This article presents a comprehensive analysis of the basic concepts that make up the conceptual sphere of the novel “Of Human Bondage” by W. S. Maugham. These concepts act as cognitive dominants of the linguistic consciousness of the protagonist’s linguistic personality in the work under study. The novelty of this research lies in the fact that it is performed within the framework of a new paradigm of linguistics — the cognitive linguistics, which involves the study of mental and linguistic representations of thought processes that occur during the perception of information. Moreover, the novel “Of Human Bondage” by W. S. Maugham has not attracted the attention of linguists-cognitologists previously, which adds to the novelty of this article. In addition, the present study provides a comprehensive description of the basic concepts making up the conceptual sphere of the novel.
The linguistic methods of representing various concepts in the analyzed work are determined by the national, personal, cultural, and psychological aspects of Maugham’s thinking. The authors employ a communicative-cognitive methodological analysis proposed by N. S. Bolotnova involving the modeling of textual and intertextual semantic fields of artistic concepts and the analysis of the conceptual sphere of a literary text. The universal concepts RELIGION, LOVE, PASSION, THE MEANING OF LIFE, which constitute the conceptual sphere of the novel by W. S. Maugham “Of Human Bondage”, are analyzed.
The main result of the study is that THE MEANING OF LIFE concept is universal, not individual, and it includes other universal concepts, such as RELIGION, LOVE, PASSION, THE MEANING OF LIFE, conceptual metaphors and metonyms, symbols, and other words-associates, which constitute the broad figurative and evaluative periphery of the conceptual sphere of the novel.
Design and experimental demonstration of a high conversion efficiency OPCPA pre-amplifier for petawatt laser facility