Gourmandise in the hierarchy of values: A case study of French and Belgian proverbs and sayings

Abstract

The paremiological stock of a language is an important source of axiological information that helps to identify the features of a culture, peoples mentality, and their worldview. The paper is devoted to the study of gourmandise as a component of the French and Belgian worldviews reflected in the French language paremias. The aim of the research is to determine its place in the hierarchy of values of the native speakers of French and its Belgian variant. The research material includes 202 units obtained from Dictionnaire de proverbes et dictons (121 units) and from Proverbes et dictons de Belgique francophonie (81 units). The research methods include semantic, axiological, quantitative, and comparative analyses. The results of the study indicate that 5,9% of French and 6,6% of Belgian units of the total number presented in the dictionaries are devoted to food and gourmandize, which proves that they occupy an important place in the hierarchy of values in both cultures. More than half of the gastronomic proverbs and sayings have a positive connotation. Some types of food, such as bread, butter, and eggs, are symbolic for both ethnic groups. The analysis of gastronomic realities has revealed similar French and Belgian values (such as wealth, prosperity, happiness, health, pleasure, life) and antivalues (poverty, hunger, misery, disease, death, etc.). The obtained data contribute to the axiological studies of the worldview of the native speakers of various variants of the French language and can serve as a starting point for conducting similar research of other values, including those based on the material of other languages and cultures.

Modern View on the Competences of a Simultaneous Interpreter

“…Students conduct research under the guidance of professors and associate professors of the departments of foreign languages, the department of general and Russian linguistics, the Russian language and its teaching methods and the Institute of Modern Languages, Intercultural Communication and Migration and participate in grant activities (Ebzeeva, 2022). The main areas of activity are comparative studies in the field of phonology, vocabulary, grammar and stylistics of foreign and native languages (Bezkorovaynaya et al, 2021;Chesnokova & Radovic, 2020;Malyuga & Ermishina, 2020), studies of the paremic fund of the studied languages (Nelyubova et al, 2020); discursive researche.g., political (Ebzeeva & Dugalich 2018;Dugalich, 2018), educational and scientific (Dugalich et al, 2020;Malyuga & McCarthy, 2020). Discourse is considered both in general theoretical and practical aspects, the study of literary text in foreign languages, both authorial (Dubinina, 2011) and folklore (Moskvitсheva et al, 2022); works on translation theory (Chesnokova & Talavera-Ibarra, 2015); psycholinguistic studies that reproduce fragments of the linguistic picture of the world of representatives of different linguistic cultures (Dmitriyeva & Chulkina, 2022) and works on the methodology of teaching languages (Strelchuk, 2021) are very popular among young researcher.…”

Structural and semantic congruence of Bulgarian, Russian and English set expressions: Contrastive-typological research

“…1. Introduction Phraseology, including proverbs and sayings, is a prolific source of axiological information, which contributes to the explication of culture and mentality of a linguacultural community and its linguistic worldview (Sharifian 2017, Nelyubova et al 2020, Bila & Ivanova 2020, Diedrichsen 2020). The unique imagery, which is part and parcel of idiomatic expressions, emerges as a result of the figurative and transferred meanings conveyed by the key constituents of idioms (Maltseva 2017, Bagasheva 2017, Sharifian 2017.…”