Linguocultural Codes in Anna Akhmatova’s Individual Author’s Worldview

Abstract

Undoubtedly, the most promising linguistic research is that performed at the junction of different disciplines, such as cultural studies, psychology, ethnography and history, as it offers us a deeper understanding of language. Linguocultural codes have developed as a separate area of research over the last 20 years and have now attracted the attention of linguists in terms of studying the author’s individual worldview. The purpose of this article was to describe Anna Akhmatova’s implementation of linguocultural codes in her poems, taking into account the linguistic peculiarity of the conceptual metaphors used. It should be noted that this paper is the first attempt in philological literature to study conceptual metaphors through which the linguocultural codes are realized in the author’s worldview of poets and writers. The main methods applied in the research are descriptive, interpretative, and conceptual. We found that linguocultural codes in Akhmatova’s poems are represented by three broad classes: 1) codes of inanimate nature; 2) codes of wildlife; 3) categorical codes. As the study showed, the poetess often turns to two groups of linguocultural codes: wildlife and categorical, the most relevant being the vital and anthropomorphic codes, abundant in conceptual metaphors. Categorical codes are significant from the axiological point of view: the poems include all types of personal evaluations (ethical, aesthetic, utilitarian, and rational). At the same time, the limited colour spectrum is striking: in her works Akhmatova uses two colours – scarlet and black, as well as two shades – pale and light. The identified features largely correlate with Akhmatova’s life experience and reflect her inner world, i.e. sensations, feelings and emotions.