Phraseologie. global - areal - regional - im Shop von Narr Francke ...

18
Elisabeth Piirainen
metalanguage. As a working term, Widespread idiom (or WI for short), has been suggested. 4 Because
this term is newly introduced to linguistics, we need to create a working definition. This
definition must be based on criteria by which actual WIs in Europe and beyond can be singled out
from other idioms that exist in some five, six or more languages. Therefore, the definition is initially
based on heuristics, starting exclusively from the linguistic situation of Europe and the empirical
multilingual phraseological data.
As far as the linguistic situation of Europe is concerned, with its many genetically diverse languages
between the Atlantic and the Ural mountain range, extra-linguistic factors are taken into
account. In order to be considered “widespread”, idioms must occur in languages of the main
geographic regions of Europe; this means that they are not only genetically distant but are also not
neighboring geographically. By this criterion, idioms are excluded which may exist in several
languages but whose circulation is restricted to only a small area (comparable to a “Sprachbund”
where languages are in narrow contact with each other, be it through a diglossic situation, roofing
languages or cross-border contacts). The definition will not require any particular minimum number
of languages involved.
Furthermore, the specific characteristics of the semantics of (prototypical) idioms are included
in the definition. This refers to the interaction of the two semantic levels of an idiom: its inner
form (the literal meaning) and its figurative or actual meaning. Firstly, idioms to be designated as
WIs must have the same or a similar lexical structure in various languages. Secondly, these idioms
must have a similar figurative meaning, 5 to be precise: they must share the same figurative
core meaning.
Such wide concepts of similarity both at the level of literal readings and at the level of actual
meanings leave room for an interpretation of each individual case within its historic-cultural development:
We must take into account the characteristic feature of idioms as linguistic signs that
are handed down historically and coined culturally. In the course of history, both the literal and
the figurative meaning of an idiom of an individual language can be affected by individual developments
that are unique to one language. If, therefore, lexical-semantic divergence is observed
from a synchronic perspective, cultural foundations must be taken into account to clarify the question
whether we are dealing with a WI or not. 6
The definition is thus: Widespread idioms (WIs) are idioms that – when their particular cultural
and historical development is taken into account – have the same or a similar lexical structure
and the same figurative core meaning in various different languages, including geographically
and genetically distant languages.
3 Ascertaining widespread idioms: methodological approach
It is completely unpredictable which idioms are actually affected by a wide dissemination and
which ones are not. There are some vague ideas that idioms originating in works of world literature,
in the Bible or Greco-Roman classics, tend to exist in many languages, but nothing definite
can be said which these idioms are in reality. The German phraseological lexicon, for example,
has about 150 idioms of biblical origin (cf. Parad 2003), most of them being more or less wellknown
and actively used by the speakers. However, no explication has been found, why “only” 43
biblical idioms and further 12 idioms known both from the Bible and other texts are really spread
4 Terms like Europeanism or internationalism are not appropriate for our objectives (cf. Piirainen 2008a, 244f.).
5 By this criterion, cases are excluded where lexical structures that are identical simply by chance lead to diverging
semantic results (so-called false friends).
6 Therefore, the proper place of this research project is not in contrastive linguistics in the traditional sense. It cannot
primarily be concerned with relationships of equivalence between idioms of different languages (e. g. with respect to
all their diasystematic features or their syntactic, pragmatic, and/or textual behaviour).