REFLECTION IN PHRASES OF THE UKRAINIAN AND ENGLISH MENTALITY

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of Ukrainian and English phrases that reflect the mentality of the peoples of Ukraine and Great Britain. The relevance of the study is due to the anthropocentrism of phraseology, i.e. the focus of stable units on the human world. The purpose of the article is to study the semantic features of phrases that reflect the Ukrainian and English mentalities. The article interprets mentality as a stable set of preferences and a formed system of values of a people, which is closely related to the national character, reflecting the spiritual face of a certain ethnic group. According to this definition of the term “phraseology”, its main types include phraseological splices, phraseological unities, phraseological combinations, and phraseological expressions (idioms, proverbs, sayings, aphorisms). According to the results of the analysis, phrases reflect such features of the Ukrainian mentality as religiosity, love of freedom, and hard work. In turn, the English mentality is the result of traditions and behavioral habits of the people of Great Britain; it reflects its climate, nature and geography. The English mentality is characterized by stability, hard work; tolerance and non-interference in the affairs of others; conservatism; restraint and individualism. The authors note that some components in the phraseological units of the analyzed languages give the phraseological units opposite connotations, although sometimes there are coincidences. This mostly concerns phraseological units containing components denoting weather phenomena, such as wind, rain, hurricane. According to the authors, this is due to the different climatic conditions in the UK and Ukraine. The difference between the phraseological units referring to labor is also established: while Ukrainian phraseological units verbalize hard or useless work, English ones mostly condemn laziness.