Polska frazeologia gestu: od informacji somatycznej do idiomu
The Polish phraseology of gesture: From somatic information to idiom

Summary/Abstract: On the basis of the rich literature of the subject and observations of the Polish phraseology, the author discusses the relationships between the code and gesture in linguistic communication. The article attempts to show in what way gestures and their verbal phraseological counterparts become metaphors and eventually idioms. The following cases are discussed: 1) gestures rooted in biological reactions of the organism are universal and contribute to verbal communication as simple information about emotions (frowning and squinting as a sign of anger); 2) gestures are biologically conditioned but interpreted in culture (turning one’s back on someone may be taken as a refusal to help); 3) gestures are purely symbolic, physically impossible, and their verbal aspect is metaphorical, idiomatic (ugryźć się w język ‘bite one’s tongue’, łamać sobie głowę ‘rack one’s brain’, lit. ‘break one’s head’, zrywać boki ‘laugh heartily’, lit. ‘tear off one’s sides’). A special case are phraseological units and idioms borrowed from another language or culture: they are semantically modified and their paraphrases become fixed (e.g. pokazać komuś figę ‘refuse to do something’, lit. ‘show someone a fig’).

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