An Analysis of English Proverbs From Cultural Perspective 英语毕业论文.doc

An Analysis of English Proverbs From Cultural Perspective 1. Introduction Each language has its own proverbs in the world. Generally, the history of a country is longer, the proverbs are richer. Proverb is a form of language to express people’s emotions and feelings in their daily lives; and is a short exact sentence or phrase from creating of people’s social practice; and is gradually the most concise and vivid part of language. Much research work has been done on Engllish proverbs from social, religious, humanistic and cultural pespects and many linguists do great contribution in these fields. They have studied the origins, language features and cultural implications of English proverbs. So based on their works, this paper attempts to decode English provers from cultural pespective, by analyzing the origin, cultural values and functions of English proverbs, in order to make readers get to know some basic ideas of English proverb from cultural view. This paper mainly focus on British English proverbs and contains three parts: the origin of English proverbs,the cultural value of English proverbs and the functions of the cultural value. Firstly, it introduces the sources of the English proverbs. English proverbs come from folk life, mythology, literary works, other languages,a nation’s history and so on. Secondly, it mentions the cultural value of English proverbs. Its cultural value is to reflect many aspects of the Great Britain. They reflect the history, geography, customs and habits, religion and literature of Great Britain. Thridly, it mentions the functions of the proverbs from cultural aspects. Its cultural value is to inspire and guide peoples behavior, teaching experience, moral education, advocacy and other social functions. During the study on this subject, the author has come to realize that many proverbs are culturally derived. They reflect many aspects of the culture. Therefore, an adequate knowledge of the cultural background of proverbs is fu