Field Approach to Studying the Onomastic Component of the Linguistic Personality of a Serviceman

Abstract

This article is devoted to the application of the field approach to the organization of the onomasticon of the military community. A modern linguistic personality communicates using varied vocabulary, a special place being occupied by proper names as one of the most important means of reflecting national culture. A highly effective approach to distinguishing and identifying systemic relations in the rich onomastic vocabulary as well as determining their structural, semantic, and functional properties is the field approach. In the traditional understanding of the onomastic field of the Russian language, the nucleus is made up of anthroponyms (personal names, patronymics, surnames, nicknames and pseudonyms), the near-nuclear zone, of anthropocentric proper names (theonyms, mythonyms, zoonyms and ethnonyms), while the peripheral zone, of proper names exhibiting features of the appellative-onymic boundary; at the same time, toponyms and cosmonyms are dispersed both in the nucleus and on the periphery, depending on the size of the object and whether it is well known or not. With regard to the closed military community, the field approach, together with the author’s anthropocentric criterion, allowed us to obtain a different distribution of proper names used by Russian servicemеn in communication. The centre of the nucleus is comprised of official anthroponyms of the full name (first of all, the surname), which are individualized, unmotivated, systemic and stable. In the peripheral zone of the nucleus are call signs and nicknames that precisely fulfil the nominative and distinguishing function; they are motivated, relatively systemic and changeable. On the periphery of the field, we find military ergonyms, chrematonyms, toponyms and chrononyms. Ergonyms and chrematonyms have weak individualizing properties, are motivated, systemic, stable and gravitate more towards the nucleus due to their frequent use by the linguistic personality. Military toponyms and chrononyms belong to the immediate periphery of the onomastic field, but are not equidistant from the nucleus: they are motivated and weakly individualize what is being named. However, chrononyms are more systematized and more stable in time. The study sheds some light on both the features of the onomasticon of military discourse and on many general issues of the theory of proper names.