AN INVESTIGATION INTO LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF IDIOMS DENOTING WORK IN ENGLISH AND IN VIETNAMESE

Abstract

Idiom is an indispensable phenomenon of languages and languages exist together with them. We cannot separate idioms from languages and vice versa. In spite of some similar features, English idioms and Vietnamese idioms are greatly different due to the difference in many aspects. My thesis is to study the syntactic, stylistic and semantic features of idioms denoting work in English and Vietnamese. In the thesis, 216 English items and 200 Vietnamese items of idiom denoting work are under investigation. Descriptive, contrastive and statistical research methods are used to describe, compare and draw statistical results from the idioms in two languages. The findings show that, although the economic, historical, cultural, belief, religious and geographical characteristic of the two countries are quite different, idioms denoting work of two languages have many common characteristics in terms of syntax, stylistics and semantics. This thesis also deals with the implications for teaching and learning English and Vietnamese as well as for further study.