Good and evil as value and antivalue (Based on The dictionary of the Russian mentality, 2014)

This article aims to determine the language semantics of the categories good and evil as values in the Russian picture of the world. Good and evil as a phraseological dyad are the main notions in the category of value. Representing value and antivalue, they function as criteria for evaluating behavior. Being an integral part of consciousness, language reflects the worldview of various peoples, and this makes it possible to construct semantic fields of any word. The material for this study was comprised by sayings of Russian writers, philosophers and public figures from the 17th to 19th centuries that contained the words good and evil. Component analysis and semantic field method were used to identify the nucleus, prenuclear part and the periphery in the semantics of the two words. As a result, 9 components for the word dobro were identified with 1 representing the nucleus, 5 included in prenuclear part and 3 forming the periphery. For the word zlo, 8 components were identified with 2 included in the nucleus, 1 representing the prenuclear part and 5 forming the periphery (close and far). On the whole, the semantic fields of both words demonstrate similar complexity. However, the field nucleus and periphery of zlo are more complex than those of dobro while the prenuclear part is more complex for dobro than that for zlo. Clearly, the authors of the analyzed texts were aware of dobro and zlo as the unity of opposites.