Cultural meanings in language: metaphors of vanity

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of metaphorization in the field of abstract categories in linguistic consciousness on the example of the cultural meaning “vanity”. The aim of the article is to establish the role and functions of metaphorical transfer in the visualization of abstract cultural meanings. The work used the methods of semantic, component, definitional and conceptual analysis, with the help of which the means and functions of semantic transfer in the metaphorization of vanity were investigated. The material for the research was the collected corpus of aphoristic sentences about vanity and the contexts of the metaphorical representation of vanity in the National Corpus of the Russian language. It is established that the metaphor in the language performs two main functions: cognitive, which gives the intellect the ability to comprehend something rationally incomprehensible, and expressive-evaluative, which allows the subject of speech to emotionally highlight any aspects and characteristics of the object. In the visualization of vanity, all the main types of metaphorical transfer on the auxiliary subject are used. Of the totality of semantic features of any category, in most cases, only a few are metaphorically distinguished, and these are connotative, evaluative features that are not associated with its definitional core. The attribute of negative evaluativeness in the semantics of vanity is metaphorized through the assimilation of this personal property to various kinds of unpleasant, harmful and dangerous creatures, plants, phenomena and objects. Like all “sinful passions” that subjugate a person and take possession of his will, vanity in speech is easily demonized – it is likened to “evil spirits”, mainly a demon. A specific feature of “reflexive feelings” – directed at oneself – conveys the likeness of vanity to a certain expanding substance, blowing a person from inside. In isolated cases, the likening of vanity to a crooked mirror and cotton wool metaphorizes such an essential semantic features of it as the imaginary, emptiness and futility of flaunting virtues. Thus, the study indicates that when metaphorizing abstract categories, which include vanity, not definitional semantic features of this category are visualized, but mainly semantic features relevant to assessment and emotional attitude of the subject of speech.