Verbal Poetic Images of the USA in the Texts of American Poetry

Abstract

This research focuses on revealing linguistic cognitive and cultural properties of the verbal poetic images characterizing the USA in American poetry. The study provides the linguistic cognitive analysis of the verbal poetic images aimed at defining the means that verbalize the American views of the USA. The use of linguistic cultural analysis of the verbal poetic images enabled to reconstruct the fragment of national world image. The article provides a brief analytical overview of the approaches to the study of the image space in the Anglophone poetry within the scope of cognitive-and-discursive paradigm. With respect to the connotation, the verbal poetic image characterizing the USA are divided into pejorative and ameliorative ones. The use of the linguistic cognitive analysis of the images mentioned above resulted in reconstructing the scope of conceptual metaphors underlying pejorative and ameliorative verbal poetic images. The pejorative verbal poetic images are the ones, which characterize negatively the USA. The ameliorative verbal poetic images are defined as the ones that have positive characteristics of the USA. The linguostylistic analysis of the examples revealed a narrow range of the stylistic devices, which allegorically express the image of the USA in texts of American poetry: a metaphor and a metonymy. The linguistic cognitive and cultural analysis of the types of verbal poetic images enabled to reconstruct the conceptual metaphors, which reflect the specific features of the interpretation of the USA. The following list of conceptual implications underlie the pejorative and ameliorative verbal poetic images: war, intervention, occupation, world leadership, challenge, inequality, unfreedom, the power of the money, thirst for profit, imposing of values, ideas and lifestyle, lie, injustice, freedom, equality, multicultur alism, uniqueness.