From body to emotion in Wolof: a Phraseology process

International audience The aim of this paper is (i) to show that phraseology is the main process for encoding emotions in Wolof through bodily expressions, and (ii) to explore the semantic perspectives on body part terms (henceforth BPs) afforded by Multiword Expressions (henceforth MWEs) and which are semantically related to the emotional situations.The paper comprises four parts. The first part reviews some relevant features of Wolof grammar. The second one considers the syntax of two kinds of MWEs that denote emotions: collocations and phraseologised compounds. The third part analyses the semantics of MWEs involving BPs. The fourth part proposes a set of perspectives on BPs based on the previous analyses. Language internal arguments are promoted, although certain semantic representations proposed by two related frameworks: Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) and Meaning-Text Theory (MTT), are also drawn upon.