Croatian proverb in the political context

Abstract

Starting from the necessity to identify Croatian proverbs, part of national culture and language, in spoken and written texts published in the Croatian mass-media during the war years 1991-1994, the present work aims (1) to show the political themes that were described paremiologically and their communicational purpose, (2) to list the proverbs and to show wnich were used most frequently, and (3) in what way. (1) Proverbs that are dominant in the political columns refer metaphorically (a) to the political situation in former Yugoslavia as viewed from the Croatian point of view, (b) to the character of the aggressor, and (c) to the evaluation of the Croatian position and their own qualification of themselves. (2) In the acertained stock of about a hundred proverbs, of which 82 are different, six are most frequent, viz. “History is teacher of life“, “Eye for eye, tooth for tooth“, “Whatever a man soweth, that shall be also reap“, “All they that take the sworld shall perish with the sworld“, “Wolf changes his clothing but never his nature“ and “Stretch your legs according to your coverlet“. (3) As to the manner of use, the trends that were observed formerly are further confirmed, proverbs in the mass media are often modified in form, and there are 9 types of modification. Each type is described, and all the proverbs of the corpus are assigned to one of the 9 structural classes.