Concept of the Father in prose: An analysis within the framework of cognitive literary studies
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Abstract
This study aims to identify the cultural and symbolic dimensions of the concept of the father in the prose works of Mukhtar Auezov. The author’s prose is examined from the perspectives of cognitive poetics and cognitive literary studies. Within cognitive literary studies, a concept is defined as a form of mental representation manifested through images, symbols, metaphors, and associations. The research corpus consisted of literary texts and the data obtained from an associative experiment conducted with respondents. The concept of the father is analyzed through a range of methods, including conceptual analysis, frame-semantic analysis, cognitive metaphor analysis, and comparative-typological analysis. The findings demonstrate that the cultural and symbolic significance of the father concept is associated with the roles of custodian of tradition, moral guide, and a figure responsible for the upbringing of the younger generation. These results contribute to a deeper understanding of the representation of the father concept in post-Soviet Central Asian prose, as well as its formation within the national worldview and the readers’ cognitive frameworks. The study underscores the significance of conceptual analysis of the father concept for interpreting the interrelationship between literary texts and the national worldview.
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