SHIRLEY L. ARORA
THE PERCEPTION OF PROVERBIALITY*
Probably the most consistently accepted generalization
concerning proverbs, in virtually any language, is that they
are "traditional," and that it is their traditionality--the
sense of historically-derived authority or of
community-sanctioned wisdom that they convey--that makes
them "work." Most definitions, to be sure, reflect the
scholar's concern for proverbs as an analytical category;
they are attempts to answer the question, as Seitel puts it,
"How does one recognize that which he is going to
study?"1 Even in Archer
Taylor's oft-quoted--and sometimes criticized--statement to
the effect that "an incommunicable quality tells us this
sentence is proverbial and that one is not," the "us" is, by
implication, the community of proverb scholars, for Taylor
goes on to remark that "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."2 Still,
traditionality--whether considered in terms of age or
currency--tends to be central to the delineation of the
proverb as an ethnic genre also. Certainly this is true in
Spanish, the language with which I shall be principally
concerned here, and probably in most other languages as
well. Spanish-speaking informants typically characterize the refrán as "an old saying," "a popular saying,"
"a teaching in oral tradition," and so on.3
The full text of this
article is published in De
Proverbio - Issue
1:1995, an
electronic book, available from amazon.com and other leading Internet booksellers.
In the opening paragraph of their well-known essay on
"Proverbs and the Ethnography of Speaking Folklore," Arewa
and Dundes cite as an illustration of proverb use a
situation in which a parent seeks to direct a child's action
or thought by means of a proverb, thereby projecting "the
guilt or responsibility for directing the child . . . on to
the anonymous past, the anonymous folk":
A child knows that the proverb used by the
scolding parent was not made up by that parent. It is a
proverb from the cultural past whose voice speaks truth
in traditional form. It is the "One," the "Elders," or
the "They" in "They say," who direct. The parent is but
the instrument through which the proverb speaks to the
audience.4
In the study thus introduced, the authors provide a
series of interesting examples of Yoruba proverbs in
context, specifically in the context of the upbringing of
children. But they leave unanswered a particularly
intriguing question raised by the opening statement just
quoted: how, indeed, does the child, with his or her limited
experience, "know" that the proverb was "not made up by the
parent"? Presumably he or she has not heard the saying
before, at least not from anyone other than the parent. How
is it then identified as a "voice from the cultural past"
rather than the parent's own words? How, for that matter,
and at what age, does the concept of that past take shape?
Such questions are outside the scope of the Arewa-Dundes
study, and of the present one as well, although they might
suggest fruitful directions of investigation in regard to
the understanding or use of proverbs by children.5 Yet the passage quoted has interesting applications as well
to the broader question of how proverbs work in normal,
everyday contexts of all kinds. With a few changes-with the
substitution of more general terms in place of "parent" and
"child"--it becomes a succinct statement of the presumed
role of traditionality in the effectiveness of proverb
use:
The listener knows that the proverb used
by the speaker was not made up by that
person. It is a proverb from the cultural past whose
voice speaks truth in traditional terms. It is the "One,"
the "Elders," or the "They" in "They say," who direct.
The proverb user is but the instrument through
which the proverb speaks to the audience.
The distinctive feature of this passage, in contrast to
most descriptions of proverb use, is its emphasis on the
listener rather than the speaker. We are accustomed to
thinking of the speaker's purpose in using a proverb, and
indeed the passage cited begins with a consideration of
precisely that purpose: the shifting of responsibility for
what is said away from the speaker and "on to the anonymous
past, the anonymous folk." But the speaker is only half of
the "interaction situation," to use Seitel's term.6 The success of a proverb performance as such must depend
ultimately on the listener's ability to perceive that he or
she is being addressed in traditional, i.e., proverbial,
terms. If the listener does not reach that conclusion, the
performance of the proverb as a proverb must fail,
although the speaker's opinions, comments, etc., may have
the desired effect for other reasons.
The listener's identification of a proverb as proverbial
is actually a two-fold process, involving first the abstract
notion of the genre "proverb" as it is culturally or
ethnically conceived, and secondly a means of assigning
individual utterances to that genre. The latter step is the
crucial one in the performance context. It is, in fact, less
than accurate to describe this process as one of "knowing"
that a particular saying was not made up by the speaker.
That is something only the speaker can "know." The listener
assumes on the basis of certain types of evidence that such
is the case. He may in fact be mistaken, but it will not
matter. The utterance in question--"truly proverbial,"
i.e., traditional, or not--will function as a proverb, with
all the accompanying weight of authority or community
acceptance that the concept implies, as the direct result of
the listener's perception, right or wrong, of its
"proverbiality."
The full text of this
article is published in De
Proverbio - Issue
1:1995, an
electronic book, available from amazon.com and other leading Internet booksellers.
If a non-traditional saying is perceived by the hearer as
a proverb, and therefore functions as a proverb, should it
be considered a proverb by the investigator as well?
Probably not; we need to retain our analytical categories to
give order to our subject matter and to keep it within
manageable bounds. It is important, nevertheless, to be
aware of the criteria by which the speakers of a language
judge their own proverbs, both on an abstract, generic level
and at the specific level of the individual saying. A
greater appreciation of the processes involved in the
hearer's perception of proverbiality may help us to
understand why it is so very difficult to arrive at an all
inclusive definition of a proverb, and why attempts to
analyze the proverb on a cross-cultural or universal basis
invariably meet with but limited success. And there are even
broader implications as well. Archer Taylor affirms, in his
chapter on "The Origins of the Proverb," that "the
acceptance or rejection by tradition which follows
immediately upon the creation of the proverb is a factor in
its making quite as important as the first act of invention"
(p. 35). One could say more precisely "the acceptance or
rejection by the hearer," for it is with the individual
hearer that "tradition" begins and--with each successive
performance--will be either extended or cut short. By
exploring in greater detail the mechanisms underlying the
perception of proverbiality, we will be enlarging our
understanding of an aspect of the proverb that is indeed
"quite as important as the first act of invention."26
NOTES
*Previously published in Proverbium, 1 (1984), pp. 1-38 and in Wolfgang
Mieder, ed., Wise Words: Essays on the Proverb (New
York: Garland, 1994), pp. 3-29
1 Peter
Seitel, "Proverbs: A Social Use of Metaphor," Genre, 2 (1969), 144. The study is reprinted in Wolfgang Mieder and
Alan Dundes, eds., The Wisdom of Many: Essays on the
Proverb (New York: Garland, 1981), pp. 122-139, with the
passage cited appearing on p. 124.
2 Archer
Taylor, The Proverb (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1931), p. 3.
3 These and
similar quotations elsewhere in this study on the nature of
the refrán are translations from definitions
supplied by Spanish-speaking informants of varying national
background. The terms refrán and dicho ("saying") are often used interchangeably, although for some
informants dicho is a broader term, i.e., a refrán is a dicho but not all dichos are refranes. The term proverbio is known
to informants but seems to be little used; the various
subcategories (adagio, máxima, sentencia, etc.) differentiated by some proverb investigators in
Spanish are almost universally ignored.
4 E. Ojo
Arewa and Alan Dundes, "Proverbs and the Ethnography of
Speaking Folklore," American Anthropologist, 66, No.
6, Pt. 2 (1964), p. 70.
5 The
ability of children to understand and to use proverbs is
studied in dissertations by Patricia J. Brewer ("Age,
Language, Culture, Previous Knowledge and the Proverb as
Social Metaphor," Diss. University of Pennsylvania 1979) and
John Wayne Chambers ("Proverb Comprehension in Children,"
Diss. University of Cincinnati 1977). Catherine Hudson deals
more briefly with children's ability to recognize as well as
understand proverbs in "Traditional Proverbs as Perceived by
Children from an Urban Environment," Journal of the
Folklore Society of Greater Washington, D.C., 3 (1972),
17-24.
6 Peter
Seitel, "Saying Haya Sayings: Two Categories of Proverb
Use," in J. David Sapir and J. Christopher Crocker, eds., The Social Use of Metaphor: Essays on the Anthropology of
Rhetoric (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1977), p. 77.
26 A
preliminary version of this paper was presented at the
annual meeting of the California Folklore Society held at
the University of California, Berkeley, April 18-20,
1980.
APPENDIX
The following is the list of proverbs and
pseudo-proverbs in the order in which they appeared in the
survey. The English translations provided here were not
included on the list.
1. No es oro todo lo que
relumbra.
(All that glitters is not gold.)
2. Más vale llegar a tiempo que ser
convidado.
(It's better to arrive on time than to be invited.)
3. El dinero del tonto se gasta pronto.
(The fool's money is soon spent.)
4. Hijo de cabra, mucho salta.
(The goat's child jumps a lot.)
5. No tiene la culpa el ladrón sino el que le da
ocasión.
(It's not the thief who's to blame but he who gives him the
opportunity.)
6. El que nace para leer, del cielo le caen los
libros.
(He who is born to read, the books fall down on him from
heaven.)
7. Más vale perder que volver a encontrar.
(It's better to lose than to find again.)
8. Aserrín, aserrán, si tú no lo
pagas no te lo dan.
Aserrín, aserrán, if you don't pay for
it, they don't give it to you.)
9. No compres fiado porque te resulta más
caro.
(Don't buy on credit because it will turn out to be more
expensive.)
10. Si te levantas temprano, tendrás un día
provechoso.
(If you get up early you'll have a profitable day.)
11. Si te duele la cabeza, cierra los ojos y
reza.
(If your head aches, close your eyes and pray.)
12. Cada uno tiene su destino y no lo puede
cambiar.
(Each one has his destiny, and he cannot change it.)
13. Así son las cosas: para algunos, espinas, para
otros, rosas.
(That's the way things are: for some, thorns, for others,
roses.)
14. No hay regalo desinteresado.
(There is no disinterested gift.)
15. A veces las cosas que menos cuestan resultan
más costosas.
(Sometimes the things that cost least turn out more
expensive.)
16. No hay peor aprendiz que el que no quiere
saber.
(There is no worse apprentice than the one who doesn't want
to know.)
17. El que está solo es más pobre que el
que está sin dinero.
(He who is alone is poorer than he who is without
money.)
18. El más sabio hace tonterías de vez en
cuando.
(The wisest man does foolish things once in a while.)
19. El muerto a la tumba y el vivo a la rumba.
(The dead to the tomb and the living to the rumba
[dance].)
20. Caballo viejo no pierde camino.
([An] old horse doesn't lose the way.)
21. No hay campana sin badajo, ni sopa buena sin
ajo.
(There is no bell without a clapper, nor good soup without
garlic.)
22. Noche y mañana canta la rana.
(Night and morning the frog sings.)
23. Hay que saber aprovechar y no dejarse
engañar.
(One must know how to take advantage and not let oneself be
deceived.)
24. El que se queja, faltas tiene.
(He who complains, has faults.)
25. No seas como los conejos, que sólo miran desde
lejos.
(Don't be like rabbits, that only watch from far away.)
Shirley L. Arora
Department of Spanish and Portuguese
University of California at Los Angeles
Los Angeles,
California 90095-1532
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