PHRASEOLOGICAL UNITS WITH THE ‘MYTHOLOGICAL BEING’ COMPONENT IN THE ENGLISH NATIONAL LANGUAGE WORLDVIEWS: PHRASEOSEMANTIC CLASSIFICATION

Abstract

The article elaborates the typology of mythological beings that are actualized in phraseological units of the English language. The very essence of the representation of the mythological code of culture by means of English phraseology is defined. The object of research is phraseological units of the English language with the component ‘mythological creature’, the subject is the mythological code of culture, which is represented by mythological creatures. The research used the following methods: logical-conceptual method, generalization and systematization method, descriptive method. As special methods, the method of component analysis (for the identification and selection of phraseological units of the English language with the component ‘mythological creature’), the method of parametric analysis of the semantic structure (for the distribution of phraseological units according to the appropriate groups of ethno-subcodes) is used. The mythological code of culture is positioned in the study as a set of images of archaic, primitive religious ideas of people, arising from general provisions, which are the basis of theoretical mythology and serve as a kind of translator of worldviews of a person. In phraseology, the mythological ethnocode of the spiritual culture is correlated with the figurative basis of the primary word combination of the phraseological unit, formed under the influence of mythological thinking in the system of the spiritual culture of the ethnos. The systematization of types of ethnosubcodes in the space of the mythological ethnocode of culture is natural on the basis of mythological ideas about the universe and human existence in it. Within the mythological code of culture, 7 typological varieties are distinguished: animistic, fetish, totemic, cosmogonic, astral, eschatological, mythonymic. Two key typological varieties represented in the mythological code of culture are distinguished: the animistic ethnosubcode of culture, which denotes natural phenomena and objects of the surrounding world that have a soul or spirit; the cosmogonic ethnosubcode of culture, which is represented in the general world structure, the development of which goes in the direction from the initial chaos to the orderly one. The perspective of the research is defined in the sequential comparison of the expression of phraseological units with the component “mythological creature” in Ukrainian and English languages.