SEMANTIC CHANGES IN THE LEXEMES DENOTING HEROISM

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study semantic changes of the lexemes denoting “Heroism”. The object of research is the following lexemes: heroism, hero, heroic, heroically. Research data includes Russian etymological and explanatory dictionaries. The Russian National Corpus provides the texts of different time frames. The research is conducted with the help of the component analysis, definitional analysis of the words denoting “Heroism”, contextual analysis and by comparing data. The texts of different genres from the Russian National Corpus are studied. The scope of the texts ranges from XVIII to XXI centuries. The study discovered the semantic components of the concept, its relevant and irrelevant meanings. The significance of the research refers to the establishing of the semantic changes in the key representatives of the concept “Heroism”. It is found that heroism and hero still have an ethical meaning like many years ago when the words came into the Russian language. The words mean “brave, self-sacrificing behavior in a dangerous situation” and “person, who acts bravely and selflessly in a dangerous situation”. Nevertheless, more and more often these lexemes are used ironically: “bravery triggered by the desire to show off”, “person who runs risks to show off”. Such contexts signal the change of the connotation from positive to negative. It is discovered that such semantic changes are observed primarily in the texts of modern media.