Specificity of the Usage of Allusions in English-Language Business News Discourse

Each national literary language is characterized by its own mechanism of cultural information compression; precedent names are treated as one of the linguistic means of fixing and transmitting cultural meanings. The purpose of the undertaken study is to identify a corpus of precedent names that are distinguished by recurrence in business news discourse and to describe the features of their usage in it. The topicality of the study of precedent names (mainly related to fairy tales or literary works of fiction by European, North American and Russian authors) in business news discourse is determined by the constant evolution of this subtype of discourse and the exponential growth of implemented manipulation techniques in it. The study is carried out at the junction of the theory of allusiveness and discourse studies. The study implements methods of etymological, quantitative, contextual analysis of lexical units, as well as comparative analysis of texts of dictionary entries and periodicals. The scientific novelty of the research reveals itself in insufficient academic writing on the notion of allusiveness in business news discourse: to date, a thesis (2008) and under ten articles (2014–2023) on this topic have been published. The main results can be formulated as follows. Two (Scrooge, Shylock) of the eleven precedent names (Anna Karenina, Cinderella, Dorian Gray, Don Quixote, Goldilocks, (Dr) Jekyll and (Mr) Hyde, Robinson Crusoe, Rumpelstiltskin, Scrooge, Shylock, Tom Sawyer) are characterized as having a direct economic genesis. The analyzed precedent names have both constant and variable connotations in business news discourse. The precedent names function mainly in accordance with the business news discourse requirements of verification, appeal to experts' opinion, etc.