Nataliya A. Nikolina

PhD in Philology, Professor of the Chair of Russian Language of the Moscow State University of Education

Moscow State University of Education

(Moscow, Russia)

Zoya Yu. Petrova

PhD in Philology, Leading Researcher, Department of Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Poetics of the V. V. Vinogradov Russian Language Institute of RAS

V. V. Vinogradov Russian Language Institute of RAS

(Moscow, Russia)

Abstract. The article considers metaphors and similes including ichthyonyms (names of fish). The research is based on the material of the Russian literature of the 19th – 21st centuries. The authors analyze comparative constructions, which serve to characterize a person. The work studies the contexts extracted from the "Materials for the Dictionary of Metaphors and Similes of the 19th – 20th Centuries Russian Literature" and from the Russian National Corpus. The article shows that the language of the Russian literature uses a variety of metaphors and similes that contain ichthyonyms. They serve to indicate various aspects of human behavior, human appearance and inner world. Along with the generic name – fish – and its derivatives, the specific names of fish are regularly used in literary texts; each of these names characterizes a character or a persona in its own way. Comparative tropes with the components under consideration are widely represented both in the Russian prose and in poetry. The authors note that metaphors and similes containing ichthyonyms reflect the peculiarities of the Russian linguistic world image. Well-known to native speaker’s names of fish dominate in these constructions. The names of fish in the composition of comparative constructions highlight stable features that are used in literary texts for the figurative characterization of a person. The designations of fish in comparative constructions enter the oppositions that are significant both for the general linguistic world image and for the metaphorical world image in a literary text. The description of the structure and semantics of comparative constructions and their classification make it possible to trace the dynamics of their use in the Russian literature over more than two centuries.
Keywords: metaphor, simile, figurative characteristic, names of fish, comparative construction, Russian literature, evaluation.

Full text of the article (PDF)

* The reported study was funded by RFBR, project number 19-012-00009.

For citation: Nikolina, NA, Petrova, ZYu. 2020, ‘Ichthionyms in the composition of anthropocentric comparative constructions of the russian literature’, Tula Scientific Bulletin. History. Linguistics, issue 4 (4), pp. 80-91, URL: http://tula-vestnik.ru/pdf/2020/vipusk_4_29_12_20.pdf (in Russ.)

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