Contamination of Phraseological Units as a Means of Speech Characterization of Characters in M.A. Sholokhov’s Novel Virgin Soil Upturned

This article dwells on the contamination of phraseological units in Mikhail Sholokhov’s works using his novel Virgin Soil Upturned as an example. The writer pays much attention to the choice of language units and the ways of their organization in the context. One of the most striking features of his style is the concentrated use of phraseological units within a short text fragment. Based on semantic identification and component analysis, it is concluded that the created sets of phraseological units are connected by paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations, which determine their interaction and the degree of influence on each other as well as contribute to structural and semantic contamination. The characters’ speech in the novel contains phraseological units that have been contaminated. Sholokhov’s use of contaminated units to describe characters allows us to identify such characteristics as their social status and level of education, as well as emotional state, temperament, etc. The image is being detailed, expanded and refined by shifting accents and adding semes and connotations. Sholokhov combines the features of various phraseological units, thus enhancing the aesthetic function of the text. Such categorical properties of phraseological units as integrity of meaning and constancy of structure as well as imagery and expressiveness of the original phraseological unit are reinterpreted and transformed during contamination, thereby updating the image and intensifying the aesthetic potential of language units in the context and, consequently, in the text as a whole. Contamination of phraseological units, which is a result of their concentrated use, in Sholokhov’s works is nothing other than a conscious departure from the traditional forms of text organization, aimed at achieving creative goals and implementing the author’s idea. Further research in this area may be of interest to specialists dealing with stylistics, text theory, phraseology and the study of linguistic personality.