Russian idiom v nikuda ‘to nowhere’ as a colloquial cliché and poeticism

Abstract

The article, based on the material of the National Corpus of the Russian Language (NRC), compares the use of the Russian idiom v nikuda ‘to nowhere’ as poeticism, on the one hand, and a colloquial cliché, on the other. The unit under study arose as a poetism in the beginning 20^th century and is found in the works of poets of all directions and schools, including Marina Tsvetaeva, Anna Akhmatova, Boris Slutsky, Genrikh Sapgir, Joseph Brodsky, Boris Ryzhy, etc. Having penetrated since the 1930s. into colloquial speech and everyday discourse, it develops the function of colloquial cliché, while continuing to be actively used in the function of poetism. The task was set to study the semantics of the unit in both cases. The analysis of the poetic and oral subcorpora of the NRC showed that the semantic potential of the idiom is realized in both cases in a very different way. The realization of the semantic potential of the idiom in poetic texts is much more diverse and complex; semantic parallels between the colloquial and poetic use of the idiom are practically not identified. Thus, the semantic potential of the idiom v nikuda ‘to nowhere’ allowed it to function consistently as poeticism, despite its use in colloquial speech.substantiation of adverbs.