Perceptual Phyto-Images in Women’s Camp Prose

The article examines the peculiarities of sensory-perceptual imagery within phytonymic terms in women’s camp prose. It is noted that through the actualization of visual, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, and auditory features and properties of objects from the plant world in female ego-documents, symbolic meanings inherent to phytonyms in the national worldview are realized. Additionally, processes of their extinction, modification, and formation of authorial symbolic semantics are observed. Varied perceptual representations of phyto-image formations, often based on syncretism of perception, broadly characterize various textual oppositions, such as free-carceral space, past-present, natural-artificial, salvation-hopelessness, and others. Olfactory characteristics of phytonyms dominate in textual fragments describing extra camp conditions, allowing the heroines to momentarily detach from the horrors of prison/camp/unfreedom. Gustatory features of berries can become metaphorical substitutes for emotional sensations, as well as acquire various image-symbolic meanings of a happy life, salvation, survival, humanity, and self-sacrifice. Visual plant images, as well as olfactory and gustatory ones, in female ego-documents become markers of free life, embody hope for the future, and symbolize life. Auditory and tactile features of phytonyms are actualized to a lesser extent in those texts; nevertheless, they also serve as reminders of another non-camp life, providing strength and protection. Linguistic means of expressing perceptual phyto-images include a varied lexicon of sensory perception (for example, smell, aroma, sour, sweet, gray-smoky, bright, silence, rustle, velvety, and others), as well as elaborate metaphors (often anthropomorphic), often based on syncretism of perception (smell-sight, smell-taste, sighttouch, sight-sound, etc.)

Lexicon · Mental lexicon · Perception · Perceptual system · Taste · Discourse Analysis and Cultural Communication · Language, Communication, and Linguistic Studies · National Identity and Symbolism