REPRESENTATION OF PAIN IN UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE

Abstract

The article presents the analysis of the metaphorical conceptualization of pain in Ukrainian language on the basis of the noun біль ‘pain’. The noun is widely used in Ukrainian to denote this unpleasant physical and emotional sensation. With the help of cognitive approach, the main aim of which is to analyze the consciousness through the language, the pain sensation and its verbalization in the language were analyzed and the following metaphors were established: PAIN – LIVING BEING, PAIN – OBJECT, PAIN – LIQUID IN A CONTAINER, PAIN – STRUGGLE, PAIN – LIGHT and PAIN – FIRE. The metaphor PAIN – LIVING BEING represents the personification of pain. Metaphorically pain gets the characteristics of the human being, for example, the ability to walk and to talk, as well as the ability to perform some actions either with the help of ‘hands’ or some instruments. As OBJECT pain possesses some characteristics like temperature, form and color. Metaphorically pain is the LIQUID IN A CONTAINER, where container is a human body.
This approach helps distinguish the peculiarities of the verbalization and perception of pain by the representatives of Ukrainian culture.