Feelings... what they are everyone can see
Paraphrasing the very famous definition of the horse by Father Baka, the title of the present article is referring to the complicated nature of FEELINGS and to many ways of expressing them in language. The paper is an attempt to present scientific researches that have been engaged hitherto about FEELINGS. It also shows the perspective of development in this domain. Being indefinable, feelings are often described in definitions through their entanglement either with the cause or with the effect they produce. The former way of depicting their nature was used in the poststructuralism, the later in the cognitivism. Hundreds of phraseologies express the look of the body correlated with the feelings. Both ways refer to how the things normally are, so they use the prototype. Different is the scale and the way of grammaticalization and lexicalization of FEELINGS. In cognitive models, the linguists present the conceptualization of FEELINGS as well as the difference between FEELINGS OF SHORT and LONG DURATION which find a rich exemplification in language. There are three types of processes which influence the category of FEELINGS:
– lexicalization of the intensity of an EMOTION,
– negative valuation of the intensity of an EMOTION,
– scenario of destruction.
Further researches regarding FEELINGS should evolve into a more contrastive direction, they should enclose grammatical markers of emotions, blending theory and constructing the scene of EMOTIONS.