Phraseology and Identity: Idioms and Proverbs in Catalan Culture

Background: From Phraseological Erudition To Applied Linguistics

Phraseology means a vague component of language which has a prototypical feature of idiomaticity, and includes interjections (even if they only consist of one word), idioms, popular sayings, conversational routines and institutionalised formulas such as proverbs. Many authors also include collocations on the boundary of the category, i.e. combinations of words that are generally found together in the general use of a language. Phrasemes or Phraseological units (PU) thus constitute a kind of “periphery” of language, insofar as they entail some degree of irregularity in terms of grammar as well as the lexicon (archaisms, vulgarisms, etc.). Another important characteristic is that they have a high level of fixation, which means they can be recognised as such by the community of speakers. They also often contain a conventional metaphorical factor for use.

Here we will discuss phrasemes in general terms, without distinguishing between the various types, but a brief terminological clarification of this wide range of subcategories is useful. First of all, the central core of the category, which is most widely accepted as prototypical, consists of what we usually call idioms (both those including verbal forms and those which do not). Idioms are polylexical forms that usually have the following characteristics (or many of them): syntactic irregularity, idiomaticity (no semantic compositionality, i. e. the meaning of an idiom is not the regular sum of the meanings of its component parts), metaphoricity, a high degree of grammaticalisation as constructs, and the ability to perform pragmatic functions as connectors or other discourse markers. Idioms usually create considerable difficulties in two fields of applied linguistics: translation and the learning of second languages (Salvador, 1995).

Phraseological studies are based on a long tradition of compiling these linguistic units, which aroused the curiosity of scholars and many other speakers. This is more common in the case of proverbs than in other types of PU, as we shall see below. This curiosity leads to a tendency towards interlinguistic or interdialectal comparatism: the contrast between forms of speech in different languages and even between different dialects has often been grounds for scholarly interest as well as humour, especially as these differences often give rise to misunderstandings that can be a reason for comedy, and provide material for jokes.

However, in recent decades linguists have sought to systematise this epistemological field (Corpas, 1997; Conca & Guía, 2014), particularly considering the interests of linguistics as they apply to translation and the teaching of second languages. Indeed, phrasemes present difficulties for learners of a second language and for translators, because many of these expressions fail to fulfil the ideal of lexical and grammatical regularity due to their idiomaticity, and they have a meaning that is not equal to the sum of their partial meanings, as one might expect from a purely semantic compositional mechanism. Inconsistencies of this nature create barriers in the teaching and learning of second languages and for translators, as they show that a complete command of any language is not only the result of knowledge of a lexicon and a grammar. These questions have led to numerous monographs and doctoral theses which have investigated how these difficulties might be overcome. Nevertheless the main aim of this chapter is the study of the sociolinguistic aspects of Catalan phraseology in relation to the identity of Catalan linguistic community.