Cognition, comprehension and communication

There is no doubt that phraseology in general and paremiology in particular are experiencing a global boom that is especially pronounced in Europe, to wit the foundation of the European Society of Phraseology in 1999 with its headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland. In North America, meanwhile, a certain revival of interest in phraseology and paremiology has also taken place. In order to make international scholars aware of the exciting paremiological work that has gone on in Canada and the United States during the past ten years, this new essay volume on „Cognition, Comprehension, and Communication. A Decade of North American Proverb Studies (1990-2000) “ is offered with the sincere hope that it will bring about further discussion and an increased interest in the intriguing world of proverbs. The twenty-seven essays have been grouped under the three „c“s of cognition, comprehension, and communication. But such matters as canonization, collection, context, culture, definition, empiricism, ethnicity, familiarity, fixidity, folklore, frequency, function, history, ideology, language, lexicography, linguistics, literature, mass media, memorability, metaphor, neurology, origin, pedagogy, poetics, politics, psycholinguistics, psychology, rhetoric, semantics, semiotics, society, speech act, strategy, therapy, value, variation, wisdom, and worldview are all part of this composite picture. The essays of this volume represent some of the finest proverb scholarship by North American scholars, and collectively they contain pragmatic and theoretical research results that all paremiologists and phraseologists might well descant upon now that these studies are all assembled under one proverbial roof.