Ways of figurative conceptualization of ideas about the qualities of a person in the Russian language picture of the world
The inner world of a person is considered as an object of figurative conceptualization, the main ways of figurative nomination of ideas about character, belief, emotional sphere, etc. are revealed and analyzed. Human mental activity becomes a source for the appearance of figurative names. The main goal of the research is to identify and describe ways of figurative conceptualization of ideas about a person’s inner world in the Russian language picture of the world. Conceptualization of ideas about a person is considered by us as a generalized description of the studied array of empirical data, which is systematized in the course of theoretical analysis. The most productive ways include metaphoric and metonymic transfers. The article pays special attention to the usual metaphor as a frequency method of figurative conceptualization of ideas about the inner world of man. Figurative language constructions that represent the characteristics of the inner world of a person and point to the specific properties of the mental sphere of the person served as the material for the study. The analysis of the methods of imaginative conceptualization of ideas about the qualities of a person made it possible to identify the following patterns: (1) metaphorical transfer emphasizes mainly the negative qualities of a person, the most frequent are associations with images of animals and hard, empty inanimate objects; and (2) the use of metonymic transference as a way of figurative conceptualization of the inner qualities of a person is based on the combination of semantic fields of the type: “human soul” - “man”, “human head” - “man”. Different ways of conceptualizing ideas about the qualities of a person have different motivational aspects, involving the identification of a figurative basis and mechanism for the emergence of a figurative nomination, as well as a definition of its casual or occasional nature. The identification of ways of figurative conceptualization of ideas about the qualities of a person in the Russian language picture of the world allows us to semantise figurative nominations that are close by categorical meaning and reveal their national and cultural specifics.