The specifics of the functioning of the periphrasis in the journalistic text of the XXI century

Abstract

The article examines the periphrases in the publicistic texts of the XXI century, mainly from newspapers and magazines, and also partially from the oral media of 2008-2021. Periphrases are analyzed from different points of view: semantics, functions, etymology, syntactic structure, communicative motivation and pragmatic intention of the text’s addressee. The semantic analysis revealed five semantic groups of periphrases used in publicist texts (mainly of 2015-2021). It was found that the main method of periphrasis formation in the journalism of the mentioned period is the metaphorical transfer of the meanings of a single word or word components in a phrase; metonymic transfer is observed less frequently. In terms of syntactic structure, periphrasis equal to the word combination dominate; however, the ones equal to a single word are also noted. From the functional and communicative-pragmatic points of view, periphrases perform the following functions: secondary nomination, expressive, evaluative and euphemistic functions. The special mention receives the fact that the periphrasis performs the function of creating historical coloring in the journal texts of specific thematic headings. In terms of the richness of the addressee’s vocabulary avoiding speech repetition becomes an important function of periphrasis. In print and oral media, periphrasis is often a means of speech economy. It is concluded that the original periphrases created by the addressees of the publicistic texts expand the boundaries of use, functioning first in oral and print media; then, due to the frequency of use in the media, they penetrate into colloquial speech and claim the status of phraseological units in the long run.