The Functioning of Phraseological Units in Modern Slovene and Russian Journalistic Discourse

Abstract

 In this article, the functioning of phraseological units in Slovenian daily newspapers Delo, Dnevnik and in Russian daily newspapers Izvestiya and Moskovskij Komsomolets are analysed. The objects of study are phraseological items from text published in these newspapers from July 2018 to March 2019. The analysis includes the frequency of use of phraseological units in these newspapers, its dependence on the theme and genre of the text, structural and semantic features of these phraseological units and the most frequently used types of transformations. In addition, the analysis helped to select some concepts represented by phraseological units. Among them are the concepts of “success”, “failure”, “time” and “space”. Identified similarities and differences in the functioning of phraseological units show the cultural and social peculiarities of Slovenes and Russians. Among the similarities in the texts are a high frequency of phraseological units about world politics and a low frequency of such units about economics. There are also equivalent phraseological units that Slovenian and Russian journalists use in their texts. A peculiarity of Russian journalistic discourse is the wide use of transformed phraseological units and proverbs. In contrast to Russians, Slovenian authors use catchphrases, proverbs and aphorisms less frequently. Among the features of the Slovene press are the repetition of the same units and the small number of phraseological units in the texts about culture.