The Child is the Betel Tray: Making Law and Love in Ayutthaya Siam

This article investigates the process of making and applying law in Ayutthaya Siam through a close reading of one text from the Three Seals Code, the Law on Husband and Wife. Rather than a piece of legislation from a certain date, this law is an archive of judgements and decrees accumulated over a long period. The constituent clauses do not lay down rules but give examples of disputes and advice on solving them. The courts’ main role was to foster conciliation. The law seems to have been applied mainly to commoners. Many clauses have unusual features—editorial, graphic portrayal, poetic phrasing, word-play, homily—which suggest they had public use beyond a courtroom. The conclusion offers a speculative history of this law in the Ayutthaya era.

Rejuvenating Karayala: An Endangered Folk Theatrical Form of Himachal Pradesh

This paper deals with karayala, a folk theatrical form of Himachal Pradesh. This form is basically a ritual, performed in the name of a local deity called Biju/Bijeshwar. It is a night long ritual consisting of minimum three and maximum four episodes (swaangs) and each one is followed by a musical interlude comprising singing and dancing. Karyala is an impromptu theatrical form. There are no women actors and only men play female roles. Surprisingly, till date women are not allowed to play female roles. It deals with range of themes and most of them aim at reforming society by employing techniques like mimicry, caricature, satire, paradox, pun and word play. The paper seeks to introduce karayala to larger audience. In the crisis of the present context and particularly owing to onslaught of media multiplicity, we have lost karayala’s past as none for a long while cared to document it due to urbanization, people’s indifference and media charged environment that has threatened its existence. At present it is alive in people’s memory and is necessitated by rituals to avert divine wrath; nevertheless, its space stands largely invaded by media today. The future of this folk theatrical form seems bleak unless we take effective measures to revive/ retrieve it.

FIELD MODELLING OF SPEECH GENRE (CASE STUDY OF ELITE BRAND GOODS IN INSTAGRAM)

The article is striving to describe one of the genres of advertising discourse - the advertising of elite brand goods in Instagram - through the theory of speech genres. The study is based on the following principles of the theory: all communication phenomena can be described through their primary or secondary nature; any speech genre has a field structure. A field consists of a core represented by features opposing this genre to other genres, and periphery represented by shared features. Field features of a genre are represented by language units of different levels grouped around some invariant content which depends on the topic and aim of communication. We have built a field model of speech genre of advertising of elite brand goods in Instagram, where the core features are word-play, highly expressive vocabulary and allusions which all aim to create positive image of elite goods. The field periphery has been split into closer periphery (common for all e-advertising) and farther periphery (represented by features common for advertising in general). The features of closer periphery are instant, ubiquitous and interactive nature. The features of farther periphery are informative and evaluative character, inducement and creolized nature.

Occasional vocabulary and word play of the coronavirus period as a way to reflect new elements of the picture of the world (using the example of French)

Выявляются и рассматриваются французские окказионализмы на тему пандемии коронавируса. Данные, полученные из франкоязычных источников, позволяют проанализировать актуальное состояние картины мира французской лингвокультуры и определить влияние экстралингвистических факторов на образование окказиональной лексики. Материалом послужили авторские словообразования открытых интернет- источников французского издательства «Le Robert» и французского периодического издания «Le Monde». Методика исследования основана на семантическом анализе новых французских лексических единиц на тему пандемии с целью описания этих элементов картины миры французского лингвокультурного сообщества. Изучение способов вербализации мировосприятия представителей той или иной лингвокультуры является одним из современных направлений лингвистики и позволяет не только описать мировосприятие этноса на определенном этапе социокультурного развития, но и выявить динамику и закономерность изменения общественных ориентиров, и их отражение в языке. Результаты исследования могут быть использованы в сравнительно-сопоставительном изучении способов вербализации элементов структуры картин мира разных лингвокультур. The article identifies and analyzes French occasionalisms on the topic of the Coronavirus pandemic. Data from French-speaking sources make it possible to analyze the current state of the picture of the world of French linguistic culture and determine the influence of extralinguistic factors on the formation of the occasional vocabulary. The material was the author's words formations of open Internet sources of the French publishing house Le Robert and the French periodical Le Monde. The study methodology is based on a semantic analysis of the new French lexical units on the topic of the pandemic in order to describe the elements of a new picture of the world. The study of ways to verbalize the worldview of representatives of a particular linguistic culture is one of the modern trends in linguistics. Such a study allows us not only to describe the worldview of the ethnic group at a certain stage of sociocultural development, but also to reveal the dynamics and regularity of changes in social orientations and their reflection in the language. The results of the research can be used in comparative study of ways to verbalize elements of different linguistic cultures.

Modelling Speech Genre as a Field (case Study of Elite Brand Goods in Instagram)

The article is striving to describe one of the genres of advertising discourse – the advertising of elite brand goods in Instagram – through the theory of speech genres. The study is based on the following principles of the theory: all communication phenomena can be described through their primary or secondary nature; any speech genre has a field structure. A field consists of a core represented by features opposing this genre to other genres, and periphery represented by shared features. Field features of a genre are represented by language units of different levels grouped around some invariant content which depends on the topic and aim of communication. We have built a field model of speech genre of advertising of elite brand goods in Instagram, where the core features are word-play, highly expressive vocabulary and allusions which all aim to create positive image of elite goods. The field periphery has been split into closer periphery (common for all e-advertising) and farther periphery (represented by features common for advertising in general). The features of closer periphery are instant, ubiquitous and interactive nature. The features of farther periphery are informative and evaluative character, inducement and creolized nature.

Defining the word ‘play’

A professional language for a complex process in a misunderstood profession – why we should reconsider using the word ‘play’ in an educational context.

Zum humoristischen Umgang mit Covid-19 in der Sprache

The global outbreak of Covid-19 in 2020 changed the world in many ways. Language reflects these changes at various levels. The article considers the linguistic effects of the pandemic with humorous potential: various types of puns, the jocular exploitation of the polysemy of corona, and playful components of contemporary trending words. As a result, not only do portmanteaus and compounds prove to be particularly prone to entertain, but it is also shown that the various forms of word play generally depend on ludic remotivation, a kind of remotivation which is finally situated and defined between the scholarly and the folk etymological type.

Some Peculiarities of Reduplication as a Musical Device of James Joyce in «Finnegans Wake» and its Translatability

The article deals with language experiments of James Joyce in his novel «Finnegans Wake». The reduplication in the novel is found to be multifaceted and multifunctional. Not only does it strengthen an emotional component, but also creates tone-painting, thus being an inherent part of the author’s word play. A detailed classification of the randomly selected occasional lexical units formed by reduplication is suggested. Among the partial reduplication, divergent modifications are found to dominate. The research concerned the possibilities of translating the revealed occasional words into Russian (A. Rene, A. Volokhonskii versions), German (D. Stündel version) and Spanish (M. Zabaloi). Various translation strategies are considered. The research has found that interlingual transference of the writer’s reduplication is possible, but highly subjective and therefore radical transformation of the source text is often required, leading to creation of the modified version of «Finnegans Wake» rather than its translation in the true sense.

Transformations of phraseological units in Russian and Slovak advertising slogans

The paper presents the problem of transformations of phraseological units in modern Russian and Slovak advertising slogans. The primary task of the advertising slogan is to attract the attention of the recipient, to interest a potential buyer, to motivate him to buy certain products. When classical linguistic means and techniques turn out to be ineffective or outdated, the creators of advertising slogans resort to various transformations of the existing material well-known to a certain society, word play and other experiments with language. Transformation of phraseological units is a justified, effective and highly relevant method of attracting attention in various spheres of communication (media, fiction, Internet, blogs, advertising, politics, etc.). This technique has occupied the dominant position in advertising for more than a decade, since fixed expressions or allusions to them appeal to the wisdom of the nation, its origins, and evoke positive images in memory. The purpose of this article is to identify the transformations of phraseological units in advertising using the example of two Slavic languages, to analyse specific examples of transformations created by Russian and Slovak authors, to consider the methods of creating such transformations, to note their features and to draw appropriate conclusions.