Файл: Шекспиризмы вчера и сегодня (The Notion and Classification of English Idioms).pdf

INTRODUCTION

Idioms are a significant attribute of the language which makes the speech more expressive, vivid and figurative. English language is enriched with idioms, which are borrowed from the Bible, and in terms of the amount shakespearisms come next.

It is important for linguists to know idioms and their origin, because they help us to understand the language and its history better and make our speech sound more natural. That is why this work is devoted to research of shakespearisms, their use and popularity in modern English.

William Shakespeare is a key writer for the English-speaking world. He is most remarkable for his contribution to the English language and the volume of his output. Shakespeare is said to have had a vocabulary of over 17000 words (some sources say 20000), that was approximately four times that of an average man. He introduced about 2000-3000 new words and more than 160 idioms into the language.

Shakespeare’s influence on modern English is not only visible in the fact that his works have survived over four hundred years and they continue to be performed and read worldwide, but also in use of the words and phrases invented or popularized by him in everyday speech. This research is aimed to prove that these idioms called shakespearisms are still popular and widely used in modern English literature and mass media.

The widespread use of shakespearisms by modern writers and newspaper journalists serves as a proof to the fact that they are still up-to-date and popular. Our observations are based on the analysis of about 60 examples of shakespearisms used in the articles of more than fifteen American (the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Post, etc.) and British (the Independent, the Guardian, the London Evening Standard, the Daily Mail, etc.) online newspapers and about 80 examples from the works of modern American and British writers. 27 quotes by W. Shakespeare out of the total included in the dictionaries of quotes in their initial or modified form have been found in modern newspaper discourse and 32 idioms in modern prose. The articles, novels and other works which were used as sources for this research cover the period from 1990 till 2012. All these examples were found with the help of the National British and American Corpuses.

The list of shakespearisms and their classification were taken from the A.V. Kunin's phraseological dictionary and his other works. As A.V. Kunin is the leading Russian scholar who studied English phraseology and Shakespeare's contribution to it, his works and classification became a basis for this research. In addition to the A.V. Kunin many linguists, such as J. Seidl, W. Mc Mordie, Ch. Bally, L.V. Shcherba, V.V. Vinogradov, A.I. Smirnitsky and others have played the important role in it. Seven dictionaries of the English language and of English Idioms were used to look up the modern meaning and variants of various shakespearisms and to compare them with the original one.

Thepaper consists of two chapters. The first chapter is a theoretical part where the notion of idioms and shakespearisms in particular, their classification and peculiarities are looked into. It is based on the researches of the scholars mentioned above. Moreover, in this part it is shown how some of shakespearisms were changed during the four centuries of their existence and which form is more common for modern English language. This information was taken from the thesis of L.F. Sviridova which was completed in MSLU and from dictionaries of Current Idiomatic English.

The second chapter is devoted to the use of shakespearisms in modern English. It is divided into two parts. In the first paragraph examples of shakespearisms from British and American mass media are analysed. The second paragraph deals with the quotes from American and British literature which contains shakespearisms. It is studied whether shakespearisms are used in their original form and meaning or in their modern variants.

Thus, the second chapter of the research and the whole work are aimed to prove that Shakespearian language is not archaic, it is widely used in everyday speech, in literature and in mass media. Shakespearisms are universal, they can be found in various styles and registers. As the language is a living matter, some of idioms and word forms have been changed and adapted to modern language and its grammar with time. Plenty of shakespearisms have become an integral part of the English language, and people do not associate it with Shakespeare making use of them without knowing that they quote the great English poet.

Chapter I. Peculiarities of Shakespearisms

1.1 The Notion and Classification of English Idioms

The problem of investigation of the phraseological units (in Russian tradition) or idioms (in Western tradition) has existed for several centuries. Idioms are interesting because they are colorful, lively and linguistic curiosities. They have an important role in spoken and written language, in particular in conveying evaluations. At the same time, they are difficult because they have unpredictable meanings or collocations and grammar, besides they often have special connotations.

Only at the beginning of the 20^th century preconditions for phraseology to become an independent linguistic discipline were created. Phraseology is an intermediary field, being close both to vocabulary studies, since it studies fixed word combinations, characterized by a unitary meaning, as well as to syntax, since phraseological phenomena are defined by syntactic relations of various kinds, which are realized on a syntagmatic axis. Given the expressive nature of phraseologic phenomena, these have also been associated with stylistics. That was why it was not easy to decide what exactly is the subject of phraseology and if it is an independent discipline.

The Swiss linguist Charles Bally is traditionally considered to be the founder of the theory of phraseology. At the beginning of the 20^th century he made an attempt to give a classification to various combinations of words in the French language. However, he did not consider it necessary to single it out as a separate discipline, including it in the structure of lexicology and studying phraseological units mainly in the stylistic aspect. Ch. Bally asserted that features of phraseological units are made of intrasemantic features (Arnold 1986: 166). Proceeding from the degree of stability of semantic links between components, he subdivided fixed combinations of the French language into two groups: phraseological series (series phraseologiques) and phraseological unities (unites phraseologiques).

In 1925 Logan P. Smith published a book entitled “Words and Idioms”, which was a collection of his essays. The longest one, called simply “English Idioms”, contains the greatest number of idioms that Smith was able to gather, file and classify. He writes about idioms ‘from foreign sources’ (Savin 2010: 35), he deals separately with idioms drawing on the Bible, as well as with Shakespeare’s idioms.

Another scholar of the former half of the past century is Murat H. Roberts, the author of “The Science of Idiom” (1944). Structuralists accept his proposed polar relation between discourse and language, the categories “which are expected to conjoin in order to produce the complete sphere of communication”. The idiom belongs primarily to discourse, he claims, but since idiom has created language, it must have created grammar, which belongs primarily to ‘language’. Hence grammar is viewed as fossil idiom. It should be appreciated that in his opinion all idioms originated as innovations of individuals and each idiom is “a mental monument of history” (Savin 2010: 28)

However, in English and American linguistics a special branch of study for idiomaticity does not exist. Moreover, there is no universally accepted definition of the word “idiom”. This word is polysementic.

In 1909 in Great Britain a dictionary "Idioms of the English language and their use" by J. Seidl and W. Mc Mordie  was published. The authors of the dictionary considered that the idiom is "some quantity of words which, under condition of their joint consideration, mean something absolutely another in comparison with the individual word meanings, forming an idiom" (Seidl 1978: 217). Thus, one of the properties of phraseological units, named later idiomaticity, was formulated.

Idiomaticity is the core notion for the study of idioms. Mainly, the question in idiomaticity is to analyze its degree, i.e. how unpredictable the meaning of an idiom from its literal counterparts is.

The English use the word ”idiom” to denote a mode of expression peculiar to a language, without differentiating between the grammatical and lexical levels. It may also mean a group of words whose meaning it is difficult or impossible to understand from the knowledge of the words considered separately.

For the first time phraseology as an independent linguistic science in the 1920s  was singled out by an outstanding Russian scientist V.V. Vinogradov. Unlike studying phraseological units in terms of speech activity, he defined the object, the structure of the science and phraseology volume. Among previous terms for a designation "semantic unities, more complicated, than a word": a phrase, an idiom, the close phraseological group, fixed, indivisible or indecomposable word-combinations, phraseological unit – V.V. Vinogradov chose the last one and defined phraseological units as the basic objects of phraseology. (Виноградов 1977:185)

According to V.V. Vinogradova phraseological unit is a word-group or a sentence with full or partial transformation meaning and with stability at phraseological level.

However, in Russian linguistics there also exist other opinions on the nature of phraseological units. O.S. Amosova insists on the term being applicable only to what she calls "fixed context units where it is impossible to substitute any of the components without changing the meaning of the whole unit".(Амосова 1963: 79) A.V. Kunin stresses the structural separateness of the elements in a phraseological unit, on the change of meaning on the whole as compared with its elements taken separately and on a certain minimal stability. A.I. Smirnitsky considers a phraseological unit to be similar to a world because of the idiomatic relationships between its parts resulting in semantic unity and permitting its introduction into speech as something complete.(Смирницкий 1956:95)

So, the term phraseology is used to describe 1) the inventory of phrases or set expressions, and not only idioms; 2) the linguistic subdiscipline of lexicology which studies and classifies set expressions (phraseological units in the broadest sense).

There are several classification systems of phraseological units suggested by different linguists.

The academician V.V. Vinogradov based his classification on the degree of semantic cohesion between the components of a phraseological unit, where the criteria are similar to those in Ch. Bally’s classification. The more distant the meaning of a phraseological unit from the current meaning of its constituent parts, the greater the degree of semantic cohesion. The given typology, worked out on the material of the Russian language, was widely used by phraseologists for describing phraseological systems of other languages, including English. According to V.V.Vinogradov’s classification, phraseological units are divided into three big groups:

• phraseological fusions,
• phraseological unities,
• phraseological combinations. (Аrnold 1973: 170)

Phraseological fusions are word-groups with a completely changed meaning, they are non-motivated, that is, their meaning cannot be deduced from the meanings their constituent parts; the metaphor on which the shift of meaning is based, has lost its clarity. E.g. at sixes and sevens, to set one’s cap at smb, to come/get a cropper.

Phraseological unities are word-groups with a completely changed meaning, i.e. the meaning of the unit doesn’t correspond to the meanings of its constituent parts. They are motivated, their meanings can be deduced from the meaning, it is clear and transparent. E.g. to lock the stable door after the horse is stolen, to ride the high horse (means to behave a superior, haughty way), to show one’s teeth (to take a treating tone, show an intension to injure), to wash one’s dirty linen in public (discuss of make on public one’s quarrels), to carry coal to Newcastle.

Phraseological combinations are word-groups with a partially changed meaning. They may be said to be clearly motivated, i.e. the meaning of the unit can be easily deduced from its constituents. They are motivated , but they are made up of words possessing specific lexical valence, which accounts for a certain degree of stability in such word-groups. E.g. a question on the agenda of the day, a question of a great importance, to raise a question. These fixed collocations tend to become kind of clichés, where the meaning of a member-word is dominated by the meaning of the whole group.

The borderline separating unities from fusions is vague and even subjective; the more the person knows a language and its history, the fewer fusions are likely to be discovered among phraseological units.

Summing up the information above, we can say that the difference between phraseological units and free word combinations is derived from the syntactic stability of the former which are felt as distinct units due to the very fusion (to a larger or smaller extent) of the constitutive elements. The borders between free word combinations and phraseological units, as well as those between a phraseological unit and a compound word are volatile. For example, due to frequent use, a free word combination may turn into a phraseological unit.

Therefore, the features which may be taken as criteria for distinguishing phraseological units are stability (manifested in the high frequency of occurrence in the language) and semantic unity (reflected in the lack of the correspondence between the general signification of the structure and the accumulation of significations of the constituent elements). The two characteristics are closely interconnected.

A.V. Kunin has made a great contribution to the field of phraseology of the English language. Taking into account the syntactic functioning of phraseological units, he worked out a functional classification, which reveals the function of a phraseological units depending on its size (collocations or sentences).

Nominative collocations, which stand for a certain notion denoting things, actions and qualities (properties). There are subtypes of such phraseological units:

• substantive phraseological units, e.g.: a bed of roses, a baker’s dozen;
• verbal phraseological units, e.g.: eat one’s words, to catch a straw, to put one’s foot abut;
• adjectival phraseological units, e.g.: cool as cucumber, poor as a church mouse, sober as a judge, easy as ABC;
• adverbial phraseological units, e.g. in full swing, on the spot, at the eleventh hour.

Interjections, e.g.: Hear, hear!

Communicative (sentence-lawn) includes proverbs and sayings. E.g.: the coast it clear, every cloud has a silver line, can the leopard change his spots?

Nominative-Communicative. Collocations become sentences in the Passive Voice. E.g.: to pull one’s leg – smb’s led is pulled. (Кунин 1986: 164)

Further classification into subclasses depends on whether the units are changeable or unchangeable, whether the meaning of the one element remains free, and, more generally, on the interdependence between the meaning of the elements and the meaning of the set expression.

Our attention is also paid to thestructural principles of classifying – the following groups of phraseological units can be singled out: 

• verbal: to get the upper hand, put one’s best foot forward;
• substantive: cat or dog life, calf live, horse opera; 
• adjectival: brand new, spick and span, as good as gold;
• adverbial: by hook or by crook, high or low, in full swing, on the spot, at the eleventh hour;
•  interjectional: Good heavens! Well, I never!

The above classification takes into consideration not only the type of component parts, but also the functioning of the whole unit. Thus, tooth and nail is not a substantive, but an adverbial unit, because it serves to modify the verb. The identically structured lord and master is a substantive phrase.

We will classify shakespearisms in the next chapter according to this classification by A.V. Kunin.

In his work “Phraseology Of Modern English Language” A.V. Kunin also subdivided idioms according their origin. Idioms can be native or borrowed.

Native idioms are idioms which are connected with traditions, historical facts, realia and idioms from literature. Shakespearisms were singled out in a special group within the group of idioms from literature.

Borrowed idioms are bibleisms and other phraseological borrowings from other languages.

There are several theories concerning idioms and their peculiarities. In general, an idiom is a group of words in a fixed order that have a particular meaning that is different from the meanings of each word understood on its own. As shakespearisms are idioms from literature, further we will describe and classify them according to peculiarities and classification of idioms given above.

1.2 Shakespearisms. A. V. Kunin's Сlassification

There are a lot of idioms in modern English, the main function of which is to increase the esthetic aspect of language. Many of them are connected with traditions, history, realia, but the majority of idioms appeared from literature. More than hundred idioms can be found in the works of the great English playwright and poet Shakespeare, who became an undeniably significant person in the history of language and literature.

It is considered that a truly paramount writer is one who finds even the entire existing vocabulary of his language limiting to his creative consciousness; Shakespeare often did, and so from time to time created his own form of grammar and vocabulary, much of which has since become common use. With his invention of commonly used expressions, his creation of new words, and his use of iambic pentameter, he was able to affect the language in a way that no person since has. From Shakespeare we learn how it is possible to explore and exploit the resources of a language in original ways, displaying its range and variety in the service of the poetic imagination. In his best writings we can see how to make a language work so that it conveys the effects we want it to.

In “The Story of English” Bernard Levin writes that much of common English speech can be traced back to idioms used by Shakespeare. Hundreds of clichés that are used daily by English speakers were invented by Shakespeare. Quotations from Shakespeare have become extremely numerous – they have contributed enormously to the store of the language (see Appendix).

Shakespeare’s works belong to the most significant literary sources, which enriched the English language with idioms.

Shakespearisms have been of interest for a lot of linguists. There were many attempts to describe and count them. In Russia this problem was worked out by A.V. Kunin, who described idioms and shakespearisms in his work “The Course of Phraseology of Modern English”. In his “English-Russian Phraseological Dictionary” we can find 165 shakespearisms. It should be mentioned that A.V. Kunin included in his list not only idioms created by Shakespeare, but also idioms which appeared before him and were popularized by him. (Кунин 1951)

Besides, there are 62 shakespearisms in “A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English” by Eric Partridge. In 1949 L. P. Smith created his list of shakespearisms (“The Golden Shakespeare; words and idioms”), which included 80 of them. It is considered to be incomplete. There are also many shakespearisms in different dictionaries of proverbs and sayings.

According to all these sources the number of shakespearisms is 170. However, all dictionaries admit unanimously that 50 of them were used by other authors before Shakespeare. The examples of such idioms are: “fool’s paradise”, “give the devil his due”, “high and low”, “to lead by the nose” etc. There are also doubts about other 16 idioms. In some dictionaries their first appearance is referred to Shakespeare’s works, in others an earlier date is given (Свиридова, Л.Ф. 1968). Idioms which appeared before Shakespeare used them, but became popular and commonly-used because of his masterpieces, are called pseudoshakespearisms.

Here are some examples of pseudoshakespearisms:

1. Neither rhyme nor reason

We find this idiom in two Shakespeare’s plays: in "The Comedy of Errors" (1593) act II scene 2 and in "As You Like It" (1599) act III

scene 2.

However, W. Tilley refers it to 1540. B. Stivenson considers that this idiom is borrowed from French and refers it to 1479.

1. Man of would

This idiom is from "King Henry V" (1599) act III scene 2. The Oxford English Dictionary gives another date for this phrase - 1390.

Thus, we can see that a lot of phrases used in Shakespeare’s plays became idioms because of the popularity of his works. For example, the largest number of shakespearisms can be found in one of the most famous Shakespearian plays "Hamlet". It contains about 61 phraseological units or 25% of all shakespearisms. Another interesting fact was discovered by the researcher from Stanford L. Bamber, who found that more phraseological units belong to female characters from comedies or to male characters from tragedies. She considers the former to be more witty, cheerful and sensible and as a result they create more new and bright words, expressions and puns in their speech. The main male characters from tragedies such as Othello, Hamlet, King Liar are capable of introspection, suffering, understanding reality and feeling it with their hearts. All this finds its reflection in their words, which become potential phraseological units.