VERBALIZATION OF NEGATIVE EMOTIONAL STATES (BASED ON STEPHEN KING AND PATRICK SUSSKIND'S HORROR STORIES)

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the study of the verbalization of negative emotional states in fictional discourse, with particular attention to Stephen King’s «Misery» and Patrick Süskind’s «Perfume: The Story of a Murderer».The focus is on such psychological and emotional states as fear, disgust, anger, despair, and loathing, which play a crucial role in revealing the inner world of characters and in constructing the narrative atmosphere. The analysis centers on the linguistic-stylistic, communicative-pragmatic, and semantic means used to express emotions: from emotionally charged lexical units to metaphorical constructions, syntactic fragmentation, internal monologues, and the depiction of bodily responses as a form of linguistic objectification of psychological experiences. The study highlights differences in authorial style, contrasting King’s dynamic, often brutal expressiveness with Süskind’s refined, olfactorily focused and subtly disturbing prose. Over 300 examples of emotional expression were analyzed in both original texts (English and German) and their Ukrainian translations. The research explores how negative emotional states are verbalized and how they influence character interpretation, plot development, and the overall emotional tonality of a work. Attention is also given to the interaction between emotional content and language choice, revealing the subjective perspective of each author through language. The analysis confirmed the scientific opinion that the verbalization of negative emotional states is a powerful tool for characterizing characters, constructing the atmosphere of a work, and conveying the author's idea. The findings of this research may be applied in literary stylistics, translation studies, and further explorations in the field of the linguistics of emotion. The article contributes to a broader understanding of how emotional language functions in narrative texts and offers insights into the relationship between linguistic form and affective meaning.