The Mechanisms of Semantic Deformation of Some Biblical Terms

Abstract

The study analyzes the questionnaire material concerning the understanding of four Biblical terms: The Tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, to wash hands, the Apocalypse. The material consists of about 100 responses given by secondary-school students.

In many responses some semantic changes have been observed; they cause differences in comparison with a dictionary meaning. The analysis shows that they are mainly metonymic changes of various type, with the strongest tendency to make a Biblical term more concrete. The author comes to a conclusion that the reason for such deformations is a limited code of respondents. She advises training a proper understanding in possibly broad and various contexts.