Phraseology and Culture in English

by Paul Skandera (Editor)

Overview

The proposition that there is a correlation between language and culture or culture-specific ways of thinking can be traced back to the views of Herder and von Humboldt in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It is generally accepted today that a language, especially its lexicon, influences its speakers' cultural patterns of thought and perception in various ways, for example through a culture-specific segmentation of the extralinguistic reality, the frequency of occurrence of particular lexical items, or the existence of keywords or key word combinations revealing core cultural values.

The aim of this volume is to explore the cultural dimension of a wide range of preconstructed or semi-preconstructed word combinations in English. The 17 papers of the volume are divided into four sections, focusing on particular lexemes (e.g. enjoy and its collocates), types of word combinations (e.g. proverbs and similes), use-related varieties (such as the language of tourism or answering-machine messages), and user-related varieties (such as Aboriginal English or African English). The sections are preceded by a prologue, tracing the development of the study of formulaic language, and followed by an epilogue, which draws together the threads laid out in the various papers.

The relation between language and culture in general has been explored in a number of important works over the past ten years. However, the study of the relation between English phraseology and culture in particular has been largely neglected. This volume is the first book-length publication devoted entirely to this topic.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783110190878
Publisher:	De Gruyter
Publication date:	02/19/2007
Series:	Topics in English Linguistics [TiEL] , #54
Pages:	520
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.06(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Paul Skandera, Management Center Innsbruck, Austria.

Table of Contents

Preface   Paul Skandera     v
Prologue
Developments in the study of formulaic language since 1970: A personal view   Andrew Pawley     3
Focus on particular lexemes
Reasonably well: Natural Semantic Metalanguage as a tool for the study of phraseology and its cultural underpinnings   Anna Wierzbicka     49
Australian perceptions of the weekend: Evidence from collocations and elsewhere   Bert Peeters     79
Enjoy!: The (phraseological) culture of having fun   Monika Bednarek   Wolfram Bublitz     109
Hot, heib, and gorjachij: A case study of collocations in English, German, and Russian   Doris Schonefeld     137
Focus on types of idioms
Collections of proverbs and proverb dictionaries: Some historical observations on what's in them and what's not (with a note on current "gendered" proverbs)   Charles Clay Doyle     181
Yankee wisdom: American proverbs and the worldview of New England   Wolfgang Mieder     205
Similes and other evaluative idioms in Australian English   Pam Peters     235
Definitely maybe: Modality clusters and politeness in spoken discourse   Svenja Adolphs     257
Focus on use-related varieties: Registers
Lexical developments in greenspeaking   Melina Magdalena   Peter Muhlhausler     275
The phraseology of tourism: A central lexical field and its cultural construction   Andrea Gerbig   Angela Shek     303
Idiomaticity in a cultural and activity type perspective: The conventionalization of routine phrases in answering-machine messages   Karin Aijmer     323
Focus on user-related varieties: Dialects and ethnolects
Greetings as an act of identity in Tristan da Cunha English: From individual to social significance?   Daniel Schreier     353
Multiword units in Aboriginal English: Australian cutural expression in an adopted language   Ian G. Malcolm   Farzad Sharifian     375
Fixed expressions as manifestations of cultural conceptualizations: Examples from African varieties of English   Hans-Georg Wolf   Frank Polzenhagen     399
Varieties of English around the world: Collocational and cultural profiles   Christian Mair     437
Epilogue
Formulaic language in cultural perspective   Penny Lee     471
Index     497

Editorial Reviews

"The real virtue of the book is the multiplicity of issues addressed and the different perspectives proposed in the papers, which offer stimulating insights into the relationship between English phraseology and culture, contributing to the development of further research."
Paola Attolino in: http://linguistlist.org/issues/19/19-1431.html

From the Publisher