Metaphorical opposition white and black and its role in language interpretation of reality

The author analyses the peculiarities of one of key axiological metaphorical binary oppositions white and black, typical for mythological consciousness and having determined the language behavior of modern man, as a marker in the process of evaluation of reality. She describes the design features of its semantic space, highlighting the symbolic level - especially important for complex axiological processes. Based on data from modern dictionaries, as well as artistic, scientific and journalistic texts of Russian National Corpus, distinguishes and characterizes aspects of life (emotional, ethical, social, legal and epistemological) for interpretation of which a person uses this antonymic dyad. And the author comes to the conclusion that the studied axiological metaphorical binary opposition white and black fits into the general system of world coordinates, consisting of spatial, temporal, parametric, color, taste, sound and other opposites that help a person to find himself in a diverse world.