The dynamics of the cultural code of ethnophaulisms naming the French

The article examines the function of ethnophaulisms as compact carriers of a given people’s representations of others, in which the societal attitudes of the “us vs. them” opposition are condensed, enabling the reconstruction of an ethnos’s hidden value dominants. The research aims to identify contemporary stereotypical perceptions of the French, driven by the dynamics of ethnophaulisms’ cultural code. The study demonstrates that semantic transformations are determined by both objective societal development processes (globalization, migration) and intra-lingual mechanisms (deonomization, connotative ambivalence). It is established that the mechanisms of semantic transformations in ethnophaulisms occur in close correlation with conceptual shifts in public consciousness, which conditions the dynamics of the cultural code. The scientific novelty lies in proposing, for the first time based on French language material, a method for describing the cultural code of expressive ethnonyms denoting the French, via adaptation of T. B. Radbil’s methodology. This approach encompasses various aspects of lexical analysis. The results confirm that comprehensive analysis of ethnophaulisms is essential for understanding the construction and evolution of the linguistic picture of the world.