Proverbs as the quintessence of the collective folk wisdom, the enduring tradition coming from generation to generation. The interpretation of the polymorphic nature of the context and competence, understanding of the limitation in using the language.
Аннотация к работе
Adegbija, 1982). As far as our knowledge is concerned, little or nothing has been investigated in the area of the pragmatics of proverbs with a view to understanding the how and why of using them, and how insights gained can enrich the theory of pragmatics in general. This neglect is unfortunate since proverbs, by their polymorphous nature, can shed more light on linguistic performance and thus extend the current frontiers of pragmatic theory. In the words of Lawal (1992b), proverbs seem to contain the richest pool of pragmatic factors since a proverb, properly contextualized, provides data that are at once linguistic, philosophical, psychological and cosmological. This act is not part of the conventional meaning of the utterance, but it is derived from the context and situation of the utterance. This implies that interpreting utterances is more than just recognising the speakers intention by following the convention of verbal communication. In an attempt to improve on Austins effort, Searle (1976) puts forward a taxonomy of illocutionary acts as assertives, directives, commissives, expressives and declaratives which are not radically different from Austins.