Semiotic Space of Characterological Color Nominations in Epic Texts (Based on the Old French, Old English and Nart Epics)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of the mechanisms of color nominations semiotization in the representation of archetypal concepts in their dynamics. The analysis of the epic text as a specific space for interpreting the events of objective reality makes it possible to identify determinants in the hierarchy of the achromatic and chromatic subsystems of symbolic color designations. For the first time the dynamic characteristics of the development of the explicatory and semi-generative potential of coloremes are determined as special signs of marking textual positions for changing the interpretive code from the individual to the general cultural one. Based on a multi-aspect approach, including the techniques of interpretive, semiotic, conceptual and hermeneutic-noematic analysis, the authors explore the determination mechanisms of color representatives of meta-concepts in archaic and modern linguistic cultures (English, French and Karachay-Balkarian) by a vertical sociocultural context. The material of the study was the texts of the Old French epic, represented by its most representative form – chanson de geste, as well as the text of Nart sagas and Beowulf, in which the hierarchical organization of the achromatic-chromatic semiotic space is revealed. The authors identify the achromatic two-element code “white/black” as the dominant coloristic symbols in the epics. As a result of the study, the following coloratives marking the primary discretion of the world and the prototypical opposition of “friend or foe” were identified: in positive space – blanche, blican, акъ; within the derogation area – noir, hárne, къара. The authors refer contextually polar and perceptually close colorems ou, golde, алтын; rougez, reód, къызыл to the key verbalizers of the gradual scale of chromatic space in the semiotization process of the opposition “good – bad” in the epic text. On the interpretation of cultural noematics define two basic subsystems of the color naming semiotization – generalized personalized images and environmental codes. The semiotic space of color meanings structures the recipient’s noesis and introduces it into the general semiosis.