Pragmatic Features Research Articles

Репрезентация внешности мужчины номинацией «дядя» в современном русском языке

The aim of the study is to identify the semantic and pragmatic features of the representation of a man’s appearance by the naming unit дядя ‘uncle’ in modern Russian. The scientific novelty of the paper consists in an attempt to present the features of implementation of the lexico-semantic variant ‘an unrelated male with certain physical characteristics’ of the word ‘uncle’ to create a complete lexicographic portrait of the word дядя based on a systemic integral approach involving the language material of the Russian National Corpus. As a result, it has been found that the specified lexico-semantic variant of the word дядя shows a low frequency in modern Russian, it was most actively used in the 1930s. In the composition of the considered lexico-semantic variant, there are three semes: ‘height’, ‘physique’ and ‘strength’, this variant in most cases is realised with the help of their combinations, the most frequent one being ‘height’ + ‘physique’. Dictionary data is not always supported by language material: the attribute сильный ‘strong’ proposed by most dictionaries shows a low frequency in the language material. The implementation of the lexico-semantic variant under consideration always occurs explicitly with the help of lexical, stylistic, grammatical (morphological (affixation) and syntactic (parcelling)) and punctuation (commas between the attributes that the author considers homogeneous) means.

The Interplay of Contextual Variables and Language Proficiency in Request Realization

The significance of producing socially appropriate utterances, not just linguistically correct ones, has given rise to a plethora of studies on speech acts. In this regard, the performance of second and foreign language learners against the norms of the target language and the factors affecting them have yet to be thoroughly investigated. To contribute to this ongoing research, this study aimed to elicit pragmatic requestive features of Iranian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners with respect to (a) request directness, (b) request perspective, (c) internal modification, and (d) external modification in eight social situations. This study also examined whether language proficiency and two contextual factors of social power and social distance affect Iranian EFL learners’ requests in English. Participants were a total of 60 university students or graduates who had taken TOEFL in the past 2 years and were thus categorized into low and high proficiency levels. A Written Discourse Completion Test (WDCT) was employed to elicit requests. To achieve the objectives of this study, both descriptive statistics and two-way ANOVA were employed. The results showed a significant main effect for contextual factors; participants’ choice of requestive features was affected by the two social factors of power and distance. Proficiency, however, did not have a significant effect on the pragmatic performance of participants. The findings of this study showed pragmatic development of participants on the one hand and some evidence of their underdeveloped pragmatic performance on the other hand, which makes explicit instruction a necessity.

The Term "Regulatory Guillotine" in the Legal Discourse

The article studies the peculiarities of coining a new term "regulatory guillotine" in the modern Russian language. It describes the semantic, syntagmatic and pragmatic features of this term. It has been established that at the initial stage of its entry into the legal discourse, the term "regulatory guillotine" is characterized by high variation. Here are revealed its semantic, grammatical and graphic variants. Based on comparative analysis of various definitions of the term "regulatory guillotine", as well as on its syntagmatics in legal discourse, the author concludes it necessary to amend the definition of this term. A new term can be prospectively developed in close connection with the field knowledge and traditional use of the Russian language in texts of official communication. When describing the syntagmatics of the term in the academic legal discourse, the author points out a violation of the norms of lexical compatibility of the modern Russian literary language. The syntagmatics of the term "regulatory guillotine" in the Russian legal discourse reflects at the linguistic level the peculiarities of the correlation of the general and special consciousness of lawyers. It is also established that in the processes of functioning of the term "regulatory guillotine", quotation marks convey a complex mix of different kinds of information. The use of the term "regulatory guillotine" in the legal text with quotation marks and without quotation marks expresses a certain pragmatic meaning of the attitude of the subject of speech to the linguistic sign. Quotation marks implement both figurative and metalinguistic functions, and are also a means of adapting a metaphor-term to legal discourse.

Exploring Politeness: Analyzing the Arabic Translation In Jane Austen's Sense And Sensibility

Research shows that the concept of politeness is inherently intricate. The current paper examines the role of politeness in translation and highlights its significance as a chief aspect for translators. It focuses on the relationship between pragmatics and translation. The study analyzes the Arabic translation of selected chapters from Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, which takes place during the Victorian era and employs various linguistic elements that depict many aspects of politeness. The analysis discusses honorific titles and politeness expressions in both the source English text and its Arabic translation. Following a qualitative approach, Roger T. Bell's discourse parameters are implemented as the analytical framework. Through this examination, the paper highlights the relationship between translation and pragmatics while enhancing our understanding of cross-cultural linguistic differences. The results show that neglecting pragmatic features in translation (i.e., politeness) often due to specific factors can result in incomplete or poor translations, potentially altering the formality of the text unintentionally.

Early code-switches in young Russian bilingual siblings

The number of bilinguals and multilinguals of all age groups, including the youngest ones, constantly grows in many countries of the world, which explains the topicality of the study. While researchers explore various aspects of bilingual development, linguists concentrate their efforts on the analysis of bilingual speech, including code-switches. The author deals with Russian-English code-switches in the utterances of two siblings at the earliest stages of their bilingual development - before they were 36 months old. The children had acquired two languages since their first month in a monoethnic Russian family, their first language being Russian and their second (non-native) language being English. The aim of the study is to reveal specific structural, semantic, and pragmatic characteristics of mixed utterances observed in early code-switches of the siblings. The author argues that children’s code-switches at the earliest stages within one family reflect specific features of the communicative situations where children have to cope with the choice between the two languages spoken by their adult interlocutors. It is shown that the application of the Matrix Language Frame Model to the analysis of early childhood bilingual speech is possible, but has several restrictions and limitations related to incomplete and imperfect acquisition of both grammars. The originality of the research is not only in the use of specific data (the earliest stage of bilingual speech observed in simultaneous Russian-English dual-language development), but also in the employment of the Matrix Language Frame Model to study them. This work can contribute to the research of typical features of emerging code-switches in developmental perspective.

Chinese terms of address in apology and request

The aim of the present study is to explore how Chinese terms of address are conventionally used in the speech acts of apology and request from a contrastive pragmatic angle. The study fills an important knowledge gap, considering that little attention has been paid to the use of address terms in the performance of speech acts. The research presented has the following bipartite structure. First, a multiple-choice Discourse Completion Tests (DCT) was administered to a group of young learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFLLs) and a comparable group of Chinese native speakers (NSs). The DCT results reveal that Chinese NSs use address terms significantly more frequently in realising apologies and requests compared to the Hungarian CFLLs. Following the DCT, an online survey was conducted with Chinese linguacultural insiders on the use of address terms in apologies and requests. The findings from the online survey affirm that Chinese address terms serve pragmatic functions beyond mere attention-getters in the performance of speech acts. These findings not only identify the use of address terms as a prominent pragmatic feature in the speech acts performance in Chinese, but also hold strong implications for CFL education in fostering learners’ pragmatic competence.

РОЛЬ ТРЕТЬЕГО ЛИЦА В ХУДОЖЕСТВЕННОМ ТЕКСТЕ: ПРАГМАЛИНГВИСТИЧЕСКИЙ АСПЕКТ

It was considered communicative features of the third person in the speech situation with three participants of the literary text in this article. It was characterized integral and differential speech of communicators.The author conducted a communicative and comparative analysis of the second and third persons, analyzed speech clichés characteristic of the third participant and some of their features. It was made an accent to research the role status of the third person, to distinguish and determine the pragmatic features of the types of speech situations with three participants; describing the role status of the third person according to the degree of participation in the communication process.

Pragmatic Features of English Ecological Advertisement

This article is devoted to the study of English ecological advertisement within the cognitive and discursive paradigm. The relevance of the study is due to the close attention of the whole world to environmental problems and the search for their solutions through the formation of the ecological consciousness of the population. One of the ways to influence the behavior of society is social advertising. The purpose of the article is to identify ways to implement the pragmatic setting of the English ecological advertisement texts. The article was carried out within the framework of an interdisciplinary approach using the methods of discursive, contextual and semantic analysis, elements of interpretation. The material of the study is the English texts of banner and video advertisements posted on the Internet on the sites “Greenpeace”, “World Wide Fund for Nature” in the amount of 202 examples. The authors of the article believe that the main strategies implemented in English ecological advertisement are the strategy of managing the criticality of perception and the frustration strategy. The cognitive and discursive model of ecological advertisement will include obligatory participants, i.e. the subject (on whose behalf the material is presented), the subject (explicated along with the person through the personification of the animal and the object), the object (the current problematic environmental topics) and the predicate. The type of informing as an optional member of the cognitive and discursive model in ecological advertisement allows you to convey to the addressee information about the current environmental situation, a message about an interesting fact, environmental forecasting. According to the authors, the characteristic linguistic means presented in environmental advertising are wordplay, rhyme, symbolism of color terms, and allusions. These tools, combined with audiovisual effects, make ecological advertisement memorable and have the right impact on the addressee.

The Influence of Firms’ Pragmatic Legitimacy on Investors’ Perceptions of Their Environmental Protection Activities

This study demonstrates the mechanisms by which the pragmatic characteristics of legitimacy influence the promotion of corporate social responsibility activities, focusing on firms and investors. We hypothesize that the more aggressive a firm is in its environmental protection efforts, the higher the reduction in investment risk from its environmental performance. Multiple regression analysis was performed for Japanese chemical-related industries from 2017 to 2019. The results revealed that firms that balance environmental performance with business profits should invest in environmental protection activities and improve their environmental performance without touting profitability. The findings reveal the need to incorporate a profitability perspective when considering the relationship between environmental protection activities and investor perceptions.

Rhetorical Moves, Intensification, and Mitigation in Motivation Letters for Acceptance into Graduate Schools in México

The motivation letter is a promotional genre often requested for acceptance into post-graduate programs in Mexico. Even though universities and research centers provide some guidelines for its preparation, there is not a clear description of this genre's textual structure or of its pragmatic features. Given this situation, we developed a qualitative research study which aimed to describe the rhetorical movements and the use of intensification and attenuation mechanisms deployed by applicants to two post-graduate programs of two universities in Mexico in 30 motivation letters written in Spanish language. For the analysis, we used the ATLAS.ti 9 software. Findings show that four rhetorical movements characterize this genre, namely, (a) to explicitly state the reasons for applying, (b) to present the applicant's objectives, (c) to persuade the reader, and (d), to express future expectations. Meanwhile, intensification appears to be more common than attenuation, suggesting that the applicants strive to build a valuable self-image for the selection committee while keeping some degree of modesty, given the asymmetry in the reviewer-applicant relationship. This study highlights the importance of integrating this genre and its discursive features in the teaching of academic writing at universities, acknowledging the discursive characteristics of each disciplinary community.

Semantic and pragmatic potential of Turkmen and Russian personal names

This article is devoted to identifying the pragmatic and semantic features of personal names in the Russian and Turkmen languages. In the article personal names are considered in the linguocultural and linguocognitive directions which determines the relevance of the pragmatic-semantic study of personal names. A comparative examination of the analyzed Turkmen and Russian personal names allows us to identify their common and distinctive characteristics and clarify the system of value priorities of different linguistic communities. The study showed that each person is endowed with a name that reveals in the language and in the process of communication their own semantic aura as a set of semantic components that constitutes its associative-figurative basis. In the course of a comparative analysis of Turkmen and Russian personal names associative-figurative complexes were established that underlie the semantics of personal names in Russian and Turkmen languages. Also, a comparison of Russian and Turkmen personal names showed differences in the evaluative halo. The pragmatic potential of personal names is revealed in the fact that they show (at an unconscious level) the attitude of the speaker to the addressee. In the Russian language people are positively evaluated whose names, for example, Daniel, Ilya, Lev and etc., negatively — Kirill, Olga, Svetlana etc. As for the ratio of positive and negative connotated personal names in Russian out of 260 names 39 % positively assessed and 61 % negatively. In Turkmen out of 300 names, 93 % positively assessed and 7 % negatively. In the Turkmen language, as a rule, personal names were positively evaluated which is due to the fact that the names encoded a prediction, a wish for the future. For example, Mekan — wealth, Batyr — courageous, Mahriban — tender, etc. Accordingly, personal names acquire the assessment that is given to people. Names also convey culturally significant information in a given linguistic culture. In Russian linguoculture the female name Ekaterina are associated with Empress Catherine the Great or the male name Peter with Peter I. In Turkmen linguoculture, Muhammed is associated with the prophet, Mahtymguly with the poet, Atabeg with the teachers of the children of the rulers. In Turkmen linguistic culture names can be associated with plants which is not typical for Russian. In Russian linguistic culture associations with the characters of songs, literary works, poems are specific.

Своеобразие имен собственных в киноистории Уэса Андерсона «Отель “Гранд Будапешт”»

The article analyzes proper names in Wes Anderson’s film “The Grand Budapest Hotel”. It examines structural, semantic and pragmatic characteristics of the film proper names. The results of the research show that fictional characters’ names perform different functions, namely, characterizing, stylistic, expressive, referential. Etymological meaning of a personal name is an important source of information about characters. Geographical names are all fictional but they are formed according to word-building patterns of different languages. Names of hotels take a special place in the film onomastic system. Other names of objects allude to some real historical phenomenon. Proper names play a significant role in building, representing, and understanding the fictional world depicted in the film created by Wes Anderson.

Multinational People of Russian Federation (Russian Nation): Discursive Representation of a Political Subject

On the basis of the ‘Strategy of State National Policy of the Russian Federation for the period until 2025’, this study examines the semantic and pragmatic features of representing the subject defined by the formula ‘multinational people of the Russian Federation (Russian nation)’, which serves as an actual instrument for expressing state ideology. The relevant attributes of the subject are reconstructed. It is established that the formula realizes the semantics of unity (integrity) at the legal, socio-cultural, and subjective levels. Unity is represented as the assumed state of the subject, acquired through the transformation of its normative, epistemic, and ethical orientations. Regular collocations representing situations causing the relevant attributes of the subject are identified and analyzed, with their implementation being the subject’s normative obligation. The axiological status of the formula is determined as a ‘normative judgment’, expressed through contrast with aberrations identified by lexemes that actualize the semantics of violating unity in political-legal texts. The ideological nature of the formula is demonstrated as a norm of ethical and epistemic nature, implying the subject’s internal non-utilitarian motivation based on its evaluation of unity (integrity) as an ideal and unconditionally true state.

Сопоставительный анализ русскоязычных и франкоязычных рекламных слоганов в контексте их коммуникативно-прагматических особенностей

The study aims to identify and compare the communicative and pragmatic features of Russian-language and French-language advertising slogans in the context of their semantic-stylistic and linguocultural specifics. The paper examines the semantic-stylistic features of advertising slogans in Russian and French in the framework of comparative analysis, reveals the relationship between the semantic content, the choice of stylistic models of the representation of slogans and their linguocultural propositions. The study is novel in that it is the first to analyse the communicative and pragmatic features of Russian-language and French-language advertising slogans in the context of considering their semantic-stylistic and linguocultural specifics. As a result, it was proved that advertising slogans are characterised by both universal communicative and pragmatic strategies (attraction, persuasion and suggestion, etc.) and differential features (in particular, the strategy of “soft” influence on the audience is peculiar to French-language slogans, while the strategy of “active” influence is peculiar to Russian-language ones).

Paremia with the word for the designation of natural phenomena in the terms of the naive picture of the ukrainian people's world.

The national spiritual treasures of the people include the language, which reflects its outlook, psychics, lifestyle, traditions, culture, rituals and beliefs - all that reproduces the soul of the people and determines the national mentality. The language finds verbal means of characterizing the most diverse phenomena of life, bright in content and form in paremias. Proverbs and sayings are the generalized memory of the people and the result of their observations of life and natural phenomena, which enables the younger generation to formulate views on ethics, morality, history and politics. The topicality of scientific research is determined by the need to study the linguistic specificity of paremiological units in the aspect of the textual organization of this genre as part of the spiritual culture of the Ukrainian nation, which preserves the memory of the people and observations of life and natural phenomena. The purpose of our article is to analyze the linguistic features of paremias with the reference word for nature, in particular, their semantic organization and thematic groups. The following methods and techniques of linguistic analysis are used in the article: system-functional analysis, component method, contextual-interpretive method, method of stylistic analysis. The scientific novelty of the research consists in deepening the knowledge about paremias, in the analysis of the semantic nature of proverbs and sayings, taking into account the means of artistic expression. Conclusions. The analyzed material proves that in the minds of our ancestors, each primary element corresponded to a certain element: water was associated with space, fire with soul, earth with time, air with wisdom. According to the semantics, we distinguished three groups of paremias with a reference word for the designation of nature: observation of nature; paremias with generalizing meaning; didactic paremias. However, paremias with a reference word for nature have different degrees of generalization. It has been studied that proverbs about the seasons are often used in their literal meaning, without subtext or excessive artistic imagery, but there are some that have several meanings. We see the perspective of further research in the analysis of communicative and pragmatic features of Ukrainian paremias.

COMMUNICATIVE AND PRAGMATIC FEATURES OF THE TEXTS GERMAN LANGUAGE ANNOUNCEMENTS ON THE SEARCH OF A PARTNER

The article is devoted to the analysis of communicative and pragmatic features of German advertisements about finding a partner, the language of which is characterized by certain changes in lexical content. Lexical units for the material were selected from advertisements on dating sites or newspaper sections for dating with age categories: 25-40 years and 60 or more years. The concise presentation of information and the desire to present yourself positively led to changes in the selection of lexical tools. In order to achieve his goal, the author is forced to customize the text to the target audience, taking into account the cultural and gender characteristics of the present. The language and its functioning in such advertisements has changed its meaning and lexical content, in particular, the use of evaluative lexical means, as well as the frequent use of abbreviations with an emphasis on general characteristics, rather than individual ones. Changes in the attitude of the younger age group towards the approach to writing have led to changes in the tactics of selecting lexical units and their implementation in order to achieve a communicative goal. As a conclusion, there is a tendency to simplify the structure, lexical content, speech formation. The research is interdisciplinary in nature and contributes to the formation of an idea of the development of language in virtual discourse and its changes caused by modern society and factors influencing it.

English terminology of aircraft engines: lexical-semantic, structural-grammatical and pragmatic features.

This article is devoted to the analysis of the English terminology of aircraft engines. The subject of the study is the structural-semantic and pragmatic features of the terms. Accordingly, the purpose of the article is to analyze terminology in semantic, syntagmatic and pragmatic aspects. The tasks can be formulated as follows: 1. Determine the structure of terminological units, find out from which components it is formed. 2. To identify how synonymy and ambiguity are inherent in terminology. 3. Identify the pragmatic component based on the structural components of the terms. The relevance of the study is due to the growing public interest in the aviation industry. The work was carried out using statistical methods, as well as methods of analysis and synthesis. The novelty of the research lies in the attempt to use a comprehensive (three aspects) approach to the study of a highly specialized group of terminological vocabulary. During the analysis, it was found that the terminology describing aircraft engines (types and design) is represented by multicomponent (mainly three- and four-component) terminological phrases. A number of syntactic models participate in their formation, each of which is one or another variant of the combination of adjectives, nouns and numerals. Adjectives, nouns and numerals should be recognized as carriers of terminological information that has pragmatic significance. This significance lies in the fact that information, being correctly orienting, guides specialists in their professional activities and promotes effective communication.

Task Design Features and Pragmatics Learning: A Systematic Review of Recent Research

The learning effects of task-based interaction is an emerging topic in the field of instructed pragmatics for ESL learners. Specifically, researchers are exploring the impact of different task features on pragmatics learning. This article reports a review of the extant research. First, the review aimed to identify specific task design and implementation characteristics that appeared to enhance learners’ use of pragmatic features during task performance. Inter alia, the review indicated greater benefits from tasks which learners completed collaboratively versus individually and tasks which presented learners with relatively complex versus relatively simple cognitive demands. Secondly, the review aimed to assess evidence of learning across this body of research. The review could not establish whether the enhanced pragmatic language use observed during task performance equated with long-term learning as very few studies included delayed post-tests, an obvious lacuna in the body of research to date.

IDEAS OF COSMISM AND PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION: DIALOGUE AND TRANSVERSALITY

The article is devoted to the study of the ideological, methodological and value dialogue between the ideas of Russian cosmism and the concepts of modern domestic education. The authors carried out a study of the semantic constants of domestic education; the analysis of their holistic combination makes it possible to understand the architectonics of education in its specificity and development. The main attention is paid to the concepts of understanding, the correlation of natural and social patterns; the concept of transpedagogy, which has already received recognition in critical literature, is introduced into the scientific context. The formation of the ideas of the philosophy of education is corrected with the development of the history of philosophy - a dialogue appears as an interaction of theoretical constructions and projected practical programmes of education and upbringing. The consideration of the ideas of cosmism in their conceptual correlation with the philosophy of education involves the substantiation of a holistic view of the socialisation processes. Determination of semantic and pragmatic characteristics of transpedagogy, which can help to understand the heterogeneous processes of socialisation and education in a systemic integrity, makes it possible to understand the architectonics and effectiveness of domestic education in the post-global world.

Cognitive and pragmatic features of Anglicisms in Kazakh media text

Abstract The use of English words has become a fashionable trend, something that is reflected in journalistic texts and adversely affects the language of Kazakhstan. This study is aimed at investigating the linguistic and cognitive-pragmatic aspects of Anglicisms in media language and media texts in Kazakhstan. The leading methods of investigating this issue are the literary method, the method of cognitive linguistics, methods of classification, induction, deduction, generalisation, and comparison of cultural, socio-psychological and philological approaches, which will help to identify the influence and function of Anglicisms in Kazakhstan. The authors of this study have performed a detailed analysis of the literature and the content, clarifying the characteristics and features of this phenomenon. The study generalises the main inherent features of borrowings in the Kazakh language, describes the functions of borrowings in media texts, demonstrates certain aspects of the communicative potential of Anglicisms, considers the specific features of the influence of these words and phrases on the development of linguistic personality, describes the topics and situations of the use of English borrowings in the media of Kazakhstan, diagnoses the number of these words in media texts, and demonstrates the prospects for the development of this vocabulary in the media resources of Kazakhstan.