CONCEPTS OF “LOVE” AND “HATE” IN RUSSIAN AND CHINESE PAREMIOLOGY: THE TRICKSTER ARCHETYPE AS A MECHANISM FOR DECONSTRUCTING THE BINARY OPPOSITION

Abstract

The article presents a comparative study of paremiological means for deconstructing the binary opposition LOVE/HATE in Russian and Chinese linguocultures. The aim of the research is to identify culture-specific mechanisms through which the paremiological fund of the two languages transforms and semantically complicates this fundamental antinomy. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the integration of the trickster archetype theory into the methodology of comparative paremiology and in a comprehensive analysis of deconstructive strategies considering the gender aspect, the influence of religious and philosophical doctrines, and the linguistic features of each language. The research methods include the conceptual, comparative and componential analysis, corpus sampling method. The material comprises 150 Russian and 120 Chinese paremiological units. The results show that absurdization and diminution strategies, realized through grotesque and everyday hyperbolization, dominate in Russian paremiology, while the Chinese tradition relies on paradox and the dialectical synthesis of opposites, reflecting the influence of Daoist and Confucian thought. It is established that the trickster archetype is operationalized at four levels of a paremiological unit: as an acting subject, a situational model, a linguistic game, and a factor provoking ambivalent perception. The research results contribute to the theory of intercultural communication and linguoculturology.