For the Semantic Specificity of Gender in German Phraseological Units

Abstract

Woman is the beginning and end of the universe. Without women, the world would have ceased to exist a long time ago. Due to the fact that phraseology is a mirror of a nation's consciousness and life, phraseology containing the concept "woman" is abundant in all languages, including the German language. The purpose of our research is to find phraseology containing the concept "woman" and determine its semantics. The object of research is German-language dictionaries and press, in particular the magazines: "Bravo", "Mädchen". There were found 83 German phraseological units. As the research has shown, the concept "woman" is used in German phraseology with positive and negative connotations, although phraseology with a negative connotation prevails (54) over (29) phraseology with a positive connotation. The concept "woman" is used in positive connotation phraseology with a variety of semantic meanings, such as beauty, love, difficulty, hard work, etc. The research of German phraseology revealed that the concept "woman" is more often fixed with a negative connotation or a negative semantic meaning. Even in the Bible, Eva is the origin of sin. She is an object, a toy in the hands of the devil. She is a weak creature who is easily influenced. The negative connotation includes the following semantic meanings: long tongue, short wit, cunning, unreliability, easy behavior, changeable character, etc. Most of the phraseology containing the concept "woman" is semantically related to the relationship between men and women and the family. As a conclusion, we can say that despite many phraseological expressions with negative connotations, women still remain the beginning of life, which is also clearly visible in phraseological expressions.