The image of the world in Polish and Arabic proverbs as a contribution to research in the field of comparative paremiology : a preliminary outline

The phrasemes, adages and proverbs which are deep-rooted in the awareness of social groups and whole nations, constitute the best linguistic material for making observations about the way of thinking as well as the image of the world created by the native speakers of a given language. In the present article the author suggests to develop research in the field of comparative (or contrastive) paremiology in the context of Arabic studies in Poland. Assuming that the language in the most obvious way reflects cultural both differences and similarities, she would like to open a debate about information transmitted by means of the language of proverbs and idioms, and a classification which – when it will be applied to a considerably larger number of examples in the future – would enable us to determine the zones of similarity and dissimilarity in the perception and description of the external world represented by various societies. One of the possible ways of classifying expressions of this kind is performed by means of a small sample of thirty proverbs and adages which are popular in Poland and in Arab countries – as a basis of the lexical and semantic analysis and further conclusions of sociolinguistic nature