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First of all, it should be noted, that fire for all human beings means the warmth and the comfort of home and it found its representation
in the language in the Ph.U. keep the home fires burningmeaning "to provide family, to keep and protect it". In English this expression goes back to the song which was popular during the Second World War.
Eg., ‘It seems to me,’ went on Ernest... ‘That we're going to hear a lot from father about keeping the home fires burning. You know what that leads to.’ ‘Reasonable 'conomy,’ said Julie... [1]
In Russian “fire” also symbolizes “family comfort” and it may be proved by variety wedding customs and traditions. The universality of this meaning in different languages and cultures indicates that there might be some ancient pre-historic roots.
In English and in Russian lexeme “fire” is very often connected with emotional sphere as in the Ph.U. to catch fire: Eg., ‘I'll study algebra,’ he concluded... He took fire with unexampled rapidity. [1]
Eg., And every day he was more and more tempted... to see whether he could not make her catch fire, and flare up with some emotion or idea. [1]
The origin of many Ph.Us goes back to the Bible it can be demonstrated with the help of Ph.U. fires of hellmeaning
“a terrible places where sinners are tortured“:
Eg., The fires of Hell burned fiercely before his mind's eye. [1]
On the contrary, the place where the righteous men are located, can be poetically called fires of heavenmeaning
“stars“which in many beliefs and religions are connected with upper positive spheres.
In many languages there are different legends describing the way people got fire, but one of the most famous and popular is a Greek legend about Prometheus who had gifted fire to people. Due to this legend Ph.U. Promethean fire became popular and gained the meaning in many languages “a burning desire to achieve goals, best ideals”.
Everyday life exposes some practical things and situations. People know that fire can spread rapidly and it is reflected in the sheer inner form of some Ph.Us:
The Ph. U. like a forest fire means “very quickly”:
Eg., " She would... flirt like wildfire for a fortnight [1].
The inner form of the Ph. U. no fire without smokeshows that everything has got it consequences like in nature smoke shows that there is fire.
Eg., Mrs. MacHugh said that there was never fire without smoke [1].
In spite of that fact that there are some universal meanings of lexeme “fire” in many languages, there might be some national peculiarities. If we take, for example, Ph.U. Kentish fire, we will find out that it means “the sound of diapproval“. Only in diachronic aspect we can reveal its inner content. This expression goes back to the noisy meetings in Kent in 1828-29 which were directed against Catholic Relief Bill. It can be observed at the functional level:
Eg., The entry of the professor was signalled by a few rounds of Kentish firefrom the heavy boots of those students who sat on the highest tier of the gloomy theatre...[1].
To crowd it all, it should be mentioned that the diachronic analysis of Ph. U. helps to reveal their inner content and to find out many interesting facts about the customs and traditions of different countries.
References
1. ABBY Lingvo CD' 12: dictionary: ABBY Software, 2008. 1 CD-ROM.
2. Etymologyonline.[Electronic resource]. - Mode of access:
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=fire&searchmode=none.
Ухова Лариса Владимировна
Доктор филологических наук, Ярославский государственный педагогический университет им. К.Д. Ушинского
Аниськина Наталия Васильевна
Кандидат филологических наук, Ярославский государственный педагогический университет им. К.Д. Ушинского
Статья выполнена при поддержке Министерства образования и науки Российской Федерации (проект №
01201455067)
«НАМ НЕ ДАНО ПРЕДУГАДАТЬ, КАК НАШЕ СЛОВО ОТЗОВЕТСЯ»: К ПРОБЛЕМЕ ОЦЕНКИ
СПОРНОГО РЕКЛАМНОГО ТЕКСТА
Аннотация
В статье поднимаются вопросы оценки спорных рекламных текстов. Рекламные тексты находятся в зоне повышенной речевой ответственности в силу своего функционирования в законодательном поле. Особый акцент делается на неоднозначность понимания адресатом имплицитно выраженной информации, которая вызывает затруднения и в процессе лингвистической экспертизы текстов. Предлагается поэтапный алгоритм выявления скрытого смысла высказывания в интерпретации его целевой аудиторией.
Ключевые слова: рекламный текст, эксплицитная и имплицитная информация, речевое воздействие, психолингвистическая экспертиза.
Ukhova Larisa Vladimirovna
Ph.D. in Philology, Yaroslavl State Pedagogical University named after K.D. Ushinsky
Aniskina Nataliya Vasilievna
Candidate of Philological Sciences, Yaroslavl State Pedagogical University named after K.D. Ushinsky ”WE CANNOT KNOW FURTHER WAYS ОF OUR WORD”: TO THE PROBLEM OF ASSESSING
CONTROVERSIAL ADVERTISING TEXT
Abstract
The article is devoted to the assessment of controversial advertising texts. Advertising texts are in an area of high speech responsibility, as they operate in the legislative field. The ambiguity in understanding implicitly expressed in-formation by the
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addressee is the focus of the authors ’ attention. Implicit information causes difficulties in the process of linguistic expertise of advertising texts. The article proposes a phased algorithm to identify the covert meaning of the statements in its interpretation by the target audience.
Keywords: advertising copy, linguistic manipulation, explicit and implicit information, psycholinguistic expertise.
Advertising texts are not infrequently known to be based on implicitly expressed information, but an essential feature of such information is “it is not necessarily taken in in the process of understanding and it is not a hundred percent recollected by the listener.” (Implitsitnost, 1999: 32). In this connection, there is a possibility of different interpretations (and, consequently, understanding) of the same text. Such texts quite often attract the attention of the regulatory authorities. However, it is not as easy to prove that the advertisement is inappropriate or, on the contrary, meets all the necessary requirements. “It should be said that nowadays both citizens and journalists have learnt very well to avoid responsibility. And this, undoubtedly, impedes the process of expertise,” says the full member of the Guild of linguists-experts in information and documentation disputes (GLEDID) E.S. Kara-Murza (2013).
According to I.A. Sternin, “the covert meaning is expressed by the author of the text with the help of certain linguistic units and constructions. When the recipient perceives them, specific cognitive schemes of interpreting different kinds of statements actualized in this culture are easily reconstructed. Herewith informative equivalence of explicit meaning of linguistic units in the text and the hidden meaning reconstructed by the recipient is established.” (Sternin, 2012: 270). Such cognitive schemes of perceiving text (including advertising text) are called receptive schemes, “i.e. schemes of understanding the covert hidden meaning of statements inherent to human mind” (Sternin,
2012: 270).
Experience shows that only lexical-semantic analysis is usually applied to assess controversial advertising texts, but, in our opinion, this approach doesn’t give objective results. The tasks of expertise can most effectively be solved by complex research including psycholinguistic experiment which helps identify the peculiarities of perceiving controversial text by the target audience. It is certainly important that representatives of the definite demographic group to which the advertising text is addressed should take part in this experiment.
In this article, we offer an algorithm for text analysis in the advertisement of a dietary supplement. The choice of this category of goods is not accidental as it is typical for this kind of advertisements to use “receptive schemes”. The fact is that, according to the federal law “On Advertising”, dietary supplement adverts cannot mention therapeutic qualities of the advertised item; however, it is this information that makes the text convincing for customers and encourages them to purchase. Advertisers tend to disguise information of healing properties, express it implicitly to avoid penalties.
The research is based on the texts from radio advertisement of the food product made of seaweeds which more than once have become the subject of administrative and court trials between Federal Antimonopoly Department (FAD) and the manufacturer. Because the texts are quite long, we have chosen certain statements containing implicit information. We have selected for the analysis the phrases which, according to FAD, contain the features of violation of the law on advertising: facilitates cleansing blood vessels and capillaries from atherosclerotic deposits, helps normalize blood pressure, is used as a prophylactic measure in many diseases, normalizes metabolic processes in the body.
To identify whether the advertisement mentions therapeutic properties of the advertised item, it is necessary to carry out a research including several stages:
1. lexical-semantic analysis of the text based on linguistic dictionaries,
2. context analysis of the statements,
3. verification of the received data taking into account modern speech practice (using the data from National Corpus of the Russian Language - NCRL),
4. carrying out psycholinguistic experiment to identify the features of perceiving the text by customers,
5. carrying out a free association experiment to verify the received results.
On the stage of lexical-semantic analysis, the research of meaning and usage of individual words in controversial statements is carried out. Special attention is paid to the lexemes playing the key role in advertising texts (used several times, have extended synonymic and derivational rows). For the assessment of the abovementioned text in particular, we have chosen the following lexemes: facilitate/help, normalize/normalization, prophylactic.
Further, the context analysis is held - studying semantics of the chosen words in the contexts where they are used. The data received during the first and the second stages is taken into account while choosing stimulus material for psycholinguistic experiment and interpreting its results.
It often happens that experts limit expertise of advertising texts by only these two stages. In our opinion, however, it is not entirely correct, as information from dictionaries and context analysis do not often reflect peculiarities of the linguistic picture of the world characteristic for the consumers of the advertised item. Working with NCRL as well as studying concepts connected with the context of the texts under analysis help to bridge the gap. For instance, the expertise of the advert for the seaweed product is based on the description of the concept “health” (Aniskina, 2014).
Such phased and multi-aspect research of the controversial text is necessary as each of the selected words individually can’t indicate therapeutic properties of the product, although the words are not understood separately in the text. According to G.V. Kolshansky, “the semantics of linguistic units is only revealed in communicative segments” (Kolshanskiy, 1980: 39), it is the context that can eliminate polysemy of words. Implicitly expressed information appears due to both using semantic and communicative presuppositions and appealing to concepts reflecting national linguistic consciousness. Therefore, it is logical to suppose that the combination of the words analysed above can be understood by the consumer as an indication of healing properties.
To verify this hypothesis, it is necessary to conduct a psycholinguistic experiment. The main method of the research can be a survey of the target group. In our opinion, the most representational results should be obtained from social (education, profession), age and gender groups, so it is these parameters that should be included into the establishing part of the
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questionnaire. We believe that in order to make the information more objective, it is necessary to survey 4 age groups in the course of the experiment: 18-25 years old, 35-45 years old, 50-60 years old, 65 and above. Such a division is caused by different attitude of each age group to their health according to characteristic features of aging.
Besides, the questionnaire should contain stimulus material with several answers both relevant to definitions from dictionary entries and containing data from NCRL and the lexemes “heals”, “facilitates recovery”. Respondents have to choose (underline) what they think is the appropriate meaning of the word.
As for a free association experiment, it enables to compare the data of the psycholinguistic experiment with the conceptual constructs which help identify both profound views of a Russian person about health as an important value category and nationally marked understanding of health care and the ways to maintain health.
Thus, on the one hand, the algorithm of assessing linguistic material described above can help identify receptive schemes inherent to representatives of certain national consciousness and, on the other hand, it can help experts to solve complex tasks in assessing a controversial text.
References
1. Aniskina N.V. (2014) Leksicheskaya eksplikatsiya kontsepta ‘zdorove’ v reklamnyih tekstah [Lexical explication of the concept ‘health’ in advertising texts]. In Sukiasyan A.A. (Eds.). Evolyutsiya nauchnoy myisli [The evolution of scientific thought]. Ufa, 2014, pp. 200-204.
2. Implitsitnost v yazyike i rechi [Implicitly in langue and parole]. (1999). Borisova E.G., Martemyanov Yu.S. (Eds.). Moskva.
3. Kara-Murza E.S. (2013). Grazhdane nauchilis kritikovat i diskreditirovat drug druga tak, chto sudu trebuetsya pomosch ekspertizyi [Citizens learned to criticize and discredit each other and the court needs the help of expertise]. URL: http://www.za konia.ru/blog/grazhdane-nauchilis-kritikovat-i-diskreditirovat-drug-druga-tak-chto-sudu-trebuetsja-pomosch-ekspertizy/
4. Kolshanskiy G.V. (1980). Kontekstnaya semantika [Contextual semantics]. Moskva.
5. Sternin I.A. (2012). Vyiyavlenie skryityih smyislov teksta i lingvisticheskaya ekspertiza [Determination of the covert meanings of the text and linguistic expertise]. In Borisova E.G., Aniskina N.V. (Eds.). Ponimanie v kommunikatsii. Chelovek v informatsionnom prostranstve [Understanding by communication. A person and information space]. Yaroslavl - Moskva, 2, pp.
270-272.
Карпухина Виктория Николаевна
Кандидат филологических наук, профессор, Алтайский государственный университет МЕЖКУЛЬТУРНАЯ КОММУНИКАЦИЯ В СИТУАЦИИ БИЛИНГВИЗМА: ПЕРЕВОД СКАЗОК
ЕСТЕСТВЕННЫМИ БИЛИНГВАМИ
Аннотация
В статье рассматривается современная социокультурная ситуация в Горном Алтае как ситуация трилингвизма. Исследуется влияние переводных текстов сказок на формирование коммуникативной компетенции детей-билингвов (алтайский и русский языки) в аспектах диахронии и синхронии.
Ключевые слова: билингвизм, трилингвизм, алтайский язык, русский язык, сказка
Karpukhina Viktoriya Nikolaevna PhD in Philology, Altai State University
CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION IN BILINGUAL SITUATION: TRANSLATION OF FOLK TALES
BY SIMULTANEOUS BILINGUALS
Abstract
The author of the article considers the contemporary sociocultural situation in the Altai Mountains as a trilingual one. The article deals with the translated folklore texts training the communicative competence of the bilingual children (the Altai and the Russian languages are mentioned) in diachronic and synchronic aspects.
Keywords: bilingualism, trilingualism, the Altai language, the Russian language, folk tale
The linguistic situation of cross-cultural communication can be appreciated as a cultural dialog which supposes understanding and cooperation of different cultures members. A multicultural space is a space where diverse languages always interact and sometimes intermingle. The basis and the main aim of the cultural dialog is “understanding in all its aspects -linguistic, socio-cultural, axiological (considering and apprehension of the other culture values when this culture is understood as a communication partner)” [16, 16]. The process of translation is conceived in the research paper as a type of a text interpretation, though these two terms can be opposites. The peculiarities of a text as an object opened for the interpretation in the cross-culturalcommunication are given in one of the most renowned works by Umberto Eco: “A work of art, therefore, is a complete and closedform in its uniqueness as a balanced organic whole, while at the same time constituting an openproduct on account of its susceptibility to countless different interpretations which do not impinge on its unadulterable specificity” [2, 4; see also: 12]. It deals with the translator’s discourse and axiological strategies used by the translator [4; 6]. Mary Snell-Hornby, when studying translation as a cross-cultural communication event [15, 38], thinks that the intermediary of this event is sure the professional translator though s/he is not a natural bilingual: “The idea that anyone is qualified to translate is all the more absurd when one considers that in theory a translator is expected to be bilingual and bicultural” [15,132]. Being in between of two or more semiosheres, the translator, as a participant of the cross-cultural communication act, works inevitably in different cultural spheres [5]. But when the translator is a bilingual person consciously aiming to form the basic communicative competence of a child reader and listener, the pragmatic effect of the target text multiplies obviously (cf. the discussion questions of different types of communication competence forming and different communicative products in the situations of teaching and natural bilingualism in [17]).
Firstly, we should speak of the bilingual situation with children speaking the Altai and the Russian languages in the diachronic aspect. In the late 1890s and the early 1900s it was possible to study Russian only in the newly-built schools of
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