A Cognitive Approach to the Study of Idioms in the Semantic Field of Weather and Natural Phenomena. A Russian-Italian Contrastive Analysis

Both Russian and Italian display a particular richness of idioms belonging to the semantic field of weather and natural phenomena. From a cognitive perspective, these phraseological units evoke rich images pertaining to this field, which in turn serve to conceptualize and convey abstract notions. The research aims to develop a contrastive Russian–Italian conceptual thesaurus designed to systematize the cognitive analysis of such phraseological expressions. In particular, the present contribution offers a preliminary investigation of one conceptual cluster, a procedure which may offer valuable insights for analyses at the level of rich images. A corpus-based study will constitute a further step in advancing the examination and validating cognitive findings.