Research on Understanding Elliptical and Figurative Expressions of Haiku

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25590168
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Educational psychology
• Research Institution: Tohoku University
• Principal Investigator: FUKAYA Yuko 東北大学, 教育学研究科, 准教授 (00374877)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 読解 / 俳句 / 省略表現

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Haiku is a short form of Japanese poetry with limited number of morae, therefore elliptical and figurative expressions are commonly used. Furthermore, it is said that haiku typically conveys two types of information: directly observed objects and implied sentiments of the writer. In a series of researches, how students comprehend haiku and make their explications were investigated. Results showed that students were likely to paraphrase the haiku into prose, but were unlikely to refer to the writer's feelings or thoughts. Exposure to other students' explications had an affect on reexamination of their own explication, including reinstating of the writer's sentiments. Explication of elliptical expressions, such as Haiku, might have been associated with not only comprehension of current digital linguistic information, but also metaphor comprehension and/or ambiguous sentence comprehension. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Free Research Field

教育心理学