ABSTRACT
There are many studies which have looked at the various functions of proverbs in speech acts or in literary and journalistic texts. It has been shown that proverbs are characterized by a polyfunctionality, i.e., their meaning depends on the situation or context in which they are employed. There was a tendency in older scholarship to overemphasize the didactic and moralizing function of proverbs. Today it has been observed that one and the same proverb might be used as a piece of traditional wisdom in a serious manner, but it might also serve as a humorous or satirical statement in another context. For a detailed discussion of this heterosituativity, polyfunctionality, and polysemanticity of proverbs see also Neal R. Norrick, How Proverbs Mean: Semantic Studies in English Proverbs (Amsterdam: Mouton, 1985).
