SEMANTIC AND STYLISTIC FUNCTIONING OF THE LEXEME SON IN THE LANGUAGE SPACE OF THE NOVEL "MOTHERS" BY MARIA MATIOS

Abstract

The article for the first time in the semantic and stylistic aspect highlights the functioning of the lexeme son in the language space of the novel "Mothers" by Maria Matios, traces the variants of its semantic load and expressive role in the artistic system. Relying on the theoretical basis of vocabulary, semantics, stylistics and thematic scientific sources, taking into account the statement about the intersection of scientific paradigms in the study of literary and artistic text, using descriptive, comparative, linguostylistic, hermeneutic, discursive-analytical, field research methods, we examined the novel discourse, which is the voice of mothers who tragically lost their sons, relayed by the narrator, and records the text's "multilingualism" with its semantic fields.The study concluded that the image of the son carries a significant artistic and semantic load in the novel "Mothers", is a composite of the binary compound "mother – son"; the lexeme son reflects numerous hypostases of the image of the son in the multidimensional discourse of the novel, built on a combination of the personal and the social, the sacred and the profane, the transcendental and the material, and acquires a branched semantics, manifesting itself stylistically in different ways. The son is at the same time the child of the earthly mother, the Son of the Virgin Mary, the fabulous kitten-son of the mistress-mother. The lexeme son functions in the novel in its direct meaning, naming the descendant of the masculine gender in different age groups, existential contexts, in the aspect of professional and life choices. For each depicted mother, the son is the object of her love, care, upbringing, pride; support, hope for the future; a worthy person with a sense of duty, capable of significant deeds. The war discourse is especially emphasized in the work, in which the son becomes a fighter, a defender of his native land from the "Soviet", "racist", dies as a hero in the fight against the enemy.The semantic load of the lexeme son expands when he loses his life. The suffering mother thinks about her son as a primordial victim, and she interprets grief (the loss of her son) as inevitable and insurmountable, which does not give her further strength and desire to live.However, faith does not allow her connection with the child and the world to be interrupted.