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It’s not a secret that performance of polysemous words mainly depends on social and professional speaker’s mentality, on his educational level, ethnic background, and age. Moreover, social, cultural, ethnic, and psychological factors should be taken into account because they also make great influence on the appearance of lexical ambiguity. That’s why it’s very crucial to know not only the language itself, but its culture, so that one could understand and translate perfectly. Which lexical units are used by the native speakers mostly depend on their language, and hence, their world perception.
No doubt, innovations in any languages reflect not only pure linguistic changes, but everything that is going on in all spheres of public life, that helps new words formation.
Decoding of foreign culture is the most difficult process, because a non-native speaker can face the problem of finding a suitable contextual meaning of a polysemous word. This choice can be hard enough while communicating with a representative of an alien
culture, as there might not be neither cultural nor linguistic equivalents for a number of different notions and expressions.
Especially it’s really significant in case of newly formed lexical units’ interpretation, which requires cultural knowledge of at least two languages — native and foreign. This fact is perfectly proved by a Russian linguist Aleksey Shmelev. The idea that different languages have diverse world conceptualization is self-evident in modern semantics. Because of this, the concept of speech culture modification is necessary: it should be dynamic and comprise the notion of logical changes of language conceptualization of the world and interrelations between social, cultural, and language processes [5, 58].
In conclusion, it should be mentioned that usage of any language innovation mostly depends on a specific stylistic context. The misuse of English lexemes can result in miscommunication and even confused situations. So, one should be very attentive socializing with native speakers.
References:
1. Clark St., Pointon G. Word for Word//Oxford University Press, 2003. 250p.
2. Collins English Dictionary. Harper Collins Publishers, 2012. 692p.
3. Hornby A. S. Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary ofCurrent English. Sixth Ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. 1540p.
4. Zaliznyak A. A. Mnogoznachnost v yazyke i sposoby yeyo predstavleniya//Yazyki slavyanskikh kultur. M.: Studia Philologica, 2006. 461p.
5. Shmelev A. D. Evolutsia yazykovoy kartiny mira i kultura rechi//Russian Language Journal. 2008. Vol. 58. 246p.
6. The American Heritage Dictionary of English Language. Third Edition. N. Y.: BARTLEBY. COM, 1991. 8652p.
7. http://lingvofreaks.narod.ru/zaliznyak.htm (date of application: 27.05.2013)
8. http://theweek.com/article/index/241002/how-the-wrong-definition-of-literally-snuck-into-the-dictionary (date of application: 08.06.2013)
9. http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/07/05 (date of application: 05.07.2009)
10. http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/hingham/2013/05 (date of application: 30.05.2013)
Panteleev Audrey Feliksovitch, Southern Federal University, PhD in linguistics, associate Professor, Department of the Language theory and the Russian language
E-mail: AF3@yandex.ru Kuleshova Nina Alekseevna, Southern Federal University,
Master's degree in linguistics, Department of the Language theory and the Russian language
E-mail: maiden1991@mail.ru
Grammatical metaphor in the language of Olga Arefieva’s poetry
Abstract: This article is devoted to the study of grammatical phenomena of transposition in the works of Olga Arefieva, who is a representative of Russian postmodernism literature. Grammatical metaphor is one of the character features of Arefieva’s idiostyle, a bright devise of expressiveness, imagery.
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Keywords: poetry of Russian postmodernism, grammatical metaphor, morphological transposition, the author’s idiostyle.
Russian postmodernism is a peculiar branch of literature, the branch that in all the senses may be understood as an experiment. The poetry of Russian postmodernism cannot be considered being complete in its development, nowadays it is still on the stage of formation. The innovations of the poetry of the end of the XX — of the beginning of the XXI centuries are “absurdity”, “alogism”, “nonsense”, “paradox”, they fully reflect the chaotic character of the consciousness of a modern person. The mentality of people changes and that is surely brightly reflected in their speech and the language itself. The Russian Literature and especially poetry of postmodernism is characterized by the linguistic game and the linguistic experiment.
As Shendels E. I. notices, “... the grammatical metaphor has some common features with the lexical one” [2, 51], but this two phenomena are not the same. The grammatical metaphor is the usage of one grammatical form instead of the other one and the result of such substitution is a collision of the prior meaning of the grammatical form with an atypical environment. In consequence the “conflict situation” arises and promotes the appearance of different stylistic effects.
Shendels E. I. believes that every grammatical category can become the metaphor basis and get some stylistic value. In this article we will try to analyze the phenomenon ofgrammatical metaphor as a characteristic feature of Olga Arefieva's idiostyle.
The grammatical metaphor is not a less bright stylistic devise in comparison with the lexical one. It is an important indicator ofthe individuality ofthe author's style and manner [1, 68]. Speaking about O. Arefieva's works we should mention the variety of genres: poems, words, prose and others. In O. Arefieva's works we can hear the motives of medieval ballads, echoes of baroque, blues intonations. Very often in some lyrics you can hear the strokes of words about the inevitability of the end, about sorrow, sadness that leave a light feeling of resentment on your soul.
Arefieva's poetry is bright and original from the point of view of choosing language means of different levels. You can often see her uncovered experiments with words, forms, contents and others. She presents a specific vision of the world: she describes it as a spherical chess-board on which you can see people, houses, animals and other things in the role ofpieces. Her character feature is different conception of life and death, different sense of time and
space. Time lacks linearity, all the time we come across the confusion of the past, future and present. In one and the same moment we face events from different times and I future we can see something that has already happened. Time in her poetry becomes something more material and at the same moment inconceivable and eluding. Когда-нибудь придет сегодня,
Тогда надену я тетрадь,
Начищу голос новогодний И буду ярко умирать.
(O. Arefieva. Novogodnee)
The result of such uncommon approach to the language is a wide prevalence of grammatical metaphor in her works. More often you may come across transportable forms of such categories as tense, number, aspect and etc. Когда мы будем были,
Наши глаза будут смотрели,
Наши песни будут звучали,
Наши руки будут обнимали.
(O. Arefieva. Kogda my budem byli)
From our point of view this metaphor should be considered a bipolar one. Under this term we have in mind a specific feature of a grammatical metaphor; the form in an atypical environment can be perceived ambiguous [4, 162]. On the one hand, we observe the author's usage of the verb in the past tense with the meaning of the feature one, that means the actualization of the action considered as a fact of reality at the very moment of speech about this fact, event or condition. On the other hand, we can speak about the adding of some new meanings to the verb such as attribute and processuality. Thus grammatical metaphor helps us to interpret the future action as an already done one, as an already changed condition of a subject. At the same time this transposition causes the accumulation of the semantics of the processual attribute like the verb form “смотрели”: “Наши глаза будут смотрящими”.
The grammatical metaphor connected with the transposition in the category of tense or temporality carries out a text-forming function in O. Arefieva's poetry: У меня два имени — Нет и Да,
У меня два времени — Здесь и Всегда,
Я иду по воде, потому что во мне Завтра был лёд, а вчера будет снег.
(O. Arefieva. Tolko ne plachte)
In this very example the situation is just like in the previous text. Here we shall use such term as ‘temporal-
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ity. The temporality of the text is a textual time. Time and space are universal features of any material thing, they are obligatory characteristics of the world of events. The text is just like reflection, it defines the fragment of reality. The starting point is some imagined “now" that becomes the basis for moving forward and building the time perspective of the text. “Tomorrow”, “yesterday", “in future”, “during the war” and seasons (autumn, winter and etc.) are the language means, words and word combinations that transfer the meaning of time. Now let’s turn to our example. “Завтра был лёд” can be considered the usage of the past tense form of the verb in the meaning of the future one that stated by the outlet of temporality “завтра”. «Вчера будет снег» contains the future tense form of the verb, used in the meaning of the past one. Such a language game is a character feature of Olga Arefieva's creativity and can be counted the feature of her idiostyle.
Мы нет или нас есть ?
Ответ заставляет ждать -Кто-то захочет есть,
А хлеб его вырвет тать.
Нас есть или мы нет ?
С тех пор продолжается спор -Люди смотрят на свет,
А глаза их ворует вор.
Сегодня был ветер, а завтра был снег,
Сегодня был вечер, а завтра нас нет,
Сегодня нас есть, а завтра мы нет.
(O. Arefieva. My net ili nas est’?)
Except an interesting language game with pronouns here we observe an unusual similar with the previous example usage of the time context. “Завтра был снег” is a combining of the future tense marker “завтра” with the verb “был” in the past tense. The comparison of time forms in parallel constructions “Сегодня был ветер, а завтра был снег” is of great importance. In the first part of the line we can see the idea of a faded metaphor when the past tense forms are used in the meaning of the present ones; in the second part it seems obvious that the author uses “был” the past tense form of the verb in the meaning of the future tense. Here there is an actualization of the action considered to be the fact of reality at the moment of speech about this action, fact or condition. Thus the grammatical metaphor helps us to take the action in future as an already committed fact, as an
already changed condition of the subject. Also we can see here the transposition in the meaning of pronouns “нас есть’, “ мы нет”. In this case we speak about the transposition in the sphere of case forms and case meanings. We can see that in present “сегодня нас есть”the pronoun “мы” is used in the form of genitive case and it lacks the meaning of a subject bearing in this context the role of an object only. In the author’s conception “мы” exists in present just as an object without any chance to become a doer of the action, a subj ect. In the word combination“... а завтра мы нет” the author on the contrary uses nominative case with the subject meaning instead of the genitive case and here it sounds like nevertheless there is no us, we are a subject, an active doer of the action.
We can enumerate one more bright experiment in the poetry and prose of Olga Arefieva, that is the transposition in the category of number, for example: “Зеркало невидимо задрожало, в нем понемногу начали меняться облики, будто маска за маской. Все они были она” The whole second sentence can be taken as a metaphor. Describing the personages of her book Arefieva unites them by the idea that each of them is she. Here we observe a transposition in the category of number. It should be noticed that in many linguists’ opinion there are no “brave” metaphors in grammar because the transposition is available only within a paradigm, within its borders [5]. The multitude “Все они были” is defined by the singular “она”. In the context of the work the pronoun that traditionally denotes a singular person or a subject gets the idea of plurality or combining of many subjects and objects in it. This transposition is also strengthened by the context. This example is interesting for us because this type of grammatical metaphor has a growing tendency for a wider spreading in modern literature.
Idiostyle is a complex notion that includes a great number of features and components. The author’s idiostyle is based on the peculiarities of his/her world description manner and way of presenting his/her ideas on the paper. Speaking about works of Olga Arefieva we can surely claim that grammatical metaphor is one of the brightest features of her idiostyle. Arefieva breaks, ruins the structure of reality and intensifies this idea by breaking the language structure. She plays and in this game she can freely change words’ meanings, meanings of parts of peach, of phraseological units and she uses absolutely unique, occasional collocations.
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References:
1. Пантелеев А. Ф., Долматова А. С. Морфологическая транспозиция в языке поэзии русского постмодер-HH3Ma//Materialy IX Miedzynarodowej naukowi-praktycznej konferencji «Naukowa przestrzen Europy -2013»/Volume 26. Filologiczne nauki: Przemysl. Nauka i studia. - pp. 62-70.
2. Шендельс Е. И. Грамматическая метафора//Филологические науки. 1972. № 3.
3. Шендельс Е. И. Грамматические средства полифонии в тексте художественных произведений//Сб. научных трудов МГПИЯ им. М. Тореза. Вып. 158. М., 1980.
4. Andrej F. Panteleev. Grammatical metaphor in the Russian literature of the 20th century//Language, individual and society in the modern world: 4th International research conference. Burgas, 2010//http://www.science-journals.eu. - pp. 145-169.
5. Weinrich H. Semantik der kuhnen Metapher//Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift, 1963.
Tarasova Yelena Vladislavovna, Kharkov humanitarian university ".People's Ukrainian Academy",
Head of the English language chair E-mail: otarasova1@mail.ru
Ethnography of communication: some aspects of ethno-semantics and ethno-pragmatics
Abstract: The paper touches upon some topical problems of the Ethnography of Communication, in particular, those of ethno-semantics and ethno-pragmatics. The author argues that cultural competence in a foreign language requires from the non-native speaker a complex cognitive infrastructure, including a number of culturally specific frames and themes. It is shown how differently some of those cultural themes are conceptualized by the speakers of English and Russian.
Key words: ethnography of communication, ethno cultural appropriateness of an utterance.
It is a well-known fact that the role of the cultural dimension in foreign language education has been radically reassessed in the post structuralist era of the 90s. As a consequence, in modern Foreign Language pedagogy language is seen as social practice and the non-native speaker needs to learn how language functions in society. This pedagogical ideology assigns a much more salient and significant role to culture. In fact, the current pedagogical trend is dominated by ethno-methodology and requires that culture becomes the very core of language teaching, so that proficiency in a foreign language is defined as “what learners can do with language, rather than what they know about it” [8, 181]. More than that, recognition of a dialectical unity of language and culture inspires many Foreign Language Teaching professionals to look for methods and ways of developing not only a culturally competent learner but also what E. Kramsch calls “a cross-cultural personality” [6]. Put simply, it means that foreign language students must be alerted to what one may say to whom, when, and how in a foreign language. This kind
semantics, ethno-pragmatics, cultural themes, frames,
of competence also implies being knowledgeable about the communicative styles of the people in the target culture and the speech manners and behavior acceptable or unacceptable in certain situations, as well as awareness of the appropriateness/inappropriateness of an utterance in L2 ethno-cultural environment.
The specific area of linguistics that focuses on those problems is known as Ethnopraphy of Communication [4; 9] and is aimed at alerting the foreign language learner to distinguishing between culturally true and culturally false utterances.
An illustrative example of cross-cultural miscommu-nication which may result from such inappropriateness could be the notorious Russian “aggressive hospitality” with the hosts energetic cajoling, urging and persuading the guests to eat and drink more than is good for them. The effect is predictable: your Western visitors will almost certainly feel resentful, may take offence, regarding your behavior as imposition.
Ethnography of Communication also alerts FL learners to various aspects of ethnopragmatics, such as
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