Words and meanings at the crossroads of mental spaces of language and culture

Abstract

The article deals with the interaction between the conceptual spaces of language and culture within the framework of the language – culture – cognition triad. We argue that this interaction is based on a dynamic network of conceptual mappings. We prove that language and culture are connected by conceptual mappings within several dimensions: semiotic, communicative and cognitive. The main emphasis is on the analysis of the conceptual interactions between the mental spaces of two cultures and languages at several levels: at the macro level (the level of conceptual worldviews of two national cultures), at the meso level (the level of individual concepts) and at the micro level (the level of individual conceptual features that form the concept). We focus on the analysis of the micro level and prove the importance of conceptual features that have the highest degree of centrality, stability and high inferential potential in the process of conceptual mapping. Our study also proves that the inferential potentials of conceptual features do not coincide in two cultures and languages. This is reflected in the translation process. When translating features with a low inferential potential, the translator needs more cognitive efforts, since this process requires compensatory translation solutions to create the translation text. The maximum cognitive load on the translator should result in the minimization of the cognitive load on the recipient.