The article deals with the identification of the structural and semantic features of phrasemes in the substandard vocabulary of structurally diverse languages using a frame approach. The relevance of the research is accounted for by the need to overcome the contradiction between the universality of human cognitive mechanisms and the linguistic diversity of their objectification forms, as well as the lack of works considering sub-standard phraseology through the prism of frame semantics. The aim of the work is to verify the hypothesis that differences in the structural organization of phrasemes in differently structured languages are derived from the ways of frame structuring a situation, and not random discrepancies in lexico-grammatical form. The method of directed sampling, comparative and conceptual analysis of selected phraseological units, analytical and descriptive method, including methods of observation, generalization and interpretation, is used. Universal for all three languages and differential features of the substandard linguistic objectification of the studied frames are established. The findings confirm that sub-standard phraseology, unlike literary-normalized phraseology, more clearly captures evaluative and emotional connotations associated with the framed situation. The frame approach makes it possible to identify interlanguage structural and semantic differences and propose their cognitively sound interpretation by referring to universal framing mechanisms and culturally specific ways of their linguistic objectification.