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Proverbs and Sayings. Almost every good writer will make use of language idioms, by phrases and proverbs. As Gorki has it, they are the natural ways in which speech develops.
Proverbs and sayings have certain purely linguistic features which must always be taken into account in order to distinguish then from ordinary sentences. Proverbs are brief statements showing in condensed form the accumulated life experience of the community and serving as conventional practical symbols for abstract ideas. They are usually didactic and image bearing. Many of them through frequency of repetition have became polished and wrought into verse-like shape, i.e., they have metre, rhyme and alliteration, as in the following:
“to cut one’s coat according to one’s cloth.”
“Early to bed and early to rise,
Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”
Brevity in proverbs manifests itself also in the omission of connectives, as in;
“First come, first served.”
“Out of sight, out of mind.”
But the main feature distinguishing proverbs an sayings from ordinary utterances remains their semantic aspect. Their literal meaning is suppressed by what may be termed their transferred meaning. In other words, one meaning (literal) is the form for another meaning (transferred) which contains the ides. Proverbs and sayings are the concentrated wisdom of the people, and if used appropriately, will never lose their freshness and vigour. The most noticeable thing about the functioning of sayings, proverbs and catch-phrases is that they may be handled not in their fixed form (the traditional model) but with modifications.
Epigrams.Anepigram is a stylistic device akin to a proverb, the only difference that epigrams are coined by individualswhoce names we know, while proverbs are the coinage of the people.
Quotations.A quotation is repetition of a phrase or statement from a book, speech and the like used by way of authority, illustration, prof or as a basis for further speculation on the matter in hand.
Quotations are usually marked off in the text by inverted commas (“ ”), dashes ( – ), italics or other graphical means.
They are mostly used accompanied by a reference to the author of the quotation, unless he is well known to the reader or audience. The reference is made either in the text or in a foot-note and assumes various forms, as for instance:
“as (so and so) has it”; “(So and so) once said that”…; “Here we quote (so and so)” or in the manner the reference to Emerson has been made in the epigraph to this chapter.
A quotation is the exact reproduction of an actual utterance made by a certain author. The work containing the utterance quoted must have been published or at least spoken in public; for quotations are echoes of somebody else’s words.
Allusions.An allusion is an indirect reference, by word or phrase, to a historical, literary, mythological, biblical fact or to fact of everyday life made in the course of speaking or writing. The use of allusion presupposes knowledge of the fact, thing or person alluded to on the part of the reader or listener. As a rule no indication of the source is given. This is one of the notable differences between quotation and allusion. Another difference is of structural nature: a quotation must repeat the exact working of the original even though the meaning may be modified by the new context; an allusion is only a mention of a word or phrase which may be regarded as the key-word of the utterance. An allusion has certain important semantic peculiarities, in that the meaning of the word (the allusion) should be regarded as a form for the new meaning. In other words, the primary meaning of the word or phrase which is assumed to be known (i.e., the allusion) serves as a vessel into which new meaning is poured. So here there is also a kind of interplay between two meanings.
Here is a passage in which an allusion is made to the coachman, Old Mr. Weller, the father of Dickens’s famous character, Sam Weller.
In this case the nominal meaning is broadened into a generalized concept:
“Where is the road now, and its merry incidents of life!..
old honest, pimple-nosed coachmen? I wonder where are they,
those good fellow? Is old Weller alive or dead?” (Thackeray)
The volume of meaning in this allusion goes beyond the actual knowledge of the character’s traits. Even the phrases about the road and the coachmen bear indirect reference to Dickens’s “Pickwick Papers.”
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