Contrastive Analysis of Religiosity in American and Polish Proverbs from a Linguo-Cultural Perspective

The purpose ascribed to this paper is to compare and contrast the corpus of selected American and Polish religion-related paremias – featuring God as a constitutive element – with a view to revealing certain distinctive features in the attitude towards religiosity in two respective linguo-cultures. Hence, principally, the God-related proverbs from both languages are analysed by the use of the semantic approach and grouped in terms of the general messages they put across in order to search for common ground and specific differences. A secondary objective to be reached is an attempt at explanation of the most apparent peculiarities bearing in mind different places of proverb origin and their specific geographical, historical, social and cultural environments. In case of religion—but not exclusively—a paremiographical col-lection of the proverbs of a given nation constitutes an ethnography of the people, which if systematized can provide a profound insight into people’s, among others, philosophy and beliefs, moral truths and social values. Such a universally acknowledged axiom is underscored by an English philosopher Francis Bacon who said that The genius, wit, and spirit of a nation are discovered in its proverbs (Trench 2003, 46). The relation between language and culture is the most prominent postulate behind a contemporary scholarly discipline integrating linguistics and the study of culture called Linguistic Culturology. The pilot empirical section of the paper is based on two unparalleled and invaluable paremiographical collections. The American religion-related proverbial texts including the component of ‘God’ are selected from A Dictionary of American Proverbs (1992) edited by Wolfgang Mieder, Stewart A. Kingsbury, and Kelsie B. Harder. In turn, the analytical research on Polish God-related proverbs is conducted on the basis of a fairly recent and detailed paremiographical reference compiled by Danuta and Włodzimierz Masłowski in their Wielka Księga Przysłów Polskich ‘A big book of proverbs’ (2008)

Contrastive Analysis of Religiosity in American and Polish Proverbs from a Linguo-Cultural Perspective

The purpose ascribed to this paper is to compare and contrast the corpus of selected American and Polish religion-related paremias – featuring God as a constitutive element – with a view to revealing certain distinctive features in the attitude towards religiosity in two respective linguo-cultures. Hence, principally, the God-related proverbs from both languages are analysed by the use of the semantic approach and grouped in terms of the general messages they put across in order to search for common ground and specific differences. A secondary objective to be reached is an attempt at explanation of the most apparent peculiarities bearing in mind different places of proverb origin and their specific geographical, historical, social and cultural environments. In case of religion—but not exclusively—a paremiographical col-lection of the proverbs of a given nation constitutes an ethnography of the people, which if systematized can provide a profound insight into people’s, among others, philosophy and beliefs, moral truths and social values. Such a universally acknowledged axiom is underscored by an English philosopher Francis Bacon who said that The genius, wit, and spirit of a nation are discovered in its proverbs (Trench 2003, 46). The relation between language and culture is the most prominent postulate behind a contemporary scholarly discipline integrating linguistics and the study of culture called Linguistic Culturology. The pilot empirical section of the paper is based on two unparalleled and invaluable paremiographical collections. The American religion-related proverbial texts including the component of ‘God’ are selected from A Dictionary of American Proverbs (1992) edited by Wolfgang Mieder, Stewart A. Kingsbury, and Kelsie B. Harder. In turn, the analytical research on Polish God-related proverbs is conducted on the basis of a fairly recent and detailed paremiographical reference compiled by Danuta and Włodzimierz Masłowski in their Wielka Księga Przysłów Polskich ‘A big book of proverbs’ (2008)

Przysłowia/powiedzenia pogodowe jako sposoby nawoływania ludzi do podjęcia lub powstrzymania się od działania

The paper is an attempt to scrutinize and categorize the weather proverbs/sayings pertaining to human action with the use of a semantic approach, often applied in linguo-cultural analysis. Such weather texts are commonly based upon people’s (in particular, sailors, farmers, travellers, fishermen and shepherds) careful observations and scrutiny of atmospheric conditions, and among other so cial functions, they represent speech acts exhorting people to either do or refrain from doing something. The corpus for analysis constitutes a major paremiographical collection titled Weather wisdom: proverbs, superstitions, and signs (1996) edited by S. A. Kingsbury, M. E. Kingsbury and W. Mieder. Under selected key words, such as rain, cloud, sky, wind and sun, related to five occupations, i.e. sailors, farmers, travellers, fishermen and shepherds, two groups of the examined weather proverbs/signs/superstitions are distinguished and analysed in terms of their content and referent. In one category a prospective and/or suggested human action is not directly stated, e.g. Wind right, sun right, fish bite. The other category of proverbial weather texts constitutes the one where the weather statement overtly implies a need to take a certain activity, e.g. When wind comes before rain, soon you may make sail again. The obvious inference is that proverbs/signs/superstitions which express the relation between atmospheric conditions and human action either explicitly or implicitly exhort their hearers to make use of fine weather and take some steps or to escape inclement weather and avoid particular work. What remains of special interest in the pragmatic analysis of weather proverbial utterances, though, is the precise referent and/or the type of action that are presupposed by such texts, and which constitutes another major concern of the article in question.Celem artykułu jest próba analizy przysłów/powiedzeń dotyczących pogody w odniesieniu do ludzkiego działania z wykorzystaniem podejścia semantycznego, często stosowanego w analizie języko-kulturowej. Jednostki paremiologiczne zostały zaczerpnięte ze słownika pt. Weather wisdom: proverbs, superstitions, and signs (1996). Pod wybranymi słowami kluczowymi, takimi jak deszcz, chmura, niebo, wiatr i słońce, związanymi z pięcioma zawodami, tj. marynarzami, rolnikami, podróżnikami, rybakami i pasterzami, dwie grupy badanych przysłów/znaków/przesądów pogodowych są wyróżnione i analizowane pod kątem ich treści i potencjalnego adresata. Jak się okazuje w jednej kategorii bezpośrednie i/lub sugerowane działanie ludzkie nie jest wyraźnie stwierdzone, np. Wind right, sun right, fish bite. Druga kategoria tekstów pogodowych to taka, w której przysłowie/powiedzenie dotyczące pogody wyraźnie sugeruje potrzebę podjęcia określonej czynności, np. When wind comes before rain, soon you may make sail again. Ogólnym wnioskiem jest stwierdzenie, że przysłowia/znaki/przesądy, które wyrażają związek między warunkami atmosferycznymi a działaniem człowieka, bezpośrednio lub pośrednio zachęcają swoich odbiorców do korzystania ze sprzyjającej pogody i podjęcia danej czynności bądź też ostrzegają przed jakimś konkretnym działaniem ze względu na złe warunki pogodowe. To co interesuje najbardziej w pragmatycznej analizie przysłów/powiedzeń pogodowych jest dokładny odbiorca i/lub rodzaj czynności implikowany przez dany tekst paremiologiczny, i co stanowi kolejną istotną kwestię niniejszego artykułu.Rzeszów University, PolandAlefirenko, Nikoloi F. 2011. Linguistic culturology. Moscow: Flinta, Nauka.Arora, Shirley. 1991. Weather Proverbs: Some ‘Folk’ Views. In: Proverbium 8. 1–17.Austin, J. Langshaw. 1962. How to do things with words. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Baran, Anneli. 2015. Weather paremias – a special case of proverbiality. In: Proceedings of the 9th Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Proverbs. Tavira: IAP. 315–327.Bradbury, Nancy. 2002. Transforming Experience into Tradition: Two Theories of Proverb Use and Chaucer’s Practice. In: Oral Tradition, 17/2. 261–289.Briggs, Charles L. 1985. The Pragmatics of Proverb Performances in New Mexican Spanish. In: American Anthropologist 87. Wiley – American Anthropological Association. 793–810.Brunvand, J. Harold (ed.). 1996. American Folklore: An Encyclopaedia. New York and London: Garland Publishing. Inc.Dixon, Izabela. 2014. Evil is as evil does’: image-schematic superstitious proverbs and sayings. In: Proceedings of the 8th Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Proverbs. Tavira: IAP. 283–295.Dundes, Alan. 1984 (1989). On whether weather ‘proverbs’ are proverbs. In: Prover bium 1. 39–46; also In: A. Dundes. Folklore Matters. Knoxville: University of Ten nessee Press. 92–97.Firth, Raymond. W. 1926. Proverbs in native life, with special reference to those of the Maori. In: Folk–Lore 37. 134–153.Grzybek, Peter. 2014. Semiotic and semantic aspects of proverbs. In: Hrisztalina Hrisztova-Gotthardt, Melita Aleksa Varga (eds) Introduction to Paremiology: A Comprehensive Guide to Proverb Studies. Warsaw/Berlin: De Gruyter Open Ltd. 68–111.Grzybek, Peter. 2016. On whether weather proverbs are proverbs. Towards a fresh look at weather lore and meteo-prognostic paroemias. In: Outi Lauhakangas, Rui J.B. Soares (eds.) Proceedings of the Ninth Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Proverbs. Tavira: IAP. 273–290.Karasik, Vladimir I.; Slyshkin, Gennady G. 2003. Linguo-cultural domain as an element of language consciousness. In: The methodology of modern psycholinguistics. Moscow; Barnaul: Altai University Press. 75–80.Kingsbury, Stewart A., et al. 1996. Weather wisdom: proverbs, superstitions, and signs. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Inc.Kispál, Tamás. 2015. Paremiography: Proverb Collections. In: Hriszta lina Hrisztova-Gotthardt, Melita Aleksa Varga (eds). Introduction to Paremiology: A Comprehensive Guide to Proverb Studies. Warsaw/Berlin: De Gruyter Open Ltd. 229-242.Kleiber, Georges. 2000. Sur le sens des proverbs. In: Langages: La parole proverbiale, No. 139, Larousse. 39–58.Kochman-Haładyj, Bożena. 2018. American proverb lore about weather – an attempt of unilingual interpretation and categorization. In: Granbom-Herranen, Liisa & Lauhakangas, Outi (eds.) 11th Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Proverbs, ACTAS ICP 17 Proceedings. Tavira: AIP-IAP.Krikmann, Arvo. 1974a (1984). On Denotative Indefiniteness of Proverbs. Tallinn, Estonia: Academy of Sciences of the Estonian SST, Institute of Language and Literature.Krikmann, Arvo. 1974b (1985). Some Additional Aspects of Semantic Indefiniteness of Proverbs. Tallinn, Estonia: Academy of Sciences of the Estonian SST, Institute of Language and Literature.Krikmann, Arvo. 2007. ‘The Great Chain of Being as the background of personificatory and depersonificatory metaphors in proverbs and elsewhere. In: 1st Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Proverbs, Tavira: AIP-IAP. 1–24.Maslova, V. A. 2001. Lingvoculturology. uch.posobie dlya stud. vissch. zaved. – M.: Izdatelskii centr “Akademia”.Mieder, Wolfgang. 2004. Proverbs: A Handbook. Westport, Connecticut; London: Greenwood Press.Morris, Ch. William. 1938. Foundations of the Theory of Signs. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Morris, Ch. William. 1946. Signs, Language, and Behavior. New York: Braziller.Nyembezi, Cyril. 1963. Zulu Proverbs. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.Paczolay, Gyula. 1997. Some notes on the Theory of Proverbs, In: compte-rendu d’une conférence donnée lors du International Symposium en septembre 1997 à Liptovský Ján.Panchev, Ivo. 2005. Cultural concepts of “good” and “evil” as seen through the perceptual prism of Russian and Bulgarian language personalities. In: Text Processing and Cognitive Technologies, No 11, The VII-th International Conference Cognitive Modeling in Linguistic Proceedings v. 1. 388–394.Permyakov, Grigorij L. 1972. Text functions of paremias. In: Ibid., From Proverb to Folk-Tale. Moskva; 140–147. [Repr. In Grzybek, Peter (ed.), Semiotische Studien zum Sprichwort. Simple Forms Reconsidered I. Tübingen: Narr. 199–202. [Special Issue of: Kodikas Code – Ars Semeiotica. An International Journal of Semiotics; 7, 3/4].Petrova, Roumyana. 2003. Comparing Proverbs as Cultural Texts. In: Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship 20. 331–344.Petrova, Roumyana. 2010. Bulgarian Proverbs of Reciprocity: A Culturematic Study. In: Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship 27. 245–286.Petrova, Roumyana. 2014. A Linguocultural Study of Religiosity in the Modern Anglo–American Proverbs. Русе, Научни трудове на Русенския университет, т. 52, серия 5.2, Русе: Изд. център на РУ. 143–172.Searle, John. R. 1969. Speech acts. An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Searle, John. R. 1975. Indirect speech acts. In: P. Cole; J. L. Morgan (eds.). Syntax and semantics. New York/London: Academic Press. 59–82Szpila, Grzegorz. 2003. Krótko o przysłowiu. Kraków: Collegium Columbinum.Villers, Damien. 2014. The definition of the proverb and its satellites (le Proverbe et les Genres Connexes). In: Presses Académiques Francophones. Sarrebruck.Vorobyov, V. V. 1997. Lingua-culturological principals of presentation of educational material. In: The problems of concentrism, Moscow.Westermarck, Edward. 1930. Wit and Wisdom in Morocco: A Study of Native Proverbs. London: George Routledge.Yeager, Paul. 2010. Weather Whys: Facts, Myths and Oddities. New York: Penguin Group.Claridge John. The Shepherd of Banbury’s Rules to Judge of the Changes of the Weather, Grounded on Forty Years’ Experience http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24163/24163-h/24163-h.htm, also available at https://archive.org/details/shepherdbanbury00unkngoog. Retrieved in February 2018.Claridge, John. The Shepherds Legacy, Banbury 1670 https://digital.nmla.metoffice.gov.uk/file/sdb%3AdigitalFile%7C656f7d4c-f4cc-489f-a199-8a9f16f41320/. Retrieved in February 2018.Franklin, Benjamin. Poor Richard’s Almanac (1733–1758). https://archive.org/stream/poorrichardsalma00franrich/poorrichardsalma00franrich djvu.txt. Retrieved in February 2018.Humphreys, William Jackson. ‘Some useful weather proverbs’, https://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/IND43747864/PDF. Retrieved in May 2018.Oremus Bible Browser http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Matthew+16. Retrieved in May 2018.1013915