Representation of Emotive Concepts in Modern English Fictional Discourse: Gender Approach

Abstract

Dzyubenko Anna Igorevna – candidate of linguistics, associate professor of cross-cultural communication and methodology of foreign languages teaching dpt. Institute of philology, journalism and cross-cultural communication, Southern Federal University. 

The article reveals the narrative strategies that are applied by the two modern much written about female authors – S. Kinsella and E. Gilbert – that help them create a unique, at times even autonomous world of a female protagonist embodying a concept of a modern woman. By defining the types of emotions introduced to the English female discourse and by determining the set of their verbal realizations grouped in clusters, the author of the article investigates the grammatical structure of the texts, so-called ‘loaded’ with emotions, thus describing the pragmatic potential of the linguistic units through which the text category of emotiveness is realized.

The author states the indisputable likeness of the ‘emotional’ palette found in the female narrations that reveals itself in the females’ going through the same emotional ups and downs, through dissatisfaction with herself and with the world around, finally, through overcoming despair and depression and thus coming to happiness and psycho-emotional tranquility. The paper also offers a set of emotive concepts that are most frequently represented in “Undomestic Goddess” and “Eat. Pray. Love” novels alongside with the description of contextual background that made their objectivization within the works mentioned logical and possible. Finally, the article suggests an interpretative view on a woman acting as a protagonist in the narration and as a fictional  embodiment of a real typical female.

Keywords: fictional discourse, ‘emotional’ palette, female protagonist, narrative strategies, representation, objectivization.