Introduction. Recently, the study of the relationship
between emotions and language has become increasingly
relevant. It is impossible to build an adequate description of
the language system without taking into account human
emotions. In recent studies, scientists have made attempts to
identify the cognitive foundations of the conceptualization of
emotions and ways of expressing them by lexical means.
Despite the existence of a significant number of works
devoted to the objectification of emotional concepts in
different languages, which are at the crossroads of the most
important
disciplinary
areas
of
modern
linguistics:
linguoculturology,
emotiology,
linguoconceptology,
psycholinguistics, axiological linguistics and addressed to the
consideration of verbalized ideas about the inner world of a
person, it should be noted that the study of conceptual
structures that underlie linguistic representations that describe
positive emotional states, remains little studied in English.
Materials and methods. The material for the study
was the lexicographic sources of the English language:
explanatory dictionaries, thesaurus, synonymous dictionaries
and electronic dictionaries. The illustrative material of the
study is presented by examples selected by the continuous
sampling method from the works of English and American
authors of the 19th-20th centuries, from the electronic corpora
British National Corpus (BNC), Brigham Young University
British National Corpus (BYU-BNC), British English Web
Corpus (ukWaC). ).
Results and discussion. Emotions as one of the forms
of reality reflection are currently at the center of attention of
many areas of knowledge, one way or another in contact with
emotional processes. Recently, scientists have been actively
developing a holistic theory of emotions in psychology and
linguistics based on the psychological and physiological
manifestations of emotions and their linguistic expression. An
analysis of a number of psychological studies devoted to the
study of emotions allowed us to identify the most common
features inherent in most emotional states; sign (positive,
negative, ambivalent), intensity, expressiveness, acquisition /
innateness, duration / short duration, variability / constancy,
and also to establish that the emotion “admiration” is not
among the basic (fundamental) emotions, respectively, it can
manifest itself in certain combinations or complexes with
other emotions.
Thus, some psychologists define the emotion
“admiration” as a fusion of such basic emotions as joy and
surprise. Others consider admiration to be the highest degree
of satisfaction, which emphasizes the positive nature of this
emotional state. In general, the emotional state of
“admiration” remains a practically unexplored phenomenon in
psychology. Therefore, in our study, we will look for answers
to many questions regarding this emotion, first of all, in
lexical units that express the emotional state of “admiration”.
Having become acquainted with various points of
view of linguists on understanding the essence of a concept
that conveys emotions and feelings, in this research we define
this conceptual structure not only as a set of certain mental,
cognitive elements, but also as a person's evaluative ideas
about the concept itself, defined, associated with images in the
human mind. Taking into account the fact that admiration is a
combination (complex) of several emotional states, we
consider it possible to model the concept “admiration” as a
segmental concept, which is a basic sensory layer surrounded
by several segments that are equal in terms of abstraction
degree.
Appeal to the consideration of the features of nouns
for the study of the concept “Admiration” is due to the fact
that the actualization of emotional states is carried out through
the compatibility of an abstract name with various predicates,