Emotive and evaluative lexis of the headlines of greek newspaper articles: semantic issues

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EMOTIVE AND EVALUATIVE LEXIS OF THE HEADLINES OF GREEK NEWSPAPER ARTICLES: SEMANTIC ISSUES

Tyschenko О.О.,

Candidate of Sciences in Philology, Assistant Lecturer Department ofGeneral Linguistics, Classical Philology and Modern Hellenic Studies Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv

Summary

The article deals with the semantic issues of emotive and evaluative lexical means used in the headlines of Greek newspaper articles, their semantic peculiarities are analyzed, much attention is paid to the correlation of the categories of emotivity and evaluativity, the emotive and evaluative lexemes expressing positive evaluation are specified.

Key words: emotive and evaluative lexis, emotivity, evaluativity, semantic.

Анотація

Тищенко О. О. Емоційно-оцінна лексика заголовків грецьких газетних статей: семантичний аспект дослідження

У статті у семантичному аспекті розглянуто емоційно-оцінні лексичні засоби, які вживаються у заголовках грецьких газетних статей, проаналізовано їхні семантичні особливості, увагу приділено співвідношенню категорій емотивності та оцінності, визначено специфіку відповідної емоційно-оцінної лексики, що виражає позитивну оцінку.

Ключові слова: емоційно-оцінна лексика, емотивність, оцінність, семантичний.

Аннотация

Тищенко Е. А. Эмоционально-оценочная лексика заголовков греческих газетных статей: семантический аспект исследования

В статье в семантическом аспекте рассмотрены эмоционально-оценочные лексические средства, которые употребляются в заголовках греческих газетных статей, проанализированы их семантические особенности, внимание уделено соотношению категорий эмотивности и оценочности, определена специфика соответствующей эмоционально-оценочной лексики, выражающей положительную оценку.

Ключевые слова: эмоционально-оценочная лексика, эмотивность, оценочность, семантический.

lexical newspaper article emotive

Background. In the 21st century linguists are increasingly interested in linguistic means expressing emotions of people, as linguistic researches are mainly focused on the study of the means by which the language reflects human consciousness. The role of lexical means in reflecting emotions in language is very significant.

Recent publications. The peculiarities of emotive and evaluative vocabulary are researched in the works of N. Gujwanyuk [1], 0. Yaskevych [2], S. Chorna [3], V Shinkaruk [4], B. Nechyporen- ko [5], A. Stadniy [6], N. Martyn [7] etc.

The purpose of the research is to define the peculiarities of emotive and evaluative lexis used in the headlines of Greek newspaper articles from the semantic point of view as well as to specify special aspects of the emotive and evaluative lexemes expressing positive evaluation which are used in the headlines.

Investigation and results. The issue of distinguishing between the concepts “emotive” and “evaluative” is controversial in linguistics. The terms “evaluative” and “emotive” are considered the same, as the subjective evaluation is based on various manifestations of human emotions. These terms are very often combined into one - the term “emotive and evaluative” [4, p. 30]. Emotive and evaluative lexis is a reflection of emotions in speech [2, p. 203].

Evaluative words convey the speaker's subjective evaluation of a particular object. They can express different human emotions and evaluations. Therefore, they are often referred to as emotive and evaluative names that are distinctively positive or negative [1, P- 89].

According to N. Martyn, emotionality reflects the emotional experience of the subject; evaluativity reflects positive or negative evaluation of the object or phenomenon. Perceiving aspects of reality a person expresses not a neutral attitude to it through the evaluation “good” - “bad”, “good” - “satisfactory”. Using linguistic means for the expression, the evaluation is implemented in the component ofword meaning which is called evaluativity [7, p. 17]. V Kyrylova claims that the category of evaluativity is a special linguistic category which can be considered a language aspect of the axiological reality [8, p. 39]. B. Nechyporenko highlights the difference between the categories of emotionality, evaluativity and expressivity. Thus, according to the researcher, emotionality is a psycholinguistic category, evaluativity is a semantic-pragmatic category and expressivity is a pragmatic-stylistic category [5].

O. Kulchytska notes that it is generally recognized that regarding attitudinal meaning two types of evaluation are provided: intellectual and logical, that is rational evaluation, based on the objective properties of the referent, and emotional evaluation. The researcher notices the peculiarity of the emotive and evaluative vocabulary: the emotional attitude of the speaker is imposed on a logical judgment regarding a certain phenomenon. The linguist makes a conclusion that emotional evaluation includes logical component, but the emotional component prevails over rational component [9, p. 242].

According to V. Shinkaruk, emotionality is always associated with emotional evaluation, but there are some words which doesn't have evaluation (emotional interjections). They only express emotions and feelings of the speaker. This allows distinguishing between the category of evaluativity and emotivity [4, p. 34].

N. Martyn stresses that evaluativity is an obligatory element of emotionality. The evaluation by a human of a subject or phenomenon is often based on emotional experiences, but emotionality is not always a necessary element of evaluativity: the same word in different communicative situations can express not only emotions, but both emotions and evaluation [7, p. 18].

Through emotions that arise from the evaluations, a subject's attitude to reality is realized. The emotional components of the meaning can intensify the evaluation. [4, p. 36]

According to N. Gujwanyuk, emotivity is associated with emotions and feelings of people, their reactions and evaluations of subjective perception of reality. The category of evaluativity means judgement about positive or negative qualities and properties of a person, an object or a phenomenon, and through them - of the features or actions, generalizing this attitude to the subject of speech. Evaluation can have subjective nature; it can also express public opinion. This attitude (evaluation) is usually accompanied by certain feelings. It is an expression of emotions in a given communication situation that causes evaluation. The linguist asserts that emotional words are always evaluative [1, p. 89].

The evaluation can be as following: 1) positive / negative / neutral; 2) absolute / relative; 3) subjective / objective; 4) intellectual and logical / emotional / emotional and intellectual; 5) sensory / sublimated / rationalistic; 6) evaluation, determined by the specific concepts / evaluation, determined by abstract concepts. Being one of the components of the semantics of a word, the evaluative meaning includes cognitive information (subject's logical perceptions of the object's value) and emotional notion (subject's emotional attitude toward the object of evaluation) [10, p. 224].

N. Martyn states that in general it is possible to say that “good” is what helps meet the needs of an individual, a group or mankind including aesthetic and moral needs, which is favorable morally and physically, and “bad” is an imperfect and wrong that is dissatisfactory for a person and a group and is in dispute with the aesthetic, moral and ethical standards. The nature of the evaluation processes is based on the opposition of instinctively conscious positive and negative qualities such as “good / bad” [7, p. 18].

The reason for the emotional evaluation is usually an extraordinary situation, or unusual properties of the object that caused the positive evaluation, reflecting in its structure the subjective and objective sides of evaluation, it depends on ethical, religious and other concepts of the subject. The semantic structure of emotive and evaluative lexemes combines connotative semes “emotivity” and “evaluativity” [1, p. 89,94].

N. Martyn remarks that evaluativity in the semantics of a word is distinguished by type: rational and emotional, and by kind: neutral, positive and negative [7, p. 18].

Evaluation can be expressed by different language means. It can be limited to items less than a word; it can also characterize a group of words or the whole statement. There are groups of words on lexical level, which function in order to express evaluation [10, p. 226].

Emotivity can be expressed by phonetic means (intonation), by lexical means (emotionally loaded units in the sentence), by morphological means (interjections in the sentence) and by syntactic means (the choice of syntactic structure according to the state of the speaker) [4, p. 34].

The present paper is aimed at the research of emotive and evaluative lexical means used in the headings of Greek newspaper articles. Means of expression of the emotional and axiological meaning in the sentence structure are not only used to inform, but also to convince emotionally, to win the interlocutor on its side, to achieve empathy [4, p. 36]. It is well known that one of the aims of newspaper headlines is not only to inform the reader on the event, but also to attract reader's attention, appealing to his/her emotions. So it is natural that emotive and evaluative lexical means are widely used in the headlines of Greek newspaper articles.

The research was based on the corpus of the headlines (with emotive and evaluative lexical means) of the news articles, feature articles for the period 14/10/2016 - 31/10/2016 and the opinion pieces (АПО^Н) for the period 01/09/2016 - 31/10/2016 of the Greek newspaper H KaOqpspivq.

While analyzing the headlines mentioned above, we came to the conclusion that there are not a lot of headlines which contain emotive and evaluative lexical means expressing positive evaluation, but still they exist. It is well known that the emotive and evaluative lexis in newspaper articles much more often expresses the negative evaluation, because people are more sensitive to negative phenomena than to the positive ones. But the headlines of newspaper articles have to inform the readers about different aspects of life. Therefore, except for the articles dedicated to sport and cultural events, which traditionally have lexis that expresses positive evaluation, we have also found the headlines, where lexical means express positive evaluation, in such sections as International Economics and Greece. The opinion pieces dedicated to current problems of Greek society also contained them. They were used because there was a need to describe some positive trends in economy and other fields.

In the headline the emotive and evaluative adjective is used in comparative degree, this contributes to the evaluation of the phenomenon as it gives the possibility to the reader to understand and to compare the previous condition in the economy with the recent one.

It is worth saying that the use of adjectives in their comparative and superlative degrees in the headlines of Greek newspaper articles is not rare. For instance, adjectives expressing negative evaluation are used in their comparative and superlative degree in order to give an additional emotional connotation. Such emotional connotation can also be expressed by the prefix.

They have been found in opinion pieces and their role was to name positive processes that take place or have to take place in Greek society.

There was the headline in the corpus, which contained the verb expressing positive evaluation. Possibly, a verb with such a distinctively positive emotive and evaluative meaning was used in order to make Greek people feel proud about their country despite the difficult economic situation in it.

They were used in order to give a reader additional information on the event or process by evaluating it.

There is an interesting combination of the evaluative adjectives expressing positive and negative evaluation used in the same headline. The adjectives in this headline state the facts concerning an event: WADA has informed that Greece is not fully in line with the instructions of the world anti-doping code. The country, however, is in line with it, but some of the National Anti-Doping Council has not informed the superior authority. Thus, the informing was delayed. The adjectives, except for stating the facts, are used in opposition which also contributes to the attraction of reader's attention.

There was also the headline, where the verb expressing positive evaluation was used metaphorically and had negative evaluative meaning, it was marked by inverted commas.It was used to describe the expensive services of private ambulances.

Discussion. Emotive and evaluative lexemes used in the headlines of Greek newspaper articles meet the objectives of the headlines - to inform readers on an event and to appeal to their emotions and feelings. The emotional perception of the headline by readers is needed to convince readers to read the article. Emotive and evaluative lexical means is a proven way to reach the goal. Despite the great amount of emotive and evaluative lexemes expressing negative evaluation, the headlines of Greek newspaper articles also contain lexemes expressing positive evaluation. One of their main functions is to denote some positive changes or processes in different fields, but, despite their usual positive evaluative meaning, they sometimes can be used metaphorically with the opposite meaning. The specification of semantic groups of the emotive and evaluative lexemes expressing negative evaluation used in the headlines of Greek newspaper articles is of interest for further research.

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