Кумуляция и амбивалентность в семантике мифологем (на примере репрезентанта horseshoe концепта SUPERSTITION в англосаксонской культуре)

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the study of the internal, “invisible” structure of the representative horseshoe of the concept SUPERSTITION in the Anglo-Saxon culture, reflecting the main categories of magical thinking. The novelty of this research is that it is performed within the framework of Theolinguistics, namely, in its section – Theolinguoconceptology [Postovalova, 2016]. For the analysis of the language representatives of the concept under study, the method of ontological concept analysis, developed by the author of the paper, is used [Stepanenko, 2006; Stepanenko, 2015. P. 185–195; Stepanenko, 2019. P. 467–488]. The history of the horseshoe is rooted in antiquity, dating back to the pre-Christian civilization. As an ambivalent symbol it is interpreted in terms of the pagan and Christian conceptual systems. The astronomical attribute of the pagan goddesses – the crescent moon – was translated into the language of the Christian theology with a change in the semantics of its symbol, thanks to which the Gospel story of the transcendental world is rendered into the immanent language. Modern culture reduces the sacral in the horseshoe to the level of a profane, a kind of simulacrum for mass consumption. The word horseshoe itself has not changed its shape over the centuries. As for its content, it has gone a difficult semantic way, cumulating both profane and sacral meanings and eventually turning into a wordmythologem, the smallest unit of the myth about the Good and the Evil. This mythologem is actualized in various legends, fairy tales, parables, telling about the magic of the horseshoe, which can bring both good and bad luck, and which can protect against the evil spirits or become an instrument against a man. Our research has shown that the word-mythologem horseshoe keeps on a peculiar framework the pillars of which are five logical ontological categories, the objective universal forms of magical thinking and being. Besides, the analysis of the examples with the word horseshoe allowed us to distinguish nine pairs of dichotomies, each consisting of two ambivalent concepts: assertion and its negation, thus creating antinomy, i.e. a logically unsolvable contradiction. This is but a favorable condition for the survival of the superstition associated with the horseshoe.