The metaphor systema digestorium in the Russian linguocultural space

Abstract

In recent years linguistic studies have laid great emphasis on the semantic side of linguistic expressions. The aim of this paper is to introduce and describe ‘systema digestorium’ viewed from the perspective of the conceptual metaphor in Russian. It describes the process of creating such metaphors based on the notions of source and target domains. From a linguistic point of view, an interest arises to answer the question of how the functioning of such an important organ as the digestive system is reflected in the conceptualization of the surrounding world. This issue is important because the metaphorization is based on the use of everyday human experience, reflecting processes known to all human kind, including those of a physiological nature. The research material was taken from the national corpus of the Russian language and a number of dictionaries. The figurative meaning of activities related to grinding, swallowing, digesting food, as well as excreting food debris became the object of the research. The basic identifiers are the verbs: to chew, to swallow, to digest, to defecate. Each stage of the digestive system has its own specificity and concentrates on specific parts in viewing the world. In addition, the metaphor ‘systema digestorium’ is often used in Russian
linguaculture to convey the expressiveness and originality of a language.