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NSU Vestnik. Series: Linguistics and Intercultural Communication

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Vol 22, No 2 (2024)
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THEORETICAL AND APPLIED LINGUISTICS

5-15 243
Abstract

    The article presents the processes of grammaticalisation and lexicalisation that have taken place in the Russian verb system in the course of its historical development. The relevance of this problem is conditioned by the ability of grammaticalization theory to present the regularities of grammatical system formation in different languages. The article represents a brief study on the issues of grammaticalisation in Russian philology and different researchers’ understanding of this process. Methods of observation, description and classification as well as structural and quantitative ones were implemented in the course of the study. The application of the theory of grammaticalisation to the Russian verb revealed the main directions of grammaticalisation that explain the formation of various verb grammatical categories, grammatical forms and grammatical indicators. Diachronic analysis of the Russian verb categories and forms showed various factors of grammaticalization corresponding to the general language trend from specific to abstract: 1) transformation of notional words into grammatical indicators (the former encclitic form of the reflexive pronoun – sya becomes a post-fix indicator of reflexiveness and passive voice; phonetically reduced verb byti becomes a particle indicator of the subjunctive mood); 2) the transition of one verb form to another (participles with suffix -l, which were part of the analytic forms of the Perfect, Plusquamperfect and Subjunctive Mood replaced the past tense form in the temporal paradigm of personal forms); 3) grammaticalization of collocations (preservation of the transformed form of the future compound); 4) generalisation of meaning (the grammatical category of aspect is based on the semantic category of limitedness/unlimitedness of action, a universal feature applied to all verbs); 5) filling lexical gaps in the system of form coinage (leading to appearance of future participles); 6) transformation of notional words into form words (onversion of adverbial participles into prepositions). The study has also revealed the opposite process in the verb system, that is, lexicalisation of the grammatical form of the perfect (and plusquamperfect). The loss of the perfect as a grammatical form has occurred, but the dual temporal semantics of the perfect itself is expressed by the short and long perfect participles, the personal forms of the perfect and imperfect verb with the favorable lexical meaning of the verb forms or due to the appropriate context and situation.

16-29 188
Abstract

   Agonality is a type of communicative competition that provides an appropriate environment for an individual to establish his or her superiority over their opponent. To achieve this goal, a range of communicative strategies and tactics may be implemented. This article discusses approaches to measuring the pragmatic potential of confrontational agonal statements in political institutional discourse. The research is based on the trilogy “House of Cards” by Michael Dobbs, which includes a voluminous number of agonal communicative situations. The analysis sheds light on how verbal competitiveness in the political institutional discourse is represented through the lens of a literary work. The relevance of this study is determined by the absence of a universal system of confrontational agonal statements analysis and intensification of adversariality in the world political arena. The methods applied in the current research include descriptive-comparative, quantitative calculation and discourse analysis. The paper examines the structure of agonality, the basics of argumentation in the verbal competition and the usage of meta-discourse markers in political institutional discourse. For these purposes, a comprehensive model for analysing confrontational agonal situations is proposed, which includes agonal strategies and tactics, types of argumentation and the use of meta-discourse markers. Our findings indicate that the confrontational type of agonality is mainly implemented via theatrical strategy and downward strategy (the prevailing tactics being analysis- “minus”, differentiation, and motivation.) The classification may be extended with the tactics of criticizing (downward strategy) and boasting (upward strategy). Psychological argumentation proved to be more effective than logical argumentation (mainly realised through the motive of public interests and the motive of truth and law).The paper further pinpoints that meta-discourse markers of involvement, self-mentions, boosters, and attitude markers have an influential capacity to secure supremacy in a verbal competition.

30-41 170
Abstract

   The aim of this article is to review the existing approaches towards the research of cohesion in film discourse, namely, in its constituent elements such as film text, title, tagline, synopsis, poster and trailer.

   The importance of cinema for modern culture makes the study of the textual features of the film and its paratexts, including such textual categories as cohesion, especially relevant. The review focuses on the history of research concerning cohesion in verbal texts, cohesive devices in multimodal texts as well as film discourse and its constituent parts. The overview of the existing body of works demonstrates that scholars regard cohesion as a category of text that ensures its formal unity and contributes to successful communication. The ways of expressing cohesion include a broad variety of lexical-grammatical units, complemented by graphic devices and editing techniques in multimodal and audiovisual texts. The analysis of the present body of works on cohesion in film discourse suggests that further advancement in this field requires a more precise methodological framework as well as inclusion of film title, tagline, synopsis and poster into the scope of research.

LINGUOCULTUROLOGY AND SOCIOLINGUISTICS

42-53 134
Abstract

   The article examines the possibility of transforming the mythologized linguistic units of the semiotic system reflected in the Olonkho text P. P. Yadrikhinsky-Bedieele “The Girl Hero Dzhyrybyna Dzhyrylyatta.” This text has preserved many lost elements of the culture of the Sakha people. Verbal and non-verbal symbols have been identified that reflect the traditional picture of the world. It has been found that the action code of Olonkho revolves around the main sacred action - the worship of aiyy deities. At the same time, a special place is occupied by sequential actions during the performance of the maternity rite, associated with the veneration of the patroness of childbirth – the goddess Aiyysyt. Clear spatial-structural loci of the Yakut pantheon of deities are given. The magical veneration of nature is represented by zoomorphic archetypal symbols. The landscapes of the upper, middle and lower world represent the structuring sound code in the Olonkho. Behavior in the middle world is regulated by the following key concepts: upper/lower, right/left, western/eastern, noble/ignoble, male/female, life/death. The tempo of Olonkho is set by the epic chronotope of “compressed” and social time. Collective preferences for color designations and numerical symbolism are strictly adhered to.

54-65 185
Abstract

   This research explores the way meaning-building works in dynamic commercial advertising texts based on the English language and the way these texts are rendered for the Russian-speaking target audience. Commercial ads are seen as multimodal texts whose function is to impact the recipients and to induce them to make the “necessary” purchasing choices. To this end, designers creatively employ linguistic resources along with impressive visual images and music.

   The purpose of the study is to examine cohesive ties built among semiotically heterogeneous elements in the original multimodal advertising texts and in their translated versions.

   Our research is set in the framework of Multimodal Discourse Analysis, social semiotics and multimodal translation. This empirical study explores dynamic advertising texts of leading multinational brands such as IKEA, Nike etc., focusing on a case study of the Lego ad Don’t Stop us Now (2021) and its Russian localization. The findings reveal that meaning-building in dynamic promotional texts is underpinned by the following types of cohesive ties: 1) intrasemiotic ones that exist within each semiotic mode, 2) intersemiotic ties among verbal and non-verbal elements of a multimodal text, 3) intertextual ties between an advertising text and a broad sociocultural context. For the multimodal translation to be successful all types of cohesion should be taken into consideration.

COGNITIVE STUDIES AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

66-81 142
Abstract

   The article is devoted to the analysis of the psychological meanings of words related to the “national” paradigm. The analysis is carried out in the current diachrony on the materials of the big Russian regional associative databases SIBAS 1 (2008–2013), SIBAS 2 (2014–2022) and EURAS (2008–2013) in comparison with the all-Russian data, collected in the epoch of perestroika (RAS: 1988–1997). The explication of socio-communicative attitudes of the Russian language personality (RLP) towards operating with verbal units of the “national” paradigm shows the preservation of the specifics of national feeling at the level of psychologically relevant meanings among modern youth, characteristic of scenarios of interethnic relations that developed during the Soviet period. At the same time, there are traces of the specific impact of post-perestroika changes in the socio-communicative environment associated with the disappearance of Soviet identity, the accompanying activation and specific strengthening of ethnic awareness in the image of the world of Russians and the general growth of national identity.

82-92 132
Abstract

   Vera Sabouroff in Vera; or, the Nihilists by Oscar Wilde is stereotypically interpreted as a nihilist.

   The purpose of the article is to reveal some of Vera’s features as a (loving and loved) Russian woman.

   The article suggests that Oscar Wilde might have known the main meanings of the female name Vera (‘faith’, ‘trust’) in Russian and thus emphasized its connection with the verb trust. The following meanings of the name Vera are revealed in the play context: faith in God; faith in humanity, kindness, and justice; faith as trust in love (Vera’s trust saves Alexis’s life, etc.). The qualitative and quantitative analysis explores six features in Vera’s image. Three of them reflect her female nature (Devoted Woman, Snegurochka, Knight’s Lady) and the three others describe the romantic context of her life (Impossibility of Happiness for Woman, Chance of Happiness for Woman, True Love). The results show that Knight’s Lady and Devoted Woman are the predominant features of Vera’s nature, while True Love is the predominant feature of the romantic context of Vera’s life. The research results also reveal Vera Sabouroff’s resemblance to some portraits of the Russian woman from history and literature of the 19th century. Vera’s care for prisoners brings to mind the Decembrist’s wife (a symbol of Russian woman’s self-sacrifice). Vera’s distantness in love and contrastive semantics of snow / chill / water versus flame / light / heat / sun reveal her as an incarnation of Snegurochka (Snow Maiden). Vera’s figurative coldness and nearly physical resistance to love resemble Anna Odintsova in Fathers and Sons by Ivan S. Turgenev. The contrast of exterior coldness and a fiery heart in Vera’s image remind of Tatyana Larina in Eugene Onegin by Alexander S. Pushkin. Comparing the peasant girl Vera both to the sun and an empress echoes Nikolay A. Nekrasov’s lines praising the merits of Russian peasant women in The Red-Nosed Frost. Translations of these works appeared within two decades before Wilde’s play premiere (1883). Thus, Vera’s image might have been formed in Wilde’s mind gradually. Comparing Vera to the morning sun poetically completes her image as a woman whose warmth defeats her own former coldness and whose light dispels the fatal dark in the male character’s soul.

   The results of the research widen our understanding of the Russian culture influence on Oscar Wilde’s work.

93-103 158
Abstract

   What mechanisms are involved in the acquisition of the Russian language by bilingual children? This question is widely studied on the speech of bilinguals. Most of the research is based on the data of bilingual children’s speech acquiring Russian as a native language, however not the dominant one. In this study, we consider a situation in which Russian is one of the two official languages of the country and the most relevant (dominant) one for the child.

   The aim of the paper is to analyze speech features of preschool children permanently residing in Kyrgyzstan (Bishkek), to identify speech errors most typical of Russian-Kyrgyz bilingual children, to classify and compare them with those, characteristic of other groups of Russian learners.

   The material includes children’s oral picture-based narratives collected using the MAIN instrument. The narratives were audio recorded, then transcribed and analyzed. The main method of analysis was functional analysis of speech and language data. The analysis of the material shows that our informants used the same speech strategies as bilingual children acquiring Russian as a non-dominant language. The types of errors arising from the use of bilingual strategies are: non-distinguishing grammar gender due to the interference of the second language, use of original forms instead of oblique ones as well as a tendency to use “frozen” forms and constructions, both due to the strategy of simplification. Along with this, we have noted numerous innovations that are characteristic of Russian-speaking monolingual children of earlier age, as well as errors usual in children with atypical speech development. The errors were of similar nature, while the Russian input had different quantity and quality. This indicates the desire of both bilingual and monolingual children to simplify linguistic phenomena, which is probably an optimal cognitive strategy in the situation of parallel learning several languages.

104-114 130
Abstract

   The article presents a study of perceptual multimodality which implies simultaneous perception by visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, and other perceptual modalities. In the literary text perceptual multimodality is conveyed through the means of the descriptive register of speech, which is aimed at emphasizing the perceptual semantic component of the situation. Perceptual multimodality manifests itself in synesthetic metaphor. The article scrutinizes synesthetic metaphor as a means of perceptual multimodality from the standpoint of conceptual integration theory. The article aims at analyzing the process of synesthetic metaphor formation with the help of conceptual integration modeling.

   The aim of the study presupposes the following: firstly, to analyze linguistic means creating a multimodal perceptual image representing the visual, auditory, olfactory, and tactile semantic components of the situation of perception; secondly, to consider the register relation to an utterance when modeling the processes of mental space integration; thirdly, to describe the lingual means representing a multimodal perceptual image by means of cognitive-stylistic analysis, taking into account specific features of the descriptive register of speech.

   The analysis of the input spaces’ domains makes it possible to identify the conceptual features that serve as the basis for the metaphorization resulting in blended space: the domain of the input space SMELL expressed by the lexeme pollen integrates the semantic features of visual and olfactory perception within the Blooming flowers frame. The domain “pollen” endows the adjacent mental spaces SOUND, COLOR with the conceptual attribute “the ability (of three-dimensional physical objects) to float in the air”. The article presents the models of conceptual metaphors that reveal the way the conceptual characteristics are gradually borrowed into adjacent mental spaces and a blended space is formed. The conceptual features of the integrated mental space are as follows: color is a substance (and not an inherent feature), sound is a visible substance; color and sound float in the air in waves, mixing like homogeneous substances.

   The study results in a model of multicomponent integration of mental spaces, which is reflected in the text by the author’s synesthetic metaphor.

APPLIED LINGUISTICS

115-127 189
Abstract

   The relevance of the study lies in the fact that Internet discourse plays an important guiding role in the functioning of modern society as a cognitive system, since the audience of bloggers can reach millions of people.

   The blogosphere has been actively developing for more than 30 years; in the modern world, a blogger is a profession. The main function of a blog is commercial, the essence of which is to increase the income of bloggers through the sale of products in the Internet environment. Promotional discourse includes various suggestive mechanisms of influence that make it possible to sell products more effectively.

   The purpose of the study is to identify the features of promoting discourse fragments by domestic and foreign bloggers in the beauty industry.

   The empirical material of the study is 120 posts from bloggers on social networks.

   The object is the Internet environment, the subject is the specificity of the Internet discourse by domestic and foreign bloggers in the beauty industry.

   Research methods are: content analysis, cognitive interpretation method, comparative analysis. From the results obtained, it becomes clear that to create promoting discourse, bloggers use: a one-sided question-and-answer form of presentation, catchy headlines, literary tropes, graphic manipulation, anglicisms, numerals, appeals to authorities, references to scientific statistical data and other mechanisms of influence. It has been confirmed that Internet discourse is characterized by creolization and hypertextuality. The results of the study also suggest that the blogger promoting discourse in the beauty sphere in different countries has its own characteristics depending on the specifics of the country’s native language, mentality, beauty canons, national values, advertising market, international relations, and the attitude to scientific achievements. The identified environmental factors make it possible to maintain communication between the sender (blogger) and the addressee (Internet audience), and to create favorable conditions for promoting products in the Internet environment.

128-145 143
Abstract

   The article studies the functions of verbal and non-verbal components of creolized texts, which combine multiple codes in one text. In other words, a creolized text is multimodal. This article discusses the main components and functions of the movie poster as a creolized or multimodal. The movie poster fulfils aesthetic and commercial functions as the main means of movie promotion, conveying information and giving the movie a certain value and meaning. From the point of view of semiotics, the movie poster consists of verbal and non-verbal signs, which interact with each other performing the following functions: attraction, informative, aesthetic, symbolic, explanatory, suggestive, and image-building functions.

IN MEMORIAM



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ISSN 1818-7935 (Print)