ON THE EVALUATIVE CONNOTATIONS OF PHRASEOLOGICAL ZOONYMS IN A CONTRASTIVE PERSPECTIVE (BASED ON FRENCH AND GEORGIAN PHRASEOLOGICAL UNITS)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of French and Georgian phraseological units with animal names/zoonyms that represent emotional attitude of the speaker towards a person or a phenomenon. We decided to study this problem on the basis of phraseological units as phraseology is the sphere which reveals each culture’s ethnic and psychological peculiarities, their customs and traditions, reflects their world vision.
The analysis revealed that each culture shows its attitude towards this or that phenomenon emotionally through phraseological units with zoonyms. Such kind of phraseological units intensify emotions and beautify the speech of the speakers. Besides behind each phraseological unit with zoonyms one can see customs, traditions, temperament of different cultures. In order to find similarities or differences between phraseological units of two unrelated languages, we have collected phraseological units with zoonyms and classified them into several groups. Using observational, descriptive, psycholinguistic and contrastive methods, we have found out seven types of zoonyms with evaluative connotations in French and nine types of zoonyms with evaluative connotations in Georgian. It seems that representatives of both cultures use phraseological units with zoonyms to show their emotions. The analysis also revealed that evaluative phraseological units with zoonyms mostly carry negative connotation in both languages.