COMMUNICATIVE-PRAGMATIC POTENTIAL OF THE LEXICAL ITEM MITLEID IN THE GERMANLANGUAGE INTERNET COMMUNICATION

Abstract

The article discusses the issues of identifying the semantics of individual lexical units functioning in computer-mediated communication using the methods of free associative experiment and linguistic text analysis. The results of a comparative analysis of the associative-verbal network of the lexical unit Mitleid according to the German language thesaurus, a free associative experiment and the analysis of the contexts of using the lexeme in the social network Twitter are presented. The novelty of the study is seen in the fact that it proposes a model of discursive text analysis taking into consideration the results of psycholinguistic experiments. The relevance of the research is due to the interdisciplinary approach to the problem of analyzing the text of modern media. The semantic dominants of the distribution of the token Mitleid in the context of its use are as follows: 1) an indication of emotional experience of varying intensity; 2) an indication of the target and performer of emotion; 3) an indication of the cause and / or relevance of the emotion in a communicative situation. It is stated that the same signs were identified on the basis of the analysis of the reactions in the German thesaurus and a free associative experiment, while the largest number of uses and associates reflect the conceptual content of the word under study. The authors conclude that a large number of conceptions and emotional-evaluative reactions and contexts expressing a personal attitude to reality may testify to a significant role of the concept Mitleid / empathy in virtual communication.