Yerevan State Linguistic University after V. Brusov

Course paper

Theme: Idioms in newspaper style

Yerevan 2009

 

Table of contents

Introduction

1. Idiom, general characteristics

2. Newspaper style Conclusion

Conclusion

Bibliography

english language newspapers publication

Introduction

Today the English language is widely spoken throughout the world. It is the language of 21st century the language of informative technologies, so while describing the English language; first of all it should be underlined that the English language is the mother tongue of the global media. To understand English clearly one should know not only its standard vocabulary but also its different styles, dialects, proverbs, sayings, phrasal verbs and idioms, as they are used in any sphere: books, films, newspapers, formal speeches. One, looking through some papers, magazines and journals, will discover the same language to sound quite different, because he will find familiar words with unfamiliar meanings. He will face idioms, phrasal verbs etc.

Besides, knowing the standard English perfectly one may have difficulties in understanding for instance American English, as many factors, such as culture, the natives’ language, slang, migration and development of the same language apart in dissimilar conditions, cause many changes in the same English language.

The focus of the research project in this paper is to represent idioms in British and American newspapers. Moreover, the research shows information on history of English language newspapers, as well as on idioms.

English newspaper writing dates from the 17th century. The first newspaper carried only news, without comments, as commenting was considered to be against the principals of journalism. By the 19th century, newspaper language was recognized as a particular variety of style, characterized by a specific communicative purpose and its own system of language means .

It includes a system of interrelated lexical, phraseological and grammatical means serving the purpose of informing, instructing and, in addition, of entertaining the reader. The modern newspaper carries material of extremely diverse character. On the pages of a newspaper one can find not only news and comments on it, but also stories and poems, crossword puzzles and the like.

Thus we can point out two main functions of the newspaper:

1.  Informative

2.  Entertaining

In order to make the article sound lively and impressive the author enriches the writing with idioms and a like.

An idiom is a phrase where the words together have meaning that is different from the dictionary definitions of the individual words. It is a phrase whose meaning cannot be made sense of from the literal definition, but refers instead to a figurative meaning that is known only through common use, that is an expression in the usage of the language that has a meaning that two or more that means something other the literal meanings of its individual words.

Ex. Between a rock and a hard place: stuck between two very bad options.

My coarse paper consists of the following chapters: Idioms general characteristics ,and the usage of idioms in newspaper style .

In the first chapter we stated the definitions of idioms by different scholars, their origin, the semantic and syntactic structure of idioms. We have also discussed the usage of idioms in American and British language.

In the second chapter we have discussed newspaper style its origin and features.

Nowadays this theme is rather contemporary as every learner must be prepared to meet the challenge simply because idioms occur so frequently in the spoken and written English.

1. Idiom, general characteristics

 

Idioms are found in every language and learning them is an important aspect of mastery of language. The English language is no exception as it contains a large number of idioms, which are extensively used. However, because of their rigid structure and quite unpredictable meaning, idioms are often considered difficult to learn. John Seed defines an idiom as words collocated together happen to become fossilized, becoming fixed over time. This collocation -- words commonly used in a group -- changes the definition of each of the words that exist. As an expression, the word-group becomes a team, so to speak. That is, the collocated words develop a specialized meaning as a whole and an idiom is born. An idiom is a group of words in which the meaning of this group is different than what would be expected. If the actual words of an idiom were understood as they appear, the entire meaning would be changed and the group of words would make no sense in its context as if it was understood as to be an idiom. When a person uses an idiom, the listener might take the actual meaning wrong if he or she has not heard this figure of speech before. In someone's native language, idioms may be a natural part of speaking. Thus an idiom is not really considered to be set in a language. They are more in one's culture. Idioms are mostly for just one language. In some cases, when an idiom is translated into another language the meaning of the idiom is changed or does not make any sense as it once did in another language. Idioms are probably the hardest thing for a person to learn in the process of learning a new language. This is because most people grow up using idioms as if their true meanings actually make sense. In the English expression «to kick the bucket«, for example, a listener knowing only the meaning of kick and bucket would be unable to deduce the expression's actual meaning, which is to die. ............