Филологические науки / 3.Теоретические и методологические проблемы исследования языка

Бобошко А. М., Бобошко Ю. М.

Винницкий государственный педагогический университет, Украина

The WAR concept in E. Hemingway's model of the world

In the course of our study there are concepts which are expected to be useful in dealing with reality. As a term, concept is used in mainstream cognitive science and philosophy of mind. A concept is an abstract idea or a mental symbol, typically associated with a corresponding representation in a language.

Concepts are taken to be acquired dispositions:

· to recognize perceived objects as being of this or that ontological kind;

· to understand what this or that kind of object is like;

· to perceive a number of particulars as being the same in kind;

· to discriminate between them and other sensible particulars that are different in kind.

The performed analysis allows concluding that concepts are bearers of meaning, as opposed to agents of meaning. A single concept can be expressed by any number of languages. In cognitive linguistics, abstract concepts are transformations of concrete concepts derived from embodied experience. The mechanism of transformation is structural mapping, in which properties of two or more source domains are selectively mapped onto a blended space. A common class of blends is called metaphors.

The focus of study linguistic concept in use is oriented on how our mental representations guide our linguistic output. Thus, we are interested in how humans structure their experience and represent information about the world, for instance, about the orientation of objects in a room or an agent’s movement through space, and the linguistic consequences of such representations.

Mental models are analogous to imagined diagrams of states of affairs, they are calculable, finite, economical (such that there may be a few and only a few alternative representations), and their inner structure corresponds to the situation represented.

To look at the speakers’ attention to particular linguistic choices that may reveal their concepts about aspects of the situation are however not the only method linguistics provides for the analysis of general conceptual structures. In cognitive linguistics, the relationship between linguistic structure and general cognitive structures also constitutes the focus of linguistic investigation.

Concepts offered here are, for instance, idealized cognitive models, cognitive metaphors, frames and scripts that are proposed to represent organizations of our experience and interaction with the world. The success of this research direction shows that linguistic methods can be very well suited for investigating cognitive structures.

As it has already been stated, the subject of our investigation is the WAR concept in E. Hemingway's model of the world.

The theme of war is one of the main themes in Ernest Hemingway’s novel “Farewell to arms”. The war is shown directly and we can sometimes be witnesses of those terrible events that took place during the war. But we can also say that these descriptions are far less dreadful and spine chilling than we have read in the books of other writers. Maybe this is because the main hero isn’t fighting in the front line and we don’t have to read about dead and malformed people. This book causes a great influence on people, because the author has put a great effort to create that atmosphere and to make his readers understand how terrible, cruel and senseless the war is.

During all the time Ernest Hemingway has written about, there is this belief and strong conviction in everyone, that the war is senseless and there will be no victory no matter who wins. Average people talk about it and are not afraid to admit that they hate everything that is happening.

In the novel “Farewell to Arms” the concept of war is represented by several semantic notions. These are the notions of :

- “rain” that symbolises war actions, people dying in the war and misery. Ernest Hemingway shows us the disintegration of happiness or an omen of suffering and death;

- “death”: the author's characters live a particular code that is predicated on the concept of death. Life, according to the code, must be lived to the fullest possible extent because the possibility of death looms at all times.

- ”troops” that is associated with fights, attacks and the tensed atmosphere;

- “attack” that is the main component of all war actions in the novel;

- “darkness” that symbolises fights, death of the soldiers and all the horrors of the war;

- “dust” that is associated with brutality of the war and damaged surrounding nature;

- “loyalty” and “abandonment”: the author suggest that loyalty is more a requirement of love and friendship than of the grand political causes and abstract philosophies of battling nations. Loyalty and abandonment lie at opposite ends of a moral spectrum. Rather, they reflect the priorities of a specific individual’s life;

- “blood” that symbolises wounded soldiers, the atmosphere during the war and its cruelty, the attitude of the characters to the war.

REFERENCES

1. Арутюнова Н. Д. Язык и мир человека / Н. Д. Арутюнова. – [2-е изд., испр.]. – М.: Школа “Языки русской культуры”, 1999. – I-XV. – 896 с.

2. Лингвистический анализ художественного текста / М. И. Гореликова, Д. М. Магомедова. – М.: Русский язык, 1989. – 152 с.

3. Hemingway E. A Farewell to Arms / Ernest Hemingway. – Спб.: КОРОНА КАРО, 2004. – 383 р.

4. Macmillan English Dictionary / [ Eds. Michael Rundell, Gwyneth Fox]. - Oxford: Macmillian Publishers Limited, 2002. – 1692 p.