Contact de langues et transferts conceptuels

Abstract

This paper aims to illustrate the relations between culture and language, through two examples. The first one concerns the transfers of use from the word vieux to the word grand in French of Lebanon, through the medium of the Arabic word ﺮﻴﺒﻛ [kabîr] ; the second one concerns the recent transfers of use from the French word problème to the word souci, through the medium of the English word worry.The study is based on a conceptual and cognitive theory of the lexical meaning, where transfers appear as the result of an alteration of the cultural representations in the case of code switching. Phenomena are connected to their political frame, i.e. for the first one, colonialism, and for the second one, the globalisation of liberalism.

Keywords

• culture
• code switching
• lexicon
• cognition
• conceptual transfers