Phraseological units with the lexical component ‘gold/golden’ in English linguoculture

Abstract

The presented article deals with the semantic analysis of English phraseological units with the component gold/golden. As phraseological units secure cultural attitudes and stereotypes the conducted study allows one to reveal the features in the perception of gold reflected in the English language picture of the world. 62 phraseological units were sampled from various phraseological dictionaries and subjected to the semantic analysis. A set of the main meanings of the gold/golden component was identified by the generalization method that allowed one to classify the obtained proverbs into six semantic groups ‘gold as power’, ‘gold as a cult’, ‘gold as a spiritual value’, ‘gold as a remedy’, ‘gold as the cause of all troubles’, ‘gold as devil’ and reveal their evaluative characteristic. It has been found out that there is a certain duality in the perception of gold in the English language picture of the world.