Proverbs also have nine lives: The use of proverbs in advertising

Abstract

Proverbs are a social product and are part of the linguistic competence of the speakers of a language. They contain and transmit cultural elements of languages. Moreover, proverbs are firmly anchored in the languages’ historical heritage. Both the linguistic and cultural data contained in proverbs are shared by most speakers and link them to past speakers. Proverbs express and strengthen ideas. Thus, proverbs play a role in both general and specialised languages. However, several authors have attested a significant decline in their use; others explain that their function has changed, but their popular currency has remained constant. Although the use of proverbs may have declined, this paper contributes to highlighting the long life of proverbs and proverbial phrases that remain in use even today in the specialised language of advertising in Spanish and English. A corpus of advertisements in both languages has been collected and analysed. Most of the examples found were in Spanish, although some examples in English were also collected. It was found that proverbs are still used in advertising campaigns for products and services and, in several cases, the proverbs used have been shortened, adapted or modified. Since proverbs reflect the cultural elements of a language and convey these elements, the process of adapting or modifying proverbs is intended to relate the culture to the product or service. The use of proverbs may have declined in general language, but they still maintain a role in the specialised language of advertising.

Keywords

• paremiology
• proverbs
• culture
• Spanish and English language of advertising