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This paper presents an analysis of human body related idioms from cognitive linguistics perspective with a view to enabling learners of English to make sense of idioms’ figurative meanings. | AN ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH HUMAN BODY RELATED IDIOMS FROM COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS PERSPECTIVE OF CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS Nguyễn Thị Trung1 Abstract: Idioms play an important role in social interactions. The capture of idiom meanings is of great significance in facilitating language users to communicate more effectively and meaningfully. This paper presents an analysis of human body related idioms from cognitive linguistics perspective with a view to enabling learners of English to make sense of idioms’ figurative meanings. Key words: idioms, cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphors 1. Introduction How to interpret the meaning of idioms in English is a matter of great concern as most of English learners find it hard to understand the meaning of many idioms in English. According to the so-called “classical view”, an idiom is a group of words in a fixed order with arbitrary meaning, that cannot be understood from the individual meanings of its components but that has a separate meaning of its own. As far as cognitive linguistics is concerned, however, most of idioms are thought to be products of human conceptualization process of the world; in other words, idioms are motivated rather than arbitrary as Dmitrij Dobrovol’skij and Elisabeth Piirainen (2005) stated. In this paper, some English idioms denoting parts of human body are analyzed in terms of Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) frame of conceptual metaphor in order to give an insight into the predictability of their meanings. 2. Content 2.1. Conceptual Metaphor 2.1.1. Working Mechanism of Conceptual Metaphor Lakoff and Johnson (1980) proposes in the book Metaphors we live by that metaphor can be found in ordinary everyday language and the metaphor employed in people’s daily life reflects their thinking systems, beliefs and concepts. Language users are usually uncognizant of the fact that the language they use for daily communication is metaphorical. This is different from literature which describes metaphor as a form of .
