Journal archive

Abstract: The study of Russian as a foreign language is impossible without studying the particular imagery of the Russian language. Both Russian and Chinese languages have developed imagery; that is why it is very important in the process of teaching Chinese student Russian to understand the similarities and differences at the level of imagery and metaphorization; consequently, one should pay much attention to the metaphorical potential of Russian and compare it the metaphorization in Chinese while learning Russian as a foreign language. The given article focuses on the linguistic context of determination of the role and place of the word “head” as a conceptual metaphor in the modern cognitive-discursive paradigm, as well as the description of the system and mechanisms of metaphorical conceptualization of the word “head”. The article studies symmetric and asymmetric characteristics of three types of metaphors: as a reflection from the field of human body parts into the field of the surrounding world, a reflection of the metaphor “head” in reversed order – from the field of the surrounding world into the field of human body parts, and metaphors with the word “head” as a reflection inside the field of human body parts. The author comes to the conclusion that symmetry between Russian and Chinese metaphors is more significant than the discovered asymmetry.