English proverbs as a reflection of social stereotypes

Abstract

Social stereotypes are extremely generalized and simplified views about various subjects and social phenomena that have evolved in the course of society development. Proverbs are also generalized statements that have been formulated by people throughout the history. The aim of our research is to prove that the proverbs are actually the reflection of social stereotypes that have long been affecting social relations. Using the method of continuous sampling we have selected the English proverbs that contain the main categories of existing stereotypes: gender, age, ethnic and professional stereotypes. We have studied the most wide-spread stereotypes about men and women, elderly people, popular occupations as well as some stereotyped notions of the British about themselves and have chosen the proverbs illustrating these generalized beliefs. We have shown that the laconic, metaphoric and memorable form of proverbs facilitates their rooting in the peoples consciousness and passing them on practically unchanged from generation to generation. Statistical and comparative analysis made it possible to group the proverbs on the basis of stereotype categories and to find out their percentage ratio. The proverbs containing gender stereotypes appear to be most numerous with the prevailing number of sayings about women. Age stereotypes reflected in the proverbs are mostly related to elderly people. Professional stereotypes embrace a small number of occupations and those few are most often of negative character. Ethnic stereotypes encountered in the proverbs represent the British most favorably. The relevance of the paper lies in the fact that the study of stereotypes as reflected in the proverbs would contribute to making people give up stereotyped thinking in favour of acquiring their own attitudes and viewpoints.