What is the CIG?

The CIG was set up in the 80s to co-ordinate, among several universities, a research entitled “Atlante Paremiologico Italiano” (API) directed towards the systematic scientific tracing of the wide heritage of proverbial sayings still alive in the oral culture of the community of Italian tradition.

The Centre also deals with the elaboration, distribution and collation of evidence gathered and subsequently entered into an electronic data base in order to form an invaluable dialectologic and paroemiologic collection which is unique in Italy and indeed throughout the world. It also promotes, in various fields (linguistic, geolinguistic, paroemiologic and anthropologic), the study of the material, organized as described, especially in the work of young people specializing in the discipline of Geoparoemiology, founded on this research.

From this vast electronic archive it will be possible to create a virtual atlas which will show the areal distribution of the variants of each of the 20.000 “cards” headed by the proverb which is the object of the research. The quantity of the material collected is in fact too great and too complex to be printed on paper, and the size of the paper, quite apart from the prohibitive expense, would be such as to hinder an over-all vision.

The points already explored in Italy are more than 300, but their distribution throughout the national territory is anything but uniform. All the regions of Italy have been visited but some only in a cursory way while others have been thoroughly investigated. However, those investigations in the early years fulfilled a requirement very much smaller than the present one, therefore, an integrated research is necessary.