Desacralization of biblical expressions in modern discourse as a factor of recognition or levity?; [Десакрализация библеизмов в современном дискурсе как фактор признанности или легкословия?]

Linguistic sacralization is a fundamental component of the spiritual aspect of human speech and thinking. It has been an important object of philology and linguistics from antiquity to the present. Generation and recognition of the sacred and profane meanings of linguistic units, systematization in the linguistic consciousness of what has been seen and heard, random and regular phenomena and connections in sacralized and desacralized reality determine a differentiated approach to the study of linguistic sacralization. Basing on the mental-linguistic triad “sacral – profane – desacral”, we can objectively establish and describe the phenomenon of the sacral principle in the language and culture of the Russian people. Linguistic desacralization of biblical expressions is a secularized popularization of biblical phraseological units in modern discourse with a lower value register to actualize the semantic segment the addressee needs in communication. When a biblical expression loses its ameliorative-communicative function and acquires an expressive-desacral status with a stylistic effect, the value-semantic space of the language becomes relative, which leads to the loss of national, cultural, and religious traditions and to the formation of quasi-values in modern Russian society through the Russian language. The anti-value functioning of biblical expressions brings about the degradation of the person’s spiritual potential and his/her cultural and linguistic constants. Bibleisms create a special speech environment, within which the exemplary and normative language implies the parameters of “recognition” or “levity”, stimulating a reorientation towards material values and consumer “quasi-shrines”, contributing to the destruction of the sacred values of a linguistic personality and destroying biblical spiritual culture, creating quasi-sacralizers in the lexis and phraseology of the modern Russian language. © 2023 Association 'Rus'. All rights reserved.