Emotional Aspect Of The Study Of The Novel-Chronicle “The Son Of Mudreshka”

Abstract

According to the analysis of the emotives selected by the continuous sampling method, the authors made a conclusion about the predominance of negative emotions in the work in general, which were expressed both in linguistic (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, fixed turns of speech) and non-verbal (look, facial expressions, movement, etc.).) means. The dependence of emotions on the property factor had been established: the feelings of the poor and the rich were different. The poor experienced such feelings as insult, fear, mockery, injustice, horror, fear, pain, anger, anxiety, timidity, fright, resentment, confusion, anger, cruelty, grief, excitement, despair, embarrassment, indecision, alertness, anger, irritation, rage, anxiety, humiliation, etc. These impersonal negative feelings were formed among the poor as a result of an unfair attitude towards them from the rich and their hard life. In relation to them, the rich showed such negative feelings as rage, anger, malice, ridicule, cruelty, irritation, malevolence, indifference, etc. They were personal and active, because affected the emotional sphere of others, they were expressed in verbal and non-verbal means. On this basis, from the point of view of the influence of feelings on a person, these feelings could be considered as inhibiting human activity. It was shown that the same emotion could be experienced by the characters in different ways, which also depended on the social factor. The experiences of the same character throughout the story could change drastically.

Keywords: Emotions, Kalmyks, novel – chronicle "The son of Mudreshka"

Introduction

The emotional background of a literary text is one of the important aspects for understanding the national-specific features of any literary text. In this case, we study a chronicle novel by the Kalmyk writer Amur-Sanan “The son of Mudreshka.” Since this work is written in Russian, we are interested in the transfer of emotions experienced by the characters of the work, as well as the author-narrator, in the means of the Russian language.

Problem Statement

The emotional sphere of a person has a long and rich history of study. In particular, it is fruitfully studied in psychology, physiology, pedagogy and other sciences, both in theoretical and practical aspects. It is necessary to mention the works of well-known experts in this field of knowledge, who defined the concept, classified emotions and described the characteristics of emotions (Eckman, 2010; Izard, 1980, 2000; Lutz, 1988; Rubinstein, 2020). The importance of emotions is also proved by the fact that the famous psychologists Mayer and Salovey proposed the concept of “emotional intelligence” – the ability to perceive and understand the manifestations of the personality expressed in emotions, to control emotions based on intellectual processes (Mayer & Salovey, 1997). In the course of further discussion and research of the emotional sphere of a person, the concept of "emotional culture" was introduced – a system of knowledge about the formation of emotions, the ways to analyze and manage them (Goleman, 1995; Ilyin, 2001). Taking into account the importance of emotions for understanding the surrounding reality, there is an opinion about the allocation of an "emotional picture of the world of an ethnos" (Evans, 2008). The study of the linguistic designation of emotions is particularly important. This linguistic aspect of emotions also has a fruitful history of comprehension, which resulted in the formation of a relatively new branch of linguistics – emotiology (Bolotnov, 1981; Filimonova, 2001; Shakhovsky, 1987). In linguistics, emotivity is understood as the inherent property of a language to express emotionality as a fact of the psyche, a designation in language units of emotions through their naming and various types of expression in speech (Shakhovsky, 1987). The means of designating emotions include nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs (Arutyunova, 1988; Babenko, 1989; Zaliznyak, 2003), evaluative nominations (Bulygina & Shmelev, 2000; Gak, 1996; Wolf, 1985), emotional concepts (Arutyunova, 1988; Krasavsky, 2001; Vezhbitskaya, 1999; Vorkachev, 2003).

A complex problem of emotiology is the classification of emotions. A generally accepted classification takes into account such parameters as intellectual assessment (simple-complex), the nature of the experience (positive-negative), orientation (personal-impersonal), influence on a person (activating-inhibiting human activity), degree of intensity (strong-weak). With all the variety of classifications of emotions, it is generally recognized that there are so-called basic, fundamental and “secondary” emotions. At the same time, researchers distinguish a different number of basic emotions: from six (Eckman, 2010) to ten (Izard et al., 1984) and eighteen (Plutchik, 1980). It is established that non-verbal means are involved in the transfer of emotions: in the subtlest changes in eyebrows, eyes, lips and behavior, nuances of a personal emotional status. Moreover, the fluctuations in his mood are manifested, which also requires scientific understanding.

Research Questions

The subject of the paper is the emotional sphere of a person. The object of the study is the representatives of emotions presented in the literary text in the means of the Russian language.

On the one hand, the object of our attention are linguistic indicators that serve to fix a variety of human emotions. Among them are lexemes, fixed speech patterns, sentences, gestures, facial expressions, a smile and other non-verbal means.

On the other hand, the object of our research are those elements that help to describe the national and cultural specifics of the expression of Kalmyk emotions in a literary text in Russian. The fact is that there are still different opinions regarding the universality of emotions. If some researchers believe that emotions are not nationally specific, and their nature and understanding depend on the linguistic culture of an ethnic group (Heelas, 1996), then others believe that emotions are universal (Shakhovsky, 1987; Tomkin & McCarter, 1964).

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the research is to study the novel-chronicle of the Kalmyk prose writer A.M. Amur-Sanan “The son of Mudreshka” from an emotive point of view i.e. the expression of emotions experienced by characters in linguistic means. To do this, the following tasks are set: a) to reveal the mechanism of communication of emotions, b) to identify the national and cultural specifics of the emotional component of the work and the nature of its expression in the means of the Russian language.

Research Methods

The material of the study was the text of the novel-chronicle “The son of Mudreshka” by the founder of modern Kalmyk literature, prose writer A.M. Amur-Sanan, which was written in Russian and published in 1925. Quantitative and linguistic research methods were used. Using the method of continuous sampling, all means of the expression of emotions (from individual lexemes to entire sentences) were written out from the text of the work. The next stage of the study was the classification of the selected emotions using the classifications available in the literature. Using the lexico-semantic method, the content of lexemes denoting certain emotions was determined.

Findings

One of the important issues necessary for understanding the national-specific features of the novel-chronicle “The son of Mudreshka” is the emotional aspect of a work: the transfer of emotions experienced by the characters of the work through the means of a non-native, Russian language. Our classification of emotions, identified by the method of continuous sampling from a literary text, allowed conditional distribution of emotions into two groups. The first group included those means that convey negative emotions, the second group included positive ones. It turned out that the first group was represented by a large number of units and the second consisted of only a few units. The subject of discussion of this work was negative emotions.

The emotions were transmitted through feelings that arose depending on the situation in which the subject/object, to which a person experienced this or that feeling, found himself. As we know, the action of the novel took place at a turning point in the history of the Kalmyks – in the era of breaking the old tribal relations and the formation of new orders and relations that were established in the 20s of the 20^th century. The narration in the novel-chronicle was conducted on behalf of the author, in connection with which feelings and emotions primarily characterized the narrator. Throughout the novel-chronicle, the position of the narrator changed. If at the beginning of the story this was a poor boy, the son of an orud (primak, stranger), a representative of the social lower classes of the Kalmyk society of that time, then in the future his self-awareness and society's attitude towards him changed dramatically. The young man was engaged in self-education, took an active life position, participated in the most important historical events taking place at the turn of the XIX–XX centuries in the Kalmyk steppe and Russia. He became the protector first of his family members, and then of all the destitute poor; he established new orders and changed people's lives. Accordingly, the position of Anuton changed and the attitude of those around him changed – this was be seen in the change in the emotional background of the work.

At the beginning of the chronicle novel, we can observe all the variety of feelings experienced by a poor boy and members of his family: bitterness, resentment, anger, helplessness, defenselessness, etc. Often these feelings were manifested in speech and behavior non-verbally in the form of indecision, shyness, silence. The poor use, as a rule, verbs of speech that had the connotation of low intensity. They were more often silent in response to unfair accusations, insulting words, as evidenced by our earlier analysis of the figure of silence in the artistic space of the novel-chronicle (Esenova, 2022). The feelings experienced by representatives of powerful people (wealthy relatives, noyons) in relation to the poor were anger, rage, contempt and disgust. They were capable of humiliation, insult, mockery, etc. The negative attitude of the rich towards the poor was manifested verbally and non-verbally, in particular, in the use of verbs of speech with the seme 'increased intensity', gaze, gestures, actions, etc.

On the one hand, the emotional background of the work included the feelings experienced by the characters themselves (personal), and on the other hand, the feelings that others showed towards the characters (impersonal). The lexico-semantic analysis of the material made it possible to characterize the emotional sphere of the Kalmyks of different social groups of the described period. It included such emotions as grief, anger, disgust, fear, contempt, which, according to Eckman (2010) and Izard (1980), were included into the basic human emotions along with joy and surprise. The lexical means expressing these feelings and used in the chronicle novel varied. They were represented by such designations as nouns (bitterness, insult, fear, mockery, injustice, anger, horror, fear, pain, envy, anxiety, timidity, fear, resentment, neglect, confusion, swearing, feverishness, cruelty, grief, reproach, excitement, despair, embarrassment, indecision, contempt, surprise, alertness, frenzy, mockery, irritation, rage, gloating, calm, mockery, horror, excitement, indifference, amazement, anxiety, etc.); verbs (insult, beat, humiliate, etc.); adverbs (painful, hard, insulting, humiliating, etc.), fixed speech patterns (clenching teeth, bulging eyes, etc.).

The emotions described in the chronicle novel can be classified in terms of their orientation as personal and impersonal. So, the poor experienced insult, fear, mockery, injustice, anger, horror, pain, envy, anxiety, timidity, resentment, confusion, cruelty, grief, excitement, despair, embarrassment, indecision, alertness, frenzy, mockery, irritation, rage, calm, amazement, humiliation, etc. These impersonal negative feelings were formed among the poor as a result of an unfair attitude towards them from the rich and their hard life in poverty and eternal shortages. In relation to them, the rich showed such negative feelings as rage, anger, ridicule, cruelty, irritation, malevolence, indifference, etc., which were personal and active, because they affected the emotional sphere of others. The poor were aware of the feelings of others towards them, but often had to endure, restrain their emotions and suppress them. On this basis, from the point of view of the influence of feelings on a person, they can be considered as inhibiting human activity. Often the feelings experienced by the poor were expressed not verbally, but non-verbally .

This can be illustrated by the example of the emotion of anger. The text gave the following description of this emotion experienced by the father of Anuton, a poor Mudreshka, forced to restrain himself, endure the mockery and insult of a wealthy relative: “Father at first only clenched his teeth. He didn’t say anything, but he looked like a beast: his nostrils flared, but he himself was silent” (Amur-Sanan, 1987, p. 49). The same emotion was experienced by the noyon in the following way: “... the noyon is black as a thundercloud, angry as a kite, flew, bypassing everyone, straight to his comrade ... quickly commanded: “Get out of here!”; Gakhaev shouted again: “Out!” Enraged Gakhaev dealt a terrible blow to the dignitary, breaking his right eye” (Amur-Sanan, 1987, p. 49). The emotion of anger experienced by the poor was realized not by verbal, but by non-verbal means (he clenched his teeth, his nostrils swelled) by means, while in the case of the rich it was also expressed by linguistic means (command expressed in an imperative form, exclamatory intonation, verbs commanded, shouted, expressing a command), and non-verbal (rapid movement, flying, hitting, breaking an eye) means. At the same time, the material also indicated that the same emotion, directed at a representative of the same social stratum as the speaker himself, manifested itself vividly, expressively, as, for example, in the following context: “The Shinkar became angry: he began to shout that he let me take care of him and, grabbing my shoulder, began to shake me” (Amur-Sanan, 1987, p. 49). As the material showed, the same emotion had a different degree of intensity: strong if directed at the poor, weak if directed at the rich; expressed in different verbal and non-verbal means. The first was characterized by a reactive manifestation of emotion and the second was the suppression of emotion, its containment. If it was aimed at a representative of the same social stratum, then it could manifest itself brightly and expressively.

Let us dwell on the characteristics of negative emotions, based on the contexts in which the means of designating the feelings behind them in the text of the work were used. The emotion of grief, characteristic of the poor, arose as a result of the humiliating, insulting attitude of the rich towards them. The noun grief and the nominee of emotion denoted the feelings experienced by poor Kalmyks, destitute and humiliated oruds, including the boy Anuton: “Besides with grief, I ran to my relatives, asking if they had seen my mother” (Amur-Sanan, 1987, p. 50). In addition, at the beginning of the chronicle novel, the emotional sphere of the hero of the work was revealed through the noun bitterness, which also denoted the experiences of a poor Kalmyk; Bitterness was one of the varieties of the emotion of grief. The narrator told the story of the formation of this emotion as follows: “I was very sad; Everyone beat me: the Kalmyks beat me because I was an orud, my father beat me because they offended him” (Amur-Sanan, 1987, p. 14). The text repeatedly showed that the feeling of sadness in the boy arose as early as childhood under the influence of the unfair and arrogant attitude of rich relatives, because of their bullying, insults and beatings: “... after all, I was an orud and an orud can be offended and beaten” (Amur-Sanan, 1987, p. 14).

The range of emotions of poor Kalmyks included such an impersonal negative emotion as mockery 'evil ridicule of someone or something, mockery, insult': To top it all off, without any reason, Jimbeev hit him with a stick and hit him (his father) in the head (Amur-Sanan, 1987). The analysis of the text showed that the means of expressing bullying include the evaluative vocabulary of both Russian (dogs, vile creatures, pitiful, etc.) and Kalmyk (orud 'primak, stranger', kishva 'unfortunate', shivchkin 'prostitute') and non-verbal means (assault, gestures, look, etc.).

The emotional sphere of the poor was characterized by the fear they had towards the rich, the unknown future. This feeling was also formed among the poor in the course of the prevailing joyless life, full of hardships. This was how this emotion was described in the realization of the poor man: “It seemed to me that all the noble relatives were about to return and begin to beat us ... At the sight of them, I crawled under the bed from fear ... This outrageous injustice deeply wounded my childish heart. Eternal mockery, constant insults, injustice, beatings. All this had a detrimental effect on my father; he lost heart, began to drink, became embittered and took out his grief on his mother, me and my sisters with cruel beatings. Once he was a fine fellow, a brave, dashing rider, not afraid to punish the offender Prince Bembe, surrounded by a whole retinue of servants ... And then he became a miserable drunkard. Why did the person die? Why was he stuck? Because he was an orud. If the father had not been an orud, he “would have found a different way” (Amur-Sanan, 1987, p. 15). In this episode, in addition to fear, the hero experienced a whole range of negative feelings (insult, injustice, mockery), he suffered constant beatings and all this formed fear in his mind.

An emotion close to fear – fright 'a sudden feeling of fear' – was experienced by the poor in front of the rich and powerful people, on whom their life completely depended. This was how this emotion was described by the poor man – an orud: “My father, timidly taking off his hat, cowering all over, frightened, walked out of the crowd and said: “Your Excellency, I am here” (Amur-Sanan, 1987, p. 16). In the presence of the rich, the poor experienced timidity 'a feeling of timidity, fear, shyness, danger' (“Father timidly wanted to report something” (Amur-Sanan, 1987, p. 16), indecision ' lack of firmness, a feeling of doubt, hesitation' (“I hesitated” (Amur-Sanan, 1987, p. 16), embarrassment “confusion, a state of shyness, shame” (“I preferred to be embarrassedly shy when it came to my family” (Amur-Sanan, 1987, p. 17), despair “extreme hopelessness” (“He threw up eyes and exclaimed almost in despair: “Yes, but we didn’t have free time to talk about the people!” (Amur-Sanan, 1987, p. 17) Gradually, under the influence of humiliation, insults and bullying from the rich, a feeling of injustice was formed in the minds of the poor as well as the lack of justice (injustice) and truth. This also was included in the representations of a little boy: “This outrageous injustice deeply wounded my childish heart” (Amur-Sanan, 1987, p. 18). Justice caused grief and insult, and as a rule, did not have a pronounced external manifestation. However, in some cases it was realized reactively and vividly, for example: “And the Kalmyks were offended to such an extent that, having knocked down the unfortunate messenger, they beat him almost half to death ... (Amur-Sanan, 1987, p. 20). Here we observe a non-verbal manifestation of feelings (beaten, knocked down). The action itself was directed to the poor: the poor man offended the poor.

Many poor people, in particular the mother of the protagonist, experienced horror as an extreme manifestation of the emotion of fear. This was how the formation and realization of this feeling was described in the work: “She was horrified and wept bitterly. She was afraid for me, she was afraid that without me, her only helper, her only friend, she would remain completely helpless and lonely, and she continued to cry and beg me not to leave” (Amur-Sanan, 1987, p. 45). This emotion was formed from fear, helplessness and loneliness. It manifested itself verbally in the vocabulary of prayer, non-verbally in crying. It could manifest itself through an action, for example, a movement: “A terrified Kalmyk ran to the horse, untied it and rushed home at full speed” (Amur-Sanan, 1987, p. 33). Let us pay attention to the fact that in horror the hero went home. This meant that the house was perceived by the character as a protected area, where there was no fear, horror, and where a person felt protected. In the text, we can also see the manifestation of fear as a dreary and restless feeling: “The arrested fell silent, everyone became terrified” (Amur-Sanan, 1987, p. 32). The highest form of manifestation of fear was characteristic of a person experiencing numbness from the emerging awareness of the hopelessness of the situation, it was experienced as horror.

In relation to the poor, the rich experienced personal negative feelings, such as cruelty, anger, malice, neglect, contempt, mockery, irritation, rage, malevolence, indifference, etc.

The negative emotion of malice 'a feeling of angry irritation, hostility against someone' was manifested in relation to the poor: “Suffocating for anger, he shouted at me” (Amur-Sanan, 1987, p. 46); Erendzhen Sharmanjiev shout in impotent rage: “I am delighted to hear this” (Amur-Sanan, 1987, p. 46). From the point of view of the degree of intensity, it manifested itself expressively (in a scream, growl). In relation to the poor, the rich experienced anger and rage, which were manifested in raising their voices and screaming, lexical means were characterized by an imperative form, for example: “Noyon shouted in a rage: ‘Do not dare to move!’ (Amur-Sanan, 1987, p. 47). They were capable of cruelty 'extreme severity, ruthlessness, mercilessness': “In a drunken state, many well-born Kalmyks were terrible hooligans: they swore, senselessly and cruelly insulted people, especially if there was not their own and defenseless person between them” (Amur-Sanan, 1987, p. 47). In addition, the rich showed contempt towards the poor 'deeply disdainful attitude towards someone or something' (“What are you here for? – he said contemptuously to me” (Amur-Sanan, 1987, p. 50) and indifference (“No, the relatives replied indifferently, “I think her father beat her again” (Amur-Sanan, 1987, p. 50). Often, they undeservedly reproach the poor i.e., ‘they express displeasure, disapproval or accusation’ (“… relatives met us and began to reproach us for the fact that the cattle had not yet been fed” (Amur-Sanan, 1987, p. 51).

Conclusion

This study allows concluding that the emotional background of A.M. Amur-Sanan “The son of Mudreshka” shape the feelings experienced by the characters and the narrator. When classifying emotions, the property indicator of an individual was decisive: the emotions of the poor and the rich were different. The nature of the realization of emotions, verbal and non-verbal means of their expression allowed concluding that negative emotions generally dominated in the work. From the point of view of direction, non-personal emotions predominated among the poor and personal emotions predominated among the rich. In the context of influencing a person, the emotions that inhibited human activity predominated, in terms of intensity of manifestation, weak emotions dominated in the poor, and strong emotions dominated in the rich. At the same time, the same emotion could be experienced by the characters in different ways, which also depended on the social factor. The experiences of the same character throughout the story could change drastically.

Acknowledgments

The paper was prepared as a part of the implementation of the RFBR project 20-312-90030 “The World and Images of Kalmyks in the Russian Literary Text (Based on A.M. Amur-Sanan's Chronicle Novel “The son of Mudreshka”)”.

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