Intersection of Cognitive Linguistics and Paremiology: Universality and Diversity in the Interpretation of World Languages Proverbs’

This article investigates the theoretical and empirical advantages of the intersection of cognitive linguistics and paremiology and aims to examine how to apply the concepts and theories of cognitive linguistics to the interpretation and understanding of proverbs in various languages such as (Persian, English, French, Croatian and Arabic), whereas previous research have mainly focused on conceptual metaphors, metonymies and schemas. Thus an important question raises here when focusing on the encounter between cognitive linguistics and paremiology: is it possible to consider the universal and cognitive principles for the interpretation of the proverb and take into account the proverbial concepts in all languages in the global sense? Or should it analyze them with regard to their own cultural-linguistic context without any attention to their cross-cultural and cross-linguistic behavior? To find a universal attribute or a common concept that is characteristic of cognitive linguistics does not necessarily mean the reduction of paremiological literature concerns with respect to folk literature. Cognitive linguistics has been adopted as a framework in this article in order to do a coherent research in both domains, the global aspects and the specific cultural aspects of proverbs, which, while taking into account common points analyze diversity in different languages and show how the proverb is perceived in real time speech. Data analysis showed that, despite the differences between the proverbs of the different languages that show the existence of the diversity of languages, we can apply cognitive linguistics and its theories based on the sensory experiences of human life used to interpret how to understand and apply proverbs in different languages. It is to note that cognitive linguistics which seeks linguistic universal would be easily able to justify linguistic diversities and proverbs with its own theoretical instruments like conceptual merging, metaphor, metonymy, image schemes.