Agioseme as a component of the semantic structure of religious vocabulary

The article is devoted to the controversial issue of classification of religious vocabulary. It presents a critical analysis of existing approaches to classification and nomination of religious vocabulary. The purpose of this study is to substantiate a new approach to classification of religious vocabulary based on the criterion of the presence of agioseme in the semantic structure of the lexeme.

Agioseme is considered as a minimal component of the semantic structure of a word, which has the meaning of holiness, which is often expressed implicitly or contextually, and allows the lexeme to be classified as a lexical-semantic group “religion”. Agioseme is identified using the methods of component, contextual and comparative analysis, as well as the functional-semantic method. The object of the study is Orthodox religious vocabulary.

As a result of the conducted research, a classification of religious vocabulary is proposed according to the following criteria: 1) by religion (Christian, Islamic, Buddhist), 2) by confessions (Orthodox, Protestant, Catholic, Old Believer, etc.), 3) by source (Biblical, New Testament), 4) by thematic principle, 5) by the presence/absence of agioseme.

The analysis of texts of different functional styles and discourses presented in the National Corpus of the Russian Language made it possible to identify several groups of vocabulary with the semantics of holiness, to analyze the phenomena of desacralization and sacralization. The results of the component analysis, the identification of the agioseme as a marker of religious context make it possible to differentiate religious and non-religious, sacred and profane meanings of one lexeme and to distinguish homonymy in different contexts.

agioseme, archiseme, component analysis, sacralization, desacralization, classification of religious vocabulary