Zoomorphic Idioms Expressing Human Unhappiness in English and Lithuanian
Zoomorphic Idioms Expressing Human Unhappiness in English and Lithuanian

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of this study is to explore how human unhappiness is expressed through English and Lithuanian zoomorphic idioms. The research has been carried out deriving from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives, focusing on understanding of the main theoretical aspects of an idiom and the notion of ‘unhappiness’, and searching for the relationships between animal idioms in the comparable languages. To illustrate the main similarities and differences between animal idioms in two languages, 79 English and 122 Lithuanian animal idioms denoting unhappiness were subjected to the analysis. The comparative, descriptive and content analysis methods were mainly employed in the study. The analysis showed that the English and Lithuanian languages do not differ substantially in the choice of animals expressing the concept of unhappiness: 19 animal names coincided in both languages. However, although a number of idioms in the English and Lithuanian languages contain the same animals, they represent different aspects of unhappiness. The findings revealed that idioms connected with the dog comprise the biggest part of phraseological units in both languages; in the English language they make 25% while in the Lithuanian – 30% of the overall figure. Other animal names are not so conspicuous.

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