Emotion in Greek proverbs

Abstract

This is a study ‘inside the proverb’. It draws its data from proverb collections and examines Greek proverbs both on romantic love and on love, both figurative and nonfigurative. The study aims at comparing the conceptualisation of these emotions in proverbs with the one in conventionalised expressions of everyday speech as captured in cognitive models approach (e.g., Kövecses 1990). The proverbs are examined with respect to the cognitive mechanisms they employ, the functions they perform, as well as the linguistic means (verb vs. noun) by which they are expressed. The results show that the two emotions are distinguished quantitatively and qualitatively regarding the aforementioned dimensions. The analysis shows that the conceptualisation of romantic love in cognitive models approach pertains to the subjective experience, while proverbs on both romantic love and love foreground the relationships within the community. In this sense, the cognitive models perspective is a ‘look inside the subject’ while that of proverbs is a ‘look from above onto the community’. Finally, the ‘Cause and Effect figurative pattern’ is highlighted as probably genre specific due to its great evidential power.