Abstract
This saying, frequently encountered in many languages, was a pretext offered by surveyors in order to generate exemplary narrations. Three groups of students in Communication (B. A. 2nd year and M. A. 1st year), confronted with this “proof”, highlighted several aspects of the Romanian economic speech: a) the tendency to avoid the difficulties of a narrative production while preferring the analysis of the expression; b) the manipulation strategies of the sender-surveyor through prestige references; c) the complex game of ethno-idiomatic patterns, beyond the instruction of the subjects on intercultural patterns.
Key words: communication, intercultural patterns