Abstract
The main purpose of this paper is to describe the cognitive signs of dust in the acroconcept “earth/ land” in the aspect of Christian influence on the consciousness of native speakers of English. For material the author turned to English fiction of different periods and monolingual English dictionaries. The key methods applied in this paper are descriptive, conceptual, comparative, and interpretative. According to the study, the structure of the macroconcept “earth/land” in English linguoculture contains religious signs related to the Christian cult, namely to the motif of the creation of man. The English version of King James Bible states that God created man from “dust of the ground”. The analysis of dictionary entries revealed 17 cognitive signs of dust, including the following: ‘dry natural matter’, ‘decay’, ‘confusion/fuss/disturbance’, ‘humiliation/low state, ‘ground/surface’, ‘small dry particles of dirt’, ‘dust cloud’, ‘low value’, ‘residue/waste ready for collection’, ‘individual particle’, ‘gold dust’, ‘corpse’, ‘(mortal) body of man’, ‘ashes/soot/coal/brick/chalk/garbage’, ‘place of burial’, ‘money/cash’, and ‘silicosis/respiratory disease’. The author found 15 of the aforementioned cognitive signs of dust in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, some of which express syncretic concepts. The article singles out six clusters of cognitive signs of dust in modern English linguoculture: 1) agricultural: the Garden of Eden; 2) somatic; 3) material; 4) territorial: a) place of residence, b) place of rest; 5) valuable, of ambivalent nature; 6) mental, emotional and moral. The third – material – cluster is the most diverse in terms of the number of cognitive signs.
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