METAPHOR AS A MEANS OF LANGUAGE WORLD PICTURE ORGANIZING IN THE ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN LINGUOCULTURES

Interrelationship of culture, language and consciousness has always attracted linguists. Today, various researches of language world picture of the representatives of different languages and cultures are being carried out; also associative dictionaries of various languages are created where valuable material for investigation of the peculiarities of reality perception within different linguocultures can be represented.

So far, the study of the role of a language in national-cultural construction of the world picture is of great importance. Any language serves as a code, a link between a person’s inner and outer world: a person, perceiving the world in the activity process, records the results of such cognition in his language and culture.

In this case, the world picture can be understood as the totality of knowledge about the world, impressed in one or another language form, a specific language vision of the world characteristic of every person. Language world picture is a definite way of conceptualizing reality which is specific for a definite language and is partly universal and partly nationally specific; therefore, native speakers can see the world in the light of their own languages [4, P.17].

In accordance with modern cognitive semantics conception, metaphorical modelling is a means of reality comprehension, presentation and estimation in people’s mentality which reflects their national self-consciousness [5].

Metaphors play the role of one of the most productive means of secondary nominations forming in language world picture creation and possesses the property of: “foisting specific world view on the native speakers; such view is the result of the conceptual system of world reflection colouring in accordance with national cultural traditions and the very ability of a language to foist invisible world in this or that way” [1, P. 115].

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their famous work “Metaphors We Live By” have suggested that metaphors are not merely stylistic, but are also cognitively important; they are pervasive in everyday life in thought and action as well as in language. They created the concept of “conduit metaphor”, helping to understand that communication is something that ideas go into; the container is separate from the ideas themselves [6].

Alongside with Lakoff & Johnson, the idea of “conceptual domain” was explored extensively by other cognitive linguists studying similar phenomena under the labels "analogy" and "conceptual blending."

With the help of conceptual metaphors we can understand theories and models, because they use one idea and link it to another to understand some things better. The very way we understand scholarly theories is also shaped by the language of conceptual metaphors; they prevail in communication and we actually perceive and act in accordance with them.

This article deals with the role of metaphor in culture and in the creation of various images which can either coincide in different languages and cultures or differ from language to language. The topicality of this research consists in the necessity of studying metaphor as a cognitive means and culturally marked layer of a language, which reflects world understanding and perception by the representatives of different languages and cultures.

The subject of our research is ethnocultural metaphor as an important element of language world picture, representing the manner of reality classification and division which is accepted in certain language communities and serves as a reflection of the existing system of values. The parameters of such correspondences can be diverse, for example the presence, absence or dominance in metaphors of any language of one of the four elements (earth, fire, air, water), the context they are used in, attachment of feelings, emotions and personal qualities to the parts of human body, up-down distributions etc. Thus, for instance, we can suppose that for English people, to some extent, hydrophobia is what typically comes from the presence in the English language of a whole number of expressions, including the word “water,” which denote trouble, e.g. “under water,” “water under the bridge,” “to get into hot water,” “to keep one’s head above the water.” We come across similar expressions in the Russian language too: “kak v vodu kanul” or “kontsy v vodu” within the meaning “everything’s gone.” At the same time phraseological unit “to be all water under the bridge” speaks about relationship when mistakes or troubles are forgotten.

It follows from this that water in most cases is associated with misfortune, something ruinous in the English and Russian linguocultures.

Metaphors are widely used in both the English and Russian languages. However, metaphorical images, typical for the English language, are quite often absent in Russian and, on the contrary, their translation from one language to another demands special transformations which help to retain or modify the initial emotional-aesthetic information.

Let us take as an example the English “animal” metaphor, where some other typical characteristics are fixed in comparison to the Russian. The considerable part of animals’ and birds’ names in the English cultural-speech consciousness is connected with the concept “he,” although the modern grammar system relates to the neutral gender “it,” in particular the metaphorical basis “he” is connected with such images as “Frog,” “Fish,” “Caterpillar,” “Tortoise,” whereas in the Russian language all these names are grammatically feminine and relate to the female sex.

Another “animal” metaphor problem concerns the differences in emotional- aesthetic associations connected with this or that animal image which is traditionally used as the basis of metaphor or metaphorical comparison. Thus, the specific character of metaphorical usage of the word “horse” in the English tradition is connected with a favourable perception like “pure-breed,” “healthy,” “graceful.” It is necessary to mention that in the English language some phrases containing the word “horse” can also have negative characteristics: one-horse newspaper, one-horse town one-horse vocabulary. In the Russian tradition, the “horse” metaphor is mainly accompanied by opposite associations like “clumsy,” “crude,” “strapping,” etc.

Metaphors also demonstrate what things are equivalent or simply comparable in the given culture. For example, in both Russian and English languages a kind, responsive and good-hearted person is compared with gold, e.g. “as good as gold.”

Language is one form of fixing national-cultural heritage, signs, superstitions, etc. Thus, if in the Russian language the word “goose” is associated with pomposity and cheating, then in the English language it is associated with richness, stupidity and so on. Compare: “the goose that lays the golden eggs,” “the older the goose the harder to pluck” (proverb), “as silly (stupid) as a goose.” These are picturesque and associative perceptions that “paint” mental processes differently in Russian and English.

In a word, ethno cultural metaphors serve as one of the main components of a nation mentality, the circle of concepts, assimilated by a nation.

Peoples, who are close historically and culturally, have much in common in the essential layer of set metaphorical expressions. For instance, in English (as well as in Russian) iron serves as an indicator of hardness and firmness, hence there are such idioms as “a man of iron,” “iron-bound” and so on.

Despite the similarity in the usage of metaphorical expressions through the representatives of the Russian and English linguocultures, there are some meaningful divergences which can be of the following types.

Within the same group different words can be metaphorized. In the Russian language the names of some animals (beaver, cat, falcon, pen-swan) have widely-used figurative meanings, but they have no such meanings in English. There are no Russian idioms with the image of a bat, but in English exist such expressions as “as blind as a bat,” “like a bat out of the hell” and so on.

In different languages, for the expression of one concept different words can be accommodated, and vice versa similar words can acquire different metaphorical meanings. For instance, in English “snake” is a symbol of insidiousness and treachery, but in Russian zmeya can denote an unloved wife, mother-in-law, etc. In the English language the word “raven” has some additional associations like greed or insatiability: “I am a raven,” “raven appetite.”

As it was discovered by some linguists, a considerable part of a language world picture is formed by so-called floristic metaphors. In the course of investigations such spheres of human experience were determined, and reflection by the English and Russian native speakers is realized by means of floristic metaphors.

Thus, in the English language human appearance is described by such metaphors as “peanut” a tiny person, “weed” a thin, delicate, weak and soon tiring person, “coconut” e.g. “with her milky complexion set off by chestnut hair the artist was nicknamed ‘coconut’,” “bean-pole,” “stick,” and “corn-stalk,” a lanky fellow. Age characteristics are transferred by such metaphors as “sapling,” “plant” meaning a young person, in the bloom of life [3].

For moral characteristics widely used metaphors are “daisy” for any excellent, remarkable, or admirable person, “daffodil” for a good natured person, “tulip” for a showy person, or one greatly admired, “sweet pea,” “peach” for a good person, “fruit” for a person easily defeated, influenced or victimized, “lemon” for any disagreeable or disliked person, and “nut” for a person hard to deal with.

Russian linguoculture also often uses such metaphorical transformations as “plant,” “oak,” “burdock,” “pepper,” “fruit,” “cone,” “berry,” “morel,” etc. [ 2, P. 10].

In ethnocultural metaphors ideas of the world of human experience are conceptualized, hence metaphor itself is anthropological. As an example we can take the process of decision making by the English and the Russians. The Russians “take decisions” as something from outside whereas the English “make decisions” wherein we can see the active role of the agent.

In most cases in European cultures, the difficult position is connected with spatial limitedness. Take, for example, “to be in a dead/tight corner,” “to be at one’s wit’s end,” etc. Also, for European culture conceptual metaphor “consciousness is a container” is common. This idea is the basis of such metaphorical expressions as “ to give an idea,” “empty words,” “to let the cat out,” and others. Sometimes, and common for some language models, the national variant can be added. In the English language, for example, except when comparing mental backwardness with a lack of something there exists a parallel with the indication of physical condition in “stupid with sleep.” National metaphors reveal the aspects of various things which are especially important for this or that culture.

Besides, metaphors can give an idea of spatial orientation. In most European cultures, for example, the future and hopes for the best are associated with the top, e.g. “cheer up.” Consciousness is also up-oriented, e.g. “to wake up,” “to be up,” “to raise,” “to get up,” but “to fall asleep,” but the condition of impossibility to check one’s actions is experienced as a fall: “to fall asleep,” “to fall in love,” “to be under hypnosis.”

Thus, ethno cultural metaphors reflect the world image, serving as an embodiment of values hierarchy and mythological presentations. Their specific character is connected with geographical, cultural, historical and other conditions. Ethno cultural originality is conveyed by the totality of such metaphors, since their number in any language is rather limited.

The necessity of new firm metaphors creation is dictated, first of all, by the needs of communication. National metaphors play the role of creator of particular formulas and axioms. And, in spite of the existence of a great number of “common subjects,” in every language there is a unique set of expressive means, characteristic only for this language, for depicting the language world picture.