Abstract

This paper investigates the occurrence of somatic idioms in German across diverse text genres, including literary works, academic texts, functional writings and journalistic articles, utilizing corpus data from the Digital Dictionary of the German Language (DWDS). The aim is to discern the specific intentions pursued by text producers through the deployment of idioms, elucidating the communicative functions they fulfill. Employing a pragmatic approach, this corpus study delves into both the stylistic-pragmatic and text-forming characteristics of idioms. The analysis reveals that somatic idioms manifest in both nominal and modified forms, concurrently fulfilling distinct functions within specific contexts. The study’s results not only reveal the specific functions of somatic idioms in different text genres but also enable a comparative approach to highlight similarities and differences. This serves to improve the understanding of somatic idioms in text analysis and to lay a basis for future research in this domain.