English Siamese Twins and Their Cohorts Exemplified In Selective Speeches of the Twentieth Century
Elham H. Ammari

Abstract
Siamese twins and trinomials are a sub-category of the aggregate umbrella term idiomatic language and expressions. They are quite observed in various languages of the world. (Malkiel 1959; Müller 2009). They are predominantly used in literature, the movie industry, and the advertising industry and in everyday speech for the sake of attracting attention amongst others. (Schlegel et al. 2014) The peculiarity of such pairs of words stems from the fact that their internal structure might or might not allow reversal of their kernels the matter which calls for extensive study and exploration to gain some insights into their nature. This is a synchronic, sociolinguistic study that will investigate the role of gender in the use of Siamese twins both reversible and irreversible, the role of the native language in the employment of certain types, and their frequency and structure. Research dealing with certain kinds of idiomatic language as idioms, proverbs, collocations and others, has been on the splurge but sparse studies have been exclusively devoted to investigating Siamese twins as an integral part of the rich vocabulary of the English language particularly in the speeches of political leaders and renowned figures worldwide in certain areas of expertise. (khatibzadeh & Sameri, 2013) This analytical study will provide insights into their internal structure, frequency, and incorporation into learning at large. Based on a corpus of fifty two international speeches taken from American rhetoric and the British library archives, amongst others, by means of which 26 men’s speeches native and non-native and 26 women’s speeches native and non-native speakers of English, during a time span extending from 1900-2000, the selected speeches address a wide spectrum of topics encompassing inaugural, social, political educational and scientific amongst others. (www.parliament.uk; www.bbc.co.uk; www.theguardian.com, www.americanrhetoric.com; www.history.com ) Flamboyance and versatility are purposeful to extract as many binomials as possible for the sake of analysis. Results have yielded (88) instances of binomial occurrences (40) by males and (44) by females revealing that both parameters gender and being a native or non- native speaker scantily impact the use of binomials due to the overall number that shows no grave differences in the identified occurrences. Seen in this light, the findings of this study are unlikely to be in line with any other similar studies. Further conclusions provide some insights into opening new avenues of future research for ardent scholars. Such inadequately touched areas of expertise need exhaustive investigation to manifest these findings or otherwise.

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