Linguistic means of expressing the binary opposition TOP – BOTTOM in a linguocultural aspect

The study aims to identify and describe the linguistic means of expressing the basic opposition TOP – BOTTOM in Russian linguistic culture. The study is novel in that it is the first one to consider the linguistic means of verbalizing the binary opposition TOP – BOTTOM in parallel using Old Slavic mythological concepts, recorded in ethnolinguistic dictionaries and encyclopedias, and modern explanatory, associative, phraseological dictionaries, and the Russian National Corpus. As a result of the study, it has been found that the linguistic means that externalize the TOP – BOTTOM opposition in Old Slavic mythological concepts have not found direct reflection in the modern Russian linguistic worldview. Partially, a metaphorical reinterpretation of Old Slavic notions of the world can be observed in phraseological units, proverbs, and sayings. The anthropocentric sensitive perception of the world is preserved at the level of associative reactions and phraseological units. The emotional evaluation accompanying the points TOP and BOTTOM is ambiguous: TOP is associated with a positive evaluation, and BOTTOM with a negative one, but there is also a change from positive to negative.