Cognitive and discursive features of the sound situation with onomatopes in German

This article examines the cognitive and discursive features of onomatopoeic vocabulary sounding with the source of the sound of animal voices in direct and figurative meanings in various discourses. The absence of such works and the importance of this layer of vocabulary as an object of auditory perception determine the relevance of the article in the recently significant context of discursive research. The purpose of the article is to describe cognitive and discursive features of sounding situations with onomatopoetic vocabulary based on the analysis of dictionary definitions and texts in different discourses. The research material includes more than 1,000 contextual extracts from the national German language corpus DWDS on such thematic sections as “political speeches”, “minutes of meetings of the Bundestag”, “polytechnic journal”, “Berliner Zeitung”, “Spiegel”, representing political, scientific, media discourses. The methodological basis of the research is represented by cognitive and discursive analysis in combination with semantic interpretation of texts, statistical confirmation of the mass character of the facts presented in the article. The author believes that the cognitive and discursive features of onomatopoeic vocabulary sounding situations with the semantics of animal voices are anthropomorphic and, therefore, the semantic ambiguity of onomatopoeic vocabulary is due to the temporal component, namely the age characteristics of the addressee, and represents a two-component structure. The first component is considered from the standpoint of onto linguistics and has only an onomatopoeic character, which is reflected in the language by interjective, often reduplicated, and verbal lexemes explicating the sound of animal voices located directly in the area of the child’s vital activity. The second component is a more complex semantic structure conditioned by certain types of discursive practices. In institutional political discourse, onomatopes perform the function of intertextuality and are represented by secondary meanings, often in paraphrased phraseological units. In scientific discourse, direct meanings are represented, often with explication of the emotional states of animals. In media discourse, a “sound picture of the world” is expressed, represented by a combination of many animal sounds, explicating such conceptual concepts as “Homeland”, “rural life”, “a certain geographical place”.