The sociocultural aspect of English phraseological compositions

Nadiya Maxymchuk (Volyn Institute for Economics and Management in Lutsk, Ukraine) and Larysa Omelchenko (University of Modern Knowledge in Kyiv, Ukraine)

Email: viem@privat-online.net

 

ABSTRACT:

Phraseology of any language is a linguistic heritage of utmost significance that reveals the conception of the world, national customs and traditions, beliefs, imagination of the people speaking a definite language. It is the idiomatic language that makes it possible to penetrate into the remotest past of the language as well as the history and cultural of its native speakers. English composite idioms represent particular semantic condensates of the idiomatic core of the English language, the meaning of their components being out of connection from their dictionary meaning: brown-nose (lickspittle), wind-bag (chatterbox). Most powerful enough to mark language giving a signal about the speaker’s social, cultural and communicative status, the latter is being defined by social position, world outlook, cultural level, intellectual and moral development of the speakers.

Composite idioms are coined in the process of creative linguistic mental activities and rest on the background knowledge of the individual who gets information from either his personal or social experience (baby-kisser, doorbell-ringing), that is, our understanding of the meaning of composite idioms depends on our knowledge of the realia of the external world that are marked by these idiomatic compounds (skinhead).

A reader’s incomplete informational content of the history, culture, realia, myths, legends, customs, traditions of another ethnic group causes communicative interference that reduces the effectiveness of communication and can bring complete discontinuity to it.

Phraseological composition is a source of language enrichment by our language competence to coin new composite idioms using already existing lexical means.