Interpretational function of language and spatial metaphor

Abstract

One of the research topics pursued by a Russian linguist Novella A. Kobrina was among various aspects of relations set between human cognitive activity, their subjective perception, vision of the world and the variability of language units, their adaptability to various nominative, structural and discursive functions in the language use. The creative human speaking capacities underlie the potential of the language to adapt to the changing conditions of its functioning and the communicative needs of the speaker. Owing to its functionally determined features, the language provides both for communication and for a culturally determined way of interpreting reality with the help of its verbal forms.

The examples of metaphorical expressions analyzed in the article name various aspects of social interaction and verbal communication as its kind. A number of metaphorical conceptual models and schemata are widely used to interpret communication in terms of physical space and spatial parameters, such as coordinates of height, length/width, distance, etc. Social relations are just as easily metaphorized within the conceptual framework of spatial parameters.

The relevance of the research lies in the implementation of a modern integrative approach to such language capacities as its semiotic nature, communicative actualization and cognitive organization that binds everything together. The study is carried out in the development of such approach to language, the basis of which is the unity of the systemic and functional in language with the unifying role of its cognitive organization. A significant contribution to its development was made by Novella A. Kobrina, and its framework is used in this article. The study results in conclusions about the universality of spatial features that make up the schemes for the interpretation of communicative events and their components, which manifests itself in the role of the concept “space” as a donor domain in the conceptual metaphor of communication.