Lexical Composition Of Structural Field Of The Love Concept In Art

Abstract

The article describes the concept of "love", examines the ways of its linguistic implementation in the novel "Gone with the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell, provides a comprehensive analysis of the lexical units that verbalize the analysed concept, defines the field model of the concept of "love" in terms of the core, near periphery and far periphery. This concept has a complex structure. On the one hand, it includes everything that relates to the structure of this concept; on the other hand, the structure of this concept includes everything that makes it a factor of culture – the original form (etymology); the historical component compressed to the main features of the content; modern associations; assessments, etc. The lexemes implementing this concept can be classified into three thematic groups or conceptual layers: 1) romantic feelings; 2) love for loved ones; 3) love for any object or type of activity. The study of all the representatives of the concept "LOVE" identified in the work made it possible to structure them from the point of view of the field approach: the core of the concept (,, etc.); the near periphery (); the far periphery (. As a result, it is determined that the analysed concept is mainly represented in the novel to describe the romantic feelings of the characters and strong family ties, rather than the love of material goods.

Keywords: Concept, core, field model, lexeme, peripherals

Introduction

The relevance of the study based on the increased interest of linguistics in the analysis and description of the national and cultural specifics of significant linguistic concepts as the main constituents of the linguistic picture of the world. The choice of the "love" concept as an object of research is determined by its special position in the human mind and its role in the linguistic picture of the world.

To achieve the goal of the study, it is necessary to solve the following tasks: first, to identify and describe the lexical representatives of the "love" concept in the analysed novel; second, to determine the structural field of the "love" concept in terms of the core and periphery; third, to determine the thematic groups of the "love" concept presented in the novel.

The research material was the lexemes verbalizing the analysed concept, which were selected by the continuous sampling method from the novel "Gone with the wind". The practical significance of this research is that the results of this research can be used in the courses of lexicology, cultural linguistics, intercultural communication, as well as in the courses of cognitive linguistics and the interpretation of a literary text.

Problem Statement

Studying the notion of "concept" in linguistics, two main approaches to its definition have been formed – linguocognitive and linguocultural. The linguocultural approach makes it possible to get into the deep essence of the concepts that have developed in the public linguistic consciousness of the nation, to reveal the organization of values and assessments, the formation of which was influenced by the cultural, linguistic and, ultimately, the social experience of a socio-cultural community. This approach aims to the study of cultural concepts, in contrast to the linguocognitive approach, which studies the concept in the form of a mental formation in the individual's psyche, which has a certain structure, which mainly finds linguistic expression and also includes national specifics. The linguocultural approach to the study of the cultural concept is that the latter is recognized as the basic unit of culture, its concentrate (Karasik, 2002).

Researcher Neroznak (1998) uses a peculiar approach to the definition of the cultural concept. The researcher believes that the concept of national culture can be considered only in cases where translation into another language is difficult due to the lack of a literal equivalent of a certain concept: non-equivalent vocabulary, or what is usually called "untranslatable in translation" is the lexicon on the material of which lists of fundamental national-cultural concepts should be compiled. Linguistic and linguo-psychological interpretation of the data in the language makes it possible to interpret the latter as the expression of special knowledge, the representation of representatives of conceptual consciousness (Sedykh, 2010).

The concept of "love" is the basic concept of emotions and is somehow manifested in the culture of each nation, since in most cases it is love that is the motivation for certain actions of a person. The whole sphere of human communication is directly related to the studied concept. In addition, love causes a number of other emotions in a person, both positive and negative ones. This is the complexity and versatility of this concept (Zolotova, 2015).

Researchers Pesina and Solonchak (2015) note the primary role of verbalization in understanding, awareness and transmission of the concept, and emphasize that it is through language that the necessary access to the concept is possible.

An analysis of the dictionary definitions of the "love" concept makes it possible to conclude that in most cases this word implies romantic or friendly feelings for a person and less often love for something material. In our study, we follow the definition of "love" given in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (Longman, 2001), according to which the concept of "love" conveys three feelings:

1)romantic feelings;

2)love for loved ones;

3)love for any object or type of activity.

The field approach, introduced in 1920 by Trit and Ipsen, is widely used to describe the structure of the concept in modern linguistics. These linguists assume that the presence of the core and the periphery in the structure of the concept indicates the presence of a transition zone between them. Depending on the frequency of use by native speakers, the lexemes implementing this concept can be attributed to the core, near periphery, far and extreme periphery (Kuzembaeva, 2017).

Research Questions

The subject of the study is the lexical means of representing the concept of "love" in the novel "Gone with the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell (2011).

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the study is to determine the composition of lexical units of the structural field of the "love" concept in the novel "Gone with the Wind". The article describes the concept of "love", considers the ways of its linguistic implementation in the novel and defines the field model of the "love" concept in terms of the core, near periphery, and far periphery.

Research Methods

The main research methods in the work were the method of conceptual analysis, the method of linguistic description, the context-interpretative method of linguistic analysis, functional-semantic and structural-semantic methods, the method of continuous sampling, as well as the method of quantitative calculations.

Findings

"Gone with the Wind" is an immortal classic masterpiece of world literature. It is a novel about family values, growing up, love and the heavy military burden that fell on the share of the residents of the south of the United States who were accustomed to a quiet life.

The concept of "love" is one of the global concepts, it can be put on a par with the concepts of "man", "life", "universe", "word" (Iriolova, 2012). The theme of love plays a key role in the novel, as it is the main motivation for the actions of the characters. The main character, a young girl and heiress of a rich estate Scarlett O'Hara, seeks love and throughout almost the entire novel wants to reunite with her lover Ashley Wilkes. For example:

But she loved him so much that, when he withdrew as he had now done, it was like the warm sun going down and leaving her in chilly twilight dews.

The "to love" lexeme can also be used with something material. At the beginning of the novel, Scarlett is not serious about the Tara estate and does not feel much love and affection for this place. For example:

Scarlett loved Twelve Oaks even more than Tara, for it had a stately beauty, a mellowed dignity that Gerald’s house did not possess.

However, after Scarlett loses her parents and the reins of power fall into her hands, she feels responsible for saving her home and even marries Frank to save Tara. In the following example, the same lexeme demonstrates the love of Ashley's wife Melanie for Scarlett. From the very beginning, Scarlett dislikes the girl, the cause of which is jealousy, but Melanie loved her like a sister despite of everything.

Melanie loves you so much, not just because you were Charlie’s wife, but because-well, because you’re you and she loves you like a sister.

More often than other synonyms of the verb "to love", the verb "to like" is found in the novel. This lexeme distinguishes between the concepts of "love" and "like", which has the conformity by the following example:

Brent liked India but he thought her mighty plain and tame, and he simply could not fall in love with her himself to keep Stuart company.

Quite often there are lexical units that have a partially similar meaning to the verb "to love", such as "to adore" and "to admire". For example:

… Wade adored Uncle Rhett and Rhett was obviously fond of the boy.

And you admired her tremendously, for all that you tried to be like your mother!

The unit "loving" expresses the mother's love for her daughter in the following sentence:

Afterward she remembered … her mother’s face, loving, a little bewildered, her lips moving in a silent prayer for her daughter’s happiness.

Love can reveal both good and bad qualities in a person. Scarlett's negative feelings for Melanie, caused by her love for Ashley, are described using the adjective "jealous". For example:

In another example, Scarlett already has feeling jealous of her daughter and her father, even though she is ashamed of it. For example: ...

The feeling of love creates a passion, a strong desire, attraction in a person. In the novel, the lexemes "passion", "lust" and "yearning" are used to describe this emotion. For example:

In English, it is quite rare to find synonyms of the noun "love", which convey an absolutely accurate meaning of this concept. Nevertheless, in the course of the analysis of this novel, the authors of this research identified the nouns that have a similar contextual meaning, expressing love. For example, the language unit "affection" is used in the meaning of "sympathy". For example:

The noun "adoration" has the meaning of "admiration". For example: Her love was still a young girl's adoration for a man she could not understand…

In this example, Scarlett's love for Ashley is defined as admiration for a person she cannot understand. Ashley combines character traits that are alien to Scarlett herself, but at the same time, cause her admiration. Ashley's relationship to Scarlett is expressed to a certain extent by the noun "admiration" in the following example:

The noun "infatuation", which is quite close in meaning to the lexeme "love", demonstrates such a concept as "passion". For example:

The concept of "love" is also correlated in the novel with such lexical units as "tenderness" and "endearment" with the meaning of "affection". For example:

Besides, the novel sharply raises the issue of patriotism in the conditions of war. The concept of "patriotism" in addition to the love for the motherland also implies loyalty to it even in the most difficult moments. The language unit "devotion" in the meaning of in the following example shows the attitude of both soldiers and civilians. They believe wholeheartedly in the victory of the Confederacy and the bright future of their country.

It was high tide of devotion and pride in their hearts, high tide of the Confederacy, for final victory was at hand.

The novel uses lexemes representing the concept of "love", which are based on the word root "love". The noun "lover" is used in the following example:

They were affectionate, humorous, discursive, but not the letters of a lover.

The lexical unit "beloved", which has a similar meaning, can be used both in relation to animate and inanimate objects.

Naturally, Pork and Dilcey and Mammy gave vent to loud guffaws at hearing the detractor of their beloved Tara set at naught.

She could sense that in Melanie’s devoted heart she had an ally, feel Melanie’s indignation that anyone, even her beloved husband, should make Scarlett cry.

Besides the language unit "beloved", the lexeme "sweetheart" is used to refer to a loved one or a person in love. For example:

… every young man hastened to enlist before the war should end-hastened to marry his sweetheart before he rushed off to Virginia …

In addition, this lexeme is used by lovers as an affectionate address to each other. For example:

I always did want to run away and be married! Please, sweetheart, just for me!

The author of the novel uses the adverb "lovingly" to describe the careful attitude of a loving person. For example:

Melanie slipped the ring on her finger and looked at it lovingly.

Often the characters use such words as "dear" and "darling" affectionate addresses to each other. For example:

Only-only, my darling, it seems that I never get the time to talk to you and to feel that you are my own little girl again before you are gone from me.

The "true love" idiom has the definition of "true affection», for example:

But if true love carries any weight with you, you can be certain Miss Suellen will be rich in that if nothing else.

The phraseological units "surge of love" and "fury of love" are often used to describe the degree and nature of love. For example:

The phraseological unit "to be crazy about" can mean "to go crazy", but the following example implies the loss of a person's control over consciousness due to an overshadowing feeling of love.

My Lord! Ashley don’t mean anything to her, except a friend. She’s not crazy about him. It’s us she’s crazy about.

Also, the word combination "a loving heart" can be used to express sincere love that comes from the depths of a person's soul.

As Melanie looked at Ashley, her plain face lit up as with an inner fire, for if ever a loving heart showed itself upon a face, it was showing now on Melanie Hamilton’s.

Quite often in English, the idiom "declaration of love" is also found in the novel. For example: She had heard that note in men's voices often enough to know that it presaged a declaration of love.

Conclusion

Thus, the feeling of love is demonstrated in the novel in entirely different situations. Therefore, the core of the concept can be divided into 3 thematic groups:

Romantic feelings are feelings for a certain person (the words "to like", "romance", "lust", "adoring", "infatuation").

"Love for friend", "relatives", "closers" – the kind of love for friends, relatives, close people (the words "mother's love", "love for a friend").

"Love of something or doing something" is a kind of love for an object or activity ("love for reading", "beloved house").

Language units representing the concept of "love" are much more often used to express love for a loved one (friend, relative, lover). However, there are also cases where the love of inanimate objects was described.

Based on the results of quantitative calculations, the field model of the concept of "love" can be presented in the following way:

is the key verb "to love" (621 cases of use) and the words similar to it in meaning ("to like" (540 cases of use), "love", "dear", "darling", "passion", "loving", "lover", "to be in love", "sympathy", "to admire", "to be fond of", "loved", "affection", "tenderness").

, which includes various stable phrases and expressions ("sweetheart", "jealous", "devotion", "to fall in love", "to get married", "to adore", "admiration", "romance", "yearning", "adoration", "endearment", "to be crazy about", "fondness", "lovingly").

represents phrases and idioms formed on the basis of the lexeme "love" ("from the bottom of one's heart", "love affair", "infatuation", "secret love", "to get engaged", "unrequited love", "empty space in one's heart", "true love", "surge of love", "fury of love", "a loving heart", "declaration of love").

Thus, we can conclude that the concept of "love" is mainly represented in the novel to describe the romantic feelings of the characters and strong family ties, rather than the love of material goods.

Prospects for further research of the problem are seen in a comparative study of lexical representatives of the concept of "love" in the works of authors of the XIX, XX and XXI centuries to describe the characteristic features of the picture of the worlds of authors of a particular century and to determine the differential features and distinctive features.

References

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• Longman (2001). Longman dictionary of contemporary English. Pearson Education limited.

• Mitchell, M. (2011). Gone with the wind. Retrieved from: www.homeenglish.ru/Books.htm

• Neroznak, V. P. (1998). From Concept to Word: on the Problem of philological Conceptualism. Questions of philology and methods of teaching foreign languages (pp. 80-85).

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