Abstract. The article deals with the proverbs of the thematic group “Labor”. Proverbs reflect the “spirit of the people”, peculiarities of their worldview and value priorities, including aesthetic and moral experience and knowledge of the ethnos. At that, the central figure in proverbs and sayings is always a man in his different manifestations. We analyze semantic features of proverbs that represent labor in English and Russian linguacultural. Labor is considered as an important part of human life, as a means of realization of one's personality. The effectiveness of work at the same time is directly related to the skills of the master. The thematic groups of proverbs of both English and Russian languages are revealed. The dominant groups of proverbs about labor in Russian are “description of labor as a kind of activity”, “labor is productive”, as well as “labor requires effort”. The least widespread groups are “systematic labor as a guarantee of success”, “labor must be paid” (found only in English), “labor effort does not always bring success”, “labor is feasible”, “correct assessment of the task is a guarantee of successful labor”. These regularities are peculiar to both English- and Russian-language world pictures.
Хакиева et al. (Wed,) studied this question.