A Dynamic Researching Approach On The Stylistic Color Of English Idiom And The Context

Being a special language expression, English idioms have their own structure and semantic features. Traditional linguistic study present:the form of English idiom is of fixed phrase and the significance of an idiom is a unity and has long-term prescriptive invariance. The functional grammar scholars consider:semantic choice depends on discourse. The formation and mechanism of the significance of idioms complies this rule—metaphorical thinking and context variation are important factors which affect semantic variation of idiom in different styles.According to the Halliday's functional grammar theory, register studies "the functional of linguistic variation", that means the change of linguistic formation depends on the variation of situational context. Situation context indicates the direct environment of linguistic activities, including three main factors:field, tenor and mode of discourse. According to three main components, style can be divided into different stylistic variations:according to the field of discourse, style can be divided into the style of law, literary style and military style and so on; according to the tenor of discourse, style can be divided into formal style and informal style; according to the mode of discourse, style can be divided into written style, spoken style, slang style and proverb style. Halliday preset:context may refer both to the environment within the discourse and to that out of the discourse. Context can be divided into four components: linguistic context, situation context, cultural context and pragmatic context. Linguistic context refers to discourse within context; cultural context refers to all the factors of the history and culture difference, the customs, values, social cultural exchanges used by the addressers who rank in the speech societies; situational context refers to the surrounding circumstances, the nature of the event, the relationship among participants, time, place, manner and so on when the discourse arise; pragmatic context refers to their mutual relationships between addresser and addressee, their knowledge, beliefs, purpose and intent, as well as their communication practices, especially the appropriateness of the communicationHalliday and functional grammar scholars hold that language has three metafunctions—deational function, interpersonal function and textual function. The components of three metafunctions can be separated and interweaved, one word, expression, clause, text can realize ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function at the same time. The dynamic mechanism of three metafunctions is affected by the metaphorical mechanism. With metaphorical mechanism, semantic choice of expression may project into different realms; English idiom also complies with this rule. Halliday's view of metaphor included both the metaphor on the lexical level and that on the grammatical level, Halliday present that grammatical metaphor can be divided into ideational metaphor, interpersonal metaphor and textual metaphor (Martin & Halliday:1993)Based on the functional linguistics, this article studies the semantic and structural motivation of ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function of idiom and dynamic function mechanism of idiom discourse. In this paper, we have studied how the metaphorical thinking made metafunction dynamic. Metaphor is an important instrument of thinking, inference and behavior of human. Metaphor can't disappear so long as the thinking of human exists. With numerous examples analysis, we proved that identified that the ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function of idiom aren't fixed, but step into different realm, and present to be dynamic in the discourse. This article studies the style of English idiom, and proves that style isn't fixed, it presents to be dynamic under different field, tenor and mode of discourse, style can cross from one realm to other. Therefore "the significance of one idiom is complete different in the different style, the textual functional changed meanwhile and one idiom in the same style, the potential meaning can change in different context and tenor of discourse".Fact proves that the semantic research of idiom not only focus on its inherent significance, but also study the significant potential mechanism and function in linguistic practice. Register and context decided semantic choice of idiom and provide a new angle to study the translation of idiom. This article breaks the current study status of idiom translation based on the cultural factors. It has analyzed and studied semantic process mechanism of idiom cultural factors and the dynamic process relationship between idiom and context, the purpose is to study context effect through the process of idiom comprehension. This research is benefit for the second language acquisitionists and researchers a better understanding of the metafunction of English idiom in view of metaphorical thinking mechanism, aiming to improve the applicative ability of English idiom.