PRECEDENT STATEMENTS IN HUMOROUS TEXTS OF MODERN TIMES

Based on the speech portrait of an intellectual reconstructed by L. P. Krysin, the article examines humorous works whose authors adhere to the aesthetic principles of the “12 Chairs Club” creative association (Literaturnaya Gazeta. 2023–2024). For special analysis, texts of small genre forms are highlighted, combined by a constructive method of transforming precedent statements. The transformed precedent phenomena are considered as a result of metalanguage reflection. The object of refl ection is the assessed precedent unit. The subject of metalanguage interpretation is a creative linguistic personality, the initiator of the transformation of a precedent statement. Metalanguage commentary is implicit in nature and consists of two components: the author’s own implication (‘please note: I am relying on a precedent text’) and inference knowledge, which the reader formulates himself based on the new author’s text. A set of ways to transform precedent units has been identified: lexical substitution; lexical insertion, insertion of a personal pronoun and a modal word; play with ambiguity; paradoxical development of original tropes and the invention of individual tropes; truncation and/or expansion of context; inversion; establishment of non-standard compositional, contrastive, and cause-and-eff ect relationships. Creative findings and linguotoxic consequences of transformation are noted.