Symbol metaphorics: Indirect speech of consciousness

The article is devoted to the study of the relationship between the type of the transferred feature of the auxiliary subject and the functional semantics of the main subject – the metaphorized name “symbol”. The research material is the concordance compiled from the speech use contexts of the name “symbol” in the general and poetic corpora of the “National Corpus of the Russian Language”. The work used the methods of component, definitional and conceptual analysis, as well as semantic and semiotic analysis of images embodying the symbol. It is established that both linguistic and figurative metaphors are involved in the metaphorization of the name “symbol”. According to the thematic affiliation of the auxiliary subject, in the metaphorization of the name “symbol”, there are such types of semantic transfer as personification, phytometaphor, hydrometaphor, photometaphor, pyrometaphor and reimetaphor. When transferring meaning from one subject to another, not all semantic features of the auxiliary subject are transposed, but only some of them, depending on their role and function in increasing the meaning of the main subject. In the semantic composition of the name “symbol”, mainly inessential, connotative features associated with evaluation and its intensification are metaphorized: a positive evaluation, when the symbol is likened to something useful, aesthetically attractive, and a negative evaluation, when it is likened to something superfluous, useless, harmful and disgusting. Among the semantic features of a symbol that are not related to the connotations of its name and assessments, the following are metaphorized: transcendence – going beyond the limits of present existence, mystery and coding, “password” ability, allegorical quality and understatement, mentality and instrumentality, the degree of comprehensibility and well-knownness, the expressiveness degree, as well as cognitive function.