Linguistic and cultural characteristics of the lexical-semantic field «Réalité russe» in the novel «Ideal» by F. Beigbeder

Abstract

The article discusses and defines the content of the lexical and semantic field «Russian reality» in modern literature on the example of the novel by F. Beigbeder «Au secours, pardon» («Ideal»). The author of the selected work F. Beigbeder is a popular modern French writer, the winner of the famous literary award «Renaudot». F. Beigbeder is known in the literary world as a prominent representative of mass literature. The images created by the writer on the pages of novels are understandable and close to the reader. The style and linguistic units used in the works deserve special attention, since F. Beigbeder’s novels are characterized by intertextuality, the method of quoting cult classical works, the principle of ambivalence, and autobiography. The text under consideration is no exception. In it, the abovementioned techniques and principles are applied by merging the author with the narrator, shifting styles and genres in the work, using irony, and the presence of thematic images and representations. The analysis of entire thematic blocks in a work of fiction remains an urgent linguistic problem, since lexical and semantic research allows us to consider thematic groupings of words from the point of view of psycholinguistics, thenational cultural component. In the work under study, a significant place is given to the formation of images, ideas, stereotypes, and mythologies about Russian reality, which served as a rich material for building a lexical and semantic field with the same name. In addition, the image of Russian reality is reflected in the novel not directly, but through the perception of female characters, through the interpretation and explication of the concept «female beauty». This fact is even more interesting for the description of the selected field. The main results of the research are, first of all, the formation of the lexical-semantic field «Russian reality» (réalité russe) on the basis of linguistic units selected by the continuous sampling method from the text of the work in French and the linguistic-cultural analysis of the factual material with the indication of the percentage of filling the core and periphery of the analyzed lexical-semantic field.