LINGUOCULTURAL FEATURES OF THE CONCEPT SEA IN THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PRESS (BASED ON THE MATERIAL OF «THE TIMES» HEADLINES)

Abstract

The sea, in all its scope and variety of denotative sphere, is one of the most important factors in the geopolitical location of Great Britain. The image-concept of the SEA is key in the linguistic consciousness of English people, which is objectivized in linguistic and conceptual pictures of the world. This fact is reflected in linguistic semantics and communicative activity. The relevance of our research is due to the need to study the phenomenon of the sea as a separate, independent cultural sphere of existence, without which it is impossible to imagine the course of the historical development of Great Britain, as well as to identify the relevant semantic components that form the concept of SEA. The specificity and semiotic richness of the concept of SEA is directly related to the historical and cultural experience of British people, to the peculiarities of the geographical location — living on the island, and to the realities that surround the representatives of this nationality. The study of the marine fragment of the world picture of the British became the object of this research for the reason that the world, natural objects and phenomena are part of the cultural world of the British linguistic community. The identification of the national cultural specificity of the linguistic consciousness of the speakers of this culture is related to the study of the content of everyday ideas about the real world. The sea, which is an integral part of the British landscape, has always had a great influence on the identity and language of this nation. The purpose of the research is to identify the specifics of the functioning of the lexeme “sea” within the framework of the linguistic-cultural concept of SEA and its comprehensive description based on the material of newspaper headlines. The subject of the research is the studying of structural and semantic characteristics, information rubrication of the titles in the newspaper discourse, which is part of the concept of SEA. The work is carried out within the framework of the theory of the linguistic and cultural approach, which is a synthesis of several research methods, including conceptual analysis, definitional analysis, and the field method. The research was conducted on the material of the English language. The source of language material was the headlines of magazine texts of the British periodical “The Times” for the period from July 1, 2021 to July 1, 2022.