The Implementation of the Conception of Friendship on the Basis of Comparative Structural-semantic Analysis of English and Russian Proverbs

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Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the conception of friendship based on the results of comparative structural-semantic analysis of English and Russian proverbs about friendship. The study includes two complementary steps. The first step consists in formulating the main aspects of the conception of friendship. The second consists in comparing fragments of this proverbial field, which made it possible to explore the implementation of eight aspects of the conception of friendship on the material studied. The clarification of similarities and differences made it possible to identify the specific national and cultural characters of thinking and mentality of the two non-related peoples towards understanding of friendship. The relevance of the study is determined by the novelty of the proposed approach to the study of the conception of friendship based on the comparative structural and semantic analysis of proverbs of two linguistic-cultural ethnic groups, as well as the insufficient knowledge of proverbs expressing the concept of “friendship” from the point of view of identifying their figurative and motivational basis, figurative means (metaphor, metonymy, comparison, personification, gradation, hyperbole, irony, allegory, antithesis), semantics of lexical components, syntactic structures (repetitions, parallelism, ellipsis, compression), expressive means, as well as rhythmic organization. There were selected and systematized similar and unique meanings of English and Russian proverbs as a result of research on the material of these languages. The analysis of these meanings allowed us to explore conception of friendship, thereby providing the basis for deeper rethinking both the conception and the proverbial material. As the part of the study there were observed differences in understanding of a person, personal relationships with others, mutual help, etc. These differences are largely due to the different origins of English and Russian proverbs. Most of the English proverbs are short sayings, which were formed under the influence of Latin expressions and quotations from Bible. Most of the Russian proverbs are peasant by origin and therefore they are closely connected with a specific and imaginative perception of the world. Their expressiveness is much higher at the expense of using the means of oral folk creativity. This analysis made it possible to reveal the role of linguistic means in expressing the mentality of the representatives of both peoples.

About the authors

Tatiana G. Orlova

Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University)

Author for correspondence.
Email: orlova-tg@rudn.ru

Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

6, Miklukho-Maklaya street, Moscow, 117198, Russian Federation

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