Cultural knowledge in the meaning of phraseological units: the case of certain zoomorphic verbal expressions in Mexico and Cuba

Abstract

The main interest of this article lies in presenting cultural knowledge as the basis for the creation of meanings in zoomorphisms. Most authors on the subject focus on the fact that expressions that are based on animals take from them some quality or behavior that is later used in the expressions figuratively to metaphorize some aspect of the human being.

However, although this statement is correct in most cases, the comparative analysis of utterances from two linguistic variants of Spanish reveals that each culture focuses on different elements of animals, whether influenced by experience or by other types of shared knowledge, to express qualities, actions, facts, ways, etc. In this article, a comparative analysis of some zoomorphic verbal phrases from the Spanish of Mexico and Cuba is carried out to verify how the expressions of each culture configure their meanings based on different aspects of the animals.