The Concept of Childhood in Sue Townsend’s The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole and John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany

Abstract

This article studies the concept of childhood as the content side of the word sign and considers the main directions of this research. It is noted that the concept of childhood is close to the concept of child, but they are not identical, because their lexical and semantic features are in different planes. The features of the concept of childhood are analyzed by the example of the novels The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole by S. Townsend and A Prayer for Owen Meany by J. Irving. Based on the analysis carried out, it is asserted that the concept of childhood is only partly universal; for each writer this concept has its own unique characteristics.

Keywords

• concept of childhood
• nomination
• artistic text
• English-language literature
• concept structure
• John Irving