No 2 (2024)

The article deals with the semantic transformations Santa Barbara — the title of an American TV series — in the Russian speech. The study has been conducted on the texts dating back to 1992 (the beginning of the series’ broadcast on the Russian television) and up to the present day. Having carried out the contextual analysis of the use of the proper name Santa Barbara in mass media, Internet communication, colloquial speech, and mass literature, we have determined certain figurative meanings, which have been consistently formed in the Russian linguistic culture for 30 years. At the same time, the name of the TV series has been expanding its semantic volume and application. The first meaning noted soon after the release of the series was positive: a high-rank neighborhood, comfortable for living. Nowadays, it has practically disappeared from speech, but it is preserved in the names of hotels, cafes, restaurants, and residential complexes in many Russian cities. The other figurative meanings that are still functionally active today are negative: 1) an endless melodramatic TV show; 2) complicated, intricate family/love relations; 3) scandals, conflicts, plots. The last meaning is no longer associated with the TV series and characterizes complex conflicts in a variety of communicative contexts. At present, Santa Barbara is used, in particular, as a political metaphor in popular Russian mass media. We also note the uniqueness of the listed figurative meanings for the Russian speech and their complete absence in the speech of Americans.

The article examines semantic properties and usage peculiarities of words that denote individuals with low material wealth in contemporary colloquial speech. Words reflecting the division of people into the poor and the wealthy form rich synonymic sets. To denote the poor (as well as the wealthy) words with a long history, described in detail in explanatory dictionaries, are used. However, in new contexts these words lose some semantic features and acquire new ones. The article addresses such lexemes as ‘golodranecʼ, ‘oborvanecʼ, ‘bosyakʼ, ‘bosotaʼ, ‘nishchebrodʼ. Some of them (e. g., ‘bosyakʼ, ‘bosotaʼ, ‘nishchebrodʼ) are labeled as archaic in explanatory dictionaries. However, as contemporary contexts show, the stylistic status of such words has significantly changed: they develop new meanings, and then their “re-actualization” occurs. So, ‘bosyakʼ as a designation for a poor person belonging to the social lower classes of society, in modern speech, is increasingly being replaced by the noun ‘bomzhʼ, which is more relevant for today, while the word ‘bosyakʼ itself is often used to designate any negative characteristics of a person. The word ‘bosotaʼ also has undergone semantic changes. It is used not only to denote extreme poverty, but also to express the speaker’s negative attitude towards someone. As observations show, this word is quite familiar to modern speakers of colloquial Russian and is found in two accented versions: bosotá and bosóta. The use of the previously low frequency word ‘nishchebrodʼ in the meaning of “a person with low material wealth” has also being updated.

Since the end of the 19^th century a lexeme верги ‘incantations, charms, sorcery’ has been illustrated by a single example recorded by G. I. Kulikovsky in Yalguba (Karelia) in the dialectical and etymological dictionaries of the Russian language. Researchers tend to believe that the word goes back to finnish verha ‘sacrifice’, but an increase in the source base allows us to take a fresh look at the history of the word. Firstly, the lexeme верга is contained in the rite in the Olonetsky collection of charms (2^nd quarter of a 17^th century) and is currently the earliest fixation of the word in a singular form. Secondly, the dictionary of A. Neovius and the expedition records of 1935 in Koivisto and other places fix rituals containing the lexeme verha. In almost all the rituals with верга/verha the object must be thrown, which permits to suggest the Old Russian etymon (compare врещи, вьргоу ‘to throw’). The Finnish-speaking population from the contact territories could borrow the lexeme after the 2^nd half of the 12^th — the middle of the 13^th century, because the vowel e in verha reflects the change of the reduced vowel.

The author of this article applies the theory of speech genres of M. M. Bakhtin, developed by A. D. Stepanov, to analyze the plays of A. N. Ostrovsky. In particular, she considers the tyrannical characters through the prism of primary speech genres. According to the author’s point of view, a completely definite and stable set of primary speech genres defines such characters. There prevail imperative speech genres, which are associated with influencing the will of another person, namely, an order, a demand or a threat. The article briefly describes each of these genres showing that they are used by the tyrannical characters to impose their own whims on the interlocutors. The author confirms this conclusion by the examples (the behavior of Bruskov, Akhov, Karkunov). What is more, the tyrannical characters resort to didactic speech genres, which mainly demonstrates their opinion of themselves as “knowledgeable” (this distinguishes, for example, Kabanikha). At the same time, the tyrannical characters often use the speech genre of complain, which shows the weakness of their nature and lack of strength when facing resistance (for example, Bolshov, Akhov). The author makes a conclusion that there are wide possibilities of applying the theory of speech genres in the study of Ostrovsky’s plays.

This article is devoted to the analysis of “composite formations” in the text of D. I. Rubina’s novel “Maniac Gurevich”. “Composite formations” are units that are formally similar to compound names or compound words. However, their structure, semantics and functions are different. They cannot be considered compound words due to their difference from the latter in the internal form of the word, as well as a wide range of linguistic units that become components of such “composites”. In addition to nouns, their components can be adjectives, participles, verbs, adverbs, etc. “Composite formations” are characterized by multicomponence, this is characteristic of those units, the lexical and grammatical content of which are nouns and verbs.

The main function of such formations is a stylistic device. In the text of the novel, they help to create a non-linear narrative, to make it the very sequence of pictures from the life of the hero, which the author of the work considers to be the main feature of the composition of the novel. Such constructions are able to convey a situation or event through the prism of the hero’s perception of the actions of objects, their signs, all this merges into a synthesis of sensations and memories in the mind of the character and creates a special perceptual effect for the reader.

It is difficult to determine their linguistic status, when analyzing such formations. The problem arises whether the concept of a word is applicable to them, what are the semantic and grammatical characteristics of this linguistic unit.