Contextual use of phraseological units with transparent inner form in the English and Russian languages and the use of statistical programmes in their study

Abstract

One of the linguistic levels of the detailed comparative analysis of the phraseological unit (PhU) with transparent inner form in the English and Russian languages is the study of cases of contextual use of PhU. Such approach enables to choose pragmatic equivalent of the unit in terms of connotations dependent on psychological, intellectual, cultural, historical and other habits of either social linguistic culture. It has been analysed two ways of PhU use in the context: in their untransformed form, without alteration, in lexicographic form and in their transformed form with new structure and new expressive stylistic features. Data were selected from fictions by Russian and Foreign authors and from dictionary bodies. The aim of individual authoring transformations of PhU is gaining new shades of meanings of transformed PhU for stronger information influence on recipient. Achieving this aim is feasible thanks to ability of PhU to various occasional alterations, defined in phraseological stylistics by different devices. The selected PhU has been also processed with statistical programmes for determining frequency of PhU use in both synchrony and diachrony. In the course of our study it was analysed up-to-date computer software and estimated possibility of its application for retrieval and revealing transformations of PhU.