Cognitive-semiotic analysis of the character portraits in the story by A.P. Chekhov “Ward No. 6”

The article deals with the cognitive-semiotic analysis of the character image system in the short story “Ward No. 6” by A.P. Chekhov. The authors show that, in the short story, the characters’ verbal portraits play a key role in the cognitive-semiotic model of the text. Each character becomes a symbolic figure and plays a specific role assigned to him in the text matrix created by the short story author. As is shown, the text matrix contains shocking for the reader life reality of the inhabitants of a provincial town in pre-revolutionary Russia.