Stereotypes of 'Russian' and 'French': Exchanges of viewpoints

Abstract

The article considers stereotypes of the 'Frenchness' in the Russian language, and the 'Russianness' in the French language in contrastive aspect. The core of linguistic images is analysed - language system facts, the internal form of which contains a direct reference to 'Russianness' or 'Frenchness'. They are: words derived from the ethnonyms francuz 'Frenchman', gall 'Gaul' and place name Parizh 'Paris' in Russian; words derived from Russe, Russien 'Russian', Cosaque 'Cossack'→ 'Russian military'→ 'Russian', Moscou 'Moscow', obsolete Moscovite 'resident of Muscovy, Russian'in French. Further more, the authors take into consideration collocations of the words mentioned. Thematic spheres of secondary semantics are covered: Material culture and Leisure. The authors reveal the motivation of linguistic facts and analyse the evaluative component of their semantics.