Formulaic Language and New Data

Theoretical and Methodological Implications

Elisabeth Piirainen, Natalia Filatkina, Sören Stumpf, Christian Pfeiffer, Elisabeth Piirainen, Natalia Filatkina, Sören Stumpf, Christian Pfeiffer

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9783110666588
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: German Language
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The existence of formulaic patterns has been attested to all languages of the world. However, systematic research in this field has been focused on only a few European standard languages with a rich literary tradition and a high degree of written norm. It was on the basis of these data that the theoretical framework and methodological approaches were developed.
The volume shifts this focus by centering the investigation on new data, including data from lesser-used languages and dialects, extra-european languages, linguistic varieties mostly used in spoken domains as well as at previous historical stages of language development. Their inclusion challenges the existing postulates at both a theoretical and methodological level.
Areas of interest include the following questions: What is formulaic in these types of languages, varieties and dialects? Are the criteria developed within the framework of phraseological research applicable to new data? Can any specific types of formulaic patterns and/or any specific features of regular (already known) types of formulaic patterns be observed and how do they emerge? What methodological difficulties need to be overcome when dealing with new data?

Part I:Lesser-Used and Areally Limited Languages

Elisabeth Piirainen

Lesser-Used Languages and their Contribution to the Study of Formulaic and Figurative Language

Note: The article is published in the original version as written by the author. On account of her sudden and unexpected death, the editors of the volume have refrained from including the comments of two anonymous reviewers.

The Judeo-Christian tradition sees the profusion of tongues after the Tower of Babel as a negative outcome punishing humans for their presumption, and standing in the way of co-operation and progress. But the Warramurrungunji myth reflects a point of view much more common in small speech communities: that having many languages is a good thing because it shows where each person belongs.

(Evans 2010: 6; italics by E.P.)

Abstract: So far phraseology research has been carried out for a few major literary languages. In addition, there is a remarkable number of studies on formulaic and figurative language of lesser-used, mainly unwritten languages, anthropology and ethnology. Both spheres of research have, for the most part, the same objectlinguistic data, but have so far little knowledge of each other. This paper is a sketchy report on some underestimated studies that can enhance our knowledge of phraseology and formulaicity. Three areas have been chosen which have often been the subject of research: body-part semiotizations, conceptual metaphors and pragmatic functions of figurative units. The inclusion of non-Western minority languages reveals various previously unknown peculiarities. The article aims to encourage scientists to include new data in phraseology and formulaic language research, i.e. to study languages which have not yet been investigated with regard to their phraseology and formulaicity, including varieties which exist merely in oral form.

1Preliminary Remarks

Research on phraseology, with a focus on formulaic and figurative language, extends for the most part to a few current European standard languages, which all together account for less than one percent of the world’s languages.3 The data underlying European phraseology research and its results are quite coherent. These data are derived from some well-researched literary languages, above all from the Western cultural area. All these languages essentially fulfill the same communicative functions: they have developed for transregionally valid written and oral communication purposes of a complex modern society. The high degree of figurativeness of these standard European languages, as manifested in idioms and other figurative lexical units, appears equally uniform. It is not just the origin of many idioms from the so-called “common European cultural heritage”, but the same metaphors and symbols, conceptualizations of abstract content that constitute these consistencies.4

Lesser-used languages have so far hardly been included in the phraseology research spectrum.5 Two languages on the fringe of the European continent, namely Inari Saami and Basque constitute an exception. Both languages have been thoroughly investigated with regard to their figurative language, and these studies reveal metaphors and conceptualizations limited to their linguistic area, unparalleled by other European languages. These studies show very clearly how important it is to incorporate new language varieties: new data is urgently needed for phraseology research, especially from languages that are predominantly used in oral form. The subject of this article is lesser-used languages from the point of view of whether they could contribute to our knowledge of phraseology and figurative language.

But first let us look at the term lesser-used language. It will be used as a generic term for smaller and minority languages, which show a downward trend of influence. The term cannot be defined by linguistic criteria; rather, there exist extra-linguistic, political, social and economic factors which constitute this term. Here we refer to the explanations of relevant standard works, which instead of one definition give a bundle of criteria: When one of these criteria is met, it is a question of a lesser-used language.6 The most important condition is that the intergenerational transmission of the language is not guaranteed. Further criteria are, among others: the language is restricted to a small area with few speakers; the number of speakers is obviously diminishing; the domains of usage are limited to unofficial situations; there is direct competition with the prestigious (national) language; standardization and written tradition are missing; the language exists mainly in oral form.

On the one hand, there would be no lack of research topics, as only less than one percent of the world’s languages have been studied in terms of their phraseology and figurativeness so far – not to mention all modes of spoken language as they appear in the regional colloquial varieties and dialects around the world. On the other hand, there is extensive research on the stereotyped nature and figurativeness of non-literary languages, the data and results of which have hardly been noticed by traditional European phraseology research. A number of publications can be found on proverbs and other figurative or formulaic units in languages outside Europe, including lesser-used and indigenous unwritten languages.

For a hundred years, anthropologists and ethnologists have gathered data on the figurative and formulaic language of distant cultures on far-away continents, which were partly taken note of by (ethnology-oriented) paremiology, but not by linguistic phraseology research. When it comes to incorporating “new data” into research, it would be the first step to consider these studies. For in the area of stereotyped and figurative expressions, proverbs and metaphors, these studies are not only concerned with the study of phraseology, but also have the same linguistic elements as the object of their research. The same applies to the lesser-used minority languages in Europe, as well as to dialects that have only recently been added to phraseology research: they too have not been adequately considered, although they can certainly extend the knowledge of phraseology to date.

This paper is primarily a sketchy report on these underestimated studies. The following remarks are grouped around individual results: Section 2 deals with the results of the studies of languages distant from standard European varieties, including those of the Austronesian language groups, which have specific conceptualizations of certain internal organs and body parts, as well as concepts in Basque which have no parallels in the standard European languages. Subsequently, some supposedly “universal” conceptual metaphors are considered. The inclusion of new, previously unresearched languages clearly shows that the postulate of universality cannot be sustained (section 3).

Pragmatic functions of proverbs and other figures of speech in several lesser-used, partly indigenous languages are the focus of the fourth section. The entire complex of figurative secret languages, “veiled languages” and “tabooed languages” in Papua New Guinea, for example, has no equivalent in the Western world. This topic is related to the classification of phrasemes or formulaic units. From the point of view of the languages outside Europe, the categories of the subject of investigation can be quite different from that of the European phraseology research. Sections 2–4 thus aim to confront the uniformity of the written European standard languages which have been studied so far with a diversity and dissimilarity outside this field, while section 5, Concluding remarks, provides references to current phraseology research.

2Semiotized Concepts of Inner Organs and Body Parts

The far-reaching uniformity of European literary languages – as opposed to the diversity of lesser-used and non-European languages – can be demonstrated by the so-called “body part idioms”.7 From the beginning of phraseological research, the human body has been considered an extensive source domain and there has been a long tradition of analyzing somatisms (idioms with body part constituents). A wealth of publications on European standard languages provides a uniform picture of this group of idioms, especially of the symbolic functions of body part concepts such as, for instance, HAND, HEAD, EYE, TONGUE, etc. Internal organs are usually counted among the body parts....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Introduction: Formulaic Language and New Data
• Part I: Lesser-Used and Areally Limited Languages
• Part II: Languages Spoken outside Europe
• Part III: Linguistic Varieties Used in Spoken Domains and/or Regarded as ‘Conceptually Oral’
• Part IV: Earlier/ Historical Stages of Language Development