Your friend Makoto is living with you while he learns English. One day he comes home very confused and tells you, “I was watching the news, and they said that everyone has a few skeletons in their closet! Do you really keep your dead in your closets?” Identify and explain the type of language that Makoto has heard.

What will be an ideal response?

Makoto has encountered an idiom. An idiom is a word or phrase that is not semantically transparent. In this case, the phrase “a skeleton in the closet” refers to an unsavory secret. It would be particularly difficult to understand as a nonnative speaker of English.

Communication & Mass Media

You might also like to view...

Name and discuss the post-World War II Italian filmmaking school that was a favorite of the French film critic/theorist Andre Bazin. Why was this school so admired by Bazin?

What will be an ideal response?

Communication & Mass Media

The theory that love is a game, entertaining, and exciting or not at all, is a description of

A) storge. B) eros. C) manic. D) ludus.

Communication & Mass Media