ИСТИНА

The paper deals with the images of wild and domestic animals in Russian folk riddles.The focus is on the stereotypes connected with animals in the Russian traditional culture, and their representation in riddles. Riddles are studied as signs of language, mind and culture in the framework of linguistics and cultural studies. The leading methods of the research conducted are the following: linguocultural and cognitive analysis. The research is concerned with the ways of categorization and conceptualisation of the world in riddles as well as with the ways of representation of different types of information in these signs.