Sincerity in Lithuanian epistolarity: Between truth and emotion

2020

AbstractThis paper investigates the lexical representation of sincerity in Lithuanian epistolarity throughout the twentieth century. Drawing on data from the corpus of Lithuanian letters and employing the techniques of corpus, statistical and philological analysis, this paper explores the use, frequency and context of occurrence of the four sets of lexical stems: atvir- (‘open’, ‘frank’), nuošird- (‘sincere’, ‘honest’), šird- (‘heart’), and tikr- (‘authentic’, ‘genuine’, ‘real’). As each of these lexical stems foreground different semantic shades of sincerity, they are treated in this paper as lexical variables that inscribe different degrees of an author’s sincere attitude (stance) toward …