Factors of developing lexical poetic connotations (the results of the psycholinguistic experiment)

Abstract

The article studies the reasons for developing stylistic poetic connotations in lexical semantics. The relevance of the work is connected with the interest of modern linguistics in pragmatic components of meaning, on the one hand, and with the gap in understanding the evolutionary processes occurring in lyrical language, on the other. The study is based on the method of psycholinguistic experiment. The material for the work is represented by a wide range of the opinions of people interested in poetry; they suggest their understanding of the essence of lyrics. The considered language is English. At the first stage of the study the poetic vocabulary is compiled from the lexemes proposed by the respondents, it is later analysed on the basis of formal characteristics. This work allows us to reveal some leading poetic concepts and also define the extent to which words’ semantics is filled with poetic connotations. The obtained data are compared with the literary tradition of poetry. The results confirm the fact of the evolutionary instability inherent in lyrical language, in particular, the instability of connotative meanings. The second stage of the study is devoted to the identification and classification of poetry factors. Eight different grounds have been distinguished determining the functioning of poetic connotative meanings in words; moreover, some subgroups are also described using specifying parametric indicators. The chosen tactics of research helps to reveal some causes of poetry language evolution. The work contributes to the study of the interaction of language and thought, some aspects of stylistics; it also contributes to the development of modern complex methods for analyzing language phenomena, in particular, those ones characterized by a large degree of irrationality, for example, poetic creativity.