Proverbs

12 Key excerpts on "Proverbs"

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  Anglo-American and Polish Proverbs

  Linguo-Cultural Perspective on Traditional Values

  • Bozena Kochman-Haladyj, Agnieszka Uberman(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Peter Lang Group

    (Publisher)

  Proverbs – theoretical underpinnings Inquiry into the language-culture nexus 45 carriers of traditional views. They serve the continuity of tradition provided that they are passed down from generation to generation.” Therefore, the proponents of the cultural camp investigate Proverbs in their cultural envelope from which they cannot be abstracted without serious change (Bradbury 2002: 263). Such a train of thought accords both with the folkloristic and linguocultural viewpoint, according to which, the proverb system of a language is viewed as a linguistic portrayal of the lifestyle and values of the people speaking a common language, i.e., of their linguoculture (Petrova 2014b: 850). The two opposing theories offered by the cognitive and the cultural camps can be, nevertheless, reconciled by an integrated approach when both the cognitive and the cultural principles can be combined to account for proverb interpreta- tion (Buljan and Gradečak-Erdeljić 2013). 46 Such a concluding holistic approach accords with a declaration fostered earlier by Honeck and Welge (1997: 608) where, nonetheless, the authors still assert that before fulfilling a social function Proverbs must perform a psychological work in terms of categorizing events and motivating thoughts and behaviour. Another relevant observation which refers to the discussed point is made by Honeck (1997: 35), as documented in the fol- lowing quotation: […] Proverbs are generated from universal human knowledge about ideals, standards, and norms, which act as reference points in evaluating events. These reference points are intuitive forms of perfection. Cultures develop idiosyncratic linguistic means of expressing the perfection. Thus, Proverbs from other cultures may be hard or impos- sible for a nonnative to interpret, but once the cultural code is broken, the Proverbs can be seen to have a species-wide significance.

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  The Function of Proverbs in Discourse: The Case of a Mexican Transnational Social Network

  • Elías Domínguez Barajas(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  So one question surrounding Proverbs is why such a form of expression – that in the eye of many of our contempo-raries seems antiquated – should persist in certain social circles. And another equally intriguing question is whether the same expressive form can be assumed to have the same social function across different discourse communities. The only way to answer these questions is by studying the discourse communities and their practices internally, with the goal of documenting the practices and hypothesizing their impact within a multicultural society. With that notion in mind, the exploration of proverb use among members of an ethnic minority group in the United States garners importance on the basis of its focus on two dimensions of language use that are basic elements in any consideration of such socially momentous issues as education, identity forma-tion, social empowerment, and intercultural respect. These two dimensions are communicative behavior and cognitive ability – the respective provinces of soci-olinguistics and cognitive science, two disciplines that have been considered to be diametrically opposed by virtue of their philosophical positioning in relation to their object of study. The first is concerned with the examination of human behavior as it is grounded in particular language use and its context; whereas the latter looks to examine human thought processes and behavior by basing itself on the premise of universal brain functions. Sociolinguists has as a basic guiding principle the idea that language and soci-ety are inextricably bound, which is to say that every society’s linguistic behavior is a reflection or extension of that society’s cultural underpinnings. Values and beliefs are codified and manifested in all aspects of linguistic communication, such as popular expressions, shared vocabulary, oral traditions, conversational rules and modes of interaction, and even linguistic modes of creativity.

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  Lexical and Semantic Aspects of Proverbs

  • František Cermák(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Karolinum Press, Charles University

    (Publisher)

  Frequent Proverbs and Their Meaning: A Proposal of a Linguistic Description (The Core and Paremiological Minima Described) In Actas ICP 3, 2010 , 47–88, Čermák Proverbs 2014 , 47–90. Abstract Starting with the nominative function of Proverbs, which is to be distinguished from its mea-ning, one might ask where to start looking, should one try to get at the Proverbs meaning. Next to the traditional and subjective resources of Proverbs in traditional dictionaries, one might turn to a modern corpora and frequency-based proverb minima extracted from them. A number of basic lexico-semantic classes for English and Czech have been found in this way and are examined. 1. Introduction: Social Function of Proverbs and Their Nominative Power The major functions Proverbs have in human communities have been discussed for a long time many times over and examined from various aspects and a consensus seems to be that there is no substitute for them in social communication, even in our modern times and society. Proverbs are generally held to be universal for any society in its multifaceted nature and its language, too. Accordingly, the sheer mul-titude and varied social functions of Proverbs have led to designs of general classifi-catory frameworks or systems, too. However, should we reverse the traditional look of viewing Proverbs through their form first and start considering them from their meaning and linguistic functions, one might also ask other questions; such as, what type of propositional meaning Proverbs have in the universe of human thought that traditionally recur and are repeatedly found useful by successive generations. Hence a question that one could ask: Do Proverbs as specific language stereotypes cover , from this semantic or onomasiological po-int of view , any recurrent type of thought , based on shared and inherited experience?

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  A Proverb in Mind

  The Cognitive Science of Proverbial Wit and Wisdom

  • Richard P. Honeck(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  For Norrick (1994a), Proverbs are “doubly indirect” in that they act as quotes, a la Cram (1994), that come from the larger culture rather than the speaker, and their message is not isomorphic with their literal meaning. Norrick claimed that Proverbs are used to avoid double binds in interpersonal situations because the proverb allows the speaker “to disguise his true feelings, to leave himself an escape route, to offer his hearer choices and to indicate real or imagined consensus” (p. 148). Therefore, Proverbs are natural choices for the perlocutionary acts of instructing, consoling, warning, and the like. Norrick also argued that such effects are intentional and can have either short-term or long-term effects.

  In conclusion, although attempts to define the proverb have been interesting and highly informative, there is no generally agreed upon definition. A proverb can be regarded as A discourse deviant, relatively concrete, present (nonpast) tense statement that uses characteristic linguistic markers to arouse cognitive ideals that serve to categorize topics in order to make a pragmatic point about them. This mouthful will not completely satisfy all scholars including the author of this volume. The problem is that, like any good definition, it should flow from an adequate theory. Paremiology comes up a bit short on this score. Perhaps Archer Taylor (1931), one of the century’s premier proverb scholars, had this in mind when he penned the following (what could be called “Taylor’s Curse”):

  The definition of a proverb is too difficult to repay the undertaking; and should we fortunately combine in a single definition all the essential elements and give each the proper emphasis, we should not even then have a touchstone. An incommunicable quality tells us this sentence is proverbial and that one is not. Hence, no definition will enable us to identify positively a sentence as proverbial. Those who do not speak a language can never recognize all its Proverbs, and similarly much that is truly proverbial escapes us in Elizabethan and older English. Let us be content with recognizing that a proverb is a saying current among the folk. At least so much of a definition is indisputable, and we shall see and weigh the significance of other elements later, (p. 3)

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  Wise Words (RLE Folklore)

  Essays on the Proverb

  • Wolfgang Mieder(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The Linguistic Status of the Proverb

  David Cram*

  Linguists of various schools have investigated the language, grammar, structure, and form of Proverbs. There is now even a special field of phraseology that deals with all formulaic language, including Proverbs, quotations, idioms, twin formulas, etc. Lexicographers are also paying much closer attention to phraseological units, and the same is true for foreign language instructors. A few representative studies are Adam Makkai, Idiom Structure in English (The Hague: Mouton, 1972); Agnes Szemerkényi and Vilmos Voigt, “The Connection of Theme and Language in Proverb Transformations,” Acta Ethnographica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 21 (1972), 95–108; Aleksandr K. Zholkowskii, “At the Intersection of Linguistics, Paremiology and Poetics,” Poetics, 7 (1978), 390–332; Neal R. Norrick, How Proverbs Mean: Semantic Studies in English Proverbs (Amsterdam: Mouton, 1985); Terence Odlin, “Language Universals and Constraints on Proverbial Form,” Proverbium, 3 (1986), 125–151; and Dmitrij Dobrovols’kij, Phraseologie als Objekt der Universalienlinguistik (Leipzig: Verlag Enzyklopädie, 1988).

  In his clearly argued article David Cram states that the proverb should be viewed as a lexical element with a quotational status. The proverb is a lexical element in the sense that it is a syntactic string which is learned and reused as a single unit with a frozen internal and external structure. Its quotational status derives from the fact that Proverbs are typically “invoked” or “cited” rather than straightforwardly asserted. All of this is explained in the three major sections of this essay on (1) proverbial competence (the proverb as a lexical item), (2) proverbial performance (the proverb as a speech act), and (3) proverbial logic (proverb systems and proverbial thinking).

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  The Form and Function of Proverbs in Ancient Israel

  • John M. Thompson(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  18 Proverbs IN GENERAL one can identify widely differing types. Both with regard to content and to form the variations, even within a given culture and language, are many. And when one considers in addition the types that are peculiar to this or that culture or linguistic setting, then any attempt at precise definition becomes impossible. As Archer Taylor has written, The definition of a proverb is too difficult to repay the undertaking; and should we fortunately combine in a single definition all the essen-tial elements and give each the proper emphasis, we should not even then have a touchstone. 3 Yet, in a very general way, one may attempt to say what the proverb is. While the frequently quoted words of Lord Russell, The wisdom of many, the wit of one, 4 are somewhat brief, they do point to three very common features of proverbial lore: (1) an arresting and individually inspired form (wit of one), (2) a wide appeal and en-dorsement (of many), and (3) content which commends itself to the hearer as true (wisdom). Sometimes it would seem that uniqueness of form is almost entirely lacking, but the content has sufficient appeal to win a wide audience. For example, the familiar saying, You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink has little in its form which would appear to guarantee its survival; only the applicability of the content seems to be the sustaining factor. On the other hand, form may preserve a parable whose content is not otherwise capable of sustaining it. He who laughs last laughs longest might well not survive were it not for its striking assonance and alliteration. But take a proverb whose appli-cability is universal and whose form is compelling, and its survival seems assured. Look before you leap enjoins caution and displays alliteration; it is therefore doubly durable. Beyond this expansion of Russell's dictum one might only add that the proverb is usually short, easy to remember and most frequently transmitted orally.

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  African Proverbs as Epistemologies of Decolonization

  • George J. Sefa Dei, Isaac Nortey Darko, Jadie McDonnell, Suleyman M. Demi, Harriet Akanmori(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers

    (Publisher)

  Proverbs may also be excellent venues to learn a second language, particularly to students who speak the Indigenous language of the proverb. Using Proverbs as a literacy tools, reinforces the students’ first language and provides them with a familiar context as they explore the proverb in English (or any other second language). In literacy learning, this interaction, where the familiar and unfamiliar meet, is where the magic happens—the learning of the new language through the familiar contextual analysis. In concluding this book we reiterate one of the important lessons to be learned. Indigenous Proverbs as epistemology is about a way of knowing that can be explored in terms of how local peoples understand, theorize, create meanings and engage in everyday practice. African Proverbs convey particular conceptions of the “human” and “humanness” as about community, community building, social responsibility, ethics, propriety, harmony, order, relationality, reciprocity and com- plementarity. These are important social-cultural values and philosophical ideas that are useful in youth socialization, education and adult learning. These cul- tural values and ideas also help us to convey the sense of the multiple ways of sense and meaning making and/or knowledge production about civic responsi- bilities. Proverbs as epistemologies inform society and everyday living. They con- vey a body of philosophical tenets that show the abilities of peoples to theorize about their worlds and the particular relations between society, culture and Nature, including physical and metaphysical realms of social existence. Understanding the embedded meanings of Proverbs reveals the complexity of African and Indigenous peoples’ ways of knowing. The study of these Proverbs is also about an under- standing of the sociology of knowledge and not just epistemology. As Indigenous science, Proverbs point to the curious interface of epistemology and the sociology of knowledge.

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  African Languages/Langues Africaines

  Volume 3 1977

  • P. Ak?j?obi Nwachukwu, P. Akụjụobi Nwachukwu(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  INSIDE THE Proverbs: A SOCIOLINGUISTIC APPROACH

  TSHIMPAKA YANGA

  I: INTRODUCTION

  Proverbs have been approached from the point of view of their content, structure, message, functions and origins in an effort to explain their place in the whole human society. In the present study, they are viewed as ‘speech acts’ (See Stankiewcz 1960:71; Austin 1962; Searle 1969; Sadock 1974). The idea that Proverbs as a ‘genre’ be analyzed in the framework of the speech acts theory is suggested by Sherzer and Darnell’s statement that: ‘Speech acts may be embedded in larger units such as genres, on the one hand, and discourse structures, speech events, and speech situations, on the other’ (1972:550).

  Purpose

  In this presentation, a new way of investigating this seemingly wide open area is proposed with the hope that it will contribute to the general comprehension of the social phenomena. The paper has two goals:

  1) The discovery of what may be called the ‘illocutionary force’ (Searle) that underlies any utterance of a proverb. In fact, one of the main concerns in the present work is to show that all Proverbs have but one íllocutionary force, with various functions.

  2) The study of the application of this illocutionary force in a speech situation. The reason that Proverbs are treated in terms of speech acts is the belief that the user of Proverbs is not only uttering words, but is performing linguistic acts for a social purpose in a particular speech community. Proverbs should be viewed as ‘performative utterances’ (see Austin 1962); that is, they are statements that function as deeds.

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  Analytic Essays in Folklore

  • Alan Dundes(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Applied to Proverbs, for example, it would be concerned with precisely the sort of rules that the Ibo youth quoted at the outset had not learned. In order to study the ethnography of the speaking of folklore (or, ethnography of speaking folklore, more concisely), clearly one cannot be limited to texts. One needs texts in their contexts. One needs to ask not only for Proverbs, and for what counts as a proverb, but also for information as to the other com-ponents of the situations in which Proverbs are used. What are the rules govern-ing who can use Proverbs, or particular Proverbs, and to whom? Upon what occasions? In what places? With what other persons present or absent? Using what channel (e.g. speech, drumming, etc.)? Do restrictions or prescriptions as to the use of Proverbs or a proverb have to do with particular topics? With the specific relationship between speaker and addressee? What exactly are the contributing contextual factors which make the use of Proverbs, or of a particu-lar proverb, possible or not possible, appropriate or inappropriate? Notice that such a study of context is not the same as the more generalized study of functions of folklore. One can say that Proverbs sum up a situation, pass judgment, recommend a course of action, or serve as secular past pre-cedents for present action; but to say this does not tell us what the particular 37 function of a particular proverb used by a particular individual in a particular setting is. There is merit in prefacing a collection of Proverbs (or of any other form of folklore) with a discussion of the various general functions of the ma-terials (cf. Turner 1960), but this does not substitute for the accurate report-ing of contextual data. In a way, it seems to be an absurdly simple request to ask that students of folklore record the contexts of their texts.

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  Be Wise, My Son, and Make My Heart Glad

  An Exploration of the Courtly Nature of the Book of Proverbs

  • Christopher B. Ansberry(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter

    (Publisher)

  The distinction between the oral stage and the written stage of production serves as an essential criterion for establishing the origin of the material in the sentence literature. However, this distinction does not account for the setting or social location of a given proverb. Any attempt to isolate the origin of a proverb, whether oral or written, is hypothetical. Since Proverbs are situationally oriented, open-ended sayings that cut across social barriers and remain relevant to a wide variety of people, 2 it is difficult to determine the origin of a saying in a collection. The original context of a saying in a collection is usually irrecoverable, and the content of a saying cannot provide an absolute indication of its origin. 3 The meaning of a proverb is made clear only when it is cast in a performance context, where the accompanying social situation can help to identify the function and significance of the saying. 4 Performance analysis is most problematic in the book of Proverbs, however, for the sayings have been removed from their original context(s) and assembled into a collection. 5 Yet this loss of a live, cultural context does not mean that a proverb in a collection is “dead.” 6 Once a proverb is grafted into a collection it receives a new performance context, viz., the literary context, the Sitz im Buch . 7 Whether individual sayings in the sentence literature originated in an aristocratic or a plebeian context, their arrangement and re-contextualization into a collection Admonitions in Proverbs ; J. Blenkinsopp, Wisdom and Law in the Old Testament: The Ordering of Life in Israel and Early Judaism (Oxford Bible Series; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983); J. L. Crenshaw, “Prohibitions in Proverbs and Qoheleth,” in Priests, Prophets and Scribes: Essays on the Formation and Heritage of Second Temple Judaism in Honour of Joseph Blenkinsopp (ed. J. W. Wright et al.; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992), 115–24.

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  How Proverbs Mean

  Semantic Studies in English Proverbs

  • Neal R. Norrick(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Like the slogan and unlike the 3.5 A linguistically founded proverb definition 79 proverb, the aphorism is not typically conversational nor even spoken. If an aphorism occurred in a conversation at all, it would be quoted as an aphorism and as the work of a particular author. The aphorism arises in and becomes popular through the written rather than the spoken medium. We associate the aphorism with a particular author, just as we associate the slogan with a particular group or cause. A further important distinction between the aphorism and the proverb lies in the literary character of the aphorism with its primary aim of entertaining vis-d-vis the character of the proverb as folklore with its primarily didactic aim. Although the aphorism is a more literary genre than the slogan and is less likely to imitate proverb structure or style, these tendencies are not pronounced enough to allow differentiation of the aphorism from the slogan or the proverb. So as in the former case, we must rely on functional and thematic criteria. Bearing in mind the distinctions drawn between the proverb and other traditional genres in the previous section, we can propose as a supercultural definition of the proverb the follow-ing: the proverb is a typically spoken, conversational form with didactic function and not associated with any particular source.

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  The Language of the Kingdom and Jesus

  Parable, Aphorism and Metaphor in the Sayings Material Common to the Synoptic Tradition and the Gospel of Thomas

  • Jacobus Liebenberg(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter

    (Publisher)

  In agreement with Burke's (1941: 256) statement that Proverbs are 'strategies for dealing with certain situations', it seems reasonable to ask, not only for what kind of (reference) situations a proverb is apt to be a strategy, but also, how the proverb itself is construed to be able to serve as a basis for creating and transmitting the analogy between proverb situation and reference situation. With regard to Seitel's model, the central question here would be what kind of relationships actually are created, or modelled, between the two entities A and B which, in the end, only provide the possibility of creating the analogy to the entities C and D of the reference situation. (Italics mine) In the case of narratives like the Synoptics where we have Proverbs used by individuals within a narrative the picture gets even more complicated since we have to remind ourselves constantly that all these contexts are the doing of the author who utilises the narrative as a whole for his own pragmatic aims. The study of Fontaine (1982), Traditional sayings in the Old Testament, represents a first, systematic attempt to understand proverbial sayings in the Old Testament narratives and prophetic literature in terms of the way in which they were contextualised by making use of the insights from the fields of folklore and paroemiology. Note, the text of Grzybek was originally published in German as the introduction to Semiotische Studien zum Sprichwort -Simple Forms Reconsidered I. Grzybek, P 1984 (ed). An updated version of that text was then published in English in Proverbium. An International Yearbook of Proverb Scholarship, vol. 4 (1987); 39-85. I quote from the article as published in the electronic journal De Proverbia, vol 1, no 1. Proverb, Aphorism and Context 437 To put it differently, without context, the distinction proverb-aphorism becomes impossible.

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