Phraseology in Intercultural Communication: A contrastive approach towards German and English phraseological units of fire and water

In the context of intercultural communication, non-native and native speakers interact with each other and often make use of idioms and other fixed expressions as “the colourful side of languages”, because they are used to it from their usual communication in their first languages. However, these fixed expressions constitute a special part of the language use due to particular characteristics, which will be explored further in this term paper. Consequently, communication between non-native and native speakers does not always runs smoothly when phraseological language comes into play. Amongst others, the cultural boundedness as well as native-like creative exploitations of the fixed expressions represent probable causes for misunderstandings. These aspects will be presented hereafter.