FINAL ASSIGNMENT Topic Idioms Denoting Death

It can be seen that the difference in idioms indicating death between Vietnamese and very different English can cause difficulties or problems for people learning English or Vietnamese a

HANOI UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE

SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE

FL4225: SEMANTICS

Class: 132567

FINAL ASSIGNMENT

Topic: Idioms Denoting Death

By Phạm Thị Hồng Ngát 20193568

Lê Thị Như Quỳnh 20193586 Trần Ngọc Minh 20193561

August 2022

FINAL ASSIGNMENT TOPIC: IDIOMS DENOTING DEATH

Table of Job Assignment

Student’s name & ID In charge of parts number

Lê Thị Như Quỳnh - 20193586 I, II

Phạm Thị Hồng Ngát – 20193568 III, V

Trần Ngọc Minh - 20193561 IV

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Table of Contents

I Introduction 4

II Background knowledge about the idiom 4

1 What is an idiom? 4

2 Principal features of idioms 5

2.1 Syntactic restriction and stability 5

2.2 Semantic ambiguity 5

3 Literal meaning and Figurative meaning of idioms 6

3.1 Literal meaning of idioms 6

3.2 Figurative meaning of idioms 6

III Idioms denoting death 7

1 What is the idiom denoting death? 7

2 Features of idioms denoting death 8

3 Meaning of idioms denoting death 9

3.1 Literal meaning 9

3.2 Figurative meaning 10

IV Implications of idioms denoting death 11

V Conclusion 13

VI References 14

Idioms denoting death: Final essay

I Introduction

When studying a nation’s language, people wish to apprehend it thoroughly and master it well To reach these aims, people are not allowed to ignore their learning language’s idioms which are defined as expressions whose meanings cannot be inferred from the meaning of their parts (Glottopedia, 2009) An idiom is a word combination in the English language These words are drawn from each language's general vocabulary

According to Society for Personality and Social Psychology (2012): “Thinking about death can be a good thing” English and Vietnamese people have very different worldviews and attitudes toward death As a result, not all idioms denoting life and death

in English and Vietnamese are the same People frequently use multiple words to describe death to avoid using the word "death" directly And idioms, such as "kick the bucket" or

"gần đất xa trời " are one of the most common ways to express death metaphorically and subtly It is difficult for people to guess the meaning based solely on the meaning of each word It can be seen that the difference in idioms indicating death between Vietnamese and very different English can cause difficulties or problems for people learning English or Vietnamese as a language

Therefore, the purpose of this contrastive analysis thesis of idioms expressing death

in English and Vietnamese is to assist cross-cultural communicators and learners of Vietnamese and English as a foreign language in improving their understanding of idioms, avoiding translation errors, and effectively using them

II Background knowledge about the idiom

1 What is an idiom?

Idioms are a collection of stable words in both English and Vietnamese, for example: raise the roof, bầm gan tím ruột, There are a variety of definitions for the concept

of the idiom According to the Cambridge Dictionary of American “An idiom is a phrase

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whose meaning is different from the meanings of each word considered separately These phrases have a fixed form – they usually cannot be changed – and they are often informal, but they can also be slang, rude slang, or even slightly formal” Or according to the Longman dictionary, idioms is defined as “a group of words that has a special meaning that

is different from the ordinary meaning of each separate word”

2 Principal features of idioms

2.1 Syntactic restriction and stability

It is very easy to realize that most idioms are fixed expressions There are no changes in structure, word order, and lexicology "They typically resist interruption and reordering of parts," writes D.A Cruse (1997) That is, parts cannot be changed, omitted, or replaced without altering or distorting their true meaning Grammar and syntax restrictions can be seen in idioms We have “die likes flies” but “die liked a fly” is not an idiom This

is an illustration of grammatical restriction The syntax of each idiom varies Although most idioms are phrase-constructed according to syntactic well-formed principles, and most idioms are homophonous with grammatical well-formed transparent expressions, a few have syntactic violations, as stated by Cruse Some people have passive voices, while others

do not Some types of idiom’s syntactic potential restrictions are semantically motivated

2.2 Semantic ambiguity

A linguistic expression shows semantic ambiguity when it can have multiple senses (Wikipedia, 2022) The majority of idioms are made up of elements that are also appropriate for non-idiomatic usage As a result, most idioms have both literal and idiomatic meanings They have an ambiguous meaning as a result For example, in English, there is an idiom “kick the bucket” In its literal meaning, it refers to a person's ability to kick a bucket when they're enraged However, this idiom has a very different connotation when considered figuratively The idiom "kick the bucket" refers to death in figurative meaning It is challenging to define the phrase "kick the bucket" since many are unsure of whether to use its literal or figurative meaning People frequently discuss the meaning of

an idiom when discussing its semantic characteristics The meaning of an idiom, according

to a linguist, "is the specific chemical mixing of the meaning of all components, which is wholly new in quality." Therefore, it is crucial to comprehend idioms metaphorically

3 Literal meaning and Figurative meaning of idioms

3.1 Literal meaning of idioms

According to Elrington (2016), “An idiom is a saying that has both a literal (exact) and figurative (understood) meaning” An idiom is a type of figurative language, a word

or phrase that does not have its everyday, exact meaning Literal means the exact meaning

of something The literal meaning of a word is the actual meaning of that word A literal translation of a text is done by translating each word separately, without looking at how the words are used together in a phrase or sentence (Cambridge dictionary) In English, there are examples of the idiom "you can say that again" which is easy to confuse listeners if not put in context Because its literal meaning is completely different from its figurative meaning The literal meaning of this idiom denotes a person's permission for the other person to be allowed to repeat Another example is the idiom "One foot in the grave" The literal meaning of this expression indicates they are already halfway into their grave (the place where a person is buried) The literal meaning of the idiom "under the weather" is also very simple because people can translate the meaning based on the words of the idiom

It denotes the action of someone standing in the rain From here, everyone can see that the literal meaning is easy to identify because people just need to combine the meanings of the words in the meaning together The literal sense is often mentally present for speakers, even

if they use an idiom only in its figurative meaning (Nordquist, 2020) As a result, the pertinent mental image of a motivated idiom must be seen as a part of its content plane In some circumstances, it is necessary to consider some pertinent mental traces that are fixed

in an idiom's lexical structure as a component of its true meaning

3.2 Figurative meaning of idioms

According to the Oxford dictionary, “figurative” is defined as “used in a way that

is different from the usual meaning, to create a particular mental picture” Figurative refers

to not literally exactly Figurative language is when you use a word or phrase that does not

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have its normal, literal meaning (Elrington, 2016) It is the polar opposite of literal; therefore, a word's figurative meaning differs from its strictly literal meaning When a word

is used figuratively, it represents something different from its literal meaning Some terms are frequently used in both literal and figurative contexts By definition, figurative meaning refers to a word or expression's metaphorical, idiomatic, or ironic significance as opposed

to its literal meaning Some of the idioms presented in the aforementioned section as examples will aid individuals in better comprehending their figurative meaning The idiom

"You can say that again" has a figurative meaning completely different from the literal one

It conveys agreement and consent rather than permission to repeat in the literal sense Similar to this, the phrase "one foot in the grave" refers to death metaphorically rather than literally, as it did in its original sense And in the final example, the phrase "under the weather" does not mean standing in the rain; rather, it refers to a person who is ill or in a bad state of health This allows us to clearly distinguish between idioms' literal and figurative meanings

III Idioms denoting death

The fundamental issues of life and death always exist in humans life Everyone passes away, thus one must eventually accept death When a person loses a loved one, they are forced to contemplate life and death and make efforts to adjust to the tragic situation These concepts gave rise to the idioms about death, which later developed and served different functions (Shurma & Lu, 2016)

1 What is the idiom denoting death?

With the development of culture and language, death-related idioms have existed for a very long period They are first and foremost a part of idioms in general Therefore, idioms denoting death are also phrases that convey speaker meanings that cannot be derived

by combining the literal meanings of the individual words in each phrase by the usual semantic rules of the language; they are idiosyncratic and mostly unpredictable (Hurford et al., 2007) However, this set of idioms also possesses a remarkable identity According to Jansone (2020), idioms denoting death are idioms indicating a state of death or relating to the death to sending a certain message or for special purposes That means this set of idioms

mostly mentioned death or objects related to death For instance, the idiom: “have one foot

in the grave” is an idiom for death This idiom is used to express the meaning of being on the verge of passing away from old age or illness Other idioms for death can be mentioned such as: “cheat death”, “die likes flies”, “dead as a doornail”, “over my dead body”, and

“the king is dead - long live the king”, etc

2 Features of idioms denoting death

Based on the basic concept of idioms for death, it can be claimed that this set of idioms contains all the characteristics that typical idioms possess The features included syntactic restriction – stability, double sense, and semantic ambiguity Firstly, idioms denoting death are restricted in substitution As a rule, no word in an idiom can be changed without destroying its meaning Secondly, due to the double sense feature (sentence meaning and speaker meaning), these idioms can also trigger ambiguity However, idioms denoting death also have some typical characteristics based on word use and images

Language is characterized by words, therefore, a set of special idioms using identifiable words is a distinctive trait In the case of idioms denoting death, the words used are not only familiar but also very typical Research by Heerema (2022) claimed that the words used in idioms for death usually denote death (such as die, dead, dying, pass away, etc) or words related to the spiritual world after death (God, grave, ghost, etc) For instance,

it can be seen a lot of idioms contain these words, such as: “Brush with death”, “Ghost of a chance”, or “Have one foot in the grave”, etc Each idiom about death can be easily recognized from its external structure This is also a typical feature that helps in identifying idioms for non-native speakers Therefore, words used in idioms are a useful feature in translation, learning, and language-related work that requires dealing with idioms

However, only the word aspect is not enough to recognize the set of death idioms, the image aspect also plays a crucial role According to Hurford et al (2007): “idioms are often metaphorical in nature” Meanwhile, metaphor is conveyed based on the association

of similar images, thus essentially implying a comparison (Ahrens, 2010) Based on these statements, images in idioms can express the ideas and meaning of fix-expressions Death

is a concept that is familiar to each person, as a result, the images used must also be familiar

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and easy to associate with deeper meanings However, the problem of images used in the language is associated with the culture of each country (Ahrens, 2010), and idioms denoting death are created using different symbolic conventions that are familiar to the culture-based background For example, in Vietnamese, images were used often from agriculture and Buddhism religion, such as “chết như ngả rạ” or “Đi với phật mặc áo cà sa – Đi với ma mặc

áo giấy”, etc “Rạ” is an image that represents agriculture In English, that means straw – the rest of the rice after being harvested This image is associated with Vietnamese farmers through thousands of years of development of the rice culture In contrast, in English, heroes

or characters in fairy tales or many royal images are often used such as the king, and the prince Additionally, images of contemporary industrial life and Christianity are more prevalent (Ahrens, 2010) It can be seen through idioms such as: “King of terror” or “Put your trust in God, and keep your powder dry”, etc It can be seen that cultural characteristics have a great impact on the images used in idioms denoting death Based on different cultural and religious contexts, it is possible to recognize the characteristics of idioms of each language, thereby helping to learn and use idioms or translate them effectively (Spivak, 2000)

3 Meaning of idioms denoting death

In general, idioms about death still cover all the characteristics and properties of a basic idiom As a result, having two layers of meaning or double sense is also a fundamental feature of this set of idioms The Literal meaning (or sentence meaning) and Figurative meaning (or idiomatic meaning) of idioms about death have more specific characteristics than general idioms

3.1 Literal meaning

As Nordquist (2020) claimed that the literal meaning of the idiom is the actual meaning of some words that make this idiom In the case of idioms about death, literal meaning can be clearly understood as the total meaning of words forming the idiom, which mostly expressed death or some situations related to death (Shurma & Lu, 2016) It can be illustrated by several examples For instance, “have one foot on the grave” means someone put one of their feet in the grave - the place where the dead are buried; or the Vietnamese

idiom “chết vinh còn hơn sống nhục” can be understood as honor dead than live humiliated From these examples, it can be said that the literal meaning cannot express the deep meaning of the sentence, it can only express the superficial meaning on the surface of the word Discovery of the literal meaning of the utterance that contains the idiom is not a key step in the idiom processing process (Bobrow & Bell, 1973)

3.2 Figurative meaning

The key point to “catching up” idioms is understanding the idiomatic meaning or figurative meaning Idiomatic meaning of idioms referred to their meaning under the words that expressed the speaker’s ideas and messages (sometimes in a certain context) According to Heerema (2021), the figurative meaning of idioms for death can be divided into communication purposes and humanitarian purposes In specific, idioms about death can convey a set of feelings and judgmental attitudes for communication purposes such as irony, satire, provocative, euphemism, etc (Mycan, 2019) For example, the idiom “have one foot in the grave” above expresses the idea of being close to dying due to old age or illness From this idea, it can be said that the speaker is intentionally trying to avoid someone dying, reducing the level of grief On the other hand, idioms denoting death are also used for humanitarian purposes, including sending messages about life (polite, good personality, etc) and expressing messages in literature, etc For instance, “chết vinh còn hơn sống nhục” is an idiom about death using the death image to advise people to keep their self-esteem, quality, and good morality Due to the figurative meaning, these illustrate how idioms are frequently used As a result, understanding the idiomatic meaning of idioms denoting death is the most effective way to conquer this set of idioms (Liontas, 2002)

Although understanding the figurative meaning is the key to understanding idioms, ignoring the literal meaning is completely wrong The literal meaning is the foundation that helps readers and listeners to deduce the meaning behind words (Colombo, 1993), especially in the case of idioms denoting death because the words and images in these idioms are very specific and thought-provoking The problem is that it is necessary to combine the harmonious application of the two layers of meaning to achieve the best use efficiency and flexible application in many aspects