THE COGNITIVE MODEL OF THE GASTIC SPACE OF THE STORY "THE SIREN" BY A.P. CHEKHOV

Abstract

The paper offers a cognitive-linguistic reading of A. P. Chekhov’s short story “The Siren”, focusing on how food imagery participates in the creation of literary meaning. The relevance of the work is determined by the increasing interest of modern linguistics in literary text as a cognitive structure and by the need to clarify how gastic imagery shapes the conceptual and communicative space of fiction. The aim of the research is to construct a cognitive model of the gastic space in “The Siren” and to describe the mechanisms by which verbalized food experience affects characterization, plot dynamics, and speech interaction. The study combines cognitive-linguistic and literary-analytical approaches. The methodological framework is based on continuous sampling of gastic units, semantic classification and grouping of food- and drink-related vocabulary, selected elements of quantitative lexical analysis aimed at identifying the most prominent semantic clusters, contextual and interpretive analysis, discourse analysis of dialogic fragments, and cognitive modeling structured around four components: subject, action, object, and attribute. Special emphasis is placed on imagination as a cognitive mechanism that activates multisensory perception (taste, smell, hearing, bodily sensation). The results indicate that the gastic space in “The Siren” is not an auxiliary descriptive layer, but a key cognitive-semantic structure that organizes the artistic world of the story. Food imagery exposes the characters’ physical condition, social attitudes, and emotional states, while gastic metaphors and sensory markers generate comic effect and sharpen the satirical critique of gluttony, lack of willpower, and irresponsibility. The scientific contribution of the article is to extend the possibilities of cognitive literary analysis and to propose a model that can be applied to other texts in which food imagery has conceptual and pragmatic weight. The practical significance lies in the potential use of the findings in courses on cognitive linguistics, literary interpretation, stylistics, and discourse analysis.