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WiSe 20/21: Words are overrated: Chinese Formulaic Language in Theory and Practice

Yaroslav Akimov

Comments

The importance of multiword sequences held in long-term memory has been revisited and reconfirmed in the past decades by language scholars and instructors: “speaking a language with any degree of fluency requires a knowledge of idioms, proverbs, slang, fixed expressions, and other speech formulas” (Gibbs 2012). As the data of computer-based corpus studies and phraseology research shows, these pieces of “fossilized language” can also be found in advertising jingles, song lyrics, play scripts, technical phrases in air traffic control speech etc. Chinese proverbial (yan-yu) and idiomatic set phrases (xiguan-yongyu), far from being mere decoration of speech, are integral part of the language which enables social interaction. The course serves as an introduction into the vast area of Mandarin idioms, collocations, binomials, and other set expressions, helping students identify formulaic sequences and understand their function in creating native-like speech and writing. Recommended Literature: Gibbs, R. W. Jr. (2012), Idioms and Formulaic Language, in: Geeraerts, D. & Cuyckens, H. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics. OUP: Oxford. Jiao, Liwei (2016), Chinese Idioms, in: Chan, Sin-Wai, The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Chinese Language, Routledge Taylor & Francis Group: London & New York. close