A Corpus-Based Comparative Study of Animal Idioms Applied in Contemporary Journalistic Texts

The present paper deals with lexical and semantic features of selected animal idioms as reflected in the actual use in the journalistic style. They are investigated within the textual corpora English Web 2020 (enTenTen20) and Russian Web 2011 (ruTenTen11) with the help of the search tool Sketch Engine. The analysis of the semantic properties of the animal idioms demonstrates that they contain both positive and negative elements of meaning related to pragmatic tools of influence and persuasion, which are actually influential on the receiver´s understanding of the surrounding reality; the contexts where they appear are divided into several categories for each studied language showing their positive/negative connotations. The outcomes demonstrate that their contemporary extent includes not only their definitions from dictionaries of idioms; it is broadened and subsequently reflected in the modification in the receiver´s mental picture of the world. Moreover, the evaluative function of idioms together with their discourse roles are described in terms of strong adjectives, possessive pronouns, modal verbs, and imperatives utilization.