Comparative Analysis of Emotional Lexicon in Works of Contemporary English/American and Ukrainian Writers

Comparative Analysis of Emotional Lexicon in Works of Contemporary English/American and Ukrainian Writers

Emotional lexicon and the emotional connotation of words play a significant role in our lives. They are related to emotional processes and reflect the experiences that occur in various life situations. Scientists have proven that emotions develop and change over time, and the language used to convey them also evolves. Therefore, researchers have always been interested in human emotions and their representation in language and speech. Many disciplines, such as psychology, philosophy, medicine, literary studies, cultural studies, linguistics, and psycholinguistics, have explored human emotions and the mechanisms of their expression.

Since ancient times, scholars have been concerned with the forms of emotional expression, the possibility of observing them, and the search for foundations for their "measurement." The field of emotion linguistics traces back to an ancient debate about whether linguistics should address emotional components. Scientists' answers to this question varied. Some believed that the cognitive function is dominant in language and therefore excluded the study of the emotional component from language research (K. Bühler, G. Guillaume). Another group of researchers (C. Balli, M. Bréal) considered the expression of emotions to be a central function of language. M. Bréal's viewpoint, which suggests that language was not created for description, narration, or unbiased reasoning, but rather for expressing desires and making prescriptions, with all of these requiring emotional accompaniment, is a contemporary perspective. A significant portion of linguists now recognize the presence of both emotional and rational components in words and agree that the stylistics of speech is determined by the emotional choices of the speaker.

The initial stage of studying the discussed lexicon is associated with the name of A.A. Potebnya, who devoted considerable attention to the object associations underlying the nomination of any emotion. In the early 20th century, A.M. Peshkovsky laid the foundations for studying specific groups of emotional lexicon. Researchers mainly examined the semantics of feeling predicates.

Recently, research on emotional manifestations, emotional processes in language, the means of expressing emotions, their description, and systematization has become increasingly relevant. N.A. Lukyanova, studying the expressive vocabulary of spoken language, notes that "emotions inherent to humans manifest themselves in purely individual, subjective forms, as well as socially conditioned evaluations, which, being reflected in human consciousness, become linguistically significant and constitute a certain part of the semantic content of corresponding linguistic signs."

In linguistics, the mechanisms of expression, notation, and transmission of emotions are of primary interest. The mechanisms of linguistic expression of emotions by speakers and the linguistic notation, interpretation of emotions by listeners fundamentally differ. One can talk about the language of emotional description and the language of emotional expression.

To differentiate the lexicon at a certain stage, the following terminological distinctions have emerged:

- Emotion lexicon (nominal function, oriented towards objectifying emotions)

- Lexicon of emotional senses (expressive and pragmatic functions, oriented towards expressing the speaker's emotions and emotional evaluation).

Emotion lexicon includes words whose denotative meaning encompasses concepts of emotions (joy, sadness). Emotionally colored words (well done, idiot) are also considered part of the emotional lexicon. Thus, two different categories form the emotive semantics: emotive lexicon and emotion lexicon - words that do not express emotions but rather name them. L.G. Babenko suggests using the terms "emotion lexicon" and "emotional lexicon" while retaining their traditional meanings to refer to the set of means denoted by them, which constitute emotive lexicon.

Furthermore, linguists are increasingly paying attention to the issue of emotiveness, and no modern fundamental text research can do without mentioning the importance of studying its

Emotiveness is a linguistic category, while emotions are psychological in nature. Emotiveness can occupy different positions in the structure of lexical meaning. "The emotive component of semantics can be salient and coincide, being identical to the entire lexical meaning of a word (in the case of emotive meaning) or be a part, a connotation of it,"  [5, p. 25]).

Emotiveness is one of the functions of language. R. Jakobson [1] identified six functions: cognitive, communicative, expressive-emotional, imperative (appellative), factual (direct-contact), and poetic. All these functions are components of a single communicative function of language [1, p. 101].

The modern interpretation of the "language and emotions" problem is carried out within several approaches: structural-semantic, stylistic, pragmatic, cognitive, psycholinguistic, and linguocultural. This poly-paradigmatic approach, according to E.S. Kubryakova [5], demonstrates the maturity of the field. Analyzing the object from various directions and paradigms allows for a comprehensive understanding of the subject [5, p. 4]. However, for a long time, the issue of emotiveness was only mentioned in scientific literature as a stylistic or phonostylistic feature of language [7, 20]. Only since the 1980s, emotive linguistic units have been considered as a semiotic code used by speakers and listeners, approached from the perspectives of semantics, syntax, and pragmatics. This approach enables researchers to delve deeper into the essence of the problem and interpret verbalized emotional phenomena from different angles [2].

It is important to remember that language serves as a means of expressing the author's personal and subjective attitude towards the object of speech. However, as N.M. Razinkina points out, the issue of emotiveness in language is the least developed in the areas of lexicology and stylistics [7, p. 34]. There are numerous terms and definitions for describing the emotional characteristics of words, which often create ambiguity and complicate the study of this question. For example, I.V. Arnold uses the term "emotional coloring of words" [1, p. 94], while D.N. Shmeliov uses the term "expressive-stylistic coloring" [6, p. 25].

One of the first classifications of emotional vocabulary belongs to A.D. Grigoryeva [2], which includes three categories of functional-emotional vocabulary:

1) words with diminutive and augmentative suffixes;

2) figurative uses of neutral words;

3) words that "incorporate emotiveness in their semantics" [2, p. 24].

The key lexicographic criteria for determining this layer of vocabulary are:

- Lexical entries or specific indications in the text;

- Presence of subjective-emotional evaluations in the word's definition, which denote emotions and emotional states;