Verbalization of existence and actionality: the world as a way and as an action in the narrative of American country music

The concept of the human world as a domain of being from the broadest concept of the world as a universe (macrocosm) to the concept of the world as a sphere of human activity, including human consciousness (microcosm), sets the focus of this work, aimed at analyzing the expression of the world and the existence of a person in it in the American country narrative. The object of the study is linguistic units (syntactic constructions and lexical units) that verbalize a person's position in relation to the world. The texts of American country songs, in which the coordinate system “human and the world” is set, served as the material of the study. The analysis shows the presence of a certain connection between the transfer of beingness and the type of statement in the broadest sense. American country, which is a narrative, conveys the idea of a person's existence in the world (i. e. the fragment where the narrator exists and their inner world) supported by lexical units that actualize the idea of movement. Both the world itself moves, and a person as a mental and physical entity exists in the world through movement. At the same time, the world implies movement to the destination which is some mythical point that is difficult to reach, most often conveyed by the lexical unit home, and the world itself appears as a road to this practically promised land, which can be understood as the end of the line. Thus, the world appears most often as a space of action-movement with the agent acting / moving, the movement is carried out towards the place in the world to which the narrator belongs. Existence in the narrative of American country music acquires the character of action-movement and the agent in the state of action-movement, with the world actualizing as a path or an action.