“ENTRÉE INTO THE MIND AND MOOD OF AMERICA” PROVERBS IN COMMENCEMENT RHETORIC
Article Sidebar
193-222
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Main Article Content
Abstract
The present paper explores different aspects of proverb use in the commencement address discourse. It draws on the analysis of 100 speeches delivered at US universities over the past three decades. First, I offer some introductory remarks about the commencement ceremony as a socio-cultural phenomenon. Second, I look at the discursive characteristics of the commencement address. Next, I analyze the role proverbs play on the thematic level of the speeches and provide comments on their cognitive-discursive functions in the most significant thematic groups distinguished in the course of study. Last, I offer a closer study of the entertaining function and the function of structural organization of discourse proverbs fulfill in the commencement address.
Article Details
References
Hesburgh, Theodore M. 2003. “Foreword”. Go Forth and Do Good: Memorable Notre Dame Commencement Addresses/ selected, edited and introduced by Wilson D. Miscamble. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, xi – xii.
Ivanova, S. 2017. “Commencement Speech as a Hybrid Polydiscursive Practice”. Russian Journal of Linguistics, 21(1), 141 – 160.
Konstantinova, Anna. 2017. “Cognitive-Discursive Functions of Anglo-American Proverbs”. Proverbium, 34. 159 – 178.
Malloy, Edward A. 2003. “Reflection on Commencement”. Go Forth and Do Good: Memorable Notre Dame Commencement Addresses/ selected, edited and introduced by Wilson D. Miscamble. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, xiii – xiv.
Manning, Kathleen. 2000. Rituals, Ceremonies, and Cultural Meaning of Higher Education. –Westport: Bergin&Garvey.
Miscamble, Wilson D. (Ed.) 2003. Go Forth and Do Good: Memorable Notre Dame Commencement Addresses. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press.
Rutherford, Markella B. 2004. “Authority, Autonomy, and Ambivalence: Moral Choice in Twentieth-Century Commencement Speeches”. Sociological Forum, Vol. 19, No. 4, 583 – 609.
Wilson, Garff B. 1952. “Commencement at the Large University”. Journal of Higher Education. Vol. 23, No. 2, 89 – 93.
Иванова С. В. Актовая речь как культурный код// Язык, сознание, коммуникация: Сб. статей/ Отв. ред. серии Красных В. В., Изотов А. И. / М.: МАКС Пресс, 2016. Вып. 53. С. 152 – 160.