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Though, for scholars of folklore and oral literature, to define proverbs has been a difficult subject, it is not absolutely impossible to propose an alternative idea. This article, adopting Kenneth Burke’s sociological view of proverbs as the strategic names for recurrent situations in a given society, analyzes the essential aspects of Hausa proverbs. However, this article is not satisfied with mere enumeration of the various types of attitudes concerning proverb‐use, but rather attempts to introduce a new concept of higher level, which reside above all the contextual attitudes. It is ‘the protection of human relationship’ that are superimposed on proverb‐speakers’ specific attitudes such as instruction, consolation, admonition, vengeance, exhortation, or foretelling, etc. This higher level strategy generally characterizes the overall syntactic structure of Hausa proverb texts: ellipsis, genetivization and frontshifting. Thses syntactic devices contribute to hiding the naked and straightforward parts of the message that speakers intend to express. The term ‘karin magana’ referring to the genre of the proverb reflects this important aspect of proverb‐use. Karin magana means ‘speech‐folding’.
