Proverbs as an agent of cultural wisdom and identity among the Xhosa speaking people
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Mawande Dlali
Abstract
The Xhosa speaking people, in common with other African people, possess a rich folklore tradition comprising mostly of tales, proverbs, riddles and poetry. Of these verbal arts, proverbs are by far the most frequently employed, in a number of ways for different purposes. In their daily communication, the Xhosa speaking people often resort to proverbs as an important and most effective strategy to optimize the rhetorical effectiveness of their speech messages. Because proverbs are frequently used in normal, everyday speech situations, the Xhosa speaking people, like any other African communities, assign great socio-cultural importance to the proverbs. This paper explores the moral nature and significance of the Xhosa proverbs which contribute to the norms and conventions and cultural wisdom well-ordered society. In the Xhosa culture, a feeling for language, imagery and expression of abstract ideas through compressed and allusive phraseology is realized in proverbs. Data were gathered from two published sources in Xhosa language titled Izaci namaqhalo esiXhosa by EWM Mesatywa (1954) and IsiXhosa 4 by JA du Plessis (1978). The data for this paper also included my knowledge, experience and introspection, based on being a Xhosa native speaker and experienced academic in language-related culture dimensions of African languages.
© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelei
- Thematic Part: Kultur und Wörterbücher / Culture and dictionaries [Culture et dictionnaires]
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- Proverbs as an agent of cultural wisdom and identity among the Xhosa speaking people
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- Culture in the OED online Phrases and Quotations
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- A novel way of extracting full-fledged terminologies from multilingual texts
- Creating specialised dictionaries using LexO
- Theoretical Considerations on AI-based Business Models for Lexicography
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- Reviews
- Dictionnaire Poche Larousse 2023, 76 000 définitions, noms communs, noms propres. Paris: Larousse Dictionnaires, 2022, 1095 pp.
- The Bloomsbury Handbook of Lexicography. Second Edition. Edited by Howard Jackson. London/New York/Oxford/New Delhi/Sydney: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022, XXIII + 473 pp.
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelei
- Thematic Part: Kultur und Wörterbücher / Culture and dictionaries [Culture et dictionnaires]
- Introduction
- Proverbs as an agent of cultural wisdom and identity among the Xhosa speaking people
- The lexicon and culture – culture and the lexicon
- Culture in the OED online Phrases and Quotations
- Representation of culture-bound items in a culture dictionary for German readers
- Unpacking colonialist and racist ideologies in historical German lexicons: A critical analysis of the Afrika Hand-Lexikon (1885) and similar reference books
- Women in Lexicography: a collaborative citizens project
- Non-thematic Part
- Specialised language and conceptual knowledge in lexicographic portals
- The anatomy of specialized knowledge: Comparing experts and non-experts through associations, frames and language models
- The multifunctional LBC-Corpora: different aims depending on the user
- A novel way of extracting full-fledged terminologies from multilingual texts
- Creating specialised dictionaries using LexO
- Theoretical Considerations on AI-based Business Models for Lexicography
- From Great Britain to the Spanish Philippines via British India… and back
- „Als Ziel gilt, den Wortinhalt allseits auszuleuchten, auch kleinste Facetten sichtbar zu machen“ – Funktionswörter im Schweizerischen Idiotikon / Wörterbuch der schweizerdeutschen Sprache
- Lexicography in Higher Education
- „Ein Mann, ein Wort, viele EMLexler, ein Wörterbuch“
- “Dictionaries and Society” – Conference Report about XX EURALEX in Mannheim
- Reviews
- Dictionnaire Poche Larousse 2023, 76 000 définitions, noms communs, noms propres. Paris: Larousse Dictionnaires, 2022, 1095 pp.
- The Bloomsbury Handbook of Lexicography. Second Edition. Edited by Howard Jackson. London/New York/Oxford/New Delhi/Sydney: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022, XXIII + 473 pp.
