Филологические науки/3.
Теоретические и методологические проблемы исследования языка
К.ф.н. Косицына И.Б.
Амурский гуманитарно-педагогический
государственный университет, Россия
Emotional
Lexis Classifications
The emotional
sphere of a person is one of the most important components of his\her internal
kernel which forms the language picture of the world, therefore emotions can be
expressed with a language more or less adequately and by that are included into
communication process.
The
emotions-language relationships can be considered from two points of view: the first
one is that language in broad sense is believed to be emotive; secondly, a
language creates a reflection or a construct of that is usually understood as “emotions”,
gives an affective meaning or defines any emotion by means of its conceptual,
connotative or stylistic contents or association. Emotions can be manifested with the help
of various linguistic means, the special and considerable significance in the
reflection of emotions belonging to the lexical level of the language system.
There already
exists some experience of studying emotional lexicon with preference to the study
of separate emotive lexemes (linguistic properties of different parts of speech
mostly), analyzing the role of metaphor in semantic representation of emotions,
studying synonymic / antonymic relations, lexical-semantic groups and
semantic/thematic fields of emotional lexicon.
It should be
noted that the very term "emotional lexicon" is defined very differently.
For many researchers (Shakhovsky; Shmelyov;
Zvegintsev; Fomina; Vansyatskaya and others) it is typical to exclude the
emotional states nominating units from the emotive sphere. They believe that
the lexicon designating emotions, unlike emotional (emotive) lexicon, is not
emotive as its contents forms the denotative word meaning. In semantics of such
words there is no obvious expression of emotional relation and, therefore, they
just transfer logical thought of it.
However, most of linguists (Adamchuk, Antropova, Asten, Ezhova, Kvasyuk, Klobukov,
Omelichkina, Zhanalina, Tsoller, Krasavsky and others) stick to the opposite viewpoint.
They assume that emotive signs (emotives) include all lexical units displaying
emotions, i.e. it is offered to understand emotional lexicon as the set of all
lexical means which usually designate different aspects of emotiveness as language
representation of emotions. In their opinion, language has two main ways of
transferring the content of emotional activity – interpretative when it is
fixed as an object of knowledge in concepts, and expressive when language meaning
expresses emotion directly and is equivalent to it. The emotiveness as semantic
category, thus, can be realized in semes of various rank: denotative (category
and differential), connotative (additional and constituting) and potential.
We believe that the nomination of emotional
states falls within the scope of emotiveness and, therefore, the emotional
lexicon includes the following groups of words: lexical units naming emotions
and feelings of the person; lexical units describing various manifestations of
emotions and feelings of a person (the words-estimates qualifying objects,
subjects and phenomena; the words characterizing features of a subject behavior
in a situation typical for this or that emotion, etc.); the words gaining emotional coloring by
means of word-formation; words which get emotional coloring within some context.
Thus, any lexical unit of a language
can be assumed as emotional as the emotional estimation is potentially put in
any word.
Due to
complexity and variety of the emotional lexicon it is very difficult to analyze and
classify emotions. From the psychological point of view all emotional lexical
units can be divided into affects, emotions, feelings etc., moreover the
contents of these concepts don't coincide in the works of different authors.
We don't find
it necessary to differentiate the concepts "emotion" and
"feeling" because it is impossible to create indisputable definition
and to allocate criteria of the concepts "emotion" and
"feeling" according to which we could attach concrete words to this
or that group. We use these terms as synonyms, though the preference is given
to the term "emotion" which is understood as all mental experiences
of a person.
The general
feature typical for most approaches to studying of emotions is the allocation
of a small number of basic emotions and derived emotions (or sentiments). Basic
emotions are understood as the experiences conditioned by human biology [8]; derived
emotions are more complex.
Some linguists divide
emotions into "emotional states", "emotional relations",
"emotional processes" and "emotional phenomena".
According to
their nature emotional lexical units can be divided into universal (put in the
person genetically and based on world perception) and not universal (cultural
caused, socialized) [6, 33; 3, 348]. They are sometimes called the lowest and the
highest feelings. Due to the intensity criterion it is possible to subdivide emotions
into weak, moderate and strong.
The
next classification is more complex and represents the division based on the
general phases, forming the development of emotion and being to a greater or
lesser extent reflected in a lexical meaning:
1) the emotion
prime cause – physical perception or mental contemplation of something;
2) immediate
cause of emotion – our assessment of this;
3) emotion proper
(positive or negative feelings, state of mind, as the result of our assessment of the situation);
4) the desire of
change or extension of the situation caused by an assessment or an emotion;
5) the external
manifestations of emotion having the following forms: a) uncontrollable
physiological reactions of a body and b) controlled action and speech reactions
of the subject [1, 368; 5, 55].
There are
also the classifications based first and foremost on the estimation component.
So G.H. von Wright offered [9] the classification based on types of objects and
semantics of combinations to the word "good". It postulates following
six "good forms": 1) instrumental; 2) technical, 3) medical
(including such objects as eyes, heart, memory); 4) utilitarian (meaning
suitability, usefulness for a definite purpose); 5) hedonistic, 6) good of the
person.
The interaction of
the subject and the object of estimation is the basis of the classification
offered by N.D.Arutyunova [2]. It allocates three groups of values which
include seven categories:
1) sensory estimates: touch and
flavoring (hedonistic) estimates and psychological (intellectual and emotional)
estimates;
2) sublimated or absolute
estimates: the esthetic estimates based on synthesis of touch and psychology,
and ethical estimates, meaning norms;
3) rationalistic estimates
connected with practical activity of a person, including: utilitarian, standard,
teleologic estimates.
The
simplified variant of such classification is the division of emotions into
ethical feelings connected with moral values, esthetic senses which arise at
beauty experience, intellectual feelings as "experience of cognition of
the truth" and practical feelings connected with the activity of a person
[4, 7, etc.].
Trying to sum up the
existing points of view N.A.Krasavsky [6] offers to single out the following groups
of differential meaning components (semes): “emotional state”, “emotional
reaction, mood, perception”, “feelings and emotions”, “the cause\ pointlessness
of emotion”, “conditions of emotions emergence”, “form of manifestation of
emotions”, “object of emotion”, “process of emotion, duration of emotion
experiencing”, “illegibility, vagueness of experiences”, “qualitative
properties of emotions”, “sensibleness of emotions”, “control
ability\disability”, “intensity of emotions”, “positive\negative emotions”
Despite their
variety, most of the approaches listed are rather functional, than semantic. We
believe that the extensiveness, diversity and some instability of the
classified material makes it impossible to create the universal classification
reflecting all possible discrepancies of separate groups of lexical units. At
the same time, the presented points of view can form the base for
classification, appropriate and correct for the emotional lexical units used in
a certain text to be analyzed.
Sources:
1.
Апресян
Ю.Д. Интегральное описание языка и системная лексикография. – М.: Школа
"Языки русской культуры", 1995.
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Арутюнова
Н.Д. Аксиология в механизмах жизни и языка. // Проблемы структурной
лингвистики, 1982. – М.: Наука, 1984. С. 5-23
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Вежбицкая
А. Язык. Культура. Познание. - М.: Русские словари, 1996.
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Семантика эмоционально-экспрессивных средств языка. // Психолингвистические
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Клобуков
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нидерландском языке (на материале переводных библейских текстов). Дис…к.ф.н. –
М., 1998.
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Красавский
И.А. Эмоциональные концепты в немецкой и русской лингвокультурах. – Волгоград,
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эквивалентности лексико-семантических групп (на материале глаголов
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G.H. von The Varieties of Goodness. – L., 1963.