Zootropes in V.I. Dal

INTRODUCTION. The article examines human nominations formed using animal names (zootropes) included by V.I. Dal in the “Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language”. This aspect of the analysis of the work, unique in its composition and volume of vocabulary, has not previously been the subject of research. The relevance of the study is due to the fact that Dal’s dictionary presents a real, living language used in a vast territory of Russia. The purpose of the study is an analytical description of the animal names used to designate and characterize, evaluate a person in Dal’s dictionary (19th century), as well as identifying nominations preserved in the modern language, according to the lexicography of the 21st century.

MATERIALS AND METHODS. The research material is zootropes contained in the “Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language” by V.I. Dal: in the heading of the article, in the text and illustrations, as well as the latest version of the “Large Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language” of 2014. Semantic, comparative, word-formation and pragmatic methods were used.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. About 90 units naming animals (beasts, birds, fish, insects, snakes and reptiles) were identified, which native speakers in the 19th century used to designate humans. 80 % of them are included in the corpus of zootropes of the modern Russian language and are recorded in modern lexicography of the 21st century. As the analysis shows, the names of animals are used to characterize a person’s appearance, internal qualities and behavior, to express a positive, sharp negative assessment and abuse.

CONCLUSION. Zootropes of the modern Russian language constitute a significant layer of vocabulary that has absorbed traditional Russian ideas about their values. The most important condemned human qualities that are designated with the help of zootropes in the 19th and 21st centuries are greed, anger, untidiness and sloppiness, immodesty, and uncommunicativeness.

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