AMERICAN TELEVISION SERIES: WHAT INFLUENCE DOES SEMIOTICS HAVE ON FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION? By TIA KIMBALL A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2018 © 2018 Tia Kimball To my Memommie and Papa ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to the many angels that have helped guide me along this journey. I could not me more fortunate to have learned from each one of you. Throughout my studies, each of my committee members contributed immensely to helping me to form my dissertation focus. Dr. Coady, Dr. de Jong, Dr. Beal, and Dr. Resende, I appreciate your insights, guidance, support, and endless encouragement. Thank you, Dr. Maria Coady for all of your advice throughout my studies. You were always willing to lend an ear and offer advice when I faced challenges with Marcos’ teachers and his educational path. Your experiences as a mother and woman in academia were invaluable. You were not only an academic advisor but an advisor of life as well. Thank you, Dr. Ester de Jong for all of the impromptu talks, advice, and suggestions, which helped me to form my research goals. I always left your office trying to answer your probing questions and thinking “I don’t know the answer to that! What is the answer to that question?” Your probing question “But so what?” always left me searching for the answer over and over until I eventually had a light bulb moment even if I could not answer the question at the moment. I thank you for the articles related to my topic that you sent to me sporadically throughout my studies. I am grateful to have benefited from your wisdom, suggestions, and thought-provoking questions. Thank you, Dr. Rosana Resende for being one of the most passionate and intense professors I have had the pleasure of taking. I sincerely always looked forward to your direct and expressive comments on anything I submitted to you. You always said something that made me laugh out loud because I could imagine how you would say it if we were face-to-face. 4 Thank you, Dr. Carole Beal for your openness. I appreciate the time that you took to discuss any questions or concerns that I had during this journey. I knew during my first class with you that I wanted you to be a part of my committee. I appreciate your dedication to your students’ success. I thank my parents for always believing in me and for their endless support in my academic endeavors. You both have always let me know how proud you are of me, and I strive to continue making you proud. Daddy, you have always been my number one hero, and I have learned so many life lessons from you that I will carry with me forever. The day I moved to Gainesville was one of the hardest days of my life because you could not be with me since you were in the hospital having a brain biopsy. I am so grateful that you recovered and in awe of how far you have come since your illness. You were my inspiration before and you continue to be my inspiration. Thank you for your 40 years of service to our country and making the world a better place in general. Ma, you have always said that if I could go to school forever, I would. However, I assure you, this is it. I remember your education motto to us growing up “Make sure you get your education because that’s something no one can ever take from you.” I cherish all of our morning talks (and sometimes four times a day talks) and being willing to talk and grow with me. You are an amazing mom, and I have learned so much from you. I will be forever grateful for the lessons you’ve taught me. I give a special thanks to my three monsters, Marcos, Jahlil, and Alimir. Although moving away from your friends in Jacksonville was difficult, you grew so much in our three short years in Gainesville. I thank you for being my solace and comfort on long 5 difficult days. Your love means the world to me. I hope that I have shown you that you can pursue your dreams no matter what obstacles you may face. You all have always been my driving force, and I will always do anything for you. I always want you to know that anything is possible, and nothing is beyond your reach. Because of you, I never give up. And I hope that because of me, you never will either. In addition to my amazing parents, I have the best mother and father-in-law that anyone could ever ask for. Thank you so much Dick and Jan for providing encouragement through each step of this process and taking on grandparenting duties when I needed the space to write or simply take a nap. You were always there with flowers, cookies, or wine to celebrate the big moments along the way in this long journey. I love you! There are not enough words to express my gratitude to my incredibly patient husband, Matt, who was the number one reason for my decision to pursue this path when I did. You always reminded me to take a break when I needed to step away. You always pulled me out of my own head when I got to far inside. You reminded me to take deep breaths. I thank you for cooking all meals every day so that I could focus and work on whatever I needed to. I am forever grateful that in addition to all of that you homeschooled Marcos at a time when he desperately needed it. Thank you for being my primary editor and sounding board. In my eyes, you definitely earned your honorary PhD since by now you should be able to explain my dissertation to anyone who asks! Thank you for being an indelible rock and shield against all of the stressors of life. Dr. Otilia Salmón, you have been a guiding light for me ever since I met you. I could not be more thankful to you and your guidance. Thank you, Ruth Harrold for 6 allowing me to take over not one or two but three classes at the ELP to teach listening skills using AMTVS. It was the perfect experience that guided a lot of my coursework at UF. Thank you, Janneke Bahamón for listening to me vent and telling me what emotions to expect. Thank you, Rosana Moreira for being my cheerleader all the way from Texas and being a positive light in my life. Thank you to Keisha Bryant and Bridgette Johnson for seeking me out at UF and letting me know that you were there for me. Your words of encouragement and time spent talking to me on the phone and answering any questions that I had about this journey was invaluable. I have to acknowledge and thank my informal committee: Yong Jik Lee, Xiaochen Du,Tuba Yilmaz, Nate Murray, Hyunjin Kim, and Shuzhan Li. I thank you for the camaraderie and the memories. I appreciate all of the talks that we had about our dissertations and coursework. You all helped to influence the researcher that I have become. I look forward to working with you all for many years to come. Finally, I must thank the ELP and my participants who were available to me any time I had a follow up question about their experiences. Thank you, Irene Silas for your many, many years of support and friendship. Thank you for opening the doors to the ELP so that I could engage in this work. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................................... 4 LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................................................. 11 LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................ 12 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................................... 13 ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ 14 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 16 Overview ..................................................................................................................... 16 Statement of the Problem ........................................................................................... 18 The Significance of the Study ..................................................................................... 20 Summary ..................................................................................................................... 21 2 REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ................................................................................ 23 Overview ..................................................................................................................... 23 Figurative Language ................................................................................................... 23 Listening ...................................................................................................................... 27 What is Listening Comprehension? ..................................................................... 27 Semiotic Support in Listening Comprehension ................................................... 28 Visual semiotics ............................................................................................. 31 Auditory semiotics.......................................................................................... 31 Gestural semiotics ......................................................................................... 32 Spatial semiotics ............................................................................................ 32 Linguistic semiotics .......................................................................................