PSYCHOLINGUISTIC IMAGE OF HELA IN THE FILM THOR: RAGNAROK BY T. WAITITI

Abstract

The article focuses on the formation of the psycholinguistic image of film characters according to the psychological archetype the Destroyer. The work contributes to the creation of the holistic system of psycholinguistic images represented by characters from the English-language films of mass culture released in the XXI century. The indicated purpose determines the relevance and novelty of the research. This particular work regards the superhero fantasy film Thor: Ragnarok (2017) by T. Waititi. Methods of the research are the following: descriptive, method of continuous sampling, methods of contextual, stylistic, pragmatic and statistical analysis. The classification by V. Schmidt (2007) is taken as the basis for definition of the fundamental psychological features of characters. Hela embodies the Destroyer archetype in the studied film; her defining features are as follows: 1) The Destroyer is guided not so much by her own goals and desires, as by the highest good; she plans Asgardians’ galactic conquest of other peoples and races. The feature is revealed by frequent use of the first person plural pronoun, lexico-semantic group CONQUER and predominance of verbs in past tense forms. 2) The Destroyer is emotionless, her purpose is to fulfill the mission; thus her speech is devoid of exclamatory sentences and tokens to denote positive emotions. 3) She sees life in black and white; the trait causes the use of antitheses and antonymous pairs forming the lexico-semantic opposition groups LIFE and DEATH; 4) The Destroyer sees only two ways, namely either others obey her or die. It is revealed in the speech by the frequent use of first person singular and the lexico-semantic group RULE. 5) The Destroyer does not justify his actions, which is reflected by the confrontational style of communication, evasion tactics in conversation, frequent use of the second person pronoun. 6) The Destroyer reveals some hidden information, which is demonstrated by the tactics of self-presentation, the use of clusters of short, simple sentences and rhetorical questions.