A Reflection on Content and Qualities of Proverbs

As a part of a broader study in the field of linguistic paremiology, the present article offers a critical study of the existing definitions of different phraseologisms and then suggests a new set of definitions based on a number of linguistic components. First, we will briefly introduce “paremiotics”, which is a term suggested here for paremiology and paremiography combined. Then, we will argue that traditional definitions do not clearly differentiate various kinds of phraseologisms. We believe that linguistic paremiotics belongs to the field of “phraseotics”, which is a term suggested for phraseology + phraseography. As a result, any possible attempt to define different phraseologisms must remain loyal to the principles of phraseology. The present study explores the discursive structure of proverb usage as well as the internal linguistic structure of proverbs, so that to come to a set of linguistic components which are able to build up various phraseologisms in combination with each other. These components belong to phraseology in corpus linguistics, morphosyntactic structure of the phraseologisms in question, speech act theory in pragmatics, intertextuality, and narratology. We will argue that phraseologisms are complicated. linguistic products being made in the interface between various linguistic levels. Therefore, their definition must contain measurable components from each and every level.