Concept of «truth» (based on the Russian language national corpus)

The article is a linguistic-cultural study of the concept of TRUTH in the Russian linguistic picture of the world. The concept of TRUTH is an important part of Russian national consciousness and is especially fully disclosed in the proverbial fund of the Russian language. The study of paremiological content of the concept of TRUTH is based on the texts of the National corpus of Russian language. It is noted, that God's Truth is one thing, but the Truth of life is another thing. In the second case, a person has to choose between truth and untruth. This antonymy is present in many of the proverbs: «To live true - means to distance from people, to live untrue means to anger the God». But in many Russian Proverbs there is a duality of consciousness: «One can’t live without truth as well as with truth», «One doesn't want to live with untruth and can’t live with truth». Moreover, it is noted that truth can be used for selfish purposes: «Truth is like a chained dog: it will bite whom it is released for». Thus, proverbs and sayings reflect the existence of different types of attitude of Russian people to the truth. Analysis of the materials allows to mark the following conceptual features of the truth: 1. Truth of the divinity. 2. Truth is goodness, light, frankness, integrity, heroism. 3. Truth of the «earth»: a) Truth is dangerous; b) There is no Truth on earth; it is weak; it can be bought. 4. It is hard to live on the earth without truth; it is necessary to tell the truth.