RUDN Journal of Language Studies, Semiotics and Semantics

Texts covering environmental problems act as translators of socially significant information that constructs a system of value coordinates and require comprehensive scientific understanding. The parameters of environmental discourse are considered in the «Telegram» social network. The relevance of the study is due to the need for a comprehensive study of the corpus of the latest texts, the unifying thematic component of which is nature and environmental protection. The purpose of the paper is to study the environmental discourse represented in the accounts of eco-bloggers in the Russian-language segment of the «Telegram» social network, in terms of the implementation in it of techniques of speech influence on the recipient. The functional and content complexity of the texts updated in the discursive space under study predetermined the variety of research methods used: from direct observation, continuous and random sampling, content analysis to linguopragmatic and structural-linguistic analysis of eco-blog texts. The study of eco-blogs made it possible to identify their specifics, as well as the range of methods and means of speech influence at the levels of composition and content, used by eco-bloggers in order to have a maximum impact on the worldview and behavior of the addressee and encourage him to take active actions in favor of preserving the cleanliness of the environment peace.

Information construal in cinematic discourse employs different semiotic modes; meanwhile, their variance is yet to be explored. The study is aimed at exploring spatial event construal in the language and image modes of science documentaries. We hypothesise that three major event types - environmental events, human-environment interaction events and interpersonal interaction events - employ different spatial construal patterns in language and image, which results from mode allowances and constraints. To verify the hypothesis, we use spatial image schema topology while identifying the image schemas in the lexical and grammatical structure of language and in the layout of the objects, the manner of their movement and interaction in image. The research data include 353 events in single clauses and in shots extracted from two English-language science documentaries. The results show the prevalence of the source-path-goal schema in both semiotic modes, which consequently prevents it from differentiating between event types both within and across the modes. The schemas scale, straight, and near-far display a tendency to differentiate between events; however, no significant distinctions were observed, presumably due to the ontological nature of events as well as the semiotic characteristics of the modes. Additionally, the study reveals that spatial construal of events can follow parallel alignment, commonly with the schemas source-path-goal, contact, near-far, and complementary alignment with the schemas centre-periphery, scale, up-down, front-back, straight, left-right, which reflects a complex nature of inter-semiotic relations in cinematic discourse. The findings of the article contribute to the understanding of event construal in the multimodal discourse of science documentaries.

The peculiarities of the comic objectification of the socially oriented anti-value concept GREED are determined by applying an axiological approach consisting of five stages. The article considers the features of comic objectification of the anti-value concept of GREED. The research proves relevant as humorous characteristics of greed have been analyzed in detail. The corpus of the study comprises recordings and scripts of 500 episodes of various sitcoms and more than 70 stand-up specials by American and British writers. Disapproving exclamations accompany laughter periodically while actualizing GREED. In addition, the manifestation of greed is evaluated negatively either by the authors of the sitcoms or by its characters. In humorous discourse the concept is emphasized both manifesting the desire to be wealthy and the desire to save wealth. While the desire of being wealthy is expressed through committing immoral acts in order to achieve wealth and through thieving goods the desire to save wealth is realized either by the unwillingness to share goods with other people or by the priority of wealth over other values. The main sociocultural characteristics that are comically exposed in modern humorous discourse while specifying greed include characteristics of success (rich people), professional characteristics (politicians, bankers, etc.), ethical characteristics (Americans) and gender characteristics (women seeking to get the wealth of the men). The main language means of expressing the analyzed concept in humorous discourse are antithesis and hyperbole. In addition, GREED is mocked through actualizing such concepts as ‘intelligence’, ‘cynicism’, ‘anger’ by a comic addresser.

The topicality of the study of nonfiction journalistic discourse concerning the communicative action of objection is connected with the existing changes which happened in the perception of science by the public and the journalistic interpretation of this sphere of activity. The scientific sphere becomes more transparent which demands extra efforts in the broadcasting of scientific knowledge and representation of achievements and discoveries in the field of science to the public reader. This explains the necessity to increase the resistance of mediatext about the science to the objection and denial by the target audience. The purpose of the article is the analysis of mechanisms for increasing the resistance of mediatext to objection. The empiric base includes hypermediatext about scientific discoveries of Rosatom in struggling against cancer. Under the development of new media it is impossible to ignore the new methods of information broadcasting to the final consumer, therefore the base for analysis includes sources which interact differently with the audience: TG-channel “Country Rosatom”, cognominal house publication, non-special media. The selected sources were analyzed from the viewpoint of meaning positions of speech subjects - modality, denotation, communicativeness. It is interesting that in each source there dominates one of meaning aspects, thus, providing the resistance to objection on each stage of information cause presentation. In contemporary media the news discourse is the continuation of promotive discourse, the mechanisms of increasing the text resistance to objection, developed on the stage of promotive discourse, are later performed in the news one. After the analysis it was revealed that the dominant aspect of meaning position of speech subject on TG-channel is modality as a generalized announcement about the significance of the discovery, because it is the first appearance and the easiest for perception. In house publication which follows the TG-channel in the discussion the communicativeness goes forward, here happens the approval of mechanisms for resistance to objection, develops the main system of images, metaphors, representing the role of the discovery for the society, later the approved methods are applied in non-special media - namely journalistic publications. On the last stage in hypermediatext we see the traditional mass media, here denotation as the message about the effectiveness and the opportunity to ensure wide spread and appliance of new technologies goes forward.

One of the topics relevant today regarding the peculiarities of the author’s discourse is the codes of culture, common to native speakers of the same language, but gaining originality in the artistic text. In the selection of units of language, their obvious thematic proximity and concentration, in their content, refracted by the writer’s vision, the originality of the word master is manifested. The novel «Surgeon» by M. Stepnova, one of the prominent writers of our time, has not yet been considered from the point of view of the peculiarities of understanding the vital subject area. The analysis of the novel is aimed at determining the functions performed in the text by units of gastronomic code, such as the names of dishes, drinks, products and their various characteristics. This allowed us to see that the use of edible nominations is one of the striking features of the writer’s style. The meal, as the author shows, occupies a significant place in the value system of the representatives of the older generation of the Khripunovs, and its features were most directly reflected in the formation of the personality and fate of their son - the main character of the story. The theme of food runs through the whole novel: it participates in showing the lifestyle and welfare of the characters, mentality and social position, the nature and motivation of actions, relationships between people, and meeting family members at a common table becomes a measure of the well-being of the family hearth. The author’s amazing skill manifests itself in showing both mouth-watering food and a food nightmare - fatty or sweet; these two vectors in the development of the gastronomic theme are the main ones in the novel, and it was gastronomy that influenced the choice of the main character of the life path. The sweet motif is most widely represented in the novel; it participates in the presentation of events, causal relationships and plot twists - the ostentatious concern of parents for their unloved son, the honey-unnatural manner of behavior and speech of the characters, the rejection of a woman because of her fundamentally different taste preferences, etc. Food code units are used both in direct meanings - when showing «non-conceptual» food, and take on an ideological, figurative and plot-forming function in the text of the novel.

Medical discourse as an institutional discourse is considered simultaneously in several aspects: genre palette; discourse participants and their communicative strategies and speech behaviour; forms of communication between patient and doctor; methods and material for transmitting medical information; linguistic means of monocode, polycode and multimodal text of medical discourse; visual means of polycode and multimodal tests; functions implemented by texts of different types. The very identification of the boundaries of medical discourse will remain relevant. The objects of analysis are Russian-language memes, demotivators, which we understand as a type of Internet memes, caricatures on a medical topic, printed advertisements for medical drugs, services and events, and medical posters. The subject of the study are iconic signs, index signs and symbols of medicine. The novelty of the proposed study is the appeal to these elements of a polycode text as a system of signs that are subject to decoding to recognize the author’s intention; their use is not obligatory, while their quality of generalization allows expressing a larger volume of meanings, and the recipient of the text relies on them to identify the text as belonging to medical discourse. The research material are polycode (with verbal and iconic series) texts with a total volume of 500 examples obtained by continuous sampling from the Internet. The study showed that the semiotic system should be recognized as an important element of polycode texts of medical discourse, since each of the three types of signs is noted in the five genres under consideration and performs summarizing, attractive, organizing, replacing and comic functions in the text. As an object of decoding in polycode texts on medical topics, we examined individual examples of the use of precedent phenomena. The algorithm for analyzing the semiotic system of medical discourse can be used to analyze the semiotic system of other types of institutional discourse.

Comparative study of languages reflects the coexistence of the universal and the particular in human languages. The development of both typological linguistics and contrastive linguistics is primarily associated with the study of structural similarities and differences between languages based on structural criteria for comparison. However, cognitive operations and forms of thinking that characterize the structural organization of expressed thoughts are fundamental mechanisms governing the functioning of various languages. In this study, a comparative analysis is presented as of the structural features of Russian subjectpredicate sentences and Chinese topic-comment sentences. Special attention is paid to different forms of thinking (rational and figurative) that underlie the differences in language structure between the two languages, as well as various cognitive processes (recognizing analogies and associations) that shape vertical and horizontal categorization, resulting in differences in thought patterns. As a result of the conducted study, the authors conclude that the form of thinking determines the form of language structure. The formation and functioning of different forms of language structure are operations and reflections of different forms of thinking in various language structures. Rational and figurative thinking, with their respective characteristics, limit and define the structural forms of Russian and Chinese languages. At the sentence level, it manifests basic structures both in Russian where the basic sentence structure is “subject-predicate,” while in Chinese it is “topic-comment.”.

The project is presented in the paper initially is launched to design a functional recognition or classification model of a modern Russian school textbook as a genre. In this study we test and confirm the hypothesis that detection of domain (subject area) and complexity level of a textbook can be reduced to a limited number of quantitative linguistic parameters provided with accurately identified and verified value ranges. We outlined our approach to genre analysis as multi-dimensional, compiled a corpus of over 1 mln. tokens, measured values of 15 linguistic parameters in 19 textbooks of two different subject areas and complexity levels, revealed 7 complexity predictors, 7 subject area predictors, and one - frequency - a metaparameter able to discriminate textbooks of History and Social Studies from texts of other genres. Our findings highlight the significance of the following parameters for textbooks across the selected subject areas: incidence of nouns, verb tenses (present, past and future), local and global argument overlap, type-token ratio. Complexity classification model is ascertained to be a function of sentence length, word length, incidence of nouns in genitive case and verbs, Abstractness score, verb/noun ratio, and adjective/noun ratio. The outcomes of this analysis will be used to interpret quantitative linguistic descriptions and classify texts.

The motivational features of Peruvian place names as units marking the geophysical, historical, migration, and linguistic-cultural features of the Peruvian ethnic community are revealed. The article interprets the material of the toponymic system of Peru to establish the linguistic parameters of the national identity of the Peruvians. Statistical data on the genesis of toponyms in Peru is derived, their percentage is calculated in the light of the national identity of the Peruvians, the features of geonaming, linguistic creativity, and markers of toponymic identity are established. Peru differs from other countries of the South American continent in the small percentage of Spanish place names per se . Meanwhile, the derived most productive lexical and semantic categories of Hispanic toponymic nomenclature, including hagiotoponyms, commemorative, descriptive toponyms, migrant toponyms, etc., allow us to consider the toponymy of Peru as an organic part of Hispanic geolinguistic system. The corresponding reasons are comprehended and the conditions favorable to the emergence of geonominations in the region are characterized. In particular, it is concluded that Peruvian toponymic periphrases enter into a relationship of intervariant homonymy with toponymic periphrases of other Spanish linguistic cultures. Being an integral toponymic construct, the toponymicon of Peru reveals universal toponymic patterns, such as, for example, migrant toponyms or transfer place names that already exist at a far distance from them. And Spanish-Indian hybrid or blended place names, according to the authors’ calculations, constitute the largest layer in the country’s toponymic corpus. The article shows that as a result of the preservation of the autochthonous toponymic heritage, cultural and linguistic synthesis, the toponymic of Peru acquired original properties that form the Peruvian toponymic code and an organic part of the linguistic parameters of the national identity of the Peruvians.

The study of the phenomenon of synesthesia in the discourse of artistic texts are relevant today. The novels “The Gift” and “Camera Obscura” by the synesthetic author V. Nabokov, as well as their translations into English, serve as the objects of research. The study of the phenomenon of synesthesia and its manifestations in artistic texts will allow describe the structure of the authorsynesthete Vladimir Nabokov’s figurative perception and identify the structural linguistic and translational features of his works. The materials for the study were the texts of the novels “The Gift” and “Camera Obscura” in Russian and English. The results of the study consist of describing and structuring the influence of the author’s synesthetic perception on the structural organization of the literary text, as well as on the formation of literary characters. In addition, the use of synesthetic images significantly complicates the work of translating literary texts due to the peculiarities of the author’s complex perception of images.

The paradigmatic relations of metalinguistics turn out to be one of the few manifestations of the systemic qualities of the verbal inventory of the natural language. In turn, to describe a natural language (“object language”), a metalanguage is used - the language of the “second” level, while the concept of “metalanguage” is much more voluminous than just the concept of “terminology (=terminosystem)”. This article examines the elements of the linguistics terminological system, first of all, paradigmatic relations are associative relations based on partial similarity between lexical units of the same type by some attribute, while at the same time distinguishing by some other attributes. The metalanguage of linguistics is not an initially defined (preceding scientific research) system, but is the final stage of a linguistic phenomenon, which is based on systemic relations between lexical units (including between terms), explicitly reflecting the principle of unity of expression and content.

The relevance of the study is explained by the need to consider the functioning of the mechanisms of discursive sensemaking and an impact on the recipients of information, taking into account the new linguosemiotic opportunities which modern political communication provides and which are manifested not only in the real life, but also in the virtual digital environment. The multimedia technologies are gaining an increasing role, allowing to encode discursive messages, using semiotically polycode format, combining the traditional verbal way of presenting information along with iconic, color, graphic, metatext and other formats. The aim of the study is to prove that semiotic parameters of visual metaphor as a polycode sign functioning in the discursive environment within the framework of the pragmatic situation “Elections”, determine its interpretative and semantic potential and interacting with other sign codes result in new meanings and interpretations. The materials for the study of visual metaphors are the official logos used during the 2024 election campaign in Mexico. The research methodology, which allows for a systematic study of visual metaphors semiotics, is based on the interdisciplinary and polyparadigmatic model of discourse studies and implies an integral approach that combines the general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis, comparison and analogy with the method of sociolinguistic interpretation, semantic, interpretive, linguocognitive and discourse analysis. It has been found out that the linguosemiotic paradigm of Mexican electoral discourse integrates verbal and non-verbal semiotic codes to express meanings, conceptualize and categorize reality. By using of various semiotic codes, the metaphor-logo condenses the semantic content and, as a cognitive model based on analogy, acts as a means of sensemaking, modelling the perception of the world in the interests of the addresser. The use of polysemantic iconic signs-images, understandable to a wide audience of voters, translates connotative, ideological and social meanings. Thus, a visual metaphor as a way of logical comprehension and verbalization of reality functions as a significant component of the cognitive space within electoral discourse.