EXPRESSING OF NATIONAL AND CULTURAL IDENTITY IN ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN PROVERBS

The paper deals with the linguistic comparative structural and semantic analysis of English and Russian proverbs with the concept of ‘happiness-unhappiness’ that reflects national and cultural identity and the specificity of thinking of the English and Russian people. The aim of the paper is to explore and show similarities and differences in mentality and perception of the world by English and Russian people. This aim was achieved due to the study of the structural and semantic components and expressive-evaluative components of the proverbs. As a result of the study both common and specific meanings of the Russian and English proverbs were revealed in the languages under consideration. The object of the study is English and Russian proverbs associated with the binary concept of “happiness-unhappiness”. During the analysis the basic meaning of the proverbs were revealed and systematized. The analysis of the phraseological meaning, lexical components, syntactic structures, expressive and emotive connotations, sound organization of English and Russian proverbs made it possible to identify the role of linguistic means in expressing the features of the mentality of the English and Russian peoples.