Evaluative Vocabulary Denoting Dishonest Behavior in the German Language

Abstract

Unfaithfulness and betrayal have always been viewed as a crime from a moral standpoint and received negative evaluation since they were associated with a violation of loyalty to a common cause, the bonds of solidarity, friendship, camaraderie, love, fidelity, and deserting to enemy. Great sages and righteous people considered betrayal and delations as a terrible evil. This article deals with the semantics and structure of stylistically marked vocabulary denoting dishonest human behavior in the German language, in particular a delation, treason, adultery, betrayal etc. Many words of the semantics under analysis have an emotional and expressive connotation which has occurred through metonymic and metaphorical transfers of inanimate objects or animals, birds to humans. The metonymic model «a clothing item – a name of a person based on this clothing item» demonstrates high productivity in this regard. A distinctive differentiation of German nouns by subject and/or object of delation is due to the peculiarities of their word formation structure: composites are typically used to nominate informants of a certain organisation, and non-derivative (root) words are characterised by a broad context of use. In axiological terms, the vocabulary under analysis is of a distinct pejorative character which indicates the negative attitude of German linguistic culture towards delations, treason, adultery, betrayal and those who committed them. The derivation of evaluative vocabulary occurs according to the models and methods of formation of German literary language. Substantive lexemes are productively formed by suffixation and compounding, and verbs by a prefixal method respectively. As a further research perspective, it is proposed to consider this issue in a comparative aspect.