THE CONCEPT DOSTLUK IN THE TURKISH WORLD VIEW

Abstract

The article aims at studying the concept DOSTLUK (FRIENDSHIP) in the Turkish language world view. Being one of the basic ethical categories in human consciousness, this concept is verbalized through a variety of linguistic means and reflects the spiritual values of the ethnic group. The purpose of the study is to identify the cognitive features of the cultural concept DOSTLUK based on the assumption of its multi-layer structure including semantic, imagery and value constituents. The research material includes Turkish explanatory dictionaries, dictionaries of Turkish proverbs and sayings as well as the data from the Turkish National Corpus (TUD). The diversity of the problem under study determines the choice of various research methods: cognitive analysis of definitions, component analysis, contextual analysis, cognitive interpretation, framing techniques, etc. The semantic component of the concept DOSTLUK is represented as a frame including the subframes “Friendship as an Attitude/Relationship”, “Friendship as a Feeling/State”, “Subject(s) of Friendship”, “The Process of Friendship” and “The Value of Friendship”. The imagery component of the concept DOSTLUK is implemented with the help of metaphors (mainly artifact and natural). The value component of the concept is realized through various linguistic means containing evaluation, as well as the high frequency of use of the concept verbalizers that make up its nominative field. The author concludes that the concept DOSTLUK is a linguocultural ethical mental formation that models the situation and the state of friendship, with a pronounced value component.