The article studies onomatopoeic lexicon of the full unabridged versions of three American novels:
“The Great Gatsby” by F. S. Fitzgerald, “To Kill a Mockingbird” by H. Lee, and “The Secret Life
of Bees” by S. M. Kidd. The study focuses on quantitative and contextual analysis of the
onomatopoeic words found in each novel from diachronic perspective. Research methods include
the method of continuous sampling and four operations of the method of phonosemantic analysis
‒ semantics, salient iconic traits, etymology, and summa summarum. Two corpora of lexical
material were collected – the contextual one containing contextual onomatopoeic word forms, and
the lexemic one containing onomatopoeic lexemes only. The contextual corpus was analyzed
according to the semantic principle of the sound source, the lexemic one ‒ according to the
phonosemantic principle of the sound type. Based on the obtained results, conclusions are drawn
regarding the author's preferences and trends in the use of onomatopoeic lexis in the American
literary text.