Language, Individual & Society, Volume 11, 2017

Abstract: The paper deals with different approaches to phraseological units that consist of more than two elements having one meaning. Phrasemes or idioms are a specific type of words in combinations characterised by expressiveness and figurativeness. The elements of these idioms are fully or partially desemanticised. Our research is based on an analysis of the words in combinations extracted from contemporary English literary texts and sorted into different categories based on their salient features. The goal of this study is to verify current trends in the use of words in combination in both the language of a narrator and the speech of main characters.