This article examines the cognitive-semantic and axiological foundations of evaluation in language, with a particular focus on the evaluative potential of lexical units and proverbs within informal discourse. Drawing on the works of M.V. Nikitin, E.S. Aznurova, N.D. Arutyunova, V.N. Telia, A.A. Ivin, J. Searle, A. Wierzbicka, and other scholars, the study explores how evaluative meanings emerge as integral components of human cognition and linguistic activity. The paper argues that evaluation constitutes a fundamental mental operation that shapes an individual’s worldview, cultural identity, and communicative behavior. Proverbs and paremiological units, due to their ethnospecific and metaphorical nature, serve as culturally marked carriers of positive, negative, and neutral evaluations. Their semantic structure reflects collective value systems and enables cross-cultural comparison of national linguocultures. The research highlights two major types of linguistic values—socially and culturally shaped evaluations and binary oppositional value scales (good/bad, pleasant/unpleasant, etc.). Theoretical perspectives from classical philosophy (Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza) and modern linguistic axiology illustrate the multidimensional nature of evaluation, encompassing psychological, emotional, pragmatic, and cognitive factors. Overall, the study demonstrates that evaluative semantics plays a central role in understanding how language encodes cultural values, shapes communicative intentions, and contributes to constructing a nation’s linguistic picture of the world

evaluation, evaluative semantics, linguistic axiology, cognitive linguistics, pragmatics, proverbs, paremiology, informal discourse, value system, lexical connotation, cultural worldview, anthropocentrism, linguistic culture.

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