Types of Idioms Theoretical Review
decoding cannot be interpreted solely by its part individually and therefore, do not have transparent meaning.
Idioms of decoding is classified into two classes, lexemic and sememic. Lexemic idioms include phrasal verbs idioms, tournure idioms, irreversible
binomials, phrasal compounds idioms, and pseudo-idioms. Meanwhile, sememic idioms covers several more sub-classes such as first base idioms, idioms of
institutionalized politeness, idioms of institutionalized detachment or indirectness, idioms of proposals encoded as questions, idioms of institutionalized greeting,
proverbial idioms with a moral, familiar quotations, institutionalized understatements, and institutionalized hyperbole idioms.
Fernando 1996 in Strakšienė 2009: 14 adds his own opinion on this
topic. He believes that idioms can be grouped into three sub-classes: pure idioms, semi-idioms, and literal idioms. Pure idiom is a type of idiom whose meaning
cannot be understood by combining the meanings of the words that constitute the phrase. Semi idiom, on the other hand, contains at least one constituent that
contributes its literal meaning to the final meaning of the idiom. If one is not familiar to a semi idiom, he is able to guess the meaning of the idiom because of
the meaning of the idiom constituent. Finally, the literal idiom is less complex than the previous two and therefore is easier to understand. This idiom‘s meaning
is made up from the literal meaning of its parts. Even so, all expressions that belong to literal idioms are classified as idiom because they are either completely
invariant or allow only restricted variation.
Adelnia Dastjerdi 2011: 880-881 proclaim that idioms can be classified into five categories, namely: 1 colloquialism, expressions of informal
speech or writing; 2 proverbs, expressions that contain wisdom and truth in metaphorical form; 3 slang, highly informal words and expressions that are not
considered as the standard use of language; 4 allusions, figures of speech that makes a reference to a place, event, etc, either directly or by implication; and 5
phrasal verbs, the combination of a verb and a preposition, a verb and an adverb, or a verb with both an adverb and a preposition, whose meaning is different from
the original verb. Baker 2001: 65 provides another types of idioms. The types are as
follows: 1 expressions which violate truth conditions, such as it’s raining cats
and dogs and jump down someon e’s throat; 2 expressions which seem ill-
formed, for example blow someone to kingdom come and the world and his friend, and 3 expressions which start with like, such as like a bat out of hell and like
water off a duck’s back. Based on the functions of idioms, Halliday 1985 in Mustonen 2010:
36 believes that idioms can be grouped into three functions: ideational, interpersonal and relational idioms. Ideational idioms
are idioms that ―either signify message content, experiential phenomena including the sensory, the
affective, and the evaluative, or they characterize the nature of the message‖. This
type of idiom includes action, situation and people and things. Interpersonal idioms
are idioms that ―fulfill either an interactional function or they characterize the nature of the message‖. Interpersonal idioms cover greetings, farewells,
feelers, directives, agreements, and rejections. Relational idioms are idioms that ensure the discourse to be cohesive and coherent. This type of idiom consists of
idioms that integrate information as well as idioms that sequence the information.