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Chibirov T.N. [Conceptual metaphor: source domain “horse” → target domain “human” in the English, Russian and Ossetian phraseology and literary texts] World of Science. Series: Sociology, Philology, Cultural Studies, 2020, Vol. 11, No. 4. Available at: https://sfk-mn.ru/PDF/25FLSK420.pdf (in Russian).

Conceptual metaphor: source domain “horse” → target domain “human” in the English, Russian and Ossetian phraseology and literary texts

Chibirov Timur Nikolaevich
Vladikavkaz scientific centre of the Russian academy of sciences, Vladikavkaz, Russia
The research department “Centre of Scytho-Alanian studies named after V.I. Abaev”
E-mail: langless.ru@gmail.com

Abstract. The article considers the metaphor “horse” in respect of the aspect of the metaphorical transfer “horse → human”, which is frequently found in the phraseology and literary texts of the English, Russian and Ossetic languages. The relevance of the study is that the metaphors under consideration originally featured with an aesthetic function in literary texts, are described according to various cognitive approaches. A metaphor has a dual nature and according to Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual theory is based on two cognitive structures interaction (source domain → target domain), one of which is the concept “horse” that is featured with certain peculiarities of conceptualization at the metaphorical level in the linguistic world views compared. The study reviewed cognitive features of the zoometaphor “horse” in the languages considered. The study revealed that in the Russian and English languages a wide range of the metaphorical units describing physiological and mental human characteristics through the image of a horse takes place. However, in Ossetic there is a lack of the metaphor “horse” in this aspect. Although, on the other hand, Ossetic, in contrast with Russian and English, has more phraseological units, containing the metaphor “horse”, that describe human feelings and emotions, and also human relations of different kind. In all three linguistic world views compared through the metaphor “horse” certain negative human characteristics are described, but only in the English-speaking world it acquires marginal shades. A number of Russian and English metaphorical units describing different human characteristics through the image of a horse possess a high degree of idiomaticity. The study revealed universal features that include metaphorical units referring the image of horse harness.

Keywords: metaphorical transfer; conceptual metaphor; zoometaphor “horse”; cognitive feature; phraseology; literary text; the English language; the Russian language; the Ossetic language; comparative linguistics

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