THE SOUL AND SRITIT OF A MAN IN THE POLISH NAIVE PICTURE OF THE WORLD

Abstract

The study of naive perceptions of certain fragments of reality helps to identify the specifics of the national consciousness of the people who speak a particular language. The article deals with a systematic description of naive ideas about the soul and spirit (as similar concepts) fixed in the Polish picture of the world. Contemporary ideas about the soul and spirit in the Polish picture of the world are formed under the influence of pagan folk beliefs (the soul as a transparent, thin matter filling the human body), scientific views on the world (the soul as a combination of psychological, intellectual, emotional features of a person), as well as religious views (the soul as an intangible, immortal foundation in a man, reviving his body and leaving him at the time of a death). Soul and spirit are conceptualized as essences inextricably linked with the human body. Conceptual metaphor allows to concretize, to give conditional visibility to such abstractions as “soul” and “spirit”. In the Polish naive picture of the world the soul / spirit is endowed with signs of a living creature (including a person), plants, artifacts such as paper, fabric, book. The metaphor of space allows to imagine the soul as a kind of receptacle, which has a bottom and is characterized by signs of depth and breadth, fullness or emptiness. The metaphors of the characterizing type focus on significant for representatives of Polish culture signs of the soul, such as purity, kindness, strength, etc. The concepts “soul” and “spirit” being significant for Polish lingvoculture have multiple representations in the language through words, as well as free and stable combinations that are metaphorical in nature. The soul in the Polish naive picture of the world, on the one hand, is a source of life in a person, on the other hand, is the source of information about him, as well as his internal regulator and some value.