Phraseological Semantics and Pragmatics in Chinese TV Series 靠近你温暖我 (Close to You, Make Me Warm)

Abstract

Idioms express emotional states, e.g., grief, anger, joy, sadness, fear, etc. However, they can also reveal the values, moral qualities, and directive potential of the speaker. This article reviews some existing approaches to phraseological studies and introduces an authentic comprehensive approach that covers syntactic, figurative, historical, axiological, and pragmatic levels. The material was obtained from film dialogues and analyzed from the communicative-pragmatic standpoint. The goal was to reveal the ethnic and cultural aspect of idiomatic expressions in Chinese cinema discourse. In the Chinese series 靠近你温暖我 (Close to You, Make Me Warm), the authors identified a number of idioms that explicated the following concepts: 独守空房 (dúshǒu kōngfáng) – Loneliness; 守身如玉 (shǒu shēn rú yù) – Honesty, 人算不如天算 (rénsuàn bùrú tiānsuàn) – Justice, 相亲相爱 (xiāngqīn xiāng’ài) – Love, 藕断丝连 (ǒu duàn sī lián) – Parting;白头偕老 (báitóu xiélǎo) – Marriage; 百闻不如一见 (bǎiwén bùrú yījiàn) – Trust; 两肋插刀 (liǎng lèi chā dāo) – Friendship. The new approach proved able to identify the value and pragmatics of phraseological units.