Linguistic analysis of emotional and expressive lexical units in English

Linguistic analysis of emotional and expressive lexical units in English
Nazarova Shoirakhon Abdumo'min qizi
Namangan State University, English Philology, a first- year master student
Abstract: The article considers the content of the notion “emotional and expressive vocabulary of the English language” and its main features. Particular attention is paid to the functional-stylistic and semantic aspects of this layer of the vocabulary. The impact of the surrounding context on the emotional coloration of a lexical unit is emphasized.

Key words and phrases: emotional and expressive vocabulary; lexical-semantic group; context; expressive semantic component;

Any existing modern language is a very complex system that linguists considered from different angles of view, according to which it is possible to distinguish different units of the language. The minimum independent units that have their own meaning are words, as well as some morphemes, the minimal meaningful units are phonemes. This is what cardinal articulation of any modern language. A person, being the creator and native speaker of a language, enters into various relationships with others people, objects and phenomena of the surroundings. However, they may experience different emotions. Thus, a person and his/her emotions, on the one hand, are part of the most objective action. They participate in the formation research on the linguistic picture of the world: a person as an active reflective subject, language as a means of reflection, human emotions - as one of the forms of reflection of objective reality. This is the specific emotion of any person: they are both an object of reflection in the language, and a tool for reflecting themselves and other objects of the real world, the moment of their inseparability from the reflecting subject is also specific.

Depending on the purpose and topic of the statement, the speakers or writers choose the words or phrases they need from the lexical system in the English language. For example, in a formal business document and in a letter to a loved one on the same topic will use different words; compare: “a good day” (here in after translated by the author E. A. Rozhnova) - in an official or neutral style and “the sweetest day” - “the most wonderful, amazing day” - in a personal letter. Such a phenomenon caught by the so-called functional-stylistic stratification of English vocabulary, that is, the presence in its special lexical units, the choice of which depends on their role in the process of implementing one of the functions of language: communication, message or impact.
The semantic and functional orientation of some words is such that it is most often used in contexts and as a rule, does not cause emotional and evaluative reactions on the part of the participants’ verbal communication, while other units of the language in their semantics towards emotional contexts.
In some descriptions of the vocabulary of the English language, emotionally expressive vocabulary is distinguished to which linguists attribute the words “to love”, “to admire”, “beautiful”, “divine”, etc. - "love", “wonderful”, “divine”. O. S. Akhmanova [2, p. 419] defines such a kind of vocabulary as words (lexemes) that have a stable emotional coloring in this particular language. Thus, the main content of these words (lexemes) is the expression of the feelings of the speaker or writer. From the definition it can be seen that with the help of these units people express their feelings, emotions in relation to the speaker or objects of the settings. It should be noted that by emotion we will understand a relatively short-term experience, namely, joy, grief, pleasure, anxiety, anger, surprise under the feeling - a more stable attitude: love, respect, hatred, etc.
Under the expression of emotions, the author understands their expression in language, manifestation in speech, which is guided by the inner and outer experience of human. Thus, the expression of emotions in speech is the direct communication of the emotions themselves and their linguistic manifestation.
The emotional component of the meaning is existent only if the word/phrase expresses some emotions. This component arises on the basis of the subject-logical, but, once having arisen, it is characterized by a tendency to displace the subject-logical meaning.
In addition, to express emotions, we widely use special verbal means, for example, “how wonderful!”, “it is charming!”, “what a splendid hour!”, “how amazing!”, “magic!”, “what a wonderful time me!". It should be noted that the most expressive signs of emotions and feelings in any language are interjections. These words make up a very special layer of vocabulary, because they have no subject-logical values. Almost all the features that distinguish the emotional vocabulary of any language are concentrated in interjections such as syntactic variability, the possibility of omission without violating the mark of the phrase, lack of syntactic links with other parts of the sentence or a phrase, semantic irradiation which consists in the fact that the presence of at least one emotional word gives emotional mentality to the whole statement [1]. Many emotional lexical units and interjections in a particular situation express emotion in the most general form without even pointing to its positive or negative character. For example, such an interjection as “oh” - can express both joy, and delight, and sadness, and other emotional states.
It should be emphasized that the interjections themselves, as well as statements where they are present, are related to highly emotive vocabulary, let's give an example: “two lovely black eyes! Oh, what a surprise!”, "beautiful brown eyes! Oh, what a surprise" - lines from a song in the novel by Jerome K. Jerome "Three in the boat, not counting the dog" [4].
Often a neutral word can have several expressive synonyms that differ in the degree of emotional stress. For instance, "fine", "majestic", "best”, “excellent". This chain of examples can be continued indefinitely, but it suffices to show that the word "superior", "the best”, “excellent" - expresses a great degree of positive emotions and has a greater emotional loading. The same of the given lexical units has a greater emotional share than the word “fine” or “good”. Bringing loved ones together according to the expressive semantic component of the word into lexico-semantic groups (LSG), denoting positive emotions in the English language, the following can be distinguished:
1) words expressing the middle a higher degree of emotional attitude to the named concepts, objects, actions;
2) words having a high degree of emotional relationship. The first group will include units transmitting media a higher degree of positive emotions (for example: good, pretty, well, lovely), in the second - marvelous, hooray!, oh!, slap-up, tip-top - "wonderful", "amazing", "first class" - some of them are sublime, poetic in some ways, found as commonly used lexical units expressing a high degree of positive emotions in slang and colloquial words (“tip-top”, “slap-up”, “first-class”, “wonderful”).
O. S. Akhmanova gives the following definition of a slang: “colloquial variant of professional speech, which penetrates into the literary language or in general into the speech of any children who are not directly related to this group of people acquires special features in these varieties of language. Thus, slang expressiveness relies on imagery and surprise.
I. V. Arnold notes that slang is a special lexical layer of the language, which consists of words and expressions with a complete and a specific set of usual connotations that differ from their own neutral synonyms.[1, p. 163]. Thus, it is clear that emotiveness is present in almost all functional styles of the English language and is characterized by varying degrees of emotional load depending on the same semantic sign. The environment helps us to finally determine the expressive coloring of any lexical unit.
Moreover, neutral words can be perceived as lofty and serious; high lexeme in other conditions acquires an ironic coloring. Sometimes even a swear word can sound affectionate. The appearance of a lexical unit depending on bridge from the context of additional expressive shades significantly expands the pictorial possibilities of the vocabulary of the language.
The expressive coloring of lexical units in works of art differs from the expression of the same words in non-figurative speech. In the conditions of a certain work of art, the word very often receives additional, secondary slang shades that only enrich its expressive coloring. In addition, lexical units denoting positive emotions in the above novel of the late 19th century, enhance their emotional and expressive load with the help of adverbs (for example: “very”, “so”, “extremely”) or superlative degree of attachment nouns and adverbs (“the most beautiful”, “the best”, “the most wonderful”). V. N. Telia notes that “the expressiveness of linguistic works, texts and any of their passages. It is the result of such a pragmatic use of language and the main purpose of the expression is (positively or negatively colored) attitude of the subject of speech to the meaningful and “infection” with this relation of the addressee” [3, p. 35].
Summarizing the above, we can draw the following conclusions. First, each language has its own layer of emotionally expressive vocabulary. Secondly, a word may have an emotional component of meaning that is closely related to the same lexical unit. We also note that the expression of some lexical units may depend on the context, i.e. a neutral word can acquire a certain emotional sound in the conditions of a particular literary context and conversely, a word may lose its expression due to the surrounding context. It should also be emphasized that emotion is not only one of forms of reflection of the surrounding reality (namely, a reflection of a person’s attitude to the world), but also itself is an object of reflection for the language and therefore is registered in the language and actively analyzed, studied by linguists.
References:
1. Arnold I. V. Stylistics. Modern English. M.: Flinta; Nauka, 2002. 384 p.
2. Akhmanova O. S. Dictionary of linguistic terms. M.: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1966. 608 p.
3. Teliya V. N. Expressiveness as a manifestation of the subjective factor in the language and its pragmatic orientation // CheThe human factor in language: linguistic mechanisms of expressiveness. M.: Nauka, 1991. S. 5-35.
4. Jerome K. Jerome. Three Men in a Boat (to Say Nothing of the Dog). M.: IKAR, 2002. 240 p.