CONTEXTUALLY SYNONYMOUS NOMINATIONS OF THE REFERENT IN SPORTS MEDIA TEXTS

Abstract

It is worth noting the process of transition from traditional, denotative, structural approaches to the interpretation of paradigmatic connections to pragmatic and psycholinguistic ones, which emphasize interchangeability in the context and combinability, convergence of meanings in the lexicon of the native speaker, respectively. Common to both approaches is a focus on the context of the speaker and the communication situation, as well as consideration of associative connection, which is broader than semantic. We will be guided by these two approaches in this study. The anthropocentrism of modern English studies motivates us to turn to the human factor in certain mass media communicative contexts. Newspaper text as a unit of communication with special semantics has the ability to influence the reader due to the functioning of verbal and non-verbal components. The cognitive-discursive paradigm actively studies speech phenomena, which include the category of contextual synonymy and the semantics of a word in the aspect of its proximity or identity through the field of its emotional and evaluative characteristics. The proposed article is aimed at analyzing and establishing the peculiarities of the functioning of the referent nomination based on the material of newspaper articles on sports topics. It has been established that contextual synonymy is a verbalmental descriptor of the conceptual picture of the world during the comprehensive description of the denotation. On the material of sports articles, the means of creating nominative variations in the text are highlighted, namely: techniques of nominalization, pronominalization, numeralization, contrast, presupposition, use of class designation of people. Stylistic means of creating nominative variation are metaphorization, metaphtonymization, euphemization, antonymization, and periphrastic nominations. Within the category of contextual synonymy, the category of «AGE» is one of the defining descriptors in sport has been determined.