Actions speak louder than words, Stupid is as stupid does: Lexico-grammatical changes of proverbs in American press and web communication

Abstract

The paper presents a corpus-inspired analysis of lexico-grammatical changes of proverbs in American press and web communication as documented in two synchronous and historical corpora (namely COCA and COHA). Being a case study of two proverbs, Actions speak louder than words and Handsome is as handsome does, it reveals differing types of changes such as variants, derivatives based on modifications (mostly adnominal ones), and derivatives based on syntactic transformations. The tendency is noted for one of the proverbs to turn into a phraseoscheme X is as X does (including but not limited to the “Gumpism” Stupid is as stupid does).

Keywords

• phraseology
• paremiology
• lexico-grammatical changes of proverbs
• proverbial derivatives
• phraseoschemes