Open Access

Michaela Kaňovská

• The paper presents an analysis and a comparison of the meanings and functions of proverbs in two editorials by the lawyer and journalist Dr Jakob Eben. The texts comment on the situation and the relations between nationalities in the Habsburg Monarchy in July 1880. One proverb is used in its normal form by the author (directly), while the other appears in a modified form, in a quotation (indirectly). In both cases the proverbs are used as part of a persuasive strategy in the text type of the editorial, for the purpose of provoking antipathy against the "others", i.e. the Czech politicians as political rivals, by means of their negative characteristics. In their specific co-text and context, the proverbs acquire additional semantic-pragmatic components of meaning, enabling them to participate in various isotopic chains and to contribute significantly to textual coherence. Additionally, their positioning marks important points in the argumentative structure of the text. The analysis also indicates some possibilities for the specification of semantic and pragmatic information in dictionaries.