LINGUOCULTURAL ASPECT OF THE ENGLISH CONCEPT AGE

The article is devoted to the analysis of the linguistic and cultural aspect of the verbalization of the English concept AGE. Among the directions of modern linguistic and cultural studies, there is a phraseologically oriented one, which studies the culturally marked content of phraseological units of various languages, and a lexicographic one, which has an applied focus on compiling various dictionaries that carry cultural information. Our research is carried out within the first direction and is based on the analysis of English phraseological units with the age component. The purpose of our study is to analyze the linguistic and cultural aspect of the English concept AGE. The analysis of the phraseological sample showed that the evaluative color has mainly units that verbalize youth and old age, creating a kind of opposition between these age periods of life. The age period of youth is represented in the studied phraseology by the lexemes young, baby, children. Recorded idioms that contain the mentioned lexemes actualize, first of all, such signs as inexperience, ignorance, which, in our opinion, have a somewhat negative connotation. A positive connotation is recorded when the signs of innocence and freshness of young people’s views are actualized. The inexperience and ignorance of the young is contrasted with the life experience and wisdom of the older generation. However, along with a positive assessment of the experience and wisdom of the older generation, there are also idioms containing a contemptuous and ironic attitude towards its representatives, which is motivated by the inability to change, grumbling character, etc. Thus, the linguistic and cultural analysis of the verbalization of the researched concept in English on the basis of phraseological turns showed that for the English-speaking culture it is stereotypical to oppose two age periods — youth and old age, and both of them have features that have positive and negative assessments of speakers.