English and Lithuanian Idioms with Disability Related Words: Contrastive Study

Abstract

The aim of the research is to find out wording of the notion of disability in English and Lithuanian idioms and to identify isomorphic and allomorphic features in idioms of the two languages related to disability. The following objectives are set: to classify collected English and Lithuanian idioms according to the aspect of disability they express; to find out and describe similarities and differences of idioms related to disability in terms of vocabulary; to distinguish and analyse the attitude towards various disabilities expressed in the idioms of both languages. The corpus of the research contains 159 English idioms and 131 Lithuanian idiom obtained from the English and Lithuanian dictionaries of idioms. Two types of idioms were investigated: the ones that contain the words directly indicating physical and mental disability and the idioms which have no words denoting physical or mental disorder but the whole idiom indirectly refers to disability. The analysis of the data revealed that a number of idioms denoting disability is similar in English and Lithuanian: the English idioms make 55% (159), and the Lithuanian take 45% (131) of the total number. The proportion of idiom numbers is very close in the category of physical idioms (English 48%, Lithuanian 52%), however, different numbers of idioms are identified in the category of mental disability (Lithuanian 7%, English 93%). Only three keywords of physical disability (blind (aklas), deaf (kurčias), hump (kupra)) and two keywords of mental disability (silly (kvailas), stupid (durnas)) out of total number of 19 keywords (13 English and 6 Lithuanian) are found in idioms of both languages. Low numbers of Lithuanian idiom keywords can be explained by the choice to use more indirect disability word idioms while talking about disorder, especially mental. Both languages have a common feature: negative connotations prevail in the idioms concerning physical disability. From the perspective of mental disability, negative attitude was identified more in the English language similes and slang expressions than in Lithuanian where indirect disability word idioms where softer and more indulgent tone could be recognized through diminutive form of words.