Курсовая работа: Idioms in Commercials Pragmatic Aspect
An attempted pragmatic reasoning explanation for these sentences might follow some such train as train as this: if someone asks me to explain a state of affairs that I am involved in, it might be that she thinks there's something wrong about that state of affairs, and making that inference might lead me to doing something to change it. Such reasoning will perform quite well with certain kinds of questions, but I will claim that it doesn't work in the case of these sentences.
If you hear, "Why aren't you wearing your shoes?", your natural inclination might be to think that the speaker finds this situation questionable and is suggesting you should put your shoes on. Such an inference, however, does not depend on the question being negative in form: it would be called on just as well if the question had been "Why are you going barefoot?". [1; 86]
The argument that the first group of negative "why" questions make up a special construction, even though constructs built on it closely resemble ordinary questions, includes the following points:
(1) "Real" questions with "why" can generally be paraphrased as something like "situation S exists; explain that". Thus, "You are not wearing shoes; explain yourself." The "why" questions that are taken as suggestions cannot. "Why don't you be the leader?", for example, cannot be paraphrased as "You don't be the leader; explain!".
(2) Instances of the construction can use "do" with "be", true also of imperatives (obligatory, in the negative "don't be obtuse" and optional in the affirmative, as in the gushy "do be careful"). Notice the difference in interpretation between "Why aren't you the leader?" and "Why don't you be the leader?". The first of these does permit the two-part paraphrase. ("You aren't the leader; tell me why").
(3) "Real negative "why" questions are generally negative polarity contexts negative-why-question suggestions are not. In the following two sentences, notice the difference between the suggestion, with "something", and the ordinary question, with "anything.
"Why don't you try something new?"
"Why don't you (ever) try anything new?"
Our conclusion, using the preceding observations and a few others, will have to be that there exists in English a way of expressing suggestions that has the form of a negative "why" question and has some of the internal trappings of a positive suggestion. [13;26]
1.2. Basic features of idioms
All English idioms possess basic common features.
Non-compositionality: The meaning of a collocation is not a straightforward composition of the meaning of its parts. For example, the meaning of kick the bucket has nothing to do with kicking buckets. (Kick the bucket means to die.)
Non-substitutability: One cannot substitute a word in a collocation with a related word. For example, we cannot say kick the pail instead of kick the bucket although bucket and pail are synonyms.
Non-modifiability: One cannot modify a collocation or apply syntactic transformations. For example, John kicked the green bucket or the bucket was kicked has nothing to do with dying. (Although John kicked his bucket and John's bucket was kicked are both valid)
It is likely that every human language has idioms, and very many of them; a typical English commercial idiom dictionary lists about 4,000. When a local dialect of a language contains many highly developed idioms it can be unintelligible to speakers of the parent language; a classic example is that of Cockney rhyming slang. But note that most examples of slang, jargon and catch phrases, while related to idioms, are not idioms in the sense discussed here. Also to be distinguished from idioms are proverbs, which take the form of statements such as, "He who hesitates is lost." Many idioms could be considered colloquialisms [24;88].
Many idioms were first created by working people. These idioms consist of familiar terms which are associated with their own trades and occupations. Such idioms were all colloquial and informal and once confined to a limited group of people in the same trade or activity. But they proved terse, vivid, forcible and stimulating so that later they broke out of their bounds and gradually gained wide acceptance. As a result, their early stylistic features faded in part, and many became part of the common core of the language and are now used in different situations.
Despite the fact, idioms are generally felt to be informal and some are colloquialisms and slang, therefore inappropriate for formal style. Occasionally, we find idioms, which are extremely formal and used only in frozen style[8;37].
The same idiom may show stylistic differences when it is assigned different meanings. In addition, slang expressions are often peculiar to social or regional varieties. Some may be used only in British setting; others may be suitable for certain groups of people. All this needs care on the part of the user in the course of production.
Apart from the stylistic features, idioms manifest apparent rhetorical coloring in such respects as of phonetic manipulation, lexical manipulation and figures of speech.
1. Phonetic manipulation. This manipulation includes alliteration and rhyme.
2. Lexical manipulation. Lexical manipulation embraces repetition, reiteration (duplication of synonyms) and juxtaposition (of antonyms).
3. Figures of speech. Idioms are terse and vivid because of the copious images created by them. Large numbers of idioms are used in their metaphorical meaning. Since idioms are peculiar to the native culture and language, many images appear exotic to foreign learners but are expressive, impressive and effective. The figures of speech, which can be found in idioms, are: simile, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, personification and euphemism.
Characterized by semantic unity and structural stability, idioms do not allow changes as a rule. But structural stability is not absolute. When idioms are used in actual context, they do experience grammatical changes such as different forms of verbs, agreement of personal pronouns and number and so on. Occasionally, we may find changes in constituents of idioms: addition, deletion, replacement, position shifting, dismembering.
1. Replacement. In some idioms, a constituent may be replaced by a word of the same part of speech, resulting in synonymous or antonymous idioms.
2. Addition or deletion. In some instances, some constituents can be added or deleted, which does not affect the meaning of the idioms.
3. Position-shifting. The positions of certain constituents in some idioms can be shifted without any change in meaning.
4. Shortening. This occasionally occurs in proverbs and sayings, where only a part of them is used instead of the whole.
5. Dismembering. It is what I mean by breaking up the idioms into pieces, an unusual case of use of idioms particularly in literature or popular press to achieve special effect.
As we can see, idioms are very important elements of the language with a elaborate structure and various ways of expressing thoughts which can be effectively used both in literature and for some practical purposes as well [27;328].
Chapter 2. Practical usage of the idioms in commercial advertising