The article is devoted to the analysis of a number of values of native French speakers living in France. The relevance of this work is explained by the fact that at the present stage the composition of the population of France is changing as a result of the migration process, which entails the transformation of the value system and their hierarchy in society compared to traditional perception. It is interesting to trace the representation of this fact on the proverbial material and on the material obtained as a result of the questionnaire. The purpose of this article is to analyze the representation and role of the peace — war value dyad in the linguistic picture of the world of representatives of modern French society from the point of view of traditions and modernity. As a material for the study of traditional values in the framework of the axiological dyad’s analysis under study, 49 French-language proverbs about weapons were used, taught by a continuous sample from the heading “La guerre et les armes” of the dictionary of French proverbs and sayings. The study of images associated with weapons allowed us to characterize the metaphorical basis for describing various life value-generating situations, and the semantic analysis of proverbs made it possible to identify adjacent values: life, health, courage and thereby trace the features of the representation of the peace — war dyad in the French value system from the point of view of accumulated experience. In order to verify the results obtained from the analysis of paremiographic material and extract an idea of the functioning of this value dyad in the language picture of the world of representatives of modern French society, a questionnaire was conducted with the participation of 97 informants — native French and Turkish migrants. The analysis of the entire array of material allowed us to identify the common contiguous value of life. This fact, as well as the second place of the concept of peace, according to the informants, is located after the family on the value-conceptual scale, allows us to consider peace as one of the main vital values of representatives of modern French society. © 2022, RUDN UNiversity. All rights reserved.