Lexico-Semantic Features of the Representation of Colour, Sound and Odour in the Kamchatka Sketches by V. M. Peskov

Abstract

This article considers how imagery and description are stylistically revealed in a series of traveling sketches “Love — Kamchatka” by V. M. Peskov: how colours, sounds and odours of real world are lexicalised by the journalist. The article reveals that sketches are saturated with words denoting colours or sounds. The colour lexicon mainly represents nuances and mixtures of colour, rather than spectral colours, and it is also often metaphoric. The sound lexicon is also variable: statistically, the sounds of nature (organic and inorganic) and civilisation sounds (people and engineering) account for more than 50 words. In both lexicons, we can see the words of “zero” designation: colourlessness and soundlessness. Although the Kamchatka sketches keep a relative balance between colour and sound designations, in some texts, however, one group of words can dominate over the other. The odour lexicon is quantitatively insignificant, mostly due to the fact that odour, once mentioned in the text, remains in memory of reader (smell of smoke around the erupting volcano) or is meant a priori, by means of stylistic reticence (bonfire’s smell of smoke). At the same time the semantic potential of the odour lexicon is enormous and it allows to reveal six contextual functional subsets of people, animals and volcanoes. The features of journalistic story, primarily seen as dynamic, rhythmic and underlying pragmatics of a travelling sketch, sometimes tend to slow down the process of reading, make a reader immerse himself into narration and stimulate his/her imagination. Refs 17.