Patarlių tradicijos ir modernumo dermės paradoksai

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Patarlės; Antipatarlės; Patarlių vartojimo galimybės; Šiuolaikinė patarlių vartosena; Lietuvių patarlių fondas; Proverbs; Anti-proverbs; Possibilities of using proverbs; Modern proverb usage; Lithuanian proverbs foundation.

ENIn the 21th century, characterized by modern technologies, urban culture, and globalization, it should nevertheless be noted that genre of proverbs and proverbial phrases is still alive and vital; it not only continues to interest people nowadays as an exotic heritage, but is useful also as a relevant and handy means of communication in the modern life. Considering the actually existing proverbs and proverbial phrases from the modern perspective, the following questions are raised: What is the vitality of the genre determined by - the concise form of the sayings or the "truth" proven by time? What kinds of sayings have survived until nowadays? Why are there such cases, when proverbs used for centuries in the country life still find their place in the modern contexts? How do proverbs used a century or two ago by peasants sound in the lips of the contemporary urban people - seriously or ironically? To what extent do the modern people appreciate the traditional form and contents of the proverbs and what are the reasons of the introduced changes? What is asserted and postulated by the proverbs: social or individual attitudes, didactics or ridicule, criticism of the old moral, ethic values or striving towards them? Are we in any way exceptional against the international background? The contemporary data regarding modern usage of proverbs and proverbial phrases clearly illustrates considerable discrepancy between the official corpus of proverbs and proverbial phrases that are published in indices and the real one, which is currently in actual use. The clearest difference comprises modified and completely new manifestations of proverbs and proverbial phrases, i. e. the anti-proverbs (transformations of the traditional proverbs) and the new, "non-folkloric" utterances acquiring status of the stable phrases.Such changes pertaining to both the paremic corpus and usage of proverbs and proverbial phrases, call for introducing a new definition of the subject of paremiology, and for reconsidering aspects related to proverb authenticity, authorship, and imitation. It is obvious that phraseology no longer relevant to the modern people tends to be displaced from the active use; while among the old proverbs, those that are particularly flexible and can be applied to absolutely different situations are used preferably, and simpler syntactic constructions of the old proverbs get established along with more usual grammatical forms and more common, simpler normative lexis that seems more relevant to the modern people. Composing of anti-proverbs is a typical feature of contemporary proverb usage both in Lithuania and in other young democratic societies. Such great extent of modification that is observed in Lithuanian proverbs during the two recent decades is perhaps unparalleled in the course of the whole history of Lithuanian proverb development. This could be explained both by democratization of language, by inherent flexibility of the genre, including its capacity of adapting to the changing social, political and cultural environment, and by the social attitude towards folklore. Still, connection with tradition is strong enough, whether consciously or not, and therefore composition of anti-proverbs can be regarded as search of new means of expression, as striving for originality, or as a way of individual self-expression. Besides, it can be maintained that ironic attitude towards traditional things is sometimes adopted precisely in order to remind of the basic human values, asserted by the traditional proverbs. The contemporary Lithuanian usage of stable sayings and directions of change and spread of the phraseology obviously reflect both the global tendencies of phraseology development and the general ones of cultural globalization.First of all, the researcher's attention is drawn towards analogies between contemporary Lithuanian paremiological phenomena and the international ones. The amount of the classified Lithuanian data is already sufficient to ground concluding that, according to the numerous studies by foreign paremiologists, such Lithuanian paremiological innovations as composition of anti-proverbs and transformations of "non-folkloric" phrases into stable sayings comprise part and parcel of the universal international process. Several universal similarities can be noted: both Lithuanian proverbs and those of other modern societies have transgressed into various spheres of communication, where they are used for similar purposes; the anti-proverbs are composed by employing similar or homogeneous structural patterns and analogous semantical means; the corpus of proverbs is constantly enriched by utterances from spheres of modern life. In other words, common features of usage of the contemporary Lithuanian proverbs are homogeneous (or at least, quite similar) to those characteristic to the whole global community. Another aspect of international character of proverbs includes exchange of proverbs between different nations and constant circulation of proverbs; these processes of adoption and borrowing have been considerably enhanced by political and social changes, modern means of communication and media, and the weakening of the national self-consciousness. So far, one can only guess, as to what extent the influence on parodying the traditional Lithuanian proverbs and on the renewal of the corpus of proverbs has been exercised by the English-speaking and Russian-speaking cultures. Obviously, our society accepts the proverbs typical to other cultures as those of its own, including their images and structures. [...]. [Extract, p. 514-516]