Reflection of the "human – animal" dichotomy in the discursive semantics of German zoolexemes

This research aims to investigate how human attitudes toward animals, undergoing significant changes in German-speaking society, are reflected in the discursive semantics of the modern German language. The article focuses specifically on examining the implicative semantics of German zoolexemes through the lens of the "human – animal" dichotomy, as well as their evaluative connotations within German-language media discourse. The novelty of this research lies in the fact that, for the first time, the concept of the "human – animal" dichotomy, presented as a three-component model, is utilized to describe the discursive semantics of German zoolexemes. The results obtained indicate that the semantics of German zoolexemes reflect human attitudes toward animals: the description of word meaning includes three components: an "animalistic" component, indicating the connection of the semantics to an animal; an "anthropomorphic" component, the main content of which is oriented towards the anthroponymic element; and a "relationship" component, which implicitly indicates which of the components – anthropomorphic or animalistic – is emphasized, and determines the pragmatic meaning of the lexical unit. Zoocentrism and anthropocentrism in the semantics of zoolexemes correlate with their evaluativeness, as well as with specific types of German-language media discourse.