Portée éducationnelle et rhétorique des proverbes dans la société ancestrale kongo

The object of our research work is to study the mechanisms by which the proverb works by showing its contribution to the ancestral education of Kongo. The proverb is a multifunctional instrument which intervenes in the socialization of the child. It plays several functions, but as regards our study, we will only discuss two : the pedagogical function and the rhetorical function. The choice of these aforementioned functions is explained by the fact that in the context of the education of a child, the proverb is, and remains a necessary tool which allows to support him in the acquisition of knowledge and in the development of language by exercising it in wisdom, one of the cardinal values of Kimuntu. So, we proceeded by Interviews and Participant observation for the collection data on the field investigation. The thematic content analysis approach of Mucchielli (1996) and relativized functionalism of Merton (1968) will be used to analyze our paremic corpus. To this end, we will first make the methodological and theoritical study of the proverbs ; contribute by presenting their pedagogical and rhetorical functions ; finally, how the rhetorical scope of the proverbs submitted to our study manifests itself. Keywords : traditional education, rhetoric, proverbs, values, pedagogy,