Abstract:

According to Sapir (2014), we can see that language is a guide to social reality. Language, as a mirror of the society, can not only reflect a nation’s culture and history, but also reflect its values and beliefs. Just as language is a mirror of a nation's culture and history, so proverbs and sayings are the casket of gold carefully guarded by every nation. The life of a people from the most distant past to the present is woven into them. Expressed in a beautiful and compact form and expressed in pure folk language, they convey experiences of a people related to various events of everyday life. They vividly, often sharply and very wittily, characterize the bad and good qualities of individuals, groups or entire nations, while stigmatizing evil, fighting violence and wastefulness. Proverbs and sayings are a polished diamond, a priceless stone that never loses its value and beauty. According to an Arabic proverb, they are a beam illuminating darkness. We will dedicate our research to these so-called beams that illuminate the way to get relevant information about the role and place of women in society, i.e., to try to find out as much as possible about the status of women in Macedonian, German, English, Italian, Spanish and Turkish society. We will try to give an overview of the social role of women in society by analyzing a larger corpus of proverbs and sayings from the listed languages. Why exactly the woman? - the answer is given by the great writer Ivo Andric, who says that “A woman stands as a gate at the exit and the entrance of this world”.

When considering the position of women in society, it is necessary to keep in mind their work and social interaction in society, because today's women perform work responsibilities both at home and at work. Hence, their value increases with the increasing of their obligations and duties; now a woman is a wife, mother, housewife, farmer, teacher, principal, mayor, member of parliament, minister etc. It is the place and role of women in society that is the interest of our research, which we believe we will most credibly explore by analyzing the proverbs and sayings that carry the traditional wealth of a people and pass it on from generation to generation.

This scientific journey includes students from the third and fourth year at the Departments of Macedonian, German, English, Italian, and Turkish language and literature as well as the students who attend the elective course in Spanish language, from the Faculty of Philology at UGD-Stip. Their task is to process 50 proverbs and sayings from the mentioned languages. With their teacher, they will try to find appropriate equivalents in their mother tongue - Macedonian which we will then analyze in relation to our main component “woman” in relation to the positive or negative context in which it is used. The first part of the research will contain the results about the positive and negative feature of the female component in proverbs and sayings in each of the above languages, and the second part will summarize the processed results and give a common view of positive and negative in proverbs and sayings about women. We emphasize the role of women in these societies, believing that there are more similarities than differences in terms of their positive and negative perception in society. We hope that this modest research of ours will be of great importance for future contrast paremiological research, which in our opinion is at an enviable level.

Keywords:

Proverbs and sayings, woman, comparative approach, positive and negative context.