Lexical Means of Love Verbalization in the English Language

Abstract

In the history of any national culture, issues relating to human relationships, such as love and friendship, have always been and still remain of paramount importance. Aspects and the peculiarities of such relationships have always been the cause of misunderstandings among people. The phenomenon of love is still not fully understood. Therefore, the article explores the conceptual aspect of the love notion in English, the means of its verbalization and its main components. The love concept, which is verbalized by the means of contemporary English, is defined as a certain abstract unit that reproduces the centuries-old experience of the people in the form of various notions about this feeling. Love as a complex phenomenon of various spheres of human life has a high status in many disciplines of different cycles, therefore the study of this notion is relevant not only in lexicology or linguistics, but also in philosophy, ethics, sociology, and other sciences. Various linguistic means for representation of love in English have been studied and the main components of this notion have been identified. The main components of the notion of love have been defined, the expression of the notion in psychological texts has been analyzed, and duality as a conceptual feature of love has been described. Verbalized ideas about the inner world of a person who is the bearer of a particular culture have been considered. The notion of love has been investigated precisely from the linguistic side, also because the culture of love in the European space is primarily a verbal culture, which is closely linked to its verbal expression. There is every reason to believe that love is understood as one of the main aspects of human life and is recognized as one of the primary factors in human relationships, which is reflected in the language conceptualization. Thus, the conducted analysis allowed to reveal the versatility and multi-component character of the notion of love in the English language.