The specifics of updating foreign language inclusions: a linguosemiotic approach

The subject of this article is the specificity of the contextual use of foreign language inclusions on the material of a work of fiction. The object is the words and phrases in German incorporated into the Russian text. This is how the principle of multicode is realised, when the text is not limited to one form of information expression, but several ‘codes’ are used to convey meaning. A typical example of a multicode work is Leo Tolstoy's novel ‘War and Peace’ in which words and phrases from French, German, Italian and Latin languages are used. The aim of the article is to systematise and analyse from the point of view of linguosemiotic approach foreign language inclusions in German due to the multimodal character of the novel's fiction text to create speech portraits of the characters and reflect the author's position. The study uses the method of classification to typologise foreign-language embeddings by volume and degree of integration into the text, descriptive method, contextual analysis, component analysis method, and structural-semantic analysis method. The method of quantitative analysis served to establish the ratio within the foreign-language material. The method of continuous sampling made it possible to compile a file cabinet of the study with the volume of 30 contexts. The novelty of the study lies in the confirmation of the fact that the peculiarities of the use of foreign-language embeddings in German described in the article in terms of their thematic and conceptual, structural aspects and models of language code switching clarify the existing ideas about the current state of polycodicity, creolised text, code switching, multilingualism, intertextuality, the systematisation of which is of particular importance for the further study of the functional-semiotic approach in the study of the artistic text. As a result of the linguosemiotic approach, it was revealed that the functioning of foreign-language inclusions in German in the text of the novel is related to their semantic (allocation of two main semantic fields: artistic opposition of the national characters of Russians and Germans, mixing Russian with German is connected with military themes and communication with German officers), syntactic (mixing of codes and alternation of codes) and pragmalinguistic features (parallel development of realistic-imaginative strategy with tactics of informativeness, historical stylisation, illustration of material, objectification and social-evaluative strategy with expressive, comic, individualising and ironic-satirical tactics).

foreign language inclusions, German language, L.N. Tolstoy’s novel, linguosemiotic analysis, semantics, syntax, pragmatics, Russian literature, multicoding, intertextuality