Representation Of Idiomatic Expressions Related To Eating And Drinking In Chinese-English Learner’s Dictionaries

Idiomatic expressions are an important part of modern Chinese idioms.They are concise and vivid.Laden with Chinese folk culture and customs,they are very expressive and of great vitality."Food is the first thing for people",the eating culture of China is extensive and profound.Therefore,diet idiomatic expressions have distinctive function in reflecting intricate social phenomena.Eating is the priority for people’s survival.Each nation around the world has specific food culture thus producing a great number of idiomatic expressions relating with eating and drinking.For example,“eat humble pie" is commonly used to describe swallowing insult and humiliation silently.Those expressions are very different in Chinese and English.Moreover,for CFL learners,vocabulary acquisition is a very basic component.Idiomatic expressions have strong spoken feature and high frequency of use.Therefore,they are the touchstone for CFL learners to test whether they are proficient in Chinese and the key to effective communication.Chinese-English learner’s dictionaries have collected many idiomatic expressions related to eating and drinking for language learners.A Chinese-English Dictionary 3rd edition(2010)provides abundant expressions,such as (?).Chinese idiomatic expression is known for its profound rhetoric and colloquial features.However,knowledge of metaphorical usage and awareness of cultural differences are generally neglected in dictionaries which might cause misunderstandings for CFL learners.Therefore,how to represent them should be of great concern for lexicographers.This thesis starts with the analysis of“(?)”and“(?)”idiomatic expressions in terms of their grammatical structure,semantic meaning,pragmatic characteristics and cultural connotation.It is found that“(?)”and“(?)”idiomatic expressions are are fixed in their collocational patterns which can be divided into two categories:single-phrasal structure and super-multi-phrasal structure,according to the structural characteristics and semantic relations.In particular,some idiomatic expressions are structurally or grammatically correct but their semantic meanings are illogical which fall into the category of unconventional collocations.In this situation,the meanings of“(?)”and“(?)”are extended,which makes the unconventional collocations reasonable.Metaphor is the core of the semantic meanings of“(?)”and“(?)”idiomatic expressions which is the source of their connotative and denotative meanings..Those idiomatic expressions also vividly reflect the colorful diet culture in China.In order to find out the current practice in the representation of“(?)”and“(?)”idiomatic expressions in Chinese-English dictionaries,a survey is conducted.Two typical Chinese-English dictionaries,NCCED2 and NACED,are investigated from the perspectives of entry inclusion,micro-structure arrangement and the labels used to indicate cultural information.It is found the dictionaries provide similar content of those idiomatic expressions and they can make good presentation to some extent.At the same time,a number of deficiencies are also found.First of all,the dictionaries investigated failed to provide the metaphorical meanings of“(?)”and“(?)”,which are useful for CFL learners since quite a number of idiomatic expressions containing those two verbs are closely related with Chinese culture.Consequently,CFL learners are likely to misunderstand some of the entries.Secondly,the same idiomatic expressions are found both in the main entry and the subentry,and this problem is found in more than one dictionary.Naturally redundancy is bound to result from this kind of arrangement.In addition,the dictionaries need to pay more attention to language and cultural differences between Chinese and English.Based on above findings,some suggestions are put forward for optimizing the representation of the idiomatic expressions related to the verbs“(?)”and“(?)”in CELDs.The suggestions are supported by three relevant theories:Conceptual Metaphor,the Multidimensional Definition,Norms and Exploitations and the theory of dictionary as communication.The suggestions includes making the definitions precise,concise;providing labels indicating the culture and history concerning the idiomatic expressions containing the verbs“(?)”and“(?)”;providing additional information to help CFL learners,such as metaphorical usage information and providing cultural,historical and social information,and even information concerning regional dialects,all of which are needed by CFL learners in understanding the idiomatic expressions.To conform their practicability,all those suggestions need to be tested in future investigation.