INEDIBLE COMPONENT IN UKRAINIAN GUSTATORY PHRASEOLOGY: ETHNOCULTURAL DIMENSION

Abstract

The study confirmed our hypothesis that the perception and verbalization of reality is performed through a certain cognitive lens. In our case, such a lens was the vision of different situations of human existence in Ukrainian society through the gustatory images of feeding and eating. The hypothesis originates from Maslow’s pyramid theory, according to which all human needs are hierarchically arranged from the phylogenetically oldest (need for food, drink, sleep) to later (social and then spiritual) needs. The need to satisfy hunger is basic in this hierarchy, and therefore serves as a certain background on which the figurative world picture of a particular ethnos is “embroidered”. The article considers a separate fragment of the Ukrainian phraseological world picture: namely, pejoratively (negatively) evaluated phrasal units (idioms) of gustatory semantics with the basic component FOOD, which is denoted by a noun that nominates a certain inedible substance. The subject of the studied idioms varies from social, behavioral relations, to psychological characteristics and appearance of people. According to the logical proposition, verbalized by the corresponding phrases, they are divided into two groups. The first group includes the phrasal units that are based on the proposal pattern AGENT FEEDS PATIENT WITH FOOD, the second one includes the phrasal units that verbalize the proposal pattern AGENT CONSUMES FOOD. The second group comprises twice as many phrases as the first one. The linguo-cultural perspective of the performed research clarified the specifically Ukrainian ethnicity of the described material. We consider cross-cultural study of the stated issues to be a promising direction for further investigations.