Conceptual analysis of the cognitive and propositional structure of the main character’s silence in the novel “Ivan” by V. O. Bogomolov

Abstract

   The present paper analyzes verbal and non-verbal representations of the concept “silence” and its cognitive and propositional structure in the artistic context. The research is based on Vladimir Bogomolov’s novel “Ivan” (1957).

   The purpose is to decode the general linguistic layer underlying the artistic concept “silence” and to discover the author’s intention in the linguistic means of the concept objectification.

   Using the expressive and aesthetic pragmatic approach, typical for a fictional text, the author narrates the mysterious story of Ivan, a twelve-year-old boy, who was found in the water near the river bank and arrested on suspicion of espionage. Resorting to the metaphor of silence, the author focuses on the description of the private story of the boy, deprived of his childhood, which he reverently guards in his silence, giving it more attention than to depicting military episodes. The article deals with a variety of the “silence” concept context verbalizations, revealing the author’s individual ideas about it, allowing him to present the conceptosphere “silence” as a field, whose core is a generalized cognitive and propositional structure including the main lexical representations of the concept. Figurative nominations constitute the nearest periphery, and subjective-modal meanings are the furthest periphery. This analysis seems productive for interpreting the individual-authorial picture of the world and fo broadening the understanding of the fictional text itself.