Value of Proverbs

出自香港新聞網 - 樹仁新傳系學生實習習作

Value of Proverbs 055113 黃盈慧 WONG, YING WAI 2007年9月28日 (五) 14:40 (UTC)

Pang Chi Ming, a columnist of Apple Daily and AM730, attended a seminar of proverbs using in media at Shue Yan University yesterday.

Nowadays, proverbs or folk adages are commonly used in printed media. But, there are many criticisms arise. Some say that proverb affect language level of youngsters; some say that this new media trend change the culture. To seek for the basic and root reason, it is no wonder that proverb present a rude, unbehavioral idea to public.

Pang does think that the function of language is communication, so if newspaper use proverbs, the only reason is to concern the education level of readers and their acceptance. He claims, using proverb get many advantages, such as make a greater tension of the story, create resonance. As a result, it is easier to attract more readers. On the other hand, he reminds proverb not equal to crude and vulgar. He uses a famous literary author Kam Yung as an example. In one of his writings, he describes caterans to get mad by using proverbs to explain. It definitely makes the characteristic more vivid.

While the society emphasis and encourage orthography and standard pronunciation, Pang in agreement on this too. He points out that language has life, and needs to improve. So public is required to faced as well as accepted.

“Respect culture, respect language.” Besides, Pang also suggests respect proverbs as it belongs to the whole culture. So he even thinks proverbs need to be reserved as part of the culture history.