A Study of Idioms in The Selected Romantic Movies

Introduction
Movie
 A work of visual art that simulate experiences and otherwise
communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere
through the use of moving images.
Give us pleasure and a lot of knowledge.
Teach us how to aspire, how to dress, how to interact with our friends,
how to talk attractively, who to love and how etc.
Can motivate us to make positive changes in our lives.
Through watching movies, phrasal verbs, idioms, accents, cultures and
others can be learned.
 Introduction
Idiom
Idioms are frequently used in daily English conversation because they enrich
the content of the communication and enable the speakers to express
themselves clearly (Thyab, 2016).
A phrase or expression that typically presents a figurative, non-literal
meaning attached to the phrase.
Provide clarity in communication.
Can boost your conversational English Skills.
Useful to express ourselves in a new creative way .
Help to explore the language in a deeper, more meaningful way.
 Aim

To analyze the idioms found in the selected romantic movies named
“Along For The Ride” and “A Perfect Pairing” by Nunberg, Sag and
Wasow (1994).
 Objectives
To classify the idioms used in the selected romantic movies by
employing six different types of idiomatic expression by Nunberg, Sag
and Wasow (1994).

To examine what types of idioms are mostly found and describe the
contextual meanings of idioms in the selected romantic movies.
 Theoretical background
•In this study, the theory of Nunberg, Sag and Wasow (1994) is used to analyze
the idiomatic expressions. In the theory, there are six types of idioms. They are
as follows;
1. Conventionality: meaning or use can’t be predicted, or at least entirely
predicted, on the basis of knowledge .For example, “He kicked the bucket
last night”. It means that “He died last night”.
2. Inflexibility: Idioms typically appear only in a limited number of syntactic
frames or constructions, unlike freely composed expressions. For example,
“Bryan shoots the breeze in his work” can be added like “The breeze is shot
by Bryan” or “The breeze is hard to shoot”, etc.
 Theoretical background
3. Figuration: Typically involve “metaphors”, “metonymy” , “hyperboles” or
other kinds of figuration.
4. Proverbiality: Idioms are typically used to a recurrent situation of particular
social interest (becoming restless, talking informally, divulging a secret)
(eg;“spilling the beans” as “tell people secret information” and so on).

5. Informality: Like other proverbial expressions, idioms are typically

associated with relatively informal or colloquial registers and with popular
speech and oral culture. Informal idioms are such as: “on my own” instead of
alone, “no way” instead of saying “impossible” and so on.
 Theoretical background
• 6. Affect: Idioms are typically used to imply a certain evaluation or
effective stance toward the things they denote. For example, “long
face” meant as “ a sad face” , “pull a face” or “make a face” meant as
“show that someone does no like something or someone else by
making an unpleasant expression” and so on.
 Related research 1
 In 2013, Fatemeh Mohamadi Asl from Allameh Tabataba'i University of Indonesia
wrote the research, “The Impact of Context on Learning Idioms in EFL Classes”.
 The aims of the research are to investigate the effect of context on learning
idiomatic expressions, and the long term effect of context on the learners' retention.
 The researcher applies the studies and the results of ( Adkins, 1968; Levorato, 1993;
Liontas, 2003, cited in Kainulainen, 2006) to carry out his research.
 According to their studies’ results, when idiomatic expressions are encountered in a
context, learners perform better.
 The finding of his research also indicated that context has a positive effect on
learning idioms.
 Related research 2
 In 2014 , Ma Aye Sandar Tun from Yadanabon University of Myanmar
wrote the research named “A Study of Idioms in the Selected Short
Stories of P.G. Wodehouse” .
 The aim of the research is to study idioms in the selected short stories.
 The researcher uses the theory of Fernando (1996).
 The finding is that altogether 77 idioms are used in the story “The
Man Upstairs” and all together 53 idioms are used in the story
“Something to worry about’.
 And literal idioms are most frequently found in both short stories.
 Related research 3
 In 2017, Maha H.Alhaysony from University of Ha’il, Saudi Arabia conducted the research
entitled, “Strategies and Difficulties of Understanding English Idioms: A Case Study of
Saudi University EFL Students”.
 The aims of the research are to investigate difficulties Saudi EFL students face in learning and
understanding English idioms, and examines the strategies they utilize to understand idioms.
 The researcher applied questionnaire by citing Pimenova (2011, pp. 117-119) to investigate
difficulties Saudi EFL students face in learning and understanding English idioms.
 And VLT ( Vocabulary Level Test) is a new version of Nation’s (1983, 1990) is used to examine
the strategies the students utilize to understand idioms.
 The questionnaire results showed that students have difficulty to understand idiomatic
expressions.
 And the VLT revealed that most frequently used strategies were guessing the meaning of
idioms from context, predicting the meaning of idioms, and figuring out an idiom from an
equivalent one in their mother language.
 Related research 4
 In 2019, Ma May Myat Mon from Yadanabon University of Myanmar did the research
named “Idiomatic Expressions found in the Selected Lyrics By Justin Bieber”.
 The aim of this research is to analyze the idioms found in the selected lyrics by Justin
Bieber.
 The objectives are to explore the idioms in the selected lyrics, to describe the
contextual meanings of idioms used in the selected lyrics, to classify the idioms used
in the selected lyrics and to investigate which status of idioms is mostly used and
which is least used in the selected lyrics.
 The researcher uses the theory of Nunberg, Sag and Wasow (1994) . There are six
types of idioms namely conventionality, inflexibility, figuration, proverbiality,
informality and affect.
 The finding is that inflexibility status is frequently applied and affect is the minimum
status in the songs of Justin Bieber.
 Related research 5
 In 2020, Dalilah Fathma, Nurlela, Muhammad Yusuf from Universitas Sumatera Utara of Indonesia
conducted the research, “ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’ UNDERSTANDING IDIOMATIC
EXPRESSIONS AND ITS USE IN THEIR ESSAY”.
 The aims of this research are to find out the types of idiomatic expressions which are used by the
students in their English essay and to describe on how far is their understanding of idiomatic expressions.
 The researcher applied qualitative approach by using content analysis to observe the types of idioms
found in the students’ essays and doing an interview sessions in order to assess their understanding of
idiomatic expressions.
 The finding is that there are two types of idiomatic expressions found in the students’ essays. Both types
are consisted of each one idiom for one student, those are A cup of tea categorized as Compound and
Drop your jaw categorized as Verb+ object/complement (and/or adverbial).
 And the 4th semester of English Department students of Universitas Sumatera Utara are not familiar with
idioms since five of seven of them did not use idiom in their essays and six of seven of them could not
pass the facets of understanding.
 Related research 6
In 2018, “Attitudes towards idioms and idiom learning strategies” is conducted by Mirna
Pucelj from J. J. Strossmayer University of Osijek.
The aim of this research is to investigate the relationships between Croatian EFL learners’
attitudes towards idioms, learning strategies they utilize to acquire unknown idioms, their
gender, academic performance, and experience in English.
The researcher applies a questionnaire and an idiom quiz, both of which were created for
the purposes of this research.
The questionnaire was designed by combining attitude towards idioms were adopted from
Liontas (2002) and idiom learning strategies were adopted from Ababneh (2016).
A short idiom quiz was designed by 8 sentences with underlined phrases that they had to
substitute with an appropriate color idiom.
The findings reveal that the majority of the participants have a positive attitude towards
learning idioms and the most used idiom learning strategies are inferring the meaning from
context, frequent repetition and a combination of visualization and verbal information.
 Related research 7
In 2015, “A Study of Idioms in Relation to Language Universals” is conducted
by Kathryn Ayers from Liberty University.
The aim of this research is to examine how language universals reveal
information about the relationship between culture and language, to examine
which expressions are cross-cultural and to identify the varieties of expressions
of universal ideas, specifically in relation to the culture of each language.
The researcher applies the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, agreeing that language
affects society.
To conduct the research, common idioms in the English language with
potentially universal concepts behind them are given and participants are told to
find an expression in their native language that expressed an equivalent concept.
The findings are that most of the expressions reveal variations of data, dependent
on differing cultures and some of the listed ideas are not matched with any
idioms in the participants’ native languages.
 Related research 8
In 2019, “The Development of Idiom Knowledge Across the Lifespan” is conducted
by Simone A. Sprenger, Amélie la Roi and Jacolien van Rij from University of
Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands.
The aim of this study is to show considerable variation between participants and
between idioms.
To collect the data, the questionnaire is implemented using the survey software
Qualtrics (Qualtrics, Provo, UT).
The researcher uses Generalized Additive Mixed Models (Hastie and Tibshirani,
1990; Wood, 2017; GAMMs), a non-linear mixed-effects regression method to
analyze the data.
The finding is that the knowledge of multiword expressions develops across the
lifespan, is acquired from exposure, and—in participants younger than about 40 years
of age—varies with item decomposability.
 Research Methodology
• In this study, idiomatic expressions found in the selected romantic
movies named “Along For The Ride” and “A Perfect Pairing” will be
analyzed.
• To analyze the types of idioms, the theory of Nunberg, Sag and Wasow
(1994) is used.
• There are six types of idioms named conventionality, inflexibility,
figuration, proverbiality, informality and affect.
• This study selected two romantic movies to point out that movies can
be used as language teaching and learning material and they can
improve the students’ knowledge of idioms.
 Research Methodology
Data Collection and Data Analysis
• The data are collected from two romantic movies named “Along For
The Ride” and “A Perfect Pairing” by finding all idioms.
• Find the idioms by checking whether the phrases in the dialogues of
two romantic movies are idioms with Google.
• And then classify the idioms by using the theory of Nunberg, Sag and
Wasow (1994).
• Idioms used in the two romantic movies are classified with two tables.
 Table 1: Idioms found in the movie "Along For The Ride"

Conventionality

Proverbiality
Inflexibility

Informality
Figuration

Affect
Sir.
Dialogues which include idiom
No

1 It's a rite of passage that everyone looks forward to all year.     ─ ─     ─

2 Really. Yeah. I'd love to. ─     ─ ─   ─ 

3 Great, great. Head out to the boardwalk. ─    ─ ─    ─ 

4 Oh my god! You snuck up on me there. ─   ─ ─   ─ 

5 Yeah. It's where all the cool, young people hang out.  ─   ─ ─    ─ 
Sample Data Interpretation of Conventionality

It's a rite of passage that everyone looks forward to all year.(Along for the ride)
Auden said these words to talk about the tradition at her school. Every
year on the Saturday after graduation, the senior of her school break into
the school’s bell tower, celebrate the party at the top and take turns
ringing the bell for an hour.
The contextual meaning of “a rite of passage” is “and event or activity
often performed or experienced as part of passing from one stage of life
to another.
The meaning “a rite of passage” is unpredictable in the dialogue.
So, it fits with the conventionality.
Sample Data Interpretation of Inflexibility

Oh my god! You snuck up on me there. (Along for the ride)

Auden’s stepmother said these words after she take fright when she
suddenly see Auden. Because she didn’t notice Auden was behind her.
The contextual meaning of “snuck up on me there” is “To approach
someone or something in a sneaky, furtive manner so as not to be
noticed.
The idiom “snuck up on” cannot be changed into “snuck up”.
So, it fits with the inflexibility property.
Sample Data Interpretation of Informality

Great, great. Head out to the boardwalk. (Along for the ride)
Auden’s father said these words to Auden to go to a great place for
onion rings when Auden comes to see him at Colby.
The contextual meaning of “head out” is “To leave some place”.
The idiom “head out” is related with informal register.
So, it fits with the informality property.