Key text-forming conceptual metaphor in the Call of the Wild by Jack London

The article describes the study of functioning of metaphor in the text of a work of fiction. The aimof the study is to bring forth the key conceptual text-forming metaphor in Jack London's Call of the Wild, find out the laws of itsfunctioning and reflect the principles of its functioning in the text of the story as translated by M. Abkina (1954). The study is conductedin the framework of lingual-cognitive approach to language. The paper makes use of the following terms: conceptual metaphor,construed as an association of two conceptual domains, one of which is structured in terms of the other; lexical metaphor, understood asa lexical unit resulting from the transfer of the name of one notion onto another, based on their likeness; key textual conceptualmetaphor, which is the metaphor that unites the whole text of a work of literature, provides it with semantic and imagery coherence andorganizes it on the derivational level. The key textual conceptual metaphor is essentially conceptual, and is realized via a system oflinguistic metaphorical models. A metaphorical model is both a linguistic and conceptual phenomenon. It is a unity of a mental schemeand a system of its linguistic representations, i.e. lexical metaphors. Our study has shown the general metaphorical background of thestory in question is set up in the anthropomorphic conceptual metaphor DOG is MAN. It is represented in a specific grammarmetaphor (the usage of the pronoun he in relation to an animal) and the lexical units with metaphorical meaning used to describe a dog(country gentlemen, dignity, fine pride, imperiously, king, realm, respect, right royal fashion, ruled, stalked). The comparative analysisof the original work in English and its translation into Russian has shown that the structure of the metaphorical model DOG is KING,RULER and its realizations on the surface level of the text are rendered with no significant changes with the help of lexemes that havesimilar semantics (Russian words for kingdom, homestead, walked in a proud way, king, ruler over all, life of a sated aristocrat, filledwith pride, egocentric, noble gentlemen). The coherence of the original and the translated text is ensured by the fact that the lexemeslisted above belong to one and the same semantic field king/tsar both in the English and the Russian languages. As these lexemes areused in everyday language in relation to man, when used in relation to a dog they are inevitably perceived as metaphorical, thus creatingthe imagery background of the story, which is set up with the help of the key text-forming conceptual metaphor DOG is MAN.

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