Discursive Space of Morality: Content, Structure, Specificity (by the Material of the German Language)
The study aims to construct a model of the discursive space of morality using the material of German-language texts. Scientific novelty of the work lies in substantiating the spatial way of organising the discourse of morality and involving the theory of mental spaces as a tool for modelling the discursive space of morality. The analysis has shown that morality acts as a superspace that unites all spheres of human life through moral evaluation. The temporal discreteness and constancy of the moral discourse, its rich thematic repertoire, as well as the variety of lexical units representing its participants are indicative of the spatial form of its organisation. The analysis of the examples of the most common collocations in modern German with the basic component “Moral” revealed the close connection of morality with Christianity and the presence of negative transformations in the sphere of moral consciousness. By considering morality in the diachronic aspect the researcher was able to discover the presence of constants of the moral discourse, which are the MORAL, RELIGION and VERBRECHEN concepts. As a result of the study, a model of the discursive space of morality has been constructed, its features conditioned by the specificity of morality itself have been identified, its basic and secondary components have been determined. It has been found that the discursive space of morality has a complex multilevel structure, it is constant and covers all periods of time.