The ratio of the categories "assessment" and "friend-foe" in English travel notes of the XIX century

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to determine the ratio of the categories "assessment" and "friend-foe" in the texts of English-language travel notes. The author and potential reader of travel notes are representatives of their own culture, and the described image of Russians is "alien". It is shown that the image of the "alien" is presented in many words using the concepts of "other" and "other". The opposition "friend-foe" expands, forming a quadriadum "friend: other, other, alien". Each member of the quadriad exhibits a different degree of axiological intensity. "Other" means a neutral or positive assessment, "other" - a neutral assessment, "alien" - a negative assessment. Special attention is paid to the subjectivity of the author's assessment of not his own culture. Evaluation can vary depending on various extralinguistic factors. As a result of the study, the gradual nature of the "friend-foe" opposition and its axiological marking were established. The author's perception of the new culture does not consist only of the extreme values of "own" = "good", "alien" - "bad". The evaluation of "one's own" and "someone else's" is not stable: "one's own" can be both positive and negative. The assessment of the "stranger" is also capable of changing from negative to neutral or negative. The change of cultural realities during the author's journey sets the evaluative orientation of the category and fixes it on the evaluation scale - "other" - "neutral", "other" - "good", "alien" -"bad". The complex of lexical means that explicitly or implicitly axiologically mark the opposition "friend-foe" was also analyzed. This article for the first time analyzes the ratio of the categories "assessment" and "friend-foe" on the material of English travel notes of the XIX century. The genre of travel notes best illustrates the author's presence in another culture, as a result of which the border between "one's own" and "someone else's" is actualized.