Linguoaxiosphere of Society and Personality in American Drama Discourse

Abstract

The article presents the results of the study devoted to the linguistic axiological analysis of the XXI century American drama discourse. Contemporary drama discourse, due to its special linguistic status, is a space for verbal representation of characters’ individual axiological trajectories, the analysis of which contributes to determining the values, which are relevant for society as a whole. The aim of the study is to systematize the dynamic structural and content elements of drama characters’ personal axiological spheres and to define their involvement in the piece of social value paradigm, which has its linguistic reflection in modern American drama. The empirical research is based on the texts of the plays written by American playwrights in 2015-2020. Individual linguistic axiological spheres are examined in terms of flexible hierarchical structures, the dynamism of which is determined by the characters’ life experience. The method of linguistic axiological interpretation based on the combination of axiological analysis and discourse analysis is applied to show that the structure of individual linguistic axiological spheres presented in the contemporary American drama discourse is a simplified version of the social linguistic axiological sphere; it has fewer value dominants and evaluative vectors while preserving the diversity of linguistic means of evaluative representation. Linguistic marking of characters’ individual axiological spheres occurs with the help of evaluative utterances, which include evaluative lexemes. Their frequency is characterized by quantitative and qualitative fluctuations in the speech of different communicants and is predetermined by the evaluative potential of the word semantics. In American drama discourse, the individual axiological sphere has a linguistic representation not only in personal evaluative remarks, but also in the personage’s reaction to other people’s value judgments, as well as in the utterances where the object of evaluation is the character himself/herself. The discrepancy between the content-based evaluative vectors or the difference in the position of personal value dominants within individual linguistic axiological hierarchies can lead to communication failures. As a result of the linguistic axiological interpretation of individual linguistic axiological trajectories, represented in American dramatic discourse of the XXI century, a fragment of the current American social linguistic axiological sphere is identified, and the central value dominants are highlighted.