Tegelikkuse mõtestajad: vanasõnad poola grafitis
Regulating the reality? Proverbs in Polish graffiti

Summary/Abstract: The paper investigates proverbial elements in Polish mural inscriptions. The main aim of the paper is to consider paremic mural inscriptions with an eye to determining if proverbs are used in Polish graffiti only as content-free play on traditional folk wisdom. The starting point in this analysis is the assumption that proverbs and non-paremic graffiti exhibit both similarities and differences and that most paremic uses in graffiti can be classified as anti-proverbial in character. Many studies suggest that the dominant feature of anti-proverbs is their mocking and humorous nature. The paper then tries to establish if mural anti-proverbs can be treated also as carriers of various sentiments which do not necessarily deny the traditional nuggets of wisdom, but are used to convey observations and truths based on them, which pertain to contemporary reality and regulate it in the same way as traditional paremias do.

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