Festival as a cultural constant of festive Italian discourse

The article is devoted to the study of the concept of festival as one of the meaning-forming factors in the life of the Italian people. Understanding the holiday as a phenomenon that preserves traditional values is becoming important in a changing world striving for the unification of all cultures with the dominance of artificial meanings. Festival for the Italian tradition is one of the concepts that, on the one hand, preserves the people's memory, on the other hand, develops and enriches it without changing the living principles of the Italians. The paper describes the way the concept of festival was formed as an element of the festive religious and secular culture of Italy. The semantic field that forms the festive discourse allows us to consider festival as one of the important categories of the Italian language and culture. The purpose of this study is to describe the festival constant as a special type of discourse that is significant for the cultural and historical development of the Italian people. Such work allows realizing the following tasks: to characterize the festive discourse; to distinguish between the terms and concepts of the festive discourse; to designate the cultural and historical meanings of the notion of processione; to consider the problem of the complex definition of the festival discourse, which is often replaced by ritual or ceremonial discourse. The study of the concept of festival based on religious holidays showed that it is the category of festival that influenced the development and formation of the category of festivity and the consolidation of the holiday as the main deep value-forming layer of tradition and culture in Italy.