Cross-Linguistic Perspectives on Proverbs about Speech and Silence

This paper attempts to classify and analyze proverbs about speech and silence. A proverb is a short, generally known sentence that expresses common, traditional and didactic views in a metaphorical and fixed form and which is easily remembered and repeated. Proverbs reflect human emotion and show culture universal or culture specific features. Proverbs related to speech and silence are also classified into various subcategories such as “speaker-centered, hearer ubiquity, positive, negative + metaphor, and - metaphor.” The added category “woman” was selected on the features that they should relate to speech or silence. Proverbs urging caution in speech were the most universal type of the communicative purposes. They are a key component of the speech proverb type. The use of a proverb - as opposed to an imperative - is rooted in the desire to avoid negative feelings on the part of the hearer. From the perspective of speech proverbs, it is the role of the older generation to speak and the younger generation to listen. In this approach, all communicative acts are viewed as carrying a guarantee of optimal relevance, and interpreted in the light of this guarantee.