Anglo-American and Polish Proverbs with Direct Nominal Exponents of Traditional Values

List of Tables

Table 1. The universal value hierarchy established by Żuk (2016) serving as a model typology for the research of the value-related proverbs in the present study

Table 2. Logemes and sublogemes differentiated within life-related Anglo-American and Polish proverbs

Table 3. Logemes differentioned within freedom-related Anglo-American and Polish proverbs

Table 4. Logemes differentioned within dignity-related Anglo-American and Polish proverbs

Table 5. Logemes differentioned within family-related Anglo-American and Polish proverbs

Table 6. Logemes differentioned within religion-related Anglo-American proverbs

Table 7. Logems and sublogemes differentiated within truth-related Anglo-American and Polish proverbs

Table 8. Logemes and sublogemes differentiated within good/goodness-related Anglo-American and Polish proverbs

Table 9. Logemes and sublogemes differentiated in the body of beauty-related Anglo-American and Polish proverbs

Table 10. Logemes and sublogemes differentiated within God-related Anglo-American and Polish proverbs

Table 11. The quantitative analysis of value-related proverbial thematic categories embedded in Anglo-American and Polish paremiological wisdom

Table 12. The qualitative analysis presenting the subcategories – with the attributed logemes – singled out within the thematic categories of Anglo-American and Polish value-related proverbs

Table 13. The qualitative analysis of semantic themes (sublogemes) within the selected main logemes of the differentiated subcategories of Anglo-American and Polish value-related proverbs

Introductory Word: Aims, Method, and Research Material

The overall purpose ascribed to the present publication is an attempt at outlining the set of core traditional values embodied in language, more precisely in such meaningful linguistic units as proverbs coming from – fairly remote and specific – Anglo-American and Polish linguo-cultures. The study falls into an extensive and multifaceted field of Sociolinguistics, which, in a nutshell, ‘[…] is that part of linguistics which is concerned with language as a social and cultural phenomenon’ (Trudgill 2000: 21), hence, within its many research purposes it attempts, among others, ‘to gain an understanding of the values and viewpoints of a community in order to explain the behaviors and attitudes of its members.’¹

Nevertheless, to be more precise, taking into account the methodological assumptions of the analysis, the study fits within the multiaspectual research on the language-culture interface which has been variously called, among others, Anthropological Linguistics, Linguistic Anthropology, Ethnolinguistics, Cultural Linguistics (Głaz 2017a: 42) – with noticeable differences in the meanings of the terms and fields.

What is particularly relevant to the subject-matter of the present study is the fact that ‘in sociolinguistic terms, proverbs must be associated with some language community’ (Norrick 2014: 11), which, in turn, be speaks the afore-mentioned evident synergy of language and culture.² Importantly, the intricate relationship between the aforementioned concepts is researched and publicised by a comparatively new sub-field of linguistics called Linguistic Culturology (also termed, among others, Linguoculturology) – whose term is, nota bene, regarded as a working alternative to other collocations such as, among others, linguistic anthropology, cultural studies and cultural linguistics.³ And, in view of the fact that the main assumptions of the branch are adopted and underpinned in the empirical part of the present study, its fairly detailed specification is provided in a separate part later in the work.

Furthermore, it should be noted at the start that the publication has got an interdisciplinary character explained by the fact that both the theme of values and the study of proverbs, subject to the theoretical description and analytical investigation, are multi-aspectual, ergo, can be approached from several scientific perspectives. It is indeed a notable fact that the concept of values, their hierarchy and the process of valuation have been subject to analysis of diverse humanistic disciplines, including philosophy, sociology, psychology, education, and linguistics (Żuk 2016: 10–11). Likewise, ‘paremiologists usually look at proverbs from a more inclusive point of view as they draw on such fields as anthropology, art, communication, culture, folklore, history, literature, philology, psychology, religion, and sociology’ (Mieder 2004: xiii). For this reason – besides the primary linguistic and cultural considerations – arguments of various scholars who are referred to in the present research study are of, among others, philosophical, pedagogical, psychological or sociological nature.

In the monograph, proverbs with direct nominal exponents of traditional values excerpted from the Anglo-American and Polish corpora are analysed with the use of semantic approach – constituting one of the new approaches to contrastive paremiology and often applied in a linguo-cultural analysis (see e.g. Petrova 2014c: 254; Górska 2016: 76)⁴– and divided into several thematic categories related to the sphere of human values and principles. To put it more accurately, the primary purpose of the paremiological analysis – based on the explicit statement that ‘each culture gravitates around its own system of values’ (Petrova 2019: 292) – is an endeavour at providing a synchronic insight into the foremost social tendencies pertaining to the axiological aspects of life which have shaped both linguo-cultures. The secondary objective to be reached is to compare and contrast the material of selected Anglo-American and Polish proverbial texts under chosen keywords with a view to revealing certain distinctive aspects of the human values and moral principles or standards of behaviour within the selected field of life which have been considered as highly appreciated and thus perceived as desirable in order to keep their cultures alive. Otherwise stated, the chosen value-related proverbs of both languages are categorised in terms of the general idea they convey in order to search for common ground and specific differences with regard to axiological preferences testifying to certain cultural characteristics.

The latter point leads to another area of linguistic research which needs to be underscored because of its close link to the study’s objectives, viz., Intercultural Linguistics. The new academic pursuit – which is based on, among others, the achievements of linguistic culturology/cultural linguistics – deals with, among others, ‘comparing languages and above all cultural conceptualizations from several linguo-cultural societies with the intention of indicating differences and similarities and/or making aware of the cultural specificity of the language activities under investigation’ (Czachur 2017: 23).

Accordingly, in the study in order to provide the relevant information within the scope of the aforementioned research purposes the following questions are asked: What is the linguistic picture of core traditional values reflected in Anglo-American and Polish paremiologcal stocks? Will the results of the study within chosen thematic categories of two contrasted languages show the uniqueness of the analysed individual proverb systems in regard to the chosen semantic field? Do the proverbs point to common fundamental aspects of values which are shared by both linguo-cultures (that actually may hold true for the whole species homo sapiens) or to different features of values, considered prototypical in the languages under comparison, and thus implying large cultural peculiarities? Obviously, certain diversities are likely to occur or even fully expected as the discussed languages do not belong to the same language family. In this context, due to the adoption of the linguo-cultural perspective in the study, it is worth mentioning a different outlook, that is to say the notion of linguistic league/linguistic area (cf. Maćkiewicz 1992). It can be assumed that cultural issue, in particular the influence of the shared Mediterranean culture, plays the key role in shaping the hierarchy of values in both cultural communities under investigation (cf. Oleśkiewicz 2007). Consequently, in the vast majority of cases, differences might concern the verbalisation, not the core meaning.

Regarding the research questions provided above it needs to be clearly stated that the study of the linguistic picture of values is not fully comprehensive due to the fact that it merely focuses on Anglo-American and Polish proverbs with direct nominal exponents of values. Otherwise stated, all the selected and investigated proverbial items contain the chosen lexemes which name respective values (enumerated in part 3.1), therefore the study cannot offer a complete embodiment/representation of traditional values in the selected linguo-cultures. In order to provide an exhaustive research, all units, both those containing given lexemes and the ones with other lexical means should be studied. What is, however, important to highlight is the fact that the analysis might be regarded as complete in terms of the methodological assumptions of the present study, which are thoroughly described in the Introduction (3.1) to Chapter 3.

The final intention of the linguistic representation of traditional values in proverbs of two examined proverbial stocks is a strive for the explanation of the most apparent and commonly accepted values and judgments of what is important in life in both cultures being mindful of different places of proverbs’ origin and their specific geographical, historical, social, and cultural environments. However, while making the explanatory comments on similarities and differences of values encoded in proverbs of both languages only the most striking aspects are going to be outlined as it would be hardly possible to contrast and compare every single feature of values reflected in the analysed proverbs.

Last but important remark of the introductory part pertaining to the aforementioned purposefulness of the work constitutes the fact that the justification of the study in question – with the specific aims, method and the research mate rial – is predetermined by, among other things, the insufficiency of similar studies in the sphere of both axiolinguistics and contrastive paremiology (though linguo-cultural studies on multiword fixed expressions have had a long tradition). Therefore, it is to be hoped that this comprehensive and extensive book-length monograph will – at the very least – partially fill the research gap mentioned above.⁵

The analytical part of the study is based on well-known and unparalleled paremiographical compilations – one American and two Polish ones⁶– which, due to their extensive records of proverbial wisdom, give a fairly good representation of the discussed proverb lore in both languages (yet as clearly stated in the Introductions to the publications not all the proverbs used by the people living in the discussed respective linguo-cultures are included). The American proverbial texts encoding cultural values are selected from the first major proverb collection in the English language A Dictionary of American Proverbs (1992), henceforth DAP, edited by Wolfgang Mieder, Stewart A. Kingsbury, and Kelsie B. Harder. The dictionary, as underscored by Mieder (2004: 102), constitutes ‘a major resource in the hunt for authentic American proverbs.’⁷ In turn, the analytical research on Polish proverbs conveying various kinds of values and principles is conducted on the basis of fairly recent and detailed paremiographical references compiled by Danuta Masłowska and Włodzimierz Masłowski in their Wielka księga myśli polskiej ‘A great book of Polish thought’ (2005), henceforth WKMP, and Wielka księga przysłów polskich ‘A great book of Polish proverbs’ (2008), henceforth WKPP.⁸ Importantly, these three invaluable reference books of both languages serve as the major research tools not only for paremiologists (i.e. proverbs scholars) and paremiographers (i.e. proverb collectors) but also cultural historians, folklorists, linguists, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists and many other enthusiasts of language and culture.⁹

It is also significant to highlight the fact that DAP by Mieder et al. contains only true proverbs and their variants (15,000) (excluding proverbial expressions, proverbial comparisons, superstitions, wellerisms, and idioms), though some of them still may be questioned because of their complexity of language and style as well as chronological aspect. With respect to the Polish compilations, WKPP contains only proverbs (5,000) whereas WKMP aside from proverbs (3,000) also contains aphorisms of famous Polish thinkers, writers and other scholars (8,200).¹⁰ The final point to mention with reference to the selected collections, constituting the corpora for the analysis, is that the dictionary offered by Mieder et al. (1992) is based on field research that took place during almost fifty years in the second half of the twen tieth century in the United States and Canada while the two publications offered by Masłowska and Masłowski (2005, 2008) are the result of a usual method of compiling proverb dictionaries, i.e. from written sources.

The monograph is divided into three main chapters: Chapter 1 – presenting the theoretical background on focal issues pertaining to proverbs, Chapter 2 – out lining the subject of values, with the emphasis on values in language and its proverbial units, and Chapter 3 – dealing with the empirical semantic research of Anglo-American and Polish value-related proverbs, followed by their comparative and contrastive paremiological analysis.

More specifically, the first part of the first chapter undertakes features of proverbs, their definition matters, and functions. The second part of the chapter outlines the relation between language and culture, as a brief introduction to the ensuing core subject of proverbs and culture interface, and the field of Linguistic Culturology. The subsequent part gives general descriptions of contrastive paremiography and paremiology, and semantic approach to contrastive aspects of proverb analysis. Next, the second chapter delineates the subject of values and valuation, the value theory and major publications, as well as selected principal approaches to values. The succeeding part of the chapter deals with the issue of language as a source of information about the world of values. The corpus which will be dealt with in the analytical Chapter 3 of the publication is made up of five hundred fifty seven (557) proverbs – three hundred and twenty three (323) Anglo-American and two hundred and thirty four (234) Polish – belonging to the selected thematic categories related to the system of values, found in the three aforementioned major contemporary proverb collections, i.e. DAP, as well as WKPP and WKMP.

Last in order but not of importance, core traditional values encoded in Anglo-American and Polish paremiological utterrances are researched on the basis of the typology and hierarchy of values established by Żuk (2016) and, wherefore, analysed within three axiological spheres, that is to say, personal values, incorporating the value of life, freedom, and dignity; common values, comprising the value of family, community, and religion; absolute values represented by the value of truth, good, beauty, and God. A semantic analysis from a synchronic perspective – aiming at the specification of various generalised axiological themes of each selected value embedded in proverbs of languages under comparison – is followed by the comparative and contrastive cross-cultural arguments as well as their explanatory notes and comments.

1 See Linguistic Society of America (https://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/sociolinguistics (09.08.2018)).

2 For an accurate description of a synergistic relationship formed by language and culture, see, e.g. Samovar et al. (2013: 251). Note also that language plus culture interface is referred to in more detail in 1.2. of the present study.

3 More information about the intricate relation between language and culture as well as terminology connected with the field researching it is provided in part 1.2.2.

4 The research perspective applied for the present study of proverbs is further elaborated on in 1.3.

5 Note that the novelty of the research method introduced in the present monograph is identified and explained in greater depth both in the Introduction (3.1) to Chapter 3 as well as Conclusion.

6 The reason for choosing the unequal number of dictionaries from the languages constituting the corpora for the analysis in the study stems from the need to have the number of proverbs from two analysed language systems relatively similar. Therefore, the Anglo-American proverbs come from A Dictionary of American Proverbs (1992) which includes about 15,000 proverbs (and their variants) whereas two Polish compilations, i.e. Wielka księga myśli polskiej ‘A great book of Polish thought’ (2005) and Wielka księga przysłów polskich ‘The great book of Polish proverbs’ (2008) contain 3,000 and more than 5,000 proverbs respectively.

7 The controversies over the origin and authenticity of American proverbs are referred to in the Introduction (3.1) to Chapter 3 of the present work.

8 The selection of these Polish compilations, serving as analytical corpora for the present study, is explained in more detail in the Introduction (3.1) to Chapter 3.

9 Without doubt the dictionary offered by Mieder et al. (1992) possesses much broader readership and solid basis for scientific researches of linguists from different parts of the world, naturally, by reason of the English language and its global lingua franca dimension.