Phraseology and Culture in English

Similes and other evaluative idioms
in Australian English 
Pam Peters
1. Introduction 
Connections between the lexicon of a language and the culture of the 
speech community in which it is embedded have been noted since Herder 
(1772), and evidence has mounted through the twentieth century, with an-
thropological linguists such as Boas, Sapir and Whorf. The linguistic ele-
ments seen as cultural expressions have typically been open-class words, 
either members of a particular semantic set or individual “key words”. More 
recent scholarship (Wierzbicka 2001: 209) has suggested that distinctive 
multiword expressions (including collocations, idioms and conversational 
routines) may also serve as reflections of culture, as indices of socio-cultural 
preoccupations and value systems. Meanwhile, current research on idioms 
has shown that they are not necessarily so fixed in their formulation, but 
may vary in terms of such things as number and tense without losing their 
idiomatic identity: a red herring / red herrings; fell foul of / fallen foul of.
Some idioms tolerate a limited amount of lexical alteration e.g. wreaked / 
wrought havoc. Most scholars postulate a scale of idiomaticity for particu-
lar sets of idioms (Fernanado 1996: 31–37). Their status as idioms may de-
pend, more or less, on the fixedness of their lexical formulation and the 
nonliteralness of their lexical composition, yet all share properties of com-
positeness and semantic unity. So despite some inherent variability in their 
wording, idioms are received as conventional modes of expression within 
the speech community. Knowing how to manipulate and apply them is part 
of native-speaker competence (Fillmore et al. 1988: 504–505). 
Similes were included among the various types of idiom discussed by 
Smith (1925) and others after him. Like other idioms, similes present a 
range of more and less fixed expressions. Time-honored similes, for exam-
ple as keen as mustard and like a house on fire are lexically fixed, and there-
fore “substantive idioms” in the terms of Fillmore et al. (1988: 505–506). 
Fresh similes of these types are continually created, because the grammati-
cal structures that house them belong to the core grammar of English. The 

---

236
Pam Peters 
terms of a simile can arise quite simply out of the narrative, hence for ex-
ample “He hoisted Hans on to his shoulders, and galloped off like a horse, 
whinnying and cavorting in front of Anna” (ACE S11: 2028).
1
Alterna-
tively, the simile may be coined imaginatively by the writer: “…with his 
lame legs nearly as useless as spent knicker elastic” (ACE PO8: 1443). 
Both these types of simile, those that arise out of the physical context, and 
those that provide an external reference point, can be created wherever Eng-
lish is spoken or written, to reflect the common circumstances of life. But 
some at least may be repeated often enough to become lexically fixed con-
structions, and to merit discussion as “cultural scripts” – using Wierzbicka’s 
(1994) term in a different way, and without taking on her methodology. 
Their formative and adaptive stages, where recorded, may be expected to 
show something of their socio-cultural significance. 
Both literature and journalism in Australian English present a rich store 
of similes used to project aspects of life and evaluate the people and phe-
nomena encountered. Some of them put new wine into old bottles, as does 
the Australian poor as a bandicoot
2
, recorded in 1845, a conscious variant 
of poor as a church mouse, first recorded in 1731 according to the Oxford
English Dictionary (1989). A few Australian examples are variations on 
North American themes, most obviously as Australian as a meat pie (Sun-
day Australian, April 1972) which provided a counterpoint to as American
as apple pie before the McDonalds hamburger reached Australia
3
. Many 
others are construed in purely Australian terms (whether consciously or un-
consciously), some with alternative formulations suggesting that their terms 
are still being reviewed and not fully conventionalized. They instantiate Fill-
more et al.’s (1988: 505) notion of the lexically open idiom, in which a par-
ticular syntactic pattern is dedicated to particular semantic and pragmatic 
purposes (in this case comparison and evaluation). The similes we have 
mentioned so far are all couched in comparative syntax, where the point of 
comparison is introduced by as or like. They share some semantic / pragmatic 
properties with a set of idiomatic expressions prefaced especially by can’t,
couldn’t, or wouldn’t. For example Wouldn’t touch it with a forty-foot pole,
a variant of the British Wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole. In this case and 
others to be discussed below (Section 4, p. 238), the prefatory negated mo-
dal sets up a frame for fresh idioms embodying new benchmarks from the 
local context. Like similes, their function is to evaluate something or some-
one in locally relevant terms. By articulating socio-cultural values of the 
Australian community in conventional phraseology, they would seem to 
qualify as cultural scripts. 

---

Similes and other evaluative idioms in Australian English
237