Features of the Language Assessment Expression in B. Akunin’s Cycle of Novels about the Nun Pelagia

The article is devoted to the study concerning the peculiarities of the expression of linguistic evaluation in a literary text. The subject of the study comprises the evaluation tools used in B. Akunin’s cycle of novels about the nun Pelagia when the writer creates the image of the main character. The purpose of the analysis regarding the means of expressing evaluation is to identify their role in revealing the author’s idea and in the formation of the hero’s image in the literary work, as well as to determine the individual author’s features of language evaluation. The study of evaluation as a universal category and its reflection in the language is based on the concepts and methods that have become classical in Russian philology (the works of N.D. Arutyunova, E.M. Wolf, A.A. Ivin, etc.), as well as on the achievements of modern research. The study has found that language evaluation tools play a significant role in revealing the image of the main character in the cycle of novels by B. Akunin. The paper notes two directions of the formation of axiological meanings in creation of the image of the nun Pelagia: an assessment of the appearance and an assessment of the heroine’s character. The analysis has showed that the linguistic means of expressing evaluation are used in the context of the situation and the heroine’s role (Polina Andreyevna Lisitsyna, brother Pelagius, nun Pelagia). Most often, lexical means of expressing evaluation are used: adjectives, nouns, adverbs with an evaluative meaning. The use of forms with diminutive suffixes contributes to the formation of evaluative meanings. As the author’s method of expressing evaluation, there is a violation of the norms of lexical compatibility, which gives uniqueness to the evaluation tools used. B. Akunin quite actively uses language assessment in describing the appearance, as well as the character and actions of the nun, while there is a discrepancy between the assessment of the external appearance of Pelagia and her internal qual- ities, which contributes to the implementation of the author’s idea when he creates the image of the main character represented in the cycle of detective novels.