The Semantic Field “Alimento” as a Reflection of the Spanish National Culture

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the semantic field “Alimento” in the thesaurus of the Spanish language and the reflection of national culture in pragmatics, the constituent units of this semantic field. The specificity of this field is determined by the significant role that the corresponding denotative area plays in the life of the Spaniards: the biological and civilizational components are inseparably linked in it - they largely form the way of life of the people, which acquires a unique ethical and aesthetic content in national cultures. The vocabulary of this semantic field is characterized by specific patterns of constant-semantic organization, pragmatic mechanisms that contribute to the enrichment of the linguistic picture of the world, the development of areas of human experience, and the building of the symbolic foundations of ethnocultural semiotics. A comprehensive analysis of the pragmatic properties of the studied semantic units of the Spanish language allows us to apply the information obtained to the tasks of improving the methodology for translating texts that contain vocabulary related to nutrition as a special area of human experience and culture. As the study showed, the lexical units of the field “Alimento” are actively involved as a component of phraseological units (PU) of the Spanish language and are often anthropocentric.