A Research On Idiomaticity In Spoken Discourse

Idiomaticity is a property of language that makes the speech natural and acceptable enough for native speakers. It is a native-like selection of expression and one of the parameters for ensuring the naturalness of a text. The phenomenon of idiomaticity in language is associated with the use of a variety of multiword expressions preferred by native speakers. With the development of corpus linguistics, statistics from large-scale corpora indicate that the production of real natural language is realized by idiomatic expressions. Idiomaticity in language has become the topic of common concern in the field of linguistics. The importance of idiomaticity in discourse has recently been recognized, but studies of it have been very few. Therefore, based on an analysis of Woody Allen's film scripts (see Appendix), attempts are made to study spoken discourse in terms of idiomaticity.The study begins with an introduction of the recognition of idiomaticity in language. Then a few definitions and terminological issues related to the phenomenon of idiomaticity are explained. Decisions are made to focus on the idiomatic expressions as the main form of realization for characterizing idiomaticity in spoken discourse. A general description of the nature and perspectives of study concerning idiomatic expressions are given. According to Fernando (2004: 69-74), there are formal categorization and functional categorization of idiomatic expressions. The formal categorization of idiomatic expressions aids the identification and recognition of a large number of various types of idiomatic expressions. The categorization based on the three meta-functions of Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar, identified as ideational, interpersonal, and relational, are adopted as the functional categorization of idiomatic expressions. Useful insights obtained from the theoretical foundations lead to the investigation of idiomatic expressions in spoken discourse. Thus the present paper locates the research on an analysis of Woody Allen's film scripts (totaling about 116,620 words) as the corpus. The 10 film scripts selected are composed of improvised or semi-improvised dialogues that are approximate to spontaneous spoken English produced by native speakers. As to the methodology, quantitative analysis is conducted to reveal the large number of idiomatic expressions in the film scripts and to enable us to have a clear map of the distribution of different kinds of multiword expressions exemplifying idiomaticity. The study presents a small amount of data that is indicative of what might be revealed by a larger-scale research. Besides, qualitative analysis is undertaken to identify the lexicogrammatical forms of various kinds of idiomatic expressions as well as to analyze their functions and communicative strategies in specific contexts. The results reveal that idiomaticity or the use of idiomatic expressions contributes to the naturalness of spoken discourse and the fluency of speakers, which is one of native speakers' language competences. Moreover, it has suggested the relevance of the findings of this study to language teaching. The application of lexical approach to language teaching and the possibility of applying formulaic language to improving students' spoken English proficiency are both explored. At the end of the study, it also considers the validity of the corpus used as well as the ambiguity in measuring idiomaticity in spoken discourse in order to point out some limitations existing in the study.