Phraseological Units with Zoonyms: A Look through the Window of the Cultural Influence

Abstract This paper discuss about the influence of the cultural aspects on the phraseological units with zoonyms (PHUz), expressions that carry a zoonym in their composition. The PHUz reflect the history and culture of the people who use them, and they include idiomatic expressions from Brazilian Portuguese language such as ser um bagre ensaboado (to be as slippery as an eel). We mobilize some theoretical foundations about Phraseology, including Manca (2008), Hall ([1976] 1989), Malinowski (1922, 1923, 1935), Corpas Pastor (1996), Corpas Pastor and Mena Martínez (2004), Lakoff and Johnson (1980, 1987, 1990), etc. Cultural aspects influence on the phraseological units and allow the appearance of interlinguistic coincidences, cultural windows that foment the universal dimension, and possess, in the conceptual metaphors, the origin of certain phraseologysms. The methodology presents some PHUz in Brazilian Portuguese with functional correspondences in English.