A culturally determined constituent of a phraseological unitand its cross-linguistic equivalence Cover Image

Kulturowe znaczenie komponentu frazeologizmu a jego międzyjęzykowa ekwiwalencja
A culturally determined constituent of a phraseological unitand its cross-linguistic equivalence

Author(s): Joanna Szerszunowicz, Ivana Vidovic Bolt
Subject(s): Language studies, Language and Literature Studies, Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu w Białymstoku
Keywords: equivalent; phraseological unit; constituent; connotation; culture

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the paper is to discuss culturally determined lexical constituents of phraseological units with reference to cross-linguistic equivalents. The focal issue is to analyse the relation between the special nature of the components at issue and their target language counterparts. The notion of culturally determined lexis, i.e. culture-bound words, is explained and exemplified with lexical items from various European languages. Special attention is paid to culture-bound appellative nouns and proper nouns. The presentation of the typology of cross-linguistic equivalents is followed by case studies, i.e. the analyses of selected phraseological units and their cross-linguistic equivalents. The source language expressions chosen for the analyses are the ones which contain either non-equivalent lexical items or words which have lexical equivalents, but ones of different status, connotations etc. in the target language. The case studies show that cultural determinism of the constituents of given phraseological units does not necessarily result in their zero equivalence. However, a multiaspectual analysis proves that the culture-bound character of the unit creates asymmetry on the connotative plane.

  • Issue Year: 2014
  • Issue No: 14
  • Page Range: 195-216
  • Page Count: 22
  • Language: Polish