Jordan’s Proverbs as a Window into Arab Popular Culture

This book offers an insightful account of Arab popular culture through the lens of about four hundred annotated Jordanian proverbs. The collection touches on almost every aspect of daily life (including animals, kinship, religion, weather, generosity, money, food, and love). The proverbs cover a wide spectrum of morals related to competence, appearance, ignorance, naivety, corruption, wisdom, experience, courage, and kindness, among many others. Specialized readers, including linguists, translators, anthropologists, psychologists, diplomats, and military persons, among others, will find significant material and insights relevant to their work in this book. It serves to provide the reader with a better, deeper understanding of Jordanian/Arab mentality and behaviour, which will encourage intercultural communication and help remove several socially-biased stereotypes, in addition to enriching the culture of proverbs in human language.