Anthropocentric Phraseological Units With Color Component in English, Russian and Tatar Languages

This article analyzes anthropocentric phraseological units with color components describing human’s qualities and appearance in three structurally different languages: English, Russian and Tatar. The article is aimed at revealing common and specific features of the phraseological units under consideration. It is well known that people manifest themselves by means of colors to the sense of sight. Colors have been exercising the major emotional expressive impact on the human’s mind from ancient times on, possess a great degree of compatibility and are used in a huge amount of phraseological units, which constitute the absolute majority of phraseology with the color component in English as well as in Russian and Tatar. As a result, such positive (innocence, sincerity, high morality, etc.) and negative (stupidity, cowardice, meanness, lightheadedness, etc.) human qualities are disclosed. Phraseological units with color components are also widely used while describing human’s appearance (paleness, gloominess, bleakness, beauty, human races, etc.). The purpose of the article is to determine the lexical-semantic features of the concept actions, behavior as well as identify the universal and national characteristics in representation of the analyzed concept through phraseological means of the Tatar and English languages. Color components within the phraseological units are mainly used in figurative sense. As a rule, certain characteristics and features of people are transferred through colors. We have revealed universal and national features in the analyzed phraseological units of the English, Russian and Tatar languages. About 60 color components have been involved in the English, Russian and Tatar phraseological units. The materials of this article can be useful for students, master program undergraduates, post-graduate students while learning Tatar and English. Information on language pictures of the world of various linguocultural communities can be applied in the methods and practice of teaching above-mentioned languages.