Филологический класс (Dec 2022)
Expression of Human Status Through Animalistic Metaphor
Abstract
The article deals with expression of the status of a person through comparison with animals. Despite the fact that this topic has already been touched upon in one way or another by researchers, not all issues have been resolved yet. The study presents an analysis of the metaphors “wolf” and “fox” in the French fable and paremiological corpora. The author looks at the status characteristics of representatives of the human world of the La Fontaine era, represented by metaphors. It is shown that the characteristics that emphasize the vices of the 17th century French society can be considered archetypal. Metaphors fix a person’s knowledge of nature and surrounding reality, correlate with mythopoetic, religious and totemic pictures of the world, reflect the symbolism of the human unconscious and serve as the basis for the nation cultural codes formation. With the help of diachronic analysis, a comparison is made using the metaphors “wolf” and “fox” in modern socio-economic and political discourses. It is shown that the status expressed through the metaphor “jeune loup” is opposed to the status “vieux renards” on the basis of the difference between young and old in the economy and business. But in both cases, a reassessment of values is taking place: those characteristics that previously were correlated with vices have not lost their archetypal features, but in modern historical contexts there have been changes that led to an axiological coloring shift: ambition, zeal, cunning, young arrogance and superiority over a weak opponent, are the key to success in the world of business and politics nowadays. The achieved results allow speaking about the linguo-pragmatic status of metaphor. The author plans, as a perspective, to carry out a study of metaphorical representations of significant fragments of the picture of the world in the diachronic aspect.
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