«RELICT FEELING»: HONESTY ACCORDING TO THE CORPUS LINGUISTICS DATA

Abstract

Semantic structure, semantic evolution and specificity of speech usage of the lexical units “por’adochnoct’” (honesty) and “por’adochnyi chelovek” (honest man) are investigated on the material of the Russian National Corpus. It is established that: the moral category of honesty is ambiguous from the axiological point of view; the speech usage of the lexical units “honesty” and “honest man” suffers semantic shift and redistribution of semantic variants and appearance of speech tinge; those exponents can function in certain contexts as ideological words – as they change their axiological sign into the opposite one in the course of language user changing; the honesty psychological status remains sufficiently indefinite; separate “honesty factors” (integrity, veracity, fidelity, sincerity, fairness etc.) are verbalized in the honesty exponents speech usage; attributive extension of the names “honesty” and “honest man” give evidence of this moral quality gradual character; honesty possesses a hierarchy of certain obligatory and optional features

Keywords

• honesty
• honest man
• ethical norm
• honesty factors