ANALYSIS OF THE MONEY-RELATED IDIOMS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Abstract

The article explores the thematic and structural aspects of idioms related to the concept of “money” in the English language. Money has long been an integral part of human activity and since languages are often reflections of the culture, values and beliefs of the societies, we can find various idioms and set expressions that use money-related lexical units in the English language. The study of idioms has a long history in linguistics. Many prominent scholars dedicated their works to the study and analysis of this very peculiar, expressive and complex linguistic phenomenon. However, despite the considerable efforts from the scholars, we should point out that there are still controversies among the linguists about the definition, identification of the basic characteristics or classification of idioms. The given paper presents an overview of the definitions existing in various linguistic dictionaries as well as in the works of prominent linguists and researchers. The article also examines the most common approaches to the classification of phraseological units suggested by various scholars based on different principles and criteria. These are: the thematic, semantic, structural or structural-semantic principles of classification. The aim of our study was to identify and collect money-related idioms in the English language and analyze these phraseological units from lexical-semantic and structural point of view.