This article presents a study of the military metaphor "laughter" as a cognitive mechanism. The ambivalence of this psychosocial and cultural phenomenon in Russian and English linguocultures, as well as a person's susceptibility to its influences, is emphasized, which is a demonstration of affectivity, irrationality in the actions of an individual.
laughter, military metaphor, mental structure, imagery, linguistic picture of the world
Despite the fact that laughter belongs to society and culture, which means it is an actively studied phenomenon, it still seems difficult to completely exhaust its controversy and versatility. Metamorphoses in the cultural and socio-political space, the dynamics of research discoveries in the field of history, literary criticism, psychology, political science, etc. create the need for a constant philosophical understanding of the cultural scenario. As a rule, laughter becomes the subject of scientific research in psychology, medicine (in connection with the study of a special emotional state of a person, which is an extremely strong short-term emotional arousal, flowing rapidly and characterized by sudden onset, short duration of the course, significant nature of changes in consciousness, violation of volitional control over actions ) or aesthetics (in connection with the artistic category of the comic), but the social characteristics of laughter remain poorly understood; its social nature is not described. It should be noted that laughter is generally read as a positive beginning, however, its destructive properties remain out of sight. Although the conceptual sphere of "aggression" belongs to the most mastered aspects of the experimental and cognitive activity of a person, it organizes the consciousness of native speakers more actively than collegiality.
This circumstance determines the relevance of the study.
This means that laughter can be viewed as a "military metaphor" that causally the work of cognitive mechanisms. Therefore, we consider laughter to be a mental structure that allows us to compare and characterize the same conceptual information from different sides, to identify the general and the particular. All this is reflected in the linguistic picture of the world (perception of the world through linguistic material, language) [15, p. 47].
The purpose of the work is connected with the above provision - to study the military metaphor "laughter" on the material of the Russian and English discourses in order to try to reconstruct and compare the Russian and English linguistic picture of the world.
So, the core of the mental structure "Laughter" is a sensually visual image of the subject of laughter, which arises in our consciousness as a result of representation, visualization of a laughing person. "Look at the laughing man: the face that had just been calm has suddenly changed. With a strained exhalation, the mouth opened, eyes closed when the eyelids were squeezed, the lips crawled in length, revealing two rows of teeth. Laughter intensifies, muscle spasms translate it into laughter ..."[6, p. 24]. "When laughing, the whole body leans back and shakes, the mouth is wide open, the corners of the lips are pulled back and up, the upper lip rises, the face and entire head are filled with blood, the circular muscles of the eyes contract convulsively. A wrinkled nose seems to be shortened, eyes shine, tears often appear"[5, p. 28].
The figurative side of laughter is a military (military) metaphor.
In the minds of Russian speakers, laughter appears in the image of an enemy/adversary in a war, that is, it has an anthropomorphic property. He can suddenly attack a person and embrace him: 1) God is with you! laughter will attack such that you grab hold of the stomach [2, p. 147]; 2) So, after these words of mine about incest, laughter suddenly attacked me and Dimka [7, p. 55]; 3) We remember Volodya, and again, as in the evening, we are seized by hysterical laughter [3, p. 65]. In the examples given, the laughing person performs the function of a passive object of influence, since he cannot resist the will of laughter.
A laughing person can also take the position of an active figure who fought with laughter and seeks to resist him. A person begins to fight, wants to defeat the "enemy", for example: 1) Struggling with the approaching laughter, I looked at the squinting eye [13, p. 80]; 2) I tried to cope with laughter, but suffered a crushing failure [4, p. 168]. 3) Burmistrov finally overcame a fit of laughter, went up to Pantov, poked his finger in his chest [10, p. 150]. Example ̶ 3 illustrates the situation of a person winning over laughter. As a creature hostile to man, laughter is quite aggressive.
To defeat the opponent in a fight, he affects the physical state of a person: he takes apart him, does not allow him to breathe calmly, strangles, for example: 1) And then I began to make out laughter, unexpected and somehow unrestrained [8, p. 130]. 2) I kick with my hands and feet, laughter suffocates me more effectively than a pillow [11, p. 59]. This conceptual feature (laughing as an enemy/adversary) has a linguistic embodiment in English:
- His laughter choked him and he coughed into his handkerchief [Steinbeck, 18, p. 48] ;
- If she did not fly at once the laughter that was worse than tears would kill her [ Kipling, 16, p. 115].
As you can see from example 2, laughter can even kill the subject. Having won a victory over a person, laughter takes him prisoner and does not let him go: 1) It happens that you get up in the morning, nothing, nothing, you haven't even had breakfast yet, and laughter takes [14, p. 6]; 2) Hysterical laughter did not let us go for several minutes, until the lungs got sick [9, p. 48]. Laughter "captivates" the subject, subordinates him to its power, as if it turns into his master: Her face turned purple from strain, but laughter took possession of her, and a mad, frightening laughter was heard in the hall, resembling rather sobs [12, p. 143]. Comp. in English: They were taken with a fit of laughing. Metaphors describing laughter as an enemy/adversary actualize the semantics of the strength and power of laughter at a person, as well as the spontaneity, uncontrollability and intensity of the emotional state of the laughing person. It is important to emphasize that in the semantic structure of metaphorical statements of the compared languages, laughter most often plays the role of an actively acting subject, capable, like any other emotional category, of "capturing" a person and controlling him. The denotation of the uncontrollability and intensity of laughter can be traced in the following proverb of the Russian language: A laugh got into one’s mouth. (Comp.: A laughter-bug got into one’s mouth.) [17, p. 579]. So laughter is a small creature with a huge life potential and resource, prevailing over the energy principle of a person [1, p. 286].
Thus, the representation of the mental structure "laughter" is based on a complex of military metaphorical names that describe the studied psycho-socio-cultural phenomenon as an instigator of action, a certain provocateur of a person's further emotional state. The figurative component of the compared mental structures is characterized by universality for the Russian and English language picture of the world. These figurative universals can be found only by conducting a comparative research method. In addition, the study of military metaphors of laughter and its subject in Russian (against the background of English) proved the hypothesis of its duality: on the one hand, laughter is a creative force, on the other, it is destructive and harmful. It follows that human experience is pre-logical.
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