THE GREAT WORD: LINGUISTIC AND CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS OF GRATITUDE IN SCIENTIFIC DISCOURSE

Abstract

Semantic features of gratitude are studied on the material of philosophical and psychological texts. It is established that gratitude is a multifaceted semantic category which social destination is to preserve confidence and peace between people. The feeling of gratitude depends upon social status, degree of benefactor’s responsibility for the problem, amount of good deed and degree of benefactor-beneficiary proximity. Ingratitude is a conflict-generating moral quality, it is inseparable from gratitude and in principle is interpreted by negation of gratitude semantic features.

Keywords

• linguistic conceptology
• gratitude
• ingratitude
• discourse
• semantic feature
• moral quality
• benefactor
• beneficiary