The relevance of the motivating signs of the English concept "Wizard" in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien

The article examines the concept wizard within the English language worldview using the methodology of motivating signs analysis. The relevance of the study is determined by the growing interest of modern linguistics in concepts related to the magical and fantastic domains, while the concept of wizard has so far been addressed mainly in literary or discourse-based studies and lacks a systematic linguocultural description. The research problem lies in the insufficient exploration of the internal conceptual structure of wizard and its motivating signs. The aim of the study is to define the motivating signs of the concept wizard and to investigate the ways these signs are actualized in literary discourse. To achieve this aim, the following objectives are pursued: analysis of the etymology and dictionary definitions of the key lexical unit; identification of the motivating signs of the concept; examination of their realization in literary texts. The research material includes data from English etymological dictionaries as well as J. R. R. Tolkien’s works The Lord of the Rings and Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middleearth . The study employs etymological, componential, contextual, and interpretative methods of analysis. The results demonstrate that the motivating signs of the concept wizard are consistently actualized in literary discourse, not by forming new semantic foundations, but by elaborating and specifying those reconstructed from etymological data. The findings confirm the effectiveness of the motivating signs methodology. Prospects for further research include applying this approach to other concepts within the magical domain and expanding the textual corpus.