CONCEPTUAL MOTIVATION OF ENGLISH AND ROMANIAN ODD AND HUMOROUS BODY PARTS IDIOMS
CONCEPTUAL MOTIVATION OF ENGLISH AND ROMANIAN ODD AND HUMOROUS BODY PARTS IDIOMS

Summary/Abstract: Idiomaticity is a complex and controversial domain of semantics. The paper analyses from a cognitive point of view a series of English and Romanian odd and humorous body parts idioms. While traditional linguists study mainly the formal and functional aspects of idioms, cognitive linguists have a completely different approach. They consider that there is a systematic conceptual motivation for many idioms. Most idioms are products of our conceptual system and not simply a matter of language. Our work is based on the cognitive theory according to which idioms are motivated by conceptual structures: conventional knowledge, conceptual metonymies and metaphors. The notion of embodiment can be easily applied especially to human body idioms. We also try to prove that there is a considerable degree of correspondence regarding this type of idioms in both languages, i.e., they share the same figurative meaning, as well as the same underlying conceptual strategies.

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