Volume 16, Issue 1

Phraseology as a distinct linguistic subsystem and the domain of figurative language share common ground, and they are often perceived in popular discourse as nearly identical. However, they are far from being the same. Phraseology—especially as understood today—constitutes a vast and intricately structured part of language, where figurativeness is characteristic of only some phrasemes, i.e., phraseological units. While the notion of figurativeness is intuitively clear, it remains especially difficult to define precisely. It is often associated with metaphor and metonymy, which, though partially correct, is insufficient: metaphorical transfers and metonymic shifts only occasionally give rise to figurative expressions. This study aims to clarify the relationship between phraseology and figurative language and, more importantly, to outline future directions in phraseology research, particularly that tied to the image component inherent in the semantics of many phrasemes. Additionally, it addresses several related issues, including: the interplay between figurativeness and idiomaticity the role of idiomaticity in shaping different classes of phrasemes criteria for identifying conventional figurative expressions in language A key focus is developing methods for analyzing the semantics of figurative phrasemes (especially idioms) and examining the underlying conceptual images that often govern not only their actual meaning and semantic associations but also their discursive behavior.

Although the status of multiword units has been enhanced in recent years under the influence of corpus research, construction grammar, and cognitive linguistics, the role of idioms in foreign language acquisition remains a subject of debate within phraseodidactics. Idioms are regarded as a particularly difficult lexical area: as units of the secondary semiotic system, they are marked by semantic-pragmatic complexity, figurativeness, and underlying motivation, the evocation of mental imagery, and, at times, culture-specific peculiarities. These considerations are undeniably valid; however, the heterogeneity of the linguistic phenomena referred to as idioms is often overlooked, as are the numerous cross-linguistic parallels among European languages. Such parallels are didactically important and can significantly reduce these difficulties. This article aims to present an exemplary selection of idioms for Polish learners of German. The selection is based on plurilingual didactics and uses two criteria: (i) a frequency study of over 1,200 idiomatic multiword units in the corpora for spoken and written German, intended to empirically validate the communicative value of the selection; and (ii) a language-contrastive German-Polish study based on the assumption that the degree of difficulty of foreign idiom acquisition correlates closely with the interlingual convergence or divergence of the foreign and native phraseological lexis; that is, the amount of work required for idioms that are largely similar in the native and foreign language is considerably less than for zero-equivalent units. The linguistic contrastive study of 376 frequently used idiomatic multiword units serves in selecting and organizing the learning progression of these units according to the expected level of difficulty.

Idioms represent a significant challenge for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners, including Moroccan high school students. This study explores the effectiveness of an action research intervention aimed at enhancing idiom comprehension through the application of embodiment and Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) strategies. In this regard, a group of high school students (n=216) participated in targeted training designed to facilitate their understanding of idiomatic expressions. The results indicate a marked improvement in students’ ability to comprehend idioms post-intervention. The data reveal that, across all idioms, 55.97% of responses were accurate interpretations, 36.17% were erroneous interpretations, and 6.71% were responses of “I don’t know”. This indicates that, on average, individuals correctly interpreted the idioms more frequently than they misinterpreted them, with a relatively small percentage expressing uncertainty. These findings underscore the importance of integrating embodiment and conceptual strategies in EFL pedagogy, highlighting their role in enriching the conceptual frameworks of learners, even in the context of a foreign language. This study contributes to the current body or research on effective teaching methods to help EFL students acquire figurative language skills. It also highlights the applications of the CMT and embodiment paradigms.

In a growing digital scenario where phraseology has become aware of technological realities, literary translation is timidly testing sophisticated AI-based tools. This study aims at assessing the quality of the output rendered by neural machine translation (NMT) systems, i.e., DeepL and Google Translate, and large language models (LLMs), i.e., ChatGPT and Gemini, in the English>Spanish translation of five comparative idioms extracted from literary texts. To this end, professional literary translators and translation undergraduates evaluate their output against human translation (HT), following the parameters proposed by Corpas Pastor and Noriega-Santiáñez (2024) to measure creativity in the translation of multiword-expressions: adequacy (morphosyntactic, semantic, and pragmatic) and novelty. The findings show that HT stands out, although NMT systems outperformed morphosyntactically. LLMs, especially ChatGTP, show promising creative results. Therefore, this study serves to reflect on the use of technologies for the translation of creative phraseology in the context of literature.

The study aims to analyze addition, one of the most popular mechanisms of proverb variation in Anglo-American proverbs about money. The Anglo-American proverb transformations (or anti-proverbs) discussed and analyzed in the present study were taken primarily from American and British written sources. My discussion is organized in two parts. The first part of the study briefly demonstrates the background of research and terminology. I list 20 Anglo-American proverbs most popular for variation and mention the most frequent themes anti-proverbs address, with a special focus on proverbs about money. I also list the proverbs containing the word “money” and several of their variations. The second, and main part, of the article discusses addition, one of the most popular mechanisms of proverb transformation in 263 Anglo-American anti-proverbs about money. The focus is on the place of the addition. The study also examines how many components are added, followed by a discussion and exemplification of some other mechanisms of proverb variation combined with addition. Finally, I list and illustrate some themes emerging in Anglo-American proverb transformations.

Paremiologists have shown little interest in whether polygenesis of two equivalent proverbs in two languages is possible or not. Few studies have shown that polygenesis does in fact exist. However, a very detailed historical analysis based on numerous contextualized references is required to prove that the two equal proverbs did not originate through monogenesis, with one proverb being no more than a loan translation of the other. This case study presents two chronologically arranged lists of references (including modern anti-proverbs) for the English proverb “Where there is a will, there is a way” and for the German proverb “Wo ein Wille ist, ist auch ein Weg”. A third list presents contextualized references that maintain the German proverb is a subsequent loan translation of the English proverb. While this would be an argument for monogenesis, a careful analysis of numerous references suggests that the two proverbs most likely originated independently of each other. If so, and if the data justifies this conclusion, it would, in fact, be a case demonstrating that polygenesis—although rare—is certainly possible for proverbs. In fact, the concise nature and even the identical structure of the two proverbs make polygenesis much more likely than would be the case with, for example, folk narratives. Nevertheless, polygenesis has not been ruled out completely for some longer fairy tales, ballads, etc., although there is no doubt that folklorists and paremiologists are correct that the dominant origin and distribution of proverbs is based on monogenesis. However, regarding the two proverbs under discussion here, “The exception proves the rule!” can support the view that, at least in this case, polygenesis is the determining factor regarding the independent origin of both proverbs.