This article discusses the conception, structure, and methodology of the Dictionary of Aesthetic Emotions (Словарь эстетических эмоций), a lexicographic work devoted to the vocabulary used to verbalise aesthetic-emotional responses in Russian. The dictionary focuses on lexical units occurring in texts of classical music criticism, and it records the ways in which affective, evaluative, and dispositional reactions to musical performances are verbally expressed. The study adopts a linguistic and discourse-based approach and treats aesthetic emotions as a fuzzy and gradient category, including not only prototypical emotional states, but also conventionalised evaluative stances that are connected with the recipient's involvement with a work of art. The article describes the dictionary's macrostructure and microstructure, the criteria applied in the selection of headwords, and the principles for identification of lexical-semantic relations. The work is conceived both as a demonstrative dictionary, illustrating authentic patterns of language use, and as a thesaurus, structuring semantic relations within a specialised lexical domain. To exemplify the methodology used, the article presents an analysis of the lexical-semantic field беспокойство (“anxiety”), showing how varied lexical units are organised and related in the dictionary. The study also points to the possible relevance of the dictionary for linguistic research as well as for educational practice, particularly in supporting the interpretation and verbalisation of aesthetic experience in the humanities.
Dzienisiewicz et al. (Mon,) studied this question.