Phraseology and Idiomatology: Two Competing or Complementary Terms?

Abstract

Terminological discussions about the different elements that are dealt with in phraseology (Thun; Pilz; Gläser) have been abandoned in recent years. Yet the question is far from being resolved, not only as regards the naming of these elements, but also as regards their nature. Indeed, there continues to be a profusion of terms according to everyone’s own theoretical frameworks (fixed expressions, phrasemes, phraseologisms, phraseological units, etc.). However, faced with this profusion of denominations and typologies within the discipline known as phraseology, the name of the field in question has had only one competitor since Bally proposed it: that of idiomatology (Guiraud), with its idiomatik variant in German (Burger et Jaksche), and its idiomatology translation into English (Makkai; Kavka and Zybert; Kavka “Compounding”). This observation prompts us to look for an explanation that goes beyond the mere random fate of words in their consolidation, by retracing the history of this rivalry, however short it may have been, in an attempt to understand the reasons for Bally’s choice of terminology and how this choice came to prevail. We will do this by comparing the terms phraseology and idiotisms and their co-appearance in two 19th century works (Dupont, and Bochet et al.). This will certainly shed light on the division amongst specialists today, who are divided between a broad or narrow conception of the field, with more or less inclusive typologies. Above all, however, it will be an opportunity to reconcile phraseology and idiomatology as complementary fields..