Anthropocentrism in English and Russian Phraseology

Abstract

Anthropocentrism has become one of the leading principles in the linguistics at the end of the 20^th and the beginning of the 21^st century. According to this principle the man using the language owns it and is the integral part of the language. The research of phraseology with the man in the centre gave rise to the birth of anthropocentric phraseology, i.e. phraseology with the man in the centre. Having shifted the interest of phraseological research toward man was a very important step as man is the creator of the phraseological picture of the world. Somatic idioms, i.e idioms referring to the parts of the body, are essential to the language and the meaning those parts convey are mostly universal. We also discuss some idioms with somatic elements which have either no equivalent in Russian or in English. We also give an example of a number of idioms of the English language describing people which have no equivalents in Russian. Having been always interested both in the theory and in the practical application of phraseological units in the languages we have decided to dedicate the current article to the modern trends in the phraseological research.

Keywords: anthropocentrism, phraseology, somatic element, idiom, English, Russian, equivalent