Evaluation in English Proverbs and Sayings

Kizyma S. M. Evaluation in English Proverbs and Sayings : bachelor’s paper : 035.041 English Studies and Translation and Two Western European Languages / supervised by Tetiana Biletska. Kyiv, 2024. 67 p.

This paper is devoted to the analysis of the structural, semantic and stylistic peculiarities of expressing positive and negative evaluative meanings in English proverbs and sayings. The relevance of the bachelor's paper lies in the insufficient research and analysis of the evaluation category in English proverbs and sayings. There is no clear differentiation between the expression of positive and negative evaluation in English proverbs, and the semantic groups of positive and negative evaluative proverbial expressions have not been thoroughly studied.
The purpose of the study is to organize the theoretical aspects of expressing evaluation in proverbs and sayings and to identify how positive and negative evaluative meanings are formed and manifested within these linguistic units.
The research methods used in this paper include analysis and synthesis, the method of classification, structural and semantic analysis, functional analysis, comparative analysis, and elements of quantitative analysis.
The results of the study show that evaluation in proverbs and sayings operates as a dynamic subsystem of language, manifesting through various lexical, stylistic, and figurative means. On the lexical level, adjectives, nouns and verbs with positive or negative semantics emerge as the most productive tools for conveying assessment in proverbial units as well as superlatives and tropes like antithesis, hyperbole, metaphor, simile, and personification. Syntactically, proverbs employ a variety of structures to convey evaluation, including emphatic compound sentences, non-emphatic sentences with attributive and nominal clauses, parallel constructions, and elliptical sentences without predicates. Other syntactic means, including comparative positive or negative structures, repetition, tautology, negation, and inversion further reinforce assessments. Pragmatically, only proverbs with negative connotations, acting as speech acts of warning, advice and prediction reflect evaluative meanings.