Vol 17, No 2 (2020)

The article is part of the authors’ big research on the forms of address in Asian varieties of the English language, which will finally be reflected in the “Dictionary of the Forms of Address in World Englishes: Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Guam”. Effective and successful communication largely depends on the forms of address used by the speakers. Being social phenomena, forms of address can vary from culture to culture following the traditions and etiquette rules of this culture. The questionnaires on the forms of address filled in by Guamanians; two dictionaries on Chamorro English; local newspapers analyses; and personal observations of the authors turned out a solid proof of the hypothesis that even though speaking English as a second language, Guamanians make English their local variety, with forms of address typical to Guam variety of the English language. Quantitative, descriptive, and observation methods were used to analyze the forms of address in Chamorro variety of the English language, and classification of the forms of address used by the native people of Guam was formed and presented in the article.

Digital communication is one of the typical features of modern society. The specificity of written communication in digital space (by means of such messengers as WhatsApp and Viber) determines various peculiarities of the process, such as conciseness, clear goal-setting and others. Nevertheless, code switching representing specific processes in the act of communication and linguistic consciousness of speakers takes place in such a specific communication mode in multilingual environment. The authors examined about 100 contexts showing code-switching process in a homogeneous environment among the communicants with the same social and educational status and having the elite type of speech culture. However, the communicants demonstrate mixing of linguistic units of at least two languages (Kazakh and Russian) as well as mistakes made due to interference.

“Semantics is meaning communicated through language” (Saeed I.J.). Semantics is the study of relationship between words and their meanings; it is directly linked with the conceptual meaning of words, and the associative meaning. Semantic sieve as a concept is an innovative phenomenon. This linguistic phenomenon is a process whereby a word is dispersed through a semantic tunnel which in some cases produces different meaning. This is explained through different models. The ‘semantic sieve’ is related to translation, where the deep structure of words differs from the surface structure. There are some concepts and words in Akan and English that are absent in Russian, others are known in Akan but virtually absent in the English language.

The paper deals with some issues connected with the notions of bilingualism and diglossia in literary creativity. The main object of the investigation is the opposition: standard language / territorial dialect, and the leading criterion of the delimitation between the said phenomena - the existence / absence of the specific codified norm. Some other factors such as the genetic affinity of the idioms and the language policy towards them are also considered.

The present article is devoted to the comparative analysis of Chinese insertions functioning in fiction and non-fiction written in English based on the works of Amy Tan and Peter Hessler. As the research showed, the leading function of insertions in non-fiction was documentary function, whereas in fiction it was the function of ethnic coloring and the function of hero speech characteristics. The functions in the analyzed texts overlap and complement one another. Structurally the insertions in non-fiction feature words and phrases, in fiction they vary from interjections to significant parts of texts.

The article is devoted to the study of the complex motive “home-antidome” in the work of F. Dostoevsky “The Brothers Karamazov”. Studying the motive as a key unit of narratology, the author comes to the conclusion that in Dostoevsky’s poetry a special role is played by antinomic motives, the multidirectional semantic potential of which contributes to the complexity of the poetic dialectic of the writer. Thus, the motive of the home in Dostoevsky’s novel is inextricably linked with the motives of homelessness, wandering, the search for the place in the world by the heroes of the novel. Each of the heroes of the novel is a “bearer of the motive function” of home. The image of old Karamazov is associated with the idea of desacralizing the house as an intimate, family space. Each of the brothers is in a transit situation, not having, according to the thesis of Yu.M. Lotman, fastening to a certain topos. Homelessness becomes for heroes of the work the starting point of a spiritual search. Using the methods of linguistic-poetic and literary analysis, the author of the article concludes that the motives of the anti-home in the “Brothers Karamazov” novelty explicate the writer’s idea of a person and his place in the world, and in a broader sense, of the past and future of Russia, which has lost touch with previous generations and faith in God.

The article presents an experience of Russian language teaching in International children’s home (Interdom). It describes pedagogical conditions which allows creating of developing environment for the pupils and achieving of high results of Russian language teaching in multilingual audience of pupils. The main difficulties that students encounter in the process of immersion in a new cultural and linguistic atmosphere are analyzed.

The article considers the main approaches to expanding international cultural and humanitarian cooperation, ensuring educational, scientific and informational interaction between the Russian Federation and European countries through international educational expeditions. These events were held in 9 European countries for leaders, teachers and learning organizations engaged in educational activities under the main and (or) additional general educational programs, media representatives of the countries running the events. The article was prepared on the results of work under the project “Conducting international educational expeditions aimed at the Russian language, literature, culture and Russian education popularization”, implemented by the LLC JV Sodruzhestvo with the support of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation. The article describes the formats of events proposed in the framework of the educational expeditions project, including the features of an integrated approach to their development and implementation, which allowed to ensure high interest of the target audience, easy and effective uptake of content presented for them.