LEXICO-GRAMMATICAL FEATURES OF MODELING THE WAR TOPOS IN S. ZHADAN’S NOVEL “THE ORPHANAGE”

Abstract

The paper provides a comprehensive linguistic analysis of the lexico-grammatical features involved in modeling the topos of war in “The Orphanage” by Serhiy Zhadan. The study demonstrates that to create the effect of perceptual presence within military realities, the author employs an extensive layer of military vocabulary (including the names of weapons and equipment, fortifications, and tactical actions), which reflects the transformation of a peaceful environment into a total combat zone. It is established that lexemes denoting emotions such as fear, anger, rage, and despair, along with jargon, vulgarisms, and obscenities, are devoid of pathos and function as markers of extreme psychological exhaustion, emphasizing the destruction of social norms and the general devaluation of life.
Substantivization serves as an important stylistic device in the novel, performing the functions of linguistic economy and psychological alienation. Its use implements several key mechanisms: (1) dehumanization and anonymization, whereby characters lose their individuality and are reduced to external markers, physical defects, age characteristics, or impersonal numerical designations; (2) spatial polarization, in which pronominal substantivates mark a paranoid division of the world into “us” and “them,” where the Other is perceived as a threat; (3) traumatic objectification, whereby individuals are identified through their relation to the war (statuses, wounds, shell shock), highlighting the unnatural and mechanical nature of war trauma; (4) sensory abstraction, where neuter substantivates transfer concrete sensations–such as the smell of destruction or tactile disorientation–into the domain of total existential states. It is concluded that the specific linguistic design of the work plays a crucial role in representing the chaotic nature of the war chronotope and reflects the transformation of the Ukrainian linguistic worldview.