MYSTICAL SYMBOLS IN THE CULINARY DISCOURSE OF JOAN HARRIS’S NOVEL “CHOCOLAT”

Abstract

The article deals with analyzing the nature of Joan Harris’s novel “Chocolat” mystical symbolism. The authors state that the culinary discourse is a mixed, personal-oriented type of communication, which is manifested in the everyday communication sphere which has an institutional character. Foreign language Culinary discourse is represented by precedent texts of culinary recipes that reflect the specifics of national culture, which has social and gender characteristics and is a special type of communication that uses certain professional-oriented signs – terminology, stable turns of phrase, characteristic morphosyntactic structures. It is noted that sign are characterized by a symbolic nature, structuredness, the presence of cultural interpretants, individually authored nature of coding, communicative orientation. Certain features of the image indicate that it acts as a special connecting link between the life world of a person and the linguistic representation of this world. This is done through the process of encoding spiritual and cultural values with the help of linguistic means (signs). The magic in the plot of the novel is connected, first of all, with mystical seniority. The novel, written as a diary of the heroine and her daughter, alternating with the letters of Vianne’s antagonist, Curé Raynaud, to his father, intimates the story from the beginning, emphasizing the specific symbolism of the characters’ world. All this makes it possible to imagine chocolate as a mystical substance that evokes a whole range of sensations described in detail in the novel.