Ekaterina V. Ogoltseva

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

Moscow State University of Education

(Moscow, Russia)

Abstract. The article considers stable comparisons and other comparative units of the Russian language, in which the names of fabrics "silk", "velvet" and "satin" serve as a figurative basis. The author analyzes all possible features-bases of comparative structures with these components, identifies typical speech situations in which stable comparisons “like silk”, “like velvet”, and “like satin” can be qualified as synonyms. On the other hand, the article investigates semantic features of each of the compared constructions. Analysis of numerous contexts extracted from the National corpus of the Russian language has shown that "silk" is primarily an image of soft, thin hair, as well as of moral qualities of a person: submission, humility, obedience. The image of "satin" often characterizes smooth, soft, elastic human skin or glossy, smooth, animal hair. The image “velvet” expresses the properties of any flat surface (“soft”, “gentle”, “pleasant to the touch”, as a rule, “fleecy”) and characterizes a pleasant, soft timbre of a human voice or musical instrument. At the same time the authors consider the structural and semantic features of the comparative structures of other models, in particular, "as (as if, exactly) + relative adjective". As a result of the analysis, the direct dependence of the pragmatic properties of figurative comparative units on two main factors is proved: 1) the subtle semantic nuances of the word that acts as a comparison image; 2) the way to express the comparison image, and therefore, the structural and semantic model within which the comparison act is implemented. Variation of reproducible comparative models in which the communicative and pragmatic potential of the same image-substance is realized is a regularity of the language image system that ensures its dynamics.
Keywords: stable comparison, comparative structure, image of comparison, basis of comparison, synonymy, context, communicative and pragmatic potential, structural and semantic model of comparison, nest of images.

Full text of the article (PDF)

For citation:Ogoltseva, EV 2020, ‘Silk, velvet and satin (images of fabrics in the system of stable comparisons)’, Tula Scientific Bulletin. History. Linguistics, issue 4 (4), pp. 92-109, URL: http://tula-vestnik.ru/pdf/2020/vipusk_4_29_12_20.pdf (in Russ.)

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