Proverbs About Friends And Enemies: Implications As The Reflection Of Cognition

Abstract

The article covers a comparative and cognitive review of English proverbs about friends and enemies including their etymological aspects and the historical viewpoint. The aim was to determine the way a proverb fulfils its function as a country-specific element within historical and cultural context and reflects kinds and stages of cognition. The cognitive analysis of friend-and enemy-related paroemias' implications as well as the association test based on friend and enemy stimulus words were carried out. Based on the research findings, a proverb is seen as a condensed wise saying having potential to actualize a fragment of worldview in a semantically accurate non-ambiguous way in the given context, but having a wider range of implications and interpretations at its core. The association test with friend and enemy stimulus words demonstrates a more limited list of reactions predominantly based on personal experience and basic associations, thus resulting in positive reactions to a friend stimulus word and negative ones to an enemy counterpart. It can be concluded that the proverbs' etymological aspect turns out to be an essential ground to understand the roots and dynamics of cognitive processes and the worldview as its fundamental component of a particular nation or society. A comparative analysis of proverbs with the given key notions in different languages helps to find evidence of the universal core elements of cognition as well as country-related variations. A cognitive review of friend-and enemy-related proverbs results in a wide scope of implications tending to embody relatively polar interpretations.