Morality as a subject: Variability of evaluativeness and transformation of meanings (based on the material of the electronic corpus of the German language DWDS-Korpus)

Abstract

The aim of the study is to determine the semantic and axiological features of morality as a subject. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the authors’ approach to analysing and describing metaphors-phrases with the common component ‘Moral’ in moral discourse. As a result of the study, it has been found that the abstract noun ‘Moral’, the basic semantic content of which is objectivity, undergoes culturally and socially conditioned changes and is able to transform its semantic content into subjectivity. Morality as a subject has an unstable status, is prone to changes in time, space and quantity. The strengthening of its semantic content is due to the use of the metaphtonymies ‘Moral siegt’ and ‘Moral sinkt’, which have the contextual meanings of UP and DOWN in their semantics, underlying the conceptual metaphors UP is STRENGTH, DOWNWARD MOVEMENT is THE LOSS OF VALUE. It has been found that in the German linguistic consciousness, there is a vector of negative orientation, while the lack of morality is a distinctive social feature of modern consumer society.