Vol 11, No 2 (2020): Semantics of Universal and Specific in the Language and a Text

The article is timed to coincide with 75th anniversary of Eleonora Dyusenovna Suleimenova, who is a famous scientist of Kazakhstan, Doctor of Philology, academic of International Higher Education Academy. The contribution of E.D. Suleimenova to the development of modern linguistics is considered in the context of her basic multifaceted scientific, educational and social activities. A special attention is paid to the academic’s fundamental works in General and Contrastive Semantics, Sociolinguistics and Theory of Second Language Acquisition. In the present article some practical research results of Suleimenova have been discussed, those of theoretical foundation of lexicographic principles of metalinguistic units and their realization in two language dictionaries, compiled by her guidance (“Glossary in Linguistics”, Languages of peoples of Kazakhstan” Reference book, “Business Language: Kazakh-Russian Dictionary of collocations”, “Glossary of Sociolinguistic terms”). Some other linguistic and educational ideas of the scientist that have been reflected in the textbooks for both school and university students have also been viewed.

Language, the first cultural phenomenon, received textual expression in myths, of which the oldest tell of the mystical relationship of the tribe with the animal. Consideration of the concepts that arose on this basis, and then of “conceptual myths” (OM Freidenberg) about the totem-ancestor makes it possible to analyze their semantic-semantic fields. Moreover, we relied on the cultural-historical concept of G.G. Shpet, which allowed us to trace the evolution and subsequent transformation of the semantic-semantic fields of myth and thus reveal the algorithm for the formation of the mythopoetic tradition, its fading and eternal return. In the center of this work is semantic-semantic fields of myths about the Heavenly deer / moose cow, the cult which stretched over the more than six millennia. Observing the astral objects that served as a spatial-temporal reference point in the hunting and reindeer herding, primitive tribes felt their unity with the star ancestors. For example, two constellations of seven stars, which served the primitive hunters and reindeer breeders as a guide on the way, began to be identified in the russian North with the horned Reindeer Mother / moose cow and her daughter, from which the well-being of people depends. The attempt of comparative-historical reconstruction of semantic-semantic fields in article based on the material of myths about totems-forefathers made it possible to distinguish three main layers. These are 1) the energetically “charged” field of the myth of the shaman visiting the fantastic deer in labor, in which the religious and mythological consciousness received expression; 2) a semantic-semantic field of myths that belong to the artistic and heroic consciousness and narrate about a cultural hero who is ready for a feat for his family-tribal community; 3) the semantic-semantic field of the myth of the Horned mother-deer in the story of Ch. T. Aitmatova’s “White Steamboat (After the Tale)”, the rescue of orphans who became the ancestors of the Bugu tribe (‘deer’), and contains deep thoughts of the author, the bearer of cultural-historical and philosophicalcultural consciousness. As for the semantic-semantic fields, specific to the various interpretations of plots about a moose cow and a calf, close to a household fairy tale, a hunting story and a joke, so they correspond to the scientific and technical type of consciousness that has lost its connection with myth.

The relevance of this article is due to the contradiction between the typical position of linguoculturologists, who use proverbs in their studies to illustrate the idea of the national specific mental representations of the world, reflected in the language, on the one hand, and the undeniable similarity in the verbal, logical and semantic structures of the proverbs that we observe when comparing the proverbial material of completely different languages - related and not related: English, German, Russian, Czech, Bulgarian, Chinese, Turkish, Armenian, etc. The object of analysis is composed of proverbs as units by means of which the speakers express their attitude to the world in a figurative form and manifest themselves as carriers of a certain culture. This rapprochement is carried out in several directions. We note the undoubted similarity (1) in the field of thematic areas, chosen to state the results of observation and conclusions, which generalize the experience gained and derive pragmatic meaning from it; (2) at the level of proverbial condensates (mental constructs, ideas) that briefly convey the contents of the proverb - such as “A wife and a husband are different”, “A child inherits the properties of parents”, “A little bad thing spoils a big good”, etc.; (3) at the level of generalized concepts - the signs of them are especially actively reflected in proverbs: the image of gold in its various interpretations is universal - as a standard of a high degree of any characteristic, as a way of solving many life difficulties, etc.; (4) at the level of components that verbalize concepts, become sustainable elements of proverbs, can be opposed or compared. Binomial pairs form the logical and semantic structure of proverbs (“friend” - “alien”, “smart” - “stupid”, “head” - “legs”), move from one unit to another and some of them can have different verbal implementations (“predator” - “victim”: wolf - lamb/sheep/cow ). This analysis allows us to talk about coincidences not only in assessing the importance of individual objects and phenomena, in thoughts about them and associations, in the spectrum of identifiable signs, in verbalization techniques used for matching generalized ideas, and - at last - about a certain reduction in the pathos of the statement about the national specificity of the proverbial space of the particular language.

The article is devoted to an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the semantics of the adjective “sacred”, the Indo-European root of which was the basis of the Latin token saker, initially illustrating a multi-pole understanding - from the divine to the demonic, from the sublime to the secularized. Particular attention is paid to the definitions of the adjective in the explanatory, etymological dictionaries of the XІX-XX centuries, in mythological representations, in folklore texts, in calendar, family and other rituals, in phraseology, paremiology, etc. In a historical retrospective, an analysis of changes in the semantics of the adjective “sacred” revealed the pre-Christian, Christian, secularized stages of lexical-semantic variations. A comprehensive study confirms the transformation of not only worldview systems, but also language tools that contribute to the formation in the minds of Russian people of the meta-idea of the adjective “sacred” in order to identify the cultural dominance and actively search and restore its semantic core.

The article deals with the consideration of the paremic text in the modern linguistic paradigm: approaches to the researches are presented, the text-forming and linguocultural potential of individual units is shown. The direct observation method was used as the main method in this work, followed by the use of descriptive-analytical, comparative, contextual and linguistic and cultural methods. The Study is based on examples from lexicographic sources and illustrations from the Internet. The article provides an overview of the main aspects of the paremiological studies. Paremias are considered as a folklore genre, the thematic and ideographic principle of classifying paremias is presented, the aspects of cultural linguistics (linguoculturological) and translation studies are substantiated, and peculiarities of historical and etymological discursive (functional) analysis are shown. Comparative linguistic and cultural analysis is recognized by the authors of the paper as an integrative aspect of the paremiological material description. The article analyzes the text-forming and linguoculturological potential of the paremiology in different languages. As an example of the realization of the text-forming potential of paremias, the functioning of the proverb Не рой другому яму - сам в нее попадешь (упадешь) (He who digs a pit for others may fall himself therein) is studied as the verbal part of the Russian and Lithuanian demotivators. The paper provides a linguistic and cultural analysis of paremias with a toponymical component in different languages. Despite the abundance of various toponyms, which are characteristic for different countries, in these proverbs are dominated the international component, which is associated with the universal laws of human thinking, which makes it possible to find their semantic equivalents in various languages. The relevance of this study lies in the fact that paremias are considered in various aspects from the standpoint of modern humanistic education. With the development of social communications in modern society, an intercultural connection is being strengthened, requiring linguocultural commentary.

The article is devoted to the study of the conception of friendship based on the results of comparative structural-semantic analysis of English and Russian proverbs about friendship. The study includes two complementary steps. The first step consists in formulating the main aspects of the conception of friendship. The second consists in comparing fragments of this proverbial field, which made it possible to explore the implementation of eight aspects of the conception of friendship on the material studied. The clarification of similarities and differences made it possible to identify the specific national and cultural characters of thinking and mentality of the two non-related peoples towards understanding of friendship. The relevance of the study is determined by the novelty of the proposed approach to the study of the conception of friendship based on the comparative structural and semantic analysis of proverbs of two linguistic-cultural ethnic groups, as well as the insufficient knowledge of proverbs expressing the concept of “friendship” from the point of view of identifying their figurative and motivational basis, figurative means (metaphor, metonymy, comparison, personification, gradation, hyperbole, irony, allegory, antithesis), semantics of lexical components, syntactic structures (repetitions, parallelism, ellipsis, compression), expressive means, as well as rhythmic organization. There were selected and systematized similar and unique meanings of English and Russian proverbs as a result of research on the material of these languages. The analysis of these meanings allowed us to explore conception of friendship, thereby providing the basis for deeper rethinking both the conception and the proverbial material. As the part of the study there were observed differences in understanding of a person, personal relationships with others, mutual help, etc. These differences are largely due to the different origins of English and Russian proverbs. Most of the English proverbs are short sayings, which were formed under the influence of Latin expressions and quotations from Bible. Most of the Russian proverbs are peasant by origin and therefore they are closely connected with a specific and imaginative perception of the world. Their expressiveness is much higher at the expense of using the means of oral folk creativity. This analysis made it possible to reveal the role of linguistic means in expressing the mentality of the representatives of both peoples.

The studies of a film text as a polycoded textual phenomena involve the studies of its integral components, such as film story and screenplay, reflecting storyline or plot of a literary text that serves as a precedential text to filming and as an immediate constituent of a film itself. Film title combines the features of a book or story title and functions as a precedential phenomenon as well, but is an integral part of the process of film promotion and release, and in cinematographic sphere it’s of crucial importance. In fact, the original book or story titles used to change especially with time and audience involved, when filming remaking changes to TV series and miniseries, or films are followed by sequels and prequels so that not to make something like Jaws 3 or Indiana Jones 5 . Anyhow, most of film titles fully repeat or at least conserve the title of a literary text, still it’s often amplified to make difference or to emphasize the idea that the screenplay is a new one just the story to be continued, e.g., Jaws-3D: The Revenge. Not very often the changes are marked graphically as of Romeo + Juliet or Romeo & Julie t, so that to hint a new turnoff the plot to the audience. It’s obvious that film titles often use names of main characters either for series or episode titles or to form a film franchise like that of Jurassic Park or Indiana Jones ones. As people started to use different IT gadgets they used to read books less and less, and film stories tend to make a new book form when a book is no longer a precedent to a film. Thus the cycle of “book title → film title” was completed by a part of “film title → book title (or book itself” to reflect the reverse trend, which is known worldwide.

This article analyses the intertextuality of the functional and pragmatic elements of the film text (film title, synopsis, slogan) that are a direct part of the film text’s semiotic space. The pragmatic orientation of the film title, synopsis and slogan with their main task (targeted audience capture) largely determines the pragmatic nature of intertextual allusions that occur in these film text elements. The purpose of this work is to prove the presence of intertextual connections in the functional and pragmatic elements of the film text and to consider in depth the internal intertextuality of these elements. In the course of the study, we made the following conclusions: the most acceptable for the analysis of the functional and pragmatic elements of the film text is the theory of transtextuality by G. Genette, through which the intertextuality of the film title, synopsis and slogan must be considered on the basis of the paratextuality, metatextuality and hypertextuality. The intertextuality of the functional and pragmatic elements of the film text consists in the interaction of film title, synopsis and slogan with the precedent texts and events, as well as the intertextual connection inside the class of these elements. The internal intertextuality of the functional and pragmatic elements of the film text allows the movie title, synopsis, and slogan to ensure the fulfillment of their main function that is to attract to watch the movie as many viewers as possible.

The spheres of official communication, which include public administration, legal proceedings, legislation, etc., are regulated, in contrast to everyday communication. Activities in each of these spheres are subject to precisely defined, strictly established rules that regulate and legitimize it. The diplomatic language is characterized by a special degree of regulation. “The weight of a word” in international politics is extremely heavy, since the fate of entire states and peoples may depend on successful or unsuccessful communication between diplomats. The strict standardization of the diplomatic language should serve as a kind of deterrent against the growth of tension in international relations. The goal of this study is to identify the degree of susceptibility of the diplomatic correspondence language to transformations in the political crisis context (during wartime). The research material is based on the texts from the Orange book, a collection of diplomatic correspondence between warring countries before the outbreak of the First World War. The application of the contextual analysis method made it possible to determine the vector of changes in the diplomatic correspondence language caused by the political crisis: from restraint, emotionlessness, tact and politeness accepted in the diplomatic sphere to ultimatumness, categoricalness, manifestation of emotions and deviation from the principle of objective reflection of events.

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