Variability of Political Phraseological Units

Abstract

 This article analyses the variability of phraseological units in the Russian language. The purpose of the study was to describe key characteristics and functional features of variants of political phraseological units, i.e. fixed units genetically related to political discourse. The paper examines and systematizes the existing approaches to solving the question of the boundaries of phraseological variability and identifies those features of variants that distinguish them from phraseological synonyms, on the one hand, and from occasional modifications of phraseological units, on the other hand. The article defines variants as fixed units that differ in their plane of expression but are relatively similar in their plane of content. The study revealed that the political phrasemics of the Russian language contains phonetic, derivational, lexical, morphological and syntactic variants, the largest group being lexical variants, which include quantitative variants. Fixed units that go back to political discourse form different variant paradigms: binomial, consisting of two variants, and polynomial, including more than two variants. All of the above phraseological variants are actively used in the modern political journalistic text and have different functions. The data obtained are important for further study of ways to enrich the phraseological component of the Russian language in general and political phrasemics in particular. The results of this research can serve as a basis for analysing the cognitive and semiological mechanisms of the formation of political phraseological units, as well as for studying the functions of variable fixed units in political texts of different genres.