A Clear Conscience Makes a Soft Pillow...Phrasemes with a Potential for Ethical Judgement
Tomasz Żurawlew
Uniwersytet Warmińsko-Mazurski w OlsztynieAbstract
This article examines the linguistic expression of moral values in selected
German phrasemes which have the potential for formulating judgements concerning human
attitudes based on ethical criteria. An attempt was made to identify factors affecting the
robustness of that potential, the ways in which that potential is manifested, and the type of
relationships between the analyzed phrasemes and moral values. The moral convictions of
language users that are embedded in the German language were also analyzed. The study
demonstrated that in colloquial German, morality is portrayed in an intellectual and emotive
context as the essence of subjective human experience. Linguistic data confirm that moral
norms are perceived by language users as an objective truth that should be respected. The
potential of phrasemes for passing ethical judgements stems from the relationship between
phrasemes and their characteristic formal attributes, including their figurative and expressive
meaning. This potential is manifested explicitly or implicitly, and its perlocutionary strength is
often determined by the metaphorical motivation of a given phraseme. The analysis confirmed
that the potential of phrasemes is also influenced by the connotative dimension of the lexicon n specific phrasemes. In the most general and broadest sense, the potential of phrasemes for
formulating ethical judgements about human attitudes is conditioned by the anthropocentric
interpretation of reality. The study revealed that phrasemes with a potential for making ethical
judgements are bound by three types of relationships with morality: they should be regarded as
a tool for assessing human attitudes, as a source of knowledge about moral values preferred by language users, and as carriers of moral values that are co-responsible for embedding these
values in collective memory. The results of this study have practical implications for research
in axiological linguistics and applied ethics.
Keywords:
set phrases, judgment based on ethical criteria, moral convictions embedded in language, ethical normsReferences
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Uniwersytet Warmińsko-Mazurski w Olsztynie
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