PROVERBS IN WRITTEN PUBLIC COMMUNICATION IN CROATIAN AND ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Abstract: Proverbs are miniature linguistic units which schematize concrete experiences and convey general truths. In view of their origin, they are expected to appear more often in oral rather than written communication. However, proverbs as well as their modifications, seem to feature as an increasingly common rhetorical and stylistic device in written texts. Working on a corpus comprising written texts (newspaper reports, comments, graffiti, etc.) we will primarily be concerned with establishing in what types of texts canonical and modified proverbs appear, who emits them and what is their pragmatic effect. We hypothesize that proverbs and their modifications will be more common in comments where they are used to achieve irony, sarcasm and humour.