In this article, proverbs are considered from a purely linguistic point of view, and within the frame of the theory of argumentation in language (Anscombre & Ducrot) and the theory of topoi (Anscombre eds, 1995). As linguistic items close to names, proverbs can qualify a situation through a stereotypical frame. The situation will then be considered as a representative (or not representative) case of the stereotype involved in the proverb. The article focuses on negative proverbs that show a negation because of their rich enunciative structure (negation being a preeminently polyphonic context). We finally suggest, for the proverbs with a negation, a classification mainly based on their enunciative structure.