This article reports on the role pragmatic inferencing plays in accounting for the ways in which native speakers perceive and interpret the semantic transparency of idioms. Although previous studies have suggested that semantic transparency intuitions of idioms are partly motivated by the conceptual metaphors that underlie them (Gibbs 1992; Gibbs et al.1997), findings from other studies (Keysar & Bly 1995, 1999) have raised questions concerning the arbitrariness of such intuitions. This study seeks to further address the discussion on the nature of semantic transparency by examining the role of pragmatic inferencing and encyclopedic world knowledge for understanding how native speakers interpret the relationship between the literal parts and figurative meanings of metaphorical idioms. To this end, semantic transparency ratings were elicited among fifteen native speakers of English for 222 metaphorical English idioms. Furthermore, raters provided qualitative support by justifying their ratings for a smaller subset of 30 idioms. These initial results were then triangulated by a follow-up exploratory study surveying etymological notes from a number of idiom dictionaries. The findings suggest that pragmatic inferencing via encyclopedic world knowledge plays an important role for the non-arbitrary way in which native speakers perceive the semantic transparency of idioms.
Within the framework of cognitive linguistics, metaphor is understood and regarded as a conceptual rather than a linguistic phenomenon. It follows that metaphorical expressions, including idioms, encountered in language merely reflect metaphors that exist at the conceptual level (Lakoff, Johnson, 1980). Lakoff (1993: 202-251), dealing within cognitive linguistics and generative semantics in particular, presents a detailed account of a theory of mental representation based on the idea that metaphor plays central role in the way in which we think, speak and perceive the world. He distinguishes between a conceptual metaphor mapped from the source domain to the target domain, and linguistic metaphors being individual linguistic expressions that represent the concepts mapped. Thus, metaphor in its essence is a cognitive phenomenon (Lakoff, 1993, p. 209). The idea that metaphoric meanings are motivated by people's conceptual knowledge, which includes metaphorical and metonymic schemes of thought, is supported also by Zoltan Kovecses (2002). Gibbs (1994) views metaphor not as a distorted literal thought, but rather considers it being a basic scheme by which human experience and the outside world are conceptualized. Idioms are considered to be products of human conceptual system; the process of their development involves domains of experience rather than individual words. Therefore, it follows that we make sense of idioms and figurative language in general by using our embodied knowledge of the surrounding world (Kovecses, 2002, p. 201; Kovecses and Szabó, 1996, p. 330), rather than by associating them with arbitrary meanings.
Dictionary Of Idioms And Their Origins By Flavell Pdf Download
To catch the attention of the target audience, advertisements should be made attractive and memorable. Largely, advertising is so powerful because of the language used; advertisers are the ones whose linguistic creativity and ability to select the most appropriate words is exceptional. Figurative language and idioms in particular have proven to be productive means in the development of persuasive advertising. They are catchy, institutionalized linguistic expressions and thus familiar to most of the representatives of the target group. Due to their multiword character, idioms easily lend themselves to different variations that may be applied in advertising to produce various semantic effects and enhance the ties between the idiom and the product advertised. Idioms that are used in advertising are usually well-known, frequently used linguistic units, therefore, by inferring both strong and weak implicatures (for more on implicatures in usage events of idioms, see Olehnovica, 2012, p. 54-55), consumers easily interpret the
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