Phraseological units in the language of public service advertising: occasional configuration of the first type

Abstract

The paper covers the implementation of phraseological units in the language of public service advertising, as well as theoretical and practical aspects of phraseological units and their contextual use. The research is aimed at the analysis, classification of the cases of implementation and identification of the main structural and semantic classes of phraseological units used in public service advertising slogans in the Russian, English and German languages. The choice of practical material is stipulated by a growing role of public service advertising and interest in this issue. As a result of our research we analysed three thousand slogans in three languages taken from posters and websites. The author dwells on occasional configuration of the first type, introduced by A.V. Kunin, and considers the following stylistic modifications: dual actualisation, substitution, ellipsis, extension, permutation and other. A relevant classification is introduced which covers the stylistic modifications implemented in public service advertising slogans in three languages. The most frequently used stylistic modifications are identified. The most commonly used structure types of phraseological units are revealed in the article. No matter what kind of modification is explored the reasons of transformation can be the following: the structure of PU, the inner form and pragmatics.

Keywords

• phraseological unit
• public service advertising slogan
• rhetoric
• stylistic use of a phraseological unit