THE IMAGE OF A WOMAN IN THE ENGLISH PHRASEOLOGY

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of English gender-marked phraseological units that represent the image of a woman, which reveals basic information about her place in society, the dominant positive and negative traits, appearance and stereotypical gender roles. The units under study, in its turn, are considered not only as fragments of the nominative system in which the gender component is expressed in its purest form, but also as means of the nation's worldview reflection, an indicator of cultural information and historical memory of the ethnic group. They have absorbed the worldview of the people, their customs, mentality, national stereotypes and standards, principles of social relations, historical events – all that form national culture and cognitive basis, reflected in the English language picture of the world.
The semantic structure of phraseological units and the component analyses have helped to find out traits most often associated with the image of a woman as well as positive and negative qualities represented in the phraseological paradigm of the English language. Comprehensive structural-semantic analysis of gender-marked phraseological units allowed to present in detail women's both traditionally formed and acquired functions in modern society, describe persistent stereotypes and ideas as for the gender roles distribution in a society/family hierarchy. A woman is identified with the following features: beauty, attractiveness, elegance, sophistication, diligence, subordination to a man, talkativeness, and grizzle.