Multimodality of concepts of basic emotions in the English language fantasy discourse “The Witcher” by A. Sapkowski.

Abstract

The article focuses on researching the multimodal dimension of the linguosemiotic representation of concepts of basic emotions in the English language fantasy discourse “The Witcher” by A. Sapkowski within the cognitive-discoursive intersemiotic methodological framework. The aim of the work, whose object is concepts of basic emotions in “The Witcher”, is to reveal the nature and peculiarities of the multimodal actualization of verbalized concepts of basic emotions in the discourse of “The Witcher”, turning to functional-cognitive paradigm methods, with an emphasis on the primary art-dimensions of the phenomenon under consideration, in particular on the color and sound emotional ontologies as a tool of creating both reality and quasi-reality. The novelty of the research, where it is a multimodal utterance as a representant of conceptualized basic emotions that constitutes the core unit of analysis, is explicated by the author’s interpretation of the concept of a basic emotion as a multimodal intermedial discoursive construct, which determines an intersemiotic approach to solving the issue of developing a model of transition from the domain of visual and audial perception in the English language fantasy discourse to its verbalization, representing conceptualized emotions. As a result of our analysis, a three-dimensional representation of the concept of a basic emotion has been construed. It implies a gradual complication of coded conceptual emotional information in terms of being a consequential audio- and linguocolor objectivization of experiential emotional knowledge in the format of index, epidigmatic and formulaic signs; a complication of image information with fixing multimodal images as imitational, trope and symbolic signs; an axiological complication of linguoculturally-determined information in background and ambivalent signs. The perspective of the work is an in-depth comparative research of multimodal aspects of emotions in fantasy discourses of various linguocultures from the point of view of psycholinguoculturology.