Phraseology in the A.N. Ostrovsky’s “Notes” on theater

Despite a number of scientific publications of various types and genres, including lexicographic works, the phraseology of A. N. Ostrovsky cannot be considered sufficiently examined. Meanwhile, the necessity of such a study is obvious: Ostrovsky is one of the classics in Russian literature, his works are widely known, his plays are still on the scene and quotes from the playwright’s works are widely used by dictionaries to illustrate the word’s usage in Russian (including the Russian language of the XIX century). However, even in the four-volume “Language Dictionary of A. N. Ostrovsky” (2012), based on all the writer's texts, phraseology is chosen and described selectively, only to the extent that was necessary to indicate the possibility to use the word – which is described in the dictionary article – in the structure of certain stable combinations. “Phraseological Dictionary of A. N. Ostrovsky's Drama” by A. G. Lomov (1988) is limited only to the material of his 54 plays, leaving aside the phraseology of other literary works and non-fiction texts of the writer. Therefore, the phraseology of non-fiction texts by Ostrovsky has not yet been practically studied. In this regard, the phraseology of Ostrovsky in his publicistic texts is of particular interest.
The major part of Ostrovsky's publicistic works includes the so-called “notes” of the playwright about the Russian theater. Ostrovsky’s “notes” are very diverse in genre: from notes to be published in a newspaper, to written ap- peals addressed to officials, primarily theater administrations, and special commissions whose activities are connected with theater business in Russia. If to speak about the themes, “notes” consider the issues that Ostrovsky worried about and which he wanted the public to pay attention to: these were judgments about the situation in the Russian theater and the necessity to establish a national theater, about the copyrights of the authors for the theater, the education of actors, their professional training; also they include various projects and proposals regarding improvements in theatrical life. A characteristic feature of the “notes” texts is their publicistic character – appeal to discuss burning issues of the social life, open and direct expression of the author’s position, their controversy, desire to influence the addressee, a wide range of language tools, etc. Phraseology occupies a special place among these tools. The aim of this work is to show some features of the phraseology usage in Ostrovsky's “notes” on theater, indicating that this phraseology can be taken into account when describing the phraseological lexicon of Ostrovsky, and also when compiling general and special dictionaries of the Russian language, primarily the Russian language dictionary of the XIX century. Therefore, in the text of this article contexts are given as examples that can be used as illustrative material to compile dictionaries of the Russian language.
Phraseology in the "notes" of Ostrovsky on theater is quite numerous and various. In this regard, in our opin- ion, it is not inferior to the phraseology of his literary works. Characteristic feature of Ostrovsky's non-fiction works is the widespread usage of two types of stable expressions: stable combinations of predicative words, which are defined by scientists as stable phrases or phraseological expressions (proverbs, sayings, catchphrases), and idioms that are special – non-verbal – formations consisting of components genetically related to words or associated with words indecomposable, integral semantically and grammatically, used in speech in combination with words, taking with them some relationships and connections according to the laws of lexical and grammatical compatibility according to the lexico-grammatical properties of these language units (phraseological combinations and phraseological unities). The text of the article gives a description of the composition and features of such usage – non-transformed and transformed – in the indicated types of stable expressions. Observations on the usage of phraseology in the “notes” of A. N. Ostrovsky concerning theater allow us to come to several conclusions. Firstly, the conclusion that not only literary, but also non-fiction texts by Ostrovsky, primarily his publicistic works, can be used as sources in the scientific – including lexicographic – description of the Russian language in general and the Russian language of the 19th century in particular. This is also true and applicable to phraseology. Secondly, the characterization of Ostrovsky’s phraseological lexicon concerning its composition and usage should be carried out taking into account the language material of both the literary and non-fiction texts of the Russian playwright. In particular, the study of phraseology in the journalistic texts of the writer significantly expands our ideas both about the phraseology of the writer and the phraseology of the Russian language of that time. Finally, it should be pointed out that Ostrovsky's phraseology requires a full and objective scientific description in special – phraseological – dictionaries, but not only usage of some extracts and contexts from his works as examples to illustrate the phraseological unit in speech when compiling Russian language dictionaries.