Youth Education with Proverbs: A Case Study of Polish Proverbs about Work

Abstract

This paper focuses on the place of metaphorical narratives in education and in young people’s perceptions of work. Paremiology—the study of proverbs—explores cultural stipulates as scripts imprinted in proverbs, based on metaphor and metonymy, stored in collective wisdom. The article aims to present typical features of proverbs, indicating their potential in teaching: for example, helping in value clarification and career planning based on metaphorical narratives found in youth discourse. The paper discusses theoretical and methodological issues and the potential of applying them in education. First, the basic theoretical assumptions referring to language and culture are introduced, alongside the phenomenon of reasoning through proverbs. Then, proverbs are described, and their use in cross-cultural linguistic research is justified. The new concept of the paremioscript is introduced to demonstrate the power of proverbs in youth culture, and a few case studies are presented as metaphorical carriers of folk wisdom in the collective memory. The paper concerns the mechanism of valuing and embodiment in proverbs and finally discusses the advantages and limitations necessary to be considered in applying paremiology in education.