THE FUNCTIONING OF RUSSIAN XENONYMS IN BRITISH LINGUOCULTURE (based on the material of the British national corpus)

Abstract

The article is devoted to a comprehensive study of the functioning of Russian xenonyms in the English linguistic culture based on the British National Corpus for the period 1985-1994. It is emphasized that this period is of key importance in world history and, in particular, for Russia, as it was during this time that a new state and political system were established, which is a key factor for the intensive description of Russian culture abroad. The article defines the term ‘xenonym’, outlines the main differences between it and related terms, and describes the extent to which this linguistic phenomenon has been studied. The article presents a thematic division of xenonyms, which includes such groups of lexical units as ‘culture’, ‘history’, ‘landscape and nature’, and ‘education and science’. The article describes in detail the results of the analysis of the functioning of Russian xenonyms in different types of discourse: spoken and written, which includes fiction, media texts from newspapers and magazines, and non-fiction, academic literature. The analysis of the functioning of Russian xenonyms also relies on data on the number of contexts for the thematic division of the linguistic units under study. Special attention is paid to a detailed examination of the most frequent units identified in the British National Corpus, and to highlighting the factors that influence the frequency of the functioning of Russian xenonyms. Among these factors, semantic adaptation stands out, which involves the formation of collocations and the acquisition of metaphorical and metonymic meanings. This article is particularly important for further research on xenonyms, including their functioning in the media texts of the British linguistic culture.