On Russian Pride and Related Concepts

Abstract

According to the National Corpus of the Russian language, the meanings of pride vary with axiological norms and might be associated in different contexts with a town, a country, people, cucumbers, a wife, an army, or even a mobile phone. The predicates applicable to pride vary with its position in the syntactic structure. As a semantic object, pride is felt, shared and hidden; as a semantic subject it attacks and covers. In metaphoric mapping, pride is defined in relation to a hostile force, beast or liquid. On analogy with hostile forces it covers, possesses, and carries; on analogy with liquid substances, it rushes, overflows, and boils; on analogy with vicious beasts, it wavers, seizes, and torments.