Somatic Idioms Research Articles

Somatic Representation of Emotional Problems among Native Kyrgyz Speakers

IntroductionThe somatization problem has been one of the most acute in mental health for half a century (Kirmayer, L., 2000). Patients with somatic complaints turn to specialists in various fields but rarely to psychologists and psychiatrists, although the connection between bodily suffering and psychological difficulties sometimes lies on the surface (Molchanova E., 2016). In the last twenty years, the mechanisms of somatization have been considered by several disciplines, one of which is cultural psychiatry, which has become relevant.Unfortunately, most of the research focuses on the cultural characteristics of migrants living in the United States (Groleau, D. and Kirmayer, L. 2004). There needs to be more research on the cultural features of somatization in Kyrgyz culture.ObjectivesThe goal of the study is to discover the distinctive features of the process of somatization in Kyrgyz cultureThe objectives are:To create a vocabulary of somatic phrases and idioms used to represent somatic problems to find the most commonly used somatic idioms for emotional complaints by native speakers of the Kyrgyz language.To describe the mechanism of transformation of the emotional symptom into a specifically located and presented somatic complaint.MethodsThe research used a mixed, qualitative, and quantitative design.The first stage is qualitative, including ten semi-structured interviews with linguists, culturologists, historians, and specialists in folk art.The second stage included four focus groups (12 people in each group) with a follow-up analysis. The recruitment of respondents was carried out through social networks, announcements, and the snowball method.The third stage was quantitative. With the help of the dictionary compiled at the first stage, 250 participants ranked the frequency of somatic idioms, which were used to express the emotional problemsResultsThere have been found more than 200 somatic idioms, which are used to present emotional problems. The most frequent ones describe the heart, liver, and joints. Heart metaphors are associated with despair and anxiety, joints - with depression, and liver metaphors - with some personality characteristics, such as conformity and kindness. The created map of somatic representation of emotional problems shows the most frequent localization of somatic symptoms in disorders featuring somatic symptoms in native Kyrgyz speakers.ConclusionsThere is a culturally shaped specifics of somatic representations of emotional problems among native Kyrgyz speakers. More research needs to be conducted to interpret the nature of people’s emotional problems represented by somatic symptoms.Disclosure of InterestNone Declared

Linguistic and Extra-Linguistic Factors of Somatic Idioms in English

As an essential part of the general vocabulary, idioms reflect the environment, life, history, and culture of the native speakers, and are closely associated with their innermost spirits and feelings. The question emerges that these idioms could have had both linguistic and extra-linguistic factors that could have influenced their appearance. In this article we aim at examining both linguistic and extra-linguistic features and ways of somatic idioms emergence in the English language. To be explicit we will compare English somatic idioms having different human part body key words to various body parts with somatic expressions of the same nature in the Romanian language.

KONTRASTIVNA ANALIZA SOMATSKIH FRAZEOLOGIZAMA SA KOMPONENTOM „OKO” U ITALIJANSKOM, ŠPANSKOM I SRPSKOM JEZIKU (SEMANTIČKO POLjE PAŽNjA/OPREZ)

This paper deals with the analysis of idioms containing the lexeme “eye” in the Italian, Spanish and Serbian languages. Since somatic idioms, especially those with the lexeme “eye”, represent a large part of the phraseological fund of three languages, only those idioms that express attention/caution were analyzed. Italian was the source language, whereas Spanish and Serbian are the target languages. The initial hypothesis was that two typologically related languages (Italian and Spanish) would share more common phraseological characteristics in comparison to typologi- cally unrelated language (Serbian). In order to prove the hypothesis from general and phraseological dictionaries, as well as from electronic sources, a research corpus was excerpted. Using the method of contrastive analysis, similarities and differences were identified from lexical, semantic and morphosyntactic aspects in order to establish the type of equivalence between the idioms at the interlingual level. The type of equivalence was determined for 22 idioms containing the lexeme “eye” in Italian, 19 in Spanish and 17 in Serbian. By contrasting the Italian and Spanish idioms, it can be concluded that there is absolute equivalence between 10 idioms, 5 of them form a relationship of partial equivalence with morphosyntactic differences, 2 a relationship of partial equivalence with lexical differences, 1 a relationship of partial equivalence with morphosyntactic and lexi- cal differences, zero equivalence is established between 3 idioms, and 1 false friend isidentified. On the other hand, the comparison of Italian and Serbian idioms gave the following results: 7 absolute equivalents, 4 partial equivalents with morphosyn- tactic differences, 5 partial equivalents with lexical differences, 1 partial equivalent with morphosyntactic and lexical differences, while zero equivalence was recorded in 5 cases, and there were no false friends. It can be seen that in both Spanish and Serbian, the highest percentage of idioms are absolute equivalents with their Italian correspondent, although that percentage is lower in Serbian than in Spanish. Therefore, it can be concluded that the initial hypothesis has been proven, ie. that typologically related languages share more common phraseological characteristics. However, the number of partial equivalents between Italian and Serbian is very high. This can be explained by the fact that somatic idioms, due to the universality of bod- ily experience, reveal similarities between languages that do not belong to the same language family. The existence of universal human knowledge and associations about body parts explains the existence of somatisms that have the same or similar structure and meaning in different languages. On the other hand, although the human body has the same functions in all languages, their symbolism is culturally determined (Kovačević, 2012: 16-17), and that could explain the existence of zero equivalence and false friends at the interlingual level.

Language as a Symbolic Culture Code

The article aims to study the culture codes depicted in English postmodern discourse verbalized by phraseological units. The objectives of this paper are to disclose quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the phraseological units in Fowles’ “The Collector”, specify the culture codes actualized in them, and provide their semantic classification. The principal research methods are induction, deduction, synthesis, content, contextual, componential, and parametric analyses, the analysis of dictionary definitions, descriptive and quantitative methods. The current study results suggest that the imagery of Fowles’ “The Collector” is created through somatic, artefactual, temporal, spatial, natural, spiritual, zoomorphic, quantitative, and other culture codes. The study demonstrated that the phraseological units with somatic components are the most numerous in the analyzed corpus. They refer to a person’s mental or emotional state, physical appearance, and his/her adaptation to the social environment, functioning as symbols of national specificity and identity. Furthermore, the somatic idioms with negative connotations prevail over those positively marked. Cultural codes within each group are linked based on similar senses, concepts, or ideas compared to material objects. Thus, an in-depth linguocultural analysis of phraseologisms modelling the English world picture would not be complete without identifying the existing culture codes.

Strategies in Translating Somatic Idioms by Learners of English at the Faculties of Arts and Languages, Sohag University

Strategies in Translating Somatic Idioms by Learners of English at the Faculties of Arts and Languages, Sohag University

러시아 민속문학에서 신체어 ‘코’의 언어문화적 함의 연구: 관용구와 속담을 중심으로

Somatism, which refers to human body parts, forms the basis of universal basic vocabulary in any language along with human history, and at the same time contains the linguistic and cultural specificity of a language. Humans understands the world through the sensory functions of body organs, and conceptualize objects of the external world by projecting them onto body lexicon. The human body was the most accessible means of self-observation, the basic measure for understanding the surrounding objects, and the most primitive form of expression of opinion. The human body was able to overcome limitations of the body by constructing a cognitive system based on accumulated experiences and fully transferring the linguistic function of memory and knowledge. Somatism is a basic vocabulary that exists in all languages. Folk literature texts are meaningful materials that show the historical and customary usage of somatism, various aspects of derivation, and the unique linguistic image of a nation. Somatism reflects the universal psychological characteristics of the language subject, the way of recognizing the world, the way of acting or thinking, and the way of expressing emotions. Therefore, idiomatic expressions including somatism are worthy linguistic phenomena that can examine the universality and specificity of a language. Somatism refers to human external body organs (faces, head, hands, nose, ears, etc.) as well as internal organs (heart, blood vessels, nerves, liver, etc.). This paper examines aspects of meaning expansion focusing on somatism used as a component of proverbs and idioms in folk literature texts that consider the communicative aspect of the language subject. We will analyze in depth the semantic structure of idioms and proverbs and examine the specificity of metaphorical and metonymic mechanisms and cultural variants of somatic idioms that reflect the unique Russian linguistic world view.

TÜRKMEN TÜRKÇESİNDE SOMATİK DEYİMLER

fizyolojisini oluşturan organlar, bu organların adlandırılması ve somut olan adlandırmaların deyimleşmesi bu çalışmanın konusunu oluşturmaktadır. Organ adları, dillerdeki temel kelimeler arasında yer almakta ve diller arasındaki akrabalığın tespit edilmesinde kullanılmaktadır. Deyimlerde organ adlarının kullanımı oldukça yaygındır. Organ adlarıyla kurulan deyimler, somatik deyim olarak adlandırılmaktadır. Türkiye Türkçesi, Kırgız Türkçesi, Kazak Türkçesi, Azerbaycan Türkçesi gibi lehçelerde organ adlarıyla kurulan deyimler tespit edilmiştir. Ancak Türkmen Türkçesinde yer alan somatik deyimler üzerine bilinen bir çalışma bulunmamaktadır. Bu çalışmada öncelikle deyimler ve organ adları disiplinlerarası bir bakış açısıyla sınıflandırılmıştır. Daha sonra deyimlerde kullanılan organ adları da yapısal ve anlamsal olarak ele alınmaya çalışılmıştır. Anatomi ve dilbilim alanlarından hareketle organ adları öncelikle baş kısmındaki organlar, boyun kısmındaki organlar, gövde kısmındaki organlar, üst uzantı, alt uzantı ve vücudu kapsayan organlar olmak üzere önce altı gruba ve daha sonra her biri kendi içerisinde farklı gruplara ayrılmıştır. Türkmen Türkçesinde yer alan organ adlarıyla kurulan deyimler “Türkmen Türkçesi Türkiye Türkçesi Deyimler Sözlüğü”nde taranmış ve “Türkmen Diliniñ Frzazeologik Sözlügi” ile karşılaştırılarak tespit edilmiştir. Türkmen Türkçesinde organ adlarıyla kurulan deyimler ve bu deyimlerin anlam özellikleri sınıflandırılarak elde edilen verilerden hareketle bir sonuca varılmaya çalışılmıştır.

Проблема межъязыковой эквивалентности русских и китайских соматических фразеологизмов с компонентами «глаз», «рука», «нога» и

The article is dedicated to the comparative analysis of Russian and Chinese somatic idioms with components eye, hand, foot («глаз», «рука», «нога»; 眼/目,手,脚/足). Somatic idioms are the core of any phraseological system and are studied in various aspects, both in monolingual and comparative works. The choice of the lexemes eye, hand, foot can be justified with their high frequency in idioms and vast system of symbolic meanings. The goal of the analysis is to compare formal and semantic features of the idioms based on the classification developed by E. F. Arsentieva, thus describing the level of the interlingual equivalency between said items. As a result, we have divided somatic idioms in 4 groups: equivalents (total and partial), analogues (total and partial), idioms with similar form but different meaning and idioms without equivalents. The biggest group is phraseological analogues (118 pairs, of which 82 pairs are partial analogues). Apart from that, we have discovered several similarities and differences between Russian and Chinese idioms. First of all, idioms often contain 2 somatic components, e.g. ears and eyes, heart and hands, etc. (though the combinations of them in compared languages don’t always match). This tendency is especially prominent in idioms with foot that usually include lexemes feet and hands. Secondly, idioms with elements eye and hand demonstrate considerably high level of interlingual equivalency, while idioms with element foot are both less frequent in these two languages and have lower level of equivalency. Thirdly, idioms with somatic lexemes have similar metaphorical meanings: eyes – vision, planning, understanding, reading, intellect, expression of emotions, sleep; hands – work, power, mastery, solving problems, possession, protection, violence, expression of emotions, measurement; feet – movement, direction, fuss, close relationship, obstacle, wealth. As for unique metaphorical models, Russian idioms have the following: eyes – attention, physical condition, measurement, source of information, hands – make and accept proposal, help, freedom, feet – confidence, stability, physical condition, measurement. Chinese somatic lexemes have developed several unique metaphors as well: eyes – appearance, order, hands – appearance, speech genre, feet – expression of emotions, characteristics of a person, critique. The results we have obtained can be used in the methodics of teaching Russian and Chinese as foreign languages, as well as applied for solving translation problems regarding somatic idioms and intercultural communication issues.

개인 특성을 나타내는 신체어 관용구의 비유적 의미에 대한 인지의미론적 연구

In this study, the figurative meaning of some idioms representing personal characteristics was studied from a cognitive semantic perspective. The focus was on the kind of physical experiences the metaphorical concepts of those abstract concepts could be traced back to and their structures. For example, an analysis of the Korean somatic idioms with ‘눈’ and ‘눈물’ using the analytical tools of metaphorical mapping and image schema revealed that the idioms with ‘눈’ conceptualize mental ability and the idioms with ‘눈물’ conceptualize emotional competence. In detail, starting with ‘human is the body’ as the highest level of metaphor, it turned out that the concept of mental ability is traced back to the bodily experience of ‘brightening’, ‘opening’, and ‘broadening’, and that emotional competence, which is divided into ‘sensitivity’ and ‘emotional empathy’, is conceptualized by the presence and the amount of tears.

La gènesi dels somatismes: accions humanes fossilitzades

Somatic idioms – those including a part of the body – have been traditionally studied from a synchronic perspective, yielding different explanations for their semantic value. The main objective of this paper is to highlight the diachronic origin of idiomatic meaning, by illustrating the process of phraseologization from a historical, usage-based perspective. As the first step, we will reflect on the general nature of phraseological meaning, and then on the semantic particularities of somatic idioms. Secondly, we will carryout a corpus-based diachronic analysis of the Catalan idiom tapar-se el nas (to hold one’s nose) within the framework of the Invited Inference Theory of Semantic Change. The different stages of the process will be exemplified and discussed. As a result, a new notion of somatic idioms as frozen human actions will be presented.

SOMATISKIE FRAZEOLOĢISMI K. ULMAŅA LATVIEŠU-VĀCU VĀRDNĪCĀ (1872) UN K. ULMAŅA / G. BRAŽES VĀCU-LATVIEŠU VĀRDNĪCĀ (1880)

The paper analyses Latvian and German somatic idioms in the dictionaries by K. Ulmann and K. Ulmann / G. Braže. Up to now the researchers of Latvian phraseology have not focused to analyse these theme – especially in diachronic aspect. The paper presents the most fixed somatic idioms in the Latvian and German and their equivalence types. The author compares with the meanings of idioms from the first dictionary (1638) to modern electronic dictionary “Modern Latvian dictionary”.

Teaching somatic idioms during the corona crisis (based on historical and literary texts)

By the last millennium of the twentieth century, phraseology was established as an independent branch of linguistics, and now it is being developed in several directions. One of them is the theory of idioethnic phraseology. This doctrine considers the asymmetry in phraseology and the semantic description of the resulting phraseological units (PhU), the concept of phraseological paradigm (PhP), the “cap” as a phraseological category, and its relationship to phraseological derivation. This paper focuses on phraseological units and the difficulties in teaching students during the corona crisis. We use the World Bank’s data on Kazakhstan (summer 2020), building on the narrative that “the COVID-19 pandemic has a negative impact on the development of human capital not only in Kazakhstan, but all over the world. Uneven access to quality education, especially during the quarantine period, can negatively affect the development of human beings.” Because of said challenges, many educational establishments transferred the education system to distance learning. Teaching languages, especially when teaching phraseology, requires a lot of strength, a good grasp of modern technology, and innovative approaches. The aim of our research is to identify (1) the semantic field of the somatic idioms based on relevant historical and literary texts and (2) viable ways of teaching students during the corona crisis

BIBLICAL IDIOMS WITH SOMATISMS IN THE PHRASE TRIADA

Our hypothesis is that the biblical unit structurally and semantically indecomposable and meets the charac- teristics of the idiom. And the assumption is based on the critical analysisof numeroues definitions and classifications of each constituent of the triad in the language system and the language in-use [cf. Boye 2019]. (i)The term phrase is defined as one or more words functioning as a unit in a sentence. The premodial concept—one or more is false: as the head word and adjunct are obligatory members of the phrase. (ii)The definition that a phrase is any group of words which are taken to be less than a sentence is not correct because non-sensical words can be also grammtically corect.(iii) The phrase is a group of two or more words functioning as a meaningful unit within a sentence or clause though a phrase is commonly characterized as a grammatical unit at a level between a word and a clause [see also Borsley 1996]. The phrase is a syntactic structure that contains one or more words but does not contain both a subject and a verb. The use of ”one word”in the definition makesthis definition also dubious. Wе understand that idioms and phraseological units do have some distinctions and a superfine operation can separate and secure them from their transformation into Yin and Yang as opposites. And the scholar must search for a precision instrument to separate this concept further on. In linguistics it is is the corpora analysis can provide us with nunerous samples and their frequency is a crucial point in separating idioms from phraseologisms which can be verified in the process of the discourseanalysis.Our assumption is the idioms are the feature of colloquial style, social dialects, language varietis, professional discourse. The evolution of the units through the stages: from the free syntactical phrase through the fixed syntactical phrases and then to idioms, first professiionally marked and then their further penetration into the standard literary language use must be crowned with the status of a phraseological unit characteristic of the a literary standard. Somatic idioms constitute a significant part of biblical idioms and can be compared with thosefunctionin in variousprofessional discourse registers.

A Contrastive Analysis of English and Albanian Somatic Idioms - A Cognitive Perspective

In this paper we try to make a cognitive comparison between phraseological expressions originating from body-part terms in English and Albanian (taking English as our starting point). Although these languages are distant in space they do have similarities. This similarity / difference is seen better than nowhere else in the way how they conceive of the world (and the way this is expressed linguistically). They are at different stages of their linguistic cultivation where English is in a dominant position (remember here that every technological innovation has knock-on linguistic effects that affect every language including Albanian) and Albanian is in a defensive position since it has to cope with a host of concepts and realities that in one way or another have to be made tangible to Albanian speakers as well. Phraseological expressions are conceived as the tip of the iceberg of a process grounded upon transformational mechanisms (the best known of which are metaphors and metonymy) with emotional coloring adding to the mix. By way of illustration we give the following example: get blood from/out of a stone - nxjerr dhjamё nga pleshti, nxjerr ujё nga guri (extract fat out of a flea, extract water from the stone) Albanian literal translation in italics and brackets. From what we see, Albanians associate the equivalent of the English phraseological unit with water (since they are a Mediterranean country with dry summers), or with fat and flea (Albanians are known for their animal husbandry and meat-related terms).

Culture as Reflected in Somatic Idioms

The aims of this paper are threefold: first, to analyse the ways in which culture is reflected in idioms; second, to discuss the role of body-part words in idioms; third, to determine the differences and similarities between the English and Georgian somatic idioms on the basis of a contrastive analysis. The somatic idioms play a special role in the formation of cultural specifics. This is due to the universal functions assigned to the somatic terms and their reference field. Somas are the semantic centres of idioms of various languages, including English and Georgian. Idioms with somatic centres may be considered as the virtual units containing information on non-verbal actions of a person and their emotions. From a general perspective, the universal feature of all languages is that the phraseology, as a cultural concept, is developed and fixed in the lexicon through communication. Multiword units express intellectual and affective meanings in the language. The idioms with soma-centres attest that many phraseologisms are semantically universal and have equivalents in other languages, in the present study, in Georgian and English. They sometimes function not only as metaphors but also as stereotypes and quasi-symbols of culture. National culture is reflected in a given language and it is revealed in socio-political life, art, literature, philosophy, science and technological development. The research proved that there are both differences and similarities between the English and Georgian somatic idioms. The analyzed multiword units have one common feature: the functions of the somatic constituents of idioms are very important, since in the majority of cases, they constitute the semantic cores of given idioms which reveal the meaning of the whole unit.

Somatic idioms describing traits of character in teaching English

The change of general scientific paradigm to the anthropological stream activates the interest of specialists in different areas to investigate the human-oriented problems, especially in linguistics and phraseology. Outlining previous research it should be mentioned that different aspects of somatic phraseologisms are investigated in the works of I. Denysenko, V. Hmara, G. Kozorih, Yu. Lapuhina, L. Moiseienko, N. Skorobagatko, F. Vakk and others. However these studies do not cover all the peculiarities of somatic idioms and their usage in teaching foreign languages. This article makes the attempt to represent the importance of involving the knowledge of idiomatic expressions in teaching foreign languages, in particular on the basis of somatic idioms. The main tasks of this research include analyzing the structure and semantics of phraseologisms with somatic components, comparing them with their native language equivalents and implementing these samples into the process of teaching foreign languages, English in particular.
 The analysis has shown that both languages manifest a great variety of samples containing somatic nominative components such as “eyes”, “ears”, “lips”, “nose”, “mouth”, “heart”, “tongue”, “blood”. Additionally it has been stated that revealing human traits of character these phraseologisms represent certain variations in their meaning as well as their structure. We have also concluded that such idioms can be a well designed material for illustrating stylistic differences and peculiarities in both languages. For our further studies we leave the issues outlining the peculiarities of English and Ukrainian phraseologisms defying traits of character containing nominative animistic elements.

IDIOMS AND ORIENTATION LEXICAL METAPHORS IN WORKS BY V. BRUSOV

The paper deals with V. Brusov’s use of idioms, collocations, gesture nominations, as well as the original phrases coined by the author. Emphasis is put on somatic idioms and orientation metaphors. The Russian National Corpus shows that while the author tends to use idioms and collocations in his prose more frequently, it is poetry where he modifies them. In the conclusion, the paper provides an explanation to this based on both phraseology and literature studies.

A contrastive analysis of Hungarian and Croatian idioms containing the component head

Abstract This paper analyzes selected examples of idioms containing the component head in Croatian and Hungarian. Despite the fact that Hungarian and Croatian are not cognate languages, due to the universal experiences and to the fact that they belong to a common cultural circle, these languages have a large correspondence in their phraseology, which can be seen in somatic idioms as body parts represent a kind of universality. The aim of this paper is to show similarities and differences in lexical content and meaning of Croatian and Hungarian idioms containing the component head. The motivational basis of idioms is also discussed as well as the influence of basic and transferred meanings of the lexeme head on the meaning of idioms.

Dolnołużycka frazeologia somatyczna

The paper discusses selected Lower Sorbian idiomatic expressions with somatic components. The author talks about somatisms and somatic phraseology in general, as well as presents different types of idiomatic motivation. A theoretical section is followed by the presentation of a corpus of somatic idioms taken fromDolnoserbsko-nimski słownik/Niedersorbisch-deutsches Wörterbuch by Manfred Starosta. The analysis of the idiomatic expressions shows how Lower Sorbian somatic phraseological units make use of somatic lexemes, as well as demonstrates the various types of motivation behind the actual senses of the examined expressions.

Emotions in the face: biology or culture? – Using idiomatic constructions as indirect evidence to inform a psychological research controversy

Research on the facial expression of emotions has become a bone of contention in psychological research. On the one hand, Ekman and his colleagues have argued for a universal set of six basic emotions that are recognized with a considerable degree of accuracy across cultures and automatically displayed in highly similar ways by people. On the other hand, more recent research in cognitive science has provided results that are supportive of a cultural-relativist position. In this paper this controversy is approached from a contrastive perspective on phraseological constructions. It focuses on how emotional displays are codified in somatic idioms in some European (English, German, French, Spanish) and East Asian (Japanese, Korean, Chinese [Cantonese]) languages. Using somatic idioms such as make big eyes or die Nase rümpfen as a pool of evidence to shed linguistic light on the psychological controversy, the paper engages with the following general research question: Is there a significant difference between European and East Asian somatic idioms or do these constructions rather speak for a universal apprehension of facial emotion displays? To answer this question, the paper compares somatic expressions that are selected from (idiom) dictionaries of the languages listed above. Moreover, native speakers of the East Asian languages were consulted to support the analysis of the respective data. All corresponding entries were analysed categorically, i. e. with regard to whether or not they encode a given facial area to denote a specific emotion. The results show arguments both for and against the universalist and the cultural-relativist positions. In general, they speak for an opportunistic encoding of facial emotion displays.