Creativity of Precedents: from Word to Text. The Boundaries of Actualization (on the Material of English and Russian Languages)

Abstract

The aim of the study is to describe the ways of creating precedents in language, the possibilities of their realization, characteristic of ethnic language and culture. The article considers the situations of using precedent units in speech communication on the material of English and Russian languages. The analysis of the use of precedent units revealed the creative potential of the phenomenon of precedence and identified a number of opportunities for further study of the phenomenon in the activity aspect. The scientific novelty of the research consists in the fact that for the first time creative possibilities of precedent language units are considered within the framework of the system-activity approach to the study of speech communication in linguistic, cognitive and communicative dimensions. As a result of the study it was established that the creative process of making a precedent unit is an individual cognitive-communicative activity of each of the communicators. Highly communicative communicators are most active in the generation of creative texts; precedence in speech is justified by the framework of conjugation of cognitive activity, communicative activity of the author and cognitive activity, communicative activity of the recipient of speech communication.