The ways of biblical quotations are mysterious: change of register and snowclones in Spanish and German from a constructivist point of view

Abstract

The subject of this essay is Bibleisms in German and Spanish which, in addition to their original religious and often moralizing meaning, have, over time, developed additional ironic and/ or humorous semantics. Some of them may undergo, alongside the change of register, a process of constructionalization derived from their lexical variability in discourse. In this way, a high number of anti-proverbs (Mieder 1982) can lead to the creation of patterns and the emergence of semi-schematic constructions or snowclones. Using the Sketch Engine corpora esTenTen18 (https://www.sketchengine.eu/), and deTenTen20 (https://www.sketchengine.eu/) the aim of this corpus-based study is to explore the lexical variability of the biblical quotation No solo de pan vive el hombre/ Der Mensch lebt nicht vom Brot allein (Man shall not live by bread alone) (Matthew 4:4) in Spanish and German in order to uncover a possible phenomenon of constructionalization. Besides, it will also be explained whether the two languages display productivity to the same extent.