CONCEPTUAL INTEGRATION AS A MECHANISM OF DEMOTIVATOR INTERPRETATION

The demotivator as a multimodal text which synthesizes verbal and visual components and is characterized by multidimensionality, comic sense is analyzed. The study of demotivator is carried out within Cognitive linguistics that gives insights into interpretive activity of language speakers from the point of view of cognitive and linguistic mechanisms of meaning-making. As the cognitive process defining the creation of demotivator, interpretation which is carried out with the help of conceptual integration is considered. Interpretation as a cognitive process relies on the collective knowledge of the scheme, receiving both verbal and visual representation, but involves a subjective understanding of the object of interpretation or its certain characteristics by a separate individual. Interpretation involves the operation of “conceptual integration”, with help of which semantic links between elements verbal and visual components of demotivators are established. On the material of English demotivators it is shown that the linguistic expression of the conceptual integration of content transmitted by verbal and visual components may be a pun, personification, hyperbole, irony. As methods of analysis of the actual material the contextual and conceptual analyses are used. The obtained results can be used in courses on English stylistics, text linguistics, cognitive linguistics.

demotivator, multimodal text, comic sense, interpretation, conceptual integration, pun, personification, hyperbole, irony