LANGUAGE EXPRESSION OF CHARACTERS’ EMOTIONAL STATE IN THE NOVEL “PET SEMATARY” BY STEPHEN KING

Abstract

The article studies the specificity of conveying emotions by language means in Stephen King’s novel “Pet Sematary”. There is an increasing attention to studying the peculiarities of the relationship between language and emotions in linguistics. Determination of individual author’s ways of expressing human emotional states in horror literature is relevant for research. Stephen King is one of the most famous American writers whose works make reader’s blood run cold. The fact that the novel “Pet Sematary” belongs to the genre of horror literature determines the dominance of negative emotions. Horror, fear, anxiety and uncertainty as the main genre elements find their way to the literary texts through the prism of the descriptions of the main characters’ emotional states. Moreover, the research helped to identify the main manifestations of the studied emotions and illustrate their language expression in the novel. We found out that Stephen King achieves the expression of the characters’ emotional state through a complex of linguistic and stylistic means. Describing characteristic psychophysiological emotional reactions, the writer uses epithets, metaphors, personifications, repetitions, parallelism, aposiopesis, rhetorical questions. Most often Stephen King expresses the emotional state of the character through physiological changes, such as numbness, heart palpitations, increased sweating, cold extremities, the appearance of goose bumps, etc. In addition, the widespread use of somatisms was found. Linguistic and stylistic means play a significant role in the novel, because with their help the author skillfully depicts the feelings and experiences of the characters. They create the psychoemotional background of the work, and also allow the reader to experience events together with the characters, getting to know each of them better. Description of the characters’ emotional state helps to achieve the recipient’s empathy. The author attracts the reader to active empathy with the characters, and the reader is emotionally included in the textual reality.