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- In a broad sense, an idiom is a long-lived group of words characteristic of a language (sometimes impossible to translate ad litteram into another language), comprising grammatical collocations and phrases (fusions, unities and free combinations), most of them being based on degraded metaphors;
- In a strict sense, an idiom is tantamount to a phraseological fusion.
According to The Oxford Companion to the English Language (OUP 1992), the term idiom finds its etymology in Latin idioma and Greek idíōma meaning at the beginning a specific property, a special phrasing, from idios = one’s own, personal, private. Archaically, there has been another term, idiotism which has two acceptations. On the one hand it denotes the speech proper to, or typical of, a people or place; a dialect or local language; the unique quality or ‘genius’ of a language. On the other hand it denotes an expression unique to a language, especially one whose sense is not predictable from the meanings and arrangement of its elements, such as kick the bucket, a slang term meaning ‘to die’, which has nothing to do with kicking or buckets.
In linguistics the term idiomaticity refers to the nature of idioms and the degree to which a usage can be regarded as idiomatic. Some expressions are moe holophrastic and unanalysable than others: for example, to take steps is literal and non-idiomatic in the baby took her first steps, but it may be considered as figurative, grammatically open, and semi-idiomatic in They took some steps to put the matter right, and it may become fully idiomatic and grammatically closed in She took steps to see that was done. These examples demonstrate a continuum of meaning and use that is true for many usages. No such continuum exists, however, between he kicked the buck out of the way and he kicked the bucket last night. Such idioms are particularly rigid: for example they cannot be passivized (the bucket was kicked) or otherwise adapted (bucket-kicking as a synonym for death).
The Oxford Companion to the English Language also mentions that “although idioms are normally simply slotted into speech and writing, they are occasionally subject to creative word-play, (e.g. on the other hand may become on the other paw in the context of kitten food or kitten shelter)”
In the same dictionary we find that “it is not unusual for even fluent speakers in the heat of conversation to bled or splice two idioms or collocations whose forms and meanings are similar.” The following example speaks volume of the idea cited above: “That seems an interesting step to go down” (splicing step to take and road to go down).
Nevertheless, linguists tend to give often incongruous definitions to idioms, thus making it quite difficult to disentangle their essential features. Nevertheless, they are quite often seen as “a terror to any student with a logical and orderly mind. Many of them, indeed, are beyond any common-sensible explanation whatever… Others are based, in fact, on anything which can be employed to convey one’s thoughts briefly and effectively.”[1]
Idioms are divided by Treble and Vallins[2] into:
a. Grammatical Idioms – those in which grammar and idioms agree, e.g. There is a ladder there.
b. Ungrammatical Idioms – those in which grammar and idioms disagree, e.g. “It’s me”. “,more than pleased”, “ in less than no time”
c. Prepositional Idioms - those making use of prepositions in idiomatic phrases, e.g. by chance, at least, after all, etc.
d. Metaphorical Idioms - those based on metaphors, e.g. a broken reed, a sly dog, etc.
Hornby’s Dictionary (1990) defines the term idiom as :
a. a group succession of words that must be learnt as a whole because it is difficult or impossible to understand the meaning from knowledge of the words considered separately;
b. a form of expressions peculiar to a people, district, group of people, country, or to one individual, as the French idiom, or the Shakespeare idiom
Webster’s Unabridged Encyclopedic Dictionary (1994) defines it as follows:
a. the language or dialect of a people, social class, etc.
b. the usual way in which the words of a language are joined together to express thought;
c. an accepted phrase, construction, or expression contrary to the usual patterns of the language or having a meaning different from the literal;
d. the style of expressions characteristic of an individual, as the idiom of Carlyle, Shakespeare, etc.
Leviţchi (1976) defines idioms as “special forms of speech that are peculiar to the instinct of a language…”, they can also be considered, as W. McMordie (1967) does, as “peculiar uses of particular words, and also particular phrases or turns of expressions which, from long usage, have become stereotyped in English, or any other language”.
After having seen what meanings the term idiom has acquired in English, it would be interesting to see what other terms are usually used in connection with the constant word groups.
Smiths (1925) also uses the term of locution / locuţiune / locution. This term suggests in English, French, and Romanian, fixed word joinings, specific to a certain language. They have variable dimensions, and a unitary sense. The word order in a locution cannot be changed. From a lexical, semantic and grammatical point of view, these word groups behave like their synthetic equivalent.
Another synonym is that one of idiomatic phrase/expresie idiomatică/expression idiomatique. Specialists agree that they share the same characteristics with the so-called Romanian – ‘idiotisme’ – or isolations (expressions specific to a certain language that have no equivalent into another one), and only partially do they share characteristics with the locutions. They are groups of distinctive words, which share a constant character and a unitary meaning. They are formed either of two or three words (to take off, cal de bătaie; cheval rétif) or they may even have the dimensions of a sentence (when the cat’s away the mice will play; quand les poules auront des dents). Many of the idiomatic phrases contain a verb among their components, (to lose one’s head). The order of the components is invariable, and they have a subjective function.
Phrases / epressions / expresii are those word joinings whose expressive function is superior to that of locutions and compound words. Their structure is varied. They may either be formed of two or three words (vorbă lungă; heart and soul; corps et âme) or they may even be sentences (a se lua în gură cu cineva, to come into being; ne pas arriver à la cheville de qqn.) Their sense is unitary and their topic is invariable.
The proverbs / proverbe / les proverbs are stable word groups specific to a certain language, enjoying a long existence and a wide circulation (a-şi spăla rufele murdare în public; to wash one’s dirty linen in public; laver son linge sale en public). Proverbs have an overt metaphoric character and they also have a fixed form. Sometimes the meaning of proverbs can be related to the meaning of the component words, but most of the times the main message is transmitted by the metaphoric meaning of the components.
The proverbial phrases / les locutions proverbiales / expresiile/ perifrazele proverbiale are fixed word joinings with a variable formal structure. Their meaning does not depend on the meaning of the component elements (to pull the chestnuts out of the fire; tirer de l’huile d’un mur.)
The saying / le dicton / zicala designates in English, French and Romanian, stable word joinings, unanimously known on large geographic areas. Sayings have a metaphorical meaning. From the point of view of form, they are made up of sentences or clauses (noaptea toate pisicile sunt negre – all cats are grey in the dark – la nuit tous les chats sont gris) and the order of the component elements cannot be modified.
The compound word / compus / nom compose is a reduced word joining from the point of view of the formal structure (e.g. papă-lapte – blanc-bec – milk sop, sea-horse – cal de mare – cheval de mer). It usually concerns one lexical unit having an invariable form and a unique meaning.
The syntagm / le syntagme / sintagma denotes a word or a group of words. The term usually alternates with formula / formule / locution / locuţiune, expresie / expression, idiome / idiom.
The periphrasis / la périphrase / perifraza is a generic term used instead of compound word / compus/ nom composé, locution, (e.g. on the other paw) etc. From a structural point of view, the periphrasis is made up of at least two words and a predicative element.
The cliché / le cliché / clişeul denotes fix word joinings of small or large dimensions (sang bleu – blue blood - sânge albastru; sic transit gloria mundi). The word order in a cliché is invariable and the sense is unitary.
The term idiom /idiome / idiotism is used mainly on the “territory” of the English language and it denotes word joinings specific to a certain language. It is in this sense that we will approach the ensuing sections and chapters. The form may vary from one word to two or several words. The form cannot be changed without a subsequent alteration of the meaning. There are several types of idioms, the short ones (also called grammatical) and the longer ones (also called functional.) The longer idioms do not have a unitary meaning. Other synonyms for this term are: idiomatic expression, expression, phrase, etc.
As far as metaphor is concerned, linguists generally agree that it plays an important part in the formation and existence of idioms. “Idioms are essentially connected with metaphors of the degraded type.”[3]
Cognitive linguistics proves that there is a much closer connection between idioms and metaphors. According to the classical view, idioms are seen as having arbitrary meaning, but in cognitive linguistics, the possibility exists that they are arbitrary but rather motivated. For a better understanding of the phenomenon, let us look into the matter of metaphor. Classically speaking, metaphor (Gk. metaphora < metapherein, “to carry over”) is seen as a poetic linguistic expression where one, two or more words are used outside their normal conventional meaning to express a similar concept. Therefore a metaphor implies the comparison of two or more dissimilar objects, but it treats the one as if it were the other. It identifies them. Thus a metaphor may be extended into a simile. From the classical point of view, metaphors are standardized, or “lexical when they form part of the vocabulary of a language” (e.g. the ship of the desert = the camel, the nose of the ship - the prow of a ship, etc.)
We mentioned earlier that “idioms are connected with degraded metaphors”. This happens because metaphors – as many other language matters, may be studied from the point of view of their life and duration. Accordingly, distinction can be made between live metaphors, degraded (fading) metaphors and dead metaphors.
Live metaphors are said to be those felt as new and fresh. They enjoy limited currency. As to duration and persistency in time, non-standardized metaphors usually enjoy a very long life. Live metaphors may become degraded or fading metaphors if we take into consideration the fact that their lifespan may be quite short through frequent usage.
Degraded metaphors still convey to the speakers of a language some of their initial freshness, although they have already become trite. Let us consider, for instance to sift the evidence (“a examina dovezile”). In this example, the verb to sift still preserves its semantic connection with its concrete meaning. It is the long-lived character of the degraded metaphors that links metaphor to idioms.
Dead metaphors are those that have now lost every metaphorical connotation.
Cognitive linguistics has proved that metaphor is a mapping between two cognitive domains. Mappings or conceptual correspondences usually follow a subconscious pattern of comparing items from different domains which have some minor but obvious characteristics. Cognitive linguists see metaphor not as a chunk of language, (sentence, phrase or whatever), but as ‘a mode of thought defined by a systematic mapping from a source to a target domain (Lakoff 1980, 1987)[4] manifested in a chunk of language.
A conceptual metaphor is hence a unidirectional linking of two different concepts, such that some of the attributes of one (e.g. MONEY) are transferred to the other (e.g. IDEAS). The use of the term metaphor is restricted to the conceptual frame, so the linguistic realization of a conceptual metaphor is not called a metaphor, but a metaphoric expression. (Lakoff, 1993)[5]
One of the most important claims of cognitive metaphor theory is that any language contains connected systems of conventional metaphorical expressions instantiating basic conceptual metaphors or root analogies, which are shared because they derive from common experience with the world and serve as ‘part of our conceptual apparatus’. (Lakoff and Turner 1989)[6]
If metaphor has often been taken to be a mere packaging device – “a fancy linguistic wrapping at best for otherwise plain idea, at worst for nothing at all”[7], Reddy shows that the locus of metaphor is thought and not language. Thus metaphor becomes a major and indispensable part of our ordinary, conventional way of conceptualizing the world and our everyday behaviour reflects our metaphorical understanding of experience. Instead of being merely a matter of words, metaphors are fundamentally conceptual in nature: they provide a means of understanding one kind of thing or experience in terms of another kind.
Rather than being decorative or irrelevant to reality, metaphor is very much the stuff of everyday life. Our very understanding of what life is about is given by a set of partially overlapping conceptual metaphors. To prove this, linguists tend to identify in conceptual metaphors everyday linguistic instances. Such expressions are so ordinary that we do not recognize their metaphorical character. This usually happens because they represent the way in which we ordinarily think and act. The various metaphors in terms of which we understand and live our lives do not generate the same goals or focus on the same concerns. Each metaphor can partially structure some aspect of life, or we may say that we structure our lives in terms of such metaphors. It is important to realize that it is not through actions alone that we live by metaphors; we also live by metaphors to the extent that our grasp of reality is metaphorical. In short, to live by a metaphor means to have your reality structured by that metaphor, and to base your perceptions and actions upon that structuring of reality. Consequently one may live by a metaphor to a degree. Certain metaphors will be more important than others for a given person. A culture and implicitly a language may be thought of as providing, among other things, a pool of available metaphors for making sense of reality. It may therefore become difficult to understand someone else’s experiences when you do not live by the same metaphors s/he does. Hence translation difficulties may arise.
From the point of view of their functioning, conceptual metaphors bring into correspondence two domains of knowledge. One is called the source domain and the other one is the target domain. The source domain is typically applied to provide understanding about the target. Thus different life concepts may be understood metaphorically.
As far as idioms and metaphors are concerned, many idioms are products of our conceptual system and not simply matters of language (i.e. of the lexicon). An idiom is not just an expression that has a meaning that is somehow special in relation to the meanings of its constituting parts, but it arises from our more general knowledge of the world. In other words, idioms are conceptual and not linguistic in nature. Since metaphors can be described as matters of language but also as being conceptual, and since idioms are connected with degraded metaphors (conceptual metaphors being almost “so ordinary that we do not recognize their metaphorical character”), we may rightly infer that idioms and metaphors are mutually dependent.
But before proceeding further, mention should be made that there are other lexical and semantic processes that “affect” idioms. Among these are folk-etymology and metonymy. Folk-etymology sometimes affects phrases, not only words, e.g. the standardized simile as mad as a hatter. E. Radford notes that “the reproach has nothing to do with hatters. They are as sane as anybody else.” It was originally as mad as an atter. Atter was the Anglo-Saxon for viper or adder; and mad was anciently used in the sense of “venomous”. Thus the expression mad as an atter meant “as venomous as a viper”. Another case may be the one of to save one’s bacon which has “nothing to do with bacon”. The old Dutch word for bacon was baec; but then the earlier Anglo-Saxon word for back was also baec… To save one’s bacon is really to save one’s baec (back) from trashing.[8]
Metonymy, too, has an influence on the coming into being of idioms. Classically speaking, metonymy is a figure of speech by means of which the name of an object is replaced by one of its significant attributes or by some function that it discharges. There are several types of metonymies, viz.:
a) The name of an object expressed by one of its attributes: from the cradle to the grave = from one’s birth to one’s death.
b) The part used for the whole and the whole used for the part: hand = man, worker;
c) The instrument used for the agent: sword = army, men bearing swords.
d) The holder for the thing held: the gallery = the spectators in the gallery;
e) The maker’s name used for the thing made and the name of a place instead of a thing coming from it: holland = linen coming from Holland; Henry James = Henry James’ works).
Kövecses and Radden also identify several types of metonymy producing relationships, which would be of the kind:
a) WHOLE THING FOR PART OF IT: He hit me. For “His fist hit me.”
A PART FOR THE WHOLE THING: hand for “person”
b) OBJECT FOR MATERIAL: We ate rattlesnake for “food”
MATERIAL FOR OBJECT: wood for “forest”
c) COMPLEX EVENT FOR SUBEVENT: fix the meal for “cooking”
SUCCESSIVE SUBEVENTS FOR COMPLEX EVENT: They stood at the altar.
CO-PRESENT SUBEVENTS FOR COMPLEX EVENT: Mary speaks Spanish.
d) Metonymic synonymy: UN for United Nations
But in cognitive linguistics, metonymy is distinguished by metaphor in such a way that metonymy is characterized as typically involving one conceptual domain, rather than two distinct ones (as is the case of metaphor). Metonymy involves a “stand for” conceptual relationship between two entities, while metaphor involves an “is” or “is understood as” relationship between two conceptual domains. Sometimes the specific cognitive mechanism required for idioms may include the cognitive mechanism of “stand for” specific to metonymies.
Among the principles governing the selection of preferred vehicle, as far as metonymy is concerned, there are communicative principles and cognitive principles. Kövecses distinguishes among the congnitive principles:
1. Human experience
HUMAN OVER NON-HUMAN: I am in the telephone book.
CONCRETE OVER ABSTRACT: brain for “intellect”
INTERACTIONAL OVER NON-INTERACTIONAL: needle for “syringe”
FUNCTIONAL OVER NON-FUNCTIONAL: sitting behind the wheel for “driving”
2. Perceptual selectivity
IMMEDIATE OVER NON-IMMEDIATE: He got cold feet for “frightened”
OCCURENT OVER NON-OCCURENT: As will be see presently.
MORE OVER LESS: How old are you? Vs. How young are you?
DOMINANT OVER LES DOMINANT: America for “United States”
GOOD GESTALT OVER POOR GESTALT: The car needs washing for “the body of the car”
BOUNDED OVER UNBOUNDED: I sent him an e-mail.
SPECIFIC OVER GENERIC: The spider has eight legs; proverbs
3. Cultural models
STEREOTYPICAL OVER NON-STEREOTYPICAL: Boys will be boys
IDEAL OVER NON-IDEAL: ideal husband
TYPICAL 0VER NON-TYPICAL: dog as a pet
CENTRAL OVER PERIPHERAL: You are not from here, are you?
BASIC OVER NON-BASIC: I have told you a hundred times.
IMPORTANT OVER LESS IMPORTANT: speaking a language for “command of a language”
COMMON OVER LESS COMMON: aspirin for “any pain-relieving tablet”
RARE OVER LESS RARE: one Dc-10 crash for “all DC-10 planes”
In Lakoff’s (1984)[9] opinion, metaphor does not exhaust the possible devices for structuring our understanding; metonymy has a central role to play. As we have seen previously, a metaphoric model structures from one domain to another and a metonymic model, in Lakoff’s view structures a domain in terms of one of its elements. Something is gained by this substitution of part of a category for the category as a whole: the former “is easier to understand, easier to process, easier to recognize, or more immediately useful for the given purpose in the given context” (ibid). Thus, for example, the social world in which some men are bachelors is structured, not by our full knowledge of the many possible courses men’s lives may take, but by what Lakoff calls a typical example of a male life course.
Typicality is not the only metonymic relation that may hold between a domain and some element in this domain. For instance, Holland and Skinner[10] (1985) argue that their interviewees in an experiment, conceptualizing interactions between college men and women in terms of how such a relationship typically proceeds, understand individuals who violate the expectations engendered by this canonical relationship in terms of negative social stereotypes. These social stereotypes are quite different from interviewees’ notions of the (proto)typical man. Thus, the proposition-schemas that Quinn (1985)[11] enumerates exemplify another type of metonymy – ideals. Even though Americans might agree that most marriages are difficult, they would probably not agree that most marriages are enduring. This proposition-schema, that MARRIAGE IS ENDURING, derives not from any notion of the statistically dominant pattern, but from an idea of the successful marital enterprise. Just as a successful marriage is enduring, a happy marriage is mutually beneficial, and a real marriage is lived jointly.
Hutchins shows that a myth can be understood as a symbolic reformulation of events in life, a culturally given yet disguised realization of painful and unacceptable sentiments.
Lakoff’s (1984) discussion gives a better sense of why cultural models have the prototypical nature they do: they are constructed out of various types of metonymy. In his words “Prototype effects are superficial phenomena. They arise when some subcategory or member or submodel is used (often for some limited and immediate purpose) to comprehend the category as a whole.
Cultural models draw on a variety of types of idealized events, actors and other typical entities in these events, and relations among these, all of which are available to our understanding of ordinary experience: the typical, the salient in memory, the mythic, the ideal successful, the ideal happy, etc. Lakoff draws the attention that these presupposed worlds are simplified in different ways and that the different types of simplification put our understanding in different perspective.
Any given cultural model may be constructed out of several types of metonymy. We have seen, for example, that the American cultural model of marriage, depending on the metonym in focus, allows propositions about the ideal successful marriage, the ideal happy marriage, and what can be considered a “real” marriage, as well as what the typical marriage is like. Moreover, Lakoff has proved that several metonymic types can stand in causal relation to one another.
When talking about the prototypical nature of cultural model, this one applies equally to our models of these models. Linde (1989)[12] discusses the interaction between the models of culturally designated “experts”, or scientists, and the models of the “folk”. Folk models of the world incorporate expert knowledge. Conversely, observation that each of the two folk theories of language has its counterpart in an academic linguistic theory implies that the former penetrates the latter.
Nonetheless, by constantly questioning how cultural knowledge is organized, we aspire to a kind of analysis that can be successively improved to capture the native model and the tasks, explanatory or otherwise, to which it is brought by the native speaker.
Lakoff & Johnson (1980) observe that metaphors appear to introduce information from physical-world source domains into target domains in the nonphysical world. Lakoff and Johnson (ibid.) seem to be suggesting that the concepts metaphors introduce are more readily understandable because they are grounded in our bodily interaction with the physical environment. However, Holland (1982)[13] points out that this is demonstrably not the case for Lakoff and Johnson’s prime example, the metaphor ARGUMENT IS WAR. Lakoff and Johnson assert that we understand war more easily because of its basis in our evolutionary history as human animals, equipped for physical conflict Holland responds that our understanding of modern war, far from resting on a conception of primal physical combat, is just as culturally given as our notions about argument; and argument is the more directly apprehended experience for most people.
It goes from here tat the advantage of metaphors from the physical world rests on the nature of physical experience itself, and the manner in which physical properties and relations are apprehensible to human beings. Image-schemas are constructed out of physical properties and relations, and the advantage of metaphors drawn from domains of the physical world is that these source domains provide the material for image-schemas. Metaphor is important to understanding, then, because it enables image-schematic thought. Thus, it does not really mater whether WAR is grounded in actual experience or genetic memory of physical combat. What makes it a useful metaphor for ARGUMENT is that, unlike the latter, war is largely culturally defined for us in terms of physical space – battlegrounds, battle lines, routes of retreat – occupied by physical occurrences – troop advances, body counts. The metaphor, thus, allows the largely intangible social dynamics of argument to be reconceptualized in the image-schematic terms provided by the tangible events of war.
The result of any such mapping, from physical experience in the source domain to social or psychological experience in the target domain, is that elements, properties, and relations that could not be conceptualized in image-schematic form without the metaphor can now be expressed in the terms provided by the metaphor. Such a result is achieved, for example, by the metaphor of anger as a hot fluid in a container, which can be envisioned as boiling, producing steam and exerting pressure on its container, or the image-schema of a problem as a protrusion on the landscape allows it to be reduced, conceptually, from the size of a mountain to the more realistic, and hence surmountable, size of a molehill.
This is a clear illustration of Lakoff and Johnson’s claim that ongoing understanding often relies on the rich mapping potential of metaphor. Lakoff and Kövecses suggest that metaphors are extended, not willy-nilly from any domain to any other, but in closely structured ways. The classes from which speakers select metaphors they consider to be appropriate are those that capture aspects of the simplified world and the prototypical events unfolding in this world, constituted by the cultural model. Chosen metaphors not only highlight particular features of the cultural model; as we discuss, they also point to entailments among these elements. Thus, one husband’s metaphor of marriage as a “do-it-yourself project” at once suggests for him the durable quality of something made in this manner – “it was very strong because it was made as we went along” – and implies additionally, the craft and care and effort that must go into such a thing to make it well.
To sum up, as C. Avădanei[14] put it, many of the stable word joinings belong to metaphor in the sense that metaphor itself may be seen as a word joining.
The need to express life matters in a colourful way lead to the coming into being of expressive forms of communication having a highly aesthetic role. Ştefan Avădanei[15] sees metaphor as being present in almost “all dimensions of human conscious existence.” Metaphor thus expresses attitudes, emotions, life situations, which would otherwise be difficult to express. By implicit simile, metaphor makes such situations possible to be spoken out and ensures that abstract life situations (which conceptually would be difficult to understand) can easily be communicated.
[1] Freeman, W., English for Foreigners, London, 1945, pp.72-73, apud Leviţchi, Leon, Limba engleză contemporană – Lexicologie, Ed. Didactică şi Pedagogică, Bucureşti, 1970
[2] Apud Leviţchi, Leon, op. cit.
[3] Leviţchi, Leon, op. cit., p.81.
[4] Lakoff, George, Johnson, Mark, 1980, Metaphors We Live by. Chicago; University of Chicago Press
[5] Lakoff, George. The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor. In Metaphor and Thought. Edited by Andrew Ortony. Cambridge: CUP
[6] Lakoff, G. & Turner, Mark, 1989. More than Cool Reason. A Guide to Poetic Metaphor. Chicago and London: the University of Chicago Press
[7] Johnson, M., Lakoff, G. Metaphor and Communication, L. A. U.T., Trier, 1982.
[8] Radford, E., Unusual Words and how They Came About, adapted, Moscow-Leningrad, 1964, apud Leviţchi, Leon, op. cit., p.67.
[9] Lakoff, G. 1984. Classifiers as a reflection of mind: A Cognitive Model Approach to Prototype Theory. Berkely Cognitive Science report No.19. Berkely: University of California Institute of Human Learning
[10] Holland, D. and D. Skinner 1985. The Meaning of Metaphors in Gender Stereotyping. North Carolina working Papers in Culture and Cognition No.3,. Durham, N.C.: Duke university department of Anthropology.
[11] Quinn, N. 1985. American Marriage through Metaphors: A Cultural Analysis. North Carolina Working Papers in Culture and Cognition No.1. Durham, N.C.: Duke University department of Anthropology
[12]Linde, C. 1989. explanatory Systems in Oral life stories. In Cultural Models in Language and Thought , Cambridge, CUP
[13] Holland, D. and D. Skinner 1985. The Meaning of Metaphors in Gender Stereotyping. North Carolina Working Papers in Culture and Cognition No.3. Durham,, N.C.: Duke University Department of Anthropology
[14] Avădanei, Constanţa, Construcţii idiomatice în limbile română şi engleză, Ed. Univ. Al. I.Cuza, Iaşi, 2000
[15] Avădanei, Ştefan, La început a fost metafora, Ed. Virginia, Iaşi, 1994, p.16.
