Abstract

The variability of linguistic units is an important characteristic of the language, which is manifested at its different levels, including the paremiological foundation of the language. The article discusses the representation of moral standards in German proverbs and anti-sayings in the semantic aspect. An attempt is made to analyse, on the one hand, the relevant characteristics of moral and ethical categories represented by proverbs of German linguistic culture, and, on the other hand, their refraction (decomposition or reconceptualisation) in the anti- proverbs of German linguistic culture.