Peculiar Functioning Features of the English Idiom «Under the Shadow» in Destructive Context

Authors

  • Valentina E. Khrabrova National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18413/2712-7451-2020-39-4-652-661

Keywords:

shadow, phraseological preposition, pragmatic function, menacing, connotation, deteriorative, appraisive semantics

Abstract

The article aims to research the idiom under the shadow of with the view to revealing the main peculiarities of its functioning in sentences and complex collocations in menacing discourse. The method of object-oriented sampling is employed to select materials from the British National Corpus (BNC), the Intelligent Web-based Corpus (IWeb), articles, their titles, books, whose choice is determined by their deteriorative evaluative relatedness. Based on the lexicographic method, we define the meaning of the analyzable idiom as «under the bad effect or influence that something has, which makes other things less enjoyable, attractive or impressive and be dominated by». The quantitative method of processing the corpus data enables the curtailment of selected research material from 500 to 121 units, due to the criterion of their compulsory attribution to deteriorative discourse. The distributive method is used to observe the components of the idiom in terms of syntactic and lexical co-occurrence and interaction within a sentence or phrase. The structural-grammatical analysis of the idiom reveals its role as a cohesive element, whereby other subordinate parts of a sentence or phrase are joined together to manifest adverbial and attributive relations therein. The idiom is regarded as a lexical support of the postpositional bundle of words and their semantical intensifier. The researched lexical unit accomplishes the pragmatic function, thereby conveying various negative connotations. The uppermost connotation of negative influence stems from the main deteriorative constituent shadow, which accounts for auctorial emotional expression towards indiscretions and terrible manifestations in the global world. From the obtained findings, it can be inferred that the phraseological unit under the shadow of comes across as an effective pragmatic device in sentences and headings of aggressive, threatening orientation, namely menace, reprimand, condemnation, allegation, and the like. The idiom exhibits a number of stylistic features of enhancing the emotional impact on readers by means of effective linguistic devices.

Author Biography

Valentina E. Khrabrova, National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE)

Senior Lecturer, Department of Foreign Languages, National Research University Higher School of Economics - St. Petersburg,
St. Petersburg, Russia

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Published

2021-02-17

How to Cite

Khrabrova, V. E. (2021). Peculiar Functioning Features of the English Idiom «Under the Shadow» in Destructive Context. Issues in Journalism, Education, Linguistics, 39(4), 652-661. https://doi.org/10.18413/2712-7451-2020-39-4-652-661

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Section

Linguistics