Aphorism in the Circle of Small Text Forms in Oral, Written and Electronic Discourses

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Abstract

Aphorism, despite its antiquity and universality as a speech genre, still does not have a generally accepted understanding of its properties as a small text form and characteristics of its place among other types of miniature texts. The object of the study is to determine the nature of the relationship between aphorism and small text forms that function in existing types of discourse (oral, written, electronic). Research methods - heuristic, descriptive, linguistic text analysis, structural-semantic modeling and discourse analysis. The material for the study covers both aphoristic units as separate texts and as structural elements of nonaphoristic texts - a total of about 100,000 aphorisms from more than 300 reference, literary and other sources. As a result of the study, it was found that aphorism is not a specific type of text, since it can be equally successfully generated and function as different text forms in different types of discourse (oral, written, electronic). Aphorisms can be literary sayings (classical and modern varieties), and literary works-miniatures (including their national varieties), and one-phrase texts (in most of their discursive and genre forms), and paremiological units (proverbs, folk signs, jokes, etc.). In relation to all existing varieties of small text forms, it is advisable to consider the concept of aphorism either as a categorical one (if we are talking about miniature texts that have a differential sign of aphorism - a generalized universal content), or as a classificatory one (if we are talking about the entire corpus of miniature texts in the sense of their differentiation into two categories of units - “aphorisms” and “non-aphorisms”). Aphorisms cannot be involvedr into paradigmatic relations with those small text forms (apophegms, chryas, wellerisms, etc.) that have a superphrasal structure and are capable of including aphorisms as compositional elements.

About the authors

Eugene E. Ivanov

Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia; Mogilev State A. Kuleshov University

Author for correspondence.
Email: ivanov_ee@msu.by
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-6451-8111

Doctor of Philology, Leading Research Fellow of the Department of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Philology, RUDN University; Head of the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, Faculty of Foreign Language, Mogilev State A. Kuleshov University (Republic of Belarus)

6, Miklukho-Maklaya Str., Moscow, Russian Federation, 117198; 1, Kosmonavtov Str, Mogilev, Belarus, 212022

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