Semantic modification of lexical units (on the material of text transcripts of the channel “Guide to the islamic state” banned on the territory of the Russian Federation)
The specificity of extremist-terrorist texts is due to the fact that they possess a characteristic conceptual sphere, that they are extremely manipulative in nature, and that they display internal and external precedent potential. Extralinguistic factors associated with the emergence of various methods of verbal manipulation, use of complex tools for dissemination of speech products and active manipulation of negative stereotypes in the minds of recipients require the use of linguistic knowledge in the study of speech products of extremist-terrorist orientation to explicate implicit meanings and establish the meaning of elements located on the periphery of the language, due to their ambiguity. The article describes the semantics of the lexical units "Lion of Allah" and "Caliphate" on the material of texts of extremist-terrorist orientation. The research material comprises transcripts of oral texts translated from Tajik into Russian. It is noted that the change of the meanings of lexical units, as a rule, outstrips lexicographic practice, in connection with which the lexical meanings of words, not fixed in the dictionaries, but commonly used in everyday communication are employed in the production of texts of extremist-terrorist orientation, which requires referring to a wide range of sources (associative dictionaries that record the predominant variants of lexical units in different periods of the word history, text data, as well as language corpora). The texts presented in the study are characterized by a high degree of metaphorization and symbolism, which is designed to give the author's style brightness, color and expressiveness. It is shown how the texts use the folklore tradition of the peoples of the East and the Islamic tradition, the reference to which serves to make the actions described seem more legitimate. In addition, the features of extremist discourse considered in the article make it possible to disguise verbal extremism as religious, artistic, and scientific styles of speech.