Phraseology and Culture in English
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Phraseology and Culture in English
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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. 23 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. 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 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. 24 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 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. 25 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 Download 1.68 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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