Phraseological model of metaphorical INTERPRETING human physical appearance: conflictogenic potential

The article analyzes the semantics of English phraseological units with food names as a means of transmitting knowledge about human appearance and also reveals their conflictogenic potential. The relevance of this study is determined by the increasing need to discover how conflict-free verbal interaction can be realized, and what risks such communication involves when using phraseological units. The aim of the study is to establish aspects of the information about human appearance represented by phraseological units and to discover the degree of success of communication involving their use, i.e., the degree of conflictogenicity of these units in the context. The main research methods are conceptual and definitional analysis and the method of cognitive modeling. The conducted research made it possible to identify metaphorical, metonymic, metaphthonymic cognitive models and cognitive models of comparison, used to create the analyzed phraseological units, to identify the characteristics on the basis of which the comparison and metonymic, metaphorical or metaphthonymic transfers are carried out. Having considered phraseological units functioning in different contexts, we came to the conclusion that phraseological units with a negative connotation can neutralize it in certain contexts without revealing their conflictogenic potential, while phraseological units with a positive connotation are able to become potentially conflict units in certain contexts.