‘Fear’ and ‘laughter’ of F.M. Dostoevsky

The work uses the materials of the Dostoevsky’s Language Dictionary argues the key function of idioglossas fear and laughter in F.M. Dostoevsky thesaurus. Thus, the main method of the research is the lexicographic parametrization of the author’s lingual identity. The relevance of the topic being developed is the need for further search of the methods for reconstructing the lingual identity, specifically – the lingual identity of Dostoevsky. These idioglossas are the centers of the corresponding textual semantic fields, which are undoubtedly interconnected with each other in the writer’s worldview. The work presents statistical data on the use of the words fear and laughter in the texts of Dostoevsky and other writers, his contemporaries. The list of laugh situa-tions in the texts of Dostoevsky, proposed by Y.N. Karaulov and Y.L. Ginzburg, is broaden, for example, the laugh intention can be the desire to hide by the character some moral standards denial, the compensatory function of laugh, etc. We analyze the attributive relationships of the words laughter and fear emphasizing the idioglossary status of these words. It is concluded that the basis of Dostoevsky lingual identity is first of all Homo Ridens – “man laughing”. In addition, the analysis of dictionary entries fear, scary, fearfully, etc. of Dostoevsky’s Language Dictionary allows us to fix the reasons for the appearance of fear in Dostoevsky’s characters and of the author himself, the most important of which are uncertainty and randomness. This conclusion seems quite reasonable and does not contradict the results of the most studies of Dostoevsky’s language and creativity.