Information on the thesis

his research focuses on the study of linguistic means of realizing pejoration in the novels by S. Mayer. It is carried out in the antropocentic paradigm of modern linguistic studies based on text-oriented and functional coordinate systems.

A complex of general scholarly, traditional and modern linguistic methods have been applied to the study of pejorative lexemes. We have elaborated and applied an intensification scale to estimate the expressiveness of pejoratives. Complex methodology of investigating pejorative vocabulary enabled comprehensive study of pejoration, scrupulous analysis of its components from different perspectives, helped to perceive the nature of pejoratives.

Pejoratives are lexemes that have negative, emotionally loaded expressive evaluation and create preconditions for the achievement of an illocutionary goal. They may be absolute and relative. They belong to the low style, have a synonym in the neutral vocabulary register, tend to change the sign of evaluation. Pejoration is investigated through the prism of semantics and pragmatics. Pejorative vocabulary has a complex, conceptual structure and is characterized by a strongly marked contextual component. Communicative, pragmatic and linguistic parameters of pejoration are generalized in the thesis.

Lexico-semantic analysis of pejoratives in the novels under consideration has shown that predominantly euphemisms, dyphemisms, exclamations, set phrases and nonce-words are used. In terms of hybrid semantics pejoratives possess use-conditional and truth-conditional components. Pragmatic analysis has yielded the following result: pejoratives are a potentially manipulative linguistic means due to the emoseme in its structure. Semantic field of pejorative vocabulary corpus consists of the nucleus, close and distant periphery. All means of distant periphery serve as intensifiers of pejorative meaning.

We have traced stylistic functions of pejoratives on the lexico-semantic and syntactic levels, they may function as an epithet, oxymoron, hyperbole, litote, metonymy, simile, irony and sarcasm. On the syntactic level pejorative vocabulary is integrated into interrogative constructions, inversions, syntactic reductions, stylistic repetitions, antithesis, and word-play.

At the last stage of the research semantic fields of the concepts VAMPIRE and WEREWOLF have been defined. The frame structure of pejorative units has been modelled. Pejoratives are also integrated as target domains in conceptual metaphors.

Key words: pejoration, pejorative, evaluation, emotiveness, expressiveness, emoseme, semantics, semantic field, context, stylistics, hybrid semantics, intensification scale.