Funcţiile sociopragmatice ale lexemului “nimic” în discursul liric contemporan [Articol]

Abstract

This study investigates the sociopragmatic functions of the Romanian lexeme nimic in the lyrical discourse of contemporary pop music. Although, from a semantic perspective, nimic represents a negative indefinite associated with referential absence, discourse analysis shows that in musical texts it frequently functions as a discursive tool capable of restructuring the interpretation of experience. The analyzed corpus consists of song lyric fragments from songs performed by N. Barbu, Andra, F. Charm, Direcția 5, and N. Nucă. The study adopts an interdisciplinary qualitative approach situated at the intersection of lexical semantics, pragmatics, and discourse analysis. The analysis highlights several recurring sociopragmatic patterns in the use of the lexeme “nothing,” such as the identity paradox (“everything and nothing”), relational annulment (“there is nothing left between us”), teleological stabilization (“nothing is random”), the suspension of existential risk (“nothing to lose”), and identity restoration (“I haven’t lost anything”). The results show that, in contemporary lyrical discourse, the lexical minimalism of negation produces a high axiological and emotional density, transforming semantic absence into a mechanism for symbolic intensification and interpretive organization of experience.