Emotions in the Mental and Linguistic Space of Lyric Poems

Abstract

The article is based on a report given in course of the round table meeting 'Language as an art', dedicated to the 90th anniversary since the birth of the outstanding linguist L.A. Novikov, whose reknown works on the issues of linguistic meaning and the aesthetic aspects of language have attracted wide critical acclaim and become a valuable part of philology as a science. The choice of the topic is methodologically adjusted to L.A. Novikov’s conception of verbal arts, which is succinctly represented in the term 'poetheme'. Emotives (vocabulary that names, expresses and describes emotions) can be categorised as poethemes, since the verbalisation process of emotions in poetry is related to their aesthetic transformation. The description of emotions in the article is conducted in multiple directions, each of which is significant in order to understand the specifics of the verbalisation of emotions in poems. The author relates the new aspect of viewing the poetic semantics of emotives to the influence of the grammatical meaning of the verb mood on the illocutionary function of verbalised emotions that take part in the declaration of intent. Besides, the imperative mood and the infinitive accentuate the extravert semantics (emotions for others and for oneself), the subjunctive mood being introvert (emotions for oneself). Additional information regarding the contextual features of emotions could be acquired through the emphasis on the indefinite, demonstrative, negative and possessive pronouns, which accompany emotives. The article demonstrates that metaphorical rows of emotions organise the personal mental image of the poet’s world. Basic poetic emotions, established due to the fact of attractiveness (mutual attraction, approach), are related to Russian mentality as a whole. The range of problems dealt with in the article is significant to filling the forming term 'emotional picture of the world’ with content.