The article examines the interaction of the German and Russian languages in the speech of bilingual Germans who were born and live in a Russian-speaking environment in the Vyatka region of Russia. This task involves the study of their usage, interference (including phonetic, lexical and syntactic assimilation), as well as borrowings and code-switching. The dialects of the Russian Germans of the Vyatka region have a status of migrant and belong to a category of vanishing supraregional linguistic entities. The function of this variety of language is to provide a link between the native German language of the immigrants (L1) and Russian, their major surrounding language (L2). In addition, the German language of the Vyatka region reflects new linguistic contacts caused by multiple forced migrations during the Second World War. As a result of these mass relocations, some new processes in interaction of dialects arose, not observed in their mother colonies. The resulting variety of usage can be referred to as a German-Russian interlanguage. Before the World War II, all German dialects for more than two centuries have been confined in Russia to enclaves (or dialect islands). After mass deportations, they transformed both geographically and, for certain dialects, in terms of social composition. Taking this into account, the study of their interactions acquires greater importance for understanding similar processes associated with modern intercultural language contacts, in general. These changes in the language environment boosted linguistic interference at all levels; they also account for the tendency to bilingual behavior common both for speakers of standard and dialectal German. Our analysis of these processes is based on the interviews with bilingual Germans of the Vyatka region of Russia recorded during dialectological trips to this enclave. The study identifies and describes phonetic interactions (both segmental and supersegmental), morphological and syntactic interferences in the Russian and German speech of the Germans of this dialect island. All these processes in L1 and L2, as well as their distortion and mixing, are typical for the mechanisms governing their bilingual performance as well as the degree of its stability.

In this study the author suggests a new systemic model of purpose constructions in Hill Mari - a Finno-Ugric language, spoken by approximately 30 000 people living mostly in Mari El Republic, located in Volga river basin. (Here and thereafter (if the opposite is not stated overtly) the term “purpose clause” or “purpose construction” is used in its traditional wide sense and should not be confused with “Purpose clauses” opposed to “Rationale clauses” in R. A. Faraci’s terms (1974).) There are two core strategies of marking the embedded predicate which can be used in contexts denoting purpose in Hill Mari. Firstly, an imperative form can be used. This option is reserved for different-subjects contexts. Secondly, an embedded predicate can be marked as infinitive. Notably, such a clause allows for its subject to be expressed overtly, in which case it is marked by Dative. Typically, though, the subject of an infinitival purposive clause is omitted and obligatorily controlled by a certain argument of a matrix clause. Finally, there are two peripheral constructions - those of perfect tense and non-past tense. Both are quite marginal and not universally accepted. This study also discusses the interaction between aforementioned strategies and purpose complementizers (conjunctions) š (borrowed from Russian) and. However, what constitutes the main theoretical concern of this study are certain peculiar traits of the subordinate null subject’s behavior. The paper adopts a standard generative approach (within Chomsky’s minimalist program) and argues that Hill Mari purpose constructions can be divided into two groups, namely, argument ones, occupying the position of VP complement, and adjunct ones, which are attached as VP adjuncts. This structural distinction can account for the indirect object control, which is possible in all cases, and direct object control, which is only allowed in case of certain matrix predicates. Such an analysis links Hill Mari purpose construction’s distinction to the Purpose/Rationale clauses distinction proposed for English in R. A. Faraci (1974). Finally, Hill Mari infinitival purpose clauses’ specific traits can potentially provide certain insights for the general theory of ditransitive constructions. Thus, among the main current approaches only that developed by L. Pylkkänen (2008) can account for the facts observed in Hill Mari. L. Pylkkänen argues that in some languages double objects constructions can be derived via “high” applicative head, taking VP as its complement and indirect object as its specifier. Our study argues that this is also likely to be the case in Hill Mari.

Corpus quantitative approach in teaching, which is of growing interest, entails some revision of the L2 vocabulary selection procedures and provides solutions for a wide range of practical problems. The focus throughout is on the discussion of research on the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of language which both teaching content and language acquisition practice could draw on. This research regards human language as a rank distribution, which has serious implications on quantitative aspect of learner’s vocabulary. We also looked into the ways to factor in the data from a small professional discourse corpus in order to target the units that have the greatest statistical prominence. Both BNC and our own collection of texts are explored. The study also elaborates on academic writing cohesive devices and grammar patterns introduction, which is approached through concordancing corpus strings to (i) provide frequency evidence and (ii) introduce a contrast in usage in various corpus genres. Striking differences that are evidenced by the frequency lists could be related not only to register, but also to the choice and instances of academic cohesive clusters which are favoured by the apprentice writers and the expert writers. With the aim of capitalizing on corpus approach a number of small-scale corpus research tasks were developed. This study also uses corpus tools and data to give a seemingly subjective phenomenon of hedging some quantitative measurement. While experimenting on corpus in the classroom, the attention of learners was drawn to various means of hedging, such as lexical bundles or down-toners that manifest themselves as important communicative strategies. Thus, corpus was used to inform both the language instructor and the student in the classroom to look in detail at differences in the use of lexical and grammatical units in different varieties of language, address contrasting register variations, and readily provide contemporary professionally relevant examples of actual language usage. It has to be noted that university students have a tendency not to perceive register violations as language errors on a par with those of grammar, lexis or punctuation. Hence, corpus investigation as raising awareness tool also proved to be an effective teaching material generator. Nowadays syllabi have the opportunity to be rather sensitive to the quantitative evidence that corpora offer us; what is more, as a result of this study, we would conclude that university students are responsive to the small-scale investigation of register differences, lexico-grammatical frequency and patterning, which have been brought directly into the L2 classroom.

In this paper, we described and tested several ways to use machine learning in order to analyze large collections of text data from social networks (namely, public Telegram chat), retrieve relevant social or cultural information from them, and to visualize the results of the research. The proposed approach has an advantage to reveal hidden patterns of social, political or cultural behavior by being able to cover large amounts of data. It can complement the standard social surveys methodology. Automatic detecting cultural bias on the example of social media requires mastering methods for measuring and visualizing its different kinds, such as cultural shifts, specific national or group refractions, mutations, stereotypes. We argue that cultural bias is a result of nonrandom errors in thinking. It is based, firstly, on a person's understanding of himself and the world around him and, secondly, on the translation of this understanding into abstraction in the form of common misconceptions, ideologemes, narrative, slogans. In society the bias inevitably leads to the separation of one social group or subculture from another. Social networks (both classic and new formats, for example, messengers with public chat options) are the most active ground for the representation of this phenomenon. Since the discussion of sociopolitical and cultural contexts in the case of chats takes place in public, the participants of such a communicative act tend to get approval of the social group to which they are ideologically close. It is this phenomenon that allows us to form comparisons of the “friend - foe” type, which lead next to unconscious cultural shifts. Thus, mastering methods to identify properly cultural shifts is not only relevant but crucial for the intra- and intercultural communication, for controlling the level of aggressiveness of the society, understanding its mood. As helpful illustrations, readers will find semantic associations elicited by the words “freedom”, “democracy”, “Internet”; sociocultural analysis of several topical clusters (e.g. Россия, страна, Путин, русский, православный); visualization of semantic associations for the words “freedom”, “democracy”, “Internet”.

The paper presents preliminary results of the comparison of the Dictionaries of word associations for French referred further to as FAS-1 and FAS-2, compiled respectively in 2010 and 2020. To check the reliability of their data we used information on word associations provided by an alternative source, the French project Jeuxdemots, which began in 2007. The first part of the article accounts for dynamic processes in the vocabulary of direct associative dictionaries, focusing on the analysis of the associative field of the adjective malade. We established that the psycholinguistic meaning of this item hasn’t undergone considerable changes during the last 10 years: most frequent associations are the same, its structure has not changed, small semantic changes in the content of certain categories are not essential and can be neglected. As for its structure, the associative field of malade includes the following major slots: ‘kind of disease’, ‘symptoms’, ‘treatment’, ‘visual characteristics of the patient’, ‘ways of spreading’, ‘health’, and some other related concepts. Cultural allusions and reactions to the form (not to the meaning) of the lexeme were singled out too. The paper also puts emphasis on the emergence of words related as reactions to the pandemic of COVID-19 though they represent only 0.03 % of the 506317 reactions collected in FAS-2. To provide a comprehensive comparison, dynamic changes in the inverse vocabulary were also studied. The list of reactions elicited by 50 or more stimuli (so called super-connectors) was analyzed, as well as the list of the most frequent reactions. For this purpose, two special research dictionaries were designed, based on the reactions to 610 identical stimuli. The lists of the first 75 super-connectors in FAS-1 and FAS-2, as well as the most frequent reactions, proved to be almost identical. We only observed an increase in the frequency and number of stimuli which provoked reactions related to the material side of life (namely, work, earning money, studies), and their decrease for reactions related to social life. However, to summarize the major result of the comparative analysis, we may state that the changes in the associative norms of speakers of French are insignificant, being within the statistical margin of error.

One of the central problems considered by the Moscow School of Psycholinguistics is the analysis of ethno-cultural language consciousness specificity of speakers belonging to different language and culture communities. This article deals with psycholinguistic comparative analysis of categorization of the concept ОСЕНЬ (Autumn / Fall) in Russian and Chinese language consciousness. The aim of this article is to identify cultural and national features of categorization of the concept ОСЕНЬ (Autumn / Fall) in Russian and Chinese language consciousness. The article considers the data from different Russian and Chinese dictionaries (Russian associative dictionary, mythological, etymological, explanatory and semantic dictionaries of the Russian and Chinese languages) as well as the results of the associative experiment involving the stimulus ОСЕНЬ (Autumn / Fall), conducted for Chinese speakers. The article constructs associative fields of the lexeme ОСЕНЬ (Autumn / Fall) and highlights the basic cognitive categories of the respective concept in Russian and Chinese language consciousness. The article uses methods of statistical, quantitative, component, semantic, psycholinguistic and conceptual analyses, as well as analysis of associative experiment data. Since comparative analysis of the concept ОСЕНЬ (Autumn / Fall) in Russian and Chinese language consciousness has not been carried out in linguistic research yet, the results obtained are relevant for the development of associative lexicography, psycholinguistics, ethnopsycholinguistics and cultural linguistics. The practical significance of the work lies in the possibility of creating a bilingual associative dictionary (on the material of the Russian and Chinese languages) and the use of the data obtained in the process of teaching psycholinguistics and intercultural communication.

This article, based on the satirical weekly newspaper “Le Canard Enchaîné”, examines the impact of the satirical press on public consciousness in modern France. The source base of the research is a selection of publications “Le Canard Enchaîné” for 2009-2020, as well as special editions of newspapers and the most significant investigative materials of previous years, with a total of over 150 copies and a sample of more than 600 contexts. To better understand the principles of its journalism (e.g. it does not accept any advertisements), the materials of an interview conducted by the author in 2013 in Paris with a journalist from “Le Canard Enchaîné” staff were used. The weekly features a wide range of ways to influence the reader, including both speech techniques to manipulate the information as well as expressive means of language, many jokes and cartoons that appeal to emotions instead of reason. At the same time, lexical, stylistic and syntactic means have always been carefully selected and developed, creating a special style of the newspaper known as “Le ton Canard”; its major function is to appeal to emotions of the readership with the purpose to model their perception of political events, politicians, government members, and French personalities. Special attention is paid by the author to the analysis of some famous investigations and, in particular, the coverage of “the Jérôme Cahuzac case”, as well as the presentation of last three French presidents on the pages of the weekly: F. Hollande, N. Sarkozy and E. Macron.

The study focuses on issues related to gender stereotypes of the blog community based on bloggers’ individual reactions and their impact on the perception of female politicians. The sample comprises tweets of the Russian- and English-speaking segments of this microblog, selected by keywords (based on the researcher’s view on the component structure of the thematic group «women in politics» and the representativeness of the sample) and collected with the help of the Python programming language. The classification of female politicians’ characteristics significant for users is made on the basis of feminine-masculine and psychophysiological criteria (according to E. G. Bakhteeva’s classification). The distribution of characteristics attributed to a female politician allows the researcher to determine which characteristics help women to fulfil their potential in politics or, on the contrary, hinder a successful political career. The results are interpreted in two aspects. On the one hand, from the point of view of the quantitative representation (percentage of characteristic groups), the field structure of the gender stereotype is compiled. On the other hand, in terms of qualitative indicator (content of characteristic’s groups, connotative components), the correlation of characteristics is identified and their visualization is performed with the help of Gephi software. As a result, the study builds models of a female-politician’s stereotypical image in the Russian- and English-speaking segments of Twitter and carries out their their comparative analysis. According to the first type of model, personal characteristics that may be inherent in both men and women are important for Russian- and English-speaking Twitter users, while typical masculine characteristics are the least relevant. For Russian-speaking users, high moral qualities are particularly relevant, while English-speaking bloggers appreciate high professional qualities. The graphs demonstrate that the language consciousness of the blog community tends to masculinize the stereotypical image of a female politician. Thus, a contradiction arises: bloggers explicitly acclaim the equal right for both men and women to fulfill their potential in politics, they recognize and accept the fact that women can be successful in the highest political positions and establishments and approve of the activity of particular women politicians. At the same time, traditional gender stereotypes, claiming that politics is a male sphere, implicitly retain their influence.

The article deals with the logical analysis of a syntactic Russian pattern ‘ne to chtoby..., no’ (“not exactly..., but”, “I would say … a sort of”), the turn widely used in the practical reasoning. Its usage is underpinned by two major reasons - dialogical nature of the speech activity as well as one’s desire to accentuate his or her position in the debate. But it is also related to one’s aspiration to rectify the assessment, to uncertainty in choosing adequate words, and sometimes the need to increase the expressiveness of the message. In its essence, the relationship between the two parts of the pattern separated by conjunction “no” (“but”) is dialogically polemical. The first conjunct signals an approximate character of the chosen nomination or qualification, it represents a kind of preliminary assessment marked by semantics of doubt, while the second makes the necessary adjustments so as to better characterize the subject of speech. This alternative, albeit not always exhaustive definition may belong to categories of knowledge, opinion or belief. Whatever were the subject of evaluation - object, property, state or action, - the “rectifying” description / nomination / qualification placed in the second part of the construction after the conjunction ‘no” (“but”) can be identified in all cases of use as the attitude for understanding a relative accuracy of its expression. Moreover, it is possible to establish how adequate the object’s qualification is in a given context of expressing opinion only within the framework of a given opinion setting, including what the subject of opinion thinks, what he is convinced of, or believes in. It is impossible to know in advance whether such an opinion is reliable or not from the objective point of view, but it is possible to assert its unconditional credibility within the accepted framework of a certain system of ideas, e.g. what should be in an “acceptable situation” properties, activities or states of the object of judgment to be assessed. In this context, it is not the denotatum that is actually brought into focus of attention, but rather its qualifications or characteristics (they is the meaning of the item) within the scope of the propositional attitude of opinion.

The article dwells upon the discourse on the linguistic implementation of the principles of political correctness (hereinafter PC discourse) in the German political linguistic culture. Like the concept of ‘political correctness’ itself, the key characteristics of the PC discourse came to Germany from the USA. However, Germany has a rich tradition of criticism of language use in politics, including a tradition of public reflection on the use of language by totalitarian ideologies. One might assume that the discussion about the linguistic implementation of political correctness in Germany will become part of this general critical discourse. These considerations served as the starting point for this study. The purpose of the presented article is to identify the specifics of PC discourse in Germany against the back-ground of other phenomena of German political linguistic culture. Discourse is understood as a corpus of texts united by reference to a common object of reality, in other words, a way of speaking about a socially significant topic that is formed in society in a certain historical period. On the basis of this interpretation, the empirical base of the study was compiled, obtained through the continuous sampling method from electronic versions of leading German newspapers and magazines, as well as from linguistic monographs devoted to the linguistic implementation of political correctness. Through the method of descriptive discourse analysis, significant methods of discursive interpretation of political correctness have been identified, which are the specifics of PC discourse. The main technique is metaphorical modeling of political reality. For almost thirty years of its existence, the German PC discourse has developed a stable framework of evaluative metaphors that set the perspective of the vision of political correctness. This framework consists of the metaphorical core, which relates political correctness to the conceptual field of “danger”, and additional metaphorical meanings, which actualize the conceptual field of “game”. The uniformity of the metaphorical frame-work reflects the ritualized nature of the argumentation of both supporters and opponents of political correctness. The latter set the dominant discursive strategy - the strategy of imaginary defense, due to which strong emotional pressure is achieved on the participants in the discourse. The metaphorical framework provides discursive unity, which is especially necessary in the context of the semantic diffuseness of the key concept ‘politische Korrektheit’.

In the article, we make an attempt to relate logical topoi, rhetorical figures, and syntactic constructions. The research is based on the court speeches of Russian lawyers of late 19th and early 20th century. This period is considered to be the Golden Age of the Russian lawyer eloquence, thus the speeches delivered at that time by famous Russian lawyers in jury trials are of particular interest for the analysis. The speeches were chosen at random as the focus was not on the orators’ individual style but on their general strategies of syntactic expression of topoi. Although topoi have been an indispensable part of rhetorical invention since Antiquity, there still exists a discrepancy in their interpretation. In different time periods, they were regarded as the source of arguments, as clichés and even as themes that can be modified depending on orator’s objectives. In the article, we focus on the approach, which involves trichotomic classification, which includes logical topoi that are connected with logical operations. The most common topoi in lawyers speeches are those of time and place and genus and species . Within the framework of our study, they are analyzed in terms of logical operations and set theory, as well as structural schemes of sentences which were further connected with respective rhetorical figures (their functions being described for each case). The structural schemes’ analysis we used follow the principles described in Russian Grammar (1980). In the final part of the article, the results of the study are summarized. Logical operations typical for the topoi of time and place and genus and species are provided along with the most common syntactic schemes of sentences and rhetorical figures. We believe that this approach to the analysis of topoi can be beneficial both in theoretical and practical perspective and can be common to analyze the logical basis of lawyers’ argumentation, the major component of their eloquence.

This paper is focused on the analysis of translator’s notes and commentary, represented by meta- and paratexts, as an integral part of translation process. These are essential to help the foreign reader overcome the cultural bias in general, guiding them through its intricate culture-bound elements, and the space and temporal distance separating them from the source text, in particular. Our source text is M. Bulgakov’s satirical novella “A Dog’s Heart” (translated also as “A Heart of a Dog”) written at the very beginning of the Soviet social project. As no piece of satire can be fully grasped - neither in source nor in target language - without making sense of the social conflict described in it, we view comprehension and explanation as the basis for cognition; they constitute two main working procedures of our approach. This means that our attention is focused on the way culture-bound words relating to the facts of social and political life appearing in this tale are conveyed in translations and interpreted in meta- and paratexts. So, author’s in-tention is deemed crucial in text interpretation. And the unity of explanation and understanding is considered to be the basis of academic knowledge To establish what metatext relating to Bulgakov’s story should be like in accordance with an academic approach, we’ve attempted to identify the presuppositions necessary for its adequate perception by the readership. To this end, we have studied the following metatexts: 1) J. Meek’s Introduction to Bromfield’s translation; 2) Bromfield’s A Note on the Text to his own translation (pub. by Penguin Books, 2007); 3) Introduction to M. Glenny’s translation by the Ukrainian writer A. Kurkov (pub. by Vintage Books, 2009); 4) Note by M. P. V. Salgado to the translation by A. Bouis (pub. by KARO, 2020). We also added our brief research-informed notes to some concepts of the novella English versions made by: M. Ginsburg (pub. by New-York Grove Press with no preface provided), Glenny, Bromfield and Bouis. Our major conclusion is that commenting on the translation should become more text-oriented to enhance its academic and didactic quality. More importantly, the paper is to exemplify the kind of methodology that should underlie the research leading to creation of helpful translator’s notes. Pertinent academic notes should help foreign reader to understand his or her bias and to discover the relevant cultural background of the text without which it would seem commonplace and unremarkable.