In his 2011 book Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language, David Crystal investigated the use of biblical idioms in English popular culture. Additionally, he compiled a list of eighteen...Show moreIn his 2011 book Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language, David Crystal investigated the use of biblical idioms in English popular culture. Additionally, he compiled a list of eighteen idioms that were first coined in the King James Bible. Following Crystal’s research topic, this paper investigated these eighteen idioms for frequency and variation in the TIME Magazine Corpus (1923-2006), which consists of 100 million words. The purpose of this paper was to establish the significance of these eighteen idioms in present-day American English. Idioms were searched in the corpus both in their original phrasing and variant forms. The most important conclusion that can be drawn from the results is that the extent to which a biblical idiom lends itself for variation is an important factor in its level of relevance in non-biblical contexts.Show less
This thesis argues that conceptual blending of mental spaces (as described by Fauconnier and Turner (2002), and Brandt and Brandt (2005)) enables the understanding of metaphors and imagery. The...Show moreThis thesis argues that conceptual blending of mental spaces (as described by Fauconnier and Turner (2002), and Brandt and Brandt (2005)) enables the understanding of metaphors and imagery. The focus lies on the function of integration networks and their complex nested structures. I propose that the nested integration network designed by Per-Aage Brandt (2005) can be used to showcase the concept of a frame: a long-term mental space network of knowledge and information (Ziem 2014). Through the analysis of ten quotes from the Dutch literary comic series ‘De Avonturen van Tom Poes’ (‘The Adventures of Tom Puss’), this thesis demonstrates the use of a new model specifically designed to showcase nested structures: the Bommodel.Show less
