“Face” as a Meaning of ‘High Self-Esteem’ in Russian and Chinese

Abstract

This paper focuses on the comparative analysis of the linguistic means of expressing ‘high self-esteem’ with the unit ‘face’ on the basis of the analysis of lexemes, phraseological units, proverbs extracted from explanatory and phraseological dictionaries of the Russian and Chinese languages. The methods used in the study include descriptive analytical method, definition, comparative analysis. The authors introduce the results of the research revealing that in both languages one of the meanings of the word “face” is associated with high self-esteem. But the difference is that in the 16-18 centuries in Russian the meaning of ‘face’ included ‘dignity, honor’, which is the key concept of ‘high self-esteem’, however, now this meaning is fixed only in Russian idioms. The word “face” in Chinese can express a whole range of meanings: ‘self-esteem’, ‘the desire to have a positive public opinion of oneself’, ‘the desire to achieve success in order to occupy a higher position in society’ . It not only includes the semantic component ‘dignity’, but also the additional meaning ‘vanity’ . Thus, “face” in modern Chinese is one of the most important means of expressing a person’s high self-esteem.

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