TRANSFORMATIONAL FEATURES OF "CORONAVIRUS" ANTI-PROVERBS IN THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE

Abstract

Summary. Research purpose – to analyze the ways in which anti-proverbs in Russian were transformed during the COVID-19 pandemic; to reveal the mentality of people in Russia during the pandemic as reflected in these anti-proverbs. Research object – Russian anti-proverbs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Research methodology – Word frequency statistics; comparative analysis; corpus analysis; literature analysis. Research result – 89 Russian anti-proverbs of pandemic were analyzed in terms of their ways of transformation, and it was found that 81 of them used substitution, 5 used associative extension, 2 used both ways, and 1 used homonymic mean. Word frequency statistics of thematic vocabulary were done for these anti-proverbs to obtain high frequency thematic vocabulary, and the results are as follows: вирус (23), карантин (8), маска (7), чихать (7), ковид (5), лечиться (5), вакцина / прививочный (5), заразить (4), Ухань / китаец (4), пандемия (3), инфицированный (3), антисептик (3). Conclusion. By collating and analyzing the anti-proverbs that appeared in Russian during the pandemic, it was found that the transformation of anti-proverbs during the period included substitution, extension, and a combination of various methods. Meanwhile, high-frequency words such as карантин, маска, чихать etc. in the anti-proverbs reflected to a certain extent the living conditions of Russian people during the pandemic. The anti-proverbs themselves contained a wealth of content, including people's fear and disgust of the virus, their ambivalence toward home quarantine, their negative attitude toward the vaccine at the beginning of the epidemic, as well as their misunderstanding of Wuhan, China. At the same time, they took an active role in protection, washing their hands regularly, wearing masks, and keeping social distance, and gained inspiration for healthy living from the epidemic. Value of research. Theoretically, the study of Russian anti-proverbs during the pandemic period can effectively contribute to the development of linguistics as a new change in the language; practically, we can see from these anti-proverbs some characteristics of people's mentality during that period. In addition, the humorous feature of anti-proverbs can be used in the education of Russian language to enhance students' interest in learning Russian proverbs and thus help them memorize traditional proverbs.