The term "cultural elaboration" as applied to cognitive metaphor

Two alternative cognitive mechanisms - conceptual and metaphorical - are examined in the article. The first one is realized by way of highlighting new characteristics in already cognized objects. The second mechanism is realized by way of viewing one object in terms of another. Cultural relativism can be seen in both mechanisms of concept development. The principles of cultural elaboration of lexicon described by A. Wierzbicka are transferred to cognitive metaphor in two respects. Firstly, cultural significance of a concept can be assessed by the number of metaphors used for its structurization. Secondly, cultural elaboration of a cognitive metaphor can be assessed by the number of lexical markers that actualize characteristics from source domain to target domain