This theory-oriented dissertation focuses on proverbs in contemporary use. The aim is to highlight one of the ways proverbs are used and interpreted in everyday communication using colloquial written language. The empirical material and the argumentation are linked to theoretical models, thereby forming a basis for the conclusions. By using and illustrating the model based on possible worlds semantics, the study also addresses the challenge of why proverbs receive various interpretations. 

Proverbs are understood as significant units and parts of communication in the vernacular while language is understood to structure reality. On the one hand, this research produces basic information, and the possibility to observe proverbs and proverbial expressions in everyday use. On the other, it contributes to the discourse among paremiologists dealing with the substance of proverbs in everyday life and within the frames of folkloristics. Moreover, the dissertation offers some methodological and theoretical solutions for paremiological research. 

The research material consists of about 70,000 original SMS messages (i.e. text messages sent using Short Message Service) sent between 2006 and 2010 to be published as short letters to the editor and aimed at the readers of the daily Finnish regional newspaper Salon Seudun Sanomat. These messages include more than 7,000 expressions that are proverbs, potential proverbs, Bible quotations or references to them. The central research method is contemporary content analysis. Context creates the frame for the use and interpretation of proverbs. 

Within folklore, proverbs have been regarded as a part of the speech of older people. However, in the new urban tradition proverbs are neither passing from generation to generation nor are they taught at school. Instead, transmission takes place in written form and often within one generation only. Anyhow, the earlier oral tradition has found a place in the colloquial written language. In SMS messages, proverbs are used in a new context, with traditional proverbs occurring alongside the modern ones. Old proverbs are recognisable much more reliably than modern or future ones. 

The study confirms that proverbs remain a part of contemporary Finnish communication and everyday language, although the context of use has changed over the period which Finnish proverbs have been collected (i.e. over two centuries). Most traditional proverbs still contain agrarian terms and are relatively permanent expressions, but nowadays they are often used in a new context and with a new meaning. Although the dissertation examines Finnish proverbs and uses Finnish examples, the processes and challenges are the same, no matter which language or culture is being examined. Many of the observations can be generalised to the field of paremiology as a whole.