A Corpus-Based Study Of Idioms In "Friends"

Idioms, as complex multi-word expressions whose integral meanings are often not predicable from their component parts, are usually viewed as something peculiar, dialectal, heterogeneous and represent a continuum of various dimensions. This nature of "idiom"provides not only a serious obstacle to researchers for its closer inspection but also grief to non-native learners in its comprehension, translation and acquisition. As the problem on how idioms should be defined remains unsolved and keeps linguists puzzling for decades, this paper initiates with an attempt to work out a clearer and more specific definition and category of "idiom"in order to clear up the fuzzy borderline between idioms and non-idioms. Useful insights obtained from the literature review conclude that corpus-based investigations of idioms in spoken discourse of specific genres are the areas that need more attention. Thus the present paper locates the research on a corpus-based study of idioms in the 823,537-word scripts of a popular American sitcom TV show "Friends". Both qualitative and quantitative analyses are undertaken to portray typical patterns of idiom use, variations of labeled idioms, the preference of grammatical patterns of certain idioms and possible difficulties for EFL learners in the comprehension and acquisition of certain idioms in this particular genre. An empirical case study is also carried out to verify whether idioms function as status markers by drawing on the data of 881 tokens of idioms used by six leading characters with different professions and educational backgrounds. The research ends up with a specification of pragmatic functions labeled idioms perform. The results reveal that idiom use in "Friends"is highly register-sensitive, context-bound and topic-related. Some idioms demonstrate typical preference in the use of grammatical or lexical patterns particular to this genre. Idioms used in "Friends"function as status markers and certain idioms serve salient discourse functions particularly relevant in the context of informal conversation. It is claimed that evidence from such a corpus can be quite informative for language teachers who aim not only at helping learners learn those unfamiliar idioms of practical significance but also raising their awareness of the functions idioms perform in this specific genre.