PARTICULIARITIES OF PEJORATIVE VOCABULARY FUNCTIONING IN THE DIALOGICAL DISCOURSE OF THE ENGLISH LITERARY TEXT

Abstract

The article provides a comprehensive linguistic analysis of the functioning and pragmatic potential of pejorative language in the dialogical speech of a contemporary English literary text. The relevance of the study is determined by the need to study the specifics of the use of pejoratives in dialogues, which, due to their imitative nature, reproduce the features of colloquial discourse and serve as a means of objectifying events and speech characteristics of characters. The aim of the work is to identify the discursive factors that cause the intensification of negative evaluation. The material for the study was the novel “Run on Red” by American writer Noelle W. Ihli. The research file contains 202 units extracted from dialogical speech. The methodological basis of the work is formed by methods of discourse analysis (to determine the pragmatic conditions and the role of context) and componential analysis (to establish the semantic structure and morphological grouping). The study theoretically substantiates the distinction between the concepts of a literary text and discourse, emphasizing the subjective nature of the category of evaluation. Practical analysis has shown that pejorative meaning in dialogues is realized both explicitly (through absolute pejoratives) and implicitly. The mechanisms of contextual pejoration are examined in detail: the acquisition of negative semantics by neutral, diminutive, or positively colored lexemes through irony, metaphorical transfer (zoomorphism), cultural allusions, and prosodic means. The results of morphological analysis show the dominance of nouns and adjectives, which indicates the priority of the nominative function of pejoratives, while a significant proportion of interjections provides emotional relief for the characters. Thus, pejorative language is a multifunctional tool that not only expresses a negative assessment, but also constructs social reality and implements the author’s pragmatic strategy within the sociocultural context of the work.