Animal-related proverbs in a cognitive and cultural perspective: The concept of dog in Greek

Thomou, Paraskevi

doi:10.1075/cogls.22012.tho

Article published In: Cognitive Linguistic Studies
Vol. 12:1 (2025) ► pp.107–129

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Animal-related proverbs in a cognitive and cultural perspective

The concept of dog in Greek

Paraskevi Thomou | University of Crete

Published online: 2 June 2025

https://doi.org/10.1075/cogls.22012.tho

Abstract

The present study investigates dog-related proverbs found in language data from Modern Greek. Two corpus materials were examined and contrasted: one with the proverbs and one concerning the overall cultural schema for the animal. The analysis takes into consideration universal aspects regarding meaning construction in proverbs, together with culture-specific aspects influencing the perception of the animal in the Greek language and culture. The investigation of the language data reveals contradictory conceptualizations for the animal, both literally and metaphorically. However, proverbs reflect mainly negative features of its behavior. Furthermore, apart from the older metaphorical conceptualizations of dogs found in Greek and other languages, newer metaphorical conceptualizations were found in the corpus. Moreover, a dog’s life is perceived in three different ways in Greek language and culture while a distinction between domestic and stray dog emerges through the corpus data.

Keywords: corpus search, culture, dog, metaphor, conceptualization, schema, Greek, proverbs

Article outline

1.Introduction
2.Theoretical background
- 2.1Proverbs and their characteristics
- 2.2Proverbs in Greek: Relevant literature
- 2.3Proverbs in a cognitive and in a cultural perspective
3.Methodology
4.Analysis of the data
- 4.1Analysis of the cultural schema about the dog
- 4.2Analysis of the proverbs
5.Discussion
6.Conclusions
Acknowledgment
Notes
References

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