The Role of Idioms in Meaning Construction Process: discursive implications
Discourse. Cognitive Linguistics. Frame Semantics. Idioms.
This thesis aims to check the role of idiomatic expressions in construction of meaning and its implications in the speech. For this, we assume that the application of Embodied Construction Grammar model provides subsidies for understanding the role of idiomatic expressions, it shows not only how frames, metaphorical schemes and projections are integrated in the production of semantic specifications (semspec), but also how these semspec are resolved in situational and discursive contexts, and how inferences are produced during discourse processing. In this endeavor, we use notions of construction grammar (pairing of form and meaning), framing, embodiedment, mental simulation and idiomaticity. The corpus of this study consists of 20 texts containing idioms, taken from Internet via Google search engine. The methodology used is of qualitative nature, as it allows the realization of an empirical analysis. Preliminary analysis shows that idioms are part of a set of metaphorical mappings to structure the framing on which the discourse is built.