This article is devoted to precedent phenomena that are a means of updating the ethnocultural code. The material for the analysis was precedent names, precedent texts, precedent statements and precedent situations, selected by a continuous sampling method from modern British newspaper journalism in the Internet space, accessible to a wide range of readers. The article provides a semantic analysis of precedent phenomena and identifies their perlocative purpose. The performed analysis allows us to assert that newspaper discourse reflects the trends in the development of language and determines its qualitative and quantitative changes through the preservation and replenishment of the corpus of precedent vocabulary. It should be noted that the phenomenon of precedent is based on the common cultural, social and linguistic background knowledge of native speakers. The use of such phenomena in newspaper discourse adds an additional level of understanding, since they
are part of previously perceived texts and evoke the recipient's experience. It is revealed that the analyzed precedent phenomena reflect the value orientations of the native-speaking people and are an important part of the English linguistic picture of the world. In addition, precedent
phenomena of a new generation of native speakers were highlighted, which are valuable for communicants, but may be incomprehensible to representatives of the older generation.
For citation: Kurazhova I.V. Precedent phenomena as actualizers of the ethnocultural code (based on the material of the British press), Ivanovo State University Bulletin, Series: Humanities, 2025, iss. 1, pp. 63—69.