Culture Study ＆ Compiling Dictionaries Of English Idioms

Second language learning is often second culture learning, especially the culture-bound idioms learning. The present thesis starts from the problems and difficulties that ESL learners meet when learning English idioms and discusses the relationship between English idioms and all aspects of culture. At the end, the author investigates four of the main English idiom dictionaries; finds out the incompleteness existing in the present dictionaries and gives some suggestions on providing cultural information to the idiom dictionary compilers.The introduction first analyses the purpose of the thesis and gets the aim of the cultural study of English idioms. That is, to solve the problems existing in ESL learners when studying English idioms. Then the author studies the idioms and culture respectively and last the relationship between language, idioms and culture is discussed to prepare for the theory of the following chapters. Chapter one states the relationship between history and idioms. The author especially states the English history and its influence on English idioms'development. Chapter two to five state the relationship between idioms and religion, customs, literature and social life respectively in detail. Chapter six, the investigation of the culture aspect in four main English idiom dictionaries is taken: Longman Dictionary of English Idioms, A Dictionary of English Idioms (Wuhan University), Oxford Idioms Dictionary for Learners of English and Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms. Through the investigation, four ways of cultural information providing. In the last chapter, four problems existing in the dictionaries are summarized, and the author gives some suggestions to English idiom dictionary compilers aiming at the problems of the learners and present dictionaries.