Phraseological Units of the Microfield “Old Age” in Russian and Chinese

This article deals with the comparative study of the old age designation in Russian and Chinese phraseology. The subject of research in this paper are phraseological units of Russian and Chinese, in which the object of description is the age of an elderly person. The main research methods used in the article are the methods of definitions, field, linguocultural and comparative analyses. The aim of the paper lies in identification of similar and distinctive perceptions of an elderly person from the point of view of representatives of Russian and Chinese linguocultures. The paper analyses the plane of expression and the plane of the content of Russian and Chinese phraseological units, as well as cultural and linguistic features of those units. The scientific novelty of this study reveals itself in the fact that for the first time the phraseological means of elderly age representation of a person in Russian and Chinese linguocultures have been defined; for the first time the phraseosemantic microfield ‘old age’ in Russian and Chinese have been presented and compared. The results of the study make it possible to represent similarities and differences of the old age conceptualization by means of Russian and Chinese phraseology and to identify the features of the microfield ‘old age’ of the languages compared.