Yurina O.Y.

Ust-Kamenogorsk branch of Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, Kazakhstan

The concept of the comical in J.K.Jerome’s prose

Cognitive science gives the answer how human’s mind is organized, how information is turned into knowledge, how mental spaces are structured. Intellectual processes are well-regulated when they are based on the former knowledge. A lot of terms came from philosophy and logics which have a very long history, but cognitive linguistics came to life only in the XX century.

Concept is a basic unit of cognitive linguistics. This term has additional definitions for the last 20 years through a very rapid development of a number of branches in linguistics. Cognitive linguistics and concepts in the XXI century have to be investigated within modern anthropological paradigm including psychology, aesthetics, culture study, literature study, literary stylistics [1].

In the recent 20 years the notion of concept has experienced reconsideration. Now it includes the following characteristics:

1) It is a minimal unit of human experience;

2) It has a field structure;

3) It is the means of storage and transmission of knowledge and information;

4) It has specific functions but not stable in boundaries;

5) It is social and has its associative field which is defined in pragmatics;

6) It is the main unit of culture

We may say concepts represent the world in human’s conscious mind, form his conceptual system, and form his human language code of communication. They are formed through our perception by our feelings and the second way is through mental activities which can be verbalized through language forms. Our conceptual system is very personal, though we may speak about fundamental, national concepts. The objective world is changing and our brain has special forms and modules. They are called frames which serve to build models of knowledge and information around a concept. They may be constructed in the forms of episodes, scenes, parts of a scenario of our past and present life. The number of concepts is always under change. Concepts have a lot of connotations and they are emotionally colored [2].

Our personal conceptual system is closely connected with the existing basic or fundamental concepts: space, time, number, justice, friendship. Concepts contain ethnical, national, personal, cultural, abstract, emotional, personal meanings. National concepts are the most generalized but they represent the basic idea of all national and cultural peculiarities and representations. National concept is realized through the image of national positive and negative characters which define national values, modes of behaviour. We may say that a language unites people into nations through concepts. Thematic classification of national concepts includes emotional, educational, cultural peculiarities. Concepts are found in pedagogical, religious, political, and medical discourses. They may change as the result of their integration into other concepts. It is very interesting to admit that concepts, as results of our mental activities in our spiritual studies, may come to some limit beyond which there is another spiritual reality which can’t be described by language means, but only comes as our spiritual experience. We may speak about different stages of the formation of concepts which may be verbal and non-verbal [3].

Conceptual world view includes mythological, religious, philosophical fragments of the world. National world view behind the language is nothing but giving color and a kind of illumination. Only in a language all national, historical and human’s experience is fixed. On the one hand, social conditions determine man’s behaviour which is expressed by different semantic and grammatical forms. The term the world view behind the language is a metaphor as real life situations are specific and they differ from the world view behind the language. They apply different and specific importance to the objects, actions and processes because they are national in character.

We have tried to investigate Jerome K. Jerome’s novel “Three men in a boat”. On the one hand it is a piece of a well-known emotional prose, which is based on the writer’s world-view and contains a number of protagonists who are placed into laughter-loaded situations. On the other hand we must define the concept of laughter through the terms of aesthetic categories. We know that any language forms create images, pictures of the conceptual world view behind the language.

We investigatigated laughter-provoking situations in the book “Three men in a boat” written in 1889 by Jerome.K. Jerome. We should consider the definition of humour as the means to express positive emotions, when the author who seems to be earnest, paints things in a color that provokes gaiety and laugh.

A humorist today is a man with a sense of humour. The sense of humour lacks any malice. This is the main difference with wit, which can hurt someone. Wit consists of a collection of ideas, a quick and smart mode of expression. It is a game which cheats the critical reason and social laws in order to find oneself in childhood, where our instincts were never bullied. Witticism express our deep human instincts (sexuality, violence) keeping in mind the requirements of social censorship. The wit is a social need because it is a way to breathe and satisfy human instincts, and a tool for social recognition. Wit makes fun of someone, humour of everyone. It isn’t always easy to distinguish humour and wit. There is sometimes a sense of humour in a witticism. At present the sense of humour doesn’t escape globalization and it isn’t so easy to see the difference.

The English humour has kept a philosophical melancholy, a smiling darkness, a taste for self-mockery. The right English definition of humour is the following – the sense of humour is the politeness of despair. In “Three men in a boat” J.K. Jerome used four chapters for the preparation of the three protagonists’ travel. They try to foresee everything. Harris took a piece of paper and got the grocery catalogue. They tried to take with them only of the things that they can't do without. They thought in that case they must take a rug each, a lamp, some soap, a brush and comb (between them), a toothbrush (each), a basin, some tooth-powder, some shaving tackle, and a couple of big-towels for bathing. For clothes, they thought two suits of flannel would be sufficient, as they could wash them themselves, in the river, when they got dirty. They wanted to take a change of under-things and plenty of socks, in case they got upset and wanted a change; also plenty of handkerchiefs, as they would do to wipe things, and a pair of leather boots as well as their boating shoes, as they should want them if they got upset. For other breakfast things, George suggested eggs and bacon, which were easy to cook, cold meat, tea, bread and butter, and jam. For lunch, he said, they could have biscuits, cold meat, bread and butter, and jam.

Emotions occupy a considerable place in the world behind the language. Emotive words and through evaluation of them we realize our psychological, social and intellectual attitudes to the objective world. Emotions are of universal character, they must be referred to cultural phenomena. Emotive meanings are described through concepts. Emotions are closely connected with mental and physical aspects of a human being.

While reading it we can’t stop laughing. Laughter, as one of the psychological expressions of pleasure, is endless and pleasant. One may get in euphoria, the sense of well-being and comfort. From medical point of view laughter is very healthy, it favours digestion, blood circulation, encourages vital forces in all organs. By causing positive and pleasant feelings, process of reading this book calls smile and laughter. J.K. Jerome has both the sense of humour and wit.

References:

1. Маслова В.А. Введение в когнитивную лингвистику: учеб. пособие / В.А. Маслова. – 2-е изд., испр. – М.: Флинта: Наука, 2006. – 296.

2. Арошидзе Н. Различия языковых картин мира в клишированных образах: дис. … д-ра филол. наук / Арошидзе Н. - Батуми, 2009. - 120 с.

3. Борев Ю. Комическое. – М., Искусство, 1970. – 272с.

4. Арнольд И.В. Стилистика. Современный английский язык: Учебник для вузов. 7-с изд. М., 2005.

5. Jerome K. Jerome Three men in a boat. Penguin Books, 1994. – 185 p.