Tatar appellatives in G. Yakhina’s novel “Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes”: polylinguality and transculturality

Abstract

The article is devoted to the linguocultural meanings of nationally specific forms of vocatives used by G. Yakhina in her novel “Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes”. The research object is the corpus of language units, used in G. Yakhina’s novel “Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes”, which are selected by continuous sampling from the first part of the novel. To analyze the studied units (appellatives), we use the descriptive and comparative methods, the method of word-formation, component and contextual analyses, as well as the method of quantitative calculation. To reconstruct the world of the Tatar village, the Russian-speaking writer uses a variety of appellative words (exoticisms, diminutives, evaluative forms, etc.), which do not always adequately appeal to the content of the Tatar linguocultural discourse. In the present article, we examine appellatives, in the unity of their form and content, as units of a particular literary text in order to identify their semantic specificity, stylistic and linguocultural affiliation, while taking into account the context of their use. The transformation and substitution of linguistic units, associated with the national specificity of the linguistic picture of the world, prevents adequate and accurate perception of Tatar linguistic culture when the author creates artistic images in her novel, or subsequently conveys the meaning in translation. Thus, the article shows how the words of a foreign culture are introduced into the text and what consequently happens to the meanings they convey.