Phrasemes in Reader's Comments on the World Crisis

Abstract

Phrasemes consist of several lexical components, have certain syntactic restrictions, and are used as fixed word combinations. They have an evaluative function or can express attitudes and emotions. Martin and White (2005) understand evaluation as attitude, engagement, and graduation. The present article addresses the role of phrasemes in the domain of attitudes related to judgments. The domain of judgment expresses people's attitudes towards certain behaviors, in other words, it is described how (un)able, (un)usual, (un)determined, (un)truthful and (un)ethical someone is. The world crisis that appeared at the time of the corona crisis triggered frustration and revolt against the existing situation among many people. In comments on the subject of the world crisis, readers express their opinions and attitudes toward economic policy measures. It is assumed that they use phrasemes to express their negative attitudes. The corpus is Croatian and German reader comments on the world crisis in the Corona period. The following questions will be answered: How often are phrasemes used to express negative attitudes in reader comments? Who or what is evaluated with phrasemes? Are there interlingual differences in the evaluation expression in Croatian and German reader comments? The aim is to investigate interlingual differences in the use of phrasemes to express assessment.