Core animalistic images in comparative phraseology

The aim of this article is to analyze comparative phraseological units and compare the core animalistic images of English, German, Russian, and Chinese linguacultures found in these units. The relevance of the article is due to the linguocultural analysis of the stable comparatives and the addition of Chinese to the Indo-European languages as the research material. The comparative phraseological units were divided into thematic groups: (1) wild animals, (2) domestic animals, (3) birds, (3) fish, mollusks, amphibians, and reptiles, and (4) insects. The total number of comparatives amounted to 517 units. Having studied the national, cultural specificity, semantic features of phraseological units with zoonyms, ornithonyms and insectonyms, as well as having analyzed examples of their use in the corpora of the languages under study, the authors of the article identify the universal core images for all the languages under consideration and partially coinciding core images. Special attention in the article is paid to the core images which are specific for this or that linguaculture. The authors infer that the differences at the level of connotative evaluation are explained by the different content of the images in the analyzed linguacultures. The reference image is formed by basic ideas about the appearance and habitat of a particular animal, and in the case of Chinese, also by the characteristics of special zooanthropomorphic creatures that have the features of this animal and are mentioned in myths and works of classical literature. Consequently, unlike Western linguacultures, in the Chinese one the core image can be multidimensional and ambivalent. Based on the comparison, the authors conclude that the national identity of linguacultures is expressed through the system of evaluative core images. Studying and comparing these images, we can acquire information not only about the aesthetic perceptions of the native speakers of a particular language, but also about the peculiarities of the national mentality. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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