SEMANTICS OF SOMATIC CODE “HEAD” IN ENGLISH PHRASEOLOGY

Abstract

An active development of an anthropological paradigm in modern linguistics is determined by the focus on defining and describing the originality of mentality and worldview of the peoples of the world. The study of ideas existing in English culture about various objects and phenomena of the world through the prism of the body allows identifying traditional and culturally marked characteristics of human body parts, as well as qualities attributed to them due to metonymic and metaphorical processing. The purpose of the study is to reveal the semantics of a somatic word ‘head’ as the component of English phraseological units. To achieve this goal, the following tasks are solved: contextual and semantic analyses of phraseological units were carried out; macrofields, i.e. semantic groups indicating the functions and qualities of the head have been identified; by means of semiotic and interpretive analyses, it has been determined that the body code ‘head’ reflects the value parameters and guidelines of English linguistic culture, representing the evaluation of a person’s mental abilities and qualitative characteristics through ‘head’ metaphor. The results of the work allow concluding that the phraseological corpus can serve as material for studying the semantics of somatic codes and elements of traditional worldview. The prospects for the study lie in the possibility of considering the somatic word ‘head’ in a comparative aspect, which will contribute to determining the specifics of metaphorical processing of basic body parts in semiotic systems of various ethnic groups.