A study of linguistic features of words and idioms expressing unintelligence In english and vietnamese

Abstract

Words and Idioms in general and words and idioms expressing unintelligence in particular are of culture-specific nature and vary from culture to culture. On this basis, the thesis investigates the similarities and differences of words and idioms expressing unintelligence in English and Vietnamese especially in terms of grammatical and semantic features, based on descriptive and contrastive methods. 140 word samples and 280 idiom samples (140 English idioms and 140 Vietnamese idioms) were taken from different sources such as novels, short stories, dictionaries, the Internet… for the sake of the semantic and grammatical analysis. Both English and Vietnamese idioms expressing unintelligence share five similar topics. They are analyzed under phrasal structures and sentence structures. However, there are some differences between them, which makes clear in the study. The thesis also offers some implications for the teaching and learning words and idioms in general and that of words and idioms expressing unintelligence in English and Vietnamese as a foreign language in particular.