QUANTITATIVE APPROACH AS A WAY OF VERIFYING THE RESULTS OF QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF A LITERARY TEXT (ON THE EXAMPLE OF WORKS BY CHARLES DICKENS)

Abstract

The objective of the article is to study features of verbalization of a subconcept “old age” in works by Charles Dickens using a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods. Foreign linguists are increasingly inclined to use the quantitative approach as an evidence base for the results of qualitative research. The study is conducted using a semantic-cognitive method based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative text analysis. As a result, the work reveals a hierarchy of cognitive features of the “old age” subconcept and builds its field model with the allocation of the pre-nuclear, central and peripheral layers. The results of the study can complement the results of extensive studies of the subconcept “childhood” conducted by other researchers and create a more comprehensive picture of the features of concept of “age”, which has not been studied before and which is verbalized in works by Charles Dickens.