AXIOLOGICAL APPREHENSION OF INDIVIDUAL DEATH IN MODERN HUMOROUS DISCOURSE

Abstract

The article considers types of individual death in modern Anglo-Saxon humorous discourse. The purpose of the article is to research axiological apprehension of individual death in modern humorous discourse from the point of view of a recipient and a speaker. The chosen theme is topical because scientific research of the „death‟ concept is not sufficient considering the field of humorous objectification and value characteristics; moreover, there is an increasing number of mass culture humorous shows touching upon the death theme. The material chosen are the scripts and videos of 50 stand-up concerts, 20 situation comedies and 10 comedian films. The conducted research showed the following types of individual death: expected and sudden, which in turn are divided into death of fatal disease, death of age; murder, suicide and death of fatal accident, respectively. The axiological linguistics-based approach is applied, whereby each type of individual death is examined from the perspective of its acceptance, rejection and cynicism. It is also found that a wide range of language tools are used for humorous effect creation and assessment explication, e.g. irony, contrast, pun, absurdity, oxymoron, comparison, antithesis, hyperbole, litotes, etc. The prospect of research is to investigate the axiological apprehension of mass death shown in Anglo-Saxon humorous discourse.