The effect of the changing society on the Turkish proverbs

Proverbs, the product of oral literature, establish strong links between past and future, ensuring the continuity of culture. However, changes in societies have caused a contradiction between the daily culture and traditional proverbs; therefore, proverbs go through a process of transformation, mostly in a humorous way. Individuals who do not find the appropriate proverbs for the new experiences have adapted the existing proverbs to the new life by changing the content and wisdom of proverbs through addicting, replacing or distracting the lexis. In other words, the transformed proverbs, which are then called as anti-proverbs, are created by changing the meaning and the structure of traditional proverbs in order to express new wisdom and innovations or to draw attention to the old and new. The development of technology, the increase within using social media, the exchange of traditional values in society, the rise of notions such as individualism, self-interest and the economic problems are some of the factors that play a significant role in the changing of proverbs. In this study, 1368 anti-proverbs collected from various sources such as books, newspapers, advertisement, television, social media, songs have been evaluated; however, 39 anti-proverbs derived from 28 proverbs have been analyzed based on each factor indicated in the study. The Turkish anti-proverbs reveal that there have been changes in the value of some notions such as knowledge, intellectuality, the sense of belonging, honesty, kindness and facts such as the increase in the events of violence, financial problems, the power and effect of social media, which have an immediate effect on the mentality and behavioral ethics of Turkish society