Figurative Representations of Alcoholic Hedonism in Russian Expressive Lexicon

The relevance of this study is determined by the need to examine the ways of verbalising alcoholic hedonism in the Russian linguistic worldview. The interaction of language, culture, and discursive practice forms a special communicative sphere of wine drinking that requires special linguistic interpretation. Alcoholic hedonism is regarded as a complex sociocultural phenomenon, a special form of value orientation in which the central place is occupied by obtaining pleasure through the consumption of alcoholic beverages. The objective of the study is to examine the Russian expressive vocabulary of the nominative field “alcohol consumption” with a special focus on the mechanisms of figurative manifestation of alcoholic hedonism. The aim of the work is a comprehensive analysis of the figurative expression of Russians’ stereotypical ideas about alcohol. The scholarly novelty lies in the description of linguistic techniques for the figurative representation of alcoholic hedonism, the systematisation of alcoholic expressive words, and the identification of sociolinguistic parameters of euphemisation of alcoholic themes. The theoretical foundation of the article is rooted in the contributions of Russian scholars in the fields of lexical semantics and the theory of expressiveness. The methodology includes semantic-stylistic, component, contextual, sociolinguistic, and quantitative analysis, as well as cross-tabulation of experimental data. The research material consists of 800 expressive words and phrases related to alcohol. These were extracted from lexicographic sources, the National Corpus of the Russian Language, digital sources, and informants’ responses. The authors identify the mechanisms of lexical expression of alcoholic hedonism. They clarify the semantic structure of figurative expressive words and determine the specifics of euphemisation of the topic of wine drinking, taking into account the socio-demographic parameters of the survey participants. It has been determined that the figurative expression of alcoholic hedonism is characterised by an ironic and humorous tone. This approach serves to mitigate the potential sensitivity and controversy associated with the subject matter

Lexical Semantics · Lexicon · Literal and figurative language · Meaning (existential) · Metaphor · Pragmatics · Representation (politics) · Semantics (computer science) · Vocabulary · Discourse Analysis and Cultural Communication · Language, Communication, and Linguistic Studies · Swearing, Euphemism, Multilingualism

• Semantics of Russian Expressive Vocabulary Connected with Drinking Alcohol

  Open Access•Xiaofei Zhang, Zhang Xiaofei et al.•Вестник Пермского университета…•2024

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