The Concept of Thought from the Perspective of Cultural Codes in Kazakh Fiction

Abstract

The modern linguistics interprets the old philosophical problem of the relationship between reality, thinking, and language in a completely new way: the world should be considered as a whole and comprehended through linguistic, mythological, religious, and artistic worldviews at once. The abstract concepts of the mental world represent a certain linguistic culture. This article describes a set of cultural codes that represent the mental concept of thought as similes in the contemporary Kazakh fiction. This linguaculturological analysis covered metaphors and similes found by continuous sampling in the Kazakh fiction of the XX century. The similes were tested for regular metaphorization models. The mental concept of thought in similes was presented through natural, biomorphic, and artefact cultural codes. The natural cultural code was represented by such conceptual metaphors as thought is wind / sunlight / fire / water. The zoomorphic metaphors of thought is horse / bird / insect were numerous in the biomorphic cultural code. The metaphor of thought is metal verbalized the artefact cultural code. In the linguistic consciousness of the Kazakhs, the concept of thought was verbalized as a divine gift or a living entity that has enough energy to take different material forms and move around all three worlds.

Keywords

• linguaculturology
• culture
• language
• concept
• cultural code
• metaphorical comparison