Phraseology and Identity

Abstract

In recent decades, phraseology has ceased to be a marginal philological discipline and has become an important area in both discourse analysis (“repeated” or “prefabricated” discourse) and applied linguistics (translation and language teaching). The fact that idiomaticity is one of its most characteristic features creates an added difficulty for translators and second language learners, since knowledge of lexicon and regular grammar is not sufficient for the communicative mastery of a language and for the socialization of the speakers in the speech community concerned. This is where sociolinguistics comes into play: the (passive and active) use of phraseological units (PU) or phrasemes becomes a relevant sociolinguistic factor as an index of collective identity in Peirce's terms and as an indicator, a marker, or a stereotype, according to Labov. Furthermore, the conservation of repertories of PU throughout history, and especially proverbs and other expressive formulas, is a symbol of the linguistic and cultural personality of the Catalan language community.