Articles

Age is the basic category that determines human existence and consciousness. It is a key parameter for determining the life characteristics of a person, their physical and mental states, behavior, etc. This article deals with the comparative study of verbalization of a person’s age by means of Russian and Chinese lan guages. The main research methods used in the article are the methods of definitions, field and comparative analyses. The aim of the work is to identify isomorphic and allomorphic features of verbalization of a person’s age by means of Russian and Chinese word-stock and to reveal similar and divergent ideas of human age from the speakers of Russian and Chinese. In this work comparative analysis of the structures of the lexical-semantic fields ‘age’ is carried out. The main age periods of a person’s life in the Russian and Chinese worldviews and ways of replenishing the lexical composition of the Russian and Chinese languages are revealed as well. The lexical system also reflects typical ideas of the speakers of Russian and Chinese about each age period. The results of the study reveal the specifics of verbalization of human age by means of Russian and Chinese word-stock and provide a better understanding of the worldviews of the Russian and Chinese nations in the sphere of comparative linguistics.

The aim of the present study is to determine the particular functions that a proper name can perform in the texts of comic opera librettos. Proceeding from the functional approach to the study of proper names, one finds it possible to assume that an onym is capable of performing the function of enhancing the comic effect. This study takes into account the existing theories of verbal humor in order to determine the mechanism according to which humorous onyms function. The novelty of present research lies within its subject, i.e. a proper name in theatrical discourse. So far proper names as a tool to create a comic effect were analysed solely within works of literary fiction. The libretto texts used in musical theater have not yet been studied to a considerable length. The analysis of onyms in the libretto of “Thespis; or Gods Grown Old”, a comic opera by William Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, revealed that proper names can enhance the comic effect created within a theatrical text when said onyms follow the path of “inconsistency”, which is a key component of theories of verbal humor. In addition, the charactonyms found in the analysed libretto can also create a comic effect when placed in an appropriate context.

By the given article I continue a cycle of publications devoted to the analysis of the key words of the Japanese culture, which characterize their peculiar way of thought and life and let us reveal their core values. The key words and their analysis help to get insight into and explain the peculiarity of the Japanese culture and mentality. The given paper dwells upon the analysis of the Japanese word gambatte, which is most frequently translated as ‘do your best, try hard, work hard, hold on, don’t give up’. It is an eternal motto of the Japanese life and of all Japanese people using it throughout their lives. This particular key message helps people to progress in life fulfilling numerous duties and obligations towards the society and themselves (‘giri’ in Japanese) and avoiding a sense of shame (‘haji’) in order to achieve impressive goals, frequently earning the respect and admiration of the world as a result. Gambatte is the essence of the Japanese philosophy of life. The analysis of the key words is regarded as a bright and effective method of penetrating in the nuances of the Japanese culture. The knowledge of key words is of vital importance for successful communication with the representatives of the Country of the Rising Sun, doing business with the Japanese as well as for effective teaching Japanese students.

The article is devoted to the gender aspect of the study of the literary work of the French writer and philosopher Marie Le Jars de Gournay (1565–1645). Interest in gender issues in European literature at the turn of the 17th century is explained by a new round of the “The Woman Question” polemic about the relationship of the sexes. In many European countries, texts appear that address the problem of the position of women in society and their role in social and cultural life. In France, the works of Marie le Jar de Gournay – “The equality of men and women” (L’Egalité des hommes et des femmes, 1622) and “The Complaints of Ladies” (Le Grief des dames, 1626), become a kind of response to iconic anti-feminist pamphlets, in which the author defends not female superiority, but gender equality. The purpose of the study is to identify and justify the features of textual practices as self-expression of a female subject in literature. The article clarifies the concept of “feminine style of writing” and analyzes some productive strategies in the study of women’s texts. The specificity of gender discourse is analyzed using the example of the work of Marie Le Jar de Gournay, who continued the tradition of women’s essays in defense of representatives of the same gender. A conclusion about the prospect of using the concept of a woman’s writing is made. The aforementioned can be used for the further research of the authorship phenomenon and features of representation of women in texts and culture.

Football reports are considered to be the main dynamic form of Spanish sports discourse that has a strong identity through a rich tradition that reflects a nationwide interest in football. Among the different means of speech that are widely used by sports commentators with the purpose of eliciting the influence on the recipient (an ordinary reader, fan or professional) a metaphor as a universal technique, deserves special attention, as it reveals the peculiarities of the national mentality of the society, its perception of the surrounding reality. The purpose of the article is to analyze, from the point of view of the national and universal vision of the world, the basic metaphors of the sports discourse prevailing in football reports (2019–2021) in Spanish. The material for the study is the online versions of the leading print sports publications of Spain (“Marca”, “As” (Madrid), “Mundo Deportivo”, “Sport” (Barcelona), as well as the sites www.rtve.es, www.laliga.com. The study presents the main universal spheres – the sources of basic metaphors in the genre of modern Spanish football reports in the projection on the realities of the national mentality.

The article analyzes the mechanisms through which fictional realia, also known as quasi-realia or irrealia (special lexical units that describe various aspects of a fictional world: its geography, ethnography, social political structure, material culture, etc.), create new cultural memes. Despite the controversial status of memetics, the concept of meme as a sustainable and self-replicating unit of information became widespread among various researchers. However, very little research has been carried out to draw connections between memes and fictional realia. Furthermore, few researchers pay attention to the study of fictional realia as a whole. We choose the genre of dystopia due to its prognostic and preventive functions. Trying to warn the reader about a future that is both undesirable and frightening to the vast majority of humanity, the author “infects” the reader with different ideas, which proliferate from the host’s mind and “infect” more and more people. «1984» by George Orwell, one of the most prominent dystopian novels of the twentieth century, is a perfect example of such proliferation of ideas: the concepts introduced by George Orwell became an integral part of various cultures and languages. The analysis of various headlines and quotes from English articles demonstrates how fictional realia propagate and assimilate in real culture and real language.

The paper continues a series of works dedicated to the study of lexical concepts Zapad in Russian, West in English and 㾯 in Chinese languages as content-bearing mental structures in diachronic perspective. Since interdisciplinary research has been one of the main trends in cognitive linguistics these days, understanding of how various mental structures mediate real-world information to our mind is still a burning issue. It’s very well known that lexical meanings are constructed based on schematic mental spaces and can be considered as highly dynamic systems. However, as far as the system of spatial reasoning is claimed to be inherent and, hence, stable, the question of its conceptual structure’s inner dynamics appears to be one of the most challenging. Thus, diachronic perspective on concepts that embody the knowledge of cardinal points appears to be a promising technique to better understand the relations between different types of cognitive structures verbalized by the means of language and how original spatial knowledge is connected to more recent non- spatial knowledge in a conceptual content system. The author focuses on the role of extra-linguistic factors in conceptual knowledge formation on different stages of conceptual development.

The article considers the city as a text of culture which appears due to interaction of different semiotic codes in urban space. Due to this approach urban space can be regarded as the text which consolidates the results of historic and cultural life of the city with the help of architecture, toponymics, natural phenomena. With regard to multi-aspect nature of urban semiotics it seems reasonable to focus on the urban metaphor as a trope which conveys the main message as a figurative expression. The article studies the metaphor garden-city concept and its se- miotic modifications in XX–XXI centuries. The author attempts to analyze the transformation of this metaphor, which initiated the urban planning conception of E. Howard, into a dead metaphor which converted into a newspaper cliché and, as a result, lost its original semiotic sense. The ideological influence of new urbanism and the necessity of promotion of new housing complexes have stipulated the appearance of this modern variety of the concept: park-city concept. However, this fact allows to concentrate both on the change of approaches to urban planning and on the related changes in the urban text as a text of culture.

Drawing from the field of intercultural communication in which space is referred to as a non-linguistic form of communication, as well as linguocultural studies that treat it as one of the cultural codes used to categorize the world, put it in order and evaluate it, the author of this article focuses on the use of space in cognitive-functional modelling of acculturation in contemporary multicultural fiction. The research examines how acculturation, which is defined as a process of change that affects one’s personal psychological space as a result of continuous intercultural contact, is constructed in the short story “How to Pronounce Knife” (2015) by S. Thammavongsa. A study of the following key binary oppositions pertaining to the physical and the psychological space in the short story is caried out: centre – edge, up – down, front – back, inside – outside, regular (traditional) configuration/layout – deformed configuration / distorted layout. Taking into account the acculturation-related symbolic meanings attributed to these spatial oppositions by S. Thammavongsa, the author concludes that the invisible “air bubble” that the protagonist of the story under analysis carries around in a new culture resembles a tesseract, or a 4D hypercube, which rotates about the XW and YW planes, rather than an ordinary 3D sphere.

The article is devoted to the study of the reaction of the ethnic community of Friuli, a territorial-linguistic minority of the Friuli region, which is part of the multiethnic region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia in northeastern Italy, in response to the legislative measures of the Italian Republic in the field of regulation of minority languages in the period 1970–2020, time of awareness of the Friulians of their cultural, historical and territorial authenticity. A brief overview of the legislative measures of the Italian Republic in the field of linguistic regulation of minority languages is given, which can be characterized both as supportive and restrictive at the same time. Among the main areas of support for the Friulian language on the part of local authorities and the ethnic community, the following are highlighted as priorities: the creation of television and radio broadcasting in Friulian, as well as the introduction of the practice of clerical work in the Friulian language in local authorities. The studied material allows us to assert that it is the media in modern society that retain the leading role in the construction of social-spatial “imaginary communities”, incl. and local ethnic communities. The practice of document circulation in the language of the national minority in the authorities is a guarantee that this language is as close as possible to the state language in functions, therefore, the status of the official language is confirmed, and not the dialect, the scope of which is the sphere of everyday communication. The national state (the Italian Republic) has the intention to keep under its control the volume and nature of social functions that the minority language performs and only forcibly lets the minority language into the sphere of functioning of the state language – media communication channels and official office work.

The purpose of the article is to consider the phenomenon of Hybridité / Hybridity as a point of intersection of language and culture in the context of the concepts: “another” – “foreign”; “the border”; “Third Space”; “cultural translation”, “translation”, “cultural transfer”, etc. Taking into account the concepts of M.M. Bakhtin, Yu.M. Lotman, R. Jacobson, J. Derrida, K. Levi-Strauss, N. Bhabha, B. Cassin and other authors, as well as dictionary definitions, it is discovered that the evolution of the lexeme Hybridité/Hybridity represents a double transfer: 1) from one language (French) to many languages; 2) from one system of terms into a com- mon language and other term systems (biology – philology – common language – anthropology, cultural studies, etc.). The lexeme has the meanings of heterogeneity, border crossing, lack of a fixed structure, a high degree of volatility, as well as connotations: positive (creativity, vitality, the emergence of something new), negative (wrong, spoiled), in scientific discourse – neutral, in some cases – reduced (unstructured). The phenomenon of hybridity is at the heart of a number of theories that establish different directions of intercultural interaction within the dichotomy of “another” – “foreign”: 1) emphasis on cultural differences, imitation, ambivalence and endless hybridization of cultural symbols (H. Bhabha’s theory of post-colonial discourse); 2) emphasis on identifying differences and searching for integration (integration of untranslatable signs by Yu.M. Lotman; the concept of the untranslatable in the philosophical discourse of B. Cassen.