Article

Name: Linguistic aspect of studying hagiographical texts

Authors: S. A. Smirnova

In the section Linguistics

Abstract: In the paper sanctity is regarded as a semantic space and as a phenomenon of Russian culture. The author analyzes the hagiographic texts of the XI – XVII centuries, describing the lives and the spiritual path of Russian venerable saints. The research is based on the method of the situational semantic and framing analysis by A. Kamalova. The «surface-syntactic» and «surface-semantic» levels of the frame permit to determine the kernel of analyzed area according to two models. The first model presumes that attribute ‘saint’ is characterizing nouns nominating the God, the Virgin, the angels, the saints of God, the ecclesiastical ceremonies, books, religious fetes, etc. In the second model the ‘saint’ replaces the subject position and determines the saints of God; the verbs signify the meaning of sacral actions, discourse, perception, etc. The «thematic» level characterizes the periphery of semantic area and defines the scenic connections exemplary for the lives of saints, namely: the saint – devotional parents, the saint – moral exploit, the saint – probations, and so on. The «narrative» frame level lines up the moral path screenplay of the saint.

Keywords: word, saint, saintship, hagiography (lives of saints), frame, methods

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