Compositional features and thematic classification of vocabulary of typhlocommentaries to paintings (based on the example of paintings descriptions on “Опиши-мне.рф” internet web-site)

The relevance of socialization of people with visual impairments persists today as the volume of disseminated visual information increases. In this regard, it is significant to study the specificity of audio description texts and typhlocommentaries to various objects of visual content. This article discusses the compositional features of typhlocommentaries to paintings as well as the thematic distribution of lexis in their content. The sampling of the study included the texts of audio description written by Internet users for people with visual impairments, posted on the specialized Internet web-site “Describe-it-to-me”. In the course of the study, 4 content blocks were defined, distinguished in accordance with the types of information they convey: encyclopedic, descriptive, interpretive, subjective-perceptual. The core component is a block of descriptive information while the representation of remaining content blocks is optional. The order of these blocks in the audio description texts varies and their boundaries sometimes appear to be arbitrary. The proportion of a block of descriptive information in the texts of typhlocommentaries varies significantly (in more than 50% of cases it contains from 100 to 200 words), which is partly due to the varying degrees of complexity of the visual content of the picture. The lexical specificity of this block has been studied, 14 lexical-semantic groups have been established, indicating the concepts and meanings that are the focus of attention of the author of the typhlocommentary when describing paintings.