Gender and Theomorphic Signs of the "Earth-Mother" Mythologeme in Russian Linguistic Culture

The research featured the "Earth-Mother" mythologeme within the "Earth" macroconcept structure. Earth-Mother is a well-known mythologeme widely distributed in different cultures. The present study was based on the National Corpus of the Russian Language and employed descriptive and conceptual analyses. The mythologeme proved to be embodied in the language as a whole set of metaphors that implement codes of Russian linguistic culture. They include vital, somatic, anthropomorphic, and theomorphic metaphors. The linguistic concept of Earth appeared to have the following cognitive signs: mother; caring parent; bestowal / benefactor; wet-nurse; parent; wife; mistress; lady; goddess. The theomorphism of the Earth concept was proved by its status as "the wife of God" expressed by the language formula "Mother-Wet-Earth". This name reflects the beliefs of the ancient Mokosh cult. The gender and theomorphic characteristics of the Earth-Mother overlap. As a result, the demiurgic act of creation is described by the metaphor of birth. After the adoption of Christianity, the name of the Virgin Mary began to be used instead of the name of the Mother-Wet-Earth. Moreover, the function of birth as an act of creativity was found to be preserved in the language consciousness of the Russian people. The research identified several clusters of images of the Earth-mother in the modern Russian language culture that can be classified as folklore, mythological, religious, and linguacultural.