THEMATIC CATEGORIES AND FIGURATIVE SYSTEM OF PROVERBS IN RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH

Abstract

The article deals with issues related to the thematic categories and the figurative system of proverbs of the Russian and English languages. A large group of proverbs of both languages are analyzed. Proverbs of the studied languages are divided into thematic groups and are considered from the point of view of the frequency of figurative words in each of the thematic groups. The analysis of the proverbs of both languages shows that the most widespread proverbs built on images-nouns that make up the thematic group “Man / people”. There are many such proverbs in these languages. This is due to the fact that the proverbs characterizing a person, his character, gender, age, occupation are numerous. In addition, they are also divided into small subgroups. Sometimes they can represent a certain hierarchy, that is, they can be a direct continuation of the category ahead. Nouns realize imagery, while they take part in the creation of images in almost all thematic groups. For example, a person – parents – children – woman – man – friendship – enmity. Each thematic category is explained by the intensity of the presentation of proverbial imagery. It is also important to arrange subject-thematic groups in a hierarchy, depending on the frequency and fullness of these thematic groups. In the proverbial images given, the sequence of events is considered. There is an evaluation scale of values in them, which can influence the criterion of intensity and fullness of a particular thematic group.