EVOLUTION OF “LOVE” CONCEPT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE PICTURE OF THE WORLD (IN THE NOVELS “LOVE STORY” BY ERICH SEGAL AND “DELIRIUM” BY LOREN OLIVER)

Abstract

The article presents the results of the comparative analysis of LOVE concept in the novels of American writers. Linguistic analysis was based on the novels “Love Story” by Erich Segal and “Delirium” by Lauren Oliver. According to the author, the LOVE concept is a relevant object of scientific research because love in the linguistic and cultural space is primarily an unstable verbal expression that changes over time. The opinion that LOVE concept is the basic emotional concept of the language picture of the world is confirmed and verbalized by the lexeme “love”. It has three aspects: conceptual, evaluative and figurative. The author focuses his research on the conceptual and evaluative content of LOVE concept. The author investigates the fact that lexemes manifesting feelings between lovers, enter into close systemic relations, which are considered to be synonymous. Such synonymous ranks in English are demonstrated in the classic novel “Love Story” by lexemes “love”, “intimacy”, “likeness”, “sociality”, “friendship”, “support”, “reconciliation”, “understanding”. In the novel-dystopia (anti-utopia) “Delirium” LOVE concept is verbalized by lexemes “sickness”, “stress”, “heart disease”, “anxiety”, “depression”, “insomnia”, “disorientation”, “distraction”. LOVE concept is depicted as a complex structural-semantic mental formation, based on a conceptual basis and embodied in the semantics of language units that denote diseases. The author considers such means of verbalization as a deformation of the traditional conceptual and evaluative content of LOVE concept and explains this fact by the peculiarities of the novel of dystopia, which belongs to the genre of literature created on the principle of negativity. The author explores the mobility and semantic capacity of the verbal content of LOVE concept, in which the evaluative connotation is clearly expressed, which provides an opportunity to build the language picture of the world. The material of the research showed that over time the concepts change their conceptual and figurative meaning, but the very concept of lexeme “love” remains more stable; it is recorded in lexicographical sources. The study of LOVE concept in the field of linguoculturology revealed the need for a systematic approach to their study as a complex basic emotional phenomenon – with the identification of nuclear and peripheral zones.