The Peculiarities of the Use of Idioms in Comments to English-Language Online Newspaper Articles

This article presents the results of a study on the "behavior" of idioms in oral/written speech of ordinary speakers found in comments to English-language online newspapers. The main aim of the study was to discover whether idioms are used in their usual ready-made form or with changes in their structure and/or connotation. A secondary concern was to determine the frequency of the usage of idioms. Such features of online comments as emotionality and spontaneity make it possible to assume that authors of comments may resort to the use of idioms, since the latter are representatives of the emotional and expressive part of vocabulary; they can be quickly reproduced in context. The primary material for the study consisted of 500 comments from readers of online newspapers The Guardian and The Sun. Then, 185 comments containing idioms were selected to conduct further research. The comments containing idioms were subjected to contextual analysis. Firstly, the authors identified the idiom. Secondly, they accessed its basic form (by consulting dictionaries) and comprehended the idiomatic meaning. If idioms were used in their basic form, they mostly did not acquire any additional features in context. However, some idioms were employed with modifications: substitution of a component/components, insertion of a component/components and cleft-use, addition of a component/components, ellipsis and allusion, phraseological repetition, extended metaphor, phraseological saturation of the context, and phraseological pun. In case of modifications, the authors had to interpret the contextual features because any change in form can entail changes in meaning, emotivity, expressiveness, and connotation. Finally, both non-modified and modified idioms underwent quantitative analysis. Identifying 185 comments containing idioms, the authors drew the first conclusion that idioms are frequently found in online comments in spite of the fact that they are written by ordinary speakers. Comments containing idioms make up 37% of the original data. The percentage is quite high, given the fact that some of the comments are laconic. The reason for the "popularity" of idioms may lie in the fact that comments are written in a rush of feelings. Idioms allow authors to express their thoughts quickly, concisely and emotionally. The second conclusion is that ordinary speakers often modify idioms in their speech. Almost half of the idioms are transformed (41%). In the authors' opinion, ordinary writers of online comments use transformations unconsciously. This is why complex modifications (phraseological pun and extended phraseological metaphor) are rare. The most common modifications include addition, substitution and insertion of a component/components. Ellipses and phraseological repetitions are slightly less common. These types of transformations (with the exception of repetition) involve changes only in the structure of idioms.

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