Lexical Phrases Research Articles

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Jeon, Hye-Young & Oh, Seon-Hye. 2017. “A Sociolinguistic Perspective on the Language of Journalism”. The sociolinguistics Jouranl of Korea 25(3). 231~258. This research aims to collect the social dialects used in the press society, to describe its meaning, and to analyze the morphemes of lexical forms and phrases. As a result of this work, we can document unrecorded lexical forms and phrases from a linguistic point of view, and answer the question on characteristics of journalism language. Most prior research on social disalects focused on the language of hierarchies, generations and races. However further research should be conducted on lexical forms and phrases per the occupation. We collected data by conducting personal interviews from November 2016 to March 2017. We had one hours interviews with 10 respondents who were working as reporters at Chosun Biz, Joongang Ilbo, Hankook Ilbo, JTBC, MBC, and Yonhap News. The collected variants were divided into three categories according to the usage method and described lexical meaning. Then, later we found lexical and pragmatic peculiarities of a social dialect such as abbreviations, loan words, compounds, duplicity, metaphoric expression and high context. This information will likely impact linguistics and journalism. It will be possible to purify Korean language and to unify the meanings of commonly used terms.

Left dislocation in main and subordinate clauses

Left dislocation is a common feature in the Nordic languages. In main clauses, a lexical noun phrase is positioned in a dislocated position in the left periphery, while a pronoun occurs in the clause-internal, prefield position, i.e., in the position preceding the finite verb. This is described by Faarlund et al (1997:904-5) for Norwegian, Teleman et al (1999 4:440–447) for Swedish and Hansen and Heltoft (2011:1828) for Danish.

The Impact of Different Instructions on Vietnamese EFL Students’ Acquisition of Formulaic Sequences

The paper explores how various teaching methods, namely Phonology-Based Instruction (PBI) and Translation-Based Instruction (TBI), have an effect on students’ acquisition of formulaic sequences. 20 multiword expressions were taught to 48 Vietnamese EFL students from three intact classes as 2 treatment groups (PBI and TBI) and 1 control group. Right after completing the tasks, the three groups were tested on their ability to identify (Form Recognition) and produce (Form and Meaning Recall) the lexical phrases by an immediate post-test. A delayed test was administered two weeks later for better comparsion of their retention. The results showed that PBI and TBI groups significantly outperformed the control one on most of the test levels. Especially, TBI tended to be more effective than PBI in two cases as regards both Repeating and Non-repeating items. It is believed that if the results and the proposed suggestions of this research are taken into consideration, major improvements could occur in language teaching programs, leading to students’ higher vocabulary uptake.

Review of Wood, D. 2015. Fundamentals of formulaic language: An introduction. London: Bloomsbury Academic. 198 pages. ISBN: 978–0–5672–7898–2

Review of Wood, David. 2015. Fundamentals of formulaic language: An introduction. London: Bloomsbury Academic. 198 pages. ISBN: 978-0-5672-7898-2.The book Fundamentals of formulaic language: An introduction by David Wood is considered an insightful, essential and comprehensive account of formulaic language. Formulaic language has been an interesting topic in applied linguistics, corpus linguistics, and language teaching since John Sinclair's works and his contribution to the field of corpus linguistics. The book covers a variety of topics, ranging from theoretical and practical aspects of formulaic language to future directions in formulaic research.The book consists of ten chapters. The first chapter lays the foundations of the book, providing background on foundational theoretical perspectives and concepts of formulaic language. It describes the theoretical and disciplinary traditions (such as anthropology, sociology, acquisition, and lexicology) which have influenced research into formulaic language over decades. Established terminology referring to formulaic language and its characteristics from various aspects of communication and language studies (e.g. pragmatics, discourse, language acquisition and cognitive processing of language), are presented. Broadly, this chapter deals with the concept of formulaic language from different perspectives, which suggests that formulaic units are not a recent approach, but a significant aspect in any field, particularly language studies and communication. However, the chapter seems to make a short and dense overview of the research history of formulaic language. In fact, the current status of formulaic language research and its roles in language teaching and learning should be mentioned.After presenting the background of formulaic language studies from different perspectives, Chapter 2 is devoted to the identification of formulaic language in spoken and written texts, introducing some basic principles, ranging from quantitative analysis to psychological judgment. Reviewing related studies on formulaic language, Wood argues that using frequency and statistic measures, such as mutual information (MI) in Schmitt's work (2010), bears some limitations. This notion is in agreement with Wray (2002; 2008), Martinez and Schmitt (2012), and Wood (2010), who note that it is necessary for a string to be more than just frequent, and needs to have a unitary meaning or function. Wood recommends that additional steps (e.g. psycholinguistic measures, either by experts or native speaker judges) be taken into account to eliminate meaningless combinations of words from functional analyses. Although Wood touches upon a rather interesting and, indeed, tempting issue, it needs to be mentioned that this is not surprising as corpus evidence alone might not provide a strong argument. A complementary use of corpora and a psycholinguistic approach are needed in conducting formulaic research (see e.g. Gilquin & Gries, 2009; Herbst, Faulhaber & Uhrig, 2011).Chapter 3 outlines concepts, characteristics and functional categories of formulaic sequences. It covers important descriptions and definitions relevant to formulaic sequences, such as idioms, metaphors, lexical phrases, lexical bundles, proverbs and concgrams (given their predicability and combinability). Wood discusses that, due to the different types of data and criteria used to determine formulaic sequences, the classifications and taxonomies of other researchers presented in the literature quite overlap and have changed over time. Some researchers (e.g. Liu, 2012; Wray, 2002), therefore, have created their own sets of descriptions, definitions, and classifications. While Wood directs the reader to the distinctions between definitions of formulaic sequences, this chapter would have benefited from a few examples of practical criteria to distinguish, for example, phrasal verbs, lexical phrases, and collocations, which novice researchers could use in order to conduct research into word strings. …

Death in Metaphorical Language

Abstract The article presents the analysis of the lexical phrases employing the selected elements of the cognitive frame of DEATH. A brief outline of the symbolism of death is also noted. The corpus for the present analysis has been collected from a number of lexicographic sources. The research results point to the negative meaning of most phrases where death, dead or to die are employed.

Linguistic Creativity in Heritage Speakers

This paper presents and analyzes lexical and syntactic evidence from heritage Russian as spoken by bilinguals dominant in American English. The data come from the Russian Learner Corpus, a new resource of spoken and written materials produced by heritage re-learners and L2 learners of Russian. The paper focuses on lexical phrase violations, which we divide further into transfer-based structures and novel creations, showing that the latter are used by heritage speakers, but generally not freely available to L2 learners. In constructing innovative expressions, heritage speakers follow general principles of compositionality. As a result, novel constructions are more semantically transparent than their correlates in the baseline or dominant language. We argue that such semantically transparent, compositional patterns are based on structures that are universally available across languages. However, L2 speakers resort to these universal strategies for creating novel phrases much less often than heritage speakers. In their linguistic creativity, heritage speakers’ utterances parallel those of L1 child learners rather than L2 speakers.

An exploratory study on an integrated genre-based approach for the instruction of academic lexical phrases

This study explores a holistic approach in the teaching and learning of academic lexical phrases. It incorporates the Sydney school genre-based pedagogy and corpus-informed explicit instruction into the ESP (English for Specific Purposes) genre-based framework for a better “text in context” exemplification of genre knowledge and genre related language features (including lexical phrases). A distinction is made between general (or “lexical bundles” in traditional terms) and move-specific lexical phrases in the academic genre of research paper. An intervention study using this approach was conducted over a semester in an intact classroom with Masters students in China. The results indicated significant gains in receptive knowledge of lexical phrases and genre structure by the participants, and learners of different starting levels showed similar final attainment after instruction. The considerable number of appropriate uses of both types of lexical phrases in a rewriting task further supported the potential of this approach in academic lexical instruction. More importantly, a multiple regression analysis was performed and implies that the growth in the use of general lexical phrases cannot be isolated from the development of genre knowledge and specific language features such as the move-specific lexical phrases.

Linguistic Cliches at the Crossroads of Controversy: their Impact in Teaching English as a Foreign Language

The acute reliance on cliches reflects on the one hand a general and inevitable but intrinsec feature of language (Amossy, Herschberg Pierrot 2011), inscribed in its "genetic code". On the other hand, from the perspective of social psychology, it reflects a broader phenomenon that marks the human mind, in order to simplify the complex set of stimuli from the environment. Apparently, linguistic cliches arise only negative reactions, especially from stylistics’, being disqualified and strongly perceived as a deviation from the aesthetic imperatives promoted under the auspices of the Romanticism. However, this paper tries to investigate if these types of linguistic patterns or the so-called frozen discourse (cliches, stereotypes, lexical phrases, sayings, collocations) can have a major impact on teaching and learning a foreign language. Informed by the theoretical perspective of Dufays (1994), Riffaterre (1979) and Eco (2007) on the constructive function of stereotypes and cliches in the process of reading, the present paper will report the results of a survey conducted on a group of middle school teachers learning English as a foreign language through an innovative method (flipped classroom) and by exploiting the potential of cliches. As a result of attending a teacher trainer course at Bell Cambridge, we have designed a series of workshops which explores different ways of teaching and learning English by using creatively prefabricated language chunks. Language acquisition specialists have pointed out that the competence to use prefabricated units is vital to the language learner. Furthermore, linguistic cliches can trigger more easily adhesion to the target culture. We aim at promoting the positive value of cliches in teaching, since, besides their cultural overtones, they can help learners achieve the ideal standard of expressing oneself as a native speaker. Keywords: cliche; positive function, frozen language, teaching and learning, foreign language

The Effect of Digital Dialogued Journaling on Improving English Writing: A Linguistic Communicative Approach

<p>Writing is a complex process that requires advanced linguistic skills. Although many college students studied English as a foreign language (EFL) for twelve years in preparatory and high schools, they still face major problems in producing correct writings that meet their colleges’ requirements. Students’ problems include inability to generate ideas, organize discourse, control sentence structures, choose appropriate vocabulary, and use effective styles. A potential solution to such problems can be found in the application of modern technologies in the classrooms. Telecommunication technologies which include synchronous and asynchronous communication have provided various tools that can be used to assist EFL students to learn writing skills. Therefore, the current quantitative, quasi-experimental study aimed at examining the effect of asynchronous communication, specifically digital dialogued journaling on students’ writing skills. Digital dialogued journaling includes blogs, webpages, discussion forms, or word-processed applications such as Google documents. Using the platform of Google documents, the present study attempted to provide new strategies for teaching writing courses at higher education to help EFL students develop their writing skills. Data was collected from undergraduate students in the College of Languages and Translation, at Al-Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Data collection depended on a number of instruments: First, a pretest was used to measure the participants’ level of writing before implementing the teaching strategies of dialogued journaling. Secondly, an online dialogued journal, designed by the researcher using Google documents, was employed for the experiment. The journal was sent to the same sample via emails, and the participants posted their reflective writings on different issues regarding their academic journey learning English. Students’ interactive dialogues included prose writing, descriptive and argumentative paragraphs, poetry, and their personal stories. The students-teacher dialogues made the corpus data which enabled investigating the effectiveness of dialogued journaling on improving students’ writing. Thirdly, a posttest was used to collect data regarding the degree of change that occurred as a result of the experiment. Fourthly, a Likert scale questionnaire was used at the end of the experiment to identify the participants’ levels of satisfaction with dialogued journaling. Data analysis was based on using the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to compare the results of pretest and posttest. A rubric with five scale criteria was used to examine each rank of students’ writing, and to report each student’s score before and after treatment. The Text Analyzer Software was also employed to examine the participant’s writing lexical density and phrase frequencies. Data analysis results indicated a significant statistical difference between the overall writing scores of the pretest and the posttest. Moreover, the examination of the participants’ writing revealed much improvement in writing styles, word choice, and the student’s voice, which are critical factors in writing. Hence, the significance of the current study is that it provides a new technological tool, such as Google document, for teaching writing skills at higher education. This study includes an instructional model that incorporates digital journaling into teaching English writing. The present research is also a contribution in the field of teaching English, adopting the communicative approach by integrating theories of connectives and constructivism into linguistic theories. <strong></strong></p>

Developing Students’ Communicative Competence in Business English

The ability to communicative in Business English (BE) is a great advantage for young specialists to become successful in the global market. Unfortunately, a lot of students lack accuracy and fluency in speaking BE. The following fact encouraged the authors of this study to carry out the research at Aleksandras Stulginskis University (ASU) from February 2014 to June 2014. The target students were 62 first year learners of the Faculty of Economics and Management who had BE as a compulsory subject. The research aims to investigate and suggest an appropriate system of effective factors, strategies, and active methods allowing students to develop the ability to produce BE terms, lexical phrases, and word combinations in impromptu situations. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has been used as the main teaching strategy, which was creatively supported by active imitative and non-imitative methods based on team work. The study reveals that a creative use of imitative and non-imitative methods affects long-term memory. Consequently, learners acquire the ability to retain and recycle the necessary BE vocabulary, and grammar structures and start producing them spontaneously in speech. By involving learners in creative activities we get them to practise an important sub-skill of using a language: thinking creatively. It leads to genuine communication and prepares learners for using BE instrumentally outside the classroom. Teamwork has been encouraged because good teamwork skills are a requirement for success in more and more professional contexts. The research has confirmed that teamwork provides students with the instruments of effective self-direction as well as with the necessary skills of collaborating, cooperating, sharing, and socializing. It means that teamwork creates safe and student-friendly environment which is an important prerequisite to develop BE communicative competence. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sal.0.28.14265

Vocabulary Teaching Based on Semantic-Field

<p>Vocabulary is an indispensable part of language and it is of vital importance for second language learners. Wilkins (1972) points out: “without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed”. Vocabulary teaching has experienced several stages characterized by grammatical-translation method, audio-lingual method and communicative teaching method before obtaining great attention from second language teachers and researchers finally.</p><p>This study states four proposals for the improvement of vocabulary teaching, which refer that: (1) apply componential analysis to vocabulary teaching; (2) foster learners’ awareness of the difference between English and Chinese; (3) introduce lexical phrases; (4) develop effective word meaning acquisition strategies.</p>

Impact of Explicit Vocabulary Instruction on Writing Achievement of Upper-Intermediate EFL Learners

<p class="apa">Studying explicit vocabulary instruction effects on improving L2 learners’ writing skill and their short and long-term retention is the purpose of the present study. To achieve the mentioned goal, a fill-in-the blank test including 36 single words and 60 lexical phrases were administrated to 30 female upper-intermediate EFL learners. The EFL participants were asked to write a composition titled 'A Cruel Sport' after a reading activity on 'Bull Fighting'. Comparing this writing to the one written after target vocabulary instruction, it caused a significant increase in the number of vocabularies used productively in learners’ writing. The statistical analysis revealed that in delayed writing, the participant retained the newly-learned vocabularies even sometimes after the instruction. Based on the obtained results, this research offers below suggestions for L2 instructors: 1) productive use of words is not guaranteed by word comprehension per se, 2) learners are not only able to increase the active vocabulary under their control but also use the words they just learned, 3) in a writing task which was immediately fulfilled through explicit vocabulary instruction, vocabulary recognition is converted into a productive one, improving retention and leading to productive use of newly learned vocabulary at the same time. This productiveness, however, is loss prone and more practice is needed in producing newly learned vocabulary.</p>

A Contrastive Study on the Use of Lexical Chunk Among Chinese Learners of Different Proficiency Levels

This study examines the juniors’ and sophomores’ writings with the same prompt, attempting to investigate the general pictures of their lexical chunk (“lexical chunk” is abbreviated to LC) use and the main features of using LC categories. The study shows the following results: (a) Juniors generally have higher frequency of using LC, especially in using 4 LC categories: topic-related LC (TRLC), sentence-building LC (SBLC), general LC (GLC) and opinion-presented LC (OPLC), except discourse LC (DLC). (b) In terms of using LC categories, juniors show a better proficiency of SBLC noticeably, which is revealed by their better-structured sentences, rich diversity of SBLC and more native-like sentence logic. (c) Juniors and sophomores show similarity in using TRLC in that their choices of topic-related lexical phrases are both extremely influenced by writing prompt. (d) Juniors employ less DLC than sophomores because juniors attach more importance to the idea, opinion and proof, while sophomores rely more on the signal words of passage due to the purpose of gaining scores and using DLC as facilitators to make the whole passage coherent. (e) Juniors use OPLC more frequently and diversely, while sophomores overuse a certain OPLC.

The impact of imposing processing strategies on L2 learners' deliberate study of lexical phrases

Abstract Lexical phrases (e.g., collocations and idioms) have in recent years attracted a fair amount of interest in the fields of SLA and language pedagogy. However, there is still a shortage of empirical studies of instructional methods and techniques. The present study focuses on the deliberate memorization of L2 phrases and tests the effectiveness of two proposals for how to help learners accurately recall the lexical composition of L2 phrases. EFL learners ( N = 65) studied a list of 32 figurative verb + noun-phrase expressions (e.g., turn the tide ) glossed in L1. In one condition, they were only instructed to study the list. In a second, they were additionally instructed to identify phrases whose verb is non-congruent with the L1 translation. In a third, the instruction was to identify phrases that alliterate. The 32 phrases included roughly equal numbers of congruent and alliterative ones. It was hypothesized that the extra instructions would cause learners to pay closer attention to the verbs in the phrases and that this would result in better recall. Comparisons of pre- to post-test gains suggest that the instruction to look out for alliteration enhances retention, whereas the instruction to compare with L1 does not.

“There's intentionality behind it …”: A genre analysis of EAP classroom lessons

This genre-oriented analysis explores the rhetorical structure and linguistic features of EAP classroom lessons. The analysis is based on a corpus of 24 EAP classroom lessons taught by highly experienced IEP teachers. Using a focused Swalesian move analysis combined with corpus-based methods, the study examines the rhetorical moves in different phases of EAP lessons and frequent lexical phrases used to signal discourse organization in each phase. In addition, four EAP teachers were interviewed in order to gain insider perspectives into their discursive practices. The analysis reveals that EAP lessons consist of three major phases, each with three distinct moves, and with varying linguistic realizations. Findings suggest that these experienced EAP teachers have generated and internalized a stable lesson frame in response to the recurrent situation of providing meaningful, activity-driven, and logically organized EAP lessons. The paper concludes with a discussion of the power of Swales's move analysis in studying classroom lessons as well as implications for EAP teacher education.

КОНЦЕПТ КИТАЯ В РУССКОЙ И АНГЛИЙСКОЙ ЯЗЫКОВЫХ КАРТИНАХ МИРА (ЭТИМОЛОГИЯ, СЛОВООБРАЗОВАНИЕ И ФРАЗЕОЛОГИЗМЫ)

In recent decades, in connection with the processes globalization, the images of the countries and China as well become the subject of study in various spheres of Humanities. The ethnocultural components of Russian-Chinese relations are of key importance. However, this issue is understudied within the frames of the linguistic worldview. It occurs during the process of interaction of thinking, reality, and language and influences the results of the cognitive-linguistic activity. In the linguistic sphere, we will use the term “concept” instead of the notion of “image”. The paper covers the contrastive-comparative study of special aspects of the “China” concept functioning in Russian and English worldviews. The author of the paper considered the processes of assimilation of the “China” toponym meaning, carried out the comparative semantic analysis of selected derivatives of this concept lexical items, gathered the established terms with these lexical items in both languages, described their meanings and etymology, summarized the content of China concept basing on the Russian and English phraseological units. The materials for study and analysis were taken from T.F. Efremova’s “New dictionary of Russian language” (2008) and various English-Russian dictionaries and phrase books of recent years. All examples were received from Russian National Corpus and British National Corpus, and that fact shows the actual usage of these linguistic units. The study proves that, depending on various historical factors and reasons, the functioning of certain lexical units, phraseological units and free phrases of the “China” sphere of concepts differs considerably in Russian and English linguistic worldviews and requires further study. That is why this issue is topical now.

Neural responses towards a speaker's feeling of (un)knowing

During interpersonal communication, listeners must rapidly evaluate verbal and vocal cues to arrive at an integrated meaning about the utterance and about the speaker, including a representation of the speaker's ‘feeling of knowing’ (i.e., how confident they are in relation to the utterance). In this study, we investigated the time course and neural responses underlying a listener's ability to evaluate speaker confidence from combined verbal and vocal cues. We recorded real-time brain responses as listeners judged statements conveying three levels of confidence with the speaker's voice (confident, close-to-confident, unconfident), which were preceded by meaning-congruent lexical phrases (e.g. I am positive, Most likely, Perhaps). Event-related potentials to utterances with combined lexical and vocal cues about speaker confidence were compared to responses elicited by utterances without the verbal phrase in a previous study (Jiang and Pell, 2015). Utterances with combined cues about speaker confidence elicited reduced, N1, P2 and N400 responses when compared to corresponding utterances without the phrase. When compared to confident statements, close-to-confident and unconfident expressions elicited reduced N1 and P2 responses and a late positivity from 900 to 1250ms; unconfident and close-to-confident expressions were differentiated later in the 1250–1600ms time window. The effect of lexical phrases on confidence processing differed for male and female participants, with evidence that female listeners incorporated information from the verbal and vocal channels in a distinct manner. Individual differences in trait empathy and trait anxiety also moderated neural responses during confidence processing. Our findings showcase the cognitive processing mechanisms and individual factors governing how we infer a speaker's mental (knowledge) state from the speech signal.

Exercises on collocations: a comparison of trial-and-error and exemplar-guided procedures

A growing body of evidence suggests that second or foreign language learners stand a lot to gain from mastering a variety of multiword units, such as idiomatic expressions and collocations. Although most of the research on this formulaic dimension of language and its relevance for language learners has so far dealt with English, there are solid grounds for believing that formulaicity is part and parcel of natural languages in general, and that pedagogues should therefore give due attention to multiword units also in other target languages than English, such as Spanish. Contemporary textbooks for language learning have started to include a focus on lexical phrases generally and on collocations in particular, albeit mostly through decontextualized exercises where learners are required in one way or another to match words that form partnerships. Often, these exercises do not first provide the learners with exemplars of the correct, intact target collocations that are to be assembled in the exercises. Instead, these exercise types appear to rely on trial and error as a pathway for learning. We report a small-scale experimental study where learners of L2 Spanish tackled a series of collocation exercises that relied either on corrective feedback (i.e., trial and error) or on prior consultation of exemplars (i.e., errorless practice). Pre-test to post-test comparisons reveal no overall difference in effectiveness between the two procedures. However, when students under the trial-and-error procedure supplied a wrong response in the exercises, the corrective feedback seldom had a remedial effect.

A Study of Length Approach on L2 Vocabulary Learning

This research was conducted with a view to investigating the effects of Length Approach on L2 vocabulary learning. The study employed both a quantitative and a qualitative study, which yielded the following findings: with regard to college English vocabulary learning, learners’ productive ability lags far behind their receptive ability. Learners’ capability of using words in communication does not develop correspondingly with their vocabulary size. Learners tend to learn English words by means of studying the word list, which may be very dangerous, since what it displays is just pronunciation, word class, target-language equivalents, derivatives and occasionally one or two examples. Long composition writing task leads learners to become more aware of the new expressions or lexical phrases which can help enrich the content of their writing. The requirement of Length Approach is helpful to arouse learners’ consciousness to accumulate new words and expressions and then use them in their writing. The data from the experiment provides supporting evidence to prove that exposure to meaningful comprehensible output practice enables learners to improve a lot in terms of language productive proficiency. The results demonstrate that Length Approach plays a positive role in building-up students’ confidence, developing their initiatives, arousing their interest and motivating them to use more new words and expressions in writing practice, and enhancing their ability in English vocabulary learning. Length Approach, through awakening a producing desire and awareness in learners, promotes the transition from input to intake by timely practice of long composition writing.

Idioms-Proverbs Lexicon for Modern Standard Arabic and Colloquial Sentiment Analysis

Although, the fair amount of works in sentiment analysis (SA) and opinion mining (OM) systems in the last decade and with respect to the performance of these systems, but it still not desired performance, especially for morphologically-Rich Language (MRL) such as Arabic, due to the complexities and challenges exist in the nature of the languages itself. One of these challenges is the detection of idioms or proverbs phrases within the writer text or comment. An idiom or proverb is a form of speech or an expression that is peculiar to itself. Grammatically, it cannot be understood from the individual meanings of its elements and can yield different sentiment when treats as separate words. Consequently, In order to facilitate the task of detection and classification of lexical phrases for automated SA systems, this paper presents AIPSeLEX a novel idioms/ proverbs sentiment lexicon for modern standard Arabic (MSA) and colloquial. AIPSeLEX is manually collected and annotated at sentence level with semantic orientation (positive or negative). The efforts of manually building and annotating the lexicon are reported. Moreover, we build a classifier that extracts idioms and proverbs, phrases from text using n-gram and similarity measure methods. Finally, several experiments were carried out on various data, including Arabic tweets and Arabic microblogs (hotel reservation, product reviews, and TV program comments) from publicly available Arabic online reviews websites (social media, blogs, forums, e-commerce web sites) to evaluate the coverage and accuracy of AIPSeLEX.