Abstract
The article examines, from a linguopoetic perspective, the role of emotions and symbolic images in shaping the interpretative and evaluative space of contemporary Kazakh prose. Within the framework of the study, the interrelation of emotion, symbol, and metatext is regarded as an important mechanism of artistic thinking, while the symbol is interpreted not merely as an aesthetic category but also as a semiotic structure exerting cultural and cognitive influence on the reader’s consciousness. It is argued that not every emotional state represented in a literary text reaches a symbolic level directly. However, a symbol is capable of accumulating emotional content and constructing a multilayered semantic field that affects the reader’s perception and interpretation of the text. In this regard, the symbol is viewed as a mediating sign system that establishes a connection between the internal semantic structure of the text and collective cultural memory. The research material includes the novels Tuazhat and Altai Ballad by Askar Altai, the short stories Sikymbai and On the Night of the Full Moon by Kabdesh Zhumadilov, as well as Twenty Years Old, The Head of the Family, and The Daughter-in-Law by Tynymbai Nurmagambetov. The analysis focuses on the relationship between emotional codes and symbolic imagery in these works and their connection with national worldview, cultural memory, and the author’s conceptual framework. Methodologically, the study is grounded in a functional-pragmatic and linguosemiotic interpretation of the “emotion–symbol–metatext” correlation and aims to identify the linguistic mechanisms underlying the organization of implicit meanings in literary texts. Keywords: cognitive linguistics, emotion, symbol, metatext, Kazakh prose.