Słowa-klucze kultury w przysłowiach hausa

The article presents a combined approach towards a comparison of proverbs in different languages through the analysis of culture-specific concepts that are essential for coding the meaning of proverbs. The theory of culture keywords (Wierzbicka 1997) is adopted to the analysis of Hausa proverbs in a comparative perspective. The aim of the article is to indicate that proverbs are a representation of the linguistic image of the world and therefore may be subject to comparison in terms of the similarities and differences between languages and cultures. The word frequency analysis of 1505 Hausa proverbs led to identifying 55 items whose function can be specified as Hausa culture keywords. The presentation of 10 top items is to confirm their culture values and to identify 6 thematic areas which they represent. The presentation of 10 other keywords shows that the distinguished areas and their lexical representation may be used as methodological basis for comparative works on proverbs.