Zoomorphic metaphor in French

This article analyzes the cognitive mechanism of the formation of the zoomorphic metaphor of the French language. A zoomorphic metaphor is a complex phenomenon that includes both figurative and cognitive potential for expressing knowledge about the world through linguistic models. In its study, therefore, it is not so much what qualities are possessed by this or that real animal (the referent of zoosemism), but those qualities that are attributed to it by the linguistic consciousness of the given collective, i.e. those that characterize the denotation.