Resumen de Prototypical Words for Core Categories in French and English: Vocabulary as a Window to culture
While some guiding principles have been proposed for the selection and presentation of vocabulary, it is unclear whether these notions have been applied systematically, particularly in ways that highlight cultural nuances. To explore the cultural foundations of vocabulary, this study garnered prototypical words for Hexagonal French (the French of France) and American English for fundamental categories such as “Breakfast foods and beverages” and “Professions, jobs, and trades.” An elicitation task based on Prototype Theory and Lexical Availability invited 100 native speakers to spontaneously recall keywords for core categories to compare prototypical vocabulary in French and English. The items that were salient for speakers of the two languages were often quite different, provoking hypotheses about culture and category conceptualization. The data highlight possibilities not only for vocabulary selection and presentation in pedagogical resources, but also for activities allowing learners to explore cultural differences from the beginning of a language curriculum.
