2024 Vol. 15 №3

This article addresses the problem of identifying hidden borrowings in the Russian language of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The authors pay particular attention to expressions that convey meanings whose semiotic 'form' utilises linguistic elements pre-existing in the recipient language. The mechanism of embedding a semantic calque into an already existing model of signification is illustrated using the example of the collocation kak po mne and its interaction with the original Russian marker of personal opinion po mne, which has a long history of use. A corpus study and contextual semantic and comparative analysis led the authors to conclude that the collocation kak po mne is a calque of the Anglo-Americanism 'as for me / as to me', competing with another form of hidden borrowing — po mne [for me / to me]. Coexisting in the recipient language with the native expression po mne, the hidden semantic calque appears as its structural-semantic variant with an intensifier.

The article also presents survey data from native Russian speakers, who predominantly classify kak po mne as a vulgarism or colloquialism. This categorisation persists despite the widespread use of the expression by educated individuals across various functional domains, including media, literary translations and film dubbing.

This article presents the frame environment, exploring its conceptual structure by analysing how linguistic units function within immediate linguistic contexts across various conceptual knowledge domains. It is proposed to define and distinguish between the theore­tical concepts of 'frame', 'cognitive context' and 'conceptual domain'. The English word 'en­vironment' was selected to describe the manifestations of frame structure at the linguistic le­vel. The etymology and definitions of the lexical unit were analysed using English lexico­graphical sources and texts and contexts from the British National Corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American English. Based on this foundation, the frame environment was constructed, encompassing the knowledge structures that define the concept of ‘environment’ and shape its linguistic expressions across various specialised knowledge domains. The au­thors hypothesise that while the generalised frame structure remains unchanged, the con­tent of its slots transforms under the influence of the conceptual domain, which affects the un­derstanding and structuring of information by a linguistic personality. The content of fra­me slots aligns with the conceptual domain, whose information scope guides the selection of lin­guis­tic means while producing a verbal message. In turn, the linguistic means describing the con­tent of the slots serve to reconstruct the frame in the process of understanding. Text ana­lysis has shown that the frame structure does not change substantially, with some slots pos­sib­ly remaining inactivated within a particular conceptual domain. Such a structure facilitates the connections of concepts and, consequently, aids in understanding and focusing attention when addressing background knowledge.

This article examines the image of 'flowers of evil' as an imago image — an imaginary image of a real object. The term 'imago' was first used in this sense by Carl Jung in 1912. The work proposes a novel approach to investigating the image of 'flowers of evil'. The com­pa­rative historical, analytical and psychoanalytic methods of text examination revealed that, in his novel À rebours, Huysmans espouses Baudelaire's celebrated image, representing it pri­marily as a notion of something bizarre, extraordinary, transmuted and dangerous. This is achieved through the reception of the image of 'flowers of evil' embodied by Huysmans in a series of vegetative appearances, such as the collection of exotic plants, the lotus in the hands of Salome and the nidularium seen in a dream. It is concluded that Huysmans uses phy­to­nymic images to demonstrate his belief that his decadent contemporaries, personified in the cha­racter of Jean Desessent, perceive Baudelaire's work superficially, inaccurately and too lite­rally, making them accomplices in the 'burial' of everything associated with 'old' values. Therefore, as a poetic image, Baudelaire's 'flowers of evil' align with the explored 'imago' methodology as they generate multiple interpretive chains representing independent acts of creativity.