Functional and Pragmatic, and Linguocultural Aspects of Anthropocentric Phraseological Units with an Animalistic Component (on the Descriptive Material of English and Ukrainian).

Abstract

The Master's research paper is devoted to the study and comparative analysis of English and Ukrainian anthropocentric phraseological units (FU`s), which include names of various animals (AC), fish and birds. The theoretical part of the study sheds light on the theoretical and methodological aspects of the study of FU: the definition of phraseological unit (idiom) and zoonym in linguistics, classifications proposed by various scholars, functional and communicative and pragmatic features of FU`s, etc. Aapplicative sections focus on a comparative analysis of phraseological inits with an animalistic component in them, revealing their linguistic, cultural and pragmatic peculiarities.
The empiric material of the research includes English and Ukrainian FU`s selected by continuous sampling from phraseological, explanatory and bilingual dictionaries. The sample size is 521 FU`s.
Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the studied units showed that in the vast majority of such phraseologies denote or evaluate negative traits, states and aspects of human existence, both in Ukrainian and in English (in the second place - neutral, in the latter - positive). This, in its turn, allowed us to develop our own, more expanded classification of anthropocentric FU`s.
Intercultural differences in the meanings and concepts assigned to individual hyponyms and the main extralinguistic factors that contributed to the emergence of particular FU`s (folklore, professional fields, gastronomic culture, geographical features, etc.) were also identified.