Russian Official Reflection in Russian Language Winged Units

Abstract

The article analyzes functioning of winged units nominating officials in literary and publicistic texts included in the Russian National Corpus. The authors consider that every winged phrase is a combination of mental ideas of the nation. Thus, winged units are important concepts verbalisators though they are found at the semantic field periphery. The article brings out the differences in the usage of winged units with the common seme “official” in texts by native Russian speakers which allows to reconstruct the image of an official existing in the Russian linguistic picture of the world. Most units can be found at the periphery of the semantic field and thus cannot claim to be universal in nominating officials because of low frequency of their use. The most universal nominations for officials are the following ones: Derzhimorda, Kuvshinnoe rylo, Schvonder, Sergeant Prishibeyev, Akaky Akakievich Bashmachkin, that can be related to the near periphery of the concept “Official” field verbalisators. The analysis of winged units’ meanings with the seme “official” allows specifying ideas of an official in the Russian linguistic picture of the world: the majority of the winged units convey a negative attitude of native speakers to officials.