Semantic-Cognitive Study of HOUSE Concept in Vladimir Nabokov’s Novel “Mashen’ka”

Abstract

The relevance of the study is determined by the fact that it is performed in the framework of a new research direction in linguistics - cognitive, established at the turn of 20th-21st centuries. The study is interesting from the point of view of application of the theory of cognitive semantics to the analysis of literary text. Cognitive analysis is carried out in conjunction with functional and discourse. The author presents a sequential extension of the verbal-semantic component of the analysis from the study of the meaning of the text to knowledge about reality. In this case, the source of knowledge about the text and the world is the word - the token дом . In the article special attention is paid to the peculiarities of the contextual realizations of linguistic expression of the concept HOUSE, partly allowing to explicitate (to complement and substantiate previous studies of the author) the content of the concept of the writer. The study opens access to further reconstruction of the writer’s image of the world with the help of the representation of the category of space. It is proved that the complex of contextual forms of expression of the concept HOUSE creates a unique, national-specific configuration space of the text, which emphasizes the importance of this object in Russian consciousness at the time of the exile, enhances the drama of reality created by the writer, actualizes the important features of the Russian character. This study contributes to the theory and practice of cognitive-discursive studies of language.

Keywords

• lexeme
• lexical-semantic field
• semantic block
• text dominant
• concept