REPRESENTATION OF LEXICAL UNIT GENTLEMAN IN ENGLISH CULTURAL SPACE

The English lexical unit gentleman which appeared in the language in the Middle Ages and is bound with knightly traditions of Western Europe is widely used nowadays. It implies nobility, politeness, honesty, disinterestedness, independence, financial well-being, reservedness, aristocratic background, respect of a woman and a set of other positive character traits due to which such a person stands out in society and functions with dignity in it. The purpose of the article is to show the representation and actualization of this lexical unit in various modern English spheres of life, discourses, and with this idea in mind the attention is paid to phraseological units including sayings and proverbs both in standard language and in slang as well as aphorisms and utterances of well-known public figures concerning this lexeme. Both contextual, definition and componential analyses were used in this research. There are not many proverbs and sayings with this unit but quite enough phraseological units and especially aphorisms and opinions of dignities about gentlemanism in general, some of them are quite negative and even paradoxical. Some contemporary сelebrities express specific attitude towards this notion which can testify to transformation of public attitude towards gentleman per se. Both native and foreign lexicographic reference-books as well as books of aphorisms were consulted in the research.