Korkut Ata Türkiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi

Öz

Proverbs, one of the products of oral culture, are cultural accumulations acquired by society as a result of long experience. They reflect the worldview and philosophy of life that society has brought with it over the centuries. Since proverbs continue to exist in social life, like other folklore materials, they are passed down from generation to generation, ensuring a fresh national memory and preserving the cultural codes. For this reason, the study focuses on the proverbs that are said in the context of rituals of transitional periods such as birth, marriage and death in the province of Hamadan in Iran. The research was written in order to determine the place of the proverbs in Hamadan during the transitional periods and the points of the transitional periods. Proverbs are products of oral culture that have no meaning when they are used out of context, but they increase the power of the word and gain their true value when they are used in context. For this reason, context-centered theories were used in the study. The proverbs used in the oral source in accordance with the context in the interviews on birth, marriage and death during field studies conducted in Iran in 2015 and 2017 were preferred in the study and the subject was limited in this aspect. In addition, it is known that proverbs express many meanings related to life events, but in the study, attention is drawn to the meanings of birth, marriage and death in particular. As a result of the study, it has been revealed that the proverbs of the region cover topics that relate to the key moments of transitional periods in the Hаmаdan area, as well as throughout the geography of the Turkic world, and carry traces of the collective memory of the Turks.