The phenomenon of conceptual integration in allusions

Under the framework of the anthropocentric paradigm, the research fields in linguistics have taken a radical turn and enlarged their scope as well as areas of investigation. The study of human factors influencing language usage is being held from different perspectives and along with traditional methods of analysis, newly emerging research methods are being applied in linguistic explorations as well. One of such language means which has been a subject to a line of scientific studies is allusion and it has been under the spotlight of such disciplines as stylistics, text linguistics, cognitive linguistics, linguopragmatics and cultural linguistics. The focus on allusions as a figurative means of language used to indirectly refer to a person, object, place or event has been switched onto the other issues which are entailing the consideration of wider scale approaches to the analysis of this stylistic device. This article sheds light on the religiously marked allusions, their denotation, functions, conceptual significance in the literary text and ways of analyzing and interpreting them from the perspectives of cognitive linguistics. To reveal the conceptual significance of religiously marked allusions in the literary text, the cognitive mechanism of conceptual blending is implemented in the research. According to the results of the analysis, allusions obtain new conceptual senses by activating a specific event, object, or personage anew in the text and the blending theory can effectively be applied in decoding the implicit message conveyed by allusions.