Constructing a Broad Model for Proverb Understanding

ABSTRACT Based on the view that “The meanings that we take most for granted are those where the complexity is best hidden”, the paper attempts to describe the complex cognitive operations at work in the process of proverb understanding. The main goal is to build up a model capable of accounting for how proverbs mean and how speakers within a speech community understand them the way they do. Such a model is not a completely new one; rather, it is built out of a number of already existing models, namely Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Great Chain Metaphor Theory, Stereotype Theory and Metaphoric Integration Theory. Each of these theories reduces to an individual ingredient which fulfills a specific task within the broad model as a whole. The broad model is applied to two case studies in order to indicate how it works in the case of proverbs with simple metaphorical structures and in proverbs with complex metaphorical potential.