This diverse collection of essays by prominent folklorists considers modern uses and contexts of proverbs and proverbial speech, some traditional and conventional, others new and unexpected. Together, they demonstrate the continuing pervasiveness and relevance of proverbs in American culture.

What Goes Around Comes Around

The Circulation of Proverbs in Contemporary Life

Utah State University Press

Copyright © 2004 Utah State University Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-87421-592-2

Contents

Kimberly J. Lau, Peter Tokofsky, and Stephen D. Winick What Goes Around Comes Around: The Circulation of Proverbs in Contemporary Life.............................1Charles Clay Doyle "In Aqua Scribere": The Evolution of a Current Proverb..........................................................................................20Isaac Jack Lvy and Rosemary Lvy Zumwalt "From One Act of Charity, the World Is Saved": Creative Selection of Proverbs in Sephardic Narrative.....................37Shirley L. Arora Baseball as (Pan)America: A Sampling of Baseball-Related Metaphors in Spanish.....................................................................58Stephen D. Winick "You Can't Kill Shit": Occupational Proverb and Metaphorical System among Young Medical Professionals............................................86Jay Mechling "Cheaters Never Prosper" and Other Lies Adults Tell Kids: Proverbs and the Culture Wars over Character................................................107Anand Prahlad The Proverb and Fetishism in American Advertisements.................................................................................................127Jan Harold Brunvand "The Early Bird Is Worth Two in the Bush": Captain Jack Aubrey's Fractured Proverbs............................................................152Alan Dundes As the Crow Flies: A Straightforward Study of Lineal Worldview in American Folk Speech.................................................................171Contributors and Editors............................................................................................................................................188

Chapter One

What Goes Around Comes Around

The Circulation of Proverbs in Contemporary Life

Kimberly J. Lau, Peter I. Tokofsky, and Stephen D. Winick

Introduction

When it comes to proverb scholarship, we have all been taught by the same master, Wolfgang Mieder, without question one of the greatest paremiologists of all time. His body of work on proverbs is so extensive as to make it nearly impossible to say anything new, but we nonetheless dedicate our efforts in this collection to that very purpose as a way of thanking him for his brilliant leadership in the field of international proverb scholarship, his unsurpassed intellectual generosity, and his incredible humor, kindness, and spirit. We only hope that the essays in this volume do justice to the ever-increasing ways he has inspired us to think about proverbs in all their various contexts and manifestations. Thus, the title of our book, What Goes Around Comes Around, is meant first to honor Wolfgang Mieder, to convey our deep appreciation not only for his intellectual influence on our work but also for his wonderful presence in all of our lives.

The circulation of proverbs in our everyday lives reminds us that folklore is, indeed, a truly dynamic process. The vitality of proverbs-the constant emergence of new proverbs, together with their continual expression in new contexts-captures the ways in which folklore draws together our gravest concerns and our strongest commitments, our most precious values and our wisest perspectives, at times even our coarsest humor and our basest beliefs, thereby structuring the world around us. In this collection, we look specifically at proverbs as they go out into the world beyond their usual contexts ("what goes around") as well as the ways in which the world beyond traditional folklore comes into being through the creation and recontextualization of new proverbs ("what comes around"). The diverse perspectives and analyses in these essays raise the question of what, precisely, is meant by proverb. Thus, we begin by reviewing the long tradition of scholarship that endeavors to define this dynamic genre of folklore.

Proverbs: What They Are and What They Do

One of the great paradoxes of the proverb is that it is generally understood to epitomize simplicity and common sense, but it turns out to be both complex and hard to define. Although most people can list many examples of proverbs, few can accurately define what makes them proverbial. Scholars have discussed proverbs for hundreds of years, and hundreds of different definitions have been advanced, making it impossible to provide even a cursory summary of them. Instead, we offer a brief overview of some of the classic scholarship on proverbs, and then touch briefly on recent and more unconventional definitions.

Because proverbs are both linguistic items (possessing concrete elements of verbal and logical structure) and behaviors (possessing motives, strategies, and outcomes), it is imperative to discuss not only what they are in linguistic and structural senses but also what they do in social and behavioral ones. Proverbs are, first of all, messages passed between and among people. They are principally expressed in speech, though they can also be transmitted through writing, visual arts, and electronic communication. In their verbal form, they are brief and pithy, wise and witty, rhetorically forceful but discreetly indirect. They include old sayings like "A rolling stone gathers no moss," as well as recent ones such as "You snooze, you lose." They can be as short as two words ("Money talks"), or they can be thirty times as long ("For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, the horse was lost; for want of a horse, the rider was lost; for want of a rider, the message was lost; for want of a message, the battle was lost; for want of the battle, the war was lost; and all for the want of horseshoe nail").

But aside from memorizing lists of proverbs, how can we tell if any given utterance can be considered a proverb? In some cultures and situations, we are lucky that proverbs are preceded by a framing device: "You know what they say"; "As someone once said"; or, in some locales, "We have a proverb for that." In most cases, though, we need to look for other clues. Sometimes proverbial messages are metaphorical so that, for example, being circumspect in signing a mortgage can be described as "looking before you leap." Sometimes proverbs are poetic, featuring rhyme ("No pain, no gain"; "Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise"), near rhyme ("Honesty is the best policy"; "A stitch in time saves nine"), regular meter ("There's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip"; "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush"), or alliteration ("Where there's a will, there's a way"; "Love laughs at locksmiths"). Sometimes they use unusual or archaic syntax ("He who hesitates is lost"; "Here today, gone tomorrow"; "It's an ill wind that blows nobody good"). Although all of these attributes apply to many proverbs, none of them is present in every one. How, then, is it possible to determine what constitutes proverbiality?

This problem has been discussed since ancient times; philosophers like Plato and Aristotle had much to say about proverbs, though they were not always referring to the same kinds of expressions we call proverbs today. For instance, Aristotle calls the phrase "an Attic neighbor" a proverb, though today it would be considered an idiom at best. Still, classical and medieval definitions of the proverb do include statements of intuitive and descriptive power, such as Michael Apostolius of Byzantium's dictum:

A proverb is a statement which...