English and Spanish phraseology in contrast

Abstract

This paper addresses some theoretical issues in cross-linguistic phraseology analysis2 and focuses on problems which arise in connection with finding pragmatic adequate equivalents which are lexical items of both source and target language which can be used in the same situations. The paper tries to elaborate some principles of contrastive idiom analysis from a functional perspective through both the use of empirical data concerning the real usage of idioms (examples from the BNC) and a sound theoretical background. Relevant parameters of cross-linguistic comparison (Semantics, Syntax and Pragmatics) will be discussed with several examples trying to offer a typology of non-parallel features between L1 and L2 idioms and collocations. This paper ends up with a practical example of idioms related to body parts and their pragmatic expression in English and Spanish.