METAPHORIZATION OF GENERALLY USED VOCABULARY IN THE ENGLISH PROFESSIONAL LANGUAGE OF MEDICINE

Abstract

The  article considers the issues concerning semantic reinterpretation of lexical units as one of the methods of medical term formation. The authors analyze the underlying reasons for metaphorization, ways of adapting common lexis to perform terminological functions, and illustrate the mechanism for transferring words into the category of units of the medical terminology system.

Analysis of strategies of metaphoric transfer of meaning enables reconstructing the naive picture of the world, which is mapped onto the English metaphoric medical terms and based on common lexis. The most  productive groups of motivational features appeared to be associated with the transfer of meaning by the similarity of form (1280 terms, 48.3%), action and its result (541 terms, 18.8%), features of human behavior and condition (392 terms, 13.6%), substances, food and their structure (270 terms, 9.4%). The prevalence of such motivational features can be explained by the naive picture of the world, represented in metaphoric terminology, namely, the objects and phenomena closest to man are subject to reinterpretation.

Groups of motivational characteristics are primarily divided into the following categories: object/substance and its features (shape, color, quality, function, position in space, sound), person/group of people (feeling, behavior, action and its result). The set of motivational features of metaphoric term formation reflects a particular image of the world where all necessary components of the human body are present, i.e., man and nature, which have specific features, perform certain functions, and correspond to the main object in medical science. Metaphoric terms are constructed not so much mediated by scientific development of reality but based on associations obtained in the process of sensory-empirical knowledge of the world, as evidenced by the above examples.