Alongside with this one chooses the group of units for investigation and constructs a special metalanguage for their description (or takes the appropriate ready metalanguage if it exists). The metalanguage is the main part of the conceptual, cognitive and terminological description of body and the phenomenon of corporeality.

 

I will give one or two examples of lexical elements in our metalanguage.

 

(1) Among different parts of body there is an interesting somatic object named fist[7]. Fist does not exist as it is; it is formed when it is necessary but acts as if it were a body part. That is why fist is named form/body part in our metalanguage. The latter expression belongs to the metalanguage. The metalanguage is the main part of the conceptual, cognitive and terminological description of body and the phenomenon of corporeality.

 

(2) Usually linguists and semioticians prefer not to use special physiological and anatomical terms in the metalanguage, such as phalanx or tendon. Instead they include into the metalanguage simple words and expressions taken from the ordinary language, such as the first (second, third) part of finger or the vein.

 

Also, while constructing corporeal DBS-s scholars always think about the general method and its sustantiation as well as elaborate and discuss working instruments for the DBS organization. The example of these instruments I take out from the particular DBS “Human body and body parts in the Russian language and culture”. It is worked up by several participants of the project.

 

2.4         The DBS approach

 

The careful study and complete description of two sets – the set of features that characterizes human body and its parts and the set of their values – constitute the kernel of the DBS approach.

 

Here are some examples of the body features and their values.

 

(1) The feature “The form <of body and its parts>” takes the values that are expressed in the following Russian words and collocations: uzkoglazyj ‘narrow-eyed’, sgorblennaja spina ‘hunched-up back’, krivyje nogi ‘crooked legs’, etc.[8]

 

(2) Another feature that is closely associated with the form is “the size <of body and its parts>”. The values of size are expressed in words and collocations bol’shoj lob ‘big forehead’, dlinnyje ruki ‘long arms’, muzhchina vysokogo rosta ‘a tall man’, etc.

 

(3) One more feature that describes the morphological characteristics of body and its parts is “the inner structure of the body and its parts”. The values of this feature denote the content of the somatic object and name the somatic objects that are part of the object given. For example, according to Russian and English naïve semiotic pictures of the body, the body part “back” has bones (cf. Russian collocation kostl’avaja spina ‘the back with eminent bones’ and English word backbone, which reflects the idea of a bone inside the back), whereas “tongue” is soft and boneless (in Russian the tongue that speaks much is called jazyk bez kostej ‘the boneless tongue’), although according to the Russian material it can be broken as if it were a bone (jazyk slomajesh – lit. ‘you will break the tongue’).

 

(4) The semiotic conceptualization of body includes also the basic functions and typical actions of the body and its parts. For example, tongue takes part in the acts of speaking, tasting and eating, head is the primary organ of thinking, teeth participates in the act of chewing, etc. In the Russian culture the body part plechi ‘shoulders’ performs several functions, both physical and cultural, such as (a) holding and carrying the weight, which can be either physical or metaphorical
(cf. Russian expression vzvalit’ cto-to sebe na plechi ‘to take something on one’s shoulders’, where “something” can denote, say, a heavy weight or a hard work); (b) dividing the space into a front part and a back part (e. g., Russian stojat’ u kogo-to za plechami lit. ‘to stand behind one’s shoulders’ means to ‘stand behind somebody’); (c) dividing the time into the past and the present/future (cf. Russian sentence U nego za plechami 20 let prepodavanija lit. ‘he has 20 years of teaching practice behind his shoulders’, which means ‘he has been teaching for 20 years’).[9]