Lavrinenko I.Yu., Timoshenko K.R. Features of concept "Horse" in Russian and Scottish fairy‑tale epics

The authors analyse the image of horse in the Russian and Scottish national worldviews on the material of fairy-tale epic, which is defined as a type of institutional discourse. The article is aimed at determining the features of the concept “Horse” in the Russian and English worldviews by conducting lexical and semantic analysis of the texts of the fairy-tales. The adjectives, describing the horse in the texts under study, are analyzed with the features, which they denote, being classified. The slots, structuring the concept “Horse” in the Russian and Scottish fairy-tale epics, are specified. In both discourses the concept “Horse” presents a discrete structure. Most features correlate with the horse`s appearance, i.e. in the Russian worldview the features are related to the colour of the horse, in the Scottish epic the features of the horse are described through tactile senses. In the Russian discourse the associations express a horse’s caritative attitude to a man, while in the Scottish discourse the attitude to the horse is utilitarian in nature. The horse is described as an animal, belonging to a man and possessing supernatural power as well as anthropological qualities.