Idiomatic Expressions Related to the Human Body in Romanian and French Cover Image

Expresii idiomatice legate de corpul uman în limba română şi limba franceză
Idiomatic Expressions Related to the Human Body in Romanian and French

Author(s): Alina Andreica, Alexandrina Tomoiagă, Ana Coiug, Aurora Băgiag
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies
Published by: Editura U. T. Press
Keywords: idiomatic expression; human body; referentiality; representation;

Summary/Abstract: This study aims to analyze how an idiomatic expression related to the human body is able to reflect the representation of the surrounding world. This type of organizing linguistic content into phrases specific to each language managed to raise the interest of some young students at two higher education institutions in Cluj-Napoca (“Iuliu Hațieganu” University of Medicine and Pharmacy and “Babes Bolyai” University), who were eager to learn about the culture of their partner within an interactive activity called tandem language learning. The worksheet entitled Idiomatic Expressions Related to the Human Body was designed for B2 level learners and is aimed at training lexical and sociocultural competences as well as representation skills. The discussions generated by this topic – included in fifteen worksheets, three audio recordings and two video recordings – constitute the corpus of the present study. A bilingual summary of the idioms used by the two partners is followed by an analysis of how each phraseological unit reflects the referentiality of the language. The analyzed idiomatic expressions reveal that, although each language has its own manner of organizing linguistic content, individuals have the same conceptual mechanisms. However, mentality, value systems, one’s perception and view of reality are culture-specific and are therefore reflected in language use. Mental representations of idiomatic expressions, which can be expressed through drawing, have analogous character and influence the preservation of meaning.

  • Issue Year: XXVI/2017
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 17-29
  • Page Count: 13
  • Language: Romanian