Cognitive-linguocultural model of the conceptual opposition MIND / HEART in contemporary poetic discourse

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to develop a cognitive-linguocultural model of the members of the semantic binary complex MIND / HEART based on an analysis of the linguistic exponents representing these two concepts in contemporary Russian poetry (using data from the Poetic Corpus of the Russian National Corpus). The resulting model incorporates the identified semantic characteristics of each member of the binary opposition. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that, for the first time using contemporary poetic discourse material, the semantic space of the conceptual opposition MIND / HEART is modeled across two dimensions: cognitive and linguocultural. It was established that compared to its opponent MIND, the opposition member HEART possesses the most diverse semantic characteristics and quantitatively dominates contemporary poetic discourse. The main results of the study include the metaphorical models “the heart as a poeticized living creature” and “the heart as a container of bitter feelings, despair, and lostness” (characteristic of poetic discourse in the 1990s), a “sensory model for objectifying the features of the HEART concept”, as well as a model of the concept “MIND as a bearer of human qualities”, which includes heteropolar evaluative features characteristic of the poetic interpretation of mind.