Comme on dit dans mon village: les métaphores sont-elles si dialectales que ça?

Abstract

Dialectal variation has been meagerly investigated in the field of phraseology, if compared to the rich tradition of phonetic and lexicological studies that made available accurate dialectal maps and atlases for all the languages of Europe. On the other hand, speakers often accompany the use of idioms and proverbs with pragmatic markers like as we say in my village (etc.), even for standard expressions. This fact suggests the existence of a relationship ‑within linguistic consciousness‑between phraseology and non-standard diatopic (or diaphasic) varieties, either as a rhetorical strategy or an intuitive hypercorrection. French phraseology and paremiology allow to observe certain cues in this respect.