Концепт НЕСТАЧА/SCARCITY в англомовному економічному дискурсі

Abstract

The article explores the name and content of the cognitive concept SCARCITY in the English economic discourse. The content of the concept is based on the following set of semantic features of its terminized name – the lexeme “scarcity” (n.): “want of provisions for the support of life”, “lack”, “hunger”, “high cost”, “need”, “rarity”, “insufficiency of supply” and is motivated by the basic feature “an inadequate amount” with a negatively evaluated property “less than the norm”. The name of the concept is viewed as the centre of its conceptual network. Its semantic properties are profiled in the domains ECONOMY and MATHEMATICS which determine the terminized nature of the concept and motivate its corresponding cognitive features and its conceptual relations with other concepts in the discourse according to the propositional schema of causation “CR-SCARCITY has FT-negative effects». This concept performs a discourse forming function in the segment ECONOMY of the English language picture of the world as one of the key factor of the economic development of the society. Further perspectives in the study of SCARCITY should be development and construction of its lexical-semantic field as well as conceptual network, building up metaphorical models, synchronic and diachronic analysis of its metaphoric potential.