The dissertation is devoted to the study of the lexical-semantic field DISASTER on the material of the English-language media discourse on environmental topics. The basis of the work is illustrative material collected from electronic editions of American and British mass media writers, which were published in the period from January 2018 to June 2023.
The theoretical basis of the work consists of works on semantics (Baudouin de Courtenay, V. von Humboldt, F. de Saussure, D. Sperber, O. Espersen, K. Meyer, O. Potebnia), research of the lexical-semantic field (A. Bondarenko, I Bagmut, O. Bondar, I. Vortnikova, O. Gasko, V. Zhovtobryukh, I. Zavalniuk, N. Zasanska, N. Ivanenko, V. Levitskyi, L. Lysychenko, N. Meh, K. Mikryukova, N. Pavlykivska, O. Pavlushenko, O. Petrushenko, and others), media linguistics (D. Sizonov, L. Shevchenko, T. Hraban, G. Pocheptsov, M. Mamych, V. Halych, A. Bell, U. Meinhof, J. Smith, J. Shumin, L. Puling, E. Ofori, B. Ott, C. Walter, K. Tyner, X. Qin).
Currently, the peculiarities of the construction of the DISASTER lexical-semantic field, the identification of lexical units and the determination of their place in the structure and hierarchy of the field, the analysis of the frequency of usе of these lexical units in media texts require immediate study.
Based on the analysis of scientific research conducted by Ukrainian and foreign linguists, we investigated the peculiarities of the systemic composition of the language, analyzed different approaches to defining the terminological and methodological basis of the study, and defined the concept of the lexical-semantic field as a complex hierarchical system where all elements come into contact with each other and with the core of the field.
Two microfields are singled out: natural disaster and human-caused disaster, the main components of the lexical-semantic field are defined: the core is the archiseme DISASTER and its synonyms, the center is the names of lexical-semantic groups (landslide and avalanche; eruption; earthquake; famine and drought; hurricane, tornado, and cyclone; precipitation and flooding; extreme temperature (heat and cold); wildfire; lightning; agricultural disaster; climate change; biodiversity loss; violence and war; industrial disaster) and the elements that make up their composition, the periphery is the most distant component, the elements of which can be part of other lexico-semantic fields.
With the help of the latest version of English Web Corpus 2021 based on the Sketch Engine platform, we carried out a quantitative calculation of the frequency of use of lexical units in the corpus of texts, which allowed us to distinguish two groups of frequency. The electronic Internet publications The Guardian, The Telegraph, BBC News, and The New York Times served as a source of information.
