Hypocrisy as a form of social behaviour represented by idioms in the English language

Abstract

The article deals with English idioms covering the semantic area of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is seen as a specific form of social behavior and communication. Idioms are examined as a linguistic representation of hypocrisy as well as an effective means of creating pragmatic impact and thus revealing the social attitude of English native speakers to hypocrisy as a form of behaviour. The research is carried out within the boundary of cognitive-pragmatic approach. The authors apply contextual analysis in order to define the key factors affecting social attitude to hypocrisy in various communicative situations