PERCEPTION OF THE WIFE IN RUSSIAN AND UKRAINIAN CULTURE (BASED ON PAROEMIAE)

The paper examines the Russian and Ukrainian paroemiae collected and systematized in ethnographic and lexicographic sources of different periods which include one of the main nominations of kinship “wife”. Interest in this component of paroemiae is determined by its linguocultural stereotypification: the wife is perceived, first of all, as a guardian of the hearth, the attitude to whom changed due to cultural, social, geopolitical conditions of family formation. The relevance of the research stems from the need of representing the national stereotype and identification of a new range of fixed modern cultural images of the “wife” component in the East Slavic language space. Behavioral stereotypes, mythological representations, social norms, phraseological collocations, symbols, rules of speech reproduction, folklore texts themselves accumulate in the collective memory the most important experience of an ethnic group — from a homekeeper to a modern socially active charismatic personality capable of performing complex ideological tasks. Results obtained afforded grounds for concluding that the nomination “wife” stores sacral cultural and historical information as a part of paroemiae of the Russian and Ukrainian languages, is illustrative of the national stereotype and reveals a new range of the fixed modern cultural images in the modern language space.