FUNCTIONS OF IDIOMS IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE

Viktoriia Chetaikina

doi:10.23856/6402

Viktoriia Chetaikina Ivan Franko National University of Lviv https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0332-7925

Keywords: idiom, political discourse, public speech, violation of a phraseological unit.

Abstract

The present paper highlights the role of idioms in Boris Johnson’s speeches on the beginning of the war in Ukraine in 2022. The total sample of phraseological turns identified during the analysis of the speeches of the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Boris Johnson, dedicated to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, includes 30 phraseological units. The main pragmatic function of the public speech is persuasion directed at influencing the listener or reader and shaping his views. Emotional information prevails in public speeches and relies on a wide range of language means reflecting it. Phraseological units belong to these means and their usage has its peculiarities. Since phraseological unit is one of the modes of reflecting thoughts, it is a clue to understanding speaker’s values, ideas, intentions and beliefs. Johnson resorts to core usage of phraseological units, including biblical expressions, as well as violation of an idiom presented by the replacements, extension of the base form (by means of evaluative insertions), inversion of the base form and phraseological allusions. As the analysis of the data showed Boris Johnson’s texts are dominated by neologisms, metaphorical comparisons, personifications, metaphors, epithets, hyperboles which are well-documented tropes in political discourse.

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