Comprehensive study of "happiness": lexical, speech and associative aspects
DOI: 10.23951/1609-624X-2026-4-36-44
The purpose of the article is to present the results of a comprehensive analysis of the subjective semantics of the emotive-nominee happiness, considered in systemic, speech and associative relations. The research material includes dictionary definitions of happiness; speech fragments including happiness, taken from the journalistic subcorpus of the National Corpus of the Russian Language; associative field "Happiness", obtained as a result of a free associative experiment. Analysis of definitions required methods of component analysis and the stepwise identification, the analysis of the associative field required the construction of a semantic gestalt in order to model the psychological meaning of emotive-nominee. The key tool for analyzing speech and associative material is a system of parameters that allows to identify the specifics of the emotional situation’s components. A comparative analysis of lexicographic, speech and associative data represented that it is the components of the emotional situation that play a key role in the formation of the subjective semantics of the emotive-nominee. As a result of comprehensive study, it was revealed that some of the units that fill the positions of components in the structure of an emotional situation of happiness are subordinated to a common semantic dominant, in this case dominant is axiological. Since the available associative material reflects to a greater extent the features of the paradigmatic and associative relations of the studied emotive-nominee, the prospect of research may be to conduct a directed associative experiment in order to deepen the understanding of the syntagmatic connections of emotive-nominee.
Keywords: emotions, subjective semantics, associative field, parameters, semantic gestalt, psychological meaning
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Issue: 4, 2026
Series of issue: Issue 4
Rubric: RUSSIAN LANGUAGE
Pages: 36 — 44
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