Эмоциональность в русском языке: с фокусом на соматические фразеологии, выражающие эмоции

Emotionality reflected in Russian language: bodily expressions-idioms of emotion

In many studies on the relations between Russian language and culture, linguists identified one of the most fundamental characteristics of the Russian language as “emotionality”, that is, the tremendous stress on emotions and on their frequent expressions, the high emotional temperature of Russian discourse, the abundance of linguistic devices for signaling emotions and many different degrees of emotions. A variety of expressive devices for signaling shade of emotions in Russian language is demonstrative of emotionality, sentimentality, generosity of Russian soul, and testifies that the emotional sphere takes a significant place in the worldview of Russian language speakers. Discourses of emotion in different speech communities differ with regard to how much attention is paid to the body, because the emotion is a very complicated concept, which combines feeling, thought and bodily movements. And the connection between emotions and body is encoded and emphasized in Russian to a higher degree than in any other languages. So in Russian somatic expressions of emotion, that is, bodily expressions of emotion are widely and frequently used. In Russian many body parts are involved in expression of emotional states and many bodily expressions more dramatic and hyperbolic than in any other languages. In this paper we analyzed idioms with such body parts, as the eyes, the eyebrows, the head, the hands, the legs and the heart. These idioms describe concrete movement or position of body parts, and it shows various emotional conditions of the man. The most characteristic construction of such expressions in Russian is the construction, where the person-possessor of body parts is expressed by the preposition “u”. Such construction describes a situation from the point of view of a person: everything that occurs around of that person directly influences on himself. Therefore in Russian bodily expressions are typically presented as involving the whole person, whereas in other languages they are presented as involving some parts of a person’s body, without any reference to the person as such. The frequent use of construction with preposition “u” in Russian conversation confirms that the Russian language pays great attention to what occurs to a person, in our case, what he experiences, what he feels. And it is certainly caused by emotionality, which is considered as one of the most characteristic characters of the Russian.