Concepts SPIRIT and SOUL in Linguo-Semiotics of Theatricl Art

Abstract

The study is devoted to the problem of the correlation of linguistic and extralinguistic operations in the creative workshop of an outstanding linguistic persona, the successor of the realistic traditions of Russian and world theater, the great reformer of theatrical art, actor, director, teacher, theatrical thinker K.S. Stanislavsky. We chose the iconic sign-words of his “system” - spirit and soul - for analysis in all the versatility of their meaning considered in compliance with the semiotic and semantic theory of L.A. Novikov. The study searches for the code content of words in the system and provides the practice of their use by K.S. Stanislavsky, conditioned, firstly, by censorship (an extralinguistic factor), secondly, by the lexicographic practice, and thirdly, by the author’s attitude to the value of the word-sign in the process of its sigmatic actual use. The analysis of the semantic structure of the words spirit and soul (as well as some of their derivatives) in the semiotics of theatrical language is based on the description of these constants as words of the cultural code, as signs of the Russian mentality based on the theory of external, internal sign and the meaning which makes it possible to correlate the word and image. In the paper we pay much attention to the characterization of the lexemes spirit and soul as pragmemes from the point of the value core contained in them. The paper describes the occurring and development of evaluative connotations in the lexemes spirit and soul as part of the concepts developing; the study makes attempts to prove the preferred use in the complex genre of presentation of the “system” by K.S. Stanislavsky. The study is based on a large empirical material collected from the works of K.S. Stanislavsky - “My life in art”, “The work of an actor on himself” (with various additions and various developments of the subject), which illustrates the multidimensionality and multilayeredness of the concepts of spirit and soul , as well as illustrates the values of the phraseological environment, their symbolic nature in the system of theatrical language, and therefore, the language of theatrical art, their relationship and, on the contrary, “rejection” from each other.