BRIDGE as a Linguistic and Cultural Symbol

The paper deals with a linguistic and cultural conceptualization of reality. A symbolic dimension of a concept is analyzed on the basis of its notional, perceptive and axiological features. The concept BRIDGE has been described in its verbal representation in the Russian and English linguistic cultures. The material of the study includes definitions from dictionaries and encyclopedias, textual samples from the Russian and English national corpuses, proverbs and aphorisms and poetic texts. Metaphorically, a bridge is understood as an opportunity to move on along the road via some natural obstacles, usually rivers. Symbolically, the following ideas come to the fore when applied to the concept BRIDGE: crossing an obstacle, raising up, possibility or impossibility of coming back, safety or insecurity. The novelty of the research consists in the description of these vectors of conceptualization of a BRIDGE as a cluster of the symbolic meanings of building or destroying a bridge and going up or falling down from it.