UDC

81’373+811.111

DOI

10.37482/2687-1505-V203

Authors

Anna D. Bakina
Orel State University named after I.S. Turgenev; ul. Komsomol’skaya 95, Orel, 302026, Russian Federation;
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8217-1828 e-mail: heart-anna@yandex.ru

Abstract

This article discusses the realization of the intertextual potential of phraseological units of biblical origin. It clarifies the status of the biblical text as a constant intertext, which, on the one hand, accumulates numerous texts of different genres and time periods and, on the other hand, is a source of intertextual elements in the form of allusions, winged words and quotations, abundant in new texts. In this paper, a biblical phraseological unit is understood as a stable, reproducible linguistic unit which structurally can be presented in the form of a phrase or a sentence with a partially or completely reinterpreted meaning and is etymologically related to the Holy Scripture. Studying biblical phraseological units within the framework of the theory of intertextuality is most important to understand the special role of the biblical text acting as a global pretext and producing various kinds of intertextual elements that can be reproduced in new texts, preserving, in most cases, their semantic link to the original text. Phraseological units of biblical origin, in their turn, being used in donor texts, carry a powerful expressive charge, enlivening and enriching our speech, transforming and developing. The following research methods were applied here: analysis and synthesis, generalization, hypothetico-inductive method, contextual method, phraseological identification, and phraseological analysis. As an illustration of the theoretical aspects of this study, the most frequently used biblical phraseological units are analysed, examples of the use of biblical phraseological units in English texts of different types of discourse are provided. As a result, a conclusion is made that biblical phraseological units have high intertextual potential due to their ability to reflect the phenomena of reality and the speaker’s attitude toward them in a concise, felicitous, figurative and expressive form.

Keywords

intertext, intertextuality, biblical text, biblical phraseological unit, intertextual potential, intertextual references

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