Abstract
<jats:p>This article examines the functioning of animalistic metaphors in the language of the mass urban press of St. Petersburg in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, using the newspapers "Peterburgsky Listok" and "Peterburgskaya Gazeta" as case studies. Despite the active scholarly interest in zoomorphism in Russian linguistics, its role in the texts of the small press, which targeted a grassroots urban readership, has not been previously described. The aim of this research is to identify the animalistic metaphors characteristic of the discourse of mass urban newspapers from this period, and to describe the foundations for creating such metaphors and their functions in journalistic texts. The article examines zoomorphisms used to characterize both specific media personalities and generalized social types. It is established that the basis for creating animalistic metaphors in newspaper texts could be visual similarity, assonance, possible etymological connections, as well as mundane details from a public figure's biography. The study identifies a number of stable metaphors that became fixed in the language of the mass press in reference to personalities significant to urban and imperial life. The potential influence of specific folkloric and literary genres on the use of animalistic metaphors in newspaper texts is also noted. The functioning of ichthyonyms is analyzed in greater detail. It is noted that ichthyonymic metaphors could be introduced into the text to reflect a complex social hierarchy, particularly to describe the sphere of entrepreneurship and to denote various social estates and nationalities. The study concludes that a number of the identified animalistic metaphors continue to function in the 21st-century language, but limited to specific domains or characterized by changes in grammatical collocation and connotation. The final conclusion is that animalistic metaphor in the mass press of fin-de-siècle St. Petersburg was multifunctional: it provided entertainment, could serve as an element of Aesopian language, shaped public opinion, and constructed a holistic picture of urban life in the reader's mind.</jats:p>