Eptonyms by O. Wilde in the German Language: Ecolinguistic Approach

Abstract

This article focuses on the phenomenon of eptonymization within the framework of the ecolinguistic approach. Ecolinguistics provides for the consideration of the language as a unity of its internal structure and natural, social, psychological and regional environment. Eptonyms result from the influence of cognitive, social and cultural factors of adapting new semiotic phenomena to the existing linguistic environment and are defined as initially freely functioning quotations which acquired the status of fixed units overtime, presuppose awareness of the authorship by the communicants and are subject to derivative processes. The translingual strain of ecolinguistics studies the processes of adapting phenomena from one language to the functional environment of another, thus, the English eponyms under consideration (namely, those authored by Oscar Wilde) are a case of translingual adaptation described in terms of ecolinguistics. The paper aims at determining conceptual and translational factors which allow for the foreign quotation adaptation in the German-language environment and its entrenchment in the German eptonymic sphere of concepts. The study brings to light the configuration of concepts verbalized in eptonyms by O. Wilde in the German language; it also covers the translation methods for revealing the way foreign quotations acquire an adapted eptonymic form in the German language. At the core of the eptonymic sphere of concepts of O. Wilde in the German language is the megaconcept PERSON dominating the hierarchy of subordinate concepts such as BIOPHYSIOLOGY, PSYCHICS, SOCIAL STANDING and BEHAVIOR. Most eptonyms activate the concepts WOMAN-MAN, COGNITION, MORAL QUALITIES, ART, SOCIETY. The translational factors for adapting eptonyms by O. Wilde include the following: phonetic and imitative (alliteration, paronymy), morphological and categorial (nominalization), lexical and semantic (metaphorization, specialization of meaning, synonymy), sentential (expansion, reduction) transformations.