Don Quixote’s lower class sidekick Sancho Panza quoted proverbs to excess. Among the intellectuals I know that class association continues – proverbs may help lesser minds, but we elites “think for ourselves.” Proverbs are also associated with older beliefs and attitudes, and so are seen as more politically conservative, and less relevant in our new changed world. Since the world today changes faster, has become less politically conservative, and has more educated folks who aspire to look more intellectual, you might think that we use proverbs less today than we did in 1800.
My simple minded take on this is that proverbs are course corrections. You need a "turn right" as well as a "turn left" because you don't want to left however; likewise, you need a "don't flow a dead horse" as well as a "try, try and try again".
Not just there either; Elster in his _Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions_, pg10 (available in Google Books & Libgen), covers a number of contradictory proverbs (at least 14 pairs at a quick count) and says "for any proverb one can find one that asserts the opposite", citing as an earlier discussion Mieder's 1993 _Proverbs are never out of Season_. Quora has a question you can contribute pairs to: https://www.quora.com/What-...
That design seems equally consistent with proverbs-as-rhetoric-and-signaling: the proverb used reflects what choice was already reached & is being justified. If the choice turns out well, does that mean the proverb was helpful or that the person thought through to the right choice?
neat post yesterday in defense of clicheshttp://thefederalist.com/20...
I think the wisdom of aphorisms is profound. 'Moderation in all things', 'know thyself', the Golden Rule, and a couple hundred others take you pretty far, good little axioms to have buried in one's right brain via repetition.
There used to be an analogous (misguided) criticism of psychoanalysis: because of the concept of defensive process and reversal, it can explain anything.
Proverbs express far-mode insights in a near-mode idiom. I would consequently expect greater prevalence in oral cultures. Educated folk tend to be more comfortable with a consistent far-mode idiom, which is higher status. Not "look before you leap"; rather, "avoid being impulsive."
The fact that "no man is an island" starts its drastic rise before the 1940 publication of "For Whom the Bell Tolls" appears to substantiate the ugly rumor that Hemingway was a thiotimoline addict. (The boring alternative being that the ngram grapher used a 1-2 yr rolling avg:-)
Here's a link to Thomas Preston's "Dictionary of English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases With a Copious Index of Principal Words" on Project Gutenberg, which I think was first published in 1881:
I'd disagree that elites don't use proverbs. They just use different sources for their proverbs. For every traditional Christian quoting the Gospel of St. Matthew about the lilies of the field, you have some self-declared secular intellectual cluttering up Facebook with quotes from Neil DeGrasse Tyson about how dumb religion is.
It wouldn't be simple, but it seems straightforward. Evidence on what behaviors and expectations are connoted by specific proverbs, weighted by proverb usage, could indicate the typical advice of proverbs. Evidence about what acts and expectations were useful could be compared to that.
Thanks for those references!
My simple minded take on this is that proverbs are course corrections. You need a "turn right" as well as a "turn left" because you don't want to left however; likewise, you need a "don't flow a dead horse" as well as a "try, try and try again".
Not just there either; Elster in his _Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions_, pg10 (available in Google Books & Libgen), covers a number of contradictory proverbs (at least 14 pairs at a quick count) and says "for any proverb one can find one that asserts the opposite", citing as an earlier discussion Mieder's 1993 _Proverbs are never out of Season_. Quora has a question you can contribute pairs to: https://www.quora.com/What-...
That design seems equally consistent with proverbs-as-rhetoric-and-signaling: the proverb used reflects what choice was already reached & is being justified. If the choice turns out well, does that mean the proverb was helpful or that the person thought through to the right choice?
neat post yesterday in defense of clicheshttp://thefederalist.com/20...
I think the wisdom of aphorisms is profound. 'Moderation in all things', 'know thyself', the Golden Rule, and a couple hundred others take you pretty far, good little axioms to have buried in one's right brain via repetition.
There used to be an analogous (misguided) criticism of psychoanalysis: because of the concept of defensive process and reversal, it can explain anything.
Proverbs express far-mode insights in a near-mode idiom. I would consequently expect greater prevalence in oral cultures. Educated folk tend to be more comfortable with a consistent far-mode idiom, which is higher status. Not "look before you leap"; rather, "avoid being impulsive."
The fact that "no man is an island" starts its drastic rise before the 1940 publication of "For Whom the Bell Tolls" appears to substantiate the ugly rumor that Hemingway was a thiotimoline addict. (The boring alternative being that the ngram grapher used a 1-2 yr rolling avg:-)
This book of English proverbs, published in 1678, is Ex Libris Stephen Jay Gould: http://goo.gl/l1tBqa
Good work. I guess we'll need a more global analysis to see any overall change in proverb usage.
Here's a link to Thomas Preston's "Dictionary of English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases With a Copious Index of Principal Words" on Project Gutenberg, which I think was first published in 1881:
http://www.gutenberg.org/fi...
A lot of things listed there just don't seem to appear in the Google Ngram corpus at all, but it's pretty easy to find proverbs that get less popular:
http://i.imgur.com/vjNk4Js.png
I'd disagree that elites don't use proverbs. They just use different sources for their proverbs. For every traditional Christian quoting the Gospel of St. Matthew about the lilies of the field, you have some self-declared secular intellectual cluttering up Facebook with quotes from Neil DeGrasse Tyson about how dumb religion is.
Yes, that makes sense.
It wouldn't be simple, but it seems straightforward. Evidence on what behaviors and expectations are connoted by specific proverbs, weighted by proverb usage, could indicate the typical advice of proverbs. Evidence about what acts and expectations were useful could be compared to that.
That was in fact a time of increase in the use of clocks to schedule activities.
Good that you tried to collect new data, but I'd be a lot more convinced if you showed Christian proverbs, instead of phrases.