Precedent names of the Russian culture and history in modern Slovak media

The article aims to analyze the functional load of Russian precedent names in the Slovak media discourse as linguistic units that represent fragments of the national language picture of the world, in their correlation with modern reception in the Slovak media. On the material of the National Corpus of the Slovak Language (journalistic subcorpus), as well as the sites of the most popular national Slovak newspapers (Tyzden, SME, Pravda, Novy cas, Dennik N, Plus 7 dni, Trend, 24hod.sk, aktualne.sk, webnoviny.sk, Hospo-darske noviny, etc.) for 2004-2017, variants of interpretation and reinterpretation of precedent names in the Slovak language picture of the world are identified; linguopragmatic features of their perception and use by the Slovak recipient are characterized; the axio-logical component of the semantics of Russian precedent names in the Slovak media discourse is described. The systematization of the material in the main part of the article is determined by the source of the analyzed precedent units: Russian literature and oral folk art, the political history of Russia, Russian science and culture, Russian toponyms. Methods of semantic, functional and contextual analysis are used. First of all, metaphorical meanings of precedent names are studied, as they reflect the basic historical and cultural concepts and demonstrate a way of perceiving Russian history and culture by representatives of the Slovak linguocultural community. In the process of pronomination, the common noun is replaced by a proper name which embodies all the qualities of the group and becomes a synonym to certain events, phenomena and properties. The study showed that the peculiarities of perception of precedent Russian names by the Slovak linguistic cultural community, their interpretation and reinterpretation in the modern Slovak media discourse are caused, on the one hand, by the historical interaction of the Slovak and Russian cultures and, on the other, by various changes in the social and political paradigm of the recent decades. It is established that historical and literary names of the 20th century are mostly subjected to semantic reinterpretation. The results of the study allow concluding that precedent names are not discourse-specific: they are used in texts on various topics (political, cultural, sports, social, everyday, advertising). Names from Russian literature and history are quite frequently used, while names from science, sport and culture are rare. Thus, the representation and interpretation of precedent units in the Slovak media space demonstrates the features of the reception of Russian history, politics, literature and culture by modern representatives of the Slovak linguocultural community.

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