Межкультурная коммуникация и сопоставительное изучение языков. Рубрика в журнале - Вестник Волгоградского государственного университета. Серия 2: Языкознание
Machine vs human translation in the synergetic translation space
Статья научная
The paper focuses on English-to-Russian translations of patent applications on the website of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). A comparative analysis of patent applications is performed by using translations made with the help of the WIPO Translate tool and human translators within the framework of the synergetic translation space concept encompassing the domains of the author's intensions, text content and composition, energy, translator, recipient, and the translation acceptability notion. The translation erratology aspects were considered from the point of view of the semantic, referential, and syntactic ambiguity within the domains of content-composition and energy space. In the domain of the author, the intention to convey some technical information is revealed, while its rendering in the content-composition and energy domains depends on whether the translation is made by a person or a machine. Genre- and composition-related specifics have been rendered in both cases while machine translation errors have been proven to result from the semantic, referential, or syntactic ambiguity, and this is when the translated output is generally considered unacceptable by the recipient. The results obtained can be used for editing machine translations of patent documentation, assessing the quality of technical documentation translation that is referred to other specific genre conventions.
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Metaphor as a means of representing first-hand cancer experience in English teen sick-lit
Статья научная
The present paper is a contribution to the study of cancer metaphors in contemporary English. It focuses on the ways cancer is conceptualized in teen sick-lit, a relatively new genre of children's literature which presents stories of severe illnesses that afflict teenagers, cancer being the most important of them. The analysis is based on four novels that employ the first-person narrative mode. It rests upon the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, utilizing such specific research instruments as the Career of Metaphor Theory (B. Bowdle and D. Gentner) and the concept of metaphorical creativity (Z. Kovecses). The novelty of the research angle is that the paper takes a differentiated approach towards cancer metaphor analysis, first identifying thematic groups relevant to cancer experience and then tracing patterns of metaphor use within each group. The four groups presented in the study are metaphors of cancer itself, cancer patients, diagnostic procedures and treatments, and physical and emotional conditions of patients. It is proved that there are metaphors that demonstrate a strong inclination to reflect only one aspect of cancer experience. Thus, the actively promoted journey metaphor appears suitable only for conceptualizing procedures and treatments, while war metaphor proves versatile. Further on, the paper analyzes instances of the war metaphor use proving that far from being obsolete, it has a considerable conceptual and communicative potential and can be developed further.
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Metaphorical Conceptualization of Cancer in English Medical Creative Nonfiction
Статья научная
The paper discusses the phenomenon of medical creative nonfiction, delineating the factors that engender demand for this type of literature, listing its types and identifying its main features. It highlights the importance of language choices in the presentation of medical facts, as creative nonfiction aims to be comprehensible, engaging and aesthetically pleasing. The paper further narrows down the topic to nonfiction about cancer and considers the use of metaphors as a means of conceptualizing this disease. It provides an analysis of metaphors in two bestsellers written by medical professionals: S. Mukherjee’s “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer” and J. Fung’s “The Cancer Code: A Revolutionary New Understanding of a Medical Mystery.” The methodological foundation for the analysis is the refined version of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, supplemented by the Discourse Metaphor Theory (J. Zinken) and the Metaphoric Creativity Theory (Z. Kövecses). The authors reveal the main patterns of metaphor use in each book. The most common source domains utilized in both books are WAR, LIVING BEING, PLANT and SPACE, while JOURNEY, which is a highly recommended source domain for the conceptualization of cancer in contemporary discourses, is barely noticeable. The authors further identify creative metaphors, analyze their conceptual structure, and compare the use of metaphors in the two books to demonstrate the possibility of conceptual experimentation with the topic despite the pressure of discursive conventions.
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Статья научная
The author's hypothesis proceeds from the position that the ancient treatises of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) describe metaphorically an ethnocultural understanding of neuro-linguistic and psychophysiological processes in the human body from the perspective of communication between large and small. TCM terms are medical concepts that also contain deep philosophical and linguistic-cultural content plans, due to the Wenyan-style in which TCM treatises are written. The purpose of the work is to identify the patterns of the language of these ancient texts in the context of the interpretation presented in them through the hierarchy of 'state and subjects'. The use of methodological holism made it possible to develop a new approach to the texts of traditional Chinese medicine from the standpoint of communication studies and neuropsycholinguistics. The mythologized interpretation of the concepts in the ancient treatises of TCM is associated with the signification of any health problem in the form of an expanded metaphor characterizing the problem as a violation of 'communication' in the body-'state' between 'vassals', 'individual social groups' and their 'leaders'. This positioning of the body's work through the prism of social relations provides an understanding of the interpretation of relationships in ancient Chinese society as a whole.
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Positioning guests in a Maybrit Illner talk show
Статья научная
In this paper we analyze techniques applied by the producers of a talk show in order to position the talk show guests as relevant participants with respect to the subject of fiscal evasion by celebrities. We analyze how the producers succeed in positioning their guests right from the beginning as prototypical representatives. This positioning is achieved through the coordination of a voice from offstage and the management of the cameras when the guests first appear on screen. Two of five guest introductions are analyzed in detail. The two presented guests demonstrate a clearly antagonistic relationship and their introduction is immediately consecutive. We have reconstructed the introduction of all five guests in detail which resulted in the identification of a network of positions. Unfortunately we cannot present all of our analyses here due to the lack of space. At the positional network’s center lies the thematic and personal “antagonism” which we reconstructed. At the periphery we have four representatives of societally relevant positions who contribute to the topic of the talk show. The four guests respectively represent jurisdiction, politics, and ethics via a lay perspective, psychology and theology. The analysis is theoretically framed by the multimodal notion of “positioning” and “recipient design”, while the applied methodology is multimodal interaction analysis.
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Promotional Adjectives in Grant Proposal Abstracts: A Corpus Study
Статья научная
By effectively integrating promotional discourse into grant proposal abstracts, researchers can more compellingly present their ideas and increase their chances of securing funding. Implications of promotional adjectives in grant writing might differ across various research fields. This study aims to explore the use of promotional adjectives in abstracts of research grant proposals in six research fields, ranging from arts and humanities to natural sciences, to confirm the hypothesis that the frequencies of promotional adjectives in abstracts across disciplines and the proportion of discipline-specific and general promotional adjectives within disciplines vary considerably. 148 promotional adjectives in six disciplinary corpora of abstracts of research grant proposals funded by UK Research and Innovation in 2012–2023 (over 13 million words, 28,551 texts) were examined. The results show that general promotional adjectives in grant proposal abstracts demonstrate high frequency regardless of the genre and the discipline; discipline-specific adjectives are more likely to be presented in Arts and Humanities, Engineering and Physics, and Economics and Social Sciences than in Natural Sciences. The use of promotional adjectives is consistent, yet distinct, in all disciplines. The results of the study may have implications for disciplinary researchers' grant writing practices and in teaching English for Academic Purposes.
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Prototype in Neural Machine Translation of Promotional Texts: Algorithmization of the Source Text
Статья научная
The article examines the quality of neural machine translation of promotional texts in the context of digitalization and the active integration of artificial intelligence into multilingual communication. The authors state that source texts should be deliberately optimized for machine translation in order to enhance the quality of translations produced by large language models (LLMs). The empirical material comprises promotional content from the multilingual website of the Singapore-based company Linguise, which develops software solutions for connecting websites to neural machine translation systems, as well as the website of the German hospitality company Traumferienhäuser Schwarzwald – presented by Linguise as a successful case of multilingual logistics. The methodology combines contrastive and translatological analysis of source and target texts, aimed at identifying structural, grammatical, and lexical congruence, as well as typical transformations and translation techniques. The results prove that a high degree of predictability and adequacy in neural machine translation is achieved through the prototypization of the source text, including a modular text structure, a fixed sequence of functional blocks, syntactic simplicity, and terminological consistency. It affirms that texts oriented towards a universal international market and devoid of culturally marked and expressive vocabulary exhibit the greatest stability in automatic translation. Based on the analysis, an algorithm for creating an "ideal" promotional source text is proposed, contributing to improved quality of multilingual neural machine translation and a reduced need for post-editing.
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Reader, I married him, или механизм аттенциональной конвергенции в англоязычном повествовании
Статья научная
Цель проведенного исследования заключается в описании аттенциональной конвергенции, определяемой в статье как способ формальной организации повествования, использующий конвергентный потенциал сразу нескольких механизмов фокусирования внимания для интенсификации когнитивной активности читателей. Охарактеризованы «аттенциональные эффекты», связанные с комбинаторным использованием таких типов выдвижения, как сильная позиция текста, эффект обманутого ожидания, сцепление, интекст. Доказана значимость аттенциональной конвергенции в создании когнитивного диссонанса как неотъемлемой составляющей интерпретационной программы современного художественного текста. Действие механизма аттенциональной конвергенции раскрыто на примере произведений современных англоязычных авторов-женщин посредством конструирования гендерной идентичности персонажей. Материалом исследования послужили рассказы Дж. Брискоу, Т. Шевалье, Э. Фрейд, Т. Хедли, С. Хилл, С. Викерс и др., опубликованные в сборнике «Reader, I Married Him», вышедшем в 2017 г. и посвященном 200-летию со дня рождения Шарлотты Бронте. Установлено, что все анализируемые в статье рассказы интертекстуально соотносятся с романом «Джейн Эйр» и предлагают современный взгляд авторов-женщин на проблемы гендерных стереотипов, гендерных ролей и гендерно обусловленного поведения, выражаемый в том числе посредством аттенциональной конвергенции. Результаты проведенного исследования доказывают актуальность дальнейшего изучения механизмов фокусирования / дефокусирования, а также создания множественных фокусов внимания, способствующих повышению экспрессивности повествования, выражению авторской модальности и усилению прагматического воздействия на читателей.
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Representation of the conceptual field “education” in national variants of the French language
Статья научная
The paper presents an onomasiological analysis of the conceptual field “Education” exemplified by the vocabulary of the national variants of the French language of France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Canada (Province of Quebec) with the aim to establish the basic nomination principles and identify inter-variational differences within the framework of three sectors of the conceptual field “Education”: “Educational institutions (établissement d’enseignement)”, “Teaching staff (personnel enseignant)”, “Students (étudiants)”. The basic principles of nominating in the field of education are identified by considering the internal conceptual structure of the language units under analysis; inter-variational differences and alterations are stated by categorical-and- semantic comparability of the differentiation semes in the nominations of three sectors of the conceptual field “Education”. The analysis allows to conclude that there exist generic categorical-and-semantic instances within nomination structures that indicate location of training or teaching, specialty, disciplines studied or taught, age, status of the teacher or student, level and methodology of training. In designation of objects in the sectors of the conceptual field “Education” lexical units get into hypernym-and-hyponym relations, thus categorically every sector is formed around some basic concept that is explicated in a hypernym, general nomination for four territorial variants of French, and a set of hyponyms that are more specific and not alike in the exemplification of general semes. The onomasiological analysis of the conceptual field “Education” reveals intervariational concomitant or alternating features, especially in sectors of “Educational institutions (établissement d’enseignement)”, “Students (étudiants)” due to certain social-and-institutional reasons.
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Semiolinguistics of protective communication
Статья научная
The current paper investigates the notion of protective communication represented by systems of signs, texts, rituals which the authors regard as means of neutralizing cognitive constructs, generated by phobias of varying degrees of irrationality. Classification of phobias on psycho- and sociolinguistic grounds allows developing their typology from the point of view of the cause of their origin: supernatural entities (superstition), individual fearful images (prejudice), social suspicion (bias). As the study showed, sacred horror caused by destructive forces of nature, climatic phenomena not subjected to man, and astronomical events gave rise to supernatural, esoteric phobias reflected in superstitions. Biological phobias appeared in response to real dangers, associated with daily human activities, personal imaginarytroubles and fears, which generated a system of prejudice invented by man himself. Social interaction of people, with its negative stereotyping and categorization of social space, entailed a wide range of phobias (racial, religious, age, gender, etc,) which turned into social biases. On his way of development, a man tried hard to find protection against phobias of different nature, creating an extensive system of protective means incorporated in religious, magical and intolerant types of discourse, consequently neutralizing superstitions, prejudices and biases in specific genres, verbal and non-verbal signs, texts and rituals of the above mentioned types of discourse.
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Статья научная
The article discusses various approaches to defining the terminological base, the ambiguity of definitions, the lack of clear boundaries and signs of the concepts of social exclusion and social inclusion. The notions under study are characterized by way of their reference to communication process circumstances and participants, who are contrasted in their social status, cultural experience, ideological ideas and worldview to other social groups. The article analyzes slang neoformations with the concern for stylistically reduced register of communication as objectifying categories of social exclusion and social inclusion within the framework of youth discourse, which determine the developing vector of both society structure on the whole and social subsystems of the language. The novelty and relevance of the study lie in the use of linguocognitive analysis of authentic material, on the basis of which the mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion of slang lexical units are differentiated. The regularity in actualization of social exclusion or inclusion is understood in connection with the mechanisms and possibilities of using communicative practices in order to include social groups in social processes. These phenomena are reflected at the lexical level of the language and might contribute to various transformations of social consciousness, increasing language efficiency and its ability to respond to current challenges. It is concluded that modern youth slang is a specific language model that acts as an instrument of social exclusion or inclusion; in communicative practices, it is embodied through pejorative slang nominations thus strategically and tactically forming a negative image and antisocial behavior. The results of the research contribute to further study of the communicative nature of sociolinguistic phenomena, to comparative studies of the discursive construction of socially significant fragments of social reality, and the communicative manifestation of multidirectional social processes that determine the social structure and stratification of society.
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Статья научная
This paper is devoted to the specific features of lettered words’ integration in the graphic, phonetic and grammatical aspects of the Chinese language. The author has analyzed a number of local and foreign studies, covering the main patterns of the lettered words’ integration. Based on Liu Yongquan’s studies, it was concluded that it’s important to strictly follow letters’ case. The case difference can distinguish semantics of different lettered words. Native Chinese speakers with high linguistic competence are able to recognize various lettered words in print, but they may not know how to read them out loud. Therefore, the pronunciation of lettered words is associated with a number of issues: the choice of pronunciation standard, the differentiation of initialisms and acronyms, the choice which syllable to stress. Based on the results of previous research, different ways of how borrowed lettered words respond to the grammatical norms of the Chinese language were identified. The empirical analysis was performed with lettered words extracted by the method of continuous sampling from lexicographic sources. Using the cases described in the paper, the author has proved that in addition to such word-formation processes as compounding, semi-affixation, syntactic and morphological transposition, lettered words can also be formed and transformed with morphological contraction.
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Structural analysis of persian-english reverse code-switching and code-mixing
Статья научная
Code-switching and code-mixing are considered dynamic conversational phenomena in interpersonal interactions, that is an alteration between two or more languages, dialectal variants, language registers, and it is an effective communicative strategy which Persian-English bilinguals consider a genuine thing in their ordinary speech practice. The focus of the present study is on the structural analysis of reverse code-switching between Persian and English that are known to be referred to two typologicallydifferent languages. Participants of the present research, all late bilinguals, reported on frequent use of code-switching (CS) and code-mixing (CM) in everyday language practice. CS/CM is quite normal and frequent among Iranian bilinguals, especially in informal settings where bilingual speakers can freely switch between their languages. Furthermore, the results revealed that Iranian bilinguals switch from English to Persian and in verso mostlyat the lexical and the phrasal levels (intrasentential switching mode), but less frequently at the clausal or the sentence level (intersentential switching mode). The research states that there are some restrictions on inserting English verbs into the Persian syntactic frame: the Persian language is thought to be the matrix language and the preverbal part comes from English as the embedded language, such incongruity between the morphosyntactic structure and the verbal system of the Persian and English languages impose some constraints on the occurrence of switching codes between the pair of the languages under study.
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Статья научная
The article proposes an original approach to the analysis of mitigation means in political discourse. The main goals of the study are: to present the matrix of mitigation means in the English and German languages; to propose a two-level framework for analysing mitigation, covering the formal and pragmatic dimensions of the communicative situation; and to establish a link between the speech, its mitigating elements, and the communication patterns specific to an ethnic culture under scrunity. The need for a pragmatic analysis of every communicative situation is reasoned by the facts that the same language marker can act as both a mitigation and a non-mitigation device depending on the context. The relevance of the research lies in the fact that the ethnocultural factors of communication (more specifically, the mitigation) are understudied. The examination was completed on the basis of the House of Commons' and the Bundestag's transcripts of sessions devoted to the COVID-19 pandemics. The choice of material ensures comparability across two languages and cultures. The methods applied were analysis and synthesis; full-text sampling; intention analysis; content analysis; corpus analysis using AntConc software to search for mitigation means for proposition and deictic mitigation; quantitative estimation. The research could be further developed to be used for other ethnicities, cultures and languages; a matrix of mitigation in other languages can be constructed.
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System-functional stratification of the average Turkish-Russian dictionary
Статья научная
The study is aimed at stratifying Rosa Yusipova’s Turkish-Russian Dictionary (2005) in accordance with the system and functional weights of its constituent words. The method is a parametric lexicon analysis (PLA), developed and tested byscientists of Voronezh State University. PLA involves identifying four particular parametric weights for each word. This is the FUNCTIONAL weight (F-weight is indirectly estimated by the length of the word), the PARADIGMATIC weight (P-weight is estimated by the number of synonyms), SYNTAGMATIC weight (C-weight is estimated by the number of phrases and utterances with this word) and EPIDIGMATIC weight (E-weight is estimated by the number of meanings of a word in the dictionary). For each of the 4 parameters, partial core, counting at least 1000 words, was allocated. The words presented in all 4 particular cores, entered a Small parametric core. Words presented in 3 particular cores entered an Average parametric core, words represented in 2 particular parametric cores - a Large parametric core and words presented in 1 particular parametric core entered the core of the Dictionary. Words that are not presented in any particular parametric core make up the Periphery of the Dictionary. The analysis revealed the words of all 4 cores of the dictionary: Small - 140 words, Middle - 630, Large - 3234, the core of the Dictionary - 6861 and the Periphery of the Dictionary counts 18236 words. The dominant (the most important word in the dictionary) was the word iş ‘work, labor’, and the vice-dominant - the word üst ‘the top’.
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The Hint and Its Persuasiveness in Diplomatic Discourse
Статья научная
The assertion that different types of hints exert varying degrees of persuasive effect has been empirically confirmed. However, how these different types of hints influence native and non-native audiences remains largely unknown. Therefore, this study, considering the characteristics of logical, textual and contextual hints in the Chinese diplomatic discourse, tests their persuasive potential and specificity when identified by native and non-native audiences. To achieve this goal an experiment was held: we recruited 90 participants, including 30 native speakers each of Chinese, Russian, and English, and conducted a comparative analysis using a Generalized Linear Mixed Model (GLMM) based on participants' accuracy rates. The results indicate that the persuasiveness of different types of hint is not fixed. Overall, logical hint tends to demonstrate stronger persuasiveness due to their higher logical consistency and lower dependence on contextual and cultural factors. A comparison of Chinese, Russian, and English participants shows that contextual hint is the most persuasive for Chinese participants because, for native speakers, greater implicitness is associated with stronger persuasiveness. Logical hint is the most persuasive for Russian participants, which may stem from their sensitivity to the logical structure of language. Textual hint is the most persuasive for English participants, which is consistent with the tendency of English, as a low-context language, to rely on explicit semantic markers within the text itself.
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The art of storytelling in the digital age: a multimodal perspective
Статья научная
Using Dan Brown’s Wild Symphony , Craig Silvey’s The Amber Amulet , and Jon McGregor’s In Winter the Sky as its case studies, this article attempts to explore a number of mechanisms and strategies contributing to the multimodal fiction construction and posing challenges for modern readers of all ages. The article proposes to examine multimodal resonance as a cognitive mechanism enhancing the emotional impact of multimodal stories on recipients and triggering the receptive mechanism of narrative empathy. Various semiotic resources, both free resources, such as photos, maps, and illustrations, and bound ones, including font types and typographical experiments, are analyzed from the standpoint of their role in fictional world creation. The article makes an original contribution to the Multimodal Stylistics Studies by hypothesizing the relevance of identifying two distinctive mechanisms of foregrounding: visual foregrounding as a range of formal ways to construct a multimodal text that focuses the reader’s attention with the help of free semiotic resources, and graphic foregrounding, which has bound semiotic resources at its heart. The findings of the research prove that it is the combination of elements of stylistic, cognitive and linguo-semiotic analyses that might provide a new and effective methodologyfor interpreting a multimodal literary text. The overall outcome testifies to the importance of further research into varied mechanisms of foregrounding as a complex phenomenon essential for our better understanding of the embodied character of reading.
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The main characteristics of stephen king’s idiostyle
Статья научная
The paper presents stylistic value of simile and metaphor as the major features of Stephen King’s idiostyle. The linguistic analysis of some novels (1408, Carrie, The Shining, Dreamcatcher, Dead Zone) is aimed at discovering sematic and structural types of simile and metaphor, revealing their functions in the content development. Structural analysis of simile and metaphor constituency in the above mentioned novels resulted in allocating some formal patterns: a one-term verbal simile (as if... verb, verb... like... verb), a two-term attribute simile (noun-like), a two-term or three-term nominative simile, and simple (a one-image) or expanded pattern of metaphor. The sematic analysis of Stephen King’s novels lets reveal the compound character of simile and metaphor use. Both tropes are used predominantly to create tension in narration that is often raised up to the atmosphere of horror, the latest is considered by the researchers to be a major feature of the idiostyle of the author under study. Having described some semantic ways of expanding horror, death, savageness, mood and expressiveness with similes and metaphors, the researchers concluded that these tropes perform leading functions in personalizing Stephen King’s idiostyle: constructing images and describing feelings that characters are going into along with creating the tone of tension and horror; performing common stylistic function despite the fact that they differ in the way the atmosphere of tension and horror is built: explicit realization in simile and implicit by various types of morphemes in metaphor.
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The nature of Chinese and Russian subcultures in urban discourse
Статья научная
The paper seeks to examine the communicative aspect of modern Chinese and Russian urban subcultures. The nominations of urban social groups representing young people in Russia and China and their connection to modern communication practices are viewed from the perspective of urban communication studies, which provides an opportunity for a new comprehension of issues connected with verbal and nonverbal constituents of urban discourse. The indicates that the subcultures in the Russian urban landscape are reflected in such nominations as фрики (freaki), мажоры (majory), хипстеры (hipstery), брейк-дансеры (break-dancery), байкеры (bikery), etc. The Chinese subcultures are known under such names as shamate, xiaoqingxin, tuyayawenhua, erciyuanyawenhua, egaoyawenhua and many others. We argue that in both countries the unity of social subgroups is based not so much on ideological preferences, but rather on lifestyles, hobbies and interests, many of them formed under the Western influence. The subcultures discussed in the research represent a broad panorama of Chinese and Russian social life. They reflect the sociocultural dynamics of attitudes, values and lifestyles influenced by globalization but acquiring nationally specific features, which transform them into unique sociocultural phenomena.
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The problem of studying neologisms and their influence on the ecology of language
Статья научная
The article raises the issues of neology and ecolinguistics. The authors specify the criteria of ecolinguistic approach to studying neologisms based on ecolinguistic monitoring which helps to elicit factors that influence the formation of new words, spheres in which they function in language as well as to define the type of new words and number of loanwords among them. The data under analysis is compiled by about 3 000 new words that appeared in English and Dutch in the last three decades. The authors elicit the main changes in the ecology of the Dutch language on different levels in the stated time frame together with the factors that motivate the formation of neologisms. Among extralinguistic factors the authors list such determinants as the emergence of new realia; scientific and technical advancement; globalization and development of the Internet. To intralinguistic factors the following are referred: linguistic economy; expressiveness of linguistic means; systematization of the vocabulary; unification of linguistic signs; conversion and the shift in stylistic usage of the words can also generate neologisms. Future development of the ecolinguistic approach in neology will help to track the evolution of modern national language and preserve its ecolinguistic balance. The research results can be used in language education, lexicographic practice or state language policy.
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