La verbalisation du concept «coeur» en français

Abstract

Language is not just a communication tool. The expression of our thoughts is articulated on a cognitive system encompassing a set of mental processes. Language is characterized as an instrument of expression of thought and allows the transmission of information about the world. This research aims to analyze and understand the use of the concept heart in the French language as a cultural object through symbolic or metaphorical expressions, through paremias and other language expressions originating from a oral memory, literature or popular wisdom and also belonging to the socio-cultural heritage. The sociolinguistic study makes it possible to question the ways of thinking of French speakers, to understand their way of communicating and of seeing things, but also to understand the variety of language and its linguistic crossbreeding. In order to study the concept heart in a global way, we use several types of analysis: cognitive linguistic analysis and contrastive analysis, which allows us to determine the use of the word heart as a concept on several levels. The authors approach in a non-exhaustive way the epistemological meaning of the word heart to determine a close peripheral level and define its core meaning as a vital organ. Explanatory and encyclopedic dictionaries of the modern French language, dictionaries of aphorisms, aphoristic expressions and proverbs of the French language served as a source of linguistic material. Dictionaries of synonyms and antonyms were used as supplementary material. The results obtained during the analysis confirm that concepts cannot exist without context and without the culture to which they belong. Thus, the analysis also confirms the position of subjectivity in the perception of the concept, due to the absence of its limitations, due to the fact that speech does not reflect reality, but a conceptual picture in the human mind.