EUPHEMISTIC NOMINATIONS OF MEDICAL REALM AS A MEANS OF CONTEXTUAL SYNONYMY IN MODERN NEWSPAPER DISCOURSE

Abstract

It has been noticed the apprehensible shifts within the underlying pandemic conditions, in dissemanting information by the mass media in the English-speaking linguistic culture. Mass media has been transformed into one of the main sources of information. The socio-political environment imposes media to implement new means of communication for information transmission. The proposed article is aimed at solving the problem of euphemistic nominations of medical topics based on the material of newspaper discourse within the cognitive-discursive paradigm. The expediency of considering the phenomenon of euphemism in line with the cognitive-discourse paradigm based on the contextual semantics of lexical units has been substantiated. The conceptual and terminological apparatus of the study is considered. The factual material of medical euphemisms is analyzed. Euphemistic nominations with a contextual-synonymous dominant, the method of their creation and thematic groups have been singled out. It has been found that euphemisms and dysphemisms are mediators of the category of contextual synonymy, actualizing emergent-metaphorical concepts on the material of medical realm. The following thematic groups of euphemistic nominations are singled out: human mental state, disease, male reproductive system, human actions, professions, food, and human physiological state. Metaphor, generalization, meiosis and antonomasia are the basis of euphemistic nominations with contextually synonymous dominance. The quantitatively predominant metaphorical type of formation of euphemistic nominations testifies to associative connections between cognitive thinking and semiotic reproduction. Euphemistic nominations as a manifestation of contextual synonymy serve to express and specify speech in mass-quality articles on medical topics. Contextual-synonymous units, having a huge pragmatic potential, become one of the main linguistic means of conveying denotative and connotative information.