Characteristic Psychological and Physiological Aspects of Personality in Idiomatic Expressions of Modern French and English

Abstract

Idioms remain a peculiar composition of specific lexical units, which differ from the words. The use of a word in an idiomatic unit is only its specific case. The particular colouring of the given units creates special (different from the word) possibilities for its appliance for emotional-expressive purpose.Idiomatic expressions are firm combinations that adorn speech. These inseparable structures, which have lexical meaning, define phenomena, features, states, and signs. They are called alternations that are freely divided into constituent parts. Moreover, these elements are independent and have some meaningful significance. Idiomatic expressions are considered to be such linguistic units that are represented as groups of words and are not often predetermined by structure and by meaning in particular.Research materials have been selected and taken from the French and English explanatory (monolingual) and phraseological dictionaries.The specificity of phraseological semantics is determined by the fact that phraseological units reflect not the fragment of reality named by the word-components, but give us information about the world obtained as a result of the secondary nomination. The highest function of phraseological units and idiomatic vocabulary is expressiveness. Phraseologisms mainly serve the emotional sphere of language.The origins of idiomatic units in both French and English, as well as in other languages, are varied. Their images have been derived from various spheres of material, cultural and socio-economic life of Nations. They (the units) reflect the history, existence and culture, their spirituality and the way of thinking. Phraseologisms are considered to be one of the most striking manifestations of the national-cultural specificity of a language.Idioms with a positive evaluation (i.e. phraseologisms that refer to a person and his/her positive characteristics) are used in ordinary expressions to describe what another person is. Idioms implying a personality are mostly historically conditioned.To sum up, from the above idiomatic expressions, we can conclude that most of these units carry a negative connotation of the physiological and psychological aspects of a person.