Swedish similes describing a person’s movement as part of the linguistic worldview (in comparison with the Russian language material)

Abstract

The article deals with the analysis of Swedish similes which describe a person’s movement as part of the linguistic worldview against the Russian language material. The aim of this article is to determine a place and role of Swedish similes characterizing a person’s movement and displacement in the Swedish culture as compared to the Russian culture. The material for the research includes the data from Swedish dictionaries, illustrative contexts of usage of analyzed units in Swedish literature, journalism and the Internet (the Swedish National Corpus), results of a survey of Swedish speakers, as well as of the data from dictionaries of stable comparisons (similes) of the Russian language. The paper contains an ideographic classification of units of the category considered, an analysis of quantitative content of ideographic groups of Swedish similes as compared to the Russian language ones and a detailed linguoculturological analysis of the standards and basis for comparisons. As a result of the analysis, it becomes obvious that the ideographic category of similes occupies different places in the Russian and Swedish linguistic worldviews. Swedish similes mainly represent appearance, disappearance and fast movement of a person, that is, the Swedes focus primarily on the general displacement of a person caused by movement. In the Russian linguistic worldview displacement and movement are far more detailed, which indicates a greater attention to this fragment of reality in the Russian linguoculture and greater movement differentiation, expressed in similes, denoting slow, reluctant or lazy movements.