Ethno-cultural Aura of Language Images in the Light of Cognitive Linguopoetics

Abstract

The nature and essence of the language image are considered from the standpoint of modern cognitive linguopoetics, its differences from the general philological concepts of “image” and “imagery” are shown. According to the authors’ idea, the language image is considered in line with creative discursive activity. It is proved that language images integrating real ideas about the world picture and the author’s emotional attitude to them synergetically create an ethno-cultural aura of a literary text. Discourse, due to the multiplicity of its components, is a speech-thinking platform for forming a language image. The latter is considered by us as a synergetic phenomenon in the aspect of a multichannel derivative stimulus and a self-organizing phenomenon in open systems of linguocreative thinking. The article substantiates that in a literary text a language image is generated not by a real, but by a so-called communicative and aesthetically significant event, i.e. a literary discourse — the denotative aura of language images. The analysis shows that the language image is formed not only by the text itself, but also by various extralinguistic factors (knowledge of the world, opinions, values) that play an important role in understanding, interpreting and perceiving verbal images of a communicative event. Therefore, the work interprets all the main (event and non-event) elements of the text’s discursive situation, forming a complex language image. The extralinguistic factors determining the semantic architectonics of the internal context and actively participating in the formation of the ethno-cultural shell of language images are revealed. Each of these images serves as a shadow cloud of the internal context, an element of the ethno-cultural aura of the speech activity. In contrast to the existing stereotypes, according to which the concept and image are considered products of different mental operations: the first is analytical, and the second is synthetic, the article proves that the genesis of language image is characterized by their fusion. At the initial stage, there is an analytical perception of the signs of a denotative situation, and at the final stage, their synthesis. Ultimately, the genetic connection of such phenomena as literary text, discourse and concept generates the ethno-cultural aura of a pictorial-speech work.