A Proverb in Mind

The Cognitive Science of Proverbial Wit and Wisdom

Richard P. Honeck

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134741373
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Desarrollo personal
• Subtopic: Habilidades de escritura y presentación

SEE SHORT BLURB FOR ALTERNATE COPY... A complex, intriguing, and important verbal entity, the proverb has been the subject of a vast number of opinions, studies, and analyses. To accommodate the assorted possible audiences, this volume outlines seven views of the proverb -- personal, formal, religious, literary, practical, cultural, and cognitive. Because the author's goal is to provide a scientific understanding of proverb comprehension and production, he draws largely on scholarship stemming from the formal, cultural, and cognitive views. The only book about proverbs that is written from the standpoint of cognitive science, cognitive psychology, and experimentalism, this text provides a larger, more interdisciplinary perspective on the proverb. It also gives a theoretically more integrated approach to proverb cognition. The conceptual base theory of proverb comprehension is extended via the "cognitive ideals hypothesis" so that the theory now addresses issues regarding the creation, production, and pragmatics of proverbs. This hypothesis also has strong implications for a taxonomy of proverbs, proverb comprehension, universal vs. culture-specific aspects of proverbs, and some structural aspects of proverbs. In general, the book extends the challenge of proverb cognition by using much of what cognitive science has to offer. In so doing, the proverb is compared to other forms of figurative language, which is then discussed within the larger rubric of intelligence and the inclination for using indirect modes of communication. Child developmental and brain substrates are also discussed.

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Views of the Proverb

Most adults know some proverbs. Proverbs are an intuitive aspect of their mental functioning. What is less intuitive is how proverbs are used and understood. This volume takes up this challenge. It is not an easy one, however, because proverbs draw on most of the mind’s powers. Moreover, a great deal of proverb mind work can be accomplished in a brief moment. Our emphasis, therefore, is on the mental processes that occur in the actual use of proverbs.

Because proverbs are complex, an interdisciplinary perspective is needed to explain how people use and understand them. Enter cognitive science, a discipline dedicated to solving the puzzle of the mind by using concepts that originate within psychology, linguistics, neurology, artificial intelligence, and the philosophy of language and mind. The puzzle has not been completely solved, but good progress has been made. Thus cognitive science provides our best prospect for revealing the secrets of the proverb.

Organization and Goals

This volume has seven chapters. In this first chapter seven general views of the proverb are delineated, three that have avowed scientific goals and four that do not. The focus is on the cognitive view, the leitmotif for the study. This chapter also serves to acquaint the reader with the proverb. Chapter 2 discusses proverbs in conjunction with five other forms of figurative language: simile, metaphor, oxymoron, idiom, and metonymy. As we look into proverb processing in chapter 3 it is discovered that practically every major issue in the study of mind is raised. Chapter 4 describes both old and new theories of proverb comprehension and examines their ability to explain proverb microcognition (i.e., the memory and thought interactions that occur during proverb use). Chapter 5 travels under, inside, and outside the proverb while trying to understand how it is created, what its internal dynamics are, and how it applies to various events. Because it takes a healthy, reasonably intelligent 7-year-old brain to comprehend a proverb, the topics of brain, mental development, and intelligence are treated together in chapter 6. Speculation on new studies, new theories, and new applications forms the core of chapter 7.

This volume does not intend merely to summarize or integrate prior analyses of the proverb. In practically every chapter, the author has theorized and speculated about a number of matters. In some cases new perspectives or theoretical ideas about proverbs are offered: the various views presented in this chapter, a systematic way of looking at proverbs and other figurative genres, and the cognitive ideals hypothesis about the conceptual basis of proverbs with its implications for many aspects of proverb cognition. A neurological model of proverb comprehension called DARTS is also proffered, along with an overall framework for appreciating the intelligence behind proverb use.

In the meantime we can get more acquainted with the proverb, then take up the seven views about it.

Proverbs in Action

Adults in practically every culture have been exposed to some proverbs. In English-speaking American culture they include such familiar forms as these: The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence and A rolling stone gathers no moss, as well as the less familiar, All clocks are off and Once burned, twice shy. These proverbs are presented here without a context, something that rarely happens in everyday life. Consider therefore the following more ecologically valid cases.

A College Scene

A college student is discussing his situation with his mother. The young man is doing poorly in his courses and having some interpersonal problems as well. He is trying to convince his mother that it would be better if he could drop out of the public university where he is going and enroll in a smaller but more expensive private university. His mother thinks that he is not working at his studies, that his interpersonal problems should be dealt with, and that the family cannot afford to send him to a private university. The discussion continues for a while before she finally says, The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence (Mieder, 1993b, provides a larger perspective on this proverb).

By uttering this proverb the young man’s mother seems to be telling her son that he needs to reassess his current situation and deal more adequately with the problems it presents rather than move off to a new and presumably less problematic situation. She is also teaching him to think more broadly about the problems that life presents, in that although it is always possible to imagine better circumstances, sometimes one must stick with the present circumstance and work things out.

An African Scene

Penfield and Duru (1988) described a situation in which Chike, a child from a poor family of Igbo society in Nigeria, has become friends with Obi, a child from a wealthy family. Obi spends his family’s money freely and carelessly. Chike’s uncle, who has become aware of the situation, seeks Chike out and says to him, “I see you are very friendly with Obi. Remember, If a rat follows the lizard into the rain they both get drenched” (Penfield & Duru, 1988, p. 121).

Here, Chike’s uncle is advising Chike to do something so that he will not be seen with Obi by other members of the community, because Obi (i.e., the lizard who dries off quickly) has resources that Chike (i.e., the rat that cannot dry off quickly) does not. Thus, Chike could be harmed.

A Baseball Scene

It is the big championship game between two Little League teams. The score is tied 7 to 7 in the bottom of the ninth inning. There are two outs and a runner on second base. The batter hits what looks like a routine groundball toward the shortstop, but just as he is about to pick it up, the ball hits a small stone and takes a hop over the shortstop’s shoulder. The runner on second base scores the tie-breaking run that wins the championship. The coach of the losing team, who had seen what happened to the ball, turns to an assistant and says, Great weights hang on small wires.

Here, the coach has summarized the sad outcome by invoking the general principle that important outcomes in life can sometimes depend on unforeseen, chancy, and seemingly unimportant details. The proverb undoubtedly functions to soften the blow of losing the big game by integrating what happened into the bigger scheme of things, as if to say, “This kind of thing happens once in a while and there isn’t much you can do about it. Let’s not get too upset.”

Views of the Proverb

The history of proverb use is interesting but cloudy. A case could be made that proverbs were invented shortly after the faculty of speech developed. Of course, our only way of knowing when proverbs were first used is through recorded history. The first recorded instances of writing were those of the Sumerians, who settled the Mesopotamian area in present-day Iraq as early as 5,000 BC. The Sumerians used wedge-shaped instruments on wet clay to produce cuneiform writing, which has been dated to about 3,500 BC, at the earliest (Fagan, 1979). Cuneiform had unique phonetic interpretations in the Sumerian language, but the cuneiform symbols were borrowed by the Akkadian people who replaced the Sumerians and used their own pronunciation of the symbols. According to Gordon (1959), the first cuneiform proverb collections were bilingual Akkadian and Sumero-Akkadian. Proverb-like statements also appear in a Babylonian source of about 1,440 BC (Beardslee, 1970). Later uses in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles are well known.

Although the history of proverbs within the species is sketchy, it is clear that the proverb has fascinated the layperson as well as the scholar. Paremiology, the study of proverbs, is practiced by many different kinds of people including cultural anthropologists, psychologists, folklorists, linguists, sociologists, educators, psychiatrists, historians, students of religion, literature buffs, and even lawyers, advertising executives, management consultants, and an occasional proverb afficionado. It should not be surprising that all of this interest in and resulting vast literature on the proverb has yielded different goals, perspectives, assumptions, methodologies, findings, and theoretical conclusions.

The result is that there is no overarching theory of proverbs. Instead, different views have emerged. Seven reasonably distinguishable views regarding the proverb exist:

Personal:	The proverb is treated from a subjective viewpoint based purely on personal experience and understanding.
Formal:	This is a scientific approach that primarily uses the methods and concepts of linguistics, logic, and semiotics to define, classify and otherwise analyze proverbs.
Religious:	Religious teaching and wisdom are examined in texts such as Bibles.
Literary:	Proverbs in prose and poetry are analyzed in terms of their literary value and what they tell us about the writer, their times, and so forth.
Practical:	The many uses of the proverb in intelligence testing, advertising, psychotherapy, and other areas are examined.
Cultural:	This is a scientific approach to the proverb that treats it as a multifunction form of folk literature that arises from and is embedded in a sociocultural context.
Cognitive:	This is a scientific approach based on cognitive science that attempts to explain how individuals use and understand proverbs. This view is the foundation for this study.

Each of these views has something unique and positive to contribute to our knowledge of the proverb, but they do not contribute equally to our understanding of proverb cognition. The personal, religious, literary and practical views rarely have scientific goals. The formal, cultural, and cognitive views do, but differ in goals, assumptions, methods, and theoretical products. There has been cross-fertilization between all of the scholarly views, except for the cognitive view, which has remained relatively isolated from the others. On a larger scale, cognitive scientific interest and research on the proverb has lagged behind that of the noncognitive scientific views, and there has been little rapproachment between the two. A major goal of this study is to begin to remedy these deficiencies.

The seven views are now described in detail. Because the formal, cultural, and cognitive views play a much larger role in elucidating proverb cognition, these views are more elaborated. The goal of this endeavor is to provide the flavor of each view rather than a state-of-the-art treatment, and to do this by sampling ideas and research that have flowed from each view.

The Personal View

The personal view might also be called the phenomenological, subjective, or folk view. Most people in all cultures have knowledge of some proverbs, along with various proclivities, attitudes, and tidbits of information about them. As with puns, there are proverb lovers, haters, and apathetics.

The personal view is in most respects an egocentric and non-scientific view, even though it derives from specific cultural experience with proverbs and may entail scientifically valid ideas. It is a starting point for a scientific view, but it sometimes moves off in antiscientific directions.

In its extreme form, the personal view essentially takes the position that personal acquaintance with proverbs confers a complete knowledge of their nature and function. That is, if one can identify and use what the culture considers to be proverbs, then one “knows about” proverbs. The corollary assumption is that there is not much more to be learned about them. This is akin to believing that because one can experience and take into account the effects of gravity then one knows about gravity. On one level such assertions are true, but they are scientifically inadequate. Although personal reactions to proverbs can sometimes be quite positive, they also can be negative. Some of the latter are presented in the following discussion that moves from the less to the more sophisticated objections and provides a reaction to them.

The Romantic Objection

“I hate proverbs. Don’t even talk to me about them.”

This is a head-in-the-sand objection, emotionally based, and hardly worth debating. Perhaps the objection tells us something about the people who make it. Individuals who voice this objection maybe could, with some effort, be made into proverb lovers.

Moreover, there are several good reasons why people may hate proverbs. Proverbs preach, and people dislike being preached to. Also, proverbs do not say anything fundamentally new, an objection discussed in the section on emotion in chapter 7.

The Aesthetic Objection

“Yes I know what a proverb is. I even use one from time to time, but they seem trite (mundane, commonplace, lowly, hackneyed, gauche, etc.), so what possible theoretical value can they have?”

This frequent objection confuses aesthetics with scientific importance. One could just as well argue that idioms, slang, and other relatively frozen forms of language should also go unstudied because they seem trite as well. Moreover, moving out of the language realm, any form of triteness should be left untouched according to this criterion, including gestures, clothing habits, music, and even lifestyles. Of course, Familiarity breeds contempt.

The “sayings” Objection

“Proverbs are just sayings, like the things my parents told me. What do they have to do with anything?”

This objection is similar to the triteness objection. Its proponents may not have considered either the ramifications of proverbs, or the larger issue of language, who uses it, and why. As for triteness, it overlooks the potential importance of familiar events. The attitude conveyed may say more about someone’s view of their parents and authority figures in general than about anything else, proverbs included. On one level, “Energy is the same as mass” is a saying, but it has great theoretical and practical punch.

The Utilitarian Objection

“What earthly value do proverbs have? Study things that have some practical value.”

The antiscience lament, this objection. Presumably, Gregor Mendel was just doing gardening when he systematically observed the characteristics of the common pea, and Barbara McClintock was wasting her time while toying with the genetic properties of corn. Then too, proverbs do have practical value in advertising, psychotherapy, and other aspects of everyday life (see The Practical View section later). In Western countries, proverbs are less esteemed than they are in some non-Western countries where they serve important social and formal-legalistic functions.

The Phenomenological Objection

“I guess I heard or read some proverbs and I just learned them on the spot. They’re in my long-term memory and I know what they mean. I don’t feel that I do any complex computations when I use them. They’re like a mental reflex. It’s not clear to me what light they shed on any important psychological issues.”

This objection, although it contains some interesting observations and suggests an educable frame of mind, also assumes some false premises. Although what most people call proverbs probably are in long-term memory, can be accessed rapidly, and have meanings that can be quickly assembled, none of these assertions, even when true, argue against the complexity of proverb processing and the need for a scientific analysis. Phenomenology may tell us that some mental events happen quickly and effortlessly, but this has limited bearing on the complexity of these events. Furthermore, cognitive scientists have discovered that just those kinds of mental processes that occur quickly and effortlessly (e.g., recognizing patterns, talking, playing the piano, etc.) have been very resistant to simulation by computer.

The Frequency Objection

“Proverbs are rare. We should spend more time and effort studying things that are commonplace.”

If this kind of objection were true and acted on, then many phenomena would never be investigated, including the magnetic monopole, various heavy atomic elements, rare diseases, certain forms of mental retardation including that of savants, and so on. By itself, frequency of occurrence is an invalid criterion for deciding whether to investigate anything. The particulars of the objection are debateable as well, because we would have to settle on what a proverb is and what standard would be used to decide its relative frequency.

The Ambiguity Objection

“Different people produce different interpretations for the same proverb, the height of nonsense!” (After reading about my view of proverbs in an article in Sky Magazine, which is furnished to passe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. Views of the Proverb
• 2. The Tangle of Figurative Language
• 3. Cognitive Foundations
• 4. Theories of Proverb Cognition
• 5. Under, Inside, and Outside the Proverb
• 6. Brain, Development, and Intelligence
• 7. New Horizons
• Appendix: Proverb Source Materials
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index