Keyword: «французский язык»

Abstract: Idioms represent an essential segment of the lexical system of any language, as they reflect both specific and universal ways of conceptualisation and patterns of thinking. Phraseology largely indicates the connection between culture and language. Indeed, idioms express various cultural contents, including the spirit, tradition, and history of a nation, making phraseology an important resource for reconstructing the linguistic pictures of the world. Phraseological meanings often rely on metaphorical structures and cognitive mechanisms that can explain their motivation and facilitate the acquisition in the context of foreign language learning. The aim of this study is to identify the cognitive mechanisms and cultural aspects underlying the phraseological meanings of the expressions containing components (Ser.) mačak/mačka / (Fr.) chat/chatte / (Engl.) cat in Serbian, French, and English. Through a comparative-contrastive analysis, we will explore similarities and differences in the ways the observed lexemes motivate phraseological meanings in Serbian, French, and English. Lexical-semantic analysis will be used to determine the equivalence between the observed idioms across the three languages. Additionally, we will suggest potential multimodal representations of the chosen idioms, with possible applications in (foreign) language teaching and lexicography. The corpus is excerpted from general and phraseological dictionaries of the Serbian, French and English languages, as well as from school textbooks, daily and weekly newspapers, digital publications, etc.