Abstract

In this paper we investigate lexical, semantic und pragmatic aspects of pejorative nouns which play an important role as language means of verbal aggression. The basis of study are nouns in the German and Croatian language used in the speech act of insult. The aim of this paper is to describe relative pejoratives, i.e. nouns which have both a neutral and pejorative meaning when used to refer to individuals. The following points will be investigated: semantic fields that the relative pejoratives belong to, their use in sentences, as well as similarities and differences between the two languages. The lexical aspect of pejoratives togetherwith their semantic and pragmatic characteristics will be described.