Metaphors by their complex semantic structure never cease to attract the attention of linguists, philologists and literary scholars and are often found as central objects of examination in different studies. In the course of the development of science, metaphors having not only linguistic nature but also being phenomena expressing peculiarities of mental processes, have been studied in the fields of psychology, cognitive science, cognitive linguistics. The fact that metaphors are omnipresent serves as a reason for their study not only for the purpose of examining imaginative language and speech elements typical of the works of fiction but also for the exploration and description of human psychological portrait and understanding. In the present article an attempt is made to clarify and examine the essence of metaphors as well as the psychological and cognitive motives for their creation. From a psychological perspective, the object of examination consists in the explanation of the nature of metaphor emergence in human brain. The cognitive peculiarities of their mechanism of operation are presented in the article as well. With the objective of accomplishing a comprehensive and profound examination of metaphors, the consideration of the achievements in the fields of psychology and conginitive science, i.e. adherence to inter-disciplinary approach, which implies application of the well-defined principles of both linguistics and other sciences, is essentially important and topical.
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