Bilyana Mihaylova, Ekaterina Tarpomanova, Albena Mircheva
Papers of BAS Humanities and Social Sciences
Vol. 4, 2017, No 2
‘AGAMEMNON THE LORD OF MEN WAS GLAD AS HE LOOKED AT THEM’: A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF JOY IN THE ILIAD
Bilyana Mihaylova, Ekaterina Tarpomanova, Albena Mircheva
Abstract. The paper discusses one of the primary human emotions from a linguis- tic point of view. Joy is considered a basic emotion in many psychological theories and therefore it is interesting to trace its lexicalization by applying semantic and etymological analysis. On the other hand, the corpus-based approach allows for a quantitative evalu- ation of joy compared to other basic emotions. The paper is a part of a larger study that aims at analysing the six basic emotions according to the conception of Paul Ekman and Wallace V. Friesen. In the present research the semantic field of lexemes denoting joy was compiled and further organized in etymological groups in order to detect their origin and proto-semantics. The examination of the contextual use of the words reveals different aspects of the emotion: the existing scales of joy, who experiences joy and what are the reasons that provoke the feeling of joy. The language data are further subjected to statistical analysis.
Keywords: basic emotions, joy, the Iliad, Homeric Greek