What does it “lose face” mean in Russian?

Abstract

The article deals with the semantic uncertainty of the phraseologism to lose face in the modern Russian language. The purpose of the study is to establish the evaluative characteristics of “loss of face” in the context of other moral “losses” (lose shame, lose conscience). The work was carried out on the material of explanatory and phraseological dictionaries of the Russian language with the use of data from the National Corpus of the Russian Language. In the course of the study, methods and operational procedures were used, including contextual analysis of phraseological unit syntagmatics, elements of component and frame analysis, methods of equivalent substitutions and context transformations. The study found that the “loss of face” in the Russian language occupies a special position among other significant moral losses. “To lose conscience, shame” denotes the loss of morally valuable qualities denoted by these words, and is understood unambiguously in this regard. The polysemy of the word face leads to the fact that the phraseological units lose face can convey a whole range of meanings, among which the main ones are the following: loss of individuality, distinctive personality traits, loss of reputation and respect in the eyes of others, loss of control over oneself, one’s emotions. The evaluative characteristics of the phraseological unit to lose face also differ from the evaluation of “loss of shame” or “loss of conscience”. “Loss of shame (conscience)” receives public censure; “loss of face” is negatively evaluated and painfully realized by the subject himself.