ANALYSIS OF LEXICAL MEANS OF EXPRESSION OF EVALUATION IN JAPANESE NEWSPAPER DISCOURSE (ON THE MATERIAL OF NEWSPAPER “ASAHI”)

Abstract

Through the evaluation people interpret the world and offer evaluation to others. It plays a universal role in human speech-thinking activity and pervades human behavior. The evaluation has been studied by many researchers, as a result, several methodological concepts are formed. However, means of expression of evaluation and the features of their functioning remain understudied. The article aims to analyze lexical means of expression of evaluation in Japanese newspaper discourse. The material of the research is the articles of Japanese digital newspaper “Asahi” devoted to Russia-Japan Relations, published in 2020 and 2021. The authors identify lexical means such as adjectives, emotionally colored words, stable expressions, linking words and constructions from the selected articles. Based on the analysis of the lexical means it is established that functional, connotative, and pragmatic evaluations are present in Japanese newspaper discourse. Most of the evaluation presented in the analyzed articles is negative, both the evaluation of Russian policy and the evaluation of Japanese side. The use of the corpus also suggests that stable expressions and emotionally colored vocabulary are more often used in modern Japanese newspaper discourse, in comparison with articles published before 2008.