Semantics of the word kukla (doll) in the Russian language (dynamic aspect)

The article is devoted to integrative research into dynamic processes in modern Russian. It examines the peculiarities of the functioning of the noun kukla ( doll ) in the Russian language of the 20th and 21st centuries. Based on the analysis of the linguistic experiment results, the materials from the National Corpus of the Russian Language (NCRL), as well as lexicographic sources, the subject-conceptual content of the word kukla ( doll ), its pragmatic features and some characteristics of attributive distributors are considered. According to the analysis of frequency based on materials from the NCRL 2010-2021, it was found that over the past ten years the recurrence of the word kukla ( doll ) has decreased by 2.3 times. At the same time, lexicographic sources of the late 20th - early 21st centuries recorded new lexical meanings of the noun kukla ( doll ): “a soulless / weak-willed person”, “a pack of fake banknotes”, formed as a result of metaphorical transfer. Generalisation of the data obtained as a result of an associative linguistic experiment made it possible to record the expansion of the semantic meaning of the lexeme kukla ( doll ), which occurred due to both linguistic processes and the influence of extralinguistic factors. The connotative components of the word kukla ( doll ) meanings have been described, their majority is established to be ameliorative and neutral. Pejorative connotation is represented insignificantly. The results achieved prove the high expressive potential of the lexeme kukla ( doll ) in the Russian language within the analysed period.