Part of
Proverbs within Cognitive Linguistics: State of the artEdited by Sadia Belkhir
[Cognitive Linguistic Studies in Cultural Contexts 16] 2024
► pp. 26–39
In the chapter, I provide an account of metaphorical proverbs within the new framework of extended conceptual metaphor theory, or ECMT, for short (Kövecses 2020). I rely especially on the multilevel and contextualist aspects of this view. I argue that ECMT can account for why many proverbs are widespread in the world’s languages; why, at the same time, many proverbs can also exhibit cultural differences; and why proverbs can have very specific meanings in particular discourse situations. Finally, I show that context plays a very different role in metaphorical proverbs than in non-proverbial uses of metaphor.