Language Means of Representing Numinous Emotions (Based on the Material of the English Bible Text)

Abstract

The research relevance consists in studying the specific sphere of human life that is poorly studied in linguistics – expression of emotions experienced with respect to the God. We specify substantive content of the term 'numinousness' and carry out its analysis from the viewpoint of emotion studies on the material of King James Bible. The necessity of differentiating emotive meanings verbalized in the text of the Bible into numinous (always positive) and anuminous (positive/negative) has been pointed out. As a result, three groups of lexemes representing numinous emotions have been classified: 1) an emotion of creature-consciousness; 2) an emotional cluster 'Mysterium tremendum' (awe, fear); 3) an emotional cluster 'Mysterium fascinans' (fascination, wonder, bliss, happiness, joy). The research shows that the analyzed lexemes are characterized with either positive occasional (the first and the second groups) or positive usual (the third group) evaluative orientation. It is shown that the reversion of an evaluative component in the language means representing numinous emotions is recurrent. This change is considered as a peculiarity of emotivity category representation in the biblical text. The proposed linguistic analysis of numinous emotions makes it possible to broaden scholarly knowledge of linguistic representation of inner self in the biblical text and to project a new prospect of further research in representing the category of emotivity in sacral texts in general.