TEXT-CREATIONAL FUNCTIONS OF TOPONYMS ІN THE MODERN LITERARY DISCOURSE (BASED ON THE NOVEL BY SOPHIA ANDRUKHOVYCH «AMADOKA»)

The need to develop a holistic linguistic vision of the functionality of toponyms in the literary discourse dictates the study of these units on the basis of broad artistic materials texts of different genres. The article is devoted to characteristics of toponyms, noted in the novel of Sophia Andrukhovych «Amadoka». The study has revealed that modern fiction manifests an abundant toponym system. The system of toponyms in the novel «Amadoka» is formed by horonyms, oykonyms, urbanonyms, hydronyms, oronyms, and so on. The toponyms carry out the following basic functions: nominative-localized, ideological, and symbolic. First, toponyms in a text actualize their toponymic meaning, structuring a text space. However, toponyms often become ideological-conceptual elements that gain a dominant role in the implementation of the author’s intention, function in the text as symbols, which enables the output of functions of this proper name beyond the limits of the traditional nominative-localization one. They become the means of the indirect features of characters of the novel that are one of the elements of text formation.

The precedent context of Russian mass media discourse

The role of precedent phenomena in the media space, in the processes of text generation and meaning formation of the media text is studied. Today, the media are modelling the reality. It may differ from the reality as it is, which is not reflected, but presented through diverse interpretations. In interpreting a statement/message, a significant role belongs to precedent phenomena and the underlying knowledge structures. The problems of the media text, a socially significant communicative environment of our time, determined the relevance of the research. The purpose of the study is to characterize the role of precedent units in interpreting the media text (at the level of meaning and significance). The materials of the research are Russian newspapers, the Newspaper Corpus of the Russian Language, the National Corpus of the Russian Language, and internet sources in Russian. The authors used methods of the discursive level, discourse analysis of precedent phenomena, taking into account their extra-linguistic dimension; the cognitive projection of the study assumed linguo-cognitive analysis and linguo-cognitive modeling as modeling the structure of meaning, text formation and sense formation based on precedent units. The study provides a discourse analysis of precedent phenomena taking into account their extralinguistic dimension and a liguocognitive analysis in order to model additional meanings and the structure of the meaning of precedent units. The cognitive approach identified the role of extralinguistic knowledge in forming the meaning of the text and the precedent unit. Thematized (invariant) knowledge shared by communicants is the key to the successful interpretation of the precedent unit and the functional effectiveness of the media text. Prospects: in the future, it seems promising to study the corpus of precedent units relevant to professional and citizen journalism, their structure, differences, spheres of functioning, as well as modeling the meaning of precedent units in social networks, memes, and the blogosphere.

Individual Style of Dostoevsky: Dimensions of Investigation

The article examines the existing approaches to the study of the individual style of the writer. We call these approaches models of individual style. We distinguish lexical model, syntactical model, narrative model and the model of intertextual relations. Specific features of the lexical model consist of the frequency distribution of certain words in text formation. The frequency distribution of lexical items reflects the importance of certain meanings and conceptual areas for a given author. The syntactic model of individual style is based on identifying characteristic syntactic constructions that have a high frequency rank for a particular author. The narrative model characterizes the way the story is organized. The units of the narrative model are the components of the plot and the operations that are performed on these components (moving, eliminating fragments of the narrative, combining episodes and scenes, introducing some components of the plot into others). Intertextual relations, that is, a set of semantic and formal references to other texts of the same or other authors, form an intertextual model, which also is unique for every writer. The above mentioned models complement each other and, taken together, make it possible to describe the specific features of the unique speech practices of the writer. Models of individual style are illustrated by the examples from Dostoevskys works. Modern corpus data technologies make it possible to more strictly develop the models of individual style, enhancing their objectivity by the implementation of quantitative methods. This article is a part of a project, initiated by Yu.N. Karaulov and E.L. Ginzburg.

Medical Books of the 17th–18th Centuries from the Siberian Archives: Structural-and-Grammatical Aspect

The article presents a comparative study of two medical books from the Siberian archives dating back to the 17 th –18 th centuries: Tobolsk Lechebnik (TL) kept in Tobolsk Book Depository, and Altai Lechebnik (AL) stored in Altai Museum of Local Lore – both stemming from the text of the medical book called "Prokhladnyi Vertograd (The Cool Garden)" from the collection of the Rumyantsev Museum (PV). Our findings show that Siberian medical books demonstrate different degrees of structural and grammatical transformation of the source PV text, conventionally considered by the authors of the research to be a list, which is chronologically closer to the original text. It was established that TL can be regarded as a list derived from the PV, and AL – a source reflecting a further stage in the process of text generation in the institutional medical discourse. We claim that the intentional and grammatical perspective of the medical text formation is associated with the modal variability of verbal lexemes: the prevailing in PV and TL personal verb forms reflect the presence of the subject of speech as an agent in special communication; in AL these are replaced by infinitives which transform the real modality of the message about an action "from experience" (in PV and TL) into a syntactic categorical imperative.It was also determined that the subject of the action expressed by personal verb forms is typically generalized (in this case, special actions of the doctor and the patient can be detected through the difference in the verbal lexemes). The subject is not grammatically defined with the infinitive verb forms.

Fractality as a Fundamental Principle of Monument Poems Organization

Tere is a centuries-old tradition of writing monument poems, while their content and form changed under the influence of the artistic context of different literary eras and due to differences in the authors’ conceptual pictures of the world. Tis type of poetic texts is the object of research by Russian and foreign scholars, but the approach to the analysis of “monuments” is rather one-sided: they are studied from the point of view of preserving and developing genre traditions. Te article offers a new look into this phenomenon − the fractal principle of the monument poems organization. Te relevance of the problem is beyond doubt, since synergetic research makes it possible to illuminate in a new way the stages of a literary text formation due to the inclusion of various monument poems in the intertext of Russian literature. Poems-”monuments” with a fractal organization, act as a nonlinear synergistic self-organizing system. Self-similarity is the main property of fractals, causing fractal changes, which repeat themselves on different scales and take different confgurations. Using the methods of linguistic observation, conceptual analysis and the descriptive method, the author comes to the following conclusions: in classical texts a monument poem acts as a semantic fractal, since the texts practically do not change structurally and contain all markers of the conceptual fractal. Non-classical texts are represented as a structural fractal, because they preserve only general formal features of a conceptual fractal, its content is subject to transformation by the poet’s artistic intention, specifc historical time and other factors.

Interdiscursivity of Biofictional Narration: the Image of Petersburg in M. Bradbury’s “To the Hermitage”

Introduction. The present paper deals with the interdiscursivity in postmodern literary biographic narration (biofiction) in which interdiscursivity is viewed as the author’s strategy of text formation. The relevance of the study is conditioned by the interest of modern linguistics in interaction of different discourse types in literary texts. It is also relevant to study different techniques that the English author uses to represent an external linguocultural context, namely, to create the image of a Russian city in the English-language narration. The novelty of the research is implied by the choice of material under examination, as the constitutive elements of biofictional narration have not been fully defined yet.Methodology and sources. The study is drawn on M. Bradbury’s English-language postmodern biofictional novel To the Hermitage. This biofiction depicts D. Diderot’s trip to St. Petersburg, where he was invited by Catherine the Great. It also recounts the adventures of a modern expedition, which came to the same destination to study the French philosopher’s heritage. The research of discourse interaction is based on a methodology, developed by V. Chernyavskaya. It combines traditional methods of stylistic analysis with discourse analysis.Results and discussion. While analysing the literary space of the biofiction, the following “central” discourses have been identified: Russian-culture-oriented discourse of English as well as historical, political, and autobiographical discourses. The narration is also rich in traits of “periphery” discourses, to name just a few: economical, literary, colloquial French, etc. M. Bradbury uses the strategy of simulated interdiscursivity to make a persuasive impact on a reader’s mind, at the same time involving the reader in fact-fiction semantic game.Conclusion. The analysis highlighted here proved the fact that interdiscursivity is one of the dominant mechanisms an author uses to construct biofictional narration. This strategy reflects some key features of postmodern texts, such as blending of literary genres, a playful montage of different discourse types and ironic mode of narration.

The Influence of the Grimm Tales on the Tale Textology of László Arany

László Arany's Eredeti népmesék (Authentic Folktales, 1862) is an iconic collection of folktales. The tales in this publication have been entrenched in the national identity as classic Hungarian folktales, and the narrative style of the tales has been established in the public consciousness as the narrative style of Hungarian folktales. The Arany family's collection of folktales ultimately had a similar function in Hungarian culture as the Kinder- und Hausmärchen of the Brothers Grimm had in Germany, but while the text formation of the Grimm tales had been thoroughly explored by philology, the Arany tales had not been accompanied by folkloristic interpretations or in-depth philological analyses. To László Arany, the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm were the ideal, which he indicated in his many theoretical writings as well as his role as a collector and editor of tales. To form the individual texts found in Eredeti népmesék, László Arany used the tale manuscripts transcribed by his mother and sister in the 1850s, modifying them considerably, primarily by employing stylistic devices, many of which can also be observed in the work of the Grimms. This essay examines the extent to which László Arany's editorial and text formation practices were determined by the textological practice developed by the Brothers Grimm, and ultimately the extent to which the stylistic ideals of fairy tales developed by the Grimms contributed to the development of the written, literary version of Hungarian folktales.

Phenomenon of Information Misrepresentation in Mass-Media: Versions of Facts

The article discusses the phenomenon of factual information misrepresentation in popular print media. From the point of view of the authors, misrepresentation is determined by a general communicative pattern — the process of misrepresentation information during its transfer; the ideology of a particular edition and the tendentiousness of the media in general; striving for informational priority and a professional perspective of presenting information. Understanding the misrepresentation in the media discourse as a substitution, falsehood, fiction, and the transformation of factual information, the authors attempt to generalize the ways of translating facts (truthful information) into a version of facts. Based on the material of the “near-political narrative”, which is part of the peripheral zone of political discourse and includes texts dedicated to the politician's relatives or ancestors, as well as his personal and even intimate life, the authors distinguish three main directions that contribute to the emergence of versions of facts. These are: extra-textual factors; a group of proper text methods; change of the axiological mode of the media. It is proved that the subjective mode of modern media determines the use of not so much false information as of transformed information, the share of which is steadily increasing and begins to determine the specifics of modern journalistic text formation.

The image of Bolshoye Boldino in the Russian literature: peculiarities of local text formation

The subject of this research is Bolshoye Boldino as the landmark of the Russian culture. The goal is to give characteristics to the image of Bolshoye Boldino established in the Russian literature, as well as analyze the possibility of formation of the local text. It is proven that constant traits of Boldino, such as solitude, isolation from the big world, simplicity of life, and vagueness of time boundaries, were formed based on the letters, works, and events in the life of A. S. Pushkin, and later comprehended by other authors. It is noted that the collection of texts about Bolshoye Boldino consists of the saying and interviews, fiction and folklore compositions. The research material includes the poems and an saying M. S. Petrovyh, Y. V. Drunina, D. S. Samoilov and B. A. Akhmadulina. The conclusion is made that in the Russian culture, Bolshoye Boldino resembles the place of commemoration of A. S. Pushkin, as well as the space that allows a person to achieve comprehension and mindfulness. In the aforementioned works, the image of Bolshoye Boldino in ambivalent: the space is interpreted as a place of salvation or as the origin of the tragic events in life of the poet. The author assumes that the Boldino text is in the process of formation and has low intensity, which is substantiated by its remoteness of from the cultural centers.

Tropofigures as New Realities of Texts in Modern Political Communication

The article examines the mechanisms of organizing verbal constructs that manifest the linguopragmatic structure of texts in modern Russian political communication. A special class of figurative means of political language stands out – tropofigures. Tropofigures include irony and parcelling, which are characterized, on the one hand, by formal-semantic ambivalence and, on the other hand, by an apparent idiostylistic touch. The proposed methodological framework of the study aimed at the identification and systematic characterization of the categorical features of these synergetic linguistic signs, facilitated the description of the ways of their exemplification in political interactions. The authors established that the tropofigures of irony and parcelling ornamentally form the antinomy of the identity / non-identity of the sign and the object (semasiological discrepancy between the logical and grammatical organization of the syntagma). The tropofigures not only organize the expressive-pragmatic center of political discursive practice but also fulfill the function of a verbal marker of the cognitive mechanisms of text formation, which allow the participant to present their communicative goal setting in a certain way. The authors emphasized that the tropofigures of irony and parcelling are transformed from means of enhancing expressiveness into markers of the idiomental process and set a different social perception. The results of the linguistic rhetorical research indicate new mechanisms of convergence / divergence of semantic constructs in various political interactions and, as a result, linguocultural "reaccentuation" of sign-symbolic and axiological constituents of the political institution in the modern Russian-speaking space.