Representation of women in English and Persian proverbs

Abstract

The present study aims to investigate the portrayal of women in English and Persian proverbs using the multidisciplinary field of Cultural Linguistics as an alternative to critical discourse analysis. Utilizing a corpus analysis approach for Cultural Linguistics (Jensen 2017), 124 English and 186 Persian proverbs representing the theme of ‘woman’ were compared and contrasted cross-culturally. Results of grounded-theory driven analysis revealed: (a) while various cultural schemata and cultural metaphors reflecting both dark and bright sides of women in proverbs were unveiled, only one cultural category in Persian proverbs with no similar instance in English proverbs was revealed; and (b) in some English and Persian proverbs, interpreting cultural schemas predicates upon eliciting and understanding the cultural metaphors hidden in the proverbs. The results are discussed with reference to the potentiality of Cultural Linguistics as an analytical framework for paremiology that can provide an in-depth interpretation of proverbs as a culturally-loaded discourse.