Comparative analysis of the concept of “health” in the English, Russian and Chuvash proverbs

Abstract

This article carries out a comparative analysis of the proverbs about health in English, Russian and Chuvash languages. Although the popularity towards leading a healthy lifestyle increases, there are virtually no comparative research of the proverbs on about health, which defines the relevance of this work. The goal lies in analyzing the culture and people's attitude towards health reflected in the proverbs of the compared non-cognate languages; finding the proverbs of the same content and uniting them into thematic groups. The novelty of this research consists in its linguoculturological focus. A comparative linguoculturological study of the proverbs of non-cognate languages allowed establishing the common and specific characteristics of the concept of “health” in linguistic consciousness of the English, Russian and Chuvash people, thereby determining their ethnic-cultural peculiarities. Theoretical importance of this work lies in the fact that the acquired results can be applied in comparative paremiology, the relevant segment of modern linguistics – linguoculturology; in lectures on the theory of cross-cultural communication and special courses on linguoculturology; in compiling textbooks on the practice of teaching foreign languages to the Russian-Chuvash audience, as well as medical glossaries.