Linguistic and cultural potential of zoomorphic metaphor in Russian and Chinese phraseology

The purpose of the study is to identify ethnospecific patterns of cultural connotation formation based on zoomorphic metaphorical reinterpretation of lexical components of Russian and Chinese phraseological units. The article considers the representation of the metaphorical understanding of zoonyms that characterize a person in terms of appearance, character, speech activity, intelligence, interpersonal relationships, emotional state and behavior. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that for the first time, through the structural and semantic characteristics of zoophraseological units, their comparative linguistic and cultural commentary is given, including an etymological description, analysis of the internal form, fixation of the structural and semantic model, as well as identification of the stereotypical component. The study revealed that in the Russian and Chinese language worldviews there are a significant number of metaphorical models and ethnospecific stereotypes with a zoo component, which contributes to the successful comparison of linguistic and cultural mechanisms of conceptualization of reality.