VERBALIZATION OF EVALUATIVE COMPONENT OF THE CONCEPT AIR POLLUTION IN CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH MEDIA RESOURCES
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32782/2410-0927-2022-17-11Keywords:
air pollution, axiological potential, concept, media resource, negative connotation, evaluative componentAbstract
The article presents the analysis of cognitive and semantic means of representation of the evaluative component of AIR POLLUTION as it is an integral part of a global concept ENVIRONMENT. The work aims at revealing structural and semantic elements of the concept AIR POLLUTION, which depict axiological potential of the concept under investigation, and which are peculiar for the representatives of American English-speaking cultural group. The material of the study comprises 200 text pieces bearing conceptual information about air pollution, which were extracted from speeches and texts belonging to media discourse. The methodological basis of this study includes the theory of cognitive mechanisms of elaboration, extending, questioning and combining. These mechanisms are used to investigate language modifications experienced by meaningful elements within a particular discourse. The findings of the content analysis show that such structural topical elements as “climate”, “human’s health”, “scale of air pollution” and “sustainability” are of the highest axiological value as they are fixed in the mental representation of the concept AIR POLLUTION. The structures “climate”, “human’s health”, and “scale of air pollution” are characterized as bearing negative evaluation, whereas “sustainability” – a positive one. The assessment verbalization presupposes the combination of several cognitive mechanisms that accumulate the meaning and combine two and more topical structures in one context. The language analysis suggests that lexical means which are used for the verbalization of evaluative component of the concept AIR POLLUTION, belong to emotionally neutral vocabulary including scientific terms and words that are peculiar for industrial, medical and political discourses. Their combination accumulates and specifies problems associated with air pollution, and contributes to the appearance of negative connotation. On the contrary, lexical means used to describe “sustainability” acquire positive connotation.
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