Oriental Text and the Subtext of Russian Paroemiology

Abstract

The article examines the geocultural image of the East, which has developed in Russian linguaculture. The purpose of the work is to systematize the conceptual and substantive characteristics of the Eastern world displayed by proverbs, to identify the axiological load of the Eastern-marked paroemias. The involvement in the study of the material of canonical proverbs, which accumulate centuries-old folk experience and fix the priorities of everyday consciousness, allows the authors to see the specifics of folk ideas about the Eastern world against the background of philosophical and aesthetic reconstructions of the image of the East, performed to date on the material of fiction of the 17 th – 20 th centuries. Transformations of proverbs and neoparoemias with an oriental cultural component, which function in the Internet space, make it possible to trace the dynamics of the geocultural image of the East, the specifics of its interpretation from the positions of the modern native speaker. This seems relevant in the context of the activation of the eastern vector of Russian state interests. As a result of the conducted research, conclusions are drawn about the deactualization of most of the paroemias based on phantom representations and real historical facts of interaction between Russians and the peoples of the East, trends in the use of oriental images in modern formation and transformation of phraseological units and paroemias are revealed. Special attention is paid to the paroemia The East is a delicate matter, which originates from cinematography. An unlimited range of its transformations is shown, thus forming a single paroemiological nest, which in the future can be described in an innovative paroemiological dictionary.