Introduction

Significance of the problem

There are some truths that, at first glance, do not need to be proven. In scientific research, they are perceived as linguistic axioms. As one might think, the concept of an image also applies to them, because back then in ancient times Aristotle also addressed its comprehension. The genius of his teaching amazes us even today. The strategy he laid down for comprehending a person’s ability to create and experience images formed in the 19th century the methodological foundations for the discipline now called the psychology of the image.

Thus, the Scottish researcher John T. E. Richardson (Richardson, 2006) systematically (of course, from the standpoint of the categorical and conceptual basis of his time) considered such aspects of the psychology of images that were defined by Aristotle. It is true that a modern scientist examines images from the viewpoint of brain processes: the subjective experience of images, imagery as an internal representation, as an attribute of a stimulus, as a mnemonic strategy (Richardson, 2006) (a method based on figurative associations to improve memorization). Especially innovative is the author’s interpretation of the brain mechanisms associated with the ability to generate images.

In Russia, psychology of imagery was founded by the research of L. S. Vygotsky (Vygotsky, 2005), A. N. Leontiev (Leontiev, 1979: 3-13), Sergei Dm. Smirnov (Smirnov, 1981: 15-29). The psychology of experience, actively developed by F.E. Vasilyuk (Vasilyuk, 1984), is of great interest. Vasilyuk (Vasilyuk, 1984) is of great interest in understanding the nature of linguistic imagery.  First of all, attention is drawn to the author’s interpretation of “experience” not as an emotional response but as overcoming perception of a communicatively significant event as a real fact and transforming it into a discursive and modus model (cognitive substrate) of language imagery (Alefirenko, 2008: 68).

Nowadays, the term “image”, in a broad sense, is axiomatically understood as the reflection of the external world in the person’s mind. The peculiarity of language imagery as one of the forms of this reflection is determined, particularly, by the fact that the communicants experience a communicative event and simultaneously convey their discursive and modus attitude towards it.

The main purpose of the work is to reveal the linguocreative essence of the language image. The purpose of the study involves the solution of the following tasks:

a) to reveal discursive and modus nature of linguistic images and the way how they reflect the multilevel synergetic extralinguistic world by semiotic means;

b) to determine psycholingual mechanisms which help to represent mental models of the corresponding communicative events within the linguistic image nontrivially and creatively;

c) to format associative-semantic potential of language images using parameters;

d) to establish connections between the creative features of linguistic images focused in discursive consciousness and the choice of those words and expressions that embody the features of ethno-cultural spirituality fixed in linguistic images.

The solution of these tasks set is aimed at finding answers to research questions that have long arisen. How to understand the reflection of the external world in linguistic consciousness? How is the attitude to the reflected object expressed in a linguistic way?

In the process of studying the essence of the image, the prominent French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty stated that the concept of imagery had acquired a bad reputation. In his essay “The Eye and the Spirit” the author comes to conclusion that “the reason for this is the unfounded ideas about imagery as a tracing paper, a copy, a duplicate of a thing, and even about a “mental image” as the same kind of copy stored in our memory” (Vasilieva, 2011). The image, according to his concept, is “the subjective perception of the external world influencing it” (Merleau-Ponty, 1964: 17).

The semiotic mechanisms of image generation were first substantiated by R. Barth (Barth, 2009). The etymology of the word imagery (image) which Roland Barthes elevates to the verb imitari – ‘ to imitate’ , “is conducive to understanding the image as a pictorial sign, the result of reproduction, copying, reflection of objects” (Barthes, 2009: 111). This reflection “creates a certain illusion of the object identity and its image which in semiotic logic must be read” (Vasilieva, 2011), revealed through the discovery of the code underlying the symbolic-conditional nature of the image.

This kind of semiotic model of the image prevailed for a very long period which is explained by the hypnotic works of R. Barth (Barth, 2009: 128), although the need for developing this concept was noted by the author himself. This could not but lead to the emergence of new theories and new nominations of imagery, such as “image-movement” and “image-time”, as Gilles Deleuze suggested (Deleuze, 1974). And it is not about the terminological game but interpretation of innovative understanding of imagery itself.

In linguistic research, the approach to the image as the result of reflecting fragments of the external world can only be taken as a methodological starting point. Its linguistic adaptation is carried out using epistemological interpretation of discursive and modus cognition (Oparina, 2017: 4-8). This approach is based on four basic concepts: “communicative event”, “discourse”, “discursive consciousness” and “discursive and modus concept”.

The novelty of research is predetermined by the fact that linguistic image is considered (against the background of the sensory image) through the prism of discursive consciousness which is a quite new term and therefore is controversial in comparison with the term “linguistic consciousness” (which has already become fixed). The new approach is relevant for the interdisciplinary study of the language image.

Our position on the linguistic image as a synergetic phenomenon generated by discursive consciousness is the starting point of the research (Alefirenko 2008: 247-252). This postulate is used as the methodological basis for linguo-cognitive poetics, a new developing field. The accepted axiom serves not only to the actual linguistic study, but also interdisciplinary (linguo-cognitive, linguo-culturological and communicative-pragmatic) research.

Materials and methods

The nature and essence of linguistic imagery are revealed through the linguocultural method, a set of methods and techniques that allow us to penetrate into the mechanisms of interaction between language and the value and semantic dominants of the human modeled picture of the world. The purpose of this approach is to explicate the hidden hypostasis of language as a tool for the formation, storage and development of culture.

To achieve this goal, the procedure of psycho-semantic identification was used to objectify the means of so-called culturally significant meanings in language imagery. This is the subject of certain methods of component analysis of ethno-cultural semantics (revealing the cultural significance of verbal signs) with the subsequent interpretation of “cultural connotations” in their symbolic, archetypical and conceptual representation (Jung, 1991; Bolshakova, 2010: 47-53). “Culturally marked connotation arises as a result of the interpretation of the associative-figurative basis of phraseological units or metaphors by correlating it with cultural and national standards and stereotypes. Components with a symbolic reading also largely determine the content of cultural connotations” (Langacker, 1990: 176-177).

Results

As a result of the study, the following methodologically significant postulates were established and substantiated:

1. The phenomenon of discourse is fundamental for the modern theory of language imagery.

Due to the ambiguity of the term “discourse” we need to clarify its linguo-cognitive value (Croft, 2004; Jackendoff, 1993) for the theory of language imagery. According to our concept, discourse is

• not a speech / text or speech dialogue, as it is commonly called in communicative linguistics,

• not evolution of thinking, expressed in concepts and judgments (the unshakable postulate of the classical philosophy of R. Descartes, B. Spinoza and G. V. Leibniz who believed that the reliability of scientific knowledge is guaranteed by intellectual intuition),

• not a representative of a special mentality and ideology, as it is presented in the French postmodern doctrine, which was developed by Michel Foucault (Foucault, 1966), Gilles Deleuze (Deleuze, 1974), Jean-François Lyotard (Lyotard, 1997) and others.

2. Of course, for understanding the origins of language imagery the above-mentioned interpretations of discourse undoubtedly have aspectual significance:

a) the communicative-linguistic approach aims at interpreting a discursive image as a communicative event (van Dijk, 1997);

b) in the development of philosophical understanding, linguistic imagery is linked to the naïve concept, the basis for concept formation, in the paradigm of which we distinguish its discursive and modus hypostasis. It is significant for the formation of language imagery that is addressed to the pragmatics of the typical situation of speech generation.

c) not being a direct representative of special mentality, the postmodern approach contributed to the appeal of linguists to the linguistic consciousness of communicants, whose basic elements are predetermined by the so-called discursive consciousness.

Discussion

The initial postulate is the proposition we put forward about language imagery produced by the discursive consciousness as a synergistic phenomenon (Alefirenko, 2008: 68-73). This postulate is used as a methodological basis for the new direction we are developing – linguo-cognitive poetics. The accepted axiom serves not only for the linguistic search itself, but also as interdisciplinary (linguo-cognitive, linguo-cultural and communicative-pragmatic) research.

In the paradigm of this approach, imagery is the result of mental (cognitive) reproduction of previously obtained sensations and perceptions from the annals of ethnocultural memory (Kugler, 2002). Having passed through the mechanisms of discursive consciousness and discursive and modus concept, the subject-sensory image turns into a language image. Its categorical features are: associativity, metaphoricity, polysemism, originality, ethno-cultural conditioning, intellectual and emotive synergy of thought and feeling (Alefirenko, Nurtazina, Shakhputova, 2021: 253-270), discursive and modus creativity.

The effectiveness of language images is associated with their ability to bring to life results of human cognitive processes – sensations and perceptions. It activates the memory of various sensations – a priori and experiential, received by the sensory, auditory, visual, tactile way – and allows clarifying the information obtained while understanding the communicative event. All this makes language imagery vivid and visual.

1) Communicative event as a prototype of language imagery

Discourse is directly related to a communicative event which should be distinguished from a real event occurring in the existential hypostasis of human existence. The communicant’s experience of a real event motivates them to discursive text generation. In this case, the real event becomes communicatively significant. The person’s experience prompts to create a discursive model of literary text by creating related configuration of communicatively conditioned anthropocentric images.

A communicative event is a discursive model of generating language image (in accordance with the characteristics of discursive situation). The discursive situation reflects in the communicant’s consciousness the information about the communicative event explicated by the means of linguistic and nonverbal semiotics. It expresses interacting ethno-cultural, social and individual-personal meanings. As a result of such interaction, language imagery arises in the conjugation of verbal and nonverbal elements of discursive consciousness (Chafe, 1994; Gasparov, 1996; Lynn, Moniek, 2021).

2) Discursive consciousness and language imagery

Since “nothing exists outside the text,” as J. Derrida (Derrida, 2002: 98) tirelessly repeated, the whole world, ultimately, is perceived as a boundless, inexhaustible text. Its associates compare it with a large-scale figurative worldview. Thus, Reinhard Pekrun (Pekrun, 2021) compares the world with a “space library”, and Umberto Eco (Eco, 2005: 89-95) parallels it with a “dictionary” and a comprehensive “encyclopedia”. In such an extended interpretation of the text, the mechanisms of its generation are based on discursive consciousness relying on the processes of narrativization of figurative speech thinking, i. e. on the person’s introspectional ability, the ability to describe themselves, on their life experience in the discursive consciousness in the form of a coherent use of poeticized images in literary speech (Fig.1).

Figure 1. Cognitive-discursive generation of a linguistic image

Рисунок 1. Когнитивно-дискурсивное порождение языковой образности

As noted above, “the understanding of discursive consciousness is based on two points: (a) on speech-thinking activity as the main condition for the emergence of discursive consciousness and (b) on speech behavior – its component and form of realization” (Alefirenko, 2014: 8). It follows from the fact that the main function of discursive consciousness is constant reflexive monitoring (mental analysis) of the figurative-semantic panorama generated in literary speech which is carried out by communicants continuously. It characterizes not only the author’s verbal behavior but also the characters of the literary text.

It should be noted that reflexive monitoring of the figurative and semantic interpretation of the external and internal world is continuous.   A well-coordinated mechanism for tracking the adequacy of various elements of a communicative event fixed in language imagery is predetermined by a discursive and modus concept. In this regard, it is important to understand the genetic conditioning of language imagery and discursive and modus concepts (Musolff, 2004: 55-75).

3) Language imagery and discursive and modus concept

First of all, it should be recognized that an image and a concept (Langacker, 1990) are units of the thought code. And yet they are different from each other.

A concept is a set of subject meanings, ethno-cultural values and assessments. By virtue of its multi-tiered organization, there are not only meanings but also “premonitions” which are synthesized in the structure of the verbalized concept (Pekrun, 2021). We can say that concepts integrate sensory images, perceptions, assessments and connotations refracted in discursive consciousness through the prism of particular ethnic culture.

The concept is discrete (it has a multi-tiered structure). On the contrary, the nature of the image is continuous (the image has a rational-sensory integrity, ethno-linguistic connotations) and includes the visual image of the representative word. In other words, both phenomena are mental structures of the perceptual-cognitive activity of communicants but they convey deep meanings of the verbalized fragment of the communicative event in different ways.

We can say that sensory images, perceptions, evaluations and connotations, refracted in the discursive consciousness through the prism of one or another ethnic culture, are integrated in the sign which represents concept. For example, “the seventh water on jelly” is ‘an extremely distant relationship’. Cf. in context: 1) “In Siberia kinship, property and nepotism are considered almost up to the twentieth generation. The seventh water is on jelly, the tenth water is on kvass, and every kind of bake from the side of the tribe is not thrown out” (P. I. Melnikov-Pechersky. On the mountains). Cf. also in different linguistic cultures: Ukr. ‘syoma voda na kisele, tenth water on jelly’; Polish ‘piąta woda po kisielu, siódma woda po kisielu, dziesiąta woda po kisielu’; Ital. ‘parente alla lontana – letters. distant relative’; Span. ‘un tío en Alcalá’ – lit. uncle in Alcala (Alcala is an extreme suburb of Madrid); Turkish ‘dış kapının dış mandalı’ – lit. latch for the outer door.

In the Slavic languages, the language image correlates mainly with the peculiarities of the preparation of jelly. Differences in some variations: in Rus. ‘tenth water in kvass’; in Polish. ‘piąta woda po kisielu’; In Span. ‘uncle from the suburbs’; in Ital. ‘just a distant relative’; Turkish language image is based on realities that are not related to kinship (the latch of the outer door).

The difference between the concept and the image is well demonstrated by the cognitive metaphors of the ‘needle’ and the ‘pattern’. A discursive and modus concept is a ‘needle’ with the help of which the author creates a particular pattern of language imagery on the text fabric.

The basis for understanding the scheme of generating language image is the statement that the substrate of discursive and modus concepts, like language imagery, is a metaphorical worldview or a cognitive metaphor (Turner, 2000: 133-145) which enables to create a capacious image based on bright, sometimes unexpected associations. The nomination of the language image is carried out in many ways: by word, by phrase, by sentence, by super-phrasal unity.

Discursive and modus concepts are products of the convergence of cognitive and literary images. The former create the illusion of their prosaic origin, their alienation from the poetic perception of the world – the cognitive substrate of exclusively literary images. However, in reality cognitive images with their meanings also nourish the irrational element of poetic speech thinking.

Such comprehension of the rational and irrational origins of the world perception allows considering language images in conjunction with discursive and modus concepts – mental structures of complex integrative nature combining information of an associative-figurative character in their semantic content.

For the symbolic representation of this kind of concepts, linguogenesis has developed special signs that specialize in the function of figurative nomination. The indirectly nominative essence of the figurative nomination signs is determined by their ability to associatively cause a secondary discursive situation in the discursive consciousness of members of certain linguistic system. This kind of ability is based on the power of the communicants’ linguistic creativity of speech thinking (Serebrennikov, 1988) capable of modeling new figurative configurations using metaphorical thinking (Yurina, 2005).

At the same time, a stable correlation between components of signs of indirectly derived nomination and ethnocultural concepts is used. This correlation represents a discursive and modus matrix of generalized-metaphorical perception of a real communicatively significant event (Alefirenko, 2018: 15-28).

4) Cognitive metaphor and language imagery

The understanding of metaphorical thinking as a mechanism for generating cultural concepts of discursive and modus nature is laid down by deep studies of cognitive metaphor. Furthermore, they still give rise to discussion, primarily, in the works of European researchers (Riker, 2008; McCormack, 1990) and Russian scientists (Arutyunova, 1999) and others).

Cognitive metaphor as a mechanism of discursive comprehension of a communicative event generates speech images (Sandikcioglu, 2003: 299-320; Underhill, 2003: 135-165) of a literary text by understanding extralinguistic circumstances of their occurrence (Fig.2)

Figure 2. Stages of generating language imagery

Рисунок 2. Этапы порождения языковой образности

As we see, such circumstances include:

(a) knowledge of real facts which are presented in a communicatively significant event,

(b) author’s intentions,

(c) characters’ notions about the discursive situation,

(d) direct attitudes and intentions of the communicants.

It should be noted that the discursive image is distinguished by its synergistic, multiline, non-linear nature. It is predetermined by many factors:

(a) conditions of discursive activity,

(b) protodiscursive events,

(c) emotional background of the communicants,

(d) linguistic and cultural markers of the communicative event.

Conceiving these factors is a function of discursive consciousness. Moreover, it is the discursive consciousness that distinguishes the epistemological tier of language imagery from the objective image due to the synergy of its speech-thinking processes.

The synergy of discursive consciousness is based on syncretism (Greek συγκρητισμός), combining in one form several semantic streams emanating from the elements of speech experience for representing discursive prototypes and their mental metamorphoses.

In other words, since the discursive activity of communicants is based on their previous communicative-cognitive experience, the language image is discursively constructed. Additionally, it is created by verbal means of the associative-semantic embodiment of the corresponding fragment of the communicative event described in speech / text.

Thus, the cognitive metaphor and its verbal derivatives are unique tools that integrate the synergy of linguistic, cultural and psycho-semantic meanings. The linguistic images projected by metaphorical thinking capture the results of creative interaction of sensory and rational cognition of the world, determining their creative nature.

The eminent scholar of human creativity Joy Guilford defined linguistic creativity as “divergent linguistic thinking” (Guilford 1982: 49), which semiotically embodies the connection between the three main levels of mental reflection of reality:

- sensory-perceptual (sensory),

- the level of representations (figurative) and

- speech-thinking level which is based on linguocreative thinking.

Concluding remarks

It is necessary to highlight the linguocreative nature of language imagery.

1. The renowned researcher of human creativity, Joy Guilford, defined linguistic creativity as "divergent language thinking".

2. Object images of the external world serve as the main elements of linguocreative thinking. With this kind of thinking, the image of a thing can fold and unfold generating an abbreviated form of inner speech.

3. With regard to understanding language imagery, linguistic creativity is based on a psychological mechanism, "a person’s ability to ignore stereotypical ways of thinking, create non-trivial verbalizations of communicative events."

To sum up, from the judgements we have made, we can identify four main parameters for the creativity of linguistic imagery:

1) originality – the ability to establish distant associations, original responses.

2) semantic flexibility – the ability to determine the main property of an object and suggest a new version of its use.

3) figurative adaptive flexibility – the ability to modify a stimulus in order to reveal new properties and opportunities for using.

4) semantic spontaneous flexibility – the ability to generate meanings corresponding to the discursive situation.

4. The creative properties of the linguistic image, focused on the epicenter of discursive consciousness, predetermine in the speech-generating process the choice of those words and expressions that reflect the features of linguistic mentality – the phenomenon of ethnic consciousness – forming in it the code of ethno-cultural spirituality.

These language image parameters follow from the results of the study. According to them, discourse is a communicative event, and the nature of the language image itself, its discursive and modus essence, is determined by a naive concept – the primary source of the ethno-cultural concept.