Phraseology and Culture in English

Yankee wisdom: American proverbs
and the worldview of New England 
Wolfgang Mieder 
It is a commonplace by now that proverbs are cultural signs for recurrent 
social situations. They are employed as verbal strategies to assure meaning-
ful communication, albeit in a metaphorical and indirect fashion (Burke 
1941). The wisdom contained in these pithy and formulaic utterances is 
based on observations and experiences that are believed to be of a general 
enough nature that they merit couching into memorable and repeatable 
statements. Over time these sentences gain general currency among people, 
from ethnic, professional, or social groups on to regions, countries, and 
continents. Some traditional proverbs have reached people throughout the 
world by means of loan translations and the powerful modern mass media, 
indicating that at least some proverbs like Time flies; One hand washes the 
other or Big fish eat little fish express truths that are universally recognized 
(Taylor 1931; Röhrich and Mieder 1977). But there are, of course, also 
countless proverbs that have not reached such broad geographic distribu-
tion. In fact, many proverbs have remained confined to nationally and lin-
guistically defined areas. In a large country like the United States, one 
might indeed speak of proverbs that pertain primarily to certain minorities 
or regions. Nevertheless, there is bound to be much overlap, and it is an 
involved task to find those proverbs that “belong” to a certain group or 
area. Above all, scholars need be extremely careful in drawing generalized 
conclusions about the national or ethnic character of a people by simply 
amassing their proverbs. And yet, keeping that caveat in mind, proverbs 
can be interpreted as reflecting at least in part the social and moral value 
system or the worldview of those who use them. This would be especially 
true for those proverbs that are used with high frequency by most citizens 
of a region such as, for example, New England.