Phraseologisms in the context of related concepts and the sources of their linguocultural motivation

The article presents a theoretical overview of the phraseology concept from an interdisciplinary perspective (linguoculturology, ethnolinguistics, cognitive linguistics and cognitive onomasiology) to its definition providing arguments for its status as a key unit of the linguistic worldview, which accumulates collective memory, cultural symbolism, mental models and established associations of a language community. Phraseological units are examined on the edge of related concepts such as difrasismo and kenning revealing their semantic and structural parameters, similarities and differences, sources of figurative motivation and functional load. It is substantiated that phraseology is distinguished by a wider functional scope, greater idiomaticity and flexibility in contrast to genre and customarily limited kennings and difrasismos. The cognitive mechanism of bahuvrihi and synecdoche is shown to underlie the creation of imagery in all three types of units, both providing indirect nomination through generalization, symbolism or transfer of features. The concept of phraseological semiosis is involved, within which the phraseological meaning formation is considered as the result of cognitive categorization of a feature relevant to a culture’s value system. In parallel, the model of phraseosemiosis is applied, which treats the phraseme as a secondary nomination sign, reflecting apperception and collective cultural memory. To explain the phraseological “third meaning” formation, which is not a direct consequence of the components meaning, the conceptual integration theory is used, where the meaning appears as the result of the interaction of several mental spaces that form a new cognitive structure. Considerable attention is paid to the study of the sources of phraseological linguocultural motivation, such as ethnocultural, mythological, floristic, somatic, zoomorphic, color-based, precedent-related domains, etc. It is shown that these sources not only explain the meaning origin of the phraseologism but also represent the cultural concepts of the people. It is proven that phraseologisms serve as markers of the national mentality that function within the code system of each linguoculture. Prospects for further research may include the involvement of comparative and corpus-based approaches to reconstruct the motivational structure of phraseologisms across different languages.