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STRUCTURAL AND SEMANTIC PECULIARITIES OF PHRASAL VERBS IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE

A. G. Ivanova, M. Shubina

Abstract

linguistic phenomenon of the English language. Studying distinctive features of structure and semantics of phrasal verbs in political discourse in relation to their polysemy appeared to be out of linguistsВ’ scope. The research paper aims to investigate the major structural and semantic peculiarities of phrasal verbs within the context of a written political discourse, namely in the articles dedicated to the partiesВ’ Brexit discussion in the Parliament of Great Britain. The В‘phrasal verbsВ’ were chosen with the help of continuous sampling method and further subjected to componential and quantitative, semantic-cognitive analyses. The research revealed that the prevailing number of phrasal verbs in political discourse are polysemous and idiomatic, however, most of them are usually used in the first meaning indicated in the dictionary of phrasal verbs. Having overviewed the major structural patterns, we found out that the occurrence of В‘transitive phrasal verb + prepositionВ’ (e.g. to rely on, to accuse of, to take up smth) pattern was the most frequent one within the studied discourse, unlike the patterns, which are represented by three component phrasal verbs В‘transitive phrasal verb+adverb+preposionВ’(e.g. to give up on, to get out of, to lead up to). Examples corresponding to the pattern В‘intransitive phrasal verb+adverbs+preposionВ’ have been not found in the analysed material. The research findings make a great contribution to the theory of political discourse, as they describe the phenomenon previously neglected within written political discourse context. Moreover, the results are also valuable for the translation theory.

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