Abstract
The article presents the results of a study aimed at revealing common characteristics and differences in the structure, lexical composition and semantics of English and Russian phraseological units that contain monetary units. Reflecting universal or culture-specific mentality characteristics, these phrases represent people’s attitude to money, to wealth or poverty. They also disclose people’s values, customary ways of living and inclinations, as well as their apprehension of one’s financial and social status. Both mono- and bilingual phraseological dictionaries served as sources of samples. The authors selected 220 Russian phrases and 116 English phrases. The sample phrases include proverbs and sayings, idioms, fixed expressions, collocations, metaphors, phraseological fusions that contain names of monetary units. It is interesting to note that in both languages names of coins that are out of circulation are quite frequent in phraseology. The authors employed component and semantic analysis to investigate the phrase samples features. The sample phrases were divided into several groups depending on the kind of monetary unit used as the key lexeme. The quantitative data unveil that the names of small coins (kopeck, penny, cent, etc.) outnumber the words “ruble” and “pound”. The study has shown that names of small coins in phraseology do not always mean “little money”. They sometimes mean large amounts of money, “a fortune”, mentioned in an ironic tone. Many phrases include small coins alongside with bigger ones. Small and large sums contrasted help to form utterances that moralize and evaluate people’s deeds in both languages. The next step was to divide the samples into three groups. Each one contained phrases with a definite connotation: negative, neutral and positive. The comparative analysis reveals that negative subjective evaluative component is frequent in both languages. However, the quantitative data demonstrate a substantial shift towards negative connotation of monetary units in the Russian phraseology. In the Russian phraseology negative phrases with monetary units constitute 63% of all samples, whereas in the English phraseology negative ones account for 28%. The use of names of small coins helps figuratively express how worthless, miserable or trivial the speech subject is. English phrases with neutral connotation are frequent (40%), but only 6% of neutral Russian phrases were found. This indicates that monetary units in the Russian phraseology tend to be used in utterances expressing either appraisal or condemnation and discontent. They substitute lengthy, neutral descriptive expressions. In the English language neutral phrases often have a nominative function and form names of objects and phenomena, without evaluating them in any subjective way.
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