Phraseology and Culture in English

particular proverb or exemplum, but if folk ideas are normally expressed 
not in one but rather a variety of genres, then it is imperative that the folk-
lorist make the attempt to extrapolate such ideas from the folklore as a 
whole. To do this, the folklorist must of necessity escape the self-imposed 
bind of genres and categories. Once one has identified a number of folk 
ideas present in a culture, one may begin to perceive what the pattern, if 
any, of these ideas is and how each of the ideas is related to the total world-
view of that culture. (Dundes 1972a: 96) 
In a perfect scholarly world, this comprehensive approach would indeed be 
the ideal way to proceed. But most scholars have to limit themselves to a 
certain genre, let’s say the proverb, leaving it to others to investigate addi-
tional areas of inquiry to complete the picture. Dundes himself has provided 
a rather inclusive folkloristic model in his exemplary study Life is Like a 
Chicken Coop Ladder: A Portrait of German Culture through Folklore (1984) 
that draws on proverbs, proverbial expressions, graffiti, children’s rhymes, 
riddles, folk songs, fairy tales, folk tales, etc. On a narrower scope, there do 
exist numerous studies looking at proverbs as cultural signs of certain as-
pects of worldview, as for example A.A. Roback’s “The Yiddish Proverb: 

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Yankee wisdom: American proverbs and the worldview of New England
207
A Study in Folk Psychology” (1918), D.B. Shimkin and Pedro Sanjuan’s 
“Culture and World View: A Method of Analysis Applied to Rural Russia” 
(1953), Joseph Raymond’s “Attitudes and Cultural Patterns in Spanish Prov-
erbs” (1954), Alpha C. Chiang’s “Religion, Proverbs, and Economic Men-
tality [in China]” (1961), Huynh Dinh Tê’s Vietnamese Cultural Patterns 
and Values as Expressed in Proverbs (1963), Matti Kuusi’s “Fatalistic 
Traits in Finnish Proverbs” (1967), Austin J. Shelton’s “Relativism, Prag-
matism, and Reciprocity in Igbo Proverbs” (1971), and 
öorƥ Mifsud-Chir-
cop’s “Proverbiality and Worldview in Maltese and Arabic Proverbs” (2001). 
The titles of these publications reveal that they are meant to be no more 
than part of a larger mosaic. But proverbs are also especially suitable in the 
attempt to assemble a collective representation of the worldview or mental-
ity of people bound together by a common culture. Semiotic proverb stud-
ies in particular can shed much light on the meaning and function of prov-
erbs as cultural signs (Grzybek 1987), and this is particularly the case if 
scholars include historical data. After all, proverbs come and go, and it is of 
considerable relevance to ascertain, for example, which proverbs were of 
special importance to British people during the eighteenth century if schol-
ars want to reach a conclusion about attitudes and mores during that time 
(see Obelkevich 1987). At the same time, it is important to know what 
proverbs are in actual and frequent use among the population of New Eng-
land in order to reach at least some conclusions about commonly held val-
ues. As Zuzana Profantová has put it so aptly, “the proverbial tradition 
[must be understood] as a cultural-historical and social phenomenon” (1998: 
302). In any case, proverbs and other phraseological units represent “a lan-
guage of culture” (Telija 1998: 783) that permits scholars to draw valid 
conclusions about the worldview or mentality of those speakers who make 
vigorous and continued use of them. 
In a fascinating article on “Proverbs and Cultural Models: An American 
Psychology of Problem Solving” (1987), Geoffrey M. White has shown 
that proverbs “accomplish both conceptual and pragmatic work” (1987: 
151), i.e., they express generalities based on experiences and observations 
and are used to make moral or ethical recommendations in socio-cultural 
contexts. By means of numerous examples, he shows that Americans in 
general have a positive attitude toward solving problems, a trait that is 
epitomized by their frequent use of the proverb Where there is a will, there 
is a way. Some years earlier, Alan Dundes succeeded splendidly in illustrat-
ing that such proverbs as Forgive and forget and Seeing is believing indi-
cate a future and visual orientation in the American worldview as well 

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208
Wolfgang Mieder 
(Dundes 1969, 1972b). And now there is also Kim Lau’s detailed investiga-
tion that shows by means of thousands of proverb references found in giant 
databases of the mass media that the following proverbs are among the 
most frequently used: Time will tell; First come, first served; Forgive and 
forget; Time is money; Time flies; Better late than never, and Out of sight, 
out of mind (Lau 1996: 137). Clearly they must relate to American cultural 
values, indicating in particular that “time entertains a primary position in 
American culture and ideology” (Lau 1996: 146). It should not be surpris-
ing that these proverbs belong to the so-called paremiological minimum of 
those three hundred proverbs that are employed with high frequency both 
in oral and written communication in the United States (see Mieder 1993: 
41–57; Tóthné Litovkina 1996: 365–372, 1998: 151–154). 
It stands to reason that especially those proverbs with high familiarity 
ratings and frequent occurrences in speech acts and written sources express 
at least in part the worldview of those people using them. The proverbs 
help people to orient themselves in the environment where they live. 
Zuzana Profantová has spoken of the “image of the world” that is contained 
in proverbs, but she also points out that they represent a “system of values” 
(1996: 719) offering social norms, commands, prohibitions, etc. Peter Grzy-
bek has echoed these observations, arguing that proverbs represent norma-
tive strategies for social conduct. In fact, proverbs are seen as social norms 
coupled with value judgments (Grzybek 1998: 138), thus in fact making 
them valuable cultural expressions of the worldview or mentality of those 
people who accept them as preformulated models of wisdom.