CONNOTATIONALITY OF SUBSTANDARD VOCABULARY IN AMERICAN DETECTIVE FICTION OF THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY

Abstract

The scope of the article includes theoretical approaches to the notion of connotation as well as functions of substandard vocabulary in fiction. It keeps focus on the detective novel The Thin Man by D. Hammett whose lower register lexical units have been detected and analyzed according to the way their connotative meaning is manifested within the genre in the framework of the functional-stylistic, pragmatic and cultural approaches and marked by high degree of emotion, evaluative and associative character. Connotative meanings of lexical units are considered as a phenomenon of a syncretic nature, specified by the genre of the text, are interpreted in the process of discourse (determined by the genre), are characterized by diffusion and dynamism, and can also be spatially, temporally, gender-specific, culturally and pragmatically determined. Considered is the symbiosis of connotative components of the intralinguistic (reinterpreted at the associative-figurative level) and extralinguistic levels (functional-stylistic and idiomatic connotations).