'Statics in Dynamics': Non-Speed Properties and Phenomena Designation through the Metaphor of Speed (With Reference to Russian Dialect Vocabulary)

This article presents the results of a motivational analysis of Russian dialect and national vocabulary denoting sluggish people and slow actions. There are a lot of nominations for low speed, and they are characterised by high expressivity, and lexemes of different subject groups are used as designations. After analysing patterns of the development of semantics of slow motion, the author concludes that there are a number of prevailing motives, reflecting the idea about the characteristics preventing people from acting quickly, and defining the perception of low speed by naïve consciousness. These characteristics are divided into two groups: evaluation and physical ones. The list of physical characteristics shows that the image of sluggishness in Russian dialects is characterised by a mixed nature: hardness as durability and softness as the inability to keep the original shape; low, medium, and high temperatures. Sluggishness is associated with heavy or large objects. The latter feature is more widespread in the vocabulary of speed: cumbersome, bulky objects, as well as salient, ball-shaped objects, reminding of stout people, develop the meaning of sluggishness. Comparisons of an object with a sluggish person are included in the group of evaluation characteristics, as evaluation there is similar. Objects that seem simple, primitive, or show their owner’s low culture, have the same axiological motive in the development of low speed semantics. The same can be said about items of poor quality, not meeting the requirements or not fulfilling their functions.