This paper deals with the variation of idioms from sport which are used to talk about competition in business, e.g. a level playing field. In business English textbooks they are listed in one form, whereas corpus data show that they occur in two or more lexical and/or syntactic forms. Furthermore, it has been shown that alterations result in a change in the overall meaning of the idiom and that different variation types serve specific functions. In order to explore the variability of idioms included in business English textbooks, we conducted two corpus studies of ten competition idioms. The aim is to show that competition idioms vary lexically and syntactically, and that there may be considerable differences between the textbook form and those in which the idioms occur in the corpora. In addition, we will give a cognitive linguistic account of how different variation types affect the idiomatic meaning and what functions they fulfil. The findings may have implications for teaching figurative language in ESP given that (1) idiom variation presents a challenge to non-native users of English, (2) idioms are frequently creatively exploited in discourse, and (3) idioms are used not only to convey information but also evaluation.

中文翻译：

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商务英语课本中的习语变异：基于语料库的研究

本文讨论了体育中成语的变化，这些成语用于谈论商业竞争，例如公平竞争的环境。在商务英语教科书中，它们以一种形式列出，而语料库数据显示它们以两种或更多种词汇和/或句法形式出现。此外，已经表明，改变导致习语的整体含义发生改变，并且不同的变化类型具有特定的功能。为了探讨商务英语教科书中所包含的成语的变异性，我们对十种竞争性成语进行了两项语料研究。目的是表明竞争习语在词法和句法上都不同，并且教科书形式和语料库中发生的习语之间可能存在很大差异。此外，我们将提供一种认知语言学的解释，说明不同的变异类型如何影响习语的含义以及它们所发挥的作用。鉴于（1）成语变化对英语非母语使用者提出了挑战，（2）习语经常被创造性地运用在话语中，并且（3）习语不仅用于传达信息，也进行评估。