Criticism in a phraseological form: corpus analysis

Abstract

Aim. The article considers the semantics of English idioms expressing criticism, a semantic corpus analysis of idioms close in meaning is carried out.

Methodology. The study of the idioms with the meaning ‘criticism’ on the material of the British National Corpus, the Corpus of Contemporary American English, the Russian National Corpus and the Parallel Corpus is carried out.

Results. The images capture information about the transfer of scenarios in which an action is performed against the object, criticism is associated with assault or physical action. The synonymous idioms have additional meanings which affect their use in contexts. Varying of the image components imposes restrictions on the use of idioms in contexts and the choice of functional correspondences in translation. The corpus analysis also shows that the choice of equivalent in translation of idioms is based on the context and may diverge from the dictionary translation. The greatest frequency of use is observed in idioms with the least alive and more transparent inner form. Criticism may be aimed at causing harm, punishment, perceiving criticism on yourself, criticism of the employer, criticism for misconduct, criticism for many things, strong criticism (intensification of meaning). The analyzed idioms are not identical in their meaning, structure and use, however, they are included in one synonymic chain describing the critical relation. Some idioms detect additional and new meanings that are not mentioned in the dictionary.

Research implications. The theoretical and practical significance of the research is that it contributes to the theory of phraseology and lexicography, confirms the hypothesis of the influence of the inner form on the meaning based on the corpus data, reveals the semantic properties of idioms that are significant in compiling bilingual dictionaries, and can also be used in phraseology and translation courses.