Linguistics and literary studies department

Features of the texts of proverbs
Proverbs are good material for acquaintance with the peculiarities of the national character, because bear the imprint of the originality of the figurative system, historically formed and reflecting the centuries-old experience of communication between people of a certain ethno-linguistic community and their knowledge of the surrounding reality.
The specificity of these linguistic units can be traced in the following inherent characteristics:
1. Proverbs are collective texts that conceptualize the accumulated observations and experience of a person in his daily life for centuries. Their social orientation and basic essence are reflected in the proverb “Proverbs are the wisdom of the streets” (“Proverbs are folk wisdom”).
2. These texts are created and used to convey folk wisdom concerning well-known truths and basic moral qualities (good and evil, simplicity and cunning, honesty and lies, good and bad) with the obligatory indication of what a person considers valuable, that he is does not consider it bad and that is indifferent.
3. Proverbs are characterized by a vivid national load and very clearly reflect the national specifics of the worldview of the people - their worldview. These texts reflect the living conditions of a native speaker, their history, way of life, place of residence, which in their totality have left a huge imprint on the peculiarities of national perception of the world. The national character of the vision of the world is manifested in the selection of different images for the expression of certain concepts, as well as in the actualization of various attributes of objects taken to name objects of reality, despite the fact that the process of cognition of the surrounding world is to a certain extent international in nature.
4. Proverbs give a certain idea of ​​the naive (everyday, unscientific) picture of the world and represent countless everyday expressions that describe understanding and non-stereotypical, emotional-figurative vision of certain life situations, phenomena and objects.
5. The purpose of proverbs is to figuratively interpret the interpretation of reality, which allows us to consider them as linguistic units representing the emotional model of character.
6. Being the units of the secondary nomination, the texts of proverbs reveal the presence of two pictures of the world superimposed on each other. The first picture of the world is a literally perceived image of reality, i.e. unreconsidered literal translation of a proverb, used only in relation to the described situation. The second picture of the world is the result of a person's emotional and sensory interaction with the surrounding reality and represents a qualitatively new view of reality, i.e. its rethinking and application to different situations. Both pictures of the world touch each other, and the second picture of the world is closely connected with the first as a support in the initial display of a certain situation in the real world.
The presence of two intersecting pictures of the world proves the specificity of the conceptualization of reality by the studied texts. It lies in the fact that the basis of expressive units, which are proverbs, is the coexistence of two different types of information: information about the world (scientific and everyday picture of the world) and information about the relationship of the subject of speech to the world (subjective picture of the world).
For example, we find in the English proverb “If there were no clouds in the sky, we shouldn’t enjoy the sun” a reflection of the nature of Great Britain, its humid climate, i.e. if there are clouds, it will most likely rain, and this is not a pleasant event for the inhabitants of this country. But against this background, one can trace the thought that without the bad (clouds) we would not value the good (the sun), because would not notice it.
Being created by the people, the proverbs are intended for them, and therefore they are very figurative, short and understandable, even if any realias are beyond the knowledge of the recipient.
Due to their original imagery and associativity, the texts of proverbs inherent in one linguocultural community are very interesting for representatives of the linguocultural community due to the coincidence of the basic life concepts of most peoples. Due to the fact that all peoples are close to the problems of morality and a person's search for his place in the world, the proverbs of one culture are compared with similar texts that exist in their native culture. Moreover, the analogy is explained not by a complete semantic and lexical coincidence, but by the coincidence of topics and problems that they touch on.