The Semantic Characteristics and the Contrast of English Body Language Idioms

This paper attempts to define body language that specially uses body features as idioms of speech. It explores three major characteristic features of English body language idiom from the perspective of semantics, that is, the characteristics of semantic transparency, semantic transference and semantic obliqueness. It also attempts a probe into the convergence and divergence of English and Chinese idioms of body language. All of these will be explained and supported by a series of examples.