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LECTURE 15. LINGUOCULTURAL AND PRAGMATIC CHARACTERISTICS OF PHRASEOLOGICAL UNITS
Plan of the lecture:
1.Reflection of the language picture of the world in phraseology
2. Nationally specific peculiarities of phraseological units
3. Proverbs and sayings as a component of the phraseological world picture
4. Difficulties in translation of phraseological units
5. Role of phraseology in developing linguistic and intercultural communication competences
The concept of the ‘world picture’ (including linguistic) is based on the study of human ideas about the world. If the world is a man and the environment in their interaction, then the picture of the world is the result of the processing of information about the environment and the humanity.
Phraseologisms play a special role in the creation of the linguistic picture of the world. They are “a mirror of the nation’s life." The significance of the phraseological unit is ​​closely associated with background knowledge of a native speaker, with practical experience of the individual, cultural and historical traditions of the people who speak this language.
English language students must learn them just as they would learn other vocabulary units. In English someone who is very clumsy, especially in delicate situations, could be described as being like “a bull in a china shop”. In French such people are like “an elephant in a porcelain factory ” (un elephant dans un magasin de porcelaine). In Danish the equivalent is ‘som en elefant I en glasbutik’ (like an elephant in a glass store), in Russian they say ‘cлон в посудной лавке’.
Is there a similar one in Uzbek: ???
Interrelation of language and culture has always been at the forefront of the researches in the sphere of linguistics, study of culture, philosophy and psychology. The relevance of analysis the links between language and culture was initially put forth by V. Humboldt, who claims that language expresses the ‘national spirit’. E. Sapir, an American anthropologist and linguist, states that the language is tightly coupled with the culture and that the language is “germinated” from the culture and reflects it. Consequently, E. Sapir and his follower B.L.Whorf worked out “the hypothesis of language relativity” proposing that the human ability to create the world picture is straightly bounded with the culture encoded in the language. In other words, “culture”, by his suggestion, “helps us to understand what a certain society thinks, while language is the way how this society thinks” [ibid, 193-194].
Thus, according to the statements given above, it follows that the language is the main means to create, store (in the texts), transfer and reflect the culture [Маслова, 2001:28]. This postulate has become a substantial one to a new interdisciplinary study –linguoculturology, which was formed at the turn of two independent sciences: linguistics and culturology, in the last decades of the XX century.
There are several definitions of this new study given by Russian scholars: V.N. Teliya defines it as ”a study aiming to investigate and describe the correlation of the language and culture in the scope of modern culturally national self-consciousness and it’s sign representation” [Телия, 1999: 16]; another definition was given by V.V. Vorobiev stating that this is “ an integrated scientific discipline studying correlation and interaction of the culture and the language in their functioning and reflecting this process as an integral structure of the units in both linguistic and extra linguistic contents through the systematic methods and with the orientation on the modern priorities and culture sets” [Воробьев, 2006:37]; lastly V.V. Krasnikh considers linguoculturology as “a discipline studying demonstration, reflection and fixation of the culture in the language and discourse” [Красных, 2002:27]. Such English linguoculturemes as Hobson’s choice, melting pot, to put the Thames on fire, By George!, the British Lion, green-eyed monster, mad as a hatter, rain cats and dogs and myriads of others can not only enrich our students’ language vocabulary, but also evoke appreciation of the history and culture of English and deepen their intercultural competence.
This lecture is devoted to the study of the linguocultural peculiarities of the English phraseological units from the point of view of the contemporary Linguistics and foreign language teaching. In modern communicative approaches to the foreign language teaching and learning the linguistic competence includes the broader knowledge of the language background, often termed as sociocultural competence. It has been widely accepted by modern Linguistics that the language background involves cultural awareness, as language is a means of collective co-existence and the social practice stored in the memory of the society and developed by the people during the whole period of the language existence. Besides, the cultural awareness facilitates the correct interpretation of the foreign language environment and must therefore constitute a full component of the foreign language curriculum.
The role of phraseology in communication is of great importance, as the nationally specific cultural connotations represent interpretation of the figurative basis of idiomatic picture of the world of the language community. The cultural knowledge can be deduced by the analysis of the “inner form” of the idiom: there are some "traces" of the culture, customs and traditions, historical events and everyday life elements and the culture can be understood as a way of orientation of the human in empirical, cultural, spiritual life on the basis of norms, standards, stereotypes, symbols, myths, etc., which represent signs of the national cultures.
As we all know, language is closely related to culture and can be regarded as a part of culture. From a dynamic view, language and culture interact with each other and form each other. Language is the carrier of culture which in turn is the content of language. We can dig out cultural features from language and explain language phenomena through national culture.
Idioms carry a large amount of cultural information such as history, geography, religion, custom, national psychology and therefore are closely related to culture. They are the heritage of history and product of cultural evolvement.
Language and culture exist in each individual person. That individual is a thinker, a creator, a transmitter of the culture, he is the part of the society, and he uses the language for communication with other members of this society where he is supposed to be understood as they belong to the same community. But the indispensable condition of realization of any communication is that a speaker and a listener should have a mutual knowledge of realities or the background knowledge as a basis of a language interaction to understand each other. A “Language world picture” gives a non-native speaker the opportunity to realize the implicit meaning of the vocabulary through explicit meaning, to understand cumulated unconscious cultural information via background knowledge, to investigate cultural values via communicative process, to synthesize interrelation and interaction of the culture and the language.
Special interest should be drawn to idioms which are the most difficult items of language. If one can use them correctly in the communication, like native speakers, we say definitely that one’s English is fluent. The linguocultural approach in teaching phraseology aspires to be approached to reality; it is focused on the maximum explication of processes which occur in the reproduction and perception of the English idioms.
An idiom most often reflects the national specificity of the people. It is a figurative interpretation of reality and an emotional model of communication. Idioms are highly interactive items. They are strong and colorful examples of cross-cultural relations. The source of their origin is sometimes difficult to ascertain. They are firmly assimilated in various languages and have become part and the whole of these cultures. The main difficulty is whether an idiom is appropriate in the given context when a non-native speaker tries to translate an idiom from his native language into English. It may confuse a listener. The problem is often one of collocation, which is a central characteristic of the language in use. The way native speakers use English in the real world is largely idiomatic and it assumes that a fluent non-native speaker should be similarly idiomatic. When even very good learners of the language speak or write English, the effect is slightly odd. Since idioms evaluate the whole narrative summarizing the main events or opinion, a native speakers’ unconscious knowledge of collocation is an essential component of their idiomatic and fluent language use and is, therefore, an important part of their communicative competence.
A large number of idioms are of folk origin; however, there are huge numbers of the biblical, mythological and author-specific idioms. Knowing culture, literature and traditions of different nationalities will help the language learner to communicate with a native speaker adequately. In this way, an idiom is the key, which enables people to open the gate of the national culture, history, traditions and beliefs of different people. English PhUs can be classified into native and borrowed. Native PhUs reflect nationally specific values, prejudices, images and beliefs, such as to be at sea; care killed a cat ; a mare’s nest; to carry coal to Newcastle; to kick the bucket; to have green fingers, a green-eyed monster, etc. – each one related to the nationally unique features of the English culture;
Culturally specific components of the vocabulary have been widely investigated by scholars, and V.V.Vorobiev coined the notion of “linguocultureme” to designate them. In his opinion, linguistic and extralinguistic factors, on the one hand, are equal in order to serve communicative function of the language units, and, on the other hand, unequal as the extralinguistic content is much richer [Воробьев, 2006:50].
Thus, linguocultureme is a complex, interlevel language unit, a dialectical unit of both linguistic and extralinguistic factors, the correlation between the form of verbal sign, its semantic content and cultural sense [Ashurova, 2012:122]. The extralinguistic content includes the nationally specific components of meaning: For example: to set the Thames on fire – зажечь воду в Темзе/ Rus: выдумать порох/хватать звёзды с неба; to shed crocodile tears -проливать крокодиловы слезы. The expression comes from an ancient belief that crocodiles shed tears or weep in order to lure their prey, or that they cry for the victims they are eating.
Idioms come to make one-third part of the colloquial speech. If we develop students’ awareness of using idiomatic expressions, we are sure to bring them closer to the authentic English speech. Idioms are a part of our daily speech. They give expressiveness and exactness to oral and written language. It’s not easy to master idioms fluently. Word - for - word translation can change the meaning of the idiom.So, what is an idiom and phraseology? How can we translate idioms? Is it possible to translate idioms word for word without changing their meaning?
That is, English collocations have proved to be problematic for translators. Idiomatic expressions, proverbs and metaphors are particularly hard to translate well. Where an English person kills two birds with one stone, a German will kill two flies with one flap, and a Russian kill two rabbits (Убить двух зайцев). When it is raining cats and dogs in England, in Germany there are strings falling from sky (Es gießt wie aus Kannen) and in Russia it is raining from the bucket (Дождь льёт как из ведра).
Proverbs and sayings also often reflect national values, traditions and stereotypes, some of which can be universal:

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  He that marries for wealth sells his liberty;
  
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  A man is as old as he feels, a woman as old as she looks;
  
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  A hungry man is an angry man;
  
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  A friend in need is a friend indeed;
  
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  Too many cooks spoil the broth;
  
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  My house is my castle;
  
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  East or West – home is best, etc.
  

There are quite a few problems when it comes to translation of the proverbs and sayings. Basically, as all phraseological units, they can be translated by:

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  Equivalents: A good wife and health are man’s best wealth / Не надобен и клад, коли у мужа с женой лад / Яхши хотин – хазина;
  
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  Analogues: The wife is the key to the house / Женщина -хранительница очага / Хотин уйнинг чироғи;
  
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  Periphrasis: A good Jack makes a good Jill/У хорошего мужа и жена хорошая/Хотиннинг чиройи эридан.
  

Many PhUs enter into the international idiomatic vocabulary. Examples:
“Blue blood” – Fr. le sang bleu / Span. la sangre azul / Chech. modrá krev / Pol. błękitna krew; / Ukr. голуба кров; Gem blaues Blut; Russian «голубая кровь»; is a calque from English, which is a calque from Spanish - la sangre azul. Originally it was the name of the Castillia nobles who never married dark-skinned. The Uzbek analogue is “оқ суяк”.