ENGLISH CONCEPT LORD: SECULAR, RELIGIOUS AND ARTISTIC ASPECTS OF STUDY

Abstract

The article presents an analysis of the linguocultural and cultural-historical aspects of the functioning and verbalization of the English concept LORD. Our research is based on the study of the semantic content of the concept presented in its key nomination lord. The purpose of our study was to identify the main factors and directions of the development of the concept. The object of the study is the nature and principles of the increase in the concept, its transformation under the influence of cultural and historical factors, ideological and artistic ideas, as well as the actual linguistic principles of transformations of the lexical unit lord representing it. The subject of the study is lexicographic data, semantic characteristics of the lexeme lord. By studying the functioning of the lexeme representing the concept in the secular, religious and artistic linguo-cultural planes and the corresponding semantic transformations on the basis of the analyzed lexicographic sources, the nominative field of the English-language concept LORD is modeled. During the study, we came to the following results. The lexeme lord is the central term of the cultural concept LORD — the lord, the ruler and master, the vicegerent of God on earth or God Himself. The considered concept is a multi-tiered system that covers the attitude of the representatives of the English linguistic community to the vital spheres of their existence: religious, social class or artistic and figurative affiliation. The semantic content of the lexeme has expanded over the centuries, and the lexeme began to serve as a nomination in two different planes of social models of the world: religious and secular. All pre-Christian accumulation and all chronologically coinciding pre-Christian representations of the concept act as the basic charge for the embodiment of the Christian idea of denoting God, which, since the 12th century, has borrowed the tradition of treating God as the Lord, and to the lords as the Lord’s vicars on earth. The plane of the ideological priority meaning of this lexeme in the Christian picture of the world as an appeal to the Lord, universal for European cultures, remains only one “pole” of the concept consideration. The second meaning, which is included in the nuclear zone of the nominative field of the key lexeme, denoting the concept, incorporates a purely national, English concept. This semantic part of the concept is due to the sphere of secular ideas, which are more mundane in the conceptual and linguistic pictures of the world. This meaning acts as an independent nuclear subsphere containing a reference to a specific, ethnically dependent reality — a courtesy title, an ethnic identifier. Conclusions: Due to its conceptual «insecurity», the concept LORD is far from being a stable system. The process of conceptualization of its key nomination lord continues for objective reasons — the influence of new cultural trends, including the heroes of popular books and cinema, political transformations, leading figures who have and receive the title of lord.