The Riddle as an Object of Linguistic Research

Abstract

The article considers the riddle as an object of linguistic research. Today, studying riddles remains relevant, since they have not been examined from the perspective of cultural linguistics. The cultural meanings preserved in traditional riddles across nations have not been identified and described. However, filling this gap requires an analysis of the most prominent research works I the field. The most fundamental works on the structure, semantics, and pragmatics of riddles are considered in this article. The author reviews the ideas of Russian and international researchers on different aspects of riddle studies within the two major approaches — the philological and ethnolinguistic ones. The article stresses the contribution made by the compilers of collections of riddles to riddle studies. Different ways to organize collections of riddles are described in the case of Russian and English editions. The article identifies the ideas both common and unique to individual riddle researchers and summarizes their findings. The author lays groundwork for further research on riddles from the perspective of linguistics, in particular, cultural linguistics.

Keywords

• riddle
• narrative and figurative component
• metaphor