COMPARATIVE IDIOMS IN MODERN ENGLISH

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N. V. Kulikova, Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics and foreign language business communication Samara State University of Economics
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0376-0489
E-mail: nataliya.kulikova@gmail.com 141 Sovetskoy Armii st., 443090, Samara, Russian Federation

COMPARATIVE IDIOMS IN MODERN ENGLISH

One of the key aspects of research in phraseology is the question of phrase building, or phraseological modelling. In this case, modelling is viewed both as the process of creating a phraseological unit and as the reflection of reality in the figurative base of the given phraseological unit. The article uses both approaches for studying comparative English idioms.

Comparison, or simile, as a figurative base, used to be a very productive one when it came to coining idioms, but is this still true? To test the hypothesis of current productivity of this figurative base for idioms in the English language, we collected a corpus of 520 idioms that have been coined recently, within the past 7- 10 years. Corpus was collected by the method of continuous sampling from online lexicographic sources www.thefreedictionary.com and www.urbandictionary.com. Using these particular sources allows quick ac- cess to the most recent idioms due to high frequency of content update.

Simple calculation and definitions analysis demonstrated that the comparative/simile figurative base not only retained its productivity over the recent years, but also increased it. The number of compara- tive/simile-based idioms in the dictionaries rose from 3–5% in 2005–2006 to the current 6–7 %.

The main topic areas of comparative/simile-based idioms remain the same: appearance, traits of hu- man character, and mode of action. The main sociological sources for new idioms are politics, mass culture (songs, films and video clips) and artefacts used in everyday life.

Keywords: idiom; phraseology; idiom modelling and coinage; comparative imagery; modern English language.

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