METAPHORICAL FUNCTIONING OF THE CONCEPT STONE IN THE FIGURATIVE SYSTEM OF THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE
Introduction. The article describes the aspects of the metaphorical interpretation of the concept stone, presented in Russian linguistic culture and the system of figurative means of the Russian language. The relevance of the research is due to the scientific interest in the study of the metaphorical functioning of concepts and their figurative language representation in the perspective of the anthropocentric paradigm of linguistics. The aim of the work is to describe the metaphorization of various qualities and properties of a stone for the figurative description of objects of the surrounding reality and the inner world of a person, expressed in the semantics of language units and speech statements. Material and methods. The methodology of the work is based on cognitive, linguistic, cultural and system-structural approaches to the study of the figurative language and speech. The methods of structural-semantic, conceptual and contextual analysis, as well as field modeling and cultural linguistic commentary are used. Empirical material is represented by figurative words and expressions (about 200 units), as well as contexts that demonstrate their metaphorical functioning (about 850 contexts). The sources were the published explanatory and phraseological dictionaries of the modern Russian language and the text base of the National Corps of the Russian language. Results and discussion. As a result, the qualities and properties of the concept being studied were described, which served as the basis for metaphorical projections on figuratively named objects and situations; the lexical and phraseological field of the Russian language is characterized, represented by words and expressions, metaphorically motivated names with the semantics ‘stone’; cognitive models are revealed for which the Stone conceptual sphere is the initial one and serves as a source of the metaphorical characteristics of the phenomena of other conceptual target spheres. The concept of stone in its metaphorical functioning actualizes the following basic features: hardness, strength, heaviness, immobility, color. These qualities of a stone are metaphorically projected onto the properties of various material and non-material objects: objects (hard, lost softness), the human body (heavy, immovable), psychological states of a person (grief, anxiety, depression, torpor), moral qualities (indifference, willpower, responsiveness), mental and social activities (meaningful content, the beginning of activities). Conclusion. The obtained results demonstrate cognitively and axiologically significant fragment of the Russian language world view. The corpus research data testify active metaphoric functioning of the Stone concept in modern discursive practices.