FINAL ASSIGNMENT Topic Idioms Denoting Death

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 Table of Contents I Introduction II Background knowledge about the idiom What is an idiom? Principal features of idioms 2.1 Syntactic restriction and stability 2.2 Semantic ambiguity Literal meaning and Figurative meaning of idioms 3.1 Literal meaning of idioms 3.2 Figurative meaning of idioms III Idioms denoting death What is the idiom denoting death? Features of idioms denoting death Meaning of idioms denoting death 3.1 Literal meaning 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 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 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” 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 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 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 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) 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 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 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 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) 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 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 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 10 IV Implications of idioms denoting death Idioms about death are often used to promote the soul and human values, besides, idioms also express attitudes such as irony or challenge the opponent (Mycan, 2019) There are two applications of using denoting death: in literature and in life Firstly, the different uses of denoting death in life consist of giving advice as well as using it for communication (Avelina, 2022) For instance, the idiom "the die is cast" is to illustrate the use of giving advice Julius Caesar is said to have said this idiom (in Latin) as he crossed the Rubicon River with one of his legions to begin the civil war that would bring him to power The Rubicon was the Roman republic's northern border, and Caesar could not legally command soldiers within Rome The victory was his only option because the offense was punishable by death When he said, "the die is cast," he meant that he'd made his decision and there was no turning back (Freeman, 1996) As a result, people use it as a synonym for "past the point of no return" to advise people to everything carefully Besides, in Vietnamese, there is a common idiom “chết vinh sống nhục” that suggests that people would rather die heroically and bring honor to themselves and their families than live and bring shame to themselves and their families The next application is for communication purposes Idioms are used in daily English conversation because they enhance the communication's content and help the speakers clearly express themselves (Thyab, 2016) For example, the idiom “over my dead body” is used when people strongly refuse, oppose something, or challenge someone In Vietnamese, there is a similar idiom: “có ngon bước qua xác tao đi” ………………………………………………… Secondly, the use of idioms is in literature Idioms are frequently used in literature to help convey subtle meanings because they are such interesting ways to convey information Idioms reflect the nuance and inventiveness of human expression and communication So, rather than relying on literal words and phrases, writers frequently choose to use idioms as a unique metaphor to make their language richer and more elaborate, adding an extra layer of meaning that literal words cannot achieve This artistic use of language also amplifies the meaning of a literary work and the enjoyment for readers (Cacciari & Tabossi, 1993) Consequently, many of the most common idioms we use today were coined by great writers as a unique metaphor, and people liked them enough to start using them in everyday conversation 11 William Shakespeare was a master of repurposing the English language, and many of the figures of speech we use today can be traced back to his plays In this essay, "as dead as the doornails" and "kill someone with kindness" are two examples of idioms denoting death that are taken from Shakespeare's plays To begin with the idiom “as dead as a doornail” which was widespread when Shakespear used it In his play "Henry IV Part 2", the character Jack Cade says: “I have eaten no meat these five days; yet, come thou and thy five men, and if I not leave you all as dead as a doornail, I pray God I may never eat grass more.” In this excerpt, the character Jack Cade is comparing doornails to whomever he is speaking with Doornails used to be hammered into doors in such a way that they were useless for anything else They were hammered in and then the opposite side was bent with the hammer so they couldn't be easily removed So, they were dead in that tense Cade threatens to kill the others, and not just kill them, but to make them as dead as doornails Furthermore, although this idiom is previously used by Shakespear, it became more popular and was better known by Charles Dickens who wrote "a Christmas Carol" The idiom “as dead as a doornail” is taken from the passages: “Old Marley was as dead as a doornail Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail.” The narrator declares that Marley is as dead as a doornail using this phrase He continues by suggesting that it could be a coffin nail However, it announces Marley's unavoidable death and burial The repeated use of the idiom “as dead as doornail” further emphasizes its meaning associated with death and foreshadows what was about to happen to Scrooge Nowadays, the idiom “as dead as doornails” is still used emphatically, implying that something is neither alive nor dead Next, the idiom “kill someone with kindness” from Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew in which Petrucio said:” This is a way to kill a wife with kindness, and thus I’ll curb her mad and headstrong humor” The character Petrucio in this play is planning to tame Kate's nagging nature and turn Kate into an obedient wife For him, “killing with kindness” entails depriving Kate of food and sleep for a period of time until she submits to being an 12 obedient wife As a result, the idiom “kill with kindness” means to overwhelm someone with over-indulgence It can also imply that being treated with excessive favor or kindness can cause harm, inconvenience, or bother As mentioned above, the idioms are used as a unique metaphor by the authors It can be seen that not all idioms are created equal and idiomaticity has come to encompass every linguistic phenomenon: from partially frozen constructions in which individual words retain roughly the same meaning as they in isolation to constructions whose meaning is completely different from that of the constituents (Lehrer, 1974); from phrasal verbs to compounds; from indirect speech acts to formulaic expression (Cacciari & Tabossi, 1993) For these reasons, readers must be careful when reading these idioms to avoid ambiguity or misunderstanding because people cannot find their meaning by translating them word by word Therefore, when coming across a strange phrase, the best way to get the most out of it and understand deeply the author's message is to look it up in the dictionary V Conclusion In conclusion, this essay mentioned three main issues: the background knowledge about idioms, the features and meaning of idioms denoting death, and implications The idiom denoting death is an important part of the idioms field, which has a long history of development based on unique cultures Besides, at the same time, they have many useful applications in life as well as art Although it is difficult to master and understand all these idioms, the benefits and effectiveness that it brings are undeniable In the future, idioms denoting death will develop more and more both in number and semantics, conquering them will also become more challenging but equally interesting and attractive 13 VI References Ahrens, K (2010) Mapping principles for conceptual metaphors (2nd ed.) Researching and applying metaphor in the real world – Amsterdam, 185-208 Avelina, N S (2022) The use of idiom in English textbook for senior high school students “pathaway English” Electronic Theses of IAIN Ponorogo Retrieved July 4, 2022, from http://etheses.iainponorogo.ac.id/20325/ Bobrow, S.A., Bell, S.M (1973) On catching on to idiomatic expressions Memory & Cognition 1, 343–346 https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03198118 Colombo, L (1993) The Comprehension of ambiguous idioms in context (2nd ed.) Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Cruse, D A (1997) Lexical Semantics Retrieved from https://books.google.com.vn/books?id=xDSBaet2uSsC&printsec=frontcover&hl=vi&sour ce=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=snippet&q=literal&f=false Elrington, A (2016) Literal and non-literal meanings of words and idioms Retrieved 2022, from https://www.oercommons.org/authoring/13819-literal-and-non-literal-meanings-ofwords-and-idio/view Freeman, C (1996) Egypt, Greece, and Rome: Civilizations of the Ancient Mediterranean Oxford University Press Glottopedia ( 2009) Idiom Retrieved 2022, from http://www.glottopedia.org/index.php/Idiom Heerema, E (2022) Euphemisms for dead, death, and dying: are they helpful or harmful? Verywell Health https://www.verywellhealth.com/euphemisms-for-dead-death-or-dying 14 Hurford, J R., Heasley, B., & Smith, M B (2007) Semantics: A Coursebook (2nd ed.) Cambridge University Press Jansone, A (2020) Phraseological units with the elements referring to ‘life’ or ‘death’ in English and Russian Daugavpils University https://www.dukonference.lv/files/proceedings_of_conf/53konf/valodnieciba_literaturzin atne/Jansone.pdf Lehrer, A (1974) Semantic Fields and Lexical Structure North-Holland Mycan, D M (2019) Idioms denoting death (on the example of Polish and Ukrainian folk songs) Precarpathian bulletin of the Shevchenko scientific society word, 2(54), 213–219 https://doi.org/10.31471/2304-7402-2019-2(54)-213-219 Nordquist, R (2020) Figurative Meaning Retrieved 2022, from https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-a-figurative-meaning-1690792 Rana, A T (2016) The Necessity of idiomatic expressions to English language learners International Journal of English and Literature, 7(7), 106–111 https://doi.org/10.5897/ijel2016.0895 ScienceDaily (2012) How thinking about death can lead to a good life Retrieved 2022, from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120419102516.htm Shurma, S., & Lu, W (2016) A cognitive poetic analysis of life and death in English and Ukrainian: A multiple-parallel-text approach to Hamlet’s Soliloquy Theatralia https://digilib.phil.muni.cz/handle/11222.digilib/135852 Spivak, G C (2000) Translation as Culture Parallax, 6(1), 13–24 https://doi.org/10.1080/135346400249252 15 ... meaning of idioms III Idioms denoting death What is the idiom denoting death? Features of idioms denoting death Meaning of idioms denoting death .. .FINAL ASSIGNMENT TOPIC: IDIOMS DENOTING DEATH Table of Job Assignment Student’s name & ID In charge of parts number Lê Thị Như... meaning 10 IV Implications of idioms denoting death 11 V Conclusion 13 VI References 14 Idioms denoting death: Final essay I Introduction When studying