Proverbs as Metaphorical Maps: A Comparative Analysis of Traditional and AI-Generated Discourse

Abstract

This paper is thoroughly based on the comparative analysis of traditional proverbs and AI generated proverbs to find out whether using artificial intelligence can in any way mimic the metaphorical, cultural, and cognitive richness involved in human proverbs. Proverbs are brief cultural items containing generations of wisdom, values, and moral teachings expressed as metaphorical mappings that are intrinsically well experienced. Thanks to the development of Natural Language Processing (NLP), models like GPT-3 and GPT-4 have been shown to have exceptional ability to result in coherent and human-like texts, which makes it difficult to believe that such systems are capable of producing culturally resonant proverbs. This study is based on the conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) and cognitive linguistics and explores the role of metaphors in understanding abstract concepts and facilitating the transmission of cultures. The study objectives are presented by defining various underlying conceptual metaphors in both traditional and AI-generated proverbs and to make comparisons between cultural and cognitive patterns expressed in them. A qualitative comparative study will show that AI can replicate the structural and linguistic characteristics of proverbs but does not easily replicate the emotional undertones, cultural internalization, and sense of experience that proverbs have. Traditional proverbs are known to do not only pass moral direction and societal standards, but also create cohesiveness, strength and generational identity. On the other hand, AI generated proverbs lack the contextual grounding which is a matter of statistics not of the lived realities. The results point to the possibilities and constraints of AI in the generation of cultural texts and that human wisdom cannot be replaced in the meaning-making process. This work can be discussed as making a contribution to the interdisciplinary contribution to the field of linguistics, cognitive science, and etc. AI ethics because it argues that technology indeed is not able to capture the essence of cultural wisdom.