PECULIARITIES OF THE USE OF PHRASEOLOGICAL MODIFICATIONS IN THE ENGLISH JOURNALISTIC TEXT

Abstract

The article is devoted to the identifi cation of the role of phraseological modifi cations in the English journalistic texts. It has been underlined that the study of idioms used in the periodical issues is of particular interest in terms of phraseological modifi cations which are characterized by high expressive and pragmatic fullness. It has been found out that the main reason of the use of idioms in the English journalistic text is the author’s desire to enhance the expressiveness of the language because phraseological units add a certain humorous or ironic tone and meaning to the text. The analysis of linguistic literature and thesaurus dictionaries as well as English periodicals leads to the conclusion that phraseological modifi cations are commonly used in order to achieve pragmatic goals and expressiveness in journalistic texts. In the article the peculiarities of phraseological modifi cations in the English journalistic text have been investigated. A generalized classifi cation of phraseological modifi cations, according to which modifi cations can be semantic, syntactic, lexical and morphological, has been created. It has been defi ned that semantic modifi cations are considered to be most frequently used as they can be easily interpreted and have expressive fullness which increases readers’ motivation to read the entire article.