Correlation of evaluativeness, expressiveness and emotionality

Abstract

The linguistic category of evaluation is a reflection of the logical category of evaluation, which expresses the subject's attitude to some object or phenomenon. The category of evaluation has points of contact with such phenomena as comparison, as in the evaluative act there is always a correlation with a certain standard, and modality, which, like evaluation, contains such elements as objectivity, subjectivity, and attitude. The distinctive features of the two mentioned categories from the category of evaluation are the absence of an axiological conclusion in the comparison and the limitation of the expression of modality to the level of the sentence, while evaluation can be expressed by elements of all linguistic levels. The obligatory elements of the evaluation frame are the subject, object and basis of evaluation. In literary texts, the source of all evaluative judgements is the author, who can put them into the mouth of the observer, narrator or characters. The object can be any element of reality, but most often people’s actions and qualities are subject to evaluation. Depending on the basis, there are axiological, intellectual, emotional, etc. evaluations. Although there is a notion of subjective and objective evaluation, we can only speak of relative objectivity. In connection with this criterion, we distinguish between evaluation in the narrow sense, associated with the subjective opposition between good and bad, and in the broad sense, where the object is correlated with the norms accepted in society. The evaluative semantics is revealed most fully by means of lexical-phraseological and syntactic levels. Lexical evaluative predicates are divided into general evaluative predicates, in which the evaluative meaning constitutes the denotation, and particular evaluative predicates, where the evaluative component of the meaning is included in its connotation along with expressive and emotional components. In most cases, these three components are co-present in a word, on the basis of which many linguists do not distinguish between evaluativeness, emotionality and expressiveness. However, there are differences: expressivity consists in the purposeful influence on the listener by increasing the impressive power of the utterance without changing the semantics of the unit, emotionality expresses the subject’s own impressions, while the evaluative component is associated with the reflection of the measure of conformity of the object to a standard in some quality.