Metaphorics of a modern literary text (based on the novel by G. Muller “The Swing of Breath”)

UDC 821.112.2-31

DOI 10.20339/PhS.4-23.067

Shipova Irina A.,

Doctor of Philology, Professor,

Professor of the German Language Department

Moscow State Pedagogical University

e-mail: schipowa@mail.ru

The article aims to consider the metaphor of a literary text as a reflection of ideological or aesthetic priorities typical of a certain era, as a manifestation of the national and cultural conditionality of its author’s work and as a way of expressing a linguistic picture of the world, closely interconnected with its ideological and artistic principles and life experience. The corpus of the study is represented by the text of the novel “The Swing of the Breath” by Herta Müller, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2009 for it. The metaphor of this text as a set of metaphors, which are the main method of artistic expression in the novel, are characterized by special properties: they are mainly cognitive metaphors, the basis for which is the method of transforming the objective world into a symbolic presentation of abstract concepts. The spread of personifications, replacing communication with people and between people with contacts with inanimate objects, reflects the author’s rejection of totalitarianism as a principle of power that humiliates the human person, which, as a result, refuses to sympathize with one’s neighbor. Non-traditional ways of creating metaphors are shown through the method of word creation, the combination of incompatible elements of the language, giving the effect of vivid poetic expressiveness. Attention is also paid to the linguocultural specifics of G. Muller’s work.

Keywords: metaphor, conceptual metaphor, personification, concept sphere, linguocultural specificity.

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