METAPHORICAL REPRESENTATION OF THE CONCEPT OF “TEMPTATION” IN RUSSIAN AND ENGLISH LANGUAGE WORLDVIEWS

Abstract

The article deals with the analysis of the image component of the concept “Temptation”. The material from the National Corpus of the Russian Language and the British National Corpus provided metaphors representing temptation. These metaphors are arranged into groups according to their sources, their cognitive comparative analysis being conducted. 12 common sources of metaphors are distinguished in both languages; 8 other sources characterize only Russian contexts, 2 sources are found only in English. The most widespread metaphor in both languages is “temptation is an enemy”, which could prove the idea about internal struggle of a person during moral problems solving. Many metaphors reflect religious basis of temptation referring to Biblical scenes. Such metaphors as “temptation is an illness” and “temptation is devil’s intrigues” imply negative attitude of society to people who succumb temptation, thus tackling axiological aspect.