Phraseology and Culture in English

 word 
CEC FLOBFROWN 
keyness p-value 
a) community 
413
599
49.9 
0.000000 
communal 
35
27
18.1 0.000021 
family 
545 1,010 
16.0 0.000063 
relatives 
44
43
15.5 0.000083 
kin 
35
11
40.9 0.000000 
kinsman 
9
3
10.2 0.001443 
kinship 
19
18
7.1 0.007773 
lineage 
18
16
7.5 0.006160 
brotherhood 
14
8
10.4 0.001294 
b) marriage 
189
281
20.7 
0.000005 
marital 
23
20
9.9 0.001616 
husband 
171
300
7.7 0.005463 
wife 
234
468
3.0 0.085403 
parent 
344
493
43.6 0.000000 
parenting 
16
4
21.1 0.000004 
maternity 
31
12
31.7 0.000000 
procreation 
11
7
7.3 0.007078 
birth 
100
131
17.3 0.000033 
child 
1,057 1,480 
146.0 0.000000 
neonate 
10
3
12.0 0.000535 
newborn 
9
5
6.8 0.008901 
filial 
9
2
12.5 0.000408 
offspring 
38
24
32.4 0.000000 
childless 
12
7
8.7 0.003202 
Table 2 shows the salience of authority and respect and the figures that 
can be associated with them.
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The items in this table correspond to the 
LEADERS ARE FATHERS
metaphor and to the domain of 
PERSONS OF RE-
SPECT AND AUTHORITY
described earlier. 
We saw that 
PERSONS OF RESPECT AND AUTHORITY ARE MEDIATORS 
BETWEEN THE LIVING AND THE DEAD
. From the African perspective, the 
dead continue to exist and exert influence as ancestors or ancestral spirit.
Table 3 reveals the significant status of these concepts, respectively their 
lexical expressions. 

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Fixed expressions as manifestations of cultural conceptualizations
421
Table 2. Authority and respect and the figures associated with this domain. 
word CEC 
FLOBFROWN 
keyness 
p-value 
authority 301 
556 
9.1 
0.002563 
respect
232 226 
82.2 0.000000 
obedience 
23
8
25.3 0.000000 
obey 80
24
95.9 
0.000000 
disobedience 
30
4
49.9 0.000000 
chief
373 219 
267.9 0.000000 
chiefdom 
28
2
53.5 0.000000 
dignitaries 11
4
11.7 
0.000610 
leader
312 402 
56.7 0.000000 
leadership
86 128 
9.4 0.002212 
ruler
59
28
51.7 0.000000 
father
365 793 
22.5 0.000002 
elder
59
68
22.5 0.000002 
teacher
293 254 
127.9 0.000000 
priest 82 
132 
6.2 
0.012755 
Table 3. The relation between the living and the departed. 
word CEC 
FLOBFROWN 
keyness 
p-value 
ancestor
65
28 61.5 
0.000000 
ancestral
58
10 88.8 
0.000000 
spirit 396 
175 
367.3 
0.000000 
ghost 60
64 17.6 
0.000027 
taboo 
18
14
9.2 0.002402 
sacred
37
50
5.8 0.016266 
rite
22
23
6.7 0.009409 
ritual 58
65 15.3 
0.000093 
worship 47
46 
16.5 
0.000049 
ceremony 
131
66 109.1 
0.000000 
ceremonial 19
16
8.6 
0.003283 
cult 
23
23
7.7 0.005400 
sacrifice
73
47 47.5 
0.000000 
bless
83
72 36.0 
0.000000 
mediums 6
2
6.8 
0.009286 
In a traditional context, the relation between the living and the ancestors is 
sacred and involves taboos, rites/rituals and sacrifices. The worshipping of 

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422
Hans-Georg Wolf and Frank Polzenhagen
the ancestors is, in modern terms, often called the ‘cult of the ancestors’. In 
turn, the ancestors can bless the living. As indicated, mediums mediate be-
tween the ancestors and the living. We are not saying that all these terms 
refer to the traditional kinship model alone, but their use in “traditional” 
contexts may influence their understanding in “modern” ones, and there 
may not be a strict dichotomy. The following examples from the CEC dem-
onstrate the use of some of these terms in reference to modern as well as 
traditional religion (see Wolf fc.): 
God bless you; to ask the blessing of their ancestors; worship the Lord, high 
priest of ancestral worship; sacred ministers of the church; the sacred shrine 
of the tribe. 
The next set of keywords captures the witchcraft component of the kinship 
model. This includes the dual role of the witch-doctors, who, as we recall, 
have healing as well as destructive powers.
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Table 4. Keywords relating to witchcraft.
word CEC 
FLOBFROWN 
keyness 
p-value 
Devil 27 
26 
9.8 
0.001774 
demon 32 
32 
10.8 
0.001032 
totem 8
3
8.4 
0.003817 
healer
5
2
5.0 0.025317 
soothsayer 4
0
9.5 
0.002004 
juju-man 6
0
14.3 
0.000154 
seer
6
1
9.3 0.002291 
witch-doctor 10
0
23.9 0.000001 
divination 5
0
11.9 
0.000552 
fateful
10
5
8.4 0.003788 
heal
69 32 
61.7 0.000000 
Devil is used in the Christian / Islamic sense but also in reference to a nega-
tive spirit or a traditional ritual masks, i.e., a totem, symbolizing this nega-
tive spirit (see Fyle and Jones 1980), a use which is probably due to the 
influence of the Christian missions. Then there is a whole cluster of syn-
onymous terms for witch-doctor, as: traditional doctors, healer, herbalist,
soothsayer, juju-man and seer. Other terms that are normally used in AE 
are witch, wizard, and sorcerer, with witches and wizards being a fixed 
expression. In critical linguistics, the phenomenon of a variety of terms for 

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Fixed expressions as manifestations of cultural conceptualizations
423
the same concept is rightly seen as a society’s obsession with certain 
themes and problems (see Fowler 1991). The reason that witch, wizard, and
sorcerer do not appear as keywords can be put in perspective by looking at 
where and how they are used. Sorcerer is the name of a mountain bike fre-
quently referred to in an article included in FLOBFROWN, and the name 
of a fictional character in another. Likewise, witch and wizard relate to 
fictional stories, e.g., Witches of Eastwick, not real people, or are used in a 
metaphoric sense, as in reference to Margaret Thatcher. In Africa, witch-
craft is real and pervades all spheres of public life, and is not just limited to 
the realm of neo-pagan witchcraft, as in FLOBFROWN. Another interest-
ing item is fateful, because unlike in native varieties of English, this term 
almost always signals an account of a fatal event, which, as we learned, is 
often interpreted in the light of witchcraft.
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3.4.2. Collocational patterns 
From a corpus-linguistic perspective, collocations may first of all be under-
stood in the broadest possible sense, i.e. as mere co-occurrence in a given 
numerically defined context. One may argue that such an approach has but 
little explanatory power. However, from our specific angle, it may yield 
some profitable insights. If items stemming from particular domains co-
occur systematically, we take it to be an indication and evidence of a possi-
ble underlying conceptual link between them. Given that we are concerned 
with conceptual metaphor and metonymy, this may be put as an elaboration 
on Richards’ (1981: 51) well-known statement that in metaphor “we have 
two thoughts of different things active together.” We thus propose to see