PORTUGUESE APHORISTICS IN THE CIRCLE OF PHILOLOGICAL STUDIES

Abstract

Aphoristics is one of the types of verbal art of short and concise forms. Despite the small format, aphoristic text-statements are characterized by completeness (correspondence to purpose), integrity (completeness of semantic content), phonetic and morphosyntactic perfection of form. The term “aphorism” has broad and narrow interpretations. On the one hand, this is a fund of linguistic units, which includes texts of small forms, different in structure, origin and functions, genres of texts and universal language statements. On the other hand, aphorism is a field of scientific knowledge that uses philological, historical and philosophical approaches. Being short statements, aphoristic units have a universal character, since they are based on judgments and inferences. Aphorisms are expressions of psychological stereotypes containing an assessment of images and ideas of social behavior. Aphorisms are characterized by cliché (predetermined form, familiarity), which in a communicative situation can turn into paradoxical novelty. From a historical perspective (diachrony), aphorisms retain not only the identity of form, but also of content. Thus they act as parts, nodes of verbal tradition. Aphorisms contain proverbs—fragments of the biblical tradition and folklore speech genres of small forms, as well as clichéd author’s sayings, formed in different types of personal and institutional types of discourse. In the Portuguese verbal tradition, aphorisms appeared during the Renaissance and revealed themes of religious and moral content. By the New Age (Baroque era), everyday aphorisms appeared with increased didactic intentionality (concerning topics of family, marriage, work and rest, housekeeping). Aphorisms have been the object of analysis in Portugal since the Renaissance, when their first lexicographic descriptions appeared. The compilation of collections of aphoristic sayings continued in the 17th—18th centuries. In the 19th century, due to the growing interest in folklore, new collections of proverbs appeared, which were already differentiated from aphorisms. As an object of scientific analysis, proverbs became known in the 20th century, mainly in Brazil as “ready-made, complete phrases.”