Festive Discourse and Conceptosphere of the Corpus Domini Holiday in Italian
Authors: Азарова Т.В. 
Published: May 2024

Исследование направлено на выявление основных характеристик, определяющих лексико-семантические особенности праздничных текстов на примерах, тематически относящихся к существующему в католической традиции празднику il Corpus Domini (Тела Христова). Основой для работы явились три текста на итальянском языке, написанные от имени католической церкви. Основное внимание уделено сопоставительно-аналитическому разбору изучаемых текстов. Проведен этимологический анализ основных слов, связанных с понятием «праздник» вообще и с рассматриваемым праздником в частности. Определено семантическое наполнение данного понятия, выделены особо значимые единицы, прослежена и выстроена его внешняя схема (концептосфера). Проведен дискурсивный анализ текстов по трем признакам (поликодовость, время, языковая личность). Определены основные черты, характеризующие особенности праздничных текстов и обеспечивающие их функционирование в пространстве праздника.

The study aims at identifying the main characteristics that determine the lexical and semantic features of holiday texts through the description of the semantic field and the construction of the conceptual sphere of the concept “holiday” using the example of texts thematically related to the holiday il Corpus Domini existing in the Catholic tradition. The basis for the work was three texts in Italian, one way or another emanating on behalf of the Catholic Church: a message from Pope Benedict XVI about the feast of il Corpus Domini and about St. Juliana of Cornelia (2010), an article describing the holiday on the Vatican information website, and a list hymns of the arrival of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary (Padua). The methodological basis of the study was a number of theoretical developments created by Russian researchers: the concept of the semantic field by S. N. Vinogradov, methods for analyzing the lexical composition of concepts (G. V. Tokarev, G. S. Shchur). The research, in a methodological sense, focuses on a comparative and analytical analysis of holiday texts: identifying lexical units according to partial affiliation, observing their functioning in the context of holiday texts, and forming the structure of holiday discourse. The authors analyzed the etymology of the main terms associated with the concept of “holiday” in general and related to the holiday il Corpus Domini in particular, determined the semantic content of the concept “holiday”, identified particularly significant units characterizing its conceptual composition, examined and modeled its external scheme (domain of a concept). The authors also performed a discourse analysis of the studied texts in Italian; on this basis, to model the polycode, they described the most significant words and analyzed the features of conveying the sense of time (chronotope), and studied the characteristics of the language personality of the holiday text. The main points that determined the lexical and semantic characteristics of holiday texts were: (1) the festive text contains code words that fix the basic meanings of the texts; (2) the festive text focuses on creating an atmosphere of celebration, which is achieved by the rare use of nouns of an elevated linguistic register; (3) the festive text allows a person to feel involved in distant events associated with the celebration; (4) knowledge of the history of the holiday helps a person form their picture of the world and understand their social role. The use of similar methods will allow identifying individual discourses in the festivity paradigm: ritualistic, ritual, ceremonial, religious.