LINGUACULTURAL INFORMATION IN ENGLISH IDIOMS WITH CONCEPTS “HEART” AND “MIND”

Abstract

The topicality of the research was determined by the need for an adequate understanding of the English dominating in the contemporary society. The cultural context that manifests itself in idioms requires a foreigner knowing the English national character which has changed slightly in recent decades. The objective of the article is to find out what features of the English national character are manifested in idioms with the concepts Heart and Mind. The English idioms to be analysed were chosen taking account certain features of the English national character, as well as the opposite. Special attention was paid to the etymology and the internal form of the idiom, as well as non-equivalent idioms or partially equivalent ones. It has been substantiated that idioms with the concepts Heart and Mind reflect almost the whole range of features of the English national character, namely: individualism and protection of personal privacy, empiricism, courtesy, humour, pessimism, moderation, restraint, stoicism and, at the same time, a certain emotionality and courage. Idioms with the concepts Heart and Mind can also represent atypical features of the English national character: faintheartedness or cowardice, sincerity. Certain idioms with the component Heart are universal, they can characterise representatives of different nations in a limited number or present a typical habit of the Christians. It has been found that most of the considered idioms have Ukrainian equivalents. In idioms with the component Heart, the equivalence in Ukrainian is provided mainly by the lexemes “heart” and “soul” (Ukrainian researchers have paid attention to this earlier). In idioms with the component Mind, in order to convey a close meaning in Ukrainian, lexemes such as “mind”, “thought”, “head”, “spirit”, “soul”, “heart” are used.