ABSTRACT
This final project is concerned with the analysis of idiomatic expressions found in Emily Bronte’s novel Wuthering Heights. Idiomatic expressions or idioms (both can be used interchangeably) are expressions peculiar to a language, not readily analyzable from their grammatical construction or from the meaning of their constituent words. Idioms are one of the English components that should be well understood by English learners. They are frequently employed in informal situation, either spoken or written. As some idioms cannot be translated literally, English learners should learn how to get and understand the meaning of those idioms precisely.
This study was carried out for several objectives, those are (1) to classify the forms of idiomatic expressions found in the novel, (2) to find out the meaning of idiomatic expressions found in the novel, and (3) to provide the readers with contributions of understanding idiomatic expressions found in the novel to the English learning in general. To reach those objectives, I was concerned with the library research as the method of investigation. In this case, I used the novel ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Bronte as the primary data, and some reference books dealing with the subject as the secondary ones.
After analyzing the data, I found that idiomatic expressions, based on their form, can be classified into two categories, the fixed and non-fixed idioms. From the study it was found that among 96 idioms taken as the data, 52 idioms are of the fixed idioms and 44 are of the non-fixed ones. Another classification applied to those idioms is classification based on the meaning, i.e. transparent or nontransparent idioms. Related to this classification, I found that 53 idioms are transparent and 43 idioms are not transparent in their meaning. Further, it is also concluded that though idioms are fixed in form, it does not mean that they are transparent in meaning. Both idioms, fixed and non-fixed, may have transparent and non-transparent meaning.
Further classification (based on the types of words), can also be given to those idioms, i.e. idioms beginning with verbs (44), idioms beginning with prepositions (36), idioms beginning with adverbs (6), idioms beginning with adjectives (5), idioms beginning with nouns (2), idioms beginning with pronouns (2), and idioms beginning with articles (1).
By understanding those idioms found in the novel, 4 contributions are given to the English learning. Those are: (1) to have a deeper understanding of the whole story of the novel; (2) to have a more awareness of recognizing the appearance of idioms; (3) to facilitate the learners with vocabulary of English idioms, and (4) to help the learners to make their sentences sound more interesting and varied.
