Concept Human Age as Archetypal and Stereotypical Mental Structure in the Consciousness of Ukrainian, Russian, and English Native Speakers

Abstract

The paper offers a new complex methodology for analyzing the linguocultural concept HUMAN AGE as a multidimensional archetypal and stereotypical mental structure of human consciousness. To recognize the systemic essence of the Ukrainian, Russian, and English native speakers’ world mapping and their cultural stereotypes, the concept HUMAN AGE is studied by considering its realization through lexical, phraseological, and paremiological units. The study assumes the analysis of such concept structure components as an etymological/historical layer that reflects the essential notional features of the concept, an additional layer, formed as a result of the concept in growth, and an active layer that is regarded relevant for the modern native speakers and represented by axio-notional, axio-figurative, and axio-evaluative stereotypes that help forward mentalizing the concept in the Ukrainian, Russian, and English native speakers’ consciousness. The archetypal basis of the concept is identified by considering the etymology of the concept names and nominations of age stages and persons by age in the three languages. The stages of stereotyping the axio-notional, axio-figurative, and axio-evaluative images of the human age that reveal the similarities (universal features) and differences (nationally specific features) in the mapping of archetypal and stereotypical images of the human age in the consciousness of Ukrainians, Russians, and the English are analyzed. Ultimately, the most complete set of archetypal and symbolic features (universal and nationally specific), sociocultural age stereotypes (neutral, positive, and negative), numerological, coloristic, phytomorphic, and zoomorphic metaphorical nominations of age stages and persons by age in Ukrainian, Russian, and English linguocultures is presented.