The article looks into some aspects of Russian and Bulgarian mentality by exploring one of the key words in both cultures - the lexeme happiness. The concept of happiness has an important place in the human axiological consciousness. The lingua-cultural approach adopted in the study helps to reveal the specific national mentality of Russians and Bulgarians in relation to the concept of happiness. The analysis relies on the comparison of data from dictionaries which provide the meaning, etymology and synonyms of the lexeme in both languages, as well as the contextual use of the words for happiness in Russian and Bulgarian. The conclusions are based on the comparative analysis of the language representations of both lexemes.

mentality, key word, happiness, lexico-semantic field, synonym, synonymic row, lingua-cultural approach

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