Linguistic and semiotic representation of pessimism in The Happy Prince and Other Tales by Oscar Wilde

Abstract

This paper focuses on indirect means of verbalizing the phenomenon of pessimism in the texts of literary fairy tales from the point of view of Linguosemiotics. The study aims to determine the linguistic and semiotic means that create the pessimistic discourse of Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince and Other Tales collection. Pessimistic discourse is a person-centred discourse type represented by a complex system of means showing the speaker’s pessimistic worldview and is characterized by its goals, style, and tenor. The study contributes to developing Linguosemiotics, Psycholinguistics, and discourse studies and enriches the knowledge about idiostyles. The study is based on the semantic and lingo-semiotic analysis of the ontological phenomenon of pessimism in fictional texts, applying the content analysis to ensure the results’ reliability and validity. Furthermore, the four-staged methodological procedure used in this research allows us to define a general literary context of the analyzed works, select the research material, establish the frequency characteristics of the symbols as lingo-semiotic means that create the pessimistic tonality and discourse of Oscar Wilde’s collection The Happy Prince and Other Tales. The research determines the symbols of nature (seasons, flowers), material world (colours, things of everyday use), distancing, and death (as an ontological category) as verbal triggers of the author’s pessimism implemented in the narration by the contextual markers of basic, adjacent, and related qualitative features of pessimism, which reflect its social, psychological and cognitive aspects. The suggested methodology of the given investigation is perspective within the scope of various genres.  Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.