The concept of “solitude” Yann Martel’s novel “The High Mountains of Portugal”

Abstract

Cognitive linguistics is the advancing branch of philology due to the proven correlation between the development language and human’s mind. The article analyzes the concept of “solitude” on the example novel by Canadian writer Yann Martel “The High Mountains of Portugal”. The object of this research is the concept “solitude”. The subject is the linguistic explication of the concept of “solitude” realized on the lexical and textual levels. Emphasis is made on characteristic features of the novel confirming that it refers to the literature of postmodernism. The author lists distinctive characteristics of the concept, analyzes the definition of “frame” with variety of subtypes, and “semantic field” as the largest semantic paradigm emerging by association with one or another phenomena. The concept of “solitude” is viewed from the perspective of philosophy, pedagogy and psychology. The scientific novelty consists in the analysis of insufficiently studied literary work of postmodernism (written in 2016) through the lens of cognitive linguistics. The term “concept” is considered in the context of multiplicity of its characteristics and approaches; definitions given by the scholars of various times and schools are provided. A conclusion is made on the discursive and emotional-evaluative components of the concept at hand. The author established the lexical and notional frames in the specific novel.