Verbalization of corporality in blockade texts

Abstract

Modern philology is increasingly turning to interdisciplinary problems, which include corporality, which is studied at the intersection of biology, medicine, cognitive science and philosophy. At the same time, the interest of linguistics in the conceptualization and verbalization of bodily and psychological individual experience leads to the need to study ego-documents that tell about the most difficult, traumatic life situations (hunger, war, disability, fatal illness, loss of loved ones, etc.). The purpose of the work is to explication of the specifics of the perception of the corporality of a resident of besieged Leningrad through the verbalization of one’s own and others’ bodily experience. The number of specific elements of the conceptualization of corporality (hunger, dystrophy, cold, trauma, etc.) were revealed. An analysis of the memories of the blockade survivors convincingly proves that the body was perceived by the starving inhabitants as deformed, destroyed and striving for inevitable death. Reflection on the body and corporality inevitably leads to the realization of the rigid connection of corporality with the psyche and morality. Such specific forms of comprehension and verbalization of the physicality of blockade runners as hunger trauma, winter trauma, and alienation of the body are identified and analyzed. The analysis of the traumatic bodily experience of the inhabitants of the besieged Leningrad can serve as a further development of linguistic studies of both corporality and traumatic experience.