Vestnik of Moscow State Linguistic University. Humanities

The article, which is focused on creativity in oral multimodal communication, presents the results of the study of the contribution of gestures to metaphorisation in Russian oral monologic speech. Despite a significant amount of research into ‘gesture-speech’ correlation, the characteristics of metaphorisation in the kinetic modality, as well as the contribution of gestures into this process with a view to their dependence on speech and in relation to different languages and types of discourse, remain understudied. The investigation is carried out on the basis of video recordings of monologic speech of native Russian speakers who explained the difference between close synonyms presented to them in pairs. Lexical semantic and multimodal visual analyses of spoken discourse with a kinetic component were employed, which revealed that representational gestures contribute to metaphor in various ways, amplifying, adding to, and replacing the meaning of the linguistic expression they co-occur with. Depending on the role of gestures, different types of metaphorical mappings were also identified, i.e., symmetrical, asymmetrical, multimodal, and cross-modal mappings.

The purpose of the work is to describe the syntax of Web 2.0 digital communication, which allows the coexistence of two types of content: adapted traditional and user-generated content. The relevance of the study is determined by the insufficient study of their syntactic characteristics, and the novelty is due to the chosen vector of comparative analysis of syntactic parameters and syntactic means of realizing the subjective-modal potential of the user-generated content and its traditional analogue based on the material of professional and amateur film reviews. The results of the study indicate a trend towards convergence of syntactic characteristics of adapted and usergenerated content of Web 2.0 communication.

The article discusses the metaphorical concepts that underlie the formation of phraseological units of the Chinese language, and determines their activity proceeding from information provided by lexicographic sources. The point of departure is the consideration of the scope of phraseology in the Chinese language which comprises various groups of stable word combinations. So, one of the objectives of the study is to clarify the classification of the phraseological units in Chinese, as well as look at the principles of the selection of stable phrases in the Chinese linguistic tradition. The research proves that Chinese linguists strive to combine the structural and semantic criteria of phraseological classification. An attempt is made to analyze the models of metaphorization and the most frequent metaphorical concepts forming phraseological images in the Chinese language.

The article focuses on the content features and the dispersion of grammatical means expressing the concept of “love” in the British poetic discourse of Early New English. It pursues the goal of studying the representation of emotiveness on the example of 500 emotive sentences of Early New English. The basic methods of research applied by the author were those of context and quantitative analysis. The most frequently used structure in 17 th-century British poetic discourse, representing the category of emotiveness on the syntactic level, is the exclamatory sentence with interjections and exclamatory particles at the beginning. The author views lexical means as a way of forming a certain image of the object of love.

The aim of the study is to assess the extent to which constructions with multiple modal verbs (MMs) and analytical forms of modal verbs in Ulster-Scots are covered in reference and student’s grammars and whether these phenomena can be considered as systemic differential features of the idiom in question. The material for the study consists of grammars and descriptions of Scots, F.S. Robinson’s “Ulster-Scots: a grammar of the traditional written and spoken language” being the principal primary source. The methods used are as follows: observation, description, comparison, as well as some elements of quantitative and qualitative content analysis. Results of the study: MMs (e.g. might could do, etc.) and analytical forms of modal verbs can be characterized as elements of the system and differential features of Ulster-Scots, as well as Scotticisms. They are still present in everyday speech, but are poorly represented in the language of local literature.

The article examines conventional zoometaphors with negative connotations functioning in American English linguoculture with the aim to study the cognitive mechanism of actualization of pejorative evaluative meanings in statements containing such metaphors. Based on the achievements of axiology and the cognitive theory of metaphor, the author describes the mechanism of zoometaphor formation and analyzes the interaction of evaluative and metaphorical meanings in an utterance. The following methods are used in the work: contextual analysis, cognitive analysis and the method of quantitative calculations. The research material is based on examples obtained by continuous sampling from the Corpus of Contemporary American English. The result of the study is the identification and substantiation of the cognitive mechanism of zoometaphor formation, which includes several stages and several types of conceptual projections.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the linguistic representation of the metaphorical complex «Dunkelheit» in the modern German-language novel discourse. The initial theoretical premise of the study is the recognition of the key role of metaphor as a cognitive meaning-generating mechanism in literary texts at the turn of the XXI century. The leading method for the study is the linguo-stylistic analysis. The research was based on the novel «Tyll» (2017) written by the modern Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann. As a result of the research, it was found that the linguistic representation of the metaphorical complex is implemented in a series of plot-related text fragments through the use of stative verbs of tactile and auditory perception, specific changes in spatial characteristics, as well as a peculiar palette of lexical means of developing pseudo-historical artistic space.

The publication is the first part of the research comparing the semantics of the characters in Shakespeare’s sonnets with the semantics of Eros in Plato’s dialogue “Symposium”. Researchers conventionally derive their metaphysical interpretations of Fair Friend and Dark Lady from the antithesis of two Aphrodites in Pausanias’s speech and describe the two beloved as opposites. Our goal is to demonstrate that Shakespeare treats Plato’s philosophy in a far more subtle and complex way: he employs the qualities of ‘true’ and ‘false’ Eros from all speeches in the dialogue, which makes his personages polysemantic while wearing different masks. We draw on philosophical works by A. F. Losev and V. S. Soloviev to broaden the context of the reception of Shakespeare’s characters and reinterpret their relation and functions in a platonic perspective.

The purpose of the article is to analyze the performative nature of identity. Performativity is reflected in visual images. The research is based on the material of painting and photography. A painting and a photograph are a representation of the identity of the author (artist, photographer) and the depicted object. The image is now being presented as a new scientific tool, they contain socio-cultural meanings and are actors. Methodologically, the research is based on culturological and performative approaches. This methodology allows us to explore identity in the context of changing socio-cultural conditions. The research contributes to the understanding of the image as a «scene» in which the performance unfolds.