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N°19 – Phraseology and Paremiology in English

Deadline for sending in final versions of papers: 1 February 2022

Lexis Journal in English Lexicology – will publish its 19th issue in 2022. It will be edited by Ramón Martí Solano (University of Limoges, France) and Aleš Klégr (Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic) and will deal with the topic “Phraseology and Paremiology in English”.

Phraseology and Paremiology in English

Phraseology, and English phraseology in particular, is probably one of the most progressive areas of contemporary linguistics. Within four decades or so it has moved away from the fringes of linguistic interest to which it was long relegated due to the assumed unsystematic nature of its object of study to step into the spotlight together with corpus linguistics (Gray & Biber [2015]). While what Granger and Paquot [2008] called the “traditional approach to phraseology” was mostly concerned with the narrow field of fixed idioms, their collection and description, the advent of the distributional or frequency-based approach based on language corpora and intertwined with corpus linguistics has completely reconceptualized phraseology and further broadened its scope (see Burger et al. [2007]). It has shown that speech is largely composed of prefabricated, more or less fixed multiword expressions (MWEs), variously labelled as collocations, lexical bundles, (continuous and discontinuous) n-grams, formulas, etc. Central among the goals of phraseological research are the extraction, identification and description of MWEs and the analysis of their discourse functions and exploration of phraseological register variation. Whether focusing on selected multiword units or the whole set of these expressions in a corpus, register, type of text, etc., the approaches are either corpus-based or corpus-driven. The discovery of phraseological units of one type or another in every kind of discourse is something linguistic theories have had to come to grips with. Phraseology is the bedrock of Systemic Functional Linguistics (Ding [2018]), but it also stimulated new directions in Cognitive Linguistics (Fillmore et al. [1988]). The recognition that idiomatic expressions are productive, not (necessarily) fixed structures which permeate ordinary language, is at the core of such cognitive theories as Usage-Based Construction Grammar. The range of contemporary phraseological studies is exemplified by the EUROPHRAS 2017 and 2019 proceedings (Mitkov [2017]; Corpas Pastor & Mitkov [2019]) and more recently by Corpas Pastor & Colson [2020]. In addition to methodological issues of identification and extraction, the papers explore a multitude of other aspects, typologies, patterns and networks, computational representation, cognitive modelling and processing, disambiguation, (semantic and pragmatic) interpretation, to name but a few.

A similar rensaissance has been experienced by the subfield of phraseology, paremiology. Transcending the stage of traditional non-linguistic approaches focusing especially on the collection and categorization of proverbs, paremiology has been firmly incorporated into linguistics (Norrick [1981], [1985]). Taking stock of the present-day situation are such works as Mieder [2007] and especially Hrisztova-Gotthardt and Varga [2015]. In fact, paremiology as the study of proverbs as phraseological multiword units is ever more profiting from language corpora and corpus linguistics just as the rest of phraseology (see Steyer [2017]).

The n°19 issue aims for contributions reflecting the current trends in phraseology exploration, addressing exclusively English phraseology and paremiology and leaving aside contrastive aspects and comparisons with other languages. The following broad areas of research are suggested for the papers with no restrictions upon other related topics:

  • methods of phraseology extraction and identification,

  • representation and modelling of phraseological units,

  • interpretation, processing and disambiguation of phraseological units,

  • discourse functions of phraseological units,

  • phraseological units and register variation.

References

Burger Harald et al., 2007, “Phraseology: Subject area, terminology and research topics”, in Burger Harald et al. (eds.), Phraseology: An international handbook of contemporary research, Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 10-19.

Corpas Pastor Gloria & Mitkov Ruslan (eds.), 2019, Computational and Corpus-Based Phraseology, Third International Conference, Europhras 2019, Malaga, Spain, September 25–27, 2019, Proceedings, New York: Springer.

Corpas Pastor, Gloria & Colson Jean-Pierre (eds.), 2020, Computational Phraseology, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Ding Jianxin, 2018, Linguistic Prefabrication. A Discourse Analysis Approach, New York: Springer.

Fillmore Charles J. et al., 1988, “Regularity and idiomaticity in grammatical constructions: The case of let alone”, Language 64/3: 501-538.

Granger Sylviane & Paquot Magali, 2008, “Disentangling the phraseological web”, in Granger Sylviane & Meunier Fanny (eds.), Phraseology. An interdisciplinary perspective, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 27-49.

Gray Bethany & Biber Douglas, 2015, “Phraseology”, in Biber Douglas & Reppen Randi (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of English Corpus Linguistics, Cambridge: Cambridge Univesity Press, 125-145.

Hrisztova-Gotthardt Hrisztalina & Varga Melita Aleksa (eds.), 2015, Introduction to Paremiology: A Comprehensive Guide to Proverb Studies, Warsaw/Berlin: De Gruyter.

Mieder Wolfgang, 2004, Proverbs: A handbook, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Mitkov Ruslan (ed.), 2017, Computational and Corpus-Based Phraseology, Second International Conference, Europhras 2017, London, UK, November 13-14, 2017, Proceedings, New York: Springer.

Norrick Neal R., 1981, Proverbial linguistics: Linguistic perspectives on proverbs, Trier: Linguistics Agency.

Norrick Neal R., 1985, How proverbs mean, Berlin: Mouton.

Steyer Kathrin, 2017, “Corpus linguistic exploration of modern proverb use and proverb patterns”, in Ruslan Mitkov (ed.), EUROPHRAS 2017. Computational and corpus-based phraseology: Recent advances and interdisciplinary approaches, Proceedings of the Conference Volume II. November 13–14, 2017, London, UK, Geneva: Editions Tradulex, 45–52.

How to submit

Please clearly indicate the title of the paper and include an abstract of no more than 5,000 characters as well as a list of relevant key-words and references. All abstract and paper submissions will be anonymously peer-reviewed (double-blind peer reviewing) by an international scientific committee composed of specialists in their fields. Papers will be written preferably in English or occasionally in French.

Manuscripts may be rejected, accepted subject to revision, or accepted as such. There is no limit to the number of pages.

Abstracts and articles will be sent via email to lexis@univ-lyon3.fr

Deadlines

November 7 2020: Call for papers

June 30 2021: Deadline for sending in abstracts to Lexis

July-August 2021: Evaluation Committee’s decisions notified to authors

November 15 2021: Deadline for sending in papers (Guidelines for submitting articles: https://journals.openedition.org/lexis/1000)

November and December 2021: Proofreading of papers by the Evaluation committee

January 2022: Authors’ corrections

February 1 2022: Deadline for sending in final versions of papers

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