Phraseme mythologischen Ursprungs im heutigen Sprachgebrauch – dargestellt an zwei Beispielen

Abstract

The main aim of the following research paper is to conduct a study on the use of idioms with elements of mythology in contemporary language. Because of the fact, that part of the analysed mythologisms were one-word phrasemes, their properties have been characterized in detail. Subsequently, on the one hand, the influence of the mythology on the language is discussed, and on the other hand, the connection between mythology and phraseology. Furthermore, the paper additionally shows an overview of the state of the research on mythologisms. The closing part presents the results of the empirical study. The study was centred on a corpus-based analysis that has shown, that the mythologically originated phrasemes (such as Achilles heel and Trojan horse) occur in many different areas of life and they are often enhanced by various lexical elements. The analysis revealed that the phrasemes of mythological origin have expanded their meaning, which is why their semantics do not correspond in most cases to the mythological one.

Keywords

• mythologisms
• achilles’ heel
• trojan horse
• everyday language