Linguocultural pecularities of phraseological units in English and Ukrainian languages

Abstract

Phraseological units directly or indirectly carry cultural information about the world and pass it from generation to generation, reproduce the national culture and its mentality, show the features of the national figurative way of thinking. A phraseological unit is the soul of each national language, in which the spirit and specificity of the nation are revealed in a unique way. The article deals with the role of English and Ukrainian phraseology as a means of national cultural reflection. It is pointed out that the phraseological units are a means of reflection of national culture and a valuable source of information about the culture and national character of the nation. The specific features of English and Ukrainian phraseology, which are reflected in the pictorial thinking of the nation, have been depicted and the examples of their written interpretation have been given. The linguistic and cultural features of phraseological units in English and Ukrainian which contain such components as: „God” – the object of comparison, „nationality” and „toponym” have been presented and analyzed. It has been proven that toponymical phraseological units detect certain features of verbalization in different cultures and these features are determined by the subjective way of the environmental interpretation. The linguistic and cultural aspects of phraseology in Ukrainian and English have been analyzed only in some cases, taking into account the cultural and literary bases of the idioms origin. This problem can be also studied on the examples of the phraseological units where the culture is reflected through the connection with cultural and national connotations, standards, symbols, stereotypes and associations specific only for one language. English and Ukrainian languages possess a variety of idioms of such type, which need further and thorough investigation.