Vol 14, No 1 (2023)

Relevance of the issue: the topicality of the issue of terminology consistency in translations of economic texts is currently emphasized by the Latvian State Language Center and determined by the fact that many economic terms emerged in Latvian and Russian relatively recently, during the transition from a planned economy to a market economy. It remains disputable how to define and assess the terminology consistency in translations of economic texts. The corpus of the study comprises Latvian and Russian textbooks on economics of three generations (1990s, 2000s and 2010s), and in addition to them - bilingual and multilingual dictionaries of economic terms published in Latvia and Russia since 1990. The paper proves that that terminology consistency in translations of economic (and not only) texts can be assessed and compared (between text corpora and time periods) using scientific methodology and a special technique. The method of research are linguistic discourse analysis, which includes both quantitative and qualitative methods. General results, which also form the scientific novelty of this study include: (1) the put forward conceptual understanding of the terminology consistency as the structural component of the overall quality of terminology translation as well as the definition of the terminology consistency in translations; (2) the elaborated original methodology and technique for assessing the terminology consistency in translations not in the categories of ‘good-bad’, but in the conditionally ambivalent categories ‘consistent-inconsistent’ (for the incidental identification of processes occurring in the studied economic discourse); (3) the explained essence of discourse in translation studies, which is the target text within the background processes of the social reality that determine the creation (synthesis) and perception (analysis) of the translation.

Over the past thirty years, Russian linguistic studies have noted terminological heterogeneity in the concepts of “jazykovaja lichnost” and “kommunikativnaja lichnost”, literally “linguistic personality” and “communicative personality”, however, in the field of political communication, due to the inextricable connection of political discourse with the socio-cultural, historical, or political context that constructs it, their differentiation was observed rather than interchangeability. This research seeks to characterise “kommunikativnaja lichnost”, a key concept in linguopersonology. The evidence base is parliamentary speeches of Jeremy Corbyn and Keir Starmer, previous and current leaders of the Labor Party of Great Britain. The results of a qualitative analysis have been verified through the Sketch Engine content analysis program, and they demonstrate how a politician’s rhetoric can change depending on situational factors - in this case, the foreign political situation and domestic political processes. The overarching theme of the politicians’ communications is the termination of the UK’s membership in the European Union and the protracted coronavirus pandemic, which is the root of all social and economic ills. The words frequently used by Corbyn and Starmer are predetermined by the communicative behaviours of the politicians. The article attempts to determine the ‘communicative personality’ of Corbin and Starman using the leadership typology proposed by Harold Lasswell. This work thus contributes to the development of linguopersonology provisions and raises the necessity to develop types of the ‘communicative personality’ of a politician. Given the analysis results, the article suggests interpreting the Russian concept ‘kommunikativnaja lichnost’ as ‘linking word use and personality characteristics’.

Developping a multilingual corpus of terminology in linguistics can contribute to better organization and standardization of Russian and Chinese terms in the chosen field on the base of the existing works on the material of the English language. The scope of the project is to fill the lacunae, to disambiguate homonymy, to facilitate the choice of appropriate translation of a linguistic term and understanding of its context. The issue of the absence of Russian-Chinese-English and Chinese-Russian-English terminological dictionaries and the general desynchronization of terminological systems have been repeatedly mentioned in scientific works focused on the description of the language for special purposes. The search for a solution to these theoretical issues will help to find an algorithm for organizing the corpus of terms both within individual scientific disciplines and in interdisciplinary areas of arts and humanities. Multilingual corpus of terminology in linguistics implies the development of methodological recommendations and a complex of teaching materials including the digital ones, which will help foreign students to use the terms according to their level of language proficiency. The project is a continuation of a collective work oriented to the research of a language for professional communication. Language for professional communication is a functional type of a natural language the units of which transfer special knowledge. The absence of this knowledge makes professional communication impossible in the ways of perception, interpretation, translation and, creation of scientific texts in writing.

The description of the facts of the lexical dynamics of the coronavirus period focuses on identifying similarities and differences in the linguistic practice of neologization of Greek and Russian languages. The features of the incorporation of loanwords and the subsequent adaptation of new lexical items in the modern socio-cultural context of these languages are considered through the prism of the impact of global processes. The research is conducted at the lexical-semantic, word-formation, and partially morphological levels. The material of the research was taken from lexicographic sources of modern Greek and Russian languages. The comparative analysis revealed processes common to both languages, such as vocabulary replenishment by borrowing from the same source donor language, and processes specific to each language, such as reborrowing in Greek in a different form or with a different meaning. Based on this analysis, we can conclude that most of the neologisms in these languages come from English, the donor language of the coronavirus lexicon in other languages. At the same time, despite certain similarities in the processes of penetration of new elements into Greek and Russian, the further assimilation of lexical units in each language has an individual character and features that often activate their own mechanisms of neologization.

The purpose and objectives of this study relate to the field of interlanguage contacts and, in particular, to the observation of the process of lexical borrowing as a result of the interaction of non-closely related Russian and Chinese languages. This article discusses the question of the correlation between the nature of Sino-Russian relations and some processes in the vocabulary of the languages of these states. The objective of the study is to identify patterns in the change in the volume and features of borrowed vocabulary, depending on the specifics of the development of interstate relations between China and the USSR, and later the Russian Federation in the period from 1949 to 2022. Within 70 years since the establishment of diplomatic contacts between China and the Soviet Union in 1949, relations between the two countries have gone through three different stages - from warm to cool, and then a period of strategic cooperation - in all areas of public life: humanitarian, scientific, educational, political, military and economic. During these three different periods, the number and nature of Chinese borrowings in Russian and Russian borrowings in Chinese also underwent significant changes. They are reflected in the features of the process of adaptation of borrowed words at the phonetic, grammatical and semantic levels. The frequency of borrowed words use in the period under review in the media texts of both countries is of particular interest. Statistical data on the use of lexemes of Russian origin in Chinese and lexemes of Chinese origin in Russian, obtained from the data of national corpora of the two languages, allow to draw some conclusions about the popularity of certain foreign words at each of the three identified historical stages.

The nature and essence of the language image are considered from the standpoint of modern cognitive linguopoetics, its differences from the general philological concepts of “image” and “imagery” are shown. According to the authors’ idea, the language image is considered in line with creative discursive activity. It is proved that language images integrating real ideas about the world picture and the author’s emotional attitude to them synergetically create an ethno-cultural aura of a literary text. Discourse, due to the multiplicity of its components, is a speech-thinking platform for forming a language image. The latter is considered by us as a synergetic phenomenon in the aspect of a multichannel derivative stimulus and a self-organizing phenomenon in open systems of linguocreative thinking. The article substantiates that in a literary text a language image is generated not by a real, but by a so-called communicative and aesthetically significant event, i.e. a literary discourse - the denotative aura of language images. The analysis shows that the language image is formed not only by the text itself, but also by various extralinguistic factors (knowledge of the world, opinions, values) that play an important role in understanding, interpreting and perceiving verbal images of a communicative event. Therefore, the work interprets all the main (event and non-event) elements of the text’s discursive situation, forming a complex language image. The extralinguistic factors determining the semantic architectonics of the internal context and actively participating in the formation of the ethno-cultural shell of language images are revealed. Each of these images serves as a shadow cloud of the internal context, an element of the ethno-cultural aura of the speech activity. In contrast to the existing stereotypes, according to which the concept and image are considered products of different mental operations: the first is analytical, and the second is synthetic, the article proves that the genesis of language image is characterized by their fusion. At the initial stage, there is an analytical perception of the signs of a denotative situation, and at the final stage, their synthesis. Ultimately, the genetic connection of such phenomena as literary text, discourse and concept generates the ethno-cultural aura of a pictorial-speech work.

The effectiveness of speech communication depends on the immersion in the uniqueness and specificity of the national culture through the knowledge of reality. A literary text transmits background knowledge and experiences, which in the process of perception are not only interpreted by a reader, but also form the value universals. Dialogue as a form of intercultural communication is due to the impact on the addressee, that is, a pragmatic approach that contributes to: 1) tolerance of thinking, 2) the preservation of traditions and cultural experience, 3) acculturation as a process and result of speech and thought activity. The purpose of the study is to identify linguistic and cultural markers of literary texts by B.L. Vasiliev, which represent the national and cultural specifics of the verbalization of a literary word, since those are linguocultural factors that make it possible to reveal the mental nature of the text and interpret the ethnoculturally conditioned semantic content. The anthropocentric orientation of the communicative-cognitive methodology and the tasks set predetermined the nature of the research methods. The leading method of describing the ethno-cultural universals of a literary text is contextual-semantic, since the actualization of ethno-cultural influence is interpreted in context. The contextual-semantic method allows explore ethnocultural constants in the following areas: 1) identifying and comprehending ethnocultural markers of literary texts by B.L. Vasiliev; 2) perception and interpretation of ethno-cultural constants in the literary texts of B.L. Vasiliev. Note that the literary texts of B.L. Vasilyev allow to form the culture of a reader’s personality.

The success of reading, including reading as a part of foreign language acquisition, depends on numerous factors, such as motivation, academic emotions, engagement in reading, etc. Although the necessity to take into consideration a reader has been pointed out on many occasions, the culture-specific paradigms of emotional situations and their role in learning have hardly been discussed. The current study is aimed at exploring an emotional response to a humorous Russian-language text by representatives of two cultures; its primary target is to identify similarities and differences in the reactions of Russian and Chinese readers to a short story and the behavior of its characters. The survey was offered to Russian and Chinese university students, who had to evaluate themselves as emotional or reserved readers; to express their attitudes towards using emotion-evoking texts in the classroom and to evaluate a story from this perspective; as well as to use a list of emotional responses to choose the options describing how they felt about the story. The respondents also added to the list to specify their feelings and provided some comments. The experiment showed that emotion-evoking texts generate interest, creating a high learning motivation, which goes in favor of selecting educational texts that not only present a target language, but also truly engage learners. The survey results revealed the similarities and differences in selfidentification through the lens of emotions and in the affective comprehension of a funny story, caused, among other things, by the nationally specific value systems of the respondents. Different proportions of particular emotions and different responses to the same situation in the Russian and the Chinese samples indicate the important role of cultural traditions and ethnically specific mentality. The characteristics of speech and verbalized thought observed at the emotional level of students of different cultural backgrounds should be taken into account by teachers of foreign languages.