Cross-Cultural Stylistic and Semantic Analysis of Proverbs: A Comparative Study of Balti and English

Abstract

The objective of this study is to investigate the similarities and differences between Balti and English proverbs and the impact of culture on them through the exploration of Parallelism as a Stylistic approach. For this purpose, Theory of Cultural Linguistics by Farzad Sharifian (2017) and Palmer (1996) are used to investigate the cultural significance of proverbs. Previous studies in the region have primarily focused on describing proverbs from a single perspective. As a result, there is a lack of exploration from alternative viewpoints. This current study aims to fill that gap. Qualitative and textual analysis methods are employed on 50 randomly collected proverbs from both English and Balti languages. The Balti proverbs are collected from Ghulam Hassan Hasni’s book “Tam Lo” (2004), while the English proverbs are collected from two online sources, namely The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs by Jennifer Speake and John Simpson, and A Handbook of Proverbs by Henry G. Bohn. The results show that proverbs of both languages use cultural conceptualizations and cultural objects to produce proverbs, and they are significantly affected by the native cultures. The English and Balti proverbs exhibit both similarities and differences in terms of stylistic, semantic, and thematic elements. Moreover, parallelism has been explored in proverbs of both languages as a Stylistic device which enhances the rhythm and beauty of proverbs. This research contributes to the field of Linguistics, Stylistics, Anthropology, and Paremiology. Future researchers can carry out research studies using other perspectives and other regional languages.