Comparative study of peculiarities of presenting the image of hero in national languages (based on French and Russian)

The object of this study is linguistic means expressing a hero’s image as a cultural phenomenon that forms and activates the process of cultural development of the people. The research aims to examine the problem of representing the hero’s image in the linguistic and socio-spiritual space of adolescents of modern world society. The relevance of the study lies in the fact that it focuses on linguistic features and ways of expressing the image of a hero, as well as the changes that it undergoes over time in different national languages. History has preserved many names of heroes, but such phenomenon as transformations of their images and their significant overestimation has recently appeared. It especially often happens on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the Great Victory, when under the guise of “discovering new facts” a devaluation of the feat takes place. It leads to a belittling or complete rethinking of heroes and their deeds. At the same time the image of a real hero is changed by a spiritually empty image of a superman which is a widespread cultural stereotype of Western civilization actively promoted today among Russian youth as an example for imitation. The research data is based on dictionaries, fiction, media, and questionnaires. The main conclusion is as follows: in Russian, a hero is associated, first of all, with a “hero-liberator”, a “hero-winner”, while in French it is associated with a superhero, a magical character. While Europe has historically been a cultural hero in Russian culture which has been fully transformed under its influence, at the beginning of the 21st century the Russian society understands and, to some extent, becomes disappointed in this cultural hero.