Axiological dimension of English worldview revisited: semantic transformations of comfort

The article analyzes value transformations in English world view across the timespan of seven centuries as exemplified by the case of the word comfort. Drawing on English language corpora, as well as lexicographic and textual data the author demonstrates that the content plane of the lexeme comfort passes through successive “devaluation” stages. Its initial 13th century correlation with the ideal metaphysical values of spiritual joy and consolation (comfort - “divine support; delight”) is replaced by a generalized image of material wealth in the 17th century puritan Britain (comforts - “material goods that minister to enjoyment and content”). In the late 18th century this meaning is supplanted by the correspondence with elementary psychophysiological values related to the satisfaction of bodily needs (comfort - “a state of physical and material well being”). The author holds that gradual process of evolving polysemy is conditioned by cognitive transformations in the axiosphere of the linguistic community. Early 17th century transition from the ideals of Medieval theocentric model to the pragmatically oriented egocentric model of Protestantism brought about intensified expansion of material, sensual semantics and resulted in the association of comfort with “ethically permissible expenditures” (M. Weber). Late 18th century generalization of material sense in the abstract psychological meaning of comfort as autonomous and self sufficient “contentment” reflects the Enlightenment’s substitution of the transcendent God with the religion of progress with its ideals of “unlimited production, absolute freedom, and unrestricted happiness” (E. Fromm).