Niedzwiedzia Przysluga?Bear’s Favor? Hidden Garden behind the Concrete Proverbs: Cognitive-Semantic Analysis of Proverbs in Persian, Polish and Spanish

Abstract

Proverbs help us understand how the society works at large and what are the main concerns regarding the environment, people-to-people exchange and notions of liberty, freedom and values.  In some cultures such as the Iranian one, the way one uses proverbs depends on the generation one finds herself in. Generation-gap provides opportunity to transfer some abstract and complicated concepts, not available in modern life, through the use of proverbs. From childhood, by hearing proverbs from parents and grand-parents, children begin grasping some important national and even religious concepts. In order to represent a rather international, holistic view and not language-specific, we analyzed further Polish, French and Spanish proverbs, whenever deemed necessary. The present paper through cognitive-semantic and content analysis aims to reveal the implied systems of value, ethics and morality realized through proverbs. The results clearly indicate that proverbs cover different systems of values through elements such as artifacts, animals, human body parts and even imaginary, nature-derived elements.