Pragmatic potential of onomatopoeia in animated movies for children

This paper reflects the results of the investigation into pragmatic potential of onomatopoeia as a part of children’s movies. The enquiry into this subject was conducted within the framework of the project devoted to the evolution and functioning of language within films for children. The paper includes the analysis of onomatopoeia through language development aspects, stylistic and pragmatic analysis. In this regard our attention is focused on the semantic, pragmatic and linguistic characteristics of onomatopoeia. It has been suggested that the onomatopoeia performs different functions within the children’s movies acting as a strong expressive component, reflecting the level of speech development, conveying emotions, describing nature, supporting musical mood in songs, attracts child’s attention to the most important character or event, forming new hybrid words to convey extra connotations, participating in wordplay such as pun or parody, developing mental activity, linguistic intuition and social communicative skills. Keywords: Onomatopoeia, language development, pragmatic potential, semantic and functional feature, animated movies for children.