«Health — disease» Conceptual Sphere: Cultural code

The research is focused on the conceptual, figurative and value features of «health — disease» concepts due to their permanently growing importance, reflected in the language mindset. These processes are caused by various trends leading to the increasing danger to human health: epidemics, human-induced disasters, environment pollution. Due to the relevance of the issues, the authors aim to analyse the «health — disease» conceptual sphere as a strategy to changehuman mentality and the attitude to health as a norm and a value as well as to disease as a deviation from normal life, which implies observation of values and image characteristics of concepts, revealing and describing the cultural semantics of signs. The research is designed according to the original perceptive image that every concept is based on. This image represents a vector basis in a configuration of meanings inherent in the whole conceptual sphere. The analysis of the conceptual sphere using the corpus analysis tools allowed the authors comes to the conclusion that they vary and differ within cultural functionality determined by the conceptual characteristics. Actualization of a negative or positive attitude to health and disease caused by internal and external factors reveals the dominance of the signs motivated by the external events, such as the formation of the new human health-oriented mentality and the creation of a specified conceptual sphere. The description of ambivalent concepts provided in the axiological perspective provides an opportunity to learn more about complicated conceptual spheres and explore linguistic experience objectivation, experienced knowledge quantum as well as social and group specifics in the «health — disease» conceptual sphere. © 2021, RUDN UNiversity. All rights reserved.