Mapping Emotional Lexicon and Ideological Meaning in the Novel Crime and Punishment: A Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

In this study, researchers intended to explore corpus-assisted Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of emotional lexicon and ideological meaning in the novel Crime and Punishment (1866) by Fyodor Dostoevsky, using van Dijk’s Socio-Cognitive Model (SCM) as its theoretical framework. This study addresses a gap in literary discourse by examining how emotional vocabulary constructs the ideological themes of guilt, morality, and redemption across different discourse layers and narrative phases. Additionally, the study traces Raskolnikov’s psychological and ideological transformation. For this purpose, a qualitative corpus-assisted research design was adopted to analyze the complete Pevear-Volokhonsky English translation using AntConc 4.2.0. The corpus was manually annotated for four discourse layers and divided into four narrative phases, with emotional vocabulary classified into ten semantic categories. Furthermore, it is important to note that the findings show that guilt is primarily expressed through free indirect discourse and interior monologue, somatic emotional language is concentrated in narratorial discourse, ideological self-assertion steadily declines, and hope and spiritual renewal increase as Raskolnikov moves toward redemption. The study further identifies six communicative functions of emotional lexicon operating across textual, cognitive, and social dimensions. Therefore, by integrating corpus linguistics with CDA, this research extends the application of van Dijk’s SCM to literary discourse and provides a systematic framework for analyzing emotional language and ideological construction in canonical fiction.

Keywords: Emotional lexicon; Ideological meaning; Critical Discourse Analysis; Crime and Punishment; Socio-Cognitive Model