Vol 20, No 2 (2016)

Content and peculiarities of the Russian branch of anthropological linguistics - linguocultural conceptology - as well as its basic term - linguocultural concept - are studied. It is established that linguocultural concept possesses a set of differential features most important of which is the presence of various different components reflecting the interdisciplinary character of this discipline in its semantics. Disciplinary status of the Russian linguocultural conceptology is proved by the fact of possessing its own terminological system which includes both general linguistics terms and special terms. Being rather integral this system has its weak points turning it into an object of criticism. Apart from the constructive criticism linguocultural conceptology is confronted with ideologically motivated criticism which denies its basic axiom: the existence of the language and culture ethnospecificity.

In this article we analyze the process of stereotype thinking and its verbal expression. We focus our attention on the symbolic vision of our society in the mind of Europeans: Russia is evil, a country where law and democracy have deteriorated. Our aim is to examine the process of mind manipulation and imprinting of the enemy image on the mind of the society by means of communication and show the difficulty of destruction of stereotypes which prevents people of the 21st century from the objective perception of reality. We conducted our study on dictionary entries, articles, B.Obama’s speech in particular, and the extract from David Mitchell’s book “Black Swan Green”. The research is based on the data worked out by a number of sciences: Cultural Linguistics, Psychology, Psycholinguistics, Cross-Cultural Communication. We used the methods of functional and pragmatic analysis of the text. A stereotype is defined as an element of the cultural code which can be decoded by means of language; itt affects the way of thinking, behavior and lexis. Thus, the proposed thesis of a stereotype is supposed to be changing but too slowly. It is concluded that the sterotype “Russia is the enemy” possesses its formal linguistic, mental, and behavioural parametres.

The article is devoted to the analysis of such specific forms of human interaction as quasi- and pseudo-communication. The authors specify the terms which sometimes are used interchangeably. The aim of the conducted research is to find out and demonstrate existing differences and similarities of these communicative phenomena on the basis of theoretical and empirical analysis of the research material in the Russian and English languages. The authors describe communicative features of these phenomena and consider the reasons for such forms of communication and their increased use at present. The research material is represented fiction extracts, film scripts, jokes, print media, a collection of oral speech records both in Russian and English. The authors make use of the following research methods: definitional analysis (to define the terminology of the research), the method of linguistic observation and introspection (to select the communicative situations), the descriptive-analytical method and the method of comparative analysis (to identify similarities and differences of the target phenomena), and the conversational analysis method (to view productivity and effectiveness of a dialogue), etc. The classification of possible forms of their existence in different discourses is suggested. The authors assume that both pseudo- and quasi-communication are characterized as fictitious forms of human interaction with some noticeable violation of the basic communicative model. Pseudo-communication suffers from the discrepancy of the meaning of a coded and decoded message. The authors put forward the main parameters of scientific classification of it as follows: adequate understanding, intentionality, and the stage of communicative action where the failure takes place. At the same time they stress the necessity to distinguish the cases of pseudo talks from phatic and indirect communication. Quasi-communcation is marked by the lack of a real partner and hence the lack of any adequate feedback. The authors assume that any kind of communication can acquire a quasi-form. The preliminary conclusions of the comparative analysis prove that these kinds of communication are characteristic of both Russian and English communicative behavior. The authors stress the importance and perspective of research and scientific analysis of these communicative phenomena (in its comparative aspect as well) for linguists and experts in the theory of communication, the theory of crosscultural communication, and linguistic ecology.

The aim of the research work is to deliver a consistent patterns of truncation in the internet communication and the factors that initiate the truncation based on the Optimality Theory suggested by McCarthy and Prince 1995, McCarthy 2008. The tasks of the research are to review the types of truncation in Korean language, to make a detailed analysis of the overall processes of truncation based on analytical tool - the Optimality Theory. Truncated forms in Korean language are mainly observed in the Internet communication, but not in regular communication. There are three main types of truncation in the internet communication. This paper examines the patterns of truncation in internet communication and suggests the major factors triggering truncation and desyllabification. To this end, we employ the basic framework of Optimality Theory (McCarthy & Prince 1995, McCarthy 2008) as our tool of analysis. During the discussion, we invoke several major constrains and show how they interact to represent the surface realization of those new forms. First of all, two major constraints, Truncate-Weak and Recoveralility, indicate that morpho-phonologically weak elements can be truncated only if the original form or meaning can be recovered from the truncated ones. Beside these, the markedness constraints, *Off-glide, *CC, *VV, and *VhV, interact with the faithfulness constraints, such as Max-Initial and Max-σ, in which the markedness constraints are ranked higher than the faithfulness constraints. In any morphological changes the main constraint is RECOVERABILITY. It is also shown that the same analytical method applies to the truncation in English loanwords as well.

This article describes some particularities of translation of literary texts from French and English into Russian as exemplified in the novel “The Lady of the Camellias” by A. Dumas and the novel “Wuthering Heights” by E. Brontë. The article examines in particular the use of the adaptation technique in order to confirm the hypothesis of the connection of this translation transformation with conveyance of the original's stylistic features. This transformation is applied in the translation of some phenomena and phrases in the original text that can barely be translated because of their national singularity, a significant time gap, or peculiarity for other culture bearers. The theoretical foundation for the article are literary style researches [Barkhudarov, 1975; Komissarov, 1990; Chaikovskij, 1997; Chukovskij, 2014; Baker, 2011], as well as researches in the field of the use of adaptation in the translation of literary texts [Alekseeva, 2004; Vlakhov, Florin, 1980; Shchetinkin, 1987; Clifford, Landers, 2001; Newmark, 1988]. The research methods used in the study are the following: relevant scientific literature analysis, statistical approach, comparative study of literary texts and their translations. A thorough analysis of the nature of adaptation enabled us to specify a range of translation transformations which allow adaptation to be applied in the reanslation of literary texts. According to the results of the research, the informative as well as the aesthetic function plays a very important role in the translation of literary texts.