Phraseology and Culture in English

Penny Lee
of major themes and their theoretical value in terms of the postulated cul-
tural script is provided at the end. The Australian ethos, as suggested by the 
patterns uncovered in this study, encourages people to face adversity with 
stubborn resilience and wry humour, to draw on extravagantly elaborated 
tropes when making judgments about other people’s behaviour and to use 
word play to mask unkind references. It maximizes the value of iconic ver-
nacular terms drawn from the rural and later rudimentary urban experiences 
of European settlers in previous centuries and exploits them innovatively in 
contemporary journalism and conversational repartee. 
In terms of the rhetorical and pragmatic force of similes and other evalua-
tive formulae used in the context she describes, Peters argues that their pur-
pose is to render key words or concepts especially salient by embellishing 
them in artful ways and, in doing so, giving extra force to the evaluations 
embodied in them. 
The pragmatic force and cultural use of modals is routinely taught in 
English foreign language classes and research into individual lexical items 
is well established, but little has been done to date on the possibility that 
modality clusters may carry composite meanings not decomposable to their 
constituent elements. Svenja Adolphs’s paper demonstrates the value of a 
corpus based study of spoken language in this regard, showing how Sinclair’s 
1991 “idiom principle” sees certain co-selection patterns occurring in pref-
erence to others, with consequent impacts on meaning. Whereas, on the 
basis of what is routinely taught, accumulation of modality items might be 
expected to either increase the degree of politeness or have an incremental 
effect on speech act indirectness, the two structures focused on in the paper, 
might just and could possibly, not only do not validate such expectations 
but are intriguingly shown to have meanings that are diametrically opposed to 
the meanings of their constituents. Methodologically, this study again shows 
the value of conducting principled analyses of authentic language on the 
scale made possible by electronically accessible corpora. In this case, the use 
of five categories of material ranging from “intimate” to “pedagogical” also 
pays dividends, helping to reveal preferred contexts of use in finer detail 
than might otherwise be possible. Adolphs’s attention to intonation patterns 
also highlights the importance of this dimension in phraseological studies. 
While there is a clear case for further research into modality clusters and 
for new approaches to teaching culturally specific politeness routines in 
English varieties, it is also important to acknowledge how difficult it is for 
even advanced learners to use politeness formulae with completely native 
like proficiency. When it comes to the use of culture-specific similes and 

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Formulaic language in cultural perspective
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idiomatic evaluative formulae with iconic status, study rather than use should 
probably be advised as a means of gaining entry to the target culture. Apart 
from anything else, some of the impact of these sayings may be carried by 
the distinctive speech style and pronunciation patterns of native speakers – 
this is a possibly productive area for further research in the Australian con-
text at least. Proverbs are possibly not so different. Learning to notice re-
current patterns of occurrence of conventionalized formulations like these 
can be helpful in building insight into the cultural preoccupations of groups 
and is valuable in itself. Learning when, how often and in precisely what 
contexts to use specific proverbs in a native like way that enhances fluency 
and does not distract listeners is, however, more challenging.