English-language Fiction Research Articles

Английские эвфемизмы на тему здоровья и болезни

Euphemisms for disease created by means of abbreviation and rhyming slang reflect new capabilities of euphemisms. This research is relevant since such euphemisms are widely used and require a more detailed examination. The article aimed to identify some synonymous euphemistic and dysphemistic names from the arsenal of communicatively correct expressions on the topic of health and illness in English, as well as to provide a sociocultural commentary on euphemisms in the form of rhyming slang and abbreviations characterizing two deadly diseases – cancer and AIDS – and such an unpleasant ailment as haemorrhoids. The key research method used here is descriptive, implemented in the techniques of systematization, generalization and interpretation of language material. The linguistic methods include contextual analysis and semantic interpretation. The topic of health and disease is represented by examples of euphemisms and dysphemisms selected from authoritative dictionaries of euphemisms and general and rhyming slang, as well as English-language fiction. Euphemisms and dysphemisms serve as an effective way to overcome taboos; they are used to smooth out unpleasant moments and “cover up” sensitive issues for the interlocutor, provided that the exact meaning of the statement can be guessed. In particular, the author selected euphemisms for cancer, AIDS and haemorrhoids in the form of rhyming slang and abbreviation since they had been overlooked by specialists in English euphemisms, which brings an element of novelty to the study of modern English euphemisms. Euphemisms associated with rhyming slang in Englishspeaking countries constitute a promising area of research. The main points and conclusions of this paper can be used when discussing euphemisms during lectures and seminars on the theory of language, lexicology, stylistics, text interpretation, and cross-cultural communication.

The role of performative verbs in the English educational discourse in British and American fiction

The issues of performativity of the English educational discourse (EED) are considered. Under the educational discourse, the authors understand the educator's statements to the educatees in order to make an educational impact on them. The aim of the study is to define the types and characteristics of performative verbs in the English educational discourse. The authors suggest that performativity can become one of the important characteristics of educational discourse. The data for this study were collected from the English-language fiction of the 19th–21st centuries, devoted to the problems of education and upbringing. Attention is paid to performative verbs as the basis of EED. The classifications of Austin, Searle and Apresyan are taken as starting points. The results of the analysis show that performative verbs are typical of the EED, but their activity and frequency vary. The performativity of a verb depends on its position in the sentence. In some positions in the sentence, they may lose their illocutionary power and the ability to carry out an action; in this case, they are used in the phatic function. The analysis shows that the EED has a high degree of performativity, which can be considered a characteristic feature of the discourse under study.

Эвфемизмы и дисфемизмы английского языка на тему физиологии женщины (беременность и роды)

This article aimed to study some common English euphemisms and dysphemisms on female physiology as exemplified by conception, pregnancy and childbirth, to describe the ways of creating such words and expressions, as well as to provide a sociocultural commentary on the euphemistic markers in contemporary English. The research is relevant due to the fact that euphemisms relating to female physiology have been studied rather superficially. Analysis from the viewpoint of rhyming slang represents a new and promising area in the field of euphemisms. The research methods are determined by the purpose and objectives of the study. The key method is descriptive, implemented using systematization, generalization and interpretation of language material. The linguistic methods include contextual analysis and semantic interpretation. The topic of women’s physiology is represented by expressions characterizing conception, contraception, pregnancy and childbirth that were selected from authoritative dictionaries of euphemisms and general and rhyming slang, as well as English-language fiction. The euphemisms were classified thematically (pregnancy as a special condition, pregnancy as an expectancy period, pregnancy with an emphasis on conception, pregnancy as an increase in the size of the belly, pregnancy as a source of trouble, and pregnancy as an accident). Techniques and means for creating euphemisms under study are presented. Rhyming slang, whose major function is euphemistic, is highlighted as a new promising sector of the functioning of euphemisms and dysphemisms referring to female physiology. The main points and conclusions of the article can be used when presenting the problems of euphemisms and dysphemisms in lectures and seminars on the theory of language, lexicology, stylistics, text interpretation, and intercultural communication.

Гиперболизация в современных английских художественных текстах

The aim of the paper is to identify in a systematized manner various means and ways of expressing hyperbolization in the speech of characters in modern English literary texts. The research is novel in that it is the first to systematize a variety of hyperbolic means in English-language fiction that allow achieving a certain emotional impact on the addressee. The paper analyzes the contexts of the use of exaggeration in the speech of 25 characters in the works of modern English writers: India Knight’s “Comfort and Joy” (2010), Sophie Kinsella’s “Finding Audrey” (2015) and “Love Your Life” (2020), and for the first time summarizes hyperbolic ways of expression in the maxims of modern English society. The study examines such hyperbolic means as hyperbole, hyperbolic metaphor, metonymy, irony, antihyperbole, meiosis and litotes. The results of the study showed that the hyperbolic ways contribute to the creation of a colorful image, comic effect, as well as an emotional and manipulative impact on the reader. The analyzed material revealed the existence of lexical, grammatical and stylistic ways of expressing hyperbolization, which are actively used in the speech of modern native speakers.

The ways of representing hidden meanings in English-language fiction discourse

The article attempts to justify the expediency of linguistic research’ direction that reveals the pragmatic qualities and cognitive basis of different types of implicit speech in English-language fiction discourse. Latent meanings in fiction text/discourse have repeatedly been the subject of research. The totality of implicit speech’ types and researched on the means that actualize it is identified. Referring the methods of cognitive linguistics, the pragmatic potential of speech means for the expression of the hidden meaning is illustrated by the prose English-language texts. The aim of this article was to identify the totality of the types of implicit speech and research on the means that actualize it in English-language fiction discourse. In this researching work, we analyzed such speech means of expressing implicit meanings as: a specific use of idioms, i.e., hints, additional nuances of meaning. Observing how innuendo is used can provide some insight into the speaker's goal when he or she chooses that discourse strategy. In conclusion, it is noticed that the hidden meaning, e.g., in the presence of an additional metaphorical transfer, may require a great deal of cognitive effort from the reader. We proved that the hint is characterized by a wealth of implicit potential.

IMPLICIT EXPRESSION OF UNCERTAINTY IN THE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE POSTMODERN FICTION ТEXTS

The article discusses the specificity of implicit representation of uncertainty by means of the English language in the British postmodern literary discourse. The data for analysis was selected from the novels written by I. McEwan, D. Mitchell and D. Lodge. Implicitness is viewed as an inherent feature of language and is a promising object for linguistic analysis, as its mechanisms are unfolded in a new way within the cognitive-discursive paradigm. Within any language, uncertainty is verbalized not only explicitly, but also through a wide range of implicit means. While explicit statements can directly express doubt or lack of certainty, implicit expressions of uncertainty add subtlety and nuance to communication. Uncertainty can be verbalized by various language means in English directly and indirectly. The English language provides a rich array of choices that enable speakers to express uncertainty implicitly. Uncertainty is a key concept of postmodernism, therefore postmodern authors attach great significance to representing it in their texts. Postmodern fiction conveys uncertainty which underlies and shapes the characters’ perception and self-identity via a number of language means and some communicative strategies that are of special interest for our research. The paper analyzes the implicit expression of uncertainty in the British postmodern fiction discourse represented by the novels of I. McEwan, D. Mitchell, D. Lodge. It has been identified that the main language means that the authors opt for are hedging, various means of expressing modality, “vague” expressions, qualifiers, euphemisms, іnterrogative sentences in inner represented speech, filler words, and aposiopesis. The article examines how their usage contributes to the nuanced portrayal of uncertainty in the Englishlanguage fiction, and in what ways the authors combine these means in order to reach their goal – give the readers the impression of the characters’ lack of certainty, hesitation, indeterminacy and doubt. The analysis reveals that these implicit meanings are not directly stated, but are suggested in the wording or can be understood from the context. The writers mostly resort to a combination of various language means that imply the characters’ uncertainty, in order to intensify the implied meanings and to make sure the reader interprets them adequately.

Модальность достоверности как модусная категория коммуникативного уровня (на материале английского языка)

The aim of the study is to clarify the communicative specificity of certainty as a particular modus meaning of the category of modality on the material of the English language. With the development of linguistic thought and the accumulation of theoretical information about modality, the ideas about its categorical belonging have undergone significant changes. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the approach to the modality of certainty as a particular modus meaning within the category of modality on the communicative level. Modality is attributed to different types of categories, such as grammatical or syntactical and semantic or functional-semantic ones, to the conceptual category. During last decades, the idea about necessity of assigning modality to the communicative category has been sounding more and more persistently. In this article, we present the analysis of modern researchers’ views on the communicative category and the modality of certainty. The received results allow considering the modality of certainty within the limits of the modus category of modality of the communicative level. The modality of certainty serves to subjectively qualify a message in terms of assessing the extent to which it corresponds to objective reality in the interests of the speaker. This conclusion was illustrated in the article by examples from English-language fiction texts.

Особенности выражения семантики будущности неличными формами английского глагола

The study aims to establish the fact of the transposition of the temporal meaning of futurality to non-finite verb forms in a certain lexico-grammatical (narrow) context. The paper presents a context-based analysis of a corpus of examples from English-language fiction in which an action expressed by a non-finite verb form possesses the meaning of the future tense. It is found that the transfer of the temporal meaning of futurality to a non-finite form occurs due to the modal connotations of verbs in a finite form combined with these non-finite verb forms. This is confirmed by transformational analysis, namely: the combination of a verb (with modal connotative semantics) with a non-finite verb form is easily transformed into a complex sentence with a future tense finite verb form (instead of a non-finite one). The scientific novelty of the study lies in establishing the fact of the transposition of the meaning of the future tense to a non-finite verb form in the construction ‘V (a verb with a modal meaning) + Ving (a non-finite verb form)’. Therefore, this construction can be considered as one of the ways of expressing the future tense in English. As a result of the study, a minimal lexico-grammatical context that promotes the transposition of the meaning of futurality from a finite verb form to a non-finite one has been established.

Kinauvit? What's Your Name? The Eskimo Disc System and a Daughter's Search for Her Grandmother by Norma Dunning

Reviewed by: Kinauvit? What's Your Name? The Eskimo Disc System and a Daughter's Search for Her Grandmother by Norma Dunning Marcie McCauley NORMA DUNNING Kinauvit? What's Your Name? The Eskimo Disc System and a Daughter's Search for Her Grandmother Madeira Park, British Columbia. Douglas & McIntyre. 2022. 184 pages. COMBINING PERSONAL MEMOIR with cultural history, Kinauvit? reflects Norma Dunning's experience constructing short stories about Inuit people's everyday lives outside their northern homeland. Her collection Tainna: The Unseen Ones—deftly constructed and interwoven—won the 2021's Governor General's [End Page 78] Award for English-Language Fiction in Canada. There, she introduces an auntie "who laughed easy" and said that "residential school was in the past and what mattered was now." When a child, Dunning's real-life Auntie Francis "let the word 'Inuit' loose into the air" and referred to "the convent" attended with Norma's mother. Dunning's MA thesis—reworked into Kinauvit?—filled the "hole of unease" that followed her for the first forty years of her life and awakened her "sense of kinship." Her initial "physical rendering" of her ancestry, her application for the Nunavut beneficiary program, consisted of two lines. She didn't know her mother had a disc/disk number/e-number—didn't even know the classification system existed for thirty years. Inconsistent naming conventions could explain such unfamiliarity; a more nuanced understanding of how the "Eskimo Identification Canada system slid into existence" emerges with Dunning's exploration of family history alongside Inuit/non-Inuit relations. Distinct from First Nations and Métis communities, the Inuit were ruled a federal responsibility by Canada's Supreme Court in 1939. Ongoing global tensions following World War II (1939–45) culminated in the Cold War with a global view of northern territory in Canada being vulnerable to Soviet expansion, and non-Inuit influence—missionaries, whalers, traders, RCMP—expanded further "under the guise of offering social benefits, commerce, and education." The outlawing of drum dancing, the disappearance of women's facial tattooing and the Inuktitut language, and several forced relocations (causing many deaths, acknowledged decades later via the Qikiqtani Truth Commission), all fueled colonization. Dunning's formalizing of her Inuit kinship counters colonization: "When language, ceremony and spiritual connections are being sliced, outlawed, and categorized as sin, the invasiveness of the colonizer cutting into Inuit daily lives is like watching a slow and painful death." She explores the need for tukitaaqtuq (Inuktitut, meaning "they explain to one another, reach understanding, receive an explanation from the past") and reconnects with her ancestry. Her fiction, too, emphasizes connection; in Tainna, for instance, readers meet the titular protagonist of Annie Muktuk and Other Stories (2017) again. Dunning's readers expand their understanding of how the historical experience of the Inuit persists in their present-day lives, how history reverberates in the present. Marcie McCauley Toronto Copyright © 2023 World Literature Today and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma

Lilies that Fester


 
 
 
 This article endeavours to examine Burgess’s mid-career novel, The Clockwork Testament, to establish whether the third instalment of the “Enderby Quartet” can, or indeed should, be reclassified as a piece of academic fiction. What is at stake here is not only a matter of generic taxonomy but also the question of how such a possible reclassification could impact our understanding of Burgess’s thematic and stylistic preoccupations and how, in a broader sense, this particular novel of his fits into an important segment of twentieth-century English-language fiction highlighted by the names of Kingsley Amis, David Lodge, or Philip Roth. Informed by theoretical insights gained from the works of Michel Foucault, Elaine Showalter, and others, this piece could also make a notable contribution to what is known as the poetics of place on the one hand and our knowledge concerning the writer-environment nexus on the other. Taking a close look at the biographical and historical context in which The Clockwork Testament was written is meant to suggest the ethnic, cultural, and sociological tensions that beset the refurbishing of higher education in America at the time. All in all, the authors offer their answer to the question whether The Clockwork Testament is a campus novel in any meaningful sense of the word and, if so, what that tells us about Burgess and his fictional excursion into academia.
 
 
 

The Fictional Ivan: Ivan the Terrible in English-Language Fiction

The Fictional Ivan: Ivan the Terrible in English-Language Fiction

AN EXPLORATION OF DISCOURSE STYLES IN PAKISTANI ENGLISH FICTIONS

The current study explores emergent discourse styles in English-language Pakistani fiction using multiple levels of analysis. The modern discourse styles in Pakistani English-language fiction have been explored using the "Corpus Stylistics" methodology and computational tools. In the past, the quantitative research on Pakistani fiction in English as a whole has hardly ever examined the entire collection of fundamental language elements. The current study is ground-breaking in that it has assembled a sizable corpus of Pakistani fiction in English for a specific goal based on a sizable collection of novels and short tales. Applying statistical factor analysis, the whole collection of essential lexico-grammatical elements presents in fictionized writing in Pakistan has been taken into consideration. The current research introduces innovative discourse styles and labels them as: "Expression of Thought vs. Descriptive Discourse Production," "Context-oriented Discourse," "Concrete Action Discourse vs. Abstract Exposition," and "Narrative vs. Dialogic Discourse." it does this by marking information from the large substantial corpus of English-language Pakistani fiction. Keywords: English and fiction, English language, literacy Pakistan, education system.

PECULIARITIES OF TRANSLATION OF IRISH LINGUISTIC REALITIES INTO UKRAINIAN

The article examines the peculiarities of the translation of Irish linguistic realities into Ukrainian based on the analysis of English-language fiction, because this is one of the areas of linguistics that is developing very actively. It is emphasized that the transmission of extra-linguistic reality by words-realities is one of the most difficult problems in the theory and practice of translation, which includes not only the translation aspect, but also country studies, intercultural communication, etc. It is noted that culturally marked lexemes are used to indicate the color of a particular nation, represent certain aspects of its mentality. Such words/phrases mostly have no counterparts in other languages and require special attention and meticulousness in rendering them in the target language. A popular method used to interpret and systematize theoretical material is the method of analysis and synthesis. The problems of adequate translation of the Irish nationally marked vocabulary in the Ukrainian reproduction are also clarified, and the typology of Irish realities during translation is characterized. The research of Irish realities, the results of which are briefly presented in this article, was conducted on the materials of historical monuments of the Irish people (sagas, rocks) and the novel of the Irish writer Donal Ryan “The Spinning Heart”. The translation analysis proved that the translation of realities can be done with the help of various translation methods, but the most used are transcription and transliteration, tracing and semi-tracing, descriptive method with interpretation, clarification, semantic Ukrainian counterpart. Among the peculiarities of the transfer of Irish realities into the Ukrainian language, attention should also be paid to sociolinguistic and cultural aspects. The linguistic and cultural dimension involves working with two important parts of this issue: linguistic and cultural. Keywords: reality; classification of culturally marked units; Irish realities; methods of translating Irish realities; Fiction.

Английская разговорная лексика в романе Дж. Боуэна «Уличный кот по имени Боб»

The aim of the study is to identify the features of English colloquial vocabulary in the novel “A Street Cat Named Bob” by J. Bowen in terms of its composition, semantics and functioning in the text. The paper examines the English-language vocabulary and phraseology of the colloquial style in the novel, which is characterised from the viewpoint of its semantics and classified by its attribution to thematic groups, determines the scope of use of the analysed units in the text. In addition, the paper identifies the role of the units under consideration in the novel, their connection with the themes of the work, the author’s idea, character description. Scientific originality of the study lies in analysing the use of colloquial style vocabulary in modern English-language fiction, in identifying the links between the thematic organisation of the units under consideration, their emotional and evaluative potential and functions in the text. As a result, it has been shown that the frequency of English colloquial lexical units in the text of the work and their thematic attribution are accounted for by the stylistic features of the novel, its plot, as well as the purposes of characterisation of the protagonist and the most realistic description of his environment.

Writing by women or for women? Either way, You're less likely to be reviewed

Scholars have consistently found that female artists receive less attention from critics than their male counterparts. In this study, we conduct a closer examination of the mechanisms driving this persistent form of inequality. Drawing on a uniquely comprehensive dataset of all English-language fiction books published in a calendar year, we find that women authors face two significant—and distinctive—gender penalties. First, we find that books classified as belonging to feminized literary subgenres are least likely to be reviewed by mainstream critical outlets. This gendered genre-based exclusion is the first way in which women authors are penalized, since the majority of writers writing in these categories are women. Second, we find that even when women writers publish books in androcentric subgenres or gender-neutral categories of literary fiction, their books are still less likely to be selected for review compared to those written by their male counterparts. This is a form of gendered artist-based exclusion. These empirical findings exhort scholars of the arts to move beyond documenting gender inequalities in review coverage to uncovering the multiple ways that gender impresses itself on the review process as an attribute of both artists and genres.

The Presence of Selected Russian Fictional Characters in English Detective Fiction: A Brief Overview

ABSTRACT The article deals with the stereotypical portrayal of certain Russian fictional characters in English literature from the mid-nineteenth century up to post-1991 fiction. An attempt is made to highlight particular popular tropes that recur in the characterisation of Russians or associated caricatures. Passing reference is made to other literary traditions in Western Europe, in order to establish peculiarities extant in English language cultural traditions as distinct from other contemporaneous European cultures. It is argued that during this period Russian fictional characters were mainly to be found in detective fiction, and that these would have had a more significant cultural impact, primarily due to the popularity of those authors at the time. The most representative authors in this genre – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Dame Agatha Christie – both write Russian characters into their work. Their depictions were influential due to their broad readership, and drew, it is argued, from cultural stereotypes popular in their day. The repetition and re-depiction of familiar characters in crime fiction bring about tropes that are drawn on in the production of theatre and film. A selection of these tropes is apparent in nearly all significant works of English language fiction. Many of them are perceived as negative, while few, if any, are on the positive side. Cultural peculiarities are exploited as plot devices. One enduring feature of the works analysed here, is the phenomenon of ‘fake’ Russians. The implications of the stereotypes depicted here go far beyond detective fiction.

“Whom the Gods Wish to Destroy”

Abstract This paper examines narrative representations of authors and authorship in English-language fiction from the 1890s to the 1920s. From Henry James onwards, such narratives revise the basic, and by that time exhausted, plot elements of the novel of literary apprenticeship as featured in Dickens’s David Copperfield and Thackeray’s Pendennis, among many others. Instead of focusing on ideas of development and professional formation, they depict authors subdued by a sense of shrinking opportunities and lack of movement. Aging or dying authors in James and Mann, young but soon disappointed authors in Joyce, Forster, or Green: wherever we look, we find an ambivalence of promise that often ends in stagnation, failure, even death. In this context, my paper presents a close reading of three less frequently discussed modernist variations on the literary bildungsroman: Arthur Machen’s The Hill of Dreams (1897/1907), E.M. Forster’s The Longest Journey (1907), and Henry Green’s Blindness (1926).

Способы языковой репрезентации оценки произведения живописи на материале английских литературных произведений

The paper aims to identify linguistic means used to evaluate pictorial work in the English-language fiction discourse. The article reveals the specificity of visual image representation in a literary text, considers the process of artistic image verbalization. Scientific originality of the study is conditioned by the fact that evaluation is considered as a triadic predicate with three arguments. Linguistic means of their realization are singled out. Relying on an analysis of factual material, the author identifies linguistic means to express evaluation in the English-language fiction discourse. The findings indicate that evaluation subject is represented in a unified way, whereas the second and third argument is realized in different ways. The following conclusions are justified: evaluation presupposes the use of certain linguistic means required to describe communicative-pragmatic situation in a literary text.

Holophrastic Constructions in English and French Fiction

Holophrasis is an occasional type of lexical and syntactic method of word formation in which a syntactic unit is transformed into a lexical one. Holophrastic constructions (HCs) are a productive method of occasional word formation in English and French writing. HCs are typically used to enhance expressiveness, conciseness, and accuracy in writing. In this study, we examined HCs in the language of modern English and French writers in terms of their syntactic structure, semantics, graphical representation, and functions. To achieve this goal, methods of induction and deduction, word-forming analysis and linguistic definition have been used. Holophrastic constructions, collected by a continuous sample of works of French and English-language fiction, have become the research material. We found that the HCs in our texts consisted of between two and twenty-six components, suggesting a high ceiling on the number of units that can be combined to make a HC. While most of the HCs in the texts were semantically transparent, there were several semantically opaque examples that required additional cultural and intertextual knowledge to decode. The HCs in both English and French were represented visually in several ways: hyphens, italics, capitalisation, and the combination of these methods. The article has presented nominative and attributive HCs with different stylistic loads. Nominative HCs refer to certain concepts and phenomena of reality, giving them greater expressiveness and originality. Attributive HCs are formed to express the quality of an object using lexical, semantic and morphological means. HCs in our texts served various functions: nominative, descriptive, pragmatic, and as a way to compress content. The cоnteхt of hоlоphrаstic construction use is usually limited by the sentence in which it is used. The emphatic nature, vivid expressiveness, self-contextualisation and ability to conserve linguistic efforts are distinguishing features of HCs.

The Evolutionary Pattern of Language in English Fiction Over the Last Two Centuries: Insights From Linguistic Concreteness and Imageability

Fiction has come to play an essential part in human culture and life in recent centuries. Because of its importance, the language or discourse of fiction has been widely studied. Discerning the evolutionary pattern of language in fiction is greatly helpful in understanding the changes in human culture and society. However, most previous studies on literary language that made use of quantitative or computational methods restricted themselves to a few authors or groups and only took into account a relative short span of time. Furthermore, most of the quantitative analysis therein was based on a primary and rather primitive algorithm that summarizes the frequencies of linguistic units in corpora. To overcome these limitations, this study uses semantic similarity as computed by semi-supervised methods to examine diachronic changes. In this study, the three large-scale corpora representing the English language and English fiction were used to investigate the evolutionary patterns concerning diachronic concreteness/imageability. The data from the two measures are well mapped and shown to support the argument that English fiction, as a special genre, exhibits an evolutionary tendency toward increasing concreteness/imageability. This indicates that modern fiction may have become increasingly important in human society, but easier to read and process in words than 19th century English fiction. This study proposed that learnability, genre difference, the changes of population size, and the other factors might have caused the systemic change. The current study is thus an important contribution to understanding the evolutionary trend of language in fiction as well as understanding the development of the English language as a whole. This study creates a novel quantitative methodology and applies this to the examination of diachronic changes of language in literary works.