Onomastic Metaphor in English Fiction
The purpose of the article is to prove the relevance of including the term “onomastic metaphor” into onomastics research arsenal. In the course of the research the following tasks were supposed to be carried out: to study the linguists’ approaches to describing an onomastic metaphor, to extract from the texts examples of precedent onyms used in metaphorical function. The research was conducted by applying the methods of analysis and synthesis of scientific works, the method of continuous sampling and contextual analysis technique. The hypothesis was that precedent onyms, used in the text for secondary nomination, can serve to realise a certain pragmatic impact on the recipient. As a result it was shown that precedent onyms can contribute to general expressiveness of the text, involve recipient’s background knowledge, generate extra senses in new environments and cause the recipient’s emotional or intellectual reaction to the message.