SEMANTIC FIELD “FREEMASONRY” IN THE LANGUAGE OF A. F. PISEMSKY

The subject of consideration in this article is the work of the famous Russian writer of the XIX century A.F. Pisemsky. It analyzes his novel “Masons”, an uncommon phenomenon in the history of the artistic texts language. The depth of fixing the real state of society and its language is combined in this work with non-trivial attempts to understand important social issues. The purpose of the research is to determine how the theme of Freemasonry, that is relevant to the Russian culture of the last three centuries, is implemented in the novel. The authors use a number of interrelated formal and meaningful procedures, which include the advantages of semantic, contextual and functional analysis. This allows identifying the specific of A.F. Pisemsky's usage of vocabulary included in the semantic field “Freemasonry”. It is found that the system relationships within the field are defined by two types of interaction: the relationship between the core and the periphery and the relationship between the thematic parts, consisting of vocabulary with a common component – a symbol, name, and gesture. The ways of including and interpreting the components of the semantic field in the novel are determined by Pisemsky's ideas about his readers as people uninitiated into the secrets of Freemasonry. Separate vocabulary and whole thematic complexes come into close interaction with the figurative, character and event plans of the novel, thus performing a nominative, indicative and aesthetic function. In addition, the speech of characters contains more different nominations and descriptions of objects associated with Freemasonry than the author's, which indicates his desire for an objective depiction of a reality segment related to the semantic field under analysis. At the same time, the language means of irony used by the author are not characteristic of Freemasonry itself, but of specific characters