Metaphraseography and phraseographic design: A learning dictionary of French-Chinese idioms

Abstract

International audiencePhraseological units (PUs) are rich with implicit carriers of cultural idiosyncrasies, societal states, collective perspectives, historicity, and conventionality (González-Rey 2002). Learning PUs should be part of a long-term process in the teaching of language and culture in a foreign language context (González-Rey 2007; Sułkowska 2016; Chen 2021).Bilingual dictionaries are “the foundation of all language pedagogy” (Taifi 2021: 28). A good dictionary for learning foreign language (FL) phraseological units (PUs) meets learners' need to independently acquire this culturally rich part of the lexicon. In the context of didactic lexicology, “the phraseological dictionary claims its place of honor as the tool of choice in teaching-learning methods of fixed expressions” (Wotjak 2005).1Thus, we aim to design a learning dictionary to improve phraseology in a foreign language, specifically French-Chinese idiomatic expressions. This reflection is based on a metaphrastic approach. (Murano 2011; Chen 2022a).The macrostructure is based on thematic classification (e.g., human body, animals) on one hand, and on the degree of intralingua “fixed”  and interlingual comparative methods on the other. The microstructure will be detailed, including etymology, figurative meaning, the source of the phraseological unit (PU), its pragmatic use, and phraseology from French to Chinese (Chen 2022b)