Linguacultural and Cognitive Images of Characters in Mukhtar Auezov’s Literary Works

Abstract

Linguacultural concept, which is a conditional mental unit, is a comprehensive study of language, consciousness and culture. This study examines linguacultural and cognitive image of personages in the works of Mukhtar Omarkhanuli Auezov (1897-1961). This study reveals linguacultural and cognitive mechanisms of word transformation in a literary text, to identify the conceptual and semantic patterns of Auezov’s literary works and to identify the conceptual systems characteristic of the writer. Achieving this goal involves solving the following tasks: to conduct a comparative analysis of the terms "linguacultural concept", "conceptual metaphor", "conceptual system"; to identify conceptual metaphors that manifest themselves in the works of Auezov; and describe the conceptual systems involved in the expression of the author's idea of the world. In the course of this qualitative study, data were collected through document searches. The novelty lies in the adaptation of cognitive linguistics methods to the study of Auezov's works and the study of linguistic and cultural mechanisms in the intertextual field. As a result of this research, it is determined that literary text is an irreplaceable bank of information about national culture and national cognition embodied in a linguistic form. The knowledge and ideas about the world fixed in the text of the works combine the author's own thought and the national heritage that he possesses by virtue of belonging to a certain culture. The linguacultural and cognitive image considered on the material of literary works is understood as a personified concept, the content of which is a typical personality of a representative of the national culture of a functional nature.