CULTURAL CHARACTERISTICS REVEALED THROUGH IMAGES OF ANIMALS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE IDIOMS

Abstract

Apart from being important language units which demonstrate a person’s efficiency in language use, idioms also express cultural characteristics of a country. Therefore, it is necessary for foreign language learners to acquire cultural knowledge in order to use idioms effectively. In this research, the author aims to find out some similarities and differences in Vietnamese and English culture revealed through idiomatic expressions to help learners use idioms successfully in communication. Idioms with animal expressions are the main data in this paper as they are quite popular in our daily life. These idioms were collected, compared and synthesized to find out similar and different meanings of animal expressions in English and Vietnamese which results from cultural characteristics. This paper also mentions some idioms with equivalent meanings but are expressed in different ways in these two languages.