Pragmatic Function of Linguistic Units

The article is devoted to the theoretical analysis of a number of works of domestic and foreign linguists in which approaches to language learning in a pragmatic aspect are defined. As a result of generalization of various approaches of researchers, the author revealed the main task of pragmatics, which consists in establishing the patterns of the use of linguistic means for the purpose of directed influence on the addressee in the communication process. Within the framework of P. Grice’s theory, implicatures are considered as conversational or communicative, as well as conventional. At the same time, the metaphorical interpretation is analyzed within the framework of the theory of speech acts. The role of euphemistic units involved in the formation of a certain, predetermined by the addressee, evaluative opinion is shown. The article reveals the potential of the study of precedent phenomena in a pragmatic aspect. The key problems of linguopragmatics are analyzed: connotations and additional (background) information as a necessary component of communication.

From Colony to Camp, From Camp to Colony: First World War Captivity in Ahmed Ben Mostapha, goumier by Mohammed Bencherif

This article offers an analysis of the representation of captivity in Ahmed Ben Mostapha, goumier. The novel, published by Algerian writer Mohammed Bencherif in 1920, was partly inspired by his own experience as a prisoner of war during the First World War. Relying on historical, sociological and anthropological sources, the article focuses on the protagonist’s experience as a POW in German camps and in Switzerland. It also proposes a metaphorical interpretation of captivity in the colonial context, reading Ben Mostapha as a “conscript of modernity,” conditioned by French republican ideals. Fi- nally, it examines thought-provoking analogies between colony and camp in Bencherif’s novel.

CURRENT PROJECTS OF EDUCATIONAL DOMAIN: FROM MASK EXPANSION TO LIVE BREATHING

Тhe paper presents the results of the study of the anthropological perspectives of the new vocational/professional school didactics. It analyzes the content (regularities, principles, forms, methods and criteria) of an enant postmodern education theory focused on self-centred individualism encouraging the future specialists’ reflection on the expediency of a peculiar machine kenosis, namely, transgression into the body of transformer, cyborg, robot-android. As an alternative, the author’s model of performative conception of professional training is introduced. The concept implies future specialists’ activity above the situation in the moral and meaningful mediation of the organizational principles of complex metasystems, atopic metaxis phenomena in Humanities and Science. The systematic thinking methodology of the proposed research has applied semiotic, phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches, methods of coherent modelling and expert evaluation of the theory of conceptual integration, the connective theory of metaphorical interpretation, the conception of non-linear epistemology, the principles of antinomy, verification, complexity, disjunctive synthesis. The scientific novelty of the paper lies in revealing the strategies of implementing performative higher school didactics and the metanoia technique for their realization in the process of metaphorical cognitivistics.

GENERATION, UNDERSTANDING AND RECOGNITION OF AN INDIVIDUAL AUTHOR’SMETAPHOR WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF ARTISTIC DISCOURSE

The article discusses the issues of generating, understanding and recognizing an individual author’s metaphor within the framework of artistic discourse. The subjectivity of metaphorical modeling the world is understood as an individual and selective understanding of it which determines the peculiarities of its perception. The issues of the connection of the process of metaphorical modeling with intuition and cognition are considered. The author makesan assumption about four possible variants of the process of generating metaphors. It is emphasized that in the process of metaphorical interpretation of the world, the personal-physiological context, the historical, socio-cultural context of the author, the situational context, as well as the context of discourse become dominant. It is noted that for successful identification and understanding of a metaphor, it is necessary, among otherthings, to havecommon knowledge about the world in the form of cognitive images of consciousness and the author’s contexts listed above, which prevail in the process of his individual creativity when generating a metaphor. The possibilities and problems of automatic recognition and identification of metaphors are considered.

Metaphoric Interpretation of Communicative Values in Today’s Flash Fiction

Referring to literary texts, this article considers the possibilities of systematisation and interpretation of the values of Russian culture. For specialised analysis, the author chooses flash fiction by Denis Dragunsky, Mikhail Shishkin, and novel prose by Pavel Krusanov, Alexey Slapovsky, Alexey Salnikov, and Maria Stepanova. The purpose of the research, which is carried out within the field of axiological stylistics, is to identify relevant communicative values with the help of the latest Russian prose. A brief outline of the politicisation and depoliticisation of the Russian language and basic values of culture provides a general idea about the basic values on the time scale of the twentieth and twenty-firstcenturies. The coordination of stylistic and linguacultural methods of analysis identified a strategy of word-centrism, which is common for the authors chosen and finds its expression in the formation of an open supra-textual lexical paradigm. Each component of the paradigmatic row nominates a communicative value and at the same time acts as an object of the author’s metaphorical interpretation. The verdict on the “dead” language of the totalitarian era and the “stillborn” language of modern mass literature, full of viruses of vulgarity, profit, and consumerism, is accompanied by the construction of a detailed metaphor of the road, which makes it possible to put forward a socially significant task of linguo-axiological construction. Based on metaphorical diagnostics of speech existence, there are distinguished numerous axiological constants, i.e. a living language and a living word. Not “the only true” word, but a word charged with emotional energy should become an instrument of linguo-axiological construction, which is to be carried out on the basis of creative use of language as a system of possibilities. The ethnotype of a real Russian writer is formed, which is contrasted with the linguacultural type of a successful word seller. The Russian writer, who selflessly serves the Russian language, is to pave the way to a living language by creating texts, which would continue the traditions of classical Russian literature as an imperishable national value.

Cross-cultural interpretation of filmic metaphors: A think-aloud experiment

The purpose of this study is to investigate how viewers who speak different languages interpret cinematographic metaphors in a filmic advertisement. The study is organized in three parts: First, we offer a theoretical model that predicts the offline mental mechanisms that occur while people interpret filmic metaphors, based on an existing model of visual metaphor processing. Second, we evaluate the model in a think-aloud retrospective task. A TV-commercial is projected individually to 30 Spanish, 30 American, and 30 Persian participants, who are then asked to verbalize their thoughts. The commercial was previously segmented, analyzed using FILMIP (Filmic Metaphor Identification Procedure), and marked for metaphoricity by two independent analysts. The collected data is then evaluated in two formal content analyses. In the first one, two independent coders classified all the clauses used by the 90 participants in relation to the steps outlined in the theoretical model. In the second analysis, those clauses in which the participants were constructing their metaphorical interpretation of the filmic advertisement were annotated for the type of metaphor they constructed. The general results show that: (1) some mental processes seem to be more prominent in some cultures and not in others, and (2) genre-related knowledge plays a crucial role in constructing filmic metaphors in certain cultures and not in others. With this study, we theoretically formalize and empirically test the types of operations reflected in the language that viewers use to describe how they interpret filmic metaphors, thus advancing the current theory and methods on filmic metaphor interpretation from cognitive, semiotic, and cross-cultural perspectives.

We Shall Fight: Speaker-Exclusive We as a Grammatical Metaphor

The first person plural pronoun cannot be considered as an expression of pluralization of the first. Its semantic boundaries are defined in context, and this inherent vagueness an be pragmatically exploited for communicative purposes. Beyond the frequently investigated opposition between (addressee-) inclusive vs exclusive forms, this paper explores non-prototypical uses of the first person plural pronoun, focusing on the conflicts that arise when it is used in contexts that semantically exclude the speaker. Speaker-exclusive forms can occur in different situations, ranging from interpersonal exchanges to public discourse. The paper investigates their different semantic implications, highlighting their common traits as well as their crucial peculiarities. Both the review of the literature and the analysis of actual examples bring forth the different values and functions of various speaker-exclusive occurrences of the first person plural. A more systematic categorization of the forms can be obtained adopting a metaphorical interpretation, which on the one hand emphasises their common denominator (i.e. speaker-exclusiveness) and, on the other, sheds light on their varying communicative potential.