Linguo-cultural concepts of colour in english, french and russian (on the material of phraseological units with colour attribute)

The relevance of the given research can be explained by the fact that concepts of colour represent significant information about the hierarchy of values within the linguistic community and contribute to the notion «colour picture of the world». It is reasonable to conduct a research of colour from the perspective of cultural linguistics, in particular, of its branch, linguistic conceptology. The article provides a linguo-cultural analysis of the colour conceptual sphere, represented by phraseological units with colour attribute and colour words in the english, french and russian languages. The objectives of the research are to carry out a comparative analysis of phraseological units with colour attribute and colour words in the english, french and russian languages and reveal their universality, difference and their unique character in the linguistic cultures under consideration. The main methods of the research are comparative and interpretation analyses as well as etymological and quantitative methods. The main sources for the research are phraseological units with colour attribute and words denoting colour collected from english, french and russian phraseology dictionaries using the continuous sampling method. The research has led to the following conclusions: man perceives the world around through colours, because colour accompanies almost all manifestations of human life; every language culture is characterized by its own ethnic-priority and ethnic-relevant colours; colour acts as an expression of universality, difference and uniqueness in the perception of the outside world. The theoretical significance of the study lies in the development of linguistic and cultural conceptology with regard to the conceps of colour.