Discourse Functions of Idioms in English and Yemeni Arabic: A Comparative Study

Abstract

This study investigates the discoursal functions of English and Yemeni-Arabic idioms common in oral interactions and storytelling, providing a descriptive account of the data to highlight any cross-linguistic similarities and differences between these functions. Results reveal that many idioms in the two languages in question have similar discourse functions and patterns (praise, criticism, description, etc.). People of the two cultures tend to employ similar strategies to convey their reactions (e.g. silence, laugh, annoyance) towards idioms, and all this seems to be influenced both by the type of relationship between the interaction participants (familiarity vs. unfamiliarity) and by the type of the context of situation (formal vs. informal). As for the use of idioms in the codas of stories or casual conversations, the two cultures both employ them in more or less the same way using either observation-comment or event-evaluation clustering. Some English idioms and Yemeni-Arabic ones differ in terms of some of their component words, and others are quite similar. One of the remarkable distinctions between the English and Yemeni-Arabic idioms is the use of animal names and the intended connotations behind that use.