Representation of external qualities of the person in the Russian and French animalistic phraseological units

Russian and French phraseological units with an animal name are considered with a special focus on their anthropomorphous semantics (external qualities of the person). The relevance of this research is caused by the urgent need of comparative studies of ethnocultural maps of the world that are encoded in phraseological corpus of any ethnos. Universal and ethno-specific features of animalistic phraseology are revealed in the article. The author states that the main function of animalistic phraseological units is not only pointing to some physical qualities of a person but assessing them. In the French map of the world the aesthetic criterion (beauty / ugliness) dominates, whereas in the Russian map it is a physiological and social criteria (mainly, health and wellbeing). Superiority of the esthetic criterion in French is hidden in the mentality and is called the hedonism; opposing to it is Russian animalistic phraseology which is said to be originated from country folk traditions and is focused on physiological and social details in assessing the man’s appearance. It is stated in the article that the lack of attention to esthetic criterion in the Russian phraseology may be explained by the influence of Orthodoxy on the content of the world map, the corporal beauty is opposed to internal, spiritual beauty. Contrary to it, under the influence of Catholicism an esthetic attitude to church rituals and corporal beauty was forwarded in the French culture. Finally, the author offers anthropological mechanism and an assessment function to be universal features of phraseology.