Axiological Markedness of English Words of the Year

Abstract

The article is devoted to the linguo-axiological analysis of lexemes and neolexemes, which are words of the year 2023 according to the authoritative lexicographical sources. The scientific novelty of the study is a comprehensive assessment of the English lexis of the year regarding three aspects: semantic, axiological, and pragmatic with the focus on the value component. The componential analysis of some lexical units allowed us to understand their essential specificity at the paradigmatic level. The axiological approach made it possible to deduce valuable semantic elements – axiologemes, regarded as signs of linguo-cultural concepts implicitly integrated into the semantics of the studied lexical material. It is believed that they form a holistic world view. As a result, six axiologemes of both valuable and “anti-valuable” character have been identified: success, lie, misfortune, sadness, progress. In addition, we identified an inherent-evaluative and an adherent-evaluative nature of the deduced value components of the analyzed lexemes. The pragmatic approach allowed us to assess the semantic prominence and implicature of the studied lexical material resulting in the inclusion of some value components in the language axiosphere. It was found that the inherent-evaluative component of meaning is characteristic of lexemes with either positive or negative evaluation semantics, while the adherent-evaluative lexis demonstrates axiological flexibility. Lexemes with fluctuating evaluation and those tending to be negative, exhibit characteristics of occasional-implicit-evaluative lexis, which manifests itself in contextual changes of axiological markedness vector. Generally speaking, the functional load of the words of the year lies in their ability to be the markers of the averaged collective system of values with a tendency towards a positive way of perception.