REPRESENTATION OF THE EMOTION “FEAR” IN THE MODERN ENGLISH THRILLERS

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the studying of the peculiarities of the representation of the emotion FEAR in the modern English thrillers. The evolution of all emotions evolved together with the development of humanity. The emotion of fear, which occurred together with people, is characterized by the long-time history, as it is described not only at the modern stage of its development, but from the ancient times. The analysis of the material of the thesaurus showed that the most frequent nouns for representation of the noun FEAR are “emotion” and “feeling”, which describe FEAR as emotion or feeling of anticipation; the most frequent verb-combination, which depicts FEAR is “to be afraid of”; adjectives are “afraid” / “frightened”. The thrillers are distinguished by their descriptions of the emotion FEAR, as it is the key point of these novels. All events in the mentioned novels take place around this emotion: the sources of its occurrence; actions, which exist together with this emotion and its consequences. The article is aimed at the research of the features of description of the emotion FEAR in the modern English thrillers. It was determined that the main ways of the achieving the goal, are studying and classifying of the lexical and stylistic means, which represent the emotion FEAR in English thrillers. One of the most important ways of representation of the emotion FEAR is personification, as in such a way the author implements in life horrific emotions evoked by fear. Fear in the modern English thrillers is depicted with the help of: epithets, which have negative meaning; degrees of comparison of adjectives, which indicate the level of fear; the gradation of fear through representation of several its stages, growth of emotional tension; change of the emotional states, which is caused by fear and by reasons, which lead to it; personification, which combines and personalize everything terrible and unknown, which is included into the notion “fear”. The perspective of the research is the study of basic emotions on the material of thrillers and gothic novels about vampires.