Pragmatic Potential of Designations of Ancient Egyptian Realities in Modern Russian Media

The article is devoted to the consideration of pragmatic potential as a peripheral aspect of the meaning of foreign words denoting ancient Egyptian realities. The material for the study was publications in modern Russian media. The total array of the considered lexemes is 25 names and 280 examples of their use. The novelty of the work lies in the fact that for the first time the pragmatic zone of the meaning of words, that call the ancient Egyptian realities. Particular attention is paid to identifying the evaluative variability of their semantics, due to the informant’s communicative strategy and contextual word usage. Their structural classification into two main groups has been developed: 1) appellatives; 2) onyms. It is shown that the first group consists of those ancient Egyptian realities that are included in the vocabulary of the Russian language: pharaoh, sphinx, papyrus, etc., and the second group includes onomastic realities, which are divided into anthroponyms, egronyms and pragmatonyms: Ramses, Nefertiti, Horus and others. It is proved that appellatives have a high frequency. The largest proportion of units are lexemes with a positive pragmatic assessment.