Cognitive and pragmatical features of German ecological aphorisms

The results of the complex description of German aphorisms devoted to environmental problems are presented in this article. In the research semantic dominants of aphorisms are revealed as well as the frequency of their usage by German authors is determined. According to the analysis a human is characterized as the main cause of environmental problems who realizes consequences of his damaging activity. The aphorists think that air pollution, recycling of waste, deforestation, climate change, extinction of plant and animal species, water pollution are the most important ecological problems. The research results have shown that effective impact on the addressee is revealed in structural-semantic models chosen by the authors’ intensions, as well as in linguistic creative peculiarities with vivid ethnic and cultural specific features. The author’s main intension is to draw the addressee’s attention to environmental problems by means of eccentricity of judgments and figurative representation of ordinary phenomena. The authors come to the conclusion that the distinctive feature of the German ecological aphorisms is the use of set expressions, proverbs, sayings which contain the nominations of animals, plants, natural phenomena. The research results contribute to the development of the theory of ecological discourse.