CORPUS ANALYSIS OF THE IDIOMS OF THE DOMAIN OF CORPUS WAR IN ENGLISH PROSE OF THE 19TH-21ST CENTURIES ON MILITARY THEMES

The article presents a corpus stylistic analysis of war-related idioms functioning in English-language fiction from the 19th to the 21st century. The research combines quantitative (frequency-based) and qualitative (contextual-stylistic) methods to explore how idioms operate as stylistic devices within literary narratives. The author identifies key idiom types based on stylistic function–command-oriented, metaphorical, emotionally charged, and ironic–and traces their changing roles across different historical periods, genres, and authorial perspectives. Special attention is given to the temporal dynamics of idiom usage: the study reveals a shift from literal war discourse in 19th-century fiction to metaphorical, psychological, and ideologically nuanced uses in 21st-century texts. Through microanalysis of selected textual fragments where idioms play a crucial role in shaping emotional tone and authorial viewpoint, the study demonstrates how war is represented through language and how narrative strategies are shaped by cultural context. This combination of distant reading (corpus statistics) and close reading (contextual interpretation) aligns with the best practices of modern corpus stylistics as a research field. The findings suggest that war-related idioms are not only a stable lexical stratum in English-language fiction but also a powerful stylistic resource for realizing authorial narrative strategies. They shape narrative rhythm, mark psychological states, foreground socio-political meanings, and convey ideological positions. The study offers both methodological value for stylistic and cultural linguistic inquiry and conceptual insight into the evolving literary representations of war.