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Symbol
— a synthetic sign of culture (art, literature, religion,
etc.) which represents, apart from its inherent and immediate
meaning, an essentially different, usually more abstract meaning,
connected with the former by a metaphoric or metonymic link. In
symbols we deal with a hierarchy of meanings where the direct
meaning constitutes the first layer of sense and serves as a basis
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гипаллага, перестановка определения, меняющая синтаксические
отношения в выражении
for the indirect (figurative) meaning — the second layer of sense.
Both of them are united under the same designator (a name, a
visual image, a significant object or person, etc.)
Among symbols language and speech symbols are specified.
Language symbols
are fixed in people’s mind as stable
associative complexes, existing in the lexical meaning of a word as
‘a symbolic aura’, i.e. a number of semes of cultural-stereotype and
archetypal or mythological character. Cultural-stereotype symbols
are contemporary and comprehensible for all the representatives of a
culture, with a transparent logical connection between a direct and an
indirect meaning and easily deducible indirect meaning. Archetypal
symbols (archetypes) are symbols based on the most ancient or
primary views on the ambient world. In archetypes the connection
between direct and indirect meanings is often darkened.
Examples of cultural stereotypes: e.g. rose — beauty, love;
wall — obstacle, restriction of freedom, estrangement; mountain
— spiritual elevation, also courage associated with overcoming
difficulties; way — movement in time, progress, course of life.
Examples of archetypes: the sky — father; the earth — mother;
egg — primordial embryo, out of which the world developed;
snake — god of the underground world, the realm of the dead;
bird — mediator between the earth and the heaven, this world and
the other world; tree (of life), mountain (of life) — the world
itself, etc.
Unlike language symbols,
speech symbols
are variables,
rather than constants. Here the direct meaning of a word is used to
denote the author’s subjective, individual ideas. Thus, in speech
the cultural-stereotype and archetypal contents of a word are
specifically interpreted.
Although symbols and the main tropes are based on the same
types of associations between meanings — of similarity and
contiguity, they are fundamentally different phenomena.
Firstly, unlike a trope, where the concrete direct meaning is
usually only a vehicle, by means of which the transferred
meaning is conveyed, in symbol both meanings are equally
important, because the direct meaning is
realistic
in the context of
a piece of literature
, it actually exists
and it is not simply like
something else and stands for something else, but it
actually
means
something else.
Compare the metaphor
‘He stepped into the dark woods of
death’
and
the woods
as the symbol of oblivion and death in
‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ by Robert Frost:
Whose woods these are I think I know,
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake…
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Secondly, there is a difference in the functions of symbols
and tropes. While the key function for tropes is that
of
characterization
of one object (concept) by means of another
object (concept), the principal function of symbols is
representation of a concept through an object
. Besides, the
aesthetic function
, which is particularly important with tropes,
ranks less important in the case of symbols. For example the
symbols of three trees and a white horse with the Christian
semantics in the poem ‘Journey of the Magi’ by T. S. Eliot are in
themselves devoid of any ‘ornamentalism’ whatever:
e.g. Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
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The typology of symbols presented below is based on their
microsemantic structure and the types of logical connections
between their meanings.
The main types of symbols are metaphoric and metonymic.
A few examples of metaphoric symbols, based on similarity
between meanings:
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