Associative-semantic field “flowers” in Russian paroemia

Paremias are linguistic units that represent the result of the folk wisdom crystallization, in verbal and semantic predicative complexes, widespread due to their concise form and deep semantic content. Flowers are closely related to the life of people. The names of flowers in many languages and cultures have become part of the national cultural code. In this regard, the appeal to paroemias, as the most stable formations in the language, makes it possible to clarify some features of the formation mechanisms of ideas about the world around a person in the aspect of Russian national identity. This fact determines the relevance of our research. The object of the research is the paremilogical units of the Russian language, containing the vocabulary of flower names. The leading research method was the method of associativesemantic field, which is an analysis of associative and symbolic meanings assigned to colors in a fixed semantic context. Our analysis of more than 300 paremiological units has shown that the most frequent names of flowers in Russian proverbs and sayings are: chamomile, cornflower, Ivan-da-Marya, poppy and rose. These names of flowers are endowed with various symbolic meanings by the Russian people through the associations with their use in different semantic contexts.