METEOMETAPHORS WITH THE ELEMENTS “SPRING”, “SUMMER”, “AUTUMN” IN MODERN ENGLISH PUBLICISTIC DISCOURSE: LINGUOCOGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The article deals with linguocognitive mechanism of creating meteometaphors with the elements “spring”, “summer”, “autumn”. The author refers to the theory of conceptual metaphor by G. Lakoff and M. Johnson and to the theory of blending by M. Turner and G. Fauconnier. Based on the classification developed by S. Zhabotynska, the following system of cognitive constructions if offered in the paper: subject frame (quantitative, qualitative, locative, temporal schemes, a scheme of manner); actional frame (scheme of state/process, scheme of action, scheme of causation); possessive frame (scheme of partitiveness, scheme of inclusiveness, scheme of property); identificational frame (scheme of personification, scheme of generalisation, scheme of specification); comparative frame (scheme of identity, scheme of likeness, scheme of as-if-ness). The author defines meteometaphors as metaphors which contain meteoelements in their verbal form; meteoelements are considered to be the following: air temperature, air humidity, cloud coverage, precipitations, atmospheric pressure, wind, seasons, types of climate. The paper offers the following algorithm of analysing the cognitive structure of meteometaphors: 1) to find a meteometaphor in a text; 2) to identify the input spaces of the meteometaphor; 3) to identify the generic space of the meteometaphor; 4) to identify the blend of the meteometaphor, to specify the frames and schemes which are blended and transformed, and to identify a new conceptual structure which is formed. The algorithm mentioned above is used to analyze the meteometaphors with the verbal elements “spring”, “summer”, “autumn” which are located in different parts of a publicistic article: in the title, in the subtitle, in the headline, in the text itself. The analysis of the empirical data (the meteometaphors) has driven the author to the following conclusions: 1) one of the input spaces for meteometaphors is always meteorology; 2) meteometaphors with the meteoelements “spring”, “summer”, “autumn” mostly have temporal scheme in their generic space, though we may come across other schemes – such as a qualitative scheme or a scheme of specification; 3) certain set expressions and allusive phrases are often included in the verbal structure of meteometaphors.