Abstract
Almost every culture has its unique proverbs or traditional sayings that express a perceived truth based on common sense or experience. Although the wisdom that traditional sayings convey is not necessarily a trustworthy guide to the cultural values of a specific culture, they may, to some extent, reflect those values. If a link between cultural values and proverbs is acknowledged, old proverbs might illustrate past values, while a new proverb repertoire probably reflects the mores and values of modern times. When examining such proverbs and sayings, an underlying cultural portrait may be outlined. Has this cultural portrait changed over time? In order to answer this question, the chapter will present an overview of Portuguese proverbs concerning women as they are presented by dictionaries published from the 17th to the 21st century; the analysis of these sayings allows for an assessment of how the image of the female figure in the Portuguese society has evolved across time.
TopBackground
There is a longstanding debate as to whether proverbs of a particular culture reflect the values of that specific culture. Since proverbs are often borrowed from one language (and culture) into another, they may be reflections of broad human experience, not a certain culture's unique viewpoint (Grauberg 1989). Nevertheless, a study of English proverbs by Unseth (2015) shows a significant increase in proverbs that reflect more casual attitudes toward sex from 1960 onwards, which seems to point to a link between cultural values and proverbs. So, though proverbs should not be trusted as a direct link to the values of a culture, some cultural values may be illustrated by proverbs: “The cultural portrait painted by proverbs may be fragmented, contradictory, or otherwise at variance with reality […] must be regarded not as accurate renderings but rather as tantalizing shadows of the culture which spawned them” (Webster, 1982, p. 173).
It is not easy to define the notion of proverbiality. Proverbs are generally sentential statements, recognizably lexicalized constructions, whose meanings have crystallized in the linguistic community and it is precisely this crystallization (sentences are repeated over time, without major changes) that gives them formal and semantic stability. Transmitted from generation to generation, they are part of the folklore of a people and, as with superstitions and legends, they become a moral authority by repetition, and are rarely questioned. Apparently, their function is to convey a cultural legacy of advice based on the experience and wisdom of the ancients. Precisely for this reason, the ideology present in proverbs is often judgmental and moralizing, showing models of behaviour that may have already fallen into disuse.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Proverb Collection: Proverbs list, alphabetized, or arranged by topic or by keywords.
Paremiography: The study of the collection and writing of proverbs. It is a sub-field of paremiology.
Anti-Proverb: Proverb produced by changing the wording of a traditional proverb or by adding something to a traditional proverb for various purposes. The expression anti-proverbs , applied to deliberate proverbs transformations, was coined by Mieder (in Doyle, Mieder & Shapiro, 2012).
Lexicography: A subfield within linguistics that involves compiling, writing, or editing dictionaries.
Proverb: Short expression of popular wisdom, generally with some moral lesson.
Paremiology: Philological research area whose main subject is the study of proverbs. The basic notions, among others, include defining proverbs, main proverb features, origin, collecting and categorization of proverbs.
Saying: A quotation from a famous person or a traditional orally-transmitted piece of wisdom.