O radości w ujęciu lingwistycznym: z problemów semantycznych badań porównawczych
JOY in the linguistic perspective: problems of comparative semantic research

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses the tenets of comparative semantic research on the names of emotions in the domain of joy. The author follows Renata Grzegorczykowa’s idea of a subjective nature of emotions and their dependence on particular languages and cultures. She then proposes to ground the research not in concepts associated with specific lexical items in a given language (e.g. the English happiness) but in a general conceptual invariant around which lexicosemantic fields of emotions terms are organized. To justify this approach, the author refers to the difficulties in comparing the results of research on different languages as well as the problems involved in translation. It is necessary to distinguish and address various levels of abstraction in understanding lexical concepts of emotions; it is also crucial to analyze their modelling in discourse. Therefore, apart from lexicographic data, which show what is possible, use is made of texts, which contain realizations of these potentialities. A combination of the structural linguistic approach with the cognitive linguistic approach facilitates a fuller understanding of the phenomena being investigated, which is illustrated with a schematic characterization of selected portions of the linguistic view of the Polish radość (joy).

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