Tactile Metaphors and Their Functioning in Modern Russian

The paper presents a study of Russian adjectives for tactile sensations.
In this study we have analyzed the fi gurative meanings of the adjectives
for tactile sensations and compiled a glossary consisting of 39 tactile
metaphors. The article defi nes the conceptual status of a tactile metaphor
in relation to the other groups of perceptual metaphors. The research material
was collected in the Russian National Corpus. The words under analysis
are classifi ed in accordance to the main components of the meaning
and usage in Russian language. The study focuses on the evaluative component
of every lexical item. The research shows that tactile metaphors
have negative meanings more often than the positive ones, which is further
explained in the paper. This article is recommended for linguists, specialists
in cognitive linguistics and neurolinguistics, as well as for teachers
of Russian language.