The Role of Anti-proverbs in Forming Humorous Women’s Images (based on the English and Russian languages)

Abstract. 

Phraseological units of a language, including proverbs and anti-proverbs, take the center stage in studying cultural peculiarities of a nation. Nowadays, the reflection of gender in languages has much gained in importance and scholars are particularly interested in anti-proverbs which can be defined as alterations of traditional paremias manifesting the changes happening in the society. The ultimate aim of this study is to define the role of the anti-proverbs with gender components in the formation of women’s images and anti-images in the English and Russian languages as well as to conduct a comparative analysis of these images. To achieve this goal, the author collected relevant items from dictionaries and Internet sources, as well as analyzed the use of anti-proverbs with gender components in both languages. This analysis made it possible to identify and correlate the images of women formed by means of paremiological units. As a result, this study allowed us to conclude that in both languages ​​the anti-proverbs emphasize the negative characteristics of women, however, unlike in English, in the Russian language, women are heavily criticized. This conclusion is supported by the lexical analysis: in the Russian anti-proverbs women are characterized not only with the help of lexis with negative connotations, but also by means of vulgarisms and taboo words. Thus, it should be noted that despite the fact that the anti-proverbs are ironic and humorous in nature, they reflect gender images fixed in a culture.

Keywords: anti-proverbs, proverbs, gender, women’s image, paremia