The functioning of phraseological units kozyol otpushcheniya (‘scape-goat’) and drat’ kak sidorovu kozu (‘thrash like a sidorov’s goat’)

The article deals with relevant issues of studying the functional features of phraseological units with zoonyms. Based on the material of the Russian National Corpus, the phrases kozyol otpushcheniya (‘scapegoat’) and drat’ kak sidorovu kozu (‘thrash like a Sidorov’s goat’) with a common zoonymic component goat are analyzed, in order to identify the features of their use in texts of different styles, genres, subjects, as well as the range of objects and actions designated by them. The descriptive method, methods of contextual and discursive analysis, and quantitative calculations are used. It is concluded that the phrase kozyol otpushcheniya is more commonly used in modern Russian, predominating in non-fiction texts on political, economic, and social topics and designating an individual, groups of people, public institutions, etc. The phraseological unit drat’ kak sidorovu kozu is used more often in literary texts, denoting interpersonal (mostly family) relationships of people. The differences are explained by the meaning, structure, stylistic coloring, and the degree of expressiveness of these phraseological units: the phrase kozyol otpushcheniya names a person by his social role (this role can be extended to any subject of social relations), is characterized by a substantive structure, is more free syntactically, and falls within the scope of literary language, while the phrase drat ’kak sidorovu kozu designates a person as an object of intense physical influence, has a verbal structure with a comparative construction, which limits its syntactic roles, and is characterized by expressiveness, national flavor, and colloquial (non-literary) character.