Siberian Federal University 
- Issue
- Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences. 2025 18 (1)
- Authors
- Litovkina, Anna T.
- Contact information
- Litovkina, Anna T.: J. Selye University Komárno, Slovak Republic;
- Keywords
- anti-proverb; proverb; transformation; repetition; literalization; word order reversal
- Abstract
For centuries, proverbs have provided a framework for endless transformation. In recent decades, the modification of proverbs has taken such proportions that sometimes we can even meet more proverb transformations than traditional proverbs. Wolfgang Mieder has invented a term anti-proverb (or in German Antisprichwort) for such deliberate proverb innovations.The study first addresses the background of anti-proverb research and terminology. Then it mentions the most frequent themes anti-proverbs treat, with a special focus on proverbs about money, and afterwards it demonstrates 20 Anglo-American proverbs most popular for variation, and lists 13 Anglo-American proverbs containing the word “money” and numbers of their transformations (263). The main focus of the study is on the discussion of various humor devices in the 263 Anglo-American anti-proverbs about money (which are by no means mutually exclusive). The article discusses and demonstrates repetition of identical or phonetically similar words, literalization, word order reversal, mixing of two proverbs, word class change, syllogisms, etc. The analysis puts main emphasis on the formal features of the anti-proverbs and not on the themes emerging in them. The anti-proverbs discussed and analyzed in the present study were taken primarily from written sources
- Pages
- 81–95
- EDN
- GFEOVD
- Paper at repository of SibFU
- https://elib.sfu-kras.ru/handle/2311/154378
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).