Category Archives: Folk speech

Hammer and Nail

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Interviewee: In a summer camp I attended while in elementary school, my teacher told us about this proverb: “If you are holding a hammer, everything you see is a nail.” In Chinese: “手里拿着锤子，看什么都像钉子.”

Hammer and nail are a perfect duo. However, when a hammer becomes the only tool you reach for, it distorts perception. In this proverb, the message is that if you always hold a hammer and see everything as a nail, you will forever be seeing this world through a single, fixed way of thinking.

It was a simple, concrete way for my teacher to educate me about not being hindered by my preconceived notions—my “hammer”—when seeing the world. It’s about teaching kids to have an open mind and think outside of the box sometimes.

Context:

My interviewee first encountered this proverb in China, shared by a teacher when she was attending a summer camp as an elementary school student.

Analysis:

This proverb is an educative proverb that teaches the audience about cognitive bias using the metaphor of a hammer and nail. It is vernacular because, while this was shared in a summer camp by a teacher, this proverb wasn’t in the textbook, and neither was it formally written down. It’s essentially a metaphor about having an open mindset: it warns against the human tendency to fit problems to our existing solutions rather than seeking solutions suited to the actual problem.

Genre analysis:
Metaphorical structure: This proverb’s metaphorical structure—using a concrete, well-known physical object to metaphorically render an abstract lesson—is characteristic of a proverb.

Sentence structure / phoenetics: In addition, the sentence structure in Chinese—each clause having the exact same number of Chinese characters—makes this proverb rhyme and easier to remember and tell from a structural/phonetic perspective.

“El que se fue a Sevilla, perdió a silla”

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C: ‘El que se fue a Sevilla, perdió a silla,’ which means, the one who goes to Sevilla, loses his seat. As in, if you get up and go away and leave your seat unattended, then like, you shouldn’t complain if you loose it.

Context

The informant’s father was born and raised in Spain and she grew up speaking Spanish with her family in the US. The informant claims that this saying is used in the context of a person leaving “any seat, everywhere, or if you’re like in line and you leave”

Analysis

This is an example of a fun, rhyming saying that makes it easy for children to remember important rules about etiquette. In this way, parent’s are able to communicate the social norms of the folk group in a way that is pleasant to hear and easy to remember. The social norm that is being communicated here is that of a system of claiming shared resources and the virtue of patience.

Sana, Sana, Colita de Rana

Context

A: My dad is from Mexico, my mom is from Guatemala and we speak Spanish in — er — mostly Spanish. I speak… uh, I speak to my parents in English, but for most of my life, they’ve spoken to me in Spanish. And I remember my family, like my mom, my aunts, or even my grandma, when we would get hurt, uh… there would be this saying.

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A: I’m going to say it in Spanish and then I’ll try to translate it. It was Sa–uh sanita sanita, colita de rana, si no a menesa bien hoy, a manaces bien mañana, which is like… Frog butt, frog butt something — er tail, if you don’t wake up better today, you’ll wake up better tomorrow. Or something like that. I probably butchered that but, um… yeah. And so… whenever we like got hurt, uh, they would like rub like wherever it hurt and say that.

Interviewer: Did it have, um… Do you recognize a convention of frogs or something to do with frogs?

A: You know what, wait. Sana — oh, it’s sana sana, colita de rana… yeah, sana sana colita de rana… yeah, si no a manasas bien hoy, a manáse — a ma-manasás bien mañana. I think that’s the saying. I don’t know what the connection is. I actually didn’t think much about it… like the translation of it… um, but yeah.

Analysis

The process of recalling this saying is interesting here because it is an example of the ways in which folklore can change over time. The informant remembers a slightly different version of the saying at first that involves a diminutive suffix “ita.” The informant also remembers the spell slightly differently from how it has been recorded in the past. In this case, they use the verb “manar,” which means to get better, but the more well-known version uses the verb “sanar,” which means to heal. By including these slight variations, it is easy to see how folklore changes over time. It might even be the case that it is more common to use the term “manar” for this spell in Guatemala.

The verb also “sanar” helps identify the significance of the “sana” (or frog) in this spell. Initially, when I asked about why the spell might involve frogs in case there was a cultural significance I was missing, the informant said he didn’t know about any such connection. Now that I have seen the more typical version of the spell, it is much easier to recognize that a frog is likely mentioned because of it’s similarity to the word for heal.

Rocky Horror Picture Show Callback Response

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Hey! I heard this movie was made in New York City! *group response* New York City? Get a rope!

Context

The informant is a cast member in a weekly performance of the Rocky Horror Picture Show that takes place on Saturday night at midnight. While the movie is being screened, there are many vulgar things the audience shouts back at the film at specific points. There are also actors on stage performing scenes from the movie as it is being played.

This particular callback happens in response to the character named Frank dieing.

Analysis

The screening of Rocky Horror Picture Show serves as a sort of festival for alternative and queer youth. By developing and memorizing all of the callbacks involved, audience members communicate their dedication and belonging to the folk group. Some callbacks are universal such as calling the character named Janet a slut and the character named Brad an asshole, but others are regional or specific to a particular cast. Therefore, based on the callbacks you are familiar with, you might be communicating your identity within your local community or an international one.

Rocky Horror Picture show is infamous for being a place for the vulgar and the taboo. Many of the scenes and callbacks are not deemed socially acceptable in the real world, even by the alternative community that find so much belonging in the show. In this way, screenings of Rocky Horror Picture Show serve as festivals in that they provide an opportunity for social norms to be turned on their head. In doing so, they may provide a socially acceptable form of release of tension just to return to reality or serve as a rehearsal for revolution.

This informant attributed this particular callback to a salsa advertisement in which a cowboy is in distress because he has run out of salsa. When he is given a less than sufficient replacement, he exclaims, “This stuff’s made in New York City?!” The rest of the cowboys respond by saying, “New York City?! Get a rope.” This pop-culture reference is an inside joke that is related to the scene taking place.

No Brain, No problems (Hebrew Saying)

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אין שכל אין בעיות

Translated roughly to no brain, no problems.

Context

The informant said that this saying might be used “if you do something dumb or if someone else does something dumb.”

Both of the informant’s parents were born in Israel, and the family all speaks in Hebrew to one another.

Analysis

The term “no brains, no problems” may be used in a situation where a person near you has erred, and the person enacting the statement wants to point out the error without being rude or offensive towards the other. By offering a sense of humor, it allows the user to diffuse the tension which may otherwise come from pointing out a mistake, and lets the other person admit to fault.