The ways of emphasizing the intensity of emotional experience in the hagiographic texts of the synodal period

The paper provides the analysis of emotive vocabulary usage in the hagiographic texts of the synodal period: The Life of Dimitry of Rostov, The Life of Hilarion of Suzdal, The Life of Mitrophan of Voronezh, and The Life of Tikhon of Zadonsk. The factual language material has been analyzed with respect to the complex approach to the language in use, i.e. intralinguistic analysis of language unit structures, paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations at various levels of the language hierarchy, and their functional realizations in the contexts under study. The markers of one of the most important characteristics of emotional experience - its intensity - include the use of lexical units expressing the emotions of high intensity in direct or figurative meaning, as well as non-emotive verbs with semantics of unusually active action or its abrupt termination to denote the emotional experience of the subject of action; use of words denoting opposite positive and negative emotional experiences or their manifestations in the same context; contextual specifiers of measure and degree; indication of emotional experience’s duration, emotional impact’s speed, the universality of feelings’ manifestations; tautological repetitions; gradation method. Comparison of the obtained results with the results of analysis of ancient Russian and old Russian texts makes it possible to identify the dynamics of methods of expressing the feelings of high intensity.