Филологические науки /Риторика и стилистика

Сейсенова Ж.Е.

Региональный социально – инновационный университет, Казахстан

The sources of precedent texts

It should be emphasized that each nation selects only the precedent texts that correspond to its moral values, outlook, world view and outlook of their nation. An important stage of the study is to appeal to precedent – spheres of sources: it is important to determine which areas (religion, folklore, literature, theater, politics, etc.) are used in a given society as the main sources for the repertoire of precedent names, events, speeches and texts.

A precedent text is a complete and self-contained product of speech activity, is a (poly) predicative unit; complex sign, the sum of the components which are not equal in their meaning ; PT is familiar to any average member of the national- cultural community; from the cognitive point it includes invariant of its perception; the appeal to the PT is repeatedly renewed in the process of communication through the associated text of precedent statements or symbols.

The analysis of the relation between linguistic and cultural space of English people makes it possible to identify the main types of sources of precedent texts.

Data analysis helped to identify the following groups:

a) ancient mythology, Western European mythology as a source of precedent texts; b) the Bible as a source of precedent text; c) the works of W. Shakespeare and other English classics; d) lyrics of popular culture or media texts.

The antique mythological units represent the most numerous group. The source text backs to the ancient (Greek and Roman) mythology, the poems of Homer, Aesop's fables, literary and historical works of Euripides, Aristophanes, Virgil, Catullus, Lucretius, Ovid, Plautus, Seneca, Tacitus, Plutarch, Juvenal, Cicero and other authors, and philosophical works of Plato, Socrates and Aristotle, Caesar 's memoirs. For example, expressions such as the apple of discord; the golden age; the unwritten law; the lion's share; to cherish a viper in one's bosom; to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs; a snake in the grass; the golden mean; like cures like; forewarned, forearmed do not lose the meaning of relevance and are still associated with the current scenarios. The main reason for the stability of precedent units of this type is the sum of the following characteristics: regular reproducibility, storage in the collective memory and labeling.

Next we consider the texts of the Bible as a source of precedent texts. In a long historical period biblical symbolism was fixed in people's minds.

Calculation shows that in modern English speech there used about 150 of onomastically marked expressions. The names of Jesus, Maria, Golgotha, Armageddon, Sodom and Gomorrah are characterized by a high incidence in the artistic and journalistic literature, as they are the names of the primary characters and the realities of the Bible and long received textbook fame in the English-speaking world.

Next, let’s consider the allusive units that are precedents characters of Shakespeare. Typological selection of shakespearian units as a separate group is explained by the special situation of the linguistic identity of their meaning for English linguoculture .

According to A.V. Kunin, more than 100 of phraseological units are taken from Shakespeare, he enriched the English language [Kunin 1996]. Such expressions are fixed in dictionaries as stable linguistic units: to have an itchy palm; in the loss of question; a tower of strength; to take the tide at the flood; thereby hangs a tale; to clear the coast; one's cake is dough; a cat with nine lives; to saw the air; the observed of all observers; to be one too many; there's the rub; to make night hideous; every inch, etc. According to our estimates, the characterological relevance peculiar to about 50 of more than 800 words endowed with characters, including in descending order of frequency that are placed by Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Ophelia, Yago, Falstaff. The content assigned to the above-mentioned names associated with them are so stable that they are used in the speech without further explanation

The precedent names from Shakespeare are characterized by the ability not only to get the concepts, but also to generate associative concepts that are firmly fixed behind these names.

The next typological group embraces the texts selected from the sphere of popular culture under the name of the texts of mass culture, or media texts.

The mechanism for creating precedent is largely based on non-linguistic influence. This factor reduces the longevity of the song as a case of the text as well as in view of the fast changing tastes of the public need to constantly introduce new mass audience in the "product". By submitting a simplified sense and artistic content, which is adapted to the average rate of language, song lyrics operates with concepts of high relevance: “love” - All you need is love; Love me tender; « Life » - Life is life; « Patriotism » - Rule, Britannia; Born in the USA; Home, sweet home; God, save the Queen; «Holiday » - Happy Birthday to You; For Auld Lang Sine; Show must go on; Make whoopee; « Happiness » - Do not worry, be happy; « Age » - When I am 64; «Money» - Money makes the world go round; Put on the Ritz; Money, money, money; « Luck » - On a wing and a prayer, etc.

Among the above examples there is domination of the concepts of a high degree of abstraction. Associations belonging to such concepts are not subject to reconsideration, since they are characterized by a clear correlation with expressing concepts. On this basis, we conclude that such a property of linguistic units derived from the texts of popular culture, is a condition for their stability and durability.

Literature:

1.Кунин А.В. Англо-русский фразеологический словарь: Около 20 000 фразеологических единиц. – 4-е изд., перераб. и доп. - М.: Русский язык, 1984. – 944 с.