CATACHRESIS IN THE IMAGERY SPACE OF ENGLISH POETIC DRAMA: A COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

This article focuses on revealing the nature of catachresis from a cognitive perspective in the imagery space of English poetic drama. The relevance of this article is determined by general tendency of modern linguistics on integration of traditional and novel approaches to analysis of semantics of literary texts in general and poetic drama in particular. The methodology of comprehensive analysis of the imagery space of English poetic drama is based on linguistic assumption of cognitive poetics. The application of such analysis made it possible to reveal genre properties and the specifics of the imagery space of English poetic drama. To formal properties of poetic drama we refer: special rhythmic-syntactic organization, enjambment, parallelism, specific compositional-graphic arrangement of a text (dialogue, monologue, polylogue, author’s remarks, act division, action, scene etc.) and types of narration. We consider lyricism+dramatism, eventfulness, tendency to ambiguity of meaning, the specifics of image system as content properties of poetic drama. The specifics of the imagery space of English poetic drama are clarified via linguistic and cognitive analysis of the types of verbal poetic images: ambivalent, parabolic, paradoxical and symbolic. A paradoxical verbal poetic image is seen as a textual construal and a cognitive structure which has two planes – conceptual and verbal. It is a multifaceted phenomenon, a verbalized knowledge in the text construed by pre-conceptual, conceptual and language domains. In the context of our research we refer oxymoron, antithesis, paradox and catachresis to contrastive stylistic devices that create a paradoxical verbal poetic image. It is maintained that catachresis as a contrastive figure of speech is predominantly manifested in paradoxical verbal poetic images in the imagery space of English poetic drama. In paradoxical verbal poetic images various linguocognitive processes and operations of creating specifics are traced. The formation of paradoxical verbal poetic images is associated with linguo-cognitive processes of categorization and verbalization (mainly with linguo-cognitive operations of contrastive mapping). It has been proved that the formation of paradoxical verbal poetic images is predetermined by cognitive operations of attributive, situational and relational contrastive mappings.