microsoft word 6.book reviews 175 177 book reviews armenian folia anglistika 175 a valuable publication seda gasparyan yerevan state university much more than metaphor master tropes of artistic language and imagination elzbieta chrzanowska-kluczewska frankfurt am main: peter lang, 2013, 196 pp. prof. dr. hab. elzbieta chrzanowska-kluczewska’s new book much more than metaphor: master tropes of artistic language and imagination is a significant contribution to the development of the all-important sphere of literary studies at large and the study of artistic language in particular. as a result of the author’s long-standing investigative experience in the field, the book demonstrates the wide scope of not only her scholarly interests but also her expert knowledge of the questions discussed. the indubitable success of the author’s logically consistent and circumstantial investigation consists in the fact that she does not confine her research to the study of “the gist of tropology” only (which is itself an enormously intricate domain of philosophical, literary, linguistic, etc. studies), but also tries to survey the behavior of the most important tropological figures in discourse viewing them as vivid means of imaginative reverberation of the objective reality and “exemplars of our imaginative conceptualization” of it. as outlined in the introduction, in the vast field of research on poetic language the author positions herself “with our founding fathers” – aristotle and quintilian, then travels through renaissance europe to our contemporary world. her observations throughout this long travel show, and this is of especial importance, that contemporary investigations, however novel they might be, are very often firmly rooted in the rhetorical tradition of ancient theories and approaches. put in poetically “metaphor is the heart of any language,” and it is not a mere chance that numerous studies have been and are still being devoted to the investigation of this multidimensional trope, but what distinguishes this particular study is that it focuses much on the interdisciplinary nature of figuration in general and metaphorization in particular. proceeding from r. w. emerson’s fundamental idea that “thought is prior to the form” the author believes in the priority of the conceptual realization of tropological figures in mind and only after that their expression in language. metaphor and the other major figures of speech are not only meant to decorate speech, make it more vivid and elevated, but also introduce completely fresh ideas into the utterance and enhance the reader’s perception of the surrounding world. armenian folia anglistika book reviews 176 the book consists of four chapters. chapter i of the volume (from microtropes, through macrotropes, to megaand metatropes of artistic language and conceptualization) presents the author’s definition of tropes as “a class within the broad family of figures” (p. 19), “involving changes and transfers of meaning” between lexemes and lexical sequences (p. 21). the discussion of the notions of figure and trope as described by aristotle, quintilian, auerbach, valery, burke, rosiek, riddel, cohen, white serves as a firm and reliable ground for the author’s detailed and scrupulous investigation of “big” and “small” functional varieties of tropes (microtropes, macrotropes, megatropes) and the subgroup of large figures (metatropes in the author’s terms). accepting the traditionally established idea of tropes as based on transferred meaning and actualized not only in words, but also phrases, sentences and texts, the author studies metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and irony as models of excellence among tropes, defines them as master tropes (in k. burke’s terms) and makes a successful attempt to bring out their metatextual potential in discourse. in chapter 2 (the vichian tropological tetrad and its contemporary variants) the author’s choice and scrupulous survey of the four powerful tools of creativity mentioned above, actually from the list of tropes elaborated by quintilian, is utterly justified, for they are, indeed, master tropes that gained prominence already in antiquity and continue stirring the interest and enthusiasm of researchers up to this day. in this part of the book by prof. hab. chrzanowska-kluczewska these tropes are analysed from the point of view of giambattista vico’s interpretations which have played an indispensable role in the development of the theory of tropological devices. it is from the statements and principles elaborated by g.vico, as well as s.t. coleridge that a.a. richards proceeds when he associates the functioning of language in the society with metaphor and persistently develops the idea that metaphoricity of language derives from the metaphoricity of thought. thus, echoing back to the aristotelian estimation of the device, the author proposes that metaphor is given the place of pride among other major tropes, and her proposition sounds quite convincing as it is through metaphor that the infinite possibilities of imagination are revealed. moreover, the power of the author’s investigative mind and her insight into poetic language stimulate her conviction of going beyond the vichian tetrad and adding other tropes to it. she emphasizes the idea that they are endowed with “a generality of patterning that makes them fit candidates for tropological universals” (p. 87). the chapter is rich in background theoretical considerations and vivid illustrations. chapter 3 (beyond the vichian circle) touches upon the issues of the usage of the tetrad in other fields of study, such as different areas of human conceptualization, mental activity and expression (p. 89). particularly, sigmund freud’s language of dreams related to the vichian master tropes, lacan’s figures of the unconscious and levi-strauss’ tropes of the “savage” mind are considered. among extended master book reviews armenian folia anglistika 177 tropes simile-comparison, antitheses, catachresis, euphemia (understatement), suppression, hyperbole (exaggeration) are thoroughly studied and illustrated. one of the important ideas emphasized in the book is the question of an additional quality of tropes, namely their ludic function that, as the author believes, ought, by no means, to be forgotten or disregarded. indeed, as justly noted by the author, “all tropes are instruments of play/game within the vast extenses of figurative space, in which the author, the text and the receiver are brought together.” being freely created in the text under the influence of the writer’s rational, emotional and aesthetic experience all the tropes have this ludic element in their depth and require an adequate echo on the part of the reader to be understood adequately. in chapter 4 (tropological space and figurative worlds) figurative worlds, perspectivization and spatial transformations within tropological space are discussed. tropological space, figurative and rhetorical in nature, is viewed as subpart of logical, textual/discourse and artistic space. through metaphoricity logical space can be expanded towards alien, unknown spheres of cognition. the scholar’s approach here to treat metaphor as an umbrella term for all kinds of tropes is grounded and justified (136), particularly that the recent analyses have convincingly demonstrated that figuration is a pervasive phenomenon. in fact, tropological space can also be attached to non-literary texts and discourses (textual/discourse space), and this fact, as investigations have shown, finds corroboration in discourse studies related to the language of politics, science, medicine, law, education and the media (p. 138). however, basing the illucidation of the conception of artistic space on the studies of the tartu and moscow schools of semiotics (lotman, uspiensky, minc, toporov), the author views tropological space as a chunk of literary/fictional/artistic space and envisages artistic space as an imaginative world called to life by poetic language. imagery and creative metaphors reign supreme here. single-world and double-world approaches (referring to metaphorical concepts in fictional worlds) are also argued in this chapter to state that metaphors, being both semantic and conceptual constructs require some metaphysical extension and are projected onto a deviant world, which in its structure encompasses impossibilia and logical contradiction and that even “nonwordly texts are capable of carrying within their space very small worlds created by single tropes or their local clusters, most typically metaphor” (p. 154). thus, the present scholarly investigation of metaphor, based on firm theoretical background, adheres to the multi-tropical approach to human discourse and will be of utmost importance to both language and literature theorists. it is a valuable addition to the study of metaphor, metaphoricity, tropology and artistic language at large. this monograph by prof., dr. hab. elzbieta chrzanowska-kluczewska is by right “much more than metaphor.” c 2015, seda gasparyan, yerevan state university, armenia microsoft word maket 2019-2 final.doc armenian folia anglistika linguistics 32 comparative analysis of the category of diminutiveness in the russian, english and armenian languages karine abrahamyan yerevan brusov state university of languages and social sciences abstract the paper highlights the most typical features of the lexico-grammatical category of diminutiveness from the derivational point of view. the correlation between language and culture, language and national linguistic traditions, language and national mentality is revealed through the category under study. the results of the research prove that applying cognitive approach to the analysis of the category of diminutiveness on the derivational level enables us to reveal: a) the existing asymmetry of linguistic images of the world in different languages, b) graduality of the lexico-grammatical category of diminutiveness in modern russian which brings forth peculiar derivational clusters. key words: category of diminutiveness, linguistic world image, cognitive approach, word-formation, derivative. introduction the problem of language and culture interrelation has always attracted the attention of linguists of different scientific schools and approaches. the latter has become one of the major issues in the light of cognitive investigations dominating in the science nowadays. it is well-known that there exist different, somehow similar and sometimes contrastive, approaches to the correlation of such many-facet and complicated phenomena as human language and culture of a nation. though being quite different, all the existing approaches have something in common: all of them linguistics armenian folia anglistika 33 undeniably accept the fact of inseparable connection and interaction of two different semiotic systems language and culture. in spite of numerous scientific investigations there is no, and, perhaps, there even couldn’t have been till now, a well-formulated common approach to the question of how language and culture are interrelated, and the answer to the everlasting linguistic question why so and not in some other way. the above mentioned may be accounted for by the complicacy of the interrelation of the two sign systems. the problem under study becomes more topical when the investigations are carried out on the data extracted from two and more languages. in such cases the scientist deals with different linguistic categorizations of the world, i.e. different linguistic world-images. it is common knowledge that even when the reality seems to be just the same at first glance, different language systems categorize it in different ways. it results in a peculiar asymmetry of linguistic world images which reflect the national and cultural features of the linguocultural socium, the peculiarities of language and logic system correlation and, consequently, peculiarities of mentality and world perception. it is worth mentioning that asymmetry of linguistic world-images may be observed on all language levels one more evidence of the integrity of human language as a structurally organized system of signs. of utmost importance is the fact that on all the language levels linguistic asymmetry is accounted for by both linguistic and extralinguistic factors. human language by all means reacts to any really important “social order” as it is a dynamic system, a part of culture and a tool of cultural analysis simultaneously. therefore, the use of cognitive approach as “one of the means of explaining linguistic phenomena” in many spheres, namely, phonology, morphology, lexics, discourse, the perception of language as a “cognitive mechanism” functioning to discretize, objectivize and interpret knowledge” (krongauz 2005:195), makes it possible to transfer it to the domain of word-formation as well. such approach is very important and topical as, on the one hand, word-formation performs a unique role in verbal discretization of the world, and on the other hand, this language level correlates with extralinguistic factors, very often presupposing numerous, at first glance, pure linguistic facts. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 34 on some differences and similarities of the category of diminutiveness in the russian, english and armenian languages the development of synchronic word-formation theory, enlargement of its investigation domains as well as the specificity of word-formation as a system, on the one hand, realizes the onomasiologic function of the language, and combines the two interrelated complexes – complex of actual and complex of potential realizations, and, on the other hand, claims that word-formation should be regarded as one of the main “participants” of world linguistic categorization. it is worth mentioning that the derivational level of the language performs the pivotal role in naming new as well as virtual notions by means of coining new derivatives. the latters may be regarded as small “models of knowledge” about the world. it stands to reason that word-formation is the structural basis of lexics (manucharyan 1981:3). hence, many facts and phenomena of the lexical level of the language are inevitably reflected in word-formation and viewed from derivational standpoint. such investigations become more topical when comparative typological analysis of different languages is carried out, aimed at revealing the derivational peculiarities of the linguistic categorization of the languages under study. while analyzing the derivational aspect of the category of diminutiveness in the russian, english and armenian languages, a great number of diminutives-derivational variants formed as a result of derivational activity of motivating bases were revealed. by derivational variants we mean a rather abstract notion, including heterogeneous phenomena, i.e. one-base derivatives formed by means of different affixes and semantically equivalent morphemes. they may be classified as derivational synonyms which also include the so-called “absolute” synonyms, for example: мамочка-мамуля, дочка-дочура. the numerous cases of derivatives formed by means of different affixes, undoubtedly, realize one and the same derivational meaning of diminutiveness. thus, they may be considered coderivatives, actualizing the same modification on different levels of derivation. from the word-formation point of view, in linguistics armenian folia anglistika 35 such cases we deal with derivational variation, a phenomenon specified by any language to express a certain meaning, in our case, the diminutive meaning, which reflects the presence or absence of cognitively motivated “social order”. for example, in russian the following derivational cluster can be observed: сын сынок сыночек сыночка сынуля in english only one derivational pair: son-sonny, is singled out, while in armenian no diminutives can be observed at all, as the derivative որդյակ (sonny) in modern armenian has become obsolete due to its bookish colouring. the category of diminutiveness in modern russian is characterized by one more feature, which has not yet attracted the linguists’ attention, though the derivational aspect of the category seems to be well investigated. however, the analysis of numerous examples of the above-mentioned derivational cluster of the noun сын, as well as different proper nouns, e.g. марфа марфуша 1 марфушка 2 марфочка testifies to the fact, that in modern russian the category under study undergoes a peculiar “graduality”. as a rule, the graduality of the russian nouns coincides with their derivational activity. of utmost interest is the fact, that even in cases of derivatives-derivational variants the activity of the motivating bases is restricted by the second, rarely third level of derivation both for common and proper nouns: папа папуля 1 папулечка 2 папенька папусик 2 папочка папик папхен папаша папаня папанька 2 екатерина катя 1 катюша 2 катюшка 3 катюшечка 3 armenian folia anglistika linguistics 36 the derivative diminutives are characterized by a wide spectrum of stylistic colouring, ranging from diminutive-caressing up to the connotation of pejorativeness, irony, abuse. moreover, nowadays a tendency of new formations bearing ironic meaning is observed: мамсик, папик, etc. but there are also numerous derivational variants which coincide in their stylistic colouring, e.g. день – денек денечек. conclusion thus, it can be assumed that the lexico-grammatcial category of diminutiveness in the russian, english and armenian languages is very peculiar in its derivational aspect. the current study enables us to reveal a certain asymmetry of linguistic categorization of reality which is reflected in the derivational levels of these languages and may be accounted for by the differences in mentality and world perception. the comparative-typological analysis of the data extracted from the abovementioned languages has disclosed some semantic nuances of the category of diminutiveness, which may be regarded as peculiar features of the languages under study. one of such features is the phenomenon of graduality of diminutive nouns in modern russian. references: 1. krongauz, m.a. (2005) semantika. m.: “akademia”. 2. manucharyan, r.s. (1981) slovoobrazovatel’niye znacheniya i formi v russkom i armyanskom yazikakh. yerevan: luys. նվազականության կարգի զուգադրական քննություն ռուսերենում, անգլերենում և հայերենում սույն հետազոտության նպատակն է կատարել նվազականության բառաքերականական կարգի զուգադրական վերլուծություն երեք լեզուlinguistics armenian folia anglistika 37 ներում: հոդվածի շրջանակներում կիրառվում է նյութի ուսումնասիրության ճանաչողական մոտեցում, որը հնարավորություն է ընձեռում վեր հանել տարբեր ժողովուրդների լեզվամտածողությունների արդյունքում ստեղծվող աշխարհի տարբեր պատկերացումները և դրանցում տեղ գտած անհամաչափությունները նշված թեմայի վերաբերյալ: հատուկ ուշադրության է արժանանում նվազականության կարգի բառակազմական առանձնահատկությունների ուսումնասիրությունը: ինչպես ցույց է տալիս կատարված վերլուծությունը, նվազական գոյականներին բնորոշ է բառակազմական յուրահատուկ աստիճանավորում: դա հատկապես բնորոշ է ժամանակակից ռուսերենին, որտեղ դրա շնորհիվ նույնիսկ առանձին բառակազմական բներ են ստեղծվում: received by editorial board 07.09.2019 recommended for publication by reviewers 26.10.2019 accepted for print 01.10.2019 microsoft word contens verjin culture studies armenian folia anglistika 133 armenian culture from the semiotic perspective armine matevosyan, manana dalalyan yerevan state university abstract the present paper goes along the lines of semiotics, a branch of linguistics. it studies the system of signs which takes the form of words, images, sounds, gestures and objects. through the usage of signs we represent the linguocultural aspect of our knowledge, ethnic traditions and folklore. the interest we take in the paper is the study of signs and symbols in armenian culture. culture, including miniature paining, singing, dancing, architecture and cuisine, may involve any sphere of armenian identity. signs and symbols that constitute language and culture are constructed through verbal and non-verbal interactions and are arbitrary. the purpose of our analysis is to specify what why, whom questions in a specific context of situation, as well as in a large context of culture, such as social community, media and communication. key words: semiotics, culture, communication through signs, cultural identity, science of signs, cuisine, visual signs. introduction semiotics is the study of signs and sign using behavior. it was defined by swiss linguist ferdinand de saussure as the study of “the life of signs within society”. it is an academic field dedicated to the study of signs. a sign (for example, the word ship) may be recognized by the presence of its constituent parts, which in semiotic theories is based on the signifier (the container, or the sign's perceptible form: the letters s-h-i-p) and the signified (the meaning or content; the notion conveyed by the signifier: a vessel of considerable size for deepwater navigation). with these concepts, general semiotics allows us to describe any system of signs: texts, images, performances, multimedia productions, traffic signals, fashion, daily life, etc. there are specific semiotic systems (for text, images, multimedia) that take into account the specifics of each system of signs (elements of semiotics 2016). armenian folia anglistika culture studies 134 it is important to note that saussure treated a linguistic unit as a “double entity” meaning that is composed of two parts. he viewed the linguistic unit as a combination of: a concept or meaning a sound image it is important to note that saussure did not refer to spoken or written words, but to the mental impressions made on our senses by a certain “thing“. as saussure states, the connection between two “signifiers” which are “sound images” or “linguistic signs” and what they are signifying – their signified object or concept – is arbitrary (saussure 1959). although the term semiotics was first introduced in the 17th century by the english philosopher john locke as an interdisciplinary mode for examining phenomena in different fields, semiotics emerged as a science only in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with works of american philosopher charles sanders peirce (locke 1997). ch. peirce made a huge contribution in the study of semiotics by categorizing three main types of signs: an icon, which resembles its referent (such as a road sign for falling rocks) an index, which is associated with its referent (as smoke is a sign of fire) a symbol, which is related to its referent only by convention (as with words or traffic signals) (pierce 1931). in the present article we have focused particularly on the on the issues relevant to visual communication. visual communication has various types of codes that help determine the meaning of the message. for example, the visuals used in graphic design, photography, video and film contain discrete sign elements (shots, typography, drawings, etc.) which are variously called semes or signemes. the phenomenon of system of signs is manifold and embraces different approaches. for example, the american semiotician charles morris studied signs and meanings in human action and defined them in three ways: the perception stage – the person becomes aware of a sign the manipulation stage – the person interprets the sign and decides how to respond to it the consummation stage – the person responds (morris 1970) it should be added that the notion of sign and symbol are in close interaction as we consider that, depending on certain cultural environmental circumstances, they may culture studies armenian folia anglistika 135 modify each other somehow. according to langer theory, symbols are “vehicles for the conception of objects, instruments of thought, allowing a person to think about something apart from its immediate presence. langer focuses on certain symbolic usages-discursive and non-discursive. accordingly, he differentiates between language-based thought and meaning, and nonverbal-based emotion and meaning like art, music and dance. meanings can be found in both non-discursive and discursive symbolism (langer 1993). in our paper we follow langer’s theory on the notion of symbol and sign and focus on visual signs that depict armenian reality and culture. armenian national identity through signs since the scope of culture is wide, in our paper we have focused on some aspects of it, namely armenian cuisine, music, dances and visual signs. it is worth starting with the interpretation of the flower forget-me-not which has become a symbol of commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the genocide. it has become an inseparable sign in armenian reality. the symbolic use of this flower is not accidental. the concept of forget-me-not comprises a conscious wave of demand to the whole world and a voiced challenge to all the nations of the world to stop aggression, intolerance and hatred. it is a unique message to create true and undying love toward life itself, which is a sign of remembrance, memory and grief. hence forget-me-not has became a recognized visual sign for the nation who witnessed the grief of the genocide. another visual sign which reflects armenian reality is khachkar. it is a stone with engraved cross which has a long history and has been a part of armenian cultural and historical heritage. khachkars have always been silent witnesses of the pain and signs of commemoration that armenian people have experienced. another interesting example of visual sign is armenian apricot which has a specific smell, flavor and color. it has always been a visiting card of armenia grown on ararat valley. armenian apricot bears the flavour of the land and people living there. probably the golden yellow of this charming fruit was a muse for the prominent armenian painter martiros saryan whose paintings became recognizable through three primary colors apricot yellow, red and blue. thus the armenian landscape appears to the world in its specific colors. these particular colors have become culturally loaded markers for the armenian national flag. the latter has a special message three equal horizontal lines of apricot yellow, red and blue. the color red recalls the blood shed for liberty. it is also associated with the well-known cochineal armenian folia anglistika culture studies 136 which is a scale insect indigenous to the ararat plain and araks river valley in the armenian highlands. it was formerly used to produce an eponymous crimson carmine dyestuff known in armenia as vordan karmir. the color is used to dye national carpets which have always been appreciated. blue is associated with peaceful sky and hope. apricot yellow (in armenian it sounds like apricot color [tsiranaguyn]) symbolizes the land, courage and patience of the armenian people. another visual sign which requires a careful study is the famous monument grandmother and grandfather in artsakh. high on the mountains the monument not only fascinates people with its stunning beauty, but also bears a special message. throughout years and decades the monument has been a silent witness of all the misfortunes that people have survived in artsakh. it is here to protect the nation from every coming evil. it is common knowledge that music is also a form of communication. it fundamentally expresses the emotional state of the composer whose task is to impact on his listeners emotionally, by means of melodic notes. the famous musical composition named “artsakh” by ara gevorgyan is a reflection of longawaited silence which breaks through the eternal struggle against violence. the leading musical instruments of the composition are the armenian dhol and duduk, which is a challenge for the armenian people to live and create. the elements of cuisine also have become visual signs which have always been associated with the land of armenia. harissa, a traditional meal made from wheat and lamb, is cooked over low heat and presupposes a long-lasting procedure. etymologically the word harissa is formed from the armenian word (harel shake up, beat up). it is prepared in a big pot over which the whole family gets together. as the preparation of this dish is a time-taking procedure, it evokes sense of patience and strength in armenian mothers. the meal is served with a spoonful of homemade butter, which symbolizes the hard work and care that armenian women feel towards their families. that is the mother who can make every possible tasty meal for her family to smell and sound “homemade”. zhingyalov hats is one of the most tasted and recognized elements associated with artsakh. greens growing in this area make this dish desirable for anyone who has an opportunity to enjoy it. it characterizes the land where it is made, as these particular greens are typical of the territory of artsakh. the pie enchants people with its taste and is a multi-layer element of tradition, culture and history. dolma is an eastern dish, which is highly appreciated in armenia and is widely cooked and served here. this spicy dish is usually made by the senior of culture studies armenian folia anglistika 137 the family, namely grandmother, on special occasions. recently in armenian reality the two words dolma and mama appeared in blending as dolmama, for it presupposes a close connection between armenian mother, family and hospitality. armenian folk dances have a long tradition of musical art dating back to prehistoric times. they have functioned as cultural elements and visual signs in armenian reality. berd (fortress) is an armenian dance the roots of which go back to vaspurakan city. the dance is associated with an old armenian game “gmbetakhagh”. the dancers wear armenian national costume “taraz”, which is a sign to show how devoted the armenian people have been to their roots. the essence of the dance is to form a fortress by standing on each other's shoulders. this picture of dance style proves the unbending and stern character of the armenian people (namely men) who are ready to unite and serve as a stronghold to each other – standing firm on the ground and confronting any possible hinder. yarkhushta is another armenian folk and martial dance associated with the highlands of the historical region of sassoun in western armenia. the dance belongs to the category of armenian “clap dances” performed by men, who face each other in pairs. the key element of the dance is a forward movement when participants rapidly approach one another and vigorously clap onto the palms of hands of dancers in the opposite row. this dance shows the tactical strength of the armenian men, who have always been as firm as rocks of western and eastern armenia. similar symbolic picture comprises the “sabre dance” which is the final act of aram khachaturian’s ballet gayane (1942), where the dancers display their skill with sabres thus showing great will and potential to struggle for freedom. conclusion armenian reality is loaded with visual signs many of which make up part of its culture. every nation creates its portrait: traditions, customs, religion as well as visual signs in communication. they struggle to create and keep their identity to survive in this multi–national world. the diversity they present makes up the world itself. being one of the oldest nations, armenians have always been devoted to their roots, origin and national identity. they are part of caucasian reality with their traditional cuisine, dances, music, in one word – culture and history, which presupposes the armenian stereotype. armenian folia anglistika culture studies 138 references: 1. elements of semiotics. (copyright 2016) available at: <http://www.signosemio.com/ elements-of-semiotics.asp> [accessed september 2016]. 2. locke, j. (1997) an essay concerning human understanding. / ed. by r. woolhouse. new york: penguin books. 3. langer, s. (1993) theory of symbolism. new york: indiana university press. 4. morris, ch.w. (1970) foundations of the theory of signs. chicago: chicago university press. 5. pierce, ch. (1953) collected writings. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. 6. sebeok, th. (1964) approaches to semiotics. the hague-paris: mouton. 7. saussure, f. (1983) course in general linguistics. / tr. by r harris. london: duckworth. ð³ûï³ï³ý ùß³ïáõûãá ýß³ý³·çïáõãû³ý ¹çï³ýïûáõýçó êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù ýß³ý³ ³ýáõãû³ý ï»ë³ýïûáõýçó ¹çï³ñïíáõù »ý ñ³ûï³ï³ý ùß³ïáõûãç ³ý ³å³ý»éç ù³ë»ñ ï³½ùáõ ëáñññ¹³ýçßý»ñ, ùýý³ñïíáõù ¿ ¹ñ³ýó ¹»ñý áõ ýß³ý³ïáõãûáõýá ñ³ûç çýùýáõãû³ý ó¨³íáñù³ý ·áñíáõù: àñå»ë ÷³ëï³ï³ý ýûáõã áýïñí³í »ý ñ³ûï³ï³ý ëáñ³ýáóçý ýáñáß áõï»ëïý»ñ, ñ³û çñ³ï³ýáõãû³ý ù»ç ï³ñ¨áñáõãûáõý ý»ñï³û³óýáõ ëáñññ¹³ýçßý»ñ, ñ³ûï³ï³ý å³ñçý ýáñáß ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñ: ðá¹í³íáõù ÷áñó ¿ ³ñíáõù ù»ïý³ ³ý»é í»ñá ýßí³íá` ß»ßï³¹ñ»éáí ýñ³ýó ³ñå»ù³ûýáõãûáõýý áõ ï³åá ³ñï³ùçý ³ßë³ññç ñ»ï: microsoft word 1.linguistics 7 54 (3) linguistics armenian folia anglistika 39 language as an influential tool for persuasion rouzanna arakelyan, gevorg muradyan yerevan state university abstract persuasion is present in all human activities; people persuade each other while learning, working and socializing. scholars representing different disciplines like communication, psychology and advertising came to a unanimous conclusion that persuasion is the intended human communication which is used to impact the autonomous judgements and actions of other people. the present article focuses on verbal language in persuasion found in a number of sources like the campaign on human rights by council of europe, journalistic article in health communication and in federal express tv commercial. key words: language of persuasion, verbal communication, tag questions, speed of speech, metaphor, repetition. introduction the history of persuasion and its study comes from ancient times. aristotle developed the first scientific approach to persuasion, and discovered the scientific elements of it. according to him, persuasion is based on three principles: the nature of the communicator, i.e. ethos; the emotional state of the audience, i.e. pathos; the message arguments, i.e. logos (in zollo 2014:15). the study of persuasion is conditioned by three shifts. first studies were held in ancient greek and were focused only on the ability of how persuaders build their speech. the second shift studies, from the 16th up to the 19th century concentrated on the receiver rather than on persuader. on the contrary, the third wave of contemporary scholars, for instance, richard perloff believes that persuasion is a bilateral process, which involves both sides: the persuader as well as the receiver the so-called ‘persuadee’ (perloff 2003). the aim of this article is to show how persuasive some communications that may happen between the interlocutors are, what kind of language is used in the brochures of human rights published by council of europe (hereafter coe), and armenian folia anglistika linguistics 40 what persuasive features were used for the tv commercial of federal express (hereafter fedex). verbal language in persuasion an american communication and argumentation theory scholar george j. o’keefe stressed the fact that it is difficult to give a proper definition of what persuasion is, because there are no concrete boundaries of it. definitions vary: one might be too broad, thus to be unsatisfactory, the other is too narrow and again seems to be unsatisfactory. nonetheless, for the surface comprehension of this social phenomenon it is preferable to look at one or two explanations of the term persuasion. for example, the merriam webster’s online dictionary gives the following definition of persuasion: “the act of causing people to do or believe something: the act or activity of persuading people”1. richard perloff a scholar, the author of academic textbooks on persuasion and political communication, defines persuasion as: “a symbolic process in which communicators try to convince other people to change their attitudes or behavior regarding an issue through the transmission of a message, in an atmosphere of free choice”2. this sophisticated explanation can be understood more thoroughly if we detach the construction and take a deeper glance at its components: 1. persuasion involves verbal and nonverbal symbols. symbols include various persuasive words like freedom, justice, equality etc.; non-verbal signs like the flag of this or that country, holy cross, mcdonald’s golden arches, etc. 2. persuasion is an influence, at least, an attempt to have an effect on a particular situation, because not on all occasions persuasion can be found satisfactory. the persuader must be aware that the second party, that is the receiver, has a mental state and he/she is able to change it. 3. people do self-persuasions, rather than persuaders coerce them. it is a widely spread belief that psychotherapists persuade us to make correct decisions. they probably, master the art of persuasion, by offering suggestions, providing comfort zone in their therapy rooms and make people pour out what they have inside. but, if the progress occurs, it is the client who made it happen. 4. the message can be transmitted through various ways such as: interpersonally, through mass media, or via the internet. it may consist of arguments or simple hints, like music in an advertisement that brings pleasant linguistics armenian folia anglistika 41 memories to mind, and they can be verbal or nonverbal, reasonable or unreasonable, factual or emotional. 5. as it was mentioned earlier, self-persuasion is the main secret for achieving proper influence. to put it another way, an individual is free for making decisions whether to accept the suggestion or to refuse it. the language of persuasion may have different effects based on the situations in which it is used. if one wants to be successful on persuading the second party, then one should take into account several factors, such as: not using the components of powerless speech. for example, hesitation forms like ‘uh’, ‘um’, ‘well, you know’ (show lack of certainty or confidence); hedges – ‘sort of’, ‘kinda’, ‘i guess’ (phrases that reduce the definitiveness of a persuader’s assertion); tag questions e.g., ‘that plan will cost us too much, don’t you think?’ and last but not least disclaimers such as ‘i know this sounds like a stupid question, but …’, ‘i’m no expert, of course’, ‘this may sound a little out of the ordinary, but …’ etc. the use of hedges, hesitations, tag questions and disclaimers communicates uncertainty or lack of knowledge. in contrast to powerless speech, powerful speech is marked by the vivid absence of those features that were mentioned above. after examining the effects of powerless and powerful speech on persuasion, researchers stated, that powerless speech is perceived as less persuasive and credible than powerful speech. communicators who use powerless speech are considered to be less competent, dynamic and attractive than those who speak in a powerful way. of course, powerful speech is more persuasive than powerless speech, however there is a case when powerless speech may have an effective result. an article by annette harres entitled “but basically you’re feeling well, are you?: tag questions in medical consultations” published in the journal of health communication is a definite example of powerless speech being successful. the above mentioned article is considered as a qualitative study investigating the use of tag questions by three australian female practitioners. tag questions such as: “you’ve been here before, haven’t you?” or “that’s the last straw, isn’t it?” can show empathy with patient’s concerns3. thus, after studying the physicians’ use of language devices it was indicated by the researcher that: “the affective tag question signals to the patient that the doctor is not just interested in her medical but also her psychological well-being” (harres 1998:122). armenian folia anglistika linguistics 42 it is a well-known fact that the how of what you say is as important as what you say. early studies suggested that the speed of speech increases persuasion. if we affirm that faster speech is persuasive because it acts as a reliable key, it means we look only at the one side of the coin. the other side of the coin reduces persuasion if it interferes with message processing or annoys the audience. therefore, the most reasonable conclusion is that the speech rate depends on the context, as contextual factors are of great importance. speech rate can raise the productivity of the persuasion when it is relevant to the peculiar message. an old advertisement for fedex, represents a businessman facing an urgent deadline. the man gives orders to his subordinate and speaks in a short voice at a lightning-quick speed. businessman: you did a bang up job. i’m putting you in charge of pittsburgh. employee: pittsburgh’s perfect. businessman: i know it’s perfect, peter. that’s why i picked pittsburgh. pittsburgh’s perfect, peter. can i call you pete? employee: call me pete4. this ear-catching ad helped make fedex a prosperous name. the ad shows a nice symmetry between the theme of the ad, speed of the speech and also the product which is being sold. that is, a courier delivery service with its slogan of being there ‘absolutely, positively, overnight’. in the list of persuasive intensifying tools can be included such tactics as the use of figurative language, e.g. metaphor, repetition; the use of personal pronouns; some fascinating stories like the testimony of a person who has experienced violation of human rights and a number of other languageenhancing instruments. for example, in the following excerpt from the campaign “i have rights…” the repetition of the same verbal structure raises awareness on children’s rights, makes the message more memorable, also intensifies the coe’s good aims: you are entitled to have your basic needs such as food, clothing, housing and health looked after. you are entitled to a high standard of education […]. you are entitled to a wide range of objective information. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 43 you have the right to life and to a balanced and healthy physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development. (from the poster i have rights5...). a metaphorical example as a persuasive device is noticeable in the campaign against abortion. the opponents of anti-abortion movement in the united states chose the metaphor “pro-life” and since, the metaphor was officially added to various dictionaries as a definition of people who express heartfelt opposition to abortion. this is another case which shows that cleverly chosen strong words may greatly affect the audience. pronouns are of great significance in persuading readers, as well. particularly the pronoun you, which is generally used to shorten the distance between persuading and receiving parties. this can be illustrated in the following examples suggested by coe again – “talk to your children and make sure they can talk to you.”; “good secrets make you happy. bad secrets don’t.” (from the campaign one in five6). another persuasive strategy that can be applied is the narrative. it can be considered as a kind of discourse which can be found reasonable and meaningful if one applies intensive words in his/her narration. for example, testimonies by various people especially those by women who have gone through a domestic violence can serve as an effective way for persuading people. the following testimony from coe’s human rights campaign which was found in zollo’s book can be presented: excerpt 7 – “today i am waiting for the trial so that he can be judged and imprisoned. he says he is sorry and wants me to come back. there is no way that is going to happen. i was beaten by my husband but also by my parents-inlaw for ten years. for all those years i never left the house except to go to work, and always accompanied by my husband. i’ve really had enough. every day i cry and think of my children. i am tired but i am going to win through. i managed the first step by coming on the refuge and a second one by finding work. i want to go on from there: get my children back, find a flat and have a quiet life. in the end it is me who is going to win, and not my husband.” this type of persuasion can be experienced by observers who directly read those testimonies and indirectly experience the violence that the victim has undergone in her life. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 44 conclusion thus, the article presented verbal means of persuasion, mainly focusing on several language tactics that were found in a tv ad, coe’s brochures and in the journal of health communication. so, it can be concluded that the speed of speech, intensive and emotionally charged words and in some cases even tag questions, can be found as effective assets on persuading the second party. however, it should be mentioned that the ‘persuadee’ is the only person who is responsible for his/her decision, because coercion is not welcomed at all. notes: 1. for more details consider the merriam – webster online dictionary. available at: <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/persuasion> [accessed april 2016]. 2. see perloff, r.m. the dynamics of persuasion: communication and attitudes in the twenty-first century. lawrence erlbaum associates, 2003:8. 3. for more details read annette harres “but basically you’re feeling well, are you?” // tag questions in medical consultations. health communication vol. 10, issue 2, 1998. available at: <http://sarahriley.net/courses/571/articles/harres1998.pdf> [accessed march 2016]. 4. for further details on fedex advertisement campaign follow: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nek5zjtpo-m > (fedex commercial with john moschitta). 5. the continuation of children’s rights (suggested by coe). available at: <http://www.coe.int/web/children/children-corner> [accessed march 2016]. 6. the examples can be found in coe’s campaign to stop sexual violence against children (one in five). available at: <http://www.coe.int/t/dg3/children/1in5/news/campaignguidelines_en.pdf> [accessed april 2016]. references: 1. zollo, s.a. (2014) promotion, popularization and pedagogy: an analysis of the verbal and visual strategies in the coe’s human rights campaigns. cambridge: cambridge scholars publishing. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 45 2. perloff, r.m. (2003) the dynamics of persuasion: communication and attitudes in the twenty-first century. uk: lawrence erlbaum publishing. 3. harres, a. (1998) but basically you’re feeling well, are you?: tag questions in medical consultations. uk: lawrence erlbaum publishing. sources of data: 1. three oranges, fedex commercial with john moschitta. sep. 2, 2006. available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nek5zjtpo-m> [accessed march 2016]. 2. children’s rights, i have right, you have rights, he/she has rights… available at: <http://www.coe.int/web/children/children-corner> [accessed april 2016]. 3. merriam webster’s dictionary. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/ dictionary> [accessed april 2016]. 軽áõý áñå»ë ñ³ùá½ù³ý ï³ñ¨áñ ùççáó êáëùç ý»ñ·áñíù³ý ñ³ñóáõù ñ³ïï³å»ë ï³ñ¨áñíáõù ¿ 黽íç ñ³ùá½ù³ý ·³ñí³éáõûãá, áñá ëáõûý ñá¹í³íç ùýýáõãû³ý ñçùý³ï³ý ³é³ñï³ý ¿։ ð³ùá½ù³ý ·áñí³éáõûãá ³éï³ ¿ ëáëù³ûçý ·ñ»ã» μáéáñ ³ïï»ñáõù ¨ ù³ñ¹áõ ·áñíáõý»áõãû³ý ï³ñμ»ñ áéáñïý»ñáõù։ îíû³é ñá¹í³íç ë³ñù³ýý»ñáõù ¹çï³ñïíáõù »ý ñ³ïï³å»ë ³½¹»óçï ëáëùý ³å³ñáí»éáõ ñ³ù³ñ ·éë³íáñ ¹»ñ ï³ï³ñáõ μ³é»ñç ¨ ß³ñ³ñûáõë³ï³ý ï³éáõûóý»ñç ×çßï áýïñáõãû³ý, çýãå»ë ý³¨ ëáëùç ï»ùåçý ³éýãíáõ 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(www.heidelberg.com) >> /namespace [ (adobe) (common) (1.0) ] /othernamespaces [ << /asreaderspreads false /cropimagestoframes true /errorcontrol /warnandcontinue /flattenerignorespreadoverrides false /includeguidesgrids false /includenonprinting false /includeslug false /namespace [ (adobe) (indesign) (4.0) ] /omitplacedbitmaps false /omitplacedeps false /omitplacedpdf false /simulateoverprint /legacy >> << /addbleedmarks false /addcolorbars false /addcropmarks false /addpageinfo false /addregmarks false /convertcolors /converttocmyk /destinationprofilename () /destinationprofileselector /documentcmyk /downsample16bitimages true /flattenerpreset << /presetselector /mediumresolution >> /formelements false /generatestructure false /includebookmarks false /includehyperlinks false /includeinteractive false /includelayers false /includeprofiles false /multimediahandling /useobjectsettings /namespace [ (adobe) (creativesuite) (2.0) ] /pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /documentcmyk /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /usedocumentprofile /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2540 2540] /pagesize [595.276 841.890] >> setpagedevice maket 2013:layout 1.qxd the role of the article in the semantic interpretation of the antecedent in attributive clauses nune hayrapetyan yerevan state university t he study of the article in english has a long tradition in various disciplines, including linguistics, philosophy, logics and psychology. it has been analyzed from a variety of distinct theoretical perspectives – logical semantics, functionalism, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, to mention just a few. nevertheless, previous analyses of the definite article the are remarkably similar in both the kinds of data they examine and the general theoretical questions they attempt to answer. more specifically, research has consistently focused on what we might call the “referential function” of the article, that is, the use of a noun phrase with the to pick out an individual, ‘‘to distinguish it from all other individuals in the universe of discourse” (lyons 1977). the article certainly plays a very important role in grammar. the paper focuses on the use of the article in restrictive and non-restrictive attributive clauses. grosu & landman (1998) interpreted restrictive (defining) relatives as intersective modifiers of the nominal head which contribute to determining the restriction of the determiner, whereas nonrestrictive (appositive or non-defining) relatives modify the whole noun phrase head, rather than contributing to the restriction. according to huddleston (1971) relative clauses are characterized by the presence in their remote structure of an element that is co-referential with a preceding element, its antecedent. normally the relativized element and its antecedent are nps. the modification of the antecedent by the relative clause can be restrictive and nonrestrictive. in restrictive relatives, the relativized np and its antecedent are both dominated in the remote structure by a larger np, which is the matrix np. in non-restrictive relatives the antecedent and the relative clause do not form a constituent in the remote structure: a) the doctor, who was the family physician, saluted him, but he scarcely took any notice. b) the doctor who was the family physician saluted him, but he scarcely took any notice. in (a) the speaker assumes that the hearer is able to uniquely identify which doctor he is referring to. the hearer may make the identification on the basis of the preceding context or of his knowledge of the situation, whereas in (b) the hearer is assumed to be able to identify which doctor is being referred to. thus, the doctor who was the family physician is a single constituent np. the difference between these two types is that in restrictive relatives, the relativized np and its antecedent are both dominated in the remote structure by a larger np, which is the matrix np, whereas in non-restrictive relatives the antecedent and the relative clause do not form a constituent in the remote structure. the definite article expresses what is known, or what is not presented as new, and has armenian folia anglistika linguistics 68 the function of identification, while the indefinite article expresses what is new and has the function of relative generalization. it is suggested that articles be represented in the deep structure as syntactic features on the head noun. there is no such category as article in the phrase structure. views on definiteness are widely divergent. perlmutter (1970) has given the impression that the comes solely from lexical insertion. robbins (1968) states that all instances of the arise transformationally. in considering the sources of definite articles, there are several distinct types of them to be considered: 1. anaphoric (within a sentence), 2. definite description with a relative clause, 3. non-linguistically anaphoric (contextual). these 3 types of uses do not exhaust the significant classifications, the lines between them are easy to draw or to justify. we consider that type 1 is simply a special case of type 3, i.e. there is the same process of anaphora in both, and it is a relatively superficial matter whether the antecedent happens to be in the same sentence or not. one might claim that the use of the definite article depends on an implicit relative clause which ensures uniqueness and hence definiteness. it is assumed (baker 1989) that anaphora changes the kernel indefinites to derived definite and the is inserted transformationally when an underlying existential relative sentence is embedded with the determiner. in the case of the anaphoric definite article, the np is assumed to be coextensive with the previous np which caused the definitization. when the definite article occurs with a relative clause, it (the clause) defines the set. the fact that some occurrences of the definite article are obligatory does not really provide justification for any of the above positions. the definite article obligatorily accompanies superlatives, as well as other quantifiers such as same, only, next which require a certain noun, as in: the best way, the same day, etc. articles operate identically with proper and countable common nouns except that the definite article is zero before singular proper nouns. chomsky (1965) adopted a formulation, on which the relative clause is generated as a complement to the determiner. the proposed selectional relation between the determiner and the relative clause can straightforwardly account for the following co-occurrence constraints: a) the zero determiner introducing (unmodified) proper names allows only for nonrestrictive relatives and not for restrictives; b) the definite and indefinite article allow for both non-restrictives and restrictives; c) quantificational determiners allow only for restrictives, but not for non-restrictives. it also accounts for the behaviour of certain abstract common nouns, like manner, way, time, place, which can only occur when modified by a relative clause or by some kind of demonstrative determiner. both men of childhood, of the elfin and adventurous time when tall weeds close over us like woods had simultaneously a reminiscence. (chesterton “the innocence of father brown” p.172) armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 69 as soon as i arrived i made an attempt to find my host but the two or three people of whom i asked his whereabouts stared at me in such an amazed way and denied so vehemently any knowledge of his movements that i slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table –the only place in the garden where a single man could linger without looking purposeless and alone. (fitzgerald “the great gatsby” p.57) similarly, it accounts for the observation that a proper name can be preceded by the definite article when it is modified by a restrictive relative clause: the paris (that i love). a refers to what is unidentified, whereas the refers to what is identified. there is, of course, no one-to-one correspondence between the use of the indefinite article and what is unidentified on the one hand, and the definite article and what is identified on the other. for example, with cataphoric determination, the definite article does not refer to an identified element. generic utterances provide another exception, and soon. however, in this discussion,we propose to simplify and to state that: the reference of an antecedent accompanied by the indefinite article is considered to be non-retrievable in context/situation; the reference of an antecedent accompanied by the definite article is considered to be retrievable in context/situation. many if not most linguists and grammarians tend to use definite head examples when analysing the properties of the restrictive relative clause. this leads one to assume that no distinction needs to be made between restrictive clauses with definite heads and those with indefinite ones. one assumes that both play the same role but in fact this is not the case. the non-retrievable vs. retrievable parameter just mentioned has semantic and pragmatic implications which, in turn, trigger off not only semantic and pragmatic distinctions but also syntactic ones. it is a well-known fact that in written english the comma ought to be used if the utterer wishes to indicate that the relative clause is a non-restrictive one; this necessity is, of course, explained by the fact that, with a definite head, there can be referential ambiguity if the comma is omitted: the storm was particularly cruel to the spanish ships which had taken the worst punishment in the battle. (thomson “sir francis drake” p.57) according to whether the comma was omitted or not, the storm was particularly cruel to all the spanish ships (non-restrictive); or else it was cruel only to those which had taken the worst punishment (restrictive). however, for a non-generic reference, there can be no referential ambiguity when the comma is omitted if the head is indefinite. it is not possible for there to be any confusion of reference for an element presented for the first time. there seems to be only one exception to this – the case where the antecedent comprises more than one noun: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 70 these were, however, reassured by his confidential servant, ivan, the old man with a scar, and a face almost as grey as his moustaches, who always sat at a table in the entrance hall – a hall hung with weapons. (chesterton “the innocence of father brown” p.30) here, the comma indicates that the whole noun phrase is referred to; in other words, it is not the scar or the face that sat at a table but ivan, the old man with a scar. since, for indefinite heads, the comma is normally not required to solve problems of referential ambiguity, this means that for the most part they (relatives with indefinite heads) have the syntactic and suprasegmental features of the attached relative clause. the example just mentioned, provides an exception. another exception is the continuative relative clause: and every time the matrons of atlanta gathered together to gossip, his reputation grew worse, which only made him all the more glamorous to the young girls. (mitchell “gone with the wind” p.185) here, his being made more glamorous to the young girls cannot enter the description of its referent at the time of the event referred to in the matrix clause (the gatherings of the matrons of atlanta); only on a subsequent occasion can it do so (his reputation grew worse among the matrons of atlanta which made him more and more glamorous to the young girls). this type of exception, where a comma indicates the non-restrictive status of the relative clause, helps one to understand why, for pragmatic reasons, it is necessary that there be two main types of relative clause: restrictive and non-restrictive. the opening of a new tone unit, marked by the comma and indicating the non-restrictive status of the clause serves as a warning to the addressee. this warning can be interpreted as follows: the information contained in the relative clause does not contribute towards the description of the antecedent for purposes of identification. parallely,in the interpretation of the antecedent the role of the article is to be emphasized. (1) the man,who has blue eyes, is very handsome. (2) the man who has blue eyes is very handsome. sentence (1) assumes that we already know what man is being talked about–hence the definite article the. that he has blue eyes is just an additional piece of information, possibly relevant to the judgment that he is handsome. sentence (2) assumes that we have been talking about more than one man and that we are singling out the one with blue eyes for a favorable comment. we are dealing with the one man on earth, perhaps, who has taken no more than his due. (chesterton“the innocence of father brown” p.142) only gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reactiongatsby who represented everything for which i have an unaffected scorn. (fitzgerald “the great gatsby” p.4) i am a man who has ever since boyhood believed in nature and in all armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 71 natural functions and instincts, whether men called them moral or immoral. (chesterton “the innocence of father brown” p.167) and i thank god that i see the criminal clearly now because he is a criminal who cannot be brought to the gallows. (chesterton “the innocence of father brown” p.210) the distinction between restrictive and non-restrictive applies to other forms of postmodifiers as well, particularly to noun phrases: (1) my brother bill laughed. (2) my brother, bill, laughed. (3) my brother who is a doctor laughed. (4) my brother, who is a doctor, laughed. (5) bill, who is a doctor, laughed. you would always use sentence (1) above if you have more than one brother and want to specify which one. sentence (2) implies that you have only one brother but want to remind the listener or reader what your brother’s name is. sentence (3) has a restrictive relative clause implying that you have more than one brother, with only one brother being a doctor. sentence (4) implies either that you have only one brother or that your reader already knows which brother is being talked about. unless there were, say, a whole room full of people named bill, relative clauses modifying names, like (5) above, are always non-restrictive. we can distinguish three functions of relative clauses: a) identifying rcs enable reference identification which book did you buy? the book (that deals with syntax). b) classifying rcs create new reference subclasses what kind of book are you looking for? a book (that deals with syntax). c) describing rcs provide additional information what kind of book did you buy? a book (that deals with syntax). relative clauses that modify definite noun phrases can have a describing function in which case they are non-restrictive in form. rcs that modify indefinite noun phrases on the other hand, cannot have an identifying function. they can have a classifying function, in which case they are restrictive in form, or they can have a describing function, in which case they are non-restrictive in form. so articles should be represented in the deep structure as syntactic features on the head noun. it is suggested that “kernel” sentences have only indefinite articles and it is anaphora that changes the kernel indefinites to derived definites. thus definitization ensures the conversion of constituent indefinite articles to definite status which embraces three types of definite articles: anaphoric (within a sentence), definite description with relative clause, and non-linguistically anaphoric (contextual). references: 1. baker, c. (1989) english syntax. cambridge: mit press. 2. chomsky,n. (1965) aspects of the theory of syntex. cambridge. ma: mit press. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 72 3. grosu, a. (2002) strange relatives at the interface of two millenia. tel aviv: tel aviv university. 4. huddleston, r. (1971) the sentence in written english. cambridge: cup. 5. jacobs, r. (1995) english syntax.a grammar for english language professionals. oxford: oxford university press. 6. lyons, j. (1977) semantics. cambridge: cup. 7. perlmutter, d. (1970) on the article in english. cambridge: mit press. 8. quirk, r.; greenbaum, s.; leech, g. and svartvik, j. (1985) a comprehensive grammar of the english language. london: longman. 9. robbins, b. (1968) the definite article in english transformations. the hague: mouton. sources of data: 1. chesterton,g. (2001) the innocence of father brown. london: penguin book ltd. 2. fitzgerald, s. (1991) the great gatsby. cambridge:cup. 3. mitchell, m. (1936) gone with the wind.new york: macmillan. ðá¹ç ¹»ñá áñáßçã »ñïñáñ¹³ï³ý ý³ë³¹³ëáõãûáõýý»ñç ñ³ñ³μ»ñû³éç çù³ëï³ûçý áýï³éù³ý ñ³ñóáõù ²ýíç×» éç ¿ ñá¹ç áõý»ó³í ù»í ¹»ñá ù»ñ³ï³ý³ï³ý μáéáñ ï³éáõûóý»ñáõù: ´³ó³éáõãûáõý ã»ý ï³½ùáõù ý³¨ áñáßçã »ñïñáñ¹³ ï³ý ý³ë³¹³ ëáõãûáõýý»ñá, áñáýó ñ³ñ³μ»ñû³éç ñ»ï û·ï³·áñíí³í ñá¹á çñ áõñáõûý çù³ëï³ûçý ý»ñ¹ñáõùý ¿ ï³ï³ñáõù »ñïñáñ¹³ ï³ý ý³ë³¹³ ëáõãûáõýý»ñç ï³ñáñáßù³ý ñ³ñóáõù: àñáßçã »ñïñáñ¹³ ï³ý ý³ë³¹³ ëáõãûáõýý»ñá ï³ñáõ »ý éçý»é ù³ëý³ïáõý³ï ¨ ³ýù³ëý³ïáõý³ï: ì»ñççýçë ñ³ñ³μ»ñû³éá ë»ñï ï³åí³í ¿ çñ»ý μýáõã³·çñ ñ³ý¹çë³óáõ ã»ù³ïçï ß³ñáõý³ïáõãû³ý ñ»ï ¨ ï³ñçù ãáõýç ñá¹ç û·ï³·áñíù³ý ë³ñù³ý³÷³ïù³ý, ³ûëçýùý` ³ûëï»õ ï³ñáõ »ý û·ï³·áñíí»é ¨° áñáßû³é, ¨° ³ ýáñáß ñá¹»ñ: æ ï³ñμ» ñáõãûáõý ³ýù³ëý³ïáõý³ï ý³ë³¹³ ëáõãûáõýý»ñç, ù³ëý³ïáõý³ï áñáßçã »ñïñáñ¹³ ï³ý ý³ë³¹³ ëáõãûáõýý»ñç ñ³ñ³μ»ñû³éç ï³åá çñ ëïáñ³¹³ë ß³ñáõý³ïáõãû³ý ñ»ï ³û¹ù³ý ¿é ë»ñï ã¿, ù³ýç áñ ³ûëï»õ ùç³ûý ñ³í»éû³é ï»õ»ïáõãûáõý ¿ ý»ñï³û³óíáõù: ð³ñ³μ»ñû³éç çù³ëï³ûçý ß»ßï³¹ñáõùá å³ñ³ýçáõù ¿ ùç³ûý áñáßû³é ñá¹ç û·ï³·áñíáõù, áñá ï³ñáõ ¿ ñ³ý¹»ë ·³é ý³¨ ½ñáû³ï³ý ï³ñ·áí áñå»ë ñ³ñ³μ»ñû³éª û·ï³·áñíí³í ñ³ïáõï ·áû³ï³ýý»ñç ³éï³ûáõãû³ý ¹»åùáõù: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 73 microsoft word 2.methodology 105 122 (1) methodology armenian folia anglistika 105 promoting independent learning ofelya poghosyan, varduhi ghumashyan yerevan state university abstract at present the role of independent learning has become more crucial than ever. the rapid development of close ties between the countries of the world, the requirement of urgent solutions to numerous problems connected with ecology, peace, politics, economy, art, etc. have strengthened the need for an international global language in order to exchange information between different cultures. today this language is english and, consequently, learning english has become a must. the effectiveness of learning in general and that of independent learning in particular depends on the level of responsibility of the students. in other words, the student, who in fact is a learner, should have a clear idea of the plan of his/her study. the students should know how much time, effort and money they are going to ‘invest’ into their studies, and, moreover, they should be responsible for their own role in the interactive, student-centered ‘give and take’ process of learning a foreign language. key words: independent learning, interactive teaching, critical thinking, studentcentered teaching, strategic investment. introduction it is an undeniable fact that we (whoever we are: teachers, scholars, doctors, or just a human beings who have brains) do not develop when things are easy; we develop when we face challenges. since challenges turn up every now and then, we have to be lifelong learners. the new changes in all spheres of life – political, economic, cultural – make people take into account the new rules of the new games: to be flexible and be able to make transition from one frame of existence to another. therefore, today’s education more than ever requires that a learner should take bigger responsibility for his/her own learning. what does ‘independent learning’ mean and how does it respond to modern challenges in respect of learning? the concept of independent learning is closely interrelated with the terms frequently highlighted in modern methodological literature, namely critical thinking, creative thinking, interactive teaching, learning by doing, etc. the essence of these concepts, however, can mean different things to different people in different disciplines and cultures. therefore, all these terms should be armenian folia anglistika methodology 106 explained to students so that they know what is required from them within the new context and discipline. philip candy (1991:19) quotes foster (1972) to define independent learning/study as follows: “independent learning is a process, a method and a philosophy of education: in which a student acquires knowledge by his/her own efforts and develops the ability for inquiry and critical evaluation.” the results of long observations and studies have brought us to the conclusion that in the learning process the learner’s motto should be ‘we forget what we hear, we remember what we read, we learn what we do’; in other words, we learn by doing things. it is required that independent learning should include: a) freedom of choice in determining the objectives within limits of a given project or program and with the aid of a faculty adviser, counsellor, guide. b) independent learning requires freedom of process to carry out the objectives. c) finally, the most important characteristic, the most crucial and essential, is that it places increased educational responsibility on the student to achieve the objectives and evaluate the goals. thus, it can be stated that independent learning in its broadest sense is based on the so-called ‘strategic investment’ – a type of cognitive principle, besides automaticity, meaningful learning, the anticipation of reward and intrinsic motivation (brown 2001). any learner, and especially a language learner, needs a set of skills that is acquired by combining the following actions: observing, focusing, practicing, monitoring, correcting and redirecting. strategies-based instruction language is probably the most complex set of skills one could ever seek to acquire, therefore an investment in the form of developing multiple layers of strategies is necessary in order to get that language into one’s brain. in an era of communication, interactive, learner-centered teaching, sbi (strategiesbased instruction) simply cannot be overlooked. unfortunately, most teachers are so consumed with the ‘delivery’ of language to their students that they neglect to devote some effort to prepare the learners to the process of ‘receiving’ the language. the students, mostly unaware of the tricks of successful language learning, simply do whatever the teacher tells them to do, having no means to question the wisdom thereof. in an effort to fill class hours with fascinating material, teachers may overlook their mission which is to enable the learners to become independent of classroom, to become autonomous learners who develop their own pathway to success. students’ unprepared discourse becomes possible when they have necessary strategic competence to hold their own viewpoint in the ‘give and take’ of meaningful communication. thus, in case of independent learning students are required to take responsibility for their learning, they have to understand that a lot of effort and time should be spent in order to achieve a certain goal. the learners should be selfdirected, make decisions about what they will focus on and how much time they will methodology armenian folia anglistika 107 spend on learning both inside and outside the classroom. they should understand that they need to play a more active role in the learning process and this, in its turn, will require greater self-motivation, self-direction, creativity (employing analytical and critical thinking). they will also need organization and greater self-awareness (i.e. metacognition) of their learning needs and actions. interactive teaching it is an acknowledged fact that nearly all methods of teaching are more or less intertwined, interconnected and interdependent. hence, let us see what aspects of interactive teaching should be highlighted in connection with independent learning. in fact, the core of interactive teaching and learning is the ‘give and take’ process carried out through brainstorm activities. the latter should serve as feedback for both the learners and the teachers so as to assimilate the results, effects, inferences for the further development in learning. let us view the following two factors of interactive method of teaching from the point of view of independent learning. the teacher’s role in interactive teaching is to give the students some assignment, to get back what they have done and assimilate it. having done this, the teacher can decide what should be best to do next. needless to say, it is also important for a teacher to share the ‘secrets’ of developing and using learning and communicating strategies with the students. the teaching process should be directed to impromptu feedback so as the students should become conscious of their responsibility for successful learning. these characteristics of interactive learning as well as strategy-based instruction, in fact, coincide with those typical of independent learning. thus, a learner should be responsible for his/her own learning, and when performing practical tasks, he/she should use critical and creative tools which develop knowledge in learning. however, it is a must that theory and practice should always go hand in hand with one another. therefore, in the present article marked attention is paid to the theoretical foundations of interactive learning. douglas brown (2001) states that the theoretical foundations of interactive learning lie in what michael long (1996, 1985) described as the interaction hypothesis of second language acquisition. as far as stephen krashen’s (1997, 1985) concept of comprehensible input is concerned, long and others point out the importance of input and output in the development of language. as learners interact with each other through oral and written discourse, their communicative abilities are enhanced. consequently, the role of input and output, in other words, that of interactive teaching and learning, comes to be essential for independent learning as well. in recent researches on flt the term whole language has been widely and divergently used, but as r. pat (1991) states in her article, today it is unfortunately on the verge of losing the impact that it once had. armenian folia anglistika methodology 108 initially the term came from reading research and was used to emphasize the following: (a) the “wholeness” of language as opposed to views that fragmented language into its bits and pieces of phonemes, graphemes, morphemes, and words; (b) the interaction and interconnection between oral language (listening and speaking ) and written language (reading and writing); and (c) the importance (in literary societies) of the written code as natural and developmental, just as the oral code is (brown 2001). now the term encompasses more than that, i.e. the term whole language is used to describe cooperative learning, participatory learning, student centered learning, focus on the community of learners, focus on the social nature of language, use of authentic language, meaning-centered language, holistic assessment techniques in testing, integration of the “four skills”. nevertheless, whole language is not an activity that a teacher can employ and schedule into the lesson. it is an educational way of life that helps people to build meaningful connections between everyday learning and school learning (edelsky 1993). in fact, two interconnected concepts are brought together in the term whole language: a) the wholeness of language implies that language is not the sum of its many discrete parts. the first language acquisition of children takes place and begins by perceiving “wholes” (sentences, emotions, intonation patterns) before “parts” (brown 2001). in other words, second language teachers should help their students by employing such “wholes” rather than by trying to build language from bottom up. as far as wholeness of language includes the interrelationship of the four skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing), it is essential that a teacher should attend consciously to the integration of two or more of these skills in her/his classroom. edelsky (1993:149) assumes that whole language is a perspective “anchored in a vision of an equitable, democratic, diverse society”. since language is used by a communicator to construct meaning as well as reality, by learning a language students come to understand a specific system of social actions that both constrain and liberate. consequently, part of teachers’ job is to empower their learners to liberate themselves from social, political, or economic forces which constrain them. the term content-based instruction (cbi) is “the integration of content learning with language teaching aims. more specifically, it refers to the concurrent study of language and subject matter with the form and sequence of language presentation dictated by content material” (brinton, snow and wesche 1989:150). when language becomes a medium of conveying relevant information, the learners display interest toward matters of intrinsic concern. in fact, language takes on its appropriate role as a vehicle for accomplishing a set of content goals and this is especially very important for lsp learners. learner’s responsibility for his/her own learning over the last twenty years, the field of cognitive science has taught us a lot about how people learn. a central principle that has been generally accepted is that everything methodology armenian folia anglistika 109 we learn is ‘constructed’ for ourselves. that is, any external agent is essentially powerless to have a direct effect on what we learn if our brain does not do it itself. the learner should have responsibility to receive information, look for connections, analyze, interpret and make sense of it, no outside force will be able to make him do so. this does not mean that the effort has to be voluntary and conscious on our parts. our brain takes in information and operate continuously on different levels, but only some of these levels are consciously directed. but, conscious or not, it is important to realize that learning is done through one’s brain, and therefore, this process is only indirectly related to the teacher and teaching. in this respect we can note that learning becomes independent. we often face situations when even the most interesting lectures result in limited learning if our students do not do the necessary work to process it. we would like to mention some reasons why students’ learning, in our opinion, may fall short of expectations in classroom situations: a) students fail to understand a crucial concept part-way through the lecture and, as a result, what follows will be unintelligible for them. b) students miss some important information or do not understand well what went before, so the conceptual structures on which the lecture is built are absent in their mental framework. c) students lack interest or motivation, they are unwilling to make a mental effort and follow the presentation. moreover, the desire to understand the arguments and validate the inferences is absent. conclusion to sum up, it should be stated that in the process of ‘changing winds and shifting sands’, as albert mackwardt (1972:5) said, about every quarter of a century a new method of learning emerges, depending on the changes in all spheres of life in general and in educational sphere in particular. each new method breaks from the old one but takes some of the positive aspects of the previous practices with it. independent learning is not an exception in this respect. independent learning is an example of the cyclical nature of methods found today, another key to the solution of the problem of learning. the solution will become possible due to the learners’ responsibility to collect information, look for connections, analyze, interpret and make sense of it. references: 1. candy, ph. (1991) self-direction for lifelong learning. oxford: oup. 2. brown, d. (2001) teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy. usa: san francisco state university. armenian folia anglistika methodology 110 3. oxford, r. (1997) cooperative learning, collaborative learning, and interaction. three communicative strands in the language classroom. // modern language journal 81:443-56. cambridge: cup. 4. long, m.h. (1988) input in second language acquisition. rowley, ma: newbury. 5. krashen, s.d. (1985) the input hypothesis. london: longman. 6. rigg, p. (1991) whole language in tesol. // tesol quarterly 25:525-42. cambridge: cup. 7. edelsky, c. (1993) whole language in perspective. // tesol quarterly 27:548-50. 8. snow, m.a. (1998) trends and issues in content-based instruction. //annual review of applied linguistics. new york: cup, pp. 243-67. æýùýáõñáõûý áõëáõóù³ý ëã³ýáõùá æýùýáõñáõûý ïñãáõãûáõý ëï³ý³éáõ ³ñ¹ûáõý³í»ïáõãûáõýá å³ûù³ý³íáñí³í ¿ ëáíáñ»éáõ ýï³ïù³ùμ áõë³ýáõç å³ï³ëë³ý³ïíáõãû³ý ½գ³óáõùáí, çýãå»ë ý³¨ ñ³ñóç ³éýãáõãû³ùμ ýñ³ áõý»ó³í í»ñ³μ»ñùáõýùáí: ð³ñï ¿, áñ ëáíáñáõá ñëï³ï å³ïï»ñ³óýç áõ ñ³ëï³ý³, ã» áõëáõùý³éáõãû³ý áýã³óùáõù áñù³ý å³ù³ý³ï áõ ç³ýù ¿ ýñ³ý ³ýññ³å»ßï ý»ñ¹ý»é ³ûë ï³ù ³ûý գçï»éçùá ó»éù μ»ñ»éáõ ñ³ù³ñ: æýùýáõñáõûý ïñãáõãûáõý ëï³óáõ áõë³ýáõá å»ïù ¿ ñ³ëï³ý³, áñ çñ ³éç¨ ¹ñí³í ýå³ï³ïç çñ³գáñíù³ý, ¨ áý¹ñ³ýñ³å»ë ïíû³é ³ëå³ñ»½áõù ñ³çáõáõãû³ý ñ³ëý»éáõ ñ³ù³ñ ý³ å»ïù ¿ éçýç ýå³ï³ï³ëé³ó` çñ ùï³íáñ ý»ñáõåý áõõõ»éáí ëï»õí³գáñí³ï³ý ùïùç ¨ í»ñéáõí³ï³ý áõý³ïáõãûáõýý»ñç ½³ñգ³óù³ýá: развитие самостоятельного обучения эффективность самостоятельного обучения впрямую зависит от степени чувства ответственности студента к поставленной им цели получить те или иные знания в данной сфере. студент должен ясно и четко сознавать какие усилия и какое время ему/ей потребуется для приобретения конкретных знаний и достижения конкретной цели. студенту важно осознать, что только благодаря собственным усилиям и целенаправленности, развивая свои креативные и аналитические способности, возможно достичь определенных успехов и поставленной цели. microsoft word 1.linguistics 7 104 (1) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 42 on nominalization, a rhetorical device in academic writing (with special attention to electronic engineering research articles) minoo khamesian sanaati noushirvani university abstract writing for science and technology is indubitably proliferating nowadays, which results in scientists being under ever-increasing pressure to write and publish their articles. to fulfill the goal of writing on different scientific domains and publishing, it is of paramount importance to be familiar with the peculiarities of the written style of the language of the discourse community. as far as engineering disciplines are concerned, foremost with electronic engineering in mind, of all various stylistic problems in scientific/technical writing, “nominalization”, as one of the most distinctive linguistic characteristics of academic writing, deserves a lot of attention. since academic writing is often characterized by high frequency of nominalization, in the hope of providing a new insight into the development of writing for engineering, the present article aims to reveal the importance of the salutary effects of this systemic resource that will put the students and academics on the path of academic excellence. key words: nominalization, academic writing, rhetorical impact, competence. introduction as believed, using the english language to successfully communicate scientific findings does not come easily to most authors, i.e. good scientists are not always good writers, particularly when they are non-native. to create a persuasive scientific text one should be able to meet the requirements of the genre and the expectations of the discourse community. it’s beyond suspicion that academic writing plays a crucial role in the dissemination of scientific knowledge, the latter being the main and most effective means of communication within different spheres of scholarship. it has been mentioned time and again that the style of academic writing is depersonalized or objective, since it concentrates on the field of discourse, the subject matter or the content of research findings as well as follows a conventionalized format with specifications on the number of pages and length of report. this creates a need for a specialized information packaging and texture regarding not only the economy of words, but also retaining the sophistication and scholarly taste through which a linguistics armenian folia anglistika 43 particular text can be marked as academic. one of the key strategies to achieve information density in academic writing as well as objectivity is nominalization. this paper analyses the effects of nominalization in achieving word economy and information density as well as objectivity in the writing of an electronic engineering research article. in the present study the analysis concentrates on verb and adjective based nominalized items of romance affixation which are believed to be ubiquitous in academic and professional writing. as biber puts it, “they are often used to expand an idea and integrate information laconically” (biber 1988:45). bhatia (1993) also maintains that nominalizations often refer to abstract concepts and generalizations; they can be overused in formal register as well, especially when writers desire to give the text an enhanced style. on the other hand, according to halliday, nominalization as a process is used in scientific discourse to “create technical taxonomies; it helps the writer to relate one process to another and thus create chains of reasoning” (halliday 1998:195). francis states that, “nominalization is a synoptic interpretation of reality: it freezes the processes and makes them static, so that they can be talked about and evaluated. in other words, they are no longer about what is happening, but what is being internalised and ‘factualised’ by society as to the status of what has already happened: the relationships between events rather than the events themselves” (francis 1990:54). being constantly utilized in all aspects of such a broad discipline as electronic engineering is, it is crucial for the students concerned with their career advancement and scientific development to understand and perform well in the language. as far as the frequency of nominalizations is concerned, we should hasten to add that they were found to occur most frequently in academic papers: 92 occurrences per 1,000 words, as compared to 27 per 1,000 in conversations, 56 per 1,000 in lectures, and 55 per 1,000 in letters (chafe & danielewicz 1987). halliday also describes two advantages of nominalization: “[w]hen a figure ... is reworded ... in a nominalized form; a considerable amount of energy is released, in terms of the two semantic potentials; the potential for referring, and the potential for expanding. that is, for transforming the flux of experience into configurations of semiotic categories, and for building up such configurations into sequences of reasoned argument” (halliday 1998:197). it is also believed that lexical nominalizations can sometimes reduce reader comprehension. according to bhatia, nominalizations in academic genre “have gained a certain degree of notoriety” because of their prevalence but also due to their “pomposity” (bhatia 1991:217). as he maintains, nominalization is considered a convention in academic writing, being employed for specific communicative function, which requires shared knowledge of discourse community. hitchings (2013), also mentions that nominalizations give priority to actions rather than to the people responsible for them. sometimes this is apt, because responsibility is armenian folia anglistika linguistics 44 not considered to be relevant. hitchings believes they are an instrument of manipulation, in politics and in business for they emphasize products and results, rather than the processes by which products and results are achieved (<http:// opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/henry-hitchings>). however, it has been shown that nominalizations are able to fulfill certain communicative goals and to function as rhetorical devices enabling scientific writers to present their findings in a clear and concise way. analysis: characteristics of nominalization in academic writing in this part of the paper we concentrate on the analysis of the rhetorical impact of using nominalizations in an electronic engineering research article, published in “journal of electrical and electronic engineering”, 2014, vol. 2(1), pp. 9-16; available at: <http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/j/jeee>. nominalization, as the passages adduced below reveal, has converted verbs (actions or events) as well as adjectives into nouns (things, concepts, or people). (1) ghana has developed a strategic national energy plan (20062020) [6] with issues concerning energy efficiency, electrification, elimination of power shortage and liberalisation of the power generation market, which will allow independent power producers to add their generated power to the national grid. (2) the use of the off-grid pv system depends on the comparative costs, affordability, quality of service, and accessibility of other energy options which are locally available. (3) the equipment costs are the initial costs incurred at the beginning of the pv system electrification whilst the operational costs include the running costs, maintenance and replacement costs. (4) energy demand is increasing day in day out due to increase in population, urbanization and industrialization with its concomitant lifestyle. the world’s fossil fuel supply e.g. coal, petroleum and natural gas will thus be depleted in a few hundred years [1]. (5) energy plays a pivotal role in our daily activities. for this reason, the degree of development and civilization of a country is measured by the amount of utilization of energy by it citizenry. (6) in order to ensure that there are no defects or inefficiency in the linguistics armenian folia anglistika 45 pv system which is usually caused by poor maintenance or ageing of its components [14], it is essential to collect accurate data for the long term performance analysis of the system. thus, in the given passages verbs electrify; eliminate; liberalise; maintain; generate; replace; urbanize; industrialize, etc. have been turned to electrification; elimination; liberalization; maintenance; generation; and replacement; urbanization; industrialization, etc. a similar process of nominalization can be observed in adjective → noun transfers: efficient; affordable; and accessible into efficiency; affordability; and accessibility. we cannot but say that, when a verb or an adjective is nominalized, it becomes a concept rather than an action, or feature. as a consequence, the “tone” of the writing becomes more abstract and also more formal. nominalizations, being predominantly of romance origin, here account for the scarcity of their expressive-emotional-evaluative overtones. it is generally assumed that for native speakers of english words of romance origin often denote something very general and abstract. (akhmanova & idzelis 1978). this is also in line with the widely held view that nominalizations tend to be associated with academic writing as they can assist in maintaining an impersonal tone, often by deleting a human agent within a given sentence. we cannot but notify that nominalization could enable the author to argue for a certain idea without his personal involvement. otherwise stated, it facilitates the author with being able to eliminate the need to specify participants, such as the agent and the patient, resulting in focus in the proposition to be shifted from the “doer” to the “deed”. this can be equated with the concept of ‘objectivity’ which is one of the peculiarities of scientific/technical writing. moreover, as the extracted sentences show, several complex abstract ideas are also packed into one sentence. as a consequence, according to christie nominalized phrases “abstract away from immediate, lived experiences, to build instead truths, abstractions, generalizations, and arguments” (christie 2001:66), resulting in the participation of normalized words in the process. as easily recognizable, when verbs and adjectives are nominalized, they become concepts rather than actions. as a result, the writer is provided with the chance of increasing the amount and density of information to make further comment or observation about the concept in the clause. for exsample, (7) the required load on a daily basis for the premise is calculated and estimated. the verbs calculated and estimated are nominalized, so: (8) the calculation and estimation of the required load on a daily basis for the premise, resulting in: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 46 (9) the calculation and estimation of the required load on a daily basis for the premise is 43534.4 wh/day or 43.53 kwh/day calculated earlier. consequently, according to the above examples, the verbs in the first sentence are nominalized to construct the adduced sentence, and this gives the author a chance to add more information by commenting upon the newly formed concept. according to jamshid (2005), nominalization can be characterized by “information density”, which is hard to achieve with more congruent use of the verbs. this means, more meanings can be packed into nouns than into verbs thereby opening up for the nominalized process more expressive possibilities as a result of the fact that more operations in terms of modification, subordination, coordination can be made on nouns than on verbs. the motivation for nominalization may be that the turning of a verb into a noun helps the readers to identify the processes and events that are being subject to study. in other words, it is easier to identify that we are studying, for example, the elimination of power shortage than power shortage is eliminated. conclusion suffice to say that language and science are interconnected, otherwise stated, learning science is to learn a language created for codifying, extending and transmitting scientific knowledge. as martin (1993a: 200) maintains: “(...) in science, language is a fundamental tool. it is used to classify, decompose and explain, and to recount the investigations that form the basis of a scientific world view. it follows that to be illiterate in science is to be denied access to a crucial aspect of its technology. (...) science cannot be understood ‘in your own words’. it has evolved a special use of language in order to interpret the world in its own, not in common sense, terms.” the conclusion could be drawn that nominalization being a marker of academic writing significantly increases the general volume of information in an economical way and contributes to the objectivity of the text. otherwise stated, nominalizations render the text more formal for they enable the author to incorporate more information, hence more complex sentences. being marked as a peculiarity of scientific/technical writing, it does not seem unreasonable to nominalize verbs and adjectives quite often in eap. nominalizations enable a writer to classify events as abstract things and predicate over them. this very useful conceptual and linguistic operation is not least made extensive use of in all scientific texts. since nominalization is an essential resource for constructing scientific discourse, we are hoping to help eap learners with handling the kind of language they need to write in order to meet the publication standards required, enabling them to face an linguistics armenian folia anglistika 47 increasing demand for academic writing competence. references: 1. akhmanova, o.s., idzelis, r.f. (1987) what is the english we use. m.: moscow university press. 2. bhatia, v.k. (1992) discourse functions and pragmatics of mixing: advertising across cultures, world englishes, vol. 11, n 2/3, pp. 195-215. 3. bhatia, v.k. (1993) analysing genre: language use in professional settings. london: longman. 4. biber, d. (1988) variation across speech and writing. cambridge: cup. 5. chafe, w. and danielewicz, j. (1987) properties of spoken and written language. // comprehending oral and written language. / ed. by r. horowitz & s. samuels. san diego, c.a.: academic press inc., pp. 83-113. 6. christie, f. (2001) the development of abstraction in adolescence in subject english. // developing advanced literacy in first and second language: meaning with power. / ed. by m. schleppegrell and m.c. colombi. mahwah, n.j.: erlbaum, pp. 45-66. 7. francis, g. (1990) theme in the daily press. / occasional papers in systemic linguistics. vol. 4, pp. 51‐87. 8. halliday, m.a.k. (1985) introduction to functional grammar. london: arnold. 9. halliday, m.a.k. (1998) things and relations: regrammaticising experience as technical knowledge. // reading science: critical and functional perspectives on discourses of science. / ed. by j.r. martin and r. veel. london/new york: routledge. pp.185-237. 10. hitchings, h. (2013) the dark side of verbs as nouns. // the new york times. available at: <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/henry-hitchings> [accessed october 2015]. 11. jamshid, i. (2005) grammatical metaphor. available at: <www.folk.ulo.no/./meta phor.htm> [accessed october 2015]. 12. martin, j.r. (1993a) literacy in science: learning to handle text as technology. // writing science: literacy and discursive power. / ed. by m.a.k. halliday and j.r. martin. london: the falmer press, pp. 221-267. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 48 ²ýí³ý³ï³ý³óáõùá áñå»ë ñé»ïáñ³ï³ý ñý³ñù ·çï³ï³ý ëáëùáõù (¿é»ïïñáý³ûçý ׳ñï³ñ³·çïáõãû³ý áéáñïç ·çï³ï³ý ñá¹í³íý»ñç ñçù³ý íñ³) ü»ñï³ûáõùë ·çïáõãû³ý ¨ ï»ëýáéá·ç³ûç ëñáýã³ó ½³ñ·³óù³ý å³ûù³ýý»ñáõù ³×áõù ¿ ·çïáõãû³ý ï³ñμ»ñ μý³·³í³éý»ñáõù ·çï³ï³ý ñá¹í³íý»ñ ·ñ»éáõ ùçïáõùá: ²ûë ³éáõùáí ß³ï ï³ñ¨áñ ¿, áñ ·çïý³ï³ýý»ñá í³ýáã éçý»ý ïíû³é ¹çëïáõñëçí ñ³ýñáõûãç ·ñ³íáñ ëáëùç 黽í³á׳ï³ý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñçý: ׳ñï³ñ³·çïáõãû³ý ¨ ³é³ççý ñ»ñãçý ù»ù»ý³ßçýáõãû³ý μý³·³í³éáõù ç ãçíë ·çï³ï»ëýçï³ï³ý ï»ùëï»ñç 黽íç á×ç ñ»ï ï³åí³í ³ûé ëý¹çñý»ñç ñ³ïï³å»ë ï³ñ¨áñíáõù ¿ ³ýí³ý³ï³ý³óù³ý՝ áñå»ë ³ï³¹»ùç³ï³ý ·ñ³íáñ ëáëùç ³é³í»é ï³ñμ»ñ³ïçã 黽í³ï³ý ñ³ïï³ýçßç ¹»ñá: ø³ýç áñ ³ûë »ñ¨áõûãá μ³í³ï³ýçý ñ³×³ë ¿ ñ³ý¹çåáõù ·çï³ï³ý ·ñ³íáñ ëáëùáõù, ëáõûý ñá¹í³íá ýå³ï³ï áõýç μ³ó³ñ³ûï»éáõ ¹ñ³ ï³ñ¨áñáõãûáõýý áõ ¹ñ³ï³ý ³½¹»óáõãûáõýá áõë³ýáõý»ñç ¨ ·çïý³ï³ýý»ñç ·çï³ï³ý ·ñ³íáñ ëáëùç ½³ñ·³óù³ý ·áñíáýã³óáõù: номинация как риторический прием в научном тексте (на материале научных статей в области электронной инженерии) в настоящее время вместе со стремительным развитием науки и технологий возрастает необходимость написания научных статей, что требует определенных знаний лингвостилистических особенностей письменной речи того или иного профессионального дискурса. в статье рассматриваются лингвостилистические особенности научно-технических текстов в области архитектуры, в частности машиностроения, выделяется особая роль номинации как наиболее выразительного языкового средства письменной речи. явление номинации в научной речи встречается довольно часто, в статье обосновывается важность номинации, а также рассматриваются проблемы ее правильного использования при развитии навыков научной письменной речи у студентов и преподавателей. microsoft word contens verjin linguistics armenian folia anglistika 37 the use of simile in emily brontë’s wuthering heights jemma militonyan yerevan state university ijevan branch abstract figures of speech are imaginative tools in both literature and ordinary communication used for explaining speech beyond its usual usage. emily brontë’s wuthering heights (1847) – the only novel written by this writer differs from many other literary works due to its style, its particular use of language and figures of speech. the literary tool and figure of speech we have illustrated in the present paper is the simile. emily brontë uses simile as a means both to creatively and purposefully convey her thoughts and ideas to the reader and to impact him/her. the literary analysis shows that the simile is also an excellent device for the author to make an unusual thing seem more familiar or a familiar thing seem more unique. through simile the reader may imagine vividly the fictive world of emily brontë’s wuthering heights. key words: simile, comparison, metaphor, functions of simile, imaginative tools, structural design. introduction emily brontë’s wuthering heights (1847) has aroused much controversy based on themes, style and techniques. the novel received neither critical praise nor any local popularity during its initial publication. the victorian society would not accept the violent characters and harsh realities of wuthering heights, so it had been deemed as coarse, immoral, brutal, disagreeable and diabolical (anonymous 1848). the reading public has changed substantially since 1847, and now both critical and popular opinion praise this singular work of fiction by emily brontë. the subsequent audiences are both more understanding and accepting the use of unsavory aspects of human life in literature. modern critics armenian folia anglistika linguistics 38 speak highly of the strength of the novel’s structure and on emily brontë‘s dynamic and disciplined handling of language. stylistically, much ahead of her time, brontë culled a form best suited to articulate her subject and ideas effectively. in fact, mark schorer (1949) wrote a praising introduction to wuthering heights presuming it as one of the most carefully constructed novels in literature. the novel, as an effective medium for the criticism and interpretation of life, comes into existence through the creativity of the writer. the literary text is an artifice; a work of verbal art, and the readers come in contact with the fictional world of the novel through its language. in fact, many contemporary critics praising brontë's style, imagery, and word choice, contend that wuthering heights is actually poetry masquerading as prose. simile, comparison, metaphor in wuthering heights figures of speech are imaginative tools in both literature and ordinary communications used for explaining speech beyond its usual usage. figurative language constitutes the cornerstone of the literariness or ornamental nature of literary language, as it enables the writer to exploit and manipulate the latent potentials of language, in various ways, for specific stylistic effects (fadaee 2011:21). in her novel brontë makes a wide use of such figures of speech as metaphor, simile, personification, imagery, irony, hyperbole, etc. the word simile is derived from the latin word simile, meaning resemblance and likenesses. technically, simile is the comparison of two objects with some similarities. it is stated that “simile is fundamentally a figure of speech requiring overt reference to source and target entities, and an explicit construction connecting them” (gibbs 1994:40). here are some more definitions of simile: '”the intensification of some one feature of the concept in question is realized in a device called simile” (galperin 1981:152). “like metaphor, it [the simile] is a semantic figure, a mental process playing a central role in the way we think and talk about the world, which often associates different spheres” (bredin 1998:68). linguistics armenian folia anglistika 39 most definitions of simile describe it as involving “an explicit comparison between two things or actions” – signalled, in the majority of cases – by the presence of like (cruse 2006:165). the aim of using a simile is to attain a more figurative or graphic characterization of one of the objects compared. an indispensable condition for the creation of a simile is the likeness of one feature belonging to both of the objects while other features may be entirely different. at the same time this common feature is permanently characteristic of only one of the objects compared. we should not confuse ordinary comparison and simile as they represent two diverse processes. galperin (1981:152) states that “comparison means weighing two objects belonging to one class of things with the purpose of establishing the degree of their sameness or difference.” the simile expresses complex analogical conceptualizations between entities of two different domains while the comparison focuses on the same domain. along with the simile, we can find examples of ordinary comparisons in the mentioned novel. his books are not as nice as mine. he imagined himself to be as accomplished as linton. he was as quick and as intelligent a child as ever you were. only, catherine, do me this justice: believe that if i might be as sweet, and as kind, and as good as you are, i would be as willingly, and more so, than as happy and as healthy. (pp. 95, 105, 105, 107) the comparison takes into consideration all the properties of the two objects, focusing on the one that is compared. the simile differs from the ordinary comparison as the subject matter, i.e., the target object in the simile is characterized through its comparison with another, ontologically heterogeneous object. the result is the creation of a new subjective image, different from the original. the simile excludes all the properties of the compared objects except the one which is common to them (miller 1993:373). armenian folia anglistika linguistics 40 the simile forcibly sets one object against another regardless of the fact that they may be completely alien to each other. and, without our being aware of it, the simile gives rise to a new understanding of the characterizing object – as well as of the object characterized. the comparison in a simile is formally expressed by words like as, as if, as though, like, seem. […] and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun. […] he broke out as i entered, turning to his daughter-in-low, and employing an epithet as harmless as duck, or sheep. catherine's face was just like the landscapes-shadows and sunshine flitting over it in rapid succession […]. (pp. 4, 14, 111) like in the simile, in the metaphor two different phenomena (things, events, ideas, actions) are simultaneously brought to mind by the imposition of some or all of the inherent properties of one object on the other which by nature is deprived of these properties. such an imposition generally results in the creation of metaphor. the creator of the metaphor finds in the two corresponding objects certain features which to his eye have something in common (galperin 1981:127). the comparison, however, is not expresses through the like or as (as in the case of the simile). the most general description is that metaphor is an expression with two conceptual domains (knowledge fields) – where one is understood in terms of the other (gibbs 1994). the two concepts are referred to as source and target, where the source is the domain where the actual statement is generated, and target is the domain that will be used to explain the statement. often, the two domains even help to explain each other (fauconnier 1995). encyclopaedia britannica (metaphor 2017) puts it as follows: “metaphor [is a] figure of speech that implies comparison between two unlike entities, as distinguished from simile, an explicit comparison signalled by the words like or as.” metaphors have a way of activating previous experiences and associations. at a first glance linguistics armenian folia anglistika 41 they can seem ambiguous and paradoxical, but in practice they can explain complex concepts both quicker and more accurate than a more literal explanation. both the simile and the metaphor are figures of speech, and both operate by comparing the thing with something else in a figurative (not literal) way. this is why the simile and the metaphor can be somehow confusing. it is sometimes believed that the difference between the simile and the metaphor comes down to a word. similes use the words like or as to compare things while metaphors, in contrast, directly state a comparison. but, actually, the two imply different aspects of language. a simile retains some irresolvable difference which means one can never fully substitute for the other. on the other hand, a metaphor actually is a substitution. thus, it can be stated that if the simile is an approximation, then the metaphor is an equation itself. the simile, being an approximation, cannot be extended, substituted, or reversed. but the metaphor, being an equation, can be reversed, extended, and substituted by other metaphors. we have to remember that metaphors and similes are not paraphrases of one another. they can, of course, function as paraphrases of one another in a usual or most frequent case, when a metaphor and a simile yield comparable interpretations. but this most usual or frequent case is, paradoxically, a special case: it is not a universal property of the metaphors and the respective simile (glukcksberg 2006:376). here are some vivid examples of metaphorical usages from the wuthering heights: it was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn. [...] the stab of a knife could not inflict a worse pang than he suffered at seeing his lady vexed. [...] one thin, blue wreath, curling from the kitchen chimney. (pp. 40, 40,127) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 42 the functions of the simile according to fromilhague (1995:88-94), the simile has various functions: first, it serves as a means of communicating concisely and efficiently. it is one of the sets of linguistic devices which extends the linguistic resources available. secondly, it can function as a cognitive tool for thought in that it enables us to think about the world of the novel in alternative ways. in discourse, the simile can also fulfill more specific functions depending on the textual genre in which it occurs. in scientific texts, for example, the simile and analogical reasoning play an important role. a simile usually consists of three components: (a) what is compared (the subject of the simile); (b) with what the comparison is made (the object of the simile) and (c) the basis of the comparison (e.g. subj. basis obj. she trembled like a reed.). the common feature between two ideas in a simile is most frequently expressed by an adjective: […] when glare of white letters started from dark, as vivid as specters. […] and his face as white as the wall behind him. […] took an opportunity of escaping into the free air, now clear, and still, and cold as impalpable ice. […] her eyes sparkled as bright as diamonds. they both promised to grow up as rude as savages. […] and linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire. […] for the space of half a year, the gunpowder lay as harmless as sand. (pp. 10, 13, 15, 20, 21, 35, 40) we can come across many other examples in the wuthering heights where emily brontë uses different animal similes for a more imaginative linguistics armenian folia anglistika 43 characterization of a phenomenon, and represents features typical of animals to characterize people. […] who obeyed her like a dog. he’s just like a dog, is he not, ellen. […] pulling me back by the skin of my neck, like a dog. […] he gnashed at me and foamed like a mad dog. i’d go stretch myself over her grave and die like a faithful dog. […] i noticed he breathed as fast as a cat. we were quarrelling like cats about you. […] turning to his daughter-in-law, and employing an epithet as harmless as duck, or sheep. […] i adjourned to my study, feeble as kitten […]. […] he was as uncomplaining as a lamb… her cousin had shrunk into a corner of the settle, as quiet as a mouse […]. we all kept as mute as mice a full half hour. […] and on my giving chase ran like a mouse over and under and behind the furniture. […] she could be as soft and mild as a dove… […] and he would crush you like a sparrow's egg. cathy, this lamb of yours threatens like a bull! […] asked the hermit, glaring like a hungry wolf. […] for we heard him sporting like a horse… i confess it with shame-shrunk icily into myself, like a snail. (pp. 110, 130, 32, 69, 75, 136, 46, 14, 15, 18, 113, 20, 83, 80, 45, 50, 59, 80, 4) similes may suggest analogies in the character of actions performed. in this case the two members of the structural design of the simile will resemble each other through the actions they perform. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 44 she turned upon me as a mouse might turn if anyone attempted to assist him in counting his gold. my love for linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, i'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. heathcliff would as soon lift a finger at you as the king would march his army against a colony of mice. he might as well plant an oak in a flower-pot, and expect it to thrive, as imagine he can restore her to vigour in the soil of his shallow cares? […] his frame shivering, not as one shivers with chill or weakness, but as a tight-stretched cord vibrates-a strong thrilling, rather than trembling. […] and she only remained, heaving like a sea after a high wind… […] they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind. (pp. 7, 36, 50, 66, 137, 5, 35) emily brontë uses the words devil, satan and death for descriptions and evaluations of some notions (mainly implying certain negative coloring). […] though it's as dark almost as if it came from the devil. […] and the whole of that time all round has been as still as death well, i won't repeat my offer of a wife: it is as bad as offering satan a lost soul. his young and fair features were almost as deathlike as those of the form beside him, and almost as fixed… […] but lurk glinting under them, like devil's spies… lonely, like the devil, and envious like him. (pp. 17, 40, 49, 70, 25, 120) linguistics armenian folia anglistika 45 conclusion similes elaborate, hopefully in a way that makes the writing more understandable or relatable. using similes attracts the attention and appeals directly to the senses of readers creating a picture in their minds which will make them experience what is being described in a more vivid way. the creativity of fiction depends to a large extent on the novelist’s artistic manipulation of the resources of language in order to attain certain aesthetic effect and we can see that emily brontë was a master of that manipulation and asserts similarity as two different notions presupposing dissimilarity. references: 1. anonymous (1848) douglas jerrold’s weekly newspaper, jan.15, london. 2. bredin, h. (1998) comparisons and simile. // lingua, 105, pp. 67-78. 3. cruse, d.a. (2006) a glossary of semantics and pragmatics. edinburgh: edinburgh university press. 4. fadaee, e. (2011) symbols, metaphors and similes in literature: a case study of animal farm. // journal of english and literature vol. 2(2), pp. 19-27. 5. fauconnier, g. (1995) cognitive mappings in semantics. // ling. 554.351, university of new mexico, summer program. 6. fromilhague, c. (1995) les figures de style. paris: nathan université. 7. galperin, i.r. (1981) stylistics. m.: moscow higher school. 8. gibbs, r.w. (1994) the poetics of mind. uk, cambridge: cup. 9. glucksberg, s. & haught, c. (2006) on the relation between metaphor and simile: when comparison fails. // mind and language, 21 (3), pp. 360-378. 10. metaphor. (copyright 2017) // encyclopædia britannica, inc. available at: <https://www.britannica.com/art/metaphor> [accessed july 2017]. 11. miller, g. (1993) images and models, similes and metaphor. // metaphor and thought. cambridge: cup, pp. 357-400. 12. schorer, m. (1949) fiction and the matrix of anology. // the kenyon review. vol. 11 (4), pp. 539-560. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 46 source of data: brontë, e. (1992) wuthering heights. london: wordswoth editions. համեմատությունը էմիլի բրոնտեի մոլեգին հողմերի դարավանդ վեպում խոսքի պատկերավորման միջոցները գեղարվեստական խոսքում և առօրյա հաղորդակցության մեջ օգտագործվող ոճական հնարներ են, որոնք գործածվում են խոսքն ավելի արտահայտչական դարձնելու համար: մոլեգին հողմերի դարավանդ-ը էմիլի բրոնտեի միակ վեպն է, որը տարբերվում է իր ոճով և հատուկ լեզվի կիրառմամբ: հոդվածի նպատակն է ցույց տալ, թե ինչպես է էմիլի բրոնտեն օգտագործում համեմատություն ոճական հնարն իր մտքերն ավելի գունեղ, տպավորիչ և հուզականորեն արտահայտելու համար, քանի որ համեմատությունը գերազանց միջոց է ոչ սովորական իրերն ավելի ծանոթ և ծանոթ իրերն ավելի արտասովոր դարձնելու համար: դրա միջոցով ընթերցողը կարող է պատկերացնել գրական երկի երևակայական աշխարհը: maket 2014_layout 1.qxd the role of the key images in the creation and enhancement of the pragmatic potential of the text mariana sargsyan yerevan state university abstract the present paper argues that the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the text pragmatics can be enhanced at the expense of stylistic devices. particularly, the case of simile is considered with a view to exposing the pragmatic potential of the key images embedded therein. in line with our research goals, with the account of internal and external factors underlying the choice and application of language units, the pragmatic and pragmastylistic potential of the chosen units in the creation and enhancement of text pragmatics is revealed. key words: pragmatic orientation of text, qualitative and quantitative aspects of text pragmatics, simile, key image. introduction presently, the traditional systematic-structural approach to the study of literary texts is considered to be insufficient as far as the authentic understanding of the propositional and communicative-intentional aspects of the text are concerned. as linguists tend to claim the cutting-edge research should be directed toward the investigation of the internal and external factors underlying the choice and application of this or that language means; otherwise stated the research should be aimed at revealing the communication goals that the author pursues. pragmatics, the crucial aspect of the research on speech activity, accentuates the importance of the communicative content of speech in various conditions and forms of communication. despite the fact that the frames of the pragmatic research have considerably enlarged in the last decades, the pragmatic approach is still in the making. nevertheless, all the spheres of linguistic research, including text theory, display great enthusiasm for enriching the pure linguistic scope of research with the pragmatic one. this growing interest toward pragmatics is conditioned by the fact that the latter is oriented toward the study of communication, regarding the latter as a means of linguistic interaction. pragmatics considers the language as a system of means for expression and investigates how the language functions in certain conditions of communication. complex study of the process of communication demands that the role played by each component be revealed, wherein the pragmatic aspect of communication plays a most important role. it follows from the aforementioned that within the frames of the pragmatic research the traditionally established interest toward language and its systematic-structural properties is gradually switching toward such issues as how the language means are applied and how the language functions in various forms and conditions of communication. toward enhancing the pragmatic potential of the text тhe pragmatic approach to the study of language phenomena contributes to the revearmenian folia anglistika linguistics 76 lation of the communicative orientation of language units, their application on the part of the author as a tool of interaction and influence, as well as to displaying the relation between the message and the addressee’s response behavior. text, the basic category of speech activity, is defined by objective purpose of carrying out à certain function in the process of communication. text is endowed with such properties as completeness, the latter concerning both the content and the syntactic-ideological interaction of its units. the communicative property of language units is the main property which we would like to especially highlight within the scope of the present research. by communicative property of language units linguistic characteristics of the latter with the account of author-text-addressee triad are first of all meant. this unity is the basic provision of pragmatics. within the frames of the communicative approach to the study of language the interest toward the language identity of the author and reader is enhanced, especially when we take into account the fact that it is during the communication between the author and the reader that the formation and perception of the text is carried out. the study of language means necessitates that communicative-pragmatic approach be applied as far as this pragmatic value is created only under certain circumstances. thus, it follows that text interpretation is to a great extent context-based. as far as the category of text is concerned we can define text pragmatics as the expression of relations between the author and the reader and their attitude toward a certain piece of information that is contained in the text. the reader’s reaction is expressed implicitly and is formulated in the form of conclusions derived through explicitly applied linguistic and non-linguistic means. pragmatic content of the word is developed in speech, in real contexts of communication. the complex pragmatic approach toward texts, i.e. the account of structural-grammatical, lexical-phraseological and syntactical peculiarities, makes it possible to investigate the text in the unity of its propositional and communicative-intentional correlations. however, this kind of approach also takes into account the pragmatic orientation of the language means, which contributes to the creation and enhancement of the pragmatic potential of the text. according to arutyunova linguistic pragmatics involves a complex of issues related to the speaker, the addressee and their interaction. thus, it is to be concluded that the rules governing the choice and the application of language units are to be treated from the speaker’s point of view and in close interaction with the context (arutyunova 1990:390). according to naer, the pragmatic aspect can be found in texts of various genres and the difference between various pragmatic aspects is of either quantitative (i.e. intensity of interaction) or qualitative character (texts differ by the pragmatic context and the means of its expression) (naer 1985). text is actualized in the process of its creation and in the consciousness of its addressee not as a static, but rather a dynamic unit of language. text is endowed with structural-ideological properties, wherein information is the basic marker of ideology and completeness – that of the structure. traditionally, text pragmatics includes the following components: the pragmatic conarmenian folia anglistikalinguistics 77 tent, the pragmatic setting, the author and the reader (addressor and addressee), the predictable pragmatic effect (naer 1985:5). consequently, text pragmatics involves the author’s intention expressed through various means in the author’s and characters’ speeches, with the aim of affecting the reader, thus contributing to a deeper interpretation of these means and consequently that of the text. in terms of creating and enhancing the communicative interaction it is to be noted that text pragmatics is created as a result of the interaction between verbal and non-verbal components of speech. not aiming to undermine the role of non-verbal components in the creation of the pragmatic meaning, basing our assumption on our own observations, it is to be highlighted that on a large scale the verbal components of text pragmatics prevail over the nonverbal ones. stylistic devices, in particular, metaphors, similes, epithets, hyperboles, allusions, intensifiers of various text levels, idioms, proverbs as well as inversion are the basic means contributing to the creation of text pragmatics. above all, key images (e.g. the image-symbol), which concentrate the ideological and aesthetic information of the text, contribute to the creation and further enhancement of the text pragmatics. as has already been shown in our previous papers on the topic from the functional-communicative perspective, the key image, or the image-symbol, is an essential element of the text via which communication is established between the writer and the reader which serves as a powerful tool for bridging the communication gaps (gasparyan, sargsyan 2011:135; sargsyan 2013:41). qualitative and quantitative aspects of text pragmatics text pragmatics created at the expense of key images can be treated and analyzed from different perspectives. but here, in line with our research goals, we will regard text pragmatics from quantitative and qualitative aspects that get enhanced due to the application of key images. as will be argued below, ideologically and aesthetically overloaded images contribute to the enhancement of both quantitative and qualitative parameters of the author’s communication goals, thus resulting in an increased pragmatic load of language units and intensity of interaction. let us note at this point that the study of text pragmatics with the account of sds and ems of language bring our research closer to pragmastylistics, the principles and methods of which are now being widely developed with a view to providing a firm ground for decoding the pragmatic intention embedded in the text (hickey 1993). according to the results obtained by the study of a considerable amount of material, the quantitative aspect (i.e. the intensity of interaction) of the pragmatic aspect can be established through the repetition or frequent occurrence of words or images encompassing the basic themes and concepts underlying the writer’s message. thus, frequency of occurrence contributes to a deeper penetration into the text message and enhances the understanding of the latter. frequently repeated words or images bring forth certain emotional expressive and modal meanings which turn into kernel signals conveying the writer’s pragmatic intention. to demonstrate this specifics let us turn to the analysis of the lawrencean image of armenian folia anglistika linguistics 78 flower. the themes of womanhood and woman nature are one of the central themes exploited in d.h. lawrence’s literary tradition. a whole arsenal of masterfully developed images is applied for the depiction of the woman nature, woman’s role in the family and society. among these images a crucial role can be ascribed to the word flower which encompasses such emosemes as beauty, admiration, innocence, fragility, naturalness, fruitfulness, continuation of life, etc. now let us adduce a passage to demonstrate the aforementioned: now, washed all clean by her tears, she was new and frail like a flower just unfolded a flower so new, so tender, so made perfect by inner light, that he could not bear to look at her, he must hide himself, cover his eyes against her. she had the perfect candour of creation, something translucent and simple, like a radiant, shining flower that moment unfolded in primal blessedness. she was so new, so wonderful, clear, so undimmed. her soul was new, undefined and glimmering with the unseen. (d.h. lawrence “women in love” 1956, p.881) as is evident from the adduced excerpt, the literary image of flower is realized in similes, the latter being the most successfully exploited and frequently applied device in the writer’s narrative technique. in the mentioned context we deal with an extended simile, the pragmatic and emotional potential of which is enhanced by the repetition of the word flower on the one hand and the application of pre-position (new, frail, radiant, shining) and post-position (just unfolded, so new, so tender, so made perfect by inner light, unfolded in primal blessedness) epithets, parallel constructions (so new, so tender, so made perfect by inner light) on the other. if viewed in the global context of lawrence’s works, the frequent use of similes helps the word flower get enriched with a wide scope of inherent meanings and emotional-evaluative overtones. this observation directs us to the conclusion that the pragmatics of the passage is dependent on the character of the interaction between the pragmatic meaning of the applied language units (the image of flower realized in the simile) and the context. all the aforementioned allows us to state that the passage under consideration compared to others incorporating the image of flower and simile is especially effective in terms of enhancing both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of text pragmatics. if the quantitative aspect of text pragmatics can be enhanced by means of frequent repetition of key images, the qualitative aspect is dependent on to what extent this or that image becomes overloaded with aesthetic and ideological information, as well as the density of the pragmatic orientation of expressivity. the frequent repetition of the image of flower in works by the author contributes to the enhancement of the communicative impact on the reader. on a large scale, the image becomes an aesthetically, ideologically and pragmatically overloaded unit of text condensing the author’s pragmatic intention to a great extent. to reinforce our argument, let us switch to the analysis of another type of frequently applied lawrencean similes containing names of animals. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 79 she always kept a bright, blithe manner, and was pleasant to all the teachers. for she felt like a swan away the geese, of superior heritage and belonging. (d.h. lawrence “the rainbow”, p.358) she felt like a bird flying in the air, as her voice soared out, enjoyed herself extremely in the balance and flight of the song, like the motion of a bird’s wings... (d.h. lawrence “women in love”, p.906) maurice was feeling, with curious little movements, almost like a cat kneading her bed for his place, his knife and fork and his napkin. (d.h. lawrence “the blind man”, p.358). in this respect it should be mentioned at this point that in lawrence’s metaphysical view of the world the emotional aspect of the man’s essence should dominate over rationality, this postulate being substantiated by the author’s assertion that men would feel better if they went back to nature, set free the animal residing their subconsciousness and gave way to emotions, letting the instincts guide them. the emosemes of emotionality and instinctiveness are implicitly realized by the application of the images of animals materialized in similes. all the above presented similes serve the purpose of conjuring a certain imaginary view of the true human nature and suggest definite attitude toward the problem reflected in the text. in the reader’s consciousness the latter generates certain attitude toward the reality as seen by the author. it should also be observed that all the similes under consideration are reduced from the author’s speech and this peculiarity in its turn enhances the informative, emotionalevaluative, aesthetic, stylistic and pragmatic potential of the units under consideration. text pragmatics is supported and enhanced due to the author’s intention and his immediate evaluation of the reality. conclusion тhe obtained results allow us to conclude that text pragmatics is the expression of relations between the author and the reader and their attitude toward a certain piece of information that is contained in the text. in the text the author’s attitude and intention is observable on all the text levels, where the elements serve one and the same communicative-pragmatic task, i.e. the impact on the reader, formation of certain attitude toward reality, persuasion in the rightness of the arguments, etc. the pragmatic and pragmastylistic potential of the text can be enhanced due to the application of stylistic devices. meanwhile, the impact of stylistic devices on enhancing the qualitative and quantitative aspects of text pragmatics may be increased at the expense of key images. references: 1. arutyunova, n.d. (1990) diskurs. // lingvisticheskij jenciklopedicheskij slovar’. moscow. sov. jencikl., p.390. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 80 2. gasparyan, s.k.; sargsyan, m.s. (2011) simvolicheskie obrazy v kontekste hudozhestvennogo proizvedenija. // vestnik khar’kovskogo nacional’nogo universiteta . n 972, vyp.. 67. kharkov, ukraine, pp. 134-138. 3. grajs, g. p. (1985) logika i rechevoe obshhenie // novoe v zarubezhnoj lingvistike. vyp. xvi: lingvisticheskaja pragmatika. moscow: progress, n 16, pp. 217-257. 4. dijk, teun a. van. (1976) pragmatics and poetics. // pragmatics of language and literature 2. / ed. by t.a. van dijk. amsterdam: north-holland, pp. 22-57. 5. hickey, l. (1993) stylistics, pragmatics and pragmastylistics. // revue belge de philologie et d’ histoire lxxi, pp. 573-586. 6. naer, v.l. (1985) pragmatika teksta i ee sostavljajushhie. // v sb. nauch. trudov. moscow, p. 245. 7. sargsyan, m. (2013) utilization of key images toward enhancing text informativeness. // armenian folia anglistika. international journal of english studies. n8 (1). yerevan: lusakn publishers, pp. 40-46. acknowledgement: this work was supported by the ra mes state committee of science, in the frame of the research project № scs13 yr – 6b0025. ðçùý³å³ïï»ñý»ñç ¹»ñá ï»ùëïç ·áñí³μ³ý³ï³ý ³ñå»ùç ó¨³íáñù³ý ¨ áõå·ý³óù³ý ·áñíáõù êáõûý ³ß ë³ ï³ý ùáõù ³ é³ç ¿ ù³ß í³í ³ûý åý¹áõ ùá, áñ 黽 í³á ׳ ï³ý ñý³ñ ý» ñç ïç ñ³ éáõ ùá ýå³ë ïáõù ¿ ï»ùë ïç ·áñ í³ μ³ ý³ ï³ý ³ñ å» ùç ù³ ý³ ï³ ï³ý ¨ á ñ³ ï³ ï³ý ïáõ ù» ñç áõå· ý³ó ù³ ýá: ø³ë ý³ íá ñ³ å»ë, ù»ñ ïáõ ùçó ùýýáõã û³ý ¿ »ý ã³ñï íáõù ñçù ý³ å³ï ï»ñ å³ ñáõ ý³ ïáõ ·» õ³ñ í»ë ï³ ï³ý ñ³ ù» ù³ ïáõã ûáõ ýá: ºé ý» éáí ù»ñ ñ» ï³ ½á ïáõã û³ý ýå³ ï³ï ý» ñçó ¨ ñ³ß íç ³é ý» éáí 黽 í³ ï³ý ùç³ íáñ ý» ñç áý ïáõã û³ý ¨ ïç ñ³ éáõã û³ý ñ³ ù³ñ ³ýññ³å»ßï ý»ñ 黽 í³ ï³ý ¨ ³ñ ï³ é»½ í³ ï³ý ·áñ íáý ý» ñá՝ ñ»õçý³ïá μ³ ó³ ñ³ûï áõù ¿ áýïñ í³í 黽 í³á ׳ ï³ý ñý³ ñç ·áñ í³ μ³ ý³ ï³ý ̈ á ׳ ·áñ í³μ³ ý³ ï³ý ý» ñáõ åá ï»ùë ïç ·áñ í³ μ³ ý³ ï³ý áõõõ í³ íáõã û³ý áõå· ý³ó ù³ý ·áñ íáõù: ðîëü êëþ÷åâûõ îáðàçîâ â ôîðìèðîâàíèè è óñèëåíèè ïðàãìàòè÷åñêîãî ïîòåíöèàëà òåêñòà â äàí íîé ñòàòüå ðàññ ìàò ðè âàþò ñÿ êî ëè ÷åñò âåí íûå è êà ÷åñò âåí íûå àñ ïåê òû ïðàã ìà òè êè òåêñòà êîòîðûå ìî ãóò áûòü óñè ëå íû çà ñ÷åò ëèãí âî-ñòè ëèñòè ÷åñ êèõ ñðåäñòâ. â ÷àñò íîñòè, íà ìè áûëo èçó ÷åío õó äî æåñò âåí íîå ñðàâ íå íèå äëÿ âûÿâ ëå íèÿ ïðàã ìà òè ÷åñ êî ãî ïî òåí öèà ëà êëþ ÷å âûõ îá ðà çîâ, ðåà ëè çî âàí íûõ â ñðàâ íå íèè. ó ÷åò ëèíã âèñòè ÷åñ êèõ è ýêñò ðà ëèíã âèñòè ÷åñ êèå ôàê òî ðîâ â âû áî ðå è ïðè ìå íå íèè ÿçû êî âûõ åäè íèö ïîçâîëÿò âûÿâ èòü ïðàã ìà òè ÷åñ êèé è ïðàã ìàñòè ëèñòè ÷åñ êèé ïî òåí öèàë óêà çàí íûõ ýëå ìåí òîâ â ñîç äà íèè è óñè ëå íèè êî ëè ÷åñò âåí íûõ è êà ÷åñò âåí íûõ àñ ïåê òîâ ïðàã ìà òè êè òåêñòà. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 81 maket 2014_layout 1.qxd armenian folia anglistika methodology 112 the garden by j. miro the semiotic interpretation of joan miro’s world of signs armine matevosyan, nazeny hovakimian yerevan state university “i try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.” joan miro abstract the following article is devoted to the semiotic interpretation of some paintings by an outstanding catalonian artist, joan miro. here an attempt is made to concentrate on the symbolic objects, the colours and the whole mood of miro’s paintings, as well as to the emotional state of the artist himself, his descriptions of his art to bring out the link between linguistic and artistic signs. key words: semiotics, sign, art, visual language, interpretation. introduction the subject-matter of the following article is art semiotics and, particularly, the link between artistic and linguistic signs. we shall draw your attention to some paintings by an outstanding catalonian artist joan miro and try to understand the nature of his art by means of not only artistic signs, i.e. the symbols used in paintings, but also which is mostly important for our research, through linguistic signs, words used in his own descriptions of his art and his pictures. the study of signs the study of semiotics, or semiology originated and evolved in france, particularly in the works of ferdinand de saussure and has been expanding in a number of directions since the early turn-of-the century work of charles sanders peirce and claude lévi-strauss. a sign can be a word, a sound, or a visual image. saussure differentiated between signified and signifier. the part of the sign saussure calls the concept or meaning (mental impression/association of the thing) is the signified in his terms. the part he calls the soundimage (the mental linguistic sign given to the thing) is the signifier. as saussure explains, the connection between all signifiers which are sound images or linguistic signs and what they are signifying – their signified object or concept – is arbitrary. in other words, there is not necessarily any logical connection between the two (saussure 2006). semiotics focuses mainly on units of meaning and the generalizable conditions for encoding across symbolic systems (linguistic, visual, auditory), and, in general, uses language as the modeling system for other second order systems that function according to systematic rules (e.g., visual art, music, literature, popular media, advertising, or any meaning system) (irvine 2004). visual versus verbal all painters work in a pictorial language by following a set of standards of picturemaking. actually there is a big resemblance between pictorial image making and the crearmenian folia anglistikaculture studies 113 ation of written language. through semiotics one can translate a picture from an image into words. visual communication terms and theories come both from linguistics and semiotics. signs may take the form of images, sounds, acts or objects, even odours but they become signs only when one provides them with meaning. everything that surrounds us is manipulated by signs, words, images and visual language. communication can be seen as a form of mind control; it has a great power. the same can be true for artworks which may activate people’s minds. visual language covers a whole range of different social mediums from advertising, commixes and television to high culture, including galleries and theatres. language becomes complicated if we look at it from a new angle – that is from the angle of visual artworks. here we have to deal with symbolic and conventional meanings. just as people can verbalize their thinking, they can visualize it as well. speech and visual communication are parallel and often interdependent means by which people exchange information. pictorial semiotics is often concerned with the study of pictures into a more constructive verbal description while maintaining confidence in the objectivity of the practice (chandler 2004). it is said that the painter works like a poet; first the word, then the thought – this quote describes how artists and poets may see or think of a concrete image or a word before they have formulated the idea or symbolism behind it. art is the expression of artist’s inner state, his thoughts, feelings, emotions, hopes, desires, wishes, dreams on the one hand, and his disappointments, fears, despairs, misfortunes, on the other. and all this can be seen in the artist’s works through different scenes and signs. what is interesting, that most artists don’t like speaking about their works, maybe because they think that whatever can be seen and felt is more than can be said by means of the spoken language. but whenever an artist speaks about his works or even about himself, it becomes clear how his words are interrelated with his art, and how what is spoken can be replaced by what is created by means of various colors and shapes. to prove whatever has been said above, we would like to illustrate some of juan miro’s paintings and try to connect his world of artistic signs with that of linguistic ones. joan miro’s world of signs miro pursued his own interests in the art world, ranging from automatic drawing and surrealism to expressionism, lyrical abstraction and color-field painting. in some of his works color becomes an object in itself and everything is seen through colors. in 1920-s miro draws “the farm”. anything that you see in the pictures is close to miro’s heart, it’s his catalan countryside. miro mentions that for him a tree is not just a tree, something that belongs to nature, but it’s something human, a living thing. tree is a personage. it’s a talking personage. it can armenian folia anglistika culture studies 114 the farm, 1921-1922 see and hear... (george rayar, yuri khachatryan 2004). all the elements of this painting, animals and objects are in the form of symbols that would appear later in miro’s works – a dog, a goat, a rabbit, snails, insects, the ladder, etc. miro once said: “for me art is never something abstract; it is always a sign of something. it is always a man, a bird, or something else. for me painting is never for form’s sake…” (chipp 1968:432). miro mentions that ladder is a recurrent form in his works. in the fisrt years it was a plastic form frequently appearing because it was too close to him – a familiar shape in the farm. in later years, particularly during the war it came to symbolize escape. so, being an essentially plastic form at first, it became poetic later (ibid 432). here the ladder becomes the symbol of escape. surely, its message is that art can offer refuge from the reality. it’s not just by coincidence that miro’s work is rich in signs and can be seen as related to language. it’s important to note that during his life he was in close relations with poets, especially with surrealists (breton, artaud, elouard) and he enjoyed reading, that’s why his art somehow resembles poetry. once he mentioned: “poetry endows me with new opportunities to rise above the rules of painting” (george rayar, yuri khachatryan 2004:10). miro tries to fight with the materialization of the world to reach a real poetry. his work illustrates the subconscious world as existing with the conscious one. according to the artist, he was taken in by hunger-induced hallucinations involving his impressions of poetry. these resulted in his “dream paintings,” such as personage (personnage), in which ghostly figures linger in a bluish ether. although these images are highly schematic, they are not without references to real things, as the artist made clear. “for me a form is never something abstract,” he said in 1948. “it is always a sign of something. it is always a man, a bird, or something else” (joan miró, interview by james johnson sweeney, in “joan miró: comment and interview,” partisan review 15, no. 2, february 1948, pp. 208-212). in these works miró began to develop his own language of enigmatic signs: the forms in personage depict a large vestigial foot and a head with three “teeth” in its grinning mouth. the star shape often represents female genitalia in miró’s work and the dot with four rays symbolizes the vision of a disembodied eye. armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 115 l’echelle de l’evasion/ the escape ladder, 1940 (from constellation series) miró came to disdain realistic depiction altogether; and he began abstracting objects almost to the point of their being unrecognizable. miro goes on with his creative search merging the real with the dreamy. he destroys the boarders of traditional painting styles and expresses unexplainable human inner conflicts and states. in his works of this period it’s rather difficult to see the link between his paintings and their names. so, here the link between his art and semiotics as well as the link between his art and linguistic semiotics becomes more and more vague. in 1937 miro creates “help spain” poster which is dedicated to his country spain. this poster becomes a cry of rebellion for spain’s destiny. translated, the inscription reads, “in the current conflict on the facist side i see massive forces, and on the other side are the people whose immense and creative resourcefulness will give spain a vitality which will astonish the world.” miro’s political conscience was awakened by the spanish civil war. catalonia was a key battleground. he responded to this with an incandescent, monstrously distorted still-life table emerging out of the dark. here apple is the symbol of spain. its objects could not be more ordinary and simple – a fork, a bottle, an apple, a loaf of bread – yet these homely realities seem threatened by a kind of hallucinogenic doom. “the civil war was all bombings, death, firing squads...” miró wrote to his dealer pierre matisse, “the composition is realistic because i was paralysed by the general feeling of terror and almost unable to paint at all... we are living through a terrible drama, everything happening in spain is terrifying in a way you could never imagine. i feel very uprooted here and nostalgic for my country...” (adams 2011). armenian folia anglistika culture studies 116 personage (personnage), 1925. aidez l’espagne , 1937 still life with old shoe, 1937 struck by the image of the fork stabbing a dried apple and the ominously flowing areas of blackness, critics have read the painting as an allegory about the spanish civil war. what is immediately captivating about it, though, is how the rustic objects seem to glow mysteriously from within. it is an image of supernatural immanence in the humblest of circumstances. there is a conspicuous difference between still life with old shoe and a work like aidez l’espagne, the poster of a brawny catalan peasant with his fist upraised in republican salute and threatening to smash the fascist enemy. designed to be reproduced widely, aidez has a clear propagandist purpose and represents a public show while in still life we see miro’s personal feelings towards the revolution, his disability to fight against injustice. it’s as if miró knew deep down that the uneasy republican coalition of liberals, socialists, etc. stood little chance against the military might of franco (a spanish military leader who ruled as the dictator of spain from 1939 to his death in 1975). but on the surface, he projected confidence, producing works like aidez l’espagne in solidarity with the republican cause. in the years of world war miro moves to the country. here he creates his famous “constellation series”. it seems that in this quiet countryside he takes a new breath. miro creates a new reality where poetry and music rule. it seems that going deeper to the world of symbolic language he wants to hide away from the tough reality, find a spiritual release and quietude in his gentle tones, slight lines, musical surfaces. miro once mentioned that the titles of his works appear gradually, while working, and mostly in french. the above introduced painting from “constellation” series with a poetic french title is characterized by shapes of stars, birds and women. the title of the picture should be taken into consideration as both in french and in english variants it bears some musicality in it. in both variants there are alliterations and the sounds /p/, /n/, /s/, /f/, /t/ make an interesting and calm atmosphere as if we ‘hear the sounds of the night’. it seems that miro created his own language. here we see black dots which represent stars. the colors and all the shapes seem to create a moving, dancing atmosphere. armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 117 personnages dans la nuit guides par les traces phosphorescentes des escargots (people at night guided by the phosphorescent trails of snails), 1940 the dots representing stars can even be called painted poetry due to their visually poetic nature. as it has already been mentioned this was the period of world war ii and during this period miro saught to find a new reality. his works of this period are influenced by night, music and stars. his forms become more and more abstracted. these stars seem to be a way to the universe, they are a door to escape from the war, from the brutality of the world. as miro’s grandson put it; “it is as if miró was a nocturnal bird able to escape from the earth, leaving the sky, traveling across the sky, the stars, to the constellations, to capture them all with one hand, and draw back to earth them on a sheet of paper” (“fragments of interview of joan punyet”. el meu avi (in catalan). tv3. retrieved 2011-10-30). as you may have already noticed, women and birds are recurrent themes in miro’s works. miro once mentioned that for him a woman doesn’t mean just a woman as a being, but a whole universe. miro’s surrealism is seen here as supposed to be a fusion of reality and dream, a sort of super-reality. conclusion so, when interpreting a sign a number of factors should be taken into consideration, beginning from the artisit’s age to his experiences and emotional states. we may conclude that thoughts that are born in a painter’s mind are transformed to images, colors and shapes and are interpreted by viewers as signs denoting this or that reality, this or that idea. besides, titles of pictures can also be taken into consideration only in case they are created by the painter himself, as this will allow the researcher to see some interesting points and to draw parallels between the painter’s world expressed in colors and his world expressed in words. there is just too much life in miro’s art; it can be seen in his different shapes and colors; too much life means that there is too much to be grasped and understood from his art. here, even emptiness pulses with energy. miro’s art bears much to his motherland catalonia, his art and his soul were rooted in there, in his sunny motherland. deep down, miro’s art has a fantastic, irrepressible quality. it is about liberating the imagination. this is what semiotic study allows us to do. thus, one should have a free and limitless imagination to understand the world of artistic signs and symbols. armenian folia anglistika culture studies 118 women and birds in sunrise, 1946 references: 1. chandler, d. (2004) semiotics: the basics taylor & francis e-library. available at: <http://dominicpetrillo.com/ed/semiotics_for_beginners.pdf> [accessed april 2013] 2. chipp, h. (1968) theories of modern art. california: university of california press. 3. rayar, g.; khachatryan, y. (2004) joan miro, sa im yerazneri guynn e. / zruycner george rayari het. / tr. by a. boyajyan, yerevan: sargis khachents press. 4. saussure, f. (2006) writings in general linguistics. oxford: oup sources of data: 1. adams, t. joan miro: a life in paintings. available at: <http://www.theguardian.com/ artanddesign/2011/mar/20/joan-miro-life-ladder-escape-tate> [accessed march 2011] 2. hospers, j. symbols in art. available at: <http://www.britannica.com/ebchecked/ topic/36433/art-philosophy-of/36270/symbols-in-art> [accessed april 2013] 3. irvine, m. structural linguistics, semiotics and communication theory: basic outlines and assumptions. available at: <http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/ theory/semiotics_and_communication.html> [accessed may 2013] 4. national gallery of art, joan miro, the ladder of escape. available at: <http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2012/miro/index.shtm> [accessed march 2013] 5. online collection, joan miro. available at: <http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/ collection-online/artwork/2935> [accessed april 2013] 6. visual art encyclopedia, joan miro. available at: <http://www.wikipaintings.org/ en/search/joan%20miro/1> [accessed may 2010] êá³ý øçñáûç ³ñí»ëïç ýß³ý³·çï³ï³ý ù»ïýáõãûáõýá ðá¹ í³ íá ýíçñ í³í ¿ ï³ ï³ éá ý³ óç ñ³ûï ýç ýï³ ñçã êá³ý øç ñá ûç ýï³ñ ý» ñç ù»ï ý³ μ³ ýáõã û³ýý áõ 黽 í³ ï³ý/³ñ ï³ é»½ í³ ï³ý ùç çáó ý» ñç ýß³ ý³ ·ç ï³ ï³ý ùýýáõã û³ ýá: ²ûë ï»õ ùç ïáõ ùçó ñ³ß íç »ý ³éý í»é ýï³ñ ý» ñáõù å³ï ï»ñ í³í ³ é³ñ ï³ ý» ñá, ·áõû ý»ñý áõ áý¹ ñ³ ýáõñ ïñ³ ù³¹ ñáõã ûáõ ýá, ùûáõë ïáõ ùçó՝ ³ñ í»ë ï³ ·» ïç ñáõ ½³ ï³ý ñá ·» íç ׳ ïá ¨ ïï³í ý» ñç í» ñ³ μ»ñ û³é çñ çëï ù»ï ý³ μ³ ýáõã ûáõý ý» ñá: ñåìèîòè÷åñêàÿ èíòåðïðåòàöèÿ çíàêîâ â èñêóññòâå æîàíà ìèðî còàòüÿ ïîñ âÿ ùå íà õó äî æåñò âåí íîé ñå ìèî òè êå. ýòî ïî ïûò êà íàé òè ñâÿçü ìåæ äó æè âî ïèñ íû ìè è ëèíã âèñòè ÷åñ êè ìè çíà êà ìè. â ñòàòüå ïðåäñòàâ ëå íû íå êî òî ðûå ðà áî armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 119 òû èç âåñò íî ãî êà òà ëîíñ êî ãî õó äîæ íè êà æîà íà ìè ðî, êî òî ðûå ðàññ ìàò ðè âàþò ñÿ ñ òî÷ êè çðå íèÿ ñî ÷å òà íèÿ ëèíã âèñòè ÷åñ êèõ è æè âî ïèñ íûõ çíà êîâ. ó÷è òû âàþòñÿ êàê èçîá ðà æåí íûå îáüåê òû, ãàììà êðàñîê è îáùèé íàñò ðîé ïðîèçâåäåíèé, òàê è ýìî öèî íàëüíoe ñîñòîÿ íèe àâ òî ðà, âûðàæåííîå â åãî âûñ êà çû âà íèÿõ î ñâîåì èñê âóññò âå. armenian folia anglistika culture studies 120 maket 2013:layout 1.qxd utilization of key images toward enhancing text informativeness mariana sargsyan yerevan state university a s is generally acknowledged one of the basic goals of any text is to convey information. every text, including that of the verbal art, contains a certain amount of information, the overall amount of which makes the latter an informatively saturated unit of speech. from the pragmatic perspective most valuable is considered to be the information which is fresh and imparts the reader new knowledge on a certain problem. informativeness of the text is measured by the volume of the new content found in the main theme of the text, author’s strategy, imagery, etc. (valgina 2003). a vast number of research material allows us to define the property of informativeness as an “unstable” index of text quality. it can rise and fall depending on the quality and the volume of the new information on the one hand, and depending on the reader’s interpretive skills on the other. of course, as far as verbal text is concerned, all the units of the text to this or that extent contribute to increasing the informative function of the text. this peculiarity is conditioned by the complex nature of the literary sign and the nature of intricate correlations underlying the content and the form of expression. if we regard the problem of text informativeness with respect to interpretative processes, the aforementioned statement becomes more grounded. hence, from the point of modern research in contemporary philological hermeneutics and text stylistics a complete understanding of a text can be reached when the latter is considered as one complete unit, and the text ideology is considered in close interaction with the structure, composition and units from all the levels of the text (phonetic, semantic, synthetic, stylistic). nevertheless, adequate interpretation of a piece of literature becomes even more complicated when we come to deal with ideologically and aesthetically overloaded images, which due to the skillful intention of the writer, perform the function of kernel informative units of the text, implicitly concentrating the writer’s ideological and aesthetic strategy. in fact every unit of the text may undergo various modifications imposed by the writer’s intention, thus extending its informative potential. in the present paper the basic unit of consideration is the image-symbol (the literary symbol), which, according to our assumption, can be regarded as a key informative unit of the literary text. the image-symbol is usually described as an image which implicitly concentrates rather generalized notions of the objective reality. in traditional literature the symbol is defined as an image or sign which is endowed with the potential of concentrating various aspects of the objective reality, functioning as a model for re-transforming and remodeling that very reality (losev 1976). literary symbols, unlike the traditional ones, are produced as a result of the writer’s individual manner of conceptualizing the reality, metaphysical interpretations of life and philosophical outlook. in the context of the literary text the image-symbol gets organically intermingled with all the units, contributes to armenian folia anglistika linguistics 40 complementing the ideological and aesthetic content of the text. from the functionalcommunicative perspective, the image-symbol is an essential element of the text via which communication is established between the writer and the reader, serving as a powerful tool for bridging the communication gaps (gasparyan, sargsyan 2011:135). in contrast to other units of the text, symbolic images are endowed with emotive-expressive-evaluative properties. this aspect conditions the wide spectrum of associations that generate in the reader’s imagination. the associations enhance the understanding of the global purport of the text, reveal the writer’s vision of reality, making the reader empathize with him. symbols are actually introduced into the text as a tool to generate not only interest or enjoyment, but create highly generalized meanings, entailing feelings, moods, empathies. the latter in their turn create a special aesthetic impact on the reader, making him an active participant of the writer’s message. finally, symbolic images are actually those units of the text in which the author’s message is condensed and through the interpretation of which adequate understanding of the text can be reached. all the above stated arguments come to show that the image-symbol, due to the writer’s intention, comprises a huge amount of valuable information, the interpretation of which will help the reader evaluate the text from the perspective of its qualitative properties, in this particular case, the property of informativeness. as far as the interpretation of the image-symbol is concerned it is worth mentioning that symbolic images do not easily yield to interpretation; here it can even be stated that in terms of the number of interpretations symbolic images are polysemantic. the reader, the level of his background, literary and cultural knowledge, the level of education and his individual approach to the reality account for the number of interpretations. moreover, symbolic images may bring forth even opposite feelings and emotions not consistent with the author’s message. hence, only the reader of average background knowledge shared with that of the writer will succeed in getting a full insight into the text ideology and perceive the propositional meaning of the images and consequently that of the text. this will unfailingly lead to deriving the most valuable information primarily encoded into the text as part of the writer’s strategic intention (gaspayan, sargsyan 2011:135). with a view to demonstrating the informative function of the image-symbol within the frames of the present paper we will strongly adhere to the consideration of literary texts, which have already been studied by us from the perspective of the ideological and aesthetic messages encoded therein. we firmly hold the opinion that the approach based on the availability of background knowledge will ensure a more complete and scholarly more grounded conclusions on the informative function of the key images. thus, the texts under investigation cover the modernist era the era of formal innovations and radical changes in literary thought. modernism had the estrangement of an individual as its main theme. the task of the modernist is to reveal human spirituality with all the complexities of human nature and mind (na 2012). now, let us turn to the study of the following passage adduced from t.s. eliot’s hollow man, which is the best demonstration of the modernist mission and can justifiably be regarded as the epitome of symbolic expression of the modernist ideology: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 41 we are the hollow men we are the stuffed men leaning together headpiece filled with straw. alas! our dried voices, when we whisper together are quite and meaningless as wind in dry glass or rats’ feet over broken glass in our dirty cellar shape without form, shade without colour, paralysed force, gesture without motion… (na:2543) eliot depicts the whole terror of the reality through the extensive use of stylistic devices (metonymy, metaphor, similie). the carefully chosen system of images enhances text informativeness in view of imparting eliot’s main concern for the future of the physically alive, but emotionally paralyzed man, whose head is stuffed with nothing but straw. the hollow man, the result of the historic era, is stuffed with useless and meaningless ideas, his voice is dried and his whispers are associated with the sounds of rats’ running over the broken glass. in the adduced passage let us specially highlight the word cellar modified by the epithet dirty. it would be rather naïve on our part to consider the word combination merely in its denotative meaning. if regarded in the larger context, including the context of the historic era, the dirty cellar becomes completely re-interpreted, acquiring a symbolic status. the dirty cellar is the symbolic projection of the reality, in which people, like rats, are running for life unaware of the uselessness of the whole mess they are involved in. in the adduced passage the atmosphere of profound pessimism, alienation and despair become especially tangible with the repetition of the preposition without. the atmosphere intensifies under the influence of the epithet paralyzed, which, symbolizing man’s helplessness, stands for the author’s disbelief in the man’s ability to change anything. the whole arsenal of images, connotations imposed to the latter and the chain of associations generating in the reader’s imagination make the passage overfilled with subjectively re-interpreted information about the reality. pessimism and estrangement are the dominant lines of presentation not only in the poetry of the time, but in the novel, which in modernist era was a more widely employed genre. switching to the the ethical-symbolic projection of j. joyce’s clay (dubliners) we can follow maria, the heroine, facing the same harshness of reality. on the symbolic level it is a story of broken dreams and vain illusions. the informativeness of the text augments when the text is considered complexly, taking into account the close interaction between the part and the whole, in this case, the title and main text. the symbolic value of the story and particularly that of the title is more visibly observed in the scene where maria, getting involved in hallow eve games, is led to the table blindfold to see what she will get. moving her hand here and there she descends her hand on one of the saucers and feels a “soft wet substance” with her fingers, the clay, which in celtic mythology symarmenian folia anglistika linguistics 42 bolizes death. the image of death intensifies, and consequently, informatively the text obtains quite new qualitative property at the segmental level of the phrase “soft wet substance”, by the repetition of the sounds [s] and [t]. it would not be in vain to state once again that linguists psychologists claim that the repetition of this or that sound may produce a certain state of mind, associating with different emotions (chastaing 1958). the informativeness of the passage enhances in light of the aesthetic impact of the phrase created due to the repetition of the underlined sounds, which provokes shuddering, accompanied by a feeling of something unpleasant, or even ominous. as far as the interaction between the reader and the text is concerned, informativeness of text units may rise or fall depending on the reader’s average level of background knowledge shared with that of the writer. in this respect, as far as symbols in modernism are concerned, one will unfailingly observe the close correlations that exist between the symbol and the myth. myth serves for modernists as a sound base to derive semantically and metaphorically transformed images which concentrate a lot of valuable information on the writer’s message and intention (sargsyan 2007). as a true demonstration of the above-mentioned let us turn to studying the image of the sun in d.h. lawrence’s the woman who rode away. in this novel we come across the traces of indian (aztec) savagery of sacrifice, an almighty power, which constantly demands sacrifice for vices committed on the earth and as a sign of veneration. here we follow a woman escaping mundanity in search of a new god and true meaning of life. … she is tired of the white man’s god… she would like to serve the gods of chilchui. (p.345) but what is most conspicuous in this novel, is that nature-man relations are undergoing the phase of alienation. unlike the prehistoric man, who was full of emotions, prejudice and utter fear towards nature, the modern man is guided by capitalistic values. we have lost our power over the sun, and we are trying to get him back. but he’s wild with us, and shy like a horse that has got away. we have to go through a lot. (p.330) the living nature, its powerful energy and its activity are contrasted to the man’s life full of conventionality and restrictions imposed by modern civilization. the sun is wild with people. nevertheless, this situation finds its solution. the woman who rode away is sacrificed to the gods of chilchui. lawrence reserves death and consummation for those who lack vital connections. the interpretation and understanding of explicitly occasional (original) but innerly myth-based image of the sun enables the reader to overcome the gap of time and distance between himself and the writer, contributing to establishing dialogical links not only with the primary, but also with the secondary texts. in this respect, the informativeness of symbolic images is complemented by the function of establishing inter-textual links between various texts. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 43 finally, with a view to presenting a more comprehensive picture of the informative property of key modernist imagery let us dwell upon one of the central images of woolfean imagery – the wave: to begin with, it is essential to mention that modernist novel experienced deep influences imposed by the reactionary theories introduced by sigmund freud and henri bergson, who denied any possibility of rational cognition of the objective reality and ardently claimed the dominance of intuition and sub-consciousness over the reason (na 2012). thus they endeavored to explore all the complexities of reality confining themselves to the study of biological instincts introducing the method of psychoanalysis. the latter was quite successfully employed by modernists, and soon gave birth to the psychological novel, in which the method of stream of consciousness was widely employed. the latter opened new horizons for cognizing the human individuality and creating man’s true psychological portrait. and as she began to go with miss pym from jar to jar, choosing, nonsense, nonsense, she said to herself, more and more gently, as if this beauty, this scent, this colour, and miss pym liking her, trusting her, were a wave which she let flow over her and surmount that hatred, that monster, surmount it all; and it lifted her up and up when — oh! a pistol shot in the street outside! (mrs. dalloway, p.41) the image of wave plays a key informative role in woolfean imagery which represents the stream of consciousness in full, symbolizing various emotional states, associating with a wide spectrum of such feelings as carelessness, easiness, freedom, abstraction from reality, etc. in the adduced passage the image of the wave intermingles with the ideas of extreme emotional freedom surmounting all obstacles. the informative function of this image enhances due to the quite extended structure of the simile, which aesthetically succeeds in leading the reader into a certain emotional state and by the ideological antithesis created by the sudden shot heard from outside, which brings mrs. dalloway back to reality. thus, the results of our study come to substantiate the assumption that the key images may function as core informative units of a text. informativeness is conditioned by the potential of images to condense the most important message embedded therein as a part of the writer’s strategic intention. in image-symbols information is multilayered and multifunctional, and is formed as a result of complex interactions inherent to content form and whole part relations. in the meanwhile we have defined text informativeness as an “unstable” index of text quality, which may increase or decrease depending on such factors as volume and quality of the information, reader’s interpretative skills, availability of background knowledge. basing our present research on already accumulated background knowledge on modernist literature, we tried to reveal the functional communicative characteristics of the key symbolic images with a view to demonstrating the amount of valuable information encoded therein. as can be concluded, image-symbols are actually those tools that armenian folia anglistika linguistics 44 boost text infromativeness and help the reader decode the writer’s strategic intention, penetrate into the global purport of the work, share the writer’s empathies. it is also concluded that due to the depth and origin of the information embedded in the key images it is possible to establish dialogical links with secondary texts, which certifies the ability of image-symbols to move out from one independent text into a network of textual relations, thus promoting intertextuality. references: 1. chastaing, m. (1958) le symbolisme des voyelles. // journal de psychologie. 2. gasparyan, s.; sargsyan, m. (2011) simvolicheskie obrazy w kontekste hudozhestvennogo proizvedeniq. // “vestnik” kharkovskogo national’nogo universiteta. n 972, ed. 67. ukraine, kharkov. 3. goljakova, l.a. (2006) podtekst. pragmaticheskie parametry hudozhestvennoj kommunikacii. // filologicheskie nauki (4). 4. graham, a. (2001) intertextuality: the new critical idiom. london: routledge. 5. losev, a.f. (1976) problemy simvola i realisticheskoe iskusstvo. m.: iskusstvo. 6. (1982) russkij jazyk. tekst kak celoe i komponenty teksta. m. 7. sargsyan, m. (2011) on the functional communicative aspect of literary texts. // armenian folia anglistika. international journal of english studies. n 1 (8) 2011: yerevan: lusakn. 8. sargsyan, m. (2007) the correlation of myth and symbol in d.h. lawrence’s novels. // armenian folia anglistika. international journal of english studies. n3. yerevan: lusakn. 9. (2001) tekst. intertekst. kul’tura. // sb. dokladov mezhdunarodnoj nauch. konferencii. m., 4-7 aprelja. 10. (2012) the norton anthology (na). english literature. the 20 th century and after. volume f. w.w. norton and company inc. 11. valgina, n.s. (2003) teorija teksta. m.: logos. ðçùý³å³ïï»ñý»ñç ¹»ñá ï»ùëïç ï»õ»ï³ïí³ï³ý μáí³ý¹³ïáõãû³ý μ³ñóñ³óù³ý ·áñíáõù êáõûý ³ßë³ï³ýùç ýå³ï³ïý ¿ ½³ñ·³óý»é ëáñññ¹³ ýçß-å³ïï»ñý»ñç μ³½ù³ïáõù ùýýáõãû³ýý áõõõí³í ù»ñ áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõýý»ñá՝ ÷áñó»éáí ñ³ù³¹ñ»é ëáñññ¹³ýß³ï³ý ·áñí³éáõûã çñ³ï³ý³óýáõ ñçùý³å³ïï»ñý»ñç ·³õ³÷³ ñ³ï³ý »õ ·»õ³·çï³ï³ý ïáõù»ñç ùýýáõãû³ùμ ëï³ó³í ³ñ¹ûáõýùý»ñá å³ïï»ñç ï»õ»ï³ïí³ï³ý ·áñí³éáõûãç ñ»ï: ²ûë ³éáõùáí ³ýíç×» éç ¿ ³ûý åý¹áõùá, áñ ï»ùëïç, ³û¹ ãíáõù ý³»õ ·»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý ï»ùëïç ñçùý³ï³ý ýå³ï³ïý»ñçó ¿ ï»õ»ï³ïíáõãûáõý ñ³õáñ¹» éá, áñý çñ³ï³ý³óíáõù ¿ ï»ùëï ý»ñùáõí³í 黽í³á׳ ï³ý ñý³ñý»ñç »õ ï»ùëïç ï³ñμ»ñ ù³ï³ñ¹³ïý»ñá ï³½ùáõ ùç³íáñý»ñçý ³ùarmenian folia anglistikalinguistics 45 ñ³·ñíáõ ý»ñ³ï³ çù³ëï»ñç ùççáóáí, áñáýù ñ»õçý³ïç ù³ñï³í³ñ³ï³ý ùáï»óù³ùμ »õ ùçïáõùáí ³ù÷á÷áõù »ý ï»ùëïç áýï³éù³ý »õ ù»ïý³μ³ýù³ý áõç ³ñå»ù³íáñ ï»õ»ï³ïíáõãûáõýá: ðçùý³å³ïï»ñý»ñç ï»õ»ï³ïí³ï³ý ³ñå»ùý çñ ¿áõãû³ùμ ³ýï³ûáõý ¿՝ ï³ëí³í ³ñå»ù³íáñ ï»õ»ï³ïíáõãû³ý áñ³ïçó »õ í³í³éçó, áýã»ñóáõç ù»ïýáõ³ï³ý ñùïáõãûáõýý»ñçó, ñ»ýù³ûçý ·çï»éçùý»ñç ³éï³ûáõãûáõýçó: ðçùý³å³ïï»ñý»ñáõù ³ù÷á÷í³í ³ñå»ù³íáñ ï»õ»ï³ïíáõãû³ý í»ñí³ýáõùá ãáõûé ¿ ï³éçë áýï³é»é ñ»õçý³ïç ù³ñï³í³ñ³ï³ý ùçïáõùá, ý»ñã³÷³ýó»é ëï»õí³·áñíáõãû³ý μáõý μáí³ý¹³ ïáõãû³ý ù»ç, ïçë»é ñ»õçý³ïç ñáõû½» ñá: ðçùý³å³ïï»ñý»ñá, çñ»ýó ù»ç ³ù÷á÷í³í ï»õ»ï³ïíáõãû³ý í³·ù³ý »õ ëáñáõãû³ý ßýáññçí, ï³ñáõ »ý áýã»ñóáõçý û·ý»é ñ³ëï³ï»é »ñïëáë³ï³ý ï³å »ñïñáñ¹³ ï³ý ï»ùëï»ñç ñ»ï, áñá íï³ûáõù ¿ ³ûý ù³ëçý, áñ ëáñññ¹³ýß³ï³ý å³ïï»ñý»ñç ùççáóáí ñý³ñ³íáñ ¿ ùç ï»ùëïçó ³ýóáõù ï³ï³ñ»é ¹»åç ³ûé ï»ùëï»ñ՝ ëï»õí»éáí ùççï»ùëï³ûçý ï³å»ñ: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 46 microsoft word 2. methodology 55 128 (1) armenian folia anglistika methodology 74 developing learners’ top-down processing skills in listening lilit bekaryan yerevan state university abstract listening is the first receptive skill that we develop as human beings, and it helps us improve other skills and gain confidence as language learners. in the english language classroom, learners find listening tasks particularly frustrating and challenging for a range of reasons. the present research addresses ways of developing learners’ top-down processing skills, such as making predictions about the target text, guessing the context and using contextual clues to infer meaning. key words: receptive skills, listening comprehension, top-down processing, listener-oriented strategies, listening tasks. introduction listening is the most frequently used language skill, as it takes up 40-50 % time spent on communication (rivers in gilman and moody 1984:331, quoted in vandergrift 2002). obviously, listening plays a significant role in the classroom as the primary medium of learning in all stages. long before, listening was thought to be a passive skill along with reading. however, modern research shows that listening is a goal-oriented activity, requiring a lot of mental efforts and strategies (thornbury 2006:123). the present research focuses on developing university students’ top-down processing skills. this choice is due to my teaching experience in a non-english speaking country, armenia, where listening in the classroom is perceived to be a passive skill, associated with reinforcing language input. about 85 % of listening tasks in armenian course-books instruct the learners to listen to every single word in the text and memorize a lot of information. these kinds of activity reduce the learners’ motivation, as their success is measured by the number of correct responses they give and as pointed out by researchers provide them with practice in listening but fail to teach the skill itself (brown 1986:286, methodology armenian folia anglistika 75 field 1998:111). hence, the difficulties that the learners might have experienced are addressed only in terms of the language and content, whereas little attention is paid to how challenging the spoken text is for them from the perspective of prior knowledge or experience. my classroom experience shows that learners’ difficulties in the comprehension of the listening text are often due to their inability to transfer their top-down processing strategies they can effectively use in their l1 to the target language. the present paper seeks to study ways of helping adult learners develop their top-down processing skills when completing listening tasks in the classroom. bottom-up and top-down processes in listening richards identifies bottom-up and top-down processes for processing spoken discourse. when processing spoken discourse bottom-up, learners make use of their knowledge of language systems, also referred to as systemic knowledge. comprehension in this case is viewed as a process of decoding sounds, words, clauses, sentences, texts until the listener arrives at the meaning (richards 2008:8). top-down processing, on the other hand, is related to using background information to understand the meaning of the spoken message. thus, if bottomup processing goes from language to meaning, top-down processing goes from meaning to language. in this case, listeners make use of their prior knowledge about the type of discourse, situation or the context when listening to a spoken text and trying to understand it. it is worth mentioning that successful listeners tend to integrate both processes when listening to spoken texts. as vandergrift argues, listening comprehension is not either top-down or bottom-up processing, but an interactive process where listeners use both prior knowledge and linguistic knowledge (vandergrift 2002). top-down listening strategies are listener-oriented and involve the listener’s knowledge, sometimes referred to as “inside the head information” or the background information (hedge 2014:232) as compared to the information comprised in the text. background knowledge consists of the situation, the context and the co-text. the listener first activates his/her background knowledge of the topic (also known as schemata), then the situation or the context, afterwards the type of text and then the language. armenian folia anglistika methodology 76 schematic knowledge is the knowledge the listener already has about the world and about certain types of discourse (anderson & lynch 1988:13). schematic knowledge can vary across cultures and people. for example, the sentence “she has posted new photos online” might confuse my grandmother, who does not have the required schemata for the social media. hence, if listeners are not familiar with the incoming information, they cannot have the necessary schemata summoned and will have to rely only on their systemic knowledge, i.e. the knowledge of the language. contextual knowledge is the information the listener has about the place where the listening takes place. in other words, besides the general knowledge of the world, language users need to have knowledge about the current communicative situation (van dijk 2005:72). contextual knowledge makes many listening situations predictable, as they follow certain routines. for instance, when my daughter’s teacher invites me to her office and i can see the grade report on her desk, i understand that she is going to discuss her learning progress with me. obviously, contextual and systemic knowledge can make comprehension easy. when listeners are familiar with the content of the material, they can employ their background knowledge to make predictions. hedge (2014:233) mentions three types of schemata used in top-down processing, namely content schemata, formal schemata, and script. content schemata refers to general world knowledge, socio-cultural knowledge, or knowledge of the topic. scripts are defined as interactions where the speech follows a set pattern to some extent. for instance, in a consumer-salesperson exchange in the context of a mobile phone purchase, the salesperson will often ask a series of set questions. formal schemata indicates the knowledge people share about the overall structure of speech events, e.g. cause-effect, problemsolution (ibid: 232). it is referred to as textual schemata by schmitt (2010:184) who highlights its role in identifying the genre of the listening text, e.g. we know that ‘once upon a time’ signals the start of a fairy tale. knowing the genre of the listening text makes it easier for adults to engage in top-down processing strategies, such as predicting and inferring from the text. methodology armenian folia anglistika 77 listening in the լesson current researchers (cattlin 2014:7.2; richards, 2008:10; wilson 2012:60) suggest that a listening lesson should be divided into pre-listening, whilelistening and post-listening stages. the pre-listening part of the listening lesson prepares the learners for what they are going to hear and can comprise a prediction or activating schemata stage, during which the teacher generates the learners’ interest in the topic and activates their schematic knowledge. in the pre-listening stage, the teacher can also pre-teach the vocabulary that she believes will impede with the learners’ overall understanding of the text. in while-listening stage the learners focus their attention on the listening text and develop their listening comprehensions skills. in this stage, learners complete tasks that develop their top-down and bottom-up processing skills. they might, for instance listen to the segment of the story to check if their prediction about the hero’s background was right. top-down listening activities specific to the while-listening part are listening for gist, when the learners have to listen to understand the main ideas, topic and setting of the text and inferencing or inferring, as referred to by j․j. wilson, when learners make deductions making analogies to the situations they can recognize (wilson 2012:84). in post-listening stage, the learners will be introduced to the target language inherent in the listening tasks and activities, as well as develop their summarizing skills, for instance by sharing the story from their own perspective or discuss its possible continuation with their partner. learner issues and teaching suggestions when discussing the problems inherent in listening comprehension, cherry (1957) as quoted in hedge (2014:237) introduces the term ‘uncertainty’. he goes on identifying several categories of uncertainties that influence the listener’s comprehension of the message. he believes the first uncertainty to be related to the confidence in the language. when listening to a message in the target language, language learners tend to have unrealistic expectations, anticipating to understand every single word comprised in the message instead of aiming for general comprehension made available by the context. dwelling on this, hedge notes that learners’ anxiety can be exacerbated by a classroom procedure which does not contextualize the text or prepare the topic by armenian folia anglistika methodology 78 activating the required schemata. in other words, tasks requesting that the students should listen to the text and then proceed to answer the questions can not only cause unnecessary tension and strain for the students, but also impede their ability to perform well in the respective task (2000:237). an argument based on my own classroom observations is that this kind of tasks usually test the learners’ lsitening skills but fail to teach them anything. to tackle this problem and to build confidence in the learner’s ability to understand, hedge suggests the teacher taking the pace and length of the listening activity into consideration (2000:237). cherry claims the second uncertainty to be due to the structure of authentic speech, fraught with repetitions, pauses, incomplete sentences, as well as a larger degree of colloquial language. hedge (2000:240) puts forward strong arguments for using slow, clear recordings of standard english with familiar accents, especially in the earlier stages of language learning. at the same time, she highlights the importance of developing the ability to deal with listening outside the classroom and familiarizing the learners with the variation in pace and pronunciation, along with learning language strategies and vocabulary development (2000:240). in this respect, having learners exposed to authentic language materials can aid both the retention of vocabulary items in the context and encourage the learners to identify the prosodic features inherent in the communication of native speakers. cherry identifies gaps in the message as another reason for uncertainties to take place. an important strategy to address these gaps would be asking the learners to predict what the speaker will say next, by attracting their attention, for instance, to the transitions and discourse markers in the message. conversational strategies, such as nodding to signal agreement and asking for clarification, when the message is not understood, can also cause uncertainties. as we know, most of the mentioned conversational strategies tend to differ across countries and cultures and might cause misunderstanding in communication. the fifth uncertainty, according to cherry, is the uncertainty of language, which has to do with the listener’s proficiency in understanding vocabulary, grammatical structures etc. uncertainties of content have to do with the listener’s lack of background knowledge, which often makes it difficult to understand what is being said. hedge believes that the uncertainties of content methodology armenian folia anglistika 79 can be resolved in the pre-listening stage, when the learners’ prior knowledge can be activated and missing prior knowledge can be introduced (2000:241). it seems appropriate to reflect on one’s teaching experience and learn which of the aforementioned ‘uncertainties’ underlie the problems and challenges learners experience in the classroom when completing listening tasks and whether there are any other factors that account for the learners’ low performance in listening activities. it also seems useful to provide an effective solution to each of the listed problems. in the light of my english language teaching experience, i can state that out of the two receptive skills, learners find listening to be more challenging for the following reasons. a) affective factors, such as lack of interest and concentration learners find it hard to concentrate on the listening task because they are not interested in the topic and thus do not feel motivated enough to complete the listening task. to address this problem, it will help to use listening tasks that comprise information relevant to the learners’ needs. for instance, before the course starts it will be useful to conduct one-to-one or paired interviews to find out information about the learners’ needs, learning styles, preferences and interests. interviews may be done either in l2 or in the learners’ native language. these kinds of proactive activity can not only address the learners’ lack of motivation but also help the teacher identify the types of stimuli, which are likely to interest and attract each learner in the group. b) problems affecting the interpretation of the spoken message in 1980, underwood suggests that the learners’ inability to understand the listener is not caused by their insufficient systemic knowledge but by their unfamiliarity with the context (1989:19). this happens because when having to listen in real life, students already know the context and can rely on their prior knowledge and experience to have an idea what they are going to hear, whereas in the classroom, they lack this knowledge. in this respect, underwood suggests providing the learners with pre-listening support to help them concentrate on what they are going to hear. this involves outlining the setting and giving background information but not telling the students too much so that the whole listening experience does not lose its value. the questions preceding a listening task can activate the learners’ mental schemata about the topic of the lesson and help the learners build up their own armenian folia anglistika methodology 80 expectations about the information they are going to hear. the gained knowledge gives the learners the required confidence for successful listening. c) insufficient visual interpretation when engaged in face-to-face interaction in their l2, learners often rely on facial expressions and body language to interpret the cues to decipher the meaning of the message. in the classroom, when listening to audio files, they are often deprived of the opportunity to see the speaker and thus cannot rely on their interpretation of the context and the speakers’ attitude. in this respect, research highlights the relevance of visual aids and videos in contextualizing listening activities and encouraging the learners to work out the visual clues to meaning (hedge 2014:246). silent viewing, playing the video with the sound off using only the picture can be used in the pre-listening stage as a prediction technique to arouse students’ interests, stimulate thought, and develop their skills of anticipation. an alternative to the same activity can be freezing the picture on the screen and encouraging the learners to guess what might be happening afterwards in the story d) scarce systemic knowledge in the while-listening stage, when extracting the gist, the learners might be unable to form mental representations from the spoken text due to the lack of language knowledge. this can prevent them from processing the relevant information. to address this problem, teachers are recommended pre-teaching the so-called blocking vocabulary, lexical items that are crucial to the comprehension of the message. e) lack of control over the pace of speech and the inability to get things repeated in real life, learners have the opportunity to interrupt their interlocutor, asking for clarification or making the speaker repeat what they have said. when completing listening tasks in the classroom, learners believe that they might miss some important information and they cannot re-listen to it. this feeling can make the learners focus on certain words and miss the general meaning of the text. vandergrift believes that this problem can be exacerbated particularly for lower-level listeners, who are often unable to process what they hear and focus on details instead (vandergrift 2004:4-5). in this respect, lynch (1996:89) introduces the idea of paused listening tasks in the classroom. paused listening tasks boost the learners’ confidence and methodology armenian folia anglistika 81 encourage the learners to talk about their mental models of the segment they have formed when listening to the message. it is worth mentioning that they do not necessarily have to be based on recorded materials, e.g. the teacher can pause when telling a story. conclusion to conclude, listening skills are crucial not only to learning but real life as well. this fact encourages researchers to compare them to life skills. the frustration and anxiety, learners often experience when facing listening tasks can block their understanding and impede their further learning. hence, it seems reasonable to encourage learners to develop top-down listening strategies reliant on the background knowledge in understanding the message. references: 1. anderson, a. & lynch, t. (1988) listening. oxford: oup. 2. brown, g. (1986) investigating listening comprehension in context. // applied linguistics. / ed. by j. hellermann and a. mauranen. vol. 7/3. oxford: oup. 3. cattlin, m. (2014) the art of lesson planning: a handbook for pre-service and in-service teachers of english to speakers of other languages. kindle edition. 4. cherry, c. (1957) on human communication: a review, a survey and a criticism. cambridge: mit press. 5. field, j. (1998) skills and strategies: towards a new methodology for listening. // elt journal. / ed. by g. hall. vol. 52/2 april. oxford: oup. 6. hedge, t. (2010) teaching and learning in the language classroom. oxford: oup. 7. lynch, t. (1996) communication in the language classroom. oxford: oup. 8. richards, j. (2008) teaching listening and speaking: from theory to practice. cambridge: cup. 9. schmitt, n. (2010) an introduction to applied linguistics. new york: routledge. 10. thornbury, s. (2014) an a-z of elt. a dictionary of terms and concepts. oxford: macmillan books for teachers. armenian folia anglistika methodology 82 11. underwood, m. (1989) teaching listening. n.y.: longman. 12. vandergrift, l. (2002) listening: theory and practice in modern foreign language competence. available at: <https://www.llas.ac.uk/resources /gpg/67> [accessed august 2015]. 13. van dijk, t. (2005) contextual knowledge management in discourse production. // a new agenda in critical discourse analysis. / ed. by r. wodak and p. chilton. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins publishing company. 14. wilson, j.j. (2012) how to teach listening. essex: pearson education limited. êáíáñáõý»ñç áý¹ñ³ýñ³ï³ý áõýïý¹ñù³ý ñùïáõãûáõýý»ñç ½³ñ·³óù³ý ñ³ñóç ßáõñç úï³ñ 黽íç áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãû³ý áýã³óùáõù éëáõ³ï³ý ³é³ç³¹ñ³ýùý»ñ ï³ï³ñ»éçë ëáíáñáõý»ñá μ³ëíáõù »ý ï³ñ³μýáõûã ëý¹çñý»ñç: ²ûë ³éáõùáí, ³ýññ³å»ßï ¿ ëáíáñáõý»ñç ùáï ½³ñ·³óý»é áý¹ñ³ýñ³ï³ý áýï³éù³ý ñùïáõãûáõýý»ñ: ðá¹í³íáõù ùýýáõãû³ý »ý ³éýíáõù ëáíáñáõý»ñç áý¹ñ³ýñ³ï³ý ñùïáõãûáõýý»ñç ½³ñ·³óù³ý é³½ù³í³ñ³ùççáóý»ñá, áñáýó ý»ñ¹ñáõùá ¹³ë³í³ý¹ù³ý ·áñíáýã³óáõù ýå³ëïáõù ¿ ëáíáñáõý»ñç éëáõ³ï³ý ñùïáõãûáõýý»ñç ½³ñ·³óù³ýý áõ μ³ñ»é³íù³ýá: microsoft word 1. maket 2019-1new.doc methodology armenian folia anglistika 103 inclusive education in armenia syuzanna tadevosyan russian-armenian (slavonic) university abstract the article is on the inclusive education in general and the status of it in the republic of armenia. it mainly covers the notion of inclusive education, the functioning model of education in armenia, its necessity and importance to be applied in many schools of armenia. the subject is not new but still, there is a lack of information and awareness of it among the people living in armenia, particularly parents and teachers. some strategies and suggestions on the topic are included in the article too, that is how to develop and implement it in everyday schooling. much attention is paid to the training of teachers and the connection of multidisciplinary bonds. research in a few schools of armenia proves that the issue is to be well observed to find proper solutions and to provide relevant information and implication of special education at schools and organizations willing to support inclusive education. key words: inclusive education, disability, special needs, equal opportunities, qualification, research, integrate. introduction inclusive education is not a new idea. communities practiced inclusion throughout centuries. through the years there was a “common misunderstanding of inclusion related to (incorrectly) considering integration and inclusion to be synonyms; viewing inclusion as simply the presence of a child who is labeled ‘disabled’ or ‘different’ in a mainstream setting; thinking that inclusion is only about some people (instead of about everyone); and viewing inclusion as a process of assimilation” (stubbs 2008:19). armenian folia anglistika methodology 104 much research has been done in this field the majority of which shows that learning in the same school with children without any disability significantly helps the children with disabilities. in the past children with disabilities attended separate schools, but today they are in the same school and sit next to those without any disabilities. this is rather humane and gives grounds not to separate someone from the society. that kind of approach is very valued as it teaches students to support each other realizing that everyone has equal opportunities in the society. inclusive education is about building friendship and relationship with all in your group and surrounding. in many countries children with special needs attend special schools and are still separated from the society. armenia is not an exception in this aspect. children with special needs are discriminated in everyday activities in schools. we face a real problem today. “all children have a right to survive, thrive and fulfill their potential – to the benefit of a better world” (world health organization, “world report on disability”, 2011:4). people should learn that inclusive education is not a privilege; it is the right of each child. representation of disabilities in societies thus, why inclusive education is important, how inclusive education works and what kind of organizations support this education? as has been mentioned, inclusive education is not a privilege, it is just everyone’s fundamental right to access education and not be excluded. yet, there are groups of people who do not have access to this right. children with special needs are also a natural part of our world. their way of learning differs from ours. methods of inclusive education help us work together, help each other and be a part of this world. it is a procedure for expanding support and lessening rejection in a way that adequately reacts to the differing needs of all learners. it includes the individual educating and adapting needs of all minimized and powerless people, including road kids, young ladies, kids from ethnic minorities, kids from financially burdened families, kids from migrant/exile/uprooted families, kids with hiv/aids and handicap kids. this methodology armenian folia anglistika 105 type of education gives a guarantee to have a good education and not be pushed aside from our society. education is a privilege and is a method for acknowledging different rights. it is important to understand the common, political and financial privileges of all kids and young people. it means to battle the minimization of people and to advance contrast. inclusive education gains more and more support day by day. the concept of it, nowadays, is wildly spread all over the world. there are many forms of education based on particular philosophies, spiritual and religious belief systems. but the system is always based on local culture and people. “everyone has the right to education. education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. elementary education will be compulsory.” (the universal declaration of human rights 1948, article 26). inclusive education in armenia education in armenia has always been highly rated. armenians have always attached great importance to education, and today the development of the education system and its compatibility with international standards are considered to be among the most important national issues. in the early 2000s, inclusive education was announced as a priority by the armenian government. the challenge of developing an inclusive approach to education has been put on the political agenda not only in armenia but also in many countries around the world. but as the idea of special education is new, not all the armenians understand it in the right way. it is something new for us. the idea of inclusive education becomes popular day by day in armenia, and we will be discussing its progress here, but still not all people living in armenia have a clear understanding of it. in every country the system of inclusive education and the way people perceive it differs from a cultural point of view. being a part of the armenian society and knowing its culture well enough, i have an opportunity to view the inclusive education from the armenian stand-point. i have had an exclusive possibility to explore the negative and positive sides of inclusive education in armenian folia anglistika methodology 106 the republic of armenia. in addition to my own studies in the field, i found information from different websites, which helped me understand how armenian culture affects the system of education on children with special educational needs. thus, my article is precisely on the formation of inclusive education in the republic of armenia and its peculiarities. i have also tried to make some suggestions. it has been for about more than 15 years that inclusive education has been in existence in the republic of armenia. nevertheless, the lack of information among the parents gives rise to understandable concerns about the impact of inclusion on themselves and their children. they may be unaware of the benefits of inclusion that is offered to all children in the society. they may believe that inclusion is a means of saving money by “dumping” children with disabilities in regular classrooms or recreational programs. parents who do not have children with special educational needs may think that inclusion will negatively influence the time and attention available for their own children. some parents of the students without any disabilities believe that inclusive education is not effective and that children with disabilities hinder their children’s education. at the same time, parents of the children with disabilities have little information about inclusion and special education. not only disinformation becomes a source of a problem but also the lack of money in some families who do not have information about special education and organizations supporting it. the armenian government adopted the concept of inclusive education in armenia in 2005. in june 2005, the law on the education of persons with special education needs was passed and inclusive education was included in the draft of education development national program for 2008-2015. however, the transition from the dual system inherited from soviet times towards inclusive education has not been so far fully implemented. children with disabilities are most often educated in separate environments, such as special schools. when we look closer at the monitoring initiatives, we can see or highlight the weaknesses in the current educational provisions. some official methodology armenian folia anglistika 107 statistics demonstrates a significant decline in the number of children enrolled in special schools. however, there has been a huge progress in inclusive education during the last decade and that is due to the efforts of professionals. as a result of my survey, the parents of the children with special education needs (sen) mentioned the insufficient conditions and low quality of education as the main reasons of exclusion of their children from the mainstream schools. somehow, we can agree with these parents, because, in many schools located in the villages of armenia the staff is not appropriately qualified. in other words, there is a problem concerning the lack of education among teachers. today the inclusion of children with sen is a big challenge for many schools, especially in villages and communities. there are still many children with sen of whom local administrations, schools, and disabled people’s organizations (dpos) are unaware. my observations proved that in local schools some parents do not really understand the importance of education for their children and they believe that it is unnecessary, since they feel that s/he will never be able to work or get married. during my studies i have not found information about trainings for teachers (not regular). i think that it would be useful if there were trainings for parents too. the trained parents will look at the problem the other way round. if they were educated and had clear information about their child’s disability or inclusive education, there would not be any conflict between teachers and parents. this is because of absence of any information on this aspect. in armenia children with sen need something more than inclusive education. on the basis of my observations in very few yerevan basic schools, i would conclude that inclusive education is not always a good idea (for many parents). not all the children with sen should go to school and learn all the things that others without sen do. it might be more effective if some children with mental disabilities learn some handicrafts instead of going to public schools. in armenia instead of inclusive education, there is a functioning model of integrated education. children with sen are just integrated into schools and get the same education as everybody else. but here comes another problem. armenian folia anglistika methodology 108 these children are labeled “inclusive kids”. so we can come up with the idea that the concept of the quality of inclusive education is not present in any form in the inclusive education system of armenia. to improve the situation, the current model of inclusive education should be revised. children with sen must not just join the classes where children without sen study. they cannot do all the things that other children do. the quality of education of children with sen must be guaranteed. there is another thing which has a negative impact on the quality of inclusive education in armenia. it is the lack of comprehensive approach towards the professional team. in villages and some communities, teachers do not realize the importance of trainings. they do not deeply understand what inclusion is and who the children with sen are. they do not know how to work with them. the members of multidisciplinary teams do not have a clear understanding of their responsibilities. subject teachers are indifferent to inclusive education and do not devote enough time to educating children with sen. sometimes it is not their fault. not all schools are financed well while the increase of the funding could somehow solve this problem. state regulations on the structure and functions of multidisciplinary teams should be elaborated too. the team should, at minimum, include a special educator, a social worker, a psychologist and a speech therapist. the structure and functions of the multidisciplinary team must be embedded in a certain charter and be applicable to all inclusive schools. that is why it is important to decide on the most optimal and child-centered timeframe for special education needs assessments. we also can highlight another problem connected with the collaboration between multidisciplinary teams, subject teachers and parents of children with sen. so far, their collaboration has been very weak. subject teachers do not trust multidisciplinary team members, and parents do not participate in many events connected with their children. there are biased and stereotypical social attitudes towards children with sen, which are often reinforced by the parents of the children with sen. not only parents but also teachers and other students should support each other and learn to work together. more than that, not only methodology armenian folia anglistika 109 teachers should have trainings but also parents of the children with sen should have trainings on how to work with the child or on how important the role of multidisciplinary teams is. otherwise, misunderstanding and lack of knowledge will become the cause of conflict between teachers and parents. key ingredients of successful and sustainable inclusive education having identified the common understanding of the phenomenon of inclusive education and the people involved in it, several people who were trained in some organizations and were interested in inclusive education suggested carrying on some improvements based on their learning experience and attitudes. they elaborated some features to be applied in order to raise awareness among teachers and parents dealing with inclusive education. what is relevant to do is to: 1. prepare training profiles: as multidisciplinary teams consist of various specialists, each member needs to acquire new knowledge and skills relevant to their specific professional functions and needs. 2. increase access to supplementary training: the members of regional multidisciplinary teams have to commute to the capital for supplementary training, which is quite time-consuming. creating regional resource centers would partly solve the problem. 3. increase availability of inclusive education materials: the ie materials provided at trainings must be updated. many teachers do not know where to go to acquire up-to-date literature on ie, since no thematic materials are available in the training section of the nie (national institute of education) website. 4. increase frequency of trainings: the frequency of training courses is very limited and ineffective in terms of strengthening and enhancing the applicability of knowledge. 5. provide needs assessment: the exact form of treatment depends on the child’s individual needs, and includes understanding of the child’s strengths and deficits, as well as what motivates the child, and what is the child’s best learning modality. in most cases, a combination of treatment methods is more effective. armenian folia anglistika methodology 110 my observations, the experience of teachers and the available information allow us to formulate some teaching tips which can be useful for the ones who want to have success in teaching children with autism. according to sue stubbs (2008:5), “teaching tips are divided into three main groups: communication, social interaction, behavior, each of which has its subgroups”. 1. communication  provide order and structure to help the person feel less anxious and more comfortable.  make a class schedule out of pictures or drawings (for example, song, prayer, story or lesson activity). point to each picture as you progress through the schedule.  be flexible; your schedule must be able to be adapted to the needs of the person with autism.  keep instruction short and simple to get a child's attention who has autism, get down on the same level to speak to him or her. 2. social interaction  learn what the person does well (such as putting together puzzles or singing), and find ways to help the person use those skills in the classroom.  select appropriate activities that include interaction with classmates. use these activities to promote making friends and taking turns. 3. behavior  regularly teach clear, simple rules that the child can achieve.  when inappropriate behavior occurs, repeat the rule. then encourage the student to engage in another activity.  praise the specific behavior whenever the person does something well, such as, well done; now you know it.  ignore small disruptions and consistently praise appropriate behavior and improvement.  ask family members about unusual or inappropriate behavior. parents can help you understand what the child is trying to communicate and how you can respond in a helpful way. methodology armenian folia anglistika 111  do not expect too much too soon. patience, consistency, and caring will eventually bring progress. conclusion inclusive education will become a dynamic process if at least in any school there is a tendency to observe and follow the above-mentioned rules. it will move back and forth between theoretical discussion and practical implementation but finally it will get its destination and be of great help to those having sen. “the changes in the system of education are to mean that all learners should benefit and this will lead to the strengthening of civil society and the socio-economic well-being of all. naturally this will guide the way to be more humane and enjoy the privileges of all equal societies around the world” (clough, corbett 2009:7). references: 1. clough, p.; corbett, j. (2009) theories of inclusive education, institute of education. university of london, uk: sage. 2. galstyan, m. (2013) an assessment of implementation of inclusive education in the republic of armenia. / centre for education researches and consulting, yerevan. available at: http://www.osf.am/wp-content/ uploads/2013/11/inclusive-education-report [accessed november 2018]. 3. stubbs, s. (2008) inclusive education: where there are few recourses. / ed. by i. lewis, updated and revised version. available at: <http://atlasalliansen.no/publication/inclusive-education-where-there-are-few-resour ces> [accessed december 2018]. 4. corps, h.; ceralli, g.; boisseau, s. (2012) inclusive education (handicap international). cambridge: cup. 5. alaverdyan, a.; jean-luc, s. (2009) towards a more equitable society: a guide to inclusive education practices in armenia, yerevan. 6. (2011)world report on disability. / world health organization, malta. armenian folia anglistika methodology 112 7. farrel, m (2000) educational inclusion. // british journal of special education. n 27(1) pp. 35-38. ներառական կրթությունը հայաստանում հոդվածը նվիրված է ներառական կրթությանը և նրա կարգավիճակին հայաստանի հանրապետությունում: այն հիմնականում ներկայացնում է հայաստանում առկա կրթական մոդելը, ներառական կրթության հայեցակարգը, նրա անհրաժեշտությունը և կիրառման կարևորությունը հայաստանի դպրոցներում: թեման նոր չէ, այնուամենայնիվ, հայաստանում ակնհայտ է տեղեկատվության և իրազեկության պակասը: հոդվածում տեղ են գտել թեմայի վերաբերյալ որոշակի փորձ ունեցող ուսուցիչների կողմից առաջարկվող ռազմավարություններ ու առաջարկներ՝ ինչպես զարգացնել ներառական կրթությունը հայաստանի դպրոցներում և ապահովել համապատասխան կառույցների ընդգրկումն ու մանկավարժների վերապատրաստումը: received by the editorial board 22.01.2019 recommended for publication by the reviewers 28.02.2019 accepted for print 22.04.2019 microsoft word maket 2020-1(21) 19.02 doc.doc armenian folia anglistika linguistics 90 the impact of metaphor on g.g. byron’s linguopoetic thinking varduhi ghumashyan yerevan state university abstract the issue touched upon in this article refers to the extraordinary use of innumerable metaphors in one of the greatest works by george gordon byron – childe harold’s pilgrimage. among literary devices it is especially metaphor that is peculiar to byron’s linguopoetic thinking. the linguostylistic and linguopoetic methods of analysis help to bring out metaphor as an important device for byron. through metaphors he portrays his heroes, their feelings and thoughts and makes the reader feel his powerful flight of imagination. the author does not convince the reader to make the resulting points, but he makes him/her indirectly judge the heroes and understand situations. thus, byron’s metaphors are the result of his linguopoetic thinking. they give a certain charm and musical perception through plain words and word-combinations, and serve as a bridge between physics and poetics across temporal and spatial scale. key words: lingoupoetic thinking, stylistic devices, metaphor, philosophical discourse, poetic thinker. introduction each art has its own medium, its own material substance. colors are the material substance of painting; sounds are the material substance of music, and it is language that is the material substance of literature. language consists of colors and sounds due to the existence of expressive means and stylistic devices. stylistic devices make the speech of the characters vivid, interesting, humorous, ironical, emotional and understandable; they reflect the author’s thoughts and feelings. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 91 this paper is characterized by a great interest towards metaphor in g. g. byron’s childe harold’s pilgrimage and is devoted to its comprehensive study. done at the junction of linguistic and literary analyses, the present research is concerned with a number of problems of text interpretation, stylistics, linguistics and literature studies. though there are many works devoted to the problem under analysis, some important aspects such as structural-semantic parameters of the text and lexical stylistic devices, including metaphor as its component, have not been thoroughly investigated. the manifold use of metaphor metaphor is a universal phenomenon in language. its universality is displayed in the space, time and structure of language. it is discovered in all languages and in all times; it is used in different aspects of language and found in all functional varieties of language. scientists always focus on two functions of metaphor: on the one hand it serves as a means of creating an artistic speech, on the other, the tradition of the antique epoch underlines the second function of metaphor. expressing his attitude brightly, markus tullius cicero said that men invented clothes to protect themselves from cold and later to decorate and ennoble their body, and metaphor, born by demerits, got its development for the sake of enjoyment (arutyunova, zhirinskiy 1990). metaphor is one of the most frequently used, well-known and elaborated stylistic devices. metaphor is used in different genres. however, in one genre it is used more than in the other, in some – very widely, whereas in others its use is limited. metaphor is exceptionally practical. whenever it appears, it enriches the perception and comprehension of human acts, knowledge and language. thus, metaphor serves not only to make our ideas more accessible to others, but it is necessary, because due to it an object becomes very simple and clear to our thought. in aristotle’s thinking the difference between the “ordinary” or “prose” use of words and the “distinctive” or “poetic” use of them is inherent. in fact, the notion of metaphor as a departure from the ordinary modes of language runs through all his writings on the subject. aristotle considers metaphor a kind of armenian folia anglistika linguistics 92 “dignifying, enlivening ingredient” which is added to language like “the seasoning of the meat.” metaphor is a thing that cannot be learned from anyone else, and it is, in fact, the mark of great natural ability, for the ability to use metaphor appropriately implies a perception of resemblances (aristotle 1987). the constant use of a metaphor gradually leads to the breaking up of the primary meaning, adding to it fresh connotations or shades of meaning. this influence, however strong it may be, will never reach the degree where the dictionary meaning entirely disappears. if it did, we should have no stylistic device. it is the law of stylistics that in a stylistic device the stability of the dictionary meaning is always retained, no matter how great the influence of the contextual meaning may be. metaphors come to help when there is a need to explain the unknown. in order to express their thoughts about the secret characteristics of things, people compare them with the familiar ones, and, in fact, we are metaphorical even in our everyday speech (galperin1977). it will not be wrong to say that metaphor now is the order of the day and we find that more and more writers of many different intellective writings are very often inclined to turn to metaphor. the impression is that if the writer did not turn to metaphor he would feel uncomfortable or even out-of-fashion, since metaphor has always been one of the most powerful tools in creating flamboyant images, in making one’s speech to the point, in describing phenomena precisely and in a lively way (gasparyan 2013). for the study of metaphor in byron’s verse the method of linguostylistic analysis is highly recommendable as the metaphor or its components are analyzed both on the semantic and metasemiotic levels. most of the lines of byron’s works contain innumerous linguistic units used on the metasemiotic level. in fact it is in the context that we reveal different stylistic devices as well as metaphors to be able to understand the writer’s message more precisely (akhmanova, zadornova 1977). moreover, the method of linguopoetic analysis allows us to reveal the aesthetic impact achieved by the author, then by reading between the lines to understand the writer’s purport, intentions, hidden meanings and emotions. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 93 the use of metaphor in poetry is one of the most important aspects of poetic style. byron uses metaphor in his poetry to explain and elucidate emotions, feelings, relationships that are impossible to be described vividly and brightly in ordinary language. he also uses metaphor as a way of explaining or referring to something in a brief but effective way showing the unlimited power of his imagination. from all the tropological devices it is especially metaphor that is peculiar to byron’s linguopoetic thinking. both the original and translated verses of his works come to confirm this. his fine metaphors play an important role in portraying his characters, their feelings and thoughts. the role of byronic metaphor in communication between the writer and the reader the main purpose of the author is to affect the reader emotionally through images. the author does not convince the reader to make the resulting points, but he makes him/her indirectly judge the characters and clear up the situation. his metaphors give a certain charm and musical perception through the plain language combinations. byron’s poem childe harold’s pilgrimage is full of genuine metaphors. let us study some examples: the hell of waters! where they howl and hiss, and boil in endless torture. (byron 1956:236) this is a nice sample of genuine metaphor, as it is really an unexpected one. we know that the hell of waters does not exist, and that torture cannot be endless. in this way the writer wants to make his writing more imaginary, expressive and impressive by exaggerating the reality. here is another context which arouses strong emotions by the metaphorical use of language units: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 94 an iris sits, amidst the internal surge, like hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn. (byron 1956:230) the whole passage is metaphorical. unexpectedness gives rise to great emotions in real life; the more unexpected this or that phenomenon is, the deeper are the emotions it evokes. byron is a real master of art in creating and using perfect metaphors. thus, it is not by chance that childe harold’s pilgrimage is full of original metaphors stirring the reader’s imagination. thus, for example: oh! ever loving, lovely, and beloved! how selfish sorrow ponders on the past… (byron 1956:121) and harold stands upon this place of skulls, the grave of france, the deadly waterloo! (byron 1956:157) the author uses the deadly waterloo metaphorically, as it is a kind of personification, it is obvious that only living creatures can die; france cannot die, and france cannot have a grave. sustained metaphors are very typical of byron’s writing. this is evident from the following examples: drooped as a wild-born falcon with clipped wing, to whom the boundless air alone wore home. (byron 1956:156) by a lone wall a lonelier column rears… (byron 1956:174) linguistics armenian folia anglistika 95 in the poem byron has clearly established his, i.e. the narrator’s view on nature and mankind. he has effectively done this through various literary techniques. childe harold is a persona of byron, he uses childe harold as a means of expressing his own opinion on mankind, specifically targeted against england – his home-country that he chose to flee after having been accused of incest. byron wrote with bright and vivid colors, creating beautiful images by using different stylistic devices. byron is a talented writer who can make us feel the way he wants us to feel. this co-existence is built up so subtly, that the reader remains unaware of the process. it is still stronger when the aesthetic function begins to manifest itself clearly and unequivocally through a gradual increase in intensity, in the foregrounding of certain features, repetitions, of certain syntactic patterns and in the broken rhythm of the author’s mode of narrating events, facts and situations. lord byron tried to create a literary work as beautiful and harmonic in all respects of art as possible. conclusion metaphor is not only a tropological device carrying out ornamental-rhetoric function, but also a universal model of transformation of meanings and images into a new sign content. considering this notion, we can state that g.g. byron managed to skillfully and effectively decorate his individual language with metaphor for implementing all his expectations as well as sending his messages to his readers in the most unique way. in childe harold’s pilgrimage metaphor is the most fundamental form of figurative language and the result of byron’s linguopoetic thinking. byron’s language is very expressive and vivid, skilful and playful, it has a great charm and expresses the brilliancy of the author’s emotions and personality. his metaphors reflect his national and universal wisdom, his cognitive attitudes, and transmit his intentions, feelings and concerns to the reader. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 96 references: 1. akhmanova, o.; zadornova, v. (1977) on linguopoetic stratification of literary texts. // poetica․/an international journal of linguistic-literary studies. tokyo: sanseido international. 2. arutyunova, n.d.; zhirmunski, m.a. (1990) teoriya metafori. m.: progress. 3. black, m. (1979) more about metaphor. ithaca: cornell university press. 4. cooper, d. (1986) metaphor․ oxford: oup. 5. crystal, d. (1969) investigating english style. bloomington: indiana university press. 6. galperin, i.r. (1977) stylistics. m.: visshaya shkola. 7. gasparyan, s.; matevosyan, a. (2011) english style in action. yerevan: lezvakan horizon. 8. gasparyan, s. (2013) figura sravneniya v funktsional’nom osveshchenii. yerevan: lusakn. 9. kukharenko, v. (2000) a book of practice in stylistics. vinnytsia: nova knyga. 10. leech, g.n. (1969) linguistic guide to english poetry. harlow: longman. 11. ortony, a. (1979) metaphor and thought. cambridge: cup. source of data։ 1. byron, g.g. (1956) childe harold’s pilgrimage. london: foreign languages publishing house. փոխաբերությունը որպես ջ.գ. բայրոնի լեզվաբանաստեղծական մտածողության արդյունք ջ. գ. բայրոնի լեզվաբանաստեղծական մտածողությունը լեզվանյութի փոխաբերական կիրառության ծնունդ է տալիս, և պատահական չէ, որ փոխաբերությունը բանաստեղծի՝ պատկերներ ստեղծելու ամենահիմնարար հնարներից է: ուսումնասիրելով և վերլուծելով փոխաբերությունները չայլդ հարոլդի ուխտագնացությունը ստեղծագործության մեջ՝ հոդlinguistics armenian folia anglistika 97 վածի հեղինակը ի ցույց է դնում բայրոնյան փոխաբերության լեզվաոճական և լեզվաբանաստեղծական արժևորուները, որոնք ոչ միայն բացահայտում են ստեղծագործության լեզվի և ոճի հարստությունը, հյութեղությունն ու պատկերավորությունը, այլև ճանապարհ են հարթում հեղինակային ուղերձի ճիշտ ընկալման համար: received by the editorial board 09.10.2019 recommended for publication by the reviewers 22.11.2019 accepted for print 03.02.2020 << /ascii85encodepages false /allowtransparency false /autopositionepsfiles true 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(www.heidelberg.com) >> /namespace [ (adobe) (common) (1.0) ] /othernamespaces [ << /asreaderspreads false /cropimagestoframes true /errorcontrol /warnandcontinue /flattenerignorespreadoverrides false /includeguidesgrids false /includenonprinting false /includeslug false /namespace [ (adobe) (indesign) (4.0) ] /omitplacedbitmaps false /omitplacedeps false /omitplacedpdf false /simulateoverprint /legacy >> << /addbleedmarks false /addcolorbars false /addcropmarks false /addpageinfo false /addregmarks false /convertcolors /converttocmyk /destinationprofilename () /destinationprofileselector /documentcmyk /downsample16bitimages true /flattenerpreset << /presetselector /mediumresolution >> /formelements false /generatestructure false /includebookmarks false /includehyperlinks false /includeinteractive false /includelayers false /includeprofiles false /multimediahandling /useobjectsettings /namespace [ (adobe) (creativesuite) (2.0) ] /pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /documentcmyk /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /usedocumentprofile /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2540 2540] /pagesize [595.276 841.890] >> setpagedevice microsoft word contens verjin armenian folia anglistika linguistics 92 on some universal and specific semantic and cognitive aspects of the emotive joy in english shushanik melik-adamyan russian-armenian (slavonic) university abstract the most widespread distinction made between emotions seems to be their being positive or negative; however, there is much more to their linguistic study. joy is seen as one of the primary emotions and is thus indispensable as an example of a positive emotion, which can open the doors to the understanding of emotives in the english language and their universal and specific aspects. the paper aims at a better understanding of both universal and specific semantic and cognitive aspects of the given emotion which in linguistics is studied under the term of an emotive. to achieve this purpose the methods of corpus analysis and metaphor analysis have been applied. the study has revealed that positive denotation and almost similar levels of intensity are the universal semantic and cognitive features of the emotive joy. key words: emotive, joy, cognitive analysis, semantic analysis, universal features. introduction it is hardly possible to imagine any language devoid of emotives. indeed, this can be true of any layer of language; however, we believe that without emotives the english literature, newspaper language and many other spheres would be far from being complete. and it is only in rare cases such as academic language that the role of emotives is diminished. among the many classifications of emotions, positive and negative emotions can be singled out. many scholars seem to support this view. parrot (2001) not only admits them being positive or negative, but he also introduces the notions of primary, secondary and tertiary emotions. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 93 the wording primary is, we believe, of central importance as in the main manifestations of emotions there is little consensus over which are the basic or primary ones. according to parrot the class of primary positive emotions encompasses love, joy and surprise, whereas the primary negative class is composed of anger, sadness and fear. interestingly enough, a vast majority of linguists and emotion scholars highlight joy rather than happiness. this may seem controversial on the surface, but for the sake of this paper, we will view terms joy and happiness as interchangeable as it will allow for a more comprehensive analysis. semantic analysis of joy to start with, we may notice the following definitions of the primary emotive joy:  a feeling of great pleasure and happiness (oxford dictionary, 1998);  the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires (merriam-webster dictionary, 2011);  great happiness and pleasure, or something that gives you this feeling (longman american english dictionary, 2008). while the abovementioned definitions may not suffice for a comprehensive analysis of joy, one may note that the common features across the three definitions are pleasure and happiness (as shared by the definitions of oxford and longman dictionaries). however, the definition by merriam-webster dictionary stands out in this respect as it concentrates more on the reasons behind such an emotive. besides, oxford and longman definitions have included the word feeling which might be a further point of reference for distinguishing between the concepts of emotion (which in linguistics is denoted as an emotive) and feeling. here some justification is to be made as to why the word joy was preferred to the word happiness. coming back to the dispute between whether it is happiness that functions as a primary or basic emotive or this role should be attributed to joy, we may note that the cambridge dictionary defines the former as “the feeling of being happy” (cambridge 1995). while the two might look armenian folia anglistika linguistics 94 like absolute synonyms on the surface, it is common knowledge that the language does not hurry to recognize absolute synonyms (suárez 1971): joy is hence seen as both a more basic (in some terminology – primary) and a more intensive emotive. as such, it encompasses happiness and pleasure becoming a uniting, binding force for them. turning to the definition suggested by merriam-webster dictionary, we see that joy is described in terms of the factors that cause such an emotive, i.e. “well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires”. it means that in case of the other 2 definitions, the underlying generality is the experience, feeling of happiness and pleasure, whereas in the latter case joy is seen as a result of actions. for now, let us turn to another definition, that of vocabulary.com (vocabulary.com 2004). this online dictionary is powered by not only standard dictionary definitions but it also boasts classification of types. its definition runs as follows: “joy is the emotion of pleasure and happiness. joy can also be the very thing that delights you.” in this sense, it encompasses both the oxford and longman understandings of joy as a combination of pleasure and happiness (joy = happiness + pleasure) and the reason behind such an emotive, the process of delighting one. with regard to the classification of the emotive joy, it differentiates between six types: 1. become cheerful (cheer, cheer up, chirk up); 2. become glad or happy (gladden); 3. feel extreme happiness or elation (be on cloud nine, exult, jump for joy, walk on air); 4. to express great joy (exuberate, exult, jubilate, rejoice, triumph); 5. become more cheerful (buoy up, lighten, lighten up); 6. be ecstatic with joy (rejoice, triumph, wallow). the common features that can be highlighted are that joy is tightly connected with the process of becoming happy, thus being presented by the action verb become, e.g. become cheerful; become glad or happy; and it even shows a comparative level as in become more cheerful. out of these six types linguistics armenian folia anglistika 95 two are described by state verbs feel and be, and the last type includes another action verb, express. thus, joy in english is either a state or process of becoming glad, happy, cheerful, and so on. besides, it is the expression of such a state. interestingly, even though we have already discussed that in terms of intensity, joy is more than mere happiness or pleasure, the abovementioned classification does not allow much room for a very strict classification of levels of this emotion. it can be generally agreed that type three (feel extreme happiness or elation) is the most intense experience of this emotion as it is modified by the adjective extreme. not surprisingly, it is here that we find idiomatic and metaphoric expressions, such as be on cloud nine, jump for joy and walk on air. type six (be ecstatic with joy) might follow suit being almost as strong as type three. and type four (to express great joy) will come after. type five (become more cheerful) will be the next as it shows a comparative level. thus, in terms of the decrease of intensity of the emotive we will have the following picture: a. feel extreme happiness or elation (be on cloud nine, exult, jump for joy, walk on air); b. be ecstatic with joy (rejoice, triumph, wallow). c. to express great joy (exuberate, exult, jubilate, rejoice, triumph); d. become more cheerful (buoy up, lighten, lighten up); however, the classification of intensity is not that straightforward. in the first place, many words denoting joy fall into different categories of intensity, such as exult which is both in the group where the emotive is the strongest and in the third group. this paradox makes the classification somewhat flawed. on the other hand, there is no criterion to distinguish between the levels of intensity of type one (become cheerful) and type two (become glad or happy). to be able to compare these two, we need to have objective tools for comparison which seem to be absent. what can be concluded about level of intensity which is typical to all emotives is that in case of joy this cannot boast a straightforward classification; in other words, all of these types have this or that level of strength of emotive; however, they are not subject to armenian folia anglistika linguistics 96 comparison, and this is, thus, not a semantic universal for this primary (basic) positive emotive. to better understand this emotive, we will turn to another classification made recently by the efforts of emotion specialist dr. paul eckman and supported by dalai lama (atlas of emotions, 2015). they present another online tool, the atlas of emotions which encompasses the following basic emotions: disgust, anger, fear, sadness and enjoyment. it is worth noting that enjoyment (which we take to be atlas’ wording for the emotive of joy) is the only positive emotive in the list. the atlas of emotions has a different term for this emotive: enjoyment. it has twelve semes here which are presented in terms of increasing force. to compare, this is more than the respective semes of the emotive anger by five. here is how it is presented: pic. 1: joy depicted in the atlas of emotions the explanations behind each of these are also given in the atlas of emotions: 1. sensory pleasure: enjoyment derived through one of the five physical senses: sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 97 2. rejoicing: a warm, uplifting feeling that people experience when they see acts of human goodness, kindness and compassion. also called elevation. 3. compassion/joy: enjoyment of helping to relieve another person's suffering. 4. amusement: light, playful feelings of enjoyment and good humor 5. schadenfreude: enjoyment of the misfortunes of another person, usually a rival. 6. peace: when something expected to be unpleasant, especially the threat of harm, is avoided or comes to an end. 7. pride: an experience of ease and contentment. 8. deep pleasure and satisfaction derived from one's own achievements or the achievements of an associate. 9. fiero: enjoyment of meeting a difficult challenge (an italian word). 10. naches: joyful pride in the accomplishments of one's children or mentees (a yiddish word). 11. wonder: an experience of something that is very surprising, beautiful, amazing or hard to believe. 12. excitement: a powerful enthusiasm. 13. ecstasy: rapturous delight. a state of very great happiness, nearly overwhelming. the atlas of emotions seems to solve the problem of classifying this emotive starting from the least intense (sensory pleasure) to the most intense one (ecstasy). joy, interestingly, goes hand in hand with compassion and is the third least intense emotive on the chart. it should, however, be mentioned that as opposed to dictionary definitions and classification of types provided by vocabulary.com, this is a work compiled by non-linguists. that is to say, that even though a classification of the levels of intensity of the emotive joy does exist, first of all there is no consensus over it and, secondly, it may not be regarded as an established universal. what is a universal feature though is that emotives, in this case, emotives showing joy do vary in degrees of intensity, but in the words of the atlas, their representation is “representative not exhaustive” (altas of emotions, 2015). not only does the atlas seem to depict the intensity of each emotive, but it also turns to the duration of each. in this respect we will have the following armenian folia anglistika linguistics 98 classification: ecstasy, compassion/joy, sensory pleasure, excitement, schadenfreude, pride, wonder, rejoicing, amusement, fiero, naches, relief. if the special distribution of two among these was the same, we prioritized the ranking of emotives based on increase in intensity. the degrees of intensity thus are not fully agreed upon, and we should look for other universal semantic features. one of them is the state of being positive, as mentioned above. the seemingly positive emotive joy, though, is not that black and white: it may have shades of negative meaning, as its secondary and tertiary emotions (again, according to parrot), may encompass pride which itself can be sometimes regarded as a negative emotive, as in “if the blockade was lifted, there is so much pro-qatar sentiment and nationalist pride that the people will buy qatar milk, not saudi.” (the guardian, october 20, 2017). the word expression nationalist pride (as opposed to, for example, national pride) shows a negative connotation. visual thesaurus; metaphor analysis to further illustrate this concept, we would like to turn to visual thesaurus which is an online tool for corpus analysis (the visual thesaurus, 2004). pic. 2: joy depicted in the visual thesaurus linguistics armenian folia anglistika 99 the visual representation shows that this emotive is almost equally distanced from the following definitions (mentioned clockwise): the emotion of great happiness (joyousness, joyfulness), making glad or happy (gladden), something or someone that provides a source of happiness (delight, pleasure), feeling happiness or joy (rejoice). this emotive is thus perceived as an emotion, a process, a state or an actor that causes this emotion. there is very little controversy over the universal semantic features in this respect which are as follows: 1. the emotive is always positive. 2. it has clear-cut levels of intensity. 3. it has a positive denotation. that is to say, in terms of universal linguistic features it is a most stable emotive as its many dictionary definitions and depictions allow concluding. however, language is a complex body of meanings which are not often clearcut. to illustrate this, we would like to turn to metaphors denoting joy. kövecses (1991b:24-25) and lakoff & johnson (1980) note the following metaphors for joy: 1. happy is up: we had to cheer him up. 2. happiness is being off the ground: i am six feet off the ground. i was so happy my feet barely touched the ground. 3. happiness is being in heaven: that was heaven on earth. 4. happy is light: she brightened up at the news. 5. happy is vitality: she was alive with joy. 6. happy is warm: that warmed my spirits. 7. a happy person is an animal that lives well: he was happy as a pig in shit. he looks like the cat that got the cream. 8. happiness is a pleasurable physical sensation: i was tickled pink. 9. happiness is a fluid in container: he was overflowing with joy. 10. happiness is a captive animal: his feelings of happiness broke lose. she couldn’t hold back her feelings of happiness. 11. happiness is an opponent in a struggle: he was knocked out! she was overcome by joy! armenian folia anglistika linguistics 100 12. happiness is a rupture/high: i was drunk with joy. 13. happiness is insanity: they were crazy with happiness. 14. happiness is a natural force: he was swept off his feet. the previously seemingly clear-cut emotive is not manifested in a far more complex way. in the first place, the emotion is seen as a state: just as in the preceding classification from the visual thesaurus, here we have joy as a state (being off the ground, being in heaven, a fluid in container, etc.). however, it is also a process as in to be drunk with joy, to be swept off one’s feet and in other examples. joy is a vertical emotion with an upward vector, e.g. i was so happy my feet barely touched the ground or heaven on earth. joy indicates a place, heaven. this is an emotive that is well associated with animals (he looks like the cat that got the cream and others). thus, rearranging the metaphors we will get the following picture: the universal features of joy are showing a state or action, being associated with upward movements and some others. on hindsight, though, not every emotion is supposed to have a direction so that it is not a universal feature for all emotives in the english language, it seems. conclusion among the many emotives of the english language joy is characterized by a number of features: it has a positive denotation but may have a negative connotation as it is associated with the feelings of pride. it is both a state and an action. it boasts levels of intensity which are relatively clear-cut. in addition, this emotive makes part of a variety of metaphors which emphasize its strong positive side. however, the emotive is also distinguished from others in that it is metaphorically associated with animals; it has an upward vector and it may be a place. this makes for the specific semantic and cognitive features of this emotive. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 101 references: 1. (2015) atlas of emotions. available at: <http://atlasofemotions.org> [accessed november 2017]. 2. (1995) cambridge english dictionary. available at: <https://dictionary. cambridge.org/dictionary> [accessed november 2017]. 3. kövecses z. (2003) metaphor and emotion: language, culture, and body in human feeling. // language arts & disciplines. cambridge: cup. 4. (2008) longman dictionary of american english. pearson. 5. (2011) merriam-webster.com. available at: <https://www.merriam-webster. com> [accessed november 2017]. 6. (1998) oxford advanced learner’s dictionary of current english. oxford. 7. parrott, w. (2001) emotions in social psychology: essential readings.. university of maryland: psychology press. 8. suárez, j.a. (1971) a case of absolute synonyms. // international journal of american linguistics 37, n. 3, pp. 192-195. 9. (october 20, 2017) the guardian. available at: <ttps://www.theguardian. com/world/2017/oct/20/land-of-milk-and-money-qatar-looks-to-farms-tobeat-the-gulf-boycott> [accessed november 2017]. 10. (2004) the visual thesaurus. available at: <https://www.visualthesaurus. com> [accessed november 2017]. 11. (2004) vocabulary.com. available at: <https://www.vocabulary.com/ dictionary> [accessed november 2017]. անգլերենի հրճվանք հույզի որոշ համընդհանուր և յուրահատուկ իմաստային ու ճանաչողական կողմեր հույզերի դասակարգման մեջ ամենատարածված տարբերակումը դրանց դրական և բացասական լինելն է, սակայն դրանց լեզվաբանական ուսումնասիրությունը այսքանով չի սահմանափակվում: հրճվանքը առաջնային հույզերից է, և այն անգնահատելի դեր ունի որպես դրական armenian folia anglistika linguistics 102 հույզ, որը կարող է օգնել լավ հասկանալու անգլերենում հույզերի դրսևորումները և դրանց համընդհանուր ու յուրահատուկ կողմերը: այս հույզը ուսումնասիրելու նպատակով կիրառել ենք այնպիսի իմաստաբանական և ճանաչողական մեթոդներ, ինչպիսիք են կորպուսային վերլուծության, փոխաբերությունների քննության և վերլուծության այլ մեթոդներ: հոդվածի նպատակն է ավելի հստակ պատկերացում տալ տվյալ հույզի ինչպես համընդհանուր, այնպես էլ մասնավոր իմաստաբանական և ճանաչողական յուրահատկությունների մասին: սույն հոդվածի հիմնական եզրահանգումն այն է, որ հրճվանք հույզի իմաստային և ճանաչողական համընդհանուր հատկանիշներից են դրական հիմնանշանակությունը և ինտենսիվության՝ գրեթե միևնույն աստիճանը: microsoft word contens verjin linguistics armenian folia anglistika 29 synonymous structures in english syntax jemma militonyan yerevan state university ijevan branch abstract synonymy is one of the most important sources of the wealth of language and is closely related to the problems of stylistics, speech culture, language changes and language improvements. in linguistic literature the term synonymy is increasingly frequently used in relation to different language elements: sounds, word forms, morphemes, syntactic constructions. recent developments in the studies of grammatical synonymy have led to a renewed interest in syntactic synonymy which is at the heart of our understanding of grammatical synonyms. the purpose of this article is to review the recent research into syntactic synonymy, taking into consideration the attempts of different linguists to define syntactical synonym, determine the criteria of synonymity and examine the synonymous structures in english syntax. key words: syntactic synonymy, interchangeability, grammatical meaning, structure, sentence, stylistic shade. introduction recently, the study of the phenomenon of grammatical synonymy draws the attention of more and more linguists. the term synonymy originates from a greek word sunonumon meaning ‘having the same name’ and it is used to refer to a relationship of similarity or sameness of meaning between two or more words (jackson & amvela 2000:92). in any language we can find some parallel forms and structures that allow us to express the same idea, the same situation and the same grammatical relation in many different ways. thus we can talk about phonetic synonyms, lexical synonyms, morphological synonyms and syntactic synonyms. syntactic synonymy is a manifestation of linguistic armenian folia anglistika linguistics 30 variation of the language which is closely connected with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the extralinguistic world, the extralinguistic variation, which is called the problem of ‘choice’ in linguistics. no situation or phenomenon can be one-sided either on the level of extralinguistic or linguistic analysis. that is why, different synonymic constructions are used for the reproduction of objectively existing differential aspects of one and the same situation having as a basis the dialectical unity of the commonness of content and the difference of forms of syntactic constructions. despite the growing interest in the issues of syntactic synonymy, there is still no agreement about the term ‘syntactic synonymy’, its criteria, the distinction between syntactic synonymy and similar linguistic phenomena. what is syntactic synonymy? the phenomenon syntactic synonym is understood in a broad sense. in linguistics there are different approaches to the study of syntactic synonymy. some definitions of syntactic synonymy are based either on the proximity of grammatical meaning and similar syntactic relations, or the same content or identical common-sense meaning. the term grammatical synonyms was first used by a.m. peshkovsky. he defined it as “ the meanings of words and phrases that are close to each other in terms of their grammatical sense’’ (peshkovsky 1930:153). he was interested in expressing the same idea by different linguistic means. according to him, grammatical synonyms are divided into two groups: morphological and syntactic. peshkovsky includes in syntactic synonyms various cases of convergence in the meaning of many grammatical forms (times, inclinations), various schemes for constructing sentences, prepositions and conjunctions, as well as the possibility of replacing the noun with a pronoun. before him there were many scientists who referred to the phenomenon of grammatical synonyms though not giving any definition for the term or establishing any criteria of the synonymity of syntactical constructions, such as o. jespersen (1933:387) who talked about similar grammatical constructions that are interchangeable, the german scientists of the 1920-1930s trier (1932) and porzig (1962) who discovered various linguistic means expressing the same idea linguistics armenian folia anglistika 31 without using the term synonym. they introduced the term grammatical fields which include numerous means chosen by the speaker depending on the estimation and perspective. the armenian linguist p. poghosyan paid attention to the problem of the linguistic study of grammatical synonyms. he stated that synonymity should be perceived not only as the substitution of one lexical unit by another, but also as the substitution of meaningful forms and constructions. so, one grammatical form may be substituted by another grammatical form (poghosyan 1959:18-19). n. parnasyan writes: “syntactic synonyms are those phrases, sentences and syntactic constructions that have the same main lexical stock, express the same relations and connections between natural phenomena by different grammatical means, are equivalent to each other and at the same time denote the different attitudes of the speaker towards the conveyed message’’ (parnasyan 1970:38). curme studies synonymic constructions expressing the genitive (the son of the kingthe king’s son), temporal constructions (the day after i came – the day after my coming), conditional constructions (conditions being favourable – if conditions are favourable), causal constructions (tired and discouraged – since i was tired and discouraged) (curme 1931:616). but the scientist looks at them from the point of view of the variety of ways of expressing various meanings. under syntactic synonyms g.i. richter understands "the facts of semantic equations between whole sentences that differ from each other not only in syntactic structure, but also in stylistic estimates” (richter 1937:48). m.k. milikh, without using the term syntactic synonymy, considered the semantic relations of words close in meaning but belonging to different grammatical categories and parts of speech as well as syntactic constructions similar in semantics (milikh 1945). i. kovtunova considers syntactic synonyms as “constructions representing a complete grammatical parallelism and differing only in those elements that express the given grammatical meaning” (kovtunova 1955:28). in the above definitions, the starting point is the grammatical meaning, which is taken as the basis for the definition of the concept of syntactic synonym. the american structuralist wells (1957) also offers an opinion about the omnitude of synonymy in the language. according to him, synonymy is based on armenian folia anglistika linguistics 32 the possibility to express one content by means of more than one linguistic phenomenon. he assumes that every sign in every language has at least one synonym. in 1950-1960s the representatives of transformational grammar, who recognized the existence of relations of equivalence between transforms, also took an interest in issues of syntactic synonymy. the equivalence relation is a relation of correspondence or involvement and if we refer to the deep and surface structures, in n. chomsky’s terminology it is called cognitive synonymy (chomsky 1965:162). the differentiation between the deep and surface structures of syntactic constructions provides ground for the formal statement of the ideas of syntactic synonymy. chomsky studies the variety of syntactically bound surface structures each member of which is directly connected with an abstract underlying representation, has an identical internal structure with other members and is in transformational relations with them; he considers such structures to be synonymous. v.p. sukhotin defines syntactic synonymy as “such compounds of the same words (word combinations) differing in structure, as well as sentences, their parts and more complex syntactic formations of the given language at a given epoch of its development, which express homogeneous relations and connections of phenomena of real reality” (sukhotin 1960:160). the criteria of synonymity one of the ambiguous issues in the theory of syntactic synonymy is the criteria of synonymity. there are various opinions of scientists on this issue. i.m. zhilin gives the following definition of syntactic synonyms: “syntactic synonyms are models of such syntactic constructions (sentences, phrases, word combinations) that have identical or similar meanings, have adequate grammatical meanings, express similar syntactic relations and are capable of substitution in certain contexts” (zhilin 1974:78). undoubtedly, we should agree with the statement of i.m. zhilin in that interchangeability is one of the important criteria of synonymy, because it is the meaning of the phenomenon of synonymy. we are of the opinion that interchangeability is one of the most important criteria of synonymity, since the very generality of grammatical meaning can be revealed only on the basis of interchangeability. but it should be noted that interchangeability should not violate linguistics armenian folia anglistika 33 the main meaning of correlated constructions and it should take place in equal syntactic environments. thus, the possibility of such substitutions is strictly limited. professor e.m. galkina-fedoruk distinguishes the following main features: 1) the semantic commonality, conditioned by the coinciding lexical meaning of the majority of the words entering into synonymous constructions; 2) the possibility of interchange on the basis of a semantic commonality; 3) a different grammatical form, not only in relation to the use of different forms of parts of speech, but also different parts of speech. (galkina-fedoruk 1958) a more correct and recognized point of view on this issue is the opinion of v.p. sukhotin that one of the most important objective signs of the synonymity of these or other syntactic formations is the possibility of interchange without violating the basic meaning of the combinations being compared. the interchangeability of syntactic constructions is a very significant indicator of synonymy, although the possibilities of this kind are interchangeable (sukhotin 1960). in total, the following five criteria are singled out for establishing the synonymity of syntactic models: 1. the possibility of interchangeability of syntactic models in the same syntactic environment. 2. identity of the semantic meaning of different in structure models. 3. the adequacy of grammatical meaning and, on this basis, the implementation of the same syntactic functions of models in the sentence structure. 4. the generality of the structure of models. 5. the reach of a fairly large class of words that could serve to fill synonymous models. syntactic synonyms in english we may find the following synonymous structures in syntax: 1. active and passive constructions if the same arguments are present: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 34 “and if it does come…destiny will keep her husband out of france.” (dickens 1989:187) …her husband will be kept out of france by destiny. active and passive constructions cannot be considered synonymous if the agent is lost in the passive however clearly it may be identified in the immediate linguistic context, e.g.: “ah!” returned the man, with a relish; “he'll be drawn on a hurdle to be half hanged, and then he'll be taken down and sliced before his own face, and then his inside will be taken out and burnt while he looks on, and then his head will be chopped off, and he'll be cut into quarters. that's the sentence.” (dickens 1989:62) 2. sentences with and without introductory it and there: “there is a great crowd coming one day into our lives, if that be so,” sydney carton struck in, in his moody way. (dickens 1989:103) a great crowd is coming one day into our lives… 3. complex or compound sentences and corresponding simple sentences containing nominalized propositional constructions: • complex sentence with a subjective clause and a simple sentence when its subject is expressed by gerundial phrase, accusative + infinitive or accusative + participle. e.g.: “but i think their withdrawing is in your favour.” (dickens 1989:78) but i think it is in your favour that they withdraw. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 35 • complex sentence with an objective subordinate clause and simple sentence when its object is expressed by the expanded form of infinitive or gerund, for-to infinitive, gerundial phrase, accusative + infinitive or accusative + participle. e.g.: “…darnay felt his own hand turn cold in the hand that slowly released and dropped it”. (dickens 1989:137) …darnay felt that his hand was turning cold in the hand that… • complex sentence with a relative (attributive) clause and a simple sentence when its attribute is expressed by infinitive (after the words the first, the last, the only, etc. and some superlatives), of + gerund or the participle, often postpositional. e.g.: “…when miss manette's head dropped upon her father's breast, he was the first to see it, and to say audibly…”. (dickens 1989:77) …he was the first who saw it and said audibly… • complex sentence with an adverbial subordinate clause and a simple sentence when its adverbial modifier is expressed by infinitive or for-to infinitive construction, gerund or its expanded form, present or past participle, absolute participle construction, e.g.: “the necessity of composing her appearance so that it should attract no special notice in the streets, was another relief.” (dickens 1989:371) the necessity of composing her appearance for not attracting any special notice in the streets, was another relief. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 36 • main clause of a complex sentence or one of the clauses of a compound sentence is synonymous with a participle functioning as an adverbial modifier of a simple sentence. e.g.: the rider stooped, and, casting up his eyes at the guard, handed the passenger a small folded paper. (dickens 1989:10) the rider stooped, cast up his eyes at the guard and handed… 4. a simple sentence with direct word order and similar sentence with an inverted subject (infinitive or gerund) replaced by expletive it. e.g.: to avoid attracting notice, and to give as little occasion as possible for talk and envy, was the general desire. (dickens 1989:294) it was the general desire to avoid attracting notice and to give as little occasion as possible for talk and envy. grammatical synonyms and style “it is very hard to list absolute synonyms: words which are identical both in denotation or basic conceptual meaning, and in their connotations, and so which can be interchanged in all contexts. most natural languages make do with nearsynonyms, words which are ‘similar’ in meaning, but which vary in their stylistic values. so, laryngitis and sore throat have the same denotational meaning, or conceptual equivalence, but differ in their context of use: the first more technical than the second. many apparent synonyms have different collocational ranges: we speak of tall or high buildings, but only of tall people and high mountains.” (wales 2014:412). the same is true for grammatical synonyms. it should be noted that grammatical forms may differ in connotative power; they grow in connotation in accordance with the nature of the meanings connected with them. there are no absolute synonyms in grammar as the synonymic forms commonly have shares of difference in style and purpose. they must harmonize linguistics armenian folia anglistika 37 with the context as appropriate to a given situation. so the change in synonymous grammatical forms often supposes a change in style. according to the principle of compositionality, the meaning of an expression depends not only on the meaning of its constituents but also on the syntactic form of the expression. to acquire a sense of their right use one should study them in context in the light of their relations with other grammatical devices. knowledge of synonymic differentiation between the grammatical forms permits a systematic, objective investigation and description of style. according to l. yezekian: “where there is a choice of linguistic units and ambiguity, there are synonyms or synonymity. stylistics studies the choice and uses of synonyms. thus synonymity is rightly considered to be one of the most important and fundamental objects of stylistic research” (yezekian 2003:197). d. bolinger establishes the principle of nonsynonymy of grammatical forms: “a difference in syntactic form always spells a difference in meaning” (bolinger 1968:127). when considering syntactic synonymy, the russian linguist piotorovsky is primarily interested in the stylistic side of the question, since in his opinion syntactic categories are usually revealed in the form of several stylistic synonyms, each of which has its own additional stylistic shades (piotorovsky 1960). conclusion all things considered, we may state that syntactic synonyms are the units of a syntactic level that share predicate-argument propositional structure and function, but differ in subjective modality and grammatical structure. one of the most important criteria of synonymy is interchangeability, which should take place in equal syntactic environments. another key point to remember is that synonymic forms commonly have shares of difference in style and purpose. they must harmonise with the context as appropriate to a given situation. as a result the change in synonymous grammatical forms often supposes a change in style. references: 1. bolinger, d. (1968) aspects of language. new york: harcourt, brace, and world. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 38 2. chomsky, n. (1965) aspects of the theory of syntax. cambridge: mit. 3. curme, g.o. (1931) a grammar of the english language. syntax. new york: heath and co. 4. galkina-fedoruk, ye.m. (1959) sinonimy v russkom yazyke. / russkiy yazyk v shkole. n 1.-s. 6-13. 41. m.: uchpedgiz. 5. jackson, h. & amvela, e. zé (2000) words, meaning and vocabulary (an introduction to modern english lexicology). london: continuum. 6. jespersen, o. (1933) essentials of english grammar. london: allen & unwin. 7. kovtunova, i.i. (1955) o sintaksicheskoy sinonimike / i. i. kovtunova // voprosy kul'tury rechi. vyp. 1. – s. 25–30. moskva. 8. milykh, m.k. (1945) voprosy grammaticheskoy stilistiki. // k sinonimike chastey rechi. «russkoe yazykovedenie». vyp. 1. s. 31–96. rostov n/d. 9. peshkovskiy, a.m. (1930) printsipy i priemy stilisticheskogo analiza i otsenki khudozhestvennoy prozy. // voprosy metodiki rodnogo yazyka, lingvistiki i stilistiki. m.; l.: gosizdat, s. 133–161. 10. piotrovskiy, r.g. (1960) ocherki po stilistike frantsuzskogo yazyka. morfologiya i sintaksis tekst. / r.g.piotorvskiy. l.: nauka. 11. porzig, w. (1962) das wunder der sprache, 3 aufl. bern: franke verlag. 12. rikhter, g.i. (1937) sintaksicheskaya sinonimika v sovremennom russkom literaturnom yazyke (stilisticheskie nablyudeniya). // russkiy yazyk v shkole. n 3. s. 14-33. 13. sukhotin, v.p. (1960) sintaksicheskaya sinonimika v sovremennom russkom yazyke. glagolnye slovosochetaniya. moskva. 14. trier, j. (1932) der deutsche wortschatz im sinnbezirk des verstandes, hdlb: carl winter universitatverlag. 15. wales, k. (2014) a dictionary of stylistics. 3rd edition. routledge, new york. 16. wells. r. (1957) to what extent can meaning be said to be structural. / reports for the eighth international congress of linguists. oslo: oslo university press, pp.216-232. 17. yezekyan, l.k. (2003) hayots lezvi votchagitutyun.yerevan: yph. 18. zhilin, i.m. (1974) sinonimika v sintaksise sovremennogo nemetskogo yazyka. krasnodar. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 39 19. parnasyan, n.a. (1970) sharahyusakan homanishnery zhamanakakits hayerenum. yerevan: hssh ga hrat. 20. poghosyan, p. (1959) bayi yeghanakayin dzeveri votchakan kirarutyunnery ardi hayerenum. yerevan: yph. sources of data: 1. dickens, ch. (1989) a tale of two cities. new york: bantam dell. անգլերենի շարահյուսության հոմանշային կառույցները հոմանշությունը լեզվի հարստացման ամենակարևոր աղբյուրներից է և սերտորեն կապված է ոճագիտությանը, խոսքի մշակույթին, լեզվի փոփոխմանն ու զարգացմանն առնչվող հարցերի հետ: լեզվագիտական գրականության մեջ ‹‹հոմանշություն›› տերմինը ավելի ու ավելի հաճախակի է գործածվում լեզվական տարբեր տարրերի՝ հնչյունների, բառաձևերի, ձևույթների և շարահյուսական կառույցների հետ: քերականական հոմանշության վերաբերյալ ուսումնասիրություն-ներում վերջին զարգացումները հանգեցրել են շարահյուսական հոմանշության շուրջ նոր հետաքրքրության առաջացմանը: սույն հոդվածի նպատակն է ուսումնասիրել շարահյուսական հոմանշության վերաբերյալ հետազոտությունները՝ հաշվի առնելով ‹‹շարահյուսական հոմանշության›› սահմանման համար տարբեր լեզվաբանների մոտեցումները, որոշել հոմանշության չափանիշը և քննել հոմանիշ շարահյուսական կառույցներն անգլերենում: microsoft word maket 2019-2 final.doc literature studies armenian folia anglistika 123 under children’s eyes: armenia in nina gabrielian’s work gabriella elina imposti university of bologna, italy abstract nina gabrielian is a russian writer of armenian origin who lives and works in moscow. she has published collections of poems, stories and critical essays. she is also a fine painter and from the early 2000s she has taken part in several exhibitions collective and personal as well. the imaginative world of her paintings is permeated by the memory of armenia. in her stories and poems there is particular attention to colour and shape. the lyrical hero is constantly recovering the collective memory of the armenian genocide, which can take the deceptively innocent appearance of a children’s game. in this paper i will investigate the way gabrielian depicts childhood and memory in her literary work. key words: nina gabrielian, armenian genocide, memory, childhood in literature. introduction nina gabrielian was born in moscow in 1953 into a family of armenian origins. she graduated at the maurice thorez state pedagogical institute of foreign languages. as she herself sums up her own artistic career, she proceeded from poetry to translations, to prose-writing and finally to painting (gabrielian 2013). she began her artistic career in the second half of the 1970s writing poetry. in this period she met the russian poet evgenii mikhailovich vinokurov (19251993), who appreciated her poems and published them in the journal “noviy mir”, in which he directed the section devoted to poetry. he also wrote the preface to nina gabrielian’s first collection of poems trostikovaia dudka (the armenian folia anglistika literature studies 124 reedpipe, yerevan 1987). she published two more collections of poems zerno granata (pomegranate seed, moscow 1992) and poiushchee derevo (the singing tree, moscow 2010). nina gabrielian also worked as a translator of classical and contemporary poetry, starting with francophone african poets, as her language of specialization was french. she then began to attend the seminars of mikhail abramovich kurgantsev (1931-1989) on oriental poetry. she followed his suggestion that she should translate from armenian poetry using interlinear translation, as she did not speak aremenian fluently. she then met levon mkrtchian, who at the time was the dean of the russian philology faculty of yerevan university. nina gabrielian considers him her “godfather as far as translations from armenian poetry are concerned” (gabrielian 2013). she translated both classical and contemporary armenian poets: vahan terian (1885-1920), yeghishe charents (1897-1937), hovhannes shiraz (1915-1984), vahagn davtyan (1922-1996) and arshaluis margarian (1924-1987). she was a personal friend of some of these authors. at the beginning of the 1990s she became the chief editor of the feminist journal “preobrazhenie” (transfiguration) and contributed to the journal with several articles devoted to women writers and issues connected with gender studies. in the same period she began to publish stories and short novels which she later collected in her book khoziain travy (the master of the grass, 2001). her poems and prose writings have been translated into english, french, swedish, italian and arabic. the latest stage of nina gabrielian’s artistic career is painting. since the mid-1970s she befriended the painter boris otarov (1916-1991), who advised him to start painting because there was “plenty of colour” in her poems (gabrielian 2013). in spite of this, she hesitated to follow his advice, because she did not think she had enough talent. however, after otarov’s death, he started to appear in her dreams and stare at her with an angry look (gabrielian 2013). she interpreted this as the reproach of her friend for not having followed his literature studies armenian folia anglistika 125 advice. so she decided to start painting and soon began taking part in collective exhibitions, making a name for herself both in russia and abroad. painting can be considered the culmination of nina gabrielian’s career and also the synthesis of her artistic conception of the world. the critic yuriy denisov (2014) has written that “her verses are like paintings, vivid oil paintings made of words [...] which recall to mind the still-lives of martiros saryan (1880-1972).” in her verses we can see a wealth of vivid colours and juicy sounds that show traces of traditional armenian visual art. the armenian theme in nina gabrielian’s work the armenian theme permeates all of nina gabrielian’s creative work: her poetry, her prose and her paintings. in the poetic cycle vozvrashchenie (the return), she felt the “potent spirit of the genus” (gabrielian 2010:85), a powerful genetic bond with the country of her ancestors. so she began to study armenian culture, literature and history and embodied this feeling in her literary and pictorial works. during her childhood, however, she had only a very vague idea of the historical and cultural meaning of armenia. she first visited this country in “a conscious age” (gabrielian 2013) at 17. both in her poems and her prose she describes how a child gradually becomes aware of his/her national identity and starts asking questions and seeing himself/herself as “different” from other children. see for example, the poem detstvo (childhood) (gabrielian 2010, 46) and also the story liloviy khalat (the lilac dressing-gown) (gabrielian 1996. english translation 2004). in this story we can find the difficult relationship of children with the armenian language, which for them has been completely replaced by russian. the little girl learns a few armenian words from an uncle and proudly repeats them with some armenian neighbours, who take great offence because, as she discovers later, their meaning is not as endearing as she thinks. her reaction is to decide that she does not want to learn this “treacherous” language: armenian folia anglistika literature studies 126 uncle babken stayed for a week, during which time, to our mutual delight, i learned nearly fifty armenian words. but after he left, i had no one to show them off to. but then something wonderful happened. an armenian family from tbilisi moved into a flat in our entrance: aunt rimma, uncle mentor, and two boys ‒ albert, the elder and rudik, the youger. [...] i make straight for the dazzling procession and greet aunt rimma: “albert is an eschchikurak”. the procession freezes. the first person to recover is aunt rimma who asks threateningly: “wha-a-at?” [...] “i did not insult albert” i say indignantly. “i was just speaking armenian” [...] mama intervenes and turns to me “who taught you that?” “uncle babken”, i answer. “he was always saying: ‘you’re my little eshchikurak.’ that’s a little donkey,” i explain innocently to aunt rimma. “it’s very handsome, and it has big eyes.” the incident blows over, but from then on i have a certain distrust of armenian. (gabrielian 2004:123-125) the tragedy of the armenian genocide is described from a child’s point of view in the story igra v pryatki (hide and seek). the action takes places on two temporal and spatial dimensions. an elderly survivor of the genocide recalls his childhood experience in an estranged perspective as a game of hide-and-seek, continuously mixing his memories of the past and his present life of an eightytwo year old person approaching the end of his life. he must have done something wrong, because the shouts did not die down. they turned into screams and literature studies armenian folia anglistika 127 howls. he pressed closer to the rock. it was warm, but he was cold. the howling stopped. [...] nearby, on the other side of the rock turkish words “where’s the boy?” a man’s voice asked, “did you forget the boy, ishaki?” “he’s hiding in the house somewhere” [...] the steps receded. eyes half-closed, he peeped out from behind the rock. opening them wide he saw a knee. a pulled up dress and a pink knee, warm and pearly. then the rest of them: father, mother, grandma, and uncle gevork. they were lying on the ground, all five of them. the pale-blue grass around them was trampled and splashed with red beetles. a crimson stream trickled out of uncle’s mouth. more sounds. he hid behind the rock. the footsteps came closer and closer. “where has he got to [...] why haven’t you found him? the orders were to finish off the lot of them!” [...] he shuddered soundlessly, his face pressed against the rock. [...] the voices came closer, closer, and closer still. (gabrielian 2004:204-105) in the story dom v metekhskom pereulke (the house in metekhi lane) the house of the armenian painter robert kondakhsazov (1937-2010) in tbilisi “exists not only in the usual spatial dimension but it also lives its own secret and mysterious life” (rovenskaia 2001). nina gabrielian’s visit to this house is also reflected in the poetic cycle v gostyakh u khudozhnika (in the studio of the painter). the visit to the artist’s studio also makes her become aware of the history of the genocide of armenians, whose memory was concealed for so many years. the house becomes a tangible metaphor of historical memory not only of single individuals but also of a whole nation. it is the memory of the genocide of the armenian people. armenian folia anglistika literature studies 128 memories weigh heavily on the old house in metekhi lane. in 1915 the artist’s grandfather arshak arutinovich kondakhsazov, a merchant of the second guild, sheltered a group of refugees from western armenia who had managed to escape the carnage. there were about thirty of them, weak with hunger and almost crazy from the sight of the savage massacre their friends and families had suffered. for years, this memory filled the grandfather’s house, exploding decades later on the granddaughter’s canvas as monstrous red, full of pain. (gabrielian 2004:196) nina recalls her childhood memories when, in the early 1960s, people of the armenian diaspora started coming back to the soviet union and impressed her with their lovely elegant foreign clothes. she completely ignores the tragedy that hides behind their smart exotic appearance: they were the first forigners i ever saw, and yet somehow these foreigners were also armenians [...] at the time i didn’t know that besides their lovely clothes, their elegant baubles and their foreign names [...] these elegant men and women brought with them their tragic destinies. how could i, a child, have known that these ladies and gentlemen were in fact refugees and children of refugees. [...] i knew nothing of the tragedy, which befell my people in 1915, when the government of the young turks [...] developed and implemented its policy of systematic genocide of the armenian population. [...] i did not understand any of this then. the book about the genocide of the armenians had not yet been compiled, and even if it had been, i doubt my parents would have considered it literature studies armenian folia anglistika 129 suitable reading for a primary school pupil. in my little seven-year-old head, only one thing was clear: that the name robert was directly linked to the word “wonder”. (gabrielian 2004:189-190) in the mid-1990s nina gabrielian started to paint at a professional level. art and literary critics agree that there is an organic and evident link between her literary production and her work as a painter (golovina 2010). many of the themes and images that are central in her poetry and prose “migrated” (onanian 2014) into her paintings and drawings. among these themes and images are the house, the garden, objects of everyday use, landscapes and faces of elderly armenian women and men. many paintings can be described as self-portraits. however, the paintings avtoportret (self-portrait), bol’shaya ma (the great mother) (2005) and also zhenshchiny moego roda (the women of my family) (2004) and others all share an abstract nature, they are a kind of “spiritual gesture expressed through the image of a concrete person” (golovina 2014). in the women of my family we can see three women wrapped in black mourning robes. it can be considered a collective portrait of the armenian people and of its sorrowful memory of the genocide. in its essential traits and colours this painting recalls a child’s memory of the elderly women seen in the home village during one of the poet’s early visits to armenia, a long time before she acquired consciousness of the meaning of this image. the theme of the mournful women can also be found in a poem of the cycle the singing tree: [...] да, я хотела уйти, но женщины из моего рода – недолюбленные, недоласканные, недоцелованные женщины – подняли плач и вой. yes, i wanted to leave but the women of my family, who did not manage to be loved and caressed, these women who did not armenian folia anglistika literature studies 130 они вопили, стонали, дергали меня за рукав… и разве могла я уйти, если женщины из моего рода, все женщины из моего рода, изголодавшиеся женщины хотели твоей любви?! (gabrielian 2010, pp. 105-106) manage to be kissed, started to cry and howl. they howled and sobbed, they pulled my sleeves how could i leave, if the women of my family, all the women of my family, these famished women wanted your love? [translation – g. i.] even the portraits of specific people, as for instance pamiyti ottsa (in memory of my father) and pamyati borisa otarova (in memory of boris otarov) retain the abstract character typical of icons. they are “negatives of the interior world” (golovina 2010). they are represented as very near close-ups of the human face with “vivid strokes of the brush from which emanates an elemental energy” (denisov 2014). it can be said that they have a certain grotesque character, as for instance in liki-gor (the visage of the mountains). however, there are no satirical or mocking traits in this type of grotesque, which is rather “tragic and compassionate”, similar to “ancient tragic masks” (denisov 2014). this tragic element is well expressed in the poetic cycle vozvrashchenie (the return). в желтой глине лежат мои предки, горбоносые, низкорослые. бабки, деды, прабабки и прадеды с жаркой кровью, густою и темною. (gabrielian 2010, p. 83) my ancestors lie in the yellow clay, they are hook-nosed, short. grandmas, grandfathers, greatgranmas and greatgrandfathers their blood is hot, thick and dark. [translation – g. i.] literature studies armenian folia anglistika 131 in the poetic cycle iskusstvo (art) the mournful portrait of the armenian father, who embodies the whole of the armenian people, mingles with the motifs of the garden and of the promise of the motherland: а в саду у отца шуршит шелковица. у отца – глаза в пол-лица и солнечные ресницы. желтые груши на ветках висят. прадедов души стерегут наш сад. (gabrielian 2010, p. 27) and in father’s garden rustle the mulberries. my father’s eyes take half of his face and his eyelashes are sunny. yellow pears hang on the branches. the souls of the great-grandfathers guard our garden. [translation – g. i.] nina gabrielian’s paintings have a certain naïve character resembling children’s work with bright colour and no perspective. some of them seem to derive from fond childhood memories, as for instance maro gotovit asapzhandal (maro prepares ajapsandali), pekut lavash (baking pita bread), na kukhne (in the kitchen), letniy dvorik (summer courtyard), trapeza (repast). in other works themes deriving from the gospels are treated in a naïve, childish way, as for instance in pokidayushchie svoy dom (leaving their home), which is based on the episode from the gospel when joseph and mary, soon after jesus’s birth, flee to egypt (matthew 2:13–23) in order to avoid king herod’s murderous intentions. the connection of this painting with the theme of the armenian diaspora after the genocide is self-evident. conclusion to conclude, we can quote nina gabrielian’s own words about her concept of art: my artistic method does not consist in dissecting and separating but rather in contemplating and feeling. armenian folia anglistika literature studies 132 i try to catch and engrave the thrill of life itself, the vibration that derives from a mysterious source, which is situated beyond the boundaries of the visible world but which manifests itself in the colours and the shapes of being [...] my painting is not conceptual. i do not seek to design some ready-made meanings which can be transmitted with the help of the word. on the contrary, with the help of colours, forms and rhythm i try to get closer to those energy flows which i can feel pulsating in the depths of the garden. (gabrielian 2012) references: 1. denisov, yu. (2010) zhivitelnaia zhivopis’ niny gabrielian // otarovskie chteniia. 2008-2009. vyp2. / pod red. e. andreevoi i n. gabrielian, moskva: institut naslediya, pp. 37-41. 2. denisov, yu. (2014) tvorcheskie ipostasi niny gabrielian. // golos armenii, 2014-07-04 available at: <http://www.golosarmenii.am/article/24243/tvorcheskie-ipostasi-niny-gabrielyan> [accessed august 2019]. 3. gabrielian, n. (2012) sad (personal communication to g. imposti) 4. gabrielian, n. (2013) interv’u s yelenoi kniazhevoy. // noev kovcheg, no 19 (225), october (16-31) 2013. available at: <http://noevkovcheg.ru/mag/2013-19/4148.html> [accessed august 2019]. 5. golovina, v. (2012) stikhiia zhivopisnosti v tvorcheskom metode khudozhnitsy niny gabrielian. // otarovskie chteniya 2010. vyp. 3, moskva. available at: <http://nashasreda.ru/stixiya-zhivopisnosti-vtvorcheskom-metode-xudozhnicy-niny-gabrielyan/> [accessed august 2019]. 6. imposti, g. e. (2012) una scrittrice-pittrice: nina gabrieljan in una prospettiva femminista. // sentieri interrotti/holzwege. / a cura di literature studies armenian folia anglistika 133 donatella gavrilovich e gabriella imposti, roma: universitalia, 2012, pp. 281-294. 7. onanian, g. (2014) mnogogrannik sud’by. // erkramas. available at: <http://nashasreda.ru/mnogogrannik-sudby/> [accessed august 2019]. 8. rovenskaia, t. (2001) “radostnye i ravnotsvetniyemiry niny gabrielian”. v svyazi s vykhodom v svet sbornika n. gabrielian “khozyain travy”. // open women line. “zhenshhina i obshhestvo”. available at: <http://www.owl.ru/avangard/radostnyeiraznozvetnye.html> [accessed august 2019]. sources of data: 1. gabrielian, n. (1987) trostnikovaya dudka. yerevan: sovetkan grokh. 2. gabrielian, n. (1992) zerno granata. moskva: aviatekhinform. 3. gabrielian, n. (1996) liloviy khalat // preobrazheniye. russkiy feministskiy zhurnal, no 4. available at: <http://www.az.ru/women_cd1/html/lilovij_halat.htm> [accessed august 2019]. 4. gabrielian, n. (2001) khoziain travy. povest’. rasskazy. moskva: eskmo press. 5. gabrielian, n. (2004) master of the grass. // tr. by k. cook, j. turnbull, j. mackenzie, s. cook. moskva: glas. 6. gabrielian, n. (2010) poiushchee derevo. moskva: fortuna. մանկան աչքերով. հայաստանը նինա գաբրիելյանի աշխատանքներում նինա գաբրիելյանը հայկական ծագմամբ ռուս գրող է, որն ապրում և ստեղծագործում է մոսկվայում: նա բանաստեղծությունների, պատմվածքների ու քննադատական էսսեների հեղինակ է: բացի այդ՝ հրաշալի նկարիչ և 2000-ականների սկզբից մասնակցել է բազմաթիվ համատեղ և անհատական ցուցահանդեսների: նրա նկարներում պատarmenian folia anglistika literature studies 134 կերված երևակայական աշխարհը ողողված է հայաստանի մասին հիշողություններով: իր պատվածքներում և բանաստեղծություններում հեղինակը հատուկ ուշադրություն է դարձնում գույներին և ձևին: լիրիկական հերոսը մշտապես կրում է հայոց ցեղասպանության հավաքական հիշողությունը, ինչը կարող է ստանալ անմեղ մանկան խաղի տեսք: սույն աշխատանքում փորձ է արվում ուսումնասիրել մանկության և հիշողության պատկերման գաբրիելյանական եղանակները: received by editorial board 12.09.2019 recommended for publication by reviewers 25.10.2019 accepted for print 04.11.2019 microsoft word contens verjin methodology armenian folia anglistika 99 dictogloss approach to dictation writing activities siranoush ghaltakhchyan yerevan state university abstract the present article is devoted to the study of modern approaches to dictation writing activities, namely to dictogloss approach, the purport of which is, first and foremost, to build a solid foundation of the english language proficiency and enhance integrated language skills in context. as different from traditional dictation writing activities, that aim at helping language learners become accustomed to processing and differentiating between different sounds of the target language, identifying words and phrases and recording them as accurately as possible, the dictogloss method of dictation writing tries to boost listening for detailed understanding, i.e. focusing on the grammatical constructions used in the texts, guessing the words and phrases suitable to the context, constructing meaning from the recorded texts and interpreting the gist of the dictated stories. our study shows that the effectiveness of dictation writing activities in efl classroom increases and the dictogloss procedure becomes more enjoyable and challenging in case of the intensive use of authentic materials, i.e. when the texts are not dictated directly by the teachers themselves, but are told by native speakers recorded on cds. key words: methods of efl teaching, language learning activities, interactive learning, cooperative and collaborative learning, dictation writing activities, dictogloss approach, dictogloss prosedure, audio dictation. introduction in its simplest and traditional form dictation writing refers to the teacher reading some text aloud in the language classroom so that the language learners can write down what is being dictated by the teacher, word for word, phrase by phrase, later the teacher checking their written works against the original text, and correcting the errors made. according to this approach, dictation is perceived as a one-way activity which is mainly intended to develop students’ phonological awareness and spelling skills (manzo 1990; davis, rinvolucri 2002; saraswathi 2004; alkhuli 2006). armenian folia anglistika methodology 100 apart from this strictly controlled listen-and-spell approach, there are a number of different creative ways of conducting dictation writing activities to incorporate dictation in the daily practice of language skills, to help teachers develop effective learning strategies for improving integrated language skills, making dictation writing more interesting, motivating, learner-centred and student-oriented. thus dictation writing can be conducted in combination with a range of challenging activities to provide an opportunity for the language learners to study english with more comprehension and ease, to make the learning process more efficient and enjoyable. dictation writing dictation is one of the oldest techniques used to test progress in the process of foreign language learning. it can actually be an effective language-teaching technique and an efficient language-learning activity. dictation writing is one of the few activities in the efl classroom that can be applicable with both small and large groups of language learners. it provides a reasonable chance for the teacher to engage the whole group in the process of language acquisition and enables the learners to become focused on the task throughout the activity. while speaking about the merits of dictation writing activities, p. davis and m. rinvolucri state that “dictation is ideal for occupying the conscious mind while stimulating the unconscious into action” (davis, rinvolucri 2002:6). moreover, j. grinder and r. bandler note that in dictation, apart from the implicit control of topic and activity, there is often a semi-hypnotic aspect to the exercise that calms the language learners down and puts all of them, as well as the teacher, into a slight trance (grinder, bandler 1981). nevertheless, the effectiveness of dictation writing activities is to a great extent dependent upon the fact how it is handled, i.e. what techniques and approaches are employed to reach the specific goals and achieve good learning outcomes in the process of dictation writing. collaborative and cooperative learning it is common knowledge that nowadays great importance is attached to the implementation of communicative language teaching and cooperative/collaborative learning activities in the efl classroom. it requires from each language learner in the group to develop a sense of personal responsibility to learn and help the rest of the group to learn too, it promotes learners to work together in groups to support methodology armenian folia anglistika 101 each other to maximize their own learning and improve that of the others (jollife 2007; celce-murcia 2001). so, in order to become cooperative, language learners must do teamwork to accomplish shared goals. each member of the team should feel responsible for and accountable to the other members, bearing in mind that each member brings strength, unity and contribution to the group. any member who appears to be noncooperative and non-participating should be encouraged by the same group and promoted to develop a sense of togetherness and an ability of giving and receiving personal feedback. studies have shown that as a result of cooperative learning, language learners obtain greater productivity and problem-solving ability in the language learning process, they develop better interpersonal relationships and unfold a sense of belonging and mutual support. their psychological health and social competence is improved and they acquire higher self-esteem and increased self-confidence (mccafferty et al. 2006; jollife 2007). dictogloss prosedure these relatively recent trends in efl teaching methods have encouraged a relatively new approach to dictation writing. it is the so-called dictogloss approach, which is a more interactive and cooperative method to language acquisition and language proficiency. dictogloss is a classroom dictation writing activity in which the language learners are asked to note down key words and phrases or chunks of ideas and even sentences in a jumbled order, while listening to the dictated text. to facilitate the development of collaborative and communicative learning skills and to allow the students to learn from each other, the students may be asked to work in pairs or in small groups to reconstruct the text from their shared resources. afterwards, the final versions are compared, discussed and analyzed (wajnryb 1990; kowal, swain 1997; davis, rinvolucri 2002; richards, schmidt 2009; jeremy 2012). the language learners are supposed not to replicate the original text but rather to produce a piece of writing that closely reflects the sense of the original, and that involves similar structures used in the original. as r. wajnryb states, essentially it consists of asking learners to reconstruct a dictated text so as to capture as much as possible of its information content in as accurate and acceptable a linguistic form as possible. it is a teaching procedure the aim of which is, first and foremost, to improve the students’ understanding and use of grammar (wajnryb 1990). armenian folia anglistika methodology 102 it is worth mentioning that like other language learning activities, dictation should be contextualized to illustrate the communicative use of the target language and enable the language learners to process information, make connections and progress toward the successful end in language proficiency. dictogloss approach to dictation writing comes to meet these needs and support language learning process. in the dictogloss procedure language learners may pay attention to things they did not come to know, they begin to notice and even correct their own mistakes connected with not only spelling, but also the right word choice, word collocations, the relationships between words and their grammatical structures (doughly, williams 1998). this kind of activity will contribute greatly to the language acquisition and, as r. wajnryb suggests, “through active learner involvement students come to confront their own strengths and weaknesses. ... in so doing, they find out what they need to know” (wajnryb 1990:10). in the reconstructing process, special emphasis should be placed on the vocabulary, grammatical accuracy of the sentences, the connection between ideas supported by appropriate cohesive devices, etc. this activity provides an opportunity for the language learners to be more aware of the sequence of events and the logical organization of texts. in this connection c. doughly and j. williams mention that in the reconstruction process the teacher should provide the language learners with “a demonstration of rules in action, in a very specific linguistic context” (doughly, williams 1998:74). to do this, the teacher should draw attention to the grammatical forms, provide an explanation for them and support the language learners to find possible ways to solve the encountered linguistic problems. dictogloss procedure can lead to oral communicative activities among the language learners. after reconstructing their own version of the dictated text, the students are asked to read them aloud, analyse the used words, phrases and the grammatical constructions, compare their written works with the original text as well as with their peers’ works, work in small groups and discuss the results and share opinions about them. they may even add a new paragraph at the end of their version of the dictated text, and introduce their own opinion in written form or orally. thus, as p. davis, m. rinvolucri note “'the inside self’ thinking that has taken place during the dictation phase leads naturally into comparing experiences with other members of the group” (davis, rinvolucri 2002:5). dictogloss approach to dictation writing also becomes a useful tool to develop language learners’ note-taking skills, which is an important language development methodology armenian folia anglistika 103 strategy that facilitates the language learners’ ability to focus attention on key information, to search for key words and phrases, to distinguish between important and unnecessary information, and record the main ideas. in this stage of writing, the language learners should not worry about the order of ideas, the sequence of tenses, spelling of the words, etc. they should just keep on writing down whatever their ear grasps or whatever they consider essential and worth writing. these notes are supposed to guide them throughout the writing process and help them be clear, concise and to the point in the process of reconstructing the texts. dictogloss procedure is particularly useful in helping students rely on their memory and apply their vocabulary and grammar knowledge in writing. in this connection r. wajnryb states that during the dictogloss procedure, because of the speed of the reading and the density of the text, the language learners manage to produce a fragmented text where the essential cohesion is missing. as a result there exists an “information gap” which should be filled in the reconstructing process by relying on the memory as well as the creativity of the language learner (wajnryb 1990). assessment of dictogloss dictations it is common knowledge that dictation is an efficient and useful device to help the efl language teachers to understand and assess the students’ learning progress. it is the teachers’ duty not only to identify and correct the language learners’ mistakes, but also to provide them with constructive feedback by commenting on their mistakes, analyzing certain comprehension and production problems and giving suggestions for improvement. nevertheless, dictation writing can also be conducted to motivate learners and promote autonomy in language learning. in the dictogloss procedure the teachers may move beyond assessing the language learners’ spelling and listening skills, and develop their reading skills as well if they allow the language learners to review their own written works. dictation writing activities where the language learners compare their version of the text to the original one can increase their critical awareness (wajnryb 1990; kowal, swain 1997, davis, rinvolucri 2005). they may notice aspects of the language that are sometimes overlooked, they may manage to find some common mistakes, such as spelling errors, absence of articles, the third person singular s, misunderstood words, incorrect tense forms etc. sometimes, however, the language learners may fail to notice some mistakes in their own written works when comparing it to the original text. thus, the efl armenian folia anglistika methodology 104 teachers should often ask language learners to exchange the written works with their peers, giving them a chance to check and point out the errors made by their class-mates. the exchange of written works may be a good opportunity for language learners to identify their own errors better. the dictogloss procedure and audio dictations as we know, it is always advisable for the language teachers that they make necessary adaptations to match the needs and abilities of the language learners in the efl classroom. in our opinion, it may concern also the dictogloss techniques the teacher employs in the efl classroom that will increase or decrease the complexity of the dictation writing activity. it is worth mentioning, that we have successfully been employing the dictogloss procedure in the efl classroom at yerevan state university in the department of english for cross-cultural communication for a couple of years. during these years we came to understand that efl students like the dictogloss procedure, since it enables them to feel free to demonstrate their knowledge and to be actively engaged in the process of the english language acquisition. nevertheless, in the recent years we tried to approach the dictogloss dictation writing procedure in a slightly different way, having in mind to attach a new application to the procedure. we started to work with the first-year students, especially with the groups of students possessing a good command of the english language, and employed the dictogloss procedure in combination with the technique of using authentic material, namely the audio recordings of the texts told by native speakers. the main purport of the novel approach to dictogloss dictation writing activities is to facilitate the development of efl students’ listening comprehension as well as to improve their writing skills in the process of dictation writing. furthermore, we aim at developing a range of sub-skills starting from letter formation, spelling, punctuation, etc. so, our studies have shown that the dictogloss procedure in combination with audio dictations provides opportunities for the students to upgrade practice in almost every aspect of foreign language learning, including vocabulary, grammar and syntax and to develop practice in understanding spoken english. thus, the final goal of implementing the dictogloss procedure in efl classroom is to provide the necessary input that facilitates the english language acquisition. methodology armenian folia anglistika 105 the dictogloss procedure includes several steps or phases. at first, the students are asked to listen to the recorded text and grasp its overall meaning. then, in order to improve the students’ command of vocabulary and grammar, the teacher brainstorms the key words and supporting details with them and focuses their attention on the new words and phrases. she asks them to identify, spell and define, sometimes even to translate certain words or phrases, to paraphrase sentences or clauses that are somehow difficult to comprehend, to discuss some grammatical structures used in the texts and identify their correct and appropriate usage, etc. for additional reinforcement, the recording may be replayed for two or more times, depending on the difficulty of the text and the language level of the students. afterwards, the students work together in a group, trying to reconstruct the text according to their shared notes, as it is usually done in the dictogloss procedure described above. in this procedure it is possible to enhance individual reading skills, too. for this purpose, the teacher asks each student in the group to read a section of his/her version of the text to the rest of the group. this kind of activity encourages the students to listen to each other, to compare their pronunciation and intonation with the original, and to highlight the importance of clear and correct pronunciation. hence, we may state that the use of audio dictation technique in the dictogloss procedure promotes renewal and rebirth of the traditional practice of dictation writing, bringing it on the up-to-date level of language acquisition. with the help of this technique, the dictogloss dictation writing becomes an extremely versatile activity which can facilitate development of the four basic language skills: listening, writing, reading and speaking. it enables the students to build a solid foundation of the english language proficiency and incorporate integrated language skills to the best advantage and, what is not less important, to make the process more enjoyable, motivating and challenging. conclusion to sum up, it should be stated that dictation writing is a very useful and flexible activity, which can be made also enjoyable if new and motivating approaches are introduced to it. the dictogloss approach to dictation writing gives the opportunity for the language learners to enhance a number of essential language skills. it helps them to improve their spelling ability, provides training in employing appropriate armenian folia anglistika methodology 106 punctuation marks. it directs the language learners’ attention to new grammatical constructions, enlarges their vocabulary and enhances the practice of using them in the correct context. it also strengthens the ability to memorize phrases, clauses and sentences and to record them appropriately. it gives the language learners much practice in concentrated listening and understanding skills. the dictation writing process becomes more entertaining and challenging when audio recordings of the texts are employed in the dictogloss procedure. it presupposes language learners’ active engagement in the activity, and strives to facilitate students’ basic language skills, involving listening, writing, reading as well as speaking. hence, dictogloss approach to dictation writing with the help of audio recordings is an enjoyable, efficient and motivating way to incorporate integrated language skills to the best advantage. references: 1. alkhuli, a.m. (2006) methods of teaching english. jordan: dar alfalah. 2. celce-murcia, m. (2001) teaching english as a second or foreign language. 3rd edition. usa: thomson learning, inc. 3. davis, p.; rinvolucri, m. (2002) dictation, new methods, new possibilities. cambridge: cup. 4. doughty, c.; williams, j. (1998) focus on form in classroom second language acquisition. cambridge: cup. 5. grinder, j.; bandler, r. (1981) trance-formation: neuro-linguistic programming and the structure of hypnosis. moab, utah: real people press. 6. graham s.; perin d. (2007) a meta-analysis of writing instruction for adolescent students. // journal of educational psychology. vol. 99, no. 3. new york. available at: <http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1. 462.2356&rep=rep1&type=pdf> [accessed august 2016]. 7. harmer, j. (2012) essential teacher knowledge. harlow: pearson education limited. 8. jolliffe, w. (2007) cooperative learning in the classroom: putting it into practice. london: paul chapman publishing. 9. kowal, m.; swain, m. (1997) from semantic to syntactic processing: how can we promote it in the immersion classroom? / ed. by johnson r.; swain m. new york: cup. methodology armenian folia anglistika 107 10. kidd, r. (1992) teaching esl grammar through dictation. // tesl canada journal. vol. 10, no. 1. available at: <http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ ej457629.pdf> [accessed june 2016]. 11. levi, c.m.; ransdell, s. (2009) the science of writing: theories, methods, individual differences, and applications. new york: routledge. 12. manzo, a.v.; manzo, u.c. (1990) content area reading: a heuristic approach. usa: merrill publishing company. 13. mccafferty, s.g.; jacobs, g.m; dasilva iddings, a.ch. (2006) cooperative learning and second language teaching. / ed by j.c. richards. cambridge: cup. 14. richards, j.c.; schmidt, r. (2009) dictogloss, longman dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics. new york. 15. saraswathi, v. (2004) english language teaching: principles and practice. india: orient longman. 16. second and foreign language teaching methods. // enhancing academic achievement of bilingual learners. available at: <http://moramodules.com/ almmethods.htm> [accessed august 2016]. 17. tang, q. (2012) the effectiveness of dictation method in college english vocabulary teaching. // theory and practice in language studies. vol. 2, n 7. academy publisher. available at: <http://www.academypublication. com/issues/past/tpls/vol02/07/19.pdf> [accessed october 2016]. 18. wajnryb, r. (1990) resource book for teachers: grammar dictation. / ed by a. maley. oxford: oup. â»é³¹ñáõãû³ý ¹çïïá·éáë ù»ãá¹ç ïçñ³éù³ý ßáõñç êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù ³ý¹ñ³¹³ñó ¿ ³ñíáõù ã»é³¹ñáõãûáõý ·ñ»éáõ å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ùáï»óáõùý»ñçó ù»ïçý` ¹çïïá·éáë ù»ãá¹çý, áñá ùçïí³í ¿ ³ùñ³åý¹»éáõ ³ý·é»ñ»ý ·ñ³íáñ ¨ ³ý³íáñ ëáëùç ñùïáõãûáõýý»ñá: æ ï³ñ »ñáõãûáõý ã»é³¹ñáõãûáõýý»ñ ·ñ»éáõ ³í³ý¹³ï³ý ù»ãá¹ç, ³ûë ù»ãá¹ç ýå³ï³ïý ¿ ñ³ñëï³óý»é áõë³ýáõý»ñç ³é³å³ß³ñá, ½³ñ·³óý»é ³é»ñá ñ³ù³å³ï³ëë³ý ñ³ù³ï»ùëáõù û·ï³·áñí»éáõ ñùïáõãûáõýá, ï³ï³ñ»é³·áñí»é ³ý·é»ñ»ý ù»ñ³ï³ý³ï³ý ï³éáõûóý»ñá ×ß·ñïáñ»ý ïçñ³é»éáõ ñùïáõãûáõýá ¨ ³ûéý: ²ûý »ýã³¹ñáõù ¿ áõë³ýáõý»ñç ³ïïçí ý»ñ·ñ³íí³íáõãûáõý` áõëáõùý³éáõãû³ý áýã³óùá ¹³ñóý»éáí áõë³ýáõ³ï»ýïñáý: ø»ñ áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõýý»ñá óáõûó »ý ïí»é, áñ ã»é³¹ñáõãûáõý ·ñ»éáõ ·áñíáýã³óý ³é³í»é ñ»armenian folia anglistika methodology 108 ï³ùñùçñ, á·»ßýãáõ ¨ ³ñ¹ûáõý³í»ï ¹³ñóý»éáõ ýå³ï³ïáí ï³ñ»éç ¿ ã»é³¹ñáõãû³ý ¹çïïá·éáë ù»ãá¹ç ñ»ï ñ³ù³ï»õ ïçñ³é»é ã»é³¹ñíáõ ï»ùëï»ñç ó³ûý³·ñáõãûáõýý»ñá, çýãá ýáñ ëáëù ¿ ûï³ñ 黽íç ñçùý³ï³ý ñùïáõãûáõýý»ñç ½³ñ·³óù³ý ¨ ³ý·é»ñ»ýç áñå»ë ûï³ñ 黽íç ¹³ë³í³ý¹ù³ý ý³·³í³éáõù: microsoft word contens verjin armenian folia anglistika literature 126 dickens’s victorian novel versus lean’s modern film adaptation vicky tchaparian lebanese university abstract charles dickens’s great expectations pinpoints his victorian literary heritage. on the other hand, david lean’s film adaptation of dickens' novel conveys it realistically in a period of post war ii cinematic modernization. in the present paper, different points are discussed and presented; first, different critical opinions, by earlier and modern critics, as well as david lean’s personal opinion about film adaptation are revealed and discussed. second, dickens’s eccentric and grotesque victorian characters that are presented through lean’s visually and thematically rationalized postwar characters. third, dickens’s extraordinary characters are contrasted with lean’s realistic ones. moreover, lean’s modernistic touches to the dickensian novel which cater the postwar audience’s need (for which reason lean’s film is a completely intellectual one and not at all dickensian) are also unveiled. thus, trying to put some hope in the hopeless hearts of his audience in the aftermath of the second world war, lean’s modernization of the dickensian era to fit in the world of his contemporary audience is proven. key words: dickens, lean, postwar, victorian, grotesque, modern, adaptation, audience, modernization, difference. introduction although dickens’s victorian novel great expectations reveals many instances of grotesque exaggerations and juxtapositions, creating a world that resembles the victorian society he belonged to, david lean’s film stigmatizes it authentically. literature armenian folia anglistika 127 lean, a postwar cinema director, realistically modernizes dickens’s novel written in 1861, into a film in 1946 catering the needs of his post war audience. since narrative fiction was the dominant mode for early cinema adaptations, literary forms such as novels and plays had their origins in cinematic fictions. however, opinions clash among different critics as for the fidelity to the original literary form in film adaptations. the difference in ideas lies mainly between the earlier and modern critics who had clashing opinions about film adaptations. great expectations adopted and modernized by david lean earlier cinema critics, such as virginia wolf, considered film adaptations as “inferior forms of art, presented to savage people” (popova 2013). for the earlier writers, film adaptation being a new form of art, was negatively criticized along with its followers. thus, it was considered inferior, and its audience was called savage people. others gave credit to “fidelity” to the original icon; graham smith, being one of those, believed that adapted films should have fidelity to their original stories which are in the novels; and contrary to other critics he believed that “lean’s adaptation is faithful to the spirit of the original” (smith 2017:61). so, graham had accepted the idea of adaptation, but with insistence on fidelity to the original icon. moreover, the process of adaptation, as peter reynolds observes, “de-centers the original author and makes the attribution of authorial responsibility problematic” (reynolds 1993:8). thus, in a film, the center of the story is not the original author anymore, instead, there are: the actor, the film maker, the director, and the producer, etc.…; the author of the adopted novel doesn’t have any authority when the novel is transformed to a film. the novelist doesn’t exist anymore and there are other people who take his place. thus, it is obvious that all three earlier film adaptation critics, wolf, smith, and reynolds had given credit to novels rather than to films, since according to them films are for savage people, they are supposed to have fidelity to the original, and the author stops having authority on his characters as soon as they are on the screen. armenian folia anglistika literature 128 on the other hand, modern film critics’ opinions about film adaptation absolutely differ from the old ones; for example, john glavin, a modern cinema critic, warns readers against “the idea that fidelity is a mark of good adaptation” (burke 2006:89), or else he says “what follows will be a source of either frustration or irritation.” (burke 2006:90). so, according to glavin, the idea of fidelity must change, or else, the adapted work will be frustrating. another modern critic called robert stam says, “film is after all, commodity for sale in the market that has to make profit for its makers” (narmore 2000:56). stam points out that “lapse of time, varying modes of expression and characterization are elements that shape a film which is after all, deeply immersed in material and financial contingencies” (narmore 2000:56). so, this means that if the film maker doesn’t know how to present the given novel into a film, he would not be able to sell it and make money; consequently, this gives credit to the changes lean had done to dickens's great expectations. according to a third critic, david lodge (lodge 1993:200), “the adapter has to perform fundamental tasks like condensation – cutting out superfluous material, accelerating the tempo of events and dramatization, translating narration and represented thought into speech, action, and image.” thus, cutting and adding, the filmmaker has the special task of creating something that is his own and not the author’s anymore. it can be concluded that the modern critics’ opinion started to change considerations of film adaptation; it started to give credit and freedom to the filmmaker to do what he wants. nevertheless, it can be mentioned that the changes david lean has made in his adapted film for the sake of the modern audience are completely accepted and legalized. studying the differences between the classical and the modern concept of what is considered art, basically focusing on novel and its adaptation to a film, it is worth quoting joseph conrad's 1897 famous statement of his novelistic intention where he claims that his task is to make his audience hear, to make them feel, and he is trying to achieve this by the powers of the written word, before all, helping his audience to see (conrad 1945:5). sixteen years after conrad's claim, d.w. griffith claimed, “the task i am literature armenian folia anglistika 129 trying to achieve is above all to make you see” (lewis 1939:119). so, according to these two people, pushed by their own beliefs concerning the writer and the film-maker, their views of a work of art confirm that what concerns adaptation of a novel to be converted to a film, each artist, depending on his profession, whether a writer or a movie maker, is a con or a pro to either art. moreover, in an article written to the “guardian,” a post-modern opinion about film adaptation is revealed by the well-known british novelist and journalist will self who believes that the difference between the old culture and the modern one is obvious. he says, “literary fiction used to be central to the culture. no more: in the digital age, not only is the physical book in decline, but the very idea of 'difficult' reading is being challenged” (self 2014)․ so, what is obvious here is that, in the digital age, people are not even pros to the act of reading, which changes the concept of the whole understanding of the classical canons and gives full credit to the cinema makers instead of novel writers. talking of the adaptation process, and dickens’s extraordinary characters being contrasted with lean’s realistic ones; according to grahame smith, “adaptation of a literary masterpiece is a dual process, an act of possession followed by recreation in the new medium.” (smith 2017:62). david lean himself says, “choose what you want to do in the novel and do it proud. if necessary cut characters. don't keep every character, just take a sniff of each one.” (parker <http://www.screenonline. org.uk/film/id/459186/>)․ thus, choosing and cutting the unnecessary from dickens’s novel lean invests a film with a sense of reality. however, his version of great expectations is said to be so “faithful to the spirit of the original that it can be said to covey something of the novel’s essence, even to the viewer who has never read the novel” (smith 2017:61)․ so, although he has cut some characters and added his own spirit to the film, lean’s version of the film great expectations of 1946, has accorded almost unanimous praise and remains according to grahame smith, the adaptation that is “universally admitted to be a great film” (smith 2017:60)․ armenian folia anglistika literature 130 shedding light on what concerns the sense of reality in film adaptation in general, a postwar critic, irving pichel notes: “on the surface there may be visual literalness and familiarity. beyond that, the characters and their actions are made to seem analogous to such actions as the spectators can imagine themselves engaged in . . . in their lives and in the lives of their friends and relatives. this is reality in a limited sense, to be sure. it does not transcend daily life or reveal unseen significances” (pichel 1947:409). in connection with what pitchel said about lean’s adaptation of great expectations, we recall dickens’ unusual story and the revelation of eccentric and grotesque victorian characters such as time-frozen miss havisham and joe, the blacksmith, who are unbelievably lucky and do not develop. the speech and physical appearances of these characters are exaggerated to the point of caricature, so that we do not want to identify ourselves with them. however, lean presents these characters in such a manner that they appear to be as the real and ordinary people the audience encounters in their ordinary life. accordingly, considering the ways of adapting characters and creating a film with his own spirit, pitchel says: “though dickens wrote of lowly people, he did not see them as ordinary . . . the dickensian dramatist personae are tasty with the salt of eccentric and their very names are as whimsical as the grotesquerie of their appearance. the england of dickens may have the architecture and topography of its time, but it is populated with a breed fatter and thinner, baser and nobler, more feeling and less feeling than that happy breed with whom we like to identify ourselves. they range from caricature to idealization . . . they behave with greater love and greater malice than ordinary folk and their lives are filled with the unpredictable and the surprising” (pichel 1947:409). thus, dickens’s grotesque characters have their lives far different than reality. considering the plot of great expectations where an escaped convict gains richness in australia and out of gratitude converts a young blacksmith to a gentleman along with a time-frozen disappointed bride, miss havisham, who grows old in her bridal gown and works out her vengeance raising an innocent young girl heartless, we can see that neither the events, nor the literature armenian folia anglistika 131 people we meet in our daily life are like them. thus, the characters of both miss havisham and magwich – an unbelievably lucky and a good-hearted convict, who happen to be there, only in stories, cannot be given life and appear as real. however, in his 1946 film adaptation, david lean has succeeded to make the impossible appear to be possible, the unusual appear to be usual and the apparent appear to be actual. so, dickens’s eccentric and grotesque victorian characters oppose lean’s visually and thematically rationalized postwar characters who look real and authentic. it is worth mentioning that many critics see these additions rather positive than negative; imelda whelehan, for example, says, “to see the film adaptation of a literary text as necessarily lacking some of the force and substance of its original, it might be more fruitful to regard this and subsequent adaptations of a novel in terms of excess rather than lack.” thus, to add on what the novel includes is a virtue and not a vice. consequently, criticizing the characters and the extent to which these characters appear to be real in lean’s film, pitchel notes: “mr. lean has accepted the characters of dickens and undertaken to rationalize them not psychologically, but visually, and thematically. . . they are realized on the screen by players and a director who concede the possibility of their existence as living persons. their speech is a credible speech because of the way they utter it. their actions are credible actions because of the utterly transparent conviction with which they are performed. the extraordinary is embraced as though it were everyday, the unusual as though it were the most usual thing in the world. . . the nature of these unnatural creatures has been so fully grasped, so completely related to the process of actuality, that they come to seem actual… it is not often that a motion picture set in a somewhat remote time and place, occupied by lives far removed from daily commonplace, achieves this kind of immediacy . . . the important thing is that director, writers, and producers have realized fully in screen terms the content of the story as extraordinarily vivid and believable extensions of human experience” (pichel 1947:410-11)․ armenian folia anglistika literature 132 thus giving credit to lean’s film, pitchel reveals how lean had made the unusual seem to be usual and the extraordinary pictures and characters appear to be usual and believable. along with what pitchel says, it is worth mentioning that since lean’s film was a postwar film and the postwar audience needed an escape from the “depression-ridden”, classical and oldfashioned griffith or any other dickensian film character, it seems that lean’s presentation has taken the postwar audience into consideration. lean’s contemporaries were in need of a change and of modern touches and so was lean’s film. a modern lean critic says, “lean’s adaptations were full of modernistic touches which would have been almost unimaginable a few years earlier” (gardiner 2001:234). other critics claimed that the film is “perplexingly cold and intellectual, not at all the dickens they were used to” (gardiner 2001:235). having all these critical ideas and claims in mind, i believe that the changes lean had made to create his film had turned it into a much better adaptation rather than considering his presentation to be purely dickensian, victorian, or grotesque. talking of dickensian adaptation style, a victorian critic, philip alingham, criticizing lean’s manner of engaging the sympathies of the audience in the opening scene of his film says: “the first few minutes of the film, the pan along the shore with what looks like a series of gallows on the waterfront, are nowhere in the book, but the image is so strong that it forces us to enter dickens’s and lean’s world and never leave it until the film is over. the next scene in which pip is at his parents’ grave and encounters magwitch, invokes strong reactions from the audience. when magwitch grabs pip, the theatre audience literally gasps. the theater-goers feel the same fear as pip… here is the spirit, the drama, the emotion of dickens on the screen” (allingham 1917-1988)․ thus, it is clear that, sometimes, lean’s modern film adaptation is so very different from the dickensian presentation. for instance, at the beginning of the film lean presents cows talking to frightened pip. although this might literature armenian folia anglistika 133 have confused the audience, yet, lean defends himself pointing out “we were not aiming at reality. what we wanted to create all the time was the world as it seemed to pip when his imagination was distorted with fear. that, after all, was what dickens himself did” (gardiner 2001:235)․ defending his modernistic touches to the dickensian novel lean has many of his contemporaries believe in his work and appreciate his adaptations. grahame smith, a major critic of dickens, considers the latter to be a genius, who could have invested in words, and this is exactly the reason why what is seen in the film adaptation of the novel may not always seem to sound dickensian. thus, smith says: “dickens was a writer of genius and naturally his stock in trade is word. this is the first and totally unbridgeable gap we face when discussing dickens and film, or dickens and television. it helps us to account for the fact that what we get on the screen is not dickens. it may look like dickens and occasionally it may sound like dickens, but it isn’t really dickens at all” (smith 2013:60). this contrast between the dickensian great expectations and lean's modernized adaptation is revealed towards the end of the film, particularly in the scene where pip meets estella in satis house and reveals his love to her, and after that they both leave miss havisham’s house to live together happily ever after. concerning this happy ending, philip allingham says, “pip rips down the draperies of satis house to let the light of day upon the mould and decay of satis house and releases estella from the possessive spirit of the vengeful miss havisham” (allingham 1917-1988). i believe that this happy ending doesn’t sound like dickens at all. however, i am also sure that through this behavior of the actor lean is trying to let some light into the dark hearts of the people in the period of the aftermath of the world war ii, to give some hope to his hopeless audience in his just prior to christmas 1946 adaptation, thus trying to promise people a better future. it is for this reason that samuel theatres has claimed that lean’s adaptation of great expectations “embodied a powerful stigmatization of the victorian at a time of postwar modernization” (gardiner 2001:235). since during the postwar period people had suffered more than enough and needed some armenian folia anglistika literature 134 positive changes in their negative lives, the victorian was adopted with positive modernization by lean. conclusion to conclude, it can be noted that lean’s modernization of the dickensian novel was a pill of hope that fought against the hopelessness of the post war disappointments, where lean fought hard to change dickens’ stable and unchangeable victorian canon into a beam of light through the adaptation of a modern film in a world suffering from an unbelievable destruction. i would like to end up with penny gay’s quote that says, “the process of adaptation, like any reading, demands the recognition of the historical distance between the original text and its new audience. the challenge for filmmakers is to find the visual language and a reading of the original that allows the story to speak to that new audience” (gay 2003:91). these lines explain it all, since in the adaptation of the classic, lean never forgets to consider first and foremost, his modern audience. the changes he made to the original icon are not only permitted, but also legalized with the excuse of a better life for the future. references: 1. allingham, v.ph. (1917-1988) “the victorian web.” great expectations in film and television. faculty of education, lake head university. available at: jstor database [accessed may 2018]. 2. burke, a. (2006) dickens on screen. / ed. by j. galvin. victorian review, volume 32, 88-91, n 1. available at: jstor database [accessed april 2018]. 3. conrad, j. (1945) preface to the nigger of the narcissus. j. m. dent and sons: london. 4. gardiner, j. (spring 2001)the dickensian and us. history workshop journal, 51, 226-237. available at: jstor database [accessed april 2018]. 5. gay, p. (2003) sense and sensibility in a post feminist world: sisterhood is still powerful. jane austen on screen, 91. / ed. by g. macdonald and a. macdonald. cambridge: cup. 6. lewis, j. (1939) the rise of the american film. harcourt, brace: new york. literature armenian folia anglistika 135 7. lodge, d. (1993) adapting nice work for television. // novel images. london: routledge. 8. narmore, j. (2000) film adaptation. beyond fidelity: the dialogics of adaptation. london: athlone press. 9. parker, d. screen on line. great expectations. // the definitive guide to britain’s film and tv history. available at: <http://www.screenonline. org.uk/film/id/459186/> jstor database [accessed may 2018]. 10. pichel, i. (july 1947) the happy breed and great expectations. // hollywood quarterly, 4. 408411. available at: jstor database [accessed march 2018]. 11. popova, m. (2013)virginia woolf on the language of film and the evils of cinematic adaptations of literature. available at: <http://www. brainpickings.org> jstor database [accessed july 2018]. 12. reynolds, p. (1993) introduction, in novel images: literature in performance. london: routledge. available at: jstor database [accessed february 2018]. 13. self, w. (2014) the guardian culture. available at: <www.theguardian. com> jstor database [accessed april 2018]. 14. smith, g. (2013) dickens and adaptation. imagery in words and pictures. available at: jstor database [accessed may 2018]. 15. whelehan, i. (1999) adaptations: the contemporary dilemmas. // adaptations: from text to screen, screen to text. / ed. by d. cartmell and i. whelehan. new york: routledge. sources of data: film great expectations: london 1946 type & time 35mm, black and white, 118 minutes director david lean production company cineguild independent producers producer ronald neame screen adaptation david lean, ronald neame, anthony havelock-allan armenian folia anglistika literature 136 from the novel by charles dickens cinematography guy green cast: john mills (pip); valerie hobson (estella); bernard miles (joe gargery); francis l. sullivan (mr jaggers); finlay currie (abel magwitch) (jaggers), martita hunt (miss havisham), ivor barnard (wemmick), anthony wager (young pip), jean simmons (young estella), and alec guinne (herbert). դիքենսի վիկտորիանական վեպի և դրա հիման վրա լինի նկարահանած ժամանակակից ֆիլմի միջև եղած հակասությունները հոդվածում քննվում են դեյվիդ լինի կողմից երկրորդ համաշխարհային պատերազմից հետո կինեմատոգրաֆիայի արդիականացման ժամանակաշրջանում դիքենսի մեծ հույսեր վեպի հիման վրա նկարահանված ֆիլմի մասին տարբեր քննադատական կարծիքներ, ինչպես նաև հենց իր՝ դեյվիդ լինի անձնական տեսակետը։ ֆիլմում դիկենսի էքսցենտրիկ և գրոտեսկային վիկտորիանական հերոսներին հակադրելով իրատեսական կերպարներ՝ լինը նպատակ է հետապնդել հույս արթնացնել երկրորդ համաշխարհային պատերազմի հետևանքով հուսալքված հանդիսատեսի սրտերում՝ դիկենսյան վեպի նկատմամբ ցուցաբերելով մոդեռնիստական մոտեցում։ microsoft word 1. maket 2019-1new.doc armenian folia anglistika linguistics 30 sports metaphors in american political discourse mariam askarian, hovhannes vanesyan yerevan state university abstract in cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor refers to the understanding of an idea in terms of another familiar object. as conceptual metaphors are great persuasive means due to their ability to make unfamiliar things familiar, we have analyzed transcripts of recent political speeches with a special reference to presidential campaign speeches (2016-2019). it should be noted that the usage of conceptual metaphors is strictly linked to cultural patterns, i.e. asian people tend to use conceptual metaphors of eating or family, while western politicians tend to rely on sport, driving or war metaphors. the thing is that they consciously, subconsciously or even unconsciously view their lives as a race, a game or a battle. our analysis is based on western presidential campaign speeches. as an outcome of our analysis we wanted to reveal and elucidate that particular link between culture and cognitive linguistics. key words: cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphors, culture, western politicians, presidential campaign. introduction since sports metaphors are so popular in american english, we can see that in the american conceptual system, sports, business and politics are always combined. american people have an obsession with sports. people fuse politics and sports, showing people’s perception of life as sports, without being aware of it. we can use lakoff and johnson’s (1980:102) words to demonstrate the reason: “our conceptual system is not something we are normally aware of. in most of the little things we do every day, we simply think and act more or less automatically along certain lines. just what these lines are is by no means linguistics armenian folia anglistika 31 obvious. one way to find out is by looking at language. since communication is based on the same conceptual system as we use in thinking and acting, language is an important source of evidence for what that system is like”. we may ask how the connection between politics and sports contributes to americans’ conceptual combination of the two domains. since the united states is a nation with advanced democracy, everyone is encouraged to participate in governing, so politics is widely tackled by ordinary americans. only sports can compete with politics in terms of popularity and the extent and level of participation. most people agree that american sports, especially professional sports, are the products of industrialization and sports have in turn strengthened the political “industry”. politics and sports are constantly promoted and benefit from each other. besides, sports are a good way to promote national pride and patriotism. there’s no wonder that lots of politicians turn to sports for various political purposes. politics and sports are conceptually combined and the image of politicians and that of sports stars are prone to merge. people hope their sports stars become politicians and politicians are good at sports. hence, in the government, there are quite a few politicians who were professional players. american children are taught to possess the spirit of competition, self-reliance, and entrepreneurship. this conception gradually forms the foundation of american way of life. people seek free competition and enterprise. that is why, in the public discourse, sports and politics always interact and many politicians often unconsciously treat politics like sports. we can say that american politics, in a sense, resembles a sports game. due to the high frequency of usage of sports metaphors, american politics and politics in general, can be clearly depicted as a contest between two opponents. sports metaphors in american politics the foundations of the cognitive theory of metaphor were laid down by george lakoff and mark johnson (1980) in their influential work metaphors we live by. in this book, they developed a new theory that has become known as the cognitive view of metaphor. some years later, lakoff (1993) renamed it armenian folia anglistika linguistics 32 and referred to it as the contemporary theory of metaphor. their key argument of the cognitive theory of metaphor is that metaphor forms an inherent part of our conceptual system – in their words, “our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature” (lakoff and johnson 1980:26). although the cognitive theory of metaphor tends to be described as radically new, the cognitive dimension of metaphor had been recognized by previous scholars. one of which, the interaction theory, viewed metaphor as a mental process, and even before that a number of philosophers, including john locke, giambattista vico, and immanuel kant, had discussed the cognitive implications of metaphor (semino 2008:13). according to this new perspective, the metaphor is defined as a cognitive mechanism whereby one conceptual domain is partially mapped onto a different conceptual domain, the second domain being partially understood in terms of the first one: “the essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.” (lakoff and johnson 1980: 82). the domain that is mapped is called the source and the domain onto which it is mapped is called the target. sometimes, we find people unconsciously using metaphors in their public discourse. but, we feel puzzled by some of these metaphors, because we don’t have the cultural knowledge behind them. such a fascination and amazement have led researchers to a close examination of people’s use of metaphor. metaphors are widely used in human communication: ancient or contemporary, formal or informal. it is not just a matter of choice of the expressions nor is it merely a rhetorical device or a linguistic convenience in human communication. metaphor participates fully in the process of knowledge and brings us to a new world. culture is the symbol of civilization and the development of human language is closely related to diversities of culture. different cultures may cause people to use different metaphors. for example, western people tend to use obviously more sports, business, war and driving metaphors, because they consciously or unconsciously view their life as a sport and war; while the chinese appear to use far more frequently family, eating and performing metaphors. so we can say language and culture are closely related. on most occasions, western people are fond of using sports and war metaphors, linguistics armenian folia anglistika 33 which reflect the features of people’s experience, thinking and vision. most probably, speakers of one language sometimes find it difficult to appreciate the metaphors of another language. this is because “communication is based on the same conceptual system that we use in thinking and acting” (lakoff and johnson 1980:118). thus, sports metaphors make part of the american conceptual system, their mode of thinking and can help to shed light on the processes going on in their electoral system, where one side seeks to defeat the other. moreover, sports metaphors can function to create an image of game in politics like they first have to run for and win the office in election, to play and score points in political or legislature games and fight the opposition while in office. in short, these metaphors are deeply rooted in american culture and appeal widely to the american electorate. sport metaphors overlap, to some extent, with war schemas, for war terminology is commonly resorted to talk about sports in english. let’s consider some examples from us president donald trump’s speech in order to put this in perspective: i think beating obama would have been a much easier one than the one that's coming up, which is sad to say but true. (<https://bit.ly/2ymw1ju>) when politicians compete, they beat each other, as it is seen in the above mentioned example. beating the adversary is common in games and sports matches, where one team beats the other and eventually gains the victory, therefore trump takes up the verb beat to show his brutal and unexpected victory over ex-president obama, although he never actually competed with him, thus putting obama down by claiming that it would be easier to beat him than the candidates whom he will face in the future. yet, in another example, trump uses the word run speaking about a candidate who tried to get a government office, that of the president presumably, but failed. what’s more, armenian folia anglistika linguistics 34 trump or probably his speechmakers, intentionally or unintentionally, repeat the final word failed, thus intensifying the intended effect. it' can't be mitt because mitt ran and failed. he failed. (<https://nym.ag/2ypxryz>) presidential elections have always been compared with a race, i.e. presidents run and they either succeed or fail. that is why, president trump in one of his presidential campaign speeches made the adduced remark about mitt romney, who had failed over again and who promised not to run against trump in 2020 elections. to further elaborate on the american way of thinking and the conceptual basis of their metaphoric expressions, let’s look at a few more examples taken from president trump’s speeches, where he addresses a number of topics ranging from domestic issues to american overseas policies. (1) iran is taking over iraq, and they’re taking it over big league. (<https://bit.ly/2hide83>) (2) we need a leader that can bring back our jobs, can bring back our manufacturing, canbring back our military, can take care of our vets. (<https://wapo.st/2kafsif>) in the first example president trump uses the phrasal verb take over, which is often used in sports games, such as soccer, when one player takes over the ball from another player. besides, it should be noted in the first excerpt, although it is about a serious international conflict, the president employs the overly colloquial or rather slangish term big league, which other than having some explicit references to the sports leagues, has also the meaning of ignoring or doing something beyond good according to online urban dictionary, this brings the context closer to the everyday life and a layperson’s repertoire of linguistics armenian folia anglistika 35 words, who, we earlier mentioned, is interested in politics as well as sports. examining the second example we may encounter some difficulties. at first, one may not see a sport metaphor here, but going deeper into the sports studies we have found that the term bring back is widely used in basketball and means the action of bringing back the ball which was stolen by the opponent, which is the case in our example. president trump uses this metaphor to show his ability, keenness, and alacrity to bring back everything which belongs to the proud american nation and which has been stolen from them. hence, we can say that intranational conflicts are assimilated to (basket) ball games. nobody, nobody will be pushing us around. (<https://wapo.st/2hhxqk5>) this example is also taken from one of donald trump’s 2016 presidential campaign speeches. once more these examples state that sports metaphors are widely used in politics and are great means of conveying thought. namely, the word loser or losing is used to define those teams that have lost the game, pushing around can refer to those players who are incompetently hurled around by other players in contact games, and game changer is applicable to those players who change the course of the game in favor of their team after entering the game. thus again, politics is a game. you know, when president obama was elected, i said, “well, the one thing, i think he’ll do well. i think he’ll be a great cheerleader for the country.” (...) i really thought that he would be a great cheerleader. he’s not a leader. (...) but he wasn’t a cheerleader. he’s actually a negative force.’ (<https://bit.ly/30m8k1i>) not only does this excerpt from one of trump’s speeches make it obvious that trump’s biggest rival, his biggest problem is obama, but it also proves trump’s incontinence towards the previous president. trump diminishes armenian folia anglistika linguistics 36 obama’s political competence by downgrading him from a leader to a cheerleader, which is a term typically used in relation to a female college student who leads a team of similar female students, who perform gymnastic dances and songs, before and after athletic games, in order to cheer and support their team of athletes. in the next example, trump repeatedly uses the phrasal verb kick in yet another term that would usually appear in sports contexts. you look at obamacare. a total catastrophe and by the way it really kicks in in'16 and it is going to be a disaster.but obamacare kicks in in 2016. really big league. (<https://bit.ly/2ikpm5m>) he uses kick in to qualify the process of a legislation taking effect. this sounds rather brusque and conveys some negative connotations about this legislation and shows the speaker’s disapproval of it. below, let’s discuss some other examples taken from 2019 presidential campaign speeches: in our national security strategy that the president trump released last december, he described a new era of “great power competition.” (<https://bit.ly/2ocjmww>) politics has always been described as a game, and as usual a game is a kind of a competition. the above mentioned example by vice president pence clearly views the world of politics under the light of competition. great powers here is associated with strong countries which in president trump’s words compete with each other. (1) brothers and sisters: we’re going to win this election not because we have a super pac funded by billionaires. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 37 (2) let’s be honest: while we have won some victories, our struggles have not always been successful. (<https://bit.ly/2wz97p7>) bernie sanders in his campaign speech again compares politics with a game, a game that needs to be won. in this example presidential election is considered to be a game that needs to be won. (..) it was a bruising race. but we kept coming back to that basic point that i made in every speech. (<https://politi.co/2wnam5r>) rick santorum speaks about the past elections he participated in. all the elections that america experienced were hard but he describes the last election he participated in as a race, a very hard to win race. here again, we have an example of sports metaphor, showing competition and strong desire to win. concluding the instances of the usage of metaphorical sports terms in the speeches of a male representative of american political platform, let’s move on and consider some examples taken from his counterpart female representative’s speeches delivered around the same period of time for the same purpose. for some reason or another it was quite difficult for us to find sports metaphors in hillary clinton’s speeches. however we succeeded to find some. in her 2016 concession speech clinton notes that politics is a game and there is a loser and a winner. she represents herself as a loser in a particular game, i.e. when she lost elections, but she claims herself to be a winner by nature for those who believed in her abilities and strength. and again, this way of thinking and formulating her ideas comes to prove that political activities are regarded as games and thus embedded in the consciousness of not only male but also female politicians. further excerpts taken from clinton’s political speeches come to prove our hypothesis. “we’re going to start calling some good plays. we’re going to go on offense as well as playing defense.” (<https://politi.co/2wnhrmp>) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 38 the example is taken from hillary clinton’s speech of 2008 presidential campaign. here again, we clearly can differentiate sport metaphors such as good play, go on offence, play defense. in her presidential campaign launch speech she elucidated the real state of america, meaning that in the past america had some achievements, but now not. lack of actions makes america stand in the same position for a long time, without moving forward. (1) (…)our history has moved in that direction, thanks to generations of americans who refuse to give up or back down. (<https://bit.ly/1xeh75g>) (2) i hear you. i see you. and as your president, i will always have your back. (<https://bit.ly/2jkha5y>) here also, it is quite easy to spot metaphors that are used in sports, mainly in basketball game such as move in a certain direction, give up, back down”.as stated earlier many politicians compare presidential elections to a basketball game. as we see here, clinton also considers her presidential elections a basketball game. the similarity of clinton’s conceptual thinking to that of her male counterparts, to that of donald trump in particular, could be explained by the fact that society tends to entrust important matters of governance to male representatives of the same society, who are thought to be guided more with logic and less with sentiments, tactics typical of sports as well as war. therefore, clinton’s image makers might have tried to assimilate her political figure to that of a strong male politician, in order to gain more electorate confidence and bring about her political triumph. this, by no means, comes to refute the idea that women too can possess a competitive mind and see politics as sports or war, however, this hypothesis aims to put forward the idea that such a way of thinking is more typical of men politicians as displayed in the speeches of donald trump. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 39 having analyzed 2019 presidential campaign speeches by different female candidates too, we found a lot more examples of sports metaphors widely used by women in politics. this example is taken from the rachel maddow show, to be more precise, from the interview with senator kirsten gillibrand. the interviewer rachel maddow begins her interview with sports metaphor running in this field, of course we should not take the literal meaning of this expression, however, both running and field are baseball related terms, which would most usually be used in situations where this game is involved. why is she running? why is she running in this field? how does she distinguish herself in this field? (<https://on.msnbc.com/2k6rx3f>) although the above-mentioned example is not from a politician’s speech, it reflects the reality of how politics is conceived in the minds of those people who have to do with it; both as politicians as well as journalists who cover the formers’ activities. no wonder, politicians tend to use various conceptual metaphors in their presidential campaign speeches, it helps them make their speeches more persuasive, more intimate and closer to the hearts of the general masses. by leveling the playing field, our democracy will thrive and we will protect against the dysfunction that's poisoning washington now. (<https://bit.ly/30ogo6u>) in the above-presented excerpt, sen. kristin gillibrand singles out her todo tasks using a very interesting sports related phrase – level the playing ground – which is a synonymous expression to the commonly used idiom level the playing field meaning to make a situation fair for everyone according to merriam webster online dictionary. this expression helps her get her message across in a vivid yet understandable manner to her supporters. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 40 the verbs to lose or to win highly refer to sports metaphors and are also widely used in political discourse. with the help of these verbs politics is represented as a game, and politicians are players who have just two alternatives: to lose or to win. this tactic is especially used in electoral speeches. to be sure we’ve won and we’ve lost, but we’ve never stopped playing. (<https://bit.ly/2mlbqpx>) interestingly enough elizabeth warren starts her speech with a story. not a typical beginning for a campaign speech, indeed. anyway, she embroiders a sports metaphor to the main part of her speech so skillfully, that it makes the reader imagine the vitality of electing her as a future president of the usa. (..) a product of a rigged system that props up the rich and the powerful and kicks dirt on everyone else. (<https://bit.ly/2wr3yc0>) in her speech she used the word rigged which we would often come across in such expressions as rigged games or competitions. although, we are to perceive this as natural and typical, we have to look deeper into the consciousness of the perception of certain concepts and ways of thinking, peculiar to americans to better justify the usage of such expressions related not only to sports but to other spheres of american life. conclusion as a result of our analysis we came to the conclusion that politics is perceived as a game and politicians are seen as players. moreover, political parties are seen as sports teams and political tactics are understood as sports tactics. all of this is embedded in political speeches of more or less esteemed politicians. thus, politics, put metaphorically, is a game to win. politicians fight and compete with their opponents in order to win an election. in other words, people frequently talk about politics in terms of sports: baseball, basketball, linguistics armenian folia anglistika 41 football, etc. it is so common that the word race is more often used than the term election campaign and the phrase running mate sounds far more familiar than that of someone’s campaign partner. references: 1. beard, a.(2000) the language of politics, london: routledge. 2. glucksberg, s. (2001) understanding figurative language: from metaphors to idioms, oxford and new york: oup. 3. hiraga, m. k. (2005) metaphor and iconity: a cognitive approach to analyzing texts, new york, new york: palgrave macmillan. 4. lakoff, g. (1993) the contemporary theory of metaphor, in andrew ortony (ed.), metaphor and thought. london: cambridge university press 5. lakoff, g. and johnson, m. (1980) metaphors we live by, chicago: university of chicago press. 6. semino, e. (2008) metaphor in discourse, cambridge and new york: cup. sources of data: 1. interview with senator kristen gillibrand. available at: <http://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/rachel-maddow-show/2019-01-16?fb clid=iwar15nm9uff9t504uyldufceofciivbkczkyzvnlkrsnzsyexgsw fmarrkbw> [accessed may 2019]. 2. remarks by vice president pence at the 2019 munich security conference. available at: <https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarksvice-president-pence-2019-munich-security-conference-munich-germa ny/> [accessed may 2019]. 3. senator bernie sander’s presidential campaign speech. available at: <https://vtdigger.org/2019/03/02/full-text-sen-bernie-sanders-2020presidential-campaign-kickoff-speech/> [accessed march 2019]. 4. rick santorum values voter summit speech. available at: <https://www.politico.com/story/2012/09/rick-santorum-values-votersummit-speech-transcript-full-text-081256>[accessed march 2019]. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 42 5. kamala harris kicks off presidential campaign in oakland. available at: <http://www.ktvu.com/news/transcript-kamala-harris-kicks-offpresidential-campaign-in-oakland> [accessed march 2019]. 6. elizabeth warren’s 2020 announcement speech. available at: <https://www.masslive.com/politics/2019/02/read-elizabeth-warrens-2020announcement-speech.html> [accessed march 2019]. 7. president trump’s campaign launch speech. available at: <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/06/16/theyre-ra pists-presidents-trump-campaign-launch-speech-two-years-laterannotated/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.8e5da9ac2ce8> [accessed march 2019]. 8. hillary clinton to women and girls: “nothing has made me prouder than to be your champion”. available at: <https://www.vogue.com/ article/hillary-clinton-concession-speech> [accessed march 2019]. 9. hillary clinton campaign rally speech. available at: <https://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/hillary-clinton-campaign-rallyspeech-transcript-118973> [accessed march 2019]. 10. donald trump iowa freedom summit speech. available at: <http://www.p2016.org/photos15/summit/trump012415spt.html> [accessed march 2019]. 11. clinton's historic victory speech as presumptive democratic nominee. available at: <http://time.com/4361099/hillary-clinton-nominee-speechtranscript/>[accessed march 2019]. 12. hillary clinton’s june 7 victory speech. available at: <https://bluenationre view.com/full-transcript-of-hillary-clintons-june-7-victory-speech/> [accessed march 2019]. 13. urban dictionary. available at: <www.urbandictionary.com> [accessed march 2019]. 14. merriam webster’s advanced learners’ dictionary. available at: <https://www.merriam-webster.com> [accessed march 2019]. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 43 սպորտային փոխաբերությունները ամերիկյան քաղաքական դիսկուրսում ճանաչողության տեսության համաձայն՝ փոխաբերությունը մեր առօրյայի անբաժան մասն է՝ դրսևորվելով ոչ միայն լեզվում, այլև մեր մտածողության մեջ։ մարդու գիտակցության մեջ հասկացույթների խմբերի միջև գոյություն ունեն խորքային կառուցվածքային հարաբերություններ, որոնք թույլ են տալիս այս կամ այն հասկացույթն ընկալել մեկ ուրիշ, արդեն ծանոթ կամ հայտնի հասկացույթի միջոցով։ սույն հոդվածում փաստական նյութ հանդիսացող ամն նախագահական քարոզարշավի ելույթների քննությունը բացահայտում է մշակույթ-մտածողություն-լեզու եռամիասնության կարևորությունը, հատկապես, երբ խոսքը հասկացական փոխաբերության՝ որպես քաղաքական դիսկուրսում կիրառվող պերսուազիվ միջոցի մասին է։ նյութի վերլուծությունը ցույց է տալիս, որ արևմտյան քաղաքական դիսկուրսում, ի տարբերություն արևելյանի, հասկացական փոխաբերությունները հիմնականում առնչվում են սպորտի, պատերազմի, մեքենա վարելու հետ, քանի որ արևմտյան մշակույթում կյանքը դիտարկվում և ընկալվում է որպես խաղ, որպես ճակատամարտ, որպես մրցավազք։ received by the editorial board 01.02.2019 recommended for publication by the reviewers 02.04.2019 accepted for print 22.04.2019 microsoft word contens verjin culture studies armenian folia anglistika 129 scottish identity through national proverbs and sayings. (a linguo-cultural perspective) naira gasparyan yerevan state university the best proverbs are true and witty; sometimes they are witty, but not true; sometimes they are true, but not witty; sometimes even neither true nor witty; but they always have “salt,” the quality which gives zest and preserves from decay. (mackay 1891:7) abstract the importance of historicity in the construction of national identity is undeniable. proverbs and sayings, which are a link with the past, are used by speakers for a variety of purposes. folklore, literary criticism, stylistics are the main fields interested in the study of proverbs, but scholars from a variety of fields have found ways to profitably incorporate the study of proverbs. the development and maintenance of proverbs and sayings, which is a time-consuming process, cannot go unaffected by inner and outer factors. the aim of this article is to show that proverbs and sayings, formed and established in the course of the development of the nation and its culture, can provide a reasonable basis for establishing a nation’s identity and wisdom (usman et al 2013:47-58). it is beyond doubt that in the era of globalization national identity issues necessarily find their multilateral consideration and objective evaluation by scholars of vast assortment of specialties across scientific disciplines. key words: scottish culture and language, proverbs and sayings, paremiology, proverbiality, national identity, national wisdom, national values. armenian folia anglistika culture studies 130 introduction there is an impressive history of the two major aspects of academic study of proverbs: paremiography and paremiology1 known as the collection of proverbs and the study of proverbs, correspondingly. the term παροιμία paroimía, in greek means “proverb, maxim, saw” (kenneth 1993). there is the opinion that best research on proverb academic study is secured when both are combined in perfect harmony. the interest in proverbs can, as our research established, be traced back to the earliest sumerian cuneiform tablets and the philosophical writings of aristotle. renaissance scholars, such as erasmus of rotterdam2 and modern folklorists, such as archer tayback3 have all built on previous research as they put forth their own collections and studies of proverbs (meider 1997). although the identification of traditional texts as proverbs and their arrangement in collections of various types are of paramount importance, proverb scholars have always known that the interpretation of their use in oral or written speech is of equal significance. attempts to define proverbs and the criteria required for classifying proverbs have also been the subject of an endless number of theoretical papers written over the years by paremiologists. the core problem of the article can be best presented if we introduce one of the most outstanding modern approaches on markers of proverbiality. defining a linguistically founded proverb definition, norrik r. n. establishes a certain set of properties of proverbs, irrespective of their structure, and considers them to be enough for distinguishing the proverb from all other literary and folkloristic genres. among these properties are: a) pithiness (being brief, full of vigor, and meaningful in expression); b) traditionality which distinguishes the proverb from original, freely formed utterances and from authored items such as slogans or aphorisms; c) fixidness, which helps to distinguish a proverb from the riddle and/or the joke; d) prosodic arrangement and very often, figuration (norrik 1985:66-67). the markers of proverbiality are considered to vary from culture to culture – in one case it is the prosody, as it is in spanish, in the other case – metaphoricity (norrik 1985:66) as it is in english and armenian. culture studies armenian folia anglistika 131 proverbs and sayings, which are part and parcel of every language and form the most viable genre of folklore, are extremely popular in scottish. the message of scottish proverbs and sayings the cognitive role of proverbs and sayings is undeniable since they can convey considerable information. f. sharifian was quite right to mention that language serves as a “collective memory bank” of the cultural cognition of a speech community (sharifian 2017). developing this idea we may conclude that proverbs and sayings can be viewed as part of the language whose task is “to store” national wisdom based on prior experience for further effective communication and cultural cognition. moreover, proverbs and sayings are not only part of the “memory bank” but they also act as a vehicle for transmission of national wisdom from generation to generation and as a rigid basis of national identity. for instance, “words of wisdom come out of the mouths of simple people” has the noun mouth as the key word. in arabic culture wisdom is obviously associated with opening one’s mouth and uttering wise ideas, while the scots consider the wisest approach to keep one’s mouth shut, as, for instance: 1. a wise head makes a close mouth. 2. a close mouth catches nae flees. a closed mouth catches no flies. from another scottish proverb – “wisdom is best taught by distress.” it can be inferred that in scottish reality wisdom is thought to be gained from one’s own experience, through misfortunes and hard work. it can be guessed that serious obstacles make one think about finding ways out of the situation. looking for and finding a variety of ways to overcome the hardships makes people more circumspect and organized. the more difficulties one faces, the wiser he/she becomes. but, as reality shows, the fool are quite self-confident and can give advice to the wise who prefer to keep silent as in armenian folia anglistika culture studies 132 a fule may gie a wise man counsel. a fool may give a wise man counsel. as far as the fool is concerned, for example, armenians think that the fool remain the same all their lifetime, for they never learn from their own experience while clever people become even wiser with age because they learn from experience “only the wise becomes wiser with age, the fool is fool at all ages”. (տարիքը խելոքի խելքն է ավելացնում). one should never hope that the fool will or may become wise at a certain age. the scottish greatly value their national proverbs and sayings and the collectors and authors of proverb books never miss the opportunity to tell their readers to follow the advice, message and wisdom of their national proverbs. kelly (kelly 1721), who was one of the first collectors of scottish proverbs and sayings, takes an effort to convincingly plead his countrymen not only to learn scottish proverbs and sayings that were presented in his famous volume and carry national wisdom but also to use them in every appropriate situation which will be a step towards passing it to the coming generations. this wonderful instruction to be followed and passed on to the coming generations makes the scottish people and proverbs distinguished. this simple fact states how great the scottish attitude is towards national values. lord bacon4 was quite right to say that “the genius, wit, and spirit of a nation are discovered in their proverbs”. he was not mistaken that the study of national wisdom condensed in the nation’s proverbs and sayings, will inevitably lead to the study of national characteristics. he is sure that few countries can lay claim to a more abundant store of the pithy sayings than those which belong to the scottish people, because, according to him, “no people were more attached” to this part of their linguistic inheritance. the above-mentioned idea formulated by lord bacon can be found in an early collection “scottish proverbs and sayings in prose and rhyme” (mackay 1891). while collecting proverbs for his book, bacon wrote-“every proverb should be put down and transmitted to the reader, even the most vulgar ones, since they are very expressive and impressive. “lord bacon collected proverbs culture studies armenian folia anglistika 133 simply because it was “his recreation” and he did it without omitting even the vulgar ones, since “the vulgar ones are excellent good”. he omitted neither those which “were dull and flat,” nor those which stressed “meanness of the person”. moreover, he added some new ones because “otherwise they would have died”. actually, bacon proceeded from the fact that the message of vulgar ones is more actual, strikingly vivid, picturesquely expressive and to the point. hence, the wisdom obtained is the result of mass practice and appears rather useful and easy to memorize. the title of mackay’s book reveals that the early collectors were already aware about the specific prosody of their national proverbs. applying norrick’s theory of proverbiality to scottish proverbs we reveal that prosody and the rhythmic arrangement can be viewed as one of their specific features. this, perhaps, can explain the fact that music was inseparable from scottish folklore. there is a scottish saying “let me make songs, and no matter who makes the laws” which confirms that music and national songs are part of national identity, and that scots must be very romantic and kind-hearted people. another important issue worth mentioning here is that the melodic arrangement of proverbs greatly helps in memorizing and easily transmitting them from generation to generation. the group of the proverbs of fife origin are specifically worth to mention since fife is known as an area with agricultural landscape, and the local proverbs can be defined as weather prophecies. weather in scotland was a universal subject that interested everyone and scottish people were “an agricultural community which had to win its livelihood in a changeable climate”. so the rhyme of the east coast sounds this way: when largo5 law the mist doth bear, when kellic6 law for storms prepare. from the above-mentioned melodic lines the readerlearns that hardworking scots were agricultural people who had to handle the problems manifested by the changeable weather. thus, the national wisdom teaches the coming generations that they will have to take into consideration weather issues as well. armenian folia anglistika culture studies 134 our analysis of scottish proverbs and sayings also establishes that the scots are kind-hearted, honorable people. the following melodically arranged three pieces of proverbial texts convey great wisdom although the first two produce some comic effect: 1. when you see a well-bred woman, catch her, catch her; if you don't do it, another will match her. 2. a' h uile fear a theid a dholaidh, gheabh e dolarmhac-aoidh. (every man that's down in luck will get a dollar from mackay7.) 3. a' h-uile latha sona dhut, gun lath' idir dona dhut! (every day goodluck to thee, and no day of sorrow be!) the second one refers to the enlisting for the highland regiment raised by lord reay for service under the king of denmark (1626-29), and gustavus adolphus (1629-32), in which the scots so greatly distinguished themselves. the investigation reveals that self-respect and sense of honour appear in scottish proverbs to beof much importancein shaping the national character. credit lost is like a broken glass. he wha's lost his credit is dead to the warld. as thou valuest thyself, others will esteem thee. he who lies in themud will rise dirty. aman's will is his kingdom. a man is king in his own. when a man goesdown, his own back is his support. the analysis of the linguistic material shows that the scotsman, being vey purposeful and determined, is a real patriot, besides he will never surrender once he has made up his mind, he will go to the end, fulfil his goal and ambition he will get whatever he wants, “unlike the english and the irish”, as culture studies armenian folia anglistika 135 the proverb says: the englishman greets, the irishman sleeps, but the scotchman gangs till he gets it. the research also establishes that, according to the learned scotsmen, this linguistic part of the national heritage differs from nation to nation. “[…]every nation hath their own proverbs and proverbial speeches; yea, every shire or part of a nation hath some proverbial speeches which others hath not: so that a man can hardly gather all such speeches”8. the early collectors of scottish proverbs in xvi-xix centuries already understood that “proverbial speeches” varied from nation to nation. the above-mentioned remark comes to confirm that proverbs of a nation contain something which can be missing in other nations’ culture, national wisdom and character. in the course of the research it is revealed that the scottish celts are naturally disposed to be religious, but they do not speak much or familiarly of sacred things. although they seem to have belief in an almighty and just god, they seem to be very practical about religion. ye ‘ll do little for god, if the deil was dead. there is no hiding of evil but not to do it. wrong cannot rest, nor ill deed stand. though there be delay, the evil-doer is not forgotten. freedom of criticism on the ministers of religion does not seem to be unfamiliar to the scots, anyhow. it is not the priest's first story that should be believed9. it is his own child the priest baptizes first. the priest drank only what he had. scottish proverbsdistinctly imply a fixed belief that human destinyis shaped by fate or providence. here are some examples to testify what has been said: 1. tha 'fhàgail fhèin aig gach neach.(everyone has his fate.) armenian folia anglistika culture studies 136 2. tha 'fhortan fhein air mac-cuaradh, biodh e cniaidhno biodh e bog. (macquarrie has his own luck, whether itbe hard or soft.) 3. no man can avoid the spot, where birth or death is his lot. below are some more examples of scottish proverbs and sayings on fate and luck which are marked by the author of the book as “exceedingly wise… among a people believing so firmly in fate” (nicolson 1882:333): 1. ni droch dhuine dan da fhein. a bad man makes his own destiny. 2. for whom ill is fated, him it will strike. 3. where folk's fate is to go, ford or hill won't prevent. 4. who is born to be hanged cannot be drowned. 5. bheir duine beath' air eigin, ach cha toir e rath air eigin. a man may force a livelihood, hut cannot force fortune. the attitude towards women and the way women are treated in the society defines the nature of the nation and, hence, gives a significant idea abo1ut the stage of the civilization of that particular nation. scottish proverbs and sayings on women, wives, maidens, matrimony contain emphasized respect for women. is mine miu na gran, is mine mnài na fir. meal is finer than grain, women are finer than men. according to the investigated linguistic material a good wife was a pride for a scotsman. 1. a gude wife and health is a man's best wealth. 2. they say in fife, that next to nae wife, the best thing is a guid wife. culture studies armenian folia anglistika 137 although scottish proverbs contain great wisdom they may show open humour at the same time, or sound rather tragic, as for instance: 1. ma 's math leat do mholadh, faigh has ; ma's math leat do chàhieadh, pòs. if you wish to be praised, die ; if you wish to be decried, marry. 2.mar dliobliran 'am bun uisge, mar sheobhag gu ian slèibhe, mar chù gu cat, mar chat gu lucli, tha bean mic gu 'màtliair-chèile. like otter at a river-mouth, like hawk to a mountain bird, like dog to cat, like cat to mouse, the son's wife is to his mother. 3.women's patience – up to three. special attention is paid to the behavior of maidens: maidens should be mild and meek quick to hear, and slow to speak. fair maidens wear nae purses. young women are not permitted to pay their share of the reckoning ; the young men pay for them. maidens want naething but a husband, and then they want everything. maidens should be mim(modest) till they're married, and then they may burn kirks (churches). the books of scottish proverbs studied by us show that old scots were kindhearted and civilized by nature. their proverbs, to their own surprise, in their own words “give very little indication of those ferocious traits” characterizing their celtic ancestors. armenian folia anglistika culture studies 138 conclusion the application of a linguօ-cultural approach does explain much. all the above discussed proverbs and sayings confirm that national wisdom may be expressed through various instances of a human’s experience where the cultural background matters greatly. scottish proverbs and sayings show that old scots were kindhearted and hard-working agricultural people with specific love for music and national issues, who cultivated great patriotism, self-respect and sense of honour, whose respect for women was emphasized. the rhythmic and melodic arrangement of scottish proverbs and sayings make them easy to memorize. proverbs and sayings differ from nation to nation since proverbs of a nation contain something which can be missing in other nations’ culture. proverbs and sayings are carriers of national wisdom, and are an undeniable source of establishing a nation’s identity. notes: 1. a saw is defined in wiki as an old saying, a commonly repeated phrase or idea, a conventional wisdom. while “old saw” is a common phrase for “saw”, some consider it a tautology (kenneth 1993:381). among various synonyms for “saying”, dictionaries from 18th century singled out “saw” as a vulgar, uneducated wisdom, often based on superstitions (crabb 1863:211). 2. erasmus of rotterdam (1466-1536) desiderius erasmus roterodamus, known as erasmus or erasmus of rotterdam, was a dutch renaissance humanist, catholic priest, social critic, teacher, and theologian. erasmus was a classical scholar and wrote in a pure latin style. available at <erasmus of rotterdam dutch renaissance scholar – biography.com. <https://www.biography.com/ people/erasmus-21291705> [accessed july 2017]. 3. archer taylor (1890-1973), a seminal proverb and riddle scholar and folklorist, enrolled at swarthmore college in pennsylvania, graduating with the ba and ma in german by 1912. he then taught german at pennsylvania state college. later he moved to california where he worked as a journal editor, for california folklore quarterly (which he helped to found) (now western folklore) and culture studies armenian folia anglistika 139 the journal of american folklore. in 1965, archer worked with his friend matti kuusi to establish the journal proverbium. available at: archer taylor-revolvy <https://www.revolvy.com/topic/archer%20taylor&item_type=topic> [accessed july 2017]. 4. francis bacon, 1st viscount st. alban (1561 –1626) was an english philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, orator, and author. he served both as attorney general and as lord chancellor of england. after his death he remained influential through his works. 5. largo, the eroded plug of an ancient volcano, rises sharply above the farmland and fields of eastern fife, scotland. 6. kellic refers to the western extremity of the lake in the district of kenmore, scotland. 7. mackay was the sheriff of the counties of fife and kinross who had collected and selected the proverbs for the book a century of scottish proverbs and saying, in prose and rhyme current in fife and chiefly of fife origin (mackay 1891). 8. these remarks belong to david ferguson, a scottish reformer, who “was celebrated for his attention to this branch of composition. he had not enjoyed the advantages of a university education”.[…]“while other leaders of the reformation were busied cultivating the literature of greece and rome, ferguson was equally assiduous in polishing the vernacular dialect” (henderson 1876). ferguson’s collection of scottish proverbs was published in 1641 under the title “scottish proverbs gathered together by david ferguson, sometime minister at dunfermline, and put ordine alphabetico when he departed this life anno 1598”.andrew henderson writes about james kelly in the preface of his work: “saving what may be gleaned from the volume itself we know nothing of its learned and ingenious author. by birth he was a scotsman, and we are inclined to believe that he was educated for the church.” (henderson 1876). other editions appeared in 1659, 1675, 1699, and 1706, the latter bearing the title “nine hundred and forty scottish proverbs, the greater part of which were first gathered together by david ferguson, the rest since added.” armenian folia anglistika culture studies 140 available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/david_ferguson (reformer)> [accessed july 2017]. 9. in some cases the scottish equivalents are missing in the paper. authors of books of proverbs and sayings sometimes only present the translated variants in english and we failed to find their scottish equivalents. references: 1. crabb, g. (1863) english synonyms: with copious illustrations and explanations. available at: <https://books.google.am/books?id=dnwpaaaayaaj&pg= pa211&dq=saw+saying +%22old+saw%22&lr=&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q= saw%20saying%20%22old%20saw%22&f=false> [accessed september 2017]. 2. kenneth, g.w. (1993) the columbia guide to standard american english, ny: cup. 3. meider, w. (1997) modern paremiology in retrospect and prospect. paremia n6, madrid. available at: <cvc.cervantes.es/lengua/paremia/pdf/006/ 064_mieder.pdf> [accessed june 2017]. 4. norrik, r. n. (1985) how proverbs mean: semantic studies in english proverbs., simi valley, ca, usa, mouton de gruyter. 5. sharifian, f. (2017) cultural linguistics. amsterdam, john benjamins. 6. usman, joshua, mustafa, lynda jummai & agu, margaret nonyerem, (2013) proverb as determinant of cultural identity. // international journal of research in humanities, arts and vol. 1, issue 6, nov 47-58, usa. available at: <http://www.impactjournals.us/about-us.php> [accessed february 2017]. 7. zvet van der arno (2015) operationalising national identity: the cases of the scottish national party and frisian national party. in nations and nationalism 21(1), pp. 62–82. available at: <doi: 10.1111/nana.12091> [accessed august 2017]. culture studies armenian folia anglistika 141 sources of data: 1. henderson, a. (1876) scottish proverbs. london: william tegg & co. available at: <https://www.abebooks.co.uk/book-search/.../scottish-proverbs.../ henderson-andrew/> [accessed september 2017]. 2. kelly, j. (1721) complete collection of scottish proverbs. available at: <https://books.google.am/books?id=begoaaaaqaaj> [accessed july 2017]. 3. mackay, g.j. (1891) a century of scottish proverbs and saying, in prose and rhyme current in fife and chiefly of fife origin. cupar-fife, a. westwood &son. available at: <https://arch ive.org/.../centuryofscottis00mackiala/ centuryofscottis00mackiala_djvu.txt> [accessed august 2017]. 4. nicolson, m.a. (1882) a collection of gaelic proverbs and familiar phrases based on macintosh’s collection. 2nd edition. edinburgh, london: maclashlan and stew art. շոտլանդական ինքնությունն ըստ ազգային առած-ասացվածքների (լեզվամշակութային մեկնակետ) դեռևս լորդ ֆրենսիս բեկոնն է նկատել, որ ազգային ինքնության այնպիսի դրսևորումներ, որոնք են ազգի տաղանդը, խելքն ու ոգին արտահայտվում են նրա առածներում և ավելի խոր դիտարկումներ, քան առածասացվածքների բնագավառը, որը ժողովրդական բանահյուսության ամենակենսունակ ժանրաձևերից է, հնարավոր չէ գտնել: շոտլանդական առած-ասացվածքների լեզվամշակութային քննությունը բացահայտում է տվյալ ազգի հոգեկերտվածքի, ազգային ինքնության, մտածողության առանձնահատկությունները՝ դառնալով նրա բարոյական արժանիքների ու ձգտումների մասին տեղեկատվություն պարունակող արժեքավոր աղբյուր: հետաքրքրական է, որ շոտլանդացու տեսանկյունից քիչ ժողովուրդներ կարող են հպարտանալ, որ իրենց լեզուն ունի առած-ասացվածքների առավել հարուստ շտեմարան, և երբևէ ոչ մի այլ ժողովուրդ, բացի շոտլանդացիներից չի կարող պարծենալ, որ նման հարստությունից այդպիսի մեծ հաճախությամբ է օգտվում իր առօրյայում: armenian folia anglistika – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english (since 2005) and yerevan state university (since 2015) aims at fostering research of the english language, literature and culture armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 literature studies 158 the rule of power in william golding’s “lord of the flies” vicky tchaparian  lebanese university the rule of power is the concept around which william golding’s nobel prize winner novel lord of the flies turns. it is golding’s literary masterpiece which is translated into more than 30 languages and hailed as one of the classics of the 20 th century. the novel which tells the story of a group of young boys who find themselves alone on a deserted island, develop rules and a system of organization, but without any adults to serve as a civilizing impulse. the children eventually become violent and brutal. in the context of the novel, the tale of the boys’ descent into chaos suggests that human nature is fundamentally savage. accordingly, golding’s boys keep on fighting and choosing one leader after another making their choices depend on the most powerful boy among them all to rule. william golding himself, as an allied officer who fought in world war ii, experienced the destructive effect of the war first-person. after this devastation he witnessed, he published his first novel lord of the flies, which symbolically expressed his thoughts on human nature, rule of power, and the constant conflict between the good and evil. the aim of this article is to reveal the fact that according to golding in the conflict between the good and evil, man’s nature tends more toward savagery and evil. the methodology used includes basic criticism regarding the concept of good versing evil in the human nature according to philosophy as well as religion. the hypothesis that the article rests upon points out that although human beings might try to act in a good manner, yet they are often heartless evils. thus, a human being is always in need of social rules to be tamed and is always ready to worship something/someone stronger than himself/herself until he/she is saved by the “messiah”. keywords: survival, human nature, social system, democracy, dictatorship, civilization, messiah. introduction golding’s haunting tale is one of the world’s best-loved and most terrifying allegorical novels where a group of six british schoolboys between the ages 6  vicky.tchaparian@hotmail.com this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received 23.02.23 revised: 30.03.23 accepted: 28.04.23 © the author(s) 021 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2023.19.1.158 mailto:vicky.tchaparian@hotmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 159 and 12 are shipwrecked on an isolated island for fifteen months somewhere in the pacific ocean where they try to create order and remake society. golding creates a backdrop of global war where the boys attempt to build a civil society that is followed by the assumed destruction of civilization. the novel is an attempt to show two main points; first; the fact that the collapse of civilizations into war is unavoidable, and second; the fact that the evil forces within the human beings drive them towards self-destruction. it is worth mentioning that golding has written lord of the flies after his active participation in wwii where he has carved deep in the human soul finding out that man’s origin is egoistic, self-centered, and that his evil nature is exposed in the form of power. thus, he says, “i must say that anyone who passed through those years [of world war ii] without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head” (golding, 1965). to convey the idea that evil is an inborn trait of mankind, golding purposefully uses children as his main characters where each boy tries to rule and dominate over the others in the absence of social rules and this allows them to commit violent acts. war for power ended up by the appearance of the messiah golding’s nobel prize winning novel lord of the flies was written by virtue of two basic motives; the first being his work experience with unruly boys as a teacher and the second being his time experience as a combatant in wwii. although golding’s debut came in 1934 with his poetry collection, yet, after world war ii, he began working on his first novel called lord of the flies, which was published in 1954 and filmed by peter brook in 1963 (tore & allén, 1993). the novel is full of different issues such as the nature, society, good, and evil. it symbolizes the destruction mankind can ravage on nature and the earth merely by coming into contact with it and destroying it because of his greed. the virgin island is a symbolic garden of eden which is untouched by man. however, as soon as the young british schoolboys arrive, its beauty begins to be destroyed quickly and it becomes corrupted. each one of the six boys represents either a negative or a positive aspect of humanity and effects either the mother nature or the society in a different way. for example, piggy and ralph symbolize civilization and order. whereas simon symbolizes natural human goodness and is also a christ figure (a literary technique that the author uses to draw allusions between the characters and the biblical jesus). more loosely, it is a spiritual or prophetic character that parallels jesus, or any other spiritual or prophetic figure. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 literature studies 160 in golding’s novel, simon just like christ, is tried out by the devil. when he was alone in the woods interacting with the lord of the flies (devil in hebrew translation) the lord of the flies a pig’s head, called so due to the number of flies swarming the dead carcass – spoke to simon, asking, “aren’t you afraid of me?... there isn’t anyone to help you, only me. and i’m the beast” (golding, 1980, p. 143). the pig’s head stated that he should be the one whom simon should fear, enhancing the allusion between the pig's head and the devil. the pig’s head continues saying, “you know perfectly well that you will only meet me down there so don’t you try and escape” (golding, 1980, p.143). thus, the head of the pig – or the lord of the flies is a representative of the devil that tries out simon the christ figure that represents the good. contrary to simon, in the same group of boys, jack and roger symbolize evil, savagery, and bloodlust at their most extreme. the big kids symbolize the ruling classes and political leaders (those who have power in society), whereas the “littluns” symbolize common people (those who don’t have power in society). in the course of his novel, through his characters, golding shows the reality of both negative as well as positive instincts within the human nature. the relationships that develop between the older boys and the younger ones emphasize the older boys’ connection to either the civilized or the savage instinct: civilized boys like ralph and simon use their power to protect the younger boys and advance the good of the group; savage boys like jack and roger use their power to gratify their own desires, treating the little boys as objects for their own amusement. while depicting the children on the island, golding describes how fearful they were while being parentless with no one defying for them. they were afraid of the wildness of nature while they saw pigs and beasts around them. when they didn’t have any fruits left for them to eat, they killed the pig to eat its meat, however, they were afraid of its blood. at night they were afraid of sleeping to avoid seeing the nightmare of the beast. while many boys were afraid of a sea monster or some winged creature, simon meditated on the metaphysical nature of the beast, wondering if they should fear their own nature instead of some outside force. according to simon, there was a darkness lurking in the hearts of the boys on the island. rejecting the notion of a beast simon says: “maybe there is a beast… maybe it’s only us.” (golding, 1980, p.81) thus, the real beast that the children were afraid of was not in the physical world around them on the island at night nor at daytime. the real beast was inside each boy who was thirsty for power to rule over his friends. literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 161 it is worth mentioning that, as england had entered world war ii in 1941, golding joined the royal navy, where he served in command of a rocketlauncher and actively participated in the invasion of normandy. on august 6, 1945, during world war ii, the american b-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the japanese city of hiroshima and killed an estimated 80,000 people. three days later, on august 9, 1945, a second b-29 dropped another bomb called “fat man” which exploded in nagasaki killing an estimated 40,000 people. (atomic bombings of heroshima and nagasaki). having this in mind, some might claim that golding’s concept of evil is just the result of living during a war era. however, this cannot be true since many philosophers who had lived earlier during the 17 th and 18 th centuries have also considered the existence of evil in the human nature. for example, jean-jacques rousseau had discussed the same belief much earlier in the 18 th century. rousseau, the genevan philosopher, whose ideas and principles were influenced by the french revolution, has claimed, “man is born evil because every human being is born with a desire for possession and a hunger for power” (philosophers and scientists views on humans good and evil, 2022). accordingly, it was the desire of owning the shell, of leading and ruling along with the desire to eat enough and resist hunger that has made the schoolboys in golding’s novel behave as they had. also, thomas hobbes, a 17 th century philosopher who was effected by niccolo machiavelli and rené descartes has argued that as human beings, we need humans’ culture, government, and laws to be implemented to control our inner evil (lloyd, 2002). while the plane was taking the boys to safety following the outbreak of a nuclear war, it crashes on an unknown island and the boys’ attempt to create civilization on the island ends in disaster, because of a battle for power (about william golding, n.d.). accordingly, even angelic beings like children can turn into brutal savages when there are no prohibitions that society dictates over them since evil is innate in a human being. thus, both j. j. rousseau and n. machiavelli had supported the idea of evil in human nature. however, golding’s concept is slightly different in the lord of the flies since for golding the innate evil power is not permanent in a man’s life. according to the lord of the flies, evil will vanish as soon as the “messiah” comes, that’s why the children left everything behind and wanted to leave the island when, the “messiah”, the british naval officer came to take them home. it is known that the setting of the novel enjoys an extraordinary natural bliss, which is disturbed by the arrival of human beings. this reminds us of the garden of eden from which adam and eve were dismissed and cursed by god because armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 literature studies 162 of the original sin. while the boys were on the island they behaved like real children who suddenly become parentless facing new experience as an adventure, trying to find different means of survival. they started by eating fruits and when the fruits were over they started to hunt pigs and eat the meat in a festive atmosphere. they built huts on the beach to protect themselves from the beast by daytime. they also created different tasks for themselves to perform. they even tried to set a government the prime minister of which was at first ralph who was the owner of the conch shell. ralph is the primary representative of order, of civilization, and of productive leadership in the novel. while most of the other boys initially are concerned with playing, having fun, and avoiding work, ralph sets about building huts and thinking of ways to maximize their chances of being rescued. with time, the shell effectively governs the boys’ meetings, for the boy who holds the shell holds the right to speak. thus, the shell itself becomes a powerful symbol of civilization and order in the novel. in this regard, the shell is more than a symbol, it is an actual vessel of political legitimacy and democratic power (lord of the flies spark notes literature guide). the children were first in need of only food, but later, after they had enough they thought of fighting with each other to have power on the other boys. as mahatma ghandi has once said, “the earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed”. it was their greed of having more and their thirst for power that led them to fight. after the conch shell is crushed, the children replace ralph by jack merridew who gets involved in the politics of power and succumbs to evil practices. jack enters into a power struggle with ralph who embodies the positive side of human character. by virtue of a relatively older age, ralph becomes the leader of the group. unlike jack who exhibits dictator-like behavior, ralph is more of a democratic leader. he provides everyone the opportunity to express their opinion through holding the conch shell. his sole objectives for the group are: to survive, to have fun, and to maintain a smoke signal so that any passing ship may come to their rescue. this shows that there is a difference in the application of power which is relatively reflected in the actions of individuals, and also says quite much about the character of each child (abhedananada, 1899, p. 157), thus, revealing both types of leadership – democracy and dictatorship. ralph and jack who kept on fighting and were always in a kind of conflict are symbols of democracy and dictatorship. who will be the chief? each of them tried to take more “littluns” (little ones) to rule against the other. the consequence of the use of power therefore, reflects the goodness or evil in a human being depending on his/her character. ralph used his mindfulness and literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 163 ruled, making the good dominant, whereas jack did his opposite. ralph’s power and influence over the other boys are secured at the beginning of the novel. however, as the group gradually succumbs to savage instincts over the course of the novel, ralph’s position declines hastily. ralph peacefully approaches the boys, yet the once neutral companions turn on him due to jack’s militaristic orders. golding portrays that while ralph and piggy’s government may have been a morally sound solution, the boys’ chaos is too strong to be controlled by democracy. accordingly, since democracy failed against chaos, dictatorship and savagery must dominate. so, golding has jack’s tribe transformed from a civilized group of schoolboys to an army of soldiers guided by fear. along with the negative instincts, golding also reveals the children’s desire for eating, having fun, and being happy; for along with being afraid, pessimistic, and egoistic the children always tended to make festivals. this shows the fact that children like joyful situations even though they were sad deep inside. among the positive instincts, golding shows the children’s love of nature and dependence on the environment they had lived in earlier. every time ralph slept he dreamt of his ponies, his football games, and his storybooks being always eager to meet his parents. this need for being protected is obviously seen in the children who created an idol to worship. they created their own god, which was a severed pig’s head mounted on a stick called lord of the flies. if we consider that the pig is a symbol of the darkness and evil that lurks inside of human nature as white (2021) claimed, then the lord of the flies may be read as a symbol of the innate evil lying within every human soul. the fact that it is a lord, but of the flies, undermines the connotation of the word lord which otherwise means ‘one of noble rank’ (abhedananada, 1899, p. 156). thus golding has used the concept of evil that verses the good through the characters of the children and their immaturity expressing his ideas about the antagonism of the countries in wwii making the children the victims of adult self-destruction, and irresponsibility. this situation is definitely one related to what might follow an atomic war because war is the central theme of lord of the flies in many ways. also, the experience of the boys on the island is an allegory for the adult war taking place “off the page”. so, the atomic catastrophe, as well as wwii, seem to color the mood of golding’s novel. however, in spite of the overwhelming presence of evil forces, there is no dearth of goodness in the world. ralph’s survival amidst such trials and tribulations, wherein even friends turned foes, is suggestive of the triumph of good over evil or alternatively, of positive power over the negative. (sharma, 2017, p. 154) similarly, both simon’s and piggy’s death in the novel may be read as a kind of sacrificial redemption, as christ had once done to save mankind. considering the fact that certain ancient cultures practiced human armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 literature studies 164 sacrifice wherein the best of the men was chosen to be sacrificed in order to appease their gods (abhedananada, 1899, p. 162). after some time and after piggy’s death ralph’s dream of saving the boys was fulfilled as soon as the “messiah” appeared and rescued the schoolboys ending up their war against nature, society, and evil for the sake of gaining power and authority. conclusion golding’s protagonists were all afraid of the beast, they were all fighting for leadership, and creating gods for themselves; however, they were always eager to see someone coming and rescuing them from their miserable state. although they fought against each other, tried to win “littluns” and fought to become the master, yet, as soon as the british naval officer came to save them they were all ready to leave with him. so, their desire for being the chief and the master of the island was vanished as soon as rescue came. the boys wanted to gain power and be the chief on other boys like them but they couldn’t stand against nature and its power, that’s why when the “messiah”, the british naval officer came, they all left everything behind and went with him instead of remaining on the island and being the chief. this officer allegorizes the savior most people in this world believe in and are waiting for. according to religious beliefs, the savior for the human race can be jesus christ, prophet mouhamad, the buddha, or any other …the naval officer is a representative of this “savior,” this “messiah” people are waiting for to come and save them from the miserable life they are living in this world. during the time when golding wrote his novel, after wwii, the two “chiefs” that represented the two great powers of the world were; the united states of america (usa) and the union of soviet socialist republic (ussr, russia). between the years 1945–1952, during the years of the early cold war, the united states took the lead in forming a western alliance to counterbalance the communist superpower to contain the spread of communism. meanwhile, the soviets demonstrated a keen interest in dominating eastern europe (1945-1952: the early cold war). each one of these two “chief” countries tried to take more (“litlluns”) small countries of europe trying to gain power and be the leader. the question that is raised here is who is the naval officer that will save the people on earth today? references abhenanada, s. (1899, november 19). the philosophy of good and evil. new york: vedanta society. literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 165 about william golding. (n.d.). in william golding. retrieved janiuary 12, 2023. atomic bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki. (n.d.). in encyclopedia britannica. retrieved february 21, 2023. british empire in world war ii. (n.d.). in wikipedia. retrieved february 06, 2023. golding, w. (1965). the hot gates and other occasional pieces. london: faber and faber. lloyd, s.a. (2001). special issue on recent work on the moral and political philosophy of thomas hobbes. pacific philosophical quarterly, 82, 285308 philosophers and scientists views on humans good and evil. (2022, february 17). edubirdie. retrieved may 16, 2023, retrieved january 10, 2023, from https://edubirdie.com/examples/philosophers-and-scientists-views-on-humansgood-and-evil/ sharma, b. (2017). human evil and power politics: a study with reference to lord of the flies. smart moves journal ijellh, 5(10), 12. retrieved february15, 2023. tore, f., & sture, a. (1993). nobel lectures, literature 1981-1990. singapore: world scientific publishing co. white g., m. (2021, january 8). lord of the flies symbolism in simple terms. your dictionary: books and literature. retrieved february 06, 2023. 1945–1952: the early cold war. (n.d.). in the office of the historian. retrieved january 10, 2023. sources of data golding, w. (1980). lord of the flies. london-boston: faber and faber ltd. իշխանության կանոնները ուիլիամ գոլդինգի «ճանճերի տերը» վեպում վիքի չափարեան իշխանության կանոնների հաստատումը առանցքային գաղափար է, որի շուրջ զարգանում է նոբելյան մրցանակակիր ու. գոլդինգի «ճանճերի տերը» վեպը։ վեպը գոլդինգի գլուխգործոցն է, որը թարգմանվել է ավելի քան 30 լեզուներով և համարվում է 20-րդ դարի դասական ստեղծագործություններից մեկը։ վեպը մի խումբ երեխաների մասին է, որոնք https://william-golding.co.uk/ https://www.britannica.com/event/atomic-bombings-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki https://www.britannica.com/event/atomic-bombings-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/british_empire_in_world_war_ii https://ijellh.com/ojs/index.php/ojs/article/view/2434 https://ijellh.com/ojs/index.php/ojs/article/view/2434 https://reference.yourdictionary.com/books-literature/lord-flies-symbolism-simple-terms https://reference.yourdictionary.com/books-literature/lord-flies-symbolism-simple-terms https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/foreword armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 literature studies 166 հայտնվելով անմարդաբնակ կղզում՝ կարգ ու կանոն են հաստատում, ստեղծում համակարգված կառույց։ այդ ամենը, սակայն, տեղի է ունենում առանց մեծահասակների վերահսկողության, որոնք երեխաներին քաղաքակիրթ վարվելակերպի օրինակ կծառայեին։ արդյունքում երեխաները դառնում են դաժան և վայրենի։ վեպի համատեքստում տղաների հայտնվելը քաոսային իրավիճակում ենթադրում է, որ մարդն իր բնույթով ի սկզաբնե վայրենի է, ուստի գոլդինգի կերպարները շարունակ պայքարում են՝ մեկը մյուսի ետևից փոխելով առաջնորդներին։ երեխաների ընտրությունը պայմանավորված է իրենց միջից ամենահզոր տղային ընտրելու ցանկությամբ։ ու.գոլդինգն ինքը, լինելով երկրորդ աշխարհամարտում դաշնակից զորքերի սպա, անձամբ վերապրել է պատերազմի կործանարար ազդեցությունը։ լինելով այդ ավերածությունների ականատեսը՝ նա հրատարակեց իր առաջին՝ «ճանճերի տերը» վեպը, որը խորհրդանշում էր իր պատկերացումները մարդկային բնույթի, իշխանության կանոնների, բարու և չարի միջև հավերժ պայքարի մասին։ սույն հոդվածի խնդրո առարկան է բացահայտել գոլդինգի հիմնական տեսլականը՝ այն է չարի և բարու միջև պայքար մղելիս մարդ արարածը իր բնույթով հակվում է դեպի բարբարոսությունը և չարությունը։ հոդվածում կիրառված մեթոդական հենքը ներառում է հիմնարար վերլուծություն՝ նվիրված բարու և չարի հակադրությանը փիլիսոփայական և կրոնական դրույթների տեսանկյունից։ հոդվածի նախնական դրույթն այն է, որ չնայած մարդիկ կարող են փորձել ճիշտ վարվել, նրանք շատ հաճախ իրենց դրսևորում են որպես անսիրտ չարագործներ։ սա է պատճառը, որ մարդ արարածը միշտ պիտի ենթարկվի սոցիալական կանոններին որպեսզի դառնա հնազանդ, այլ կերպ՝ ընտելացվի։ մարդիկ միշտ պատրաստ են իրենցից ավելի ուժեղ մեկին պաշտելու մինչև որ մեսիան չգա և նրանց չփրկի։ բանալի բառեր՝ գոյատևում, մարդկային բնույթ, սոցիալական համակարգ, ժողովրդավարություն, քաղաքակրթություն, մեսիա։ microsoft word maket 2020-1(21) 19.02 doc.doc linguistics armenian folia anglistika 33 insights into the category of gender (with special reference to gender-marking avoidance strategies) lili karapetyan, lusine danukhyan yerevan state university abstract gender is an issue that has long preoccupied linguists, and the category of gender is one of the still unsolved puzzles of linguistic science. there has never been a complete agreement between scientists with regard to gender origin, nor there is unanimity of opinion as to its function in different language systems and, in general, to its definition. the present study focuses on the origin and historical development of the category of gender, classification of languages according to gender types, the peculiarities of gendered and genderless languages, gender-marking avoidance strategies. through the comparative method of analysis english and armenian gender systems are compared with an aim to reveal the similarities and differences in terms of functions, gender indicators in proverbs, as well as types of reference. key words: category of gender, gender systems, gendered and genderless languages, gender-marking avoidance strategies. introduction the word gender has been used since the 14th century as a grammatical term, referring to classes of noun as masculine, feminine, or neuter groups. grammatical gender is a formal category, but it does not refer to the biological difference between man and woman; rather it is an integral part of the linguistic system and it also includes inanimate entities. this system is used in approximately one quarter of the world’s languages. in 257 languages from different geographical areas and linguistic families, 112 are shown to have a gender system (oxford research encyclopedia). armenian folia anglistika linguistics 34 in linguistics grammatical gender is a specific form of noun class system in which the division of noun classes forms an agreement system with another aspect of the language, such as adjectives, articles, pronouns, or verbs. this system is used in approximately one quarter of the world's languages. in these languages, most or all nouns carry one value of the grammatical category called gender; the values present in a given language (of which there are usually two or three) are called the genders of that language (gender, wikipedia). gender category is observed in such old languages as sanskrit, latin, ancient greek, old persian, ancient egyptian, etc. according to the definition given in oxford online dictionary (2019) gender is any class (typically masculine, feminine, common, neuter) of nouns and pronouns distinguished by the different inflections which they have and which they require in words syntactically associated with them. grammatical gender is only very loosely associated with natural distinctions of “sex”. the gender category cannot be perceived and comprehended unless we reveal certain notions such as gender types, classification of languages according to the mentioned types, the origin of the category of gender and its historical development, the peculiarities of gendered and genderless languages, gendermarking avoidance strategies, and some others. gender origin and classification of languages according to gender types the origin of the grammatical category of gender in different languages is connected with the outlook and world view of ancient people. at the initial stages of world discovery people divided the inanimate objective reality according to fertility, movement and growth. the objects that give some kind of products, grow (up) or move from their initial position were considered to be feminine (earth, tree, water, sun, moon, etc.) and those that do not correspond to these criteria were considered masculine (aghayan 2010:187). in the languages where the grammatical category of gender is better demonstrated, the difference is better seen, e.g. in russian вода (f), луна (f), земля (f) and камень (m), in spanish la tierra (f), una flor (f), el agua (f), etc. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 35 some languages do not have distinctions of the grammatical category of gender: these languages are called genderless. they lack gender-specific words, prefixes or suffixes. the armenian language belongs to this group. according to the gender type, languages are divided into 5 groups – those that have:  masculine and feminine – french, hindi, irish, spanish, etc;  common and neuter – danish, norwegian, swedish, dutch;  animate and inanimate – georgian, sumerian, elamite, etc;  masculine, feminine and neuter – latin, old english, russian, etc;  more than three genders – polish, czech, bantu languages, etc. (list of languages by type of grammatical genders, wikipedia). according to j. lyons (1968:283), gender “plays a relatively minor part in the grammar of english by comparison with its role in many other languages.” following aristotle’s model, j. harris (in teterin 2012) stated that modern english has a “natural” or “logical” system of gender. this is neither a grammatical category, nor a lexical one, but semantic, based largely on biological sex differences, and, therefore, sensible only for human and animal reference. thus, all nouns referring to females are logically or naturally assumed to be feminine in gender (she). nouns referring to male beings or creatures are naturally assumed to have male reference (he); and everything else (animals, plants, objects, abstract qualities, etc.) is assumed to be unmarked for gender (it). ilyish (in tiv'jaeva 2012:4) states that not a single word in modern english shows morphological meaning of gender. thus, the word sister and brother do not show any difference in their morphological forms, but only in lexical meanings. consequently, the difference between actor and actress is purely lexical. in other words, the category of gender should not be confused with the category of sex, as the latter is an objective biological category. while some nouns in the english language can only have one type of reference, others are double-gender or multiple-gender nouns: 1. masculine only: for male human beings (father, boy, king). 2. feminine only: for female human beings (mother, girl, queen). 3. neuter only: inanimate (non-sexed) objects (book, tree, room). armenian folia anglistika linguistics 36 4. masculine or feminine: male or female human beings. these have been described as “common gender”, or “dual gender”, and usually are nouns in -er (driver, employer, singer), -ian (vegetarian), or -ist (loyalist, artist, typist). 5. masculine or neuter: male animals (billy-goat, ram, bull, drake, boar, cock), and personifications of certain objects of the human physical or mental universe (sun, river, summer, winter, love, death, time, war). 6. masculine, feminine or neuter: animate beings whose sex is indeterminate (baby, infant, child, cat, dog). this is often the case of young children or lower animals (fish, birds, reptiles, insects, etc.) (teterin 2012:160). in old english, all nouns were treated as either masculine, or feminine or neuter, this system fell out of use during the middle english period. in modern english the category of gender is mostly distinguished by personal pronouns (third person, singular): he – masculine, she – feminine, it – neuter. there are some other indicators:  certain words acting as sex-indicators: girl-friend, boy-friend, tomcat, jane-cat, billy-goat, nanny-goat, policewoman,  bound morphemes indicating feminine gender: actress, tigress, heroine,  different words used for indicating the gender: lady, queen, king, uncle, aunt. modern armenian, which is considered to be a genderless language, has similarities with english in terms of giving a gender to its gender-neutral vocabulary:  certain words acting as sex-indicators: մոզի (արու կով), հովատակ (արու ձի), etc.  suffix -ուհի indicating feminine gender of the nouns: աշակերտուհի, բժշկուհի, գործավարուհի, etc.  different words used for indicating gender: օրիորդ, պարոն, տիկին, քեռի, քույր, etc. in the english language the 3rd person singular personal pronouns distinguish the genders, consequently, there are three pronouns he (for masculine), she (for feminine) and it (for neuter). though nowadays in the linguistics armenian folia anglistika 37 armenian language the equivalent of he/she is gender-neutral նա, in western armenian the 3rd person singular pronoun once had two genders նե (f) and նա (m) (aghayan 1976:1018). in the english language animals are referred to as nouns of neuter gender even when their sex is known to the speaker: the elephant slowly lifted its trunk. the cat was licking its body. my cat is celebrating his 5th birthday today. peter’s puppy is so sweet: she jumps on me every time i call on them. sometimes the choice of the gender is made by the author/speaker as it includes an emotional component, too: titanic, giant white star liner sinks after collision with iceberg on her maiden voyage. do you like my new car, isn’t she beautiful? but when used in a purely geographical sense the gender choice of inanimate things or places may be referred to as it (mkhitaryan et al 2001:18): new york city is the most populous city in the usa, its population reaches 8538 million. paris is the capital of france. it is considered to be the city of love. in fiction these nouns get their gender according to the context and the author’s taste: new york city is the most fatally fascinating thing in america. she sits like a great witch at the gate of the country. (johnson 2004:51) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 38 i shall attempt no such supergatory task as a description of paris. it impressed me as a perfect and perfectly beautiful city. (johnson 2004:72) paris was a universe whole and entire unto herself, hollowed and fashioned by history; so she seemed in this age of napoleon iii with her towering buildings, her massive cathedrals…. (rice 1976:67) gender markers in english and armenian proverbs being a purely linguistic category gender reveals a lot about human mind which is better seen when observing the wise truths handed from generation to generation as in the case of proverbs (the examples are taken from english proverbs and sayings, 1987). when studying english proverbs one may see the tendency of using the word man as the subject in most of them. this phenomenon is conditioned by the fact that for many centuries men have been the breadwinners and decision makers of the family and have been focused on: no man is an island. a man is the only animal that can be skinned more than once. a man who marries twice is a two-time loser. a man is known by his friends. the word man is a proper indicator of masculine gender, but in the proverbs above it may also mean a human being in general. yet, one cannot be certain what gender the proverb demonstrates or whether it wants to have a stress on gender or not. other proverbs already solve this kind of puzzles directly pointing to the gender by its meaning or a suitable pronoun: linguistics armenian folia anglistika 39 marry a handsome man and you marry trouble. the smart man knows how little he really knows. behind every great man there's a great woman. the words humanity, human race, person, people can be acceptable substitutions to avoid sexist language in some cases, though it changes the agesold wisdom to some degree: a dog is a man’s best friend => a dog is human’s best friend. a good man is hard to find. => good people are hard to find. a man is known by his friends. => people are known by their friends. clothes make the man. => clothes make identity. being a gender neutral language, armenian avoids this kind of misunderstandings even in similar proverbs. in armenian translation the word մարդ stands for the word man. generally, the word refers to masculine gender, but without a clear indicator one may understand as they wish: մարդուն, հողից բացի, ոչ մի բան չի կշտացնի: ագահ մարդու փորը միշտ դատարկ կլինի: ժլատ մարդը բարեկամներ չի ունենա: սարը սարին կհանդիպի, մարդը մարդուն չի հանդիպի։ just like in english, in the armenian language sometimes there is serene indicator: արիությունը զարդարում է տղամարդուն: կնկան էրիկը մարդն է, մարդուն էրիկը` պարտքը: in the armenian language there is another good way for avoiding gender indication – the use of substantivized adjectives: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 40 երբ հիմարը խոսում է, խելոքը լռում է: աղքատին ո՞վ է տվել արքայություն: gender-marking avoidance strategies sometimes in formal communication one faces different problems connected with sexist languages. when using cautious language people need some tips how to use appropriate pronouns or words. for example, in spanish, italian and other sexist languages when referring to a group of people it is grammatically correct to use masculine gender if there is at least one male representative. only when the whole group consists of females the speakers use feminine gender e.g. las chicas comen en un café italiano. this sentence assumes that all the members of the group are female, while without a certain context one can never guess if the group members of the sentence los chicos comen en un café italiano are all male or there are representatives from both genders. the english language speakers do not come up to this kind of misunderstanding, but they find themselves in other sorts of tricky situations. in the english language gender based errors are connected either with the 3rd person singular pronouns or with profession indicating nouns. pronoun-related form of sexist writing occurs in a sentence such as: when a student goes to university, he should understand the importance of higher education. such a sentence assumes that all the students are male. in a cautious language the speaker could use:  he or she or s/he or he/she instead of he, i.e. when a student goes to university, he/she should understand the importance of higher education.  one instead of he, i.e. when a student goes to university, one should understand the importance of higher education.  another way of avoiding the sexist pronoun is to use they instead of he, i.e. when a student goes to university, they should understand the importance of higher education. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 41  on the other hand, the speaker may not only change the pronoun but the number of the noun in the main phrase making it plural, i.e. when students go to university, they should understand the importance of higher education.  another solution is to avoid using gender pronouns and use nouns or neuter pronouns instead: ask him to be impartial. – ask your teacher to be impartial. when a teacher is motivating, his students will be more interested in studying the subject. – when you are motivating, your students will be more interested in studying the subject. when a teacher is motivating, his students will be more interested in studying the subject. – when we teachers motivate, our students will be more interested in studying the subject. the complex diversity of linguistic units enables speakers/users to come up with avoiding structures even for already defined sexist avoidance techniques. once the doctor is ready to operate, he or she must wash his or her hands. – when ready to operate, doctors must wash their hands.  in the case of an inanimate object the use of indefinite article is also recommended. in different structures and contexts one may use the indefinite article to avoid gender based judgements, e.g. who has left a book at cafeteria? someone dropped a purse in the street. as mentioned above, the second use of sexist language is connected with nouns such as businessman, fireman, chairman, etc. nowadays, with the growth of awareness in the society women have started to occupy positions which were meant for men only in the previous centuries. in order not to hurt their feelings or worsen relationship with them one may find alternatives to some position names: chairman => presiding officer businessman => business executive congressman => congressional representative armenian folia anglistika linguistics 42 fireman => firefighter stewardess => flight attendant conclusion being a linguistic category, gender reveals a lot about human mind, which is unconditionally reflected in the language. while awareness grows in the society, there is a growing need for some tips and strategies to avoid problems connected with sexist languages. nowadays the flexibility of a language and the complex diversity of linguistic units enable speakers/users to come up with sexist avoidance techniques, i.e. avoid the use of gender displaying words and use neutral words and phrases instead to encourage equality and be linguistically polite by using cautious language. references: 1. aghayan, e. (2010) lezvabanutyan neratsutyun. yerevan։ ysu. 2. aghayan, e. (1976) ardi hayereni batsatrakan bararan. yerevan: hayastan. 3. lyons, j. (1968) introduction to theoretical linguistics. cambridge: cup. 4. mkhitaryan, ye.; hambartsoumyan, n.; markaryan, a.; avakyan, n. (2001) a basic english grammar, morphology. yerevan: zangak 97. 5. (2019) oxford research encyclopedia. available at: <http://linguistics. oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore9780199384655-e-43-> [accessed august 2019]. 6. teterin, m. (2012) a comparative study of the category of gender in english and romanian and its role in english teaching/learning. available at: <http://dspace.usarb.md:8080/jspui/bitstream/123456789/26 97/1/teterin_a_comparative _study _conf_econom_2012.pdf> [accessed september 2019]. 7. tiv'jaeva, i.v. lekcii po teoreticheskoj grammatike anglijskogo jazyka. available at: <http://window.edu.ru/catalog/pdf2txt/740/67740/41104> [accessed august 2019]. 8. wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/> [accessed august 2019]. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 43 sources of data: 1. (1987) english proverbs and sayings. yerevan: luys. 2. johnson, j.w. (2004) the autobiography of an ex-coloured man, ebook#11012․ available at: <http://library.umac.mo/ebooks/b280 458 77.pdf> [accessed august 2019]. 3. rice, a. (1976) interview with a vampire. vol. 1. available at: <https://www.academia.edu/37488425> [accessed august 2019]. սեռի կարգի շուրջ. նշույթավորման խուսափողական ռազմավարություններ սույն հոդվածում ուսումնասիրվել է սեռի կարգը՝ ծագման, պատմական զարգացման, ըստ սեռային տարբերակման լեզուների դասակարգման, ինչպես նաև տարբեր լեզուներում, մասնավորապես անգլերենում և հայերենում, սեռի արտահայտման առանձնահատկությունների առումով։ համեմատական վերլուծության մեթոդի միջոցով զուգահեռներ են անցկացվում անգլերենի և հայերենի գենդերային համակարգերի միջև` դրանցում որոշ նմանություններ ու տարբերություններ վեր հանելու նպատակով։ հատուկ ուշադրության են արժանացել ասացվածքներում սեռի արտահայտման եղանակները, սեռի կարգի ցուցիչները, ներկայացվել են դրանցից խուսափելու որոշ ռազմավարություններ։ received by the editorial board 10.09.2019 recommended for publication by the reviewers 10.11.2019 accepted for print 11.01.2020 << /ascii85encodepages false /allowtransparency false /autopositionepsfiles true /autorotatepages /none 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(www.heidelberg.com) >> /namespace [ (adobe) (common) (1.0) ] /othernamespaces [ << /asreaderspreads false /cropimagestoframes true /errorcontrol /warnandcontinue /flattenerignorespreadoverrides false /includeguidesgrids false /includenonprinting false /includeslug false /namespace [ (adobe) (indesign) (4.0) ] /omitplacedbitmaps false /omitplacedeps false /omitplacedpdf false /simulateoverprint /legacy >> << /addbleedmarks false /addcolorbars false /addcropmarks false /addpageinfo false /addregmarks false /convertcolors /converttocmyk /destinationprofilename () /destinationprofileselector /documentcmyk /downsample16bitimages true /flattenerpreset << /presetselector /mediumresolution >> /formelements false /generatestructure false /includebookmarks false /includehyperlinks false /includeinteractive false /includelayers false /includeprofiles false /multimediahandling /useobjectsettings /namespace [ (adobe) (creativesuite) (2.0) ] /pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /documentcmyk /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /usedocumentprofile /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2540 2540] /pagesize [595.276 841.890] >> setpagedevice microsoft word contens verjin armenological studies armenian folia anglistika 175 the question of the armenian genocide in taner akçam’s intrpretation seda gasparyan yerevan state university abstract the present paper aims to reveal the standpoint of the turkish scholar taner akçam in the recognition and condemnation of the armenian genocide. the linguistic approach to the study of his considerations of the question, as well as his firm belief concerning the responsibility of the present turkish government for the shameful actions of their predecessors helps to bring out interesting facts and implied meanings. key words: the armenian genocide, shameful facts, face one’s history, recognize and condemn, responsibility. introduction in recent years a unique link in the chain of western scholarly comments on the recognition and condemnation of the armenian genocide is the book a shameful act: the armenian genocide and the question of turkish responsibility authored by taner akçam, a turkish historian and sociologist1 who openly criticizes the 1915 felony qualifying it as a genocide2 . in the book, the history of the armenians of the ottoman era and the armenian-turkish relations in general are examined in a new light, “breaking” many ideological cliches and stereotypes. based on thorough investigation this book by t. akçam presents to the current generation of turks the shameful facts of their past. the author hopes that turkey will one day face its own history and bear moral responsibility for the armenophobic policy of its ancestors. this is the decisive step turkey must take paving the way to real democracy. armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 176 t. akçam: attitudes and estimations t. akçam’s position in the issue of the armenian genocide becomes obvious at the very moment one takes the book in hand. the title itself succinctly discloses the author’s evaluative attitude to the facts, events and conceptions presented. his denouncing approach first of all is indicated in the attributive word combination a shameful act in the title, the basic semantic unit being the attribute expressed by the adjective shameful; the idea of shamefulness is being actualized by the stem shame carrying an intrinsically negative connotational colour combined with the suffix -ful, which is meant to make the negative colouring even stronger. the inherent negative charge of the unit shameful becomes even more intensified when perceived in the context of the armenian genocide and the question of turkish responsibility where the unquoted use of the unit genocide directly points to the fact that the author actually admits the reality of the armenian genocide and condemns its executors. moreover, t. akçam’s ethnic identity is no obstacle on his way to expressing his honest views in defence of the armenian cause and calling on his fellow nationals not to shirk responsibility, for only by taking the responsibility may they try to cleanse the brand of shame inherited from their ancestors. thus, the very title of the book attracts the reader’s attention and succinctly informs about the overall content of the narrative, discloses the identity of the text in general and enables the reader to foresee the author’s predisposition. in his book t. akçam covers a large range of questions elucidating the genocidal situation in the ottoman empire at the beginning of the 20th century. he presents, describes and discusses completely fresh and crucially important records and facts the investigation of which leaves no room for doubts about a centrally planned and instructed operation of annihilation and even the division of labour among various organizations. discussing the causes of the genocide the author, referring to ahmed refik, highlights the documented reality that the annihilation of armenians had long become one of the national objectives of the unionist leaders who had planned to avoid carrying out reforms in the six eastern provinces, and to solve the armenian “problem” at its root (p. 112). armenological studies armenian folia anglistika 177 on the other hand he reveals the falsity of the prevailing opinion of turkey’s forced entrance into the war. as the author confirms, the unionists, on the contrary, made great efforts to join the war, for they were well aware of the opportunities they could be availed of by the process of world war i. they expected they could manage to return the territories lost in the balkan war and accomplish their grand project of pan-turanist and pan-islamic expansion. referring to different documents, official and private correspondence t. akçam also brings out the ideal of the turkish authorities to destruct the moscovite enemy in order to get a possibility to include all branches of turkic people into the empire and unite them. the author criticizes the “illusory goal” of the ottomans which prompted them to instigate the actions in baku in 1918 aimed at cleansing azerbeijan of russians and armenians in order to provide “territorial continuity” between turks.3 thus t. akçam openly declares that the turkish authorities perceived armenians (as well as greeks) to be a major territorial and religious obstacle preventing the realization of their pan-islamic objectives. this was a goal which they strived to achieve by all means: deportations, mass killings, violation of historical, geographical and demographic facts. interestingly enough, the author dedicates his book to the memory of an ethnic turk, named haji halil, who (as testified by greg sarkisyan at a conference in armenia in 1995), risking his own life, saved and hid eight members of the family of greg sarkisyan’s mother for more than six months. the author believes this heroic deed of haji halil, as well as the candid praise for the act of a turk by armenians makes him expect positive shifts in armenian-turkish relations. thus: i would like to dedicate this book to the memory of haji halil, a devout muslim turk, who saved the members of an armenian family from deportation and death by keeping them safely hidden for over half a year, risking his own life. his courageous act continues to point the way toward a different relationship between turks and armenians…<…> i was deeply moved by the story, by armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 178 the humanity that triumphed over evil and by the fact that an armenian could find it in his heart to praise a turk in a public forum, for the humanity. the memory of haji halil reminds us that both, turks and armenians, have a different history on which they can build a future. (p. viii) it is rather obvious from the context of the passage that, writing on the armenian genocide and commemorating an ethnic turk, the author aims at opening the eyes of the turkish society, help them know and understand their past, thus attempting to shed new light on the armenian-turkish relations. and although the author fully reasons that the heroic stance of haji halil and other individuals alike cannot level out the amount of what had been done and the grade of the atrocities, he cannot underestimate the value of this kind of turk. he would prefer more people among his nation be like haji halil, for akçam is also a turk, and he does not want to be ashamed for the disgraceful behaviour of his compatriots. this book breaks with that tradition. it is a call to the people of turkey to consider the suffering inflicted in their name on those “others”. the reason for this call is not only the scale of the armenian genocide, which was in no way comparable to the individual acts of revenge carried out against muslims. it is also because all studies of large-scale atrocities teach us one core principle: to prevent the recurrence of such events, people must first consider their own responsibility, discuss it, debate it, and recognize it. in the absence of such honest consideration, there remains the high probability of such acts being repeated, since every group is inherently capable of violence; when the right conditions arise this potential may easily become reality, and on the slightest of pretexts. there are no exceptions. each and every society needs to take a self-critical approach, one that should be firmly institutionalized as a community’s moral tradition regardless armenological studies armenian folia anglistika 179 of what others might have done to them. it is this that prevents renewed eruptions of violence. (p. 2) this book is an appeal to the turkish people not to evade reviewing the shameful chapters of their history full of atrocities, but rather to make an effort to discuss, learn and criticize the condemnable acts of turks in order to prevent such crimes against humanity in future. in the passage this idea is conveyed to the reader by the use of such connotationally coloured linguistic means as inflict, prevents, renewed, eruptions, violence. from a pragmalinguistic viewpoint4 the use of homogeneous predicates (people must consider their own responsibility, discuss it, debate it, recognize it) is of special interest; hereby the author tries not only to make his language more persuasive but also denote the sequence of steps that may bring to the admittance of the genocide: first, consider their share of guilt, discuss, debate and then recognize. from the pragmatic point of view the use of the unit “others” is also important. in our surveys we have dealt with the use of pronominal units their, they, these in works that deny and reject the fact of the armenian genocide. particularly in the book titled "an armenian question...? let's consider..." by h.b. danisman, the unquoted use of pronominal units expresses the implicit sense of mutual alienation and hostility.5 in the example above the quoted pronoun “others” emphasizes the fervent desire of the author to eliminate the stereotype of mutual alienation, in the meantime targeting his criticism against scholars who accept, confirm and constantly fuel the sense of alienation by using quotation marks. in other words, the quotations in this case give a new meaning to the word fulfilling its communicative purpose: to highlight the idea of peaceful coexistence of nations, including armenians and turks. by dedicating his book to the memory of haji halil the author writes about the genocide of armenians, admitting and recognizing it, but at the same time as an ethnic turk he seeks to somehow justify the turkish people by refusing to make generalizations about the turkish society as a whole. the use of words, collocations and utterances like every group, inherently capable of violence, the armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 180 right conditions arise this potential may easily become reality, on the slightest of pretexts affirms this not only in the given passage but also in other extracts of the book like the one that follows: those who acted collectively in history were not the entirety of “turks” and “armenians”, but certain organizations or groups that shared a common interest and claimed to be acting in the name of the nation or religion to which they belonged. in some cases, this meant the government; in others a political party; in still others, the representatives of a clearly defined class or subclass. it is even questionable whether the broad mass of muslims in anatolia at the time understood themselves as turks, or kurds, rather than as muslims. in all cases, however, these actors never comprised the entire national or religious group that they claimed to represent. (p. 15) the first thing in the passage that strikes the attention of the reader is the statement of the author which indirectly guestions the awareness of turks and kurds of their national identity (whether the broad mass of muslims in anatolia at the time understood themselves as turks, or kurds, rather than as muslims) and spreads light on what r. suny tries hard to disguise under the veil of world war i. that is the basic underlying reason for pre-planning and unleashing the armenian genocide – the insatiable desire of the turkish authorities to take possession of vast territories in the middle east and establish the greater turan inhabited only by muslim population (cf. pp. 79, 85, 90, 91 of the present book). thus, it was their aspiration for religious superiority and the morbid pining for the greater turan that mattered, and this can be deduced from the mentioned utterance of the passage. although in various parts of the narrative the author emphasizes the fact of the pre-planned nature of the armenian genocide, based on the documentary files of numerous testimonies, court writs, national and international instructions, published and unpublished notes and memorandums, nevertheless, by using words and expressions like group, government, organization, political party, representatives of a clearly defined class or armenological studies armenian folia anglistika 181 subclass the author once again attempts to persuade the reader that the committed crime was the act of a specific group – a political party, authorities or some other team. and he does this with a sole purpose: to alleviate the share of guilt of the turkish people trying to enhance the idea that not the nation as a whole but a certain group of people is to be held culpable. the following passage where the author examines the terms “armenian” and “turk” makes this notion even more convincing: …instead i have selected more precise terms for the people involved in any particular actions. the terms “turks” and “armenians” which are widely used in historiography and conversation, are not historical categories but rather ahistorical constructions. they are used to express only that one group is not armenian and the other not turk. this not only misrepresents history but exacerbates public perceptions and prejudices today. (p. 16) the passage reveals the author’s intention: to take a fresh look at the terms “armenian” and “turk,” and bring the discussion of the armenian-turkish relationship to a new stage. one can hardly accept the author’s idea of the terms “armenian” and “turk” being non-historical categories. as words widely used in historical, ethnographical and anthropological studies they are merely metalinguistic units (ethnonemes) denoting ethnic identity, nevertheless, from the point of view of their conceptual content they cannot evade historicity, for ethnos itself is a community of people sharing common material, linguistic and cultural features. it is historically formed within a certain space and time6 . by viewing these notions as “ahistorical” concepts the author definitely intends to take away the historically formed stereotype of alienation. however, it is undeniable that almost a century after the genocide the words “armenian” and “turk” still bear a conflicting mark in both armenian and turkish comprehension (cf. the next chapter of the present book), also due to the fact that the culpable side is not courageous enough to admit the historical truth. moreover, they make every possible effort to deny the undeniable truth and armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 182 present a distorted past to their future generations. to illuminate the idea let us just refer to taner akçam’s highlight of the term genocide. because of the long-standing turkish policy of denial, the very term “genocide” has become contested – sacred to armenians, taboo to turks. both sides attach supreme importance to the question whether or not “genocide” should be used. (p. 9) it is not difficult to deduce from the context of the passage that the unit genocide, the use of which is definitely conditioned by the historical reality, the basic background ideology and the aim of communication, is perceived as two conflicting concepts in the minds of an armenian and of a turk: sacred for the armenian, and taboo for the turk. thus, in the mind of a turkish speaker/listener the word genocide is associated with forbidden, far-fetched, silenced, immemorable and discrediting ideas which remind one of a disgraceful past, but in the mind of an armenian it recollects a combination of the following associations: crime, massacre, tragic chapters of history, bleeding wound, dispossession of homeland, blood-shed, etc. from the perspective of a national mentality the coded meaning of the unit genocide draws the listener’s attention to the connotational colouring of the word corresponding to the mindset of that very nation. in the mindset of a turkish speaker and of an armenian speaker the possible associations of the term genocide are not of a common nature. this explains the impossibility of mutual understanding of the issue in question between the two nations to this day. moreover, the existing tension between the opposing sides becomes intractable as it is impossible to find common ground. it is also important that on a rational level the speaker’s perception conditioned by national identity, ideology, mentality and other factors in the case of armenians comes close to the essence of the concept of genocide and suggests ideas of requisitioning; in the case of turks the perception drifts away from this understanding in favour of a denialist’s viewpoint. armenological studies armenian folia anglistika 183 t. akçam’s interpretation of the concept genocide is based on the definition by r. lemkin7. i have used the term in line with the united nations definition adopted in 1948. accordingly, genocide includes the partial or complete destruction of an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group, whether in periods of peace or war. the definition covers various means of destruction, be it killing members of a particular group, exposing them to grave physical or emotional harm, inflicting such physical damage that ends the group’s continued existence, preventing the group’s members from giving birth, or forcibly removing their children and merging them with other communities. under the terms of the un definition, and in light of all the documentary evidence, we cannot but call the acts against the armenians genocide. (p. 9) the value of the words we cannot but call the acts against the armenians genocide by t. akçam cannot be overestimated. inspiring confidence and encouragement, they once again assert that what happened to armenians in the ottoman empire at the beginning of the 20th century is nothing but genocide; and no other term but genocide could be the internationally accepted term to evaluate the committed felony8. however, a notable consideration occurs in t. akçam’s book: the author believes it is not the term itself that requires attention but the very fact of the genocide that deserves condemnation (the moral position that recognizes the crime and condemns it). the important thing, however, is not the term, but rather the moral position that recognizes the crime and condemns it. however we define it, whatever word we use, we must acknowledge that this history involved the deliberate destruction of a people. in 1915 cerkez hasan was an ottoman officer armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 184 commissioned to resettle armenians in what are now the syrian and iraqi deserts. when he realized that the real aim of the deportations was not resettlement but annihilation he resigned. “you may argue whether or not the word ‘killing’ is synonymous with ‘deportation’,” he said. “use it in any way you want; it doesn’t change what actually happened in any real sense…there is only one terrible way to understand what happened, and of which the whole world is aware (aksin 1987: 169 9 ).” (p. 9) one cannot possibly overlook, however, the well-established linguistic reality that any word, under the influence of various linguistic and extra-linguistic factors, can grow more powerful and capacious, can be enriched by new shades of meaning, evaluative-attitudinal components, thus changing in depth and volume, and expressing the speaker’s attitude to a certain issue, turn to a weapon to influence the audience. neither should it be ignored that each year on april 24 armenians worldwide listen closely to the words of the president of the usa to hear whether or not he will pronounce the word genocide in his annual address, for the mere utterance of this single linguistic unit is sure to add a new subtext to the message, even to landmark a breakthrough along the process of admitting, condemning and conceding the responsibility of turkey for the 1915 genocide. after all why not call it what it is? conclusion the armenian genocide must be condemned by the whole world as the first genocide of the 20th century for this is the demand of justice, and the demand of our concern for the future of this world; for it is our sacred duty to prevent any recurrence of genocide on this planet in future. t. akçam’s work enables us to mark a step forward along that path, for it reassures and fosters the hope that turkey will eventually come to read the dark chapters of its history, admit the truth, and undertake a roadmap of peace in its relations with armenia.10 armenological studies armenian folia anglistika 185 notes and references: 1. taner akçam has been in politics since his young age. in 1976 he was arrested as an editor of a student political paper and sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment. a year later he escaped from jail and found refuge in germany under the protection of amnesty international. beginning from 1988, akçam was working at the hamburg social studies institute taking special interest in problems of the armenian genocide. in 1996, he defended a phd thesis on the issue, and since 2002 he is an adjunct professor at the minnesota university (usa). he is the author of 10 books including a shameful act: the armenian genocide and the question of turkish responsibility, published in 2006 (new york, metropolitan books, henry holt and company), which is here the subject of our inquiry. 2. cf. gasparyan, s.; harutyunyan, g. (2012) taner akchami “amotali arark…” ashkhatutyuny. // vem. pan-armenian journal, no 2 (38), pp. 125-134. yerevan: vem ltd. 3. cf. landau, j.m. (1995) pan-turkism: from irredentism to cooperation. p. 55. blooming ton: university of indiana press. 4. in linguistic research nowadays more significance is being given to the role of a human being as the key element of communication. the complex relationship between the speaker/writer and the listener/reader is rendered paramount importance to in speech activity which is always dependent on the pragmatic goal of the speaker. thus, pragmalinguistics – an appealing and promising branch of linguistics, is always communicatively-oriented and aims at revealing the peculiar features of speech formation in this or that social and communicative situation. cf. levinson, s.c. (1983) pragmatics. cambridge: cup; arutyunova, n.d.; paducheva, y.v. (1985) istoki, problemy i kategoii pragmatiki . // novoe v zarubezhnoy lingvistike, vyp. 16. m., izd.-vо progress, s. 3-43; verschueren, j. (1999) understanding pragmatics. london, new-york: oup, etc. 5. gasparyan s.; harutyunyan, g.; gasparyan, l. (2011) interpretations of the armenian genocide: a linguocognitive study. // “language, literature & armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 186 art in cross-cultural contexts,” aase-3 international conference. yerevan, 2011, 4-8 october. 6. cf. pilisopayakan bararan (1975) yerevan, armenia press, p. 4. this is particularly supported by miroslav hroch (1996) in his essay nationalism and national movements: comparing the past and the present of central and eastern europe. // nations and nationalism, no 2(1), p. 35-44. 7. in 1944 the us saw the publication of axis rule in occupied europe” by r. lemkin in which the author came up with a thorough and detailed legal analysis of the policy of the nazi germany during world war ii. the work is also noted for the scrupulous examination and further addition to the comments on the term genocide. available at: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ genocide> [accessed 15.04. 2014, 18:12]. 8. for more details cf. gasparyan, s. (2010) yeghern bari hamarzhekutyan dashty anglerenum. // vem. pan-armenian journal, no1(29), pp. 138-148. yerevan: vem ltd. 9. aksin, s. (1987) zhon tyurkler ittihat ve teraki. s. 169, i̇stanbul. 10. it is not a mere chance that t. akçam writes: “the armenian genocide is nothing else but a real genocide, and not a mere massacre or murder. i would say if what happened in 1915 is not called a genocide, then we should say no genocide has ever occurred in the world.” this is the rationale of the author: things must be called by their names proper to create a right attitude towards them. available at: <http://araxmag.blogspot.com/2010/06/1915.html> [accessed march 2014] հայոց ցեղասպանության հարցը թաներ աքչամի մեկնությամբ հոդվածը միտված է բացահայտելու թուրք պատմաբան թաներ աքչամի դիրքորոշումը հայոց ցեղասպանության ճանաչման ու դատապարտման հարցում: լեզվաբանական մոտեցման կիրառմամբ տարվող այս քննությունը թույլ է տալիս բացահայտել հետաքրքիր փաստեր և ներակա միտումներ հայոց ցեղասպանությանն առնչվող նրա դատողություններում: microsoft word contens verjin armenian folia anglistika linguistics 38 metaphor through the lens of clinical medicine: the case of specialty-specific signs svetlana margaryan yerevan brusov state university of languages and social sciences alina petrosyan mkhitar heratsi yerevan state medical university abstract the present paper aims at discussing certain metaphors which name diseases resembling specialty-specific signs manifested in different occupations. an attempt is made towards showcasing the cognitive value that metaphor entails when used in a clinical setting to verbalize different diseases. stedman’s medical dictionary – currently the most content-rich medical dictionary – has served a major reference point for the analysis of specialty-specific metaphors in medicine. key words: metaphor, medicine, specialty-specific signs, clinical practice, medical agenda, chemical, physical and biological agents. introduction in different periods of time the world has witnessed key advancements in industry and technology which have in turn led to the emergence of new fields of specializations in order to keep pace with the ever-changing reality. however, this has also given rise to new forms of diseases which have been associated with the activities or workings conducted within these specialty fields or occupations. these health conditions which manifest specialty-specific signs have also been observed in humans not exposed to particular working conditions. in furtherance, the study of targeted medical literature has revealed that such health conditions can be verbalized through metaphors which make reference to specialty-specific signs. in other words, the field of specialty-specific signs serves a useful source in borrowing the needed term to name a particular health condition in the target domain. these borrowed terms better communicate the nature and specificities of the disease. as to the application of metaphor for scientific purposes, it should be stated, that generally there are two strands of debate over the usage of metaphor in science, one of which is organized around the conceptual theory of metaphor and linguistics armenian folia anglistika 39 claims that metaphor is indispensable in scientific thought and understanding (lakoff and johnson 2003; richards 1936). the other strand is around the philosophical concerns regarding metaphor considering the latter as an instrument in the art of rhetoric (vickers 1970; locke 2007). this paper embraces the conceptual approach and showcases the cognitive value of metaphor from the clinical perspective and medical rationality coupled with succinct summary of some of the major claims made by the school of conceptual theory. an outline of conceptual approach to metaphor back in 1936 a. richards was the first to present the cognitive theory of metaphor and further claim that metaphor should be regarded as a constituent component of language. in particular, richards stated the following in “the philosophy of rhetoric” (1936:92), “even in the rigid language of the settled sciences we do not eliminate or prevent it [i.e. metaphor] without great difficulty. in the semi-technicalised subjects, in aesthetics, politics, sociology, ethics, psychology, theory of language and so on, our constant chief difficulty is to discover how we are using it and how our supposedly fixed words are shifting their senses. in philosophy, above all, we can take no step safely without an unrelaxing awareness of the metaphors we, and our audience, may be employing; and though we may pretend to eschew them, we can attempt to do so only by detecting them. and this is the more true, the more severe and abstract the philosophy is. as it grows more abstract we think increasingly by means of metaphors that we profess not to be relying on.” according to lakoff and johnson (2003:4), metaphor “… is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.” the authors make an important claim in “metaphors we live by” (2003) by arguing that metaphor forms a central component of the human cognitive system. another claim on metaphor by gibbs (1994:122) states that metaphors “not only serve as the foundation for much everyday thinking”, but also “continue scholarly theory and practice in a variety of disciplines.” metaphors doctors act by doctors and clinicians follow different agendas in their routine therapeutic and clinical practice. they may be engaged in taking histories, treating diseases, examining and running patients, diagnosing disorders and pathologies and perform armenian folia anglistika linguistics 40 other healthcare activities as deemed necessary in a medical setting. whatever the pattern of agenda, they communicate their ideas and conceptions of a particular clinical condition through various linguistic means, and the usage of metaphors appears to be central in such activities. gerald holton, professor of physics and professor of the history of science at harvard university, states that “in the work of the active scientist there are not merely occasions for using metaphor, but necessities for doing so [...] the necessity built into the process of scientific rationality itself” (holton 1998:236). meanwhile, anatole broyard, american writer and literary critic, claims that “metaphors may be as necessary to illness as they are to literature. […] at the very least, they are a relief from medical terminology” (broyard 1992:18). apparently, metaphors help to transfer the intended idea and the complex nature of a phenomenon effectively and in a timeefficient manner. in addition, metaphors allow fulfilling certain goals in a clinical environment: doctors may use a metaphor to make a differential diagnosis (woolsorter’s disease, baker’s eczema, cobbler’s chest) based on findings of radiological imaging or laboratory examination; make the clinical picture easy for understanding (ballerina pose, clown nose, obstetrician’s hand) instead of using long and complex definitions, and most importantly, save time which is very precious in everyday clinical practice. as to specialty-specific signs, usage of metaphor in such cases is also conditioned by the sociocultural aspect of perception of these health conditions. according to paul unschuld (1998:23), “the ideas of a nature of a healthy organism, or illness, and of appropriate therapeutic interventions that develop in medical systems […] are highly reflective of the social and physical environment of the thinkers who developed these systems. systems of medical ideas are, therefore, metaphors in themselves, revealing at least as much of the world where their authors lived, or would have preferred to live, as of what they tried to explain.” physicians are not isolated from the society, environment, culture, technology and many other factors which play a central role in shaping their understanding and interpretation of different phenomena, their experience and also background and professional knowledge. specifically in the case of diseases by target organ systems activated through various infections and agents, physicians resort to metaphors in order to clearly verbalize the underlying cause of the disease since treatment or prevention can (in the majority of cases) be achieved if the cause or agent of the disease is clearly identified and known. consequently, this will allow for an accurate diagnosis followed by a targeted route of treatment or linguistics armenian folia anglistika 41 selection of prevention options. hence, in this case it is through metaphor that doctors highlight the agent of the disease, thus establishing a precise diagnosis and selecting certain option of treatment. specialty-specific signs as metaphors for diseases exposure to different risk factors which arise from the occupation or professional activity may lead to numerous health conditions and disorders. quite frequently these diseases manifest specific signs which are then attributed to the same conditions seen in other humans who are not engaged in that particular activity giving rise to these abnormalities. in such cases the association between two different conceptions from different realms of knowledge plays a major role in shaping the requisite term to name the disease. consequently, health conditions with resemblance to specialty-specific signs are often verbalized through metaphors. such signs may arise from inhaling certain chemical, physical and biological agents and dusts as well as from performing certain type of activities which cause skin diseases and musculoskeletal disorders. hence, this paper is an attempt to make a selection from the group of such distinctions and study those diseases which are named through metaphors based on association of resemblance of a specialty-specific sign. as sisakyan states, inhalation of airborne and mineral dusts can cause lung diseases, in particular (sisakyan, ayvazyan 2011). these dusts are later deposited in the lungs thus affecting them and causing severe damage. one of such conditions is metaphorically named woolsorter’s disease, which is a pulmonary infection acquired by inhalation of dust containing “bacillus anthracis.” typical signs include initial chill followed by pain in the back and legs, rapid respiration, cough, fever, rapid pulse, and extreme cardiovascular collapse. this disease is also known by series of synonyms such as ragpicker’s disease, rag sorters’ disease or woolsorter’s pneumonia. similar diseases are flax-dresser’s disease, which is a chronic obstructive pulmonary condition caused by inhalation of particles of unprocessed flax; and weaver’s cough – the term for cough, dyspnea, and sense of constriction of the chest, caused by mildewed yarn. quite interesting appears to be the case of legionnaire’s disease where the etiology of the disease and the etymology of the metaphoric naming are interrelated. according to various research sources and scientific data (world health organization; mayo clinic, diseases and conditions; skinner1949) this is a severe form of bacterial pneumonia or a serious lung inflammation which is usually armenian folia anglistika linguistics 42 caused by infection. the agent of this infection is the bacterium widely known as “legionella pneumophila” (“pneumophila” meaning “lung-loving” from greek pneum n (lung), and phila (friendship) or philos (dear) denoting “fondness, especially an abnormal love for a specified thing” (oxford dictionaries) which was first identified after an outbreak of severe pneumonia in 1976 among participants of convention of the american legion (u.s. military veterans’ organisation) in philadelphia (world health organization). according to key facts provided by the who, inhalation of contaminated aerosols through air conditioning and similar systems is the most common mode of legionnaires’ disease transmission. the breakdown of the name of this disease shows that the legionella refers to the legionnaires infected at the philadelphia convention. certain health conditions widely observed in general public relate to skin diseases as a result of exposure to various exogenous agents. for instance, fairskinned, blue-eyed persons are prone to experience dry, wrinkled skin if they are exposed by occupation or sport to sunshine for prolonged periods and over many years. this skin condition is called golfer’s skin and is also known as sailor’s skin or farmer’s skin. another metaphor which permeates the field of forensic medicine relates to swelling of the skin tissue as a result of being immersed in water. these changes are referred to as washerwoman’s changes or washerwoman syndrome in which the skin absorbs a great amount of water. this triggers skin proteins to increase in length followed by enlargement of the skin being folded up and wrinkled. people engaged in sporting activities may also experience skin conditions one of which is widely known as athlete’s foot. this is a fungal infection of the skin between the toes and on the plantar surface of the foot which is commonly seen in athletes since the bacteria causing this skin condition mostly survives in dark, moist and warm environments usually around the swimming pools, bathrooms and locker rooms used by athletes. reaction to flour, yeast, or other substances may cause a skin disease called baker’s eczema which describes an allergic eruption on the hands and arms. it mostly occurs among bakers, though can well be observed in people not involved in baking. it can also happen due to the grain itch mite leading the disease to be also known as baker’s itch. skin conditions can occur not only due to a certain reaction to a particular agent but also due to some insects, for example, body lice. it can inhabit the skin tissue and cause pigmentation or discoloration if the skin has long been exposed to uncleanliness as a result of not maintaining proper hygiene. this skin condition is named linguistics armenian folia anglistika 43 vagabond’s disease or vagrant’s disease and is mostly seen in people who have an allergic reaction to louse bites. among musculoskeletal disorders numerous descriptions of fractures or malformations of upper and lower limbs can be found. one of them is called clay shoveler’s fracture which is a fracture through the spinous process of a lower cervical vertebra or upper thoracic vertebrae. the etymology of the disease dates back to 1930s when men digging deep ditches in australia tossed clay ten, twelve or even fifteen feet above their heads using long-handled shovels. this sticky clay didn’t separate from the shovel and sticking to the instrument it added greater weight and posed hazard to the health of the worker. the clinical picture was as follows: sudden pain between the shoulders and then inability to continue the work. hence, the term started to be widely applied in medicine and currently is also used with reference to similar fractures among workers engaged in shoveling other materials or employed in occupations which require lifting weight (with upper extremities stretched) and throwing it above over a certain distance (hall, perth & australia 1940). another condition is connected with the fracture of the neck of a metacarpal bone in the hand. typically, these are the metacarpal bones which connect the bones in the fingers to the wrist. the metaphor which is used to name this fracture is boxer’s fracture. people are likely to sustain such fractures when punching an object or mechanism. consequently, the name derives from this specific activity of punching or striking an immovable or hard object (for example, a wall) with unprotected fist. hence, any metacarpal fracture is referred to as boxer’s fracture by most clinicians and pathologists (webmd). people are likely to sustain injuries in the lower extremities as well. one of such injuries is called dancer’s fracture which is an avulsion fracture caused by twisting injury to the ankle and foot. in this case a small fragment of bone is pulled away from the rest of the bone by a strong ligament (o’malley, hamilton & munyak 1996). typically, this is a break of the long bone on the outside of the foot. the name may derive from the widespread perception that dancers may be prone to numerous fractures and injuries of foot, ankle and feet bones due to the dancing practices and performances. another metaphor denoting abnormalities connected with feet and anatomical parts of the feet is called dancer’s heel. it describes a bony formation at the back of the ankle. this affects the posterior of the ankle and prevents from performing certain movements (midwest orthopaedics at rush). another condition affecting the foot is known as dancer’s foot malformation which refers to a vigorous armenian folia anglistika linguistics 44 posteromedial contraction of the left ventricle coupled with convexity anteriorly sometimes resulting from poor contraction of the opposing anterior wall. resembling a ballerina’s foot this condition is also called ballerina foot. repetitive activities of running, jumping, climbing, or kicking can also cause a condition known as jumper knee which describes a patellar or quadriceps tendonitis in feet. some other conditions related to lower extremities are known as a rider’s leg which describes a strain of the adductor muscles of the thigh; and a tennis leg which is a rupture of the gastrocnemius muscle at the musculotendinous junction, resulting from forcible contractions of the calf muscles. the latter is often seen in tennis players due to frequent quick stopping and starting movements. certain diseases are associated with the position or stance of human bodies. in particular, the disease called ballerina’s pose is a type of cerebral palsy characterized by congenital spastic paralysis of the upper and lower extremities. in children it is described as a neurological disorder due to the impairment of the brain. in this case both the arms and legs are abnormally stiff; limbs are in a vertical position with the child’s head dropped to the chest. this clinical picture forms a ballerina’s pose. this condition was first observed by dr. william john little (1810 1894) who was himself suffering from a certain congenital deformity afflicting his left foot (pearce 1988). in forensic medicine the metaphor pugilistic attitude or pugilistic stance describes a “defensive” position likened to the posture adopted by pugilists-boxers found in severely burned bodies. it is characterized by flexion of elbows, knees, hip, and neck, and clenching of hand into a fist. another position called fencing position or fencing response is a peculiar position of the upper extremities, namely, a position assumed by the arms following a concussion of head and injured hemispheres of the brain. this condition resembles the position taken to initiate fencing in which one arm is extended and the other is raised. certain target organs may be affected as a result of various causative agents. thus, people may be diagnosed with what doctors call a cobbler’s chest. this is a congenital deformity of the anterior wall of the chest and produces a distinctly sunken chest seen in cobblers due to sitting in a certain position over a continued period. the movements of the head of a human body may as well bear abnormalities one of which is widely known as bishop’s nod. this is a rhythmic bobbing or nodding of the head in synchrony with the heartbeat in aortic regurgitation and aortic aneurysm. hands can manifest signs of medical conditions one of which is likened to the position of the obstetrician’s hand when examining the female genitals. it is linguistics armenian folia anglistika 45 therefore called obstetrician’s hand or hand of the obstetrician. this condition is associated with tetany and is characterized with extension of the hand at the metacarpophalangeal and interphalangeal joints, and adduction of the thumb. in other words, the hand contracts and assumes cramped posture, flexed at the wrist with fingers at the metacarpophalangeal joints and extended at the interphalangeal joints; meanwhile the thumb is strongly flexed against the palm. ear tissue can be diagnosed with certain conditions one of which is identified as boxer’s ear in which thickening and induration of the auricle is observed with distortion of its contours. an infection to the outer ear canal, which runs from the eardrum to the outside of the head is known as swimmer’s ear. this is an inflammation of the external auditory canal and is caused by bacteria commonly found in water and soil. people usually experience swimmer’s ear when water remains in ears after swimming since this creates the most beneficial moist environment triggering bacterial growth. one more metaphor characterizes a reddish-brown bulge involving the tip of the nose. this is a condition known as clown nose which reminds of the fake red nose clowns usually wear during their performances (colletti et al 2014). another condition with the nose tissue is metaphorically named toper’s nose which describes enlargement (hypertrophy) of the nose. increased vascularity of the nose skin and follicular dilation is observed followed by multiple red-coloured bumps on the nose. this condition is said to be associated with excessive consumption of alcoholic beverages and is also known as rum nose, rum-blossom or brandy nose. alcohol consumption also impacts the caution measures exercised by people employed as gardeners. they are said to suffer from alcoholic rose gardener syndrome since they show less concern for caution measures and infections and to the skin abrasions. such condition is commonly seen among alcoholics working as gardeners who have increased skin abrasions, and the metaphor alcoholic rose gardener syndrome is used to verbalize chronic mycosis and the above mentioned behaviour among them. this list of metaphors can be characterized as comprising multiple expressions. however, this paper is not aimed at a comprehensive study of metaphors in medical discourse since that would require a lot of time and multifaceted medical literature. it should, nevertheless, be mentioned, that the listed metaphors succinctly communicate disease configurations and allow doctors to explain a particular clinical condition in a time-efficient manner and help to make the clinical picture of a disease easily recognizable based on associations of notions from different realms of knowledge. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 46 conclusion given the statements above, it can be concluded that the metaphor facilitates the understanding of certain specialty-specific signs. in particular, it fosters clarity and saves time in communicating the intended idea in a more economic manner. nowadays medical literature is replete with papers and research on specialtyspecific signs and descriptions of certain diseases and disorders which are quite frequently verbalized through metaphors. in such cases the metaphor serves as a cognitive device since it is accurate in the description of signs, causative agent and the outline of the disease. in addition, the usage of the metaphor justifies certain patterns of agenda doctors follow: they are precise and unambiguous and allow establishing a differential diagnosis thus helping to quickly proceed to the prevention 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(2012) seizure semiology: its value and limitations in localizing the epileptogenic zone. // journal of clinical neurology (seoul, korea), 8(4): pp. 243-250. available at: <http://doi.org/ 10.3988/jcn.2012.8.4.243> [accessed july 2016]. 26. pearce, j. 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legal english. the un convention on genocide as a domain-specific text seda gasparyan, lilit kharatyan yerevan state university abstract the question of the interaction of language and law is one of the main issues occupying the minds of both the linguists and jurists of our time. the study of the intersection of these scientific fields acquires even more importance nowadays as expansion of economic and cultural cooperation between countries and within countries requires legal regulation, qualified assistance of lawyers and their participation in negotiations, business meetings and in the preparation of documentation. accordingly, linguistic and translation activities in the sphere of legal relations turn out to be of special significance. like other functional styles of speech, which are independent systems, the style of official documents has certain communicative goals as well as its own consistent patterns and language characteristics common to the given style. the latter are the subject of the present article. key words: legal linguistics, a domain-specific language, legal english, the genocide convention as a legal text, language characteristics, layout features. introduction it has already been established that the branch of science dealing with issues of language and law can be described by the metalinguistic notion of legal linguistics. in the middle of the last century, this term occurred to mean a set of methods and research results connected with the relationship of language and legal norms, and meet the requirements of modern linguistics. the understanding of legal linguistics has significantly expanded due to the developmental changes modern linguistics has undergone, particularly armenian folia anglistika translation studies 72 stimulation of interdisciplinary research the productivity and reliability of which is already beyond doubt. over the last decades a number of scholars have tried to define what “legal language” is, however most of their studies have not proved to be systematic, and the definitions offered for the language used in legal processes did not transfer all the properties and functions obtained by this style. some scholars discuss only the written variety of legal language defining it as legal writing with its three subtypes: academic legal writing, juridical writing and legislative writing (bhatia 2010:46). there can be no doubt that the presented distinction is quite acceptable. however, obvious is the fact that this style of language is not confined to its written form only. the jewish linguist kurzon, going further and offering two terms for specific legal procedures, argues that language of the law is “the language or the style used in documents laying down the law”, whereas legal language refers to the language that is “used to talk about the law”. the latter can appear both in written (judgements, textbooks, etc.) and oral forms (formal speech, witness questioning, etc.). the oral subtype of legal language can also be referred to as law talk (kurzon 1989:284). the present investigation aims at singling out the main features of english legal style with special reference to the english text of the un convention on genocide as a domain-specific text and drawing some parallels between the original text and its armenian translation. legal english as a domain-specific language according to galperin legal language is a substyle of official style, and like other styles of language, it has a definite communicative aim and its own system of interrelated language and stylistic means. the basic feature of presenting legal style is accuracy, which excludes the possibility of any kind of uncertainty and ambiguity; a narrow range of speech tools used in the text; language standard which can be accounted for by the desire to express thoughts in a uniform way and use this ready-made language formulaic-cliches; high degree of repeatability (frequency of use) of individual sections of the texts of translation studies armenian folia anglistika 73 documents. these features are reflected in the structure of the text when drawing up official papers and legal documents: formation of composition, arranging different parts of the text, separating paragraphs, font, etc. (galperin 1981:68). the most important qualities of legal documents are completeness and logical follow-up of information, accuracy, and conciseness of formulations. neutral tone of narration is a norm for official style. therefore, in a piece of legal speech an emotionally expressive coloring of language means (nouns and adjectives with suffixes of subjective evaluation, evaluative adjectives, etc.) occurs rarely. the use of colloquial, vernacular, dialectal words, phraseological units, etc. in legal speech is unacceptable. in fact, the literature on legal english suggests that in a number of ways it differs from ordinary speech, namely – the abundant use of professional terminology, impersonal constructions, long and complex sentences with passive constructions and multiple negations, etc. (trosborg 1995; groot 1998; gibbons 2003, etc.). from a lexical point of view it is characterized by wordiness and nominalization, the use of formal vocabulary, foreignisms, etc. among other things, legal english is distinguished by a number of important features due to which it is characterized as unique and intricate in its nature. investigations have long established precision and clarity, as well as the use of lexical elements, terms included, in a strictly defined sense as one of the basic characteristics of this variety of english. the use of grammatical constructions excluding ambiguity provides simplicity and reliability to legal english, for implementation of inaccurate language may result in ambiguity of sense and hamper the process of understanding in the sphere of legislative communication. another quality of legal english is the neutrality of language which excludes the possibility of either exerting emotional pressure or revealing one’s legal assessment. the occurrence of unjustified innovations is not allowed in legal english as they will violate its systemic nature meant to preserve the system of concepts relevant for the legal sphere (berman and greiner 1972; tiersma 1999; sahakyan 2012, etc.). investigations show that the history of english is the milestone of legal english and the terminology of the domain. in fact, it is a story of anglo-saxon armenian folia anglistika translation studies 74 mercenaries, latin-speaking missionaries, scandinavian raiders, norman invaders who all left their mark not only on england but also on the language of its law. therefore, it is not by chance at all that modern legal english owes, to a great extent, to latin and french. throughout different periods of the development of the english language certain changes have taken place in either their form or semantic structure, whereas some still retain their original characteristic features. for example, terms like inflict – latin inflictus (15c.), conspiracy – latin conspirationem, old french conspiracie (mid. 14c), incitement – latin incitamentum (early 15c.), tribunal directly from latin tribunal (early 15c.), treaty – latin tractatus, old french traitié, anglo-french treté (late14c.), suppress – latin suppressus (late 14c.), deposit latin depositum, from deponere (1620s), etc. are still used daily in legal english. many of them, however, are now practically unknown outside legal circles, sometimes because they are used in their etymological versions. our observations in the text of the convention on genocide which is a document of paramount international importance, reveal that the french expression procès-verbal in article 14 of the convention has been preserved without any change or interpretation, whereas in the armenian version the official term արձանագրություն comes to present an equivalent translation. due to the vast amount of borrowings, legal english has acquired a number of characteristics. besides the terms borrowed from french, modern legal english has preserved some features of legal french, such as inversion of the word order of an attributive construction which is a widespread phenomenon in legal language. however, in the text of the convention it is confined to a single case only: secretary general – գլխավոր քարտուղար. one can easily notice that the armenian version of the convention has confided on the classic use of syntax. not only did the loans replenish and enrich the english legal terminology but also make it unique and intricate. some of the factors that make the english legal terminology unique and complex include the use of synonyms referring to the same legal concept. translation studies armenian folia anglistika 75 the text of the convention is not an exception. thus, for example, provision, paragraph, article – հոդված; confirm, ratify – հաստատել; etc. albeit these words are not exact synonyms for, largely speaking, there are no exact synonyms at all, they are very close to each other in meaning and with only a few semantic and stylistic differences. the legal use of the term article means separate clause or item in an agreement or a contract (oald 2005:72)1, while paragraph is a section of a piece of writing usually consisting of several sentences dealing with a single subject (oald 2005:1099). paragraphing is a typological device for arranging a legislative text. it involves dividing a sentence into grammatical units and arranging them as separate blocks of text. provision defines a condition or an arrangement in a legal document (oald 2005:1215). investigation of semantic relations between confirm and ratify reveals that the definition of the word confirm in the dictionary is rather wide: to make a position, agreement, etc. more definite or official; to establish sth. firmly (oald 2005:318), while ratify is a legal term proper meaning to make an agreement officially valid by voting for or signing it (oald 2005:1251). thus, the given units, as far as legal english is concerned, are very closely semantically related. this possibility of using synonymous language units can, as mentioned above, be accounted for by the fact that the same concept can be expressed by more than one language form, not infrequently by variants in the form of own vs foreign synonymous forms. most common types of synonym pairs (doublets or binomials) having two lexical units, appear in the text of the convention, too. the use of the noun-binomial application or fulfillment – կիրառում կամ կատարում is a case in point. we should hasten to add however that the use of antonym pairs is not alien to legal english either. the inclusive effect and the ability of antonymous pairs to refrain from ambiguity and misunderstanding are obvious in the convention text: public officials or private individuals – պաշտոնատար կամ մասնավոր անձինք; in whole or in part լրիվ կամ մասնակի; in time of peace or in time of war խաղաղ, թե պատերազմական պայմաններում. the analysis of the text shows that the use of other formal words, which are considered archaic and rarely used in daily conversation occurs very often. armenian folia anglistika translation studies 76 being used less frequently than other terms, they appear rather obscure in the course of time. for example, in the text of the convention we come across archaisms like hereinafter (ներքոհիշյալ), thereof (որի), thereafter (-). notable is the fact that in the armenian translation the archaism thereafter of the original has been completely ignored. as dictionaries testify (kouyoumdjian 1981:1272), it could have been represented in the translation with the help of the following possible units: սրանից հետո, այդ պահից ի վեր, հետևաբար. while some of the english concepts are archaic and bookish, some of their armenian equivalents (նեքոհիշյալ, որի, etc.) are more or less frequently used in casual communication. in the armenian text of the convention the opposite process can also be observed. elements of ordinay use in english are translated by archaic units in armenian (present – սույն, to depose – հանձնել ի պահ, etc.). however it should be noted that although these forms pursue the goal of making the idea detailed, comprehensive and emphasized, they often complicate the cognitive process and become unnecessary additions. despite this, the tendency retains their relevant use. along with these terms lawyers use less formal words, phrases and even idioms or, in other words, jargonisms which seemingly make the communication easy, though, in fact, they turn out to be rather difficult for a layman to understand. d. mellinkoff defines this specialized lexis as argot which, like slang words, are produced by lawyers themselves for convenience. he believes that terms and terminological expressions proper intensify formality in legal english and impart specific semantic preciseness to speech (mellinkoff 1963:17): another interesting characteristic feature of legal english is the use of the socalled common words with uncommon meanings. the use of such language elements in their primary dictionary meanings is generally aimed at avoiding possible misunderstandings or ambiguity, or inappropriate emotionality. the use of the same word with the same sound structure in a legal text with a meaning different from its legal meaning shows the potential of the word to express different concepts. if, for example, the word provision is used in financial sphere to mean an amount set aside out of profits in the accounts of an organization for a known liability, especially a bad debt or the diminution in value of an asset (fdf)2, or in a translation studies armenian folia anglistika 77 religious text it means an appointment to a benefice, especially directly by the pope rather than the patron, and originally it became vacant (fdf), in the context of the convention its terminological meaning is actualized as a condition or requirement in a legal document (oald 2005:1215) (privision – դրույթ). consideration of the term instrument (փաստաթուղթ, վավերագիր) from the same viewpoint shows that its basic meaning is a tool or device used for a particular task especially for delicate or scientific work (surgical, optical, precision, etc) (oald 2005:806). in the sphere of arts this term usually refers to a device designed to enable a person to make musical sounds (fdf). however, in a legal context it acquires an additional meaning and indicates a formal or legal document (fdf). the study of the language units resolution, law, ratification, provision, jurisdiction, legislation, punishment, crime, aim, humanity, co-operation, peace, war, conspiracy, prevention, suppression, accession, revision, etc. in the context of the genocide convention comes to show a very high degree of terminological generalization and abstraction. in fact, the use of such nomenclature units in legal documents aims at emphasizing the basic concepts in the context. on the other hand, their presence in legal documents and in the text of the convention in particular mark the tendency of nominalization which is a preferred use in similar documents. albeit they make sentences much longer and tend to disjoint their parts, they introduce definite and rather precise meanings into legal texts, hence the impossibility of their substitution for verbs. thus, for example, give effect to the provision of the present convention; consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts; the declaration made by the general assembly of the united nations in its resolution; direct and public incitement to commit genocide; relating to the interpretation, application or fulfillment of the present convention; etc. considerations of the morphologically relevant peculiar features of legal english bring out the use of specific grammatical constructions. among them passive constructions are the most intensively used ones and are aimed to secure the desirable effect of impersonality and lay the emphasis on the action rather than the actor. in the text of the convention obvious is the realization of armenian folia anglistika translation studies 78 the intention to preserve the principle of objectivity as far as the presented material is concerned, and emphasize the importance of implementing the main action. e.g.: • the present convention shall be ratified, and the instruments of ratification shall be deposited with the secretary-general of the united nations. • genocide and the other acts enumerated in article iii shall not be considered as political crimes for the purpose of extradition. • the present convention may be acceded to on behalf of any member of the united nations. even in rare cases when the doer of the action is mentioned, the preference is given to the action. the examples adduced below illustrate the case in point: • persons charged with genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article iii shall be tried by a competent tribunal of the state in the territory of which the act was committed. • an invitation to sign has been addressed by the general assembly. • a request for the revision of the present convention may be made at any time by any contracting party. high frequency of use of modal verbs, shall and may in particular, is also typical of legal texts. modal verbs mark the action as possible, probable, impossible, obligatory, and advisable. they are used in such ethical concepts as obligation and permissibility. in the english text of the convention the modal verb may expresses permission and authorization which in the armenian variant is conveyed by կարող է or պետք է”. • any contracting party may call upon the competent organs of the united nations. յուրաքանչյուր պայմանավորվող կողմ կարող է դիմել translation studies armenian folia anglistika 79 միավորված ազգերի կազմակերպության իրավասու մարմիններին: the stylistic use of the modal verb shall in legal language is also remarkable. its basic function in legal documents is the statement of laws, regulations, commands, determination. according to webster’s new world dictionary, shall is used in formal style to express an explicit obligation. in armenian, this modality is expressed mainly through present simple: • persons charged with genocide … shall be tried by a competent tribunal of the state. այն անձինք, որոնք մեղադրվում են ցեղասպանություն կատարելու մեջ, դատվում են երկրի իրավասու դատարանի կողմից: • acts enumerated in article iii shall not be considered as political crimes. մյուս արարքները հանձնման նպատակների համար չեն դիտվում որպես քաղաքական հանցագործություններ: the study of the armenian translation reveals that in terms of content shall is more comprehensive, as it does not show order, obligation, commitment, threat, warning, and promise. being used in other semantic contents, it excludes severity and shows permission, probability of implementation of some activity, conditioned by a series of circumstances, thus coming close to the modal verb may. legal documents are also specific from the point of view of their graphological layout. crystal and davy point out that legal documents were traditionally made as solid blocks of script whose long lines were from margin to margin and there were no patterns of spacing or indentation to indicate the limits of the paragraphs or the relation between them. it was common for drafters to compose an entire document in the form of one single sentence (crystal and davy 1999:194). however nowadays, in legal writing much importance is attached to the structure and composition of the text in order to maintain the clarity and precision of the armenian folia anglistika translation studies 80 message conveyed. thus, it is not by chance that farghal and shunnaq write in this connection: “layout refers to the sketch or plan of the texts’ physical appearance. this relates to paragraphing, indentation and graphitic choices, viz. capitalizing, italicizing, underlining and bold-typing” (farghal & shunnaq 1999: 205). if we try to consider the text of the convention on genocide from the mentioned points of view an interesting picture will be revealed. the text starts with a short preamble representing the background of the document, the need for its constitution and the objective. it should be noted that this is a structural feature characteristic of conventions, declarations and other agreements and treaties of universal scale in general. the main points of the convention, i.e. the articles, come immediately after the preamble. the articles are divided into paragraphs enumerated with roman numbers each of which represents one complete idea, a so-called provision. some of the articles consist of more than one paragraph or include multilevel lists as needed. it can be observed that the specific layout of the text of the convention on genocide is imposed by the message conveyed in the document. it is beyond suspicion that dealing with legal language needs special care as most of our everyday common activities are carried out within a legal context. therefore there is a tendency to make legal texts more cohesive and coherent through opting for a more consistent layout. accordingly legal drafters start to give much attention to the graphitic and graphological devices such as italicizing, bolding and so on (crystal and davy 1986:189). however, the text of the convention is not very rich in similar cases. our observations of both the english and the armenian texts of the convention reveal the use of italicizing to highlight the number of the articles in the english text whereas in the armenian version text-bolding is employed for the same purpose. a case of italicization occurs in article xiii of the english text where the use of the latin expression process-verbal is italicized to underline its metalinguistic value. the presence of the asterisk (*) on the mentioned expression refers to the footnote providing the explanation of its meaning. this, however, does not appear in the translated version of the text as the armenian translator has chosen to use the armenian equivalent of the latinism in the target language. translation studies armenian folia anglistika 81 among the characteristic features of legal documents capitalization of words and particularly of initial letters can also be mentioned. this is usually acomplished by either typing the chosen words in a larger font size than the remainder of the text or writing it all in capitals. our study of the convention text both in english and armenian marks rather a large amount of cases of capitalizing. thus, e.g.: • convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide կոնվենցիա ցեղասպանության հանցագործությունը կանխարգելելու եվ պատժելու մասին capitalization can also be observed in the initial part of the preamble of the english text to emphasize the paramount importance of introducing the document, thus distinguishing the even more significant sections of speech from the rest of the sentence. in this case the initial letters of capitalized words appear in even a larger size to mark the beginning of the sentence: • having considered the declaration ... • recognizing that at all periods ... • being convinced that ... however, the preamble of the armenian version refrains from using capital letters, and this fact can be accounted for by the differences in the graphological traditions of english and armenian. • հաշվի առնելով, որ ... • ընդունելով, որ պատմության բոլոր ... • համոզված լինելով, որ ... instances of capitalization can also be observed in the presentation of organizations and institutions (united nations – միավորված ազգերի կազմակերպություն, general assembly – գլխավոր ասամբլեա, international court of justice – միջազգային դատարան), official positions (secretary general – գլխավոր քարտուղար), or instruments or documents (convention – կոնվենցիա, constitutions – սահմանադրություններ, charter – կանոնաarmenian folia anglistika translation studies 82 դրություն). in all these cases both the creators of the original and the target texts are guided by the working graphological rules of the languages in question. the presence/absence of punctuation marks is another characteristic feature of legal texts. english legal texts are not infrequently characterized by absence of punctuation to avoid forgery, for punctuation marks can be as easily erased from documents as they can be put in, thus sometimes introducing grave changes in the legal meanings intended to be conveyed to the readers. thinness of punctuation and presence of long uninterrupted sentences effectively provide a high level of formality in the language of english legal documents. notwithstanding this fact there are, however, some ways they can be used where they are needed. if, for example, there is the necessity of emphasizing either the beginning or end of a phrase, clause or sentence, or a piece of new and highly important or contrastive information of essential value, commas, semi-colons or full stops may be used. in the english text of the convention different cases of such applications of punctuation appear: • hereby agree as hereinafter provided: • the following acts shall be punishable: (a) genocide; (b) conspiracy to commit genocide; (c) direct and public incitement to commit genocide; • a national, ethnical, racial or religious group due to the complicated nature of the armenian syntax and word order the need for precise punctuation is inevitable, consequently, the armenian version of the convention makes use of punctuation marks not only in the cases mentioned above, but also in nearly all the sentences of the articles. it is quite obvious that much care and interest are given to legal texts through the use of layout features for the sake of revealing structure, content, and logical progression as a guide to facilitate interpretation. therefore, layout features need to be respected in any type of legal drafting. translation studies armenian folia anglistika 83 conclusion thus, the functioning of the above-mentioned features creates a specific stylistic system regulated by certain rules in legal english whereas their application outside the formal and official spheres may lead to stylistic errors and sometimes to unjustified complication of texts. the examples adduced above come to prove that legal texts are quite distinct from other writings, and this is first and foremost accounted for by the textual convention of the profession. despite the fact that legal language is quite limited, many legal texts come in a variety of genres, and each of them tends to have its stereotypical format and fixed structure. hence, legal translation is considered to be a very complicated process consisting of various comprehensive steps. notes: 1. the abbreviation oald stands for oxford advanced learner’s dictionary of current english (2005), 7th edition, oxford: oup. 2. the abbreviation fdf stands for the free dictionary of farlex (copyright 2003-2016) <www.thefreedictionary.com>. references: 1. berman, h.j. and greiner, w.r. (1980) the nature and functions of law. mineola, n.y.: foundation press. 2. bhatia, k.l. (2010) textbook on legal language and legal writing. new delhi: universal law publishing. 3. farghal, m. & shunnaq, a.t (1999) translation with reference to english and arabic: a practical guide. irbid, jordan: dar al-hilal for translation. 4. galperin, i.r. (1981) stylistics. m.: visshaja shkola. 5. gibbons, j. (2003) forensic linguistics: an introduction to language in the justice system. malden ma, oxford: blackwell. 6. groot, de g. r. (1998) language and law. // netherlands reports to the fifteenth international congress of comparative law. / ed. by e. h. hondius. bristol. 7. hakobyan, a. (2009) pashtonakan khosqn ibrev votchakarutsvatsqayin hatkanishneri uruyn hamaktsutyun (amerikyan sahmanadrutyan lezvakan nyuti himan vra). / teknatsuakan atenakhosutyan seghmagir. yerevan: yph. armenian folia anglistika translation studies 84 8. kurzon, d. (1989) language of the law and legal language // special language: from humans thinking to thinking machines. / ed by c. lauren and n. marianne. clevedon/philadelphia: multilingual matters, pp. 283-290. 9. kurzon, d. (1997) legal language: varieties, genres, registers, discourses // international journal of applied linguistics. vol. 7, n 2, pp. 119-139. 10. mellinkoff, d. (1963) the language of the law. little, brown.little, brown. 11. tiersma. p. (1999) legal language. chicago: university of chicago press. 12. trosborg, a. (1995) introduction. special issue on “laying down the law – discourse analysis of legal institutions”. // journal of pragmatics. vol. 23, issue 1, elsevier, pp. 111-116. 13. kouyoumdjian, m. (1981) a comprehensive dictionary: english-armenian. beitut-lebanon: d. doniguian & fils. 14. sahakyan, l. (2012) pokhaberakan teghasharji himnakhndiry terminasteghtsman (angleren iravabanakan terminneri nyuti himan vra). / teknatsuakan atenakhosutyan seghmagir. yerevan: yph. իրավաբանական անգլերենը և մակ-ի ցեղասպանության կոնվենցիան որպես մասնագիտական կողմնորոշման տեքստ լեզվի և իրավունքի փոխազդեցության առանձնահատկություններն այն հիմնական հարցերից են, որոնցով ներկայումս զբաղվում են լեզվաբաններն ու իրավաբանները: գիտական իմացության այս ոլորտների փոխադարձ կապը, շարունակում է ավելի ու ավելի զարգանալ՝ նոր, հասարակական նշանակության թեմաների շնորհիվ: երկրների միջև տնտեսական և մշակութային համագործակցության ընդլայնումը պահանջում է իրավական կարգավորումներ, նաև իրավաբանների աջակցություն և անմիջական մասնակցություն բանակցություններում, գործնական հանդիպումներում և փաստաթղթերի պատրաստման գործընթացում: այդ է պատճառը, որ իրավաբանության բնագավառում լեզվաբանական և թարգմանական հուսալի մոտեցումների կիրառումը առանձնակի կարևորություն է ստանում: հաղորդակցական նպատակադրմամբ պայմանավորված՝ պաշտոնական ոճում իրացվում են լեզվական ու ոճական տարբեր բնութագրական գծեր, որոնց քննություն էլ սույն հոդվածի առարկան է: microsoft word 1. maket 2019-1new.doc culture armenian folia anglistika 151 fate across cultures: a linguocognitive approach mara baghdasaryan yerevan state university abstract concepts may have different conceptual-semantic coverage and lexical realization in different cultures and languages. in the present paper a cognitive framework has been elaborated to look into the concept fate across different linguocultures – armenian, russian, english and italian, and to reveal its culture bound characteristics along with its universal essence, that is reveal fate in linguocultural thinking. key words: concept fate, linguoculture, linguocultural thinking, cognitive frame, conceptualization, lexical and semantic realization, phraseological unit. introduction expressions, sentences and even whole texts can often be incomprehensible even in case of the knowledge of words and grammar forms. such a situation occurs because of the lack of cultural knowledge. there are concepts that represent “whole worlds” which need to be revealed. different nations, naturally, have a different history, language, way of communication, lifestyle, perception of the world – in a word, a different culture. language encompasses and transfers huge cultural information – what national characteristics the nation has, in what geographical and social conditions it lives, what traditional food it eats, what developed fields of activity it has, what view and perception of the world it demonstrates, what it says to itself and the world, and how it says it. language with all its means is understood in the context of communication, and context finds its realization or specification in culture. in other words, language is a reflection of concepts and meanings which differ armenian folia anglistika culture 152 from culture to culture. in specific languages the cultural semantics of concepts is a powerful condensation of traditional practice and values. this is the reason why certain words or names of phenomena have different moral, intellectual, conversational and practical meanings in different languages, and their lexical counterparts are often not identical in other languages. fate in the armenian and other linguocultures: definitions and lexical realizations the concept to be presented in this paper is fate (բախտ). what is the concept fate? in what way do we use it? and what are our expectations from it? these, actually, are not very easy questions to answer. surely, fate is a universal concept probably existing in all languages as it is inherent to human thinking and life. but this does not mean that our ideas and expectations related to fate are identical. here is where culture comes to have a key role, and the linguistic expression – its variety and shades of meaning are representative of culture. the idea of fate is traditionally and firmly entrenched in an armenian’s worldview. it is so usual for armenians that often in speech without any specific contemplation, as if automatically, they may say, for example, բախտի բան է (it’s a matter of fortune1), մարդ բախտ պիտի ունենա (one should have a fortune), բախտս բերեց /չբերեց (i was /wasn’t lucky). it is also customary to express good wishes to young people, in particular words wishing a happy marriage like թող բախտդ բացվի (let your fate open up), բարի բախտ ունենաս (have a good fate) are said to unmarried young ladies. another good wish to young ladies is the phrase handed down to us from our grandmothers – լվացքի տաշտի պես բախտ ունենաս2 (have a fate like the one of a washtub), meaning good fortune, luck and abundance, for as we know, the washtub hardly ever gets empty. marriage and family happiness have always been crucial in the armenian mentality and lifestyle and, naturally, have found their way into language. hence the concept fate could not have circumvented such a key field of the armenian culture as marriage and family. this will be discussed in more detail and in comparison to other linguocultures further in the paper. culture armenian folia anglistika 153 in our reference to the concept fate we would like to focus on phraseological units as these language realizations are usually typical cultural condensations and provide a wide spectrum of the meaning of a concept and its functioning in a specific culture. the phraseological units with the concept fate are mainly represented by the word բախտ and in a few cases by the word ճակատագիր in armenian. in russian its lexical realizations are судьба and рок, the latter having solely a negative meaning. in english the most semantically comprehensive word representing this concept is fate. though it should be mentioned that in english and italian the conceptual-semantic realization of this concept is more disperse and the latter is usually verbalized in phraseological units through the lexical units fate, fortune, luck, destiny in english and fortuna, fato, destino, sorte in italian. anyway, fate, fortune in english and fato, fortuna in italian are more generally representative of the concept fate. before starting the examination of the phraseological units with the concept fate we would like to present the definitions given by dictionaries to its main or comparably more comprehensive lexical expressions in the four languages under discussion (the presentation of the specifically professional or technical realizations of the concept are omitted here as non-relevant to this research). բախտ – 1. կյանքի հանգամանքներով պայմանավորված վիճակ, 2. ճակատագիր, 3. հաջողություն, բարեպատեհ բերում, հանգամանք, դիպված, 4. սնոտիապաշտական պատկերացումներով այն գերագույն ուժը կամ աստվածային կամքը, որով տեղի է ունենում ամեն բան կյանքում, 5. /ժղ./ գերբնական անձնավորված էակ, որ տնօրինում է մարդկանց կյանքը (աղայան 1976): судьба – стечение обстоятельств, не зависящих от воли человека, ход жизненных событий, 2. доля, armenian folia anglistika culture 154 участь, 3. история существования кого-, чегонибудь (кн.), 4. будущее, то, что случится, произойдет (ожегов 1988). fate – 1. the development of events outside a person's control, regarded as predetermined by a supernatural power; the course of someone's life, or the outcome of a situation for someone or something, seen as outside their control; the inescapable death of a person (oxford dictionary 2010). fortune – 1. chance or luck as an arbitrary force affecting human affairs; luck, especially good luck; (fortunes) the success or failure of a person or enterprise over a period of time, 2. a large amount of money or assets; (a fortune) a surprisingly high price or amount of money (oxford dictionary 2010). fortuna – 1. destino o sorte alterna, indipendente dalla volontà umana, identificata dagli antichi nell’omonima divinità (la dea bendata) distributrice a caso di gioia e dolori, 2. sorte favorevole, destino propizio, 3. averi, patrimonio, ricchezza; /lett./ condizione economica o sociale, 4. /lett./ sorte o destino avverso, vicenda disgraziata, 5. rompicollo (zingarelli 2014). fato – 1. per gli antichi, legge eterna e ineluttabile che regola e domina senza contrasto la vita dell’universo, 2. destino, caso, fatalità (zingarelli 2014). as is evident from the dictionary data the given concept largely means chance as an arbitrary force affecting human affairs, success, development of events outside a person’s control and regarded as predetermined or regulated by a supernatural power, as an outcome of a situation, the course of one’s life, as well as economic welfare. the phraseology of fate through cognitive modelling with reference to phraseological units it should be stated that even at a very first sight it is obvious that the armenian phraseological units with the concept fate are incomparably more numerous, and the armenian wordconcept բախտ is more comprehensive. in phraseological dictionaries culture armenian folia anglistika 155 (սուքիասյան, գալստյան 1975, войнова, жуков, молотков, федоров 1986, oxford dictionary of idioms 2004, zingarelli 2014) there are more than 100 armenian, around 5 russian, 15 english and 35 italian phraseological units with this concept. according to the language data provided by the dictionaries a set of frames3/mental models, i.e. a cognitive framework of the concept fate has been elaborated in the course of the present research aimed at revealing linguocultural thinking. thus fate is presented through the following cognitive frames and subframes. 1. fate – success/chance 1.1. personified success/chance 1.2. success in socio-economic perspective 2. fate – marital happiness/success 3.1. fate – destiny future 3.1. future/end 3.2. fate – destiny-life 4. incident, event (negative) 4.1. fateful incident 4.2. haphazard event 5. fate – money (usually in a large amount) our examination of the phraseological units with the concept fate has shown that in the armenian culture there is a strong disposition to fate or in other words it is fate-centered (բախտակենտրոն) to a considerable extent. success is considered crucial in all the domains of human activity and the idea of success finds its linguocultural realization in a variety of contexts. a very typical characteristic of success is chance, and not only in the armenian linguoculture as the linguistic evidence shows. so the first cognitive frame is fate – success/chance. the idea of chance and unexpectedness is present in many phrases and it can often be positive as well as negative resulting in the armenian folia anglistika culture 156 attainment or loss of success or else having good or bad luck: բախտը բերել = բախտը բանել = բախտը կտրել = բախտը բռնել /խսկց./ = բախտի դռները/դուռը բացվել = your luck is in ≠ your luck is out; բախտը աջ /լինել/; բախտը բացվել; բախտը գտնել; բախտը կապվել = բախտը կտրվել = բախտը թեքվել = բախտը ծռվել = բախտի դռները/դուռը փակվել = բախտը քարին ու կապին դեմ ընկնել = բախտը ծովն ընկնել = բախտը ջուրն ընկնել; բախտը ջլկահորն ընկած /dialectal/; բախտին / բախտի գլխին քար գցել /քարով տալ/, քացի/քացով տալ իր/մեկի բախտին = բախտի առաջ քար գցել /dialectal/; բախտի թղթախաղ = բախտի խաղ = игра судьбы; բախտին թողնել = [оставить] на произвол судьбы = abbandonare qlcu. al proprio destino = abbandonare qlcu. alla sua sorte; բախտին տալ /իրեն/ = affidarsi alla fortuna = affidarsi/rimettersi alla sorte; բախտի բան է /խսկց./ = è solo questione di fortuna; բախտի բերմամբ/բերմունքով = as luck would have it = è destino /che/; բախտը փորձել = try your luck /at sth/; բախտ ունենալ = avere sorte; բախտ ունենալ = բախտ վիճակվել = aver fotruna ≠ non aver fortuna; բախտից փախչել; какими судьбами?; the luck of the draw; make your own luck; ride your luck; ha tutte le fortune; avere/toccare in sorte; un colpo di fortuna, portar fortuna, fare la fortuna di qlcu., mezzi di fortuna. the phrases with the concept fate can have unique lexical and semantic realizations such as in the armenian linguoculture բախտդ ընկնեմ, բախտի դուռն ընկնել /մեկի/ which mean readiness to contribute to the interlocuter’s success in any way asking for help in a difficult or desperate situation. another unique linguistic expression is armenian բախտդ սիրեմ which is an exclamation of admiration with reference to a person who is always lucky. in the armenian phrases it is usual to come across the word բախտ with the possessive ending or a possessive pronoun like բախտս / իմ բախտը, բախտդ / քո բախտը, բախտը / նրա բախտը as in, for example, «բախտս բերեց» (“i was lucky enough”). among the armenian phrases there are also derivatives and compounds from բախտ as բախտախաղի դնել, բախտավոր աստղի տակ ծնվել, բախտավոր մեր գլուխը. it is also noteworthy to observe how ճակատագիր – another realization of the concept fate in armenian – is expressed in phraseological contexts. the culture armenian folia anglistika 157 compound word ճակատագիր, i.e. a writing on the forehead – a person’s destiny predetermined for him, is split into its components ճակատ (forehead) and գիր (writing) and is used to make phraseological units with syntactic flexibility: ճակատին գր/վ/ած /լինել/, ճակատին սև գիր գրել. ճակատագիր, as is clear, indicates a necessarily predetermined course of events. an interesting lexical-syntactic unit is the typically russian phrase какими судьбами? which is actually a question having a specific contextual functioning. in english there is an interesting phraseological unit with the word lucky derived from luck – you, he, etc. will be lucky (or should be so lucky) – which is a predicative syntactic unit, actually a sentence and is “used to say that someone’s wishes or expectations are unlikely to be fulfilled” [siefring 2004]. it is an ironic phrase expressing just the contrary – the absence or the impossibility of the luck. a similar case comes across among the armenian phrases – բախտավոր մեր գլուխը in which բախտավոր is, too, derivative from բախտ, and is synonymous to lucky. the phrase literally means lucky (is) our head but the phraseological meaning is the contrary – we are not lucky (enough for). it is a colloquial phrase which is notably emotionally saturated. a remarkable fact about fate as success/chance is that it is often personified. so we distinguish a subrame fate – personified success/chance. the concept of fate as success/chance is endowed with characteristics typical of a human being. often in the armenian linguoculture these phrases even exist in antonymic pairs indicating that fate, like a human being, can possess characteristics of the opposite directions. thus, in armenian: բախտը գալ ≠ բախտը դառնալ, բախտը ետ գալ, բախտը ժպտալ = բախտը ծիծաղել = բախտն երեսին ծիծաղել ≠ բախտը երես դարձնել/ երես թեքել/ երես/ը/ շուռ տալ, բախտը դավել / դավաճանել, բախտը հաշտ աչքով նայել /մեկի վրա/ ≠ բախտը խեթ նայել/ խռովել /մեկից/, բախտը քնել, բախտը քոռացնել, armenian folia anglistika culture 158 բախտի քմահաճույքին թողնել, բախտի քմահաճույքին լինել/մնալ; in russian волею судьбы, ирония судьбы, искушать судьбу; in english tempt fate, fortune favours the brave; in italian tentare la fortuna = tentare la sorte, ai capricci della fortuna, figlio della fortuna, ha una fortuna sfacciata, rassegnarsi al destino = subire al destino, essere perseguitato dal destino, essere in balia della sorte, opporsi al fato. it is evident that such actions as come (գալ), go back (դառնալ), come back (ետ գալ), smile (ժպտալ), laugh (ծիծաղել, երեսին ծիծաղել), avert one’s face (երես դարձնել) / turn aside (away) (երես թեքել) / turn one’s back (երես/ը/ շուռ տալ), betray (դավել/դավաճանել), be in peace with (literally – to look (at sb.) with a peaceful eye (հաշտ աչքով նայել /մեկի վրա/), look askance (խեթ նայել) / resent (խռովել), sleep (քնել), blind (քոռացնել), tempt (искушать, tentare), favour, submit (rassegnarsi, subire), be pursued (essere perseguitato), be under sb’s control (essere in balia di qlcu.), oppose (opporsi) indicate relations between humans, as well as such characteristics as whim/caprice (քմահաճույք, capriccio), will (воля), irony (ирония), impudence (sfacciato – impudent, shameless) and figlio (child) normally pertain culture armenian folia anglistika 159 to humans. the language material shows that the personification takes particularly various lexical forms and finds a whole range of semantic, contextual realizations in the armenian and italian linguocultures. the other subframe distinguished within the frame fate – success/chance presents fate as success in socio-economic perspective. this type of success is observed separately as there are several phraseological units which specifically denote it, e.g. բախտ որոնել = բախտ փնտրել, բախտ ուզել/ուզենալ (partially), as distinct from the bulk of the phraseological units which denote success/chance in general. but it should be noted that the specific meaning of socio-economic well-being is presented in the armenian dictionary by this small number of phrases only, which can be representative of culture, indicating that success in the social and economic domain does not have a central role in the understanding of fate being success in the armenian culture. the situation is completely different with another realization of fate as marital happiness-success. the latter has an important part within the conceptual field of fate in the armenian culture and specifically with reference to ladies as further will be demonstrated on examples: բախտին նստել /մեկի/ – to be /act as/ an obstacle to one’s marriage, բախտ խնդրել – to ask for love, welfare, բախտեբախտ ընկնել (dialectal – about a widow or a widower) – to get married several times (literally – to fall from fate to fate), բախտը բացվել – (2nd meaning) a lady has married (literally – fate opens up) ≠ բախտի դռները/ դուռը փակվել – (2nd meaning) not to manage to marry for a long time (mainly about ladies) (literally – the doors of fate close), բախտի դուռը բանալ – to marry a lady off (literally – to open the door of fate) ≠ բախտը քոռացնել (colloquial) – to make unfortunate, wreck the future (generally about a lady who is not getting married) (literally – to blind the fate), բախտը կապ է – no one proposes to a lady (literally – the fate is tied up), բախտը կապել (colloquial, superstitious) – (2nd meaning) to act as an obstacle to a lady’s marriage (literally – to tie up the fate), armenian folia anglistika culture 160 բախտը ուրիշ տեղ փնտրել/ փնտրիր (colloquial) – to propose to a lady from another place; also in the form of an order used as a reply to the matchmaker (literally – to look (look!) for the fate in another place). in the dictionary definitions of the first three phraseological units there is no special reference to ladies but the statements exemplifying the first two refer to ladies. the third one is exemplified by statements referring to both men and women. it is notable that it has an intensified semantics of the idea of fate. this is due to the double use of բախտ (fate) within the word բախտեբախտ, making the phrase emotionally more coloured and intensive which is quite usual with dialectal and colloquial phraseological units. the next six phrases are even defined with immediate reference to ladies. language as the reflection of the culture clearly shows the relationship between marriage and fate, or more specifically the role of fate in marital happiness/success, family being the generally accepted form of personal happiness in the armenian world. particularly ladies’ marital happiness / success has traditionally been fate bound and they are usually wished բարի բախտ (good fate) in the patriarchal armenian society where a man is expected to propose to a lady and take her to his home after marriage. this is the reason why there is such a phraseological unit in the armenian linguoculture as տանը մնալ (literally – to stay/remain at home) which means the lady is unmarried or her success in marital happiness has not opened up to her (բախտը բացվել – fate opens up). it is also remarkable that some armenian phrases such as բախտը ծովն ընկնել, բախտը կապվել, բախտը կտրվել are generally defined as to suffer a misfortune but the illustrations, which are predominantly from fiction, all make a reference to the lady’s marital issue. the final phraseological unit on this list, բախտը ուրիշ տեղ փնտրել/ փնտրիր, pertains to men specifically and can be a refusal (also in the form of an imperative statement) to a man proposing to a lady. so, this comes to assert that in the traditional armenian society a man makes a proposal to a lady which in its turn, still, needs to be accepted by her and/or her parents. the third major frame elaborated within the present research can be presented as follows: fate – destiny-future and fate – destiny-life in which the culture armenian folia anglistika 161 concept fate is realized as human destiny actualized in the idea of the future and in the idea of life, respectively. these are two parallel conceptualizations of fate none of them being a subframe of the other. many of the phrases belonging to the first group are connected to the superstitious idea of foreseeing the future, e.g. բախտ գուշակող, բախտը աշել = բախտը բանալ/բաց անել = բախտը գցել = բախտը նայել = predire/leggere il destino a qlcu. others express the idea of the future destiny in different contextual-phraseological realizations: բախտը կապել /մեկի/մի բանի հետ/, բախտը նժարների վրա լինել, բախտը ոտքին հանձնել/մեկի/, բախտը շինել (colloquial), so quale sarà la mia sorte. among the english phraseological units there is also a phrase seal someone’s fate which means “make it inevitable that something unpleasant will happen to someone” (oxford dictionary of idioms 2004). here, too, there is a direct reference to fate as destiny-future. this phrase has some similarity to the armenian phrase բախտը կապել (literally – to tie up the fate) which is colloquial and has the superstitious meaning of bringing bad luck by spell. it is interesting that there is a subtle variation to the realization of fate as destiny-future. for example the phrase բախտը վճռել /մեկի/մի բանի/ has two meanings: the first one is to take a crucial decision on an important question and is synonymous to decidere della sorte di qlcu., and the second one is to have a decisive influence on the result of something. so in the latter case the frame is a little modified to fate – destiny future/end. the realization of fate as destiny-life can be exemplified through such phrases as բախտի արժանանալ, բախտը գդալ ջրի հետ կապել, բախտի տերը դառնալ /իր/, բախտից գանգատվել = prendersela col destino, բախտից երես առած, բախտն անիծել, ճակատին գր/վ/ած /լինել/, seguire il proprio destino, cedere al fato and also a group of phrases with the metaphoric expression բախտի անիվ (the wheel of fate) usually with reference to the different directions life takes: բախտի անիվ = la ruota della fortuna, բախտի անիվը աջ դառնալ, բախտի անիվը թեքվել/ծռվել/ձախ դառնալ, բախտի անիվը շրջվել/շուռ գալ/դառնալ, բախտի անիվը պտտվել, բախտի անիվը փշուր-փշուր լինել. armenian folia anglistika culture 162 a special focus should be given to the phrases բախտ ունենալ = aver fortuna meaning to be successful and բախտ ունենալ = avere sorte meaning to have a good life. the phrase բախտ ունենալ is very popular in the armenian linguoculture and can obviously be referred to both frames fate – success/chance and fate – destiny-life. there are also two minor frames presented on our list to show how else the concept fate works. in the english linguoculture one of them conceptualizes fate as a negative incident, event – either a fateful incident or an unpredictable, haphazard event: a fate worse than death (a terrible experience, especially that of seduction or rape), the fortunes of war (the unpredictable events of war). the other conceptualization of fate is the idea of money, usually in a large amount: in english the informal phrase a small fortune expresses the idea of a large amount of money in a playful manner, or the phrase a soldier of fortune is used to denote a person ready to take a service under any person or state in return for money, in italian the phrase fare fortuna means to become rich like in english the phrase make a fortune, also in italian the phrases cadere in bassa fortuna and trovarsi in bassa fortuna are literary expressions meaning go bankrupt/be bankrupt in which fortuna, i.e. fate actualizes the idea of economic, financial welfare. this kind of specific realization of the concept under discussion is not found in the armenian or russian linguocultures. it is typical of the english and italian linguocultures. the english word fortune and the italian word fortuna on their own have the meaning of wealth, capital among other meanings. whereas with general reference to socio-economic welfare, as already stated in this paper, in armenian we only come across the phrases բախտ որոնել = բախտ փնտրել (literally – to look for fate), բախտ ուզել/ուզենալ (literally – to wish fate), in the first two ones բախտ expressing the idea of means of living, in the third one also happiness in general. finally, we would like to focus on a specific conceptual condensation – the phrase հայի բախտ (the armenian’s fate) used in spoken armenian. it means bad luck, unhappiness. this phrase has become widely circulated in the recent century and is largely connected with the armenian genocide of 1915. but there is a remarkable fact – this phrase has not found its way into dictionaries, culture armenian folia anglistika 163 that is it has not “found its place” in standard armenian. this means that notwithstanding the many atrocities, namely the genocide the armenian people went through and survived, this nation, though preserving the memory on the genetic level, does not believe they are a nation with a victim’s soul and mind, but does believe they are a nation with a survivor’s soul and mind looking to the future. so the armenian nation has preserved this phrase on the level of saussurean parole and does not adopt it into their language on the level of saussurean langue. conclusion fate is a vital concept in human thinking and active in all the languages we have looked into in the framework of this research. fate is a universal concept with universal essence as man is not endowed to reach the essence of all existence. fate is something we are born with, live with, rely on, look for, discover and create. despite its universal characteristics the concept fate also has unique or more typical characteristics conditioned by different culture bound factors and deeply rooted in national linguocultures. as the present research has shown the concept fate is most widely referred to in the armenian linguocultur, and the reference fields are success/chance including personified success/chance, marital happiness/success, destiny-future and destiny-life (the vast number of phraseological units often with a variety of synonyms and antonyms provide us with a profound evidence). this concept is also considerably active in the above mentioned fields excluding the one of marital happiness/success in the italian linguoculture. the role of fate is unique in marital happiness in the armenian culture as distinct from all the other cultures, at least the ones under discussion. and specifically ladies are found to be in the realm of fate. another typical realization of the concept fate/fortune is the idea of economic, financial welfare, but in this case typical of the english and italian linguocultures as distinct from the armenian and russian ones. the analyzed linguistic data can also lead to the idea that this kind of actualization of fate is typical of european cultures in general. armenian folia anglistika culture 164 surely, the topic of the present research is far wider and can give much more food for thought but the cognitive research of the phraseological units can already provide a deep insight into the linguocultures and linguocultural thinking. notes: 1. the english translations of the armenian phraseological units in this paper have been done by the author (m. b.). 2. it is remarkable that in armenian there are phrases with the concept fate (բախտ) such as բարի բախտ /ունենալ/, լվացքի տաշտի պես բախտ ունենալ which are widely used in the spoken language but are not recorded in dictionaries and are actually used by force of tradition. 3. a frame can be defined as a structure of knowledge or a mechanism of knowledge building: in the broad sense, a frame is a cognitive model. a frame is a unified structure of knowledge, a coherent schematization of experience. it is a structure of data which exists in a person’s consciousness and which a person uses to recognize and process typical situations and phenomena. it represents the essential, typical and possible features of the concept, which can be conditioned to this or that extent, that is they have a situational basis. frames shape a person’s perception of the world and direct their behaviour (cf. kubryakova, dem’yankow, pankrats, luzina 1997, minskij 1979, fillmore 1988). references: 1. 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(1976) ardi hayereni batsatrakan bararan. yerevan: “hayastan” hratarakchutyun. 2. sukiasyan, a.; galstyan, s. (1975) hayots lezvi dardzvatzabanakan bararan. yerevan: yerevani hamalsarani hratarakchutyun. 3. voynova, l.; zhukov, v.; molotkov, a.; fyodorov, a. (1986) frazeologicheskiy slovar’ russkogo yazika. / pod red. a. molotkova, izd. 4oye. m.: russkiy yazik. culture armenian folia anglistika 165 4. kubryakova, ye.; demyankov, v.; pankrats, yu.; luzina, l. (1997) kratkiy slovar’ kognitivnikh terminov. m.: mgu. 5. minskiy, m. (1979) freymi dlya predstavleniya znaniy. m.: energiya. 6. ozhegov, s. (1988) slovar’ russkogo yazika. 20-oye izd. m.: russkiy yazik. 7. fillmore, ch. (1988) freymi i semantika ponimaniya. // novoye v zarubezhnoy lingvistike. kognitivniye aspekti yazika. vip. xxiii. m.: progress. 8. (2010) oxford dictionary (for abbyy lingvo x5). 3rd ed.. oxford: oup. 9. (2004) oxford dictionary of idioms. / ed. by j. siefring. 2nd ed. oxford, new york: oup. 10. zingarelli, n. (2014) vocabolario della lingua italiana. milano: zanichelli. բախտը տարբեր մշակույթներում. լեզվաճանաչողական մոտեցում հասկացույթները կարող են որոշակիորեն զանազան հասկացականիմաստային դաշտեր ընդգրկել ու բառային իրացում ունենալ տարբեր մշակույթներում ու լեզուներում: այս հետազոտության մեջ մշակվել են ճանաչողական մոդելներ, որոնց միջոցով փորձ է արվում ուսումնասիրել բախտ հասկացույթը տարբեր լեզվամշակույթներում և քննել դրա թե՛ համընդհանուր էությունը, թե՛ մշակույթով պայմանավորված առանձնահատկությունները, այսինքն՝ վեր հանել բախտը լեզվամշակութային մտածողության մեջ: received by the editorial board 01.03.2019 recommended for publication by the reviewers 03.04.2019 accepted for print 22.04.2019 microsoft word 3.literature 129 144 (1) literature armenian folia anglistika 129 the nineteenth century american fiction: hawthorne, the house of the seven gables and its reception: a brief overview saša simović, marija mijušković university of montenegro abstract critics have always been interested in nathaniel hawthorne’s literary oeuvre but that interest has varied over different periods of time. nevertheless, we can claim that his books have always enjoyed a rousing reception. this paper discusses nathaniel hawthorne’s famous romance the house of the seven gables and its reception from the time of its publication, 1851, to the present day. we will focus our attention on the essential features of the book that were commented on and reviewed by the most influential critics who dealt with hawthorne’s text. key words: the house of the seven gables, romance, review, reception, critic. introduction inspired by the great success of his master-piece the scarlet letter in 1850, nathaniel hawthorne began to work on another book in the late spring of the same year. he wrote the house of the seven gables in lenox, west massachusetts, where he lived for about a year after he had left salem. although he thought that the writing process would be completed by november, the book was finished on 26 january 1851. publishers ticknor, reed and fields published the house of the seven gables on 9 april 1851 (rosenthal 1995:1). hawthorne had on his mind several versions for the title of his romance – “the seven gables”, “maule’s well” (with the subtitle “the house of the seven gables”). however, his final choice seems to be the most appropriate one given the book’s plotline as well as the symbolic perspectives of the house. armenian folia anglistika literature 130 in none of his romances is the burden of the past which “endangers” the present day represented in such a striking way as it is in the house of the seven gables. therefore the reader is not surprised by a frequent use of terms such as “ancient”, “antique”, “hereditary”, ”ancestor” or “posterity”. the plot of the romance implies interrelations between the generations of the families involved which proves to be an exceptionally functional device used by the author to “evoke” almost “forgotten” deeds and people from the past and place them in a contemporary sequence of events. in the house of the seven gables hawthorne depicts a much simpler way of life compared to his previous romance. however, in both romances he uses the same narrative technique – mentioning, but not describing, the crucial point in the plot after which the whole story would unfold. in the scarlet letter hawthorne depicts the consequences of hester prynne’s “sin” and moral downfall but not the act of adultery itself. in the house of the seven gables he presents the consequences of colonel pyncheon’s seizure of maule’s land over a long period of time but not the seizure itself. the consequences of pyncheon’s mighty decision would be felt by seven generations. hawthorne manages successfully to present the incessant conflicts between the pyncheons and maules which are always somehow renewed and repeated. the problem of cyclic movement (waggoner 1955) hawthorne masterfully transfers to another perspective – the description of nature, primarily the elm, which with its luxuriant crown and green leaves rises over the house thus making it an inseparable part of landscape. the major symbol in the romance proves to be the pyncheon house, the embodiment of the once esteemed and well-to-do family, which is “forced” to cope with the cruelty and unpredictability of the present. the house has been “cursed” as matthew maule’s words “god will give him blood to drink!” (hawthorne in merrill 1966:5) incessantly reverberate from the past. old matthew maule was convicted and executed because of being an alleged wizard. consequently, his land became easy prey for the haughty colonel pyncheon. although there was no written document preserved, the narrator claims, there was obviously a dispute in the past between maule, who defended what belonged rightfully to him, “the site [that] had become desirable in the eyes of a prominent and powerful personage”, and the mighty pyncheon, the claimant “characterized by an iron energy of purpose” (hawthorne in merrill literature armenian folia anglistika 131 1966:3). after maule’s death, the pyncheon house was erected “over an unquiet grave”, although many people expressed disapproval since “[h]is house would include the home of the dead and buried wizard, and would thus afford the ghost of the latter a kind of privilege to haunt its new apartment, and the chambers into which future bridegrooms were to lead their brides, and where children of the pyncheon blood were to be born.” (hawthorne in merrill 1966:5). the entire plot of the book takes place in the pyncheon mansion with the exception of the chapter “the flight of two owls” which describes the running away of the pyncheon siblings, hepzibah and clifford, into an unknown, (un)friendly world. hawthorne masterfully uses the introductory paragraph in order to create “the stage” on which the whole story would be “performed”: “half way down a by-street of one of our new england towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst. the street is pyncheon street; the house is the old pyncheon house; and an elm-tree, of wide circumference, rooted before the door, is familiar to every townborn child by the title of the pyncheon elm. on my occasional visits to the town aforesaid, i seldom failed to turn down pyncheon street, for the sake of passing through the shadow of these two antiquities, – the great elm-tree and the weather-beaten edifice.” (hawthorne in merrill 1966:1) the pyncheon house, the book’s eponymous house of the seven gables, used to be a grand, magnificent building. now, it seems to be just a pale remnant of once immense wealth, potency and authority. its interior is occasionally lit with sunshine, laughter seldom echoes through its halls and chambers. the narrator tells us that the old pyncheon house always reminded him of a human countenance and the traces of bygone days were remarkably visible. however, armenian folia anglistika literature 132 the splendour of the house, which was remarkably evident in days of yore when colonel pyncheon built the mansion on maule’s restless grave, over time was lost. maule’s “curse” proved to “come true” on the day of the ceremony of consecration since colonel pyncheon was found dead in his oak chair drenched in his own blood. the house of the seven gables symbolises the disintegration and decadence of the pyncheon family. instead of living in prosperity, with many descendants, it seems that the family regresses and becomes almost obsolescent. the street in which it upreared its venerable peaks has long ceased to be a fashionable quarter of the town; so that, though the old edifice was surrounded by habitations of modern date, they were mostly small, built entirely of wood, and typical of the most plodding uniformity of common life. […] but as for the old structure of our story, its white-oak frame, and its boards, shingles, and crumbling plaster, and even the huge, clustered chimney in the midst, seemed to constitute only the least and meanest part of its reality. so much of mankind’s varied experience had passed there, – so much had been suffered, and something, too, enjoyed, – that the very timbers were oozy, as with the moisture of a heart. it was itself like a great human heart, with a life of its own, and full of rich and somber reminiscences. (hawthorne in merrill 1966:26-27) the disintegration of the pyncheons is masterfully presented through the characters of the siblings, hepzibah and clifford. for the old maiden hepzibah, the house is her family legacy, she seems to be “destined” to the loneliness and darkness of its chambers which used to be filled with life and vigour. the pyncheon house is her home but it is a home without warmth and joy. hepzibah faces an unfavourable financial situation and therefore decides to run a shop. this shop for her is just another sign of degradation, necessary in order to sustain her small family. literature armenian folia anglistika 133 a lady – who had fed herself from childhood with the shadowy food of aristocratic reminiscences, and whose religion it was that a lady’s hand soils itself irremediably by doing aught for bread – this born lady, after sixty years of narrowing means, is fain to step down from her pedestal of imaginary rank. poverty, treading closely at her heels for a lifetime, has come up with her at last. she must earn her own food, or starve! and we have stolen upon miss hepzibah pyncheon, too irreverently, at the instant of time when the patrician lady is to be transformed into the plebeian woman. (hawthorne in merrill 1966:40) for clifford, the house of the seven gables seems not to be of crucial importance. at least not of the significance it could have had if only he had not been forced to pay for somebody else’s “sins” and spend most of his life in prison, convicted for a crime he did not commit. the only joy in this world that he is able to perceive is embodied in his young cousin phoebe. maule’s well represents the union of the past and present as well as that of the two families. according to some superstitious stories its water is enchanted and forebears the stain of the old days and the curse of matthew maule. that is why holgrave warns phoebe against drinking the water with “magical” power, stating the following: “be careful not to drink at maule’s well![…] neither drink nor bathe your face in it![…] because, like an old lady’s cup, it is water bewitched!” (hawthorne in merrill 1966:105-106). the decadence of the family is masterfully presented through the “great similarity” between the pyncheon siblings and the pyncheon hens. with a dose of humour the narrator states that these hens, since they were of the “aristocratic line”, could not “understand” the simple language of the ordinary village hens, in almost the same way that the “patrician” pyncheons had nothing in common with “plebeians”. the decline and waning of the mighty pyncheons is remarkably presented in the following extract: nor must we forget to mention a hen-coop of very reverend antiquity that stood in the farther corner of the garden, not a great way from the fountain. it now contained only chanticleer, his two armenian folia anglistika literature 134 wives, and a solitary chicken. all of them were pure specimens of a breed which had been transmitted down as an heirloom in the pyncheon family, and were said, while in their prime, to have attained almost the size of turkeys, and, on the score of delicate flesh, to be fit for a prince’s table. in proof of the authenticity of this legendary renown, hepzibah could have exhibited the shell of a great egg, which an ostrich need hardly have been ashamed of. be that as it might, the hens were now scarcely larger than pigeons, and had a queer, rusty, withered aspect, and a gouty kind of movement, and a sleepy and melancholy tone throughout all the variations of their clucking and cackling. it was evident that the race had degenerated, like many a noble race besides, in consequences of too strict a watchfulness to keep it pure. these feathered people had existed too long in their distinct variety. […] the distinguishing mark of the hens was a crest of lamentably scanty growth, in these latter days, but so oddly and wickedly analogous to hepzibah’s turban, that phoebe […] was led to fancy a general resemblance betwixt these forlorn bipeds and her respectable relative. (hawthorne in merrill 1966:98-99) focusing his attention on this interesting breed of “feathered people” and its indisputably “aristocratic origin”, the reader can recognise a direct allusion to clifford and hepzibah. through this, we find out that the rooster and his two hens became a little bit “cracked” because of their solitude and being cut off from the rest of the world. the ex-prisoner clifford could not watch them living in an enclosed space. consequently, “they had been set at liberty, and now roamed at will about the garden” (hawthorne in merrill 1966:168). the symbolism of the weeds in this romance is noteworthy as well. weeds that grow in the family garden are named the “evil” of the by-gone days, “symbolic of the transmitted vices of society”. they incessantly appear and reappear thus showing that the huge family burden is passed from one generation to the next. but the “evil” which broods over the pyncheons and which is embodied in the weeds is not destined to spread throughout. a maule, literature armenian folia anglistika 135 the descendant of matthew maule, does not allow it. the maules, victims of the overbearing nature and pride of the once mighty pyncheons, succeed in reducing the “evil” whose seed had been planted a long time ago. therefore, not everything is lost. this will be proved by the young cousin, phoebe pyncheon, who brings “sunshine” into the story. the present relations between the pyncheons and maules are strikingly different from the relations between their ancestors, which is shown through the relationship of phoebe and the daguerreotypist holgrave, the youngest offspring of the families. it is through their union that hawthorne bathes the conclusion of the book in sunlight. this proves to be significantly different from the conclusion of his previous romance, his master-piece, the scarlet letter. the house of the seven gables and its reception it is highly possible that hawthorne drew his inspiration for the major symbol, the house of the seven gables, from his boyhood when he was fascinated by the ancient mansion which “in the midst of a beautiful garden, stands facing the blue waters of the harbor at the foot of turner street in salem, massachusetts” (merrill 1966:xvi). historians discovered that in 1668 a certain john turner bought the land on which he built a house which consisted of four rooms. as the family grew over time, the house underwent significant architectural changes and was enlarged several times until seven gables were created. his grandson sold the house in 1782 to captain samuel ingersoll whose wife proved to be nathaniel hawthorne’s aunt. (merrill 1966:xvi). for a long period of time the young hawthorne paid visits to his cousin, miss susie ingersoll, who told him interesting stories about the history of the house. “a chair is now shown to visitors as the hawthorne chair, said to have been the favourite of the young writer in many his visits. small wonder that the house took on a living interest to him, and that the children of his brain moved through its rooms as to the manor born” (merrill 1966:xvi–xvii). seriously concerned about the possibility that the new romance would contain “too much of darkness” as was the case with the scarlet letter in which he masterfully presented the story of “sin”, adultery and moral downfall within the framework of the seventeenth century puritan boston, this time the author “permitted” more rays of sunlight to pour over the pages of the house of armenian folia anglistika literature 136 the seven gables. in his letter of april 1851 the great american writer and hawthorne’s literary friend, herman melville, praised the book, stating that its contents did not belie its romantic title as well as that the book, for the pleasantness of the running interest, surpasses the author’s previous literary achievements. furthermore, melville stated the following: this book is like a fine old chamber, abundantly, but still judiciously, furnished with precisely that sort of furniture best fitted to furnish it. there are rich hangings, wherein are braided scenes from tragedies! there is old china with rare devices, set out on the carved buffet; there are long and indolent lounges to throw yourself upon; there is an admirable sideboard, plentifully stored with good viands; there is a smell as of old wine in the pantry; and finally, in one corner, there is a dark little black-letter volume in golden clasps, entitled ‘hawthorne: a problem’. it has delighted us; it has piqued a re-perusal; it has robbed us of a day, and made us a present of a whole year of thoughtfulness; it has bred great exhilaration and exultation with the remembrance that the architect of the gables resides only six miles off, and not three thousand miles away, in england, say. (melville in rosenthal 1995:23) evert august duyckinck in the literary world (26 april 1851) states that if one wants to understand hawthorne’s book adequately, one has to be in the right mood, time and place when reading this text. according to this distinguished nineteenth century intellectual, the house of the seven gables is a book full of light and shade, “parts and diversities”, without a peculiar richness in the style: “in some respects it is plain, but it flows on pellucid as a mountain rivulet”, so that the reader can become aware of its refreshing purity. duyckinck claims that the sun shines into the house primarily to expose the darkness. it is the house itself which proves to be the chief dramatis personae in the book since “it is alive and vital, albeit on a dusty antiquity” (duyckinck in rosenthal 1995:27). the story which is revealed in the book is actually “a tale of retribution, of expiation extending over a period of two hundred years” literature armenian folia anglistika 137 (duyckinck in rosenthal 1995:28). duyckinck in his review emphasises the following as well: you may read the book into the small hours beyond midnight, when no sound breaks the silence but the parting of an expiring ember, or the groan of restless mahogany, and you find that the candle burns a longer flame, and that the ghostly visions of the author’s page take shape about you. conscience sits supreme in her seat, the fountains of pity and terror are opened; you look into the depths of the soul, provoked at so painful a sight – but you are strengthened as you gaze; for of that pain comes peace at last, and these shadows you must master by virtuous magic. nathaniel hawthorne may be the cornelius agrippa to invoke them, but you are the mirror in which they are reflected. (duyckinck in rosenthal 1995:28) rufus wilmot griswold in his review published in the international magazine of literature, art and science (may 1851) remarked that the house of the seven gables can be considered less original, less striking and less powerful than the scarlet letter. nevertheless, he considers this book “the purest piece of imagination in [american] prose literature” (griswold in rosenthal 1995:31). in an anonymous review published in the christian examiner (may 1851) the author claims that this piece of writing of hawthorne’s indisputably presents a creation of great power, although inferior in interest to the scarlet letter. the impression which it leaves on the reader’s mind is, indeed, much pleasanter than that produced by its predecessor; but its plot is more complex, the characterization more exaggerated, and the artistic execution less perfect. viewed as a whole, it will stand much higher than when considered in its separate parts; for the general outline is well conceived, but the filling up is not of equal excellence. there is too much of disquisition, and too little of narrative and dialogue. armenian folia anglistika literature 138 (anonymous in rosenthal 1995:32) in his study hawthorne (1879) henry james states that the house of the seven gables is a rich, delightful work but not as shaped and fashioned as the scarlet letter. james claims that he always considered it much more functional as a prologue to a great novel than a great novel itself. the subject of the story, according to james, does not fill it out adequately. the characters in the book are rather to be considered figures, “they are all pictures rather than persons”. he also claims that they are all types to the author’s mind, of something general, of something that is bound up with the history, at large, of families and individuals, and each of them is the centre of a cluster of those ingenious and meditative musings, rather melancholy, as a general thing, than joyous, which melt into the current and texture of the story and give it a kind moral richness. (james in rosenthal 1995:55) many twentieth century critics focused their attention on the structure of the house of the seven gables, especially the end of the book. f.o. matthiessen in his influential study american renaissance: art and expression in the age of emerson and whitman (1941) claims that the conclusion of the house of the seven gables could satisfy only a few people. according to matthiessen, the main theme which hawthorne developed from the past of the pyncheon and maule families is the curse that the pyncheons continued to bring upon themselves. putting his characters in a definite environment, he could not give the sense of their being in continuous contact with that larger outside world […] furthermore, when hawthorne centers directly on the presentation of his individuals, he can ordinarily manage no more than to give a careful notation of their traits […] instead of revealing them gradually through significant incidents. even in their conflicts with literature armenian folia anglistika 139 one another, description nearly always usurps the place of immediate action. (matthiessen 1941:335) leland schubert in his study hawthorne, the artist: fine art devices (1944) comments on the specific use of colours, light, shadow and sound in hawthorne’s fiction. discussing the dominant colours in the house of the seven gables schubert emphasises “a dull yellow and green, almost brown” (schubert 1944:101-102). schubert claims that hawthorne’s auditory imagination “may have been weak or undeveloped” since he makes “much less use of sound than many writers do” (1944:112). according to this critic, hawthorne “sees the sound” and often creates “sound images and sound patterns of considerable effectiveness” (1944:113). schubert states that the sound of the shop bell could be considered “the audible expression of seven gables’s moral” (1944:121). yvor winters in “maule’s curse, or hawthorne and the problem of allegory / defense of reason” (1947) points out that of hawthorne’s three long works the scarlet letter, the house of the seven gables and the marble faun, it is the scarlet letter that can be considered pure allegory while the other two are impure novels, “novels with unassimilated allegorical elements” (winters in kaul 1966:11). according to winters, the scarlet letter is faultless in scheme and in detail. “the second and third are interesting, the third in particularly, but both are failures” (winters in kaul 1966:11). critical reviews published in 1950s and 1960s presented a significant step forward in the study of hawthorne’s fiction. namely, richard harter fogle in hawthorne’s fiction: the light and the dark (1952) states that in hawthorne’s texts the reader can recognise elements of simplicity and complexity. hawthorne’s tone is calm and there is a specific combination of light and darkness. commenting on the characterisation in this romance fogle states that phoebe is less sensitive than clifford, and less intelligent than holgrave but proves to possess greater strength than either of them. this critic also notes that equilibrium in hawthorne’s texts implies some kind of sacrifice – “the head and the heart can never be in a harmony and no character can be complete. where the materials for synthesis, as in the house of the seven gables […] we find armenian folia anglistika literature 140 only an unequal compromise” (fogle 1969:221). hyatt h. waggoner in hawthorne: a critical study (1955) points out that the house of the seven gables was written more carefully than the scarlet letter. therefore, waggoner claims, the book can be considered “the product in a much greater degree of conscious, even of self-conscious artistry” (1955:151). in his analysis of this romance waggoner pays special attention to the house itself, which according to him represents a place of happening and a symbol. millicent bell in her study hawthorne’s view of the artist (1962) recognises in the house of the seven gables a large amount of symbolism specific to gothic novels. she also points out the fact that hawthorne’s fiction is “obsessed” with the theme of guilt. terence martin in his study nathaniel hawthorne published in 1965 emphasises that no american writer before hawthorne tried to present in such a unique way the past and the present. he agrees with henry james that the original idea does not fulfill the story. discussing the characterisation in the house of the seven gables he points out the young phoebe who has the responsibility of redemption on her shoulders. “he [hawthorne] emphasizes her ability to make any place look like a home, from a hut in the forest to the house she has come to live in” (martin 1983:133). in hawthorne’s images: the “proper light and shadow” in the major romances richard harter fogle (1969) points out that we should never study hawthorne’s characters separately since, taken out of a context, they look incomplete and unsatisfying. there is no dominant hero or heroine in hawthorne’s fiction, claims fogle. the main characters “exist” in a group. according to fogle, hawthorne’s universe has its own solar system and the sun “is its center, the divine light and the source of light” (fogle 1969:49). frederick crews in his seminal study the sins of the fathers: hawthorne’s psychological themes (1966) claims that in the house of the seven gables the reader can recognise “the risks” of artistic imagination, being “obsessed” with unconscious desires. the conclusion of this romance, according to crews, was psychologically necessary. furthermore, he claims that it is imperfect repression which could be understood as the agent of all the ironic justice in this book (crews 1966:178-179). richard h. brodhead in hawthorne, melville and the novel (1976) states that hawthorne in the house of the seven gables abandons the grandness of literature armenian folia anglistika 141 tragedy in order to “apply” ordinary life. brodhead highlights the specific modulation between the mimetic and symbolic in the book. george dekker in the american historical romance (1987) states that hawthorne could be called a historical ironist who recognised the excesses of the puritans as well as weaknesses and faults of his own political party. dekker points out that, in this romance, hawthorne joins “cooper, emerson, mark twain, and many other nineteenth-century critics in finding scott and his fictions deeply subversive of american political and social ideals (dekker 1987:341). in a highly complex and inspirational study the anatomy of national fantasy: hawthorne, utopia and everyday life (1991), lauren berlant explores the problem of national identity in hawthorne’s texts. discussing a female-popular private source of national narrative berlant claims that it proves to be central in the house of the seven gables. “it is, and is not, necessary for the maintenance of patriarchal law; it is, and is not, an instance of autonomous female political theory. but as the guardian of desire and hope for future justice, the domesticated institution of women’s consciousness is crucial to hawthorne’s critical revision of american national identity” (berlant 1991:157). samuel chase coale, in mesmerism and hawthorne (1998), claims that the aforementioned romance, “saturated with mesmeric themes and powers, confronts all the aspects of mesmerism both in the text itself and in the very nature of that text” (coale 1998:91). coale also discusses the great “frenzy” which ruled ante-bellum america. the pyncheons can control and rule the world of riches and social status, but the maules rule the mysterious world of dreams, hypnosis and mesmeric powers. in this romance “hawthorne creates dreamscapes, the mysterious places where mesmeric trances take us” (coale 1998:95). allan lloyd-smith in his essay “nineteenth century american gothic” points out that nathaniel hawthorne adopted the tone of comic gothic in the house of the seven gables. in the very house, “erected on a shameful rotting corpse”, and whose occupants were frequently “the victim of maule’s curse” the reader can recognise “a version of the gothic haunted castle, brought up to date and containing a cent shop selling miscellaneous items” (lloyd-smith in punter 2008:116). in her article “comical reflections and delayed affect in the house of the seven gables” published in the nathaniel hawthorne review (2015), julie wilhelm deals primarily with hawthorne’s complex relationship to sentimentalism. wilhelm claims that armenian folia anglistika literature 142 although hawthorne was determined to distinguish himself from the “d–d mob of scribbling women” or “commercially successful sentimental women writers”, insisting that his texts reveal “hard truths rather than sentiment and sales”, it can be “proved” that the writer, “keen to support his family and build his reputation, cared deeply about writing novels that the public would buy” (wilhelm 2015:112). the number, quality and variety of critical reviews of hawthorne’s romances, notably of the house of the seven gables, which have been published since the mid-nineteenth century, highlight the author’s artistic uniqueness as well as the great complexity of his style. some of these reviews are of crucial importance for the study and proper understanding of hawthorne’s texts. critics have focused their attention on various literary and theoretical issues ranging from the use of colours, the distinction of light and darkness, sound images to allegory, symbolism, originality and characterisation. in this paper we have tried to shine additional light on the romance and its reception through different periods of time as well as to point out some of the book’s distinctive features that have been discussed by the most influential critics. references: 1. barry, p. (2002) beginning theory: an introduction to literary and cultural theory. manchester and new york: manchester university press. 2. bercovitch, s. and jehlen, m. (eds) (2004) ideology and classic american literature. cambridge, new york: cup. 3. bell, m. (1962) hawthorne’s view of the artist. new york: university publishers. 4. berlant, l. (1991) the anatomy of national fantasy: hawthorne, utopia and everyday life. chicago and london: the university of chicago press. 5. brodhead, r.h. (1976) hawthorne, melville and the novel. chicago: the university of chicago press. 6. coale, c.s. (1998) mesmerism and hawthorne: mediums of american romance. tuscaloosa and london: the university of alabama press. literature armenian folia anglistika 143 7. crews, f. (1989) the sins of the fathers: hawthorne’s psychological themes. revised edition. berkley, los angeles, london: university of carolina press. 8. dekker, g. (1990) the american historical romance. cambridge, new york: cup. 9. fogle, r.h. (1969) hawthorne's fiction: the light and the dark. revised edition. norman: university of oklahoma press. 10. fogle, r.h. (1969) hawthorne’s imagery: the “proper light and shadow” in the major romances. norman: university of oklahoma press. 11. hawthorne, n. (1966) the house of the seven gables. atlanta, belmont, calif, dallas: allyn and bacon, inc. 12. kaul, a.n. (ed.) (1966) hawthorne: a collection of critical essays. englewood cliffs, new jersey: prentice hall inc. 13. matthiessen, f.o. (1968) american renaissance: art and expression in the age of emerson and whitman. new york: oup. 14. reynolds, l.j. (ed.) (2001) a historical guide to nathaniel hawthorne. oxford, new york.: oup. 15. rosenthal, b. (ed.) (1995) critical essays on hawthorne’s the house of the seven gables. new york: g.k. hall & co. 16. schubert, l.(1944) hawthorne, the artist: fine – art devices in fiction. chapel hill: the university of north carolina press. 17. terence, m. (1983) nathaniel hawthorne. revised edition. new york: twayne publishers. 18. vukčević, r. (2002) reading american literature: a critical anthology. podgorica: univerzitet crne gore, institut za strane jezike. 19. vukčević, r. (2005) a history of american literature: then and now. podgorica: univerzitet crne gore, institut za strane jezike. 20. waggoner, h.h. (1955) hawthorne: a critical study. cambridge: the belknap press. 21. wilhelm, j. (2015) comical reflections and delayed affect in “the house of the seven gables”. // nathaniel hawthorne review. / ed. by j.e. hall. vol. 41, n. 2. the nathaniel hawthorne society. armenian folia anglistika literature 144 19-ñ¹ ¹³ñç ³ù»ñçïû³ý ·»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý ·ñ³ï³ýáõãûáõýá․ ðáãáñýç úáã å³ïáõñ³ýý»ñáí ïáõýá ¨ ¹ñ³ áýï³éáõùý»ñá․ ñ³ù³éáï ³ïý³ñï øýý³¹³ïý»ñá ùçßï ¿é ñ»ï³ùñùñí³í »ý »õ»é ü³ã³ýç»é ðáãáñýç ·ñ³ï³ý ëï»õí³·áñíáõãûáõýý»ñáí․ çñ³ñï», ³û¹ ñ»ï³ùñùñáõãûáõýá ï³ñμ»ñ ¿ »õ»é ï³ñμ»ñ å³ù³ý³ïý»ñáõù: ²ûýáõ³ù»ý³ûýçí, ù»ýù ï³ñáõ »ýù åý¹»é, áñ ýñ³ ·ñù»ñá ùçßï ¿é é³í áý¹áõý»éáõãûáõý »ý ·ï»é: êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù ùýýáõãû³ý ¿ ³éýíáõù ü³ã³ýç»é ðáãáñýç úáã å³ïáõñ³ýý»ñáí ïáõýá ñ³ûïýç ëçñ³í»åá ¨ ¹ñ³ áýï³éáõùý»ñá ññ³ï³ñ³ïù³ý å³ù³ý³ïí³ýçó (1851 ã.) ùçýã ûñë: ðá¹í³íáõù շեշտը դրվում է ·ñùç ³ûý ¿³ï³ý ñ³ïï³ýçßý»ñç íñ³, áñáýù ù»ïý³μ³ýí»é ¨ áõëáõùý³ëçñí»é »ý ðáãáñýç ëï»õí³·áñíáõãû³ùμ ½μ³õíáõ ³ù»ý³³½¹»óçï ùýý³¹³ïý»ñç ïáõùçó։ maket 2014_layout 1.qxd linguistic and semantic aspects of causation in legal reasoning in modern english robert khachatryan yerevan state linguistic university abstract the objective of this article is to elaborate on the significance of linguistic aspects of causation in legal reasoning in modern english. more specifically, this article elaborates on semantic aspects of causation in legal reasoning. linguistic aspects of causation in modern english are instrumental in legal reasoning, particularly elaborating on the expression of the main features of lexical causatives due to their direct causation. a series of events form the causal nexus, in which the relationship is connected via spatiotemporally continuous sequences of causal intermediates. in spatiotemporal relationship of cause and effect, proximity is the criterion, which differentiates the causal connection. keywords: causation in legal reasoning, lexical causatives, causal nexus, proximity. introduction the notion of legal language is a key feature of the broader intersection between language and legal studies. legal language has clearly established its formal domain, in the framework of which scholars and researchers in many multidisciplinary fields investigate the empirical relationship between law and language. the history of the field in the recent three decades provides ample illustration that the explanatory force of a particular linguistic theory on legal language depends in large measure on the types of linguistic constructs it posits and the manner in which it manipulates them in order to yield wellformed linguistic representations. the task of identifying the right representations and the appropriate relations between them is quire challenging. however, it is empirically proven in practice that law is a “product of and dependent on language” (schauer 1993), namely it is “mediated through language, partially through spoken language (e.g. at court), partially through written language (e.g. written statutory regulations, ordinances)” (grewendorf and rathert 2009:1). further on, linguistic descriptions are “ubiquitous in legal disputes. language users linguistically frame incidents from the very moment they occur and later in police reports, legal statements, court testimony, and public discourse” (fausey and boroditsky 2010:644). thus, language is central to legal proceedings (robinson 2003; tiersma 1999) and without it there would be no way to establish legal validity (grewendorf and rathert 2009). in assessing the linkage between law and language, o’barr and conley posit, “language is the essential mechanism through which the power of law is realized, exercised, reproduced, and occasionally challenged and subverted” (o’barr and conley 1998:129). most of the time, language is articulated in legal discourse, i.e. the totality of codified linguistic usages attached to legal practice among different parties: clients, lawyers, judges, disputants and witnesses, etc. thus, law and language, each with its own unique and independent dimensions, interact on many armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 31 levels with reciprocal influences. this intersection constitutes multidisciplinary fields, variously known as legal linguistics, forensic linguistics, legal discourse, etc. legal professionals deploy the language and terminology of their own profession. in pursuing the aim of interpreting that language, linguists are employed to analyze and interpret the complex structure and planes of language system, as well as its particular. it is also worth mentioning that there is an “increasing sophistication of linguistics in interpreting language behavior in legal contexts as well as a greater acceptance by the law of linguistics insights as valid and helpful” (o’barr 2001:538). in this regard, language is systematically linked with the process of legal reasoning since understanding of the latter is central to understanding law and legal practice from a linguistic perspective. more specifically, legal reasoning incorporates the use of linguistic concepts by means of which legal phenomena or evidence can be described and explained. setting legal phenomena into a linguistic context, legal professionals naturally search for understanding about why events happen, especially when the outcome is important or unexpected, make inferences or attributions about causes and then put all the events in chronological order. in legal reasoning, it is essential to explain legal phenomena by searching for causes and effects (consequences). thus, legal reasoning is defined as describing, explaining, or judging legal phenomena with the use of linguistic concepts, such as causation. causation in legal reasoning the notion of causation is an indivisible part of human cognition, where causation finds its expression on the legal and linguistic levels, incorporating special structures. the notion of causation within the domain of legal and language studies is important and challenging. it is important because ascertaining how preexisting or aggravating conditions play a role in producing causes and subsequent consequences adds to understanding the causal nexus. it is challenging because causation in legal studies and linguistics does not involve simple cause-effect relations. for example, the task of identifying the cause-effect relations in the case of linguistic evidence is generally attributed to a forensic linguist, who enhances this process by establishing the linkage between the event and its cause. more specifically, a forensic linguist can employ certain foundational principles of linguistics for evaluating the usage of the given linguistic evidence. this may be done through proving that linguistic evidence or the method is scientifically valid, through substantiating assertions made without linguistic evidence-based support or through determining the validity of a particular confession, etc. however, it should be mentioned at the outset that whenever linguistic evidence is an element of forensic expert opinion, it is not the responsibility of a forensic linguist to solely establish causation beyond a reasonable doubt. in this regard, “courts often insist that the causal questions which they have to face must be determined on common-sense principles” (hart and honore 1985:26) by different participants of a legal process. more specifically, the jury is tasked to determine the questions of fact, such as causation, and the judge is tasked to determine the questions of law, such as sufficient evidentiary basis (e.g. cogent evidence in the form of expert evidence), the scopes of rules, and the allocation of risks in addiarmenian folia anglistika linguistics 32 tion to other responsibilities. to illustrate, some language crimes are defined in such a way that a conduct accompanied by intention to cause a harmful result may constitute the crime without regard to whether that result actually occurs. for example, it is forgery to make a false writing with intent to defraud, though no one except the author of writing sees it so that no one is actually defrauded. however, some crimes necessitate the occurrence of a certain specific result of a conduct for its commission. this may be illustrated by an example that false pretenses may probably be committed by one who recklessly makes a false statement not knowing whether the statement is true or false. thus, emergent trends in forensic linguistics have delineated into a linguistic contention that the “importance of the linguistic reconstruction of the event turns the formulation describing it into the principal factor uniting the legal text on a syntagmatic level, on a syntactic-discursive level and on the level of the lexical structure” (azuelos-atias 2007:33). another aspect of this intersection between legal practice and language is very instrumental for the prosecution. namely, the “prosecution’s narrative must prove the existence of the causal relations mentioned in the legal definition of the offence in order to infer the criminal responsibility of the defendant” (azuelos-atias 2007:24). it is not enough for criminal liability that the defendant conducts himself or herself with an intention to produce the specified result, or that he or she conducts in such a manner to recklessly create a risk of that result; there exists the problem of causation. from a legalistic perspective, causation is defined as the “relationship between an act and the consequences it produces. it is one of the elements that must be proved before an accused can be convicted of a crime in which the effect of the act is part of the definition of the crime” (martin 2003:68). causation is further delineated into two major types: the “effective or immediate cause of the damage (causa causans) and any other cause in the sequence of events leading up to it (causa sine qua non)” (martin 2003:69). from a linguistic standpoint, the concept of causation is defined as “some relation of determination between two events, with a prior event resulting in or giving rise to a subsequent event” (frawley 1992:158). this phenomenon is modelled into causal chains that “consist of a series of segments, each of which relates to two participants in the event; a single participant may be involved in more than one segment” (levin and hovav 2005:117-18). to put it differently, a series of events forms the causal nexus, in which the relationship is connected via spatiotemporally continuous sequences of causal intermediates. thus, the spatiotemporal continuum necessitates temporal sequence of events, i.e. a cause precedes an effect or effects in the causal nexus. the general pattern is that each event is both the effect of what happened before it and the cause of the next event, e.g. if event a is a cause of event b, and event b is a cause of event c, then event a is a cause of event c. this construct has been extensively elaborated in linguistic literature. in pursuit of providing a particular constellation of certain insights and major developments in the linguistic theory of causation, several fundamentals are worth explicating. situations that include the notion of causation are mainly comprised of “causal complex” that is a “complete set of events and conditions necessary for the causal consequent to occur” (hobbs 2005:181). hobbs further delineates “causal complex” as a “collection of eventualities (events or states), armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 33 whose holding or happening entails that the effect will happen.” stemming from this theory, it may be stated that causation most often embeds events or actions, rather than states in the relationship between the cause and effect. some event or actions not only reach a previously set aim, but also may initiate a single or series of further actions. the causal nexus, i.e. the cause-effect relationship, rests on a fundamental premise that the effect is an event, action or state of affairs that is caused by the cause, i.e. another event/action or entity. namely, cause is the reason behind the event, explaining why or how events happen; whereas, effect is the result of the event, i.e. the consequence of the action or the outcome of what happened. it should be mentioned that an outcome may be perceived to have internal or external causes and may vary over time. what is cause and effect is often dependent on which time horizon is chosen. thus, it may be stated that the cause-effect relationship is multidimensional in regard to time and locus, i.e. the location of the cause. basically, the causal nexus factually describes an event or action that is caused by another event or action. this relationship may be presented in the following four patterns: 1. single cause – single effect nexus, in which a single cause produces a single effect. e.g. trigger of an explosive bullet à extensive physical damage 2. single cause – multiple effects nexus, in which a single cause produces multiple effects. e.g. sexual harassment by a supervisor at workplace à job termination, internal office investigation, financial liability of a supervisor 3. multiple causes – single effect nexus, in which several causes produce a single effect. e.g. effective collection of evidence, thorough investigation of evidence, interviewing witnesses ® appropriate legal judgment of responsibility 4. multiple causes – multiple effects nexus, in which several causes produce several effects. e.g. a greater number of patrolling policemen on the streets, a greater number of neighborhood watch groups on the streets à decrease of crime in the neighborhood, enhanced informal social control it is also substantial to identify the necessary causal connection between the conduct and the result of conduct. a key to establishing causation is to prove that the conduct is the “proximate cause” of the result in linguistic evidence. this includes both direct and indirect causation. often, legal cause is the factual or direct cause of harm. proximate cause is a flexible concept. it permits fact-finders, namely a forensic linguist, to sort through various factual causes and determine who is liable for the result. a certain result is caused under two different circumstances: (1) when a causer desires that result, whatever the likelihood of that result occurring, and (2) when a causer knows that such a result is substantially certain to occur, whatever his or her desire concerning that result. in the realm of causation, this means that (1) a causer’s conduct must be a substantial factor in armenian folia anglistika linguistics 34 bringing about the effect, and (2) in addition the actual result cannot be brought about in a manner too different from the intended manner. thus, in the spatiotemporal relationship of cause and effect, proximity is the criterion that differentiates the causal nexus. the function of proximity has proven difficult to identify in language. proximity is a concept that requires the evaluation of factual states of affairs (e.g. non-linguistic settings) and linguistic evidence. proximity mainly focuses on two components of the causal nexus – its focus being the relative positioning of the causer vis-à-vis the causee. in the general logics of identifying proximity, it is important to discuss the expressions of “cause” and “effect” in language. the discussion will be brief and mainly based on certain illustrations in statutes. for example, the expression “cause” alone does very frequently occur in statutes although the expression “effect” is comparatively rare. instead, a set of other causal expressions may be used both in statutory and legal language, such as “due to,” “owing to,” “result of,” “attributable to,” “lead to,” “the consequence of,” and “caused by.” in some cases, such causal expressions may substitute the expression “effect” without alteration of meaning. yet very often this substitution cannot be made without change of meaning or gross incongruity of expression. the “use of the term ‘effect’ is in fact fairly definitely confined to cases where the antecedent is literally a change or activity of some sort (as distinct from a persistent state or negative condition), and where the event spoken of as the effect is a change brought about in a person or continuing thing” (hart and honore 1985:27). the above discussion is to illustrate that the majority of events are interconnected and embed the chains of actions within themselves in the causal nexus. the causal nexus is divided into three main components, every one of which denotes a different aspect of causation. these three components in the causal nexus are the causer, causative verb, and the causee. the causer: the causer is the instigator or the energy source of the action. there are some actions that do not require intention. when these actions are transferred into linguistic expressions, the central idea becomes the impersonal verb, i.e. the predicate and language syntax demands a subject. e.g. it rained all morning. e.g. this year it will snow all winter. in the examples above, the central idea is the action, expressed by weather verbs. as weather verbs do not necessitate an instigator, they couple with dummy subject to form a grammatically and syntactically correct sentence. the absence of notional subject indicates the fact that there is no causation in this type of sentences. conversely, further discussion is needed for sentences where subject is not dummy. the following examples may illustrate the point: e.g. in this time of the year the sun rises too early. e.g. some men were killed by storms and accidents. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 35 in the first example, the action happens without any physical force used by the causer. the sun rises without any external penetration. meanwhile, the second sentence not only embodies causative verb, but also expresses the causal nexus. the causer, i.e. storms and accidents, uses force to kill men. therefore, the first component in the causal nexus is the causer, i.e. the instigator or the energy source of the action. it is the starting point in the process of causation, which, in the majority of cases, is also in control of the situation. causative verb: causative verb is the key component in the causal nexus as it controls the flow of action. the instigator initiates the action, carried out by causative verb and further passed on to the causee, forcing it to undergo a change of state. in other words, causative verb is the intermediate link between the causer and the causee, i.e. the intention and consequence. causative verbs generally embed actions that carry consequences and results. however, one and the same phenomenon can possess the notion of causation in one instance and be devoid of it in another. e.g. he died quietly before the sunrise. e.g. harry killed the criminal without a spark of doubt. as it may be inferred from the above examples, both instances indicate one and the same state – the death, but the settings are different. in the first example, the instigator dies naturally, without any force provoking it. while in the second sentence, the death occurs not naturally, but intentionally. the first verb to die is non-causative, yet the second verb to kill is causative. causative verbs can be of different types: verbs with semantically embedded meanings, combining both the cause and the result (lexical causatives), verbs with adjectival roots entailing verb-forming affixes to express causation (morphological causatives), and notional verbs in combination with auxiliary verbs (syntactic causatives) (hladký and růžička 2001:36). thus, causative verb is the obligatory nucleus in the causal nexus and requires the causer and the causee to complete the action. the causee: the final component in the causative nexus is the causee, i.e. the entity that bears an effect or result of the action or undergoes a change of state. as a consequence of the action instigated by causative verb, the causee undergoes a change of state. levin and rappaport hovav (2005) elaborate on the definition of the causee. the causees “are presumably arguments of an event embedded under the causing event that includes the cause and, thus, will have a less prominent realization than the cause” (levin and hovav 2005:169). it may be inferred that although the causee is not in control, its presence is an absolute necessity in each causative situation. discussing the component of the causee, it is important to distinguish two types of causation – direct and indirect. in both cases there is a possibility of a temporal or spatial gap. more specifically, an action can be originated in one case at one time and be completed at another time, i.e. a person can be wounded on the street, but die in hospital the next day. the gap is almost always existent, but its length depends on a situation (frawley 1992:166). in the case of direct causation, maximum conceptual closeness between the causer and the causee is observed. an action contains no immediate causer, armenian folia anglistika linguistics 36 i.e. an action is directly instigated and implemented by the causer. there is no additional participation involved, and a temporal and spatial gap is at the minimum. the situation is different in the case of indirect causation, where the instigator and the actor are not one and the same entity. the instigator can initiate an action by giving out an order to a subordinate or initiating a special setting, but the instigator does not perform the action. in such cases, the existence of an intermediate causer is added, who, although not the instigator, is the immediate causer of an action. the spatial and temporal gap is at the maximum, thus elongating the actual relation between the causer and the causee. e.g. bella stabbed the thief with the kitchen knife and killed him. although there are no explicit hints about time or location in this example, it can be easily inferred that some time passed after the process of stabbing before the thief died. the thief could have died literally five minutes later or could have died in hospital the next day. spatial and temporal specifics are not observable in this example as there is no context, but they are, surely possible. if the thief died from the wound of the knife, a direct causation is observed, but if the knife provoked internal bleeding, which later became the main cause of death, causation is indirect with an intermediate causer. despite the fact that the notion of causation is delineated immediately and subconsciously in the world of actions, there are certain rules and constructions specifically designed to express causation in language. lexical causatives as any other language phenomenon, causation and its linguistic means of expression substantiate diverse nature of all languages. the concept of causation in modern english can be expressed by three means: morphological, syntactic, and lexical. the first two categories stand for the flexibility of the english language, as auxiliary words and affixes are joined to express new meanings. lexical causatives, on the other hand, demonstrate the richness of english lexicon, the availability of special verbs and the possibility of new creations. lexical causatives, known as covert and underived causatives, stand out in legal reasoning due to two features. first, they bear the meaning of causation from within since these verbs are always causative, even though they can sometimes be used in noncausative constructions. as an illustration, lexical causative verb to stab should be observed. the verb embeds the denotation of to cause to die. e.g. police are expected to charge a father with attempted murder after his fifteen month old son was found stabbed in his cot. (bnc 2007: k28 75) e.g. a few hours after the accident, yankel rosenbaum, 29, an australian hasidic jew, was stabbed to death by a black brooklyn gang in what appeared to be a retaliatory attack. (bnc 2007: hla 920) armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 37 these two examples illustrate that the causer may differ according to the context. in the first example, the instigator is not yet known. a possible instigator, i.e. the father, is assumed to have intentionally caused his fifteen month old son to die by stabbing him. in the second example, the instigator is already proved to be a black brooklyn gang that caused yankel rosenbaum to die by stabbing him to death. these two examples illustrate that the causees (a fifteen month old son and yankel rosenbaum) would not have died at that moment without the causers’ participation (a father and a black brooklyn gang). it is evident that the main stimulator of causation in these sentences is the causative verb to stab. conversely, lexical causative verb to kill with the same denotation of to cause to die can be found in sentences devoid of any causation. e.g. from every shadowy corner in the great room appeared a growling animal, ready to kill me, it seemed. (bnc 2007:gwh 38) e.g. alice went out to monica, who was transformed by fury, ready to kill, as alice could see. (bnc 2007: evi 1695) stemming from the contention that the structural and semantic nucleus of any sentence is the verb (apresyan 1995; seuren 1996), causative verb to kill is analyzed from the viewpoint of surface-syntactic and deep-semantic structures. the surface-syntactic structure signifies the form of verb, whereas the deep-semantic structure signifies the meaning of verb. firstly, from the view of surface-syntactic structure, the verb to kill is used in infinitive to express ability and readiness, but not to instigate causation. further on, the verb to kill is a lexical causative, and from the viewpoint of its deep-semantic structure, it preserves its causative meaning even in the examples mentioned above. as a verb with the semantically-embedded causative meaning, it necessitates a semantic causee. secondly, lexical causatives do not embed any affix or auxiliary word. they incorporate the meanings of both cause and effect in one lexeme, hence providing maximum conceptual closeness. so, there is minimum spatial and temporal gap between the cause and effect. generally, the notion of causation is closely embedded with the concepts of transitivity and intransitivity of verbs. bache states (1991:155) that verbs that do not take objects are intransitive, and those taking objects are transitive. all causative verbs are transitive as they necessitate two components in the causal nexus (moreno 2006:79). the first component is the causer, the instigator of the action, and the other one is the causee, i.e. the entity that bears the effect or result of the action or undergoes a change of state. at the syntactic level, transitive causatives are ditransitive and necessitate both a subject (which can serve in the semantic role of the agent) and an object (which can serve in the semantic role of the patient or experiencer). further distinction between agentive (transitive) and non-agentive (intransitive) verb forms is instrumental in legal reasoning as “linguistic framing influences participants’ judgments about blame and punishment… agentive descriptions of events invite more blame and more severe punishment than do nonagentive descriptions” (fausey and boroditsky 2010:648-9). they explicate that a “canonical armenian folia anglistika linguistics 38 agentive description (e.g. timberlake ripped the costume) includes a person as the subject in a transitive expression describing a change of state (in this case, ripping),” whereas a “canonical nonagentive description (e.g. the costume ripped) is intransitive and does not place the person as the subject for the change-of-state event” (fausey and boroditsky 2010:644-5). this explication is central to understanding legal reasoning in court proceedings as the transitivity-intransitivity linguistic dichotomy in law not only underlines the attributional consequences of transitivity (e.g. blame), but also the actual outcomes of these attributions (e.g. punishment). meanwhile, these two phenomena should not be regarded as identical. most causative verbs are transitive and appear in transitive constructions. transitive verbs, on the other hand, always require an object to pass the action to, but are not necessarily causative. to illustrate this contention, the following example should be analyzed. e.g. jonathan constantly kept the ball in his hands. the verb to keep is transitive, but not causative. that is why a change-of-state in the object is not identified. by being kept in jonathan’s hands the ball neither changes its location nor its size. it is of utmost importance to bring forward the notion of intransitivity. although this aspect itself does not have a direct impact on causatives, it allows the latter to expand the field of their functioning. all natural languages gradually tend to modify their own rules and eventually create new ones. as the usage of causatives expands, exceptions arise, which later find their reflection and place in the layers of language. ergative constructions it has already been mentioned that all causative verbs are transitive. however, there are many instances when intransitive verbs can express causation as well. these verbs are called ergative and contain features of both transitive and intransitive verbs. thus, ergatives are intransitive verbs used in transitive constructions. the key factor in this case is the construction, which is transitive. these verbs are usually called ergative causatives of intransitives (davidse and geyskens 1998:158). ergatives are a subtype of causative verbs and usually necessitate two animate participants. they are called differently by different scholars, namely induced action causatives (levin 1993) or double agentive verbs (van valin 2001). as a rule, intransitive verbs do not take objects. intransitive verbs are transformed into ergatives, once they take an object and denote a cause, control or energy source. e.g. sarah had a lot to think about, that’s why she decided to walk home. e.g. it was already late, and damian walked sarah home. the examples above illustrate different dimensions of the verb to walk. as can be seen in these two examples, the verb to walk which is ordinarily intransitive appears with a direct object in the active variant of the resultative. more specifically, in the first senarmenian folia anglistikalinguistics 39 tence the instigator of the action is sarah, who performs the action of walking, which is internally caused. first, the verb to walk is not causative, meaning it initially cannot convey causation. second, the verb to walk is not ordinarily transitive, meaning there is no participant to receive the effect of walking. there is only an adverbial of place, which does not undergo a change. therefore, the verb in the first example is intransitive and non-causative. the second example contains an action generated by damian, who is the instigator of an action directed to sarah, the second participant undergoing a change. there are two participants and a change-of-state in the second sentence. hence, this leads to an ergative causative. on the other hand, there is a space for debate, as there is no physical force involved in the action. sarah herself commences the action of walking, while damian only accompanies her. that is why these types of instances are usually considered causatives based on accompaniment (levin 1993:18). davidse and geyskens (1998) suggest that these types of processes require co-participation of the participants. speaking about peculiarities of ergative causatives, it should also be noted that ergativeness is very similar to transitiveness, but there are a few differences. from the semantic point of view, one of differences is the alternation of deep cases or semantic roles (agent, patient, goal, instrument, experiencer) played by noun in relation to the action. transitive structures necessitate an instigator, the agent (in most cases syntactically expressed by the subject) that initiates the action and achieves a certain aim, the goal (syntactically expressed by the object) (halliday 1998:164). this is the most common transitive construction. ergative constructions embed the same scheme, but their aim is the change-of-state in the patient (syntactically expressed by the object), which can be animate and inanimate. further on, according to halliday (1968:185), the action is goaldirected in the case of transitivity, i.e. the action is extended beyond the syntactic object; whereas ergative constructions are based on the extent whether instigation is from outside or inside, and whether the patient undergoes changes as a result of the action. moreover, davidse (1994:75) adds that the idea of cause-and-effect is especially stressed in ergative constructions. e.g. he ate the pie completely. (the goal of the instigator is to eat the pie not to influence it) e.g. the general marched the soldiers. (the instigator acts for the purpose of influencing the soldiers to perform a specific action) treating the distinctions of ergative verbs, lakoff (1977:244) introduces a number of conditions and properties, the most significant ones of which are presented below: 1. agentivity – a human agent does something that brings about a change of state in the patient, 2. energy source – the agent is the source of energy for the process brought about, 3. physical manipulation – the agent is in direct physical contact with the patient, 4. control – the agent controls process which the patient undergoes, 5. intention – the agent initiates the process deliberately, 6. patient – an (in-)animate patient undergoes change of state. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 40 7. single event – the agent’s action and the patient’s change of state constitute a single event. this classification can be illustrated by the example of the ergative verb to march from the prospective of lakoff’s properties. e.g. the general marched the soldiers. in ergative constructions, although the agent is the instigator of the action (1), in some cases the source of the energy can be the patient itself (lyons 1968: 365). even though the action takes place by the order of the general, i.e. the agent, the energy needed for the order to be carried out is provided by the soldiers themselves, the patient, i.e. they move their feet to march (2) (talmy 1985:81). furthermore, causation in this case lacks any physical force or contact (3). the action of marching is stimulated by a mental effort, namely ordering. it is important to mention that the patient must be animate, as inanimate patients cannot possess their own energy source and demand a physical contact from the agent to carry out the action. moving on to the next point, a division of control over the action should be discussed. although the general is officially in control of the causative situation, the soldiers also have control over their bodies that act in accordance with the given order (4). the action is carried out intentionally (5). the patient, the soldiers, change their location and position by marching, undergoing a change-of-state (6). the action, however, is not a single event, but a chain of several acts (7). hence, it can be concluded that the example touches upon all the points of lakoff’s ergative prototype, but does not correspond to all of them. it belongs to the marginal causative type. such deviations are called non-direct causation (delancey 1984:207). as geuder and weisgeber state, the immediate causer of an action may be one entity and the instigator – a completely different one (geuder and weisgeber 1999:12). in cases of external and indirect causation, the immediate causer may be a person to merely carry out a part of causation. the indirect causer, who is also the instigator, is either not involved in the actual process or retains very weak presence. indirect causation takes place with the introduction of a new causer (whether an agent or other factors) between the direct causer and the causee. this results in the creation of several events together forming a chain of causes (halliday 1966:38). consider the following example. e.g. hitler killed thousands of jews. although sometimes understood only subconsciously, hitler is recognized as the instigator of the action, but the actual killing is attributed to other unknown officers serving at the conservation camps. however, this is not syntactically evident. hitler did not kill the jews himself, he only gave out the orders. therefore, causation here is indirect because there are intermediate forces. hitler is the indirect causer, the officers are the intermediate ones. the direct involvement of the instigator and direct causation can be illustrated by the following example. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 41 e.g. officer franz wagner raised the gun and killed the jew who started the rebellion in the camp. conclusion as linguistic data suggests, legal reasoning incorporates the use of linguistic concepts by means of which linguistic phenomena or evidence can be described and explained. setting legal phenomena into a linguistic context, legal professionals naturally search for understanding about why events happen, especially when the outcome is important or unexpected, make inferences or attributions about causes and then put all the events in chronological order. linguistic aspects of causation are instrumental in legal reasoning in modern english, particularly elaborating on the expression of the main features of lexical causatives due to their direct causation. a series of events forms the causal nexus, in which the relationship is connected via spatiotemporally continuous sequences of causal intermediates. in spatiotemporal relationship of cause and effect, proximity is the criterion which differentiates the causal nexus. all claims made in this research paper are subject to further empirical investigation since causatives constitute an undiscovered domain, which has the potential to reveal new findings about structures and usage in different contexts. references: 1. azuelos-atias, s. (2007) a pragmatic analysis of legal proofs of criminal intent. amsterdam: john benjamins publishing company. 2. davidse, k. (1994) experiential variation in the ditransitive paradigm. / 21st international systemic functional congress. gent. 3. davidse, k. and geyskens, s. (1998) have you walked the dog yet? the ergative causativization of intransitives. / word. vol. 49 (2), pp.155-80. 4. dixon, r.m. (2000) a typology of causatives: form, syntax and meaning. // changing valency: case studies in transitivity. / ed. by dixon r.m.w. and aikhenvald, al.y. cambridge: cup, pp.30-83. 5. dowty, d. (1979) word meaning and montague grammar. dordrecht: reidel. 6. fausey, c.m. and boroditsky, l. (2010) subtle linguistic cues influence perceived blame and financial liability. / psychonomic bulletin and review. vol. 17(5), pp.644650. 7. frawley, w. (1992) linguistic semantics. hillsdale: lawrence erlbaum associates. 8. geuder, w. and weisgerber, m. (1998) manner and causation in movement verbs. available at: <www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/papers/zaspil/articles/zp44/geuderweisgerber.pdf> [accessed 15.04.2014] 9. grewendorf, g. and rathert, m. (2009) language and law – new applications of formal linguistics. // formal linguistics and law / ed. by grewendorf, g. and rathert, m. the netherlands: mouton de gruyter. 10. halliday, m.a.k. (1968) notes on transitivity and theme in english. // journal of armenian folia anglistika linguistics 42 linguistics. vol. 3. cambridge: cup, pp.37-81. 11. halliday, m.a.k (1994) an introduction to functional grammar. london: edward arnold. 12. hart, h.l.a and honore, t. (1985) causation in the law. 2nd ed. oxford: at the clarendon press. 13. hladký, j. and růžička, m. (2001) a functional onomatology of english. brno: masarykova univerzita. 14. hobbs, j.r. (2005) toward a useful concept of causality for lexical semantics. / journal of semantics. vol. 22:181-209. 15. lakoff, g. (1977) linguistic gestalts. // papers from the 13th regional meeting of the chicago linguistic society. / ed. by w.a. beach, s.e. fox, s. philosoph. 459-471. chicago: chicago university press. 16. leech, g. (1983) principles of pragmatics. london: longman. 17. levin, b. (1993) english verb classes and alternations. chicago: chicago university press. 18. levin, b. and hovav, m.r. (2005) argument realization. cambridge: cup. 19. lyons, j. (1968) introduction to theoretical linguistics. cambridge, england: cup. 20. martin, e.a. (ed.) (2003) a dictionary of law. 5th ed. oxford: oup. 21. o’barr, w.m. and conley, j.m. (1998) just words: law, language, and power. chicago: univeristy of chicago press. 22. o’barr, w.m. (2001) language, law and power. // the new handbook of language and social psychology. / ed. by robinson, w.p. and giles, h. england: john wiley & sons. 23. robinson, m. (2003) language and the law. / proceedings from a conference. buffalo, ny: william s. hein. 24. schauer, f. (1993) law and language. ny: ny university press 25. seuren, p. (1996) semantic syntax. oxford / cambridge: blackwell. 26. shibatani, m. (ed.) (1976) the grammar of causative constructions: syntax and semantics 6. new york: academic press. 27. song, j.j. (1996) causatives and causation: a universal-typological perspective. london and new york: longman. 28. talmy, l. (1985) lexicalization patterns: semantic structures in lexical forms. // language typology and syntactic description iii: grammatical categories and the lexicon. / ed. by shopen, t. cambridge: cup, pp.57-149. 29. tiersma, p.m. (1999) legal language. chicago: university of chicago press. 30. van valin, r. (2001) lexical representation, co-composition, and linking syntax and semantics. available at: <http://linguistics.buffalo.edu/research/rrg/vanvalin_papers/lexrepcocomplnkgrrg.pdf.> [accessed april 2014] armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 43 ä³ï׳é³ï³ýáõãû³ý 黽í³çù³ëï³ûçý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñý çñ³í³ï³ý ñçùý³íáñù³ý ù»ç å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù ðá¹ í³ íç ýå³ ï³ïý ¿ í»ñ ñ³ý»é å³ ù³ ý³ ï³ ïçó ³ý· é» ñ» ýáõù ç ñ³ í³ ï³ý ñçù ý³ íáñ ù³ý ù»ç å³ï ׳ é³ ï³ ýáõã û³ý 黽 í³ ï³ý ³ é³ýó ý³ ñ³ï ïáõã ûáõý ý» ñç ï³ñ¨á ñáõã ûáõ ýá` ³ý¹ ñ³ ¹³é ý³ éáí ù³ë ý³ íá ñ³ å»ë ç ù³ë ï³ ûçý ñ³û»ó³ï»ñåçý: ä³ ù³ ý³ ï³ ïçó ³ý· é» ñ» ýáõù ç ñ³ í³ ï³ý ñçù ý³ íáñ ù³ý ù»ç ï³ñ¨áñ ¹»ñ áõ ýç áõõ õ³ ïç å³ï ׳ é³ ï³ý ï³å ëï»õ íáõ μ³ é³ å³ ß³ ñ³ ûçý å³ï ׳ é³ ï³ý ý» ñç ñçù ý³ ï³ý ñ³ï ï³ ýçß ý» ñç ¹ñë ̈ á ñáõ ùá: ¸»å ù» ñç ùç ³ù μáõ ç³ ï³ý ß³ñù ï³ ñáõ ¿ ëï»õ í»é å³ï ׳ é³ ñ»ï¨³ý ù³ ûçý ï³ å³ ûçý ñ³ý ·áõûó, áñ ï»õ ñ³ ñ³ μ» ñáõã ûáõ ýá ¹ñë¨áñ íáõù ¿ å³ï ׳ é³ ï³ý ùç ç³ýï û³é ï³ å» ñç ï³ ñ³ í³ ï³ý-å³ ù³ ý³ ï³ ûçý ß³ ñáõ ý³ ï³ ï³ý ñ³ çáñ ¹³ ï³ ýáõã û³ùμ: ä³ï ׳ é³ ñ»ï¨³ý ù³ ûçý ï³ ñ³ í³ ï³ýå³ ù³ ý³ ï³ ûçý ñ³ ñ³ μ» ñáõã û³ý ù»ç ã³ ÷á ñá ßç ãá ùá ï³ íá ñáõã ûáõýý ¿, áñý ¿é ï³ñ μ» ñ³ ïáõù ¿ å³ï ׳ é³ ñ»ï¨³ý ù³ ûçý ï³ åá: ëèíãâèñòè÷åñêèå è ñåìàíòè÷åñêèå àñïåêòû êàóçàòèâíîñòè ïðàâîâîì îáîñíîâàíèè â ñîâðåìåííîì àíãëèéñêîì ÿçûêå öåëüþ äàí íîé ñòàòüè ÿâ ëÿåò ñÿ âûÿâëåíèå çíà ÷è ìîñòè ÿçû êî âûõ àñ ïåê òîâ êàó çà òèâ íîñòè â ïðà âî âîì îáîñ íî âà íèè â ñîâ ðå ìåí íîì àíã ëèéñ êîì ÿçû êå. â ñòàòüå óäå ëÿåòñÿ îñî áîå âíè ìà íèå ñå ìàí òè ÷åñ êèì àñ ïåê òàì. ëèíã âèñòè ÷åñ êèå àñ ïåê òû êàó çà òèâ íîñòè èã ðàþò âàæ íóþ ðîëü â ïðà âî âîì îáîñ íî âà íèè, â ÷àñò íîñòè, âàæ íû ðàç ðà áîò êè ãëàâ íûõ îñî áåí íîñòåé ëåê ñè ÷åñ êèõ êàó çà òè âîâ, îáóñ ëîâ ëåí íûõ ïðÿ ìû ìè ïðè ÷èí íî-ñëåäñò âåí íû ìè ñâÿ çÿ ìè. ðÿä ñî áû òèé ôîð ìè ðóåò ïðè ÷èí íóþ ñâÿçü, â êî òî ðîé îò íî øå íèÿ ñâÿ çà íû ñ ïðîñò ðàíñò âåí íî-âðå ìåí íîé íåï ðå ðûâ íîé ïîñ ëå äî âà òåëü íîñòüþ ïðè ÷èí íûõ ïðî ìå æó òî÷ íûõ ñâÿ çåé. â ïðîñò ðàíñò âåí íî-âðå ìåí íîé âçàè ìîñ âÿ çè ïðè ÷è íû è ñëåäñò âèÿ îñíîâíûì êðè òå ðèåì, îò ëè ÷àþùèì ïðè ÷èí íóþ ñâÿçü, ÿâ ëÿåò ñÿ ïðèá ëè æåí íîñòü. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 44 maket 2013:layout 1.qxd variability of punctuation marks in english lilit tigranyan yerevan state linguistic university p unctuation, like all elements of language is characterized by certain pragmatic and interpretive potential. punctuation is an important text-forming means, as it contributes to the implementation of communication between the author of the text and the reader. interacting with each other in a specific situational context, they affect the reader only in the text; in a particular text structure (demidova 2003:4). punctuation marks form a semiotic system, which is a means of adequate organization of a written text. the semiotic character оf punctuation becomes apparent due to the conditions of their functioning, the register of the text in particular. in addition, the semiotic nature of punctuation, its system, as well as the principles, rules and regulations shaping the text and, as a consequence, the functions of punctuation have undergone considerable changes for many centuries. the functions, pragmatic and interpretive potential of punctuation first of all depend on the historical period and the type of discourse in which they function, as the choice of the punctuation marks is conditioned by the properties and specific features of the discourse. besides, a number of other no less important factors affect the functioning of punctuation: the variety of the language (british or american), the style and the substyle of the text, the author’s individual style and even the features of a particular text. thus, a comprehensive analysis of the characteristics of functioning of punctuation system takes into consideration a number of factors, both linguistic and extra-linguistic, such as: 1) the historical era, 2) the functional style, 3) the domain of the text, 4) the author’s style, 5) the syntactic structure of the text, 6) the semantic structure of the text. in the case of fiction the literary trend to which a piece of literature belongs should also be taken into account. 60 works in british english have been analyzed with the aim of singling out the specific usage of punctuation marks in three functional styles: fiction, drama and scholarly writing. the comparison of the system of punctuation marks used in these styles shows that fiction and drama mainly employ the signs of the primary punctuation system. unlike fiction and drama, the signs of both the primary and peripheral punctuation systems are used in scholarly writing. the functioning of the following punctuation marks has been compared in these styles: the parentheses and the ellipsis. the word “parentheses” appeared in english towards the end of the 14th century from latin via greek. the parentheses mark the inclusion of additional information in a sentence and separate insertions from the main text so that its flow should not be interrupted. eric partridge mentions that “... without them, the sentence is grammatically and logically complete: they explain or modify, but they do not determine the sense” (partridge 2005:65). insertions can be included with the help of three types of the sign: parentheses, or round brackets; square brackets and curly brackets. the latter sign is used in scientific armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 47 writing, mostly in mathematics. round and square brackets are used both in fiction and drama, and in scholarly writing; but their functions and distribution depend on the stylistic affiliation of the text. in drama, square brackets are used to separate stage directions from the characters’ speech. this function of square brackets has greatly increased in the course of time because lengthy stage directions have become a characteristic feature of drama at the turn of the 19th century, e.g., in “hamlet” the number of square brackets comprises 0.52%, whereas in “pygmalion” by bernard shaw it reaches 10.3%. fiction avoids using square brackets and employs round brackets instead. but, on the whole, the percentage of round brackets in fiction is very low unless it is the specific feature of the author’s style, e.g., james joyce uses 4.6% of round brackets in his ulysses to insert grammatical units of different grammatical structures to indicate a number of functions such as: concomitant actions: bringing his host down and kneeling he heard twine with his second bell the first bell in the transept (he is lifting his) and, rising, heard (now i am lifting) their two bells (he is kneeling) twang in diphthong. (joyce 1922: episode 1) clarification: cantrell and cochrane’s ginger ale (aromatic). the author’s or the character’s attitude: excuse, miss, there’s a (whh!) just a (whh!) fluff. contrast: he wore a loose neckcloth and altogether he looked (though he was not) a dying man. (joyce 1922: episode 1) the functions of round brackets used in scholarly writing are mostly specific, not met in fiction and drama. among these functions the following can be mentioned: defining the terms: […] in both spoken and written discourse (any continuous use of language which is longer than one sentence). (thorne 1997:1) exemplifying: new words are rarely added because pronouns (e.g. i, you, she, he […]), [… ] (ibid:4) introducing symbols: nouns (n) are traditionally known as naming words; [… ] (ibid:4) mentioning alternatives: identify the main lexical verb(s) and mark the main clause(s). (ibid:41) enumerating the section of the text: in received pronunciation (rp – see section 5.2) …(ibid:50) s. greenbaum includes these functions in the group of minor functions of the round brackets, but for scientific writing they can be considered major functions because of a great frequency of their occurrence (greenbaum 1996:539). besides, it is seen from the examples above that the specific feature of scholarly writing is the use of a great number of typographic means (italics, bold, capitalization, etc) that facilitate the perception of the information. the ellipsis is used to indicate 1) the omission in the quotation, 2) hesitation and suspense, and 3) something left unsaid, 4) interval and hiatus, and 5) reflectiveness. in its armenian folia anglistika linguistics 48 former function the ellipsis is used in scholarly writing and does not correspond to any prosodic feature. e.g.: a liturgy should be as self-explanatory as possible and, above all, readily intelligible: “the rites ... should be within the people’s powers of comprehension, and normally should not require much explanation”. (crystall 1964:151) the latter four functions of the ellipsis prosodically correspond to a complete break in the phonation, especially if it occurs at the end of the passage; or a filled hesitation pause. in these two functions the ellipsis is met in declamatory style, especially in drama. e.g. (1) for old mary ann she doesn’t care a damn, but, hising up her petticoats... he crammed his mouth with fry and munched and droned. (joice 1922:episode 1) (2) jack. i never knew you when you weren’t . . . algernon. what shall we do after dinner? go to a theatre? (wilde 1895:act 1) it is worth mentioning that before the 19th century ellipsis was not used either in fiction, or in drama; in the 19th century it was used only in drama. n.d. azarova (azarova 2001:1) mentions that the scientific discourse reveals a steady tendency towards a unified use of punctuation (and therefore their unambiguous interpretation), which results in increased semiotic nature of punctuation (in other types of writing it is decreases). the analysis of the texts of scholarly writing discloses the fact that the unified character of the punctuation system in this register is overestimated. punctuation marks are of multifunctional character not only in declamatory style, but in the scientific discourse as well. thus, we may conclude that: 1. the variability of punctuation marks in english is accounted for by the historical, stylistic, structural and other linguistic and extralinguistic factors. 2. the comparative analysis of the punctuation marks used in fiction, drama and scientific prose has proved that scientific prose makes use of a much larger system of punctuation marks than fiction and drama. not only primary punctuation marks, but also punctuation marks belonging to the periphery of punctuation, typographical signs and formula are excessively employed in scientific prose, which enables the author to make the material presented more illustrative. 3. the functions of the types of discourse under study considerably differ both in the volume of their functions and the frequency of their occurrence and distribution. in this respect scientific prose is opposed to fiction and drama. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 49 references: 1. demidova, z.v. (2003) interpretatsionniy potentsial znakov prepinaniya v diskurse (deskriptivnij aspect) / dis….. kand. filol. nauk. krasnodar. 2. azarova, n.d. (2001) lingvopoeticheskie, semioticheskie i kommunikativnie osnovy anglijskoy punktuatsii: na materiale sovremennoy angloyazychnoy khudozestvennoy prozy. / dis….. kand. filol. nauk. moskva. 3. crystall, d. (1964) a liturgical language in a linguistic perspective. new blackfriars, vol.46. issue 534. 4. joice, j. (1922) ulysses. episode 1. <http://www. online-literature.com/ jamesjoyce/ ulysses/1>. 5. wilde, o. (1895) the importance of being earnest. <http://www.online-literature.com/wilde/being_earnest>. 6. müller, ch. a. (2010) a glasgow voice: james kelman’s literary language. / thesis presented for the degree of doctor of philosophy. flinders university. 7. partridge, e. (2005) you have a point there. a guide to punctuation and its allies. with a chapter on american practice by john w. clark. london & new york: routledge. 8. thorne, s. (1997) mastering advanced english language. basingstoke, hampshire and new york: palgrave. 9. greenbaum, s. (1996) english grammar. oxford: oup. î»ï³¹ñ³ï³ý ýß³ýý»ñç ÷á÷áë³ï³ýáõãûáõýá ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù հá¹í³íá ýíçñí³í ¿ ³ý·é»ñ»ýç ï»ï³¹ñ³ï³ý ýß³ýý»ñç, ù³ëý³íáñ³å»ë ÷³ï³·íç ¨ μ³½ù³ï»ïç, ïçñ³éù³ý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñç í»ñéáõíáõãû³ýá ëáëáõûãç »ñ»ù ï»ë³ïý»ñáõù` ³ñó³ïáõù, ¹ñ³ù³ûáõù ¨ ·çï³ï³ý á×áõù: î»ï³¹ñ³ï³ý ýß³ýý»ñç ·áñí³μ³ ý³ï³ý ³ñå»ùá å³ûù³ý³íáñí³í ¿ ùç ß³ñù ·áñíáýýý»ñáí, áñáýó ãíáõù ï³ñ»éç ¿ ýß»é å³ïù³ï³ý ¹³ñ³ßñç³ýá, ëáëáõûãç ï»ë³ïá, ñ»õçý³ï³ûçý á×á ¨ ³ûéý: ö³ï³·í»ñá ¨ μ³½ù³ï»ïá, áñå»ë ï³ýáý, ï³ñμ»ñ ·áñí³éáõûãý»ñ »ý çñ³ï³ý³óýáõù ëáëáõûãç ýßí³í »ñ»ù ï»ë³ïý»ñáõù: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 50 microsoft word maket 2019-2 final.doc armenian folia anglistika linguistics 38 syntactic maxi-accidents in spontaneous speech of middle-class speakers of english karen velyan yerevan brusov state university of languages and social sciences abstract spontaneous spoken language is known to be rich in fragmented and nonintegrated chunks of speech. the latter are the result of syntactic “accidents”, which are indispensible elements of spontaneous talk. caused by a variety of pragmatic factors, syntactic accidents differ in their formal, lexical, and distributional features. with these features in view, we single out three main varieties of syntactic accidents: 1. maxi-accidents, 2. mini-accidents and 3. micro-accidents, which collectively constitute one whole paradigm. within the framework of the present article, the main focus of the analysis is on maxi-accidents in spontaneous talk of middle-class native speakers of english. based on the empirical data, the analysis outlines the key functional properties of maxi-accidents, such as their frequency of occurrence, positional characteristics and pragmatic reasons that lie behind maxi-accidents. key words: maxi-accidents, spontaneous talk, distributional properties, planning of ideas, lexical change, interrupted fragment. introduction spontaneous and non-spontaneous talks are known to vary in a number of linguistically important respects, including – but not limited to – vocabulary choice, syntactic structures, and intonation contours. extra-linguistic factors such as time constraints, face-to-face communication, background knowledge have direct correlation with speech production in spontaneous communication. in this regard, one of the key distinctions between planned and non-planned linguistics armenian folia anglistika 39 speech lies in the fact that the latter is mainly organized round unintegrated, that is, disconnected syntactic structures. the latter, otherwise called fragmented syntax (see, for example, miller and weinert 2009) appear when there is a break of the flow of surface syntax at the moment of speech. w. chafe addresses the phenomenon of fragmented syntax in his article «integration and involvement in speaking, writing and oral literature», emphasizing fragmented syntax arising from breaks as a property of spoken language (chafe 1982). in our research, we call this kind of breaks «syntactic accidents», which we define as follows: interruptions of the surface syntax in the flow of speech production, generated by pragmatic reasons and performance errors and resulting in syntactic fragments. syntactic accidents, however, are far from being homogenous as regards their formal properties, there being different reasons to generate them. based on lexico-syntactic features, we single out three main varieties of syntactic accidents in our research: maxi-accidents, mini-accidents, and micro-accidents, which collectively make up one whole paradigm. respectively, all three varieties possess their distinctive lexico-syntactic features. specifically, maxiaccidents arise when there is a break in the middle or at the beginning of the sentence, with a new sentence following, like in the following illustrations: 1. my perspective on this.. you see .. i went .. to a couple of years of undergraduate at ut,… (interview with j. duke) 2. i haven’t found it.. in different parts, for example, in.. in different um. employment situations it.. it may be very different. (interview with c. preston) mini-accidents arise when there is a break of the sentence, with the interrupted word or phrase (but not the sentence) repeated in the sequential segment of the sentence: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 40 1. of course, since american literature is my field, i think i.. i have a lot of a deep sense of the things that shape our culture and... (interview with s. kerr) 2. if i had a chance to live anywhere, i think i would probably.., other than austin, i would move to new york, probably for all the work opportunities. (interview with j. duke) and finally, micro-accidents arise when there is a break in the boundaries of a word in the sentence: 1. … then it would be a very differ.. difference, then i would say that’s been a complete transformation. (interview with ch. tiplady) 2. yeah, a lot more, so.. social expectations, more conservative views around race and migration and foreigners and all that sort of things. (interview with e. russell) however, these three basic types are not homogenous either and are further subdivided into divergent subtypes. in this article, we will be looking at the formal characteristics of maxi-accidents and the pragmatic reasons that lie behind them. objectives of the analysis it is assumed that syntactic accidents may display different formal features in spontaneous talk of representatives of different social classes: upper, middle, and low. from the wider scope of our research perspectives, it was our interest linguistics armenian folia anglistika 41 to see what kind of syntactic accidents come up to the surface in the talk of middle-class speakers – both males and females. from the narrower scope of the research, we were aimed at carrying out a mixed quantitative-qualitative analysis of syntactic maxi-accidents that arise in spontaneous talk of our target social group middle-class native speakers of english. in terms of the quantitative analysis, it was our interest to see the frequency of occurrence of different formal types of syntactic accidents. we were also curious to take a closer look at what may trigger interruptions in the talk of middle-class speakers, that is, what factors have immediate correlation with syntactic maxiaccidents. data and methods of the analysis to obtain empirical data for the analysis, a substantial number of informal audio-interviews were conducted with middle-aged (35-60) representatives of middle class in different areas of england (newcastle / northumbria), brighton / sussex), york city / yorkshire) and the usa (austin / texas), los angeles / california), columbia / south carolina). coming from our current objectives, we analyzed 16 interviews (8 interviewees per gender), with the average duration of 6.5 minutes. the interviews were then transcribed into written texts, which became the source for the analysis. to ensure communicative equality, all interviewees were asked the same questions, which have no linguistic relevance, namely: 1. “do you think that in the last 15 to 20 years there has been a transformation or at least a change of gender roles in your home city?”; 2. “how do you find social life in your home city?”. these two questions are contextually different and assume different content, which would provide different kinds of narrative and, respectively, a wider scope of syntactic structures in responses. in order to find out the varying frequency of maxiaccidents in spontaneous talk of our target social group, we implemented statistic analysis. dealing with the phenomenon of syntactic accidents, we could not but implement structural analysis. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 42 outcomes of the analysis as indicated in the introductory part of the article, each type of syntactic accidents is not homogenous and may display different formal, lexical, and distributional properties. in this part of the article, we will lay out the main findings that came up as a result of our analysis. the overall number of the maxi-accidents turned out to be 88. but this number will get broken down into smaller numbers as we look more closely at the different subtypes of maxiaccidents, which will be presented below. in terms of frequency of occurrence, it is maxi-accidents with a complete lexical change after the interruption that stand out in spontaneous talk. the overall number of maxi-accidents with a complete lexical change is 39, which makes up almost half the overall number of maxi-accidents. let us take a look at the illustrations extracted from different interviews with native speakers (the interrupted fragments are indicated as italic and bold, followed by double dots): 1. i mean.. 'cause remember the.. the prosecutors, they.. they worked together with the police, you know. (interview with p. boham) 2. i haven’t found it.. in different parts, for example, in.. in different um. employment situations it.. it may be very different. (interview with c. preston) 3. it was a good.. well, it's an interesting organization called “meet up”, and you might want to research this, “meet up brighton”, “meet up newcastle”, “meet up london”. (interview with ch. tiplady) linguistics armenian folia anglistika 43 it seems obvious from the examples that the interruptions of the initial sentences (i mean.., i haven’t found it.., it was a good..) are triggered by the new ideas that “pop up” in the minds of the speakers, which entails the interruption of the preceding sentence, with the latter being left “hanging”. the factor of new ideas is also justified by totally different lexical set in the sentences that follow the interrupted segments. maxi-accidents with a complete lexical change may also arise because of experiencing difficulty in phrasing and changing the planning of ideas. otherwise stated, when a speaker finds it difficult to carry on the wording of his discourse down the syntactic “path” that he originally chose, he has to shift to a phrasing which is more likely to better express the idea meant to be conveyed. the following segment of the interview with a speaker from newcastle would be a good illustration: l.h. in that, when i was a child, most of the men would be engaged in the coal mining or ship building activities which this region is still … k.v. right. l.h. … indeed, where many men were employed, and i am talking about not too long after the second world war, when, obviously, we could have needed. rebuilding and um. there was.. um. when the employment was not a problem. (interview with l. heslop) as can be seen from the passage, the interruption arises after the predicate there was. most likely, the speaker found the syntactic structure that he had in his mind inappropriate, so after some hesitation he switched to another syntactic structure and phrased his idea differently, leaving the fragment there was “hanging”. the valid indicator of the difficulty the speaker experiences in phrasing is the hesitation mark um, which appears twice in the same passage of the discourse. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 44 difficulty in phrasing and, as a consequence, change in planning of ideas may arise at the very beginning of the sentence, which serves as another case of maxi-accidents with a complete lexical change. the overall number of this kind of maxi-accidents turned out to be 26, which is much smaller than that of the previous maxi-accidents we discussed above (39). as our data indicate, in the vast majority of cases the interrupted element is a conjunction, as exemplified in the following passages from the interviews: 1. and..so i changed my academic focus in ph. d working in esl, with that in mind. (interview with j. duke) 2. and.. so i think my creative writing is a part of what helps me, helps my students write. (interview with s. kerr) 3. but.. i think it depends on the context and the field of.. of the potential. (interview with p. boham) maxi-accidents may arise with a partial lexical change in the subsequent part. this normally happens when the speaker at some point realizes that he needs to insert contextually important information, so he abandons his original message and fills in the missing information, which, from the speaker’s perspective, is needful in making a particular point. the overall number of this subtype of maxi-accidents in our data is 13, which is twice as little as the previous case (26). the following examples will illustrate the point. 1. in the past, men.. [if the wife had a baby, she got a maternity leave], the man had to come straight to work. (interview with c. preston) linguistics armenian folia anglistika 45 2. people pawn cars longer, people.. [the real estate market has changed], people were moving more, and now they are not. (interview with t. england) 3. and if one is an older single person, it’s probably harder to have an active social life as.. [than it is before] as a student. (interview with t. england) in the first example, the speaker abandons the sentence at the word men, since she feels that contextually relevant information should be provided (if the wife had a baby, she got a maternity leave), and she then makes a transition back to her original statement, continuing with the abandoned word (men). similar pragmatic interpretations can be offered with respect to examples 2 and 3, in which the inserted pieces of information the real estate market has changed, than it is before – interrupt the speaker’s narrative discourse. in all the examples, the insertions are followed by the same interrupted word (men… the man, people… people, as… as). this kind of syntactic performance can be explained by the fact that, though left abandoned, the aimed syntactic structure was still in the speaker’s mind. maxi-accidents with a partial lexical change also arise when the speaker inserts explanatory background information in the narrative, as illustrated in the following examples: 1. for example, there are more women today who feel it's possible,.. [and we do work within certain industries], for example, you see more women bus drivers, taxi drivers, whereas that was before, for example, in my profession, mechanics, for example, as well, you read or you see female mechanics who are working. (interview with ch. tiplady) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 46 2. they still have to .. children, they still have to look after the home, because they tend to be the ones who.. [whether through nature or not] they still tend the ones that are capable a lot more or more capable or, perhaps, are more used to it. (interview with ch. tiplady) 3. many large organizations.. [i used to work for the government, i was a civil servant], and they have the provision for what we call “paternity leave”. (interview with l. heslop) from the pragmatic perspective, this functional type of interruption seems to be similar to the one discussed above. the only difference being here is that in the previous case the speakers would have started their discourse with the inserted information if they had remembered it at the starting point of speech. contrastively, in the last case the speakers make an interruption at some point in speech because they want to introduce some clarification in the discourse, making it semantically more transparent – something that has not been planned before. the last two subtypes of maxi-accidents with partial lexical change also differ in terms of syntactic arrangement. thus, in the former case it is the last word that is repeated after the insertion, whereas in the latter case the whole interrupted fragment gets repeated after the insertion. compare: people pawn cars longer, people.. [the real estate market has changed], people were moving more, and now they are not. [for example, there are more women today who feel it's possible,..] [and we do work within certain industries], for example, you see more women bus drivers, taxi drivers, whereas that was before, for example, in my profession, mechanics, for example, as linguistics armenian folia anglistika 47 well, you read or you see female mechanics who are working. in either case, however, the speakers stick to the syntactic structure that they had in mind in the beginning. this fact is very relevant to speakers’ memory limitations as reflected in their syntactic performance “limitations on performance imposed by organization of memory and bounds on memory…” (chomsky 1970:10). finally, in our analysis we single out one more subtype of syntactic maxiaccidents – those with no lexical change in the subsequent part of the narrative. most typically, syntactic accidents of this kind arise when a speaker runs into some difficulty in phrasing, especially at the beginning of the sentence, which eventually results in the repetition of the interrupted chunk. as far as the frequency of occurrence is concerned, this subtype of maxi-accidents is met rather infrequently. as our data indicate, the overall number turned out to be 10. the following examples can serve as illustrations. 1. and... i went to.. i went to the academic program in russian,… (interview with j. duke) 2. well, i like to.. i like to write. (interview with s. kerr) 3. but i think.. i think . for most people it's probably the greatest means of socialization, to get together. (interview with j. greenwood) as mentioned above, this subtype of maxi-accidents arises when a speaker is experiencing some difficulty in phrasing his ideas. still, as compared to the above-discussed cases related to experiencing difficulties, in this particular case the difficulty is of a very temporary character, which is signaled by very short pauses between the repeated segments. we assume that the difficulty lies not in the choice of the appropriate syntactic structure, but rather in the choice of the armenian folia anglistika linguistics 48 relevant vocabulary to carry on within the limits of the same syntactic structure. conclusion thus, within the framework of this article we have presented the outcomes of our analysis of maxi-accidents as a kind of syntactic performance in spontaneous talk. as our empirical data indicate, maxi-accidents in the spontaneous talk of middle-class speakers can take a wide range of forms based on their distributional and lexical characteristics. different subtypes of maxiaccidents may be generated by different pragmatic reasons and syntactic competences of speakers. in the whole paradigm of maxi-accidents it is those with a complete change of lexical arrangement in the subsequent narrative that stand out in frequency. they also dominate in terms of the distribution, arising both in the midand front positions of the sentence. of course, the quantitative distribution of maxiaccidents across all social classes will demand further similar analyses with respect to the other social classes. references: 1. chafe, w. (1982) integration and involvement in speaking, writing, and oral literature. // spoken and written language: exploring orality and literacy. norwood, new jersey. 2. chomsky, n. (1970) aspects of the theory of syntax. cambridge, massachusetts: m.i.t. press. 3. miller, j.; weinert r. (2009) spontaneous spoken language. syntax and discourse. oxford: oup. շարահյուսական «վթարները» միջին խավի անգլախոս լեզվակիրների հանպատրաստից խոսքում հայտնի է, որ հանպատրաստից խոսքում հանդիպում են շարակարգային հարաբերություններից զուրկ բազմաթիվ հատույթներ: վերջինlinguistics armenian folia anglistika 49 ներս այսպես կոչված շարահյուսական «վթարների» (syntactic accidents) արդյունք են, որոնք հանպատրաստից խոսքի անքակտելի մասն են կազմում: դրանք առաջանում են տարբեր գործաբանական գործոններով պայմանավորված և տարբերվում են իրենց կառուցվածքային և բաշխումային հատկանիշներով: հիմք ընդունելով կառուցվածքային հատկանիշները` մենք առանձնացնում ենք շարահյուսական «վթարների» երեք հիմնական տեսակ. 1. «մաքսի-վթարներ», 2. «մինի-վթարներ» և 3. «միկրովթարներ», որոնք կազմում են շարահյուսական «վթարների» մի ամբողջական հարացույց: սույն հոդվածի շրջանակներում հիմնական շեշտադրումը անգլախոս միջին խավի լեզվակիրների հանպատրաստից խոսքում մաքսիվթարների վրա է: հիմք ընդունելով էմպիրիկ տվյալները` հոդվածի շրջանակներում ներկայացվում են մաքսի-վթարների հիմնական պատճառները` գործածության հաճախականություն, գործաբանական գործոններ, բաշխումային առանձնահատկություններ: received by editorial board 17.08.2019 recommended for publication by reviewers 15.10.2019 accepted for print 01.10.2019 microsoft word contens verjin linguistics armenian folia anglistika 7 artistic concept in the cognitive perspective seda gasparyan, mariana sargsyan, astghik melik-karamyan yerevan state university abstract the present article aims at studying the phenomenon of artistic concept by providing a detailed analysis of linguistic choices and patterns in the text with a systematic consideration of the mental processes and representations that are involved in the process of interpretation. the tools provided by the recent developments in cognitive approach are applied to enlarge the scope of studies in artistic concepts in general and also to highlight the major features that make the artistic concept distinct from the general cultural concepts. the practical study is based on alienation – one of the key concepts exploited in the contemporary literature. key words: artistic concept, subjective-evaluative component, cognitive approach, container schema. introduction language is endowed with cognitive functions and is not only a means of accumulating information, but also a crucial player in the formation and spreading knowldege. thus, language is not only a material for linguistic study but an important tool to create new knowledge. whorf argued that each language refers to an infinite variety of experiences with a finite array of formal categories (both lexical and grammatical) by trouping experiences together as analogically “the same” for the purposes of speech (whorf 1956). any piece of literature embodies the author’s individual authorial way of world perception, and the literature turns into a private case of conceptualization. the author creates not only a new word but also a new meaning, resulting from a unique way of thinking and explicating various associative links. the recognition of the associative character of speech-creating activity has brought forth the neccessity to study langauge in close connection with thinking, culture, individual language picture of the world, etc. hence the literary text is studied on the level of various cognitive processes reflecting the peculiarities of the understanding of the world. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 8 the above mentioned comes to prove that the study of the cognitive mechanisms of nomination can not only assist in defining the new meaning, but also study the cognitive structures underlying nomination. thus, this development in the cognitive sciences has brought about new defition for “language creativity”, which can be explained as a process of emergence of new cognitive structures and their realization via language (ogneva 2013; tarasova 2012). artistic concept – basic component of the authorial style in most studies involving the cognitive aspect of language creation, the central category of research is the individual authorial (artistic) concept, which defines the author's individual world picture. there is still no universally accepted definition of the term concept. if we turn to the most common dictionary definition it is “an idea of how something is, or how something should be done” (6), which explicitly suggests the involvement of a thinking person, which in its turn brings to the forefront the idea of subjectiveness. however, it is obvious that the dictionary definition can be justified as long as the individual concepts are concerned. in contrast to individual concept, the individual artistic concept embodies the author’s knowledge and his own way of interpreting the objective reality. it acquires artistic features in the context of a literary work. according to l.v. miller artistic concept is defined as “a product of complex mental activities, belonging not only to the individual consciousness, but the psychological and mental spheres of a certain ethnic cultural community”, or as “universal artistic experience, recorded in the cultural memory and the ability to act as a building material in the formation of new artistic meanings (miller 2003:4142). according to another widely acclaimed definition “individual artistic concept is a unit of the writer’s consciousness, represented in the text and reflecting the authorial understanding of the world” (bespalova 2002). individual artistic concepts should not be confused with general cultural concepts. the term individual concept has been introduced for the study of literary texts. it is only the author and the process of text creation that reform individual concepts into authorial ones. authorial concept is a unit of poetic world picture and it condences authorial knowledge about the world (bespalova 2002). authorial concept is the unit of the author’s consciousness which is realized in the text and expresses authorial comprehension of the essence of things and phenomena. it is built on individual knowledge. authorial concept carries cultural component linguistics armenian folia anglistika 9 common to all people sharing that culture, but its specificity lies in the subjectiveevaluative component, which generates as a result of the creator’s cr ativeinterpretive activities. due to this feature the meaning of the concept gets enriched, and both the content and the volume undergo changes. by individual concept we mean a multi-dimensional mental product formed by various methods of categorization, which is verbalized in a variety of forms. in this paper we will primarily consider the concept as a unit of an authorial concept sphere realized in either a single or a series of works by the writer. the system of individual concepts forms the concept sphere of the text. of course, concept, existing in individual consciousness cannot be equated to the mechanical amount of concepts. the structure is determined by individual laws which are closely related to individual, linguistic, pragmatic and cultural factors. one conceptual sphere can be combined with another. there exists a huge number of ways of the linguistic representation of concepts in a literary text. concepts as mental products create a complex unity, that is why it seems natural to underline its structural character and differenciate various types of concepts within the structure and find out how the structure correlates with other conceptual structures. artistic concepts are endowed with an emotional component and carry the element of aesthetic evaluation. in the typology of concepts we can find how the mental structure and language layers are interrelated and this feature allows to enlarge the boundaries of the study of artistic concepts which presently is basically confined to the lexical level only. a case study of the authorial concept in the light of cognitive approach there arise questions concerning the individual concept being equal to the author's intention or not, or can the intention be remodeled completely? intention of course exists only in the mental world of the author, and as such is not explicitly expressed. consequently, the authorial concepts cannot be clearly identified and described. however, what the combination of traditional and cognitive means of analyses seeks for is the wider possibility to look at the language phenomena and come as close to the authorial intention as possible. hence, in this part of the work an attempt will be made to analyze the authorial individual concept with the application of the toolkit provided by recent developments in the cognitive study of literary texts. the application of the cognitive dimension to a traditional stylistic analysis will augment the stylistic armenian folia anglistika linguistics 10 analysis and justify the possibilities for the two approaches to go hand in hand in order to provide a comprehensive understanding of the text. to demonstrate how the tools of the cognitive approach can help in disclosing the nature of authorial concepts we will turn to the study of the means of representing the concept of alienation in contemporary fiction. by and large, alienation has been one of the central concepts in literature since the modernist period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but it was a dominant topic of post-modern fiction and is still widely referred to in contemporary literature. encyclopedia britannica defines alienation as “the state of feeling estranged or separated from one’s milieu, work, products of work, or self” (7). alienation involves the state of being detached, separated or estranged from closer connections, including family members and a loved one, also from religious institutions or even from the god. due to its depth the concept alienation functions as a narrative construct of the contemporary fiction and as such it is subject to coanalysis from the point of view of its representation. alienation is one of the dominant concepts in a.l. kennedy’s fiction, particularly in the collection of stories what becomes, where it enriches due to such sub-concepts as powerlessness, meaninglessness and isolation, which impart to the concept additional volume and depth. to demonstrate the case, the following passage will be discussed, allowing us to observe the ways the concept is materialized: “…he truly detested his travelling bag. this evening it would be waiting inside his hotel room, crouching by his bed like the guard dog in an unfamiliar house. it always was by his bed, no matter where he was sleeping, neatly packed for when he’d have to leave, fill it with his time and carry it in the way he’d enjoy being carried, being lifted over every obstacle”. (p. 6) the effect of the passage is achieved by a cluster of images describing the protagonist and his travelling bag that he detests (crouching like the guard dog, fill it with time, being lifted over every obstacle). from the cognitive point of view the effect of the passage rests on the key image of the travelling bag and the role it has in the protagonist’s life. the passage concentrates on the perception of the period in the protagonist’s life in which the need of stability and belonging to somewhere comes to be a crucial point. the travelling bag linguistics armenian folia anglistika 11 stands for the protagonist’s life of loss and defeat, constant change and lack of his own place. it can be concluded that the author models the concept of alienation on a container schema or a metaphor. lakoff and johnson classify the container schema as part of ontological metaphors, which “appears through human experiences with physical objects (especially the body) and facilitates the way of viewing events, activities, emotions, ideas, etc., as entities and substances” (lakoff, johnson 2003:26). the container in the above mentioned passage is the bag, which encases the state of alienation the protagonist is experiencing under the load of the recent loss of a dearest one. in all cases discussed in the paper the protagonist’s microcosm is encased and provokes the image of a container where the lack of communication has estranged all the relations with the outer space. this is especially made evident in the scene where the protagonist is in the cinema (“a whole cinema of his own the kind of thing a child might imagine, might enjoy”, p. 4) where he was all by himself and it gave him the feeling of privacy and belonging to himself for a short while. however, in the ensuing analysis we observe the development of the container schema in the opposite direction; the loneliness becomes irritating and the privacy is broken: frank being alone in a cinema, that was all right – alone in a muddle of people in a cinema – that was all right…silly to think that way, but he did. for a moment. then he focused on being irritated, his nice privacy broken when it had extended so very far by now… [i]t was fine though. nobody joined him”. (p. 5) the tantalizing feeling of being trapped in a container is realized also via the parallel between the cinema and the airport: “huge glass and metal tower, looked like a part of an airport”. (p. 3) the glass and the metal stand for the barriers of misunderstandings that the huge modern buildings, lacking any architectural aesthetics, create for people. container schema can be considered a general mode of the writer’s presentation of her conceptual universe and the latter can be further observed in the following excerpts: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 12 “four seats across and then the aisle and then another four and that was it. the room wasn’t much broader than his lounge and it put frank in mind of a bus, some kind of wide, slow vehicle, sliding off towards destinations it left undisclosed.” (p.4) the parallel between the two schemas – the cinema and the bus in the above presented excerpts – is the implicit representation of frank’s isolated life, involving slow and unwilling moves forward. given for a slight overemphasis, the passage may also be taken as a metaphor of the writer’s work in which she is obsessed with the search for the fullness of meaning in the materiality of the world. the latter can be justified via another container schema: “we are not all connected. we are bags of skin. we are all separate bags of thinking skin”. (p. 54) the identity mapping between we and bag is no accident. here, the inside of the container (the bag of skin, intensified by the parallel construction and modified by pre-position epithets separate and thinking) is more directly associated with the concept alienation. in this excerpt, the subjective-evaluative component of the concept is most obvious, since in the ending of the story the author offers no means of escape; the state of being confined to the container allows no possibility to find any meaning in the human existance. it follows from the above presented analysis that the key images of the container (bag, cinema, bus), also two more cases of container schemas, wallet and flotation tank, which have not been included in the present paper evoke the imminent absence of human connections, distortion, fragmented vision of the reality through the container, separation from the society, which by and large contribute to human alienation. conclusion artistic concepts, the products of the authorial world picture, are the structural base of the text on which the text ideology and the authorial intention rest. to reaveal the artisitic concept and to construct the authorial model of conceptualization of reality it is suggested to enlarge the scope of analysis by complementing the traditional stylistic analysis with cognitive approach. the case linguistics armenian folia anglistika 13 study of the concept alienation in the article demostrates that the analysis on the cognitive base is insightful, shedding a new light on understanding the mechanisms of authorial conceptualization of reality. acknowledgement: this work was supported by the ra mes state committee of science, in the frames of the research project 15t 6b278. references: 1. bespalova, o.e. (2002) konceptosfera pojezii n.s. gumileva v ee leksicheskom predstavlenii: avtoref. dis. ... kand. filol. nauk: 10.02.01. / ol’ga evgen’evna bespalova. spb.,. 24 s. 2. encyclopedia britannica. available at: <https://www.britannica.com/search? query=alienation> [accessed june 2016]. 3. lakoff, g.; johnson, m. (2003) metaphors we live by. chicago and london: university of chicago press, 256 p. 4. lakoff, g. (1987) women, fire, and dangerous things: what categories reveal about the mind. chicago and london: the university of chicago press, 614 p. 5. longman dictionary of contemporary english. available at: <http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/concept> [accessed june 2016]. 6. miller, l.v. (2000) hudozhestvennyj koncept kak smyslovaja i jesteticheskaja kategorija. / l.v. miller // mir russkogo slo-va, n 4, s. 41-45. 7. ogneva, e.a. (2013) kognitivnoe modelirovanie konceptosfery hudo zhestvennogo teksta. 2-e izd. dopoln. m.: jeditus, s. 282. 8. tarasova, i.a. (2012) pojeticheskij idiostil' v kognitivnom aspekte [jelektronnyj resurs]: monografija / i.a. tarasova, 2-e izd.¸ pererab. m.: flinta, s. 196. 9. whorf, b.l. (1956) language, thought, and reality. selected writings. cambridge: technology press of massachusetts institute of technology, pp. 134-159. source of data: kennedy, a.l. (2010) what becomes. london: vitage, random house. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 14 ¶»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý ñ³ëï³óáõûãç ùýýáõãûáõýá ׳ý³ãáõ³ ³ýáõãû³ý ¹çï³ï»ïçó ²ßë³ï³ýùáõù ùýýáõãû³ý ¿ »ñã³ñïíáõù ·»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý ñ³ëï³óáõûãá` 黽í³ï³ý ùççáóý»ñç áýïñáõãû³ý ¨ ï»ùëïç ï»ñïù³ý áýã³óùáõù ù»ýã³é ·áñíáýã³óý»ñç ñ³ù³ïáõù í»ñéáõíáõãû³ù : ö³ý³ãáõ³ ³ýáõãû³ý áéáñïáõù í»ñççý ßñç³ýç ·áñíý³ï³ý ýáõûãç ó»éù »ñáõùý»ñá ïçñ³éí³í »ý` áý¹é³ûý»éáõ ·»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý ñ³ëï³óáõûãç áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãû³ý ßñç³ý³ïý»ñá ¨ ³é³ýóý³óý»éáõ ³ûý ï³ñ¨áñ ·í»ñá, áñáýù ³éï³ »ý ·»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý ¨ ùß³ïáõã³ûçý ñ³ëï³óáõûãý»ñç ùçç¨: ¶áñíý³ï³ý ùýýáõãûáõýá ï³ï³ñí³í ¿ å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ·ñ³ï³ýáõãû³ý ù»ç é³ûý ßñç³ý³éáõãûáõý áõý»óáõ ûï³ñí³íáõãûáõý ñ³ëï³óáõûãç áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãû³ý ñçù³ý íñ³: maket 2013:layout 1.qxd modal adverbs used as hedges in research articles naira martirosyan, tatev ghazaryan yerevan state university a cademic writing is nowadays generally seen as an interaction between the writer and the reader. the main aim of the writer is to build up an interactive and constructive relationship with the readers, to persuade them of the correctness of their claims. accordingly, the authors of research articles commonly qualify the information presented by means of items relating to vagueness, uncertainty or tentativeness. these devices are referred to as hedges. thus, despite a widely held view that professional scientific writing is purely objective and impersonal, hedges are abundant in science: they are a significant means for academics as they help researchers to “shield’ against readers” possible rejection of their propositions. lakoff used the term hedge to refer to “words whose job is to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy” (lakoff 1972:195). this definition became the starting point for several studies on this phenomenon. later brown & levinson defined hedges as “a particle, word or phrase that modifies the degree of membership of a predicate or a noun phrase in a set” (brown & levinson 1987:145). they list hedging as one of various “face” preserving politeness strategies. for example, in order to avoid disagreement with the hearer the speaker can make his own opinion safely vague by using hedges such as sort of, kind of, etc. hyland claims that hedges are “linguistic means used to indicate either a) a lack of complete commitment to the truth value of an accompanying proposition, or b) a desire not to express that commitment categorically” (hyland 1998:1). thus, they mark uncertainty and help writers to present a proposition as an opinion rather than a fact. the overview of the development of the concept clearly demonstrates that the notion of hedging has expanded by going through roughly three stages. the first stage is mainly semantic. the second stage is semantic and pragmatic, modifying the truth value of the whole proposition and the speaker’s or writer’s commitment or attitude to the propositional content, with its focus on the speaker-content relationship. and, finally, the third stage is mainly pragmatic and social, modifying relationships between the reader and the writer or between interlocuters, or social relationships in a wider context, with its focus on interpersonal and social relationships. the writer’s or speaker’s judgments about statements and their possible effects on interlocutors is the essence of hedging, and this clearly places epistemic modality at the centre of our interest. coates (1987:112) describes epistemic modality as concerned with “the speaker’s assumptions, or assessment of possibilities, and in most cases, it indicates the speaker’s confidence or lack of confidence in the truth of the proposition expressed”. the epistemic system is mostly referred to as realizing a continuum of “commitment” on the part of the writer to the truth value of his or her statements, ranging from uncertain possibility to confident necessity. its importance lies in the fact that such tentativeness armenian folia anglistika linguistics 74 avoids personal accountability for statements, reducing the author’s “degree of liability” (huebler 1983:18), while expressing caution and facilitating open discussions. epistemic comment is seen by many writers as being at the heart of language use and a principal means by which speakers can use language flexibly to adopt positions and express points of view. writers cannot avoid encoding their point of view towards whatever they say, commenting on and committing to or distancing themselves from their propositions. the concept of hedging is an area of some neglect (crystal 1995:120) although the literature contains references to various aspects of hedging over the past 20 years. hedges have been referred to as compromisers (james 1983), downtoners (quirk et al 1972), weakeners (brown & levinson 1987), downgraders (house & kasper 1981), softeners (crystal & davy 1975), backgrounding terms (low 1996) and pragmatic devices (stubbe & holmes 1995). this phenomenon has received most attention in casual conversation where it is extremely common and represents a significant interpersonal and facilitative communicative resource for speakers, who use them when they wish to create an informal atmosphere, facilitate turn-taking, sustain discussion, show politeness. these units have also been treated as a form of “metadiscourse” by some applied linguists who have included them in the elements of a text. as it has been mentioned above, hedges are abundant in science and play a critical role in academic writing. they are important to scientists because even the most assured scientific propositions have an inherently limited period of acceptance. categorical assertions of truth in these circumstances are decidedly hazardous. what is more, the use of hedges may have provocative influence, for on the one hand such hedges as possibly, maybe, admittedly somehow signal the writer’s perhaps limited knowledge, while on the other hand, hedges like certainly, undoubtedly emphasize the commitment over what would be indicated by a simple declarative in english. hence we see that hedging is an essential element of academic writing. as crismore & farnsworth (1990:15) mention: “hedging is the mark of a professional scientist, one who acknowledges the caution with which he or she does science and writes on science”. in everyday conversation hedges are commonly expressed through auxiliary verbs and by epistemic adjectives, adverbs and lexical verbs. common conversational forms include perhaps, i guess, maybe, quite, sort of , while prosody, tag questions, hesitation markers, rhetorical questions also function as hedges when they are used to decrease the strength of an utterance (coates & cameron 1988; holmes 1995). academic research writing also includes diverse expressions of hedging which make use of the full range of epistemic lexical resources. in academic writing modal adverbs comprise a greater range of items than modal adjectives or nouns, from which they differ in that the former are “peripheral in clause structure” (quirk et al 1972:421). they are not syntactically integrated as an element of the clause but can appear in a number of positions without affecting the meaning relation between the clause and the adverb. in the examples below we shall see that the modal adverb perhaps appears in all three positions without affecting the grammaticality of the sentence or changing its core meaning. in other words, the presence or absence of the modal adverb perhaps does not change the information that the speaker conveys. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 75 e.g. a) perhaps the most widely quoted ages of the universe come from the age estimates of globular cluster stars. b) the most widely quoted ages of the universe come from the age estimates of globular cluster stars, perhaps. c) the most widely quoted ages of the universe perhaps come from the age estimates of globular cluster stars. (riess et al 1998) it is worth noting that the mobility of adverbs means that they can be selected to operate on phrasal, sentential and supra-sentential levels. on the supra-sentential level modal adverbs also perform a text-creating function, expressing various semantic relations, anaphora and cataphora included. as is known, anaphora implies retrospective connection, while cataphora indicates prospective connection. in the following examples modal adverbs illustrate anaphoric reference: e.g. a) but modality, as will be seen, does not relate semantically to the verb alone or primarily, but to the whole sentence. not surprisingly, therefore, there are languages in which modality is marked elsewhere than on the verb or within a verbal complex. (palmer 1986) b) with ought to/should the conditions were the carrying out of an obligation; with might they seem to be those of behaving in a sensible or proper way. but this a much stronger notion than mere permission, and it is clear that might have does not mean ‘you would have acted thus if you had had permission’. apparently then, might expresses a stronger kind of deontic modality than may – a positive suggestion rather than mere permission. (palmer 1986) in these examples the modal adverbs not surprisingly and apparently refer to the preceding sentences, without which the meaning of the sentence introduced by the modal adverbs would be obscure. examples of cataphoric reference are: a) in a sense, presumably, this is to be interpreted as not being direct observation; but the point is that tajik distinguishes just two types. (palmer 1986) b) intuitively, it seems reasonable to assert that an asc ii file contains 7/8 as much information as an arbitrary file of the same size, since we already know one out of every eight bits before we even look at the file. (mackay 2003) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 76 another interesting point to be made is that modal adverbs may be modified by such words as very, too, most, quite, rather, less and may form degrees of comparison, for example: a) less obviously, interrogative sentences are related, not only to statements, but to relative clauses. (crystal 1995) b) in notional terms all three are, in some way, concerned with the event or situation that is reported by the utterance. tense, rather obviously, is concerned with the time of the event, while aspect is concerned with the nature of the event. (palmer 1986) c) more strictly (and significantly), this is so only if the subordinate clause is part of what is reported. (palmer 1986) research shows that modal adverbs are quite often used in combination with other modal adverbs or modal verbs: e.g. a) it is undoubtedly the case that most perhaps all languages have a clear way of indicating that the speaker is to be true making a statement that he believes to be true. (palmer 1986) here the writer uses the modal adverbs undoubtedly and perhaps which constitute 2 polarities, as undoubtedly expresses a strong level of modality, while perhaps – a weak level of modality. the same can be said about the next example. b) although all languages probably have devices for asking questions, and although there is certainly a need to recognize the typological category of interrogative, the ways in which questions may be expressed vary greatly. (palmer 1986) on the other hand, writers may use adverbs of the same level of modality to make a greater impact on the reader. a) the essential point here is that the absence of marking categories such as number and tense is precisely the defining characteristic of nonfinite forms, and non-finite forms typically occur in subordinate constructions. more strikingly, perhaps somewhat paradoxically, such forms are used with coordination, but not with subordination in some papuan languages. (palmer 1986) armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 77 b) almost certainly, no synchronic explanation can be given for the use of past tense for unreality without being circular, but it may be possible to speculate, very tentatively, along the following lines, why the situation has come about historically. (palmer 1986) epistemic expressions in language, then, are likely to originate in such high-level conceptual operations as well. hence, an investigation of them can probably not be limited to a purely linguistic description, but will obviously require a concern with the conceptual systems from which they derive. lyons employs the term “modally harmonic” to refer to contexts where two or more forms express the same degree of modality, such that “there is a kind of concord running through the clause, which results in the double realization of a single modality”. thus clusters overwhelmingly function to reinforce the epistemic strength of items, what banks refers to as “fertilizing hedges”. as for the classification of hedges, it should be mentioned that there is no unanimous agreement on it, since there are no unified criteria for the classification of hedges. prince, fraser and bosk (1982) classified hedging devices into two kinds: 1) approximators that express fuzziness within the propositional content, i.e. affect the truth-value of propositions; 2) shields that express fuzziness in the relationship between the propositional content and the speaker/author. despite the seeming clearness, the taxonomy was criticized because of the obvious overlap between the categories. as hyland has pointed out, hedging devices “do not fit into a neat scheme of discrete categories which allows one meaning to be clearly distinguished from others” (hyland 1996:437). moreover, meanings are frequently expressed simultaneously. the reason for this difficulty is that hedging devices are polypragmatic. the two main categories of hedges distinguished in the content of research articles by hyland are content-oriented hedges which mitigate the relationship between propositional content and a non-linguistic mental representation of reality and reader-oriented hedges, which mostly deal with the interpersonal interaction between the reader and the writer. now let us observe the following examples: a) the investigation of morgan (1998) on mathematical writing is probably the most relevant research, as it followed the same cda framework. (wagner and herbel-eisenmann 2008) b) perhaps in this kind of highly standardized production environment, “thinking outside of the box” to design new and creative production processes only results in processes that are less efficient and, as a result, more variable over time. (hofmann and jones 2005) in these examples the writers make clear that they have reservations concerning whether the stated situations actually obtain. in general, content-oriented hedges are a significant communicative resource as they enable scientific writers to both negotiate the precision of claims and convey an attitude armenian folia anglistika linguistics 78 to them, offering the reader a means of assessing the certainty of its truth and degree of personal commitment to it. summing up, it should be mentioned that the investigation is carried out on a corpus comprising research articles from three different disciplines, namely linguistics, economics and physics. we have selected 10 research articles from each discipline. the research articles we have selected had to comply with a number of requirements in order to be included in the corpus: all of them came from scientific refereed journals, their publishing span was between 1999 and 2012, the average length of each article, which has already been modified, is about 6,500 to 7,500 words. the modification includes deletion of all the material that is not the author’s coherent writing such as citations, examples, or the list of references. our analysis of the modal adverbs used as hedges in research articles demonstrates that the frequency of their occurrence is determined by the discipline. the average number of modal adverbs used per 1.000 words is 3.5, 3 and 0.8 in linguistic, economic and physics articles respectively. these results quite clearly indicate that modal adverbs are used slightly more frequently in linguistic articles than in economic articles and that physics articles had the lowest frequency of occurrence of hedges. based on these findings one might speculate that, in comparison to the articles on physics, linguistic and economic articles are somewhat more flexible and less formal in their mode of expression. the scientific paper constitutes a rhetorically competent product through which scientific knowledge is negotiated. a successful claim depends on linguistic choices which appropriately convey the writer’s intention, facilitate the smooth exchange of information and create conditions for persuading readers of a point of view. thus, hedges are not the negative indicators of imprecision and fuzziness as many linguists think, on the contrary, they are an essential means by which speakers and writers encode a point of view. references: 1. brown, p. and levinson, s. (1987) politeness. cambridge: cambridge-university press. 2. coates, j. (1983) the semantics of modal adverbs. london: croom helm series. 3. crismore, a. & farnsworth, r. (1990) metadiscourse in popular and professional science discourse. newbury park, ca: the writing scholar: studies in the language and conventions of academic discourse. 4. hyland, k. (1998) hedging in scientific research articles. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins publishing company. 5. hubler, a. (1985) understatements and hedges in english. amsterdam/philadelphia: pragmatics and beyond iv, 6. 6. lyons, j. (1977) semantics. vols 1 & 2. cambridge: cambridge university press. 7. lakoff, g. (1972) hedges: a study in meaning criteria and the logic of fuzzy concepts. chicago linguistic society papers, 8 chicago: chicago university press. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 79 8. quirk, r.; leech, g.; greenbaum, s. and svartvik, j. (1985) a comprehensive grammar of the english language. london/new york: longman. 9. stubbe, m. & holmes, j. (1995) you know, eh and other “exasperating expressions”: an analysis of social and stylistic variation in the use of pragmatic devices in a sample of new zealand english. elsevier ltd: language and communication: 15 (1). sources of data: 1. crystal, d. (1995) the cambridge encyclopaedia of language. cambridge: cup. 2. david, j. mackay (2003) information theory, inference and learning algorithms. 73. cambridge: cup. 3. hoffman, d. & jones, l. (2005) leadership, collective personality, and performance. // journal of applied psychology. vol.90, no.3. 4. palmer, f. (1986) mood and modality. cambridge: cup. 5. riess et al., (1987) observational evidence from supernovae for an accelerating universe and a cosmological constant. // the astronomical journal. vol.116. usa. 6. wagner, d. & herbel-eisenmann, b. (2008) just don’t: the suppression and invitation of dialogue in the mathematical classroom. educational studies in mathematics. vol.67, no.2. ºõ³ý³ï³íáñáõ μ³é»ñç ·áñí³íáõãûáõýá ·çï³ï³ý ·ñ³ï³ýáõãû³ý ù»ç ¶çï³ï³ý μýáõûãç ï»ùëïáõù ñ»õçý³ïç ·éë³íáñ ýå³ï³ïý ¿ ñý³ñ³íáñçýë ñ³ùá½çã ý»ñï³û³óý»é çñ ï»ë³ï»ïá` ÷áñó»éáí ý»ñ³½¹»é áýã»ñóáõç íñ³: ø³ýç áñ ·ñ³íáñ ëáëùáõù ³ýñý³ñ ¿ ³ýùçç³ï³ý ß÷áõù ³å³ñáí»é áýã»ñóáõç ¨ ñ»õçý³ïç ùçç¨, ï³ñ¨áñ ¿ ëï»õí»é »ñïëáëáõãû³ý ¹³ßï, áñï»õ ï»õ»ïáõãûáõýá áñ³ï³íáñ»éáõ ñ³ù³ñ ñ³×³ë û·ï³·áñííáõù »ý ñ³ùá½í³íáõãûáõý, ³ýáñáßáõãûáõý, ³ýíëï³ñáõãûáõý ¨ ùáï³íáñáõãûáõý ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõ μ³é»ñ: ²ûë ï»ë³ýïûáõýçó ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïáõï ñ»ï³ùñùñáõãûáõý »ý ý»ñï³û³óýáõù »õ³ý³ï³íáñáõ μ³é»ñ᪠ç ßýáññçí çñ»ýó ï³ñ¨áñ ï»ùëï³ï³½ùçã ¹»ñç: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 80 microsoft word 2.methodology 105 122 (1) methodology armenian folia anglistika 111 interference error analysis in efl class tsovinar arakelyan police educational complex abstract the present article aims at investigating the nature of interference errors in efl class. based on a case study, it analyzes the armenian speakers’ interference errors in efl class. in order to give a vivid picture of their nature, these errors have been categorised according to the model of hierarchy of difficulty propelled by stockwell and prator. the beneficial outcomes of the study may be implemented in further pedagogical research towards finding an optimal model of interference errors correction. key words: overgeneralization, transitional competence, cross-linguistic influence, interlanguage, input, uptake. introduction learning a foreign language is not an easy undertaking. one’s personality is affected when he/she makes efforts to go beyond the confines of his/her first language and gets involved in a new language with new culture, new ways of thinking, feeling and acting. thus, as brown states, a combination of total commitment and involvement, as well as total physical, intellectual and emotional responses are necessary to send and receive messages in a foreign language. this transitional path of passing from the native language system to the foreign language system and language building process are mostly subject to cross-linguistic influence (cli) (brown 2007:208). specifically, cli suggests that prior experience plays a crucial role in any learning act and the influence of the native language as prior experience must not be overlooked. it means that in the early stages of foreign language learning, when its system is unfamiliar to the learner, the native language is the only linguistic system upon which the learner can draw. in turn, this interlingual influence gives birth to a specific language system called interlanguage, typical to any individual. the advent of interlanguage presupposes a flaw of errors onto the language building process. as a matter of fact, in order to lead the learner to the attainment of appropriate language capacities, these errors need specific treatment. interference and overgeneralization human beings approach any new problem with the help of an established set of cognitive structures and through these prior experiences they attempt a solution. the same mechanism functions in the second language acquisition process, when the learner armenian folia anglistika methodology 112 gradually approximates the target language and passes through the stages of language building based on the prior linguistic data of his native language. thus this approximation process generates a specific language system called “interlanguage”. the term “interlanguage” was introduced by the american linguist larry selinker to refer to the second language adult learners’grammatical system. he described interlanguage as a separate linguistic system based on the observable output which results from a learner’s attempted production of a target language (selinker 1972:214). interlanguage refers to the separateness of a second language learner’s system, a system that has a structurally intermediate status between the native and the target languages. equally important, as any learner tries to form his own self-contained linguistic system, interlanguage is peculiar to that individual alone (corner 1971:151). this is neither the system of the native language nor the system of the target language, but a system based upon the best attempt of the learner to bring order and structure to the linguistic stimuli surrounding them (brown 2007:256). thus the concept of interlanguage might be better understood if it is thought of as a continuum between l1 and l2 along which all learners traverse. at any point along the continuum, the learners’ language is systematic, rule-governed and common to all learners, any difference being explicable by differences in their learning experiences (larsen-freeman 1991:60). along with interference, overgeneralization is a crucially important strategy in human learning. to generalize means to infer or derive a law, rule, or conclusion from the observation of particular instances. much of human learning involves generalization. the learning of concepts in early childhood is a process of generalizing. a child who has been exposed to various kinds of animals gradually acquires a generalized concept of “animal”. that same child, however, at an early stage of generalization, might see a horse for the first time and, having been familiar with dogs, might overgeneralize the concept of “dog” and, calling the horse a dog. similarly, a number of animals might be placed into a category of “dog” until the general attributes of a larger category of “animals” have been learned. as for the second language acquisition, it has been common to refer to overgeneralization as a process that occurs when the second language learner acts within the target language, generalizing a particular rule or item in the second language, irrespective of the native language, beyond legitimate bounds. for instance, it is common among learners of english as a foreign language to overgeneralize regular past tense endings (worked, finished) as applicable to all past tense forms (goed, speaked) until they recognize a subset of verbs that belong to an irregular category. this fact implies that the learners are prone to overgeneralize the rules within a target language before gaining some exposure and familiarity with it. such overgeneralization is committed by learners of english from almost any native language background. to sum up, interference and overgeneralization strongly correlate with each other as interdependent learning strategies. interference of the first language in the second one is methodology armenian folia anglistika 113 simply a form of generalization that takes prior first language experiences and applies them incorrectly. overgeneralization is the incorrect application of previously learned second language material to a current second language context. all generalization involves transfer, and all transfer involves generalization. interference error analysis learning is fundamentally a process that involves the making of mistakes. mistakes, misjudgments and erroneous assumptions form an important aspect of learning any skill or acquiring any information. for instance, you learn to swim by first jumping into the water and moving your arms and legs, and then you understand that there is a certain combination of movements that enables you to keep balance on water and swim. the first mistakes of learning to swim are giant ones but they gradually diminish, as you learn from those mistakes. learning to swim, to play tennis, to type or to read all involve a process in which success comes by profiting from mistakes and by using mistakes to obtain corrective feedback (brown 2007:217). language learning, in this sense, is like any other learning. unquestionably, children make countless mistakes in the first language acquisition process. most of these mistakes are logical in the limited linguistic system within which children operate and, by carefully processing feedback from others, they slowly but surely learn to produce what is acceptable speech in their native language. similarly, second language learning involves the process of trial-and-error, typical of first language acquisition. inevitably, learners make mistakes in the process of acquisition and that process will be impeded if they do not commit errors and then benefit from various forms of corrective feedback (brown 2007:257). errors, as manifestations of learning process, arise from different sources: interlingual errors of interference from the native language, intralingual errors within the target language, the sociolinguistic context of communication, psycholinguistic or cognitive strategies and, no doubt, countless affective variables. as corder noted: “a learner’s errors … are significant in [that] they provide how language is learned or acquired, what strategies or procedures the learner is employing in the discovery of the language” (corder 1967:167). in this research we will look more closely at the nature of interlingual errors of interference from the native language and will try to classify them into definite categories. in fact, having examined the nature of the armenian students’ mistakes in efl class, we have come to the conclusion that they can be grouped into definite categories according to some common features. thus, we tried to fit these categories into the model of hierarchy of difficulty propelled by stockwell and prator. actually, it presents a five-level model that can be applied to any two languages and make it possible to predict second language learners’ difficulties in any language with a fair degree of certainty and objectivity (prator 1967). the first or “zero” degree of difficulty presents complete one-to-one correspondence and transfer, while the fifth degree of armenian folia anglistika methodology 114 difficulty was the height of interference. most importantly, this model of hierarchy of difficulty is applicable to both grammatical and phonological features of language. the six categories are listed below in ascending order of difficulty. all the examples are taken from the armenian adult speakers’ mistakes made in a classroom context. precisely some common interference errors made by the students of the first, second and third years of bachelor’s degree in law are analyzed. level 0 – transfer. no difference or contrast is present between the two languages. the learner can simply transfer positively a sound, structure or lexical item from the native language to the target language. examples: in the following statement “i am eighteen years old” the armenian students face no difficulty with the appropriate choice of the verb “to be” as it takes the same form in armenian as well: §ºë ï³ëýáõã ï³ñ»ï³ý »ù¦․ here we deal with positive interlingual transfer. in contrast, armenian students studying french face negative transfer as the same statement is expressed in french with the verb “to have” – j’ai dix-huit ans. level 1 – coalescence. two items in the native language become coalesced into essentially one item in the target language and vice versa. this requires that learners overlook a distinction they have been accustomed to. for example, in english thirdperson possessives require gender distinction (his/her), while in armenian they do not. an armenian speaker learning english may overlook the distinction between listen and hear, besides and except, few and little, many and much, as and like, since they have the same form in armenian. the choice between the use of the present indefinite or the present continuous is also an example of coalescence as there is a single tense of the verb in armenian which is used to express present action with no distinction whether the action is taking place at the moment of speech or in the present context in general. level 2 – underdifferentiation. an item in the native language is absent in the target language. for example, the possessive case in english is formed by adding’s to the stem of the animate object. meanwhile, the equivalent case in armenian does not require any distinction between animate and inanimate nouns. thus, armenian speakers tend to overgeneralize the use of the possessive case and mistakenly use the classroom’s windows. level 3 – reinterpretation. an item that exists in the native language is given a new shape or distribution in the target language. for example, the sounds [∫], [t∫] and [ƒ] correspond to a single letter in armenian, but in english they are written by means of the combination of two letters sh, ch, ph. furthermore, the pronunciation of the letters g and c differs in english according to their placement before e, i, y. meanwhile, in armenian they are pronounced in the same way regardless of their position. as a result, the armenian learners must adopt a new cognitive strategy to distinguish the sounds according to their given position. the failure in this differentiation process gives free way to a flaw of pronunciation mistakes. methodology armenian folia anglistika 115 level 4 – overdifferentiation. a new item, bearing little if any similarity to the native language item, must be learned. for example, the armenian learner must learn to omit the definite article before nouns speaking about things and people in general which is just the contrary in armenian. in the statement “burglary is a common crime in developing countries” the armenian students mistakenly use “the burglary” as a result of negative interlingual transfer. level 5 – split. one item in the native language takes multiple forms in the target language, requiring the learner to make a new distinction. the tag questions in english are formed according to the tense form, the affirmative or negative form of the verb, the person of the pronoun, the type of the verb etc. for example: “you went home, didn’t you?”, “you didn’t go home, did you?”, “she likes ice-cream, doesn’t she?” meanwhile, the tag question in armenian is the same regardless of tense form used in the sentence, as in §¸áõ ·ý³óçñ ïáõý, ³ûýå»ë ã¿՞¦« §¸áõ ã·ý³óçñ ïáõý, ³ûýå»ë ã¿՞¦« §ü³ å³õå³õ³ï ¿ ëçñáõù, ³ûýå»ë ã¿՞¦. these types of systematic errors may be taken as evidence of learners’ current transitional competence. in other words, it reflects the learners’ attempts to make sense of the input in their own particular ways and to make an effort to organize the information provided by the language to which they are exposed (smith 1994:24). as we can see, interlingual transfer is a significant source of error for all learners. the beginning stages of learning a second language are especially vulnerable to interlingual transfer from the native language. in these early stages, the native language is the only linguistic system upon which the learner can rely before the system of the second language becomes familiar. accordingly, a wide range of strategies such as the control over the learning pace, the proportion of input and resulting uptake and most importantly, the provision of relevant corrective feedback should be taken into consideration. also, the classification of armenian native speakers’ english learning errors into definite categories may create a favorable ground for modeling appropriate interference error treatment methods. conclusion our analysis enables us to conclude that learning a second language does entail proportionate transfer from the native language of the learners to the target language. native language is the learners’ prior linguistic system upon which they organize the new linguistic data. every learner has an individual system-builder, he/she analyzes this input differently and produces different uptake. the transitional filter through which the input is processed generates numerous interference errors typical of an individual learner. the fact that learners make errors which can be observed, analyzed and classified in order to reveal the system operating within the learner led to significant research in error analysis. the classification of the native armenian speakers’ interference errors into definite categories may be a certain contribution to these studies armenian folia anglistika methodology 116 in terms of modeling appropriate error treatment methods. last but not least, errors made by learners need to be analyzed carefully as they may hold the key to the understanding the process of second language acquisition. references: 1. brown, h.d. (2007) principles of language learning and teaching. san francisco: longman. 2. corder, s. (1967) the significance of learners’ errors. // international review of applied linguistics, 5, 161-170 3. corner s. (1971) idiosyncratic dialects and error analysis. // international review of applied linguistics,9, pp. 147-159. 4. larsen-freeman, d. (1991) an introduction to second language acquisition research. london and new york: longman. 5. prator, c. (1967) hierarchy of difficulty. / unpublished classroom lecture, university of california, los angeles. 6. selinker, l. (1972) international review of applied linguistics in language teaching, 10 (1-4), pp. 209-232. 7. smith, m.sh. (1994) second language learning. theoretical foundations. london and new york: longman. 8. (2012) interlanguage: the nature, the issues and the pedagogical implication. available at: <http://www.academia.edu/2344295/interlanguage_study_of_sla> [accessed may 2015]. ²ý·é»ñ»ýç՝ áñå»ë ûï³ñ 黽íç ¹³ë³í³ý¹ù³ý ·áñíáýã³óáõù 黽í³ï³ý ÷áëý»ñã³÷³ýóáõùý»ñç ñ»ï¨³ýùáí ³é³ç³ó³í ëë³éý»ñç í»ñéáõíáõãûáõý ðá¹í³íáõù ï³ï³ñí»é ¿ ³ý·é»ñ»ýç՝ áñå»ë ûï³ñ 黽íç ¹³ë³í³ý¹ù³ý ·áñíáýã³óáõù 黽í³ï³ý ÷áëý»ñã³÷³ýóáõùý»ñç ñ»ï¨³ýùáí áõë³ýáõý»ñç ï³ï³ñ³í ëë³éý»ñç í»ñéáõíáõãûáõý: ø³ëý³íáñ³å»ë áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãû³ý ³é³ñï³ »ý ñ³ý¹çë³ó»é ³ý·é»ñ»ý áõëáõùý³ëçñáõ ñ³û³é»½áõ áõë³ýáõý»ñç ³ûý ëë³éý»ñá, áñáýù ³ñí»é »ý ñ³û»ñ»ýç ³½¹»óáõãû³ùμ: ¸³ë³ï³ñ·»éáí 黽í³ï³ý ÷áëý»ñã³÷³ýóáõùý»ñç ñ»ï¨³ýùáí ³é³ç³ó³í ëë³éý»ñá ¨ ¹ñ³ýó ½áõ·³¹ñ³ï³ý í»ñéáõíáõãû³ý »ýã³ñï»éáí՝ ñý³ñ³íáñ ¿ ³û¹ ëë³éý»ñá áõõõ»éáõ ù»ãá¹³ï³ý ûåïçù³é ï³õ³å³ñ ëï»õí»é: methodology armenian folia anglistika 117 анализ ошибок, возникающиx в процессе языковой интерференции в преподавании английского языка как иностранного в статье представлен анализ ошибок, совершаемыx студентами вследствие языковой интерференции в процессе изучения английского языка как иностранного. предметом особого внимания выступает влияние армянского языка на возникновение ошибок у армяноговорящиx студентов, изучающиx английский язык. актуальность статьи заключается в том, что посредством классификации и сопоставительного анализа ошибок, возникающиx вследствие языковой интерференции, можно создать оптимальные модели, корректирующие эти ошибки. microsoft word maket 2020-1(21) 19.02 doc.doc literature studies armenian folia anglistika 137 (how) can recent cognitive studies contribute to literary interpretation? angela locatelli university of bergamo abstract this essay wishes to engage with the crucial issue of the interpretation of literary texts from the specific perspective of the rise of cognitive sciences in the past two or three decades. one of the stimulating, but also controversial elements of cognitive literary studies is the variety of denominations of the field itself. different labels have been adopted to define it, including: “cognitive poetics”, “cognitive semiotics”, “cognitive stylistics”, “cognitive literary studies”, “cognitive criticism”, and “cognitive literary science”. a crucial problem that has variously been dealt with but that still remains open to discussion (and has sometimes promoted a questioning of the usefulness of the neurosciences in the interpretation of literary works), is the problem of the affordances of a cognitive approach to the specificity of literary artifacts. this contribution will therefore address and investigate this timely topic and illustrate aspects of the dynamics of literary interpretation that the cognitive sciences have recently productively developed. in particular, it will focus on the following elements: various perspectives in “the neurohumanities”, “literariness and the brain”, “the respective contribution of the cognitive sciences and of literature to the knowledge of the human mind”. key words: neurohumanities, literary and cultural cognitive studies, theory of mind, cognitive poetics, hermeneutic circle. armenian folia anglistika literature studies 138 introduction the issue of interpretation is something as old as literature itself, but precisely because of this, it is important to perceive the various ways in which it has been articulated according to different methodological and critical perspectives, in different epistemological contexts over the years. this essay wishes to engage with a specific contemporary perspective which has emerged over the past two or three decades, as a consequence of the rise of the neurosciences and of their impact on the so called “neurohumanities” and on literary and cultural cognitive studies. i wish to outline some of the fruitful convergences between these studies and literary theory, as well as some of the problems that are still object of debate, and in need of further research. one of the crucial problems that still remains partly open to discussion, and that has sometimes promoted a questioning of the very usefulness of the cognitive sciences in literary studies, is the problem of the interpretation of artistic texts, as opposed to that of ordinary linguistic texts. in other words, cognitive scientists, who have satisfactorily dealt with human creativity, seem, with the due exceptions that i will discuss in the following pages, to have come relatively late to a treatment of the specific features or verbal art and they have not fully explained yet the distinction between the production and reception of a great literary masterpiece versus that of an ordinary or mediocre narrative. literary critics have extensively and brilliantly dealt with the challenges of hermeneutics for centuries. some of their theories concern, in particular: the hermeneutic circle (schleiermacher 1998), the role of the reader (eco 1979), the various degree of indeterminacy or even indecidability of literary texts (eco 1989), the interplay of what is said and what remains unsaid (ricoeur 1965; 1977), the dynamic and dialogic nature of hermeneutics (lecercle and shusterman 2002; alexandrov 2004). it is important to notice that similar concerns resonate with recent studies and findings in “cognitive stylistics” (semino, culpeper 2002) , “cognitive poetics” (tsur 1992; 2002; stockwell 2007; gavins 2003) “cognitive criticism” (cave 2016; burke and troscianko 2017) as i hope to convincingly argue in the following pages. literature studies armenian folia anglistika 139 cognitive scientists and literary theorists: a complex liaison one of the stimulating, but also controversial elements of cognitive literary studies is the great variety of denominations and ramifications of the field itself. in her detailed critical overview of the discipline ana margarida abrantes (2018) points out that different labels have been adopted for this area of study and that each of them has specific qualities that it is obviously impossible to satisfactorily examine or even outline in this essay, which is, in any case, concerned primarily with literary interpretation. so i will adopt a different approach, and instead of mapping the disciplinary territory of cultural and literary cognitive studies, i will focus on some of the most significant works of critics and scientists that have emerged since the 90s of the xx century. the study of the mental processes and the ways in which linguistic information is elaborated in the neurophysiological system has been one of the central issues of the cognitive sciences in relation to literature. this aspect has been adressed experimentally by a growing number of cognitive scientists through various strategies of neuroimaging, including: pet (positron emission tomography), fmri (functional magnetic resonance imaging), optical thermal images, the discovery of the ngf (nerve growth factor). this has allowed scientists to assess more accurately which areas in the brain are activated during verbal understanding and a fortiori during literary interpretation. other areas of study focus on the correspondences between cognitive mechanisms and the features of literary texts, and on the ways in which literary information is processed according to human cognitive endowments. the experimental approach has sometimes been accused of naive reductionism. in other words, excessive trust in the almost exclusive observation through neuroimaging has been questioned, first and foremost by literary scholars, and understandably so, because their experience and expertise in hermeneutics is grounded in a prevalently philosophical approach, rather than in an experimental methodology. some neuroscientists and several cognitive scientists seem to be aware of the limits of a purely experimental procedure towards the understanding of armenian folia anglistika literature studies 140 human hermeneutic activity, and they have advocated a phenomenological approach to the study of brain processes in interpretation, and have welcomed suggestions from the humanities. among them semir zeki (1999; 2009), founder of the institute of neuro-asthetics at university college london, francisco gomez mont avalos levy (2011), a neurologist, psychiatrist and founder of the neurohumanities research centre in tlalpan, mexico, vittorio gallese (stamenov 2002; ammaniti & gallese 2014), one of the members of the team of researchers at the university of parma who discovered the workings of ‘mirror neurons’ and provided a psycho-physiological explanation for both human empathy and learning through imitation.1 their findings can valuably be applied in aesthetics to concepts such as “imitatio”, and “mimesis”. several scientists have gone as far as to suggest that: “all areas of the humanities will contribute to (neuro) cognitive science (gomez and vega 2011). francisco gomez mont has, more specifically, proposed that “a primary purpose of literature is to represent the subjective quality of experience, inasmuch as mechanisms of evolutionary psychology are reflected in myths, dramas, tales, novels and poems. the discipline of evolutionary psychology, in conjunction with the neurohumanities must expand its historical sophistication and take into account the velocity of genomic changes and the plasticity and quick rewireability of neuronal circuits” (gomez and vega 2011). the fruitful collaboration between the sciences and the humanities advocated by zeki, gomez mont, gallese and others in the early years of the 21st century has, in fact, been further corroborated by studies on the brain’s neuroplasticity, and the discovery that culture, and literature as one of its specific domains, produces an incessant reorganization of jointly activated brain areas.2 the interfaces of cognition, culture, literature, and translation have also more recently been fruitfully explored by peter hanenberg (hanenberg 2015; 2018). his concept of “intramental translation” as the human capacity to transform sensorial input(s) into meaning expands roman jakobson views of intralingual, interlingual and intersemiotic translations in a neurocognitive perspective. hanenberg explains that the mental process of establishing literature studies armenian folia anglistika 141 meaning from perceptual experience(s) consists in the fact that the brain adds to perceptual input(s) a pre-existing (cultural) concept, and this produces the meaning of the perceived object. perception and conception are mutual processes that rely on cultural models or experiential memories to which new experiences are related. the studies i have mentioned so far clearly indicate lines of possible future developments in the cognitive cultural disciplines. the experimental study of neurophysiological responses to language comprehension, and their relation to concepts of literariness, foregrounding, and defamiliarization. a decisive contribution of the neurosciences to the dynamics of reading has come, as suggested above, from studies on how the brain processes linguistic information. progress in this direction has come from the joint efforts of linguists, literary scholars and neuroscientists. a very interesting contribution on the relationship between how the brain elaborates literary language and the seminal concept of “literariness” (sensu roman jakobson) has been proposed by vladimir alexandrov who convincingly defends “literariness” on the basis of experimental research carried out by cognitive scientists (alexandrov 2003a; 2003b). experimental data in support of “literariness” have been produced, among others (mcgilchrist 2009; waldie and mosley 2000; keller et al. 2001; bottini 1994), by two canadian researchers who work together, david miall (a specialist on english literature) and don kuiken (a psychologist), (miall and kuiken 1994; 1998; 1999). alexandrov refers to their studies and connects jakobson’s notion of the metaphoric and metonymic poles of language to hemispheric specialisation in the brain. he writes: “how do the hemispheres differ with regard to language processing? one difference appears to be how they process figurative language, such as metaphors, and related linguistic structures. a study using pet concluded that comprehension of metaphors, like that of sentences, involved “extensive activation” of several specific regions in the left hemisphere. but the comprehension of metaphors also activated a number of sites in the right armenian folia anglistika literature studies 142 hemisphere. […] additional studies show that patients whose right hemispheres do not function normally “tend to prefer literal interpretations of phrasal metaphors and idioms; […] they also fail to understand jokes because they cannot connect the premise to the punch line, and have difficulty “appreciating metaphors, idioms and indirect requests”. (alexandrov 2003a:4849) his contribution lucidly highlights the respective roles of the left and right hemispheres when we elaborate complex linguistic utterances (and literature is, of course a complex text par excellence). alexandrov develops his richly documented argument in volume ii and in volume iv of la conoscenza della letteratura / the knowledge of literarure: and he concludes as follows (alexandrov 2003b: 23-24.): “…the studies in question indicate that the left hemisphere is the locus of sequential, syntactically and grammatically organized linguistic meaning. its lexicon is characterized by semantic fields based on proximal, hierarchical, logical, or metonymic relations. when making sense of language, the left hemisphere suppresses ancillary or secondary meanings of words. […] by contrast, semantic fields in the right hemisphere are restricted in number and are characterized by a looser or coarser semantic focus. via metaphoric linkages, the right hemisphere can construct meanings from distal words that may otherwise seem unrelated to each other in the given language […]. these broad generalisations are noteworthy because they appear directly to echo jakobson’s ideas about two poles of language about which he wrote in his classic paper “two aspects of language and two types of aphasic disturbances”. (1956) (jakobson 1990a, 1990b) miall and kuiken’s theories and experiments are discussed by alexandrov also because they confirm the convergence of the experimental neurosciences and the philosophical and linguistic theories developed by czech structuralist jan mukařovský (1964) and the russian formalist viktor šklovskij (1976). i wish to point out that the concept of “foregrounding” (or aktualisace in the original czech), and the concept of “defamiliarization” (ostranienie in the original russian) refer to both the specific features of artistic discourse and to its literature studies armenian folia anglistika 143 surprising cognitive effects. “foregrounding” refers to the stylistic features of literary texts at the phonetic level (e.g., alliteration), the grammatical level (e.g., inversion, ellipsis), or the semantic level (e.g., metaphor, irony)”.3 literary theory and experimental data converge and demonstrate that the defamiliarization effect of literature depends on foregrounding as a specific cognitive experience related to artistic form. we can find an interesting analogy with miall and kuiken’s interest in “defamiliarization” and romantic views of poetry. samuel taylor coleridge and percy bysshe shelley are actually mentioned in their studies, undoubtedly because they had already extensively talked about “defamiliarization” in their philosophical and aesthetic defenses of poetry, suggesting that poetry takes the veil of habit off our eyes (coleridge, <http://www.public-library.uk/ebooks/14/98.pdf>; shelley 1909). theory of mind’(tom) and metarepresentationality: the impact of some human cognitive endowments on the experience of reading fiction a significant way in which narrative fiction has been related to the cognitive sciences is what is generally called “theory of mind”. lisa zunshine’s book “why we read fiction: theory of mind and the novel (2006) combines the findings of evolutionary psychology and recent studies on autism with a specific attention to literary texts. among others she deals with virginia woolf, dorothy richardson, henry james, and nabokov and with the genre of the detective novel. the value of fiction – zunshine convincingly argues – lies in the power of novels to develop a vital human faculty: i.e. the ability to read the mind of others. the ‘normal’ and evolutionary cognitive ability to explain the behaviour of others in terms of the underlying states of mind originated, as evolutionary psychology tells us, during a massive neurocognitive revolution which took place almost 10,000 years ago during the pleistocene and that gave humans a unique advancement in the knowledge of their social environment. zunshine elaborates two important concepts from cognitive studies and applies them to literary studies: armenian folia anglistika literature studies 144 1) the “mind reading” capacity, also known as “theory of mind” (tom), which involves inferring the thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and desires of others from their observable behaviour. and 2) the concept of “metarepresentationality”, i.e. the cognitive faculty that allows us to: “keep track of sources of our representations". this means that: “the attribution of mental states to literary characters is crucially mediated by the workings of our metarepresentational ability. fictional narratives, from beowulf, to pride and prejudice, rely on, manipulate, and titillate our tendency to keep track of who thought, wanted, and felt what and when”. (zunshine 2006:5) what is significant for our focus on the interpretation of literary texts is that this process rests on our cognitive ability, and the ensuing pleasure, to infer or make conjectures as to the characters’ motives, intentions and purposes. what are, for example, ulysses goals in his peregrinations? what are iago’s motives in pushing othello to murder and self-destruction, through crafty rhetoric? what forces and complex emotions drive anna karenina to kill herself?4 these conjectures are one of the significant elements in our enjoyment of novels. let me add that, in making such conjectures, there is always the possibility of misconstruing the characters’ states of mind and emotions, particularly in the case of texts that are temporally or culturally distant from the reader(s)’ knowledge and cultural “mind sets”, or in the case of texts that require an active intervention on the part of readers to supply missing information or to judge the reliability of narrators. moreover, misinterpretation, or a plurality of different interpretations of the characters’ fictional mental states largely depend on the assumptions and different frames of reference that different readers or literary critics, as well as cognitive scientists, bring to the texts. the oscillations between interpretation and overinterpretation (eco et al. 1992) are undoubtedly part of the daily experience of both common or critical readers. i wish therefore to point out that literary interpretation may include, but it certainly extends literature studies armenian folia anglistika 145 beyond what ‘theory of mind’ can tell us about characters, since the global meaning of a work of verbal art is much more complex than what is grasped or intuited at the level of character (locatelli 2009). the high structural complexity of plays, poems and novels, particularly of what we call “great literature” is related to several critical elements that transcend personal everyday experience and that include historical conjunctures, genre conventions, temporal and spatial categories, networks of rhetorical figures, formal devices such as plots and subplots, different kinds of argumentation, the aesthetics and poetics of different ages and literary movements or schools, the authorial intention, as well as the important distinction between the empirical author and the lyrical or narrative voice. we have reliable and unreliable narrators, and above all we experience literature as a special kind of discourse in which more that one thing can be said at once, and even contradictory things can be said at once. william empson’s seminal concept of “ambiguity” (empson 1947), and michail bakhtin’s fundamental idea of “heteroglossia” (bakhtin 1981; 1990; 1993; 1994) eloquently warn us against interpretative reductionism. this is undoubtedly one of the aspects that make a purely “theory of mind” approach to reading, however rigorous, somehow narrow. even if, in alan palmer’s words, “we all think of novels in terms of the mental functioning of characters,5 lisa zunshine herself is aware of this problem of reductionism and, in order to avoid it, she profitably integrates contributions of the cognitive sciences and mind reading (tom) with those of narratology (hogan 2010a; hogan 2010b) phenomenology (zunshine 2010b; easterlin 2010) and cultural historicism (zunshine 2010c) in the book she edited in 2010, introduction to cognitive cultural studies (zunshine 2010a). chapter seven in this volume talks about nothing less than a “second cognitive revolution” with the rise of “discursive psychology”. david herman explains that: “the first cognitive revolution marked a shift away from behaviorism to the study of cognition, postulating that “there are mental processes ‘behind’ what people say and do.[…] in contrast, although the second cognitive revolution also accepts the idea that there are cognitive processes, it views them as immanent in discourse practices. from this perspective the mind does not armenian folia anglistika literature studies 146 preexist discourse, but is ongoingly accomplished in and through its production and interpretation”. (herman 2010:156) this seems indeed a very interesting rapprochement between linguistic theory and cognitive science, at the level of language, literature and human cognitive affordances. the ‘resistant’ reading of literature and the pleasure of cognitive displacement neuroscientists who, since the early days of the discipline have been, and still are, interested in the study of emotions, are likely to find in the poets and literary critics ample material related to human consciousness. i am primarily, but by no means exclusively, referring to the so called “stream of consciousness novel” and its close connections to psychoanalysis and jamesian psychology, but i also wish to recall the above mentioned romantic poetry and poetics with its emphasis on literature’s power of “defamiliarization”. reuven tsur (1992), a brilliant cognitive literary critic, has proposed that literary fictions produce an effect of pleasure because they provide a particular awareness of our cognitive functioning, and has suggested that they do so by breaking up or deferring our ordinary cognitive processes. one significant example is provided by tsur’s discussion of our interpretation of jokes (tsur 1992). jokes, he suggests, go against the grain of our “mental sets”, i.e. they provoke a shift in the ordinary and common response to certain utterances. if mental sets are obviously valuable adaptive mechanisms that save mental energy, their disruption demonstrates that our cognitive abilities can go beyond automatic responses, and enable us to cope with changing and unpredictable situations. in relation to tsur’s studies i wish to recall that baroque poetry and aesthetics was grounded in the specific emotion of “wonder”, and in the poet’s capacity to evoke the emotion of cognitive amazement in the reader and viewer’s experience. the baroque aesthetic sense of “wonder” is, in my opinion, something closely related tsur’s idea of “cognitive displacement”. literature studies armenian folia anglistika 147 what he suggests seems to me very relevant for literary studies and interpretation, in general. in fact, i believe that his explanation of our cognitive displacement holds true for the difficulty we experience in reading complex literary texts, which often require us to pause, to register unusual formal features, to re-assess the (more or less) partial meanings we have grasped up to a certain moment, and to move beyond (locatelli 2005). literary artistic texts seem to resist a linear and immediate understanding, but require instead cognitive operations that allow us to gradually unfold a plurality of meanings. this ongoing re-assesment is dependent on the quintessentially aesthetic dimension of artistic texts, as i have repeatedly argued elsewhere (locatelli 2011; 2007). literary texts cannot be “swallowed whole”, so to speak, but must be “tasted” slowly and in depth. because of this i find reuventsur’s work on “cognitive poetics” (tsur 1992) highy convincing and a very interesting contribution to the solution of the crucial problem of addressing the specificity of literary works, versus ordinary verbal texts. the act of reading novels and poems requires close attention to different aspects of the literary works: from the level of phonemes and lexical units, to the use of retorical figures, from the level of narrative strategies of emplotment to intertextuality, from genre codifiction to aesthetic and ethical value (locatelli 2014; 2015). moreover, i believe that the use of ordinary language in artistic literature is always a variation, along a gradient that goes from the ordinary to the strange. literary language is an innovative variation on the ordinary norms of language use, at lexical, syntactical, cognitive, aesthetic levels. significant variations in literature occur at micro and macro levels, and of course all of these levels must be examined in literary interpretation, as suggested by seda gasparyan’s recent writings (gasparyan 2019; 2018). “as research indicates, the initial important condition of text understanding is the knowledge of the given language. however, language competence can by no means be sufficient for full understanding and interpretation of the text. here, the extra-linguistic knowledge and experience that are manifested in the text content and linguistic composition in one way or another are of particular significance”. (gasparyan 2018:12-13) armenian folia anglistika literature studies 148 i agree with gasparyan when she proposes that literary interpretation is grounded in linguistic competence and a special interaction between writer and reader, and she also suggests that this competence extends beyond this, to cultural, historical, critical knowledge on the part of both author and reader. my exploration of what cognitive science can contribute to literary hermeneutics wishes therefore to highlight also paul b. armstrong’s how literature plays with the brain: the neuroscience of reading and art (armstrong 2013). armstrong’s very promising approach is decidedly phenomenological, and at the same time it is based on neurological evidence. what i find most appealing is his focus on the aesthetic experience of both visual forms and words and, in particular, his refreshing focus on the “hermeneutic circle” in a cognitive science perspective. the “hermeneutic circle” is a seminal concept in literary theory proposed, among others, by friedrich schleiermacher (1998) and paul ricoeur (1965, 1970, 1977). armstrong refers to the importance of this concept in cognitive terms when he writes: “the hermeneutic circle – the paradox whereby an understanding of the parts of a text depends on an anticipatory sense of the whole to which they belong – turns out to have deep foundations in the cognitive functioning of the brain. similarly […] there is extensive neurological evidence about how the brain interprets shapes and words that is consistent with the phenomenological view of reading as a process of filling in textual indeterminacies and building consistent patterns, a process open to opposing results (so that readers may disagree about what a text means). neurological research on the brain’s response to ambiguous figures and the possibility of multiple interpretations is consonant with phenomenological theories of multiple meaning and conflicting readings”. (armstrong 2013:21) paul armstrong suggests that literature is a powerful stimulus to brain activity, a force that produces a uniquely cognitive experience of ongoing conflicts and negotiations in our understanding. negotiations occur between the human need for patterns, cohesion, regularity in both texts and the external literature studies armenian folia anglistika 149 world, versus the need of variation, innovation, instability, and a sense of perpetual change. these productive tensions constitute the “play” in armstrong’s title “how literature plays with the brain: the neuroscience of reading and art”. conclusion i wish to conclude my investigationon on the contributions of the cognitive sciences to literary interpretation by referring to a recent work resulting from the joint efforts of neuroscientists and literary critics, a work that, in this sense, has strong affinities with what i have suggested in my discussion. vera nuenning’s reading fictions, changing minds. the cognitive value of fiction (nuenning 2014) uniquely defends the value of literature in a cognitive and emotional perspective. nuenning writes: “when reading fiction, we remain an – albeit anything but passive – observer; for hours at a stretch, readers’ or viewers’ empathic reactions are allowed to continue without any disturbance from the outside. such an extensive and intensive practice of emphatic feelings, if engaged in regularly, can leave physiological traces and predispose readers to similar feelings in everyday situations”. (nuenning 2014:102) this is a very interesting and productive reinterpretation of the above mentioned neuroscientific idea of the “brain’s neuroplasticity”, and confirms literature’s power to cultivate empathy and increase our cognitive and social competences, through the special activity of interpretation that it promotes and sustains. the wonders of literature and its cognitive displacements are a vast domain to be both appreciated and further investigated. notes: 1. for their discovery of the ‘mirror neurons’ giacomo rizzolatti, vittorio gallese and leonardo fogassi received the the grawemeyer award for psychology, in 2007. rizzolatti, giacomo r. 2. “the neuronal architecture of an adult human brain is sculpted by language, visual milieu, music, gastronomy, tactile, olfactory, sensory armenian folia anglistika literature studies 150 stimuli and attitudes towards the useful, the aesthetic, the erotic and the sacred”. see francisco gomez mont avalos levy, and joseline vega osornio “neuroliterature: imagining and imaging the brain in the neurohumanities” in la conoscenza della letteratura/the knowledge of literature, vol.x, angela locatelli ed., bergamo: bergamo university press/edizioni sestante, 2011, p. 51. 3. miall and kuiken refer directly to mukařovský’s essay “standard language and poetic language”, to explain that: “foregrounding may occur in normal, everyday language, such as spoken discourse or journalistic prose, but it occurs sporadically without systematic design. in literary texts, on the other hand, foregrounding is structured: it tends to be both systematic and hierarchical”. see v. alexandrov, “literariness revisited”, op. cit., 2005 p.26. 4. zunshine suggests that: “the very process of making sense of what we read appears to be grounded in our ability to invest the flimsy verbal constructions that we generously call “characters” with a potential for a variety of thoughts, feelings and desires and then to look for ‘cues’ that would allow us to guess at their feelings and thus predict their actions. literature pervasively capitalizes and stimulates theory of mind mechanisms that had evolved to deal with real people, even if on some level readers do remain aware that fictive characters are not real people at all.” (p.10 zunshine, op.cit. emphasis mine). 5. this is what alan palmer suggests in his “storyworlds and groups”, in liza zunshine (ed.), introduction to cognitive cultural studies, baltimore, johns hopkins, 2010, pp.176-192. references: 1. abrantes, a.m. (2018) setting goals, finding gains, bridging gaps. criticism of cognitive literary studies. / paper presented at the cognitive futures in the arts and humanities 2018 conference, university of kent, uk, 1-4 july. literature studies armenian folia anglistika 151 2. alexandrov, v. (2003a) neuroscience and literariness. // la conoscenza della letteratura/the knowledge of literature, vol.ii. / ed. by a. locatelli. bergamo: bergamo university press/edizioni sestante, pp.41-62. 3. alexandrov, v. (2003b) “literariness” revisited. // la conoscenza della letteratura/the knowledge of literature, vol.iv. / ed. by a. locatelli. bergamo: bergamo university press/edizioni sestante, pp.21-38; 4. alexandrov, v. (2004) limits to interpretation: the meanings of anna karenina, madison: university of wisconsin press. 5. ammaniti, m. & gallese, v. (2014) the birth of intersubjectivity. psychodynamics, neurobiology and the self. new york: w.w. norton & company. 6. armstrong, p.b. (2013) how literature plays with the brain: the neuroscience of reading and art. baltimore: the johns hopkins up. 7. bakhtin, m. (1981) the dialogic imagination: four essays. / ed. by m. holquist, austin: university of texas press. 8. bakhtin, m. 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(2000) hemispheric specialisation for reading. // brain and language, 75, pp. 108-22. 61. zeki, s. et. al. (2004) the neural correlates of maternal and romantic love. // neuroimage, 21, pp.1155-1166. 62. zeki, s. (1999) inner vision: an exploration of art and brain. oxford: oup. 63. zeki, s. (2009) splendors and miseries of the brain: love, creativity, and the quest for human happiness. oxford: wiley-blackwell. 64. zunshine, l. (2006)why we read fiction: theory of mind and the novel. columbus: the ohio state university press. 65. zunshine, l. (ed.) (2010a) introduction to cognitive cultural studies. baltimore: johns hopkins. 66. zunshine, l. (2010b) theory of mind and experimental representations of fictional consciousness. / ed. by l. zunshine. // introduction to cognitive cultural studies. baltimore: johns hopkins, pp.193-213. 67. zunshine, l. (2010c) lying bodies of the enlightment: theory of mind and cultural historicism. / ed. by l. zunshine. // introduction to cognitive cultural studies. baltimore: johns hopkins, pp.115-133. armenian folia anglistika literature studies 156 կարո՞ղ են արդյոք ժամանակակից ճանաչողական ուսումնասիրությունները նպաստել գրական ստեղծագործությունների մեկնաբանությանը սույն հոդվածի նպատակն է ներկայացնել վերջին երկու կամ երեք տասնամյակներում գրական տեքստերի մեկնաբանության հարցը ճանաչողական գիտությունների ուրույն տեսանկյունից: ճանաչողական գրականագիտության ամենահետաքրքիր, բայց նաև հակասական տարրերից է այս ոլորտի անվանման բազմազանությունը: այն կոչվել է ամենատարբեր անուններով – ճանաչողական պոետիկա, ճանաչողական սեմիոտիկա, ճանաչողական ոճագիտություն, ճանաչողական գրականագիտություն, ճանաչողական քննադատություն և այլն: առանցքային խնդիրը, որին բազմաթիվ անգամ անդրադարձ է արվել, բայց որը դեռևս շարունակում է քննարկվել, ճանաչողական գիտությունների կիրառելիությունն է գրական հուշարձանների մեկնաբանության բնագավառում: ուստի, սույն աշխատանքով փորձ է արվում ուսումնասիրել այս արդիական խնդիրը և ներկայացնել գրական մեկնաբանության դինամիկայի այն առանձնահատկությունները, որոնք ճանաչողական գիտությունների ուշադրության կենտրոնում են: հոդվածը մասնավորապես կենտրոնանում է ուղեղի գործունեության և գեղարվեստականության կապի հարցերին, ինչպես նաև այն հնարավոր ներդրումներին, որ նյարդահոգեբանությունն ու ճանաչողաբանությունը կարող են ունենալ գրական երկերի մեկնաբանության բնագավառում: received by the editorial board 26.09.2019 recommended for publication by the reviewers 29.11.2019 accepted for print 02.02.2020 << /ascii85encodepages false /allowtransparency false /autopositionepsfiles true /autorotatepages /none /binding /left /calgrayprofile (dot gain 15%) /calrgbprofile () /calcmykprofile (iso coated v2 \050eci\051) /srgbprofile (srgb iec61966-2.1) /cannotembedfontpolicy /error /compatibilitylevel 1.3 /compressobjects /tags /compresspages true /convertimagestoindexed true /passthroughjpegimages true /createjobticket false 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(www.heidelberg.com) >> /namespace [ (adobe) (common) (1.0) ] /othernamespaces [ << /asreaderspreads false /cropimagestoframes true /errorcontrol /warnandcontinue /flattenerignorespreadoverrides false /includeguidesgrids false /includenonprinting false /includeslug false /namespace [ (adobe) (indesign) (4.0) ] /omitplacedbitmaps false /omitplacedeps false /omitplacedpdf false /simulateoverprint /legacy >> << /addbleedmarks false /addcolorbars false /addcropmarks false /addpageinfo false /addregmarks false /convertcolors /converttocmyk /destinationprofilename () /destinationprofileselector /documentcmyk /downsample16bitimages true /flattenerpreset << /presetselector /mediumresolution >> /formelements false /generatestructure false /includebookmarks false /includehyperlinks false /includeinteractive false /includelayers false /includeprofiles false /multimediahandling /useobjectsettings /namespace [ (adobe) (creativesuite) (2.0) ] /pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /documentcmyk /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /usedocumentprofile /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2540 2540] /pagesize [595.276 841.890] >> setpagedevice microsoft word 1.linguistics 7 54 (3) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 46 sports idioms and their interpretation in different dimensions gevorg barseghyan yerevan state university abstract the present paper aims at elucidating the ethnocultural relevance of sports terms and expressions which tend to penetrate into everyday english speech as well as political discourse. obvious is the fact that the character and essence of cross-cultural interrelations depends, to a great extent on the participants’ ability to understand each other in order to reach an agreement. it is also well known that mutual understanding is in most cases defined by the ethnic culture of each side and the psychology of the ethnic group. members of common culture not only share the same information but also the methods of coding, storing and retrieving the information. rituals, traditions, customs are very closely connected with language and form part and parcel of the linguacultural “realia”. in the present article sports terms and expressions are viewed as realia and social behaviour patterns as each nation has its unique way of understanding and perceiving a game in its own way, thus attaching some symbolic significance to it understandable within the scope of the linguocultural traditions of the country it has originated in. our observations show that the wide use of sports terms and expressions in non-sporting situations, particularly in political discourse and everyday speech is to a certain extent conditioned by their sociocultural origin and the new connotational meanings acquired in the course of the language development. key words: sports terms and idioms, expression of one’s identity, nonsporting situations, sociocultural nature of sports idioms, linguocultural realia, hidden codes, code breaker, popular consciousness, international communication. introduction in recent years extensive research in communicative language teaching served as theoretical and methodological basis for the emergence of several linguistics armenian folia anglistika 47 approaches, the ethnographic approach (hymes 1974); and the sociocultural one in particular (saphonova 1991) that aimed to co-teach language and culture (vereschagin, kostomarov 1990); the core of which is the dialectical connection between language and culture. language is a means of expression of one’s identity. it is impossible to understand a foreign language unless you at least have some idea about the conditions the nation speaking the language lives in. in other words, real use of linguistic elements in speech and real speech productivity are conditioned by the knowledge of the social-cultural life of the people speaking the language. rituals, traditions, customs are very closely connected with language, as they form part and parcel of linguocultural realia (edward 1990); british sports idioms, for example, known to express everything that concerns mankind, mediating the joy and misery of life, sorrow, and happiness, honor and shame, rising to greatness and falling into objection, in fact, indicate elements of british culture. sports idioms in non-sporting situations in this paper an attempt is made to show that games and sports terms and expressions also belong here and constitute an important part of a nation’s linguoculture. the target of the research is the study of sports idioms, their origin, their occurrence in the english language, the new connotational meanings they acquire in the course of language development, and their usage in the non-sporting situations and dimensions. the interpretation of the material scrupulously selected and presented in the paper enables us to reveal the typically british sociocultural nature of sports idioms and their ability to be well fit in non-sporting situations and everyday speech. the purpose of this paper is also to go over one of the problems of ethnocultural studies, namely take into consideration sport and sports terms viewing them as realia and social behavior patterns closely linked to national character. the implicit significance of the question is elucidated through linguistic material. in fact, each nation has its own way of seeing and doing things, based on written rules, and these hidden differences often make cooperation difficult. members of common culture not only share the same information, but also methods of coding, storing and retrieving the information. these methods vary from culture to culture. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 48 in this paper we are concerned with the sports idioms which are used to appear in non-sporting situations. thus if we do not know the rules and the origin of a given game we would be unable to understand the meaning of the verbal manifestation of the principles of the game, and the expressiveemotional-evaluative overtones they have acquired in different linguocultural contexts. we proceed from the fact that in the english language, and in the world of english reality, sports and, thus sports terms and expressions are part of the given cultural reality (beard 1998). the popular expression that’s not cricket, for example, implies that someone has behaved badly. the term derives from the game of cricket. cricket means fair and honorable behavior. when one is fair and honorable, one is cricket. you can say “you are cricket” to someone you respect, or “i’m cricket” about yourself. “i’m cricket” when you are cricket, you benefit yourself by avoiding your bad behaviours. on the other hand, you honor yourself. and that’s really cricket. cricket is one of the ethnic values which is idiomatically used in other spheres of life, and its significance is ascribed to the universal concept of fair vs unfair. it is not cricket means it is not fair. we should hasten to add that the rules of this british game are very strict and fair. if an englishman tells an armenian “you are not cricket” the latter will not be able to understand it if he has no background knowledge about the english game of cricket. in order to understand what a foreigner wants to say by this or that phrase or even behaviour one should have some background information about the nation and its culture. moreover, he must be familiar with certain british ethnocultural realias. the phrase it’s not cricket became inexorably linked to the lack of honesty, integrity, morality or patriotism. the goal of the paper (the study of sports idioms used in non-sporting dimensions), accounts for our interest in various researches on idiomatic expressions at large, the investigation and critical analysis of which disposes us to think that sports terms and expressions may well fit for non-sporting spheres and situations. politics is one of those spheres. for example, to throw one’s hat in the ring which is now actively used in political campaigns, when the politician announces his determination of becoming a candidate, comes from the sport of boxing, as it was the custom for a fighter to throw his hat into the boxing ring to signal his readiness to fight. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 49 another interesting example in the domain of politics is shoo-in which is an american term meaning someone or something that seems sure to win. it originates from the sphere of football when before a big match, for example, supporters of each team are certain to argue about which team will win. sometimes, though, one team appears much stronger than the other, and there seems to be no way it can lose. everyone agrees that the stronger team which is the shoo-in will win. the term shoo-in comes from the word “shoo” that is a word hundreds of years old and is associated with the meaning “to urge a person or an animal to move in a desired direction.” word experts say it was first used many years ago in horse racing, when dishonest riders agreed secretly to “throw the race,” to hold back their horses, so that one chosen horse would win the race. the chosen riders would lose the race. but they would win money from secret bets on the chosen horse. the public soon learned about this dishonesty in races. they began to call the winner of such a race a “shoo-in”. as years passed, the meaning changed and now “shoo-in” has nothing to do with cheating or illegal activity. it is now used to describe any athlete or competitor, certain to win. american runner edwin moses won more than a hundred races before the hurdles race in the 1984 olympic games. everyone said moses was a shoo-in, that he was faster than any other competitor. they said he could not lose. and they were right. he won the gold medal. the popularity of the word shoo-in established itself in the sphere of politics in the presidential election campaign of 1984. the study of the public opinion during the campaign showed much more support for the republican president ronald reagan than for his opponent the democrat walter mondale. so, ronald reagan was a “shoo-in” or in other words a hot favourite sure to win. another interesting idiom is fall guy just the opposite of shoo-in. this expression has made an easy jump from sport events to politics and everyday life. a fall guy is the person who is decided to be the loser or victim. the first fall guys were men who wrestled for money. at the end of the last century, wrestling was a very popular sport in the united states. wrestling matches were held not only in big cities but at country fairs and travelling shows. as the sport became more popular, it gradually lost its sporting value. many of the contests were “fixed,” and the wrestlers knew before the match which of them would be the winner. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 50 the goal in wrestling is to hold your opponent’s shoulders down against the floor. this is called a fall. sometimes one of the wrestlers would be paid before the match to “take a fall.” he agreed to be the loser for money i.e. the fall guy. today, a fall guy in many different situations is somebody who is talked or tricked into taking the blame for someone else’s crime or wrong doing. there are fall guys in many situations, people who publicly take the blame when something goes wrong. our observations show that not only sports terms and expressions have penetrated into our everyday speech, but also the names of sports champions. thus, a case in point is the word combination the real mccoy. if a person tells you that something is “the real mccoy,” he intends to inform that it is the real thing, not a copy or substitute. the idiomatic word combination “the real mccoy” is based on the name of the famous boxer and a former world champion charles “kid” mccoy, who once had an unpleasant incident. mccoy was a peaceful man but one day when he was having a drink in a bar with a lady friend a man came up to them and without asking for permission began talking to the lady and offended her by pestering. mccoy had no other choice but mentioning he was kid mccoy. however, this had no effect on the stranger who didn’t believe his words. he even attempted a joke saying he was george washington in that case and continued pestering the lady. mccoy could stand this no longer and had to hit the stranger with his fist. although it was a very light touch, the man fell to the ground unconscious. however soon he came to himself and called out, “that was the real mccoy!” hence the idiomatic meaning of the word combination “the real mccoy.” the intensive use of another common expression, game plan, outside the sports world, namely in economics, politics, social life, everyday speech among friends, etc., is meant to describe a detailed plan for dealing with changing situations. for example, the chairman of the us president’s council of economic advisers said that he would help to decide the “washington game plan for economic policy” which thoroughly presented all the steps the government would take while accomplishing its aims and ideals in its economic policy. the word combination game plan originates especially from football. before any game, the coach will design a plan for his team to follow and in making the plan he needs to study the video and audio materials of the earlier games of the team. the study of those materials helps him to consider the strongest and linguistics armenian folia anglistika 51 weakest points of both teams. while making his game plan, he takes all those points into consideration and then instructs his players how to react to every possible move the opponents may take. there is obviously nothing interesting and exciting in socks that people wear on their feet, but several interesting english expressions based on the word socks have so far been made. one such expression is pull up your socks meaning “try to do better, improve your performance.” imagine a basketball team near the end of an important game. the players are losing. they are so tired that even their socks look tired. the tops of their socks are falling down. the coach calls time out to talk to his team. “take a breath”, he tells them. “get organized. if you pull up your socks, you can win this game.” thus, he is telling them they can win, if they start playing better. it is not a mere chance, then, that a magazine recently reported that a political leader told the members of his party they needed to “pull up their socks and get back in the game.” it should be mentioned that americans’ love for sport has helped to make many sports expressions part of everyday american speech. for example, the expression full court press, which also originated from the sphere of sports, means the strongest possible effort in order to get something done. a newspaper reported recently that the administration was planning a full court press to get its programme through congress. we have to agree that it is not easy to understand what it means just by looking at each of the components, for court, in this case, has nothing to do with trials or judges, and press does not mean newspapers. but a basketball player will be able to explain that it means a very forceful effort by one team to take control of the basketball game, for a basketball team scores by putting the ball through the basket at the opponent’s end of the playing area or court. the team then usually runs quickly back to its own end of the court to defend its basket. it tries to keep the other team back from scoring. however, in a full court press a team does not retreat after it scores. instead, it attacks or pressures its opponents with a very aggressive defense. thus, when someone decides to make a strong extra effort to get something done, that person is making a full court press. there are many baseball terms that are also used in everyday english. here are several examples: to retrieve a ball that has been hit – it appears in british and american variants of english in the sense of “deal with.” armenian folia anglistika linguistics 52 to strike out – the baseball player has three strikes and is out for that time at bat, while the second meaning of the phrase is “to fail at doing something.” to keep pitching – the first meaning of this expression is to continue to throw the ball, but in everyday speech it is used as “to continue to work on something.” popular familiarity with all kinds of sports shows that the most intensive use of sports idioms occurs in politics. here are some additional examples: sailing close to the wind (to take a risk: comes from sailing sport) on the ropes (to be in a tough situation: a boxing term) to score an own goal (to be mistaken: especially taken from football) plain sailing (easy, without problems: comes from a sailing term) kick off (to start something: a football term) to be for the high jump (to be in a serious trouble: used in athletics) steer clear off (to keep away from: it’s an athletic term also used in running) learning the ropes (to find out how to do something: used especially in learning boxing rules) being thrown in at the deep end (to face a difficult situation without any preparation: is typical of a football game or boxing) to give a free rein (to give someone freedom for action: used in horse racing) boxed into a corner (to limit one’s freedom to move or act: a boxing term) below the belt (that was not fair: used in boxing) to slow off the mark (be slow at starting something: used especially in car race) neck and neck (equal position: in horse racing or in a contest, to fight with competitors for advantage or lead) to move the goalposts (to change the rules to your own advantage: used in football or rugby) to take the wind out of sail (to make someone feel less confident: used in sailing) skating on thin ice (to do something risky or dangerous: from skating sport) to do an end run (to go around the end of the opponent’s defensive line: used especially in football and rugby) carry the ball (to be responsible for a project in a business deal: used in all playing disciplines) linguistics armenian folia anglistika 53 to hold the line (to stay and not move: usually players try to stay in their position against the opponent’s offensive attack in almost all playing disciplines). the examples adduced above display the “hidden codes” of behavior in each culture, which can rarely be understood without a “code breaker” (arens, montague 1975); they reveal a fundamental tone characteristic of the voice of people’s feelings and thoughts, help to capture the “soul” of a nation, as well as testify the capacity of sport to provide metaphoric interpretations of the objective reality into different spheres of activity, thus translating them into the popular consciousness of diverse cultures. our observations allow us to conclude that idiomatic expressions originating from sports will continue to feature heavily in the english language for international communication. references: 1. aghayan, e. (1976) ardi hayereni bacatrakan bararan. yerevan: hayastan hratarakchutyun. 2. arens, w.; montague, s. (1975) professional football: an american symbol and ritual in the american dimension: cultural myths and social realities. washington, new york: alfred publishing. 3. beard, a. (1998) the language of sport. 1st edition. n.y.: psychology press. 4. edward, j. (1990) understanding cultural differences. yarmouth, me: intercultural press. 5. (1962) enciklopedicheskiy slovar’ po fizicheskoi cul’ture i sportu. m.: fizkul’tura i sport. 6. (1998) football dictionary. / compiled and arranged by th. binder and m. brasse. zurich: published by fifa. 7. gavrilovets, a. (1979) english-russian dictionary of sports terms and phrases. m.: russian language publishers. 8. hymes, d. (1974) foundations in sociolinguistics: an ethnographic approach. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. 9. (1993) oxford dictionary of phrasal verbs. oxford: oup. 10.(1997) oxford dictionary of english idioms. oxford: oup. 11.(2005) oxford dictionary of foreign words and phrases. oxford: oup. 12.palmatier, r.; ray, h. (1989) sports talk: a dictionary of sports metaphors. new york: greenwood publishers. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 54 13.saphonova, v. (1991) sotsiokulturniy podkhod k obucheniu inostrannomy yaziku. m.: visshaya shkola. 14.tomakhin, g. (1999) lingvostranovedcheskiy slovar’. m.: rus.yaz. 15.vereschagin, y.; kostomarov v. (1990) yazyk i kul’tura. m.: rus.yaz. 16.(1989) webster’s encyclopedic dictionary of the english language. new york: gramercy book. 17.zarokhovich, l. (2002) anglo-ruskiy i rusko-angliyskiy slovar’ futbolnykh terminov. m.: izdatel’stvo ast. êåáñï³ûçý ç¹çáùý»ñá ¨ ¹ñ³ýó ù»ïý³μ³ýáõãû³ý ï³ñμ»ñ ã³÷³ýçßý»ñá ü»ñï³û³óíáõ ñá¹í³íá ýå³ï³ï áõýç å³ñ½³μ³ý»éáõ ëåáñï³ûçý ï»ñùçýý»ñç ¨ ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõãûáõýý»ñç ³½·³ùß³ïáõã³ûçý ñ³ù³å³ï³ëë³ýáõãûáõýý»ñá, áñáýù ùçïí³í »ý ý»ñã³÷³ýó»éáõ çýãå»ë ³éûñû³ ³ý·é»ñ»ýç, ³ûýå»ë ¿é ù³õ³ù³ï³ý ëáëáõûãç ù»ç: ²ïýñ³ûï ¿, áñ ùççùß³ïáõã³ûçý ÷áëñ³ñ³μ»ñáõãû³ý μýáõûãý áõ ¿áõãûáõýá ù»í³å»ë ï³åí³í »ý ëáë³ïçóý»ñç՝ ùçùû³ýó ñ³ëï³ý³éáõ ï³ñáõáõãû³ý ñ»ï: ö³ëï ¿, áñ »ñïïáõù áùμéýáõùá ß³ï ¹»åù»ñáõù å³ûù³ý³íáñí³í ¿ ïáõù»ñç ³½·³ûçý ùß³ïáõûãáí ¨ ñá·»μ³ýáõãû³ùμ: øç¨ýáõûý ùß³ïáõûãç ïñáõý»ñá áã ùç³ûý ïçñ³å»ïáõù »ý ùç¨ýáõûý ï»õ»ï³ïíáõãû³ýá, ³ûé¨ ï»õ»ï³ïíáõãû³ý ïá¹³íáñù³ý, ïáõï³ïù³ý ¨ μ³ó³ñ³ûï»éáõ ù»ãá¹ý»ñçý: ìçë³ï³ñ·»ñá, ³í³ý¹áõûãý»ñý áõ ³í³ý¹áõãûáõýý»ñá ë»ñïáñ»ý ï³åí³í »ý 黽íç ñ»ï, ¨ 黽í³ùß³ïáõã³ûçý çñ³ïáõãû³ý μ³õï³óáõóçãý »ý: ²ûë ñá¹í³íáõù ëåáñï³ûçý ï»ñùçýý»ñý áõ ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõãûáõýý»ñá ¹çï³ñïíáõù »ý áñå»ë çñ³ïáõãûáõýý»ñ ¨ ñ³ë³ñ³ï³ï³ý í³ñù³·íç ûñçý³ïý»ñ՝ óáõûó ï³éáí, áñ ûáõñ³ù³ýãûáõñ ³½· ûáõñáíç ¿ áýï³éáõù ë³õá, ¨ ³û¹ áýï³éù³ý ßñç³ý³ïý»ñáõù ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïáõï ï³ñ¨áñáõãûáõý áõý»ý ³ûý »ñïñç 黽í³ùß³ïáõã³ûçý ³í³ý¹áõûãý»ñá, áñï»õçó ³ûý ë»ñáõù ¿: ø»ñ ¹çï³ñïáõùý»ñá óáõûó »ý ï³éçë, áñ ëåáñï³ûçý ï»ñùçýý»ñç ¨ ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõãûáõýý»ñç é³ûý ïçñ³éáõãûáõýá áã ëåáñï³ûçý çñ³íç׳ïý»ñáõù, ù³ëý³íáñ³å»ë ù³õ³ù³ï³ý ëáëáõûãáõù, çýãå»ë ý³¨ ³éûû³ ëáëùáõù, ½·³éçáñ»ý å³ûù³ý³íáñí³í ¿ 黽íç ½³ñ·³óù³ý áýã³óùáõù ó»éù μ»ñí³í ëáóç³é-ùß³ïáõã³ûçý ýñμçù³ëïý»ñç ³éï³ûáõãû³ùμ: microsoft word maket 2020-1(21) 19.02 doc.doc linguistics armenian folia anglistika 1 armenian folia anglistika – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english (since 2005) and yerevan state university (since 2015) aims at fostering research of the english language, literature and culture in armenia and elsewhere and facilitate intellectual cooperation between high school teachers and scholars. armenian folia anglistika is intended to be published twice a year. articles of interest to university-level teachers and scholars in english studies are warmly welcomed by the multi-national editorial board of the journal. articles should be directed to the editor-in-chief. in 2007 the editorial board of armenian folia anglistika announced the opening of a new section in the journal – armenological studies, which invites valuable and innovative contributions from such fields as armenian linguistics, literary criticism, ethnic studies, cultural history, gender studies and a wide range of adjacent disciplines. հիմնադիր և գլխավոր խմբագիր` սեդա գասպարյան համարի թողարկման պատասխանատու` լիլի կարապետյան լրատվական գործունեություն իրականացնող «անգլերենի ուսումնասիրության հայկական ասոցիացիա» հկ http:www.aase.ysu.am վկայական` 03ա 065183 տրված` 28.06.2004 թ. yerevan state university press armenian folia anglistika linguistics 2 editor-in-chief seda gasparyan – dr. of sciences (philology), professor, corresponding member of ra nas, honoured scientist of ra, holder of “best scientific work” award of ra nas (2010), holder of “prolific researcher” award of ra state committee of science (2013, 2016, 2017, 2018), head of yerevan state university english philology department, president of armenian association for the study of english. phone: +374 99 25 50 60; e-mail: sedagasparyan@yandex.ru; sedagasparyan@ysu.am editors shushanik paronyan – dr. of sciences (philology), professor, head of the department of english for cross-cultural communication, yerevan state university (armenia). gaiane muradian – dr. of sciences (philology), associate professor of english philology department, yerevan state university (armenia). astghik chubaryan – phd in philology, professor of english philology department, yerevan state university (armenia). editorial advisory board svetlana ter-minasova – dr. of sciences (philology), professor emeritus at lomonosov moscow state university, president of the faculty of foreign languages and area studies, doctor honoris causa at the universities of birmingham, uk (2002), the state university of new york, usa (2007), the russian-armenian slavonic university, armenia, yerevan state university, armenia (2019), visiting professor at the national research tomsk state university, russia (2013), yunshan professor at guangdong university of foreign languages and international relations, china (2016), holder of lomonosov award (1995), fulbright’s 50th anniversary award (1995), boris polevoi prize (2015), member of the council of experts of the international academic forum, japan (2013). angela locatelli – professor of english literature, bergamo university, italy, adjunct professor in the department of religious studies at the university of pennsylvania, philadelphia, faculty member of the international phd network established in 2008 by the university of giessen, germany, holder of a fellowship at the folger shakespeare library in washington (1999, 2008), one of the three general editors of ejes (european journal of english studies) (2004-2010). linguistics armenian folia anglistika 3 olga aleksandrova – doctor of sciences (philology), professor, head of the department of english linguistics at lomonosov moscow state university, holder of lomonosov award (2001), award of the international federation of modern language teachers’ associations at fiplv (2005). john stotesbury – adjunct professor, school of humanities, university of eastern finland, joensuu, finland; and adjunct professor, department of english, university of oulu, finland. elżbieta chrzanowska-kluczewska – professor, dr. hab. universytet jagiellonski, institute filologii angielskiej, katedra jezykoznawstwa angielskiego. cracow, poland. elżbieta manczak-wohlfeld – professor, dr. hab. universytet jagiellonski, institute filologii angielskiej, katedra jezykoznawstwa angielskiego. cracow, poland. alessandra giorgi – phd in philology, full professor, department of linguistics and comparative cultural studies, ca’foscari university of venice, italy. buniyatova isabella – dr. of philology, professor, head of the department of germanic and romance philology, boris grinchenko kyiv university, ukraine. iryna shevchenko – dr. of philology, full professor, v. n. karazin kharkov national university, head of the department of business foreign language and translation, academician of academy of sciences of the high school of ukraine, editor-in-chief of the international journal “cognition, communication, discourse”. ewa salkiewicz-munnerlyn – professor, doctor of cracow academy after andrej frycz modrzewski, cracow, poland. marta dabrowska – associate professor, dr. hab., institute of english studies, jagiellonian university, cracow, poland. peter sutton – freelance editor and translator, uk. sona haroutyunian – doctor of linguistics, professor at the department of asian and african studies, visiting professor at university of california los angeles (2009), nida school of translation studies, new york misano adriatico (2012), california state university fresno (2013), yerevan state university (2015), city university of new york (2017). managing editor lili karapetyan – associate professor of english philology department, yerevan state university (armenia) assistant editor gohar madoyan – phd in philology, associate professor of english philology department, yerevan state university (armenia) © seda gasparyan, 2020 armenian folia anglistika linguistics 4 երևանի պետական համալսարան անգլերենի ուսումնասիրության հայկական ասոցիացիա (անգլերենի ուսումնասիրության եվրոպական ֆեդերացիայի անդամ) անգլիագիտական հետազոտությունների հայկական հանդես միջազգային գրախոսվող ամսագիր համագործակցությամբ՝ երևանի վալերի բրյուսովի անվան պետական լեզվահասարակագիտական համալսարանի (հայաստան) մոսկվայի մ. լոմոնոսովի անվ. պետական համալսարանի (ռուսաստան) կրակովի յագիելոնյան համալսարանի (լեհաստան) բերգամոյի համալսարանի (իտալիա) մոնտենեգրոյի համալսարանի (մոնտենեգրո) երեվան – 2020 linguistics armenian folia anglistika 5 yerevan state university armenian association for the study of english (member association of the european society for the study of english) armenian folia anglistika peer-reviewed international journal in cooperation with: yerevan brusov state university of languages and social sciences (armenia) lomonosov moscow state university (russia) jagiellonian university, cracow (poland) bergamo university (italy) university of montenegro (montenegro) yerevan – 2020 << /ascii85encodepages false /allowtransparency false /autopositionepsfiles true /autorotatepages /none /binding /left /calgrayprofile (dot gain 15%) /calrgbprofile () /calcmykprofile (iso coated v2 \050eci\051) /srgbprofile (srgb iec61966-2.1) /cannotembedfontpolicy /error /compatibilitylevel 1.3 /compressobjects /tags /compresspages true /convertimagestoindexed true /passthroughjpegimages true /createjobticket false /defaultrenderingintent /default /detectblends true /detectcurves 0.0000 /colorconversionstrategy /leavecolorunchanged 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(www.heidelberg.com) >> /namespace [ (adobe) (common) (1.0) ] /othernamespaces [ << /asreaderspreads false /cropimagestoframes true /errorcontrol /warnandcontinue /flattenerignorespreadoverrides false /includeguidesgrids false /includenonprinting false /includeslug false /namespace [ (adobe) (indesign) (4.0) ] /omitplacedbitmaps false /omitplacedeps false /omitplacedpdf false /simulateoverprint /legacy >> << /addbleedmarks false /addcolorbars false /addcropmarks false /addpageinfo false /addregmarks false /convertcolors /converttocmyk /destinationprofilename () /destinationprofileselector /documentcmyk /downsample16bitimages true /flattenerpreset << /presetselector /mediumresolution >> /formelements false /generatestructure false /includebookmarks false /includehyperlinks false /includeinteractive false /includelayers false /includeprofiles false /multimediahandling /useobjectsettings /namespace [ (adobe) (creativesuite) (2.0) ] /pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /documentcmyk /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /usedocumentprofile /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2540 2540] /pagesize [595.276 841.890] >> setpagedevice microsoft word 1.linguistics 7 54 (3) linguistics armenian folia anglistika 7 pragmatic aspects of metalinguistic utterances marika tonyan yerevan state university abstract verbal communication is an extremely many-faceted and complex phenomenon, and should be seen as a process which, besides sending and receiving messages about the object world, can also be focused on the use of the code through which the verbal interaction is taking place. such spheres as teaching, translation, scientific discourse, court procedures, psychological treatment, to say nothing of verbal art, are obviously metalinguisticallyoriented. however, in everyday interaction as well the discussion of metalinguistic issues by the interlocutors is almost as common as a talk about extralinguistic reality. the aim of the present study is to examine the interrelation of metalinguistic and pragmatic characteristics of utterances in everyday speech. we will try to show that only if a certain utterance of metalinguistic nature is perceived as such by the speaker and hearer, can communication be pragmatically successful. conversely, provided that the interlocutors take into account certain pragmatic factors, the utterance can be actualized and realized as a metalinguistic one, the result being the interlocutors’ mutual understanding. key words: “naive linguist”, object language, reflexive use of language, metalinguistic activity, pragmatic feature. introduction as is well known, the metalinguistic function was first described by roman jakobson. he distinguished six functions of language: the referential, the expressive (emotive or affective), conative, poetic, phatic and metalingual (or reflexive). while the referential function relates to the description of a situation, object or mental state in reality, the metalinguistic function is the use of language (what jakobson calls “code”) to discuss or describe itself. according to r. jakobson, a distinction is made between “object language” when we speak of objects in the extralinguistic world and “metalanguage” when armenian folia anglistika linguistics 8 we refer to language itself. he states that the latter plays an important role in everyday communication: “whenever the addresser and/or the addressee need to check up whether they use the same code, speech is focused on the code: it performs a metalingual (i.e., glossing) function. ‘i don’t follow you — what do you mean?’ asks the addressee, or in shakespearean diction, ‘what is’t thou say’st?’” (jakobson 1960:356). metalinguistic activity metalinguistic activity, whose basis is what l. wittgenstein called “tacit knowledge”, permeates all spheres of language use. we talk about language, about its different aspects and specific linguistic entities, and in this way act as a “naive linguist”. it goes without saying that a scholar’s judgments about language are based on goal-directed and systematized manipulations, but the operations of a “naive linguist” with language are almost as diverse as those of a professional linguist. an ordinary speaker metarepresents a linguistic fact by performing so many activities that it would be hardly possible to enumerate all of them. some of the most common metalinguistic activities are: defining a word, explaining the purpose of the utterance, justifying the choice of verbal means, repeating what has been said, reformulating it, commenting on it, quoting, making generalizations, etymologizing, playing on words. in these, and many other, ways we use language as a tool by which we explore the world and at the same time can explore the tool itself. obviously, the process of language acquisition, both by a child and an adult learner, includes numerous additional activities. v. kashkin gives some interesting data about the frequencies of occurrence of a linguistic topic among russian students. according to a survey conducted among 100 students (aged from 16 to 26), it appears that 44.0 % of the respondents think about language very often, 21.4 % – sometimes, 21.4 % conative not very often, 7.2% – hardly ever, and 6% – never. reflections about one’s mother tongue are usually accompanied by a sense of linguistic superiority, and generalizations about the exceptional merits of this or that mother tongue are widely spread in all languages. just to quote one such statement: “only we, english people, call it properly – “water””. we not only call it “water”, but it is water” (yuen 1968: 2, cited from kashkin 2002). metalinguistic activities can be observed in linguistic errors, which are of quite different kinds and origins, one of which is hypercorrection. a language linguistics armenian folia anglistika 9 user can have the idea of the rule in his mind and adapt the use of a linguistic unit to that rule. this is the case with children and learners, who either use an irregular verb as a regular one or vice versa. “naive” users of a foreign language can make mistakes out of the erroneous concept of the foreign regularity, therefore creating a humorous effect (kashkin 2002:5). just as people refer to an entity in extralinguistic reality, they can also make reference to a linguistic entity, be that a phoneme, a word, a sentence, or any other linguistic unit: “one of the most characteristic features of natural languages (and one which may well distinguish them, not only from the signalling-systems used by other species but also from what is commonly referred to as non-verbal communication in human beings [...]) is their capacity for referring to, or describing themselves. the term we will employ for this feature, or property, of language is reflexivity. language can be turned back on itself, as it were” (lyons 1977:5). the focus on a linguistic entity is described as autonymy – within the linguistic sign we have the following relationship between the signifier and the signified: in an autonymous use of the word, the metalinguistic expression does not refer to the signified, but to the signifier. this happens, for example, when we are defining the meaning of a word: “imagine such an exasperating dialogue: “the sophomore was plucked.” “but what is plucked?” “plucked means the same as flunked.” “and flunked?” “to be flunked is to fail an exam.” “and what is sophomore?” persists the interrogator innocent of school vocabulary. “a sophomore is (or means) a second-year student.” all these equational sentences convey information merely about the lexical code of english; their function is strictly metalingual. any process of language learning, in particular child acquisition of the mother tongue, makes wide use of such metalingual operations; and aphasia may often be defined as a loss of ability for metalingual operations” (jakobson 1960:6). metalinguistic utterances in use we are going to analyze various types of metalinguistic utterances from the point of view of their pragmatic characteristics and bring out the messages which are not explicitly transmitted by object language. these utterances have to do with certain expressions of speaker meaning, of inferred meaning, of background information known to either or both of the speakers. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 10 a case of reflexive mention of a linguistic entity is the speaker’s reference to the form of the word, which can be made in various ways. in one of such reflexive uses the word is mispronounced or misspelt, because the speaker considers the parts of the word to be meaningful and gives his own interpretation to the inner form of the word. for example, the armenian word «ամանոր» is often wrongly spelt «ամանօր» because the user connects the word with the concept «օր», though actually it is connected with «նոր», “new”. likewise some people say «տարեկետում» instead of «տարկետում» for “academic leave of absence for the whole term” having in view the word «տարի», “year”. thus, in such cases the linguistic item acquires a different meaning, often characterized by a pragmatic feature; the new “etymology” can be directly connected with speaker meaning: “see more glass,” said sybil carpenter, who was staying at the hotel with her mother. “did you see more glass?”“pussycat, stop saying that. it’s driving mommy absolutely crazy. hold still, please.” (j.d. salinger “a perfect day for bananafish” p. 10) the little girl is referring to a person whose name is “seymour (pronounced [`si:mo]) glass”, which she identifies as “see more glass”. though the child does not invest the name with meaning deliberately, this is a case of metalinguistic play on words connected with the meaningful perception of the pronunciation of the word. in reality the child would like to see the young man more often as they have become good friends. so unless we take into account this information about the little girl, the transformation of the name “seymour” will be considered a mere mispronunciation, like any other case of children’s funny (and mostly cute) mistakes. but in the given situation the hidden meaning of the utterance is revealed owing to the “naive linguist’s” etymologizing. if the girl had performed this action deliberately, it would be a joke, a witticism. thus, it has been observed that children’s jokes are very creative and “a child’s cognitive development of metalinguistic jokes is as follows: (a) a joke on the phoneme is appropriate for ages 6-8 years, (b) a joke on the word is most appropriate for ages 8-10, and (c) a joke on sentence structure is appropriate for ages 10-14” (mechanisms of linguistic behavior, <http://www.lacus.org/volumes/36>). linguistics armenian folia anglistika 11 the girl in the story, however, is only 4 years old, and semanticizing the word is not purposeful on her part. she is not joking, she is just saying the name in the way she perceives it. the same character makes another mistake, which in that situation is devoid of pragmatic features. this time it is based on a wrong perception of the phrase article+noun – “an airplane”, which she cuts into elements in a wrong way, presenting her own phonetic linking of an unknown word with an article: “my daddy’s coming tomorrow on a nairplane” (j.d. salinger “a perfect day for bananafish” p. 11) the child does not make a distinction between the two variants of the indefinite article (“a” and “an”), and she does not know the word “airplane”. there is no hidden or implied meaning in the deformation of the phrase. the only information the hearer can receive from the child’s mistake is that the word “airplane” is unknown to the speaker. a metalinguistic use can be essential for the recognition of this or that contextual meaning within a polysemantic word. to illustrate the point let’s consider the following scene from tv series “monk”. detective monk and his assistant sharona are in the street, at the scene of the crime. sharona is standing behind monk, so that he does not see her. she suddenly notices a stray dog, bends down to it and says in a sweet tone: “hey, you lost?” sharona, certainly, addresses the dog and means that it cannot find its master. monk, who is investigating the case and is thinking over it, assumes that sharona has addressed him. he answers: “no, just thinking”, implying “not lost” in the meaning of “not perplexed”. sharona retorts: “i wasn’t talking to you”. this is a metalinguistic utterance which aims to correct the interlocutor’s mistake and identify the real addressee of the utterance. as a matter of fact, monk is an overhearer, while the real addressee is the dog. the difference between an addressee and an overhearer is easily defined on grounds of mere common sense: the addressee is chosen by the speaker as the target of his utterance, while the overhearer is not, or in other words, “addressees are participants in the conversation at the moment, and overhearers are not ([…]). speakers are responsible for making themselves understood to the other participants, but not to overhearers” (shober, clark 1989). armenian folia anglistika linguistics 12 the comical effect of this dialogue is the result of several factors. first of all, it is due to the mistaken attribution of the address of the utterance, the mistake being made by the overhearer, who “usurps” the position of the addressee. as we have said, this leads to the wrong interpretation of the word “lost”, and hence – to the wrong interpretation of the speaker meaning. besides it is important to take into consideration the character’s personality: monk is extremely self-centered, and it is natural for him to place himself within and not outside the speech act. thus, the understanding of the word “lost” depends on who the addressee is, and the discovery of the intended receiver of the message eliminates the ambiguity of the situation. the problem is solved by means of the metalinguistic expression “i wasn’t talking to you”. now let’s examine utterances whose metalinguistic character gives rise to a complex implied meaning, containing a performative component. (1) i speak twelve languages, english is the bestest. (d. machale “wit. the draught bass book humorous quotations” p. 30) (2) there he goes – the man what learned me english. (d. machale “wit. the draught bass book humorous quotations” p. 34) both of these utterances are self-referential. the illustration of how “well” the writer speaks several languages and how “well” he was taught by his teacher is to be found in the way these utterances are constructed. the humorous effect is due to the metalinguistic aspect of the statements, and not to their referential meaning. it goes without saying that the reader understands what is meant: “i speak twelve languages, english is the best.” “there he goes – the man who taught me english.”, but there is nothing funny in these utterances if we correct the mistakes. as a matter of fact, in the original utterances the referential meaning is absorbed by the metalinguistic function: the utterances focus on the agrammatical forms and uses of the adjective (*“bestest), the pronoun (“the man – *what”), and the verb (* “learned me”), which are crucial for the comic effect of the statements. these utterances have a complex structure, and include an implied performative component. actually, if we expand the hidden meanings of these sentences, they will look like this: “i know several languages, and this linguistics armenian folia anglistika 13 is the way i speak english”, “there goes my teacher, and if you look at the way i speak english, you'll see the result of his instruction.” in both examples we can see the speaker’s linguistic performance because we are focused on the autonymous uses of the highlighted words, and not exclusively on their meanings. the effect is, naturally, connected with pragmatic factors, as we deal with such a situation in which more is communicated than is actually said. the classical liar paradox “i lie” is also an example of a self-referential utterance. it is an assertion of someone who states that he is lying. this means that the pronouncement that he is lying is a lie, hence he is telling the truth. we thus arrive at a contradiction. the reflexive use of language in this case leads to a pragmatically anomalous utterance. speaking about the famous moore’s paradox (“john has two phds but i don’t believe he has”), s. levinson concludes that this sentence is pragmatically anomalous “because it contradicts the standard quality implicature that one believes what one asserts” (levinson 1983:105). the liar paradox is another case of violation of the quality maxim, and both paradoxes are based on the metalinguistic component “i assert that…” let’s consider another case of violation of grice’s maxims, this time of the maxim of quantity. here is a scene from the film “groundhog day” (1993). a lady in charge of the hotel service talks to her guest, a famous and arrogant weatherman phil connors, who is fed up by all kinds of weather forecast talks. she says, “there’s talk of a blizzard”. phil’s response is unnecessarily detailed and professional: “we may catch a break and have that blizzard blow by us. all this moisture coming up out of the south will probably push on east of us. at high altitudes it will crystallize and give us what we call snow. probably will be some accumulation, but here in punxsutawney our high will be about today, teens tonight. chance of precipitation about percent and tomorrow. did you want to talk about the weather or were you just making chitchat?” “chitchat” “see you later”. in actual fact the lady’s intention is to prolong the contact, which is an end in itself. her aim of striking up a conversation is that of filling the minutes between the greeting and parting with some formal exchanges, the best topic being that about the weather. so the lady’s purpose of communication is doubtlessly phatic, and phil is supposed to react in an adequate way – just make some small talk in return. however, he pretends not to understand this, and his reaction places the woman in the position of an inquirer, who expects relevant armenian folia anglistika linguistics 14 information from a qualified expert. by deforming the purpose of communication, phil violates grice’s maxim of quantity burdening the addressee with superfluous information, and actually, making fun of her. he even makes his usual tv forecaster’s gestures in the air, pointing to nonexistent places on an imaginary map. the implication is: “you wanted to talk about the weather with a weatherman, you will have the most thorough lecture on the topic. this will teach you not to annoy other people.” in the article, which we cited above, we find a useful definition of humour involving metalinguistic discourse: “metalinguistic jokes are based on the language form and not the meaning. in order to understand metalinguistic jokes, we have to be able to understand about language and its mechanics. the humor comes from the discrepancy between the actual world and the metalinguistic world, between the abnormal spelling and the normal spelling, and so on” (mechanisms of linguistic behavior, 2011, <http://www.lacus.org/volumes36>). the identification of a metalinguistic construction by the addressee is something that a speaker may take for granted, and the interlocutor’s disability to do this often causes the speaker’s disappointment. a: don’t you ever get tired of being right? i do feel tired. b: more fatigued, really. i don’t know if it’s from being right. a: it was a rhetorical question, monk. (“monk”, film, usa) in his second utterance, speaker a specifies the purpose of his first utterance after his interlocutor, speaker b, has misinterpreted it. speaker a uses the metalinguistic term “rhetorical question” to explain that what he said in his first utterance did not require an answer. moreover, no one expected a metalinguistic answer on b’s part, in which by suggesting a synonym, speaker b tried to give an especially accurate account of his state of mind. the confusion of referential and metalinguistic functions is sometimes easy and, naturally, it can cause failure in communication. the following joke shows the unhappy effect of substituting the referential function for a metalinguistic one: linguistics armenian folia anglistika 15 “my mom texted me: what do idk, ly & ttyl mean?” i answered: “i don’t know, i love you, talk to you later.” mom: “ok, i’ll ask your sisters!” xd”. (<http://jokideo.com/my-mom-texted-me>) unless the metalinguistic definitions of these abbreviations are used in quotation marks, italics or bold type (three common conventions employed to draw attention to metalanguage), they will be understood as referring to object language. conclusion everyday communication deals not only with extralinguistic reality but also with the code used in the verbal interaction. while object language represents the actual world, metalanguage focuses on the verbal means of representing reality. by referring to language in his speech, a “naive linguist” performs various functions manifesting his metalinguistic awareness. we argue that certain metalinguistic utterances can be understood only if the interlocutors actualize the pragmatic features of the given utterance. pragmatics explains how the participants of the act of speech manage to engage in successful communication and overcome ambiguity. with a certain type of metalinguistic utterances, we have to take into account such factors as who are the speaker and the hearer, in what circumstances communication is taking place, what are the presuppositions and inferences of the utterance, what cooperative principles are observed or violated, and what are the intentions of the interlocutors in the process of their verbal interaction. references: 1. jakobson, r. (1960) closing statement: linguistics and poetics. // style in language. / ed. by th.a. sebeok. cambridge: technology press of massachusetts institute of technology. 2. kashkin, v.b. (2002) bytovaya philosophiya yazyka i yazykovye kontrasty. // teoreticheskaya i prikladnaya lingvistika. voronezh: izdatel’stvo vgtu. 3. lyons, j. (1977) semantics. vol. 2. cambridge: cup. 4. mechanisms of linguistic behavior. / lacus forum xxxvi. available at: <http://www.lacus.org/volumes/36> [accessed june 2011]. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 16 5. schober, m.f.; clark, h.h. understanding by addressees and overhearers. // cognitive psychology, 21. available at: <http://web.stanford.edu/~clark/1980s/schober> [accessed march 1989]. sources of data: 1. machale, d. (1997) wit. the draught bass book of humorous quotations. london: brass brewers plc. 2. salinger, j. d. (1964) nine stories. new york: bantam books. 3. funny adult jokes. available at: <http://jokideo.com/my-mom-texted-me> [accessed march 2015]. 4. monk (2002-2009), television series, usa. 5. groundog day (1993), film, usa. ø»ï³é»½í³ï³ý ³ëáõûãý»ñç ·áñí³μ³ý³ï³ý ñ³û»ó³ï»ñå»ñá ø³ñ¹ï³ûçý ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý ã»ù³ý ï³ñáõ ¿ éçý»é áã ùç³ûý ³ñï³é»½í³ï³ý çñ³ï³ýáõãûáõýá, ³ûé ý³¨ μáõý ïá¹á, áñç ßýáññçí çñ³ï³ý³óíáõù ¿ ³û¹ ñ³õáñ¹³ïóáõùá: ²ý¹ñ³¹³éý³éáí 黽íçý՝ áñå»ë çñ ³ëáõûãç ã»ù³ûçý, ëáëáõá ï³ï³ñáõù ¿ μ³½ù³½³ý ·áñíáõáõãûáõýý»ñ, ï³åí³í 黽íç û·ï³·áñíù³ý ñ»ï, ¹ñë¨áñ»éáí §ý³çí 黽í³μ³ýçý¦ μýáñáß ù»ï³é»½í³ï³ý çñ³½»ïáõãûáõý: ²ûëåçëç ù»ï³é»½í³ï³ý ³ëáõûãý»ñçó áñáß ï³éáõûóý»ñ áõý»ý ·áñí³μ³ý³ï³ý áõõõí³íáõãûáõý՝ ëáëáõá ññ³íçñáõù ¿ éëáõç áõß³¹ñáõãûáõýá çñ ³ëáõûãáõù ã³ùýí³í çù³ëïý»ñçý: ²ëáõûãç ×çßï ù»ïý³μ³ýáõãûáõýá ù»í³å»ë ï³ëí³í ¿ ýñ³ýçó, ã» áíù»ñ »ý ëáëáýï»ñý»ñá ¨ çýã ñ³ý·³ù³ýùý»ñáõù ¿ áýã³ýáõù ñ³õáñ¹³ïóáõùá: microsoft word contens verjin linguistics armenian folia anglistika 47 approximation as a semantic process of occasional modification of the meaning marine yaghubyan yerevan state university abstract approximation is a semantic process when occasional modification of meaning, i.e. partial actualization of a linguistic unit is carried out. this process takes place when one of the elements of a situation, an object, an action or a quality mentioned is questionable as to its correspondence to the referent. as a result of this the latter is denoted approximately, not precisely by the speaker or writer. the paper examines different types of approximators (approximators proper, minimizers, compromizers) in order to assess the semantic relations between certain adverbs that function as approximators. the analysis shows that the adverbs used as approximators are not identical and cannot be called absolute synonyms. vocabulary acquisition is not an easy job for foreign language learners. it becomes even more challenging when it comes to the learning of synonyms. though synonymous approximators share some of the meanings, they are not interchangeable in all contexts. furthermore, the analysis comes to prove that the occurrence of approximators across various registers differs. key words: approximation, modification of meaning, minimizer, compromizer, absolute synonym, near synonym, hedge. introduction according to traditional grammar, the word is the basic unit of syntax and semantics. general linguistics has always been concerned with the problem of relations between words and things they denote, i.e. referents. the relation armenian folia anglistika linguistics 48 which exists between words and their referents, i.e. things, events, actions and qualities is known as correlation (reference), but correlation cannot be always exact and precise. absolute correspondence is something that can hardly ever be found as the boundaries between objects in extra linguistic reality are sometimes difficult to define (butterfield 2008). in the process of communication some lexical units are often indefinite, not exact or precise in meaning. hence, a word used in the flow of speech may only partly characterize the objects and things. the linguistic means which express approximation, i.e. approximators, can be realized on different levels: morphological, syntactic, phraseological and phonetic (quirk et al. 1985:597-98). approximation is a semantic process when occasional modification of meaning, i.e. partial actualization of a linguistic unit is carried out. this phenomenon takes place when one of the elements of a situation, an object, an action or a quality mentioned is questionable as to its correspondence to the referent. as a result of this, the latter is denoted approximately, not precisely by the speaker or writer. the majority of linguistic units having the meaning of “approximation” refer to adverbs: “approximately”, “somewhat” and so on. here also belong such adverbial collocations as “in a way”, “more or less”. approximation includes also a number of adverbial modifiers of degree, i. e. “almost”, “hardly”, “nearly” “scarcely”, “barely”, and the adverbial collocations “kind of”, “sort of”(carter 2006). according to r. quirk and s. greenbaum, approximators belong to the group of down toners which have a lowering effect on the force of the word. they are divided into the following types:  approximators proper: “almost”, “nearly” which imply a denial of the truth value of what is denoted by the verb;  minimizers: “hardly”, “scarcely”, “barely” which partially deny the truth value of what is said;  compromizers: “kind of”, “sort of”, which reduce the force of the verb and the noun;  diminishers: “somewhat”, “somehow” (quirk et al. 1985:597-98). linguistics armenian folia anglistika 49 defining approximators as degree adverbs, g. leech points out that degree can be applied only to gradable words whose meaning can be thought of in terms of a scale. therefore, he distinguishes two kinds of gradable words:  scale words, which indicate a relative position on a scale (almost, nearly);  limit words, which indicate the end point of a scale (completely, absolutely) (leech 1991:20). let us examine the use of different types of approximators in speech in order to identify the semantic relationship between synonymous words expressing imprecise meaning. approximators proper: “almost”, “nearly” defining adverbs as words denoting circumstances or characteristics modifying actions, a state or a quality, we can single out a group of degree adverbs which may intensify or weaken a quality or characteristics, like “nearly”, “almost”. these adverbs are considered to be synonymous. it is well-known that synonymy is considered one of the “sense relations”, or in other words, “the meaning relations that hold within the vocabulary of a language between words themselves” (harris 1973:6). h. jackson claims that “synonymy deals with sameness of meaning, more than one word having the same meaning, or alternatively the same meaning being expressed by more than one word”(jackson 1988:64). l. linsky states that “two linguistic expressions are synonymous if and only if they have the same meaning” (linsky1952:111). r. harris focuses on the relationship between form and meaning and suggests that “there may be cases in which a difference of form between two expressions is not accompanied by a difference of meaning: in such cases we may speak of synonymous expressions” (harris 1973:6). the adverb “almost” that means “nearly” is used to modify a verb. it is usually placed before notional verb, but after the auxiliary verb or link verb. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 50 e.g. 1. why, i know things, good and bad, big and little, about men and women and life that sometimes i almost doubt myself that they're true. but i know them. (london 1916:11) 2. he rode through what was almost a village, save that there were neither shops nor hotels. (london 1916:9) from these examples it becomes clear that the meaning of the approximator “almost” in both cases is the same-“not quite”, while the position of the adverbs is different. “almost” is used with adjectives, time expressions and periods of time or quantities of things but before pronouns like any, anybody, anything, etc. e.g. 1. “i don’t know what to think,” replied poor giles. “i don’t think it is the boy; indeed, i’m almost certain that it isn’t.” (dickens 2003:55) 2. i’ll eat almost anything you give, aunt minnie. (escott 1995:12) 3. twenty – almost twenty-one. i asked him this afternoon. i didn't think he was that young.” (london 1909:63) in these examples the approximators express the same meaning with a slight difference. thus in (1) the meaning is “very nearly about”, in (2) –“all just about”, in (3) – “most near”. these examples show that it is not completely the case but is nearly the case, there is one more interesting point to make. “almost” is used with like to indicate that two things are very similar. in the following example comparison is used to describe resemblance. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 51 e.g. the dam was a bright sorrel – almost like a fresh-minted twenty-dollar piece – and i did so ant a pair out of her, of the same color, for my own trap. (london 1916:87) we can state that the use of approximators may vary in british english and american english. in british english “very” and “so” can be used before “nearly”. in the following example the adverb “so” modifies the approximator “nearly” and intensifies the meaning of proximity. e.g. on the right is the garden of madame olivier's villa, on the left the garden of another villa – and from that garden, mark you, the tree fell – so nearly on us. (christie 1927:95) our analysis shows that “almost” is used much more frequently than “nearly” and is therefore likely to be less specialized than the latter; “nearly” is used to indicate that something is not quite the case, or not completely the case. they are both used to express ideas connected with progress, measurement or counting. minimizers: “hardly”, “scarcely”, “barely” now let us analyze the minimizers “hardly”, “scarcely” and “barely”. though these minimizers mostly appear as a subgroup of adverbs of degree, it is important to point out that some grammarians place them in a separate group (chalker 1984:201; sinclair 1990:285). according to s. chalker, the following adverbs fall into the group of intensifiers (chalker1984:201). j. sinclair also creates a separate category and labels these adverbs “broad negatives” (sinclair 1990:214). the most convenient classification is provided by r. quirk et al who place these adverbs into the group of intensifiers, specifically minimizers. the meanings of “hardly” and “scarcely” share are “almost not” and they are all used to emphasize that something happened immediately before something else. however, only “hardly” and “scarcely” are used to indicate that something is not likely or reasonable, in other words they mean “definitely not”. on the other armenian folia anglistika linguistics 52 hand, it is just “barely” that is used to emphasize how small a number or amount is. unlike “scarcely” and “barely”, “hardly” is associated with difficulty of doing something. what is more, “hardly” is employed in special context, when something impossible is suggested, to mean “no” (quirk et al. 1985:589-90). let us examine the case where “hardly” can mean “to almost no degree; almost not; probably or almost surely not; with severity, harshly; with great difficulty; painfully”. in the following example the doer notes that he did some action with great difficulty. he is trying to convince her interlocutor to agree with him. e.g. i could hardly prevent myself from there and then kneeling down at his feet and telling him what i had done. (doyle 2007:52) like “hardly”, “scarcely” can’t be used in negative sentences. “scarcely” can mean “almost not” and can replace “hardly”. but “scarcely” is chiefly used to mean “not quite”. in the following example the author implies that nancy was able to perform an action “without looking” at her partner. e.g. nancy, scarcely looking at the boy, threw him a handkerchief to tie round his throat; sikes gave him a large rough cape to button over his shoulders. (dickens 2003:85) these adverbs mostly function as premodifiers and they precede the words they modify or refer to (quirk et al.1985:441; chalker 1984:201). the adverb “barely” can mean “not more than / only just”. e.g. he backed the car out of the garage one morning and could barely push the brakes. (album 2003:8) the adverb “barely” is used to emphasize that something happens immediately after a previous action and we can see that the word “barely” has the meaning “hardly”, “not enough” and can be easily substituted by “scarcely”. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 53 however, viewed from the point of the degree of approximation, “barely” stands closest to the category of completeness. furthermore, we employ “barely” when we want to say that something happened but it almost did not. in other words,” barely” indicates that something almost does not happen or exist, or is almost not possible. evidently, it is connected with describing a sequence of events. it is applied when we want to emphasize that something happened only a very short time before something else. furthermore, all the adverbs are employed in language to “emphasize that something happens immediately after a previous action” (ldce 2003:105). they are all connected with sequence of events. these two meanings are shared by all the three adverbs. nevertheless, there are some additional meanings which are associated only with one or two of these adverbs. the adverbs “hardly” and “scarcely” can indicate that “something is not at all reasonable or likely” (oaldce 1998:1303). they both mean “certainly, definitely not”. evidently, the adverb “barely” is not very common in this sense. both “barely” and “hardly express that “it is difficult to do something” (oaldce 1998:680) and that something happens but “only with great difficulty or effort” (ldce 2003:105). e.g. she was very old and barely able to walk. (ldce 2003:105) e.g. i can hardly keep my eyes open. (oaldce 1998:680) bäcklund points out that all the three adverbs have pessimistic colouring, however, “hardly” implies a more pessimistic frame of mind than “barely”. in other words, the negative aspect of “barely” is much weaker than that of “hardly”. it is also claimed that “hardly” is used in more emotional contexts, to a great extent expressing failure to reach a desirable standard, whereas “scarcely” seems to occur more often in neutral collocations” (bäcklund 1973:37-40). the adverbs also differ in terms of words they occur with. while “barely” most often precedes verbs, adjectives, and numerals, “hardly” is followed mainly armenian folia anglistika linguistics 54 by verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. “scarcely” can be found mostly with verbs, adjectives, and nouns. furthermore, it is obvious that pronouns co-occur almost exclusively with “hardly”, and numerals with “barely”. “hardly” often occurs with the following words: be, surprising, ever, believe, and knew. analyzing the collocations of the adverbs unlike “barely”, both “hardly” and “scarcely” often occur with ever (hardly ever, scarcely ever). “barely” forms frequent expressions with adjectives related to senses: audible, perceptible, visible, discernible, and the word able. “scarcely” is followed mainly by be, have, and surprising. what is more, the word alive is used only with “barely”, whereas fair is found only after “hardly”. ever, likely and surprising form very frequent expressions with “hardly”, however, they are never used after “barely” (bolinger 1972:59; borst 1967:22). our analysis shows that the adverbs “barely”, “hardly”, and “scarcely” are equal in some of their meanings. however, it is important to point out that they are not coincident in all contexts. moreover, each of the adverbs forms different collocations and is part of different grammatical constructions. in this respect, “hardly” and “scarcely” seem to be more similar. compromizers: “kind of”, “sort of” the interpersonal and the semantic dimension of hedges have sometimes been used in literature as a basis for the creation of typologies. the category of hedges contains expressions such as “sort of”, “kind of”, “somewhat”, “a bit”. the speakers can avoid giving emphasis to their role in interaction by using approximators, thus they could be characterized as markers of denotational vagueness. they help to reduce the force of what speakers are saying. approximators are hedges that affect the propositional content but not the speaker commitment. they are used to make some adaptation to some extent of the prepositional meaning so as to make the interpretation more close to the fact or used to give a range or limit the meaning to a certain scope (lakoff 1972, skelton 1988). approximators such as “sort of”, “kind of”, “basically”, as well as “about”, “around” and “approximately” can have the effect of conveying uncertainty, an linguistics armenian folia anglistika 55 unwillingness or inability to assert precise propositions or provide sufficient information. approximators are hedges like “sort of” which semantically indicate some markedness with regard to group membership. “sort of” and “kind of” make us appear less than sure of our ideas. if one is less than sure, it can be called an approximation (aijmer 2002). the adverbial collocations “kind of”, “sort of” expressing approximation can be preceded only by an indefinite article or zero article. e.g. 1. it was a sort of bed, small and soft. (doyle 2007:101) 2. that was sort of a joke. (escott 1995:77) if there is a definite article or any other pre-modifier before “kind of”, “sort of”, that means it is not the approximation we deal with but noun-phrases the semantic meaning of which is “type of something”. e.g. now you know the sort of perfectly splendid modern young lady i am. (shaw 1957:187) “kind of”, “sort of” are not preceded by an article when they are used with verbs. considering the semantic meaning of “kind of”, in the following example, we can say that the implication is as follows: we do not deny hating, but we seem to be deprecating what we are saying. e.g. she kind of hated people like that. (shaw 1957:86) in some cases the approximators “kind of” and “sort of” may occur in combination with modal verbs or between the part of the compound / verbal / modal predicate. e.g. 1. i kind of might get hold of her father’s money, but he wouldn’t let me to. (shaw 1957:103) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 56 2. one might sort of describe it as a happy ending. (shaw 1957:107) our analysis shows that the use of the approximators “kind of” and “sort of” gives indeterminateness and vagueness to speech. the speaker appears less than sure of his/her ideas. conclusion it appears from those definitions that the adverbs are so synonymous that they are sometimes defined in terms of each other. if they are so close in meaning, one may well wonder if there are any differences between them in the way they are used. comparing the definitions of these adverbs, we may say that these adverbs are equal in some of their meanings. however, it is also obvious that the adverbs slightly differ in some sense and are used in different communicative situations. constructions vary both structurally and semantically. therefore, we can conclude that approximations cannot be absolute synonyms. references: 1. aijmer, k. and bengt, a. (eds) (1991) english corpus linguistics: studies in honour of jan svartvik. london: longman. 2. bäcklund, u. (1973) the collocation of adverbs of degree in english. uppsala: s. academiae ubsaliensis. 3. butterfield, j. (2008) damp squid: the english language laid bare. oup. 4. carter, r. and mccarthy, m. (2006) cambridge grammar of english. a comprehensive guide. cambridge, uk: cup. 5. chalker, s. (1984) current english grammar. london: macmillan. 6. harris, r. (1973) synonymy and linguistic analysis. toronto: university of toronto press. 7. jackson, h. (1988) words and their meaning. london: longman. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 57 8. lakoff, g. (1972) hedges: a study in meaning criteria and the logic of fuzzy concepts. chicago: linguistics society. 9. leech, g. (1991) an a-z of english grammar and usage. england: nelson. 10. linsky, l. (ed.) (1952) semantics and the philosophy of language. urbana: university of illinois press. 11. quirk, r.; greenbaum, s.; leech, g. and svartvik, j. (1985) a comprehensive grammar of the english language. london: longman. 12. sinclair, j. (1990) collins cobuild english grammar. london: collins. 13. skelton, j. (1988) comments in academic articles. // applied linguistics in society. london: centre of international language teaching. / ed. by p. grunwell. british association of applied linguistics. 14. (1982) oxford university learner’s dictionary of current english. oxford: oup. 15. (1998) oxford advanced learner’s dictionary of current english. oxford: oup. 16. (2003) longman dictionary of contemporary english. harlow: pearson education. sources of data: 1. album, m. (2003) the five people you meet in heaven. hyperion. 2. christie, ag. (1927) the big four. london: collins. 3. dickens ch. (2003) oliver twist. philip horne. harmondsworth: penguin. 4. doyle, c. (2007) the lost world. the echo library. 5. doyle, c. (2008) the return of sherlock holmes. forgotten books. 6. escott, j. (1995) the ghost of genny castle. do brasil: longman. 7. london, j. (1909) martin eden. new york: the macmillan co. 8. london, j. (1916) the little lady of the big house. new york: the macmillan co. 9. shaw b. (1957) pygmalion. harmondsworth: penguin books. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 58 մոտավորություն արտահայտող բառերը որպես իմաստի դիպվածային փոփոխության գործընթաց սույն հոդվածում ներկայացված են մոտավորություն արտահայտող բառերի երեք խմբեր: նպատակ ունենալով պարզել, թե արդյոք մոտավորություն արտահայտող այդ բառերը բացարձակ հոմանիշնե՞ր են, թե՞ ոչ, կատարվել է դրանց արտահայտած իմաստի համեմատական քննություն: ուսումնասիրությունը ցույց է տալիս, որ, ունենալով իմաստային նմանություններ, դրանք ոչ թե բացարձակ, այլ մոտ հոմանիշներ են: microsoft word contens verjin linguistics armenian folia anglistika 103 the role of prosody in text interpretation mariam khazhakyan yerevan state university abstract in this paper, an attempt has been made to show the indispensable role of prosody in the language of drama. prosody as a reliable means of identifying the meaning in belles-lettres style (drama) is important not only in terms of articulation but also perception and cognition as speech is a bilateral process. as compared with other substyles of the belles-lettres style, the dialogue in drama occupies a leading place. the author’s remarks contribute to the correct choice of prosody enabling us to reveal the author’s intent. though represented in the form of dialogues, the language of drama is in no way the exact reproduction of the norms of colloquial language. the playwright will reproduce actual conversation only as far as the norms of the written language will allow. thus, the language of drama is marked by stylization of colloquial speech preserving the modus of literary language. key words: belles-lettres style, drama, prosody, prosodic features, sentence prosody, interpretation. introduction the term prosody is treated differently by different linguists. to avoid a fragmentary study, any confusion and misunderstanding, we have chosen the one that is termed sentence prosody. it groups together intonation, phrasal rhythmic patterning and more general features of prosodic phrasing (crystal 2008:393) and best suits our purport. prosody is a means for “reading with expression” (erekson 2010:80). prosody is utilized to basically determine the meaning. it is the music of language. prosodic features (stress, pitch movement, intonation, pauses, loudness, tempo, armenian folia anglistika linguistics 104 paralinguistic features, vocal effects) contribute to the meaning of speech. they are used to reveal the extremely rich and varied fluctuations of speech. prosody of drama “the importance of being earnest” by oscar wilde is a real comedy in the classical sense. it is one of the best examples where all the prosodic features are condensed in such a way, that they best reveal the author’s intention. the humour of the play is largely achieved by the juxtaposition of high-flown and prosodic language. jack. ˈcharming ↘day it has ˎbeen, miss fairfax. gwendolen. pray ˈdon't ˋtalk to me about the ˎweather, mr. ˏworthing. whenever people ˋtalk to me aˈbout the ˅weather, i always feel ↑quite ˏcertain that they ˈmean something ˎelse. and ˌthat ˌmakes me ↑so ˎnervous. jack. i ˎdo mean someˌthing ˎelse. gwendolen. i ˎthought ˏso. in →fact, i am ˄never ˄wrong. jack. and i would ˈlike to be alˈlowed to take ad↘vantage of ↘lady ↘bracknell's ↘temporary ˅absence... gwendolen. i would ↘certainly ad↘vise you to ˋdo so. ˅mamma has a ˏway of ˈcoming ˏback ˄suddenly into a ˏroom │ that i have ↑often had to ˋspeak to her aˌbout. it is not difficult to notice that there are virtually no pauses in the given passage. this may be explained by the fact that the communicative process takes place on a stage and the actors performing the play know the text perfectly well. the falling-rising (˅), the rising-falling (˄), the level (→) tones, the gradually descending stepping scale, the broken descending stepping scale and the sliding scale are used. the noun weather which represents the neutral layer of the vocabulary acquires a special implication when pronounced with the falling-rising intonation. the speaker hesitates to make the statement too linguistics armenian folia anglistika 105 confidently and expects the addressee to guess the extra meaning. but this uncertainty makes gwendolen nervous which is reinforced by the use of the gradually descending stepping scale. the adverbs quite and so are being pitched higher than the preceding stressed syllables, making the communicative centre of the utterance, thus emphasizing gwendolen’s state of nervousness. the fact that jack is really concealing something from her, and gwendolen is aware of the fact, makes her more confident, telling that she can never be wrong. and this daring tone is achieved by the use of the rising-falling tone: in →fact, i am ˄never ˄wrong. she wants to prove her infallibility once again conveying an ironical attitude. the word fact is uttered with a mid-level tone which signifies non-finality. it gives the utterance somewhat uncertainty, but under those circumstances, even the monotonousness of that tone attaches some depth to gwendolen’s speech making it too self-confident. “style is the physiognomy of the mind, and a safer index to character than the face” (schopenhauer 2016:1). thus, it is sometimes more important how you say things than what you say because the tone of the voice, the vocal effects, paralinguistic features, etc. give us more information than the words can suggest. thus, the phonopragmatic factor acquires special importance as the situation is the best indicator of how to express oneself. but after a moment’s seeming hesitation gwendolen intensifies the fact that she can never be mistaken as if she were speaking about some universal truth which can never fall under suspicion. jack intends to take the opportunity and make a proposal to gwendolen, he wants by no means to miss his chance. and the use of the sliding scale, in which all the stressed words are equally prominent, is the best choice in this situation: and i would ˈlike to be alˈlowed to take ad↘vantage of ↘lady ↘bracknell's ↘temporary ˅absence.... here the word absence is pronounced with the falling-rising intonation. that means that lady bracknell may appear anytime, and jack has no time to be lost. her absence is temporary and she is present even when she is actually absent. besides, gwendolen also wishes the same and does her best for jack (ernest, as she thinks) to feel at ease: i would ↘certainly ad↘vise you to ˋdo so. ˅mamma has a ˏway of ˈcoming ˏback ˄suddenly into a ˏroom │ that i have ↑often had to ˋspeak to her aˌbout. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 106 gwendolen pushes jack to an immediate action. she pronounces the adverb suddenly with the rising-falling intonation, thus expressing her disapproval, negative attitude towards her mother’s unexpected appearance, and guessing jack’s intention, reinforces the humorous effect of the situation which is revealed by the correct choice of prosodic features, namely – the melody of speech, loudness of voice, as well as paralinguistic and extralinguistic features, such as smile, facial expression, shining eyes. the passage under discussion is not distinguished by the varied use of connotative words, grammatical, semantic constructions, with the exception perhaps of alliteration expressed by the sound [s], but it is evident that through prosody the addressee is able to fully transmit the information conditioned by situation. the following passage from the same drama shows how it becomes possible to interpret the speech of the characters and reveal the underlying meanings through prosody. jack. [nervously] miss →fairfax, ˈever since i ˏmet →you ≀ i have adˋmired you ˈmore than ↑any ˏgirl... i have ˈever ˏmet ˈsince... i met ˎyou. gwendolen. ˎyes, i am ˈquite aˋware of the ˌfact. and i ˈoften ˏwish ≀ that in ˋpublic, ≀ at any →rate, ≀ you had been ↑more deˋmonstrative. for →me you have ˋalways had an ↑irreˋsistible fasciˎnation. ˄even be↗fore i ↗met ˋyou ≀ i was ↗far from in↗different ˎto you. [jack looks at her in amazement.] we ˏlive, ≀ as i ˈhope you ˏknow, mr. worthing, ≀ in an ˈage of iˎdeals. the ˈfact is ˋconstantly ˌmentioned in the more ex↘pensive ↘monthly magaˎzines, and has ˈreached the pro˄vincial ˄pulpits i am ˌtold: and my i˅deal ≀ has ˈalways ˅been ≀ to ˈlove ˈsome one of the ˈname of ˎernest. there ˏis ˈsomething in that ˅name ≀ that inˈspires ↑absolute ˎconfidence. the ˈmoment ˏalgernon ≀ first ˅mentioned to me ≀ that he ˈhad a ↗friend ˈcalled ˏernest, i ˈknew i was ˋdestined to ˎlove you. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 107 jack. you ˈreally ˋlove me, ˏgwendolen? gwendolen. ∖passionately! jack. ˋdarling! you ˈdon't ˋknow how ˋhappy you've ˎmade me. gwendolen. my ˈown ˎernest! jack. but you ↘don't ↘really ↘mean to ˎsay ≀ that you ˈcouldn't love me if my ↘name ↘wasn't ˄ernest? gwendolen. but your ˈname ↑is ˄ernest. jack. ˋyes, i ˈknow it ˎis. but supˈposing it was ˈsomething ˎelse? ↗do you ↗mean to ˎsay you ˈcouldn't ˄love me then? gwendolen. [glibly] ∖ah! that is ˈclearly a ˈmetaˈphysical ˈspecuˏlation, ≀ and like ↑most metaˈphysical ˈspecuˏlations has ↘very ˈlittle reference at ˋall ≀ to the ˈactual ˈfacts of ˋreal ˎlife, ≀ as ˎwe ˌknow them. jack. ˈpersonally, ˏdarling, ≀ to ˈspeak ↑quite ˏcandidly, ≀ i ˈdon't ˈmuch ˏcare ≀ about the ˈname of ˅ernest... i ˈdon't ˅think the ˈname ˈsuits me at ∖all. gwendolen. it ˈsuits you per˄fectly. it is a di˄vine name. it has a ˄music of its ˏown. it produces vi˄brations. once you hear the first sounds of the play, it becomes evident that through prosody it is quite possible to identify the emotional state of the characters, their admiration and attitude towards each other and the surrounding world, even their class distinction, making it possible for the addressee to grasp all the shades of meaning in their speech. gwendolen’s speech is stylized, it is marked, whereas jack’s speech is neutral, unmarked. jack’s admiration for gwendolen is expressed by the gradually descending stepping scale, and fear, anxiety, uncertainty – by the frequent use of pauses, level tones. if compared with jack’s speech, that of gwendolen is overly self-confident, almost without pauses. the repetition of short vowels, sudden changes of tunes, voice quality, etc. make the speech of the characters more dynamic and funny, thus stimulating the imagination of the addressees and helping them reveal the author’s intention. gwendolen is a smart, purposeful, active, energetic, practical woman, she armenian folia anglistika linguistics 108 pursues her goal and is always the first to take the initiative. she is eager to get married to someone named ernest as she thinks it is the only name that is endowed with only positive connotations: it is a di˄vine name. it has a ˄music of its ˏown. it produces vi˄brations. throughout the whole play, oscar wilde utilizes wit and satire to achieve a humorous effect. gwendolen creates ideal conditions for jack to make a marriage proposal to her (she is convinced that jack’s name is ernest). it’s a wonderful occasion for jack, as he is not indifferent to the young, beautiful, attractive lady, but he tries to indirectly make gwendolen understand that he is indifferent towards the name ernest and thinks that the name doesn’t suit him at all and there are much better names than that: →well, ˋreally, ˏgwendolen, i ˋmust →say that i ˏthink there are ˈlots of ˏother ↑much ˄nicer ‸names. i think ˎjack, for →instance, a ˋcharming ˏname. now let us see how gwendolen interprets jack’s words who is the best source of creating a humorous effect: gwendolen. ´jack? ... ˎno, there is very ˈlittle ˋmusic in the ˋname ˎjack, ≀ if any at ‸all, inˎdeed. it ˎdoes not ˋthrill. it proˈduces ↑absolutely ˋno vi‸brations.... i have ˈknown ˋseveral ˎjacks, ≀ and they ˏall, without exˋception, were more than ˈusually ˎplain. be→sides, ˈjack is a noˈtorious domesˏticity for ˄john! and i ↗pity ↗any ↗woman who is ↗married to a ↗man ↗called ˋjohn. she would ˈprobably ↑never be alˈlowed to ˈknow the enˋtrancing ˎpleasure of a ˈsingle ˈmoment's ˎsolitude. the ‸only really ˋsafe ˏname is ˎernest. we may deduce from the above-given example that there is condensed humor, and even irony in gwendolen’s words. the irony is addressed to all those who are not called ernest. this is an issue of principle for her. the irony in her speech is manifested through melody which is achieved by the use of the sliding scale, linguistics armenian folia anglistika 109 different facial gestures, changes in voice quality, stylized speech. a man’s style, as a. schopenhauer formulates, shows the formal nature of all his thoughts – the formal nature which can never change, be the subject or the character of his thoughts what it may: it is, as it were, the dough out of which all the contents of his mind are kneaded. and the prosody seems to make this idea full and complete, helping the addressee grasp the meaning expressed by the author. v. a. artyomov, a well-known researcher of experimental phonology and speech psychology, thinks that prosody is the warp on which the intonation and the word are embroidered (buraya 2009:187). conclusion to sum up, it can be said that prosodic features are contextual factors which become meaningless out of context. they are utilized to give depth to utterances and reveal the underlying meanings. prosody provides the necessary information for language comprehension and facilitates the comprehension process. it helps the addressee hear the text, process and simultaneously interpret it in his mental lexicon. drama is characterized by a great variety of tones. along with simple tones, complex tones are frequent in final as well as in non-final sense-groups. the range is wider than usual. the tempo varies greatly. very often we come across logical and psychological rather than hesitation pauses which are used for stylistic considerations, i.e. for attaching certain colouring to speech and revealing the hidden shades of meaning. prosody may somehow be exaggerated in the drama for the purpose of maintaining intelligibility in the process of speech continuity. thus, prosodic information is, in fact, of vital importance. references: 1. crystal, d. (2008) a dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. 6th ed. blackwell publishing ltd ©, 555 pp. available at: <https://anekawarnapendidikan.files. wordpress.com/2014/04/a-dictionary-of-linguistics-and-phonetics-by-davidchristal.pdf> [accessed december 2017]. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 110 2. erekson, j.a. prosody and interpretation. available at: <http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1008&context= reading_horizons> [accessed january 2018]. 3. schopenhauer, a. on style. available at: <https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/lit/chapter2.html> [accessed january 2018]. 4. buraya, ye.a. (2014) fonetika sovremennogo anglijskogo yazika. teoreticheskij kurs: uchebnik dlya stud. uchrezhdenij vyssh. prof. obrazovaniya. / ye.a. buraya, i.e. galochkina, t.i. shevchenko. 4-e izd., ispr. i dop. m.: izdatel’skij centr “akademiya”, 288 s. sources of data: 1. wilde, o. the importance of being earnest. available at: <http://pinkmonkey.com/ dl/library1/earnest.pdf> [accessed january 2018]. 2. wilde, o. the importance of being earnest. act i. available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diwjltfcuhe> [accessed january 2018]. առոգանության դերը տեքստի մեկնաբանության մեջ հոդվածը միտված է վեր հանելու առոգանության կարևորագույն դերը խոսքի հոսքում, մասնավորապես գեղարվեստական գործառական ոճի ենթաժանր դրամայում: դրամայի լեզուն ոճավորված է, և առոգանությունն այստեղ առավել վառ դրսևորում ունի, քանի որ գործողությունները կատարվում են բեմի վրա և գերնպատակը ուղերձը հասցեատիրոջը լիարժեքորեն հասցնելն է: առոգանությունն անիմաստ է համատեքստից դուրս: այն դիտարկվում է տեքստին զուգընթաց՝ լավագույնս նպաստելով քողարկված, խորքային իմաստների բացահայտմանը: ցանկացած խոսք առանց առոգանության հաշվառման ենթակա է ձախողման: բանավոր խոսքում ամենաիմաստուն միտքն անգամ կարող է վերածվել սոսկ բառակույտի, եթե անտեսվի առոգանության գործոնը: microsoft word contens verjin methodology armenian folia anglistika 109 authenticity and teacher’s role in project based learning lusine madoyan yerevan state university abstract project based learning (pbl) is a student-centered teaching method that involves a dynamic classroom approach in which students gain knowledge and skills to explore and respond to an authentic and engaging problem or challenge. pbl focuses on different real-world subject matters that can sustain the interest of students, require student collaboration and autonomy, and at the same time, accommodate a purposeful and explicit focus on form and other aspects of language. the present article focuses on the teacher’s role in project based learning as well as the importance of authenticity in designing a project. key words: project based learning, authentic materials, motivation, efl, teacher’s role, real-life skills. introduction project based learning is widely viewed as a valuable pedagogical approach allowing teachers to target material that motivates students and giving learners the freedom to explore and learn about topics that interest them. it encourages learners to be at the center of the process and promotes autonomy, problem-solving, critical thinking, as well as interpersonal and life skills. pbl also helps motivate students to learn language for a specific purpose and promotes community among class members by creating an atmosphere of cooperation and team-work. in pbl, the students are presented with authentic problems before they receive instruction. they then must learn the content and skills necessary for solving the problem through collaborative research, discussion, and strategic planning. content learning and skills occur as natural consequences of solving problems, similar to the way people learn on the job (gaer 1998). the implementation of project work differs greatly from one instructional setting to another. in some settings, fairly non-elaborated tasks, confined to a single class session, are labeled as projects. in other settings, elaborate sets of tasks establish the process for completing the project and span an entire instructional armenian folia anglistika methodology 110 unit; in settings like these, the benefits of project work are maximized because students are actively engaged in information gathering, processing, and reporting over a period of time, and the outcome is increased content knowledge and language mastery. teacher’s role in pbl ideally, it is the students who choose projects, but since in lower-level classes students often do not have the required language skills or confidence to develop project themes, the teacher must listen to them and try to identify some underlying issues that are meaningful to the students, paying special attention to their needs, interests, cultural background, jobs, etc. with beginner level students, the teacher may have to take a fairly active role, providing examples of previously completed projects to encourage the students to produce their own. with more advanced classes, however, it is easier to get the class to develop a project that meets a need they have identified. in these situations, the teacher takes the role of a facilitator (gaer 1998). projects that students choose to do may be based on some topic in their textbook or may merely be a source of entertainment and a break from routine classroom activities. as wentzel and brophy (2014) state, student motivation should be at the center of project design as the students must see value in a project in order to be willing to enroll in it. when outlining a project, teachers must always keep in mind the linguistic objectives and the content standards that will be addressed. the choice of the topic is also of huge importance, it must be up-to-date, motivate the students and keep them interested throughout the project. it is important to involve the students in planning and decision making since this will help them develop a feeling of ownership of the project. after agreeing on the theme of the project and determining the final outcome of the project (e.g., written report, brochure, handbook, oral presentation, video, multimedia presentation, theatrical performance), the teacher must also design a timeline for project components and help the students define a specific flexible schedule to accomplish the project. the teacher’s initial role in pbl is to develop realistic and authentic problems and materials, and as soon as this task has been fulfilled, the teacher fades into the background while students engage in solving the problem. methodology armenian folia anglistika 111 the students take on the role of whatever person is solving the problem, generate a list of learning issues and whenever a new learning issue arises, the students must create an action plan to tackle this issue. the teacher can help by directing the students to information which will answer their questions, but should not answer the questions per se. students must regard the teacher as a guide so the teacher should not try to control everything and must leave some autonomy to the students. finding the proper balance between teacher guidance and student autonomy enhances the advantages of project work in the language classroom. the teacher designs language-improvement activities to help students successfully present the final outcome of the project. those activities may focus on skills for successful oral presentations, persuasive debates, editing, and so forth. after engaging in teacher-guided preparatory activities, students start to compile and analyze the gathered data. they work in groups to organize the information and then discuss the value of the data that they have collected, keeping some and discarding others. another role of the teacher is to monitor the students and the progress of the project, as well as to assess the final outcome. the teacher should not forget to ask the students to provide feedback on the project experience and to reflect on the language and the subject matter acquired during the project. this will help the teacher see the drawbacks of the project and make it more elaborate each year. in this last stage of project work teachers also provide students with feedback on their language and content learning. one of the most important things the teacher should not forget when using project based learning is to ask the students to provide feedback on the project experience. this will help the teacher see the drawbacks of the project and make it more elaborate each year. authenticity of a project many specialists refer to morrow (1977:13) for their definition of authenticity: “an authentic text is a stretch of real language, produced and designed to convey a real message of some sort”. according to harmer (1983:146) “authentic texts (either written or spoken) are those which are designed for native speakers: they are real texts designed not for language students, but for the speakers of the language in question”. armenian folia anglistika methodology 112 this is a good place to start, but falls short when we attempt to define authenticity in regard to pbl. in order to define authenticity in pbl, we must take into consideration the various aspects of authenticity, such as the initial input and final output, the participants, the setting, the nature of the interaction, etc. thus, when speaking about the authenticity of a project, we should bear in mind that the materials and the sources that the students use must be authentic (examples of authentic input commonly employed are films, commercials, texts from print media, audio recordings and many other types). moreover, the task itself, the output and the audience must ideally also be authentic. the authenticity of the above mentioned features may improve the benefit of pbl for learners and instructors and as stoller (2006) emphasizes, the most commonly cited benefit of pbl is the authenticity of experience and language. j. larmer (2012) defines the following four authenticity criteria for a project: 1. the project meets a real need in the world beyond the classroom, or the products that students create are used by real people. 2. the project focuses on a problem, issue or topic that is relevant to students' lives, or on a problem or issue that is actually being faced by adults in the world students will soon enter. 3. the project sets up a scenario or simulation that is realistic, even if it is fictitious. 4. the project involves tools, tasks or processes used by adults in real settings and by professionals in the workplace. this focus of context with real-world themes or issues provides the authenticity that teachers strive for, and learners often appreciate. stoller (2006) states that the vast majority of project work exposes learners to the target language through the use of authentic information sources. however, it is questionable whether this is sufficient to motivate learners to communicate in the target language throughout the project cycle. in many cases the authenticity and the use of the target language is limited to the initial stage of the project cycle where the students only collect information data to obtain the background content they need to complete the project. during some other stages of the project, the students may opt to use their native language when assigned to work in groups or individually at home without the teacher being able to monitor the process. the tasks that the teacher assigns the students to carry out for the project must also be authentic. by an authentic task, we mean those tasks which enable learners to use the knowledge they have gained in the classroom to solve real-life problems. methodology armenian folia anglistika 113 authentic tasks create a bridge between what is learned in the classroom and why this knowledge is important to the world outside of the classroom. an important aspect of task authenticity is the degree of real communication that takes place while working on the project. to fulfill this aspect, we need authentic audience since when students submit project work to peers, they are likely to believe their peers will forgive them for gaps in their knowledge of content or the target language. learners are usually motivated to work harder when their work has an authentic audience. also, ideally learners will be able to receive authentic feedback from the audience, which may also be quite motivating. an example of a good project with a high degree of authenticity can be designing a website for a tourist information agency. in regard to input for this project, the learners can visit websites or travel agents and gather the necessary information. with the advent of skype and free telecommunication learners can actually call hotels and ask for availability and prices for a variety of rooms. to complete the project and develop the final product the students will have to accomplish different authentic tasks such as determining the most economical airfare, hotels, meals package, and car rental. learners can also be tasked to design a plan for sight-seeing, draw up sketches of the website and develop content for the site. conclusion in conclusion we may say that pbl is a very good technique of teaching english for specific purposes as it can provide the students with the relevant linguistic and professional skills to accomplish different work-related tasks. it becomes a real life experience and will definitely help the learners in their future jobs. the end result is often authenticity of experience, improved language and content knowledge, increased metacognitive awareness, enhanced critical thinking and decision-making abilities, intensity of motivation and engagement, improved social skills, and a familiarity with target language resources. pbl helps students learn skills and strategies in addition to content. students take on the positions of executives, producers, designers, planners, scientists, doctors, historians, and so on and find themselves learning research skills, time management, self-directed learning, transferring knowledge, and other lifelong learning skills while finding information to solve the problem. another advantage of using pbl in esl/efl classrooms is that your students will have more control over the actual vocabulary they learn, because they must determine what vocabulary they need to know. armenian folia anglistika methodology 114 references: 1. bülent, a. and stoller, f.l. (2005) maximizing the benefits of project work in foreign language classrooms. // english teaching forum, vol. 43 (4). 2. gaer, s. (1998) less teaching and more learning. vol. 2. available at <http://www.ncsall.net/index.html@id=385.html> [accessed may 2015]. 3. harmer, j. (1991) the practice of english language teaching. new edition, london: longman. 4. larmer, j. what does it take for a project to be “authentic”? available at: <https://www.edutopia.org/blog/authentic-project-based-learning-john-larmer> [accessed october 2016]. 5. morrow, k. (1977) authentic texts in esp. // english for specific purposes. / ed. by s. holden. london: modern english publications. 6. stoller, f. (2006) establishing a theoretical foundation for project-based learning in second and foreign language contexts. // project-based second and foreign language education: past, present, and future. / ed. by g. h. beckett & p. c. miller. greenwich: information age publishing. 7. wentzel, k.r. & brophy, j.e. (2014) motivating students to learn. new york & london. 8. wilkerson, l. and feletti, g. (1989) problem-based learning: one approach to increasing student participation. // new directions for teaching and learning, i. n. 37 pp. 51–60. æëïáõãûáõýý áõ áõëáõóãç ¹»ñá áõëáõùý³ï³ý ý³ë³·í»ñáõù êáõûý ñá¹í³íá ýå³ï³ï áõýç áõëáõùý³ëçñ»éáõ çëïáõãû³ý ¨ áõëáõóãç ¹»ñç ï³ñ¨áñáõãûáõýá áõëáõùý³ï³ý ý³ë³·í»ñç ùß³ïù³ý ·áñíáõù: àõëáõùý³ï³ý ý³ë³·í»ñç ïçñ³éáõùá áõë³ýáõ³ï»ýïñáý áõëáõóù³ý ù»ãá¹ý»ñçó ù»ïý ¿, áñý áõë³ýáõý»ñçý ñý³ñ³íáñáõãûáõý ¿ ï³éçë ó»éù »ñ»é ·çï»éçùý»ñ ¨ ñùïáõãûáõýý»ñ çñ³ï³ý ëý¹çñý»ñç éáõíù³ý ñ³ù³ñ: îíû³é ù»ãá¹á ï»ýïñáý³ýáõù ¿ çñ³ï³ý ³ßë³ññç ëý¹çñý»ñç íñ³ ³ûëåçëáí ·ñ³í»éáí áõë³ýáõý»ñç ñ»ï³ùñùñáõãûáõýá: àõëáõùý³ï³ý ý³ë³·í»ñç ïçñ³éáõùá ýå³ëïáõù ¿ áõë³ýáõý»ñç ëù ³ï³ûçý ¨ çýùýáõñáõûý ³ßë³ï»éáõ ñùïáõãûáõýý»ñç ½³ñ·³óù³ýá: microsoft word maket 2023, vol 19. 15.04.23 (1)   1 armenian folia anglistika – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english (since 2005) and yerevan state university (since 2015) aims at fostering research of the english language, literature and culture in armenia and elsewhere and facilitate intellectual cooperation between high school teachers and scholars. armenian folia anglistika is intended to be published twice a year. articles of interest to university-level teachers and scholars in english studies are warmly welcomed by the multi-national editorial board of the journal. articles should be directed to the editor-in-chief. in 2007 the editorial board of armenian folia anglistika announced the opening of a new section in the journal – armenological studies, which invites valuable and innovative contributions from such fields as armenian linguistics, literary criticism, ethnic studies, cultural history, gender studies and a wide range of adjacent disciplines. հիմնադիր և գլխավոր խմբագիր` սեդա գասպարյան համարի թողարկման պատասխանատու` լիլի կարապետյան լրատվական գործունեություն իրականացնող «անգլերենի ուսումնասիրության հայկական ասոցիացիա» հկ http:www.aase.ysu.am վկայական` 03ա 065183 տրված` 28.06.2004 թ. yerevan state university press     armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 linguistics 2 editor-in-chief seda k. gasparyan dr of science (philology), professor, corresponding member of nas ra, honoured scientist of ra; holder of “best scientific work” award of nas ra (2010); holder of “rated researcher” award of ra state committee of science (2013, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020); head of yerevan state university english philology department; head of the research council for defence of phd and doctoral theses in the speciality 10-02-07 romance and germanic languages (1995-2019); scientific supervisor of the project “anti-armenian propaganda discourse studies”; academic and research visiting professor at ca’foscari university of venice (2018, 2022). president of the armenian association for the study of english (aase); board member of the european society for the study of english (esse). e-mail: sedagasparyan@ysu.am; sedagasparyan@yandex.ru url: https://www.ysu.am/user/383 orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 phone: (+374 99) 255 060 editorial team lili h. karapetyan managing editor associate professor at english philology department, yerevan state university, armenia. e-mail: starlet@ysu.am url: https://www.ysu.am/user/392 orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2899-6239 gohar g. madoyan assistant editor phd in philology, associate professor at english philology department, yerevan state university, armenia. e-mail: goharmadoyan@mail.ru url: https://www.ysu.am/user/1779 orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6525-9230 mariana s. sargsyan phd in philology, associate professor at english philology department, yerevan state university, armenia. e-mail: marianasargsyan@ysu.am url: https://www.ysu.am/user/409 orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3054-1871 shushanik h. paronyan dr of science (philology), professor, head of the department of english for crosscultural communication, yerevan state university, armenia. e-mail: shushanik.paronyan@ysu.am url: https://www.ysu.am/user/281 orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6997-731x     3 gaiane h. muradian dr of science (philology), professor at english philology department, yerevan state university, armenia. e-mail: g.murad@ysu.am url: https://www.ysu.am/user/391 orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7588-5849 bert vaux professor of phonology and morphology, department of theoretical and applied linguistics, faculty of modern & medieval languages & linguistics, king’s college, cambridge. ba university of chicago, 1990; ma harvard university, 1992; phd harvard university, 1994. e-mail: bv230@cam.ac.uk url: https://www.mmll.cam.ac.uk/bv230 orcid id: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0915-4503 elisabeth jay professor emerita of english literature at oxford brookes university where she was director of the institute for historical and cultural research. she has taught in both american and french universities and remained a long-standing member of the oxford university english faculty. her various external roles have included chair of the council for college and university english (uk); uk board member for the european society for the study of english; uk representative on the executive committee of the international association of university professors of english and member of european science foundation college of expert reviewers. e-mail: ejjay@brookes.ac.uk url: https://www.brookes.ac.uk/profiles/staff/elisabeth-jay orcid: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-5805-4568 andreas h. jucker dr, professor emeritus of english linguistics at the university of zurich where he was dean of the faculty of arts and social sciences (2013-2017). his current research interests include historical pragmatics, politeness theory, speech act theory, and the history of english. his recent book publications include politeness in the history of english. from the middle ages to the present-day (cambridge university press, 2020). the pragmatics of fiction. literature, stage and screen discourse (co-authored with miriam locher; edinburgh university press, 2021), pragmatics of space (co-edited with heiko hausendorf; de gruyter, 2022) and multimodal im/politeness. signed, spoken, written (co-edited with iris hübscher and lucien brown; benjamins, 2023). he is currently president of the european society for the study of english (esse) and co-editor-in-chief of the journal of pragmatics. email: ahjucker@es.uzh.ch url: https://www.tiny.uzh.ch/159 orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3495-2213     armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 linguistics 4 elżbieta chrzanowska-kluczewska dr hab., professor, linguist, member of the department of english linguistics at the institute for english studies, jagiellonian university in kraków, poland. e-mail: elzbieta.chrzanowska-kluczewska@uj.edu.pl url: https://ifa.filg.uj.edu.pl/elzbieta-chrzanowska-kluczewska orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0908-1711 angela locatelli professor emerita of english literature at the university of bergamo, italy; member of the board of the phd school (scuola di alta formazione dottorale) of the university of bergamo; one of the founders and faculty member of the international phd network in "literary and cultural studies". e-mail: angela.locatelli@unibg.it url: http://www00.unibg.it/struttura/strutturasmst.asp?rub... orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4210-8397 aleksandra nikčević-batrićević dr of philology, full professor of literature, university of montenegro. she is the author of various texts on american, irish and scottish literature, the organizer of international conferences on anglicists, initiator of many translation projects. in 2004 she was part of a melville society scholarship at the maritime institute in new bedford, massachusetts. e-mail: aleksandra.b@ac.me url: https://www.ucg.ac.me/objava/blog/18106/objava/1 charles hall phd in linguistics, associate professor of applied linguistics, alfaisal university, saudi arabia. ba oakland university,1976; ma university of florida,1979; phd university of florida, 1983. he was named doctor honoris causa by the university of west bohemia, czechia, 2007. e-mail: chall@alfaisal.edu url: https://faculty.alfaisal.edu/sites/default/files/hallvita2019september_0.pdf orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4085-6754 sivakumar sivasubramaniam phd in applied linguistics from the university of nottingham, uk, an extraordinary professor and past head of language education in the faculty of education at the university of the western cape, republic of south africa. he is also south africa’s national research foundation rated researcher, an executive committee member of english scholars beyond borders, has also served the editorial board of the journal of english as an international language as chief editor since 2011. he has been a foreign language educator for over thirty-eight years now and has taught english in india, ethiopia, thailand, bahrain, armenia, and uae prior to relocating to the western cape. e-mail: ssivasubramnaim@uwc.ac.zasivakumar49@yahoo.com url: https:// www.uwc.ac.za orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7794-2571     5 svetlana g. ter-minasova dr of science (philology), professor emerita at lomonosov moscow state university; president of the faculty of foreign languages and area studies at lomonosov msu, russia; chairperson of the flt council (ministry of education, russia) since 1987; founding president of national association of applied linguistics, russia; an affiliate of the international association of applied linguistics since 1989 and the founding president of national association of teachers of english, russia, a collective member of the international associations tesol (the usa) and iatefl (the uk); chairperson of the flt council (ministry of education and science, russia) since 1995; holder of lomonosov award, fulbright's 50th anniversary award; named doctor honoris causa by the university of birmingham (uk), the state university of new york (usa). e-mail: sgtermin@mail.ru url: http://ffl.msu.ru/en/about/president/ orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4274-6674 advisory editorial team alessandra giorgi phd in philology, full professor at the department of linguistics and comparative cultural studies, ca'foscari university of venice, italy. e-mail: giorgi@unive.it url: https://www.unive.it/persone/giorgi orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6382-7510 sona haroutyunyan phd in philology, dr. of linguistics, researcher, habilitatin (associate professor), department of asian and north african studies, ca’foscari university of venice, italy. e-mail: sona.haroutyunian@unive.it url: https://www.unive.it/persone/sona.haroutyunian orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2740-983x elżbieta mańczak-wohlfeld dr hab., professor ordinarius at the institute for english studies; head of the department of english linguistics, jagiellonian university in kraków, poland. e-mail: manczak@uj.edu.pl url: https://ifa.filg.uj.edu.pl/elzbieta-manczak-wohfeld orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7839-4957 john a. stotesbury adjunct professor, school of humanities, university of eastern finland, joensuu, finland; adjunct professor, department of english, university of oulu, finland. e-mail: john.stotesbury@gmail.com url: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=list_works&hl=en&hl= en&user= brlfca0aaaaj orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2712-2211   armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 linguistics 6 iryna s. shevchenko doctor of philology, full professor, academician of the academy of sciences of higher school of ukraine; head of the department of business foreign language and translation of v.n. karazin kharkiv national university; head of the thesis committee for defense of phd theses in the speciality 10.02.04 — germanic languages. e-mail: iryna.shevchenko@karazin.ua url: http://foreign-languages.karazin.ua/en/shevchenko orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2552-5623 isabella r. buniyatova dr of philology, professor, head of the department of germanic and romance philology, boris grinchenko kyiv university, ukraine. e-mail: i.buniiatova@kubg.edu.ua url: https://if.kubg.edu.ua/struktura/.../615-.html orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4286-6705 marta dąbrowska dr hab., assistant professor with habilitation at the institute for english studies, jagiellonian university in kraków, poland. e-mail: marta.b.dabrowska@uj.edu.pl url: https://ifa.filg.uj.edu.pl/marta-dabrowska orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0151-3049 olga v. aleksandrova doctor of science (philology), professor, head of the department of english linguistics at lomonosov moscow state university; holder of lomonosov award (2001); award of the international federation of modern language teachers' associations at fiplv (2005). e-mail: ovaleksandrova@gmail.com url: https://www.philol.msu.ru/~engdep/.../aleksandrova-olga/ orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8281-9164 astghik e. chubaryan phd in philology, professor at english philology department, yerevan state university, armenia. e-mail: astghik.chubaryan@ysu.am url: https://www.ysu.am/user/405 orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4413-6044 arpine madoyan phd in philology, associate professor at english philology department, yerevan state university, armenia. e-mail: arpinehmadoyan@ysu.am url: https://www.ysu.am/user/379 orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6848-0109     7 naira hambardzumyan phd in philology, associate professor, senior researcher at the institute of literature after manuk abeghian, nas ra. member of the editorial board of the journal of literary studies, nas ra (since 2022). academic visitor at near and middle east department, faculty of languages and cultures at soas, university of london 20152016. an award for scientific-educational activity from 2017 to 2021 from ministry of diaspora of ra (2019). supervisor of the project “women’s issues in the western armenian literature in the second half of the 19th century” supported by science committee of ra. e-mail: nairahambardzumyan@yahoo.com url: https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/naira-hambardzumyan2231455324 orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2792-8891     armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 linguistics 8 երևանի պետական համալսարան անգլերենի ուսումնասիրության հայկական ասոցիացիա (անգլերենի ուսումնասիրության եվրոպական ֆեդերացիայի անդամ) անգլիագիտական հետազոտությունների հայկական հանդես գիտական գրախոսվող ամսագիր համագործակցությամբ՝ երևանի բրյուսովի անվան պետական համալսարանի (հայաստան) մոսկվայի մ. լոմոնոսովի անվ. պետական համալսարանի (ռուսաստան) կրակովի յագիելոնյան համալսարանի (լեհաստան) բերգամոյի համալսարանի (իտալիա) մոնտենեգրոյի համալսարանի (մոնտենեգրո) երեվան – 2023       9 yerevan state university armenian association for the study of english (member association of the european society for the study of english) armenian folia anglistika peer-reviewed scientific journal in cooperation with: yerevan brusov state university (armenia) lomonosov moscow state university (russia) jagiellonian university, cracow (poland) bergamo university (italy) university of montenegro (montenegro) yerevan – 2023     maket 2014_layout 1.qxd on the temporal and aspectual value of modern eastern armenian aorist: a comparative perspective alessandra giorgi, sona haroutyunian ca’ foscari university of venice1 abstract in this research we study some syntactic and semantic properties of the modern eastern armenian aorist by comparing it to similar verbal forms in english and italian. we argue that the temporal interpretation of the aorist is not a primitive property, but derives from its main aspectual characteristic, i.e. perfectivity. this hypothesis is further supported by the analysis of the futural value expressed in certain contexts by means of the first person aorist form. keywords: perfectivity, temporal anchoring, aorist, future, modern eastern armenian. introduction it is a well-known fact that languages differ widely as far as their verbal systems are concerned. some languages, for instance, have very poor verbal morphology – like english or chinese – whereas others overtly mark several subtle temporal and aspectual distinctions – like russian and greek, both ancient and modern. temporal and aspectual properties, moreover, can combine with each other following certain patterns discussed at length in the literature.2 the analysis of the interactions between temporal and aspectual properties is presumably one of the most fascinating fields in the study of verbal systems. in this paper we show that the temporal interpretation of the armenian aorist is actually derived from its aspectual properties, in dependence of the context in which the verbal form is used.3 the armenian aorist exhibits temporal and aspectual properties not easily fitting the “canonical” descriptions. we will see that its distribution might seem at first sight incoherent and show that only by means of a finer analysis it is possible to account for its characteristics in a uniform way. to this end, we compare the armenian aorist with the english simple past and present perfect, on the one hand, and with the italian passato remoto (simple past) and passato prossimo (present perfect), on the other. 1. a brief overview of the italian and english simple past and present perfect in this section we briefly compare the properties of the english simple past and present perfect with those of the italian – allegedly – corresponding forms. we show that in spite of the superficial morphological similarity, one must be very cautious in directly identifying the verbal forms in question, given that at a closer look they exhibit different temporal and aspectual properties. in english some forms are clearly identifiable as temporally marked as past – such as the simple past i ate – whereas some forms encode an aspectual value – such as the present perfect i have eaten. the literature on the english past and perfect forms is particularly rich and emphasizes in various ways the following point: aspectual and temporal armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 151 values interact in complex ways, which are idiosyncratic of a specific language. for instance in english the aforementioned forms can both refer to a past event, but if the present perfect is used, the consequences of the event must be detectable at the time of the utterance, i.e., it must be relevant at the present time.4 consider for instance the following example (from higginbotham 2006, ex. 47): (1) i have spilled my coffee. this sentence (1) is acceptable only if there is spilled coffee around at the moment of the utterance. moreover, presumably for the same reason, these forms are (mostly) incompatible with a definite temporal reference, as in the following case: (2) john has left at four. the sentence (2), with a present perfect, contrasts with the sentence in (3), with a simple past, or with (4), where no temporal reference is realized: (3) john left at four. (4) john has left. both sentences are about a past event of leaving, but the specific aspectual properties of the present perfect give rise to the contrast above. the italian present perfect has exactly the same morphological structure as the english one: a present tense auxiliary, followed by a past participle. the sentences equivalent to (1) and (2) are however perfectly grammatical and there is no requirement to be observed, such as the present relevance found in (1). consider the following examples:5 (5) ho versato il caffè i have spilled my coffee. (6) gianni è partito alle quattro. lit: gianni has left at four. (gianni left at four.) sentence (5) can be uttered even if there is no sign around of spilled coffee and there is full compatibility with definite temporal adverbs. it is a well-known fact that it is very difficult to find a correspondence between the forms expressing temporal distinctions and those expressing aspectual ones. in the case of english and italian illustrated in (1) it is important to understand that if the english sentence i have spilled my coffee is translated as ho versato il caffè, the fact that the speaker (english) is in a situation where there is actually coffee around is simply lost in the italian equivalent, where this might be true, but not necessarily so. on the other hand, the italian sentence does express a meaning corresponding to the english one, i.e., both sentences talk about a past event of spilling coffee, but this is not enough to capture and explain all the properties of these forms. armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 152 the challenge is therefore to account for these facts in general theoretical terms, by means of general principles, which might predict the english/italian behavior of the verbal forms. in this work we are not going to further discuss the contrast illustrated above, but we will consider a case displaying similar properties: the armenian aorist. as we anticipated above, this verbal form has in fact a rather puzzling distribution when compared to the possible equivalents in languages such as italian and english. the analysis of the armenian aorist will also shed light on the interactions between aspectual properties and the anchoring conditions, which are crucially relevant in the temporal interpretation of utterances. 2. temporal and aspectual properties of the armenian aorist 2.1. on the temporal properties of the armenian aorist in modern eastern armenian – henceforth, mea – most verbal tenses, at least in the indicative system, are periphrastic, i.e. formed by means of an auxiliary and a participle. the aorist is the only synthetic verbal form of the indicative. it includes the aorist stem of the verb followed by the verbal inflection. note that for many verbs the aorist stem is lexicalized by adding the suffix c‘ to the verb. we will consider the nature of this suffix with more detail in section (5) below.6 the armenian aorist normally expresses pastness, i.e., it refers to past events, both in main and in subordinate contexts. consider for instance the following examples: (7) erek armenə lav gnahatakan stac‘av yesterday armen gained (aor) a good mark. (8) silvan asac‘ wor erek armenə lav gnahatakan stac‘av silva said that yesterday armen gained (aor) a good mark. the temporal interpretation of (8) is analogous to the english one: armen gained a good mark and this event is past with respect to silva’s saying it. the same holds in italian: (9) ieri gianni ha preso un bel voto. yesterday gianni gained (pres perf) a good mark. (10) maria ha detto che ieri gianni ha preso un bel voto. maria said that yesterday gianni gained (pres perf) a good mark. in (10) the gaining of the good mark lies in maria’s past. hence, it looks like the aorist is the form corresponding to simple past in english and to the present perfect in (centralnorthern) italian. in some cases however, the aorist does not have a past reading, but on the contrary, refers to future events. consider for instance the following sentence:7 (11) aysōr ašxatavarj em stac‘el vałə t‘atroni tomserə gnec‘i today i received my salary. tomorrow i’ll buy (aor) the tickets for the theatre. armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 153 the buying of the tickets has not taken place yet, as clearly specified by the time adverb tomorrow. the speaker’s intuition is that the aorist in this sentence is admitted as the future outcome of a past situation, i.e. i got the money, and on the basis of this i make a decision concerning the future. the specification concerning the past, enabling the present and the future situation to come out, does not necessarily have to be mentioned, but needs to be present and retrievable from the context. hence, the future meaning of the aorist needs a presupposition concerning the conditions enabling the future event. let us compare now this future usage of the aorist with the meaning expressed by the other future forms in armenian. in mea, but not in mwa, the future can also be expressed by means of a form from the conditional mood, i.e. the finite verb prefixed by k-, as seen in example (12), which we will gloss as “conditional future” (cond fut). this form, to be fully acceptable, requires the existence of a planning in the future, as in the following case: (12) vałə t‘atroni tomserə kgnem (ayspisov erekoyan miasin kgnank) tomorrow i’ll buy (cond fut) the tickets for theatre (hence in the evening we’ll go together). the planned events do not need to be overtly mentioned in the same sentence, but they can remain implicit, belonging to the presupposed part necessary to license this usage. this future is in some sense considered a colloquial form and not used in writing. the periphrastic future, formed by means of the future participle and the inflected auxiliary em in the present tense, on the contrary, is the more learned form, used in writing as well. consider for instance sentence (13): (13) vałə gnelu em t‘atroni tomserə (ayspisov erekoyan miasin kgnank) tomorrow i’ll buy (fut) the tickets for theatre (hence in the evening we’ll go together). in this case as well, a planning is required, either expressed or retrievable form the context. finally, the present tense can also have a future meaning, analogously to italian – and, to a certain extent, to english – as shown in the following example: (14) vałə arjanagrvum em pari dasənt‘ac‘i (bayc‘ vstah č‘em) tomorrow i enroll (pres) in a dance course (but i am not sure). to clarify the meaning of the various forms in armenian, note that the clause bayc‘ vstah č‘em (but i am not sure) could neither be added to the sentence with the aorist, nor to the one with the future. the first in fact entails a certainty by the speaker, based on events located in the past, and the second – the existence of a plan in the speaker’s mind. hence the presence of i am not sure would be inconsistent. the present tense, however is neutral and therefore compatible with it.8 armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 154 the aorist tense can also express ingressive meaning with verbs of emotion as illustrated in the following example (from dum-tragut 2009:232): (15) lilit‘n atec‘ ayn nor usanołin lilit started to hate (aor) that new student. the event expressed by means of a future aorist does not need to take place in the immediate future, as shown by the fact that adverbs such as in two months can also be used: (16) aysōr imac‘a, wor erku amis heto ašxatavarj em stanalu. erku amis heto t‘atroni tomserə gnec‘i. today i learnt that in two months i’ll receive my salary. in two months i’ll buy (aor) my tickets for the theatre. hence, the value of this future aorist is not purely imminential, because the event can be delayed. interestingly, the future interpretation of the aorist is natural for the first person – and the second – but quite marginal for the third one – both singular and plural – where a regular future is by far the preferred option:9 (17) armenə avartec‘ dasere. (na) hima kgna/ *gnac‘ armen has just finished his lessons. he is now going (cond fut/*aor) away. note also that the futural interpretation of the aorist cannot be simply labeled a modal one, in the sense that it is not the expression of a wish, and it is neither an optative, nor a desiderative. the speaker simply expresses what she is going to do in the future. as additional evidence for the future reading of the aorist, consider for instance also the following example: (18) vaghe andzrev chi galu. yes vaghe khaghac’-i futbol tomorrow it is not going to rain. i will play (aor) football. in the same vein, consider the following context. a football team has two goalkeepers. the coach chooses one of them for the match. the chosen one utters to the other: (19) du mnac’ir nstaranin nstatz you will stay (aor) seated. furthermore, to strengthen our argument, note that the armenian aorist cannot be used as a counterfactual form as it might be the case for past forms in other languages, for instance in english, as shown by the following example: (20) if you went to bed earlier, you would not be so tired. armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 155 armenian in these cases uses the subjunctive, as italian. the aorist is ungrammatical, as shown by the following examples:10 (21) et‘e du erek šut ankołin mtac lineir (past subj)/*mtar (aor), aysk‘an hognac č‘ēir lini. (22) se tu ieri fossi andato (past subj)/*sei andato(pres perf) a letto prima, non saresti così stanco. if you went to bed earlier, you would not be so tired. summarizing, in a language like italian, having the subjunctive in its verbal inventory, it is never the case that the simple past, or the present perfect can have a modal interpretation: (23) se sapessi /*seppi/ *ho saputo volare, farei un giro sopra new york. if i could (subj/*simple past/*present perfect) fly, i would fly over new york. the same holds in armenian as well: (24) ete yes t‘ŕč‘el imanayi/*imac‘a/*imac‘el em new yorki vrayov kt‘ŕč‘ei. if i could fly (subj/*aor/*present perfect), i would fly over new york. the armenian aorist, therefore, seems to behave as a regular past form, with the interesting exception of the future reading. note that, in general, past forms cannot be used to express future meanings. as discussed above, in italian, the present tense can have such a use, as shown in the following example (from bertinetto, 1991, ex. 57): (25) esco fra un attimo. i leave (pres) in a moment. but a past, i.e. a present perfect or a simple past, cannot:11 (26) *sono uscito/*uscii fra un attimo. lit: i have left /i left in a moment. hence, the present discussion will focus on the anomalous behavior of the armenian aorist with respect to the availability of the future interpretation, which we will try to characterize and explain without introducing ad hoc theories, resorting instead to more general principles of temporal anchoring. 2.2. on the aspectual properties of the armenian aorist in the previous section we illustrated the temporal properties of the aorist. in this secarmenian folia anglistika armenological studies 156 tion, we will consider the aspectual one. we apply here the well-known tests on the compatibility of a verbal form with time adverbials, which have been shown to discriminate well between the various aspectual interpretations. in this section we show that the aorist is a perfective form. consider the following example: (27) silvan erek‘žamum salorə kerav silva ate (aor) the plum in three hours. in this sentence, the aorist – a form of non-suffixed aorist – is compatible with the adverbial in x time, which is a typical property of perfective forms.12 the sentence means that the plum has been eaten up in a time span of three hours. analogously, there is the following case: (28) armenə erek‘ tarum tunə kaŕuc‘ec‘ armen built (aor) the house in three years. this sentence expresses the reaching of a result: armen finished building the house in three years. let us consider now a different adverbial. bertinetto (1991) points out that in italian the adverbial da x tempo (lit: from x time) is only compatible with compound perfective forms and not with the synthetic ones, namely it selects a certain past, even if both past forms in italian can be said in general to be perfective. consider the following contrast between the italian present perfect and the simple past (adapted form bertinetto 1991, section 1.5.2.2., exx. 204 and 207):13 (29) marco è arrivato da almeno due ore. lit: marco has arrived (pres perf) at least from two hours. marco arrived at least two hours ago. (30) *marco arrivò da almeno due ore. marco arrived (past) at least from two hours. marco arrived at least two hours ago. according to bertinetto (1991), the compound form and the simple one differ because in the former, but not in the latter, the interpretation requires the presence of a reference point, in reichenbachian terms.14 the adverbial in question in fact measures the time span between the end of the event and the reference point, hence it cannot be compatible with the simple past, which does not have any.15 the same judgments obtain with the locution sono due ore che (lit: it is two hours that): (31) sono due ore che marco è arrivato. lit: it is two hours that marco has arrived (pres perf). marco arrived at least two hours ago armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 157 (32) *sono due ore che marco arrive. it is two hours that marco arrived (past). marco arrived at least two hours ago. in armenian the only locution available in this case is the one corresponding to the italian sono due ore che (it is two hours that) in examples (31)-(32). consider the following examples: (33) erku žam ē inč‘ armenə hasel ē lit: two hours is that armen has arrived (pres perf) armen arrived two hours ago. (34) *erku žam ē inč‘armenə hasav lit: two hours is that armen arrived (aor). armen arrived two hours ago. in this case as well, armenian behaves like italian, and the aorist patterns with the simple past. as an interim conclusion, we can say that the armenian aorist is a perfective verbal form, which exhibits properties similar to the non-compound perfective forms of the italian system. 3. towards an explanation: the anchoring conditions let’s summarize the properties of the armenia aorist discussed so far: (35) a) it is a synthetic verbal form. b) it can have a futural meaning, even if it is mostly used as a past. c) it is aspectually perfective. d) it patterns with the italian non-compound perfective forms. the hypothesis we will argue for here is the following: the armenian aorist is a perfective present tense. in what follows we argue in favor of this hypothesis. it is a well-known fact that verbal forms are obligatorily anchored.16 namely, an event or state, henceforth eventuality, must be placed along a temporal continuum, taking some other event as the anchoring one. in main clauses the anchoring event is provided by the speech event itself. consequently, a past, a present or a future verbal form has the effect of placing the eventuality as preceding, overlapping, or following the speech event:17 (36) john ate an apple. (37) john is eating an apple. (38) john will eat an apple. in example (36) the event precedes the speech event, overlaps it in (37) and follows it in (38). armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 158 we follow here higginbotham’s (1995) and giorgi and pianesi’s (1997) proposal according to which a temporal morpheme is a two-place predicate. hence, a past verbal form like ate is characterized by the presence of a predicate as the following one: past (e1, e2), where e1 is identified with the eating event and e2 with the speech event. the anchoring procedure is analogous to a theta-marking (or theta-identification) procedure, i.e. to the process involved in the linking of the predicate to its arguments in general. subordinate events must be anchored as well. in normal complement clauses, the anchoring point is provided by the superordinate event, plus a condition enabling the double access reading in languages having this requirement. the anchoring requirement is even in this case universal.18 consider for instance the following examples: (39) mary said john ate an apple. (40) mary said john is eating an apple. (41) mary said john will eat an apple. in sentence (39) the eating precedes the saying, in (40) it is simultaneous with it and in (41) it is located in the future.19 however, the anchoring conditions are on their turn constrained by the aspectual properties, namely, the aspect of the verbal form. for instance being perfective or continuous contributes to the outcome of the temporal anchoring. this issue is analyzed at length in giorgi and pianesi (1997), who propose the punctuality constraint. giorgi and pianesi (1997) argue that the anchoring event is by definition punctual, both in the case it is taken to be the speech event itself, and in the case it is the superordinate event in the case of embedded clauses. note also that giorgi and pianesi (1997) develop a mereological view of the notion of punctuality, to the effect that punctuality does not necessarily imply absence of a temporal extension. a point under their view is defined as something that, independently of its extension, cannot be partitioned. this is however a technical issue we will not further consider here and refer the reader to the cited works. the punctuality constraint can be stated as follows (from giorgi and pianesi 1997:163): (42) “a closed event cannot be simultaneous with a punctual event.” let us now consider what a closed event is and why it cannot coincide with a punctual event. giorgi and pianesi (1997, ch.4) argue that all eventive predicates – as opposed to stative ones – have an internal structure. each predicate, even achievements ones – i.e., those usually considered to be inherently punctual – can be seen as a sequence of temporally ordered sub-events. in order to clarify this notion, the authors discuss the following example (giorgi and pianesi, 1997, ch.4, ex.9): (43) john ate an apple. while eating the first bit of it, he remembered that he had to phone mary. armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 159 the first sentence set the scene: a native speaker of english knows that the eating event took place in the past and has ended. the rest of the example, however, makes it clear that this event can be partitioned in a meaningful way. giorgi and pianesi argue that the role of the past morpheme appearing on eat in the first sentence is to put a boundary to the sequence of eating sub-events, which however remain conceptually available for further reference. in other words, the english simple past closes the eventive sequence. the punctuality constraint states that even if the internal structure of the event, once closed, is still conceptually available, it is not formally so anymore. coherently with this view, the following sentence is completely unacceptable: (44) *while john ate an apple, mary was playing the piano. the only possibility is to express the first verbal form as an open sequence, by means of the progressive periphrasis, also appearing in the second part of the sentence: (45) while john was eating an apple, mary was playing the piano. a progressive form is continuous and non-perfective, whereas the simple past of an eventive verb is perfective. only the progressive form, as shown in example (45), can be interpreted as the background for another event. in other words, the eating and the playing can be made to overlap only if the former is aspectually an open, continuous sequence, and not if it is a closed, perfective, one. hence, a closed event can only be ordered as preceding or following a punctual, closed, event and can never be simultaneous with it.20 in other words a perfective, closed event can only be past with respect the utterance time or the anchoring point, or future, but could never be simultaneous. 4. back to the armenian aorist what can we say about the armenian aorist and its peculiar characteristics? our hypothesis is that the aorist morpheme does not contribute a past temporal value, but an aspectual one, namely we propose that the aorist is a purely aspectual form and that its temporal interpretation is a side-effect of its aspectual value. more specifically, we propose that this form is a perfective present tense. 4.1. a diachronic view let us illustrate the diachronic and synchronic evidence in favor of this conclusion. a typical armenian aorist form is the following (see also haroutyunian 2011 for a detailed discussion): (46) gr -ec‘ -i write-aor-1sg (were -eis the thematic vowel) i wrote. armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 160 with respect to the armenian aorist suffix -c’ meillet (1936: 115) claims the following: (47) “la caractéristique -c’de l’aoriste repose sur un ancien *-ske-; le grec a de même des prétérits comme φάσκον, φεύγεσχοv, φύγεσκον, φιλέεσκον, etc.; le suffixe n’a rien de proprement aoristique: […] l’aoriste arménien représente une forme indoeuropéenne a désinences secondaires, mais non pas nécessairement un aoriste.” ačaŕyan (1961) – who is a very authoritative armenian grammarian – completely agrees with meillet. hence, even if it might prima facie seem that the armenian suffix -c’ marking the aorist resembles the indo-european sigmatic aorist, this is presumably not the case. in more modern historical literature the issue is still debated, see for instance klingenschmitt (1982) and kortland (1995), without however providing any clear evidence against meillet’s claim. note also that in armenian this verbal form is not called aorist, which is a term introduced by the non-armenian tradition, but is simply called antc’yal kataryal, literally meaning past perfect. now, we know that *-skeis an indo-european suffix which gives rise to different semantic nuances in the various languages, as pointed out for instance by szemerényi (1985: 314). in latin, for instance – see also ernout (1953: 132) – it has a clear inchoative value, but in hittite, it attributes to the verb an iterative or distributive meaning, and in tocharian it mostly adds a causative meaning – cf. szemerényi (1985: 315). note that in all these cases it contributes an aspectual value and not a temporal one. hence, a reasonable hypothesis might be the following: the armenian aorist is formed by the verbal stem plus an aspectual marker, followed by inflection. hence, we endorse here meillet’s position and propose what is called aorist in the non-armenian tradition, is actually an aspectual form.21 under this hypothesis, this form does not include any temporal morpheme. note that the absence of an overtly realized temporal morpheme in the present tense is a largely widespread property among the languages of the world. for instance, giorgi and pianesi (1997) argue that this is a universal characteristic of present verbal forms, and that the lexically realized morphemes, which might occasionally surface in association with the present tense, have always an aspectual value, and not a temporal one, as we briefly discuss below. this observation is coherent with our claim: we propose that the morpheme in question is an aspectual perfective morpheme; hence, the armenian aorist is a present perfective form. 4.2. deriving the properties of the aorist let us go back to the properties of the aorist listed under point (35), repeated here: (48) a) it is a synthetic verbal form. b) it can have a futural meaning, even if it is mostly used as a past. c) it is aspectually perfective. d) it patterns with the italian non-compound perfective forms. armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 161 property a) follows from our hypothesis, as we pointed out above. present tense verbal forms may combine with aspectual morpheme, but never have a purely temporal affix. an example of this sort is provided for instance by the present tense in turkish, as discussed in giorgi and pianesi (1997, ch.2). we briefly review the relevant paradigm here, because it has some significant similarities with the armenian phenomena in question. in turkish the present tense is formed by means of the verb stem, the suffix –iyor and verbal inflection. consider for instance the verb gitmek (to go). the verbal stem is gid-. the stem is followed suffix –iyor and verbal inflection, giving rise to the form gid-iyorum, meaning i am going. the presence of the suffix is obligatory, i.e., the form *gid-um is not available. one might therefore prima facie conclude that the morpheme -iyor is a temporal one. on the other hand, by considering the whole system, we can see that the form gid-iyor-um can be combined with the past morpheme -d-, giving rise to gid-iyord-um, which means i was going. moreover, the morpheme -iyoris not the only one that can appear in between the verbal stem and inflection, given that, interestingly, the aorist morpheme -ercan also appear, giving rise to the pair gid-er-im, which might be glossed i go (habitually), and gid-er-d-im, that can be glossed as i used to go, i.e., an habitual past. summarizing, therefore, the paradigm in turkish looks as follows (see giorgi and pianesi, 1997, exx.3-5): (49) gid-iyor-um (i am going) (50) gid-iyor-d-um (i was going) (51) gid-er-im (i go habitually) (52) gid-er-d-im (i used to go) hence, both morphemes iyor and er can be combined with a past, and therefore cannot be taken to mark a present. they express therefore aspectual meanings, progressive and habituality, respectively.22 therefore, we can conclude that exactly the same situation arises in armenian: the verbal stem is followed by an aspectual marker and inflection. there is one difference though, in mea the “normal”, continuous, present tense is available and is periphrastic. mea in fact forms the present tense by means of the –um present participle of the verb, and the auxiliary em (be):23 (53) kardum ē. read (pres part) is (he) reads hence, in armenian we find an unmarked, periphrastic, present tense and an aspectually marked one, the so-called aorist. a possible generalization to account for the non-periphrastic nature of the aorist could armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 162 be that in mea it is impossible to inflect a tensed verb, but there is no ban for inflecting an aspectually, or modally, marked form. note that this might also account for the existence of the synthetic (conditional) future in mea i.e. the finite verb prefixed by k-, a marker for the conditional, as in k-gne-m (cond fut-buy-1sing), as discussed above – cf. for instance ex.(12). as far as kis concerned, we can say that is a conditional – i.e., a modal– prefix, with a future interpretation, hence, there is no co-occurrence of tense and inflection. this ban does not exist in mwa. let’s consider now the temporal interpretation in point (b). as proposed by giorgi and pianesi (1997, 2001) and briefly discussed in section 3, a perfective verbal form cannot be interpreted as a presently ongoing event, due to the punctuality constraint. a perfective form, being closed – i.e., punctual in the relevant sense – cannot overlap the speech event, which, being an anchor, is punctual by definition. therefore, a perfective present tense cannot de facto be interpreted as a present. the consequence of this is that its temporal interpretation must be shifted either in the past, or in the future. the aorist permits both options. let us consider the future interpretation first.24 as pointed out above, the aorist can express the future outcome of a past situation, which may or may not be explicitly mentioned, even if it must be retrievable from the context. this interpretation is exactly what we expect. as discussed in the introduction, a present perfect usually expresses the present outcome of a past situation – as very well exemplified by the english language – in which the past component is introduced by the perfective marker. hence, we can say that in the future interpretation the perfective marker of the armenian aorist has the same function, requiring the event to be the outcome of a past situation.25 given the co-occurrence in the armenian system of the futurate – i.e. the present tense with a future interpretation – and the “normal” future, either with the kprefix, or in the canonical periphrastic construction, we find a specialization of the various forms.26 property c), i.e. perfectivity, has already been discussed in section 2 above. finally with respect to property d), let us briefly consider the analysis proposed by bertinetto (1991, section 1.5.2.2). he suggests that the temporal adverbs such as da due ore (lit: from two hours, roughly meaning two hours ago) – and we also added periphrases such as sono due ore che (lit: are two hours that, roughly meaning two hours ago, as well) must stress the present relevance of the past event. we can say that in italian in the present perfect they measure the time lapse between the end of the event – the right boundary – and the present moment, now. in other words, are two hours that (sono due ore che) implies that the event finished two hours ago, with respect to now. the present perfect is compatible with them because it combines perfectivity, expressed by means of the participle, with the present auxiliary. the present tense on the auxiliary is interpreted as a regular, continuous, present – hence, it does not violate the anchoring conditions imposed by the punctuality constraint, as discussed by giorgi and pianesi (1997, ch.3). therefore, the locution can denote the relevant time span, in this case the interval between the realization of the resultant state, expressed by means of the participle, and now. as proposed armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 163 above, the events expressed by means of the aorist, on the contrary, cannot coincide with the present moment, due to the punctuality constraint, hence the temporal locution cannot be properly interpreted, giving rise to ungrammaticality.27 conclusion in this work we have shown with several arguments coming mostly from a cross-linguistic analysis that the so-called aorist is actually a perfectively marked present tense. due to perfectivity, the event is a closed sequence – i.e., a mereological point – and cannot be simultaneous with the speech event. we argued, following giorgi and pianesi (1997), that this move would violate the punctuality constraint holding on the anchoring conditions. for this reason, the aorist cannot have a present temporal value, but must be interpreted either as a past, or as future, according to further pragmatic conditions. this analysis is also supported by some diachronic considerations, pointing to the conclusion that its temporal interpretation is just a side effect of its aspectual properties.28 notes: 1. the authors elaborated every part of this research together. however, as a far as legal requirements are concerned, alessandra giorgi takes official responsibility for the introduction and sections 1 and 2 up to example (29) and sona haroutyunian for the remaining part. we wish to thank pier marco bertinetto for his careful reading of a preliminary version of this paper and his very interesting comments. 2. for a typological perspective, see dahl (2000) and references cited there. note also that in some languages the same morpheme can express both a temporal and an aspectual value. this is, for instance, often the case in italian. 3. armenian is an indo-european language spoken in armenia and in persian and indian armenian colonies. nowadays it is also spoken in other areas due to recent emigration from armenia. this variety is called modern eastern armenia, mea. in communities living in turkey and several other countries where the armenians have emigrated especially after the 1915 genocide – other varieties which go under the general label of modern western armenian, mwa are used. mea and mwa exhibit some differences, in particular in the verbal system. even if the aorist is presumably quite alike in the two varieties, we limit our analysis to mea. we do not consider here the properties and distribution of other temporal forms in mea, such as the present and past perfect and the imperfect. even if a comparison among the various verbal forms is certainly important, it should be addressed in a separate work. in this work armenian graphemes are transliterated adopting the system developed by hübschmann-meillet (1913) as follows: i. ա a; բ,b; գ,g; դ,d;ե,e; զ,z; է, ē; ը, $; թ, t‘; ժ, ž; ի, i; լ,l; խ,x; ծ,c; կ,k; հ,h; ձ,j; ղ, ł; ճ, č; մ,m;յ,y; ն,n; շ, š; ո,o; չ, č‘; պ,p; ջ, ĵ; ռ, ŕ; ս, s; վ,v; տ,t; ր,r; ց, c‘; ու,u; ւ,w;փ, p‘; ք, k‘; օ, ō; ֆ, f. 4. there are other conditions that might intervene in the licensing of a present perfect in english, which will not be discussed here. for a comparative discussion of germanic armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 164 and romance languages in the framework sketched in this work, see among many others, giorgi and pianesi (1997). 5. the variety of italian given here is the one spoken in central and northern italy, where the simple past, partì (he left), is quite marked and used only in certain contexts, and the notion of pastness is mostly expressed by means of a present perfect. in southern italy, the situation is the opposite: the simple past is the form expressing pastness, whereas the present perfect is only very marginally used. on this issue, see giorgi and pianesi (1997, section 3.4); see also bertinetto and squartini (1996). note however that, as discussed in giorgi and pianesi, the claim that for northern italian speakers the periphrastic form ho mangiato (i have eaten) is a mere past would be too simplistic. in fact, when the context elicits it, even northern italian speakers must attribute to this form the present relevance property we are discussing in this section. in english the effect in question is much more marked, in italian it is less so, but still detectable. 6. for a description of some properties of the verbal system of mea, see haroutyunian (2011); for an analysis of tense and aspect in mwa, see donabedian (1996, 1999, 2002) and donabedian and ouzounian (2008). we are not going to consider all the possible ways to derive an aorist in armenian and will concentrate, mostly in section 4, on the properties of the sigmatic one, as discussed by meillet and other scholars. our claim with respect to this point is the one generally holding in generative grammar. since a native speaker does not have an innate diachronic competence, it is assumed that the generalizations holding for a certain form, namely in this case the sigmatic aorist, also holds for the other forms belonging to the same kind, even if diachronically derived in different ways. in the example and discussion therefore, we will consider all aorist forms as alike. 7. dum-tragut (2009) mentions a similar case in her work (252). however, we show that this future meaning is not just imminential, as proposed by dum-tragut, but selects a particular presupposition. 8. note that in english the present tense with futural meaning entails the so-called agenda interpretation. namely, the event must have been scheduled in advance. this is presumably due to the aspectual properties of the english present tense form, which are different from those of the present tense in armenian and italian (see giorgi and pianesi 1997). 9. note also that, if inserted in a special context, where the sentence can have an exclamative/evaluative interpretation, the aorist can be used. consider the following dialogue: a: erku zham avel mn-ank‘ ašxat-enk‘. b: razmikə hastat mn-ac‘! a: let’s stay for two more hours and work. b: razmik will stay for sure! in this sentence b is meaning exactly the opposite, namely that r will never consent at staying. this piece of evidence will also follow from the proposal we argue for in section 4, but we will not consider these contexts in detail. see also fn. 23 below. 10. note that in italian the imperfect of the indicative can have a counterfactual role as armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 165 well: se partivi domani, saresti arrivato in tempo per la cerimonia di aperture. if you left (impf) tomorrow, you would be (impf) on time for the opening ceremony. this, however, does not seem to be the case in armenian, where counterfactuals can only be expressed by means of the subjunctive. 11. bertinetto (1991) discusses some cases where the present perfect can have an anteriority reading in subordinate clauses (from bertinetto, 1991, ex 153b): se entro due ore enrico non è arrivato, gliene dico di tutti i colori. if in two hours enrico has not arrived, i’ll give him what for. these cases however, are very different form the future reading of the aorist we are discussing here. as a first consideration note that in italian they can never appear in matrix clauses. moreover, in italian the futurate reading of the present perfect is possible only if the event is past with respect to some other event or reference point – even if the whole situation may be located in the future – as is the case in the example above. this is not the case in armenian, as clearly emerging form the examples. 12. there is important and very interesting literature on this and related issues. here, we are taking the relevant generalizations for granted, without further discussing them. see, among the many others, bertinetto (1991) and giorgi and pianesi (1997). note also that all the various sorts of aorist behave alike, independently of their diachronic and morphological derivation. 13. we will not consider here the distribution of similar time adverbials in english, given that the discussion would not be pertinent to the main topic of this paper. in general, however, the indexical temporal expression x time ago, does not distinguish between the two verbal forms, as shown by the english translation. on the other hand, other temporal expressions, such as the ones introduced by since, would have a different distribution, along however different dimensions. 14. reichenbach (1947) identifies three temporal points, relevant for locating an event along the temporal axis: e, the event point, s, the speech point, and a third point, r, the reference point. we will not discuss here the reichenbachian system and the various interpretations given by the scholars during the years. for a brief discussion, see giorgi and pianesi (1997, ch.2). 15. bertinetto (1991, section 1.5.2.2), precisely for this reason, distinguishes between two kinds of perfectivity: the perfectivity of the present perfect and compound tenses, and the one, which he calls aoristic, of the simple past. according to him, the aoristic forms cannot express the persistency of a certain result at a reference time. 16. see among the many others enç (1988). 17. there is an ample debate on this topic. see, among many others, giorgi and pianesi (2001a, 2001b), higginbotham (1995). 18. the double access reading is a phenomenon found in some languages, such as italian and english, according to which the tense of the embedded cause must be interpreted twice: once with respect to the temporal coordinates of the superordinate subject and once with respect to the temporal coordinates of the speaker. consider for instance the following sentence: john said that mary is pregnant. for this sentence to be felicitous, mary’s pregnancy must hold both at the time john said it and at the time armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 166 the speaker is uttering the sentence. on the anchoring procedure, see also higginbotham (1995, 2002, 2006). on the double access reading see giorgi and pianesi (2001a, 2001b) and giorgi (2010, 2011). 19. note that the future must be computed both with respect to the time of john’s saying and the time of the utterance event. giorgi and pianesi (2001b) and giorgi (2010) consider this property evidence in favor of a generalized double access reading theory, holding not only for an embedded present tense, but for a past and a future as well. the issue however is not directly relevant to the present discussion, and we do not pursue it further here. 20. ramchand (2008:169, ex.23) points out, with respect to perfective forms in russian, the following properties: i. “[perfective forms] cannot get a simple ongoing interpretation in the present tense.” ii. they cannot be used as the complements of phrasal verbs such as begin/finish/continue. iii. they cannot form present participles. iv. in discourse, they combine to form non-overlapping events in the narrative. these properties all follow from our proposal, in that they would all violate the punctuality constraint. 21. cambi and bertinetto (2003) discuss the properties of ške/ain hittite and conclude that this morpheme has an imperfective meaning, expressing habitual and progressive reading. this analysis is coherent with our hypothesis. 22. by descriptive grammars, the meaning of the aorist er is often defined as conveying a nuance of “general truth”. see for instance thomas and itzkowitz (1967:75). 23. note that the armenian present tense, as the italian one, can have the continuous reading. hence, example (53) corresponds to the english sentence he is reading. 24. in russian the shifting to the future is the natural interpretation of perfectively marked present tense, as in the following example: zavtra maria prigotovit užin. tomorrow maria perf-makes dinner. tomorrow maria will make dinner. if there is no perfective prefix, the sentence is interpreted as a continuous present. finally, if the perfective form is combined with a past inflection, it is interpreted as a perfective past. see the following examples: maria gotovit užin. maria makes dinner. maria is making dinner. včera maria prigotovila užin. yesterday maria perf -makepast dinner. yesterday maria made dinner. note however that this issue is much more complex than that, and has been studied at length by many scholars. the only point relevant to our discussion, however, is the shifting of the present perfective form to the future, as predicted by our hypothesis. 25. the reason why this most naturally happens with first and second person sentences might simply be due to the fact that the knowledge of the past situation is taken to be subjective, i.e. to be limited to the speaker and to the discourse situation. this might also be an explanation for the fact that, third person, both singular and plural, tends to have an exclamative/evaluative interpretation – see fn. 8 above. the evaluative component is actually speaker-related as well. hence, the whole pattern might follow from the same property. further investigation on this point is however required. 26. for a discussion of the futurate interpretation as a planning future, with respect to the normal future, see copley (2009) and greco (2011). armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 167 27. see beninca’ (1978) for a syntactic analysis of locutions such as sono due ore che (lit: are two hours that, roughly meaning two hours ago). 28. note that this analysis does not amount to saying that the armenian aorist and the english present perfect have the same value. their interpretation is derived in very different ways. recall in fact, as discussed in section 1, that the english present perfect is used for talking of the present relevance of a past event, whereas this is not the case in armenian. references: 1. ačaŕyan, h. (1961) liakatar k’erakanut’yun hayoc’ lezvi [complete grammar of armenian]. vol. 4b, erevan: haykakan ssr ga hratarakč’ut’yun [armenian ssr academy of sciences press], pp.357-358. 2. benincà, p. (1978) sono tre ore che ti aspetto. // ms., / padua, centro di dialettologia del cnr. 3. bertinetto, p.m. (1991) il verbo. // grande grammatica italiana di consultazione. / ed. by l. renzi and g. salvi. bologna: il mulino, pp.13-162. 4. bertinetto, p.m. and squartini, m. (1996) the distribution of the perfetto-semplice and the perfetto-composto in different varieties of italian. // romance philology. 49(4) 383-419. 5. cambi, v. and bertinetto, p.m. (2003) hittite temporal adverbials and the aspectual interpretation of the ške/asuffix. // studi linguistici in onore di roberto gusmani. / ed. by r. bombi et al.. alessandria: l’orso, pp.193-233. 6. copley, b. (2009) the semantics of the future. new york: routledge. 7. dahl, o. (ed.) (2000) tense and aspect in the languages of europe. berlin: mouton de gruyter. 8. donabédian, a. (1999) négation analytique et médiatif en arménien occidental: un liensystémique? // cahiers de linguistique de l’inalco. paris 99(1), pp.23-41. 9. donabédian, a. (1996) mediative and perfect in western modern armenian. // proceedings of the fifth international conference on armenian linguistics. / ed. by d. sakayan. new york. delmar: caravan books, pp.149-166. 10. donabédian, a. (2002) médiatif et progressif en arménien occidental: convergences discursives. // actes du vième colloque international de linguistique arménienne. / ed. by a. donabédian, a. ouzounian. slovo n.24, pp.343-357. 11. donabédian, a.; ouzounian, a. (2008) diachronic and dialectological variation of verb morphology in armenian: internal and/or contact-induced changes? // ms., comunicazione al13th imm, 2008. vienna. 12. dum-tragut, j. (2009) modern eastern armenian. amsterdam-philadelphia: john benjamins. 13. enç, m. (1987) anchoring conditions for tense. // linguistic inquiry 18 (4), pp.633657. 14. ernout, a. (1953) morphologie historique du latin. klincksieck, paris. armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 168 15. giorgi, a. (2010) about the speaker: towards a syntax of indexicality. oxford: oup. 16. giorgi, a. (2011) reflections on the optimal solution: on the syntactic representation of indexicality. // the biolinguistic enterprise. / ed. by a-mdi sciullo and c. boeckx. oxford: oup. 17. giorgi, a.; pianesi, f. (1997) tense and aspect: from semantics to morphosyntax. new york: oup. 18. giorgi, a.; pianesi, f. (2001a) the temporal coordinate of subject and speaker: from semantics to morphosyntax. // working papers in linguistics. 11, university of venice, pp.130-151. 19. giorgi, a.; pianesi, f. (2001b) tense, attitudes and subjects. // proceedings of saltxi. / ed. by r. hastings, b. jackson and z. zvolenszky. cornell university. 20. greco, c. (2011) double access reading and embedded futurates, ms., university of milan-bicocca. 21. haroutyunian, s. (2011) an analysis of dante’s tenses in the armenian translations of the divina commedia. / phd dissertation. university of venice. 22. higginbotham, j. (1995) tensed thoughts. // mind and language. 10(3), pp.226-249. 23. higginbotham, j. (2002) why is sequence of tense obligatory? // logical form and language. / ed. by g. preyer and g. peter. oxford: clarendon press, pp.207-227. 24. higginbotham, j. (2006) the anaphoric theory of tense. // proceedings of salt xvi, clc publications. / ed. by m. gibson and j. howell. cornell university, ithaca. 25. klingenschmitt, g. (1982) das armenische verbum. wiesbaden, pp.42-43. 26. kortland, f. (1995) the sigmatic forms of the armenian verb. // annual of armenian linguistics, 16, 13-17. 27. hübschmann, h.; meillet, a. (1913) altarmenisches elementarbuch. heidelberg, reprint, new york, 1981. 28. meillet, a. (1936) esquisse d’une grammaire comparee de l’armenien classique / seconde ed., vienne imprimerie des pp. mekhitharistes. 29. ramchand, g.c. (2008) perfectivity as aspectual definiteness: time and the event in russian. // lingua, n.118(11),1690-1715. 30. reichenbach, h (1947) elements of symbolic logic. new york: free press. 31. szemerényi, o. (1985) introduzione alla linguistica indoeuropea. milano: unicopli. 32. thomas, l.; itzkowitz, n. (1967) elementary turkish. london: dover. å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ³ñ¨»é³ñ³û»ñ»ýç ³ýóû³é ï³ï³ñû³éç å³ù³ý³ï³ûçý ¨ ï»ñå³ûçý çù³ëïý»ñá (ñ³ù»ù³ï³ï³ý í»ñéáõíáõãûáõý) êáõûý áõ ëáõù ý³ ëç ñáõã û³ý ù»ç ù»ýù ñ» ï³ ½á ïáõù »ýù å³ ù³ ý³ ï³ ïçó ³ñ¨» é³ ñ³ û» ñ» ýç ³ýó û³é ï³ ï³ñ û³é å³ ù³ ý³ ï³ó¨ç á ñáß ß³ ñ³ ¹³ ë³ ï³ý ¨ ç ù³ë ï³ μ³ ý³ ï³ý ³ é³ýó ý³ ñ³ï ïáõã ûáõý ý»ñ, ¹ñ³ýù ñ³ ù» ù³ ïáõã û³ý ù»ç ¹ý» éáí ç ï³ é» ñ» ýç ¨ ³ý· é» ñ» ýç μ³ û³ ï³ý ýù³ ý³ ïçå ó ̈ » ñç ñ»ï: ø»ýù ùýý³ñ ïáõù »ýù, áñ ³ýó û³é ï³ ï³ñ û³ éç å³ ù³ ý³ ï³ ûçý ù»ï ý³ μ³ ýáõã ûáõ ýá ï³ñ ñ³ ï³ý ñ³ï ï³ ýçß ã¿, ³ûé ³ûý μëáõù ¿ ýñ³ ñçù ý³ ï³ý ï»ñ å³ ûçý ñ³ï ï³ ýç ßçó` ³û ëçýùý ï³ ï³ñ û³ armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 169 éáõã ûáõ ýçó: ²ûë í³ñ ï³ íá ñçù ý³ íáñ íáõù ¿ ³ å³é ýç å³ ù³ ý³ ïç ç ù³ë ïç í»ñ éáõ íáõã û³ùμ, á ñá á ñáß ñ³ ù³ ï»ùë ï» ñáõù ³ñ ï³ ñ³ûï í³í ¿ ³ýó û³é ï³ ï³ñ û³ éç 1çý ¹»ù ùáí: âðåìåííûå è âèäîâûå çíà÷åíèÿ àîðèñòà â ñîâðåìåííîì âîñòî÷íîàðìÿíñêîì ÿçûêå (ñîïîñòàâèòåëüíûé àíàëèç) â äàí íîé ðà áî òå ìû èññ ëå äóåì íå êî òî ðûå ñèí òàê ñè ÷åñ êèå è ñå ìàí òè ÷åñ êèå ñâîéñò âà àî ðèñòà â ñîâ ðå ìåí íîì âîñ òî÷ íî àð ìÿíñ êîì ÿçû êå â ñî ïîñòàâ ëå íèè ñî ñõîä íû ìè ãëà ãîëü íû ìè ôîð ìà ìè â àíã ëèéñ êîì è èòàëüÿíñ êîì ÿçû êàõ. ìû àð ãó ìåí òè ðóåì, ÷òî âðå ìåí íàÿ èí òåðï ðå òà öèÿ àî ðèñòà íå ÿâ ëÿåò ñÿ ýëå ìåí òàð íûì êà ÷åñò âîì, à ïðîèç âîä íà îò åãî îñ íîâ íîé âè äî âîé õà ðàê òå ðèñòè êè, ò.å. perfectivity. äàí íàÿ ãè ïî òå çà â äàëü íåé øåì îáîñ íî âû âàåò ñÿ àíà ëè çîì çíà ÷å íèÿ áó äó ùå ãî âðå ìå íè, âû ðà æåí íî ãî â îï ðå äå ëåí íûõ êîí òåêñòàõ ïîñ ðåäñò âîì ôîð ìû ïåð âî ãî ëè öà àî ðèñòà. armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 170 microsoft word 1. maket 2019-1new.doc armenian folia anglistika linguistics 44 the sociolinguistic perspective of hedging in english kristine harutyunyan, anna sargsyan yerevan state university abstract hedging refers to linguistic strategies which qualify categorical commitment, expressing possibility and probability rather than certainty. hedges express tentativeness and possibility in communication, so their appropriate use in different discourses is vital. the aim of the present paper is to describe and analyze the social factors and social parameters that influence and determine the use of hedging in english speech; particularly we focus on gender, occupation, topic and setting while examining each type of speech. the famous ted talks (usually short, influential and powerful) serve as a primary source of investigation. key words: sociolinguistic perspective, social interaction, hedging, social factors, ted talks. introduction sociolinguistics as a discipline studies a wide variety of dialects to analyze different social variables influencing the speaker’s language. it often shows the humorous realities of human speech and how a dialect of a given language can describe the speaker’s age, gender, social class or the level of education. the basic components in sociolinguistic explanations of why we speak differently in different social contexts are the social factors. they are very important in describing and analyzing all kinds of information. in any situation linguistic choices generally indicate people’s awareness of the influence of one or more social factors (holmes 2013). language variation allows to locate speakers in a multi-dimensional society. age is one of the dimensions on which we construct identities for linguistics armenian folia anglistika 45 ourselves and others. gender also plays an important role in language variation as we have linguistic differences between male and female speech (lakoff 1975). hedges are communicative strategies for reducing the force of statements, to show doubt and indicate that information is presented as opinion rather than accredited fact. hedges may be understood as positive or negative politeness in which the writer or speaker tries to appear humble rather than arrogant or allknowing. it also guarantees a certain level of acceptability in a community, so one could consider hedges as ways of being more precise in reporting results. hedging may present the true state of the writers’ or speakers’ unerstanding and may be used to negotiate an accurate representation of the state of the knowledge under discussion. by hedging, authors or speakers tone down their statements in order to reduce the risk of opposition. there is much dispute about the linguistic difference between men and women, about the language they use. hedging, being a kind of politeness marker, plays an important role in showing the differences of its usage from a sociolinguistic perspective, particularly focusing on such social and contextual parameters as gender, class, age, ethnicity, setting, etc. thus, our intention has been to carry out quantitative and qualitative analyses from a sociolinguistic perspective of twenty-minute speeches of ten people (five men and five women) to provide a detailed interpretation of hedges used in male and female speeches. a case study of hedging from a sociolinguistic perspective sociolinguistics studies language in general and particular linguistic items in relation to the society which uses it. in any situation linguistic choices generally reflect the influence of the setting or social context of the interaction. this is one of the basic components in sociolinguistic explanations of why we speak differently in different social contexts (hickey 2007). the context in language use is very important, for linguistic and social behavior not only has to be appropriate to the individual and his socio-economic background, but it also needs to be suitable for particular occasions and situations. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 46 investigating the social context of ted talks, we have observed that almost in all the speeches the setting is primarily informal, friendly and inspiring, which presupposes free usage of various language means by the speakers. and hedging devices as common linguistic means of communicative strategies are abundantly utilized by the speakers in talks for different purposes. hedges are widely used in conversation and in social interaction since they tone down and reduce the force of the statements and indicate that the information is presented as opinion rather than accredited fact. thus we can say that the benevolent setting of ted talks contribute to the unrestrained code choice. as an exemplification we can mention the usage of vulgar words by one of the speakers in his speech. moreover, if we take into account the fact that the audiences are people of various interests and occupation, and that they are not indispensably representatives of science, technology, psychology or culture, then the usage of diverse linguistic means, in our case the utilization of hedging, is completely justified. context in language use is very important, for linguistic and social behavior not only has to be appropriate to the individual and his socio-economic background, but it also needs to be suitable for particular occasions and situations. in other words, language varies not only according to the social characteristics of the speaker but also according to the social context in which he finds himself. for a more in-depth analysis of the material we have considered the occupations of the speakers which also deals with the themes touched upon by them. the largest amount of hedges is used by amy cuddy (132), who is a social psychologist, a professor and a researcher. she delivers her speech on body language and how nonverbal behavior affects people’s perceptions. the next, in terms of the amount of hedges used in the speech, is brené brown (79), a vulnerability researcher who speaks about a personal quest to know herself and to understand humanity. then comes susan cain (51), she is a former corporate lawyer and negotiations consultant who argues that introverts bring extraordinary talents and abilities to the world. the health psychologist kelly mcgonial (42) states that stress is a positive thing. the last one is the famous linguistics armenian folia anglistika 47 model cameron russell (34) speaking about beauty and trying to prove that looks are not everything. this study of women’s speech shows that the number of hedges used in female speech varies from speaker to speaker, confirming the fact that the big amount of hedging used in female speech is not only conditioned by the gender of the speaker but also by the speaker herself. considering men’s speech we have noticed that the number of hedges used by men is not much as compared with that of the women. this may promote a preconceived idea that women use more hedges than men because of their gender differences, if not for other social factors and social parameters that should be taken into consideration. for a more comprehensive and thorough analysis let us take into consideration the occupation of each of the speakers and reveal the subject matter of their speech. among men ken robinson used the largest amount of hedges (48). he is a creativity expert who challenges the school system to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence. next is pranav mistry (44), a mit graduate student who invented sixthsense wearable device that enables new interactions between the real world and the world of data. the life coach and expert in leadership psychology tony robbins (43) discusses in his speech the “invisible forces” that motivate our actions in order to know why we do what we do. the leadership expert simon sinek (21) presents a simple, but powerful model for inspirational leadership-starting with a golden circle. and the last one is the career analyst dan pink (20) who examines the puzzle of motivation with a fact that social scientists know. this study, first of all, has revealed that women use more hedging devices and politeness markers than men do during their speech. women mentioned above used about 338 hedging devices of different kinds, while men used only 176 hedges. this is a considerable quantitative difference between the two genders, which might give a preconceived idea that gender presupposes some extent of certainty or lack of certainty. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 48 hedging and its functions in speech the notion that gender presupposes some extent of certainty or lack of certainty is not an absolute one. moreover, such an explanation is too narrow and restrained because the possible different communicative functions of hedges have not been taken into consideration. by functions we namely mean the inclusion of others into speech or arousing interest in the topic. in other words, hedges can function as conversational facilitation strategies to keep the conversation flowing, and when considering cross-gender issues it is of paramount importance to take into account the different functions and purposes of the employed strategies, as well as the various social factors and social parameters that can influence the code choice of the speaker (fishman 1983). in examining the usage of hedging by two genders the investigation of the mere quantity used by two genders is not sufficient. it is also necessary to take into consideration the taxonomy of hedging devices, i.e. the main types of hedging used during the speech (salager-meyer 1997). it is of paramount importance to get a more comprehensive sociolinguistic picture of the speech material under consideration and this will be done by calculating which kinds of hedges are mostly used and for what purposes. the most frequently used type of hedging by two genders is the introductory phrases. these hedges are mainly used during the speech as false starts, as markers of hesitation and subjectivity. the next commonly used hedging device differs across gender, in men’s speech it is the approximators of degree, quantity, frequency and time, in women’s speech it is the adjectival, adverbial and nominal modal phrases. as for the approximators, they are used either because of the speaker’s lack of precise information or as strategies of being more accurate in representation. the adjectival, adverbial and nominal modal phrases mainly contain shades of possibility, probability and hesitancy. yet, we may claim that there are not many quantitative differences between these two types of hedges in men’s and women’s speech. such is the case with the modal lexical verbs as well, which express doubt and evaluation rather than mere description. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 49 and the last three hedges, which have low frequency of usage in male and female speeches – are if-clauses, modal auxiliary verbs and compound hedges. as we have observed in the examples, if-clauses render hypothetical meaning which is deemed possible if certain conditions are met. as far as the modal auxiliary verbs are concerned, they often convey possibility and probability of the action. and the hedging with the least frequency is compound hedges, which also expresses probability but with the help of two hedging items. another social factor that is necessary to consider in the process of analyzing the usage of hedging by two genders is the topic. sociolinguistic studies show that people may select a particular variety, code or language means to discuss a particular topic. that is to say, they use the language which is associated with that particular domain. thus, we can also consider the themes and topics discussed in the ten ted talks to find out whether they play any role in the number of hedges used by the two genders. the main themes and subjects discussed by women are psychology, body language, stress, beauty and vulnerability. if we compare the number of hedges used by amy cuddy (132), kelly mcgonial (42) and susan cain (51), taking into consideration that all of them dealt with psychological issues, we may deduce that there is much difference in the number of the hedging devices found in the speeches they delivered. as compared to the other two talks which are related to beauty and vulnerability, cameron russels uses 34 hedges and brené brown uses 80 respectively. concluding the study of the hedges used with reference to the topic discussed by women, we can note that talks connected with psychology and different psychological issues include more hedges than others not connected with the mentioned topics. hence, in case of women’s talks, the topic plays not a primary, but an important role in code choice, and in this particular case in the number of hedges. as for the topics touched upon by men, they include creativity, business, leadership psychology and technology. simon sinek’s (21), tony robins’ (43) and dan pink’s (20) talks are connected with business and leadership. as we see the number of hedges used by them does not much differ, but compared to the armenian folia anglistika linguistics 50 other two male speeches, which refer to creativity and technology, the number of hedges does not prevail (ken robinson 48 and pranav mistry 44). thus, the topic of the talks is of relevant importance in conditioning the number of hedging devices used by men. another reference point to consider frequency of usage of hedges might be a cross-gender analysis, connected with one and the same topic. for example, amy cuddy’s (132), susan cain’s (51) and tony robins’ (43) talks are related to psychology, but the number of hedging devices differs considerably, which shows that although the topic and the theme of the talks play some role with reference to the number of hedges used within the talks by speakers of the same gender, on a broader scale – considering one and the same topic in a male – female continuum, the difference is quite vivid in favour of more hedges used by women. conclusion considering all the possible social factors and social parameters that could influence the usage of hedging by two genders in speech, we have come to the conclusion that women’s abundant utilization of hedging devices is not necessarily conditioned by their inferiority, powerlessness and deficiency, but by the fact that they are better and skilled communicators. studying gender issues we should focus our attention on all the possible social factors and social parameters, and we should not ignore the role of context and blindly overemphasize the linguistic differences between men and women. hedging does not only refer to hesitation, doubt, insecurity and lack of confidence; it is also a conversational and politeness strategy which carries out interactional and facilitative functions. hedging enables us to maintain better interpersonal relationship and to keep the conversation flowing. references: 1. fishman, j.a. (1972) the sociology of language: an interdisciplinary social science approach to language in society. rowley, ma: newbury house. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 51 2. hickey, r. (2007) language and society. cambridge: cup. 3. holmes, j. (2013) an introduction to sociolinguistics. new york, routledge, taylor and francis group. 4. lakoff, r. (1975) language and woman’s place. new york: harper & row. 5. salager-meyer, f. (1997) i think that perhaps you should: a study of hedges in written scientific discourse. // functional approaches to written text: classroom applications. united states information agency. sources of data: 1. cain, susan, the power of introverts. available at: https://www.ted. com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts [accessed march, 2019] 2. cuddy, amy, your body language shapes who you are. available at: <https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_wh o_you_are> [accessed january, 2019] 3. brown, brené, the power of vulnerability. available at: https://www.ted. com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability [accessed december, 2018] 4. mcgonigal, kelly, how to make stress your friend. available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_fri en [accessed january, 2019] 5. mistry, pranav, the thrilling potential of sixthsense technology. available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potential_of_ sixthsense_technology [accessed march, 2019] 6. pink, dan, the puzzle of motivation. available at: https://www.ted.com/ talks/dan_pink_on_motivation [accessed december, 2018] 7. robbins, tony, why we do what we do. available at: https://www.ted. com/talks/tony_robbins_asks_why_we_do_what_we_do [accessed february, 2019] 8. robinson, ken, do schools kill creativity. available at: https://www.ted. com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity [accessed march, 2019] armenian folia anglistika linguistics 52 9. russell, cameron, looks aren’t everything. believe me, i’m a model. available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/cameron_russell_looks_aren_t_ everything_believe_me_i_m_a_model [accessed january, 2019] 10. sinek, simon, how great leaders inspire action. available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action [accessed february, 2019] 11. ted talks (available at: <https://www.ted.com/> [accessed january 2019]. հեջավորման հանրալեզվական բնութագիրը անգլերենում հեջավորումը խոսքային տարբեր իրավիճակներում հավանականություն արտահայտող հաղորդակցական կարևորագույն միջոց է: հեջավորման կիրառությունը պայմանավորված է հասարակական և հանրալեզվական մի շարք գործոններով: հանրահայտ ted talks անգլերեն հակիրճ և տպավորիչ խոսքային նյութի հիման վրա հոդվածում փորձ է արվում բացահայտել հեջավորման կիրառությունը պայմանավորող այնպիսի գործոններ, ինչպիսիք են գենդերը, մասնագիտությունը, թեման և միջավայրը: received by the editorial board 25.01.2019 recommended for publication by the reviewers 05.03.2019 accepted for print 22.04.2019 microsoft word 1.linguistics 7 104 (1) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 68 male features in the political discourse of female politicians ruzanna arustamyan yerevan state university abstract the article is devoted to the description of masculine manner of speech in the discourse of female politicians. being mainly a field of male activity, politics has become the area of strict rules, perseverance, pertinacity and leadership. the main point in politics is struggle and tough competition of interests. in these conditions strict power qualities exacerbate, humanism disappears in actions and behaviour. this exact style is typical of men, and not women, hence if a woman goes into politics, she has to play according to male rules achieving tough and uncompromising manners of speech. therefore, entering this complex sphere, women need to obtain analytical, logical, direct and unemotional way of thinking both for their activity and speech. these are necessary qualities for being a successful politician and a person, who will obtain fame, respect and love of citizens. the materials chosen for the analysis are the speeches of two famous women politicians of different periods: margaret thatcher and condoleezza rice. the main method of linguistic analysis is comparison, i.e. we choose certain parts from speeches of both politicians and try to find male characteristic features. key words: political discourse, male and female speech, gender communication, language and gender, gender difference. introduction language is both personal and social. on the one hand, we can use language to express our internal thoughts and desires. on the other hand, language exists outside of us, because society influences and dictates the needs and demands of the use of certain terms, which are changeable in different periods of history. language reflects society. it reflects gender division. the linguistic patterns people adopt are influenced much by the interaction patterns, by the people one regularly talks to and by the social status of the people who are concerned. language is sensitive to the living patterns and the interaction patterns. “in these ways one can say certain sex differences in language behavior are a side effect of the systematically different social experiences of women and men” (graddol, swann 1989:9). language is a means of communication. communication takes a large part in the process in which we become male or female because males and females are taught different linguistic practices. for example, females are often more expressive and intuitive in their communication, while linguistics armenian folia anglistika 69 males tend to be instrumental and competitive. in addition, there are differences in accepted communication behaviors for males and females. to improve communication between genders, one must understand these differences found in the opposite sex. the analysis of political discourse of female politicians (on the example of margaret thatcher and condoleezza rice) the communicative behaviour of men and women has always been sustainable during the development of mankind. traditionally the role of men was active, whereas women’s role was considered only as careful mother and wife. the stereotype of “housewife” was dominant in the society and was conditioned by the performance of “natural” publicly accepted duties (platoshina, novikova 2012:232). throughout history, the public image of a female politician has been influenced by the notion that the identity of a ‘politician’ is male. nowadays the situation has somewhat changed. from the second half of the 20th century women tend to change this stereotype and are actively involved in many spheres, particularly in politics. despite the performance of “natural” role of mother and wife, women seek to participate in decision-making processes, obtaining masculine features of behaviour both in actions and speech. the article aims to reveal masculine features in the speeches of two outstanding female political leaders: margaret thatcher and condoleezza rice. although they were in office in different periods of time, we will try to find similar features, which distinguish them from other women politicians. margaret hilda thatcher, baroness thatcher was the from 1979 to 1990 and the from 1975 to 1990. she was the longest-serving british prime minister of the 20th century and is the only woman to have held the office. a journalist yuri gavrilov called her the "iron lady", a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style. as prime minister, she implemented policies that have come to be known as thatcherism. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/margaret_thatcher#cite_note-ironlady-68>). many examples of thatcher’s discourse prove her confident, ambitious, uncompromising and direct nature. such style is not typical of women. this is the reason why it attracts the attention to the peculiar communicative behaviour of “the iron lady”. we will try to observe these features in the following examples: if you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing. (<http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/margaret_thatcher.html# qfbpwcsqzgzxxy4j.99>) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 70 here she uses to compromise to show that she is not going to compromise to be liked. here we see an example how a person should behave according to the so-called rules of gender behaviour when women have to become incompliant. in politics one has no right to compromise, especially women. my statement yesterday explained the government’s decision to support the united states military action, taken in self-defence, against terrorist targets in libya… …in april 1984 we took our own measures. we closed the libyan people’s bureau in london and broke diplomatic relations with libya. we imposed a strict visa regime on libyans coming to this country and we banned new contracts for the supply of defence equipment and we severely limited export credits guarantee department credit for other trade… (<http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp×docid =106363>) we can notice that mrs. thatcher praises the anti-terrorism cooperation only by using military attacks. such verbs as close, impose, break, ban, limit reveal tough and uncompromising stance of the prime-minister. the use of “strict” verbs is typical of male politicians. usually female politicians do not seek to resolve problems via military intervention. we may follow such example in the discourse of hillary clinton on issue of iran nuclear weapon. i am against a rush to war. i was the first person on this stage and one of the very first in the congress to go to the floor of the senate back in february and say bush had no authority to take any military action in iran. secondly, i am not in favor of this rush for war, but i’m also not in favor of doing nothing. iran is seeking nuclear weapons. and the iranian revolutionary guard is in the forefront of that, as they are in the sponsorship of terrorism. so some may want a false choice between rushing to war, which is the way the republicans sound – it’s not even a question of whether, it’s a question of when and what weapons to use – and doing nothing. i prefer vigorous diplomacy. and i happen to think economic sanctions are part of vigorous diplomacy. we used them with respect to north korea. we used them with respect to libya. (<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/us/politics/30debatetranscript.htm l×pagewanted=print&_r=0>) linguistics armenian folia anglistika 71 these anti-war expressions against a rush to war, not in favour of this rush war show that clinton seeks to resolve conflicts via peaceful settlement. the expression vigorous diplomacy exemplifies the eagerness to find a resolution through active diplomatic channels. whereas, mrs. thatcher is not used to resolving problems through winning concessions. she used to be stubborn and strong-willed, and that is the secret of her success. in one of her speeches thatcher says, “i am not a consensus politician. i’m a conviction politician.” this expression is the apogee of self-confident character of the politician. this kind of statement may be seen as not only the declaration of selfconfidence and strong uncompromising nature, but also as a tool to preserve the stance of a woman in a manmade world, when a woman has no choice but being severe in the political arena. margaret thatcher’s career is a vivid example how a woman acquiring male characteristic features became one of the most influential and strong female political leaders throughout the whole history of politics. the following statement was mentioned in one of the articles of rossiyskaya gazeta (zakharchuk 2012:22): thatcher didn’t adjust herself to the conservative party…she adjusted the party to herself and embodied the party in herself. and when the time came and the power was concentrated in her hands, she began to change the party. thus, the unshaken rhetoric of thatcher gained her the nickname the “iron lady”, which explains much of the firmness of her speeches addressed to the public. such words as didn’t adjust herself; change the party; concentrate power reveal the uncompromising, stable and powerful nature of the prime-minister, which again is not peculiar to women. when we look through the speech delivered at kensington town hall in january 19, 1976 it is seen that through anaphors the politician shows her readiness to carry out the activities against a superpower, i.e. trying to cease a soviet union military force expansion. here we see how a woman politician is aware of all military staff. confident use of the pronoun “i” expresses the motivated and self-confident position of the primeminister. the pronoun “i” is inherent to male politicians, because of their competitive nature, whereas women tend to use the pronoun “we” to show their compassionate and collaborative nature. thatcher is readily concentrating all the actions around herself, representing the concept of strong willingness to change the direction of soviet union’s strategy. some military experts believe that russia has already achieved strategic superiority over america. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 72 but it is the balance of conventional forces which poses the most immediate dangers for nato. i am going to visit our troops in germany on thursday. i am going at a moment when the warsaw pact forces – that is, the forces of russia and her allies – in central europe outnumber natos by 150,000 men nearly 10,000 tanks and 2,600 aircraft. i would be the first to welcome any evidence that the russians are ready to enter into a genuine detente. but i am afraid that the evidence points the other way. i warned before helsinki of the dangers of falling for an illusory détente. (<http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102939>) “let me give you my vision” is the speech delivered on 10 october 1975, where thatcher represents a new direction, which will lead the country further. in the following examples we see the superiority of capitalism over communism. whenever i visit communist countries their politicians never hesitate to boast about their achievements. they know them all by heart; they reel off the facts and figures, claiming this is the rich harvest of the communist system. yet they are not free as we in the west are prosperous, and they are not free as we in the west are free. our capitalist system produces a far higher standard of prosperity and happiness because it believes in incentive and opportunity, and because it is founded on human dignity and freedom. even the russians have to go to a capitalist country – america – to buy enough wheat to feed their people – and that after more than fifty years of a statecontrolled economy. yet they boast incessantly, while we, who have so much more to boast about, forever criticize and decry. is it not time we spoke up for our way of life× on this example we observe the negative attitude of thatcher towards the communist system. she is using verbs with negative connotations. the use of the words – to boast – to talk with excessive pride, to reel off – to crack, – imparts additional significance to the words. the phrase to know by heart in this context bears evaluative overtone, because it does not reflect the real state of affairs, it sounds sarcastic. then we come up to the rhetorical question: is it not time we spoke up for our way of life×, which serves as a vivid and expressive form for the evidence of the basic idea. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 73 in general, the discourse of female politicians is characterized by the abundance of evaluative epithets, which convey emotional tone to the speech. we can observe this phenomenon on the examples of hillary clinton and madlen albright’s discourse: madeleine albright: we have had very good discussions. (<http://fas.org/news/ukraine/98030903_wpo.html>) i am happy to report that a truly impressive coalition of leading companies has supported this process and welcomed these principles. (<http://1997-2001.state.gov/www/statements/2000/001220.html>) the second item of news is that i am pleased to announce the successful culmination of an unprecedented dialogue initiated by the state department and the british foreign office. (<http://1997-2001.state.gov/www/statements/2000/001220.html>) besides emotive adjectives, the use of hedges is widely spread among women. we may observe them in the speeches of hillary clinton: so i can imagine who only, you know, follow it from, you know, some of the snippets on tv might, you know not be sure exactly who’s saying what and what the campaigns are doing. (<http://edition.cnn.com/transcripts/0804/21/lkl.01.html>) many linguists state that the use of hedges is conditioned by the willingness to express solidarity and not to hurt the interlocutor. therefore, the hedge you know is used for the involvement of the interlocutor in the conversation. it is also worth mentioning that the hedge may be used as an indicator of the lack of conviction and as a signal for displaying support. r. lakoff entitles the above mentioned characteristic features as “ladylike talk”, i.e. the expressions and sentence constructions inherent to women (lakoff 1975:321). contrary to these “ladylike” peculiarities we can observe another example of “manlike” discourse on the example of condoleezza rice. condoleezza "condi" rice is an american political scientist and diplomat. she served as the 66th united states secretary of state, and was the second person to hold that office in the administration of president george w. bush. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/condoleezza_rice>)). many political scientists consider condoleezza rice to be the follower of “iron lady”. we will try to make a little overview and to decide whether these similarities do exist or not. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 74 the u.n. charter certainly endorses self-defense. and the u.n. charter – it is under the u.n. charter that the resolutions were put together that are supposed to constrain saddam hussein and to disarm him so that he is not a threat to peace and security… …we’re in a new world. we’re in a world in which the possibility of terrorism, married up with technology, could make us very, very sorry that we didn’t act. …it makes ever more urgent the continued war against al qaeda, the continued support for our allies, who are helping us to fight that war. and it makes more urgent looking at other threats, like those who are building weapons of mass destruction and mean us ill… (<http://edition.cnn.com/transcripts/0209/08/le.00.html>) to disarm, to constrain, didn’t act, fight that war, look at other threats shows the willingness of ms. rice to act and the readiness to resort to all sorts of methods to reach her aims, hence she views the struggle and war as the only way to solve the problems against dictatorship and terrorism. this way of thinking is not typical of women, because generally they tend to solve disputes in a peaceful manner without showing off their power. with her steely nerve and delicate manners (she has been called the “warrior princess”), rice lately has reinvigorated her position with diplomatic activism, whether it’s promoting israel’s withdrawal from the gaza strip to ease the palestinian conflict, or encouraging six-party talks to get north korea to stop its pursuit of nuclear weapons, or trying to stop sudan’s genocide – to the point where her diplomatic party was recently roughed up by sudan’s strongmen. (<http://www.forbes.com/lists/2005/11/mtng.html>) in her speech in south barrington rice said: …the defining characteristic of a true leader is that he or she never accepts the world as it is, but strives always to make the world as it should be. (<http://www.brightquotes.com/lea_fr.html>) the expressions never accepts, to make the world confirm her uncompromising character of a strong leader. she states that successful leader should not admit the reality as it is, but must seek to change it for the better. when speaking against the obama administration, rice called for greater dedication in us leadership, saying: linguistics armenian folia anglistika 75 i fully understand the sense of weariness. i fully understand that we must think: ‘us, again×’ i know that we’ve been through two wars. i know that we’ve been vigilant against terrorism. i know that it’s hard. but leaders can’t afford to get tired. leaders can’t afford to be weary. (<http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/condi-rice-blasts-obamaweakness-leadership_786123.html>) again we see the repetition of the pronoun “i”, which indicates a sign of self-focus and which shows exactly her own attitude towards different events. the word-combinations can’t afford to get tired, can’t afford to be weary denote the intolerant nature of her character. she is ready to condemn every single administration and president if they do not correspond to her image of a dedicated leader. i love policy, i do not really love politics. (<http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/politics/condoleeza-rice-will-not-be-mittromneys-vice-president-151947795.html>) this means that she likes to conduct policy, to arrange everything in their certain places, to be a dedicated politician, who serves for ideas and principles but not showing. she is a woman that strives to work and to act. condoleezza rice has been named one of the most powerful women in the world by the forbes magazine. (<http://leadership.expert/leadership/great-leaders-condoleezzarice/>) conclusion tough and strict manner of the speech and the style of both female politicians is vividly expressed during their years in office. a perfected political image was margaret thatcher’s answers to the problem of being a woman in a man’s world. as far as political leadership was concerned, thatcher did not wish to distinguish herself from men. she was tough in parliamentary and government affairs. both political leaders express in their discourse the readiness to struggle against any kind of threat towards their country. as prime minister thatcher could not conceal her private and family life but she endeavoured to make it look as perfect as possible. as for ms. rice, her style was very similar to the british prime-minister’s tough style. her confidence in her manner of speech and skills to get the job done and her professionalism to admit mistakes is clearly seen when she issues harsh statements during interviews. the main outcome of our research is that both female politicians tend to perform their style of discourse as strict, formal, discreet and perfect. they have similar strong character and armenian folia anglistika linguistics 76 will, which is necessary to resist pressure coming from male politicians, because being a female politician is a challenge, which demands hard work and uncompromising nature. references: 1. graddol, d. and swann, j. (1989) gender voices. cambridge: blackwell. 2. jandt, f.e. (2004) gender differences in communication. intercultural communication: a global reader. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. 3. lakoff, r. (1975) language and women’s place. new york: harper and row. 4. platoshina, v.v.; novikova, a.i. (2012) raspredeleniye rolei v rechevom povedenii muzhchin u jenshchin. belgorod: niu belgu. 5. zakharchuk, y. (2012) imidj meiking lidera: genderniy aspect. m.: ideya. sources of data: 1. condoleezza rice. available at: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/condoleezza_rice> [accessed april 2015]. 2. condi puts romney veep rumors to rest. available at: <http:// www.nbcchicago.com/news/politics/condoleeza-rice-will-not-be-mitt-romneysvice-president-151947795.html> [accessed may 2015]. 3. condi rice blasts obama on weakness, leadership. available at: <http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/condi-rice-blasts-obama-weakness leadership_786123.html> [accessed may 2015]. 4. interview with senator hillary clinton. available at: <http://edition.cnn.com/transcripts/0804/21/lkl.01.html> [accessed november 2015]. 5. interview with condoleezza rice; pataki talks about 9-11; graham, shelby discuss war on terrorism. available at: <http://edition.cnn.com/transcripts/0209/08/le.00.html> [accessed november 2015]. 6. interview with condoleezza rice; pataki talks about 9-11; graham, shelby discuss war on terrorism. available at: <http://edition.cnn.com/transcripts/0209/08/le.00.html> [accessed april 2015]. 7. leadership. available at: <http://www.brightquotes.com/lea_fr.html> [accessed may 2015]. 8. margaret thatcher. available at: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/margaret_thatcher#cite_note-ironlady-68> [accessed april 2015]. 9. margaret thatcher. hcs: us bombing of libya. available at: <http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp×docid=106363> [accessed april 2015]. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 77 10. remarks of albright and udovenko in kiev. available at: <http://fas.org/news/ukraine/98030903_wpo.html> [accessed november 2015]. 11. secretary of state madeleine k. albright. press briefing. available at: <http://19972001.state.gov/www/statements/2000/001220.html> [accessed november 2015]. 12. the 100 most powerful women. available at: <http://www.forbes.com/lists/2005/11/mtng.html> [accessed in may 2015]. îõ³ù³ñ¹áõ ëáëù³ûçý ñ³ïï³ýçßý»ñá ïçý ù³õ³ù³ï³ý ·áñíçãý»ñç ëáëáõûãáõù ø³õ³ù³ï³ýáõãûáõýá »õ»é ¨ ùýáõù ¿ ïõ³ù³ñ¹ï³ýó ·áñíáõý»áõãû³ý áéáñïá: ø³ñ·³ñ»ï â»ïã»ñá ¨ îáý¹áéç½³ è³ûëá ñ³ûïýç »ý áã ùç³ûý çñ»ýó ù³õ³ù³ï³ý ·áñíáõý»áõãû³ùμ, ³ûé¨ ñé»ïáñ³ï³ý ñùïáõãûáõýý»ñç ÷³ûéáõý ïçñ³å»ïù³ùμ: üñ³ýù »ñï³ñ ¨ ùñïý³ç³ý ³ßë³ï»é »ý ׳ñï³ë³ýáõãû³ý í³ñå»ïáõãû³ý ½³ñ·³óù³ý íñ³ ¨ éç³ñå»ù ï³ñáõ³ýáõù ¿çý ý»ñï³û³ý³é ñ³ýñáõãû³ýá ³½¹»óçï ¨ ïå³íáñçã »éáõûãý»ñáí: ²ßë³ï»éáí ïõ³ù³ñ¹ï³ýó áéáñïáõù՝ ï³ý³ûù ó»éù »ý μ»ñáõù áã ùç³ûý ñ³ëï³ï³ï³ù ¨ ëçëï ñ³û³óùý»ñ, ³ûé¨ ëáëùç ³ý½ççáõ ñ³ïï³ýçßý»ñ: ²ûýáõ³ù»ý³ûýçí, ýù³ý ³½¹»óáõãûáõýá å³ûù³ý³íáñí³í ¿ áã ùç³ûý ·áñíáõý»áõãû³ý áéáñïáí ï³ù ù³ëý³·çï³ï³ý å³ñ³ýçý»ñáí, ³ûé¨ ï³ý³ýó μý³íáñáõãû³ý ¨ ý»ñùçý ñ³ïï³ýçßý»ñç ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñáí: мужские черты речи в дискурсе женщин-политиков политика всегда была и остается сферой деятельности мужчин. маргарет тетчер и кондолиза райс известны не только политической деятельностью, но и мастерством красноречия. оба политических деятеля в совершенстве владеют искусством политического выступления, искусством воздействия на аудиторию. они серьезно и упорно работали над своим ораторским мастерством и в совершенстве владели искусством политического выступления, искусством воздействия на аудиторию. работая в сфере деятельности мужчин, женщины приобретают не только строгие и неуступчивые взгляды, но и бескомпромиссную манеру речи. подобное влияние не полностью обусловлено лишь сферой деятельности и профессиональными требованиями, но и внутренним стержнем политиков. microsoft word contens verjin armenian folia anglistika linguistics 40 functional interpretation of alright? as a lecture question: a multimodal analysis nare hakobyan yerevan state university abstract the article is devoted to the revelation of how crucial the multimodal analysis is in the functional interpretation of alright? as a lecture question, because it is only thanks to the multimodal analysis that the functional interpretation of the question becomes complete and comprehensive. moreover, we will attempt to answer the question whether alright? is a true question or not. key words: alright?, functional manifestation, multimodal analysis, pause, gestures, facial expressions. introduction alright? has functionally been interpreted as a comprehension check (morell, 2004, thompson, 1998, fortanet-go’mez, and ruiz-madrid, 2014). e. schleef considers it as progression checks, modal question tags, facilitative question tags and common ground tags (schleef 2009: 64): progression checks mark the end of the preceding idea or signal the importance of the preceding idea, as well as the possibiliy that the idea may be difficult to understand. usually the lecturer continues talking after the tag question. modal qusetion tags are aimed at getting either confirmation or more data as a response to the question. in this case the audience takes the turn. facilitative question tags are used to shift the turn to the audience as a matter of “a positive interest in or solidarity with the addressee , and … offer her or him a way into the discourse, signalling in effect, ok, your turn now”(cameron et al. 1988:82, quoted in schleef 2009:65). linguistics armenian folia anglistika 41 common ground tags are a means to check the perception of the idea though the turn may not be offered to the audience. meanwhile, some scholars who do not regard it as a true question at all, find it redundant to research its functional manifestations. camiciottoli (2007), for instance, in her study on questions in 12 business lectures in terms of nonverbal behavior, does not regard it as a conventional question: “they are not true questions, but primarily manifestations of individual speaking habits as lecturers do not really engage with students or wait for their reaction” (camiciottoli 2008:1221, quoted in fortanet-go’mez, i. and ruiz-madrid, n.ma., 2014:210). moreover, “lecturers continue to speak after “okay?” without pausing for audience response... this raises doubts about whether these items are actually comprehension checks or simply manifestation of the habits of individual lecturers that are systematically unaccompanied by gaze toward the audience, again calling into question their true role” (camiciottoli 2007:108). in our case we will try to get a comparatively complete image of the function(s) of the question. this attempt will, to the greatest extent, be impossible without the “multimodal analysis” (fortanet-go’mez and ruizmadrid 2014), othrwise we will either face misinterpretations, or ignore some of the functions the question acquires in different contexts. the role of pause in the functional interpretation of the question in the present study alright? with the pause of at least two seconds is considered as a conventional question that elicits feedback (the presence of pause has been marked with “+++” while its absence with “---“ plus the duration of the pause). analyzing 70 lectures on natural sciences downloaded as a part of opencourseware run by prominent universities (oxford, mit, yale, university of chicago, saylor academy, etc), we have come across 5 cases out of 431 applications of the question, where it is intended to elicit feedback in a form of a question, worry, request, confirmation, agreement, etc. in the following example the lecturer pauses for two seconds after the question, checking whether there is any feedback in the form of a question, a request to explain it once more, or any concern that the students want to share: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 42 “…so that i can do. 65:46 this also holds. 65:48 and formally, of course, s sub t is a random variable, 65:51 so it's a function from the sample space of the real line. 65:53 but this holds for every point on the sample space. right? 65:56 so i can write down this equation 65:58 between random variables. 66:06 here it's just the integral over dk. right? 66:10 so that holds. 66:11 now i'm going to take the expectation operator. 66:16 so take discounted expected value, ok? , of each side. 66:32 so in other words, what is my operator ‘s look like? 66:34 it looks like z (t,t), expected value of, given s_t. 66:41 alright?--2sec 66:45 ok, so this one is a discounted expected value. 66:48 that's the price. 66:55 so this becomes price of the derivative with payout 67:01 at maturity …” (blythe 2013) the following example presents another context, when alright? is applied with a pause to signal that the audience is offered to take the turn if they wish: “…and the reason i want you to do this, 46:45 is because i want to show you an expression where in some sense, 46:49 this is the term that is the summation for your expression. 46:52 if we just replace this, you can write this out 46:55 as i equals 0 through k, i plus 1 divided by 2 raised to i. alright?47:05 that is the symbolic form of this expression, 47:09 which came from here. alright?47:10 and then the argument was made that this 47:13 is a convergent series and is bounded by a constant. alright?---2sec 47: 18 that make sense? 47:20 good”. (devadas 2011) linguistics armenian folia anglistika 43 conversely, our analysis has also revealed some cases when alright? is not followed by a pause, but manifests a broad range of functions presented in the table below: verify the preceding idea focus attention create the illusion of involvement sound less overbearing signal what comes next fill in the silence 335 335 335 335 3 2 total 340 let us analyze an example where the question alright? performs several functions though it is not followed by a pause: “to give you all the detail, 9:11 there's two classes of bases that appear here. 9:15 one class is called the purines and they have two ringlike 9:19 structures. there are two of them that are 9:22 going to be important to us, one is adenine and the other is 9:25 guanine, shown here. because saying adenine takes a 9:29 long time and saying guanine takes a long time we're going to 9:33 simplify it by calling adenine (a) and guanine (g). alright?+++9:36 the second class is the pyrimidines. and there's three of 9:40 those that are important: uracil, thymine and cytosine 9:43 which we're going to simplify by calling (u), 9:47 (t) and (c)”. (saltzman 2008) in this context alright? is used to verify the preceding idea in order to eliminate any doubts about the truthfulness of the given information, to “focus attention” (schleef 2009) on the preceding idea in order to mark its importance, to create the illusion of involvement in order to make the class studentoriented, and to sound less overbearing in order not to harass the audience for knowing less than the lecturer and for being in the role of the learner throughout the course. these functions usually come up together with no shade of inferiority or dominance (jacobson 1960). armenian folia anglistika linguistics 44 as for signaling what comes next, this functional manifestation indicates that the question may make reference not only to what comes before it but also to what follows it. in the latter case it is considered as a referent question with the logical flexibility of making reference. e.g.: “now talking about 33:25 protein structure. there's one other 33:26 thing i want to consider. alright?+++ 33:27 collagen is an example of one class of 33:32 protein. i'll give you some other 33:33 examples in a minute, that we call 33:35 fibrous proteins, fibrous in the sense 33:38 that they are literally fibers. ok? they 33:43 form a helical structure, and that 33:45 helical structure just goes on and on 33:47 and on, on and on, on. ok? it doesn't stop. 33:51 it just keeps going on and on. your hair 33:53 is a fibrous protein. ok?+++ it goes on and 33:58 on and on. in my case it doesn't go on as 33:59 much as it goes on you, guys, but it keeps 34:00 going on and on and on and on. right? ok? 34:03”. (ahern 2013) filling in the silence is another function, when the question is used in order not to make the lecture boring or discontinued: “…so this observed the operator tau, the 28:55 hermitian operator tau, which we suspect 28:57 is connected to some observable, well, 28:59 will turn out to be connected some 29:00 observable in every case, is the thing .29:02 what does it do?, what it does is it 29:05 measures the rate of change of your 29:06 states when you change the parameter 29:09 theta. so this is a generalization of… 29:16 where are we? this equation, this equation 29:20 here. yeah. alright?+++ so this is a 29:23 concrete example of this… “ (binney 2011) linguistics armenian folia anglistika 45 functional interpretation of alright? according to gestures/facial expressions and context quite interestingly, we have also come across some contexts when there is no pause after the question, but the appropriate gestures/facial expressions or context enable us to interpret that its function is to elicit feedback. the most common gestures and facial expressions are the following: nodding the head, looking through the audience to see whether any hands or reactions have been missed or not, pulling out the hand, or keeping eye contact with the particular speaker or audience. as for the context, it may be “interaction phase” (young 1994), for instance. with the aforementioned functional interpretation the question alright? is attested to have been applied 4 times in 70 lectures. e.g.: “professor: how about it, nick? 80:25 audience: [inaudible] 80:26 professor: exactly. 80:28 and you ought to be able to see it from where you are. alright?+++ 80:32 can you appreciate that they're not at the moment? 80:36 alright? now hang on. 80:41 here comes mode number one. 80:44 this takes two hands to do it. 80:47 all right, you ready? 80:53 this is mode number one. 80:54 again, it's a those numbers…” (gossard 2013) in this context alright? in bold is applied as a means to elicit feedback. that conclusion is arrived at due to the context of interaction phase (young 1994) and the eye contact the lecturer is maintaining with the audience. one more example illustrating the importance of the context: “now let's take entirely different bone. let's look at the femur. the distal end of the femur so you can just pick out a bone right away. you know that's femur. right? that's the way we examine you. we give you a box of bones and call out one and you got to get it for us. alright?+++ that's a femur. and what do we have that's unique on the femur are what are called condyles, condyles. condyles are large armenian folia anglistika linguistics 46 smooth surfaces, curved surfaces. sothey're large smooth curved surfaces…” (diamond 2005) in this passage alright?' is applied with the aim of eliciting feedback in order to check whether the examining conditions are clear or not. those conditions are incredibly vital to be understood, hence it is logically assumed that its comprehension has to be confirmed by the audience. moreover, the lecturer is looking at the audience and maintaining eye contact with them. our analysis has also brought to the light some cases when alright? is followed by pause but is not intended to elicit feedback. and it is thanks to the “multimodal analysis” (fortanet-go’mez, and ruiz-madrid 2014) that the functional manifestation is distinguished from the former ones: the question is accompanied with the corresponding facial expression/gestures or the context that prompts that the question is not intended to elicit feedback. examples similar to this have been 11 in 70 lectures on natural sciences. in all the examples the question functions as a means to verify the preceding idea in order to eliminate any doubts about the correctness of the information, to focus attention on the preceding idea by marking its importance, to create the illusion of involvement so that the audience does not feel ignored, and to sound less overbearing to motivate the audience in the way that they do not feel less knowledgeable compared to the lecturer (as is the case of alright? without pause which does not elicit feedback). as for the pause, it is made to fulfill an action in order to upgrade the quality of the lecture. below an example where a pause is used to draw the path the lecturer has been talking about, is presented. “…it's worked through already. let's see. i believe it's 27:10 worked through in the notes. yes. 27:17 so if you need the help of the notes it's in there, but i 27:21 would urge you to work through it on your own, and it's the 27:26 following: let's start with the same path a. alright?---7sec 27:49 so we've got our reversible adiabatic path. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 47 right?+++. 28:00 and now, try working through what happens if we close the 28:06 cycle in a different way, right?, like this…” (bawendi, nelson 2008) in this example the question itself is applied to eliminate any doubts about the correctness of the information, to focus attention on the preceding idea and mark its importance. simultaneously, there is the illusion that the audience is involved in the lecturing process through the seeming feedback provoked by the question. moreover, the lecturer tries not to sound overbearing in order not to disappoint the students who might have the feeling of knowing less or nothing about the object compared to the lecturer. the question makes up the atmosphere as if they are asked for feedback and that feedback as an answer is necessary to the lecturer, etc.: “…that would say that any set of one horses the horses 45:26 are all the same color. 45:28 that's true. 45:29 i've got one horse. 45:29 it's the same color as itself. 45:32 so that's easy. 45:33 it's true since just one horse. 46:03 alright?---13 sec what's the next step of the proof?+++ 46:08 what's the next thing i do?---2sec 46:10 inductive step. 46:15 so i'm going to assume that pn is true to prove pn-and show 46:28 pn plus 1 is true…” (leighton 2010) as can be seen, in this case a pause is used to tidy the board for the further explanation while alright?' has the same functional manifestation it had in the previous example. conclusion to conclude, we may say that the most productive way to analyze the functional realization of alright? in lectures comprehensively is to carry out a multimodal analysis. this approach helps to get more objective and realistic results in terms of how the question functions. moreover, it also makes the functional interpretation of the question more substantiated and rigid. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 48 additionally, it is the multimodal analysis that points out the uniqueness of the question in the sense that it may come up as a true question to elicit feedback or as an unconvemtional one that still maintains the features of a true question due to its interrogative form but is still different in its functional realizations. references: 1. camiciottoli, b.c. (2007) the language of business studies lectures: a corpus-assisted analysis. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins publishing company. 2. fortanet-go’mez, i.; ruiz -madrid, m.a n. (2014) multimodality for comprehensive communication in the classroom: question in guest lectures. ibe’rica 28, 203-224, issn: 1139-7241 / e-issn: 2340-2784/: available at: <http://repositori.uji.es/xmlui/bitstrea m/handl e/1023 4/127545/20 14_64497.pdf?sequence=3&isallowed=y> [accessed august 2017]. 3. halliday, m.a.k. (1978) language as a social semiotic: the social interpretation of language and meaning. london: edward arnold. 4. hoffeld, d. (2016) the science of selling: proven strategies to make your pitch, influence decisions, and close the deal. published by tarcher perigee. an imprint of penguin publishing group, a division of penguin random house llc. 5. jacobson, r.(1960) concluding statement: linguistics and poetics. // style in language. / ed. by s. thomas. cambridge: mit press. 6. morell, t. (2004) interactive lecture discourse for university efl students. // english for specific purposes 23. the american university: elsevier ltd/ doi: 10.1016/s08894906(03)00029-2 7. schleef, e. (2009) a cross-cultural comparison of the functions and sociolinguistic distribution of english and german tag questions and discourse markers in academic speech included in cross-linguistic and crosscultural perspectives on academic discourse. // pragmatics and beyond new series, issn 0922-842x; v. 193. / ed. by suomelasalmi, e., dervin f. amsterdam. the netherlands: john benjamins publishing co. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 49 8. thompson, s. (1998) why ask questions in a monologue? language choice at work in scientific and linguistic talk. // language at work. / selected papers from the annual meeting of the british association of applied linguistics. / ed. by s. huston. clevedon: multilingual matters. 9. vivekmetakorn, ch.k.; thamma, m. (2015) teacher questioning from a discourse perspective. // language education and acquisition research network (learn) journal 8 (1). sources of data: 1. ahern, k. (2013) protein structure. / lecture. oregon state university. available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7qen8hsd3i> [accessed october 2017]. 2. bawendi, m.; nelson, k. (2008) thermodynamics & kinetics. / lecture. mit. available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xpn2jorigu> [accessed october 2017]. 3. blythe, s. (2013) option price and probability duality . / lecture. mit. available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg_arpy1kve> [accessed november 2017]. 4. binney, j. (2011) transformation of kets, continuous and discrete transformations and the rotation operator. / lecture. oxford. available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31xrxgmrwtw> [accessed october 2017]. 5. devadas, s. (2011) heaps and heap sort. / lecture. mit. available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7hvxcmfptm> [accessed november 2017]. 6. diamond, m. (2005) skeletal system. / lecture. university of california. available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjcirlwkl3k> [accessed june 2017]. 7. gossard, d. (2013) engineering dynamics. / lecture. mit. available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cpa6wg6mro> [accessed october 2017]. 8. saltzman, m. (2008) genetic engineering. / lecture. yale. available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxgl2kracgs> [accessed july 2017]. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 50 9. leighton, t. (2010) mathematics for computer science. / lecture. mit. available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8hkwuws-la> [accessed october 2017]. alright-ի գործառութային մեկնաբանությունը` իբրև հարց դասախոսություններում. բազմապայման վերլուծություն աշխատանքի բուն էությունն է` մատնանշել բազմապայման վելուծության կարևորությունը alright? –ի գործառութային վերլուծության ընթացքում: այն օգնում է ձեռք բերել իրատեսական և օբյեկտիվ արդյունքներ` տալով ավելի հիմնավորված և սպառիչ պատասխան հարցի գործառութային վերլուծության վերաբերյալ: բացի այդ, հենց բազմապայման վերլուծությունն է օժանդակում պատասխանելու այն հարցին, թե արդյոք alright?-ը իրակա°ն հարց է: microsoft word contens verjin armenological studies armenian folia anglistika 137 critical discourse and event semantics analyses of d. trump's statement on the armenian genocide sona hakobyan eurasia international university abstract the paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the us president d. trump's statement on the armenian genocide. our research is based on some principles of the discourse analytical theories covering the fields of semantics, pragmatics and political discourse. critical discourse analysis is applied for analyzing political discourse and mostly studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context. as for the event semantics analysis we employ the socalled event structure approach focusing on causative constructions which refer to predicates formed by a combination of a causative event and an underlying predicate. hence, two types of linguistic theories are applied for enclosing the hidden subtexts of the president’s intentions along with maneuvering strategies. key words: critical discourse analysis, event-based semantics, causation, verb meaning, predicate, agent. introduction critical discourse analysis (cda) is obviously not a homogenous model, nor a school or a paradigm, but at most a shared perspective on doing linguistic, semiotic or discourse analysis (van dijk 1993:131). critical discourse analysis far and by accepts the social context studying the relations between textual structures and social context. the main objective of critical discourse analysis is to create a framework for decreasing the so-called opacity. in his well-known definition n. fairclough describes cda as “discourse analysis which aims to systearmenian folia anglistika armenological studies 138 matically explore often opaque relationships of causality and determination between (a) discursive practice, events and texts, and (b) wider social and cultural structures, relations and processes; to investigate how such practices, events and texts arise and are ideologically shaped by relations of power and struggles over power; to explore how the opacity of these relationships between discourse and society is itself a factor securing power and hegemony” (fairclough 1993:135). the word critical ‘'implies showing connections and causes which are hidden; it also implies intervention, for example providing resources for those who may be disadvantaged through change” (fairclough 1992:9). fairclough points out three stages of cda.  description is the stage which is concerned with the formal properties of the text.  interpretation is concerned with the relationship between text and interaction – with seeing the text as a product of a process of production, and as a resource in the process of interpretation…  explanation is concerned with the relationship between interaction and social context – with the social determination of the processes of production and interpretation, and their social effects. (fairclough 1989:26) these notions transform into an analytical method, including the “linguistic description of the language text, interpretation of the relationship between the discursive processes and the text, and explanation of the relationship between the discursive processes and the social processes” (fairclough 1989:97). according to r. batstone “critical discourse analysts seek to reveal how texts are constructed so that particular (and potentially indoctrinating) perspectives can be expressed delicately and covertly; because they are covert, they are elusive of direct challenge, facilitating what kress calls the “retreat into mystification and impersonality” (batstone 1995:198-199). this paper presents critical discourse analysis of d. trump’s statement on the armenian genocide revealing causative constructions in his discourse by employing the underlying event-based semantics that owes its introduction into linguistics to d. davidson. much work on verbal semantics in the past twenty years or so has armenological studies armenian folia anglistika 139 been shaped by davidson’s idea to treat events as individuals, as values of variables in first-order logic (davidson 1967:169). texts in basic logics typically assign simple english sentences like mary kissed john a representation like kiss (m, j), involving two constants and a binary relation. davidson proposes that action sentences like this are not so simple, and involve, in addition, a quantification over events which is given in the formulation ∃e [kiss(m, j, e)] ("there is a kissing of john by mary.") where an existentially quantified event parameter is simply added to the relational structure of the predicate. however, the widely-adopted, neo-davidson position is given in the formulation ∃e[kissing(e) & agent (e, m) & theme(e, j)], where the verb is distilled into a core unary event predicate, whose participants are linked to the event by means of conjoined binary thematic relations (higginbotham 1989, parsons 1990). utterly, the event is represented as “there is a kissing, and it is by mary, and it is of john”. according to m. shibatani, “most comprehensive analysis of the causative construction has been done in the framework of generative semantics” (shibatani 1976:273). the causative construction provided the generative semanticists, particularly g. lakoff (1970) and g. mccawley (1968) with the most rewarding field of investigation. n. chomsky in his quest to displace the generative semantics analysis of causative constructions notes the problems that obtain in thinking of the lexical entry for ‘kill’ as specifying somehow a phrase marker ‘cause to die’. he argues that, similarly, the lexical entry for ‘murder’ might indicate that it can be inserted by a lexical transformation for the substructure murder=cause to die by unlawful means and with malice aforethought, where the grammatical object is furthermore human. (chomsky 1971: 89) studies show that verb meaning can be represented by decomposing the predicate into more basic predicates. this is best illustrated by g. mccawley’s analysis of the verb kill; armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 140 in view of this, field studies have developed the idea that the meaning of a verb can be analyzed by the structured representation of the event that the verb designates. hence, the so-called complex events are identified as having an internal structure. various studies converged on the idea that complex events are structured into an inner and an outer event, where the outer event is associated with causation and agency, and the inner event is associated with telicity and change of state (pustejovsky and tenny 2001:10). with the so called cause predicate the outer event is represented and the change of state is represented by the predicate become. towards making sense of the internal structure of verb meanings r. jackendoff proposes the theory of decomposition calling it conceptual representations which parallel the syntactic representations of sentences of natural language. these employ a set of canonical elements including cause, go to and on and cannonical elements including thing, path and event. under his system r. jackendoff represents the sentence harry buttered the bread as: [event cause ([thing]i,[event thing [path to ([place on (thing]j)])})})} (jackendoff 1990:54) according to event-semantic theories through syntactic-semantic representation the hidden meanings of the utterance can be revealed. the deep armenological studies armenian folia anglistika 141 semantic-syntactic analyses through context and event semantics permit to restructure the deep meaning and significance of the sentence. the linguistic text transforms to a formal logical-semantic structure (i.e. deep structure) through which the surface structure of the text is represented. we understand the text in its deep structure taking into consideration the implicit and contextual meanings. it is worthy to mention that here we have something to do with context models, suggested by van dijk. language users not only form and update models of events and situations they communicate about, but also of the communicative event in which they participate. a communicative event or situation, that is context, includes the following categories: setting (time, place), circumstances, participants and action (and their modifiers), including those that represent opinions. these define the mental (and hence subjective) counterpart of the canonical structure of a communicative situation or context as presented in a vast literature in ethnography, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, social psychology (van dijk 1995:255). context models feature evaluative propositions or opinions: speech participants usually have opinions about each other, about the actual text and talk of the other as well as about other features of the context (time, place, circumstances). within this framework, we identify two types of event structures: communicative event and complex event (outer and inner events) representing the deep structure of the talk or writing. the theory of event semantics provides a large analytical tool for analyzing word meaning. a new synthesis has emerged in recent years which attempts to model verb meanings as complex predicative structures with rich event structures. the research has developed the idea that the meaning of a verb can be analyzed into a structured representation of the event that the verb designates. this literature has further contributed to the realization that the grammar recognizes the existence of complex events having an internal structure. outline of the remembrance day speech on armenian remembrance day on april 24, 2017, the us present president d. trump paid tribute to more than one million armenians killed armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 142 during the ottoman empire. howbeit, the president following his predecessors stopped short of calling the great calamity as a genocide. as a matter of fact president donald trump's speech can be divided into the following 4 parts; 1. remembering and honoring the memory 2. acknowledging the fact that one and a half million armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in the final years of the ottoman empire.trump indirectly mentions the fact of 1.5mln. armenians being the victims of genocide, though. 3. pointing out the past and the armenians' contribution to the usa by pointing out the past the president indirectly and unconsciously accepts the history and the deeds by the hands of young turks. by that, it becomes clear that he is familiar with the history by mentioning the name of ottoman empire, which doesn't exist anymore. as for armenians' contribution he posits their indelible contribution to their country. this means, that the president tries to pacify the plight, hence maneuvering the recognition of the core event. 4. welcoming the efforts of turks and armenians trump outlines new foreign policy avoiding to mention official facts or proning to one or another. the overall theme of the president's speech can be summerised as grievously inadequate. the word genocide is maneuvered and scrubbed. the president uses the expression meds yeghern instead. the speech shows that suffering and loss of innocent lives are abstracted from any cause, i.e. any perpetrator. the question to be analyzed from the event-semantics point of view is the following: who caused the suffering? who committed the murder? our approach is based on the idea that the grammar of natural language structures the events represented by verbs into complex events, with a causative outer event and a change-of state inner event. within this framework, we identify two types of event structures: communicative event and complex event (outer and inner events) representing the deep structure of the talk or writing. the theory of event semantics provides a large analytical tool for analyzing word armenological studies armenian folia anglistika 143 meaning. a new synthesis has emerged in recent years, which attempts to model verb meanings as complex predicative structures with rich event structures. analysis 1 today, we remember and honor the memory of those who suffered during the meds yeghern, one of the worst mass atrocities of the 20th century. beginning in 1915, one and a half million armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in the final years of the ottoman empire (statement by president donald j. trump on armenian remembrance day 2017) context model -----communicative event (remembrance and honoring) subjective opinion /we remember and honor the memory/ event model------------complex event outer event cause inner event become beginning 1915 1,5 mln. armenians deported, massacred in the final years of the ottoman empire not alive cause-become relation becomes significant at this point. the so-called causer argument makes an object (1.5 ml. armenians) undergo a change of state. one interesting point should be taken into consideration, that in the deep semantic context the causer of the event, i.e. agent is not marked, however, the front position of the sentence comes to be represented by adverbial modifiers of time (beginning 1915/ in the final years of the ottoman empire), which prompts that the president is well-aware of the history. yet, in trump’s statement, it is not armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 144 clearly mentioned who realized the events but the history gives the reader/listener a hint, that in 1915 1.5 million armenians were massacred by young turks. the following structure can be outlined: massacre -----------kill-------------------become not alive as can be noticed, the armenian people are the grammatical passive (armenians were massacred and marched to their death) subject of the sentence (event) but the agent and cause of the real event (massacre) are not presented, i.e. who did the action (event), who caused 1.5mln. armenians to be massacred and deported are not mentioned though. like in obama’s statement one can detect the event meds yeghern in trump’s statement as well, where the event-result is mentioned, but event-cause is missing. analysis 2 i join the armenian community in america and around the world in mourning the loss of innocent lives and the suffering endured by so many (statement by president donald j. trump on armenian remembrance day 2017). context model --------------------------communicative event subjective attitude: sharing the pain of the armenian community in america event model --------------------------complex event . outer x cause inner /innocent lives become lost/suffered) the example clarifies that the causer agent is not presented (x), i.e, the president uses a maneuvering strategy expressing his thoughts with grammatical armenological studies armenian folia anglistika 145 passive structures. from here the reflection, that politicians often need to apply to composite audience characterized by heterogeneous values and beliefs, is onward observable. in order to do so they turn to techniques of ambiguity that make their positions seem broadly applicable. conclusion by the way of conclusion i draw together the threads that we have woven throughout the examples. the american evading politics in genocide recognition is expressed by the linguistic strategies used in the presidents’ talk. us authorities do accept the history but at the same time try to maneuver the fact playing a conciliatory role. trump’s politics is also avoiding as he devalues talk dismissing it as “rhetoric”. in his statement the us 45th president refuses to talk about the 1915 events in their full sense. he just introduces the communicative event (today, we remember and honor the memory of those who suffered during the meds yeghern, one of the worst mass atrocities of the 20th century.) or describes the event being discussed (one and a half million armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in the final years of the ottoman empire.). they evaluate the event (as we reflect on this dark chapter of human history, we also recognize the resilience of the armenian people.) by mentioning the armenians and armenian community’s contribution to their nation (many built new lives in the united states and made indelible contributions to our country, while cherishing memories of the historic homeland in which their ancestors established one of the great civilizations of antiquity…..). hence, for the best we posit that the relationships among languages and ideology are best explored by combining critical discourse and event-based semantic analyses, providing a new idea and method to analyze public addresses. references: 1. batstone, r. (1995) grammar in discourse: attitude and deniability. // principle & practice in applied linguistics. / ed. by g. cook and b. seidlhofer. oxford: oup. armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 146 2. chomsky, n.a. (1971) constraints on transformations. / ed. by s. anderson and p. kiparsky. new york. holt, rinehart and winston. 3. davidson, d. (1967) the logical form of action sentences. // the logic of decision and action. / ed. by n. rescher. pittsburgh: university of pittsburgh press. 4. fairclough, n. (1989) language and power. london: longman. 5. mccawley, j.d. (1968) the role of semantics in the grammar. // universals in linguistic theory. / ed. by e. bach and r. harms. new york: holt, rinehart and winston. 6. shibatani, m. (1976) the grammar of causative constructions: a conspectus. // the grammar of causative constructions. syntax and semantics. vol. 6. / ed. by m. shibatani. new york: academic press. 7. van dijk, t. (1985) a handbook of discourse analysis, vol. 4. / ed. by teun van dijk. academic press inc. harcourt brace jovanovich publishers. 8. van dijk, t. (1995) discourse semantics and ideology. // discourse and society. vol. 6, n2. london: saga publications. 9. d. trump’s statement on armenian remembrance day. available at: <https://anca.org/press-release/president-trump-continues-enforce-turkeys-gagrule/> [accessed september 2017]. դ. թրամփը՝ հայոց ցեղասպանության մասին․ իմաստաբանական և խոսույթային քննություն սույն հոդվածի նպատակն է վերլուծել ամն 45-րդ նախագահ դ. թրամփի ելույթը հայոց ցեղասպանության վերաբերյալ՝ բացահայտելով այն լեզվական և խոսույթային ռազմավարությունները, որոնցով նախագահը փորձում է խուսափել «ցեղասպանություն» եզրույթից: հոդվածում քննվում են այսպես կոչված քննադատական խոսույթի վերլուծությանը և իրադարձությունների իմաստաբանությանը հարող տեսություններ, որոնք լավագույնս արտացոլում են խոսույթի ենթատեքստում թաքնված իմաստների բացահայտման մեխանիզմները: microsoft word maket 2020-1(21) 19.02 doc.doc armenian folia anglistika linguistics 44 gender specific english advertisements ruzanna arakelyan, ani petrosyan yerevan state university abstract advertising is a worldwide phenomenon nowadays that has gained the attention and interest of a large number of individuals in different societies around the world. advertising is not only an “ideal tool” for reaching people economically, but also a device of attaining and maintaining contact with people socially, culturally, politically and even psychologically. as men and women perceive various social phenomena and often react to certain situations in quite distinct ways, it is also vividly expressed in the ways they perceive the effectiveness of advertising language. this is also conditioned by the fact that men and women create different imagery from the advertisements they see. this confirms the fact that ad specialists should analyze how they choose the target viewers and what language they should use to focus on them. thus, gender is one of the main segmentation variables for the advertiser, and a significant factor that makes it interesting to advance the study of how gender differences are manifested in the language of advertisements. key words: advertising, gender language, gender differences and perceptions, communicative power of language. introduction the main topic of this research is the gender difference in perception of ads and gender specification in the language of advertising. advertising is a worldwide phenomenon that has gained the attention and interest of a large number of individuals in different societies around the world. we also know that men and women are different in their characteristics, behavior, characteristics, way of thinking and tactics, that is to say, the way they act, and in using the language, linguistics armenian folia anglistika 45 the way they speak. thus it is not surprising that gender is reflected in advertisements as well. to start with, it should be mentioned that gender can be defined as a set of social and cultural norms and practices that the society prescribes to human individuals according to their sex. men and women perceive various social phenomena and often react to certain situations in distinct ways. there are even differences between male and female brains. although men tend to have larger brains, they shrink more quickly as old age sets in. one of the most significant differences is the fact that females’ brain has more connections between the right and left halves. because there are more connections, women are able to recover from a stroke much easier than men since their brain has more options for rerouting signals. according to lakoff and spender (1980), women’s speech is characterized “as more hesitant, less fluent, less logical, and less assertive than men’s speech. women, in their view, are more silent, interrupt less frequently than men, use tag questions and modal verbs more than men, use cooperative strategies in conversations rather than competitive ones, and so on.” therefore, men’s and women’s choices of conversation content, language use or speech style are not different only because of their different sexes, but also because of their socio-cultural background and social status etc (mills 1995). gender difference in perception of ads women and men have some differences at the level of discourse and conversation as well. men interrupt women in a group where men and women are interlocutors. women frequently accept men’s topics while men reject subjects raised by women. women are more polite than men and try most of the time to initiate conversation but succeed less because of men’s lack of cooperation. the confirmation, according to cross & markus (1993), is that “women’s linguistic styles also reflect a sensitive connection to the other. for women, the goal in social interaction is often cooperation and support.” grammatically, women use more tag questions, more hedges, direct quotations, more descriptive adjectives, more intensifiers and incomplete sentences. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 46 ads are often more detailed for women. for example, in toiletry ads, women appreciate very fine distinctions such as shampoos for dry hair, for straight hair, for curly hair, for oily hair, etc. there are fundamental differences in the way men and women perceive information. women tend to process different pieces of information more extensively. men rely more on mental shortcuts. females consider detailed, subjective advertisements aimed towards appealing more to the affective, emotional state to be of higher preference. in a yarborough study a group of people were brought to a room and later asked to remember various items there. the result showed that women had much better memory for details than did men. men might remember the big picture of an office like the location of a desk or a bookshelf. but women would remember more intimate details like a vase of flowers in the corner or a picture of a husband, etc (yarborough 2000). however different gender ads, they are designed with only one intention: to make more profit by bringing the products to groups of potential customers. to achieve that intention effectively, they “characterize” the potential customers of each product or service and design “personalized” advertisements that target at certain potential groups of customers (<http://www.choicestream.com>). the most important techniques that all advertisement designers need to know are the techniques of choosing the target viewers and language wisely and correspondingly. language plays a vital role in the society in general and in everyone’s life in particular. we use language of all kinds every day, every moment to communicate with other people, to get ourselves and our own opinions expressed and vice versa – to get the same things from others (gyllgard 2006). gender specification in the language of advertising mastering the communicative power of language, sensible advertisers try to utilize language as a powerful tool to influence the viewers. more specifically, they often try to use language distinctively in order to catch the viewers’ attention.(<https://www.adcracker.com>) for example, advertisers sometimes play with words, use them out of context, use some ambiguous meanings of linguistics armenian folia anglistika 47 words, put specific metaphors and create new ones in order to help and manipulate viewers. in most cases those words become slogans for brands. in mac cosmetics it is discover ideas about all races, for michael kors it is women can’t drive. the mentioned ads do not clearly feature a product being advertised. the second ad symbolizes the idea that women’s sole responsibility is beauty while men carry the burden of work. sentence structure is also important to draw customers' attention. a sentence as why don't you try...? is found regularly in female advertising, grammatically it is an interrogative sentence but intends to issue a direction to customers. in contrast, a direct sentence like an imperative is generally used in male advertisements. men do not use indirect sentences much in daily life and sometimes have a problem with interpretation. the sentence structures are already chosen suitably for each target “victim”. clear shampoo is one obvious example in vietnam: the product has seven advertisements on television and the internet. they seem to target different viewers of different genders and have several other aspects such as models, images, languages and advertising techniques. the analysis of advertisements, taken from tv and the internet, shows that male models talk about their confidence and show their strength as well as their dominance to others by facing a certain problem: for example: i breathe. i move. i sweat. with the world watching. my hair. my clothes. i like black. black is confident. black looks good. looking good means no dandruff. confidence means no dandruff. clear means no dandruff. i trust clear. dandruff never comes back. my name is rain. clear. no dandruff. this means that black is confident, confidence means no dandruff. as their concerns are different, female and male models choose different adjectives when they speak about their hair. like in the above ad, most male models and voiceovers use black to talk about their hair or the hair they want to have (i like black. black is confident. black looks good). armenian folia anglistika linguistics 48 at the same time, female models talk about the features of soft, clean and beautiful which are just suitable to describe female hair. clear makes my hair soft and beautiful. just soft hair. can your shampoo leave your hair soft and clean? clear takes it soft. just soft hair. as can be seen from the above-mentioned advertisements, female models talk with a collaborative orientation. they talk as if they want to share their experience with the audience whereas male models and voiceovers try to assert their positions of dominance by a competitive orientation. men, for example, talk about their dealing with dandruff, the collision of sparks and dandruff, their black seduction and temptation when they are dandruff free. the tendency of dominance is also expressed by short imperative sentences which can be found more frequently in male models’ or voiceovers’ speech: face it. solve it. rage, rage against her breath of fear. make the season more seductive. make it a clear black valentine’s. be board. be black. move closer anytime. have clear black valentine’s. advertisements with male models offers another typical feature of a male speech. that is the logic in thinking and speaking. using logical speech, male models try to convince the audience that, for example, there is a close relationship between being clear, black, confident and looking good. conclusion the notion of advertising is nothing new. it is a worldwide phenomenon and expanding throughout the world nowadays. advertising is also described as an audio or visual form of marketing communication that employs an openly sponsored, non-personal message to promote or sell a product, service or idea. to conclude, it can be stated that linguistics armenian folia anglistika 49  language, gender and society are three complex and closely interwoven notions, though many studies have focused on the differences existing between men and women in terms of social behavior and language use.  gender is defined as one of the primary categories that people use to understand and think about their social world. language is an important part of an individual’s life which helps to form social identity by different linguistic habits reflecting different individual biographies and experiences.  advertisers have some techniques: they use language in marketing based on different stereotypes of gender to convince customers to buy products. and this really works, because men and women have different gender stereotypes to convince customers to buy products.  advertisements for women contain a lot of declarative adjectives, whereas they are hardly found in ads for men. advertisements for men usually use simple words which do not have many adjectives and are easy to understand. advertisers use descriptive words frequently in women skin care and cosmetic advertisements. it is a great strategy which effectively attracts customers. a sentence like why don't you try...? is found regularly in advertisements for women, actually, it is an interrogative sentence but intends to issue a direction to customers. in contrast, a direct sentence like an imperative is generally used in advertisements created for men. no matter how different advertisements are, they are designed with only one intention: to make more profit by bringing the products to groups of potential customers. to realize that intention quickly, they characterize the potential customers of each product or service and by means of specific linguistic means design personalized advertisements that target certain potential customers. references: 1. a guide to progressive gender portrayals in advertising. available at: <http://www.choicestream.com> [accessed april 2019]. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 50 2. bruner, j.s. (1957) on perceptual readiness, psychological review, washington: american psychological association. 3. communicative power of language. available at: <http://www.adcracker.com> [accessed march 2019]. 4. cross, s.e. & markus, h.r. (1993) gender in thought, belief and action: a cognitive approach. new york, us: journal of advertising research: guilford press. 5. dholakia, r. & kshetri, n. (2003) gender & internet usage. us: guilford. 6. geis, m.l. (1993) a social psychological view of gender. us: guilford. 7. lakoff, r. & spender, d. (1980) gender styles in computer mediated communication, new york: oup. 8. sara, m. (1995) feminist stylistics, london: routledge. անգլերեն գովազդի գենդերային հայեցակերպը այսօր գովազդները հասարակության լայն շերտերի ուշադրության կենտրոնում են։ դրանք ոչ միայն տնտեսական առաջընթացի գործիք են, այլև սոցիալական, մշակութային, քաղաքական և նույնիսկ հոգեբանական շփումների պահպանման և ամրապնդման միջոց։ կանայք և տղամարդիկ տարբեր ձևով են ընկալում սոցիալական երևույթները, ներառյալ գովազդները։ կանայք գերադասում են գովազդի ոչ նյութական առանձնահատկությունները, տղամարդիկ՝ նյութականը։ կանայք նախընտրում են գովազդում առկա այն արտահայտությունները, որոնք կապված են մարդու հույզերի, զգացողությունների և մտքերի հետ, իսկ տղամարդիկ՝ տրամաբանության, օբյեկտիվ հատկությունների, կարիերայի, սպորտի, հետազոտությունների հետ կապված արտահայտությունները։ կանանց համար ստեղծված գովազդներում հիմնականում օգտագործվում է նկարագրական լեզու, իսկ տղամարդկանց պարագայում՝ տեղեկատվական։ received by the editorial board 12. 09.2019 recommended for publication by the reviewers 15.11.2019 accepted for print 13.01.2020 << 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(www.heidelberg.com) >> /namespace [ (adobe) (common) (1.0) ] /othernamespaces [ << /asreaderspreads false /cropimagestoframes true /errorcontrol /warnandcontinue /flattenerignorespreadoverrides false /includeguidesgrids false /includenonprinting false /includeslug false /namespace [ (adobe) (indesign) (4.0) ] /omitplacedbitmaps false /omitplacedeps false /omitplacedpdf false /simulateoverprint /legacy >> << /addbleedmarks false /addcolorbars false /addcropmarks false /addpageinfo false /addregmarks false /convertcolors /converttocmyk /destinationprofilename () /destinationprofileselector /documentcmyk /downsample16bitimages true /flattenerpreset << /presetselector /mediumresolution >> /formelements false /generatestructure false /includebookmarks false /includehyperlinks false /includeinteractive false /includelayers false /includeprofiles false /multimediahandling /useobjectsettings /namespace [ (adobe) (creativesuite) (2.0) ] /pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /documentcmyk /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /usedocumentprofile /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2540 2540] /pagesize [595.276 841.890] >> setpagedevice maket 2014_layout 1.qxd the manifestation of gender peculiarities in political discourse ruzanna arustamyan yerevan state university abstract the article is devoted to the description of gender peculiarities in political discourse. the differences of male and female speeches aim to determine the degree of effectiveness of the impact of gendered approaches in political communication on male and female audiences. we may observe obvious differences between male and female speeches. it is conditioned by biological differences and social roles and stereotypes fixed in the society. sometimes female politicians tend to imitate male speech behavior in order to defend their positions and the right to participate in the political life of their country. key words: gender, political discourse, male and female languages, communicative behaviour. introduction individual qualities of people are manifested not only in behaviour, lifestyle, but also in speech. people use language for many different reasons. it is used as a method to express feelings or to persuade people and very importantly, it is a part of our self-expression. nowadays the issue of gender research has become prominent in many spheres such as in psychology, sociology, philosophy, political science and linguistics. in majority of human societies, political power has been a masculine domain. in democratic societies, once women achieved the vote the next debate quickly centered on their “proper role” relative to political power. all over the world, the debate about gender and political power continues (galliano 2003:321). gender equality in political power and resources of industrialized democracies has grown tremendously in the past fifty years more women are running for and being elected to national parliaments than ever before. virginia sapiro suggests that most studies of male and female languages reveal women as considerably less influential than men are. (sapiro 1983:115) however, our research suggests that nowadays women’s role in political activity becomes increasingly more important and deserves higher evaluation and attention. gender aspect is particularly an interesting sphere of investigation within the field of linguistics – the main focus is on the language differences between men and women. in modern linguistics one of the prior goals in the investigation of political discourse is the study of communicative behaviour as an integral component describing a political leader’s activity in professional spheres. according to i. sternin “verbal behaviour” is the set of norms and traditions of people, communication, age, professional and other groups. (sternin 2003:106). gender peculiarities of communicative behaviour of public figures always attract scholars’ attention. gender communicative behaviour is one of the types armenian folia anglistika linguistics 88 of socially determined communicative behaviour that requires systemic description in political discourse. the peculiarities of male and female political leaders’ speeches speaking generally on the issue of differences between male and female talk, it is worth mentioning that theorists, followers of robin lakoff (1975) claim that women’s messages are ignored and interrupted because women are taught to “talk like a lady”, that is, to use disclaimers (“this may not be right, but…”), “weak” particles (“dear me”, “goodness”, etc.) rather than forceful expletives, and tag questions (“the book was good, wasn’t it”), and to express uncertainty rather than assertiveness. when women do not implement these tactics, they may be accused for being unfeminine. however, if they do “talk like a lady”, they risk not being taken seriously (borisoff 1998:10). since traditionally, politics is regarded mainly as a sphere of male activity, women do not often play an important role in decision-making processes. the analysis of the speeches of political leaders will give us the opportunity to examine whether any differences are notable in verbal communication when gender is concerned. thus the language of politicians is endowed with gender approach which implies making a purposeful impact on male and female audiences by using certain characteristic features. the analysis of speeches of political leaders enables us to assume that there are two major gender approaches, 1. special features of feminine and masculine speech behaviour which are necessary for creating a certain image. the gender approach is carried out with the help of rapid changes and correction of speech behaviour. 2. direct appeal to male and female audience this provides reflection of verbal tactics, as well as different uses of gender stereotypes and metaphors. the first gender approach may be observed in hillary clinton’s speeches: she made a very emotional and impressive speech concerning benghazi crime. she speaks very emotionally which is typical of female speech and shares the sorrow of four american families. she sounds sympathetic and shares their sorrow. for example: i stood next to president obama as the marines carried those flagdraped caskets off the plane at andrews. i put my arms around the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters. (<http://www.politico.com/gallery/2013/01/hillary-clintons-best-benghazi-hearing-lines/000744-010630.html>) in general women are more sensitive to the problems and sorrow of close people. by saying “put my arms” hillary clinton shows her solidarity with fellow-citizens and makes sure that she thoroughly supports all the victims by mentioning the members of their families: “mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters”. it seems that clinton tends to unite the pain of the whole nation. as a female politician, she really suffers, cries and shares the sorrow of four american families which is a tragedy for the whole nation. here the gendered characteristics are displayed on the basis of female armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 89 leader who serves her nation and every single accident may affect and hurt her because she behaves as the mother of the whole nation. the secretary of state supports them and takes the responsibility of the crime as it is typical for female politicians: as i have said many times since september 11, i take responsibility. (<http://www.newsy.com/videos/clinton-spars-with-republicans-during-benghazi-hearing>) she takes the responsibility thoroughly and courageously, which means that she is not only a liable politician, but also a good citizen devoted to her own country. the frequent use of the pronoun i also states that the leader separates herself from the others and presents herself as an independent and accomplished politician. as a marker of gender, the frequent use of the pronoun i enables the female politician to establish and strengthen her positions in political areas, as well as to confirm her self-affirmation. this approach is typical of female politicians as they always struggle to prove their status, their right to be considered as equal contenders in the political life of the country. here is an example of speech by hillary clinton, where she appeals to george bush to coordinate the actions on iran nuclear weapon with the us congress. she states that the main aim of the usa is to stop actions against iran and adds her view with the following words: as i have long said and will continue to say, u.s. policy must be clear and unequivocal. we cannot, we should not, we must not permit iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons. and in dealing with this threat, as i’ve also said for a long time, no option can be taken off the table. (<http://www.ontheissues.org/2016/hillary_clinton_war_+_peace.ht m#iraq_war>) the use of modal verbs conveys imperative tone to the speech, the repetition of verbs creates a troubling atmosphere. furthermore, the syntactic structure of simple sentences promotes an easy perception of communication. focusing on hillary clinton’s linguistic abilities, we must emphasize that her purpose is to preserve her position as a powerful woman. she has the ability to combine the peculiarities of masculine and feminine languages skillfully. many political texts reinforce masculine models of communication through aggressive metaphors. speakers are instructed to “arm” themselves against the other speaker’s “argument”; to “win” their point by “waging an attack” on the “weak” points in their “opponent’s” logic with a strong “plan of battle”. the general stereotypes concerning this theory are very subjective. there are cases when women imitate masculine models of communication, using aggressive and offensive expressions. for example, the debate in south carolina proves that clinton is rather aggressive saying: i personally think that they had ideas but they were bad ideas, they were ideas like privatizing social security, like moving back from a balance armenian folia anglistika linguistics 90 budget in a surplus of deficit and debt. (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgqnta2je98>) she evaluates the ideas of senator obama administration “as bad”. the main strategy here is the criticism of the opposite candidate by favoring her own candidate. the debate shows that the accepted stereotypes of men’s aggressiveness and women’s tolerance are not totally acceptable and true. the concept of interruption is also worth investigating. debora borisoff states that the majority of studies proved the evidence that in mixed-gender conversations between couples, colleagues, and adult strangers, men overwhelmingly interrupt women. (borisoff 1998:40) however, the example of barack obama and hillary clinton debate shows that this fact is not totally right for all cases. obama seems to be more tolerant and careful about clinton’s speech. despite the fact that she traduces and blames him for lying, he never interrupts her. … it is sometimes difficult to understand what senator obama has said, because as soon as he is confronted on it, he says that’s not what he meant. the facts are that he has said in a last week, that he really lied. (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgqnta2je98>) as far as clinton is concerned, everything is vice versa – she behaves inappropriately during obama’s speech, she consistently interrupts him trying to defend her positions. having analyzed some examples of hillary clinton’s speeches it becomes clear that she possesses both male and female features. one of these female features is the use of hedges. robin lakoff states that “hedges” manifest lack of determination and distrust. (lakoff r. 2004:83). we can note the frequent usage of “well”, “you know”, “i mean” and “i think” in hillary clinton’s speeches. you know, i’m here tonight as a proud mother, as a proud democrat… (<http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/president/conventions/videos/200 80826_clinton_speech.html>) and you know – in all of the states, you voted because you wanted a leader who will stand up for the deepest values of our party… (<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/democrats/2073000/hi llary-clintons-speech-full-text.html>) you know, for the past seven years, so many people in this country have felt invisible, like your president didn’t even really see you. (<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/democrats/2073000/hi llary-clintons-speech-full-text.html>) you know, tonight, we stand just a few miles from the statue of liberty and from the site where the twin towers fell and where america rose again. (<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/democrats/2073000/hi llary-clintons-speech-full-text.html>) armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 91 well, i want what i have always fought for in this whole campaign. i want to end the war in iraq. (<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/democrats/2073000/hi llary-clintons-speech-full-text.html>) i mean, i know very well the extensive authority any president has. (<http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june07/clinton_0118.html>) ‘well, i am glad you raised that... and i think that... (<http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/public/chatham%2 0house/111013clinton.pdf>) as for clinton’s intonation, it should be stated intonation and the fact that she usually puts “well” at the beginning of the sentence, which gives her time to think about her response carefully. sometimes the hedges “well” and “i think” are combined in a sentence and, which endows the sentence with certainty and persuasion. the following example shows obama’s attitude and speech behavior during his campaign: we are counting on you to help fix a health care system that’s leaving too many americans sick or bankrupt or both. we are counting on you to bring this planet back from the brink by solving this crisis of global climate change. we are counting on you to help stop a genocide in darfur that’s taking the lives of innocents as we speak here today. (<http://www.snhu.edu/6885.asp>) on the one hand, the use of the pronoun we allows us to separate obama from “young” audience of graduates who must be able to make decisions. on the other hand, the leader uses the tactics of criticism implicitly which is expressed by indirect forms of negative assessments of the existing situation in the country and in the world. in the passage above the manipulation of public consciousness due to intentional negative indications can be observed. at the same time there are some hidden capabilities of improving the situation. obama seems to be saying – “choose me, and we’ll reform everything.” here we can see the gendered aspect of a self-confident male politician who acts like a leader. in contrast to female features, male politicians do not seem to prove their rights to take part in political sphere. instead, they are in a more privileged position and they only defend their points of views without trying to prove that they have the right to participate in the political life of the country. the former us secretary of state condoleeza rice also appeals to this approach by changing her gender-specific style. she uses speech behaviour typical of her speech, thus combining the use of both feminine and masculine features. during her trip to asia, condoleeza rice delivered a speech characterized by peculiar male features. at the beginning she mentions the goal of her trip: “the purpose of my trip is to rally the support of our friends and allies in northeast asia for our comprehensive strategy.” then the political armenian folia anglistika linguistics 92 leader alternately explains the program and substantiates the aim of the visit: “first, we must strengthen our strategic relationships in the region. … second, as north korea scorns the international community, we …. third, we and our partners must expand defensive measures to counter …. fourth, we must ensure the continued vitality of the global regime …. finally, we must remind north korea that a positive path remains open to it through the six-party talks.” (<http://2001-2009.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/74047.htm>) her speech is constructed very logically and precisely. the sentences are simple and clear. like clinton, rice also unifies the actions with the help of the pronoun we. consequently, this part demonstrates that the speech of c. rice does not contain any emotional tone and language means typical of female speech. instead, the speech is distinguished with logical structure and sequence. applications of gender approaches towards men and women audiences in the language of political figures is carried out by other means. there is a bright example of tony blair’s speech during general assembly third committee of the un dedicated to women institutions. he deliberately constructs his speech in order to be pleasant to the audience and speaks on the issues which concern women, such as family, children, breast cancer, discrimination against women and so on: … we all share the anxieties of today’s world: the fear that our child will be bullied or worse offered drugs in the playground. the worry that children are exposed to too much sex and too much violence too young. the struggle of balancing work and family. … on our own the majority of us are powerless. together we can shape our destiny. to become the masters of this change, not its victims, we need an active community. (<http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20060715135117/number10.gov.uk/page1526>) the political leader places himself in the position of women, shares their problems and conveys the whole information in emotional and figurative manner. the us former secretary of state madeleine albright’s speeches are constructed on the basis of family gender stereotype: i will always love and honor my parents and will always respect their decision, for that most painful of choices gave me life a second time. (<http://1997-2001.state.gov/www/statements/970713b.html>) devotion and respect towards parents are appreciated by different generations and promote the image of a loving daughter. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 93 conclusion thus, the investigation shows that the right choice of gender approach conveys vividness and interest to the politician’s language, endorsing its impact on the audience. in some cases the boundaries between masculinity and femininity are erased or manifested implicitly. sometimes female politicians try to cross these limits – this is conditioned by the fact that female political leaders tend to preserve and defend their positions by imitating masculine manners of speech. references: 1. borisoff, d.; merrill, l. (1998) the power to communicate. gender differences as barriers. illinois: waveland press. 2. briefing on upcoming trip to asia. available at: <http://2001-2009.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/74047.htm> [accessed june 2014] 3. grace galliano (2003) gender crossing boundaries. kennesaw state university. 4. robin tolmach lakoff, mary bucholtz (2004) language and woman’s place. new york: oxford university press. 5. virginia sapiro (1983) the political integration of women: roles, socialization, and politics. urbana and chicago: university of illinois press 6. sternin, i.a. (2003) ocherk angliyskogo kommunikativnogo povedeniya. voronezh: izdatelstvo “istoki”. 7. briefing on upcoming trip to asia. available at: <http://2001-2009.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/74047.htm> [accessed june 2014] 8. chatham house prize 2013: in conversation with hillary rodham clinton. available at: <http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/public/chatham%20house/111013 clinton.pdf> [accessed january 2014] 9. clinton spars with republicans during benghazi hearing. available at: <http://www.newsy.com/videos/clinton-spars-with-republicans-during-benghazihearing> [accessed december 2013] 10. hillary clinton’s best benghazi hearing lines. available at: <http://www.politico.com/ gallery/2013/01/hillary-clintons-best-benghazi-hearing-lines/000744-010630.html> [accessed december 2013] 11. hillary clinton on war and peace. available at: <http://www.ontheis sues.org/2016/ hillary_clinton_war_+_peace.htm#iraq_war> [accessed in december 2013] 12. hillary clinton’s remarks at a rally on tuesday in new york city. available at: <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/democrats/2073000/hillary-clintonsspeech-full-text.html> [accessed december 2013] 13. hillary rodham clinton’s speech at the democratic national convention. available at: <http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/president/conventions/videos/20080826_clinton_speech.html> [accessed december 2013] 14. obama and clinton heated exchange in south carolina debate. available at: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgqnta2je98> [accessed january 2014] armenian folia anglistika linguistics 94 15. secretary of state madeleine k. albright remarks at jewish museum prague. available at: <http://1997-2001.state.gov/www/statements/970713b.html> [accessed january 2014] 16. sen. barack obama’s commencement remarks. available at: <http://www.snhu.edu/ 6885.asp.> [accessed january 2014] 17. senator clinton calls for cap on u.s. troops in iraq. available at: <http://www.pbs.org /newshour/bb/politics/jan-june07/clinton_01-18.html> [accessed january 2014] 18. women’s institutes’ triennial general meeting. available at: <http://webarchive. nationalarchives.gov.uk/20060715135117/number10.gov.uk/page1526> [accessed january 2013] ¶»ý¹»ñ³ûçý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñç ¹ñë¨áñáõùá ù³õ³ù³ï³ý ëáëáõûãáõù îçý ¨ ïõ³ ù³ñ¹ ù³ õ³ ù³ ï³ý ·áñ íçã ý» ñá ï³ñ μ»ñ ï»ñå »ý ý»ñ ï³ û³ó ýáõù ç ñ»ýó » éáõûã ý» ñá, çý ãá å³û ù³ ý³ íáñ í³í ¿ ýñ³ýó ëáë ùçý μýá ñáß ë» é³ ûçý ³ é³ýó ý³ ñ³ï ïáõã ûáõý ý» ñáí: ²ý ï³ë ·á ûáõã ûáõý áõ ý» óáõ ï³ñí ñ³ ïç å» ñçó ï³ ý³ýó ¨ ïõ³ ù³ñ¹ ï³ýó ëáë ùáõù ¿³ ï³ý ï³ñ μ» ñáõã ûáõý ý»ñ ï³ý: ø³ õ³ ù³ ï³ý ¹³ß ïáõù çýù ý³ ñ³ë ï³ï í» éáõ ¨ ï³ ûáõý ¹çñ ù»ñ ³ å³ ñá í» éáõ ýå³ ï³ ïáí ïçý ù³ õ³ ù³ ï³ý ·áñ íç ãá ÷áñ óáõù ¿ ýù³ ý³ ï»é ïõ³ ù³ñ¹ ù³ õ³ ù³ ï³ý ·áñí ãç ëá ë» é³á ×á: ïðîÿâëåíèå ãåäíåðíûõ îñîáåííîñòåé â ïîëèòè÷åñêîì äèñêóðñå æåí ùè íû è ìóæ ÷è íû ïî ëè òè êè ïî-ðàç íî ìó ñòðîÿò ñâîþ ðå ÷ü âî âðå ìÿ âûñòóï ëå íèé. ýòî îáóñ ëîâ ëå íî ïî ëî âû ìè ðàç ëè ÷èÿ ìè ìóæ ÷èí è æåí ùèí. íåñ ìîò ðÿ íà ñó ùåñò âóþ ùèå ñòå ðåî òè ïû, êî òî ðûå õà ðàê òå ðè çóþò ðå ÷å âûå äåéñò âèÿ â ðå ÷å âîé äåÿ òåëü íîñòè îáîèõ ïî ëîâ, åñòü ÿâ íûå ðàç ëè ÷èÿ. æåí ùè íû ïî ëè òè êè ÷àñòî ïû òàþò ñÿ èìè òè ðî âàòü ìóæñ êîå ðå ÷å âîå ïî âå äå íèå ñ öåëüþ çà ùè òèòü ñå áÿ, óñòà íî âèòü ñîáñò âåí íûå âçãëÿ äû è ïðà âî ó÷àñò âî âàòü â ïî ëè òè ÷åñ êîé æèçíè ñòðà íû. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 95 microsoft word contens verjin translation studies armenian folia anglistika 95 “byronic” phraseological units and their equivalents in the armenian translation ofelya poghosyan, varduhi ghumashyan yerevan state university abstract the article highlights one of the most typical features of g.g. byron’s individual style, particularly, the use of a great variety of phraseological units in his works. the basic layer of byron’s literary vocabulary includes phraseological units derived from the bible and greek mythology. the present article focuses on the problem of translatability of the so-called “byronic” phraseological units in his narrative poem childe harold’s pilgrimage. it is an acknowledged fact that byron’s works are translated into numerous languages and the armenian translations have their special place among them. the eminent armenian writer h.tumanyan succeeded in finding the best equivalents of “byronic” phraseological units that not only sound convincing, truthful and colourful, but also very often enrich both the source and the target languages. key words: phraseological units, idioms, source language (sl), target language (tl), narrative poem, individual style, intranslatability. introduction language and culture are connected dialectically. language is a means of expression of one’s identity. it is impossible to understand a foreign language unless you at least have some idea about the conditions the nation speaking the language lives in. in other words, real use of linguistic elements in speech and speech productivity are conditioned by the knowledge of the social-cultural life of the people speaking the language. rituals, traditions, customs are closely armenian folia anglistika translation studies 96 connected with language, as they form part and parcel of linguocultural realia (edward 1990). the reflection of the dialectical connection between language and culture is revealed in the study of phraseological units in general and their translations from sl into tl in particular. from this viewpoint it is of paramount interest to study the means of translating “byronic” phraseological units from english into armenian. the translation of english phraseological units that express the same meaning and have their adequate forms in the armenian language does not put forward any problems, therefore in this study the emphasis is laid on the translation of phraseological units with no equivalents in the armenian language and culture at all. in the article we also make an attempt to analyse phraseological units that are similar in meaning but different in form in the english and armenian languages. thus, this work is another attempt to shed light on some disputable and problematic issues in the art of translation, particularly focusing the attention on the problems of intranslatability. the abundance of linguistic forms, language structures and the rich word stock of the armenian language are powerful means for translators to skillfully and adequately do translations from other languages, irrespective of their complicated linguistic and cultural differences. on the differences and similarities of phraseological units in sl and tl being natural human languages english and armenian, as well as other languages, have interesting similarities either in their forms or meanings or in both of them. nonetheless, there are vast differences, especially those of linguocultural nature. the reflection and impact of culture, its customs and traditions on language formation is great as these factors have their direct influence on the thought, mentality, outlook of people and very often give birth to innumerable language phenomena. phraseological units or idioms, as defined by some western scholars, represent what can be considered as the most picturesque, colourful and expressive part of the language vocabulary. phraseology may be described as a translation studies armenian folia anglistika 97 kind of picture gallery where are collected bright and amusing sketches of the nation’s customs, traditions and prejudices, recollections, memories of its past history, scraps of folk songs, stories and fairy-tales (antrushina 1985:173). in our article the terms phraseological unit and idiom are used interchangeably taking into account the definition given by g. antrushina, although the term phraseological unit has a broader meaning than the term idiom. idioms are specific to one culture and language and their meaning is peculiar to that particular language (the oxford dictionary of english etymology, 1966). when idioms in one language are translated into other languages, they may sometimes lose their actual meaning because many idioms are specific to a particular culture (the universal dictionary of the english language, 1958). according to gibbs (1992) the meaning of idioms is more emphatic than that of their equivalent literal paraphrases. they convey more complex meaning entailments and implicatures at once than single word paraphrases express in several sentences. idioms have complex meaning that seems to be motivated by independently existing lively and creative conceptual metaphors that are able to reflect the complexity of human thought better than single words can. therefore, gibbs disclaims the presumption that idioms are dead metaphors. idiomatic figures convey not only factual meaning but also particular evaluative aspect towards the relevant phenomenon (http://philologica.net/). in linguistics, idioms are usually presumed to be figures of speech contradicting the principle of compositionality. that compositionality is the key notion for the analysis of idioms emphasized in most accounts of idioms. this principle states that the meaning of a whole should be constructed from the meanings of the parts that make up the whole, whereas in idioms this key notion is violated (http://en.wikipedia.org). as far as the english phraseological units or idioms in childe harold’s pilgrimage and in their translations into armenian are concerned, our analysis shows that to a certain extent they can be identified by their origins that are in most cases either from the bible or greek mythology. however, there are also idioms the sources of which are difficult to be found. presumably, it can be armenian folia anglistika translation studies 98 stated that this phenomenon is connected with our ancestors’ cultural and traditional habits that are not actual today, consequently their origin still remains unknown. finding solutions to problematic situations the armenian writer managed to translate innumerable idioms totally preserving the meaning of the original. moreover, there are some passages where an ordinary sentence or a word combination is translated into armenian as an idiom which makes the translation not only beautiful but also adequate. in order to have a clear idea of what has been said it is necessary that some phraseological units from childe harold’s pilgrimage be analyzed and compared to their translated versions in armenian. phraseological units in general are formed through the medium of different stylistic devices (gibbs 1992). the study and analysis of some translation problems in childe harold’s pilgrimage brought us to the conclusion that in the poem there is a special layer of vocabulary which consists of a great number of phraseological units created on the basis of metaphor and metonymy. these units can be called metaphoric or metonymic phraseological units whose number in the poem is prevailing. the translation of the following extract has preserved the function of aesthetic impact, the expressiveness and exquisiteness of byronic language. in this respect it is interesting to analyse the following lines from the poem: who lick yet loathe the hand that waves the sword to save them from the wrath of guald’s unspoiring lord. (byron 1956, i-xvi:55) there are two phraseological units in the example: to lick the hand and to wave a sword. to lick the hand means to cajole, to accept the defeat, and the second unit to wave a sword is associated with the concept war. in the english-russian phraseological dictionary by a.kunin (1984) the unit to lick smb’s boots (or shoes), means to be servile towards somebody; it conveys a meaning close to that of to lick the hand as both of them mean to accept translation studies armenian folia anglistika 99 other’s requirements, wishes, commands neglecting selfesteem, one’s own standpoints. it is interesting to note that metaphoric and metonymic phraseological units are found not only in the original source but also in the target language. lick … hand and wave … sword are metonymic phraseological units. by saying to lick a hand we understand: asking somebody for something in the way a dog usually does when asking its owner for something. in other words, the phrase depicts the image of a servile person or servility. as far as the phraseological unit to wave a sword is concerned, the word sword in this context substitutes the concept of war. both phraseological units are translated into tl very adequately: լիզեց նողկանքով այն ձեռքը օտար, որ սուր բարձրացրեց փրկության համար: (i-16:109) due to his fundamental philological knowledge, creative approach, flight of thought, perfect awareness of the culture, language and history, the translator succeeded in transferring not only the content of the work and the author’s thoughts but also the original form of the text which is understood as a complex of means expressing the content. the study of phraseological units of linguocultural nature it goes without saying that a translator has no difficulty in translating phraseological units which exit both in sl and tl reality. an interesting question arises in this respect: what is the origin of similar phraseological units in different languages? presumably, it is connected with the existence of similar linguocultural realities in sl and tl. nevertheless, for answering this question further studies are still expected to follow. an interesting example to illustrate an adequate translation of a phraseological unit is as follows: armenian folia anglistika translation studies 100 pour’d forth his blood beneath the assasin’s knife some hand erects a cross of mouldering lath; … the phraseological unit to pour blood or to shed blood means to kill somebody. it is easily and adequately translated into armenian as it expresses the same meaning in similar contexts both in sl and in tl. it is a metonymic phraseological unit expressed by a verbal construction which conveys the meaning of the scene of murder. in the armenian version it effectively transfers the aesthetic impact it has in the original text. however, the question which language this or that phraseological unit originated in still remains unanswered. ընկած ոճրապարտ դաշույնից փայլուն, այսպիսի խաչեր այս երկրում շատ կան, որ մարդն աներկղյուղ թափում է արյուն... (i-21:110) the next example adduced from childe harold’s pilgrimage runs as follows: and marvel mens should quit their eary chair, the toilsome way, and long, long league to trace… the phraseological unit to quit eary chair in this extract means to make no attempt to improve the situation. it is a metaphoric phraseological unit whose meaning is totally preserved in the translated version of the phrase (գամված աթոռին). գամված աթոռին, չեն կարող զգալ ճամփորդի հրճվանքն հովիտներն ի վեր, բարձր լեռների օդը ձյունափայլ: (i-30:113) translation studies armenian folia anglistika 101 in the armenian language the direct meaning of the phrase գամված աթոռին is stuck or clung to the chair which certainly cannot be considered appropriate in this context. however, its metaphoric interpretation is equivalent to quit their eary chair. the phraseological units in the following passage have totally preserved their meaning in the armenian version. and vice that digs her own voluptuous tomb had buried long his hopes, no more to rise. (i-lxxxiii:77) ու մեղքն հեշտասեր փորեց գերեզման, տանելով իր հետ հույսեր վարդագույն: (i-83:131) the units to dig a tomb (that transfers the meaning of the verb to bury) and hopes, no more to rise (which means hopes that will never come true) are metaphoric phraseological units whose meaning is adequately transferred from sl to tl as both exist in the english and armenian linguocultural realities. the translation of biblical phraseological units the unit curst cain’s unresting doom is an example derived from the bible: pleasure’s palled victim! life-abhorring gloom սrote on his faded brow curst cain’s unresting doom. (i-lxxxiii:77) դրոշմեց կայենի անեծքն անսահման: (i-83:131) cain’s curse is an idiom whose source in both languages is the bible, hence its translation in tl is precise and adequate. cain is a cursed character in the bible; g. byron was much interested in this character, thus, it is not accidental that later he wrote the misteria cain. armenian folia anglistika translation studies 102 another biblical phraseological unit is found in the following example: it is that settled, ceasless gloom the fabled hebrew wanderer bore. (i-5:79) its equivalent version in the armenian language is as follows: ա՜խ տանում եմ ես այն վիշտն անդադար, որ թափառական հրեան է կրում: (i-inessin:132) hebrew wanderer (թափառական հրեա) is an idiom that exists in christian and israelite traditions and is used both in english and armenian. a hebrew wanderer is a person with an extraordinary destiny that attracted byron’s attention. let us consider the following example: or fear their name defiled from slavery’s mournful page. (ii-lxxv:114) որ ստրկության շղթան անիծված հավերժ թոթափեն մեջքներից ծալված: (ii-75:163) the phraseological unit slavery’s mournful page is translated into armenian as ստրկության շղթա. although in the armenian passage the unit թոթափեն մեջքներից (to take away the burden, to get free of the burden) is not the adequate form of the phraseological unit in the source language (slavery’s mournful page), the meaning of the original is totally preserved in the armenian version. in other words, there are situations when this or that phraseological unit in sl does not have its equivalent form in tl, hence the translation studies armenian folia anglistika 103 translator has either to paraphrase it or give its descriptive translation in order to preserve the idea expressed in the original text. byronic phraseological units in the following extract silent sea is an individual authorial or byronic phraseological unit. something too much of this: but now tis past, and the spell closes with its silent seal. (iii-vii:153) կորավ անցյալի հմայքը վսեմ, ավա~ղ, դրոշմված լռությամբ դաժան: (iii-8:174) with silent sea is translated into armenian as դրոշմված լռությամբ. the phraseological units created by a particular writer are called individual authorial units. this kind of phraseological units enrich not only the target language, but also the source language from which they are translated. it is well known that a writer often describes or writes about this or that mythological and religious fact, the memories that have remained in his/her consciousness. consequently, it can be assumed that the phraseological unit silent seal is connected with a certain old religious ritual, which was stamped in the poet’s memory. in this respect fon humboldt states that there are writers who due to the moments of strong inspiration can give or inject some new, additional characteristics to the language of their creative work (humbol’dt 1985:372). in the passage to follow the whole scene, its beauty and expressiveness is adequately transferred from english to armenian. stop! for tread is on an empire’s dust! (iii-xvii:156) կանգ ա՛ռ, ո՜վ ճամփորդ, դու կայսրության հողն ես ոտք դնում... (iii-17:177) armenian folia anglistika translation studies 104 in the armenian translation of the phraseological unit tread is on an empire’s dust (հողն ես ոտք դնում...) the original meaning is preserved. however, difference between them is revealed. in the armenian language հող means soil but it also conveys the meaning of the word land which in this context stands for an empire’s dust. the wordcombination tread is on an empire’s dust comes to mean that someone’s foot stepped on the land of the empire. in fact, it is an idiom whose source is considered to be connected with war tradition as it symbolizes the winner who puts his foot on a new land or the invader who occupies a new land. thus, even though in this passage there is no similar phraseological unit in tl, the translated version conveys the meaning of the extract adequately. the interplay of the categories of part and whole in the art of translation here comes another example with a breathtaking description of the nature of divine love and beauty. ……..and the bend of stirring branches, and the bud which brings the swiftest thought of beauty here extend mingling-and maok fy love-unto one mighty end. (iii-cii:186-187) եվ բողբոջն այս նուրբ ու ցողաշաղ կյանքի է կոչել սեր աստվածն արդար ու ձուլել միմյանց՝ կյանքի համար: (iii-102:207) the word-combination maok fy love which means made by love expresses the meaning of creating something for happiness. the armenian translation in general conveys the beautiful description of love in the original text. at first sight it may seem that the image of the whole scene is successfully and adequately transferred to tl, however, in this respect some observations should be made. it is well-acknowledged that in adequate translations the translation studies armenian folia anglistika 105 meaning of a text may be adequately transferred due to a proper choice of the constituents the text is constructed with. the phraseological unit կյանքի կոչել ( to bring to life) is used to substitute the english word-combination made by love or created by love which can at least be observed as a set-phrase but not as an idiom. in fact, the translator transfers this meaning with the help of the idiom կյանքի կոչել which partially reveals the idea that the basis of happiness and beauty is love. hence, on the whole the translator managed to transfer the meaning of the original. however, it cannot possibly be described as adequate translation. in the following extract another interesting word-combination is revealed: i saw from out the wave her structures as from the stroke of the rise enchanter’s wand… (iv-i:206) կարծես դյութական գավազանով մի ելնում են ծովից շենքերն անկաշկանդ... (iv-i:213) the set-expression enchanter’s wand is translated into armenian as դյութական գավազան. the word enchanter prompts us to think that the source of the phrase should be searched in fairytales, myths or the bible. the armenian translation is done adequately as it conveys not only the meaning of the set-expression but also that of the whole passage. however, we can observe that although the translation is done adequately, in the english version the stress is put on the word stroke but in the armenian translation it falls on the set-expression enchanter’s wand. presumably, this phenomenon can be explained by the differences in the linguocultural reality of the writer and the translator. armenian folia anglistika translation studies 106 conclusion thus, it can be assumed that the translations of phraseological units, particularly idiomatic expressions from the source language into the target language are carried out by using the following strategies: a) using an idiom of similar meaning and form. this strategy involves using an idiom in the target language which conveys roughly the same meaning as that of the source language idiom, and, in addition, consists of equivalent lexical items. the sources of this kind of idioms from childe harold’s pilgrimage are either from the bible or greek mythology. b) using an idiom of similar meaning but not form. the idiom in the target language is transferred through the medium of idiom or expression consisting of lexical units different from those in the source language. c) using paraphrasing is the most common way of translating idioms. it takes place when a match for this or that idiom cannot be found in the target language, or when it seems inappropriate to use idiomatic language in the target text because of differences in stylistic preferences of the source and target languages. d) idioms are a colourful and fascinating aspect of any language and their abundant use is found in g. byron’s works. e) “byronic” linguomentality is chiefly based on metaphorical thinking and interpretation of reality. f) the linguostylistic connotations of linguistic units are adequately transferred into the armenian language due to h. tumanyan’s brilliant sense of language world, art of translation and excellent awareness of cultures in general. references: 1. antrushina,g.b. (1985) english lexicology. m.: drofa press. 2. edward, j. (1990) understanding cultural differences. yarmouth, me: intercultural press. translation studies armenian folia anglistika 107 3. ghumashyan, v.s. (2010) george gordon bayroni hayeren targmanutyunneri lezun. candidate disertation. yerevan: ra nas. 4. humboldt, v. (1985) yazyk i kul’tura. yazykovaya kartina mira. m.: visshaya shkola. 5. kunin, a.v. (1970) angliyskaya frazeologiya. m.: visshaya shkola. 6. kunin, a.v. (1984) english russian phraseological dictionary. m.: russkiy yazyk. 7. (1997) oxford dictionary of english idioms. oxford: oup. 8. (2005) oxford dictionary of foreign words and phrases. oxford: oup. 9. soukiasyan, a.m.; galstyan, m.a. (1975) hayoc lezvi dardzvatsabanakan bararan. yerevan: yerevan university press. 10. the encyclopedia of dormat languages. available at: <http:// philologica.net/studia/2000308140000.htm> [accessed may 2018]. 11. wikipedia. available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki> [accessed may 2018]. 12. yezekyan, l. (2008) hayoc lezvi vochagitutyun. yerevan: yerevan university press. sources of data: 1. bayron, g.g. (1965) yerkeri zhoghovacu. yerevan: hayastan press. 2. bayron, g.g. (1985) polomnichestvo chaylda garolda. moskva: pravda. 3. byron, g.g. (1862) childe harold’s pilgrimage. leipzig: bernhard tauchnitz (harvard college library). «բայրոնյան» դարձվածքները և դրանց համարժեք թարգմանությունը հայերենում ջ. բայրոնի գրական բառապաշարում զգալի քանակ են կազմում աստվածաշնչից ու հունական դիցաբանությունից վերցված դարձվածքները: armenian folia anglistika translation studies 108 սույն հոդվածում ուսումնասիրվում են ջ. բայրոնի չայլդ հարոլդի ուխտագնացությունը ստեղծագործության դարձվածային միավորների թարգմանելիության հնարավորությունները հայերենում: հատուկ ուշադրություն է դարձվում այսպես կոչված «բայրոնական» դարձվածքների համարժեք թարգմանության խնդրին: հոդվածում քննվում է նաև այնպիսի դարձվածքների թարգմանելիության հարցը, որոնք ընդհանրապես բացակայում են հայ լեզվամշակութային իրականության մեջ: microsoft word contens verjin armenian folia anglistika culture studies 142 stone in cognitive perspective mara baghdasaryan yerevan state university abstract this paper is aimed to look into the concept քար/stone, to reveal its meaning capacity, to illustrate its characteristics. the parallel study of the concept in four languages enables a cross-cultural perspective into the phenomenon which is essentially linguocultural. the systematization of the phraseology through cognitive models/frames designed on the basis of the idea realized by the concept and their analysis reveal the common and specific features of this concept across cultures. key words: concept “stone’’, linguocultural analysis, cognitive frame, conceptualization, lexical realization, phraseology, counterpart. introduction cross-cultural communication has become an indispensable part of our contemporary reality and the study of languages across cultures is now vital as never before. in this context our studies of languages take more various and complex forms. but first we should understand what culture is and how it can be approached. culture is generally defined as a system of values and beliefs, which we share with others and the whole of which gives us a sense of belonging or identity. and naturally these values and beliefs are different within various nations and societies. we should understand what language is. it, in fact, is words and phrases that do not just have abstract meanings. they are the reflection of certain concepts and meanings that vary from culture to culture. they are symbols for social and material interconnections and can be understood in the context of communication, the latter finding its realization or specification in culture. so, culture studies armenian folia anglistika 143 language being part of culture can be defined as a cultural resource and also a powerful tool of human activity which, in its turn, is culture bound, too. hence we would consider it relevant to state, as an important standpoint for our research, the idea that any language should be considered and referred to as culturally biased. it advances the cultural assumptions and values embedded in its words, structures and philosophy. stone in armenian, russian, english and italian: definitions and lexical realizations the concept to be analyzed in the framework of the present paper is քար/stone. it is deeply rooted in the armenian national consciousness and culture. this concept demonstrates a wide range of meanings and a huge potential of context coverage. it is a most frequently referred concept in the armenian linguoculture. along with literary expressions there are also many dialectal and colloquial ones, which is another evidence showing that this concept is culture bound. the study of the mentioned concept will be realized through a comparative analysis with other linguocultures – english, russian and italian – as things often become more obvious in comparison. so the linguocultural characteristics of the concept stone will be revealed and interpreted in its corresponding realizations in a number of languages. such a comparative study of language realizations will help to reveal and understand the mental and cultural characteristics of thinking and behavior valid in different cultures, identify the common features and differences of worldview and world perception. the analysis of linguocultural concepts illustrates their conceptual, evaluative role and function and enhances a better understanding of the cultures. the abovementioned concept will be presented through mental models/frames aimed at revealing the linguocultural thinking.1 in the present paper the concept քար/stone will be discussed through a number of cognitive frames which have been designed on the basis of the meanings realized by it. before presenting the frames proper it is regarded relevant to look into the definition of this noun given in explanatory armenian folia anglistika culture studies 144 dictionaries. the lexical-semantic field of the meaning of this noun has both similarities and differences in the languages being discussed (the presentation of the specifically professional or technical meanings of this noun are omitted here as non-relevant to this research). քար – 1. միահաղույն զանգվածի կամ առանձին կտորների ձևով, կարծր` անկռելի և ջրում չլուծվող լեռնային ապար, 2. այդպիսի լեռնապարի առանձին բեկոր` կտոր /որպես շինանյութ, քանդակագործության նյութ և այլն/, 3. ակ, թանկագին քար, 4. շիրմաքար, գերեզմանաքար, 5. /ժղ./ լեռ, սար, ժայռ, 6. կշռաքար, 7. զանազան խաղերի փայտյա, ոսկրե, մետաղյա և այլն փոքրիկ իրերից` ֆիգուրներից յուրաքանչյուրը (aghayan1976:1557): камень – твердая горная порода кусками или сплошной массой, а также кусок, обломок такой породы (ожегов 1988:214). stone – 1. hard solid non-metallic mineral matter of which rock is made, especially as a building material; a small piece of rock found on the ground; a meteorite made of rock, as opposed to metal; 2. a piece of stone shaped for a purpose, especially one of commemoration, ceremony, or demarcation/ a memorial stone/ boundary stones; a gem or jewel; a round piece or counter, originally made of stone, used in various board games, especially the japanese game of go; 3. a hard seed in a cherry, plum, peach, and some other fruits (oxford dictionary 2010). pietra – 1. frantume di roccia, usato come materiale da costruzione o per ornamento (zingarelli 2014:1677). as is evident from the dictionary definition the first meanings are principally the same which refer to stone as a solid mineral matter. in the second place in the armenian dictionary comes the presentation of stone as a building material and what is of particular interest also material for sculpture or some other creation. it is remarkable that almost the same is the basic definition culture studies armenian folia anglistika 145 of stone in the italian dictionary: a building material or a material for ornament. this indicates that the ideas of creation and aesthetics are of utmost importance in the italian culture. in the russian explanatory dictionary no further specification of stone is given. then in the armenian and english definitions references to the precious stone and memorial come similarly. afterwards another point of similarity is observed in the meaning of different objects used in board games. now let us look into the differences. in the armenian version of stone there are also meanings of a stone used in weighing and a mountain/rock. the latter meaning is recorded in the colloquial speech and is of particular interest as here the noun stone is actually used in the widest sense referring to any stone mass of big size. in the english dictionary another meaning of stone is recorded –a hard seed in fruit. obviously it is a narrow specific meaning and does not have such a powerful generalizing coverage as the armenian stone in the sense of any rock or mountain. so, in the explanatory dictionary we can already observe two important linguocultural characteristics of stone in armenian: it is of the widest universal meaning as a reference to any piece or aggregation of this mineral and a particular meaning as a source of creation for this nation. this is only a preliminary observation of the concept stone, which will further be elaborated in the study of the phraseological units with it. the reference to phraseology is considered most useful in the framework of this research as phraseological units are virtual condensations of language which reflects national thinking, lifestyle, culture – in a word the national picture of the world. stone in phraseology and through cognitive frames according to the phraseological dictionaries used for the collection of the data (sukiasyan, galstyan 1975, voynova, zhukov, molotkov, fyodorov 1986, oxford dictionary of idioms 2004, zingarelli 2014) there are around 95 phraseological units with the concept stone in the armenian language, around 25 in the russian language, around 15 in the english language and around 50 in armenian folia anglistika culture studies 146 the italian language. the lexical realizations of the concept stone are քար, լեռ, սար in armenian, камень, гора in russian, stone, mountain, rock in english and pietra, roccia, sasso, montagna, monte in italian. even at the only sight of these figures it becomes evident that armenian is particularly rich in the phrases with the concept stone. another marker showing that stone is typical of the armenian linguoculture is that around 10 cognitive frames have been designed on the basis of the armenian phraseological units. some of these frames are further made precise through subframes. all this indicates the depth and variety of the use of the concept stone in armenian. some of these frames are valid in russian, english and italian, too, but surely not in such an impressive representation. also there are some frames which are not typical of armenian but have been designed on the basis of the data of the russian, english and/or italian languages. thus below will be presented the frames designed as a result of our research (the order of the frames is solely conditioned by the order of the occurrence of the corresponding armenian phraseological units in the dictionary and has a simply technical reason). 1. stone – coldness; emotionlessness; indifference; immobility քար լացացնել, քար հալեցնել = fare piangere le pietre; far piangere i sassi; fare pena/ compassione ai sassi; fare ridere le pietre; cuore di pietra = avere un cuore di sasso; essere un sasso; essere duro come un sasso, essere di sasso ≠ non essere di sasso; քար անտարբերություն; fall on stony ground /of words or a suggestion/; քար կտրել = rimanere di pietra; rimanere di sasso 2. stone – failure, prevention, obstacle քար գցել /մի բանի վրա/; գլխին քար գցել /մեկի, մի բանի/; գլխին քար ընկնել; քար գլտորել /արևմտհ./; քարը դուրս բերել; քարը մեջքին գալ; քար խառնել; mettersi un sasso al collo; gettare il sasso e nascondere il mano 2.1 closing silencing culture studies armenian folia anglistika 147 քար դնել մի բանի վրա = metterci una pietra sopra; քարը բարձրացնել, տակով/ն/ անել; քարը վերցնել, քարի տակը դնել; pietra tombale 2.2 end of good/success քարը ծովն ընկնել 2.3 collapse (also moral) քարը քսած /բրբ./; քարը քսել; քարին ու հողին հավասար անել 3. stone – solidity/firmness, strength, powerfulness քար դառնալ; քարեն կակուղը ուտել /բրբ./; քարեն ջուր հանել /բրբ./; քարը բռնել` ջուր հանել; քարը հուպ տալ` ջուր հանել; քարը սեղմել` ջուր հանել /խսկց./; քարի կծիկ; քարի կոկոն /1-ին նշանակություն/; dormire come un sasso; dormire come una monatgna; քար լինի` կմարսի; լեռան պես կանգնել = стоять горой за кого, за что; стать /встать/ горой за кого, за что; как на каменную гору/стену надеяться/полагаться на кого, на что; как за каменной стеной; avere la roccia tra le ditta 3.1 bigness/big measurement քարի նման/պես; քարը ճաթել; քարը ճաքել/տրաքվել (որ քարը ճաքի` տրաքվի); cavare sangue da una pietra; spaccare i sassi; քարի վրա դնելիս/գցելիս քարը հալվել/պատռվել/տրաքվել; քար լինի` կտրաքի/կճաթի; քարը քարին/քարի վրա չթողնել = камня на камне не оставить = non lasciare pietra su pietra; քարը քարին/քարի վրա չմնալ = камня на камне не остаться; լեռներ շարժել/շրջել/շուռ տալ = սար շուռ տալ = воротить горы/гору; ворочать/двигать горами = move mountains = muovere/smuovere mari e monti, золотые/златые горы, идти/пойти в гору/вверх ≠ идти/пойти под гору/под уклон; լեռը/երկնեց/մուկ ծնեց = la montagna ha partorito il topolino; promettere mari e monti; make a mountain out of a molehill; սարի նման/պես = essere grande come un amontagna; sembrare una montagna; սարի չափ = una montagna di; լեռ ու բեռ; pesare come una montagna; սարերի ետևում /լինել/ = յոթ/ը/ սարի ետև ≠ не за горами; սարերով մեկ դառնալ; armenian folia anglistika culture studies 148 սար ու ձորի տարբերություն լինել; սարից ձորից /խոսել և այլն/; սար ու ձոր գցել/ընկնել; սար/եր/ ու ձորեր բաժանել; սար ու քոլ ընկնել 3.2 stubbornness քարը գոգից թափել, քարը գոգից վեր ածել, քարը փեշից թափել/վեր ածել /խսկց./ 3.3 burden, difficulty սար ընկնել ուսերից = как гора с плеч /свалилась/; սրտի վրայից ծանր քար ընկնել/սրտից քար ընկնել = камень с души/с сердца свалился ≠ камень на душе; have a mountain to climb; սարը սարի վրա դնել; avere una pietra sullo stomaco; քարը գլխին տալ, գլուխը քարին; leave no stone unturned 3.4 stinginess/the quality of being tight-fisted քարի կոկոն /2-րդ նշանակություն/ 4. stone – hardship/difficulty, torturing/suffering երկու քարի արանքում = between a rock and a hard place /informal/; երկու քարի արանքում գցել/դնել; երկու քարի արանքում ընկնել/մնալ; քարեն /առնել/ քացախին տալ; քարեքար տալ; քարից քար խփել; нашла коса на камень; подводные камни/камешки; камень преткновения /книжн./= on the rocks /of a relationship or enterprise/ 4.1 wondering from one place/side to another (as a type of suffering, hardship) քարեքար գալ; քարեքար դիպնել; քարեքար ընկնել; սարերը ընկնել/չափել; սարեսար ման գալ/ընկնել; սար ու քոլին տալ /իրեն/ culture studies armenian folia anglistika 149 5. stone – creation (also by the power of mind; with difficulties/overcoming hardships), basis generation քարից հաց հանել; քարից հաց քամել; քարից յուղ հանել; քարեն կաթ կթել /բրբ./; քարի` հողի հետ կռիվ տալ; քարի, քոլի հետ կռիվ տալ; քարը քարին չդնել; portare la prima pietra all’edificio; posare/porre la prima pietra; краеугольный камень = pietra angolare; pietra dello scandalo 6. stone – silence քարերը աղաղակել= камни вопиют / камни возопили /книжн./ 7. stone – hint; meaning քար գցել մեկի բանջարանոցը = бросать/кидать/пускать камешки/камень в огород; քարը կտուրը գցել; քարը տեղը դնել/ձգել 8. stone – means քարն էլ իր ձեռին լինել, պոպոկն/ընկույզն էլ /խսկց./ 9. stone – wilderness withdrawal from people/solitude; withdrawal from people/from civilization սարը քաշվել; սարի արջ 10. stone – memorial քար գցել 11. stone – criticism забросать/закидать камнями/грязью, бросить камнем /в кого/; cast/throw the first stone = scagliare la prima pietra 12. stone – danger suffering держать/иметь камень за пазухой; lanciare un sasso nello stagno; tirare/gettare sassi in piccionaia/colombaia armenian folia anglistika culture studies 150 13. stone – challenge difficulty пробный камень = pietra di paragone the above presented system of frames has mainly been designed on the basis of the armenian phraseology: ten frames out of thirteen. the last three frames and also subframe 3.5 have been designed on the basis of the english, russian and/or italian phraseological units though, for example, frames 12 and 13 have some shades of meaning common with frame 4. the armenian lexical realization լեռ and its russian counterpart гора, english counterpart mountain, italian counterparts montagna and monte are expressed in the general frame 3 and the subframe 3.1. another fact we would like to comment on is that the two other lexical realizations of the concept stone in armenian – լեռ and սար – are less representative than the word քար which is actually the basic linguistic embodiment of the concept. in the case of լեռ and its counterparts the idea of firmness becomes even stronger as in լեռան պես կանգնել, стоять горой за кого/что, стать/встать горой за кого/что, как на каменную гору надеяться/полагаться на кого/что and the idea of bigness associated with physical size becomes more remarkable, also particularly as a result of the use of լեռ in plural as in լեռներ շարժել, воротить горы/гору, двигать горами, move mountains, muovere mari e monti, золотые горы, promettere mari e monti and the juxtaposition of the ideas of bigness and smallness as in լեռը /երկնեց/ մուկ ծնեց, la montagna ha partorito il topolino, promettere mari e monti, make a mountain out of a molehill, muovere mari e monti. the armenian lexical realization սար and its counterparts in the other languages (which are practically the same as those of լեռ) are mainly expressed in the subframes 3.1, 3.3 and 4.1. in the case of subframe 3.3, too, սար is conceptually stronger than քար and makes the idea of burden/difficulty stronger: compare սրտից քար ընկնել and սար ընկնել ուսերից. another technique of pluralization of idea – repetition of the word-concept – is used in սարը սարի վրա դնել expressed through the same frame. anyway, the conceptualization through սար is obviously frequent through its idea of big culture studies armenian folia anglistika 151 measurement, physical bigness in particular: սարի նման/պես, essere grande come una montagna, sembrare una montagna, սարի չափ, una montagna di, սար շուռ տալ. here, too, the ideas of plurality and contrast are exploited to make the bigness of measurement more expressive, e.g. սարերի ետևում /լինել/, յոթ/ը/ սարի ետև (յոթ is a numeral meaning seven which transmits a much stronger idea of plurality than the plural of the corresponding noun would express in this phrase), не за горами, սարերով մեկ դառնալ, սար ու ձորի տարբերություն լինել, սարից ձորից /խոսել/, սար ու ձոր գցել/ընկնել, սար/եր/ ու ձորեր բաժանել, սար ու քոլ ընկնել. the plurality of սար suggests the idea of a bigger coverage in particular. with reference to the subframe 4.1 it should be stated that apart from the idea of wondering from one place/side to another as a type of suffering or hardship as in քարեքար գալ, սարեսար ման գալ/ընկնել, սար ու քոլին տալ /իրեն/, սարերը ընկնել the phraseological units with սար/եր/ and սարեսար also express the idea of a difficult search. frame 9 is actually designed on the basis of the phraseological units with սար. wilderness expresses the idea of being distanced from people either in the meaning of seclusion, solitude or in the meaning of lacking civilization and being ignorant/harsh: compare սարը քաշվել and սարի արջ. frame 11 expresses the idea of criticism exemplified through забрасывать/забросать камнями кого, бросать/бросить камнем в кого in russian and cast/throw the first stone in english and scagliare la prima pietra in italian. it should be mentioned that in english and italian it is the same phrase which comes from st john’s gospel and is universal. frames 12 and 13 are exemplified through the russian and/or italian phrases держать/иметь камень за пазухой and пробный камень / pietra di paragone, correspondingly. the ideas of danger suffering and challenge difficulty as can be seen have something in common with frame 4 but still the main conceptual contents is expressed in the ideas of danger and challenge. it is remarkable that there are many synonyms and even antonyms among the phraseological units with the concept stone. below are only presented some armenian folia anglistika culture studies 152 of them to avoid an extensive repetition (the sequence of these examples is according to the conceptual classification above): քար լացացնել = քար հալեցնել; քար գցել /մի բանի վրա/ = գլխին քար գցել /մեկի, մի բանի/ = քար գլտորել /արևմտհ./; քար դնել մի բանի վրա = քարը բարձրացնել, տակով/ն/ անել = քարը վերցնել, քարի տակը դնել; սար ընկնել ուսերից = սրտի վրայից ծանր քար ընկնել /սրտից քար ընկնել/; լեռներ շարժել/շրջել/շուռ տալ = սար շուռ տալ; քարեքար գալ = քարեքար ընկնել = սարերը ընկնել = սարեսար ընկնել = սար ու քոլին տալ /իրեն/; քարից հաց հանել = քարից հաց քամել = քարից յուղ հանել = քարեն կաթ կթել /բրբ./ = քարի`հողի հետ կռիվ տալ = քարի, քոլի հետ կռիվ տալ; fare piangere le pietre = far piangere i sassi; essere duro come un sasso = essere di sasso ≠ non essere di sasso; rimanere di pietra = rimanere di sasso; dormire come un sasso = dormire come una monatgna; воротить горы/гору = ворочать/двигать горами; идти/пойти в гору /вверх/ ≠ идти/пойти под гору/под уклон; забросать/закидать камнями/грязью = бросить камнем /в кого/. conclusion the active use of the concept stone in phraseology of different languages and even the existence of synonymous and antonymous phraseological units among them account for the fact that the stone is one of the most basic living environments common for all human beings. at the same time the particular abundance of the phraseological units with the concept stone and the variety of the conceptualization of the underlying notion, as well as the noticeable synonymic series in armenian are strong indicators that this concept has a special meaning for this nation. the stone has for centuries been the typical living environment of the armenian nation, it has become an essential scope of culture studies armenian folia anglistika 153 worldview, a vital means of struggle for life, a basic source of creation – both material and spiritual – for this people. stone is specific to the armenian nation, it is deeply rooted and active in its language. the natural environment is “fixed” in the culture and language – the big repositories and sources of thinking and behaviour. note: 1. a frame can be defined as a structure of knowledge or a mechanism of knowledge building: in the broad sense, a frame is a cognitive model. a frame is a unified structure of knowledge, a coherent schematization of experience. it is a structure of data which exists in a person’s consciousness and which a person uses to recognize and process typical situations and phenomena. it represents the essential, typical and possible features of the concept, which can be conditioned to this or that extent, that is they have a situational basis. frames shape a person’s perception of the world and direct his behaviour (see kubryakova, demyankov, pankrats, luzina 1997, minskiy 1979, fillmore 1988). references: 1. aghayan, e. (1976) ardi hayereni batsatrakan bararan. yerevan: “hayastan” hratarakchutyun. 2. sukiasyan, a.; galstyan, s. (1975) hayots lezvi dardzvatzabanakan bararan. yerevan: yerevani hamalsarani hratarakchutyun. 3. voynova, l.; zhukov, v.; molotkov, a.; fyodorov, a. (1986) frazeologicheskiy slovar’ russkogo yazika. / pod red. a. molotkova, izd. 4oye. m.: russkiy yazik. 4. kubryakova, ye.; demyankov, v.; pankrats, yu.; luzina, l. (1997) kratkiy slovar’ kognitivnikh terminov. m.: mgu. armenian folia anglistika culture studies 154 5. minskiy, m. (1979) freymi dlya predstavleniya znaniy. m.: energiya. 6. ozhegov, s. (1988) slovar’ russkogo yazika. 20-oye izd. m.: russkiy yazik. 7. fillmore, ch. (1988) freymi i semantika ponimaniya. // novoye v zarubezhnoy lingvistike. kognitivniye aspekti yazika. vip. xxiii. m.: progress. 8. (2010) oxford dictionary (for abbyy lingvo x5). 3rd edition. oxford: oup. 9. (2004) oxford dictionary of idioms. / ed. by judith siefring. 2nd edition. oxford, new york: oup. 10. zingarelli, n. (2014) vocabolario della lingua italiana. milano: zanichelli. քար հասկացույթը ճանաչողական մոտեցմամբ հոդվածի նպատակն է հասկանալ քար հասկացույթի էությունը, վեր հանել դրա գաղափարային հնարավորություններն ու ցույց տալ առանձնահատկությունները: հասկացույթի զուգադիր ուսումնասիրությունը չորս լեզուներում թույլ է տալիս սույն երևույթը քննել միջմշակութային դիտանկյունից և բացահայտել դրա լեզվամշակութային էությունը: դարձվածաբանական միավորների վերլուծությունը, համակարգումը ճանաչողական մոդելների/ֆրեյմերի միջոցով, որոնք մշակվել են հասկացույթի իրացրած գաղափարի հիման վրա, վեր են հանում այս հասկացույթի ընդհանուր և ուրույն հատկանիշները տարբեր մշակույթներում: microsoft word 2. methodology 55 128 (1) methodology armenian folia anglistika 83 on some features of logical thought in writing marina karapetyan yerevan state university abstract this paper considers some features of logical thinking in persuasive essay writing. a solid essay is logically organized and well-developed; it advances consistent arguments supported by strong evidence. at the same time, it demonstrates cogency of reasoning, completeness and unity of thought. all this suggests that the ideas in each paragraph and the overall essay relate to one another, are arranged in a logical sequence and lead to a valid conclusion. based on scientific approach to logical reasoning, the paper outlines various reasoning techniques that can be employed to produce a forceful essay. key words: logical sequence, deduction, induction, analogy, causal argument, predictions, credibility. introduction teaching how to write an independent essay is more than just explaining how to brainstorm, plan and put ideas on paper. it also aims at making the writer’s ideas more orderly, rational and cohesive. in the 30 or 40 minutes of allotted writing time on the toefl ibt and ielts tests, it is hard for a foreign language learner (even at an intermediate and an upper-intermediate level) to integrate new language skills with logical thinking. as a result, we deal with works which are rather incomprehensible due to abrupt changes of thought, cluttered ideas, errors of judgement and invalid conclusions. this paper considers some features of logical thinking in persuasive essay writing for the toefl ibt and ielts tests. a solid essay is logically organized and well-developed; it advances consistent arguments supported by strong evidence. at the same time, it demonstrates cogency of reasoning, completeness and unity of thought. based on scientific approach to logical reasoning, the paper outlines various reasoning techniques that can be employed armenian folia anglistika methodology 84 to produce a forceful essay. paragraphs used to illustrate the techniques are borrowed both from model and students’ essays. essay logic logical reasoning is an effective method of persuasion which makes the author’s ideas easy to follow. the essay writer seeks to appeal to reason by using logical arguments to communicate to the reader the way s/he understands an issue. admittedly, opinions vary from person to person and hence should be supported by sound reasons. in this process, the writer advances several evidence-based arguments and proceeds toward a justified conclusion. although test-takers are not judged for wrong opinions, it is a distinct advantage to be able to demonstrate rational thinking. what they need is to express themselves in a logically consistent way so the essay reads smoothly and the ideas are readily comprehensible. on this background, the essay logic serves two functions: correlating the premises and the conclusion, on the one hand, and assessing the degree of plausibility of the conclusion, on the other. the former rests on the arrangement of ideas in a certain sequence, while the latter consists in the writer’s ability to employ deductive and inductive reasoning techniques, including enumerative induction, analogical induction, causal arguments and predictions. the combination of the two methods strengthens the writer’s arguments and prevents potential weaknesses. further, we shall consider them more closely. correlating the premises and the conclusion in terms of correlation of the premises and the conclusion, two broad types of idea progression in an essay can be categorized: from a general point to particular information and vice versa. when we examine model essays from various sources, what we observe is that most writings apply general-to-specific order, although it is not rare to find good examples of the reverse sequence. the process is slightly different in an overall essay and in body paragraphs. in an overall essay, the information is sequenced from the general thesis statement to supporting evidence. the thesis in the introductory paragraph expresses the writer’s position on an issue and is followed by three or four body paragraphs presenting more concrete ideas to bring credibility to the thesis. the conclusion to be reached is predictable – the reader can anticipate the outcome from the earlier stated thesis. methodology armenian folia anglistika 85 thus, a short plan for a general-to-specific essay looks as follows: thesis: children’s new habits are the source of their poor health. para 1: too much homework causes stress and exhaustion. para 2: violent computer games make children nervous. para 3: junk food and lack of exercise lead to obesity and related illnesses. conclusion: children’s bad habits are a serious threat to growing organisms. as can be seen, the writer adopts a general attitude about an issue and then seeks to reinforce it by outlining specific evidence. the conclusion confirms the initial thesis. alternatively, in a body paragraph the order is from the topic sentence to specific details and examples. the topic sentence in each paragraph sets forth one basic argument (the main idea), the explanation clarifies its meaning, and the details illustrate the point. in fully developed paragraphs this information is also emphasized in a closing sentence, which gives the paragraph a sense of unity and completeness. consider the paragraph below: many people would not endure work they hate, whatever the external benefits. passion for what one does gives an intrinsic stimulus to succeed. this is especially true of people of creative professions such as painters, musicians, beauticians, actors, as well as people engaged in scientific activity. an inventor puts his heart and soul into his brainchild without thinking about the profits he can get from it. the best reward for him is to see the humanity enjoying his creation. love for one’s job is what really matters. because the conventional general-to-specific pattern keeps to a fixed plan, it is the easy to teach and to learn. it is also the most effective and practical form of logical organization: the essay is comprehensible and focused, the train of thought is easy to follow, and the conclusion can be predicted. it is helpful for producing various kinds of essays, including argumentative, cause-and-effect, compare-and-contrast, problem-solution and descriptive ones. armenian folia anglistika methodology 86 the other mode of writing an essay follows a specific-to-general order. this is a less common strategy and is favored by writers who are ready to experiment in the writing process. using creative and unorthodox thinking, they organize their ideas by drawing on specific occurrences as springboards from which to move to general statements. the essay’s thesis statement is given in the introduction only as a preliminary observation, which may be slightly modified by the end of the writing process. in turn, the topic ideas come in the body paragraphs preceded by examples and details. the student’s paragraph below demonstrates the use of specific-to-general order (question: some people say that advertising encourages us to buy things we really do not need. others say that advertisements tell us about new products that may improve our lives. which viewpoint do you agree with?): to begin with, when we see the radiant smile of an actress who supposedly washes her teeth with colgate, for example, we are subconsciously urged to buy the toothpaste. we want to believe that our teeth will shine as brightly as hers. advertising agencies use psychological means of persuasion: nice-looking happy people, promise of solutions for all our problems, etc. truly, ads reach their goal of persuading us we can’t do without certain goods and services. the writer arrives at his conclusion resting on the example of a particular advert and on the response this and other ads evoke in the audience. below is another example, which is abridged from a model essay (official toefl ibt tests, 2013, toefl test prep planner: 73). the specific-togeneral order is used throughout the essay (question: do you agree or disagree? a teacher’s ability to relate well with students is more important than excellent knowledge of the subject being taught): i remember every teacher that has taught me since i was in kindergarten. ……… the teachers all looked very kind and understanding in my eyes as a child. they had special relationships with nearly each and every one of the students. that’s the reason i remember all of them. a teacher’s primary goal is to teach students the best they can methodology armenian folia anglistika 87 about the things that are in our textbooks and, more important, how to show respect for one another. they teach us how to live a better life by getting along with everyone. in order to do that, the teachers themselves have to be able to relate well with students. my parents are teachers too. ……… my parents’ ability to relate well with my brother and i allows them to teach not just the subject they teach but also their excellent knowledge of life. knowledge of the subject being taught is something taken for granted. ……… any teacher is able to have excellent knowledge of their subject but not all teachers can have the ability to relate well with students. as can be seen, the writer proceeds from his personal school experience, as well as his relations with his own parents, who are also teachers. he establishes his priorities at the end of each paragraph and fully exposes his belief about a teacher’s most important quality in the closing lines. what is especially interesting about this mode of writing is that you can end up with an unexpected conclusion. the writer is primarily guided by some specific instances from his or her life, and it is those instances that dictate the direction the essay will develop further. in fact, the results can be unpredictable and the writer can easily digress from his or her purpose. the method is mainly applicable to scientific research but it can also be effective in expository, descriptive and other types of short essay and is certainly worth practicing if one has a passion for writing and creative potential. there have not been too many student essays in our practice that used purely specific-to-general organization, although a few test-takers have well succeeded in developing their essays in this way. on the whole, the pattern can be seen more frequently on a paragraph level, especially in the conclusion. by contrast, an overall essay typically applies the reverse pattern. assessing the degree of plausibility of the conclusion the two aforesaid methods of sequencing ideas also indicate the so-called deductive and inductive logical reasoning, respectively. however, these reasoning processes imply more than just putting ideas in order. at this point, we arrive at the other logical function – assessing the degree of plausibility of the conclusion. in this sense, some arguments lead to “necessary” conclusions, armenian folia anglistika methodology 88 others to “credible” ones. the former arguments are sufficient to lead to only one possible conclusion with no other alternatives. the latter arrive at a conclusion only with some degree of certainty. according to the degree of plausibility of the conclusion, two main types of arguments can be distinguished: deductive and inductive. in independent essays a conclusion that is absolutely true is a rare case. thus, we can only be speaking about credible conclusions. the analysis of a substantial number of model and students’ essays leads us to the inference that even though most persuasive writings are organized deductively in terms of idea progression (general-to-specific), not all of them can be claimed to be deductive in the sense that the conclusion is not reached with absolute certainty. in case of deductive reasoning, however, the degree of plausibility is a matter of a claim’s scope, whereas induction always leaves room for speculation. let us consider a model deductive paragraph: career preparation is becoming more and more important to young people. for many, this is the primary reason to go to college. they know that the job market is competitive. at college, they can learn new skills for careers with a lot of opportunities. this means careers, such as information technology, that are expected to need a large workforce in the coming years. (lougheed 2004:150) to make the argument easy to follow, we have adapted it to a simple deductive syllogism (in this case, the so-called hypothetical syllogism): major premise: if some young people go to college, they will learn new skills. if a then b. minor premise: if they learn new skills, they will have careers with a lot of opportunities, such as information technology. if b then c. conclusion: if some young people go to college, they will have careers with a lot of opportunities, such as information technology. therefore, if a then c. methodology armenian folia anglistika 89 here, the writer takes a position on an issue and tries to justify her point of view. as can be seen, the given premises are quite sufficient to come to a sound and necessary conclusion, if we consider that the claim is limited to “many” or “some” young people. if a full scope claim were made, using words like “all”, “everyone”, “students” in general, or adverbs like “always”, the conclusion would have a considerable degree of uncertainty. in turn, inductive arguments only lead to credible rather than necessary conclusions. with the focus on writing toefl and ielts essays, we shall limit our discussion to four of the major types of inductive reasoning: enumerative induction, analogical induction, causal arguments, and predictions. in the so-called enumerative induction, we base our judgements about the entire class on the observation of a limited number of subjects from the same class. as a case in point, consider the above essay from ets where the writer describes the teaching methods of his parents thus arriving at the conclusion that a teacher’s most important quality is the ability to relate well with students rather than the excellent knowledge of the subject taught. this conclusion cannot be viewed as certain or necessary, at least because it is an example of the teachers’ ability to relate well with one’s own children – an extremely limited scope for judging about the same ability at large. we cannot accurately judge about all teachers even resting on the writer’s relationships with other teachers in his life. enumerative induction in short essays is also reflected by statistical reasoning, where the writer judges about all by answers taken from a representative sample, which cannot indicate facts with absolute accuracy. on the test, it is rare to use statistics as it does not readily come to mind. yet, it is not impossible, and students with certain professional backgrounds sometimes provide relevant numerical data. another type of inductive argument is analogical induction. it is based on a comparison of different objects or phenomena. the writer seeks to describe or explain the qualities of one object resting on its essential similarities with the other. similarities in a number of characteristics suggest that the objects are likely to share other characteristics too. the degree of plausibility of the conclusions depends on the correlation of similarities and differences between the objects compared. the more the objects are alike, the higher the probability of the conclusion, and vice versa. analogies create memorable mental images and thus help both the writer and the reader visualize an issue. but they are only armenian folia anglistika methodology 90 used to clarify a hypothesis rather than prove it. this kind of reasoning predominantly occurs on a sentence and paragraph levels. in his essay, one student drew a conclusion that social networks can replace face-to-face communication. he proceeded from an analogical argument that on social networks one can meet real people, follow their life events, comment on their activity, share interests, seek and offer advice – the same things friends do in real life. quite rational, at first sight – especially if we are only speaking about communication, not true friendship. this conclusion, though not the only possible one, has a high degree of probability. consider a paragraph from another student’s essay (question: do you agree or disagree? disobedient students must be isolated from the rest of the class and taught separately): trying to teach a student who isn’t willing to learn is the same as trying to treat a patient who is indifferent to his own health. like the patient who can’t be cured if he is not willing to take the medicine prescribed by his doctor, the student who is too lazy to follow his teacher’s instructions will not be able to succeed. alternatively, even if a hopeless patient eventually starts the treatment, his apathy will impede his recovery. this is also true of a student who is only motivated to learn because of the upcoming exam. without internal motivation he will not make progress. despite the strong impression they leave on a reader, analogies can be somewhat faulty. some relevant similarities between the compared subjects may really exist, but the conclusion will always have a degree of uncertainty. we cannot judge about all students by their broad similarity with patients. moreover, the student who is lazy to follow his teacher’s instructions may be quite willing to learn very effectively on his own. similarly, the patient opposing the doctor’s prescriptions may be a supporter of alternative medicine and be getting effective treatment from an acupuncturist. take another analogy: a good roommate is someone who could replace your parent, a sister, a bosom friend. this one is faulty because the seeming resemblance fails at the point we think more closely and see that however perfect a roommate might be, s/he would hardly ever replace a parent. it is important to keep in mind that “analogies cannot serve as evidence in a rational argument because the methodology armenian folia anglistika 91 differences always outweigh the similarities; but analogies can reinforce such arguments if the subjects are indeed similar in some ways” (kennedy et al 2003:509). another type of inductive argument is causal or cause-and-effect reasoning (also referred to as “scientific induction”). in a causal relationship one phenomenon or event is claimed to be the cause of the other, or vice versa. the two premises of the argument are referred to as cause/reason and effect/result. as different from applying this argument in scientific research, in developing it for a test essay we are not seeking for real, but rather possible, causes or effects. thus, the conclusion reached is only credible, not necessary. nevertheless, the causal argument is considered to be stronger than the previous two types of induction and has a higher degree of plausibility of the conclusion. this essay layout presents the possible causes why people are living longer now: argument: today, people are enjoying better health and have longer life expectancy than in the past. cause 1: healthcare services and technologies have developed in recent years. cause 2: life conditions have become more comfortable. cause 3: people are more health-conscious today. conclusion (= effect): today, people are able to live healthier and longer lives. the other layout below outlines the effects of building a new factory in a community. the prompt requires discussing both the advantages and disadvantages of this new influence and expressing one’s attitude about the issue. argument (= cause): building a new factory in our small town will bring more problems than benefits. effect 1: it will ruin the ancient architecture of the town. effect 2: it will pollute our environment and entail new health risks. effect 3: a new factory will create many job openings. armenian folia anglistika methodology 92 conclusion: the drawbacks of a new factory outweigh the benefits, so i am against its construction. there are probably numerous other factors that might prolong life and factors that building a new factory might result in, but it is quite possible to reach a higher plausibility of conclusion by narrowing the scope to major factors only, which should be carefully weighed in terms of their likelihood and correlation with the issues discussed. the last reasoning technique we would like to discuss is prediction. here the writer proceeds from the present or past events to make judgements about the future prospects. although the conclusion is not definite or inevitable, it is highly probable. in the example below, a student pictures some of the changes the 21st century may bring. his argument about the future is based on the past and present evidence: i envisage there will be multiple accomplishments in the sphere of technologies. judging by the pressing current issues, most of the upcoming global innovations in this century will be aimed at reducing environmental risks. for example, greener fuels will be used on a larger scale to drive automobiles, run factories, and warm our dwellings. besides, some countries are already using costly technology for producing home appliances like refrigerators. this technology prevents ozone depletion. i think after a while this technology will also be available in poor countries. we have demonstrated how helpful logical reasoning can be if used correctly. at the same time, all types of logical arguments are prone to fallacies. further, we shall briefly consider the fallacies that occur most frequently in our students’ essays. reasoning fallacies among the typical reasoning errors are the so called false causes and false effects. as a case in point, the following relationship reveals a false effect: due to the development of medical technology, many diseases can be healed today. methodology armenian folia anglistika 93  technologies make our world a safer place to live. the fact that diseases can already be healed doesn’t make the world a safe place. diseases still exist, even though they have become curable. the argument would sound more truthful and logical if diseases had been eradicated or reduced due to technological advances. similarly, the following ideas are obviously unrelated: nothing can be compared to the taste of the armenian apricot.  for this reason, ancient romans called this fruit an “armenian apple.” a question naturally arises here. how could romans liken the apricot to the apple or any other fruit if the taste of the former is unmatched or unrivalled? the argument below reflects a false cause-and-effect relationship. it occurred as a result of breaking the rules of the deductive syllogism: major premise: people in the past had fewer health problems than today. minor premise: in the past there were no computers. conclusion: without computers people would be healthier. even if we consider the two premises as true, the conclusion should not necessarily be true. the fact that computers are the reason for poor health cannot be deduced from the two given premises. the argument is unsound. another common error is referred to as begging the question, when the writers “repeat what they already believe, only in different words” (kennedy et al, 2003:509), like is done in the following sentences: students should be required to study art and music because these are compulsory subjects, our generation is different from that of our parents because we do things in other ways, i watch tv every day because it has become an inseparable part of my life. still another common error is a hasty generalization, when the writer jumps to conclusions without weighing all the evidence or only basing on one or two examples. the paragraph below is a case in point: i would buy a business. if you want to earn stable income, you must have your own business. those who once considered this as a worthwhile investment are successful businessmen today. so i would put the money in setting up and developing a company of my own. armenian folia anglistika methodology 94 the writer stereotypes all business people as successful. meanwhile, the fact that many people around have succeeded in running their businesses doesn’t guarantee that any business is sure to be profitable. the writer relies on the successful experience of a few acquaintances but fails to assess the validity of the judgment or provide any other logical explanation. conclusion we all make reasoning errors in everyday situations. however, introducing efl learners to the simple strategies discussed above and teaching them to weigh their arguments and assess their value with the help of logical reasoning will considerably improve their writing skill. on the contrary, unsound reasoning can lead to wrong conclusions and undermine the credibility of judgments. it should definitely receive due attention in the test preparation process. simultaneously, the extensive reading of model essays is not enough for students to acquire, rather than learn, the combined skill of reasoning and writing logically. logical reasoning deals with both rational progression of ideas and various types of logical arguments. it not only means connecting sentences in the right sequence but also using valid and sound arguments to reach sufficiently credible conclusions. it is our firm belief that reading and practice need to be supplemented by a deep analysis of both models and one’s own essays. this activity will develop the learners’ ability to analyze and evaluate, rationalize and make inferences. it will promote critical reading and thinking skills, as well as the ability to eliminate irrelevant issues and avoid reasoning fallacies. references: 1. bradford, a. (2015, march 23) deductive reasoning vs. inductive reasoning. available at: <http://www.livescience.com/21569-deduction-vsinduction.html> [accessed august 2015] 2. brutyan, g.a. (1998) logic. yerevan: “gitutyun” publishing house. 3. heiserman, d.l (ed.) (2012, june 29) thinking & writing. a first course in critical writing and communication. available at: methodology armenian folia anglistika 95 <http://www.waybuilder.net/sweethaven/english/critcomm01/?inum=030> [accessed august 2015]. 4. kennedy, x.j.; kennedy, d.m.; aaron, j.e. (2003) the bedford reader. boston: bedford/st. martin’s. 5. teays, w. (2003) second thoughts: critical thinking for a diverse society. boston: mcgraw hill companies, inc. sources of data: 1. (2011) cambridge ielts 8. examination papers from university of cambridge esol examinations. cambridge: cup. 2. hudon, e.; clayton, i.; weissgerber, k.; allen, p. (2006) toefl ibt. 20072008 edition. new york: kaplan, inc. 3. lougheed, l. (2004) how to prepare for the computer-based toefl essay. new york: barron’s educational series. 4. (2013) official toefl ibt tests. vol. 1. n.y.: mcgraw hill companies, inc. ¶ñ³íáñ ëáëùç ïñ³ù³μ³ý³ï³ý ùïùç áñáß ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñç շուրջ ðá¹í³íáõù ùýý³ñïíáõù »ý å»ñëáõ³½çí ¿ëë»çý μýáñáß ïñ³ù³μ³ý³ï³ý ùïùç áñáß ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñ: ä»ñëáõզ³õçí ¿ëë»ý ù³ýñ³ù³ëý ùß³ïí³í ¿, ·³õ³÷³ñý»ñá ß³ñ³¹ñí³í »ý ïñ³ù³μ³ýáñ»ý, ³é³ç³¹ñí³í ÷³ëï³ñïý»ñá ñçùý³íáñí³í »ý: ²ûëûñçý³ï ¿ëë»áõù ýï³ïíáõù ¿ ¹³ïáõáõãûáõýý»ñç ïñ³ù³μ³ýáõãûáõý, ùïùç ³í³ñïվածáõãûáõý ¨ ùç³ëýáõãûáõý: ²ûëåçëáí, ûáõñ³ù³ýãûáõñ å³ñμ»ñáõãû³ý ù»ç ¨ ³ùμáõç³ï³ý ¿ëë»áõù ³ñï³ñ³ûïí³í ·³õ³÷³ñý»ñá ÷áëï³å³ïóí³í »ý, ñ»ï¨áõù »ý áñáß³ïç ïñ³ù³μ³ý³ï³ý ñ³çáñ¹³ï³ýáõãû³ý ¨ ñ³ý·»óýáõù »ý ñçùý³íáñí³í »½ñ³ï³óáõãû³ý: ðá¹í³íáõù ·çï³ï³ý ñçùùç íñ³ ý»ñï³û³óíáõù »ý ùï³íáõáõãû³ý ¨ ¹³ïáõáõãû³ý ï³ñμ»ñ ù»ãá¹ý»ñ, áñáýù ï³ñáõ »ý û·ï³·áñíí»é ñ³ùá½çã ¿ëë» ·ñ»éáõ ñ³ù³ñ: maket 2014_layout 1.qxd reading literature: an ethical gesture in the postmodern context? angela locatelli università degli studi di bergamo “the essence of great art is tension without bloodshed.” (morrison 2005:717) “the norm of art is to be found in its utility for the treatment of the affections of the soul.” (badiou 2005:4) abstract after the so called ethical turn in literary theory ethics is still a major issue in literary studies. european continental philosophy has traditionally been in close touch with ethical issues. not surprisingly then, it was the influence of french philosophy that, from the eighties onward, began to put back the ethical in british academic discourse. one of the interesting paradoxes of post-modernity is the fact that, while it promotes an attitude of scepticism, oriented towards a strong suspicion of strong ideologies, it is also an attempt to promote emancipative activities (demonstrated in the canon debate, postcolonial studies, trauma studies, and a broad ethical turn in different sectors of the humanities). this contribution wishes to investigate the issue of ethics and literature in the postmodern context, with reference to contemporary philosophy and literary theory and aims to propose that postmodern culture still needs complex literature, and (the promotion of) appropriate hermeneutic skills to deal with it. key words: postmodern culture, ethics and politics, representation, dialogic reading of literature. introduction values are not a natural given, but they are created, proposed, negotiated and disseminated in culture, and it is crucially important to understand how this is effected in various representational processes. as we address this ancient issue, which runs through the history of philosophy and literature from aristotle to alain badiou, we recognize that the realms of ethics, politics and representation have always been, and still are, mutually implicated and responsive to each other. representation is never innocent, or objectively neutral, especially when it claims to be so. specific mechanisms are at work in representation, and they are both the expression and vehicle of different values and value judgments. after the so called ethical turn in literary theory at the beginning of our millennium (davis and womack 2001) ethics is still a major issue in literary studies. this contribution wishes to investigate it with special focus on its relevance to global post-modernity and contemporary culture. armenian folia anglistikaliterature 121 the paradoxical ethics of the postmodern the question of defining the postmodern in cultural, philosophical, and literary terms is fraught with intricacies and contradictions. when this question is combined with the problem of ethics and representation such contradictions multiply, because postmodernism is the expression of a cultural sensibility which involves both the political and the a-political, the writer’s ethical commitment and a sceptical attitude in relation to (traditional) values, a traditional referential view of history and a new narratological, and even fictional, conception of it. postmodernism claims a constructivist and an anti-foundational epistemology, it inaugurates the so-called, and highly controversial, post-human paradigm, and features a de-centering of the traditional subject of liberal humanism. because of all this, it is often deemed radically un-ethical. and yet, i believe that the question of ethics is not absent from the cultural stakes of post-modernity. the ethical concerns of postmodern times and culture are evident in a range of phenomena that can hardly be defined as homogeneous, but that share an indisputably ethical dimension. among these phenomena i wish to recall: the canon debate in literary studies (cf. alberti 1995, lauter 1995, locatelli 2004), the rise of feminist, postcolonial, and trauma studies, and the already mentioned ethical turn in literary theory. writers and artists as well as literary and cultural critics have recently contributed to the development of a specific ethical awareness. some of their views, for example pier paolo pasolini’s prophetic and relentless critique of secular consumerism (cf. pasolini 1991 and 2008), fredric jameson’s critique of “the cultural logic of late capitalism” (jameson 1998), zygmund bauman’s analysis of “liquid modernity” (bauman 2000, and 2007) and the reflections on otherness spawned by the philosophy of emmanuel lévinas (cf. lévinas 1961,1974, 1981, and 1991) have all become central in the way ethics is articulated in our times in literary culture(s). i obviously cannot deal at length with these debates in just a few pages, but these artists, theorists and philosophers are undoubtedly to be mentioned because of their ongoing relevance in contemporary questions of ethics and culture. postmodern culture is complex, nuanced, and even paradoxical. its ethics claims to be non-essentialist, non-foundational, and negotiable, rather than normative. however, in its flaunted uncertainty it displays attitudes which may seem grounded on a readiness to embrace and mix elements from diverse and diverging normative and established doctrines and protocols. a certain ambivalence towards ethics and a concomitant distancing from the political can also be perceived in large areas of postmodern globalized discourses (cf. lecercle 2010). the relationship between ethics and politics has always been, and is still a complex one, clearly beyond the scope of this paper, which is primarily concerned with literature and its academic study as part of culture. focussing on this circumscribed critical perspective, i will first of all come to terms with the recent poststructuralist neglect of ethics, which is evident in british academic discourses since the seventies of the 20th century. andrew gibson has attributed to positivism and to the “politics of english” (gibson 1999) in the early 1970s this general academic disregard and/or suspicion of ethics. in postmodernity, ethics and the novel. from leavis to levinas gibson shows that speakarmenian folia anglistika literature 122 ing of value has recently been, and for quite a long time, a taboo in literary studies in britain. in the aftermath of f.r. leavis’ pronouncements on the great tradition, the very term value has become suspect. a general ostracism of discourses about value has produced a cultural void on questions of ethics in the past three or four decades, for which literary theory has sometimes been blamed, undeservedly, in my opinion. in fact, from a continental (as opposed to british) perspective it seems indeed strange that radical politics in british academy would construe an opposition between the ethical and the political, but this becomes perhaps more understandable (albeit still philosophically questionable and politically problematic), if one considers that the leavisian brand of self-proclaimed ethical criticism was ideologically conservative and lacked self-reflexive questioning. distance from questions of ethics in britain may also have come from the traditional anglo-saxon protocols of philosophy, which favors an analytical and logical approach to the discipline, rather than a generalist and literary approach, explicitly harboring ethical questions. as jean-jacques lecercle has suggested in his recent book badiou and deleuze read literature: “continental philosophy likes to address the concerns of the general public: where the analytic philosopher is a shy and retiring creature, the continental philosopher is a man, or woman, of the world – his or her voice is heard on the agora, in the media, thus gaining a form of recognition” (lecercle 2010:13). continental philosophers such as habermas, foucault, cacciari, vattimo, badiou, derrida and deleuze have often voiced ethical and political issues, and have reached wide and widely different audiences in terms of taste, education, and profession. european continental philosophy has been a formative matrix for sociologist, anthropologists and psychoanalysts, and has thus been in close touch with ethical issues, both inside and outside the academy. not surprisingly then, it was the influence of french philosophy that, from the eighties onward, began put back the ethical in british academic discourse. this happened in a second phase of poststructuralism, after the anesthetized earlier phase of a radical linguistic turn (heavily condemned by philosophers like deleuze and badiou). among the literary theorists who have forcefully contributed to a return to the ethical in academic debate in britain i wish to recall: andrew gibson (gibson 1996), robert eaglestone (eaglestone 1997 and 2003), derek attridge (attridge 1999 and 2004). the developments in feminist, queer, postcolonial studies can also be seen as important forms of ethical criticism, with an obvious and relevant ideological difference from the previous leavisian conservative approach, while at the same time clearly distant from marxist political critique. one of the interesting paradoxes of postmodernity is therefore the fact that, while it promotes a general attitude of scepticism and relativism, oriented towards a strong suspicion of traditional strong ideologies, it is also an attempt to promote an ethical turn in the humanities. in the u.s. many representatives of both new historicism and deconstruction have been engaged in the canon debate (itself a relevant ethical issue), and, following the affaire deman they have engaged in the promotion of trauma studies (cf. caruth 1995, whitehead 2004 and onega and ganteau 2011), variously responding to the ethical urge of attempting to represent the “irrepresentable” (harman 1996). moreover, social and literary theorists in britain and north america have turned to armenian folia anglistikaliterature 123 emmanuel lévinas (cf. lévinas 1981 and 1991) in order to defend a view of ethics in terms of an encounter with the other. on the other hand, the other has also come to be interpreted (in anthropology and cultural studies), as the oppressed subject of social minorities: i.e. the alien, the woman, the queer, the (post?)-colonial1 subject, the migrant. this is a relevant articulation of the concept of otherness at a moment in which, with the advent of mass migrations, the question of natural rights and civil rights is under close scrutiny and re-articulation. the meanings of human rights, or natural rights have to be re-defined, within a rethinking of political subjectivity in inclusive, rather than excluding terms. etienne balibar and alain badiou have fruitfully combined the ethical and the political while investigating this particular issue in politics and the other scene (2011) and in l’éthique. essai sur la conscience du mal (2011). an increasing number of social theorists, and several writers and poets with them, have also been voicing the idea that political rights have necessarily to be expanded beyond the narrow confines of nation, and even of ethnic identity, in order to do justice to a universal concept of the human. this is part of alain badiou’s polemical argument in his seminal study of st paul (badiou 2003). in the tradition of french marxist critique (alain badiou and jean-jacques lecercle) the resurgence of interest in ethics in literary studies has also been depicted as ambiguously deflecting attention from a political focus, and immediate political action. which does not in the least deny the political significance of literature, which is, on the contrary, upheld in the works of the same badiou (cf. badiou 2006) and lecercle (cf. lecercle 2006), and of other philosophers, for example jacques rancière (cf. rancière 2004 and 2007) and guilliaume le blanc (cf. le blanc 2007). after these philosophers, and against the scepticism of some towards literary theory (accused of being a predicament that remains distant from daily concerns), i believe that the literary experience and literary studies can valuably contribute to the ethical and political debate in postmodern culture, and i will devote to this argument the pages that follow. the literary ethical dimension: reading (with) the other in the complex context of post-modernity outlined this far, the debate on the social impact and role of literature has been lively, swinging from elation to despair, and presenting all sorts of in-between positions in the past thirty years. in 1987 gerald graff lamented the fact that: “high literary culture” is “increasingly marginal to the commercial and corporate interests dominating modern life” (graff 1987:12), a complaint that is still repeatedly voiced in academia. almost ten years later martha nussbaum strongly endorsed the vital social role of literature, by suggesting that it can move us beyond the abstractions of both ethics and the social sciences, because it makes us “capable of entering imaginatively into the lives of distant others” (nussbaum 1995:xvi). the italian writer italo calvino has explored the issue of literature and politics and has suggested that literature is at risk when it finds itself in two apparently opposite situations: either an excess of attention or a lack of attention on the part of politics and the public: “when politicians and politically minded people pay too much attention to literature, it is a bad sign – a bad sign mostly for literature, because it is then that literature is in most armenian folia anglistika literature 124 danger. but it is also a bad sign when they don’t want to hear the word mentioned, and this happens as much to the most traditionally obtuse bourgeois politicians as to the most ideological revolutionaries. this is a bad sign mostly for them2, because they are showing themselves afraid of any use of language that calls the certitude of their own language into question” (calvino 1986: 93). this last sentence seems extremely relevant to our concerns because i believe that it implies, among other aspects, that the language of literature does not, and should not coincide with the language of politics tout court, while at the same time being acutely mindful of politics. if a work is written in the language of politics, it ceases to be literature3, but becomes sociology and/or social psychology, or a text of political argumentation, or even indoctrination and propaganda. we have unfortunately witnessed reductive forms of such literary discourse in some romans à these, and more recently in politically correct novels, which mostly persuade the already persuaded, but fail to engage the reader at the complex level of controversy and judgment to which literature is intrinsically conducive. but it is precisely at the level of questioning and judgment that literature becomes most ethical. it is at this level that it can provoke debate, expose bias and provide the ground for its rejection. in fact, only literature among the human sciences can reach a specific epistemic complexity and ethical significance, precisely thanks to its figurality and special narrativity (i.e. the thanks to its linguistic sophistication, and to its various modes of narration which greatly differ from other ways of telling in ordinary discourse or in other disciplines). the ethical dimension of literature depends on its unique style (provided we reject a view of style as embellishment and ornament and see it as the language proper to an epistemic and aesthetic position). thanks to its intrinsic plurality of voices (bahktin docet)4, its ambiguity (empson docet)5, and its linguistic richness literature transcend the plain statement, which is the main feature of discourses of power, and indeed of most of the contemporary human sciences (with the exception of philosophy, especially after derrida and deleuze). when it is faithful to its own immanence, and its criticality, literature literally “speaks a different language” (cf. calvino 1986). in this sense i completely agree with calvino when he writes that: “literature is like an ear that can hear things beyond the understanding of the language of politics, it is like an eye that can see beyond the color spectrum perceived by politics” (calvino 1986:98). the ear and eye provided by literature are not innate faculties. they are abilities to be acquired with the critical practice of dialogic reading (cf. locatelli 2003), which amounts to the activity of an attentive reader, of an open minded and a careful listener, of someone who is patiently seeking information on historical contexts and cultures related to the text, and who is sensitive to the nuances of language and who is also ready to be surprised and even destabilised in his/her commonsensical attitudes by the text. the dialogic reader is not eager to jump to conclusions in order to confirm his/her received doxa on human relations, and thus to make of texts the pretext for his/her own motives, and a confirmation of what he/she already holds as valuable. readers must learn hermeneutical strategies that do not reject the careful minutiae of traditional close reading, and the concomitant implications of respecting the text, but they should not stop there. going beyond means that interpretation needs to be shared, so that it may teach readers to step outside their own positions, and look at themselves from another one, in armenian folia anglistikaliterature 125 order to perceive their own location as it is perceived by (distant) others. this change of perspective involves un-hinging the reader’s expectations, exposing his/her assumptions, and expressing his/her distances from other assumptions, while promoting the interaction of different points of view. this means that the reader (whose role is as crucial as that of the text in the construction of meaning) should come to terms with the presence of more than one’s own interpretive community, and thus more than just one form of hermeneutic validation. ignorance can thrive in a society where a rule-based and univocal view of the world holds the stage. not knowing other possibilities, scenarios, world pictures, undoubtedly leads to the arrogance of self-righteousness, and to the absolutism of selfinterested norms. pushed to its limit, this attitude obviously makes the encounter with otherness, utterly impossible. but the experience of literature is a genuine encounter the other, which starts, as i have suggested, with the opening of one’s ears and eyes, and includes the experience of wonder and discovery, the re-appraisal of norms and the shaping of novel attitudes. literature is able to promote complex identifications and dis-identifications with different subjects and it thus promotes judgement, through both the intellect and the emotions. but when literature is taken to be a mere ornament, a means of evasion or of political indoctrination, rather than a means of deepening human understanding, literature betrays its own epistemic reality and primary social function, as well. derek attridge’s seminal notions of readerly hospitality defines the attitude of respect that is implicit in any dialogic reading: “the always dominant mode of mechanical reading can be modified or interrupted by a somewhat different relation to the work. not all works will have something to offer to a reader’s openness to alterity, of course, but when one does, mechanical and instrumental interpretation is complicated by what we may term readerly hospitality, a readiness to have one’s purposes reshaped by the work to which one is responding” (attridge 2004:80). respect allows readers to move beyond mechanical reading, it starts from an unbiased and keen attention to the particular, an attitude that has recently been defended as ethical by herbert grabes in his examination of the centrality of aesthesis in aristotle nicomachean ethics (grabes 2009). last but not least, a dialogic reading of literature is respectful of the other’s response(s) and ceaselessly moves towards the construction of shared meanings. sharing the construction of meanings is a difficult task, but one to be pursued since it puts a limit to unbridled relativism and uncritical dogmatism, as well as rejecting the idea that anything will do in interpretation, including the whims of a capricious or tendentious reader. adding to this perspective on the position of the reader in ethical terms, i will propose that the ethical dimension of literature is closely related to the following interpretative and critical gestures, which can all be implemented in the postmodern pluralistic cultural context: 1. reading texts to grasp their structures, features and functions. this is an exercise in patience, rigour, and even self-denial (resisting the temptation of construing the text in one’s own image). 2. finding and explaining the reasons for one’s interpretative conclusions. it is a socratic exercise in self-awareness. armenian folia anglistika literature 126 3. reading texts to understand the workings of language. this is also an exercise in self-knowledge, since language is at the core of human relations, of subjectivities and interlocution (lecercle 2006). 4. reading texts to discover their relationship to forms of power. it is a premise to any acceptable critique of ideology. it is also a metaethical exercise evaluating “values”. this is a relevant task of literary studies, and promotes ethically valuable strategies of emancipation from error and oppression. 5. reading to manage trauma. it is both a therapeutic and ethical gesture, because ultimately a strategy of containment of violence and of human flourishing (eudaimonia). all of these ways of reading literature are forms of dialogue and practices of pluralism, and from them emerges the ethically transformative power of the reading itself, which post-modernity urgently needs to remain human. rather than settling with the mainstream reductive market view of literature as escapism and entertainment, or as a straightforward politically correct message, we should, as academics, promote the enjoyment of complex literature, to voice alternatives to the predictable and mechanical relationships and subjectivities that are promoted by techno-corporate interests (cf. pasolini 1991 and 2008 and bauman 2007). in fact, the reading of literature is a therapeutic strategy against blind compliance to both fundamentalisms and the imperatives of financial and techno-bureaucratic protocols. in the postmodern context, the dialogic reading of literature is of primary social relevance: what is at stake is the survival of the imagination (and sanity). the imaginative, emotional and empathetic dimensions of literature make it still epistemologically unique, ethical and socially valuable. literature goes hand in hand with our readiness to be surprised and to be challenged, to be emotionally and cognitively stimulated and enriched. this is why postmodern culture needs complex literature, and (the promotion of) appropriate hermeneutic skills to deal with it. this is an empowering and reparative gesture, once literature is seen as the “the ecology of wonderland” (locatelli 2007). notes: 1. the question mark after the “post” preceding “colonial” is a legitimate expression of doubt on the politics of global neoliberalism and its forms of new financial and commercial colonialisms, as well as, to some extent, on the very discipline of “post-colonial studies” in the context of a weakening anglo-american supremacy. 2. emphasis in the original 3. i am using the term “literature” in the restricted sense of the literary classics or canonical works, not in the broad sense of any written text. 4. cf. bakhtin 1981 and 1984. the italian philosopher augusto ponzio has brilliantly argued in favour of “a surprising analogy between lévinas notion of “exteriority” and bakhtin’s “extra-locality” (“vnenachodimost”). cf. ponzio 1997. 5. cf. empson 1966. armenian folia anglistikaliterature 127 references: 1. alberti j. (1995) the canon in the classroom: the pedagogical implications of canon revision in american literature. new york: garland pub. 2. attridge, d. (1999) innovation, literature ethics: reading the other. // pmla, vol. 114, n. 1 pp.20-31. 3. attridge, d. (2004) the singularity of literature. london and new york: routledge. 4. badiou, a. (2003) saint paul: the foundation of universalism. / tr. by r. brassier. stanford, calif.: stanford university press. 5. badiou, a. (2005) handbook of inaesthetics. / tr. by a. toscano. stanford calif: stanford university press. 6. badiou, a. (2011) l’étique. essai sur la conscience du mal. caen: nous. 7. bakhtin, m. (1981) the dialogic imagination. / tr. by c. emerson and m. holquist. austin, texas. 8. bakhtin, m. (1984) problems of dostoevsky’s poetics. / tr. by c. emerson. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. 9. balibar, e. (2002) politics and the other scene. new york: verso. 10. bauman, z. (2000) liquid modernity. cambridge: polity press. 11. bauman, z. (2007) consuming life. cambridge: polity press. 12. calvino, i. (1986) right and wrong political uses of literature. // the uses of literature. / ed. by i. calvino. / tr. by p. creagh. san diego, new york and london: harcourt brace jovanovich. 13. caruth c. (ed.) (1995) trauma: explorations in memory. baltimore, md and london: johns hopkins university press. 14. davis, t.f. and womack, k. (2001) mapping the ethical turn: a reader in ethics, culture, and literary theory. charlottesville: university of virginia press. 15. eaglestone, r. (1997) ethical criticism: reading after lévinas. edinburgh: edinburgh university press. 16. eagleston r. (ed.) (2003) european journal of english studies, ethics and literature. vol. vii n.3. 17. empson, w. (1966) seven types of ambiguity. new york: new directions. 18. gibson, a. (1996) towards a postmodern theory of narrative. edinburgh: edinburgh university press. 19. gibson, a. (1999) postmodernity, ethics and the novel. from leavis to lévinas. london and new york: routledge. 20. grabes, h. (2009) what exactly is the case? ethics, aesthetics, and aisthesis. // values in literature and the value of literature: literature as a medium for representing, disseminating and constructing norms and values. / ed. by s. baumbach, h. grabes and a. nünning. trier: wissenschaftlicher verlag trier, pp.43-51. 21. graff, g. (1987) professing literature. an institutional history. chicago and london: university of chicago press. 22. guillory j. (1993) cultural capital: the problem of literary canon formation, chicago: university of chicago press. armenian folia anglistika literature 128 23. hartman, g.h. (1996) the longest shadow: in the aftermath of the holocaust, bloomington in, indiana university press. 24. jameson, f. (1991) postmodernism, or the cultural logic of late capitalism. durham: duke university press. 25. jameson, f. (1998) the cultural turn: selected writings on the postmodern, 19831998. london-new york: verso. 26. lauter, p (1991) canons and contexts. new york: oxford u.p. 27. le blanc, g. (2007) vies ordinaires, vies precaires, paris: seuil. 28. lecercle, j.j. (2006) a marxist philosophy of language. leiden: brill. 29. lecercle, j.j. (2010) return to the political. // pmla vol 125 n.4. new york: the modern language association of america. 30. lecercle, j.j. (2010) badiou and deleuze read literature. edinburgh: edinburgh university press. 31. lévinas, e. (1981) otherwise than being: or, beyond essence. / tr. by a. lingis. the hague: martinus nijhoff. 32. lévinas, e. (1991) totality and infinity: an essay on exteriority. / tr. a. lingis, london: kluwer academic publishers. 33. locatelli, a. (2003) literature: teaching meets “theory”. // textus, vol. xvi n.1, pp. 17-26. 34. locatelli, a. (2004) literariness, consensus, or ‘something else’. // tropismes n 12. whither theory? où va la théorie? université paris x nanterre, centre de recherches anglo-americaines: paris, pp.173-188. 35. locatelli, a. (2007) the ecology of wonderland: textual, critical and institutional perspectives in literature. // literary landscapes, landscapes in literature / ed. by m. bottalico, m.t. chialant, e.rao. roma: carocci editore, pp.46-53. 36. morrison, t. (2005) guest colum: roundtable on the future of the humanities in a fragmented world. // pmla / ed. by toni morrison, gayatri chakravorty spivak and ngahuia te awekotuku. vol.120, n.3, pp.715-723, p.717. new york: modern language association of america. 37. nussbaum, m.c. (1995) poetic justice. the literary imagination and public life. boston: beacon press. 38. onega s. and ganteau j.-m. (eds.) (2011) ethics and trauma in contemporary british fiction, amsterdam and new york: rodopi. 39. pasolini, p. p. (1991) lettere luterane. roma: l’unità/einaudi. 40. pasolini, p. p. (2008) scritti corsari. milano: garzanti. 41. ponzio, a. (1997) the relation of alterity in bachtin, blanchot, lévinas // russian literature, ruslit vol. xli n. iii, (special issue italian contributions to the international bachtin dialogue 1981-1986), pp.315-331. 42. rancière, j. (2004) the politics of aesthetics. london: continuum. 43. rancière, j. (2007) politique de la littérature. paris: galilée. 44. whitehead, a. (2004) trauma fiction. edinburgh: edinburgh university press. armenian folia anglistikaliterature 129 ¾ãçï³ý ¨ ·ñ³ï³ý áýã»ñó³ýáõãûáõýá åáëïùá¹»éý ñ³ù³ï»ùëïáõù êáõûý ñ» ï³ ½á ïáõã û³ý ù»ç, ³ý¹ ñ³ ¹³é ý³ éáí å³ ù³ ý³ ï³ ïçó ÷ç éç ëá ÷³ ûáõã û³ý ¨ ·ñ³ ï³ý ï» ëáõã û³ý ·ç ï³ ï³ñ ·» ñçý, ùýýáõã û³ý »ý ³éý íáõù ¿ ãç ï³ ûçý ¨ ·ñ³ ï³ ýáõã û³ ýá ³éýã íáõ ëý¹çñ ý»ñ åáëï ùá ¹»éý ñ³ ù³ ï»ùë ïáõù: ð» õç ý³ïý ³ é³ ç³¹ ñáõù ¿ ³ûý ùçï ùá, áñ åáëï ùá ¹»éý ùß³ ïáõû ãá å³ ñ³ý çáõù ¿ ñ³ ù³ å³ñ ÷³ï ·ñ³ ï³ ýáõã ûáõý, çýã å»ë ý³¨ ù»ï ýáõ³ï³ý ñ³ ù³ å³ ï³ë ë³ý ñùïáõã ûáõý ý» ñç ½³ñ ·³ óáõù` ³û¹ ·ñ³ ï³ ýáõã ûáõ ýá ùýý» éáõ ¨ í»ñ éáõ í» éáõ ñ³ ù³ñ: ×òåíèå ëèòåðàòóðû: ýòè÷åñêèèé æåñò â ïîñòìîäåðíèñòñêîì êîíòåêñòå? öåëüþ äàí íî ãî èññ ëå äî âà íèÿ ÿâ ëÿåò ñÿ èçó ÷å íèå âîï ðî ñà ýòè êè è ëè òå ðà òó ðû â ïîñò ìî äåð íèñòñ êîì êîí òåêñòå, ñî ññûë êîé íà ôè ëî ñî ôèþ è òåî ðèþ ëè òå ðà òó ðû. àâ òîð âûä âè ãàåò èäåþ î òîì, ÷òî äëÿ èçó÷íèÿ ïîñò ìî äåð íèñòñ êîé êóëü òó ðû íåîáõîäèìà â êîìï ëåêñ íàÿ ëè òå ðà òó ðà, à òàê æå â ñîîòâåòñòâóþùèå ãåðìåíåâòè÷åñêèå íàâûêè. armenian folia anglistika literature 130 maket 2014_layout 1.qxd conversation and argumentation in boyle’s scientific dialogue maurizio gotti università di bergamo abstract the aim of this paper is to illustrate the new stylistic approach embodied in the genre of the scientific dialogue as used in 17th-century england, focusing, in particular, on the strategies adopted by robert boyle in the sceptical chymist (1661). the purpose of our analysis is, on the one hand, to point out those characteristics which make this dialogue resemble the features of normal conversation and, on the other, those that instead have a more argumentative purpose and that therefore make it more similar to the other genre typical of scientific theorisation, i.e. the treatise. key words: scientific dialogue, robert boyle, the sceptical chymist, 17th-century england, conversational features, argumentative strategies, treatise. introduction the great epistemological and methodological innovations that took place in 17th-century england (vickers 1987; hunter 1989; jardine 1999; shapiro 2000) determined the need for corresponding adjustments both as regards the methods of communicating information about new scientific discoveries and as regards the most suitable means of expression chosen to describe and discuss the new phenomena then being observed and analysed. this new perspective determined not only the creation of more innovative genres such as the experimental essay (gotti 2001), but also the reformulation of traditional genres, such as the treatise and the dialogue. the aim of this paper is to illustrate the characteristics of this stylistic reformulation as embodied in the genre of the scientific dialogue. in particular, the paper focuses on the expository and argumentative strategies adopted by one of the most influential innovators of that period, i.e. robert boyle, drawing comments and examples from the sceptical chymist (1661), written in a dialogic form. the purpose of our analysis is, on the one hand, to point out those characteristics which make this dialogue resemble the features of normal conversation and, on the other, those that instead have a more argumentative function and that therefore make it more similar to the other genre typical of scientific theorisation, i.e. the treatise. boyle’s choice of the dialogic form the dialogue, mainly derived from the platonic tradition, was a very popular form of composition used both in literary and non-literary contexts in the early modern english period (cf. merrill 1970; marsh 1980). boyle’s choice of the dialogic form to embody his considerations in the sceptical chymist does not represent a confirmation of a traditionarmenian folia anglistikalinguistics 7 al writing procedure of his, as this is the only printed work composed by him in this form. his other works, in fact, appeared in other guises, mainly in that of the treatise and of the experimental essay. the choice of the dialogue as the genre for this work, therefore, is to be taken as the result of a series of careful stylistic choices on the part of the author. the confirmation of this hypothesis can easily be found in the examination of the pragmatic purposes of this work, which differ from those of others by the same author. boyle’s other writings, in fact, generally aim at expounding some new theoretical argumenta tions conceived by the author or at reporting the details and the results of a particular experiment carried out by the british scientist; it was therefore fully appropriate for boyle to recur to the genres respectively of the treatise and of the experimental essay to carry out those specific pragmatic functions. the main purpose of the sceptical chymist, instead, is not the assertion of a new theory, but a critical analysis and confutation of the principal theoretical statements put forth by preceding and contemporary philosophers and men of science as regards the basic elements that constitute physical substances representing matter. boyle’s willingness to point out the inconsistency and inadequacy of such theoretical assertions is confirmed by the subtitle of this work,1 in which the author takes care to warn the reader that the ideas put forth in it are to be taken as doubts and paradoxes about existing theories. the lack of pretension to theoretical innovation on the part of the author is clearly expressed by his choice of the lexeme notes to refer to the observations that boyle draws from his own experi ments to support his criticism of both the aristotelian and the para celsian views concerning the main physical elements. a confirmation of the mainly critical attitude taken throughout this work is provided by boyle himself, when he makes his main character assert that “’tis not so much [his] present talk to make assertions as to suggest doubts” (p.356).2 boyle is fully aware that his suppositions and intuitions cannot yet aspire to the consistency and reliability of sound theoretical principles. at the moment, therefore, all he can do is only express his doubts and reservations about the principles commonly shared by the scientific community. the rhetorical form which he considers the most appropriate for the expression of his reservation without giving the impression of aiming at a more formal and preten tious kind of treatise is the dialogue, which enables the author to put forth his observations in a more informal way, resembling a tranquil, polite conversation among learned people.3 apart from the possibility of greater consistency between stylistic form and pragmatic function, there is another reason which might explain boyle’s choice of the dialogue, which consists in the advan tage that such a genre offers the author of expounding his ideas in an indirect way and of thus offering him some sort of protection against public criticism.4 the dialogic form, in fact, enables the author to attribute his views to different characters, who however cannot be identified directly with the author himself. boyle’s willingness to distance himself from the opinions expressed by the various speakers in the sceptical chymist is clearly pointed out in the preface to his work: nor needed i make the interlocutors speak otherwise than freely in a dialogue, wherein it was sufficiently intimated, that i meant not to declare armenian folia anglistika linguistics 8 my own opinion of the arguments propos’d, much lesse of the whole controversy itself, otherwise than it as it may by an attentive reader be guess’d at by some passages of carneades: (i say, some passages, because i make not all, that he says, especially in the heat of disputation, mine). (p.212) moreover, the choice of carneades as the main character of the sceptical chymist emphasizes the dialectical freedom typical of the sceptical dialogue5 which grants each speaker the possibility of maintaining and defending his own opinion, without being bound by the fetters of traditional authority. the link with this type of dialogue, established by the choice of that character and the open attitude that characterizes it, allows the author to make use even of conflicting arguments in his search for truth. another rhetorical device which boyle takes advantage of to distance himself from the opinions expressed in his work is the presentation of the narrator as a modest person, who humbly listens to the other speakers rather than pre senting his own views. in the dialogue, in fact, boyle identifies him self with the narrator, who is presented as the least expert of the par ti cipants as regards the matter under discussion, and who is relegated therefore to the mere role of listener and learner: i conscious to my own disability’s told them resolutely that i was as much more willing as more fit to be a hearer than a speaker, among such knowing persons, and on so abstruse a subject. ... i added, that i desir’d not to be idle whilst they were imploy’d, but would if they pleas’d, by writing down in short hand what should be delivered, preserve discourses that i knew would merit to be lasting. (p.217) of course, boyle’s ignorance of the subject is only an excuse, as the british scientist is quoted by carneades on several occasions as an authority in the field, and the results of his experiments are often mentioned as evidence for many objections and criticisms. this humble role which the author devises for himself is therefore part of a rhetorical design,6 which is meant to protect the author from public attack. the sceptical chymist has another purpose, which concerns the identification of the most appropriate style for scientific discussions. this metatextual intention is confirmed by the author’s own words: and indeed, i am not sorry to have this opportunity of giving an example, how to manage even disputes with civility. (p.212) from this sentence, we can see that the expression used to qualify the style to be adopted in scientific argumentation is with civility. as a matter of fact, the adjective civil is frequently used in this work to define not only the language to be used, but also the tone to be adopted and the relationship to be maintained with interlocutors. boyle’s insistence on civility7 as a distinctive feature of scientific exposition was meant to emphasize armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 9 an important change that was taking place within the scientific community (gotti 2013). scientific matters were attracting wider interest, especially among aristocratic and cultured people, and they were separating this select group of people, who found their proper identification in the newly-founded royal society, from the less learned group of non-scientific practitioners. boyle was very pleased with this widening of the community of scientists among the nobler minds of the period 8 but clearly perceived that the causes of differentiation of this group from that of practitioners was not only methodological and conceptual, but also linguistic and stylistic. thus the choice of the dialogic form to embody this work is meant to assist boyle in exemplifying the civility that scientists ought to adopt in their discussions. indeed, this form would provide a natural way of presenting opinions and evaluating objections within a scientific discussion in a cooperative and respectful atmosphere thus highlighting the politeness values (klein 1994) typical of conversa tion between gentlemen. conversational features in order to make his dialogue more effective, boyle endows it with features typical of a real conversational exchange. first he invents appropriate characters and assigns a specific role to each of them. as mentioned above, to allow himself complete freedom in the expression of his criticisms the british writer does not designate himself as the main character, but assigns this role to carneades. the choice of this name is not at all a casual one, as the role which boyle attributes to this character is the same as the one actually played by the greek philosopher in his time, as he is “to play the antagonist and the sceptick [... and] to suggest doubts against the opinion he questions” (p.210). the use of this historic character can help boyle defend himself from the accusation of inconsistency as it is part of carneades’ method to evaluate opposing points of view concerning a certain topic. the main character of the sceptical chymist, in fact, is not expected to put forth a consistent new theory, but “to propose two or more severall hypotheses about the same thing; and to say, that it may be accounted for this way, or that way, or the other way, though these wayes be perhaps inconsistent among themselves” (p.210). there are three more characters in the dialogue apart from carneades and the narrator: eleutherius, themistius and philoponus. the links of the latter two with the philosophical tradition makes them suitable means to expound the theoretical positions of two important schools of thought, that is, respectively the aristotelian and the paracelsian. eleutherius instead is assigned the role of the inquisitive person who is to stimulate carneades to express his opinions and objections. in assigning different roles to various characters, boyle likens his dialogue features to those of a scientific discussion, in which his characters are to embody different theo re tical positions and express contrasting points of view. the interactive aspect of the dialogue is thus identified in the contrast among the theo retical statements characterising opposing scientific and philoso phical schools. in spite of the fictitiousness of this interaction and the contrived roles of its participants, boyle tries to confer a certain degree of realism to his dialogue by providing a particular contextualization to the conversations that take place in it. at the beginning of the dialogue, in fact, boyle carefully sets the scene, specifying both the place and the time armenian folia anglistika linguistics 10 of the beginning of the narration. the dialogue takes place “on one of the fairest dayes of this summer” (p. 215), when the narrator, who is at home, receives the visit of his friend eleutherius. the following scene too is representative of boyle’s desire to provide a detailed contextualization of the conversation between carneades and his friends. the former is described as being in “one of the arbours in his garden”, where he has retired “to enjoy under its cool shades a delightful protection from the yet trouble some heat of the sun” (p.216). this cool, quiet setting is thus introduced as ideal 9 for the scientific discussion the learned men are going to take part in. also the characterisation of the participants is fairly accurate. indeed, boyle frequently introduces skillful descriptions of actions that one might consider irrelevant in the general view of the dialogue, but which however are useful in helping the reader identify the true nature of the various characters. for example, the first presentation of these characters is accompanied by appropriate contextualization, as these philosophers are portrayed “sitting close about a little round table, on which, besides paper, pen, and inke, there lay two or three open books” (p.216). the careful description of the scene is completed by the faithful report of the reactions of these characters to the arrival of eleutherius and the narrator: carneades appeared not at all troubled at this surprise, but rising from the table, received his friend with open looks and armes, and welcoming me also with his wonted freedom and civility, invited us to rest ourselves by him; which, as soon as we had exchanged with his two friends (who were ours also) the civilities accustomed on such occasions, we did. and he, presently after we had seated ourselves, shutting the books that lay open, and turning to us with a smiling countenance, seemed ready to begin some such unconcerning dis course, as is wont to pass or rather waste the time in promiscuous companies. (p.216) the five characters are then made to start their philosophical conference (p.216), which is described with the accurate insertion of those features of due decorum that pertain to a discourse “wherein only gentlemen are introduced as speakers” (p.212). the description of such polite manners, however, does not make the narration artificial or pedantic, as boyle also inserts appropriate com ments and actions to attribute particular concreteness and vividness to the characters’ behaviour. the following passage, for example, re ports eleutherius’ reaction to the formalities employed by his col leagues, and highlights his more practical spirit: philoponus and themistius soon returned this complement with civilities of the like nature, in which eleutherius perceiving them engaged, to prevent the further loss of that time of which they were not like to have very much to spare, he minded them that their present businesse was not to exchange complements, but arguments. (p.219) armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 11 the subsequent progress of the debate represents the realization of a typical scientific dispute, whose final outcome is made to coincide with the persuasion of the other characters on the part of the main one. boyle’s dialogue follows the rules typical of polite conversation among gentlemen,10 according to which participants take it in turns to speak in an appropriate way, paying compliments to the previous speaker even when they are disagreeing with what he has just said. boyle is aware that as arguing typically implies disagreeing with another interlocutor, argumentation is a highly face-threatening activity which may greatly endanger social relations (brown and levinson 1987). however, the civility corresponding to a real gentleman’s discourse should imply the adoption of a fair attitude towards his interlocutors, and respect for the people whose opinions he is arguing against.11 he thus indicates the correct behaviour of a person who is trying to convince other people of the rightness of his ideas: a man may be a champion for truth, without being an enemy to civility; and may confute an opinion without railing at them that hold it; to whom, he that desires to convince and not to provoke them, must make some amends by his civility to their persons for his severity to their mistakes; and must say as little else as he can, to displease them, when he says, that they are in an error. (p.212) what distinguishes a gentleman’s behaviour, therefore, is his respect for the person whose views he is criticising and his limiting his objections to the points he sees as incorrect without any unfair recourse to excessive aggressiveness.12 according to this view, ad hominem argument is deemed unacceptable, as criticism should be directed towards the debated matter rather than the opponents. boyle’s dialogue contains the elements which are typical of con ver sational argumentation (cf muntigl and turnbull 1998) and its most frequent speech acts are those of making claims, disagreeing with claims and countering disagreements. claims are often strengthened by discourse markers expressing emphasis, as is the case of i say in the following quotation: and since especially there is a manifest analogie and resemblance betwixt the bodies obtainable by chymical anatomies and the principles whose names are given them; i have, i say, consider’d that these things may be represented: […]. (p.305) disagreements with claims and countering disagreements, how ever, are expressed in a civil manner. the following quotation is an instance of disagreement with a previous claim which is expressed in a very cautious way using hedging and a counterfactual conditional: i halfe expected, carneades, that after you had so freely declar’d your doubting, whether there be any determinate number of elements, you would have proceeded to question whether there be any elements at all. (p.344) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 12 also when the objection is made more directly, it is formulated in such a way as not to hurt the interlocutor’s feelings: but (says eleutherius) me thinks for all this, you have left some part of what i alledg’d in behalf of the three principles, unanswer’d. (p.339) the civility of the formulation of a disagreement also finds con firmation in the tone of its reply, in which the first speaker, even when objecting to the counterclaim, is grateful to the person who expressed it: nor do i doubt, but you’l excuse me, if as i thank the chymists for the things their analysis shews me, so i take the liberty to consider, [...]. (p.278) in the following example, instead, the narrator is very keen to underline carneades’ lack of irritation by remarking that his reply to disagreement is given with a laugh: i never denyed (replyes carneades) that the notion of the tria prima may be of some use, but (continues he laughing) by what you now alledg for it, it will but appear that it is useful to apothecaries, rather than to philosophers, […]. (p.339) the civility of the tone adopted is often emphasised by the use of appropriate politeness phrases: but i think i could shew you, if you would give me leave, that this will prove only that the elements as you call them, are the chief bodies that make up the neighbouring part of the world, [...]. (p.225) this frequent adoption of polite expressions sometimes suggests an impression of unrealistic use of the dialogic tool in the sceptical chymist. this impression is confirmed by the fact that the speakers’ turns are quite imbalanced, with frequent and long turns taken by carneades and sporadic and much shorter sentences uttered by his interlocutors. only in some parts of the dialogue does the conver sa tion acquire more realistic features, with the characters taking turns in a more natural way. in certain cases, in fact, the succession of the characters’ lines is made more vivid by spontaneous interruptions, such as in the following passage: but as carneades was going to do as he had said, eleutherius interrupted him, by saying with a somewhat smiling countenance: […]. (p.278) at times interruptions are somewhat brusque, and make the inter action sound more similar to direct speech: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 13 what helmontian opinion, and what arguments do you mean? (askes carnea des). (p.258) in general, turns clearly follow one another, sometimes neatly di vided by pauses and silence: themistius having after these last words declared by his silence, that he had finished his discourse, carneades addressing himself, as his adversary had done, to eleutherius, returned this answer to it. (p.223) claims and counterclaims usually follow each other smoothly. on some occasions the words of one character are perceived by the other as a stimulus for his own intervention in the conversation: you recall to my mind (says carneades) a certain experiment i once devis’d. (p.283) the presence of the interlocutor(s) is often made explicit by a clear reference to him/them through the use of the second person pronoun form or his/their proper name(s): for i, and no doubt you, have long observed, that those dialectical subtleties, that the schoolmen too often employ about physiological mysteries, are wont much more to declare the wit of him that uses them, then increase the knowledge or remove the doubts of sober lovers of truth. (p.219) but i have already intimated, eleutherius, that i shall not insist on this expe ri ment, not only because, having made it but once, i may possibly have been mistaken in it; but also.[...]. (p.251) at times, the speaker’s direct reference to his interlocutors is meant to guide their decoding activity and thus strengthen his per lo cu tionary action: but i must here profess, and desire you to take notice of it, that though i pass on to another argument, it is not because i think this first invalid. (p.225) to convey the impression of greater colloquialism, some of the turns are made to start with an interjection or an exclamation: nay, for a further confirmation of this argument, i will add this strange rela tion, that two friends of mine, the one a physitian, and the other a mathe ma ti cian, and both of them persons of unsuspected credit, have solemnly assured me, that [...]. (p.266) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 14 now, if chymists will agree to call the dry and sapid substance salt; the unctuous liquor sulphur; and the other mercury; i shall not much quarrel with them for so doing [...]. (p.306) argumentative features the stylistic choices made by the author often lead him to privi lege the argumentative aspects of his dialogue rather than the conver sa tional ones so that in many parts the work looks more like a treatise than a real oral interaction. indeed, the way scientific exposition is structured in the dialogue greatly derives from the stylistic principles presented by the author in this same work. according to these prin ciples, carneades expounds his observations in a very orderly way, taking care to make use of all possible rhetorical means to favour his interlocutors’ decoding of his words. each consideration is usually illustrated by means of suitable examples, and supported by appro priate evidence derived from clearly demonstrated experimental re sults. as the dialogue has the clear purpose of providing an example of how discussions should be conducted, it is not at all surprising to find throughout the text clear metatextual statements meant by the author to offer friendly guidance to his readers’ interpretation. very frequently, in dealing with a theoretical point, the author emphasizes the structure of his reasoning by means of appropriate comments such as the following: to proceed then to my propositions, i shall begin with this, that (propos. i.) it seems not absurd to conceive, that [...]. but (continues carneades) presuming, that the first proposition needs not be longer insisted on, i will pass onto the second, and tell you that (propos. ii.) neither it is impossible that [...]. but to proceed to a new proposition (propos. iii.) i shall not peremptorily deny, that [ ...]. to these three concessions, i have but this fourth to add, that (propos. iv.) it may likewise be granted, that [ ...]. (pp.229-232) after outlining the structure of his argumentation, the author pro ceeds to develop it, carefully preceding each step of his reasoning with transparent metatextual statements: that i may not make this paradox a greater then i needs must, i will first briefly explain what the proposition means, before i proceed to argue for it. [...] that then, which i mean by the proposition i am explaining, is, that [...]. having thus explain’d my proposition, i shall endeavour to do two things, to prove it; the first of which is to shew, that [ ...]. and the other is to make it probable, that [...]. to begin then with the first of these, i consider that […]. (pp.254-255) having appreciated the author’s care in avoiding redundancy, we should not be puzzled by his summing up the various steps of his reasoning at the end of his treatment of armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 15 a main argumentative move. if we consider the length of the argumentation (which in its printed form takes up several pages), it is not at all surprising that the author should provide a recapitulation of his main theses before proceeding. once again, this process is meant not merely to satisfy the locutor’s argumentative needs, but is mainly justified by the wish to help the readers understand his text: and thus, eleutherius, (sayescarneades) having at length gone through the four considerations i propos’d to discourse unto you, i hold it not unfit, for fear my having insisted so long on each of them may have made you forget their series, briefly to repeat them by telling you, that since, in the first place, it may justly be doubted whether or no [...]; since we may doubt, in the next place, whether or no [...]; since also, [...]; and since, lastly, [...]; since, i say, these things are so, i hope you will allow me to infer, that [...]. (p.326) also at the end of the dialogue, the main steps of the debate are re proposed in a shortened form. this time, however, the summary is not provided by carneades himself, but by eleutherius to indicate the high degree of cooperation existing in that civil group: wherefore, if it be granted you, that you have made it probable, first [...]; next [...]. lastly [...]. if, i say the chymists (continues eleutherius) be so liberall as to make you these three concessions, i hope you will, on your part, be so civil and equitable as to grant them these three other propositions, namely; first [...]. next [ ..]. lastly [...]. (pp.374-375) this summary concludes with the total acceptance of carneades’ argumentative line. in fact, eleutherius recognizes the soundness of carneades’ reasonings and acknowledges his superiority over the others. the language used by eleutherius to express his final consi derations belongs to the stylistic variety which can appropriately be considered civil, thus showing that, in the process of the dis cus sion, not only have carneades’ epistemological and conceptual suggestions been accepted, but so too have those concerning linguistic aspects. the use of the two adverbs sincerely and subtilly in the final compliment that eleutherius pays to carneades shows his emphasis on both the conceptual and the stylistic aspects of his argumentation: so that (concludes he, with a smile) you may now by granting what i propose, add the reputation of loving the truth sincerely to that of having been able to oppose it subtilly. (p.375) conclusion the analysis carried out in this paper has thus helped us under stand boyle’s use of the armenian folia anglistika linguistics 16 scientific dialogue by showing how the choice of this genre was strictly linked with the nature of this work, which was mainly meant to provide a critical analysis and confuta tion of the principal theoretical statements put forth by the aristo te lians and the paracelsians as regards physical elements. the exami na tion of the expository and argumentative aspects of this dialogue has pointed out that, on the one hand, boyle tries to insert those stylistic characteristics which are needed to make this dialogue resemble normal conversation. the dialogue indeed tries to imitate natural speech to some extent by giving reactions to previous turns, repeating parts of them, making explicit reference to the interlocutor and inserting interjections. however, the main part of the work shows an accurate and constant use of those argumentative features that instead are typical of another genre of scientific theorisation, i.e. the treatise. moreover, the analysis has outlined the fact that the expository strategies employed greatly derive from the stylistic principles expounded by the author in this work, who identifies them by the attribute civil. generally speaking, boyle does not seem to take full advantage of the various controversial issues he is dealing with to build up con trasting interactive sequences, with the result that the use of the dia lo gic genre in the sceptical chymist often hinders its conversational worth.13 this is also due to the methodological choice made by the british writer. in fact, in adopting the style of arguing typical of a sceptical philosopher, boyle is bound to present the same main character evaluating both the strong and the weak points of each argument, instead of assigning them to different speakers. in spite of its limitations in the use of conversational features, boyle’s work possesses the characteristics of mimetic dialogues typical of early modern english, which represent an evolution compared to the scholastic dialogues mainly continuing the late modern english tradition as pointed out by taavitsainen´s (1999) analysis, which has been summarised in scalar terms by culpeper and kytö in the following table (2010:43): table 1. scalar differences between the dialogic scholastic and mimetic traditions in early modern english. however, boyle´s dialogue shows fewer oral characteristics than those of real conversation and therefore looks less speech-like if compared to the other spoken genres of the same period listed in the following table (reproduced from culpeper and kytö, 2010:67): armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 17 scholastic mimetic less speech like instructional less characterisation less plot development less entertaining narrow audience more speech like persuasive more characterisation more plot development more entertaining wide audience table 2. historical genres containing “spoken” dialogue. the sceptical chymist thus constitutes an important testimony of boyle’s progress in his writing abilities throughout his career, which can be found in his choice of the dialogic form to embody his sceptical treatise and in his selection of appropriate elements with which to endow its various parts. moreover, this dialogue shows a remarkable example of boyle’s various proposals – ethical, methodo lo gical, linguistic and stylistic – all contributing to provide an example of the main discursive features of scientific discussion as en visaged by the new specialized community of that time. in this way, the sceptical chymist played a fundamental role in the promotion of these discursive conventions, as it soon became a model for the scientific community of gentlemen that was expanding and becoming consolidated in england in the 17th century. notes: 1. the subtitle of the sceptical chymist is: chymico-physical doubts and paradoxes, touching the experiments, whereby vulgar spagyrists are wont to endeavour to evince their salt, sulphur and mercury, to be the true principles of things. to which, in this edition, are subjoined divers experiments and notes about the producibleness of chymical principles. 2. all the quotations from the sceptical chymist mentioned in this paper are taken from hunter and davis (1999, volume 2). 3. golinski (1987:61) gives a similar explanation for boyle’s choice of the dialogic form: “boyle cast the sceptical chymist in the form of dialogues, in order to communicate his ideas in a didactically-effective way, while also dramatising the rituals of proper philoso phical debate. in his view, the manners of such debate required the strict avoidance of dog matic theorising. within such a dramatic structure, the deployment of sceptical arguments undercut the authority of traditional chemical discourse, while avoiding the pressure to explicate theoretical alternatives.” 4. this aspect of the dialogue of protecting the author from public attack is pointed out by marsh (1980:15) as an important reason for galileo’s choice of this genre: “the armenian folia anglistika linguistics 18 dialogue recorded reconstructed constructed less explicit narratorial intervention trial proceedings (meeting records) (parliamentary journals) (history, biographies) drama didactic works, i.e. instructional treatises in dialogue form more explicit narratorial intervention witness depositions / accounts (history, biographies) prose fiction caution of the humanists [...] exploited the form of the dialogue in order to avoid recrimina tions and reprisals from contemporary authorities. [...] as late as galileo’s day, the threat of ecclesiastical authority recommended the dialogue form for treating potentially dangerous topics.” 5. however, the goal of boyle’s work is not to promote scepticism as a philosophical approach. as golinski (1990:384) rightly asserts, “in an appendix to his work, [boyle] explained that he did not intend to propose scepticism as a philosophical doctrine, the kind of belief in the doubtfulness of all things to which a convinced sceptic might seek to convert his auditors. for boyle, rather, scepticism was an argumentative strategy, a mode of dis course to be used, as he wrote, on ‘occasion’ and ‘with design’ – the design, in this case, being to challenge the authority of the prevalent mode of chemical discourse.” 6. as has been suggested by shapin (1984), modesty plays an important role in boyle’s writing strategy, and helps the author make his works more convincing and less subject to criticism. 7. for an analysis of boyle’s conceptualisation of a ‘civil style’ cf. gotti (2012). 8. here are the words with which boyle shows his approval of the widening of the scientific community: “for i observe, that of late chymistry begins, as indeed it deserves, to be cultivated by learned men, who before despised it.” (p.208) 9. markley (1988:41) gives a historical interpretation of this idyllic setting of the dialogue: “in one respect, these images of social harmony are part of boyle’s [...] attempts to promote a positive articulation of shared values about language, science, and social order; in another, they may be seen as necessary fictions designed to paper over the cracks in the fragile civic peace in the years following the restoration.” 10. the class nature of this politeness feature and its close link with the world of ‘gentle men’ have been clearly stressed by shapin (1994). 11. this respectful and cooperative attitude is also one of the features which sprat (1667/1959:92) points out as typical of the behaviour of the members of the royal society: “they could not be much exasperated one against another in their disagreements, because they acknowledge, that there may be several methods of nature, in producing the same thing, and all equally good.” as goldgar (1995) demonstrates, this is one of the ‘unwritten rules’ of behaviour typical not only of the fellows of the royal society but of the scholars who formed the international community that he calls ‘the republic of letters’. 12. the adoption of a ‘civil’ tone to be used in scientific debate was a common aim shared by all members of the royal society: “the emphasis in the works of boyle, sprat, and glanvill is thus on precisely those qualities which minimize passionate debate and rhetorical conflict and which elicit their readers’ tacit complicity in, as well as overt ac ceptance of, their campaigns against the backward languages of fanaticism and the occult.” (markley 1988:40-41) 13. this is not typical of this genre. in her analysis of medical dialogues of this period, taavitsainen (1999:262) finds that “features of natural conversation are present in some dialogues that incorporate speech acts of normal everyday interaction, like apologies, in armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 19 sults, greetings and leave-takings, and other exchanges that belong to personal communica tion, but this seems to be rare and achieved only in texts by the most skilful writers.” references: 1. brown, p.; levinson, s. (1987) politeness: some universals in language usage. cambridge: cup. 2. culpeper, j.; kytö, m. (2010) early modern english dialogues. cambridge: cup. 3. goldgar, a. (1995) impolite learning: conduct and community in the republic of letters 1680-1750. new haven: yale university press. 4. golinski, j.v. (1987) robert boyle: scepticism and authority in seventeenth-century chemical discourse. // the figural and the literal. / ed. by a.e. benjamin, g.n. cantor and j.r.r. christie. manchester: manchester university press, pp.58-82. 5. golinski, j.v. (1990) chemistry in the scientific revolution: problems of language and communication. // reappraisals of the scientific revolution. / ed. by d.c. lindberg and r.s. westman. cambridge: cup, pp.367-396. 6. gotti, m. (2001) the experimental essay in early modern english. // european journal of english studies, vol. 5 (2), pp.221-239. 7. gotti, m. (2012) managing disputes with civility: on seventeenth-century argumentative discourse. // investigations into the meta-communicative lexicon of english. a contribution to historical pragmatics. / ed. by u. busse and a. hübler. amsterdam: benjamins, pp.89-109. 8. gotti, m. (2013) the formation of the royal society as a community of practice and discourse. // communities of practice in the history of english. / ed. by j. kopaczyk and a. jucker. amsterdam: john benjamins, pp.269-285. 9. hunter, m. (1989) establishing the new science: the experience of the early royal society. woodbridge: boydell press. 10. hunter, m.; davis, e.b. (eds.) (1999) the works of robert boyle. london: pickering and chatto. 11. jardine, l. (1999) ingenious pursuits: building the scientific revolution. london: little and brown. 12. klein, l. (1994) ‘politeness’ as linguistic ideology in late seventeenthand eighteenth-century england. // towards a standard english, 1600-1800. / ed. by d. stein and i. tieken-boon van ostade. berlin: mouton de gruyter, pp.31-50. 13. markley, r. (1988) two-edge’s weapons. oxford: clarendon press. 14. marsh, d. (1980) the quattrocento dialogue. cam bridge (mass.): harvard university press. 15. merrill, e. (1970) the dialogue in english literature. new york: burt franklin. 16. muntigl, p.; turnbull, w. (1998) conversation structure and facework in arguing. // journal of pragmatics. vol. 29, pp.225-256. 17. shapin, s.(1984) pump and circumstance: robert boyle’s literary technology. // social studies of science. vol. 14, pp.481-520. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 20 18. shapin, s.(1994) a social history of truth: civility and science in seventeenthcentury england. chicago: university of chicago press. 19. shapiro, b. (2000) a culture of fact: england, 1550-1720. ithaca: cornell university press. 20. sprat, t. (1667) a history of the royal society of london for the improving of natural science. london: martyn; rpt. london: routledge and kegan paul, 1959. 21. taavitsainen, i. (1999) dialogues in late medieval and early modern english medical writing. // historical dia logue analysis. / ed. by a. jucker, g. fritz and f. lebsanft. amsterdam: benjamins, pp.243-268. 22. vickers, b. (ed.) (1987) english science: bacon to newton. cambridge: cup. ð³õáñ¹³ïóáõãûáõýý áõ ÷³ëï³ñïáõùá ´áûéç ·çï³ï³ý »ñïëáëáõãû³ý ù»ç êáõûý ñá¹ í³ íç ýå³ ï³ïý ¿ ý»ñ ï³ û³ó ý»é 17-ñ¹ ¹³ ñç ³ý· éç³ ï³ý ·ç ï³ ï³ý »ñï ëá ëáõã û³ý å³ý ñçý μýá ñáß ýáñ á ׳ ï³ý ùá ï» óáõù, ñ³ï ï³ å»ë ï³ñ¨á ñ» éáí èá μ»ñï ´áû éç ïáõ ùçó áý ¹áõý í³í é³½ ù³ í³ ñáõã ûáõý ý» ñá: êáõûý áõ ëáõù ý³ ëç ñáõã û³ý ù»ç ñá¹ í³ í³ ·ç ñá ù³ï ý³ý ßáõù ¿ ùç ïáõ ùçó ³ûý á ñ³ ï³ ï³ý ñ³ï ï³ ýçß ý» ñá, á ñáýù ï³ ñáõ »ý áý¹ ñ³ ýáõñ éç ý»é ·ç ï³ ï³ý ¨ ëá íá ñ³ ï³ý »ñï ëá ëáõã ûáõý ý» ñç ñ³ ù³ñ, çëï ùûáõë ïáõ ùçó` ³ûý ³ é³ýó ý³ ñ³ï ïáõã ûáõý ý» ñá, á ñáýù, ñçùý í³í éç ý» éáí ï» ë³ ï³ý ÷³ë ï³ñ ïáõù ý» ñç íñ³, ùá ï»ó ýáõù »ý í» ñáýß û³é å³ý ñá ·ç ï³ ï³ý ïñ³ï ï³ ïçý: êîììóíèêàöèÿ è àðãóìåíòàöèÿ â íàó÷íîì äèàëîãå áîéëà öåëü äàí íîé ñòàòüè – ïî êà çàòü íî âûé ñòè ëèñòè ÷åñ êèé ïîä õîä, âîï ëî ùåí íûé â æàí ðå àíã ëèéñ êî ãî íàó÷ íî ãî äèà ëî ãà 17-îãî âå êà, â ÷àñò íîñòè, ñòðà òå ãèè, ïðè íÿ òûå ðî áåð òîì áîé ëîì. â ñòàòüå àâ òîð ñòà âèò öåëü óêà çàòü, ñ îä íîé ñòî ðî íû, íà õà ðàê òå ðèñòè êè, êî òî ðûå ïðèá ëè æàþò ýòîò äèà ëîã ê îáû÷ íî ìó ðàç ãî âî ðó, à ñ äðó ãîé, òå õà ðàê òå ðèñòè êè, öåëüþ êî òî ðûõ ÿâ ëÿåò ñÿ àð ãó ìåí òà öèÿ, è êî òî ðûå, òà êèì îá ðà çîì, ïðèá ëè æàþò âû øåó êà çàí íûé æàíð ê íàó÷ íî ìó òðàê òà òó. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 21 microsoft word maket 2023, vol 19. 15.04.23 (1) armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 linguistics 10 contents linguistics anahit hovhannisyan  english idioms from the perspective of modal meaning ........................... 13 ning huichun, gevorg grigoryan  verbal deviations in contemporary english social media platforms ........ 27 anahit makaryan, shogher harutyunyan  on modelling of the concept “crime” via autointertextuality (based on r. dahl’s writing style) .............................................................. 43 anna knyazyan, liza marabyan  gender differences in verbal and nonverbal aggression ......................... 57 mariana sargsyan  “all truth is relative” or how to not be fooled in the post-truth age? ...... 69 narine harutyunyan  decoding multimodal texts of media discourse ........................................ 83  methodology astghik chubaryan, mariam vardanyan  lexical errors in second language academic writing .............................. 95 translation studies nelli sargsyan  the essence of metaphor and its interlingual translation ........................ 105  literature studies ara arakelyan  manifestations of postmodernism in hermann hesse's novel “the glass bead game” ............................................................................ 118 anush sedrakyan  the end of history, the destruction of the story and the death of the hero in postmodern discourse .............................................. 129   linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 11 amalya soghomonyan  loss of the self in postmodern discourse. deconstructing and reconstructing identity .............................................................................. 137 gohar madoyan  character, characterization and dialogue ................................................. 144 vicky tchaparian  the rule of power in william golding’s “lord of the flies” ................... 158   armenological studies ashot melkonyan  the scientific and political significance of textbooks on history (objective history vs falsification) ............................................................. 167 naira hambardzumyan, siranush parsadanyan  linguo-stylistic stratification as identification of femininity in the novels “siranush” by srbuhi tyusab and “a girl’s heart” by sipil ........ 178 armenological studies     microsoft word 5.armenological studies 145 156 (1) armenological studies armenian folia anglistika 147 the extralinguistic reality of the armenian question or why armenians should be killed off (with special reference to e.t. lawrence’s standpoint) naira gasparyan yerevan state university abstract e.t. lawrence, or lawrence of arabia, found “a perfect solution” to the armenian question: the perfect race of armenians” need a perfect massacre”. in lawrence’s interview given to lincoln steffens (1919), entitled armenians are impossible his intent suddenly becomes explicit at the end of their talk: armenians are the last word in human impossibility, hence, they should be killed off. to show what makes lawrence arrive at such an inhuman idea of annihilating a whole nation, we intend to present the discussion with the help of a certain methodology. methods of linguo-cultural analysis and purposive sampling, techniques of comparison and contrast, interpretation and representation have been applied to the material of our choice. key words: armenians, turks, linguo-cultural analysis, extralinguistic reality, armenian question. introduction in 1915 new york times wrote that some aspects of the armenian situation were presented in an article in nuova antologia (rome), by a member of the italian chamber of deputies, signor filippo media. at the outset he noted that but for disraeli’s opposition, the armenian question might have been settled at the congress of berlin, in 1878, by constituting an armenian dependency under the nominal suzerainty of turkey… disraeli and his assistant salisbury opposed it inflexibly. they feared that the new armenian state would follow the example of the balkan states and gravitate toward russia, and would thus render turkey more vulnerable in case of a russian attack in asia minor (the armenian genocide – news accounts from the american press: 1915-1922). armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 148 during his activity of a liaison officer t.e. lawrence, famous as lawrence of arabia, while fighting against the turks together with arab tribes, managed to closely study the armenians, their lifestyle, preferences, national characteristics, national wisdom, national demeanor. he also managed to notice that christianity was not the main reason for the ruling young turkish government to declare armenians state prisoners, otherwise said – enemies of turkey. arabs, both muslim and christian, were declared enemies and killed on the same scaffolds together with armenias (lawrence 1922). edgar t.a. wigram (1922:19) interprets the hatred of the turks for the armenians emphasizing the fact that armenians were the only one of their subject nations of whom the turks were afraid. the arabs and kurds were their coreligionists, and had no national cohesion. the nestorian and jacobite syrians were either too few to be dangerous, or too thoroughly tamed by long subjection to have any desire to rebel. but the armenians were numerous and imbued with national aspirations; and though the majority of them were inoffensive cultivators, they included a considerable number of intelligent and capable men. a small percentage too were active political propagandists, who continued to work persistently to overthrow the present regime. under equal political conditions the armenians would soon secure dominance: and that would be a subversal which the turks could never endure. so when the armenians grew restive the turks resolved to “take precautions”. they could not cope with them in cleverness, but in physical force they could. the british noblemen noel buxton and harold buxton who travelled in western and eastern armenia in 1913-1914 presented their accounts to the british parliament. they wrote: europe should give up the hope that the turks would ever be able to initiate reforms from within, moreover, armenians should be perished from the turks, or given arms to defend themselves. (buxton, buxton 1914) armenological studies armenian folia anglistika 149 armenian identity and e.t. lawrence’s interpretation of the armenians in his seven pillars of wisdom (1922) lawrence mentions that those irritating subject races, thus were they perceived by the ruling stamp, that is by the turks, had only one fault: they were not turkish… everything was going to be made turkish and only for the turks. yeni turan was supposed to house only turks. the rest were to be massacred. so, the turks began to cut the throats of their prisoners with knives, as though they were butchering sheep. (lawrence 1922). but, despite this horrible patches in one’s destiny, armenians survived and never surrendered. in the famous interview given to lincoln steffens, 1919, lawrence, with some hidden envy, admits that armenians have no lack of thrift, they know how to make money, handle their profit and become prosperous. nevertheless, he considers that the british and americans should teach them to work hard to succeed because armenians prefer to make use of their brains rather than their hands. the fact that armenians practise medicine, law, arouses his detest. but why shouldn’t armenians, practise medicine, law? this capability of armenians, as it appears, was a source for concern and dissatisfaction for lawrence. the trouble, as he thinks, is that all those old races that have been civilized, and once dominated the world and worked it, afterwards lost control. they have gone forward logically, psychologically, physiologically. here the stem logically is repeated for three times for some stylistic effect. lawrence thinks that armenians do not care for hard labor, armenians should work for armenia and not armenia for armenians. lawrence is sure that ex-civilized nations like armenians are not lazy, anyhow they are too intelligent to work for others. the idea that armenians are exploiters themselves may lead to some misunderstanding, since armenians have always migrated because they themselves have been exploited. in foreign countries it took armenians just a certain period to revive. persians have always appreciated armenians’ loyalty and wit, creative talents and ability to participate, to invest in the well-being and prosperity of the state. lawrence is sure that armenians, are the most intelligent, the most perfectly selected, the most highly developed race in the world – from the civilized point of view. here the superlatives are used to highlight certain national features that deeply displease lawrence. a more perfect evaluation of a nation cannot be found. armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 150 as the national history shows armenians have succeeded in all the spheres. in 1653, a planter named edward diggs, considered to be the first armenian in america, established a silk factory in america (<z4.invisionfree.com/armenian _history/ar/t110.htm>). there is also the fact (<z4.invisionfree.com/armenian_history/ar/t110.htm>) that the first information concerning patenting of innovations by armenians is believed to relate to xvi century when in venice the inventor anton surian received privileges and character of immunity on august 17, 1564 for the construction and method of “pontoon” salvaging of sank vessels from adriatic sea lagoon. the first claim for patent in the usa was given by another armenian, chemist christopher der-seropian, in 1854. it was immediately security-restricted by state department of the country, because it concerned the method of production and green colour putting on dollar notes, which excluded the falsification possibility. it is security-restricted until the present time. nicolas knaian’s grandmother’s story is another vivid example. we learn that on his father’s side, the story goes that his grandfather provided chalk for the town they lived in. when he was taken away and killed with all the other armenian men in the village, friendly turkish neighbors protected his wife along with her two-year-old daughter, armenouhi, saying that they couldn’t kill her because she was the only one left who knew the process for making the chalk. (<http://www.northeastern.edu/nuwriting/the-truth-about-the-armeniangenocide>) savage and inhuman invaders, as well as governmental restrictions, have always made christian armenians either continue their creative activity out of their native country, or strive for changing the social-political situation in their own country. very often, migration proved to be beneficial for their scientific activity like it was the case of grigor barseghyan who became marie curie fellow in london. armenians have always lived in unbelievably complicated circumstances but they never gave up the hope, they worked hard and succeeded (buxton, buxton 1914). quite another point is that armenians have been weak at negotiating. this feature has not been well-developed most probably because of the specific armenian straightforwardness, courage and wit, the ability to handle their national problems without others’ help. the independent armenian peaceful republic of artsakh is a vivid example of this. armenological studies armenian folia anglistika 151 according to lawrence, the jews themselves feel about armenians the way the antisemitic europeans feel about the jews; and so do the greeks, turks – all the other races that have ever had them on them. they feel that the armenians would put them all to work. and they would. the armenians are all that the jews are, plus all that all the other races are—and they are christians besides! (steffens 1919) armenians have never had the tradition of enslaving others, interfering with others' domestic affairs, but they do have the feeling of being historically just and, hence, armenians easily detect any injustices imposed on them. irrespective of his specific hatred towards armenians, lawrence displays unbelievably compassionate attitude towards them, something that surprisingly hides his real intent. from lawrence’s interview to steffens it becomes obvious that ….he, lawrence, had some inexpressible sympathy or – let me rather say – some knowledge or experience of the armenians that gave him a human understanding for the turks (and all the other near neighbors of the armenians), who are forever trying to kill off this orphan race. (steffens 1919) lawrence seems to know a lot about turkish-armenian relations. to show that history repeats itself, that the turkish attitude towards armenians never altered, we would like to cite a passage (hoffman 2011: 36-37), where tessa hoffman discusses a similar scene described by the armenian historiographer aristakes lastiverttsi (1001-1080), who was the first armenian author to give a detailed account of the seljuk incursions into armenia. he wrote about the seizure of ani by the seljuks already in 1064: babies were torn from their mothers’ arms and hurled against stones, mothers shed tears and blood on their children. one and armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 152 the same sword slew father and son alike. old men and youths, priests and deacons were struck down by the same weapon…” (lastiverttsi 11th cent., translated in 1985) lawrence uses an epithet orphan race to define the armenians. most probably he meant that pro-turkish superpowers did not want to take care of them, because they themselves were somehow indifferent towards the needs of armenians. steffens lincoln, the reporter of the famous interview (armenians are impossible, 1919), adds: so he did not say that the armenians should be killed off. he only gave me the impression, at the time, that that was the sole solution of the armenian problem; and that that was his reason for desiring us americans to take on the job. (steffens 1919) the attributive word-combinations orphan race and sole solution in the above examples, seem to carry a certain message, but the message, which at first sight seemed implied, reveals lawrence’s hidden intent. it sounds like a resolution, a deadlock, a destiny for a whole nation, a nation which was said to be harmless. killing and wiping this orphan race off the world seems to be the only solution. but the worst is yet to come. all the other old rival races never finished the job, because their aesthetic pleasure in the killing of armenians was fully satisfied before all the armenians were dead. he seems to pronounce the sentence with indifference, but actually it turns out to highlight his dissatisfaction, although his intent is still implicit. steffens writes: he, lawrence, made me feel, that the turks shouldn’t do it; they were too rough and ready – and not christians. nor the greeks; they enjoyed it too much and were inefficient; they never finish anything, and when their aesthetic pleasure in the killing of armenians was sated they quit. and so with all the other old rival races. they stopped work before all the armenians were dead. (steffens 1919) armenological studies armenian folia anglistika 153 yet another very interesting feature of the armenians is established by lawrence – they are blessed by god, they cannot be abolished, cannot be wiped off the surface of the earth. he is infuriated that they produce offsprings in a controlled and organized way. it is expressed through the stylistic repetition of to breed in the past indefinite tense – bred and bred and bred, then participle i of to spread – spreading and spreading which means they spread incessantly. there are millions of them, all meek, gentle, obedient, unprotesting, and lovable, attractive in a graceful way. in the last part of the sentence the consonants s, p, b, through alliteration, create an atmosphere of secrecy beneficial for breeding and spreading. the adverb slyly points out that the armenians are selfcontained in private matters, they are clever and tend to keep thoughts and feelings private. even when they all went at the task together they invariably left a couple here and a couple there: adams and eves who, the moment one's back was turned, bred and bred and bred so that the next time one visited armenia there were the armenians as before, millions of them, all meek and lovely, but busy by day at business and at night secretly breeding and slyly spreading and spreading…. (steffens 1919) millions of armenians! only imagine – millions of them after the armenian genocide of 1915. his dissatisfaction concerning the results of the genocide seemed to have increased. his hatred was so unlimited that he expresses it implicitly through a simple exaggeration so that the next time one visited armenia there were the armenians as before, millions of them… unfortunately, millions of armenians have never lived in armenia during the past couple of centuries, and he must have been very well-aware of that. anyhow, his words make one think that after the genocide of about one and a half million of armenians the population of armenia should have increased with geometrical progression. from the next paragraphs we learn that since the english are practical, they think about solid things – oil, ore, air, the sea and they, the british, are not fit for a perfect massacre of the armenians, they still have a dream, a task – a world government must be founded. armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 154 the shocking part of lawrence’s attitude towards the armenians is that this almost perfect nation needs a perfect massacre. this ‘adj + noun’ syntagm is actually the carrier of the author’s intent – this is the case when a nation should be abolished, massacred because of their positive features, because these positive features turn out to be very “dangerous” for the whole mankind. he suggests that the job be done by americans who managed to have shown a similar attitude, a certain policy towards the indians and nobody made a scandal… besides, americans never ceased to think that they had been right! conclusion the problem with the armenians remains obscure and controversial – they are creative, harmless, thrifty, graceful, intelligent, gone forward… and just for these reasons they should be killed off. then, all of a sudden, with the methods and technique applied to the material, we discover the unique and astounding reason why armenians should be killed off… it is because they, armenians, will never obey foreign forces who intend to exploit them in their own armenian mines! it is because armenians love intellectual work, personal and national freedom, so, they will never become slaves; it is because they know how to survive and be successful – not only on their own soil in armenia, but also in any foreign country. lawrence was a successful liaison officer and a british spy who happened to make mustafa kemal pasha, ataturk, work on the british as a spy. although lawrence was a keen expert in world cultures, he was mistaken to think that armenians will make the whole world work for them. anyhow, he perfectly understands that armenians will never be abolished because they manage not to be killed off. besides, armenians know how to breed and spread. references: 1. armenian immigration. available at: <www2.needham.k12.ma.us/nhs/cur/ kane98/kane_p6_immig/armenian/luder.html> [accessed march 2016]. 2. history of armenia, p. 35. available at: <www.historyofarmenia.am/images /menus/728/hjp.pdf > [accessed june 2016]. 3. hoffman, t. (2011) one nation – three sub-ethnic groups. the case of armenia and her diaspora. yerevan: narek. armenological studies armenian folia anglistika 155 4. issue three / nu writing. available at: <www.northeastern.edu/nuwriting/ the-truth-about-the-armenian-genocide> [accessed june 2016]. 5. list of armenian scientists and philosophers. available at: <www.en.wiki pediaorg/wiki/list_of_armenian_scientists_and_philosophers> [accessed january 2016]. 6. ria: inventions of armenians. available at: <http://ria.am/en/about-armenia/ inventions-of-armenians.html> [accessed january 2016]. sources of data: 1. armenians are impossible. / interview with lawrence of arabia in 1919 by lincoln steffens. available at: <http://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2008 /05/2471-armenians-are-impossible-interview.html> [accessed april 2015]. 2. buxton, n.; buxton, h. (1914) travel and politics in armenia. london: smith, elder & co. 3. lastiverttsi, a. (1985) history regarding the sufferings occasioned by foreign peoples living around us. / tr. and ed. by r. bedrosian․ n.y.։ ny publishers. 4. lawrence, e.t. (1922) seven pillars of wisdom. uk: private edition. 5. wigram, e.t. (1922) the cradle of mankind. life in eastern kurdistan. london: adam and charles black. ð³ûï³ï³ý ñ³ñóç ³ñï³é»½í³ï³ý ñçùùá, ï³ù ã» çýãáõ å»ïù ¿ μý³çýç»é ñ³û»ñçý ²ù»ñçï³óç éñ³·ñáõ êï»ý»ýëçý ïñí³í èááõñ»ýë ²ñ³μ³óáõ ñ³ñó³½ñáõûóç ÷³ëï³ï³ý ýûáõãç ñçù³ý íñ³ àëï ²ñ³μ³óáõ` ³û¹ ï³ï³ñû³é ó»õá åçïç μý³çýçíç §ï³ï³ñû³é ç³ñ¹»ñç¦ ùççáóáí, áõ ¹³ ïéçýç ñ³ûï³ï³ý ñ³ñóç ùç³ï éáõíáõùá: ð³ßíç ³éý»éáí, áñ ñ³ñó³½ñáõûóá ïñí»é ¿ 1919 ãí³ï³ýçý, ð³ûï³ï³ý ø»í ºõ»éýçó ³ýùçç³å»ë ñ»ïá, å³ñ½ ¿ ¹³éýáõù áñáß ù³õ³ù³ï³ý ßñç³ýý»ñ ý»ñï³û³óýáõ èááõñ»ýë ²ñ³μ³óáõ` ñ³û»ñç áý¹ñ³ýáõñ μýáõã³·ñçý ñçùý³ï³ýáõù ù³ç³ï»õû³ïáõãûáõýá ¨ áý¹·íí³í ³ï»éáõãûáõýý áõ ýñ³ýóçó ³½³ïí»éáõ ë»é³·³ñ ó³ýïáõãûáõýá: ðá¹í³íç ëý¹ñá ³é³ñï³ ñ³ûï³ï³ý ñ³ñóç ³ñï³é»½í³ï³ý ñçùùç áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõýá 黽í³ùß³ïáõã³ûçý ¨ ùç ß³ñù ³ûé ù»ãá¹ý»ñç áõ ëï½μáõýùý»ñç ïçñ³éù³ùμ å³ñ½áõù armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 156 »ýù, áñ ýù³ý ùáï»óù³ý å³ï׳éá í³ëý ¿, áñ ñ³ûá` éçý»éáí ²ëïíá áýïñû³é, ï³ñáõ ¿ çñ ë»éùáí ¨ áõý³ïáõãû³ùμ, ïñãáõãû³ý ýï³ïù³ùμ ëçñáí, ³ßë³ï³ëçñáõãû³ùμ ¨ ë³õ³õ³ëçñáõãû³ùμ ·ñ³í»é ³ßë³ññá, å³ñ½áõù »ýù ý³¨, áñ ãáõñùá` ë»éçáõïá, 㻨 ¹»åç ºíñáå³ ó·ïáõ, ¿áõãû³ùμ ùý³ó»é ¿ ýáõûýá. í»ñ³óý»é ³ûý, çýãý ³í»éç ³é³ç³¹»ù ¿: microsoft word maket 2020-1(21) 19.02 doc.doc armenian folia anglistika linguistics 6 contents linguistics alessandra giorgi the comparative method in synchronic linguistics: the case of word order .............................................................................. 9 lili karapetyan, lusine danukhyan insights into the category of gender (with special reference to gender-marking avoidance strategies) ............ 33 ruzanna arakelyan, ani petrosyan gender specific english advertisements................................................... 44 hasmik kajberuny, tamara hakobyan different approaches to enantiosemy in english ..................................... 51 samvel abrahamyan peculiarities of manipulative strategies in english political discourse .. 66 kristine harutyunyan, hayk danielyan the use of emotionally colored words in english e-headlines ............ 82 varduhi ghumashyan the impact of metaphor on g.g. byron’s linguopoetic thinking ............................................................................... 90 methodology tatyana sidorenko, alexandra kudryashova content and language integrated learning: potential and obstacles of its implementation in russia ......................... 98 linguistics armenian folia anglistika 7 translation studies gayane gasparyan pre-translation text analysis as an essential step to an effective translation ....................................................................... 117 culture studies dylan whitman waller sanctities sustained: an outsider’s experience inside armenian culture ..................................................................................... 130 literature studies angela locatelli (how) can recent cognitive studies contribute to literary interpretation? ........................................................................ 137 armenological studies naira gasparyan globalization and armenian identity. challenges and integration (armenia and artsakh) ............................... 157 << /ascii85encodepages false /allowtransparency false /autopositionepsfiles true /autorotatepages /none /binding /left /calgrayprofile (dot gain 15%) /calrgbprofile () /calcmykprofile (iso coated v2 \050eci\051) /srgbprofile (srgb iec61966-2.1) /cannotembedfontpolicy /error /compatibilitylevel 1.3 /compressobjects /tags /compresspages true /convertimagestoindexed true /passthroughjpegimages true /createjobticket false /defaultrenderingintent /default /detectblends true /detectcurves 0.0000 /colorconversionstrategy /leavecolorunchanged /dothumbnails true /embedallfonts true /embedopentype false /parseiccprofilesincomments true /embedjoboptions true /dscreportinglevel 0 /emitdscwarnings false /endpage -1 /imagememory 1048576 /lockdistillerparams true /maxsubsetpct 100 /optimize true /opm 1 /parsedsccomments true 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(www.heidelberg.com) >> /namespace [ (adobe) (common) (1.0) ] /othernamespaces [ << /asreaderspreads false /cropimagestoframes true /errorcontrol /warnandcontinue /flattenerignorespreadoverrides false /includeguidesgrids false /includenonprinting false /includeslug false /namespace [ (adobe) (indesign) (4.0) ] /omitplacedbitmaps false /omitplacedeps false /omitplacedpdf false /simulateoverprint /legacy >> << /addbleedmarks false /addcolorbars false /addcropmarks false /addpageinfo false /addregmarks false /convertcolors /converttocmyk /destinationprofilename () /destinationprofileselector /documentcmyk /downsample16bitimages true /flattenerpreset << /presetselector /mediumresolution >> /formelements false /generatestructure false /includebookmarks false /includehyperlinks false /includeinteractive false /includelayers false /includeprofiles false /multimediahandling /useobjectsettings /namespace [ (adobe) (creativesuite) (2.0) ] /pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /documentcmyk /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /usedocumentprofile /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2540 2540] /pagesize [595.276 841.890] >> setpagedevice microsoft word 1. maket 2019-1new.doc culture armenian folia anglistika 113 politics, poetry, people: an overview of contemporary poetry trends in the british literary landscape evgeniia zimina kostroma state university mariana sargsyan yerevan state university abstract the article deals primarily with the poetic discourse surrounding the 2014 scottish independence referendum and the post-referendum developments in the uk. the political processes of the recent years have been unprecedented in terms of the public resonance, which was by and large due to the active involvement of the social media. by examining the language and rhetoric strategies used in poems we become aware of the message behind them, of the political ideologies they are based on and of the means employed to address the public. it is argued that poetry, whether traditional or digital, sentimental or furious, played and still continues to play a significant role in shaping debate over mega political processes in the uk and in affecting people’s opinion. key words: 2014 scottish independence referendum, brexit, nationalism, politics, poetry, social media, amateur authors. like scotland, slightly synthetic and in a state of indecision. (stewart sanderson, aiblins, 2016) introduction on 18 september 2014, the people of scotland were asked whether “scotland should be an independent country?” in fact a question which could receive its final answer after many decades of illusions of freedom. the whole armenian folia anglistika culture 114 country was divided into “yes” and “no” /better together/ sides. scottish independence referendum involved the highest ever turnout with 84.6 percent of voters. in response to the question 55.3 percent of voters answered “no”, leaving the yes voters disappointed and grieving for the lost chance, but at the same time with the realization of the fact that scotland will never be the same. the scottish referendum (or indyref) might have become a case of local voting, which would have been soon forgotten. it would have remained a curious historic fact, had it not been for another referendum: the referendum aimed to decide whether the uk should leave the european union. scotland, outraged by the outcome, is now considering the second indyref as it has always manifested its commitment to european values. while saying yes in 2014 scotland could not expect that it would stay with england but out of the eu. in the frameworks of the present research our interest will be focused not as much on the outcome of the major political process from the socio-economic and political aspects, rather we will concentrate on the emotional aspect of the preand postreferendum atmosphere and how that atmosphere was reflected in poetry. scottish literary landscape has always been noted for being rather politicized, but in the force of the events of the recent years that landscape, including scottish literature, poetry and theatre, came to be extremely politicized, which demonstrates the growing politicization of the society and the postponed triumph of scottish nationalism. even now, four years after the referendum, the question “what now?” continues to hover around boundaries and borders of scotland, at the same time serving as catalyst for creativity. it is not by chance that on 23 september 2015, one year after the referendum the national library of scotland hosted a publicly engaged symposium on ‘poetic politics: culture and the 2014 scottish independence referendum, one year on’, the aim of which was to stimulate interinstitutional dialogue on various aspects of referendum and related issues. in her opening address cabinet secretary for culture underlined the important role of the artists and performers in “shaping discussion about what the future of scotland might look like, using their creativity to explore the big questions thrown up by culture armenian folia anglistika 115 the referendum, challenging us to reflect about our past, present and most importantly our future’ (<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjoxxec7qo8>). poets shaping debate on the scottish independence referendum the ideas of scottish independence were manifested through poetry much earlier than the 21st century. as early as in the 1930s hugh mcdiarmid in his poem the drunk man looks at the thistle and a number of shorter verses expressed thoughts of freedom from england. england, in his opinion, was the major factor hindering scottish progress. however, these ideas, expressed in an undoubtedly radical way, were treated cautiously even by ardent supporters of scottish independence. it was in the 1980s when edwin morgan published a collection of poems, sonnets from scotland, as a response to the botched devolution referendum of 1979, when scotland voted for its own parliament only to be told by westminster that their majority was not enough. the idea of scotland as a parliamentary republic seized morgan’s imagination. the republican government could only be possible if scotland became independent from the uk, as the uk is a monarchy. the poem the coin describes time travellers who arrive in scotland in the very far future and find an ancient coin with the latin inscription respublica scotorum (wallace 2002). however, time-travellers come to scotland only to find wasteland and swamps, obscured by the fog. it may mean that when the poem was written, the poet was not sure whether independence and the republic would make scotland a prosperous country. scotland re-opened its parliament only in 1999 as a result of the repeat referendum, and in 2004 parliament moved into a new building, constructed specially for the purpose. it may seem to be an insignificant event, but it has a deep symbolic meaning. edwin morgan wrote a poem for the opening of the scottish parliament, 9 october 2004, dedicated to the new building, to underline the new values. the poet compares the two types of buildings: old constructions associated with the empire, and the new, built of local materials, airy and sunny. the description of the interior is followed by the collective image of the politicians who are going to work in this new building: armenian folia anglistika culture 116 what do the people want of the place? they want it to be filled with thinking persons as open and adventurous as its architecture. a nest of fearties is what they do not want. a symposium of procrastinators is what they do not want. a phalanx of forelock-tuggers is what they do not want. and perhaps above all the droopy mantra of 'it wizny me' is what they do not want. dear friends, dear lawgivers, dear parliamentarians, you are picking up a thread of pride and self-esteem that has been almost but not quite, oh no not quite, not ever broken or forgotten. (morgan 2004) it is extremely unusual to address politicians as “dear friends”. yet, it is a clear sign of belief in grass-root democracy. the poet also says: forget, or don't forget, the past. this reference to the frosty relations between england and scotland does not imply any belligerence towards england. however, it is a hint that the struggle for independence is only beginning. the end of the poem is written in the form of advice to politicians from common people. the poet makes it clear that the fight should be won not with weapons, but with thinking minds. many poems emerged during 2013-2014 and after, many of them random poems, written on the spot and not even published anywhere. however, the period was prolific for a number of renowned poets for whom poetry was a means of voicing the troubled minds and the uncertainty that awaited the country. among them was edinburgh makar christine de luca whose poem the morning after (2014) aimed to encourage the people to come back to normal life no matter what the result. as evident from the title, de luca’s major concentration is on 19 september 2014, the day after the referendum, which culture armenian folia anglistika 117 was to be a pivotal day for all the sides. the “day after” is imagined as the time of a new start, with the full understanding of the fact that there should be no dividing lines between “yes” and “no” sides because all of them are one nation and are destined to continue to live together. was it about the powers we gain or how we use them? we aim for more equality; and for tomorrow to be more peaceful than today; for fairness, opportunity, the common weal; a hand stretched out in ready hospitality. the question (was it about the powers we gain or how we use them?) posed by de luca is whether the referendum was all about the power to be gained, or how to use this power for the benefit of all, for the final goal for all the sides was the equality of opportunities and stability for all. this is a challenging question for those voters who believed that the independence was not an end in itself, while the “yes” supporters believed that prosperity and fairness are at the heart of the case for independence. the poem argues controversial policies conducted by westminster, which would not have been allowed if scotland was in charge of all its affairs. the referendum day is seen by de luca as a balance sheet where the “folly and wisdom” and“risk and fearlessness” were to confront for much was at stake. what is most challenging in this poem is that de luca avoids adhering to any side, instead she takes a different turn by making an appeal to unite the efforts of both sides for the sake of those “unseen things” that unite the people of scotland. it’s those unseen things that bind us, not flag or battle-weary turf or tartan. there are dragons to slay whatever happens: poverty, false pride, snobbery, sectarian schisms still hovering. but there’s nothing broken that’s not repairable. armenian folia anglistika culture 118 we’re a citizenry of bonnie fighters, a gathered folk; a culture that imparts, inspires, demands a rare devotion, no back-tracking; that each should work and play our several parts to bring about the best in scotland, an open heart. the cultural aspect that unites the scots is of crucial importance for the preservation of the nation. at the same time there should be no room for the primitive elements of culture, “false pride”and other“schisms”. saying this, de luca implicitly refers to the wide associations of scotland’s culture with tartan, kilt or haggis. in a way this poem can be regarded as a reaction to tartanry1, which has been overemphasized in recent years for the sake of tourism. the real culture that should bind people includes the language, literature and art (a culture that imparts, inspires, demands a rare devotion) which were ruthlessly overshadowed by the dominance of the english culture. thus, among other things, this poem is an appeal for the “reimagination” of scotland and its authentic culture and freeing the country from the imposed stereotypes. in this respect, the poem serves a noble aim to urge the people of scotland to find the true value and meaning of being scottish no matter outside or within the uk. indyref in its resonance and the atmosphere created in the country because of the division into “yes” and “no” parties can be explained in terms of caledonian antisyzygy, a term coined by g. gregory smith (smith 1919), which stresses the “idea of dueling polarities that come together to make up scotland, a definition which is believed to adequately describe the divided nation that scotland represents. throughout the history under the rule of england the scots fought for preserving their identity which left them with a split identity. the story seems to never end and after hundreds of years of union and struggle the nation is again in turmoil and divided into two camps. dwelling upon this issue, brian groom in his article scotland, forever in two minds published in financial times (groom 2014) comes to the conclusion that “the scottish people are very against the english, though the majority culture armenian folia anglistika 119 prefer to allow them to dictate and govern for scotland; this was proven in the 2014 referendum that was not passed. 55% of people who voted did not want to break from england and become independent, but 45% did. the divide is nearly half and half, another way of showing that scotland is still just as divided today as it was three hundred years ago”. the idea of dueling is central in irfan merchant’s poem storm, or the undecideds (2014). built on antithesis, the poem brings forth this very image of scotland “forever in two minds”. the poem images the people on the deck of a ship, where some are sunbathing on the deck, while others huddle inside keeping warm, some wonder who will first walk the plank, others argue about who should be the last. people on the deck are also divided into two sides each with its expectations and visions of the future. the gap between the two sides and the estrangement of the two camps from each other is so deep that they have lost common understanding even about most ordinary things /some see an iceberg on the horizon; others believe it’s the light /. the poem questions the problem of trust trust in the political power who has initiated the 2014 referendum: though all disagree, each is convinced, as the waves continue to roll, our ship would surely be safely in harbour if they were in control. there are those who have said the captain is dead and have looted the ship’s supplies, launched the lifeboats to make their escape but all of them capsized. some still have faith in the captain’s hands, steady as she goes; they’re drinking martinis in the cocktail lounge, not minding which way the wind blows. armenian folia anglistika culture 120 the scottish national party (snp), which stormed to victory at the scottish parliament election in may 2011, announced that the majority win is “a victory for a society and a nation”. during the address in edinburgh after the win, snp first minister vowed to govern for all of the ambitions of scotland and for all the people who imagine that the nation can live in a better land. “this party, the scottish party, the national party, carries your hope. we shall carry it carefully and make the nation proud.” (https://www.bbc.com/news/ukscotland-scotland-politics-19907675). despite the controversies between the camps, the people on the ship believe that it will safely reach the harbor, on the condition that it is in control (our ship would surely be safely in harbor if they were in control). so the captain has the serious task of guiding the people throughout the process. snp which reflects the hope of the nation promised to “carry it carefully”, but should people have trust in this promise? in 1707 the kingdom of england and the kingdom of scotland united into one kingdom, each side having its perspective on the necessity of the union, but neither the people of england nor those of scotland were happy of the fact. the poem sounds a warning against the repetition of the past when personal and financial interest finally took over the popular interests. the motives of scottish independence referendum were multilayered ranging from economic to social and political ones including issues of democracy and inequality. all of the motives combined together prove that the most significant motive for independence remains the issue of national identity. the scottish sense of national identity has significantly contributed to the development of the debate over independence. for the people of scotland independence means fairness, prosperity and democracy, values that scotland has been deprived of because of the uk government’s failure to create conditions for scotland’s sustainable development. this feeling of unfairness and the inability of the country to make its own decisions gave rise to a huge number of “anger” poems which respond vehemently to the problems facing the nation. among the writers and artists involved in the “yes”campaign for the scottish independence referendum, was alan bissett, a famous author and culture armenian folia anglistika 121 performer, who stands out for his radical “yes” vote. his poem vote britain (2012) sounds an appeal for all the undecided ones. the heavy ironic tone and anger are the tools to make people listen and wake up to face the reality. the poem abounds in anti-english sentiments and expressions of anger toward and the deep contempt for the empire (vote with your love for the queen who nurtured you, cradle to grave, who protects you and cares, her most darling subjects, to whom you gave the glens she adores to roam freely through, the stags her children so dearly enjoy killing), the past and current policy and the disastrous westminster decisions (vote for the highland clearances. baaaaaaaaaa; vote for nuclear submarines in your water; vote for oil revenue, which we ensure flows directly from us into you. vote for our proud shared history of enslaving other nations and stealing their natural resources), the uk media (vote for our voices dominating your media, but in no way telling you what to think. vote for scotland being referred to as a ‘region’, like, say, yorkshire? or east anglia?), etc. between the lines we hear the voice of compassion for the nation, who has been rejected the freedom of expressing its attitudes, because the media in the uk has always worked against the scots, labeling them as anti-english, parochial, and scotland as “region”. the message the poem sought to get across to the people was that the decisions about scotland should be taken only by the people of scotland and this is the only way to guarantee welfare for the people of scotland. a conspicuous feature of anger poems undoubtedly remains the use of the scots language and gaelic intermingled with numerous references to truly scottish realia. the closer look at the poems advocating “yes” vote shows the validity of benedict anderson’s postulate that “nationalism and language are closely related to each other”(anderson 1991). the use of scots expresses the existence of a separate nation and country. in vote britain the choice of the language units ‘glens, eh? wee, deep fried mars bar, whisky, mooth’ and references to ‘jock, braveheart, robert burns, kircudbright, etc.’ is a deliberate one aimed at equalizing the status of scots /considered subordinate/with that of english, while the reference to the scottish realia emphasizes the idea of scotland’s unshared values with the rest of the uk. armenian folia anglistika culture 122 politics and poetic discourse in the digital space the latest political changes have coincided with the increasing popularity of social media, as a result of which published poetry has ceased to be the monopoly of professional authors. professional poets, however, also use every opportunity to go digital and reach the average reader through interviews or exclusively published pieces, thus setting the mood and the trend of what to write and how to write. carol ann duffy, whose duties as the poet laureate make her respond to current issues, willingly uses electronic media opportunities to promote her new works. the poem campaign (2017) tackling the general election of 2016 was published not only in the paper version of the guardian, but also on their web page, thus reaching a much larger audience. the poem savages the incumbent prime minister, theresa may. the criticism of brexit is apparent: her mouth a ballot-box that bit the hand that fed, referring to the growing financial dependence of the uk from the eu. theresa may is portrayed as a lying merciless politician. … her body was a question-mark querying her lies; her mouth a ballot-box that bit the hand that fed. her eyes? they swivelled for a jackpot win. her heart was a stolen purse; her rhetoric an empty vicarage, the windows smashed. (almost the same vocabulary and imagery are used by hilary mantel to describe the first female pm margaret thatcher in the short story the assassination of margaret thatcher: the same image of the eye, cruelty, and power-hunger). the poem describes the furious young generation that “ran towards her through the fields of wheat”. however, it is difficult to say whether the author intended this as an indirect reference to the catcher in the rye, either contrasting the generation of holden caulfield with contemporary young people who are politically more active and do not mind growing up, or culture armenian folia anglistika 123 comparing british and american attitudes to the role of young people in politics. duffy describes theresa may as absolute evil and attributes devilish features to her, e.g. stiletto heels growing from her feet. it is also notable that in the poem may is compared to a male. theresa may is not the only object of duffy’s bitter criticism. in sincerity, her last collection written in the capacity of the poet laureate (duffy remains such until 2019) to be published in november 2018, the poet compares “the two evils: brexit and trump” and says these two phenomena inspired her latest political poetry. it seems, though, that the title, sincerity, can be easily replaced with the word “obscenity”. duffy’s rejection of donald trump manifests itself through extremely offensive language: news-maggot, twitter-rat and mandrake mymmerkin (an allusion to william dunbar’s poem the flyting of dunbar and kennedy) are to name but a few (youngs 2018). in a way, duffy follows the pattern of persian poets of old days who exercised in the art of insult. however, duffy’s current poetry is far from persian poetic duels where both opponents had their turn to speak. understandable though duffy’s feelings are, these poems lack elegance and balance of her previous works (e.g. on the independence referendum in scotland) or the works of other poets who write on the same issues. in the poem ex-ministers the poet compares the ex-cabinet with a force, driving the nation to “go over the white cliffs of dover”, like lemmings. carol ann duffy may rival another poet laureate, philip larkin, once called “the most politically incorrect poet”. duffy tries to be politically correct to the maximum but tends to forget about the voting majority who made brexit and theresa may’s victory or trump’s victory possible, i.e. more than a half of the population in the uk/usa respectively. (the peculiarity of the us election system is widely known, but we may be safe to assume that if trump is now president, there must be supporters, too). duffy's previous works, regardless of her feelings, are considerably more dynamic and unbiased from political and poetic points of view. the scottish independence referendum was presented in the poem september 2014 with elegance and style. admitting that both a thistle and a rose can draw blood, the armenian folia anglistika culture 124 poet draws parallels between england and scotland, comparing their poetic legacy (keats and burns). she addresses the people over the scottish borders, i.e. the english, as cousins, sisters and brothers and praises england as the bold and brave country. aye, here’s to you, cousins, sisters, brothers, in your brave, bold, brilliant land: the thistle jags our hearts, take these roses from our bloodied hands. (duffy 2014). the poet admits there is blood on the hands of both nations, but offers the gift of mutual respect and love. the insult trend can be clearly seen in the poetry published online by amateur authors, encouraged by a variety of literary projects. many authors cannot avoid direct insults and bursts of negativity. by analysing brexit-related poems on twitter, facebook and poetry platforms, it is easy to see that the number of likes is proportionate to the use of strong language despite the fact that such poetry is of rather low quality and serves as a vent for emotions. the poem below is an example of such poetry (https://hellopoetry.com/tag/brexit), although we have chosen an example without direct insults (the spelling and punctuation are as in the original). lets not exit brexit twenty third june twenty sixteen the biggest vote we’d ever seen results are in and brexit win and many say it’s such a sin those who voted not to leave this news they just could not believe. culture armenian folia anglistika 125 it would be interesting to analyse why it is poetry that people resort to in the attempt to express their feelings about brexit. in comparison, in russianlanguage posts concerning political issues in both russia and abroad there are very few comments, if any, written as poems, while prosaic texts clearly dominate. now we may only assume that while having a desire to share thoughts and ideas, people avoid writing long comments in order not to sink into frustration. a limited space of a tweet of an instapoem forces them to choose the shortest possible way of expression, and poetry suits this purpose perfectly. paradoxically, brexiteers seem to be under-represented in social media poetry projects. the british internet-community almost unanimously calls for another referendum. recent anti-brexit protests in london have shown that most brexit opponents come from london, northern ireland or scotland. this is explained by the unresolved issue of the irish border and the status of the uk nationals living in continental europe. the north and the agricultural regions, hit hardest by the eu regulations, are mostly brexiteers. having to cope with everyday survival, people may not have time or desire to write about it. however, they may avoid praising brexit because, positive or negative, it will be a serious challenge for the whole country. the few optimistic amateur poems on brexit lack literary merit and are rather poorly rhymed couplets than poetry. here is another example, this time of pro-brexit poetry submitted to the pre-brexit competition (https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/antibrexit-poetry-in-response-to-telegraph-editor-1-5500142). "red for the poppy, brave and bold "blue for the passport, so proud to hold "white for the flag we wave as we exit "thank god for mrs may and our glorious brexit. however, it cannot be denied that the political changes in the uk triggered an unprecedented wave of creativity and self-expression. it would be wrong to think, however, that people who do not use the internet for these purposes are armenian folia anglistika culture 126 excluded from the general fad to compose politically charged lines. poet chris jelley, together with the lynmouth pavillion project, installed six poetry boxes across exmoor to find more than 6,000 poems written not only on eternal topics of love, marriage and sadness, but also on proand anti-brexit ideas. conclusion poetry has always been a highly controversial form of art. on the one hand, it aims to appeal to the reader’s aesthetic feelings. on the other hand, poets have traditionally used their skill to respond to reality, events and current situations regardless of the scale of those. that is why political poetry is by no means a recent phenomenon. although studies of history are based on documents rather than poetic interpretations, literary works have become an excellent tool to assist in gauging the mood of a nation in the times of change. the recent political and social life in britain has been marked by a variety of turning points, difficult choices and uncertainty. the scottish independence referendum, brexit and related issues, such as the irish border, are changing the political map of europe. tv and the internet give a thorough (sometimes too thorough) explanation of the current processes and procedures. it may seem that there is no room for subjective emotions and personal feelings in the highly documented world. however, strangely enough, poetry has found its place in this politicized atmosphere: it is turning into voxpopuli, involving common people into discussion alongside with professional authors. the quality of some poetic works may be questionable, but we may regard it as a positive sign that people prefer ballot-boxes and poetic debates to weapons. notes: 1. according to collins dictionary tartanry is the excessive use of tartan and other scottish imagery to produce a distorted sentimental view of scotland and its history (https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/ tartanry). the word includes all material stereotypes and symbols that characterize scotland as a country and the scottish as a nation. culture armenian folia anglistika 127 2. scottish national identity is a term referring to the sense of national identity, as embodied in the shared and characteristic culture, languages and traditions of the scottish people (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ scottish_national_identity). national identity is the main argument of the scottish people who are in favor of independence, claim that the scottish have a distinct identity and should have the right for “home rule”. references: 1. anderson, b. (1991) imagined communities: reflections on the origins and spread of nationalism. 2nd edition, london. 2. groomin, b. (2014) scotland, forever in two minds. financial times. ft.3 feb. 2014. available at: <https://www.ft.com/content/553411c4-8aae-11e39465-00144feab7de> [accessed september 2018] 3. smith, g.g. (1919) scottish literature, character and influence. london: macmillan publishing, pp. 4-20. 4. timeline: scottish independence referendum (2011) available at: <https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-19907675> [accessed september 2018]. 5. youngs, i. (2018) poet laureate carol ann duffy’s parting shot at donald trump and brexit․available at: <https://www.bbc.com/news/ entertainment-arts-45837842> [accessed october 2018]. 6. wallace, g. (2002) new currency or old? – ‘the coin’, by edwin morgan. available at: <https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2007/11/new-currency-orold-the-coin-by-edwin-morgan/> [accessed december 2018]. sources of data: 1. bissett, a. (2012) vote britain. available at: <https://alanbissett.com/ 2012/01/13/my-contribution-to-the-debate-on-scottish-independence/> [accessed september 2018]. 2. de luca, c. (2014) the morning after. available at: <https://www.scotti shpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/morning-after>. [accessed september 2018]. armenian folia anglistika culture 128 3. duffy, c.a. (2017) campaign – a poem by carol ann duffy exclusively for the guardian. available at <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jun /10/cam paign-a-poem-by-carol-ann-duffy-exclusively-for-the-guardian> [accessed september 2018]. 4. duffy, c.a. (2014) september 2014. available at: <https://www.theguar dian.com/books/2014/sep/23/carol-ann-duffy-poem-scottish-independen ce-referendum-september-2014> [accessed 29 september 2018]. 5. lets not exit brexit. available at: <https://hellopoetry.com/search/poems/? q=lets+not+exit> [accessed october 2018]. 6. mcdiarmid, h. (1926) the drunk man looks at the thistle. available at: <https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46796/a-drunk-man-looks-atthe-thistle> [accessed october 2018]. 7. merchant, i. (2014) storm. available at: <https://www.scottishpoetryli brary.org.uk/poem/storm/> [accessed september 2018]. 8. morgan, e. (2004) for the opening of the scottish parliament 9 october 2004. available at: <http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poetry/poems /opening-scottish-parliament-9-october-2004> [accessed september 2018]. 9. politics: culture and the 2014 scottish independence referendum, one year on.’ available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjoxxec7 qo8> [accessed october 2018]. 10. the telegraph asks for brexit poems and it all goes wrong. available at: <https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/anti-brexit-poetry-inresponse-to-telegraph-editor-1-5500142> [accessed october 2018]. քաղաքականություն, պոեզիա, մարդիկ. ժամանակակից պոեզիայի միտումները բրիտանական գրական լանդշաֆտում հոդվածում քննարկումը առնչվում է 2014 թվականի շոտլանդիայի անկախության հանրաքվեի և դրանից հետո բրիտանիայում տեղի ունեցած քաղաքական զարգացումների շուրջ հյուսված բանաստեղծական դիսկուրսին: վերջին տարիների քաղաքական գործընթացներն աննախաculture armenian folia anglistika 129 դեպ էին հանրային հնչեղության առումով, որին մեծ մասամբ նպաստեցին նաև սոցիալական ցանցերը: քաղաքական պոեզիայի լեզվական և հռետորաբանական ռազմավարության ուսումնասիրության միջոցով մեզ հասանելի է դառնում, թե ինչ հաղորդագրություն է ընկած դրա ետևում, ինչ քաղաքական գաղափարախոսության վրա են դրանք հիմնված և ինչ միջոցներ է գրողն ընտրում հասարակությանը դիմելու համար: քննությամբ հաստատվում է, որ բրիտանական պոեզիան՝ ավանդական, թե´ թվային, հուզիչ, թե´ ցասումնալի, կատարել է և շարունակում է էական դեր կատարել բրիտանական քաղաքական մեծ գործընթացների շուրջ բանավեճերի և հասարակական կարծիքի ձևավորման գործում: received by the editorial board 11.02.2019 recommended for publication by the reviewers 01.04.2019 accepted for print 22.04.2019 microsoft word contens verjin linguistics armenian folia anglistika 49 on text coherence via frame-based presuppositions hranush tovmasyan yerevan brusov state university of languages and social sciences abstract the article is an attempt to shed light on one of the most interesting issues on the crossroads of psycholinguistics, pragmatics and cognitive linguistics – framebased semantics and frame-based presuppositions as text coherence means. the findings of the article allow of the following statement: the text is implicitly bound via complex mental structures – frames – by virtue of their hierarchic, presuppositional structure. the appearance of a frame in the context implicitly introduces pieces of information – presuppositions – from its information slots. the presuppositions structured in the slots of the frame create predictable associations of words and word-combinations on the surface structure of the text, thus securing its coherence. key words: frame, frame-based presuppositions, text coherence, linguistic picture of the world, presupposition base, consciousness, speaking individual. introduction with the rise of pragmatics, psycholinguistics, cognitive linguistics and ethnolinguistics there have appeared such notions as the presupposition, frame, precedent phenomenon, cognitive structure, and many others which disclose the actual functioning of human thinking activity and its linguistic output – text – via patterned background knowledge. a variety of the latter is the frame which i will minutely elaborate in the present paper and try to prove the hypothesis that frames are in fact presuppositional structures, that’s to say units of the presupposition base of the speaking individual, as well as that they implicitly contribute to the coherence of the text and structure its context. i find it timely to define the notion of the speaking individual, proceeding from the scientific data based on previous research (karaulov 1982; johnstone 1996). it is noteworthy that initially the term linguistic individual appeared in linguistic literature before it was introduced into the sphere of scientific terminology by yu. karaulov (1982). this idea was further developed in the work of b. johnstone (1996). both scholars view the linguistic individual as a human being who is armenian folia anglistika linguistics 50 endowed with the potential of learning a language and who masters it in the process of his/her socialization. hence, in my understanding the linguistic individual is in fact the language speaker. i term it the speaking individual as the speech counterpart of its language variant – linguistic individual. as for presupposition base (notion and term proposed by me) it is the bulk of knowledge and ideas which are first reflected and then shaped as such in a human being’s consciousness as a result of the cognitive, speculative process which starts at his/her birth and develops throughout life. the notion of the presupposition base is crucial in this paper as frames are actually units of it. another key characteristic of the frame is that due to its cognitive, presuppositional content it acts as context coherence and text cohesion means. these are the key points i will dwell upon in this article. thus, in the present paper i will dwell upon the notion of the frame in general and my own perception of it, aiming to prove its presuppositional nature and, hence, text coherence function. the presuppositional nature of the frame i endorse the view of the frame as an anthropological, cognitive, social and cultural phenomenon. within this perspective i consider that a human being’s mental picture of the world is anthropological, culturally and cognitively marked which means that our mental images impose on us certain culturally based concepts and codes of behavior and conduct. thus, the speaking individual’s mental picture of the world has the imprint of the given nation and culture. in this respect, upholding a. wierzbicka, e. paducheva states meaning is anthropological, that is to say it reflects the human nature, further, it is ethnocentric which means it is directed at the ethnos. it is impossible to describe the world by the given language “as it is” – the language a prori imposes a certain picture of the world on its speakers, moreover, each language its own (vezhbitskaya 1996:5-6). thus, the mental picture of the world is not neutral from the man and his/her linguo-culture. knowledge and ideas are preserved in human consciousness via cognitive structures. the world, regardless of the national and cultural belonging of the man, is the same. the later comes to prove that the consciousness of any human being must contain certain shared, universal information structures. this standpoint is definitely true, otherwise it would be impossible to communicate for people with different cultural backgrounds. thus, there are certain primitives of shared information that is common for everyone. in this respect it is relevant to quote a. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 51 wierzbicka, […] effective communication between different cultures straightforwardly depends on semantic primitives – identity of the majority of predominant semes, from which each language can create practically an endless list of culturally-based notions (configuring the primitives in different ways). the integrity of such shared primitives can account for “the psychic unity of mankind” (boas 1938) and the hypothesis that the lexis of different languages embodies different configurations of the common set, would explain the peculiarities in language and thinking typical to different cultures. […] there is a set of semantic primes that coincide with the set of lexical universals, and the integrity of those universals lies in the basis of human communication and thinking, further in different languages the unique configurations of the primes reflects the diversity of cultures (vezhbitskaya 1996:296-297). thus, a. wierzbicka made a successful attempt to discover the concepts that exist as words in each of the world’s languages, semantic primitives, or semantic primes or lexical universals. based upon an extensive collection of empirical linguistic data, a. wierzbicka has derived a working list of semantic primitives. as j. hoyt said in his article finding meaning in meaning, published in the periphery journal in 2012, wierzbicka’s work suggests that these semantic primitives are universal among the world’s languages, which is to say that certain meanings are universal among humans [...]. it could be that all natural languages, despite the diversity among languages, share the same set of basic meanings because such meanings are innate in humans – we might be born knowing the meanings of semantic primes. or, it could be that all natural languages share the same set of basic meanings because the humans that speak those languages have an innate propensity to lexicalize the same set of concepts – we might be born meaning to know the world through words. either way, though a. wierzbicka likely would subscribe to the latter possibility, her research into semantic primitives unquestionably means a whole lot to meaning (hoyt 2012:23). the above-said makes it clear that meaning is anthropological and culturally-born. thus, the difference lies in the configuration of the universal mental images – knowledge and ideas – which undoubtedly has cognitive nature. the latter means that each language, depending on the culture it serves, stipulates its own unique configurations of the mental images which are reflected in human consciousness as more complex mental units than cognitive structures and precedent phenomena (precedent phenomena are experience-based mental unites of human consciousness that contain presuppositions as its semantic blocs). in my account these culturally armenian folia anglistika linguistics 52 and cognitively-based complex mental structures are frames which are composed of a kernel surrounded by information units. note that these information units are the basically culturally-based aspect of the frame. saying basically, i restate the above-mentioned view that any frame contains a portion of information that is universal which is met in homonymous frames of different cultures. these are actually the semantic premes proposed by a. wierzbicka. it is noteworthy that communication – text composition and its adequate comprehension – would be impossible if frames contained only culturally-based phenomena. the frame incorporates the universal and the special, imparting a unique configuration to them. thus, the frame contains two types of information – universal, non-cultural and culturally marked information, presuppositions on a certain topic. the latter becomes evident at the surface structure of the text – via its lexical cohesion. in research literature there is a multitude of more or less identical definitions given to the notion of the frame with slight divergences though (minskiy 1979; naisser 1981; kulakov 1979; vshivkova 1987; fillmore 1992; gorokhova 1985; abelson 1977; cook 1994; schank 1977; bellezza 1982; bower 1979; charniak 1978; lehnert 1980; johnson-laird 1983; stilling 1987; carberry 1990; fiske & taylor 1991; eyesenck 1993; wilensky 1994; van dijk 1997; berger & bradac 1982 and others). my perception of the frame is most identical with m. minsky’s standpoint which describes the fame as a cognitive structure in a man’s phenomenological domain based on the awareness of standard situations and certain expectations deriving from that awareness – what features and relations should a real or imaginary object have. structurally the frame is composed of a peak (topic), that is, a macroproposition and slots or terminals which are filled with propositions. this cognitive structure is organized around a certain concept, though contrary to an empty set of associations, such units contain only most essential, typical and potential information associated with that concept (makarov 1998:19). it is noteworthy that the frame has had a variety of names ascribed to it, the idea underlying it being the same though – scenario (sanford & garrod 1998), frame (minskiy 1979), script (schank, abelson 1977). the difference lies in the fact that as a rule the frame refers to fixed structures (for example, the pattern of elections) while scenario to the dynamic ones (for example, procedure of holding elections). as a unity of the two t. van dijk proposes the term situation pattern. his elaborate argumentation on the topic is presented in epizodicheskiye modeli v obrabotke diskursa (van deyk 2000:9) which is based on the importance of the basic role of the linguistics armenian folia anglistika 53 patterns in social cognition. in fact, situation patterns are forms of presenting one’s self experience. the idea of the pattern is correlated to the individual experience of real or imaginary situations in regard to how texts should be generated and comprehended. discourse gives a general idea of a certain part of the world which i term situation. the pattern is the cognitive correlate of the situation – it is what happens in a human being’s consciousness when he/she faces a certain situation. hence, the pattern contains individual knowledge that one can have about similar situations, that knowledge – presuppositions – is the result of previous experience accumulated though encountering such situations. new knowledge about such situations contributes to the amplification and development of the pattern. in this perspective t. van dijk claims that if mental structures contain knowledge about stereotypical situations, then situation patterns contain speakers’ individual knowledge (van deyk 2000:68-69). let us elaborate and argument on the above-said. in fact a human being does not reflect the world through separate images as knowledge and ideas but rather via some complex structural units – frames which are thematic blocs. each frame contains one macroproposition, that is, the semantic kernel that creates that frame. information is accumulated in the frame around the kernel. the information must be closely related to the topic of the kernel. in this perspective i would like to introduce some correctives in the definition of the frame upholding v. krasnykh (1999), that is, the information accumulated around the kernel is predictable for the given culture. according to v. cherneyko and l. dolinsky (1996:33) semantic associations in human consciousness are spontaneous and that there does not exist and cannot be invariant associative links (leontyev 1961; tarasov 1985 and others). nonetheless, it should be mentioned that the associations are the already existing spontaneous associative links of deep structures preserved in human consciousness. thus, howsoever spontaneous the associations are, they are predictable. the predictability is due to deep semantic units – frames – existing in human consciousness. the frame is a thematic structure and can be figuratively described as beeswax whose cells are filled with knowledge and ideas connected with its topic. the close study of frames allows of the finding that the frame is a more complex presuppositional structure and a form of structural organization of the presupposition base. consequently, the mental reflection of the world in human consciousness is a priori pre-organized. each reflected unit which must turn into knowledge or an idea and further a presupposition, from the first stage of its reflection process enters different frames due to its associative links. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 54 to make the above-state more tangible let us consider the frame wedding in the armenian culture. note that the semantic kernel, that is, the notion of wedding, is the same with all cultures – two people who have decided to bond their lives together by way of marriage. yet, in every culture it is realized differently, turning into a mental image in human consciousness, then a frame as a semantic kernel with its culturally based knowledge – presuppositions. thus, the frame wedding will be different from language to language, that is, the data, presuppositions associated with it are different. for example, if someone asks an average representative of the armenian culture to describe armenian wedding – its frame actually – he/she will say a great wedding ceremony, luxurious white bridal dress to symbolize purity, gold rings, zurna and dhol (national armenian musical instruments), breaking plates on the threshold of the house, spreading lavash (armenian national thin bread) over the shoulders of the newlyweds, honey-tasting treated by the future mother-in-law, solemn oath in front of the altar, the newlyweds unbind two white pigeons in the churchyard after the sacred ceremony, godfather, godmother, mothers-in-law, fathers-in-law, wedding reception, toastmaster, wedding cake, barbecue, bouquet throwing by the bride, the first night, the red apple (the symbol of virginity in the armenian culture), honeymoon, etc. the frame wedding of a representative of another culture will not contain half of the mentioned items, while there will be others missing in the armenian frame wedding. for example, in indian and other cultures, besides the bouquet throwing, there is a tradition to throw the bride’s garter to the assembled unmarried men; the man who catches it is supposedly the next to wed, etc. a frame, in my understanding, is a predictable store of information about a certain phenomenon. it is a set of presuppositions available in that frame. and once the addresser introduces the word wedding in the text, moreover when both the addresser and the addressee are armenian, he/she contributes the whole predictable frame knowledge – presuppositions – on wedding to the context which will display a predictable set of words and their associations on the surface structure of the text. consequently, the surface structure of the text is also predictable – the network of the chosen words, their associations as they are in fact the linguistic carriers of the frame data. language actualizes the contents of the speaking individual’s consciousness as a picture of the world. appearing in a certain thematic domain, the speaking individual a priori structures the surface structure of his/her text which is indeed first shaped in its deep structure, that is, discourse context. indeed, speaking about a wedding in any other culture will yield a text whose surface structure – word choice and its associations – is completely different from linguistics armenian folia anglistika 55 the armenian one, for example. the latter largely depends on the frame and its semantic, presuppositional slots. note that the frame is a larger mental unit than the precedent phenomenon which is due to the fact that the frame makes different predictable associations and by this includes one or more precedent phenomena. to prove all above-stated i have carried out a small quiz among my acquaintances on the topic armenian wedding which is in fact the frame i elaborate. besides the above-given language units, created by associations, most of the respondents gave other associations as well, they are as follows: (the so called fat armenian wedding, that is, a pompous wedding with a lot of guests and traditional armenian wedding realia. in this particular case it is the name of the tv program), (tv program), (diana grigoryan is a famous armenian actress, tv presenter and script writer), (rural weddings which preserve the flavor and the colouring of traditional armenian weddings), etc. obviously, the frame armenian wedding (indeed, for each armenian based on his/her own experience) contains a precedent phenomenon – the program aired on armenia tv which in its turn is composed of other precedent phenomena – series of the tv program as well as the precedent name diana grigoryan. thus, the structure of the frame stipulates predictable associative links and relations between the component presuppositions of that frame which actually predict their potential appearance in the text. there is another example in store which also displays the multilevel hierarchic structure and predictable associations of the frame. the latter is also an outcome of the quiz. i asked armenians of different age and social backgrounds to speak on the notion of tale. there came up the following spontaneous associations (children’s), (to read bedtime stories for children), (hovhannes tumanyan was an outstanding armenian poet, writer, tale-teller, translator, literary and public activist. he is considered to be the national poet of armenia), (a drop of honey – the name of the famous armenian tale by h. tumanyan), (the dog and the cat – the name of the famous armenian tale by h. tumanyan), (hans christian andersen was a danish author. although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, andersen is best remembered for his fairy tales), etc. as well as such utterances as armenian folia anglistika linguistics 56 (you are telling a tale! – used to mean that someone is making up stories), (don’t tell tales! – especially used in regard to children when they slander each other), (old wife’s tales, urban legends). undoubtedly, the given entities refer to the kernel tale but they go in different directions – to real tales that are precedent texts, to tale writers who are precedent names and to national folk sayings which are precedent texts. the analyzed examples expose both the complex hierarchic structure and the marked cultural, national nature of the frame. the latter accounts for its predictable associations. research on the frame proves there can be all-cultural frames, though it is impossible to state to the full that they are really all-cultural as there will always be entities unknown to a representative of some other culture. for example, colosseum which is considered a universally renowned cultural monument will indeed call forth a multilevel frame in the consciousness of most people, though it does not stand for its being all-cultural which actually proves that the frame is an outcome of a nation’s routine and culture. besides, each nation, each culture perceives universal phenomena due to different configurations of these phenomena in their consciousness. due to this in research literature there have appeared such terms as culturally valued frame and imaginary gestalt structures (teliya 1996). the given notions are analyzed only in the framework of language and culture if nominative units (like the russian samovar, or perestroika) have cultural memory but can point at a certain culturally valued frame due to their own meanings and encyclopedic base (teliya 1996:82-83). in this perspective v. teliya furthers that, the fact that culture “is incorporated” in language is unquestionable – language as a means of communication accumulates in meanings all that is connected with the cultural-traditional competence of its representatives, which passes from generation to generation by virtue of the language (teliya 1996:84-85). it is timely to quite b. worf’s (1940:97) standpoint here regarding how language influences the formation of the mental picture of the world in human consciousness, how a human being processes information, stores it in his/her memory and reproduces it. in this perspective there come up a number of questions – how language signs appear, why there are so many nominations of types of snow in the eskimo language while in other languages there are not, why there are so many nominations of cars in all languages but in lappish there are so few or almost none. most probably it is accounted for by the fact that the more a certain experience is important for us, the more elaborate are language means to verbalize them. the linguistics armenian folia anglistika 57 language is not merely a means of expressing human thoughts, it is rather a means of verbalizing a certain picture of the world organized in human consciousness via frames – sophisticated presuppositional structures. hence, the development of certain language codes depends on cultural needs; when members of a certain language group assimilate them, they simultaneously assimilate essential cultural values, too (soslo 1997:361). in this respect let us consider an excerpt from cockles mussels: a gang of men and girls came stepping out in arrow, arms linked, breasting the whole width of the road, and singing, and for a second miss parson was caught up among them, she could see the white teeth and peacock-painted eyes of the girls, smell the men’s sweat, and they parted and went on like the tide, leaving her behind. (hill 1978:294) the thematic directive of the given multi-predicative structure is stipulated by the topic of its first part which actually shapes its frame careless youth, which makes part of a larger frame youth as its sub-frame. the subsequent parts of the multipredicative structure develop and back up the topic. the author chooses such words and word combinations from the frame careless youth that reflect the hierarchic structure of the frame as well as such youth-characteristic actions which are stereotypical and derive from the frame. by this, the author creates a chain of nominal units that must embody and reflect the frame in the text. the pre-positive segment a gang of men and girls came stepping out in arrow predetermines the above-stated topic and thus the choice of the frame. the following predicative segment contains stereotypical actions, presuppositions arms linked; breasting the whole width of the road; singing; went on like the tide generating from the frame. the next fragment white teeth and peacock-painted eyes of the girls, men’s sweat contains words and word-combinations denoting a careless lifestyle and characteristics peculiar to the careless youth. the semantic components – presuppositions – of the sub-frame careless youth passes through the whole text via well-chosen and structured surface structure means. indeed, some nominative units chosen by the author straightforwardly connect with the topic of the frame, its stereotypical kernel, as for example arms linked, white teeth, peacock-painted eyes of the girls, smell the men’s sweat, singing, though there are also such ones that are somehow far from the prototypical meaning of the frame, armenian folia anglistika linguistics 58 yet, a close examinations will disclose that they are also associated with that prototype. for example, came stepping out in arrow, breasting the whole width of the road, and went on like the tide. thus, this fragment of the text is shaped according to the repeated meaning of the frame careless youth which is portrayed by such words that belong to one semantic domain – frame. the peak of the frame is the component that maximally reflects the features characteristic of other units of the same group (givon 1986:195). obviously, the composition of the text is accompanied by the joint projection of the two types of cognitive structures – phenomenological and linguistic. by their nature both structures are presuppositional as they contain some knowledge – extralinguistic or linguistic. phenomenological structures make part of frames, while the linguistic ones verbalize these deep semantic structures. in this perspective it is relevant to quote s. ter-minasova (2000) who gives her account of how cultural frames influence the collocability of lexical means. she claims that different word combinations are used to denote the same notion in different languages. for example, in russian it is said (tall grass) while the english say long grass. isn’t this accounted for by the english tradition according to which the grass must always be trimmed as hair, moustache and beard, while in the russian tradition grass is an element of nature, it grows itself as trees and bushes. all this is stipulated by the mental cultural structures – frames. an overview of the study reveals that frames are subjective phenomena. the situation can be described by the text and its compositional units. by this the speakers of the language express their vision, interpretation of the world, which give ground to assume that these means are not arbitrary – they reflect the main categories and the structure of our cognition of the world. that is, before initiating a talk on a certain topic the language speaker creates an inner speech in his mind. the inner speech carries the whole cognitive load of the language speaker, reflected in the presupposition base, which is expressed in outer speech by such surface structures that immediately reflect the associations and relations of the units of the inner speech. conclusion to round off the discussion of frame-based presuppositions in the perspective of text cohesion means it should be said that the mechanism responsible for the work of the human consciousness is the presupposition base. the presupposition linguistics armenian folia anglistika 59 base is the mental picture of the world – composed of knowledge and images – which is shaped and developed throughout the whole life of a speaking individual. the presupposition base is actually an information pool, set of presuppositions. the data stored in the presupposition base – the knowledge and images about the world – are actually presuppositions preserved in human consciousness via cognitive structures. the cognitive structures – presuppositions – are organized in the presupposition base as unities of more complex and hierarchic type. these unities are frames composed of a macroproposition and a network of culturally marked, associated presuppositions. this feature of the frame creates predictable semantic links. by their structure frames are more complex phenomena than the cognitive structures. hence, one cognitive structure contains one presupposition on some phenomenon of the world or of the language. frame is a complex notion composed of a large number of semantically interwoven cognitive structures – presuppositions. the appearance of the frame in the text calls forth a set of the presuppositions from its structure, thus implicitly securing its coherence. references: 1. bellezza, f.s.; bower, g.h. 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(1997) nekotorye poznavatel’nye problemy, analiz soznaniya. / xii mezhdunarodnyi simpozium po psikholingvistike i teorii kommunikatsii. moskva, 2-4 iyunya. m., s. 149. 35. teliya, v.n. (1996) rol obraznykh sredstv yazyka v kulturno-natsionalnoy okraske miroponimaniya. // etnolingvisticheskiye aspekty prepodavaniya inostrannykh yazykov. m.: nauka, s. 82-89. 36. ter-minasova, s.g. (2000) yazyk i mezhkulturnaya kommunikatsiya. m.: slovo. 37. vezhbitskaya, a. (1996) yazyk. kul’tura. poznanie. .: russkie slovari. 38. vshivkova, t.v. (1987) protsess antitsipatsii i ponimanie teksta. // semantika armenian folia anglistika linguistics 62 tselogo teksta. m.: prosveschenie. 39. whorf, b. (1940) language, thought and reality: selected writings of benjamin lee whorf . j. / ed. by caroll. cambridge, ma: mit press. 40. wierzbicka, a. (1972) semantic primitives. frankfurt: athendum. 41. wilensky, r. (1994) discourse, probability, and inference. // beliefs, reasoning, and decision making. hillsdale, pp. 363-388. î»ùëïç ï³å³ïóáõùá ýñ»ûù³ûçý ï³ýë»ýã³¹ñáõûãý»ñç ùççáóáí ðá¹í³íáõù ÷áñó ¿ ³ñíáõù å³ñ½³ ³ý éáõ, ã ñá· é ½í³ ³ýáõãû³ý, ·áñí³ ³ýáõãû³ý ¨ ׳ý³ãáõ³ï³ý é»½í³ ³ýáõãû³ý ¹çñù»ñçó çýãå ë ¿ ï³å³ïóíáõù ï»ùëïá ýñ»ûù³ûçý ï³ýë»ýã³¹ñáõûãý»ñç ùççáóáí: ðá¹í³íçó ëáõ ½ñ³ñ³ý·áõùý ñá ãáõûé ý ï³éçë åý¹»é, áñ ï»ùëïá ï³å³ïóíáõù ¿ ·çï³ïó³ï³ý ³ñ¹ ï³éáõûóý»ñç ýñ»ûùý»ñç ùççáóáí ¹ñ³ýó ñç»ñ³ñëçï, ï³ýë»ýã³¹ñáõã³ûçý ï³éáõóí³íùç ßýáññçí: ²ûëåçëáí ýñ»ûùý»ñç ùççáóáí ³å³ñáííáõù ¿ ï»ùëïç ù³ï»ñ»ë³ûçý ï³éáõûóáõù ï³ýë³ï»ë»éç ³é»ñç ¨ ³é³ï³å³ïóáõãûáõýý»ñç ï³å³ïóáõùá: microsoft word 1. maket 2019-1new.doc armenian folia anglistika literature 166 spatial mobility as social mobility in the early seventeenth century: henry peacham jr.’s picaresque novel a merry discourse of meum and tuum angela locatelli university of bergamo abstract the theme of migration and travel occupies a prominent position in the literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. travelogues, travel notes, poems, and disparate accounts of the booming explorations towards the new world(s) abundantly embody the spirit of adventure of the age. the energetic spirit promoting the appropriation of new and distant lands did not, however, belong exclusively to the class of sailors, pirates, merchants. it seems, on the contrary, to define a widespread political and cultural attitude on the part of different social groups, at all levels of society. a significant sign of this phenomenon is the rise of the picaresque novel whose sagacious protagonists travel primarily for material gain and partly for entertainment. their spatial movement is clearly the means of a new upward social mobility. this movement is obviously very different from the present day migrations prompted by wars and political persecution, but, mutatis mutandis, it is somehow similar to contemporary migrations in search of economic improvement and amelioration of one’s social status. i will discuss the many implications of this kind of narratives in the xvii century by examining henry peacham jr.’s a merry discourse of meum and tuum, a 1639 short novel (for which no modern edition was available until i produced one in 1997, after a period of research at the folger shakespeare library in washington d.c.) (locatelli 1998). the protagonists of peacham’s picaresque novel, the twins meum and tuum, move across england from the fenlands to cambridge and from there to london, thus providing a rich and amusing picture of the geographical, social literature armenian folia anglistika 167 and cultural situation of england in early-modern times. through their keen observant gaze the reader is taken to farms and universities, taverns and churches, and thus meets a rich variety of social types, and is given a unique perspective on the mores and shifting values of jacobean england. the utilitarian purpose of the movement of picaresque heroes is certainly distant from the devotion prompting mediaeval pilgrims; moreover, their social ambition is usually combined with their ability to provide witty and satirical comments on their surroundings. the story of their adventures is thus much more than just a lively “michelin guide” of england avant la lettere, it is a vivid illustration of social situations and a convincing anticipation of the emergent entrepreneurial mentality of the xviii century. key words: picaresque novel, invading nomadism, picaresque heroes, prereformation art and architecture, peregrinations in space and mind, the development of the satirical mode, parodic innovation. the shifting purposes of travel in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the rising genre of the picaresque novel in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the rising genre of the travelogue to distant and unknown countries (concerning either actual, or feigned journeys) posits the crucial concept of “charter” in its double semantic value of “a mapping” of unknown lands, as well as of “a control” or “management” of such lands, under the prevalent assumption of the right of to their appropriation on the part of the newcomers. we can therefore easily detect in most of these texts the posture of what edouard glissant brilliantly defines the “invading nomadism” of the conquerors (glissant 1997:12). the spirit promoting such appropriation has clear affinities with the spirit of entrepreneurial adventure implicit in the picaresque novel, a genre par excellence focusing on the motive of travel as a means of material acquisition, and as a form of simultaneous spatial and social movement. picaresque itineraries are, in fact, primarily prompted by the need of acquiring wealth, but also by other motives, such as the need to run away from creditors or enemies, armenian folia anglistika literature 168 or the desire of independence from family or from local constraints, or by pure and simple curiosity. the hero of the picaresque in many ways foreshadows the pragmatic style of the protagonists of countless xviii century novels, and contributes to the nascent affirmation of a bourgeois ideology. the motive of travel and peregrination is, of course, as ancient as the odyssey, but it takes on new connotations in the context of xvi and xvii century explorations, which eventually find their climax in the following century, in the archetypal figure of robinson crusoe. this figure has become a “global icon” of bourgeois values, i.e. of the spirit of adventure combined with the practical virtues of the “self-made man”. several decades before defoe’s renown novel, picaresque narratives had been produced across europe, a growing number of works which had already registered, and had in turn began to foster, a new attitude towards the meaning of travel itself. the picaresque clearly illustrates the new cultural mentalité, since perhaps more than any other genre it represents the shift from a traditionally religious view of travel (the pilgrimage) and from a scholarly conception of movement (that of the clerici vagantes and of the humanists, eventually culminating in the fashion of the grand tour) to an entirely secular and utilitarian view. the transcendental, spiritual and reparative features proper to the mediaeval religious pilgrimage are gradually, but irreversibly, shifted in the picaresque novel towards secular meanings and interests, i.e. towards economic aims and pleasurable goals. the experience of secular, as opposed to purely religious, travel had, of course, found great impulse with the early humanists, whose peregrinations across europe had been conducive to both the elaboration and dissemination of new forms of theoretical and practical knowledge. their quintessentially intellectual purposes, however, remain clearly outside the scope of picaresque narratives. if the picaresque heroes come in contact with academies, inns of court and universities, it is not in order to improve their minds through knowledge in the humanities, but only in view of gaining the kind of practical knowledge needed for social and economic advancement. this is the case with the picaresque novel under discussion. the protagonists of peacham’s novel a merry discourse of meum and tuum are not concerned literature armenian folia anglistika 169 with forms of abstract learning per se. the very idea of “adventure” displayed in this kind of works bespeaks a new approach to economic and social realities, an attitude which relegates metaphysical and/or intellectual pursuits to the background, while promoting a new primary interest in material concerns. in fact, the sagacious protagonists of the picaresque novel travel exclusively, as peacham jr. acutely suggests, for “profit and pleasure”. this twofold purpose may have been present in previous experiences of travel, but never before had it found a full social legitimation and become the central focus of the narrative. the mediaeval pilgrims of the canterbury tales, for example, were not, of course, driven by exclusively devotional concerns, and yet their overt motivations had to fit into a religious frame. two hundred years later such legitimation is no longer required of travelers, and the picaresque heroes are oblivious of both genuine religious concerns, and disinterested scholarly pursuits. a renewed interest in the theme of travel and the rise of new genres in the literary context are among the significant tangible responses to the rise of bourgeois interests. the picaresque hero’s spatial movement is clearly the means and expression of a new social and economic mobility. shifting attitudes and expectations lend unprecedented support to a utilitarian view of travel. although the debate on the origin and textual sources of the english picaresque is still ongoing, a prevalent scholarly opinion indicates an indisputable influence of the spanish picaresque, particularly of the novel lazarillo de tormes, after david rowland’s 1586 translation into english. the “native” picaresque, as a specific kind of narrative, starts in england in 1575, with jerome turler’s the traveller, and continues with robert dallington’s a method for travell, a text often considered more of a vademecum or a historical report than a proper picaresque novel. the best known example of the genre remains, of course, thomas nashe’s the unfortunate traveller (1594). peacham jr.’s a merry discourse of meum and tuum does therefore valuably and significantly enrich the picture of this genre in early modern england. armenian folia anglistika literature 170 henry peacham jr.: an itinerant scholar and artist before examining peacham jr.’s picaresque novel, a few details of his life and works must be provided. henry peacham jr. was born in 1578, the son of anne fairclough and of the minister henry peacham the elder, who is remembered in english letters first and foremost for his contribution to earlymodern rhetoric. he was, in fact, the author of the garden of eloquence (1577), a normative rhetorical text providing a detailed taxonomy of tropes and figures. both rhetoric1 and ecclesiastical culture2 are relevant elements of peacham jr.’s formation, and they leave unmistakable traces in his works (in a merry discourse we find several ecclesiastical types and peacham jr.’s anglican and royalist position is forcefully defended in several of his other works). and yet, his interest in antiquarian and artistic matters was to shape his career in a different direction from the ecclesiastical goals of his father. after a ba at cambridge, he undertook a voyage across the country in the company of other humanists (robert cotton, john selden, william camden) who shared his antiquarian interest in pre-reformation art and architecture. his first-hand experience of westminster, canterbury and lincoln is displayed in the art of drawing (1606) and in subsequent handbooks and “travel guides”. peacham jr.’s sharp observant eye on english social settings and their cultural connotations makes him one of the most acute “reporters” of contemporary english social life. an interesting parallel is provided by the already mentioned a method for travell: shewed by taking the view of france, by robert dallington (1598), also published (presumably) in 1606. both dallington (who took a classical “grand tour” on the continent) and peacham (who roamed across britain in search of ancient and mediaeval relics) undoubtedly belong to the category of the itinerant scholars and travelling intellectuals whose peregrinations in space and mind were part and parcel of mediaeval and early-modern culture. nearly all of his works testify to peacham jr.’s first-hand knowledge of specific places in britain. a prominent position in the literary genre of the “guide book” must be assigned to his the art of living in london (1642), a practical guide to the pleasures and dangers of the booming capital. it is full of anecdotes, and not dissimilar from his coach and sedan, a lively short text debating the respective literature armenian folia anglistika 171 merits of movement in either one (the coach) or the other (the sedan) means of transportation. the sections devoted to london in a merry discourse of meum and tuum are also worthy of attention, given the perceptive representation of the city’s manners and social customs. but peacham jr.’s talents are not limited to travel literature: he also excelled in the art of limning and illustration, and in the production of emblems (locatelli 2000:77-93), which cannot be discussed at length in this paper, devoted to his travel literature3. let us then come to peacham’s contribution to the picaresque and to the 1639 text of a merry discourse of meum and tuum. the lived topographies of a merry discourse several elements in peacham jr.’s picaresque narrative deserve attention and will be discussed for their innovative literary merit: in fact, not only does he provide a unique and relevant contribution to the genre in early modern england, but he also forcefully contributes to the so called “rogue literature” (rawlings 1992) and to the development of the satirical mode which was to flourish in the xviii century, often converging into the polymorphous genre of the novel. the protagonists of peacham’s picaresque novel, the twins meum and tuum (and the theme and motive of “the double” is also relevant in this short novel), move across england from their hometown “wrangle”, in the region of the “fennes” to cambridge, and from there to london, and back. their itinerary outlines salient features of the social and geographical fabric of early-modern england. the itinerary of the two picaresque protagonists often reveals a firsthand acquaintance of the author with the places and with various social roles and professions. the narrator’s topographical accuracy suggests that the author has drawn its materials from his own peregrinations and lived experience in the fenlands, specifically in the towns of boston, cambridge, and london, and in their more or less immediate surroundings. peacham’s own itineraries across rural and urban england undoubtedly fed his narrative inspiration, so that his narrative strategy superimposes the voice of the narrator as eye-witness to that of the author’s own views and opinions on contemporary england. his armenian folia anglistika literature 172 description of boston is exemplary. peacham lived in boston around 1622-1623, his daughter elizabeth was born there. in the novel, in line with his youthful antiquarian interests, he traces the name of boston back to the benedictine monk st. botholf (or botulf) who died there in 680 c.e., and he carefully records that in the xiii century boston was an important sea port, second only to london, while its importance regrettably waned as the sand gradually filled up the river’s estuary4: to make a topographical description of this towne (by way of digression) it standeth seven miles beyond villam butolphi, alias boston, at the hither end of a spacious and fruitfull marsh, well knowne for plenty of the biggest and fattest sheepe of england; it is adjoining to that arme of the sea, called by ptolemy, metaris aestuarium; it was sometimes a market towne, and in time of canutus the dane, it had a fair haven, which since the sea hath forsaken, and is now toward the sea filled up with sand, and upon land become a deep valley, wherein grasse growth, and is common for their sheepe. (p. 60) his knowledge of cambridge likewise rests on peacham’s years of stay there. when meum and tuum reach cambridge and plan to acquire some knowledge of the “lawes” in order to become proficient in the art of disputation, the narrator’s allusion to the curriculum is a precise indication of the knowledge peacham had acquired in cambridge as a student: …but above all others they desired to see the common schooles, an desired to heare the disputations, and wrangling of the sophisters; with some of whom they had aquainted themselves, they learned all the rulkes of arguing, with the nature of syllogismes, and every fallacie, whereby they enabled themselves, for literature armenian folia anglistika 173 reasoning pro&con in all places, and upon every occasion; and were now became able to entangle any adversary, or opposite in logicall limetwigs. now having well viewed the university and towne, and being furnished with latine and logick, enough for the practice of the law, they take their leaves, and to london forward by trompington they goe. (p. 78) the naming of sites and monuments in cambridge is also detailed, if not always entirely historically accurate. the narrator refers to the “petit curie” (petty cury was a street in cambridge), to the ruins of a castle, to “pythagoras schoole” (a part of st. john’s college), to “the round church” (unlikely to have been a synagogue, as the narrator suggests), to “jesus colledge”, and even to erasmus of rotterdam’s “chamber and study, in queen’s colledge”. the description of london is rich and varied. as expected of picaresque characters, the twins take up a lodging in “theeving-lane”, surprisingly, but no doubt ironically set close to “the upper hand of westminster hall”. the following day they visit the “beare-biting sites” (where meum is hit by one of the beare-wards, for taking the city butchers’ part against the bear-keepers, and in a highly exhilarating scene loses his breeches while trying to escape the attack of a furious bull). in order to reach the “beare-garden” the twins had to go “over the water” and this provides the lively description of the “watermen” on the thames, who are “railing at one another” about fares and clients to hire. visits to quieter and more respectable and august places follow, to both the inns of chancery, and to westminster hall (the site becomes the occasion for a historical digression on heraldry and richard ii). peacham’s knowledge of london is, of course amply documented also in his, already mentioned “guidebook” the art of living in london (1642). but peacham’s descriptions are not limited to places: he has a truly meticulous eye for the rich variety of people and social strata of contemporary england. armenian folia anglistika literature 174 the picaresque as social survey: professions, social status, and mores through its detailed and amused attention to various professions and locations this text offers a unique perspective on the social levels, the mores, and shifting values of jacobean england. moreover, it achieves a meticulous and comprehensive description of the historical moment with pervasive humor, and often through a brilliant satirical voice. in their travels meum and tuum meet a wide spectrum of professions and social roles: an old parson (p.62), a proctor (p.64), a farmer (p.64), a young diligent preacher “mr. of arts of cambridge” (p.66), a “suffolke cheesemonger” (p.72), “a baker of chesterton” (p.72), a “hostesse” (70), a number of attorneys (pp.64, 86, 90, 102), magistrates (p.122), a “bailife”(p.68), two contending “swinheardes”(68) and lords (68), a “crown promotour belonging to the exchequer” (p.74), a clerk of the parish (p.80), a vicar (p.80), the watermen on the thames (p.82), the beare–wards in the beare-gardens (p.84), the city butchers (p.84), students at the inns of chancery (who are cornish and devonshire gentlemen) (p.86), a countryman visiting london (p.88), a “justice of peace” now retired and comfortably living in the country (p.94), the apprentice and the maid working in his house (p.100), projectors (p.p.92), a tinker (p.98), a young “heire” wasting his patrimony in dissolute living (p.104), a couple of quack ‘doctors’ (p.106 and p.110), a roper (p.122) and several “ladies, gentlewomen, and other honest women” (p.120). in their peregrinations meum and tuum always try to fool others, often strategically pretending to take opposite sides in the quarrels they come across, which they claim to resolve disinterestedly. moreover, they manage to profit from the quarrels which they provoke among commoners, parsons, and lords. with the typical eagerness of the picaresque hero, they also impersonate several professions, including that of attorney (the most frequent and lucrative role), the functions of crown inspector, of fortune-teller, of “physitian”, and even of gipsy, always deriving material gain from people’s credulity and contentiousness. the fact that the picaresque hero revels in tricks and pranks at the expenses of others, contributes to the light and amused tone of the narrative. literature armenian folia anglistika 175 literary innovations in a merry discourse: parody, the external gaze and a satirical voice. at least three elements seem to anticipate, or even promote in a merry discourse the literary development towards the genre of the canonical xviii century “novel”: i.e. parody, the external gaze and a satirical voice. parodic innovation is immediately manifest in the incipit of the picaresque journey. the scene of the twin’s departure connotes peacham’s novel as an amused parody of the mediaeval romance. it also provides a description of the different rural activities and occupations of the fenland summer, but, what is more important, it is a quintessentially “carnevalesque” moment, in bakhtin’s sense (bakhtin 1981), which reverses the meanings that are intertextually evoked in the comparison between the setting off of the picaresque hero and the traditional departure of the heroic mediaeval crusader: in brief, their father resolved to be troubled no longer with them, but to send them into the world, to seeke their fortune, and rather forthwith while the summer lasted, the weather was faire, the daies long, and (if extremity constrained them) while there was meanes to get something in the fields, as by haymaking, sheeepe-shearing, shocking of corne, pitching the cart, and the like hereupon, as well for lightness in hot weather, as saving his money, he clad each of them in a parchment suite, made of bonds and leases out of date; the large black lines served for lace, and the waxen seales for buttons; for hats they had two monmouth caps their father brought out of wales, wherein they stuck a fen-cats-taile or two; weapon they had none, save each of them a broome staffe in his hand, with some small summe of money in their pockets: and thus accoustred, out of dores they goe (without either asking their parents blessing, or once bidding them armenian folia anglistika literature 176 farewell) on their intended voyage, bidding their sweet and native soile of wrangle (for how long they knew not) a friendly adieu.” (pp. 58-60) the twins’ attitude and posture recalls and mocks the dressing of the chivalric hero: each item of clothing (“monmouth caps”, “fen-cats-taile”, “a broome staffe”) is a debased version of the elements of a traditional knight’s armor (helmet, plumes, spear) and the lowly goals of the protagonists are in sharp contrast to the lofty aims proposed by the crusaders. the noble journeys of the latter are parodied in the base and immediately utilitarian purposes of picaresque travel. meum and tuum (whose very names connote a bourgeois interest in property and ownership) are two penniless rogues, ready to embark on morally dubious adventures, and ready to make the most of the contentions and strife of the people they meet on their way. the narrative tone is clearly that of parody, and, as already suggested, it suggests derision of the traditional romances. the subversion of the ideal figure of virtue could not be more complete: the picaresque twins are no idealists, and their motives are far from generous or noble. the rogue has replaced the noble hero and the motivations behind their respective travels illustrate a great shift in moral values. the picaresque is as timely in the seventeenth century as it is incompatible with the older chivalric genre, and one is easily reminded of the fact that the two narrative modes are magisterially and unmistakably confronted in the near contemporary masterpiece don quixote. it is significant that meum and tuum come from the town of wrangle (nomen omen!) and that the town wants to get rid of them because of their contentiousness. after being rejected as soldiers for fear of a mutiny in the army (due to their quarrelsome personality) they embark on a picaresque journey, to the “outside world”. peacham’s keen observation of places and people is often combined with the adoption of an external point of view in the description of social and spatial contexts. in fact, the narrator’s gaze on the picaresque heroes, and their own gaze on xvii century england allow for a critique, as well as a description of places, people, and customs. the traveller’s gaze becomes a powerful stylistic literature armenian folia anglistika 177 device in the satirical literature of the xviii century. the stranger’s position is in fact the most adequate to promote comments on and criticism of specific social mores and context. not surprisingly, peacham’s narrative gaze is above all satirical and his satire has a number of specific targets: first and foremost attorneys and magistrates, who, pretending to facilitate just and even amicable solutions to controversies cause, on the contrary, bitter and endless disputes (for the benefit of their own pockets). as meum and tuum explain to the retired “justice of the peace” who is hosting them in his house a few miles from london: we are dablers in the lawes, and well knowne to all the courts about westminster; i pray god not for pickpockets; we cut, nor pick no purses, quoth tuum, but empty them after a legall way, for there is not a tryall but we have a hand in the same, and in every sute, though never so long depending; (p. 96) the explicit moral of the fable throughout peacham’s narrative is that quarrels and disputes are advantageous for cunning attorneys, rather than for any one of the parties involved. according to the rules and classical features of the picaresque, the heroes of his novel are no saints or philosophers, they are literally two “rogues” who delight in strife, but who eventually become gentrified (economic and social advancement is the acknowledged purpose of their travels, as already suggested). they return to their original point of departure, after achieving a respectable and even affluent social status. their acquisition of a specific competence in legal matters is the skill that more than any other advances their social upgrade. they often pass for trained attorneys or “experts of the law”, since they get involved in all sorts of disputes in which something is to be gained. their economic improvement and their rising social respectability along the picaresque journey is significantly marked by change in apparel (which starts relatively soon, when a proctor gives meum a “handsome blacke suit”). their gentrification is also made explicit in the new form of armenian folia anglistika literature 178 address they receive: “…and whereas before they were called by their names only, they were called now mr. meum and mr. tuum.”(p.92). the success of the picaresque parable is thus fully accomplished: the bourgeois virtues of cunning and entrepreneurial courage receive their reward. the progression is worth examining: when they start out on the voyage from “the fennes” they hardly have any decent clothes to wear. they eventually get rid of the ridiculous “parchment suit” their father had clad them in, and with keen commercial acumen and savoire faire, sell it “to a taylor for measures”, as soon as a few rewarding adventures have allowed them to afford a “very hansome and civill apparel” (p.76). meum and tuum combine a hear-say knowledge of the law with a personal propensity to contention and with an astute mind. these entrepreneurial “qualities” bring them abundant material gain from involvement in disputes ad infinitum. and yet, as it becomes the picaresque hero, a rogue and spendthrift almost by definition (in contrast to the thrifty bourgeois hero of xviii century novels), meum and tuum live hand-to mouth, and are, on the whole, unable to accumulate wealth. this explains the repetitive gestures of their peregrinations and the circular and “interminable” structure of the narrative itself5. their deliberation to return to their homeland will be short lived, despite the fact that they find “sute and strife” there: they will “returne up to london” and the picaresque voyage will presumably continue forever. conclusion i hope to have convincingly argued that spatial movement is a quintessentially social movement in peacham’s picaresque. the story of meum and tuum is much more than a guide book for travellers in xvii century england; it is not only a lively tale of adventure, but also a convincing illustration of the emergent entrepreneurial mentality of the age, and of the incipient bourgeois ideology of xvii century society. not least, the merry discourse undoubtedly deserves wider critical attention and a due canonization as a very valuable literary contribution to the genre of the picaresque in english literature. literature armenian folia anglistika 179 notes: 1. peacham jr.’s the valley of variety (1638) demonstrates his obvious acquaintance with his father’s the garden of eloquence as well as with erasmus’s de copia. 2. henry peacham jr.’s anglican stance and his polemical attacks against the puritans are displayed in a number of pamphlets – the duty of all true subjects (1639), square caps turned into round heads (1642), a paradox in the praise of a dunce, to smectymnus (1642), his active participation in the sharp controversies of the times. 3. i will briefly recall that the first known illustration of one of shakespeare’s plays is peacham’s own representation of a scene from titus andronicus in which tamora is shown kneeling before titus while aaron the moor stands in the background holding his sword. henry peacham jr. both wrote and illustrated several collections of emblems: in 1603 he presented james i with fifty-six emblems from the king’s own basilikon doron. in 1612 two important emblem collections were published: minerva britanna and graphice. this volume was also edited with the title the gentleman’s exercise and was followed by emblemata varia in 1621. moreover, peacham holds a significant position in the so called “courtesy literature”, i.e. in those texts aimed at the education of the aristocracy, in the line of baldassarre castiglione, niccolò macchiavelli, stefano guazzo, sir thomas hoby and sir thomas elyot. his the compleat gentleman. furnishing him absolute in the most necessary and commendable qualities was indisputably successful in his own times, and was known outside national boundaries. it was printed in several editions from 1622 to 1661. 4. the river witham is a river almost entirely in the county of lincolnshire. at boston it flows into the haven, a tidal arm of the wash, near frampton marsh. 5. the narrator closes his account in these terms: “i leave them wrangling, at their native towne of wrangle, where i first found them” (p.124). armenian folia anglistika literature 180 references: 1. bakhtin, m.m. (1981) the dialogic imagination. / ed. by m. holquist, tr. by c. emerson and m. holquist. austin, texas: university of texas press. 2. glissant, ed. (1997) poetics of relation. / tr. by b. wing, a. arbor. michigan: the university of michigan press, p. 12. 3. locatelli, a. (1998) il doppio e il picaresco. un caso paradigmatico nel rinascimento inglese, con l’ameno racconto di meum e tuum di henry peacham jr., milano: jaca book. 4. locatelli, a. (2000) semantic integration and diversion in henry peacham’s emblems. // slavica tergestina, n.8. trieste, pp. 77-93. 5. rawlings, ph. (1992) drunks, whores and idle apprentices. london: routledge. source of data: 1. peacham jr., h. (1639) a merry discourse of meum and tuum. london. տարածքային տեղաշարժը որպես հասարակական շարժունություն վաղ տասնյոթերորդ դարում. հենրի փիչամ կրտսերի «միըմի և թուըմի ուրախ զրույցը» արկածային վեպը տեղաշարժի և ճամփորդության թեման մեծ տեղ է զբաղեցնում 16-17րդ դդ. գրականության մեջ՝ արտացոլելով այդ դարաշրջանի մարդկանց յուրահատուկ արկածախնդրությունը: նոր և հեռավոր տարածքների տիրելու, հարստանալու, ինչպես նաև զվարճանալու նպատակով ճանապարհորդող հերոսների կյանքի նկարագրությամբ անգլիական գրականության մեջ հիմք դրվեց արկածային ժանրին, որի ակունքները սկիզբ են առնում դեռևս հոմերոսի ոդիսականից և հասնում գագաթնակետին 18-րդ դարում դ. դեֆոյի «ռոբինզոն կրուզո» վեպով: հոդվածում քննության է առնվում հ. փիչամի «միըմի և թուըմի ուրախ զրույցը» արկածային վեպը: նկարագրելով երկվորյակ եղբայրներ միըմի և թուըմի ճամփորդությունliterature armenian folia anglistika 181 ները անգլիայում՝ ֆենլանդզից մինչև քեմբրիջ, այնուհետև՝ լոնդոն, հեղինակը ցույց է տալիս, որ տարածքային տեղաշարժը հասարակական շարժունություն է, քանզի հերոսների վարքագծում արտացոլվում է այդ դարաշրջանում նոր ի հայտ եկող ձեռնարկատիրական մտածելակերպը: received by the editorial board 19.11.2018 recommended for publication by the reviewers 22.02.2019 accepted for print 22.04.2019 microsoft word maket 2019-2 final.doc armenian folia anglistika methodology 56 on the role of phraseological units in teaching english as a foreign language to adult learners minoo khamesian sanaati noushirvani university abstract one of the challenges of learning english for iranian learners is “nativelike” production of speech rarely achieved by even the most advanced learners. unfortunately, it is common belief among iranian english learners that knowledge of individual lexical items is the key to communicative competence. but alas! the outcome has shown this is counterproductive. as an anglicist teaching esp in general and eap in particular in my country, i feel responsible for shedding light on this issue inasmuch as i experience the lapse in my every day professional work. it should be noted that in this global village, in which english is considered the lingua franca of science and technology, focusing on phraseological units as a sub-branch of lexical proficiency seems to be of paramount importance to avoid misunderstanding and miscommunication. the present article makes an effort to highlight the role of contextual usages of these units in tefl to help the learners reach the desired native-like production of english speech. key words: phraseology, idiomaticity, collocational proficiency, nativelikeness. introduction language and culture are, needless to say, intimately linked. different schools of thought, for instance, prague school of linguistics, or firthianhallidayan functional-systemic british contextualism, view language as a social phenomenon primarily, as it is intertwined with culture both naturally and inextricably. such approaches, in addition to those socio-culturally and contextually oriented, tend to view language as embedded in culture to the methodology armenian folia anglistika 57 extent that linguistic proficiency can only be reached providing that the cultural context embracing it is properly referred to. the functions of phraseological units from many researchers’ works can be summarized as first and foremost indicating how these units contribute to the production of creative language and fluency, as well as help avoid misunderstanding, improving the users’ native-likeness in communication. when it comes to producing a text or a piece of speech, according to sinclair (2004), seldom do we have the chance of selecting a single word freely, but there is a phraseological tendency by means of which meaning is built. this phraseological nature of language is further explained by bolinger (1976:1) as, “language does not expect us to build everything starting with lumber, nails, and blueprint, and rather it provides us with an incredibly large number of prefabs.” sinclair (2004b:19-20) also argues that words do not “constitute independent selections”. rather, co-selection is the norm, “the choice of one word conditions the choice of the next, and of the next again”. otherwise stated, this sharing entails that “[…] the meaning of words chosen together be different from their independent meanings”, leading to a certain “delexicalization” of words, as a result. according to gibbs (1993), it is essential to study idioms not only because they help us comprehend how people learn and communicate figurative language, but also because idiomaticity opens the door to some dramatic insights into how language and thought are interconnected. phraseologies and teaching language to non-natives we should bear in mind that language tends not only to be controlled by grammatical rules and regulations, but by lexical and discursive co-selections as well. in this regard, the phraseologies of a given language (in our case the english language) can thus be taken as a means to differentiate native language from learner language. the latter has been termed differently, e.g. “informal, speech-like” (granger & rayson, 1998:130), “bookish and pedantic” (channell, 1994:21), “vague and stereotyped” and having “limited vocabulary” (ringbom, 1998:49), or lacking idiomaticity (lorenz, 1998:53), all of which imply that armenian folia anglistika methodology 58 learner language contains its own style, which is generally referred to as “unnatural” or “non-native”. on the other hand, as cowie (2005:12) puts, “prefabricated expressions pervade all levels of linguistic organization – lexical, grammatical, pragmatic – and affect all kinds of structures, from entire utterances to simple phrases [...], there are relatively few examples that are completely invariable or opaque.” thus, to select the most natural alternative from among a broad range of grammatically possible sentences in any given situation calls for something beyond knowledge of syntax. being ubiquitous in the english language, and arguably, allocating a large part of the native’s vocabulary to themselves, these prefabricated expressions require to be paid due attention while teaching the language to the non-native. the foreign language learner, not being familiar with them, would devise structures in the hope that native speakers would be unable to communicate without misunderstanding, but the result is likely to be highly contrived and unacceptable to native ears. when it comes to cultural differences between languages, the interference of the native language of the learner makes the learning process even worse. furthermore, according to wray (2002:206), another problem the learner should challenge is having so many choices – paradigm – so a wrong selection would undoubtedly result in unnaturalness, and, as a result, correct use of words seems to be an essential counterpart of expressive and effective speech. wolter (2006) shows that the learner’s mother tongue would provide a preset structure of concepts, and as a consequence of the dissimilarities between lexical sources, miscollocations might be inevitable. learners make collocational errors mainly due to the fact that they rely on their l1 lexical knowledge. however, the acquisition of new combinations of words in l2 will lead to “conceptual modifications”, as a result of which problems manifest. this is further elaborated by danesi’s conceptual fluency, which argues that “students ‘speak’ with the formal structures of the target language, but they ‘think’ in terms of their native conceptual system” (danesi 1995). methodology armenian folia anglistika 59 analysis what is adduced below is drawn from my english learners’ speeches, who devised these usages naturally and spontaneously. it should be added that my learners of english generally have rather a good command of english and target ielts or toefl to seek a post-degree or a job opportunity overseas. in actual fact, my collection is noticeably overwhelming, but as it is impossible to include all, i decided to select some of those with the highest frequency of occurrence in every day communication. the native-like english equivalents are presented after each misused phrase. the collection, although small, hopefully will be enough to meet my claim in this study. empty your place. it was a shame you weren’t with us. he is not in the garden. his mind is somewhere else. your father will be killed. your goose is cooked. don’t be tired. (the word by word translation of how iranians farewell at the end of a working day; see you.) any order? (again, the direct translation of how can i help you.) he looked at me left left. he looked at me angrily. his hen has one leg. he is headstrong. his donkey has crossed the bridge. he is out of the woods. her writing is lobster and frog. his writing isn’t legible. wants both god and date. (which surprisingly means have your cake and eat it.) armenian folia anglistika methodology 60 i should hasten to add that such violations tend to be a natural manifestation of the playful, creative energy. the oddness of expressions built by the learners, as obvious, is not associated with grammatical deficiency. they seem to occur due to the mental models of farsi, the mother tongue. the interference of semantics and syntax of farsi is obviously visible. considering the nature of phraseology, i.e. the arbitrary co-selection of words to be combined, we can put it at an area between grammar and meaning. surprisingly enough, the learners are interested in using idiomatic structures, but rarely do they bother themselves to find out what the genuine equivalents are. such pragmatic clusters, as i would like to call, are made up of a string of words, the meaning of which can rarely, if ever, be taken in literally. as wray (2002:465) puts, “a sequence, continuous or discontinuous of words or other meaning elements, is, or appears to be prefabricated; that is stored and retrieved whole from the memory at the rime of use, rather than being subject to generation or analysis by the language grammar.” sinclair (2004), on the other hand, explains that when producing a text or speech, we are not entirely free to choose a single word inasmuch as there is a phraseological tendency according to which meanings can be created in terms of word combinations. the cultural distance or so-called alienness of the utterances clearly shows that the learners do not share in the socio-cultural knowledge of native english speakers or common ways of how they speak. following what bakhtin (1981:346) puts concerning every discourse presupposing a special conception of the listener, of his perceptive background and the degree of his responsiveness, i would assert that the differences found from the two cultural contexts and in the two languages contribute to establishing distance towards the readership, ailing true understanding. it is also worth adding here that bolinger (1976:1) elaborates on the phraseological nature of language stressing out that “language does not expect us to build everything starting with lumber, nails, and blueprint. rather it provides us with an incredibly large number of prefabs.” sadly enough, the majority of the poor phraseological performances were produced by advanced learners, which can strengthen the fact that they are deficient in collocational relationship between words in idiomatic expressions. methodology armenian folia anglistika 61 for them, this tends to be initially regarded as compositional combinations of words not a phenomenon of co-selection. what is worthy of note here is that contrary to some study results indicating that learners tend to use a limited number of collocations (those they are sure about) – iranian learners create collocations in english unnervingly extravagantly, happily expecting their interlocutors to understand them. as written time and again, phraseological cohesion tends to be more challenging than lexical cohesion due to its semantic structure, hence it will not be irrational to claim that the inherent feature of any unit of phraseology is the cohesion of the base form, including not only grammatical, lexical, and phonological but also stylistic aspects. wolter (2006:746) puts that “the process of building syntagmatic connections between words in l2 appears to be considerably harder than the process for building paradigmatic connections.” therefore, it does not seem unreasonable to say that idiomatic competence is highly likely to develop after extensive exposure to the pragmatics of idiomaticity in the sociocultural contexts of a specific discourse community. conclusion undeniably, cross-cultural communication is essential in the world today, but sadly, it seems not to enjoy the attention it deserves among the teachers. english teachers in general and in iran in particular, should be aware of the fact that our task is not merely teaching the language rules and the vocabulary, but also raise our learners’ awareness of the important role the english culture plays in our ability of native-like production of speech. it is also worth bearing in mind that we cannot expect our learners to communicate in english naturally if the vocabulary of english is taught as single items without collocational relationships in terms of idiomaticity. it is necessary for learners’ attention to be diverted from single lexical items to habitual word combinations, whose meanings could be perceived through intralinguistic relations that exist between them. this does not necessarily overlook the fact that lexical items relate to concrete features of the real world but stresses out that the meaning would not solely be comprehensible in terms armenian folia anglistika methodology 62 of the referential approach. it is of paramount importance for us as english teachers to find out lexical restrictions in teaching idioms which due to their purely intralinguistic nature, cannot be accounted for by logical considerations. also important for an efficient teacher is to be aware of the fact that for a native-like command of english in general, and idiomatic english in particular, words, word-groups and sentences must be shed light on within the lexical, grammatical and situational restrictions of the language. references: 1. bakhtin, m.m. (1981) the dialogic imagination. austin, tx: university of texas press. 2. bolinger, d. (1976) meaning and memory. // forum linguisticum, 1, 1-14. 3. channell, j. (1994) vague language. oxford: open university press. 4. cowie, a. (ed.). (2005) phraseology: theory, analysis, and applications. new york: oup. 5. danesi, m. (1995) learning and teaching languages: the role of “conceptual fluency.” // international journal of applied linguistics, 5(1), 3-20. 6. firth, j.r. (1968a) a synopsis of linguistic theory, 1930-1955 (special volume of the philological society, oxford, 1957, 1-31). // selected papers of j.r. firth 1952-1959. / ed. by f.r. palmer, 168-205. london: longman. 7. granger, s. & rayson, p. (1998) automatic profiling of learner texts. // learner english on computer. / ed. by s. granger. london and new york: longman. 8. sinclair, j. (2004) trust the text. london: routledge. 9. sinclair, j.m. (2004b) trust the text. // trust the text, 9-23. london: routledge. 10. wolter, b. (2006) lexical network structures and l2 vocabulary acquisition: the role of l1 lexical/conceptual knowledge. // applied linguistics, 27(4), 741-747. 11. wray, a. (2002) formulaic language and the lexicon. cambridge: cup. methodology armenian folia anglistika 63 դարձվածաբանական միավորների դերը օտար լեզուների դասավանդման մեջ իրանցիների համար անգլերենի ուսուցման գլխավոր դժվարություններից մեկը լեզվակրին բնորոշ սահուն խոսքի արտաբերելն է, ինչը հազվադեպ է հանդիպում անգամ ամենալավ ուսանողների խոսքում: ցավոք, անգլերեն ուսումնասիրող իրանցիներից շատերը այն կարծիքն ունեն, թե առանձին բառային միավորի իմացությունը հմուտ հաղորդակության բանալին է: ավաղ, արդյունքները հակառակն են վկայում: անգլերեն դասավանդելով ինչպես հատուկ, այնպես էլ ակադեմիական նպատակներով լեզուն ուսումնասիրող խմբերի՝ պարտավորված եմ զգում լույս սփռել այս խնդրի վրա, քանզի ինքս ականատես եմ լինում բացերի ամեն օր: սույն հոդվածով անդրադարձ է կատարվում դարձվածաբանական միավորներին որպես բառային մակարդակում վարպետության հասնելու միջոցի: այս գլոբալ աշխարհում, որտեղ անգլերենը համարվում է գիտության և տեխնոլոգիայի լինգվա ֆրանկան, լեզվի իմացությունը հույժ կարևոր է թյուըմբռնումներից խուսափելու համար: հոդվածում փորձ է արվում վեր հանել այս միավորների համատեքստային կիրառության դերը tefl-ում՝ հնարավորություն ընձեռելով լեզուն ուսումնասիրողներին հասնել լեզվակիրների այդքան բաղձալի վարպետությանը: received by editorial board 01.08.2019 recommended for publication by reviewers 22.09.2019 accepted for print 03.11.2019 maket 2014_layout 1.qxd author’s “ego” in “the ballad of the reading gaol” marika tonyan yerevan state university abstract oscar wilde’s poem “the ballad of reading gaol” contains various narrative perspectives which convey the author’s and the protagonist’s points of view. in this work the roles of the author and the narrator are not differentiated, they are integrated in the subject of consciousness who manifests his “ego” in different modes: as the participant of the events, as their observer, as the transmitter of the main and secondary characters’ experiences and feelings, etc. the actualization of the existing standpoints becomes possible by means of pragmatic analysis of the text, and at the same time is, naturally, closely connected with the reader’s knowledge of the author’s background. by revealing the narrator’s meanings, the contextual implications, and by finding out the spacial characteristics of the text, an attempt is made at discovering the author’s subjectivity to a hopefully full extent. key words: subject of consciousness, narrator, point of view, first-person narration, third-person perspective. introduction the problem of the author’s personality is a critical issue not only in literary criticism, but also in linguistics. the way the narrator presents the world of the literary work is closely connected with the question of narrative modes and to a great extent determines its structure and dynamics. the situation becomes still more interesting when the concepts of “narrator” and “author” coincide, as is the case under consideration. in the present article we will try to reveal the author’s point of view within part one of “the ballad of reading gaol” having in mind that this poem is a profound investigation of one’s self in a situation of loss of freedom. both in this poem and in “de profundis”, oscar wilde goes through his recreation of dante’s inferno, describing the acceptance and rejection of sin, and looking at the world through his own subjectivity. about the poem “the ballad of reading gaol” was written by oscar wilde in exile in france, after his release from reading gaol in 1897. wilde had been incarcerated in reading, after being convicted of homosexual offences in 1895 and sentenced to two years’ hard labour in prison. during his imprisonment, on 7 july 1896, a hanging took place. the 30-yearold charles thomas wooldridge, who had been a trooper in the royal horse guards, was convicted of cutting the throat of his wife, laura ellen, earlier that year at clewer, near windsor. wilde, it is sometimes said, made use of the proletarian ballad form, and suggested it be published in reynold’s magazine, because, as he said, “it circulates widely among the criminal classes – to which i now belong – for once i will be read by my peers – a new experience for me” (kiberd 2000:336). armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 45 the finished poem was published by leonard smithers in 1898 under the name “c.3.3”, which stood for “cell block c, landing 3, cell 3”. this ensured that wilde’s name – by then notorious – did not appear on the poem’s front cover. it was not commonly known, until the 7th printing in june 1899, that “c.3.3.” was actually wilde. it was a commercial success, going through seven editions in less than two years, only after which “oscar wilde” was added to the title page, though many in literary circles had known wilde to be the author. the poem has a dedication, which from the very start gives the protagonist a definite background: “in memoriam c.t.w. sometime trooper of the royal horse guards”. obiit h.m. prison, reading, berkshire, july 7th, 1896 point of view and space in fiction a composition device, according to yu. lotman, becomes meaningfully distinctive, if it is incorporated into an opposition with a contrasting system. the point of view develops into an explicit element of the literary structure if there is a possibility of its change within the framework of the narrative (or of a projection of the text upon another text, from a different point of view) (lotman 1998:181). yu. lotman also argues that a work of fiction reveals the interrelation between the individual and the world, and thus is of a subject-object character. for example, in the literary tradition of classicism the subject-object relations expressed in the text characteristically converged in a single focus. the focus was removed from the author’s personality, combining with the notion of truth, and the literary text developed from this angle. such fixed and definite relations corresponded to the perception of eternity, the universality and stability of truth. in romantic poetry the literary points of view also converged in one fixed centre, but this centre (or, in other words, the subject of the poetical text) coincided with the individuality of the author and became the counterpart of the poet’s personality. however, as yu. lotman remarks, another textual structure is possible: in this text the points of view do not meet in one centre, rather they construct a dispersed subject, containing distinct centres, the relations between which create additional meanings. instead of a single focal point, there is an area including different points of view (lotman 1998:182). space in a work of literature is created through the perceiver’s perspective; hence the problems of the subject of consciousness and space are closely interrelated. the classical concepts of literary space (m.bakhtin, m.lotman, d.likhachev, v.toporov, b.uspenskiy) define it as follows: space in fiction and real space are different categories – a text can be regarded as a “possible world”, whose structure to some extent replicates the structure of the real world. the spacial characteristics of the text are often described armenian folia anglistika linguistics 46 in terms of “locus” (from latin locus) and “topos” (from greek τόπος), and philologists sometimes distinguish between a closed image of space, “locus”, and an open one, “topos”. as far as space in a work of fiction is concerned, it is possible to bring out those features which can be detected visually, trying to determine from whose point of view these features are observed. in a first-person text it is obvious that the events, people and objects are perceived and described by the subject of consciousness who, at the same time, is the narrator. however, in a third-person narration there are other, indirect means which can reveal the perceiver’s “ego”. actually, in this type of narration the linguistic means of indicating the narrator are not as straightforward as the pronoun “i”. according to ye. paducheva, several egocentric words and word combinations, owing to their meaning, presuppose the existence of the subject of speech and/or the subject of consciousness. in a canonical situation of speech (for example, in conversation), we find the explicitly expressed speaker. in a narrative text, where the speaker is sometimes hidden, the narrator can be actualized in an indirect way, by the use of certain linguistic means, some of which are as follows: metatextual elements, predicates of emotional and mental states, indicators of identification, generalizing insertions, words with evaluative meaning (paducheva 1996:276). firstand third-person perspectives the first stanza of the poem is considered by some philologists to be an objective story-telling, an impersonal recount of events: (1) he did not wear his scarlet coat, for blood and wine are red, and blood and wine were on his hands when they found him with the dead, the poor dead woman whom he loved, and murdered in her bed. however, linguistic analysis shows that we can speak about the narrator’s implicit presence. thus, the existential presupposition of the phrase “his scarlet coat” can mean “[i know that] he had a scarlet coat”. and if we remember the dedication of the poem, we will reconstruct the pragmatic bond between the speaker/narrator and the hearer/reader: the author has previously informed us about wooldridge’s occupation and now he makes a reference to it. it is obvious that the colour of the coat has a direct bearing on the fact that wooldridge was covered with blood and wine. it is known that wilde made a mistake by using the word “scarlet” because, in fact, the horse guards wore blue uniforms. he made the choice of the colour term consciously, in order to construct a dramatic setting for the scene: “i remember once at dinner a friend of his [wilde’s] who had formerly been in the “blues”, pointing out that in the open stanza of “the ballad of the reading jail” he had made a mistake in speaking of the “scarlet coat” of the man who was hanged; he was, as armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 47 the dedication of the poem says, a private in the “blues”, and his coat would therefore naturally not be scarlet. …“well, what could i do,” said oscar wilde plaintively, “i couldn’t very well say, “he didn’t wear his azure coat”, could i?” (dossick 2013). the second and third lines are generic statements, and since a generalization requires a subject of consciousness in order to make it, we have another case of reference to the narrator’s “ego”. the rest of the first stanza is written in an objective tone: the use of the indefinite pronoun “they”, which is i-exclusive, implies that the author is detaching himself from the scene. the employment of “they” in this case is opposed to the use of the generic “one”, which later in the text will indicate the narrator’s sympathetic attitude to the sufferings of wooldridge. (2) he walked amongst the trial men in a suit of shabby grey; a cricket cap was on his head, and his step seemed light and gay; but i never saw a man who looked so wistfully at the day. (3) i never saw a man who looked with such a wistful eye upon that little tent of blue which prisoners call the sky, and at every drifting cloud that went with sails of silver by. (4) i walked, with other souls in pain, within another ring, and was wondering if the man had done a great or little thing, when a voice behind me whispered low, “that fellow’s got to swing.” in the first three lines of the second stanza the narrator describes the character objectively, without reference to his own experience. after this the perspective of the text switches to that of i-narration. the line “and his step seemed light and gay”, by means of the verb “seemed”, suggests the existence of the subject of consciousness. the evaluative adjective “shabby (grey)”, conveys subjective evaluation; besides “scarlet” and “grey” symbolize a contrast between passion and miserable prison life, and it is evident that a symbolic representation should be connected with the narrator’s “ego”. in general, the settings around the narrator are quite explicit in stanzas (2) to (4), and we can now envisage the locus of the scene. the poetic lines might be paraphrased by means of the following propositions. the prisoners can see only a little piece of the sky above: “the little tent of blue” and “the sky above my head”. the part of the sky that they armenian folia anglistika linguistics 48 can see is confined by the high prison walls: it may be inferred that the walls are high because the prisoners can see only the sky, while the landscape is not to be seen. the prisoners go round in circles, one after another: “a voice behind me…” (a. stokes notes that the prisoners walked in what was according to the prison rules, clockwise). though all the prisoners look at the sky sadly, wooldridge watches the sky even more wistfully (he is the one to part with life very soon). another thing connected with “drifting” and “sails” is the theme of freedom (symbolized by the implied image of the sea) which is contrasted to the closed space of the prison. we can find an excellent illustration to this dramatic scene in v. van gogh’s famous work “the prison courtyard”, in which not only the whole atmosphere is close to the tone of the poem but so are the details of the setting. naturally, a poem is not a technical description, but it is our belief that even if we take into account the “poetic abstraction” of the text, we can see that wilde puts into his imagery – and therefore into the philosophy of the poem – all he wants to convey, the whole message of the work. hence, a pragmatic “deciphering” of the image does not “kill” poetry, it adds meanings. the phrase “with sails of silver” again makes reference to the narrator, this time, specifically, to the artist’s self, because stylistic devices (metaphor, alliteration, etc.) reveal a poet, who on perceiving the situation transforms his impressions into complex verbal images. (5) dear christ! the very prison walls suddenly seemed to reel, and the sky above my head became like a casque of scorching steel; and, though i was a soul in pain, my pain i could not feel. the exclamation “dear christ!” indicates a diegetic narrator, that is, an actual participant of the situation, and shows his feelings at the time of watching the man in the prison courtyard. we can imagine the narrator by locating him in terms of specific dimensions. thus, the “up” dimension is the sky, while his surrounding space is confined by the prison walls. “scorching steel”, in addition, has the connotation of punishment, and the “casque above his head” suggests a closed coffin. apparently, through this imagery wilde suggests that the forthcoming execution is being vividly visualized by both the protagonist and the narrator. hence, we can speak about a convergence of points of view. (6) i only knew what hunted thought quickened his step, and why he looked upon the garish day with such a wistful eye; the man had killed the thing he loved and so he had to die. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 49 here again the point of view is subjective: the mental predicate “knew”, the evaluative adjectives “garish”, and “wistful” set the focus inside the subject of consciousness. the modal verb “had to”, however, shifts the point of view towards law, penalty, and “so” indicates the inevitability of punishment. accordingly, there is an opposition between the subjective depiction of the protagonist’s sufferings, as well as of the narrator’s feeling of empathy, on the one hand and reference to brutal, inevitable justice, on the other hand. generic statements the next stanzas are generalizations: (7) yet each man kills the thing he loves by each let this be heard, some do it with a bitter look, some with a flattering word, the coward does it with a kiss, the brave man with a sword! (8) some kill their love when they are young, and some when they are old; some strangle with the hands of lust, some with the hands of gold: the kindest use a knife, because the dead so soon grow cold. (9) some love too little, some too long, some sell, and others buy; some do the deed with many tears, and some without a sigh: for each man kills the thing he loves, yet each man does not die. as mentioned, a generalization has a definite source – the subject of consciousness, who must by all means be the subject of speech as well. the subjectivity of the writer’s reflections, and of his images becomes obvious if we consider the oppositions in these two stanzas. some of them are lexical (“a coward” vs “a brave man”, “young” vs “old”, reversive antonyms “sell” vs “buy”), others are contextual (“a bitter look” vs “a flattering word”, “a kiss” vs “a sword”, “the hands of lust” vs “the hands of gold”, “with many tears” vs “without a sigh”). if we take into consideration the events in wilde’s biography, we can see that many of these lines have a direct bearing on his own life. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 50 multiple perspectives (10) he does not die a death of shame on a day of dark disgrace, nor have a noose about his neck, nor a cloth upon his face, nor drop feet foremost through the floor into an empty space. (11) he does not sit with silent men who watch him night and day; who watch him when he tries to weep, and when he tries to pray; who watch him lest himself should rob the prison of its prey. (12) he does not wake at dawn to see dread figures throng his room, the shivering chaplain robed in white, the sheriff stern with gloom, and the governor all in shiny black, with the yellow face of doom. (13) he does not rise in piteous haste to put on convict-clothes, while some coarse-mouthed doctor gloats, and notes each new and nerve-twitched pose, fingering a watch whose little ticks are like horrible hammer-blows. (14) he does not know that sickening thirst that sands one’s throat, before the hangman with his gardener’s gloves slips through the padded door, and binds one with three leathern thongs, that the throat may thirst no more. (15) he does not bend his head to hear the burial office read, nor, while the terror of his soul tells him he is not dead, cross his own coffin, as he moves into the hideous shed. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 51 (16) he does not stare upon the air through a little roof of glass; he does not pray with lips of clay for his agony to pass; nor feel upon his shuddering cheek the kiss of caiaphas. in stanzas (10) to (16) that follow, wilde describes what happens and is going to happen to wooldridge, paradoxically, by negating all these happenings. in fact, on the surface he is speaking about a construct, a certain “man” who kills his love but does not have to be executed. actually, these statements are made from the point of view of the author himself, and if the reader is aware of wilde’s relations with alfred douglas, he will be able to read between the lines. otherwise, the ideas in these generalizations may be interpreted on a metaphysical level. a wonderful interplay of perspectives and implications can be found in this part of the poem. if we drop the negatives, we will see: 1. the diegetic narrator’s recounting of what happened and was going to happen to wooldridge, 2. the narrator’s reflections on what a person sentenced to death usually goes through, 3. the description of the convicted man’s emotions and states of mind, 4. the presentation of other prisoners’, the chaplain’s, the sheriff’s, the governor’s, the doctor’s, the hangman’s, the burial office’s actions and feelings. the generic pronoun “one” used in stanza (14), owing to its semantics, combines three perspectives: the narrator’s, the protagonist’s and the reader’s points of view. the reader is invited to empathize with the convict and mentally go through the experience and sensations of someone who is being executed. conclusion to sum up, the analysis of the perspectives within the text opens numerous interpretations of “the ballad of reading gaol” which would be concealed from the reader if we did not relate the event and its evaluation to a specific subject of consciousness, that is, to the author’s “ego”. the poem abounds in a variety of “voices”, of which even the narrator’s viewpoints are diversified. other standpoints belong to the protagonist and to the secondary characters, but as we have seen, their points of view are also represented through the narrator’s eyes. so we can conclude that various perspectives in “the ballad of reading gaol” converge in one centre, the narrator’s focus (though they are identifiable as to their source). the result of the interaction of the diversified perspectives with a single focal point is the creation of one of the most highly subjective and insightful works in great literature. references: 1. dossick, ph. (2013) oscar wilde: sodomy and heresy. [kindle edition] available at: <http://books.google.am/books> [accessed march 2014] armenian folia anglistika linguistics 52 2. kiberd, d. (2000) irish classics. london: granta. 3. lotman, yu. (1998) struktura khudozhestvennogo teksta. // ob iskusstve. sankt peterburg: iskusstvo – spb. 4. paducheva, ye. (1996) semanticheskie issledovaniya. moskva: yazyki russkoy kul’tury. 5. stokes, a. (2007) pit of shame: the real ballad of reading gaol. available at: <http://books.google.am/books> [accessed january 2014] ð»õçý³ïç §»ë¦-á« §è»¹çý·û³ý μ³ýïç μ³éé³¹áõù¦ oëï³ñ à õ³ûé ¹ç åá» ùá å³ ñáõ ý³ ïáõù ¿ ùç¨ýáõûý ý³ ñ³ ïç íç ßñç³ ý³ï ý» ñáõù û· ï³ ·áñí í³í μ³½ ù³ ãçí ¹ç ï³ ï»ï ý»ñ, á ñáýù å³ï ï³ ýáõù »ý ñ» õç ý³ ïçý, ·éë³ íáñ ¨ »ñï ñáñ ¹³ ï³ý ï»ñ å³ñ ý» ñçý: ð» õç ý³ ïç §»ë¦-á ³ñ ï³ ñ³ûï íáõù ¿ çýã å»ë ³ñ ï³ ï³, ³ûý å»ë ¿é ý» ñ³ ï³ ï³ñ μ»ñ » õ³ ý³ï ý» ñáí: 軽 í³ ï³ý ùç çáó ý» ñç ·áñ í³ μ³ ý³ ï³ý í»ñ éáõ íáõã ûáõ ýá ãáõûé ¿ ï³ éçë í»ñ ñ³ ý»é ñ» õç ý³ ïç ³ý ñ³ ï³ ï³ ýáõã û³ý ùç ù³ ýç ß»ñ ï»ñ ¨ ñý³ ñ³ íá ñáõã ûáõý ¿ áý ó» éáõù ³ûë ·áñ íç μ³½ ù³ ó³û ýáõã û³ý ßñç³ ý³ï ý» ñáõù ùßï³ å»ë §éë»é¦ ñ» õç ý³ ïç §»ë¦-á: àâòîðñêîå “ÿ” â “áàëëàäå ðåäèíãñêîé òþðüìû” â ïîý ìå î. óàéëü äà, â ïðå äå ëàx åäè íî ãî íàð ðà òè âà, îä íîâ ðå ìåí íî ñî ñó ùåñò âóþò ðàç ëè÷ íûå òî÷ êè çðå íèÿ: àâ òî ðà, ïðî òà ãî íèñòà è âòî ðîñòå ïåí íûx ïåð ñî íà æåé. “ß” àâ òî ðà ìà íè ôåñòè ðóåò ñÿ â òåêñòå ÿâ íûì îá ðà çîì è èìï ëè öèò íî. ïðàã ìà òè ÷åñ êèé àíà ëèç ïðîèç âå äå íèÿ, öåëü êî òî ðî ãî âûÿ âèòü ñêðû òîå àâ òîðñ êîå “ÿ”, îä íîâ ðå ìåí íî îï ðå äå ëÿÿ òî xóäî æåñò âåí íîå ïðîñò ðàíñò âî, â êî òî ðîì îíî ñó ùåñò âóåò, ïîç âî ëÿåò â ìíî ãî ãî ëî ñèè òåêñòà íåèç ìåí íî “ñëû øàòü” ãî ëîñ àâ òî ðà. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 53 microsoft word 2.methodology 105 122 (1) armenian folia anglistika methodology 118 the development of the basic approaches to teaching writing zori barseghyan yerevan bryusov state university of languages and social sciences abstract the variety of methodological approaches can contribute to developing the optimal model of teaching writing in higher linguistic universities since implementing only one approach in writing process is unfruitful. however, the priority of this or that approach does not suggest abandoning the other approaches to writing, but puts forward the demand for complementing one another rather than opposing. the content and functional analyses of the product-based, the process-based and the genre-based approaches can lead to paradigm shifts in foreign language teaching/learning methodology, emphasize the importance of the recursive procedure of writing, reveal the main characteristics of writing activities, determine the roles of teachers and students in the process of writing, and develop new strategies teaching writing. thus a synthesis of the product, the process and the genre approaches to writing will be the best approach to meet the needs of our esl students. key words: product-based approach, process-based approach, genre-based approach, cohesive device, learner-centered methodology. introduction the teaching of writing or writing instruction has always been a compulsory course in higher educational establishments. accordingly, there have been various approaches to the teaching of writing that have led to numerous changes in the selection of writing methods and devices. however, in the last years, there has been much debate on the differences of the best of three approaches, namely, the product-based, the process-based and the genre-based approaches. such debates often generated conflicting views on teaching writing which resulted in paradigm shifts in this sphere. there have basically been two approaches to writing. one approach considers writing as a process. while the product-based writing is a traditional approach, the process-based is a modern one (flower and hayes 1981:365-387). in recent years, however, there has been emphasis on the genre-based approach which views writing as a product of social content. methodology armenian folia anglistika 119 content and functional characteristics of the main approaches to teaching writing the product approach was used in order to highlight form and syntax and the emphasis was on rhetorical drills (silva 1990). that is, this approach focuses on linguistic knowledge with the appropriate use of vocabulary, syntax and cohesive devices. in short, writing is viewed as mainly concerned with the knowledge about the structure of language, and writing development is mainly the result of imitation of input, in the form of texts provided by the teacher (badger and white 2000:153). it is therefore teacher-centered, as the teacher becomes the arbiter of the models used. however there is a debate whether product-based approach is beneficial for the language learners or not. for example, as prodromou (1995:1-25) states, this approach devalues the learner’s potential, both linguistic and personal. hence this disputable point has led to a paradigm shift, viewing writing as a process. although there are many different process approaches to writing, they share some core features. tribble (1996:37) suggests that process approaches stress “[…] writing activities, which move learners from generation of ideas and the collection of data to the ‘publication’ of a finished text.” the process approaches focus on how a text is written, instead of the final outcome. in the process of writing there is much less emphasis on linguistic knowledge, such as knowledge about grammar and text structure. this approach, therefore, emphasizes the importance of a recursive procedure of writing. there are different views on the stages that writers go through, but a typical model identifies four stages: pre-writing; composing/drafting; revising and editing (tribble 1996). the pre-writing activity involves introducing techniques that help the students choose and engage in a topic. that is, a typical pre-writing activity in the process approach is to brainstorm on the topic. at the next step students select and structure the result of brainstorming session. this would result in multiple drafts of the task. after discussion and feedback, the learners revise or proof-read the task. in such a writing process, the central elements are the writer, the content and the purpose. the teacher only facilitates the learners’ writings, encouraging their potential. the process approach is thus learner-centered. in short, process approaches are identical to task-based learning where learners are given freedom within the task, concentrating on the “ways” the task is accomplished rather than on the product (the finished text). taking into account the degree of effectiveness of this approach, linguists and methodologists express their critical views on the approach. for instance, it is noted that the process approach seems to narrowly focus on the skills and process of writing in the classroom itself and, as a result, fails to take into account the social and cultural aspects that have an impact on different kinds of writing (atkinson 2003:49-63). as a result of such contradictions a new movement, the so-called genre movement, started. the genre approach considers writing as a social and cultural practice. in some ways, the genre approach is considered to be an extension of the product approach as, armenian folia anglistika methodology 120 on the one hand, it focuses on the linguistic aspect of the writing, and, on the other hand, it emphasizes the social context in which the writing is produced. it has been stated that we have a range of different kinds of writing, such as letters, research articles, reports linked with different situations (flowerdew 1993:307). and, as paltridge (2001:73-90) claims, the genre approach to teaching writing involves the teaching of a particular genre to students who need it for later social communication. in other words, the focus is on the genre approach to teaching writing as a means of achieving communicative success. the focus should first of all be on the language and discourse features of a particular text. besides learning about the structure and language features of various text types, the genre-based approach also teaches students to be aware of a number of factors such as the audience, the purpose of writing, the context of writing. emphasis is placed on how a particular genre will accomplish certain functions or goals. in addition, within the frames of the genre-based approach, the idea that different variations of language are used in different sociocultural contexts and in certain social environments or spheres is promoted. the use of wrong register will not sound appropriate in a certain situation and the goal of the communication will not be achieved. in this process the teacher takes the role of a facilitator until the learners gain autonomy. considering this approach very important, however, we cannot but admit that, like other approaches, the genre approach has also seen criticism. paltridge (2001) mentions that the genre approach combines both the knowledge of the text and a number of social and cultural peculiarities. comprehension and specification of either is a difficult job for the students. it is also noted that by teaching a particular genre, the teachers are, in fact, not helping the learners (caudery 1998:1-5). the approach may not require the students to express their own ideas, it may depend on whether the teacher is able to find suitable materials as models or not. our opinion is that the choice of approach to be used will definitely depend on the teachers, the students and the genre of the text. we have some reservations as to the skill and competence of the teachers who use the communicative approach. the fact is that although the communicative approach has been introduced recently for teaching english, the esl teachers in the higher educational institutions in our country are not yet trained properly in the new approach. in armenia the teachers are still more prone to practise the old grammar translation method. in most cases the teachers’ feedback is based on grammatical and lexical errors instead of meaning-oriented explanation. our english teachers at school or university level still follow the product approach in the writing classes. the importance of product-based approach cannot be under-estimated or neglected fully as it highlights the learner’s final work. however, the process-based approach also needs careful consideration as it highlights the procedure of the text production. that is, the question “what is produced?” can be substituted by “how is it produced?” as noted by caudery (1995:1-12), tesl has a habit to embrace teaching methodologies with methodology armenian folia anglistika 121 fervor, and then, as a few cracks begin to show and it seems that the new teaching approach, which rejects the previous approaches with equal vigor, will not solve every classroom problem. however, numerous studies and practice have shown that the synthesis of the product, the process and the genre approaches will bring to the best results. as batstone suggests (1994:224-236), we need to mix “the careful control of language for learner (as in product)”, and the creative use of language by the learner (as in process).” and while the genre-based approach focuses on the language used in a particular text, it will be necessary to include the processes by which writers produce a text. conclusion implementing only one of the approaches in the writing process in the classroom can be unfruitful. on the one hand, the usefulness of the writing process (pre-writing, drafting, revising, etc.) cannot be replaced entirely by the genre approach as the process writing emphasizes the communicative approach and meaning is considered to be more important than the final product. on the other hand, the genre-based approach is useful in the classroom as it teaches the students how to write different types of text for different purposes. the use of this approach will enable the students to differentiate their writings according to various situations and functions which is an essential life skill in the long run through the whole life. by implementing the genre-based approach the students learn about syntax, grammar and vocabulary through the language features of various text types, while the process approach enables them to learn about different genres and discourses. however, the priority of this or that approach does not suggest abandoning the other approaches to writing, but puts forward the demand for complementing one another rather than opposing. thus a synthesis of the product, the process and the genre approaches to writing will be the best approach to meet the needs of our esl students in higher education. references: 1. atkinson, d. (2003) writing and culture in the post-process era. // journal of second language writing, 12, pp. 4963. 2. badger, r. and white, g. (2000) a process, genre approach to teaching writing. // elt journal, 54(2), pp. 153160. 3. batstone, r. (1994) product and process: grammar in the second language classroom. // grammar and the language teacher. // ed. by m. bygate, a. tonkyn and f. williams. new york: prentice hall, pp. 224236. 4. caudery, t. (1995) what does the process approach mean to practising teacher of second language writing skill? // teaching english as a second or foreign language 1(2), pp. 1-12. armenian folia anglistika methodology 122 5. caudery, t. (1998) increasing students awareness of genre through text transformation exercises: an old classroom activity revised. tesl-ej. 3.3. a2. 6. flowerdew, j. (1993) an educational or process approach to the teaching of professional genres. // elt journal 47/4, pp. 305316. 7. flowerdew, l. (2000) using a genre-based framework to teach organizational structure in academic writing. // elt journal 54(4), pp. 369378. 8. flower, l. and hayes, j. (1981) a cognition process theory of writing. // college composition and communication, pp. 365387. 9. paltridge, b. (2001) genre, text type and english for academic purposes (eap). // genre in the classroom. / ed. by a.m. john. mahwah: erlbaum. 10. prodromou, l. (1995) the backwash effect: from testing to teaching. // english language teaching journal, 21(1), pp. 1-25. 11. silva, t. (1990) second language composition instruction: issues and direction in esl. // second language writing: research insights for the classroom. / ed. by b. kroll. new york: cambridge university press, pp. 1-24. 12. tribble, c. (1996) writing. oxford: oup. ¶ñ³íáñ ëáëùç áõëáõóù³ý ñçùý³ï³ý ùáï»óáõùý»ñç ½³ñ·³óáõùá êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù ùýýíáõù ¿ ·ñ³íáñ ëáëùç áõëáõóù³ýý ³éýãíáõ ù»ãá¹³μ³ý³ï³ý ùáï»óáõùý»ñç ó¨³íáñù³ý ¨ ½³ñ·³óù³ý ñ³ñóá: øýý³ñïíáõù »ý ³û¹ ùáï»óáõùý»ñç μáí³ý¹³ï³ûçý ¨ ·áñí³é³ï³ý μýáõã³·ñ»ñá, çýãå»ë ý³¨ ûï³ñ 黽áõý»ñç áõëáõóù³ý å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ï»ëýáéá·ç³ý»ñá, áñáýù ùçïí³í »ý ëáíáñáõý»ñç ùýý³¹³ï³ï³ý ùï³íáõáõãû³ý ó¨³íáñù³ýý áõ ½³ñ·³óù³ýá: развитие основных подходов к обучению письменной речи в статье рассматривается процесс развития основных методологических подходов к обучению письменной речи, с учетом их содержательных и функциональных характеристик, а также современных технологий обучения иностранным языкам. в итоге развивается критическое мышление студентов, которое является одним из важнейших умений современных учащихся. microsoft word maket 2019-2 final.doc armenological studies armenian folia anglistika 135 epigraphy in tenthand eleventh-century armenia: inscriptions as bridges and boundaries anne elizabeth redgate university of newcastle upon tyne abstract this article brings epigraphy, history, architecture, archaeology and liturgy together in an investigation of royal political ambitions and identity in tenth and eleventh-century armenia, offering a new dimension to the usual study of inscriptions. it considers royal armenian responses to monuments in the landscape, both ancient and recently constructed, and how the kings of two different dynasties proclaimed their greatness and their legitimacy as kings in stone, but in different ways. key words: ałt´amar, ani, gagik artsruni, identity, inscriptions, landscape. introduction epigraphy is a specialised discipline in its own right, but one that is of considerable interest to linguists and literature specialists as well as to medieval historians such as myself, because of the questions of what, and how, inscriptions communicate, and what their authors envisaged their audience(s) to be. the south-east and north-east of tenthand eleventh-century historic armenia (much larger than today’s republic (hewsen 2001:13, 268) offer some interesting case studies. those that this article is concerned with fall under two headings. there are inscriptions that the armenians of this period inherited, from the ancient state of urartu and from their own christian ancestors. there are also inscriptions that tenthand eleventh-century armenians made, on the island of ałt´amar in lake van, and in the city of ani. the context of the armenian ones is royal building programmes: the one that king gagik artsruni, armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 136 whose kingship was based on ałt´amar, undertook early in the tenth century, and those that the bagratuni kings, based in ani, undertook later in that century and in the eleventh century. these are, respectively, in today’s southeast and north-east turkey (hewsen 2001:111, 113, 117). we have contemporary accounts of gagik’s building (thomson 1985:18-19, 315-319, 352-361; t´ovmay 1887:252-256, 290-299), but only in the case of holy cross, his palace church on ałt´amar, do we have material remains (der nersessian 1965; mnatsakanian 2010; davies 1991; jones 2007). as for ani, contemporary textual references to its buildings (its walls and churches) are less detailed than for gagik’s, but the material remains there are considerable (marr 2001; thierry and donabédian 1987:481-489; cowe 2001; grigoryan 2015; maranci 2018:5766). these monuments and their political contexts have been the object of significant scholarly work, but it has not embraced the particular concerns of this article. the concerns of this article are twofold. one is the interrelationship, possibly rivalry, between the artsruni and bagratuni kingships, and its expression in architecture and in sculpture in stone. the other is the influence that historic monuments had upon the kings’ buildings, that is, whether, and how, the kings were influenced by what they saw around them. these issues are themselves contexts for examining inscriptions both as bridges, and also as frontiers or barriers, regarding time, space and people. and there are other contexts too in which inscriptions were and are bridges. the armenian ones, both the historic and the newly made ones, are on churches. a church is itself a liminal area, between this world and the next, and connecting past, present, and future. inscriptions on a church functioned as prayers, and had a role in processions, strengthening historical memory. the background to the needs of the northern and southern armenian kingships to proclaim their legitimacy, to and within each other, is the following. there had long ago been a kingdom of armenia, but it had been abolished in 428 ad, when its nobility requested the persian shah to make what had been his client kingdom into a persian province. later, in the eighth and ninth centuries, the arab-byzantine frontier ran through armenia armenological studies armenian folia anglistika 137 (hewsen 2001:104, 106). most of armenia was within an arab province (hewsen 2001:106), which had an arab governor, the ostikan, though the arabs entrusted supervision of the armenians to one or other of the armenian native princes, making him prince of princes. in the ninth century the bagratunis had a stranglehold over this position, and in 884, the nobility decided to make the then prince of princes, ashot bagratuni, king, informing the caliph of this through the ostikan. what followed was recognition by the caliph, some sort of investiture by the ostikan, coronation by the catholicos (the head of the armenian church), and some recognition by the byzantine emperor (maksoudian 1987:128, 129; garsoïan 1997:147-148; jones 2007:16-20). sadly, ashot’s son and successor, king smbat i (890/91-914), fell out with successive ostikans, and with some of his own nobles. war followed, and smbat himself died a martyr’s death, to be succeeded by his son, king ashot ii (914-928/29). but by 914 there was another kingship. in 908, the ostikan yusuf had crowned gagik artsruni, who was prince of vaspurakan, in southern armenia, and, through his mother, smbat’s own nephew (jones 2007:25-26). gagik received caliphal recognition, and his title was the same as ashot i’s and smbat i’s, namely king of the armenians, which is often translated as ‘king of armenia’. after gagik died, probably in 943, ‘king of vaspurakan’ was used, for his son and later successors, in vaspurakan. this change of title reflected a shift in the balance of power. gagik had been the most powerful king in armenia, and was recognised as such by byzantium (garsoïan 1997:158-162; zuckerman 2014:847). but later, the bagratuni kings of ani were pre-eminent. they used the title king of kings, differentiating them from both the artsruni kings and other kingships, which proliferated (zuckerman 2014:844, 847-849; greenwood 2011:52-53). king ashot iii (952/53-977) had granted the title ‘king’ to his brother abas (963), who was based in kars, and later there was another northern kingdom, based in lori, and yet another in siunik´ in eastern armenia (garsoïan 1997:166; hewsen 2001:115). thus, when king gagik artsruni began building his church of the holy cross in 915 (der nersessian 1965:5), shortly after king smbat’s martyrdom, he armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 138 certainly needed to demonstrate his legitimacy as king, and he may also have wanted to proclaim his equality with former rulers. historic inscriptions in the landscape what did king gagik see, that might have challenged and inspired him in these endeavours? there were two kinds of inscriptions in the landscape: urartian ones from urartu’s empire of the mid-ninth to mid-seventh centuries bc, and christian armenian ones. urartian inscriptions are famous as sources for urartian history. the earliest are in assyrian script and language, and a very few are in hieroglyphs. the rest are in urartian, in urartian cuneiform (redgate 2016; özdem 2003:121; sagona and zimansky 2009:338, 341). most of the known urartian inscriptions are on cliff faces, steles and buildings, and metal objects. some 25% of them are reasonably substantial (özdem 2003:121). royal inscriptions, which are the majority, include commemorations of building works, of campaigns and conquests. but display inscriptions were much more than mere records, they were places where the urartian kings manifested themselves, and were impressive, to illiterate, as well as to literate viewers. most such inscriptions are associated with van (zimansky 1998:279) (which the urartians called tushpa), that is, from the rock of van and the old city beneath it, not today’s city. tushpa was urartu’s capital for all of its history except for a while at the beginning. of course, what was visible to urartians, and is now known by scholars through observation, reports, old photographs, and archaeological discoveries, would not all have been visible to tenth-century armenians. the end of urartu had itself featured a lot of destruction, and over the following centuries sites had suffered further destruction, or decayed, or been built over. however, what is visible on the rock of van now, from below it, and on site, was probably visible in the tenth century. from below one can see what look like worked recesses or niches, and a post-urartian inscription, legible only with binoculars or a zoom camera. this is by the achaemenid persian king xerxes i (485-464 bc), in babylonian, old persian and median, probably meant to emulate and surpass urartian ones, to state mastery. there are rock tombs armenological studies armenian folia anglistika 139 within the cliff, including one of a king, that has a long inscription in urartian cuneiform on the smoothed rock face around its door. there are rock-cut steps, a niche with a stele, further urartian inscriptions, and remains of citadel walls (sinclair 1987:179-184). gagik artsruni must have seen all these. van was part of artsruni territory, and he knew it well. according to the contemporary historian t´ovmay artsruni, gagik’s father had built on the rock of van, and so did gagik himself (thomson 1985:315-316; t´ovmay 1887:252-253). an earlier armenian historian had noted the ancient inscriptions on the rock at van, which he ascribed to the legendary assyrian queen semiramis (thomson 1978:101; movsēs 1913:54). neither armenian princes and kings nor their aristocracy stayed in one place all the time. they travelled, for war, for diplomatic visits, and around their domains. so gagik will have seen urartian works at sites that lie beyond van. of especial importance are meher kapısı (sinclair 1987:188) and anzaf (sinclair 1987:261-262), which were nearby, and beyond them, pagan (sinclair 1987:263); and edremit, with its canal (sinclair 1987:219-220), which was on the van-ałt´amar coastal road. çavuştepe (sinclair 1987:208-212), and eski norgũh (sinclair 1987:221), which are on the road from van to soradir, are also relevant, since soradir was another place that gagik almost certainly knew. the plan of soradir’s church may have been the model for ałt´amar’s, and the church itself may have been the site of the artsrunis’ family mausoleum (cuneo 1968; breccia-fratadocchi 1971; jones 2007:102), until the later tenth century. (after that, the artsrunis used the monastery of varag, near van, instead.) the most important of these sites is meher kapısı, six miles from van/tushpa. its urartian cuneiform inscription was probably unintelligible in the tenth century, though now some scholars perceive it as perhaps a record of urartu’s constitution, since it names and ranks deities, and particular deities were associated with particular places and peoples. it prescribes what animals were to be sacrificed, annually, in the month of the sun god, at that very site, to 79 deities (belli 1999:29-33). visually however, some of its meaning is still clear, and must have been in the tenth century. in the rock face, which is above today’s road, and was described in the late nineteenth century as about fifty feet armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 140 above ground level (lynch 1965:112), there is an inscribed panel, which is 14.5 feet high. it is recessed inside two matching rectangular frames, so it looks like a door. indeed, its inscription refers to it as a gate. and its name, meher kapısı, means ‘the gate of meher’. it is very imposing from below, and must surely have always aroused interest and wonder. providentially, there is evidence that it did. in armenian tradition the site is the raven’s rock at van in which, according to the armenian poem, the epic of sasun, little mher, one of its heroes, who is cursed by his father, is imprisoned alive until the end of time (though two of the 24 versions site the cave elsewhere) (russell 2014). the epic goes back to the tenth century, and king gagik artsruni himself seems to lie behind one of its characters, gagik, king of armenia (kouymjian 2013:21, 22; der melkonian-minassian 2013:80-81). it is therefore likely that the site was visible, and perceived as a gate, in his time. in the story, the rock opens every year at ascension and transfiguration, though different versions of the epic have once, twice or even five times a year (russell 2014:43). there is another legend that the rock opened every year on the festival of st john, the seventh day of easter (sinclair 1987:188). the other inscriptions with which king gagik would have been familiar were those on armenian churches, much shorter than that of meher kapısı. the oldest known armenian monumental inscription is fifth-century. it is now lost, so is known only through reports, photographs, and a cast that was made in 1912 and that is in erevan. it was on a lintel on the west door of the church at tekor (digor), in north-east armenia. the two lowest of its five lines record sahak kamsarakan’s building a martyrium of saint sergius. it was to intercede for himself and for his family (line 3). the upper three lines say that the place itself had been founded by five other people: tayron, a priest of the monastery; manon, a hazarapet; uran, a roman; yohan, the catholicos; and yohan the bishop of the arsharunik´ (durand, rapti and giovannoni 2007:61-62). the one inscription that i myself have studied is at the seventh-century church at ptłni, also in north-east armenia, and near erevan, the capital of today’s republic. in the seventh century ptłni was part of the domain of the amatuni family. the decoration of an arch above one of this church’s windows armenological studies armenian folia anglistika 141 includes a hunt scene, each with one hunter, on either side, and figures above. scholars have interpreted the two hunters as being either two dead forebears of the founder of the church, or as two current patrons of it. the inscription is three words, over the scene which is on the viewer’s left, and names its hunter, manuēl, tēr (that is lord) of the amatunis. over the hunter who is to the viewer’s right, there is a bird in the equivalent space (maranci 2015:201-254). i myself have suggested that the two hunters should not in fact be interpreted as either both dead or both living at the time of the construction. i have argued that the bird has the same function as the inscription, which is as an identifier, and that the two identifiers mean that one hunter is dead and one is alive (redgate 2012:14-16). manuel is the living donor, the other, a heroic forebear. this forebear is pargev amatuni. as christina maranci has demonstrated, pargev’s portrait reproduces a historical account of how he was killed in, probably, the 380s, by the persians, after failing in an attempt to rescue his king, khosrov, who had been deposed. he was ‘blown up like a wine skin’ (maranci 2015:214-217; thomson 1978:314-315; movsēs 1913:321). the decoration of this window at ptłni has the same liturgical dimension that tim greenwood has suggested for armenia’s seventh-century foundation inscriptions (greenwood 2004:35). as maranci has noted, from liturgical sources collated by daniel findikyan, a church’s consecration ritual involved processing around the exterior (maranci 2015:76-77; findikyan 1998). and it is likely that there were one or more annual commemorations at a church after its consecration. at ptłni, these will have been of the church’s foundation, or of pargev’s death, or of both, and possibly, later, of manuēl’s death. the hunt scenes will have been viewed from processions, and requests will have been made, in prayers, to pargev and to the other saints depicted above the arch, for intercession, for both living and dead members of the community, including the donor, manuēl (redgate 2012:16-17). furthermore, processions would not have been limited to anniversaries. there will also have been penitential processions in which litanic prayer was used. these were a long-standing feature of the eastern church (lapidge 1991:8, 16, 24, 45, 48, 58, 59). armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 142 king gagik artsruni: buildings, inscriptions, self-publicity and intercession since ptłni is far away both spatially and temporally from early-tenthcentury ałt´amar, it might be suspected of being a long way from it conceptually too. but actually it is not. by king gagik’s time the amatunis had moved into the artsruni orbit. they had provided loyal support to his grandfather and father as well as to himself, and they were in a sense one of the foundations of his power (redgate 2007:11; thomson 1985:176, 213, 289-291, 301, 321-322; t´ovmay 1887:109, 146-147, 226-227, 238, 258-259). and some features of the sculpture at ałt´amar are foreshadowed at ptłni, as maranci has noted in her study of ptłni (maranci 2015:246-248), and as i have noted in mine (redgate 2012:22-23). gagik could have drawn on the amatunis’ cultural resources as well as their military ones. although holy cross is all that remains of his palace and urban buildings there, it is clear that gagik’s ałt´amar was as impressive as urartian towns and citadels had been in their day. like them, they claimed and dominated the landscape, and, judging by the textual accounts, gagik’s works at van, and at ostan (vostan) (modern gevaş) on the mainland, opposite ałt´amar, did too (pogossian 2017:185-193, 202-203, 208-210). but gagik did not emulate urartian kings with regard to inscriptions. he did not use inscriptions to state his greatness, and to proclaim the legitimacy of his kingship and its superiority to that of his bagratuni rivals. instead he used figural sculpture. sadly, the belfry that was added to the middle of the south façade of holy cross in, probably, the nineteenth century (der nersessian 1965:10; davies 1991:15) dominates it now, distorting its tenth-century impact. but the placing at either end of this façade of two biblical models of kingship, the king of nineveh, and david, emphasised gagik’s descent from, and emulation of, both of them (jolivet 1981; der nersessian 1965:plate 15; mnatsakanian 2010:106-107, 128; thomson 1985:82, 313; t´ovmay 1887:20, 251). his own small portrait, seated, within the vine frieze, above a portrait of adam, on the east façade (jones 2007:57-58), implies that his status was like that of adam and like that of christ, as indeed do other features of the church, as armenological studies armenian folia anglistika 143 several scholars have argued (jolivet-lévy 1997:240-241; jones 1994:108-113; jones 2007:72-80; dorfmann-lazarev 2016a:333-336, 338; dorfmann-lazarev 2016b:496-498). his full length, over life-size, standing, portrait with christ, who is shorter, on the west façade, also implies a christ-like status. this is in part because in byzantine and other artistic traditions stature was one method of indicating status. scholars have disagreed as to whether the greater height of gagik was deliberate or a mistake, but to my knowledge none have interpreted his height as signifying christ-like status. in addition, as lynn jones has shown, it proclaims that gagik will attain salvation. the presence of two seraphim in the scene suggests that it is set outside time, in heaven, portraying the success of the penitence which, according to a contemporary artsruni writer, the portrait depicts (jones 2007:82; thomson 1985:360-361; t´ovmay 1887:298). as i have argued elsewhere, his face in this portrait seems designed to stress his trustworthiness, in contrast to the bagratunis’ oath-breaking (redgate 2014:336-340). these claims not only answer the bagratunis’ claim to be descended from david, by pointing out that gagik (through his mother) was too. they also state that, as a king, gagik was more davidic than the bagratunis were, and more favoured by god. in his self-publicity, gagik seems to have eschewed inscriptions. the contemporary historians do not mention any. there are armenian inscriptions on holy cross, but only one of them is unanimously regarded by scholars as original. this is the biblical quotation on the book, which looks closed, that christ holds, on the west façade, ‘i am the light of the world’ (from john 8:12). the book has been perceived as an open book (davies 1991:5). the inscription indicates a conceptual similarity between gagik’s palace church and the great church of hagia sophia in constantinople, capital of the byzantine empire. ‘i am the light of the world’ is a motif which was dominant at hagia sophia in the late ninth and early tenth century. it is most obvious today in a mosaic in the narthex, which, probably, was made during emperor leo vi’s reign (886-912) and depicts him, though opinions have differed. (oikonomides 1976; gavrilović 1979; cormack 1994). here christ holds a book which is clearly open and is inscribed (in greek) ‘peace unto you i am the light of the world’. it is, however, armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 144 possible that gagik had a second inscription made, a long one on the west façade that was hidden by the gawit (forechurch) that was added in 1763 (der nersessian 1965:10), though the inscription itself could have been a later addition. this inscription too has a byzantine resonance, implying an equality with byzantium, given that leo vi was known as ‘the wise’, and as a ‘new solomon’. for according to a text which was put together in the late eighteenth, and finished in the early nineteenth century, gagik took six years to finish his church (915-921). sirarpie der nersessian, citing ervand lalayan, suggested that this information may have come from this long inscription (der nersessian 1965:5). the claim of six years implicitly invites comparison with the old testament king solomon, and possibly even the conclusion that gagik surpassed him. according to the bible (i kings 6:38), solomon took seven years to build the temple of jerusalem. there are indeed other inscriptions at ałt´amar, that, like the ptłni inscription, identify individuals. these individuals are the majority of the 61 persons, at least 41 of whom are biblical, who feature in ałt´amar’s main band of sculptural reliefs, which is about six and a half feet high. thirty-eight of the sixty-one are identified (davies 1991:17, 21). but these inscriptions seem likely to be later additions, though just how much later, is unclear. although lalayan and der nersessian thought that they were original (mnatsakanian 2010:54), j.a. orbeli and stepan mnatsakanian thought they were later. mnatsakanian noted that the forms of the letters of ‘prophet david’ on the north façade are seventeenth-century (mnatsakanian 2010:60-61). on the east façade, below the portrait that is almost certainly of gagik (jones 2007:57), there is one of another man, flanked by animals (jones 2007:78-80). an inscription identifies it, as adam naming the animals. mnatsakanian agreed with orbeli that this was an attempt to christianise the band of animal reliefs (mnatsakanian 2010:53-55). in general he thought that there was a great deal of secular, even pagan, imagery, in the church’s decoration, and that the inscriptions were an attempt to christianise this, at a time when it was no longer deemed respectable. j.g. davies by contrast thought that the inscriptions are indeed later than the sculptures, but that they do record the sculptures’ original meanings. his view armenological studies armenian folia anglistika 145 was that they were added to preserve their meaning at a time when it was in the process of being forgotten (davies 1991:17-18). as noted above, one function of inscriptions was as prayers. a viewer, viewing them, would activate them. yet it was probably felt that inscriptions did not actually depend on a viewer to activate them, to be effective, at a particular moment, but that they worked independently, and all the time. certainly in byzantium it was thought that inscribed words spoke on their own, with a silent ‘voice’ (papalexandrou 2001). it is also likely that the many images of saints at ałt´amar were thought to do the same as inscriptions, just as pictures, and buildings themselves, were in byzantium. the ałt´amar images were pictorial inscriptions, just as, as i have argued, the figures over the window at ptłni were (redgate 2012:16-17), constituting a pictorial litany, acting as intercessors for king gagik. in addition, according to the artsruni continuator, on ałt´amar’s west façade, gagik himself was ‘depicted as if begging forgiveness for his sins’ (thomson 1985:360-361; t´ovmay 1887:298). bagratuni ani: the decoration of the cathedral, horomos, and inscriptions thus figural sculpture alone at ałt´amar did for gagik what the later inscriptions at ani cathedral did for its bagratuni royal patrons. this building was begun in 989, by king smbat ii (977-989/90), and finished in 1001, by the wife of his successor, king gagik i bagratuni (989/90-1017/20). it was near ani’s main square, at the junction of two main roads, and would have been visible both from the main gate on the north of the city and from the large bridge that spanned the river akhurean to its south (donabédian 2001:43). thus, though it did not dominate its city from above, as gagik artsruni’s holy cross on ałt´amar did and as urartian temples had, it would, like them, have been a major feature in the landscape, impressing approaching travellers, especially those who came from the south. ani cathedral’s dome and drum have fallen, but most of its façades remain. they are very different from ałt´amar’s. first, there are few sculpted figural decorations, and these are relatively unobtrusive. the decoration of the south armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 146 façade includes small reliefs of eagles above the central arch (sinclair 1987:372373). there were two lions flanking the porch (rapti 2015:188). there were some bands of ornament (rapti 2015:188; grigoryan 2015:30, 32, 34, 36-38). the main decorative element is the blind arcade (a series of sculpted arches) resting on sculpted narrow columns, which was a feature of the architectural school of ani (kazaryan 2017:532). in contrast to ałt´amar’s, these façades’ surfaces are restrained. a third contrast is that epigraphy was used at ani cathedral as a decorative element in itself. the inscription that commemorates its completion was, and is, at eye level, framed by arches (rapti 2015:188). it must have drawn the eye, as is clear from old illustrations (brosset 1861:plateviii). this is analogous to inscriptions on churches in neighbouring georgia at the same time, which, antony eastmond has suggested, were designed to be seen as much as read. they had a decorative function and they were visual prayers, imprinting an icon of prayer on the mind of viewers, looking as if they were readable though actually being less readable than they look (eastmond 2015:76-82, 87, 89). the ani inscription may also have been intended to provide an historical record, as indeed both it, and later, inscriptions at ani became. inscriptions were likewise used by the bagratunis as a decorative device at horomos, about 9.3 miles north-east of ani, where a monastic complex was begun c. 931-936, probably with royal patronage from the start (vardanyan 2015). armen kazaryan has pointed out, regarding the gawit/jamatun of st john’s, which was built for king yovhannēs-smbat bagratuni (1017-1040/41), in 1038, that the ornamental power of lapidary inscriptions is especially impressive on its walls (kazaryan 2015:142). yovhannēs-smbat’s nine-line inscription is on the jamatun’s west façade, above the door (karapetyan and mahé 2015:417-418). it may have been king ashot iii who built the small chapel that is near horomos’s oldest surviving church (st minas). ashot may also have built the tomb-like structure that was to the chapel’s south-west, though it is also possible that this was built just after his death in 977 (kazaryan 2015:62-63). it may even have been his own tomb, for an inscription naming king ashot was discernible on it in the nineteenth century (karapetyan and armenological studies armenian folia anglistika 147 mahé 2015:406). this inscription does not however seem to be entirely reliable. armen manuk-khaloyan has established that it was regularly effaced and rewritten in the nineteenth century (manuk-khaloyan 2013:164). it is nevertheless on inscriptions that the case for horomos as the bagratunis’ royal mausoleum, an identification that has been repeatedly made in secondary literature, rests. one on the east wall of the chapel of st george states that gagik (bagratuni) had founded it as a martyrium (karapetyan and mahé 2015:399-400). yovhannēs-smbat’s inscription there (which names him as smbat not yovhannēs-smbat), on the west wall, refers to the monastery of horomos as the royal resting place, recording that he had given it a village in 1036 (karapetyan and mahé 2015:400-402). conclusion in conclusion, it seems, first, that in the early tenth century, king gagik artsruni emulated and equalled the urartians in his building, but without imitating their use of inscriptions. instead, he used figural sculpture to communicate his greatness. second, the figural sculpture, with its messages, of his church on ałt´amar was neither emulated nor challenged by the bagratunis. although the bagratunis did not eschew figural sculpture entirely, their messages about their kingship lay elsewhere, in architectural form and in epigraphy. i intend to discuss the issues of the royal building programmes and the particular buildings that are discussed in this article, in much greater detail in a forthcoming book. notes: 1. i dedicate this article to the memory of jane langhorne rowlandson (25 december 1953-20 november 2018), dear friend, and distinguished papyrologist and historian of roman egypt, who would have enjoyed this topic. 2. a version of this article was read at the british epigraphy society spring meeting, whose programme was “epigraphy and frontiers”, held in armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 148 newcastle upon tyne, uk, 18 may 2019. i thank my colleague dr simon corcoran for inviting me to speak at the meeting. references: 1. 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(2014) catholicos anania of mokk´ on himself and on armenia’s rulers. // mélanges jean-pierre mahé. / ed. by a. mardirossian, a. ouzounian and c. zuckerman. paris: association des amis du centre d’histoire et civilisation de byzance. հայկական վիմագրությունը 10-11-րդ դարերում. փորագրությունը՝ որպես կամուրջ և սահման սույն հոդվածում փորձ է արվում ի մի բերել վիմագրագիտական, պատմագիտական, ճարտարագիտական, հնագիտական և ծիսագիտական դիտարկումների արդյունքները՝ տասներորդ և տասնմեկերորդ դարերի հայ արքունական քաղաքական նկրտումների ու ինքնության ուսումնասիրության դաշտում՝ ըստ էության նոր լույսի ներքո ներկայացնելով փորագրությունների զննության ու արժևորման խնդիրները: հոդվածում քննության է առնվում հայ թագավորների վերաբերմունքը բնապատկերի անբաժանելի մաս դարձած ինչպես հնադարյա, այնպես էլ ավելի ուշ շրջանում կառուցված հուշարձաններին: ներկայացվում է նաև, թե ինչպես են քարի վրա արված փորագրությունները վկայում armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 154 թագավորական երկու դինաստիաների մրցակցությունը իրենց՝ որպես մեծ ու օրինական արքաների կարգավիճակը հաստատելու համար: received by editorial board 11.08.2019 recommended for publication by reviewers 25.10.2019 accepted for print 01.11.2019 microsoft word contens verjin linguistics armenian folia anglistika 111 linguistic analysis of the two speech functions in president donald trump’s inaugural speech vicky tchaparian lebanese university abstract the purpose of this study is the linguistic interpretation of president donald trump’s inaugural speech during the ceremony held in washington d. c. on january 21, 2017. the two functions of speech which will be analyzed here are the grammatical and textual functions. the findings reveal two main themes: one is the criticism of the economic situation of america during the last years and the other is a promise and a vow for a change towards a better future where the economy will flourish and there will be prosperity. the study shows the president’s determination to make america strong again, safe again, and prosperous again. key words: donald trump, america, rebuilding, power, challenges, grammatical analysis, textual analysis. introduction the inauguration of the president of the united states is a ceremony which marks the commencement of a new four-year term of the president of the united states. the mentioned ceremony takes place for each new presidential term, even if the president is going to continue in office for a second term. during his inaugural speech the 45th us president donald trump appeared in a special ceremony accompanied by the first lady melania trump, who “brought back memories of jacqueline kennedy in an elegant ralph lauren powder blue suit” (donald trump’s first speech as president 2017). during his 16-minute speech trump addressed the american people promising them to put america first. he said that the ceremony had a special meaning, armenian folia anglistika linguistics 112 because it was not a transfer of power from one party or administration to another but a ceremony that belongs to the american people themselves. the speech consists of more than 1450 words which realize grammatical and textual functions. below is an analysis which will focus on both of the mentioned functions. grammatical function: modals and pronouns 1. modality analysis the modal verb will is used mostly while talking about the future, it is the most frequent choice used to make requests, promises, etc. (thornburg 2004: 30-1,192-3). must expresses necessity and is usually equivalent to am/is/are obliged. in the second person, it is used chiefly to express a command, or an insistent request or counsel. considering the above definitions, it can be stated that the usage of the auxiliaries will and must are well justified in the president’s speech. the table below shows the frequency and politeness degree of the auxiliaries will and must in president trump’s speech. modals low politeness medium politeness high politeness positive modals 30 (will) 2 (must) negative modals 3 (will not) according to the above table, the auxiliarywill is the most excessively used modal. this shows that the president focuses on future plans and is requesting american people to join his efforts for a better future for the country. 2. pronoun analysis: the personal pronoun is a grammatical form, a subcategory of the pronoun class, which itself represents a subcategory of noun. personal pronouns function as the heads of pronoun phrases or noun phrases. they are words that take the place of common and proper nouns. (huddleston 1984). detecting the linguistics armenian folia anglistika 113 number of occurrences of personal pronouns in president trump’s inaugural speech we have drawn the following table: personal pronouns number of usages in president trump’s speech first person i (me) 3 we (us) 35 second person you (your) 4 third person he (him) she (her) it (it) 9 they (them) 2 the above table shows that the president has used the personal pronouns i and me only 3 times, while he has used we and us 35 times. this shows that the president’s speech focuses on american people (including himself) rather than only on himself. by this, he aims to share everything with american people. he believes in the power of unity and togetherness. thus, his effort to make america great again depends more on the president in company with the american people. as for possessive pronouns, they are pronouns that express possession or some other relationship to another word or phrase and can perform five functions in clauses: subject, subject complement, direct object, indirect object, and prepositional complement. moreover, the possessive pronoun is a subcategory of pronoun class which in its turn is a subcategory of the noun. possessive pronouns function as the heads of pronoun phrases or noun phrases (laurel & brinton 2010). below is a table that shows the number of occurrences of the possessive pronouns in president trump’s inaugural speech. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 114 possessive pronouns: number of usages in the president’s speech my (mine) 1 our (ours) 38 your (yours) 11 his (his) her (hers) its (its) 9 their (theirs) 6 the above table shows that the president has used the possessive pronoun my only once, while using your/yours 11 times and our/ours 38 times. this shows that the president uses the possessive pronouns your/yours and our/ours to reveal that he depends on american people in his effort of unity and making “america great again.” textual analysis according to m. a. k. halliday “language makes links between itself and the situation; and discourse becomes possible because the speaker or writer can produce a text and the listener or reader can recognize one” (halliday 1979:334). on the other hand, according to hu zhuanglin, because language serves a generalized ideational function, we are able to use it for all the specific purposes and types of contexts which involve the communication of experience. because language serves a generalized interpersonal function, we are able to use it for the specific forms of personal expression and social interaction. a prerequisite to its effective operation under both these headings is what we have referred to as the textual function. when language becomes a text, it is related to itself and to its contexts of use. without the textual component of meaning, we should be unable to make any use of language at all (zhuanglin 1988). donald trump’s inaugural speech is the president’s first experience with the american people to give them a public speech; mr. trump wants to impress and linguistics armenian folia anglistika 115 convince the americans that he and his team will effectively serve america in the best way possible. he says that he is ready to serve america and the americans “with every breath” of his body. the president’s inaugural speech is a good example to show that language makes links between itself and the situation to produce a text and the listener or reader can recognize one (halliday 1979:334), and that language serves a generalized ideational function (zhuanglin 1988). we have divided the text of the speech into seventeen different parts to clarify its different ideational functions. below are the parts; 1. salutation; 2. togetherness (the president and the people will build america together); 3. gratitude (to president obama and his wife for being magnificent); 4. power transfer (the transfer of power from washington to the people, not to him as a president); 5. criticism (there is a decline in economy because those who reaped the fruits of american economy had not been the american people themselves); 6. promise (promise for a change for the better. serving the citizens through schools and education, jobs and cash, safety from crimes, gangs and drugs); 7. oath (oath to top the pain of the american people from the terrorists); 8. oath (oath for better industry and military); 9. oath (oath for a different future, new vision – america first); 10. americanization (america will benefit the americans); 11. fight (fight for the construction and rebuilding); 12. civilization (the civilized world against islamic terrorism); 13. unity (power is in the unity); 14. timeliness (time for action not talk, time to take challenges, time for prosperity); 15. togetherness (with all the differences, americans unite under the same flag); 16. promise (vow to protect the citizens); 17. strength (together stronger). armenian folia anglistika linguistics 116 the text of the president’s speech which reveals conversational features is highly persuasive since the president is the one who is leading the talk, who chooses/changes the topics, and comments on what he says. he is the dominant participant who initiates the conversation, sets the agenda, and controls the topics. mr. trump is able to convince his submissive participants who are following the set agenda of his speech. he is able to let them believe in him since he reveals the truth about the economic situation being bad. there has been terror and drugs, yet the president says we – he and his fellow citizens – together will make america great again. conclusion donald trump entered the 2016 presidential race as a republican defeating sixteen opponents and announcing his campaign slogan, make america great again. on june 16, 2015, mr. trump first announced his candidacy for president of the united states at trump tower in manhattan. his speech included domestic issues such as illegal immigration, offshoring of american jobs, the us national debt, and islamic terrorism. all these had remained large priorities during his campaign and have all been included in his inaugural speech and vow to work together with the american people for a better america. however, according to schäffner (1996:203) “politicians do not deliver speeches as individuals, but rather as representatives of political parties, governments, or nations.” thus, mr. trump’s speech shows not only his own views and promises, but also those of the political party he represents. the grammatical and textual analyses show that the president’s speech consists of different points where he thanks, blames, and promises the citizens. however, what is obvious is that the president wants to look forward to a better future for the american people. a future that is prosperous and safe. he uses short sentences and simple words. first he thanks the previous powers that controlled the country, but he later blames them because they contribute to making other countries prosper economically but have a deficient inside the us (by making the factories and companies close). linguistics armenian folia anglistika 117 however, with all the negativity that is dominant in the country, the president promises a better future for the americans where they all work together, since there is power in unity. he believes that all the country from detroit to nabraska live under the same american flag, and thus they have all to work together for a better future for america and the americans. references: 1. brinton, l.j. & donna m. brinton (2010) the linguistic structure of modern english. amsterdam: john benjamins. 2. donald trump’s first speech as president. available at: <www.ndtv.com> jstor database [accessed november 2017]. 3. hopper, p.j. (1999) a short course in grammar. new york: w.w. norton & company. 4. halliday, m.a.k. (1979) linguistic function and literary style: an inquiry into the language of william golding’s “the inheritors.” // linguistic studies of text and discourse. peking: peking university press, pp. 88-125. 5. huddleston, r. (1984) introduction to the grammar of english. cambridge: cup. 6. schäffner, c. (1996) editorial: political speeches and discourse analysis. // current issues in language and society, 3 (3), pp. 201-204. 7. the auxiliary verbs “must,” “need,” and “dare.” available at: <www.btb.termiumplus.gc.ca/tpv2guides/index-fra.html> jstor database [accessed november 2017]. 8. thornbury, s. (2004) natural grammar. oxford: oup. 9. united_states_presidential. // wikipedia. the new encyclopedia. available at: <wikipedia.org/wiki/united_states_presidential> jstor database [accessed november 2017]. 10. zhuanglin, h. (1988) a course of linguistics. peking: peking university press. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 118 նախագահ դոնալդ թրամփի երդմնակալության խոսքի երկու գործառույթների լեզվաբանական վերլուծություն այս ուսումնասիրության նպատակը 2017 թվականի հունվարի 21-ին վաշինգտոնում տեղի ունեցած հանդիսավոր արարողության ժամանակ նախագահ դոնալդ տրամփի երդմնակալության խոսքի լեզվաբանական վերլուծությունն է: հոդվածում քննության են ենթարկվում նախագահի խոսքի երկու գործառույթները՝ քերականական և տեքստային: հետազոտության արդյունքում բացահայտվում է երկու հիմնական թեմա. մեկը վերջին տարիներին ամերիկայի տնտեսական իրավիճակի քննադատությունն է, մյուսը` խոստումը, որ փոփոխությունները կտանեն դեպի ավելի լավ ապագա, տնտեսության զարգացում և բարգավաճում: ուսումնասիրությունը ցույց է տալիս նախագահի՝ ամերիկան կրկին ուժեղ, ապահով և բարգավաճ դարձնելու վճռականությունը: microsoft word contens verjin methodology armenian folia anglistika 115 the importance f teaching english through armenian culture meline ghonyan american university of armenia abstract culture and art have always been indispensable parts of language teaching. cultural texts and various cultural topics have been included in language books and textbooks. however, textbook developers and english teachers give priority to teaching the culture of the target language rather than that of native learners. in the current paper we would like to state that it is beneficial to teach english through local culture materials as they increase the cognitive, communicative and social understanding of the learners. having based on our teaching experience, we can claim that specific topics like armenian music, dances, customs and traditions, armenian artists and their art works, the cities and architecture, filming and theatre, holidays and festivals and other culture-related topics are of great interest to armenian learners of english. these topics are, to some extent, familiar to them, so they enhance the learners’ english communicative skills. moreover, the learners obtain a full comprehension of armenian culture and develop certain skills to present it to others. key words: local culture, target culture, cultural materials, culture-related topics introduction armenian learners are rarely exposed to armenian culture; the only topics that are related to armenia are armenian history, religion and geography. meanwhile, armenian culture and art are considered to be the most interesting and valuable items of the armenian heritage. our ancestors left us a very rich culture and it is important to use armenian cultural materials during english classes to highlight the national identity of the learners. therefore, as a teacher, i felt responsible to create a course which would introduce the local culture and art in the english language. being an international language, english will provide a great opportunity for the armenian learners to present their culture to foreigners armenian folia anglistika methodology 116 who will become more interested in the country of armenia and its culture. thus, we have carried out a project on the attempt to teach english through armenian culture. the purpose of this project is to address three functions: cognitive, communicative, and social. the cognitive function implies that the learners will get to know the armenian culture and art, specifically the topics that are not included in public school textbooks, which are armenian music, dances, traditions, artists and their art works, cities, filming and theatre, fashion, and many others. communication will become easier when learners have an idea what exactly they are talking about, thus they will become more confident first to talk to each other and then discuss their local culture with people of other nationalities. the third function of the course is to empower the learners with knowledge about their own culture in order to share this knowledge with representatives of other nationalities and, eventually contribute recognition of armenian culture internationally. definition of culture in recognition of the explanation of culture, choudhury defines it as the characteristics of a particular group of people, defined by everything from language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts” (choudhury 2014). as culture is defined in many different ways, there should be a precise understanding of what we think is acceptable for this project. as kirkebæk & jensen (2013) explain it is important for the teacher whether the culture is an unchanging value system or treatment that groups of people have in common, whether the culture is a system which is always changing and typical of individuals, and shared during social interaction. through the choice and understanding of the concept of culture teachers may select methods and approaches for teaching it in a language classroom. for this project the most appropriate definition of culture is the one given by peck (2015) which defines it as an accepted behavior shared by a group of people. the relationship between language and culture language is the means that people socialize with others, and when it becomes a tool for communication between people, it starts to be related with culture. when people talk and easily understand each other, when they have topics in common, this is because they share the same knowledge about their surroundings, that is, the methodology armenian folia anglistika 117 culture of the country and culture in general, as claims “language expresses cultural reality” (kramsch 2010). by using language, people express attitudes, experiences and, moreover, gain experience. when talking on the phone, speaking face to face, or performing other activities with the help of language, adding gestures and mimics to it, people get to know each other better. they start using vocabulary, facial expressions, style and accent that are common for each other, they define themselves and others with the verbal and non-verbal aspects that are common for a group of people, so as kramsch mentions “ language embodies cultural reality” (ibid:3). finally, as kramsch states in her book, language is considered to be a system of signs. language is also a way of identifying people, their social and cultural status and rank, therefore “language symbolizes cultural reality” (ibid:3). why teach local culture? culture is the phenomenon that is closely related to people, including the languages they speak, the lifestyle they have and the way of interaction they share. in the process of learning culture, learners first of all study their families, friends, their surrounding areas and learn on them, they have natural examples and their own experiences in front of them (wagler 2004). teaching local culture is also important for the learners’ individual development and the feeling of national identity. in the process of learning, the local culture students study their families, the actions of their ancestors, go back to their past, observe their present, and, most importantly, imagine their future. learners better know who they are and walk forward with a deep knowledge about their own history (wagler 2004). it is very important to feel free while expressing ideas and discussing topics when starting to learn a language. the inclusion of local culture materials in the teaching curriculum gives learners the opportunity of being familiar with topics which they are exposed to in their daily life (mahmoud 2015). moreover, learners, especially the ones in lower proficiency levels, may face difficulties while learning a new language and a new culture: the culture of the target language. they may feel a huge load and may be discouraged to continue studying. it is truly important to include the target culture while learning the language, because without it the learners, even though they will learn the language, will not be able to act in real life situations. armenian folia anglistika methodology 118 as mahmoud states “the use of local culture in the classroom environment decreases the possibility of assimilation and alienation” (mahmoud 2015:70). besides, learning the local culture helps to be closer and understand concepts in other cultures. thus, as the main purpose of learning a language is gaining the ability to communicate, the learners should also learn their own culture to be able to present it to other people. ways of teaching culture as clarke, et. al, (2002) state in their book, to teach culture effectively in the classroom the teacher should provide meaningful materials and why not, even visits to museums and galleries, because while teaching it is very important to see the real artifacts or other objects that are presented in the classroom, it is considered a nice way of teaching authentically. only visiting cultural places is not enough to have an effective input for the learners, the teacher should also consult with experts who know everything the teacher and the learner need. in such courses there should be high level of knowledge and professionalism. as stated in clarke, et. al., the experience of visiting museums and libraries can be a very beneficial experience for students in their curricula, as they see a lot and feel a lot when seeing the real materials that they have been talking about and presenting so much during their classes. it is even better than having role-plays and other engaging activities. this way of teaching culture gives learning opportunities to the students who have weaker abilities, thus they are becoming more enthusiastic and involved in the teaching process. after visiting museums and galleries, learners start to learn from simple objects. the museum exhibits make them realize the aesthetic value of such things in their surrounding area. as royani noted, for teaching culture in a language classroom it is very important to include texts about local culture. with the help of this learners are becoming more enthusiastic and motivated about the lesson. as they may be familiar with some of the patterns of their own culture, they are becoming more self-confident, feeling more important and needed. including local culture texts in the course will be effective as the learners will get to know events, traditions and environment, thus increasing engagement in their lesson. besides, when learners read texts related to their local culture, they understand better as they live in it. it methodology armenian folia anglistika 119 eases the process of comprehension and then gives space for discussions (royani 2013). local culture related texts can be appropriate for teaching l2 to any level of proficiency of learners. these kinds of materials are easy to obtain, even more; the materials can be created by the teachers themselves. as wagler mentions in his book, it is important to use media presentation during culture-language integrated lessons. learners may present on slides, show some photos taken from local exhibitions or galleries. learners may choose the cultural items and the audience of their presentations. this kind of presentations also encourage the feeling of community, when people work on a project which is familiar, they start feeling that they are one community (wagler 2004). teaching a language through local art the value of art is highly appreciated and has an enormous power to impress people in a good sense. art is also a valuable tool to foster learning and enrich the instruction of language teaching. understanding the profound importance of arts teachers are inclined to incorporate it in their teaching curricula (ruiz 2010). integration of local art in language teaching helps to raise teaching to the high level of analysis in terms of all four skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening (ruiz 2010). art comprises everything that is strongly related to human being and activities. thus it allows the learners to challenge their background knowledge, activate their experiences to discuss art patterns, interpret them, explore and reflect on them. it also touches upon the spheres of communicating ideas and interaction between people. the inclusion of art in teaching languages also evokes the imagination and creativity of learners which helps them to better deepen the language skills (ruiz 2010). art also gives a wide opportunity for the learners to activate their background knowledge and tap to concepts that they know, and which will serve a nice ground for developing the language. as art can be visually shown and serves as a non-verbal type of communication, learners, even the ones who have a low proficiency level, can express their feelings and ideas, and even interact with others during discussions (ruiz 2010). inclusion of arts in teaching languages gives a huge chance for learners having different backgrounds and language knowledge to develop their creative thinking, problem solving skills, and help them critically analyze issues. through art, armenian folia anglistika methodology 120 learners gain confidence, they express their ideas, feel that their ideas are appreciated and, even more, they start appreciating the ideas of others (ruiz 2010). every work of art can be included in the lesson. it is a nice way to gather all the learners around and start discussing, it is the place where learners are not ashamed to express their ideas, and in this case, they can speak, as art work is a visual material that provides interaction between classmates and the teacher (ruiz 2010). narowski notes a hands-on tool which provides learners with space for showing experiences and learning from them, it gives an opportunity to think critically and have clear and beneficial outcomes in writing and speaking. she states that all the students liked it, as none of them was left out, everyone had a platform to express his thoughts and be heard, everyone could say something that was worth listening. this approach proved to be the key success of her course. integrating art into a language learning course is especially effective for those who have hard times reading, who think that reading is not appropriate for them as a teaching technique. in this case art works come forward. art works can be placed in front and serve as a material to speak, to communicate, even to learn language items and functions (narowski 2015). conclusion during the implementation of the project, the actual teaching and the literature review, we may come to the conclusion that it is really important and beneficial to teach local (armenian) culture to armenian students. due to teaching local cultural materials in english, armenian students become, first of all culturally aware; they also study different aspects of armenian culture, the components of culture in general. secondly, local cultural materials help them to express themselves more easily in english, they are more familiar with topics, and as it is claimed in literature, students speak more freely, and learn the language more easily when they are exposed to topics familiar to them. and finally, the local cultural materials give the opportunity to use interesting reading materials, diverse activities which make the language learning process more interesting and productive. references: 1. choudhury, r.u. (2014) the role of culture in teaching and learning of english as a foreign language. // express international journal of multimethodology armenian folia anglistika 121 disciplinary research. available at: <www.express journal.com> [accessed june 2016]. 2. clarke, a.; dodd, j.; hooper-greenhill, e.; o’riain, h.; selfridge, l.; swift, f. (2002) learning through culture. leicester: rcmg publishers. 3. elmes, d. (2013) the relationship between language and culture. / national institute of fitness and sports in kanoya international exchange and language education center. available at: <http://www2.lib.nifs-k.ac.jp/hpbu/annals/ an46/46-11.pdf> [accessed june 2016]. 4. kirkebæk, m.j.; x.-yun du and jensen, a.a. (2013) teaching and learning culture, negotiating the context. rotterdam: sense publishers. 5. kramsch, c. (1998) language and culture. oxford: oup, pp. 3-5. 6. lightfoot, a. (2003) art in the classroom. / british council. available at: <https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/art-classroom> [accessed may 2016]. 7. mahmoud, m. (2015) culture and english language teaching in the arab world. // adult learning. 8. narowski, l. (2015) using art to encourage effective speaking and writing skills with esl students. the yale new haven teachers institute, available at: <http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/2009/1/09.01.08.x.html> [accessed may 2016]. 9. peck, d. (2015) teaching culture: beyond language. / the yale-new haven teachers institute. available at: <http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/ 1984/3/84.03.06.x.html> [accessed june 2016]. 10. royani, m. (2012) the use of local culture texts for enthusiastic english reading teaching. / the international journal of social sciences, vol. 7, n.1. 11. ruiz, j.p. (2010) art as a tool for teachers of english language learners. / the new york state education department office of bilingual education and foreign languages studies. the university of the state of new york. 12. wagler, m. (2004) teaching local culture. / madison children’s museum. madison. 13. wardhaugh, r. (2006) an introduction to sociolinguistics. 5th edition, blackwell publishing, pp. 1-10. available at: <http://home.lu.lv/~pva/sociolingvistika/1006648_82038_wardhaugh_r_an_introduction_to_sociolinguistics. pdf> [accessed april 2016]. armenian folia anglistika methodology 122 ð³ûï³ï³ý ùß³ïáõûãç ùççáóáí ³ý·é»ñ»ýç áõëáõóù³ý ï³ñ¨áñáõãûáõýá 軽áõý ¨ ùß³ïáõûãá ùßï³å»ë ï³½ù»é »ý ûï³ñ 黽íç áõëáõóù³ý ï³ñ¨áñ³·áõûý ù³ëá: øß³ïáõûãç ù³ëçý ï»ùëï»ñá ¨ ùß³ïáõûãçý í»ñ³ »ñíáõ ã»ù³ý»ñá ý»ñ³éí³í »ý »õ»é ûï³ñ 黽íç ¹³ë³·ñù»ñáõù: ê³ï³ûý ¹³ë³·ñù»ñç ñ»õçý³ïý»ñá ùçßï ¿é ý³ë³å³ïíáõãûáõýá ïí»é »ý áõëáõó³ýíáõ 黽íç ùß³ïáõûãçý, ñ»ï¨³ ³ñ ï»õç ùß³ïáõûãá, ³ûë ¹»åùáõù ñ³û»ñ»ýç ùß³ïáõûãá ëïí»ñáõù ¿ ùý³ó»é ¨ ³ß³ï»ñïý»ñá ñý³ñ³íáñáõãûáõý ã»ý áõý»ó»é ëáíáñ»éáõ çñ»ýó »ñïñç ùß³ïáõûãá ûï³ñ 黽íáí: êáõûý ñá¹í³íá ý»ñï³û³óýáõù ¿ ³ûý íñ³·çñá, áñ ñ»õçý³ïý çñ³ï³ý³óñ»é éë³ñ³ýáõù áõëáõó³ý»éáí ³ý·é»ñ»ý ñ³ûï³ï³ý ùß³ïáõûãç ³é³çý³ûçý ï³ññ»ñç ùççáóáí: microsoft word 1.linguistics 7 104 (1) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 78 diminutives as intimacy expressions in english and armenian shushan khachikyan yerevan state university abstract diminutives are an important means of expressing attitudes and emotions in both english and armenian. diminutives as intimacy expressions have been much studied in english, meanwhile this aspect of communication has received less scholarly attention in armenian. the comparative analysis of english and armenian diminutives carried out in the present paper demonstrates the linguistic differences between armenian and english diminutive systems, and comes to prove that the conceptualization of intimacy may vary across cultures. key words: diminutives, intimacy expressions, emotions, attitudes, individual diminutive systems, culture, conceptualization of intimacy. introduction traditionally the term diminutive has been used to refer to words that denote smallness, and possibly to express the speaker’s attitude which can be positive or negative, depending on linguistic and situational aspects in certain contexts (schneider 2003). in many cases diminutives are used when talking to children or referring to them. these are nouns indicating children’s part of the body, their toys, foods and so on, as well as certain concrete nouns referring to their immediate environment. diminutive forms are not restricted to interactions with children. it is quite possible that they originated in such contexts, and then developed further to cover similar items of the immediate environment which concern adults. adults use diminutives when they talk to good friends, parents or grandparents. diminutives are most frequently used in situations between close participants in familiar settings, usually at home. however, interactions that occur between strangers in formal institutional contexts, for example, in banks, hospitals or supermarkets, can also be marked by diminutives. the use of diminutives is most often a sign of reduced psychological distance. thus our aim is to study the linguistic differences between armenian and english diminutive systems and to show that conceptualization of intimacy may vary across cultures. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 79 diminutive formation in english and armenian languages are either predominantly synthetic or analytic. an analytic language “is one which either does not combine inflectional morphemes or does so sparingly; grammatical relations are indicated primarily by word order and function wordsˮ (brinton and arnovick 2006:91). when english creates diminutives, it preferentially does so analytically; that is by compensating for diminutive suffixes lexically, by the addition of analytic markers such as little, tiny or small before the noun (naciscione 2000:136). synthetic languages, on the other hand, usually form diminutives through attaching a vast array of diminutive affixes to the root. english diminutives are not as unique in their extent and variety as armenian diminutives. they are usually formed analytically and convey diverse meanings. (wierzbicka 2003; schneider 2003). anyhow, english has also plenty of diminutive suffixes that are used in spoken english. thus, synthetic diminutives do exist in english. in his monograph on diminutives in a corpus of spoken english, k. schneider discusses diminutive endings such as -ie/-y (in doggie), -let (as in piglet or kinglet), kins (as in the name lizziekins), -o (as the name carlo) among many others (schneider 2003:32). analytic diminutives are used comparatively more frequently in english than diminutive suffixes and can convey various expressive meanings. these analytic constructions use the analytic markers little, small, wee, tiny and other adjectives in the semantic field small to convey emotion and smallness (naciscone 2010). it may be difficult to pinpoint the diverse meanings of english diminutives but the main analytic markers, little and small, differ greatly from each other. the analytic marker small refers only to smallness, meanwhile little is considered more subjective, more flexible and can express various emotional meanings. the emotive component in the adjective little is supposedly stronger because we can view it as a type of affix (e.g. the armenian synthetic diminutive ïý³ï could be translated as house-little), while small is more like a word that stands alone, as it does in synthetic languages (e.g armenian ÷áùñ ïáõý). diminutives formed with the adjective little and diminutive forms with suffixes do not derive diminutive forms of personal names nearly as much as they do in armenian, where many diminutive suffixes exist to express various nuances of intimacy (e.g. ³ï ak, çï ik, áõï uk, û³ï yak, éçï -lik). english diminutivized names do, however, have a role to play as terms of endearment. there is considerable confusion regarding the difference between english hypocoristics, pet names, diminutive forms, short forms and the amount of emotion they express. for example, the feminine proper name samantha can be shortened to the hypocoristic form sam, which, in turn, can receive a diminutive suffix to create sammie/sammy or even sammiekins. a girl named samantha could also be called little sam, little sammy. in this scenario, sam is the armenian folia anglistika linguistics 80 standard shortened and truncated form, since the form has lost the last few sounds of the name, while the diminutive suffix –ie creates the diminutive form sammie. a girl or woman called christine would skip chris and be more likely to be called chrissy or christy while a man named christopher would be called chris (bonvillain 2003:82). therefore, scholars state that an adult named chris is more likely to be a man (even though women use these shortened form) and an adult named chrissie/christy is more likely to be a woman because women are “more likely to be addressed in adulthood with names marked with the diminutive suffix –ie/-y more so than men” (romaine 1999:56). armenian diminutive names, on the other hand, keep a clear difference between feminine and masculine diminutive names. despite the difference between children’s, women’s and men’s names in english, the affectionate meanings associated with diminutives do not play a vital role as the emotional diminutive meanings conveyed by english diminutives. the –ie suffix tends to be attached to names of small children and sometimes to women’s names, while proper names and their shortened forms are used most often among adults/teenagers. like english diminutives, armenian diminutives also convey affection, familiarity and intimacy. armenian is a synthetic language, yet åáõ×áõñ/÷áùñ little sometimes forms analytic constructions, such as åáõ×áõñ/÷áùñ +n, which typically conveys affection or positive diminutive meaning. armenian has three basic suffixes that create diminutives: çï ik, ³ï ak, áõï uk. added to the noun, they impart the meaning of smallness (in size or value), affection, endearment, but also degradation or debasement on the part of the speaker. the most productive suffix is çï ik which is frequently used to form diminutives or hypocorism from nouns. the suffixes – çï ik and – áõï uk may also be attached to adjectives. when referring to or addressing a person or an object, they indicate affection or fondness: ëçñáõý sirun ëçñáõýçï sirunik, ·»ñ – ger ·çñáõï giruk. when the suffix – çï ik is added to proper names, it expresses the speaker’s subjective or emotional attitude toward the person: ì³ñ³ý -vahan ì³ñ³ýçï vahanik, ø³ñç³ù mariam ø³ñç³ùçï mariamik, îç·ñ³ý tigran îç·ñ³ýçï tigranik. longer names form diminutives by adding the suffix – çï ik to the first syllable of the name. first names may be morphologically modified with diminutive or augmentative suffixes. for example, the first name ²ýý³ -anna may be diminutivized in a number of ways: ²ý -an, ²ýáõé -anul, ²ýáõéçï -anulik. unique diminutives in english and armenian every language has diminutives that are not used in one language or the other. english has a set of diminutives that are connected with garden and kitchen. for linguistics armenian folia anglistika 81 example, the english diminutives sweetie-pie, cutie-pie, pookie-pie refer to food treats. pookie-pie is a pet name given to a partner or true love. typically, most of these diminutives are used to address women, but the welsh diminutive boyo is primarly used between men. diminutives can also have negative connotation. the diminutive poetaster is a word describing an inferior poet. the suffix -aster denoting resemblance, which was common a few hundred years ago, is rare today. the native english suffix -ock is used in such diminutives as hillock, bullock. the french suffix -ette can be seen in such words as cigarette and kitchenette. armenians express their love by using diminutives that are closely connected with the concept of life. the armenian words ç³ýçï janik, ñá·û³ïë hogyaks which are used as forms of address reflect the spiritual side of diminutives. in fact, ջ³ý jan, which is the most frequently used armenian word, literally means body or soul. armenian diminutives are marked by a large number of animal-related nicknames, for example: mukik ùáõïçï, ³ñçáõï arjuk, óáõïçï dzukik, ó³·áõï dzaguk, ßáõýçï shunik, ÷çëçï pisik, ÷çëá piso, ·³éýáõï – garnuk, out of which ï³ïáõ ÷çëçï ÷çëá – katu – pisik piso, ³ñç ³ñçáõï – arj arjuk have the highest frequency in use. in armenian the name ¶³éýçï garnik is the diminutivized form of the word ·³éý garn. animal names used metaphorically to address people comprise both positively and negatively connotated expressions. while ëá½ khoz, ³í³ý³ï avanak, ßáõý shun, ñ³í hav bear negative connotations, ·³éýáõï garnuk, ³ñçáõï arjuk, ÷çëçï pisik have positive connotations. english also uses a few names of animals, for example lamb, lambie, angel lamb, duck, duckling, pet, petkins, lovey-dovey, honey-bunny. like diminutives, english animal metaphors are much less productive and are related to animals that have positive connotations and are stereotypically conceptualized as innocent and safe. it may be because english does not have a similar productive category of diminutive that may neutralize negative connotations (schneider 2003:145). the main function of diminutives is to signal the speaker’s affectionate attitude towards the hearer; hence, they signal psychological proximity between the interlocutors. in particular, affectionate nicknames are characteristic of female conversational style. conclusion diminutives form a significant part of the vocabulary of english and armenian. in both languages diminutives create different meanings and can be formed through synthetic or analytic constructions. without diminutives language would lose a vital linguistic means of conveying emotion, attitude, evaluation, and, why not, also warmth. diminutives provide a way to show affection towards people or things; they are armenian folia anglistika linguistics 82 expressive means and contribute to the emotional aspect of language, whether spoken or written. the fact that english and armenian have a set of diminutives which is appropriate to the specific language system comes to prove that every culture constructs its identity around certain shared values which are perceived differently due to the uniqueness of language. the study of diminutives shows that they can present not only linguistic but also culture-related aspects. diminutives are more than their semantic meanings, they reflect the unique culture of a language, the writer’s individual conceptualization of words, the speaker’s preferences. thus we can conclude that at the core of diminutives lies a deeply embedded cultural worldview. references: 1. bonvillain, n. (2003) language, culture and communication: the meaning of messages. n.j: prentice hall. 2. brinton, l.j. and arnovick l.k. (2006) the english language: a linguistic history.oxford: oup. 3. naciscione, a. (2010) stylistic use of phraseological units in discourse. amsterdam: john benjamins. 4. romaine, s. (1999) communicating gender. mahwah: l. erlbaum associates. 5. schneider, k.p. (2003) diminutives in english. tübingen: niemeyer. 6. wierzbicka, a. (2003) cross-cultural pragmatics: the semantics of human interaction. berlin: mouton de gruyter. ö³õ³ùß³ï³ý μ³é»ñá áñå»ë ùï»ñùáõãû³ý ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõãûáõý ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù ¨ ñ³û»ñ»ýáõù úáõñ³ù³ýãûáõñ ùß³ïáõûã ûáõñáíç ¿ ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõù ùï»ñùáõãûáõýá: ö³õ³ùß³ï³ý μ³é»ñá համáýդհաýուր »ý, ù³ýç áñ կաý μáéáñ 黽áõý»ñáõù: ö³õ³ùß³ï³ý μ³é»ñի միջոցով ³ñï³ñ³ûïվում է ù³ñ¹ï³ýó ùï»ñùáõãûáõýá միմյաýց ï³ù çñ»ñç ýï³ïù³ùμ: դñ³ýù 黽íակաý ³ûý ùççáóý»ñçó »ý, áñáýù ýå³ëïáõù »ý 黽íç ½·³óùáõýù³ûçý ³ñï³ñ³ûïã³ï³ýáõãû³ýá: աýգլերեý փ³õ³ùß³ï³ý μ³é»ñá áõëáõùý³ëçñí»é »ý ï³ñμ»ñ լեզվաբաýýերի ïáõùçó, ùçýã¹»é ñ³û»ñ»ýáõù դրաýք համեմատաբար ùçã »ý áõëáõùý³ëçñí»é: êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù ñ³ù»ù³ï³ï³ý í»ñéáõíáõãû³ý »ý »ýã³ñïíáõù ³ý·é»ñ»ý ¨ ñ³û»ñ»ý ÷³õ³ùß³ï³ý μ³é»ñá: ուëáõùý³ëçñáõãûամբ լուսաբաýվում է ³ý·é»ñ»ýçý ¨ ñ³û»ñ»ýçý բýորոշ ÷³õ³ùß³ï³ý μ³é»ñç ñ³ù³ï³ñ·á, վեր եý հաýվում 黽í³ï³ý ï³ñμ»ñáõãûáõýý»ñ, ¨ առաջ եý քաշվում ùß³ïáõûãçý í»ñ³μ»ñáõ ñçùý³ëý¹çñý»ñ: linguistics armenian folia anglistika 83 уменьшительно-ласкательные слова как выражение близких отношений в английском и армянском в каждой культуре близость выражается по-своему. в вербальной коммуникации близость выражается уменьшительно-ласкательными словами. уменьшительно-ласкательные слова дают возможность выразить близость по отношению к людям или к вещам, они являются одним из тех языковых средств, которые способствуют эмоциональной экспрессивности языка. уменьшительноласкательные слова в английском изучались данной учеными, в то время как в армянском они мало изучались. в статье сравнительному анализу подвергаются уменьшительно-ласкательные слова армянского и русского. исследованием раскрывается уникальная система уменьшительно-ласкательных слов английского и армянского языков, выявляются не только языковые различия, но и проблемы, относящиеся к культуре. microsoft word contens verjin linguistics armenian folia anglistika 7 on some properties of science fiction dystopian narrative gaiane muradian, anna karapetyan yerevan state university abstract dystopia is a narrative form of fiction in general and of science fiction in particular. using elements of science fiction discourse like time travel, space flight, advanced technologies, virtual reality, genetic engineering, etc. – dystopian narrative depicts future fictive societies presenting in peculiar prose style a future in which humanity has fallen into destruction, ruin and decline, in which human life and nature are wildly abused, exploited and destroyed, in which a totalitarian, highly centralized, and, therefore, oppressive social organization sacrifices individual expression, freedom of choice and idiosyncrasy of the society and its members. it is such critical and creative reflections of science fiction dystopian narrative that are focused on in the present case study with the aim of bringing out certain properties in terms of narrative types and devices, figurative discourse and cognitive notions through which science fiction dystopia expresses and conveys its overarching message, i.e. the warning to stop before it is too late to the reader. key words: science fiction, dystopian narrative, narrative types and devices, figurative discourse, cognitive notions. our golden age is long buried in our ashes. (sicoe 2013) introduction dystopia (from the greek δυσfor bad, not good and τόπος for place), the antonym of utopia (a blueprint for an ideal society with minimal crime, violence and poverty) was coined by english philosopher and economist j.s. mill in 1868 armenian folia anglistika linguistics 8 (mill 1988). as a genre or narrative form of fiction, it appeared in the 20th century and became very prevalent in the years after world war ii. science fiction dystopian narrative depicts imaginary worlds, states and societies, typically totalitarian and degraded ones, in which people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives (merriam-webster 2017; english oxford living dictionaries 2017). such societies are characterized by authoritarian governments, environmental disasters, cataclysmic decline in human relations. however artistic and imaginative the science fictional dystopia set in the future, it reflects the present fears and anxieties and draws attention to real-world problems regarding society, politics, economics, religion, psychology, ethics, science, technology and warns us to stop destructing our world if we want to survive. the language of such a form of narrative is unique, vivid, full of expressive means and stylistically charged linguistic elements, in addition to cognitive tools which contribute to carrying the message of the genre to the reader. thus, the aim of the present paper will be to explore this unique literary form considering normative narrative writing, and to make apparent certain properties of science fiction dystopian narrative from a linguistic perspective. narrative types and devices in science fiction dystopia remaining largely unconcerned with good or bad literature, narrative is always with us – international, trans-historical, transcultural like life itself (barthes 1975:237). dystopia is the narrative type that reflects pessimistic world-view. in a specific narrative form science fiction (sf) dystopia often describes how humanity destroys nature and natural bonds, and can range from partial or total estrangement from them, to the catastrophic destruction of natural environment up to where life can no longer be sustained. this is ecological dystopia (1). the dystopia narrator often reflects the fact that one or more large corporations, completely ruling the world, can dominate the human mind through manipulation, propaganda, intrusive advertisement and even through implanted technology, or they can dominate the human life through absolute control of resources and a strict limitation of available comforts. this is economic dystopia (2). sf authors often consider government linguistics armenian folia anglistika 9 to be the root of all the evil. this can be the government of a single nation, or a global government system, in which case dystopia crushes an otherwise utopian premise of unity. society is controlled and limited by the very institutions that are supposed to protect it, ranging from presidents to law enforcement structures. personal freedom is a myth, trust is a commodity no one can afford, and the system disregards human rights down to treating people like livestock. this is political/totalitarian dystopia (3). generally, in sf dystopian narrative, the future society is controlled by a dangerous ideology or religion which slowly destroys human relations and everything spiritually valuable that humanity has built along the road. this is spiritual dystopia (4). spiritual dystopia may result in another, a most dangerous form of itself which is the kind the one sets up in one’s own mind. this is internal dystopia (5) motivated by fear, misinformation, manipulation and isolation crippling a society from within even more effectively than through political means. and finally, contrary to an economic and political dystopia where a bunch of people control all others by means of technology, technological dystopia (6) narrates the consequences of technology itself ravaging the lives of people. the narrator focuses on man-slaughtering robots, androids, simulacra, clones to man-enslaving ones. also, the author attaches great importance to humankind becoming entirely dependent upon technology to accomplish even the simplest tasks. a variant of this dystopia is “the science-turned-rogue kind”, where usually a virus or genetic modification destroys humanity (sicoe 2013). often, in dystopian sf, the reader experiences the dystopia through the protagonist’s point of view because the narration is presented through the perspective of a single protagonist who questions the social and political order. as a result, social and political language, notions and concepts abound. the positive characters are complex too because they are combating grand ideas and going against a powerful totalitarian order. the combat/conflict is a key to the dystopian narrative: the protagonist, either single or in a group, rebels against the dystopian reality and this conflict makes the plot, which is complex, attractive and interesting. however, in much the same way, the armenian folia anglistika linguistics 10 dystopian plot deals with the imperfect – the acts of the protagonist often fail giving rise to hopelessness. very often the plot necessitates and furthers the conflict between the protagonist and the system or its representatives to its highest level. in this case, forceful actions against the system are encouraged, but they can result in violence depicted in very descriptive narrative forms. therefore, the protagonist, the positive characters, the combat/conflict, the plot, the system and violence are narrative devices typical of nearly all science fiction dystopias. dystopias usually have an alienated character that refuses the dominant society, and it is precisely this narrative element that establishes the text’s capacity for social critique and the “utopian anticipation in the dystopian text” (moylan 2000:147). figurative language and cognitive notions in sf dystopian narrative since the mid-20th century sf utopian fiction has especially become irrelevant and dystopian fiction has gained power. sf dystopia extrapolates terrifying nearfutures from disturbing current trends of today. “in order to quickly create an atmosphere that is at once plausible and terrifying, dystopian writers almost universally turn to an idea certain to generate both fear and sympathy in the reader – the dual concept of language as the primary tool by which repressive societies stifle dissent, and simultaneously as the primary weapon used by rebels bent on understanding, resisting, and countering such oppression” (sisk 1997:7). the emphasis on language has always remained a key element in sf dystopian narrative. sf dystopia imposes authoritarian control over language in order to prevent the formulation of heterodox thought (meyers 1990:198); the representation of discourse in the narrative is necessarily related to the nature of the society in which the linguistic acts take place (marcus 1999:2). however, this does not mean that if the sf dystopian society is exposed to numerous limitations and manipulations (including linguistic ones), there is no place for artistic, beautiful and expressive language to describe in narrative form the “dark” society. in addition to expressive language, the analysis of dystopian narrative demonstrates that there are things the reader needs to know and linguistics armenian folia anglistika 11 experience outside of language (cognitive notions) because language mediates reality, but there is also the very fictitiousness/figurativeness of language that impacts the reader securing the comprehension of the factitious part of the message. sf dystopian narrative is fundamentally characterized by the reflection of the cognitive notions referring to problems of socio-political and cultural context that produces them. for example, george orwell’s nineteen eighty-four, a totalitarian (also spiritual and internal) dystopia written in 1949, focuses on powerlessness of the individuals in the face of the oppressive and brutal government run by a totalitarian dictatorship, paranoia among the citizens who live in fear (they are constantly monitored, betrayed or abused). here language is used as a political medium to conceal the truth from the public, to manipulate and brainwash people, to make them accept all propaganda as unmistakable. these cognitive notions are supported by a highly imaginary orwellian narrative language aimed at evoking emotional experiences in the readers. orwell’s fictional character and dystopian protagonist winston smith is depicted as feeling a previously-repressed desire grow from within; he is determined that everything is terribly wrong with the society in which he lives. what sets him and his girl-friend apart from the countless others is their willingness to challenge presumptions and their courage to risk comfort to know and make life better. they both feel trapped and are struggling to escape from the existing repressive system. the essence of the system is presented in the following utterance: big brother is watching you. (orwell 1990:2) the cognitive notion underlying the above sentence is related to the totalitarian, anti-democratic system of government control. on the linguistic surface, the notion is introduced by an expressive figurative usage – a genuine metaphor created by the author. in this case the functional aim (both cognitive and expressive) is carried out by a sentence but in general it may be presented by units larger than a sentence, groups of sentences of varying lengths, even up armenian folia anglistika linguistics 12 to the work as a whole, and by units smaller than a sentence – by the syntagma and the word. seemingly one sentence, actually the above narrative may be broken down into other functional units: (1) big brother, (2) is watching, (3) you. the first unit is coined by george orwell himself, it expresses the idea of a certain power (negative) over people. at first sight protective as a brother, in reality this power takes advantage of its position to control others. the second unit expresses the position of the big brother who is always watchful and ready to notice and punish any misconduct. the rules of conduct have been set by this power beforehand. the third unit functions as an indicator of the target, i.e. the lower-class proles (from proletariat) under the control of the big brother. the proles make up the majority of the population and represent the uneducated working class (the you in the example). the figurative utterance with the underlying cognitive notion has an initial importance for the work taken as a whole, as this sentence may be considered the gist of the whole narrative. in the context big brother is the dark-eyed, mustachioed embodiment of the single party that rules the dystopian superpower of oceania. george orwell uses an indirect discourse throughout his narrative structure, which basically means that he uses a certain style of third-person narration, using some third-person characteristics. along with the essence of first-person direct speech, this enables a unique impact on the reader. through both first and third person narrative, the reader experiences the events and the feelings of the characters as they are happening. george orwell also uses the common narrative structure of a beginning, a middle and an end, being told in chronological order, which makes the plot much easier to follow, and the story to flow better. let us try to identify figurative discourse and cognitive notions of power and control in huxley’s brave new world (first published in 1932). the following examples of spiritual/internal dystopia show that huxley’s narrative style and figurative language are centered on the depiction of human loneliness and isolation while conceptualization is based on misuse of technology, especially those allowing the manipulation of human brain and genes aimed at destructing spiritual experiences and creating a dehumanized society. the assumption that linguistics armenian folia anglistika 13 there will always exist those who use technologies for personal gain, and as an attempt to maintain power and control, is another cognitive notion. “but all the same,” insisted the savage, “it is natural to believe in god when you’re alone – quite alone, in the night, thinking about death.” the words awoke a plaintive echo in bernard's mind. alone, alone… “so am i,” he said, on a gush of confidingness. “terribly alone.” “yes, that's just it.” the young man nodded. “if one's different, one's bound to be lonely.” “alone, always alone,” the young man was saying. he was as miserably isolated now as he had been when the service began – more isolated by reason of his unreplenished emptiness, his dead satiety. alone even in morgana's embrace – much more alone, indeed, more hopelessly himself than he had ever been in his life before. and then he spends most of his time by himself – alone. he was like a man pursued, but pursued by enemies he does not wish to see, lest they should seem more hostile even than he had supposed, and he himself be made to feel guiltier and even more helplessly alone. most of bernard's isolation is self-imposed. mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism. (huxley 2006:47) the theme of loneliness is the gist of huxley’s figurative discourse and is observed in many chapters of the story. the repetition of the words alone and lonely and their semantic analogies (isolation, isolated, solitude, by himself) strengthen the stylistic effect of the utterances and respectively – the emotional armenian folia anglistika linguistics 14 impact on the reader. the impact becomes still more powerful through the successive repetition of the word (alone, alone) and the usage of such intensifiers as quite, terribly, always, more, miserably, hopelessly, even more helplessly. it is evident that the controlled mass entertainment and the seemingly happy life make people spiritually crippled, and this is what the system is striving to do in all totalitarian regimes. it is clear from the example below that books are burnt in ray bradbury’s fahrenheit 451 (1953) because, put in figuratively, a book is a loaded gun in the house next door, a very dangerous weapon because it can open the human hypnotized minds. we must all be alike. not everyone born free and equal, as the constitution says, but everyone made equal. each man the image of every other; then all are happy. so! a book is a loaded gun in the house next door. burn it. take the shot from the weapon, breach one man’s mind. (bradbury 1953:58) the above quote around which the whole narrative revolves, is the core of the plot in fahrenheit 451. books provide outside knowledge, and due to this new knowledge people will realize that they are forced to live in a seemingly perfect society and will rebel against the system. the same idea is observed in huxley’s brave new world (2006) where the system pre-conditions its inhabitants into artificial roles and anti-riot speeches, rendering them able to see only the single world-view imposed on them. this is done through eradicating the past: by a campaign against the past, by the closing of museums, the blowing up of historical monuments, by the suppression of all books. accompanied by a campaign against the past; by the closing of museums, the blowing up of historical monuments (luckily most of them had already been linguistics armenian folia anglistika 15 destroyed during the nine years’ war); by the suppression of all books published before a.f. 15o. (huxley 2006:36) in general, there are many situations of internal dystopia, each corresponding to elements of figurative discourse narrating the ruling powers. the largest motivating component is fear, typically from isolation, change and punishment. these are the main motivators in self-imposed dystopian behaviors that hold people back from experiencing life in fuller ways. to fully experience the joys and wonder of humanity, humans must live in a normal society, take responsibility for their actions, keep their eyes and minds open to greater understanding and deeper knowledge, value the life around them, and embrace themselves as members of existence. sf dystopian narrative is also characterized by the reflection of the cognitive notion of the more advanced technology available only to the group in power to improve their oppression, and thus the narrative features technology more advanced than we have today, and the group in power controls it. as in any kind of narrative, in sf narrative too, it is the character that shapes the story, makes the reader follow and get involved in it. the character can also be a robot, an android, a machine, other genuine invention of technology, which is presented in a detailed description. the dehumanizing nature of the society and a negative achievement of technology depicted in fahrenheit 451 is best reflected in the mechanized hound that is used to sniff out nonconformists: “it doesn’t like me,” said montag. “what, the hound?’ the captain studied his cards. “come off it. it doesn’t like or dislike. it just functions. it’s like a lesson in ballistics. it has a trajectory we decide for it. it follows through. it targets itself, homes itself, and cuts off. it’s only copper wire, storage batteries, and electricity.” (bradbury 1953:12) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 16 as an inanimate object, the hound is depicted in such figurative usages as the metaphor it doesn’t like or dislike, in the literal/literalized metaphor it’s only copper wire, storage batteries, and electricity and in the simile it’s like a lesson in ballistics. dystopian narrative is mostly the product of the 20th and 21st centuries. whether isolationist or open, insular or global, it is the cultural product of the age of discovery, technology and social structure. war, famine, disease, state terror, dictatorship, genocide, ecocide have provided fertile ground for this fictive/figurative underside of human imagination. this narrative type has produced challenging cognitive maps of the given historical situation by way of imaginary societies which are even worse than those that lie outside the author’s and the reader’s world. conclusion narrative is the primary means of comprehension and expression for our experience of events changing over time. the descriptive sf dystopian narrative that uses figurative language techniques with underlying socio-technological cognitive notions is presented in stories about oppression, dictatorship, devastation of the world by pollution, overpopulation and technology, destruction of human life and mind, and finally, rebellion and survival. it borrows features from reality, is involved with the concerns of the time and discusses them, but it does not depict contemporary society in general. the most important perspective element of sf dystopian narrative presented with the help of a most expressive language is its suggestion of some kind of warning (often implicit) of what will happen should present trends continue. references: 1. barthes, r. and duisit, l. (1975) an introduction to the structural analysis of narrative. // new literary history. vol. 6, n 2. baltimore, maryland: the johns hopkins university press, pp. 237-272. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 17 2. (2017) english oxford living dictionaries. oxford: oup. available at: <https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/dystopia> [accessed may 2017]. 3. marcus, e. (1999) speaking the ineffable: language and dystopia. // postmodern perspectives. london: university of north london. 4. (2017) merriam-webster inc. available at: <https://www.merriam-webster.com/ dictionary/dystopia> [accessed may 2017]. 5. meyers, w. (1990) aliens and linguists: language study and science fiction. athens: the university of georgia press. 6. mill, j.s. (1988) public and parliamentary speeches – november 1850 november 1868. toronto: university of toronto press. 7. moylan, t. (2000) scraps of the untainted sky. science fiction, utopia, dystopia. boulder: westview. 8. sicoe, v. (2013) utopia and dystopia – the many faces of the future. available at: <http://www.veronicasicoe.com/blog/2013/04/utopia-anddystopia-the-many-faces-of-the-future/> [accessed june 2017]. 9. sisk, d.w. (1997) transformations of language in modern dystopias (contributions to the study of science fiction & fantasy). westport: praeger. sources of data: 1. bradbury, r.d. (1953) fahrenheit 451. ny: random house. see also r. bradbury (copyright 2016) fahrenheit 451. available at: <https://canvas.instructure.com/courses/953654/files/35819853> [accessed february 2016]. 2. huxley, a. (2006) brave new world. new york: harper perennial. 3. orwell, g. (1990) nineteen eighty-four. london: penguin books. see also orwell, george (copyright 1999-2016) nineteen eighty-four – 1984. available at: <http://orwell.ru/library/novels/1984/english/> [accessed june 2016]. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 18 դիստոպիական պատմասության որոշ առանձնահատկությունների շուրջ դիստոպիան գիտաֆանտաստիկ պատմասության ձև է, որը հիմնըված է ժամանակային և տիեզերական ճամփորդությունների, վիրտուալ իրականության, բարձրակարգ տեխնոլոգիաների, գենետիկ ճարտարագիտության վրա և ներկայացնում է ապագա երևակայական աշխարհներ, որտեղ մարդն ու բնությունը հարստահարվում կամ ոչնչացվում են, որտեղ իշխում են բռնատիրական համակարգեր: հենց այսպիսի նկարագրություններն էլ ենթարկվում են վերլուծության սույն հոդվածում՝ բացահայտելու համար պատմասության համապատասխան ձևերն ու հնարները, փոխաբերական լեզուն և ճանաչողական հասկացությունները, որոնց միջոցով էլ դիստոպիան իրացնում է իր ոճաժանրային գործառույթները: microsoft word 1.linguistics 7 54 (3) linguistics armenian folia anglistika 17 imagery in action: g. orwell’s animal farm gaiane muradian yerevan state university abstract the present paper is a literary stylistic analysis that highlights the imagery, the allegorical significance, linguistic manipulation or abuse of language in the novel animal farm by george orwell. orwell’s sophisticated exposure of political abuse of language is one of the most typical characteristics of animal farm and an indispensable part of his imagery. seemingly a plain story of animals, inwardly this novel is an allegory that refers to power struggle, usurpation, intimidation, exploitation, hypocrisy, corruption, political racket and terror of the ruling classes in whatever form they may appear (human or animal). however serious the theme is, orwell has made it fictitious and amusing through his vivid imagery and artful use of literary devices. with its clear, deceptively simple, but creatively honed prose style and expressive language, the novel is a source of great aesthetic and intellectual pleasure and political insight. key words: orwell, imagery as a literary device, allegory, linguistic manipulation, political insight. introduction imagery, in a literary text, is the author’s use of vivid and descriptive language to add depth to the work (imagery 2016), the use of figurative language to represent ideas, actions, events, objects, characters in such a way that it appeals to human senses and deepens the reader’s understanding of the work. hence, the function of imagery in literature is to generate a visual presentation and to aid the reader’s imagination to envision scenes, events, characters described in written discourse. highly didactic intentions of the author are realized through effective use of imagery and different literary tools. for g. orwell the powerful forms of imagery used in his dystopian science fiction novel animal farm (first published in 1945, reprinted 57 times) are allegory (political allegory to be armenian folia anglistika linguistics 18 exact), symbolism, irony, satire, personification, farce, grotesque, caricature. in other words, orwell’s imagery is a device itself which combines all the mentioned literary forms of expression. in their turn, symbolism, satire, irony, personification, etc. are presented within an allegorical framework, thus making allegory the most important imagery means to present animals as symbols of historical figures (k. marx, v. lenin, j. stalin and others); groups and classes (the working class, mass media people, the military/police, etc.); leaders of countries (england, germany, turkey, etc.) (the newspeak dictionary 1984; rodden 1999), and to pass to the readers the general message that all violent revolutions which initially succeed in overthrowing totalitarian regimes, in time deteriorate into repressive regimes themselves and use linguistic manipulation as a means of propagating their false ideology. orwell’s “finely honed prose style works to near perfection and is superbly adapted to dealing with the central artistic difficulty involved in the animal farm project, that of making his characters believable as both animals and humans, or rather as animals with human characteristics” (molyneux 1989:2). orwell imagines animals and people alike and considers swinish nature a basis of corruption, a root of all evils. his imagery refers to power struggle, usurpation, intimidation, political racket and terror, manipulation, exploitation. all these are signs of tyranny and dictatorship, loss of liberty and security for common people. however serious the theme is, orwell has made it fictitious and amusing through his vivid imagery and artful use of literary devices. orwell (1968:7) once wrote of animal farm, “i tried with full consciousness of what i was doing to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole.” hence, we will not be mistaken if we say that when in action, orwell’s artistic imagery serves the aim of criticizing certain socio-political purposes and realities. orwell’s imagery in discourse the plot of the animal farm is based on a series of images which gave expression to the experience of totalitarianism. the plot is an extended allegory in which animals play the roles of the 1917 russian bolshevik revolutionaries. they overthrow and oust the human owners of the farm and set up a community in which all animals are at first equal but soon disparities start to emerge between the different species or classes and political corruption reigns supreme. the community’s ideology changes too, manipulated by individuals in positions linguistics armenian folia anglistika 19 of power (pig napoleon and his clan). the farm as a whole is devoured by propaganda “for reconciling the animals, for safeguarding the position of the pigs, and for winning privileges for the pigs’ clan” (ea fonseka1998-1999:11). the plot opens with the grotesque image of the human mr. jones (decoded as the russian tsar nicholas ii), the master of manor farm, whose dictatorship and tyranny provide an ideal situation for the animal revolution. no less imaginative is orwell’s ironical portrayal of the philosophically minded, swinish theorist old major who symbolizes a representative of marxist and leninist ideology and who initiated the revolution. he was twelve years old and had lately grown rather stout, but he was still a majestic-looking pig, with a wise and benevolent appearance in spite of the fact that his tushes had never been cut. (p. 2) major’s image of violence is concealed under pretentious kindness which appears in the antithesis made up of a wise and benevolent appearance and tushes which had never been cut. the younger pigs napoleon (lenin and stalin merged in one character), snowball (trotsky) and squealer (a propagandist representing mass media at large) formulate major’s principles into the ideology of animalism, defeat farmer jones in a battle, and set to building their animal farm. the image of the working-class or the common masses is depicted in the stupid cart-horse boxer who devotes himself to the cause with great zeal, committing his strength to the prosperity of the farm and adopting the maxims of hard work and the rightness of the ruler pig napoleon and his clan. finally, napoleon sells this loyal worker in order to buy more whiskey for himself. what enables napoleon to usurp power is essentially the low intellectual development of the working class represented by boxer. j. molineux (1989:11), considering orwell’s picture of the working class too “horrible and slanderous,” argues that of course “the intellectual development of workers is damaged by social conditions, by poverty, abysmal education and alienated labour” but “these characteristics are neither innate, nor unchangeable” and even “when the confidence to resist openly has been smashed, they are never as stupid, brainwashed and supine as orwell suggests here.” the degeneration of the revolution leads to the conflict between the utopian goals of equality, freedom and democracy and inner animal/human armenian folia anglistika linguistics 20 characteristics – greed and lust for power. false notions about superior intelligence, experience and leadership abilities of pigs are put forward to conceal the mentioned characteristics. the irony expressed in the linguistic units the more intelligent animals, it was their duty, generally recognised as being the cleverest of the animals and teaching and organising the others fell naturally upon the pigs in the context below suggest that pigs are not smart – they just use the power of seeming smart: major’s speech had given to the more intelligent animals on the farm a completely new outlook on life. they did not know when the rebellion predicted by major would take place, they had no reason for thinking that it would be within their own lifetime, but they saw clearly that it was their duty to prepare for it. the work of teaching and organising the others fell naturally upon the pigs, who were generally recognised as being the cleverest of the animals. (p. 7) to ensure a tiny minority’s material gain and control over wealth while keeping the vast majority oppressed, a strong political rhetoric is essential. to justify the pigs’ monopolization of resources – false statistics about the farm’s success is spread. when napoleon begins to act more like a human being – walking upright, sleeping in a bed, wearing clothes, carrying whips, tying ribbons on the tails of his offsprings to distinguish them from the rest of the pigs, draping his favourite sow with mrs. jonses’ clothes, drinking whisky, playing cards and getting involved in other activities that are against the original animalist principles, squealer uses powerful propaganda (an inevitable instrument of any politics) to justify the mentioned actions to other animals, to convince them that napoleon is a great leader, that they are cold, hungry and overworked due to the cruel schemes of external and internal enemies. napoleon’s wish to lead a materialistic pattern of life is an allusion to human politicians. the extravagant crown derby dinner shows the lifestyle of a corrupt politician “blind with class consciousness” (ea fonseka1998-1999:12). capital punishment on those rising against government are also features of a cruel dictatorship. the retrogression of the farm to its original state (in an even linguistics armenian folia anglistika 21 worse form) is the result of political deterioration. today, this is the reality behind the politics of many states. the abuse, the manipulation of language as an instrument of power and control is one of orwell’s central concerns. speaking about the importance of precise and clear language orwell believes that there is a close association between insincere, inaccurate, euphemistic, meaningless, manipulative, vague prose and oppressive ideology, that such a prose is a powerful tool of political manipulation “designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable” (orwell 2006), intended to hide the truth rather than to express it (shelden 1991:393). orwell’s sophisticated exposure of political abuse of language is one of the most typical characteristics of the animal farm and an indispensable part of his imagery. orwell’s imagery is particularly active when he explores the ways in which those in power often use rhetoric and language to twist the truth aiming at gaining political and economic control. hence, the author’s imagery is vividly expressed in his linguistic formulations referring to the seven commandments of animalism and their later distortions which aim at justifying the behaviour of the rulers. the original commandments, set up after the animals’ victory and written on the tarred wall in great white letters that could be read thirty yards away were supposed to keep order within the animal farm and prevent animals from following the human evil habits. the commandments were written on the tarred wall in great white letters that could be read thirty yards away. they ran thus: the seven commandments 1. whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. 2. whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend. 3. no animal shall wear clothes. 4. no animal shall sleep in a bed. 5. no animal shall drink alcohol. 6. no animal shall kill any other animal. 7. all animals are equal. (p. 11) for a while the rules are unviolated but as the story progresses, an ironic twist occurs in the original purpose of the seven commandments; each rule armenian folia anglistika linguistics 22 falls off the wall twisted and mangled and is secretly replaced with revised maxims. such conversion is symbolic of the mass media under a smug dictatorship benefiting the privileged few. the first two commandments (whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy; whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend) change into four legs good: two legs better. both this version and the simplified form of the original two slogans (four legs good, two legs bad) are presented as meaningless sounds bleated by the sheep and serving the purpose of drowning out dissenting opinion. the birds did not understand snowball's long words, but they accepted his explanation, and all the humbler animals set to work to learn the new maxim by heart. four legs good, two legs bad, was inscribed on the end wall of the barn, above the seven commandments and in bigger letters. when they had once got it by heart, the sheep developed a great liking for this maxim, and often as they lay in the field they would all start bleating “four legs good, two legs bad! four legs good, two legs bad!” and keep it up for hours on end, never growing tired of it. (p. 15) and finally there was a tremendous baying of dogs and a shrill crowing from the black cockerel, and out came napoleon himself, majestically upright, casting haughty glances from side to side, and with his dogs gambolling round him. he carried a whip in his trotter. there was a deadly silence. amazed, terrified, huddling together, the animals watched the long line of pigs march slowly round the yard. it was as though the world had turned upsidedown. then there came a moment when the first shock had worn off and when, in spite of everything – in spite of their terror of the dogs, and of the habit, developed through long years, of never complaining, never criticising, no matter what happened – they might have uttered some word of protest. but just at that moment, as though at a signal, all the sheep burst out into a tremendous bleating of – “four legs good, two legs better! four legs good, two legs better! four legs good, two legs better!” (p. 56) linguistics armenian folia anglistika 23 the other distorted slogans also present a most typical characteristic of the animal farm and are perfect examples of orwell’s sophisticated exposure of political abuse of language. commandment 4 (no animal shall sleep in a bed) becomes no animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets. “muriel,” she said, “read me the fourth commandment. does it not say something about never sleeping in a bed?” with some difficulty, muriel spelt it out. “it says, ‘no animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets,’” she announced finally. […] the rule was against sheets, which are a human invention. we have removed the sheets from the farmhouse beds, and sleep between blankets. (p. 29) when the animals find commandment 5 (no animal shall drink alcohol) changed into no animal shall drink alcohol to excess, they once again blame their memories for being faulty. but a few days later muriel, reading over the seven commandments to herself, noticed that there was yet another of them which the animals had remembered wrong. they had thought the fifth commandment was “no animal shall drink alcohol,” but there were two words that they had forgotten. actually the commandment read: “no animal shall drink alcohol to excess.” (p. 46) commandment 6 (no animal shall kill any other animal) is replaced by no animal shall kill any other animal without cause. a few days later, when the terror caused by the executions had died down, some of the animals remembered – or thought they remembered – that the sixth commandment decreed “no animal shall kill any other animal.” and though no one cared to mention it in the hearing of the pigs or the dogs, it was felt that the killings which had taken place did not square with this. clover asked benjamin to read her the sixth commandment, and when benjamin, as usual, said that he refused to meddle in such matters, armenian folia anglistika linguistics 24 she fetched muriel. muriel read the commandment for her. it ran: “no animal shall kill any other animal without cause.” somehow or other, the last two words had slipped out george orwell animal farm – 39 – of the animals’ memory. but they saw now that the commandment had not been violated; for clearly there was good reason for killing the traitors who had leagued themselves with snowball. (p. 38) commandment 7 (all animals are equal) – the only commandment that eventually remains on the wall – in its revised version reads: all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. for once benjamin consented to break his rule, and he read out to her what was written on the wall. there was nothing there now except a single commandment. it ran: all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. (p. 57) this final reduction of the seven commandments into all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others, is the ultimate example of the pigs’ systematic abuse of logic and language, a phrase presenting a senseless content in a seemingly plausible linguistic form, a manipulative idiom meaning that there can be different degrees of equality (some will be differentiated from all), therefore directly alluding to the hypocrisy of governments that pretend to adhere to the principle of absolute equality of their citizens but give power and privilege only to a small group. thus, by the end of the novel, after squealer repeatedly configures the commandments to decriminalize the pigs, the ideal of equality underwent an outrageous abuse serving only the interests of a bunch of corrupt rulers. the entire plot of the animal farm is most creatively summarized in the final man-pig feasting picture of the novel. on the one hand this picture presents “with superb irony the betrayal of revolutionary hopes” (molineux 1989:2) but on the other it is “a moment of gained consciousness, a potentially liberating linguistics armenian folia anglistika 25 discovery” (williams 1971:74) for animals/men who are gaping at the scene. and hopefully, for people who are living under totalitarian regimes too. twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. no question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. the creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which. (p. 60) conclusion george orwell’s animal farm is a strong criticism of the oppressive policy of a specific government. however, it has far broader application – it is a powerful artistic and imaginative attack on any political, military and rhetorical power that unjustly controls societies. orwell’s vivid imagery is tied to a rather rigidly structured animal allegory that discloses human experience of great historical and political value. the literary stylistic analyses of the novel’s general notions and the linguistic manipulations of the seven commandments of animalism, support the statement in the introduction that the author’s goal to fuse political and artistic purposes into one whole, is perfectly accomplished. thus, however serious the theme of animal farm, orwell has made it fictitious and amusing through his vivid imagery and artful use of literary devices. with its clear, deceptively simple, but creatively honed prose style and expressive language, the novel is a source of great aesthetic and intellectual pleasure and political insight. references: 1. ea fonseka, g. (1998-1999) “how swnish…! yet…” – a crirical analysis of george orwell’s animal farm. // sihouette. general sir john kotelawala defence academy journal, sri lanka. see also the online publication by academia (2016). available at: <http://www.academia.edu/6657939/_ how_swnish_a_critical_analysis_of_george_orwell_s _animal_farm> [accessed november 2015]. 2. imagery (copyright 2016) // wikipedia. wikimedia foundation, inc. available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/imagery> [accessed july 2015]. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 26 3. molyneux, j. (1989) animal farm revisited. // international socialism 2/44. see also john molyneux archive (2012) encyclopaedia of trotskyanism on-line (etol). available at: <https://www.marxists.org/history/etol /writers/molyneux/1989/xx/orwell.html> [accessed january 2016]. 4. orwell, g. (1968) collected essays, journalism and letters of george orwell. vol. 1. london: seeker & warburg. 5. orwell, g. (2006) politics and the english language. peterborough: broadview press. 6. rodden, j. (1999) introduction to understanding animal farm. westport/london: greenwood press. 7. shelden, m. (1991) orwell: the authorized biography. ny: harper collins. 8. (1984) the newspeak dictionary animal farm. available at: <http://www. newspeakdictionary.com/go-animal_farm.html> [accessed february 2015]. 9. williams, r. (1971) orwell. fontana modern masters. glasgow: collins. sources of data: 1. orwell g. (1987) animal farm: a fairy story. london: penguin books. 2. orwell (2004) animal farm. / aaargh internet edition. available at: <http://vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres4/afarm.pdf> [accessed february 2015]. ä³ïï»ñ³íáñáõãûáõýá ß³ñåù³ý ù»ç. æ. úñáõ»éç ²ý³ëý³ý»ñù³ í»åá ðá¹í³íá ·ñ³ï³ý-á׳ï³ý í»ñéáõíáõãûáõý ¿, áñá ï³ñ¨áñáõù ¿ å³ïï»ñ³ûçý ñ³ù³ï³ñ·ç, ³ûé³μ³ýáõãû³ý ¨ 黽í³ï³ý ß³ñ³ñïù³ý ¹»ñý áõ ýß³ý³ïáõãûáõýá æ. úñáõ»éç ²ý³ëý³ý»ñù³ í»åáõù: êáõûý ëï»õí³·áñíáõãûáõýý ³é»ñ¨áõûã ùç å³ñ½ å³ïùáõãûáõý ¿ ï»ý¹³ýçý»ñç ù³ëçý, μ³ûó áëï ¿áõãû³ý ³ûý çßë³ýáõãû³ý ûáõñ³óáõù, ù³õ³ù³ï³ý ³ñ³μ»ïáõù, ù³ñ¹áõ ïáõùçó ù³ñ¹áõ ß³ñ³·áñíáõù, ï»õí³íáñáõãûáõý áõ ïáéáõåóç³ å³ïï»ñáõ ·ñ³ï³ý ³ûé³μ³ýáõãûáõý ¿: ð»õçý³ïç í³é »ñ¨³ï³ûáõãû³ý ¨ ·ñ³ï³ý ñý³ñý»ñç ï»õçý ïçñ³éù³ý ßýáññçí ëáõûý éáõñç ã»ù³ïçï³ý ý»ñï³û³ýáõù ¿ áñå»ë ·»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý ù»í ý»ñáõåáí ûåïí³í ëï»õí³·áñíáõãûáõý: æñ å³ñ½, ñëï³ï, μ³ûó å³ïï»ñ³íáñ á×áí ³ãùç áýïýáõ í»åý áõýç ·»õ³·çï³ï³ý ¨ ù³õ³ù³ï³ý ù»í ýß³ý³ïáõãûáõý: microsoft word maket 2020-1(21) 19.02 doc.doc armenian folia anglistika methodology 98 content and language integrated learning: potential and obstacles of its implementation in russia tatyana sidorenko, alexandra kudryashova tomsk polytechnic university, school of core engineering education abstract reforms and initiatives applied to the field of russian higher education during the past decade focus particularly on extending the scope of communicative educational space and scientific fields integration. consequently, linguistic competence contributing to significant acceleration of the processes of globalization and internationalization of the society as a whole becomes the key component of higher professional education. it is necessary to ascertain that the current system of language education in russian universities fails to deal with the tasks in hand comprehensively. the search for more efficient didactical tools and ways of organizing teaching processes culminated in choosing the paradigm of integrated education, specifically, integration of subject knowledge and foreign language. this approach is well-renowned in scientific and educational literature as clil (content and language integrated learning). the major objective of the present article is to analyze the current attempts of implementing clil in russian universities through the example of tomsk polytechnic university. the analysis comprises the effectiveness of clil didactic capacity, the prerequisites for its emergence as well as needs and challenges in the system of russian higher education and intellectual labor market. as a conclusion, we offer a systematic list of measures that tend to improve the situation. key words: content and language integrated learning, professional training, synergetic effect, immersion, collaborative teaching, tandems. methodology armenian folia anglistika 99 introduction the paramount objective of russian higher education in accordance with the strategy for innovative development of the russian federation until 2020 is to assure success and well-being of russian society by ensuring a high level of population welfare and developing human resources in the fields of science, education, technology and innovation. meeting this objective is within the area of responsibility of russian universities (glagolev, et al 2014:426). for this reason, a lot of projects and programs aimed at the development of higher education have been implemented with the support of russian government and the ministry of education and science1. the global goals of these programs and projects are as follows: to increase the higher institutions’ competitiveness among the leading scientific and educational centers and to increase the attractiveness and competitiveness of russian education in the market of international educational services. the “triangle of knowledge” model, which implies the integration of three elements being education, research, and innovation, is considered to be of top priority in the process of creating an innovative society. the synergy between these spheres is completely consistent with the requirements of global economy based on knowledge (glagolev, et al 2014:426). knowledge, in turn, is acquiring the status of convergence and interdisiplinarity due to the meta-competences required by modern technological processes. comprising knowledge and competencies as well as unifying approaches applied for solving global tasks of the world level are aimed to generate common concepts of recognizing the ways to solve these tasks and intensify the need for international collaborations. ability to communicate, including fast language shift, which implies the ability of a communicator to join a discussion (written or oral) during the process of solving professional tasks of various levels, tends to be one of the most important requirements in addition to knowledge competences in subject areas. due to the primary responsibility for the teaching staff capacity building russian universities are taking up the challenges of modern society and beginning an active search for effective teaching methods. the classical nature armenian folia anglistika methodology 100 of the higher education of the soviet era is undergoing extensive renovation both at the level of education management and at the level of tools and didactics. in this case, we do not dare to assert that the approaches of the past have become obsolete, should be archived for the future generations and only signify the factual background and a certain stage of the development of russian higher education. on the contrary, we tend to believe that modern technological stage and resources accumulated in the form of experience and knowledge can improve organizational and pedagogical conditions of learning environment in a certain amount of synergy and, thus, significantly affect the effectiveness of russian higher education in general. the search for new teaching methods was based on the concepts of knowledge efficiency and practical focus of skills. their sustainability and stability are determined by the frequency of implementation practice, specifically, by direct involvement into the process of solving cognitive and personality-significant tasks. knowledge cognition and personalization are the key components determining the effectiveness of the obtained knowledge as well as its sustainability and stability (grigorieva 2016:223; tsarenkova, shpanovskaya 2016:187; kuznetsova, kuznetsov 2016:173; zaripova et al 2017:7; mehisto et al 2008:238; baker 2011:497; coyle et al 2010:17; van de craen et al 2007:9; meyer et al 2010:19; etc.). clil historical data we consider clil (content and language integrated learning) to be an example of effective approaches to university education. a distinctive feature of the approach is teaching in a foreign language when the foreign language is not a target object of study but a tool for studying other subjects. the approach under consideration is distinguished by augmenting the study of a foreign language with a functional nature. specifically, the major objective of studying a language is to practice it via oral and written tasks rather than to drill lexical and grammatical material and to construct correct statements based on rules. in other words, the framework of the clil approach enables learners to extend their content and language knowledge into realistic contexts (agolli r.i. methodology armenian folia anglistika 101 2013:20), solve professional problems and search for information in their professional domain. it is worth mentioning that originally it was not the initiative of the education stakeholders to implement the approach into the russian education system. the approach appeared at a time when the tasks of internationalization were gaining momentum and becoming more monumental; it was the period when foreign language competence was considered to be an integral part of the overall engineer competence and the need to save teaching and time resources increased. clil approach initially generated as a form of bilingual education and had slightly different objectives in contrast to the ones it has at present. moreover, it is worth noting that clil objectives can be special for different countries and are determined by the categories of incoming conditions and initial requirements ranging from cultural to political ones. these requirements include the following: the extent of university internationalization, the degree of the multilingual environment development, the level of incoming mobility, the degree of preparedness of the stakeholders being teachers and students, the level of development of teaching techniques and availability of practices. clil approach is frequently associated with emi (english as medium of instructions) approach, which does not specifically highlight teaching a professional foreign language as the goal of studying. as a rule, the emi approach is effective in english-speaking countries where english is the main and single language of instruction. indisputably, emi includes the adaptation methods, which facilitate understanding due to the fact that the primary goal is actually subject knowledge and it is the subject knowledge to evaluate. the language in this case acts only as a tool for information transmission and cannot be subjected to evaluation. the history of clil in the system of russian higher education is not extended due to the lack of the approved and adjusted practices and theoretical concepts. clil approach is rather controversial with regards to ambiguity of understanding and perception of a new didactics by academic community. moreover, the mentioned contradictions are observed both at the management armenian folia anglistika methodology 102 level and at the level of teaching, as well as at the level of understanding this practice by students and approving it. much depends on the latter due to the fact that if the practice is not accepted, for example, for the reason of students’ insufficient level of language proficiency, then the teachers’ motivation to do their work in an efficient and more creative way decreases. clil experience of tomsk polytechnic university the attempts to generalize russian experience concerning the clil developmental history were first made approximately 5 years ago, which can be seen from various theses and scientific publications (zaripova 2016:196; grigorieva 2016:223; almazova et al 2018:379; salekhova, danilov 2015:226; pichkova 2017:4; litvishko, chernousova 2015:4; zaripova, salekhova 2015:5; laletina 2012:4; gudkova, burenkova 2015:7; grigorieva, yakhina 2017:6; etc.). following the generalized experience we are going to conduct our own research covering clil education through the example of tomsk polytechnic university. herewith, our analysis assumes studying not only the current situation and prerequisites for its occurrence but also the potential of this approach from the standpoint of influencing the solution of multi-level tasks for different target groups. for a start, it is worthwhile to delve into the history of the issue and give brief information on how clil appeared in the “biography” of tomsk polytechnic university (tpu). thus, the approach under consideration replaced the approach of esp and interdisciplinary tandems, which were unique in nature and, virtually, had no analogues in the russian higher education system. let us provide a concise presentation of the tandems. interdisciplinary tandems emerged in the practice of tpu in 2008 and existed until 2011. the main intended purpose of tandems was the collaboration of subject teachers and english teachers while delivering a single training course. responsibility was distributed in accordance with the competences of teachers in the way that english teachers were responsible for the language component, while subject teachers were in charge of the subject knowledge delivering and skills development. such training was specified by the narrow methodology armenian folia anglistika 103 professional scope of the courses, namely, a specific purpose was determined by a definite knowledge area, for example, not just information technology and biomedicine, but “databases” and “nanocomposite polymer materials”, etc. no doubt this approach lies in the use of the esp approach and fully adopts its methodology but at the same time it has a more precise content based on “special purpose”. however, there arises a question: “what prompted the university to move to a new level of understanding this approach?” the answer is rather simple, the university was triggered to make such a decision due to dissatisfaction with learning outcomes, which, according to a preliminary hypothesis, was the consequence of the limitations concerning the proposed learning context and context-based language forms that were chosen as the teaching basis by language teachers, who did not have engineering education, and was confined to the formation of common professionally oriented skills and knowledge. in other words, the discussion of professional topics was reduced to the problems stating under the conditions of inability to find practical solutions. the effectiveness of the tandems was obvious; however, the massive introduction of such courses in the educational process required a significant increase in the time resource for the training materials development and implementation. in addition, this practice failed to provide the desired degree of sustainability while its effectiveness depended on a certain level of language proficiency (b2) of subject teachers. thus, the university had to abandon the “expensive” approach of tandems and make another attempt to optimize the resource and maximize performance by integrating subject and linguistic competencies as well as knowledge and to begin its clil history. consequently, by the time clil courses were introduced the university in the person of subject teachers already had quite a lot of experience in delivering subjects in a foreign language. accordingly, there was also a certain toolkit of methodological practices, including those created with the help of linguists (language teachers). however, even before the implementation of the new approach was triggered, the stakeholders started raising the following questions: armenian folia anglistika methodology 104  what level of subject teacher’s proficiency in a foreign language can be considered sufficient for the implementation of clil courses?  can a clil course have not a purely subject nature and be directed to the developing skills of academic writing, scientific communication, etc.?  what is the nature of the language and subject departments’ interaction?  what exactly serves as content: subject or language?  what to assess and in what way? it is fair to note that many of these questions have remained open, which once again justifies the necessity of conducting additional analysis and experiments in order to form a clearer understanding of the approach and developing its concepts and principles of organization and management. we will base our analysis on the identification of 1) the degree of appropriateness of the approach and 2) the reasons preventing its correct implementation, which would enable to consider the approach to be undoubtedly efficient. in conclusion, we will offer a set of measures contributing to the improvement of clil implementation in russian universities, in general, proceeding from our own experience and that of our colleagues. to begin with, let us determine the benefits of the clil approach drawing on the research conducted in the past (zaripova 2016:196; grigorieva 2016:223; shmakova, fokina 2016:4; filipovich 2015:5; popova et al 2018:14; etc.). now we are going to visualize the list of advantages, having preliminarily divided them into the following categories: subject, language, subject-language and meta-subject components. on the basis of the revealed content of each category, we will try to hypothetically determine the potentials for such stakeholders as universities, graduates and organizations. the results of the analysis are shown in figure 1. methodology armenian folia anglistika 105 figure 1. clil components and potentials for different stakeholders armenian folia anglistika methodology 106 having analyzed the advantages of the clil approach, we can conclude that it is quite effective and can be used in educational trajectories of universities in view of the fact that: 1. a foreign language and its studying in accordance with university programs should be continuous, which is different at present. in compliance of educational standards a foreign language is an obligatory course and is studied by students during the first two years in university. afterwards a two-year break follows. some universities find local resources to fill this gap offering elective courses, however, this practice is troublesome and unstable. the negative outcomes of such a break are detected at the level of master programs, when the program requirements greatly exceed the students’ level of a foreign language. a two-year break and the lack of practice and motivation to study a foreign language are to be blamed for this. as a result, the programs exist independently and the teachers have to alter their courses annually due to the need to adapt them to the level of students' preparedness, which also has a negative impact on the teachers’ motivation and the quality of education. 2. the clil approach implies a foreign language functional studying, which naturally increases the efficiency of mastering the subject area with the objective to develop communication skills required for solving professional tasks. 3. it is widely-known that the motivation to learn a foreign language is rather low in russia. this can be stipulated by the lack of necessity to use a foreign language in everyday situations due to the low level of migration and the dominant use of the russian language, which is spoken by the overwhelming majority of people in the country. in other words, despite the multinational nature of the country there is lack of the problem of multilingualism at large, and, therefore, there is no need for language integration as a factor of social well-being. hence, there is no need to equalize the professional opportunities of all graduates and develop training programs in a foreign language for all students. in this context, the use of the clil approach creates certain conditions of so called coercive nature or forced practice when a foreign language becomes the only language of instruction. however, there is a methodology armenian folia anglistika 107 sticking point here as well. according to the vice-rector of moscow state university, academician a. r. khokhlov, translating all courses into english is meaningful only when either the teachers or the students do not understand russian. the situation when everyone speaks russian at a far greater level than english, and the lectures are nevertheless delivered in english, will be at least unstable2. and this is the reason why the coercive nature must change its status of coercion to the status of necessity, which will be more accessible for each stakeholder (teachers, students, and management). 4. russian universities feel the need to expand the boundaries of education internationalization and to enter the world level of competitiveness. this task turns out to be quite complicated and is accompanied by such difficulties as a low percentage of promising and unique educational programs in foreign languages, which can attract more foreign students. the situation is due to the unpreparedness of the teaching staff to conduct their courses in a foreign language. thus, the clil approach is partially able to solve this problem by creating the conditions forcing continuous practice for teachers and constant development of language competence, because teaching professional disciplines in a foreign language becomes one of the prerequisites for qualifying a higher school teacher. 5. enterprises have a need to share experience with foreign colleagues, attract foreign investment, etc. however, the lack of professionals who are able to work in international groups and projects, to represent their organization at the international level (at foreign exhibitions, conferences, etc.) impedes meeting this objective. 6. russian education system has a rather rigid structure, which implies studying a certain set of disciplines with a set number of hours allocated for their mastering and it seems almost impossible to change this system. the clil approach can be integrated into the curricula of universities without the need for fundamental changes in view of its implementation flexibility. the choice of a model (partial clil, based on a modular system) can be chosen directly by a university with regards to the specific aspects of training, the level of armenian folia anglistika methodology 108 preparedness of teaching staff, specific professional requirements for future graduates. thus, the above stated arguments confirm our hypothesis about the feasibility of using content and language integrated learning in russian universities to a certain extent. however, as is well known, there is normally a clearly stated inconsistency between a theoretical possibility and practical realization. with the objective to find out whether russian universities understand how clil training should be structured and what methodology the approach has we conducted a survey among the subject teachers currently engaged in clil in order to get a general impression of their satisfaction and understanding of the didactic goals they are to reach and tasks they are to accomplish. clil survey results the survey comprises 35 subject-matter teachers of tpu. the participants for this research are lecturers of different academic rank and experience teaching different subjects – mechanical engineering, material science, computer science, and electrical engineering. all of them have the teaching experience in clil context at least of less than 2 years, if in percentage – 50% of respondents have been teaching clil for less than 2 years and 50% – for the period within 3-10 years. the question falls into the categories as a) three things you enjoy in teaching clil and three biggest challenges in it; b) specific feature of clil methodology, your insights in it (goals and objectives, main principles); c) three most important professional qualities needed for clil teaching; d) clil teaching materials, their accessibility and availability; e) assessment standards – three weak and strong points. the collected data show a wide range of responses regarding the overall attitude of the teachers towards clil pedagogy in general and their practice in it. we will present the answers in the order of frequency: – things they enjoy in clil – good support through constant practice to english language skills, acquiring new professional knowledge through original methodology armenian folia anglistika 109 sources, easy to teach and learn terminology; control absence from part of administration to clil teaching that gives more academic freedom to experiment; no restrictions in tools and materials; flexible teaching, we can change the content adjusting it to today’s needs of students; – the biggest challenges in clil – the level of students’ english proficiency is cardinally different. that complicates the process of preparation for teachers and does not influence positively the students’ motivation due to the extent of their involvement into exercising practical tasks and understanding how to combine different teaching methods and approaches – ‘should i teach the language and if yes, how, what is the balance between the language and content, and should i assess the language progress at the end of a course?’ 50/50 percent picture was obtained in terms of special preparation of teachers to run clil courses. thus, the most part of the teachers had a vague insight in how to work within the clil context. as specific features of clil methodology, particularly how teachers understand its essence and their functions in it, the most part responded that they see their role in preparing students to professional communication in english, being aware with basic professional vocabulary and terminology. as a key focus in clil methodology the teachers put the following (order of importance): subject knowledge (100%), language skills (100%), terminology, translation, academic speaking; academic writing was left as absolutely non-needed. their awareness in clil methodology the teachers evaluated as 25%. the students’ need satisfaction by means of clil courses the teachers evaluated as on average 39%. that is a sort of reflection and illustration of the teachers’ uncertainty in what they are doing in clil methodology, as well as its effectiveness and necessity. as for (c) part addressing professional teaching qualities to work with clil methodology, the teachers responded – high skills in english, wide professional outlook, communication skills. the qualities and skills the teachers need are: knowledge in clil methodology, how to motivate students. armenian folia anglistika methodology 110 from the part of teaching material in clil (d), almost 100% of the respondents answered that there are no special textbooks in clil; they use esp (developed by language teachers) or authentic materials, including video and audio, from the internet or other sources. the cooperation between language teachers in terms of developing teaching materials has the figures as 25/75 – no/yes correspondently. the last section of questions addressed the point of assessment (e), where the main question was: are you satisfied with the existing standards of assessing a clil course at the university? 100% of the respondents answered – no, identifying as an issue in it the lack of any standards on how to assess and particularly what to assess. the issue regarding the ratio between language and content remains still unsolved in tpu practice at least. consequently, the question about – do you think the existing assessment should be changed? 100% of the respondents gave the answer “yes”. as to resume, we have to point out some problematic zones that are required further research-based consideration and more real classroom observations. among these challenges or problematic zones we can refer to the following: 1) lack in knowledge regarding clil methodology, 2) lack in qualified or experienced clil teachers, 3) lack in learning materials. the materials to be used are lectures translated into english. consequently, after analyzing the survey findings we came to reckoning that the approach needs some changes to be more successful in practice. we present a chain: what is needed? what do we have now in the current situation? what can we do to make the situation better (table 1). table 1 clil 3d analysis what is needed current situation measures-actions motivated teaching staff without fear to using new methods and teaching tools. teaching staff have a vague insight in clil methodology; they are very resistant to demonstrating clil practices through workshops and advanced training programs; allocating additional hours for methodology armenian folia anglistika 111 changes. clil teachers to prepare materials for classes; reducing the teaching load; introducing additional stimuli (incentive payments). qualified teaching staff having the set of competences required for implementing clil courses. teachers do not have the necessary clil qualification. special competences in clil pedagogy; advanced training programs. lack of clil training programs. motivated students who understand the importance of a foreign language for developing the overall competence of an engineer. the majority of students do not see any feasibility in clil courses. the quality of classes is often low; the types of activities do not meet the requirements and personal needs of students. raising students awareness concerning the benefits of the high proficiency in a language; using a variety of activities in a class and relevant to goals learning material. peer professional communities that discuss current issues related to clil teaching at tertiary level. lack of a university-wide community for accumulating clil practices and experience. creating professional communities within the universities; encouraging clil teachers’ initiatives to participate in conferences, inter alia, international ones. developed universitywide clil conception with some regulatory functions and rules. lack of the unified clil concept. analyzing the existing experience of russian and foreign universities in practicing clil approach; developing the system of recommendations on adapting the approach to the settings of russian universities, with the focus on local or country-scale objectives and requirements; developing the clil university strategy and conception. armenian folia anglistika methodology 112 conclusion expanding practices and raising motivation to generate them will over time develop clearer concepts based on experience and regarding the specifics of the actual educational system. organizational measures such as the tandems of english teachers and subject teachers, professional communities for subject teachers who are involved into clil training will be able to reinforce the interdisciplinary component of the educational process. the identified measures for increasing capacity and acquiring a more positive experience should be approved by universities and included in their management policy possibly to be primarily implemented in pilot training projects. this implies additional funding as well as incentives in the form of reducing clil teachers' class hours. the university policy focused on the renewal of educational technologies should regard clil methods as one of the priority course of tertiary education development. thus, taking into account the considered concepts and potential of the clil approach, we can conclude that this approach can and should be implemented in russia despite certain difficulties associated with the specifics of the educational system. the measures proposed by the authors of the article are just hypothetical assumptions and possible directions of development, which need special attention when planning the universities activity in the course of modernization and globalization of educational processes. notes: 1. <http://government.ru/programs/202/events/> 2. training in english in high school: pros and cons. url: <http://www.strf. ru/material.aspx?catalogid=221&d_no=47139#.wbtkjc2ltiu>. references: 1. agolli, r.a. (2013) penetrating content and language integrated learning (clil) praxis in italian mainstream education: stemming novelties and visions. // research papers in language teaching & learning. vol. 4. 2. almazova, n.i.; baranova, t.a.; vdovina, e.k., et al (2018) integrirovannoe obuchenie inostrannym yazykam i professional'nym disciplinam. opyt methodology armenian folia anglistika 113 rossijskih vuzov. [integrated training in foreign languages and professional disciplines. the experience of russian universities.] 3. glagolev, s.n.; doroshenko, yu.a.; moiseev, v.v. (2014) aktualnye problemy investicij i innovacij v sovremennoj rossii [relevant problems of investments and innovations in modern russia]. // directmedia. 4. grigorieva, k.s. (2016) formirovanie u studentov tekhnicheskogo vuza inoyazychnoj kompetencii v sfere professional'noj kommunikacii na osnove tekhnologii clil (na primere napravleniya" tekhnicheskaya ehkspluataciya transportnogo radiooborudovaniya") [developing foreign technical competence of technical university students in the field of professional communication based on clil technology (using the example of "technical operation of transport radio equipment")]. doctoral dissertation. 5. baker, c. (2011) foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism. // multilingual matters. vol. 79. 5. coyle, d.; hood, p.; marsh, d. (2010) clil. available at: <https://www.unifg.it/> [accessed january 2019]. 6. filipovich, i.i. (2015) predmetno-yazykovoe integrirovannoe obuchenie. novyj shag v razvitii kompetencij [content-language integrated learning. a new step in the development of competencies]. // scientific herald of the southern institute of management. vol. 4. 7. grigorieva, k.s.; yakhina, r.r. (2017). ob opyte ispol'zovaniya tekhnologii predmetno-yazykovogo integrirovannogo obucheniya clil. [on the experience of using clil technology integrated language learning.] // relevant issues of humanitarian knowledge in modern society. 8. gudkova, s.a., & burenkova, d.yu. (2015). instrumenty prakticheskoj realizacii clil-tekhnologii v vuze [tools for the practical implementation of clil-technology in the university.] // science vector of togliatti state university. series: pedagogy, psychology, vol. 4. 9. kuznetsova, t.i.; kuznetsov, i.a. (2016) razvitie sistemy professional'noorientirovannogo obucheniya inostrannym yazykam v tekhnicheskom vuze na osnove predmetno-yazykovoj integracii [development of the armenian folia anglistika methodology 114 system of vocational-oriented teaching of foreign languages in a technical university on the basis of subject-language integration]. // bulletin of adygeya state university. series 3: pedagogy and psychology. vol.1. 10. laletina, t.a. (2012). integrirovannyj podhod i ispol'zovanie predmetnoyazykovoj integracii pri obuchenii inostrannomu yazyku [an integrated approach and the use of subject-language integration in teaching a foreign language.] 11. litvishko, o.m.; chernousova, yu.a. (2015) kompetentnostnoorientirovannaya model' obucheniya: preimushchestva metodiki clil v prepodavanii professional'no-orientirovannogo anglijskogo yazyka [competence-based learning model: the benefits of the clil methodology in teaching vocational-oriented english] // proceedings of the scientific and methodological readings pslu. 12. mehisto, p.; marsh, d.; frigols, m.j. (2008) uncovering clil content and language integrated learning in bilingual and multilingual education. // macmillan. 13. meyer, o. (2010) towards quality clil: successful planning and teaching strategies. // pulso. revista de educación. vol. 33. 14. pichkova, l.s. (2017) rol' predmetno-yazykovogo integrirovannogo obucheniya (clil) v formirovanii novyh obrazovatel'nyh tekhnologij v vysshej shkole [the role of content and language integrated learning (clil) in the development of new teaching techniques] // human capital. vol. 6. 15. popova, n.v.; kogan, m.s.; vdovina, e.k. (2018) predmetno-yazykovoe integrirovannoe obuchenie (clil) kak metodologiya aktualizacii mezhdisciplinarnyh svyazej v tekhnicheskom vuze. [subject-language integrated learning (clil) as a methodology for the actualization of interdisciplinary communication in a technical college.] // bulletin of the university of tambov. series: humanities. vol. 23. 16. salekhova, l.l.; danilov, a.v. (2015) clil-integrirovannoe predmetnoyazykovoe obuchenie: konceptual'naya ideya, preimushchestva, modeli methodology armenian folia anglistika 115 [clilcontent-language integrated learning: conceptual idea, advantages, models] // kazan science. vol. 12. 17. shmakova, o.v.; fokina, m.m. (2016). integrirovannoe yazykovoe obuchenie-vazhnaya sostavlyayushchaya podgotovki ehffektivnyh i konkurentosposobnyh specialistov [integrated language learning is an important component of training efficient and competitive specialists]. 18. tokareva, e.yu. (2017) predmetno-yazykovoe integrirovannoe obuchenie kak metodika aktivizacii processa obucheniya inostrannomu yazyku. [content-language integrated learning as a method of activating the process of teaching a foreign language]. // issues of teaching methods in high school. vol. 6. 24. tsarenkova, v.v.; shpanovskaya, s.i. (2016) perspektivy prakticheskoj realizacii clil-tekhnologii v uchebnoj srede vuza [on the issue of linguistic advantages of content-language integrated learning]. // works bstu. series 6: history, philosophy. vol.5. 25. van de craen, p.; mondt, k.; allain, l.; gao, y. (2007) why and how clil works. an outline for a clil theory. // views. vol. 16. 26. zaripova, r.r.; salekhova, l.l. (2015) k voprosu o lingvisticheskih i kognitivnyh preimushchestvah integrirovannogo predmetno-yazykovogo podhoda v obuchenii (clil) [to the question of the linguistic and cognitive advantages of the content-language integrated approach to learning (clil)] // international journal of experimental education. vol. 8. 27. zaripova, r.r. (2016) modelirovanie obucheniya na inostrannom yazyke v vuze na osnove integrirovannogo predmetno-yazykovogo podhoda [modeling of teaching in a foreign language in a higher educational institution on the basis of an integrated subject-language approach] dissertation, candidate of pedagogical sciences: 13.00.01. 28. zaripova, r.r.; salekhova, l.l.; danilov, a.v. (2017) interaktivnye veb 2.0-instrumenty v integrirovannom predmetno-yazykovom obuchenii [interactive web 2.0-tools in integrated subject-language training]. // higher education in russia. vol.1. armenian folia anglistika methodology 116 բովանդակության և լեզվի ինտեգրացված ուսուցման կիրառման հնարավորություններն ու խոչընդոտները ռուսաստանում վերջին տասնամյակում ռուսաստանում բարձրագույն կրթության ոլորտում կատարված բարեփոխումներն ու նախաձեռնությունները հիմնականում սևեռված են հաղորդակցման կրթական տարածքի ընդլայնման և գիտական ոլորտների ինտեգրացման վրա: հետևաբար, հասարակության համաշխարհայնացման ու միջազգայնացման գործընթացի արագացմանն էապես նպաստող լեզվական գրագիտությունն ընդհանուր առմամբ դառնում է բարձրագույն մասնագիտական կրթության գլխավոր բաղկացուցիչներից: հարկ է նշել, որ ռուսական համալսարաններում լեզվի կրթության ներկայում գործող համակարգերին չի հաջողվում առկա խնդիրների համակողմանի լուծում առաջարկել: առավել արդյունավետ դիդակտիկ գործիքների և դասավանդման պրոցեսի կազմակերպման նոր եղանակների փնտրտուքի արդյունքում ընտրվել է ընդհանուր կրթական հարացույց, ավելի ստույգ՝ կոնկրետ առարկայի և օտար լեզվի իմացության համադրությունը: այս մոտեցումը գիտակրթական գրականության մեջ հայտնի է clil (բովանդակության և լեզվի ինտեգրացված ուսուցում) անվամբ: սույն հոդվածի նպատակն է վերլուծել ռուսական համալսարաններում clil-ի կիրառման ներկա փորձը՝ տոմսկի պոլիտեխնիկական համալսարանի օրինակի հիման վրա: վերլուծությունը ցույց է տալիս clil-ի դիդակտիկ հնարավորությունները, դրա ծագման նախադրյալները, ինչպես նաև ռուսաստանի բարձրագույն կրթության համակարգում և աշխատաշուկայում առկա խնդիրներն ու մարտահրավերները: հոդվածում առաջարկվում է միջոցառումների համակարգված ցանկ, որը կարող է նպաստել իրադրության բարելավմանը: received by the editorial board 26.08.2019 recommended for publication by the reviewers 26.12. 2019 accepted for print 13.01.2020 << /ascii85encodepages false /allowtransparency false /autopositionepsfiles true /autorotatepages /none /binding /left /calgrayprofile (dot gain 15%) /calrgbprofile () 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(www.heidelberg.com) >> /namespace [ (adobe) (common) (1.0) ] /othernamespaces [ << /asreaderspreads false /cropimagestoframes true /errorcontrol /warnandcontinue /flattenerignorespreadoverrides false /includeguidesgrids false /includenonprinting false /includeslug false /namespace [ (adobe) (indesign) (4.0) ] /omitplacedbitmaps false /omitplacedeps false /omitplacedpdf false /simulateoverprint /legacy >> << /addbleedmarks false /addcolorbars false /addcropmarks false /addpageinfo false /addregmarks false /convertcolors /converttocmyk /destinationprofilename () /destinationprofileselector /documentcmyk /downsample16bitimages true /flattenerpreset << /presetselector /mediumresolution >> /formelements false /generatestructure false /includebookmarks false /includehyperlinks false /includeinteractive false /includelayers false /includeprofiles false /multimediahandling /useobjectsettings /namespace [ (adobe) (creativesuite) (2.0) ] /pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /documentcmyk /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /usedocumentprofile /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2540 2540] /pagesize [595.276 841.890] >> setpagedevice microsoft word contens verjin linguistics armenian folia anglistika 59 small talk in english and armenian ani vanyan yerevan state university abstract the present article is aimed at presenting an analysis of the pragmatic functions of small talk in the light of general principles of linguistics in order to explore phatic communication (a verbal communication between a speaker and a hearer to maintain social relationship) between the interlocutors in english and armenian languages. the investigation of the cases under study shows that the functions and ways of expressing small talk have not only gender differences, but also cultural peculiarities. phatic utterances may also serve as markers of interlocutors’ gender, education, age and social status. in general, the use and avoidance of phatic cues in conversations affect the contact and relations between the interlocutors. key words: small talk, phatic communication, phaticity, “how are you” utterances, conversational move. introduction phatic communication is a verbal communication between a speaker and a hearer to maintain the social relationship between them, without emphasising the information content of the communication. the maintenance of the social relationship between the two sides is carried out by breaking the silence, starting a conversation, making small talk, making gossip, keeping talking, expressing solidarity, creating harmony, creating comfort, expressing empathy, expressing friendship, expressing respect and politeness. the term phatic (from greek phatos: spoken) originated in the writings of the british functionalist school of linguistics. the first usage of the term is armenian folia anglistika linguistics 60 considered to be by bronisław malinowski in his essay “the problem of meaning in primitive languages” (1923). phatic communication is also known as phatic communion, more commonly as small talk. since its introduction, small talk has been used as a concept in sociolinguistics, semantics, stylistics, and communication, and usually points out a conventionalized discourse type. “phaticity” is a multidimensional potential for talk in many social settings, where speakers’ relational goals supersede their commitment to factuality and instrumentality” (coupland, coupland, robinson 1992). a historical review the phrase “phatic communion” is closely connected with ritualized aspects of social interaction. malinowski defined phatic communion as “language used in free, aimless, social intercourse” (malinowski 1923). recent terms such as “phatic communication” and “phatic speech” emphasize mostly the function of conversations. noteworthy is jakobson’s characterization of phatic communion. he points out that phatic communion is part of the communication model he proposes. according to this model, any speech event has six factors and each of these factors is associated with a function of language. the six factors are: the addresser, addressee, message, code, context, contact; and respectively the emotive, conative, poetic, metalingual, referential, and phatic functions of language (jakobson 1960). putting emphasis on the difference of jakobson’s definition to that of malinowski, schneider (1988) notes that malinowski stressed more the creation of ties or the relational goal of phatic messages, while, for jakobson, phatic utterances help to maintain contact between speakers of a speech event. abercrombie pointed out that, “the actual sense of the words used in phatic communion matters little” (abercrombie 1956). bull and roger (1982) defined the term phatic as “speech that initiates conversation but that is [...] conventional and ritualised, such as hello, how are you?’ etc. neither approach offers much cross-cultural insight, as the functions of phatic communion are linguistics armenian folia anglistika 61 highly variable across cultures. it is of great importance to understand how and when a certain conversation can be categorized as phatic or not. it is of great importance to attempt to discover pragmatic and communicative functions of phatic talk in face-to-face communication. in trying to do so, we will compare the degrees of phaticity found in the responses to the question how are you? among the british and armenians. analyzing functions of small talk though small talk has little useful purpose, it is a very important bonding ritual for managing interpersonal distance. the main pragmatic function is to help establish relationships between friends and new acquaintances. the desired function is often dependent on the point in the conversation at which the small talk occurs. small talk can occur at the beginning of a conversation. when the talkers do not know each other well enough, it allows them to show that they have friendly intentions and desire positive interaction. in case of already existing relationship between the two talkers, their small talk serves as an introduction which provides ground for engaging in more functional topics of conversation later. the main pragmatic function here is to signal the speakers’ own mood and to sense the mood of the other person. the following example from salinger’s “a perfect day for a bananafish” (1953) is a good illustration of a small talk at the beginning of a conversation: “hey. hello, sybil.” “are you going in the water?” “i was waiting for you,” said the young man. “what's new?” “what?” said sybil. “what's new? what’s on the program?” “my daddy's coming tomorrow on an airplane,” sybil said, kicking sand. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 62 “not in my face, baby,” the young man said, putting his hand on sybil's ankle. “well, it's about time he got here, your daddy. i’ve been expecting him hourly. hourly.” (salinger 1953) the above mentioned dialogue proves that the speakers do not know each other well. this phatic utterance shows also the difference between the age of the interlocutors. small talk can occur at the end of a conversation, as well. suddenly ending an exchange may risk at rejecting the other person. the pragmatic function of small talk here is to mitigate that rejection, affirm the relationship between the two people, and soften the parting. small talk can act as a space filler to avoid silence. in many cultures, silence between two people is usually considered impolite. this tension can be reduced by starting phatic talk until a more factual subject arises. small talk may be extensively used in phone calls. there are instances of phone conversations in salinger’s “nine stories”, which we would like to analyze here. here are examples from “a perfect day for bananafish” (1953) and “pretty mouth and green my eyes” (1953): “hello,” she said, keeping the fingers of her left hand outstretched and away from her white silk dressing gown, which was all that she was wearing, except mules her rings were in the bathroom. “i have your call to new york now, mrs. glass,” the operator said. “thank you,” said the girl, and made room on the night table for the ashtray. (salinger 1953) summing up, we can say that the sub-paradigms of phatic communication are following: communication starters – greetings. communication supporters – pause fillers. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 63 communication terminators – with the main function of establishing a continuing consensus for the future encounters. phatic talk among the british and armenians the fact that how are you? (hay?) occurs routinely in every person’s life, hay? utterances are considered to be central examples of phatic communication. when asked, how are you? by an acquaintance not known well, a person chooses such a simple, generalised answer as, i am good, thank you. in this case it is not appropriate to reply with a list of symptoms of any medical conditions suffered from. if such a reply is chosen, it means that the two speakers know each other quite well. otherwise, this may create an uncomfortable situation. hay? utterances are a class of conversational moves that need not be delimited as to precise forms and functions. as to the criteria we have been discussing, they have a clear phatic potential (coupland, coupland, robinson 1992). berger and bradac (1982) noted that how are you? is often not intended to produce self-revelation but rather merely to signal acknowledgement of the other. the authors also commented that literalist interpretations of how are you? are the basis of an old joke: a: how are you? b: i have bursitis; my nose is itching; i worry about my future; and my uncle is wearing a dress these days. (berger and bradac 1982) from this point of view, we can compare armenian and british and american answers to how are you? and say that what is a joke for the latter, is quite a natural thing for the former. when asked a simple question how are you? armenians are likely to tell about latest events, about different symptoms of illnesses, about their neighbour’s daughter who married a very rich man, etc. this is especially true for elderly people. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 64 in order to find responses of native english speakers we have used the data from the article “how are you? negotiating phatic communion” (coupland, coupland, robinson 1992). the corpus in the article is a series of interviews with elderly people (34 women and 6 men) aged 64 to 90. all were volunteers who attended a day centre (social club) in cardiff, united kingdom. they were asked to be involved in a survey of experiences of health care, making it clear that the interviewers were not themselves health practitioners or health specialists of any sort. they were asked a series of prepared questions about health care. the first verbal step was a conversational move: how are you? said smiling and without any primary stress. the research proves that elderly speakers did tend to behave more disclosively than younger adults. this article, therefore, was particularly interested to examine responses elderly people make to hay? utterances. only a few uncontroversially phatically oriented responses did emerge: a: alright, thank you. b: oh, i’m fine thank you. in order to compare the answers of armenian elderly people, i conducted my own survey. the same question was asked to the elderly people among my relatives and neighbours, and surprisingly enough, no one gave a positive, phatically oriented answer. they either did not respond at all or gave a negative response. a: այնքան էլ լավ չեմ: not so well.) b: դե, հետս մի բան կատարվում է, ամեն ինչ վատ է: something is going wrong with me. everything is out of order. c: ո ՞ նց պիտի լինեմ, նույնիսկ դեղի փող չկա: how do i feel? i even do not have money for medicine. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 65 in many cases the native english speakers used filled pauses (oh; well; erm; etc.) which signal the pragmatic function of self-appraisal. a: oh (…) not too bad. (there are five initial oh-s) b: well (…) up and down like you know (there are 2 initial well-s) c: erm, not too bad. the same phenomenon was observed in case of our investigation among the armenians. moreover, except filled pauses, there were also some utterance post-qualifiers (a local dialect feature). the not too bad formula is common with the native speakers of both languages: responses of english speakers: a: not too bad. b: well, i’m not so bad. c: well, could be better. d: not too bad, could be better i suppose. e: coming on. responses of armenian speakers: a: նորմալ էլի, ոնց գիտես: not bad. nothing has changed. b: էսպես էլ մնա` վատ չի: not too bad. c: ոտքի վրա: on feet. (figuratively) d: ոչինչ էլի: so-so. the above mentioned examples of small talk show how the phrase not too bad has become conventionalised as a hay? response, at least in our own cultural context. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 66 another way of mitigating the impact of initial negative appraisals is to give information on specific medical circumstances in the form of justifications. a: well not very well, i’ve just had a bad fall. b: well, i’m not feeling very well at all. c: not very well, i suffer from awful depression. good for my age and as well as can be expected formats are more observed among the interviewees from the united kingdom than those form armenia. a: fine, well a few aches and pains like everybody else, but still ... b: oh, quite good really, um ... c: well, i’m alright, i don’t grumble, i’m eighty-one. d: not too bad, keeping stable. another difference observed is the fact that nearly all the responses of elderly people from the uk were made with laughter. even where it is a negative appraisal, it is again mitigated. the results of our investigation are represented in the table below. figure 1 % english interviewees (40 people) armenian interviewees (40 people) negative responses 25% 35% positive responses 10% 20% not too bad formulas 55% 45% phatically oriented responses 10% 0% linguistics armenian folia anglistika 67 we have carried out another investigation in an armenian hospital with different age groups to find out phatic and non-phatic responses. the results are represented in the table below: figure 2 % interviewees aged 15-30 (20 people) interviewees aged 30 and more (20 people) phatic 85% 60% non-phatic 15% 40% as evident from the table, there is a great difference between the age groups. younger people’s responses are phatically oriented to a great extent. we observed the following answers to the doctor's question how are you? a: լավ եմ, դուք ինչպես եք: fine, and you? b: լավ, շնորհակալություն: fine, thank you. c: ըմմմմ… (silence) hmmm. of course, we can argue that all the responses are phatic. but nearly all of the respondents, irrespective of the observed language, are vivid examples of malinowski’s original concept of phatic communion. conclusion as it has been shown the rules and topics of phatic communication can differ widely between cultures. the differences are observed even in responses to such a generalized and simple question as how are you? the responses differ in the degree of their phaticity in the observed languages, i.e. english and armenian. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 68 as our research proves, the nature of small talk conversations greatly depends on people’s age. younger people tend to give phatically oriented responses, whereas elderly people’s responses depend on particular topic or transaction. references: 1. coupland, j.; coupland, n.; robinson, j.d. (1992) how are you? negotiating phatic communion. // language in society, vol. 21 (2). cambridge: cup. 2. malinowski, b. (1923) the problem of meaning in primitive languages. // the meaning of meaning. london: routledge. 3. goffman, e. (1959) the presentation of self in everyday life. new york: doubleday. 4. salinger, j.d. (1953) nine stories. us: little, brown and company. դատարկ խոսակցությունը անգլերենում և հայերենում սույն հոդվածն ուսումնասիրում է դատարկ խոսակցության գործաբանական գործառույթները լեզվաբանության ընդհանուր սկզբունքների լույսի ներքո անգլերենում և հայերենում: նպատակը խոսքարկային հաղորդակցության ուսումնասիրությունն է: հետազոտությունը փաստում է, որ խոսքարկային հաղորդակցության գործառույթները և արտահայտման միջոցները ունեն ոչ միայն գենդերային տարբերություններ, այլև մշակութային առանձնահատկություններ: խոսքարկային արտահայտությունների օգտագործումը և դրանցից խուսափելը կարող են ազդել խոսողի և խոսակցի հարաբերությունների վրա: maket 2014_layout 1.qxd t.e. lawrence’s idea on how to solve the armenian question naira gasparyan yerevan state university abstract t.e. lawrence’s specific perception of the turks and of the armenians is analyzed within the frames of this particular research article. t.e. lawrence’s biographical-documentary novel the seven pillars of wisdom and his famous interview given to the american journalist and editor lincoln steffens have been the material of our cultural and linguostylistic study. an attempt is made to establish the true image of the young turks and the armenians who were killed by the turks because of their national identity. lawrence depicts turkish atrocities with some highlighted negative emotion. key words: cultural perceptions, linguostylistic analysis, young turks, armenians, perfect massacre. introduction t.e. lawrence’s (lawrence of arabia) perception of various oriental cultures is very specific. what we are interested in is his interpretation of the turks, the arabs and the armenians and their cultural values. for this purpose we have focused on lawrence’s biographical-documentary novel the seven pillars of wisdom and the famous interview given to the american journalist and editor lincoln steffens. to understand lawrence’s attitude towards other nations we need to be aware of the political-military situation lawrence found himself in. the situation was really complex and its roots ran into the past and involved the intertwined histories of the ottoman and the british empires, islam and the arab speaking world. lawrence, who managed to succeed because of his very specific ability – awareness of the vast cultural, political and military-technical differences of the nations and states involved in the war, was a british army liasion officer and a military advisor to the arab army. particularly, through a minute cultural and linguostylistic analysis, we have made an attempt to establish lawrence’s perception of young turks, and the armenians who were slaughtered by the turks because of their ethnicity. analysis: turks lawrence, being a military man, depicts turkish atrocities with some highlighted negative emotion: (1) the turks cut the throats of their prisoners with knives, as though they were butchering sheep. the author introduces the climax in the second part of the sentence. the emotionalexpressive-evaluative overtones are introduced by the clause where the image of prisonarmenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 171 ers being butchered like sheep is horrible. butchering sheep is shocking even in the direct meaning. the author simply creates a very vivid image which characterizes young revolutionary turks who kill, yet never shudder. the author uses no epithets or attributes, like inhumane, or savage. however, the image speaks for itself. to understand it wholly the reader is expected to be aware of the existing cultural-national characteristics of the turks and the social environment. lawrence’s keen observations reveal that during the period of 1916-1918 the turks had one aim: (2) turkey made turkish for the turks – yeni-turan – became the cry. in the above example the adduced informative and evocative functions of speech are so delicately interwoven that they present a unity, moreover, the unity is highlighted with this t alliteration, which seems to be warning – the turks were getting ready for some undesirable secret activity. (<http://www.trismegistos.com/magicalletterpage>) the last part of the utterance, became the cry, used metaphorically, is the climax, which emphasizes the turkish truth – everything connected with the turks, turkey should belong to the turks which on the surface level is not bad, but reading between the lines it becomes evident that the turks have been striving for yeni-turan: this simple idea sounds like a bunch of threats, it contains some very severe hint about negative forces in store – about ruining, slaughtering, annihilating everything and everybody – everything and everybody that appeared to be non-turkish by origin and nature. it was a signal about capturing others’ lands, enslaving others’ language, annihilating others’ religion, owing others’ culture and, finally, about the ethnic cleansing of other nations living on the lands of the turkish desire. that was the culture, strategy and attitude adopted by the young turks – a feature inherited from sultan hamid ii – lawrence is sure. when others’ historical and cultural monuments and values are abolished or owned young turks may seem to be even more revolutionary. (3) ...they must purge their empire of such irritating subject races as resisted the ruling stamp. the ruling stamp, a periphrasis, is used to stress the turks’ unrestricted negative power, while still another periphrasis, such irritating subject races, comes as a negative evaluation of the nations, armenians among them, who appeared to be viewed by the turks as enemy because of their culture and riches. the modal verb must combined with to purge is used to indicate how urgent it was for the turkish government to get rid of those “unimportant” nations. let us adduce another very informative passage for the analysis. (4) later there had been nationalist movements in egypt, in india, in persia, and finally in constantinople, where they were fortified and made pointed by the new american ideas in education: ideas which, when armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 172 released in the old high oriental atmosphere, made an explosive mixture. the american schools, teaching by the method of inquiry, encouraged scientific detachment and free exchange of views. quite without intention they taught revolution, since it was impossible for an individual to be modern in turkey and at the same time loyal, if he had been born of one of the subject races – greeks, arabs, kurds, armenians or albanians – over whom the turks were so long helped to keep dominion. as can be seen from the passage the nominal syntagms, the old high oriental atmosphere, explosive mixture, scientific detachment, free exchange of views, quite without intention, obtain significantly highlighted value when they appear in the same context together with the american schools, they taught revolution, it was impossible for an individual to be modern in turkey and at the same time loyal, born of one of the subject races (greeks, arabs, kurds, armenians or albanians). these syntagmatic word-combinations add considerable flavour to the whole passage, building on to the main idea. the climax comes to the close, and here the key unit is so long helped to keep dominion. it actually gives a hint of a certain steady and destructive policy – the turks, otherwise, could not have been so powerful and potent in achieving or bringing about a particular effective result concerning turks were keeping their dominion... the verbs to encourage, to teach, to help become of major importance in this particular context. progressive and modern american education turns out to be rather dangerous in an oriental atmosphere, specifically in the turkish context, where it obtains the status of an explosive mixture. the victims of the young turks had only one fault – their national identity. just for that very reason the armenians, the arabs, both muslim and christian, were slaughtered. (5) the young turks had killed the armenians, not because they were christians, but because they were armenians; and for the same reason they herded arab moslims and arab christians into the same prison, and hanged them together on the same scaffold. through repetition and parallelism (not because...but because; the same reason, the same prison, the same scaffold) the author manages to emphasize and transmit the most important piece of information. in the second case, the hopelessness of the situation is intensified and the evocative function is successfully realized, due to change of the nominal component in the parallel syntagmatic word-combinations presented. instead of using the term ethnic cleansing, lawrence uses a longer and more powerful explanation, thus making certain impact on the readers’ feelings. the conjunctions but and and in this particular context display new textual meanings: they emphasize the turks’ inhuman and monstrous policy towards other nations. the prepositions for, into, on act as a kind of intensifiers whose aim is to stress how dangerous and hopeless the situation was. lawrence does not use any evaluative adjectives to present the turks’ atrocities, he abstains from expressing his personal opinion and attitude, he simply lays down the facts which speak for themselves. armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 173 analysis: armenians during his activity of a liaison officer lawrence managed to closely study the armenians, their lifestyle, preferences, national characteristics, national wisdom, national demeanor. lawrence’s negative attitude towards the armenians is not quite obvious in the book, it is rather highlighted in his interview given to lincoln steffens, in 1919, entitled armenians are impossible. as the author of the interview puts it: (6)…why we americans should go halfway around the world to take charge of the armenians and not only save them from the turks, greeks, french, italians, british and themselves, but, somehow, to save ourselves from ourselves and them. he said, for example, that the armenians were “the last word in human impossibility”. the pronouns themselves and ourselves being in syntagmatic relation with the verb to save express the author’s intent clearly. armenians expect others to save them, the most impressive key word-combination which can be viewed as a cognitive one is to save them from themselves. it gives a hint that his perception of the armenians is very unique. the passage ends with an unexpected phrase the last word in human impossibility. (7) ….he had some inexpressible sympathy or – let me rather say – some knowledge or experience of the armenians that gave him a human understanding for the turks (and all the other near neighbors of the armenians), who are forever trying to kill off this orphan race. lawrence uses an epithet orphan race to define the armenians. most probably he meant that no other nation wanted to take care of them, because they themselves were somehow indifferent towards their own needs. the reporter adds: (8) so he did not say that the armenians should be killed off. he only gave me the impression, at the time, that that was the sole solution of the armenian problem; and that that was his reason for desiring us americans to take on the job. the attributive word-combination orphan race in the above sentence (7) and the attributive syntagm sole solution in the sentence below (8) seem to carry a certain message, but unfortunately the message, which at first sight seemed implied, reveals the hidden intent. it sounds like a resolution, a deadlock, a destiny for a whole nation. killing and wiping this orphan race off the world seems to be the only solution. but the worst is yet to come. all the other old rival races never finished the job, because their aesthetic pleasure in the killing of armenians was fully satisfied before all the armenians were dead. armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 174 (9) he made me feel, that the turks shouldn’t do it; they were too rough and ready – and not christians. nor the greeks; they enjoyed it too much and were inefficient; they never finish anything, and when their aesthetic pleasure in the killing of armenians was sated they quit. and so with all the other old rival races. they stopped work before all the armenians were dead. yet another very interesting feature of the armenians is established by lawrence – they are blessed by god, they cannot be abolished, cannot be wiped off the surface of the earth. his dissatisfaction, that they produce offsprings in a controlled and organized way, is expressed through the stylistic repetition of to breed in the past indefinite tense – bred and bred and bred, then participle i of to spread – spreading and spreading which means they spread incessantly. there are millions of them, all meek, gentle, obedient, unprotesting, and lovely, attractive in a graceful way. in the last part of the sentence the consonants s, p, b, through alliteration, create an atmosphere of secrecy beneficial for breeding and spreading. the adverb slyly points out that the armenians are self-contained in private matters, they are clever and tend to keep thoughts and feelings private. (10) even when they all went at the task together they invariably left a couple here and a couple there: adams and eves who, the moment one’s back was turned, bred and bred and bred so that the next time one visited armenia there were the armenians as before, millions of them, all meek and lovely, but busy by day at business and at night secretly breeding and slyly spreading and spreading…. from the next paragraphs we learn that being practical the english think about solid things – oil, ore, air, the sea and they are not fit for a perfect massacre of the armenians, they still have a dream – a world government must be founded. lawrence has one truth for the armenians – they have no lack of thrift, and they, the british and the americans, should teach them to work hard to succeed. armenians will practise medicine, law. the trouble really is that all those old races that have been civilized, and once dominated the world and worked it, have lost control. they have gone forward logically, psychologically, physiologically. here the stem logically is repeated for three times for some stylistic effect. lawrence thinks they, armenians, do not care for hard labor, the armenians should work for armenia and not armenia for the armenians. ex-civilized nations like the armenians are not lazy. they are too intelligent to work for others. they are exploiters themselves. the armenians, lawrence is sure, are the most intelligent, the most perfectly selected, the most highly developed race in the world – from the civilized point of view. here the superlatives are used to highlight certain national features that seem important to foreigners. lawrence continues: the jews themselves feel about armenians the way the antisemitic europeans feel about the jews; and so do the greeks, turks – all the other races that have ever had them on them. they feel that the armenians would put them all to armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 175 work. and they would. the armenians are all that the jews are, plus all that all the other races are – and they are christians besides! a more perfect evaluation of a nation cannot be found. lawrence is sure that the armenians must not have armenia, because they want to live on the coast, in cities, on rent, interest, dividends and the profits of trading in the shares and the actual money earned by capital and labor. they are harmless. they are willing to do nothing but spend. even jews are spenders, great spenders, but armenians will do nothing and they won’t spend. they get and they save; they sell but only to buy again and so get more and more. it takes evolution to develop such perfection of the true commercial spirit, and it is a matter of degree. and the armenians are the nth degree. if ever the armenians are given a fair start in the world, if they get a free hold of any corner of the earth, they will own the whole planet and work all the rest of mankind. that’s what the turks know and dread and the greeks and – all of us who know them. the most striking part of lawrence’s attitude towards the armenians is that this almost perfect nation needs a perfect massacre. this adj + noun syntagm is actually the carrier of the author’s intent – this is the case when a nation should be abolished, massacred because of their positive features, because “these positive features turn out to be very dangerous for the whole mankind”. the problem with the armenians remains obscure and controversial – they are creative, harmless, thrifty, graceful, intelligent, gone forward… and just for these reasons they should be killed off. this is t.e. lawrence’s verdict. conclusion to sum up, we want to highlight the following: lawrence was not only a successful liaison officer and a british spy, who also happened to make mustafa cemal pasha, ataturk, work on the british as a spy, but also a keen expert in oriental cultures whose observations are of great value, whose work principles can be studied and applied in culture-study and in the military. and as he had perfectly understood the armenians will never be abolished because they know how to breed and spread. after all why should they? sources of data: 1. magical letter page – linguistic iconism, sound symbolism. available at: <http://www.trismegistos.com/magicalletterpage> [accessed december 2013] 2. lourens arabatsin yev arevelyan vorosh mshakuytneri lourensyan meknabanumy. available at: <http://wwwfacebook.com/ajax/messaging/attachment.php?attach_id= cdedfa3ae532d48b72f5db155100b9e6&mid=mid.1392185532567%3a92b24ac853e 53ac152&hash=aqa4piftzrsjq9dd> [accessed february 2014] 3. 19 may 2008 armenians are impossible: interview with lawrence of arabia in 1919. / by lincoln steffens. available at: <http://www.nt.am/en/news/15918/> [accessed february 2014] armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 176 ð³ûï³ï³ý ñ³ñóá ¨ ýñ³ éáõíù³ý éááõñ»ýëû³ý ï³ñμ»ñ³ïá êáõûý ·ç ï³ ï³ý ñ» ï³ ½á ïáõã û³ý ë³ñ ù³ý ý» ñáõù ÷áñó ¿ ³ñ íáõù ùß³ ïáõ ã³ ûçý ¨ 黽 í³á ׳ ï³ý í»ñ éáõ íáõã ûáõý ý» ñç ùç çá óáí å³ï ï» ñ»é ëï»õ í³ ñ³ñ áõ ³ ù»ý ñ³ñ óáõù »é ùá ·ïýáõ ñ³ ûçý, áñá ë³ ï³ûý, áëï éá áõñ»ýë û³ý å³ï ï» ñ³ óáõù ý» ñç, çñ áõç ¹ñ³ ï³ý ñ³ï ï³ ýçß ý» ñáí ñ³ý ¹»ñó å»ïù ¿ í»ñç ý³ ï³ ý³ å»ë »ý ã³ñï íç μý³çýç ù³ý: èááõ ñ»ý ëá ñ³ñ ù³ñ ãç ï»ë ýáõù ãáõñ ùçý ³û¹ ·áñ íá ï³ ï³ ñ» éáõ ñ³ ù³ñ, ù³ ýç áñ ãáõñ ùá ã³ ÷³ ½³ýó í³û ñ³· ¿ ¨ ùñçë ïáý û³ ã¿: èááõ ñ»ý ëá ¹å·áñ ¿, áñ ³ ù» ý³ ï³ ï³ñ û³é áõ ³ ù» ý³ ù³ õ³ ù³ ïçñã ñ³û ³½ ·çý áã ùç ³ûé ³½· ãç ï³ ñá õ³ ýáõù μý³çý ç»é, á ñáí ñ»ï¨ ñ³ ûçý ùçßï ñ³ çáõ íáõù ¿ ï»ý ¹³ ýç ùý³é ¨ μ³½ ù³ ý³é: àðìÿíñêèé âîïðîñ è ëîóðåíñîâñêàÿ âåðñèÿ åãî ðåøåíèÿ â ïðå äå ëàõ äàí íî ãî èññ ëå äî âà íèÿ ëèíã âèñòè ÷åñ êè ìè ìå òî äà ìè äå ëàåò ñÿ ïî ïûò êà ïå ðå äàòü îá ðàç ñî çè äà òåëü íî ãî è íà õîä ÷è âî ãî àð ìÿ íè íà, êî òî ðûé âîï ðå êè ñâîåìó ñó ãó áî ïî ëî æè òåëü íîìó îá ðà çàó, ïî ëîó ðåíñîâñ êèì ñîîá ðà æå íèÿì, äîë æåí áûòü óíè÷ òî æåí. íî òóð êè íå ñà ìûå ïîä õî äÿ ùèå äëÿ ýòî ãî äå ëà, òàê êàê îíè ñëèø êîì ãðó áû è ñó ðî âû, è ê òî ìó æå ìó ñóëü ìà íå. ëîó ðåíñ íå äî âî ëåí òåì, ÷òî ñà ìûå ñî âåð øåí íûå è ñà ìûå öè âè ëè çî âàí íûå àð ìÿ íå íè êàê íå óíè÷ òî æàþò ñÿ, ïîñ ëå êàæ äî ãî ãå íî öè äà âñåã äà îñòàåò ñÿ ïà ðà, êî òî ðàÿ âëàäååò èñêóññòâîì ðà çì íî æåíèÿ. armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 177 microsoft word contens verjin armenian folia anglistika book reviews 147 a valuable research gayane gasparyan yerevan brusov state university of languages and social sciences raphael lemkin’s draft convention on genocide and the 1948 un convention: a comparative discourse study s. gasparyan, sh. paronyan, a. chubaryan, g. muradyan yerevan: ysu press, 2016, 176 pp. the contemporary approach towards historical events combines different types of comprehensive research based specifically on two chief directions historical discourse and political discourse analysis. they are interrelated and interdependent as both have a certain portion of contribution to the formation of the so-called "new knowledge" in new circumstances and new readings of historical past. any historical situation has its definite reasonable or nonreasonable motive. it is politicized and politically multidimensional as its interpretation depends absolutely on how it is viewed by different statesmen, leaders, politicians, historians or researchers of any field concerned. due to recent political perspectives and recent interpretations of the past events historical past acquires new properties especially in the modern world marked with a new cycle of political conflicts. this is why political discourse analysis is actually becoming an essential part of multifunctional and comprehensive research to solve the past and newly emerging problems, as to avoid miscommunication it is necessary to accurately decode disputes and misunderstandings. the phenomenon of genocide is regarded today as a variety of political discourse explored by historians, political analysts, lawyers, journalists, linguists. the research under review is a thorough survey of the genocide phenomenon as a crime against humanity, a matter of debates and conflicts at different levels. as a matter of fact the language at all these levels becomes a book reviews armenian folia anglistika 148 tool through which comments, opinions, and discords come afore. that is why cognitive linguistic research in this field is highly prioritized since it facilitates the understanding of mechanisms of world perception, in this particular case – the mechanisms related to the phenomenon of genocide. today the promotion of research on the linguistic aspects of historical and legal studies, as well as legal documents on genocides should be considered one of the most important measures in the area of genocide studies. the armenian genocide has received wide resonance all over the globe, hence, there is voluminous englishlanguage literature on this matter. but it does not mean, that all the works are based on objective research that realistically picture the events. part of that research is implicitly or explicitly aimed at misleading people’s consciousness. the armenians still have a lot to do in ensuring a multifaceted coverage of the most painful episode of the armenian history, and thoroughly presenting the details of the monstrous act of genocide at the international level. therefore, our current task is not only to present to the english language reader profound scholarly materials on the objective facts of the armenian genocide, but also react to historical and legal research published in the past, as well as works depicting the distorted historical reality, reveal the fraud and hypocrisy embodied in them. here the role of armenian specialists of english linguistics is undeniably great because they master the nuances and subtleties of the english language and speech structures, and can reveal the arsenal of linguistic strategies used by authors in their texts to influence the reader, generate opinions, communicate additional information by means of linguistic analyses. manifestly in armenia we have already had the experience of conducting such research. in 2014 professor seda gasparyan, head of english philology department at yerevan state university, corresponding member of ra national academy of sciences, an author of many articles on genocide studies and armenian studies, authored and published a unique research work – “the armenian genocide: a linguocognitive perspective”, which undertakes a cognitive linguistic study of historiographic works on genocide in english by a number of foreign scholars. this piece of research elicits the possibilities of armenian folia anglistika book reviews 149 linguistic, particularly, cognitive linguistic studies in revealing the fargoing communication goals of the authors (regardless of its essence – be it historiographic, legal, fiction or other) and the linguistic means they deploy to influence the reader. the research under review is the outcome of dedication to thorough and accurate scientific work by s. gasparyan and her team (sh. paronyan, a. chubaryan, g. muradyan). it is concerned with two legal documents related to the area of genocide studies, namely the comparative examination of the texts of r. lemkin’s draft convention on the crime of genocide presented in 1947 and the 1948 un “convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide.” this study is unique in its kind because it examines two versions of the same legal document – the draft of the legal document condemning the genocide to prevent another such occurrence, developed by the initiative and immediate participation of the genocide scholar, lawyer and public figure r. lemkin, and the legally binding convention adopted by the un in 1948. and once again necessity emerges to address and to re-value the convention within the more general context of the centennial of the armenian genocide and the turkish policy of denial. the genocide convention is the first legal document passed by the un in relation to human rights, that aims to protect national, racial, religious, ethnic and other minorities from the threats they may face struggling against racism and discrimination. as the authors mention, numerous studies have been devoted to the analysis of the two documents taken separately, as well as to their comparative analysis, however, they have been done in the sphere of legal studies, referring to the flaws, shortcomings and legal deficiencies and inadequacies. the research is beneficially different from the rest since it embraces a wide linguistic horizon. the authors describe the general profile of legal english, and the linguostylistic, pragmatic, semantic, grammatical features of the language of the documents under study. the present examination carried out on the basis of cognitive linguistics allows to elucidate the so-called “hidden intent,” called presupposition in linguistics, of the skillful lawyers authoring book reviews armenian folia anglistika 150 this highly significant legal document to reveal the discursive tactics of fortifying or weakening the impact of certain provisions of this important document, to make specific provisions clearer and unambiguous, or on the contrary, to make them sound ambiguous. the authors of this research righteously mention that as an official document the text of the convention should be devoid of any ambiguity and undesirable implicature. the comparative analysis of the two texts shows how the communicative impact of the convention discourse changes after lemkin’s draft is edited, some of the provisions are reformulated, a number of important ideas contracted and omitted, changing the tonality of the text, the stress on their standpoint in the condemnation of the crime against humanity. the main study of the documents has been carried out not only from different linguistic angles – stylistics, pragmatics, semantics, grammar and others, but with the examination of various linguistic elements – words, word combinations, utterances, etc. thus, the examination of the preamble of the draft convention shows that the emotive and evaluative nuances are due to the use of the vocabulary with some stylistic charge. words and expressions with negative connotation are highlighted. they simultaneously describe the action (defies, inflicts, deprives, destroys, is against) and the consequences of genocide (inseparable loss, being intentional destruction, in violent contradiction with the spirit and aims of the united nations, odious crime), and serve the purpose of intensifying the negative attitude of the authors towards violence also (pp. 72-73). the desirable attitude towards the crime of genocide on the part of the un member states is named by the following linguistic units: to oppose, prevent and repress (p. 73). the comparative analysis of the opening part of the 1948 convention shows that the official text is more reserved in its criticism and condemnation, since the lexical units contained in it are presumably due to compromised choice, semantically they are more neutral and devoid of determination. here is an example: the draft contains the expression “is in violent contradiction with the spirit and aims of the united nations” which was replaced by “contrary to the spirit and aims of the united nations” in the convention. the authors of the study are convinced that as a result of the armenian folia anglistika book reviews 151 substitution of the word contradiction for contrary semantically rather close to the former, the strong emotional negative colouring particularly intensified due to the use of the adjective violent is significantly weakened in the final text of the convention. this also undermines the determination to manifest the necessary attitude of intolerance towards genocides (p. 75). the expression “odious crime” used in the draft has been replaced by “odious scourge” (cause of suffering) in the convention, weakening the spirit of intolerance against barbarism and manifestation of the monstrous nature of genocide (pp. 76-77). from pragmatic, cognitive, semantic and grammatical perspectives an accomplished analysis has been done on the material of the definition of genocide as a criminal act, presented in lemkin’s draft (article i). undertaking an analysis of the actualization of different sememes of the word “act”, studying the use of that linguistic unit in the paradigmatic and syntagmatic systems and conducting contextual analysis, the authors come to the conclusion that in the draft the word “genocide” is used in two meanings of the word “act”: as a completed tragic happening in the past, and as a probable destructive happening which may occur in the future. the cognitive-pragmatic analysis reveals that lemkin’s introduction is drafted to have a perlocutive effect – condemnation of genocide. yet, as a result of changes introduced into the language of the convention text, the perlocutive effect is not manifest. it is also noteworthy that in the course of the comparative analysis of the documents, the authors apply contextual and co-textual analyses. examining the text of the convention (article i) they refer to the historical context and draw parallels with the armenian genocide, specifically pointing to the parts of the text that implicitly refer to the ottoman atrocities. thus, analyzing a section from the convention which touches upon the genocides of the past and the need for international cooperation for their prevention, the authors righteously conclude that genocide is a crime and remains punishable beyond any time limitations, never ceases to be punishable. hence, they are hopeful that the contemporary successors of the ottoman empire will one day answer for what their ancestors have done (p. 80). book reviews armenian folia anglistika 152 the contextual analysis of the draft version of the document makes the socalled armenian and jewish footprint obvious and reveals the fact that the convention has been written against the background of a concrete precedent and contains extralinguistic constituents and situational elements which testify to past genocidal events (pp. 87-88). by means of co-textual analysis the authors refer to the holocaust by fascist germany, as well as the genocidal actions and attempts of ethnic, national and religious mass cleansings of modern times (in rwanda, nagorno karabakh and so on). the comparative analysis enables to reveal the inconsistencies between the provisions of the draft and the convention in terms of the text per se, the aim of the articles, as well as the language used. many researchers have qualified the fact of omitting the idea of cultural destruction and the aspects related to political and social groups from the final text of the convention as a deficiency, though r. lemkin gave a lot of thought to them, considering these aspects as major elements of paramount importance of the concept of genocide. that has narrowed down the possibilities of qualifying destruction of cultural values as genocide, consequently, the possibilities for their prevention and punishment. the comparative analysis brings out the concrete linguistic tactics – stylistic devices, connotative meanings, grammatical structures, illocutive and perloctive acts employed to ensure the semantic modifications in the final text of the convention. from the perspective of linguistic analysis it is also interesting to note the innovative approach to the comparative analysis of the frequency of occurrence of words in the two documents, presented in the form of tables and graphs. by means of this methodology the authors have succeeded in disclosing the content and language similarities and differences between the abovementioned pieces of legal discourse. as the authors rightly mention, legal discourse is a dual phenomenon. on the one hand, it is a linguistic act, actualized by means of communication through words. on the other hand, it is also a legal act which serves the objectives of the legal domain (p. 126). lemkin made great efforts to criminalize the acts of violence against humanity, to prevent and punish the acts taken to destroy the world civilization. when armenian folia anglistika book reviews 153 formulating the text of the convention, the lexical, morphological, and syntactic changes caused a weakening of the spirit of intolerance towards genocides and undermined the determination to strictly punish those who undertake any such crime against humanity. the research presented to the readers’ attention is one of this kind. patriotic work has been done which is of especially high significance for our reality, our history and our people, because one of the most terrifying pages of human history is unfortunately related to us – armenians. the armenian people that fell prey to the yataghan of barbaric turks have lived through indescribable sufferings – forced physical extermination, psychological stress, reconceptualization of life, loss of historical and cultural heritage, surviving and proving indestructible and invincible, though going through complicated linguistic and cultural adaptation. the armenian people, torn to pieces and dispersed all over the world, perhaps are still unable to get rid of the mental imbalance caused not only by extermination, forced deportation, and other circumstances disrupting their national identity and collective consciousness, but by the injustice, indifference, permissiveness and denial of the historical truth. this does not certainly mean that the humanity has ignored the fact of this terrible crime and has failed to address it. genocide studies present a serious area of international research that concerns itself with diverse topics on issues related to the intentional destruction of the armenians, and other nations also, religious and racial groups, viewing these matters from the perspectives of history, law, political science, and sociology. undoubtedly, a considerable share of scientific research in this area is dedicated to the armenian genocide, since scholars in history, legal studies, political science, psychology and sociology, who acknowledge their responsibility for the future of humanity, realize that the only way to prevent this villainous phenomenon is to voice and condemn it. to conclude, i would like to state again and again the importance of the research for our reality and our nation and to express my profound gratitude to the team of authors for the significant and valuable work they have done. microsoft word contens verjin literature armenian folia anglistika 109 visual interpretation of harry potter novels anna dilanian yerevan state university abstract this article seeks to explain the nature of visual interpretation which is an inseparable part of visual linguistics. within the frames of this article we intend to study and illustrate the techniques that are used for making any kind of visual interpretation. to be more practical, illustrations and movie images have been used. the article focuses on the study of the two main characters of harry potter novels. the characters have been thoroughly analyzed with the method of triangle analysis. key words: visual interpretation, image, illustration, semiotics, linguistics. introduction nowadays, in linguistics there is a new interdisciplinary study called visual linguistics. the latter is quite a new approach to language sciences, which has originated in the usa and later been successfully developed in the uk and germany. some attempts have also been made in this new field of linguistics by russian scholars. in the article we intend to study two main harry potter characters and their visual interpretation. the study is carried out with the help of textual reference and visual analysis. the characters have been analyzed through the method of triangle analysis which in fact is the relation of text, illustration and image. one of our main goals is to show that being an interdisciplinary study, visual linguistics has a lot to do with other disciplines, thus extra factors reflect on the choice of any kind of visual technique. armenian folia anglistika literature 110 the nature of visual linguistics visualization as a means of illustration has a long tradition in linguistics. starting from the antique times up to modern writers, literature as a separate form of art is the primary basis for many other branches of art: painting, music, theatre and cinema. visual interpretation of literature is realized with the help of visual means: drawings, illustrations, photos and so on. there may be different visual interpretations of the same well-known literary work; such a case is harry potter. what is worth mentioning is that visual interpretation as such is individual: the artist expresses his/her own understandings of a literary work, though the general idea is clearly kept. as cristopher orr remarks: “within this critical context [i.e. of intertextuality], the issue is not whether the adapted film is faithful to its source, but rather how the choice of a specific source and how the approach to that source serve the film's ideology” (orr 1984:86). the concept of “movie interpretation” can be explained as a creative search for expressing the works of literature by means of cinematic decisions. nowadays, books are considered to be a source of movie interpretations and the latter consequently became a separate form of art i.e. filmmaking. nowadays, cinematographic interpretations are popular not as a separate form of art but as a tool for propagating literature as such. however, considering all the modern forms of interpretation of literary works, it can be noted that literature, as a separate form of art, is destined to become a fundamental source for many other forms of art. visual linguistics is closely interrelated with multimodality and semiotics. the former, in the most general sense, is the theory of communication and social semiotics. the most important study in this field is realized by halliday who gives definitions for both multimodality and semiotics. interestingly enough he thinks that the mixture of these two phenomena is the most effective contribution to the study of visual linguistics. multimodality describes the process of communication in terms of textual, auditory, linguistic, spatial and visual resources or other modes that are used for transferring the linguistic message. another study which is the fundamental literature armenian folia anglistika 111 base of visual linguistics, as mentioned above, is semiotics. semiotics is the theory of sign systems. “for decades it has been assumed that every sign system in nature, society and cognition belongs to the domain of semiotics. the literature on the subject is voluminous” (nazarova 1996:79). no matter how different the signs are, all of them have a common nature: they are socialized, from era to era and from one society to another they change radically. the above mentioned proves the fact that visual interpretation varies from culture to culture: things that are accepted for one culture may be quite harmful and inappropriate for another, so with the aim to be delicate and not to offend the representatives of the supposed culture visual interpretation must be accomplished very delicately. hence, all of these give us the right to conclude that some extra factors reflect on the process of visualization. one of them, as mentioned above, is cultural differences, hence we can state that visual interpretation is a very subtle process. another factor is the question of gender studies. nowadays, gender studies are an integral part of both social sciences and linguistics in general, and, as already mentioned, visual linguistics is somewhere in between these two disciplines, so the problem of gender, at the same time is the vital problem of visual linguistics, too. thus, any kind of visual interpretation follows one aim: to be aesthetic and allure large audiences. aiming to be more delicate, the illustrator and/or the director are allowed to add or omit things in his/her interpretation. characters’ visual interpretation the first character that is described in this article is the main protagonist of the book – harry potter. harry is described in the following way: “harry had always been small and skinny for his age. … harry had a thin face, knobby knees, black hair, and bright green eyes. he wore round glasses held together with a lot of scotch tape.... the only thing harry liked about his own appearance was a very thin scar on his forehead that was shaped like a bolt of lightning” (rowling 1994:47). in the movies harry appears with blue eyes and is not skinny at all. while asking the directors why there were such short-cuts, the reply was that among all the candidates the actor who portrayed harry was armenian folia anglistika literature 112 the most similar one. as a matter of fact the question of green and blue eyes was a serious problem for the most faithful fans. in an illustrated version of harry potter which was approved by the author, harry had green eyes. below are the pictures of harry potter taken from the illustrated version of the book and the one from the movie. (kay 2018) (wb 2001) as can be seen, the clothes and attributes (exactly the way rowling described) are all preserved in both versions but the appearance is somehow altered. the second character is hermione granger. in the books hermione granger is described as having a bossy sort of voice, lots of bushy brown hair, and rather large front teeth” (rowling 1997:105). the point that was a huge argument between the fans was the fact of hermione not having large teeth in the movie. the director of the first harry potter movies chris columbus revealed that they initially tried to use fake teeth but it was uncomfortable and affected the speech. so from the point of view of visual linguistics this is an unfaithful interpretation. bellow you can see hermione’s illustrated version and the movie hermione. literature armenian folia anglistika 113 (kay 2018) (wb 2001) as mentioned above, some extra factors can affect the choice of this or that way of visual interpretation. in all the book series, there is no mention of the color of hermione’s clothes but in the third book she appears in pink clothes; this is a stereotypical phenomenon: in all cultures pink is considered to be girlish. this comes to prove the fact that visual linguistics as such is an interdisciplinary study and closely associated with newly developed gender studies. another example of it is the following. at the yule ball, hermione was wearing a blue dress: “she had done something with her hair; it was no longer bushy but sleek and shiny, and twisted up into an elegant knot at the back of her head. she was wearing robes made of a floaty, periwinkle-blue material, and she was holding herself differently, somehow…” (rowling 2000:117). whereas in the movie she appears in a pink dress. the character’s visual interpretation is more likely to be not faithful to the source material but more aesthetic, whereas the book cover and movie poster strongly reflect the text. the latters are so close to the source material that may even contain spoilers and allow the reader or viewer make some guesses even without reading the book. another reason why the character’s visual interpretation is not faithful to the text is that the directors sometimes consciously cut the flaws in the character’s appearance, as many directors mention: “it is because people love watching beautiful actors on the screen” (vogue 2007:34). armenian folia anglistika literature 114 conclusion visual interpretation which has been studied in terms of two main characters was aimed at showing gender roles. the scholars in the field of visual linguistics differentiate between two types of visual interpretation: faithful interpretation and adoptive interpretation. the book covers and movie posters are mostly interpreted faithfully, whereas characters are adoptive, as both actors and illustrations cannot be completely like the source prototype. visual linguistics is closely connected with disciplines like social sciences, humanities and newly developed gender studies. thus, while making any kind of visual interpretation every single detail is taken into consideration and, what is more important, visual interpretation is individual. such cases are hermione’s clothes and harry’s appearance. any kind of visual interpretation is done on purpose and thus varies from culture to culture with the aim of not being harmful. the illustrators’ task is to be delicate as, without even understanding, one can offend others’ feelings. hence visual linguistics mostly deals with philosophical and psychological aspects. references: 1. rozhdestvenskaya ye. (2001) kachestvenniye metody v gendernoy metodologii. // genderniy kaleydoskop. m.: izd-vo isepn. 2. rozhdestvenskaya ye. (2001) feministskiy podkhod k interpretatsii kachestvennykh dannykh: metody analiza teksta, interaktsii i izobrazheniya. // vvedenie v gendernye issledovaniya. s.-peterburg: aleteyya. 3. nazarova t. (1996) linguistics and literary semiotics. m.: msu. 4. orr c. (1984) the discourse on adaptation. new york: wide angle. sources of data: 1. rowling, j. (1997) harry potter and the philosopher’s stone. london: bloomsbury. 2. rowling, j. (1998) harry potter and the ‘chamber of secrets’: london: bloomsbury. literature armenian folia anglistika 115 3. rowling, j. (1999) harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban. london: bloomsbury. 4. rowling, j. (2000) harry potter and the goblet of fire. london: bloomsbury. 5. (2001) harry potter and the philosopher’s stone, film usa. հարրի փոթեր վիպաշարի պատկերային մեկնությունը հոդվածը միտված է բացահայտելու պատկերային մեկնության էությունը, որը համարվում է վիզուալ լեզվաբանության անքակտելի մաս: հոդվածի շրջանակներում ուսումնասիրում և ցուցադրում ենք այն հնարները, որոնք օգտագործվում են ցանկացած տեսակի պատկերային մեկնության համար: հոդվածում օգտագործելով նկարազարդումներ և ֆիլմից դրվագներ՝ եռանկյունաձև (տեքստ-պատկեր-դրվագ) մեթոդի միջոցով հոդվածագիրը քննության է առնում հարրի փոթեր վիպաշարի երկու հիմնական կերպարները: microsoft word contens verjin linguistics armenian folia anglistika 15 the text-organizing function of compression in english scientific discourse astghik chubaryan, lilit sargsyan yerevan state university abstract english scientific discourse can be characterized as a key area of the economy principle realization in the form of text compression. the latter carries out a major text-organizing function due to its potential to form implicit meanings and presuppositions thereby minimizing the use of linguistic units while enhancing the informativity of the text. thus, the given paper is an attempt to provide a general overview of the role of compression in the production of scientific discourse by examining its concrete manifestations at the syntactic and semantic-cognitive levels in the light of some key pragmatic parameters of communication. key words: linguistic economy, compression, implicitness, informativity, pragmatic universe of discourse, principle of pragmatic sufficiency, metaphor. introduction the economy principle in language plays a significant role in the choice of linguistic units as well as their combination in such a way as to ensure maximum efficiency in the exchange of information in line with the situational, functional and pragmatic requirements of communication. as recent studies in linguistics show, the economy principle can be tracked throughout all levels of linguistic structure such as phonological, morphological, lexical, syntactic and semantic1. furthermore, it has been established that, due to unique syntactic structure, various means of text compression as a medium of the economy principle realization in speech serve the purpose of forming implicit meanings and presuppositions, which in their turn enable to convey a great volume of information during communication by using as few linguistic units as possible. it is by the latter fact that the extensive use of text compression in different functional styles of the language can be accounted for. namely, english scientific discourse can be characterized as a key area of the economy principle realization in the form of text compression given some basic requirements of this particular sphere of human communication such as the conciseness and clarity as well as high degree of informativity of scientific armenian folia anglistika linguistics 16 texts, the economical use of time, space, etc. in other words, text compression as the realization of the economy principle in actual communication carries out a major text-organizing function in english scientific discourse, to elucidate which it is essential to elaborate on such key concepts as linguistic economy and compression, compression and implicitness, informativity as well as some basic pragmatic parameters of communication. linguistic economy vs. compression first of all, it is to be noted that though linguistic economy and compression often tend to be identified with one another, they actually constitute different phenomena2. the point is that the economy principle, which is also referred to as the principle of least effort, consists in tending towards the minimum amount of effort that is necessary to achieve the maximum result and displays itself in language use as a conscious or unconscious tendency of language users to save more time and energy by conveying more information with as few language units as possible (zhou 2012:100), whereas compression is not merely a way of using as few linguistic units as possible thus making the understanding of the conveyed message easier and saving the addressee’s efforts but also, and more importantly, it pursues the ultimate purpose of carrying out other functions, through economizing language means, which are more relevant to the final aim of the communication. thus, for instance: we still have an opportunity to not only bring the fish back but to actually get more fish that can feed more people than we currently are now. how many more? right about now, we can feed about 450 million people a fish meal a day based on the current world fish catch… (sj so: 5:41) the example adduced above, which is an excerpt from a lecture on how to efficiently manage fish stocks, illustrates the use of ellipsis as a means of text compression at the syntactic level. namely, the elliptical utterance how many more? (which constitutes the compressed, reduced variant of the non-contracted construction how many more people can we feed?*) does not, in fact, simply serve to reduce the number of used words but, by doing so, helps the speaker draw the audience’s attention to the key message of the lecture, i.e. the increase in the number of people who could be fed on fish if the actions described in the lecture linguistics armenian folia anglistika 17 were implemented. in other words, by using the elliptical utterance constituting a question, the speaker emphasizes the important information in the lecture so that the audience can be concentrated to grasp it in the answer to the question, which is to be found in the following part of the lecture. thus, she also activates the audience’s attention keeping them focused on the topic of the speech. hence, compression can be defined as an economy principle based regular process, which covers all the levels of linguistic structure and consists in the reduction of the form of linguistic units and parallel preservation of the information contained in them with a view to ensuring the maximum efficiency of communication in line with the pragmatic requirements of the communicative act. moreover, the efficiency and completeness of communication is to be determined not by the volume or number of the verbal means being used, but by the situational and functional relevance of the latter. compression and implicitness speaking about compression as a means of linguistic economy principle realization in english scientific discourse, we cannot but dwell upon the interrelation between compression and implicitness. thus, according to the way of representation, the information contained in a text can be of two major types: explicit and implicit. a smart combination of these two types of information in the informative structure of the text serves two main purposes: ensures conciseness in terms of the form, and increases the degree of informativity in terms of the content. it is to be noted that the term “implicit” is used to refer to the elements in the semantic structure of the utterance that have an incomplete verbal expression or no verbal expression at all. furthermore implicit information is decoded on the basis of the explicit. therefore, the implicit element in the structure of the text can be defined as that part of the information contained in the text, which is not directly represented via verbal means or has an incomplete verbal expression; however it can be inferred or restored from the explicit content, the context of speech as well as other relevant factors. among the latter the principle of pragmatic sufficiency should be mentioned. as we know, the general goal of any text created within a certain context of interaction is to make a particular intended impact on the addressee, and to achieve this goal the speaker not only in scientific discourse but also any other situation, should know how much information to convey and how. so the principle of pragmatic sufficiency implies that only that part of information should be conveyed explicitly which is necessary and sufficient armenian folia anglistika linguistics 18 to achieve the goal of the communicative act within a given context. moreover, it’s a well-established fact that very often the main purpose of the speaker, influenced by various linguistic and extra-linguistic factors, is not to get to the hearer what is said explicitly but to make him perceive what is left unsaid (bagdasaryan 1983:1011). as they say, language serves not only the purpose of expressing thoughts but also of concealing them. thus, for instance: good afternoon. my name is uldus. i am a photo-based artist from russia. i started my way around six years ago with ironic selfportraits to lay open so many stereotypes about nationalities, genders, and social issues – [“i am russian. i sell drugs and guns”] [“vodka = water. i love vodka!”] (laughter) – using photography as my tool to send a message. [“marry me, i need a visa.”]. (bu wp: 0:11) the example adduced above, which is an excerpt from a lecture on stereotypes delivered by a russian photo-based artist, illustrates the use of implicit information inferred on the basis of stereotype-based presuppositions in creating a special humoristic effect, which helps to keep the audience entertained. namely, while the speaker is delivering her speech, the audience is watching a number of funny photos representing common stereotypes with the corresponding subtitles following one another on the screen. so the speaker, being well aware that people, namely those sitting among the audience, stereotypically associate russians with vodka for their great love and consumption of it on daily basis as if it were water for them, as well as that it’s a common practice throughout the post-soviet countries to marry american citizens to obtain a us visa, intentionally chooses to leave this part of the information implicit to be inferred by the audience. thus, she not only uses short compressed texts based on implicit meanings to express stereotypes in the form of photos but also produces a certain impact on the audience keeping them amused throughout her speech. as it can be concluded from the above, compression and implicitness are two sides of the same coin. namely, in text production when we proceed from the content to the form of expression, i.e. in considering the text from the point of view of the speaker, we deal with the process of implicitness, expressing the information implicitly, whereas in text perception when we proceed in the opposite direction, from the form to the content, i.e. in considering the text from the viewpoint of the linguistics armenian folia anglistika 19 hearer, we deal with compression. in other words, it is the task of the hearer to identify and restore the compressed elements in the text in order to decode and adequately restore the implicit information. in other words, on the one hand, compression functions as a means of encoding implicit information, on the other hand, it serves as a means of decoding it. moreover, both processes are largely influenced by the context as well as extra-linguistic factors which make up the situation in which communication proceeds. pragmatic factors underlying text compression it follows from what has been said above that in the process of speech production, i.e. in choosing an appropriate form of verbal expression for the information to be conveyed, the speaker is normally guided by a set of principles which determine the use of this or that surface structure for verbalizing the same piece of information. those principles are to be tracked at the pragmatic level. in other words, the choice of this or that syntactic construction for giving a verbal expression to a given content, which is closely related to text compression as a means of the economy principle realization, is to be accounted for by a number of pragmatic factors. among the latter, of special significance to the production of scientific discourse are the following: distribution of information in the text (functional sentence perspective), the so-called pragmatic universe of discourse (otherwise referred to as “frame of reference”3) by which we mean the mutual knowledge of the speaker and the hearer, the genre peculiarities of the text as well as the potential addressee of the message or the target audience, the communicative environment, etc. namely, a key role in text production, which is closely related to compression as a text-organizing function, is attributed to the distribution of information within the text. it is a well-known fact that in order to ensure effective communication first the known or the so-called “old” information (theme) should be conveyed, which is essential to the adequate perception and interpretation of the following message. furthermore, in terms of text compression, the known or old information is normally conveyed in the form of presupposition, which is defined as a proposition or set of propositions which, in the speaker’s opinion, are known to the hearer at the moment of speech and are essential in the context of speech. it is here that the concept of pragmatic universe of discourse comes in, by which the totality of presuppositions shared between the speaker and the hearer is meant (luzina 1996:15). in other words, they constitute the mutual knowledge of the speaker and the hearer. accordingly, the informativity of the text is determined by armenian folia anglistika linguistics 20 that part of the utterance which does not constitute the pragmatic universe of discourse. hence, in order to ensure the highest degree of informativity and, therefore, maximum efficiency of scientific communication, the main purpose of which is to convey new knowledge or information, it is essential for the speaker to have a good idea of the hearer’s awareness of the state of affairs, which is otherwise used to refer to the extra-linguistic situation (nuyts 1992:51-54). briefly speaking, not only the speaker’s own knowledge but also his awareness of the pragmatic universe of discourse matters in the production of scientific discourse of which compression is an intrinsic component. last but not least, text compression as a means of conveying implicit information with a view to raising the degree of informativity of the text, is largely determined by the genre peculiarities of communication, which in their turn are closely related to such factors as the potential addressee of the text or the target audience and the communicative environment. thus, for instance, in lectures as a traditionally academic genre, the speaker is supposed to take into account the level of the audience (students, specialists, narrowly specialized professionals) in determining the feasible limits within which he or she is allowed to speak “implicitly”. the higher the level of awareness of the audience, the larger the scope of the pragmatic universe of discourse is supposed to be. on the other hand, there are the requirements of the communicative environment. namely, lecture as a genre of oral discourse always presupposes imposition of certain time limits, which often account for the speaker’s effort to compress as much information as possible within the boundaries of the oral presentation to manage in terms of time. hence the wide use of various tools such as slideshows, video and photo materials, diagrams, etc. accompanying oral speech, which in this case serve as means of not only facilitating understanding but also compressing information. to illustrate the role of the above-mentioned pragmatic factors in lectures as a genre of scientific discourse, let’s adduce an excerpt from noam chomsky’s lecture entitled “who owns the world” delivered at the university of massachusetts at amherst, september 2012: in a few weeks, we’ll be commemorating the 50th anniversary of “the most dangerous moment in human history.” now, those are the words of historian, kennedy adviser, arthur schlesinger. he was referring, of course, to the october 1962 missile crisis, “the most dangerous moment in human history.” others agree. now, at that linguistics armenian folia anglistika 21 time, kennedy raised the nuclear alert to the second-highest level, just short of launching weapons. he authorized nato aircraft, with turkish or other pilots, to take off, fly to moscow and drop bombs, setting off a likely nuclear conflagration. (cn ww) in the example adduced above the speaker refers to the 13-day (october 16-28, 1962) confrontation between the united states and the soviet union concerning soviet ballistic missile deployment in cuba. in fact, it was one of the “hottest” periods of the cold war, it was the closest the cold war came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war. now, the speaker, having in mind the level of knowledge of his audience, presupposing that those who have come to listen to his lecture, are supposed to have a basic idea of at least the most famous moments in the history of the united states, chooses not to elaborate on what the 1962 missile crisis is and why it is described as “the most dangerous moments in human history”. thus, the speaker’s awareness of his mutual knowledge with his audience makes it possible for him to avoid overloading the surface structure of the text with information which is deemed as already known to the audience. in other words, based on the pragmatic universe of discourse, he conveys the so-called “old” information implicitly, in the form of presuppositions, thus compressing the text of the lecture, which in its turn results in saving the time allocated to the lecture as well as drawing the audience’s attention to the new and more important information expressed explicitly. metaphor as a means of text compression at the semantic-cognitive level the role of the interaction of the so-called “old” and “new” information in text compression displays itself in the use of metaphors in scientific discourse, which act as means of economy principle realization at the cognitive-semantic level. namely, metaphor, which, as a linguo-cognitive model for non-stereotypical perception and reproduction of the objective reality4, constitutes a condensed or compressed image of that reality thus enabling the speaker to verbalize as much information as possible concerning this or that object or phenomenon of the objective reality while reducing the number of used language units to the minimum possible, makes it possible for the speaker to introduce or explain an object or phenomenon which is new or unknown to the hearer based on the latter’s knowledge of another object or phenomenon related to the one being introduced in terms of similarity. it is this property of the metaphor which makes it a key armenian folia anglistika linguistics 22 mechanism of scientific thinking (mishankina 2010), which displays itself in scientific discourse as well. thus, for instance: so i was about 11 when i went along to my first meditation class…now as i was there, i guess, like a lot of people, i assumed that it was just an aspirin for the mind. you get stressed, you do some meditation. (pa mm: 02:12) the example adduced above, which is an excerpt from a lecture on the effects of meditation, illustrates how the speaker explains to the audience the tranquilizing effect of meditation on the human mind by implicitly (i.e. by using the underlined metaphor) comparing it with an aspirin. based on the extralinguistic knowledge (which in this case constitutes the mutual knowledge of the speaker and the audience) about the properties of aspirin, i.e. that it is a medication which is used to treat pain, fever, inflammation, the audience easily decodes this implicit message. so, due to the use of the metaphor, the speaker manages to convey to the audience a basic but comprehensive image of the impact of meditation on the human mind, by using as few linguistic means as possible. on the other hand, such a strategy helps the speaker give a special stylistic effect to his speech making it entertaining for the audience. the role of shared extra-linguistic knowledge in conveying and adequately decoding implicit information through a metaphor, which enables to economize linguistic means and carry out other accompanying functions in speech, can be commonly tracked in most metaphors used in scientific discourse, including in the genre of lecture. for example: … for my part, what i wanted us to do was just to look at terrorism as though it was a global brand, say. coca-cola. both are fairly bad for your health. if you look at it as a brand in those ways, what you’ll come to realize is, it’s a pretty flawed product. as we’ve said, it’s pretty bad for your health, it’s bad for those who it affects, and it’s not actually good if you’re a suicide bomber either. it doesn’t actually do what it says on the tin. you’re not really going to get 72 virgins in heaven. it’s not going to happen, i don’t think. and you’re not really going to, in the ’80s, end capitalism by supporting one of these groups. it’s a load of nonsense. (mcj tb: 01:00 – 17:33) linguistics armenian folia anglistika 23 the example adduced above is a small excerpt from a lecture on ways to fight terrorism, throughout which the speaker compares the struggle between the state and the terrorists with a market competition, identifying terrorists with coca-cola as “a pretty flawed product”. namely, implicitly referring to the ideology in which muslim suicide-bombers are raised (the speaker avoids mentioning the religion for ethical reasons), the speaker denounces it as a lie while avoiding sounding critical due to the use of the metaphor it doesn’t actually do what it says on the tin. and the audience understands what the speaker means because they all share common knowledge of the history of the advertising slogans of “coca-cola” company such as coca-cola…makes good things taste better (1956), things go better with coke (1963), it’s the real thing (1969), coke adds life (1976), have a coke and a smile (1979), america’s real choice (1985), always coca-cola (1993), cocacola.enjoy (2000), life tastes good (2001), coca-cola…real (2003), open happiness (2009), etc., each of which could be found on the tin of coca cola at different periods. in other words, the speaker compares terrorism with coca cola based on the similarity that, as coca cola advertisements promise that coca cola will do its consumers good but actually it ruins their health, terrorists too promise their suicide-bombers that the latter will find bliss and happiness in heaven after killing themselves, yet, in fact, they destroy their as well as their victims’ lives. thus, due to the use of a single metaphor based on the shared extra-linguistic knowledge of the speaker and the audience, the speaker manages to express his position and does so implicitly without sounding too critical. in other words, the example illustrates the role of extra-linguistic knowledge in the production and perception of metaphor in scientific discourse as a text-organizing element due to its function of compressing information. conclusion linguistic literature abounds in various ideas regarding the nature of compression. the latter is frequently identified with the economy principle or is defined in terms of the concrete means of its realization. the analysis of theoretical literature as well as factual manifestations of the economy principle in english scientific discourse enables us to claim that compression is an economy principle based process aimed at ensuring the maximum efficiency of verbal interaction, which is determined not only by linguistic factors but also – and even more importantly – by the situational and pragmatic requirements of communication. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 24 compression inherently presupposes encoding and decoding of implicit information, the latter processes being guided by a set of pragmatic rules and principles. due to its potential for contributing to the informativity of the text while using as few verbal means as possible, text compression is recognized as an inherent text-organizing element of scientific communication given certain key requirements of the given variety of discourse. furthermore, compression as the economy principle realization in actual communication affects all levels of linguistic structure, from the lowest to the highest, semantic-cognitive level, with the metaphor as a linguo-cognitive model for non-stereotypical reproduction of the compressed image of the objective reality. hence, the findings of the research are not only meant to constitute a useful contribution to discourse theory but also to provide grounds for further studies along these lines. notes: 1. the analysis of the materials studied within the framework of the given research has enabled us to add to this traditionally accepted classification the textual and semantic-cognitive levels at which the economy principle is realized. 2. the term “compression” (from latin “compressio” meaning contraction, condensation), which was initially used in the communication theory to refer to the process of condensation of the verbal signal without a loss of the information contained in it, was borrowed by soviet linguistics in the 1960s. despite its common use in linguistic theory, the term has no unanimously accepted definition. some linguists view it as a source of formation of implicit meanings and presupposition (glukhov, komarova 2004), others define it in terms of the concrete means of its realization (litvin 2003), whereas others regard it as the economy principle realization in speech (vasilyeva, vinogradov, shakhnarovich 2003), etc. 3. the term was introduced into the theory of pragmatics by jan nuyts to refer to the mutual knowledge of the speaker and the hearer (nuyts 1992). 4. this interpretation of metaphor as a linguo-cognitive model of thinking is based on the cognitive theory of metaphor elaborated by g.lakoff and m.johnson (lakoff, johnson 1980). linguistics armenian folia anglistika 25 references: 1. bagdasaryan, v.kh. (1983) problema implitsitnogo (logiko-metodologicheskiy analiz). yerevan: an arm. ssr. 2. glukhov, g.v.; komarova, s.s. (2004) lingvisticheskaya komressiya i implikatsiya. // slovo-viskazivanie-diskurs. samara: samara university press. 3. lakoff, g.; johnson, m. (1980) metaphors we live by. chicago: university of chicago press. 4. litvin, s.i. (2003) kompressiya khudojestvennogo teksta v dvuyazichnoy situatsii (na material angliyskogo i russkogo yazikov). m.: moscow state regional university press. 5. luzina, l.g. (1997) raspredelenie informatsii v tekste: kognitivniy i pragmaticheskiy aspekti. m.: urss. 6. mishankina, n.a. (2010) lingvokognitivnoe modelirovanie nauchnogo diskursa. tomsk: tomsk state university press. 7. nuyts, j. (1992) aspects of a cognitive-pragmatic theory of language. / on cognition, functionalism and grammar. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins publishing company. 8. vasilyeva, n.v.; vinogradov, v.a.; shakhnarovich, a.m. (2003) kratkiy slovar’ lingvisticheskikh terminov. m.: russkiy yazik. 9. zhou, g. (2012) on the embodiment of economy principle in the english language. // english language and literature studies, vol. 2, n. 2. available at: <http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ells.v2n2p100> [accessed may 2016]. sources of data: 1. bu wp – bakhtiozina, u. (2014) wry photos that turn stereotypes upside down. available at: <https://www.ted.com/talks/uldus_bakhtiozina_wry_photos_that_turn_-stereotypes-_upside_down/transcript?language=en> [accessed may 2016]. 2. cn ww – chomsky, n. (2012) who owns the world. available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9chtm2qk2g> [accessed september 2015]. 3. mcj tb – mccue, j. (2012) terrorism is a failed brand. available at: <https://www.ted.com/talks/jason_mccue_terrorism_is_a_failed_brand/transcri pt?language=en> [accessed april 2016]. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 26 4. pa mm – puddicombe, a. (2012) all it takes is 10 mindful minutes. available at: <https://www.ted.com/talks/andy_puddicombe_all_it_takes_is_10_mindful_ minutes/transcript?language=en#t-158042> [accessed september 2016]. 5. sj so – savitz, j. (2013) save the oceans, feed the world. available at: <https://www.ted.com/talks/jackie_savitz_save_the_-oceans_feed_the_world/ transcript?language =en#t-28016> [accessed september 2015]. êï³óù³ý ï»ùëï³ï³½ùçã ·áñí³éáõûãý ³ý·é»ñ»ý ·çï³ï³ý ¹çëïáõñëáõù î»ùëïç ëï³óáõù᪠áñå»ë 黽í³ï³ý ïýï»ëù³ý ëï½ áõýùç çñ³óáõù ëáëùáõù, ¹³ñó»é ¿ ³ý·é»ñ»ý ·çï³ï³ý ¹çëïáõñëç ýáñáß ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýá, áñï»õ ³ûý ñ³ý¹»ë ¿ ·³éçë ï»ùëï³ï³½ùçã ·áñí³éáõûãáí: ì»ñççýë å³ûù³ý³íáñí³í ¿ ëï³óù³ýª ý»ñ³ï³ çù³ëïý»ñ ¨ ï³ýë»ýã³¹ñáõûãý»ñ ó¨³íáñ»éáõ ñ³ïïáõãû³ù , áñá ãáõûé ¿ ï³éçë, 黽í³ï³ý ùççáóý»ñç ·áñí³íáõãûáõýá ýí³½³·áõûýçý ñ³ëóý»éáí ñ³ý¹»ñó, ³å³ñáí»é ï»ùëïç ³ñóñ ï»õ»ï³ïí³ï³ýáõãûáõýá: êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù ÷áñó ¿ ³ñí»é ý»ñï³û³óý»é ëï³óù³ý ¹»ñá ³ý·é»ñ»ý ·çï³ï³ý ï»ùëï»ñç ëï»õíù³ý ñ³ñóáõù ñ³õáñ¹³ïóáõãû³ý ·áñí³ ³ý³ï³ý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñç éáõûëç ý»ñùá ß³ñ³ñûáõë³ï³ý ¨ çù³ëï³ ³ý³ï³ý-׳ý³ãáõ³ï³ý ù³ï³ñ¹³ïý»ñáõù ¹ñ³ ïáýïñ»ï ¹ñë¨áñáõùý»ñç ùýýáõãû³ý ùççáóáí: microsoft word 2. methodology 55 128 (1) methodology armenian folia anglistika 55 reflection in class: experimenting with text gayane girunyan yerevan state university abstract methodological studies, as well as teaching practice attest to the central role of reflective thinking in class. as a fundamental skill, which once learned is applicable to any domain of knowledge, reflection is the prerequisite of critical thinking – a goal university education pursues too. the paper stresses the importance of practical assignments as part of the course of text linguistics and presents an experimental model involving verbalization of graphical texts and meta-cognitive awareness through guiding questions. with a focus on both individual and shared experience, the role of emotional response is viewed as a motivating factor. key words: meta-cognitive skills, educational goals, textuality, creativity. introduction if asked, every teacher will be ready to present a long list of observations, their own findings and useful hints on conducting a lesson, stressing at the same time that the students are always different: whether individually or even at the group level. there is no doubt that the teacher is never the same either – i mean that the special atmosphere that is created in and with every class is unique, being such due to collective effort and developing throughout the course. moreover, the content of the course and the domain of specialized knowledge that the latter covers are significant too. having taught university courses for more than two decades, i have arrived at some awareness of the process (“some” – because my practice is an ongoing experience), five aspects of which have always seemed important to me. the first is the awareness of the educational goals in general, and in particular, the formation of so-to-call “working knowledge” to be derived from each course. the second is the awareness of teaching/learning as communication, in which the roles of teacher and learner can reciprocally change in the sense that not only is the student the learner but the teacher as well. i would summarize the armenian folia anglistika methodology 56 exchange of the roles as: “whoever asks the question is the teacher”, firmly believing that we learn from our students, by considering their perspectives, their simple or thoughtful questions. the third aspect that i would stress is the importance of reflective thinking and hence, use of reflective skills in the teaching/learning process both by the teacher and student, that is, both sides involved in the communication need meta-cognitive skills. the fourth is the understanding that reflection is a creative process including such components as generating, planning, and producing, to help which – elements of artistic creativity can be applied. finally, knowledge is not merely “borrowed” as information, but is learnt, that is, experienced, the experiential character of reflection being obvious too. educational goals the recognition by educational theorists of the demand that educational objectives should be classified and presented in a systematic and consistent way brought to the publication of frameworks known as taxonomies: “taxonomy of educational objectives: the classification of educational goals. handbook i: cognitive domain” (1956) by benjamin s. bloom and the later publication by anderson, krathwohl and their co-authors of “a revision of bloom’s taxonomy” (2001). as krathwohl observes, as different from the original taxonomy with its distinct categories in the cognitive domain (knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation), presented as a cumulative hierarchy whose categories are distributed from concrete to abstract and simple to complex, the revised version introduced a new category in the knowledge dimension – meta-cognitive knowledge (krathwohl 2002), which, according to the authors of the revised system, “involves knowledge about cognition in general as well as awareness of and knowledge about one’s own cognition.” krathwohl also points to the “increasing significance” of such knowledge in making students “aware of their meta-cognitive activity and then using this knowledge to appropriately adapt the ways in which they think and operate” (krathwohl 2002:214). as presented in the new taxonomy, it is strategic knowledge, knowledge about cognitive tasks, contextual and conditional knowledge and self-knowledge. in other words, it is what is obtained by reflective thinking. the introduction of the new category is not the only change in the framework: the revised taxonomy tends to stress the dynamic nature of methodology armenian folia anglistika 57 knowledge acquisition (cf.: the choice of verb forms, apply rather than application, analyze instead of analysis, evaluate in place of evaluation); it is a “two-dimensional framework” with knowledge and cognitive process as the parameters (krathwohl 2002:218); the structure of the cognitive process dimension is more detailed. the changes included in the revised version of the taxonomy are not formal, but are indicative of a more profound understanding of the process. i would single out two positions. the first is the substitution of the term understand for comprehension: a convincing choice, considering the presence of meta-cognitive activity (reflective thinking), and of such modes as interpreting and explaining handled on a par with understanding in hermeneutical tradition. in the revised framework, the category of understand is represented by: interpreting, exemplifying, classifying, summarizing, inferring, comparing and explaining. moreover, the very definition of understand as “determining the meaning of instructional messages, including oral, written and graphic communication” (krathwohl 2002:215) does not overlook the communicative character of the process (cf.: understanding of texts as communication/ hermeneutical dialogue). the second is the use of the term create instead of synthesis, where the category create comprises such constituents as generating, planning, producing, and is defined as: “putting elements together to form a novel, coherent whole or make an original product” (krathwohl 2002:215). in this case also the decision on the more inclusive and more representative term is justified, understanding/interpreting/explaining involving awareness of the correlation between part and whole (cf.: hermeneutical circle) and demanding creative response. besides, the choice of the term allows not only the technical sense of “putting elements together to form a coherent or functional whole; that is, reorganizing elements into a new pattern or structure” (mayer 2002:231) but also the notion of it as denoting artistic/inventive/playful creativity. teaching/learning as communication the main outcome of education (and especially university education) being “working knowledge”, its aim is much wider – a process, which richard e. mayer calls “meaningful learning” (2002). describing the different aspects of the cognitive process specified in the revised taxonomy – remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, create – the theorist makes a further armenian folia anglistika methodology 58 generalization, and namely that the first promotes retention, and the remaining five – transfer. in other words, the distinction is based on two mechanisms: of storing knowledge, and that of using it, with creating new knowledge (on a larger scale) as the climax of the second process. in simpler terms, it is at the heart of the dilemma that we face when assessing our students’ performance: who is the better – the one who remembers the material well (often even verbatim) or the one who may not remember details but produces his/her own interpretation? mayer defines transfer as “the ability to use what was learned to solve new problems, answer new questions, or facilitate learning new subject matter” (mayer 2002:226). in pursuit of this highly-demanding aim, two things should not be overlooked. the first is that “meaningful learning” is communication, in the most profound sense of the word, between two sides, and i would call them worlds, systems, laboratories, which are understood as roles, and which being relative parts cannot exist without each other. as mentioned earlier, these roles change alternately between teaching and learning, and the process can be successful only if the efforts are well-balanced, i.e. if both sides make their earnest contribution to it. the next decisive factor is openness on both parts to each other’s initiative. needless to say, feeling determined, and motivated to share with their students their expertise and general background, teachers will often choose to experiment with the material, activities, method of teaching. when i was reflecting on the type of activities that i have chosen to practice in class, i was encouraged by a. ball’s conclusion paraphrased by choy and oo that “teachers with high self-efficacy are those that have high meta-cognitive awareness of themselves and can change the strategies they are using to attain their intended goals” (choy and oo 2012:170). learning and reflection the reflective and creative type of activities presented below are meant as part of the course of text linguistics, and the motivation to present it for consideration was supported by two generalizations, to which my own teaching practice attests too. they are: “reflection, once learned is a skill that crosses disciplines”, and therefore, it is “content neutral” (colley et al 2012:1). i do not intend to claim that a university student is not familiar with reflective learning, rather that such activities should be continued at a higher methodology armenian folia anglistika 59 level of theoretical knowledge and with elements of imaginative creativity. the idea is that even with the more conscious choice of specialization, learners need motivation, and the shortest way is through reflection as experience where “emotional responses are part of what we bring to every learning situation and should be brought to the surface and examined” (colley et al 2012:5). as for the teacher’s perspective, the most sincere wish on his/her part is to improve the process of instruction, and for that purpose, as james raths suggests, the two ways, which the revised taxonomy allows, are: 1) focus on “increasingly more complex cognitive processes, particularly analyze, evaluate, create”, and 2) “objectives that emphasize meta-cognitive knowledge” (raths 2002:235). as for the latter, paul r. pintrich summarizes the findings of researchers that, as students “become more aware of their own thinking”, “they tend to learn better” (pintrich 2002:219). one of the major elaborations on reflection is john dewey’s conception in “how we think” (1910/1933), discussing which carol rodgers focuses on four criteria, which she thinks characterize his position. briefly, the first is that reflection is a meaning-making process with essentially moral ends; secondly, that it is a “systematic, rigorous, disciplined way of thinking, with its roots in scientific inquiry”; thirdly, it “needs to happen in community, in interaction with others”; and finally, that it requires evaluative attitudes (rodgers 2002:845). thus, the human, i.e. intellectual, moral and communicative/interactive sides are stressed, without which the process of learning – whether at the individual or group level – would be unthinkable. on the whole, agreeing with the conclusions, and in particular that “systematic”, “rigorous”, having “roots in scientific inquiry” do apply to reflection, i would argue that the latter is not confined to those processes. rodgers also mentions that for dewey belief, invention and stream of consciousness are kinds of thought different from reflection (rodgers 2002:849). i am inclined to think that reflection being the best representative mode in terms of logical reasoning, these should not be contrasted as it is hardly possible to view them in isolation from each other, considering that thinking as totality is not a sum of fragments, and that spontaneous, subconscious, inventive and emotional elements may occur in essentially systematic and consistent reflection as well. furthermore, the learner’s and teacher’s awareness of their selves, beliefs, inventive thoughts, emotional-evaluative response, etc., can trigger a more “systematic” and “rigorous” process. armenian folia anglistika methodology 60 one last remark concerning the creative/inventive component: as a meaningmaking, and hence creative process (typically expressed by means of verbal language), reflection, however, should not be reduced to the domain of concepts only. and as long as we acknowledge its experiential nature, we could not overlook the other dimension that creativity has – artistic, with its own textuality and even more “delicate forms of reflection” – to use dennis s. schmidt’s wording (schmidt 2013:8). exposed to interpretation and as unique forms of artistic reflection, such compositions are human texts, and the way we understand them, citing dennis schmidt again, “is not necessarily wedded to the intelligibility defined by conceptuality. insofar as images can constitute a text – that is, insofar as they can lay claim to being intelligible and understandable – one must take seriously the process that the word does not define the realm of the intelligible. textuality is a way in which one can recognize and account for an intelligibility not restricted to linguistic and conceptual forms of intelligibility” (schmidt 2013:20). i would also add that my personal experience of creative reflection is that there are states starting from and returning to which i prefer to produce images, thinking about which helps me understand my search for meaning better. on the other hand, these states which are neither yet finally formulated thought nor still finally shaped image, are important for me as i enjoy the freedom from being mistaken, or from misunderstanding, even from being misunderstood. these are states of experimenting with my own text, not much restricted by formal convention. one such recent paper is “cross-cultural perspective: an attempt at bimodal reflection” (girunyan 2015). creative reflection as experience: experimenting with interpretation and explanation on the basis of what has been said so far and also considering the fact that the field of textual studies is interdisciplinary, and hence extensive, it is suggested that the course should include practical assignments/activities of creative and reflective character which will help to develop the feel of “knowing from experience” for the discussion and theorizing of diverse textual phenomena not to seem too abstract or “out of reach”. in particular, such fundamental issues as textuality, communication, multimodality, interdiscursivity, as well as more specific ones such as coherence, cohesion, etc., will be handled as immediate observations if the students are asked to reflect on methodology armenian folia anglistika 61 their own, each other’s or the teacher’s discourse. the same refers to the teacher’s perspective. thus, for the start the students will be asked to produce their own descriptive texts as verbalizations of graphical images, i.e. translate images into verbal language, at the same time feeling free in the process to include not only factual and concrete details but also their own chains of associations. for such activities nearly any graphical material (e.g. images of places, people, events, etc.) can be useful from the perspectives of defining contexts of situation, compositional structure, informativity, and other parameters defining a text in general. and i firmly believe that the material of study should be extended to include artistic compositions, where the freedom of associations is greater and the reflective process finer. obviously, in such cases the students taking on the role of interpreter will focus on their own experience: perception, attitude, etc. along with the shared part of background (knowledge). it is expected that when shaping their verbalized versions, they will strive to make their texts coherent and well-formed. the variety of pieces and their further exchange and analysis should be a rewarding experience both for the students and the teacher, and the complexity of the material for discussion may be increased to stress this or that aspect of textuality. well aware of the fact that it is impossible to cover the variety of choices of material in this paper, and also hoping that the statement of the idea is selfexplanatory, i will present an experimental class activity, in which i have my own part of personal involvement. motivated to hear and discuss my students’ response to my attempt at visual text production (collages/installations created as artistic compositions), i anticipate their readiness to reflect on their own experience. thus, the activity involves two stages, the first of which is text production with the awareness of the transition from image to verbal text. the second is the reflective consideration of the results. both stages are guided by questions initiated by the teacher, and further answered and/or revised by the students. with the understanding of openness for communication in mind, i am also ready to answer their questions (including ones about the compositions). in other words, the uniting factor for everyone will be reflection. i have tried such a sharing of experience with smaller groups within the course of academic english and now believe that it could be especially useful for text linguistics. armenian folia anglistika methodology 62 below is the image of my collage as a graphical text, followed by some examples of guiding questions (the latter forming an open-end set with possible variation) for the two-stage activity referred to above. stage 1 – text production:  what is the first thing that you notice about the visual text as a compositional whole? methodology armenian folia anglistika 63  describe the image in structural terms, focusing on the elements, the way they are combined.  are there any unusual elements or structural features, and why do you think they might be included in the composition?  pay attention to the techniques and the use of shapes, colours, materials.  what do you find as most/least appealing?  does the image look unexpected/paradoxical/meaningful/polysemous to you?  is there anything you would like to change about the collage? why?  what would you preserve in the structure/composition of the collage if you were to make any changes?  do you find anything familiar in the text, i.e. is the image reminiscent of anything else that you have seen, read, felt, etc.?  are there any artistic or literary associations in your mind?  are you thinking of figurative and/or symbolic dimensions?  think of a context in which to set the image, i.e. of a “gallery” of other images.  is the visual text a state/story/mood, etc. to you?  what would you ask the author about?  think of a caption for the image: the choice might range from concrete to abstract, including the option “untitled”. stage 2 – reflection on the verbalized text; discussion:  comment on your use of figurative language and analogies. could you do without them?  pay attention to your use of evaluative adjectives.  looking back at the process, how often did you need to shift to your first language? what accounts for such shifts: lack of vocabulary, associations, or any other factors?  did words happen to fail you, and if so, what did you feel like doing?  is the text you have produced coherent?  what cohesive means have you used?  specify your text in terms of genre.  comment on your text in terms of lexical choice, stylistic means, etc.  does your text look like a collage? armenian folia anglistika methodology 64  comment on the connection between the caption and your use of words from related lexical/semantic fields.  do you think your text is more informative than the graphical one?  if you have told a story, is it what you have experienced, or heard/read? (the student is free to ask the question to him/herself and not speak out the answer).  does your own text contain any allusive elements? what are they?  how “independent” is your text from you?  do you wish to change anything about your text having heard/read what the others have written/told?  how different/similar is your text to what everyone else has produced in terms of thematic development, composition, genre, background, etc.?  make your contribution to the process of discussion by formulating your own question(s). conclusion as a basically communicative phenomenon, at least because it is a way of thinking, reflection can serve for the broadening of the teaching and learning process, if used interactively. with the mechanism of asking questions to trigger the process, and as long as the latter is not taken as a formal type of activity but one that aims at revealing what is shared collectively and experienced individually, reflection is awareness of growth, gain due to exchange, and a way to discoveries (even if small). references: 1. airasian, p.w.; cruikshank, k.a.; mayer, r.e.; pintrich, p.r.; raths, j. & wittrock, m.c. (2001) a taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: a revision of bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. complete edition. / ed. by l.w. anderson, d.r. krathwohl. new york: longman. 2. engelhart, m.d.; furst, e.j.; hill, w.h. & krathwohl, d.r. (1956) taxonomy of educational objectives: the classification of educational goals. handbook 1: cognitive domain. / ed. by b.s. bloom. new york: david mc kay. 3. choy, s.ch․; oo, p․s. (jan. 2012) reflective thinking and teaching practices: a precursor for incorporating critical thinking into the classroom? // international journal of instruction. vol. 5, n 1, pp. 167-182. methodology armenian folia anglistika 65 4. colley, b.m.; bilics, a.r.; lerch, c.m. (9-25-2012) a key component to thinking critically. // the canadian journal for the scholarship of teaching and learning, vol. 3, issue 1, article 2, pp. 1-19. 5. girunyan, g. (2015) cross-cultural perspective: an attempt at bimodal reflection. // multimodal communication 2015 4 (2), pp. 151-165 (also available at: <www.de-gruyter.com>). 6. krathwohl, d.r. (2002) a revision of bloom’s taxonomy: an overview. // theory into practice. vol. 41, n 4. college of education, the ohio state university, pp. 212-218. 7. mayer, r.e. (2002) rote versus meaningful learning. // theory into practice. vol. 41, n 4. college of education, the ohio state university, pp. 226-232. 8. pintrich, p.r. (2002) the role of meta-cognitive knowledge in learning, teaching, and assessing. // theory into practice. vol. 41, n 4. college of education, the ohio state university, pp. 219-225. 9. raths, j. (2002) improving instruction. // theory into practice, vol. 41, n 4. college of education, the ohio state university, pp. 233-237. 10. rodgers, c. (2002) defining reflection: another look at john dewey and reflective thinking. // teachers college record. vol. 104, n4. teachers college, columbia university, pp. 842-846. 11. schmidt, d.j. (2013) between word and image: heidegger, klee, and gadamer on gesture and genesis. bloomington and indianapolis: indiana university press. è»ýé»ùëç³ûç ¹»ñá éë³ñ³ýáõù (î»ùëïá ÷áñó³ñ³ñ³ï³ý ¹çï³ýïûáõýçó) ¸³ë³í³ý¹ù³ý áéáñïáõù ù»ãá¹³ï³ý ñ»ï³½áïáõãûáõýý»ñá íï³ûáõù »ý ³ûý ù³ëçý, áñ é»ýé»ùëç³ý áñå»ë ñùïáõãûáõý ùýý³¹³ï³ï³ý ùï³íáõáõãû³ý ý³ë³å³ûù³ýý ¿: àëï ³û¹ù, ñá¹í³íáõù ý»ñï³û³óíáõù ¿ ÷áñó³ñ³ñ³ï³ý, ·áñíý³ï³ý ¹³ëç ûñçý³ï ï»ùëïç 黽í³μ³ýáõãû³ý ¹³ëáýã³óç ßñç³ý³ïý»ñáõù, áñáõù ·ñ³ýçï³ï³ý ï»ùëïç §μ³é³ûý³óáõùý¦ áõ áñå»ë ñ³çáñ¹ ù³ûéª áõõõáñ¹áõ ñ³ñó»ñç ùççáóáí é»ýé»ùëçí í»ñéáõíáõãûáõýá ¹çï³ñïíáõù ¿ áñå»ë ï»ùëïçý ³éýãíáõ ï»ë³ï³ý ñ³ñó»ñç çù³ëï³íáñù³ýá ýå³ëïáõ ù»ë³ýç½ù: maket 2013:layout 1.qxd the main features of electronically mediated communication rouzanna arakelyan, lilit hovakimyan yerevan state university i t is a matter of fact that netspeak has currently developed into a separate medium. netspeak is akin to both speech and writing, still, it is likely to be considered a new variety of language. at present the internet is mainly concerned with written texts and in this regard a language variety is defined in terms of its graphic, orthographic, grammatical, lexical and discourse features. hence, to ground the notion that netspeak is prone to be represented as a language variety there arises a need to study its main features. frankly speaking, it will be difficult to speak about common features of languages used in so many types of emc. besides, it goes without saying that the internet is a space of varieties and freedom, i.e. each user is free in his/her choice of language. language diversity is also conditioned by individual, gender and personality traits differences of internet users. interestingly enough, it turns out that the differences of men’s and women’s communicative styles are reverberated even in electronically mediated communication. among such diversity certain features which are typical of the language of emc can also be noticed. one of the main characteristic features of electronically mediated communication is the abundant use of abbreviated forms. the extensive use of highly abbreviated language in emc is not accidental and can be grounded by the fact that it accelerates the process of communication. besides, it goes without saying that the quicker emc takes place, the more it is akin to natural speech. abbreviated language implies syntactically reduced forms, the use of acronyms and symbols, the clipping of words, and various other strategies which function to reduce the time and effort necessary to communicate. the most frequent syntactically-reduced form which is typical of emc is the omission of the subject, the pronoun and the auxiliaries. before introducing an example it should be mentioned that syntactically-reduced forms are characteristic of synchronous types of emc, i.e. they are used for communication in chat rooms, social network, etc. it goes without saying that such constructions are not expected to occur in e-mail messages especially official ones or in the language of world wide web. thus, for example: ann: hi, hru? hi, how are you? mary: fine. u? i’m fine, and you? ann: me, 2, what r u doing? me, too. what are you doing? mary: reading. i’m reading. reduced sentences in terms of verb phrases should also be illustrated and discussed. a sentence that is reduced in this way refers to the fact that the verb phrase (i.e. a phrase headed by a verb) is omitted in the sentence. for example: dress? (= are you going to armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 81 wear a dress tonight?) the omission of verb phrases, like the omission of subject/pronoun, is most likely a consequence of the fast-paced character of emc. thus, by leaving out the verb phrases, the so-called “save the keystroke” principle is put into use, and consequently, lots of time is saved. the reduced sentences in terms of verb phrases are evenly understandable as those that are not reduced in this way. emc can also be characterized by sentences reduced with the help of the omission of prepositions or possessive pronouns. this kind of sentence reduction aims at saving keystrokes and thus time for the same reasons as mentioned above. the next linguistic feature of emc is atypical, to be more exact, it refers to complicated chaining. in the english grammar chain is the horizontal arrangement of words in a particular order. it is a matter of fact that electronically mediated communication, especially communication in its asynchronous types, is akin to speech, as if being its exact reverberation. hence, internet users write as if they’re speaking. consequently, multiple coordination/subordination in sequence is common in virtual commu ni ca ti on which can be illustrated in the following example: “the government have no money but they are giving syria 60 million on top of the 50 million that they already gave plus all of the salaries etc... that will cost to go help them... not quite understanding this...” this type of writing somehow resembles “stream of consciousness” style, which implies putting down whatever you’re thinking of, such as “just one more thing, do i want to go to england to teach in a school??? do i? oh well, i’ll decide that when i have to.” the tendency towards brevity typical of emc is expressed also in the frequent use of abbreviations. they are widespread and commonly accepted during electronically mediated communication. acronyms and initialisms 1 happen to be the most common and actual types of abbreviations emc is flooded with. very often certain abbreviations are used by teenagers as an attempt to make their speech different and not be understood by parents. however, in the course of time, they acquire such a high degree of acceptance that they gain usage in non-virtual communication. this idea which has currently become a matter of fact is interestingly formulated in an article called “alphabet soup”. it writes; “first developed about 20 years ago to streamline conversation on chat platforms like usenet and irc (internet relay chat) and popularized on instant messenger and gmail chat, terms like lol 2 (laugh out loud), omg (oh my god) and btw (by the way) now seem to be popping up irl (in real life)” (quenqua d., the new york times, september 23, 2011). the language of the extract itself comes to ground the idea that the internet language has penetrated in all spheres of communication.3 apart from the above mentioned ones. the following types of abbreviations are also peculiar to emc:asap (as soon as possible), brb (be right back), bak (back at keyboard), ttyl (talk to you later), rofl (rolling on the floor laughing), lmk (let me know), ambw (all my best wishes), kit (keep in touch), wth (what the hell), cul (see you later). to newbies, i.e. newcomers or new users of the internet these abbreviations may seem too confusing and illegible. but it will take them quite a little period of time to get used to and start using them effectively. it is interesting to observe that there are certain principles with the help of which the internet abbreviations are created. the main principles are as follows: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 82 • to reduce the number of required keystrokes to the absolute minimum, some words get truncated, especially those that resemble the sound of a single letter when pronounced, e.g. “u” stands for you, “ur”you are, “b”be, “bcoz”because, “cu”see you, “ic”i see, “q”queue, “ne”any. • in emc netizens make use of words where the letters are substituted by numbers on the basis of analogous sound system, e.g. “l8”late, “4”for, four, “b4”before, “4ever”forever, “2”to, two, too, “2day”today, “2morrow”tomorrow, “wan2”want to, “no1”no one etc. • the abbreviated forms of the words in electronically mediated communication imply also consonant writing which refers to the fact that some words are written with consonants only; i.e. the vowels are left out, e.g. “pls”please, “thx”thanks, “hv”have, “wk”week, “wknd”weekend, “msg”-message, “dctnry”dictionary and many others. consonant writing, for the most part, is a consequence of the fact that people avoid being accused of non-acceptable behavior such as swearing, insulting etc. by means of attempts to make such behavior difficult to notice. otherwise stated, all negatively charged words are written without vowels. this, in all likelihood, is an attempt to get away with insults and suchlike without risking netiquette 4. however, the omission of vowels can sometimes contribute to saving time as well. another feature peculiar to the electronic language is word clipping, i.e. word formation process which implies the reduction of word to one of its parts. here are the main four types of clipping: 1. back clipping in which the beginning is retained, e.g. net (network), ad (advertisement), doc (doctor), exam (examination), gas (gasoline), gym (gymnastics, gymnasium), memo (memorandum), pop (popular music), etc. this is perhaps the most common type. 2. fore-clipping retains the final part, e.g. phone (telephone), chute (parachute), etc. 3. in middle clipping the middle of the word is retained, e.g. flu (influenza), tec (detective), etc. 4. in the case of complex clipping one part of compound words is retained, e.g. cablegram (cable telegram), op art (optical art), etc. it may sound nonsense to insist that clipping is the prerogative of electronically mediated communication, but still it can’t be ignored that clipping is very common in electronic language for the reason that netizens are often compressed with time while communicating. the exchange of long words with their shorter synonyms is also frequently observed in emc especially in its synchronous types. this exchange, simply put, refers to the fact that a short word with the same meaning as a longer word is written instead of the longer one. for example, instead of writing i’ve given up/abandoned smoking netizens are more likely to use the word “quit”. in terms of using short words rather than long ones the choice seems to be one of preference. the short words that are used instead of longer ones are not that much shorter than their longer equivalents, and thus do not take much less time to write, which precludes that the intention is to save time. moreover, the short words that are used are more colloquial, which, as a whole, is more consistent with the armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 83 nature of electronic language. indeed, the use of colloquial lexicon is typical of its synchronous types such as chat rooms and social networks. chatting is more like talking on the phone than writing letters, despite the fact that you use the keyboard and, thus, actually write. some colloquial expressions – such as ain’t you, i been waiting, i don’t got time and it don’t seem – might indicate the writers’ membership of certain social groups, ethnicity as well as educational level. such colloquial expressions, then, help to establish our identity and influence other people’s views of who we are. another characteristic feature of the vocabulary in emc is the use of interjections. in face-to-face communication emotions can be expressed with facial expression or gestures. in emc, with the lack of visual cues, interjections are extensively used to compensate for it as in the following examples: very often electronically mediated communication is criticized that it fails to express the emotions of interlocutors as opposed to face-to-face communication. the criticism is unfair because in the electronic language there exist phenomena known as smileys (or smilies) or emoticons (emotional icons). the term emoticon is undoubtedly preferable for the simple reason that the name itself points at the function an emoticon carries out which is conveying emotions. besides, not all the emoticons are smiling faces there are also sad emoticons. they are used particularly in on-line chat rooms, social networks, blogs and e-mails. emoticons are basically short sequences of keyboard letters and symbols, usually emulating a facial expression that complements a text message. there are no strict rules for composing emoticons. therefore, it is natural that numerous varieties have been created and are in use. the principle is to create a face or other symbols with the help of keyboard characters and punctuation. a typical emoticon would be constructed from a colon or equals sign for eyes, a hyphen or “o” as a nose, and a bracket forming the mouth. examples of different emoticons are: : ) :-) :o) :-)) happy (☺); ;) smile with a wink; :~( :~ ( :’-( crying, etc. it is beyond doubt that emoticons are very entertaining and useful. however, they are more interesting from the linguistic point of view. it has already been stated that they complement to the message, but they may alter its meaning too. here are examples: a) yeah, but you are never on time anyways. b) yeah, but you are never on time anyways ;-) it is easy to notice that the first example has an ambiguous mood, i.e. it can be easily taken as a cutting remark and may even sound offensive. whereas the second example conveys warmth and friendly attitude by simply adding the three characters emoticon for winking. in a lot of cases emoticons are the only cues which help to decipher the speaker’s intention as in the following cases: a) simon is one of the best dog trainers ever! the changes he’s shaped in skittles are awe inspiring! : ) (☺) b) simon is one of the best dog trainers ever! the changes he’s shaped in skittles are awe inspiring! : ( (�) it is evident that the same message could be interpreted differently if there were no emoticons. some of the most characteristic and interesting features of the language used armenian folia anglistika linguistics 84 in electronically-mediated communication are the result of a complex set of orthographic strategies designed to compensate for the lack of intonation and paralinguistic cues that interactive written discourse imposes on its users. an innovative set of linguistic devices has evolved that functions to create the effects of voice, gesture and tone through the creative use of capitalization, spelling and punctuation. for example, reduplicated letters are used to represent drawn-out or expressive intonation. so, in the following examples the reduplication of letters intensifies the messages and makes them more expressive: “you are going to germany? greaaaaaaaaaaat!!!” “veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery bad joke... how could you think of it?! repetition of words is also typical of emc as it helps to highlight the emphasis. using this way of emphasizing something is also quite common in the spoken language, e.g. when one, for example, says: well, well, well, would you look at that? for example, “no nonoplzzzz” is more accentuated than “no, please!” other non-standard forms of orthography are endemic to emc and are appropriated to serve as alternative systems of signification. for, example, capitalization is almost never used for proper nouns or at the start of sentences mainly because changing the shift to capital letters is an unnecessary slowing down of communication speed, something which speech is liberated from. in general, it can be stated that capitalization is highly disregarded, and lower case is generally the rule. anyway, although in most internet situations upper or lower case make no difference, certain contexts (as web addresses and path) are case sensitive; moreover sometimes in a name there can be found two capital letters, a phenomenon which is known as bicapitalization or intercapitalization (i.e. geocities). above all, capitalization is most commonly employed as a convention for expressing emphasis. “omg this young lady is the cutest most adorable singer i have ever seen!!!” “i think to myself what a wonderful world when i hear her sing this song.” in both examples capitalization is used to add impact to the users’ statements. here another important notion should be noticed in respect to capitalization, i.e. writing personal pronoun “i” with lower case letter. this deviation from traditional english orthography is very typical of emc. one should be very careful while using capitalized letters during emc because it is very often associated with shouting especially among foreigners. in other words emc is sensitive to capitalization and as such the use of capital letters may cause misunderstanding. colloquial verbalization and non-standard spellings appear to be self-consciously selected in preference to “standard” linguistic expressions. all the spelling deviations point at the fact that emc is unedited. undoubtedly, there are a lot of blogs and websites which are censored but the most of the comments and the conversations that take place armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 85 on the internet is unedited. internet gives its users freedom which is expressed even in the language they write in. such messages are common on the internet. if all da happiness i have ever known, if all the happiness i have ever known, would b all dat i would ever own, would be all that i would ever own, it would b all right, it would b ok, it would be all right, it would be ok. if suddenly my life came 2 an end if suddenly my life came t an end & of good things dr would b no more and of good things there would be no more it would not matter, bcoz of da bst it would not matter, because of the best. interestingly enough people are tolerant towards orthographic mistakes in emc. reading such a message a netizen is not likely to think that the sender of the message is illiterate and would not consider the errors as mistakes but rather misspellings. moreover, it is a matter of fact that such writing has been accepted and has even become common within the domain of electronically mediated communication. additionally, given that many people do not know each other well while chatting, they do not seem to care about the spelling of words, they do not have to feel ashamed since they know for themselves that the risk of encountering those people in real life is quite low. in order not to miss to reply to a post they write messages fast and often with no concern regarding spelling. consequently, there occur many typos. the concept of “typos” refers to the fact that some words have been misspelled as a consequence of accidental keystrokes, which result from the rapid pace on emc. in relation to this, the following examples were found in the conversations in chat rooms: “are u going to the concert on friday???? (=are you going to the concert on friday?)”, “how ar you? (=how are you?)” and so on. regarding punctuation in electronically mediated communication, d. crystal clarifies that “punctuation tends to be minimalist in most situations, and completely absent in some e-mails and chat exchanges”, adding that “some do not use it at all, either as a consequence of typing speed, or through not realizing that ambiguity can be one of the consequences” (2001:89). in addition, he states that “unusual combinations of punctuation marks can occur, such as (to express pause) ellipsis dots (…) in any number, repeated hyphens (—), or the repeated use of comas (,,,,)”, adding that “emphasis and attitude can result in exaggerated or random use of punctuation, such as !!!!!!! or £$£$%!” (ibid.). besides, crystal makes clear that “some odd combinations of punctuation marks can appear at the end of a sentence” (ibid.). so, punctuation is also used to create effects of a spoken delivery. notes: 1. though both acronyms and initialisms (also referred to as anacronyms) are abbreviations formed with the initial letters of the successive parts of a compound term, still they differ in the way they are pronounced. acronyms form words themselves and are pronounced accordingly (e.g. nato, aids, unesco, laser, etc.), whereas initialisms are pronounced by spelling out letters individually (e.g. bbc, hiv). armenian folia anglistika linguistics 86 2. interestingly enough many abbreviations may stand for more than one thing, e.g. lol may stand for 1. laughing out loud, 2. laugh out loud, 3. lots of love, 4. lots of luck. very often their interpretation may not be as evident as they seem. in such cases it may be useful to refer to certain online dictionaries designed to decipher acronyms and abbreviations such as netlingo (dictionary of internet terms), foldoc (free online dictionary of computing), gutenberg: (project gutenberg; producer of free electronic books) and many others. 3. time-saving online abbreviations like lol, omg, and imho acquired such a high degree of acceptance and usage that have become already part of the official english language. the oxford english dictionary (oed) announced the addition of several acronyms to its dictionary adding some interesting trivia behind the origins of these internet-associated expressions such as lol (little old lady), etc. a word has to be in use for at least five years before it can earn its place in the dictionary. 4. netiquette (short for “network etiquette” or “internet etiquette”) is a set of social conventions and rules that facilitate interaction over networks. references: 1. baron, n. (2008) always on. language in an online and mobile world. oxford: oup. 2. berners-lee, t. & fischetti, m. (1999) weaving the web. london: harper collins publisher. 3. crystal, d. (2001) language and the internet. cambridge: cup. 4. crystal, d. (2002) language death. cambridge: cup. 5. crystal, d. (2003) the cambridge encyclopedia of the english language. 2nd edition. cambridge: cup. 6. crystal, d. (2008) texting. the gr8 db8. oxford: oup. 7. harper, j. (1998) english the lingua franca of the internet. // the washington times. washington d.c. 8. herring, s.c. (1996) computer-mediated communication: linguistic, social and cross-cultural perspectives. amsterdam: john benjamin’s publishing co. 9. knowles, e. & elliot, j. (1998) the oxford dictionary of new words. oxford: oup. 10. poster, m. (1990) the mode of information: poststructuralism and social context. cambridge: polity press. 11. romiszowski, a. & mason, r. (2007) computer-mediated communication. // educational media international, 4 (1). / handbook of research for educational communications and technology. 12. veselinova, l. & dry, h. (1995) queries on the linguist list: acquisition of a subregister. / paper presented at the georgetown university round table. washington d.c. 13. waseleski, c. (2006) gender and the use of exclamation points in computerarmenian folia anglistikalinguistics 87 mediated communication: an analysis of exclamations posted to two electronic discussion lists. / journal of computer-mediated communication, 11 (4). 14. foldoc. / free online dictionary of computing. <www.foldoc.org> 15. merriam webster’s new english online dictionary. <www.merriam-webster.com> 16. netlinguo. / online dictionary of internet terms. <www.netlingo.com> 17. oxford english dictionary. (2009) oxford: oup. 18. <www.abbreviations.definitions.com> 19. <www.google.books.com> 20. <www.internetworldstats.com> 21. <www.wikipedia.com> sources of data: 1. bbc new technology. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10971949> 2. davit crystal’s blog. <http://david-crystal.blogspot.com> 3. whitcomb, s.b. (2007) resume magic. / jist works. indianapolis. 4. <www.facebook.com> ¿é»ïïñáý³ûçý ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá ö³ëï ¿, áñ ñ³ù³ó³ýóá ý»ñï³ûáõùë í»ñ³íí»é ¿ ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý ùç ûáõñûñçý³ï ùççáóç: ð³ù³ó³ýó³ûçý ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý 黽áõý ýù³ý ¿ ¨՛ · ñ³íáñ, ¨՛ μ³ ý³íáñ ëáëùçý, ³û¹áõñ³ý¹»ñó ³ûý å»ïù ¿ ¹çï³ñï»é áñå»ë 黽íç ýáñ ¹ñë¨áñáõù, áñá ï³ñ»éç ¿ ë³ñù³ý»é ùç ß³ñù μýáñáß áõõõ³·ñ³ï³ý, ù»ñ³ï³ý³ï³ý ¨ çù³ëï³ûçý ñ³ïï³ýçßý»ñáí: âý³û³í ï³ý ¿é»ïïñáý³ûçý ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý 黽íçý ñ³ïáõï áý¹ñ³ýáõñ ñ³ïï³ýçßý»ñ` μ³ûó¨³ûýå»ë ñ³ù³ó³ýóá ½³ý³½³ ýáõãû³ý ¨ ³½³ ïáõãû³ý ïçñáõûã ¿: 軽í³ï³ý ùççáóý»ñç û·ï³·áñíù³ý μ³½ù³½³ ýáõãûáõýá å³ûù³ý³íáñí³í ¿ ý³¨ ñ³ù³ó³ýóçó û·ïíáõý»ñç ³ýñ³ï³ï³ýáõãû³ùμ, ë»éáí ¨ ýáõûýçëï μý³íáñáõãû³ý ·í»ñáí: ¾é»ïïñáý³ûçý ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý 黽íçý μýáñáß »ý ñ³å³íáõùý»ñç ¨ ñ³ù³éáï ·ñ»é³ó¨»ñç, §·çï³ïóáõãû³ý ñáëù¦ ñçß»óýáõ μ³ñ¹ ëïáñ³¹³ ë³ï³ý ý³ë³¹³ ëáõãûáõýý»ñç, ûáõñûñçý³ï áõõõ³·ñáõãûáõýá ¨ ³ûéý: üßí³í ùççáóý»ñá ùçïí³í »ý ¿é»ïïñáý³ûçý ñ³õáñ¹³ïóáõùý ³ñ³·³óý»éáõ ¨ ñáõ½³-³ñï³ñ³ûïã³ï³ý ³½¹» óáõãûáõýá áõå·ý³óý»éáõ ýå³ï³ïáí: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 88 microsoft word contens verjin linguistics armenian folia anglistika 51 factive and fictive in a literary critical text lilit gharagozyan yerevan state university abstract the aim of the present research is to reveal different stylistic devices that impart expressiveness as well as emotionality to the literary critical text. being a historical category, scientific style is first of all based on the development of the scientific thought and is characterized by the state of the national language and by the abilities and skills of the author, as well as that of the reader, for whom the scientific text is meant. scientific prose requires the use of a specific discourse, sometimes with a certain amount of ambiguity and indefiniteness. in recent years, there has been a significant rise in studies concerning the usage of different stylistic devices in scientific discourse, which is a direct indication of a complex dialectical relationship of the two main functional styles. all these elements of emotionality are necessary elements for the literary critical text. they essentially serve as additional reinforcements for the final clarification of the thought which is expressed in a neutral way. it should be noted that the fictive elements play a significant role in scientific discourse, thus contributing to the clarification of scientific theories and principles. key words: stylistic devices, expressiveness, scientific discourse, literary critical text, metasemiotic level. introduction a man's style is as specific as his fingerprints. stylistic analysis can in fact settle many complicated problems in writing style. a writer's use of language, if studied carefully, can reveal his deep-laid philosophy, his aesthetic personality and worldview. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 52 when two words emotion and science are mentioned together, many people see an intrinsic contradiction. the distinction between the two, however, is probably more falsified than genuine. as indicated by many linguists, nowadays in linguistics there are considerable changes connected with the problem of relationships between language and thought. scholars, especially during the last decades, have argued that scientific practice and discourse have not only factive but also fictive elements. the authors of scientific papers must demonstrate the validity and objectivity of their findings and make them seem interesting and relevant to already-established conclusions, that is why in recent years there was a gradual rise of interest to stylistic devices used in scientific discourse (gasparyan 2006). the elements of emotionality are necessary for scientific texts. they essentially serve as additional reinforcements for the final clarification of the thought, which is expressed in a neutral way. this can be explained, first and foremost, by the common interest to the examination of the texts (the peculiarities of the functional styles), by the tendency to give linguistic substantiation and interpretation to different stylistic devices, which impart expressiveness to the text. the functional specificity of scientific texts it is already a well known fact that nearly in all kinds of texts we can find different stylistic devices that give emotionality as well as expressiveness to the text. the fact that we, humans, are not only rational, but also emotional beings has also been illustrated. thus, our mind and its linguistic manifestations depend on specific circumstances (gasparyan 2006). accordingly, scientific writing provides us with straightforward logical information, while creative writing impresses us. in the course of history, these two polar functions were expressed differently; fiction – nonfiction, factive/real – fictive/unreal (razinkina 1965). while approving the opposition of these two functions, we can see that there are infinite types and genres, and it is often very difficult to define the linguistics armenian folia anglistika 53 boundary between the basic dichotomy of literal and non-literal speech. this is one of the reasons why the questions of perception, understanding and interpretation of texts have long been in the centre of attention of philologists. it is well known that language means, used in scientific discourse, tend to be objective, precise and unemotional. scientific prose exists for quite a long time and being a historical category, it is first of all based on the development of scientific thought in a particular country, and is characterized by the state of the national language and the abilities and skills of the author and of the reader for whom the scientific text is meant (akmanova 1977). the vocabulary of scientific texts has also received a lot of attention. it has been established, for instance, that ready-made, clichéd word-combinations should be taken as a characteristic feature of this register (gasparyan 2006). as a result the use of any expressive means and stylistic devices in scientific discourse can lead to the change of the meaning and of the structure of scientific texts. however, although the rigor typical of science requires the use of a specific discourse, a certain amount of fictiveness and ambiguity can also be present. thus, the use of figurative language helps to overcome the strict limits of scientific harshness, objectivity, and represents ideas and theories in a different, more creative way. that is why, this duality – the factive and fictive nature – of the language of intellective prose is the focus of the present article. the elements of fictive in factive texts we know that a literary critical text as such, is considered to be an intellective prose. it has a middle position between a scientific text and that of literary one. thus, as we have already stated above, the usage of fictive elements in any kind of factive text is more than possible, so in order to prove this, let us examine some examples taken from two different literary critical texts. the first example is taken from hamlet and his problem by eliot. starting from the very first pages of his criticism, t.s. eliot somehow summarizes some of hamlet’s already excising literary critical views, and while doing that, consciously or subconsciously he makes use of a stylistic device which is irony1 armenian folia anglistika linguistics 54 “these minds often find in hamlet a vicarious existence for their own artistic realization. such a mind had goethe, who made of hamlet a werther; and such had coleridge, who made of hamlet a coleridge; and probably neither of these men in writing about hamlet remembered that his first business was to study a work of art. the kind of criticism that goethe and coleridge produced, in writing of hamlet, is the most misleading kind possible. for they both possessed unquestionable critical insight, and both make their critical aberrations the more plausible by the substitution – of their own hamlet for shakespeare's – which their creative gift effects. we should be thankful that walter pater did not fix his attention on this play”. (eliot 1921:55) here, by observing the passage, we can see that eliot tries to look extraordinary or express his attitude towards the subject he has chosen to speak about. he wants to show his reader that he is well-read and has a good background of all the literary critical texts that were written about hamlet. our first example is tinged with irony by which eliot tries to show that he does not agree with some of the critic’s ideas. he thinks it is really good and even “we should be thankful” that walter pater2 did not write anything about hamlet, as according to eliot, it would be a failure and he would definitely criticize him as well. “so far from being shakespeare's masterpiece, the play is most certainly an artistic failure. in several ways the play is puzzling, and disquieting as is none of the others”. (eliot 1921:57) in the second example we can find a use of antithesis3; in the first part of the sentence the critic considers the play to be a masterpiece but then he says that it is an artistic failure and with this contradiction he somehow gives the puzzling atmosphere of the play. if we go back to the original text, we will see that the linguistics armenian folia anglistika 55 play, particularly monologues of hamlet, are filled with hesitation and doubt, hence, these parts have their effect on the critic. generally the impact of the original play is present in every passage of the critical text. e.g.: “to be, or not to be? that is the question – whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and, by opposing, end them? to die, to sleep”. (hamlet: act 3, scene 1) as can be seen, the above-adduced example is one of the most famous passages of hamlet, which by influencing eliot, also influences his language of criticism. the next example is taken from lewis’s hamlet: the prince or the poem: “critic who makes no claim to be a true shakespearian scholar and who has been honoured by an invitation to speak about shakespeare to such an audience as this, feels rather like a child brought in at dessert to recite his piece before the grown-ups”. (lewis 1969:88) in the above example we see that the critic refuses to use strict scientific prose style, and prefers to play with words, hence, giving a humorous tone to the passage. the use of metaphorical simile4 is of particular interest. he compares himself to a child who is unskilled and has a lot to learn. with the help of this simile, lewis both makes his audience understand that whatever he will say is not an easy task, and that it is a great honor and responsibility for him to speak about shakespeare and his plays. that is why, as we will see in the next example, he promises to be as honest as a child and “bestow all” his “childishness upon” those people who are listening to him in order not to “deceive” anyone: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 56 “i should not deceive you: i should not even deceive myself. i have therefore decided to bestow all my childishness upon you”. (lewis 1969:88) at the end of his work, however, with the help of a metaphoric construction, lewis emphasizes that he is not “a sort of literary peter pan who does not grow up” and he thinks that “only those adults who have retained, with whatever additions and enrichments, their first childish response to poetry unimpaired, can be said to have grown up at all.” “you must not think i am setting up as a sort of literary peter pan who does not grow up. on the contrary, i claim that only those adults who have retained, with whatever additions and enrichments, their first childish response to poetry unimpaired, can be said to have grown up at all. mere change is not growth”. (lewis 1969:105) it is also important to realize that in the neutral style of scientific literature the individualized style of the author should also be emphasized. while analyzing different scientific materials, we face up to a very interesting characteristic feature of english, i.e. their humorous attitude towards the most serious things. this is mostly achieved with the help of comparisons that play a cognitive role and appear unexpectedly in the sentence as we have already observed in the above examples. it is worth mentioning once again that in case of literary critical writing we should not forget about the original work which has its direct effect on the critic, hence, on his language of writing. to clarify this point it would be appropriate to study the following passage: “we see visions of the flesh dissolving into a dew, of the world like an unweeded garden”. (lewis 1969:99) linguistics armenian folia anglistika 57 at first sight it may seem that we have just one more example of the fictive element in a piece of intellective prose which is the following simile: “the flesh dissolving into a dew, of the world like an unweeded garden”. but when we go further and compare it with the original play, we realize that several lines coincide. with the help of horizontal context analysis it becomes clear that while talking about one of hamlet’s monologues, the critic himself is influenced by the shakespearean work of art, and hence, he goes out of the factive frame of scientific discourse. having studied both texts, we come to the conclusion that in some cases we have an allusion5 and to some extend a deformation6 of the original text in the literary critical work. to make our claim more understandable, we bring the two texts together in table 1 below to show the similarities between them. (table 1) how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world! fie on ’t, ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed. things rank and gross in nature. possess it merely. that it should come to this! but two months dead: nay, not so much, not two: so excellent a king; that was, to this, hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother that he might not beteem the winds of heaven visit her face too roughly. heaven and earth! (hamlet, act 1, sc. 2) for what, after all, is happening to us when we read any of hamlet’s great speeches? we see visions of the flesh dissolving into a dew, of the world like an unweeded garden. (lewis 1969:99) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 58 the mirroring of the original play can also be easily seen in the next example, presented in table 2 below. “there are ten lines of it before we reach what is necessary to the plot: lines about the melting of flesh into a dew and the divine prohibition of self-slaughter”. (lewis 1969:98) (table 2) oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! or that the everlasting had not fixed his canon 'gainst self-slaughter! o god, god! (hamlet, act 1, sc. 2) there are ten lines of it before we reach what is necessary to the plot: lines about the melting of flesh into a dew and the divine prohibition of selfslaughter. (lewis 1969:99) works of literature lead a life of their own and they receive something new from each generation of the readers that comes to them because we look at literature through lenses that are different and multiple. those lenses are our nationality, age, family background, sex, political, socio-economic status, the century, our mood, and generally our cognition of the world; they all influence the perception of a literary text. the aim of the present article, as stated earlier, was to reveal different stylistic devices that impart expressiveness as well as emotionality to the literary critical text. feelings and thus, fictive elements, are very important in literary critical discourse because they help the critic and the reader to appropriate their own experience. those elements are the ones to help critics not to feel themselves as somebody who has to be only very factive but also to be a human who can also play with the words and show us his worldview. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 59 conclusion the popular belief of the past century that scientific language is merely a transparent transmitter of natural facts, or that the scientific paper gives only a totally misleading narrative of the processes of thought that goes into the making of scientific discoveries, as we saw with the help of our study, is not always right. we have illustrated that there is a creative side to science, a side often sacrificed to an assumed objectivity. creativity is more often subjective than objective, and so alternative interpretations exist. as we have observed, the use of expressive-emotional-evaluative elements in a literary critical text is accounted for by the great wish of the writer to sometimes look extraordinary, show his cognition of the world, sometimes express his attitude towards the literary work he has chosen to speak about and his great wish to convince the readers in the righteousness of his approach to the problem. it is notable that the overstepping of the stylistically neutral, informative narration very often appears when the critic tends to clarify his points of view and uses fictive elements to explain something very difficult. this can be accounted for by the fact that we use both hemispheres of our brain simultaneously which has its influence on the language we use, however, we shouldn’t forget that though the possibility of finding many stylistic devices in literary critical texts is more than obvious, we can never speak of their linguopoetic function in this case, hence, a literary critical text, largely speaking, can never cross the border of logicality and matter of factness. notes: 1. irony is a figure of speech in which words are used in such a way that their intended meaning is different from the actual meaning of the words (gasparyan, matevosyan 2011:150). 2. walter horatio pater was an english essayist, literary and art critic, and fiction writer, regarded as one of the great stylists. his works on renaissance subjects were popular but controversial, reflecting his lost belief in christianity (wikipedia 2018, available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/walter_pater> [accessed april 2018]). armenian folia anglistika linguistics 60 3. antithesis, literal meaning opposite, is a rhetorical device in which two opposite ideas are put together in a sentence to achieve a contrasting effect (gasparyan, matevosyan 2011:138). 4. in case of metaphoric simile, the transfer acquires a different character, the one-to-one correspondence of form and content of linguistic units is violated; the comparison is based on inner characteristic features of the objects compared (gasparyan, 2013). 5. allusion is a brief and indirect reference to a person, place, thing or idea of historical, cultural, literary or political significance. it does not describe in detail the person or thing to which it refers. it is just a passing comment and the writer expects the reader to possess enough knowledge to spot the allusion and grasp its importance in a text (gasparyan, matevosyan 2011:136). 6. the term deformation renders the peculiarities of the processes which take place when an idiom, saying or other combination of words is broken in speech, then the refashioned as the case maybe (gasparyan, matevosyan 2011:136). references: 1. akhmanova, o. (1977) linguostylistics: theory and method. m.: mup. 2. gasparyan, s.k. (2006) the linguostylistic and linguopoetic analyses in action. yerevan: gitelick n 16. 3. gasparyan, s.k. (2006) on objectivity in understanding verbal art. // the knowledge of literature. vol. v. bergamo: bergamo university press. 4. gasparian, s.k.; matevosian, a.i. (2011) english style in action. yerevan: lusakn. 5. razinkina, n.m. (1965) elementy emotsional'no-subektivnoy otsenki v stile angliyskoy nauchnoy prozy. m.: mgu. 6. wikipedia (2018) available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/walter_pater> [accessed april 2018]. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 61 sources of data: 1. eliot, t.s. (1921) hamlet and his problems. // the sacred wood and major early essays. new york: mineola, dover publications. 2. lewis, c.s. (1969) hamlet: the prince or the poem. // selected literary essays. cambridge: cup. իրականն ու անիրականը գրաքննադատական տեքստում սույն հետազոտության նպատակն է բացահայտել այնպիսի ոճական հնարներ, որոնք հուզականություն և արտահայտչականություն են հաղորդում գիտական, մասնավորապես` գրաքննադատական տեքստին: վերջին տարիներին իրականացվել են զգալի թվով ուսումնասիրություններ՝ նվիրված գիտական խոսքում զանազան ոճական հնարների կիրառմանը, որը ևս մեկ անգամ փաստում է երկու հիմնական գործառական ոճերի բարդ փոխներգործությունը: գրաքննադատական տեքստը, որը նույնպես գիտական ոճի տարատեսակ է, նույնպես զերծ չէ նման ոճական հնարների կիրառումից: սակայն, ի տարբերություն այլ գիտական տեքստերի, գրաքննադատական տեքստում նման միջոցների օգտագործմանը գլխավորապես նպաստում է գեղարվեստական տեքստը, որն իր ազդեցությունն է թողնում քննադատի, ուստի նաև նրա խոսքի վրա: հարկ է նշել, որ այս հուզարտահայտչական միջոցները գիտական և հատկապես գրաքննադատական խոսքում շատ կարևոր դեր են խաղում՝ նպաստելով գիտական տեսությունների և սկզբունքների մեկնաբանմանը։ maket 2014_layout 1.qxd the functional value of proper nouns in medical texts marianna ohanyan yerevan state university abstract medical terminology is the professional language of those who are directly or indirectly engaged in the art of healing. medical texts contain a lot of greek and latin borrowings, metaphoric usages of some terms and also term-eponyms. health and care professionals need good communication skills to develop positive relationships and share information with people using linguistic varieties. medical eponyms are often attached to the people who made the discovery. term-eponyms can have both negative and positive overtones. they are a source of social communication and cognitively and culturally oriented. it can be stated that term-eponyms realize a cognitive function derived from the sphere they belong to. key words: medical discourse, medical terminology, term-eponyms, linguostylistic analysis, cognitive perceptions. introduction medicine is a sphere where the terms and terminological word-combinations are always in constant development. the use of eponyms fills the gap between different ethnic peculiarities in speech. an eponym is a term based on or derived from the name of a person. eponyms are word units which fill some gaps in language, and some cognitive perceptions arise based on them which reflect the ethnic peculiarities of a world (rilov 2006:298). in medicine, eponyms are the names of disorders linked to individuals who originally described the condition. they also help us remember and identify the disorder. for example, the apgar score is a system for point score evaluation of the physical condition of a newborn after birth, named after virginia apgar (1909-1974), a new york anaesthesiologist. some of the earliest uses of eponyms have been by ancient greeks and ancient romans. e.v. bekisheva describes term-eponyms as the reflection of a person in medical terminology. of importance are term-eponyms formed by means of proper nouns in combination with common nouns (bekisheva 2007:25). the functional use of term-eponyms medical terminology is a specialized language used by health care practitioners. and just like a foreign language it has its own vocabulary and acceptable ways of stringing words together. medical language can be so different from common or general language that it would have to be acquired or learnt by language users with only general language knowledge. medical terminology is a layer of lexical fund with the specific features, for in each professional sublanguage exists nomenclature vocabulary connected with certain realities and objects. medical english in its broadest sense includes not only the official nomenclatures of the basic medical sciences (such as anatomy, biochemistry, pathology, and immunology) and the clinical specialties (such as pediatrics, dermatology, thoracic armenian folia anglistika linguistics 102 surgery, and psychiatry) but also a large body of less formal expressions, a sort of trade jargon used by physicians and their professional associates in speech, correspondence, and record-keeping. at all periods of history, proper nouns denoting persons and places have been incorporated into adjectives, verbs, other nouns, and phrases, as in jeffersonian, americanize, marxism, and halley’s comet. eponymy, the derivation of words from personal names, has added to the medical vocabulary such diverse expressions as addison’s disease, chagoma, cushingoid, descemetocele, facies hippocratica, galenical, and parkinsonism. besides terms like these honoring distinguished physicians, others stand as monuments to important patients: bacitracin, an antibiotic named for margaret tracy, from whose tissues it was first isolated; carriуn’s disease (bartonellosis), named for daniel a. carriуn, a peruvian student who inoculated himself experimentally with the disease and died of it; hartnup disease, a heredofamilial metabolic disorder named for an english family of which several members were so affected; hela cells, a line of cultured human malignant cells named for henrietta lacks, from whose cervical carcinoma they are all descended; legionnaires’ disease, pneumonitis due to a bacterium of the genus legionella, the disease and the genus both named for the american legion, at whose convention in 1976 the first recognized outbreak occurred. names of prominent figures in myth, legend, and popular fiction have also found their way into the physician’s lexicon. atropine, a drug extracted from belladonna and various related plants of the genus atropa and used as an antispasmodic for smooth muscle, is named, in allusion to its lethal properties, for atropos, one of the three fates, who was reputed to cut off each person’s thread of life at the moment appointed for death. morphine, a narcotic extracted from the juice of the poppy, is named for morpheus, the god of sleep. satyriasis, abnormal sexual excitability in the male, refers to the satyrs, mythic sylvan deities with a leaning toward lechery. pickwickian syndrome, extreme obesity with hypoventilation, refers to joe the fat boy in dickens’s pickwick papers. most of the medical terms that incorporate geographic allusions are names of infectious diseases or their causative agents and refer to sites where these diseases are specially prevalent or endemic or where they were first identified or studied. in some of these terms, the names preserve their original form, as in lyme disease, a tick-borne spirochetal infection named for a town in connecticut, and norwalk virus, which causes outbreaks of diarrhea in school children and is named after a city in ohio. for other terms the geographic origins are not so evident: coxsackievirus, any of a group of human viruses causing various acute febrile syndromes, named for coxsackie, new york; maduromycosis, a fungal skin disease, named after the city of madura, india; tularemia, an infection of rodents sometimes transmitted to humans, first identified in tulare county, california. these terms based on proper nouns impart an element of novelty as well as a liberal dimension to what might otherwise be a depressingly prosaic assemblage of dry lexical bones gathered from the graveyard of dead languages. in a similar way, terms borrowed from modern foreign languages lend a cosmopolitan flavor to medical speech and writing. there are logical reasons why speakers of english customarily use foreign words for certain diseases, symptoms, or drugs. during the nineteenth century, the teachings and writings of continental medical authorities played an essential part in the education of british and armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 103 american physicians. until world war i, americans flocked to paris and vienna for specialty training, and brought back french and german words and phrases for which no english equivalents seemed quite right. numerous french words continue in use today in clinical medicine (ballottement, “shaking”, bruit, “noise”, grand mal, “big disease”, petit mal, “little disease”), surgery (bougie “dilator”, curette, “scraper”, “unbridling, cutting loose”, rongeur, “gnawer”), and obstetrics (cerclage “encirclement”, cul de sac “bottom of the bag”, fourchette “little fork”, souffle “blowing”). the suffix -ase, used to form the names of enzymes, first appeared in diastase, a french respelling of greek diastasis, “separation”. the sugar suffix -ose dates from french glucose, based on greek gleukos, “sweet wine”. e.g. asherman syndrome – a syndrome of intrauterine adhesions and synechiae resulting from trauma, commonly currettage (<http://www.babymed.com/eponyms-obstetrics-and-gynecology>) ballantyne’s syndrome (ballantyne-runge syndrome) – dysmaturity syndrome, placental dysfunction syndrome, postmaturity syndrome, prenatal dystrophy syndrome, prolonged gestation syndrome (<http://www.babymed.com/eponyms-obstetrics-and-gynecology>) bandl’s ring – the ring muscle at the border of the uterus corpus and the uterus isthmus, which is developed more pronouncedly during delivery (<http://www.babymed.com/ eponyms-obstetrics-and-gynecology>) in the above cases the proper nouns asherman, ballantyne and bandl are connected with common nouns, such as syndroe and ring, making the perception of the phenomenon more understandable. as a result, term-eponyms get the status of a cognitive construction as they denote the specific sphere. the peculiarities of the nominating processes (both linguistic and extralinguistic) have been studies by cognitive terminologists (lejchik 2007:123). many cognitive terminologists think that terms are always in constant movement and they originate in professional speech varieties and are submitted to some changes in the nominative process (bejsenova 2009:15). although medical english may give a superficial impression of order and system, it does not possess the qualities in much higher degree than the common speech. in fact, the ceaseless proliferation and endless semantic fusion and differentiation of medical terms have created a variety of problems. the presence in the medical lexicon of four or more names for many anatomic structures, many diseases, and many diagnostic and therepeutic procedures makes it awkward to maintain consistency in medical record-keeping, gathering statistics, billing for medical services, and assigning health insurance benefits, not to mention difficulties in medical and paramedical education and publishing. many symptoms, syndroms and terms denoting different diseases include termeponyms. for example. hippocratic face/facies, hippocratica (cachexia), botkin’s desease, filatov’s desease, quinke’s edema, virchow’s metastaces, the desease of hercules. there are many term-eponyms where the constituent parts include different organs, cells and tissues, e.g. the fallopian tubes, golgi cell, etc. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 104 the analysis has shown that the use of term-eponyms in medical speech is combined with some maneuvers, skills and abilities, e.g. gunn-zavanelli-o’leary maneuver (zavanelli’s maneuver). breech presentation may be diagnosed by leopold’s maneuver, vaginal examination, or ultrasound. the point of reference in describing the position of the breech is the sacrum. obstetrical maneuver is sometimes used when the baby’s head is born but the shoulders are stuck. other eponyms of this type are: smellies’ manoeuvre (mauriceau-levret manipulation), zavanelli’s maneuver, sim’s position (james marion sims). the term-eponyms bazedow’s disease, graves’ disease, flajani’s disease, parry’s disease, botkin’s disease, hepatitis a,b are actually very important and play a great role in english medical terminology. nowadays there is a tendency to substitute the eponym with a more neutral equivalent, e.g. bourneville disease – tuberous sclerosis complex, alice-in-wonderland syndrome or todd’s syndrome – lilliputian hallucinations, lynch syndrome – hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer (hnpcc). term-eponyms have some emotional-expressive overtones both positive and negative. for example: elschnig’s pearls, saint vitus dance (<http://www.wisegeek.com/what-issaint-vitus-dance.htm#did>). there are many term-eponyms where the names of two or more doctors are included. these are people who described the symptom, the syndrome or those who found the solution to the problem, e.g. jackobson-bechterev-kempner syndrome, khenda-shiullerakrischena-zive syndrome. in theoretical literature eponyms are considered as a variety of conceptual metonymy and many cognitive-linguists have studied this topic. the research has shown that term-eponyms realize a cognitive function as they indicate the sphere they belong to. in some cases term-eponyms have many equivalents. eponyms have a scientific-cognitive basis where the cultural aspect is dominant. conclusion thus, it can be concluded that medical terminology, including eponyms, is the most important means of communication. since the very start of development of the language of medicine, greek and latin words have been used as terms. actually they are internationally recognized and helps the scientists all over the world to communicate efficiently. the national and international cognitive-cultural information which is rooted in eponyms becomes a source of knowledge which is of vital importance for the specialists in international communication. references: 1. bejsenova, zh.s. (2008) k probleme motivirovannosti terminologicheskoi edinici. // materiali mezh. nauchno-prak. konf.: sovremennaja termonologija: sostojanie i perspektivi. astana: kgu. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 105 2. bekisheva, e.v. (2007) formi jazikovoi reprezentacii gnoseologicheskikh kategorii v klinicheskoi terminologii. avtoref. dis.dokt. fil.nauk / e.v. bekisheva, inst. jazikoznanija ran, moskva. available at: <http://www.referun.com/n/formy-yazykovoy-reprezen tatsii-gnoseologicheskih-kategoriy-v-klinicheskoy-terminologii>. [accessed march 2013] 3. blejkher, v.m. (1984) eponimicheskie termini v psikhiatrii, psikhoterapii i medicinskoi psikhologii. kiev: vishaya shkola. 4. golota, v. y. (2005) eponimi v akusherstve i ginekologii. // medicinskaja literatura. moskva: medpresinform. 5. rilov, j.a. (2006) imena sobstvennie v evropejskikh jazikakh. moskva: ast. 6. lejchik, v.m. (2007) kognitivnaja lingvistika. // novie problemi poznanija. n5. moskva: vishaya shkola. 7. (2011) eponyms in obstetrics and gynecology. available at: <http://www.babymed.com/eponyms-obstetrics-and-gynecology> [accessed march 2012] 8. (2010) contextual influences in art & design. available at: <http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-saint-vitus-dance.htm#did> [accessed june 2012] î»ñùçý-¿åáýçùý»ñç ·áñí³é³ï³ý ³ñå»ùá μåßï³·çï³ï³ý ëáëùáõù ´åßï³ ·ç ïáõã û³ý ½³ñ ·³ óáõùý çñ ñ»ï μ» ñáõù ¿ ýáñ ï»ñ ùçý-¿ åá ýçù ý» ñç ëñáý ã³ó ³×: ²ûë ³ éáõ ùáí ³ é³ í»é ñ» ï³ùñù ñ³ ï³ý »ý ³ûý ï»ñ ùçý-¿ åá ýçù ý» ñá, á ñáýù ¹» õ³ù ççá óç ï³ù ñç í³ý ¹áõã û³ý ³ý í³ ýáõù ý»ñ »ý` ³ í³ýó í³í ù³ñ¹ ï³ýó ³ ýáõý ý» ñçó: ø»ñ áõ ëáõù ý³ ëç ñáõã û³ý ù»ç ñ³ ïáõï áõ ß³¹ ñáõã û³ý »ýù ³ñ å³ ý³ó ñ»é ³ý· é» ñ»ý 黽 íç ñ³ ïáõï ³ ýáõý ý» ñç ñç ù³ý íñ³ ï³½ ù³ íáñ í³í μåßï³ ·ç ï³ ï³ý ï»ñ ùç ý³ μ³ ý³ ï³ý ùç³ íáñ ý» ñá: öáñó ¿ ³ñ í»é μ³ ó³ ñ³û ï» éáõ ï»ñ ùçý-³ ýáõý ý» ñç ׳ ý³ ãá õ³ ï³ý ý» ñáõ åá` ¹ç ï³ñ ï» éáí ³ý í³ ýáõù ý» ñç ñçù ý³ íá ñáõù ý» ñá, ï»ñ ùç ýç ïç ñ³é ù³ý ¹³ß ïá, ýñ³ ýß³ ý³ ïáõã ûáõ ýá ùç ç³½ ·³ ûçý ñ³ õáñ ¹³ï óáõã û³ý á éáñ ïáõù: ôóíêöèîíàëüíàÿ çíà÷èìîñòü òåðìèíîâ-ýïîíèìîâ â ìåäèöèíñêîé ðå÷è â ìå äè öèíñ êîé ðå ÷è áîëü øóþ ðîëü èã ðàþò òåð ìè íû-ýïî íè ìû. ýïî íèì – ýòî ëåê ñè ÷åñ êàÿ åäè íè öà, â îñ íî âå êî òî ðîé ëå æèò èìÿ èëè ôà ìè ëèÿ ÷å ëî âå êà, âïåð âûå îá íà ðó æåâ øå ãî èëè îïè ñàâ øå ãî òó èëè èíóþ áî ëåçíü èëè ëå êàðñò âî. â íà øåì èññ ëå äî âà íèè ìû îñî áîå âíè ìà íèå óäå ëè ëè òåð ìè íî ëî ãè ÷åñ êèì åäè íè öàì, â êî òî ðûõ èìåþò ñÿ àíã ëèéñ êèå ñîáñò âåí íûå èìå íà. íà öèî íàëü íàÿ, èí òåð íà öèî íàëü íî-êóëü òó ðî ëî ãè ÷åñ êàÿ èí ôîð ìà öèÿ, ñî äåð æà ùàÿ â èìåí ñîáñò âåí íûõ, ñòà íî âèò ñÿ èñòî÷ íè êîì ñî öèàëü íî ãî çíà íèÿ, ÷òî è îá ëåã ÷àåò ïðî ôåñ ñèî íàëü íóþ êîì ìó íè êà öèþ. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 106 maket 2013:layout 1.qxd on semantic patterns of kill-verbs in modern english robert khachatryan yerevan state linguistic university t he objective of this article is to reveal the semantic patterns of lexical causatives in modern english, particularly elaborating on the expression of the nuclear meaning to cause to die and the main features of kill-verbs. more specifically, this article reveals semantic characteristics that contemplate on the causativity of lexical causatives (also known as covert or underived causatives), namely based on a new approach to the already existing classifications of kill-verbs (khachatryan 2012). within the confines of this article, only kill-verbs with the nuclear meaning to cause to die with most frequent occurrences in speech, namely to kill, to murder, to assassinate, to execute, and to massacre are studied. linguistic data for the analysis of kill-verbs are mainly taken from the british national corpus (bnc). linguistic data from the bnc may entail discern patterns of usage that are not apparent in the examples from fiction. moreover, as words can acquire a broader meaning and usage in fiction, especially when used in metaphors, cases of metaphoric use of kill-verbs have been considered. all causative verbs in modern english denote the notion of causation, i.e. a relation between situations (events), but they perform it differently in different situations. in certain contexts they may acquire features that might change their connotations. langacker (1987:278) posits, “linguistic convention cannot provide a fixed, unitary expression for every conceivable situation that a speaker might wish to describe.” there might be instances containing one and the same verb, possessing one definition, but different connotations in each instance (langacker 1982:306). for example, the verb to kill can be used in different contexts and express different meanings by remaining in the general scheme of its primary definition, i.e. to cause to die. 1. a young woman of 30 was killed in the car accident on highway 66. 2. the rapist killed his victims to keep his identity secret. lexical causatives embed the meanings of cause and result. however, in example (1) the meaning of result prevails over that of the cause. example (2) clearly expresses both the cause and the result equally. different contexts modify the additional information denoted by the verb (the factor of intention, physical energy, etc). in example (1) the aspect of intentionality is non-existent; while in example (2) it is existent. moreover, the same general definition of to cause to die can be denoted by different verbs, like to murder, to massacre, to assassinate, etc. 3. they paid the criminal a fortune to assassinate the leader of the rebellion. 4. kyle murdered without hesitation, he loved the sensation. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 51 a new approach to the classifications of kill-verbs (khachatryan 2012) unites transitive forms of kill-verbs. the verbs included in the top category are to kill (cause the death of a person or other living thing) and to murder (the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another). these verbs denote the nuclear meaning to cause to die without any additional information on the instrument, motivation or manner. to cause to die is semantically embedded in all kill-verbs. considering the variety of features of english causative verbs, there can be many potential criteria for classifications. the accuracy of some of them can pose further debate on the topic. if one collective classification of kill-verbs has to be proposed, it must be based on the most important characteristic – one thing that both unites the whole class of causatives and divides them into subgroups. that one main criterion is their nuclear meaning to cause to die. firstly, verbs must be categorized according to their relation to the nuclear meaning. secondly, they must be subcategorized and compared with each other based on the additional features they denote parallel with the nuclear one. the verbs can be further cross-categorized and cross-compared, but this should be done outside of the main classification. to kill the definition of the verb to kill in longman dictionary of contemporary english (ldoce) is “to make a person or animal die”. the verb to kill itself is considered to be a prototypical causative because of its flexibility, and the causee cannot be omitted, it must be explicitly expressed. the verb to kill usually bounds its cause and effect stronger, intensifying the spatial and temporal distance between the cause and the effect. 5. in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the guatemalan army killed tens of thousands of civilian indigenous peasants during so-called ‘counterinsurgency’ operations. (bnc 2007:cjr 389) 6. according to one account the signal for revolt was given when geoffrey de lusignan killed one of the duke’s closest advisers. (bnc 2007:efv 1521) 7. i stood there and promised them that i would stay alive until i had killed the monster. (bnc 2007:h8g 737) in examples (8) and (9) the verb to kill can be substituted by other kill-verbs such as to stab, to shoot, to massacre, etc. the reason for this broad choice is the context. in example (8), the instrument is not specified because of the vagueness of the action. in example (9), background knowledge is decisive in determining a choice of verbs as battles usually include various instruments of killing like guns, knives, bombs, etc. 8. if he was vulnerable he was mortal, and if we could wound him we could kill him. (doyle “sherlock holmes, the valley of fear”) 9. and therefore, in recounting the numbers of those who have been armenian folia anglistika linguistics 52 killed in battle, i cannot but think you have said the thing, which is not. (swift “gulliver’s travels”) lemmens (1998:107) finds its agentival flexibility as one of the main reasons. in fact, to kill allows the use of both the agent and force. example (10) illustrates a case, in which there are many ways of dying in the wild nature. the idea is collective, uniting pirates and the natural causes, that is why to kill is used – it can express each one of them. 10. the boys on the island vary, of course, in numbers, according as they get killed and so on. (barrie “the adventures of peter pan”) 11. acid rain kills welsh fish. (bnc 2007:b7g 197) 12. an advantage of wind is that it at least partially kills sound. (bnc 2007:bny 1441) besides, to kill is widely used in both direct and metaphorical speech. and finally, together with corresponding arguments it can express the meanings of the rest of killverbs, while others kill-verbs cannot exceed the boundaries of their meaning essentials and substitute each. the predominance of to kill may be demonstrated in the following examples. 13. the man killed three women and was sentenced to five years of prison. 14. the man, who had killed the women, was sentenced to twenty years of prison. firstly, the verb to kill expresses an action, i.e. “to cause to die” but does not necessarily specify the means. in example (14) the man could have shot, stabbed, drowned or beheaded the victims. next, the immediate participation of the agent or the force is not specified; the man could have killed the women himself, could have given out an order or used an instrument. however, the man most probably performed the action intentionally, as no court will sentence a person to twenty years of prison for an accident. therefore, the indicator of volition is also perceivable. in example (13), the phrase of “five years of prison” most probably may indicate an accidental killing. provided examples (13) and (14) are not dependent on a context, the verb to kill may be simply replaced by the verbs to murder, assassinate, behead, stab, etc. the verbs can be substituted almost by any other murder-verbs, thus acquiring a more fixed meaning, i.e. verbs which allow valency expansion at the deep-semantic level (khachatryan 2008). however, this is possible only if verb arguments are not added. if an instrument is added as an argument to the verb (“the man killed three women with the same knife… ”), it could be substituted only with those murder-verbs that semantically embed the knife, for example, with the verb to stab. 15. five people were killed at the state capitol today. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 53 16. a terrorist group murdered five people at the state capitol today and threatened to blow out the building. example (15) introduces the mere fact, not the details and embeds an agent/force, however, it is not expressed at the surface-syntactic level just yet. the people could have died of a disease or been murdered (as illustrated in example 16). by leaving the agent/force, instrument and motivation out, the actual idea of killing is emphasized. the fact that people were killed at the state capitol, one of the most important buildings of the usa, is more crucial at the moment, rather than details that would probably follow later. to murder the definition of the verb to murder is “to kill someone deliberately and illegally” (ldoce). this verb possesses peculiarities that distinguish it from the verb to kill. firstly, the agent is semantically embedded in the meaning of this verb. 17. someone has murdered my master. (bnc 2007:gv7 590) 18. i’m sure the people who murdered your father are up to something. (bnc 2007:bp7 2133) 19. father morrow, 58, from braemar, aberdeenshire, had made the application alleging that dr james howe murdered the 22-year-old hillsborough disaster victim at the nearby airedale general hospital . (bnc 2007:cfb 1192) the agent of the act of murdering must be an entity either possessing animate or human-like attributes. the role of human-like agents can be performed by companies, communities, governments, etc. (lemmens 1998:107). 20. i remember one meeting six months after the cia had murdered allende. (bnc 2007:cf4 604) 21. loyalists have killed nine people and the ira have murdered eight in counties down, tyrone and derry. (bnc 2007:hj4 4689) 22. the gunsmith would have murdered him or had a heart attack. (bnc 2007:amu 2496) an interesting deviation from this pattern is presented in example (23). different uses of these verbs, however, are limited to literature, when the author has more freedom with language to support his own style and ideas. 23. “would you murder me?” he stammered. “there is no murder,” i answered. “who talks of murdering a mad dog? what mercy had you upon my poor darling, when you dragged her from her slaughtered father, and bore her away to your accursed and shameless harem.” “it was not i who armenian folia anglistika linguistics 54 killed her father,” he cried. (doyle “sherlock holmes, a study in scarlet”) secondly, the verb to murder possesses peculiarities that distinguish it from the verb to kill, namely the action denoted by this verb is almost always intentional. 24. ben murdered his brother for money and wealth. in example (24) ben obviously had the intention of killing, and he might as well have planned the action. as it is observed in example (25), the verb to murder is used to denote a killing caused by personal relationships, i.e. two brothers. the verb to kill would also be possible, but, for example, the verbs to assassinate, to massacre or to execute would be irrelevant to the context. in example (26) the killing is regarded as a crime, because it mentions the punishment (execution). the verb to murder always relates to immediate causation. with no intermediate causers, to murder is never used in case of orders. 25. “god forgive you!” cried madame charpentier, throwing up her hands and sinking back in her chair. “you have murdered your brother.” (doyle “sherlock holmes, a study in scarlet”) 26. one day, a young gentleman, who was nephew to my nurse’s governess, came and pressed them both to see an execution. it was of a man, who had murdered one of that gentleman’s intimate acquaintances. (swift “gulliver’s travel”) 27. “the secretary, mr. joseph stangerson,” said lestrade gravely, “was murdered at halliday’s private hotel about six o’clock this morning.” (doyle “sherlock holmes, a study in scarlet”) 28. i would have you call things by their right names. you say i murdered peter carey, i say i killed peter carey… for i knew that it was him or me. (doyle “sherlock holmes: the valley of fear”) 29. if the holy father was murdered, the implications are profound. (brown “angels and demons”) in example (28) the speaker distinguishes between to murder and to kill, because he wants to emphasize that he did not kill the victim deliberately, did not want to commit crime and, moreover, did not have any reasons for it. the reason he killed him was selfdefense. example (27) illustrates another peculiarity, the emphasis on the deliberateness. to murder is considered a crime, a deliberate killing. it can be noted that the sentence is very similar to a crime report, i.e. states the exact place and time. if the verb to kill was used, the information of the crime would be lost. in case of to assassinate the victim would have to be a celebrity, famous politician or social activist. example (29) seems incorrect because it contains to murder, not to assassinate. context plays a decisive role as it was earlier announced that the holy father has died of illness. the new death cause changes the situation, this is why to murder is used to denote deliberateness and crime. it is worth mentioning that the patient can be inanimate entities. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 55 30. “you have murdered a world,” he accused her. (bnc 2007:cm4 2479) to assassinate this verb is very similar to the verb to murder in the indicators of intention and planning that are stronger than in the verbs to kill and to murder, which have a very common usage and can be used in any context regardless of its topic. the verb to assassinate, meaning “to kill an important person” (ldoce), is an exception in this manner. to clarify, this verb is common in formal contexts and its denotational meaning plays an important role in the usage of the verb. in essence, the instigator of this action is necessarily an agent, and the patient of the action is always a political or social personae. 31. on my departure they assassinated the president. (bnc 2007:hrs 128) 32. on 2nd june 1914, the archduke franz ferdinand and his wife, were assassinated by a bosnian serb and that triggered a series of events that led to the outbreak of war on 4th, august 1914 the war that became known as the great war. (bnc 2007:aly 613) 33. in 1909 ito was assassinated at harbin in manchuria by a korean nationalist. (bnc 2007:edp 29) lemmens (1998:108) also points out the motivational background. if the motivation behind to kill and to murder can be a personal reason, like hatred or jealousy, the activities of the victim usually stand as a motivation for the assassinator. 34. a prime minister who sought to push an unpopular agreement through was assassinated by a religious nationalist in march 1951. (bnc 2007:g3r 911) 35. the man who assassinated john kennedy was killed before he could take the punishment. 36. t would be an easy way for a young man to go down into history? not so many british ministers have been assassinated as to make it minor incident. (conrad:the secret agent) both examples (35) and (36) allow substitution of the verb to kill with to murder. although to kill and to murder are grammatically correct, their use in this situation would be a marker of language incompetency. it can also be observed that the assassination mostly includes intermediary and immediate causer. the process is carried out in two stages. first, a criminal is identified, order is given out and the killing is planned by the actual organizers, which are the intermediate causers. only then the act of killing is brought about by the killer, the immediate causer. it is worth mentioning that the agent and the patient can be inanimate entities. 37. finally, the kgb assassinated a dozen members of our group as a warning to the others. (bnc 2007: cda 1702) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 56 38. progressive archbishop romero is assassinated by right-wing forces. (bnc 2007:hh3 4767) 39. manavendra sharma, the assam congress (i) general secretary, was assassinated by suspected ulfa guerrillas in guwahati on february 22. (bnc 2007:hl4 1374) to execute the verb to execute employs two meanings. the first meaning is “to do something that has been carefully planned” (ldoce), whereas the second one has the general definition of killing “to kill someone, especially legally as a punishment” (ldoce). as a member of murder verb category, the connotation of this verb incorporates both meanings: it surely denotes killing, but in an organized, official manner and it certainly possesses high level of intention and organization. 40. oliver plunkett was an irish jesuit executed for treason on july 1, 1681 and canonised five years ago. (bnc 2007:b1j 428) 41. he too was arrested and later convicted of treason and executed. (bnc 2007:an0 570) 42. he executed, imprisoned or dispossessed many of his own relatives to ensure the containment of their territorial ambitions and safeguard against any attempted seizure of the throne. (bnc 2007: ef2 550) 43. chinese authorities have executed a bank accountant who embezzled more than $175,000 in the country’s first such case of computer fraud, the xinhua daily telegraph newspaper reported yesterday… (bnc 2007:cpk 343) it is also worth mentioning that the criminal probably went through a number of trials or was omitted deliberately before s/he was sentenced to execution, i.e. the judge, the witnesses, and the lawyers, the executors can be considered the indirect instigators of the action. 44. several of its leaders were executed and many others sentenced to life imprisonment. (bnc 2007: hlg 2368) 45. many of the yugoslavs and white russians handed over were executed without trial by the titoists and russians. (bnc 2007: a2a 608) 46. people assembled in the room to witness how the terrorist was executed. 47. franquet’s trial lasted two week; he confessed to the charges against him, and was executed. (madison: joan of arc) there is no doubt that execution cannot be accidental. however, there is an interesting aspect to be considered, i.e. the aspect of agentivity. the immediate causer and instigator of this action is usually the government, courts and other legal bodies, the intermediate causer and the implementer is the executioner. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 57 48. as a result eck, the doctor and the engineer were found guilty, sentenced to death and executed by firing squad on luneberg heath. (bnc 2007:cds 604) as a rule, the agent of this particular action should be the intermediate causer. on the other hand, execution is an official procedure, and the executioner is usually the representative of the government, as if he does not preserve his own identity throughout the process, but acts as a medium. in this case the agent of the action is the immediate causer, the government, comprised of different officials, some of which did not even participate in the given action. the act, as illustrated in example 48, is carried out as a mere procedure, devoid of any emotions. 49. not a few ruffians whom he caught red-handed in flagrant acts of cruelty were executed without mercy. (fuller “brave men and women”) an interesting deviation can be observed in example (50), where to murder does not possess its traditional features. first, the verb is used only when the context refers to capital punishment. it is implemented by an executioner who receives an order from the authorities. it is obvious here, that although there was an order, it was not from any kind of official authority. next, there was no trial before the act. third, the verb to assassinate could be used as the victim was to be killed because of its status. 50. shortly afterward, the office of the swiss guard received that document, along with the threat that the cardinals will be publicly executed, one per hour, starting at seven p.m. tonight, in rome. (brown “angels and demons”) to massacre the official definition of this verb is “to kill a lot of people or animals in a violent way, especially when they cannot defend themselves” (ldoce). as it can be deduced from the definition, the patient of this action is expressed by the plural form of nouns which semantically embeds a collective noun. 51. the kurds have been and are being massacred, and are dying of neglect — our neglect — by the tens of thousands because they tried to escape that massacre, which we did nothing to prevent. (bnc 2007:abj 320) 52. for the first time in european history the jews were not only persecuted, they were massacred. (bnc 2007:bmv 380) 53. ever since 1099, when the first crusaders captured the holy city and massacred the people who lived there, jews and muslims alike, the christians had always treated jerusalem as though it belonged to them alone. (bnc 2007:efv 1446) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 58 54. this event reminded many of the bartholomew’s day ninety years previously when three thousand french protestants were massacred in paris. (bnc 2007:alk 499) 55. they massacred the filipinos, regarding them as little better than dogs. (bnc 2007:cal 1795) furthermore, it may be stated that not only the patient of the action, but also the agent embeds a collective noun. 56. then the israelis entered west beirut, their lebanese militia colleagues massacred the palestinians in sabra and chatila and european armies established themselves in beirut. (bnc 2007:anu 985) 57. the palestine liberation organization (plo) is forced to leave beirut and palestinians in the refugee camps are eventually massacred by lebanese christian forces. (bnc 2007:hh3 4793) 58. according to the report kuomintang troops brought over from the mainland massacred between 18,000 and 28,000 people following what was deemed to be a communist-inspired rebellion which began on feb. 28, 1947. (bnc 2007:hlg 859) the verb to massacre is usually realized by a number of people, although the instigator can be one person. consider the following examples: 59. the king massacred pagans for their faith in old gods. 60. the soldiers carried out the order the next day, and massacred pagans of the city. in example (59) the king is the instigator of the action. however, it is clear that the action includes an intermediate causer, i.e. soldiers. as the intermediate causer is not mentioned, the main emphasis falls on the king himself, stressing his responsibility for the crime and making him the agent. further on, in example (60) the soldiers are considered to be the agents of direct causation, because their participation in the killing is more emphasized than the person who gave out the order. to summarize, it is undeniable that even though the verbs mentioned above express killing, their use is limited to specific contexts. the semantic properties that distinguish kill-verbs, namely verbs to kill, to murder, to assassinate, to execute, and to massacre can be accounted for their highly context-dependent nature. the relevant use of causative verbs also excludes any misunderstanding concerning the setting and agentivity of the action. the notion of causation is closely connected to language competency for it relates not only to the surface-syntactic structure, but also to the deep-semantic structure of the verb. some causatives like to assassinate embed very specific meaning that limit their usage only to specific contexts. the use of to assassinate in a context describing the killing of common citizens is as unacceptable as reporting the death of an atheist by means of the verb to martyr. in case of the absence of a context, an appropriate way to perceive the connotation of the verb is through the agent/force and the patient/object, armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 59 which might provide additional information. the semantic role of the instrument is also a sufficient support to the representation of the situation in one sentence. it may be concluded that the analysis of the verb alone is not enough to reveal its exact meaning in the given sentences. valency expansion must be taken into consideration, as many arguments can complete the meaning. thorough study of causatives, especially those under lexical category, is necessary to comprehend the conditions of the action and the entity responsible for the consequences. verbs like to kill, to murder, etc. can semantically reveal details about the agent of the action, the number of the agents, volition, motives, manner, and instrument used by the killer. based on the newly proposed classification that unites verbs with the nuclear meaning “to cause to die” and emphasizes their additional features at the same time, the suggested classification of semantic classes of lexical causative verbs cannot be considered exhaustive. as linguistic data suggest, modern english employs structured classifications of causative verbs that are already being analyzed from the surface-syntactic and deepsemantic viewpoints. all verbs under this classification have been classified according to their meanings and additional features, like the embedded instrument, etc. however, a detailed meaning of kill-verbs will be a new ground for further investigations and research. all claims made in this article are subject to further empirical investigation because causatives constitute an undiscovered domain, which has the potential to reveal new findings about structures and usage in different languages. references: 1. khachatryan, r. (2012) on some aspects of semantic roles and their meanings in modern english. romance and germanic philology. yerevan: lingva. 2. khachatryan, r. (2008) semantic and syntactic valency of causative verbs. // romance and germanic philology, pedagogy and teaching methodology. yerevan: lingva. 3. kemmer, s. & verhagen, a. (1994) the grammar of causatives and the conceptual structure of events. // cognitive linguistics, 5(2). 4. langacker, r.w. (1982) space grammar, analysability, and the english passive. // language, 58. 5. lemmens, m. (1998) lexical perspectives on transitivity and ergativity: causative constructions in english. amsterdam and philadelphia: john benjamins. sources of data: 1. barrie, j. the adventure of peter pan. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16/16-h/16h.htm> 2. brown, d. angels and demons. <http://www.miracle-girl.com/angels&demons.pdf> 3. conrad, j. the secret agent. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/974/974-h/974-h.htm> 4. doyle, a.c. sherlock holmes: a study in scarlet. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/244/244-h/244-h.htm> armenian folia anglistika linguistics 60 5. doyle, a.c. sherlock holmes: the valley of fear. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3289/3289-h/3289-h.htm> 6. fuller, o.e. brave men and women. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13942/13942h/13942-h.htm> 7. madison, l. joan of arc. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/34474/34474-h/34474h.htm> 8. swift, jonathan. gulliver’s travel. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/829/829-h/829h.htm> 9. longman dictionary of contemporary english. <http://www.ldoceonline.com> 10. oxford english dictionary. <http://oxforddictionaries.com> ä³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù §ëå³ý»é¦ ýß³ý³ïáõãû³ùμ μ³û»ñç çù³ëï³μ³ý³ï³ý ï³éáõóí³íùç ßáõñç ðá¹í³íç ýå³ï³ïý ¿ μ³ó³ñ³ûï»é å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù å³ï׳ é³ï³ý μ³û»ñç çù³ëï³μ³ ý³ï³ý ï³éáõóí³íùý»ñá` ù³ëý³íáñ³å»ë ³ý¹ñ³¹³éý³éáí §ëå³ý»é¦ ýß³ý³ïáõãû³ùμ μ³û»ñç ñ³ïï³ýçßý»ñçý ¨ “to cause to die” ñçùý³ï³ý çù³ëïç ³ñï³ñ³ûïù³ýá: ²í»éç ïáýïñ»ï` ñá¹í³íá í»ñ ¿ ñ³ýáõù ñçßû³é μ³û»ñç çù³ëï³μ³ ý³ï³ý ³ûý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá, áñáýóáí å³ûù³ý³íáñí³í ¿ ¹ñ³ýó å³ï׳ é³ï³ýáõãûáõýá: ðá¹í³íç ßñç³ý³ïý»ñáõù áõëáõùý³ëçñíáõù »ý “to cause to die” ñçùý³ï³ý çù³ëï ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõ ùç³ûý ³ûý μ³û»ñá, áñáýù ³ù»ýçó ñ³×³ë »ý û·ï³·áñííáõù ëáëùáõù, ù³ëý³íáñ³å»ë to kill, to murder, to assassinate, to execute ¨ to massacre μ³ û»ñá: ì»ñéáõíáõãû³ý ñ³ù³ñ 黽í³ï³ý ýûáõãá ·»ñ³½³ýó³å»ë í»ñóí³í ¿ ´ñçï³ý³ï³ý ³½·³ ûçý ïáñåáõëçó (the british national corpus). armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 61 microsoft word maket 2020-1(21) 19.02 doc.doc armenian folia anglistika 169 our authors alessandra giorgi – phd in philology, full professor, department of linguistics and comparative cultural studies, ca’ foscari university of venice, italy. e-mail: giorgi@unive.it alexandra kudryashova senior lecturer, school of core engineering education, tomsk polytechnic university. e-mail: english@tpu.ru angela locatelli professor (full and tenured) of english literature, and director of the phd program in “euro-american literatures”, university of bergamo, italy. e-mail: angela.locatelli@unibg.it ani petrosyan – ma in linguistics, english philology department, yerevan state university. e-mail: a.petrossian.am@gmail.com dylan whitman waller – freelance editor, writer and musician, usa. e-mail: dylan.waller@gmail.com gayane gasparyan – doctor of philology, professor, chair of english communication and translation, yerevan brusov state university of languages and social sciences. e-mail: gasparyan.gayane@yandex.ru hasmik kajberuny – phd in philology, professor, chair of english, yerevan brusov state university of languages and social sciences. e-mail: kajberuny@yahoo.com hayk danielyan – ma student at english philology department, yerevan state university. e-mail: hdanielyan86@gmail.com karine kochunts – phd in philology, associate professor, english philology department, yerevan state university. e-mail: karinekochunts@ysu.am armenian folia anglistika 170 kristine harutyunyan – phd in philology, associate professor, english philology department, yerevan state university. e-mail: kristineharutyunyan@ysu.am lili karapetyan – associate professor, english philology department, yerevan state university. e-mail: starlet@ysu.am lusine danukhyan – ba student at english philology department, yerevan state university. e-mail: ldanoukhyan@gmail.com naira gasparyan – phd in philology, associate professor, english philology department, yerevan state university. e-mail: naira.gasparyan@ysu.am ruzanna arakelyan – phd in philology, associate professor, english philology department, yerevan state university. e-mail: ruzanna.arakelyan@ysu.am samvel abrahamyan – phd in history, associate professor, english philology department, yerevan state university. e-mail: samvel.abrahamyan@ysu.am tamara hakobyan lecturer, chair of english communication and translation, yerevan brusov state university of languages and social sciences. e-mail: tamarahakobian@mail.ru tatyana sidorenko – phd in pedagogy, assistant professor, school of core engineering education, tomsk polytechnic university. e-mail: sidorenkot@tpu.ru varduhi ghumashyan – phd in philology, assistant professor, english philology department, yerevan state university. e-mail: varduhighoumashyan@ysu.am << /ascii85encodepages false /allowtransparency false /autopositionepsfiles true /autorotatepages /none /binding /left /calgrayprofile (dot gain 15%) /calrgbprofile () /calcmykprofile (iso coated v2 \050eci\051) /srgbprofile (srgb iec61966-2.1) /cannotembedfontpolicy /error 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(www.heidelberg.com) >> /namespace [ (adobe) (common) (1.0) ] /othernamespaces [ << /asreaderspreads false /cropimagestoframes true /errorcontrol /warnandcontinue /flattenerignorespreadoverrides false /includeguidesgrids false /includenonprinting false /includeslug false /namespace [ (adobe) (indesign) (4.0) ] /omitplacedbitmaps false /omitplacedeps false /omitplacedpdf false /simulateoverprint /legacy >> << /addbleedmarks false /addcolorbars false /addcropmarks false /addpageinfo false /addregmarks false /convertcolors /converttocmyk /destinationprofilename () /destinationprofileselector /documentcmyk /downsample16bitimages true /flattenerpreset << /presetselector /mediumresolution >> /formelements false /generatestructure false /includebookmarks false /includehyperlinks false /includeinteractive false /includelayers false /includeprofiles false /multimediahandling /useobjectsettings /namespace [ (adobe) (creativesuite) (2.0) ] /pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /documentcmyk /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /usedocumentprofile /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2540 2540] /pagesize [595.276 841.890] >> setpagedevice microsoft word contens verjin translation studies armenian folia anglistika 155 conceptual adequacy in legal translation nare chobanyan yerevan state university abstract the aim of the present article is to provide an overview of the main difficulties encountered by legal translators, and work out some practical solutions so that the translator could provide an adequate translation in compliance with the norms of the target legal system. legal translations raise very complex theoretical and practical problems and, therefore, an interdisciplinary comparative approach to the two legal systems and languages should be manifested by specialized translators. this study demonstrates that despite the common assumption that legal translations are literal, they may be translated differently depending on the context and aim of its translation. when translating a legal document, one is thus faced with the challenge of providing a translation that makes a legal as well as linguistic sense. consequently, a translator can provide an accurate translation only if he/she has an understanding of the sl and the tl legal systems. key words: comparative linguistics, comparative law, sl and tl legal systems, culture-specific elements, paradigms of translation, court system, legal institutions, conceptual adequacy. introduction the legal systems of different countries are based on different legal traditions and cultural principles. this leads to legal terminology varying from country to country and remaining specific to each society. the very specific jargons of the legal texts are as complicated as mathematic equations. there is no room for literal translation, and the task of the translator is to fully understand the legal systems and language-specific details the two countries possess. in fact, an overabundance of resources found on the internet today may lead armenian folia anglistika translation studies 156 to confusion and make inexperienced translators focus on tools rather than content. therefore, translators should be equipped with reliable resources and be taught how to grasp the meaning in context of legal terms, as well as how to find appropriate equivalents in the target language. in the modern globalized world, translation lacks depth in theorization. paradigm shifts in translation theory occur when the changes in the social, economic, cultural and religious environments lead to significant changes in the practice of translation and that these changes then can no longer be adequately theorized by the old paradigms of translation. in order to provide an adequate interpretation, description, explanation and prediction of the impact of globalization on the theory and practice of translation, it is worth emphasizing that globalization has changed the mainstream of translation practice from canonical translation to professional (i.e. non-canonical) translation. translation theories based on comparative literary study or on linguistics fail to provide an objective and comprehensive theoretical framework for the mainstream practice of translation. influenced by theories of the knowledge-driven economy, translation should now serve the demand of the global economy and the global community. the process of translation is a process of decision-making. it is a set of procedures and strategies for making judgments when selecting the optimal choice from a range of potential equivalents. the theory of translation should attempt to understand how that decision-making is accomplished. it should also explicate how the professional translator moves from the concrete source text to producing the most appropriate target text. paradigms of translation according to anthony pym, “plurality of paradigms” tends to have many valuable ways of approaching translation. the true stuff of translation theory is the body of practice, what translators actually do and how translation users react to what they do. rather, we would recognize that there is a translation reality which is extremely diverse and which calls for different translation responses. translation studies armenian folia anglistika 157 as pym notes, for a translator who intends to work in the field of law, the problem of correctly identifying the english equivalent of the armenian legal term and vice versa is often a difficult task. a good translation is the one which has the same impact on the target language audience as the original text has on the source language audience. therefore, pym states two related questions the translator always has to bear in mind: who is the intended audience? what is the purpose of the text? the practice of translating seems to follow the modern translation theory that advocates the priority of the purpose as a decisive factor. if the translation is required only for an informal purpose (e.g. the business partner mainly needs to be informed on certain legal matters), then the translator may choose a simplified version, and sometimes it is the target reader that asks for it in order to fully understand the message. on the other hand, the translation can be required to be submitted as evidence in a court of law, or may represent a document that is to comply with legal requirements – for instance, a contract or a power of attorney. in this case the translation becomes even more difficult and the translator has to connect the source and target languages so as to meet the requirements of a fully functional translation (pym 2012:21-46). dating back to the wars between egypt and mesopotamia, the two dominant rivals of the early eurasian world, the oldest known recorded evidence of legal translation is the egyptian-hittite peace treaty of 1271 b.c. for over 2000 years, general translation studies were dominated by the debate whether a translation should be literal or free. since both legal and religious texts are normative and cultural-bound, it is not surprising, that the early history of legal translation is most closely related to that of bible translation, which needs “strict literal” translation. in the seventeenth century the french churchman and scholar pierre daniel huet raised his voice and rejected strict literal translation as “primitive”, insisting that interlinear translation requires no intellect on the part of the translator. in his opinion, the translator must respect the basic rules of grammar and syntax in the target language, yet not ‘adulterate’ the source text by producing a free translation. thus, huet advocated a ‘refined’ form of literal translation in which the words are translated in context, not in isolation (šarčević 2000:293). in the field of law, it was the practitioners who armenian folia anglistika translation studies 158 finally raised the question whether legal translations must follow the letter of the source text, as was traditionally believed, or whether they can be written in the spirit of the target language. after the so-called “cultural turn” in the 1980s, when factors other than purely linguistic ones began to be taken into account, translation strategies shifted according to the purpose of the translation (vermeer 1996: 41-42). other scholars would rather describe this approach as taking the particular communicative situation into account. as šarčević rightly argues, this approach cannot be applied to legal translations without restriction, because these texts are subject to special rules that govern their use in the mechanism of the law. when translating legislative texts, the translator will usually adhere closely to the wording of the source text. for example, when it comes to certificates and diplomas, with the culture-specific elements widely used, the aim of which is the delivery of personal information, its recognition and application, the strategy is generally to retain original forms without cultural adaptation. this normally means using the simplest translation equivalents as suggested by dictionaries, glossaries, encyclopedias or other credible sources. moreover, some elements must also be left untouched (e.g. addresses, names of people and places). borrowings, calques, naturalizations or descriptive translations are commonly used, because the first and most critical rule in the translation of such texts (apart from being communicative) is the retention of the source cultural elements. this is done with official names of countries, institutions, job titles, and the forenames of the holders of the documents. we also retain the sense (or names) of administrative units, the names of normative acts governing the formats of the documents if they are mentioned, and the references to all forms of proof of authenticity – stamps, watermarks etc. (šarčević 2000:277-293). according to correia, when it comes to the names of institutions, it is sometimes difficult to find a foreign language equivalent in accessible sources like dictionaries, glossaries, or corpora. if the institution itself does not suggest the officially established and acceptable version of its name, the only solution is to borrow the original name and add the translator’s version of descriptive translation, or sometimes to calque (the only excuse for using the name of an translation studies armenian folia anglistika 159 equivalent institution in the target culture is the situation in which the functions of both institutions are similar and there is no better solution). however, we must remember that the translation is introduced after the first appearance of the original term for informative purposes, as the most appropriate strategy is still to use the original versions of such names (correia 2003:38). the principle of fidelity in legal translation after all, the principle of fidelity in legal translations represents only one of the challenges for the translator. guralnik (1979), in webster's english dictionary, writes that "faithfulness/fidelity" means "the quality of being accurate, reliable, and exact." fidelity in translation is passing of the message from one language into another by producing the same effect in the other language, (in sense and in form), in a way that the reader of the translation would react exactly as the reader of the original text. the relationship of fidelity between the original and its translation has always preoccupied translators, but the problem is, as far as translation is concerned, one should decide to whom, to what the supposed fidelity pertains. the language system itself with its syntactic and semantic implications places certain demands on the translator and even creates limits for the translation. the following are some of the areas which can give rise to errors. polysemantic and homonymic words many words have a number of meanings, either related to each other in the event of polysemy, or looking alike simply by coincidence (homonyms). a translator may fail to notice that the word which seems familiar has a meaning different from that which it has in other typical contexts, or simply be unable to choose the best meaning from those listed in a dictionary. for instance, the word title (կոչում) has a number of meanings in english, but is hardly ever used in the legal sphere – for that purpose the word degree is used (polysemantic word). synonyms and collocations synonymous expressions cannot always replace each other in any context, armenian folia anglistika translation studies 160 but tend to be distinguished by different lexes or form different collocations with other words. a subversive activity may be illegal, but not illegitimate or lawless, a child may be legitimate or illegitimate, but not illegal, illicit, or unlawful. a husband will not refer to his wife as legitimate, or legal, but as lawful. apart from the linguistic issues, one of the central challenges, which the translators of legal texts face, is the ability to fully understand the requirements of various legal systems worldwide. in this respect, comparative law plays an important role in legal translation, as it allows for the identification of similarities and differences among legal systems. while the practice of legal translation requires an excellent knowledge of comparative law for the linguistic transfer to be successful, educational institutions do not usually train their students in how to make the most of comparative law in the translation of legal texts or how to rationally solve the problems arising from the differences that inevitably exist between legal systems. adhering to the pragmatic-functionalist approach by weston, the primary function of legislative texts is regulatory (prescriptive) and as such these texts differ from other lsp texts. when it comes to understanding a foreign legal system, this implies that the translator should at least have some basic knowledge of the other legal system and legal culture. legal system and legal culture are inherently interwoven, the difference being that the study of legal culture takes as an axiom the fact that two societies can have similar legal systems in some formal sense and yet different systems in terms of living law or actual practice. from this it follows that the translator must be aware of the most obvious similarities and differences between the systems and cultures being analyzed (weston 1991: 23). of vital importance to translation is ensuring that the legal effects are the same in both the source language and culture and the target language and culture. to do this, the translator partially applies the method of legal comparison, e.g. when comparing the court system or other legal institutions, such as marriage, in two different legal systems (e.g. armenia’s and canada’s translation studies armenian folia anglistika 161 legal systems). the armenian court system differs considerably from the canadian system due to the fact that armenia is a unitary state (a state governed as a single power in which the central government is ultimately supreme) while canada is a federal state (a political entity characterized by a union of partially self-governing states or regions under a central (federal) government). in the institution of marriage, for instance, the same-sex marriages are not recognized in the armenian legal system in contrast to the canadian one. in this respect, the translation of some culture-bound legal concepts referring to the institution of marriage may become a challenge for the translator. in the source text (in the canadian legal system) we find, for instance, the pivotal concepts of co-mother and co-motherhood. these terms were recently introduced to cover the concepts arising from the new form of parenthood in a same-sex marriage of two women: co-mother (the legal parent of her female partner’s child) and co-motherhood (being the legal parent of her female partner’s child). to find out whether there is comparability in the target legal culture, the armenian and canadian legal cultures must be compared with respect to the regulation of the same-sex relationships. the armenian legal system does not allow same-sex marriages, whereas the canadian legal system does. consequently, there are no legal concepts similar to the english comother and co-motherhood, and the translator has to apply an appropriate strategy to cover the linguistic and legal gap. there are several legal terms in english referring to the above-discussed legal concept -“joint mother”, “comother”, “joint status as mother”, “joint maternity”, “co-motherhood” and “comaternity”. here the prefix coand the adjective joint convey the idea of sharing, and the translator may choose to use their armenian equivalents (համա, համատեղ) to convey those terms into armenian if there are no other fixed armenian terms for them – համատեղ մայր, համամայր, համատեղ մոր կարգավիճակ, համատեղ մայրություն, համամայրություն, etc. here the translator works out an adequate translation for the given terms applying the transformational approach either at the morphological (in case of the prefix co-) or lexical level (in case of the word joint). thus for an equivalent legal translation, a number of strategies should be armenian folia anglistika translation studies 162 applied in the form of shifts and transformations to ensure appropriateness, that is, the potential reader should get the same information not necessarily rendered by the same kind of linguistic means. for example, when translating verdicts the english present tense in the court rules as follows... is adequately rendered into armenian by means of the past tense դատարանը վճռեց… in other contexts, however, a similar change in tense might be inappropriate. conceptual adequacy in legal translation legal translation leaves little margin to subjectivity. it rather depends on legal conditions, comparative law and legal interpretation rules to achieve accuracy and conceptual adequacy. in a major proportion of legal translation, this is a matter of legal consistency, and hence of conformity to legal sources and discourses, rather than a matter of individual preferences. conceptual adequacy implies that the terminology used should cover the same semantic areas this is sometimes difficult because the systems of law are not mirror images of each other. in one country, for example, the terms infant, toddler, baby, child, teenager, underage, minor, juvenile, adolescent, etc., refer to age groups which do not necessarily overlap with the particular age groups in another language. though most countries set the age of maturity at 18, there are different ages as well, such as age of sexual consent, marriageable age, school leaving age, drinking age, driving age, voting age, smoking age, etc. although a person may attain the age of maturity in a particular jurisdiction, they may still be subject to age-based restrictions regarding matters, such as the right to vote or stand for elective office, act as a judge, and many others. there are even countries, where age of adulthood refers only for male or female only, such as in iran, the adulthood age is 15 for males and in pakistan 16 for females only. for example, the following article from the ra civil code (www.arlis.am) may cause some misunderstanding if translated into english without specifying the age of adulthood mentioned in the passage: <<հհ օրենսգրքի 86 հոդվածի համաձայն չափահաս դառնալուց հետո նրանք միաժամանակ կկրեն որդեգրողներին խնամելու, նրանց հանդեպ հոգածություն ցուցաբերելու պարտականություններ>>: translation studies armenian folia anglistika 163 to solve this problem we can, for example, provide such a context which makes the meaning of the concept clear, using the method of descriptive translation or introducing a footnote (e.g., adult, i.e. more than 18 years old in armenia and 20 years old in canada). conclusion each country is characterized by a different linguistic, cultural and legal system. therefore, legal translations entail a certain level of system specificity and are not challenging only from a linguistic point of view, but also from a legal one. the translator, as the recipient of the source text and the producer of the target text has to be fully aware of the referential processes and correlate the reference strategies of the two cultures in order to meet the requirements of a fully functional translation. knowing the problem areas and pointing them out can help translators eliminate the risk of misunderstanding. overall, a translator who specializes in legal translation, should have the ability to read with “legal expert eyes” and achieve conceptual adequacy adapting to the needs of specialized drafters and target readers, but also of non-specialized receivers, as appropriate, depending on the translation brief. references: 1. guranilk, d.b. (1979) webster's new world dictionary of the american language. cleveland, (ohio): collins. 2. order n66 (07.12.2000) of ra ministry of social security on child's adoption. available at: <http://www.arlis.am/documentview.aspx? docid=19374> [accessed october 2017]. 3. pym, a. (2012) on translator ethics: principles for mediation between cultures. amsterdam: benjamins. 4. renato correia (2003) “translation of eu legal texts” in crossing barriers and bridging cultures: the challenges of multilingual translation for the european union. // ed. by a. tosi. clevedon: multilingual matters ltd. armenian folia anglistika translation studies 164 5. šarčević, s. (2000) new approach to legal translation. the hague: kluwer law international. 6. vermeer, h.j. (1996) a skopos theory of translation: some arguments for and against. heidelberg. 7. weston, m. (1991) an english reader’s guide to the french legal system. london: berg. հասկացութային համապատասխանությունը իրավաբանական թարգմանության մեջ այս հոդվածը միտված է ուսումնասիրելու իրավաբանական տեքստերի թարգմանության հիմնական դժվարությունները և մշակել որոշ գործնական լուծումներ, որպեսզի թարգմանիչը իրականացնի թիրախ լեզվի իրավական նորմերին համապատասխան թարգմանություն: իրավաբանական փաստաթղթերի թարգմանությունը առաջ է քաշում մի շարք բարդ տեսական և գործնական խնդիրներ, որոնք հաղթահարելու համար անհրաժեշտ է ցուցաբերել միջգիտակարգային մոտեցում՝ բացի լեզվական առանձնահատկություններից հաշվի առնելով նաև սկզբնաղբյուր և թիրախ լեզուների իրավական համակարգերի յուրահատկությունները: այս ուսումնասիրությունը ցույց է տալիս, որ, չնայած ընդունված կարծիքին, թե իրավաբանական տեքստերի թարգմանությունը բառացի է, կարող են կիրառվել տարբեր ռազմավարություններ՝ կախված համատեքստից և թարգմանության նպատակից: maket 2014_layout 1.qxd damnable lives? the inter-textual relations between marlowe’s doctor faustus and the english faust book ani kojoyan yerevan state university abstract christopher marlowe’s play doctor faustus is a problematic work in regards to the issues of its date and authorship, but one thing can be stated with certainty: it was inspired by the history of the damnable life and deserved death of doctor john faustus which is commonly known as the english faust book. the present article observes inter-textual dimensions between marlowe’s tragedy doctor faustus and its prose source-book – the english faust book. the article discusses intertextual relations both at paradigmatic and syntagmatic levels. according to the analysis, it becomes obvious that despite several similarities between the two texts, certain differences also exist which are conditioned by political and religious factors of time and social-historical factors of space. key words: christopher marlowe, early modern english drama, history and religion, british studies, text interpretation, intertextuality. introduction the following article observes inter-textual dimensions between marlowe’s tragedy doctor faustus and its prose source-book – the english faust book. christopher marlowe’s play doctor faustus is a problematic work in regards to the issues of its date and authorship, but one thing can be stated with certainty: it was inspired by the history of the damnable life and deserved death of doctor john faustus which is commonly known as the english faust book (hereafter referred to as the efb) (vivien 1994:171). the efb is a translation of a german original, the historia von d. johann fausten translated by an obscure translator, known only by his initials p.f. gent. however, the efb is not a mere duplication of the german faust book (butler 1979:31-2). like many other elizabethan translators p.f. also “felt free to improve on the original” (jones 1994:12-3). he rendered and modified the german source, producing a work which appeared in terms of omissions, replacements and additions in regards to its original (bevington 1993:3-5). in turn, some of these variations allow us to state that marlowe utilized the english translation rather than the original german text, since he alludes to specific events only appearing in the efb (ibid.). the english faust: a collection of stories retelling the reader about ‘damnable life’ the date of translation of the efb is also of paramount importance to determine the date of doctor faustus. the earliest survived edition of the efb appeared in 1592 (fehrenbach 2001:328). the title page states this edition is “newly imprinted, and in convenient places imperfect matter amended”. hence we can postulate that there existed an armenian folia anglistikaliterature 131 earlier, now lost edition of the work, which marlowe might have consulted (vivien 1994:172). the efb is a collection of stories telling the reader about the ‘damnable life’ of the protagonist whose “deserved death” is already predicted from the very beginning of the work. according to h. levin the efb is “a cautionary tale and a book of marvels, a jestbook and a theological tract” (levin 1961:131), but most importantly this is a story about a man whose consequent despair in god deprives him of the power to repent. this narrative prose consists of sixty-three chapters which generally can be presented in a tripartite structure: at first faustus’s pact with the devil, followed by his adventurous and supernatural journeys, and finally his damnation and hellish end. the efb greatly influenced the transmission of the faust legend and its further development in england. presumably, it also captured marlowe’s attention and provided him with rich and unique material for his play, serving as a chief source for it. however, the relationship between marlowe’s doctor faustus and its prose source is complicated: the former exists in two separate versions the a-text (1604) and the b-text (1616) (bevington 1993:63). the a-text contains a few short passages that do not appear in the b-text, also presenting a number of verbal changes. the following figure presents the transmission process of the faust theme in germany and england (jones 1994:11). intertextual relations: doctor faustus and the efb the b-text contains a number of episodes which cannot to be found in the a-text. it is regarded as a combination of both authorial and theatrical provenances including revision from 1602 onwards (ibid.). w. greg argued that the a-text was a ‘bad quarto’ declaring that it was memorially reconstructed (dump 1976:xxvi). for a long period of time this was armenian folia anglistika literature 132 a disputable question. however, recent studies have shown that the a-text stands much closer to marlowe’s original and, moreover, that it is set from an authorial manuscript, composed of scenes by dramatists (jones 1994:17). however, the issue of authorship of the b-text still remains disputable. besides the above mentioned facts, the a-text provides a more reliable account than the b-text does in relation to marlowe’s source-book, the efb. this becomes particularly clear in those scenes where the existing two versions deal with identical episodes. since the a-text is considered to be more accurate than the b-text, all the citations in this essay refer to the a-text unless otherwise specified. marlowe’s play doctor faustus exists with obvious detailed changes in relation to its prose source. already in the prologue marlowe uses an implicit allusion to the fall of icarus (gatti 1989:81-83), comparing faustus’s action with the one ‘who mounted above his reach, who flew too near the sun on the waxen wings and then fell into the aegean, an element not occurring in the source-book. chorus: his waxen wings did mount above his reach, and melting heavens conspired his overthrow. for, falling to a devilish exercise. (ch. marlowe “doctor faustus”, prologue, p.20-23) this might be considered but a subtle difference between the two works. nevertheless, this variation enables marlowe to introduce and develop a new type of character in his play: an ‘overreacher’ and a disobedient figure, that greatly varies from the one presented in the source. moreover, faustus’s transgressive character is emphasized more and more within the subsequent scenes throughout the whole play. the following lines provide the audience with information on faustus’s necromantic activity: chorus: and glutted more with learning’s golden gifts, he surfeits upon cursed necromancy; nothing so sweet as magic to him. (ch. marlowe “doctor faustus”, prologue, p. 24-26) . the source-book does not provide these details, and neither is it concerned greatly with the process of the protagonist’s decision to conjure. the only thing the efb reveals is the following, more ominous information on the topic: faustus being of a naughty mind and otherwise addicted, applied not his studies, but took himself to other exercises… (efb, chapter i, p. 26-28) gradually within the next episodes of the play disobedient character of faustus becomes more obvious, as he expresses his explicit desire to see the devils as obedient spirits under his control: armenian folia anglistikaliterature 133 faustus: faustus, begin thine incantations, and try if devils will obey thy hest… (ch. marlowe “doctor faustus” i.iii.5-6) in the source the entry of the dragon is succeeded by mephistopheles in the guise of a friar, and only later faustus requests the spirit to appear in that shape. moreover, when faustus sees the devil he is so terrified that he wants ‘to leave his circle and depart.’ in contrast, marlovian faustus immediately orders mephistopheles to reshape into a friar in order to demonstrate his power over the devil: [faustus sprinkles holy water and makes a sign of the cross.] enter a devil [mephistopheles] faustus: i charge thee to return and change thy shape. thou art too ugly to attend on me. go, and return an old franciscan friar; that holy shape becomes a devil best. exit devil [mephistopheles] i see there’s virtue in my heavenly words. who would not be proficient in this art? how pliant is this mephistopheles, full of obedience and humility! such is the force of magic and my spells. now, faustus, thou art conjurer laureate, that canst command great mephistopheles. (ch. marlowe “doctor faustus” i.iii.23-33) faustus: having thee ever to attend on me, to give me whatsoever i shall ask, to tell me whatsoever i demand, to slay mine enemies and aid my friends, and always be obedient to my will. (ch. marlowe “doctor faustus” i.iii.94-98) it is noteworthy that even on the linguistic level the choices of the word command in the play and of the word request in the equivalent episode in the efb clearly reveal the difference between the characters of the protagonists: presently not three fathom above his head fell a flame in manner of a lightning and changed itself into a globe: yet faustus feared it not, but did persuade himself that the devil should give him his request before he would leave. (efb, chapter ii, p.102-105) armenian folia anglistika literature 134 this pleasant beast ran about the circle a great while, and lastly appeared in the manner of a grey friar, asking faustus what was his request. (efb, chapter ii, p.117-119) the use of the word request does not show faustus’ power-striving, overreaching, “willfully and aggressively competitive” character in the source-book (cox 2000:110). these are features typical for the protagonist of the play who seeks for titanic power over “all things that move between the quiet poles.” faustus’ dissatisfaction with traditional learning is expressed within the episodes where he rejects the subjects of the university curriculum one by one: faustus: philosophy is odious and obscure; both law and physic are for petty wits; divinity is basest of the three; unpleasant, harsh, contemptible, and vile. (ch. marlowe “doctor faustus” i.i.108-111) however, this episode does not appear in the source-book and is the result of marlowe’s brilliant elaboration, which enabled the playwright to create a new character, a character of a renaissance period with humanist aspirations. marlovian faustus’ disobedient character becomes more visible within the scene where he takes initiative and offers his soul to lucifer: faustus: go bear these tidings to great lucifer: seeing faustus hath incurred eternal death by desp’rate thoughts against jove’s deity, say he surrenders up to him (lucifer) his soul, so he will spare him four-and-twenty years. (ch. marlowe “doctor faustus” i.iii.89-92) whereas in the source it is mephistopheles who becomes a proposer: upon these points the spirit answered doctor faustus, that all this should be granted him and fulfilled, and more, if he would agree unto him upon certain articles as followeth: first, that doctor faustus should give himself to his lord lucifer, body and soul. (efb, chapter iv, p.189-193) the play also portrays inner conflict in a way that is largely missing in the sourcebook. this conflict is presented in terms of a strict opposition between the good angel and the evil angel that derive from the tradition of morality plays (vivien 1994:177). armenian folia anglistikaliterature 135 these angels do not appear in the source-book. interestingly, the efb’s faustus is initially unwilling to accept the terms of the contract proposed by mephistopheles, but he does not show much sign of inner conflict until signing the pact, while the dramatic embodiment of marlovian faustus’ promptings of his conscience are presented from the very beginning through the good and the evil angels’ appearance. these two characters do not only portray the inner conflict but also add some additional tension and keep the rhythm throughout the whole play. in fact, their regular entries do not allow the audience to know exactly how the play is going to end; whether faustus will be able to repent and be saved or whether he will be damned: good angel: faustus, repent, yet, god will pity thee. evil angel: thou art a spirit. god cannot pity thee. faustus: who buzzeth in mine ears i am a spirit? be i a devil, yet god may pity me; ay, god will pity me if i repent. evil angel: ay, but faustus never shall repent. (ch. marlowe “doctor faustus” ii.iii.12-17) the opposition between good and evil also presents problems of free will and predestination in the play. the marlovian protagonist gets warnings about hell and damnation before making a pact with the devil, but he ignores this willfully and consciously. in the source-book the discussion about hell and damnation follows the act of signing the pact. being aware in advance of the issues of damnation and hell stresses faustus’ responsibility of his free choice of bad and evil, as well “the inevitable consequences of that choice.” the theme of conscience is prominent in the pact signing process where the good and evil angels appear again, which again stresses the inner conflict in the play (ch. marlowe “doctor faustus” ii.i.15-20). in the play faustus’ responsibility of free choice and conscience is also present in the scene when mephistopheles seems powerless uttering: “his faith is great. i cannot touch his.” (ch. marlowe “doctor faustus” v.i.78). the notion of hell is presented in the efb as the one of folkloristic background full of fireworks and gruesome tortures and of colorful beasts and animal-devils, but at the same time it is a place of physical torment: hell is the nurse of death, the heat of all fire… the dwellings of devils, dragons, serpents, adders, toads, crocodiles… the puddle of sin… the end of whose miseries was never purposed by god. (efb, chapter vi, p. 635-642) the ‘two sorts of torments in hell’ – paena damni and paena sensus, i.e. the pain of loss and the pain of sense, were widely discussed and spread approaches among many writers and protestant theologians of the time. marlowe also applied this protestant extension of the traditional “two sorts of torments in hell” in doctor faustus where he presents hell on the assumption of the spiritual idea of hell as separation from god: armenian folia anglistika literature 136 faustus: where are you damned? mephistopheles: in hell. faustus: how comes it then that thou art out of hell? mephistopheles: why, this is hell, nor i am out of it. think’st thou that i, who saw the face of god and tasted the eternal joys of heaven, am not tormented with ten thousand hells in being deprived of everlasting bliss? (ch. marlowe “doctor faustus” i.iii.74-81) in christian tradition despair is one of the mortal sins as it presents lack of faith in divine mercy and, therefore, in salvation as well (kott 1985:15). it is the consciousness of being damned to hell which is eternal. oed defines despair as “the action of condition of despairing or losing hope; a state of mind in which there is entire want of hope; hopelessness.” hence despair is another central issue omnipresent in doctor faustus. even marlowe’s play is often called a tragedy of despair. despair and its derivatives appear thirteen times throughout the play, reaching its climax in act five: faustus: damned art thou, faustus, damned: despair and die! hell claims his right... (ch. marlowe “doctor faustus” v.i.48-49) faustus: why wert thou not a creature wanting soul? or why is this immortal that thou hast? ah, pythagoras’ metempsychosis, were that true this soul should fly from me, and i be changed unto some brutish beast. all beasts are happy, for when they die, their souls are so dissolved in elements. but mine must live still to be plagued in hell. (ch. marlowe “doctor faustus” v.ii.97-104) however, the notion of despair is still rarely presented in the efb and is interpreted from a lutheran viewpoint: the devil had so blinded him, and taken such deep root in his heart, that he could never think to crave god’s mercy. (efb, chapter vi, p.703-704) marlowe, however, puts the issue of choice of free will and reprobation at the centre of his concerns, revealing this through faustus’ struggle to repent. if interpreted in calvinist terms, faustus is damned because he is an unredeemed sinner, a person who has been predestined by god to eternal damnation. faustus thinks that he cannot repent armenian folia anglistikaliterature 137 because his heart is hardened but at the same time he appeals to god to save his soul. the good angel and the evil angel explicitly show faustus’ struggle to repent; the good angel states that god will forgive him, while the evil angel reminds faustus that it is “too late” (ch. marlowe “doctor faustus” ii.iii.77-80). the play suggests an end similar to that of the efb’s one where the protagonists have a hellish fall. at the same time, however, these two works have quite different ways of depicting the final episodes. in the last chapter the prose sourcebook presents christian moral condemnation of a life from which “all christian may take an example and warning” and ends with long christian sermon-like lines (efb, ch. lxiii). the same moralizing end, but in its condensed and dramatic version, is presented in the epilogue of the play, where the epilogue fixes the status of doctor faustus as a heroic and moral play: chorus: cut is the branch that might have grown full straight, and burnèd is apollo’s laurel bough that sometime grew within this learnèd man. faustus is gone. regard this hellish fall, whose fiendful fortune may exhort the wise only to wonder at unlawful things, whose deepens doth entice such forward wits to practice more than heavenly power permits. (ch. marlowe “doctor faustus” epilogue, p.1-8) in the case of the sourcebook faustus’s hellish end is described in great detail: “they (students) found no faustus, but all the hall lay besprinkled with blood, his brains cleaving to the wall: for the devil had beaten him from one wall against another, in one corner lay his eyes…” (efb, chapter lxiii, p. 2925-2928.) in contrast, the a-text of the play retains its audience in anticipation of what happened to faustus and does not provide a parallel to the grotesque scene like the one mentioned in its source-book. only the b-text of doctor faustus is a reminiscent of the scene in the efb where the students find faustus’ dismembered body (“doctor faustus” the b-text, v.iii.1-12). conclusion the efb was an invaluable source upon which christopher marlowe based his tragedy. yet marlowe presents his work in a more rhythmical way, compressing the sixtythree chapters of the source-book into five acts in his play. he creates a character that is quite different from its archetype. in several chapters in the efb, faustus is depicted as a trickster; for example, he deceives a horse-courser, borrows money from a jew, and armenian folia anglistika literature 138 robs the bishop of salzburg. in the play faustus is presented as a power-striving, transgressive and overreaching character and a sinner. the efb tells its reader about the history of the damnable life and deserved death of its protagonist. marlowe shows his audience a play which is also about the damnation of the protagonist, doctor faustus. in contrast to its archetype, marlovian faustus’ damnation is not clearly shown from the very beginning of the play. in the case of the efb the reader already knows from the title of the work that the protagonist is damned and will die. moreover, it can be seen from the title of the source-book that the main character’s death is considered to be a deserved one. one of the most important differences between the efb and the play lies in the attitude towards the protagonist. in the efb, the protagonist is rejected, whereas in the epilogue of the play the chorus laments the tragic downfall of ‘the branch that might have grown full straight’. the play is also full of moments of faustus’ hesitation and struggle to repent, for instance, when faustus thinks about his possible salvation, or when he tells the scholars: “if i live till morning, i’ll visit you; if not, faustus is gone to hell.” thus, up to the end of the play the audience does not know exactly whether this tragic hero will be saved or damned. though the play and its source have the same moralizing end, from which every christian should learn; however, each of them suggests its own way of depiction of that end. as it has already been shown previously, the efb gives every single detail of what happened to faustus, thus uncovering every single detail to its reader, whereas in the play the audience is left in anticipation. marlowe stages a compulsive and ambitious character who sells his soul for knowledge and power in order to go beyond the limits of the possible. marlowe’s protagonist is deeply inspired by a characteristically renaissance humanist aspiration to push the boundaries of human knowledge. marlowe also puts the issues of free will and predestination at the centre of discussion . john calvin, an influential theologian of the time, emphasized the doctrine of predestination and man’s loss of free-will except to do evil. he believed that a man is initially inclined towards evil, and that any good deeds a man may perform is derived directly from god. according to this doctrine, god has already armenian folia anglistikaliterature 139 facsimile of title page of the orwin 1592 edition of the efb (jones, 1994: 90). chosen those who will be saved and those who will be damned (honderich 1973:12-13). the calvinist doctrine of predestination and free will to choose evil is obviously present in the play. through the use of calvinist conceptions of spiritual destiny, marlowe endowed his play with a remarkable degree of dramatic tension and tragic intensity. meanwhile in the efb, the lutheran approach is more emphasized: the sinner’s heart is hardened, he is damned and he has no salvation, and gets the ‘devil’s reward’, i.e. his deserved death. notes: 1. oxford english dictionary defines the noun command as ‘the act of commanding; the utterance or expression of an authoritative order or injunction; bidding.’ see oxford english dictionary, oxford university press. available at: <http://www.oed.com/ search?searchtype=dictionary&q=command&_searchbtn=search> [accessed feb ruary 2014]. 2. oxford english dictionary defines the noun request as ‘an instance of asking for something, esp. in a polite or formal manner; a petition or expression of wish; a document expressing such a wish; (also) the thing which is asked for. see oxford english dictionary, oxford university press. available at: <http://www.oed.com/search? searchtype=dictionary&q=request+&_searchbtn=search> [accessed february 2014]. references: 1. bevington, d.; rasmussen e., (eds.) (1993) doctor faustus aand b-texts (1604, 1616): christopher marlowe and his collaborator and revisers. manchester: manchester university press. 2. buthler, e. (1979) the fortunes of faust. cambridge: cambridge university press. 3. cox, j. (2000) the devil and the sacred in english drama 1350-1642. cambridge: cup. 4. fehrenbach, r. (2001) a pre-1592 english faust book and the date of marlowe’s doctor faustus. // the library ii, pp.327-335. 5. gatti, h. (1989) the renaissance drama of knowledge. london: routledge. 6. honderich, p. (1973) john calvin and doctor faustus. // the modern language review lxviii, pp. 1-13. 7. kott, j. (1985) the two hells of doctor faustus: a theatrical polyphony. // new theatre quarterly i, pp.7-18. 8. levin, h. (1974) the overreacher: a study of christopher marlowe. gloucester, mass: peter smith. 9. oxford english dictionary. oxford university press. available at: <oxlip+ , http://www.oed.com> [accessed february 2014] armenian folia anglistika literature 140 10. vivien, th.; tydeman, w. (eds.) (1994) christopher marlowe: the plays and their sources. london: routledge. sources of data: 1. jones, j. (ed.) (1994) the english faust book: a critical edition based on the text of 1592. cambridge: cambridge university press. 2. jump, j. (ed.) (1976) doctor faustus. manchester: manchester university press. ²ýçíí³í ïû³ýù»՞ñ. ùççï»ùëï³ûçý ñ³ñ³μ»ñáõãûáõýý»ñá ø³ñéáûç §¸áïïáñ ü³áõëï¦ åç»ëç ¨ §ü³áõëï. ³ý·éç³ï³ý ï³ñμ»ñ³ï¦ å³ïù³õμûáõñç ùçç¨ êáõûý ñá¹ í³íý áõ ëáõù ý³ ëç ñáõù ¿ øñçë ïá ý»ñ ø³ñ éá ûç §¸áï ïáñ ü³áõëï¦ åç» ëç ¨ ýñ³ å³ï ù³õμ ûáõ ñá ñ³ý ¹ç ë³ óáõ §ü³áõëï. ³ý· éç³ ï³ý ï³ñ μ» ñ³ï¦ (the english faust book) ëï»õ í³ ·áñ íáõã û³ý ùçç¨ ³é ï³ ùçç ï»ùë ï³ ûçý μ³ñ¹ ñ³ ñ³ μ» ñáõã ûáõý ý» ñá՝ ï³ éáõó í³í ù³ ûçý ¨ μá í³ý ¹³ ï³ ûçý ù³ ï³ñ ¹³ï ý» ñáõù: ºí ãý³ û³í »ñ ïáõ ï»ùë ï»ñý áõ ý»ý ùç ß³ñù μá í³ý ¹³ ï³ ûçý ýù³ ýáõã ûáõý ý»ñ, ³û ýá õ³ ù» ý³û ýçí, »ñ ï» ñç ñ³ ù³ ï»ùë ï³ ûçý í»ñ éáõ íáõã ûáõ ýá ãáõûé ¿ ï³ éçë í»ñ ñ³ý»é ý³¨ á ñá ß³ ïç ï³ñ μ» ñáõã ûáõý ý»ñ, á ñáýù å³ï ù³-ïñá ý³ ï³ý ï³ñ¨á ñáõã ûáõý áõ ý»ý: ºí ñ»ýó ³ûë ï³ñ μ» ñáõã ûáõý ý» ñç ùç çá óáí ¿é ëï»õí íáõù »ý ¹³ ñ³ßñ ç³ ýç ñ³ ï³ ë³ ï³ý ý³áõëï û³ý ³ý· éç³ ï³ý »ñ ïáõ ï»ñ å³ñ ý» ñá: ïðîêëÿòûå æèçíè? èíòåðòåêñòóàëüíîñòü â ïüåñå êðèñòîôåðà ìàðëî “äîêòîð ôàóñò” è â êíèãå “äîêòîð ôàóñò: àíãëèéñêàÿ âåðñèÿ” â ñòàòüå ðàññ ìàò ðè âàþò ñÿ ïðîá ëå ìû èí òåð òåêñòóàëü íîñòè â ïüå ñå êðèñòî ôå ðà ìàð ëî “äîê òîð ôàóñò” è â êíè ãå “äîê òîð ôàóñò: àíã ëèéñ êàÿ âåð ñèÿ” (the english faust book). ñ÷è òàåò ñÿ, ÷òî ìàð ëî íà ïè ñàë ñâîþ ïüå ñó â 1592, à êíè ãà “äîê òîð ôàóñò: àíã ëèéñ êàÿ âåð ñèÿ” áû ëà ïå ðåâeäå íà ñ íå ìåö êî ãî ïðèá ëè çè òåëü íî â 1591. è íåñ ìîò ðÿ íà ñõîäñò âà ìåæ äó ýòè ìè ïðîèç âå äå íèÿ ìè, åñòü òàêæå êîíê ðåò íûå äå òà ëè ñ ÷åì è ýòè äâà ïðîèç âå äå íèÿ îò ëè ÷àþò ñÿ äðóã îò äðó ãà, è êàê ïî êà çû âàåò aíà ëèç ìà òå ðèà ëà, äëÿ ýòî ãî èìå ëèñü ðåç êèå èñòî ðè ÷åñ êèå è ñî öèàëü íî-ïî ëè òè ÷åñ êèå ïðè ÷è íû. armenian folia anglistikaliterature 141 microsoft word 1. maket 2019-1new.doc armenian folia anglistika literature 182 morality vs immorality in the miserable life of daniel defoe's moll flanders vicky tchaparian lebanese university abstract defoe’s novel, moll flanders, the story of a thief, a criminal, a whore, a mistress, a lady, a lover, a beggar, and a plantation owner who lives the life of a repentant at 70, reveals moll’s both high and low morals. in the present paper i try to reveal the fact that moll flanders, the protagonist, and the first person narrator of the novel, speaks in the voice of defoe who had lived a life of both vice and virtue with all its extremes. moll flanders represents the age defoe lived, along with its harsh and corrupt judicial system, the poverty, the low level of life in the english society, and the injustice of the patriarchy, where love and marriage were commodities in the market called life. in the society where moll lived, women got married either for money or for title but never for love. thus, moll, having neither money nor title, and urging to become a lady, passed through different stages in her life living in vice but later repenting and living in virtue. key words: moll flanders, criminal, immorality, newgate prison, mistress, minister, lady, money. introduction at the time when daniel defoe wrote his fortunes & misfortunes of the famous moll flanders, men dominated the world and england was living black days after the horrible fire and the plague that had added on the misfortunes of the poor. in his preface to the novel defoe states that the tale is meant to convey a serious moral although moll’s autobiography which details her scandalous sexual and criminal adventures, may reveal the opposite. literature armenian folia anglistika 183 moll flanders is depicted to be one of the poor victims of the corrupt social and judicial systems of the 18th century; she is a young girl of anonymous parenthood, who had fallen in love, but had not been able to be happily married because of social and economic reasons. moll’s dream had never been to live a life of vice, whoredom, and theft; however, her life circumstances had not offered her anything better, so, she had ended up living in immorality. defoe, being an active member of the low class, and working hard in trade to move forward in life, knew well about the miseries of the low class people in general and women in particular; women who had only one chance in life called “marriage.” however, life was a market, and marriage was a very expensive commodity. a woman had to have either money or title to be able to get a good husband and live virtuously, and not all women were so lucky. a typical 18th century woman longing to live in virtue, but living in vice although many economic and social changes occurred in england during the 18th century, yet, obviously men still dominated the world. under the influence of the patriarchal society and the industrial revolution, men were superior to women not only in social status but in economic status as well. defoe, one of the pioneers in the world of trade and economy of the 18th century england, who participated effectively in creating the novel genre, has skillfully carved and engraved his unique character, moll flanders, cultivating in her much of him and more of the women of his age. the epidemic of the great plague that ravaged london from 1665 to 1666 and killed an estimated 100,000 people, almost a quarter of london's population in 18 months, along with the horrible fire of london that swept the central parts of the city from 2 till 6 september 1666 (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ great_fire_of_london>) effected the english society in general and its lower class in particular and revealed the very big gap between the rich and the poor. defoe, who participated effectively in creating the english middle class, presents a detailed and realistic picture of the life of the poor, including violence on the streets, theft, prostitution, and alike. in moll flanders, defoe armenian folia anglistika literature 184 depicts the lives of those who could not inherit money and try theft even though the law was harsh, death penalty was frequently inflicted, and executions were public events. defoe’s protagonist, moll flanders, truly represents all those penalties along with executions and transportation overseas. she represents innocent women who would like to have their own family, get married with their one and only lover, but have been deprived of their senses and been converted to either criminals or prostitutes who would fight using any means to be able to survive. moll, the heroin, who wrote her autobiography at the age of seventy, was aware of the fact that it was a man’s world; that money and class were the only means for a woman of her time to live a comfortable life, however, she also knew that she couldn’t afford her dream life since she was poor and of unknown parenthood. in the 18th century england, “being a woman was a misfortune and being a woman without money was a double misfortune” (ma wenying 2015:2). considering this, moll understood that no matter how much money she made and how many possessions she had, she would never be accepted by the english society as a fine lady. according to holzner (2001:52), “moll flanders was merely a victim of the male-centered society, and she was driven by all the forces of the world to pursue the immoral things.” she came to the conclusion that the only means for her to afford a living was to make money because she believed that nothing would save her but money, thus she said; […] if a young woman has beauty, birth, breeding, wit, sense, manners, modesty, and all these to an extreme, yet if she has not money, she’s nobody, she had as good want them all for nothing but money now recommends a woman; the men play the game all into their own hands. (p. 20) moll learned that money was the only way for a virtuous life, that she was living in a man’s world, and that women had restricted roles. she knew she literature armenian folia anglistika 185 could do nothing alone, and that is why she always searched for a companion, usually a man, who could support her with material things, 'tis evident men can be their own advisers, and their own directors, and know how to work themselves out of difficulties and into business better than women; but if a woman has no friend to communicate her affairs to, and to advise and assist her, 'tis ten to one but she is undone […]. (p.112) having this in mind, moll never stopped getting married. she even left her maternal feelings aside to save herself from poverty and loneness. at the time when defoe wrote moll flanders, there existed in england essentially no difference in the punishment received by those who committed theft and those who committed murder. moll, the innocent little girl, born in newgate prison, from a mother who was about to be hanged for a petty theft, was saved because of her pregnancy and was later transported to the colonies, leaving the oneand-a-half-year-old moll in bad hands. later in her life, moll came to understand that life in the 18th century england was only a market where love and affection were cheap commodities, whereas title and money were all what a woman needed to survive. moreover, “in the patriarchal society, men and women were unequal, not only in the marital life, but also in the social life” (erikson 1986:89). so, men could get married with a rich or a famous man’s daughter, and keep poor girls as their lovers and mistresses. […] men chose mistresses indeed by the gust of their affection, and it was requisite to a whore to be handsome, well-shaped, have a good mien and a graceful behavior; but that for a wife, no deformity would shock the fancy, no ill qualities the judgment; the money was the thing; the portion was neither crooked nor monstrous, but the money was always agreeable, whatever the wife was. (p.60) armenian folia anglistika literature 186 moll, having born in such a society, with neither money nor title, lived her childhood working and learning how to sew and make her own living. she was a forceful, persistent, and an attractive woman who obtained her way alone in life and was convinced that men were in love with her and that she was beautiful enough to get any man she wanted. she said, if a young women once thinks herself handsome, she never doubts the truth of any man that tells her he is in love with her; for if she believes herself charming enough to captive him, 'tis natural to expect the effects of it. (p.23) however, along with her wit, she lived twelve years as a whore, five times as a wife (once to her own brother), twelve years as a thief, and eight years as a transported criminal in virginia. by the time moll was eight, she didn’t intend to become a servant, even though town authorities expected her to be one. instead, she intended to become a “gentlewoman,” like a neighbor who seems to earn her living by needlework but is actually a prostitute. because of her looks and cleverness, moll became a favorite of the wealthy ladies in town who enjoyed visiting her and gave her money for her living expenses aside from her money for needlework. so, by the time she became fourteen she was taken in by one of the wealthy women, and it was here that her journey in real life tribulations and miseries started. a poor and beautiful orphan, who had no one to support her, serving in a rich family home would definitely be led to trouble; moll and the elder brother of the well-off woman’s family had a relationship, yet, the elder brother turned her into the wife of his younger brother (who was more interested in love, and less interested in money, and more importantly was naïve enough to believe moll was the innocent powerless virgin in love with him). as moll said, […]he diligently did […] cheat him, and had the thanks of a faithful friend for shifting off his whore into his brothers arms for a wife (p. 52). literature armenian folia anglistika 187 knowing that only money could save her from the harshness of life and the society, knowing that life is not a fair game, that the elder brother whom she so dearly loved would never accept her as his wife since she lacked title and money, moll accepted the offer of the younger brother who was less interested in class and was more in love with her. however, after living only five years as the wife of the well-off family’s son, she was left alone as a widow with no money and no one to turn to. being in such a situation, in such a place as england during the 18th century, moll increased her criminal activities (which included no killing but stealing and prostitution). she also kept spreading rumors about her riches to get a husband every time she lost one. her theory was that if england had provided properly for orphans she would not have fallen into bad hands and would not have needed to fend/maintain for herself before she could make her way in the world. the result of the acts she performed to achieve these goals was the transformation of a beautiful innocent young girl into a hardened middle-aged criminal who was finally captured and sent to newgate prison. thus, dreaming to live a life of virtue in a happy and a rich family, with her lover becoming her husband, the misfortune of being a poor orphan did not help moll to realize her dream, but obliged her to live in vice, become a criminal, and be transported to virginia to work at the plantations. however, one might ask, what the difference between virtue and vice is. virtue is “a behavior that shows high moral standards. doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong. the opposite of virtue is vice.” according to the same source, vice means, “a practice, behavior, or habit generally considered immoral, sinful, criminal, rude, taboo, depraved, or degrading in the associated society” (<https://en.wikipedia.org.>). according to merriam webster’s dictionary, virtue means “morality, a particular moral excellence” and vice is “sexual immorality, especially prostitution” (webster, 1993). considering the definition of the word vice according to merriam webster’s dictionary, it can be said that moll proved to be immortal throughout her life, since she had committed prostitution and had played the role of the mistress for many men. moreover, if vice means rude, and degrading in the armenian folia anglistika literature 188 society, according to the encyclopedia, moll’s behavior also proved to be so rude to her children, leaving them careless and going in search of new husbands. she was also a criminal – during her lifetime, even a petty theft was considered to be a crime. however, she confirmed that had it not been the corruption of the english government at her time, shelters would be built for the orphans to live in as was the practice in france. then, moll wouldn’t have been through all the miseries in her life. on the other hand, the encyclopedic definition of virtue (“a behavior that shows high moral standards. doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong”) can be applied to moll flanders’ life in the way that, every time she had a husband, moll didn’t cheat on him. she was faithful to all her husbands during the times she was married (considering the fact that she had officially been married for five times), and she avoided any other men during those times. moreover, although she was considered a criminal and a thief, she only stole because she was poor and had nobody to provide her with her necessities. she said, i have been told that in one of neighbor nations, whether it be in france or where else i know not, they have an order from the king, that when any criminal is condemned, either to die, or to the galleys, or to be transported, if they leave any children, as such are generally unprovided for, by the poverty or forfeiture of their parents, so they are immediately taken into the care of the government, and put into a hospital called the house of orphans, where they are bred up, clothed, fed, taught, and when fit to go out, are placed out to trades or to services, so as to be well able to provide for themselves by an honest, industrious behavior. (pp. 9-10) literature armenian folia anglistika 189 thus, according to moll, if the english government provided for the orphans as the french government did during the 18th century, if she herself was able to live at ease, regardless of her parenthood, she wouldn’t have been condemned with all the crimes and would have lived a decent life. conclusion thus, moll, a poor orphan of unknown parenthood, born in newgate prison, longed for a life of virtue, but living in such a society as the 18th century english, where title and money were to define a person’s fate, she was doomed to live a life of vice. nevertheless, according to the definitions of vice and virtue, moll had qualities that proved her to adhere to both. she condemned the english government for making her live a life of vice since she didn’t have anyone to protect her nor to provide for her. throughout the novel, moll’s dual nature is revealed shifting from vice to virtue and vice versa. sometimes, she was a repentant woman rebuking herself for her misdeeds, and other times she was a ruthless pursuer of ill-gotten wealth, giving the excuse that a young girl in poor circumstances had the right to find support in the best way she could. eventually, having got married for five times, and giving birth to a dozen children from different fathers, moll’s wit brought her release from prison and her transportation to virginia. there, with jemmy, her favorite husband, she was able to become, in a year’s time, a wealthy plantation owner and repented for all the wrong deeds she had committed in her life. references : 1. erikson, r.a. (1986) mother midnight: birth, sex fate in eighteenthcentury fiction. new york: ams press inc. 2. great plague of london (copyright 2019) wikipedia. available at: jstor database <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/great_plague_of_london> [accessed march 2019]. 3. great fire of london. (copyright 2019) wikipedia. <https://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/great_fire_of_london> [accessed february 2019]. armenian folia anglistika literature 190 4. holzner, j. (2001) the taboo against female aggression in moll flanders, lady audrey's secret, and alias grace. dissertation. huntsville, alabama: the university of alabama. 5. wenying zhang (2015) the feminist thoughts of moll flanders in moll flanders. // journal of literature and art studies. march 2015, vol. 5, no. 3, pp.177-180. doi:10.17265/21 59-5836/2015.03.003. changchun university, changchun, china. 6. webster, m. (1993) merriam-webster’s collegiate dictionary 10th edition. springfield, massachusetts, usa. 7. wikipedia. the free encyclopedia. available at: jstor database <https://en.wikipedia.org> [accessed may 2019]. source of data 1. defoe, d. (2008) moll flanders. new immeuble esseily, place riad solh, beirut: york press. բարոյականն ընդդեմ անբարոյականի դանիել դեֆոյի հերոսուհի մոլ ֆլանդերսի թշվառ կյանքում սույն հոդվածում վերլուծության է ենթարկվում դ․դեֆոյի «մոլ ֆլանդերս» վեպի գլխավոր հերոսուհու հակասական բարոյական կերպարը։ փորձ է արվում բացահայտել այն փաստը, որ վեպում հերոսուհին խոսում է դեֆոյի «ձայնով», որը վարել է թե´ բարոյական և թե´ անբարոյական կյանք՝ ողջ ծայրահեղություններով հանդերձ: մոլ ֆլանդերսը ներկայացնում է դեֆոյի ապրած դարաշրջանը՝ իր բոլոր արատավոր կողմերով, ուր սերն ու ամուսնությունը շուկա են հանված։ այն հասարակության մեջ, որտեղ մոլն ապրում է, կանայք ամուսնանում են կա´մ փողի, կա´մ հասարակական դիրքի, բայց ոչ երբեք սիրո համար։ received by the editorial board 19.12.2018 recommended for publication by the reviewers 30.01.2019 accepted for print 22.04.2019 microsoft word 1.linguistics 7 104 (1) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 16 representation of the concept loneliness in katherine mansfield’s authorial world picture* mariana sargsyan, gohar madoyan yerevan state university abstract the present paper aims at observing the peculiarities of the linguistic representation of the concept loneliness in k. mansfield’s authorial world picture. the authorial approach to the representation of the mentioned concept is studied in phonetic, lexical and syntactic aspects with the aim of discovering the specificities of interaction at micro and macro-levels of the text. a preliminary overview of the linguistic representation of the concept loneliness provided by the research will enable linking the results of the study with the cognitive stylistic individuality of the author. key words: concept loneliness, authorial world picture, microand macro-structure of the text. introduction linguistics has long been concerned with the problem of the reflection of the author’s feelings and his inner state in the language of his/her works. it has long been established that the constantly changing outer world forces one to respond to the events taking place in the real world that stir some kind of emotions. it is noteworthy that the problem of loneliness is not a new one and it can be easily traced in the writings of all ages. however, in the 19th century the concept loneliness underwent some transformations. it became associated with categories like isolation, solitude, seclusion. in the 20th century the problem of loneliness was even more complicated. now it was viewed as a natural state of man (puzanova 2003:4). however diverse the ideas on the concept loneliness may be, it is generally agreed that it is a social phenomenon which arises as the result of a clash between the external world of social relations and the inner state of a person leaving him/her with a series of mixed emotions. in the case of men of letters they may find their way in their writings. the concept loneliness or the lonely characters in katherine mansfield’s stories generally, considering the role of concepts in a literary text, some linguists mention that poetic concepts are in direct contact with the authorial mindset, his/her personality, biography as a whole. it is generally assumed that a poetic concept finds its verbal expression in a poetic image or in a symbol and helps reveal the world of the author. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 17 moreover, the concept may go beyond the limits of a single text connecting it with the rest of the works by the same author, of the literature and the cultural constants of the nation” (shurupova 2013:52). there is a close connection between the individual concepts of the author and his/her biography and worldview, with the epoch the writer lived in and created certain pieces of literature, with the genre (shurupova 2013:214). to demonstrate the case, in this article we will consider the interrelation between the authorial language and the personality of the author on the example of katherine mansfield’s short stories, which to our firm belief, can pave way toward better understanding of the individuality of katherine mansfield, the author so professionally hidden behind the “mask” – the story. katherine mansfield is one of the most distinguished feminist writers who tried to depict the harsh life of women left alone in the entire world with their problems and thoughts. not surprisingly, the center of all mansfieldian stories are women, young and old, rich and poor, educated and illiterate – all with different life situations but all sharing the same problem – loneliness. this is the underlying concept recurrent in all of her stories. these are disillusioned, depressed women in despair who are struggling hard to find peace with themselves and with the world. these are women in constant search for a better treatment. even if there are other characters, still the whole story develops around one central feminine character. it is not difficult to draw parallels between mansfieldian characters and mansfield herself. the careful study of the letters and the diary of katherine mansfield, the author reveals a most disillusioned personality – in deep depression, especially during the later years of her life, because of an incurable disease, complicated relations, and constant travel from one place to another which left her in perpetual fatigue and tiredness. though always accompanied by some close people ready to help and take care of her, loneliness was the feeling that befriended with the author. the bundle of all these complex emotions is best expressed in the language material of each story. the linguistic analysis of the text can enable us to follow how the concept of loneliness is materialized at various text levels which in its turn will bring to understanding the ideological content of the literary text and penetrate into the mental sphere of the very literary personality (askoldov-alekseev 1997:278). realization of the concept loneliness at lexical, syntactic and phonetic levels we herein assume that the analysis of the key concepts in these short stories can pave way to the revelation of both mansfield’s personality and individual characteristics, which will help the reader to perceive the text and understand the real motives lying behind it, which, in turn, will promote a more accurate interpretation of the text. the thorough and detailed investigation of the stories by mansfield reveals that among the key concepts apparent in the short stories is that of loneliness. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 18 to illustrate the peculiarities of the concept loneliness in mansfield’s stories we find it necessary to begin the analysis of the linguistic material at lexical level first, then turn to the syntactic and phonetic levels. the investigation of the lexical material reveals a great number of recurrent themes and words that come to emphasize the feelings and emotions of the lonely characters depicted in the stories. among the frequently encountered words are – faint, chill, sigh, wind, dark, vague, strange, grey, wretched, weary, etc. like in faint chill, faint winds, faint stirring, chill with red clouds, chill old brain, chilling portrayal, dark corners, dark crept, dark page, grey crinkled water, grey flannel jacket, grey light hovered, grey cat, wretched children, she was extremely wretched, wretched time, wretched place, life is weary, weary droops her head, etc. all these word combinations, though they might seem to have little to do with loneliness in the traditional meaning of the word, this way or another do convey feelings of loneliness and misery. in mansfieldean worldview the feeling of loneliness is often transferred through referring to natural phenomena. generally speaking, the writer often turns to natural phenomena to portray the inner state of the characters, and, somehow, these phenomena take on the role of symbols in the stories. one of the usual symbols in her stories is the wind. in fact, it helps convey so many diverse feelings – fear, loneliness, anticipation of some dreadful event, etc. suddenly – dreadfully – she wakes up. what has happened? something dreadful has happened. no – nothing has happened. it is only the wind shaking the house, rattling the windows, banging a piece of iron on the roof and making her bed tremble. leaves flutter past the window, up and away; down in the avenue a whole newspaper wags in the air like a lost kite and falls, spiked on a pine tree. it is cold. summer is over – it is autumn – everything is ugly. (k. mansfield “the wind blows”, p. 106) the wind, the wind. it’s frightening to be here in her room by herself. the bed, the mirror, the white jug and basin gleam like the sky outside. it’s the bed that is frightening. there it lies, sound asleep. . . (k. mansfield “the wind blows”, p. 83) the feelings of fear are accompanied with those of helplessness, powerlessness and loneliness in the face of a problem. the minute depiction of various plants plays an important role in revealing the characters, unfolding the storyline. for example, the aloe seems to be her favorite – strong and healthy on the one hand and isolated, lonely and thorny on the other. one may go as far as to state that with the help of the aloe the author, as a matter of fact, portrays herself – lonely, isolated from others, strong in spirit and thorny and conflicting in character. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 19 ...nothing grew on the top except one huge plant with thick, greygreen, thorny leaves, and out of the middle there sprang up a tall stout stem. some of the leaves of the plant were so old that they curled up in the air no longer; they turned back, they were split and broken; some of them lay flat and withered on the ground. “mother, what is it?” asked kezia.linda looked up at the fat swelling plant with its cruel leaves and fleshy stem. high above them, as though becalmed in the air, and yet holding so fast to the earth it grew from, it might have had claws instead of roots. the curving leaves seemed to be hiding something; the blind stem cut into the air as if no wind could ever shake it. “that is an aloe, kezia,” said her mother. “does it ever have any flowers?” “yes, kezia,” and linda smiled down at her, and half shut her eyes. “once every hundred years”. (k. mansfield “prelude”, p. 98) the author uses a number of stylistic devices to portray the aloe growing all alone amid the garden plants. the description provided by the author (huge plant with thick, grey-green, thorny leaves, split and broken; lay flat, withered on the ground, swelling plant (hyperbole) with its cruel leaves (metaphor) and fleshy stem, claws instead of roots (metaphor), hiding something, the blind stem cut into the air as if no wind could ever shake it (comparison) leaves the reader with the impression of a lonely plant – different from the rest, unique in its type, deeply rooted in the earth and quite resistant to challenges. the aloe stands all alone – like the heroine herself, like the author. it does not give flowers as often as all other plants but “once every hundred years”. the air was motionless, but when you opened your mouth there was just a faint chill, like a chill from a glass of iced water before you sip, and now and again a leaf came drifting – from nowhere, from the sky... …and then she too, she too, and the others on the benches – they would come in with a kind of accompaniment – something low, that scarcely rose or fell, something so beautiful – moving ... and miss brill’s eyes filled with tears and she looked smiling at all the other members of the company. yes, we understand, we understand, she thought – though what they understood she didn’t know. …but to-day she passed the baker’s by, climbed the stairs, went into the little darkroom – her room like a cupboard – and sat down on the red eiderdown. she sat there for a long time. the box that the fur came out of was on the bed. she unclasped the necklet quickly; quickly, without looking, laid it inside. but when she put the lid on she thought she heard something crying. (k. mansfield “miss brill”, p. 35) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 20 the above excerpted passages depict a middle-aged, lonely woman who is struggling to belong in the crowd she has nothing in common with. however, through a carefully presented contrast of the very crowd and herself the author makes it obvious that she simply ends up being a mere observer who has no place among the others. among the crowd of people dressed in their best she tries persistently to look a happy woman, however, in the last part of the story the author reveals the secret – under the mask of a most successful and happy woman the reader recognizes a most depressed and lonely lady who makes the reader feel sympathetic toward the heroine. the culmination makes the reader re-evaluate the whole story, and retrospectively the reader realizes that he/she knew it all throughout the story, it was not printed in black and white, but the secret sadness and the feeling of loneliness never left her a moment due to the gentle “melody” that katherine mansfield managed to create with the help of the skillful manipulation of the letters. throughout the story the reader is bombarded with words like motionless, chill, sad, disappointing, yellow leaves dropping, cold, trembling smile, soundlessly singing, little dark room, etc.. however, in fact it is not with certain words that the concept of loneliness is produced, rather it is accomplished through a series of stylistic devices, or rather these are everyday words with no special stylistic coloring that gain one through their specific arrangement in the sentence. namely, through repetition and gradation, the author manages to take the simplest words and make them absolutely special and decisive in the image of loneliness. and when she breathed, somethinglight and sad – no, not sad, exactly – something gentle seemed to move in her bosom. the band had been having a rest. now they started again. and what they played was warm, sunny, yet there was just a faint chill – a something, what was it? – not sadness – no, not sadness – a something that made you want to sing. (k. mansfield “miss brill”, p. 37) all types of heroines, old and young, tired of misfortunes and problems, despaired and desolate make their appearance in her stories and the misery and sufferings they live through get more realistic and tangible and make the reader feel as lonely as they do. the mixed feelings of loneliness, powerlessness and desolation are all summed up in the following examples. it was cold in the street. there was a wind like ice. people went flitting by, very fast; the men walked like scissors; the women trod like cats. and nobody knew – nobody cared. even if she broke down, if at last, after all these years, she were to cry, she’d find herself in the lock-up as like as not. (k. mansfield “life of ma parker”, p. 137) linguistics armenian folia anglistika 21 here is a very nice comparison between the inner state of the heroine, the weather outside and the indifference of the people to her grief. cold wind, like ice, went flitting by, very fast, me walked like scissors, women trod like cats come to make the image more complete. the ending of the story is even more touching. the heroine quite overwhelmed with her thoughts and emotions that were suffocating her was trying to find a place to cry and relieve the pain gnawing inside. lost in her own feelings and lost in the crowd, she was alone with her suffering and was unable to find a lonely place. (1) oh, wasn’t there anywhere where she could hide and keep herself to herself and stay as long as she liked, not disturbing anybody, and nobody worrying her? wasn’t there anywhere in the world where she could have her cry out at last? (k. mansfield “life of ma parker”, p. 249) (2) ma parker stood, looking up and down. the icy wind blew out her apron into a balloon. and now it began to rain. there was nowhere. (k. mansfield “life of ma parker”, p. 249) (3) and the night passed. presently the cold fingers of dawn closed over her uncovered hand; grey light flooded the dull room. rosabel shivered, drew a little gasping breath, sat up. and because her heritage was that tragic optimism, which is all too often the only inheritance of youth, still half asleep, she smiled, with a little nervous tremor round her mouth. (k. mansfield “the tiredness of rosabell”, p. 437) cold fingers of dawn closed over her uncovered hand, grey light flooded the dull room, shivered, drew a little gasping breath, tragic optimism, nervous tremor all come to underline the feelings she was experiencing. these are, in fact, complex emotions, a blend of emotions, however, they all can be grouped under the umbrella concept of loneliness, one that is typical of all mansfieldean women, one that was experienced by mansfield herself, and one that transgresses the “borders” of the text and “captivates” the reader, as well. as in nearly all stories by mansfield, here, too, there is the perpetual contrast between the dream, the desired life and the harsh reality. the girl longs for love, an affectionate glance and a warm embrace and lives in a kind of unreal daze daydreaming, hoping for strong emotions. on the syntactic level, the repetition and parallel constructions, which are quite abundantly used throughout the stories, serve as intensifiers of the concept loneliness. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 22 moreover, in some cases we can notice that repetition and parallel construction are the logical base of the stories. (1) and then she too, she too, and the others on the benches – they would come in with a kind of accompaniment – something low, that scarcely rose or fell, something so beautiful – moving. (k. mansfield “miss brill”, p. 228) (2) although it was so brilliantly fine…the air was motionless, but when you opened your mouth there was just a faint chill, like a chill from a glass of iced water, before you sip, and now and again a leaf came drifting – from nowhere, from the sky. (k. mansfield “miss brill”, p. 225) (3) she wanted to run, she wanted to hang on his arm, she wanted to cry every minute. (k. mansfield “the little governess”, p. 56) the overall repetition of certain structures and phrases bring on some kind of melancholy to the stories. the “melody” which one can find in poe’s poems can be well traced in the short stories of mansfield. in fact, mansfield, for some time, bore the influence of e.a. poe and his symbolism. (stafford, williams 2006:144-145). another peculiarity of mansfieldean repetitions is their arrangement in a sentence. they form a kind of a chain which stretches all through the story. the examples are quite many. (1) … dashed off distracted, like a lost dog who thinks at last, at last, he hears the familiar step again. (k. mansfield “je ne parle pas francais”, p. 146) (2) the silence – really, the silence seemed to come drifting down like flakes of snow. (k. mansfield “revelations”, p. 155) the phonetic aspect of the stories calls for a special attention since mansfield herself mentioned that she never wrote randomly but rather paid close attention to each word and each sound. she chose them very carefully, reading sentences out loud so that she could put some “music” in them. hence, the accumulation of certain vowels and consonants create a kind of tragic tone, a melody that runs through the story. in fact, alliteration and assonance as such play a key role in mansfieldean stories. again her, again she is blotted against the tall tree. squares of gold light show in the houses; the street lamps gleam through the new leaves; linguistics armenian folia anglistika 23 yellow fans of light follow the dancing boats. for a moment she is a blur against the tree, white, grey and black, melting into the stones and the shadows. and then she is gone. (k. mansfield “spring pictures”, p. 536) there were tangerines and apples stained with strawberry pink. some yellow pears, smooth as silk, some white grapes covered with a silver bloom and a big cluster of purple ones. these last she had bought to tone in with the new dining-room carpet. yes, that did sound rather far-fetched and absurd, but it was really why she had bought them. (k. mansfield “bliss”, p. 70) conclusion the preliminary study of the concept loneliness, which is not a new one in literature, is most evident in the short stories by k. mansfield. the tiredness and loneliness of the heroine are best manifested at the lexical level with certain words directly connected to that feeling, but also indirectly, through the carefully planned syntax and sound envelope. as a result of our preliminary study it becomes evident that the thorough analysis of the mentioned key concept helps reveal both mansfield’s personality and individual characteristics, which will lead to a better understanding of the text. the analysis of the concept is carried out taking into account the specificities of interactions between the various units of microand macro levels of the text. references: 1. askoldov-alekseev, s.a. (1997) koncept i slovo. // russkaya slovestnost’. ot teorii slovesnosti k structure teksta: antologia. / pod red. v.p. neroznika. m.: academia. 2. puzanova, zh.v. (2003) filosofiya odinochestva i odinochestvo filosofa. // vestnik rudn. ser. sociologiya. №4-5. 3. shurupova, o.s. (2013) тekstologiya i sverkhtekstovaya kartini mira kak obyekt filologocheskogo izucheniya [elektronii resurs] // filologicheskie nauki. 1. voprosi teorii i praktiki. № 3 (21). ch. ii. url, available at:<http://www.gramota.net/articles/issn_1997-2911_2013_3-2_57.pdf> [accessed august 2015]. 4. ydich, e.a. (2011) problema odinochestva w kontekste filosofii. // izvestiya tomskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. № 6. 5. kimber, g. (2014) mansfield and the art of the short story. uk: palgrave macmillan. 6. stafford, j.; williams, m.m. (2006) new zealand literature,1872-1914. victoria univ. press. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 24 sources of data: 1. mansfield, k. (1984-86) the collected letters of katherine mansfield. / ed. by v. o’sullivan and m. scott. 4 vols. oxford: clarendon press. 2. mansfield, k. (1984) the collected stories of k. mansfield. middlesex. england: penguin books. 3. mansfield, k. (2002) selected stories. great britain: oup. 4. mansfield, k. (2012) the best short stories of k. mansfield. uk: courier corporation. 5. mansfield, k. (2006) the collected stories of katherine mansfield. uk: wordsworth editions. * acknowledgement: this work was supported by the ra mes state committee of science, in the frames of the research project № scs13 yr – 6b0025. øç³ûýáõãûáõý ñ³ëï³óáõûãç ³ñï³óáéáõùá ø. ø»ýëýçé¹ç ³ßë³ññç ñ»õçý³ï³ûçý å³ïï»ñáõù êáõûý ³ßë³ï³ýùç ßñç³ý³ïý»ñáõù ý³ëý³ï³ý áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãû³ý ¿ »ýã³ñïí»é ùç³ûýáõãûáõý ñ³ëï³óáõûãá` ø. ø»ýëýçé¹ç ³ßë³ññç ñ»õçý³ï³ûçý å³ïï»ñáõù 黽í³ï³ý ¹ñë¨áñáõùý»ñç ûáõñ³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñç ï»ë³ýïûáõýçó: üßí³í ñ³ëï³óáõûãç 黽í³ï³ý ¹ñë¨áñáõùý»ñá ùýý³ñïí»é »ý ñýãûáõý³ûçý, μ³é³ûçý ¨ ß³ñ³ñûáõë³ï³ý ù³ï³ñ¹³ïý»ñáõù` ÷áñó»éáí í»ñççýý»ñë ï³å»é ï»ùëïç ùçïñᨠù³ïñáù³ï³ñ¹³ïý»ñç ùçç¨ ÷áëñ³ñ³μ»ñáõãûáõýý»ñç ñ»ï: ²ûë ñ»ï³½áïáõãû³ý ³ñ¹ûáõýùý»ñá ñý³ñ³íáñáõãûáõý ïáýó»é»ý ñ»ï³·³ûáõù ß³ñáõý³ï»é ýßí³í ñ³ëï³óáõûãç ùýýáõãûáõýá` ³ûý ï³å»éáí ñ»õçý³ïç ³ýñ³ï³ï³ý á×ç ׳ý³չáõ³ï³ý-á׳μ³ý³ï³ý ¹ñë¨áñáõùý»ñç ñ»ï: репрезентация концепта одиночество в авторской картине мира к. мэнсфилд в данной статье рассматриваются особенности лингвистической репрезентации концепта одиночество в авторской картине мира к. мэнсфилда. индивидуальный подход репрезентации данного концепта изучается на фонетическом, лексическом и синтаксическом уровнях с целью расскрыть специфику соотношения элементов микро и макроуровней текста. первоначальные результаты данного исследования будут служить для дальнейшего изучения когнитивно-стилистической индивидуальности авторского стиля. microsoft word 1. maket 2019-1new.doc armenian folia anglistika culture 130 on some forms of “out-group” intolerance and “unlimited” tolerance in linguoculture narine harutyunyan yerevan state university abstract the subject of the research is ethnic intolerance as a form of relationship between “we” and “other”, manifested in various modifications of the hostility towards others. there are several main types of ethno-intolerant relations: ethnocentrism; xenophobia, migrant phobia, etc. the author's definitions of such concepts as “intercultural whirlpool”, “ethnocentric craters” and “xenophobic craters”, “emotional turbulence of communication” are presented. the negative, discreditable signs of ethnicity of a particular national community are represented in the lexical units of english in such a way as if the “other” ethnic group has the shortcomings that are not in the “we” group. the problem of “unlimited” tolerance is considered when “strangers” – immigrants, seek to impose “their own” religious and cultural traditions, worldview and psychological dominant on local people. the article deals with the problems of intolerance and “unlimited” tolerance not only as complex socio-psychological, but also as linguocultural phenomena that are actualized in the linguistic consciousness of the ethnic group (english-speaking groups, in particular). the article also deals with the problem of “aggressive” expansion of the english language, which destroys the nation’s value system, distorts its language habits and perception of the surrounding reality, and creates discriminatory dominance of a certain linguoculture. key words: ethnocentrism, xenophobia, migrant phobia, tolerance, linguistic hegemony. culture armenian folia anglistika 131 introduction in the 21st century, the relevance of language learning in conjunction with extralinguistic factors has significantly increased, since the world today is multi-polar and multicultural. the boundaries between “we” and “other” are erased. this mixture of cultures is observed not only in the lives of individuals. in fact, it is becoming increasingly characteristic of entire societies (<http://www. irbis.vegu.ru/>). the theoretical prerequisite for the selection of research problems was the globalization process or the westernization of the world that began in the twentieth century and gave rise to a huge number of cultural migrants. however, with the approach of the twenty-first century, the nature of these migrations has changed slightly, since along with westernization, the process of easternization is underway, and the traditional values of the east are actively flowing into the world of western values (бахметьев, паин http://regconf.hse.ru/). in the process of modern globalization, cultural differences were originally laid between people who are determined by their distinctive ethno-cultural, historical and religious roots. main forms of “out-group” hate the problem of cultural diversity or multiculturalism demonstrates the real drama and complexity of the political, socio-economic and socio-cultural conditions prevailing in the modern world, which, due to the high probability of interracial, ethnic, interreligious clashes and the threat of terrorist attacks, require immediate resolution. in such a situation, differences or oppositions of cultural phenomena of “alien” culture with accepted traditions and norms of “our”, native culture form the concept of “alien”. thus, the actual problems of “alienity” of culture, intolerance or xenophobia and ethnocentrism arise. one of the manifestations of the opposition “we” “they” is “xenophobia” unmotivated hatred or obsessive fear of someone or something unfamiliar, unusual, irrational fear and hatred of outsiders. xenophobia has many faces, and depending on the object of impact, the following types of it can be distinguished: ethnophobia — which causes a hostile and prejudiced attitude armenian folia anglistika culture 132 towards members of a particular ethnic group or race; religious xenophobia — caused by the intolerance and prejudice of the representative of one religion to another religion; migrant-phobia — cautiously hostile attitude towards refugees and migrants; sexism — prejudice towards people or discrimination and prejudice based on gender, etc. another expression of the universal criteria “we” -“they” is “ethnocentrism”— the tendency to see and appreciate the world with the help of your own cultural lenses. from this definition and the knowledge of how we acquire these lenses, it follows that literally every person in the world is ethnocentric. that is, everyone learns a certain communicative style of behavior and acquires a certain national character, mentality, which models the perception and interpretation of the behavior of other people. in this sense, ethnocentrism only reflects the existing state of affairs when we are all under the “hypnosis” of national culture, religion and language. when we perceive foreigners, first of all we subconsciously pay attention to differences in behavior and manners. separating the existence of “we – groups” and “they – groups”, we divide the behavior into “normal” and “not normal”, respectively, the communicative style of “we – group” formed as a result of constant use, is perceived as the only “normal” style of communication, whereas the style inherent in “they – group” causes a negative reaction and leads to misunderstanding and the formation of ethnic stereotypes. so, for example, all latin americans are lazy, all americans are arrogant, all muslims are terrorists, all east asians are emotionless, etc. ethnic stereotypes in language ethnic stereotypes laid down in early childhood undergo very minor changes and are preserved on the ethnic, genetic level, being passed down from generation to generation. since stereotypes are fixed in our mind, so their transmission is unique to language. ethnic stereotypes existing in the linguocultural model of the world of english speakers are fixed in idioms (as false as a scot; make a polish exit, a wooden indian; speak pig’s german, gay (mad) greek; having a french shower, culture armenian folia anglistika 133 chinese ace), proverbs, and sayings (nothing ill in spain, but that which speaks; the older the welshman, the more madman; do not trust a hungarian unless he has a third eye on his forehead; the only good indian is a dead indian; after shaking hands with a greek, count your fingers; the spaniard is a bad servant but a worse master; the frenchman is a scoundrel; the neapolitan is widemouthed and narrow-handed), ethnophaulisms (bootlip – an african american; bounty bar – a racially black person who is considered to be behaving like a white person (i.e. dark on the outside, white on the inside); brownie – a. (us) a person of mixed white and black ancestry; buffie – a black person; fog-breather – british person; jungle bunny – (us and uk) a black person, as well as other ethnic groups living in the usa (so-called hyphenated americans): armo – (us) an armenian/armenian american. especially used in southern california; cheesehead– people who are dutch; pancake face, pancake – an asian person; cheese-eating surrender monkey – (uk, usa) a frenchman, from the defeat of the french against the germans in 1940, and the huge variety of cheeses originating from france; curry-muncher – a person of indian origin; reaseball/ greaser – a person of italian descent) etc.. people describe the features inherent in “we-group”, labeling them positively, and in describing the same features in “they-groups” their attitude is negative. in the overwhelming majority of the linguistic units considered by us, there are traits of xenophobia and ethnocentrism, rather than multiculturalism or ethnorelativism. the proverb “people suffer from their tongues” is an excellent example of the fact that language can be the cause of unhappiness and an increase in hostility towards “alien” ethnic groups. “aggressive” tolerance there is also a flip side or antipode of ethnocentrism and xenophobia — tolerance, which implies tolerance of “alien” views, customs and habits, peaceful coexistence of different peoples with the absence of all kinds of hatred. however, an unlimited or so-called “aggressive” form of ethnic, racial, religious, gender and other tolerance may also have a negative meaning. under the conditions of new migration of peoples or global migration of the population, armenian folia anglistika culture 134 tolerance is often a means of manipulating people's minds, a means of “hidden” transformation, substitution of national values, etc. today, uncontrolled migration turns europe into a “chimeric state”, when immigrants try to impose their religious and cultural traditions, worldview and psychological dominant on local people. along with this, relatively few immigrants unceremoniously penetrating into the new ethno-cultural environment, put it to deformation and destruction, turning numerous indigenous inhabitants (french, germans, englishmen, etc.) into a majority oppressed by tolerance. most immigrants from muslim countries ignore the process of integration into european society, while preserving their religious, racial and cultural identity. let us give just a few examples of the linguistic expression of various types of unlimited tolerance. as a result of gender tolerance, the state of washington will allow residents to change their gender in their birth certificates to “x” in the case when the gender designation of a person on a birth certificate does not match the way he feels (<http://www.nat-geo.ru/planet/>). the british government is asked to replace the term "pregnant woman" with "pregnant man" in un documents, so that it includes transgender people (<https://www.newsinfo.am>). recently, the scottish bishop and former honorary chaplain of the british court are concerned about the sexual preferences of the heir to the throne. to be or not to be prince george gay? that's the question now. he asks the congregation to pray for the future heir to the british throne, prince george, and not to pray at all, but specifically that "the lord bless him with love for a beautiful young gentleman"!(<https://ria.ru>). the following situations can serve as an example of unlimited racial tolerance. bbc star, actor benedict cumberbatch, who plays the role of sherlock holmes in a famous tv series, recently wanted to draw attention to the absence of non-white actors on television, but used the word “color”. cumberbatch immediately apologized for his words after a flurry of criticism against him (https://www.bbc.com/russian/uk/). culture armenian folia anglistika 135 in 2018, dove attracted public attention with its ambiguous advertising. so, a dark-skinned girl takes off her dark topic and turns into a light-skinned lady in light-colored clothes, which internet users considered racism to be. they said that dove showed her true attitude towards black people. moreover, users remembered that the bottles of dove shower gel were labeled “for normal and dark skin” which allegedly hints at the superiority of the white race over the black. representatives of the company apologized and said they did not want to offend anyone (<https://news.vse42.ru/feed/show>). we can recognize sexism in the following situations. scottish parliament has banned the use of the term “gingerbread boy” in the fight against sexism (<www.bbc.com/russian/uk/>). children's favorite traditional christmas cakes will now be called exclusively “gingerbread man”, and the expression “gingerbread boy” will not be used, because the term indicating gender, offends some members of the society. the paradoxical situation with the celebration of christmas in the uk serves as an example of religious tolerance in the language. in foggy albion, they offer to congratulate each other on “season’s greetings” or “happy holidays” instead of “merry christmas” wishes. until recently, the same thing was observed in the united states. during the eight years of the presidency of barack obama, the white house sent out postcards on christmas eve, in which the word “christmas” was carefully avoided and “season’s greetings” was written instead. this year, president trump returned the word “christmas” to official christmas cards (<https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/>). in brussels, along with the installation of a “tolerant” new year tree, that is, an abstract sculpture distantly resembling a fir tree, they also decided to rename the “christmas markets” into “winter pleasures”. for ten years now, santa claus and the images of this gray-bearded grandfather in a red sheepskin coat are officially banned at christmas fairs in austria and germany. a large shopping center thistles in the british city stirling banned the christmas symbols and installation of the festive nativity scene, so as not to “offend the feelings” of representatives of other religions (<https://www.bbc.com/russian/in ternational/>). armenian folia anglistika culture 136 modern events in the eu countries, in particular, migrant-phobia indicate a fiasco of multiculturalism and tolerance. for example, in 2015, the newspaper the sun published an article by journalist katie hopkins, which began with the words «show me pictures of coffins, show me bodies floating in water, play violins and show me skinny people looking sad. i still don't care» (<www.un.org>). the title itself shows the author’s intolerance to a certain group of people, as it will later become clear to refugees and immigrants. in the text of the article itself, the author compares foreigners with cockroaches that have flooded the whole country «make no mistake, these migrants are like cockroaches». you can also see the following statement: «migrants are plague of feral humans» and many cities in the uk «festering sores, plagued by swarms of migrants and asylum seekers shelling out benefits like monopoly money» (<www.un.org>). in addition, katie hopkins advised using «gunboats to stop migrants, threatening them with violence, and drilling a few holes in the bottom of anything suspiciously resembling a boat would be a good idea too» (<https://www.thejournal.ie/ katie-hopkins-migrants-the-sun>). obviously, the problem of unlimited tolerance and multiculturalism demonstrates the real drama and complexity of the political, socio-economic and socio-cultural conditions prevailing in the modern world, which due to the high probability of interracial, ethnic, interreligious clashes and the threat of terrorist attacks require urgent resolution. u. eco draws parallels between the global migration process taking place in the modern world and a grandiose cultural mixture in the middle ages. he notes that in modern europe there is resettlement, comparable to the early indo-european migration from east to west, or the invasion of the barbarians into the roman empire and the formation of the roman-german states. in a hundred years, according to eco, europe can become a continent of colored persons and muslims: “the phenomena that europe is still trying to perceive as immigration are in reality migration. the third world is knocking at the doors of europe and entering into them, even when europe does not agree to let it go. the problem is not to decide (politicians like to pretend that they are solving it) whether it is possible to go to school in a hijab in paris, or how many mosques culture armenian folia anglistika 137 need to be built in rome. the problem is that in the next millennium europe will turn into a multiracial, or, if you prefer, into a multicolored continent” (эко 1998:3). such concepts as "ethnocentrism" and "xenophobia" in the conditions of the modern world order are increasingly acquiring positive connotation, and the concept "tolerance" – more negative. “ethnocentrism” and “xenophobia” perform a function useful for the group, the function of “protection”, in order to preserve their native language, culture, traditions, their ethnic identity, preserve its integrity and specificity. tolerance often turns a “tolerant ethnos” into a vulnerable, constantly inferior, weak ethnic group, while those to whom tolerance is manifested experience a sense of superiority, permissiveness and even hatred, and therefore they become increasingly ethnocentric. the degree of influence of multiculturalism and tolerance in language policy is extremely dangerous. language is not only a carrier and transmitter of national culture, but also “an instrument of self-preservation of an ethnos and the separation of ‘we’ and ‘they’” (межкультурная коммуникация и проблемы национальной идентичности 2002:67). in particular, tolerance to the linguistic hegemony of the english language and cultural imperialism of the united states of america represents at the present stage the danger of losing the identity of other peoples and their languages. the scale of the “aggressive” expansion of the english language and american culture destroys the nation’s value system, distorts its language habits and perception of the surrounding reality, and creates discriminatory dominance of a certain linguoculture, or anglocentrism. linguistic imperialism of english is supported in countless ways: media and television, pop culture, the development of computer technology and social networks, advertising, international exams in english as a foreign language (toefl, ielts), and so on. for example, anglocentric slogan of ielts is the following: “ielts is the only test you need for study, work and life”. conclusion all above mentioned allows us to reflect on the currently important and problematic issues preserving national identity, confronting language and armenian folia anglistika culture 138 cultural discrimination, opposing the unlimited tolerance of a certain people and turning it into a “victim” as a result of its own tolerance. the dialogue of cultures in the modern cosmopolitan world is impossible without respect for the culture and language of another people and without the development of new, universal principles. references: 1. arutyunyan, n.l. k voprosu ob osobennostyakh mul'tikul'turnogo khudozhestvennogo diskursa. available at: <http://www.irbis.vegu.ru/> [accessed october 2018]. 2. bahmet'ev, a.y.; pain, e.a. modeli kul'turnoj politiki: krah mul'tikul'turalizma i perspektivy interkul'turalizma. available at: <http://regconf.hse.ru/> [accessed december 2015]. 3. barinova a. tretij pol uzakonen v n'yu-jorke. available at:<http://www. nat-geo.ru/planet/1239365-tretiy-pol-uzakonen-v-nyu-yorke/>[accessed august 2018]. 4. london prizval oon vvesti termin “beremennye ljudi”. available at: <https:// www.newsinfo.am/rus/article/view/njefxtt8ax> [accessed august 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"abstraktnaja" rozhdestvenskaja elka vozmutila bel'gijcev. available at: <https:// www.bbc.com/russian/international/2012/12/121130_ abstract_ christmas_tree> [accessed november 2018]. 11. katie hopkins under fire for calling migrants "cockroaches". available at:< available at: <https://www.thejournal.ie/katie-hopkins-migrants-the-sun2054000-apr2015/> [accessed december 2018]. 12. eko, u. (1998) pyat' ehsse na temy ehtiki. spb. izdatel’stvo spgu. 13. (2002) mezhkul'turnaya kommunikaciya i problemy nacional'noj identichnosti. // sb. nauch. trudov. / red. l.i. grishaeva, t.g. strukova. voronezh. izdatel’stvo vgu. օտարների նկատմամբ անհանդուրժողականության և «անսահմանափակ» հանդուրժողականության դրսևորումները լեզվամշակույթում հետազոտության առարկան էթնիկ անհանդուրժողականությունն է, որպես «յուրային»-ի և «օտար»-ի միջև եղած փոխհարաբերության ձև, որը դրսեւորվում է ուրիշների հանդեպ թշնամանքի տարբեր տեսակներով: գոյություն ունեն էթնիկական հանդուրժողականության մի քանի հիմնական տեսակներ. էթնոկրատիզմ, քսենոֆոբիա, միգրանտոֆոբիա եւ այլն: անգլերենի բառապաշարում որոշակի ազգային համայնքի էթնիկական պատկանելության բացասական, վարկաբեկիչ նշանները ներկայացված են այնպես, կարծես «օտար» էթնիկ խմբում կան այնպիսի թերություններ, որոնք իսպառ բացակայում են «յուրային»-ների խմբում: հոդվածում դիտարկվում են անհանդուրժողականության և «անսահմանափակ» հանդուրժողականության խնդիրները, որպես ոչ միայն բարդ սոցիալ-հոգեբանական, այլև լեզվամշակութային երևույթներ, որոնք առկայանում են որոշակի էթնոսի լեզվագիտակցության մեջ (մասնավորապես՝ անգլիական): armenian folia anglistika culture 140 հոդվածում անդրադարձ է արվում նաև անգլերենի «ագրեսիվ» տարածման խնդիրին: այն ոչնչացնում է ոչ անգլիախոս ազգերի արժեքային համակարգը, խաթարում տվյալ ժողովրդի լեզվական սովորություններն ու շրջակա իրականության ընկալումը, ստեղծում որոշակի լեզվամշակույթի գերիշխանություն: received by the editorial board 14.02.2019 recommended for publication by the reviewers 15.03.2019 accepted for print 22.04.2019 microsoft word maket 2020-1(21) 19.02 doc.doc armenian folia anglistika linguistics 66 peculiarities of manipulative strategies in english political discourse samvel abrahamyan yerevan state university abstract the article discusses peculiarities of manipulative strategies in english political discourse. manipulative strategy can be considered as a form of persuasive strategy aimed at influencing hearers and making them accept beliefs or do things advocated by the manipulator. manipulation can be considered effective when the hearer doesn’t recognize the intentions of the speaker to influence him. manipulation is realized by means of different strategies. the two most important ones are the strategy of positive self-presentation which aims at maximizing the significance of one’s own status and the strategy of negative other-presentation which aims at creating a negative image of the opponent, discrediting him. an equally important manipulative strategy often used in political discourse is the theatrical strategy which is characterized by a very high level of emotionality and aims at forcing emotional responses on behalf of the hearers. in the article linguistic means of realization of manipulative strategies and tactics are revealed and discussed. key words: manipulative strategies, persuasive strategy, political discourse, evaluative argumentation, pragmatic markers of manipulation, rhetorical devices, social media. introduction one of the peculiar features of political discourse is its manipulative character. manipulation can be considered as a form of persuasive strategy aimed at influencing hearers in the best interests of the speakers. according to t. van dijk, the crucial difference is that in persuasion the interlocutors are free to linguistics armenian folia anglistika 67 believe or act as they please, depending on whether or not they accept the arguments of the persuader, whereas in manipulation “recipients are unable to understand the real intentions or to see the full consequences of the beliefs or actions advocated by the manipulator” (dijk 2006). t. van dijk in his work discourse and manipulation (2006) examined some properties of manipulation in a triangular theoretical framework which includes discourse, cognition and society. a discourse analytical approach is warranted because most manipulation takes place by text and talk. secondly, those being manipulated are human beings, and this typically occurs through the manipulation of their ‘minds’, so that a cognitive account is also able to shed light on the processes of manipulation. thirdly, manipulation is a form of talkin-interaction, and since it implies power and power abuse, a social approach is also important. consequently manipulation can be revealed only by using an integrated complex approach which will include the analysis of all the three above mentioned aspects. detecting manipulation is mainly the task of the researcher as the manipulator himself will never admit that he is engaged in manipulating people and very often manipulative techniques can be used unconsciously while the speaker tries to solve his/her immediate communicative goals. one of the effective means of revealing manipulation and resisting it is adopting a critical approach to the delivered information which is successfully done by the representatives of the critical discourse analysis. manipulative strategies in political discourse manipulation in political discourse is realized by means of applying certain manipulative strategies which t. van dijk divides into two main groups, namely the strategy of positive self-presentation and the strategy of negative otherpresentation (dijk 2006:373). in linguistic literature these two strategies are also defined as the strategy of downplay which aims at creating a negative image of the opponent, discrediting him, and the strategy of intensification which aims at maximizing the significance of one’s own status. to these so called macro strategies the theatrical strategy should also be added (mikhaleva 2009). this strategy, which is characterized by a very high level of emotionality, is singled armenian folia anglistika linguistics 68 out by the researchers due to the fact that in order to attract potential supporters politicians very often have “to work on the public”. in their turn the public or the people being a part of the communication very often perceive the political discourse as a performance staged for them (sheigal 2000:85). within these three macro strategies other substrategies can also be mentioned. for instance, p. chilton speaking about strategic functions of the political discourse singles out three strategies, namely coercion, legitimization / delegitimisation, representation / misrepresentation. they are interconnected and in all of them elements of coercion and manipulation achieved by a strategic use of the language can be found. for instance, linguistic functions of coercion can be manifested in setting agendas, selecting topics in conversation, positioning the self and others in specific relationships, making assumptions about realities that hearers are obliged to at least temporarily accept, in order to process the text or talk. another impo can be found rtant language-related phenomenon that could be judged coercive is the strategic stimulation of affect. according to p. chilton, “it is reasonable to hypothesise links between meaning structures produced via discourse and the emotional centres of the brain” (chilton 2004: 118). the legitimisation function is closely linked to coercion, because it establishes the right to be obeyed, that is, ‘legitimacy’. reasons for being obeyed have to be communicated linguistically, whether by overt statement or by implication. the techniques used include arguments about voters’ wants, general ideological principles, charismatic leadership projection, boasting about performance and positive self-presentation. what legitimacy means, writes p. chilton, is that humans using language politically seem to feel a strong pressure to justify their actions or proposals for action in terms of oppositions between right and wrong (chilton 2004:120). at the heart of what is called ‘politics’ is the attempt to get others to ‘share a common view’ about what is useful–harmful, good–evil, just–unjust. and language is the only means for doing this. delegitimisation is the essential counterpart: others (foreigners, enemies, institutional opposition, unofficial opposition) have to be presented negatively, and the techniques include the use of ideas of difference and boundaries, and speech acts of blaming, accusing, insulting, etc. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 69 representation / misrepresentation relates to one of the obvious functions of discourse (language) representing a reality which is in fact a matter of the control of information or discourse control. it may be quantitative or qualitative. secrecy is the strategy of preventing people from receiving information; it is the inverse of censorship, which is preventing people from giving information. in another mode of representation/misrepresentation, information may be given, but be quantitatively inadequate to the needs or interests of hearers (telling the half-truth). qualitative misrepresentation is simply lying, in its most extreme manifestation, but includes various kinds of omissions, verbal evasion and denial. euphemism has the cognitive effect of conceptually ‘blurring’ or ‘defocusing’ unwanted referents, be they objects or actions. implicit meanings of various types also constitute a means of diverting attention from troublesome referents (chilton 2004:7-8). manipulative strategies and relevant tactics intended for the implementation of the formers can also be used to realize persuasive functions depending on the speaker’s goals and intentions. since the chief aim of manipulative strategies is to persuade the listener, they can be considered as a part of the persuasive strategy, which can be considered a generic term for manipulative strategies. among the main strategies of political discourse fulfilling manipulative functions the generic strategy of reductionism should be singled out. the strategy of reductionism is used to describe to an electorate a complex phenomenon in terms of other simpler phenomena without paying attention to its different aspects. this oversimplification lies in the basis of the bipolar type of estimation peculiar for political discourse where there is no zone of transitional or neutral signs and definitions. accordingly the cognitive model of the reality is presented as extremely polarized, having no nuances, roughly divided into “us” and “them”, “black” and “white”, “good” and “bad”, etc. the strategy of reductionism also lies in the basis of the ample use by politicians of such tropes as metaphors, metonymies, allegories, etc. which explain one phenomenon by means of the other. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 70 as already mentioned, the manipulative communication can be successful only if the hearer fails to recognize the influential intention of the speaker to make the former think and act in favor of the latter and against his own will. this goal is achieved by different manipulative techniques. the main principle of these techniques is to affect the subconscious of the addressees in order to alter their picture of the world, their evaluations and preferences and by doing it influence their behaviour and actions. as the subconscious of the addressee can’t be reached by rational and descriptive argumentation, politicians very often resort to irrational and evaluative arguments, make use of emotionally coloured words and expressions, conversational formulas and structures, different stylistic devices aimed at evoking emotional responses in the audience. among words with positive connotation often used by politicians are such words as freedom, democracy, justice, progress, change, new, etc. other evaluative arguments used by politicians to exert influence on the audience include such emotional arguments as love, sense of duty, sense of dignity, pride and allegiance. these arguments inspire people and like interests and needs can underlie their actions. for instance, in his speech to accept the republican nomination for president d. trump said: remember, all of the people telling you you can’t have the country you want are the same people that wouldn’t stand, i mean, they said trump does not have a chance of being here tonight, not a chance, the same people. oh, we love defeating those people, don’t we? don’t we love defeating those people? love it. love it. love it. the same argumentation was used by him in his victory speech: we’re going to get to work immediately for the american people. and we’re going to be doing a job that hopefully you will be so proud of your president. you’ll be so proud. again, it’s my honor. it was an amazing evening. it’s been an amazing two-year period. and i love this country. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 71 evaluative arguments, especially ones that appeal to moral and ethical values confirmed by time-honored traditions, are often used by politicians as a means of justification of their policy. together with them an important role in manipulative strategies is assigned to evaluative arguments which contain mainly populist promises about things considered useful or profitable for different parts of society. these promises, which are manifestations of the theatrical strategy, are accompanied by words and expressions directed to evoking in the listeners positive feeling towards the speaker (trust, sympathy, loyalty, etc.). that’s why politicians very often instead of presenting facts, figures and other analytical information speak about their beliefs, hopes and visions appealing to the feelings of the listeners and trying to make them believe in what they say they believe. for instance, in his acceptance speech at the republican convention d. trump repeated the imperative expression “believe me” for six times. this claim was enhanced by such sentences as “america is a nation of believers, dreamers and strivers” and “we must choose to believe in america”. to create the effect of unity and general support the strategy of solidarity is often used. an important part in it is assigned to such argumentative tactics as the use of the pronoun of solidarity we in inclusive meaning, opening addresses at the beginning of a speech (my fellow citizens, distinguished quests, fellow americans, etc.), calling by the name as an expression of solidarity and friendship, etc. as a means of expressing solidarity the personal pronoun in the first person plural in the construction let us is often used which helps to create an atmosphere of mutual understanding and trust, sharing a common goal. speaking of himself in the third person is another manipulative device within the same strategy of self-representation. sometimes it is done explicitly: …that will never happen with donald trump as president”; and sometimes also implicitly. “our country needs a truly great leader… we need a leader that wrote “the art of the deal”. we need a leader that can bring back our jobs…. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 72 within the framework of the strategy of positive self-representation an important role is assigned to the use of epithets which perform evaluative function, e.g. good, best, smart, very nice, etc. (i think i’m actually a very nice person). against this background the strategy of downplay is actively used to accentuate negative information about speaker’s opponents and their policy. very often different manipulative strategies are used parallel to one another. for instance, in his speech to accept the republican nomination for president d. trump actively used the strategy of downplay to show the negative results of obama’s policies: “president obama has almost doubled our national debt to more than $19 trillion and growing. and yet, what do we have to show for it?”. telling the audience that the country was in a crisis he supported his thesis by the following gloomy images: “our roads and bridges are falling apart, our airports are third-world condition, and 43 million americans are on food stamps”. according to d. trump, there were also a lot of unsolved problems in the sphere of foreign policy: now, let us consider the state of affairs abroad. not only have our citizens endured domestic disaster, but they’ve lived through one international humiliation after another, one after another… after 15 years of wars in the middle east, after trillions of dollars spent and thousands of lives lost, the situation is worse than it has ever been before. this is the legacy of hillary clinton: death, destruction, terrorism and weakness. another example of the strategy of reduction is “rule of three” actively used in political discourse to communicate complex ideas in a short, pervasive and memorable way. for instance, speaking about the threat of terrorism d. trump proposed three steps to protect the country from it: to protect us from terrorism, we need to focus on three things. we must have the best, absolutely the best gathering linguistics armenian folia anglistika 73 of intelligence anywhere in the world. the best. we must abandon the failed policy of nation-building and regime change that hillary clinton pushed in iraq, in libya, in egypt and in syria. instead, we must work with all of our allies who share our goal of destroying isis and stamping out islamic terrorism and doing it now, doing it quickly. we’re going to win, we’re going to win fast! within the strategy of positive self-presentation he assured the audience that he was the only person who could solve the problems facing the country (“nobody knows the system better than me, which is why i alone can fix it” ) and that he had a plan which would bring the country out of the “disastrous” situation and “make it great again”. he tried to assure his audience that as a result of his “new economic policies, trillions and trillions of dollars will start flowing into our country”. he promised that “this new wealth will improve the quality of life for all americans. we will build the roads, highways, bridges, tunnels, airports and the railways of tomorrow. this, in turn, will create millions of more jobs”. in his speech he also promised to pay a special attention to immigration policy and to relieve the country from uncontrolled immigration. using the tactics of opposing himself to his rival he said that he would restore “law and order” to the country while h. clinton’s plan was proposing “mass lawlessness”: my plan is the exact opposite of the radical and dangerous immigration policy of hillary clinton. americans want relief from uncontrolled immigration, which is what we have now. communities want relief, yet hillary clinton is proposing mass amnesty, mass immigration and mass lawlessness. (donald trump's acceptance speech) following the theatrical strategy, d. trump actively used argumentation expressed in speech acts of promise addressed to different layers of society. the armenian folia anglistika linguistics 74 promises contained in his speech and ranging from reduction of taxes and creation of new jobs to leading “our country back to safety, prosperity and peace” touched upon the needs and interests of the vast majority of people and were intended to motivate them to vote for him. one of the most important rhetorical devices producing manipulative effect are repetitions. the active use of the tactics of repetition is based on the assumption that people easily believe in what the politicians say even against their will (sornig 1989). that’s why politicians during their speeches very often address the audience to get confirmation of their words. in addition to that as a means of manipulation such methods and techniques are often used as semantic presuppositions, interrogative constructions with implicit semantics (special and rhetorical questions), appeals to the authority and to the fund of general knowledge, argumentation based on the proposition of conditional sentences to underline the cause-and-effect relations. it should be taken into account that the evaluative argumentation in political discourse in the framework of the opposition “us – them” is very often conducted implicitly. imposition of propositions is one of the effective methods of speech influence and manipulation. as the proposition is linguistically hidden in the structure of the sentence and is presented as initial information, it doesn’t become the subject of critical analysis on the part of the recipient. it is so because presuppositional information is considered to be true, not requiring verification, otherwise the sentence will become anomalous and meaningless. it is also known that the knowledge given implicitly and contained in the logical premises and presuppositions of the utterance is learned better than the one which is explicitly represented in the proposition (baranov 1990). communicative strategies and tactics of political discourse are called to provide the effectiveness of speech influence. the aim of communicative acts in political discourse is to influence the audience and to induce it to some actions which correspond to the aims and intentions of the sender of the messаge. for political discourse, the main goal of which is to influence the addressee, the perlocutive act is the main one in the structure of the speech act. it represents a purposeful influence on the thoughts and actions of the recipient and provokes linguistics armenian folia anglistika 75 the change in the interlocutor’s consciousness and relevant reaction (amazement, discontent, fear, anger, etc.). for example, the following extract from d. trump’s speech intends to evoke in listeners a sense of mistrust towards the policy of democrats on immigration issue and even fear towards the immigrants themselves: when mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. they’re not sending you. they’re not sending you. they’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. they’re bringing drugs. they’re bringing crime. they’re rapists. and some, i assume, are good people. but i speak to border guards and they tell us what we’re getting. and it only makes common sense. it only makes common sense. they’re sending us not the right people. it’s coming from more than mexico. it’s coming from all over south and latin america, and it’s coming probably – probably– from the middle east. but we don’t know. because we have no protection and we have no competence, we don’t know what’s happening. and it’s got to stop and it’s got to stop fast. using p. chilton’s terminology we can say that in terms of speech acts, trump is issuing warnings; in terms of contextualised political language use, he is using a coercive strategy in so far as he is causing or inducing fear of contingent events and actors involved in them. p. chilton distinguishes two kinds of coercion in the analysis, one forcing emotional responses, the other – cognitive responses. emotive coercion can occur when certain vocabulary or certain propositions receive mental representations that are in some way linked to emotion centres of the brain. for instance, some kind of fearful response may be stimulated by such terms as ‘urgency’, ‘national danger’ and ‘evil’, terms which are widely used by politicians. the second kind of coercion is propositional rather than emotive, and involves different forms of implied armenian folia anglistika linguistics 76 meaning. the mechanisms of ‘forced inferences’ include presupposition, implicature and presumptions (chilton 2004:118-119). one of the important manifestations of manipulation is the conversationalisation of political discourse. the manipulative and pragmatic effect of communication becomes apparent in the choice of such style of speech which can have the strongest influence on the audience. analysing d. trumps speeches we can see that he widely uses colloquial lexis, simple, short sentences, typical of his twitter style, lexical and syntactic repetitions, parallel syntactic constructions, inversions, parcellations and elliptical structures. this, on the one hand, creates an effect of something unusual, extraordinary and helps to attract the attention of the audience, and, on the other hand, secures greater emotional influence and makes comprehension and memorization easier. the wide use of such linguostylistic means as epithet, especially in the context of opposition we – they (smart stupid), hyperbole (i will be the greatest jobs president that god ever created), short evaluative judgments (not good), colloquial lexis and style allows to secure necessary pathos and dynamics of speech and shortens the distance between him and the audience making his speeches understandable for ordinary voter. p. furko singles out special pragmatic markers of manipulation manifesting such manipulative intent as suppression, polarization, recontextualising, conversationalisation and intended ambiguity. among them he singles out such pragmatic markers as of course, surely, i think, well, etc. it is noted that a single pragmatic marker can serve several manipulative functions, while a given manipulative strategy is potentially realized by a variety of pragmatic items. for instance, such evidential markers as of course, surely can be used both for suppression and backgrounding, they can signal the degree of confidence, positive or negative, held by the speaker about the truth of the basic message. they can indicate a speaker’s attitude regarding the validity of certain information, for example, whether it is certain, probable, or untrustworthy. such general extenders as and stuff (like that), and the like, and so on, et cetera might imply that there is more to be said on a certain issue than the speaker has said, and on the other hand they can downplay alternative viewpoints and policies. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 77 quotations can play their relevant role in decontextualising and recontextualising texts, legitimising one’s own opinion and delegitimising that of the opponent and thus justifying polarization between “them” and “us”. such pragmatic markers of manipulation as i think, i mean can be manifestations of both conversationalisation and the exploitation of ambiguity. the wide use of conversational style in political discourse, including the above mentioned markers, is an effort to impress the audience, to influence them more easily. at the same time their wide use in political discourse is another manifestation of its ambiguity and manipulative intent. for instance, such manipulative pragmatic marker as i think can fulfill two distinct and contrastive functions, expressing either uncertainty or certainty. from the social class perception in britain it can mark certainty for the middle-class audience, and solidarity among members of the working class (furko 2017). not only common people lacking appropriate information or experience but also politicians and even the whole political institutions can be manipulated for this or that reason. for instance, as it was shown by t. van dijk, even such a powerful parliament like that of the uk was manipulated into accepting the prime minister’s policy of joining the usa in war against iraq that was presented as a war against tyranny and terrorism. what in reality was (among many other things) getting control with the usa of a key oil country in the middle east, using as an excuse alleged weapons of mass destruction and the support of terrorism, was presented as defending democracy and the whole ‘free’ world against its major threat. as t. van dijk argues, t. blair managed to define the situation in such a way that few mps could refuse, even when they knew they were being manipulated and probably lied to (dijk 2006:380). one of the main means of manipulation in political discourse is the creation and the use of the effect of a crowd whose actions contrary to those of individuals are determined by the collective unconscious. as the crowd acts on the basis of irrational factors, beliefs, convictions and emotions it becomes extremely suggestible and is easily manipulated. here the crowd doesn’t mean the accumulation of people in one place, but the human totality possessing a psychic community. it is achieved by means of mass media which has an access armenian folia anglistika linguistics 78 to every family and makes each person a member of this newly formed mass of people, a variety of the crowd (lebon1995; moskovichi 1998). nowadays different social media including twitter, facebook and other social networks are increasingly being used within the sociopolitical domain as a channel through which to circulate information and opinions. throughout the 2016 us presidential primaries and general election campaign, a notable feature was the prolific twitter use of donald trump as a means of direct contact with voters. this use has continued since his election victory and inauguration as president. donald trump’s twitter style characterized by simple, short and imperative sentences, energetic, impressive and colourful language is especially suitable for inspiring people and driving them to corresponding actions. analyzing donald trump’s twitter discourse george lakoff revealed a number of strategies which had certain manipulative aims. among these strategies he singled out the following ones: pre-emptive framing the purpose of which is to be the first to frame an idea; diversion whose purpose is to divert attention from real issues; deflection with the purpose to attack the messenger and change direction; trial balloon with purpose to test public reaction (ross and rivers 2018). in their investigation a.s. ross and d.j. rivers revealed that d. trump most frequently uses the strategy of deflection the main purpose of which is labeling main stream media as ‘fake news’ and ‘fake media’ and positioning himself as the only reliable source of truth. the following tweet by trump can serve as an example of the above-mentioned strategy: 54% in poll! i would be at 75% (with our great economy, maybe the best ever) if not for the phony witch hunt and the fake news media! (<https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump>) as it is seen from this example, d. trump, being under the permanent attacks on behalf of the establishment and mainstream media, in his turn resorts linguistics armenian folia anglistika 79 to the facts which can’t be verified. however, his success at 2016 presidential elections proved the effectiveness of his persuasive and manipulative strategies which included a large use of social media and particularly twitter as a means of direct contact with the voters with the aim of influencing and persuading them. conclusion the polarization strategy (we/they) with the usual polarized structures of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation lies in the basis of manipulation. manipulative strategies are realized through different linguistic means. not only rational but also irrational arguments, including emotional appeals, are used to produce a manipulative effect. linguistic strategies and tactics of political discourse are called to influence the thoughts and actions of the recipient, and by provoking a change in the interlocutor’s consciousness, evoke certain reaction. from this point of view manipulative strategies and tactics explicitly or implicitly represent varieties of coercive influence on the recipient, which contradicts thе cooperation principle and maxims of effective communication. our analysis of various discursive dimensions of manipulation reveals that one of the peculiar features of political discourse is the usual polarized structure of positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation. in addition, we found out that in manipulative strategies emotional appeals and the use of evaluative arguments prevail over descriptive ones. though the latters are also used as a means of confirmation of the speaker’s ideas, the verification of them is not always possible. in political discourse manipulation includes not only cognitive and discursive aspects but also the social one because to be distinguished from other forms of influence political discourse should be first socially defined as a form of struggle for power, control and domination. that’s why the study of different manifestations of manipulative social practices is very important to understand the mechanisms of speech manipulation in political discourse and try to resist it. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 80 references: 1. baranov, a.n. (1990) lingvisticheskaja teorija argumentatsii (kognitivnyj podkhod): avtoref. diis. dokt. filol. nauk. m., 48 s. 2. chilton, p. (2004) analysing political discourse: theory and practice. london: routledge, 224 p. 3. dijk, t.a. van. (2006) discourse and manipulation // discourse & society, vol. 17 (2), p. 359-383. 4. furko, p. (2017) manipulative uses of pragmatic markers in political discourse. // palgrave communications, volume 3, article number: 17054. available at: <https://www.nature.com/articles/palcomms201754> [accessed june 2019]. 5. lebon, g. (1995) psikhologija narodov i mass. spb.: maket, 311 s. 6. mikhaleva, o.l. (2009) poloticheskij diskurs: spetsifika manipuljativnogo vozdejstvjia. m.: knozhnij dom «librokom», 256 s. 7. moskovichi, s. (1999) vek tolp. istoricheskij traktat po psikhologii mass. m.: tsentr psikhologii i psikhoterapii, 480 s. 8. ross, a.s. and rivers, d.j. (2018) discursive deflection: accusation of “fake news” and the spread of misand disinformation in the tweets of president trump. // social media + society, april-june, p.1–12. 9. sheigal, e.i. semiotika politicheskogo diskursa. m.: itdgk «gnozis», 326 s. 10. sornig, k. (1989) some remarks on linguistic strategies of persuasion. // language, power and ideology: studies in political discourse. ed. by ruth wodak. amsterdam, philadelphia: john benjamins publishing company, p. 95-113. sources of data: 1. donald trump's acceptance speech at the republican convention, july 22, 2016. available at: <https://time.com/4418493/republican-conventiondonald-trump-transcript> [accessed june 2019]. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 81 մտաշահարկման ռազմավարության առանձնահատկությունները անգլալեզու քաղաքական դիսկուրսում հոդվածում քննարկվում են անգլալեզու քաղաքական դիսկուրսի մտաշահարկման ռազմավարության և մարտավարության առանձնահատկությունները: մտաշահարկման ռազմավարությունը կարող է դիտարկվել որպես պերսուազիվ ռազմավարության մի ձև, որի նպատակն է ազդել լսողի գիտակցության վրա և դրդել նրան՝ խոսողի շահերին համապատասխան գործելու: այս ռազմավարությունը կարող է համարվել արդյունավետ այն դեպքում, երբ լսողը չի ըմբռնում խոսողի՝ իր վրա ազդելու մտադրությունը: մտաշահարկումն իրագործվում է տարբեր եղանակներով, որոնցից հիմնականները դրական ինքնաներկայացման և ուրիշին բացասական կերպով ներկայացնելու ռազմավարություններն են, ինչպես նաև թատերականացման ռազմավարությունը: հոդվածում բացահայտվում և քննարկվում են այն լեզվական միջոցները, որոնք օգտագործվում են մտաշահարկման ռազմավարության և մարտավարության իրագործման համար: received by the editorial board 25.09.2019 recommended for publication by the reviewers 26.11.2019 accepted for print 03.02.2020 << /ascii85encodepages false /allowtransparency false /autopositionepsfiles true /autorotatepages /none /binding /left /calgrayprofile (dot gain 15%) /calrgbprofile () /calcmykprofile (iso coated v2 \050eci\051) /srgbprofile (srgb iec61966-2.1) /cannotembedfontpolicy /error /compatibilitylevel 1.3 /compressobjects /tags /compresspages true /convertimagestoindexed true /passthroughjpegimages true /createjobticket false /defaultrenderingintent /default /detectblends true /detectcurves 0.0000 /colorconversionstrategy /leavecolorunchanged 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(www.heidelberg.com) >> /namespace [ (adobe) (common) (1.0) ] /othernamespaces [ << /asreaderspreads false /cropimagestoframes true /errorcontrol /warnandcontinue /flattenerignorespreadoverrides false /includeguidesgrids false /includenonprinting false /includeslug false /namespace [ (adobe) (indesign) (4.0) ] /omitplacedbitmaps false /omitplacedeps false /omitplacedpdf false /simulateoverprint /legacy >> << /addbleedmarks false /addcolorbars false /addcropmarks false /addpageinfo false /addregmarks false /convertcolors /converttocmyk /destinationprofilename () /destinationprofileselector /documentcmyk /downsample16bitimages true /flattenerpreset << /presetselector /mediumresolution >> /formelements false /generatestructure false /includebookmarks false /includehyperlinks false /includeinteractive false /includelayers false /includeprofiles false /multimediahandling /useobjectsettings /namespace [ (adobe) (creativesuite) (2.0) ] /pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /documentcmyk /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /usedocumentprofile /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2540 2540] /pagesize [595.276 841.890] >> setpagedevice microsoft word contens verjin armenian folia anglistika linguistics 72 the modeling of social distance on the mat: towards a semiotic study of aikido grigor ghazaryan yerevan state university abstract the study of language through sign systems that represent “by-products” or substitutes of language as a means of communication is a direction in linguistics that adds to the knowledge about the productivity and language-generating potential of natural languages. nonverbal language which boasts a plethora of wordless cues through which people communicate, includes postures, gestures, stances, and movements, all of which can be analyzed and explained through the use of the instruments of a semiotic methodology. for instance, the study of signs through the rituals, conventions and overall nonverbal interactions in the diaculture of modern japanese martial arts, reveals interesting characteristics of the sign language used particularly in kenjutsu and aikido. the mentioned martial arts make wide use of nonverbal cues that are characterized by features of indexicality, iconicity and symbolicity, and echo concrete social norms and conventions. those social conventions are materialized and translated into the setting of trainings through philosophical concepts and ideas. key words: nonverbal communication, aikido, semiotics, social distance, maai, katana, kata, martial arts, combat language. introduction it is common knowledge that communication takes place not only through words but through gestures as well. sets of gestures can assume ritualistic nature, if those are expected to be applied in certain settings. when interaction is limited to kinesics and proxemics according to the norms common to a specific environment, communication becomes largely based on nonverbal acts. iconic gestures, many of which are uninterpretable by outside viewers without the accompanying explanation (clark 2004:179), are amply used in oriental martial arts. the semiotic analysis of the iconic signs used by aikido practitioners (commonly called aikid ka) can help reveal the characteristics of the communicative model through which objective reality (or at least attributes and linguistics armenian folia anglistika 73 conventions pertaining to it) is encoded and translated into the training environment. in the present paper we will consider such notions as sphericity, distance and space (known as “maai” in oriental martial arts) as basic tools of translating the notions of social distance into the context and setting of aikido trainings. special attention will be paid to the concepts of center and sword, as important points of ideological reference, in consideration of the fact that postures, gestures, stances, and movements in aikido are “drawn” in circles, the “imaginary weapon” being the so-called katana (japanese sword) which is usually substituted or imitated by hands kept in a position that looks like holding a sword in front of one’s own body. in the mentioned context, the forms and exercises designed to develop fighting skills incorporate set combinations of positions and movements which are based on and correspondingly generate a certain perception about interpersonal distance. spatial perceptions through the “language” of aikido speaking in general terms about the models used to describe reality in one way or another, roger bell points out that the latter “range from pictorial or iconic models, in which there is an evident isomorphism between elements in the model and elements of the reality it represents, to analogue and symbolic models. in analogue models, the isomorphism is less, by virtue of making use of one property of the model to represent a different property of the object, while in symbolic models, the relationship between the “real” object and the model cannot be immediately grasped.” (bell 1976:42). some models may be interpreted in various ways depending on the diacultural or subcultural affiliation of the subjects. in aikido, the mat represents a mini-model of the universe, where multiple interpersonal relationships are modeled on the basis of conflict situations. conflict or confrontation is mostly conventional in the training environment where physical interaction is realized in a “question-and-answer” or “statement-and-reply” format. in the mentioned process we encounter a number of signs that bespeak a highcontext culture on the one hand, and a close connection with social proxemics on the other. no wonder that many concepts of aikido are borrowed by social anthropologists to signify tactical and behavioural moves of individuals in their social interactions. such is the example of randori1 which is often discussed as a principle of effective leadership (baum, hassinger 2002). masters of the mentioned martial art make use of a wide arsenal of tools (signs that can be classified either as indices, icons or symbols) in order to relate the armenian folia anglistika linguistics 74 details of fighting techniques and “common practices” to a wider context of conflict resolution in social interactions in the synchronic perspective, or to ancient fighting practices in the diachronic perspective2, and to religious-ideological concepts of shinto3, in the panchronic perspective. unlike other forms of art, here the use of the mentioned types of signs has not only an aesthetic but also a didactic purpose. in other words, it helps to transmit the message from master to students through tacit forms of communication and through patterned forms known as the “kata”. here we deal with such means of constructing the communicative event as iconic body gestures, and emblems in hand movements that demonstrate the nature and intensity of the physical interaction during the combat. when looking at those models of signaling, “language” must be taken broader than “a language”. at least in the notion of “language use” it must include every method by which one person means something for another – describing, indicating, and demonstrating – regardless of the instrument used – voice, hands, arms, face, eyes, or body (clark 2004:188). nonverbal cues, often used to invite the opponent to the mat, or the initial postures signifying readiness and alertness, are clear examples of indices. iconic signs can be noticed in situations in which the practitioner's hands imitate the japanese sword (katana), whereas symbols can be found in concepts relating, for example, to hierarchy on the vertical axis, and to integrity and personal space on the horizontal axis. the latter is explained on the basis of the concept of “hara” (center of man and universe at the same time). the use of all these notions in verbal and nonverbal discourse during training sessions comes to characterize the communicative model of aikido as being complementarily pictorial and symbolic at the same time. when talking about iconicity and symbolicity in language models such subcategories of the study of nonverbal communication as proxemics (use of space) along with haptics (touch), kinesics (body movement), vocalics (paralanguage), and chronemics (structure of time) should be taken into consideration as important levels of analysis (moore 2010). the consideration of the mentioned subcategories can be especially effective when analyzing human conventional interactions during martial arts trainings and also when studying the interrelatedness of interpersonal behavioral patterns used in aikido, as well as those translated into the social setting. edward t. hall, who coined the term proxemics in 1963, emphasized the impact of proxemic behavior on interpersonal communication. analyzing the linguistics armenian folia anglistika 75 communicative events of aikido one may assume that the notions suggested in proxemics could be effective in evaluating the interrelatedness and mutual impact of how people interact and how they organize and use the space around themselves (hall would mention “the organization of space in [their] houses and buildings, and ultimately the layout of [their] towns” (hall 1963:1003-1026) which equally applies to the organization of space in an aikido dojo (training hall)). however, in order to take this argument one step further we would need to look into the results of a separate research works on the effects of sports’ diaculture on family and daily life habits. according to the ideology of aikido, the whole universe revolves around a center, where the center is the man. this understanding governs the proxemic behaviour of individuals on the mat. “center and centralization are among the most important notions in aikido, the consciousness of which is developed through special exercises by the help of which centralization becomes “an accomplished fact referring to the unconscious maintenance of balance – both mental and physical, extension of energy, circularity of motion and action, etc.” (westbrook & ratti 2004:104). circles around the center are “drawn” by movements of the body and hands, usually substituting a weapon. the concepts of “weapon-hand” (reflected in the understanding of “te katana”, which literally means “hand sword”) and distance (known as “maai”) are fundamental elements of aikido proxemics. maai is understood as a spatiotemporal “interval” between two opponents during combat; it formally represents the “engagement distance”. when the distance measures about two metres between the opponents, from which either need only one step in order to strike the other, we deal with a setting where techniques (consequently, contact /“conversation”) can be initiated. hence, it becomes clear that in aikido the distance between personal and social spheres is measured by the length of the sword which is perceived as an extension of human body. the tip of the extended sword is the point which draws the radius of the circle around the person’s self and represents his ego or the personal. this is why battle (which in broader armenian folia anglistika linguistics 76 terms can be described as conflict or confrontation) starts when the tips of the opponents’ swords cross – they violate each other’s personal space. the use of weapons in general and the use of hands as substitutes of weapons in particular, are largely based on imitation. this makes the discussion about the nonverbal and iconic character of combat language almost inevitable. moreover, nowadays aikido is often explained in rather far-reaching abstractions, in which we often come across comparisons between physical contact and dialogue4 where the contact between the opponents is seen as a type of conversation5 realized through targeted and intentional gestures. if symbolic models of language have the disadvantage for the student, at least, of being much more abstract than the “reality” they are designed to describe and explain, the model of the combat language applied in aikido is comparatively more iconic, since the gestures it uses as carriers of messages, are based on imitating analogous gestures that pre-existed the bare hand fighting techniques, due to the use of certain elements like weapons, pieces of armour and protective devices (bell 1976:44). another concept essentially related to proxemics is that of sphericity which is pervasive in the ideology of aikido. it conceptually underlies the division of space into circles around the individual’s center and the circularity of motions in the given martial art. even the employment of katana, by the very logic of its design and structure, is based more upon the circular slash than upon the direct thrust (westbrook & ratti 2004:95). the dimensions of the concept of centralization range from the cosmic or universal where the center is identified with the idea of order, harmony, and total integration in the balance of opposites, to the human and personal, where it is seen as the balance point of human personality, the unified basis of individuality and particular character. with the concepts of center and sphericity in mind, we can notice that social distance in aikido corresponds to the sphere of objectivity which is literally outside the reach of the linguistics armenian folia anglistika 77 individual’s hand (=sword). the cosmic and the human dimensions of the concept of center are closely intertwined, man being an integral part of creation. this refers to the concept of individual integrity, since the center, according to eastern philosophy, is all-encompassing and “it is the same for both the general and the particular, for the universe and for man. [...] separation of man from that identity with the universe, alienation of man from man, and finally, a man’s feeling of a split within himself are considered to be the result of paying too much attention to the surface differences, to the details of life. this completely ignores the underlying identity of all life, the basic “oneness” of its essence” (westbrook & ratti 2004:70). in conformity with the same principle of oneness, the bare hand becomes an iconic image of the japanese sword (katana) which determines the personal distance and delineates the subjective from the objective (social, and universal). at the same time, conflict is literally understood as the violation of the mentioned personal zone, and conversely, the respect of the personal zone guarantees absence of violence, but also absence of contact, conversation and communication. hand <=[iconic representation]=> sword <=[symbolic representation]=> distance /maai* (*distance = guarantee of security; absence of confrontation; mutual respect) as shown above, the hand of an aikidoka iconically stands for the sword, and symbolically represents the distance which is essential to avoiding conflict. the concept of “maai”, which incorporates “not just the distance between opponents [proxemics], but also the time [chronemics] it will take to cross the distance, angle and rhythm of attack [kinesics and haptics]” (jones 2005) helps to get a better understanding of nonverbal communication in aikido and to read and understand conflict situations from the point of view of aikido proxemics. as long as any reading of social, real-life situations is based on signs6, those readings will accumulate in the process of cognition to form the basis of patterned approaches that are meant to be respectively applied in situations outside the training environment. conclusion the interaction between aikido practitioners in the setting of trainings can be seen in terms of a conversation taking place according to pre-set norms and armenian folia anglistika linguistics 78 through the use of nonverbal linguistic means. the latter are applied by “speakers” (aikidoka) who represent what they mean in symbols which they intend their addressees to interpret using a shared system of sign language. similar to a type of conversation, a conventional fight scene (kata) in aikido implies inherent meanings of breaking and reestablishing balance – initiating and ending a conflict respectively – conveyed through body language (kinesics) and the physical distance between the communicators (proxemics). aikido practitioners, taken as speakers, enter into a conversation presupposing a certain common ground where the delineation between personal and social space is marked by emblematic hand gestures which iconically stand for sword movements. the patterned exercises known as the katas, imply certain isomorphism between elements in the model (hands) and elements of the reality (sword) that they refer to. if the general approach of constructing those models is quite iconic or pictorial for the practitioners of aikido, it appears to be symbolic to outsiders who usually need additional explanation of the nonverbal communicative events discussed above. notes: 1. “the term randori does not translate nicely into english, but it is usually translated loosely as free play. ran literally means “disorder”, “chaos” or "random”. dori does not translate well, but it means to “take hold of”. the disorder and randomness of randori was in contrast with the very formal and orderly kata (pre-arranged patterns of technique). using terms that referred to chaos and randomness clearly set randori as the opposite side of the coin in comparison to traditional kata.” (rego 2014) 2. founder of aikido morihei ueshiba was said to have studied several different styles of kenjutsu (japanese swordsmanship). there are details of ueshiba's training in those classical martial arts and their influence on the development of modern aikido. sword techniques (aiki-ken) in particular, which became the foundation of aikido are predominantly based upon the teachings of the ancient fighting techniques of kashima shint -ryu. (skoss 1993) 3. the ideology of shinto was intertwined with that of the moto-ky movement to which the founder of aikido morihei ueshiba joined in 1919. 4. “aikido is neither a sport, nor a competition. it is an art of communication among people. there are no winners or losers here. we should forget the approach which is based on an idea like “i am the winner and i am the good and linguistics armenian folia anglistika 79 you are the loser, and that means you are bad.” aikido contains martial elements, but the accent is laid in interaction. aikido is a dialogue. i attack and you respond and vice-versa. the attacker and the person being attacked are not looking for a conflict. the aim is to train and not to destroy on another. that is how communication and development take place.” (svyatokhina 2014) 5. “physical altercation, controlled or uncontrolled, is nonetheless a form of communication that reveals much about an individual’s psychological makeup. as such, karate kumite, aikido randori, and kendo or judo shiai, represent nothing more than physical “conversations.” if you watch closely, regardless of the art being practiced, you will learn much about any participant’s personal style of, or approach to conflict resolution.” (jones 2005) 6. we can see this from peirce’s early idea that every interpretant is itself a further sign of the signified object. since interpretants are the interpreting thoughts we have of signifying relations, and these interpreting thoughts are themselves signs, it seems to be a straight-forward consequence that all thoughts are signs, or as peirce calls them “thought-signs” (peirce’s theory of signs // stanford encyclopedia of philosophy 2010). references: 1. baum, d.; hassinger, j. (2002) the randori principles: the path of effortless leadership. chicago: dearborn trade publishing. 2. bell, r.t. (1976) sociolinguistics. goals, approaches and problems. ny: st. martin’s press inc. 3. burgoon, j.k.; guerrero, l.k; floyd, k. (1996) nonverbal communication. ny: pearson publishing. 4. (2011) changing minds, 10 apr./6 dec. 2011. available at: <http://www.changingminds.org> [accessed august 2016]. 5. clark, h.h. (2004) using language. cambridge: cup 6. hall, ed.t. (1963) a system for the notation of proxemic behavior. // american anthropologist 65 (5), pp.1003–1026. 7. hall, ed.t. (1969) the hidden dimensions. ny: ancor books. 8. jones, t.d. (2005) angular attack theory: an aikido perspective. // aikido journal. available at: <http://members.aikidojournal.com/public/angular-attacktheory-an-aikido-perspective> [accessed august 2016]. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 80 9. moore, n. (2010) nonverbal communication: studies and applications. ny: oup. 10. (2010) peirce’s theory of signs // stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. available at: <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/peirce-semiotics/#sigelesig> [accessed august 2016]. 11. skoss, m. (1993) kashima shinto-ryu. the classical martial arts resource. <http://www.koryu.com/library/mskoss3.html> [accessed august 2016] 12. rego, g. (2014) randori in jukido jujitsu. a brief explaination of the history, development, & benefits of randori in jukido jujitsu, available at: <http://www.floridajukido.com/resources/postings/103-randori-in-jukidojujitsu.html> [accessed august 2016]. 13. svyatokhina, d. (2014) interview with takashi kuroki sensei, “yaponskij master aikido podderzhal kollegu iz bashkirii”. // obshestvennaya elektronnaya gazeta. available at: <http://i-gazeta.com/news/mesta_interesa/ 31725.html> [accessed august 2016]. 14. westbrook, a.; ratti, o. (2004) aikido and the dynamic sphere, boston: tuttle publishing. êáóç³é³ï³ý ñ»é³íáñáõãû³ý ùá¹»é³íáñáõùá ù³ñ½³ëñ³ñáõù. ³ûïç¹áûç ýß³ý³·çï³ï³ý áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõý ðá¹í³íá ùýýáõãû³ý ¿ ³éýáõù ³ñ¨»éû³ý ù³ñï³ñí»ëïý»ñç ù³ëý³íáñ³å»ë ³ûïç¹áûç áã í»ñ ³é ñ³õáñ¹³ïóáõãû³ý 黽áõý §ëáõñ¦, §ï»ýïñáý¦, §ñ»é³íáñáõãûáõý¦ ¨ §áéáñï³ûýáõãûáõý¦ ÷áëï³å³ïóí³í ñ³ëï³óáõãûáõýý»ñç ýß³ý³·çï³ï³ý í»ñéáõíáõãû³ý ùççáóáí ì»ñççýý»ñë ïçñ³éíáõù »ý ÷çéçëá÷³û³ï³ý ï»õ»ïáõûãý»ñý ³ûïç¹áûç ïçñáõûãáõù ïá¹³íáñ»éáõ, çýãå»ë ý³¨ ù³ñï³ï³ý ñý³ñ³ýùý»ñý çù³ëï³íáñ»éáõ ýå³ï³ïáí: øç¨ýáõûý å³ù³ý³ï ýßí³í ñ³ëï³óáõãûáõýý»ñá ïíû³é ù³ñï³ñí»ëïç ñý³ñùý»ñáõù ³ñï³óáéíáõù »ý óáõóçã-ýß³ýý»ñç, å³ïï»ñ-ýß³ýý»ñç ¨ ëçùíáéý»ñç ùççáóáí, ¨ áã í»ñ ³é ÷áë·áñí³ïóáõãû³ý áýã³óùáõù í³é³ûáõù áñå»ë ³ýóý³ï³ý ¨ ëáóç³é³ï³ý ï³ñ³íáõãû³ý ë³ñù³ý³½³ïù³ý ·áñíçù: ºã» ³ûïç¹áûç áã í»ñ ³é ñ³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý ·áñíáõáõãûáõýý»ñç ýáõûãá å³ïï»ñ³ûçý ¨ áýï³é»éç ¿ ïíû³é ù³ñï³ñí»ëïç ïçñáõûãáõù ·ïýíáõý»ñç ñ³ù³ñ, ³å³ ù³ñï³ñí»ëïç ïçñáõûãçó ¹áõñë ·ïýíáõ §áýã»ñóáõý»ñç¦ ñ³ù³ñ ³ûý ëçùíáéçï ýáõûã ¿ ëï³ýáõù: maket 2014_layout 1.qxd constructions with reflexive and reciprocal verbs in english and armenian yelena mkhitaryan, mary vardanyan yerevan state university abstract reflexive and reciprocal verbs constitute a special class both in the english and armenian verbal system. as for their semantics, they manifest similarity, but morphologically and syntactically they show some differences. in english the meanings of reflexivity and reciprocity are expressed both by single verbs and their combination with the respective pronouns. in armenian these categories are designated by means of the suffix í. the english reflexives may be used with the pronouns without apparent semantic change, whereas the armenian counterparts normally do not take them. used with other words than the respective pronouns these verbs lose the meanings of reflexivity and reciprocity and function as common transitive verbs. key words: reflexivity, reciprocity, self-pronoun, objectless transitive construction, symmetric action. reflexive and reciprocal verbs constitute a special class both in the english and armenian verbal systems. reflexive verbs show actions occurring within the same entity; reciprocal verbs indicate actions that are reciprocated by two or more entities (participants). in english the combinations of these verbs with the pronouns (self pronouns for reflexives and each other or one another for reciprocals) are often referred to as voice forms, since “the agent both acts and is acted upon” (payne 2011:306). there have been various attempts to acknowledge two more voice forms in english: reflexive and reciprocal. thus, b. ilyish speaks of two approaches to the status of the pronoun in these constructions: 1) the pronoun is the auxiliary of the voice form, 2) the pronoun is a separate word functioning as a direct object (ilyish 1971:116-119). m. blokh claims that the reflexive and reciprocal pronouns within the framework of the hypothetical voice identification should be looked upon as the voice auxiliaries. the linguist concludes that this question is still open to consideration (blokh 1983:181182). this problem becomes more complicated when the reflexive verbs dress, shave, wash, etc. and the reciprocal verbs part, divorce, kiss, etc. are used without the respective pronouns. we think it rational to view these verbs in terms of structural dichotomy as it is suggested by some linguists. thus, th. payne points out two types of reflexive and reciprocal verbs in english: lexical and analytic (payne 2011:306-311). lexical reflexives and reciprocals are represented by verbs only. analytic verbs which are also referred to as syntactic reflexives and reciprocals are used with the respective pronouns. naturally, in the deep structure both the elements are present: the agent and the patient expressed by the verb and the reflexive or reciprocal pronoun, but in the surface armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 63 structure the second element does not usually find explicit expression. so we can have equally: to wash oneself = to wash, to dress oneself = to dress, etc. or to divorce each other = to divorce, to kiss each other = to kiss. semantically they preserve their reflexive and reciprocal meaning in both cases. therefore almost all linguists agree that these verbs retain the category of reflexivity or reciprocity irrespective of the presence of the corresponding pronoun (carter and mccarthy 2006:385-386). j. lyons refers to these objectless verbs as implicit reflexives or reciprocals. the linguist argues that constructions with reflexive verbs preserve the meaning of reflexivity even when they occur without reflexive pronouns (lyons 1978:383). the same can be said in regard to reciprocal verbs. if a sentence contains more than one argument, there arises ambiguity as in the following sentences: they want [john to help himself]. they want [john to help themselves]. a. radford tries to interpret this phenomenon by introducing the concept of local antecedent. accordingly, he claims that the first sentence is grammatically correct as the antecedent of the reflexive pronoun himself is the noun john contained within the same help-clause as himself. conversely, the second sentence is ungrammatical because the reflexive pronoun themselves does not have an antecedent within the help-clause; its antecedent is contained in the want-clause, which is farther away (radford 2006:92). now let us see what is the state of things with the reflexive and reciprocal verbs in armenian. first of all it should be pointed out that both classes of verbs in english and armenian show semantic similarity. as to their status in the armenian verbal system, linguists display different approaches to this issue. we think the most rational definition is given by h. barseghyan, who claims that these verbs belong neither to active nor passive voice, since they cannot have an outer object; besides, and the agent is associated with the subject rather than the object (barseghyan 1953:128-129). another difference concerns the structure of the verb: in armenian the categories of reflexivity and reciprocity are expressed morphologically – by means of the suffix í: ñ³·ýí»é, éí³óí»é (reflexive); μ³å³ýí»é, ñ³ùμáõñí»é (reciprocal). however, the armenian reciprocals may occur in combination with the pronouns çñ³ñ, ùçùû³ýó. μ³å³ýí»óçý çñ³ñçó. but the presence of the reciprocal pronoun normally requires the verb in the active voice. üñ³ýù ·ñï³ë³éýí»óçý / ýñ³ýù ·ñï»óçý çñ³ñ, ñ³ùμáõñí»óçý/ ñ³ùμáõñ»óçý çñ³ñ (asatryan 1970:190-191). as for the armenian reflexives, they usually do not take the reflexive pronoun, though it is implied in the deep structure: ü³ éí³óíáõù ¿ = ü³ éí³ýáõù ¿ çñ»ý: below are examples to illustrate the morphological and structural differences between the uses of the english and armenian reflexive and reciprocal verbs.1 a) he had just shaved for there was a white spot of lather on his cheekbone. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 64 ð»ýó ýáñ ¿ñ ë³÷ñí»é, áñáíñ»ï¨ ³ûïáëïáñçý û׳éç ÷ñ÷áõñ ¿ñ ïå³í: b) when dick knocked, she had just dressed and been watching the rain... ºñμ ¸çùá ¹áõéá ã³ï»ó, ý³ ñ»ýó ýáñ ¿ñ ñ³·ýí»é ¨ ý³ûáõù ¿ñ ³ýóñ¨çý... c) in sibyl’s room they parted. êçμçéç ë»ýû³ïáõù ýñ³ýù μ³å³ýí»óçý: d) we kissed each other. i can’t describe to you what i felt at that moment. ø»ýù ñ³ùμáõñí»óçýù: â»ù ï³ñáõ ³ë»é, ã» çýã ½·³óç ³û¹ å³ñçý: english reflexive verbs are usually used without selfpronouns when they denote dailyroutine actions (i wash / dress / shave, etc.). however, used with reflexive pronouns they acquire new connotations. as r. carter and m. mccarthy put it, used in this way these verbs would mean that a person is unable to do these things on his own or it may merely be an unexpected, surprising action (carter and mccarthy 2006:385-386). in armenian this meaning of the english reflexive is rendered by means of the adverb çýùýáõñáõûý. e.g. a) she was no longer able to wash herself. ü³ ³ûé¨ë ã»ñ ï³ñáõ çýùýáõñáõûý éí³óí»é: b) i was surprised to find out that she was able to wash herself that morning. ºë ½³ñù³ó³, »ñμ å³ñ½»óç, áñ ³û¹ ³é³íáï ý³ ï³ñáõ³ó»é ¿ çýùýáõñáõûý ñ³·ýí»é: c) the child is old enough to wash herself. ºñ»ë³ý μ³í³ï³ý³ã³÷ ù»í ¿ áñå»ë½ç çýùýáõñáõûý éí³óíç: in other cases used with the reflexive pronoun the verb suggests that the action is done with deliberate care. (biber et al 2000:148) e.g. a) there, since it would be in some sense an official visit, i dressed myself with care so as to make a proper impression on the captain. b) so he had risen in the bitter cold of four-fifteen, washed himself in the prescribed fashion, dressed and put on his father’s astrakhan cap. th. payne also points to ‘special situations’ in which these verbs take reflexive pronouns. e.g. a) the photographer had dressed himself in clothes that were less foppish than his usual attire. b) next, i bathed myself with a soapy cloth in the appropriate hygienic order. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 65 when reflexives are used without the pronoun, this may lead to ambiguity. let us consider the following sentence: e.g. he never shaves before lunch. j. lyons interprets this sentence in two ways: a) the man never shaves anybody before breakfast, b) he never shaves himself before breakfast. in the first case we deal with an objectless transitive verb, in the second case we have an implicit reflexive verb (lyons 1978:383). below is another example adduced by ch. kreidler. 1. harvey drowned his mother-in-law. 2. harvey drowned. in the first example harvey is the instigator of the action and his mother-in-law a victim, i.e. the object. as to the second sentence, it is ambiguous. that would depend on whether harvey committed suicide by drowning or he drowned accidentally. whichever is the case, the information is not in the sentence (kreidler 2002:79). verbs which are not characterized by reflexivity can take reflexive pronouns as direct objects, in which case they function as ordinary transitive verbs. this is observed in both english and armenian. a) he stooped and kissed her forehead. b) ¸çùá ïé³ó³í ¨ ñ³ùμáõñ»ó ýñ³ ׳ï³ïá: c) she washed the child in haste and put it in bed. d) ì³ëçéçë³ý »ñ»ëá éí³ýáõù ¿, ·éáõëá ë³ýñáõù: e) ²ù»ý ³ý·³ù, »ñμ ý³ áñëç ¿ñ ·ýáõù, ¹áõñë ¿çý μ»ñáõù ¹åμ³ëï μ³ýï³ñïû³éçý, éí³ýáõù: f) þï³å ñ³·³í ßáñ»ñá ¨ ãé³í ÷áõáó: g) âáõ ùáï ·³ù, í½áí¹ áýïý»ù: ø»½ ñ³ùμáõñ»ù ùç ³ý·³ù: reciprocal verbs basically function in the same way. as we have mentioned, english reflexives occur both with the reciprocal pronouns or without them. as for the choice of each other or one another, many linguists do not see any semantic difference between them. as m. swan notes “if there is any difference, it seems to be that we prefer one another when we are making very general statements, and not talking about particular people.” (swan 1982:191-192). no difference is observed between the armenian reciprocal pronouns çñ³ñ and ùçùû³ýó. a) they adore one another. b) ä³ßïáõù »ý çñ³ñ: c) but both of us loved each other all the time… armenian folia anglistika linguistics 66 d) ´³ûó ³ùμáõç å³ù³ý³ï ëçñáõù ¿çýù ùçùû³ýó… e) they are accusing one another vehemently. f) üñ³ýù ù»õ³¹ñáõù »ý ùçùû³ýó: however, our factual material allows us to make the following observation: each other may show more intimacy, friendliness than one another. on the contrary, one another emphasizes distance, coldness in human relationship. thus, when d. du maurier describes the relations between the main characters maxim and caroline (“rebecca”) at different periods of their life, she uses one another to show a breach in their relationship, and each other when they regain their trust and love after a long period of bitter disappointment and distress. e. g. a) he never spoke to me. he never touched me. we stood beside one another, the host and the hostess, and we were not together. b) we can’t lose each other now. the english reciprocal verbs used without the pronouns denote: 1) emotional actions (embrace, kiss, hug) a) when they kissed, he felt the same stirring. b) they embraced and wept and promised to keep in touch. c) they put their arms around each other and hugged. 2) communicative actions (talk, speak, interrupt, interrogate) a) we talked on the phone for an hour. b) would you not mind interrupting all the time? 3) physical interaction (clash, collide, contact, fight) a) they regularly collide over policy decisions. b) two men fighting over a parking space were arrested earlier today. c) the two sets of supporters clashed outside the stadium. 4) mental interaction, cooperation (agree, argue, squabble, quarrel) a) ultimately the two sides could not agree, and negotiations were abandoned. b) jim and beth seem to spend all their time arguing. c) whenever they meet they end up quarreling. 5) various forms of movement, joining, connection, disconnection (meet, divorce, join, link) a) my parents divorced when i was seven years old. b) how do these two pieces join? c) we parted at the entrance. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 67 all these examples show that the actions of participants are symmetrical, therefore the omission of the object does not entail any semantic changes in the sentence. but as ch. kreidler claims it is not always the case. let us consider the following two sentences: 1. the truck and the bus collided. ´»éý³ï³ñ ù»ù»ý³ý áõ ³íïáμáõëá μ³ëí»óçý (ùçùû³ýó ñ»ï): 2. the truck collided with the bus. ´»éý³ï³ñ ù»ù»ý³ý μ³ëí»ó ³íïáμáõëç ñ»ï: in the second case we cannot state that the actions of the participants are symmetrical: the truck collided with the bus, the same cannot be said about the bus. as for the first example, it contains some kind of ambiguity. the truck and the bus collided may be assumed as the result of ellipsis. for example, we can assume that the truck and the bus collided with a taxi. then we will have a) the truck collided with a taxi. b) the bus collided with a taxi (kreidler 2002:107-109). if the participants’ actions are not symmetrical, the object is not deleted and the verb is not regarded as reciprocal. consider the following sentences. a) landau embraced his protégé. b) she kissed me swiftly, patting my shoulder at the same time… c) she divorced her husband. here the verbs embrace, divorce and kiss function as ordinary transitive verbs taking a direct object. the same is observed in armenian. a) ì³ëçéçë³ý »ñ»ëá éí³ýáõù ¿, ·éáõëá ë³ýñáõù: b) þï³å ñ³·³í ßáñ»ñá ¨ ãé³í ÷áõáó: to conclude: english and armenian reflexive and reciprocal verbs display similar semantic features but in other aspects they show some differences. reflexives as well as reciprocals in armenian are formed morphologically by means of the suffix í. reflexive verbs in armenian do not usually combine with the respective pronouns, while reciprocal verbs may or may not take these pronouns. the analysis shows that objectless constructions with the lexical verbs under consideration are more common in use than those having the second element denoted by the reflexive or reciprocal pronoun. reflexive and reciprocal verbs both in english and armenian preserve the meanings of reflexivity and reciprocity irrespective of the presence or absence of the respective pronouns in the structure of the sentence. the presence of the self-pronoun in the construction may entail semantic changes in the meaning of the english reflexive construction. objectless constructions with reflexive and reciprocal verbs in english may cause ambiguity, which can be removed by a wider context. used with other words than the respective pronouns these verbs lose the categories of reflexivity and reciprocity and function as ordinary transitive verbs. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 68 note: 1. the examples used in this paper are taken from various sources (dictionaries and fiction). references: 1. biber, d. et al (2000) grammar of spoken and written english. london: longman. 2. blokh, m. (1980) a course in theoretical english grammar. m.: visshaya shkola. 3. carter, r.; mccarthy, m. (2006) cambridge grammar of english. cambridge: cup. 4. ilyish, b. (1971) the structure of modern english. leningrad: prosveshcheniye. 5. kreidler, ch.w. (2002) introducing english semantics. london and new york: routledge. 6. radford, a. (2004) english syntax. an introduction. cambridge: cup. 7. payne, th. (2011) understanding english grammar. cambridge: cup. 8. swan, m. (1982) practical english usage. oxford: oup. 9. lyons, j. (1978) vvedeniye v teoreticheskuyu lingvistiku. m.: progress. 10. asatryan, m.e. (1970) zhamanakakits hayots lezvi dzevabanutsyan hartser. yerevan: yerevani hamalsarani hratarakchutjun. 11. barseghyan, h.kh. (1953) ardi hayereni bayi yev khonarhman tesutsyun. yerevan: yerevani hamalsarani hratarakchutyun. ²ý¹ñ³¹³ñó ¨ ÷áë³¹³ñó μ³û»ñáí ï³éáõûóý»ñá ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù ¨ ñ³û»ñ»ýáõù ðá¹ í³ íáõù ¹ç ï³ñï íáõù »ý ³ý· é» ñ» ýç ³ý¹ ñ³ ¹³ñó ¨ ÷á ë³ ¹³ñó μ³ û» ñç »ñ ïáõ ï» ë³ ïáª μ³ é³ ûçý ¨ í»ñ éáõ í³ ï³ý: ¼áõ ·³¹ ñ³ ï³ý í»ñ éáõ íáõã ûáõ ýá ç ñ³ûï ¿ μ» ñáõù ï³ éáõó í³í ù³ ûçý ¨ ß³ ñ³ñ ûáõ ë³ ï³ý ï³ñ μ» ñáõã ûáõý ý» ñ, áñáýù ³é ï³ »ý »ñ ïáõ é» ½áõ ý» ñáõù ïíû³é μ³ û» ñá å³ ñáõ ý³ ïáõ ï³ éáõûóý» ñáõù: æ ù³ë ï³ ûçý ³ éáõ ùáí »ñ ïáõ é» ½áõ ý» ñáõù ¿é ñçß û³é ï³ éáõûóý» ñý áõý»ý ýù³ ýáõã ûáõý ý»ñ, 㻨 ³ý¹ ñ³ ¹³ñó μ³ û» ñç ¹»å ùáõù ãç ï³ ñ» éç ëá ë»é μ³ ó³ñ ó³ï ýáõû ýáõã û³ý ù³ ëçý: êîíñòðóêöèè ñ âîçâðàòíûìè è âçàèìíûìè ãëàãîëàìè â àíãëèéñêîì è àðìÿíñêîì ÿçûêàõ â ñòàòüå ðàññ ìàò ðè âàþò ñÿ äâà òè ïà âîçâ ðàò íûõ è âçàèì íûõ ãëà ãî ëîâ â àíã ëèéñ êîì ÿçû êå: ëåê ñè ÷åñ êèå è âçàèì íûå. ñî ïîñòà âè òåëü íûé àíà ëèç âûÿ âèë òå ñòðóê òóð íûå è ñèí òàê ñè ÷åñ êèå ðàç ëè ÷èÿ, êî òî ðûå ñó ùåñò âóþò ìåæ äó êîíñò ðóê öèÿ ìè ñ äàí íû ìè ãëà ãî ëà ìè â îáîèõ ÿçû êàõ. â ñå ìàí òè ÷åñ êîì ïëà íå äàí íûå êîíñò ðóê öèè ïðîÿâ ëÿþò îá ùèå ÷åð òû, çà èñê ëþ ÷å íèåì êîíñò ðóê öèé ñ âîçâ ðàò íû ìè ãëà ãî ëà ìè, ãäå íàá ëþ äàþò ñÿ îï ðå äå ëåí íûå ðàç ëè ÷èÿ. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 69 maket 2014_layout 1.qxd the multifaceted nature of legal english lilit sahakyan yerevan gladzor university abstract it is beyond suspicion that legal english stands as a sublanguage of paramount international importance. the extralinguistic basis of legal english has nowadays been extended embracing conflict of overall international-social, political (both foreign and home) interests. as seen from the title of the work, the primary goal of the present article is to investigate the nature of law english. the article covers a detailed analysis of some pivotal, challenging and highly significant linguistic issues that deal with the multifaceted nature of legal english based on the comprehensive historic review of legal english. thus, the vital importance of the subject is accounted for by the substantial and decisive role legal english plays in our social life. key words: legal english, law english, sublanguage, key features, precision, vagueness, multifaceted nature. introduction legal english is a language of long traditions. it is the story of anglo-saxon mercenaries, latin-speaking missionaries, scandinavian raiders, and norman invaders, all of whom left their mark not only on england, but on the language of its law as well. legal english developed naturally, under the influence of diverse languages and cultures, as well as the growing complexity of the legal system and the shift from predominantly oral to mainly written. legal english is significantly different from standard general english as it uses specialized legal english vocabulary and structure. law english is a system and culturebound language: its special style, lexis and syntactic structure depend on the society in question and its legal reasoning. it has traditionally been the preserve of lawyers from english-speaking countries which have shared common law traditions. however, due to the spread of english as the predominant language of international business, as well as its role as a legal language within the european union, legal english is now a global phenomenon. historical development how did legal language get to be the way that it is? to answer this questions one needs to look at the phases of the history of the language of lawyers, mainly the origins: celts, anglo-saxons and danes, as well as the impact of the adoption of christianity, christian missionaries and latin, the norman conquest, the introduction of french, french-speaking normans and anglo-french, as well law french, the demise of latin and law french on the law and legal english.1 and how does the language of the law differ from ordinary speech and writing? the hot issue to be considered in this article is the great difference armenian folia anglistika linguistics 22 between legal english and ordinary english. modern legal english is based on standard english. nevertheless, law english differs from standard english in a number of ways. it contains a number of unusual key features largely relating to terminology, linguistic structure, linguistic conventions, and punctuation, etc., all of them having their roots in the history of the development of english as a legal language (butt, castle 2006; elwell, smith 1996; haigh 2006, 2009; klinck 1992; mellinkoff 1982; murray, muldoon 2004; putman 2003; tiersma 2000). one thing to be emphasised is that the mastery of ordinary english does not imply the mastery of legal english. those differences are based on certain categories, and their basic elements, standing as specific markers of legal english. the points given below portray the multifaceted nature of legal english based on its basic elements, mainly lexical, grammatical and syntactic specific features and significant key features. those key features are studied with the aim of providing a comprehensive description of some pivotal and challenging issues that expose the multifaceted nature of legal english. key features of legal english key feature n1. terms of art. one of the ways in which the language of the law is claimed to promote clear and concise communication is mainly through a specific legal vocabulary. legal english, in common with many other professional languages variations, employs a great deal of specialized words and phrases unique to law that have relatively exact meanings2, are used by legal professions, promote brevity of expression, and fulfill an important communicative function. these distinctive units of vocabulary – terms of art – have technical meanings, and such technical terms as waiver, restraint of trade, restrictive covenant, promissory estoppel, as well, tort, fee simple, and novation, etc., are not generally familiar to the layman. key feature n2. obscure words or phrases. there is a tendency in legal writing to use unnecessary obscure words or phrases rather than their ordinary equivalents, perhaps out of a feeling that the obscure words are somehow more impressive. here are the most commonly used obscure words or phrases implemented in legal english parallel to their single word equivalent: annex – attach, append – attach, cease – stop, conceal – hide, demise – death, desist – stop, leave off, detain – hold, delay, determine / terminate – 1. end, 2. decide, donate – give, effectuate – carry out, endeavour – try, evince – show, expedite – hasten, expend – spend, expiration / expiry – end, extend – give, extinguish – end, forthwith – immediately / soon, forward – send, furnish – give / provide, implement – carry out / fulfill, inaugurate – begin, indicate – state / show / say, initiate – begin, necessitate – require, occasion (v.) – cause, peruse – read, possess – have, present – give, prior – earlier, prior to – before, proceed – go (ahead), quantum – amount, retain – keep, suborn – bribe (e.g., a juror or witness), subsequent to – after, subsequently – then / after / later, utilise – use, until such time – until, etc.. key feature n3. quotidian words. ordinary words both in general english and legal english exhibit certain systematic lexical relationships, e.g., words can be related armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 23 as homonyms, or via polysemy. but this can cause communication problems when legal terms have both an ordinary meaning and a divergent legal meaning. for example, there are quotidian words used in apparently peculiar contexts in legal english as compared to their ordinary meanings in general english, e.g., distress 1) n. the self-help taking of another’s possessions in order to force payment of a claim, which is generally illegal without a court order, 2) adj. at lowest price due to negative circumstances, entertain v. to consider (e.g., a lawsuit), execute to sign to effect, find v. to resolve, to make a legal decision in a law court, furnish v. to give, provide, to present (associated concepts may include furnish proof, labor furnished, material furnished, work furnished), hold to resolve, to decide legally, to conclude, etc.. these words are particularly problematic because laymen are very likely to misinterpret them, and even courts are sometimes unsure whether the ordinary or technical meaning was intended. key feature n4. wordiness and redundancy. lawyers are very prone to wordiness and redundancy, using wordy and redundant phraseology. for example, lawyers tend to use ponderous phrases (such as subsequent to) where a single word would suffice (after). other examples of frequently used ponderous phrase parallel to their single word equivalent include be a significant factor in – affect / influence, be inclined to the view that – think that, be in a position to – can / may, by dint of – because, during the time that during, give rise to / have the effect of – cause, have a detrimental effect upon – harm, have an affect upon / impact upon – affect, in spite of the fact / notwithstanding the fact that – despite / although, having regard to – concerning, in the event that – if, in view of – because, it is arguable that – perhaps, etc.. on the one hand, lawyers avoid synonyms or elegant variation as using a different word is assumed to invoke a different meaning. on the other hand, lawyers have a great love for long lists of synonyms, especially in legal doublets, triplets and quadruplets (dublicate / triplicate / quadruplicate words / alliteration and conjoined phrases). in anglo-saxon legal culture, the complexity of anglo-saxon law led to more linguistically complicated legal language, for instance, there was a curious historical tendency in stringing together two or three words to convey what was usually a single legal concept. the practice of the usage of alliteration and conjoined phrases dating back to anglosaxon times has survived to the present. these conjoined phrases consisting of words like and and or, are extremely common in legal english. examples of this include such legal doublets like fit and proper, fraud and deceit, null and void, perform and discharge, sole all and sundry, successors and assigns, and such legal triplets as give, devise and bequeath, the rest, residue and remainder, dispute, controversy or claim, promise, agree and covenant, possession, custody and control, and also legal quadruplets as in lieu, in place, instead and in substitution of, etc.. such constructions need to be treated with caution, since sometimes the words used mean, for practical purposes, exactly the same thing (as in case of null and void); and sometimes they do not quite do so (as in case of dispute, controversy or claim, possession, custody and control). one reason for such lists of words is to be as comprehensive as possible. they also can add emphasis. but the lists of synonyms can thus create interpretative problems leading to armenian folia anglistika linguistics 24 ambiguity. consequently, careful communication requires that lawyers use such conjoined phrases with care. key feature n5. archaic language vs. novel terminology. the language of the law is neither utterly conservative nor exceptionally innovative, and as a mere outcome, legal english is an odd mixture of archaic alongside very innovative features. legal writing employs many archaic vocabulary / legal archaisms that were formerly quotidian language, but today exist only in law, dating from the 1500s. use of pronominal adverbs or here-, thereand wherewords like hereof, thereof, and whereof (and other derivatives, including --above, -after, at, -before, -by, -in, -inafter, -of, -on, -to, -tofore, -under, -upon, -with, etc.) are not often used in ordinary english. nevertheless, they are used in legal english primarily as a way of avoiding the repetition of names of things in the document or the document itself. for example, the parties hereto instead of the parties to this contract, or the provisions contained hereinafter instead of the provisions referred to later on in this contract. however, archaic pronominal adverbs used in legal english persist in modern legal usage largely as a consequence of legal tradition rather than usefulness. moreover, legal vocabulary is full of antiquated features including a. archaic morphology (further affiant sayeth not), b. the legal use of same, said, aforesaid, such and to wit, or said and such as adjectives, and c. use of the subjunctive, especially in the passive (e.g., be it known). although these legal archaisms and antiquated features often had a legitimate function in the past, and often there were reasons, conflicting motivations and goals for using antiquated vocabulary (such as the reluctance of religious language adherents to change or even to translate sacred or authoritative texts for not affecting their meaning, or to justify lawyers‘ high fees), the claim that these antique features should be preserved nowadays because they are somehow more precise than ordinary language is simply not defensible. even though some legal language is quite archaic, and many other old legal terms have died off as the concepts to which they refer became obsolescent, in fact, when dealing with new legal concepts for which there is no existing word, lawyers do not hesitate to create novel terminology. consequently, some areas of the legal lexicon are very innovative, as in terms like zoning, palimony, e-contract, e-signature, e-postmark, clickwrap agreement, shrink-wrap licences, clickwrap licences, browsewrap licences, etc.. such terms give the law the ability to deal with novel circumstances and legal developments. further, another example of linguistic creativity in legal language is the frequent formation of new words ending in -ee, which contrast to those ending in -or/-er. legal english contains a large number of names and titles, such as employer and employee, mortgagee and mortgagor, assignee and assignor, or lessor and lessee, in which the reciprocal and opposite nature of the relationship is indicated by the use of alternative endings. this practice derives from latin. although these pairs are confusing for the lay public, they can enhance communication within the profession by filling lexical gaps that exist in ordinary language. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 25 key feature n6. latinisms and french survivals. law english is abundant with loan words and phrases from other languages. some anglo-saxon words or legal terms have survived to today, including writ, ordeal, witness, deem, oath and moot. also, a large amount of loan technical vocabulary, including many of the most basic words in our legal system, includes terms and terminological combinations derived from french (attorney-at-law, autrefois acquit, bailiff, cestui que trust, culprit, cyprès doctrine, defendant, escheat, estoppel, feme covert, feme sole, force majeure, laches, mortgage, oyez, plaintiff, puisne, replevin, torts, trove, voir dire, etc.) and latin (ad hoc, bona fida, certiorari, de facto donatio, ex parte, habeas corpus, inter alia, inter vivos, mens rea, mala prohibita, mortis causa, prima facie, res judicata, sub judice, sub silentio, sua sponte, ultra vires, etc.). as a rule, in legal instruments they are not italicised as english legal language, as would be foreign / loan words in mainstream english writing. to make it worse, in some cases, parallelly are used both the loan and the native terms for the same legal phenomenon, such as, eng. previously acquitted à fr. autrefois acquit, eng. previously convicted à fr. autrefois convict, eng. estoppel by conduct à fr. estoppel in pais, excess of jurisdiction à lat. ultra vires, eng. legally permissible à lat. legitimate, eng. guilty knowledgeà lat. mens rea, eng. unlawful act or behaviour / misdeed / misdemeanor à lat. actus reus, eng. among others à lat. inter alia, eng. letter citatory / citation à lat. subpoena, eng. witness summons / citation à lat. subpoena ad testificandum, eng. action / suit à lat. lis, eng. autopsy à lat. post mortem, eng. immunity à lat. habeas corpus, eng. in court à lat. ad litem, eng. survivorshipà lat. jus accresendi, eng. so-called à lat. soi disant, etc.. as well, legal maxims, even today, are often in latin, which gives them a sense of heightened dignity and authority. also, names of writs (mandamus, certiorari) and terminology for case names (versus, ex rel., etc.) are still in latin. furthermore, some of the other characteristics of law french that have left traces in today’s legal language include addition of initial e to words like squire, creating esquire, and simplification of the french verb system, so that all verbs eventually ended in -er, as in demurrer or waiver. as an outcome, in legal english, it is more difficult to achieve clarity in practice than it is in ordinary english, because much of the terminology used comes from french and latin. key feature n7. legal slang. despite claims on lawyers’ very formal, even pompous speech habits, frequent use of legal slang, enhancing group cohesion and ensuring shortness, is evident, as well.. examples include rogs for interrogatories; stir, porridge for prison or imprisonment; mug shot for photo of a criminal; tro for temporary restraining order; slapp suit for strategic lawsuit against public participation; horse shedding for subornation of perjury, and grant cert for grant a writ of certiorari, etc.. key feature n8. avoiding pronouns. one means of gaining precision is to repeat nouns (e.g., player), rather than using a pronoun (e.g., he) after a person or thing is introduced. pronouns can sometimes have ambiguous reference, so this technique can indeed enhance precision. lawyers, however, avoid pronouns almost routinely, even where no armenian folia anglistika linguistics 26 ambiguity is possible. avoiding pronouns does have an unintended benefit, mainly it reduces the use of sexist language. key feature n9. unusual word order. lawyers often adopt an unusual and distinctly strange word order. there is no single clear reason explaining this phenomenon, although the influence of french grammatical structures is certainly a contributing factor. here are some typical examples in case of which adjectives normally follow the noun that they modify as it is in french. such as, accounts payable, attorney general, court martial, fee simple, letters testamentary, malice aforethought, solicitor general, title absolute, treasure trove, as well before as after any judgment, the title above mentioned, etc.. such specificities cause little trouble for lawyers, for whom inverting word order becomes second nature. but they trouble the non-lawyer, unfamiliar with such linguistic eccentricities. key feature n10. unusual and complicated syntax. syntax in legal language is quite a bit more unusual and complicated than in other styles. to illustrate this point let us note that english lawyers have the tendency to make use of such obvious markers as: a) unusual sentence structures (e.g., separating the subject from the verb, or splitting the verb complex), b) lengthy and complex sentences with intricate patterns of coordination and subordination, abundant with c) multiple negations / negative structures (aimed at softening the impact of what is being said by using not un/ im/ il/ in, etc., such as: not inconsiderable, not unjustifiable, not negligible, etc.), d) syntactic devices, strategically creating objectivity and authoritativeness, such as the frequent use of 1. impersonal constructions (e.g., the avoidance of first and second person pronouns and using the third person, or the tendency of judges to refer to themselves as the court rather than i), and 2. passive constructions (strategically to omit reference to the actor, thus de-emphasizing or obscuring the identity of the actor, and being deliberately imprecise), as well f) nominalizations (i.e., nouns derived from verbs, e.g., cancelcancellation, legalize-legalization, mislabel-mislabeling), and the last but not the least, g) with an eye-catching lack of punctuation (e.g., some statutes or linguistic principle that can easily be broken down into more digestible pieces with no loss in content, are formulated as one sentence without any punctuation except for a final full stop). such commonly stressed syntactic characteristics of legal style reduce comprehension, make the meaning less clear and definite, as well inappropriate or ambiguous, thus impairing precise communication. conclusion as an outcome of our study, we got assured in the multifaceted nature of legal english highlighting its flexibility, precision and vagueness, gained as a result of making use of armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 27 terms of art, wordiness and redundancy, conjoined phrases and lists of words, quotidian words, archaic or rarely used words and expressions, latinisms and french survivals, unusual word order, intricate and unusual sentence structures, long and complex sentences with specific syntactic devices, etc.. indeed, each of the above listed factors, accompanied with pertinent explanatory notes and relevant interpretations on selected examples, came to mirror the multifaceted nature of legal english, as a language having its own specialized grammar, lexical, syntactic and semantic specificities that are not acceptable in the standard language. nevertheless, it would be inaccurate to suggest that legal english is nothing more than formal written language with some specific features. better to conclude by stating that legal english is an english sublanguage of long traditions, standing distinctively somewhere between a separate language and ordinary english, with either highly precise or maddeningly vague collection of linguistic habits and specifically complex multifaceted nature, developed over many centuries. notes: 1. for further detailed information on the historical development of law english see sahakyan, l. s. (2014) insights into legal english (teaching and methodology). yerevan, pp. 85-89; sahakyan, l. s. (2011) legal english terminology as an outcome of historical developments // ‘’gladzor-20’’: hodvatsneri hobelyanakan zhoghovatsu./ ed. by zh. jhangiryan, a. sargsyan, et. all. yerevan gladzor university, yerevan: noyan tapan, pp. 674-687; baker, j. h. (1990) an introduction to english legal history (3rd edition). london: butterworths; baker, j. h. (1990) manual of law french (2nd edition). aldershot, eng.: scolar press; hiltunen, r. (1990) chapters on legal english: aspects past and present of the language of the law. helsinki: suomalainen tiedeakatemia; williams, ch. (2007) tradition and change in legal english: verbal constructions in prescriptive texts. germany: peter lang.. 2. such terms are less exact in law than in other sciences because legal terms typically refer to concepts that change over time, or are slightly different in divergent jurisdictions, and, of course, they may be modified by judicial decisions. references: 1. baker, j.h. (1990) an introduction to english legal history (3rd edition). london: butterworths. 2. baker, j.h. (1990) manual of law french (2nd edition). aldershot, eng.: scolar press. 3. butt, p.; castle, r. (2006) modern legal drafting: a guide to using clearer language. cambridge: cup. 4. elwell, c.c.; smith, r.b. (1996) practical legal writing for legal assistants. usa. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 28 5. (2009) guide to court reform and the role of court personnel: a guide for usaid democracy and governance workers usaid, washington, d.c.. 6. haigh, r. (2006) oxford handbook of legal correspondence. oxford: oup. 7. haigh, r. (2009) legal english (2nd edition). routledge-cavendish, taylor & francis gr.. 8. hiltunen, r. (1990) chapters on legal english: aspects past and present of the language of the law. helsinki: suomalainen tiedeakatemia. 9. klinck, d.r. (1992) the word of the law: approaches to legal discourse. ottawa: carlton university press. 10. mellinkoff, d. (1982) legal writing: sense and nonsense. st. paul: west publ.. 11. murray, g.e.; muldoon, g. (2004) criminal law language of new york. florida: gould publ.. 12. putman, w.h. (2003) legal analysis and writing (3rd edition). delman cengage learning. 13. sahakyan, l. (2014) insights into legal english (teaching and methodology). yerevan: “agh” press. 14. sahakyan, l.s. (2011) legal english terminology as an outcome of historical developments // “gladzor-20’’: hodvatsneri hobelyanakan zhoghovatsu. / ed. by zh. jhangiryan, a. sargsyan, et. all. yerevan gladzor university, yerevan: noyan tapan. 15. tiersma, p. (2000) legal language. chicago: univ. of chicago press. 16. williams, ch. (2007) tradition and change in legal english: verbal constructions in prescriptive texts. germany: peter lang.. 17. garner, b. (2003) a dictionary of modern legal usage (2nd edition). new york: oup. 18. gifis, s.h. (1993) dictionary of legal terms (2nd edition). barron’s publ.. 19. hill, g.n.; hill, k. (1997) real life dictionary of the law: taking the mystery out of legal language. general publishing group. 20. riley, d. (1996) check your vocabulary for law: dictionary of law (2nd edition). peter collin publ.. æñ³í³μ³ý³ï³ý ³ý·é»ñ»ýç μ³½ù³¹çùáõãûáõýá àëï ¿áõã û³ý, ñ³ ïáõï ³ å³ óáõûó ý»ñ ãç å³ ñ³ý çáõù ³ûý ÷³ë ïá, áñ ³ý· é» ñ»ý ç ñ³ í³ ï³ý é» ½áõý ³û ëûñ ñ³ý ¹»ë ¿ ·³ éçë áñ å»ë ùç ç³½ ·³ ûçý ï³ñ¨á ñáõã ûáõý áõ ý» óáõ »ý ã³ é» ½áõ: ü»ñ ï³ ûáõùë û ñ»ý ùç 黽 íç ³ñ ï³ é»½ í³ ï³ý ñçùùý áý¹ é³ûý í»é ¿` ý»ñ· ñ³ í» éáí ñ³ ùáý¹ ñ³ ýáõñ, ùç ç³½ ·³ ûçý ñ³ ë³ ñ³ ï³ ï³ý, ù³ õ³ ù³ ï³ý ³ñ ï³ ùçý ¨ ý»ñ ùçý ß³ ñ» ñç μ³ ëáõù: ²ûë ³ éáõ ùáí ëáõûý áõ ëáõù ý³ ëç ñáõã û³ý ³ñ ¹ç³ ï³ ýáõã ûáõ ýá å³û ù³ ý³ íáñ í³í ¿ ³ûý í×éá ñáß ¹» ñáí, áñ ³û ëûñ ç ñ³ í³ μ³ ý³ ï³ý ³ý· é» ñ»ýý áõ ýç ñ³ ë³ ñ³ ï³ ï³ý ïû³ý ùáõù: êáõûý ñá¹ í³ íáõù ñëï³ï ¨ ñ³ ù³ ï³ñ· í³í û ñç ý³ï ý» ñáí ñ³ý ·³ ù³ ý³ éçó ùýýáõã û³ý ¿ »ý ã³ñï íáõù ç ñ³ í³ ï³ý ³ý· é» ñ» ýç μ³½ ù³ ¹ç ùáõã ûáõ ýá. ¹ç ï³ñï íáõù »ý ç ñ³ í³ μ³ ý³ ï³ý ³ý· é» ñ» ýç ñ³ ù³ñ ·áñ í³ é³ ï³ý ³ éáõ ùáí ³ é³ í»é í³é ¹ñë ̈ áñ íáõ ¨ ï³ ñá ñá ßçã 黽 í³ ï³ý ï³ñ¨á ñ³ ·áõûý ³ é³ýó ý³ ñ³ï ïáõã ûáõý ý»ñ` ç ñ³ í³ μ³ ý³ ï³ý ³ý· é» ñ» ýç ûáõ ñ³ armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 29 ïç åáõã ûáõýý áõ ëñãçý μýáõû ãá å³û ù³ ý³ íá ñáõ ³ é³ýó ù³ ûçý ·áñ íáý ý»ñ, á ñáýó ùç çá óáí ç ñ³ í³ μ³ ýç ù³ë ý³ ·ç ï³ ï³ý ³ý· é» ñ» ýá ñ³ý ¹»ë ¿ ·³ éçë áñ å»ë ¹³ ñ» ñç áý ã³ó ùáõù μý³ ï³ ýáý ½³ñ ·³ óáõù ³å ñ³í ûáõ ñá íç á ׳ íáñ í³í ³ é³ý óçý é» ½áõ, áñ å»ë μ³½ ù³μ ýáõûã 黽 í³ μ³ ý³ ï³ý ³ í³ý ¹áõûã ý» ñç ³ñ ·³ ëçù` ³ñ ï³ óá é» éáí ³ûý é» ½áõ ý» ñç ùç³ ë³é ýáõ ùá, á ñáýù áý¹ ñ³ ýáõñ ³é ù³ùμ ³ý· é» ñ» ýç ó ̈ ³ íáñ ù³ý ·áñ íáõù ù»í ¹»ñ »ý ë³ õ³ ó»é: ìíîãîãðàííîñòü þðèäè÷åñêîãî àíãëèéñêîãî â íàñòîÿùåå âðåìÿ íå òðåáóþòñÿ îñîáûå ôàêòû î òîì, ÷òî þðèäè÷åñêèé àíãëèéñêèé âûñòóïàåò â êà÷åñòâå ïîäúÿçûêîì ïåðâîñòåïåííîãî ìåæäóíàðîäíîãî çíà÷åíèÿ. ýêñòðàëèíãâèñòè÷åñêàÿ îñíîâà þðèäè÷åñêîãî àíãëèéñêîãî ðàñøèðèëàñü, âêëþ÷àÿ â ñåáÿ ñòîëêíîâåíèÿ âñåîáùèõ, ìåæäóíàðîäíî îáùåñòâåííûõ, ïîëèòè÷åñêèõ âíåøíèõ è âíóòðåííèõ èíòåðåñîâ. àêòóàëüíîñòü èññëåäîâàíèÿ ñâÿçàíà ñ òîé çíà÷èìîé ðîëüþ, êîòîðóþ èãðàåò þðèäè÷åñêèé àíãëèéñêèé â îáùåñòâåííîé æèçíè. ñòàòüÿ ïîñâÿùåíà òùàòåëüíîìó àíàëèçó ìíîãîãðàííîé ñóùíîñòè þðèäè÷åñêîãî àíãëèéñêîãî. ñ ïîìîùüþ êîíêðåòíûõ ïðèìåðîâ ðàññìàòðèâàþòñÿ íàèáîëåå ÿðêèå êëþ÷åâûå ÿçûêîâûå îñîáåííîñòè þðèäè÷åñêîãî àíãëèéñêîãî ñ ôóíêöèîíàëüíîé òî÷êè çðåíèÿ, ÷òî è ïîçâîëÿåò âûÿâèòü âàæíåéøèå ôàêòîðû ñòàíîâëåíèÿ ïðîôåññèîíàëüíîãî ÿçûêà çàêîíà â ðåçóëüòàòå õðîíîëîãè÷åñêîãî ðàçâèòèÿ àíãëèéñêîãî ÿçûêà â öåëîì. ó÷èòûâàþòñÿ òàêæå ðàçëè÷íûå ÿçûêîâûå òðàäèöèè, ñûãðàâøèå êëþ÷åâóþ ðîëü â ôîðìèðîâàíèè ìíîãîãðàííîé ñóùíîñòè þðèäè÷åñêîãî àíãëèéñêîãî. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 30 maket 2013:layout 1.qxd the language of synchronous and asynchronous interactions of emc narine madoyan yerevan state university s tudying the global village means taking a considerable account of the netspeak. the main linguistic peculiarities of netspeak can be seen in computer mediated communication (cmc) basically in its various types. herring (2007:1) defines cmc as “predominantly text-based human-human interaction mediated by network computers or mobile telephony”. the term cmc does not seem quite appropriate as apart from a computer the interaction can take place through any electronic device like small gadgets, cell phones or palmtops, and due to this many scientists redefined the linguistic term cmc introducing electronically mediated communication (emc) instead (crystal 2012). the language of emc may differ according to its types. it is common knowledge that emc can take place in synchronous and asynchronous time. due to this the communication on the internet is generally subdivided into two major forms: synchronous and asynchronous communication. in asynchronous communication the conversation does not take place in real time. one of the types of asynchronous communication is the email which is the use of computer systems to transfer messages between users – now chiefly used to refer to messages sent between private mailboxes. there is a time lag between the sender of the message and the receiver. analyzing characteristic features of email language many scientists see its similarity with the language of a formal letter (crystal 2005). e.g.: recommendation letter narine, thank you for your support. i attach the form already filled in. the name, title, position and phone number of the reference i need to fill in myself, please write that info in the email, or i will ask you to do it via phone. so basically i need a signature on the second page of this document and the date. i will take care of the seal myself. the above email is written in formal style which resembles the language of an ordinary letter as it contains an addressee, a title, a main body and a conclusion. in asynchronous communication the sender has time to edit the letter to check the spelling, and in the above-mentioned case it lacks emotional colouring. in her research baron regarded email as formal written english but did not adhere to the same view as in her book published two years later where she stated that the language of the email does not closely resemble formal written english (baron 2000:250-259). in this connection it should be mentioned that there are emails which clearly breach all the rules common to the style of letter writing. the title of the following example starts with a special question although the sender of the message and the recipient do not know each other. e.g.: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 89 narine, why didn’t you tell me? you never told me you were having trouble making money online.... this is what you’ve been looking for: it’s brand new, it works, and it’s free. enjoy. (newsletter@realtranslatorjobs.com via xa.icpbounce.com) the email has a title which is common to a letter, although it doesn’t contain the formal style of language.the aforementioned mail can be considered as junk mail since it contains promotional materials. david crystal states that junk mail doesn’t contain any name and senders simply try to persuade you to become a millionaire in a day (crystal 2005) although in the above example written in active voice the sender uses direct address so that the recipient may think that this is a real opportunity to get money. the sender of the massage never wants to show that the sender and the recipient do not know each other which gives her the opportunity to give a piece of advice in making money. if you are a newbie (newcomer, especially in computing or on the internet) in the global village you will probably answer the email. thus, analyzing the given example, we can say, although not quite definitely, that the language of the email is mainly formal. we can state that, opposite to the style of email language, the chat has all the characteristic features typical of the oral speech. the communicators interact in real time so the participants are breaking the linguistic conventional norms. as the communication takes place in real time,the communicators break the accepted linguistic norms first of all to save the keystroke. the analysis of the language used in chat rooms shows that there are many orthographic, semiotic novelties, which are used to express the speaker’s attitude and emotions towards the utterance. in the following example the orthographic novelties are expressed through letter homophones r for the auxiliary “to be” in present indefinite and u for the personal pronoun “you”. the speaker starts the conversation with a rhyme using western emoticons to show his interest in chat rooms. <cheeky_chico> whether you’re skinny, slim or fat .. have a husband, boyfriend or just a cat .. miss universe or ugly like a rat .. whomever you are, just let’s have a chat ^^ <lili_998> nice <cheeky_chico> thanks :) <cheeky_chico> how r u? <lili_998> fine where ru from <cheeky_chico> im 27 m spain <cheeky_chico> u? if, in online communication, the whole sentence is written in capital letters it means that the speaker is highly excited. otherwise stated, the high pitch of the voice is expressed by means of capitalization. e.g.: <d-ten>hi lulu <twillight46_>hb armenian folia anglistika linguistics 90 the acronym hb in the above-mentioned example indicates to something “highly beautiful”. the frequent use of abbreviations and acronyms in chat rooms aims at saving the keystrokes, but it is also used as a code language for certain social groups. according to bodomo acronyms are divided into • sentence acronyms (gtg (got to go), brb (be right back), lol (laughing out loud) • acronyms of letter homophones (u (you), r (are) • combination of letter and number homophones (b4 (before) • reduction of individual words (tml (tomorrow), coz (because), gdnite (good night) the analysis of chat language testifies to the frequent usage of acronyms by representatives of numerous and different chat rooms. e.g.: <pecheur>hey there lulu <blackforestmary>brb (sentence acronym) lulu>where r u from (acronyms of letter homophones) <crystal69>lolb4katrina (combination of letter and number homophones) <redmanredtemper>u got me <redmanredtemper>cos people think raey is a girly girl (reduction of individual words) in the illustrated examples we can see that the participants of the conversation are using various types of acronyms. the analysis has come to prove that the language of a chat is unique and widely applies grammatical, semantic, semiotic, orthographic novelties which tend to imitate the spoken english language. references: 1. baron, n. (2003) language of the internet. // the standford handbook for language engineers. / ed. by a. farghali. standford: csli publication. 2. bodomo, a.b. (2010) computer-mediated communication for linguistics and literacy. usa information science reference (an imprint of igi global). 3. crystal, d. (2001) language and the internet. cambridge: cup. 4. crystal, d. (2012) internet linguistics. / lectures at british council: yerevan, ar me nia. 5. thurlow, c.; lengel, l. & tomic, a. (2004) computer mediated communication: social interaction and the internet. london: sage. ¾é»ïïñáý³ûçý ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý ëçýëñáý ¨ ³ëçýëñáý ÷áë³½¹»óáõãû³ý 黽áõý îíû³é ñá¹í³íá ùýýáõãû³ý ¿ ³éýáõù ñ³ù³ó³ýó³ûçý ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá, ù³ëý³íáñ³å»ë, ñ³ù»ù³ï»éáí ¿é»ïïñáý³ûçý ý³ù³ïý»ñç armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 91 ¨ ½ñáõûóý»ñç (chat) 黽í³ï³ý ¨ ñ³ñ³é»½í³ï³ý ¹ñë¨áñáõùý»ñá: ðçùýí»éáí ÷³ëï³ï³ý ýûáõãç í»ñéáõíáõãû³ý íñ³` ï³ñ»éç ¿ ³ë»é, áñ ¿ é»ïïñáý³ûçý ý³ù³ïý»ñç 黽áõý áñáß áý¹ñ³ýñáõãûáõýý»ñ (ß³ñ³ñûáõë³ï³ý, çù³ëï³ûçý, ï³éáõóí³íù³ûçý) áõýç ·ñ³íáñ ëáëùç ñ»ï: ì»ñáýßû³é áý¹ñ³ýñáõãûáõýý»ñá ãç ï³ñ»éç ¹çï»é áñå»ë ûñçý³ã³÷áõãûáõý, ù³ý½ç ß³ï ñ³×³ë ¿é»ïïñáý³ûçý ý³ù³ïý»ñç 黽áõý çñ ù»ç ïñáõù ¿ ã»° ·ñ³íáñ ¨ ã»° μ³ý³íáñ ëáëùçý μýáñáß ï³ññ»ñ: ²ý¹ñ³¹³éý³éáí ñ³ù³ó³ýó³ûçý ½ñáõûóý»ñç (chat) 黽íçý` ³ûý ï³ñ»éç ¿ ë³ñù³ý»é áñå»ë μ³ý³ íáñ ëáëùç ñ³ù³ó³ýó³ûçý ¹ñë¨áñù³ý ó¨: ð³ïï³ýß³ï³ý ¿, áñ ñ³õáñ¹³ïóíáõý»ñç ñáõû½»ñý áõ ½·³óùáõýùý»ñý ³ñï³ñ³ûïíáõù »ý ñ³ïáõï ýß³ý³ûçý ñ³ù³ï³ñ·ç ùççáóáí: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 92 microsoft word contens verjin methodology armenian folia anglistika 119 the effect of non-native accents and stereotypes on speaker perception and comprehension susanna baghdasaryan kh. abovyan armenian state pedagogical university abstract the paper argues that linguistic forms per se do not have any positive or negative meaning and that one form is not better than the other. however, this is not fully perceived outside the narrow linguistic community. very often it is demonstrated by the apparent stigmatization of non-native accents by native speakers of the language. this phenomenon seems true in reference to many communities and languages. different sociolinguists have conducted research to prove the ungrounded nature of linguistic partiality. they try to account for the listeners’ attitudes towards non-native speech by incorporating the model of dual cognitive processing methods, namely implicit and explicit. they believe that attitudes are formed by the interaction of these two cognitive mechanisms. the negative attitude can be cured by application of more explicit cognitive techniques. key words: native speakers, non-native accents, sociolinguistics, cognitive mechanisms, partiality, implicit/explicit mechanisms, stigmatization. introduction there is a wide-spread belief that language is one of the major uniting factors for any society. however, the multiplicity of one and the same language in a given community may be viewed as simply being incompatible with a homogenous healthy society. moreover, it should be mentioned that there is a pretty high level of intolerance towards other regional language varieties spoken by minorities. this phenomenon seems true in reference to many communities and languages. the scientists within the field of sociology, armenian folia anglistika methodology 120 sociolinguistics and psychology have tried to give a rational explanation about the causes of non-native or regional accent stigmatization. the brief literature review that has been carried out for this research shows that such studies have been more actively conducted in the us than anywhere else in the world. it is not because the non-native accent stigmatization is not ubiquitous but simply because this phenomenon seems to be more painful for the us society by merely contradicting the philosophy on the basis of which this country was created. one of the varieties of english, is termed as american english. any other variety is considered non-standard or accented. even certain us regional language varieties are looked down upon, let alone accents which are associated with foreignness and belong to immigrants. all the researchers seem to agree on the fact that non-native accent stigmatization is associated with prejudiced beliefs about cultures that these non-native speakers represent. we will start off by presenting a few studies on this topic. then we will proceed with researches that analyze concrete cases of bias towards a certain accent and will provide a brief review of the experiments that different sociolinguists have conducted to prove the ungrounded nature of linguistic partiality. cultural bias as a determiner of unfavorable attitudes towards non-native accents1 julie spencer-rodgers and timothy mcgovern (2002:610) have conducted a very important research with the aim of trying to explain some objective factors that underlie the cultural bias. they point out that intercultural communication difficulties arise from:  group differences in cognition (e.g. values, norms, etc.);  affect (e.g. types and levels of emotional expressivity);  patterns of behavior (e.g. language customs, communications styles, etc. the authors believe that individuals who are involved in intercultural communication face language barrier challenges – challenges that arise from the difference in cultural beliefs. these are serious tasks which can have adverse methodology armenian folia anglistika 121 emotional consequences both for foreigners (or immigrants) and for the socalled host groups. the authors do not try to justify any type of cultural prejudice; they try to find the objective causes that might underlie this ungrounded belief and possible ways of overcoming them. the participants of the research are undergraduate students (both native speakers and non-native english speakers/international students) in a us educational institution. before presenting the experiment, it is important to mention that mentioned authors consider the following main factors that cause prejudice: negative stereotypes, intergroup anxiety, realistic threats, and symbolic/cultural threats (spencer-rodgers & mcgovern 2002:613). the authors designed questionnaires which would measure the abovementioned four factors. their initial hypothesis was that “intercultural communication emotions would constitute a unique and potent source of attitudes toward ethnolinguistic outgroups” (ibid 614). the researchers have concluded that an affective factor is a determining factor in forming attitudes towards foreign students. as the authors point out, “many american college students, have difficulties with an international student on their campuses. factors such as accented speech, cultural differences in non-verbal communication styles, and cultural variations in values, norms and customs contribute to these communication problems” (ibid 623-624). while we agree with the authors that affective factors, the awkwardness arising from the difficulty of dealing with unfamiliar cultures, and the cognitive difficulty of processing an accented speech may play a role in formation of a cultural bias, the persuasion of his/her own cultural superiority and ungrounded beliefs are certainly a crucial factor determining the unfavorable attitudes towards other cultures, hence towards non-native accents associated with the representatives of those cultures. in her article listening with attitude published in 2010, s. lindemann describes an experiment during which two groups of participants were asked to listen to a recorded lecture which was facilitated by a photo of an asian for the armenian folia anglistika methodology 122 first group and by that of a caucasian for the second one. the native speakers in the second group reported that they perceived a milder accent than the ones in the first group although both groups were listening to the same voice (lindemann 2010:420). another important research that should be mentioned when talking about the cultural attitudes is the article by a. pantos and a. perkins. the authors try to account for the listeners’ attitudes towards non-native speech by incorporating the model of dual cognitive processing mechanisms, namely implicit and explicit. the interaction of these two cognitive mechanisms are believed to form these attitudes. implicit attitudes are the person’s immediate, automatic reactions based on preexisting stereotypes and cognitive connections, and explicit attitudes are reactions formed through additional controlled cognitive processing. pantos and perkins (2013:5) state that implicit attitudes, per se, are not accessible for consciousness, therefore they cannot be studies by applying self-reflective methods. such attitudes can only be investigated by using indirect methods which do not rely on human introspection. the implicit – explicit distinction is directly linked to the idea of in-group vs. out-group dichotomy which, according to authors of this article, underlies the unfavorable attitudes towards non-native accents. they believe that non-native speech associated with being out of group which once perceived, implicitly provokes a negative attitude. the application of more explicit cognitive mechanisms will help to make objective judgments and to avoid instinctive and logically unsupported reactions. the non-native accent as a marker of inferior cognitive capacities sometimes, even subconsciously, the native speakers of the language attribute inferior cognitive capacities to non-native speakers. because of these misconceptions, some native speakers fail to play their role in the process of communication. in other words, they simply refuse to cooperate. conversation is not a unilateral process: it requires some cooperation from all the parties. when one or more of the parties fails to cooperate, the communication becomes impossible even among native speakers. methodology armenian folia anglistika 123 precisely this idea is elaborated in the article listening with an attitude by s. lindemann published in 2002. the author hypothesizes and later proves with an experiment that the attitude of the listener towards the non-native speech is extremely important for its comprehension. as a part of the experiment, a group of native-speakers was chosen. the group consisted of members who had positive attitudes towards koreans and korean accent, and of those whose attitudes are not that positive and are sometimes even negative. the native speakers of korean were supposed to explain to the native english speakers how to draw a certain missing route on an imaginary map. the results of the study showed that those participants who had positive attitudes towards koreans and korean accent, understood the explanations given by native korean speakers, while the participants who had more negative attitudes claimed that they did not understand the foreign accent. this study is a clear demonstration of the fact that willingness to participate in a conversation is a key to a successful communication. in her article, lindemann frequently quotes the famous sociolinguist rosina lippi-green, namely from the latter’s article language ideology and language prejudice (2004), where lippi-green talks about the myth of ideal standard english. the author elucidates the process of generation of this idealized language form. her statement is so clear and to the point that we cannot help but directly quote it: “dominant institutions promote the notion of overarching, homogenous standard language. that language is primarily white, upper-middle class and middle american: it is often claimed to be unaccented. but of course it is accented, like all other language verities. it just happens to be the accent of the mainstream” (lippi-green 2004:294). in this context, it is worth recalling another famous article by lindermann, titled who is unintelligible (2010). in this article the author refers to the famous policy of the state of arizona about english teachers with non-native accent not having the right of teaching english at us educational institutions. lindermann (2010:224) points out that the very idea that english teachers should not have an accent is absurd simply because everyone has an accent. armenian folia anglistika methodology 124 all the studies reviewed above are more concentrated on the perception of the listener. the impact of the non-native accent on the speaker has not been studied much. the research by a. gluszek and f. dovidio (2010) is one of the first studies that mainly concentrates on the speaker’s experience. the authors hypothesize that non-native accent can create a negative experience for the speaker. the expectation that their accent will be stigmatized facilitates the feeling of not belonging to the us. gluszek and dovidio conducted two studies to prove or disprove their hypothesis. the first study tested the association between having a nonnative accent and perceptions of discrimination and experiences in communication. the second study was aimed at investigating the link between having a non-native accent as compared with having regional non-standard accent and feeling of belonging (gluszek and davidio 2010:225). the participants in the study 1 were supposed to complete an online survey. they were to answer the following questions: are they native speakers? what is their level of education? they also had to assess their personal experience of bias. study 2 included a comparison between responses of people with nonnative accents and those with regional accents to help identify the effects of having non-native accent rather than a regional accent. the researchers concluded that the participants with nonnative accents perceived more problems in communication than the ones with regional accents. in addition, the participants with non-native accents had a lower sense of belonging to the us than the ones with regional non-standard accents (gluszek & dovidio 2010:226). as it has been mentioned at the beginning of this subsection, non-native accents are sometimes wrongly associated with inferior cognitive capacities and can have a huge effect on the degree of perceived credibility of the speaker. this problem has been analyzed by shiri lev-ari and boaz keysar from the university of chicago. the article that encompasses this up-mentioned analysis is entitled why do not we believe non-native speakers? (2010). lev-ari and keysar try to analyze the impact of accented speech on the credibility if the message from an objective point of view. that is to say, they do not simply claim that this misconception is a result of prejudiced beliefs but methodology armenian folia anglistika 125 rather, they try to explain why such an attitude exists. in fact, they believe that this perception has two aspects: one of them is that accent serves as a signal which prompts the out of group perception of the non-native speaker. according to the authors, this perception creates a biased perception of untruthfulness. the second aspect is that the accented speech is harder to process and this higher processing cost creates a perception of untruthfulness of the statement. in other words, the authors claim that “[…] the difficulty of understanding accented speech has a unique effect on perceived credibility which cannot be attributed to stereotypes about non-native spekers” (lev-ari & keysar 2010:1093). levi-ari and keysar conducted two experiments to test their hypothesis. in the first experiment the native speakers were asked to judge trivial statements pronounced by native speakers and non-native speakers with different accents. in experiment 2 the authors simply revealed the purpose of their study to the participants. they believed that if the listeners were aware that the difficulty of processing non-native accents incorrectly influences their credibility judgments, they would review their attitudes. the first experiment proved that the statements pronounced with nonnative accents have a lower credibility rate. the second experiment proved that many native speakers review their credibility judgments when they are cautioned against associating an accent with the idea of truthfulness. thus, the authors concluded that the idea that some non-native accents have a higher processing cost on behalf of the native speakers is objectively real. but what is truly wrong and should be eliminated is the idea of associating the difficulty of processing a non-native accent with credibility in the speaker’s message (levari & keysar 2010:1095). conclusion it is understandable that if a certain language community is used to a certain accent, they are not always ready to accept another variety not only because of a bias towards the cultural identity of the non-native speaker but simply because it is different. some native speakers even question why the non-native armenian folia anglistika methodology 126 speakers cannot try and reach a native fluency. the fact is that it is almost impossible to gain a native fluency in any language after a certain age. this phonological barrier, however, does not have anything to do with other human cognitive systems. in other words, a non-native accent should never be associated with lack of intelligence. these concepts are recognized in linguistic circles but they are also limited to these circles. perhaps, one way of preventing biased attitudes towards different non-native accents will be the incorporation of basic linguistic courses in high school curriculums. this kind of education is of vital importance for multicultural societies. another important factor that should be recognized by both native and nonnative speakers is that communication is not a unilateral process: both sides should make an equal effort in assuring an efficient conversation. if any of the sides fails to carry out the conversational burden, the communication will fail even if the speakers are both speakers of the same language variety. humans are biological systems and human language is a biological module. there are no better or worse language varieties because all human languages conform to a universal innate structure. different language varieties are just different forms of expressing one and the same innate structure. there are no superior or inferior sound forms, hence, there cannot be any superior or inferior accent – they are just different. notes: 1. non-native speech is not associated exclusively with the phonological characteristics as the word accent might suggest; it certainly has other very important morpho-syntactic components. however, for the purpose of this research we will refer mainly to the phonological aspect of non-native speech. methodology armenian folia anglistika 127 references: 1. adank, p.; evans, b.; stuart-smith, j. & scott, s. (2009) comprehension of familiar and unfamiliar native accents under adverse listening conditions. // journal of experimental psychology: human perception and performance, 35(2), pp. 520-529. 2. (1987) ethnicity and language. wi, milwaukee: university of wisconsin system, institute on race and ethnicity. 3. gluszek, a. & dovidio, j. (2010) speaking with a nonnative accent: perceptions of bias, communication difficulties, and belonging in the united states. // journal of language and social psychology, 29(2), pp. 224234. 4. hansen, j. & ikeno, a. (2007) the effect of listener accent background on accent perception and comprehension. // eurasip journal on audio speech and music processing, (1). 5. ikeno, a. & hansen, j. (2007) the effect of listener accent background on accent perception and comprehension. // eurasip journal on audio speech and music processing, (1). 6. lev-ari, s. & keysar, b. (2010) why don't we believe non-native speakers? the influence of accent on credibility. // journal of experimental social psychology, 46(6), pp. 1093-1096. 7. lindemann, s. (2002) listening with an attitude. // language in society, vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 419-441. 8. lindemann, s. (2010) who’s “unintelligible”? the perceiver’s role. // issues in applied linguistics, 18(2), pp. 223-232. 9. lippi-green, rosina (2016) language ideology and language prejudice. // language in the usa. cambridge: cup, pp. 289-304. 10. pantos, a. & perkins, a. (2013) measuring implicit and explicit attitudes toward foreign accented speech. // journal of language and social psychology, 32(1), pp. 3-20. 11. spencer-rodgers, j. & mcgovern, t. (2002) attitudes toward the culturally different: the role of intercultural communication barriers, affective armenian folia anglistika methodology 128 responses, consensual stereotypes, and perceived threat. // international journal of intercultural relations, 26(6), pp. 609-631. օտար առոգանության և կարծրատիպերի ազդեցությունը խոսքի ընկալման վրա կարո՞ղ է արդյոք օտար առոգանությունը բացասաբար անդրադառնալ խոսքի ընկալման վրա: չէ՞ որ արտաբերվող հնչյունային միավորները ըստ էության հավասար են բոլորի համար, չունեն դրական կամ բացասական իմաստներ: իրականում շատ հաճախ միևնույն լեզվում առկա օտար առոգանությունը լեզվակրի համար ակնհայտորեն դառնում է բացասական ընկալման, կանխակալ կարծիքի և պիտակավորման պատճառ: հաշվի առնելով ունկնդիրների կարծիքները օտարազգի խոսքի ընկալման վերաբերյալ՝ ընդունելի են ճանաչողական գործընթացի երկակի՝ ներակա և արտակա մեխանիզմները: բացասական վերաբերմունքը ստեղծվում է վերոնշյալ ճանաչողական մեխանիզմների փոխազդեցությամբ և կարող է շտկվել արտակա մեխանիզմի առավելագույն ներդըրմամբ: microsoft word 2. methodology 55 128 (1) armenian folia anglistika methodology 66 reconstructing learners’ understanding of education ani manukyan khachatur abovian armenian state pedagogical university abstract at present, when interaction between civilizations turns to be more and more intensive, integration into world life and universal culture becomes essential for the modern competent citizen. as educators we need to make fundamental changes in the educational system which will enhance the students’ mutual understanding and social integration, develop their intercultural competence and tolerance towards other nations, as well as encourage lifelong learning and freedom of movement. for students to be competitive in the local and international labour market, it is necessary to revise various educational issues, such as aims and objectives of teaching, modernisation and improvement of textbooks and curricula making them less theoretical and more practical. the paper attempts to reveal current crucial problems in the sphere of education and suggests some differentiated approaches to learning. key words: education, educational system, differentiated approach to learning, application of new technologies, constructivism, mobility. introduction “if we teach today’s students as we did yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.” (john dewey) modern developing and rapidly transforming society needs morally and mentally tempered, well-educated risk-takers, who can make their own responsible decisions in various situations of choice, predicting the possible consequences. they should obtain the ability of cooperation, distinguished mobility, dynamism, constructivism, as well as have a strong sense of responsibility for the fate of the country and respect towards the other nations. the concept of modernization of educational system in armenia defines social demands to the schooling. from this perspective, the most important task methodology armenian folia anglistika 67 of the school is the formation of full-fledged citizens of the country. the solution to this task depends largely on what grown-ups will do in their further life, what profession they will choose, and whether or not they will be able to use their inner potential and education in real life. schools should develop learners’ cognitive interests and abilities to inculcate the key competencies required for future self-learning. the transformation and modernization of the content of education in armenia at the current stage of society development is closely linked to innovation processes of foreign language teaching organization. the priority direction of development of the modern school has become a humanistic orientation of teaching, in which personal potential takes the leading role. it takes into consideration the needs and interests of the learners, as well as the implementation of a differentiated approach to learning. transformation and modernization of education today the learner’s personality and unique inner world are in the spotlight. therefore, the main purpose of the modern teacher is to choose methods and forms of organization of learning activities so that they optimally correspond to the goal of personality development. in recent years, the question of the application of new technologies at school has increasingly risen. not only cutting-edge technical facilities but also new forms and methods of teaching, novel approaches to the learning process are in the scope of the educators’ interest. the main objective of foreign language teaching becomes the formation and development of the communicative culture of pupils and practical mastery of foreign language learning. the graph below illustrates educational needs of the modern learner in general. armenian folia anglistika methodology 68 the task of the teacher is to create conditions of practical language acquisition for each learner and to boost students’ individual activity and creativity. the forms of blended learning/teaching programs during foreign language lessons include learning vocabulary; practicing pronunciation and grammatical phenomena; training dialogic and monologic speech; teaching writing (caulfield 2001:18-22). nowadays, the possibilities of using internet resources are enormous. the internet as a global network creates fertile environment for obtaining any necessary information for learners and teachers held anywhere in the world. using the internet at english lessons can solve a variety of didactic tasks:  developing communicative skills;  using a variety of materials of the global network;  enhancing reading and writing skills;  replenishing the vocabulary of learners;  increasing pupils’ motivation to learn english. in addition to this, studying with the use of information technologies expands the horizons of schoolchildren, develops and maintains active relations and contacts with their peers in english-speaking countries. learners may take online tests, quizzes, participate in virtual competitions and contests, chat with peers from other countries, participate in webinars, in video conferences, etc. ultimately, education stops to be identified with the formal schooling and even with high school training. all the activities are now treated as an inquiring education process if it is intended to change attitudes and behaviors of the individual. the function of education is performed by a variety of social institutions but not just as schools or universities do. non-formal education which has to compensate for the shortcomings and contradictions of the traditional school system often meets urgent educational needs, and gives solutions even better than formal education. as noted in the report of unesco “learning to be”, education must not be limited within the walls of the school any more (faure 1972:7). the essence of this transition is not only a change in priorities but also a result of constant trainings of specialists to satisfy needs of an individual. the new concept provides individualized character of education which takes into account the capabilities, development and self-realization of each individual. this will be a feasible result for the development of various educational methodology armenian folia anglistika 69 programs. the important factor here is the development of education by which students’ abilities to learn, skills of independent cognitive activity and the usage of advanced means of information technologies take place. the graph below indicates all the steps learners should take to reach success. there were times when a good handwriting was a guarantee for the quiet and comfortable life up to the old age. contrastingly, the last decade is characterized by the acceleration of renovation of technology and knowledge in various spheres of human activity. school, even university formal education is not enough to prepare real-life professionals. president of motors crop puts it this way. “we need experts with not four and even six, but with forty years of education”. the desire of development lifelong learning is to implement it in practice which exacerbated the problem of adult education in society. there has been a radical change in the views on adult education and its role in the modern world. armenian folia anglistika methodology 70 the important feature of the development in education is its global nature. this feature reflects the availability of the integration processes in the modern world in order to promote interactions between countries in different spheres of public life. in highly developed countries education is being transformed from the category of national priorities into the category of the universal priorities. these trends define the main directions in the development of a new educational system. the principal difference between the new system and the traditional one lies in its technological base. technological elements are marginal in the traditional education, which relies mainly on the training such as face to face interaction and printed materials. the technological basis of information technologies allows us to realize one of the main advantages of new educational system which is called training in the distance or distant learning. hence, here are some practical strategies which can help the learners to facilitate learning process:  developing memory for an excellent memory it is very important to have such qualities as attentiveness and observation. of course, the process of memorizing should be capturing as well. you should clearly recognize what is useful to you in this or that information. before you start memorizing, you need to force yourself to concentrate utterly. next, you should include logical memory, and try to understand the meaning of memorizing, and not just to cram mechanically. particular attention should be paid to the structure of the material. it is necessary to understand what the sequence of its composition is called for. do not overload the memory of information in a short period of time. the amount of ram (random access memory) is equal to seven units. that is the perception we keep in memory comprises 7 objects in average – 7 words, 7 phrases, 7 sections (maslow 2002:23-45). it is helpful to use an associative memory method. for instance, the famous orator cicero while preparing his speech moved from one room to another, linking each section of the speech with a certain area of home, and later during the speech in the senate, he mentally repeated this way.  record more it allows you to make some notes, and as they are written and interpreted by you, it will help you to learn the material better.  mix and match methodology armenian folia anglistika 71 one way to remember a new fact is to mentally associate it with what you already know. thus, thinking about the second, you can always return to the first.  separation another way to better memorize the information is to divide it into parts. the shorter the facts, the better they are stored (strawson 1964:78-80). so, good memory is a key to success. over its improvement one needs to work hard. and, perhaps, the first thing to start with – is to overcome laziness.  driving laziness away the problem lies in the fact that often everything is done through the expression ‘i must’, rather than through the motivating expression ‘i want’. that is the problem which hinders the whole teaching process – the lack of desire (motivation) to do something. there is a parable – how to eat an elephant? step by step? if we divide a big deal of a task into steps it will become much easier. break into small ‘subtasks’. set a purpose to fulfill only one of them in a certain time, and then the second one. so you slowly move towards the ultimate goal. moreover, each subsequent task will seem easier. if you do not want to do any of the upcoming cases, start to deal with them in parallel. first, do one of them for 10-15 minutes, then pass to another one. but if suddenly you will feel that you come to inspiration during some of them, do not be distracted off the case – until the muse does not leave you. this is what psychologist ludmila martynenko advises: “first of all, you need to give yourself a fighting mood and get ready to work: listen to the upbeat and cheerful music, arrange the workplace so that it evokes positive emotions” (karvasarskiy 2006:45-47).  getting pleasure from study studying seems unbearable only in those cases when it is uninteresting or unclear. if you are interested in and immediately try to find out the incomprehensibility, the study starts to be enjoyable, and you become able to absorb any new data (wang, luo 2002:34). conclusion therefore, it is essential to learn to study effectively. the learners' professional future depends on their ability to learn and apply all they learned in practice. the role of the teacher is vital in this process. his/her task is to boost the cognitive activity of the learner in the entire learning process. modern armenian folia anglistika methodology 72 pedagogical techniques such as cooperative learning, project methodology, the use of modern information technologies and the internet resources help to implement a student-centered approach to learning, providing personalization and differentiation of learning based on children's abilities and their level of teaching. references: 1. caulfield, j. (2011) how to design and teach a hybrid course: achieving student-centered learning through blended classroom, online and experiential activities. / isbn: 1579224237. university of wisconsinmilwaukee: stylus publishing. 2. faure, e. (1972) learning to be: the world of education today and tomorrow. / report of the international commission on the development of education. paris: unesco. 3. garrison, d.r.; vaughn, n.d. (2007) blended learning in higher education: framework, principles, and guidelines. / isbn: 0787987700. canada: athabasca university, canada’s open university press. 4. karvasarskiy, b.d. (2006) psihoterapevticheskaya entsiklopedia. piter: 3-e izdanie. sankt peterburg. 5. maslow, a. (2002) the psychology of science: a reconnaissance. nc: chapel hill: maurice bassett publishing. 6. osin, l. (1998) computers in education in developing countries: why and how? washington, dc: world bank education and technology team. 7. strawson, o. (1964) intention and convention, in speech acts. / philosophical review. chicago: austin publishing house. 8. wang, g.h. and luo, s.l. (2002) construct professional chatting rooms for foreign language teaching. // media in foreign language instruction. vol. 6. washington: washington publishing. 9. warschauer, m. (1999) millennialism and media: language, literacy and technology in the 21st century. // keynote address delivered at the world congress of the applied linguistics (aila). / tokyo: bungeishunjū publishing house. methodology armenian folia anglistika 73 êáíáñáõý»ñç å³ïï»ñ³óáõùý»ñç í»ñ³÷áëáõùá ïñãáõãû³ý ù³ëçý ü»ñï³ûáõùë, »ñμ ù³õ³ù³ïñãáõãûáõýý»ñç ß÷áõùá ï³ñ»óï³ñç ³í»éç ¿ ë»ñï³ýáõù, ñáõûå ï³ñ¨áñ ¿ ¹³éýáõù ùçç³½·³ûçý ïû³ýùçý çýï»·ñí»éá, ñ³ù³ßë³ññ³ûçý ùß³ïáõûãçý, å³ïùáõãû³ýý áõ ³ýóáõ¹³ñóçý çñ³½»ï ù³õ³ù³óç éçý»éá: îñãáõãû³ý áéáñïáõù ³ßë³ïáõý»ñç ñ³ù³ñ ýáõûýå»ë ûñ³ëý¹çñ ñ³ñó ¿ ïñã³ï³ý ñ³ù³ï³ñ·áõù ³ûýåçëç ßñç³¹³ñó³ûçý ÷á÷áëáõãûáõýý»ñ ï³ï³ñ»é, áñáýù ïýå³ëï»ý ëáíáñáõý»ñç ùççùß³ïáõã³ûçý ÷áëáùμéýù³ýá, ñ³ý¹áõñåáõ³ï³ýáõãû³ýá, ñ³ë³ñ³ï³ï³ý ý»ñ·ñ³íí³íáõãû³ý μ³ñóñ³óù³ýá, óïû³ýë ïñãáõãû³ý ï³½ù³ï»ñåù³ýá ¨ ³½³ï ï»õ³ß³ñåçý: àñå»ë½ç ñ³û ëáíáñáõý»ñá ùñóáõý³ï éçý»ý ï»õ³ï³ý ¨ ³ñï³ë³ñù³ýû³ý ³ßë³ï³ßáõï³ûáõù, ðð-áõù í³õáõó ³ñ¹»ý ëïëí»é »ý í»ñ³ý³ûí»é ïñãáõãû³ý ýå³ï³ïý»ñá, ¹³ë³í³ý¹ù³ý ù»ãá¹ý»ñç, íñ³·ñ»ñç ã³ñù³óù³ý, ¹³ë³·ñù³ëï»õíù³ý, ¨ ß³ï ³ûé ñ³ñó»ñ, áñáýù ïáãí³í »ý ñ³ù³ï³ñ·ç ñ³ù³ïáõù³ýç çýï»·ñù³ýá: ðá¹í³íáõù í»ñá ýßí³í ñçùý³ñ³ñó»ñç éáõíù³ý í»ñ³μ»ñû³é áñáß ³é³ç³ñïáõãûáõýý»ñ »ý ³ñíáõù, áñáýù ¿é ï³ñáõ »ý ÷áë»é ëáíáñáõý»ñç å³ïï»ñ³óáõùý»ñá ïñãáõãû³ý ù³ëçý: microsoft word contens verjin culture studies armenian folia anglistika 123 linguocultural peculiarities f british parliamentary discourse samvel abrahamyan yerevan state university abstract peculiarities of british parliamentary discourse are largely conditioned by context models of its participants, which influence the style and linguistic forms of their speeches. as context models are culturally predetermined, linguistic means used in parliamentary discourse have also certain linguocultural peculiarities. centuries-old traditions of british parliamentary system find their reflection in the language and form an essential part of british parliamentary discourse. the adherence to these communicative norms, including different rituals, ceremonies and traditions peculiar to british political life and british political discourse, has a special symbolic meaning and is aimed at maintaining stability of the political system, respect for the state power and its authority. key words: political discourse, british parliamentary discourse, context models, the form and style of british parliamentary debates, linguocultural peculiarities. introduction nowadays the importance of language, in the sense of differential verbal formulation, is acknowledged by political parties and government agencies which employ publicists of various kinds, whose role is not merely to control the flow of, and access to information, but also to design and monitor wordings and phrasings, and in this way to respond to challenges or potential challenges (chilton 2004:8). in the era of spin, when political discourse is characterized by high degree management and manipulation, in order to understand the political meaning of a speech it is important to pay attention to its context. according to dijk, though genres are connected with certain grammatical structures, their characteristics are to a larger extent contextual rather than textual. it means that, for example, parliamentary debates are defined not so much by topic, formal style and discursive restrictions, as all these can occur in other discourses as well, but by the roles and armenian folia anglistika culture studies 124 identities of participants (members of parliament), their relations (e.g. supporters of the ruling party against opposition), their goals and actions. trying to understand any political speech it is necessary to take into account “who speaks to whom, as what, on what occasion and with what goals. in other words, political discourse is especially “political” because of its functions in the political process” (dijk 2002:225). linguocultural models in parliamentary discourse the contexts of political discourse are formed by context models which are cognitive constructs of the participants of the discourse. as context models are connected with non-linguistic reality they are characterized by definite national cultural peculiarities which influence linguistic models of political discourse. for example, speeches of members of parliament during parliamentary debates are strictly regulated by parliamentary procedures many of which are culturally marked and reflect centuries-old traditions of the british parliamentary system. the origins of parliament go back to the 13th century: there are many rules, customs and traditions that help explain its workings. much of parliamentary procedure has developed through continued use over the centuries and is not written in the standing orders. this is sometimes known as “custom and practice.” for example, the practice of bills being “read” three times in both houses is not in the standing orders. other procedures have developed through precedents such as rulings made by the speaker and resolutions of the house. erskine may, who was the clerk of the house of commons between 1871 and 1886, wrote “treatise on the law, privileges, proceedings and usage of parliament” which is considered the authoritative source on parliamentary procedure. this book, which is now in its 24th edition, provides details of observed “rules” within the house, whether they relate to standing orders (and are therefore regulated by the house), traditional practice or whether they derive from “speaker’s rulings” (rules and traditions of parliament 2015). the way in which debates are held in british parliament is governed by the standing orders, the written rules which regulate the proceedings of each house, and also by various customs and traditions (parliament explained 2007). the majority of mps are well aware of parliamentary procedures which include specific forms of address, formulas of etiquette, style of speech characteristic of parliamentary debates, as well as in communicative behavior of the participants of the debates. for example, the members of the house of culture studies armenian folia anglistika 125 commons during the debate can speak only when addressed by the speaker. those who want to speak should try to attract the speaker’s attention by rising to their feet. this procedure is called “catching the speaker’s eye”. when the speaker calls on a member to speak, the other mps who rose at the same time will then sit down. only one member is allowed to stand and speak at any one time. if a member wishes to interrupt a speech, he or she will rise to their feet. the member who is speaking may then sit down and allow an interruption – known as an “intervention”– to be made in his or her speech, but if he or she refuses to give way, then the member wishing to interrupt should sit down (parliament explained 2007:4). this kind of procedure of conducting parliamentary debates is an example of constitutional convention which is an informal and uncodified procedural agreement which is adhered to by state institutions and, in particular, by the house of commons. it is in fact an example of a context model used by the mps to which former british prime minister d. cameron explicitly alluded at the beginning of his speech on syria in the house of commons on 2 december 2015. he said: “mr speaker, i will take dozens of interventions in the time that i have. i am conscious of not taking up too much time as so many people want to speak, but i promise that i will give way a lot during my speech. let me make a bit of progress at the start” (hansard. house of commons, vol. 603, col. 324). according to the official hansard transcripts, d. cameron during his above mentioned speech gave way 28 times. as a result of adhering to such a procedure the speech of the speaker assumes the form of a polylogue rather than monologue or dialogue. this style of debate can make the commons chamber a rather noisy place with robustly expressed opinion, many interventions, expressions of approval or disapproval and, sometimes, of repartee and banter (rules and traditions of parliament 2015). sometimes during the debates tempers rise and several mps may try to shout at once. the speaker then has to exert the chair’s authority. if tempers become heated, it is the chairman who will step in to control the debate. the speaker or deputy speaker would say “order, order” trying to bring the house under control again (parliament explained 2007:4). armenian folia anglistika culture studies 126 ultimately it is the chair, the speaker of the house of commons, who controls the house and who speaks and when. members have the right, when speaking, to be heard without unendurable background noise (deliberate or accidental) and the chair will call for order if it appears there is an attempt to drown out a member or when a number of members are leaving the chamber, or conversing loudly (rules and traditions of parliament 2015). after the principal speakers anyone else wishing to speak can then rise and make their contribution. members may speak only from where they were called and they may not speak from the floor of the house between the red lines which they are not allowed to cross during debates. they must stand whilst speaking but if they are unable to do so they are allowed to address the house seated (parliament explained 2007:2). whilst front-benchers may, if they wish, speak from the despatch boxes on the table in front of the speaker, all other members rise to speak from wherever they are sitting in the house (parliament explained 2007:3). mps address all their comments to the chairman, not to each other. mps are not allowed to refer to each other by name and instead always refer to “the honourable member for…” the place they were elected to. if one can’t remember where someone is mp for he or she can refer to them as “the honourable gentleman” or “the honourable lady”. if someone from the same party is talked about, they can be referred to as “my honourable friend”, while members of the privy council – usually ministers – are “the right honourable”. the exception to this is the speaker, who can refer to anyone he likes by name. mps are only allowed to speak to one person in the house of commons: the speaker. nobody else is ever directly addressed. this is why politicians talk in the way that they do, beginning their sentences with “mr speaker” (or “madam speaker”), and referring to “he” or “she” instead of “you” when making points about their opponents or friends in a debate (oxford guide to british and american culture 2000: 504). normally mps or lords may speak only once in a debate, although mps may “intervene” with a brief comment on another mp's speech. lords normally speak only once, except to give clarification or by special leave (debates 2016). as already mentioned mps do not use personal names, but refer to another mp as “my right honorable friend”, “the honourable member for….” this practice was originally intended to prevent mps getting too angry with each other (oxford guide to british and american culture 2000:405). still the forms of culture studies armenian folia anglistika 127 addresses have some peculiarities. mps from the same party refer to each other during the debates as “my right hon. friend”, including the cases when they refer to the prime minister. the latter refers to mps from his own party as “my hon. friend”, “my right hon. friend” or “my right hon. and learned friend”. the prime minister refers to mps from other parties, including the leader of opposition as “the right hon. gentleman” or “the hon. lady” or “the right hon. and learned lady”. in the house of lords the accepted forms of address are my lords, noble lords, the noble lord, the noble baroness (e.g., the noble lord, lord brooke; the noble baroness, lady evans, but it is also possible to use the form of address without mentioning the name). the members from the same party address each other as my noble friend (e.g., my noble friend, lord brooke). not all mps, especially newly elected are well aware of those parliamentary rules and conventions, that’s why the speaker, or a deputy speaker, from time to time has to intervene in the debates to ensure that the rules of the house are adhered to. sometimes explanations are given as in the following example: ruth cadbury (brentford and isleworth) (lab): i thank the previous speaker, the hon. member for aldershot (sir gerald howarth), who is also my constituent, but i am afraid i am going to disagree profoundly with you. madam deputy speaker (mrs eleanor laing): order. the hon. lady is not going to disagree with the chair. she might disagree with the hon. gentleman, but she will not disagree with the chair. i am clamping down on this now, because we have been here a long time. ruth cadbury: my sincere apologies, madam deputy speaker. i am still getting used to the conventions of this place. (hansard. house of commons, vol. 602, col.1559) in the example above the deputy speaker rebukes the mp for not adhering to the rules of the house using the negative politeness strategy and trying to save as much as possible the face of the addressee. it is manifested in the implicit expression of the reproach used with a regulative function which is provided not only by lexical and syntactical units, but also by grammatical forms, e.g., by using such forms as “is not going to” and “will not” instead of usual for the speech acts of reproach modal verbs should or ought with perfect infinitive. armenian folia anglistika culture studies 128 it should be also noted, as mentioned above, that british parliamentary discourse has a mediated character as the mps while speaking address not directly the addressee but the speaker. it results in using the models peculiar to indirect communication, e.g. using personal pronouns “he” or “she” instead of “you” (it doesn’t refer to the lords who normally address not the lord-speaker, but all the members of the chamber using the expression “my lords”). according to the official video record during the debates on syria on september 7, 2015 prime minister d. cameron in his answer to the speech of the leader of the opposition harriet harman pronounced the expression “the right hon. and learned lady” only once, pronoun “she” – 14 times, pronoun “her” – 4 times (parliamentlive.tv 2016). however, in the official transcript of the debates (hansard) in ten cases the pronouns “she” and “her” were substituted by the expression “the right hon. and learned lady” as a result of which pronoun “she” occurs in the text only 6 times. this example illustrates differences between spoken and written language. if in his speech david cameron allowed himself to use the pronoun “she” 14 times referring to harriet harman, sitting just in front of him, in the official transcript of the debates it was found unacceptable. in his speech d. cameron used pronouns “we” and “i” 35 and 15 times correspondingly, the former being used in its exclusive meaning, i.e. without including the addressee. it had the highest frequency of all the nominal words (2.83%) and was opposed to the pronoun “she” with the implicit meaning that the speaker (d. cameron) expresses the opinion of the majority, whereas the opposite side is in the minority. it is necessary to take into account the specific features of the genre of parliamentary debates in british parliament. though for parliamentary debates the formal communication style (as an example of formal style t.a. van dijk brings the following sentence uttered by t. blair’s in the house of commons during the debates on iraq: “i do not disrespect the views in opposition to mine” where the expression “in opposition to mine” is used instead of “opposed”) (dijk 2008:2) is predominant, parliamentarians often shift to informal communication style as in british parliament speeches should not be read and only notes can be referred to. even in case of statements made by principal speakers, which are usually prepared in advance and are written in formal style, while answering the questions they have to turn from formal style to conversational. for example, d. cameron after his statement on syria and counter terrorism while answering to culture studies armenian folia anglistika 129 h. harman used such colloquial words and expressions as “i would say”, “what is going to happen here is”, “what i would say is”, “look” (to attract attention), “i think” etc. none of them, except “i think”, were included in the official hansard record. in the hansard record the expressions i think, i thought used in cameron’s answer were half the number (6/12) of the same expressions used in his speech as recorded in the official video. in his official statement on syria and counter terrorism (hansard vol. 599, col. 23-27), which was read by d. cameron not long before his answer to h. harman, the expression “i think” was used only once as a citation form his previous speech delivered a year before. and it is not surprising as in political communication, the main goal of which is the persuasion of the audience, the speaker’s speech should be confident and argumentative. as mentioned above there are certain differences in parliamentary rules and conventions of the house of lords as compared with the house of commons. unlike the speaker of the house of commons, the lord speaker is politically neutral and is elected by members of the house. the lord speaker does not control the proceedings during a debate. you will never hear the lord speaker shouting “order, order” as it is assumed that the lords themselves will keep order during their debates. on the whole, debates in the house of lords are calmer than those in the commons. if, however, the temperature did rise, there would be a chorus of “order, order”, from lords sitting all round the chamber, rather than from the lord speaker. another difference between the lord speaker’s position and that of the speaker of the house of commons is that he/she does not decide who shall speak next in a debate: the practice of “catching the speaker’s eye” in the house of commons has no equivalent in the house of lords. instead, there is a list of speakers. the order of speaking will have been arranged in advance by agreement between the party whips, together with a representative of the crossbenchers – those who sit on the crossbenches, between the government and the opposition, and have no party ties (parliament explained 2007:7). if a number of members rise to speak at the same time, most of them will normally sit down immediately, allowing the remaining member to speak. if however, more than one member remains on his feet, there will be cries of “order, order” from all around the chamber. this usually encourages all but one to sit armenian folia anglistika culture studies 130 down. the remaining member will then speak. (parliament explained. debates in parliament 2007:8). unlike the house of commons, where all speeches are directed towards the speaker, all speeches in the lords are addressed to the house in general and begin “my lords”. if one lord making a speech wishes to refer to another member, he will do so in a particular way, e.g. “the noble lord, the lord bloggs”, or in the case of a baroness “the noble baroness, the baroness bloggs”. this is rather like the procedure in the house of commons where members are not referred to by name. as in the house of commons notes can be referred to, but speeches should not be read. long speeches are discouraged (parliament explained 2007: 8). conclusion in political communication producing and understanding text and talk involves what is traditionally called the “context” of the speech, involving such categories as participant identities and roles, place, time, institution, political goals, actions and political knowledge, among other components. contexts also control discourse style, including the specific contextual constraints of the parliamentary debates. appropriate background knowledge that lies in the basis of context models helps to make communication effective. these context models help understand that when referring to “the house” the speaker in the house of commons deictically refers to “this” house of commons where he is now speaking. in the same way when the speaker in the house of lords deictically refers to “this place” and “the other place” the house of lords and the house of commons are correspondingly meant. apparently, language and language use are of course social phenomena, and need to be studied in their social and cultural contexts. rules and conventions of british parliamentary discourse as well as different rituals, ceremonies and traditions that form part of british political culture and find their reflection in the language have important symbolic meaning and are aimed at maintaining the respect for the state power and its authority. references 1. chilton, p. (2004) analysing political discourse: theory and practice. london: routledge. culture studies armenian folia anglistika 131 2. crowther, j. (ed.) (2000) oxford guide to british and american culture. oxford: oup. 3. dijk, t.a. van (2008) discourse and context: a sociocognitive approach. cambridge cup. 4. dijk, t.a. van (2002) political discourse and political cognition. // politics as text and talk. analytic approaches to political discourse. / ed. by p. chilton and ch. schäffner. philadelphia, pa, usa: john benjamins publishing company, pp. 203-236. 5. debates. available at: http://www.parliament.uk/about/how/business/debates/> [accessed december 2015]. 6. hansard. house of commons (2015), vol. 599, col. 23-31.; vol. 602, col. 1559; vol. 603, col. 324. 7. parliament explained. debates in parliament. parliamentary education service. 2007. available at: <http://www.parliament.uk/documents/education/onlineresources/printed-resources/debates.pdf > [accessed november 2016]. 8. parliamentlive.tv. house of commons. monday, 7 september 2015. available at: <http://www.parliamentlive.tv/event/index/a472a129-39b4-4c22-a8f4f0785e2cf856?in=15:30:16 > [accessed september 2015]. 9. rules and traditions of parliament. available at: <http://www.parliament.uk/ about/how/role/customs> [accessed december 2015]. ´ñçï³ý³ï³ý å³éé³ù»ýï³ï³ý ¹çëïáõñëç 黽í³ùß³ïáõã³ûçý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá ´ñçï³ý³ï³ý å³éé³ù»ýï³ï³ý ¹çëïáõñëç ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá ù»í³å»ë å³ûù³ý³íáñí³í »ý ýñ³ ù³ëý³ïçóý»ñç ñ³ù³ï»ùëï³ûçý ï³õ³å³ñý»ñáí, áñáýù ³½¹áõù »ý ëáëùç á×ç ¨ é»½í³ ³ý³ï³ý ó¨»ñç íñ³: ø³ýç áñ ñ³ù³ï»ùëï³ûçý ï³õ³å³ñý»ñá ïñáõù »ý ïíû³é »ñïñç ùß³ïáõûãç ³½¹»óáõãûáõýá, å³éé³ù»ýï³ï³ý ¹çëïáõñëáõù û·ï³·áñííáõ 黽í³ï³ý ùççáóý»ñá áõý»ý ý³¨ áñáß³ïç 黽í³ùß³ïáõã³ûçý ûáõñ³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñ: ´ñçï³ý³ï³ý å³éé³ù»ýï³ï³ý ñ³ù³ï³ñ·ç ¹³ñ»ñç å³ïùáõãûáõý áõý»óáõ ³í³ý¹áõûãý»ñá çñ»ýó ³ñï³óáéáõùý »ý ·ïýáõù 黽íç ù»ç ¨ ï³½ùáõù »ý ñçï³ý³ï³ý å³éé³ù»ýï³ï³ý ¹çëïáõñëç ï³ñ¨áñ ù³ëá: ²û¹ ñ³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý ýáñù»ñç, çýãå»ë ý³¨ ñçï³ý³ï³ý ù³õ³ù³ï³ý ïû³ýarmenian folia anglistika culture studies 132 ùç ¨ ñçï³ý³ï³ý ù³õ³ù³ï³ý ¹çëïáõñëç ýáñáß ï³ñ »ñ ³ñ³ñáõáõãûáõýý»ñç ¨ ³í³ý¹áõûãý»ñç å³ñå³ýáõù áõýç ñ³ïáõï ëáñññ¹³ýß³ý³ï çù³ëï ¨ ýå³ï³ï³áõõõí³í ¿ ù³õ³ù³ï³ý ñ³ù³ï³ñ·ç ï³, å»ï³ï³ý çßë³ýáõãû³ý ñ»õçý³ , ýñ³ ýï³ïù³ù ñ³ñ·³ýù : microsoft word contens verjin linguistics armenian folia anglistika 7 concerning the program of understanding a literary text seda gasparyan yerevan state university abstract text is a broad notion. it may be expressed both in writing and orally in the form of a monologue, dialogue, utterance, etc. this may well be the reason for the persistent interest towards text as such. the great variety of studies on the nature of text and its objectives, however, are all somewhat controversial and lack a unified conceptual approach. things get even more complicated due to the fact that now into scientific circulation has been introduced the notion of discourse, and evidently of considerable popularity in the current stage of the development of linguistics is the relationship between text and discourse. the present article focuses on the study of the correlation of text and discourse, views literary text as a unit of specific communication between the writer and the reader, as well as centers the attention on the consecutive stages of literary text perception and understanding. key words: author, reader, communicative intention of speech making, literary communication process, the influence of external factors, a combination of linguistic and extralinguistic knowledge, multiplicity of text perception, the program of understanding text. introduction the diversity of investigations on text is often controversial and lacks a unified standpoint. this might be one of the reasons why the study of text never ceases to be topical. text is rather a broad notion covering both the written and oral forms of speech which can be actualized as a monologue, a dialogue, an utterance at armenian folia anglistika linguistics 8 large. today the situation becomes even more complicated because the notion of discourse (խոսույթ in armenian) has occurred in the domain of science and is being very actively circulated. whether the armenian translation of the term discourse (խոսույթ) is justified and appropriately conveys the essence of the notion discourse is a question of a separate discussion. however obvious is the fact that the problem of text – discourse correlation is rather topical at the present stage of linguistic research. the thing is that these two notions are very often used without any clearcut differentiation, except that a piece of written speech is defined as text, whereas oral speech is identified as discourse (karasik 2002; levitskiy 2006). it should be mentioned however that this differentiation based on the statement of oral speech/written speech dichotomy can by no means be justified as both text and discourse can be expressed both orally and in written form. indeed, there is also the approach according to which discourse has two forms of expression – written and oral (gasparyan 2010), however this distinction has also given rise to various opinions and discussions. some linguists are doubtful about what recorded simultaneous text is – an oral text or discourse. (cf. crystal, davy 1979), though according to e. ochs, oral speech is distinguished with the proportionality of phonemes, words and syntax and the lack of syntagms that make the speech coherent. oral speeh acquires a seemingly unfinished nature as it mostly contains unfinished sentences and word-syntagms (ochs 1979). on the other hand, the use of certain features, typical of oral speech cannot be fully excluded in the written text. very often authors turn to reduced or elliptical utterances, lexical units and to the description of the phonetic and intonational features of the characters to make the language of a literary text more living and actual. thus, it is not a surprise that evelyn hatch suggests using the terms pre-planned speech and spontaneous speech instead of written and oral (hatch 1992). it is an established fact that the cohesion of speech is one of the most important pre-conditions to achieve the understanding of a text. and if the text-froming units are uttered successively but are not cohesive, the string of words is unable to convey a complete sense and be understood by the reader or the listener. whereas when utterances created in the process of speech linguistics armenian folia anglistika 9 formation cohere semantically and structurally, and their correlations do not contradict the logics of communication or do not distort the natural process of realizing the communicative intention proper, then, as van dijk states, we deal with discourse. van dijk defines discourse as the uttered text, and text as the abstract grammatical structure of the uttered. proceeding from the sossurian distinction of language and speech he qualifies discourse as a unit of speech and text as a means of materializing the language system (van dijk 1982). the brief examination of various approaches to the correlation of text and discourse shows that discourse is widely refered to not only in linguistic but also other scientific spheres, particularly in psychology, philosophy, political studies and other social sciences. however, whatever the case, it is generalized as an efficient way to reproduce the reality, particularly in the process of speech formation and, in fact, demonstrates speech processes from a social, psychological and cultural standpoint, emerging in certain communicative situations in terms of the intention of the speaker and the attitude of the listener (gasparyan 2010). moreover, the experience, the knowledge, the ability of both parties to perceive, understand and reproduce the reality is of paramount significance. it is not accidental that, for example, n.d. arutyunova defines discourse as a piece of speech immersed in the vortex of life and is convinced that discourse is the coherent text with all its linguistic and extralinguistic factors (cultural, psychological, functional, etc.), i.e. the text with its situational concepts (arutyunova 1990). there are also others who believe that discourse is the process of pronouncing, recording, interpreting the speech in its entirety (brown, yule 1983). thus, if we try to formulate the notion of discourse broadly we shall say that, in real fact, it is communication between the addresser (author) and the addressee (reader or the listener), viewed through the interrelation of their mental, cultural, social and linguistic features. when we turn to questions related to the problem of perception, understading and interpretation of texts we can easily notice that they have nowadays undergone certain changes appearing in the limelight of linguistic research. these changes occurred after the communicative approach came to armenian folia anglistika linguistics 10 replace the structural one and when man with his emotions and feelings, his unique worldview and national and linguo-cultural characteristics obtained special significance and came to occupy a special place in the sphere of linguistic research. perhaps this came to explain the interest of linguistics towards the art of hermeneutics, and the problems of the poetic understanding and interpretation of a text (particularly a literary text) were soon ranked among the more actual problems of scientific cognition. literary text as communication between the writer and the reader what has been presented above shows rather obviously that discourse is an active whole and text is its passive result. but can we accept this definition without any reservation? first, as a matter of fact, there is no doubt that any text turns into discourse when being read or reproduced. it is also appropriate to consider the theory of the classification of speech functions offered by v.v. vinogradov who states that any form of speech is based on the communicative function of the language (vinogradov 1963). therefore, it is not surprising to come across the trend which states that though traditionally the text is viewed as a complex made up of interrelated successive elements, the result of a creative process endowed with certain stability devoid of mobility, still, this idea can be considered acceptable as long as the text has not entered a communicative process and has not turned into a diologue between the author and the reader which brings it very close to discourse itself. it is not accidental that the complete whole in the form of a written document which has come into being as a result of the speech-making process and meets certain requirements, enjoys certain pragmatic freedom (gal’perin 1981) and is distinguished with possibilities of intrinstic and extrinsic manifestations (morokhovskiy 1981; 1989). this makes it possible to view text as a real communicative unit, to perceive it as a high-level system whose structural composition is conditioned by the very communicative intention of speechproduction. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 11 this multi-dimensional nature of the text, naturally, creates certain challenges for its perception, understanding and interpretation, particularly as far as a literary text, first and foremost associated with a piece of literary work, is described as a special type of text: apart from enjoying the features of coherence and integrity typical of any text, a literary work is also distinguished with ideological and aesthetic unity which is realized in any text through an inseparable and indivisible link between the content and form. it has been established that various lexical, grammatical, stylistic and logical links, as well as unique text-forming units are of special significance for any text. however, the choice of most diverse linguistic means and their combinations in a text are far more important since it is the very choice of these units that comes to define the impact the author intends to make on the reader by provoking a certain emotional state. the information here is not logical, but mostly emotional, evaluative and, broadly speaking, aesthetic-imaginative (arnol’d 1990). hence, the use of various linguistic means, including the expressive ones, is conditioned by the very purport of the text and the farreaching intention of the author. being the unique and imaginary reverberation of the reality rather than its direct and mirror reflection, the literary work contains certain conditionality. and though it heavily rests upon the objective reality and feeds on it, the linguistic units it contains do not represent the tangible and visible objects of the reality. otherwise stated, on the one hand, it reproduces the surrounding world that is perceivable in the framework of human experience, and on the other hand, it is fictitious, imaginative and comes to reflect the border of the author’s imaginative perception of the reality. the author may choose this or that object or phenomenon of the reality and reproduce them artistically. however, despite the differences between the works born out of this process, they undoubtedly bear the seal of the author’s worldvision and linguistic mentality since they are always formed under the influence of the social, economic and various other external factors of the given time period. in this case, the reader’s personal descriptive features, his ideological, psychological qualities, as well as worldvision take the lead. and since a truly valuable and armenian folia anglistika linguistics 12 high-quality literary work, transgressing its time, reflects the existing problems of the society, the reader, relying on his own, personal experience and ideas, always faces a certain challenge when trying to deeply perceive the issues raised by the author and to re-evaluate the nature of the reality the author describes. the unity of form and content in understanding process when examining the problems related to text perception, the issue of the unity of form and content acquires special importance. the form of the work, in fact, is quite a complicated and comprehensive notion since it includes not only stylistic functional, phraseological coherence and syntactic structure, but also certain phonetic and rhythmic peculiarities, which often help the author “hide” the intention proper consciously or unconsciously. as far as the content of a literary work is concerned, it is not homogenous in terms of perception, understanding and interpretation. as a matter of fact, it is a hierarchical system which is presented as a unity of linguistic, stylistic, imaginary, aesthetic and ideological contents. investigations indicate that perception will occur only when the reader passes through all the levels of this system, from the lowest to the highest where he will be able to reveal the general idea of the work and the intent of the author (gasparyan 2006). if the reading of a piece of literature is broadly viewed as a specific manifestation of communication, the author and the reader acquire no less importance, they act as opposite sides of the same whole. the fact is that the formation of the literary work is built upon the authorial intention, the idea that was born out of the demand to tell the reader the important information and this is accomplished by the author individually, in a unique way, conditioned by his own worldview, his emotional, psychological and mental peculiarities, thereby instilling or placing the so-called “authorial meaning” in the texture and composition of his work. as reseach indicates, the initial important condition of text understaning is the knowledge of the given language. however, language competence can by no means be sufficient for full understanding and interpretation of the text. here, the extra-linguistic knowledge and experience that are manifested in the text linguistics armenian folia anglistika 13 content and linguistic composition in one way or another are of particular significance. and since the author’s target is a certain category of readers when writing any piece of work, he, as an addresser chooses and combines a complex of linguistic and extralinguistic knowledge in his work which will be available to the reader. this will give the latter a chance to understand the author, to process and analyze the reading material, understand and interpret it. as is the case with any type of text, in the literary text as well, the semantic-structural features, i.e. the features which are the result of the creative process of the author, are of foremost importance. we have to agree that the complex mechanism of perception is not confined to this, since, as already mentioned, the factors of experience, knowledge, level of consciousness and memory are of no less importance. nonetheless, the initial stage of understaning starts with the creation of the sensory image of the object the perception of which is confined to the material shape of the object. it is evident that the first stage of the perception of the oral text is realized through hearing and that of the written text – through vision. in this regard, it is necessary to have an accurate idea of what the reading process is. in its primary meaning “to read” means to perceive what is written and to reproduce it loudly or in one’s mind. however, when it comes to the reading of fiction, it becomes necessary to distinguish between two goals of reading – to read in order to perceive the factual information in this or that text and to read with the purpose of understanding the philologically subtle semantic and stylistic nuances. evidently, the latter is more complicated since the perception of any piece of literary text can by no means be confined to the perception of the material form only. the dialectic interrelation between the form and the content displays more complicated manifestations owing to the multi-layered system of the content of the work. this well explains the specific challenge of reading and understanding a piece of fiction, since the mutual relation of the writer and the reader is anchored on the purpose of perceiving and understaning the ideological and aesthetic “information”, rather than on revealing the mere plot of the work. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 14 stages of understanding process the process of text understanding runs as follows: first the analysis of perception takes place which is paralleled with the attempt of the recipient to analyze the meaning of the lexical elements and make some guesses about the general contents. then, proceeding from the results of the separate stages of analysis, the obtained results are combined and synthesized. the examination of the perception process brings close to the adequate psychological recognition of linguistic images, and they are preserved in our short-term memory. this, in its turn, is followed by the identification of certain constituent semanitic elements in the general semantic structure of word-images which are of paramount importance for understanding the whole. thus, in the given sematic situation and the given context the combination of the separate semantic elements shapes our understanding of the whole. it has been established that the possibility of various interpretations of one and the same work is not uncommon for fiction. this, in fact, is one of the underlying characteristiscs of a literary work. usually a piece of imaginative writing has no specific addressee and, as mentioned above, is targeted at a group of readers with a certain level of intelligence who share a certain common feature while differing in many others. nevertheless, the general semantic core of a literary work should be accessible for a wide circle of readers and not transpass its border. its guarantee is the program of text interpretation, which the author places in the basis of his work having in mind the requirements of his intention and the presumable developmental level of the reader who is the addressee. thus, we can see that the challenges of perceiving and understanding a work of literature depend on not only the complex nature of the text and its characteristics, but also the factor of the reader himself. and since the latter is quite another personality and often belongs to another age, another generation, and represents a new mentality, there is little likelihood that he may directly penetrate into the world of the author, re-live his life, re-experience the same emotions and feelings, let alone the fact that in the course if time the author himself may change his own attitude towards his own work, in fact, introducing new meanings and shades of meanings into the so-called “authorial linguistics armenian folia anglistika 15 meaning” of the work. no matter how hard the reader tries to reproduce and recreate the “authorial meaning”, he is sure to fail, since he is guided by his own personality, his own life experience and his own inner world. this is the reason why the reader, based on his own perceptions and interpretations, enjoys a certain amount of freedom in shaping the “meaning” of the literary text. however, the border of the freedom stretches up to that of the opportunities provided by the text itself and the linguistic units used in it. here, “inner speech” comes to help. as a matter of fact, it is the most reliable factor guiding the process of perception, understanding and interpretation since it best reflects the essence proper of the literary work enhancing the phonetic, rhythmic, melodic and timbre specificities it contains. the importance of “inner speech” has found its clarification in the works of l.v. shcherba, where he emphasizes the necessity of the phonetic interpretation of poetic speech (shcherba 1957; cf. also coleridge 1956). the fact of the text is not a simple phenomenon itself, at least for the reason that there is some disproportionality between the objects of reality and their textual reproductions. it is known that the objects of the external world are endowed with numerous or almost infinite number of features whose reproduction in the text without any selection or choice may turn the text into an unbound and infinite domain. on the other hand, it is quite clear that any work of speech is supposed to be complete in a sense. this fact pushes the author into a corner of contradiction: on the one hand the author needs to describe and recreate the multi-faceted object of the real world with the help of a limited number of linguistic elements which would expand the borders of the text to infinity, on the other, he has to provide the completeness of the text. which is the way out? depending on the scope of his interests, social stance and world vision, the author chooses those features of the real life objects that are important from the point of view of his ideological and aesthietic intentions while leaving behind the features of less significance or, more precisely, hiding them most carefully between the lines of the text. the features the author considers important come to shape the skeleton of the text and serve as a basis for the text perception by armenian folia anglistika linguistics 16 the reader. in this process the reader, i.e. the addressee himself builds his own text based on his personal background, ignoring certain things, perceiving others in a distorted way or adding something more. perhaps, this can help explain the fact that the impressions and the impact of the same text vary owing to the psychological, mental and social differences of the readers. the similarities in their interpretations depend on the amount of common characteristic features the readers have. it is these descriptive features of the potential readers that turn out to be decisive for the author in the process of creating his literary text. and since the latter is re-created by the efforts of the reader who is out of the direct control of the author, there emerges the necessity for the reader himself to take charge of the direct control of the recreation of the text. the text, with all its peculiarities, becomes the sole reality in the process of the literary communication, which takes the lead in the reader’s perception. all the means and preconditions for the text perception that regulate the whole process of reading are placed in the text from the very start. the sum total of all these factors gives rise to the so-called program of text perception, and the fact that some linguistis figuratively describe the program of text perception, understanding and interpretation as a labyrinth is by no means accidental (eco 1983). conclusion thus we can conclude that the only way out of this labyrinth is to be aware of the fact that the “meaning” of the work is built by the collective efforts of both the author and the reader, and that the proceeding point in the whole process is the language of the work. the appropriate choice and arrangement of linguistic units by the writer, whether intuitively or knowingly provides a basis for possible objective understanding of the work. therefore, reading, understanding and interpreting a work of literature calls for the perception of the dialectical correlation of content and form, as well as appreciation of the work as an aesthetic whole. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 17 references: 1. arnol’d, i.v. (1990) stilistika sovremennogo angliyskogo yazyka. m.: prosveshchenie. 2. arutyunova, n.d. (1990) lingvisticheskiy entsiklopedicheskiy slovar’. m.: sov. entsiklopediya, pp. 136-137. 3. brown, g.; yule, g. (1983) discourse analysis. cambridge: cup. 4. coleridge, t.s. (1956) biographia literaria. / ed. by g.watson. new york: everyman’s library. 5. crystal, d.; davy, d. (1979) advanced conversational english. london: longman. 6. eco, u. (1983) the author, the text, and the reader. lsj publ. house. 7. gal’perin, i.r. (1981) tekst kak ob’ekt lingvisticheskogo issledowaniya. m.: nauka. 8. gasparyan, g.r. (2010) tekst i diskours kak yedinicy rechetvorcheskoy i kommunikativnoy deyatel’nosti. // phenomen w. saroyana v kontekste mezhkulturnogo diskoursa (k probeme izucheniya lingvokognitivnoy struktury teksta). / doct. dissertation. yerevan. 9. gasparyan, s.k. (2006) dzevi yev bovandakutyan miasnakanutyuny banasirakan motetsmamb. // banber yerevani hamalsarani. yerevan: ysu press, 3 (120), pp.79-83. 10. hatch, e. (1992) discourse and language education. cambridge: cup. 11. karasik, v.i. (2002) yazykowoy kroug: lichnost’, kontsepty, diskours. volgograd: peremena, visshaya shkola. 12. levitskiy, u.a. (2006) lingvistika teksta. m.: visshaya shkola. 13. morokhovskiy, a.n. (1981) nekotorye osnownye ponyatiya stilistiki i lingvistiki teksta. // linguistika teksta i metodika prepodawaniya inostrannykh yazykov. kiev: visshaya shkola, pp. 6-13. 14. morokhovskiy, a.n. (1989) k probleme teksta i ego kategoriy. // tekst i ego kategorial’nye priznaki. kiev: kspiiyaz, pp. 113-117. 15. ochs, e. (1979) transcription as theory. // developmental pragmatics. new york: academic press. 16. shcherba, l.v. (1957) opyty lingvisticheskogo tolkovaniya stikhotvoreniy, armenian folia anglistika linguistics 18 “vospominaniye” pushkina. // izbrannye raboty po russkomu yazyku. m.: uchpedgiz. 17. van dijk, t.a. (1982) options and attitudes in discourse comprehension. // language and comprehension. amsterdam, etc.: north holland, pp. 35-51. 18. vinogradov, v.v. (1963) stilistika. teoriya poeticheskoy rechi. poetika. m.: as sssr. գեղարվեստական տեքստի հասկացման ծրագրի շուրջ գեղարվեստական տեքստի քննությանն առնչվող խնդիրները լուսաբանվել են տարաբնույթ ուսումնասիրություններում, որոնք սակայն աչքի են ընկնում որոշակի տարակարծությամբ: իրավիճակն ավելի է բարդանում այն իրողությամբ, որ վերջին ժամանակներս գիտական շրջանառության մեջ հայտնված դիսկուրս հասկացությունը էլ ավելի է դժվարացնում տեքստ – դիսկուրս հարաբերակցության շրջանակներում այդ երկու երևույթների հստակ սահմանազատման հնարավորությունը: սույն հոդվածը ուշադրություն է սևեռում տեքստ – դիսկուրս հարաբերակցության խնդիրներին, գեղարվեստական տեքստը դիտարկում որպես յուրօրինակ հաղորդակցություն գրողի և ընթերցողի միջև, ներկայացնում գեղարվեստական տեքստի ընկալման ու հասկացման գործընթացի հաջորդական փուլերի բնութագրական գծերը: microsoft word contens verjin linguistics armenian folia anglistika 19 comparative analysis of armenian and english syndetic analytical word-formation structures with noun component sirarpi karapetyan kh. abovyan armenian state pedagogical university abstract the syndetic or conjunctional analytical word-formation structures with noun component are very productive in the armenian and english languages from the point of view of forming new words. the paper is devoted to the comparison and contrast of the structural, grammatical and semantic peculiarities of the syndetic (conjunctional) analytical word-formation structures in armenian and english. in armenian they are mainly formed with the help of the conjunction “ու”, rarely with the conjunction “և”. in english these units are generally formed with the help of the conjunction “and” and belong to the type of the so-called phrase compounds. besides the conjunctional compounds, phrasal compounds also include the so called syntactic compounds which resemble segments of speech corresponding to the syntactic and word order rules of the english language, e.g. jack-of-all-trades “a person who can do many different kinds of work”, lily-of the-valley “a european plant of the lily family”; this type does not have its typological equivalent in armenian. the examples of syndetic analytical structures provided in this paper are mainly taken from english and armenian dictionaries. key words: analytical structures, compound, phrase, word-formation, comparative analysis, typology, noun, component. introduction the comparative-typological analysis of the armenian and english languages gives an opportunity to study their similarities and differences in a more indepth and detailed way and arrive at more exact conclusions concerning their armenian folia anglistika linguistics 20 structures. the structural and functional issues of languages can be best investigated from the point of view of comparative typology. there are both commonalities and differences between the word-formation structures of the armenian and english languages. they are rich in word-building and morphological patterns; there are patterns composed of nominal, adjectival, adverbial, numeral and other bases. the patterns derived from nominal bases play an essential role both in english and armenian, so this can be considered a common typological feature for both languages. owing to its expansive semantic peculiarities, the noun, as a part of speech, enters into relationships forming patterns not only with nouns, but also with words belonging to other parts of speech. the structural and semantic similarities and differences of armenian and english syndetic analytical word-formation structures in general all the analytical structures in armenian, including the syndetic analytical structures which have a value of one word, should be called բաղադրություն “composition” rather than բարդություն “compound”. we should not include analytical word-formation structures into “compound words” in armenian since they are formed by an independent means of word-formation, juxtaposition. thus, all the analytical compositions formed in the result of juxtaposition should be called հարադրություններ “juxtapositions” (as opposed to both compound and affixed words) and their components should be called հարադիրներ “juxtaposed components” (hovsepyan 2009:107). as it has already been mentioned, in armenian the majority of the syndetic analytical constructions are formed with the help of the coordinating conjunction “ու”, those with the conjunction “և” are fewer in number. thus, the conjunction “ու” is not merely a syntactic unit of language, it also has a word-building function in armenian. according to a. margaryan, it was long ago noted in armenian linguistic literature that it is the conjunction “ու” which expresses the closest connection and relation between words and from this point of view it differs even from its synonymous conjunction “և” (margaryan 1986:11). in the course of the historical development of the armenian language, the conjunction linguistics armenian folia anglistika 21 “և” gradually lost its word-formation significance as opposed to the conjunction “ու” which gained a greater role in forming analytical compositions, because the latter is more typical of colloquial language and, consequently, forms structures typical of colloquial speech. the formations with the conjunction “և” are, just on the contrary, typical of literary armenian. the syndetic analytical structures in armenian are mainly formed with words belonging to the same part of speech, among which the constructions with the pattern noun + ու + noun prevail. they can be singular and plural, they are declined, they get the possessive marker s’ and other grammatical markers, and it is their second component which undergoes grammatical changes, e. g. վար ու ցանք, վար ու ցանքի, վար ու ցանքով, վար ու ցանք (ը), վար ու ցանքերը, etc. only the formations composed of the nouns «մայր» and «հայր» are exceptions to this rule, i. e. the first component is also declined, e. g. մայր ու աղջիկ, մոր ու աղջկա, մոր ու աղջկանից, մոր ու աղջկանով, հայր ու տղա, հոր ու տղայի, հոր ու տղայից, հոր ու տղայով, etc. in other cases, although the first component is not declined, it equally expresses the meanings of declension and number of the second component (margaryan 1986:48). phrase compounds in english the syndetic analytical structures belong to the type of the socalled phrase compounds. the question is whether or not phrase compounds should be considered structures which have a value of one word. they can also be considered structures formed in the result of the fixation and lexicalization of the syntactic combinations. we can claim that these formations, just like in armenian, fall somewhere between word-combinations and compound words. however, they are examined as separate types of compound words since they have the value of one word; hence, from here comes the term phrase compound. one type of these compound structures is mainly formed with the help of the coordinating conjunction “and”, e. g. bubble-and-squeak “cooked cabbage fried with cooked potatoes and often meat”, milk-and-water “lacking the will or ability to act effectively”, pepper-and-salt “flecked or speckled with intermingled dark and light shades”, etc. (bauer 1983:207). armenian folia anglistika linguistics 22 another type of the phrase compounds in english is represented by the socalled syntactic compounds (bloomfield 1984:233-234), which resemble segments of sentences or speech; they have a structure typical of sentences and correspond to the syntactic and word-order rules of the english language, e. g. jack-o´-lantern «a lantern made from a hollowed-out pumpkin», state-of-theart, etc.. first of all, let us compare the compositions with the conjunction “and” in the languages under investigation. according to the degree of proximity of the components of syndetic analytical structures, it is possible to divide analytical structures with noun components into three types: structures the components of which are related in meaning and structures with synonymous and antonymous components. thus, the syndetic analytical compositions in two languages can be divided into the following three types; a) analytical structures with components having related meanings: arts and crafts, bed and board “lodging and food”, bread and butter “a person's livelihood or main source of income”, bread and wine “the sacrament of the eucharist”, cakes and ale “lively enjoyment”, doom and gloom “a general feeling of pessimism”, law and order, man and boy “from childhood”, milk and honey “prosperity”, oil and water “incompatible or not blending together”, etc. in armenian we have the following examples; աղոթք ու աղաչանք, անձրև ու քամի, բակ ու դուռ, բառ ու խոսք, թաթ ու կրունկ, թուղթ ու գիր, խոսք ու զրույց, կար ու կութ, հանդ ու ձոր, հարց ու փորձ, հաց ու պանիր, շող ու շաղ, շուն ու գայլ, ոտ ու ձեռ, վարպետ ու բանվոր, ցախ ու ցաք, քար ու կշեռք, etc. b) analytical structures with synonymous components: command and control “the running of an armed force or other organization”, house and home “a person's home, possessions”, hue and cry “a loud clamour or public outcry”, hum and haw “hesitation”, pot and pan “husband”, rag and tatter “full of or characterized by rags and tatters, ragged”, etc.. in armenian we have the following examples; անեծք ու նզովք, բաղ ու բախչա, բանտ ու զնդան, բար ու բերք, գանգատ ու բողոք, գութ ու կարեկցանք, դաշտ ու դուրան, դաս linguistics armenian folia anglistika 23 ու խրատ, դեղ ու դարման, դեպք ու դիպված, դող ու էրոցք, եռանդ ու ջանք, լույս ու ճրագ, խաղ ու տաղ, ծոմ ու պաս, կուշտ ու բոլոր, etc. c) analytical structures with antonymous components: alpha and omega, boom and bust, day and night, ebb and flow, left and right, life and death, light and shade, wax and wane “increases and decreases”, etc.. in armenian we have, e.g., աղքատ ու հարուստ, ամառ ու ձմեռ, անեծք ու օրհնանք, առք ու վաճառք, գիշեր և ցերեկ, դար ու դուրան, խինդ ու լաց, ծեր ու մանուկ, ծով ու ցամաք, մահ ու կյանք, սուտ ու ճիշտ, ստրուկ ու տեր, վերջ ու սկիզբ, վիշտ ու ժպիտ, տեր ու ծառա, տիվ ու գիշեր, etc. very often these structures (especially in english) have a metaphorical meaning, e. g. cat and mouse “a series of cunning manoeuvres designed to thwart an opponent”, chalk and talk “a traditional teacher-centered education”, dog and bone “a telephone”, etc. in the languages under investigation we can seldom come across syndetic analytical structures in which the noun is juxtaposed to other part of speech, e. g. a) n + verbal stem; e. g. cash and carry “a system of wholesale trading whereby goods are paid for in full at the time of purchase and taken away by the purchaser”, tax and spend “a political policy of increasing taxes”, etc., in armenian we have, e. g. ահ ու զարկ, ահ ու սաստ, ահ ու փախ, դավ ու խաբ, շարժ ու ձև, etc. b) verbal stem + n; e. g. hit-and-miss “done or occurring at random”, run and gun “denoting fast, free-flowing play without emphasis on set plays or defence”, in armenian we have , e. g. տուր ու դմփոց, առ ու գերի, դարձ ու զղջում, զարկ ու ավար, հունչ ու բառ, ել և մուտք, etc 1. c) a + n; e.g. hard and fastness “inflexibility; fixedness”, rough and tumble “a situation without rules or organization”, in armenian we have , e.g. ալ ու ատլաս, թաց ու թոն, խեղճ ու կրակ, etc.. d) n + a; e. g. art-and-crafty “interested or involved in making decorative artistic objects”, horse and buggy “old-fashioned”, home and dry “having successfully achieved or being within sight of achieving one's objective”, pepper and salty “pepper-and-salt coloured”, in armenian, e. g. խաղք ու խայտառակ, ուժ ու աշխույժ, որբ ու մենակ, etc.. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 24 in armenian there are also formations with the pattern interjection + noun, e.g. ախ ու դարդ, ախ ու հառաչանք, ախ ու ոխ, etc. the syndetic analytical structures in english are mainly formed with the juxtaposition of simple stems, but in armenian there are also structures the constituents of which have grammatical markers, e. g. declension markers, like առքով ու փառքով (instrumental case), կենաց ու մահու (old armenian genitive case), plural marker ազգ ու ազինք. there are also structures in which both of the components are plural, e. g. եզներ ու կովեր, սարեր ու ձորեր, etc. in armenian in the result of the juxtaposition of the nouns usually nouns are formed, i. e., the whole structure belongs to the same part of speech as its second component. in english, however, by the juxtaposition of two nouns not only nouns are formed, e.g. alarums and excursions, but also adjectives, e.g. hole and corner, adverbs, e.g. body and soul, and verbs, e. g. top and tail, etc.. the same structure can have two-three or even more part of speech meanings at the same time, for example, nouns and adjectives, like meatand-potatoes «1. n. the most important part of something, 2. adj. important, main». being juxtaposed to the third noun, the syndetic analytical structures form determinant-determinatum compounds, like a cat and dog life, a ham-and-egg sandwich, a life and death struggle, etc. as we have already mentioned, another type of the phrase compounds in english is represented by the so called syntactic compounds. within this type, l. bauer separates endocentric and exocentric compositions. the endocentric constructions are in their turn divided into two groups: a) compositions in which the key word (the semantic and grammatical center which is expressed by a noun) is the first constituent, e. g. mother-in-law, lady-in-waiting; this type is unproductive in english, b) compositions in which the semantic centre is the second constituent, whereas the first component is a phrase or a sentence, e. g. a what-do-you-think-movement, the old-must-be-right-attitude; this type in english is more productive from the word-building point of view (bauer 1983:207). the exocentric compounds of this type are generally plant names, e. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 25 g. love-in-a-mist, love-lies-bleeding, mother-of-thyme, snow-in-summer, snow-on-the mountains, etc (marchand 1969:122). since this kind of compositions comprise various prepositions, in english they are called prepositional phrasal compounds and are usually composed of a noun and other parts of speech. this kind of structures can be composed of various prepositions (ménová 2012:19-38): a) indyed-in-the-wool, hand-inglove, b) offamily-of-three, mother-of-pearl, c) atgentleman-at-arms, stayat-home, d) օff -off-the-shoulder-blouse, off-the-record, e) onon-the-job, johnny-on-the-spot, etc.. although from the structural point of view the mentioned structures resemble more a simple noun phrase, they often undergo grammatical changes like simple words, e. g. by adding the particle s to the phrase jack-in-the-box, we form its plural in the following way; jack-in-theboxes, but on the other hand, e. g. in the composition brother-in-law, it is the first component, i. e. the semantic and grammatical centre of the composition which gets the plural; brothers-in-law, in case of which the composition deflects the rule of getting the grammatical particle in the end, which is typical of ordinary words (mccarthy 2002:67-68). at the same time the combination brother-in-law gets the possessive ending on the last component, like brotherin-law’s, as in case of words. this is the reason why they are called phrasal or phrase compounds having characteristic features typical of both phrases and compound words2. the peculiarity of this type of compositions is that they are not always lexicalized, fixed formations; they can also be formed immediately at the time of speaking, in a given situation. often whole sentences turn into this kind of phrasal compounds, e. g. a what-should-i-do-next look. although they really have a structure of a phrase, they carry out the function of one word. they are usually authorial structures and are used to give uniqueness to speech; we often come across such structures in literary works, e.g. she looked at him in a “what-a-brave-hero-you-are” manner. (agatha christie) (arbekova 1977:24). in armenian they are formed in a descriptive way but not with the help of a combination which has one word value. the existence of this kind of structures in english is conditioned by the fact that english is an analytical language, armenian folia anglistika linguistics 26 which allows us to insert a few words and prepositions side by side and, without subjecting them to any grammatical changes, get units which have a one word value. moreover, there are no certain patterns for the formation of these units; they can be composed of nouns, prepositions, verbs and articles, accordingly, these structures are not formed in accordance with any word-building pattern. in armenian they do not have their typological parallels. the phrasal compounds, being juxtaposed with another noun, form determinant-determinatum compositions, like a mother-to-daughter talk, an end-of-term examination, the not-quite-at-ease manners, etc. (they represent the so-called exocentric type presented by l. bauer). conclusion our investigation shows that in both languages the syndetic compositions are rather productive from the point of view of word-formation. in english the so called phrasal compounds include also the syndetic analytical structures and the structures which are composed with the help of prepositions and other parts of speech; they do not have their typological parallels in armenian. we revealed the grammatical, structural and semantic peculiarities of the structures under analysis. the comparative analysis of syndetic analytical structures has a significant role in the typological characterization of the languages under investigation. notes: 1. neither in the case of the pattern n + verbal stem, nor in case of the pattern verbal stem + n is the part of speech of meaning of the components always obvious. for example, the word “զարկ” can be considered both as the pure base of the verb “զարկել” and as the noun “զարկ”. in english as well we often come across the problem of noun-verbal stem coincidence, when the pure verbal root coincides with the noun and it becomes difficult to determine the part of speech meaning of the components. for instance, the compound words bakeshop, washday can be considered n + n patterned linguistics armenian folia anglistika 27 compounds, rather than verbal stem + n compounds, as far as the nouns “bake” and “wash” also exist. 2. in english the constructions with the pattern n + to be are noteworthy, e. g. a bride-to-be, a mom-to-be, a wife-to-be, etc.. references: 1. aghayan, ed. (1976) ardi hayereni batsatrakan bararan, yerevan: “hayastan” hratarakchutyun. 2. arbekova, t. (1977) leksikologija anglijskogo yazyka. m.: izd-vo “vysshaja shkola”. 3. bauer, l. (1983) english word-formation. cambridge: cup. 4. bloomfield, l. (1984) language (with a new forward by c.f. hockett). chicago and london: university of chicago press. 5. hovsepyan, l. (2009) barakazmutyan tiper, eghanakner ev mijotsner. // jahukyanakan yntertsumner (4), yerevan, pp. 102-108. 6. marchand, h. (1969) the categories and types of present-day english word-formation, 2nd edition, münchen. 7. margaryan, a. (1986), hayereni baghhyusakan bardutyunnery. yerevan: yerevani hamalsarani hratarakchutyun. 8. mccarthy, a. (2002) an introduction to english morphology; words and their structure, edinburgh: edinburgh university press. 9. ménová, m. (2012) phrasal compounds in contemporary british newspapers /bakalářská práce/, kvĕten, pp. 19-38. 10. (2000) oxford advanced learner’s dictionary of current english (hornby a.), 6th edition, oxford: oup. 11. (1969, 1972, 1974, 1980) zhamanakakits hayots lezvi batsatrakan bararan. hator 1-4, yerevan: hssh ga hratarakchutyun, hr. acharyani anvan lezvi institut. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 28 հայերենի և անգլերենի գոյականական բաղադրիչով շաղկապական հարադրությունների զուգադրական քննություն հոդվածում քննվում են հայերենի և անգլերենի գոյականական բաղադրիչով շաղկապական հարադրությունների կառուցվածքային, քերականական և իմաստային առանձնահատկությունները: երկու լեզուներում դրանք բավականին կենսունակ են բառակազմական տեսանկյունից: հայերենում դրանք հիմնականում կապվում են «ու» շաղկապով, ավելի հազվադեպ` «և» շաղկապով, իսկ անգլերենում` «and» շաղկապով: անգլերենում նման հարադրությունները դասվում են բառակապակցական բաղադրությունների շարքին: վերջիններս ընդգրկում են նաև շարահյուսական բաղադրությունները` քարացած շարահյուսական կառույցները, որոնք կարծես նախադասություններից կամ խոսքաշարից պոկված հատվածներ լինեն և համապատասխանում են անգլերենի շարահյուսական կանոններին, ինչպես` editor-in-chief «գլխավոր խմբագիր», johnny-on-thespot «անհրաժեշտության դեպքում միշտ հասանելի անձնավորություն»: վերջիններս, սակայն, իրենց տիպաբանական զուգահեռը չունեն հայերենում: maket 2014_layout 1.qxd intercultural language competence and business communication valentina golysheva narfu (northern arctic federal university, archangel, russia) abstract teaching modern languages for specific purposes requires the investigation of the interaction of language and socio-cultural aspects, the knowledge of which predetermines successful acquisition of intercultural competence by the students. students studying business language should be recommended to do the research in the theory of language planning namely political correctness (pc). observing politeness strategy, i.e. avoiding direct imposition either in conditional requests or imperatives might be useful for students studying english to be learned as value one. to reduce the level of imposition most english officials prefer to stick to the strategy of disguised imperatives, i.e. rephrase their public messages by employing specific periphrastic expressions in a statement/request/notice/announcement. in the teaching process priorities should be given to introducing the situational language, the speech etiquette in the english and russian communities; teaching students to assess social responses. key words: intercultural competence, politeness strategy, situational language, speech etiquette, periphrasis, political correctness. introduction the life style of any community is shaped by the way people use their language and people in various cultures use languages differently. so one of the challenging issues for russian students within an english context is investigating disparities in language use. meanwhile students should bear in mind that these disparities are culturally determined. the disparities that are concealed in the russian and english speaking cultures maybe damaging for intercultural business communication and that explains why students should be motivated to thoroughly analyze and study these disparities in language use and in cultures/mentalities. this might be helpful to them in a more successful acquisition of intercultural competence skills. politeness strategy to avoid any misunderstanding in intercultural relationships, russian students should primarily be given an explicit statement of english values and ethos. one of the most distinct features of the english culture is the ability of the people to observe politeness strategy. karen hewitt, professor from oxford university in her book “understanding britain” which is specially written for the russian reader gives a few generalizations about the british and their social priorities. thus hewitt observes: “foreign students learn that you must not use a simple imperative when you are in england. “sit down” armenian folia anglistikamethodology 107 sounds very rude, because it is an order. and we resist orders just as we resist trying to order other people to do things. so i might say, “would you like to sit down?” the sentence is shaped to allow the other person to say, “thank you, but i don’t want to sit down”. in other words, an englishman, at a subconscious level is always taking into account the fact that the other person may not wish to do what i suggest and that person should be offered a polite way to refuse my proposal” (hewitt 2009:208). why do the english use language in this way? the answer is because the english are trained from an early age to judge and assess social responses” (hewitt 2009:209). for instance, when discussing their employment with somebody the english try to avoid the direct question of payment: “is your sister well-paid? how is it from the money point of view? in the same situation the russian person will ask directly: “how much does your sister earn? what is her salary?” asking the details of payment is a taboo in uk. people in the english speaking communities tend to encourage tact, sympathy and respect in reference to other people. t. scarrot comments on politeness strategy in the english social behavior: “in to-day’s mad world, politeness is more important than ever….. being polite and considerate should be a top priority” (scarrot 2000:49). social priorities in the english speaking communities are clearly reflected in their language (see jones 1989; blundell 1992). due to the functional approach to the language there appeared a great number of works on the theory of linguistic/speech politeness. the numerous authors of this theory have successfully developed a typology of speech acts – their cognitive status, cultural dependence and speech norms (see the review of papers by gabrielle kasper, 1990, 2001) it’s becoming an axiom, that “any language reflects the culture and mentality and it is vividly seen in the speech etiquette” (wierzbicka 1990). situational language/speech etiquette – it’s indisputable that the task of a teacher of a foreign language is to examine the extent to which language communities differ in their application of politeness principle (pp) priorities should be given by introducing the situational language in the teaching process. it might be of interest to show in this paper several situations which demonstrate extreme diversity of the speech etiquette in the english and russian communities: in a shop: shop assistant: can i help you madam/miss?; russian speaker: нет, спасибо! no, thanks! english speaker: oh, thank you very much. i’ll just have a look around on my own. maybe later? the response of the russian customer sounds too abrupt and somewhat negative, lacking the assessment of the positive social response of the saleswoman. at the classes: • teacher: thank you for coming to my classes. russian student: you are welcome! armenian folia anglistika methodology 108 • teacher: our class is over. have a nice day! english student: thanks! you too. russian student: no response, simply leaving the classroom. politeness strategy in the british culture might as well be useful for russian students of english to be learned as value one perhaps. one of the striking features of the english social behavior from the point of view of verbal politeness is the ability to avoid direct imposition either in conditional requests or imperatives. people in the english-speaking cultures are very sophisticated in expressing requests in the most polite way. at the library: the english reader: could i possibly have this book for a couple of days? i need it awfully. the russian reader: вы не можете дать мне эту книгу на два дня? (can’t you give me this book for two days?) the phrase “can’t you give me the book” sounds to the english librarian somewhat impolite and even aggressive because of the negation in it (which is a norm for the russian language). it is quite important for the russian students of english to realize that lack of politeness strategy in the speech of an interlocutor may be associated with aggressiveness by the members of the english-speaking community. imperatives in requests unlike russian community people in the uk tend to avoid the direct imposition in their speech. for instance, english mothers always find a good excuse to make their kid help her about the house: “please, could you just wash it up? i am so tired”. so the request sounds less imperative. in the russian families the kid is not requested to do something but usually gets an imperative command: “ann, go and wash up the dishes at once” . english wives often apply to disguised imperatives when they want to make their husbands do something for them. thus, the phrase “david, would you like to have a cup of tea?” actually contains an implicit order (imposition) for her husband to go into the kitchen and put the kettle on. when an english wife doesn’t like the idea that her husband is going to water the flowers in the garden in the heat she might say in a very evasive way “you don’t want to water the flowers now, darling, do you?”. the russians will most probably use the negative imperative “you don’t have to water the flowers now” or more direct “don’t water the flowers now!; stop watering the flowers now!”. public imperatives-implicit imposition – in fact, most officials in english community prefer to stick to the strategy of disguised imperatives. they permanently rephrase messages in public imperatives by employing specific periphrastic expressions that soften what they want to emphasise and make it sound less direct. there’s a lot of psychology about it when people don’t want to be told what to do or what to refrain from armenian folia anglistikamethodology 109 doing. in other words, the application of disguised imperatives in a state ment /request/notice/announcement reduces the level of imposition. it makes the implicit imposition (contained within the semantic structure of the message) sound milder, vague, less blunt or disagreeable. the strategy of disguised imperatives is extremely popular in notices and announcements used by english and swedish communities for most public places like cafes, restaurants, movies, museums, gyms, pubs, etc. they usually illustrate an amazing variety of the verbal expression carrying implicit imposition. compare the variants: собаки запрещены! dogs are prohibited! (russian) in the interest of hygiene no dogs! (english) не курить! no smoking! (russian) this is a no-smoking area. thank you for your understanding. (english) we are a no smoking school. your cooperation is appreciated. (english) so one of the challenging issues for teachers of modern languages is to examine the extent to which cultural communities differ in their verbal business communication. students studying business language should be recommended to do the research in the theory of language planning (see christian 1993) – the so-called political correctness (pc see in cameron 1995) which might positively affect the acquisition by them of intercultural competence and contribute to a better cross-cultural relationship. references: 1. blundell, j.; higgens, j.; middlemiss, n. (1992) function in english. oxford: oup. 2. cameron, d. (1995) verbal hygiene. london: routledge. 3. christian, d. (1993) language planning: the view from linguistics. // linguistics; the cambridge survey iv. cambridge. 4. hewitt, k. (2009) understanding britain. perspective publications. ltd. 5. jones, l.; von baeyer, c. (1989) functions of american english. / communication activities for the classroom. student’s book. cambridge: cup. 6. kasper, g. (1990) linguistic politeness. // journal of pragmatics. n14. north holland. 7. kasper, g. (2001) “politeness” in rajend mesthrie (ed) concise encyclopedia of sociolinguistics. oxford: elsevier. 8. scarrot, t. (2000) don’t be silly, be polite. // yorkshire riding magazine. june/july. 9. wierzbicka, a. (1990) cross-cultural pragmatics. berlin: mouton de gruyer. armenian folia anglistika methodology 110 軽í³ùß³ïáõã³ûçý çñ³½»ïáõãûáõýá μç½ý»ë ñ³õáñ¹³ïóáõãûáõýáõù øç ß³ñù 黽 í³ ï³ý ùç çáó ý» ñç (ý» ñ³é û³é ³ûé ùß³ ïáõûã ý» ñçý í» ñ³ μ» ñáõ ¿ ãç ï³ ûç ¨ ³ñ å»ù ý» ñç) ç ù³ óáõã ûáõ ýá ïû· ýç ½³ñ ·³ó ý»é áõ ë³ ýáõ ý» ñç ùççù ß³ ïáõ ã³ ûçý 黽 í³ ï³ý ç ñ³ ½» ïáõã ûáõýá, á ñá ãáõûé ïï³ ýñ³ýó ëáõ ë³ ÷»é ãûáõ ñ áùμéýáõù ý» ñçó ùççù ß³ ïáõ ã³ ûçý ·áñ í³ ñ³ñ ñ³ õáñ ¹³ï óáõã û³ ý áýã³óùáõù: øß³ ïáõ ã³ ûçý ý» ñáõ åç ¨ 黽 í³ ï³ý ï³ñ μ» ñáõã ûáõý ý» ñç ç ù³ óáõã ûáõ ýá ï³ ñáõ ¿ ¹ñ³ ï³ý ³½ ¹» óáõã ûáõý áõ ý» ý³é ·áñ í³ ñ³ñ μ³ ý³ï óáõã ûáõý ý» ñç ³ñ¹ ûáõýù ý» ñç íñ³: ü³ë ¨ ³ é³ç û· ï³ ï³ñ ïéç ýç ïç ñ³ å» ï»é ù³ õ³ ù³ í³ ñáõã û³ý é³½ ù³ í³ ñáõã ûáõý ý» ñçý, ³û ëçýùý` ëáõ ë³ ÷»é áõõ õ³ ïç ññ³ ù³ û³ ï³ý ý³ ë³ ¹³ ëáõã ûáõý ý»ñ û· ï³ ·áñ í» éáõó ëý¹ñ³ýù, óáõ óáõù ï³ù ³ñ ·»éù ³ñ ï³ ñ³û ï» éçë: ¸³ ë³ í³ý¹ ù³ý áý ã³ó ùáõù ³ýñ ñ³ å»ßï ¿ ïç ñ³ é»é 黽 íç ï³ ýáý ý» ñç ï³ñ μ» ñáõã ûáõý ý» ñá í»ñ ñ³ ýáõ 黽 í³ ï³ý ç ñ³ íç ׳ï ý»ñ: ä»ïù ¿ ½³ñ ·³ó ý»é 黽 í³ ï³ý ï³ ñá õáõã ûáõý ý» ñá ·ý³ ñ³ ï» éáõ, å³ß ïá ý³ ï³ý ëý¹ñ³ýù ý» ñáõù áõ ñ³û ï³ ñ³ ñáõã ûáõý ý» ñáõù ³ ýáõõ õ³ ïç ññ³ ù³ û³ ï³ý ý»ñ (í» ñ³ å³ï ùáõù, ù»õ ù³ ëáõã ûáõý) û· ï³ ·áñ í» éáõ áõ ë³ ýáõ ý» ñç ñùïáõã ûáõý ý»ñá: ßçûêîâûå êîìïåòåíöèè â ìåæêóëüòóðíîé áèçíåñ êîììóíèêàöèè äëÿ áî ëåå óñ ïåø íî ãî ïðèîá ðå òå íèÿ ìåæ êóëü òóð íûõ ÿçû êî âûõ êîì ïå òåí öèé ñòó äåí òû äîëæ íû îâ ëà äåòü íà áî ðîì ÿçû êî âûõ èíñò ðó ìåí òîâ, êà ñàþ ùèõ ñÿ ýòè êè è öåí íîñò íîé îðèåí òà öèè äðó ãîé êóëü òó ðû. ÷òî ïîç âî ëèò èì èç áå æàòü íå ïî íè ìà íèÿ â ìåæ êóëü òóð íîé áèç íåñ êîì ìó íè êà öèè. çíà íèå ðàç íè öû êóëü òóð íî ãî ïî òåí öèà ëà è ÿçû êî âûõ ðàç ëè ÷èé ìî æåò íàè ëó÷ øèì îá ðà çîì ïîâ ëèÿòü íà ðå çóëü òà òû áèç íåñ ïå ðå ãî âî ðîâ. â ïåð âóþ î÷å ðåäü, ïî ëåç íî îâ ëà äåòü ñòðà òå ãèåé âåæ ëè âîñòè, ò.å. èç áå ãàòü ïðÿ ìî ãî èì ïå ðà òè âà â ïðîñü áàõ, óêà çà íèÿõ è çàï ðå òàõ. ïðè îáó ÷å íèè íåîá õî äè ìî ðà çûã ðû âàòü ÿçû êî âûå ñè òóà öèè, èë ëþñò ðè ðóþ ùèå ðàç ëè ÷èÿ â ÿçû êî âîì ýòè êå òå. ñëå äóåò ðàç âè âàòü ó ñòó äåí òîâ íà âû êè îöåí êè ÿçû êî âûõ êîì ïå òåí öèé; îâ ëà äå íèå ñêðû òûì èì ïå ðà òè âîì, ò.å. óïîò ðåá ëå íèå ïå ðèô ðàç è ýâ ôå ìèç ìîâ â îôè öèàëü íûõ ïðîñü áàõ, çàÿâ ëå íèÿõ è îáüÿâ ëå íèÿõ. armenian folia anglistikamethodology 111 microsoft word 1. maket 2019-1new.doc methodology armenian folia anglistika 63 clil as a new innovative pedagogy: the case of russia and armenia tatyana v. sidorenko tomsk polytechnic university margaret apresyan yerevan state university abstract the present paper presents teaching experience and observations in clil implementation of the countries that about forty years ago shared a common vision of how to teach foreign languages at the tertiary level, but since then have developed their education policies separately. the article suggests the analysis (based on the experimental activities) of content and language integrated learning (clil) from the perspectives of universities of two countries russia and armenia. the analysis was carried out by means of an observation tool for clil teaching in tomsk polytechnic and yerevan state universities. in the overview the authors make the attempt to collect the general theoretical principles and concepts of clil, match them with the real classroom data that they have, analyze it and conclude what improvement is needed and what measures are eligible for the national educational context of both countries. the article data do not pretend to overview all the aspects of university language teaching, because they are different in the countries, they reflect to a certain extent the national teaching experience and relate it to the theoretical and practical issues of clil and esp education. key words: innovative pedagogy, content and language, integrated learning, principles and concepts of clil, educational concept. armenian folia anglistika methodology 64 introduction in accordance with bologna process requirements higher education all over the world aims at expanding educational and cultural boarders, fostering scientific research, integrating global experience, increasing the rate of academic mobility, enhancing the quality of learning and teaching, promoting the higher employability of graduates throughout their working lives. all these require competence in foreign language communication, on the development of which universities concentrate a large part of their resources and energies. it is necessary to ascertain the fact that in spite of the time and resources invested before in foreign language education, the success rate, measured as communicatively competent foreign language user is still low. the shortcoming of it may be attributed to the fact that the language learnt in traditional foreign language classroom is often unrelated to real-life communication…“if input is predictable and output not spontaneous, how can we expect learners to be effective communicators if real-life communication is, just that, real” (ting 2010). for a long time esp (english for specific purpose) has been recognized as the most popular approach to language teaching and learning at universities of russia and armenia. this approach would have remained as the effective one, unless the dynamism and challenges of our quickly changing time had not been long in coming. in terms of teaching resources deficiency (necessity to constant upgrading materials), time constrains and teaching staff training that is needed to enlarge its scope with new competences, the systems of higher education of the countries face the necessity to put some modifications into the existing teaching methods, making them more adjustable and flexible to respond the society and intellectual labour market demands. the decision was seen in a relatively new approach for university pedagogy as content and language integrated learning (clil), where a foreign language is considered as the language of instruction in teaching subject-matter courses. we call this approach as a new one, because despite its “25 years history”, clil remains in practice as “capricious” approach affected much with the national context, including the specificity of an educational system and even countrymethodology armenian folia anglistika 65 scaled goals. the ambivalence of the approach is also explained by the potential to be used for covering different purposes of different education stakeholders as students, subject and language teachers. therefore, the search for the balance between them still remains as a point to discuss. clil also brings with it one more complex challenge – the professional development of teachers who should understand how to organize their teaching, experiment with new approaches and put these into classroom practice. the latter will require the overhaul in on-going planning, monitoring and assessment, with clear goals and expectations. as much as clil, on the one hand, provides very positive encouragement to experiment, on the other hand, the evidence base or real classroom data upon which we can disseminate clil practice are quite limited. much in clil is prompted with the national settings and “input factors” as resources and purposes of each university. this paper makes not big but a timely contribution to both countries professional understanding of clil pedagogy and how it can be used at tertiary level currently or in prospect. it will consist of two main parts reflecting the outcomes of clil implementation initiatives in russia and armenia with describing national possibilities and priorities, and practices, if any. we deeply hope that our experience, rather small at moment, will provide a reader with some practical suggestions and raise issues for further reflections, particularly in terms of teaching models and teacher education programs without which the full potential of clil is unlikely to be realised and the approach will risk to be unsustainable. clil prerequisites and history initially, the approach originated as a form of bilingual education in canada (province of quebec) in the 1970s. around 1965, a group of english speaking parents living in the french territory of quebec, canada, desired an educational kindergarten program for their children that would give them an equal opportunity a) to become competent to speak, read and write in english; b) to reach normal achievement levels throughout the curriculum, including armenian folia anglistika methodology 66 the english language; c) to appreciate the traditions and culture of frenchspeaking canadians, as well as english-speaking canadians” (baker 1993:496). they initiatively addressed their local educational authorities to solve this issue. consequently, the solution in the form of programs aimed at creating the immersion environment for students in a language other than their mother tongue was developed and implemented also in other schools. on a voluntarily basis, the english-speaking children learnt school subjects in french (e.g. mathematics or geography) together with the french-speaking children. in the 1970s and 1980s the term “immersion” was used as a synonym of bilingual education. later on, immersion programs designed for teaching the content in the non-native language without weakening the command of the mother tongue spread all over canada, the united states and the rest of the world. much later, in the early 2000s, clil's approach reached europe, where it was seen as a new pedagogical philosophy, a means of linguistic consolidation of the society and a tool for multilingual development. historically, the term clil was introduced in 1994. by a researcher in the field of multilingual education, david marsh, who at that time conducted an analysis of language education in europe (the european dimension: actions, trends, and foresight potentials). then, in 2001, d. marsh accumulated the experience and knowledge and described a methodology, the essence of which was to learn a foreign language as a tool for studying subject-matter courses. in the future, the practice of introducing bilingual education in europe was implemented as a means to mitigate the problems associated with migration and multilinguism, but the practical implementation of this approach was carried out, mainly at the level of primary and secondary education. clil methodology for and against: general insight why clil? with the growing interest in clil, there are some reflections on doubts and settings limitations regarding foreign language benefits in clil education because any benefits are attributable as much to: a) student selection (incoming level), b) subject complexity and other curriculum-based factors, and c) teacher methodology armenian folia anglistika 67 awareness in methodology and their readiness to implement it. we will try to scrutinize the arguments in favour of clil with a consideration of the corresponding counter-arguments, while sounding a word of warning against the wholesale adoption of clil. clil instruction has at times been constructed as a kind of catalyst for change in classroom pedagogies, implying that it somehow causes a shift from (traditional) teacher-centered practices to (more innovative) student-centered learning arrangements. widely advertised as a “dual-focused approach” that gives equal attention to language and content (e.g., mehisto, marsh and frigols 2008:9), clil can be described as an educational approach where curricular content, or part of it, is taught through the medium of a foreign language, typically to students participating in some form of mainstream education at the primary, secondary, or tertiary level (puffer 2011). as we can see from the recent surveys (pérez-cañado 2011), clil is clearly on its way to becoming obligation, not an option, for tertiary education. against the background of internationalization and globalization perspectives, educational institutions face the need to create borderless education that entails the challenge of programme competitiveness and language acquisition. clil is considered as a driver for both. and what makes clil so attractive in current pedagogy (mainly focused on foreign language teaching) is that the content is expected to give the use of the foreign language a communicative purpose so “in this sense clil is the ultimate dream of communicative language teaching (e.g. brumfit and johnson 1979) and task based learning (e.g. willis 1996) rolled into one: …” (puffer 2007). much clil research, then, while clearly following more sophisticated conceptual orientations than policy papers, still tends to share the position that clil classrooms are somehow fundamentally different from foreign language lessons. clil is often understood as an educational model for content where the classroom provides the only site for learners’ interaction in the target language. therefore, clil is about either foreign language or lingua franca. this means that clil lessons are usually timetabled as content lessons (e.g., biology, music, armenian folia anglistika methodology 68 geography, mechanical engineering), while the target language normally continues as a subject in its own right in the shape of foreign language lessons taught by language specialists. for these reasons clil implies that teachers will normally be non-native speakers of the target language. they are not, in most cases, foreign language experts, but instead content experts, because “classroom content is not so much taken from everyday life or the general content of the target language” (puffer 2007). this model can be complicated by the fact that teaching in a foreign language can be affected by learners’ knowledge, skills, and understanding of the subject because the medium of learning is less perfectly known than to students in terms of a language and this will lead to reduced subject competence and to detrimental of subject knowledge. another fear that can be pointed out in this context is that clil teachers, among subject experts, will not have the required level in language proficiency and due to this reason will simplify the content of teaching, making this subject knowledge reduced. in this vein, the obvious clil courses benefits will be in foreign language enhancement, while the weaker point is content capacities low-speed development. research on the issue has been difficult to carry out because relatively few countries conduct standardized testing in science and social studies subjects. thus ready-made constructs of subject-specific competence in a particular area are hard to come by, making quantitative surveys and cross-country comparisons more problematic than those regarding language attainment. therefore, the definition of clil as a dual-focused approach has to be regarded as programmatic rather than factual, and practices that are “content-oriented but language sensitive” (wolff 2007:17) cannot be regarded as firmly established. for the time being, there are views that consider clil as a very reliable approach with less pain for the learners. it is worth asking the question what assumptions lie behind such expectations. these implicit baseline assumptions are in line with krashen’s (1985) monitor model, which continues to be the most prominent reception-based theory of language acquisition outside methodology armenian folia anglistika 69 academic research circles. as is well known, the basic idea of the model is that if the language learner is exposed to comprehensible input, acquisition will occur, especially if the learning situation is characterized by positive emotions. the latter condition is widely thought to be fulfilled in clil by virtue of the fact that language mistakes are supposedly neither penalized nor corrected in clil classrooms. applied linguistic research into clil has, naturally, made use of a wider theoretical base than this, starting with a focus on interaction (long 1996). a first approximation was formulated by gajo (2007) who suggested that “the notion of integration [of language and content] implies precise reflection on the linguistic aspect of subject knowledge and on the role of discourse in the learning process” (p. 568). another important theoretical influence has been swain’s output hypothesis (1995) and its claim that only the self-regulated production of utterances that encode learners’ intended meanings forces them to actively process morphosyntactic aspects of the foreign language, thereby expanding their active linguistic repertoire and achieving deeper entrenchment of what they already know. and to carry on with clil efficiency, it is worthwhile speaking about interactive knowledge-construction processes and how they influence the work of our brain. on clil as a brain activator much was told by teresa ting (20082018), the expert in neuroscience. in her paper “examples from clilneuroscience” she says: clil automatically change classroom dynamics – rather than downloading information onto passive learners, teachers guide them towards deep-level understanding of concepts through interactive knowledgeconstruction processes. such active learning is coherent with how the brain learns (ting 2010). then, she continues: the efficacy approaching science (content knowledge) through clil is explained by the fact that memory formation does not occur in isolation but is tightly linked to the neurobiological processes of fear, motivation and executive control. the main aspect of successful clil education, if done well, is right balance in complexity between language and content teaching. the concepts complexity or learning load in clil can seem very high, taking into consideration the double difficulty – armenian folia anglistika methodology 70 science-based concepts and knowledge and the second language as a language of instructions. this can bring some additional fears to learners and will put the barriers and lead to brain refusal to work with the information. the american association for the advancement of science (1989) and the national research council (1996) warn that, in “overemphasizing facts”, rather than helping learners cultivate a deep-level understanding of scientific concepts, science curricula inadvertently oblige teachers to download onto learners facts and formulas to explain odd-sounding terminology of phenomena that learners can neither see nor appreciate. worse still, if these details are embedded into the “alienating language of science”, children quickly come to believe that science is for the brainy few, propagating the opinion that “science is inaccessible and thus irrelevant for the general public” (halliday and martin 1993). in other words, no matter the complexity of concepts, the tasks offered to learners to deal with are to be solvable, the learning context should be more brain-aware or brain compatible and the didactic objective number one is to find this proper balance in practice. hence, the specific nature of clil courses is the right balance between the difficulty of content and language. this balance can be achieved by careful planning and selection of content that has a linguistic potential, as well as a simultaneous selection of language that is most typical for a professional field (ting 2011). in other words, clil = simple content + complex language or clil = complex content + simple language. that is, the increase in linguistic complexity should be compensated by a decrease in professional content complexity and vice versa. therefore, clil implies changes to the traditional repertories of language and non-language teachers, requiring the development of a special approach where educators work collaboratively to formulate new didactics for “a real integration and function in language teaching” (marsh 2008). concerns with theorizing the interaction of language and content are currently becoming a focus of attention for clil researchers. given equal importance to both content and language (marsh and marsland 1999), clil advocates a 50:50/content:language clil-equilibrium where the 50:language methodology armenian folia anglistika 71 component refers to the learners’ language. the central element in the success of clil (ting 2010) is that it elicits language from the learner, not the teacher. if 50% of the learning time is devoted to developing learner’s language, it is clear that the era of teacher-as-talking-encyclopedia must give way to more student-centered science education: clil automatically advocates “learning by construction rather than learning by instructions” (marsh 2009). moreover, as clil advocates content-learning not in a foreign language but through a foreign language (marsh 2005), educators are called upon to design activities in which language is used in an authentically purposeful search for understanding. done right, clil classroom are thus student-centered and investigative, very much in line with “neuroscience of learning”. the brain-compatible learning environment can be created if the fear level is decreased, whereas the motivation level is increased. the 50:50 clil learning environment is easily accommodated with the following filters, which enable to make the environment not only brain-compatible but investigative and interactive. there are 5 filters in total: a) the novelty filter: is the information new? b) the pleasantness filter: is the input enjoyable? c) the relevance filter: what does this have to do with my goal – do i need it – is it significant? d) the cope-ability filter: can i understand this? e) the self-social image filter: will knowing this make me “cool”? even so, it is clear that much more work needs to be done conceptually and empirically across different contexts for clil classroom methodology until clil concepts can be regarded as settled. at the present stage clil classrooms share a great deal more with traditional language lessons, in most cases making them language-led in subject-matter discourse. and in these cases there is nothing to differ clil methodology from the esp one and it is still the point for many universities to discuss and analyse. in summarizing clil advantages and conclusions regarding its “undisputable” efficacy with the accent to the evidence that content-based situations help steer learners’ attention from language forms to things armenian folia anglistika methodology 72 accomplished and meanings conveyed through language, making by this the right-balanced language-learning environment, which is the keystone for clil success, nevertheless, we assert that clil is not a panacea. why not clil? as considered above, clil is an approach to learning oriented towards achievement of a dual objective, where a foreign language is used as a means of teaching content and at the same time as the object of study. the efficacy of clil education has been already proved but by the same token currently we observe a diverse interpretation of clil methodology that is mostly affected by the difference in national and cultural contexts. what plays well in one setting, can have a counter effect in another one, just due to different input conditions and goals. answering the question why not clil we find the following reasoning. smith (2005) asks the pertinent question: “so why are we witnessing this quest to use a foreign language as the medium of instruction – trying to make the unnatural natural?” in a somewhat similar vein, mehisto, marsh and frigols (2008) state somewhat rhetorically that “common sense seems to say that students studying in a second language cannot possibly learn the same amount of content as students studying in their first language” (puffer 2011). some european clil proponents emphasise a language over context (coyle 2007:548), and “subject matter pedagogies and their integration with language pedagogies are being systematically overlooked”. wiesemes (2009) noted the high face validity of clil but also warned against clil becoming a trend or buzz word and nothing more because the lack of research base. he wrote “the political support for clil teaching is generally strong, concrete guidance and support for teachers implementing it are largely absent” (wiesemes 2009:16). the apparent attraction of clil, and some content-based (immersion) programmes (cammarata and tedick 2012; wesche 2010), is that the students get two for the price of one (puffer, nikula and smit 2010; zydatiß 2012): subject content and foreign language development simultaneously and interdependently. but in this there are some underwater stones and on it methodology armenian folia anglistika 73 bruton (2013) made the quite ironic conclusion that the fundamental argument for simultaneous content and foreign language learning relies on a “two-for-the price-of-one” (p. 588) perspective, which is often very attractive but can result in unfortunate, unintended consequences. concerning the learning of content, for example, he suggested “it would be possible to have the opposite, 1/2-for-2” result. mostly it is explained by the complexity of clil methodology, if done right, including special clil teachers training that will be targeted at clil (not esp methodology) teaching materials and other didactic instrumentation development. the subject-teachers competence for clil is very important because “if the content teaching is already below expected standards, as it seems to be in andalusia in spain, clil is probably not going to help, except for cases where there has been selection, in which case the overall averages might decrease. in germany, breidbach and viebrock (2012) suggest that “structural selectivity of clil appears to have a greater impact on student achievement than clil itself has on student achievement” (bruton 2011). whether clil is ultimately beneficial or not will depend on a number of contributing factors, but nobody will deny that clil is hard work for teachers, and it is no easy matter for students to advance in subject matter at the same time as in the foreign language (coonan 2007). very often the content is not only no help for the language development, but the lack of language might be a serious handicap and hindrance for content development (apsel 2012), if the foreign language is the real medium of instruction. furthermore, interaction in the foreign language is very often absent, and translation and first language use not atypical (mehisto 2008; tan 2011). in such cases there may be a need for extra foreign language support, which conflicts with the 2-for-1 formula. coonan (2007), actually documents the fact that this difficulty can be beneficial as content teachers might make more effort to make the subject-matter accessible, which might in turn influence their teaching in a native language. even so, if the students have problems with the content, it may be difficult for them to find help at home in a foreign language medium, especially in languages other than english, unless the same content is also available in their armenian folia anglistika methodology 74 native language. drop outs are another element of clil that are conveniently ignored (apsel 2012). clil practice at tomsk polytechnic university, russia (2011-2017) the clil story of tomsk polytechnic university we would like to preface with charles darwin’s quotation: “it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but rather the most responsive to change”. this is absolutely true that the need to respond the challenges of the time was the main motive to launch clil education in the form of separate courses in our university. here are some details. starting from 2011, rf national policies consider the language competence not only as a component of professional qualification of an engineer, but also as a tool to globalize and internationalize universities, to promote universities into international community (чучалин, велединская, ройз; 2004). the new national education strategy required some strong initiatives from the university management including new solutions in language education. university language policies reacted appropriately. the new “tpu roadmap 2020” aims among others to create a comfortable bilingual environment, which should contribute to a significant increase in the population of international students and activate teachers’ and students’ participation in international research carried out by the world’s leading centres (<http://tpu.ru/today/programs/viu>). the available resources were reformulated into a new clil-based course of professional training/course in a foreign language to support the reformed ideology. the new course inherited the significant teaching experience and the methodology, as well as materials accumulated by that time. however, the following question provoked the debate when new disciplines were put into practice: which language level should teachers possess to be able to deliver a clil course? can this course repeat some content previously learned in the russian language? what should be the nature of cooperation between language and content departments? what are the criteria to select teaching and learning material? how can a students’ low language level be compensated? many of the questions above remain open until present day. methodology armenian folia anglistika 75 materials and methods as we have already said – clil is debated much but it has not been welltermed yet and has the lack of practice base. all this is compounded by differences in cultural backgrounds and social-educational patterns, established in each country. “there is no single blueprint of content and language integration that could be applied in the same way in different countries – no model is for export” (marsh 2011); “clil resembles acupuncture: it works but nobody seems to know why” (van de craen, mondt, allain, gao 2007); “the political support for clil teaching is generally strong, concrete guidance and support for teachers implementing it are largely absent” (wiesemes 2009). thus, clil courses replaced the esp courses and interdisciplinary tandems, involving both language teacher and subject teacher in delivering one course. these tandems were unique by nature and, virtually, had no analogues in the russian higher education system. interdisciplinary tandems emerged in the practice of tpu in 2008 and existed until 2011. the main intended purpose of tandems was the collaboration of subject teachers and language teachers within one course. responsibility was distributed in accordance with the competences of teachers in the way that language teachers were responsible for the language component, while subject teachers were in charge of the subject knowledge delivering and skills development. such training was specified by the narrow professional scope of the courses, namely, a specific purpose was determined by a definite knowledge area, for example, not just information technology and biomedicine, but “databases” and “nanocomposite polymer materials”, etc. no doubt, this approach lies in the “kingdom” of the esp approach and fully adopts its methodology but at the same time it has a more precise content based on “special purpose”. however, there arises a question: “what prompted the university to move to a new level of this approach understanding?” the answer is rather simple, the university was triggered to make such a decision due to dissatisfaction with learning outcomes, which, according to a preliminary hypothesis, was the consequence of the limitations concerning the proposed learning context and context-based language forms that were chosen armenian folia anglistika methodology 76 as the teaching basis by language teachers, who did not have engineering education. it was confined to the formation of common professionally oriented skills and knowledge. in other words, the discussion of professional topics was reduced to the problems stating under the conditions of inability to find practical solutions. the effectiveness of the tandems was obvious; however, the massive introduction of such courses in the educational process required a significant increase in the time resource for the training materials development and implementation. in addition, this practice failed to provide the desired degree of sustainability while its effectiveness depended on a certain level of language proficiency (b2) of subject teachers. thus, the university had to abandon the “expensive” approach of tandems and make another attempt to optimize the resource and maximize performance by integrating subject and linguistic competencies as well as knowledge and to begin its clil history. consequently, by the time clil courses were introduced in the person of subject teachers the university already had quite much experience in delivering subjects in a foreign language. accordingly, there was also a certain toolkit of methodological practices, including those created with the help of linguists (language teachers). the transmission to clil-based teaching is not so easy. the main reason for it is that the approach has not been well-termed yet for the russian context and has the lack of practice base. in spite of its rather “long existence” in the world pedagogy, clil application is compounded with some differences in cultural backgrounds and social-educational patterns established in the countries of the world. we need first to identify 1) the degree of the approach appropriateness to our settings and 2) the reasons preventing its implementation. with the objective to find out whether russian universities understand how clil training should be structured and what methodology the approach has we conducted a survey among the subject teachers currently engaged in methodology armenian folia anglistika 77 clil in order to get a general impression of their satisfaction and understanding of the didactic goals they are to reach, and tasks they are to accomplish. survey results (russia) the survey comprised 35 subject teachers of tpu. the survey findings have indicated that the majority of the respondents are not satisfied with the conditions of teaching the subject in a foreign language, due to the fact that 50% of the respondents consider themselves to be insufficiently aware of the clil methodology and procedure, the goal of training, and what should be assessed. the mentioned obstacles preventing efficient implementation of clil were as follows:  different levels of students’ foreign language proficiency;  low motivation of students to study disciplines in a foreign language;  lack of opportunity to prepare course materials with the assistance of a language teacher/native speaker;  lack of ready-to-use materials;  lack of guidelines for assessing the knowledge of the students enrolled in clil courses;  inconsistency of opinions concerning the understanding of the learning objective;  insufficient levels of a foreign language among the subject teachers. the respondents put forward the following potential ways of solving the problem:  to provide the opportunity to study clil-techniques;  to develop interaction with language teachers to receive assistance in selecting and producing educational material;  to develop the programs of language internships abroad in order to support the language level;  to encourage interaction through workshops and meetings with the peers engaged in clil training. armenian folia anglistika methodology 78 here is some statistics: 25% of subject teachers produce the teaching materials with the language teachers’ assistance; 50% of respondents use the study guides previously developed during the tandem practices; 20% use esp materials; 20% develop materials by themselves on the basis of authentic text materials within the scope of the subject area. 50% of teachers choose technical translation as the main type of educational activities; 20% predominantly focus their courses on introduction and drilling terminology; 20% emphasize the practice of speaking in the form of presentations and discussions; 10% give priority to writing articles. the following learning objectives were highlighted (in the descending order):  expansion of subject knowledge through the use of literature in english and information resources,  study of terminology,  development of writing skills by writing reports and articles, including translation. as we can judge, the described situation does not quite correlate with the priority activities chosen by the teachers (the statistics is presented above). the survey findings indicate that the current clil practice is ambiguous with regards to understanding the learning objectives and the function of a teacher. as a matter of course, the purpose of training can be the expansion of the subject area through the use of english sources. however, this formulation does not present the teaching goal to learn a foreign language (the second goal, but not less important than the first one). also, the terminology of a subject area in the form of a separate subject knowledge domain is not quite justified to serve the purpose of the clil course because it cannot be considered separately and only the list of terms can be studied. regarding writing which includes terminology as well, it is unlikely that the involvement of a subject teacher in the education process would be appropriate due to the lack of the required qualifications and methodological knowledge for this. in this case, the replacement of a language teacher is not justified. technical translation is a special field of knowledge and, accordingly, methodology armenian folia anglistika 79 delivering this material will require certain competencies that are not completely identical to the merely practical skills of subject teachers which they use in their professional activities. thus, the above facts indicate the following: 1) clil courses are organized according to the principle “i am involved in clil training because i know a foreign language”, 2) clil methodology is not clearly used in practice, thus, understanding of clil methodology is questioned, 3) clil training materials are developed with no regard to the principles of the approach but are lectures translated into a foreign language. consequently, after analyzing the survey findings we became concerned with the requirements and conditions necessary for successful implementation of clil training. thus, we have attempted to systematize the preliminary study outcomes determining the effectiveness of the approach for university education. therefore, we assume that clil training requires the following: a) motivated teaching staff feeling no fear about using new forms and teaching tools; b) a qualified teaching staff having the set of competencies required for implementing clil training; c) possibility of obtaining additional competences in the field of clil pedagogy through advanced training programs; d) motivated students who understand the importance of a foreign language for building and developing the overall competence of an engineer; e) peer professional communities that discuss current issues related to clil training procedure; f) availability of a university-wide clil training conception performing the regulatory function of processes. clil practice at yerevan state university armenia definitely shares the opinion that clil approach can significantly improve the level of internationalization in the country, particularly in the field of higher education. thus, the approach is viewed as a new pedagogic armenian folia anglistika methodology 80 technology capable of improving the efficiency of educational system at management, content and motivation levels. as for clil in armenia, its implementation is currently episodic and, if implemented, is only partial, in single educational institutions. the problem is that the absence of a single scientific and methodological guidance on the nature, objectives and possibilities of the approach, and most importantly the lack of available mastering practices hampers the effective implementation of clil education in the country. it should be noted that in armenia more and more publications have been devoted to clil approach recently, which proves the high interest of the scientific community in the development of this direction at all levels of the educational system. however, armenia cannot fully accept and adopt the practices and techniques developed in the countries of the european union or the american continent, whose higher level of development is due to the earlier identification of linguistic, social and political needs for the consolidated and sustainable growth of the society. in armenia’s case, as in case with russia, the clil education needs to be preliminarily analyzed and tailored up with the conditions involving the national context and country needs. armenia reckons that for the effective implementation of the clil approach in the perspective of armenian higher education system, it is necessary to: 1) develop a concept of its implementation, taking into account national specificity of the educational system, 2) work out an adaptive methodology and 3) design programs for academic staff involved in clil instruction. to develop the concept and methodology of clil-instruction in the armenian universities, yerevan state university initiated the project – new clil for armenia – where the theories and practices existing at the moment in the foreign and armenian realities will be analyzed with the aim to obtain the data to be used further in composing graphical matrix describing inputs and outputs for the national clil models. the following methods and approaches will be used to carry out the indicated algorithm: methodology armenian folia anglistika 81 general scientific: analysis of methodological and pedagogical literature on the research problem; comparative analysis of existing practices for the implementation of clil instruction in armenian and foreign universities; analysis and description of the conditions of the armenian higher education system, influencing the implementation of the approach; analysis of national educational requirements and development of measures to meet those requirements using the clil approach. systematic: systematic presentation of the approach and its tools as a model, determining the key positions and principles of the clil concept for the armenian education system. pedagogical and interdisciplinary: development of methods, practices and pedagogical strategies when designing clil-courses and materials and their further approbation. pedagogical design: development of materials and methods of presentation, improving the mental activity and the level of perception; empirical: approbation of clil-instruction in armenian universities: study and overview of practical experience, adjustments statistical: surveys, interviews; data processing, quantitative and qualitative analysis of the approbation results. survey results (armenia) as mentioned above, clil practices in armenia are still of episodic character that impedes to collect more or less objective opinions of stakeholders involved. we initiated two attempts at yerevan state university to conduct surveys through google forms on clil outcomes and esp outcomes. the latter due to long practice turned to be more illustrative and for this reason it is a subject for analysis. the survey comprised 14 language teachers. the most part of them have had the esp experience (75%) more than 10 years, working with the language for specific purposes in such areas as: math, social studies, law, chemistry, psychology, business, etc. there is no divergence of views regarding the understanding of the word purpose in esp teaching. practically, this is the point where the general principles of language meet with those of subject armenian folia anglistika methodology 82 area: meet the need of students to run professional communication in real job world. among the three things that language teachers enjoy most in esp practice are: innovativeness, specific terminology, interdisiplinarity and academic freedom in choosing authentic materials. among three biggest challenges in esp teaching they named lack of specialized knowledge (content/subject), technology deficiency, and a limited number of hours. what the armenian language teachers miss in esp methodology is real life language skills, and this restricts their teaching practices and puts some limits on teaching freedom. despite the opinions illustrating “the lack of professionbased knowledge”, 100% of respondents stated that they do not feel the lack in qualification or the need in some additional training to work in esp environment, although 75% of esp teachers did not study any professional courses for doing esp, they gained the knowledge on how to do it in the process of teaching. the teachers pointed out – the application of digital media and new technologies in pedagogy as a means to improve the teaching performance. generally, esp teachers in armenia are satisfied with how esp is organized but they called upon three weak points in assessing standards: too much stress on summative assessment while formative assessment is neglected; too little differentiation that would support students of different language level; too much standardization that does not work in class. conclusion it is evident that different pedagogical approaches appear in response to emerging professional and social needs and challenges. the application of esp and clil at yerevan and tomsk universities do not allow deciding which one is better. the choice is determined by goals and available resources (human and material). the main principle in choosing is feasibility and applicability at a place. there is no need to start clil if you do not have the resource or special need for it, the chase for being innovative can lead to the results with the “sign minus”. meanwhile, if esp is a well-established practice and complies with the methodology armenian folia anglistika 83 university policy and curricula, there is no need to replace it with new “more innovative” approaches. nevertheless, clil as a new and younger methodology compared to esp needs to be worded in explicit terms and expanded with richer practices based on the national standards and cultural settings. clil multinational pool collected in collaborations is capable to guarantee the best practice transferability. references: 1. apresyan, m. (2007) “are there any clil schools in armenia?” // “windows on clil” content and language integrated learning in the european spotlight. graz, austria. 2. apsel, c. (2012) coping with clil: dropouts from clil streams in germany. // international clil research journal, 1(4), 47–56. available at: <http://www.icrj.eu/14/article5.html> [accessed may 2017]. 3. baker, c. (1993) foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism. clevedon, uk: multilingual matters. 4. bruton, a. (2011) is clil so beneficial, or just selective? re-evaluating some of the research. system, 39/4, pp. 523-532. 5. bruton, a. (2013) clil. some of the reasons why … and why not. // system 41, pp. 587–597. centraal bureau voor de statistiek (2013). available at: <http://www.cbs.nl/nlnl/menu/home/default.htm> [accessed december 2013]. 6. cammarata, l. & tedick, d.j. (2012). balancing content and language in instruction: the experience of immersion teachers. // the modern language journal, vol. 96(ii), pp. 251-269. doi:10.1111/j.154000267902/12/251–269. 7. chuchalin, a.i., veledinskaja, s.b., rojz, sh.s. (2004) formirovanie mul'tijazykovoj sredy – uslovija integracii universiteta v mirovoe obrazovatel'noe prostranstvo. // inzhenernoe obrazovanie, №2, s. 12-126. 8. coonan, c.m. (2007) insider views of the clil class through teacher selfobservation-introspection. // international journal of bilingual education armenian folia anglistika methodology 84 and bilingualism 10, vol. 5, pp. 625-46. 9. coyle, d. (2007) content and language integrated learning: towards a connected research agenda for clil pedagogies. // international journal of bilingual education and bilingualism, vol. 10(5), pp. 543-562. doi:10.2167/beb459.0. 10. dalton-puffer, c. (2007) discourse in content and language integrated learning (clil) classrooms. amsterdam: john benjamins. p. 330. available at: <https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168809341521> [accessed january 2014]. 11. dalton-puffer, c. (2011) annual review of applied linguistics, vol. 31, pp. 182–204. cambridge: cup, doi: 10.1017/s0267190511000092. 12. dalton-puffer, c., nikula, t. & smit, u. (2010) language use and language learning in clil: current findings and contentious issues. / ed. by c. dalton-puffer, t. nikula, & u. smit. amsterdam: john benjamins, pp. 279291. 13. gajo, l. (2007) linguistic knowledge and subject knowledge: how does bilingualism contribute to subject development? // international journal of bilingual education and bilingualism. vol. 10(5), pp. 563-581. 14. halliday, m.a.k. and martin, j.r. (1993) writing science: literacy and discursive power. pittsburgh: university of pittsburgh press. pp. 4-6, 8-11. 15. krashen, s.d. (1985) the input hypothesis: issues and implications. new york: longman. 16. long, m.h. (1996) the role of the linguistic environment in second language acquisition. // handbook of second language acquisition. / ed. by w.c. ritchie, & t.k. bhatia. new york: academic press, pp. 413-468. 17. maljers, a., marsh, d., wolff, d. (2007) windows on clil. content and language integrated learning in the european spotlight. alkmaar: european platform for dutch education. available at: <https://www.researchgate.net/publication /290828891> [accessed may 2017]. 18. marsh, d. (2005) adding language without taking away. guardian weekly, april 8. 19. marsh, d. (2008) language awareness and clil. // encyclopedia of methodology armenian folia anglistika 85 language and education. knowledge about language, 2nd edition, volume 6, new york, springer science+business media llc. / ed. by j. cenoz and n.h. hornberger. 20. marsh, d. (2009) clil for a knowledge society. available at: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=gb&hl=engb&v=tgnkemjbg4g&fea ture=related> [accessed september 2018]. 21. marsh, d. (2011) clil/emile. the european dimension. actions, trends, and foresight potential. jyva skyla: university of jyva skyla. 22. marsh, d., marsland, b. (1999) clil initiatives for the millennium. continuing education centre: university of jyväskylä. 23. mehisto, p. (2008) clil counterweights: recognizing and decreasing disjuncture in clil. // international journal of bilingual education and bilingualism 1/1, pp. 93-119. 24. mehisto, p., marsh, d. and frigols, m-j. (2008) uncovering clil: content and language integrated learning in bilingual and multilingual education. macmillan education. 25. pérez-cañado, m.l. (2011) clil research in europe: past, present and future. available at: <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254242 336> [accessed january 2014]. 26. piet van de craen, mondt, k., allain, l., gao, y. (2007) why and how clil works. an outline for a clil theory”. // clil special issues 2. vol.16 (3). 27. programma povyshenija konkurentosposobnosti niu tpu sredi vedushchikh mirovykh nauchno-obrazovatel'nykh centrov. available at: <http://tpu.ru/today/programs/viu> [accessed december 2017]. 28. smith, k. (2005) is this the end of the language class? // guardian weekly, january 21, 2005. available at: <http://education.guardian.co.uk/ tefl/teaching/ story/0,15085,1394830,00.html> [accessed september 2018]. 29. swain, m. (1995) three functions of output in second language learning. // principle and practice in applied linguistics: studies in honour of h.g. widdowson. / ed. by g. cook & b. seidlhofer. oxford: oup, pp. 125-144. 30. tan, m. (2011) mathematics and science teachers’ beliefs and practices armenian folia anglistika methodology 86 regarding the teaching of language in content learning. // language teaching research 15/3, pp. 325-42. 31. ting, t. (2010) in focus: clil appeals to how the brain likes its information: examples from clil-(neuro) science. // international clil research journal. vol. 1(3). 32. ting, t. (2011) clil ...not only not immersion but also much more than the sum of its parts. // elt journal 65 (3), pp. 314-317. doi:10.1093/elt/ccr026. 33. wesche, m.b. (2010) content-based second language instruction. // the oxford handbook of applied linguistics. / ed. by r.b. kaplan. oxford: oup, pp. 275-293. 34. wiesemes, r. (2009) developing theories of practices in clil: clil as post-method pedagogies? // content and language integrated learning: evidence from research in europe. / ed. by y. zarobe, and r. ratalan. bristol, uk: multilingual matters, pp. 41-59. 35. zydatiß, w. (2012) linguistic thresholds in the clil classroom? the threshold hypothesis revisited. // international clil research journal, 1/4. available at: <http://www.icrj.eu.> [accessed june 2017]. clil-ը որպես նորարական մեթոդաբանություն. ռուսաստանի և հայաստանի փորձը սույն հոդվածում ներկայացված են բովանդակության և լեզվի ինտեգրված ուսուցման (clil) մեթոդաբանությամբ իրականացվող փորձը և դիտարկումներն այն երկրներում, որոնք քառասուն տարի առաջ առաջնորդվում էին բարձրագույն դպրոցում օտար լեզուների ուսուցման ընդհանուր տեսլականով: այսօր սակայն, ակնհայտորեն մշակված է որոշակի կրթական քաղաքականություն: հոդվածում վերլուծվում է բովանդակության և լեզվի ինտեգրված ուսուցման (clil) ռուսաստանյան և հայաստանյան փորձը՝ հիմնված փորձարարական գործունեության վրա: վերլուծությունը կատարվել է տոմսկի ճարտարապետական և երևանի պետական համալսարաննեmethodology armenian folia anglistika 87 րում: հեղինակներն այդ համատեքստում փորձում են ի մի բերել clil-ի ընդհանուր տեսական սկզբունքներն ու հայեցակարգերը, համապատասխանեցնել դրանք փորձով ձեռք բերված իրական լսարանային տվյալներին, վերլուծել և վեր հանել իրավիճակի բարելավման համար անհրաժեշտ և երկու երկրների ազգային կրթական ոլորտներում ընդունելի միջոցները: հոդվածի տվյալները չեն ներառում համալսարաններում լեզուների ուսուցման բոլոր հայեցակարգերը, քանի որ դրանք, որոշակիորեն արտացոլելով ազգային ուսուցման փորձը, տարբեր դրսևորումներ են ստանում վերոնշյալ երկրներում: received by the editorial board 24.01.2019 recommended for publication by the reviewers 12.03.2019 accepted for print 22.04.2019 microsoft word 1.linguistics 7 54 (3) linguistics armenian folia anglistika 27 the role of metaphor in technical term-formation hasmik ghajoyan national polytechnic university of armenia abstract nowadays metaphor is not considered to be a solely literary expressive means. the human mind is both rational and emotional. in terms we both think and act, it is fundamentally metaphorical in nature. today this idea has gained so wide an acknowledgement that it can be the basis of the contemporary approach to metaphor study. the aim of this article is to analyze the role of terminological metaphor in one specialized field of language, in the process of technical term-formation. the focus is on the field of computing and the respective conclusion that metaphorical transfer is a key process in the formation of technical terms in electronics and information technologies. key words: metaphor, technical terms, terminological metaphor, conceptual metaphor, metaphorical transfer in computing. “a metaphor is a kind of magical mental changing room – where one thing, for a moment, becomes another, and in that moment is seen in a whole new way forever.” (james geary 2012) introduction the study of metaphor dates back to aristotle (1927:66) who studied metaphor as a literary device. according to him one of the first classifications of metaphor is to transfer the word changing the meaning from sort to form and from form to sort by analogy. cicero (in freidenberg 1996:218) treats metaphor as a way of formation of a meaning which does not exist in language, and the transfer of the meaning on similarity is made because of the absence of the corresponding concept of the word in language. modern life is rapidly developing constantly bringing us new ideas, inventions, devices which influence not only our lifestyle but also our language. technical communication requires knowledge and understanding of some armenian folia anglistika linguistics 28 technical processes, their components and applications. thus, we need specific linguistic units and structures which can express conceptual categories. new conceptual structures are frequently described with elements already existing in language. one of the ways of creating new language structures by means of the existing ones is the metaphorical use of language. by means of metaphor the structures from one conceptual domain are mapped to another, thus making it possible to understand one word by means of another. this process is especially relevant in the formation of terminological metaphors. terminological metaphor is a new field of investigation which deals to a greater extent with conceptual metaphor. lakoff and johnson (1980:5) as well as black (1990:153-172) considered metaphor a source of reinforcement of lexical structure of the language. as stated by the authors, it is not possible to do without metaphor even in the language of science. according to them metaphors are part of our everyday life. metaphors are not only used in language, but they are also used in our thought and actions. our ordinary conceptual system, in terms we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature. the metaphoric thought is a mechanism of thought that is constantly used for communication among people and to the comprehension of the world. conceptual metaphors operate in our thought (lakoff 1993:203). this idea has gained such wide acknowledgement that it can be the basis of the contemporary approach to metaphor study. according to lakoff and johnson’s traditional distinction, there are three major types of metaphor: conceptual metaphors, metaphorical expressions and image metaphors. the time of political, economic and technological changes have forced people to use powerful linguistic tools to express their thoughts, and the conceptual type of metaphor is considered to be a means to achieve this goal. metaphor as a means of technical term-formation metaphor as a language phenomenon is different from metaphor in artistic speech. language metaphor is understood first of all as an element of the lexical system of language used by all native speakers as a ready-made means with a definite meaning. scientific language is precise, strict and devoid of expressiveness and emotiveness. thus, metaphor in scientific language differs from metaphor in common use. language metaphor has its specific place in linguistics armenian folia anglistika 29 terminology, especially in the sphere of electronics and information technologies. texts concerning these fields are very rich in metaphors as the common words connected with important vital needs which have been created in the course of human activities are penetrating into the world of electronics and information technologies. most of the terms in these fields are formed by means of narrowing of the meaning of the word and by metaphorical transfer, or metaphorical extension. thus, for example, the electronic term current has been created by the metaphorical extension or comparison with the current of water, or the current of air on the basis of common characteristics of the concept of movement. terms are classified according to their denominative peculiarities. if we consider software to be a human being, we will have the metaphorical image of being intelligent, friendly. considering the fact that language affects various spheres of human activity (including the activity in the field of electronics and information technologies) we classify metaphors into anthropological and non-anthropological ones. anthropological metaphors reflect physical, moral and intellectual qualities, and social activities of the human being. thus, for example some words denoting professions are used as technical terms in their metaphorical meaning. the word actor in common lexicon describes someone who performs in a play, film, etc. (this and other meanings presented in the article are taken from the dictionaries mentioned in the references), while as a technical term it means an objectoriented language developed by the whitewater group, ltd. the word administrator describes someone whose job is connected with the management and organization of a company whereas in its metaphorical meaning it denotes a power user who controls everything in a web site. the same can be said in reference to the word agent. it describes a person or company that represents another person or company in business, in their legal problems, while as a technical term it means a program that performs a background task for a user and reports to the user when the task is done, or some expected event has taken place. the names of the parts of the body, words showing relations become technical terms in their metaphorical meaning. thus, for example the word backbone means the row of a connected bones that go down the middle of your back in its direct meaning, while as a technical term it is used to describe cable segments that connect computers in a straight line. child means baby, infant in its direct meaning, whereas in its metaphorical meaning it shows a process armenian folia anglistika linguistics 30 initiated by another process (the parent). some other examples are illustrated in the table: word direct meaning metaphorical meaning 1. arm one of the two long parts of your body between your shoulders and your hands it is the long thin part of the machinery that looks and moves like an arm 2. body the physical structure of a person in e-mail and internet newsgroups the content of a message 3. compiler someone who collects different pieces of information or facts to be used in a book, report, etc. a software program that converts computer programming language into machine language that the computer can interpret 4. compile to make a list, record using different pieces of information to put a set of instructions into a computer in a form that you can understand and use 5. deselect to refuse to choose an existing member of parliament to remove something from a list choices on a computer 6. disarm to reduce the size of your armed forces and the number of weapons tо transfer to the mode on duty 7. face the front part of the head from chin to the forehead one side of a solid object 8. family a group of people who are related to each other a series of hardware or software products that have some properties in common linguistics armenian folia anglistika 31 9. feed to give food to a person or animal to advance paper through a printer device 10. finder someone who finds something the standard interface to the macintosh. the finder allows the user to view the contents of directories (folders); to move, copy, and delete files and launch applications. 11. finger to touch or handle something with your fingers to obtain information on a user by means of the finger program 12. fingerprint (v.) to press someone’s finger on ink and then press it on the paper in order to make a pattern of lines at the end of the finger to scan a computer system to discover what operating system (os) the computer is running 13. fingerprint a mark made by the pattern of lines at the end of a person’s finger information embedded or attached to a file or image to uniquely identify it 14. handler someone who trains an animal a routine that manages a common and relatively simple condition or operation, such as error recovery or data movement 15. handshake the act of taking someone’s right hand and shaking it a series of signals acknowledging that communication or the transfer of information can take place between computers or other devices 16. head the top part of your body the read/write mechanism in a disk or tape drive. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 32 17. inherit to receive money, property from someone after they have died to acquire the characteristics of another class, in object-oriented programming 18. inheritance money, property that you receive from someone who has died the transfer of the characteristics of a class in object-oriented programming to other classes derived from it 19. leader the person who directs or controls a team a row of dots, hyphens, or other such characters used to lead the eye across a printed page to related information 20. orphan a child whose parents are both dead the first line of a paragraph printed alone at the bottom of a page or column of text, or the last line of a paragraph printed alone at the top of a page or column. 21. populate if an area is populated by a particular group of people, they live there 1. to put chips in the sockets of a circuit board. 2. to import prepared data into a database from a file using a software procedure rather than by having a human operator enter individual records 22. push to press a button to send data or a program from a server to a client at the instigation of the server. 23. thumbnail the nail on your thumb a miniature version of an image or electronic version of a page that is generally used to allow quick browsing through multiple images or pages linguistics armenian folia anglistika 33 24. widow a woman whose husband has died and who has not married again a last line of a paragraph, shorter than a full line, appearing at the top of a page non-anthropological metaphors reflect the reality surrounding the human being. these may be the names of animals, household goods, clothes, plants or trees, and abstract concepts. metaphorical transfer is carried out from the names of animals to objects. thus, for example the word mouse means a small furry animal in its direct meaning, while as a technical term it means a common pointing device. this device looked like a mouse with a tail, whereas the cursor on the computer screen is used to be called a cat, so it was natural that the cat would chase the mouse. another word apple means a fruit that has a red, light green, yellow skin in its direct meaning, while in its metaphorical meaning it is associated with high end brand apple mac computers, apple ipads, etc. the word cookie is associated with a flat, dry, sweet cake usually sold in packets, whereas as a technical term it is a block of data that a server returns to a client in response to a request from the client. it is derived from magic cookies which refer to video games where the players had to gain magic cookies in order to advance. the name of the clothing jacket means a short, light coat while as a technical term it denotes the outside covering of a cable or wire. the word bucket as a household goods means an open container with a handle whereas in its metaphorical meaning it describes a region of memory that is addressable as an entity and can be used as a receptacle to hold data. other examples of nonanthropological metaphors are demonstrated in the table. word direct meaning metaphorical meaning 1. anchor a piece of heavy metal that is lowered to the bottom of the sea, lake, etc. to prevent a ship moving a format code in a desktop publishing or word processing document that keeps an element in the document 2. bird a creature with wings and feathers that lay eggs and can fly a satellite armenian folia anglistika linguistics 34 3. boot a type of shoe that covers your whole foot and the lower part of your leg the process of starting or resetting a computer 4. boot (v.) to kick someone or something hard to start or reset a computer by turning the power on 5. branch a part of tree that grows outwards from the trunk any connection between two items such as blocks in a flowchart or nodes in a network 6. bridge a structure built over a river, road, etc. that allows people or vehicles to cross from one side to the other a device that connects networks using the same communication protocols so that information can be passed from one to the other 7. briefcase a case used for carrying papers or documents a system folder in windows 9x used for synchronizing files between two computers, usually between desktop and laptop computers 8. bus a large vehicle that people pay to travel on a set of hardware lines (conductors) used for data transfer among the components of a computer system 9. button a small round flat object on your shirt, coat a graphic element in a dialog box that, when activated, performs a specified function 10. cell the smallest part of a living thing that can exist independently the intersection of a row and a column in a spreadsheet 11. device a plan or trick, especially for dishonest purpose a generic term for a computer subsystem linguistics armenian folia anglistika 35 12. gate a frame that you can open and close to get through an electronic switch that is the elementary component of a digital circuit 13. jar a round glass container with a wide lid a file name extension that identifies a compressed jar (java archive) file 14. jumper a piece of clothing made of wool a small plug or wire that can be connected between different points in an electronic circuit in order to alter an aspect of a hardware configuration 15. plant a living thing that has leaves and roots the cables that connect all the computers in a local area network 16. pine a tall tree with long sharp leaves one of the most commonly encountered programs for reading and composing e-mail on character-based unix systems 17. pool a small area of still water in a hollow place the dynamic distributed area 18. port a place where ships stop an interface through which data is transferred between a computer and other devices 19. score the number of points that each team or player has won in a game or competition when referring to a spelling checker, a score is a number that indicates how much a replacement word differs from the original misspelled word 20. seat a place where you can seat one workstation or computer, in the context of software licensing on a per-seat basis armenian folia anglistika linguistics 36 21. seed a small hard object produced by plants a starting value used in generating a sequence of random or pseudorandom numbers 22. shell a hard outer part that covers or protects a nut, egg, or seed and some types of animal a piece of software, usually a separate program, that provides direct communication between the user and the operating system 23. skyscraper a very tall modern city building one of several larger formats for online ads developed to replace traditional banner ads on the internet 24. sink a large open container, especially in a kitchen a device or part of a device that receives something from another device 25. spider a small creature with eight legs which makes networks of thread for catching insects an automated program that searches the internet for new web documents and indexes their addresses and contentrelated information in a database 26. turtle an animal that has a soft body covered by a hard shell a small on-screen shape, usually a triangle or a turtle shape, that acts as a drawing tool in graphics thus, the role of metaphor in technical term-formation is to demonstrate available information transfer which is based on cognitive mechanisms of human memory. the metaphorical terms connect new concepts with the ones which already exist in language, thereby providing maximum efficiency of interaction of common lexicon and technical terms. terms created by metaphorical transfer are obviously brief, accurate, clear. conclusion having analyzed metaphorical terms used in electronics and information technologies we can conclude that these new terms are created from the words linguistics armenian folia anglistika 37 existing in common lexicon by means of metaphorical transfer. metaphorical transfer is considered to be a key process in the formation of technical terms in the mentioned spheres. the study shows that a lot of technical concepts have inanimate and inorganic properties, and the metaphors that are used to express these properties frequently become animate and organic. the understanding of unknown concepts by means of the known ones effects our cognitive thinking and creates a basis for new scientific observations and discoveries. references: 1. aristotle (1927) poetika. leningrad: academia. 2. arutyunova, n.d. (1979) yazikovaya metafora (sintaksis i leksika). // lingvistika i poetika. m.: nauka. 3. akhmanova, o.s. (2007) slovar lingvisticheskikh terminov. m.: komkniga. 4. black, m. (1990) metafora. // teoriya metafori. / tr. into russian from english. m.: progress. 5. collin, s.m.h. (2004) dictionary of computing. gb: bloomsbury publishing plc. 6. freidenberg, o. (ed.) (1996) antichniye teorii yazika i stilya. / tr. into russian from ancient greek and latin. m.: russkiye slovari. 7. geary, j. (2012) i is an other: the secret life of metaphor and how it shapes the way we see the world. ny: harper perennial. 8. illinguorta, v.; gleizer e.l.; payla, i.k. (1989) tolkoviy slovar’ po vychislitel’nym sistemam. m.: mashinostroenie. 9. kolisnichenko, d.n. (2009) anglo russkii tolkovii slovar kompyuternikh terminov. m.: nauka i tekhnika. 10. lakoff, g. and johnson, m. (1980) metaphors we live by. chicago: university of chicago press. 11. lakoff, g. (1993) the contemporary theory of metaphor. metaphor and thought. / ed. by a. ortony. uk, cambridge: cup. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 38 öáë³μ»ñáõãû³ý ¹»ñá ï»ëýçï³ï³ý ï»ñùçýý»ñç ëï»õíù³ý ·áñíáýã³óáõù êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù ùýýáõãû³ý են »ýã³ñïíáõù ÷áë³μ»ñáõãûáõýý áõ ýñ³ ¹»ñá ï»ëýçï³ï³ý ï»ñùçýý»ñç ëï»õíù³ý ·áñíáýã³óáõù: î»ñùçýý»ñá ï³ñáõ »ý áõý»ý³é ÷áë³μ»ñ³ï³ý çù³ëï՝ ³é³ñï³ýý»ñç, »ñ¨áõûãý»ñç, ñ³ïï³ýçßý»ñç, çñáõáõãûáõýý»ñç ùçç¨ ³éï³ áñ¨¿ ý»ñùçý ï³ù ³ñï³ùçý ýù³ýáõãû³ý ñçù³ý íñ³: ¸ñ³ýù ï³ñáõ »ý éçý»é ù³ñùýç ù³ë óáõûó ïíáõ μ³é»ñ, ï»ý¹³ýçý»ñç ³ýáõýý»ñ, ïû³ýùç ¨ ßñç³å³ïáõ »ñ¨áõûãý»ñç ³ýí³ýáõùý»ñ: öáë³μ»ñ³ï³ý³óù³ý ³ñ¹ûáõýùáõù ó¨³íáñí³í ï»ëýçï³ï³ý ï»ñùçýý»ñá ¹³éýáõù »ý ïíû³é μý³·³í³éç éççñ³í ³ý¹³ù ¨ é³ûý ïçñ³éáõãûáõý ·ïýáõù ³û¹ μý³·³í³éáõù: microsoft word contens verjin armenian folia anglistika linguistics 62 language and gender in political discourse anna knyazyan, varduhi hakobyan yerevan state university abstract this article covers the problem of male and female speech differences in political discourse. male and female politicians use different language tools in order to make the message comprehensible to the listener. most studies of male and female language reveal women as considerably less influential than men. however, our study shows that women’s role in political activity becomes increasingly important and deserves higher attention. the analysis of the speeches of political leaders gives us the idea that there are several differences which are notable in verbal communication when what we are after is gender. the article aims to identify male and female linguistic features in the speeches of two political leaders: donald j. trump and hillary r. clinton. key words: language, gender, political discourse, gender differences, verbal behavior. introduction sex differences are a fundamental fact of human life and it is not surprising to find them reverberated in language. there is perhaps no better way to understand human behavior as a whole than to analyze the differences between males and females. everybody has a different style of communicating with other people. our style depends on a lot of things: where we are from, how and where we were brought up, our educational background, our age, and it can also depend on our gender. men and women are “metaphysically” different. every bit, every cell in a boy is male, every cell is female in a woman, and must remain so. women can never feel or know as men do. and in the reverse, men can never feel and know, dynamically, as women do. men and women talk linguistics armenian folia anglistika 63 differently. they speak in particular ways and those ways are associated with their gender. these gender differences can be noticed in different domains, as well as in politics. political discourse is identified by its actors or authors, that is to say politicians. politicians seek to comply with emotions, desires, and needs of the audience. in general, the goal of politicians is not primarily to present facts but to be persuasive. political speech is just the most evident case where the exact choice of words and expressions may influence the audience to think or even do what a political speaker wants them to think or do. the language of politicians should be viewed through gender approach which implies making a purposeful impact on audiences by using certain characteristic features. male and female politicians try to use different linguistic tools to preserve and defend their positions in the political discourse. political speeches need to contain highlights and memorable phrases to be remembered and to catch the attention of people beyond the special interest group. politicians use different linguistic tools for making abstract political issue accessible to the listener and to emphasize or soften certain issues. female and male politicians use their appropriate language in order to win their fight. male and female speech differences in political discourse generally speaking, political power has been a masculine domain. but nowadays women’s role in political activity becomes important and deserves higher attention. the analysis of the speeches of male and female political leaders gives us the opportunity to examine the differences that are notable in verbal communication when gender is concerned. the first linguistic feature that we observed and analyzed in our study is question. in their speeches, politicians use a number of expressions of inquiry that invite a reply. questions notify that an idea is not absolute and therefore provide opportunities for collaboration (homles 1992). the use of expressions of inquiry is different, it depends on gender. for example, women mostly use questions to facilitate communication and express their opinions. hillary clinton uses tag questions expecting opportunities for collaboration. e.g.: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 64 “but i also, through you, want to talk to people who are still making up their minds, believe it or not, right?” “you know, donald trump is doing his best to confuse, mislead, and discourage the american people. i mean, he's such a downer, right?” “beyond partisanship and politics, it's a hopeful, inclusive america where everyone counts and everyone has a place, right?” “you got it. you got it. and it also means when you're knocked down, what matters is whether you get up again. i have been fighting for families and underdogs my entire life. i'm not stopping now. we're just getting warmed up, right?” 1 this particular type of tag question is used by hillary clinton to express her own opinions. male politicians tend to use self-dialogues. they invite listeners to participate in the conversation but they mostly use self-dialogues. for example in his speech d. trump asks: “in less than 8 years, 10 trillion dollars has been added. think of it and we haven't fixed anything. we haven't fixed anything. what have we done? ” and then he tries to answer to his question.“our roads are broken, our bridges, our tunnels, our hospitals, our schools, and we have 20 trillion in debt. all-time high. that's true, our va hospitals are in bad shape. va is in very very bad shape and we will fix that. we are going to work on fixing that because our veterans are not treated properly. we have illegal immigrants that are treated far better in many instances than our veterans and we're not going to have that. it is revenue neutral”.2 the second linguistic feature that we analyzed in our study is qualifiers. hillary clinton and donald trump use a number of qualifiers in their speeches. our study showed that h. clinton mostly uses relative qualifiers, such as some, linguistics armenian folia anglistika 65 occasionally, almost. relative qualifiers make the statement less certain and as women’s language invites input, they are characteristic of female speakers. e.g.: “and here's some really good news. this is amazing. more than 20 million people have already voted in this election, most of those votes in the last few days, 3 million of those votes from right here in florida. now, you only see numbers like that when people are standing up for what they really believe in. so if all of you vote, if your friends, your family, your coworkers vote, if everyone you talk to between now and election day votes, we are going to make some really big history on november the 8th”. 3 male speakers tend to be more decisive, and d. trump also tends to use absolute qualifiers such as all, never. they make his speech more exact. e.g.: “all americans living lawfully in this country, including millions of patriotic hardworking immigrants, are entitled to have their jobs, their wages, and their security protected. the borders around our nation are for the benefit of all people living here today – and when those borders are erased, it's often the lawful immigrants already here who are the first to suffer lost jobs and decreased security.” 4 politicians tend to use a lot of hedges in their speeches to show that they share values with the audience and understand their beliefs. j. coates (1997) defined hedges as linguistic forms which reflect the speaker’s certainty or uncertainty about the current situation. h. clinton tends to use such hedges as you know, well. these hedges signal the confidence that she shares values with the audience. e.g.: “i met a young woman just yesterday in north carolina who said, 'nobody really explained to me and my family what i was getting into.' i hear that so much. you know, these financial aid forms, one armenian folia anglistika linguistics 66 is called fafsa, it takes forever to fill out, and at the end of it you really don't know what it means? well, we're going to be really explicit. you know, we do have technology in america. and we ought to use it more to help people understand what they're getting into and to provide alternatives so that they don't make the wrong decisions for themselves”. “and we started a fund to help fill those gaps, and, you know, we did it over so many years now, about 35 years, and we've helped thousands of people, so they didn't have to drop out”. 5 as we can remark, she often puts well at the beginning of the sentences, which gives her time to think about her answers. besides hedges, women tend to use a number of exaggerated expressive means. h. clinton tends to use emphatic so and very, which gives a special intonation to her speech. e.g.: “i was very honored today to earn the endorsement of john warner, a retired republican senator, world war ii veteran, former – former secretary of the navy who served under two republican presidents. i served with him on the senate armed services committee. and i have the deepest respect for his patriotism. and it's a great honor. he's never endorsed a democrat for president before. and i'm also very grateful that a number of republicans and independents here in new hampshire have announced their support for this campaign. in fact, it is really an extraordinary honor that 150 republicans here in new hampshire are supporting this campaign because they understand how high the stakes are”. 6 robin lakoff proposed that women are more likely to use tentative speech than men (lakoff 1975). our study shows that d. trump is more dominant and linguistics armenian folia anglistika 67 aggressive in his speech patterns than h. clinton. h. clinton makes stronger use of tentative speech. she uses this language strategy as a mechanism to generate audience participation and reaction and keep levels of high collaboration. meanwhile, d. trump tends to use a more direct, assertive style. he uses tentative language either to infuse humor in his speeches, or to assault his opponent. e.g.: “our seals took the time to move the women and children, bin laden’s family members, to safety, before destroying the helicopter. that is what honor looks like. that is america at our best. maybe the soldiers of other nations wouldn’t have bothered, or maybe they’d have taken revenge on those family members of terrorists. but that is not who we are. and anyone who doesn’t understand that doesn’t understand what makes our nation great”.7 “hillary is, and has been, in politics since the 70s. what’s her pitch? the economy is busted? the government’s corrupt? washington is failing? “vote for me. i’ve been working on these problems for 30 years. i can fix it”, she says. i wasn’t really sure if hillary was going to be here tonight, because i guess you didn’t send her invitation by email. or, maybe, you did and she just found out about it through the wonder of wikileaks”. 8 on the other hand, our research shows that the use of emotions by men is often associated with power and assertiveness. the use of emotion is mounted to express deeply felt sentiments about a particular issue or behavior. at the same time, the use of emotions by women provokes negative reactions among the audience. d. trump uses more words of anger than h. clinton. but she uses words of anger only in situations where values and principles are violated and the situation dictates a more direct answer. e.g.: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 68 “keep calling him out and rejecting the hateful, bigoted rhetoric that seeks to pit americans one against each other, and continue making the case in every way for our vision of an america that is “stronger together.” an america where all our children have the choice to live up to their god-given potential, no matter where they come from, or what they look like, or what the circumstances of their lives have been” 9 “i will fight for you against the special interests, against the corrupt politicians and against the powerful insiders. let me be your champion. in all things, it’s time to put americans first – and start taking care of each other.” 10 in some situations, in order to dissolve the feeling of anger and frustration, d. trump and h. clinton use some swear words. but if we compare their speeches, we will understand that d. trump uses more swear words than h. clinton. e.g.: “i’m running out of things but i’m going to tell you one thing. in a donald trump administration, there will be no bullshit. thank you very much.” 11 conclusion thus, the examples which are analysed in the present article, will suffice to show that female politicians have their specific methods and appropriate use of words in order to win their fight. male and female politicians’ speech, as a whole, becomes an instrument which serves for various purposes. the investigation shows that the right choice of gender approach conveys vividness and interest to the politician’s language, proving its impact on the audience. in some cases the boundaries between masculinity and femininity are erased or manifested implicitly. sometimes female politicians try to cross these limits linguistics armenian folia anglistika 69 this is conditioned by the fact that female political leaders tend to preserve and defend their positions by imitating masculine manners of speech. notes: 1. hillary clinton. remarks at the manor complex in wilton manors, florida. available at: <http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=119697> [accessed september 2017]. 2. donald j. trump. remarks on proposals for the first 100 days in office at the eisenhower complex in gettysburg, pennsylvania. available at: <http://www. presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=119875> [accessed september 2017] 3. hillary clinton.remarks at the manor complex in wilton manors, florida. available at: <http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=119697> [accessed september 2017]․ 4. donald j. trump. remark at henderson pavilion in henderson, nevada. available at: <http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=119169> [accessed september 2017]․ 5. hillary clinton. remarks at the university of new hampshire in durham. available at: <http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=119164> [accessed september 2017]․ 6. hillary clinton. remarks at the university of new hampshire in durham. available at: <http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=119164> [accessed september 2017]․ 7. hillary clinton talks about american exceptionalism at amerian legion convention. available at: <https://hillaryspeeches.com/2016/08/31/>[accessed september 2017]․ 8. donald j. trump. remarks at the wnc agricultural center's davis event center in fletcher, north carolina. available at: <http://www.presidency. ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=119185> [accessed september 2017]. 9. hillary’s vision for america. available at: <https://www.hillaryclinton. com/briefing/updates/2016/09/08/in-kansas-city-clinton-reflects-on-her-faithand-the-belief-that-we-are-stronger-together/> [accessed september 2017]․ 10. donald j. trump. remarks at a rally at canton memorial civic center in canton, ohio. available at: <http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/ index.php?pid=119190> [accessed september 2017]․ armenian folia anglistika linguistics 70 11. donald j. trump. remarks on immigration at the phoenix convention center in phoenix, arizona. available at: <http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index. php?pid=119805> [accessed september 2017]. references: 1. holmes j. (1992) women, men and politeness. new york: longman․ 2. coates, j. (1997) language and gender oxford: blackwell․ 3. lakoff r. (1975) language and woman’s place. new york: harper and row. լեզուն և գենդերը քաղաքական խոսույթում հոդվածը նպատակ ունի բացահայտել տղամարդ և կին քաղաքական գործիչների (դոնալդ թրամփի և հիլարի քլինթոնի) խոսքի լեզվական առանձնահատկությունները: քաղաքական և սոցիալ-տնտեսական բնույթի համընդգրկուն տեղաշարժերի հետևանքով, շոշափելիորեն խորանում է գենդերային փոխհարաբերությունների անհամաչափությունը հասարակական կյանքում, որն էլ իր դրսևորումն է գտնում քաղաքական, իրավական, հոգեբանական, տնտեսական, սոցիալական, մշակութային, լեզվական և այլ ոլորտներում: գենդերային տարբերությունների գիտակցումը կարող է էապես կարևոր դեր խաղալ համապատասխան փոխընկալում և փոխըմբռնում ապահովելու գործում: մեր ուսումնասիրությունը ցույց է տալիս, որ կանանց դերը քաղաքական գործունեության մեջ դառնում է ավելի կարևոր և արժանի է ուշադրության: maket 2013:layout 1.qxd functional-communicative study of adversative and causal discourse markers siranush khandanyan, liza mardoyan yerevan state university w ithin the framework of the following article we will focus on the peculiarities of english adversative and causal discourse markers (dms), mainly their functional and communicative study. the whole study would be incomplete if we did not take into consideration the role of discourse with its two forms written and spoken. the whole discourse may be presented in the form of a specific building which is being constructed due to every new “brick” put on its foundations. discourse markers are the “pillars” that help the “bricks” to construct the building. our main concern will be to define discourse, distinguish between its varieties and clarify the status of discourse markers in the study of discourse. the field of discourse is explored by the specifications of different types of discourse markers and by the revelation of their functional peculiarities in the organization of written text, their role in the achievement of coherent speech or speech patterns (monologue or dialogue) in written language. since the study of discourse markers is rather new in linguistics their functional and communicative study is not devoid of difficulties and presents special consideration. the diversity of the discourse field leads us to undertake a multidimensional linguistic inquiry of discourse study textual discourse (determines how sentences/utterances are organized to form texts), pragmatic discourse (determines how sentences/utterances are related to the intentions of language users). the whole nature of textual and pragmatic interpretation of dms changes when we deal with dialogues and monologues in written discourse, which were taken as a main domain of our research on communicative function of adversative and causal dms. in this case dms have to carry out their role as text organizers and the elements introducing interactional features. it is due to this pragmatic and functional approach in the study of dms that we witness their shift to multifunctionality (the ability to act as texture connector or pass to pragmatic use in written domain) (ariel 1998:121). irrespective of the predominance of textual or pragmatic function, the common thing that all dms share is connectivity. as opposed to other cohesive devices (conjunctions), discourse markers involve speaker choice. this is the reason why they are easily shifted from semantic domain into pragmatic one to fulfill the communicative function of the situational context. thus, our main investigational routine is greatly connected with the investigation of the shift from semantic (textual) to pragmatic domain. irrespective of the main theories dealing with the study of discourse markers they abridge in the sense that they perceive similarly the main functions carried out by discourse markers they act as contextual coordinates, they index adjacent utterances to the speaker/hearer or both, and they index the utterance to prior or subsequent discourse (schiffrin 1995:52). within the boundaries of this article we will try to focus on those dms which are very essential for the interpretation of discourse. it is the adversative and causal dms that are armenian folia anglistika linguistics 62 endued with the ability of linking the sentence elements both formally and mentally, since adversative dms indicate a contrary result or opinion to the content mentioned above. on the other hand, the importance of causal dms in text organization is due to the need of justifications, reasoning, explanations and the addition of a new statement. as we are concerned with the clear-cut scrutiny of adversative dms, we find it necessary to present a range of adversative dms, illustrated by fraser: but, alternatively, although, contrariwise, contrary to expectations, conversely, despite (doing) this/that, however, even so, in contrast (with/to this/that), in comparison (with/to this/that), on the contrary, nevertheless, nonetheless, regardless, still, as a matter of fact, at any rate, instead, yet, contrary to this (that), on the other hand, rather (than (do) this/that, still whereas, etc. (fraser 1999:145). however, for the complete revelation of the peculiarities of adversative markers included in this range, we will speak about the notion of adversity and contrast. according to schwenter contrast can be manifested indirectly but adversity provides explicit marking of clashes between different viewpoints with the help of discourse markers bearing the meaning of adversity (schwenter 1999:126). the academy had an unquestionable beauty and its library was rather modest. (th. more “utopia” 2000:97) the coles were very good sort of people friendly, liberal and unpretending; but, on the other hand, they were of low origin, in trade, and only moderately genteel. (j. austen “emma” 1997:34) the first example does not signal an explicit contrast, but hearers familiar with the link between the “richness” and “poverty” will perceive it nevertheless. but the adversative dm on the other hand in the second sentence, helps to determine an explicit difference between two parts of the sentence. in this sense the adversative markers indicate the beginning of a different viewpoint. in order to understand the communicative nature of adversative discourse markers it becomes necessary and essential to examine the number of ways that conceptualize the interplay between viewpoints in language use and language structure. roulet distinguishes between “monologues (one physical speaker) and dialogues (two-physical speaker), as well as between monological (one viewpoint) and dialogical (two viewpoints) discourses.” (roulet 1984:32). the main distinction between monological and dialogical viewpoints is closely tied to whether the viewpoints are constructed as argumentatively parallel, i.e. oriented towards the same conclusion, or as argumentatively opposing, i.e. oriented toward different conclusions. to illustrate what is meant here, we will consider the following sentence. their separation did not exist in all its finality, but jennie felt destructed. (th. dreiser “jennie gerhardt” 1911:305) here, it is possible to isolate both the stated viewpoint that “jane’s feeling of destruction” was the cause of “their separation”, and the underlying expectation that “their sepa armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 63 ration” will cause her “feeling of destruction”. thus, in this case, a single speaker is simultaneously advancing two viewpoints, which are in some sense incompatible, since the first part of the utterance (s1) presupposes a positive coloring of the second part of the utterance (s2). this presupposition is due to the negative use of the verb exist (did not exist) after a word separation (having negative connotation), which leads to a positive coloring of s2. the communicative features of dms are revealed with more difficulty from monological (one-speaker) viewpoint, since we need to have a semantically and pragmatically burdened segment in the first part of the sentence, which helps the readers to deal with a more pragmatically burdened second part of the sentence. hereinafter, an example will be adduced, where we deal with a dialogue bearing monological viewpoint. it seems that s2 is the continuation of the thought expressed by the speaker of s1. therefore, we deal with monological viewpoint in a dialogue. many a time has she said so; and yet i am no advocate for entire seclusion. on the contrary, when people shut themselves up entirely from society, it is a very bad thing. (th. dreiser “jennie gerhardt” 1911:140) in many cases one can witness a sentence presenting a dialogue which bears a dialogical viewpoint. the background for such a use is the unexpected thought expressed by the speaker of the second clause. this unexpected shift creates different lines of thoughts expressed by different speakers. he would make her an ideal husband, his father would be pleased, everybody would be delighted. instead, he had drifted and drifted, and then he had met jennie, and somehow; after that, he did not want her any more. (th. dreiser “jennie gerhardt” 1911:310) within the limits of our interest was the revelation of the main communicative and functional features of adversative dms with the help of their semantic shades unfolded due to the contextual interpretation. the main way of investigation carried for adversative dms will be implemented in the process of exploring the communicative and functional peculiarities of causal dms. the importance of causal dms is greatly connected with the role of causality. the latter is an important phenomenon in discourse, since it plays a crucial role in discourse understanding and question answering process. second, causality is described as a major device for creating relevance in discourse becoming one among several principles of text organization. it goes without saying that the investigation of causal dms could be carried out after giving their general outline: because, for, on condition that, so that, supposing, although, even though, so, unless, hence, since, as a consequence, consequently, then, therefore, thus, as a result, accordingly, of course, on that condition, while, etc. in order to understand the communicative and functional nature of causal discourse markers, it becomes essential to pay attention to the intertwinement between the content, epistemic and speech armenian folia anglistika linguistics 64 act level. they together constitute the shift that one needs to pass from textual to the pragmatic fulfillment of causal dms. the content and epistemic level are more similar to the monological viewpoint expressed by the adversative dms. the content level is more similar to the monological viewpoint with semantic textual function, where the real-world causality between events is expressed. however, the epistemic level is more similar to the monological viewpoint with both pragmatic and textual functions, where the speaker’s reasoning comes forth in statement comprehension process. the speech act level is the complete functional “twin” of dialogical viewpoint expressed by adversative dms. ladies know what to fend hands against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks. (th. hardy “tess of the d’urbervilles” 2005:148) (content or fact level) john loved and appreciated her because he came back leaving the chain of all their grief behind. (th. hardy “tess of the d’urbervilles” 2005:158) (epistemic level) “does jack dollop work here? because i want him! i have a big bone to pick with him, i can assure you.” (th. hardy “tess of the d’urbervilles” 2005:158) (speech act level) thus, if we draw parallels between the functional and communicative nature of adversative and causal dms, we see that they are rather similar in their realizations, in the sense that they carry out the textual function of elaboration and argumentation. the communicative function of adversative dms is realized by the distinction between monological and dialogical viewpoints. however, in case of causal dms the communicative function is mainly expressed on a speech act and epistemic level. since a content causal sentence directly reflects a state of affairs in the world, it may be easier to process than an epistemic causal sentence, which does not directly express real-world causality. therefore, the epistemic relation in some way is based on the underlying content relation (background knowledge) (blakemore 1998:125). in this model it becomes clear that some part of background knowledge is essential for the realization of the epistemic interpretation of the causal clause. thus, in many cases the content level or non-content realization of a given discourse marker depends on its inner semantic background (whether it is more inclined to the fulfillment of communicative or textual function) as well as clausal environment. any scientific research becomes more and more essential if it brings forth certain shreds of further investigation. we found it necessary to present in general outlines one of the important findings of our research the overlap of causal and adversative dms. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 65 the overlap was mainly possible in case we had the embedded core meaning of a given causal or adversative discourse marker. due to that relation and clausal environment one could witness some shades of correlation between the discourse markers within the limits of our investigation. however, one of the crucial points of our findings was the fact that only a narrow range of discourse markers (adversative and causal) could be resorted to the overlap. hereinafter we will present that set of dms, that are exposed to this overlap (blakemore 1998:125). though, even, despite, although, however, still, while, thus the probabilities were that he would be very fair and liberal. at the same time robert was constantly beating her. still, there was no certainty that the old gentlemen might do anything or nothing. (th. dreiser “jennie gerhardt” 1911:146) the interpretation of this example seems rather incomprehensible at first sight, and only the temporal meaning of the adversative marker still helps to unfold its extra semantic realizations in a given discourse. not to mention the role of context, that becomes crucial for the adequate interpretation of the overlap of the marker still with causal meaning. hereinafter, we find it necessary to resort ourselves to the representation of the main conclusions and findings drawn within the boundaries of this article. the revelation of the communicative and functional peculiarities of adversative and causal dms was crucial due to their argumentative and elaborative specifications in discourse structure. the upbringing process of these peculiarities was due to the unquestionable role of context as well as the cohesion and coherence. one could find the communicative and functional realizations of adversative dms only with the help of dialogical and monological viewpoints. the study the textual and pragmatic function of causal dms was due to the peculiarities of content, epistemic and speech-act levels. the communicative function of adversative and causal dms is more likely to occur when they are not too dependent on a given context. the presence of a “wide” context, which in itself has shades of low speech-act, hinders the total fulfillment of the communicative function, being more inclined to the textual one. these findings were useful for drawing the final framework of the communicative and functional study of adversative and causal dms. references: 1. ariel, m. (1998) pragmatic operators. oxford: pergamon press. 2. blakemore, l. (1998) semantic constraints on relevance. oxford: blackwell inc. 3. blakemore, l. (2001) understanding utterances. oxford: blackwell inc. 4. croucher, s. (2004) a study of discourse marker frequency in impromptu speaking. oklahoma: oklahoma university press. 5. dowing, a. (2006) english university grammar. new york: oxon inc. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 66 6. fraser, b. (1997) contrastive discourse markers in english. amsterdam: benjamin inc. 7. fraser, b. (1999) an approach to discourse markers. new york: dobson publishing house. 8. fraser, b. (2009) pragmatic markers. new york: dobson publishing house. 9. roulet, e. (1984) speech acts, discourse structure and pragmatic connectives. // international journal of pragmatics, 8. new york. 10. schiffrin, d. (1987) discourse markers. cambridge: cup. 11. schiffrin, d. (1995) discourse markers, meaning and context. oxford: maldon press. 12. schwenter, a. (1999) viewpoints and polysemy: linking adversative and causal meanings of discourse markers. berlin: berding press. sources of data: 1. austen, j. (1997) emma. london: random house group. 2. dreiser, th. (1911) jennie gerhardt. london: random house group. 3. hardy, th. (2005) tess of the d’urbervilles. new york: random house inc. 4. more, th. (2000) utopia. london: random house group. ¸çëïáõñëç ý»ññ³ï³ï³ý ¨ å³ï׳é³ï³ý óáõóçãý»ñç ·áñí³é³ï³ýñ³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõý ð»ï¨û³é ñá¹í³íáõù ùýýíáõù »ý ¹çëïáõñëç ý»ññ³ï³ï³ý ¨ å³ï׳ é³ï³ý óáõóçãý»ñç ·áñí³é³ï³ý-ñ³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãû³ý ñ»ï ï³åí³í ñçùý³ï³ý ëý¹çñý»ñá: ²ûë »ñïáõ ïçåç óáõóçãý»ñá é³ûý ïçñ³éáõãûáõý áõý»ý ³ý·é»ñ»ý ï»ùëï³ûçý ¨ ñ³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý ¹çëïáõñëáõù: ðá¹í³íáõù ýñ³ýó ·áñí³é³ï³ý-ñ³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý μýáõûãý áõëáõùý³ëçñí»é ¿` ñçùù áõý»ý³éáí ·»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý ·ñ³ï³ýáõãû³ý ù»ç û·ï³·áñíí³í ù»ý³ëáëáõãûáõýý»ñá ¨ »ñïëáëáõãûáõýý»ñá: ì»ñççýý»ñë ñý³ñ³íáñáõãûáõý »ý ï³éçë ûáõñáíç å³ñ½³ μ³ ý»éáõ ý»ññ³ï³ï³ý ¨ å³ï׳ é³ï³ý óáõóçãý»ñç ï³ñևáñáõãûáõýá ¹çëïáõñëç ï³½ù³ï»åù³ý ·áñíáõù: â»° å³ï׳ é³ï³ý, ã»° ý»ññ³ï³ï³ý óáõóçãý»ñçý μýáñáß ùç ß³ñù ñ³ïï³ýçßý»ñ μ³ó³ñ³ûïíáõù »ý ñ³ù³ï»ùëïç áýó»é³í ñý³ñ³íáñáõãûáõýý»ñç ßýáññçí: ð³ù³ï»ùëïçó ù»í ï³ëí³íáõãû³ý ¹»åùáõù óáõóçãý»ñá ã»ý çñ³ï³ý³óýáõù é³ûý ñ³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý ·áñí³éáõûã, çýãå»ë ûñçý³ï ù»ý³ëáõëáõãûáõýý»ñáõù, ³ûýçýã »ñïëáëáõãûáõýý»ñç ¹»åùáõù ñ³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý ·áñí³éáõûãç ¹»ñá ù»í³ýáõù ¿: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 67 microsoft word contens verjin linguistics armenian folia anglistika 27 male and female profanity in english anecdotes anna knyazyan yerevan state university abstract the article covers the problem of profanity and deprecating humor in english anecdotes. aggressive humor often occurs in the form of sarcasm or teasing and often includes compulsive displays of humor with little regard for others. it deals with the issue of using swearwords in comic discourse. swearing is a behavior more frequently engaged in by males than by females. various generalizations about women and men involve some false assumptions as they negate the aspirations, diverse identities and personalities of individual males and females. on the largest scale women are the brunt of more jokes than men. key words: gender roles, gender stereotypes, male, female, deprecating and disparaging humor. introduction profanity is a subject which generally calls forth many discussions and debates. on the largest scale this is partly due to the very nature of profanity, which is a part of what is generally called “bad language”. this fact strongly suggests that bad language is a very general notion which is characteristic not only of profanity but also of other aspects of language i.e. slang, jargon, misuse. all linguistic studies of gender in language interdependent and complementary, but can identify several fundamental areas of linguistic research: sociolinguistic, social culture, psycholinguistic, communicative discourse. for studying male and female profanity qualitative and quantitative methodologies have been used which are still widely considered in the research methods. at a basic level, qualitative research commonly refers to the collection and analysis of material that seeks to uncover meaning and to promote the understanding of the experiences of the research subjects. by contrast, quantitative research is about the collection and analysis of numerical data – the social facts. the current study has revealed that a high percentage of men make deprecating utterances targeted towards women. the problem of male power over women is very general and cross-cultural. profanity refers to linguistic performances which armenian folia anglistika linguistics 28 are regarded as unacceptable by many people. in the broadest sense of the word bad language can be offensive and hurtful. swearing is associated with bad education and behavior. as a rule, children who use swearwords are generally punished and reprimanded. swearing seems to be a kind of speech present in every language, and also something which is part of the everyday life of many people. the exciting controversy of this kind of language is probably what makes it both captivating and shocking. every person takes on a particular role according to standards which are fixed in the society. being a woman is closely linked with speaking “properly”. swearing is reserved to men only because women are not allowed to express any kind of control. women are involved in everything that deals with the beginning of the life cycle. males exert power on the public domain, on everything influential while female power is exerted on the private sphere. women hold a disadvantageous role in society that is subordinate to that of men. gendered swearing in english anecdotes in english society humor has a high visibility. it is expressed in various ways and can be found in everyday life. many jokes about men are more positive in tone than jokes about women. there are categories of jokes about women for which there are no male parallels: prostitute anecdotes, mother-in-law anecdotes, blonde anecdotes. but in english anecdotes exclusively men use swearing to express anger and frustration. swearing is gender-specific and is present in every language. the level of any offence of a swearword largely depends upon the situation and context in which it is used. it is striking to observe that the challenging aspect of this kind of language is probably what makes it both appealing and shocking in all senses. gender stereotypes are powerful means which serve to understand interactions between males and females. stereotypes influence both the way men and women act and the way they speak. no doubt that gender has an impact on the vocabulary used when swearing. swearing is another aspect of daily life where double standards exist: when men swear, it is mirthful or tough. when women do it, it is coarse and uncouth. linguistic behavior of males and females differ greatly. females are more likely to use linguistic forms which are thought to be more correct than those used by males. according to trudgill in any society females are generally more statusconscious than males, and therefore more sensitive to any linguistic norms. working-class speech is very often associated with masculinity, which may lead linguistics armenian folia anglistika 29 males to be disposed to non-standard linguistic forms (trudgill 1983). r. lakoff claimed that language differences may be explained on the basis of female's subordinate social status (lakoff 1975). traditionally men are viewed as bigger swearers, and women as prudish speakers, avoiding bad language. disparaging humor has negative consequences. this fact strongly suggests that disparaging humor creates and reinforces negative stereotypes, prejudice, hostility towards females. en and women have the same perception of what is obscene, but what differs is the quantitative use of these terms (stapleton 2003). in english anecdotes women seem to know at least as much profanity and negative terms as men. but they do not use much profanity because of the stereotype of the silent and polite woman. in any society, speech patterns among males and females reflect the social and traditional stereotypes on men and women’s nature and behavior (sherzer 1987). so, if women are considered to be shy, this shyness will be expected to be found in their language. sometimes this can lead to linguistic beliefs which are not asserted to be true, but which exist because of various socio-cultural stereotypes. sometimes, females and males themselves try to conform to what is traditionally considered as a norm. in english anecdotes men favor aggression to strengthen their authority, whereas women tend to display their knowledge by their choice of vocabulary. in anecdotes swearwords are classified into the following groups: 1) words relating to sexuality (fuck1, ass2, shit3), 2) animal terms of abuse (pig, cow, bitch4), 3) sexist terms of abuse (whore, slut), 4) intellect-based terms of abuse (idiot, prat, moron). words relating to sexuality are probably the most common and are part of the most used expletives. in this connection it should be noted that in english anecdotes males use the words fuck, shit, ass, much more frequently than females. fucking is mainly used as an adjective or an adverb, that is to say, is often used in situations where the speaker wants to emphasize what he is saying. for example, a sentence like “that was a fucking nice wedding!” will have more impact on the listener than just “that was a nice wedding”. males mostly consider the word fuck as a binding factor (i.e. a close personal relationship that forms between them). it stems from the fact that men are not so strongly criticized and rejected as women, which proves that masculinity is an important factor of connection in male groups. the strongest interconnection between men can also be explained by the fact that the need for recognition through boasting is important among men. it is regarded as armenian folia anglistika linguistics 30 a sign of their strongest attachment. this integrity may be accounted for by the fact that the use of swearwords is considered as “strong” language. swearwords (invectives) are also connected to religion. swearing also sometimes refers to the christian religion with expletives like “jesus”, “hell”, “god”. religion is another domain once reserved to men only because in the bible, jesus, the central element of the christian religion was a man, as well as all of his apostles. in english anecdotes words like god, hell, jesus, christ, damn, damned are generally considered as blasphemous. for example: a young girl went into confession and told the priest she had slept with four different men over the past week. jack on tuesday, bill on wednesday, peter on thursday and chuck on friday. “well my child” said the priest “on your way home tonight buy two lemons and suck on them.” “but father, will that cleanse me of my sins?” she asked. “no, but it’ll take that bloody damned smile off your face.” (sharpe 2004:142) animal abuse alludes to words like bitch, cow, pussy, monkey, animal, bull, (dead) cat, dog, sheep, hen, cock, chicken. in english anecdotes bitch is the word males use most. it should be added in this connection that bitch is mainly used to refer to women in a derogatory way. as men are generally not called bitches, this word is referred to women only. cow is a pure intragender word for females; this does not appear to be the case for males. all the facts are in favor of the belief that in english anecdotes women are targets of deprecatory humor. deprecatory humor has social consequences on women. it affects the ways that men think about women and perceive discrimination against them. for example: a husband and wife sleep in separate twin beds. one night he asks his wife to come over to his bed to fool around. as the wife gets up to walk over to his bed, she trips over the carpet and falls flat on her face. the husband looks up concerned and says, “oh did my little wifey fall on her little nosey wosey?” linguistics armenian folia anglistika 31 she laughs and gets in his bed. when they are done, she gets up to go back to her bed and falls over the rug again. her husband looks over his shoulder to see her on the floor, rolls over and says, “clumsy bitch.” (some funnies 2015) there can be no doubt that people jokingly call others bitch, stupid, loser, silly, foolish or fool to assert their place within the social status hierarchy. in many cases when these words are said with a chortle, they seem less unkind, cruel, uncivil and more acceptable. but it does not mean that people particularly enjoy hearing them. men use substantially more swearwords when they are with other men.in english anecdotes men consider profanity as a much more gender related feature, avoiding this kind of language with women, but using it a lot more with other men, especially in certain situations, like sports. males have a preference for “stronger” word forms while females have a preference for ‘weaker’ word forms. for example: a boy comes home one day and runs up to his mom. “what’s a bitch and a pussy?” “well,” mom says, “a bitch is a female dog and a pussy is a cat.” the boy thinks to himself that this doesn’t sound right since the other kids were calling each other that. so he goes to dad. “what’s a bitch and a pussy?” dad pulls out his playboy and opens it to the centerfold. he draws a circle around the woman’s pussy. “now that’s a pussy, son! and everything else is the bitch!” (some funnies 2015) a closer look at this phenomenon supports the view of limited access to sexually explicit discourse by women. hesitations, pauses and silences mark difficulties that the women come across in answering sensitive questions. the anecdote about a woman and a police officer illustrates this difficulty. in women’s speech hesitations are very often accompanied by muttering and mumbling, police officer: what did he then do? tell us everything that happened. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 32 woman: after he lay on top of me, he parted my legs, and pushed his thing inside me. police officer: what thing did he push inside you? i want to repeat that you have to tell us everything and you should use adult and not childish language; it is not my fault but the law requires that you tell us everything. woman: um . . . [silence] police officer: are you going to tell us what this man did to you or what? we cannot stay here the whole day. we have other important things to do. woman: [sobbing]: he pushed his pipe, his [inaudible] inside my cake . . . police officer: [interrupts]: what? [laughs out loud] you seem to be very stubborn. being stubborn does not work in cases like these. woman: he pushed his thing here [demonstrates by placing her hand between her thighs]. police officer: i don’t think you understand what i am saying. you are a woman and not a girl, according to this medical report. the doctor clearly points out that you did not suffer any injuries during the sexual intercourse. isn’t it? woman: [silence] (sharpe 2004:59) in the anecdote above, the woman refers to her assailant’s penis as his thing, his pipe and toher vagina as my cake – using a code for women. while police officer mostly uses the sexually explicit expression (sexual intercourse), and demands that the woman does the same but the latter sticks to the use of euphemisms. the police officer asks questions mainly on sexual issues. the male marked words are more offensive, more potent, than the female marked words. our study has revealed that there is a set of swearwords which are used with an exclusive gender direction either by male speakers or by female speakers. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 33 table 1 female targets male targets fuck 54 33 fucked 6 15 bloody5 25 89 bastard 0 30 wanker 0 10 cunt6 2 16 arse 4 30 bugger 0 20 shit 10 5 piss7 3 24 bird 10 0 gay 0 10 sod 0 11 arsehole 0 11 idiot 0 10 cow 30 0 git8 0 10 bitch 56 0 cunt 0 8 big-ass 10 0 tart 5 0 whore 10 0 tits 9 0 slag 10 0 in english anecdotes the words themselves seem to display some evidence of being directed quite differently by males and females. there are words which show a strong gender targeting, preference by males or females but which are not gender exclusive. the words like cow, bitch, bloody, fucking, slag, tart, tit, tits and whore are directed at females by females, bastard, gay, cunt, idiot are used by females, which are directed exclusively at males. fucking, bloody, bastard, wanker, cunt, arse, fucked, piss, gay, sod, arsehole are directed at males by males. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 34 it is deducible from what has been said above, that there are several ways one can use language to hurt or express frustration. “women’s language” reflects powerlessness and this is the reason why a woman swearing is classified or described as disgraceful. traditional stereotypes tend to represent women as people who avoid swearing. women do not have the same tools as men to affirm themselves (that is, “strong language”). this fact strongly suggests that they often develop different practices to reinforce their in-group recognition in english anecdotes. in interactions women avoid any confrontation. but there are cases when women use more profanity than men. it then appears that women seem to know at least as much profanity and negative terms as men. for example: a dude comes home from work one day, and his wife is watching the food network. the husband asks, “why do you watch that? you still can’t cook,” and the wife responds, “why do you watch porn? you still can’t fuck.” (bigfun com. 2015) watching his wife put her bra on, the man sneered, “i don’t know why you bother, it’s not as if you’ve got anything to put in it.” “bugger off,” she replied. “i don’t complain when i’m ironing your underpants.” (sharpe 2004:126) there are several ways one can use language to hurt, be obscene or express frustration. however, even if, generally speaking, everyone shares the same conception of what swearwords are, everyone does not react equally as far as profanity is concerned. some people will be profoundly offended when hearing “fuck”, but some people will use it many times a day in casual conversations with friends. some people will be disgusted by a woman saying “shit”, but these people may not even notice it when used by a man. some people never swear in public, or at work, but will be extremely vulgar at home. that is to say, everyone has a different degree of tolerance regarding profanity, and everyone uses it differently according to the context. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 35 conclusion perhaps it is most reasonable to conclude that in english anecdotes women’s and men’s linguistic strategies differ according to the situation they are in, as well as according to the people they are talking to. but the observation of the facts reveals that sociocultural stereotypes on language and gender could be questioned, since our research showed that women’s supposed prudishness is very relative, and that men can be a lot more than women likely to avoid swearing in certain situations. however, it should be emphasized once again that in english anecdotes men’s voice dominates. the fact that swearing is gender-related and serves to reinforce social status leads us into a notion that traditional stereotypes are still present in english society. notes: 1. the most popular origin story of fuck goes something like this – after the great plague the english population was considerably downsized, so the king ordered his people to reproduce. hence, fuck is “fornicate under command of the king”. <http://www.storypick.com/swear-word-origins>. 2. this word has its roots in the old english word assa, and since the medieval era people started associating it with a “stupid” person (like a donkey). as for the use of the word to mean backside – it came from old english ærs, which meant buttock. <http://www.storypick.com/swear-word-origins>. 3. this word comes from old english word scitte, meaning purging or excrement. the poet robert frost created the word shitticism to mean scatological writing. <http://www.storypick.com/swear-word-origins>. 4. the word bitch comes from old english word bicce, which also meant female dog. but since 1400, the use of this word to signify “a lewd or immoral woman” came to be. it is the most offensive appellation that can be given to an english woman. <http://www.storypick.com/swear-word-origins>. 5. this utterly common swearword is believed to be a corruption of the exclamatory phrase ‘by your lady’. the oxford english dictionary also suggests that it derives from a reference to the aristocratic rowdies (who had royal blood) of the restoration period. <http://www.storypick.com/swear-wordorigins>. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 36 6. this word derives from the ancient sumerian word kunta which meant female genitalia. it was also spelled “quna,” which is the root of the word queen. <http://www.storypick.com/swear-word-origins>. 7. this mild swearword originates from latin pissare and french pissier both of which describe the sound of urination. <http://www.storypick.com/swear-wordorigins>. 8. it actually is a variation of the commonly used word get, and has been in use since the 14th century. but even get comes from shortening beget, referring to the idea of illegitimate pregnancies and resulting offsprings. <http://www.storypick.com/swear-word-origins>. references: 1. lakoff, r. (1975) language and women’s place. new york: harper and row. 2. stapleton, k. (2003) gender and swearing: a community practice. // women and language, 26 (2), pp. 22-33. 3. sherzer, j. (1987) a diversity of voices: men’s and women’s speech in ethnographic perspective. // language, gender and sex in comparative perspective. / ed by. s.u. philips, s. steele, ch. tanz. new york harper and row, pp. 95-120. 4. trudgill, p. (1983) sociolinguistics: an introduction to language and society. harmondsworth: penguin books. sources of data: 1. bigfun com. available at: <http://www.laughfactory.com/jokes/boycott-thesejokes/3> [accessed august 2015]. 2. sharpe j. (2004) the adult joke book. london: arcturus publishing limited. 3. some funnies. available at: <http://jokes4reallaugh.blogspot.com/2013/06/ man-at-bed time.html> [accessed august 2015]. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 37 î³ý³ýó ¨ ïõ³ù³ñ¹ï³ýó ñ³ûñáû³ëáëáõãûáõýá ³ý·éç³ï³ý ³ý»ï¹áïý»ñáõù ð³ûñáû³ýùá, ñ³ûñáû³ëáëáõãûáõýá, ³ýå³ñï»ßï ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõãûáõýý»ñá ³·ñ»ëç³ûç ¹ñë¨áñù³ý ¨ ëáõ û»ïïç ñ³ýñ³ûçý í³ñï³ »ïù³ý ûáõñûñçý³ï ó¨»ñ »ý: ð³ûñáû³ï³ý ³é³å³ß³ñç ß»ñïç ù³ýñ³ïñïçï ñ»ï³½áïáõãûáõýá, ¹ñ³ýó ·»ý¹»ñ³ûçý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñç ï»ë³ýïûáõýçó, ãáõûé ¿ ï³éçë áñáß»é, ã» ï³ý³ûù ¨ ïõ³ù³ñ¹çï çýãåçëç ³ýå³ñï»ßï ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõãûáõýý»ñ »ý ý³ëáýïñáõù ·áñí³í»é: ²ý·éç³ï³ý ³ý»ï¹áïý»ñáõù ïõ³ù³ñ¹çï ¹çùáõù »ý ß³ï ëáõñ ¨ ·é»ñçï ñ³ûñáû³ëáëáõãû³ý, ï³ý³ûù, áñå»ë ï³ýáý, ý³ëáýïñáõù »ý ³í»éç ù»õù ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõãûáõýý»ñ: î³ý³ýó ïáõùçó ñ³ûñáû³ýùý»ñ ã·áñí³í»éá ³é³ççý ñ»ñãçý ï³ñ»éç ¿ ³ó³ïñ»é ýñ³ýó ³ûý ñ³ùá½í³íáõãû³ù , áñ ³·ñ»ëçíáõãûáõýá ³ýó³ýï³éç »ñ¨áõûã ¿, ¨ ³ù»ý ï»ñå å»ïù ¿ ëáõë³÷»é ¹ñ³ýçó: microsoft word 1. maket 2019-1new.doc linguistics armenian folia anglistika 9 a methodological mechanism for applying the hermeneutical approach seda gasparyan yerevan state university abstract the present paper deals with one of the intricate problems of philology – the question of reading and understanding a work of verbal creativity. the paper aims at emphasizing the methodological value of the hermeneutical approach to the study of literature which comes into being due to the presence of three basic components: imagination, language as a code between the writer and the reader, and the expected ability of the reader to share the author’s emotions and thoughts. proceeding from the basic statements of hermeneutics and schleiermacher’s theory of hermeneutical circle in particular, as well as considering the results of our former investigations we come to the conclusion that understanding verbal art is a complex process which is achieved step by step. to provide a reliable mechanism for the application of the hermeneutical approach the investigator has to take the following steps: 1) reveal the correlation of language and speech with the help of the linguostylistic method of analysis; 2) understand the aesthetic value of the work built up due to the complex relationship of the linguistic elements and the poetics of the work, which is brought out by the linguopoetic method of analysis; 3) come up to the metametasemiotic level of analysis which, in fact, belongs to the sphere of literature studies and helps reveal the intention of the author and the idea of the work. key words: a work of verbal creativity, understanding, interpretation, hermeneutical approach, methodological mechanism, the linguostylistic analysis, the linguopoetic analysis, metametasemiotic level. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 10 introduction this study concerns the all-important question of understanding, which has long declared itself to be one of the key problems of philology. although we face this problem at every step of our lives – in the process of perceiving any gesture, any element of mimicry, any piece of speech – we are well aware of the fact that the essential difficulties are, first and foremost, associated with verbal creativity. why is it so important to refer to this ever-lasting question (ever-lasting, in fact, for it has been on the agenda of philological discussions for centuries)? first, because today, unfortunately, the number of people (especially among the younger generation) who fail to develop the ability of reading, understanding and appreciating the thesaurus of classical and contemporary literature, is increasing daily. they find it enormously difficult to read and adequately understand verbal art even in their native tongue, let alone in any of the foreign languages they study. this unfavourable situation can be accounted for by many different reasons, some of which are objective. the first is the disposition of the human mind primarily to develop technical sciences and technologies – elements vitally important for the growth of the material basis of any society, especially in the contemporary period of human life. the second factor lies in the profound changes occurring in the cultural and spiritual values of the presentday world. but there is still another very important circumstance which cannot be ignored, and that is the fact that art in general, and verbal art is not an exception, is a highly complicated and intricate phenomenon itself (gasparyan 2003), requiring awareness of the necessity of going deep into the essence of the work, and have our mind’s ear longing for the bells that a work of art, verbal art in particular, can ring in our inner speech. thus, a question is bound to arise here. what is literature in fact, and how are we to approach the problem of understanding it, for if it is something that cannot be understood in the way it is meant to be, what is the use of writing it? we know that we have more or less the same problem in any other sphere of art. if, by an unfortunate chance, we suddenly faced a situation in which there linguistics armenian folia anglistika 11 was nobody who could, say, read musical notes or understand the harmony of colours in a piece of painting, those works of art would simply cease to exist for their addressees. thank god, the situation is not so grave! however, investigations have shown that the question is still there: how do we set about the complicated process of reading, understanding and interpreting verbal art? the basic preconditions of creativity it is common knowledge that one of the most important preconditions for the realization of any work of art is imagination. this, certainly, refers to works of fiction as well, since they present a specific field of art, in fact, a fictional reproduction of reality realized through a specific and unique use of language. for instance, if we are to refer to the following lines taken from the country of nairi by charents «եվ նորից բերդի անառիկ ամրություններից, որպես երկաթյա ահեղ մի սպառնալիք – կելնե, կհառնե ահասաստ նաիրյան ոգին, կորովը, ուժը հազարամյա նաիրյան աշխարհի…», we can say for sure that the image of the awakening, intensifying power lying in the basis of this context ensures dynamism, and that it is the choice and arrangement of the very language units (namely կելնե կհառնե, երկաթյա ահեղ, ոգի – կորով ուժ) that takes this movement to its peak (կհառնե ահասաստ). it is due to the author’s imagination and his unusual use of the language units that the context is enriched with the shades of rebirth, typical of the rebellious people of nairi, present in other parts of the work too. thus, imagination and language are viewed as the most underlying and necessary elements for the realization of any work of fiction which, however, will not yield any fruits without the ability of the readers to share the emotions and feelings of the author. if we take, say, t.s. eliot’s well known lines in his “the love song of alfred prufrock” – “let us go then, you and i, / when the evening is spread out against the sky / like a patient etherized upon a table” – would the reader be ever able to understand them if he/she were not endowed with the power of armenian folia anglistika linguistics 12 perceiving reality imaginatively, a fragment reality of which a piece of literature is a specific reverberation. when t.s. eliot compares evening with a patient lying on the surgical table, anaesthetized, it is obvious that here we deal with a scene of reality reproduced by the author imaginatively. will the reader be able to share the author’s feelings and interpret this product of his imagination as adequately as possible, to understand the depth and subtleties of the image and appreciate its aesthetic value in this very piece of poetic work if he is unable to work his imagination into the process of understanding and if there is absolutely nothing in common between his knowledge and that of the author, i.e. if there is no “common horizon” between them (in gadamer’s terms)? this, in fact, is not one of the easiest questions to be answered straightforwardly. or if we look into a passage by lawrence durrell where the gradual appearing of the first light of the day is compared to the peeling of a fruit (the clouds peel the morning like a fruit), shall we be able to understand an original image like that, an image which is based on the comparison of absolutely incompatible phenomena (the appearing of the morning and the peeling of an exotic fruit), an image which is absolutely devoid of any conceptual coherency, if we exclude our emotional-evaluative attitude to this linguistic invention of the writer, if we “close the doors” of our imaginative perception? surely not! it is quite natural to admit that the borders of the imaginative perception of the reader and the author can never be the same since the differences between time, space, culture, age and sex, let alone those of personal experience are often, if not always, inevitable. just as the author cannot create his piece of literature without having his fantasy worked into his creative process, without the ability of reprocessing the world by passing real facts through the kaleidoscope of his imagination, so the reader is unable to understand a work of literature adequately if he lacks the ability to experience objective facts imaginatively, to envisage the world creatively. however rich and manifold the reader’s imagination may be, it is subjective, just as subjective as the writer’s. on the other hand, it would not be unjust to think that any text, let alone a piece of literature, is never a closed, self-contained structure, but an open linguistics armenian folia anglistika 13 system which avails the reader of the opportunity to introduce his understanding and his interpretation into the text. in this connection it would be appropriate to refer to the works of l. shcherba, who puts forward the idea of “freedom of interpretation” (shcherba 1957), but this is valid only to a certain extent: the freedom he speaks of is not infinite. otherwise we should have to agree with the interpretation of a screen version of shakespeare’s “hamlet” in which the main character is pictured as a sexual maniac. it follows, that perception and interpretation can never be absolute. this is impossible also because imagination and the ability to share the author’s feelings are rather wide and abstract notions. all this comes to prove that even if the above-mentioned preconditions ensuring the realization of a piece of work are there, even if there exist the necessary imaginativeness and the “common horizon” establishing a close contact between the author and the reader, and the shared language code is also present, all the same, to perceive, understand and interpret a piece of literature is rather a hard task, a complex and complicated process since there are a number of other questions that are of no less importance, among them – the relation between the author and the reader, the correlation of thought and language, speech activity and communicative intention and many others. thus, the key to perceiving, understanding and interpreting a piece of fiction lies at the crossroads of not only linguistics and literary studies, but also other spheres of knowledge. hence, it is not accidental that these issues have been in the focus of the thinkers’ attention since ancient times, in almost all the stages of the history of literature. a historical view of the question of understanding and interpretation it is well known that the ancient thinkers were more attracted by the analysis of the eternal clashes between the heavenly, the earthly and their complicated interrelations, whereas the thinkers of the early medieval periods were predominantly concerned with the interpretation of theological works. the interpretation and explanation of the allegorical works dating from the late armenian folia anglistika linguistics 14 medieval period required even more efforts. it should be noted however that there was unfortunately no agreement in adopting these efforts. not infrequently the above-mentioned three preconditions, as well as the personality of the writer were ignored. a literary text was examined as a phenomenon, separate from the author. however, this approach was overcome in the age of romanticism when a piece of literature was viewed as a means of expressing the self of the author, his own interpretation of reality, a means of a unique reproduction of the author’s own impressions, emotions and feelings rather than a direct and “mirror reflection” of reality. the hermeneutical approach to text interpretation was gradually taking on more significance in this very period, especially in the 18th century when german philosophy started to examine language-related issues (schleiermacher 1998; dilthey 1977, 1987; humboldt 1984, etc.). comparative linguistics and historical investigation date back to this very period. questions concerning the nature of language, its etymological background, as well as the historical circumstances of its formation soon appeared in the focus of linguists’ attention, and the scientific achievements in the field of language studies proved preconditions for the elaboration of the theory of hermeneutics, and later also of philological hermeneutics as an approach to the study of particularly a literary text (humboldt 1984:47): in a short period of time the key aim of this approach, which, largely speaking, was the interpretation of any piece of text, became one of the central issues of the historical and philosophical methodology of investigating texts and attached paramount importance to the study of both the external and the internal factors of the text. the form and the content of a text were soon viewed as an indivisible integrity. a lot of attention was paid to the idea of text perception as a threefold process made up of historical perception in terms of the content of the work, grammatical perception with regard to the language of the text and psychological perception aimed at considering the inner world of the given writer (ast 1808:177): interestingly enough, according to von humboldt who also regarded the role of language in a text as decisive, words did not represent the features of the physical world, but rather of the very person who spoke about that world. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 15 humboldt was convinced that language helped express the inexpressible, and that was the reason why a piece of text used to give rise to so many different interpretations (humboldt 1984:80, 392). sharing this viewpoint, f. schlegel claimed that any true work of art contained numerous meanings (schlegel 1963:81), and that the meaning of each work of fiction could be found in the diversity of possible interpretations. the concept of the close correlation of the part and the whole was considered to be the cornerstone of the theory of hermeneutics. in fact, it is of tremendous significance for the perception and understanding of any work since it is due to the constant interaction and supplementation of the parts and the whole that the piece of work is formed. indeed, true is the idea that any piece of work is a huge net with established relations between its elements. the essence of poetic speech can be revealed by the fact that each element in it becomes relevant and necessary and is closely connected with the global whole of the work. this statement of the interrelation of the part and the whole acquires even more importance in the context of schleiermacher’s theory of hermeneutical circle (1998) according to which, the interpreter proceeds from the intuitively perceived meaning of the whole text, then comes down to the semantic level of the text, perceives and understands the preliminary meaning of the text. i.e. the separate meanings of its elements (the parts) and goes up again and putting together the results obtained due to the analysis of the parts re-forms and reevaluates the global meaning of the work. the attention of the interpreter moves from the part to the whole through comparisons and intuition and vice versa from the whole to the part to re-interpret it. therefore, an interpretation always calls for a re-interpretation. however, when the reader returns to the parts they are no longer the same, for they are re-perceived and re-understood through the prism of the whole. it follows, that the famous hermeneutical circle, in fact, is a hermeneutical spiral, as identified by i. maclean (maclean 1986). hence, one can conclude that there can be no complete and absolutely final interpretation of any piece of text since a spiral is an endless curve and, unlike a circle, its ends never meet at any point (spitzer 1967:35). armenian folia anglistika linguistics 16 in terms of the examination of the linguistic peculiarities of the text, f. schleiermacher’s hermeneutics offered its own approach attaching a lot of importance to the perception of the meaning of not only certain words and expressions, but also their place in the whole context and in the composition of the whole work. this too proceeds from the core principle of hermeneutics, namely, understanding the text as a whole and perceiving the meaning of each word in relation with the other parts, since the meaning of words is defined in a certain context, owing to their relation with the text as a whole (schleiermacher 1838:69). f. schleiermacher’s hermeneutics can be considered the basis of philological hermeneutics since the idea of language is basic in his theory. he claims perception to be the perception of the language itself as the mentality and worldview of a person are formed and expressed through language. his approaches to subjectivity are of great interest. he regards speech as the result of the work of a separate subject. all language processes take place in the consciousness of a separate subject and despite common linguistic peculiarities, the linguistic activity is always individual. hence, one can conclude that it is the language that is individual; language is the objective basis of the subjective speech (schleiermacher 1998, vossler 1905:14). f. schleiermacher believes that perceiving means reproducing the mental processes taking place in the author’s mind, of course in a reversed order. the process of the perception starts the moment you take a ready and complete piece of work and proceed towards its initial, original meaning (schleiermacher 1838:78). still, if it is the unconscious that prevails in the author’s creative mind, the interpreter has to yield to the dominance of consciousness. since any idea in the text is embodied and materialized through its language, it is the linguistic concept in any piece of literary work that calls for utmost attention. however, no interpretation can be regarded complete and full if it is limited to the analysis of the language material of the text only. this is the reason why schleiermacher in his search for maximum perception, understanding and interpretation of a text puts forward the idea of the necessity of the so called grammatical and psychological interpretations which aim at linguistics armenian folia anglistika 17 examining the objective and subjective concepts of a piece of text and revealing the relation between the two (schleiermacher 1838). thus, we can see that the objective truth we are looking for in a piece of literature can be found in language, and only in language, which is an intermediary link between our inner world and objective reality. it is language that is capable of bringing the reader’s understanding into contact with the writer's, irrespective of the time and distance between them, in fact, bridging their visions of the objective world and making the understanding of a work possible. this, we believe, is supported by the grand idea expressed by humboldt, who defines perception as the basic function of language and thought. he insists that the existence of language is not accounted for only by the necessity of the external, actual communication, but also by an inner demand for communication with which a human being is endowed by nature. for him the functioning of language is connected with understanding and mutual understanding, for it is the latter that accounts for the purpose of linguistic activity (humboldt 1984). it is known that the basic feature of any piece of speech consists in the possibility of combining linguistic elements according to the established conventions of the language, and the rules of collocation and colligation of the given language play an essential and guiding role here. research work along these lines has already established that in a piece of imaginative writing, however constrained the latter may be by the publicly recognized norms of language, the author never confines his writing to those norms. he finds it not only possible but also necessary to use the same language material in quite an unusual way, inventing original combinations of linguistic elements, “playing” with them in order to arouse emotions in his readers, to challenge them. when, for instance, john galsworthy uses the metaphoric word combination “passionate dusk” in his description of a london park in “the forsyte saga”, or somerset maugham coins a combination like “ambiguous monotony” in his short story “the force of circumstance”, it is obvious that these anomalous combinations of words have not occurred in their contexts at armenian folia anglistika linguistics 18 random. they carry out an aesthetic task and are also closely connected with the global purport of the works in which they are used. thus it is the peculiar, original way in which language elements are chosen and strung together that intensifies ordinary language, introducing all kinds of deviations from its recognized norms, and it is not by chance that literature is described as a kind of writing which represents “organized violence committed on ordinary speech” (jakobson 1956). from what has been said it becomes clear that in a work of verbal creativity, form plays an important role in the complex correlation and unity of form and content, for it is the “how” of the literary piece that, to a great extent, guarantees the aesthetic value of a work. more than that, it is the “how” that ensures the invented, fictive nature of literature rather than the “what”, for the latter never goes beyond human experience or human consciousness. understanding as a step by step process following the results of our research we have arrived at the idea that owing to the importance of these general and basic concepts of the hermeneutic approach to text interpretation and considering the efficiency of the application of various methods of text analysis elaborated and effectively carried out during the last decades, it is necessary to have a certain methodological mechanism in order to achieve a possible comprehensive interpretation of a piece of literary text. we srongly believe that the complex process of perceiving, understanding and interpreting a literary text should be carried out step by step. it would not be unjust to say that the first step in cognizing a work of verbal creativity is the axiological estimation of it – evaluation that is based on the perception of the text through senses. however, investigations have shown that perception at the axiological level is impregnated with enormous difficulties and is unable to serve as safe and reliable methodological grounds for the interpretation of the work (gasparyan 2009), at least because there can never be a one-to-one correspondence between the reader’s experience and the writer’s. how can the reader, who probes into the author’s mind, understand and interpret his or her personal experience, private associations, feelings and impressions? next comes linguistics armenian folia anglistika 19 the stage of the linguistic perception and understanding. research has revealed that the linguistic perception can be achieved through a linguostylistic examination which is carried out on two levels – semantic and metasemiotic. at the semantic level all the possible language units that make up the text are studied as elements of the language system. on the meta-semiotic level, which does not have an expression plane of its own, the united whole of the form and content of the semantic level acts as a means to express this or that metacontent. on this level the analysis aims at revealing the stylistically coloured uses of language units, the existence of additional emotive-expressive nuances and various uses of different stylistic devices. thus, the method of linguostylistic analysis helps reveal the relationship between language and speech lying in the basis of any text, including a literary one. this is an important, though not a sufficient stage for the process of perception, understanding and interptetaion (gasparyan 2008:27-35). it is known, however, that the ultimate goal of this process, i.e. the revelation of the ideologial basis of the work, the discovery of the authorial intention cannot be achieved by a quick “jump” from the level of speech (i.e. the level of style) to the level of ideas and the global purport of the work. it follows that the researcher has to cover a long way which goes through the field of the author’s poetics, to be more exact, the field of the aesthetic impact ensured by the close interaction and interplay of the composition of the work and the language used by the author. this suggests a higher level of investigation which can be realized by the application of the method of linguopoetic analysis (gasparyan 2008:36-41). it is however evident that both these methods – the linguostylistic method and the linguopoetic one aim at investigating the peculiar properties of the form of the literary piece. the possibly adequate understanding and interpretation calls for a united perception of both the form and the content and the authorial intention which can be be achieved through the examination of the text on the meta-meta level which is in the domain of literature studies. we are convinced that this scheme of realizing the process of perceiving, understanding and interpreting a work of fiction is justified. on the one hand, it armenian folia anglistika linguistics 20 puts an emphasis of the effective cooperation of linguistics and literature studies in the field of philology, on the other hand, it ensures an accurate and sound methodological mechanism for the application of the hermeneutical approach. we shall now try to demonstrate the linguostylistic and the linguopoetic analyses in action. as has already been mentioned, the underlying methodological basis we proceed from is that adequate understanding of a work of literature can be achieved step by step as the process of cognition of any object is a gradual one. the first acquaintance with a work of verbal art brings the investigator to the conclusion that first and foremost it is an ordinary piece of speech just like any other speech event which is based on the dialectical unity of language and speech. to reveal this correlation of language and speech is possible, as already mentioned, by applying the method of linguostylistic analysis which starts on the semantic level, i.e. with the study of the linguistic units in their direct, nominative meanings. to begin the analysis of a text from the semantic level is particularly important when what we deal with is a piece of literature in a foreign language, for we cannot even try to appreciate the expressiveemotional-evaluative overtones present in this or that element unless we have clearly understood the direct, nominative meanings of every word, wordcombination or grammatical construction. when we have done this, we then pass on to the metasemiotic level where the same linguistic units are studied from the point of view of their functioning in the given context. the linguistic units can acquire a new connotative (metaphoric) content which is superimposed over their linguistic meanings proper. this “metacontent” becomes the object of investigation on the metasemiotic level. we should hasten to add however that although the metasemiotic level is of paramount importance in a work of verbal art, it cannot be completely ignored in other varieties of human communication. it has been established, for example, that metasemiotic elements, i.e. words and word-combinations with inherent and adherent connotations, tropes and figures of speech not infrequently appear in the scientific register as well. the use of these elements linguistics armenian folia anglistika 21 in an informative text is accounted for by the great wish of the author to sometimes look extraordinary, sometimes express his attitude towards the subject he has chosen to speak about. overstepping of the stylistically neutral, informative narration very often appears when the author tends to clarify his point of view and convince his readers in the righteousness of his approach to the problem or stand out in defense of his doctrine. on the other hand, in works of verbal art we may come across different informative insertions which acquire a specific value under the influence of the general purport of the given literary work. for an example of a kind of intertwinement of the aesthetic and the informative functions of speech in a work of verbal art one may be referred to hemingway’s writings, say “the old man and the sea” where there are quite a number of encyclopedic, informative words and word-combinations, even some terms and terminological combinations particularly in the description of the shark. these elements are, certainly, not included in his text to give the reader exact and detailed information on how the shark looked, but to convey the idea about how devoted to the sea the old man was and indicate the profundity of his knowledge of the sea. if we take these statements for granted, it will be justified to conclude that whatever the text, it is based on the dialectical correlation and unity of semantics and metasemiotics which can be revealed with the help of the linguostylistic method of analysis. this method is universal and can be applied to any kind of text irrespective of its register. when we turn to imaginative writing, particularly to a piece of verbal art, we face a completely different picture, for here what we are after is the general intention of the writer and the aesthetic content he tries to convey to his readers. in this case we cannot confine our study to linguostylistic analysis only. it is only a preliminary step in our attempt to perceive a piece of verbal art as a global artistic whole. it is here that to make the next step towards possibly complete and adequate understanding of a work of literature we turn to the linguopoetic analysis which is aimed at revealing the complex correlation of the verbal texture of the given work and its composition which results in a certain armenian folia anglistika linguistics 22 aesthetic impact. the linguopoetic analysis is applicable only to verbal art. in this case the investigation of a work begins from “above”, i.e. from understanding the general purport of the work towards the study of the verbal texture. in other words, linguopoetics deals with the complex correlation of the language and poetics of the work of verbal creativity. to be more exact, this method aims to reveal the sum total of different linguistic means with the help of which the writer’s intention is conveyed and the aesthetic effect is achieved. it is an important step towards the hermeneutical interpretation of a literary work. now let’s look into the text: on saturday, october 5, the sky had been blue all day deepened after sunset to the bloom of grapes. there was no moon, and a clear dark, like some velvety garment, was wrapped around the trees, whose thinned branches, resembling plumes, stirred not in the still, warm air. all london had poured into the park, draining the cup of summer to its dregs. couple after couple, from every gate, they streamed along the paths and over the burnt grass, and one after another, silently out of the lighted spaces, stole into the shelter of the feathery trees, where, blotted against some trunk, or under the shadow of shrubs, they were lost to all but themselves in the heart of the soft darkness. to fresh-comers along the paths, these forerunners formed but part of that passionate dusk, whence only a strange murmur, like the confused beating of hearts, came forth. but when that murmur reached each couple in the lamp-light their voices wavered, and ceased, their arms enlaced, their eyes began seeking searching probing the blackness. suddenly, as though drawn by invisible hands, they, too, stepped over the linguistics armenian folia anglistika 23 railing, and silent as shadows, were gone from the light. the stillness, enclosed in the far, inexorable roar of the town, was alive with the myriad passions, hopes, and lives of multitudes of struggling human atoms; for in spite of the disapproval of that great body of forsytes, the municipal council – to whom love had long been considered, next to the sewage questions, the gravest danger to the community – a process was going on that night in the park, and in a hundred other parks, without which the thousand factories, churches, shops, taxes, and drains, of which they were custodians, were as arteries without blood, a man without a heart. the instincts of self-forgetfulness, of passion, and of love, hiding under the trees, away from the trustees of their remorseless enemy, the “sense of property”, were holding a stealthy revel, and soames, returning from bayswater – for he had been alone to dine at timothy’s – walking home along the water, with his mind upon that coming lawsuit, had the blood driven from his heart by a low laugh and the sound of kisses. he thought of writing to the times the next morning, to draw the attention of the editor to the condition of our parks. he did not, however, for he had a horror of seeing his name in print”. (galsworthy 2001:193-194) starting our linguostylistic analysis of the text we look up words like “plume”, “inexorable” (անխռով), “myriad” (անթիվ, անհամար), “custodians” (հովանավորներ, պաշտպաններ), etc. in the dictionary. it is also important to understand the difference between “seek” and “search”, “dark” and “darkness”, etc. after this the stylistic differences between different words should be established, for side by side with stylistically neutral words like “saturday”, “sky”, armenian folia anglistika linguistics 24 “blue”, “sunset”, etc. there are also emotionally coloured ones in the text such as “clear”, “velvet”, “soft”, “passionate”, “danger”, “ disapproval”, “remorseless”, etc. the word “whence” deserves attention because it is an archaic one. the highflown word “multitude” and the bookish element “inexorable” add to the stylistic atmosphere of the text. it should also be noted that there are semantically close words in the extract such as “love”-“passion”; “soft”“velvety”; “seek”-“search”; as well as antonymous pairs like “light”“darkness”. the words “fresh-comers” and “forerunners” are interesting from the point of view of their morphological structure. if the latter can be found in the dictionary in the meaning of “predecessor”, in the case of “fresh-comer” which is an occasional coinage, the meaning may be derived from the meaning of its components. the semantic analysis on the level of minor syntax shows that the number of attributive word-combinations (purple grapes, clear dark, velvety garment, still, warm air) is prevailing, whereas further on we come across predicative constructions (murmur reached; voices wavered and ceased; arms enlaced; etc.). there is also an idiom proper in the text (to drain sth. to its dregs). the study of the major syntax shows that the majority of sentences in the passage are long, compound sentences with a lot of homogeneous parts. there are some parenthetical insertions like “however”; “for he had been alone to dine at timothy’s”; etc., the role of which is decisive in the prosodic organization of some parts of the passage. passing on to the metasemiotic level, we shall now try to see what additional content is acquired by the linguistic units in the context of the extract. our attention is immediately attracted by the metaphoric wordcombinations like “passionate dusk”, “soft darkness”, “feathery trees” with the help of which the mysterious, romantic atmosphere of the night park is created. in the word-combination “clear dark” two completely incompatible words are brought together which results in an oxymoron. besides the mentioned devices the writer also makes use of other tropes, such as personification as in “instincts of self-forgetfulness … were holding a stealthy revel” , and metonymy as in “all london had poured into the park”. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 25 being a skillful master of deforming idiomatic expressions here as well galsworthy presents the idiom “drain sth. to its dregs” as “drains the cup of summer to its dregs” thus reviving it. the word “cup” used metaphorically is usually associated with “bitterness”, “sorrow”, etc. but here its combination with the word “summer” endows the idiomatic expression with positive connotations. the word “love” is very unusually used in the passage in plural, perhaps in the analogy with “passions” and “hopes”. there are quite a few figures of speech which appear in the context with very little changes: lexical repetitions (a process was going on that night in the park, and in a hundred other parks; myriad passions, hopes, and lives of multitudes of struggling human atoms; the instincts of self-forgetfulness, of passion, and of love) and parallel constructions (were as arteries without blood, a man without a heart). the best effect of the use of semantically close words is achieved in the socalled synonymic condensation in the line “their eyes began seeking searching probing the blackness”. it is not difficult to notice that almost all the stylistic devices are concentrated in the first three paragraphs where the lovers in the night park are described. in the last two paragraphs which presents soames’ pondering over what was going on, on the contrary, the number of ready-made phrases (“had long been considered”, “to draw the attention of”, “in print”, “the next morning”, etc.), usually characteristic of an informative and everyday speech, increases. in this part of the extract we also find words (process, lawsuit, condition of our parks, municipal council, sewage question, etc.) more appropriate for a businessman’s speech rather than for a poetic description. thus, the analysis presented shows the mechanism of the linguostylistic analysis. but it is not difficult to see that, however detailed and scrupulous it may be, it merely acquaints us with the text of the extract without revealing its aesthetic value. this, in fact, is the task of the linguopoetic analysis which first and foremost begins with identifying the place and role of the extract in the armenian folia anglistika linguistics 26 context of the whole novel and then develops, all the time modifying the investigator’s understanding of its parts. our research has shown that throughout the novel galsworthy opposes two ways of perceiving the world, or rather two attitudes to life. one of them is characteristic of the forsytes and the like and is described in the novel as “the sense of property”, whereas the other is based on the ideals of beauty and love embodied by irene and bossinie in the novel. in the presented extract this opposition can be traced on all the levels. in this sense the role of the extract is indispensible in revealing the real purport of the novel. the first half of the text, i.e. paragraphs from 1 to 3 must be clearly kept apart from the second one (paragraphs 4 & 5) as far as the rhythmic, phonetic and timbral characteristics are concerned. this poetic description requires an appropriate, “lyrical” timbre which is characterized by a decreased volume of voice, breathiness and slowing down of the tempo in such elements as “velvety garment”, “still, warm air”; “passionate dusk”. the fact that the author feels sympathetic about what is going on in the dark of the park is borne out not only by the prosody but also the specific balanced rhythm achieved by the repetitions in the first three paragraphs (“their voices wavered and ceased, their arms enlaced, their eyes began seeking searching probing …”), also the parallel constructions (“couple after couple”; “one after another”) and by the alliteration of the stressed and unstressed syllables (“couple after couple, from every gate, they streamed along the paths and blotted against some trunk, or under the shadow of shrubs”). the alliterations and the assonances in “blue-bloom-moon; shadow of shrubs; heartdark-darkness-park” add to the rhythmical unity of the extract. in paragraph 4 where the author arrives at certain conclusions against the general poetic background of the narration some elements of facetious intonation are introduced. the author mocks the forsytes who think that love, next to the sewage question, is the gravest danger to the community. at the end of the passage the solemn tone is substituted for a neutral one because soames appears and the emotionality of the narrative gives way to the businesslike manner. however the author’s voice does not submerge in soames’ linguistics armenian folia anglistika 27 voice and hardly notable irony creeps in (he thought of writing to the times the next morning, to draw the attention of the editor to the condition of our parks). the strength of the aesthetic impact of this extract consists in the fact that the author does not simply inform of the existence of the opposing attitudes towards life, but makes the reader feel the contradiction with the help of the specific choice and arrangement of words, stylistic devices and particularly by means of the change in the tone of the narration. conclusion thus, we can conclude that the linguostylistic and liguopoetic analyses are completely different from the point of view of their ontology. however, as far as the study of a work of verbal art is concerned, they appear to be very closely interconnected. the linguopoetic analysis is based on the results of the linguostylistic one and usually follows it. the linguopoetic analysis depends, to a great extent, on the background knowledge and the intuition of the reader. it necessarily includes the analysis of the prosodic features of the text, for a philological perception of a work of literature is impossible without hearing the “bell” it rings in the inner speech of the reader. references: 1. ast, f. (1808) grundlinien der grammatik, hermeneutik und kritik. landshut, germany: jose. 2. dilthey, w. (1977) descriptive psychology and historical understanding. the hague: springer netherlands. 3. dilthey, w. (1987) vvedenie v nauki o dukhe. // zarubezhnaya estetika i teoriya literatury xix i xx vv. (traktaty, statyi, esse). m.: msu press. 4. gasparyan, s. (2003) concerning the problem of understanding verbal art. // gitelik, no10, yerevan. 5. gasparyan, s. (2008) linguopoetika obraznogo sravneniya. yerevan: lusakn. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 28 6. gasparyan, s. (2009) the recreation of symbolic images in literature. // in search of (non)sense. / ed. by e. chrzanowska-kluczewska, g. szpila. newcastle upon tyne: cambridge scholars publ. 7. humboldt, w. (1984) izbrannye trudy po yazykoznaniyu. m.: progress. 8. jakobson, r. (1956) two aspects of language and two types of aphasic disturbances. // jakobson r. and halle m. fundamentals of language. the hague: mouton & co. printers. 9. maclean, i. (1986) reading and interpretation. // a. jefferson and d. robey (eds.) modern literary theory: a comparative introduction. london: b. t. batsford, pp.122-144. 10. shcherba l. v. (1957) izbrannye raboty po russkomu yazyku. moscow: uchpedgiz. 11. schlegel, a.w. (1963) kritische schriften und briefe. stuttgard: kohlhammer. 12. schleiermacher, f. (1838) hermeneutik und kritik mit besonderer beziehung auf das neue testament. berlin: reimer. 13. schleiermacher, f. (1998) hermeneutics and criticism and other writings. cambridge: cup. 14. spitzer, l. (1967) linguistics and literary history. essays in stylistics. new york: princeton legacy library. source of data: 1. galsworthy, j. (2001) the man of property. // the forsyte saga. vol. 1, part 3. uk, kent: mackays of chatham plc. հերմենևտիկական մոտեցման կիրառության մեթոդաբանական մեխանիզմ հոդվածում շեշտադրվում է գեղարվեստական ստեղծագործության ուսումնասիրության հերմենևտիկական մոտեցման կարևորությունն ու կիրառման արդյունավետությունը: հենվելով հերմենևտիկայի հիմնարար դրույթների և մասնավորապես ֆրիդրիխ շլայերմախերի հեմենևտիկաlinguistics armenian folia anglistika 29 կան շրջանի տեսության վրա, նաև հաշվի առնելով հեղինակի նախորդ ուսումնասիրությունների արդյունքները՝ հոդվածում առաջ է քաշվում լեզվաոճական և լեզվաբանաստեղծական մեթոդների հաջորդական կիրառությամբ և գրականագիտական արժևորումներով ձեռք բերվող արդյունքների համադրումը որպես ստեղծագործության հնարավոր լիարժեք հասկացման ու մեկնաբանության հասնելու հուսալի մեխանիզմ: received by the editorial board 12.12.2018 recommended for publication by the reviewers 22.03.2019 accepted for print 22.04.2019 microsoft word contens verjin armenian folia anglistika literature 116 traditional fairy tales and shrek vicky tchaparian lebanese university abstract although brothers grimm collection of fairy tales have somehow the same cliché of plot, setting, and characters, in the fairy tale of shrek the protagonist doesn’t follow this cliché. shrek the protagonist is not a classical fairy tale of the handsome prince in quest of a beautiful princess; instead, he is an ogre. grimm brothers wrote on text that they collected from the words of mouth giving the traditional tales a special structure and characters. however, compared to grimm brothers' tales, shrek the film, has a completely different structure and characters. in this paper i try to disclose the fact that grimm folk tales which reveal the mentality of the 19th century as well as that of the earlier ages that belong to specific cultures (especially to the european culture and their mentality) are completely different than that of shrek the film. key words: shrek, brothers grimm, traditional, protagonist, folk tales, animation. introduction traditionally, fairy tales were told orally and handed down from one generation to another by the word of mouth until the 19th century when they developed into written texts. later, they presented them with special effects in the film genre. the first collectors of fairy tales in an attempt to preserve them were jacob and wilhelm grimm known under the name of brothers grimm. their first edition of folk tales which appeared in 1812 remains a treasure for folklorists. wystan hugh auden, the anglo-american poet and critic, claimed that grimms’ fairy tales “rank next to the bible in literature armenian folia anglistika 117 importance” (auden 2015:240). however, the extremely important collection of fairy tales has the same cliché of plot, setting, and characters, which the fairy tale of shrek doesn’t follow. as for the plot of brothers grimm collection of folk tales, they are culture specific because they tell a story true for a certain society and a certain time in the past. in her journal called tale spinners: submerged voices in grimm’s fairy tales ruth b. bottigheimer says, “the folktales which appeared during the grimms' lifetime in seven large and twelve small editions from 1812 to 1856 can be seen as a sourcebook for the mentality not only of the 19th century but also of former ages.” (bottingheim 1982:141). thus, brothers grimm fairy tale collection reveals the mentality of the 19th century when brothers grimm lived, as well as the mentality of the older ages when these fairy tales were created. it is worth mentioning that in grimms’ time and earlier, these tales were read only to/by european children to teach them moral lessons. however, in the current time, they are read by various people that belong to different social and ethnic groups. for this specific reason, the plot and setting of shrek (the film) is much more different than those told by brothers grimm. a comparative study of the traditional fairy tales and shrek in their book gender and society, lori baker-sperry and liz grauerholz mention: “these folk and fairy tales were originally used as primers for relatively affluent european children and served to impart moral lessons to them (zipes 1988). today, these tales, at least those that survived into the twentieth century, are read by children all across the globe, they belong to various social class racial and ethnic groups” (zipes 1997; baker-sperry and grauerholz 2003:714). furthermore, these fairy tale stories were affected by the political and social changes that happened in various parts of the world. an obvious example is the absence of african children of color from the pages of these books. research by pescosolido, grauerholz, and milkie (1997) found that “during periods of intense racial conflict and significant political gains by armenian folia anglistika literature 118 african americans, black characters virtually disappeared from children's books” (baker-sperry and grauerholz 2003:14). thus, because of the racial conflicts, black children or characters disappeared from children’s books although there might be many black children reading stories from those books. in the journal of negro education, dorothy l. hurley notes: “tatum (1997) suggests that identity formation in children of color in the united states travels a different path from that of children who belong to the dominant culture” (hurley 2005:221). thus, these stories play a major role in forming the identities of these children undervaluing the black identity and overvaluing the white one in a certain period of their childhood. as for the age of the people who read these fairy tales, it has varied since the earlier ages. in the journal of american folklore, kristin wardetzky writes: “as early as 1923, charlotte biihler's viennese study confirmed the fact that fairy tales were the favorite reading material for eightto nineyear-olds (federspiel 1968:124), and almost sixty years later werner psaar and manfred klein ascertained that “there can be no question of a disappearance of interest in fairy tales either among children or among adults” (psaar and klein 1980:159; wardetzky 1990:157). thus, these fairy tales that play an important part in forming the identity of children can be read by either children or adults. however, passing by the word of mouth to the written words on papers, they didn’t remain there. they traveled far to hollywood studios to be presented more powerfully with the use of special effects and animation to be watched by different children as well as adults in different parts of the world. something which is obviously clear is that most of these fairy tales have the same plot and structure. the beginning of the fairy tale films, like that of the text starts with the words “once upon a time” and ends with “happily ever after.” the hero and the heroine may suffer a lot, be enchanted by an evil magician, be of different social classes (usually extremely rich or miserably poor), yet they will eventually meet somewhere and somehow, where the magic will lose its power by a fairy godmother. most of the heroines will wait for the charming prince to come and save them. these literature armenian folia anglistika 119 heroines are magnificently beautiful princesses and their heroes are extraordinarily charming princes who live in faraway castles and places of unimaginable beauty where the flowers never fade and rivers never stop flowing. according to many critics, most fairy tales have the same plot and structure, yet, the plots of these fairy tales are culture specific, and they reveal the beliefs of a given society. in her journal fairy tales, folk narrative research and history ruth b. bottigheimer claims: “folk narrative specialists demonstrate a growing – and correspondding – conviction that folk and fairy tales are historically determined, a belief that content, style and plot grow out of the surroundding culture rather than representing an ageless and unchanging tradition” (bottingheim 1982:343). however, in shrek the protagonist follows neither style nor plot or characters of the traditional fairy tale since both heroes are ogres instead of being a prince charming and an enchanting the princess. they both live in a swamp instead of a castle and they both are chubby and ugly. thus, it can be said that shrek follows the anti-racist educational approach that seeks to challenge inequalities, in addition to celebrating cultural difference. unlike classical fairy tales, shrek is the story of an ugly ogre, who falls in love with a princess who is also an ogre like him. this reveals the fact that each person, whether a beauty or a “beast”, a prince or an ogre, has his/her match and will be loved for whoever he/she is, regardless of his/her beauty or culture and even the society he/she belongs to. thus, it can be noted that shrek, a fairy tale presented in film genre, has grown out of american culture rather than following the traditional understanding of the fairy tale hero and heroine. considering the fact that "americans are extremely independent, individualistic, and like to be different from each other" (101 characteristics of americans/american culture) and since the american culture is different from the european one having its unique and new ways of living and lifestyle, being characterized by independence, shrek can be considered more an americanized/ modernized fairy tale rather than a classical one. armenian folia anglistika literature 120 as for the looks of the heroine in shrek, it is not only untraditional but is extremely modern and weird. for example, while fighting during a battle it’s the heroine who saves the hero instead of the traditional cliché of the hero saving the heroine. although lori baker-sperry and liz grauerholz believe “that feminine beauty is a dominant theme and that tales with heavy emphases on feminine beauty are much more likely to have survived” (baker-sperry and grauerholz 2003:711), shrek controverses this understanding by having an ogre as a heroine, yet it has been such a success at the box offices of the cinemas that shrek 2001 is succeeded by shrek 2 in 2004, shrek the third in 2007, and shrek ever after in 2010. according to jane caputi, the film shrek is based upon a children's picture book by the new yorker cartoonist william steig (1990), who began writing and illustrating children's books at the age of 60. in shrek 2001, shrek is the main protagonist of the film voiced by mike myres and instead of the charming prince he is animated as a big and terrifying swamp dwelling green ogre. although the word shrek means monster in yiddish (a german dialect used by the jews in germany before the holocaust) and is related to concepts of terror and fear, yet shrek has become such a “beloved popular phenomenon because the film's narrative clearly recognizes and reveres those loveable and enjoyable aspects of ourselves that our culture rejects by deeming them ugly and fearsome” (caputi 2007:32). the film opens as shrek ruminates in his outhouse, reading a fairy tale that says: “once upon a time, there was a lovely princess. but she had an enchantment upon her of a fearful sort which could only be broken by love's first kiss. she was locked away in a castle guarded by a terrible fire-breathing dragon. many brave knights had attempted to free her from this dreadful prison, but none prevailed. she waited in the dragon's keep, in the highest room of the tallest tower, for her true love, and true love's first kiss”. (shrek 2001) literature armenian folia anglistika 121 after this classical fairy tale beginning, we see something contrary to the cliché; we see shrek enjoying a mud bath, and savoring a meal and a martini in his exceptionally cozy cottage in the base of a tree. he is isolated in his swampland home, which is a wetland and which caputi describes as: “wetlands so frequently are drained, filled-in and paved-over to allow human commerce and habitation. but in so doing, humans destroy one of nature's most precious places. . . swamps are necessary, providing habitat for the most beauteous birds and creatures as well as spawning and fishing grounds shrek's swamp is vividly contrasted with the egotistical lord farquaad's supposedly perfect but actually sterile city, from which he bans all the fairy tale beings” (caputi 2007:33). shrek is isolated in his swampland home which will be taken away from him to be given to all the fairy tale characters that lord farquad put away from his “perfect city.” the characters who come to stay at shrek’s swamp are; pinocchio, big bad wolf, gephetto, humpty dumpty, old lady in the shoe, the three bears, muffin man, little red riding hood, mongo the giant, dwarves, cyclops, captain hook, black knight, three little pigs, three blind mice, gingerbread man, magic mirror, and many others. all these characters are in fact traditional fairy tale characters that have appeared in many tales throughout history. meanwhile, when these folk tale characters come to stay with him, shrek makes a deal with lord farquaad, owner of du lack, which “is a perfect place” to save his princess. traditionally, in folk tales, the handsome prince is extraordinarily powerful, and he is the one who fights dragons to save his princess, however, in shrek, princess fiona who is supposed to be saved by lord farquad, who will marry her, is saved by “the other” who is an ogre. moreover, prince of du lack is ironically shorter than the princess, and is carried on shoulders of his soldiers to be seated on his horse. in his swamp, shrek is lonely and has no relationships with others. later he comes to have a talking donkey as a guest in his house who turns to become his best friend; the donkey, who is the secondary protagonist, has a scottish accent and is voiced by the famous comedian eddie murphy. along armenian folia anglistika literature 122 with this weird scene; to get back his swamp, shrek goes on a quest to save princess fiona who is guarded by a dragon. however, to add weirdness to the classical in the process of making it modern, this dragon happens not to be a male character but a female one who falls in love with the witty, comical, talkative, and persistent donkey. moreover, the presence of this dragon gives the film a happy ending instead of a sad one. according to caputi, “in the standard patriarchal myths, the hero kills the dragon and is then able to “rescue”, that is capture, the woman and make her his servant/wife. the narrative of shrek, of course, gloriously reverses this hoary trope. this time, the dragon is female, but she is not slain to save the day. rather, it is a dragon who ultimately intervenes to bring about the happy ending” (caputi 2007:36). thus, revealing this much controversy in the plot and character of the story that is related to the classical concept of fairy tales, it can be said that shrek doesn't follow the footsteps of the traditional folktales. the classical concept of the fierce and evil character of the dragon is changed in shrek since she is a female character who is so sensitive and so in love with the donkey (who never speaks like a donkey but makes gestures). she is charged with guarding princess fiona (voiced by cameron diaz) in her castle but she is not given a name, she has leathery bat wings, long ears, and a long, spadetipped tail to aid in balance. moreover, this dragon has a much better characteristic than killing and conquering, on the contrary, she is the one who saves shrek and fiona from lord farquad on the day of her marriage. thus, she is a modernized devil who doesn't look like the classical one in the collection of grimm brothers' tales. contrary to classical fairy tales, the princess in shrek has a dual-natured character. by daytime she is human and “beautiful” whereas by night she turns to an “ugly” ogre. as she says in the film “by night one way, by day another.” consequently, fiona has two sides, one of an ogre and another of a princess. she is both; a beast and a beauty. fighting the dragon for fiona’s sake ironically with the help of his best friend – the donkey, shrek saves the literature armenian folia anglistika 123 princess and they fall in love, and later they get married on the day of her supposed marriage to lord farquad. conclusion thus, comparing shrek to classical folk tales in history that have magnificently beautiful princesses and extremely charming princes as characters, who live in palaces where the unbelievable becomes believable, and the unachievable – achievable; it can be deduced that shrek, has a completely different type of plot, setting, and characters that subverts the fairy tale genre of the traditional fairy tale cliché since it is the story of an ogre who falls in love with another ogre, fights the dragon to save someone else’s princess, and lives in an extremely muddy swamp where the dragon falls in love with his best friend who is a talking donkey. for all the reasons mentioned above, the tale of shrek the protagonist has a different plot, a different setting, and even a different type of characters than the classical fairy tales in history whether told by brothers grimm or by anyone else. references: 1. auden, w.h. (2015) quotes about fairy tales. goodreads. goodreads inc. available at: jstor database [accessed may 2018]. 2. bottigheimer, b.r. (autumn, 1982) tale spinners: submerged voices in grimms' fairy tales. 27, p.141-150. available at: jstor database [accessed may 2018]. 3. bottigheimer, b.r. (oct. 1989) fairy tales, folk narrative research and history. 3, pp. 343-357. available at: jstor database [accessed may 2018]. 4. caputi, j. (autumn, 2007) green consciousness: earth-based myth and meaning in shrek. ethics and the environment, 12, 2: 23-44. available at: jstor database [accessed may 2018]. 5. hurley, l.d. (summer, 2005) the journal of negro education. seeing white: children of color and the disney fairy tale princess. 74, 3:221-232. available at: jstor database [accessed may 2018]. armenian folia anglistika literature 124 6. baker-sperry, l. and grauerholz, l. (oct., 2003) the pervasiveness and persistence of the feminine beauty ideal in children's fairy tales. gender and society, 17, 5: 711-726. available at: jstor database [accessed may 2018]. 7. wardetzky, k. (apr. jun., 1990) the structure and interpretation of fairy tales composed by children, journal of american folklore, 103, 408, 157176. available at: jstor database [accessed april 2018]. 8. zipes, j. (2000) the oxford companion to fairy tales. oxford: oup. 9. 101 characteristics of americans/american culture. available at: <http://www.press.umich.edu/pdf/9780472033041-101amercult.pdf> [accessed april 2018]. sources of data: shrek rating: pg (for mild language and some crude humor) genre: animation, comedy, kids & family directed by: vicky jenson, andrew adamson written by: joe stillman, roger s.h. schulman, terry rossio, ted elliott, conrad vernon, cody cameron in theaters: may 18, 2001 wide on disc/streaming: nov 2, 2001 box office: $266,982,666 runtime: 93 minutes studio: dreamworks ավանդական հեքիաթները և շրեկը ի տարբերություն գրիմի մյուս հեքիաթների՝ շրեկի հեքիաթում հերոսը չի առաջնորդվում ավանդական կարծրատիպերով և կաղապարներով: շրեկի դերը խաղացող դերասանը գեղեցիկ արքայադստերը որոնող գեղջուկի դասական հեքիաթի հերոսը չէ։ փոխարենը, նա հրեշ է: գրիմ եղբայրները տեքստում շարադրել են այն, ինչ բերանացի փոխանցվել է՝ literature armenian folia anglistika 125 ավանդական հեքիաթներին հատուկ կառուցվածքով և կերպարներով: սակայն, շրեկի ֆիլմը բոլորովին այլ կառուցվածք և կերպարներ ունի: հոդվածում փորձ է արվել բացահայտելու այն փաստը, որ 19-րդ դարում, ինչպես և ավելի վաղ ժամանակաշրջանում տարբեր մշակույթներին բնորոշ մտածելակերպը (հատկապես եվրոպական մշակույթում) բացահայտող գրիմի ժողովրդական հեքիաթները, բոլորովին տարբեր են շրեկի ֆիլմից: microsoft word contens verjin linguistics armenian folia anglistika 69 reflexive pronoun deviations in contemporary english social media gevorg grigoryan yerevan brusov state university of languages and social sciences abstract the paper discusses reflexive pronoun deviations in modern english in the domain of social media. the mentioned deviations are the result of intensive contact of english with other languages. the advent of digital technologies make a platform for millions of speakers all over the world to communicate in any language they want. the latter has eventually triggered the convergence of many grammatical structures and lexical items of different languages. as a result, new deviations and misspellings emerge in different platforms of social media. among these alterations, the actively used reflexive pronoun misspellings and variations have a unique role. these pronominal variations help us to evaluate the current state of reflexive pronouns and lead us to foresee the possible future change of english. key words: language contact, social media, pronominal irregularities, reflexive pronoun fusions, linguistic deviations and errors. introduction everything in this universe is perpetually in a state of change (aitcheson 1991:3). over time, languages also change to meet the needs of society. there seem to be different reasons of language change. languages may undergo deep changes due to immigration, new technologies, trade, political and economical pressure, colonization, cultural imperialism, etc. (boeschoten and johanson 2008:25). the latter may have a wide variety of outcomes. on the one hand, the intensive contact with other languages does trigger the development of grammatical and lexical structures in a number of ways. on the other hand, it is armenian folia anglistika linguistics 70 the source of new vocabulary, which enriches the language. in this regard, it is worth mentioning that the contact of people speaking different languages was not too active until the 21st century. language boundaries were distinctly preserved which was determined by poor technologies of telecommunications. however, with the advent of digital technologies the contact gradually has increased. this has eventually led to the emergence of social media. today social media have become an integral part of everyday communication. different platforms of social media enjoy more and more popularity because millions of people from different parts of the world take part in various discussions in chat groups, discussion boards and forums. people with different linguistic backgrounds find themselves interacting in different social sites, blogs, discussion boards, etc. as stated by reitz (2012:44) social media have changed the nature of everyday communication by providing a platform for individuals and organizations alike to engage with each other in a dynamic, synchronized, and multidirectional dialogue that represents varied voices. due to the economic and political power of the usa and great britain, english is considered to be the most prevalent language of social media. hence, there has been an expansion in the number of english speakers all over the world. today the english language is in deep contact with many genetically related and unrelated languages worldwide. it is important to note, that in a way the future development of english is determined by contact with other languages, because the content on different platforms of social media is often generated in two languages simultaneously. an illustration of the above stated is the following examples taken from different social sites (facebook, twitter, flickr, etc): feliz cumpleanos my dear amiga hope u are having an amazing day...may god bless u always (facebook) #empleo #job i would like to hire by castormorgan: nous sommes à la recherche d'un rédacteur en free pour le... (twitter) linguistics armenian folia anglistika 71 sorry it’s late but hope your birthday was beautiful just like u mi amigacorena torrez!!! feliz cumpleanos mamita! love u (facebook) je sais nous sommes inconnus beyond the borderline of social media i would like and i wanted to be a friend. (twitter) congratulations a todos nuestros alumnos del b1. un año más hemos vuelto a conseguir el 100% de aprobados gracias avosotros. thank u! (facebook) as the above examples illustrate, some components of the sentences are in english, whereas others are in foreign languages: spanish, french, etc. which in a way are in close contact with english. in this respect, it is worth stressing the fact that in the domain of online interaction it is not necessary to transmit coherent lexical-grammatical sentences and items. speakers with different linguistic backgrounds combine grammatical and lexical elements of their native language with the english ones. speakers make a wide use of lexical units, which are combinations of two different languages, for example, unoself, laself, nousself, toiself and so forth. it can be noted that social media is full of fusions of two source languages. the lexical innovations are not considered to be an indication of illiteracy. in virtual environment lexical mixtures and bilingual deviations are the result of spontaneity. bilinguals frequently make use of lexical fusions of two source languages, which are more common in everyday talks. many studies show that in modern english the list of high-frequency words involve mainly function words, and includes pronouns, articles, prepositions, etc. according to c. chung and j. pennebaker (2007:347) function words have a powerful impact on the listener/reader and, at the same time, reflect a great deal about the speaker/writer. hence, it is not surprising that pronominal fusions of two source languages are rapidly evolving in various platforms of social media. among these pronominal fusions are the reflexive pronoun mixtures found in contemporary english social media. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 72 reflexive pronoun fusions according to the surveys carried out in social media reflexive pronoun fusions mainly include items from spanish. it is not accidental, because the flow of spanish-speaking immigrants has undoubtedly increased in the usa in the last ten years. spanish speakers replace the first component of reflexive pronouns, i.e. the object and possessive pronouns, whereas the second stem self – remains constant. an illustration of the above stated are the following examples: get tuself down to le @walkerartcenter for le 2015 internet cat video festival! (twitter) he is the way the true n the light. no one commend to the father elself throng him (facebook) ... ugghhhh... neck and shoulders r killing me from the anger. ....the chick at kfc better be nice... orelself.. she wont be to lucky... (facebook) bank holiday weekend with @ellaself (twitter) be yoself no matter wat. some wil adore u, while others wil hate eveytin abot u (facebook) kip yoself in a position wea u hear god, u must prepare yoself b4 any situations ever emerge (facebook) totally made tihs miself (reddit) comin ovr from /r/pcfaggotrace i thougt the enhanced graphicz wher a bit hard 2 reed, got miself a pear of these and im good tooo go!!!!!11!!! (reddit) you’re overlooking the pleasure in cooking tiself, not just eating (twitter) love loself (twitter) laself love ....when nobody cares n u just smile a lil... (facebook) so uno could keep uno corrupted religion to unoself.....cause i good with my god (facebook) linguistics armenian folia anglistika 73 this fi happen to some a uno pussyhole that caah commit unoself to a trying youth who would shower uno dung wid love and have sleepless nights fi ensure uno alrite (facebook) make una no dey call unaself fool anyhow jare,you should know that was a typo (twitter) fighting bcos of a boy!!! mak una kill unasselves na... (facebook) in many social sites like facebook, twitter, myspace, tumblr, flickr, etc. reflexive pronoun mixtures with french and italian can also be found. however, it should be noted that the users do not actively utilize these pronominal fusions in comparison with the spanish ones: awesome sushi’s fait nousself (twitter) be happy and be nice to toiself and treat your shadow well... (flickr) @zoe_ashdown -of the drink. it was perfect and warming for the early afternoon's chill.} so, tell moi about vousself, (facebook) @natrevrover was supposed to be doing that with elleself, but lack of work curtailed that plan, even got it booked last july (twitter) #ilself continua con una ghiotta segnalazione: ben due romanzi, di silvia devitofrancesco: l'umoristico ultimo... (facebook) paroli is sposting luiself to verdini? #shish ... (twitter) gonna explore by moiself. be back in a number of hours! (twitter) be toiself (facebook) qui peuvent jamais être heureuse pour les autres ptn mais go floatez vosself (twitter) #tbt w/ pretty_live_girl @yup_itspoe quiself_ made we turnt in miami's http://instagram.com/p/jhb8fln3_m/ (twitter) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 74 witout god, my un!queself dz nt exist,witout god my sense of being doz not hav meaning.. i am bcoz he is..1#mornin tweeps,blessed week ahead (twitter) @ceself now that's an embarrassment (facebook) @hettienne qui/quis/quiself (pronounce key/kwee based on preference/origin) (twitter) @leemoburrito well i was about to tweet dat but no (i regret mienself) (twitter) there’s a picture on instagram of my crush..,.. and in the background..,,, i'm looked at him.,.. im choked mienself (twitter) interestingly enough, the substitution of the first item in english reflexive pronouns with the french, spanish and italian ones is not reasonable. the replacement of foreign elements is arbitrary. as the examples show, bilingual speakers can substitute the first item with any type of french, spanish, italian pronouns: personal, possessive, indefinite, interrogative, etc. in modern english reflexive pronouns end in self or selves, which refer to singular and plural forms. however, it is relevant to note that in certain cases the formations of reflexive pronouns in two source languages are reflected with the addition of foreign suffixes like fita, lo, vo, etc. which are equally employed both for singular and plural forms: okej qika gjeremika imma go sleepita myselfita (twitter) what kinda chance does this jazz freak have with a foxy whockachahcha cheeqa like yourselvo (facebook) ra person’s wth in this world is estimated according to the value they put on themselvo. -jean de la bruyere (twitter) @brandonlorenzo you know there's something wrong when you start sending tweets to yoursello there. yummy. ;) (twitter) free yoursello (twitter) hopefully healthy and be a good boy mysello (facebook) linguistics armenian folia anglistika 75 manaña es el reto.......leandro y hersello ...presente del club club taekwondo tito inca http://fb.me/2n5jwizbl (twitter) the keeper personally provided oursello (caminotime blogspot) thus, one can assume that the homogenization of singular and plural endings eases the communication in the domain of online environment and leads the english language to have simplified grammatical structures. linguistic interference as the basis of reflexive pronoun irregularities in contemporary english social media many errors of reflexive pronouns occur as a result of linguistic interference. according to weinreich (2011:27), instances of deviation from the norms of either language occur in the speech of bilinguals as a result of their familiarity with more than one language, i.e. as a result of language contact. in the domain of online communication, speakers employ the english language in accordance to their mother tongue, which results the rise of errors. many languages speakers frequently make use of verbs which often employ reflexive pronouns like german sich anziehen – get dressed, sich erholen – get better, french se lever – get up, se doucher – have a shower, se promener – have a walk, italian alzarsi – get up, combiarsi – change clothes, etc. in comparison to the mentioned foreign languages, in english reflexive verbs are used much less often. in fact, modern english lacks pronominal verbs. however, one can easily note that in online interactions bilingual speakers often violate the rules and add reflexive pronouns to verbs which are not necessary used with reflexive pronouns: i get myself up, shower myself and have breakfast before i leave for work (thoughtco) she becomes herself angry when she doesn't get her way (thoughtco) my husband dressed me for a week, and it changed the way i dress myself (twitter) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 76 been in bed snoozing my alarm for an hour and a half because i just can't make myself get up. depression is fun (twitter) the overuse of reflexives as the result of foreign language interference has become so widespread today that many english online teaching websites such as <www.britishcouncil.com>, <www.engivid.com>, <www.thoughtco.com>, etc. have already included it in the list of common mistakes made by bilingual speakers. as a result of the mentioned linguistic influences, gradually a new type of verbs emerges in modern english. speakers delete the first component of reflexive pronouns and merge the stem self with verbs, like in doeself, makeself, listenself. these innovative formations are written together without any hyphen. in different platforms of social media speakers make use of this kind of verbs in order to emphasize that they are acting upon themselves. interestingly enough, today there is a rapid growth of these newly formed verbs. here are some examples taken from twitter: im supposed to doself administered allergy shots every other day but i be forgetting #bmcpolls2017 it's lesson to shivsena forget dirty politics and think for all who live in maharashtra and doself assessment of your workpast ok i gtg washself brb kisses right off to washself then sleep he knows that it’s not all about the handsome image, and he always makeself laugh with his derpy faces when i was younger, i would makeself a time frame to get home before 3-4 because zoey 101 was on until late lol i know how you feelself feelself like a looooooooooseer linguistics armenian folia anglistika 77 good probably all communist democrats. actually they are the communist liberals and blames other party for russia hack they need to lookself irregularities also occur because of the lack of gender differentiation in the third person plural form. as it is known, in many languages plural reflexive pronouns are clearly distinguished into male, female and neutral, whereas in modern english the gender distinction of reflexive pronouns is only bound in singular form. the plural reflexive third person is neuter. there is no clear-cut distinction of it, that is why bilingual speakers often make use of reflexive pronoun innovations which are in a way quite awkward for standard english: himselves, itselves, herselves, shesselves, hesselves, itselves. the examples below are taken from the twitter: hes don't love hesselves isis refuses all idea of democracy, it searchs to break up the unity, solidarity, the precepts, concepts itselves of democracy in everybody arie & stephanie will straighten it out they don't take no crap and let the aholes.make a complete fool out of his or herselves it’s unfair to sheselves to keep them in prison for such a wretched offense.#tcot reading hate comments that haters send to @khairykj regarding this flag issues, is too hurtful for abah and malaysian itselves! #kl2017 beautiful blonde feeling lonely fingers herselves "we can defend those who cant defend himselves" você disse teen wolf? não, pera, é got no need other peoples. we are himselves rule until the day of judgement. we are brave nation among all over the world. thanks for ur opinion armenian folia anglistika linguistics 78 thus, one can see that in the domain of online communication bilingual speakers try to find out the equivalent forms in english, then the lack of proficiency make them create pronominal innovations on their own. the next deviation that we have noted for reflexive pronouns in contemporary english social media is the conversion of the position. in modern english the word order is rigidly fixed and canonical. for example, reflexive pronouns are used after verbs. however, in their posts english speakers make use of reflexive pronouns before predicates to add emphasis and intensify their statements. the following examples are taken from gingersoftware: jesse wondered aloud whether he himself was the only one seeing what was happening maria knew that she herself could make a positive impact on the world, if only she put her mind to it you yourself can easily transform your body: all it takes is a proper diet and plenty of exercise a thorough investigation carried out in different platforms of social media reveals that there is a growth of conversion of reflexive pronouns in speakers’ posts. we hasten to add that it has nothing to do with the intensification and emphasis. to prove the above stated let us compare reflexive pronoun positions in italian, french and spanish. in french, for example, reflexive pronouns are positioned in front of the verb – predicate in nearly all tenses and moods. the following examples are taken from thoughtco: nous nous parlons. we’re talking to each other. ils ne s’habillent pas they aren't getting dressed in modern italian as well, reflexive pronouns are placed before a conjugated verb or predicate like in the examples below (taken from thoughtco): si lava tutti i giorni. he washes himself every day. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 79 ci divertiamo molto qui. we enjoy ourselves a lot here. a casa, m’annoio. at home, i get bored. in modern spanish reflexive pronouns are placed before conjugated verbs as well. the following examples are taken from spanishdict: me ducho cade manana. i shower every morning. tu peinas antes de salir. you brush your hair before going out. se hablaba. he was talking to himself. consequences follow that in english the growth of usage of reflexive pronouns in place before conjugated verbs is the result of language contact as well. the following examples are the illustration of the above stated: i myself run a b& b ... a lot to learn from this experience ... a truly traditional indian family experience full of warmth & smiles .... (tripadvisor) i myself don’t like this idea. (english.stackexchange) i myself believe that natural medicines like medical marijuana beat out traditional prescription drugs any day. (facebook) i, myself, have killed six people. all random, all undetected, no way to trace them to me. (goodreads) we ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. (brainy quote) in modern english grammar it is accepted to use reflexive pronouns when the subject of the sentence and the object of the sentence are the same, however, today one can find many deviations of these rules. the latter can be explained in accordance with linguistic interference as well. she continued to stare at his scars. he shook herself out of it and looked back up at his face "wow… (twitter) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 80 --before blinking and twitching her nose like a little rabbit would. "wait...why am i getting taller?" she asked as he looked at herself . (twitter) it's a good thing. he really protected myself and luke while we were growing up, and sable was pretty chill too. (twitter) you may submit your expenses to myself before friday. (grammarly) i've been up and stare at herself as shit. (twitter) i just woke up and stare at herself in the morning #enstars #あんさんぶるスター (twitter) your wcw comes to the gym just to stare at herself in the mirrors, it's me i'm your wcw. (twitter) thorough surveys in social media show that there develops a new linguistic feature which is not peculiar to modern english. generally, like object pronouns, reflexive pronouns are placed before the verb in imperative as well. however, in recent years there is a tendency which evolves to attach the reflexive pronouns at the end of the verb with a hyphen, like in the following examples from the twitter: a "real" can do it-yourself home improvement…on steroids. graffiti removal guys complete "do-it-yourself kit" (sensitive surfaces) gr... via @amazon. a must do...it-yourself for our mamas! suction cup bowls... perfect for our messy monsters...and... many people will tell u dat u can't make it,neva be fooled,there is someone that strongly believe u can make it-yourself i posted 10 photos on facebook in the album "macy's makeityourself galore!" in french two subtypes of reflexive pronouns are distinguished: weak and strong. in imperative forms strong reflexive pronouns are attached to the end of linguistics armenian folia anglistika 81 the verb with a hyphen like in leve-toi, aidons-nous, etc. this means the existence of this kind of linguistic deviation can be explained by the deep influence of the french language. conclusion to sum up the survey carried out in the present paper, we can say that contemporary english social media play an important and unique role in everyday communication because they stimulate exchanges of information and creation of a simple and quick communicative platform where information dissemination is easily distributed to speakers with different linguistic background. the active use of words by bilinguals make an efficient ground for different linguistic deviations and variations. among these variations, english reflexive pronouns should be mentioned. the intensive contact of many languages triggers the rise of reflexive pronoun deviations, which are noted in all levels of the english language. over time pronominal deviations have the tendency to become a linguistic norm and this may lead the english language to changes. references: 1. aitcheson, l. (1991) language change: progress or decay? cambridge: cup. 2. chung, c.; pennebaker, j. (2007) the psychological functions of function words. // social communication. new york: psychology press. 3. crystal, d. (2008). txting: the gr8 db8. oxford: oup. 4. boeschoten, h.; johanson, l. (2008) turkic languages in contact. // wiesbaden: harrazowitz verlag. 5. reitz, a. (2012) social media’s function in organizations: a functional analysis approach. // global media journal. vol. 5. ottawa: university of ottawa press. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 82 անդրադարձ դերանունների շեղումները և այլաձևությունները ժամանակակից անգլալեզու սոցիալական մեդիայում սույն հոդվածը վերաբերում է ժամանակակից անգլալեզու սոցիալական մեդիայում անգլերենի անդրադարձ դերանունների տարատեսակներին և այլաձև կիրարկումներին, որոնք առաջանում են լեզվական սերտ շփումների արդյունքում: առցանց հաղորդակցության ընթացքում տարբեր լեզվակիրներ ազատորեն փոփոխում են անգլերենի անդրադարձ դերանունները, և արդյունքում ձևավորվում և զարգանում են այդ միավորների կիրառության նոր ձևաչափեր: ավելին, ինտենսիվ լեզվական շփումների արդյունքում առաջացած անդրադարձ դերանունների շեղումները մեծ թիվ են կազմում: վերջիններս ժամանակի ընթացքում կարող են վերածվել լեզվական նորմի, որն էլ, իր հերթին, գրական անգլերենը կարող է ենթարկել փոփոխության: microsoft word 3.literature 123 134 literature armenian folia anglistika 123 detecting a literary future in the historical past: the gibraltar case john a stotesbury university of eastern finland, joensuu abstract until the present millennium, very little creative literary writing in either english or spanish had been published in the british colonial enclave of gibraltar. given the small population size of the autonomous community of some 30,000 people, it was considered unlikely that a “national” literary culture could form. in the course of the past decade, a handful of dedicated writers have published a noticeable amount of fiction, all of which is concerned with establishing a recognized gibraltarian literary identity. the present article, while not arguing for the permanence of a gibraltarian national literary culture, attempts to trace some of the ways in which a small, unified, geopolitical territory has attempted to tell its own story. key words: gibraltar, identity, historical crime fiction, siege, memory, postcolonial, museumification introduction in the broad field of literary studies there are probably relatively few opportunities to focus on the emergence of a new, contemporary national literature. most cultures have passed through many stages in the process of shaping of their communal stories: their narratives reveal and simultaneously conceal complex tales of past experience and present and future aspirations. the tales may be shaped from conflicting narratives and from narratives whose sources have faded from memory long ago. in the case of gibraltar, however, it may be argued that in the decades since the second world war the largely urban community of some 30,000 individuals, who stem from a variety of backgrounds, both european and african, largely, but not solely, mediterranean, has for geopolitical and domestic reasons – the return of thousands of evacuees after the war; the lasting imposition of a cold war-like relationship with spain; the decline in british global military ambitions – begun to assume a new and very different common identity. it is this emergent sense of a new communality that is now persuading a few local writers to explore its multifaceted origins, framing narratives that have their source in experiences that have been generally forgotten by the local populace as much as by a wider, global readership. the novelty of this process is striking: prior to the year 2005, the publication of literary texts by gibraltarians writing in either spanish or english was armenian folia anglistika literature 124 sporadic, and sparse; now, however, a tiny handful of gibraltarians have produced a substantial body of writing that deserves critical attention. the present article is modest in scope, focussing in the main on a single title in the intensive collaborative literary production of two writers, sam benady and mary chiappe, whilst attempting to provide a partial foundation for future literary-critical work. fictionalizing history gibraltar has shown itself in recent times to be remarkably capable of surviving as a self-ruling entity, where referenda have demonstrated the reluctance of its multi-ethnic population of some 30,000 to dilute its political and economic difference from spain. despite their self-evident interdependence, gibraltarians and their immediate neighbours in the considerably larger spanish communities of la línea de la concepción, across the land-frontier to the north, and algeciras, to the west, a few kilometres across the bahía de algeciras/bay of gibraltar, remain separated by a common history that extends well beyond the formal acquisition of the colony by britain as a result of the signing of the treaty of utrecht in 1713. an even older significant aspect of that shared difference (as i have remarked elsewhere1) has been the proliferation of sieges of the rock, including an iconic series of some fourteen blockades that commenced in the early 14th century and culminated in the great siege of the british military colony from june 1779 to february 1783. the prominence and geopolitical location of gibraltar and its rock have evidently endowed it with a susceptibility to besiegement, and it can well be argued that the full and partial economic blockades that have continued into recent times2 have paid more than lipservice to that communal experience of hardship and suffering. my intention in this brief study is, however, only indirectly linked with the historical experience of siege. given its three centuries of exposure to british influence of all kinds, it would appear to be inevitable that literary expression of local cultural identity would have emerged, especially in the now 70 years of the post-second world war period, with the return of most of gibraltar’s wartime civilian evacuees and the entrenchment of an education system founded on the metropolitan english model (its two main secondary schools are based on the uk comprehensive model of the 1970s) and on the english language3 as the principal medium of instruction. this has not, however, been the case. writing in 2010, albeit with somewhat dated references, the spanish scholar césar domínguez refers to the opinion of the poet trino cruz seruya that “gibraltarian literature is a literature nonata (not yet born)”4. crucially, he concurs with seruya’s suggestion that the relative absence of a local gibraltarian literary culture has been the result of its having become “lost within itself or moving in circles” 5. that seruya’s reading – which i would regard as largely accurate – dates back to as recent a date as 2004 underlines the apparent significance of more recent literary activity in the colony. even now, it would be difficult to argue that a “national” literature armenian folia anglistika 125 gibraltarian literature has been established: it is simply too sparse. nevertheless, a tiny handful of writers has started – as one of them, m.g. [mark gerard] sanchez, has asserted in interview with the italian scholar esterino adami – to respond to the challenge that gibraltarians “need to have our own representative voice – and not just let ourselves be represented by outsiders”6. elsewhere, sanchez has suggested that his writing is primarily concerned with “giving gibraltarians a linguistic and cultural space for themselves. […] [i]f we don’t start writing about ourselves, we run the risk of being presented to the world solely through the prism of others’ perceptions”7. since 2007, sanchez’s writing, most of it self-published, has become both substantial and varied, consisting of two volumes of short fiction, several novels, an anthology of allusions to gibraltar made by literary “outsiders”, and an array of cultural and historical essays; in brief, sanchez’s endeavour is self-evidently to supply a solid foundation for both his own and other gibraltarians’ literary work, an assertion of place, language, history: rootedness. on the surface, there is an immediate and striking contrast between sanchez’s work and the recent collaborative writing of two other gibraltarians, sam benady and mary chiappe. their most substantial work (in addition to a scattering of individually authored fictional – and other – texts8) consists of a seven-part series of imaginative crime novels, all with gibraltarian settings located within a specific historical period – broadly speaking, from the 1790s to the 1820s – focused through the identity of an amateur detective, giovanni bresciano, son of an immigrant italian ship chandler, who in the course of the series himself becomes a chandler and merchant whilst simultaneously functioning as an amateur investigative eye. thus, even at first glance it becomes clear that benady and chiappe have set out to devise a potentially complex formula for their fiction: a gibraltar imagined at an early moment in its colonial formation, at a conflicted period in its history, with a protagonist whose identity is hybrid, both gibraltarian and british. in their second title, fall of a sparrow (2010), bresciano is both fledgling recruit to the local british garrison and also a character inching towards an awareness of the ramifications of his self-appointed apprentice role as crime investigator; but he is also credibly hybrid in his imperial identity – his mother is english, while his father is a first-generation gibraltarian, with genoese origins. in addition, as the authors themselves have indicated in interview, benady’s primary interest has been in “gibraltar history and forensic and medical detail,” while chiappe’s has been in the “social history of the period”9, aims that find their focus in and through bresciano’s role as an increasingly observant, investigative gibraltarian citizen. in brief, for their historical settings the seven novels in the series (at the moment of writing, the seventh, the dead can’t paint: bresciano and the french inheritance, has very recently appeared) have a fairly random span of almost forty years, although also with links to key moments in the local history of the period, starting with that of the armenian folia anglistika literature 126 second completed novel, fall of a sparrow (2011), in 1779 (the great siege) and ending with the forthcoming title, the dead can’t paint, in 1817 (linked with the visit of a french exploration vessel the uranie, bound for the south seas). it can readily be noted, however, that the sequence of the time-settings does not entirely coincide with the writing and publication of the novels themselves, and the bulk of my attention in this study will indeed be paid not to the first to be published, the murder in whirligig lane (2010; set in 1813; yellow fever epidemic) but to the second, fall of a sparrow, set in 1779-1780 amidst the iconic great siege of 1779-1783). these titles have been succeeded by the pearls of tangier (2011; set in 1789; william lempriere’s visit to morocco10); the prince’s lady (2012; set in 1790; prince edward, king george iii’s fourth son, in gibraltar); the devil’s tongue (2013; set in 1793; start of french wars); and death in paradise ramp (2014; set in 1802; the “licentious” duke of kent and the 1802 gibraltar mutiny). at the end of this remarkably compact series, the authors aver that, between his first case, at the age of 18, and his last, not only has the protagonist survived to the age of 55 but “bresciano lives on!”11. the first of the bresciano novels, the murder in whirligig lane, may in some senses be read as the two authors’ own “apprenticeship” piece in collaborative storytelling, but the very title of the novel, with its assertive deployment of the definite article within the context of a now-extinct but historical place-name, suggests an intention to recall an event that, despite its fictionality, can be imagined as part of a collective memory: essentially, a reconstructed gibraltarian experience. as popular reviewers have noted, the plot of this first novel in the series is coherent, and the solution of the crime plausible12. fall of a sparrow, in contrast, appears to mark the authors’ growing awareness of the complexity of the task in hand, as already mentioned above: “to show our community in the process of its formation”, to create a gibraltarian narrative, and to explore some of the origins of the present-day community. as benady has informally commented in response to a question concerning allusions to some of the named characters in this and other novels, we used real gibraltarians where we could [e.g., in the devil’s tongue]: menahem benady was my g-g-g-grandfather and was a shoemaker. abraham hassan was a cousin 4 times removed and did volunteer during the siege. sgt miles is mary’s husband’s g-ggrandfather and was in the first gib police force (later, in 1830) and there are others. [… jane austen’s] capt wentworth started it all – i then found it amusing [in the murder in whirligig lane] to have him read sense and sensibility 13. it may also be noted that in the cast of characters included at the start of fall of a sparrow, the authors have listed the names of “real historical personalities” in bold – literature armenian folia anglistika 127 including the governor of gibraltar, general eliott, and, notably, that of lieutenant john drinkwater, “diarist of the siege” – while adding a secondary allusion to the fictional cast: “[t]he others are no less real to us” (n.pag.). the fictionalization of the historical moment is both transparent and persuasive. the story effectively starts in 1780, “eighteen long, hungry months […] since the start of the spanish blockade” (p. 5). the siege conditions are reflected in the protagonist’s symbolic view of his home, where he arrives to reveal that he has joined the local british military forces in defence of his community: “the large room […] was the centre of family life, but the house seemed empty” (p. 7) – the symbolism of the home requires populating with human relationships, which in the construction of the communal story necessarily undergo threats to their survival in the form of malnutrition and disease. an immature eighteen year-old, giovanni bresciano stands out from his fellow soldiers as an individual who is “curious to hear more” (p. 28) from them concerning the violence suffered by a fellow soldier, jamie macfarlane, whose ethnic “difference” as a scot eventually proves crucial in the solution of the mystery surrounding his death. in this regard, bresciano’s role is to convey curiosity and then suspicion: has jamie suffered accidental violence and then, as a result of his damaged mind, committed suicide, or has he become the victim of murder? the first stage is for the fledgling amateur detective to discover for himself the “only rational explanation” (p. 31), and then to convince others, firstly a childhood friend and fellow local recruit, abraham hassan, whose simple role is to indicate the route that bresciano must take as an investigator: “giovanni, you have to look at the actual facts carefully” (p. 43). this process becomes crucial to bresciano’s detective maturation after jamie’s death by hanging, where the search for the location of a missing key becomes symbolic as well as factual. the second stage in bresciano’s detective apprenticeship is then to consolidate suspicions through detailed consideration of others’ potential motives. again, his mentor abraham acts as guide: “you have given me a number of names of people who might have had a grudge against jamie, but have you cited a single powerful motive?” (p. 85). this dilemma continues through much of the novel, with the narrative voice, at a mid-point in the investigation, reminding the reader that “[w]hile bresciano had the intelligence to resolve the puzzles that jamie’s death faced him with, he had more imagination than organizational skills and his investigation was lurching on from one random idea to the next. he was himself aware of it: he knew he should have looked for the key sooner” (p. 121). perseverance, naturally enough, eventually pays off: bresciano gathers evidence, harbours his suspicions, and enhances his own understanding of the process of death itself by questioning the more experienced regiment cook about the onset of rigor mortis in human cadavers: armenian folia anglistika literature 128 “no! i mean, when you find a dead body, how can you tell when he died?” “most dead bodies i seen ‘ve bin on the battle field. […] funny that. sometimes they was limp when it ‘ad all just ‘appened. an’ sometimes, when we ‘ad to wait to collect the dead, it were a different tale. stiff as a board they’d be. awful – lyin’ there all twisted and stiff like wooden dolls. been dead for hours. and ‘ere’s a strange thing. […] we’d ‘aul away to get these rigid corpses moved, sweatin’ over it […] and if we could ‘ave waited to the next day, the job would’ve been that much simpler. that’s it, you see: first you’re floppy, then you go all stiff and then you go floppy again”. (benady and chiappe “the murder in whirligig lane”, pp. 174-175) the “naive” learning process involved in the honing of bresciano’s suspicions and his accumulation of keys to the resolution of the crime eventually fails to direct him by means of rationalization to reveal the identity of the perpetrator. instead, his assiduous pursuit of misleading lines of inquiry places him in immediate danger of becoming the killer’s next victim. but bresciano now understands the process that has led him into danger, and his future as an occasional detective who will act in civilian life on behalf of his community, gibraltar, is ultimately certified by the (historical) governor of gibraltar, general eliott, himself: “i congratulate you on as pretty a piece of deductive work as i have seen” (p. 283). reading the “popular” text thus, it may be asserted that, superficially, the bresciano series appears to bear most, if not all, of the hallmarks of a subgenre that stephen knight has described, somewhat dismissively, as typical of historical crime fiction: “[m]any periods and locations are used to combine the knowledge-rich security of historicism with elementary crime fiction plots. the link often made to the “cozy” [crime fiction] is credible in that the politics of historical crime fiction are basically traditional, including in terms of gender and race” (knight 2010:225). according to the wikipedia entry (which in this case may be regarded as uncontroversial), the concept of “cozy” crime fiction or mystery can also be considered as a positive marketing ploy: “also referred to simply as ‘cozies,’ are a subgenre of crime fiction in which sex and violence are downplayed or treated humorously, and the crime and detection take place in a small, socially intimate community”. the appeal of the “cozy” is reportedly strongest amongst a female readership, thus tapping into the burgeoning gender politics of the past two or three decades14. in light of the stand-off between knight’s dismissive view and the intriguing but fragmented approaches to the “cozy” subgenre suggested by its authors, publishers and literature armenian folia anglistika 129 readership, my approach has been to read benady and chiappe’s fiction in terms of a complex attempt on their part to investigate not only an imaginary crime (i.e., a murder mystery, narrativized within conventional literary constraints) but also their attempt to investigate and explore valid methods for re-creating a historical cultural narrative, including its actual telling as a “tale”. as sanchez has emphasized, the narrative of gibraltar is always at risk of over-simplification in the views and narratives of outsiders, with the result that the indigenous perspective becomes overlooked and ignored in the modern world. arguably, this may well be a common experience in colonized cultures. hence, while my initial reading of the benady/chiappe narratives has been in terms of their presentation of a constructed "memory" of a fictional character, it is also bresciano’s community – gibraltar – that not only has its own roots embedded in “real” place and time but also has its own ongoing, imaginary connections with present times. as benady has commented, “we aimed to show our community in the process of its formation, with a backdrop of real events – the siege, the epidemic, etc.,” which chiappe has augmented with the comment: “though [we] never formulated such a purpose per se”; predictably, like many effective story-tellers, their stated primary aim has been “to tell a good story”16. a telling moment in my recent email interview with the authors is contained in another chance observation of sam benady’s when he suggests that a secondary aim of their writing, from his perspective, has been “to bring gibraltar history to our reading public,” modestly adding in parentheses “(mostly gibraltarian!)”. for benady and chiappe, the problem of distribution and readership has been compounded by publication that has been only local, and thus, while there may be some ambiguity in benady’s response, there must also be some wryness in his consideration of the extremely limited scope locally for cultivating a readership: do the bresciano narratives appeal solely to a gibraltarian readership, depending on their insiders’ familiarity with the historical referents, or can the authors design their narratives for consumption by, say, a british public with a partial awareness of the rock as an imperial icon, or eventually, perhaps in translation, by a future, hypothetical iberian readership, perhaps one whose own perspective on gibraltar has undergone “translation”?16 where the bresciano novels coincide with general descriptions of post-colonial crime fiction (as opposed to colonial narratives produced by “settler” authors) may be seen, at least in part, in the identity of their protagonists: post-colonial detectives are always indigenous to or settlers in the countries where they work; they are usually marginalized in some way, which affects their ability to work at their full potential; they are always central and sympathetic characters; and their creators’ interest usually lies in exploration of how these detectives’ approaches to criminal armenian folia anglistika literature 130 investigation are influenced by their cultural attitudes. (christian, “introducing the post-colonial detective”, p. 2. christian concludes from this generalization that “books featuring post-colonial detectives are interesting not only because of their plots and the quality of their writing but because of their revelations of diverse cultures” (p. 2). for obvious reasons, this would appear to be problematic in the context of historical crime fiction emerging from a culture such as that of gibraltar: giovanni bresciano is by no means a “post-colonial” protagonist. equally, gibraltar, situated at the present moment between its self-governing status as the most populous of britain’s remaining overseas territories and its historical dilemma as a geopolitical appendage to the iberian land-mass, nicely complicates and frustrates any quest for a satisfactory categorization. christian’s discussion of post-colonial detective protagonists seems, nevertheless, to provide a potential solution. he suggests that “these [post-colonial] detectives are in process, they are learning, adjusting, changing, compromising, rejecting, resisting. they are not heroes of the resistance, out to destroy the oppressor. they are all employed, whether publicly or privately – they answer to employers” (p. 13). in this view, fictional detectives in the post-colonial process function in an apprentice capacity, and play a conservative role – their function is, after all, to restore order and equilibrium to their community rather than to re-form it. in brief, their role, from a textual perspective, with the unravelling of the crime, is for a community and its individual members to discover how to become again what they have been previously. but they have also to create a new consciousness of how their previously secure past cannot be restored: violence has occurred, and the victim(s) and their community have undergone an unwilled transformation. on our behalf, as readers, christian suggests, such investigative characters undertake a form of surveillance, “observation of both the empire and the indigenous culture; the observation of disparities, of ironies, of hybridities, of contradictions. now the surveillance is not for imperial dominance, though, but for the restoration of what is right” (p. 13). now that the bresciano series has been completed, it doubtless deserves more extensive treatment than this initial discussion. an especially provocative approach could perhaps be based on jose f. colmeiro’s discussion of the spanish detective as “cultural other” in carlos g. reigosa’s galician vernacular crime en compostela (1984). foremost in colmeiro’s reading of reigosa is his speculation that the “old city” of santiago de compostela “is the real protagonist of the novel, having become a living art museum for tourists (modern-day pilgrims), a lively university town, and the seat of the newly restored galician autonomous government. the city is the narrative space in a symbolic search for collective marks of identity through architecture, geography, history, legends, food, and popular customs” (p. 181, my italics). transferred to the bresciano series, this view may well help to provide a centred re-reading of the seven literature armenian folia anglistika 131 novels, no longer in terms of their common “distractor”, the human protagonist, giovanni bresciano, but for their re-construction of a historical gibraltar – vide reigosa’s contemporary santiago de compostela – as a narrative “museumification” of the territory. read within this frame, the bresciano novels may then be seen to lay out the foundations of the gibraltar as it may once have been in earlier days, and reveal links and disjunctive moments across the several centuries that find their contemporary meaning in the lived lives of the present-day community. conclusion whilst political commentators have frequently debated the emergence of a definitively “new” communal gibraltarian identity17, the detection of a new “national” literary culture may well prove to be complicated by the continued emergence, or potentially also disappearance, of narratives that will contribute sufficiently and substantially to that literature. in gibraltar’s case, the future remains uncertain. on the one hand, m.g. sanchez’s writing displays a continuing strength and versatility, but the collaboration of the two older writers, benady and chiappe, has recently ended with the publication of their seventh “bresciano” novel, and it remains to be seen whether new narratives will be published by them or by others that will take the process forward of creating a new “national” literature. despite this uncertainty, the present article has, it may be hoped, provided the basis of a rationale for studying the emergence of a new communal literary voice such as that of gibraltar. notes: 1. see john a stotesbury 2014, “the rock and the barbary macaque in 21st-century gibraltarian fiction in english”, the european english messenger 23.2: 34-39. 2. the franco régime in spain imposed a total blockade of gibraltar that was not lifted in its entirety until 1985, ten years after franco’s death. 3. for a detailed historical and contemporary linguistic account of the language situation in gibraltar, see, e.g., david levey (2008), language change and variation in gibraltar, amsterdam: john benjamins. 4. césar domínguez, “historiography and the geo-literary imaginary. the iberian peninsula: between lebensraum and espace vécu”, in fernando cabo aseguinolaza, anxo abuín gonzalez, and césar domínguez, eds., a comparative history of literatures in the iberian peninsula, vol. 1, amsterdam: john benjamins, 2010, p. 114. 5. trino cruz seruya, qtd in aseguinolaza et al., p. 114. armenian folia anglistika literature 132 6. m.g. sanchez in interview with esterino adami (2014) original english transcript of email interview published in italian at: <http://aperto.unito.it/handle/2318/150037 #.vqcorufvi5x>. 7. m.g. sanchez, “if you don’t write your own stories, others will,” new statesman, 17 feb. 2015, web. 8. see, especially, sam benady, sherlock holmes in gibraltar, grindon, uk: gibraltar books, 1990 [short fiction]; sam benady, the keys of the city: an episode in the history of gibraltar, gibraltar: gibraltar books, 2005 [novel]; and mary chiappe, mosaic of an unquiet time, gibraltar: doma´, [2012]. 9. john a stotesbury, unpublished email interview with sam benady and mary chiappe, 4 feb. 2015; until retirement, benady was a lifelong paediatrician, while chiappe worked in politics and education. 10. william lempriere subsequently published his travelogue, a tour from gibraltor (sic) to tangier, sallee, mogodore, santa cruz, tarudant and thence over mount atlas to morocco (london, 1791). 11. personal email with the author, 9 feb. 2015. 12. see, e.g., the compilation of general reviews at http://manilvalife.com/179/, [accessed 6 apr. 2015]. 13. sam benady, personal email, 4 feb. 2015. 14. see marilyn stasio, “crime/mystery; murder least foul: the cozy, soft-boiled mystery,” the new york times, web, 18 oct. 1992; see also “cozy mystery list: a guide to cozy mystery (and other favourite) books and dvds,” accessed march 2015. 15. email interview with the author, 4 feb. 2015. 16. benady’s earlier historical novel, the keys of the city: an episode in the history of gibraltar (2005), is due to appear in spanish translation in 2015. 17. see, e.g., f. oliva, the frontiers of doubt: a critique of the political system by a gibraltarian sceptic (2004). references: 1. adami, e. (2014) original english transcript of email interview with m.g. sanchez. published in italian. available at: <http://aperto.unito.it/handle/2318/15003 7#.vqcorufvi5x> [accessed may 2015]. 2. anon. (2015) manilva life. / anonymous informal review of sam benady and mary chiappe, the prince’s lady, available at: <http://manivaalife.com/179/> [accessed april 2015]. 3. benady, s. (2015) personal email communication with john a stotesbury, 4 feb. 4. benady, s. (2015) personal email communication with john a stotesbury, 9 feb. literature armenian folia anglistika 133 5. christian, ed. (ed.) (2001) the post-colonial detective. basingstoke. uk: palgrave. 6. colmeiro, j.f. (2001) the spanish detective as cultural other. // the post-colonial detective. / ed. by ed. christian, pp. 176-192. 7. domínguez, c. (2010) historiography and the geo-literary imaginary. the iberian peninsula: between lebensraum and espace vécu. // a comparative history of literatures in the iberian peninsula. vol. 1. / ed. by f.c. aseguinolaza, a.a. gonzalez, and c. domínguez. amsterdam: john benjamins, pp. 53-132. 8. levey, d. (2008) language change and variation in gibraltar. amsterdam: john benjamins. 9. knight, s. (2010) crime fiction since 1800: detection, death, diversity. 2nd ed.. basingstoke, uk: palgrave. 10. sanchez, m.g. (2015) if you don’t write your own stories, others will. // new statesman, 17 feb., web. 11. stasio, m. (1992) crime/mystery; murder least foul: the cozy, soft-boiled mystery. / the new york times, 18 oct., web. 12. stotesbury, j.a. (2014) the rock and the barbary macaque in 21st-century gibraltarian fiction in english. // the european english messenger 23.2: pp. 34-9. 13. stotesbury, j.a. unpublished email interview with sam benady and mary chiappe, 4 feb. sources of data: 1. benady, s. (2005) the keys of the city: an episode in the history of gibraltar. gibraltar: gibraltar books. 2. benady, s. and chiappe, m. (2010) the murder in whirligig lane. gibraltar: calpe press. 3. benady, s. and chiappe, m. (n.d. [2011]) fall of a sparrow. gibraltar: hkb press. 4. benady, s. and chiappe, m. (n.d. [2011]) the pearls of tangier. huntingdon, uk: rock scorpion books. 5. benady, s. and chiappe, m. (n.d. [2012]) the prince’s lady. gibraltar: two pillars press. 6. benady, s. and chiappe, m. (2013) the devil’s tongue. gibraltar: two pillars press. 7. benady, s. and chiappe, m. (2014) death in paradise ramp. gibraltar: two pillars press. 8. benady, s. and chiappe, m. (2015) the dead can’t paint: bresciano and the french inheritance. gibraltar: two pillars press. armenian folia anglistika literature 134 ¶ñ³ï³ý ³å³·³ûç μ³ó³ñ³ûïáõùá å³ïù³ï³ý ³ýóû³éáõù․ æçμñ³éã³ñû³ý å³ïùáõãûáõý øçýã ëáõûý ñ³½³ñ³ùû³ïá æçμñ³éã³ñç ´ñçï³ý³ï³ý ·³õáõã³ûçý ³ýïé³íáõù ³ý·é»ñ»ý ï³ù çëå³ý»ñ»ý ññ³ï³ñ³ïí³í ·ñ³ï³ý ëï»õí³·áñíáõãûáõýý»ñá ëçëï ë³ï³í³ãçí ¿çý: èçý»éáí ÷áùñ³ãçí՝ 30.000 μý³ïãáõãû³ùμ çýùý³í³ñ ñ³ù³ûýù, ùçã ñ³í³ý³ï³ý ¿ñ ñ³ù³ñíáõù, áñ æçμñ³éã³ñáõù ï³ñáõ ¿ñ ó¨³íáñí»é §³½·³ûçý¦ ·ñ³ï³ý ùß³ïáõûã: ì»ñççý ï³ëý³ùû³ïáõù ùç ëáõùμ ýíçñû³é ·ñáõý»ñ, ñ³ëï³ï»éáí çñ»ýó ³½·³ûçý ·ñ³ï³ý çýùýáõãûáõýá, ññ³ï³ñ³ï»é »ý ½·³éç ãíáí ·»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý ·áñí»ñ: êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù, ³é³ýó ß»ßï³¹ñ»éáõ ñ³ùáý¹ñ³ýáõñ ççμñ³éã³ñû³ý ³½·³ûçý ·ñ³ï³ý ùß³ïáõûãç ñ³ñ³ï¨áõãûáõýá, ù³ïý³ýßíáõù »ý ³ûý »õ³ý³ïý»ñá, áñáýóáí ùç ÷áùñ, ùç³ëý³ï³ý ³ßë³ññ³ù³õ³ù³ï³ý ï³ñ³íù ÷áñóáõù ¿ å³ïù»é çñ ë»÷³ï³ý å³ïùáõãûáõýá: раскрытие литературного будущего в историческом прошлом: гибралтарская история число опубликованных литературных произведений на английском или испанском языках в британском колониальном анклаве гибралтара было небольшим вплоть до наших дней. считалось не очень вероятным, что в гибралтаре, который был малочисленным автономным сообществом с населением в 30000 человек, могла сформироваться “национальная” литературная культура. в течение последнего десятилетия группа преданных делу писателей опубликовала достаточно много художественных произведений с целью утвердить свою “национальную” идентичность в литературе. в данной статье, не акцентируя факта существования гибралтарской литературной культуры, мы попытались показать, как небольшая единая геополитическая территория представляет собственную историю. maket 2013:layout 1.qxd hedging in modern english nona harutyunyan yerevan state university hedging: a general outline the main aim of the present paper is to give a general outline of hedging and hedges by putting forward the ideas of the linguists who have brought a great contribution to the development of this linguistic strategy. my research also focuses on the study of the types of hedges and their function in scientific discourse. besides, an attempt will be made to find out in what fields of academic papers hedges are more pronounced as well as to illustrate whether there are any fields where the use of hedges is excluded. in her article “i think that perhaps you should: a study of hedges in written scientific discourse” f. salager-meyer assumes that one of the most important aspects of scientific discourse is to weigh evidence and draw conclusions from data. fundamental characteristics of science are uncertainty, doubt and skepticism. scientists inevitably indicate their attitude in their writings. she states that as science is not the coolly objective discipline as asserted in many textbooks and scientific style guides, academic writing cannot be considered as a series of impersonal statements of facts which add up to the truth. moreover, research from a variety of disciplines has revealed ways in which academic discourse is both socially situated and structured to accomplish rhetorical objectives. linguistically these objectives are realized as hedges mostly verbal and adverbial expressions such as can, perhaps, may, suggest, which deal with degrees of probability. they are viewed as devices used to reflect not only fundamental characteristics of modern science, but also the true state of the writer’s understanding and state of knowledge. according to f. salager-meyer, mild speech conveyed by hedges allows researchers to present themselves as cautious, coy, humble and modest servants of their discipline, and to diplomatically negotiate their claims when referring to the work of colleagues and competitors. its use originates on logic and semantics, but has lately been developed further in pragmatics discourse analysis so far that it now extends to areas like metacommunication and to communication strategies like mitigation and politeness. through this extension the concept has lost some of its clarity and sometimes seems to have reached a state of definitional chaos, as it overlaps with several other concepts. hedging is a significant communicative resource for academics since it both confirms the individual’s professional persona and represents a critical element in the rhetorical means of gaining acceptance of claims (salager-meyer 1995). in the article “hedging research in pragmatics: a bibliographical research guide to hedging” h. schröder and d. zimmer showed that the designation hedge/hedging was introduced by g. lakoff in his article “hedges: a study in meaning criteria and the logic of fuzzy concepts”. in his synchronic, non-contrastive study of the oral and written standard english, lakoff defines hedges as words whose function is to make meanings fuzzier or less fuzzy. lakoff argues that the logic hedges require serio-semantic analysis for all predicates. he (1972, 195) defines hedges as follows: “for me, some of armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 93 the most interesting questions raised by the study of words whose meaning implicitly involves fuzziness – words whose job is to make things fuzzier or less fuzzy. i will refer such words as hedges’’. in their further investigation h. schröder and d. zimmer pointed out that zadeh (1972) in his article “fuzzy-set-theoretic interpretation of linguistic hedges” followed lakoff in using the new designation “hedge” and analyzed english hedges from the point of view of semantics and logics. the author assumes that hedges are operators that act on the fuzzy set representing the meaning of their operands. furthermore, fundamental contributions were made again by g. lakoff with the focus on lexicography, and by rosch from the point of view of cognitive psychology (schröder, zimmer 1997). in general terms hedging represents the use of linguistic devices to decrease the writer’s responsibility for the extent of and the truth value of propositions/claims, to show hesitation or uncertainty and to display politeness and indirectness in order to reduce the impression on the writer or the reader (e. hinkel 1997). as the saying goes, hedges express politeness, vagueness, mitigation, hesitation, tentativeness, etc. they can also be examined as adverbials, epistemic verbs, clausal structures, hypothetical constructions and the anticipatory it-clausal construction. the taxonomy of hedges presented by f. salager-meyer represents the most widely used hedging linguists have come across in various types of scientific texts (salager-meyer 1995): modal auxiliary verbs: such diseases may be sufficient to explain chronic pain without invoking other factors. modal lexical verbs: we believe that syntactic drag-chains are more limited in scope than is sometimes assumed. adjectival, adverbial and nominal modal phrases: it is possible that they know about interactions between medicine and are best able to prevent them. approximators of degree, quantity, frequency and time: approximately 30000 poor residents were displayed from their homes in atlanta by gentrification. introductory phrases: it is our view that there are no formal constraints on possible re-analyses beyond the constraints imposed by a theory of grammar. if clauses: if inflected, the living of the vagina becomes inflamed and the vagina area reddens. compound hedges: it would appear that the analysis does not hold much promise of overcoming the technical problems. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 94 it appears that a hedge is a “textual phenomenon” and “a virtual quality” of a text. hedges are of course present at various levels of textualization, but are not inherent characteristics of a text. a text does not contain hedges, but gets them through the authorreader interaction (markkanen, schroder 1997). hedges in english scientific discourse that hedges are actually used in scientific discourse, which is supposed to be above all rational and neutral, is connected with the fact that scientific discourse obeys the same mechanisms as ordinary everyday communication does, although it tries to hide this, more or less successfully, by using a code of its own. it is speculated here that science is not only content, that is, scientific texts are not only content-oriented and informative, but also aim at convincing and influencing their audience (markkanen, schroder 1997). to our knowledge the rhetorical style of a scientific text is not merely a decorative addition to an otherwise informative text, rather form and content are inseparable (stolze 1992:232). furthermore, it can be assumed that in academic papers the use of hedges varies according to the field the writer represents. salager-meyer (1993, 1994) showed that medical editorials and review articles are more heavily hedged than research papers and case reports. she argues that the stronger the generation and the claim to universality (review papers and editorials), the more hedged the discourse. editorials and review articles, which evaluate, persuade or argue and appeal to a broad audience, will have many hedged statements. research papers will be in the middle, and case reports will be at the end. presumably as case reports are clinical observations of a single, generally rare and even unique entities, they are almost purely descriptive and relatively unhedged. typical of case reports are short-story and anecdote-like sentences. by contrast, review articles collect, select, order and interpret the huge outpouring of scientific reports and present relevant findings and generalizations in a form useful for researchers outside the immediate group working on a given program. this is why in almost every one of the review paper statements, there is as bazerman and paradis say (1990:60) “some qualifying adverb or adjective that makes the statements more cautious” (salager-meyer 1995): it has been proposed that this category should be derived much higher in the tree, probably directly dominated by s. the frequency of occurrence and types of hedges are not evenly distributed throughout different sections of academic papers (bants 1994, salager-meyer 1994). the typical introduction section of academic papers (swales 1990a) includes a survey of the field. it is a hypothesis-making opening where the unknown or poorly understood is delineated and where scientists mention (mostly with hedge-attributing verbs such as to indicate, to seem, to suggest) previous research which bears in the same issue as the one their article deals with: although this year can justifiably be regarded as a successful one for the tries i don’t suggest that great value will be needed to maintaining a balance between the three facets. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 95 in the introduction sections of academic papers, then, hedges serve the purpose of building arguments to support the researcher’s own work. as described in skelton (1998) the introduction of a scientific article is almost as tentative as an arts paper. hedges appear least in the almost purely factual methods section, the least descriptive and commentative section of academic papers where confirmatory statements are the rule: we brought about to upsurge by 18 % for legal entities and by over 97% for natural people. the results section is also described by a relative absence of hedging devices, but when they do appear they tend to foreshadow the discussion: one explanation could be that the rules and the conditions underlying such diverse phenomena as article selection, prenominalization are very similar if not identical. the incidence of hedging seems to be much higher in the discussion/conclusion sections of academic papers. it is in these two discursive and speculative sections that authors put forward controversial ideas or interpretations and hence feel the need of protecting themselves from counter argument. in the discussion section hyland analyzed instances of hedging rose to one in every 36 words. this reinforces myer’s (1989) contention that most hedging occurs in the discussion sections of research articles because it is here that an author needs to show commitment while leaving open the possibility of being mistaken. in similar vein salager-meyer (1994) summed up the distribution of “vague expressions” and other hedging strategies in medical research papers as being clustered in the introduction and discussion, whose language she characterized as being general and vague. a high incidence of hedges in the discussion section of a research paper is to be expected, because it is in this section that authors seek to demonstrate their relevance to the body of scientific knowledge (salager-meyer 1995): as nice as these benefits are, they are unlikely to provide strategic advantage. however, the use of hedges is not alien to writers in science and technology either. duboia (1987:15) discusses the myth of perfect objectivity in science noting that “it has been shown that the scientist can unobtrusively inject his personal view into his communication” by using linguistic items that express uncertainty or impreciseness. similarly, butler (1990) shows the importance of modals in english biological and physical texts, in which they “serve the weighing of evidence and the careful drawing of conclusions from data, in the making of claims from evidence, and more particularly in making generalizations about what is possible in the behavior of universe, on the basis of observation of what actually happens” (butler 1990:139). armenian folia anglistika linguistics 96 in the book “hedging and discourse: approaches to the analysis of a pragmatic phenomenon in academic texts” r. markkanen and h. schroder showed that the amount of hedging may depend on individual language user’s position vis-a-vis the audience and even on his/her personality. according to them, there is, thus, room for individual style in the use of hedges even in academic writing. a skillful writer may also use them for his/her own scientific purposes. the linguists mentioned above indicated that in his analysis f.r. leavis’ literary-critical text “the great tradition”, simpson (1990) showed that leavis’ modalized information that was not “risky” or controversial and left controversial information unmodalized. the effect of this, as simpson (1990, 91) pointed out, that important questions concerning the canon of english literature could be glibly passed over, and, at the same time attention could be deflected toward issues that were, by contrast, less significant and more peripheral”. thus, r. markkanen and h. schroder concluded that the pattern of hedging used by an individual writer would become really significant when we thought of the effect that it might have on readers, of how it would direct the readers to evaluate information (markkanen, schroder 1997). linguists claim that hedging is an important interactional strategy both in spoken and written communication. thus, to be effective communicators a feel should be acquired for its appropriate use in different communication situations. it is therefore indicated that – in addition to the analysis of hedges and hedging for their own sake-there have been studies of a more applied kind. these studies aim at finding ways of making communication more effective through providing communicators in different areas of life with both knowledge about hedges and the opportunity to develop their skill in using them. this practical aim is evidently shown in studies of hedging at least in the following areas presented by r. markkanen and h. schroder: 1. contrastive/cross language analysis and comparative stylistics 2. translation studies, e.g., studies concerned with target-language oriented translation, studies on the equivalence of effect between source and target texts, problems connected with text types in different cultures, and ‘untranslatable’ linguistic and cultural phenomena 3. studies on teaching writing in the mother tongue and the readability of texts 4. studies on foreign language teaching, particularly on teaching writing in a foreign language, which also includes contrastive rhetoric, that is, the comparison of culturebound text conventions 5. intellectual communication studies, that is, studies on the reception of texts written in a foreign language (raija markkanen and hartmut schroder 1997). r. markkanen and h. schroder illustrate that teaching the appropriate use of hedges, like other pragmatic phenomena, can be very problematic for several reasons. according to them, one reason is apparently that hedges get their meaning through the context in which they occur. another reason is that their use is often connected with the speakers/writers’ values and beliefs, even their personalities, which make teaching them a delicate matter. as using hedging expressions appropriately may cause problems in some communicative situations even in the mother tongue, the linguists mentioned above suggest that it is no wonder that it is problematic in a foreign language. to their armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 97 minds, this is because the rules of appropriateness vary across cultures. and as to become effective communicator in a foreign language, learners have to acquire these rules, particularly since transfer from the mother tongue is possible also in this area. they illustrated skelton’s analysis which suggests that the skillful use of hedges, which requires subtlety and sophistication even in the mother tongue is clearly part of a language user’s pragmatic competence, lack of which may lead in foreign language use to mistakes that are more serious that, for example, grammatical errors. this is because pragmatic errors are not so “obviously erroneous” as faulty syntax. they only make the foreign language user sound, in the case of hedging, more impolite or aggressive, more tentative or assertive than he/she intends to be, which they may even lead to a communicative failure. foreign language learners seem to prefer the more explicit kind of modification to the implicit ones. hence the authors conclude that in order to sound native-like in a foreign language a speaker or a writer should, then, have a rich repertoire of hedging expressions at his/her disposal and use an appropriate amount of them (markkanen, schroder 1997). an attempt has been made in this paper to show the importance of the phenomenon that appears to be called hedge/hedging for different areas of language use. linguists apparently admit the difficulty connected with this linguistic strategy. the results show that it expresses politeness, vagueness, mitigation, hesitation, tentativeness, etc. it can as well be examined as adverbials, epistemic verbs, clausal structures, hypothetical constructions and the anticipatory it-clausal construction. the frequency of occurrence of hedges is not distributed throughout different sections of academic papers. the investigations made by linguists prove that the occurrence of hedges is very high in the discussion/conclusion sections of academic papers. by contrast, the incidence of hedges is least apparent in the factual methods section and the results section which is characterized by a relative absence of hedging devices. references: 1. hinkel, e. (1997) indirectness in academic writing. / journal of pragmatics, n27. 2. lakoff, g. (1972) hedges: a study in meaning criteria and the logic of fuzzy concepts. / papers from the 8th regional meeting of the chicago linguistic society. chicago. 3. markkanen, r and schroder, h. (2000) hedging: a challenge for pragmatics and discourse analysis. berlin: mouton de gruyter. 4. markkanen, r and schroder, h. (1997) hedging and discourse: approaches to the analysis of a pragmatic phenomenon in academic texts. berlin: mouton de gruyter. 5. salager-meyer, f. (1995) i think that perhaps you should: a study of hedges in written scientific discourse. / the journal of tesol 2/2. washington dc. 6. schröder, h. and zimmer z. (1997) hedging research in pragmatics: a bibliographical research guide to hedging. / ed. by r. markkanen & h. schröder, 249271. berlin: walter de gruyter. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 98 sources of data: 1. boost your child’s language skills. america’s 1 family magazine. woodland hills, california: windson publishers. 2. mugan, j. neurolinguistics. linguistic-death-in life. surrey: university of surrey press. 3. lyman, a. benefits. oxford: oup. â»ñ³ëáõãû³ý ·áñí³μ³ý³ï³ý ³ñå»ùá å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù êáõûý ñá¹í³íç ýå³ï³ïý ¿ áõëáõùý³ëçñ»é ã»ñ³ëáõãûáõýý»ñç ·áñí³μ³ ý³ï³ý ³ñå»ùá ¨ ½³ñ·³óù³ý ·áñíáýã³óá 黽í³μ³ ý³ï³ý ·ñ³ï³ýáõãû³ý ù»ç ¨ ·çï³ï³ý ¹çëïáõñëáõù: ðá¹í³íáõù ÷áñó ¿ ³ñíáõù ï³é ã»ñ³ëáõãû³ý ñ³ù³éáï ýï³ñ³·çñá, áñáß»é ¹ñ³ ï»ë³ïý»ñá ¨ ù³ïý³ýß»é, ã» áñ μý³·³ í³éý»ñáõù »ý ¹ñ³ýù ³é³í»é³å»ë ïçñ³éíáõù: â»ñ³ëáõãûáõýý»ñá ï³ñáõ »ý ³ñï³ñ³ûï»é ù³õ³ù³í³ñáõãûáõý, ³ýáñáßáõãûáõý, ù»õù³óáõù, ³ýí×é³ï³ýáõãûáõý`³û¹åçëáí ýí³½»óý»éáí ñ»õçý³ïç å³ï³ëë³ý³ïíáõãûáõýá çñ ïáõùçó ï³ï³ñí³í å³ñ³çý»ñç ¨ ³é³ç³ñïý»ñç ýï³ïù³ùμ: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 99 microsoft word 2. methodology 55 128 (1) armenian folia anglistika methodology 96 muslim immigrant students in european higher educational institutions siranush chubaryan university of south carolina, us abstract this study investigates the influence of higher education on the integration of muslim students from migrant background into french, german and armenian societies. in 1999 many european states signed the bologna declaration (also bologna process), the goal of which was unification of european higher education under one umbrella. in line with many aims stated in bologna declaration, one of the eye-catching characteristics was the policy’s flexibility, which would allow students enrolled in higher education institutions all over europe to voice and promote their social, educational, cultural needs and take part in decision-making processes. to be able to understand whether the bologna process plays a role of integrator for muslim immigrant students as well, the research attempts to reveal how muslim immigrant students perceive and describe their experiences with european higher education; how they describe their integration into european institutional environment and consequently into european society. for this purpose case study approach has been applied. individual interviews with student-participants have been conducted. key words: muslim immigrant students; europe; bologna process; higher education policy; integration․ introductory remarks my interest in the experiences of muslim students from migrant background in european higher educational institutions under the bologna process grew after i heard the stories told by student participants during an international civic education conference held in armenia in 2008. in my professional life, i have traveled a lot and participated in many conferences in different european states, where i frequently heard different intriguing stories about muslim students. the stories varied, as they were told by different people of several ethnic and methodology armenian folia anglistika 97 religious backgrounds, but most of those stories had one detail in common: muslim immigrant students are understood to be disengaged compared to other groups of immigrant students. even the bologna process, with its flexibility, does not entirely solve the problem of “alienation and detachment” of muslim students. the stories that i have heard from these students show that even if they have spent their whole lives in europe, muslim students are often mistreated. one of the students brought to light several key issues related to immigration: religious identity, social identity, education, and integration. for the immigrant population, the issue of identity is quite complex, because immigrants often try to adapt and fit in to their new environment. in this process, their identities undergo changes. the notion of identity becomes especially contentious when it comes to the muslim students of migrant background (especially after tragic events of september 11, 2001). before september 11, 2001 the presence of muslim immigrants in europe’s economic, political, cultural, educational spheres was not discussed nearly as much as it is now. while issues of integration have always been challenging for muslims in europe, the challenges have become particularly acute after 9/11. moreover, often the attitudes, structures and existing policies of some european states (e.g. france, germany, united kingdom, armenia, etc.) hinder muslim immigrant students’ educational, civic, and social integration, becoming obstacles for those students in building their future careers and lives while legally residing in europe. although there is a vast literature (e.g. barseghyan 2010; markaroff 2011; shadid 2002; kamaroff 2010; melnikov 2002; landa 2004) around the topic of muslim immigrants in europe, the research still lacks depth on the ways in which muslim students from migrant background perceive the problems they face while attending european higher educational institutions. the main focus of researchers (e.g. markaroff 2011; landa 2004; etc.) is general muslim population, including their cultures, traditions, the practice of islam in west. there is also research (e.g. shadid 2002; melnikov 2002, etc.), which focuses on muslim second-generation immigrants’ religious identity in one specific country context (e.g. netherlands). finally, it is important to take into account the solutions proposed by muslim students themselves and consider their suggestions for enriching their academic and civic experiences. the stories told by muslim students inspired me to initiate this study in order to have a deeper understanding of the interplay between current educational armenian folia anglistika methodology 98 policy (e.g. the bologna process) and the integration of muslim students from migrant background into educational, civic, and social life of europe. for this purpose the following questions are going to be addressed within the framework of the present paper: 1. while studying in a european higher educational institution, how do muslim immigrant students describe their experiences with european education? 2. how do they describe their integration into european institutional environment and consequently into european society? the countries selected as cases: germany, france and armenia the existing policies on religious and minority rights in france, germany and armenia seem to be quite strict, even relating to traditional muslim female populations’ use of headscarves in educational institutions. for instance, david sapsted (2010) indicates that germans’ attitudes towards muslims is noticeably more intolerant compared to people from other western european countries. another example is the french government’s law that prohibits the presence of any kind of religious signs in schools and universities. according to bouzar and kada (2003), muslims in france do not enjoy their religion as much as other residents of the country enjoy theirs. finally, i would like to say that historically, christian armenia has always struggled in its relations with its muslim neighbors (e.g. the armenian genocide by the ottoman empire, the ongoing conflict with azerbaijan in the disputed nagorno-karabakh region, etc.). jaloyan, while talking about muslims in armenia, outlines that, “we have always had problems with muslims. now what we have is increasing number of persian population, which is trying to take over our country” (jaloyan 2010:28). while discussing the choice of these three countries, it is important to mention that all three countries are part of the same higher educational policy (i.e. the bologna process). thus, according to françois orivel, “the origin of the bologna process in france can be traced in a report prepared at the request of the ministry of education in 1998. this report was aimed at proposing a harmonization of the structure of diplomas in the european space,” (orivel 2005:2). after the signing of the bologna declaration and introducing the process into the french educational system, higher education in france was no longer state funded. the tuition fee is not currently very high (ranging from 150-700 euros yearly for public institutions, 700-15000 euros for private methodology armenian folia anglistika 99 institutions), but it still could be a problem for immigrant population in general, making their access to higher education more difficult. germany was also among the 29 european countries to sign the bologna declaration in 1999. as mause explains, “what is interesting is that the bologna declaration was not a legally binding contract amongst the states who signed it. there also existed no sanctions for the non-implementation of the bologna objectives. the same holds for the subsequent declarations published within the ongoing bologna process,” (mause 2013:19). thus, in germany the change in the higher education system had more of a gradual character. due to governmental pressures starting from the winter term of 2010, german higher educational institutions introduced bachelor’s and master’s degrees into higher educational institutions all over germany, making the system more in tune with the bologna process. higher education in germany, though, is still state funded, which means that high tuition cost is not a potential hindrance to muslim immigrant students’ education process. after armenia signed the bologna declaration in 2005, reforms have taken place in the armenian educational system, which aim to restructure it into an integrated educational system and to provide multifaceted education. according to bekaryan, “the integrated educational system would also give a priority to basic scholarly research activities and will integrate the primary goals of the university to create exchange and import knowledge,” (bekaryan 2010:27). the achievement of these goals was possible through the introduction of a flexible three-degree system including bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees, as well as through the introduction of new content into curricula. along with positive effects, there were very negative outcomes, which i should outline. the education that was once completely free is now quite expensive, especially for a country like armenia. this means that many potential young students, including muslim immigrant students, are not able to have equal access to education. armenian educational institutions, in contrast with other western/european states, do not really employ the scholarship system, which would allow lowerincome students to have equal access to education. the introduction of tuition fees could be one of the potential challenges within the framework of the bologna process, which could hinder the equal access of muslim immigrant students to education in armenia and france. for instance in armenia the scholarship system for students in general is not wellestablished, which makes it hard for students apply for grants and financial armenian folia anglistika methodology 100 assistance. in france the education is not state funded, but it is more or less affordable. since the education in germany is state funded and muslim immigrant students still face problems while studying in higher education institutions in germany, tuition fee appears not to be one of the main challenges within the bologna process in the country. it is important to mention, though, that there are many foundations all over the world (e.g. a.q.m salehuddin and najmun nisa memorial trust, aamir mustafa kidwai trust, etc.), which financially assist muslim students all over the world, making their access to education easier. literature on education’s role in muslim immigrants’ life many research works find education to be the main means of integration for muslim immigrants into european society. research that focuses on the interplay of education and integration of muslim immigrants mostly draws upon factors like academic attainment of muslim immigrant students, dropout rates, introduction of new classes into schools, which could either hinder or promote the integration of muslims (gesemann 2005). there are also studies which focus on the identity of muslim immigrants (mostly religious) within the framework of general education. also, research gives consideration to muslim female students, while discussing the role of education (jackson 2008). gesemann discusses information regarding the immigrant students’ academic progress, based on the new the programme for international student assesment (pisa), and iglu (international primary school reading study) comparative studies. gesemann states: the results of the pisa comparative study conducted by the oecd show that the differences in reading competence among youths from upper and lower social classes is greater in germany than in any other country participating in the study. affected here in particular are children of the working class and of immigrants. pupils 15 years of age, both of whose parents were born in germany, have chances of attending realschule or gymnasium which are two to three times as good as pupils of the same age who come from pure immigrant families (gesemann 2005:10). the research suggests that there should be supplementary education designed for immigrants and children of working-class families to promote the entire integration process. many researchers see integration of young muslim immigrants through the introduction of religious education into general education. in this regard, methodology armenian folia anglistika 101 jackson (2008) outlines that european inter-governmental institutions emphasize and advocate the study of religion in public schools all over europe. osce has developed recommendations regarding the integration of religious study into the school curriculum. while trying to integrate religious studies into public education, european governments realize that appropriate pedagogical approach should be developed, which should be engaging for all students and will address the importance of religious identity. jackson (2009) mentions that through integration of religious studies, europe hopes to engage immigrants in european civics. when it comes to higher education, the whole picture regarding the integration of muslim immigrant students gets even more confusing. higher educational institutions are considered to be spaces where students can interact and engage in different issues related to academic and social life. immigrant students studying at universities are not exceptions (scott 1997). asmar (2006) and gilliat-ray (2000) assert that some needs of muslim students have to be met to make their integration process into european society smoother and easier. the list of those needs is mostly related to religious rituals (e.g., praying, available prayer space, halal food consumption, etc). modood (2005) criticizes the approach of the european education system towards the muslim immigrant population, stating that the practiced approach does not respect multiculturalism. modood asserts that european universities do not really satisfy the basic needs of muslim immigrant students, thus hindering the students’ social integration. according to modood (2005) there should be an intercultural dialogue to promote muslims’ social engagement. ortuno (2009), in line with modood (2005), emphasizes the absence of dialogue between locals and immigrants. another major aspect hindering the integration of muslims is the overall discrimination against them. the increase in discrimination is especially noticeable after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. appleton (2005) points out that according to muslim immigrant students, the attitude of europeans towards them sharply shifted towards the negative after 9/11. muslim students experienced not only verbal but also physical attacks by local europeans. appleton indicates that those attacks make muslim students feel apathetical towards their studies, as well as integration into european society in general. regarding the negative attitude towards muslim students, tyrer and ahmad (2006) notice the presence of islamophobia on the campuses of universities. the armenian folia anglistika methodology 102 negative attitude is especially obvious towards muslim female students, who usually wear their traditional dresses and cover their heads. though 12 years have passed after the tragic events of 9/11, the situation for muslim students in europe has not improved. jaloyan, after interviewing 20 muslim immigrant students studying in higher educational institutions, explains that muslim students experience hardships. these hardships are not because they do not study hard or have issues related to french, but because of their religious background. jaloyan’s study and his interviews with those 20 students show that european professors have negative attitudes towards muslims, and especially towards muslim females, because, as jaloyan mentions, “it is easier to identify the female’s religious belonging sometimes, than that of males,” (jaloyan 2008:37). another eye-catching study regarding muslims’ integration is kalinin’s research in 2010. through interviewing 10 european students from france, uk, and spain, the researcher tries to understand their perception of their muslim peers. the study reveals that the attitudes of europeans towards their muslim immigrants differ. some students outlined that they have muslim friends. others indicated that muslims present a potential danger for the future of europe. there are also students that singled out the role of media in shaping negative attitudes towards muslim population in general. kalinin suggests that development of special programs at higher educational institutions where locals and immigrants can get together and tell their stories to each other could help to solve the issue of negative attitudes. the study concludes that those integrative programs could be the beginning of mutual understanding, which could help both parties. to summarize his research results, kalinin mentions that in this respect policy makers could try to make educational policies more flexible, stating, “course credits…they may be important. but they lose importance, when not every student is engaged. this means that there is a problem, which policy makers could try to fix,” (kalinin 2010:76). mitchell, while discussing neoliberal governmentality and its influence on european education asserts that both the policies and the programs associated with education and training are becoming more oriented towards the formation of mobile, flexible, and self-governing european laborers and less oriented towards an institutionalized affirmation of personal development and individual or group ‘difference’ (mitchell 2004:3). methodology armenian folia anglistika 103 mitchell thinks that the flexibility of the european educational system should make the integration of immigrants in general easier. but is this also true for muslim immigrants? how do muslim immigrants see the role of education in promoting their own integration? limitations of the study my research is a set of individual case studies that i compare. the main method of my data collection consists of semi-structured interviews with nine muslim immigrant students from france, germany and armenia. the study is not therefore statistically representational and cannot be generalized. because the study is of international character, i could not be present in the countries for long periods of time, limiting my contact with the student-participants. methods qualitative research. i think that in general most of the inquiry methods used by researchers can make substantial contributions to research and provide profound knowledge about the examined topics. since my research mostly carries international and comparative components, and because i focus on notions like the interplay of educational policy and integration as human experiences, i thought that it would be appropriate for me to use qualitative methods of inquiry. by using qualitative methods i was able to conduct a more profound examination; i was able to focus, understand, explain, and interpret the collected empirical data. my research is more individualized with data collected through individual conversations with the participants of my research. case study approach. while thinking about the research approach i would be using in my examination, i went through a lot of articles and books (maxwell, 2004; maxwell, 2005; yin, 1984, etc.) that offered a variety of methods to be applied in research in general. i thought about the goals of my research and came to the conclusion that what i am doing in my examination is looking at particular groups of participants and their experiences in a specific context (e.g., european context). at the same time, it is important to provide detailed information about the researched phenomenon through individual stories. since i was conducting research on muslim immigrant students in one specific context (e.g., european context), it meant that i was not going to look for or focus on a universal truth. instead, what i, as the researcher, would do was mostly related to examination and description of what was happening. armenian folia anglistika methodology 104 according to yin, it is an empirical inquiry which enables researchers to investigate “contemporary phenomenon in a real-life context,” (yin1984:23). further, he outlines that there are “no clearly defined boundaries between phenomenon and the context” and in this respect he recommends the use of multiple sources of evidence. taking into account the importance of the interrelationship between phenomenon and the context, i think that the case study approach was the most appropriate for my research, as i would be examining muslim immigrant students in european context. data on muslim student-participants i used two main sources to gather data for my research: personal interviews with student-participants, their written reflections. the discussion of each method follows. interviews. interviewing in general is a quite informative process. the data collected makes it possible to become more enlightened and learn more about the issues the research is focused on. glesne (1992) describes interviews as an “alternative” source of finding answers to questions of interest. inspired by this definition, i was able to gather important data by interviewing studentparticipants on their experiences as muslim immigrant students. research in the field of phenomenology suggests that interviews should consist of three interview series: focused life experiences; the details of experience; and reflection on the meaning (mills 2010; seidman 1998; smagorinsky 2008). reflections written by muslim student-participants. i chose written reflections as another source of data because i think that written reflections can provide more comprehensive data and make the entire data collection process more informative. in this regard, i would like to mention that i based my choice of written reflections on my personal experience. while working as a research assistant at the office of program evaluation the university of south carolina, i conducted many focus groups, as well as individual interviews after which the interview participants were requested to write reflections around the questions asked during the interview. to my great surprise, those written reflections were more detailed and uncovered some issues which were not voiced during the interviews. hubbard and power (1999) and mills (2003), while discussing qualitative research methodology and its practical use, emphasize that data from written reflections together with interviews “draw patterns and categories from responses.” those responses can be especially useful for data analysis. methodology armenian folia anglistika 105 after coding the data, i started building as well as analyzing each individual case. cross case analysis followed the single case analysis. analysis and results i conducted my research interviews in the following universities: yerevan state university (armenia); frankfurt am main university (germany); science po university, menton (france). to my surprise, there were many immigrant students with a muslim background who expressed a willingness to participate in interviews. i conducted a group interview first in order to determine which students had really interesting stories to share with me. after discussing general questions related to my research, i chose three students from each university: the students represented the following countries: algeria, yemen, lebanon, turkey, morocco, iran, india, uzbekistan and egypt. while making my choice among the volunteers, i based my decisions on bringing into my project as much diversity as possible (e.g. diverse nationalities, age as well as gender). i conducted three rounds of interviews with each and every student. the interviews were individual. the interviews were individual. names of student-participants are the following: viola, ahmed, sasan (armenia); erdi, mayana, said (germany); amal, khaled, jhoka (france). according to the students interviewed, there were various obstacles they needed to overcome in order to feel accepted by locals. shahnazaryan (2011) asserts that institutions of higher education possess the ability to make the integration of immigrant students easier and less painful. in this section i focus on analyzing the results of the data on experiences of muslim immigrant students in their respective institutions of higher education. i try to answer whether or not muslim immigrant students feel integrated into their educational environment in particular and into french, armenian and german society in general based on the data of interviews with the students. next, i discuss what the students indicated as the existing problems and obstacles that hinder their integration into their educational environment as well as european society. i look at participants’ experiences with their peers as well as professors, and i try to determine to what degree they felt accepted by the locals. to make the points discussed clearer, i refer to notions like: religion and ethnicity, language, unequal treatment, and the feeling of being an outsider. armenian folia anglistika methodology 106 finally, i also talk about the suggestions the participants made regarding possible ways of making their integration easier and smoother in their new homelands. higher education and integration: how immigrant students see their integration shabayev (2009) finds it very important for immigrants from muslim backgrounds to enroll in institutions of higher-education in their host countries, asserting that higher education can have a positive influence on immigrants’ integration in general. while shabayev (2009) has very positive feelings about higher education’s role as an integrator, polich (2011) states that european institutions of higher education all over europe may discourage many muslim immigrant students from continuing their educations, explaining that sometimes a very tense atmosphere exists inside the institutions and there are prejudices toward muslim immigrant students. at the same time, ghukasyan (2008) indicates that many muslim students do not want to integrate and that higher education cannot play any role in their integration, even if they are part of that institution. as opposed to ghukasyan, wright (2012) states that immigrants do not integrate because: “they feel and see the silent conversation among locals and themselves” (wright 2012:56). he asserts that any immigrant is willing to integrate and to support the entire integration process; immigrants should be approached individually. comparing immigrant students with first grade elementary school students, wright points out that they are even more vulnerable than first grade students and require individual approach (ibid). when i look at the data provided by the students, i notice an interesting tendency across all nine cases. although students came up with different thoughts and ideas on integration, there is at least one commonality among all nine cases: “being integrated means being accepted.” the data shows that the perception of the three students studying in armenia (viola, ahmed and sasan) of their higher educational institution (yerevan state university) varies. viola found it really complicated to become part of her institutional environment because she had a hard time communication with her armenian peers, while ahmed and sasan were doing their best to make armenian friends because they thought it would help them better integrate into their educational environment in particular and armenian society in general. but all three students indicated that one of the most important aspects of integration is acceptance by armenian methodology armenian folia anglistika 107 society. in addition to “being accepted,” ahmed found himself in the middle of a “cultural game,” stating that his integration also depended on accepting the local cultural value system. the same tendency is noticeable among students studying in germany and france. despite the fact that some of the students were successful in their communication with local peers, they still felt that they were not accepted by many people within their higher educational institution as well as outside of it. an interesting fact that i notice in the student data is that khaled and amal (students studying in france) did not pay attention to the bad attitude toward them coming from local europeans because they realized that, if they wanted to be accepted and integrated, then they needed to ignore those “negative messages” and just do their work and try to maintain their friendship with their european friends. i am inclined to believe that it is due to their childhood in the multicultural countries of algeria and morocco and the influence of their families that amal and khaled were able to ignore the existing bad attitude and willingly continue their integration process into the society of their new homeland. another tendency that i notice among all nine cases is that students try to “look like europeans.” the data shows that all 9 students, for example, mostly spoke the local language even if they interact with people who knew their mother tongue. another important thing is that students try to wear clothing that will make them look like their local peers. a good example is sasan’s case. he indicated that he did not want to look like other persian students who wore specific colorful clothing and had different haircuts. sasan tried to look like armenian students. yet another commonality among all nine students is that they find their integration into their own higher-education environments important because they think that it will facilitate not only their entire educational process, but also their integration into european society in general. even though, for instance, amal and khaled saw quite a progress in their integration, all 9 students still came across various obstacles that could potentially hinder their integration. in the section to come, i try to reveal those obstacles based on the data provided by students. obstacles hindering integration religion and ethnicity. the stories of interviewed students tell us that often they avoid questions related to their ethnicity, nationality, and religion. armenian folia anglistika methodology 108 while looking at the data of the 9 student participants of my study, i can see that the abovementioned results hold true for them as well. viola realized that her ethnic background and her religion could potentially hinder her integration into armenian society and stopped wearing the hijab, despite the fact that armenian institutions of higher education do not prohibit it. viola also pointed out that local students would often tease her for the clothing she wore, which made her make some changes in her appearance. but viola could not hide her ethnicity and, according to her, everyone in her institution knew that she was from uzbekistan. in contrast to viola, ahmed did not plan to make major changes to hide his nationality or religion. he thought that studying hard and being a good student could help him overcome problems related to his integration and make locals believe that “being an immigrant from muslim background is not a mental disability.” in contrast with viola and ahmed, sasan almost never interacted with other iranians, and he tried to wear clothing in the style of armenian students. he did not consider himself a muslim, and when asked questions about his nationality he presented himself as armenian, and the most astonishing thing is that he sometimes wore a cross around his neck. like sasan, erdi, finding himself in the middle of integration problems, thought that giving up his religion, presenting himself to others as german, and wearing european-like clothing could make his integration into german society smoother. erdi thought that the changes he had undertaken seemed to have made his integration easier. mayana (student from germany) tried to avoid religious practices and think and act more like europeans, but at the same time she indicated that she did not feel accepted either by europeans or by immigrant students from a muslim background. i understand why covered muslims don’t accept me. it is because they know that i should be muslim, but in reality i am not. i don’t even wear their type of clothing. but i feel like there are many european students who just don’t want to interact with me. mayana, like viola, still felt badly integrated, despite the self-changes she had been through. in contrast with other students, said was one of those lucky students whose appearance was more or less european, which helped him avoid questions related to his nationality and religion. said, similar to sasan, did not wear muslim-specific clothing, and he tried to act and think like european: “i try to methodology armenian folia anglistika 109 behave like europeans; i wear the same type of clothing; i eat the same type of food; and i listen to european music only.” jhoka’s case was very similar to viola’s case: lack of friends and interaction, lack of acceptance, and low levels of communication. despite the fact that jhoka did not use her yemeni clothing inside institutions, she did not feel that it helped her to integrate. she realized that her religion and ethnicity, especially after recent tragic events in france, could hinder her integration into french society, but she did not feel like giving up either her ethnic identity or religion. she thought that if people were going to accept her, they needed to accept her the way she was. in contrast with jhoka, khaled did not seem to have major problems in adapting to his institutional environment. but at the same time, khaled, like erdi, tried to act french and think french, because he thought that that type of behavior could influence his integration positively. khaled said that he did not really like concepts such as nationality and religion. i think that such an attitude toward those concepts is due to the fact that khaled realized that nationality and religion were potential obstacles toward his integration. amal’s case is similar to kahled’s case in sense that amal did not seem to have major problems related to her ethnicity or religion. amal herself did not outline the fact that she was muslim, but she stated that she just had belief in god. also, amal mentioned that morocco's being a multi-national country made it easy for her to be accepted by french society without having problems related to her ethnic background. at the same time, she realized that muslim immigrants from other countries do have issues related to ethnicity and religion. like mayana, amal mentioned that sometimes she felt non-accepted by other muslim students due to her free outlook and communicative behavior. language. transition to new culture and environment can be very stressful. an important part of a new culture for an immigrant is the official language of the country. nelson (2008) asserts that integration into a new society is much easier if immigrants learn the language of their new homeland. nelson (2008) also states that the tendency to learn the local language is especially noticeable among the younger generation of immigrants and, more specifically, among those youngsters who want to be well educated in order to be able to build their future in the new country. my interviews with all 9 muslim immigrant students suggests that they realized the importance of knowing and speaking the language of their host country. my observations show that, for example viola, did realize the armenian folia anglistika methodology 110 importance of learning and speaking armenian. she could also understand that speaking the local language would potentially improve her integration into armenian society. viola did not have an easy time learning armenian. as to ahmed and sasan, both of them realized that knowledge of the armenian language could play an important role in their integration. both of them learned armenian before entering yerevan state university to be able to enroll in mainstream classes with armenian students. most of the time they speak armenian. sasan’s story reveals that he avoided communication with other iranian students and tried to speak only armenian. ahmed also indicated that he preferred to speak armenian most of the time. moreover, ahmed’s major was armenian history, not only because he was interested in it, but also because he thought that knowing the history of his host country better, would make his integration smoother. similarly, mayana, erdi and said found the knowledge of german important and thought that it could definitely make their interaction with germans easier. moreover, they often tried to speak german because, according to them, by doing so, they avoided questions related to their ethnic as well as religious background. while amal and khaled had no problem speaking french, because they grew up speaking french, jhoka attended specialized courses in french for foreign students who were planning to continue higher education at science po. in contrast with amal and khaled, jhoka’s parents did not speak any french and they did not encourage their children to speak french. but jhoka, realizing the importance of speaking the local language as well as its positive influence on integration, did learn french and tried to speak it most of the time. unequal treatment and the feeling of being an outsider. all 9 of the student-participants in my study considered unequal treatment, which makes students feel like outsiders, to be one of the major issues they dealt with. thus, despite the fact that amal and khaled were more or less integrated into their educational environment, they also felt unequally treated by their professors and thought that such treatment could be detrimental to the integration of muslim immigrants. amal did not talk much about unequal treatment toward herself, but her data makes it clear that she was aware of an existing problem and noticed that many muslim immigrant students did face that problem. khaled did talk about his own unequal treatment and existing prejudices toward him. at the same time, both amal and khaled preferred to ignore the negative treatment, considering their integration vitally important for their education in particular methodology armenian folia anglistika 111 and life in france in general. they kept up with making many friends among the french and other europeans, and they were actively involved in educational activities. both students perceived that their integration was vitally important and preferred not feel like outsiders. jhoka’s, viola’s, and mayan’s cases shows that the three young students did have hard time integrating into both their educational environment and into the societies of their host countries. the data of these three students reveals that professors did not treat them well. the students could not make friends with local students, which would make their integration smoother. they felt like outsiders and distanced from europeans. the students thought that unequal treatment by their professors reflected on the students as well and caused the local population to keep away from them. this type of attitude made all three students feel “othered” inside and outside of their institution. according to the data, very few professors were supportive and approachable. when i compare the erdi’s, said’s, sasan’s, and ahmed’s cases, i notice that all four felt unequally treated by professors and even sometimes by students. the data also reveals that all four students had good knowledge of the language of their host country and mostly interacted with locals both inside and outside the institution. they thought that interaction and communication with local european students was the main key to their integration. and all four students did their best and studied hard to prove to their professors that they deserved better treatment. to conclude, i would like to add that all nine students knew that their integration was important not only for their education but also for their attempt to become good citizens of their host countries. all nine cases demonstrate that professors’ unequal treatment influences the opinions of local students about muslim immigrants. at the same time, muslim immigrant students think that the reason behind their unequal treatment is their religion and the country of origin. that is the main reason students avoid speaking their native language, try to behave like europeans (for example, through clothing, thinking, and so on), and even sometimes ignore negative messages from their professors and peers. conclusion as we saw from the above discussion, all nine students discussed various obstacles related to their integration. students also highlighted that integration armenian folia anglistika methodology 112 was vitally important for them, not only for their successful completion of their education but also for becoming lawful members of the society of their respective host country. gyurzaev, while looking at various institutions of higher education all over europe, talks about diverse population of migrant students from different ethnic as well as religious backgrounds. the researcher observes different groups of students, examines issues related to their integration, and asserts that there is a tendency among students from muslim backgrounds not to integrate as well as migrant students from christian backgrounds. he indicates that muslim students feel segregated because they often feel they are mistreated by their professors and peers. the researcher also discusses the student cliques and notes that often students from muslim backgrounds tend to interact among one another and try to keep a distance from their european peers. at the same time, he makes us aware that the overall educational environment does not really play a role of integrator the way it should. one of the main solutions suggested by the researcher is the incorporation of culture-related subjects and activities in which all students can participate, present their culture, and talk about their problems both inside and outside their institution. this would enable local european professors and peers know immigrant students better (gyurzaev 2011). al-mahmud conducts a similar study where he looks at various educational institutions in france. the researcher states that, while the student population is diverse, the professors’ population consists of mostly local professors. he stresses the importance of recruiting and hiring professors from migrant backgrounds, which would bring the overall institutional population into some kind of balance. the researcher thinks that having migrant colleague would help local professors better understand the hardships that migrants face and treat students equally (al-mahmud 2013). thus, considering the experiences of the 9 student-participants of my study, i have suggestions that are consonant with those suggested by al-mahmud and gyurzaev. the student participants think that their integration into their educational environment and, consequently, into french society would be smoother if the educational institutions offered recreational facilities for all students, so that they could attend those and get to know one another. diverse cultural and interactive student clubs are among the means students thought methodology armenian folia anglistika 113 could support their integration. by attending those clubs, students from various backgrounds could interact and share their interest. student participants also discussed the curriculum. mayana suggested the following: “the university curriculum should incorporate subjects related to immigrants, to their issues, problems, and hardships. that way european peers will know more about our lives, and it is very possible that their treatment will change toward better.” among other suggestions related to changes in curriculum was the suggestion to include subjects related to culture, which could help european students know more about the countries where their immigrant peers came from. jhoka said, “i think there should be some informative classes for locals, where they can learn more about islam and muslim immigrants and understand that not all of us are scary.” finally, students stated that they lacked one-to-one meetings with their professors where they could talk about education-related problems and find solutions together, mentioning that those meetings would be helpful for both students and professors. professors would thus get to know migrant students better, which could be beneficial for their integration. also, student-participants mentioned that most of their professors were local europeans and saw a need of having professors who had migrant backgrounds: another important thing would be to hire a diverse group of professors, which would be helpful. i know many educated people from muslim background who used to be professors in their countries and who are really proficient in the field of political science. why don’t they hire those people when the institution lacks professors of certain subject fields? if the local professors interacted with migrant professors, they would probably change their negative attitude. in sum, the discussion above shows that the 9 students had various experiences while studying at their respective institutions of higher education. some students continued to face many difficulties while trying to integrate into their educational environment and into the society of their host country. all students thought that integration was vitally important for them because problems with integration would exert a negative influence on their education, their future careers, and their lives in europe. the students talked about the potential obstacles that they thought could hinder their integration. finally, the students made suggestions and came up with different ideas for making their integration in their educational environment smoother. armenian folia anglistika methodology 114 references: 1. asmar, c. 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(2002) reflections on the reform of higher education in central and eastern europe. higher education in europe, n 27 (1-2), pp. 137-152. 25. seidman, i. (1998) interviewing as qualitative research: a guide for researchers in education and the social sciences. 2nd edition. new york: teachers college record. 26. shadid, a. (2002) legacy of the prophet: despots, democrats, and the new politics of islam. kindle edition. 28. shahnazaryan, g. (2011) integration and minority cultures. yerevan: ysu press, pp. 260-80. 29. smagorinsky, p. (2008) the method section as conceptual epicenter in constructing social science research reports. // written communication, n 25 (5), pp. 389-411. armenian folia anglistika methodology 116 30. tyrer, d. & ahmad, f. (2006) muslim women and higher education: identities, experiences and prospects. liverpool: liverpool john moores university and european social fund. 31. wright, m. and bloemraad, i. (2012) is there a trade-off between multiculturalism and socio-political integration? policy regimes and immigrant incorporation in comparative perspective. // perspectives on politics 10, n 1, pp. 77-95. 32. yin, r.k. (1984) case study research: design and methods. beverly hills, ca: sage publications. 33. zaloyan, v. (2008) azgayin poqramasnutyunner. yerevan: bamber. 34. gyurzaev, v. (2011) rol’ obrazovaniya v yevrope. m.: pressa mgu. 35. kalinin, p. (2010) bolonskiy protses i musulmane v yevrope. // pedogogicheskiy journal. n 8 (5), pp. 7-15. 36. kamarov, i.p. (2010) islam i zapad. // journal po politologii. n 8 (1), pp. 3-14. 37. landa, p.g. (2004) musulmane na zapade. m.: institut izucheniya izrailya i blijhnego vostoka. akademiya yestestvennykh nauk rossiyskoy federatsii. 38. melnikov, a. (2002) musulmane v yevrope. // moskovskiy gosudarstvenniy universitet. n 235 (8), pp. 33-48. 39. margelov, v. (2006) vremya terrora i dilemmy resheniy. // mezhdunarodnaya zhizn’. n 1 (2), pp. 29-38. 40. malakhov, m. (2009) religiya i intergratsiya. // moskovskiy institut politologii. n 35 (9), pp. 34-67. 41. polich, sh. (2011) novaya yevropa, novye otnosheniya. m.: pressa mgu. 42. shabayev, g. (2009) politika obrazovaniya v yevrope. m.: pressa mgu. ü»ñ·³õã³í ùáõëáõéù³ý áõë³ýáõý»ñá »íñáå³ï³ý μ³ñóñ³·áõûý áõëáõùý³ï³ý ñ³ëï³ïáõãûáõýý»ñáõù ðá¹í³íáõù ùýýíáõù ¿ ³ûý ñ³ñóá, ã» áñù³ýáí ¿ μ³ñóñ³·áõûý ïñãáõãûáõýá ýå³ëïáõù ùáõëáõéù³ý áõë³ýáõý»ñç çýï»·ñù³ý ·áñíáýã³óçý ýñ³ýëç³ï³ý, ·»ñù³ý³ï³ý ¨ ñ³ûï³ï³ý ñ³ë³ñ³ïáõãûáõýý»ñáõù։ 1999 ãí³ï³ýçý μ³½ù³ãçí »íñáå³ï³ý å»ïáõãûáõýý»ñ ëïáñ³·ñ»óçý ´áéáýç³ûç ñéã³ï³·çñá, áñç ýå³ï³ïý ¿ñ »íñáå³ï³ý μ³ñóñ³·áõûý ïñã³ñ³ù³ï³ñ·á ùç³ëý³ï³ý³óý»é, ¹³ñóý»é ù»ï áý¹ñ³ýáõñ ñ³ù³ï³ñ·։ ²û¹ ñéã³ï³·ñç ï³ñ¨áñ³·áõûý μýáõã³·ñ»ñçó ¿ñ ù³õ³ù³ï³ýáõãû³ý ×ïáõýáõãûáõýá, çýãá ñý³ñ³íáñ ï¹³ñóý»ñ μ³ñóñ³·áõûý ïñãáõãû³ý ñ³ù³ï³ñmethodology armenian folia anglistika 117 ·ç áõë³ýáõý»ñç ñ³ù³ñ áã ùç³ûý μ³ñóñ³ó³ûý»é, ³ûé¨ áñáß³ïç ·áñíáõý»áõãûáõý í³í³é»é` ç ýå³ëï çñ»ýó ëáóç³é³ï³ý, ïñã³ï³ý, ùß³ïáõã³ûçý ï³ñçùý»ñç μ³í³ñ³ñù³ý, çñ»ýó ù³ëý³ïóáõãûáõýá μ»ñ»é áñáßáõùý»ñç ï³û³óù³ý ·áñíáýã³óçý։ ð»ï³½áïáõãû³ý ýå³ï³ïý ¿՝ ñ³ñóçý ùáï»ý³é ý»ñ·³õã³í ùáõëáõéù³ý áõë³ýáõý»ñç ï»ë³ýïûáõýçó, μ³ó³ñ³ûï»é ýñ³ýó` »íñáå³ï³ý μ³ñóñ³·áõûý ïñã³ñ³ù³ï³ñ·ç áýï³éáõùá, í»ñ ñ³ý»é ýñ³ýó ÷áñó³éáõãûáõýý»ñá »íñáå³ï³ý ïñã³ñ³ù³ï³ñ·çý ¨ ñ³ë³ñ³ïáõãû³ýá çýï»·ñù³ý ·áñíáýã³óáõù։ êáõûý ýå³ï³ïá çñ³·áñí»éáõ ñ³ù³ñ ³ßë³ï³ýùáõù ùýýáõãû³ý »ý »ýã³ñïí»é çñ³ï³ý³óí³í ñ³ñó³½ñáõûóý»ñç ³ñ¹ûáõýùý»ñá` ïçñ³é»éáí ñá·»μ³ýáõãû³ý ¨ ù³ýï³í³ñåáõãû³ý ù»ç áý¹áõýí³í ³é³ýóçý ¹»åù»ñç í»ñéáõíáõãû³ý ù»ãá¹á: microsoft word maket 2020-1(21) 19.02 doc.doc translation studies armenian folia anglistika 117 pre-translation text analysis as an essential step to an effective translation gayane gasparyan yerevan brusov state university of languages and social sciences abstract pre-translation text analysis is an integral part of an efficient translation procedure. in fact, it focuses on collecting intra-textual and extra-textual information on the text under translation. collecting the intra-textual information is mainly based on a thorough analysis of the source text linguistic peculiarities, whereas the extra-textual information focuses basically on the communicative functional properties of both source and target texts. there exist different approaches towards this procedure and the stages of its accomplishment. nonetheless, it should be noted that they all lead to a broader spectrum of discourse analysis with its intra-textual and extra-textual parameters and give birth to the translation-oriented pragmatic analysis before initiating translation process itself. the article focuses on the interrelation and interaction of all the mentioned types of analysis (pragmatic analysis, discourse analysis, pre-translation analysis) as an essential requirement for a relevant translation. key words: intra-textual information, extra-textual information, source text, target text, translation oriented pragmatic analysis, discourse analysis, pretranslation analysis, intention, motivation, socio-cultural component. introduction pre-translation text analysis has always been considered an important procedure of an effective translation. there exist different approaches towards this procedure and the stages of its implementation. some scholars focus on the armenian folia anglistika translation studies 118 analysis of the source text linguistic peculiarities and consider them within the examination of language media for effective translation. this approach is mostly employed by russian translation researchers, who believe that complete understanding of source text message is the fundamental basis for adequate translation. those who support this approach pay certain attention to the genre, vocabulary and syntactic peculiarities of the source text, which according to their viewpoint should be thoroughly examined to provide complete and valuable translation. r. minyar-beloruchev, a. shvejtser, v. komissarov, m. brandes, v. provotorov (minyar-beloruchev 1996, shvejtser 1988, komissarov 1990, 2002, brandes, provotorov 2001) and others take the view that the translation strategy may be better selected after detailed analysis of the source text linguistic peculiarities. a number of scholars have developed different models of pre-translation analysis, which step by step describe the stages of its implementation. among them the most fundamental and vividly developed is christiane nord's model (nord 1991), which focuses basically on the communicative functional properties of both source and target texts. much attention in this model is paid to the author's intention, which is defined from the point of view "of the sender who wants to achieve a certain purpose with that particular text. yet, the best intentions do not guarantee a perfect result, particularly in cases where the situations of the sender and the receiver considerably differ. ... the receivers use the text with a certain function, depending on their own expectations, needs, previous knowledge and situational conditions" (nord 2018:28). according to the author the same will happen with the translation where the sender of the message and the receiver are in different cultural and situational settings. yet, it should be noted that they all lead to a broader spectrum of discourse analysis with its intra-textual and extra-textual parameters and give birth to the translation-oriented pragmatic analysis before initiating the translation process itself. the article focuses on the interrelation and interaction of all the mentioned types of analysis (pragmatic analysis, discourse analysis, pretranslation analysis) as an essential requirement for a relevant translation. translation studies armenian folia anglistika 119 strategies and steps of pre-translation analysis the scholars, who consider the pre-translation text analysis as a necessary and essential part of a translation process, single out different steps for this procedure, which can be combined in the following groups: communicative, functional and linguistic (ayupova 2014:213-216). viewed from the perspective of collecting information necessary for an effective translation, the first group (communicative) includes a great deal of extra-textual information that can answer the following three questions: where, when andwhy. these are the questions, which automatically bring forth the relevant data about the place or culture in its wide sense, time or time-making characteristics of the period the text has been created in, the author with his/her intention and the recipient with his/her expectations and level of perception. as seen, the very first step to pre-translation analysis is collecting proper information around the source text to make the analysis complete and reliable. the information should contain relevant data about the author, mainly the culture, the country, the historical period and of course his intention and motivation. this information covers and responds the three mentioned questions: where, when andwhy, and includes the so-called extra-textual information. the second step to pre-translation analysis is collecting required intratextual information concerning the genre with its linguistic peculiarities, the structure and the language media of the text under translation. within this procedure a thorough analysis of the source text is highly required, as the translator should determine what and how to transmit into his newly created text (translation), keeping on the one hand the source text features, and making it readable and comprehensible by a new culture, on the other. the first step to pre-translation analysis is based on socio-cultural relevance of reality reproduced by the source text, whereas the second one determines basically the language media relevance of the target text. thus, both procedures are of great importance, as a professional translator has to deeply realize and signify whatever he/she is going to transfer to another mental system with its different way of perception and reconstruction of reality. both types of analysis (extra-textual and intra-textual) may be effectively applied to armenian folia anglistika translation studies 120 any text of any genre. though it should be noted that for the texts of different professional spheres (economy, finance, education, business, mass-media, it, etc.) as well as official documents collecting both extra-textual and intra-textual information will be fast enough and easy. according to the first step of pretranslation analysis (extra-textual) the translator will easily manifest the information to answer the three required questions: where, when and why. according to the second step of pre-translation analysis (intra-textual) a good work with the terminology arsenal, the structure and syntax of the source text is actually enough. thus, if a text is not a piece of belles-letters or publicist style, the pretranslation analysis of the source text will not take much time to collect both extraand intra-textual information. but if the text belongs to the mentioned two styles, the translator has a great deal of work to do with both source and target texts, to determine the socio-cultural and linguistic content of both textcreating sides. hence, a piece of belles-letters or publicist style should be considered from the perspective of double-phase analysis: first the specification of all the details around the text, such as the author of the text, the author's intention, the message transfer method, where and when the text was created, the communicative purpose and the impact level on the expected recipient. all this background information on the source text will help the translator to easily understand the literary or publicist text/speech and to transfer its essence to a different substance for a different recipient. this is especially important while translating texts with a profound national substance, where the latter creates a specific quality of perceiving, reconstructing and reproducing the actual reality. the same mode scheme is observed in terms of perceiving the text by both the native recipient and the translated text reader, as the national mentality, national culture, national evaluation schema have their direct impact on both the perception of actual reality and the reinterpretation of different mental and ethic perspectives. while speaking about these so very important issues concerning the initial stage of pre-translation analysis (collecting extra-textual information), one should keep in mind that it automatically gives way to the method of discourse translation studies armenian folia anglistika 121 analysis with its socio-cultural examination of extra-linguistic context of any utterance created in any situation and having a certain portion of the impact on the recipient. in this case another method of pragmatic analysis comes to be exercised to determine why and how the mentioned impact on the recipient is materialized in the utterance. the pragmatic analysis together with discourse analysis brings forth to the second stage of pre-translation analysis (collecting intra-textual information), as all the information existing around the text is anyhow materialized in the text by means of language media which is used by the author and determines his approach towards the utterance and its recipient. in any case, the methods of discourse and pragmatic analyses seem to be interdependent and inter-supplementary from the perspective of pretranslation analysis, which comes to cover research issues in both domains. as soon as the socio-cultural context is determined and the pragmatic value of the message is measured, the translator can be assumed to be ready to start the translation. it should also be mentioned, that both discourse and pragmatic analyses are employed while collecting intra-textual analysis too. the discourse analysis of the language media and its certain impact on the recipient based on its pragmatic value come to answer the questions raised before: where, when and why, hence making the way to a perfect translation of the text proposed. if a translator is able to combine all the mentioned types of analysis of both extra and intra-textual information, he/she will have a high-quality product as a result. pre-translation analysis in political discourse all of the above-mentioned can be considered in an example of political discourse. us ex-president barack obama's statements on armenian remembrance day on april 24, 2014 and april 22, 2016, which are very much like all his statements on the occasion every year, are vivid samples for both extraand intra-textual pre-translation analyses (the statement on april 24, 2014 was translated into russian and the statement on april 22, 2016 was translated into armenian). armenian folia anglistika translation studies 122 thus, in order to be able to do an adequate translation, the translator according to the accepted procedure should collect proper socio-cultural information around the source text, containing relevant data about the author, the culture, the country, the historical period and his intention and motivation. in this particular situation for both armenian and russian translators there is no need to raise and analyze certain information about the author, his country and culture, as the latter is a rather well-known personality and much was written about him at different levels of political and international review. nonetheless, if the translator is not an armenian, he/she should examine the intra-textual reality, which is in fact an extra-textual one, to transform it correctly into another language. besides the author's intention and motivation should be considered and thoroughly examined to detect why certain language means and structures come to express his certain approach towards whatever is employed in his speech. the armenian genocide is the subject of the president's statement. hence, the translator should collect information about this historical event, examine the details of mass destruction in ottoman turkey 1915 and repatriation of the armenian population. besides, the translator should be able to answer correctly the question: who the president's statement is addressed to, since there are at least three real addressees who are to reconsider the events described by the speaker the us people, the armenian population of the usa and the armenian people in general. the pragmatic impact on all these recipients is absolutely different. the us people are not always aware of the facts the president is speaking about. all the armenian people, living anywhere, know and are very much concerned about them. the russian speaking readers likewise the us people are not always aware of the facts described. in his statement the president as usual never uses the word genocide. instead, he uses massacre, dark days, tragedy, violence, atrocity, painful elements, darkness of the past, horror and, what is mostly obscure and incomprehensible, meds yeghern, the armenian equivalent to great genocide. barack obama is not the first and the only western politician, who does not use the word genocide, while speaking about the horrendous events of 1915. many translation studies armenian folia anglistika 123 of them avoid uttering the term armenian genocide not to deteriorate relations with the turkish government. though all of them likewise barack obama evaluate the events anyhow as massacre, tragedy, violence, atrocity, etc. nonetheless, none of them except the us president have ever used meds yeghern, a term, that can be conceived only by the armenian people. neither the americans nor a representative of any other culture will be able to understand and be impressed by it. both the illocutionary and perlocutionary effects will not be achieved by the speaker, if the addressee is non-armenian. this is why, if the translator into armenian keeps մեծ եղեռն in the translation and is absolutely sure that it will have its certain impact on the reader, the translator into russian will make the reader at least to guess, if he/she is really able to, the meaning of мец ехерн. this intra-textual piece of information, which makes the speech discourse open to the extra-textual reality, needs to be clarified by the translator (likewise by the author of the utterance for the us population) at least in footnotes or certain comments. another interesting fact concerning the translation of the statement (april 22, 2016) title attracts attention. in english it sounds statement by the president on armenian remembrance day. in the armenian translation it is accurately kept as նախագահի հայտարարությունը հայկական հիշատակի օրվա առիթով, where the only shift is made in the word հայկական that is written with a capital letter. taking into consideration the fact that in english all the notional words in the title or words belonging to a national appurtenance are always written with a capital letter, the reader would never fix his/her attention to the capital letter in the word armenian. in the armenian translation only հայկական is written with a capital letter, whereas the whole combination հայկական հիշատակի օրվա could be capitalized. what is the translator's intention? maybe to identify the certain national substance of the event? there are a lot of remembrance days celebrated in the usa, but for the us and other armenian people it is a special day, therefore a certain spelling for հայկական. the translator into russian (april 24, 2014) has made a free translation of the title: обращение президента сша б. обамы ко дню памяти жертв геноцида армян. first, it should be mentioned, that statement has been armenian folia anglistika translation studies 124 translated as обращение, but not заявление which leads to the conclusion, that it is an address to the armenian people, but not to the american population in general. in this case the use of meds yeghern/мец ехерн seems absolutely justified. the other element that is missing in the english version attracts attention: президента сша б. обамы. in the english version the president is not given a name and the country is not specified. why the translator into russian found it necessary to mention the name of the president and the country he represents? does it mean that he/she wishes to specify exactly which president of the country that has always been in trustworthy relationships with turkey has made this certain statement? or maybe, he/she tries to focus the reader's attention to the fact, that barack obama among all the other us presidents, was the first to make a statement of the kind? who knows? maybe. finally, the last element of the title, worth mentioning is памяти жертв геноцида армян. in the english version the combination victims of armenian genocide is missing, whereas the translator into russian seems to focus the reader's attention towards the fact, that the armenian remembrance day is dedicated to the victims of the armenian genocide. besides the use of геноцид армян in the title forces the reader to determine for himself/herself the meaning of мец ехерн in the text. the modal value in both english meds yeghern and russian мец ехерн undoubtedly acquire a higher level of significance (whereas neither massacre nor резня do). nonetheless, one may arrive at a decisive conclusion, that both the english and russian versions likewise the armenian one are deliberately aimed at the armenian audience. though even if so, the translator should keep in mind that any reader of any other nationality, if he/she knows russian, should be able to understand the message as well as an armenian reader. in the first paragraph of the statement the president remarks: today we solemnly reflect on the first mass atrocity of the 20th century the armenian meds yeghern when one and a half million armenian people were deported, massacred, and marched to their deaths in the final days of the ottoman empire. likewise in the title, the translator into armenian accurately keeps to translation studies armenian folia anglistika 125 the source text: այսօր մենք լրջագույնս խորհրդածում ենք 20-րդ դարի առաջին զանգվածային վայրագությունների՝ հայկական մեծ եղեռնի մասին, երբ օսմանյան կայսրության վերջին օրերի տեղահանություններին, կոտորածներին ու մահվան երթերին զոհ գնացին մեկ ու կես միլիոն հայեր. the only modification that is found in the target text is the shift of passive voice in case of when one and a half million armenian people were deported, massacred, and marched to their deaths into active voice երբ ... տեղահանություններին, կոտորածներին ու մահվան երթերին զոհ գնացին մեկ ու կես միլիոն հայեր. in the english version the grammatical form of passive voice focuses on the fact that the armenian people were forced to undergo the terrible actions by someone, who is not mentioned in the speech. taking into consideration, that passive voice is not so often and freely used in the armenian language, the armenian version seems to be reasonable. the russian translation of the statement on april 24, 2014 provides a good deal of reinterpretation of the extract: today we commemorate the meds yeghern and honor those who perished in one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century. we recall the horror of what happened ninety-nine years ago, when 1.5 million armenians were massacred or marched to their deaths in the final days of the ottoman empire, and we grieve for the lives lost and the suffering endured by those men, women, and children. we are joined in solemn commemoration by millions in the united states and across the world. in so doing, we remind ourselves of our shared commitment to ensure that such dark chapters of human history are never again repeated. in russian it sounds: сегодня мы вспоминаем мец ехерн и чтим память тех, кто стал жертвой одних из самых страшных погромов 20 века. мы вспоминаем тот ужас, который имел место 99 лет назад, когда в последние дни существования османской империи были убиты 1,5 млн. армян. мы скорбим о загубленных жизнях и страданиях, которые пережили эти мужчины, женщины и дети. first, who perished is translated as стал жертвой, where becoming a victim if compared with perish is much stronger and significant. then one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century is transferred into russian as одних из самых armenian folia anglistika translation studies 126 страшных погромов 20 века. the question is: why atrocity is translated as погром, why the worst is changed into одних из самых страшных. the pragmatic value and the impact on the reader seems more effective in case of одних из самых страшных погромов, as atrocity is just a crime against somebody, whereas погром includes more than manslaughter. besides the worst does not sound so crushing as самые страшные (the most terrible). another very important technique device used by the translator into russian gains the reader's attention: мы вспоминаем тот ужас, который имел место 99 лет назад. in english 99 is written in letters ninety-nine years ago, whereas in russian it is manifested in figures 99 лет назад. again, and again a question arises, what it is done for. again, and again the answer may be given by the translator mainly. we can guess only that this technique device is used by the translator to make the numeral message more vivid and functional. the last paragraph of the statement has also undergone certain reinterpretation by the translator into russian: today, our thoughts and prayers are with armenians everywhere, as we recall the horror of the meds yeghern, honor the memory of those lost, and reaffirm our enduring commitment to the people of armenia and to the principle that such atrocities must always be remembered if we are to prevent them from occurring ever again. the russian version provides quite a new vision of the presidential commitment: сегодня наши мысли и мольбы повсюду адресованы армянам, мы помним ужас мец ехерна, чтим память погибших и подтверждаем взятое на себя обязательство содействовать армянскому народу и принципу предотвращения повтора подобных зверств в будущем. in fact, ... we stand with the armenian people throughout the world ... is substituted by наши мысли и мольбы повсюду адресованы армянам, which does not absolutely mean that the usa support the armenian people throughout the world. it rather shows how concerned and interested the usa president is about the armenian matter and its further solution. in the original ... чтим память погибших ... and ... и принципу предотвращения повтора подобных зверств в будущем ... are also missing. this part of the translation rather comes to prove the beginning of the sentence that the usa are very translation studies armenian folia anglistika 127 much concerned to prevent repetition of similar atrocities in the future, but not their ongoing commitment to a democratic, peaceful, and prosperous armenia. in fact, the perlocutionary effect of the message in this sentence of the translated version is achieved by such language means as чтим память погибших and подобные зверства, which determine the translator's modal evaluation of the facts the president touches upon in his statement. a rather free translation, isn't it? as seen, the translator is very much concerned to transfer to the target language his/her own vision of the president's approach towards meds yeghern/armenian genocide on armenian remembrance day. it also means that the translator has done a good deal of work before starting the translation. he has examined thoroughly the socio-cultural context around the text on the facts he/she was going to transfer to his/her native cultural domain and has measured the recipient's scope to perceive, reconstruct and reconsider this context in a certain situation. conclusion to conclude, one can confidently assert that the extraand intra-textual sociocultural/discourse and translation oriented pragmatic analysis of both source and target texts become an integral procedure of pre-translation analysis to have an effective product as a result. they all are basically interwoven within the course of pre-translation analysis becoming interrelated and interdependent by their nature. references: 1. ayupova, r. (2014) pretranslation text analysis as a part of translation process, sciencedirect, procedia-social and behavioral sciences 136, published by elsevier ltd. available at: <http://creativecommons.org/bync-nd/3.0/> [accessed june 2019]. 2. brandes, m.; provotorov v. (2001) predperevodcheskiy analiz teksta. m.: nvi tezaurus. 3. komissarov, v. (1990) teoriya perevoda (lingvisticheskie aspekti). m.: visshaja shkola. armenian folia anglistika translation studies 128 4. komissarov, v. (2002) sovremennoe perevodovedeniye. m.: ets. 5. minyar-beloruchev, r. (1996) teoriya i metodi perevoda. m.: moskovskiy licey. 6. nord, c.; sparrow, p. (1991) text analysis in translation: theory, methodology and didactic application of a model for translationoriented text analysis. amsterdam-new york: amsterdam/atlanta, ga rodopi. 7. nord, c. (2018) translating as a purposeful activity. london/new york: routledge. 8. shvejtser, a. (1988) teoriya perevoda (status, problemi, aspecti). m.: nauka. sources of data: 1. barack obama's statement on armenian remembrance day on april 24, 2014. available at: <http://obamawhitehouse.arcives.gov/.../2014/.../24/statement-presidentarmenian-remembrance-day> [accessed june 2019]. 2. russian translation of obama's statement on armenian remembrance day on april 24, 2014. available at: <https://www.panorama.am/ru/world/2014/04/24/obama-statement> [accessed june 2019]. 3. barack obama's statement on armenian remembrance day on april 22, 2016. available at: <https://obamawhitehouse.arcives.gov/.../2016/.../22/statement-presidentarmenian-remembrance-day> [accessed june 2019]. 4. armenian translation of obama's statement on armenian remembrance day on april 22, 2016. available at: <https://usembassy.gov>home>news and events-hy> [accessed june 2019]. translation studies armenian folia anglistika 129 տեքստի նախաթարգմանական վերլուծությունը որպես արդյունավետ թարգմանության կարևոր բաղադրիչ հոդվածում դիտարկվում է տեքստի նախաթարգմանական վերլուծությունը որպես տարբեր վերլուծությունների (սոցիալ-մշակութային դիսկուրս վերլուծություն, գործաբանական վերլուծություն և բուն նախաթարգմանական վերլուծություն) համակցություն: ըստ էության ցանկացած նախաթարգմանական վերլուծություն ենթադրում է դիսկուրս վերլուծություն և գործաբանական վերլուծություն ինչպես արտա-տեքստային, այնպես էլ ներտեքստային մակարդակներում։ միայն նման մոտեցումը կարող է ապահովել լիարժեք և հնարավորինս համարժեք թարգմանություն: received by the editorial board 08.09.2019 recommended for publication by the reviewers 10.10.2019 accepted for print 15.01.2020 << /ascii85encodepages false /allowtransparency false /autopositionepsfiles true /autorotatepages /none /binding /left /calgrayprofile (dot gain 15%) /calrgbprofile () /calcmykprofile (iso coated v2 \050eci\051) /srgbprofile (srgb iec61966-2.1) /cannotembedfontpolicy /error /compatibilitylevel 1.3 /compressobjects /tags /compresspages true /convertimagestoindexed true 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(www.heidelberg.com) >> /namespace [ (adobe) (common) (1.0) ] /othernamespaces [ << /asreaderspreads false /cropimagestoframes true /errorcontrol /warnandcontinue /flattenerignorespreadoverrides false /includeguidesgrids false /includenonprinting false /includeslug false /namespace [ (adobe) (indesign) (4.0) ] /omitplacedbitmaps false /omitplacedeps false /omitplacedpdf false /simulateoverprint /legacy >> << /addbleedmarks false /addcolorbars false /addcropmarks false /addpageinfo false /addregmarks false /convertcolors /converttocmyk /destinationprofilename () /destinationprofileselector /documentcmyk /downsample16bitimages true /flattenerpreset << /presetselector /mediumresolution >> /formelements false /generatestructure false /includebookmarks false /includehyperlinks false /includeinteractive false /includelayers false /includeprofiles false /multimediahandling /useobjectsettings /namespace [ (adobe) (creativesuite) (2.0) ] /pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /documentcmyk /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /usedocumentprofile /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2540 2540] /pagesize [595.276 841.890] >> setpagedevice microsoft word contens verjin literature armenian folia anglistika 165 gender stereotypes in children's literature (with special reference to h.ch. andersen’s and w. disney’s fairytales) anna knyazyan yerevan state university abstract this article is devoted to the study of those concepts of masculinity and femininity that are fixed and replicated in children's literature. these gender stereotypes are absorbed during early childhood, when the process of gender identification takes place. we view gender identity as the process through which children acquire the characteristics, attitudes, values and behaviors that society defines as appropriate to their gender and which lead them to adopt roles and responsibilities that are prescribed to men and women. a number of stories by h.ch. andersen and w. disney have been analyzed in order to determine how gender roles and sex frequency appear in children's literaturе. it should also be noted that no theoretical reasoning and generalizations are valid unless they are corroborated and tested empirically. that is why the use of quantitative and qualitative methods of sociology in the study of gender relations is more than obvious. key words: gender roles, gender stereotypes, fairytales, male, female, children's literature. introduction fairytales have an influence on the socialization of children and shape social expectations and gender roles. fairytales being one of the most enduring childhood impressions play an important role in the construction and perception of self. children's literature has a significant impact on children's perceptions of appropriate behavior in the society as it teaches children armenian folia anglistika literature 166 behavior patterns and value systems. children's literature is oriented toward eternal, unshakable humanistic values, teaches to distinguish between good and evil, lies and truth. in this respect, the role of literature is primarily due to the fact that the basic ideas and meanings expressed in the language of artistic forms and images can penetrate into consciousness, thus exerting a strong influence on the individual. on the one hand, literary works educate their readers/listeners with certain aspirations, on the other hand, they satisfy their real needs. fairytales show various aspects of life through fictitious characters. it not only develops children's imagination, but also gives them an opportunity to take part in the described events and understand some aspects of reality. there are gender stereotypes that children always come across in fairytales. in fairytales males are often described as brave, strong and competent, whereas females are described as incompetent and passive. females are expected to be assertive, compliant and nurturing. in children’s literature the following words are associated with femininity: soft, sensitive, quiet, emotional, dependent, passive, flirtatious, graceful, innocent, submissive, weak, nurturing, self-critical, and sexually. the words associated with masculinity are the following: competitive, independent, non-emotional, rebellious, experienced, strong, selfconfident, aggressive (sexually), and active (knyazyan 2015). fairytales teach young girls how to transform themselves into proper women according to prevailing standards in the society. they are taught to be self-sacrificing, sweet, passive, whereas boys are encouraged to be strong and adventurous. the images of women (the damsel, the princess, the temptress, the evil witch) in fairytales have a powerful influence on children’s perceptions of gender roles and stereotypes. the nineteenth-century children’s literature was intended to show the girls how to become attractive and domesticated (baker-sperry 2003). english fairy tales, like the tales of other peoples, affect all aspects of the life of the ethnos. they reflect the notions of good and evil, life and death, earth and sky, happiness and sorrow, beautiful and ugly, people and animals and, of course, the idea of a woman and a man. literature armenian folia anglistika 167 gender in h.ch. andersen’s fairytales the majority of h.ch. andersen’s fairytales encourage a male gender bias. males are represented nearly twice as frequently as females as children’s literature usually views females as dependent and passive (fox 1993). the roles of male characters are usually adventurous and exciting, whereas the roles of female characters are limited to that of caretakers or females who are in need of help from a male (temple 1993). the following fairy tales by hans christian andersen have been studied: the little mermaid, the angel, the butterfly, clod hans, the cock and the weathercock, the days of the week, a drop of water, the flying trunk, the girl who stepped on bread, the great sea serpent, it is perfectly true, the pine tree, the pixy and the grocer, the princess and the pea, the shadow, the silver shilling, the storks, the swans’ nest, the sweethearts, the teapot, the tinderbox. in andersen’s fairytales there are thirty-nine females and forty-eight males who are represented as characters. there are also thirty-two neutral characters. male dominance was clearly prominent in all andersen’s fairytales. thus, of the twenty works by andersen, fourteen stories included characters with occupations. males had eighteen occupations while females had eight. female occupations were passive, they included five princesses, three queens, a fortuneteller, two witches and a beggar, a maid, a nurse and a servant. male occupations were active, they included three kings, three scholars, a squire, a tourist, a traveler, a merchant, a grocer, a student, a trumpeter, a soldier, a servant, a chairman, a messenger, a defender, and a shoemaker. in andersen’s fairytales the males displayed more emotions than the females. this was too unexpected since females were typically stereotyped as more emotional. the female characters displayed the following emotions: loneliness, pride, sorrow, hurt, hatred and arrogance. the emotions expressed by male characters included anger, contentment, vengeance, fear, sadness and misery. andersen’s fairytales place much value on the physical beauty. to be physically attractive was important both for males and for females. the armenian folia anglistika literature 168 stereotype of feminine beauty in these fairytales essentially affects the formation of gender identity. in fairytales physical beauty, innocence, grace are rewarded, while powerful, aggressive, and ugly characters are punished. for example, the feminine beauty stereotype, was mentioned in the teapot. in the girl who stepped on bread, inger was described as pretty. had it not been for her beauty, she would have been treated more badly due to her arrogance and pride. the association of beauty with “good” and ugly with “bad” influences greatly children’s perception of physical attractiveness. the little mermaid by hans christian andersen is precise to be scrutinized in the terms of symbols of gender stereotypes. the symbols of gender stereotypes revealed in the little mermaid are divided into two groups; symbols of masculinity and femininity. we have found three symbols related to masculinity: king, knife and sword and three symbols related to femininity: the mermaid/siren, long hair and oyster. king is considered as a symbol of masculinity and has the meaning of a strong man. in the story the king is represented as a patriarchy figure. in the little mermaid the word knife is repeated seven times and is highly related to the issue of masculinity. at the end of the story, the little mermaid did not win the young prince’s immortal soul because she had to kill him by using the knife given by the witch. but, she decided to throw away the knife into the sea. soon afterwards she died. in the little mermaid the presence of a knife is related to death, sacrifice, and strength. e.g.: … she danced again quite readily, to please him, though each time her foot touched the floor it seemed as if she trod on sharp knives.” (p. 18) from the illustration, it can be seen that how hard the little mermaid must hold up the pain made by the knife in order to get the immortal soul of the prince. “sword” is a symbol of masculinity and has the meaning of a brave, adventurous and intellectual man. in children’s literature the symbol of a “sword” frequently becomes the part of literary works. the king, the army and literature armenian folia anglistika 169 the prince in children’s literature always have a sword which is used to show the prowess in battle. the presence of a sword always deals with authority, justice and courage in fairytales. for example: “i will prepare a draught for you, with which you must swim to land tomorrow before sunrise, and sit down on the shore and drink it. your tail will then disappear, and shrink up into what mankind calls legs, and you will feel great pain, as if a sword were passing through you....,…., if you will bear all this, i will help you” “yes, i will,” said the little princess in a trembling voice, as thought of the prince and the immortal soul.” (p. 28) “then the little mermaid drank the magic draught, and it seemed as if a two-edged sword went through her delicate body: she fell into a swoon, and lay like one dead.” (p. 26) the “mermaid/siren” is the symbol of femininity and has the meaning of a flirtatious woman. in the little mermaid “long hair” is considered as a femininity symbol and has the meaning of a loyal and submissive woman. eg.: “…., and that she had as pretty pair of white legs and tiny feet as any little maiden could have…. “ (p. 22) “very soon it was said that the prince must marry, and that the beautiful daughter of a neighboring king would be his wife, for a fine ship was being fitted out.,,,,. “i must travel,” he had said to her; “i must see this beautiful princess; my parents desire it; but they will not oblige me to bring her home as my bride. i cannot love her; she is not like the beautiful maiden in the temple, whom you armenian folia anglistika literature 170 resemble. if i were forced to choose a bride, i would rather choose you my dumb founding, with those expressive eyes.” and then he kissed her rosy mouth, played with her long waving hair, and laid his head on her heart, while she dreamed of human happiness and immortal soul.” (p. 20) it is interesting to note that in some fairytales such as rhapunzel, aladdin, the main girl characters have “long hair”. oyster is the symbol of femininity and has the most possible meaning of a nurturing woman. the oyster in the little mermaid is an animal that has an important role or position of a high rank mermaid in the sea world. eg.:“at last she reached her fifteenth year. “well, now, you are grown up,” said the old dowager, her grandmother,…., then the old lady ordered eight great oysters to attach themselves to the tail of the princess to show her high rank. “but they hurt me so”, said the little mermaid. “pride must suffer pain” replied the old lady.” (p. 25) the presence of an oyster is always related to the figure of a grandmother who always nurtures and gives guidance to her granddaughters. male and female stereotypes in walt disney’s fairytales w. disney’s fairytales show males and females in stereotypical roles. they have a sexist influence on children and fall in line with the sexual biases that exist in society. in disney’s fairytales five themes are related to males: 1. males use physical strength to express their emotions; 2. males are unable to control their sexuality; 3. males are strong and heroic; 4. males always have non-domestic jobs; 5. fat males have always negative characteristics. literature armenian folia anglistika 171 males use physical strength to express their emotions. in twelve of the twenty-six fairytales (mulan, bambi, mermaid, lady, cinderella, peter, sleeping, oliver, hercules, and beauty), males responded to an emotional situation with aggressive behavior. six fairytales displayed the examples of male heroes using both physical and verbal means of expression. in tarzan and emperor males used more physical than verbal expression, whereas in aladdin, jungle, pinocchio, and hunchback male heroes used more verbal than physical expression. but in six fairytales (dumbo, aristocrats, bambi, jungle, oliver, and mulan) male heroes do not express emotions and suppress them. in fifteen fairytales (hercules, pinocchio, dalmatians, hunchback, oliver, bambi, cinderella, fox, alice, lady, jungle, mermaid, beauty, aladdin, and mulan), male heroes lose their senses in the presence of an attractive woman. in nineteen fairytales (pooh, pinocchio, bambi, oliver, cinderella, peter, sleeping, mermaid, tarzan, mulan, dalmatians, jungle, aristocrats, robin, beauty, aladdin, lion, hunchback, and pocahontas), male heroes are shown as rescuers. in seventeen of the fairytales, male characters have non-domestic jobs, but only in three fairytales (tarzan, pinocchio, and jungle) they performed domestic tasks. in nine fairytales (hunchback, pooh, cinderella, alice, dalmatians, aladdin, lion, peter, and mulan), fat male characters were portrayed negatively as unintelligent, slow, sloppy. in disney’s fairy tales there are four themes that are related to female characters: 1.female’s beauty, appearance is valued more than her intellect; 2. females are always weak, helpless, and need protection; 3. females are domestic and likely to marry; 4. fat females are ugly, unpleasant, and unmarried. in fifteen fairytales (oliver, dwarfs, hunchback, pinocchio, hercules, aristocrats, cinderella, alice, peter, lady, sleeping, dalmatians, jungle, robin, and emperor), a female’s value was determined by her beauty more than by her intellect. in mulan, mermaid, beauty, aladdin, pocahontas, and tarzan females were valued both by their appearance and by their intellect. in mermaid, beauty, aladdin, and mulan female characters were valued for appearance more than for intellect. the examples of female’s need of armenian folia anglistika literature 172 protection occurred in eleven fairytales (dwarfs, bambi, cinderella, peter, lady, sleeping, robin, oliver, mermaid, lion, and hercules). in alice, dalmatians, aristocrats, beauty, aladdin, hunchback, and tarzan women were more likely to need help and protection from men than to be independent and adventurous. in fox, pocahontas, and mulan, there were portrayals of both females needing protection as well as heroic women, but with more portrayals of adventurous and independent women. in hunchback, dwarfs, cinderella, peter, lady, sleeping, jungle, lion, aristocrats, robin, fox, mermaid, beauty, hercules, and emperor, women were portrayed in domestic roles. in tarzan and pocahontas marriage was not an ultimate goal for women. in cinderella, alice, robin, and mermaid fat women were portrayed in a negative light. conclusion stereotypes associated with the gender factor reflect the views of society on the behavior expected of men or women. stereotype ideas about the image of a man and a woman, which are still spread to all members of a particular gender, regardless of their individual characteristics and age, have evolved over the centuries. the patriarchal paradigm that structures the fairytale genre naturalizes the subordination of women in a male dominated society. thus, fairytales are always created and reproduced through an androcentric lens. the moral of most fairytales is that the heroines who obey conventional female virtues and submit to the structures of patriarchy will live happily. consequentially, she receives both the prince and guarantee of social and financial security through marriage (rowe 1999). the social and economic dependence of fairytale princesses on males has had a powerful influence in molding the concept of femininity. women in fairytales who fall short of this “feminine” standard are cast as evil. wicked women are cast as witches, sea urchins, stepmothers and stepsiblings, endure punishment and are stripped of their power and agency (zipes 1983). they are portrayed as ugly, dark, and undesirable. wealth and status are associated with passivity, beauty, and literature armenian folia anglistika 173 helplessness, whereas self-aware, aggressive and powerful women are associated with punishment and death. references: 1. baker-sperry, l. and grauerholz, l. (2003) the pervasiveness and persistence of the feminine beauty ideal in children's fairytales. gender and society. vol. 17 (5), pp. 711-726. 2. fox, m. (1993) men who weep, boys who dance: the gender agenda between the lines in children's literature. language arts, 70 (2), pp. 84-88. 3. knyazyan, a.t. (2015) gendernie asimetrii i stereotypy v yumoristicheskom diskurse. saarbrücken, deutschland: palmarium academic publishing omniscriptum gmbh & co.kg․ 4. rowe, k. (1999) to spin a yarn: the female voice in folklore and fairytale. the classic fairytales. / ed. by maria tatar. new york: w.w. norton & co. 5. temple, c. (1993) what if 'beauty' had been ugly? reading against the grain of gender bias in children's books. language arts, 70 (2), pp. 89-93. 6. zipes, j. (1983) fairytales and the art of subversion: the classical genre for children and the process of civilization. london: heinemann. source of data: andersen, h.ch. (2007) the little mermaid. new york: barnes and noble, inc. գենդերային կարծրատիպերը մանկական գրականության մեջ մեծերի աշխարհին զուգահեռ կա մի փոքր իրականություն. դա մանուկների հեքիաթային աշխարհն է, որում գոյություն ունեն դերային դիրքորոշումներ՝ պայմանավորված գենդերային փոխհարաբերությունarmenian folia anglistika literature 174 ներով: գենդերային դերեր ասելով հասկանում ենք հասարակության կողմից տղամարդկանց և կանանց թելադրվող վարքի տիպեր (վարքագիծ, արտաքին տեսք, խոսք, շարժուձև և այլն): մանկական գրականությունը կարելի է բնորոշել որպես տղամարդկանց և կանանց դերի և կարգավիճակի մասին գաղափարների և հայացքների, հասկացությունների և պատկերացումների համակարգ: microsoft word 1. maket 2019-1new.doc culture armenian folia anglistika 141 the use of positive and negative politeness strategies to express request in english and armenian cultures marine yaghubyan yerevan state university abstract politeness is an indispensable topic in pragmatics. the standard of politeness may vary from group to group, from situation to situation and even from person to person. in pragmatics the principle of politeness is related to the choices that are made in the language usage, the linguistic expressions that give people space and express a friendly attitude. the present article focuses on the examination and comparison of positive and negative politeness strategies to express request in english and armenian cultures. the analysis shows that in armenian culture positive politeness is highlighted. on the contrary, in english culture requests are made within negative politeness strategies. key words: positive politeness, negative politeness, request, culture, positive face, negative face, politeness strategies. introduction politeness is a culturally defined theory. it is possible to treat politeness as a fixed concept, as in the idea of polite social behavior, or etiquette within a culture. it includes being tactful, generous, modest, and sympathetic towards each other (yule 1996:60). that is to say, what is viewed polite in one culture can sometimes be rude, indecent and inappropriate in another cultural context. it should be stated that all interlocutors are interested in keeping two types of faces while communicating with each other. so every interlocutor possesses both positive and negative faces. negative face is defined by g. yule as the need to be independent, and positive face is the need to be connected. it is the main armenian folia anglistika culture 142 claim to territories, maintenance of privacy, and rights to non-distraction. meanwhile positive face can be characterized by positive desires to be liked and regarded with respect (yule 1996:62). in this article we aim at examining the differences in the ways of expressing request in english and armenian cultures, while paying much attention to positive and negative politeness strategies. positive politeness positive politeness indicates not only similarities among the interlocutors but also it expresses appreciation of the interlocutor’s self-image. as can be observed, we often make use of positive politeness strategy in order to avoid conflicts, to make the hearers feel good about themselves by taking into consideration their desires, needs, wants or interests. it is important to mention that positive politeness strategy is mainly used in situations where speakers and hearers know each other well enough. the tendency to use positive politeness forms, emphasizing closeness between speaker and hearer, can be seen as solidarity strategy. linguistically, such a strategy will include personal information, use of nicknames, sometimes even abusive terms, particularly among males, and shared dialect or slang expressions (yule 1996: 64-65). this can be explained by the illustration provided below: “hey ducky, can you give me that cup?” (galsworthy 1976:15) according to the above-mentioned example, the speaker needs some cup and wants to get it from the hearer, who is presumably his friend, since he calls him by a nickname “ducky” to identify his “friend”, which normally cannot be used with a stranger or an acquaintance to sound in a proper way. it should be mentioned that there might be the risk of confrontation, misunderstanding, and rejection in this case. by the way, speakers do not run the risk of confrontation by utilizing this kind of nicknames in the group of their friends since nicknames show solidarity. then, we should note that another factor, which should be taken into consideration in this particular situation, is the proper use culture armenian folia anglistika 143 of correct intonation since it has an ultimate power to cause misunderstandings between the interlocutors. frequently, a solidarity strategy will be marked via inclusive terms such as “we” and “let’s” (yule 1996:65). this can be shown by the following example: let’s have a glim’ said sikes, ‘or we shall go breaking our necks, or treading on the dog. (dickens 1945:396) it is worth noting that we can make use of positive politeness strategy, in order to offer the hearer something, or give promises as shown by the following example: stand still a moment, and i’ll get you one. (dickens 1945:396) negative politeness negative politeness is the need to be autonomous and free from imposition. the tendency to use negative politeness forms emphasizing the hearer’s right to freedom, can be seen as a deference strategy. it can be the typical strategy of a whole group or just an option used on a particular occasion. the language associated with a deference strategy emphasizes the speaker’s and the hearer’s independence, marked via an absence of personal claims (yule 1996:66). it is worth mentioning that the usage of negative politeness strategies presumes a direct connection between indirectness and politeness. admittedly, in order to show negative politeness, the speaker should be indirect. “would he have minded you’re going?” (galsworthy 1976:163) as can be observed, we utilize questions and hedges in order to show negative politeness: could you possibly invite her to lunch tomorrow? (fitzgerald 1941:120) armenian folia anglistika culture 144 cross-cultural comparison it is worth noting that historically independence and freedom in actions have always been crucial values in armenian culture. nevertheless, it is safe to say that armenian culture is a collectivistic one, hence armenians attach too much importance to the needs and goals of the group (triandis 2001). they emphasize a group as one unity and relationships within the members of a group play a great role in forming each individual’s personality. in armenian culture families and communities have an indispensable role and people are likely to do what is best for society. in armenian society people are regarded as good if they are kind, generous, helpful, dependable and mostly take into consideration the needs and desires of others. this leads to the conclusion, that armenians tend to show less social distance, which means that people interact with one another directly. furthermore, taking into account the abovementioned characteristic features of armenian culture, we can state positive politeness strategies are mainly utilized and accepted by armenian society. as can be observed, armenians tend to show positive face since each representative of armenian culture has the need to be accepted and sometimes even liked by others. as a part of a collectivistic culture, armenians like to be treated as members of the same group and know that their needs and desires can be shared by others. they try to avoid conflicts and make the hearers feel good about themselves, paying much attention to their desires, needs, and interests, hence it can be claimed that positive politeness is highlighted in armenian culture. conversely, in english culture people value individuality and independence, therefore it is a vivid illustration of an individualistic culture. as is stated, individualistic cultures focus on characteristics like independence and assertiveness. they value a person’s freedom to act and appreciate personal identity. thus, in english culture, negative politeness is more stressed and people tend to show negative face, indicating the need to be independent, to keep privacy and have right to non-distraction. in brief, in english culture requests are made within negative politeness strategies. culture armenian folia anglistika 145 as can be observed in armenian culture, the usage of interrogative forms beyond the area of questions is truly bounded. the interrogative form is not valued in the cultural perspective to perform directives, hence there was no cultural need to evolve special interrogative tools for accomplishing speech acts apart from questions and more specifically for carrying out directives such as the usage of “won’t you?” this idea can be illustrated by the following sentences: won’t you join us? they will be delighted, everyone of them. (dickens 1945:658) -չէի՞ք կամենա միանալ զվարճացողների խմբին: ձեր ներկայությունը ամենքին մեծ ուրախություն կպատճառեր: (dickens 1988:456) nevertheless, if there is a possibility of having a context-free, general interpretation of the conversation provided above, then we will presumably hear or read a polite request which is being expressed, and a positive or a negative action will pursue. in armenian the avoidance of imperative and the usage of interrogative devices are not connected with the principle of politeness, as it is in english. by the way, there is an obvious similarity related to the expression “would you mind” which is utilized both in armenian and in english in order to make a polite request: would you mind coming presently? (galsworthy 1932:290) -կգաս ինձ մոտ հետո, դեմ չե՞ս լինի: (galsworthy 1975:707) nevertheless, it can be indicated that the usage of the interrogative forms in requests is hardly ever expressed in armenian. generally speaking, there armenian folia anglistika culture 146 might be a slight possibility, but compared to english, the possibilities are truly bounded. hence, one could express requests, or speech acts closely referring to requests, by apparently asking about the addressee’s aptitude to act, or about his or her decency or kindness. could you tell me if there are likely to be any more of you coming down? (galsworthy 1932:467) -ի միջիայլոց, չէի՞ք կարող ասել` ուրիշ որևէ մեկը ձերոնցից միտք ունի՞այստեղ գալու: (galsworthy 1975:196) as can be noted, the polite interrogative request form «կարող էի՞ք», which equals to the english form “could you?”, is not commonly utilized in armenian culture. instead, armenians more frequently make use of the form «չէի՞ք կարող», which equals to the english form “couldn’t you?” couldn’t you hear the noise? (dickens 1945:370) -իսկ աղմուկը չէի՞ր կարող լսել: (dickens 1988:358) compared to english, in the armenian language requests are often interpreted in the imperative form. it is worth mentioning that the teachers are the ones who excessively express requests in imperative forms during their lessons in the classroom as in “open your copy-books, write the date!” and in armenian, the same sentence will be as «բացեք տետրերը և գրեք ամսաթիվը». let us bring some other examples, which illustrate the usage of request in imperative form: 1. “bow to the board,” said bumble. (dickens 1945:34) -խոնարհվիր հանձնաժողովի առաջ,ասաց բամբըլը: (dickens 1988:248) culture armenian folia anglistika 147 2. “come!” said gamfield; say four pound, gen’lmen say four pound, and you have got rid of him for good and all. there! (dickens 1945:62) -դե՛, մեկից չորս ֆունտ ասացեք, այո՛, չորս ֆունտ և առմիշտ կազատվեք նրանից,ասաց գեմֆիլդը: (dickens 1988:257) it can be stated that both in english and armenian, requests are made with the forms «կարելի՞ է» and “may i?” in order to express polite requests in various situations: 1. “may i accompany you?” said the book stall-keeper, looking in. (dickens 1945:268) -կարո՞ղ եմ ձեզ ընկերակցել,-ասաց գրավաճառը՝ ներս նայելով: (dickens 1988:325) 2. may i ask the name of the gentleman, who has given us that striking piece of information? (galsworthy 1932:499) -կարո՞ղ եմ հարցնել այն ջենտլմենի անունը, որը այդպիսի սքանչելի խորհուրդ տվեց մեզ: (galsworthy 1975:210) however, it must be noted that one could not use literal armenian equivalents of the phrases “would you do it?”, “won't you do it”, “ why don't you do it” or “would you like to do it?” in order to express requests and ask people to do something. it is important to mention that pseudo-questions, such as “would you like to?” or “do you want to”, are actually defined as requests, apparently inquiring about the addressee's wants. these questions appear to be odd and amusing from the point of view of armenian culture. nevertheless, not only the variety armenian folia anglistika culture 148 of reasonable interrogative devices, distinguishing armenian directives from the english ones are striking, but also the differences in function should be taken into consideration. hence, interrogative directives sound orderly and elaborately polite in armenian. as can be mentioned, in this perspective the imperative is impartial, which neither prevents nor invites a verbal response. beyond any doubt, this is one of the main reasons for it to be preferred in armenian and avoided in english. if the speaker wishes to be more polite and at the same time wants to show coldness and lack of intimacy, the infinitive can be combined with a verb used in a performative way: i ask you to give this message for god almighty’s sake. (dickens 1945:105). -ես ամենակարող աստծու անունով խնդրում եմ, որ նրան հայտնեք իմ մասին: (dickens 1988:588) in this perspective it should be mentioned that the infinitive directive functions as a distance-building device in armenian, similar to interrogative devices, used in english. but in anglo-saxon cultures distance is a positive cultural value, related to respect in order to express the individual’s autonomy. conversely, in armenian culture distance will be associated with hostility and alienation, thus pre-requests such as «կարո՞ղ եմ քեզ մի բան խնդրել» (can i ask you something?), «ժամանակ ունե՞ս» (have you got some time?), «կարո՞ղ ես ինձ օգնել», (can you help me?) are usually used to be more polite. conclusion thus, we can conclude that armenians tend to show positive face since each representative of armenian culture expects to be accepted and liked by others. as part of a collectivistic culture, armenians like to be treated as a member of the same group and to know that their needs and desires can be culture armenian folia anglistika 149 shared by others. it is worth remembering that armenians try to avoid conflicts and make the hearers feel good about themselves by paying much attention to their desires, needs, and interests, hence it can be claimed that positive politeness is highlighted in armenian culture. on the contrary, in english culture people value individuality and independence, therefore it is a vivid illustration of an individualistic culture. as is stated, individualistic cultures focus on characteristics like independence and assertiveness. they value a person’s freedom to act and appreciate personal identity. thus, in english culture, negative politeness is more stressed and people tend to show negative face, indicating the need to be independent, to keep privacy and have right to non-distraction. so, in english culture requests are made within negative politeness strategies. references: 1. brown, p., levinson, s.c. (1987) politeness: some universals in language usage. cambridge: cup. 2. held, g. (1999) submission strategies as an expression of the ideology of politeness: reflections on the verbalization of social power relations. //“pragmatics”, 9 (1). 3. leech, g. (1983) principles of pragmatics. new york: longman. 4. paronyan, sh. (2012) pragmatics. yerevan: asoghik. 5. triandis, h.c. (2001) individualism-collectivism and personality. usa: blackwell publishers. 6. yule, g.(1996) pragmatics. oxford: oup. sources of data: 1. dickens, c. (1988) oliver twist. yerevan: arevik. 2. dickens, c. (1945) oliver twist. new york: pocket books. 3. fitzgerald, f.s. (1941) the last tycoon. usa: charles scribner’s son. 4. galsworthy, j. (1932) the forsyte saga. uk: penguin books. 5. galsworthy, j. (1975) the forsyte saga. yerevan: hayastan hratarakchutiun. 6. galsworthy, j. (1976) the silver spoon. moscow: progress publishers. armenian folia anglistika culture 150 խնդրանքի դրական և բացասական քաղաքավարության ռազմավարական ձևերը անգլիական և հայկական մշակույթներում սույն հոդվածում դիտարկվում են խնդրանք արտահայտելիս կիրառվող դրական և բացասական քաղաքավարության ռազմավարական ձևերը, որոնք հակառակ ուղղվածություն ունեն: առաջինը հիմնված է մտերմիկ հարաբերություններ ձևավորելու վրա, իսկ երկրորդը` վանելու կամ հեռացնելու վրա: հոդվածում ներկայացվում են դիտարկումներ և համեմատություններ, որոնք վերաբերում են խնդրանքի արտահայտման դրական և բացասական քաղաքավարության ռազմավարական ձևերին անգլիական և հայկական մշակույթներում: կատարված վերլուծությունների արդյունքում հեղինակը եզրակացնում է, որ հայկական մշակույթում գերիշխում են դրական, իսկ անգլիական մշակույթում՝ բացասական քաղաքավարության ռազմավարական ձևերը: received by the editorial board 26.02.2019 recommended for publication by the reviewers 02.04.2019 accepted for print 22.04.2019 maket 2013:layout 1.qxd synonymy in english and bulgarian military terminology (a contrastive study) valentina georgieva g.s. rakovsky defence academy, sofia some theoretical considerations on synonymy this paper discusses the existence of synonymy in english and bulgarian military peacekeeping terminology. although there is a general requirement that there should be no synonyms to terms because “terms are the linguistic representation of concepts and […] the prescriptive attitude of the past associated one concept with only one term” (sager 1990:57-58), in scientific and specialized (military in particular) texts we often find lexical units (terms) which seem to be semantically very close or identical. the traditional definition of synonymy describes this linguistic phenomenon as a kind of semantic relation between two or more words (or phrases) with the same meaning. webster’s new dictionary of synonyms (1984:24) provides the following definition: “a synonym, in this dictionary, will always mean one of two or more words in the english language which have the same or very nearly the same essential meaning. [...] synonyms, therefore, are only such words as may be defined wholly, or almost wholly, in the same terms. usually they are distinguished from one another by an added implication or connotation, or they may differ in their idiomatic use or in their application”. many linguists deny the existence of synonyms. quine and goodman, quoted by edmonds and hirst (edmonds and hirst 2002:107) argue that true synonymy is impossible, because it is impossible to define, and so, perhaps unintentionally, dismiss all other forms of synonymy. edmonds and hirst continue “absolute synonymy, if it exists at all, is quite rare”. similarly, ullmann (1957) says that “it is a truism that total synonymy is an extremely rare occurrence, a luxury that language can ill afford”. cruse (cruse 1986:270) maintains that “natural languages abhor absolute synonyms just as nature abhors a vacuum” because the meanings of words are constantly changing. more formally, clark (1986:171–188) employs her principle of contrast that “every two forms contrast in meaning” to show that language works to eliminate absolute synonyms. either an absolute synonym would fall into disuse or it would take on a new nuance of meaning. at best, absolute synonymy is limited mostly to dialectal variation and technical terms (underwear (ame): pants (bre); plesionym or a near-synonym), but even these words would change the style of an utterance when intersubstituted. according to lyons (lyons 1981:148), the distinction may be drawn between a complete, absolute, and incomplete synonymy. he, like many other linguists, maintains that absolute synonyms defined by the property of having the same distribution and being completely synonymous in all their meanings and in all their contexts of occurrence are almost nonexistent. in his view “two expressions are full synonyms if the following conditions are met: all their meanings are identical; they are synonyms in all contexts; they are semantic equivalents in all aspects of their meaning” (lyons 1995:61) and he claims that, though rarely, context restricted synonymy certainly exists. other linguists traditionarmenian folia anglistikalinguistics 17 ally distinguish absolute (full) synonyms from partial synonyms and believe that incomplete synonymy is not rare at all. in such a case the identity of one kind of meaning is most clearly recognizable, most commonly of the descriptive meaning (therefore it is referred to as descriptive synonymy), as in, for example, the set mother, mum, mummy, ma, mater. they are also called near-synonyms (or plesionyms), i.e. words that are close in meaning are almost synonyms, but not quite; very similar, but not identical, in meaning not fully intersubstitutable, but varying in their shades of denotation, connotation, implicature, emphasis, or register instead (edmonds and hirst 2002:107). based on this traditional distinction, the following classification diagram is suggested (fig. 1) (said): fig. 1 types of general language synonyms following the review of different types of synonymy in general english usage, we can discuss the situation in scientific terminology. according to j. horecký, quoted by kolaříková (2008) terminological synonyms are represented by such pairs as a loanword vs. domestic word; a one-word term vs. a two(or more) word term; so called syntactic synonyms differing in the position of an attribute within a word-group (close or loose), or by such pairs that are neither stylistic nor lexical synonyms, but simply names for the same thing used simultaneously, so that the links between the older and newer literature of a given field are sustained. emirzyan (1989:44) distinguishes between lexical and morphological synonyms in bulgarian terminology. as a subtype of absolute (lexical) synonyms she mentions synonymous usage of “linguistic and non-linguistic elements”, e.g. water – h2o. several criteria may be used for differentiation of synonymous terms. one of them is substitutability, based on which, if two terms are substitutes for each other in all contexts of occurrence, they are said to be synonymous. in other words, if both terms satisfy the same definition, they are synonymous, because they name the same thing. most linguists claim that “synonymy should not be tolerated in terminology, if the main purpose of terminology is facilitating scientific communication. [...] whenever there is change in meaning caused by a change in the concept, or an additional connotation, we will consider terms to be different ones” (popova 2012:591). danilenko (1977:73-74) explains the reason for the existence of synonymous terms as follows: “synonyms refer to the same concept and object, they do not refer to differarmenian folia anglistika linguistics 18 ent characteristics”. she also explains that lexical variants were coined at the beginning stage of development of a given scientific sublanguage in three main ways: 1) when there were few borrowings from different languages for the same concept; 2) when there was a word in the language coexisting with the borrowing; and 3) when a word was coined in a language simultaneously with the borrowing. this statement can be supported with the following examples from bulgarian military terminology: 1) synonymous rows: миночистач миночистачен кораб тралчик тралшчик миннотрален кораб; 2) borrowing – domestic word: пилот летец; 3) borrowing – neologism: есминец разрушител. molhova (1976:51) adds an interesting example: “in the history of a language there are periods abounding in synonyms for certain notions which fall out of use at a later period. thus in anglo-saxon literature there are about 30 synonyms for the notion of warrior and almost the same number of words for the notion sea. the majority of these are completely obsolete in modern english”. furthermore, rossouw (1998) points out some important reasons for the existence of synonyms, or variants in military terminology where “new types of activity demanded description and nomenclature, the various role players each produced their own personal variations of the existing military terminology, rather than working towards a commonly acceptable solution to the problem. in the process, no clear semantic distinction has been made between the diplomatic/political and the military dimensions of international peace initiatives”. in result, many synonymic terms have been coined for a given concept. this process is still continuing and leads to the absence of unification of military terms among native english military speakers, not to mention the whole international military community who use english as the main means for communication during international operations and initiatives. in the last decade several attempts for unification and standardization of english military terminology have been made: nato glossary of terms and definitions (english and french) (2013), where the terms are in the two official languages of nato with the purpose “to standardize terminology used throughout nato, thereby promoting mutual understanding” (further ‘nato’ when referred to); us department of defense dictionary of military and associated terms (2009), which “sets forth standard us military and associated terminology to encompass the joint activity of the armed forces of the united states in both us joint and allied joint operations” (further ‘dod’ when referred to). despite the efforts for standardization, the nato glossary allows for the existence of synonyms, stating that “each entry […] contains first the preferred term in english followed by a slash and the equivalent term in french on the same line, followed on the lines below by any synonym and abbreviation, the definition, notes, examples, cross-references to related terms and figures, the source and the date on which the entry became nato agreed, i.e.: preferred term admitted synonym deprecated synonym obsolete synonym abbreviation definition notes examples related terms source date” (nato:1-e-2). there is also an explanation: “synonymy. non-preferred armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 19 terms are also listed as separate entries in alphabetical order, giving only a cross-reference to the preferred term” (nato:1-e-2). another nato document nato glossary of standardization terms and definitions (english and french) (2011) gives the definitions of the types of synonyms: preferred term is the most suitable for a given concept. admitted term may be used for a given concept but is less suitable than the preferred term. deprecated term is not suitable for a given concept. obsolete term or the concept that it designates is no longer current. these dictionaries are undoubtedly useful as a starting point for standardization of english military terminology; yet, the examples of interchangeably used military terms both in dictionaries and in authentic texts are numerous: e.g. naval mine (41 200 occurrences in the internet) versus sea mine (35 000 occurrences); stationary weapon (2 370 occurrences) vs. static weapon (1 200 occurrences), etc. contemporary bulgarian military terminology has been in use for a comparatively short period of time and has undergone the period of initial coining after 1878 when bulgaria regained its independency.1 significant changes followed after 1944 when bulgaria became a member of the warsaw pact and received military equipment and armament from the soviet union. the new army structure and equipment which copied the soviet model led to language transformations, characterized by borrowing russian terms to name the new army organization, military ranks, units, armament, etc. thus, numerous russian terms were borrowed (маяк, бойна рубка, поиск, подводная лодка, рубеж); bulgarian terms with russian elements were coined (противолодочная оборона� противолодъчна отбрана); or russian terms were calqued (охотник на подводные лодки� ловец на подводници). a new tendency started after 1990 with the political changes in bulgaria which speeded up after bulgaria joined nato in 2004. english words and terms have entered all sublanguages, including military terminology. in addition to direct borrowings (бригада � brigade, брифинг � briefing, логистика � logistics, превенция на конфликти � conflict prevention, etc.) and lots of calques (мироопазване � peacekeeping, ми ро творчество � peacemaking, мироналагане � peace enforcement, оценка на щетите от битката � battle damage assessment; цивилно-военно сътруд ни чест во� civilmilitary cooperation, команден канал � command channel) to justify the need for standardization among nato members, lots of english abbreviations are also used (главна квартира на обединените сили в европа – шейп� supreme headquarters allied powers europe – shape, оперативен план – оплан� oplan). efforts for introducing the new english terms and finding their appropriate equivalent in bulgarian military terminology have been made in the last decade: английскобългарски военен речник. всички термини на нато (2002) (further ‘абвр’ when referred to), интернационално командване. наръчник за военни ръководители, офицери и сержанти (2003) (further ‘ик’ when referred to), английско-български терминологичен речник за мироопазващи операции, (2006) (further ‘трмо’ when referred to), речник по национална сигурност и отбрана (2007) (further ‘рнсо’ armenian folia anglistika linguistics 20 when referred to), as well as the oldest военен терминологичен речник (1979) (further ‘втр’ when referred to). classification of military terminology several categories of synonyms can be observed in military terminology and we suggest the following more detailed classification of the synonymous terms, supported with examples from both english and bulgarian peacekeeping terminology (see fig. 2). 1. lexical synonyms 1.1. lexical absolute synonyms 1.1.1. standard term – non-standard term fig. 2 classification of synonymous terms 1.1.1.1. nato glossary permanently publishes new editions where synonymous terms are marked. in some examples of synonymous pairs the preferred form is longer and more precise, e.g.: munitions / ammo (admitted) ammunition (admitted); exercise directing staff / directing staff (admitted) / distaff; culminating point / culmination (admitted) (nato). another group of terms includes the following examples: attack position preferred term: forming-up place situational awareness / sa / battlespace awareness (obsolete) (nato). the possible reason for replacing the terms attack position and battlespace awareness is the willingness to substitute the more aggressively sounding terms with more neutral ones. similar trend can be also noted in the following examples from dod: make safe one or more actions necessary to prevent or interrupt complete function of the system (traditionally synonymous with dearm, disarm and disable). armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 21 law of war that part of international law that regulates the conduct of armed hostilities. also called the law of armed conflict. 1.1.1.2. bulgarian terminology gives numerous examples for different translations of english terms that enter with international documents and nato doctrines and are still in the process of standardization: правила за бойно поведение (рнсо) правила за предприемане на военни действия (абвр) правила на ангажимента (трмо) � rules of engagement, степен на бойна готовност (абвр) положение, степен на готовност (трмо) � state of readiness, миротворчество (рнсо) сключване на примирие (абвр) � peacemaking, постоянен оперативен ред (абвр) стандартна процедура на опериране (трмо) � standing operating procedures, вмъкване, включване (трмо) навлизане в зоната на операция (абвр) � insertion, интервенция, вмешателство, намеса (трмо) � intervention, обстрелване (абвр) ангажимент: малки тактически конфликти, обикновено между противостоящи маневриращи сили (трмо) � engagement: the second term is an example of wrong interpretation of the concept and misleading borrowing. 1.1.2. synonymous compound terms with different modifiers 1.1.2.1. a very large group of absolute english synonyms comprises absolute compound terms-synonyms which differ in the premodifying adjective/noun/participle before the head noun. in the nato glossary the preferred of the two synonymous terms is given first, e.g. multinational force combined force; nato commander allied commander; combat patrol fighting patrol; combat information centre action information centre; appreciation of the situation estimate of the situation; clandestine operation discreet operation; core planning team central planning team; nuclear weapon atomic weapon. a variation of this group of synonyms is the example of different postmodifying adjectives, e.g.: gun empty gun clear (nato). 1.1.2.2. the following terms exemplify the same group in bulgarian terminology: локална война малка война; мобилна отбрана подвижна отбрана (втр); преден команден пункт изнесен команден пункт: втр defines преден кп, but ик gives synonymous terms, probably translating literary the english forward command post. internet gives statistics of 3:4 in favour of the second term which means that probably it will be accepted in the future under the influence of the english term. similar is the situation with предно/изнесено командване (ик). минни заграждения минновзривни заграждения: втр gives both terms, but specialized literature prefers the first one, e.g.: “районите, в които могат да се очаква наличие на морски минни заграждения (мз-м), се различават по дълбочината, [...]” (dimitrov 2002:86). the first term is shorter and more general but this does not change the meaning of the concept. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 22 bulgarian example of the different postmodifying noun is коригиране на стрелбата коригиране на огъня (втр). 1.1.3 synonymous compound terms with different heads 1.1.3.1. there are absolute compound terms-synonyms, which have the same modifier (adjective, noun or participle), but a different head noun, e.g.: essential supply essential cargo; emergency establishment emergency complement; chemical warfare chemical operation; dead space dead zone; delaying action delaying operation. 1.1.3.2. bulgarian terminology includes the following synonymous terms from the same group, e.g.: бойна поддръжка (абвр) бойна подкрепа (трмо); подкрепа от страната домакин (трмо) помощ от страна/нация домакин (абвр); водна преграда водно препятствие (втр). 1.1.4. loan term domestic term 1.1.4.1. although rare, there are synonymous terms in which a military specialist can find and use terms of english or french origin in nato glossary. the explanation of coexistence of terms is the fact that english and french are the official languages in nato and the interference between the two languages is unavoidable, e.g.: attenuation 3 / tone down attenuation 3 (french); blister agent / vesicant agent agent vesicant (french). 1.1.4.2. bulgarian terminology includes lots of terms of russian and english origin which are used simultaneously with a bulgarian domestic term or cases of two nondomestic terms to represent a given concept. 1.1.4.2.1. bulgarian term russian term подводница подводна лодка (� подводная лодка): official bulgarian documents contain both terms, e.g. п is the abbreviation for подводница, but дивизион подводни лодки = днпл, противолодъчна авиация = пла. ескадрен миноносец есминец разрушител: the term ескадрен миноносец and its synonym есминец are borrowed from russian together with this type of ships from the soviet union (todorov 1981:133). втр defines миноносец as “a subtype of ескадрен миноносец with smaller draft and speed. nowadays it is not so used” which proves that the term has become obsolete. current documents present ескадрен миноносец as synonymous to разрушител. this new term is a calque of the english term destroyer. търсене на мини поиск на мини: both terms coexist in official documents with the domestic head търсене and the russian equivalent поиск, e.g.: “вмс участват в провеждане на разузнавателни поиски на мини и поиски на подводници [...]”; “търсенето на мини във военно време се извършва в определени райони и фарватери [...]”. ракета примамка ловушка (втр) бойна кабина бойна рубка: the term with the russian term element рубка is preferred in втр. 1.1.4.2.2. bulgarian term english term водосамолет хидросамолет хидроплан: despite the attempts to introduce the armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 23 bulgarian term-calque водосамолет, the english one хидроплан (�hydroplane) is preferred. летец пилот (� pilot): both terms are accepted and have derivatives in bulgarian. атомно оръжие ядрено оръжие нуклеарно оръжие (� nuclear): the term ядрено оръжие is most widely used both in the internet and in documents. dictionaries also include compound terms with ядрен, e.g.: ядрен удар, ядрен огън, ядрена бойна глава, ядрени бойни средства, etc. 1.1.4.2.3. simultaneous usage of non-domestic terms the examples below represent synonymic pairs of terms which are widely accepted and well incorporated in bulgarian terminology, although they are foreign to the bulgarian language origin: фар (�φάρος, greek) маяк (russian): both terms are used simultaneously, but the russian one is more productive in derivatives, e.g.: радиомаяк навигационен маяк радионавигационен маяк. десантни сили (� russian) амфибийни сили (�amphibious): bulgarian documents still prefer десантен and give амфибиен in brackets, but the situation might change under the influence of english terminology. 1.2. stylistic synonyms 1.2.1. english military terminology is abundant with numerous examples of stylistic synonyms, jargon and slang words used extensively by military professionals to replace the official term. according to some linguists (sudzilovski 1968) “english military terminology can be subdivided into 1) a. standardized vocabulary which includes terms from military documents and regulations, and b. informal vocabulary which is used in informal military speech and some types of military texts which are not official; 2) military jargon and slang which in most cases is synonymous to the corresponding standard terms. both groups are characterized by the same peculiarities, i.e. special usage and meaning. in addition, words that belong to one of the groups, can be transferred from one group in the other, e.g. mess, pillbox, silo, dud which were jargon words are terms now”. other examples of stylistic synonymic pairs include: general brass hat; private gi; infantryman doughboy; marine devil dog, leatherneck, bootneck, joeys, hm jollies, shipboard soldier; submarine sub, silent service, pigboat; destroyer tin can; battleships battlers, battle wagons; aircraft carrier flat top; nuclear weapon doom’s day weapon. 1.2.2. bulgarian military terminology contains only sporadic examples of slang words which are synonyms to official terms: отдаване на военна чест козируване: the term is the first one, but informally the second one is also used. 2. morphological synonyms this group is the one with the least number of synonyms in both terminologies. most of the examples include terms with different suffixes, e.g.: 2.1. dispersion 6 (nato) preferred term: dispersal; combination influence mine combined influence mine (*) 2. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 24 2.2. зенитно прикритие: втр defines this term with the synonymous noun прикриване; поразяване на целта поражение на целта: here the internet usage ratio is 378:6. although втр defines the differences between поразяване (на целта) and поражение, present documents prefer поражение (на войските и силите). it is possible that some of the following bulgarian noun terms with the suffix -ция could be used simultaneously with their counterparts with the suffix -не, but since they are borrowings of the term ending in the suffx -tion, it is a norm that they are formed with -ция: евакуация, дезактивация, дегазация, дезинформация, демилитаризация, демобилизация, демонстрация, детонация, дислокация, диспозиция, имитация, индикация, капитулация, etc. 3. syntactic synonyms 3.1. english terminology provides lots of examples of this type of compound terms with a prepositional postmodification by an of-phrase which is synonymous to a complex term with surface structure n+n: description of target target description; chain of command command channel (*). similarly, bulgarian terms for the latter english term show uncertainty adj.+n or n+prep.+(adj)+n: командна верига (ред), линия на подчинение, команден канал (трмо) ред на подчинение (абвр). other bulgarian examples include: adj+n = n+prep.+(adj.)+n: противолодъчен кораб кораб за противолодъчна отбрана, спомагателен кораб кораб със спомагателно назначение, фронтова линия линия на фронта, всесезонно оръжие оръжие за всякакво време (� allweather weapon). several english two-component terms resulted in the following bulgarian syntactic synonyms: force protection � защита на войските (абвр) защита, охрана на собствените вс защитни, охранителни мерки (трмо), peace enforcement � мироналагане, налагане на мира със сила (рнсо) налагане на мир (абвр), collateral damage� странични щети и загуби (трмо) косвени щети (абвр), humanitarian aid� хуманитарна помощ мерки за хуманитарна помощ (трмо), 3.2. synonymous terms result of shortening of the complex term when (one of) the modifier(s) is omitted, e.g.: initial contact report preferred term: contact report; humanitarian operation humanitarian relief operation (admitted); early warning air defence early warning; gun carriage carriage (nato); dome / preferred term: spray dome (*); date line preferred term: international date line (*). 3.3. synonymous terms result of blending: danbuoy laying danlaying бойно снабдяване боеснабдяване, бойни припаси боеприпаси, боен комплект боекомплект, газово убежище газоубежище. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 25 4. graphical synonyms according to popova (2012: 602) “graphical are the variants where at least one of the terms is an abbreviation”. we can expand this definition adding that in military terminology one of the equivalent terms can be a symbol. 4.1. term-abbreviation military language is characterized by extensive usage of abbreviations of the terms. here is an example paragraph from the nato document about peace support operations ajp 3.4.1 (2001:52): “on the recommendations of the pmg, having considered advice from the military delegates group, the council will decide the mission and structure of the force. the council appoints the operation commander and selects the operation hq, the fc and designates the point of contact (poc). if nato assets and capabilities are used, the nac, with the advice of the military committee, selects for proposal to the weu council the operation commander and the operation hq as well as, if foreseen, the fc and force hq”. in nato glossary of standardization terms and definitions (2011:12) “only initialisms, acronyms, shortenings and clipped terms that are formed by truncating complex terms are considered as abbreviations and standardized”. 4.1.1. most of the abbreviations in english and bulgarian terminology are initialisms, i.e. formed from the first letters of the words abbreviated, and pronounced letter by letter, e.g.: pk � peacekeeping, pso � peace support operation, psf � peace support force (nato); cc � command center (dod). опм� операции за поддържане на мира, вмс� военноморски сили, гщ� генерален щаб, оп� оперативно планиране, ппу� преден пункт за управление. 4.1.2. another group are acronyms, i.e. abbreviations made up of the initial letters of the components of the full form of the designation or from syllables of the full form, pronounced as a word, e.g.: nato, shape, stanag (nato), lots operations � logistics over-the-shore operations (dod). нато, станаг, кис � комуникационни и информационни системи, бип� бойно информационен пост, бов � бойни отровни вещества. 4.1.3. a third group comprises clipped terms which are derived from first parts of compound terms, e.g.: psyop � psychological operation, damcon � damage control, dissub personnel � distressed submarine personnel. bulgarian examples are new complex terms and their abbreviations formed after the english model: оплан� оперативен план, коноп� концепция на операцията, десо� десантен отряд. intel � intelligence and com � commander and bulgarian ком � командир are examples of apocope which is the most frequent type of clipping in english when the final phoneme or syllable is dropped. 4.1.4. the fourth group of abbreviations includes shortenings made up of the first letter and possibly one or more other letters of a simple term, e.g.: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 26 alt. � altitude, lchr � launcher, rgt � regiment. арс � арсенал, пр-к � противник, фр � фрегата. 4.1.5. the next english group of synonymous terms comprises abbreviations in which there is a combination of letters and numbers, e.g.: c2 � command and control; c2s � command and control system; c4 � command, control, communications and computers; c3i � command, control, communications and intelligence. kocharyan (2007) defines numbers in this type of abbreviations as metasigns, i.e. “signs to substitute other signs with a different meaning from the general meaning”. 4.1.6. the last group includes abbreviations in which the letters that substitute the compound term or part of it do not coincide with the first letters of the term: cv or cvn � aircraft carrier cvn is nuclear powered (dod); decoy ship / q-ship; k-kill� complete kill (nato). what is typical for different types of graphical synonyms (abbreviations) is inconsistency in their spelling with capital or small letters, e.g.: battalion: вn bn bn; european command: eucom eucom eucom; casualty report: casrep – casrep. if there is a slash in the abbreviation, it can be used to: mark the boundaries between parts of the compound terms, e.g.: а/с aircraft; с/а counterattack; f/c flight control; m/r morning report. to substitute a preposition or a conjunction, e.g.: a/g air-to-ground; c/s chief of staff; c/s cycles per second; s/c second-in-command. sometimes there is additional information after the slash, e.g.: dcs/o deputy chief of staff, operations. 4.2. term symbol nato countries have agreed and accepted a system of symbols to represent various military facilities, units, weapons, etc. in order to use them on maps, so that all allies have the same understanding of what is depicted on maps and charts. this means that a study of a given term should be inseparable from a memorization of its symbol. some examples of the symbolic representation of military terms are: minelayer: contact: escort: medical unit: conclusions all of the above considerations and examples prove the existence of numerous synonyms in english and bulgarian military terminology (including terms related to peacekeeping) despite the attempts for their unification and standardization. 1. most of the synonymous terms are complex terms and include synonyms in some of their parts (pre-modifiers or heads). from the four main groups of synonyms, lexical synonyms are the most widely observed and used in both terminologies. the main reason for their coexistence/interchangeability is the process of constant invent of new armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 27 weapons and strategies, new organizational formations, as well as introduction of new military and political concepts and doctrines. 2. morphological synonyms are less compared to other types of synonyms in both terminologies due to precise definition of the concept which avoids inconsistent usage of suffixes or prefixes. 3. the process of extensive usage of military abbreviations is especially significant and influential. active usage of different types of abbreviations (initialisms, acronyms, shortenings and clipped terms) and standardized nato symbols is the result of two main reasons: 1) english military writing traditions; and 2) the strive for terminological standardization and thus facilitation of communication between nato members during international exercises and operations through usage of nato approved and accepted terms and non-verbal (symbolic) means. 4. the main difference between the contrasted terminologies is the existence of stylistic synonyms in english unlike bulgarian military terminology which does not allow this. 5. bulgarian terminology abounds in synonymous terms of domestic and english or russian origin, while english terminology presents only a few examples of french borrowings. 6. english direct borrowings and calques enter rapidly into bulgarian terminological systems, including military terminology. 7. the research proves the fact that bulgarian military terminology is still in the process of active creation because there is hesitation and inconsistency in usage of synonymous or incorrectly borrowed/calqued terms even in official documents and dictionaries. this contrastive study proves danilenko’s statement (danilenko 1977:74) that “synonymy is typical of initial stages of establishment of terminological systems when the process of uncontrolled (and conscious) selection of the most appropriate term is still under way and lots of alternative terms coexist. the establishment of a given terminological system is achieved through overcoming of synonymy”. notes: 1. bulgarian armed forces were officially declared in 1878. bulgarian officers were trained in bulgaria and in military academies in russia, italy, austria-hungary and france. <http://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/българска армия> 2. the symbol (*) shows that the terms are both in nato glossary and dod dictionary. references: 1. clark, e. (1992) conventionality and contrast: pragmatic principles with lexical consequences. // frames, fields, and contrasts: new essays in semantic and lexical organization. lawrence erlbaum. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 28 2. cruse, d. (1986) lexical semantics. cambridge: cup. 3. danilenko, v. (1977) russian terminology. m.: nauka. 4. dimitrov, h. (2002) morski mini i borbata s tyah. varna: mo, vvmu “n.i. vaptsarov”. 5. edmonds, p., hirst, g. (2002) near synonymy and lexical choice. // computational linguistics, vol. 28, n2. 6. emirzyan, a. (1989) obshtoezikovi semantichni protsesi v terminologiyata (s ogled na stroitelnata terminologichna podsistema). // bulgarski ezik, n 1. 7. kocharyan, y. (2007) abreviatsiya v angliskoy voennoy leksike. < h t t p : / / c h e l o v e k n a u k a . c o m / a b b r e v i a t s i y a v a n g l i y s k o y v o e n n o y l e k s i k e # ixzz2urldwkm6>. 8. kolaříková, z. (2008) synonymy in english botanical terminology. // skase journal of translation and interpretation. vol. 3 (1). <http://www.skase.sk/volumes/ jti03/pdf_doc/5.pdf>. 9. lyons, j. (1981) language and linguistics. an introduction. cambridge: cup. 10. lyons, j. (1995) linguistic semantics: an introduction. cambridge: cup. 11. molhova, j. (1976) outlines of english lexicology. sofia: naouka i izkustvo. 12. (2001) peace support operations ajp 3.4.1. <http://www.osrh.hr/smvo/library/ajp3.4.1.pdf> 13. popova, m. (2012) teoriya na terminologiyata. veliko trnovo: znak’94. 14. rossouw, b. (1998) south african national defence force. // african security review, vol. 7 (1). (also online <www.iss.co.za/pubs/asr/7no1/rossouw.html>). 15. sager, j. (1990) a practical course in terminology processing. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins. 16. said, m. (2007) synonymy in translation. // translation journal, vol. 11, n 4. 17. todorov, i. (1981) bulgarskite korabi. sofia: technika. 18. ullmann, s. (1957) the principles of semantics. oxford: basil blackwell. 19. (2002) english-bulgarian military dictionary. nato terms. sofia: trud. [абвр] 20. (2006) english-bulgarian terminological dictionary of peacekeeping operations. sofia: voenno izdatelstvo. [трмо] 21. (1979) military terminological dictionary. sofia: voenno izdatelstvo. [втр] 22. (2013) nato glossary of terms and definitions (english and french). <http://nsa.nato.int/nsa/zpublic/ap/aap6/aap-6.pdf > [nato] 23. (2011) nato glossary of standardization terms and definitions (english and french). <http://nsa.nato.int/nsa/zpublic/ap/aap-42>. 24. (2007) rechnik po natsionalna sigurnost i otbrana. sofia: voenna akademia “g.s. rakovski”. [рнсо] 25. sudzilovski, g.; borisov, v. (1968) english-russian military dictionary. moscow: voennoe izdatelstvo. (also on-line http://www.zw-observer.narod.ru). 26. (1984) us department of defense dictionary of military and associated terms (as amended through 19 june 2009). < http://www.js.pentagon.mil/doctrine/jel/doddict/>. [dod] 27. webster’s new dictionary of synonyms; a dictionary of discriminated synonyms with armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 29 antonyms and analogous and contrasted words. springfield, mass., usa: merriamwebster. 28. yostman, p.; aleksandrov, s. (2003) internatsionalno komandvane. / narachnik za voenni rakovoditeli, ofitseri i serzhanti. sofia: informa intelekt. [ик] ðáù³ýßáõãûáõýá ³ý·é»ñ»ý ¨ μáõéõ³ñ»ñ»ý é³½ù³ï³ý »½ñ»ñáõù (ñ³ù»ù³ï³ï³ý áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõý) ðá¹í³íáõù ùýý³ñïíáõù ¨ áõëáõùý³ëçñíáõù »ý ñáù³ýßáõãû³ý ï³ñμ»ñ ¹ñë¨áñáõùý»ñá ³ý·é»ñ»ý ¨ μáõéõ³ñ»ñ»ý é³½ù³ï³ý ë³õ³õáõãû³ý å³ñå³ýù³ýý áõõõí³í »½ñ»ñáõù: ö³ëï³ï³ý ïíû³éý»ñç ñçù³ý íñ³ ï³ï³ñ³í ù³ýñ³ïñïçï ñ»ï³½áïáõãûáõýá íï³ûáõù ¿, áñ, ãý³û³í ëï³ý¹³ñï³óù³ý ¨ ùç³ó¨áõãû³ý ñ³ëý»éáõ ùçïáõùý»ñçý, ³ý·é»ñ»ý ¨ μáõéõ³ñ»ñ»ý å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó é³½ù³ï³ý μ³é³å³ß³ñá ß³ñáõý³ïáõù ¿ ³ñï³ñ³ûïí»é ñáù³ýßáõãû³ý μ³½ù³ãçí ¨ μ³½ù³½³ý ï»ë³ïý»ñáí: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 30 microsoft word 1.linguistics 7 104 (1) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 84 rhythmic arrangement of english academic discourse (in comparison with armenian) lusine vanyan artsakh state university abstract the article addresses the problem of the rhythmic arrangement of academic discourse and its main units. it is the result of computer-based acoustic investigation of english rhythm (in comparison with armenian). the contrastive analysis of the rhythmic units helps to reveal the regularities that pass unnoticed in monolingual studies. basing on the scalar approach to the rhythm, the study defines rhythm as an output of all the gradients participating in its formation with the special accent on grouping and prominence. it is an attempt in modelling the rhythmic organisation of academic prose in english (armenian) by giving its acoustic profile. key words: rs (rhythmic structure), intonation group, accentual-syllabic structure, acoustic modelling, prosodic wrapping, dynamic energy, temporal patterning. introduction the main objective of the study is the prosodic patterning of the main rhythmic units in english academic discourse (in comparison with armenian). the regular rhythmic arrangement of the academic text, conditioned by its cognitive function, aims at a more transparent transmission of complicated content and intensifies the organizing function of rhythm in speech communication making the study of rhythmicality an important point in the analysis of the phonetic structure of the text. speech rhythm has often been studied cross-linguistically to indicate universal and specific differences of the language. as opposed to earlier cross-linguistic studies of rhythm focused on rhythmically similar languages, recent studies consider languages with minimal degree of linguistic affinity. the scalar model of rhythm may serve an example (grabe 2011). at the same time the scalar models replaced the rigid rhythmic dichotomy by a gradient scale which more precisely indicated the rhythmic tendency of a language and its extent by an index. on the other hand, it attracted a whole array of phonetic and phonological parameters into the study of rhythm. the gradient model of rhythm based on rhythmic structure (rs) proved its efficiency on a number of languages (potapov 2004; potapova, potapov 2012; zlatoustova 1999). the universal character of rs was attested its leading role in psycholinguistic experiments on linguistics armenian folia anglistika 85 sequential memorization (gilbert 2011). the cognitive base of rs is correlated with its objectively occurring recursive accentual pattern. due to its universal character rs is employed in typological studies of languages with fixed and free types of stress and polar rhythmic tendencies with the purpose of disclosing the universal and languagespecific rhythmic features. the accentual and cognitive base of rs is combined with the semantic one, which determines the unification of nucleus with enclosing clitics. in this sense rs correlates with the terms phonetic/phonological word and differs from the terms foot, tact, clitic/prosodic group, interstress interval, distinguished on a formal basis. the core of rs is the accented syllable encompassing the clitics, their patterns conditioning the temporal, melodic and dynamic characteristics of rs. method the study included auditory-acoustic computer-based analysis with the elements of synthesis of the rhythmic units under study. at the first stage of auditory analysis synthesized rs patterns were suggested for identification to two groups of auditors (professional and nonprofessional). as a result of auditory analysis of synthesized rs patterns the objectiveness of rs as a minimal unit was proved. delexicalized reiterate (two-, three-, fourand five-syllabic) stimuli /ba/ were generated. the duration of the stimuli was supplemented with fo and intensity values. the algorithm of distribution of prosodic parameters was worked out with the special focus on the prosodic contrast of the elements constituting rs. the generated rhythmic structure samples were presented for identification as regards the language they were encoded in. the prosodic wrappings were supposed to serve sufficient clues to define the significance of rs in language recognition. the quantity of correctly identified stimuli in professional group (82%) slightly exceeded those in non-professional group (70%). at the next stage of auditory analysis relevant authentic english texts were segmented into rhythmic structures, grouped according to their metrical composition and viewed as to their position in larger units. the same procedure was applied for the study of the armenian rhythm. this stage aimed at revealing the acoustic composition of rhythmic structures in terms of fundamental frequency, intensity and duration. the received measurements on english and armenian were further compared with the view of disclosing general and language-specific characteristics. in this way methods of acoustic and auditory analysis were coupled with those of comparison and observation. the corpus of the study contained 820 intonation groups selected from authentic english academic prose and read by seven native speakers of standard english. the analysed texts were related to ethnography, psychology, linguistics, architecture, music, geology, etc. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 86 the same number of intonation groups from armenian academic prose were read by native armenian speakers (literary eastern armenian) and further considered by the same scheme of parametric analysis. the raw acoustic data were analyzed in relative values. the insignificant intralanguage dispersion allowed to generalise the results and reveal the basic rhythmic tendencies of the languages under study. results and analysis basic rs types, their syllabic-accentual composition and frequency english intonation unit is generally formed by 2 rs (6.6 syl.) (44%), less frequently by 3 rs (9 syl.) (26%), 1 rs (4 syl.) (24%) and 4 rs (13 syl.) (6%). armenian is primarily expressed by 2 rs (7.4 syl.) and 3 rs (10.3 syl.) intonation units (77%), less frequently by more extensive 4 rs (13 syl) and 5 rs (14-20 syl.) intonation units (12%) and intonation units with 1 rs (4 syl.) (12%). therefore, in english the number of rs in an intonation unit and the number of syllables in rs is more limited as compared with armenian. the average intonation unit length is 4-9 syl. in english, average armenian intonation unit length is 5-12 syl. the summary chart of the basic rs types shows the basic tendencies of metric constituency of an english rs in comparison with that in ela. table 1: rhythmic structures in english and armenian linguistics armenian folia anglistika 87 diagram 1 (english marked in black, armenian marked in gray) the initial rs in english intonation unit are constituted by 2 or 3 syllables with the incidence of the stress on the second syllable, n-syllable rs – on the third syllable, intonation units beginning with the initial stress being rare constituting only 9-13%. final rss of the intonation unit include 1/1, 2/1 and 3/2 structures. thus, the metric scheme may be depicted as 3/2, 2/2, n/3… n/n ….3/2, 1/1, 2/1. the metrical scheme of armenian intonation unit is more homogeneously expressed by two, three-, and four-syllabic intonation units with an ultimate stress on the initial and medial positions. in the final position it is characterized by 3and 2-syllable rs, resulting in the following structure: 3/3, 2/2, 4/4 …….3/3, 2/2, 4/4 ….3/3, 2/2. the distribution of the types of rs in the intonation unit reveals that the final rs exhibits a tendency to rs with a limited number of syllables in both languages under study. in english it is also characterized by a tendency to encliticism. therefore, it can be concluded that english is expressed by 1 to 5-syllable rs, while armenian – by 2 to 6 syllable rs. % 2-syllable 3-syllable 4-syllable english 19 30 13 armenian 15 31 25 the accentual structure of rs in both languages is expressed by rising, falling and mixed structures. english displays preference towards enclitic (34%) and mixed (28%) rs and it is minimally expressed by proclitic rs (7%) forming the following chart. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 88 armenian structures tend to proclitic arrangement (64%) and mixed (18%) rs. rhythmic structures common to two languages to a different extent: this may be illustrated by polysyllabic 3/3 and 4/4 structures in armenian, which approximately 6-10 times outdo the english analogues. the rhythmical differences of languages and their rhythmic arrangement arise from rhythmic-dynamic stereotypes of the phonetic structure of a given language, set in its articulatory basis. they depend on the number and position of stresses. there are 11 basic accentual structures and 34 accentual-syllabic realizations in english (komyagina 2011) that allow a certain degree of variability particularly as regards four-, five and six-syllable types. english basic accentual types include/ˈ-/, /ˈ-ˌ-/, /ˈ--ˌ-ˌ/ˈ -ˌ-ˈ/, /ˈ-ˈ-ˌ-/, /ˌ-ˈ-/ˌˌ-ˈ-/, /ˌ-ˈ-ˈ-/. according to the existing data (abramyan 1978), armenian has 3 basic accentual types: /ˈ-/, /ˌ-ˈ-/,/ˌ-ˌ-ˈ-/. the basic types of accentual structures in armenian were also received on the basis of words taken from fairy tales (tokhmakhyan 2009). the experimental base selected for the study of english academic prose showed the following patterns of distribution of primary and secondary stresses in the armenian academic prose: a. 2/2, 3/3, 4/4(/-ˈ-/, /--ˈ-/, /---ˈ-/) with the stress on the ultimate syllable, b. 2/1, 3/2, 4/3, 5/4 (/ˈ--/,/-ˈ--/ , /--ˈ--/, /---ˈ--/) with the incidence on the penultimate syllable c. 3/1, 4/2 types (/ˈ---/, /-ˈ---/) with the incidence on the anti-penultimate, d. 4/1,4, 6/1, 5, 6/2, 5, 5/1, 4, 5/1, 5 (/ˌ---ˈ-/,/ˌ----ˈ--//) the seven and eight syllable structures with two secondary stresses were also registered in the corpus of the study, the latter being of rare occurrence (7/1, 4, 7; 7/ 3, 6; 7/ 1, 4, 6; 8/2, 4, 7). linguistics armenian folia anglistika 89 գերմաներեն ֆրանսերեն բրիտ անգլերեն հայերեն 20 30 40 50 60 70 30 40 50 60 70 80 միջձայնային pvi ձ ա յն ա յի ն p v i according to the received data, the high-frequency accentual types in the academic prose were 5/ 3, 5, 5/ 1, 3, 5/ 2s, 4, 5/1, 4, 6/ 2, 4, 6/ 1, 3s, 5, 6/ 1, 5, 6/ 1s, 4 . in compound rs consisting of two or more morphological items in armenian academic prose, each of the constituents receives a certain degree of stress. this may result in accentual options but the latter do not belong to high frequency types: 3/1, 3s, 3/1s, 3, 3/ 2s. 3 4/1, 3s, 4/1s, 3, 4/2, 3s, 4/2s, 4, 4/2, 4s, 5/1, 4s, 5/2s, 4, 5/3s, 5, 6/1, 4s, 6/2, 4s, 6/2, 5s (s – secondary prominence). this correlates with the findings described by tokhmakhian (1987, 2009) in the study of the accentual structure of armenian words. prosodic structure of intonation unit and rs duration the vocalic percentage in the texts studied is 40, 1% as opposed to 59.9% of intervocalic percentage that reflects strong quantitative compression and prevalence of heavy syllable types added other phonological parameters that determine a stress-timed tendency in english, while in armenian it is 43% and 57% correspondingly. the ratio of vocalic/intervocalic elements in english and armenian is an indicator of different phonological tendencies in the mechanism of rhythm-formation in two languages studied. chart1: pairwise variability indices chart2: durational profiles for english, armenian and of english, armenian, french german and french armenian folia anglistika linguistics 90 the average length of an english syntagm in academic prose varies between 0.71.8s (80%), its maximal range 2,3s, minimal range 0.3s. the length of the syntagm is directly proportional to the number of syllables it contains, since every syllable adds about 0.1-0.2s to the duration of the syntagm. table 2: syllabic and temporal length of rs syl. structure of eng.syntagm /70%/ temporal structure of eng.syntagm syl. structure of arm.syntagm temporal structure of arm.syntagm 4-syl 0,8 5-syl 1, 5-syl. 0,9 6-syl 1,1 6-syl 1,1 7-syl 1,2 7-syl 1,3 8-syl 1,4 8-syl 1,5 9-syl 1,5 9-syl 1,6 10syl 1,8 11syl 2 12syl 2.1 as it is seen from the chart, the temporal and syllabic length of most frequent intonation units is 1s (5 syl) and 1,1s (6 syl). the linear temporal growth of intonation units with different syllabic composition, the scale of quantitative fluctuations point to a more compact grouping in case of polysyllabic structures. in contrast, the temporal regularity is not observed in armenian academic prose. the temporal contrast of stressed and unstressed syllables in the initial segment in armenian, both with a marked or unmarked melodic peak, is expressed very slightly or is even absent. the stressed syllable exceeds the unstressed in a limited number of cases. armenian intonation units perceptibly exceed its english counterpart in the quantity of syllables and in the linearity and ratio of growth: every syllable often adds 0.2sec to the length of intonation unit on average. its average duration is 0,9 to 2,1sec, 5-12 syl. (77%), the most frequent types being 1.3sec in a 7-syl. intonation unit and 1.6sec. in a 9-syl. intonation unit. the minimal length of intonation units is 0.5-0.9sec /1-4 syl./ (910%), maximal length 2.2 3.1sec. /13-22 syl./ (13-17%). linguistics armenian folia anglistika 91 table 3. relative duration of stressed and adjacent unstressed syllables in rs a r m en ia n fr eq ue nt m et ri cs r s du ra tio na l pa tt er n in a rm en ia n e n gl is h fr eq ue nt m et ri cs r s du ra tio na l pa tt er n in e ng lis h xx 1,4-1,1 xx 1,2-1,6 xx 1,1-1,2 xx 0,9-1,7 xxx 1,0-1,0-1,1 xxx 0,8-0,7-1,6 xxx 1,2-0,9-1,0 xxx 0,8-1,0-1,1 xxxx 1,0-0,9-1,0-1,1 xxxx 1,0-1,1-0,9-0,9 xxx 1,0-0,9-1,0 xxxx 0,8-0,7-0,9-1,2 xxxx 1,0-1,0-0,5-0,8 xxxxx 0,9-0,9-0,9-0,8-1,1 xxxxx 0,9-0,8-0,9-0,6-1,1 xxxxx 1-0,9-0,9-1-1 xxxxxx 0,8-1,0-0,7-1,0-0,8-0,7 table 4: relative duration of frequent rs types number of syllables in rs duration of rs in english duration of rs in armenian 1 0.4 0.2-0.3 2 0.5 0.4 3 0.5-0.6 0.5 4 0.6-0.7 0.7 5 0.8-0.9 0.8 6 0.9 table 5: relative duration of rs according to their accentual-syllabic constituency every unstressed syllable adds 0.7-0.9 relative points to the duration of rs in english on average, 0.9-1 in armenian, in polysyllabic structures 0.5-0.8 in english armenian folia anglistika linguistics 92 and 0.7-0.9 in armenian. compactness and non-linearity of english rs is shaped by compression in the unstressed syllable and final lengthening. in english the contrast between accented and unaccented syllables equals 0.3-0.8 relative points in the final position (0.1-0.3 points in armenian), since final lengthening adds 0,01-0,03 to the total duration of english intonation unit. in non-final position, this contrast decreases to 0.30.5 in english (0-0.3 in armenian). thus, english is characterized by a stronger contrast between stressed and unstressed syllables and a higher degree of compression of unstressed syllables that becomes more pronounced in polysyllabic structures and in post-accented non-final position. in the initial position in english there is a higher incidence of temporal contrast of stressed syllable over the unstressed one as compared with the nuclear segment. in the final segment the extent of temporal contrast is significant in case a stressed syllable is located at the end of a final rs and bears final lengthening effect. contrastive temporal relations between accented and non-accented syllables, lengthening of monoand bisyllabic structures, compression of polysyllabic english structures and absence of 6-syllabic structures determine the tendency to isochrony of english rs (antipova 1984; cummins 2008). meanwhile, armenian is characterized by linearity, variability and higher average length conditioned by weak syllable weight difference and low degree of compression.this is accounted for by moderate temporal marking of stressed syllables and insignificant final lengthening in armenian. an interlanguage similarity may be observed in the similar relative duration of threeand four-syllable rs. in armenian their duration is shaped by equal-timed, full syllables, in english – by temporal compensation between reduced vs. accentually and finally lengthened syllables. the length of english rs varies within 0.1 and 1.2sec (90%), the average length is 0.6 (+0.2). the most frequent rs length is 0.4-0.5, 0.3-0.4 and 0.5-0.6s. the average length of armenian rs coincides with english, however, due to its linearity its temporal range is wider 0.15 to 1.4s. intensity the average total intensity of rs in the intonation group is characterized by a steady decrease of these parameters from the beginning of the syntagm/phrase to its end, the zone of the minimal dynamic values (for instance, rs 1 = 71db, rs2 = 69db). maximal intensity is often concentrated at the beginning of the syntagm, minimal values – at the end, conditioned by general physiological universal characteristics of speech production. rs at the beginning and end of intonation unit/phrase is regularly marked by maximal total intensity and minimal total duration in the initial rs and minimal total intensity and maximal total duration in the final. the dynamic parameter may rise in the nuclear rs in the middle or at the end of intonation unit similar to the parameter of fo . linguistics armenian folia anglistika 93 diagram 2: relative temporal contrast of adjacent stressed and unstressed syllables in the languages under study (english marked in light gray, armenian marked in black) table 6: relative intensity of rs a rm en ia n fr eq ue nt m et ri cs r s in te ns ity di st ri bu tio n in a rm en ia n e ng lis h fr eq ue nt m et ri cs r s in te ns ity pa tt er n in e ng lis h xx 1,02-1,02 xx 1,05-0,97 xx 1,01-0,99 xx 1,0-1,03 xxx 1-1-0,98 xxx 0,99-1,00-1,03 xxx 1,01-1-0,98 xxx 1,00-1,05-0,99 xxxx 1,01-1-0,99-0,98 xxxx 1,02-1,01-0,990,98 xxx 1,02-1,01-0,98 xxxx 1,05-1,01-1-0,95 xxxx 0,98-0,99-1,03-0,97 xxxx 0,97-1,02-0,95-0,98 xxxxx 1-0,99-0,99-0,980,97 xxxxx 1,02-1,01-1,04-0,98-,99 xxxxx 1,01-1-0,97-0,990,97 xxxxx 1,02-1,05-1,00-1,040,96 xxxxxx 1-1-0,99-0,96-0,99-0,99 xxxxxx 1,03-1-0,97-0,96armenian folia anglistika linguistics 94 time (s) 76.36 76.87 pi tc h (h z) 0 500 a ra gin time (s) 76.36 76.87 0,98-0,99 diagram 3: relative dynamic contrast of rs in english and armenian (english marked in gray, armenian in black) picture 1: time course of fo and energy (dotted) of rhythmic unit with xxx metrics “arajin – the first” although the intensity of intonation unit declines gradually in both languages, in english the intensity is a position-independent constant marker of the accent of all rss in the intonation group, while in armenian it tends to rise at the beginning of rs and gradually decreases towards the end of rs. in english academic prose the dynamic contrast is expressed and equals 0, 03-0,06, 0,08 relative units, exhibiting stronger contrast of stressed and unstressed syllables as compared with armenian. concerning the character of intensity distribution, in english maximum intensity occurs on the first or second syllable of rs, due to the accentual tendencies in english, while in armenian linguistics armenian folia anglistika 95 it equals 0,01-0,03 relative units and reflects a tendency to equal prominence of armenian syllables and weak dynamic marking of the stressed syllable. the accented syllable may slightly exceed in intensity the unaccented syllable as opposed to english in which intensity is a constant marker of english stress, confirming the recent experimental evidence (kochansky 2011). the received findings correlate with the data acquired by tokhmakhyan (2009) as regards the distribution of dynamic characteristics in the isolated phrases. the normalized average intensity diapason is 0.6-0.9 relative points, the maximal diapason – 0.8-1.1 relative points, minimal – 0.8-0.9 relative points. the diapasonal range values of the syntagm edge in english as regards its intensity is equal to10db, the dynamic range of rs edges – 4db. fundamental frequency as it is seen, the analysis of the acoustic parameters, including fo, requires consideration of the positional factor, which includes the description of the initial rs, that of the medial body and the nuclear. from the discursive point of view the initial rs is highly relevant in the sense that the communicative load is realized on this segment providing the intersentential link. the nuclear segment is of equal significance since it is the carrier of the nuclear tone. the nuclear rs in english has the greatest degree of prominence that is expressed by pitch contrast of the accented and unaccented syllables. melodic peaks occurring within the melodic range of the initial rs in the english academic discourse are realized within 2st with the rate of 20st/ msec, exceeding similar parameters of the medial rs (1,75st). the pitch range of the final segment of non-final intonation group is 4,1st, ranging within 3-10st, with the rate of fo changes up to 30 (2-47 st/ msec). the nuclear rs in non-final syntagm has the maximum degree of fo contrast. the pitch interval of rise is often equal to that of fall. the configuration of the parameters in the medial rs points to the fact that it bears lesser degree of prominence according to the described parameters as compared with the rightwing and leftwing rs. the prosodic structures of rs in armenian have the following features. the initial rs in the majority of cases bears the maximum degree of prominence as opposed to english in which the maximum pitch values are characteristic of nuclear rs. in a number of cases the prepositive theme in armenian is marked by a rising contour, which culminates in the melodic peak on the accented syllable, dominating over the unaccented syllable and ranging within 4.4st (1-8) with the rate of 16 st /msec (5-24). the fo range of the unmarked beginning of syntagm is 1,6st, its modification rate being 9st/msec. the initial rs is terminated by a slight rise in non-final intonation group. it may also have the rising-level movement in the melodic diapason with the fo, rate of 9st/msec. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 96 time (s) 96.61 pi tc h (h z) 0 400 բայրոնի ստեղծագործությունների լայն արձագանքին baroni steghtsagortsutjunneri lajn ardzaga time (s) 96.61 time (s) 132.1 132.6 pi tch (h z) 0 500 nit re gre ssion time (s) 132.1 132.6 picture 2: time course of fo of intonation group with a marked melodic peak in the initial rs picture 3: time course of fo and energy (dotted) of rhythmic unit with xxx metrics “regression” the nuclear rs of non-final intonation group is marked by the lengthening of the final syllable and the widening of the melodic diapason (4st) and the fo, change rate up to 32st/msec. the melodic range of english intonation unit is 0 – 13st, its average range – 3-7 (+2 –3) st, minimal range – 0-2, maximal range – 7-13st.the pitch range of armenian intonation unit is similar to that of english (2-12, 6 on average). average english rs range equals 2-5st, maximal range 13st, armenian 4st. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 97 table 7: relative frequency values of rs a rm en ia n fr eq ue nt m et ri cs r s fr eq ue nc y pa tt er n in a rm en ia n e ng lis h fr eq ue nt m et ri cs r s re la tiv e fr eq ue nc y di st ri bu tio n in e ng lis h x x xx 1.4-1.2 xx 1.3-0.9 xx 1-1.1 xx 1-1 xxx 1-1.1-1.3 xxx 1.01-0.98-1.07 xxx 1.1-1.2-1.2 xxx 1.03-1.09-1.04 xxxx 1-1-1-1.1 xxxx 1.01-1.02-1.17-1.14 xxx 0.9-0.9-1 xxxx 0.99-0.93-1.03-1,02 xxxx 0.99-1.02-1.03-0.97 xxxxx 0.99-1.03-1.03-1.031.26 xxxxx 1-1.1-1.1-1-1 xxxxx 0.7-1-0.9-1-1.1 xxxxx 0.88-1.05-1-0.98-1 xxxxxx 1.1-1.1-1.1-1.1-1.1-1 xxxxxx 1.05-1.02-1.02-1.031.02-1.17 the melodic range of both languages varies between 1-13 semitones in english and 1-12 in armenian. diagram 1: relative fo contrast of rs in semitones in english and armenian armenian folia anglistika linguistics 98 the statistic analysis of the positional distribution of fo values reveals concentration of maximal values at the beginning of an intonation unit in both languages. after the initial melodic peak the middle and final part in armenian exhibit gradual decrease until the end, while the middle and final contour in english may decrease or ascend. the characteristic features of academic prose are most clearly outlined in the syntagm. these include double-peaked melodic contour, alternation of rs of high and low intensity, relatively slight temporal variation of rs in english. in armenian a typical contour of syntagm is a wavy movement with rises of different contour and amplitude on the stressed syllables of rs. the tonal configuration is conditioned by polysyllabic character of armenian words, tonal structure of enclitics and melodic configurations in the pretonic, tonic and posttonic segments. the pretonic segment often carries level or rising tone, the tonic segment – rising tone, post-tonic segment – either falling, rising or level. intonation unit may also have a levelled-out flat contour. the acquired results on the contrastive study of the melodic contour in academic discourse correlate with the results of analysis of prosodic configuration of main melodic types of armenian received on the isolated phrases (bagdasarian 1987). the prosodic distribution in an intonation unit depends on the informational structure of the text as well. the initial rs taken from the informational perspective serves as a base on which interphrasal cohesion is anchored. the main types of intersentential links determine the specific prosodic arrangement of the initial rs: linear or distant, with a lesser degree of retrievability, and conversely contact and parallel with a higher degree of retrievability. in the studies on syntax-phonology interface, there are different stances on the role of prosodic components in shaping thematic-rhematic relations. in a number of works on academic and fictional prose the focus was on the melodic curves in actualizing thematic-rhematic relations. autosegmental studies on this problem consider diapasonal data more relevant in conveying the informational structure of the text. according to calhoun, a series of production and perception experiments prove that the distinction between theme and rheme nuclear accents is relative pitch height (calhoun 2006:77-82). steedman affirms that when speakers of english assign prosodic accent to a word, they do so on the basis of a number of elements of discoursesemantics, of which the most important is contrast. it is surface-syntactic derivation that projects such semantic elements to the level of the intonational phrase (steedman 2014:3-4). in english academic style the initial rhythmical structures expressing contact linking are mostly marked by falling-rising, falling + rising, rising-falling + rising, rising + falling movements or also falling and rising movements though in a number of cases the theme may be unmarked as well. in cases of linear or distant links the initial linguistics armenian folia anglistika 99 rhythmic structures are either unmarked or expressed by falling and rising-falling movements. the discourse markers often used in the initial rhythmic structures bear tonal accents. in english the melodic range of marked theme and rheme are more expressed than the range of unmarked theme. the temporal contrast between stressed and unstressed syllable of the rheme exceeds that of the contact and unmarked links. the maximal dynamic range is observed in the linear type of links, in cases of contact linking the theme proper has a less expressed dynamic values. the minimal dynamic range is observed in the thematised base or diatheme. in armenian the initial rhythmic structures are marked by high and low rising tones, sometimes falling and level tones, falling and unmarked tones being more typical of contact links. the linear links presenting the rheme are marked by rises. the fo range of theme proper and rheme surpasses the range of diatheme and unmarked theme, while temporal contrast between stressed and unstressed syllables is the same in all three types of links. the tendency to the dynamic marking of rheme is also directly proportional to the informational loading. picture 4: falling tone on contact link picture 5: falling tone on contact “the notions are equivalent” link “reception theories” picture 6: contrastive contact picture 7: unmarked theme link marked with fall-rise “such a combination” “yet the responses” armenian folia anglistika linguistics 100 picture 8: falling tone picture 9: level tone on theme “disciplinary” on contact link “what scar and mscatney say” picture 10: falling tone picture 11: rising-falling tone on a discourse marker on contact link “similarly” “the distinctions” picture 12: rising theme picture 13: rising tone “jrambari” “of the reservoir” on rhematic base “konstruktiv lutsman” linguistics armenian folia anglistika 101 picture 14: rising tone on rheme “kavits patrastvats sherty” conclusion the analysis of metric constituency, acoustic composition and prosodicinformational interface of rhythmic structuring of english academic prose in comparison with armenian disclosed a number of specific characteristics. the metric structure shows a tendency to variability of accentual stereotype brought forth by polysyllabic character of english words, a great number of mixed-type structures, and a greater flexibility of accentual transformations. basic rhythmic types are distributed evenly; peripheral types are relatively more frequent in the academic prose as compared with the fictional prose. english has 32 accentual-dynamic stereotypes with frequent occurrence of structures with primary and secondary stresses which conditions the variability of rhythmic structures. fixed ultimate stress limits quantity of armenian accentual stereotypes, their variability originating due to secondary rhythmic stress or morpho-phonetic interface. this distinction is caused by polar accentual tendencies which account for a number of language-specific rs. as regards the acoustic profiles, english rhythmic units are characterized by an expressed compression in academic prose, greater temporal contrast between stressed and unstressed syllables, final lengthening, a higher contoid index. combined with lengthening of monoand disyllabic structures, qualitative-quantitative reduction conditions the tendency of rs to isochrony in english as compared with linearity of temporal growth of armenian rs and syntagm. the prominence in an english rs is invariably marked by intensity, armenian intensity values have an optional rise on accent, maximum intensity values being attached to the beginning of rs. as for the prosodic structures of rs the characteristics of fundamental frequency are in close correlation with the position and accentual-syllabic structure in a phrase.the analysis of fo points to a wider frequency span of english rs in the initial position than in armenian unless the rs in armenian is expressed by the prepositive theme. in the armenian folia anglistika linguistics 102 latter case the rs may be marked by a tangible rising movement or a fall which is though a rare case. in those cases when the theme is unmarked it often starts on a medium pitch level. the nuclear segment in english academic style is marked by a steep fo, change in the intonation group, the medial segment bearing more moderate fo, and the prenuclear segment – a minimal fo, change rate. armenian academic style is characterized by a slight fo, change in the medial position and by a greater fo, change in the final segment, but it does not reach the onset pitch. english exhibits wider syntagmatic and rs range as compared with armenian. the information layer differently affects intersentential prosody in the languages under study. the informational structure is in complex interrelations with rhythm of the text. 1. in both languages under study the intensity values are directly proportional to the retrievability of the informational constituents, the maximal intensity values are on the rheme, the minimal ones on the theme. 2. melodic range is more expressed in the english distant and contact links as opposed to the unmarked theme. the distant links are marked by a greater contrast between the accented vs. unaccented syllables. 2. distant and contact links do not differ in the direction of pitch movement in both languages, their difference being in the proportion of occurrence. english contact links are predominantly marked by falling, level and unmarked tones, distant links – by unmarked, falling, rising-falling, occasionally by rising tones. in armenian academic texts contact links tend to rises, high rises and level tone, while distant links do not often receive level tone. attributive features of rhythm are interconnected with its functional characteristics. the pragmatic role of rhythm of academic rhythm is mostly implemented through pragmatic accent, distinctive temporal variations, strengthening and weakening of accent and specific structural fluctuation. references: 1. arvaniti, a. (2009) rhythm, timing and the timing of rhythm. // phonetica, 66 (12), p. 46–63. 2. bagdasaryan, s.a. (1984) zhamanakakic hajots lezvi himnakan meghedain tiperi bnutagrumy. // pedagogicheskij institut ruskogo i inostranogo yazikow im v.y. brusova, erevan, pp. 237-250. 3. bagdasaryan, s.a. (1987) o nekotoryh tipologicheskih osobennostyah ritma sowremennogo armyanskogo i anglijskogo yazikov. // sopostawitelnoe izuchenie russkogo, armyanskogo i inostrannogo yazikov, pp. 23-25. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 103 4. barbosa, p. (2007) how prosodic variability can be handled by a dynamic speech rhythm model. // proc. 16th international congress of phonetic sciences. saarbrücken: pirrot gmbh, dudweiler, pp. 75-96. 5. barry, w.; andreeva, b.; russo, m.; dimitrova, s.; kostadinova, t. (2003) do rhythm measures tell us anything about rhythm type× // proc. 15th international congress of phonetic sciences, barcelona: futurgraphic, pp. 2437-2440. 6. calhoun, s. (2010) how does informativeness affect prosodic prominence× // language and cognitive processes. 25 (7-9) special issue: experimental and theoretical advances in prosody, pp. 1099-1140. 7. ghitza, o.; greenberg, s. (2009) role of brain rhythms in speech perception. phonetica, 66 (1-2), pp.113–126. 8. keller, e.; port, r. (2007) speech timing: approaches to speech rhythm. // proc. 16th international congress of phonetic sciences, saarbrücken: pirrot gmbh, dudweiler, pp. 327-329. 9. kohler, j.k. (2009) rhythm in speech and language. a new rresearch paradigm. // phonetica, 66, pp. 29-45. 10. kochansky, g.; grabe, e.; coleman, j.; rosner, b. (2011) loudness predicts prominence: fundamental frequency lends little. // the journal of the acoustic society of america118 (2), pp. 1038-1054 11. krivnova, o.f. (2007) ritmizacia i intonacionnoe chlenenie teksta ''v procese rechimisli''. // phd dissertation, moscow. 12. loukina, a.; kochanski, g.; rosner, b.; keane e. (2011) rhythm measures and dimensions of durational variation in speech. // the journal of the acoustic society of america, pp.3258-3270. 13. niebuhr, o. (2009) f0-based rhythm effects on the perception of local syllable prominence. // phonetica; 66, pp. 95-112. 14. potapov, v.v.(2004) dynamics and statics of speech rhythm. a comparative study of slavic and germanic languages. / editorial urss, komkniga, pp. 257-265 15. pinaeva, zh. (1975) o nekotorye intonacionnyi osobenosty akchteniya angliyskoy hudozhestvestwenniy i nauchnoyh tekstow. // phd dissertation, moscow. 16. steedman, m. (2014) the surface-compositional semantics of english intonation. // language 2014, 90, pp. 2–57. 17. tokhmakhyan, r. (1983) zhamanakakic hayereni sheshtabanutyuny. // academy of sciences of the armenian ssr, pp. 65-158. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 104 ²ý·é»ñ»ýç ·çï³ï³ý ³ñó³ïç éçãùçï ï³éáõóí³íùá (ñ³û»ñ»ýç ½áõ·³¹ñáõãû³ùμ) ðá¹í³íáõù ¹çï³ñïíáõù ¿ ³ý·é»ñ»ýç éçãùá å³ýñ³ûçý ñ³û»ó³ï»ïáõù: èçãùçï ï³éáõûóç ¨ ß³ñáõûãç »é³ï»ï³ûçý ùç³íáñý»ñç ñçù³ý íñ³ í»ñ ¿ ñ³ýíáõù ¹ñ³ýó í³ýï³-ß»ßï³ûçý ï³½ùá, ³ïáõëïçï éóáýáõùá, çñ³óù³ý ñ³×³ë³ï³ýáõãûáõýá, ¹çñù³ûçý ùçïáõùý»ñá ¨ ó³ûý³ß³ñç ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá: ð³ù³ï³ñ·ã³ûçý í»ñéáõíáõãû³ý ùççáóáí í»ñ ¿ éáõííáõù ³ý·é»ñ»ýç ß»ßï³ûçý ¨ ³ýß»ßï ñ³ïí³íý»ñç åñáëá¹çï ã³÷áñáßáõùá ¨ ñ³ù³¹ñíáõù ñ³û»ñ»ýç ñ»ï: ð³û»ñ»ýç ¨ ³ý·é»ñ»ýç ³ïáõëïçï ã³÷áñáßù³ý ù³ëçý ¿ íï³ûáõù ý³¨ ëï³óí³í ³ñ¹ûáõýùý»ñç ñçù³ý íñ³ ëçý㻽í³í ëáëùç áýï³éù³ý ÷áñóá: ð³ù³ï³ñ·ã³ûçý ù»ãá¹áí éáõë³μ³ýíáõù ¿ ý³¨ éçãùç ¨ é»ù³-ã»ù³ïçï ï³ñμ»ñ³ïù³ý åñáëá¹çï ÷áëå³ûù³ý³íáñí³íáõãûáõýá: ритмическая организация научной прозы в современном английском языке (в сопоставлении с армянским) в статье рассматривается ритм английского языка в стилевом ракурсе в сопоставлении с армянским, в частности исследуются акцентнo-силлабический строй сопоставляемых языков, их акустическое наполнение, частотность, позиционные тенденции и диапазональные особенности базовых единиц ритмической структуры и синтагмы. посредством компьютерного анализа раскрываются особенности просодической параметризации в типологическом аспекте. результаты получили последующее подтверждение при применении акустических данных в синтезе речи. по ходу компьютерного акустического анализа определяется характер взаимообусловленности ритма и просодической структуры тема-рематической актуализации. maket 2014_layout 1.qxd homophonic pun in“alice in wonderland” in english and armenian armine matevosyan, marine alimyan yerevan state university abstract the article focuses on the theoretical and practical issues of the homophonic pun in “alice in wonderland” and its armenian translation. a pun is a rhetorical device in which people use the polysemous or homonymous relation of a language to cause a word, a sentence of a discourse to involve two meanings. the research reveals that l. carroll uses a great array of homophonic pun which reveals the quintessential feature of the work, i.e. humor. key words: pun (paronomasia), word play, humor, homophonic pun. introduction the pun (paronomasia) is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. these ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic, homographic, metonymic, or metaphorical language. henri bergson defined pun as a sentence or utterance in which “two different sets of ideas are expressed, and we are confronted with only one series of words” (bergson 2005). according to d. crystal puns are more sharply focused kind of humor: two unrelated meanings are suddenly and unexpectedly brought together in a single word, and incongruity makes us laugh and groan (crystal 2004). puns may be regarded as in jokes or idiomatic constructions, given that their usage and meaning are entirely local to a particular language and its culture. pun and its characteristic features in “alice in wonderland” puns are used to create humor and sometimes require background information to perceive the author’s intended meaning. puns have long been used by comedy writers, such as william shakespeare, oscar wilde, and george carlin. the roman playwright plautus is famous for his tendency to make up and change the meaning of words to create puns in latin. puns are widespread in anecdotes as well, like a: how do you know there’s an elephant in your bed? b: by the big e on his pyjamas. a: why is dracula’s family so close? b: because blood is thicker than water. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 70 the purpose of classifying puns in terms of their formal structure is to examine how the pun components (i.e. the word or word group that have more or less similar forms and more or less different meanings) are related formally. the relation of identity between the two pun components can be either partial or complete. it is possible to identify four types and degrees, which can be further specified in terms of homonymy, homophony, homography, and paronymy (delabastita 1996). according to the structure puns can be divided into two major types: homophonic puns and homographic puns. the first ones are identical in sound but have different meanings, while the second ones are identical in spelling but have different meanings. the homophonic pun, a common type, uses word pairs which sound alike (homophones) but are not synonymous. walter redfern exemplified this type with the statement: “to pun is to treat homonyms as synonyms” (redfern, 1985). for example, in george carlin’s phrase “atheism is a non-prophet institution”, the word “prophet” is put in place of its homophone “profit”, altering the common phrase “non-profit institution”. the following article aims at revealing the peculiarities of homophonic pun in “alice in wonderland” by lewis carroll and see how it is realized in armenian. the fact is that in poetic diction the text may acquire some additional, contextual meanings. the same occurs in the case of pun. carroll delights in puns like: “you promised to tell me your history you know,” said alice, “and why it is you hate – c and d,” she added in a whisper, half afraid that it would be offended again. “mine is a long and a sad tale!” said the mouse, turning to alice and sighing. “it is a long tail, certainly,” said alice, looking down with wonder at mouse’s tail; “but why do you call it sad?” (chapter iii, page 56) ¸áõù çýó ëáëï³ó³ù ó»ñ å³ïùáõãûáõýý ³ë»é,– ³ë³ó ²éçëá ¨, áñå»ë½ç ãíçñ³íáñç ýñ³ý, ßßáõïáí ³í»é³óñ»ó, ã» çýãáõ± »ù ³ïáõù “î”-»ñçý áõ “þ”-»ñçý: ²ûë å³ïùáõãûáõýá »ñï³ñ áõ ïëáõñ í»ñç³íáñáõãûáõý áõýç,– í³ýñ ñ³é³ã»ó øáõïá ßñçí»éáí ¹»åç ²éçëá: – æñáù, áñ »ñï³ñ í»ñç³íáñáõãûáõý ¿,– ý³û»éáí øï³ý åáãçý` ñ³ëï³ï»ó ²éçëá,– μ³ûó çýãáõ± »ù ³ûý ïëáõñ ñ³ù³ñáõù: (translated by s. seferyan, chapter iii, page 34) in this particular example the author underlines the specific use of homophonic puns, like “tale, tail”, and it causes a kind of humorous effect on the reader. let us study the armenian translation and see whether the effect of homophones is preserved in the armenian translation. it becomes clear from the translation that the effect of homophonic puns is not found here for objective reasons. here the translator used the word §í»ñç³íáñáõãûáõý¦ twice trying to keep close to the meaning. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 71 here again we shall introduce another interesting case of homophonic pun. why did you call him tortoise, if he wasn’t one?” alice asked. “we called him tortoise because he taught us,” said the mock turtle angrily. “really you are very dull!” (chapter ix, page 121) – æýãá±õ ¿çù â³ëù³ë ³ýí³ýáõù,– ñ³ñóñ»ó ²éçëá: – þ³ï å³ñ½, áñáíñ»ï¨ ý³ ³ëù³ë ã¿ñ…. – æëï³å»ë, ¹áõ ß³ï μáõã »ë,– ½³ûñ³ó³í ßï³å»ó î»õí îñç³ý: (translated by s. seferyan, chapter ix, page 97) the author paid attention to the homophonic pun, like “tortoise, taught us”, thus correlating the notion of tortoise with the effect of teaching. in the armenian version the translator interprets the context in the following way: §æýãá±õ ¿çù â³ëù³ë ³ýí³ýáõù,– ñ³ñóñ»ó ²éçëá: þ³ï å³ñ½, áñáíñ»ï¨ ý³ ³ëù³ë ã¿ñ¦. the translation is really a successful one and it creates a humorous effect, as the word §³ëù³ë¦ is actually an occasional word. it associates with the meaning of “a stupid man” and has nothing to do with §ã³ëù³ë¦: another interesting case of homophonic pun is the example of “axis and axes” like: “which would not be an advantage,” said alice, who felt very glad to get an opportunity of showing off a little of her knowledge. “just think what work it would make with the day and night! you see the earth takes twenty-four hours to turn round on its axis”. “taking of axes,” said duchess, “chop off her head!” (chapter vi, page 86) – ¸ñ³ýóçó áãçýã ã¿ñ ÷áëíç,– ²éçëá ß³ï áõñ³ë³ó³í, áñ çñ ·çï»éçùý»ñá óáõó³¹ñ»éáõ ñ³ù³ñ ³éçã ·ï³í,– ³å³ ùï³í»ù, çýã± ïéçý»ñ ó»ñ»ïí³ áõ ·çß»ñí³ ñ»ï: æýãå»ë ·çï»ù, »ñïçñá åïïíáõù ¿ çñ ³é³ýóùç ßáõñç ùë³ýãáñë å³ùáõù: – ðçù³ ùç í³ûñïû³ýáõù ïåïïí»ë ùá ³é³ýóùç ßáõñç,– ×ã³ó ¸ùëáõñçý,– ïïñ»é ýñ³ ·éáõëá: (translated by s. seferyan, chapter vi, page 62) in the above mentioned english version carroll uses the homophonic pun “axis” and “axes”, thus creating an unexpected humorous influence on the reader and on the duchess who asked to chop off alice’s head. in the armenian translation seferyan fails to preserve this homophonic pun, as it is impossible to translate it into armenian. the translator merely transfers this utterance by means of the word §³é³ýóù¦. another example of a pun is the following: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 72 “and how many hours a day did you do lessons?” said alice, in a hurry to change the subject. “ten hours the first day,” said the moch turtle: “nine the next, and so on”. “what a curious plan!” exclaimed alice. “that’s the reason they’re called lessons,” the gyphron remarked “because they lessen from day to day”. (chapter ix, p.124) – æëï ùç ûñí³ ù»ç ù³ýç± ¹³ë ¿çù ³ýáõù,– ñ³ñó»ó ²éçëá, ßï³å»éáí ÷áë»é ëáë³ïóáõãû³ý ýûáõãá: – ²é³ççý ûñá` ï³ëá,– å³ï³ëë³ý»ó î»õí îñç³ý,– çëï ñ³çáñ¹ ûñá` çýá, ¨ ³ûëå»ë ß³ñáõý³ï: – æ±ýã ñ»ï³ùñùçñ ¹³ë³óáõó³ï ¿: – ²û¹ å³ï׳éáí ¿é ¹ñ³ýù ¹³ë»ñ »ý ïáãíáõù,– ýï³ï»ó ²ñíí³éûáõíá,– áñáíñ»ï¨ ¹³ë³íáñí»éáí å³ï³ëáõù »ý: (translated by s. seferian, chapter ix, p.99) the author underlines the correlation of lesson as ¹³ë and lessen as å³ï³ë»é thus creating the atmosphere of humor. alice in perplex asked about the curious lessons, but gyphron remarked that the lessons are lessoning day by day, at first ten lessons, then nine, eight, etc. in the armenian translation the meanings of the words lesson and lessen are preserved, but the effect of the pun has disappeared, as it is difficult to maintain both the form and the content in the translation. let us look at another example: alice did not wish to offend the dormouse again, so she began very cautiously. “but i don’t understand. where did they draw the treacle from?” “you can draw water out of a treacle well eh, stupid?” “but they were in the well,” alice said to the dormouse not choosing to notice this last remark. “of course they were,” said the dormouse; “well in.” this answer so confused poor alice, that she let the dormouse go on for some time without interrupting it. “they were learning to draw, the dormouse went on, yawing and rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy; “and they drew all manner of things – everything that begins with an m”. (chapter vii, p.101) ²éçëá ã¿ñ áõ½áõù øý³ùï³ýá ýáñçó íçñ³íáñ»é ¨ ß³ï ½·áõßáõ ãû³ùμ ñ³ñóñ»ó. – ´³ûó »ë ã»ù ñ³ëï³ýáõù, ã» ýñ³ýù áñï»õçó ¿çý ûß³ñ³ï ïñáõù: – ¸áõ ï³ñáõ »ë çáõñ ïñ»é çññáñçó,– å³ï³ëë³ý»ó ·éë³ñï³ ·áñ íá,– ýñ³ýù ¿é ûß³ñ³ï ¿çý ïñáõù ûß³ñ³ïç çññáñçó: ¾¯ñ, ñçù³ñç ù»ïá: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 73 – ´³ûó 㿱 áñ ýñ³ýù μý³ïíáõù ¿çý çññáñáõù,– áõß³¹ñáõãûáõý ã¹³ñó ý» éáí ·éë³ñï³·áñíç í»ñççý ëáëù»ñçý, ñ³ñóñ»ó ²éçëá: – æñ³ñï»,– ñ³ëï³ï»ó øý³ùáõïá,– çññáñáõù: ²ûë å³ï³ëë³ýý ³ûýå»ë ß÷áã»óñ»ó ë»õ× ²éçëçý, áñ ý³ ùç áñáß å³ù³ý³ï ãáý¹ñ³ï»ó øý³ùï³ýá: – üñ³ýù ëáíáñáõù ¿çý ·ñ»é,– ñáñ³ýç»éáí áõ ³ãù»ñá ïñáñ»éáí ß³ñáõý³ï»ó øý³ùáõïá,– ·ñáõù »ý ½³ý³½³ý μ³é»ñ, ³ûý ³ù»ýá, çýã ëïëíáõù ¿ §ø¦ ï³éáí: (translated by s. seferyan, chapter vii, p.76) lewis carroll is a master of creating homophonic puns. in the example mentioned above we have on the one hand the verb to draw (to make pictures, or a picture of something, with a pencil, pen or chalk) and on the other hand, the unit to draw which means “to move something by pulling it”. the translator cannot preserve the quintessential connotations of the verbs, as the armenian translation cannot transfer the essence of the pun. but one cannot fail to observe that the translator managed to transfer the meaning of the above mentioned verbs. conclusion among the figures, pun is an effective way to make the literature attractive, accurate, striking, vivid and forceful. thus, puns can have a crucial role in expanding different types of meaning. puns are the most constructive stylistic devices which can bare different expressive-emotional-evaluative overtones in the context by creating a humorous atmosphere. and in most of english literature pun can result in the effect of humor, wit, beauty and economy and these effects always give people great impressions. homophonic puns in “alice in wonderland” are the impeccable gems of the work. by creating a humorous effect they underline the essence of the content, the gist of the plot. it is evident that puns are not always expressed in the armenian translation, however the translator is skillful and solves this objective problem by choosing creative equivalents. references: 1. bergson, h. (2005) laughter: an essay on the meaning of the comic. / tr. by f. rothwell. dover: dover publication. 2. delbastita, d. (1996) introduction. // wordplay & translation, special issue of the translator. / ed. by d. delbastita. vol.2 (2), pp.127-139. 3. cystal, d. (2004) the cambridge encyclopedia of the english language. cambridge: cup. 4. redfern, w. (1985) puns. oxford: blackwell. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 74 sources of data: 1. carroll, l. (1898) alice’s adventures in wonderland and through the looking-glass. london: j.m. dent and sons ltd. 2. carroll, l. (1994) alisy hrashqneri ashkharhum, alisy hayelu ashkharum. / targmanich s. seferyan. yerevan: “samson” hrat. ð³ù³ýáõý μ³é³ë³õç áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõýá §²éçëá ññ³ßùý»ñç ³ßë³ññáõù¦ ëï»õí³·áñíáõãû³ý ù»ç ´³ é³ ë³ õá á ׳ ï³½ ùçã ¹»ñ ¿ ë³ õáõù èá õçë ø» ñá éç §² éç ëá ññ³ßù ý» ñç ³ß ë³ñ ñáõù¦ ëï»õ í³ ·áñ íáõã û³ý ù»ç: ¶³õï ýçù ã¿, áñ μ³ é³ ë³ õç ñçù ùáõù ñáõ ùáñý ¿, ¨ ñ»ýó ñáõ ùá ñç ³é ï³ ûáõã ûáõýý ¿ ï»ñ ïáõù ï»ñ å³ñ ý» ñç ³ é³ýó ý³ ñ³ ïáõï ï»õý áõ ¹» ñá ëï»õ í³ ·áñ íáõã û³ý ù»ç: êáõûý ñá¹ í³ íáõù ³ é³ýó ý³ ïç ùýýáõã û³ý ³ é³ñ ï³ ¿ ¹³ñ ó»é ñ³ ù³ ýáõý μ³ é³ ë³ õ» ñç áõ ëáõù ý³ ëç ñáõã ûáõ ýá: ê³ å³û ù³ ý³ íáñ í³í ¿ ³ûý ñ³ý ·³ ù³ý ùáí, áñ áõç ëï»õ í³ ·áñ íáõã ûáõ ýá ñ» õ»õ í³í ¿ μ³ é³ ë³ õ» ñáí` ù³ë ý³ íá ñ³ å»ë ñ³ ù³ ýáõý μ³ é³ ë³ õ» ñáí, á ñáýù ³ñ ï³ óá éáõù »ý ïû³ý ùá μ³ñ¹ áõ ñ³ ï³ ë³ ï³ý, μ³ûó ¨ ·ñ³ íçã áõ ³å ß»ó ý» éáõ ³ë ïç ׳ý »ñ¨³ ï³ û³ ï³ý ó ̈ áí: ð³ ù³ ýáõý μ³ é³ ë³ õ» ñç áõ ëáõù ý³ ëç ñáõã ûáõ ýá μý³· ñáõù, çýã å»ë ý³¨ ãç ñ³ë 黽 íáõù óáõûó ¿ ï³ éçë, áñ ñ³ ù³ ýáõý μ³ é³ ë³ õ» ñá ã»ý ï³ ñáõ μ³ é³ óç ã³ñ· ù³ý í»é, ù³ ýç áñ μý³· ñç μá í³ý ¹³ ïáõã û³ý í» ñ³ñ ï³¹ ñáõã ûáõ ýá å»ïù ¿ ½áõ ·³ïó íç ýñ³ ·» õ³ñ í»ë ï³ ï³ý ûáõ ñ³ ñ³ï ïáõã û³ý å³ñ å³ý ù³ý ñ»ï: êàëàìáóð â ïðîèçâåäåíèè “àëèñà â ñòðàíå ÷óäåñ“ â àíãëèéñêîì è àðìÿíñêîì êà ëàì áóð èã ðàåò ñòè ëèñòè ÷åñ êóþ ðîëü â ïðîèç âå äå íèè ëóè ñà êå ðîë ëà “àëè ñà â ñòðà íå ÷ó äåñ”. â îñ íî âå êà ëàì áó ðà ëå æèò þìîð, êî òî ðûé ðàñê ðû âàåò îñî áåí íîñòè îá ðà çîâ, èõ ìåñòî è ðîëü â äàí íîé ðà áî òå. â äàí íîé ñòàòüå ðàññ ìàò ðè âàþò ñÿ ÿçû êî âûå îñî áåí íîñòè îìî íèì íûõ êà ëàì áóð, êî òî ðûå ÷àñòî óïîò ðåá ëÿþò ñÿ â ïðîèç âå äå íèè. òàê æå ïðîèç âî äèò ñÿ ñðàâ íè òåëü íûé àíà ëèç êà ëàì áóð â àíã ëèéñ êîì è àð ìÿíñ êîì. â õî äå àíà ëè çà âûÿ âè ëîñü, ÷òî äîñ ëîâ íûé ïå ðå âîä îìî íèì íûõ êà ëàì áó ðîâ íà àð ìÿíñ êèé ÿçûê ïî÷ òè íå âîç ìî æåí. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 75 microsoft word contens verjin linguistics armenian folia anglistika 91 linguo-cognitive analysis of the concept god (on the basis of j. fowles’ philosophical essay “the aristos”) heghine isahakyan gyumri state pedagogical institute abstract the article aims at disclosing the concept god in j. fowles philosophical essay “the aristos” as well as defining linguistic means of its actualization. the key concept or concepts of a narrative, storing the main idea of the text actually reveal the author’s individual world perception, highlighting those aspects of the concept that the author sees or would like the reader to focus his/her attention on. proceeding from this point the investigation of a narrative disclosing its key concepts via conceptual metaphor opens great perspectives for understanding the author's unique world perception, sometimes, contradicting the universal understanding of the concept. key words: actualization, concept, conceptual metaphor, god, world perception. introduction for the last decades metaphor has been and still is in the centre of attention of different disciplines. if in the times of aristotle metaphor was considered a rhetorical, poetic device, today it is equally actual in philosophy, psychology, cognitive sciences, culture, art and, of course, linguistics. metaphor is investigated in the perspectives of cognitive linguistics. cognitive aspect of the metaphor lies in the fact that it reflects the results of the world cognition. “the essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another” (lakoff & johnson 2003:5). here it should be mentioned that “the systematicity not only allows us to comprehend one aspect of a concept in terms of another, but also it hides other aspects of the concept” (ibid:10). thus, a metaphorical concept can keep us from focusing on the other aspects of the concept that are inconsistent with that metaphor. this aspect of metaphor makes it a very strong tool for thought, reasoning and action, employed in different types of discourse. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 92 cognitive stylistics or poetics, a comparatively young branch of cognitive linguistics, is one of the rigorous spheres of current interdisciplinary study of literature, linguistics and cognitive science. the focal point of cognitive stylistics lies in examining literary/non-literary texts on the basis of conceptual metaphor, observing its interaction within the text as a whole. if traditional stylistics is focused on linguistic aspects of a text, cognitive stylistics studies the author's idiolect and how it is perceived by the reader. it studies the influence of foregrounding on the reader's mind. “what is new about cognitive stylistics is the way in which linguistic analysis is systematically based on theories that relate linguistic choices to cognitive structures and processes. this provides more systematic and explicit accounts of the relationship between texts on the hand and responses and interpretations on the other” (semino & culpeper 2002: foreword). the role of viewpoint in text interpretation in fictional text conceptual information plays a crucial role. the key concept or concepts of a literary text, storing the main idea of the text actually reveal the author's individual world perception highlighting those aspects of the concept that the author sees or would like the reader to focus his/her attention on. hence, the investigation of a literary text disclosing its key concepts via conceptual metaphor or metaphors opens great perspectives for understanding the author's unique world perception, sometimes, contradicting the universal understanding of that concept. b. dansyngier and e. sweetser argue that “many metaphors rely on experiential viewpoint” (dansyngier & sweetser 2014:212). it follows that interpretation of the author's concepts implies decoding of the author's viewpoint. this, undoubtedly, brings up the question of the reader's own thesaurus (knowledge, opinions, beliefs), which can vary from one reader to another. on the one hand the reader tries to interpret the author’s viewpoint, on the other hand the reader himself is an active participant in the process of decoding, inputting his/her own viewpoints in it. as a result, a concept is viewed from the writer’s and reader’s collaborative understanding based on their experiential viewpoints. consequently, different readers’ interpretations may differ. however, here it is appropriate to cite m. riffaterre’s words “the text is constructed in such a way that it can control its own decoding” (riffaterre 1983:6). in other words there is a control over the process of decoding by way of selecting such kind of linguistic and extra-linguistic means which not only direct the reader’s proper understanding of the text but also limit the interpretation freedom. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 93 conceptual analysis of the text to reveal conceptual information there have been suggested different methods of conceptual analysis. currently there exist the following methods of conceptual analysis: conceptual analysis of the text based on psycholinguistic associative experiment (l. babenko & u. kazarin), content analysis, conceptual metaphoric models (g. lakoff & m. johnson), scripts (r. schank & p. abelson), frame semantics (ch. fillmore), cognitive prototypes (e. rosh), gestalt analysis (l. cherneyko). to choose this or that method of analysis depends on the investigator’s aim. the article suggests investigating literal or non-literal texts employing combined method of conceptual analysis, namely, conceptual metaphoric models, gestalt analysis and conceptual analysis of the text based on psycholinguistic associative experiment which presupposes finding out the key words of the concept, describing the semantic space of the concept, taking into account their syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations with the concept, conducting multilevel analysis of the concept: semantic, syntactic, stylistic. the overall description of the concept via conceptual metaphor will, undoubtedly, disclose the author’s individual world perception, the encoded information entailing great amount of conceptual information. the following example will illustrate how to conduct multilevel conceptual analysis of the text employing combined methods of analysis. the concept god in j. fowles’ philosophical conception j. fowles, being an outstanding postmodern english writer and philosopher, is undoubtedly one of the writers in the world literature whose views and ideas outstand in their originality, touching upon such universal issues as: god, freedom, death, life, love, wealth and so on. in the given article an attempt is undertaken to define means of actualization of the concept god via conceptual metaphor in j. fowles’ philosophical essay “the aristos”. ‘god’ is a situation. not a power, or a being, or an influence. not a ‘he’ or a ‘she’, but an ‘it’. not entity or non-entity, but the situation in which there can be both entity and non-entity (aristos:22). the concept god is disclosed via conceptual metaphor god is a situation. it is noteworthy to mention that in the passage the noun god is used in inverted armenian folia anglistika linguistics 94 commas, most likely to mark it out, to delimit it from all its common understandings and from all human associations. however, not only god but personal pronouns he, she and it are used in inverted commas. in the writer’s world perception god is of neutral gender or rather something having no gender. here of special importance is the use of such a small lexical element as the indefinite article, which accumulates a certain amount of the conceptual information. being used with personal pronouns it indicates uncertainty, indefiniteness (not a ‘he’ or a ‘she’, but an ‘it’) which is also connected with the concept god. it is defined as something uncertain. due to the negative parallel constructions and parcellation the author's subjective understanding of the concept is verbalized. not a ‘he’ or a ‘she’, but an ‘it’. not entity or non-entity, but the situation in which there can be both entity and non – entity. as it can be seen all the semantic units are negated and detached by full points. here the particle not comes forward as the actualizer of the conceptual information. however, only from the first glance it seems that particle not negates such substances as power, being, influence, entity and non-entity. negating them separately, the author emphasizes the aggregate of all those components in the concept “god”. the repetition of the particle not on the one hand intensifies all the negated lexemes, on the other hand due to the conjunction but it unites them all within the notion of god. thus god is both power and influence, both entity and non-entity. it follows that god is a situation where both entity and non-entity exist. the ubiquitous absence of ‘god’ in ordinary life is this sense of non-existing, of mystery, of incalculable potentiality; this eternal doubt that hovers between the thing in itself and our perception of it, this dimension in and by which all other dimensions exist. the white paper that contains a drawing, the space that contains a building; the silence that contains a sonata; the passage of time that prevents a sensation or object continuing forever: all these are ‘god’. (ibid: 27) in his further ponderings the author reaches the deepest layers of the concept by means of oxymoron ubiquitous absence which actualizes the conceptual information. two contrasting substances: ubiquitous and absence submerge into linguistics armenian folia anglistika 95 one notion god. it is the ‘absence’ which exists everywhere: the white paper that contains a drawing, the space that contains a building; the silence that contains a sonata; the passage of time that prevents a sensation or object continuing forever. in other words, by being absent god is present everywhere. the conceptual information is actualized by means of epiphora and parallel constructions, where the key word is the verb contain. the latter is repeated three times emphasizing its semantic significance. the notion of god contains everything, even what is unseen or incomprehensible to human reason. hence, semantically contrasting words absent and present are the cores of the conceptual information. j. fowles gradually discloses the deepest layers of the concept god. god is a situation where it is present at the same time being absent. consequently, god is a mystery. thus is ‘god’ present by being absent in every thing and every moment. it is the dark core, the mystery, the being-not-being of even the simplest objects. mystery or unknowing is energy. as soon as a mystery is explained, it ceases to be a source of energy. if we question deep enough there comes a point we dam the river, but we dam the spring at our peril. in fact since ‘god’ is unknowable, we cannot dam the spring of basic existential mystery. ‘god’ is the energy of all questions and questions, so the ultimate source of action and volition. (ibid) the whole passage can be expressed by means of the following logically complementary conceptual metaphors: god is a mystery. mystery is energy. god is the energy of all questions and questions. god is a mystery and everything connected with it is energy. this follows the idea that god is energy, power as it is unknowable. one idea supplements the other one. the conceptual core is the noun energy. at first god was defined as something uncertain (an it), gradually the semantic layers of the concept are revealed and in climax definiteness is achieved. if in the beginning the actualizer of the concept “god” was an indefinite article, in the end it gives its way to the definite article (‘god’ is the energy of all questions and questions, so the ultimate source of action and volition). the repetition of the definite article confirms the idea stated above. it becomes obvious that the gradation is based on the articles (indefinite and definite) and repetition. thus god armenian folia anglistika linguistics 96 is a situation, a mystery and the energy of all questions and the ultimate source of action and volition. in another part of the text j. fowles discloses the concept “god” citing s. augustine’s words: lvii. the sage says, i do nothing and the people change of themselves. i prefer stillness and the people correct themselves. i do not intervene and the people prosper themselves. (ibid:23) here the conceptual information is disclosed via a syntactical parallelism expressed by the compound sentences. the indicator of the concept “god” is the personal pronoun i. the author focuses the reader’s attention on the functional side of the concept. the alternations of the negative and positive statements speak of themselves. despite the negation the result is positive in the end. hence, god is almighty being passive. i do nothing and the people change of themselves. i prefer stillness and the people correct themselves. i do not intervene and the people prosper themselves. in another part the positive statements are followed by the negative ones, once again the result is positive. here the personal pronoun i is replaced by the personal pronoun it. li. it gives the myriads life and yet claims no possession; it benefits them yet asks for no thanks; it looks after them yet exercises no authority. (ibid) x. can you love the people and govern the state without resorting to action? (ibid) the concept god is fully disclosed in the climax via a rhetorical question where the key word is the negative preposition without. who can love and govern without resorting to concrete actions? actually the rhetorical question is a philosophical generalization, more exactly, generalization and confirmation of all above mentioned conceptions: ‘god’ is a situation where both entity and non-entity linguistics armenian folia anglistika 97 exist; ‘god’ is present everywhere by being absent, ‘god’ interferes in everything by non-interference, loves and governs without resorting to actions. conclusion thus, linguo-cognitive analysis of the concept shows that the means of actualization of the concept at the same time become means of the actualization of the conceptual metaphor. the concept “god” in j. fowles’ philosophical essay “aristos” is actualized mainly by linguistic means (definite and indefinite articles, negative particle), stylistic devices (oxymoron, parallel constructions, epiphora, parcellation) and extra-linguistic means (inverted commas). the core of the concept make up the lexemes: energy and mystery. for the author god is, first of all, a mystery, thus, a source of energy. consequently, the gestalts of the abstract noun “god” are mystery and energy. the multilevel analysis of the concept allows the reader to see the hidden sides of the concept which are significant from the author's point of view. in other words, it demonstrates the author's subjective evaluation of the objective reality. references: 1. dansyngier, b. & sweetser, e. (2014) figurative language. cambridge: cup. 2. fowles, j. (1981) the aristos. london: triad grafron. 3. isahakyan, h. (2013) j. fowles v metaphoricheskom zerkale. germany: lap lambert academic publishing. 4. lakoff, g. & johnson, m. (2003) metaphors we live by. revised edition. chicago and london: the university of chicago press. 5. riffaterre, m. (1983) text production. new york: columbia university press. 6. semino, e. & culpeper, j. (2002) cognitive stylistics: language and cognition in text analysis. collective monograph. / ed. by e. semino & j. culpeper. amsterdam: john benjamins publishing company. ²ëïí³í ñ³ëï³óáõûãç 黽í³×³ý³ãáõ³ï³ý í»ñéáõíáõãûáõý (æ. ü³áõé½ç §²ñçëïáë¦ ÷çéçëá÷³û³ï³ý ¿ëë»ç ñçù³ý íñ³) êáõûý ñá¹í³íç ýå³ï³ïý ¿` áõëáõùý³ëçñ»é ²ëïí³í ñ³ëï³óáõûãá ¨ ¹ñ³ ³éï³û³óù³ý ùççáóý»ñá æ. ü³áõé½ç §²ñçëïáë¦ ÷çéçëá÷³û³ï³ý ¿ëë»ç ñçù³ý íñ³: êï»õí³·áñíáõãû³ý ³é³ýóù³ûçý ñ³ëï³óáõûãá ï³ù ñ³ëï³armenian folia anglistika linguistics 98 óáõûãý»ñá, å³ñáõý³ï»éáí ëï»õí³·áñíáõãû³ý ñçùý³ï³ý ·³õ³÷³ñá, çñ³ï³ýáõù ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõù »ý ñ»õçý³ïç ³ýñ³ï³ï³ý ¨ çýùý³ïçå ³ßë³ññáýï³éáõùá` áý¹·í»éáí ñ³ëï³óáõûãç ³ûý ïáõù»ñá, áñáýù ñ»õçý³ïá ï»ëýáõù ¿ ï³ù, áñáýó íñ³ í»ñççýë ó³ýï³ýáõù ¿ áýã»ñóáõç áõß³¹ñáõãûáõýá ññ³íçñ»é: ð³ëï³óáõûãç áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõýá ׳ý³ãáõ³ï³ý ÷áë³ »ñáõãû³ý ùççáóáí ù»í ñ»é³ýï³ñý»ñ ¿ ³óáõù ñ»õçý³ïç ûáõñûñçý³ï ³ßë³ññáýï³éù³ý áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãû³ý ñ³ù³ñ, áñá, »ñ »ùý, ï³ñáõ ¿ ñ³ï³ë»é ïíû³é ñ³ëï³óáõûãç ñ³ùáý¹ñ³ýáõñ áýï³éù³ýá: maket 2014_layout 1.qxd the interpretation of metamorphosis as a narrative device in george macdonald’s fairy tales diana hayroyan yerevan state university abstract the following article is an attempt to study metamorphosis as a narrative device in scottish fairy tale writer george macdonald’s fairy tales. due to a closer study of the theoretical background of metamorphosis and the analyses of the examples it becomes possible to describe metamorphosis not only as a stylistic but also as a narrative device. in the mentioned fairy tales metamorphosis, granting specific meaning to the events, reveals the unique poetics of the fairy tales and promotes a deeper understanding of the fairy tale text thus fulfilling the author’s intention. key words: interpretation, fairy tale, metamorphosis, narrative device, trope. introduction mystical transmutations and metamorphic transformations are universal themes that have been the subjects of human expressions created through art, music and literature. in its broadest sense metamorphosis is a marked change in appearance, character, condition or function as well as transformation by magic or sorcery. metamorphosis as a tropological problem is another subject addressed in many recent studies. many scholars, among them tzvetan todorov, do not accept that metamorphosis can have an autonomous rhetorical status. he considers metamorphosis to be the propensity of the text to get rid of tropes, a tendency to literalize tropes at the expense of the intentional enlivening of their worn hackneyed semantics (todorov 1975:77-79). metamorphosis is widely used in fairy tales occupying its unique place among the rhetorical figures in this genre. the tropic status of metamorphosis here is of singular nature. it functions as a narrative figuration of figurative language, as linguistic events are projected into the world “out there” as narrative fictions. thus it may take a figurative expression and spin from it a narrative fleshed out with persons, times and places. a. jivanyan (2007) claims that metamorphosis in fairy tales is a unique trope belonging more to the story than to the rhetoric of the fairy tale. in a certain sense metamorphosis can be seen as a genre-defining device. no wonder one of the famous collections of fairy tales written by the roman fairy tale writer lucius apuleius is called metamorphosis or the golden ass (jivanyan 2007:50) thus, from a stylistic device it turns to a narrative device giving the story a powerful push forward. a unique place in this respect belongs to george macdonald’s fairy tales. the present article touches upon the study of metamorphosis as a narrative device, its impact and interpretation in george macdonald’s fairy tale the princess and the armenian folia anglistika literature 142 goblin and its sequel the princess and curdie which are vivid patterns for employing metamorphosis as a narrative device. these fairy tales, particularly rich in metamorphosis, illuminate specific subtle nuances of metamorphosis as a narrative device which catches the reader’s attention and, as a specific narrative device, fulfills the author’s intention. metamorphosis in the princess and the goblin in the princess and the goblin irene’s great-great grandmother becomes the central image. the metamorphosis of the heroine does not entail change of shape; instead we find a flexible trope through which the author fills the reader with an almost inevitable feeling of wonder. metamorphosis occurs with irene’s all-wise, all-knowing, all-loving great-great grandmother who lives in a secret, mysterious place accessible only to those she chooses. she evokes a timeless mother figure that is always there when the child needs comfort or protection. as we will see her metamorphoses possess rich symbolic meaning providing the fairy tale with narrative tension. this is how princess irene sees her for the first time: perhaps you will wonder how the princess could tell that the old lady was an old lady when i inform you that not only was she beautiful, but her skin was smooth and white. her hair was combed back from her forehead and face and hung loose far down and all over her back. that is not much like an old lady-is it? ah! but it was white almost as snow. and although her face was so smooth, her eyes looked so wise that you could not have helped seeing she must be old. (g. macdonald “the princess and the goblin” p.17) macdonald’s detailed descriptions conjure up amazing imagery, a feeling of mystery and special effect of magical power. it is evident that great-great-grandmother has taken a kind of disguise. she is old and at the same time she is not old. her transformation aims at intensifying her inner qualities. she is depicted spinning, an activity usually seen as an attribute of wise old woman. the princess opened the door and entered. there was the moonlight streaming in at the window, and in the middle of the moonlight sat the old lady in her black dress with the white lace, and her silvery hair mingling with the moonlight, so that you could not have told which was which. (g. macdonald “the princess and the goblin” p.76) as we proceed, transformation takes place with great-great-grandmother’s age. macdonald represents her in different ages. though her hair is white as silver her face is very smooth and white, her eyes look so wise that one cannot help seeing she must be old, thus white hair signifies age and wisdom. her metamorphosis is indeed paradoxal. she is old and young at the same time. she wears black dress, a kind of symarmenian folia anglistikaliterature 143 bol which stands for her age, whereas white lace, emphasizes her youth. macdonald interlocks her silvery hair with moonlight, thus creating a kind of perpetuity. the focus is again on hair, which changes its colour continually, giving some hints of her age. this time macdonald equates her hair with silvery moon and this is not accidental as she appears at night as if entering the process of darkness: her face is like a moon out of a cloud. thus, a metaphoric relation is established between her hair and silvery moon. and when she came nearer she found that the smell of roses with which the room was filled came from the fire-roses on the hearth. her grandmother was dressed in the loveliest pale blue velvet, over which her hair, no longer white but of a rich golden color streamed like a cataract, here falling in dull gathered heaps, there rushing away in smooth shining falls. as she looked, the hair streamed pouring down from her head and vanishing in a golden mist ere it reached the floor. it flowed from under the edge of a circle of shinning silver, set with alternated pearls and opals. on her dress was no ornament whatever, neither was there a ring on her hand, or a necklace or carcanet about her neck. her face was that of a woman of three-and twenty. (g. macdonald “the princess and the goblin” p.96) the following scene describes irene’s great-great-grandmother in a different appearance. to work out implications to identify the underlying meaning of metamorphosis here is not an easy task. as we see transformation occurs with her age, she seems much younger though she still doesn’t lack wisdom. the black dress changes into blue velvet witnessing that she is younger than before, the blue colour evoking a feeling of eternity and calmness. macdonald portrays her room in blue too with the interference of blue sky with the stars shining in it. if in the previous passage her silver hair mingled with the silvery moon, now her dress of blue velvet matches the blue sky. we can see the unlimited power of the author in demonstrating his creative imagination. now great-great – grandmother’s hair is of rich gold colour; it is like a stream of cataract, the shining beauty of nature that is gentle, pure and invincible. metamorphosis of her hair colour can be viewed as an extension of simile; her hair bears resemblance to precious gold. her old age means strength and beauty, mirth and courage. the soft moonlight and the milkiest pearl bring the child to the wonderful world of dreams and fairyland. metamorphosis in the princess and curdie macdonald takes up the theme of metamorphosis in the next fairy tale the princess and curdie which is the sequel of the previous one. here the central image is again princess irene’s great-great grandmother. in this fairy tale irene’s great-great grandmother appears to a brave miner’s son curdie who had once helped irene. this is how curdie first meets irene’s great-great-grandmother: armenian folia anglistika literature 144 in the shadow on the other side of the moonlight which came like a river between, he saw the form to which the hands belonged: a small, withered creature, so old that no age would have seemed too great to write under her picture, seated on a stool beyond the spinning wheel…. she sat crumpled together; a filmy thing that it seemed a puff would blow away, more like the body of a fly. her grey hair mixed with the moonlight so that he could not tell where the one began and the other ended. her shoulders nearly swallowed up her head between them…. curdie laughed within himself and when he thought of how princess used to talk about her great old grandmother he laughed more. (g. macdonald “the princess and the goblin & the princess and curdie” p.9) as has already been mentioned above great-great grandmother appears only at night, within moonlight. now she is small, like a filmy thing. macdonald does not portray her in a positive mood. she is not delighted and her new form wants to indicate that curdie is in a wrong way in dealing with things as he didn’t give much importance to irene’s stories about her grandmother, and she transforms herself voluntarily into a tiny creature in order to test the boy. this signifies her unnatural and magical qualities. her hair is grey now, which shows her so-called “grey mood” and her spinning appears again as the symbol of her wisdom. macdonald creates perfect series of similes which appear within metamorphosis. as she spoke she held out her hand to him and when he took it she made use of his to help herself up from her stool. the same instant she stood before him a tall, strong woman-plainly very old, but as grand as she was old and only rather severe looking. her hair was very white but it hung about her head in great plenty and shone like silver in the moonlight. (g. macdonald “the princess and the goblin & the princess and curdie” p.12) macdonald again presents a set of contradictions. the understanding and the interpretation of metamorphoses portrayed in the fairy tale become a complicated task. they unfold to reveal great-great grandmother’s character. now she is a tall, strong woman. the transformation is centered about her hair which in this case becomes white symbolizing her age. her grey hair changes into white which is brought into a direct contact with the moonlight. the association is fortified by the presence of a milk-white moon. the heroine experiences her next metamorphosis in the dark cavern: and with that the darkness of its complexion melted away and down from the face dawned out the form that belonged to it, until at last curdie and his father beheld a lady, beautiful exceedingly dressed in somearmenian folia anglistikaliterature 145 thing pale green, like velvet over which her hair fell in cataracts of a rich golden colour. it looked as if it were pouring down from her head as if vanishing in a golden vapour ere it reached the floor. it came flowing from under the edge of a coronet of gold, set with alternated pearls and emeralds. she looked about five-and twenty years…. curdie knew somehow that the face before him was that of the old princess, irene’s great-great-grandmother. (g. macdonald “the princess and the goblin & the princess and curdie” p.19) now she is dressed in pale green, she is young again. her hair becomes a significant motif, it turns to a rich golden colour, which symbolizes her divine character, and the length of her hair reaching the floor is the sign of her inner spiritual strength, her life experience and at the same time magical power. the transformations of her vivid image arouse a very strong upsurge of emotions. metamorphosis in the fairy tale becomes really a powerful vehicle for gaining narrative tension. thus metamorphosis becomes more attached to the story than to the fairy tale rhetoric. the presence of emeralds and pearls carries the symbolic connotation of warmth and fiery. emeralds appear also as a symbol of happiness and luck and signify that curdie will have a good fortune. he could see no sky or stars any more, but the wheel was flashing out blue-oh such lovely sky-blue lightand behind it, of course, sat the princess but whether an old woman as thin as a skeleton leaf, or a glorious lady as young as perfection he could not tell for the turning and flashing of the wheel. (g. macdonald “the princess and the goblin & the princess and curdie” p.26) grandmother appears behind the wheel, and now she is thin, but glorious. her image presents a set of contradictions: she is old and at the same time she is as young as perfection. her shape appears through dresses and what is inside her never changes. she is the embodiment of a holy spirit. she takes the shape of a young woman sometimes as beautiful as an angel and then she is the most dangerous of all. conclusion as has been observed in the present paper, metamorphosis in macdonald’s fairy tales serves as a symbolic as well as a powerful narrative tool characterized by the wide use of symbolism. it appears as an individual feature of style and becomes closely linked to the story which is the product of the author’s individual and pictorial imagination. metamorphosis stands for the development of the whole fairy tale. it is particularly worth mentioning that metamorphosis is rather widely used in the above mentioned fairy tales revealing the potential of fairy tale poetics and rhetoric in a new armenian folia anglistika literature 146 light. as a narrative tool metamorphosis provides the reader with cues to interrogate meanings that the fairy tale may offer beneath the surface. these meanings, as we have seen, can either speak to the reader indirectly or may be disguised and open to varied interpretations. the close comprehension of metamorphosis provides a different and a deeper understanding of the fairy tale. references: 1. humphery, c. and prichard, m. (1995) the oxford companion of children’s literature. new york: oup. 2. jivanyan, a. (2007) the fairy tale as archetext. yerevan: zangak-97. 3. mikkenon, k. (1996) theories of metamorphosis: metatropeto textual revision. // style, academic journal, vol.30 (2). 4. todorov, t. (1975) the fantastic: a structural approach to a literary genre. new york: cornell university press. sources of data: 1. macdonald, g. (1986) the princess and the goblin. new york: books of wonder, william morrow & company. 2. macdonald, g. (1990) the princess and the goblin & the princess and curdie. new york: world classics, oup. î»ñå³÷áëáõãûáõýá áñå»ë å³ïùáõ³ï³ý ñý³ñ æáñç ø³ï¹áý³é¹ç ñ»ùç³ãý»ñáõù êáõûý ñá¹ í³ íç ßñç³ ý³ï ý» ñáõù ÷áñó ¿ ³ñ íáõù áõ ëáõù ý³ ëç ñ»é ï»ñ å³ ÷á ëáõã ûáõ ýá áñ å»ë å³ï ùá õ³ ï³ý ñý³ñ ßáï é³ý ¹³ óç ù³ý ï³ ·çñ æáñç ø³ï ¹á ý³é ¹ç ñ» ùç³ã ý» ñáõù: î» ë³ ï³ý ýûáõ ãç áõ ëáõù ý³ ëç ñáõã û³ý ¨ û ñç ý³ï ý» ñç í»ñ éáõ íáõã û³ý ßýáñ ñçí ñý³ ñ³ íáñ ¿ ¹³é ýáõù ï»ñ å³ ÷á ëáõã ûáõ ýá μýáõ ã³· ñ»é áñ å»ë á ׳ ï³ý, çýã å»ë ý³¨ å³ï ùá õ³ ï³ý ñý³ñ: ²ûë ñ» ùç³ã ý» ñáõù ï»ñ å³ ÷á ëáõã ûáõ ýá, ³ é³ýó ý³ ñ³ ïáõï ç ù³ëï ñ³ õáñ ¹» éáí ýï³ ñ³·ñ íáõ ç ñ³ ¹³ñ óáõã ûáõý ý» ñçý, μ³ ó³ ñ³û ïáõù ¿ ñ» ùç³ã ý» ñç áõ ñáõûý åá» ïç ï³ý ¨ ýå³ë ïáõù ñ» ùç³ ãç ï»ùë ïç ³ í» éç ëáñ áý ï³é ù³ ýý áõ ñ» õç ý³ ïç ùç ï ù³ý ç ñ³ ï³ ý³ó ù³ýá: armenian folia anglistikaliterature 147 èíòåðïðåòàöèÿ ìåòàìîðôîçû êàê ïîâåñòâîâàòåëüíîãî ïðèåìà â ñêàçêàõ äæîðäæà ìàêäîíàëüäà äàí íàÿ ñòàòüÿ ÿâ ëÿåò ñÿ ïî ïûò êîé èññ ëå äî âàòü ìå òà ìîð ôîçó êàê ïî âåñò âî âà òåëü íûé ïðèåì â ñêàç êàõ äåòñ êî ãî øîò ëàíäñ êî ãî ïè ñà òå ëÿ äæîðä æà ìàê äî íàëü äà. â ðå çóëüòàòå èññ ëå äî âà íèÿ òåî ðå òè ÷åñ êî ãî ìà òå ðèà ëà è àíà ëè çà ïðè ìå ðîâ ñòà íî âèò ñÿ âîç ìîæ íûì îïè ñàòü ìå òà ìîð ôî çó êàê ñòè ëèñòè ÷åñ êèé òàê è ïî âåñò âî âà òåëü íûé ïðèåì. â ýòèõ ñêàç êàõ ìå òà ìîð ôî çà, ïðè äà âàÿ îñî áûé ñìûñë îïè ñû âàå ìûì ñî áû òèÿì, âûÿâ ëÿåò óíè êàëü íóþ ïîý òè êó ñêà çîê è ñïî ñîáñò âóåò áî ëåå ãëó áî êî ìó ïî íè ìà íèþ òåêñòà ñêà çîê, òåì ñà ìûì ðåà ëè çóÿ íàìå ðå íèå àâ òî ðà. armenian folia anglistika literature 148 microsoft word maket 2019-2 final.doc linguistics armenian folia anglistika 9 the phonetic particulars of modern english advertising svetlana decheva lomonosov moscow state university abstract this article is designed to give a sharper focus on the phonetic properties of advertising in the english speaking world. we come from the premise that globalization processes and the consumer culture of the so-called net generation make the marketers change their sales strategies and find new, no less effective promotional tactics, which would be more attractive to the young. to see how this language policy actually works an in-depth processing of the material is required, and cognitive syllabics happens to be a great help in this respect. key words: code-switching, phonetic interference, cognitive syllabics, rhetoric. introduction as is well known, the linguistic properties of advertising have concerned very many scholars both in this country and abroad since time immemorial. it transpires, however, that even these days quite a few aspects of this rather prolific sphere of knowledge are still open to interpretation and further elaboration in philological and, more specifically, phonetic terms. thus, the sound form of the so-called ‘global english advertising’, meant for a potential clientele the world over appears to be one of them. the fact is that ad making, intrinsically, as it were, thrives on the ineluctable unity of the oral and the written forms of speech. that is why, unless one is fully aware of its present-day phonetic particulars some of the innovative marketing strategies and techniques which are cleverly exploited in armenian folia anglistika linguistics 10 advertising will fail to work and become ineffective for the target-audience. to put it in a nutshell, reading and appreciating the advert presented in black and white implies that it is actually heard and reflected adequately in one's inner speech. this is by no means the whole story, for today the marketeer's language seems to abound in all kind of verbal tricks, as well as cases of play upon words, which not so long ago would have been unthinkable in the ad text. this makes us think that now being properly equipped with different social, cultural and psychological traits of elf1 community will hardly suffice unless the copywriter also demonstrates a good working knowledge both of the buyer's national variety of english and the basic principles of global english usage. to be more exact, it is the elf speaker's code-switching (or code-mixing) skills (gardner-chloros 2009)2 that should be taken into account and examined in greater detail. in other words, it is people's ability to accommodate and change (or reorient) their habitual speaking-hearing stereotypes against the background of the two main british and american most influential variants of modern english that is indispensable for elf communicative efficacy. without exaggeration, it seems to form the central core of global english speech. it is a kind of matrix, into which elements of other languages are embedded, and to succeed in promoting goods and services ad makers should be well acquainted with the underlying mechanisms of british american phonetic interference (decheva, il’ina 2018).3 the highlights of the present-day marketing industry to this we have to add that the main factors which make for the changing landscape of the present-day sales and marketing industry can by no means be confined only to the globalization of the english language. it has also very much to do with the unprecedented technological advances of our time and the digital expertise of the new, increasingly young and technology-oriented generation of buyers who are impatient, easily bored and highly attuned to visual symbols. they are very particular about brands, that seem to add linguistics armenian folia anglistika 11 authenticity to the marketplace and help them sift through the volume of options they face in the 'too much information' society. they are confident, communicative, connected and differ from their elders by their growing demand for retailers to bow to their needs and respect them. they are the force to be reckoned with because the speed and availability of new information in the digital world put more control over purchasing in their hands. it is only natural that the 'old-school', rather aggressive and excessive product-pushing should be unacceptable these days. it could only annoy the young customers who have been brought up under the influence of the internet. marketers or advertisers have to reinvent their policy and find new tools and persuasion methods that are more appealing to the young. otherwise stated, it is the tastes and demands of the net gen (millennials) and the socalled digital natives or generation y (also described in special literature as 'generation buy') (yarrow, o'donnel 2009, prensky 2001)4 that now seem to hold an incredible sway over almost every aspect of shopping and advertising respectively. there is every reason to believe that to adapt to these changing realia psychologists and advert makers have to sense the pulse of the time, so to speak, and undertake special studies of all the social, cultural and emotional factors behind the new consumers' buying tactics. to relinquish their former authority, they look for the ways and means that are more subtle and less straightforward in linguistic terms, so that their promotional strategies could slip past their young customers' vigilance. thus, for example, brand techniques are widely exploited and most welcome today because, being devoid of any requisites for political correctness, they may not infrequently serve as a conversation starter. to be more exact, young people's awareness of brands appears to be a new 'weather' subject that not only can provide fodder for a free exchange of ideas but also make for the sense of connectedness gen buy always strive for (yarrow, o'donnel 2009:38). this being the case, to get to grips with the phonetic peculiarities of modern advertising, which will be efficient with the representatives of this target audience, their processing and perceptive characteristics should be armenian folia anglistika linguistics 12 looked into and treated with utmost care. however reluctantly, we have to admit that the net gen mental capacities and the way they consume information seem to be mainly conditioned by their technological experience, as well as video games and so many other computer technologies, on which they have actually grown up. therefore they expect gratification in everything they do, and shopping is no exception in this respect. modern-day advertising as a syllabic proposition it follows from what has just been said that for us to gain a deeper insight into the peculiar sound form of modern ad text a highly comprehensive, cognitive approach to the material is required, when all its linguocultural and purely phonetic antecedents are studied in minute detail. in view of this, the basic postulates of cognitive syllabics as a branch of anglistics, whose main focus is on the hidden dynamics of english phonation (decheva 1997)6 may happen to be particularly problem-solving. it opens up new and so far unavailable vistas for an in-depth study of marketing techniques and helps to trace and reveal their underlying mechanisms. the concept of the syllable and those stereotypical speech movements which lie behind british-american phonetic dichotomy, as well as people's ability to code-switch come here to the fore and make our knowledge in the field really productive and operational. our material demonstrates conclusively that the syllabifying capacities of the english language are now widely and most effectively exploited in advertising as a rhetorical device. they endow the advert with all kind of expressive-emotional-evaluative overtones, which otherwise are impossible to impart and are extremely appealing to the young audience. thus, for example, in the following advertisement the brand name of one of the biggest clothes retailers in the us tj maxx is specially played upon in syllabic terms and happens to be a powerful attention getter: fashion blogger: i'm always happy about tj maxx. tj is a perfect place to find designer pieces for less. voiceover: fashion direct from designers. saving direct to you. fashion blogger: born fashionista, self-made maxxinista. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 13 voiceover: tj maxx. let us make a maxxinista out of you... start shopping in a new way. start maxximizing at the place where you always get more than you pay for – tj maxx. brands you love, prices that work for you. maxx style, maxx savings. keep your standards high and your spending low. fashion, family, home – maxx is what matters most to you. maxx life at tj maxx. it does not require a close examination to see that in this case the brand name is not only repeatedly used, but also made particularly pronounced in articulatory terms to entertain the target audience and capture their buying power. to be more exact, the copywriters' awareness of the cognitive capacities of the net gen make for their special promotional tactics. it is the gen yers' flexibility and readiness to be involved into different kind of play upon words that are taken into consideration, and it does not matter what ways and means to achieve the impression of a big and competitive game are actually used. the first point to be made here is that it is neither morphemes, nor phonemes in the words “fashionista” and “maxxinista”, let alone their peculiar interplay in the extended forms of the brand name “maxximizing”, “maxx savings”, “maxx style” and “maxx life” that make for the desirable effect of this advert. it is the syllabic properties of american phonation that are relied upon and serve to convey the retailers' intention to perfection. the fact is that the morphonological peculiarities of this advertisement are heavily dependent on a skilful treatment of identical syllables. the words containing them are brought together and made accented by the admen. otherwise either phonetic or morphological repetitions which are made extensive use of in the ad text won't be perceived and will be merely beyond most of the young consumers' audience. as for the syllables, they are the ultimate units of speech that remain global in the process of encoding and decoding messages (zhinkin 1958, akhmanova 1957)7. they are most naturally isolated in the flow of speech and are psycholinguistic by nature. bringing them out or, contrariwise, degrading them are the skills, which are innate or automatic and there is no need to develop them any further. it is not difficult to surmise in this connection that the syllable-based armenian folia anglistika linguistics 14 techniques of this kind have been familiar to the young generation of buyers since early childhood, and they are prepared to join in with the vendors and undergo an exhilarating experience of being a maxxinista. the ad text under consideration happens to be extremely demonstrative insofar as marketers' tactics are concerned, and can serve as a beautiful illustration of play upon words in the english language or, at least, one of its manifestations, described in the literature as paronymic attraction (nazarova 2003)8. thus, first come the words “fashionista” and “maxxinista” in “born fashionista, self-made maxxinista” that appear to be similar in morphological and syllabic terms. the spanish suffix “-ista”, which today gets increasingly productive in american english is brought out to the utmost, so that the two syllables, which it comprises “-ist-” and “-ta” and which are totally unstressed on the emic level become accented and are pronounced with clarity and intensification. in combination with “fashion-” it forms a peculiar americanspanish morphonological blend, which is frequently used and appreciated in the elf community in general and the multi-ethnic, as well as multicultural american society in particular. to this we have to add that “maxxinista” is a stretched or extended form of “maxx” in “tj maxx”. due to the repetition of the suffix “-ista” and the intrusion of the syllable “-sin-”, which is identical with “-shion-” in “fashionista” it undergoes an amazing expressive-evaluative transformation and acquires in this ad text a highly meliorative (positive or pleasant for most american gen yers) connotation. almost the same is also true of the so-called nonce word “maxximizing” in “start maxximizing”. in this case two suffixes “-iz-” and “-ing” are attached to the noun stem “maxx-”. as a result, “maxximizing” becomes homonymous with the word “maximizing”, which implies people's ability to use their shopping expertise to the maximum, spending less for the best possible quality. here again it is a new metasemiotic and clearly meliorative connotation, which the use of the occasional word is meant to impart. no doubt it is addressed mainly to the young people who consider themselves to be particularly savvy and knowledgeable in their purchasing decisions. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 15 the idea behind is enhanced by a further extension of “maxx” in the unstable compounds “maxx style”, “maxx savings” and “maxx life”, where the monosyllable “maxx-” is accented and made extra prominent. in other words, the typically american quantitative component of the syllable is played upon and made special use of. to be more exact, the effect of branding in this commercial, which invariably attracts young customers is based on the prolongation of the syllables with the american gliding vowel n5 and the continuants “m” and “n”: “fashionista”, “maxxinista”, “maxx”, “maxximizing”, “maxx style”, “maxx life”, “maxx savings”, “brands”, “standards”, “fashion”, “family”, “home”. of special interest in this connection are the specificities of the highly original 'paradoxical' timbre of voice, which accompanies the presentation of this ad text to the public. it is no longer didactic or authoritarian, unbending and indisputable, that most advertisements of the past have usually implied, but rather informal, friendly and consultative, as if you were asked to play a competitive game or were invited to a cocktail party just to enjoy yourself and have fun. it is more in the nature of a slapstick or humorous acting, where all the parameters of the performer's speaking voice are grossly exaggerated and reach (or even exceed) their maximum indexes. thus, loudness is enormously increased (the speaker dwells on the vocal element of the syllable and his manner of speaking turns into shouting). tempo is accelerated to such an extent that the better part of the utterance is engulfed by its phonetic environment and an extremely vociferous (extra long and intensive) pronunciation of the monosyllabic brand name “maxx” and its numerous extensions. pitch variation is realized within an incredibly wide diapason, which goes far beyond the confines of the unmarked american 'monotone' or 'levelled out' enunciation. rhythm is stress-timed and clearly beaten ousting a much more involved rhythm pattern of american english, which sometimes starts to approximate syllable-timing. there is hardly any need to say here that when all these parameters are brought together, they no longer make for the imperative tone of voice, which ad texts have so far been associated with. it has nothing to do with 'patronizing' armenian folia anglistika linguistics 16 and is merely used to entertain people and arouse their curiosity. being grotesque by its nature, this manner of exposition is totally syllable bound and becomes operational only by means of cognitive processing of all its articulatory characteristics. british vs. american phonetic interference in global english advertising it should be noted here that quite a few of the present day ad texts are oriented mainly towards global english speaking millennials. in syllabic terms it means that both british and american syllable stereotypes serve as a necessary background against which play upon words is realized. in the following commercial, for example, british-american phonetic interference is used as a rhetorical device, which enables the addressee to grasp the idea of advertisers: voiceover: the finer things are like grey poupon dijon mustard. so fine, it's even made with white wine. 1st gentleman: pardon me, would you have any grey poupon? 2nd gentleman: but of course. (1st gentleman drives off). 2nd gentleman: farnsworth, i do believe that well-groomed man has driven off with our grey poupon. 2nd gentleman's driver: shall i chase him down, sir? 2nd gentleman: fine idea. the first point to be made here is that the final aim of the ad text is to show that the advertised product now seems to be growing in popularity the world over. the desirable effect is achieved by switching between british and american pronunciation, which english as a lingua franca is primarily centered upon. thus, the slogan presented by the voiceover, as well as the 1st gentleman's speech are clearly american. their task is to remind the potential consumers that this initially french mustard is now also made in the usa. it is their free and vowel-based syllable stereotype and the generally relaxed and unhurried manner of speech that makes this part of the ad text discernible american (decheva 2012).9 linguistics armenian folia anglistika 17 as for the pronunciation of the 2nd gentleman and his driver, they clearly speak british variant. the syllables are checked and the consonants at the releasing and the arresting stages (or at the syllable onsets and its off glides) are relied upon and intensified. moreover, the syllable stereotypes of british and american english are specially played upon here, and the voice parameters of the two speaking voices are not only opposed to each other but also deliberately enhanced and made additionally pronounced to entertain the public and correspond to the innovative spirit of the elf and predominantly net gen consumer culture. conclusions summing up our research into the phonetic properties of modern english advertising, we would like to reiterate that the role of syllable dynamics in the design of the millennial-oriented ad texts can by no means be overestimated. it enables us to trace the metacontent, which each advertisement invariably conveys and to get to grips with the new marketing strategies that affect, attract and appeal to the young generation of buyers. they are meant, first and foremost, to slip past one's shopping vigilance and produce the impression of a totally unbiased and unaffected choice of an advertised product. in this sense english syllabics happens to be an inexhaustible rhetorical reservoir, from which ad makers readily borrow quite a few most cunning and highly expressive techniques that suit their intention and help to promote goods and services in a peculiar inoffensive and unobtrusive fashion. notes: 1. in this article the abbreviation elf suggested by j. jenkins stands for english as a lingua franca (cf. jenkins 2000). 2. by phonetic interference we mean numerous cases of rhetorical interplay of the two british and american englishes, which enables the speaker to establish a close contact with the target-audience (see about it in greater detail in decheva, il’ina 2018). 3. it is an opposition of free vs. checked syllable stereotypes that makes it armenian folia anglistika linguistics 18 possible to tell british and american pronunciation from one another in speech intercourse (decheva 2012). references: 1. akhmanova, o.s. (1957) o psikholinguistike. moskva: msu press. 2. decheva, s. (1997) cognitive syllabics. // folia anglistica. language: structure and variation, n2, мoscow, pp. 89-107. 3. decheva, s.v. (2012) sovremennoe angliyskoe zvuchanie: problemy i napravleniya issledovaniya. // aktual’nye problemy angliysogo yazykoznaniya. / sbornik statey. k yubileyu prof. o.v. aleksandrovoy. moskva: maks press, pp.29-37. 4. decheva, s.v.; il’ina k.a. (2018) phoneticheskaya interferentsiya v diktorskoy rechi bbc. moskva: mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya. 5. gardner-chloros, p. (2009) code-switching. cambridge: cup. 6. jenkins, j. (2000) the phonology of english as an international language. oxford: oup. 7. nazarova, t.b. (2003) philologia i semiotika. sovremenniy angliyskiy yazyk. moskva: visshaya shkola. 8. prensky, m. (2001) digital natives, digital immigrants. // on the horizon. vol. 9, n 5, ncb university press. 9. yarrow, k.; o'donnel, j. (2009) gen buy: how teens, tweens and twenty-somethings are revolutionizing retail. san-francisco: jossey-bass. 10. zhinkin, n.i. (1958) mekhanizmy rechi. moscow: academy of pedagogical sciences press. գովազդի հնչյունաբանական առանձնահատկությունները ժամանակակից անգլերենում սույն հոդվածում առանձնակի ուշադրության են արժանանում անգլախոս աշխարհում գովազդի հնչյունաբանական առանձնահատկությունները: մենք ելնում ենք այն դրույթից, որ համաշխարհայնացումն ու linguistics armenian folia anglistika 19 այսպես կոչված համացանցային սերնդի սպառողական մշակույթը ստիպում է վաճառողներին վերանայել վաճառքի՝ իրենց ռազմավարությունը և գտնել նոր, գովազդի ոչ պակաս արդյունավետ մարտավարական հնարներ, որոնք կարող են ավելի գրավիչ թվալ երիտասարդներին: սույն լեզվի գործնական կիրառությունը ստուգելու համար անհրաժեշտ է մանրամասն ուսումնասիրել առկա նյութը: այս առումով ճանաչողական վանկատումը կարող է շատ օգտակար լինել: received by editorial board 23.08.2019 recommended for publication by reviewers 15.10.2019 accepted for print 01.11.2019 microsoft word maket 2019-2 final.doc armenian folia anglistika translation studies 64 understanding in literary translation aschen mikoyan lomonosov moscow state university abstract the article addresses the issue of the importance of a full and adequate understanding of a literary st on the part of the translator. understanding is crucial on all levels of the text – lexical meanings and connotations, phraseology, idiomaticity, syntax, stylistic devices and overtones, etc. apart from these, there are various other aspects of the text – its cultural, historical and literary allusions, various culture-specific terms and other, not necessarily, explicit, elements and features that the translator must fully understand so as to produce an adequate and worthwhile rendering of his/her st in a different language. key words: literary translation, comprehension, connotation, equivalence, understanding. introduction among the various notions that are associated with translation in general and literary translation in particular there is hardly any that is less questionable than the notion that a truly satisfactory translation depends on an adequate and comprehensive rendering of both form and content, which, in its turn, depends, to a great extent, on the translator’s adequate and comprehensive understanding of the source text. it is important to note here that by “an adequate and comprehensive rendering of form” we do not mean what is known as ‘formal correspondence’, which, as eugene nida and jan de waard point out, “so frequently does not carry the correct meaning of the source text” (de waard, nida 1986:37). it is clear that both these all-important constituents, i.e., the form and the content of a literary work, are themselves complex and multitranslation studies armenian folia anglistika 65 faceted phenomena. comprehensive and profound understanding by the translator of all the ‘facets’ that constitute each of them and make them what they are can be regarded as a conditio sine qua non of a successful translation. at the same time it can be said that it is not a fully realistic condition, and in actual translation practice complete and thorough understanding of the st in all its entirety and complexity by the translator is not always achieved, which might cause mistranslation of certain elements or even parts of the text. the paper will discuss a number of characteristic examples drawn from a variety of translated literary texts and representing some particular challenges for the translators in terms of their understanding and adequate – or inadequate or erroneous – rendering. understanding in literary translation as had been pointed out above, a truly adequate translation depends on an adequate and comprehensive rendering of both form and content of a literary work. the rendering of form is impossible without paying attention to such aspects of the text as its vocabulary (which in its turn can be represented by a wide range of various types of lexical and phraseological units, idioms, toponyms, anthroponyms, terms, etc.), its syntactic structure (the type and length of sentences, division into paragraphs, fsp, etc.), its various morphological features (e.g., verbal forms, aspect, etc.), and, last but most certainly not least, its stylistic character, constituted by a range of expressive devices on all the above levels plus the level of sounds (assonance, alliteration, paronymic attraction, etc.). again, it should be pointed out that the above reference to the ‘constituents’ of form is not intended to promote what was described by john catford as “rank-bound translation”, where st units of this or that grammatical category are expected to correspond to units of the same grammatical category in the tt. rank-bound translation establishes “word-toword or morpheme-to-morpheme equivalences, but not equivalences between high-rank units such as the wordgroup, clause or sentence” (catford 1965:31). catford contrasted it with “unbound translation”, i.e., “normal total translation in which equivalences shift freely up and down the rank scale [ibid].” the latter armenian folia anglistika translation studies 66 type of translation is, basically, the only of these two that can be applied to translation of works of literature. yet each of the ‘ranks’ constituting a literary text, might play a significant role in it and therefore must be given attention that is due to it in the context of the st and be treated accordingly. the content of a literary work, which, needless to say, is inseparable from its form, and depends on the latter just as the latter depends on it, in its turn comprises several levels, or ‘layers’ of meaning, various implications, connotations, allusions, culture-specific terms (realia), besides direct or indirect ‘links’ with extralinguistic reality, with the cultural and historical background on which a literary work is created (and in which its story is set), also possibly with the personality and life story of the author. in short, when it comes to understanding a literary work, there is much to understand indeed. when it comes to translation, understanding, might be said without much exaggeration, to be ‘half the battle’. it is hard to overrate the importance of a comprehensive and correct understanding of the source text (st) – and each and every element of it – on the part of the translator. understanding is crucial on all the above levels of the text – all the various levels of expression and content, and all other, not necessarily explicit, elements and features of the text. ideally, the translator must achieve understanding of all the above to be able to produce an adequate and worthwhile rendering of a literary work, which will do full justice to it in a different language. it seems evident and stands to reason that this kind of understanding is something a native speaker of the language in which a literary work is written is more likely to achieve in full (or, at least, to a larger extent) than someone who was not born with that language and/or within that culture. the same, naturally, is true about the readers of the original of a literary work as against readers of its translation. as leonid barkhudarov pointed out in this connection in his work language and translation, “…to be able to understand the text that he is translating, the translator must possess a certain store of extralinguistic knowledge”, at the same time, he “can by no means expect that this knowledge, essential for the understanding of the text, will be possessed in equal measure by the speakers of l2 and l1. on the contrary, it is perfectly normal and translation studies armenian folia anglistika 67 common that the scope of extralinguistic knowledge possessed by the l2 speakers does not coincide with the scope of such knowledge possessed by the speakers of l1 – a great deal of what is known and comprehensible to the readers or listeners of the original text turns out to be unknown or incomprehensible to the readers or listeners of its translation (barkhudarov 1975: 3; translation – a. m.). so, it might be seen as the translator’s task, at least, not to ‘cloud’ the readers’ comprehension even more with his or her inadequate understanding and, ideally, whenever possible, to partially bridge this gap in understanding – though it will never disappear completely. yet, the difficulty here lies in a somewhat paradoxical and at the same time indisputably logical fact that literary translation is normally done into one’s native language and not from it, i.e., out of l2 and into l1. the logic behind it is, of course, perfectly sound and obvious: unless the translator’s l2 for some reason happens to be at the same or virtually the same level as his l1, his performance in his native tongue is, by definition, better, more natural and correct than his performance in l2. however, the other side of the medal is that the translator’s understanding of the foreign text might, at least to some extent and at least in some instances, be inferior to that of educated native speakers reading the same text in their own language. in his uber die verschiedenen methoden des übersetzens, friedrich schleiermacher, having enlarged on the difficulty and importance of true and profound understanding of a work of verbal art on all of its many levels in one’s own tongue, writes: “imagine, then, what a high art understanding must be when it has to deal with the products of a distant and foreign language! whoever has mastered this art of understanding through the most diligent cultivation of a language, the most precise knowledge of the whole historical life of a nation, and the living representation of single works and their authors, he and he alone may wish to unlock that same understanding of the masterpieces of art and scholarship for his own contemporaries and compatriots” (schleiermacher 1813 in lefevere 1992:147). in actual life and in translation practice of today, this high ideal, even if it is sincerely aspired to by conscientious translators, is not often achieved in full armenian folia anglistika translation studies 68 and in some cases is not achieved at all – sometimes even at much lower levels than those schleiermacher was writing about, and instances of misinterpretation are far from being rare. some of such instances are illustrated by the examples considered in the paper and representing fragments of translated texts both in english and russian. the most obvious level with which to begin seems to be the level of the language, where a considerable proportion of errors and misinterpretations are accounted for by the translator’s failure to correctly understand the meaning of a word, a phrase or a sentence. for the sake of convenience and visual clarity examples are presented in the form of a table, where excerpts from the source texts are juxtaposed with their corresponding translated versions (from published translations). each instance is commented on in the text that follows each table. table 1. source text translation 1 translation 2 н.в. гоголь, «мертвые души». глава 1 dead souls (translated by d.j. hogarth, 1915) dead souls (translated by christopher english, 1987) 1.1 [наружный фасад гостиницы отвечал ее внутренности: она была очень длинна, в два этажа;] <…>; верхний был выкрашен вечною желтою краскою; внизу были лавочки с хомутами, веревками и баранками. 1.1.1 <..> as for the upper half of the building, it was, of course, painted the usual tint of unfading yellow. within, on the ground floor, there stood a number of benches heaped with horsecollars, rope, and sheepskins; 1.1.2 <…> the upper was painted the inevitable yellow; on the ground floor were little shops selling harness, ropes and bread rolls. 1.2. в угольной из этих лавочек, или, лучше, в окне, помещался сбитенщик с самоваром из красной меди и лицом так же красным, как самовар, так что издали можно бы 1.2.1 …while the window-seat accommodated a sbitentshik*, cheek by jowl with a samovar**— the latter so closely resembling the former in appearance that, but for the fact of the samovar 1.2.2 in the corner shop, or, to be more precise, at the window of it, a honey-tea vendor stood beside his copper samovar. his face was just as coppery as his translation studies armenian folia anglistika 69 подумать, что на окне стояло два самовара, если б один самовар не был с черною, как смоль, бородою. possessing a pitch-black lip, the samovar and the sbitentshik might have been two of a pair. 6 --------------------- *an urn for brewing honey tea. **an urn for brewing ordinary tea. samovar, so that from afar one might have thought that there were two samovars standing in the window, had not one of them sported a pitch-black beard. although the above examples come from a complicated and, languagewise, a very rich text, which would not have lent itself easily to translation, some of the mistakes made by one of the two translators quoted here1, still seem a bit ‘extreme’. as a matter of fact, d.j. hogarth’s translation was rather severely criticized for its numerous errors and the excessive ‘freedom’ with which he treated the text. thus, in the words of semion rapoport quoted by rachel may in her book the translator and the text, “mr hogarth has a very poor knowledge of russian but a rich fancy <…> and decorates gogol with such ornaments of style as to make him unrecognizable” (rapoport 1928:505, in may 1994:35). at the same time, it might be said in hogarth’s defence, that he was one of the earliest translators of gogol’s poem, and he was working on it at the time when reliable and comprehensive russian-english dictionaries must have been few and far between. this can to some extent explain certain instances of mistranslation (although certainly not the ‘flights of his fancy’, mentioned by rapoport). yet, what the above examples demonstrate is not so much the translator’s “poor knowledge of russian” (although this too is rather evident) as his failure to understand the meaning of certain words, phrases and descriptions in the given context. it is this failure to understand that led to the above mistranslations. none of the mistranslated words or parts of sentences in these short excerpts can be supposed to have been ‘difficult’ for or unknown to the translator. he obviously knew the word “вечный” in “…выкрашен вечною желтою краскою” (ex.1.1) and he must have thought he understood its meaning in the context, translating it as “unfading (yellow),” while in fact what armenian folia anglistika translation studies 70 gogol meant was not “unfading” but “invariably seen on the walls of provincial inns” (that is to say, the word refers not to the ‘durability’ but to the ‘predictability’ of colour). even though hogarth adds the words “the usual tint of…”, it still seems that he was not certain which of the meanings of «вечный» was meant here and decided on a kind of compromise – although, giving him the benefit of the doubt, as it were, we can also suppose that he deliberately played on the polysemy of the word “вечный.” christopher english, whose very competent version, 2 is represented here side by side with hogarth’s, used the word “inevitable,” thus supplying an appropriate translation equivalent that conveys the true meaning of its russian counterpart. the two other instances of misunderstanding (and complete misunderstanding at that) to be noted in d.j. hogarth’s translation of the same sentence (ex. 1.1) are “benches” for “лавочки” (instead of “little shops”) and “sheepskins” for “баранки” (instead of “bread rolls”, “cracknels”, etc.). here indeed it was probably hogarth’s insufficient knowledge of russian that led to his confusing “лавочка” (a small shop), i.e., a derivative of “лавка” (a shop), with its homonym meaning “a small bench”. it is more difficult to explain how “баранки” ended up as “sheepskins”, since “баранки” have no connection with sheep whatsoever; they are rings made of yeast dough, which, like polish bagels or italian ciambelle all'acqua, are prepared by being dipped into boiling water before going into the oven. it can be supposed that the translator, misled by the similarity between the words “баранки” and “баран” (a ram) and puzzled by the presence of “rams” on “benches”, rendered “баранки” as “sheepskins” for lack of a better idea. example 1.2 illustrates another instance of flagrant misunderstanding on hogarth’s part. first of all, he misunderstood the word “сбитенщик” (“hot-tea vendor” in ch. english’s descriptive translation), which he transcribed as “sbitenshchik” and supplied with a footnote reading “an urn for brewing honey tea” (as against “samovar”, which is explained by him in another footnote as “an urn for brewing ordinary tea”). this led him to the misunderstanding of the final clause in the sentence, in which gogol says that if one of the “samovars” (i.e. the vendor himself, of course) had not possessed a pitch-black translation studies armenian folia anglistika 71 beard, they could have been taken for a pair of samovars from a distance (“…издали можно бы подумать, что на окне стояло два самовара, если б один самовар не был с черною, как смоль, бородою.”). d.j. hogarth was evidently confused by the fact that the man is humourously referred to here as “one of the samovars” – a kind of ‘follow-up’ to his earlier words to the effect that the “honey-tea vendor’s” face was as red as his copper samovar. as a result, he understood this clause literally, hence his somewhat bizarre description of a samovar “possessing a pitch-black lip.” in addition, hogarth placed both the sbitenshchik and his samovar on a window-seat, which is not what the words “в окне” (lit. “in the window”) suggest. table 2. source text translation 1 translation 2 dorothy sayers, the nine tailors «девять ударов за упокой», translated by maria vorsanova (мария ворсанова), 1998 «почерк убийцы» («девять портных»), translated by a. yashina (а.в. яшина), 2008 2.1 “oh, i’m sorry, sir. i thought you were some of the men. your car broke down? that’s bad. come in. i’m afraid we are all in a muddle… – ах, простите, сэр. я приняла вас за одного из здешних выпивох. у вас сломалась машина? какая жалость. входите же. я как-то растерялась… — о, простите, сэр! я подумала, что вы один из тех мужчин. у вас сломалась машина? это плохо. проходите. только у нас тут ужасный беспорядок. 2.2 “oh, dear,” said the clergyman. “such a terrible day, too! can i be of any assistance?” – вот те на! – огорчился священник. – в такуюто погоду! могу я вам чем-нибудь помочь? — о, боже мой! какая неприятность! — воскликнул падре. — да еще и в такую ужасную погоду! я могу вам какнибудь помочь? 2.3 “but couldn’t we get rooms at an inn or something? i’m really ashamed…” “my dear sir, pray don’t think twice about it. – и все же, нельзя ли снять комнаты в какойнибудь гостинице или где-нибудь еще? мне, право, неловко… – дорогой сэр, умоляю, не стоит больше об этом. – может, все же будет удобнее, если мы снимем номер в гостинице? мне действительно очень неудобно… — прошу вас, не меняйте своего решения. armenian folia anglistika translation studies 72 2.4 <…> here we are. i always blow my horn here; the wall and the trees make it so very dangerous. <…> here is the rectory – just opposite the church. i always blow my horn for fear anybody should be about. <…> i always blow my horn at the door, so as to tell my wife i am back. <…> ну вот. здесь я всегда сигналю. эта стена, эти деревья – немного жутко. <…> вот и жилище пастора – сразу за церковью. я всегда сигналю, въезжая в ворота. на случай, если кто-нибудь бродит по двору. <…> у дверей я тоже всегда сигналю, чтобы жена знала – я приехал. <…> ну вот, приехали. я здесь всегда трублю в свой рог. стены храма и деревья создают прекрасную акустику, и звук получается особенно пронзительным. <…> знаете, я еще всегда трублю в рог у калитки, чтобы отпугнуть недобрых людей. <…> когда я подхожу к дому, я тоже всегда дую в рог, чтобы предупредить жену о моем приходе. 2.5 “will you come up now and see your room? you will like a wash and brush-up at any rate. (mrs venables to lord wimsey) не хотите подняться наверх и посмотреть свою комнату? вы сможете умыться и освежиться. — может быть, сейчас поднимемся на второй этаж, и я покажу вам вашу комнату? я думаю, в любом случае, вы с удовольствием примете душ и освежитесь. 2.6 “my library is, i fear, limited, but i have an edition of the gospel of nicodemus that may interest you.” (mr venables to lord wimsey) – моя библиотека, увы, не слишком обширна, но в ней есть издание «евангелия от никодима», которое может вас заинтересовать. – конечно, моя библиотека, к сожалению, не отличается особым размахом, но у меня есть одно преинтересное издание, которое может вас заинтересовать — «проповеди никодемуса» the above examples come from dorothy sayers’ detective novel the nine tailors and its two translations into russian, published in 1998 and 2008 respectively. the very first challenge presented by this novel to the translator is its title, which, as it is usually the case, should not be translated in a hurry, that translation studies armenian folia anglistika 73 is to say, before the book is read, for a literal translation of it (which actually features as an alternative title of the 2008 russian version) would be definitely wrong. it has nothing to do with any tailors, and means exactly what m. vorsanova chose as the title for her version: nine strokes of the funeral bell, which, in accordance with an old english village tradition, were rung at a male villager’s death (while six strokes proclaimed a woman’s death). in the fictional village of fenchurch st paul, where dorothy sayers set her novel, the lowestpitched bell of st paul’s church (or the tenor bell as it is known in the english bell-ringing tradition) is named tailor paul, with all the other seven bells having their distinctive names too. and since it is tailor paul that traditionally tolls for the deceased, its funeral strokes are referred to by the villagers as ‘tailors’, hence the nine tailors. unlike the above examples from dead souls, in this sequence of examples it is not the earlier but the later of the two translated versions that is less successful and contains a much larger amount of errors of various kinds, including those that are accounted for by the translator’s failure to understand either the text or the context, or both. thus, in example 2.1, it is the definite article before the noun ‘men’ that was misinterpreted by a. yashina, who, without any regard for the context of the episode (set outside a village pub prior to its opening hours), rendered it with the help of the russian demonstrative pronoun “тех” – the accusative of “те” (“those”). for the publican’s wife 3 to say that she took lord wimsey (and his companion) for “some of those men” there ought to be some men about, whom both she and he could see or at least of whose existence both she and lord wimsey would be aware. but what she says is “i thought you were some of the men”. the difference appears to be slight yet it is significant, for what the woman implies is, perhaps, a guessing matter to lord wimsey yet something very definite to her – the men of the village who frequent her pub. of the two translators it was only m. vorsanova who understood that implication, and, although her rendering is longer and more explicit than the original (lit. “one of the local boozers”), it gives full justice to the contextual meaning of “the” in the sentence. the only fault of vorsanova’s version is that she substituted “one” (“один”) for “some,” thus disregarding the armenian folia anglistika translation studies 74 fact that lord wimsey was not alone but accompanied by his valet. in rendering the last sentence in this sequence (ex. 2.1), “i’m afraid we are all in a muddle…” neither of the translators demonstrates due regard for the context. what the publican’s wife refers to here is the state of worry and concern she is in because of her husband’s suddenly falling victim to the epidemic of influenza raging in the village. neither of the translated versions conveys this meaning, and, while vorsanova’s rendering (“я как-то растерялась…”) suggests that the woman has got confused at that very moment and can’t collect her wits because of the strangers’ arrival (which is not the case), in yashina’s translation (“только у нас тут ужасный беспорядок”) mrs tebbutt seems to be apologetically warning the visitors about the untidiness of the house. example 2.2 demonstrates a. yashina’s neglect of the context of a higher level. in rendering “clergyman” as “падре” (“padre”) – here and in many other instances throughout the book, the translator shows lack of understanding of (or deliberate disregard for) the extralinguistic reality in relation to the religious situation in england and its reflection in sayers’ novel. mr venables is an anglican clergyman; he introduces himself to lord wimsey with the words “my name, by the way, is venables – <…> i am the rector of the parish”. it should be clear from this introduction and from the context of the book as a whole that mr venables is not a catholic priest. in the original text of the novel “padre” is indeed used several (fifteen) times – but only as a form of direct address and only by lord peter, as a rather informal and somewhat humourous (spanish) version of ‘father’. the latter, alongside ‘reverend’, ‘rector’ and mr so-and-so, could be used to address a church-of-england clergyman. in russian, however, the word “падре” is associated only with catholic priests, which mr venables is definitely not. therefore it should not have been used by the translator in the author’s narration (in the original he is referred to, alternatively, as ‘the clergyman’, ‘mr venables and ‘the rector’). the other translator quite sensibly went for the neutral words “священник” (clergyman) and “пастор” (pastor). examples 2.3 and 2.4 demonstrate flagrant misunderstanding of the st utterances by a. yashina. in 2.3 the rector’s words “my dear sir, pray don’t translation studies armenian folia anglistika 75 think twice about it,” with which he urges lord wimsey to accept his offer of hospitality without hesitation, are translated with the russian sentence that means, literally, “do not change your decision” (it seems that the translator confused “thinking twice” with “having second thoughts”). yashina’s translation of the sentences in 2.4 creates an amusing, if not bizarre picture of mr venables the rector literally blowing into a hunting or a viking horn on the way home, instead of using his car horn to warn off pedestrians. the noun she used in russian, unlike the english “horn”, has no association with cars whatever and means either “a horn of a bull, etc.” or “a simple instrument made from the horn of an animal” (macmillan english dictionary). the verb used with it is the verb describing the physical action of blowing air into such a horn, so as to extract a sound. the 1998 translation, by contrast, features the verb “сигналить” (to signal), which is just the verb used in russian for blowing a car horn. as for the reason why the rector blows his horn at certain points of the road, a. yashina had a problem with understanding it as well, the result of it being a translation that can only mislead the reader. first we read in her translated version that mr venables explains his ‘horn-blowing exercise’ by “the fine acoustics created by the walls of the church and the trees, which makes the sound [of the horn] particularly piercing” and then, as he and wimsey reach the rectory gate, that his horn-blowing is intended “to scare off bad people”. in actual fact, as the english text half explicitly, half implicitly lets us know, the rector blows his car horn in places where he can’t see the road far ahead so as to warn off possible pedestrians and thus to avoid an accident. the final two examples in table 2 demonstrate the importance of relevant background knowledge for an adequate translation of the text. in example 2.5, mrs venables, the rector’s wife, is offering to take her guest to his room, adding: “you will like a wash and brush-up at any rate.” in the 1998 translation it is appropriately and noncommittally rendered as “вы сможете умыться и освежиться,“ meaning, literally, “you’ll be able to wash and freshen up”, while the other translator’s faulty understanding results in mrs venables supposing that lord wimsey “would enjoy taking a shower.” anyone acquainted (through books or other sources) with what life in an english village was like at the time armenian folia anglistika translation studies 76 when the novel is set, i.e., the early 1930s, would know that showers were practically non-existent. in those days most english rural homes were equipped only with bathtubs, and with separate taps for hot and cold water too, and certainly not showers. for many old houses it is still true today. so mrs venables’ remark about lord wimsey’s “taking a shower” in the 2008 version seems flagrantly inappropriate and comes from the translator’s failure to understand the broad context of the book she was translating. and, finally, the last example in table 2, where the 2008 translation features a double mistake in the title quoted by mr venables. the mistakes are so obvious that they hardly deserve any comment – “the gospel” is mistranslated as “sermons”, and, instead of the traditional russian version of nicodemus’s name (“nikodim” – appropriately used in the 1998 translation, together with the correct word for the gospel), yashina simply transcribes the english version. it is not the question of understanding here, for there is nothing much to understand in the title. it is rather the question of deficient background knowledge and negligence on the translator’s part. but there is a point in the sentence at large, where adequate understanding was important and where a.yashina was wide of the mark again. “i have an edition of the gospel of nicodemus that may interest you,” says mr venables to lord wimsey. “an edition” suggests that there have been a number of editions, and “that”, unpreceded by a comma, introduces a limiting relative clause signifying that it’s this particular edition that, in the rector’s opinion, might interest his guest. while m. vorsanova understood and translated this sentence correctly, a.yashina, failing to comprehend the grammatical indicators of meaning, produced a rendering with misplaced accents. in a literal translation back into english it reads as follows: “…i have one extremely interesting edition [=a book] that may interest you – the sermons of nikodemus.” what we deal with here, therefore, is lack of adequate understanding on the level of grammar, which is, in fact, quite an important level deserving the translator’s full attention. examples that follow are intended to illustrate the importance of adequate understanding of the stylistic and socio-cultural features of a literary text, translation studies armenian folia anglistika 77 which are sometimes not immediately apparent and do not always lie on the surface, as it were. these examples come from the master and margarita by bulgakov and three english translations of the novel. table 3. the master and margarita, translated by mirra ginsburg (1967) the master and margarita, translated by michael glenny (1967) the master and margarita, transl. by richard pevear & larissa volokhonsky (1997) 3.1 однажды весною, в час небывало жаркого заката, в москве, на патриарших прудах, появились два гражданина. at the hour of sunset, on a hot spring day, two citizens appeared in the patriarchs' ponds park. at the sunset hour of one warm spring day two men were to be seen at patriarch's ponds. at the hour of the hot spring sunset two citizens appeared at the patriarch’s ponds. 3.2 речь эта, как впоследствии узнали, шла об иисусе христе. the conversation, as we learned subsequently, was about jesus christ. they had been talking, it seemed, about jesus christ. this conversation, as was learned afterwards, was about jesus christ. 3.3 впоследствии, когда, откровенно говоря, было уже поздно, разные учреждения представили свои сводки с описанием этого человека. afterwards, when – frankly speaking – it was already too late, various official institutions filed reports describing this man. afterwards, when it was frankly too late, various persons presented their data and issued descriptions of this man. afterwards, when, frankly speaking, it was already too late, various institutions presented reports describing this man. 3.4 – взять бы этого канта, да за такие доказательства года на три на соловки! – совершенно неожиданно бухнул иван николаевич. – иван! – сконфузившись, шепнул берлиоз. "this kant ought to be sent to solovki for three years for such arguments!" ivan nikolayevich burst out suddenly. "ivan!" berlioz whispered in embarrassment. "kant ought to have been arrested and given three years in solovki asylum for that 'proof' of his!" ivan nikolayevich burst out completely unexpectedly. "ivan!" whispered berlioz, “they ought to take this kant and give him a three-year stretch in solovki for such proofs!” ivan nikolaevich plumped quite unexpectedly. “ivan!” berlioz armenian folia anglistika translation studies 78 embarrassed. whispered, embarrassed. 3.5 – алмаз вы наш небесный, драгоценнейший господин директор, – дребезжащим голосом ответил помощник мага, – наша аппаратура всегда при нас. (koroviev to rimsky) "our diamond from heaven, our most precious mister manager," the assistant quavered, "our paraphernalia are always with us.” "why, bless you, my dear sir," replied the magician's assistant, "we have all the equipment we need with us now, look!” “our heavenly diamond, most precious mister director,” the magician’s assistant replied in a rattling voice, “the paraphernalia is always with us. here it is!” 3.6 к необыкновенному исчезновению лиходеева присоединилось совершенно непредвиденное исчезновение варенухи. римскому было известно, куда он ушел, но он ушел и… не пришел обратно. римский пожимал плечами и шептал сам себе: – но за что?! <…> rimsky knew where he had gone, but he left ... and he had not returned! rimsky shrugged his shoulders and whispered to himself: "but why?" rimsky knew where varenukha had been going, but the man had simply gone and never came back. he shrugged his shoulders and muttered to himself: "but why?" rimsky knew where he had gone, but he had gone and ... not come back! rimsky shrugged his shoulders and whispered to himself: “but what for?” what is of interest to us here is how the three translators dealt with the socio-cultural-ideological elements of the text reflecting the political and ideological situation in russia at the time when bulgakov was writing his great novel (1929-1940) and the time and place in which its action is set, i.e., moscow in the 1920s. many of these elements, affecting both its content and, possibly, also its form, might perhaps be perceived by the western reader as 'incomprehensible', 'alien' or simply 'unusual' or 'unknown'. while dealing with such features, the translator ideally must not only be conscious of their existence and their meaning in the given text, but also understand as fully as possible their meaning and significance within the framework of the source translation studies armenian folia anglistika 79 culture as a whole. without this understanding, his or her translation, for all its possible merits, will fall short of re-creating the atmosphere permeating the original work, and the target readers will be deprived of an important part of its intrinsic value – not only as a work of verbal art but also as a product of a certain culture, a culture different from their own. and now for the examples. the first one in this group (ex. 3.1) is the instantly recognizable opening sentence of the novel, introducing two characters of the book, and the difference between the approaches chosen by the translators becomes apparent right away. to be more precise, it is one of the three versions that stands out against the background of the other two. the word used by bulgakov here is the plural form of “гражданин”, of which “citizen” is the direct english equivalent. to the russian readers this word is an indication of at least two things: a) the author's somewhat ironic or humorous attitude to these two characters, and b) the post-1917 setting of the novel. the pre-1917 forms of polite indirect reference to people, such as “господин” (gentleman) or “дама” (lady) after the 1917 revolution were ousted from usage by the words “гражданин” (citizen) and “товарищ” (comrade). michael glenny does not seem to have understood or appreciated the significance of the word chosen by the author and replaced it with a perfectly neutral word “men,” thus 'levelling out' the sentence, as it were, and depriving it of its socio-cultural character and mildly ironic touch. in sentence 3.2, “речь эта, как впоследствии узнали, шла об иисусе христе,” only the 1997 translation treats the underscored sequence of words in a way that preserves the somewhat sinister connotation achieved by the impersonal form, “…as was learned afterwards,” suggesting an official investigation that must have followed the death of berlioz. both m. ginsburg’s version (“as we learned subsequently…”) and that of m. glenny (“they had been talking, it seemed, about jesus christ”) fail to convey this connotation completely. example 3.3 is similar to 3.2 in its allusion to the authorities investigating the woland-related events: “разные учреждения”, which both ginsburg and the pevear & volokhonsky team translated with appropriate literalness as armenian folia anglistika translation studies 80 “various institutions” (following the author also in the choice of verbs describing their actions –“filed/presented reports”). m. glenny’s version, however, stands out again with its failure to render an important detail – and replaces it with details of his own invention: “…various persons presented their data and issued descriptions…” the same can be said of the next example (3.4), where glenny’s rendering is wide of the mark again. failing to appreciate the significance of a reference to solovki (even in the humourous context in which bulgakov places it in this sentence) – “the mother of the gulag” in a. solzhenitsyn’s words – and makes ivan bezdomny (ivan homeless) refer to it as “the solovki asylum,” thus misleading at least some of the target readers into believing that solovki was nothing more sinister than a lunatic asylum. in addition, glenny does away with the demonstrative pronoun “этот” (this), and, besides, uses a perfect infinitive form instead of a simple infinitive thus changing the implication and effectively destroying the humour of the original remark (the demonstrative pronoun and the simple infinitive after the modal verb make it clear that ivan does not know who kant is and believes he is still alive and, at least in theory, can still be subjected to his proposed treatment). example 3.5 concerns stylistic features (namely those used to create a speech portrayal of a character) more than anything else, and here, too, we find that one of the translators, predictably, michael glenny again, either did not understand the role of these features in the text or chose to ignore them, which in itself shows somewhat deficient understanding – not only of the value of such elements in the text but also of his duty as translator. the words “why, bless you, my dear sir,” with which he ‘mistranslates’ koroviev’s flowery mockpolite address, could have come from any english novel, and there is nothing in them that would help to identify the speaker as a particular character of a particular book. and, finally, the last excerpt to be considered in the article – example 3.6, which represents more subtle issues, directly related to the atmosphere of suspicion, fear and implicit tension that characterized the life of soviet people under stalin from the 1920s onwards. bulgakov does not make any explicit references to it or to stalin’s terror as such; all his references are oblique, yet translation studies armenian folia anglistika 81 perfectly obvious to the russian readers of the master and margarita, especially those of the older generations. in the episode preceding the one example 3.6 represents, the only such reference is “там” – the russian word for “there”, very probably implying the secret police – the dreaded nkvd. rimsky, the financial director of the variety theatre, following the mysterious disappearance of the director (in whose name a number of bizarre telegrams have arrived), instructs the administrator, varenukha, with all the telegrams in his briefcase, to go... there. this pronoun is the only 'identification' of varenukha’s destination we find in the text: “go right now, ivan savelyevich, take it there personally. let them sort it out [in the original this last sentence is impersonal].” (pevear & volokhonsky), says rimsky to varenukha, who does not ask, where exactly he is being sent and who will sort it out, because he knows – so he leaves. when, after many hours he does not return to the theatre or phone rimsky, the latter decides that they have got hold of varenukha, in other words, he has been arrested. rimsky does not question this assumption, but he can't understand for what reason or for what offence they have arrested him. and this is the question that torments him that night as he sits in his office in the varietytheatre. the question “but why?” in ginsburg’s and glenny’s versions can be easily taken to refer to the words in the author's speech: “he left... and he had not returned!” so, the readers of these translations are likely to assume that rimsky is asking himself why varenukha did not return to the theatre – nothing especially sinister in that. not so in bulgakov's own text, where the russian “но за что?!” (lit. “but for what?!”) can imply only one question, that is, 'for what was he arrested?' we find this wording in only one translation of the three, i.e., in that by pevear and volokhonsky. it might in fact be the presence of a native russian speaker (larissa volkhonsky) in the family team that ensures a fuller and subtler understanding and a more precise rendering of such textual nuances as this one. it is all the more surprising therefore that they, along with both other translators, overlooked not only the double punctuation mark after “но за что?!” (which, admittedly, would have perhaps looked odd in english), revealing rimsky's agitation and worry, but also another clear indication of his armenian folia anglistika translation studies 82 emotional state in bulgakov’s text. it is not a lexical but a grammatical indication, namely, the use of the imperfective aspect of the verbs meaning “shrug [one’s shoulders]” and “whisper” respectively, which suggests repeated, or continuous and not one-off, actions. that is to say, rimsky was [continuously] shrugging his shoulders and he was [continuously] whispering to himself one and the same agonizing question. this suggests a much more significant nervous strain and emotional involvement than, as all three translations have it, a 'single' shrugging of the shoulders and a 'single' whispering of the question. conclusion although each of the above examples, taken as an isolated case, might be seen as a rather minor or insignificant fault of the translations in question, such instances demonstrate that the understanding vs. non-understanding or misunderstanding of a literary source text in all its complexity and entirety on the part of the translator are extremely important factors. they affect the overall quality of translation and the degree of adequacy and fullness with which the source text, and all its constituent elements and characteristics – its style, its artistic merit, its storyline, and its socio-cultural-ideological-historical content, to say nothing of its purely linguistic features – are represented in the target text. it is obvious that the likelihood of errors and misinterpretations caused by the failure to understand – or to understand correctly – certain points in the text, both explicit and implicit, is inversely related to the translator’s qualification and professionalism, to the translator’s command of l2, general background knowledge, his or her cultural and language awareness, and so on. language awareness of a literary translator implies, among other things, a kind of ‘vigilance’ – a habit of not easily taking all apparently simple and straightforward elements of the text ‘at face value’, as it were, and of being alert to the possibility of hidden meanings, implicit connotations, disguised allusions and other important elements and features of the text, which, together with its other, more explicit features and its overall content, constitute the uniqueness translation studies armenian folia anglistika 83 of a work of verbal art and its intrinsic artistic value as a phenomenon of a given national culture. notes: 1. encyclopedia of literary translation into english (see references) mentions thirteen english translations of gogol’s poem altogether (p. 549). 2. thomas p. hodge, author of the article on english translations of gogol’s works in the encyclopedia of literary translation into english, writes that christopher english’e translation of dead souls “takes its place at the top of the list [of translations of the poem – a.m.]. he praises english’s thoroughness and his style as a translator: “instead of avoiding the numerous difficulties of translating mertvye dushi, english addresses them directly and cogently in a translator’s foreword and numerous explanatory endnotes. there are also scores of enormously helpful endnotes elucidating the key aspects of the 19th-century russian culture, politics and history. the style of the translation itself is an admirable blend of appropriately arcane and convoluted british english in a humourously playful register” (see encyclopedia 2000:550). 3. she says it to apologize to lord wimsey for having first denied entrance to the pub to him and his servant (neither of whom she has ever seen before). references: 1. barhudarov, l.s. (1975) jazyk i perevod. moskva: mezhdunarodnye otnoshenija. 2. catford, j.c. (1965) a linguistic theory of translation: an essay on applied linguistics. london: oup. 3. (2000) encyclopedia of literary translation into english. chicago, illinois, usa: fitzroy dearborn publishers. 4. may, r. (1994) the translator in the text: on reading russian literature in english. usa: northwestern university press. 5. nida, e.a.; waard, j. de. (1986) from one language to another. new york: thomas nelson publishers. armenian folia anglistika translation studies 84 6. rapoport, s. (1928) translation and translators. // contemporary review, 133. 7. schleiermacher f. (1992) uber die verschiedenen methoden des übersetzens. // translation. history. culture. london. / ed. by a. lefevere. new york: routledge. 8. the literary texts and their translations. available at <https://culturesconnection.com/different-types-of-translation-services/> [accessed march 2019]. sources of data: 1. bulgakov, m. (1980) master i margarita. m.: hudozhestvennaja literatura. 2. bulgakov, m. (1985) the master and margarita. / tr. by m. glenny. new york: new american library (first published 1967). 3. bulgakov, m. (1989) the master and margarita. / tr. by m. ginsburg. london: pan books ltd (first published 1967). 4. bulgakov m. (1997) the master and margarita. / tr. by r. pevear and l. volokhonsky, penguin books. 5. gogol', n.v. (1985) mertvye dushi. moskva: hudozhestvennaja literatura. 6. gogol, n. (1931) dead souls. / tr. by d.j. hogarth. london: j.m. dent & sons, england, (first published in 1915). 7. gogol, n. (1987) dead souls. / tr. by ch. english. moskva: raduga publishers. 8. sayers, d. (2016) the nine tailors. london: hodder & stoughton, (first published in 1934). 9. sayers, d. (1998) devjat' udarov za upokoj. / perev. m. vorsanovoj. moskva: ‘armada’. 10. sayers, d. (2008) pocherk ubijcy (devjat' portnyh). / perev. a. jashinoj. moskva: mir knigi. translation studies armenian folia anglistika 85 հասկացման խնդիրը գեղարվեստական թարգմանության մեջ սույն հոդվածն անդրադառնում է թարգմանչի`աղբյուր տեքստի համակողմանի և համարժեք հասկացման խնդրին, որը կարևոր ու առանցքային դեր է խաղում տեքստի բոլոր մակարդակներում՝ բառիմաստ, առնշանակություն, դարձվածաբանական միավորներ, շարահյուսական կառույցներ, ոճական հնարներ ու հնչերանգ: էապես կարևոր է նաև հաշվի առնել տեքստի պատմամշակութային և գրական անդրադարձները, տվյալ մշակույթով պայմանավորված միավորների, ինչպես նաև բազմաթիվ ոչ բացահայտ տարրերի ու բնութագրական գծերի առկայությունը, որոնք պետք է հասկանալի լինեն թարգմանչին, որպեսզի վերջինս կարողանա աղբյուր տեքստը թարգմանության լեզվում համապատասխան համարժեքությամբ վերարտադրել: received by editorial board 11.09.2019 recommended for publication by reviewers 23.10.2019 accepted for print 01.11.2019 nerdir.pdf страница 1 страница 2 microsoft word maket 2020-1(21) 19.02 doc.doc armenian folia anglistika linguistics 82 the use of emotionally colored words in english e-headlines kristine harutyunyan, hayk danielyan yerevan state university abstract e-headlines play an important role in shaping our interest towards reading different online articles and news. there are a lot of strategies and techniques of attracting the readers’ attention and one of them is the use of emotionally colored words. the aim of the present paper is to define the characteristics of emotionally colored words as lexical phenomena and to analyze special emotional word colorings in english e-headlines that are deliberately used to make an immediate impact on the readers’ choice. the famous western electronic newspapers and magazines like “time”, “the telegraph”, “the guardian”, “the new york times” and “the sun” make the source platform of the current investigation. key words: e-headlines, emotionally colored words, electronic news, interjections, evaluation, intensifiers, word coloring. introduction electronic news headlines are of great importance in providing quality news. their function is to briefly inform the reader what the body that follows is about, thus, news reporters bear a great responsibility to draw the readers’ attention to what is in fact trustful and worthy information. as the media world grows bigger with a snowball effect over the years, the necessity to feed the audience’s curiosity becomes indispensable. lots of skills and techniques are being implemented by the electronic news reporters to headline the materials and make them more attractive for reading. headlines in newspapers greatly vary from the ones on electronic news. electronic headlines are separate from the article body and readers can only linguistics armenian folia anglistika 83 access the material by a hyperlink. in modern media world it is challenging to attract a great amount of readers by just a limited amount of information in headings. thus, electronic news reporters are inclined to use eye-snaring words to give intriguing information to readers about the material and make them interested to continue the reading. electronic headlines should be impressive and emotional to gain more attention, therefore online news reporters often use words with emotional colorings to headline their articles. it is especially common in british and american electronic newspapers and magazines which are deservedly considered to be the best quality news sources in the world. emotionally colored words have their lexical peculiarities and distinctive characteristics. arnold (1986) distinguishes emotionally colored words from emotionally neutral ones and gives them a certain classification. interjections, intensifiers and the so-called evaluating words are considered to bear emotional colorings. ginzburg (1979) also adds to the list some dialectal and slang words, and states that some sounds themselves may carry emotional colorings. the use of emotive vocabulary in the headlines of online articles is a very popular technique which satisfies the requirements of modern understanding from news attractiveness perspective. emotionally colored words are widely used in electronic headlines mostly covering political and world issues. our intention is to gather up certain electronic headlines with emotionally colored words from the popular western online newspapers and magazines and to study their effects on arousing the readers’ curiosity and leveling up news quality. the distinctive peculiarities of emotionally colored words the emotional coloring of a word is a lexical phenomenon and represents one of the components of shaping the emotive quality of discourse. emotionally colored words have distinctive function in speech and language. jakobson (1987) believes that the emotive function of language flavors to some extent all our utterances, on their phonic, grammatical and lexical levels. emotionally colored words are differentiated from emotionally neutral ones. interjections are the most popular type of emotionally colored words. interjections express emotions without naming them (arnold, 1986): ‘eh’, armenian folia anglistika linguistics 84 ‘hmm’, ‘oops’, ‘phew’, ‘whoa’, ‘yoo-hoo’. the appropriateness of some interjections has evoked the necessity to use them as verbs over time, e.g. “the crowd boos the players” in a specific context means that the crowd expresses their intolerance or complaint towards the players. so, we can see that the emotionally colored expression closein the form of interjection satisfies the semantic requirement of a context. besides, other parts of speech can also be used as interjections. the interjection “god!” can express the speaker’s delight, surprise or fear but as a proper noun it may not bear the same emotional values. on the other hand, the interjection “damn” has the connotative coloring close to its corresponding verb. in the time of shakespeare ‘peace’ as an interjection meant ‘silence!’ (arnold 1986). thus, words belonging to different parts of speech can bear emotional colorings when used as interjections. another specific set of emotional words are intensifiers which convey special intensities to highlight the importance of what is expressed. intensifiers are mainly expressed by adverbs or adverbial phrases (arnold 1986). for instance, the adverb ‘extremely’, which often describes conditions with negative implications, has an intensifying positive connotation in the utterance “i am extremely lucky to know her”. the use of intensifiers allows to dodge the common application of some emotionally neutral words, e.g. ‘very funny’ can be replaced by ‘super funny’. there are some sets of words that are seemingly devoid of emotional elements but may possess emotive implications. for an architect the word ‘church’ may not be implicated emotionally in the same way as for a religious person. besides, some colloquial words may also carry more emotional colorings than their neutral versions, e.g. ‘daddy’ and ‘mummy’ are more emotional than ‘father’ and ‘mother’. there is also a considerable number of emotionally colored dialectal and slang words (ginzburg, 1979), e.g. ‘chubby’ – ‘fatty’ and ‘lit’ – ‘exciting, excellent’. arnold (1986) also distinguishes the so-called evaluating words which not only can possess emotional colorings in the context but also specify them. they highlight speaker’s intentions to mean specific implications. the word ‘fox’ can linguistics armenian folia anglistika 85 be used to describe a person who is cunning and even can make an adjective itself becoming ‘foxy’. at last, it is also researched (ginzburg 1979) that some sounds themselves may carry emotional colorings. sound forms may evoke associations connected with the things they denote. sound cluster [oŋ] in the word ‘dong’ is associable with the deep resonant sound of a large bell. emotionally colored headlines in english electronic news the world of media has a remarkable influence on our everyday life. the flow of information within online platforms has accelerating rates and people want to keep up with as many events as possible. electronic news is mainly the best solution of staying up-to-date but quality news is a really big issue in this perspective. electronic information (particularly electronic newspaper headlines) should be presented in such a manner as to minimize the amount of time required for acquisition by the user (kingery & furuta 1997). electronic news headlines need to be compact but also should capture the readers’ attention and compel them to read the body. they need to be economical and attractive to arouse the readers’ curiosity and for this reason, article reporters of the famous western newspapers and magazines give the priority to the use of emotionally colored words to headline their materials. headlines with emotional colorings mainly appear in political and world news. this technique is often used to add some flavor to daily repetitive news. electronic news article reporters often use the direct citation of a politician’s speech to make the material more authentic and trustworthy. eu what? irish pm leo varadkar sparks anger by claiming the british people want a second brexit referendum as he rejects boris’ deal (the sun) the expression ‘eu what’ has binary meaning cited from the irish pm’s speech. ‘eu’ is an interjection that represents the pm’s attitude towards the matter and also stands for the initials of ‘european union’ implicitly hinting the armenian folia anglistika linguistics 86 reporter’s intentions to mention it. another interpretation of the same event can be found in the headline of this online article: boris johnson: ‘i love europe’ and here is my plan to leave it (the new york times) in this case we seemingly deal with a direct citation as well but in fact these are johnson’s words from different parts of his speech. the use of johnson’s emotional words in the headline makes the reader even more eager to find out the details behind. political news readers love drama and scandal and for the online news article reporters it is preferable to cite in the headline what is exciting and shocking. there is a set of english electronic headlines that use words metaphorically to obtain the emotional impact in a specific context. let us consider this headline on global health security topic: mission impossible? creator of world’s first 'bleeding' vegan burger predicts meat-free world by 2035 (the telegraph) here ‘bleeding’ is associated with actual meat burgers and is used metaphorically to highlight the similarity between traditional and meat-free burgers. this technique of an emotional coloring of a headline focuses on human associations with the help of eye-snaring vocabulary. it captures the readers’ attention by making an associative description. emotional colorings of headlines often highlight the importance of the matter discussed in the article. they help the reader to distinguish between everyday repetitive media ‘junk’ and an important issue to be paid attention to. pakistani prime minister warns of 'bloodbath' in kashmir region (time) linguistics armenian folia anglistika 87 the emotional word ‘bloodbath’ is not an ordinary use to inform the reader about a specific issue. it tells a lot about the emergency level of the matter and stimulates the reader’s wish to reveal the actual story. an emotional story always requires a proper emotional heading and news article authors acquire the use of the words which primarily evoke emotional associations. electronic news headlines should be intriguing. they should offer exciting and shocking content. celebrities are always in the center of attention of online news reporters. a celebrity’s comment on anything can make the material a piece of fascinating news. sometimes online news can be headlined with the use of profanity and swear words making it more emotional and attractive. robert de niro drops f-bomb on critics of anti-trump stance (the guardian) in this case we deal with the initial letter of an actual swear word from de niro’s interview and an add-on word with really emotional associations. this word combination is not directly quoted but makes the headline even more emotional and eye-snaring. conclusion summing up the current research we may conclude that in english emotionally colored words are differentiated from emotionally neutral ones, and there are several lexical phenomena that possess affective connotations. we may conclude that emotionally colored words are often deliberately used in english electronic news headlines to arouse the readers’ curiosity and compel them to read the body of the article. headlines with emotional colorings often cover political and world topics. with the help of specific headlines of popular western newspapers and magazines we studied the impact of the use of emotionally colored words on the attractiveness of the material and the quality of the news. references: 1. arnold, i.v. (1986) the english word. m.: vyssaja skola. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 88 2. ginzburg, r.s. (1979) a course in modern english lexicology. m.: vyssaja skola. 3. jakobson, r. (1987) language in literature. massachusetts: harvard university press. 4. kingery, d. & furuta r. (1997) skimming electronic newspaper headlines: a study of typeface, point size, screen resolution and monitor size. oxford: pergamon press. sources of data: 1. alex matthews; the sun. available at: <https://www.thesun.co.uk/news /brexit/10056541/leo-varadkar-says-brits-want-second-brexit-vote/> [accessed october 2019]. 2. anne gulland; the telegraph. available at: <https://www. telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people/mission-impossiblecreator-worlds-first-bleeding-vegan-burger/>[accessed october 2019]. 3. foster klug & jennifer peltz; time. available at: <https://time.com/56 88224/pakistan-prime-minister-kashmir-india/>[accessedoctober 2019]. 4. mark landler & stephen castle; the new york times (accessed: 03.10.2019). available at: <https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/02/ world/europe/boris-johnson-brexit-eu.html> [accessed october 2019]. 5. victoria bekiempis; the guardian. available at: <https://www.theguardian. com/film/2019/sep/29/robert-de-niro-cnn-trump-fox-news> [accessed october 2019]. հուզական գունավորում ունեցող բառերը անգլերեն առցանց հոդվածների վերնագրերում առցանց վերնագրերը մեծ նշանակություն ունեն տարբեր առցանց հոդվածներ և լրատվություն կարդալու համար մեր հետաքրքրվածությունը ձևավորելու գործում։ ընթերցողների ուշադրությունը գրավելու համար կան մի շարք գործիքակազմեր և դրանցից մեկը հուզական գունավորում ունեցող բառերի օգտագործումն է։ մի շարք հանրահայտ արևմտյան լրաlinguistics armenian folia anglistika 89 գրերից և ամսագրերից քաղված առցանց վերնագրեր օգնում են մեզ բացահայտելու անգլերեն հուզական բառապաշարը և դրա ազդեցությունը լրատվության գրավչության և որակի վրա։ received by the editorial board 08.10.2019 recommended for publication by the reviewers 26.11.2019 accepted for print 03.02.2020 << /ascii85encodepages false /allowtransparency false /autopositionepsfiles true /autorotatepages /none /binding /left /calgrayprofile (dot gain 15%) /calrgbprofile () /calcmykprofile (iso coated v2 \050eci\051) /srgbprofile (srgb iec61966-2.1) /cannotembedfontpolicy /error 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(www.heidelberg.com) >> /namespace [ (adobe) (common) (1.0) ] /othernamespaces [ << /asreaderspreads false /cropimagestoframes true /errorcontrol /warnandcontinue /flattenerignorespreadoverrides false /includeguidesgrids false /includenonprinting false /includeslug false /namespace [ (adobe) (indesign) (4.0) ] /omitplacedbitmaps false /omitplacedeps false /omitplacedpdf false /simulateoverprint /legacy >> << /addbleedmarks false /addcolorbars false /addcropmarks false /addpageinfo false /addregmarks false /convertcolors /converttocmyk /destinationprofilename () /destinationprofileselector /documentcmyk /downsample16bitimages true /flattenerpreset << /presetselector /mediumresolution >> /formelements false /generatestructure false /includebookmarks false /includehyperlinks false /includeinteractive false /includelayers false /includeprofiles false /multimediahandling /useobjectsettings /namespace [ (adobe) (creativesuite) (2.0) ] /pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /documentcmyk /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /usedocumentprofile /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2540 2540] /pagesize [595.276 841.890] >> setpagedevice maket 2013:layout 1.qxd on the semiotic interpretation of the epic poems “david of sassoon” and “beowulf” armine matevosyan, liza mardoyan yerevan state university t he present article aims at uncovering the main semiotic peculiarities of the epic poems “beowulf” and “david of sassoon”. we deal with cross-cultural analysis which is termed in semiotics as “cross-cultural media activity”. within the focus of our interest has been the study of the basic linguistic and non-linguistic signs that give a helping hand in semiological studies. great attention is paid to the study of visual signs which enter into the system of semiosphere. the study in these lines has mainly been carried out on the level of opposition and comparison between two epic poems. the research shows a great number of similarities and a surprising degree of differences in the semiotic systems. this provides a great insight into the semiological system of these two epic poems and leaves much room for further scrutiny in the field. it is worth mentioning that for each observer and researcher it takes a gigantic conspiracy to deal with such a challenging sphere like that of epic poetry. however, in case of strong will and great desire, the success will be at hand. when trying to give a general outline of the epic poems, it is important to state the fact that they are the reflection of the given nation’s worldview, desires, ambitions, and deeds. epic heroes are the nation’s beloved “sons” and “daughters” who together with their “parents” create and recreate their present and future in the light of their past deeds. thus, epic poems become the ultimate achievements of the folklore, hence they are the mirror of national identity. the only preserved manuscript about beowulf dates from the 10th century. according to many scholars the main events described in the poem take place at the end of the 7 th century or at the beginning of the 8 th century (newton 1993:10). “david of sassoon” is based on oral tradition that presumably dates from the 8th to the 10th century. it was widely known from the 16th through the 19th century and was finally written down in 1873 by garegin srvandzeanc (encyclopædia britannica, entry on the epic poem “david of sassoon”:258). it has become quite obvious from the introductory parts that we are dealing with cross-cultural analysis of semiotic features of the introduced epic poems. in a semiotic fashion this analysis is termed as cross-media symbolic activity which focuses on the revelation of culture-bound semiotic features and interpretation (irvine 1993:18). thus the culturally bound sign system points to the existence of our larger contemporary and inherited semiotic system, or what some have termed a semiosphere, the whole universe of available and possible meanings in a cultural system (ibid. 20). if we pass all this knowledge to the framework of our analysis it becomes obvious that we deal with a very subtle and deep analysis of the semiotic systems of the social reality introduced in these two epic poems.in order to bring forth the role of signs in the epic poems under study, we would bear in mind pierce’s definition of the sign, which follows as such: nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign (peirce 2006:58). in this connection it becomes armenian folia anglistikaliterature 151 important to give a general outline of the semiotic system introduced by charles pierce. he distinguishes between an index (a mode in which the signifier is not arbitrary but is directly connected in some way physically or causally to the signified), icon (a mode in which the signifier is perceived as resembling or imitating the signified) and symbol (a mode in which the signifier does not resemble the signified but which is fundamentally arbitrary or purely conventional; so that the relationship must be learnt (ibid.:74). pierce stresses the importance of icons, indices and symbols analyzed in ideological combination. the overlap of these sign types has led the researchers to study in depth the notion of mapping in epic studies. the feature of signs of being able to represent a map is of utmost importance since the map is both a continuous and discontinuous phenomenon. it presupposes the existence of both the territory/space and time. thus spatial and temporal dimensions are the cornerstones of the realization of semiotic features in the analysis of the chosen epic poems. therefore, in this connection sometimes the distinction is made between digital and analogical signs. indeed, angus cameron declares that no two categories, and no two kinds of experience are more fundamental in human life and thought than continuity and discontinuity (cameron 1987:417). in fact all these semiotic features find their realization in epic poems where three lines of development are noticed; the notion, the very idea of world creation (people’s preconceived idea about nature) and supernatural energy. 1. the form of telling mythical which is mainly observed in non-christian countries and historical, the latter is mainly witnessed in europe. 2. the origin of heroes heroes are basically of supernatural origin and if they don’t have that power and supernatural strength they acquire it during their life (ibid.:420). while dealing with epic studies, one cannot but mention the role and essence of objects that are always with heroes and serve as protecting means for them. thus, in respect to this if we tend to the symbolic system introduced by pierce we come to see lots of symbols referring to heroes’ personal objects or places. now we will observe the semiotic nature of some of them. in “beowulf” we come to see heorot, the royal palace which is full of treasure and luxury. as a sign it finds its representation in the linguistic interpretation which gives the following heorot means “deer palace” (newton 1993:78). this assumption is made due to the fact that the walls of the palace are decorated with deer fur. besides, deer is also the symbol of ruling and great power. in “david of sassoon” we see sassoon as one of the main symbolic paces which carries the soul of its founders and their energy, is always thundering over its stones, stands apart from evil and doesn’t let the anger and stormy winds enter it and undo the indissoluble links that are the basis of its foundations (“david of sassoon” 1981:17). pierce’s concept of the sign illustrates the ways in which the sign interaction of the poem through repetition and interconnection, forms networks of indexical association. one sign, for example, a sword,will point indexically, inevitably to an interpretant (a cognition produced in the mind of the interpreter), such as past enmity, which in turn produces another interpretant (future strife). in both epic poems the magic power of the sword is of great value for its carriers and for those who believe in its victory (encyclopædia britannica, entry on the epic poem “david of sassoon”:260). the phenomenon of world creation is widely expressed through numeric symbols, armenian folia anglistika literature 152 like14 (the number of beowulf’s soldiers representing collective strength and power), 10 (the symbol of the wholeness of universe), 4 (the symbol of continuity which serves to prove the fact that beowulf goes to save hrodgarth and his people and to give them a new life), 7, which is of wide use in “david of sassoon” and is the symbol of holly spirit and one of the basic symbols of christianity. however it is also used while requesting for merci for the deceased passed people to help them find their appropriate place and role in heaven. the following shows the realization number 7. hearken i shall sing, hearken i shall sing a requiescat for younger mher, a requiescat for lady gohar , a requiescat for voicy hovan, a requiescat for uncle thoros, seven requiescats for david i’ll sing . cycle by cycle coming down we have now reached the cycle of younger mher. (armenian epic poem in four cycles, 2002:317) îç ï³ù ûõáñùçý äëïçï øñ»ñçý , îç ï³ù ûõáñùçý ¶áñ³ñ ë³ýáõùçý, îç ï³ù ûõáñùçý ò»ýáí ðáí³ýçý, îç ï³ù ûõáñùçý ø»éç âáñáëçý, îç ï³ù ûõáñùçý ûáã ×ûáõõ ¸³íãçý, öõ»×áõõ ¿ï³ýù í»ñ øñ»ñç ×áõõçý: (“david of sassoon” 1981:292) as was mentioned above, it is very important to cast a glance at the heroes’ history of birth. each of the heroes is to have a mythic or supernatural origin, like sanasar and balthazar who are born from water, david of sassoon, who is born by the virtue of god’s will. the heroes get their strength in the course of growing old and old, like beowulf. thrust her hands in that life-giving fountain, she got a drink first cupping both her hands, then another one cupping just one hand; anon the fountain dried up then and there. (armneian epic poem in four cycles, 2002:23) thus, water as the source of life of the initial forebears of this epic, continues to be a dominant factor in imparting strength to the heroes and revitalizing them from battle.tsovinar drinks water from milky fountain, david washes his face with water before going to battle with melik. beowulf also gets strengthened while swimming 40 days long in the sea. in “beowulf” water is also represented as the place of evil and disgust for people. here, the purity of water is opposed to people’s inner evil and monster’s outer evil. armenian folia anglistikaliterature 153 we can witness that in both epic poems the main heroes are endowed with godlike nature whereas their enemies are of hellward birth. in “beowulf”, grendel, who is also the symbol of hellward birth, cares the curse of all humankind. the curse is that of brothermurder. thus, for the interpretationn of the semantic poems, the transportation and semiotic mapping of heroes and the main events is of utmost importance. in this case we deal with spatial and temporal continuity which is the basis of human life. in this domain the role of fate acquires great significance since it is the cornerstone of the historical events and their interpretations. armenian kamy (wind) and english voice echo the concept of speed in covering distances. they are the basic index that stand for the continuity and for the indissoluble links that keep the basis of digital mapping. voicy hovhan and uncle thoros are the indecis of continuity in “david of sassoon”, and in “beowulf” permanent is the index of water that brings new life and takes it away. in beowulf skild skilding reaches the coast of denmark on a boat full of gold and brings a new life for these people. when he dies the same continuous and discontinuous water takes him away on the same boat full of the same gold. thus the phenomenon of fate becomes very important for both beowulf and younger mher. fate is governed in one case by a dragon who guards the gold of its ancestors and in the second case it is governed and provided by the hero’s father who puts spell on his son. in case of the dragon we deal with a two-parted creature who lost its godlike power and face and preserved the ability to fly and scrawl like a snake. as for younger mher we see heavenly and earthy qualities by two figures mher (earth) and colt jalali (the heaven). the fight with the dragon kills beowulf since he has been preoccupied by taking the gold and giving it to his people. in case of mher the father curses him and thus leads him to a spiritual death in contrast to beowulf whose death is more physical than spiritual. the ultimate realization of the semiotic sign in the two epic poems is the cave which is the symbol and the index of the two sides of the world, the earth and the underground world. one of the heroes passes it but the other is incapable of doing so and is sitting in between these two worlds. mher’s stone opened, the shepherd went in, saw a man sitting; the shepherd asked him; “when will you come out of this place, mher?” mher said: “if i come out of this place, the ground won’t be firm enough to bear me. as long as the world is evil, wicked; as long as the soil is rot to the core, i can’t abide in this world, cannot.” (“david of sassoon” 1981) mher continues to bear the curse and the whole bunch of human sins. days pass, years roll, the soil becomes heavier under his feet, the load that the humankind is carrying is too heavy to be carried alone, since it becomes heavier and heavier. the salvation could be found either on this or the other side of the cave, but the burden dragged along centuries is grown into wheat as big as cankerberries. armenian folia anglistika literature 154 thus, within the framework of the present paper we have tried to present the main semiotic peculiarities of the two epic poems: “david of sassoon” and “beowulf.” the importance of the scrutiny of semiotic features found in these poems is due to the fact that we deal not only with an intertextual but also with inter-cultural analysis. since we deal with texts, it is of paramount importance to draw attention to the study of basic linguistic signs and how they are presented by individuals and the socium as a whole. the digital semiotic mapping and the principle of continuity and discontinuity are basic semiotic features. heroes who are either born as supernatural or become supernatural are exposed to the creation of a new semiosphere and its crystal-clear interpretation. references: 1. cameron, a. (2012) ground zero the semiotics of the boundary line. // social semiotics.vol. 21 (3). 2. ernest, j.b. (1898) the story of beowulf. new york: thomas y. crowell company publishers. 3. irvine, m. (1993) anglo-saxon literary theory exemplified in old english poems: basic readings in anglo-saxon england. new york: garland press. 4. langer, k. (1942) philosophy in a new key. cambridge: cup. 5. nalbandyan, z. (1993) armenian folk epic in four cycles. yerevan: hayastan. 6. newton, s. (1993) the origins of beowulf and the pre-viking kingdom of east anglia. woodbridge, suffolk, eng, uk: boydell & brewer. 7. pierce, ch. (2006) semiotics and philosophy. newcastle: cambridge scholars press. 8. saussure, f. (1959) general course in linguistics. new york: philosophical library. 9. shalian, a.k. (1964) the armenian folk epic in four cycles.athens, ohio: ohio university press. 10. (1998) david of sassoon. / haykakan zhoghovrdakan epos. yerevan: luys. 11. <http://books.google.am/books?id=uugt66pkxn4c&pg=pr18&lpg=pr18&dq =language+sign+and+gender+in+beowulf&source=bl&ots=oszsbn6tdn&sig= _ k o 7 t z y g p 1 l g v k z k i f t 2 t q 3 v b x y & h l = h y & s a = x & e i = u e 2 r u c 2 f d ig4gsunycwag&ved=0ceeq6aewaw> 12. <http://www.oxbowbooks.com/oxbow/language-sign-and-gender-in-beowulf.html> §ê³ëáõýóç ¸³íç㦠¨ §´»áíáõéý¦ ¿åçï³ï³ý åá»ùý»ñç ýß³ý³ûçý ù»ïýáõãûáõýý»ñç ßáõñç êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù áõëáõùý³ëçñíáõù »ý ýß³ý³ûçý ³ûý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá, áñáýù áýï³í »ý ‹‹ê³ëáõýóç ¸³íçã›› ¨ ‹‹´»áíáõéý›› ¿åçï³ï³ý åá»ùý»ñç ñçùùáõù: øýýáõãû³ý »ý ³éýíáõù 黽í³ï³ý ¨ ³ñï³é»½í³ï³ý ýß³ý³ûçý ùç³íáñý»ñ` (ýß³ý-μ³é, ýß³ý-ëçùíáé, ýß³ý-³ñï³ñ³ûïáõãûáõý) ¹ñë¨áñáõùý»ñá, áñáýù ³é³ýóù³ûçý ¹»ñ³ï³ï³ñáõãûáõý áõý»ý í»ñá ýßí³í åá»ùý»ñáõù: armenian folia anglistikaliterature 155 microsoft word 1.linguistics 7 104 (1) linguistics armenian folia anglistika 25 gender and disparaging humour anna knyazyan yerevan state university abstract the article covers the problem of deprecating humor in english anecdotes. it deals with the issue of using invective lexical units in comic discourse. women swear considerably less than men. aggressive anecdotes frequently disparage women. generalizations about women and men inevitably involve false assumptions as they refuse to acknowledge the diverse identities, aspirations and personalities of individual women and men. women are the brunt of more jokes than men. in english anecdotes men’s voice dominates. conceptions of male dominance and patriarchy have also affected the lens through which we view the maternal image in language socialization practices. key words: gender roles, gender stereotypes, male, female, deprecating and disparaging humor. introduction gender differences pervade every aspect of human personality and appearance, and dictate how males and females should act, think and behave. gender linguistics is concerned with various aspects of the representation of gender in language. gender differences can be divided into two categories: how the representatives of opposite genders speak or write, and how they are spoken or written about. it was r.t. lakoff who highlighted this phenomenon and gave room to many debates and research on gender, and especially on language and gender (lakoff 1975). gender consists in a pattern of relations that develops over time to define male and female, masculinity and femininity, simultaneously structuring and regulating people’s relation to society. it is deeply embedded in every aspect of society. it goes without saying that gender issues are confronted with the problem of gender stereotypes and clichés in society. interest in language and gender research has raised lately. researchers have examined the relationship between language and gender using numerous methodologies. humour research has also become increasingly prolific. there are many stereotypes postulating gender differences in using and appreciating humour, but there is a conspicuous lack of studies investigating how humour, namely english humour, is used by men and women in everyday communication. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 26 deprecating humour humour can be found in various everyday situations. humour, broadly defined, is the “quality or ability to perceive, appreciate or express what is funny, amusing, or ludicrous” (webster’s new world 2001:751). jokes are short narratives or riddles with a long introduction and a brief comic ending which impute a particular ludicrous trait or pattern of behavior. due to their brief content, jokes are often based on the means of linguistic economy, therefore many of them rely on simplified and established concepts and stereotypes, formulated by one social group concerning some other group. humor is a social phenomenon that tends to relieve stress on an individual level and collectively constitutes a powerful mechanism for disseminating both abstract and real-life knowledge about the human condition. it is conceived as a mode of discourse and a strategy for social interaction. the purpose of wit, or humor, is to elicit laughter, but until now, the question of how such humor perpetuates power/status inequity has not been studied directly (wyer & collins 1992). because of the broad definition of humor, it is important to note that there is a wide variety of categories within the context of humor. deprecating or disparaging humor, as defined by webster’s new world (2001:751), “is a type of humor that degrades, or expresses disapproval of another individual or group of individuals”. disparaging humor has negative consequences on both the individual or psychological levels. on the individual level, disparaging humor is thought to create and reinforce negative stereotypes and prejudice toward the targeted group. the initiation of disparaging humor serves a divisive function. it creates and reinforces hostility toward the targeted group. stereotypes are emotion-based and they are often used in a negative or prejudicial sense. gender-based stereotyping differs from many other well-known cases of stereotyping. attitudes toward the disadvantaged group of women are very often favorable in content and yet prejudicial in their consequences. sexist humor has been an integral part of many patriarchal cultures for centuries. sexist humor demeans, insults, stereotypes, victimizes, and/or objectifies a person on the basis of his or her gender. importantly, women are more frequently the target of aggressive humor and the object of sexual humor than men are. based on sexist beliefs about the inferiority of women, such humor portrays them through characteristics such as stupidity, illogical thinking, ignorance, or irresponsibility. sexism can be very damaging because it reinforces the idea that one gender is superior towards the other. thus, opportunities are unequally distributed leaning in favor of one gender over the other. sexist humor tends to build on sexual objectification of women. sexist jokes can come in general or specified forms. general sexist jokes are told about women directly, disparaging them as a unity. for example, why don’t women mind their own business? no business. no mind. specified sexist jokes mock certain feminine groups, characterizing them by an exaggeration of traditional feminine stereotypes. for example, the dumb blonde is an embellished version of “dumb women” and “sex object” stereotypes, while mother-inlinguistics armenian folia anglistika 27 law-centered humor employs the stereotype of threatening, castrating, sexless womanhood. general sexist jokes are explicit in their focus on gender. gender in specified sexist jokes is often implicit – encoded in well-known stereotypes that are not labeled explicitly as relating to gender. humour is conveyed in various ways, most notably through speech. people usually have hundreds of daily interactions, in which they use language to express their ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and values, and, moreover, to affect those around them. ford, wentzel, and lorion (2001) found that exposure to disparaging humor will only affect a listener’s stereotypes if the target of the humour are the disadvantaged (e.g., women).it was hypothesized that there may be gender differences in speakers’ use of deprecating humor. in anecdotes women become targets of deprecatory humor more frequently than men do. for example: (1) mrs. jones goes to the doctor for a full medical examination. after an hour or so, the doctor looks at mrs. jones and says the following: “mrs. jones, overall you are very healthy for a 45-year old. there is however, only one problem. you are 4 stone overweight and bordering on obese. i would strongly suggest that you diet now to save any complications in later years.” she looks sternly at him and says, “i demand a second opinion.” “ok” he says, “you’re fucking ugly as well!”1 (2) a wife asked her husband, “what do you like most in me, my pretty face or my sexy body?”he looked at her from head to toeand replied, “i like your sense of humor!”2 both men and women would prefer to listen to females be deprecated than males. this type of humor creates a social status hierarchy, so that the speaker is superior and the subject is inferior within an utterance. therefore, in order to identify which stereotypes are upheld, it is important to differentiate which gender is making these remarks and to discover what implications they might have on an individual and the society. superiority and inferiority are conveyed through the words speakers use in daily interactions. conversations (telling anecdotes) allow for many instances of humor use, in particular, opportunities for deprecating remarks. people jokingly call others “bastard”, “bitch”, “stupid”, “loser”, “silly” or “foolish”, “fool” to assert their place within the social status hierarchy. for example: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 28 (3) a guy gets home early from work and hears strange noises coming from the bedroom. he rushes upstairs to find his wife naked on the bed, sweating and panting. “what’s up?” he asks. “i’m having a heart attack!” cries the woman. he rushes downstairs to grab the phone, but just as he’s dialing, his four-year-old son comes up and says, “daddy! daddy! uncle ted’s hiding in your closet, and he’s got no clothes on!” he slams the phone down and storms upstairs into the bedroom, past his screaming wife. he rips open the closet door. sure enough, there is his brother, totally naked, cowering on the floor. “you bastard,” says the husband. “my wife is having a heart attack, and you’re running around with no clothes on scaring the kids!3 (4) a young woman is alone in a railway carriage when a dishevelledlout walks in, sits opposite her and takes out a packet of peeled prawns to eat. belching and farting, he eats his way through the packet and then throws the empty carton onto the floor. at this point the young woman gets up, gathers together all the rubbish and throws it out of the window. she then pulls the communication cord. “you silly bitch,” he chuckles, “that’ll cost you a ￡50 fine.” “maybe,” replies the lady. “but it’ll cost you 15 years when they smell your fingers.”4 goldstein (1976) concludes that people enjoy hearing jokes that reflect what they believe; they do not enjoy hearing jokes that oppose what they believe. this would indicate that the listener, although he or she finds a joke humorous, does not share the same beliefs as the joke implies. for example, there are a lot of jokes about blondes: (5) a blonde walks into a doctor’s office. she gets in the room with the doctor and says, “doc, i hurt all over.” the doctor is really confused. he says, “what do you mean, you hurt all over?” the blonde says, “i’ll show you.” she then touches herself on her leg. “ow!!! i hurt there.” then she touches her earlobe. “ow!!!!!! i hurt there too!” then she touches her hair. “ow!!!!!even my hair hurts!”sothe doctor sits back and thinks on it for 5 min. then he says, “tell me, is blonde your natural hair color?” the blonde says “yes, why?” the doctor says, “well, you got a broken finger...”5 linguistics armenian folia anglistika 29 (6) a blonde stormed up to the front desk of the library and said, “i have a complaint!” “yes, ma'am?” said the librarian looking up at her. “i borrowed a book last week and it was horrible!” puzzled by her complaint the librarian asked “what was wrong with it?” “it had way too many characters and there was no plot whatsoever!” said the blonde. the librarian nodded and said, “ahhh. so you must be the person who took our phone book.6 (7) a blonde calls delta airlines and asks, “can you tell me how long it'll take to fly from san francisco to new york city?” the agent replies, “just a minute...”“thank you,” the blonde says, and hangs up.7 a “dumb blonde joke” can be found humorous, even if the listener may not actually hold the belief that blonde women are dumb. he or she may have had experience with intelligent blonde women, which reflects their true feelings. when males tell a “dumb blonde joke” to a male audience, the listeners laugh, endorsing the idea that some women can be dumb, or share similar qualities with the “dumb blonde” in the joke. however, when a male tells this joke to a female audience, their laughter may not signify their endorsement of women being dumb blondes, but rather, by laughter they accept and display their place in society as lesser than males, whether in terms of intelligence or power. disparaging comments disguised as jokes often refer to the feminine nature of the partner, to her intellectual abilities, or to her competency. women face economic, spiritual, physical, emotional and social disadvantages in comparison to men almost in all cultures. although women are generally equals of men, there are still large disparities in theory and practice of this supposed equality. according to our statistics twice as many jokes about men are positive in tone than jokes about women; three-quarters of all jokes about women are negative. there are whole categories of jokes about women for which there are no male parallels: prostitute jokes, mother-in-law jokes, dumb blonde jokes, woman driver jokes, jewish mother jokes. the fact that women are judged by a harsh standard of youth and beauty is presented as an opportunity for women to express their individuality through fashion, starvation dieting and cosmetic surgery. sex differences are easy to point out, but difficult to explain. while males typically socialize in groups, females are more likely to have closer, one-on-one relationships with other women (benenson, maiese, dolenszky, dolenszky, sinclair, & simpson 2002). to maintain this closeness, many females will utilize deprecating humor to maintain dyadic female relationships, in which they are apt to put themselves down in order to ease or comfort those around them (benenson et. al. 2002). armenian folia anglistika linguistics 30 freud claims that self-deprecatory humor is aggression toward others turned inward(freud1905). anger at this message may be turned inward, particularly if inferiority has been internalized. in this case, the pleasure of the joke can be read as masochistic or, in the case of those who disparage other women, as an indicator of a psychological need to compare favorably with others who are devalued. those in power within a culture prefer humor that disparages the powerless, whereas those not in power tend to prefer self-deprecatory humor. but freud also claims that the ability to laugh at oneself represents the “triumph of narcissism and assertion of invulnerability” (freud 1905:186). in this model, the individual shifts some of the energy from ego to super ego and “stresses moral values at the expense of pragmatic interests, thus lessening the impact of physical adversity”. people laugh at “some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly” (wilson1979:89).we laugh at ourselves only when we feel that we are actually distanced from that former inferior self. walker notes that: “laughing at one’s shortcomings is not only a way of diminishing their importance and potentially overcoming them but is also a technique for cleansing them of pejorative connotations imposed by the dominant culture and, thereby, turning them into strengths” (walker1988:96). females tend to put up a defensive wall that calls attention to their lack of social power before any other person can poke fun at them for the same things (benenson et. al. 2002). women are more likely to engage in self-disparaging humor – that is, humor at one’s own expense. this humor is at the expense of a person or a group with whom the humorist is closely identified, such as a spouse, mother, father, sibling, or one’s own ethnic group. women hold a disadvantageous role in a society that is deficient or subordinate to that of men. this subordination is expressed in language. although there are interpretations of gendered language that deny an existing deficiency of women in language, the language features strongly suggest power imbalance in the society. however, this power imbalance may more often be based on ideology than on reality, and similarly, on the established language features, because otherwise, the separation of men and women into those two groups just seems too strict and absolute. conclusion sexist humor has broader social consequences, or indirect effects on both women and men. specifically, sexist humor can potentially create a distressing, hostile environment for women. sexist humor affects the ways that men think about women and perceive discrimination against them. with the growing awareness that sexist humor can function as a potential tool of prejudice and discrimination, there is a clear need for social scientists to continue conducting empirical research in order to illuminate the potentially complex emotional responses that people may have to sexist humor. there is also a clear need for researchers to continue research in an effort to further delineate the broader social consequences of sexist humor, and thus help us linguistics armenian folia anglistika 31 better understand how sexist humor shapes social interaction. the current study reveals that a high percentage of men make deprecating utterances targeted towards women. men joke at the cost of others more often than women do. women joke about themselves and their experiences. for them joking is a means of establishing common ground and intimacy. women actively encourage the success of the speaker by providing support through laughter. men do this less frequently, especially when the speaker is a woman. this is because human society holds women in a position of inferiority, one that is easy to target and easy to disparage. notes: 1. bigfun com. available at: <http://www.bigfun.be/jokes/doctor+s+diagnose_4.htm> [accessed august 2015]. 2. unijokes.com. available at: <http://unijokes.com/joke-8415/> [accessed august 2015]. 3. ava7.com.havailable at: <http://ava7.com/2006/09/blonde-guy.html> [accessed august 2015]. 4. sharpe, j. (2004) the adult joke book. london: arcturus publishing limited. 59 p. 5. some celebrity jokes. available at: <http://www.worthwhilesmile.com/jokes/> [accessed august 2015]. 6. cool blonde jokes. available at: <http://www.coolblondejokes.com/dumbjokes/ badbook.shtml> [accessed august 2015]. 7. some funnies. available at: <http://www.tellmeastory.freeuk.com/funnies/10 87.htm> [accessed august 2015]./blonde-guy.html references: 1. benenson, j.; maiese, r.; dolenszky, e.; dolensky, n.; sinclair, n.; simpson, a. (2002) group size regulates self-assertive versus self-deprecating responses to interpersonal competition. // child development, 73(6), pp. 1818–1829. available at:<http://www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8624.00508/pdf.> [accessed january 2015]./blonde 2. ford, t.; wentzel, e.; lorion, j. (2001) effects of exposure to sexist humor on perceptions of normative tolerance of sexism. // european journal of social psychology, 31(6), pp. 677-691. new york: wiley& sons, ltd. 3. freud, s. (1905) jokes and their relation to the unconscious. // the standard edition of the complete psychological works of sigmund freud james. / ed. and tr. by strachey. vol. 8, pp. 1–237. london: hogarth press. 4. goldstein, j. (1976) theoretical notes on humor. // journal of communication, 26(3), pp.104-112. oxford: blackwell publishing ltd. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 32 5. lakoff, r. (1975) language and woman’s place. new york: oup. 6. sharpe, j. (2004) the adult joke book. london: arcturus publishing limited. 7. walker, n. (1988) a very serious thing. women’s humour and american culture. university of minnesota press; minnesota archive editions. 8. wilson, c. (1979) jokes: form, content, use and function. new york: academic press. 9. wyer, r. & collins, j. (1992) a theory of humor elicitation. // psychological review, 99(4), pp. 663-688 boston:american psychological association inc.. 10. (2001) webster’s new world college dictionary. foster city, ca: idg books worldwide, inc (4th ed.). ¶»ý¹»ñá ¨ ýë»ù³óýáõ ñáõùáñá ´áéáñ ñ³ë³ñ³ïáõãûáõýý»ñáõù ³éï³ »ý »õ»é ¨ ñçù³ ¿é ³éï³ »ý ·»ý¹»ñ³ûçý ï³ñíñ³ïçå»ñ, áñáýù ³ñï³ñ³ûïíáõù »ý ý³¨ ñáõùáñáõù (³ý»ï¹áïý»ñáõù): ²ý»ï¹áïý»ñáõù ï³ý³ýó ñ»ï ï³åí³í ï³ñíñ³ïçå»ñç ³éï³ûáõãûáõýá ï³ýë³ï³é ï³ñíçù »ý ëï»õíáõù ýñ³ýó ù³ëçý: ø³ñ¹çï »ýã³¹ñáõù »ý, áñ ïíû³é ëùμçý å³ïï³ýáõ μáéáñ ï³ý³ûù ûåïí³í »ý ùç¨ýáõûý μý³íáñáõãû³ý ·í»ñáí ï³ù ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñáí: ²ûëåçëç ¹³ë³ï³ñ·áõùá ï»õí »ýã³¹ñáõãûáõýý»ñ áõ ý³ë³å³ß³ñùáõýùý»ñ ¿ ³é³ç ù³ßáõù ï³ý³ýó ù³ëçý, çýãå»ë ý³¨ ãûáõñçù³óáõãûáõýý»ñç ï»õçù ¿ ï³éçë: ²û¹ çëï å³ï׳éáí ³ý»ï¹áïý»ñáõù ï³ý³ûù »ýã³ñïíáõù »ý í³õñ³ýùç ¨ ùýý³¹³ïáõãû³ý: гендер и уничижительный юмор гендерные оппозиции пронизывают все сферы жизни. гендерные стереотипы формируют определенную форму поведения, к одним и тем же чертам приписываются разные оценки, в зависимости от того, к какому полу относится данная характеристика. в картине мира, реализуемой в анекдоте, тенденция к андроцентричности является подавляющей. в большинстве случаев анекдоты, касающиеся гендерных аспектов, открыто или завуалированно дискриминируют женщин. microsoft word contens verjin linguistics armenian folia anglistika 19 the communicative function of english parenthetical constructions marine yaghubyan yerevan state university abstract the main function of parenthetical constructions is to characterize the sentence from the position of the speaker to the listener. in english parenthetical constructions are essential, since they not only connect ideas, sentences, paragraphs making them more cohesive, but also introduce contrast or opposition, emphasis or agreement, purpose, result or conclusion, etc. we try to demonstrate how parenthetical constructions provide and convey communicative functions in spoken and written discourse. however, one should also note that parenthetical constructions cannot carry out the communicative shifts independently; hence the certain communicative shift is relatively dependent on the context. key words: parenthetical constructions, communicative competence, communicative function, communicative skill. introduction the primary function of a language is to convey information to each other. different contexts require different kinds of vocabulary and different expressions that are suitable to that particular context. however, people do not only give information of a concrete nature to each other that has some inherent "truth" about it but also they put their own evaluation on the information to either create an entertaining or an emotive story, a convincing argument, a diplomatic inquiry and so on. such “evaluation” then provides an interpersonal aspect to the discourse and provides a starting point from which a conversation partner might decide to agree or disagree, or at least to have a armenian folia anglistika linguistics 20 reaction that might promote a social encounter. language is purposefully used to engage others as well as simply to convey certain types of information. speakers can construe their own identity and authority and choose to align or disalign themselves with potential conversation partners through their choice of words and particular grammatical constructions (huston, merrigan 2000:15). another function of a language is to create coherent messages. for discourse to hang together in a logical and organized way, certain linguistic devices such as conjunctions and parenthetical constructions (e.g. however, therefore) are used. communication will break down if there is no continuity or coherence to a speaker's discourse. this occurs during both monologue and dialogue. in monologue, the speaker must maintain coherence within his or her own discourse, while in dialogue, he or she must be able to continue on from the previous speaker, using similar vocabulary, referring to what has just been said, and developing the topic. thus, grammatical competence is a part of communicative competence (huston, merrigan 2000:21). therefore, to acquire an effective communicative skill, people should pay attention to grammar due to the following reasons. first, grammar is very important because it may help to enhance accuracy. accuracy in communication forms the mind to habits of order and clearness, it accustoms learners to accuracy of language, and hence, to accuracy of thinking. this means grammar rules can help learners develop a habit of thinking logically and clearly. therefore, after studying grammar, they will become more accurate when using language. communicative grammar accuracy improves the development of fluency. the person will know how to organize and express the ideas in his/her mind in a smooth way. second, a proper use of grammar is a sign of respect, both for speakers and listeners. for speakers, speaking clearly means they take time to polish themselves with a good impression from listeners. for listeners, a proper use of grammar shows that their thought is concerned. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 21 the role of parenthetical constructions in communication is of paramount importance. тhe main function of the parenthetical constructions is to characterize the sentence from the position of the speaker to the listener (alexandrova 1984:34). parenthetical constructions and their appropriate usage are vital devices for any kind of communication: written or oral. these constructions provide cohesion between sentences and paragraphs, they give logical organization and structure to the context or text, and they make the text easier to read. parenthetical constructions marking support and emphasis in english parenthetical constructions are essential, since they not only connect ideas, sentences, paragraphs making them more cohesive, but also they show contrast or opposition, emphasis or agreement, purpose, result or conclusion etc. after identifying the importance of parenthetical constructions in communication, we now try to demonstrate how parenthetical constructions provide and communicative functions in spoken and written discourse. they can mark support and emphasis. to cue the stated communicative shifts to the reader: the following lexical patterns come in handy: in other words, for one thing, in this case, for this reason, to put it another way, that is to say, by all means, another key point , first thing to remember, on the positive side, on the negative side, with this in mind, namely, chiefly, truly, indeed, certainly, surely, markedly, especially, surprisingly, significantly, particularly, in fact, in particular, in detail, for example, for instance. in the following passage, the author used the parenthetical construction indeed in order to create a link between his idea and the reality, as well as to demonstrate his agreement and awareness in regard to reality. hence, the parenthetical construction indeed is a marker of agreement and emphasis. e.g.: “indeed, it is not uncommon for slaves even to fall out and quarrel among themselves about the relative goodness of their masters, each armenian folia anglistika linguistics 22 contending for the superior goodness of his own over that of the others”. (douglass 1981:78) a way to express similarity is to attach parenthetical constructions of similarity, which reflect resemblance. in the examples mentioned below, the writers use the words similarly, likewise to show the relationship between the statements, as well as to support the given ideas. so, we can see that these parentheticals serve as a marker of similarity in the following examples. e.g.: “in time of the cholera, some people go about with a camphorated handkerchief to their mouths; so, likewise, against all mortal tribulations, stubb's tobacco smoke might have operated as a sort of disinfecting agent”. (melville 1992:27) “it may or may not be affected by philo; it is almost or quite solitary in the n.t. similarly, the immortality of the soul may be maintained on platonic or quasi-platonic lines, as by st athanasius”. (melville 1992:47) parenthetical constructions expressing contradiction, addition with a touch of agreement and consequence unlike parenthetical constructions expressing similarity, certain parenthetical elements express contradiction and thus introduce a change in the line of reasoning (contrast). although, in contrast, different from, on the other hand, on the contrary, in spite of, though, then again, above all, in reality, after all, even though, although, instead, whereas, despite, conversely, otherwise, however, rather, nonetheless, regardless, notwithstanding, in addition to, this may be true, in contrast, though, as it may, in reality, after all, etc. e.g.: linguistics armenian folia anglistika 23 “oh! in spite of million villains, this makes me a bigot in the fadeless fidelity of man! – and a black! and crazy! – but me thinks like-cureslike applies to him too; he grows so sane again”. (melville 1992:38) “in the limit of dilution when n is very small compared with n this gives raoult's experimental law that the relative lowering is n/n, which we deduced from the osmotic law, and conversely from which the osmotic law follows, while for more concentrated solutions agreement is obtained by assigning arbitrary values to a, which, as we have seen, is 5 in the case of cane-sugar”. (melville 1992:44) the parentheticals in spite of, conversely used in the examples above logically make the ideas fluent, coherent, at the same time they signal the subtle differences and contrasts that exist. the following parenthetical elements point out addition sometimes with a touch of agreement like: this may be true, nevertheless, of course, on the same time, besides, then again, in addition and so forth. e.g.: “you know i am trying very hard to get through with the reading for the examinations in june, and this, in addition to my regular schoolwork, keeps me awfully busy”. (keller 1989:44) in this example, the writer makes us feel her awful situation. she not only tries hard to get through with the reading for the examinations, but also she works, which makes her busy, thus adding more elements to her current situation. so, the parenthetical construction in addition has purely additional meaning in this context. e.g.: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 24 “but one thing, nevertheless, that made me a little distrustful about receiving a generous share of the profits was this: ashore, i had heard something of both captain peleg and his unaccountable old crony bildad...”. (melville 1992:217) providing the parenthetical nevertheless in this paragraph is largely a matter of attitude to show agreement, to stress once more the very idea that made him a little distrustful. the following group of parenthetical constructions serves to intensify the very idea that after a peculiar time there was/is/will be a consequence or an effect: as a result, under those circumstances, in that case, for this reason, in effect, thus, because, then, hence, consequently, therefore, forthwith, accordingly. e.g.: “they belonged to the defendants; the whale, because it was a loosefish at the time of the final capture; and the harpoons and line because when the fish made off with them, it (the fish) acquired a property in those articles; and hence anybody who afterwards took the fish had a right to them”. (melville 1992:118) in this example, the parenthetical construction hence allows the reader to establish probability and prepare accordingly. parenthetical constructions of time, chronology and sequence, restatement, conclusion and summary speakers also make use of parenthetical constructions of time, chronology and sequence in order to build up the communicative function of limitation, restriction and definition of time: at the present time, from time to time, sooner or later, at the same time, up to the present time, to begin with, in due time, after a while, as soon as, as long as, in the meantime, in a moment, without delay, in the first place, suddenly, at this instant first, second, immediately, quickly, finally, after, later, last, linguistics armenian folia anglistika 25 until, till, since, on a sudden, then, before, hence, since, when, once, now formerly, suddenly, shortly, henceforth, whenever, eventually, meanwhile, further, during, in time prior to, forthwith, presently, occasionally. e.g.: “after a while, the villager voices start a different chant, of nangjata, nangjata, and this gradually dominates over the forest chant...”. (crystal 2014:28) in this example david crystal achieved the desired chronological effect with the help of the parenthetical construction after a while, so this construction shows that actions are presented as if they follow each other. parenthetical constructions are also used to express restatement, conclusion and summary: as can be seen, generally speaking, in the final analysis, all things considered, as shown above, in the long run, given these points, as has been noted, in a word, for the most part, after all, in fact, in summary, in conclusion, in short, in brief, in essence, to summarize, on balance, altogether, overall, ordinarily, usually, by and large, to sum up, on the whole, in any event, in either case, all in all, obviously, ultimately, definitely. e.g.: “many parents and students have been complaining about the program. for example, scores on the end-of-grade tests have gone down from last year; teachers are not very motivated; and everyone is frustrated. to sum up, some improvements in the middle school program need to be made”. (keller 1989:48) “there was a malfunction in the smoke machines and lights, the curtains would not open and close properly, and one of the actors was sick with no stand-in. in conclusion, the play was a disaster”. (keller 1989:26) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 26 these parenthetical constructions mentioned above lead the reader to draw conclusions from the preceding thoughts. some parenthetical constructions mentioned above may also have another or additional communicative function depending on the context, for instance parenthetical construction for example specifies the preceding statement. with the expression for example, the writer introduces a specific example that helps to explain or confirm the general statement. to prove the above stated let us consider the following example: “ambiguous words or statements lead to vagueness and confusion, and shape the basis for instances of unintentional humor. for example, it is ambiguous to say “i rode a black horse in red pyjamas,” because it may lead us to think the horse was wearing “red pyjamas”. (douglass 1981:61) parenthetical constructions of contrast and contradiction like conversely, on the other hand, on the one hand, on the contrary, however, yet, but, etc. may also build up other communicative functions. e.g.: “the children were very happy. on the other hand, and perhaps more importantly, their parents were very proactive in providing good care”. (douglass 1981:83) in this example the author not only makes a contradiction, but also compares children with parents in order to make the situation more emphatic and expressive. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 27 conclusion thus, within the framework of communication, english parenthetical constructions are essential, since they not only connect ideas, but also can introduce contrast or opposition, emphasis or agreement, purpose, result or conclusion, etc. in the line of argument. however, one should also note that parenthetical constructions cannot carry out the communicative shifts independently; hence the certain communicative shift is relatively dependent on the context. references: 1. alexandrova, o.; komova, t. (2007) modern english grammar: morphology and syntax. moscow: academia. 2. blakemore, d. (2006) divisions of labour: the analysis of parentheticals. lingua. amsterdam: north-holland publishers co. 3. dehe, n.; kavalova, y. (2007) parentheticals. amsterdam: john benjamins. 4. huston, c.; merrigan, g. (2000) communication research methods. clarendon: oup. sources of data: 1. crystal, d. (2014) living on. london: fames flefber. 2. douglass, f. (1981) the narrative of the life of frederick. boston: american press inc. 3. keller, h. (1989) the story of my life. new york: doubleday page and company. 4. melville, h. (1992) moby-dick. new york: harpers and brothers publishers. 5. morell, d. (2003) first flood. indiana: indiana university press. 6. shakespeare, w. (1974) henry 8. harmondsworth: penguin press. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 28 միջանկյալ կառույցների հաղորդակցական գործառույթը սույն հոդվածում դիտարկվում է միջանկյալ կառույցների հաղորդակցական գործառույթը: ուսումնասիրությունները ցույց են տալիս, որ միջանկյալ կառույցները շարահյուսորեն կապված չեն նախադասության անդամների հետ, այնուամենայնիվ նրանց դերը նախադասության հաղորդակցական ուղղվածության ձևավորման հարցում չի կարելի թերագնահատել։ հոդվածում քննարկվում են նախադասության հետ այդ կառույցների կապակցման ձևերը և այն իմաստային փոփոխությունները, որոնք ներմուծվում են սույն կառույցների միջոցով։ maket 2012 1-2:layout 1.qxd syntactic variability in spoken english discourse through age dimensions karen velyan yerevan state linguistic university a s is widely known, english is socially and functionally differentiated, which isparticularly true of the spoken variety of english. social heterogeneity is bound to be reflected in language heterogeneity, especially in the syntactic patterns that native speakers use in conversational discourse. it has often been claimed that speech forms have a range of associations, if not direct relations, with social categories, such as socio-economic class, gender, and age, which are considered to be social variables. the latter may have reflections in linguistic variables, which then become socio-linguistic variables. it should be mentioned that both social and linguistic variables have different variants, that is why they are called variables. the correlation of linguistic variables with social variables such as social class and gender has in fact been the major focus of sociolinguistic study. actually, it is these social variables that explain differentiation in language. many linguists believe that “gender may in fact, be more powerful underlying cause for the social differentiation of language than socioeconomic status” (o’grady, dobrovolsky, aronoff 1997:512). “a more viable approach is one that combines gender and other categories like social class” (mesthrie et al. 2009:102). still, the correlation of linguistic variables with age as a social variable has not been paid due attention. and this is highly relevant to the correlation of syntactical variables with different age groups. as the american linguist jeane herndon puts it, “…individuals differ in the ways that they use their language from one period of their lives to another” (herndon 1970:112). the correlation of syntactic features with age as a social variable is emphasized by peter trudgill as well: “the diffusion of a syntactic feature through a society may be halted by a social barrier such as socialclass, age, race, religion” (trudgil 2000:24). native speakers are believed to possess different range of vocabulary and syntactical structures in different time periods of their lives. also, as time goes by, people are bound to interact in different social situations at different stages of their lives, which can ultimately result in picking up and acquiring new syntactical features of phrasing. still, syntactic heterogeneity as related to different age groups has not been thoroughly studied.the study of the use of syntactic patterns through age dimensions can bring about some peculiarities of linguistic behavior in the spoken variety of english. in this article, we will test the hypothesis that syntax of a native speaker is liable to change at different stages of his/her life. wewillanalyze the syntactical features of native speakers of english belonging to two different age categories. one age category in our analysis ranges from 20 to 26, and the other from 35 to 50. the material for the analysis is based on the face-to-face interviews with native speakers – both males and females.the interviews were first tape-recorded and then stenographed. to ensure communicative equality, all the informants were asked the same armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 43 questions. the interviews were held in informal settings. the informants were randomly chosen. as young speakers, we chose ba and ma students with different regional backgrounds. the informants of the second age group were university professors with different regional backgrounds, mostly esl instructors. in the analysis, the factor of gender was taken into consideration, too. the primary focus of the analysis was on such syntactic variables as types of composite sentences and the conjunctions used in simple and composite sentences. the main objective of the analysis was to disclose the different proportions in the use of the sociolinguistic variables mentioned above and show the tendency and the statistical differential features rather than exclusive differential features in their use. this being the case, the analysis carries more quantitative rather than qualitative character.as a result of our analysis, we came to the following findings. 1. one of the most striking characteristics in spoken english discourse of young speakers, as our records data indicate, is the frequent use of the conjunction and in the frontand especially mid-sentential positions of the sentence, which can be illustrated by the following piece of an interview with a 20-year old undergraduate student: k.v.:why did you choose up music? r.m.: it all started when i was 12 years old. k.v.: and… r.m.:andthere was this party that i went to, and we were playing “truth and day”. we were sitting around in a circle. i said “truth”, and they said: “you said truth six times, and there is nothing interesting at all”. and so i said: “ok. day”, and so they said: “go play the piano”. and so i did, and i loved it. and i said: “i wanna do this for the rest of my life”. and i went to study it at ut. the same syntactic feature is observed in the discourse of middle-aged speakers, since here again we notice the highest frequency of the use of the conjunction and. moreover, we can state that the frequency of the use of the conjunction and in the discourse of this age group is even higher, almost twice as high. also, male speakers tend to use it with a higher frequency than do female speakers, which is not the case with younger speakers. in terms of frequency of usage, next comes the conjunction but in the front position of simple declarative and in compound sentences. our data indicate that this conjunction has equal frequency of use on the part of male and female speakers among young speakers, which testifies to gender-related linguistic universal. this is not the fact in case of adult speakers. thus, female speakers display significantly higher frequency of use of this conjunction. in terms of age-related linguistic differences, we can conclude that the conjunction but has a higher degree of use in the talk of young speakers than in the talk of middle-aged speakers. here are two interviews with young (1) and middle-aged (2) speakers: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 44 1. k.v.: so, cristine, would you please tell me what’s your best, ..favorite place in the united states or in texas or in austin, wherever? cristie:am, my favorite place in the united states is texas. am…i was… k.v.: mine too. christine: yes, i was born here, raised all but two years, i just love it ...because it has everything, has topographically, mountains, ocean and praire everything like that. but it also has ..different cultures. am…you can go to any different city. my favorite place, my favorite city in the united state is charlestown, south carolina, so if we could just transplant it to texas, it would be perfect k.v.: ok and…how do you find study… at ut , or how do you find your life at ut? cristine.am…i would love… ut, i … i wasn’t happy about going here in the first place, because i wanted to go to a different school, but didn’t get in, and now… i can’t imagine going to anywhere else. i mean i don’t even know why the heck i wanted to leave texas. am…everybody always told me that ut was so big that you are just a number, but i don’t feel that way at all, and are for the most really eager to help you with prep sessions and things like that, so it is not as big as you would think it to be it the largest university in the country. 2. k.v: terry, will you please tell me why and how you chose your major. a couple of words about it. terry: aha. it’s very interesting (laughing). i don’t know… i just fell into that, i guess. i was working... well, i first graduated with my bachelor’s degree. i worked for a number of years and was really bored with what i was doing. so i decided to go back to graduate school. and my undergraduate degree was in english literature. and so i actually applied for an english degree for a master’s. but within that program they happened to have an esl specialization. so i started taking classes in linguistics. and doing some esl work, like tutoring and things like that, i really enjoyed it. am… so i ended up with specialization in my master’s program in esl.and then, when i started doing my phd work, i switched to linguistics. so the first semester i was here at ut, i was actually in linguistics department. and then i decided it’s too formal for me ..., so i transferred to education. and here i am (laughing). another feature that stands out in the conversational discourse of young american speakers is the relative frequency of attributive clauses. from cross-gender-linguistic perspective, attributive non-restrictive continuative clauses seem to be more characteristicof male speakers, while attributive non-restrictive clauses, including descriptive ones, are more characteristic of female speakers. here is a piece of the interview with a 20-year female student: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 45 k.v.: ok. in this conjunction, how do you find the academic life at ut? jenifer: at ut? i’ve been enjoying it very much. i sort of was of type that would … a…got a class and drop it. within the first day, if i didn’t think it was going be warnings, so i always am… when i around the class till i found a professor that was very expert and the field, and he was enjoyable teacher. and... i liked discussions in classes. i think that’s good, too. i was fortunate i had a plantiniun studio … my major classes room really small, so really good to know the professors and the students. in the talk of adult speakers, this kind of clauses, especially attributive restrictive clauses, were more frequently met. as opposed to the young age group, in this age group it is female speakers that use attributive clauses a lot more than do male speakers. as far as attributive nonrestrictive clauses are concerned, they display tendency to be used far oftener than they are used in the talk of young female speakers. here is a piece of the interview with a 52-year-old esl professor: k.v: ok. so, sticking to foreign language education, would you please tell me why and how you ended up taking up this major, foreign language education? pat: ok. well, of course, as you can see by the fact that i chose education and english and spanish, i was already linked to foreign language education as a… as a young person, and just loved ... the other language, which in my case was spanish, and liked the culture of the language that i deal with. am..and so i continued with that for a while. but am…one time, when i was fairly young, while i was not teaching in school, but was at home with my children, i was asked to do some voluntary work for a an organization at peru university called “wives of the world”, which was like our community programs here at ut serving the families of the graduate students at ut. and as a voluntary i started out baby-sitting for them while they had their english. i continue to love it, because here ... in this job ... i was feeling like ... i am teaching something, i am giving something, but i am learning more from the students than they are learning from me. another syntactical feature that stands out in the conversational discourse of american students is the relative frequency of adverbial clauses of reason introduced by the conjunction because. it is very typical of american students to begin a sentence with the conjunction “because”, sometimes abbreviating it to “cause”. it has been our observation that american female speakers tend to use it more frequently than male speakersdo. here is another piece of the interview with the 20-year-old female student: k.v.: jennifer, would you please tell me how you ended up taking arts, which has become your ... major for the last three years? armenian folia anglistika linguistics 46 jennifer: well, basically, am...i’ve always ...well to drive in communicating through that. and… i ... am.. i was interested in al...am… academia, but i liked art . best, because it kind of would give you own spin on what you are learning. and … i am also interested in studying am… i am actually thinking about… the reason i am stopping at ut, austin is i am going to different schools to continue in arts but to actually study art therapy. k.v.: so, art therapy is supposed to be your ..sub major. jeniffer: yeah, i… i wanted to go to graduate art therapy at high school, so i want to add some psychology in to my classes. cause i found out i was doing art am… for most i did was therapially needed it. and favorite experience is to work with students privately and kind of help them, kindofunvalue their talents and their feelings through the art. the same kind of tendency is observed in the discourse of adult speakers. however, the cases with the front position of the conjunction because turn out to be fewer. this last factor speaks in favor of the fact that the syntax of native speakers gets more standardized as they get maturity. k.v.: susan, what’s your favorite place in the united states or in texas? otherwise put, where would you like to live if given a chance? susan kerr: well, texas is an interesting state. i need to talk about the big picture of texas first, because … we’re urban state. we, fortunately, we have a number of interesting cities. and texans characterize their cities in different ways. they say that houston and dallas are the wallet of texas, the banking center. austin is supposed to be the branch of texas, cause this is where the big university and the government is. and san antonio is supposed to be the soul of texas. that’s where the artists are. of course, our descriptive analysis was not aiming at giving a full picture of conversational syntax of american speakers of different age categories. our goal was to point out some of the key syntactical features in the talk of native speakers in the united states, which have turned out to be the frequent usage of the conjunction and, but, attributive clauses, adverbial clauses with because. thus, as we see syntax functions differently in different periods of life, which is the valid indicator socio-linguistic variability in different age groups. references: 1. herndon, j. (1970) a survey of modern grammars. new york: holt, rinehart and winston, inc. 2. trudgill, p. (2000) sociolinguistics. an introduction to language and society. usa: penguin books. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 47 3. mesthrie, r.; swann, j.; deumert, a.; leap, w.l. (2009) introducing sociolinguistics. second edition. edinburgh: eup. 4. o’grady, w.; dobrovolsky, m.; aronoff, m. (1997) contemporary linguistics. anintroduction. third edition. new york: st. martin’s press. ´³ý³íáñ ³ý·é»ñ»ý ëáëáõûãç ß³ñ³ñûáõë³ï³ý ï³ñμ»ñ³ï³ûýáõãûáõýá ï³ñçù³ûçý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñç éáõûëç ý»ñùá êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù ³ñí³ñííáõù »ý ³ý·é»ñ»ýç` ï³ñμ»ñ ï³ñçùç 黽í³ïçñý»ñç áã å³ßïáý³ï³ý μ³ý³íáñ ëáëáõûãç áñáß ß³ñ³ñûáõë³ï³ý ¹ñë¨áñáõùý»ñ: æýãå»ë óáõûó »ý ï³éçë ù»ñ í»ñéáõíáõãû³ý ïíû³éý»ñá, ñ³ýñ³é»½í³μ³ ý³ï³ý ÷á÷áë³ïý»ñç ïçñ³éáõãû³ý ñ³×³ ë³ï³ýáõãûáõýá ï³ñμ»ñíáõù ¿ ï³ñμ»ñ ï³ñçùç 黽í³ïçñý»ñç ëáëùáõù: ¸³ ù³ëý³íáñ³å»ë ¹ñë¨áñíáõù ¿ ³ý·é»ñ»ýç and ¨ but ß³õï³åý»ñç ïçñ³éáõãû³ý ñ³×³ ë³ï³ýáõãû³ý, áñáßçã »ñïñáñ¹³ ï³ý ý³ë³¹³ ëáõãûáõý-μ³ õ³¹ñçã å³ñáõý³ïáõ μ³ñ¹ ëïáñ³¹³ ë³ï³ý ý³ë³¹³ ëáõãûáõýý»ñç, çýãå»ë ý³¨ å³ï׳ éç å³ñ³·³ »ñïñáñ¹³ ï³ý ý³ë³¹³ ëáõãûáõý-μ³ õ³¹ñçã å³ñáõý³ïáõ μ³ñ¹ ëïáñ³¹³ ë³ï³ý ý³ë³¹³ ëáõãûáõýý»ñç ïçñ³éáõãû³ý ñ³×³ ë³ï³ýáõãû³ý ³éáõùáí: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 48 microsoft word contens verjin linguistics armenian folia anglistika 29 personification as manifestation of author's ironical attitude from the title-text correlation standpoint (in the novel animal farm by g. orwell) irina mkhitaryan yerevan state university abstract the paper attempts at presenting the author’s ironical attitude in the allegorical novel “animal farm” written by g. orwell. here we posit the idea that the author's ironical attitude can be embodied by personification, a figure of speech, which makes inanimate objects, animal characters or abstract ideas seem just like people by giving them human traits. the article also clarifies the role of context in defining the title-text correlation, which is best marked by the superiority of pigs ruling the farm instead of people. hence, the former manor farm comes to be named animal farm, postulating the abilities and strength of animals. key words: irony, personification, context, title-text correlation, modality. introduction animal farm is an allegory about life in the soviet union. the writer satirizes the political condition of the su from 1917 to 1945 when bolshevik party ruled over ussr. g. orwell criticizes the political condition of soviet union at that time by using irony, which comes to be an important stylistic device being studied by many philosophers, linguists and rhetoricians. numerous studies done in the field reveal mainly the pragmatic significance of the ironical speech. according to l. breeva, the pragmatic essence of irony lies in its asymmetry, i.e. “what is said and what is implied” (breeva 2000:131). irony proves to be a highly intricate and context-bound type of communication. as d. muecke puts it “irony is an art that gets its effects below the surface” (muecke 1969:5). in this sense, scholars also mention that irony easily frustrates armenian folia anglistika linguistics 30 attempts at its elucidation through an investigation of its syntactic and semantic representations alone since all sentences are considered to be potentially ironic (frust 1985; sperber and wilson 1989). according to i. galperin, “linguistic irony usually bears a negative meaning, notwithstanding the fact that it has a positive meaning in the dictionary (galperin 1977:320). the capacity of irony to communicate what is offensive in an apparently non-offensive manner, given its duplicitous nature, qualifies it as “a successful way of avoiding censorship, whether the censor is a politician or superego’’ (scholes 1982:75). in recent linguistic studies the analyses of stylistic irony are mainly based on the principle of linguistic modality. there are numerous views on modality and its classification. the issues of modality, however, have thoroughly been studied in the works of v. vinogradov and the most classic classification (objective and subjective modality) is stated to be his own. objective modality is the relation of what is said by the speaker about the reality, but subjective modality is the attitude of the speaker to the content of expression (vinogradov 1975:60). in this respect subjective modality introduces new ways of expressing irony. in general subjectivity plays a crucial role in how meaning is created and constructed. the french linguist o. ducrot developed his theory on irony, stating that one utterance can give access to several competing meanings with regard to which the speaker communicates his/her commitment or rejection. ducrot's analysis requires a “split” of the speaker into several subjective instances (ducrot 1984). ironic modality is expressed by many different literary devices, from which we have singled out personification. personification is a term that was coined in the mid 1700s. it derives from the combination of the greek (ānthrōpos) "human" and (morphē) "shape" or "form". it is a figure of speech used to give things a human form, to humanize inanimate objects, abstract entities, phenomena, and ideas (dodwin 1990). according to h. blair, people personify in order to express passionate emotions; personification is a sign of strong passions which "struggle for vent, and if they can find no other object, will rather than be silent, pour themselves forth" (blair, 1983, quoted in dodson, 2008). linguistics armenian folia anglistika 31 analysis of the alegorial novel animal farm from the personification point of view the novel animal farm is a great masterpiece in personification and symbols. it is a very interesting, complex, and informative novel. the author uses farm animals to portray the people of power and the common people during the revolution of the socialists. the novel starts off with major explaining to all the animals in the farm how they are being treated wrongly and how they can overthrow their owner, mr. jones. they finally gang up on their owner and he leaves the farm. then, they start their own farm with their own rules and commandments. originally the two people in charge of the animal farm are napoleon and snowball. napoleon is really greedy and wants all the power to be his, so he gets the animals to turn on snowball and make him leave the farm. after napoleon took over the power, the pigs started disobeying the commandments. so the pigs disobeyed and changed every law that existed there started imitating humans. although the animals cannot speak, write, plan, read or drink alcohol, they behave like humans, which makes the story more interesting and lively. hence, personification becomes the key to the revelation of what is latent in the novel. almost every character is a representation of an authority figure in europe at that time. the author wants to depict the situation surrounding the cold war, without actually naming those events or people. as we have already mentioned, the novel is a satirical one, so g. orwell uses irony to support his views. the main ironic theme which evolves throughout the entire novel, is the transition of the pigs into “human beings”. at the start we have old major’s clear vision of the future that outlaws humans and all their features. it goes against his ideals to copy human habits, but one by one the central rules are amended and then ignored. before his death, the old major warns the animals against mankind: "man serves the interests of no creature except himself…. all men are enemies…and remember also that in fighting against man, we must not come to resemble him…. do not adopt his armenian folia anglistika linguistics 32 vices…. and, above all, no animal must ever tyrannize over his own kind …. all animals are equal." (orwell 1952:10-12) g. orwell uses irony and major's words resonate throughout the novel, "all men are enemies we must not resemble them . . . no animal must ever tyrannize his own" because they become the blueprint for napoleon`s behavior once he has established his dominance over his own people. the commandments change as their hold over the animals changes and essentially erase the tenets of the revolution. napoleon manipulates the animals into being more determined and faithful to their cause since they do not want to work under the tyranny of jones or one of his agents. yet, in the end, they are exchanging one tyrant for another. the allegorical novel animal farm brings in a considerable ironic force along with the author’s severe criticism on josef stalin and his signature stalinism. nearly all the phenomena in the novel realize some symbolic nature which, in their turn, explicitly or impicitly express the author's ironic attitude. through the use of allegory, the author tries to highlight the psychological pressure of revolution replacing one regime with another. herein, g. orwell criticizes those who do not firmly adhere to what they believe but blindly follow the revolutionaries, ignoring the evil and difficulties of future actions. in the first chapter the following ideology that man is the enemy of animals is continuously propagated. the old major's words are revolutionary and it is the first time that the animals consciously admit to be the slaves of men, but don't have to be. however, the next chapters come to prove contrary views. pigs try to walk upright, play cards and dance like men. they start to live in the farmhouse, adopting human vices. they start to walk with whips in their hands. napoleon's insistence on the fact that the windmill should be built and re-built several times is suggestive of the establishment of his tyranny. his sole aim is to keep the masses busy so that he can easily rise to absolute power to terrorize his own kind. as time passes, napoleon starts to lead a pleasant life while the working class is suffering. his ruling body turns out to exploit the animals more than jones and the others did. in the end, irony reaches its peak. old major's doctrines are totally reversed. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 33 there, round the long table, sat half a dozen farmers and half a dozen of the more eminent pigs, napoleon himself occupying the seat of honor at the head of the table. the pigs appeared completely at ease in their chairs. (orwell 1952:116) here we can notice the author's ironic attitude towards some false slogans and statement of humanity. this very attitude is sharply expressed through the device of personification. they start to live in the farmhouse, adopting human vices hence making it impossible to tell the pigs apart from the men. it was a pig walking on his two legs. a little awkwardly, as though not quite used to supporting his considerable bulk in that position, but with perfect balance, he was strolling across the yard. (orwell 1952:113) the animals that played the leading role during the revolution replace the human masters under whose oppression the animals suffered a great deal. here it is worthy to mention d. leyburn’s statement on satire as “the revealing light of the allegorical satire is turned most searchingly upon the villainous hero himself: and when he is allowed to go off triumphant in the end, the feeling is that the wicked ways of the world have been convincingly displayed" (leyburn 1962:219). napoleon (the pig) was now never spoken simply as “napoleon”. he was always referred to in formal style as “our leader, comrade napoleon”, and the pigs liked to invent for him such titles as father of all animals, terror of mankind, protector of the sheepfold, ducklings friend, and the like. (orwell 1952:80) in this example the word leader shows that the pigs think of themselves as if they are teachers and they even have their headquarters soon after. we see pigs use their intelligence to trick the other animals and play mind games with them. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 34 the company had been enjoying a game of cards, and had broken off for a moment, evidently in order to drink a toast. a large jug was circulating, and the mugs were being refilled with beer. there were shoutings, bangings on the table, sharp suspicious glances, furious denials. the source of the trouble appeared to be that napoleon and mr. pilkington had each played an ace of spades simultaneously. (orwell 1952:120) all the above mentioned examples depict the device personification characterising the author's criticism on humans' stupidity or vices in the context of politics. the corruption of absolute power is a major theme in the novel, as most of the animals hope to create a utopian system based on the equalty of all animals. the pigs manipulate and intimidate the other animals into subservience. g. orwell underlines the basic tenet of human nature: some will always exist who are more ambitious, ruthless and willing to grab power than the rest of the society, and some within the society will be willing to give up power for security, therefore. the author gives the animals human qualities to further his satire. napoleon is an absolute dictator who abuses the goodwill of the animals and boxer is a strong, determined, faithful worker. the story is told from the viewpoint of the animals in such a way as to enable the reader to like the animals, but at the same time to realize that their ideals are doomed. g. orwell creates ironic distance because we can see the plotting of the pigs which the others cannot. the author wants us to see that unchecked good intentions are certain to turn into evil, and the promised land, ironically, is no better than the hell they were living before. to put in a nutshell, the historical context of the novel reveals the intentions of g. orwell as well. through a humorous and effective animal allegory, g. orwell directs his satiric attack on the events of the revolution of the soviet union and on the totalitarian regime. the book reflects events leading up to the soviet union revolution of 1917 and then on into the stalinist era of the soviet union. g. orwell substitutes animals for humans, so the major linguistics armenian folia anglistika 35 concepts of communism are played out on the farm. communism is meant to be a classless society, yet the revolution of the russians results in new leaders, but the same kind of tyrants. the same is manifested on the farm: pigs take over because they think of themselves as the smartest, and in order to protect them, it is eventually decided to reserve the best food for them. the russian leaders, too, felt that they were equal to their fellow revolutionaries, but more privileged than the others, and deserved to be better fed than those producing the food. conclusion by the way of conclusion, we can firmly posit that personification being the attribution of human characteristics to any inanimate object, abstract concept or impersonal is extensively used by g. orwell in his novel animal farm. personification is a literary device serves to decorate or amplify, to educate or clarify, to motivate or manipulate, to expose the cause or to deflect attention away from an insufficient system. the context enables us to highlight the “titletext’’ correlation, postulating the animals’ abilities and strength. it is best illustrated by the fact that the former manor farm comes to be named animal farm. it is not accidental that the author has chosen this title by conveying ironic force through skillfully representing the “title-text’’ correlation. references: 1. beers, h. (1996) outline sketch of english literature. london: oup. 2. breeva, v. (2000) sintaksicheskie sredstvo sozdania ironii. // romanogermanskaya filologiya regulyativi , vip.1 saratov: izdatel'stvo sarat.un-ta. 3. dodson, j. ( 2008) the power of personification: rhetorical purpose in the book of wisdom and the letter to the romans. ny: walter de gruyter. 4. galperin, i. (1977) stylistics. m.: higher school. 5. leyburn, d. (1962) two allegorical treatments of man: // rasselas and la peste,"criticism: vol. 4: iss. 3, article 3. 6. muecke, d. (1969) the compass of iron. london: methuen. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 36 7. scholes, r. (1982) semiotics and interpretation. new haven london: yale university press. 8. sperber, d. and wilson, d. (1981) irony and the use-mention distinction'. // radical pragmatics. / ed. by p. cole. new york: academic press, pp. 298315. 9. vinogradov, v. (1975) o kategorii modal’nosti i modal’nix slovakh v ruskom yazike. // issledovaniya po russkom grammatike. m.: nauka. անձնավորումը որպես հեղինակի հեգնական վերաբերմունքի դրսևորում «վերնագիր ստեղծագործություն» փոխհարաբերության տեսանկյունից (ջ. օրուելի ''animal farm'' վեպի հիման վրա) սույն հոդվածի նպատակն է քննել և վեր հանել «վերնագիր ստեղծագործություն» կապը հեղինակային սուբյեկտիվ վերաբերմունքի տեսանկյունից, որտեղ անձնավորում դարձույթը հանդես է գալիս որպես հեղինակային հեգնանքի դրսևորում: ջ. օրուելի animal farm վեպն ակներև կերպով պատկերում է հեղինակի միտումները, և սուր երգիծական վերաբերմունքն իշխող անարդարության դեմ: ստեղծագործությունում գրեթե յուրաքանչյուր երևույթ կատարում է խորհրդանշական գործառույթ, որն էլ իր հերթին արտացոլում է հեղինակային հեգնանքն ու ծաղրը` թե' արտակա և թե' ներակա: «ստեղծագործություն – վերնագիր» կապը երեվում է հենց համատեքստից, որտեղ բացահայտ կերպով նկատվում է մարդկանց փոխարեն ագարակը ղեկավարող խոզերի առավելությունը, վերջիններիս ունակությունները և հնարավորությունները, այսինքն` նախկինում այսպես կոչված “manor farm”-ը անցնում է ամբողջովին կենդանիների ձեռքը` անվանափոխվելով “animal farm”-ի: այստեղից էլ կարելի է եզրակացնել, որ հեղինակը պատահական չի ընտրել ստեղծագործության այս վերնագիրը: իր այս ընտրությամբ նա վեպին հաղորդել է հեգնական մեծ լիցք և վարպետորեն վերարտադրել «վերնագիր – ստեղծագործություն» փոխհարաբերությունը: maket 2011-2:layout 1.qxd on language determinism and relativity susanna baghdasaryan armenian state pedagogical university “all speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.” (r.l. stevenson) we would not discover any novelty if we stated that language is the primarymeans of human communication. however, the language is not just a transmitter of thoughts and ideas, it is also a creator and a reflector. the language paradigm is our most basic metaphor because word creations substitute for the thing signified. as we master words, we often fail to distinguish between verbal symbols and the reality for which they stand. but words can only evoke conceptually what is meant, thereby providing vicarious mental experiences for speaker and hearer. once acquired, words have the power to mediate what we think, say, and do. through language, we have the power to recreate events experienced, but also to talk of things we “know” only indirectly through symbols. language aids (and sometimes limits) imagination, fantasy, the make-believe. real or imagined, language can bring into existence even what may not exist at all. and once experienced, directly or indirectly, language becomes a repository for our collective human memory – or at least for the memory of those who share the same tongue – generation after generation. language is a double-edged sword: language communicates, but it also excommunicates. that is, it includes only those who share the system; others are excluded. likewise, language both liberates and constrains. our ability to symbolize, for example, allows us to move freely, albeit conceptually, through time and space. we can recall and tell of things past or project into the future merely by uttering words. so great is our faith in words that we can viscerally experience the “reality” of something we never experienced directly at all, whether in the past or the future. knowledge is tremendously augmented through language use. much of schooling and other learning in life is accomplished through language, expanding the limits of what we can know through direct experience alone. language permits contemplating the impossible and exploring the unfathomable. we talk about concepts as difficult and as abstract as “death,” for example, which we can never know directly, at least not in life. it is difficult to imagine what life might be like without our human ability to symbolize, just as it is difficult to imagine how we might think or know differently if we spoke a language other than our native tongue. when serving as a means of intercultural communication, the cognitive characteristic of the language emerges with vividness, because the language is not a bare unity of meaningful utterances, it is also a carrier of a national character. one may not know italian, but when listening to a speech utterance in that language closely, one cannot fail to learn about the cheerfulness, artistry, and lightness that characterize that nation. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 40 armenian speech may evince a dramatic destiny and solemnity that characterizes the armenian nation. thus, language is not just a means of exchanging intercultural data, it is also a good resource of learning more about the given culture. because language is considerably more tangible and easier to document than culture, linguists are often better able to analyze and understand their data. yet, much of what is gleaned from a linguistic perspective about a language informs our understanding of culture. because language reflects and affects culture, and because both languages and cultures are human inventions, it is not surprising this should be so. a linguistic concept illustrating this point and widely used in the intercultural field (gudykunst & nishida 1989) is the notion of etic and emic perspectives (seeing from the outside as a foreigner vs. seeing from the inside as a native). the utility of linguistic insight to intercultural thought is perhaps best supported in the works of edward hall and may account for his proposition that “culture is communication” (hall 1973:97) just as we might add that, “communication is culture”. communicative ability allows cultural development through interaction and communication with other individuals. language serves as the construct that aids cultural development. why is it that we take language for granted, unaware that our native tongue is not merely a “neutral” communication system, but a pervasive medium that directly influences every aspect of our lives? it may be because we seldom need to reflect on our use of language; it has been there for as long as we can remember. and therein lies the power of a different cultural experience. while providing a chance to learn about another way of life, it provokes even more questions about one’s own language, culture and worldview. by giving tangible expression to thought, language enables communication with others. although speech signals are often part of communicative ability, there are other forms as well – written symbols, signed language and other means. whichever we use, these are usually combined, forming several interrelated systems: • a linguistic component (sounds, signs and/or graphemes, forms, and grammar of language); • a paralinguistic component (tone, pitch, volume, speed, and affective aspects); • an extralinguistic component (nonverbal aspects such as gestures, movements, grimaces); • context (sociolinguistic dimension: a repertoire of styles, each appropriate for different situations). all these are mastered in overlapping stages as part of one’s native competence. understanding these multiple dimensions and their interrelatedness elucidates what is involved when developing competence in a second or third system. during the past quarter of a century, the notion of communicative competence has increasingly commanded the attention of language teachers and interculturalists alike. for language teachers, it suggests that teaching “language” means more than the linguistic (i.e., grammar) component alone. in practice, however, linguistic considerations often continue to preempt the major portion of time in classroom teaching. for interculturalists, on the other hand, a common approach to communicative competence includes cularmenian folia anglistikalinguistics 41 ture-specific ethnographic studies based on the work of hymes’ (1972) framework (cf. carbaugh 1990); as well as attempts to extend this sociolinguistic framework to intercultural interaction (cf. collier 1989). in these endeavors, however, the language component is often superseded by a focus on the communicative rules of interaction. language, i.e. communicative competence (our expanded definition of language), reflects and reinforces a particular view we hold of the world. in linguistic terms, the influence of language on culture and worldview is called language determinism and relativity; in other words, the language we acquire influences the way we construct our model of the world (hence, determinism). and if this is so, other languages convey differing visions of that same world (relativity).this theory, known as the sapir-whorfian hypothesis, raises intriguing issues related to cross-cultural effectiveness (steinfatt 1989; whorf 1956). in other words the level of effectiveness and appropriateness of an individual’s activity in the domain of a foreign culture are viewed under the light of target language competence and incompetence. some scientists state that there is a significant difference in communicating in one’s own language and in the target language on the platform of a foreign culture. they base their judgments on the supposition that target language competence gives a much more clear view of the given linguaculture. despite the marvelous diversity and creativity across the linguacultures of the world, the overlap hints at the existence of universals across all, an aspect that researchers have begun to investigate more seriously in recent years. these universals may result from our common humanity, ensured by similar biological and physical possibilities and constraints. developing intercultural competence for ourselves and for others is a shared challenge – for language educators and interculturalists alike. contact with other world views can result in a shift of perspective, along with a concomitant appreciation for the diversity and richness of human beings. communication is one of the indispensible particles of the modern life. the effectiveness of that communication determines the development of science and the prosperity of human life. the effective communication is what makes the world an integrated unity and makes the famous novel by defoe just an intriguing adventure. references: 1. adler, p.s. (1976) beyond cultural identity. // intercultural communication. / ed. by l. samovar & r.e. porter. belmont, ca: wadsworth. 2. brown, r. (1958) words and things. new york: the free press. 3. carbaugh, d. (ed.) (1990) cultural communication and intercultural contact. hillsdale, nj: lawrence erlbaum. 4. fishman, j. (1976) bilingual education: an international sociological perspective. // recorded keynote address, 5th international bilingual education conference, san antonio, tx. 5. gudykunst, w.b. & nishida, t. (1989) theoretical perspectives for studying armenian folia anglistika linguistics 42 intercultural communication. // handbook of international and intercultural communication. / ed. by asante & gudykunst. newbury park, ca: sage. 6. hall, e.t. (1973) the silent language. new york: doubleday. 7. hall, e.t. (1976) beyond culture. new york: doubleday. 8. hymes, d. (1972) models of the interaction of language and social life. // directions in sociolinguistics. the ethnography of communication. / ed. by j. gumperz & d. hymes. new york: holt, rinehart & winston. 9. steinfatt, t.m. (1989) linguistic relativity: toward a broader view. // language, communication and culture: current directions. / ed. by s. ting-toomey & f. korzenny. newbury park, ca: sage. 10. ting-toomey, s. & korzenny, f. (eds.) (1989) language, communication and culture: current directions. newbury park, ca: sage. 11. whorf, b.l. (1956). language, thought and reality. cambridge, ma: mit press. 12. wiseman, r.l. & koester, j. (eds.) (1993) intercultural communication competence. newbury park, ca: sage. 軽í³ï³ý ¹»ï»ñùçýç½ù ¨ ñ³ñ³μ»ñ³ï³ýáõãûáõý 軽áõý, ³ûëçýùý ù³ñ¹áõ ñ³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý áõý³ïáõãûáõýá, ³ñï³óáéáõù ¨ ³ùñ³åý¹áõù ¿ ³ßë³ññç ù³ëçý ù»ñ áõý»ó³í áñáß³ïç ï»ë³ï»ïá ¨ áñå»ë ï³éáõóí³íù³ûçý ï³ññ` ù»í³å»ë ýå³ëïáõù ¿ ùß³ïáõûãç ½³ñ·³óù³ýá: 軽í³μ³ ýáñ»ý ³û¹ »ñ¨áõûãá ïáãíáõù ¿ 黽í³ï³ý ¹»ï»ñùçýç½ù ¨ ñ³ñ³μ» ñ³ï³ýáõãûáõý: 軽áõý ùç³ûý ùïù»ñç ¨ ·³õ³÷³ñý»ñç ÷áë³ýóáõ ã¿, ³ûý ý³¨ ëï»õíáõ ¿ ¨ ³ý¹ñ³¹³ñóýáõ: 軽áõý ï³ñáõ ¿ ïû³ýùç ïáã»é μáéáñáíçý ·áûáõãûáõý ãáõý»óáõ »ñ¨áõûãý»ñ: ì³é³û»éáí áñå»ë ùççùß³ïáõã³ûçý ñ³õáñ¹³ïóáõãû³ý ùççáó, 黽áõý ý³¨ ³½·³ ûçý μýáõã³·ñç ïñáõ ¿ çñ ³ñï³μ»ñù³ý ã»ã¨áõãû³ùμ ï³ù éñçáõãû³ùμ, ñ³ý¹çë³íáñáõãû³ùμ ï³ù ¹ñ³ù³ïç½ùáí: âý³û³í 黽í³ùß³ïáõã³ûçý ³ßë³ññç μ³½ù³½³ ýáõãû³ýá ·áûáõãûáõý áõý»ý áý¹ñ³ýñáõûãý»ñ, áñáýù 黽í³μ³ýý»ñç ñ³ù³ñ ¹³ñó»é »ý éáõñç áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãû³ý ³é³ñï³: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 43 microsoft word maket 2020-1(21) 19.02 doc.doc linguistics armenian folia anglistika 9 the comparative method in synchronic linguistics: the case of word order alessandra giorgi ca’ foscari university of venice abstract in this article i discuss the comparative method in formal linguistics when applied to word order phenomena in italian, english and german. i argue that the comparison has to rest on sound theoretical basis in order to reach interesting conclusions. these languages might prima facie all look subjectverb-object – svo – languages, with some puzzling issues arising in german. at a closer look however, i will show that english and italian pattern together as their basic word order – i.e., svo – goes, as opposed to german, an sov language. conversely, english and german pattern together with respect to a property typical, even if not exclusively so, of germanic languages, i.e. verb second. key words: word order, syntax, verb second, romance, germanic. introduction in this article, i provide a brief introduction to the comparative method and to linguistic typology, discussing some issues concerning the basic word order of italian, english and german. i will show that in the comparison among languages, raw data are not enough to provide a satisfactory classification and that a formal model is required to make sense of the various existing orders, together with several phenomena, which would otherwise go unexplained. language is often seen as a means of communication shaped by our culture and history. it is certainly an incontrovertible fact that language, by enabling a speedy and efficient communication with our fellow humans, provided us with a huge evolutionary advantage. however, it is also quite clear that language is a armenian folia anglistika linguistics 10 very important cognitive ability, defining humans as special among all living beings. human language has no rival among the animal communication systems, both qualitatively and quantitatively, no matter how sophisticated such systems might look. therefore, in order to understand the nature of language and its manifestations, it is necessary to study on one side, the history and the relevance of culture in language, and on the other, the properties of our cognitive system, enabling the language faculty. in order to do that, a theoretical framework of investigation, connecting language with psychology and neurology is necessary. the framework i will refer to in this article is the one developed by chomsky (1995, 2002) and scholars. the issues i am going to consider in the following sections illustrate this dual nature of language: cultural and cognitive. by means of the comparative method and the theoretical generative framework, i will show that english and italian pattern together with respect to their basic word order, i.e. svo, as opposed to german, an sov language. conversely, english and german pattern together with respect to a property typical of germanic languages, i.e. verb second. basic word order plus verb second properties will be shown to account for a wide set of data, which would otherwise remain unexplained. word order and linguistic typology scholars of linguistic typology have studied word order variations quite extensively.1 the typologists’ goal is a better understanding of the distribution of the properties of languages, and in particular of how languages vary and what correlations can be found among their different features. as defined by comrie, dryer and haspelmath (2013:1), linguistic typology can be defined as “the systematic study of the ways in which the languages of the world vary structurally and of the limits to this variation.” they go on providing the following example (ibidem): “for instance, we may want to know whether languages with a particular word order in the clause, say subject–verb– object as in english (the farmer killed the duckling), are found only in one part of the world, whether they are distributed more or less evenly across different linguistics armenian folia anglistika 11 parts of the world, or whether some in between scenario holds.” in this work, i will compare the basic word order of italian, german and english, taking into account not only main clauses, but also more complex structures, constituting potential problems for a coherent classification. with respect to word order variation, the figures provided by wals are the following:2 table 1 sov 565 japanese, indo-aryan languages svo 488 english, romance vso 95 arabic, celtic vos 25 malagasy, fijian ovs 11 hixkarayana (amazon) osv 4 xavante (mato groso) no dominant order 189 german, armenian as can be seen, the number of languages considered by wals is quite extensive. the majority of languages happen to be either sov or svo, with a considerable group of verb-initial languages, whereas the three other groups are relatively small. furthermore, there is a large group of languages classified a no dominant order. note that in this table, english and romance languages, therefore italian as well, are put together in the same group, whereas german falls in the no-dominant-order slot. linguists have amply discussed word order issues and it will be impossible for me to review here the literature on the relevant issues. as i pointed out above, i will limit my contribution to the comparison of italian, english and german with respect to certain word order phenomena, in order to show that a theoretical framework actually permits a better understanding of certain phenomena. this table raises at least two questions. the first one concerns the relatively small number of languages exhibiting vos, ovs and osv orders; the second concerns the languages with no dominant order and what that exactly means. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 12 in this article, i will have nothing to say with respect to the first issue, whereas i will consider the second one, as far as german is concerned.3 the order subject-verb-object in defining the basic word order, one has to look at the order of words in sentences expressing assertions, when uttered in absence of any previous context. an assertion, roughly speaking, is a declarative sentence – as opposed to a question, an exclamation, or an order, i.e. a content expressed by a speaker with the intent of sharing a certain knowledge with her audience. in order to check the basic word order, it is important that no linguistic or extra-linguistic context is provided – i.e. that the sentence is uttered out-of-the-blue, so that the informational properties, such as given information vs. new one, do not constrain the syntactic form of the utterance. it is a well-known fact, that informational properties have an important influence on word order, but in this work i will put this issue aside. hence, a simple way of classifying languages is to consider the ordering in sentences with transitive verbs, i.e. sentences constituted by a subject, an object and a verb, as in table 1 above. for instance, to compare italian, english and german we can look at examples such as the following ones:4 (1) gianni mangia una mela (italian) (2) john eats an apple (english) (3) hans isst einen apfel (german) in these examples, the transitive verb eat appears with the animate subject, john, and the inanimate object an apple. in this case, the three languages exhibit the order subject-verb-object. these are declarative sentences, which can be uttered out-of-the-blue without the necessity of a previous context.5 in other words, in order for the sentences in (1) – (3) to be felicitous, there is no need of a previous mention of an eating event, nor of its participants, john and an apple. hence, according to this piece of evidence, italian, english and german should be taken to share the basic word order svo. if this is the case, this linguistics armenian folia anglistika 13 should be true independently of the kind of subject, object and verb appearing in the sentence. this seems to be correct, as far as subject and object are concerned. for instance, instead of the proper noun john, we could have the nominal expression the girl, and the apple could be substituted by any other eatable object. consider for instance the following examples: (4) la ragazza mangia una pera (italian) (5) the girl eats a pear (english) (6) das mädchen isst eine birne (german) however, the same does not apply with respect to the position of the verb, when the verbal form is not a syncretic one. the position of the verb in german we know that in italian, english and german, as in many other languages of the world, verbal forms can be either synthetic or periphrastic. the present tense in the examples above is a synthetic form, constituted by the verb plus a suffixal ending – mangi-a; eat-s; iss-t.6 a periphrastic form is constituted by a participle and an auxiliary. the participle can be invariant or have an inflectional ending, according to the properties of the specific language. the present perfect is typically a periphrastic form: italian ha mangiato (aux.3.sing part); english have eaten (aux.3.sing part); and german hat gegessen (aux.3.sing part). as can be seen, the glosses of the three forms are exactly the same, and the auxiliary is always have. however, word order does not always remain the one we see with the present tense. consider the following examples: (7) la ragazza ha mangiato una pera (italian) (8) the girl has eaten a pear (english) (9) das mädchen hat eine birne gegessen (german) in italian and english, the periphrastic form occupies the same position as the synthetic one, i.e. in between the subject and the object, whereas in armenian folia anglistika linguistics 14 german the auxiliary (hat) follows the subject, but the participle (gegessen) occurs sentence-finally. german therefore, raises an issue with respect to its classification according to its word order. if we consider as relevant the position of the auxiliary, we end up with svo; if on the contrary, we consider as crucial the position of the participle, we have an sov order. as illustrated in table 1, german as a matter of fact, is classified as a no dominant order language, given this kind of issues. however, this conclusion seems quite unsatisfactory, because it does not explain why german turns out to be different from italian and english, and why a periphrastic form exhibits a different word order with respect to a synthetic one. hence, a simple classification of the reciprocal order of subject, object and verb, constitutes an important starting point, but cannot be considered a sufficient account for the word order properties of a language. as a first consideration, note that even in italian and english it cannot be simply claimed that the periphrastic form ha mangiato and has eaten occupy the same slot as the syncretic verbal form. consider the following examples: (10) la ragazza ha certamente mangiato una pera (11) the girl has certainly eaten a pear example (9) above shows that in german the object (eine birne /a pear) can appear between the auxiliary and the participle. examples (10) and (11) show that in italian and english an adverb, in this case certainly, can appear in between, hence in all the languages discussed here the two parts of the present perfect can be separated by some sort of linguistic material. for this reason, it seems that the label verb for periphrastic forms is inadequate: it is necessary to distinguish between the two parts of the verbal expression: the auxiliary and the participle. the auxiliary conveys the temporal information, so that we can have a present perfect, as in the examples above, or a past perfect – had eaten, where had is a past verbal form – and in italian also a compound future, avrà mangiato (he will have eaten), were the auxiliary avrà (will have) appears with future morphology. the participle conveys the lexical linguistics armenian folia anglistika 15 information, i.e. it identifies the event the sentence is about. in the examples above, the event is an event of eating. conversely, when the verbal form is a synthetic one, both the temporal properties and the lexical ones are realized by the same word. more about german word order in german, and in other germanic languages as well, exhibits other interesting properties. the position of subject and object given in (9) can be inverted, maintaining the same meaning, yielding the following sentence: (12) die birne hat das mädchen gegessen the pear has the girl eaten the girl ate the pear the sentence can begin with an adverb as well, as in the following case: (13) gestern hat das mädchen die birne gegessen yesterday has the girl the pear eaten yesterday the girl ate the pear if an indirect object appears in the sentence, it can precede the auxiliary as well: (14) dem mädchen hat hans ein buch gegeben the girl.dat has hans a book. acc given hans gave a book to the girl hence, it seems that a variety of word orders are available in german. however, this does not mean that there are no constraints. the following orders are not available (i signal the non-availability of a certain order with a ‘*’):7 (15) *hat die birne das mädchen gegessen has the pear the girl eaten armenian folia anglistika linguistics 16 (16) *hat gegessen die birne das mädchen has eaten the pear the girl the verb cannot occupy the first position, with or without the participle after it. consider now the following examples, where the participle and the auxiliary are adjacent and appear at the end of the sentence: (17) *die birne das mädchen hat gegessen the pear the girl has eaten (18) *die birne das mädchen gegessen hat the pear the girl eaten has (19) *das mädchen die birne hat gegessen the girl the pear has eaten (20) *das mädchen die birne gegessen hat the girl the pear eaten has these sentences are all ungrammatical, in that the auxiliary cannot appear at the end of the sentence together with the participle, neither preceding it, nor following it. consider also that the reciprocal order of subject and object is irrelevant.8 finally, of the two parts constituting the verb, only the auxiliary can appear on the left, and not the participle: (21) * das mädchen gegessen die birne hat the girl eaten the pear has (22) * die birne gegessen das mädchen hat the pear eaten the girl has in these cases as well, the reciprocal order of subject and object is not relevant. linguists long ago proposed a generalization called verb second – v2.9 in all the cases judged as grammatical by native speakers, the temporalized part of the verb appears in the second position. this is true both for a synthetic verbal linguistics armenian folia anglistika 17 form, such as isst (eats), in sentence (6), and for the auxiliary in sentences (9) and (12)-(14), where items other than the subject – object, indirect object and adverb – appear in the first position. all other possibilities are ruled out, as shown in examples (15)-(22).10 following this reasoning, the supposed svo order of example (6) – das mädchen isst eine birne (the girl eats a pear) – turns out to be very different from the svo order of italian and english. in italian and english there is no v2 pattern in declarative sentences and the participle does not follow the object, as exemplified by the following examples: (23) *gianni ha la mela mangiato gianni has the apple eaten (24) john has eaten an apple (25) *john has an apple eaten on the contrary, (22) and (23) would be acceptable word order in german. however, with respect to the similarities between italian and english, there is still an important point. all germanic languages – even if with minor differences – share the verb second pattern, with the apparent exception of english, whereas romance languages do not. it is well-known that english in the course of history underwent the influence of romance, but one can wonder if english really is an exception to the general properties of germanic. in the next section i will briefly consider this issue.11 a closer look into word order in english i illustrated above that word order in english declarative sentences is the same as in the italian one. but what can be said about non-declaratives? traditional grammars of english often mention the so-called subject inversion rule: in some types of sentences the subject appears after the verb. for the sake of completeness, note also that in english, contrary to italian, in declarative sentences a definite subject, such as for instance a proper name, can never appear post-verbally, as shown in the following examples: 12 armenian folia anglistika linguistics 18 (26) ha telefonato gianni (italian) has called gianni gianni called (27) john called (28) *called john consider first word order in interrogative sentences, compared with the declarative one: (29) john has eaten a sandwich (30) what has john eaten? (31) john has given a book to mary (32) to whom has john given a book? (33) john has gone to london (34) where has john gone? in all the interrogative cases, the subject must appear after the auxiliary.13 when the verb of the corresponding declarative sentence is not a periphrastic form, an auxiliary is created – this is the phenomenon traditionally called do insertion: (35) john ate a sandwich (36) what did john eat? (37) john gave a book to mary (38) to whom did john give a book? (39) john went to london (40) where did john go? the verb in these cases is a periphrastic form, constituted by the auxiliary do followed by an infinitive. in all the interrogative cases listed above, the auxiliary does indeed occupy the second position and the pattern looks very similar to the one given for linguistics armenian folia anglistika 19 declarative sentences in german. the first position in fact is occupied by an interrogative item, expressing an object, an indirect object or an adverb, exactly as in the german cases, modulo the non-declarative status of the sentence. there are other kinds of sentences requiring subject inversion, as for instance sentences beginning with a negative item, as in the following cases: (41) never has john failed an examination (42) seldom has john failed an examination the examples in (41) and (42) have an emphatic flavor. concluding these remarks, it looks like there are indeed some cases of v2 in english as well, but only in certain cases. these phenomena have been called in the literature. most notably by see rizzi (1996) residual verb second phenomena, being vestigial of a previous stage of english exhibiting full v2. hence, even if english is classified as a svo language, on a par with italian, it still shows germanic-like features in its word order, such as the verb second constructions illustrated above. english and italian declarative sentences in this section i will briefly discuss the evidence provided above by introducing some theoretical notions. one of the problems at this point is to understand what english and german have in common, that is, why english interrogative sentences and german declarative ones share the same property of v2. in order to provide an answer to this question, it is necessary to introduce some linguistic theory concerning the syntactic structure of the sentence. syntax is the branch of linguistics dealing with word order phenomena and it rests on the basic assumption that a sentence is not just a sequence of words, but is organized in a structure. let us consider a sequence judged by a native speaker as a sentence belonging to her language, for instance, john sleeps. this sequence is not only a string composed of a noun (n) and a verb (v), but is much more, in that it is a armenian folia anglistika linguistics 20 predicative structure composed of subject, john, ad a predicate, sleeps. the same can be said of much longer and more complex sequences, such as, the boy i met yesterday is eating an apple in the garden. in this case as well, there is a predicative structure, where the subject is much longer and is constituted by the whole sequence the boy i met yesterday – including the noun boy, preceded by an article and followed by a relative clause – and the predicate is constituted by is eating an apple in the garden – including the verb, the object and a locative adverb. therefore, simplifying a quite complex issue, we can conclude that no matter how long a declarative sentence is, it is constituted by a subject and a predicate, and that the subject (usually) includes a noun and the predicate (usually) includes a verb. the subject and the predicate are phrases, or constituents. 14 to represent this generalization, the subject and the predicate are put into brackets and labeled noun phrase, np, and verb phrase, vp, respectively; their sequence gives rise to a sentence, s. hence, a declarative sentence can be represented by means of the following structure: (43) [s [np … n … ] [vp … v … ] ] the dots on the right and on the left of n and v signal that there can be other material inside the subject noun phrase and the verb phrase, besides the noun and the verb. therefore, according to this proposal, the example discussed above: the boy i met yesterday is eating an apple in the garden has the following structure: (44) [ s [np the boyn i met yesterday] [vp is sleepingvin the garden] ] the noun boy is called the head of the noun phrase and the verb sleep is the head of the verb phrase. this structure however, is not adequate to capture the phenomena illustrated above and should be made a little more complex. as linguistics armenian folia anglistika 21 pointed out earlier, in fact, the auxiliary and the verb cannot be simply labeled together as v, since they can be separated by linguistic material, and appear in non-contiguous positions in the sentence, both in italian, where they can be separated by adverbs (as can be the case in english as well) and in v2 constructions in german and english, where the auxiliary must occupy the second position in the sentence. the auxiliary, therefore, must be granted a certain degree of autonomy with respect to the participle. recall that the auxiliary expresses the temporal properties, which in the synthetic forms are realized by means of verbal morphology on the head v: love + past → lov-ed. hence, we can label the auxiliary as tense, assigning it to the category t. finite verbal forms are constituted by a temporal part and a lexical part. in the periphrastic cases, the two are realized as separate items: the temporal part is realized by the auxiliary and the lexical one by the participle. when the verbal form is synthetic, the temporal morpheme is attached to the lexical verb. summarizing, has eaten, i.e. auxiliary+participle, realizes t and v; loved, i.e. v+past, realizes v and t. let us consider first the forms with the auxiliary. from the discussion above, it follows that t cannot be realized together with v. the proposal in generative grammar is that t is an autonomous head, located on the left of the verb phrase. hence, the structure is the following: 15 (45) [ [np … n … ] [ t [vp … v … ]] the structure assigned to a sentence such as john has failed the examination, is therefore the following: (46) [ [np john ] [ hast [vp failedv the examination ] ] ] as can be seen in (45) and (46), the auxiliary is labeled t and its constituent includes the verb phrase. importantly, t and v do not share the same position in the structure, since t appears on the left of the verb phrase. in this way, the apparent discontinuity observed in sentences (10) and (11) above, is not armenian folia anglistika linguistics 22 surprising any more. in fact, by means of this representation, the auxiliary and the participle can be separated by an adverb, as for instance in a sentence such as: john has certainly failed the examination. this way, at least part of the anomalies observed above, can be accounted for. when the verbal form is synthetic, the complex verb + t occupies the position t, instead of v. i provide here an italian example: (47) gianni mangiava un panino gianni eat.past a sandwich gianni was eating a sandwich the form mangiava (ate) can be decomposed in mangia-va (eat+ past) and is represented as follows:16 (48) [ [np gianni ] [ mangia-va v+t [vp un panino ] ] ] in this case, the whole verb, which includes t, appears on the left of the verb phrase. to conclude this brief section, it is possible to say that the order svo observed in italian and english is actually better represented as the underlying order subject tense – verb object, where tense and verb can be bound together, when the verbal form is a synthetic one. german verb second let’s analyze again the german sentences not beginning with a subject, as the one in (12), reproduced here for simplicity: (49) die birne hat das mädchen gegessen the pear has the girl eaten the girl ate the pear in this case, the subject, das mädchen, follows the auxiliary, whereas according to the structure provided above in (45), it should precede it. in that linguistics armenian folia anglistika 23 structure there is actually no way of locating the various items, as seen in (49). recall also that it is not just the object which can precede the auxiliary, but whatever other phrase – an indirect object and an adverb – could as well. as a first consideration, observe that the participle always appears at the end of the sentence. hence, if the participle belongs to category v, then, according to the language classification illustrated in section 1, german should be a subject – object – verb language, in spite of the fact that we see sentences like hans isst einen apfel (hans eats an apple), where the verb precedes the object. as proposed above, this sentence as well can be analyzed as a case of v2, where the phrase preceding the temporalized verb in second position happens to be the subject. in order to assign a structure to example (49), it is necessary to consider what happens in embedded clauses. german introduces embedded clauses, for instance clauses complements of a saying verb, with the particle dass, which is roughly equivalent to english that. these particles are called complementizers and labeled c. consider the following example: (50) hans sagte, dass marie einen apfel gegessen hat hans said that marie an apple eaten has hans said that marie ate an apple in this example, there is a main clause has sagte (hans said) followed by the complementizer dass (that) and a subordinate clause, exhibiting the order subject object verb. hence, no verb second takes place in this case. i will not discuss here the position of the auxiliary in the embedded clause, since it would lead us too far away from the present discussion. i only want to point out that the order in the subordinate clause changes when the complementizer is absent. consider the following example: (51) hans sagte marie hat einen apfel gegessen hans said marie has an apple eaten hans said that marie ate an apple armenian folia anglistika linguistics 24 in this case, the order of the subordinate clause is the one found in main clauses: marie hat einen apfel gegessen (marie has an apple eaten). these sentences exhibit the v2 pattern, as shown by the following example: (52) hans sagte einen apfel hat marie gegessen hans said an apple has marie eaten hans said that marie ate an apple the order of the embedded clause in (51) is subject – auxiliary – object – participle, which is the same one as the one in example (9) above. the order in example (52) is object – auxiliary – subject – participle, which is the same as the one of example (12). hence, the generalization is the following: german subordinate clauses are verb final, when the complementizer dass (that) is present, otherwise they follow the verb second pattern. structurally, the complementizer and v2 are in complementary distribution: embedded sentences show either the one or the other, contrasting with simple sentences, where v2 is always obligatory. in other words, dass and the temporalized verb, either the full verb, or the auxiliary, are in complementary distribution. according to the literature on the topic, this happens because they compete for the same structural position, which cannot be filled twice. this principle can be formally stated as follows:17 (53) if x and y are in complementary distribution, they occupy the same position in the structure. going back to the structure to be assigned to v2 clauses, given (53), we can conclude that the auxiliary – i.e., more abstractly, tense – in v2 sentence occupies the same position as the complementizer – dass (that). in main clauses, we do not see a complementizer, but the hypothesis is that the same holds in those cases as well. it is clear, as argued in the literature, or instance by rizzi (1997), that the position of the complementizer dass in subordinate clauses lies externally to the linguistics armenian folia anglistika 25 predicative structure, since it precedes all the arguments, the subject included. the syntactic area on the left of the subject is usually called the left periphery of the clause. when the clause is a subordinate one, the complementizer appears in this position, or, otherwise, the temporalized verb – realized as an auxiliary, in the case of periphrastic verbal forms – appears there. the verb in v2 position is preceded by a phrase, and this is an obligatory property, as illustrated by the examples discussed above. therefore, we can conclude that german has indeed a dominant word order: german is a sov language, where verb second applies obligatorily in all cases (with the exception of the clauses introduced by a complementizer). this is a welcome conclusion, since it provides an explanation for the observed word order variations. the structure to be assigned to v2 clauses in german is therefore the following (where s stands for sentence): (54) [ xp t [s [np … n … ] [ [vp xp v ] t ] the auxiliary originates in final position, and ends up in the left periphery, preceded by a phrase, in this case an object originating inside the vp: (55) [einen apfel hat[s [np das mädchen] [ [vp einen apfel gegessen] hat]]] an apple has the girl eaten when the sentence is a subordinate one, if the left periphery is occupied by dass, no v2 is possible, because dass and hat compete for the same position. hence, the non-v2 structure is the following one: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 26 (56) … [ dass [s [np das mädchen ] [ [vp einen apfel gegessen ] hat ] ] ] that the girl an apple eaten has english interrogative clauses as illustrated above, in section 5, english exhibits residual verb second phenomena in interrogative clauses. the hypothesis is that the structure is exactly identical to the one provided above, with the only difference that the xp is an interrogative item. the structure for english is the following one (note that in english tense appears on the left of vp, and not on the right as in german. int stands for interrogative): (57) [ int t [s [np … n … ] [ t [vp v ] ] (58) [ what has [s [np john ] [ has [vp eaten ] ] the same structure is available in case of initial negation, or in the other cases triggering v2. conclusion according to the literature on the issue, v2 is characteristic of the germanic languages, with modern english having only a residual form of v2. even if v2 is a relatively rare phenomenon among the languages of the world, it is certainly not limited to a single language group. as pointed out by holmberg (2015), among the modern romance languages, only some of the rhaetoromance languages exhibit the v2 properties. however, v2 was characteristic of many, or even all, medieval romance languages. among the modern celtic languages, we find breton, but it was earlier more widespread at least among the brythonic celtic languages. among the finno-ugric languages, estonian shows v2. among the slavic languages, sorbian is reported to have v2. the indo-aryan language kashmiri is a v2 language, as are two dialects of himachali, also indo-aryan and adjacent to kashmiri. interestingly, word order linguistics armenian folia anglistika 27 phenomena in all these languages can be accounted for by means of the proposals illustrated above. some of these languages, like german, are basically sov and other ones, like english are svo; v2 combines with the basic word order to give rise to a variety of observable word orders. the simple theoretical apparatus presented in this work permits to account for several complex cases, tracing back some odd and unexplained phenomena, such as for instance word order variations in main and subordinate clauses in german and subject inversion in english, to more general properties. this is a welcome result because it permits us to provide a more accurate description and classification and, more importantly, to reduce apparently unpredictable differences among languages to predictable patterns. also, it seems to me that the phenomena i just discussed provide a clear example of the interaction between the cultural nature of language and its cognitive foundations. languages do not vary indiscriminately, but along precise dimensions, which can be captured both investigating their diachronic properties, i.e. their cultural heritage, and their synchronic ones. under this perspective, we can say that modern english has subject inversion, i.e. residual verb second, because from a diachronic point of view, on one side, it is a germanic language, and, on the other, it underwent strong influences from romance, as pointed out by roberts (1993). however, the rules of grammar concerning verb second phenomena are very general and hold in a variety of languages, even if typologically they are very far from the germanic ones. future research on word order and verb second phenomena should proceed along these lines, investigating both the diachronic evolution of languages and their synchronic properties. moreover, the various word orders should also be investigated with respect to their informational value in relation with the context. it is in fact a very general observation that word order, together with intonation, signals different informational properties with respect to the new or given status of the various part of the sentence. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 28 notes: 1. on linguistic typology, cf. among the others greenberg (1963), comrie (1989), dryer and haspelmath, (2013). for a discussion of word order universals in a generative framework, see among the others cinque (1999). 2. see dryer (2013, http://wals.info/chapter/81 [accessed on 2019-08-29]. 3. on word order in armenian in a generative framework, see giorgi and haroutyunian (2016). 4. in this work, i am not considering the contribution of the participle to the meaning of the verbal form. the participle adds an aspectual value, which must be combined with the aspectual one. on the notion of aspect, see comrie (1976) and giorgi and pianesi (1997), for the properties of temporal forms in embedded clauses, see giorgi (2010). also, i am disregarding the aspectual value of the present tense in english. in order to be equivalent in meaning to the italian form, the english verb in this case should appear as a progressive periphrasis: is eating. for the sake of the argument, however, i will use the present tense in english as well. 5. irrelevantly, a minimal context is always required, in that for instance, the proper name john must refer to an individual identifiable both by the speaker and the addressee. this shared knowledge is often called common ground. 6. i am not taking into account here the possible irregularities of the verbal inflection, because they are not relevant for the purposes of the present discussion. hence a verbal form like ate, is taken to be eat + past, not differently from any other regular verb. 7. in generative grammar the symbol ‘*’ is used to signal that a certain string is not considered a good sentence by a native speaker, i.e. that the speaker does not recognize the string as a sentence belonging to her language. this is a grammaticality judgment by the speaker on the form of the sentence, independently of its comprehensibility, namely: ‘this is not how it is said’. accordingly, the sequence is identified as ungrammatical. 8. in section 6.2 i will go back to sentences (18) and (20), since this order is actually admitted in subordinate clauses. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 29 9. see den besten (1983). see also holmberg (2015) for a discussion of the state of the art on this issue. 10. in the grammatical tradition of german, these regularities had obviously been observed. as a matter of fact, the terms vorfeld, mittelfeld, nachfeld refer respectively: to the items that precede the temporalized verb, i.e. the auxiliary, to the part of the sentence between the auxiliary and the participle and to the items following the participle, if there are any. 11. it is also well-known that word order in romance languages has not always been the same. for instance, old italian was a v2 language, see poletto (2014). 12. in english, an indefinite subject can appear post-verbally in certain constructions: i. there arrived three men however, a discussion of the properties of indefinites in english lies beyond the limits of this work. note also that the sentence in (28) could not be rescued by the insertion of a preverbal expletive pronoun: ii. *it/there called john in some cases, the item there, when corresponding to a locative interpretation, can be accompanied by an inverted subject: iii. here is your sandwich! the sentence in (iii) can assimilated to the other cases i am discussing in this section. 13. note that in italian the subject can appear post-verbally, as in (26), but cannot appear in between the auxiliary and the participle, as is the case in english: i. *ha gianni telefonato (it.) has gianni called therefore, english so-called subject inversion is a different phenomenon with respect to the post-verbal subject in italian and other romance languages. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 30 14. in the text i am simplifying a complex situation. even if most sentences have nominal subjects, there are some cases where the subject can be nonnominal, as in the following italian case: i. che maria sia partita preoccupa gianni that maria left worries gianni che maria sia partita (that maria left) is the subject of the sentence and is itself a sentence. moreover, in some languages, such as for instance latin, it is possible to have sentences without an explicit verbal form: ii. caesar imperator caesar emperor ‘caesar is the emperor’ in these cases the interpretation of the copula is always as a present tense. 15. as i will briefly point out in the text, t is on the right of the vp in german, but this property only shows up in subordinate clauses. consequently, the structure in (45) is appropriate for english, but should look as follows in german: i. [ [np … n … ] [ [vp … v … ] t ] 16. i am disregarding here several theoretical and technical points, for the sake of simplicity. the different positions of the verb when syncretic and periphrastic have been widely discussed in the literature. for a comparison between germanic and romance, see roberts (1993). 17. this proposal was discussed for the first time by den besten (1983). see also holmberg and platzack (1995) and holmberg (2015) for a review of the current literature. references: 1. besten, d.h. (1983) on the interaction of root transformations and lexical deletive rules. // on the formal nature of the westgermania / ed. by w. abraham. pp. 47–131. amsterdam: john benjamins. 2. chosmky, n. (1995) the minimalist program. cambridge ma: mit press. 3. chomsky, n. (2001) derivation by phase. // ken hale: a life in language. / ed. by m. kenstowicz. 1-52. cambridge, ma: mit press. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 31 4. cinque, g. (1999) adverbs and functional heads: a cross-linguistic perspective. new york: oup. 5. comrie, b. (1976) aspect: an introduction to the study of aspect and related problems. cambridge: cup. 6. comrie, b. (1989) language universals and linguistic typology. oxford: blackwell. 7. comrie, b; dryer, m.; gil, d.; haspelmath, m. (2013) introduction. // the world atlas of language structures online. / ed. by m. dryer, and m. haspelmath, leipzig: max planck institute for evolutionary anthropology. available at: <http://wals.info/chapter/s1> [accessed august 2019]. 8. dreyer, m. and m. haspelmath, (eds.) (2013) the world atlas of language structures online. leipzig: max planck institute for evolutionary anthropology. available at: <http://wals.info> [accessed august 2019]. 9. dreyer, m. (2013) order of subject, object and verb. // the world atlas of language structures online. / ed. by m. dryer, and m. haspelmath, leipzig: max planck institute for evolutionary anthropology. available at: <http://wals.info/chapter/81> [accessed august 2019]. 10. giorgi, a. and pianesi, f. (1997) tense and aspect: from semantics to morphosyntax, new york: oup. 11. giorgi, a. (2010) about the speaker: towards a syntax of indexicality, oxford: oup. 12. giorgi, a. and haroutyunian, s. (2016) word order and information structure in modern eastern armenian. // journal of the society for armenian studies. vol. 25, pp. 185-200. 13. greenberg, j. (ed.) (1963) universals of language, cambridge ma, mit press. 14. holmberg, a. and platzack, c. (1995) the role of inflection in scandinavian syntax. new york: oup. 15. holmberg, a. (2015) verb second. // syntax—theory and analysis. an international handbook. / ed. by t. kiss & a. alexiadou. vol. 1. pp. 242– 283. berlin: mouton de gruyter. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 32 16. poletto, c. (2014) word order in old italian. new york: oup. 17. rizzi, l. (1996) residual verb second and the wh-criterion. // parameters and functional heads: essays in comparative syntax, pp. 62–90. / ed. by a. belletti and l. rizzi․ oxford: oup. 18. rizzi, l. (1997) the fine structure of the left periphery. // elements of grammar: handbook of generative syntax. pp. 281–337. / ed. by l. haegeman. dordrecht: kluwer. 19. roberts, i. (1993) verbs and diachronic syntax: a comparative history on english and french. dordrecht: kluwer. համեմատական մեթոդը համաժամանակյա լեզվաբանության մեջ. շարադասություն սույն հոդվածում ներկայացվում է համեմատական մեթոդի կիրառությունը իտալերենի, անգլերենի և գերմաներենի շարադասության քննության մեջ: ըստ հոդվածագրի՝ շարադասությունների համեմատությունը պահանջում է ամուր տեսական հիմք` որոշակի եզրակացությունների հանգելու համար: թեև բոլոր նշված լեզուներում էլ առկա է ենթակաստորոգյալ-խնդիր կաղապարը, սակայն, քննությունը բացահայտում է, որ անգլերենում և իտալերենում, ի տարբերություն գերմաներենի, գերակայում է ենթակա-խնդիր-ստորոգյալ կաղապարը: received by the editorial board 08.09.2019 recommended for publication by the reviewers 1.10.19 accepted for print 30.01.2020 << /ascii85encodepages false /allowtransparency false /autopositionepsfiles true /autorotatepages /none /binding /left /calgrayprofile (dot gain 15%) /calrgbprofile () /calcmykprofile (iso coated v2 \050eci\051) /srgbprofile (srgb 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(www.heidelberg.com) >> /namespace [ (adobe) (common) (1.0) ] /othernamespaces [ << /asreaderspreads false /cropimagestoframes true /errorcontrol /warnandcontinue /flattenerignorespreadoverrides false /includeguidesgrids false /includenonprinting false /includeslug false /namespace [ (adobe) (indesign) (4.0) ] /omitplacedbitmaps false /omitplacedeps false /omitplacedpdf false /simulateoverprint /legacy >> << /addbleedmarks false /addcolorbars false /addcropmarks false /addpageinfo false /addregmarks false /convertcolors /converttocmyk /destinationprofilename () /destinationprofileselector /documentcmyk /downsample16bitimages true /flattenerpreset << /presetselector /mediumresolution >> /formelements false /generatestructure false /includebookmarks false /includehyperlinks false /includeinteractive false /includelayers false /includeprofiles false /multimediahandling /useobjectsettings /namespace [ (adobe) (creativesuite) (2.0) ] /pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /documentcmyk /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /usedocumentprofile /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2540 2540] /pagesize [595.276 841.890] >> setpagedevice maket 2012 1-2:layout 1.qxd emotions in the teaching/learning process gayane shmavonyan state engineering university of armenia lili karapetyan yerevan state university e motions play a great role in our daily life, as well as in the teaching processwhich is closely connected with the emotional sphere of life since teaching is an emotional practice involving emotional understanding, as well as emotional labor. being in the centre of the teaching process, emotions should be paid due attention to in the language classroom since they lead to a better understanding of classroom interactions and more satisfying educational experiences for both language teachers and students.1 the paper explores the role and significance of students’ and teachers’ emotions in language teaching and learning, as well as the emotional factors that influence the teaching/learning process. it would be reasonable to first turn to the issue of emotional intelligence (ei), which refers to the ability to perceive, control and evaluate emotions. some researchers suggest that emotional intelligence can be learned and strengthened, while others claim it is an inborn characteristic. since 1990, peter salovey and john d. mayer have been the leading researchers on emotional intelligence. in their influential article “emotional intelligence”(1990), they defined emotional intelligence as “the subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.” salovey and mayer proposed a model that identified four different factors of emotional intelligence: 1. perceiving emotions: the first step in understanding emotions is to accurately perceive them. in many cases, this might involve understanding nonverbal signals such as body language and facial expressions. 2. reasoning with emotions: the next step involves using emotions to promote thinking and cognitive activity. emotions help prioritize what we pay attention and react to; we respond emotionally to things that pay our attention. 3. understanding emotions: the emotions that we perceive can carry a wide variety of meanings. if someone is expressing angry emotions, the observer must interpret the cause of their anger and what it might mean. 4. managing emotions: the ability to manage emotions effectively is a key part of emotional intelligence. regulating emotions, responding appropriately and responding to the emotions of others are all important aspects of emotional management. according to salovey and mayer, the above mentioned four branches of the model are “arranged from more basic psychological processes to higher, more psychologically integrated processes.” “your eq is the level of your ability to understand other people, what motivates them armenian folia anglistikamethodology 99 and how to work cooperatively with them,” says howard gardner (2007), the influential harvard theorist. for most people, emotional intelligence (eq) is more important than the common intelligence (iq) in attaining success in their lives and careers. as individuals our own success and the success of the profession today depend on our ability to read other people’s signals and react appropriately to them. therefore, each one of us must develop the emotional intelligence skills required to better understand, empathize and negotiate with other people. otherwise, success will elude us in our lives and careers. salovey and mayer proposed a model that identified four different factors of emotional intelligence (salovey, mayer 1990): 1. self-awareness. the ability to recognize an emotion as it “happens” is the key to the eq. developing self-awareness requires tuning in to true feelings. if emotions are evaluated, they can be managed. the major elements of self-awareness are: • emotional awareness, i.e. the ability to recognize one’s own emotions and their effects. • self-confidence, i.e. the sureness about one’s self-worth and capabilities. 2. self-regulation. people often have little control over themselves when they experience emotions. they can, however, have some say in how long an emotion will last by using a number of techniques to alleviate negative emotions such as anger, anxiety or depression. a few of these techniques include recasting a situation in a more positive light, taking a long walk and meditation or prayer. self-regulation involves: • self-control: managing disruptive impulses. • trustworthiness: maintaining standards of honesty and integrity. • conscientiousness: taking responsibility for your own performance. • adaptability: handling change with flexibility. • innovation: being open to new ideas. 3. motivation. motivation for any achievement requires clear goals and a positive attitude. although one may have a predisposition to either a positive or a negative attitude, he/she can with effort and practice learn to think more positively. if one catches negative thoughts as they occur, he/she can reframe them in more positive terms—which will help to achieve one’s goals. motivation is made up of the following components: • achievement drive: the constant striving to improve or to meet a standard of excellence. • commitment: aligning with the goals of the group or organization. • initiative: being ready to act on opportunities. • optimism: pursuing goals persistently despite obstacles and setbacks. 4. empathy. the more skillful one is at discerning the feelings behind others’ signal, the better he/she can control the signals he/she sends. an empathetic person excels at: • developing themselves: sensing progress and bolstering the abilities. • leveraging diversity: cultivating opportunities through diverse people. • reading a group’s emotional currents and power relationships. • understanding others: discerning the feelings behind the needs and wants of others. 5. social skills. the development of good interpersonal skills is tantamount to success in life and career. in today’s cyberculture all professionals can have immediate access armenian folia anglistika methodology 100 to technical knowledge via computers. thus, skills are even more important now because one must possess a high eq to better understand, empathize and negotiate with others. among the most useful skills are: • influence: achieving effective persuasion tactics. • communication: sending clear messages. • leadership: inspiring and guiding groups and people. • initiating or managing change. • understanding, negotiating and resolving disagreements. • collaboration and cooperation: working with others toward shared goals. the eq theory suggests that success in education requires both academic ability and equivalent social skills. in education it applies to the institution, teachers and students through promoting academic success while reducing anxiety and negative feelings during the learning process. thus, emotional intelligence should be dealt with from three perspectives: the teacher’s, the learner’s and that of the educational institution. at an institutional level, the emphasis is on creating an environment conducive to raising students’ eq, much of which involves creating a sense of identity, safety and value. in this way, institutions and teachers are responsible for fostering students’ attachment to the educational establishment, facilitating the formation of friendships, reducingstress, creating a free-and-easy learning environment, and so on. in a communicative language teaching classroom support and co-operation between learners is essential. despite this, language learners are often reluctant to co-operate, as a result of repressed fear, anxiety and anger rather than linguistic inability, and are unlikely to learn much in a student-centered classroom. emotions are undoubtedly connected with good (professional) teaching, which involves positive emotions. it is not just a matter of knowing one’s subject perfectly, being efficient or learning all the techniques. good teachers are emotional, passionate beings who connect with their students creatively, with great enjoyment and enthusiasm. the teaching process must be started with knowledge and feeling about the students, with understanding about what would be likely to excite them. good teachers must have enthusiasm about ideas, topics, materials, methods used in the teaching process. the feeling of freedom and improvisation are also significant factors. teachers must talk about their ideas, practice and experiences of planning with their colleagues. thus, the teacher needs to focus on areas of language used to express emotions, and on classroom techniques which will reduce tension and produce better group dynamics. emotional intelligence can best be developed through some confidence-building activities promoting communication in the classroom: • the variety of activities allows for different approaches and varied learning styles. • warm-up activities help students to get to know each other better. • discussion encourages the sharing of opinions and knowledge. • role-plays related to real-life situations help students reveal themselves. • group work activities promote cooperation among learners. • giving feedback to students’ performance gives them an opportunity to change. • assessment allows the positive aspects of the students’ performance to be assessed and rewarded. armenian folia anglistikamethodology 101 being “emotionally intelligent” is completely different from having a cheerful emotional character. emotional intelligence, if it is worth anything, does not point towards the world of pleasantness and success. it helps young people get ready to cope well with the full rainbow of emotions that inevitably accompany the vicissitudes of life. furthering emotional intelligence is an honorable ambition for any lecturer, but a hard one to fulfill. the most difficult task for the teacher in teaching the language of emotions is persuading learners to state their feelings directly. the language teacher should encourage learners to use the simple language of emotions in terms of functions. so the students should be taught expressions labeling feelings (i feel, i am impatient/angry/frightened), expressing empathy (i understand/accept/realize), suggestion (i/you had better/could/might), positive feelings (i’d feel better if, i am delighted), stating wants and needs (i/you need/want/would like to), etc. there is also language to be avoided, mainly to do with the functions of giving commands and strong advice (i/you should/ought to), obligation (i/you must/have to) and blaming (you’re wrong/you’re to blame). being emotionally literate – able to talk fluently about emotions – is very different from being emotionally sensitive. helping young people develop their emotional vocabulary is a worthwhile thing to do but it may not contribute a great deal to their all-round emotional intelligence. by all means young people should be offered opportunities to explore their feelings. many cultures do not see it as a good thing for a person to disclose the inner life, especially to people they do not know very well. research shows that talking about emotions in a soulless way can do young people more harm than good. how you deal with your own emotions in front of a class, and how open you are about your emotional ups and downs, probably have greater impact (for good or ill) on students’ development than set-piece discussions and activities. a lecturer who announces cheerfully i’m in a bad mood today, so you’d better watch out… and such models may be a better emotional intelligence educator than one who insists on an earnest discussion, packed with unacknowledged moralizing messages, about an earlier playground dispute. as far as possible, teachers should respond to young people’s emotions in a way that acknowledges them without being emotionally reactive, keeping in mind that everyone has their limits of tolerance. according to andy hargreaves (1998), the main points how emotions are represented in teacher’s relationship with their students are the following: 1. teaching is an emotion practice, 2. teaching and learning involve emotional understanding, 3. teaching is a form of emotional labor, 4. teacher’s emotions are inseparable from their moral purposes and their ability to achieve those purposes. the conclusion is: lecturers need to take care that conversations aimed at developing emotional literacy genuinely allow students to engage and express their emotions, not just talk about them. “anyone can become angry, that is easy. but to be angry with the armenian folia anglistika methodology 102 right person to the right degree, at the right time for the right purpose and in the right way, that is not easy” (aristotle). notes: 1. the latin origin of the word emotion is emovere, meaning to move out, to stir up. when people are emotional they are moved by their feelings. in her paper “positive affect” alice isen (2000) claims that positive affect has a powerful and facilitating effect on thinking, creativity, decision making and risk taking. positive emotions can bring about significant changes in behavior and thinking. references: 1. cherry, k. (2005) whatis emotional intelligence, definitions, history, and measures of emotional intelligence. about.com guide. 2. gardner, h. (2007) what is emotional intelligence. boston: bup. 3. hargreaves, a. (1998) the emotional practice of teaching. // international centre for educational change, ontario institute for studies in education of the university of toronto. vol.14. toronto, ontario, canada: utp. 4. isen, a. (2000) positive affect. // handbook of cognition and affect. / ed. by t. & m.j. power. new york: wiley. 5. oatley, k. & jenkins, j.m. (1996) understanding emotions. oxford: blackwell publishers. 6. salovey, p.; mayer, j. (1990) emotional intelligence. yale: yale university press. ¼·³óùáõýùý»ñç ¹»ñá ¹³ë³í³ý¹ù³ý ·áñíáýã³óáõù ðá¹í³íáõù ùýýáõãû³ý ¿ ³éýíáõù ½·³óùáõýùý»ñç ¹»ñý áõ ýß³ý³ïáõãûáõýá ¹³ë³í³ý¹ù³ý ·áñíáýã³óáõù: èçý»éáí áõëáõùý³ï³ý ·áñíáýã³óç μ³õï³óáõóçã ù³ë, ñáõ½³ ï³ý ·áñíáýý»ñá ï³ñáõ »ý ýå³ëï»é ï³ù ëáãáý¹áï»é ³ß³ï»ñïý»ñç ·çï»éçùý»ñç ó»éùμ»ñù³ýý áõ ½³ñ·³óù³ýá, ëï»õí³·áñí³ï³ý ùï³íáõáõãû³ý ó¨³ íáñù³ýá, çýãå»ë ý³¨ éë³ñ³ý³ûçý ñ³ù³·áñí³ïóáõãû³ý çñ³ï³ý³óù³ýá: àõëïç, ñ³ñï ¿, áñ áõëáõóçãý»ñý ³í»éç ù»í áõß³¹ñáõãû³ý ³ñå³ý³óý»ý çýãå»ë çñ»ýó ë»÷³ ï³ý, ³ûýå»ë ¿é çñ»ýó ³ß³ï»ñïý»ñç ½·³óùáõýùý»ñç ï³é³í³ñù³ýá: ðá¹í³íáõù ³é³ç³ñïíáõù »ý áñáß ù³ñï³í³ñáõãûáõýý»ñ, áñáýù ïýå³ëï»ý ¹ñ³ï³ý ñáõû½» ñç ëã³ýù³ýá: armenian folia anglistikamethodology 103 maket 2011-2:layout 1.qxd logic puzzles as mental gymnastics for lsat preparation marina karapetyan yerevan state university in recent years a new standardized test has been administered in armenia to evalu-ate law school applicants. the lsat (law school admission test) has been used in the usa, canada and australia since 1991. it tests logical and verbal reasoning, as well as reading comprehension skills. it is designed especially to measure a candidate’s ability to think logically and draw logical conclusions from facts and premises. the test consists of several sections, of which the analytical and logical reasoning sections seem most unfamiliar to armenian students and hence frightening. this research is aimed at exploring amusing and learner-friendly ways of fostering critical thinking skills and attention to detail as basic skills for the analytical reasoning questions of the lsat. the method suggested here is through logic games, with a focus on their specific type commonly referred to as logic grid puzzles. for one thing, this logic game is perceived as an enjoyable leisure activity, a kind of mental gymnastics, a warm-up in terms of both english proficiency and principles of reasoning and drawing conclusions. moreover, it ranges from easy to more challenging types, which can provide a good basis for beginners. what is a logic puzzle and what purpose does it serve? a logic puzzle can be defined as a riddle that requires deductive reasoning. to put it simply, it is a test of our ability to think clearly. a typical puzzle has a short introduction, which sets the situation and presents the problem as well as provides some clues to help deduce the solution. for example, you might be told that four people each built a house in a different part of a town in a different month of the year, and the task would be to match up each person’s name with the type of housing, the part of the town and the month when the house was built. each option is used only once. each puzzle has only one possible solution and can be solved using simple logical processes. however, few people can solve logic puzzles “in mind”; most people record the information deduced in the so-called solving grid, which helps them clearly see the situation and make further deductions. the grid allows you to cross-reference every possible option in the scenario. there are two kinds of grids: the “crosshatch” grid and the “fillin” grid. which is more useful depends on each particular puzzle. very often, both can be effective. here’s the crosshatch grid with a very simple puzzle scenario:1 four babies were all born within an hour of one another at our local hospital. each baby was born at a different time (7:00, 7:15, 7:30, and 7:45) that evening, and the ward supervisor came around the next day to take a snapshot of each of the happy mothers (dot, janis, serena, and vicky) with her newborn (two boys named aidan and travis, and two girls named colleen and reba). armenian folia anglistika methodology 106 you fill in all the squares in the grid. true assertions can be represented by a dot, while false assertions can be represented by an x. if you know from the clues, for example, that serena’s son was born at 7:30, you can add a dot in the box where the serena column and 7:30 row meet. similarly, if the clues tell you that vicky gave birth to reba at some point after colleen was born, you can cross out both the options that reba was the first child to be born that evening and that colleen was the last, and consequently, the option that vicky gave birth to reba at 7:00. you continue doing this for every clue until you have filled the board with enough x’s and o’s to make a final deduction. the logic is this: if a = b, and b = c, then a must equal c. in the same way, if a = b, and b =/= d, then a cannot equal d. that is, if vicky = reba and if reba =/= 7:00, then vicky =/= 7:00 (although this option was automatically eliminated when we marked the hour serena’s baby was born. below is a sample fill-in grid: as can be seen, the crosshatch grid gives more opportunity for eliminating possibilities; however, the fill-in grid can be useful for solving bigger and more challenging puzzles when most deductions have already been recorded and the puzzler needs to arrange conclusions in a more orderly manner. the process of deductive reasoning can be rather complex. conclusions are obtained step by step from each clue, with each step leading to a new claim. the claims are the result of an application of valid arguments to the clues or to previously formed claims. that is, each new conclusion becomes a kind of premise for further conclusions. thus the clues (or premises) can be considered as a basis for making deductions. if you understand the clues clearly and follow them, you should make valid arguments, and, consequently, valid conclusions. the first thing to do in solving a logic grid puzzle is to read the introduction and clues carefully, and make sure you understand what you are to figure out. the main skills required for solving small logic puzzles consist of natural language understanding and simple logical reasoning. quite often, some of the clues can be contained in the introduction. for example, the introduction to the puzzle about the newborn babies above might tell you that of the four babies, two are girls (named colleen and reba) and two are boys armenian folia anglistikamethodology 107 source: dell logic puzzles, 2003: 6 dot janis serena 7:30 vicky reba (aidan and travis). this valuable information rules out colleen and reba as serena’s baby, as clue 1 says: “serena’s son was born at 7:30”. it also becomes obvious that neither of the girls was born at 7:30. let us now explore the structure and nature of the lsat analytical reasoning section and see how logic grid puzzles are related to it and how they could help foster the skills required for this section. the purpose of the analytical reasoning section is to establish how well a law school applicant understands complex relationships between a wide range of objects, places, people or events, and demonstrates the ability to combine them to make valid deductions. this section contains four problems, or games, with a group of four to eight questions related to each game. a game has an introduction, which tells you what is involved and what must be done (for instance, clarence is organizing his file drawers. he wants to put all of his notes from five economics classes – a, b, c, d, e – in the chronological order in which he took the classes), and several rules or conditions to govern the game. the rules are mainly similar to the clues in a logic grid puzzle. some are straightforward, others are somewhat ambiguous and it is only possible to make a deduction by combining two or more rules. in addition, there is a type of rules specific to the lsat – the socalled hypothetical rules that are often merged with the questions. such rules are worded as “if-then” conditionals. for example: if class a was the fourth class that clarence took (antecedent), then which one of the following statements must be true (consequent)? the following is an example of a more complex hypothetical rule: if clarence took class c first, and class e third, which class did he take fourth? as can be seen, the rule contains more than just one premise. a hypothetical rule only applies to the question in which it appears. the other questions in the group are not affected. in fact, the setups and tasks for logic grid puzzles and the lsat games are very much alike. the former usually introduce a scenario and then ask to make certain deductions based on a list of clues. similarly, the latter have an introduction, a set of rules to help figure things out and individual questions related to the setup. both assignments are based on deductive guesses and can be worked out by using a solving grid to record inferences. although the principles of solving the two types of activities are similar, the questions in the lsat games are more precise than the ones in logic grid puzzles. while a logic puzzle may ask you simply to match, group or put things in order, an analytical game may tell you to identify an acceptable order from among multiple choice answers, or to select the true or the false option, or to give a complete and accurate list of something, etc. in both activities, the rules (clues) are the reasons or justifications for a claim or a conclusion. there is a subtle difference, however. in the lsat, and in logic science at large, one premise supplements another to result in a valid conclusion. on the contrary, in a logic grid puzzle, each clue can be an independent premise that supports a conclusion, though sometimes you need to look at two clues collectively to see what can be ruled out and what belongs together. as was already stated, the principal skills required for both types of activities are armenian folia anglistika methodology 108 sequencing, grouping and matching sets of things, or a combination of these skills. another common skill is sketching, that is the ability to outline or summarize the main ideas to assist in reaching a solution. sketching proves especially useful in the conditions of time pressure. while it is not the case with logic grid puzzles, which you do for fun at leisure, time pressure is always an issue on the test (less than 10 minutes can be spent on each problem). the above mentioned solving grid is only one kind of sketching, but one can work out simpler and clearer sketches as well, just to help keep the initial data and new deductions in mind and thus handle a considerable amount of information. on the lsat games, you may even be urged to make individual diagrams for each question because of the hypothetical form of the questions. in such a case, you need a less time-consuming way to organize information. the following is an example of an easy diagram telling there are five products (p) to be presented by a different one of five salespeople s and that two of the presentations should take place on monday, one on tuesday, and the last two on wednesday.2 mon tues wed s1 : p1 s3 : p3 s4 : p 4 s2 : p2 s5 : p5 the above description of the lsat games and logic grid puzzles confirms the idea that the two kinds of activities differ in some points and should not be equated. although there is a lot in common between the two, as we stated before, it is necessary to keep in mind that logic puzzles cannot be the only activity to prepare for the analytical reasoning section of the lsat. they can only be an excellent springboard for proceeding to the lsat games. in fact, they give test-takers a solid intuitive grasp of the logical structure and develop various reasoning skills, including an ability to identify the most basic parts of an argument – premises and conclusions, an ability to perform a critical analysis, as well as comprehend, evaluate and complete a range of arguments, an ability to identify and match patterns of reasoning and to recognize conclusions that depend on unsupported assumptions, etc. these vital skills will serve as a basis for a further and more comprehensive study of logical relationships and will contribute to success in the logical reasoning section of the lsat. to sum up, we recommend logic grid puzzles to students of english and law-school candidates as a preliminary and a supplement to the actual lsat preparation for the following reasons: • they are viewed as leisure activities and hence can be solved for pleasure and arouse interest and motivation for further lsat preparation; • they do not press for time and can be done at a relaxed pace; • they range from easy to difficult, which allows step-by-step progress; • they provide a warm-up not only on the principles of reasoning, but also in the english language proficiency and thus can be used by students whose knowledge of english is not sufficient for the actual lsat preparation. armenian folia anglistikamethodology 109 in addition, logic puzzles develop applicants’ logic at large, which builds a solid background for success in other parts of the test. notes: 1. the puzzles are borrowed from <http://www.testsherpa.com/lsat/>. 2. the source of the diagram is the official lsat superprep 2007:144. references: 1. dell logic puzzles. (june 2003) no 83. dell magazines, norwalk. 2. the official lsat superprep. (2007) law school admission council. newtown, pa. 3. <http://www.logic-puzzles.org/> 4. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/logic_puzzle> 5. <http://www.testsherpa.com/lsat/> 6. <http://www.lsattestquestions.com/> îñ³ù³μ³ý³ï³ý ·éáõëïáïñáõïý»ñá áñå»ë lsat ã»ëïçý ý³ë³å³ïñ³ëïí»éáõ ùï³íáñ í³ñå³ýù êáõûý ñá¹í³íá ýíçñí³í ¿ áõß³¹ñáõãû³ý, ïñ³ù³μ³ ý³ï³ý ¨ ùýý³¹³ ï³ï³ý ùçïù ³ñï³ñ³ûï»éáõ ñùïáõãûáõýý»ñç ½³ñ·³óù³ý ùççáóý»ñçý, áñáýù ï³ñ¨áñíáõù »ý ²øü-áõù, î³ý³¹³ ûáõù, ²íëïñ³éç³ûáõù, çëï ³ûåù ý³¨ ð³û³ëï³ýáõù çñ³í³μ³ ý³ï³ý ¹åñáóç ùýýáõãû³ý ã»ëï»ñáõù (lsat): ²û¹ ùççáóý»ñçó ù»ïá ïñ³ù³μ³ ý³ï³ý ·éáõëïáïñáõïý»ñç ¨ ë³õ»ñç éáõíáõùý ¿: ¸ñ³ýó ïçñ³éáõùá ñý³ñ³íáñáõãûáõý ¿ ï³éçë ³å³·³ çñ³í³μ³ýý»ñçý ¨ ³ûé ù³ëý³·çïáõãûáõýý»ñç ï»ñ ù³ñ¹ï³ýó ½³ñ·³óý»é ¹»¹áõïïçí ùï³íáõáõãûáõý, çýãå»ë ý³¨ ñ³çáñ¹³ ï³ý³óý»éáõ, ëùμ³íáñ»éáõ ¨ ñ³ù³å³ï³ëë³ý³óý»éáõ ñùïáõãûáõýý»ñ: armenian folia anglistika methodology 110 maket 2013:layout 1.qxd gender from sociocultural perspective gohar harutyunyan, margarit hovhannisyan yerevan state university a s a social factor having a great impact on the choice of linguistic items, gender has always been a subject of thought in the sociolinguistic tradition. a special area within sociolinguistics, called language and gender or gender studies, is devoted to the investigation of language varieties in relation to gender. the theory of gender has formed and developed as a separate field in sociolinguistics since 1970s, and robin lakoff’s famous book “language and woman’s place”, published in 1975, was a real turning point in the area of gender studies which gave rise to various works on the topic. some of these works developed the ideas proposed by lakoff; others challenged them, suggesting new explanations and approaches to gender differences. lakoff’s arguments on gender are known as “deficit approach”, since she represents diversities of male and female speeches, portraying women as a subordinate, deficient group in society. according to this approach, male speech is the norm against which female speech can be viewed and judged. this kind of attitude towards gender differences could not be accepted implicitly by subsequent scholars. starting from 1990s a new approach became dominant in sociolinguistic theory. deborah tannen was one of the major proponents of this new position, known as “difference approach”. tannen states that men and women, being brought up and socialized in different sub-cultures, differ also in their speeches. this assumption is explained in terms of cultural diversities, which in their turn give birth to male and female conversational styles. the belief that there is a fundamental difference between men and women in all the aspects of life goes still deeper in later years. in 1992 john gray published his bestseller “men are from mars, women are from venus”, where he states that males and females are so distinct as if they were from two different planets. he also expresses the idea that very often there occur grave problems in the relationships between men and women because of these differences. according to gray deep misunderstandings occur between genders in various conditions of life. he acclaims that men and women behave differently when handling problems, responding to stressful situations and even counting the received amount of love. in this book linguistic diversities between genders are presented to be still greater. according to the claims proposed by gray, women are more sensitive towards communication, they talk more and are verbally more skilled than men. in short, gray was a great advocate of the proposition that there exist serious gaps between male and female speeches, which lead to misperception or misinterpretation and finally to “miscommunication”. the widely spread stereotype that men and women speak different languages is broken in 2007, when deborah cameron writes her book “the myth of mars and venus: do men and women really speak different languages?”, which casts doubts on the claims stated by gray and his precedents. she calls the theory of “mars and venus” a myth in the broadest sense of the word, assuming that male and female differences are biological rather than social. the fact that there are differences between men and women is as natarmenian folia anglistikaculture studies 123 ural as communication itself. these diversities construct personal identities and give meaning to the communicative process. as it is noticeable, the notions about gender diversities greatly vary from each other, and they have been subject to cardinal changes in the course of time. the aim of the present paper is to find out whether men and women speak identically in english and armenian. as a basis for our investigation we have taken the following claims put forward by robin lakoff: color terms, strong vs weak expletives, women’s versus neutral adjectives, tag questions, question intonation with statement syntax and strength of directive speech acts. the analyses of gender talk in english linguoculture are based on examples which are taken from fiction. the data that these examples provide us clearly show that the above mentioned points which lakoff mentions as distinguishing features between male and female speech, mainly hold true for english. let us discuss the use of strong expletives by males first. the bulk of the material obtained from the examples clearly shows that in modern english men really use strong expletives when they are in extremely emotional situations. males may use swear words when they are disappointed, nervous or angry. sometimes swear words appear in male speech nearly automatically, along with word combinations which carry a positive meaning. this can be proved by the following example: “it’s all right. he says it’s a damned good part, a boy’s part, nineteen. eight or ten weeks in new york and then on the road. it’s a safe forty weeks with john drew. two hundred and fifty dollars a week” (m.s. p.31). as we can see, the expression damned you is used alongside a word combination which does not possess any negative connotations. in the same way, once, when michael is too touched by julia’s acting and his eyes are heavy with tears, julia approaches him and asks what the matter is. michael, who is clenching his jaw to prevent its trembling, answers: “don’t talk to me. you dirty little bitch, you’ve made me cry”. then julia asks if he liked the scenes. to this “naive” question michael answers in the same style: “the scenes be damned, it was you. you just wrung my heart. the critics are right, damn it, you’re an actress and no mistake” (m.s p.24). in this example uttering swear words is a good means for michael to express his deep emotions and also to show the extent he admires the actress and her acting. women, on the other hand, are more careful about words. they may use strong expletives only in the case they are alone, or if they are addressing someone lower in status and age. lots of examples taken from fiction show that women use strong and offensive words mostly in their inner speech. in the following speech situation julia expresses her disappointment, anger and depression: (“he doesn’t love me. he doesn’t care a damn about me. i hate him. i’d like to kill him. blast the american manager!”) (m.s. p.32). in another example julia is having tea with charles tamerley, who is the oldest and the most constant of julia’s admirers. actually, julia is not in love with him, she just uses her artistic skills to pretend so and to make an impression on charles. when charles goes away under the influence of julia’s bitter cry, she gets up and looks in the glass: “you rotten bitch,” she said to herself (m.s. p.64). in the light of these data we can assume that women in english linguoculture are more status-conscious than men, since they avoid using expletives in the presence of others. armenian folia anglistika culture studies 124 the next point we focus on is the frequent use of tag questions by women. as the analyses show, this is the dimension which mostly corresponds to the results of our data in english. in modern english women tend to use questions with tags more frequently. the abundance of the examples provides us with a firm basis to say that females sometimes apply tag questions in cases when their occurrence is not logical, such as when women express their own emotions, feelings or other personal matters. for example, in the following example the use of a tag question reaches extremes. julia meets a young actress avice crichton. when they are about to part, avice asks her: “you won’t forget me, miss lambert?” (m.s. p.133). to this julia answers: “no, dear, i promise you i won’t. it’s been so nice to see you. you have a very sweet personality. you’ll find your way out, won’t you? good-bye.” (m.s. p.133). it is obvious that julia does not intend to find out avice’s opinion, otherwise she could have asked: “do you think you will find your way out?” julia’s words express her own viewpoint and prevision. it sounds like an encouragement or good wish, formed like a question. another point mentioned by lakoff is the strength of directive speech acts. directive speech acts sound really strong and rude when used by males. in some cases they may sound even too offensive. females, on the contrary, tend to accompany their orders with phrases which make orders sound like request. for example, each time eloise gives instructions to her own daughter, she says: “close the front door after you, please,” eloise called (s.j. p.42), “stand up, please….tell mary jane how jimmy looks” (s.j. p.44) or “may i have this. yes. stay out of the street, please” (s.j. p.45). women often form their requests indirectly. when susan wants to tell bo to stop smoking, she expresses her request in the following way: “i don’t think you’re allowed to smoke in here” (s.j. p.87). it is important to mention that susan and bo are quite on good terms. they are close friends. however, susan prefers to use an indirect way of making bo understand that his smoking is not pleasant for her. this feature does not occur so often in male speech. question intonation with statement syntax is another distinguishing feature between male and female speech mentioned by lakoff. based on the data of the analyses, it is possible to state that at present this point is rarely found in male speech, at least in the works we have analyzed. certain examples are present in female talk; however their occurrence is not so often. when dougald tells susan that their friends are going to build a dam on ranna creek, susan says: “and i suppose he expects me to drop everything and survey ranna?”(m.a. p.67). on another occasion annabelle tells bo that she was too much afraid to ever go back to suttor country. when bo asks her what she is afraid of, annabelle answers: “i’m not a very bold person,” she said and laughed. “just imagine, supposing i found the suttor country meant so much to me that i decided my life for the past twenty years had all been a dreadful mistake?” (m.a. p.78). annabelle goes on with another statement again with question intonation: “supposing i found it meant nothing all to me? they say you should never go back” (m.a. p.78). the assumption that the above mentioned sentences are not mere questions but statement syntaxes with question intonation is proved by the fact that they are not perceived as questions both by dougald and bo, and do not elicit answer. we can easily see that these statements of question are armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 125 not directed to susan’s or annabelle’s addressees, but to themselves. it is evident that they do not need an affirmation from their interlocutors. they merely express their opinions formed like a question. the next point that lakoff mentions is the use of women’s adjectives by females and the use of neutral adjectives by males in similar situations. it’s typical of female speech to use a great number of intensifying adverbs next to the adjectives to emphasize the meaning of the sentence and the frankness of their utterance. thus, whenever julia wants to tell michael how handsome he is, she says something like this:“it would be so silly to pretend you weren’t divinely handsome” (m.s. p.30). when speaking about herself, julia also uses this kind of ‘colorful’ adverbs:“with a son of sixteen it’s no good pretending i’m so terribly young any more. i’m forty and i don’t care who knows it” (m.s. p.70). similar adverbs occur in julia’s speech, when she talks to others, or when she thinks about them. for example:“i couldn’t bear to think of your having to throw away your good money on tips. i know that you’re not terribly rich and i knew you’d spent a lot on green fees” (m.s. p.106). on another occasion julia is telling langton about her admiration for michael: “oh, you don’t understand. he’s so frightfully handsome, they’ll fall for him like a row of ninepins, and poor lamb, he’s so susceptible to flattery. anything can happen in two years” (m.s. p.34). as the analyses prove, women tend to use rich and colorful adjectives in their speech, but they do not overuse them. meanwhile in male speech rich and colorful adjectives are missing. the last feature lakoff focuses on is the use of specific color terms. it seems impossible to present a full picture in this connection, as the factual materials provide us with no typical examples concerning color terms. for the lack of data it is difficult to prove that women often tend to use precise color terms. the total absence of typical examples in the works that we have analyzed allows us to conclude that specific color terms are not common in women’s talk. as for armenian linguoculture, we have the opportunity to conduct a more practical survey of men’s and women’s speech differences. to do this, we have compiled a special list consisting of 10 questions, each of which relates to the dimensions suggested by robin lakoff., and carried out a survey among 200 armenians (100 males and 100 females). the responses given by all the respondents are really interesting. these answers prove the fact that the 6 dimensions proposed by lakoff do not hold true for armenian linguoculture altogether. the data obtained from the analyses in armenian are completely different from those in english. the first point to be discussed is the use of strong expletives by men. two of the situations described in the questionnaire demand an expression of strong emotions. as the answers show, the majority of female respondents prefer to keep silent or ignore the situation and thus, they do not express their emotions. even if they do, they do it either in their minds or among their friends. only a very small number of women, nearly 12% use expletives. however, if they apply them, they use even stronger ones than the expletives mentioned by male respondents. the words that basically appear in females’ answers are the following: §ñçù³ñ¦, §ãáμ³ý¦, §áãë³ñ¦, §³ý¹³ëïç³armenian folia anglistika culture studies 126 ñ³ï¦,§³ýßýáññù¦. the majority of men, 55% mention they would definitely react to the situation; they either would say something very rude or would even apply physical strength, like: §ºë ¿é çñ³ý ïμñ¹»ù¦, §îë÷»ù¦, §àï»ñá ïç³ñ¹» ù¦. however, even if males write that under certain circumstances they would react very rudely, in most of their answers strong expletives are missing. in order to present a more evident picture, we shall note that among men only 9% apply expletives in one of the situations given above, while among 100 women nearly 12% mention they would use rather offensive words. so, as we can see, the data received from the analyses in armenian present a great deviation from the above mentioned dimension. if we come to the use of tag questions by women, we can see that among females only 40% use a tag question when the situation demands. others form their questions differently. more than half of the respondents avoid using a question with a tag. among males the number of the respondents who apply tag questions is even smaller, only 25%. so, we can assume that tag questions are an inseparable part of female speech in english, while their occurrence is not common by armenian women. among armenian men only 42% of the respondents apply direct orders when addressing a stranger. others use polite and in some cases even indirect requests. in the same situation the majority of females, 72% use polite requests. thus, in armenian the majority of men and women tend to use polite requests rather than directive speech acts when they address a stranger. the picture changes tremendously when the addressee of the request or the order is not a stranger but someone very close to the speaker. here, as we can see, the social dimension of solidarity comes to the fore. in similar cases the number of polite requests greatly reduces, especially among the answers by women. among 100 female armenian respondents 74% use question intonation when suggesting going to the cinema. others apply affirmative sentences. of 100 male respondents only 46% use sentences with question intonation. of course it is obvious that the majority of women’s answers are formed in question intonation, however, in men’s answers too, this feature is present to a great extent. nearly half of the male respondents form their suggestions using interrogative patterns. thus, it would be wrong to state that only armenian women use question intonation with statement syntax. in armenian the difference between men’s and women’s talks concerning the use of rich adjectives, which lakoff characterizes as women’s, is not considerable. male respondents, like the female ones, use such colorful adjectives, which do not frequently occur in everyday speech. the number of adjectives used by both men and women is nearly equal. 83% of male respondents and 88% of female respondents present different types of adjectives, both colorful ones and slang terms. so, these data enable us to conclude that the distinction of adjectives between neutral and women’s does not hold true in case of modern armenian. we can say that this feature cannot be characterized as a main distinguishing feature between male and female speech in modern english, however, taken generally it is not completely wrong for the english linguoculture. the results of the questionnaire show that, the dimension concerning the use of specific color terms by women is a bit exaggerated for modern armenian as well. it should be emphasized once again that it is only female respondents who create new and precise armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 127 color terms like ¹»õý³ï³ñùñ³íáõý, ¹»õý³ý³ñýç³·áõûý, ¹»õý³ï³ñùçñ, ï³ñùñ³ý³ñýç³·áõûý and ï³ñùñ³¹» õçý to describe the color which according to them is neither orange nor red, or neither yellow nor orange. however, these answers make up only a small number of all the answers, besides, among the color terms mentioned by males, there are again such specific names which do not provide us with sufficient ground to assume that the use of specific color terms is a feature typical only of female speech. thus, the use of specific color terms is the only feature mentioned by lakoff which is not in accordance with our analyses in english and armenian linguocultures. our analyses enable us to draw certain culturally-oriented conclusions. thus, as we can see all the points mentioned by lakoff hold true for english, of course to different extents. only one of the dimensions does not fit the analyses carried out in english. this means women in english are more indirect in making orders and more self-assertive in expressing strong emotions. they often seek confirmation from their interlocutors and also express uncertainty when uttering statements. as far as the vocabulary is concerned, it also varies greatly between men and women. the frequent use of women’s adjectives by females and their absence in male speech proves that the word-stock used by men and women is too distinct. so, we can come to the final conclusion that in english linguoculturedirectness and self-assertion are actual and applicable in female talk. hence, english males and females follow different speech patterns and thus, different value systems work well for each of the parties. if men in english are more direct in making orders, women tend to apply more indirect and polite utterances in the same situation. males may express strong emotion when females try to avoid the use of expletives. different reasons may account for the intention to sound less stiff and rude in speech. we can assume that women in english linguoculture prefer to use milder elements in their speech since they try not to offend their interlocutors, or intend to protect their face. so, it is clear that females pay more attention to interpersonal relationships and the maintenance of their own status and reputation in the society. this means that components of non-verbal communication are of more significance for women than the direct expression of their emotions, feelings or ideas through speech. it is believed that the tendency to attach more importance to non-verbal components than to the verbal message is typical of high-context cultures. as it is visible, english women’s sub-culture is clearly high-context. males, in contrast, follow patterns of low-context communication. when analyzing the use of adjectives, it became obvious that male and female vocabulary is also different. so we can say that in english men and women can be characterized as two distinct sub-cultures that are socially expected to have different speech habits and preferences. as distinct from preconceived ideas and expectation, the above-discussed dimensions proposed by lakoff mostly do not hold true in armenian linguoculture. this means that male and female speeches in armenian do not vary from each other to the extent they do in english. as it is perceived, male and female vocabulary, syntax and choice of linguistic elements differ in those cultures where the structure of the society is clearly hierarchical and there are clear-cut boundaries between different sub-cultures, in this particular case, between males and females. thus, we have every reason to conclude that modern armenian society, in contrast to modern english society, provides equal opportunities to armenian folia anglistika culture studies 128 apply identical speech patterns for both men and women. this may sound interesting, and even unusual. however, as we see, globalization leaves its effects on modern societies, making them more westernized. furthermore, our own analyses show that the english society is even more hierarchical than the armenian one. references: 1. cameron, d. (2007) the myth of mars and venus: do men and women really speak ddifferent languages? oxford: oup. 2. fasold, r.w. (1990) sociolinguistics of language. oxford: blackwell publishers. 3. gray, j. (1992) men are from mars, women are from venus. usa: harper collins publishers. 4. holmes, j. (1992) an introduction to sociolinguistics. london and new york: longman group uk limited. 5. hudson, r.a. (1980) sociolinguistics. cambridge: cup. 6. jandt, f.e. (2004) (ed.) intercultural communication. california: sage publications. 7. lakoff, r. (1973) language and woman’s place. cambridge: cup. sources of data: 1. maugham, s. (2001) theatre. usa: vintage books. 2. miller, a. (2002) journey to the stone country. london: clays ltd. 3. salinger, j.d. (1982) nine stories. franny and zooey. raise high the roof beam, carpenters. m.: progress publishers. ¶»ý¹»ñç ñ³ýñ³ùß³ïáõã³ûçý ñ³û»ó³ï»ñåá êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù ÷áñó ¿ ³ñíáõù å³ñ½» éáõ ¹»é¨ë 1975 ã.-çý è. è»ûïáýç ïáõùçó ³é³ç ù³ßí³í ï³ý³ýó ¨ ïõ³ù³ñ¹ï³ýó ëáëùç ï³ñμ» ñ³ïçã ¹ñáõûãý»ñç ³ñ¹ç³ï³ýáõãûáõýá å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù ¨ ñ³û»ñ»ýáõù: ²ý·é»ñ»ýç ñ³ù³ñ áñå»ë áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãû³ý ýûáõã »ý í³é³û»é ·»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý ·ñ³ï³ýáõãûáõýçó í»ñóí³í ñ³ù³å³ï³ëë³ý ûñçý³ïý»ñá: æ ï³ñμ» ñáõãûáõý ³ý·é»ñ»ýç, ñ³û»ñ»ýáõù ñ»õçý³ïý»ñá ñý³ñ³íáñáõãûáõý »ý áõý»ó»é ï³ï³ñ»éáõ ·áñíý³ï³ý áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõý` ñçùýí³í çñ»ýó ïáõùçó ý³ë³å»ë ùß³ïí³í ñ³ñó³ß³ñç å³ï³ëë³ýý»ñç í»ñéáõíáõãû³ý íñ³: armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 129 maket 2011:layout 1.qxd literality of metaphor in science fiction gayane muradyan yerevan state university t heoretical discussions on science fiction (sf) so far have articulated the urgentneed to define this broad literary genre. but the fact is that sf hasn’t had a neat, final definition so far. the common view is that a fixed definition may draw sf towards a mere limitation to formula. the general approach is to consider it an art dependent on intellect: speculative fiction, imaginary science, scientific romance, storytelling about future, technology of emotions, as named by sf writers and analysts. art is specifically used to support the cognitive reflection in science, in a wider sense art and cognition are intimately associated. therefore, science is the frame and the fantasy and visions of the author are the content of sf. sometimes sf is proclaimed to be “the mythology of the modern world” (leguin 1993:21) and this approach can be well justified: although sf began to emerge with the development of science itself, as a means of understanding the world through speculation and storytelling, it really has antecedents back to mythology. sf commonly uses techniques both from the realistic and the fantastic traditions of narrative to tell a story of which a referent, implicit or explicit, is the mythos of modern world (described as a virtual world) and can educate the imagination beyond the constraints of mainstream mindsets. sf is also qualified as “a modern fairy tale”. as in fairy tales and mythology the discourses of narration and description play an important role in it. and as in fairy tales and mythology the origin of the imagery, the motive of the narrative is to be found in the contents, assumptions and views of the present world. at this juncture, it should be stressed that the stylistic device of literalization of metaphor 1 is realized exceptionally in fairy tales and sf. and like in fairly tales of all nations, evil is always defeated here. the following passage is a piece from the cyberpunk story by paul di filippo “stone lives” published in “the cyberpunk anthology” (ed. bruce sterling. ny: arbour house, 1986). following the current craze, she has had a subdermal pattern of microchannels implanted. the channels are filled with synthetic lucifirase, the biochemical responsible for the glow of fireflies, which she can trigger now at will. in the afterglow of lovemaking, she has set herself alight. (p.194) the first sentence of the passage reminds the reader that no matter how normal things may appear in a piece of sf (following the current craze, she has had a subdermal pattern of microchannels implanted), you can always expect some punk to pop into the scene with the lucifirase, a good example of a newly coined sf term. the verb trigger is used in a sense other than the expected metaphorical one as it is applied to turning on the glow of the body. the passage gradually becomes more effective: starts out normally grounded (implantations are quite common today), then becomes typically science fictional (with the heroine turning the lights of her body on at will) and reaches a climax armenian folia anglistika linguistics 54 exemplified in the stylistic device of literalization of metaphor which, as mentioned above is a typical characteristic of only sf and fairy tales and never occurs in realistic fiction. in realistic fictional context such metaphors can be described as “dead”, in the sense that the reverse process of them to become literalized is impossible. the metaphor she has set herself alight in other discourses of realistic fiction would be associated with passion but in the sf context, in addition to symbolizing love, it has been literalized, i.e. the heroine has in fact turned on the lucifirase matter filling her subdermal microchannels, in this way making her body luminous. literalized metaphors or literality of metaphor exemplify what i believe to be a significant stylistic marker for sf. as ursula k. leguin notes “literalization of metaphor is a characteristic of science fiction. in teaching the craft to people new to it, i use delany’s phrase ‘subjunctive tension’ to alert them to a challenge not present in realistic fiction: the way in which the open context of science fiction brings the language alive” (leguin 1993:30). we come across many examples of this tool in the story: stone is a living camera (he can take pictures using his eyes), when he still retained his eyes (when the camera was still installed in him), don’t take the eyes back (he didn’t want the camera to be taken out), practicing his new eyes (using the eye camera), his eyes go dead (the camera was switched off). through the highly important marker of literality of metaphor sf signals not only its stylistic uniqueness but the difference between the present and future as well. we come across numerous cases of literalized metaphors in r. zelazny’s “jack of shadows” (toronto: fitzhenry and whiteside, ltd., 1971) where the mortal hero can die deaths and resurrect after each through gaining strength and flesh from shadows. “everyone knows that darksiders have more than one life. how many have you?” “it is not as if you would be dead forever.” “it is a long way back from the dung pits of glyve at western pole of the world, and one must walk. it sometimes takes years to constitute a new body.” (p.11) and again after a long while he felt himself falling – falling as from a great height, gaining a substance, until he realized that he was lying on his back staring upward with the full weight of his being once again on him. (p.14) it was always with a certain sadness that he reflected on the loss of blood from any new body which also happened to be his own. (p.16) flocks of meteors constantly strung the sky, reminding him of the appearance of heavens on the day of his last resurrection. (p.133) interestingly enough we come across the same resurrection phenomenon (and respectively an extended literalized metaphor) in f.m. busby’s “if this is winnetka, you must be judy” (“best science fiction stories” edited by lester del ray. ny: ace books, 1977). armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 55 having died, he still feared death. it would be merely a different way of ending. for he had no clear idea how much of his life had been lived, back and forth in bits and pieces. one day he would use up the last unlived segment, and then…he supposed he simply wouldn’t wake up. at his best estimate he had lived something less than half his allotted timeyears. (p.19) making clear as to what literality of metaphor is, leguin brings the example “he was absorbed in the landscape.” (leguin 1993:30) which in an ordinary story is a quite safe sentence to create the image of an artistic nature admiring the beautiful scenery, while in sf narrative the same phrase should be used very carefully as it may be depicting a piece of cannibal landscape devouring its victims or a scenery eating the characters. interestingly enough in roger zelazny’s “jack of shadows” we come across another such phenomenon, a monster stone, faintly glowing and pink which lay in the valley and is later slain by the protagonist who literally ate the stone instead of being eaten by it. “i lie before you little one. come to me”. “i see just a moldy rock”…. he staggered as he beheld the heap of skeletons that were lying behind the glowing stone. “yes. i must position them there so that newcomers to this place will not grow fearful and avoid the circle of my influence. it is there that you, too, will lie, bloody one”. (p.25) i am shadowjack, the thief who walks in silence and in shadows! i was beheaded in igles and rose again from the dung pits of glyve. i drank the blood of a vampire and ate a stone. i am the breaker of the compact. i am he who forged a name in the red book of ells. i am the prisoner in the jewel. (p.85) the mammoths seen by man, whales in kurdistan, the angel who walked and stood in those high plains saying he was named man, mary rainwood who gazed upon her own double and talked with her from r.a. lafferty’s “and name my name” (“best science fiction stories” edited by lester del ray. ny: ace books, 1977) are also good examples of literalized metaphors. exemplifying an important stylistic marker for science fiction writing in general, the stylistic device of literalization of metaphor is still awaiting to be thoroughly investigated. science fiction is developing and booming today as the penetration of science and new technology into society has created a deep interest in english literature exploring technologies which influence the global society. today anglo-american science fiction is represented in all varieties of advanced communication, words coined in science fiction have become part of the vocabulary of any number of subcultures and endeavors, from comics, to aerospace, to computers, to environmentalism, to zine culture, to poliarmenian folia anglistika linguistics 56 tics. sf has a significant impact upon the behavior of individuals in the society, world culture, thought, education and english language. in conclusion it should be said that investigation of a discourse is part of the inflationary process by which genres survive, endure, propagate. science fiction with its panoply of luminous and vivid worlds, lies in all its potential to be explored by linguists. notes: 1. a good example of literalization of metaphor are the following word-combinations from fairy tales or sf: “red river”, “silver/white sun” or “to speak to one’s own soul”. in a mundane narration they will probably depict metaphorically a bloody scene, cold, unfriendly sun or one’s inner speculations with the self while in sf and a fairy tale the mundane metaphors acquire a literal meaning: the river is actually red-coloured, the sun – silver/white-coloured or made of silver and one can actually live separately from one’s soul and even communicate with him/her. references: 1. delany, s.r. (1977) the jewel-hinged jaw: notes on the language of science fiction. elizabethtown, ny: dragon press. 2. freedman, c.h. (2000) critical theory and science fiction. middletown, ct: wesleyan university press. 3. leguin, u.k and attebery, b. (ed.-s) (1993) the norton book of science fiction. w.w. new york: norton and company inc. 4. scholes, r. and rabkin, e. (1977) science fiction: history-science-vision. oxford, uk: oxford university press. 5. wolfe, g.k. (1979) the known and the unknown. kent, oh: kent state university press. in a world half of light, half of darkness, where both science and magic strive for dominance,öáë³μ»ñáõãû³ý áõõõ³ïç³óáõùá ·çï³ý³ýï³ëïçï å³ýñáõù ¶çï³ý³ýï³ëïçï ·ñ³ï³ýáõãûáõýá çñ³ï³ý ¨ »ñ¨³ï³û³ï³ý ß³ñ³¹ñ³ýùç ùç³ëýáõãûáõý ¿: ºñ¨³ï³û³ï³ýç ñçùùá å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ³ýñ³ïç ¨ ñ³ë³ñ³ïáõãû³ý ëý¹çñý»ñý, çõó»ñý áõ »ñ³½³ýùý»ñý »ý, áñáýù çñ»ýó ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõãûáõýý »ý ·ïýáõù ÷áë³μ» ñáõãû³ý ¨ ¹ñ³ áõõõ³ïç³óù³ý á׳ ï³ý ñý³ñý»ñç ½³ý³½³ý ¹ñë¨áñáõùý»ñáõù: öáë³μ» ñáõãû³ý áõõõ³ïç³óáõùá ³ûý »½³ ïç á׳ ï³ý ñý³ñý ¿, áñá »ñμ»ù ãç ïçñ³éíáõù ·»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý ·ñ³ï³ýáõãû³ý áñ¨¿ ³ûé ï³ñ³ï»ë³ïáõù, ¨ ã³÷³ ½³ýóáõãûáõý ãç éçýç ³ë»é, áñ ·çï³ý³ýï³ëïçï ·ñ³ï³ý å³ýñç ñ³ù³ñ ³ûý ³ù»ý³μýáñáß óáõóçãý ¿: there dwells a man who is friendly with neither side armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 57 maket 2011:layout 1.qxd how to avoid discriminatory words in modern english naira harutyunyan yerevan state university w ord usage changes over time, words often come to mean more or less than theyused to. some words change in meaning, some become outmoded, some fall out of favor, and some words even become offensive instead of accepted and vice versa, they become accepted having been offensive once. every day the demands to produce well-written and well-expressed communication grow in number and complexity. so the ability to write or to express oneself easily and effectively is valuable. there is no doubt that a knowledge of accurate vocabulary is essential for the mastery of a language, we cannot use words unless we know how they should be put together, whether they are appropriate in this or that situation or not. for learners who are studying english in a non-english speaking setting it is very important to experience real communicative situations in which they learn to express their own views and attitudes, and in which they are taken seriously. learning and mastering a foreign language is not just a matter of memorizing a different set of names for the things around us; it is also an educational experience, since language is closely linked with one’s personality and culture. thus, acquiring a new language one should gain further insights into the culture and personality of the natives. the idea to write on words misused by efl speakers occurred to me after an incident which happened to a teenager, who lived in london for seven years and learned english right among native speakers. at school, in yerevan, he was once asked to fetch a piece of chalk. he got nervous and very offended to be “treated as a pet”, as he later complained to his mother, a colleague of mine. in england and in other english-speaking countries they turn to their dog-pets to fetch a stick or something else, in this way trying to illustrate how clever their pets are. i clearly remember to have used this very word many times when asking for something, but it appears that there has been a change in usage over time and we, the teachers, should know about it. the idea is that we must try to keep current; we must know the present meaning of words and how to use them in order not to be misunderstood. it is not easy for a nonnative speaker to master all the nuances of the words that are not commonly used or widespread or have recently undergone a slight change in meaning, let alone the fact that very often translated words may appear awkward to a native speaker. students often make mistakes when translating words having the component man, which has nothing to do with masculine gender but is derived from latin manus, in the result of which the utterance becomes meaningless and, in most cases, silly. in order to avoid being misunderstood we should know which words are too harsh, which are regional and redundant or they simply fog our intended meaning, and, why not, those which are offensive and should not be used at all. every word should be chosen carefully, and the ones which are unnecessary or too vague should be eliminated. according to sandra e. lamb, we should first of all avoid “sexist” language, i.e. gender-specific terms should be used as seldom as possible. “avoid sexist language. treat all armenian folia anglistika methodology 86 readers equally. that means addressing men and women as equals in your communications” (lamb 1998:308). the main stress should be put on writing; whatever we write, be it a composition, a story, an essay or a letter, an invitation to a party, or maybe a resume, a request, a letter of condolence, or a response to a letter, we should know how to write it and try to use some effective means which will make the writing simple, clear and concise. the most important question here is “who is my reader?” so it is essential to use the appropriate vocabulary for formal and informal messages. the following points should be observed: 1. avoid gender-specific terms by choosing the most inclusive and descriptive nongendered word. the word chairman, for example, implies masculine gender, but the head of a meeting is not necessarily accepted to be a man. instead of the word chairman we can use more inclusive words such as: the representative, the leader, the person responsible, the coordinator, the presiding officer, the head, etc. instead of manpower we can use workforce, employees, personnel, workers, staff, etc. the idea is not to use man when we mean both men and women. we should be especially careful to use an inclusive term when we refer to all humans. thus, mankind can be replaced by people or humankind. in manmade the prefix should be avoided using a more descriptive word, such as handmade or synthetic. there are some “male-sounding” words containing man derived from the latin manus, which means hand. imagine how silly it is trying to translate words like manufacture, management, manipulate, manual, manuscript or manage, taking man for masculine gender, which, by the way, i have come across not once in my practice as a teacher. replacing man in such cases is a silly error. 2. avoid the he/she pronouns. usually we have no difficulty with the first-person or the second-person pronoun, but the third person pronoun can sometimes create problems for writers. although it has been common practice to address both sexes of readers as he, it is best to change the writing to avoid this problem. several options can be observed in making changes: • use plural pronouns for example, instead of saying “if the student has questions, he should call the dean-office.” we can say “if students have questions, they should call the dean-office.” • reword to omit pronouns we can change the same sentence to “students should call the dean-office with questions.”(if any questions arise). • use secondor firstperson pronouns armenian folia anglistikamethodology 87 “if you have questions, call the dean-office.” “i would call the dean-office if i had questions.” • replace pronouns with the. “the student should select his course at the beginning of the term.” “the student should select the course at the beginning of the term.” • restructure the sentence to passive voice “the course should be selected at the beginning of the term by the students.” of course, passive voice should be used very sparingly and only if it emphasizes what we want to emphasize or provides needed variety in the sentence structure. • substitute one for pronouns “the student has a choice to select the course; he should do it at the beginning of the term.” “the student has a choice to select the course; one should do it at the beginning of the term.” 3. avoid words that stereotype by race or nationality nationality and heritage word usage changes with time. the term preferred by the people we are describing should be used, and it should be used with sensitivity. for example, we should not use black speaking about african americans, the terms negro and colored are not preferred either. native americans are often called redskins or savages, which are offensive terms. 4. avoid age discrimination. age terms that might offend should be avoided. here is a chart taken from how to write it by sandra e. lamb (323) and longman dictionary of american english. before using this consider adolescents young people elderly people over 70 golden ager person over 62 middle-aged people between 45 and 60 oldster people over 65 senior citizens people over 62 teenagers young people youngster young person gaffer a man of advanced years 5. avoid stereotyping people with disabilities. instead of use birth defect congenital disability crazy specific medical term crippled disabled armenian folia anglistika methodology 88 deaf individual who cannot hear deaf and dumb hearing and speech disabled in this table you can find some non gendered substitutions (selected from longman, oxford, merriam-webster’s dictionaries) that are inclusive of both sexes and make logical sense: instead of use aircraftsman aviator assemblyman assembly person(worker), line person bachelor’s degree undergraduate degree barman bartender, waiter bagboy assistant busman bus driver cabin boy crew member cavemen cave dwellers chambermaid housekeeper choirgirl/boy choir member churchman lay officer clergymen clergy, pastors congressmen members of congress, representatives counterman clerk dairyman dairy farmer (worker) doorman doorkeeper fraternal twins nonidentical twins fatherland homeland fireman firefighter fisherman fisher, angler five-man committee five-person committee foreman supervisor, leader, boss freshmen first-year students g-man government employee gagman writer of funny stories man(girl) friday aide, helper, assistant handyman fixer, face-of-all-trades headmaster principal insurance man insurance agent johnny-come-lately newcomer johnny-on the spot prompter king-size huge, large maiden name birth (family) name man among men important person man of the year newsmaker of the year armenian folia anglistikamethodology 89 man on horseback dictator, tyrant manhole utility hole manhunt search manmade handmade motherland (country) homeland, native country mother tongue native language office boy messenger statesman diplomat (or a specific title) watchman guard references: 1. friederike, k. (1984) keep talking. // communicative fluency activities for language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. 2. ommagio, a. (1976). real communication: speaking a living language. // foreign language annals vol.9 (2) 3. lamb, s. e. (1998). how to write it. // a complete guide to everything you’ll ever write. berkeley, california, 94707: ten speed press. 4. (2002) longman dictionary of american english. new ed. usa: pearson education. 5. (1988) merriam webster’s collegiate thesaurus. massachusetts:incorporated springfield. 6. (1998) oxford advanced learner’s dictionary of current english. oxford. æýãå»ë ëáõë³÷»é ëïñ³ï³ýáõãûáõý ³é³ç³óýáõ μ³é»ñçó å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù ´³ é»ñç` å³ù³ý³ïç áýã³óùáõù ïñ³í çù³ëï³ûçý ÷á÷áëáõãûáõýý»ñá »ñμ»ùý ñ³ý·»óýáõù »ý ãûáõñáùμéýù³ý: þ³ï μ³é»ñç çù³ëïá ÷áëíáõù ¿, ¨ ¹ñ³ýù ¹³éýáõù »ý ùçã û·ï³·áñí»éç, ï³ù ¿é çñ»ýó ý³ëïçý çù³ëïáí û·ï³·áñíí»éáõ ¹»åùáõù íçñ³íáñ³ï³ý, ïáåçï »ý ñýãáõù: üù³ý ëý¹çñý»ñçó ëáõë³÷» éáõ ñ³ù³ñ ñá¹í³í³·çñý ³é³ç³ñïáõù ¿ áõëáõùý³ëçñ»é ïíû³é μ³éç ïçñ³éáõùá μýçï ëáëáõý»ñç ïáõùçó` ñ³ßíç ³éý»éáí áñáß³ïç ùß³ïáõã³ûçý ¨ ³í³ý¹³ ï³ý ýñμ»ñ³ý·ý»ñ: ðá¹í³íáõù ÷áñó ¿ ³ñíáõù ·ïý»é ýù³ýûñçý³ï μ³é»ñçó ëáõë³÷» éáõ, ï³ù ¹ñ³ýù ³í»éç ñ³ñù³ñ μ³é»ñáí ÷áë³ñçý»éáõ ñý³ñ³íáñ ùççáóý»ñ: armenian folia anglistika methodology 90 maket 2012 1-2:layout 1.qxd lexicalization patterns of english and armenian verbs of speech activity lilit badalyan yerevan state linguistic university c ontemporary linguistic researches are characterized by attempts to reveal thenature of linguistic mechanisms that provide for the relations of man and extralinguistic reality. language is a means of the conceptualization of that reality and results in the creation of the linguistic picture of the world. it should be noted that the interpretive function of man’s consciousness plays an important role in the construction of the meaning of words. it takes place both in the creation of the mental concept reflecting objects and phenomena of the reality, and in their linguistic representation, in the construction, development and usage of the word meaning. languages are thought to be comparable in conveying information, but they generally differ in the amount and type of information that can be expressed by lexical units. it is known that the more significant an object or concept is to a community, the greater is the tendency to lexicalize it, i.e. to coin greater number of lexical units to denote it. there can be identified semantic components which may or may not be lexicalized in particular languages. the identification of the semantic components characterizing classes of words in a language and of the possible combinations of such components within word roots leads to the revelation of lexicalization patterns varying across languages. typological classification of languages can be made on the basis of the above-mentioned patterns, i.e. according to “characteristic ways in which language […] packages semantic material into words” (lehrer 1992:249). a trend has recently emerged towards addressing the issues of identifying semantic components lexicalized within verb roots and stating a connection between specific components characterizing semantic classes of verbs and syntactic properties of the verbs themselves; there is a strong correlation between each combination of semantic components and the syntactic constructions allowed by the words displaying them. one of the most widely discussed proposals concerning verb typologies is l.talmy’s (1985) idea that languages fall into two types according to how they encode primary events in verbs (particularly motion verbs) and satellites. in the so-called satellite-framed languages like english, german and russian motion verbs tend to incorporate “manner” to their core meaning (e.g., shuffle, tip-toe, crawl, etc.) and “path” is expressed by a variety of other devices (satellites) such as particles (out), prepositions (into the room), verb affixes, etc, whereas in verb-framed languages like modern greek (papafragou & selimis 2002), romance, turkish and japanese (matsumoto 1996), armenian (badalyan 2011) 1 verbs tend to incorporate “path”, expressing “manner” with an additional complement. the distinction is not meant to imply that the relevant languages lack certain kinds of verb altogether. for instance, english has path verbs, such as enter, exit, ascend and descend, and verb-framed languages have manner verbs. but the most characteristic (i.e., armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 65 colloquial and frequent) way of describing motion in the two types of languages involves manner and path verbs respectively. talmy’s typology of lexicalization patterns has received much attention in the domain of motion events in the literature (slobin 1996, matsumoto 1996); however, the validity of this typology in other domains of event types is not fully established.2 in our paper we will extend the analysis of talmy’s typology to the domain of english and armenian verbs of speech activity that encode the semantic component of “the manner of speaking”. in the current investigation 80 english and 60 armenian verbs of speech activity have been analyzed alongside the data (2000 sentences) extracted from the british national corpus (<http:// www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk>) and the data (1500 sentences) – from eastern armenian national corpus (<http:// www.eanc.net>). various researches testify to the fact that verbs denote a whole situation with its various participants and in the definitions of the verbs not only the action itself and the possible participants are pointed out in the form of substantive semes, but also the relationship between them is revealed. as e. paducheva states, “in its each usage the verb shows a situation with the participation of certain number of people; the qualities of participants and relations between them are to some extent reflected in the meaning of the verb” (paducheva 1998:87). the seme structure of a verb may comprise several components (for instance, “subject-tool-object-place-time”) which are united through one action. the study of the english verbs of speech activity discloses the following semantic components (semes): the agent of the action (the speaker) the object of the action (the content of speech) the addressee of the action the purpose of the action the manner of the action it should be noted that the enumerated semantic components may have various configurations in the meanings of different members of the group, for instance, the seme structure of a verb may lack the seme of “the manner of the action” or “the purpose of the action”, thus providing for the semantic differentiation of the verbs of speech activity. as mentioned above, we have focused only on the verbs that conflate the semantic component of “manner” in their meaning. the study of the selected verbs in both languages shows that onomatopoeic words denoting sounds produced by animals and birds comprise the bulk of the groups under study. these verbs denote speech activity figuratively, through their secondary meanings. the examination of the data also reveals that english verbs encoding manner of speaking outnumber the corresponding armenian verbs, especially if we take into consideration the fact that some armenian verbs are included in the group with their reduplicative variants, e.g. ·áé³é/·áé·áé³é, íí³é/íííí³é, ×í³é/×í×í³é, ýí³é/ýíýí³é. if we compile the selected verbs into subgroups based on their common semes, namely the semantic component of the type of manner, we see that in one of the groups the number of english and armenian verbs nearly coincide: these are the verbs that denote the action of “complaining in an annoying way”, such as to whine, to wail, to rant, to grumarmenian folia anglistika linguistics 66 ble, to mutter, to snivel in english and ·³ý·³ïí»é, ÷ýã÷ýã³é, ùñùýç³é, ùéãùéã³é, ãý·ãý·³é, ïýù³é in armenian (about 20 units in both languages), while in many groups the armenian verbs yield to the english ones in number, e.g. there are more verbs in english to denote the action of “talking about silly, unimportant things” or “speaking quickly or incoherently” (about 20 units) than in armenian (about 8 units): to twitter, to prattle, to drivel, to prate, to gabble, to burble and μéμé³é, íéíé³é, ùã÷ã³é, ß³ï³ëáë»é, ß³õ³ïñ³ï»é, ¹³ï³ñï³μ³ý»é, ½³é³ýó»é. as we have already mentioned, the combination of the semantic components may determine the syntactic peculiarities of verbs. the analysis of the selected sentences reveals that the english and armenian verbs of speech activity display both similar and different syntactic properties. both english and armenian verbs, particularly those that express the meaning under study figuratively, in most cases are used to introduce direct speech, either without any modifiers or with adverbial modifiers of cause or manner expressed by a noun, a noun phrase or an adverb. e.g. “life isn’t necessarily fair, miss levington,” he rapped. “it’s on now,” he crowed triumphantly. “i loved him,” moaned gwendolen defiantly. àýï»ñáçë ñ³ý¹çå»óç, ýáñçó ÷ýã÷ýã³ó ð³ùμáý: ü»õý áýï³ñ, ñ³°, íñ³ »ë ï³éçë, ñ³õã³ï³ýáñ»ý ýßß³ó ²ñõáõãá: ø»ñ å³ßïáýá ·ñáõç íáóá, — ñáõ½ùáõýùçó ï³ï³½»ó ²ñ³ùá: however, the analysis of the extracted sentences shows that the given verbs can display the syntactic properties of other verbs of speech activity, i.e. they appear in the syntactic structures typical of the dominants of the lexico-semantic group of verbs of speech activity, namely to say, to tell, to speak and to talk, as well as some other members of the group, such as to complain, to shout, to call that stand out with general meaning and can serve as identifiers for subgroups within the given lexico-semantic group. it should be noted here that if in armenian we have only two dominants ³ë»é and ëáë»é, in english we can point out four dominant members that display subtle differences in meaning and usage that provide more syntactical patterns for the verbs under study. in other words, the semantic components of the addressee of the action, object of the action and the purpose of the action that exist in the meanings of the selected verbs either as actual or potential semes find surface expressions, i.e. are expressed by verb arguments in sentences. e.g. ³ë»é çýã-áñ μ³ý øçý㨠í»ñç³å»ë ùç ï»ñå, μ³é»ñý çñ³ñ ë³éý»éáí, μéμé³ó »õμáñ å³ïíçñ³íá: to say sth. his eyes darted from her to nicolo and he babbled an apology, half in italian, half in english. ³ë»é çýã-áñ μ³ý çýã-áñ ù»ïç ñ³ëó»çý armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 67 ²ýùçï-³ýùçï ý½áíùý»ñ ÷ýã÷ýã³éáí ïû³ýùç, çù ñ³ëó»çý, »ë ù³ûéáõù ¿ç, ³ýóñ¨ç ó³ýóç ù»ç ³õáï í³éíáõ é³åï»ñý»ñçý ý³û»éáí: to say sth. about sth./smb. all of a sudden, she whined something about me not knowing what i had done and she broke down into tears. ³ë»é, áñ/ã»…, ²ûýáõñ»ï¨ å³é³íá ïñïýç³ó, ã» í»ñù³ïç »ñ»ëý»ñá ùñùñí»é »ý áõ ïïáñ»õ»ý ãï³: to say that…, within five minutes steve hollered that his ice hammer had broken. to say sth. to smb. he crowed to me: ‘the queen won’t allow any negotiations between andrew and fergie and their lawyers to go on without me being present.’ “if she’d been herself,” maisie wailed to robert, “she’d have looked”. ³ë»é çýã-áñ 黽íáí êáç³ý ùï³ï³ñ ý³ûí³íùáí ³ëïõ³·çñùá ã»ñã»ó ¨ çýã-áñ ùñãùýç³ó »μñ³û»ñ»ý, ³å³ ³í»é³óñ»ó ñ³û»ñ»ý: to say sth. in a language “maldita, she is dead,” gabbled umberto in spanish. æýùý çñ»ý ³ë»é §ê³, ñçñ³íç, ëáëï³éç ¿¦, çýùý çñ»ý ùñùýç³ó ³ñ¹»ý »ñïñáñ¹ ³ý·³ù: to say to oneself “you can be a success,” he chanted to himself, “your mind is a chisel, your will is a hammer, and life is a rock.” ëáë»é çýã-áñ 黽íáí ð»ïá ë»ýã³ó³í å³ï»å³ï ¿ñ ë÷íáõù, ·ñïáõù-ñ³ùμáõñáõù ¿ñ çýó, ñáéç å»ë åïïíáõù, çï³é»ñ»ý ·áé·áéáõù, ýáñçó çýó ·ñïáõù ...: to speak (in) a language i saw people springing up from the ground and letting down ropes out of the sky, boarding red buses, jabbering in english. a militia spokesman rambled on in arabic about the need for resistance, the nobility of the struggle against isolationism and the potentialities of the revolution. êáë»é çýùý çñ»ý öáùñçïá ùç³ûý ùç ³ý·³ù ³ñãý³ó³í, μéμé³ó çýùý çñ»ý áõ ýáñçó ³ãù»ñá ÷³ï»ó…: to speak to oneself ashen-faced, she was gibbering quietly to herself, her petrol-sodden hair plastered to her head and her dripping gown showing her legs almost to the crotch. to speak to smb. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 68 and while they were up there in the wide, blue yonder, they jabbered non-stop to each other over the radio. ëáë»é/·áé³é çýã-áñ ù»ïç íñ³ ²ûýå»ë ³ñ³ ãáõ ß³ñåíç-ç-ç-ç°... íý·³ó ý³ ñáñ íñ³: àõñ»ùý ¿é çýãá±õ »ù ïñïýçáõù ó»ñ »õμáñ íñ³: to shout (sth.) at smb. “all right, out!” he boomed at the others. “the smiths are here!” she squawked at him. he snarled the words at her. ëáë»é çýã-áñ μ³ýç ù³ëçý/çýã-áñ μ³ýçó ºã» μåçßïá ïñïýçáõù ¿ ó³íñ ³ßë³ï³í³ñóçó, í»ñ¨áõù ýñ³ý ³ãùáí »ý ³ýáõù, ã» é³í μåßïçý, ùç¨ýáõûý ¿, ù³õó³í ã»ý ãáõýç: ëáë»é çýã-áñ ù»ïç ñ»ï çýã-áñ μ³ýç ù³ëçý øç »ñïáõ ³ý·³ù ïçïçý èáõãç å»ë åå½»ó, ó»éùç ÷³ã»ãá ¹ñ»ó ·á·çý, ·³í³ãá ïýïõ»ó, ïïïï³óñ»ó ×ïáõûãç »õáõý·áí, í³×³éáõç ñ»ï ß³õ³ïñ³ï»ó: to speak/to talk on/away (to smb.) (about sth.) adams is always harping on about her. he jabbered away to his friends, and ellie assumed he was explaining that item number one was a drink. here we would like to focus on the use of particles and prepositions, the so-called satellites such as out, on, away, back placed after the verbs. it should be noted that english has a well-developed system of satellites that enable to express direction or duration of the action thus making the speech laconic. here are some other examples. e.g. he sat his guest down in a cubbyhole office, mixed instant coffee with the help of a whistling electric kettle, and rambled into a monologue of his thoughts on michael holly. he hemmed and hawed and rambled through a number of subjects before making a sideways approach to what he really seemed to need…. …he was spluttering over the tale, to whoever would listen…. he roared down the passage, “louisa, louisa…” as armenian lacks the equivalents of such satellites, it needs to switch to descriptive means to express the same meaning. e.g. øç³ûý îç·ñ³ýçïý ¿, áñ μéμéáõù ¿ ß³ñáõý³ï, áõ ñ³ûñá ãç μ³ñï³ýáõù ýñ³ íñ³: ²íïáù»ù»ý³ûáõù ³ýáý¹ñ³ï ß³õ³ïñ³ïáõù ¿ñ: ð³ ùïùïáõù ¿ñ, çëï í³ñáñ¹á ñ³ ß³ï³ëáëáõù ¾ñ: þ³ùå³ûýç ³é³ççý ßßçý ñ³çáñ¹»ó »ñïñáñ¹á, »ññáñ¹á ¨ ùçý㨠³ý·³ù ãáññáñ¹á ºí¹áùëç³ý ³ý¹³¹ñáõù ¹³ï³ñï³μ³ýáõù ¿ñ: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 69 üñ³ýù ³ýí»ñç ýíýíáõù ¿çý, ³ñóáõýùý»ñ ã³÷áõù, ñ³ûñáûáõù ³ù»ýùçý ¨ ³ù»ý çýã: other patterns that the armenian verbs under study lack are: to speak out (sth) “but my daddy babbled out the truth.” he rasped out the words and stood with his hands on his hips to glare down at her. to answer back so when jane asked him for a loan, he snapped back: “i think my first duty is to look after myself!” “are you, darling?” his mother trilled back. to ask for i hollered for fortified wines and drank quarts of tongue-frazzling black coffee. although we shall be grumbling for water, shan’t we? to tell/to say/ ask to do below, in the kitchen, william whined to go out, a gentle, quivering, undemanding sound that meant, nevertheless, a fairly urgent need. to call/ask for smb. to do she roared for the carriage to be brought round. kaas leant forward and dragged adam to his feet as he yelled for the guards to come in and help him. to express smth. …victoria crowed her delight. at the table the young man murmured his pleasure at something father reynard had pointed out, shook the priest’s hand and quickly left. at night she emerged, wandering the corridors of the upper floor, a lighted candle in her hand, wailing her grief. as can be seen from the examples, the english verbs under study are more likely to be used in the syntactic structures proper to verbs of speech activity than the armenian ones. besides, the english verbs appear in the given structures irrespective of the fact whether they express speech activity directly, i.e. are nuclear members of the group or they express the given meaning figuratively, i.e. they are peripheral members. in armenian it is mainly the nuclear members of the group that display such syntactic properties, and even their occurrence in the above mentioned positions is rather limited. this can be accounted for by the fact that in the meanings of the english verbs the semantic component of the speech act is a nuclear one, while the semantic component of the manner of speaking is a peripheral one. whereas in the meanings of most armenian verbs under study the manner of speaking or the sound made by the speaker is more important, i.e. a nuclear component and the speech act with its content and addressee are of secondary armenian folia anglistika linguistics 70 importance. the given statement can further be proved by numerous examples of sentences where the peripheral members of the armenian verbs of speech activity tend to function as adverbial modifiers for the predicate expressed by nuclear members, such as ³ë»é, ëáë»é, å³ï³ëë³ý»é, ñ³ñóý»é, ññ³ù³û»é, ëý¹ñ»é, ï³ýã»é, ³ñï³ñ³ûï»é (about 80 examples out of 1500). e.g. ð»ïá ëïë»ó ·áé·áé³éáí ï³ýã»é ì³ãáûçý. (…shouted out to…) ð»é³ó»ù, ÷ë÷ë³éáí å³ï³ëë³ý»óç ýñ³ý: (…whispered back to …) ð»ýó »ï»õ»óáõù ¿é ÷ë÷ë³éáí çñ³ñ ñ³ûïýáõù ¿çý, áñ μ³ýï³ñïû³éý»ñçý ³ýëý³ í»íáõù »ý, ëáßï³ý·áõù, å³ñ³ýçáõù ñ³ýóý»é ã³ùóñ³í ½»ýù»ñá: (…whispered to each other…) àõïáõù ¿çý, ùã÷ã³éáí ½ñáõóáõù, ë»õ¹íáõù íçí³õçó: (…chattered on) ¶ý³ýù ùá ë»ýû³ïá, ã» ã¿ èûáéû³ûçý ï³ñãý³óý»ýù, ýáõûýå»ë, ßßýç³éáí å³ï³ëë³ý»ó ý³: (…whispered back…) ¾¹ ³ë³ ¿°, ïýù³éáí ³ñó³·³ýù»ó ùç áõñçßá: (…groaned out …) whereas in english we have found only 6 examples out of 2000. “i’ll kill him,” repeated bigwig, spluttering through his fouled whiskers and clotted fur. “it was her,” said rose, gibbering with fear. “that,” i said, whispering, “can be our secret.” thus, we can conclude that the differences in the usage of the english and armenian verbs of speech activity come to prove the results of our previous analysis of motion verbs,3 i.e. armenian may be ranged among verb-framed languages while english is a typical satellite-framed language. notes: 1. in the article the cognitive aspect of lexicalization in english and armenian (badalyan 2011) we presented the results of the comparative analysis of sixty-five english and twenty-five armenian motion verbs that led us to assume that armenian may be ranged among verb-framed languages. 2. in the article how to say things with words: ways of saying in english and spanish, rojo a. and valenzuela j. (2001) made an attempt to apply slobin’s analysis of english and spanish manner verbs to verbs of saying in english and spanish and the way spanish translators deal with them. they concluded that in contrast with slobin’s statement that verb-framed languages have a lower number of manner verbs than satellite-framed languages, their examples suggested that the difference between armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 71 english and spanish manner verbs of saying is not very big. in the description of motion events, translators tended to omit information when going from english into spanish, while their study showed that when dealing with verbs of saying, spanish translators tended to add information, using more specific verbs. 3. see note 1. references: 1. badalyan, l. (2011) the cognitive aspect of lexicalization in english and armenian. // higher linguistic education from the perspective of reforms: new approaches, prospects, and challenges. bucharest: unesco-cepes. 2. fillmore, c. and atkins, b.t.s. (1992) towards a frame-based lexicon: the semantics of risk and its neighbours. // frames, fields and contrasts: new essays in semantics and lexical organization. / ed. by e. kittay & a. lehrer. hillsdale (nj): lawrence erlbaum associates. 3. lehrer, a. (1992) a theory of vocabulary structure: retrospectives and prospectives. // thirty years of linguistic evolution. studies in honour of rené dirvén on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. / ed. by pütz, manfred. amsterdam: benjamins. 4. matsumoto, yo (1996) typologies of lexicalization patterns and event integration: clarifications and reformulations. // empirical and theoretical investigations into language: a festschrift for masaru kajito. / ed. by shuji chiba et al.. tokyo: kaitakusha. <http://www.lit.kobe-u.ac.jp/~yomatsum/typologies2.pdf> 5. paducheva, e.v. (1998) communicativnie videlenie na urovne synaksisa i semantiki. // semiotika i informatika. vol. 36. м.: mgu. 6. papafragou, a. and selimis, s. (2002) lexical and structural cues for acquiring motion verbs cross-linguistically. university of delaware and university of athens. <http://papafragou.psych.udel.edu/papers/papafragou%20selimis-bucld.pdf> 7. rojo, a. and valenzuela, j. (2001) how to say things with words: ways of saying in english and spanish. // translators’ journal. vol. 46, n 3. <http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/003971ar> 8. saeed, j (2003) semantics. london: blackwell publishing ltd. 9. slobin, d. (1997) mind, code and text. // essays on language function and language type. / ed. by j. bybee, j. haiman and s.a. thompson. amsterdam, philadelphia: john benjamins. 10. talmy, l. (1985) lexicalization patterns. // language typology and synchrohic description. / ed. by th. shopen. cambridge: cup. <http://dingo.sbs.arizona.edu/~hharley/courses/pdf/talmylexicalizationpatterns.pdf> 11. talmy, l. (1991) path to realization: a typology of event conflation. // proceedings of the seventeenth annual meeting of the berkeley linguistics society. berkeley: berkeley linguistics society. <http:// www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk> <http:// www.eanc.net> armenian folia anglistika linguistics 72 ²ë³ó³ï³ý μ³û»ñç μ³é³ûý³óù³ý ï³õ³å³ñý»ñý ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù ¨ ñ³û»ñ»ýáõù ðá¹í³íáõù áõëáõùý³ëçñí»é ¿ ³ý·é»ñ»ýç ¨ ñ³û»ñ»ýç ³ ë³ó³ï³ý μ³ û»ñç μ³é³ûý³óù³ý ï³õ³å³ñý»ñç ¨ ß³ñ³ñûáõë³ï³ý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñç ùçç¨ ï³åá` ñçùýí»éáí è.â³éùçç ùçç黽í³ï³ý ïçå³μ³ ýáõãû³ý íñ³, áëï áñç ³é³ýóý³óíáõù »ý »ñïáõ ïçåç 黽áõý»ñ` ³ûëå»ë ïáãí³í “satellite-framed” 黽áõý»ñ, áñï»õ ß³ñåù³ý μ³û»ñç çù³ëïáõù μ³é³ûý³óíáõù ¿ ·áñíáõáõãû³ý ó¨ç çù³ëï³ûçý μ³õ³¹ñçãá, çëï ·áñíáõáõãû³ý áõõõáõãûáõýá ý³ë³¹³ ëáõãûáõýáõù ³ñï³ñ³ûïíáõù ¿ ³ûé ùççáóý»ñáí, ¨ “verb-framed” 黽áõý»ñ, áñï»õ μ³ûçù³ëïáõù ³éï³ ¿ ·áñíáõáõãû³ý áõõõáõãû³ý μ³õ³¹ñçãá: öáñó ¿ ³ñí»é â³éùçç ï»ëáõãûáõýá ïçñ³é»é ³ý·é»ñ»ýç ¨ ñ³û»ñ»ýç ³ ë³ó³ï³ý μ³ û»ñç çù³ëï³ûçý ëùμç íñ³` áýïñ»éáí ³ý·é»ñ»ýç 80 ¨ ñ³û»ñ»ýç 60 μ³û»ñ, áñáýó çù³ëïáõù ³éï³ ¿ ·áñíáõáõãû³ý ó¨ç çù³ëï³ûçý μ³õ³¹ñçãá: ²í»éç ñëï³ï å³ïï»ñ ëï³ý³éáõ ñ³ù³ñ áõëáõùý³ëçñí»é »ý ý³¨ ´ñçï³ý³ï³ý ³½·³ ûçý ïáñåáõëçó áýïñí³í ùáï 2000 ¨ ²ñ¨»é³ñ³û»ñ»ý ³½·³ ûçý ïáñåáõëçó` 1500 ý³ë³¹³ ëáõãûáõýý»ñ, ù³ýç áñ μ³ û»ñç ß³ñ³ñûáõë³ï³ý ñý³ñ³íáñáõãûáõýý»ñá ù»í³å»ë å³ûù³ý³íáñí³í »ý μ³ ûçù³ëïç çù³ëï³ûçý μ³õ³¹ñçãý»ñç ï³ñμ»ñ ï³å³ïóáõãûáõýý»ñáí: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 73 microsoft word 1. maket 2019-1new.doc armenian folia anglistika methodology 88 meeting the goals and challenges of adult efl learners veronik khachaturyan yerevan state university armenuhi ghalachyan russian-armenian (slavonic) university abstract the paper addresses the goals and challenges of language instruction to adult learners over 30 in armenia, with emphasis on oral speech. as the number of english learners among adults is growing, it is becoming urgent to study the peculiarities and specific learning needs of adults to organise an adequate teaching and learning environment. the components of spoken language and the idea of communicative competence are discussed, followed by a consideration of what teaching adults should take into account and how the teaching process can be organised. the target group in this study encompasses three categories of adult learners. one refers to people who take up english for better employment opportunities and/or to meet on-the-job requirements; the second category consists in employees seeking to expand their professional development activities; the last one is represented by an increasing number of emigrants. key words: adult learners, efl, speaking, social needs and goals, characteristics of adult learners, employment, professional development, emigration. introduction the vast majority of tesol research surrounds pre-school and secondary school children as well as young adults (aged 20-25), while little attention is given to language learning and acquisition by adults over 30. yet, the latter methodology armenian folia anglistika 89 situation is completely different and should be tackled properly, especially as the number of english learners among adults is growing. this paper addresses the goals and challenges of language instruction to adult learners in armenia, with emphasis on speaking. the components of spoken language and the idea of communicative competence are discussed, followed by a consideration of what teaching adults should take into account and how the teaching process can be organised. the target group in this study encompasses three categories of adult learners. one refers to people who take up english for better employment opportunities and/or to meet on-the-job requirements; another consists of employees seeking to expand their professional development activities by attending foreign conferences and reading foreign-written professional literature; the last category is represented by an increasing number of emigrants, including the ones preparing for the ielts general test. social needs for learning english numerous social needs for learning english depend on the abovementioned learner category and are related to the following skills: 1) to read, write and speak well enough to meet employment requirements (most employers in armenia require the knowledge of english, so applicants mastering the language have a competitive advantage over those not speaking english or at least other foreign languages); 2) to communicate with foreign partners visiting the armenian offices (in this respect, writing skills such as letter-writing, although important too, are not viewed by learners as primary because of the wide availability of sample business letters and reference materials on the internet, including digital translators); 3) to make presentations and communicate effectively at professional and academic conferences abroad (writing a paper or a speech in english is another important objective here, but in many cases it is accomplished with the help of expert translators, so many learners do not pay due attention to developing the academic writing skill); armenian folia anglistika methodology 90 4) in case of emigrants, to communicate with their potential employers and/or classmates, to tackle different real-life tasks, to interact with their children’s teachers and with authorities at different levels, deal with their new neighbours, take part in community life in mixed-language environments, etc. (bailey 2006:2). as can be seen, despite the need to acquire a variety of language skills to meet their goals, the main skill that adult learners strive to achieve is speaking. admittedly, many become satisfied with their ability to reach their communication goals effectively, even though they may be using elementary structures and vocabulary; at the same time, there are also meticulous adults who need to get the deepest possible knowledge of grammar and sufficient vocabulary to raise their self-esteem and become confident users of the language. 1. at this point, it will be appropriate to briefly review what makes a good oral communication and what components should be covered by an effective oral language instruction. to start with, “speaking means far beyond than simply uttering words and sentences; it involves logical thinking processes and the ability to put into use specific bits of knowledge (such as vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, function) and skills (including listening, turn taking, non-verbal and cultural awareness) in order to communicate effectively” (nunan 2003:4). keys to effective speaking one of the keys to effective speaking is a good knowledge of vocabulary. without an essential vocabulary, it will be impossible to realise a meaningful and comprehensible interaction using the structure and function alone. the richer the vocabulary, the easier it will be to express oneself. simultaneously, it is vital to distinguish between oral and written vocabulary and utilise it appropriately. as we learn to read and write, written lexicon gradually comes into its own. as we increase our vocabulary, there arises the need to include idiomatic language. regrettably, many adult learners attaching importance to vocabulary build-up the limits of the survival vocabulary themselves. methodology armenian folia anglistika 91 one essential aspect of vocabulary and speaking at large that is often neglected by students (and sometimes by teachers) is pronunciation. this refers to the way words and sentences should be articulated to be clearly comprehensible. rare mispronunciations which do not interfere with meaning and do not prevent the interlocutor(s) from reacting adequately are acceptable (especially as native english speakers in the age of globalisation are becoming more and more tolerant towards foreign accents). with these minor mistakes communication can still occur and develop successfully, and communication goals can be achieved. another aspect of language to which some learners do not pay due attention is grammar. with the introduction of communicative language learning, the focus on form has been replaced with the focus on meaning. many adults find themselves tolerably communicating with foreign friends having only basic knowledge of grammar; academic conferences are successfully held by hosting speakers who do not speak english perfectly; international business correspondence is carried on with the help of model letters available in books and on the internet; important business meetings are held without deep knowledge of grammar. the communication goal is to avoid misunderstanding and get the message across without trying to impress anyone with one’s brilliant english. however, it is not always that simple. in more complex life and work situations the inability to combine words in a sentence correctly may potentially lead to confusion, communication breakdown and even more serious outcomes such as contentions with the authorities (police, customs officers, etc.). in case of adults studying the ielts course, vocabulary and grammar play an absolutely essential role. the next component of spoken language is comprehension – the ability of the speaker to produce meaningful speech having a good grasp of their own stretches of discourse and enabling the listener to decode what was being said. comprehension of a foreign language also involves some intuition – the ability to make logical connections between words, draw inferences, as well as interpret nonverbal behaviours, which may be quite different from the native ones. armenian folia anglistika methodology 92 last but not least, speech fluency contributes to communication outcomes too. it derives from all the above mentioned components and implies the ability to speak communicatively, accurately and continuously. too many grammatical errors, a wrong choice of words, mispronunciation and interruptions have a disruptive influence on the listener’s understanding of oral expression and may create false impressions about the speaker. taking into consideration the aforesaid speech components, language instruction should provide a well-structured methodology to compensate for the lack of the authentic language environment. “a good language learning setting can be modeled by the following techniques: predominantly using the target language in class, giving learners english nicknames, extending not only vocabulary proper but also conceptual knowledge, assimilating the conversation process to the natural one” (vitlin 1998:5). a good example can be allowing students to provide an uninterrupted flow of speech and correcting their mistakes later, or using phrases like don’t you mean… ?, echoing what was said in the right way, etc. to imitate native interlocutors. in this country, foreign language education for adults is mostly realised in two ways: as on-the-job training, for one thing, and as private tutorship (whether in small groups or individually), for another thing. however, what needs to be taken into consideration in both types of courses is the need for instructional methods to be relevant to adult learners. adults, however conscientious and motivated they may be (both intrinsically and extrinsically), have specific social needs and personal characteristics that make them rather hard-to-teach and slow learners. firstly, adult learners are too preoccupied to master the language as quickly as possible. this factor explains why many of them want to skip grammar. secondly, the majority of adult learners are on low levels of english proficiency. others have probably forgotten what they learnt at school. this is part of soviet heritage: at that time english was not in high demand and speaking it was not a must-have skill. taking up a new language at a later period of life and from such a low level requires sufficient time and effort, which adults can hardly afford, if we consider the many responsibilities (work, home, etc.) that they methodology armenian folia anglistika 93 have to shoulder. another remnant of the soviet past is that adults are used to the teacher-oriented approach. they do not tend to work on a task with their peers/classmates, and so their communication skills may suffer. in their firm belief, they can learn little from a classmate, who masters the language no better than they do. they expect the teacher to talk to them and correct their mistakes. on the other hand, the teacher-centred instruction is most likely to bore them, especially as most adults attend classes after a hard day at work, so they may be tired and inattentive. it is hardly surprising that the lesson may not go where you intend it to, as tired students are prone to deviating from the subject. in addition, some companies arrange corporate language courses for their employees as on-the-job training, but the trainees frequently turn to be uninterested and reluctant to learn because they have to fulfil more important duties at home. still another downside to teaching adults is their persistent use of mother tongue and the tendency to compare structures and sounds in the two languages; hence, they often find it difficult to adopt the new forms if they are different from the familiar ones. finally, an essential peculiarity of teaching adults is that a teacher cannot use strict measures or put too many restrictions and rules on them. be prepared that your adult learners may not always be ready for the class, may arrive late, leave early, or miss some classes altogether. the best you can do is to encourage them to do at least a little homework on a daily basis rather than accumulate it for the last minute; get the message across to them that they should work as hard as they can commit to if they do not want to have extra difficulty meeting their language learning goals. on the other hand, some of the unfavourable peculiarities of adult learning, including those mentioned above, can be turned to the learners’ advantage. for instance, if used appropriately, the native language can actually foster foreign language learning and acquisition. thus adults’ established native grammar and lexis may be helpful in understanding target language structures and vocabulary items. if the learners stick to the first language, then use it for giving directions, explanations, etc. while english will remain the predominant language in class to create the near-authentic language environment. in certain classroom situations the teacher can “simulate” not knowing armenian and armenian folia anglistika methodology 94 persistently react to the students’ questions in english thus urging them to switch to the target language. fortunately, apart from students repeatedly using armenian in class, there are those wanting to take risks with the target language, understanding that the language classroom is the only environment where they have an opportunity to communicate in english. what is left to do is bring this idea home to all the learners. it is also indispensable that adults’ social demands for using english be exercised during the lesson. these include asking for directions, ordering a meal in a restaurant, filling out job applications, passing job interviews, conducting business communication via e-mail, giving speeches, and many more. they will help the teacher to make the classroom activities relevant to the needs of their adult learners by integrating efl instruction with their personal, social, academic and vocational goals. instruction should create content that is close to adult learners’ functioning in real-world situations, such as in the contexts of work, social or interpersonal relations, and so on. adults’ life experience is an additional advantage to provide adequate instruction. the teacher who designs tasks drawing on the learners’ previous experiences and strengths gives them a powerful motive and an opportunity to express themselves demonstrating their expertise. this is especially true for oral and written language development as well as grammar and vocabulary build-up. for example, in reinforcing grammar material, it is more favourable for adult students to make true sentences about themselves using the target structures than drill book-generated sentences, which students do automatically, by rote. in this way, the students also get involved in the learning process creatively. moreover, adult instruction should seek not only to link the topics to the students’ experience, interests and real demands, but also facilitate their speech production by guiding them with a plan and/or key vocabulary. as argued by j. dobson (1992:1), “directed conversation practice is probably the most reliable route to true communication”. a tried-and-tested method is to prepare separate cards with an individual topic and plan for each student. a sample card looks like ones produced for the ielts speaking exam (especially for those learners preparing to take the ielts for emigration purposes) or it includes instructions methodology armenian folia anglistika 95 and a list of questions to answer in a particular life situation as shown in the cards a and b respectively: describe an object you particularly like. you should say what it is and what it looks like  what it is made of  what it is for  why it is special for you at a job interview. you should:  greet the interviewer(s)  introduce yourself  tell about yourself  say why you want to work for this particular organisation  say in three words how your friends would describe you to make it more exciting, allow each student to draw their own card. assign them a specific time limit to prepare their speeches. furthermore, the card method can be used for a complete-a-dialogue assignment. this is a perfect way to integrate speaking and writing skills and encourage adults to speak. give each pair of students two cards – each bearing part of the same dialogue. the students are to complete the missing parts (their role). below are the sample cards for a conversation between friends: how well did you do on your exam, ann? ……………………………………… congrats! how much did you score? ……………………………………… well done! now you can relax and enjoy yourself a bit. ……………………………………… ………………………………. i passed! ………………………………… 85. it’s not too high, but still i’m happy! ………………………………… yeah. it’s a big relief. when making the dialogues for your students, make sure the given conversation lines suggest the idea of the missing ones. but when the students’ armenian folia anglistika methodology 96 level allows, encourage them to modify their answers on the spot to keep the conversation going in a natural way (if the prepared answers do not match the partner’s). due to considerable life experience mature students have established opinions on various life situations and, as a result, want to have a say in class. once the basic speaking skills are learned and appropriate vocabulary and grammar are mastered, guided monologues can turn into question-and-answer sessions and further into discussions. for the start, encourage your students to use simple english sentence structures that they know are correct, so that they can concentrate on getting their message across. they are not taking a speaking test to try to impress the examiner with their sophisticated language. at the same time, urge them to be more adventuresome with their word choice because in authentic communication with their native english interlocutors they are most likely to get feedback on vocabulary. besides, in a natural conversation they are not supposed to translate every single word they say or hear from or into their mother tongue in order to interact successfully, and it will be more than natural to use language “fillers”, such as well, you know, um, er to take some time to think (especially if they have forgotten a word). teach your students to be able to make themselves understood with the help of the language resources they possess by substituting unknown or forgotten words for ones readily available. activities and strategies as a springboard to speaking during the work with adult students we have utilised alternative approaches to traditional activities. in this paper, we would like to share some of the activities and strategies we have compiled from various sources or worked out over time as a springboard to speaking. activity 1: ask your students questions about themselves. there are different ways to do this: a) having them briefly introduce themselves talking about their family, job, house, interests and so on; b) inquiring in more detail about their job responsibilities, etc.; c) having students ask each other questions. adults like talking about themselves, even if they are on the low levels of methodology armenian folia anglistika 97 language proficiency. on the first day of class they usually display themselves best in this kind of activity, probably as it is quite familiar to them. the scope of questions and the level of difficulty should be adjusted to the class level. you can start with general and alternative questions and then gradually extend to special ones. questions can also be adapted to the specific class being taught. in a business english class, for example, this activity would work well to introduce such topics as jobs, employment, personnel, promotion and the like. in particular, ask your students questions directly related to their concerns. activity 2: this is a variation of the first activity. it is effective in a class where students are more or less familiar with each other. one student is supposed to be interrogated – subjected to “a lie detector”, which is represented by the other students in the class. the respondent should tell a lie only once. the lie detector (the class) is to figure out which answer is not truthful. the strategy in the two activities above aims at instilling into learners that questions make part of authentic conversation and that questioning each other can be a useful learning technique. activity 3: get your adult learners to collaborate with their peers. although armenian adults are not initially good at peer work, as we have observed and noted above, they eventually come to like this activity as they realise that they are not shy talking to someone like them (or someone with a similar proficiency level). the teacher’s job is to observe each working pair not only to direct them and provide help but also to make sure everyone is speaking english, not their mother tongue. at later stages of language development, when the fear of speaking wrong has been overcome, each pair can be invited to perform individually in front of the whole class. activity 4: an extension of the above mentioned collaborative work, the traditional role plays are vital for teaching language skills to both children and adults. role plays model real-world situations and provide a motivating context for practical use of language skills. it is in role plays that students’ ingenuity and inspiration are revealed. the older the learner the more complex roles can be assigned. armenian folia anglistika methodology 98 activity 5: one habitual activity in a language class is a discussion or a debate. it is usually perceived by students as the golden opportunity to speak up. however, shy students are most likely to be excluded or overshadowed by more active and ambitious learners. therefore, we hold to small group discussions, where everyone gets a chance to express themselves. if the class is silent, we ask leading questions to stimulate the answers or, again, personalise the topic by asking different students what they would do in that particular situation. there is a popular view that what triggers a class debate is a controversial topic. many instructors would proudly say that the more controversial the topic, the more heated the debate gets leading to the more creative use of the newly acquired language knowledge and skills. while this is true in mixed language class settings, such as in the classroom full of immigrants from different countries, in armenia a heated debate is most likely to result in your students speaking their native language. during an overly excited discussion our students, both junior and senior, unwillingly turn to armenian, as their foreign language resources may turn to be insufficient for proving their point and bringing their ideas home to their peers. to avoid such an undesirable outcome, the controversial questions that we raise for a debate are never directly related to students’ deep concerns. by contrast, controversial questions work quite well during discussions, where all participants may be on the same wave length and there is no direct confrontation of ideas. activity 6: the latest or current news can also generate discussion. students share what they have heard or read (even if the source of information is armenian), as well as their own views on the topic. such unprepared reports are usually based on simple news stories and can be delivered in a simple language, but the activity successfully serves to break the ice and help overcome the fear of speaking. one beneficial characteristic of adult students is that they like to voice their opinions. a good strategy to flatter their vanity and boost their self-esteem is to ask their viewpoint on matters beyond ones specially raised for discussion. when doing a reading in class, get them to tell you why this or that event is methodology armenian folia anglistika 99 presented in the passage, what idea they think the author wants to convey, why the character acts in this particular way, what they would do in his/her place, how they would solve the problem facing the character, and so on. personalise all the questions. adults also appreciate having a chance to demonstrate their competence. so why not ask them to restate your explanation, be it for a grammatical issue, a lexical item or a reading / listening comprehension assignment? after all, it is common knowledge that things are learned better through teaching. delegating the teacher’s role for clarifying a point or for checking a home task is still another conventional strategy that works miracles. of course, the teacher controls the process guiding and helping the student “in charge”, but it is the latter who does most of the talking. activity 7: one of the ways to elicit opinions is solving problems through brainstorming. it is also a relatively simple task for lower-level students as they do not have to produce full sentences but rather use short phrases. again, choose the problem relevant to your adult learners’ needs and have each participant provide at least one possible solution. further, each solution can be viewed in terms of its merits and demerits. activity 8: yet another effective method to stimulate speaking is to get the students to summarise the reading/listening passage or the results of a discussion or what was basically done in class. ideally, the summary is followed by the students’ own conclusions or demonstrates their changed or confirmed attitude towards an issue. activity 9: as the students’ level of language competence grows depending on their educational and social needs, introduce them to public speaking. presentations with power point, prezi or other presentation software make it a pleasurable experience for learners of all ages, who prepare the slides with genuine enthusiasm and utmost care. further, through computer-aided presentations the speakers not only feel supported throughout the speech but also are distracted from the audience and the fear of speaking in public. activity 10: this challenging but entertaining task is great for more capable students and it involves reading. however, it can also be tried with lower-level armenian folia anglistika methodology 100 students; just ensure adjusting the size and difficulty of the text (or, at worst, prepare a picture for them to describe). it resembles the game which was once popular with children in armenia. we call it “chinese whispers”. the idea is that one student reads a text once or twice, then he tells the content to the student next to him, who then “passes it on” to another student and so on. in the end, the last participant tells the story to the class and the class discusses the inaccuracies that occurred in the transmission process. the more ambitious the class the more precisely the story reaches the last student. but with beginners the resulting version of the text is usually very funny, and apart from sharing a good laughter students practise speaking without fear of mistakes because in this case mistakes actually are what makes the activity more amusing. admittedly, with young learners there is also a risk that they will make deliberate comprehension mistakes to have more fun, but adult learners approach the activity quite seriously. on the other hand, even if students change the content on purpose, their ingenuity and willingness to experiment with the language should also be appreciated both by the classmates and the teacher. this activity can also be performed in the form of a competition between two groups. the same text is given to both groups and passed on from one participant to another. eventually, the last student in each group presents the story and the more accurate version wins. conclusion all the above mentioned activities provide context for task-based and communicative language learning allowing all the students in class to contribute to the best of their ability and overcome their embarassment and build their confidence. most importantly, they give an opportunity to link instruction to learners’ lives outside the classroom and create content that can be immediately useable by learners in their roles as students, parents, friends, shoppers, travellers, employees, citizens, etc. methodology armenian folia anglistika 101 references: 1. auerbach, e. (1992) making meaning, making change. mchenry, il and washington, dc: delta systems co., inc. and center for applied linguistics. [reprint in press] 2. bailey, k.m. (2006) issues in teaching speaking skills to adult esol learners. // review of adult learning and literacy. chapter 5, v. 6. available at: <http://www/ncsall.net/?id =859> [accessed december 2018]. 3. effective techniques for english conversation gropps / julia m. dobson. washington: english language programs division bureau of educational and cultural affairs united states information agency, 1989. ix, [iii], 137 s.; 23 cm. 4. dobson, j.m. (1989) effective techniques for english conversation groups. / bureau of educational and cultural affairs, us information agency, washington, d.c.. 5. hammond, j., & macken-horarik, m. (1999). critical literacy: challenges and questions for esl classrooms. "tesol quarterly, 33" (3), 528 543. 6. nunan, d. (ed.) (2003) practical english language teaching. publisher: mcgraw-hill 2003, singapore. 7. vitlin, zh. (1998) teaching a foreign language for adults, theory and practice. m.: pedagogic. available at: http://userpages.umbc.edu/~crandall/ issues_in_literacy_for_adult_english_language_learners> [accessed december 2018]. 8. five components of effective oral language instruction. professional development service for teachers. available at: http://pdst.ie/sites/default/ files/oral%20languagepercentage20bookletpercentage20pdf.pdf>, <http://busyteacher.org/7370-15-tricks-get-adult-learnerstalking.html> [accessed january 2019]. armenian folia anglistika methodology 102 անգլերենի՝ չափահաս անձանց դասավանդումը կազմակերպելու առանձնահատկությունները հոդվածը նվիրված է հայաստանում հասուն անձանց անգլերենի՝ որպես օտար լեզվի դասընթացի կազմակերպման առանձնահատկությունների ուսումնասիրությանը: քննարկվում են ուսուցման նպատակները և դժվարությունները՝ կապված հատկապես խոսելու հմտության զարգացման հետ: լեզուն ուսումնասիրող հասուն բնակչության քանակի աճը նպաստում է, որ մեծանա նաև լեզուն սովորողների առանձնահատկություններին և ուսուցման հատուկ նպատակներին համապատասխան մեթոդների մշակման անհրաժեշտությունը: կատարված ուսումնասիրություններում առանձնացվում են անգլերեն սովորողների երեք խումբ. ա) աշխատանքային հնարավորություններն ընդլայնելու նպատակով անգլերեն սովորող անձինք, բ) արտերկրում աշխատանքային որակավորումը բարձրացնել ցանկացող ծառայողներ, գ) արտագաղթի պատրաստվող անձինք: received by the editorial board 07.02.2019 recommended for publication by the reviewers 29.03.2019 accepted for print 22.04.2019 maket 2011:layout 1.qxd romance and germanic philology faculty not only does ararat dominate this small country by its magnificent view, but, with itsbiblical associations, it also compels armenians to go deeper and deeper into the secrets of human existence, to put forward questions and seek for answers in wisdom, books, knowledge by attaching a great importance to the study of languages. throughout the history armenians have been impelled by the desire to explore different languages. this is based on the belief that it is the best way to the new reality, new perception of life, a new civilization and a new culture. and it is not surprising that after the foundation of yerevan state university in spite of many economic and historic difficulties the new process of teaching and studying languages was phased in at the university. in 1935 within the faculty of philology a chair of foreign languages was set up which in its turn in 1957 was divided into two chairs – the chair of romance and germanic philology and the chair of foreign languages. it was the chair of romance and germanic philology which took the initiative in preparing foreign language specialists. by the end of the 80s the chair expressed the initiative and its willingness to operate independently from the faculty of armenian philology. this was fully welcomed and supported by the ysu authorities of the time headed by ysu rector, academician sergey hambartsumyan. in 1991 the faculty of romance and germanic philology was established on the basis of the department of romance and germanic languages and headed by its first dean mr. karo karapetyan, ph. d, associate professor. currently it is one of the largest educational and scientific units of the university. since 1991 the faculty has succeeded in gaining fame and respect not only in armenia but also beyond its borders. the vigour of the faculty may be judged by its commitment to research. this often takes the form of partnership with international companies or inter-institutional co-operation within the framework of programmes of the european community. the library is the heart of research activity, and here ysu is fortunate. with access to the stocks with several thousand volumes it is one of the largest in the country. the faculty presently headed by samvel abrahamyan, dean, ph. d, associate professor, prides itself also on its tradition of personal contact between staff and students. its academic staff and students form a compact academic community. the faculty provides a complete day-time environment, with a large variety of facilities and a varied social life sustained by student societies and sport clubs. at the faculty of romance and germanic philology hundreds of educators have gained the skills and knowledge, passion and perspectives to meet the challenges of educating our young people in the 21st century. at the faculty you will meet many educators who share ideas about teaching and learning, leading classrooms, using effective theories and strategies. the students have a wonderful chance to study with a diversity of professors who are some of the most highly qualified scholar-practitioners in their fields. they also explore real questions in the light of the latest research and best practices. all the educators care passionately about the qualities that make up good teaching and have a professional awareness of what constitutes effective teaching practice. at present, along with its traditional departments of english, german and french those of spanish, italian, translation studies and intercultural communication have taken their stable place and role at the faculty. apart from languages, the armenian folia anglistikaromance and germanic philology faculty 13 faculty provides the students with the opportunity to gain sufficient knowledge in foreign literature, fl teaching methodology, introduction to germanic/romance philology, theoretical grammar, theoretical phonetics, fundamentals of linguistics, fl history, lexicology, functional stylistics, theory of translation, theory of intercultural communication, discourse analysis, pragmalinguistics and many more. it also offers learning by correspondence. the basic scientific trends the faculty specializes in are semantics, text linguistics, text interpretation, discourse analysis, pragmatics, language and culture, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, contemporary methods of fl teaching, the study of contemporary problems of foreign literature, etc. the faculty of romance and germanic philology successfully cooperates with a number of celebrated universities in the world, namely with those in the usa, great britain, france, germany and russian federation as well as with aua (american university of armenia), russianarmenian (slavonic) university and state linguistic university after v.brusov in yerevan. the lecturers of the faculty are given a chance to take part in regular training courses in france, belgium, italy, spain, germany, austria, the usa and the uk. in addition, the faculty cooperates with many foreign embassies to armenia and international organizations. among them aase (armenian association for the study of english) which has become the national representative of esse (european society for the study of english) since september 2003 is worth mentioning. together with the association the faculty periodically organizes conferences, seminars related to the english language, literature and culture, thus promoting prospective exchange of information and experience between domestic and foreign scholars, strengthening the bounds with foreign higher educational and scientific organizations. every year international examinations of spanish are organized at the faculty based on which the students are awarded internationally acclaimed diplomas after servantes. among the great achievements of the faculty is the publication of a number of scientific journals: “astghik”a translator’s journal, “foreign languages in high school”, “language and literature in the contemporary paradigm of scientific knowledge”, “flsp” (foreign language for specific purposes), “context” and “journal of romance philology”. in the field of english the faculty most efficiently has created strong ties with “armenian folia anglistika”a reviewed international journal concerned with english-related research. being sent to more than 50 countries of the world, it sheds light on the achievements of armenian scholars. the activities of the faculty are shared by its 8 chairs (the chairs of english philology, german philology, romance philology, french philology, translation theory and practice, foreign literature, english chairs no 1 and no 2. the staff of the faculty totals to over 200 lecturers with 9 doctors and professors, and over 40 phds. guest lecturers from the usa, great britain, italy, spain, germany, poland, brazil, etc. are regularly invited to deliver lectures at the faculty. the highlight in the history of the romance and germanic philology faculty was the foundation of the chair of english philology in 1991. inheriting the great scientific and pedagogical experience of her predecessors gevorg jahukyan, doctor of philological sciences, professor, academician of the armenian national academy of sciences; e. atayan, doctor of philosophical sciences, professor, academician of the armenian national academy of sciences; pprofessor h.tokmajyan; l.aloyan, ph. d.; professor ye.mkhitaryan, seda gasparyan, doctor of philological sciences, professor has been the head of the chair since 1993. due to the enthusiasm and energy, devoted love for english studies and academic persistence of the present head armenian folia anglistika romance and germanic philology faculty 14 of english philology chair, professor seda gasparyan, the chair has become an outstanding centre of english language teaching and english studies, recognized all over armenia. currently with lecturers totaling to 70 (24 phds and 3 full professors) the chair performs varied teaching and methodological activities, provides the teaching of practical english as the first and second foreign languages, as well as allows the students to obtain knowledge in different philological disciplines. with the advent of the three-level educational system the chair skillfully and successfully overcomes the challenges it meets on its way, reforming educational syllabuses, introducing new and more efficient methods of teaching to meet the modern requirements of science, economy and culture and provision of good professional knowledge both in bachelor and master degrees. the work of the chair embraces systematic exploration of the life and realias of english speaking countries, involving both classrooms and on-site investigation. the teaching process comprises the refinement of all four language skills (reading, speaking, listening, writing) and the classes are accompanied by oral presentation on different issues, viewing and discussion of films, vocabulary development, homereading and so on). its aim is to bring together the theoretical and practical approaches to the teaching of foreign languages at this level of study. its graduates not only perform successfully in their classrooms, but achieve the extraordinary in their careers. the alumni of the chair of english philology are successfully involved in the highest spheres of state and governmental structures, many different institutions and companies, as well as in the embassies of foreign countries and international organizations functioning in ra. the interests of the scholars of the chair lie in the fields of phonetics, lexicology and lexicography, morphology and syntax, stylistics and linguopoetics, discourse analysis and pragmalinguistics, pshycolinguistics and sociolinguistics, cognitive and functional linguistics, crosscultural communication and others. the chair has always been involved in compiling dictionaries, books, textbooks, manuals, practitioner guides. english chair no 1 was established as a separate chair in 1991 and m. apresyan, ph. d, assocciate professor has been the head of the chair since 2001. the chair with the staff of approximately 40 lecturers elaborates large-scale educational activities at different ysu faculties (informatics and applied mathematics, chemistry, biology, philosophy and psychology, law, history, sociology, geography, geology and theology) aimed at teaching english for special purposes. to meet modern requirements the chair has set a goal to incessantly update and develop the methods of teaching languages and expand knowledge in applied linguistics. the notable achievement of the chair is the launch and publication of the international scientific journal “flsp” (foreign language for specific purposes) which illuminates the international achievements and experience of language teaching according to learners’ constantly changing demands, needs and interests. the chair is oriented on equipping people having different specializations with sufficient knowledge and skills in english which will help them introduce armenian scientific potential on international arenas. english chair no 2 was founded in 1993 and since then has been headed by professor ye.yerznkyan. the chair has more than 40 lecturers, among them 12 phds and 5 associate professors, 8 assistant professors, translators and many experienced specialists. the chair aims at teaching english at different ysu faculties (armenian philology, russian philology, oriental armenian folia anglistikaromance and germanic philology faculty 15 studies, international relations, journalism, economics, as well as the art department of the faculty of history). the chair goes to extreme lengths to help students have a good command of professional english and proficiency in their speciality. language as a basic tool in communication is inextricably bound with society and is used in different social as well as cultural situations. that is why the models of verbal communication used in classrooms should be based on real-life situational contexts inducing and prompting students to speak. therefore within the framework of the chair the aim of practical english is to provide good communicative bases, i.e. to be able to share knowledge and ideas in english and develop the ability to express themselves in sustained oral and written forms, to master adequate speaking skills to be lively conversationalists on any topic, to understand and interpret texts in english related to their fields of study. the whole process embraces all the key elements of language teaching reading, listening, speaking and writing. the adopted highly individual approach in the teaching process allows the instructors to find out the needs of the students and to help them overcome difficulties and get involved in the learning process to the best. this is enhanced by the edusoft english discoveries computerbased course and by the steps taken towards the development of theoretical bases for english teaching through a computer-based programme. the course consists of 12 levels from basic to executive including business english. the notable achievement of the chair is the publication of the yearly journal “foreign languages at higher educational institutions”. it touches upon different issues in linguistics, literature and methods of teaching. since 2007 the chair together with the ministry of education of the republic of armenia has been publishing the journal “foreign languages in armenia” which is designed for a larger scope of readers and draws the attention on such fields as educational reforms, education and upbringing, teaching methods, philology and so on. the chair attaches great importance to the role of the lecturer in forming a student’s personality as a citizen and specialist. due to the endeavors of the lecturers the students take part in different conferences and competitions. the students also have an english club where they share their problems, make reports, organize discussions. the chair of translation studies was established in 2009 on the basis of the section of translation studies of english philology department and since then has become a self-organized unit within the faculty of romance and germanic philology. the head of the chair is k.karapetyan, ph. d, associate professor. the aim of the chair of translation studies is to prepare qualified specialists both in written and oral translations equipping them with all necessary knowledge and skills to work in all spheres of our society. the department has about 20 highly qualified specialists in three foreign languages (english, french, german). they successfully put into practice the contemporary approaches to foreign language teaching and preparation of skilled translators. modern technologies (computers, tv, dvd, audio materials) are actively used in the teachinglearning process. future translators study works by world-famous authors in the original and in translations. the problems of adequacy, the translation of stylistic devices, imagery, word play, versification and exactitude are addressed in term papers, final papers and theses and are always in the centre of scientific attention of the staff. armenian folia anglistika romance and germanic philology faculty 16 in 2011 the first conference devoted to the problems of translation theory and practice was held and it proved to be a success. in 1988, the publication of a translator’s journal, “astghik” (named after the pagan goddess of love and fertility) was initiated. the focus of the journal is not only on the translations from different languages into armenian and from armenian into other languages but also on key issues of the theory and art of translation. the chair takes an active part in compiling dictionaries, proverb books, textbooks, manuals on the theory and art of translation, publishing monographs and articles. the chair of germanic philology was established in 1991 after the foundation of the faculty of romance and germanic philology and included lecturers teaching german at different faculties at ysu. since 1999 the chair has been headed by professor yu.gabrielyan, doctor of philological sciences, professor. the teaching process is accomplished by putting into practical use all contemporary methods of language teaching. the theoretical subjects are delivered according to the latest achievements in the field of contemporary linguistics. due attention is given to the teaching and mastering of german as a second language. at the faculties of humanities and sciences efficient methods and efforts are invested in the teaching process aimed at providing students with opportunities to read scientific literature and communicate freely in german. the best students have a good chance to develop their language skills at well-known universities in germany and austria. apart from this the staff of the chair actively carries out research in different fields of philology publishes scientific articles, manuals, dictionaries. every year qualified specialists from germany and austria are invited whose assistance in pedagogical and research work is invaluable. the exchange program with the german academy has developed into a good tradition for both the staff and the students of the chair. the chair of french philology was founded in 1991 after the foundation of the faculty of romance and germanic philology. presently the chair is headed by z.harutyunyan, ph. d,, associate professor. the chair initially provided the teaching of three foreign languages – french, spanish and italian. after the establishment of the chair of romance philology the french philology chair is currently oriented to teach french only. the teaching staff is comprised of both young high-level lecturers and lecturers with great experience in the field of teaching. the chair is aimed to provide students with good language skills in the language they are majoring in. the entire educational process is carried on taking into consideration all the nuances of up-to-date communicative approaches to language teaching and making good use of the traditional ones. one of the most important scientific efforts of the chair is translation studies and the theory of translation. the lecturers of the chair have published a number of educational manuals, textbooks, dictionaries etc. in 2009 the chair of romance philology separated from the french chair and since then has taken the initiative of teaching only three romance languages (spanish, italian, portuguese), among which spanish and italian are taught both as first and second languages of specialization and students taking master’s degree are given a good chance to study portuguese too. the chair is currently headed by hasmik baghdasaryan, ph. d, associate professor. armenian folia anglistikaromance and germanic philology faculty 17 in the process of teaching foreign languages contemporary approaches and methods are applied: the communicative method of language teaching is successfully combined with traditional ones. the chair periodically invites specialists from abroad who have a great potential, especially in spanish and italian. lecturers from italy, spain and brazil carry on important scientific and pedagogical practice, actively participate in the work of the chair. since 2008 the chair has had an educator from brazil in its staff. last year owing to the good results of fruitful co-operation with the italian embassy qualifying exams were held based on which diplomas after dante were granted. the chair is actively engaged in elaborating a vast scope of scientific research which deals with different problems of romance philology, such as semantics, phraseology, pragmatics, translation studies, etc. one of the most important scientific efforts of the chair is translation and the theory of translation. since the foundation of the university history of foreign literature has been included in the curricula of the humanities faculties as the study of languages and foreign literature go together and their profound study provides valuable experience and advantage for future career development of our students. in 1929 in accord with the standards of university education separate chairs of literature as well as the chair of foreign literature were set up. at that time the chair was headed by professor simon hakobyan, later by professor luisa samvelyan, academician ed. djrbashyan, professor h. edoyan. now it is headed by a. araqelyan, ph. d, associate professor. in 2007 the chair of foreign literature was subdivided into two chairs the chair of the theory of literature and the chair of foreign literature. the latter became part of the faculty in 2007. the chair offers a wide spectrum of general and specialized courses (lectures and seminars) on the history of european and american literatures of different periods from the early middle ages up to the present day. it also presents various courses where traditional and modern literary criticism is considered from an unbiased viewpoint. the objective is to represent literature as a process and an art deeply implanted into historical and cultural contexts. it provides students with the skills necessary for the appreciation and comparative analysis of these works both as literature and as representations of rich and diverse cultural values. the educators are strongly conscious that a good literature course does at least three things: it familiarizes the students with a corpus of authentic material; it reveals fresh points of view; it gives some clues to the methods of investigation by which the field may be explored. the chair is also actively engaged in translation doing its best to represent to the armenian student as well as to the public both the works of great intellectuals and highly valued works of art of european and american literatures. education and wisdom have been essential for all nations. yet, historically armenians revered education and wisdom as they were destined to understand the role of spiritual values in the life of the society. they always felt that they might lose everything in a wink of an eye. the only thing they could keep forever was what they had inside: their own wisdom, and consequently they cultivated their inner world. thus ysu with all its faculties can be seen as a metaphor which best describes armenians’ striving and aspiration for knowledge and education. armenian folia anglistika romance and germanic philology faculty 18 maket 2012 1-2:layout 1.qxd whimperatives across english, armenian and russian cultures lusine madoyan yerevan state university t he main aim of the present paper is the study of “whimperatives” and their illocu-tionary forces in modern english and across different cultures. we want to show that different cultures find expression in different systems of speech acts, and that different types of speech acts become entrenched, and, to some extent, codified in different languages. an attempt will also be made to give a brief outline of different whimperative constructions in modern english discourse, and the way they are translated and used in other languages. whimperatives are commands or requests phrased as polite or indirect questions (also whimperative). as defined by r. mcdermott, a “whimperative” is a command stated in a question form, such as, “why don’t you close the door?” (mcdermott 1977:25) english interrogative subjunctives are restricted to requests with only four backshifted modals: 1. (a) would you mail this for me? (c) might he be there by now? (b) could you do me a favour? (d) should i write to him? (dr.keith allan 1994:77) these interrogativeutterances are notably tentative, which accounts for their use in polite contexts.in modern english there are a great number of whimperative constructions, the most frequently used of which are of the following types: will you...? , would you...? , can you...? , could you...? can’t you...? etc. whimperative constructions have been extensively and meticulously studied by a. wierzbicka who gives the following main ideas as an outline of a new direction in the study of linguistic interaction: (i) in different societies, and different communities, people speak differently. (ii) these differences in ways of speaking are profound and systematic. (iii) these differences reflect different cultural values, or at least different hierarchies of values. (iv) different ways of speaking, different communicative styles can be explained and made sense of, in terms of independently established cultural values and cultural priorities (wierzbicka 1991:69). wierzbicka also states that the ways of speaking are by no means clear in terms of values such as “directness”,“indirectness”, “solidarity”, “spontaneity”, “sincerity”, “social harmony”, “cordiality”, “self-assertion”, “intimacy” and “self-expression”. since they do not have the same meaning in all cultures, they are used with quite different and even mutually incompatible meanings, and can create confusion, moreover, some languages do not even have corresponding words for all these terms, e.g. there is no word for “self-assertion” in japanese, italian, french, polish or russian (cf. 1991). hence, a strong methodological case is made for the use of universally reliant semantic constructs armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 119 that can be translated in all languages, such as “say”, “think”, “want”, “know”, “good”,“bad”, “people”, “someone”, “something”, “this”, “no”. goddard and wierzbicka (1994) reason that this universal metalanguage is useful both for a semantic analysis and for a formulation of cultural scripts that “can capture culture-specific attitudes, assumptions and norms in precise and culture-independent terms”. for example, wierzbicka (1991) contrasts the attitude of anglo-american and japanese cultures to “self-assertion” and conceives the following underlying conceptual structures: japanese culture don’t say: “i want this”, “i don’t want this” anglo-american do say: “i want this”, “i don’t want this” japanese culture don’t say: “i would/wouldn’t like (want) this” anglo-american do say: “i would/wouldn’t like (want) this” japanese culture don’t say: “i think this/i don’t think this” anglo-american culture do say: “i think this/i don’t think this” the attitude of reserve or restraint, which represents a key value in japanese culture, cannot be applied to anglo-american culture, just as the notion of “self-assertion” has no corresponding value in the other culture. thus, the analysis comes to prove that japanese speakers are discouraged from saying clearly what they want, whereas anglo-american speakers are encouraged to do so. on top of this, japanese culture places a taboo on asking other people directly what they want. a similar contrast between japanese and anglo-american culture exists with regard to the clear and unequivocal expression of personal opinions (wierzbicka 1991:74). a. wierzbicka uses the different interactional norms to account for the differences in linguistic structures characteristically engaged in the two cultures. thus self-assertion is generally encouraged in anglo-american culture as long as this does not threaten personal autonomy, i.e. negative face. thus, one is allowed to say “i want this”, but not “i want you to do this”. in their contrastive description of case studies of discourse, wierzbicka (1991) and goddard and wierzbicka (1997) construct cultural scripts of discourse preferences in japanese, chinese, hebrew, polish, italian, as well as black english and white english, japanese, polish and malay. we can conclude that while an anglo-american may appear direct or blunt to a japanese interlocutor, the former may label an israeli as blunt and direct. this preoccupation with the avoidance of such relative and vaguely defined terms as “direct”, “blunt”, etc. in the contrastive characterisation of speech patterns across cultures provides us with a more valid general picture of differences in speech habits. this fact explains the ubiquity of the so-called whimperatives“interrogative directives” -in english, (e.g. would you do x?, will you do?, could you do x?, can you do x?, why don’t you do x?, combining the two components in recognition of the addressee’s right to freedom from imposition) which is a culture-specific norm for avoiding face-threatening acts. w. k. hünig states that even if a. wierzbicka´s formulations seem simplistic or naive at first sight, it has to be acknowledged that she offers a method armenian folia anglistika culture studies 120 of speaking about differences and analyzing them in a non-circular and culture-free “language”. this is a major step forward in the vast area of cross-cultural semantics and pragmatics (hünig1998). what a. wierzbicka does not provide is a framework that takes into account a more global perspective and recognizes that different cultures practice different ways of speaking. such a wider framework is provided by dell hymes, who describes speech acts in a global model of communication, i.e. in the context of their material and psychological setting such as the communicative purpose of the communication, the key how to interpret the acts, the instrumental means available, the norms of interaction and the genres (hymes 2004). the use of the so-called whimperatives, extremely common in english culture, is almost unheard of in other european languages (wierzbicka, gruyter 2003). a request like “would you mind opening the window” (perhaps watered down even further with a side-order of “it’s a bit cold in here”) would, if you attempted to render it into a language like polish, sound quite bizarre — at best it would come across as an inquiry as to whether the addressee is capable of opening the window, but certainly not as a request. as b. comrie points out, russian does not use the will you or can you patterns in the way english does, and the same applies to the would you pattern: “…in english one polite way of getting someone to do something is by asking a yes/no question using either some form of “will” or some form of “can”. in other languages, that’s not conventionalized. if you tried it in russian, the reaction would be “what’s this guy trying to do?” (comrie 1984:282) thus, we may say that people speak differently in different societies and communities not only because they speak different languages, but also because they use language differently. these differences reflect different cultural values, or at least different hierarchies of values. this often leads to a communication failure among individuals and social groups. by studying different cultural traditions manifesting themselves in different ways of speaking, we can improve our ability to communicate with others more effectively and to interact with others more fruitfully. there exist a number of differences between english and other languages in the area of speech acts, which are linked with different cultural norms and cultural assumptions. the results of our research show that english, as different from armenian and russian, places heavy restrictions on the use of direct speech acts (especially, direct orders, etc.), and makes an intensive use of indirect speech acts, i.e. whimperatives and other constructions. features of english are shown to be language specific and due to specific cultural norms and cultural traditions. linguistic differences are shown to be associated with cultural values such as individualism and respect for personal autonomy in the case of english, and cordiality and collectivism in the case of armenian and russian. the heavy restrictions on the use of the imperative in english and the wide range of interrogative forms in performing acts other than questions constitute striking linguistic reflexes of the anglo-saxon socio-cultural attitude. in english the imperative is mostly used in commands and in orders. other kinds of directives (i.e. of speech acts through which the speaker attempts to cause the addressee to do something) tend to avoid the imperative or to combine it with an interrogative and/or a conditional form. armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 121 in armenian the use of interrogative forms outside the domain of questions is very limited, and since the interrogative form is not culturally valued as a means of performing directives, there has been, so to speak, no cultural need to develop special interrogative devices for performing speech acts other than questions, and in particular, for performing directives. thus, we may say that specific differences between languages in the area of indirect speech acts are motivated, to a considerable degree, by differences in cultural norms and cultural assumptions. to understand the linguistic and cultural differences mentioned above, we have analyzed some examples of whimperative constructions in english and their translations into armenian and russian taken from fiction. first we shall study whimperativeswhich are framed like questions but have the illocutionary force of: suggestion “wouldn’t you like to be a star?”(p. 29) вы хотите стать звездой? кто же не хочет? (стр. 220) ուզո՞ւմ եք աստղ դառնալ: իսկ ո՞վ չի ուզում: (էջ 23) here we deal with a suggestion and the answer of the hearer confirms this interpretation, because once again it makes clear that the speaker did not expect a yes/no response but rather wanted an action to be done (here, an agreement to be signed). “what d’you say to a battle of pop to celebrate?” he said. (p. 42) как вы смотрите, не открыть ли нам бутылочку шампанского, чтобы отметить это событие? спросил он. (стр. 234) ինչ եք ասում, մի շիշ շամպայնով չնշե՞նք,առաջարկեց նա: (էջ 38) it is worth mentioning that the word “said” in this example is translated into russian as “asked” which is typical for questions (as the syntactic form of the english variant is that of a question), while the armenian translator uses the word “suggest” which indicates the illocutionary force of the given utterance. “why the hell don’t you get a charwoman in?” (p. 46) почему вы не пригласите поденщицу, чтобы она здесь убрала? (стр. 238) տե՛ր աստված, կարծես խոզանոց լինի: ինչո՞ւ աղախին չես պահում: ( էջ 43) this example is quite interesting because the translators of both languages have considered it necessary to supplement their translations with additional information. if we look at the russian translation, we can see that it gives a word for word translation, and provides us with some explanation “so as she could clean up the mass”. similarly, in the armenian variant we come across the following additional information “oh my god, it’s like a pigsty”, which is not given in the original variant. besides, in this example the more common whimperative construction why don’t you is replaced with a stronger and more idiomatic variant why the hell don’t you, which makes the utterance sound more like reproach or rebuke than suggestion. “your cigarette’s gone out. won’t you have another?” (p. 154) armenian folia anglistika culture studies 122 ваша сигарета погасла. возьмите другую. (стр. 349) ձեր սիգարեթը հանգել է: մեկ ուրիշը վերցրե°ք: (էջ 168) here the russian and armenian variants sound as direct suggestions or even orders, whereas the same semantic component is expressed in english with the help of the indirect question, i.e. whimperative construction won’t you do x. “well, why don’t you go and have a look-see?” (p. 156) что ж, пойди и посмотри. (стр. 352) թոմն ասում է արժե գնալ տեսնել: (էջ 171) in this example the russian translation gives a straightforward (bold-on-record) suggestion while the armenian translation would sound as: tom says it’s worth seeing, so here again the semantic component i suggest you go and see it is present. “why don’t you talk it over with someone more of your own age?”(p. 211) почему бы тебе не обсудить все эти вещи с кем-нибудь из ровесников? (стр. 408) ինչո՞ւ չես ուզում այդ ամենի մասին խոսել քո տարիքի որևէ մեկի, օրինակ թոմի հետ: (էջ 235) in this example the translator of the armenian variant introduces the word “want” into the sentence, thus adding some additional overtones and shades of meanings to the utterance, which unfold the following semantic components: the hearer does not want to do x, the speaker reproaches him for that and suggests doing x. “d’you want me to say good night to you in the passage? i’ll just come in for a minute?” (p. 53) ты хочешь, чтобы я пожелал тебе доброй ночи в коридоре? может, я зайду к тебе на минуту? (стр. 245) ուզում ես քեզ բարի գիշեր մաղթեմ միջանցքո՞ւմ: միայն մեկ րոպեով ներս կմտնեմ,ասաց մայքլը: (էջ 51) the russian variant of this example clearly expresses the illocutionary force of suggestion with the help of the word “maybe” (может), whereas the armenian translation sounds closer to the original english variant. invitation “i suppose you wouldn’t come to tea with me one day, would you?” (p. 82) вы, наверное, не захотите выпить со мной чашечку чаю как-нибудь на днях? (стр. 276) հավանաբար մոտ օրերս չեք կարողանա գալ ինձ մոտ թեյելու, այնպես չէ՞: (էջ 86) in this example the armenian and the english variants are both tag-questions in their form, whereas the russian is not. we would also like to draw your attention on the fact that in the russian translation the part “you wouldn’t come to tea” is translated as “you wouldn’t like to drink tea” and in armenian as “you couldn’t come to me for tea”. in our opinion the illocutionary force indicators are made more apparent and obvious by the armenian and russian translators. “julia says, will you come and dine on sunday?” (p. 167) джулия спрашивает, не придешь ли ты к нам пообедать в воскресенье. (стр. 363) ջուլիան հարցնում է կիրակի օրը կգա՞ս ճաշի: (էջ 184) armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 123 in this example we deal with an invitation dressed up as a question. the english word “says” is translated into both languages as “asks”. in choosing a particular verb (request, ask, suggest, or whatever) the reporter imposes a certain interpretation on the original utterance, and can choose one of a number of interpretations compatible with the force signaled by will you do x. in doing so, the reporter adds to what is encoded in the construction itself. this is, then, where the “interminacy” lies: in the range of possible interpretations, which can be signaled by a range of reporting verbs. but the force of will you do x is quite determinate. request, permission “can i come in, mummy?” (p. 146) можно войти, мамочка? (стр. 340) կարելի՞ է, մա°մա: (էջ 159) this is a classic example of a whimperative, i.e. a request (asking for permission) dressed up as a question. “can you grudge me the happiness it gives me to get you out of a hole?”(p. 104) неужели тебе трудно доставить мне удовольствия и позволить вызволить тебя из беды? (стр. 298) ինչո՞ւ չես ուզում երջանկացնել ինձ` թույլ տալով, որ քեզ դուրս քաշեմ նեղ դրությունից: (էջ 111) if we translate the armenian variant back into english, it is more likely to sound as “why don’t you grudge me…”, so we may conclude that in cases like this the two whimperative constructions can you and why don’t you might be interchangeable. order, reproach “why the devil don’t you answer when i speak to you?” (p. 124) черт подери, ты почему не отвечаешь, когда я с тобой говорю? (стр. 319) ինչո՞ւ չես պատասխանում, գրողը տանի, երբ խոսում եմ քեզ հետ: (էջ 135) in this example we have an indirect speech act (reproach) with the implied meaning of order (answer, when i speak to you!),and again the insertion why the devil makes the utterance stronger. “how can you say a thing like that? the fool.the blasted fool.” (p. 143) (<как ты можешь так сказать? дурак. несчастный дурак!>) (стр. 338) ինչպե՞ս կարող ես նման բան ասել: ապո՛ւշ: անիծյա՛լ ապուշ: (էջ 156) the implied meaning is – do not say such a thing! it is worth mentioning that this example is taken from the heroine’s monologue, and the addressee does not hear the speaker. nevertheless, since the utterance is intended to have some imposition on the “hearer”, it can be regarded as a whimperative. below we present a table which displays clearly how many times the whimperative constructions of english have been translated into russian and armenian in the same way, and how many times the translators have proposed a translation which is different from the original construction. armenian folia anglistika culture studies 124 we would also like to draw your attention on the fact that tag questions which are so common in english are very rarely used in russian. thus we may conclude that the armenian and english variants coincide more often. in conclusion, we would like to state that when translating works of verbal art many translators try to stick to the original expressions. in doing so they use many clichés, expressions and constructions in the translations which are not so typical of the target language. this is done in order to retain the literary style of the author and the work itself. this is one of the reasons why the results of our research show more coincidence between the original (english) and the translated variants (russian and armenian) than there actually is. thus we might come to a misleading assumption that whimperatives are equally common for the three languages, whereas investigations of speech practice used in everyday communication show that on the conversational level the english use much more indirect speech acts, especially whimperatives than russians or armenians do. thus, the analysis of different types of whimperative constructions and their use in different cultures enables us to show the close connection between the study of language structure (grammar) and the study of language use (pragmatics). references: 1. brown, p. and levinson, s.c. (1987) politeness: some universals in language usage. cambridge: cup. 2. levinson, s.c. (1983) pragmatics. cambridge: cup. 3. searle, j.r. (1975) a taxonomy of illocutionary acts. // language, mind, and knowledge. / ed. by k. günderson. vol. 7. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. 4. searle, j.r. (1975) indirect speech acts. / ed. by cole and morgan. syntax and semantics. reprinted in searle (1979). new york: academic press. 5. searle, j. (1969) speech acts. cambridge: cup. 6. wierzbicka, a. (1985) different cultures, different languages, different speech acts: polish vs. english. // journal of pragmatics. n 9. 7. wierzbicka, a. (1991), (2001) cross-cultural pragmatics: the semantics of human interaction. berlin: mouton de gruyter. sources of data: 1. maugham, w.s. (1980) theatre. new york: collier & son. 2. maugham, w.s. (1985) tatron. / tr. from english into armenian by j. hovhannisyan. yerevan: sovetakan grogh. 3. maugham, w.s. (1983) teatr. / tr. from english into russian by n. man, g. ostrovskaya. m.: pravda. armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 125 wh-áí ëïëíáõ ññ³ù³û³ï³ý ý³ë³¹³ëáõãûáõýý»ñá ï³ñμ»ñ ùß³ïáõûãý»ñáõù wh-áí ëïëíáõ ññ³ù³û³ï³ý ý³ë³¹³ ëáõãûáõýý»ñý ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõù »ý ññ³ù³ý ï³ù ëý¹ñ³ýù, ë³ï³ûý áõý»ý ù³õ³ù³í³ñç ï³ù ³ýáõõõ³ïç ñ³ñó»ñç ß³ñ³ñûáõë³ï³ý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá: êáõûý ñá¹í³íç ýå³ï³ïý ¿ áõëáõùý³ëçñ»é ññ³ù³û³ï³ý ý³ë³¹³ ëáõãûáõýý»ñç ³ûë ïçåá ¨ ýñ³ýó çéáïáõïçí ·áñí³éáõûãá å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù, ñ³û»ñ»ýáõù ¨ éáõë»ñ»ýáõù: ðá¹í³íáõù ÷áñó ¿ ³ñí»é ý»ñï³û³óý»é 黽í³ï³ý ³ûë ûáõñûñçý³ï ï³éáõûóý»ñç ñ³ù³éáï ýï³ñ³·çñá ¨, ½áõ·³ ñ»éý»ñ ³ýóï³óý»éáí í»ñáýßû³é 黽áõý»ñç ùçç¨, å³ñ½³ μ³ ý»é, ã» ïíû³é ï³éáõûóý çýãå»ë ¿ ã³ñ·ù³ýíáõù ¨ ïçñ³éíáõù ï³ñμ»ñ ùß³ïáõûãý»ñáõù: armenian folia anglistika culture studies 126 microsoft word 2. methodology 55 128 (1) armenian folia anglistika methodology 118 making a difficult language skill easy vicky tchaparian lebanese university abstract one of the main reasons why writing is a difficult language skill according to roger and robinson is that “the connection between the mind and the verbal system, by which mental processes are made apparent (visible or audible) to oneself and to others, is difficult to capture” (roger and robinson 1990:88). however, one can overcome writing difficulties by following certain rules. this paper intends to introduce rules for better writing. key words: writing, combining, summarizing, word, sentence, paragraph. overcoming writing difficulties although language learning skills are difficult in general, yet, writing english is more difficult because “given the importance of english as an international language, more and more people need to learn to write in english for occupational or academic purposes.” (long and richards 1987:259). moreover, it is because “the connection between the mind and the verbal system, by which mental processes are made apparent (visible or audible) to oneself and to others, is difficult to capture” (roger and robinson 1990:88). however, one can overcome the writing difficulties in the english language by following certain rules. any written piece of prose consists of paragraphs. a paragraph consists of sentences, and a sentence consists of words. however, if the words are not written in a certain order and the sentences do not have coherency, and if the paragraphs do not have a topic sentence followed by supporting sentences and a concluding sentence, the paper would be of little value or no value at all. thus, to write well, one has to follow certain rules. although all the rules serve for the same purpose of better writing, yet, some of these rules are simple and well known for everybody. on the other hand, there are some other rules, which might although not be well known, yet they must be followed for better writing. according to ronald white, “the ability to methodology armenian folia anglistika 119 write may be associated with evidence of having learned the language” (found in long and richards 1987:259). so, better writing is associated with better knowledge of language and it requires “thought, discipline and concentration. it involves committing something to a relatively permanent form” (260) and since written documents are permanent while spoken words are forgotten, one must try hard to write well. however, writing well does not come easily; it has to pass through many stages and drafts before reaching the final stage. steps for better writing since a whole novel consists of pages that, in their turn, consist of words written in a sequence that makes a sentence, one has to choose the correct words and put them in the right order. so, the first step of better writing is to write correct words in a sentence within a paragraph. but what about the paragraph itself? how to arrange the chosen words in the sentences? according to oshima & hogue, coherent paragraphs have three parts: a topic sentence, several supporting sentences, and a concluding sentence (oshima &hogue 2007:3): a) the topic sentence tells what topic the paragraph is going to discuss. b) the supporting sentences give details about the topic. c) the concluding sentence summarizes the main points or restates the topic sentence in different words. 1. writing correct sentences it is said that “a paragraph is like a sandwich. the topic sentence and concluding sentences are the two pieces of “bread” enclosing the “meat” – the supporting sentences” (oshima & hogue 2007:38). however, to write these paragraphs, the sentences within the paragraphs must also follow certain rules, some of these rules are: a) write simple but complete sentences with a subject, a verb, and an object (ibid.:11), e.g. mary has a lamp. subject verb object while writing sentences, do not break sentences in two by using periods for commas, e.g. he was an interesting person. a man who had traveled all over the world, and lived in half a dozen countries. armenian folia anglistika methodology 120 the first period should be replaced by a comma, and the following word should begin with a small letter (stink1918:8). b) use the active voice; it is usually more direct and vigorous than the passive voice, e.g.1) i shall always remember my first visit to boston. 2) my first visit to boston will always be remembered by me. sentence 1 is much better than sentence 2 (stink 1918:20). c) put statements in positive form omitting needless words from sentences and unnecessary sentences from paragraphs, e.g. the taming of the shrew is rather weak in spots. shakespeare does not portray katharine as a very admirable character, nor does bianca remain long in memory as an important character in shakespeare’s works. e.g. the women in the taming of the shrew are unattractive. katharine is disagreeable, bianca insignificant. (stink1918:18) sentence 2 is much better than sentence 1. d) avoid using run-on sentences and comma splices. run-on and comma splices are similar errors, both happen when you join sentences incorrectly (oshima & hogue 2007:87), e.g. men like to shop quickly women like to browse. (run-on sentence) men like to shop quickly, women like to browse. (comma splice) men like to shop quickly, but women like to browse. (correct sentence) following these rules will make a written paragraph much better. however, “writing will be concerned not only with correctness of expression but also with the organization of ideas and the production of logically coherent prose” (long & richards 1987:263). to write a logically coherent prose and improve writing skills, a language learner must practice different exercises such as: 2. filling blanks following the sample paragraph a good example is the paragraph presented below which is a description of the port of calcutta, it is followed by an exercise that gives necessary words to write a similar paragraph describing the port of new york: e.g. calcutta is a port in india. it is situated on the northeast coast, on the estuary of the river hooghly, which flows into the bay of bengal. the population of the city is six million. the distance from new delhi, the capital of the country is about one thousand miles. (ibid.:263) practicing exercises like the one adduced below can help to write better. using the words given, write a paragraph following the one above: methodology armenian folia anglistika 121 new york, the usa, east coast, river hudson, atlantic ocean, eight million, washington, two hundred and fifty miles. the paragraph will be as such: new york is a port in usa. it is situated on the east coast on the hudson river, which flows into the atlantic ocean. the population of the city is eight million. the distance from washington, the capital of the country is about two hundred and fifty miles. 3. combining answers to make a précis another way for better writing is combining answers using conjunctions to make summaries according to richards & long, “a way of focusing on the development of a paragraph is to provide a series of questions, the answers to which will form a coherent piece of prose” (long & richards 1987:263). so, a way of improving the learner’s writing skills can be through answering comprehension questions. the following is an example of a paragraph along with questions. later, after answering the questions and combining the answers to each other using combining words such as the fan boys the learner can have a summary to the main paragraph. e.g. nobody likes staying at home on a public holiday especially if the weather is fine. last august we decided to spend the day in the country. the only difficulty was that millions of other people had exactly the same idea. we moved out of the city slowly behind a long line of cars, but at least we came to a quiet country road and, after some time, stopped at a lonely farm. we had brought plenty of food with us and we got it out of the car. now everything was ready so we set down near a path at the foot of a hill. it was very peaceful in the cool grass until we heard bells ringing at the top of the hill. what we saw made us pick up our things and run back to the car as quickly as possible. there were about two hundred sheep coming towards us down the path! (alexander 1965:22) comprehension questions: 1) where did we decide to drive last august? 2) were there a lot of cars on the road, or were there only a few? did it take us a long time to find a quiet place or not? (so) 3) what did we get out of the car? where did we sit? (and) 4) what did we hear soon afterwards? where did we have to turn? (and) 5) what were coming down the path? armenian folia anglistika methodology 122 after answering the questions, join up the answers using the conjunctions given after questions 2, 3, and 4. your answers to the questions must follow each other. afterwards, the combined sentences all together will make a complete paragraph which will be a summary of the earlier paragraph. the answers of the questions that are combined together using fan boys will be as follows: last august we decided to drive into the country. there were a lot of cars on the road so it took us a long time to find a quiet place. we got our food out of the car and sat down near a path at the foot of a hill. soon afterwards, we heard bells ringing and we had to run back to the car. about two hundred sheep were coming down the path! (ibid.:23) 4. finding irrelevant sentences and crossing them out another way of practicing exercises for the purpose of writing better and keeping unity in the paragraph is finding irrelevant sentences in a paragraph. the below paragraph is a good sample of a paragraph which includes irrelevant sentences that break its unity. a woman of strength: the strength of character that eleanor roosevelt possessed was obvious in her face. on her head, which was always held high, her light hair was styled in a nonsense way and did not cover her forehead or eyes. her eyebrows were thick, natural and expressive. under these were her intense eyes, which revealed her intelligent mind. her nose was straight, and, as she aged, her cheeks sagged a bit and formed the common wrinkles that make a triangle out of the nose and edges of the mouth. she was a serious woman, but, when she smiled, her smile showed sincerity and genuine pleasure. she was a great asset to her husband, franklin, who was president of the united states from 1932 to 1945. in short, it was clear from the first impression that eleanor roosevelt was a strong woman (boardman & frydenberg 2008:226). to keep unity in the paragraph the italicized sentences have to be crossed out. however, being able to make paragraphs is not enough for good writing, according to richard and long, “to teach writing as a form of communication, it is necessary to go beyond sentence level manipulation to the production of paragraphs and subsequently of multi paragraph compositions” (long & richards 1987:265). so, to write a multi paragraph composition, you have to develop ideas and make a first and a second or even a third draft before writing the final draft. to methodology armenian folia anglistika 123 make the writing process easier and reach the final draft easily, the below rules should be followed for better writing. 5. practicing prewriting techniques such as: a) listing: sometimes called brainstorming, is a quick way to get ideas on paper. write whatever comes to your mind that is associated with the subject given to write about (dees & dornan 2009:52). the list of words and phrases later can be developed by deleting some and keeping others. b) free writing: “simply write nonstop. don’t judge your ideas or shut them out. don’t also be concerned with the technical aspects of writing: grammar, sentence structure ... they will all come later” (ibid.:53). after finishing; grammar, sentence structure, or any other mistakes should be corrected. c) clustering: “begin a cluster in a simple fashion. write what you have determined to be your tentative subject in the center of the page, and draw a circle around it” (ibid.:53). 6. distinguishing paragraph types: according to mark cornnelli, “everything you write has a goal. good writing has a clear goal – to inform, to entertain, or to persuade” (cornnelli 2007:23). however, whatever you write, your writing is one of the writing types mentioned below: a – descriptive paragraph: where the writer describes a person, a place, an object, or an experience, e.g. describe your favorite person. b – narrative writing type: where the writer narrates an event or a series of events in a chronological order, e.g. narrate about an unforgettable experience that has happened in your life. (essential terms are the time order signals: first, second, third, then, next, finally). c – definition writing type: where the writer defines a certain term, condition, issue, etc., e.g. define technology (essential words are the relative pronouns: who, which, that). d – comparison and contrast: where the writer compares and contrasts two or more things writing about the similarities and differences. there are 2 type of organization for compare and contrast writing type: a) point by point organization or b) block organization, e.g. compare and contrast country life with city life. armenian folia anglistika methodology 124 e – process writing type: to explain how something occurs or how something is prepared or accomplished, e.g. how to make chocolate cake? (essential words are time order signals: first, second, third, or first step, second step, next step, final step). f – division writing type where the ideas are logically subdivided, e.g. why i don’t have a credit card. (essential words are transitional signals: first, second, furthermore, or on the other hand, for example, in conclusion). g – classification writing type: where subjects are classified in different classes or levels, e.g. ways of protecting the environment (essential words are: first, second, third …). h – cause and effect writing type: where the the results of an event are given, e.g. what is the effect of pollution on the ozone layer? (essential words are: since, because, however, furthermore). i – argument and persuasion writing type: where an argument is raised to praise readers about a certain opinion, e.g. the production and sale of cigarettes should be made illegal (essential words are the auxiliaries: will, shall, may …). thus in the writing process, the given topic should be taken into consideration to determine the writing type and the essential words. in the first stages of language learning, the learner starts to write following simple rules. however, for better writing purposes, in the next stage he has to follow harder and more complicated rules such as using semantic information and selected words. since “meaning in written text is the set of semantic information produced by the writer composing at some point in time” (mosenthal 1983:222), the language learner has to consider the semantic meaning of what he is writing. according to peter mosenthal “there are three sources of meaning in a text including: meaning in prior text, meaning in current text, and meaning in future text.” meaning in prior text refers to the semantic information a writer has produced some time before writing. meaning in current text refers to the semantic information that is being produced at the moment of writing and meaning in future text refers to the semantic information that a writer will produce sometime after he writes (ibid.:222). thus, since semantic information or meaning in text is important, for a better written text, a language learner should take semantic meaning into serious methodology armenian folia anglistika 125 consideration. he has to think about what will be written, write, and consider the meaning of what has been written, since “written texts are permanent” (long & richards 1967:257). therefore, a writer should choose the right word in the right place because “words have power and so using the impact of a written text greatly depends on the words the writer chooses to express ideas” (connelly 2007:128). accordingly, a writer has to: 1) use words precisely, 2) use concrete words, 3) use strong verbs, 4) appreciate the impact of connotations. these are important issues that have to be considered while writing. in addition to these, a writer has to consider the language in which he/she is writing, because different languages have different writing organizations. considering the fact that each language has a different organization type, to show the difference between english and the other languages, i will highlight three different language organization types along with that of english. according to boardman & frydenberg, “different languages use different writing styles of organization. english organization is fairly simple. english uses a straight line from beginning to end. when english speakers read an article, they expect the article to have a beginning, middle, and an end” (boardman & frydenberg 2008:xiv). the beginning says what the article should talk about, the middle talks about the topic, and the end shows what the article was about. it should me mentioned though, that not all languages have the same style of writing organization. the spanish writing organization is similar to english, but the line from beginning to end is not so straight. spanish speakers write about the topic, but here and there they add something that is not directly related to the topic. to a spanish speaker, this makes the writing more interesting (boardman & frydenberg 2008:xvi). however, the japanese writing organization, “is often circular. this means that the topic comes at the end of the article” (ibid.:xvi) here, the writer does not say what the topic is. on the other hand, he gives hints to help the reader guess what the topic is (ibid.:xvi). the arabic writing organization “is more repetitive than english writing, with the main points being restated in different ways throughout the text” (ibid.: xvii). armenian folia anglistika methodology 126 it is important to note that “one style of writing isn’t better than another just as one language is not better than another” (ibid.:xvii). to be a successful writer in any language, you need to follow the writing organization of that specific language. the english writing organization, as mentioned earlier, consists of three parts, the beginning, the middle, and the end. according to boardman’s diagram (xv), the english writing organization is as follows: thus, a writer has to consider the language he is writing in, make sure his writing follows the writing organization of the given language, and also make sure that his writing does not lack any of the parts mentioned above. conclusion it can be concluded that to write well, one has to think thoroughly of the rules that should govern the task. during the first stages of the writing process a writer starts first with structuring sentences, later, moves to writing paragraphs, and next starts writing longer pieces of prose. however, to write good sentences and structure really valuable pieces of prose, the writer has to follow certain rules such as writing coherent paragraphs that have a topic sentence, supporting sentences, and a concluding one. a writer has to practice exercises following the samples, practice prewriting techniques, and distinguish different types of prose to write accordingly. moreover, he/she also has to consider the semantic information and the words selected. the more effective the words, the better the message sent, the more understandable the writer’s intention, the better the writing. methodology armenian folia anglistika 127 it should also be mentioned that, since each language has a different writing organization, the writing organization of the given language should be considered while writing. since this paper introduces rules for better writing considering the english language, an english writer has to make sure that his written work has a beginning, a middle, and an end. in other words, he/she has to make sure his written text has an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. following the steps and the rules mentioned above will help one to write english well. references: 1. alexander, l.g. (1965) a first book in comprehension précis and composition. burnt mill, harlow, essex: longman. 2. boardman, g. & frydenberg, l. (2008) writing to communicate: paragraphs and essays. 3rd edition. new york: pearson, longman. 3. connelli, m. (2007) the sundance writer: a rhetoric, reader, handbook. boston: thomson wardsworth. 4. dee, r. & dornan, e. (2009) four in one: rhetoric, reader, research guide, and handbook. 4th edition. new york: pearson, longman. 5. long, h.m & richards, c.j. (1987) methodology in tesol, a book of readings. boston, massachusetts: helene & helene, pp. 257-267. 6. mosenthal, p. (summer, 1983) classroom writing competence: a paradigmatic perspective. american educational research association. available at: <www.jstor.org/stable/1170215> [accessed november 2011]. 7. oshima, a. & hogue, a. (2007) introduction to academic writing. n.y.: pearson, longman. 8. roger, e. & robinson, j. (1990) the oral language process in writing: a real-life writing session. / national council of teachers of english. available at: <http://www.jstor.org/stable/40171447> [accessed november 2011]. 9. stink, w. (1918) the elements of style. new york. available at: <www.jstor.org/stable/27920620> [accessed november 2011]. 10. van valine, r. (2008) investigations of the syntax – semantics – pragmatics interface. new york: john benjamin publishing company. armenian folia anglistika methodology 128 æýãå»ë ñ»ßï³óý»é μ³ñ¹ 黽í³ï³ý ñùïáõãû³ý ½³ñ·³óáõùá àëï èáç»ñç ¨ èáμçýëáýç, ·ñ³íáñ ëáëùç 黽í³ï³ý ñùïáõãû³ý μ³ñ¹ éçý»éá å³ûù³ý³íáñí³í ¿ ³ûý ñ³ý·³ù³ýùáí, áñ §ùïùç ¨ 黽í³ï³ý ñ³ù³ï³ñ·ç ï³åá, áñç ùççáóáí ùï³íáñ ·áñíáýã³óý»ñá ³ïýñ³ûï (ï»ë³ý»éç ï³ù éë»éç) »ý ¹³éýáõù ³ýñ³ïçý ¨ áõñçßý»ñçý, ¹åí³ñ ¿ ñ³ëï³ý³é¦ (roger and robinson 1990:88): ê³ï³ûý, ·ñ³íáñ ëáëùç ½³ñ·³óù³ý ¹åí³ñáõãûáõýý»ñá ï³ñáõ »ý ñ³õã³ñ³ñí»é, »ã» ñ»ï¨»éáõ éçý»ýù áñáß³ïç ï³ýáýý»ñç: êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù ý»ñï³û³óí³í »ý áñáß ï³ýáýý»ñ, áñáýù ïýå³ëï»ý ·ñ³íáñ ëáëùç ñùïáõãûáõýý»ñç ½³ñ·³óù³ýá: 7 maket 2010 nor_n:layout 1.qxd self-assessment in foreign language teaching self-assessment is not an alien concept to humanbehavior. all human beings are involved, either consciously or subconsciously, in an on-going process of selfevaluation. until recently, however, the value of this human process was largely ignored in pedagogy. learners were rarely asked to assess their performance. in the last decade, with the increased attention to learnercentered curricula, needs analysis, and learner autonomy, the topic of self-assessment has become of particular interest in testing and evaluation. it is now being recognized that learners do have the ability to provide meaningful input into the assessment of their performance, and that this assessment can be valid. self-assessment involves students making judgments about their own work. assessment decisions can be made by students on their own written works (essays, dictations, tests, reports), oral performances, etc. it can be extremely valuable in helping students to critique their own work and make judgments about its strengths and weaknesses. self-assessment has long been part of the repertoire of teachers abroad. it is recommended in many schools and universities that students submit a self-assessment with every major assignment. this is thought to be an important and valid form of assessment as (1) students create something that requires higher level thinking (i.e., they interpret their performance using definite criteria); (2) the task requires disciplined inquiry (i.e., the criteria for appraisal are derived from a specific discipline); (3) the assessment is transparent (i.e., procedures, criteria and standards are public); and (4) student have opportunities for feedback and revision during the task (coombe 1999). when asked why they include self-assessment in their student assessment repertoires, teachers give a variety of responses. most frequently heard is the claim that involving students in the assessment of their work, especially giving them opportunities to contribute to the criteria on which that work will be judged, increases student engagement in assessment tasks. closely related is the argument that this technique contributes to variety in assessment methods, a key factor in maintaining student interest and attention. some teachers argue that self-assessment is sometimes more effective than other techniques. still others argue that students learn more when they know that they will share responsibility for the assessment of what they have learned (ross 2005). students can become better language learners when they reflect upon what they are learning and how they are learning it. in this kind of reflection, students step back from the learning process to think about their language learning strategies and their progress as language learners. this encourages students to become independent learners and can increase their motivation. most students prefer self-assessment to assessment by the teacher alone. the reasons they give suggest additional benefits of self-assessment: 1) students say that when using armenian folia anglistika methodology 118 arus markaryan this technique they have a better understanding of what they are supposed to do because they are involved in setting the criteria for the assessment; 2) students argue that selfassessment is fairer because it enables them to include important performance dimensions such as effort, that is not usually included in their grade; 3) self-assessment enables them to communicate information about their performance (e.g., their goals and reasoning) that is not otherwise available to their teacher; 4) it gives them information they can use to improve their work (ross 2005). even though students prefer self-assessment to teacher appraisal alone, such participation is more work for students. some may find it boring and argue that it is unfair to ask them to do the teacher’s job. teachers express concern about the lack of student commitment to the process arguing that self-assessment will not work if students do not put the required effort into it. only a very small proportion of school and university teachers in our country report using self-assessment, because they have doubts about the value and accuracy of student self-appraisals. the doubts center on the concern that students may have inflated perceptions of their accomplishments and that they may be motivated by self-interest. frequently heard is the claim that the “good students” under-estimate their achievement, while others who do not know what successful performance requires or wish to have higher grades, over-estimate their achievements. this may be the reason why self-assessment or rather self-correction, is used for teaching purposes only and the marks the students give themselves do not affect their final grades. no student would ever be asked to assess their mid-term or final tests whose results form their final credits. however, teachers shouldn’t ignore the benefits of self-assessment. it is actually an effective way of correction. correcting is a waste of time and serves little purpose if it makes no impact, if the students fail to notice and understand the correction. self-assessment encourages students to focus on their achievements, rather than comparisons to other students. when students correct and assess their own work their attention focuses on the mistakes they have made. when the teacher assesses their work they focus on their own and their peers’ marks. they are more interested in comparing the results than in analysing and correcting their mistakes and improving their knowledge. an important advantage is that self-assessment reduces the teachers’ workload. to make self-assessment more valid and reliable teachers need to provide their students with distinct assessment criteria, e.g. an answer key to the test, a photocopy of the dictated text, a photocopy of the teacher’s book key, etc. it will be more helpful if the students take part in constructing the key. after the students are through with the test, the teacher can discuss it with the class, explain all the items. meanwhile the students put down the correct answers and thus make up the correction criteria to use them in the assessment of their work. assessing their own dictation or self-dictation is a useful way for the students to revise and retain spelling rules. advanced students can assess their essays and reproductions. to gain better results teachers can use a partial correction technique. they can first read the works themselves, underline or circle the parts that contain mistakes, and hand the works back to the stuarmenian folia anglistikamethodology 119 dents to correct and assess them. to be able to carry out this task the students will have to do a lot of revising and textbook and dictionary consulting, which is undoubtedly beneficial to the learning process. it will encourage them to see writing as a process not a product and make them look back at their work and see it as a draft to improve, rather than just a final “product” to be corrected and marked. a good idea might be asking the students “to confess” their mistakes, i.e. to tell their peers what mistakes they have made and in this way prevent themselves and others from repeating them. we hope that when the main concern of students becomes acquiring knowledge rather than high grades, self-assessment can be used more efficiently in high schools, not only for teaching purposes but for evaluation as well. references: 1. coombe, c. (1999) self-assessment in language testing: reliability and validity issues. // assessment, research & evaluation. tesol arabia newsletter, vol. 7 (1:7-8). www3.telus.net/linguisticsissues/selfassess. 2. liang, j. (2006) overview of self-assessment in the second language writing classroom. // paper presented at the 2006 tesol convention. florida: tampa. 3. noonan, b. duncan, c.r. (2006) peer and self-assessment in high schools. // practical assessment, research & evaluation. a peer-reviewed electronic journal. vol. 10 (17). www.p21.org/route21/index.php?option=com 4. oskarsson, m. (1980) approaches to self-assessment in foreign language learning. oxford: oxford university press. 5. ross, j. a. (2005) the reliability, validity, and utility of self-assessment. // practical assessment, research & evaluation. a peer-reviewed electronic journal. vol. 15 (10). pareonline.net/pdf/v11n10. æýùý³·ý³ñ³ïáõùá ûï³ñ 黽íç áõëáõóù³ý ù»ç æýù ý³· ý³ ñ³ï ù³ý ù» ãá ¹á ï³ ñáõ ¿ ³ñ¹ ûáõ ý³ í»ï ó ̈ áí ïç ñ³é í»é û ï³ñ 黽 íç áõ ëáõó ù³ý ·áñ íáý ã³ óáõù: ²ûý ³ å³ ñá íáõù ¿ ëïáõ· ù³ý ¨ ·ý³ ñ³ï ù³ý μ³½ ù³ ½³ ýáõã ûáõý` áõ ë³ ýáõ ý» ñç ñ» ï³ùñù ñáõã ûáõ ýá ëã³ ý» éáõ ùç çá óáí, μ³ñó ñ³ó ýáõù ¿ ýñ³ýó å³ ï³ë ë³ ý³ï íáõã ûáõ ýá ë» ÷³ ï³ý ³ß ë³ ï³ý ùç ýï³ï ù³ùμ, áõ ß³ ¹ñáõã ûáõ ýá ï»ýï ñá ý³ó ýáõù ãáõûé ïí³í ëë³é ý» ñç, ³ûé áã ã» ·ý³ ñ³ ï³ ï³ ýç íñ³: öçßï û· ï³ ·áñí ù³ý ¹»å ùáõù çýù ý³· ý³ ñ³ ïáõ ùá áõ ë³ ýá õçý ñý³ ñ³ íá ñáõ ãûáõý ¿ ï³ éçë ¨ë ù»ï ³ý ·³ù í» ñ³ ý³ û»é, ïñïý»é ³ý ó³í ýûáõ ãá, ¹³ ë³·ñ ù» ñç ¨ μ³ é³ ñ³ý ý» ñç û· ýáõã û³ùμ çýù ýáõ ñáõûý áõõ õ»é ï³ ï³ ñ³í ëë³é ý» ñá, ñ»ï¨³ μ³ñ` ³ù ñ³ åý¹»é ¨ éñ³ó ý»é ëá íá ñ³ íá: armenian folia anglistika methodology 120 7 maket 2010 nor_n:layout 1.qxd comparative analysis of english prepositions and armenian case endings the present paper reveals one of the rather conspicu-ous differences between the english and armenian languages, i.e. the role of the prepositions in english and that of the grammatical category of case in armenian. it’s common knowledge that modern languages may have some phonetic, lexical and grammatical similarities regardless of the differences in pronunciation, word building, morphology and syntax. being the language-representatives of one and the same language family the english and armenian languages may rather lack common phonetic and lexical features. however, these two languages have got similarities in their grammatical structure. according to the morphological and typological classification of the languages at issue, as well as relying on the common structural features, the english language is classified in the series of analytic languages. in english such means as word order, stress, intonation, modal words are used mainly as means of expressing grammatical meanings. whereas the armenian language belongs to the series of synthetic languages. inflectional morphology makes it possible to clarify the grammatical meanings expressed in the armenian language. the case system is quite developed in armenian. in the latest works of grammar the synthetic notion and the definition of languages is being criticized on the basis of the fact that the case meaning can’t be considered to be similar with the concrete relation and the synthetic function expressed by the case. each case has got its basic meanings and synthetic functions on which the morphological meaning of the case is based. in the armenian language it’s only the common (nominative) case that opposes to all the other cases in its form: it hasn’t got any typical ending and it is considered to be the basic form for the other so-called inflectional cases. modern english doesn’t have a rich case system. here the synthetic applications typical of the case meaning are not expressed by means of case endings (inflections) but with the help of modal words (blokh 1983:65). so prepositions here play the role of the modal words. it is just with the help of prepositions that different grammatical meanings of one and the same word are expressed. for example: ÷áõáóçó – from the street ÷áõáóáõù – in the street ÷áõáóç – of the street, etc. if case endings are considered to be morphemes, then prepositions are part of the voca buary of the language as independent words. many prepositions, mainly the prepositions of armenian folia anglistika linguistics 50 ruzanna avetisyan place are considered to be words with full meanings and they can function as independent members of the sentence. whereas the case endings lack any lexical meaning of their own. yet the role of prepositions and case endings in some languages are equal. prepositions are wildly used linguistic units in modern english. used with the noun or the noun substitute, i.e. with the pronoun and the gerund, they express the relation between that same word and another word in the sentence. other parts of speech which are used as nouns can take prepositions as well (leech, svartvik 1983:255). combinations of a notional word with a functional word are equivalent to separate words by their nominative function. since a functional word expresses some abstract relation. such combinations, as a rule, are quite obviously non-self-dependent: they are artificially isolated from the context. in terms of their morphological structure prepositions in modern english are simple (on, in, at, for, with, etc.), derivative (behind, below, across, along, etc.) and composite (in front of, by means of, as for, etc.). they may have a meaning of their own. for example: her sister appeared carrying a wine-glass in which there was a raw egg, with a little cherry on it. øáõûñá ñ³ûïýí»ó ·çýáõ μ³å³ïá ó»éùçý, áñáõù óáõ ï³ñ` íñ³ý ùç ÷áùñ μ³é: the path felt springy beneath his feet. ²ñ³ñ»ïá ï³ñí»ë ÷³ëãáõù ¿ñ ýñ³ áïùç ï³ïçó: he dropped into a chair beside his mother. ü³ áýï³í ³ãáéç íñ³, ùáñ ïáõùçý: expanding the cited formative phrases with the corresponding notional words one can obtain notional phrases of contextually self-dependent value. there are prepositions which express concrete meanings: that of place (on, in, at, out of, etc.), position (above, by, over, in front of, under, beneath, behind, below, on top of, etc.), motion (towards, into, though, along, away from, etc.), direction (up, down, along, across, etc.) and time (after, before, during, for, in, on, at, etc.). there are prepositions expressing different abstract relations (by, with, for, against, because of, instead of, owing to, according to, etc). some prepositions may have a double meaning (leech, svartvik 1983:93). for example: i’ve been here for already two weeks. ²ñ¹»ý »ñïáõ ß³μ³ã ¿ »ë ³ûëï»õ »ù: he has brought a letter for you. ü³ ù»½ ñ³ù³ñ ý³ù³ï ¿ μ»ñ»é: i was punished for my little joke. ºë å³ïåí»óç çù ÷áùñçï ï³ï³ïç å³ï׳éáí: they went for a walk. üñ³ýù ½μáë³ýùç ·ý³óçý: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 51 they sent for a doctor. üñ³ýù áõõ³ñï»óçý μåßïç ñ»ï¨çó: as for syntagmatic groupings of functional words, they are essentially analogous to separate functional words and are used as connectors and specifiers of notional elements of various status. functional phrases of such and like character constitute limited groups supplementing the corresponding subsets of regular one-item functional words, as different from notional phrases which, as free combinations, form essentially open subsets of various semantic destinations. for example: no one could account for his objection to our plan. àã áù ã¿ñ ï³ñáõ ³ïýï³é»é, áñ ý³ ù»ñ íñ³·ñçý ¹»ù ïéçýç: he should be ashamed of himself. ü³ å»ïù ¿ áñ ³ù³ãç çñ ³ñ³íçó: you shouldn’t rely on him. âå»ïù ¿ ñáõûë ¹ý»ë ýñ³ íñ³: who is going to look after your children while you are away? à±í ¿ ëý³ù»éáõ »ñ»ë³ý»ñç¹, ùçýã ¹áõ ³ûëï»õ ã»ë: i’ve been dependent on both of you so long. ºë »ñï³ñ å³ù³ý³ï ó»ñ »ñïáõëçó ¿é ï³ëí³í »ù »õ»é: the use of prepositions is determined by different factors. sometimes it may be quite free depending on the meaning that is meant by the speaker. in many cases the choice of the preposition is determined by the main word with which it is used. in other cases the choice of the preposition depends on the noun that follows it: for example: who was the first to speak at the meeting? à±í å»ïù ¿ ³é³ççýá ëáë»ñ åáõáíçý: he went there on business. ü³ ·áñíáí ·ý³ó ³ûýï»õ: he is now on a concert tour in europe. ü³ ñçù³ ñ³ù»ñ·³ûçý ñûáõñ³ë³õ»ñç ¿ ºíñáå³ûáõù: i’m planning to finish it in february. ºë åé³ý³íáñáõù »ù ³í³ñï»é ¹³ ÷»ïñí³ñçý: prepositions, like all the other functional words re-interpreted by syntactic approach, also reveal some important traits that remained undiscovered in earlier descriptions. functional words, considered by their role in the structure of the sentence, are proved to be exposers of various syntactic categories, i.e. they render structural meanings referring to phrases and sentences in constructional forms similar to derivational (word-building) and relational (grammatical) morphemes in the composition of separate words. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 52 the corresponding meanings of the english prepositions have their equivalent forms in armenian. those meanings are expressed by the case category in armenian. case is the immanent morphological category of the noun manifested in the forms of noun declension and showing the relations of the nounal referent to other objects and phenomena. thus, the case form of the noun, or contractedly its “case” (in the narrow sense of the word), is a morphological-declensional form. in modern english there are many prepositions denoting time relationships or duration. the equivalent meanings in armenian are expressed by the dative case: ¸³ë»ñý ëïëíáõù »ý å³ùá çýýçý: classes begin at 9 o’clock. ºñ¨³ýá ·»õ»óçï ¿ ï»ë·çß»ñçý: yerevan is beautiful at midnight. but: ü³ ³ùáõëý³ó³í ï³ëýûáã ï³ñ»ï³ý ñ³ë³ïáõù: she got married at the age of 17. as is evident from the above examples the armenian case ending -çý/áõù corres ponds to the preposition of time at in english. the english preposition from has got the equivalent meaning of the armenian case endings -çó/áõó . the corresponding meaning of the preposition by is expressed by the case endings -áí/û³ùμ in the examples below: most people work from 9 to 5. þ³ï ù³ñ¹çï ³ßë³ïáõù »ý çýýçó ùçý㨠ñçý·á: they flew from paris to rome. üñ³ýù ö³ñç½çó ãé³ý ðéáù: i translated the article from russian into english. ºë ã³ñ·ù³ý»óç ñá¹í³íá éáõë»ñ»ýçó ³ý·é»ñ»ý: he likes to travel by car. ü³ ëçñáõù ¿ »ñ㨻ï»é ³íïáù»ù»ý³ûáí: generally in both languages prepositions are considered to be functional parts of speech. these are words that play the role of interpositional elements, determining the relations of notional words to one another. thus, according to the comparison of the case meanings in armenian and the corresponding meanings of prepositions in english, it can be mentioned that there is a certain kind of correspondence between them which can bring to the creation of several useful grammar rules which may be observed by translators. it will naturally make things easier for them while doing translations from armenian into english or vice versa. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 53 references: 1. gordon, e.m., krylova, i.p. (1980) a grammar of present-day english. m.: vyshaya shkola. 2. murphy, r. (1967) english grammar in use. cambridge: cambridge university press. 3. thomson, h., martinet, e. (1986) a practical english grammar. new york: oxford university press. 4. vince, m. (2008) intermediate language practice. english grammar and vocabulary. china: macmillan. 5. leech, g., svartvik, j. (1983) a communicative grammar of english. m.: prosveshcheniye. 6. blokh, m.y. (1983) a course in theoretical english grammar. m.: vyshaya shkola. ²ý·é»ñ»ýç ý³ë¹çñý»ñç ¨ ñ³û»ñ»ýç ñáéáí³ï³ý í»ñç³íáñáõãûáõýý»ñç ñ³ù»ù³ï³ï³ý í»ñéáõíáõãûáõý êáõûý ñá¹ í³ íáõù ñ³ ù» ù³ï íáõù »ý ³ý· é» ñ» ýç ý³ë ¹çñ ý» ñá ¨ ñ³ û» ñ» ýç ñá éá í³ ï³ý í»ñ ç³ íá ñáõã ûáõý ý» ñá, μ»ñ íáõù »ý û ñç ý³ï ý»ñ, á ñáýó ñç ù³ý íñ³ ý»ñ ï³ û³ó íáõù ¿ ñ³ û» ñ» ýç ï³ñ μ»ñ ñá éáí ý» ñç ¨ ³ý· é» ñ» ýç ï³ñ μ»ñ ý³ë ¹çñ ý» ñç ñ³ ù³ å³ ï³ë ë³ ýáõã ûáõ ýá: ä»ïù ¿ ýß»é, áñ ñá¹ í³ íç ã» ù³ý ß³ ñáõ ý³ ï» éç ¿ ¨ »ý ã³ ï³ ¿ ñ» ï³ ·³ áõ ëáõù ý³ ëç ñáõã û³ý, ù³ ýç áñ ³ïý ï³é íáõù ¿, áñ ñá¹ í³ íáõù ßá ß³÷ íáõ ã» ù³ý μ³ í³ ï³ ýçý û· ï³ ï³ñ ýûáõã ï³ ñáõ ¿ í³ é³ û»é ³ý· é» ñ» ýç ý³ë ¹çñ ý» ñç ¨ ñ³ û» ñ» ýç ñá éá í³ ï³ý í»ñ ç³ íá ñáõã ûáõý ý» ñç ñ³ ù³ å³ ï³ë ë³ ýáõã ûáõýý áõ ëáõù ý³ ëç ñ» éáõ ñ³ ù³ñ: üù³ý áõ ëáõù ý³ ëç ñáõã ûáõý ý» ñá ï³ ñáõ »ý ñ³ý ·»ó ý»é ù» ñ³ ï³ ý³ ï³ý ïáýï ñ»ï ï³ ýáý ý» ñç ëï»õí ù³ ýá, á ñá μý³ ï³ ý³ μ³ñ ¹ûáõ ñçý ï¹³ñó ýç ã³ñ· ù³ý ã³ ï³ý ³ß ë³ ï³ý ùá ñ³ û» ñ» ýçó ³ý· é» ñ»ý ¨ ³ý· é» ñ» ýçó ñ³ û» ñ»ý: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 54 maket 2011-2:layout 1.qxd “the knowledge of literature”: or the special effects of literary discourse angela locatelli university of bergamo “the knowledge of literature” is the central topic dealt with in the eponymousconference series held at the university of bergamo from 2001-2011.1 my primary concern in the ensuing volumes was to investigate the question of what sort of knowledge, if any, literature provides, both qua literature, but also in relation to other forms of knowledge (such as philosophy, the hard sciences, the social sciences, psychoanalysis, medicine, religion, history, the visual arts, etc.). volumes vi and vii in the series specifically deal with literature and science, vol. viii with literature, myth and religion; volume ix with literature and history; and volume x with the cognitive import of the visual and the verbal. as i developed my investigation into these matters, it became apparent that literature was able to produce special, and even unique, cognitive and aesthetic effects among various disciplines providing knowledge. life and literature we often hear, in everyday conversation, in publishers and booksellers’ advertisements, and also among the reasons for literary awards, that novels, poetry, and plays tell us something important about “life”. what is usually meant by this philosophically loaded term is: “identity”, “desires”, “emotions”, “conflicts”, and a variety of “social contexts”, in short – “human experience”. but we also often hear, and this attitude is becoming more rampant in the age of tv talk shows and videogames, in the age that too often equates “culture” exclusively with “market”, that literature is just a pastime, a means of evasion, less exciting perhaps than the latest gadget, but still enjoyable on certain occasions, like a plane or train ride. most readers will probably simultaneously hold both of these views, and arguably so in relation to the kind of “literature” they read. readers of “anna karenina” will go, first and foremost, for “human experience”, readers of “harry potter” for entertainment and evasion. the most common of “common readers” would thus already have identified two important, perhaps the major, “special effects” of literature: i.e. knowledge and enjoyment, and, of course, they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. but what kind of pleasure and what kind of knowledge are we talking about? how is that pleasure and that knowledge “of life” provided? a good start to answer this question is to show that literature’s knowledge is close to the living phenomena, as opposed to the aridity of an always-already dead abstraction. many eminent critics in the past, from sir philip sidney to lukács, and many theorists today, from martha nussbaum to jean-jacques lecercle, have held and still hold this opinion. i am in complete agreement with them and wish to highlight the fact that literature provides a knowledge of the subject both in the act of knowing and of the subject as it is known. armenian folia anglistikaliterature 127 ronald shusterman explains the ways in which literature is related to “life” in his contribution to vol. iv of the “the knowledge of literature” (shusterman 2004:39-60). he deals with the phenomenology of (re)cognition and its relevance in general aesthetics, and he proposes a list of: “different types of links between the work of art and the real”. his list includes five forms of relation: 1. correspondence to reality 2. connection to reality 3. connection to life 4. relatedness to context 5. aboutness with respect to context. in the case of correspondence to reality, the work of art expresses verifiable truth in some direct and explicit way. we come to connection to reality when the work doesn’t actually correspond to a fact, but is in some way linked to the external world. factually speaking, there is no such city as christminster, but this fictional city is realistic and in many ways connected to the actual city of oxford. in the third type, connection to life, the term reality has been replaced by a term more suited for dealing with the psychological, ethical, and political elements that one usually has in mind when claiming that a certain work of art is true to life. the fourth type of connection – relatedness – is simply the claim that the work is related in any number of ways to the socio-historical context in which it has been produced. shusterman concludes that: “a work that is not only a trace of human situations, be they social or political or whatever, but which is also, in some sense, a treatment of these contexts would illustrate the concept of aboutness that i have put at the end of my list. these different types of relation may be combined in certain works; any work will require its own mixture of acts of recognition”. the third type of relationship, i.e. literature’s “connection to life” seems to me the most intriguing, and perhaps the one that most eloquently defines the range of literature’s powers and specificity, its diversity from the truths of scientific discourse. in fact, this is the realm of literature’s attention to the subject and to the other. in order to elaborate on this observation i need to recall martha nussbaum’s suggestion (nussbaum 1995:16) that literature has a social usefulness because it can move us beyond the abstractions of ethics and social sciences, by making us “capable of entering imaginatively into the lives of distant others”. the empathetic imagining provided by literature is a road (not the only one, of course) towards an ethics of “impartial respect for human dignity”. if nussbaum’s position seems too optimistic in a literate world which is still plagued by violence and discrimination, i would nonetheless suggest that literature is particularly valuable in corroborating an attitude of impartial respect for the other because it adopts a subjective but simultaneously also a shared point of view, and a plurality of points of view at the same time. i wish to underline that this is the case with literature from its earliest beginning, because drama and dialogue take their origin, at least in the grecoroman cultural tradition, in the rhetorical exercise of arguing in utramque partes, as opposed to the monolithic, and putatively objective point of view of the hard and human sciences. armenian folia anglistika literature 128 in volume i of “la conoscenza della letteratura”, i have argued that the imaginative, emotional and empathetic dimensions of literature make it socially valuable and cognitively unique, and that the criticality of literature has both an ethical and an epistemological value (locatelli 2001:7-12; 181-190). the intellectual apprehension of complex situations is the vis vitalis of literature (locatelli 2004:173-188). a few salient points may illustrate the “special effects” of literature: it possesses a dynamic symbolic strength, which is both centripetal and centrifugal, i.e. literature moves towards itself (as meta-language, and as the site of intertextuality), and moves towards the representation and the construction of the external world. insofar as literature partakes of both mimesis and imagination, it is a royal road to knowledge because it “holds the mirror up to nature”, but it is also a site of what nelson goodman calls “worldmaking” (goodman 1992). in fact, i see fiction as a sort of thought experiment, the site of construction of alternative worlds, where the rules of everyday referentiality do not apply. a work of art, according to derrida (1992:33-75) has: “in principle the power to say everything, to break free of the rules, to displace them, and thereby to institute, to invent and even to suspect the traditional difference between nature and institution”. literature’s cognitive function is therefore also manifest in its critical function, particularly when it works as a critique of the ideologies it represents, and may implicitly or explicitly challenge. after foucault and derrida, i would say that by suspending reference, literature suspends (or even abrogates) the law. literature enables readers to achieve a specific awareness of the world that the social sciences do not provide, but one of its “special affects” is that it can create a synergy of knowledge with them. there are numerous occasions for these synergies, for example when: 1) literature sheds light on variously important social mechanisms let me briefly recall: • the rites of passage that are illustrated (and often questioned) in the bildungsroman; • the containment strategy of comic misrule, which subverts established hierarchies (see barber (1963) on shakespearean comedy and bakhtin (1968) on the carnival). i have called these strategies “litotic” because they (temporarily) deny established social values in order to (re)affirm them fully. • the illustrations of mimetic desire and victimization strategies (rené girard (1986, 1991, 1997) on scapegoating, and on shakespeare and dostoevsky). 2) literature illustrates different psychic and cognitive states literature is the locus where disparate cognitive states are displayed “from the inside”, not in the abstract and generalising mode of clinical diagnosis. dreams, visions, and even the unconscious, which freud himself admitted to have found in sophocles, find in literature a non-reductional expression. i agree that videogames may stimulate cognitive faculties, and that cybertexts do so through the dynamic strategy of interactive simulation, but they seem to address a nararmenian folia anglistikaliterature 129 row sector of human intelligence and a limited cognitive potential, if compared to literature’s wider appeal (schlaeger and stedman 2008). 3) literature represents the various silences of the repressed, the unsaid, the socially forbidden freud has magisterially taught us that the witz bypasses censorship (freud 1960). literature also indicates the silence of the ineffable (the romantic symbol being, of course, its highest expression). 4) literature promotes the recognition of different identities (including one’s own) literature gives us access to alterity by representing the voice of the other in a number of different ways. as jean-jacques lecercle (2003:18-19) reminds us: “i do not read a literary text to find my own image, but to have access to the image of other(s)”. lecercle further explains : “literature it is that allows me to break away from myself and offers me the luxury of access to another consciousness, to the consciousness of the other. ‘confessions’, as we all know, is an important subgenre of literature, and through the techniques of point of view or stream of consciousness typical of the modernist novel, literature makes the reader a happy peeping tom. […] this is made possible because of the collective medium of language, because intersubjectivity is always-also interlocution”. i will add that if we emphasize the representative quality of texts – we can often see the literary text as the expression of a group identity (usually a social, ethnic, religious, sexual minority). this aspect includes the problem of both the construction of such an identity, and of its recognition and acceptance by others. literature aptly responds to these challenges because it can stage the individuality of a voice or voices in the text, and the collectivity which implies (and highlights) the representative nature of the text. we should always be aware of the fact that literary texts are both representative and unique. they participate in both a subjective knowledge and a shared knowledge. i believe that literature is an encounter with alterity, with distant others, but also that it is an encounter with one’s own consciousness and social identity. in this sense, i agree with derek attridge (2004:86) when he writes that: “i can be surprised by the closeness of a work to me, the way it seems to echo what i had assumed to be my private thought.[…] we may feel that a work we are reading speaks directly to our deepest selves, yet when we look back we have to acknowledge that we had no awareness of those aspects of our subjectivity before the reading that offered itself as an affirmation of them.” the cognitive complexity of literary form the specific knowledge and pleasure of literature depend on form. they are fully displayed in “poetic thought”, a kind of conceptual activity which cannot simply be reduced to or “translated into” linear, plain, univocal statements. poetic thought, as i see it, is a way of thinking that implies a “unified sensibility”, and the layered complexity of logical, emotional and even sensuous apprehensions. armenian folia anglistika literature 130 i am convinced that the figurality of literature sustains a conceptual complexity that neither the plain statement nor any videogame can convey. metaphor, metalepsis, litotes, amphibology, paradox, and what the russian formalists have called “device”, allow literary discourse to say more than one thing at once, and even to say contradictory things at once. this is where literature is farthest removed from the univocal dimension of scientific discourse or the predetermined options of videogames software. let me paraphrase two sentences from virginia woolf’s “to the lighthouse” and “orlando” and suggest that in literature (and in poetry par excellence) “nothing is simply one thing” and “everything, in fact, is something else” (locatelli 2004:141-152). this is a feature that only literature displays among the human sciences (with the exception of contemporary philosophy, which has, of course, largely moved in this direction in the 20th century. literature directs us to an image of “truth” which cannot be attained through purely logical, causal, probabilistic, or pragmatic criteria. i therefore see literature as a process of simultaneous veiling and unveiling (the italian term s/velare, meaning a “revelation” through unveiling, is indeed adequate to indicate what literature “does”), and i see theory as the gesture that captures such process, essentially through questioning and criticality (locatelli 2005:1-12). the literary has a different import and purpose from scientific discourse, which aims at universal and univocal meaning, and also aims at information and usefulness. literature is “useless” in a kantian sense, and certainly “of little use” in a pragmatic sense: teaching how to sail a boat is not the major aim of coleridge’s “rime of the ancient mariner”, nor is mrs. dalloway’s walk in the streets of london a comparable substitute for a tourist guide to the city. when they interrogate their own epistemic status, the human sciences are increasingly recognizing that literature is a source of knowledge. the ever deepening interest in narrativity, strategies of emplotment, metaphorical thinking on the part of social psychologists (bruner 2001:25-37), cognitive scientists (fauconnier and turner 2002; toolan & weber 2005), neuroscientists (gomez mont and vega osorno 2011:49-64), etc., is there to prove it. the very acquisition of cultural systems through which we make sense of the world is promoted by storytelling and poetry, and by a “narrative understanding” even before logical reasoning. it follows that literature and theory certainly have the expertise in, and the understanding of “narrative and fictional mechanisms” which seem now required in areas as distant as medicine (engelhardt 2004:153-172), psychotherapy (barbetta 2002: 159-180), photography (agazzi 2004:51-73), advertising, religion, and law. it follows that both literature and literary theory can offer their critical competence in our experiences of acquiring, deciphering, and interpreting cultures, texts, ideologies, i.e. in interpreting what we call “life”. i do not need to remind you that epistemology indicates that interpretation and knowledge are intrinsically related. most importantly, i hope to have shown that literature offers a form of knowledge which is highly specific. it does not claim and does not aim at exactitude, precision, impartiality, objectivity, and pragmatic verification. these are, however, the criteria of scientific “truth” that are most prized in our culture today. incidentally, let me say that it clearly was not so in the middle ages or the renaissance, when religious metaphysics armenian folia anglistikaliterature 131 was deemed both the criterion and domain of absolute truth. which shows that knowledge is time and culture specific. after nietzsche, freud, and bakhtin literature seems to me to put us in a relationship with “truth”, provided this happens figuratively, obliquely, paradoxically, and also through the insuppressible polyphony of voices that characterizes its discourse. i would not hesitate, of course, call these the “special effects” of “literary style”. they depend on literature’s unique relationship to language. i reject the idea of “style” as mere ornament, but see it as an inescapable and specific epistemic category, not only for literature, but for any discipline, field, or theory. in this sense knowledge is style-specific. style is not embellishment but it is a “cognitive position”, and this is clearly visible in each discipline’s defense of its own protocols. this takes me to my next and final section. literature’s special relationship to language literature’s special relationship to language makes it a unique form of knowledge. we can certainly find social, historical, moral “truths” and “facts” in literature, but this is true also for the disciplines of history, sociology, psychology, anthropology and ethics. we can find in these disciplines emancipative and reparative cultural strategies that are morally valuable. however, as gilles deleuze and jean-jacques lecercle have shown, only literature provides knowledge of “life” through knowledge of language. i will add that literature puts back into the culture a memory of the language, a trace of its historical stratifications, cultural modifications, and that literature registers and transmits not just events or memories, but the “flavour” (what i call “expressiveness”) of the language in which the (recorded) events were lived. only literature among the human sciences gives us a kind of language that is communicative, expressive, and inventive, at the same time. these three features of its language are crucial in the knowledge that literature provides. any global language necessarily tends to be effective, i.e. merely communicative, but this happens at the expense of expressiveness and inventiveness. internet or esp english are certainly not the english of poets and novelists, but an impoverished, albeit functional version of it. any professional language amounts to a curtailing of the full potential of language, which, on the contrary literature can preserve, keep in view, and circulate in the culture. literature takes language to its limit, and the philosophy of deleuze (1986, 1998, 2008) has indeed called attention to this aspect, particularly in his concept of “minority literature”(elaborated with felix guattari), in his works on spinoza, as well as in his unique “readings” of literary texts, from proust to melville, from kafka to beckett. the anthropological consequences of the political and practical choices a culture makes regarding language are indeed extremely relevant, and so are its choices regarding literature. the jargon ridden vocabulary we increasingly use in everyday language, i.e. the jargon of the professions, with its soaring number of neologisms and formulaic turns of phrase, is fostering nothing less than unprecedented subjectivities, it is changing who we are. pier paolo pasolini prophetically perceived and forcefully deplored this state of affairs in the italian culture of the sixties and seventies; his remarks have become more poignant with the explosion of capitalist communication industry, and the advent armenian folia anglistika literature 132 of formulaic reports, memos and demos in the workplace and beyond, in cell phone texting, cybertexts, hypertext, and internet menus, all of which disregard the infinite variety of expression afforded by natural language and literary language. a great writer, on the contrary, absorbs, passes on and contributes to the language s/he finds. but i wish to emphasise that “linguistic innovation” is at the same time “philosophical innovation” because, as antonio gramsci (1971) who is better known as a marxist, but was also a trained linguist, reminds us, any language is always “a conception of the world”. i have proposed that literature’s linguistic inventiveness depends on the use of the full potential of language, let me add that its inventiveness lies not just in creating new plots (shakespeare borrowed nearly all of them). the complex language of literature is what provides as many different conceptions of the world as there are writers and even literary works. we can certainly see literature as a rich jewel box of plots and characters that can be transferred to film, or artistic performances, but we cannot reduce literature to a storehouse of plots: we would miss the specificity of its special effects qua literature. let me remind you that even the apparently merely communicative language of hemingway is precisely his unmistakable style, and even such seemingly “plain style” widely differs from the inexpressive and homogeneous language of professional jargons. however, even these jargons would become expressive in literary discourse (instrumental as they are in connoting a character’s social status and historical contingency). e-novels can provide knowledge, they “hold the mirror up to nature”, being written in the language in which we live the postmodern condition. when they are written by someone sensitive to language use, they become literature in the full sense of the term (and not merely in the sense in which the instructions of my photo-camera is ‘literature’). to conclude, let me say that literature’s fictional status and its focus on the particular have long been despised, or at best, misrecognized as irrelevant, but i believe that literature has a significant cognitive value and a social role to play also in our postmodern age because its “special effects” cannot be replaced by the extant hypertexts or even cybertexts. moreover, in epistemic terms, literature’s claims seem indeed too modest, vis à vis the immodest claims of positivistic science or analytic and systematic philosophy, because literature does not display its complex cognitive wonders at first sight. the way to literary wonderland is a slow movement, the patient acquisition of a specific expertise, leading to the wonders of endless (re)cognitions. like slow food, as opposed to fast food, literature is delightful and healthy. note: 1. see: locatelli, angela (ed.), 2001-201... i wish to warmly thank professor seda gasparyan from yerevan state university for her valuable contribution to this series. see: gasparyan, seda on objectivity in understanding verbal art (2006) in angela locatelli (ed.), la conoscenza della letteratura/the knowledge of literature, vol.v, bergamo, sestante edizioni, bergamo university press (pp.67-72). armenian folia anglistikaliterature 133 references: 1. agazzi, e. (2004) spazi privilegiati d’incontro tra immagine e parola. il rapporto tra letteratura e fotografia in alcuni esperimenti della narrativa contemporanea. // la conoscenza della letteratura. the knowledge of litrerature, vol. iii. / ed. by a. locatelli. sestante edizioni, bergamo: bergamo university press. 2. attridge, d. (2004) the singularity of literature. london and new york: routledge. 3. bakhtin, m. (1968) rabelais and his world. / tr. by h. iswolsky. cambridge: m.i.t. press. 4. barber, c.l. (1963) shakespeare’s festive comedy: a study of dramatic form and its relation to social custom. cleveland and new york, meridian books: the world publishing company. 5. barbetta, p. (2002) memoria implicita e autobiografia in psicoterapia. // la conoscenza della letteratura. the knowledge of literature, vol. i. / ed. by a. locatelli. sestante edizioni, bergamo: bergamo university press. 6. bruner, j. (2001) self-making and world-making. // narrative and identity. studies in autobiography, self and culture. / ed. by j. brockmeier and d. carbaugh. amsterdam/philadelphia: john benjamins publishing company. 7. deleuze, g. and guattari, f. (1986) kafka. / tr. by d. polan. minneapolis mn: university of minnesota press. 8. deleuze, g. (1990) the logic of sense. / tr. by m. lester and c. stivale. new york: columbia u.p. 9. deleuze, g. (1990) expressionism in philosophy: spinoza. / tr. by m. joughin. new york: zone books. 10. deleuze, g. (2008) proust and signs. / tr. by r. howard. london: continuum. 11. derrida, j. (1992) this strange institution called literature. (interview). // acts of literature. / ed. by d. attrigidge. london and new york: routledge. 12. engelhardt, d.v. (2004) disease between phenomenology and symbolism. // la conoscenza della letteratura. the knowledge of litrerature, vol. iii. / ed. by a. locatelli. sestante edizioni, bergamo: bergamo university press. 13. fauconnier, g. and turner, m. (2002) the way we think, conceptual blending and the mind’s hidden complexity. new york: basic books. 14. freud, s. (1960) jokes and their relation to the unconscious. / tr. and ed. by j. strachey. new york and london: w.w. norton & company. 15. girard, r. (1986) the scapegoat. baltimore: the johns hopkins university press. 16. girard, r. (1991) a theatre of envy: william shakespeare. new york: oxford university press. 17. girard, r. (1997) resurrection from the underground: feodor dostoevsky. new york: crossroad publishing company. 18. gomez, f.m. and osorno, j.v. (2011) neuroliterature: imaging and imagining the brain in the neurohumanities. // la conoscenza della letteratura. the knowledge of litrerature, vol. x. / ed. by a. locatelli. sestante edizioni, bergamo: bergamo university press. armenian folia anglistika literature 134 19. goodman, n. (1992) ways of worldmaking. indianapolis: hackett. 20. gramsci, a. (1971) selections from prison notebooks. / ed. and tr. by q. hoare and g.n. smith. london: lawrence & wishart. 21. lecercle, j.j. (2003) kafka, minority, marxism, or: literature reading philosophy. // la conoscenza della letteratura. the knowledge of literature, vol. ii. / ed. by a. locatelli. sestante edizioni, bergamo: bergamo university press. 22. lecercle, j.j. (2009) in praise of realism. // la conoscenza della letteratura. / the knowledge of litrerature, vol.viii. / ed. by a. locatelli. sestante edizioni, bergamo: bergamo university press. 23. locatelli, a. (ed.) (2001-2011) la conoscenza della letteratura/the knowledge of litrerature, vol. i-x. sestante edizioni, bergamo: bergamo university press. <www.sestanteedizioni.it/bgunipress/locatelli> 24. locatelli, a. (2002) note sul sapere letterario. // la conoscenza della letteratura. the knowledge of literature, vol. i. / ed. by a. locatelli. sestante edizioni, bergamo: bergamo university press. 25. locatelli, a. (2002) pensiero poetico: forma, immaginazione ed empatia. // la conoscenza della letteratura. the knowledge of litrerature, vol. i. / ed. by a. locatelli. sestante edizioni, bergamo: bergamo university press. 26. locatelli, a. (2004) literariness, consensus, or “something else”. // tropismes, n.12. whither theory ? / où va la théorie? paris: université paris x nanterre, centre de recherches anglo-americaines. 27. locatelli, a. (2004) for nothing was simply one thing: observations on the knowledge of literature. // la conoscenza della letteratura. the knowledge of litrerature, vol. iii. / ed. by a. locatelli. sestante edizioni, bergamo: bergamo university press. 28. locatelli, a. (2005) literature as endless hypersign of revelation and concealement. // saukoanaritikaru eibungaku ronso, psychoanalytical study of english and literature, n 25. tokyo. 29. nussbaum, m.c. (1995) poetic justice. the literary imagination and public life. boston: beacon press. 30. schlaeger, j. and stedman, g. (2008) the literary mind. tubingen: gunter narr, verlag. 31. shusterman, r. (2003) acts of recognition: identification, knowledge and mutuality in art. // la conoscenza della letteratura. the knowledge of litrerature, vol. iv. / ed. by a. locatelli. sestante edizioni, bergamo: bergamo university press. 32. shusterman, r. (2004) cognition and the iconotext: art, philosophy, and the dream of fusion. // la conoscenza della letteratura. the knowledge of litrerature, vol. iii. / ed. by a. locatelli. sestante edizioni, bergamo: bergamo university press. 33. toolan, m. & weber, j.j. (eds.) (august 2005) the cognitive turn: papers in cognitive literary studies. // the european journal of english studies, vol. 9-2. armenian folia anglistikaliterature 135 ¶ñ³ï³ýáõãû³ý çù³ó³ï³ýáõãûáõýá ï³ù ·ñ³ï³ý ¹çëïáõñëç ñ³ïáõï ³½¹»óáõãûáõýá ¶ñ³ï³ýáõãûáõýý áõýç çù³ó³ï³ý ù»í ³ñå»ù ¨ ëáóç³é³ï³ý ýß³ý³ïáõãûáõý, áñáýù ³ûýáõ³ù»ý³ûýçí, ùçý㨠³ûåù ñçùý³ï³ýáõù ã»ý ï³ñ¨áñí»é: ²ûëåçëç ³ýï»ëù³ý å³ï׳éý ³ûý ¿, áñ ·ñ³ï³ýáõãûáõýá ñ»ßïáõãû³ùμ áõ ùç³ý·³ ùçó ç óáõûó ãç ¹ýáõù çñ μ³ñ¹ çù³ó³ï³ý ññ³ß³éçùý»ñá, ¹ñ³ýù ñý³ñ³íáñ ¿ áýï³é»é ùç³ûý çù³ëï³íáñù³ý ¨ í»ñ³çù³ëï³íáñù³ý »ñï³ñ ¨ ³ýí»ñç ãí³óáõ ׳ ý³å³ññý ³ýóý»éáõó ñ»ïá: ¶ñ³ï³ýáõãûáõýá áã ùç³ûý »ñ¨³ï³û³ï³ý ·» õ³·çï³ï³ý å³ïï»ñý»ñ ¿ ý»ñï³û³óýáõù, ³ûé¨ ·çï³ïó³ï³ýáõãû³ý ¨ ëáóç³é³ï³ý çýùýáõãû³ý μ³½ ù³ãçí áõ μ³½ ù³½³ý ¹ñë¨áñáõùý»ñ: armenian folia anglistika literature 136 maket_n_verjin.qxp guest editor: gohar madoyan (armenia) computer design: heghine gasparyan armenian folia anglistika is the reviewed international academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english. its aim is to foster research of the english language, literature and culture in armenia and elsewhere, facilitate intellectual cooperation between high school teachers and scholars. armenian folia anglistika is intended to be published twice a year. articles of interest to university-level teachers and scholars in english studies are warmly welcomed by the multi-national editorial board of the journal. articles should be directed to the editor-in-chief. the editorial board of armenian folia anglistika announces the opening of a new section in the journal armenological studies, which invites valuable and innovative contributions from such fields as linguistics, literary criticism, ethnic studies, cultural history, gender studies and a wide range of adjacant disciplines. editor-in-chief: dr. seda gasparyan, prof. yerevan state university alex manoogian 1 yerevan 009025 armenia tel: (3741) 571660 fax: +(3741) 571660 e-mail: romano@xter.net editorial board: yelena mkhitaryan, prof. (armenia) dr. svetlana ter-minasova, prof. (russia) dr. olga alexandrova, prof. (russia) dr. vincent gillespie, prof. (england) peter sutton, editor (england) shoushan paronyan, associate prof. (armenia) gayane girunyan, assist. prof. (armenia) lusakn publishers 6 grigor lusavorich,yerevan tel: 52-79-74, 52-79-47, e-mail. lusakn@rambler.ru ðçùý³¹çñ ¨ ·éë³íáñ ëùµ³·çñ` 꺸² ¶²êä²ðú²ü ð³ù³ñç ãáõ³ñïù³ý å³ï³ëë³ý³ïáõ` þàôþ²ü ä²ðàüú²ü èñ³ïí³ï³ý ·áñíáõý»áõãûáõý çñ³ï³ý³óýáõ §²ü¶èºðºüæ àôêàôøü²êæðàôâú²ü ð²úî²î²ü ²êàòæ²ò沦 ðî ìï³û³ï³ý` 03² 065183 îñí³í` 28.06.2004ã. ²ý·é»ñ»ýç áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãû³ý ñ³ûï³ï³ý ³ëáóç³óç³ (²ý·é»ñ»ýç áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãû³ý »íñáå³ï³ý ý»¹»ñ³óç³ûç ³ý¹³ù) ²ü¶è沶æî²î²ü ðºî²¼àîàôâúàôüüºðæ ð²úî²î²ü ð²ü¸ºê øçç³½·³ûçý ·ñ³ëáëíáõ ³ùë³·çñ ñ³ù³·áñí³ïóáõãû³ùµ` ºñ¨³ýç å»ï³ï³ý ñ³ù³éë³ñ³ýç (ð³û³ëï³ý) ºñ¨³ýç å»ï³ï³ý é»½í³µ³ý³ï³ý ñ³ù³éë³ñ³ýç (ð³û³ëï³ý) øáëïí³ûç ø.èáùáýáëáíç ³ýí. å»ï³ï³ý ñ³ù³éë³ñ³ýç (èáõë³ëï³ý) îñ³ïáíç ú³·ç»éáýû³ý ñ³ù³éë³ñ³ýç (è»ñ³ëï³ý) ê³ñ³·áë³ûç ñ³ù³éë³ñ³ýç (æëå³ýç³) øáýï»ý»·ñáûç ñ³ù³éë³ñ³ýç ºðºì²ü 2009 2 armenian association for the study of english (member association of the european society for the study of english) armenian folia anglistika reviewed international journal in cooperation with: yerevan state university, armenia yerevan state linguistic university, armenia moscow state lomonosov university, russia jagiellonian university, krakow, poland university of zaragoza, spain university of montenegro yerevan2009 3 microsoft word maket 2020-1(21) 19.02 doc.doc armenian folia anglistika culture studies 130 sanctities sustained: an outsider’s experience inside armenian culture dylan whitman waller freelance editor, writer and musician abstract this essay will depict one american musician’s journey in the discovery of komitas’ music and how this led to a deeper discovery of armenian culture and history writ large, resulting in a visit to armenia itself. it is intended to honor the greatness of the armenian spirit and identity, as well as to encourage the following of one’s inspiration and intuition in life. key words: komitas, preservation, identity, travel, lusine zakaryan, jordi savall, sincerity, genocide, garcia lorca, duende, artur shahnazarian, music. just when i’m thinking, / as i’m passing the boy smiling in his school uniform, / thinking i was a boy once too,/ and then another boy, this one / twelve years old maybe, /with anger and confusion on his face, thinking i was twelve once too, / and as i wonder, / just as i begin to get pierced /by the gorgeous september morning / and all the holiness of the mountains and people around, / wondering ‘why is it that when so far away from one’s birthplace, / everything essential becomes closest?’ / just as it’s hitting me with awe and grief and gratitude, / i round the corner and there’s mt ararat, / in all majesty, silence, autumnal, no haze, / unreal, ultimate reality, the beauty, the symbol, / anonymously, generously, generating, donating, / identity. worship while you weep the clarity of fall. dylan whitman waller introduction i was living in a one-room cabin in northern minnesota, halfway between my grandmother and my parents, alongside a lake that was frozen full of eagles in culture studies armenian folia anglistika 131 wintertime, and full of car-noise when it thawed, attempting to make a living while attempting to make peace between the generations. one night as i’m resting and my little radio is on, a sound comes to me from the public station down the road broadcasting things from further away: it’s the first time i hear komitas, in that little broken shack, and i don’t know who he is and i don’t know what armenia is, but the music makes immediate, complete sense: first, a woodwind, and who of what wood is playing that flute? the sound of pure longing, and the fortitude within it. then, voices – the chorale, the angelic, the transcendence over the bestial and mundane, surpassing even russian vespers in intriguing resolutions. it went to my soul, where it lived or already existed and was placed inside to germinate. i did some research on the duduk as soon as i could, but for whatever reason overlooked a study of the composer. years later i’m in portugal, attending a concert of the spanish maestro jordi savall, whose organization hesperion xxi (savall 2012) has long been dedicated to preserving and performing traditional music from around the world. jordi’s wife, montserrat figueras, had died within the previous year. she was an extremely gifted soprano, and her favorite music was armenian music, so his ensemble had made a recording of his interpretations of komitas’ conveyant sounds, dedicated to her memory. i was finally fully struck by the man and his work. it was mentioned that montserrat’s favorite singer of armenian music was a woman named lusine zakaryan. the name stayed with me, but it wasn’t until a year or two later, i’m living outside boston, up in the green mountains, taking time away from the world, wanting always to go away, as the only means to get in further, and on a christmas eve i finally hear her, electronically, for the first time: lusine zakharyan singing komitas, ‘krunk’, ‘garun a’, and all the rest. i break down. if her voice opens a wound, it is only in order to pour healing into it. it shoots through me with such light, direct into the sternum, and i understand that my whole life will be rearranged. i end up in denmark and i’m still listening to the material, absorbing her voice, and it’s during that armenian folia anglistika culture studies 132 time that a russian colleague shares with me what she has known of komitas’ life, and i begin to become aware of some of the history of armenia, while wondering what sort of people could produce and harbor such unique, divinelyinspired music. from dream to determination i learn while looking at trees through the mist of the danish seashore and listening to the calls of migrating geese above as background to the armenian music coming from inside, that armenia experienced the genocide – the conscious determination of the turks to exterminate it – the first such horror seen in the 20th century. in earlier centuries, american occupiers had already been well under way in attempting to systematically exterminate its native inhabitants, but this, inside the boundaries of european civilization, was a first. and i learned that komitas could not handle it, had no way to assimilate or understand on a spiritual level what was happening. it broke him. twisted him mad. i was compelled by his heroic, unique labor, in travelling to every region of armenia and collecting, preserving the folk music; how he placed it alongside and within classical forms he had learned in berlin and vienna, and wondered if his action and his music remained a cornerstone of armenian culture and identity. i wondered if someday, somehow, i could find out for myself. some few weeks later, in the rain-haze, looking into those seashore-trees holding this deep question, trying to discern direction, a voice inside their gentle repose seemed to say, ‘yes, now, armenia.’ the dream became determination, and i walked through the trees of that baltic seashore and was able to enter armenia. what i discovered upon arrival and every day henceforth were so many open doors of illumination, a combination of creativity and depth of kindness in the people, a heroic humility i’d heard reflected in the music. i mean, a singer and her brother, neither of whom you’ve met before, come and pick you up at the airport at five in the morning in the middle of a snowstorm and take you to culture studies armenian folia anglistika 133 your rented house? who are these people; why are they so kind? don’t they know that nearly everyone in america and europe distrusts one another, or do i yet not understand their brand of distrust? in any case, in being allowed to set up my portable home, i feel an immediate, deep sense of belonging. i begin to learn. i begin to meet and assist musicians, composers, filmmakers, book publishers – those who have devoted their lives to komitas’ music, and all those who have komitas’ music inside them, which is everyone. whether street sweeper or doctor, whether taxi driver or professor – all armenians hold komitas’ music inside them, a sign of the highest culture. i am not an academic; if anything i am a student of faces, voices, sound and form. i was amazed to find children here safe and free, which no other large city of the world that i’ve seen can claim. their freedom informs us all, a sign of the highest civilization. i see the poverty and the problems too, but i see how people deal with the poverty, in most cases so heartily and humorously endured and survived within than the kinds of poverty that afflict the united states and europe. i had the great fortune of meeting, for example, artur shahnazarian, the composer of ‘sasuntsi davit’ and so many other works (shahnazarian. 2014), one who understands khaz, the ancient armenian system of musical notation, a code which had taken komitas fourteen years to crack, and after a great evening of sharing music and poetry, he asked me, ‘what do you hear in komitas’ music?’ how does one describe in words what one hears inside works of beauty, dedication and endurance? after a moment of reflection, i answered ‘sincerity’. what is the quality of sincerity? why is it difficult to define? why is it essential? it’s not dissimilar to the great spanish poet garcia lorca’s definition of duende, meaning, ‘singing from the soles of your boots through the top of your head’ (lorca 1933), and that one can retain all the technical training in the world, but without this quality, the work will be flat, without soul. though armenian folia anglistika culture studies 134 komitas employed a unique technical brilliance in his compositions, the human heart is the root of his music. armenian singers retain this essence organically and supranaturally. lorca would have loved this place. anyone with half a heart left open would. concluding remarks simultaneously, i begin to learn more about the atrocities committed in the past and the threat and active danger armenia remains exposed to by its neighbors east and west. in addition to its culture and music, i devote whatever may be useful from my life to the preservation of armenian historical sovereignty. i learn about komitas’ rescue; i unexpectedly learn about my extended family – the bliss family’s role in assisting refugees in the region, raising over three million dollars in relief in 1920 (ketibian and ohanian 2018). i understand we used to do good things with our money. komitas gave his life to music, lived inside it; this cannot be overstated. what broke in him is what breaks in all of us, in accordance with our sincerity and sensitivity, but as he was breaking and before he was broken, the sound of his supplication can only be called divine, fully human. tenderness and playfulness. the honesty. the faith. the love. sincerity and sensitivity – the rarest of traits. many young people in europe have forgotten their root-music; but most here still listen to komitas. ‘his is not a music,’ one young woman said, ‘it is a way of understanding life.’ i have few illusions that any place is paradisiacal, but across the 30 countries i’ve experienced, i do have an ability to employ and observe some societal comparisons, and whatever is lacking in certain important areas of armenian infrastructure is made up for in what’s preserved – may it always be defended. i believe there is a heritage, cultural and spiritual, held for safekeeping in armenia which belongs to all the world. one can read it inside the tragedy, and hear it inside his music, where a spirit seems to say, ‘it’s safe here, inside this music – this is a preservation and culture studies armenian folia anglistika 135 continuation of home, of identity. the world brings suffering, but there is a greater mercy at work.’ last year, one of the good young soldiers drove me to etchmiadzin, where komitas lived and worked, and to surb gayane, where lusine zakaryan is buried. i placed four white roses on her grave, breaking down in light as i had when her voice first pierced me, a peak moment of my life, a great honor to come full circle from that small cabin in midwestern america to here, from the birth of her voice in my awareness to her final resting place. i could not be more fortunate. thank you for allowing me to say these words; it’s an honor to be here. may god bless us all. references: 1. ketibian, a. and ohanian, r.v. (2018) the armenian genocide, prelude and aftermath, as reported in the us press. // the new york times; vol.2 1915-1922; p.1347. 2. lorca, f.g. (1933) play and theory of the duende. available at: <www.poetryintranslation.com/pitbr/spanish/lorcaduende.php> [accessed november 2019]. 3. savall, j. (2012) armenian spirit. available at: <www.aliavox.com/en/catalogue/esprit-darmenie> [accessed november 2019]. 4. shahnazarian, a. (2014) the armenian national musical treasury. available at: <www.armenianmusic.am/en/audio/singers=14> [accessed november 2019]. 5. zakaryan, l. available at: <www.youtube.com/channel/ucv3rutsranhwj erw85p9thg> [accessed november 2019]. հարատևող սրբություններ. հայկական մշակույթի՝ օտարերկրացու ընկալումը հոդվածը պատմում է կոմիտասի ինքնատիպ աշխարհում ամերիկացի երաժշտի ճամփորդության մասին, այն մասին, թե ինչպես է վերջինս armenian folia anglistika culture studies 136 բացահայտել մեծ երգահանի երաժշտության գեղագիտական արժեքը, ինչն էլ իր հերթին նրան մոտեցրել է հայ մշակույթի ու պատմության ուսումնասիրության մեջ խորամուխ լինելու գործին: հեղինակի հետաքըրքրություններն ու գնահատականները ամբողջացել են նրա՝ հայաստան կատարած այցով: սա փորձ է ընդգծելու հայ ոգու և հայկական ինքնության մեծությունը, ինչպես նաև քաջալերելու մարդկանց ականջալուր լինել սեփական կանխազգացումներին ու ոգեշնչմանը: received by the editorial board 20.12.2019 recommended for publication by the reviewers 30.01.2020 accepted for print 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(www.heidelberg.com) >> /namespace [ (adobe) (common) (1.0) ] /othernamespaces [ << /asreaderspreads false /cropimagestoframes true /errorcontrol /warnandcontinue /flattenerignorespreadoverrides false /includeguidesgrids false /includenonprinting false /includeslug false /namespace [ (adobe) (indesign) (4.0) ] /omitplacedbitmaps false /omitplacedeps false /omitplacedpdf false /simulateoverprint /legacy >> << /addbleedmarks false /addcolorbars false /addcropmarks false /addpageinfo false /addregmarks false /convertcolors /converttocmyk /destinationprofilename () /destinationprofileselector /documentcmyk /downsample16bitimages true /flattenerpreset << /presetselector /mediumresolution >> /formelements false /generatestructure false /includebookmarks false /includehyperlinks false /includeinteractive false /includelayers false /includeprofiles false /multimediahandling /useobjectsettings /namespace [ (adobe) (creativesuite) (2.0) ] /pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /documentcmyk /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /usedocumentprofile /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2540 2540] /pagesize [595.276 841.890] >> setpagedevice 7 maket 2010 nor_n:layout 1.qxd foreign words and phrases in newspaper film reviews foreign words and phrases shouldn’t become a bête noire, but, ceteris paribus, english sentences should be in english… jack lynch throughout its history, english has been shaped andenriched by words and phrases of french, scandinavian, italian, latin, greek and german origin. when cultures come into contact with one another, borrowing takes place primarily in the realm of lexical terms (anderson 1973). as a. i. smirnitsky points out, a foreign word is a shapeless piece of material, which gains its shape only by means and in the system of the new language (smirnitski 1954). many words of foreign origin have been in english for so long that they have been freely integrated and can no longer be distinguished from english words and may not trigger a sense of “foreignisms”. however, there are cases, when the word is not assimilated and retains its foreign language spelling, pronunciation as well as connotation. such cases are perceived as “organic inclusions” (smirnitski 1954). depending on the degree of adaptation of an originally “alien” word to its new linguistic surroundings, linguists distinguish between foreign words and loanwords. however, the borderline between them is blurred and a concise classification is not always an easy task. in this article the word foreign is used for those borrowed words which have not been accepted by the english as “part and parcel” of the language, or in other words, had not been naturalized yet (lindgren 1943:240). the use of foreign words and word combinations in film reviews has direct connection with the peculiarity of the newspaper style. along with informing the reader about the film, they gain the readers’ attention and make an impression on him. being aware of their expressive power, the reviewer uses a number of foreign words and phrases in the text. these units can be perceived as elegant and educated, and they are likely to show up in the writing of individuals who seek to give a special elevated touch to their work. it is worth mentioning, that this means of expression is more productive when it does not arouse extra difficulties in understanding the whole text. for this purpose, the reporter should take into account both the educational and social status of his reader. he should be aware of the background knowledge of his reader to successfully establish contact with the latter. the use of foreign words and word combinations in film reviews perform both expressive and informative functions. it is possible to show how the relationship between these two functions changes depending on the role of foreign words and phrases in the text of film reviews. a comparison of film reviews published at the same period of time armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 89 irina vardanyan on the same film but in newspapers of different social orientation will help to show how the choice between a foreign word and its functional english equivalent depends on the readers’ social and educational status. the usage of foreign words and word combinations is considered to be marked, as they reveal not only the reader’s, but also the reviewer’s social status. however, this phenomenon is not always socially marked. the admixture of foreign words is one of the distinguishing peculiarities of newspaper style. it should be noted that some foreign words as vanilla, visa, blitz, etc., are so commonly or long used in newspapers in general and film reviews in particular that they have become totally familiar to the reader and there is no need to print them in italics. on the other hand, a number of loanwords, such as cliché, coup de theatre, etc., keep their original spelling, foreign words and word combinations of this type are also widely used both in quality and mass newspapers. below are some examples of foreignisms, the use of which is not limited to the social and educational status: they are found in both quality and mass newspapers. film bible variety says: ‘the indisputable raison d’etre for about schmidt is to showcase jack nicholson giving a master class in the art of screen acting. the daily mail, january 22, 2005 the sequence was, above all, a remarkable tour de force of editing, but its emotional effect depended on the identification the viewer brought earlier in the film to the sympathetic and vulnerable figure that leigh presented. the guardian, october 5, 2004 the performance is extraordinary tour de force. her company gravity & levity has been launched with an ambitious programme of live performance and film that tours until june 25. the daily express, june 1, 2005 the coincidence of sound and meaning of such words with homonymous english words improves understanding. in the last example, the reviewer successfully matches the french phrase tour de force with the english word tour, thus adding to the better understanding of the whole text. as seen from the examples in both quality and mass newspapers the foreign word is introduced without any explanation. the absence of any comment is explained by the fact that such units do not have an important role in the understanding of the whole text. their function is to draw the reader’s attention to the text of some particular review. to foreignisms also belong a number of terms of foreign origin relating to arts: painting, music, theater, etc., such as premiere, denouement, leitmotiv, etc. however some of them have a restricted use, mainly restricted to the educational level. e.g. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 90 more recently there was , the knockabout 70s heist romp written by tv vete rans clement and la frenais that attracted large numbers of americans to a story involving princess margaret and a denouement at paddington station (and which, together with the now-cancelled us version of life on mars may have helped nudge the door open for peace’s altogether more hellish vision of the same era). sunday telegraph, june 29, 2008 aycborn leitmotiv abound: male obtuseness provoking female desperation. the financial times, december 20, 2009 the frequency of foreign word usage varies between newspapers aimed at different audiences. it is common knowledge that compared with mass newspapers, the quality ones frequently contain a higher proportion of foreign words and phrases. reporters like to use foreign words when they mention foreign films in an attempt to arouse their readers’ interest or to express the connotations of the words more prope rly. e.g. inside, designer paul wills lays on an impressive coup de theatre for the torture chambers in the ministry of love. the daily mail, march 5, 2010 columbia studios gave him carte blanche, and clouzot went ahead with serge regianni and romy schneider starring and three full camera crews. the observer, november 8, 2009 the most original thing about peter sollett’s film about teenage angst is its title, taken from rachel cohn and david levithan’s novel of the same name. evening standard january 1, 2009 as it is seen from the examples adduced above, foreign words are introduced to the text differently, depending on the author’s intention and the readers’ background know ledge. in the given examples foreign words are used without any explanation and comment since they are known to the reader. the reviewer gives explanations to the foreign words in case the reader lacks some particular background information to understand house word. the purpose is to avoid misunderstanding of the whole context. sometimes the writer, who likes to avail himself of a foreign word, either to make a genuine point or to show that he has the gift of tongues, uses literal translation instead of the actual word not to keep his less favored readers in the dark. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 91 on 4 october 1976, the strip was launched. woody, the pen-and-ink protagonist, was angst-ridden: flawed, fearful, insecure, inadequate, pessimistic, urban, single, lustful, rejected by women. the guardian, october 19, 2009 it should be noted that the english equivalents of the german word angst cannot be considered pure translation as they have different shades of meaning and the former has additional emotional-expressive-evaluative connotations due to its foreign origin. thus, despite the fact, that the word angst is freely used by the english, it still retains some of its sociolinguistic connotations peculiar to german. foreign words and word combinations are getting to be freely interspersed through english. many of them retain their original pronunciation in order to add some extra coloring to the whole text. the reviewer takes particular care to linguistically liven up his text, to describe the scenes more authentically by adding local coloring to his speech. the foreign words introduced in the text without any explanation, help the author to achieve some stylistic effect. in this case, there is no need to understand the meaning of the word as only the foreign word form is relevant here. when reading a review readers feel they are closer to the reality of the film characters and their language. in the following example in order to vividly transmit the local coloring of the film the reviewer uses the french word directrice which is well known to the broad public: one laughs as madame dubonnet, directrice of a nice finishing school, is reunited with the english millionaire. sunday telegraph, june 22, 2004 the journalist usually acts in his own interest to provide optimal stylistic effectiveness for the reader. he aims at evoking interest, understanding or reacting to the feelings in the audience. on the other hand, foreignisms are conspicuous when embedded in english sentences, and thereby catch the readers’ attention (pfitzner 1978:122). foreignisms are also used for emphasis, to achieve intensification of expression in particular. it’s done with relish and syle, much helped by robin’s set: the plage and the terrasse of the cafe pataplon. standard, june2, 2004 here the reviewer prefers the french word plage to its neutral english equivalent beach, and uses terrasse as he intends to transfer to his reader the local atmosphere of a fashonable and luxurious rest house. however, when using a foreign word the reviewer always takes into consideration his readers’ background knowledge, social and educational status. otherwise he can lead the reader to misunderstanding, as the reader can fail to understand the whole passage armenian folia anglistika linguistics 92 because of a foreign word. reporters writing for quality papers are relatively free in introducing foreign elements in the text only when they are sure that the reader will not only understand the meaning of the foreign word, but also highly appreciate the stylistic effect brought in by the foreign word. it should be noted that if there exists a more or less adequate english equivalent for the foreign word, the reviewer of mass newspapers tends to use the native equivalent, whereas in quality papers the foreign equivalents are preferred. this can be well illustrated in the following examples, where the same film is reviewed in newspapers of different social orientation. the period is the 19th century. with a happy sense of fun, the king of navarre and his three cronies are seen as pompous highbrows in graduate’s gowns… daily telegraph, december 10, 2006 we are in the turn-of-the century france. daily express, november 27, 2006 mr. kyle sets the action in the period of the early belle epoque. the guardian, november10, 2006 it is clearly seen from the examples that only in the last passage printed in the guardian, the author describes the period of settled and comfortable life preceding the war of 1914-1918 by a french phrase belle époque. this contextually and syntactically important expression is not commented upon, as it is well known to the reader of the guardian. there is no doubt that compared with such natural expressions as the period is the 19 th century or the turn-of-the century france the french phrase implies more emotional-expressive connotations due to its foreign origin. it can be said that in the given examples the foreign words perform both informative and expressive functions. thus, it can be concluded that foreign elements imply additional local colouring to the text of the review. generally spoken, the adoption of foreign words is motivated by potential profit, be it need or prestige. moreover, there is a wide spread opinion that the use of foreign words belong to a more “educated” register. indeed, by virtue of its being foreign, a word attains greater saliency and acquires greater expressive power. references: 1. anderson, m.h. (2002) engelsk i dansk. // sprogholding i. denmark. kopenhavn: kopenhavn universitet. 2. lindgren, h.c. (1942) the relationship between foreign language courses of study and foreign words in newspaper english. stanford: stanford university press. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 93 3. pfitser, j. (1978) der anglicismus in deuchen. vol. 51. stuttgart: j.b. metzlersche verlagsbuch handlung. 4. smirnitsky, a.i. (1954) obyektivnost sushchestvovaniya yazika. // materialy k kursam yazikoznaniya. v.a. zveginceva (ed). m: mgu. úï³ñ μ³é»ñý áõ μ³é³ï³å³ïóáõãûáõýý»ñá ïçýá·ñ³ëáëáõãû³ý ï»ùëïáõù ðá¹ í³ íáõù ñ³ý ·³ ù³ ýá ñ»ý í»ñ éáõí íáõù ¿ û ï³ñ μ³ é» ñç ¨ μ³ é³ ï³ å³ï óáõã ûáõý ý» ñç ¹» ñá ïç ýá· ñ³ ëá ëáõã û³ý ï»ùë ïáõù: ¸ñ³ýù ïç ýá· ñ³ ëá ëáõã û³ý ï»ùë ïçý ñ³ õáñ ¹áõù »ý ³ñ ï³ ñ³ûï ã³ ï³ ýáõã ûáõý` ³ûý ¹³ñó ý» éáí ³ é³ í»é ïå³ íá ñçã: ú ï³ñ μ³ é»ñý áõ μ³ é³ ï³ å³ï óáõã ûáõý ý»ñý ç ñ³ ï³ ý³ó ýáõù »ý ñ³ õáñ¹ ù³ý ¨ ý»ñ ·áñí ù³ý ·áñ í³ éáõûã ý»ñ: ¸ñ³ýó ·áñ í³ íáõã û³ý ³ë ïç ׳ ýá å³û ù³ ý³ íáñ í³í ¿ áý ã»ñ óá õç ëá óç³ é³ ï³ý ¨ ïñãí³ íáõã û³ý ù³ ï³ñ ¹³ï ý» ñáí: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 94 maket_n_verjin.qxp armenian higher education in the 19th and early 20th centuries after joining russia, eastern armenia experienced years of economic andcultural growth. along with the general rebirth of culture, the demand for a national higher educational institution was naturally getting more relevant. and though tsarist russia was pursuing a policy of colonial pressure in the transcaucasia, the leading armenian intellectuals never gave up the idea of having a national higher educational institution. the idea of establishing an armenian university proved to be a matter of real concern for the devoted sons of armenia since the 40s-50s of the 19th century. the issue was raised at different times by khachatur abovian, hovhannes tumanian, michael nalbandian and others. m. nalbandian wrote: “our nation should have the opportunity of receiving a regular education on trade, agriculture and economics to put both agriculture and trade on firm bases”. this statement by nalbandian did not bear an abstract nature. on the contrary, he viewed the problem from the perspective of the challenges of the time. he was sure that the professional education should be resultoriented and should meet the requirements of the development of the material life in the country. “a certain branch of science may prosper in armenia only if it leads to its well-being”. he added: “the university that may become an endless source of enlightment for our nation should teach armenian, latin, greek, french, german and russian, general history, general geography, armenian history, the history of russia, law, commerce, the history of commerce, mathematics, physics, chemistry, agriculture, religious studies, painting etc. that is the university that we all long to have”. the problem of having their own educational institution was so evident that the nations of transcaucasia turned to the tsarist government urging to be allowed to set up their own national universities along with their demands for freedom of speech, press and association. the issue of establishing an armenian higher educational institution was once again emphasized particularly in 1912, on the 1500th anniversary of the armenian alphabet and the 400th anniversary of that of the printing practice. hovhannes toumanian was one of the main proponents and advocates of the idea of establishing a national university or academy and he did not spare his 21 yerevan state university is 90 years old armenian folia anglistika kh. abovian m. nalbandian efforts for its realization. at one of the meetings in his own house toumanian said: “we must unite armenian scientists, set up science in armenia, a home of science – the armenian academy”. this dream was to remain a mere dream for years to come. and this was not accidental. the policy pursued by tsarist russia, the economic and spiritual backwardness of armenia, as well as the fact that the armenian intelligentsia had spread all over the world for the lack of a relevant area of activity in the country, made it impossible to establish an armenian university. seeking to leave the small nations on the outskirts of the great country in ignorance, the tsarist government rejected any application and explained its policy of suppressing the nations with the groundless argument of “financial difficulties”. thus, armenia, too, having no other higher educational institution except gevorgian chemaran, was deprived of the opportunity of training specialists and professionals inside the country. this was the reason why there were only 12 specialists of agriculture, 73 doctors, 107 teachers and a small number of other specialists in 1922. 22 armenian folia anglistika yerevan state university is 90 years old h. toumanian maket 2011:layout 1.qxd directive speech acts: a cross-cultural study astghik chubaryan lilit sargsyan yerevan state university t here are different modes of linguistic interaction between people. they dependon the feelings and intentions the interlocutors have at the moment of speech as well as on the fact who they are – both as individuals and as representatives of a particular cultural group/discourse community. hence, every language makes available to the user the same basic set of speech acts, such as requesting, apologizing, declaring, and promising, with the exception of certain culture-specific ritualized acts such as baptizing, doubling at bridge, and excommunicating. thus, if the english language permits such basic everyday acts as requesting, ordering, advising, suggesting, and warning, armenian will too. the main aim of the given paper is to give a comprehensive treatment of directive speech acts as culture-bound phenomena, namely from the point of view of different cultural values and norms, such as, for instance, intimacy vs. distance, directness vs. indirectness, politeness and courtesy vs. impoliteness, etc. intimacy implies an especially close personal relationship between the speaker and the addressee; and it is a well-known fact that english isn’t particularly rich in devices to convey that. as wierzbicka justly puts it (2003:47), the very absence of an intimate t-form of address, which sets english apart from many other languages (french: tu/vous; russian: òû/âû; armenian: ¹áõ/¹áõù, etc.), is a reflex of the same attitude. in fact, anglo-saxon culture seems to give preference to an utterly different value, i.e. distance. thus, for instance, as compared to armenian culture, where distance is viewed in the negative light, in anglo-saxon culture non-sexual body contact is heavily restricted: people seldom touch, kiss or hug one another, even hand-shaking is rather rare. they also keep at a considerable distance from each other. this culturally expected psychological distance between individuals testifies to the general need for psychological and physical privacy. it is these culture-specific values of distance and privacy that underlie a typically anglo-saxon cultural tradition, namely the emphasis on the rights and autonomy of every individual and the respect for everybody’s selfdetermination. this is the reason why, despite the fact that the english language provides its speakers with explicit, direct ways for achieving communicative ends, the anglo-saxon speakers seem to prefer indirect ways. unlike the armenian culture, in the anglo-saxon culture directness is normally thought to bring to open confrontation, which indeed will disrupt social harmony. in other words, it is this anglo-saxon cultural assumption, commonly associated with the requirements of politeness, that underlies the heavy restrictions on the use of the imperative in english directive speech acts. unlike english, in armenian the bare imperative is used on a much wider scale. however paradoxical it may seem, english warnings found on medicine labels are armenian folia anglistika culture studies 128 normally in the imperative, whereas in armenian, warnings found on medicine labels are expressed by the infinitive form of the verb. thus, for instance: keep out of the reach of children. ä³ñ»é »ñ»ë³ý»ñç ñ³ù³ñ ³ýñ³ë³ý»éç ï»õáõù: do not use the product after the expiry date. âû·ï³·áñí»é ¹»õç åçï³ý»éçáõãû³ý å³ùï»ïá éñ³ý³éáõó ñ»ïá: now, how is this phenomenon to be accounted for? in fact, warnings of this type, just as advertisements and recipes, are public speech acts; first, they are anonymous, and, second, they are not directed at a particular addressee, but rather at an imaginary addressee. therefore, the danger of being impolite does not arise, and the imperative is widely used without being offensive. as for armenian, the infinitive is used for almost the same reason as the imperative in english, i.e. the speech act is not directed to a particular person, but what is said in the warning concerns anybody who will buy the product. thus, we witness how two different cultures and two different languages approach one and the same problem. likewise, in armenian, side by side with the imperative, forms with the verb in the indicative mood are used to issue orders and commands. below are two such examples taken from the armenian soap opera “anna”: êñ³ýçó ñ»ïá ùáé³ýáõù »ë μ³ñ»ï³ù³ï³ý ï³åç ù³ëçý, ³ù»ý ûñ ·³éçë »ë ·áñíç áõ çñçïáõýá áõãçý ·ýáõù »ë: ä³±ñ½ ³: ø³ñïáõõ³ñáõñáõý ³ëáõù »ë` ¿ë çýýáñù³óç³ý ³ýùçç³å»ë áõõ³ñïáõù ³ ö³ñç½: in this connection, it is to be noted that the commonly accepted and normally expected form for orders and commands both in english and armenian is the imperative. however, unlike english, in armenian we often find orders and commands expressed by means of a second-person predicate in the present indicative. now, how is this phenomenon to be accounted for? in fact, the use of a given mood is congruent with the mentioned culture-specific attitudes. namely, the imperative mood presupposes a possible future action on the part of the addressee. hence the anglo-saxon speaker makes use of the imperative mood when issuing orders and commands, thus imposing his/her will on the addressee by trying to get the latter do what is in his/her (i.e. the speaker’s) best interest. however, at the same time the english speaker leaves it to the addressee to decide whether to comply with the order or not. in contrast, the indicative mood, especially with the verbs in the past and present tenses, represents things as facts of life. hence, when the armenian speaker makes use of the indicative mood when issuing orders and commands, he/she represents the proposition of the utterance as a fact, namely as something that is already being implemented, without taking much care of the addressee’s disposition, i.e. whether the latter will actually comply with the order or not. such kind of orders armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 129 imply even a higher degree of imposition than the ones expressed in the imperative mood. though essentially the same in terms of syntactic structure, the armenian speech act of advice is different from its english counterpart. the latter seems to be more tentative, which is accounted for by different cultural values; namely, the anglo-saxon culture discourages interference in other people’s affairs, hence the general tendency in english to reduce the use of the explicit performative formula with the verb advise as much as possible. on the other hand, the armenian culture encourages intimacy, so interference is often viewed positively as a way of showing concern for the other person. armenian speakers often find it appropriate to make it explicit that they are advising, hence the frequent use of the explicit performative formula ëáññáõñ¹ »ù ï³éçë (i advise) or ëáññáõñ¹ ïï³ûç (i would advise) in the armenian speech act of advice. by the way, the illocutionary point of the armenian speech act of advice is often difficult to distinguish from that of warning. to elucidate the point, let us present the semantic structure of the english concept codified in the word warn: warn i say: if you do x, something bad may happen to you. i think: if you know it, you may not do x. i say this, because i want you to know it. in armenian the concept of warning is expressed by the word (ý³ë³)½·áõß³óý»é, which, however, differs from the english warn: it implies an assumption that (1) the speaker has authority over the addressee, (2) the speaker intends to protect the addressee from evil, (3) the speaker has some good feelings towards the addressee. now, in all the three cases the semantic structure of the armenian speech act of warning could be presented by the following formula: (ý³ë³)½·áõß³óý»é i say: if you do x, something bad may happen to you. i think: if you know it, you will not do x. i say this, because i don’t want you to do x. now, if we compare the first component of the armenian speech act of warning with that of english, we shall see that in both languages the given speech act is issued to warn the addressee against something bad. however, when we come to the second and the third components of warning, which, in fact, reveal the speaker’s attitude to the addressee, we shall see a considerable difference between the corresponding acts in the two languages: the english speaker acknowledges the addressee’s right for autonomy and self-determination, leaving it to the addressee to choose what is in his best interest or what course of action to take after he has been warned. this particular attitude is best revealed in the use of the modal verb may (if you know it, you may not do x). in contrast, the armenian speakarmenian folia anglistika culture studies 130 er feels it his duty or even his right to persuade the addressee to act in such a way as to avoid something bad mentioned in the warning. in this way the armenian speaker simply tries to impose his will on the addressee. this attitude is best revealed in the use of the modal verb will (if you know it, you will not do x). in this characteristically armenian behaviour we witness such culture-specific features as intimacy, on the one hand, and interference in other people’s affairs on the other. such an approach on the part of the armenian speaker may be explained in two possible ways: either the speaker is really concerned about the addressee and feels responsible for him, or the speaker feels he has authority over the addressee and wants to get the latter do what is in his (i.e. the speaker’s) best interest. in the former case the illocutionary force of the armenian speech act of warning is often difficult to distinguish from that of advice, whereas if the latter case is true, we already deal with the speech act of threatening. by the way, just as in english, in armenian too the illocutionary force of the speech act of warning is often difficult to distinguish from that of threatening. what makes things even more complicated is that the performative formula ý³ë³½·áõß³óýáõù »ù is often used in armenian to issue threats rather than warnings, which is accounted for by the lack of a performative formula with the verb ëå³éý³é in armenian and the verb threaten in english correspondingly. the point is that the concept encoded in the english verb threaten and the corresponding armenian verb ëå³éý³é is associated with something negative, hence the universal avoidance of its use. as for the speech act of suggesting, if in english it is often difficult to distinguish from advice, in armenian such a problem hardly ever arises, for the armenian speech act of suggesting is mostly of the inclusive-we type and is easily recognized by the specific forms in which it is expressed. to elucidate the point, let us adduce the following examples, taken from different armenian tv series: ¶ý³ýù ñçí³ý¹³ýáó, ãáõ ý³ûç, ³ëç` çýã ³ý»ýù: (“angels’ school”) ¸» »ï»°ù ëù»ýù çñ³ ï»ý³óá: (“revenger”) æ±ýã ï³ë»ë, ùç ñ³ï ëáõñ× ãëù»±ýù: (“anna”) now, it is easy to see that the first two examples, which represent the commonest grammatical-syntactic means of expressing suggestions in armenian, correspond to one of the commonest english forms used to perform the speech act of suggesting, namely the let’s do x form. the third example reveals another illocutionary force indicating device for the armenian speech act of suggesting, which corresponds to the english constructions of the type let’s do x, shall we?, what about doing x?, how about doing x?, why not do x?. observation along this line shows that armenian speakers very rarely use constructions corresponding to the english why don’t you do x? when making suggestions, for this type of construction tends to be perceived in armenian as a direct question rather than a suggestion. hence, what makes constructions of the given type be interpreted as suggestions is rather the context and the speech situation. to conclude, the basic position we have taken in this article is that the differences between english and armenian in the sphere of the so-called “indirect” speech acts armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 131 are motivated to a considerable degree by differences in cultural norms and cultural assumptions as well as by different hierarchies of cultural values; the general mechanisms themselves are culture-specific. the choices embodied in individual languages reflect not only “natural logic”, and not only a combination of “natural logic” with historical accidents. they also reflect “cultural logic”. thus, what has been discussed within the frames of the given paper asserts the value of investigation of speech acts in illuminating social language interactions and in helping to be rational and choose the course of action which most effectively and at least cost attains the desired end, no matter what our culture-conditioned attitudes, values and purposes are. references: 1. austin, j.l. (1962) how to do things with words. oxford: oxford university press. 2. austin, j.l. (1971) performative-constative. // the philosophy of language. j.r.searle (ed.), oxford: oxford university press. 3. bach, k. & harnish, r.m. (1979) linguistic communication and speech acts. cambridge: mit press. 4. kramsch, c. (1998) language and culture. // oxford introductions to language study. / ed. by h.g.widdowson. oxford: oxford university press. 5. sadock, j.m. (1974) toward a linguistic theory of speech acts. new york: academic press. 6. searle, j.r. (1998) mind, language, society: philosophy in the real world. new york: basic books. 7. searle, j.r. (1969) speech acts – an essay in the philosophy of language. cambridge: cambridge university press. 8. (1980) speech act theory and pragmatics. / ed. by j.r. searle, f.kiefer, m.bierwisch. dordrecht, holland: reidel. 9. wierzbicka, a. (2003) cross-cultural pragmatics: the semantics of human interaction. berlin/new york: mouton de gruyter. 10. yule, g. (1996) pragmatics. oxford/new york: oxford university press. àõõõáñ¹áõ ëáëáõ³ï³ý ³ïï»ñ. ùççùß³ïáõã³ûçý í»ñéáõíáõãûáõý 軽í³ï³ý ñ³õáñ¹³ïóáõãûáõýá ù³ñ¹ï³ûçý ÷áëý»ñ·áñíáõãû³ý ñçùý³ï³ý ó¨» ñçó ù»ïý ¿: ²ù»ý ûñ ù»ýù çñ³ï³ý³óýáõù »ýù μ³½ù³ãçí ëáëáõ³ï³ý ³ïï»ñ` ÷áñó»éáí ùç³å³ù³ý³ï ù»ïý³μ³ ý»é ùûáõëý»ñç ëáëáõ³ï³ý ³ïï»ñá. ³ñ¹ûáù ýñ³ýù ³é³ç³ñïá±õù »ý, ëáññá±õñ¹ ï³éçë, ý³ë³½·áõß³óýá±õù, ã»± ëå³éýáõù: êý¹çñý ¿°é ³í»éç ¿ μ³ñ¹³ ýáõù, »ñμ ·áñí áõý»ýù ³ûé ùß³ïáõûãç ý»ñï³û³óáõóãç ñ»ï: ð³ïï³å»ë 21-ñ¹ ¹³ ñáõù, »ñμ ·éáμ³ é³óù³ý ·áñíáýã³óáõù ùççùß³ïáõã³ûçý ï³å»ñç áý¹é³ûýù³ý ³ï³ý³ï»ëý áõ ù³ëý³ïçóý »ýù, ï³ñ¨áñíáõù ¿ ùççùß³armenian folia anglistika culture studies 132 ïáõã³ûçý ·áñí³μ³ ýáõãû³ý ¹»ñá: ²ûëåçëáí` ù»ñ ñ»ï³½áïáõãûáõýá ùç ÷áñó ¿` ñ³ù»ù³ï»éáõ áõõõáñ¹áõ ëáëáõ³ï³ý ³ïï»ñá ³ý·éáë³ùëáý³ï³ý ¨ ñ³ûï³ï³ý ùß³ïáõã³ûçý ýáñù»ñç ñ³ù³ï»ùëïáõù: ø»ñ ï³ï³ñ³í áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãû³ý ³ñ¹ûáõýùý»ñá ãáõûé »ý ï³éçë åý¹»é, áñ í»ñáýßû³é ëáëáõ³ï³ý ³ïï»ñç ï³ñμ» ñáõãûáõýý»ñá ñ³û»ñ»ýáõù ¨ ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù å³ûù³ý³íáñí³í »ý ïíû³é 黽í³ùß³ïáõûãáõù ³ñù³ï³íáñí³í ùß³ïáõã³ûçý ³ñå»ùý»ñç ýï³ïù³ùμ ·áûáõãûáõý áõý»óáõ ï³ñμ»ñ í»ñ³μ»ñùáõýùý»ñáí: armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 133 microsoft word maket 2020-2(22) (3)-1 (1).doc armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 book reviews 162 the armenian genocide: a review of eve makis’s novel, the spice box letters (dingwall, scotland: sandstone press, 2015, 260 pp., isbn 978-1-910124-06-6) john a stotesbury university of eastern finland looking recently at the popular goodreads.com page on the internet, i discovered that the web-site includes a section headed “armenian genocide books”. although obviously very selective and undoubtedly incomplete, the page lists some 50 relevant titles, including histories and memoirs, and also at least 16 works of fiction, not all of them originally published in english. for perhaps understandable reasons, most of the works listed have been published since the 1990s, although one, the forty days of musa dagh, the celebrated novel by franz werfel, originally appeared in german in 1933 and was somewhat poorly translated into english in the following year – a new and much improved version appeared as recently as in 2012 (wikipedia “the forty days of musa dagh”). the incompleteness of the goodreads page devoted to the armenian genocide is also evidenced by the absence of a novel published in 2015, the centenary year of the genocide. the spice box letters, by the anglo-cypriot writer eve makis (her greek cypriot parents migrated to the uk in the 1960s), took makis (as she readily acknowledges) some years to complete – as early as in 2009 she admitted that “this book is tough going as i am writing about a culture that is not my own and one i knew very little about before i started writing.” in her previous three novels she had been concerned with exploring the lives of her characters in relation to the communities making up the divided island of cyprus, emphasizing in the same interview that “the role of history […] is absolutely vital. i don’t think you can understand the characters fully without knowing their history”. this, then, was no less the case when she decided, by https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2020.16.2.162 book reviews armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 163 chance rather than as a long-considered idea, to focus her fourth novel on the lives of individuals in one of the smaller cypriot communities, that of the armenians who found shelter there in diaspora in the wake of the armenian genocide and the disintegration of the ottoman empire during the first world war. as she has said in interview, the cypriot armenian community was unknown to her, and hence she spent considerable time talking to individuals and learning about the past of the armenian cypriots who now share cyprus with other ethnic communities. the spice box letters can be read on several levels. in its quest to explore the otherwise unarticulated links between individuals and their families, its settings range across the seventy years between 1915 and the present time of 1985, and across places as diverse as eastern turkey, lebanon, cyprus, england, and the usa. its short, pithy chapters lend themselves to a story narrated in several different voices that emanate, it soon becomes clear, from different moments in the twentieth century. the earliest part presents an ethnically armenian family domiciled in caesaria, in eastern turkey, that in 1915 is swiftly uprooted and torn apart by ethnic conflict inspired by the ottoman régime in constantinople. this part of the story of armenian diaspora is told through the modern translation (into english) of the armenian-language diaries and letters, stored in an old armenian spice box, of mariam arakelian, in essence a re-sounding of a life lived some seventy years prior to the present time of the novel itself. mariam’s life is retold to her english granddaughter katerina, who while holidaying in cyprus encounters a young armenian cypriot, ara, a sculptor working in cypriot stone, and it is through his – male – voice translating mariam’s journals and letters that katerina’s recently deceased grandmother is figuratively restored to life. thus we learn that mariam’s childhood game played in the early 1920s with her armenian step-brother levon in their adoptive english home is properly fulfilled only after more than sixty years of recurrent grieving and healing: [levon:] “we can go there [to armenia] right now, if you want.” armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 book reviews 164 [mariam:] “what are you talking about?” [levon:] “up here [in the attic of their english home], we can be wherever we want.” levon suggests to mariam that she should imagine her father, a doctor, his friend baladian, a poet, and their friend carabetian, as they would have been if there had been no genocide and they had lived on into the present time of the 1920s. mariam records in her diary that “i loved this game” – until she recalls that “the lawyer had the soles of his feet sliced off and the poet had his tongue cut out”, while her father was hanged before her eyes in the town-square of caesaria (pp. 142-43). in other parts of that process of dispossession, the story traverses the boundaries imposed by time, history, place – the inevitable outcome of a diaspora provoked by the inter-communal violence of the past – but at the same time the story is also subtly transformed by gendered voices, female and male, that swiftly add the novelistic pleasures of emotion, sexuality, romance, and hope for the future. given the novel’s emphasis on the continuity and restoration of a fractured historical armenian culture, the narrative uses a number of familiar strategies, notably an emphasis on food: its ingredients and aromas, and their power to evoke memories. as the mother of the present-day katerina says of her own mother, mariam, who has recently died: “i should have written down her recipes while she was alive, but i never did and now i’ll never have the chance” (13) – thus providing katerina with a new, unspoken task of rediscovering such evocative recipes by contact with a living armenian culture, which she finds in cyprus. with levon, however, in the 1920s, mariam has re-created a recipe for halva that is redolent of their past life in caesaria but they are obliged to make use of ingredients that the youngsters discover in their english home, and the resultant luxury sweetstuff eventually provides levon with both his future livelihood in new york and also yet another link with his communal and familial past. book reviews armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 165 the second major character in the narrative is gabriel, mariam’s brother, who has also survived the 1915 genocide but in the process has lost contact with his sister and her life. in old age, along with his devoted wife marta, he still lives on in larnaca, cyprus, his senescent irascibility nicely typified by his whisky-enhanced language. in the course of living in cyprus he has developed multilingually, still speaking the armenian and turkish of his youth, and also the english of that other empire. gabriel is imagined as a tragicomic character, mourning his unresolved memories of his fractured family. thus, in 1919, once he has made his way to the safety of cyprus, he joins the family of nareg, an uncle, whose wife lena gives birth to varvar: “my connection to varvar was instant as were my feelings of protection and love. she was a reason to rejoice, swelling the ranks of our small clan, a fresh green shoot on a ravaged family tree” (p. 121). gabriel’s survival into old age despite the pain of his memories is ensured by his armenian wife marta: “she strokes my scalp with nimble fingers absorbing pain twisted into the coils of my dna, as ingrained as the colours that run through granite rock. i want to weep for the comfort of marta’s touch” (pp. 127-28). the spice box letters is, then, at once a romance and an almost relentless history of communal and familial suffering that endures across three generations of the twentieth century – but there are eventually several gratifying resolutions that are tellingly motivated through the agency of individuals who are outsiders to the armenian community in cyprus. on one level, this might even be labelled a “feel-good” fable, since, although it is grounded in the cruelty of historical reality, its message is one of hope. as a modern paperback novel, the spice box letters has been translated and published in a number of european languages – greek, italian, polish, and czech – but not, as yet, in armenian. given its message of hopefulness and regeneration, perhaps one should also dare to imagine that, one day, it might even appear in turkish. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 book reviews 166 general references i am grateful to my old student and colleague, professor jopi nyman, of the university of eastern finland at joensuu, for bringing eve makis’s novel to my attention. his far more scholarly study of the novel (which i avoided consulting while writing this review!) is due to appear as the following: nyman, jopi. “writing the armenian genocide in eve makis’s the spice box letters: trauma, diaspora, community.” forthcoming: brno studies in english 47.1 (2021). in writing this review, i have consulted a few other sources for support: “eve makis tells the story of an ordinary armenian family”, the armenian mirror-spectator (usa), 1 sept. 2016, online. “the spice box letters – review”, 26 sept. 2016, online. petra tourney-theodofou, “an interview with eve makis”. the european english messenger 18.2 (2009): pp. 46-50. received by the editorial board 14.08.2020 recommended for publication by the reviewers 17.09.2020 accepted for print 15.10.2020 maket_n_verjin.qxp essence and phenomenon in linguistic content and expression the interrelation between content and expression inlanguage is not identical with that in extralinguistic reality. in the extralinguistic world it is an interrelation between essence and phenomenon. the world itself is split up into essence and phenomenon; the division of language into content and expression genetically is connected with this division and is the former’s reflection and echo. at the same time, as part of the world, language has its essence and phenomenon. hence, in language neither expression is identical to phenomenon, nor content – to essence. in language, essence – phenomenon and content – expression pairs form a net of interpenetration, the knots of which are the essence of content and the phenomenon of content, the phenomenon of expression and the essence of expression, the content of essence and the expression of essence, the expression of phenomenon and the content of phenomenon. naturally, there occur crossings and coincidences among them. thus, the content of essence is identical with the essence of content, the content of phenomenon is identical with the phenomenon of content, the expression of phenomenon is identical with the phenomenon of expression, the expression of essence is identical with the essence of expression. the picture gets more complicated when the gradual manifestations of essence, phenomenon, content and expression are being considered in language in general, in a certain language and in individual’s language1. a certain language, as a link in the chain of manifestations of the language essence through phenomenon, is the phenomenon of language in general and the essence of individual’s language. therefore there exists coincidence between the phenomenon of content (the content of phenomenon) of language in general and the essence of content (the content of essence) of an individual’s language, the phenomenon of expression (the expression of phenomenon) of language in general and the essence of expression (the expression of essence) of an individual’s language. the four results of the synthesis of content and expression, essence and phenomenon in their threefold manifestations present the table given below. 47 linguistics armenian folia anglistika ashot abrahamyan language in general, a certain language individual’s language as it can be seen from the table, the phenomenon of language in general and the essence of individual’s language fall into the same category but not always coincide in their comprehension. the phenomena of the content of language in general are the semantic systems of all languages, whereas the essence of the content of an individual’s language is the semantic system of one language which acts as realization of one of the possibilities. similarly, the phenomena of the expression of language in general are the phonetic systems of all languages, only one of which is the essence of expression of the individual’s language. that is, there exists a relationship of possibility and reality between the phenomenon (of the content and expression) of language in general and the essence (of the content and expression) of an individual’s language2. the phenomenon of the content of language in general is a set of possibilities, the realization of one of which becomes the essence of the content of an individual’s language. similarly, the phenomenon of the expression of language in general is realized through the essence of the expression of an individual’s language. thus, the essence of an individual’s language is one of the possible realizations of the phenomena of language in general. the summary table of essence and phenomena of content and expression reveals another interesting fact: language in general and individual’s language get nearer not only in the phenomenon of the first and the essence of the second, but also in the essence of the first and the phenomenon of the second. it may seem that the essence of language in general and the phenomenon of individual’s language, being polar edges of essence and phenomenon, must have been 48 armenian folia anglistika linguistics language in general a certain language individual’s language essence of content (content of essence) extralinguistic reality reflection of extralinguistic reality in human reason semantic system of a certain language phenomenon of content (content of phenomenon) semantic systems of languages semantic systems of individual’s languages situative reference of speech essence of expression (expression of essence) existence of voice as property of matter articulated sounds as possibility of expression of content phonetic system of a certain language phenomenon of expression (expression of phenomenon) phonetic systems of languages phonetic systems of individual’s languages speech phonation extremely drawn apart from each other. however, the situation is quite different. starting from the extralinguistic reality in the essence of content of language in general linguistic reality returns to the same extralinguistic reality in the phenomenon of the content of individual’s language, concentrating in that particular case on one of many possible situations. the essence of the expression of language in general, which is voice, is a feature of matter, i.e. is of extralinguistic, objective nature. it has speech articulation as its type: it is voice, too, but it is a vocal signal specified by language and thus is the linguistic realization of various manifestation possibilities of the sound feature. it can be concluded that there also exists a relationship of possibility and reality between the essence of language in general and the phenomenon of individual’s language: the essence of language in general is a multitude of possibilities, one of which is realized as phenomenon of an individual’s language. the following figure illustrates the double transition between language in general and individual’s language. notes and references: 1. different linguists have considered the interrelations between language of humanity, nation’s language and individual’s language from various aspects. see, for example, humboldt v. fon o razlichii stroeniya chelovecheskikh yazikov i ego vliyanie na dukhovnoe razvitie chelovechestva // humboldt, v. fon (1984) izbrannie trudi po yazikoznaniyu. m.: progress, p.60-74; atayan, e.r. (1981) lezvakan ashkhari nerqin kerpavorumy ev artaqin veraberutiuny. yerevan: yerevani hamals. hratarakchutyun, p.23-24. cf also jahukyan, g.b. (1999) universalnaya teoriya yazika. prolegomeny k substantsionalnoi lingvistike. m.: institut yazikoznaniya. p.12-13, where the author speeks of a language of a group rather than a nation’s language. 49 linguistics armenian folia anglistika 2. it may seem that the interrelations of language in general, a certain language and individual’s language, presented in the table, correspond to those of matter, form and substance as interpreted by l. hjelmslev (see hjelmslev, l. (1960) propegemeny k teorii yazika // novoye v lingvistike. m.: izd. inostr. literaturi vol. i, p.308-315). but in fact such a correspondence does not exist. form as a net of abstract relations is not identical with any of three levels of generalization mentioned above and hence is not presented in the table at all. the essence and phenomenon of any level cannot be identified to matter and substance, either. it can be seen that in the table a combination of essence and phenomenon besides the two consecutive cells includes the third adjacent cell as well, whereas matter and substance would occupy only two consecutive cells. ¾áõãûáõýý áõ »ñ¨áõûãá 黽í³ï³ý µáí³ý¹³ïáõãû³ý ¨ ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõãû³ý ù»ç ¾áõãûáõý – »ñ¨áõûã ¨ µáí³ý¹³ïáõãûáõý – ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõãûáõý ½áõû·»ñá 黽íáõù ÷áëý»ñã³÷³ýóáõùý»ñç ùç ó³ýó »ý ï³½ùáõù: ä³ïï»ñý ³í»éç ¿ µ³ñ¹³ýáõù, »ñµ ýï³ïç »ý ³éýíáõù ¿áõãû³ý, »ñ¨áõûãç, µ³í³ý¹³ïáõãû³ý ¨ ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõãû³ý ³ëïç׳ý³íáñí³í ¹ñë¨áñáõùý»ñá 黽íç áý¹ñ³ýñ³óù³ý »ñ»ù ³ëïç׳ýý»ñáõù` áý¹ñ³ýñ³å»ë 黽íáõù, ³é³ýóçý 黽íáõù ¨ ³ýñ³ïç 黽íáõù: æñ»ýó ï³ñ·áí, µ³ûó áã ùçßï ý³¨ í³í³éáí ñ³ùáýïýáõù »ý áý¹ñ³ýñ³å»ë 黽íç µáí³ý¹³ïáõãû³ý »ñ¨áõûãá ¨ ³ýñ³ïç 黽íç µáí³ý¹³ïáõãû³ý ¿áõãûáõýá, áý¹ñ³ýñ³å»ë 黽íç ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõãû³ý »ñ¨áõûãá ¨ ³ýñ³ïç 黽íç ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõãû³ý ¿áõãûáõýá. áý¹ñ³ýñ³å»ë 黽íç µáí³ý¹³ïáõãû³ý áõ ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõãû³ý »ñ¨áõûãý»ñç ¨ ³ýñ³ïç 黽íç µáí³ý¹³ïáõãû³ý áõ ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõãû³ý ¿áõãûáõýý»ñç ùçç¨ ·áûáõãûáõý áõýç ñý³ñ³íáñáõãû³ý ¨ çñ³ï³ýáõãû³ý ÷áëñ³ñ³µ»ñáõãûáõý: ¸çï³ñïáõùá óáõûó ¿ ï³éçë, áñ áý¹ñ³ýñ³å»ë 黽áõý ¨ ³ýñ³ïç 黽áõý ù»ñó»ýáõù »ý áã ùç³ûý ³é³ççýç »ñ¨áõûãç ¨ »ñïñáñ¹ç ¿áõãû³ý, ³ûé¨, áñ ñ³ïï³å»ë áõß³·ñ³í ¿, ³é³ççýç ¿áõãû³ý ¨ »ñïñáñ¹ç »ñ¨áõûãç ù»ç: 50 armenian folia anglistika linguistics 7 maket 2010 nor_n:layout 1.qxd grigor narekatsi in the scope of levon shant’s scientific interests great is the service of nikol aghbalian and levonshant in the noble cause of investigating and systematizing old and medieval armenian literature. during his lectures n.aghbalyan studied and circulated a great number of manuscripts and colophons to meet the demands of his listeners interested in medieval armenian literature (aghbalian 1970:9-12). meantime, after finishing his studies in germany, l.shant returned home. most probably influenced by aesthetic and philosophical theories of schopenhauer and nietzsche and traditions of romanticism shant created his two famous works – “ancient gods” and “the chained” which became reflections of armenian renaissance conjoined with the abundant west armenian pagan tendencies of early 20 th century. but the range of professional interests of the artist was beyond these issues. in complex political contexts he touched upon such topics concerning cilician armenian medieval developments as armenia-byzantine knotty and intricate relations. the historical dramas “the princess of the fallen castle”, “the emperor”, “oshin payl” refer to this period. the works raised a number of pressing questions and testify to shant’s great command of the time (shant 1946:198). written in 1943-1946 shant’s “a glimpse of armenian folklore” (shant 1946:464) is a versatile and profound study of rather the history of armenian literature than the study of armenian folklore. the author states that the history of twenty-seven centuries of armenian survival may be divided into seven main periods. the fourth epoch (mid 7 th11th centuries) is characterized by the arab domination and “the rule of a new religion, persecutions and violence” which originated in the south. it was also the period when some noble families (the bagratids and the ardzrunis) managed to set up kingdoms which “had to struggle both against the constantly renewed religious demands and political claims of the byzantine empire” (shant 1946:12-13). this was the very period when the medieval genius saint grigor narekatsi (950-1003 ad) created his masterpieces. according to v.oshakan “from greatest conquerors to humblest tyrants in the east revered this wise man [narekatsi] and didn’t dare to revile his interference” (oshakan 1942:34). it is on christian ideology that the great hermit narekatsi built the edifice of his thoughts and feelings. it is on christianity that shant expresses the following opinion, “even after becoming gentle and noble, being a kind captain, a provident, merciful and kind father – did the christian-propagated monotheism remain to be complex, difficult, continuously dispute-provoking. unity and holy trinity, human and god – to these are the idea of birth, the image of human indisposition, tortuous explanations, doctrines and sectarianism related” (shant 1946:110). then shant comes to a most important conclusion: “the great value of christianity lies in its armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 163 sargis mkhitarian requirement for human psychological evolution and a still higher social collectivism and organization. it propagates altruism versus the radically narrow-minded selfishness of the prehistoric man…. on the other hand, looking down upon secular values and wealth and striving for spiritual and divine heights it will enhance human inner dignity and pride” (shant 1946:110). such an evaluation reveals the essence of a religion which is daring and autocratic and advocates egalitarianism. and it is the human striving for eternity, as well as the idea of being god’s exceptional minion that induce humans to protest. in the following way shant formulates the human exalting idea that he will belong to heaven if his wearied soul strives for it: “he wants to be a truly divine being but on earth, he wants to be like his christ who was god in human body” (shant 1946:111). interestingly enough shant considers that the public “ideal” is something unreal, something that exists “only in books and on paper” (111). the powerlessness of man contradicts to the cherished desire to achieve his ideals. “the antagonism between this indefeasible reality and the abstract striving of the human soul gives birth to an unimaginably sweeping trauma for the truly christian souls” (111). such emotions were typical of almost all great figures. for example grigor narekatsi is a classical example of “exactly that kind” of religious fathers who “lived and created in a small monastery situated in front of lake van under the protection of his cleric relative anania narekatsi” (112). the poet narekatsi led a solitary and contemplative life. he read a lot to fill up his religious knowledge. according to shant “he is a talented person endowed with subtle senses, deep feelings and a lively speech” (112). his poems are religious songs but “very often they go beyond such limits and turn into images of reality or fine exuberant descriptions of nature” (112). such poems as “the small cart” and “vardavar” would be enough to consider narekatsi an author with a great sense of taste and individuality, “the best among many”(112). shant considers “the book of lamentations” the most significant one among narekatsi’s works. all of a sudden “the strivings and sufferings of the christian hermit encircled in subtle and deep wisdom flow out, he feels the skyward flight of his soul and will, he proudly determines to reveal subtleties and greatnesses, things that exceptional individuals are required to do”(112). m.mkryan points out the great aesthetic value of narekatsi’s songs considering them wonderful descriptions of the 10 th century reality, nature and humanity (mkryan 1976:474-477). it is first and foremost the specific form of narekatsi’s masterpiece that attracts shant’s attention. on the one hand the poet is a human being, a mortal; a fact that he isn’t able to conciliate with and constantly focuses on. on the other hand we face “the inaccessible height and the almighty power” of the writer (shant 1946:113). although the series of his prayers is also called “narek” or “book of prayers”, in fact “they are prayers neither in essence, nor in form and spirit…. “narek” presents the deep agitation of the human soul…, the striving and soaring of the waters to the sky” (shant 1946:113). beyond the form there lies another world, the mysterious and imaginative otherworld which is verbally difficult to describe. armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 164 and here are lines formulating the essence of the poem: “a genuine work of art is the true reflection of spiritual emotion” (shant 1946:113). as to the clarification of the aesthetic interpretation of the work, shant claims that faithfulness towards spiritual imagery is the basis of the aesthetical. the greater the reflection of public emotion is, the bigger admiration and interest towards a works of art will be. “narek” is an exclusive work of art, simple, yet deep and spontaneous. it is not only the most mysterious and valuable expression of medieval armenian christian literature but is also “a unique and strong belch of universal christian spirituality”(114). it is worth mentioning that the above evalu ation of the now world famous “the book of lamentations” is not only truthful but is also precise, especially at a time when the book was not so famous in the world. shant has come to a surprising conclusion as to the type of narekatsi’s poetry. in addition to considering narekatsi a christian poet because he is an adherent of christian faith, a bearer of christian mindset and education, shant thinks that the poet “has pagan inclinations and a pagan talent” (114). probably this was the way paganism found an outward expression in the poet’s time. and this was because early christian thought itself was greatly influenced by egyptian theology (manandyan 1956:287-322). what we think at this point is that pagan thinking is incoherent, in some sense incompatible with narekatsi’s essence. he may be willing to reestablish some pagan traditions but cannot be regarded as pagan himself. a very strange approach to armenian history and literature emerged in the late 19 th century and predominated over the whole of the 20 th century. the approach was based on academically groundless and incorrect opinion that armenian historiographers and writers falsified both history and literature. this viewpoint, reconsidering many traditional approaches, misrepresented and distorted knowledge of our historiography and literature. since the 70-90-ies (19 th c.) western scientists have drawn a groundless conclusion that m. khorenatsi, eghishe and other armenian historiographers presented false versions of our history (abeghyan 1968:282-283). on this very basis and under its influence shant and some diaspora armenologists claimed that “christianity dislikes individuality, it likes the ecumenic” (shant 1946:115). then he concludes: “christian prayers and psalms don’t accept the ‘self’, the vast majority of them points to plurality – ‘we’, ‘our’, etc.” (115) likewise, the 20 th century distinguished armenologist r.thomson states that armenian historiographers distort the reality and armenian poets are deprived of their own self. the same opinion concerning narekatsi is expressed by anne and jean-pierre mahes. the opposite opinion is expressed by armenian historian h.mirzoyan who states: 1.“the book” is not simply a prayer book. it is “the book of lamentations”. it is how the author called it considering its generic peculiarities.” 2. “it’s at least strange that on the one hand researchers of narekatsi claim that “the book” is an exclusive species of world and armenian literature, on the other hand they state that it lacks the author’s biographical data and his self is not expressed in the book (mirzoyan 2004:71-81; 2008:6-7). according to shant god is the “self” while “all the believers together are a single whole before the god” (shant 1946:115). fortunately he realizes the incorrectness of this point at least towards narekatsi and states: “narekatsi is alone in his prayers, as a perarmenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 165 son, as an individual who speaks to christ about himself and his soul without focusing on others” (shant 1946:115). this results in personal sufferings, psychological drama, struggle between the divine and human beings and the human finds his way out of the collective submissive state. a global cataclysm takes place. “in the songs [narekatsi’s] and in the prayers” is the poet’s proud spirit that struggles against the pressure of the almighty claiming his human rights and questing for freedom of his being. “when going deep into narek’s poetry we see that it is not a bewail, it’s rather a protest…, it’s not downfall, it’s rather the flight of a powerful human spirit to the sky…. it will be strange to look upon those songs and speculations as simple prayers of a christian believer” (116). this means narekatsi’s poems are not simply prayers, but deeply individualized lyrics where the ego of the hero is entirely accentuated. not to be mistaken, he formulates his speech to god on behalf of his own “self” and to prove the truth, veracity and frankness of his words and person he confirms the main ideas with “amen”. such a great conflict between the human and the divine “resembles the pagan image of the struggle between prometheus and zeus” (117). shant considers “the book” a strange prayer in the sense that it is not quite natural for the author to ask almighty to live within his physical being. a thing that is impossible. “what a prayer it is if you are turning to your beloved and professed god and saying … ‘you have kept all the matters of honour and high positions for yourself and have placed the bad and heavy burdens on my shoulders’.... this is no prayer and glorification, this is a struggle, a demand for human rights” (116). in this particular case the human revolts against god who cares for his own “self”, not “for people”. this point is very important not in the sense that worthy is the human inducement to protest (typical of renaissance) but in the sense that what is revealed is god’s “self love”. and not only that. why not god’s rigor despite his being a source of boon. perhaps it’s a matter of speculation moved forward by the evil spirit, the one who accuses god of concealing boon from people. the medieval philosophers declare that there was no reason for god to hide the forbidden fruit from adam as sooner or later he would learn the life-and-death truth himself. there was really no need to conceal anything from his beloved one – the first human. narekatsi realizes that he is in struggle with god, yet knowing that he is the loser. therefore, he acknowledges his defeat. the essence of narekatsi’s preoccupation, according to shant, is “his soul, his essence, his individuality, his present and future, and the mortal man” (117). of course, this approach should not be misinterpreted as individualistic or egocentric. vice versa, the poet is a selfless individual whose interests lie beyond the world of matter. he strives to find out (for himself and as a result for everybody else) whether a person can quest for salvation. it’s very important for him to penetrate this divine mystery. shant considers that the poet’s spiritual anxiety is caused by contradiction and uncertainty to find his way out. narekatsi has problems “but no solutions to them as christianity and paganism, individualism and collectivism, the hermit and the protestant, the saint and the sinful, christ and satan are all mixed up in his soul and he desperately tries to discern the destination of his shabby life cart. this is a human soul placed before us; naked but full of art”(120). armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 166 it is for possessing a contradictory and sorrowful human soul that shant regards narekatsi as “the bard of christianity” and one of the greatest figures of renaissance, thus rejecting the armenian diaspora approach that the notion of similarity between narekatsi and the representatives of italian renaissance is put forward by armenologists of soviet era (pltyan 2001:31-32). it should be noted here that the armenian renaissance as part of globalization of world culture started in the late 10 th century (mkhitaryan 2007:115). the following well-aimed observation of shant is also worth mentioning: “narekatsi is great also because his soul darts out of medieval christianity into the tribulations of the new era” (shant 1946:118). one of the most important aspects of narekatsi’s poetry is the author’s love and vivid depiction of nature. it symbolizes the poet’s struggle for being and remaining humane. and finally shant concludes: “narekatsi’s song-prayers, created many years before the renaissance, sound like a longing for a new era, for human physical and spiritual freedom still to come, for the voice and spirit of the future renaissance. and this is a testimony of a creative and profound armenian spirit” (shant 1946:120). this estimation of shant, a true researcher who graduated from several european universities, an erudite thinker and a talented scientist of renaissance (davtyan, lalayan 1986:28) is not incidental. shant is well aware of the great ideological and aesthetical value of the “the book” and pays special attention to the significant poetic and spiritual achievements of narekatsi. it is an undeniable fact that shant is greatly interested not only in the medieval genius narekatsi but also in issues concerning early armenian renaissance. references: 1. aghbalean, n. (1970) patmutyun hay grakanutyan. vol. 4. peyrut: la-photo-bress publishers. 2. abeghian, m. (1968) yerker. yerevan: asra publishers. 3. davtian, h., lalayan, e. (1986) narekatsu ashkharhayatske. yerevan: ysu publishers. 4. hayuni, m. (2001) narekean voronumner. beirut: sipan press. 5. manandian, h. (1956) hermeay yerametsi ar askghepios sahmank. // banber matenadarani. vol.3. yerevan. 6. mkrian, m. (1976) hay hin grakanutyan patmutyun (5 – 10th cc). yerevan: ysu publishers. 7. mirzoyan, h. (2004) aghotagirk te matyan voghbergutyan? // grakan tert. n3, yerevan. 8. mirzoyan, h. (2008) ardyok matyanum chka banasteghtsi yesy? // grakan tert. n27, yerevan. 9. mkhitaryan, s. (2007) ardi mijnadaragitutyuny yev haykakan veratsnutyan khndiry. // patmabanasirakan handes. yerevan. 10. oshakan, h. (1942) aghachem zanpopokheli. n 1-2, sion. armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 167 11. pltean, g. (2001) gorts arkanel. verstin grigor narekatsi. montreal: h. a. surb hakob mayr yekeghetsi press. 12. shant, l. (1989) yerker. yerevan: sovetakan grogh. 13. shant, l. (1946) endhanur aknarkner hay banasirutyan vray. peyrut: tparan hay tchemarani. ¶ñç·áñ ü³ñ»ï³óçý è¨áý þ³ýãç ·çï³ï³ý ñ»ï³ùñùñáõãûáõýý»ñç ßñç³ý³ïý»ñáõù ðá¹ í³ íáõù í»ñ éáõí íáõù »ý è ̈ áý þ³ý ãç` ñ³û ùçç ý³ ¹³ñ û³ý ñ³ý ׳ñ ¶ñç ·áñ ü³ ñ» ï³ óáõ ëï»õ í³ ·áñ íáõã ûáõý ý» ñç ·» õ³ñ í»ë ï³ ï³ý ¨ ·³ õ³ ÷³ ñ³ ï³ý ³ñ å» ùá ï³ñ¨á ñáõ ù»ï ý³ μ³ ýáõã ûáõý ý» ñá: þ³ý ãá ³ é³ í»é ù»í áõ ß³¹ ñáõã ûáõý ¿ ¹³ñó ñ»é ü³ ñ» ï³ óáõ μ³ ý³ë ï»õ í³ ï³ý ³ñ í»ë ïç ¨ ñá·¨áñ ó»éù μ» ñáõù ý» ñç íñ³` ¹ñ³ýù ñ³ ù³ ñ» éáí ³ é³ í»é ýß³ ý³ ï³ éç: âç ï³ ñ» éç ³ý ï» ë»é ³ûý ù»í ñ» ï³ùñù ñáõã ûáõ ýá, áñ þ³ýãý áõ ýç áã ùç³ûý ü³ ñ» ï³ óáõ, ³ûé¨ ñ³û ï³ ï³ý í³õ ì» ñ³í ýáõã û³ý ñçù ý³ëý ¹çñ ý» ñç ñ³ý ¹»å: armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 168 maket 2013:layout 1.qxd in defense of the author1 gohar madoyan yerevan state university “the author always manifests himself in his works regardless of his will” (n.m. karamzin) t he concept of the author is not a new one. it has arrested the minds of most thinkers from the ancient world to modern times. aristotle in his poetics and plato in ion attempted to shed light on the definitions of poetry and poet. much later hermeneutics was to interpret texts through the hermeneutical circle with special reference to the personality of the author. in fact, it was in the age of romanticism that the self of the poet received more emphasis than ever. poetry was generally viewed as a means of self-expression. english poets such as w. wordsworth, p. shelly and others considered their own art as the reflection of their own impressions, feelings and emotions. so, it was not least surprising that the poets of the time were more inclined towards lyrical poetry in belief that it could best serve as a tool to express one’s feelings. however, the concept of the author became one of the leading issues of linguistics, literary studies and psychology in the second half of the 20th century when the ideas of individualism, respect for human rights and equality were advanced.the “self” became the dominant figure in all spheres of human activity and literature was by no means an exception. as a result, any piece of writing was viewed as a unique world, the result of the creative activity of the writer and a kind of dialogue between the author and the reader. the developments in the world of politics at the start of the century brought about underlying changes. literature was among the first to be affected. romanic literature seemed to have exhausted itself in a sense that it no longer seemed to serve its aims. it was high time new approaches were adopted.the concept of the author was one of the key issues that received much speculation for it was absolutely essential for the further understanding of literature itself, in a way because the definition of literature of any kind first and foremost requires the straightforward answer to a most complicated question “who is speaking?” it is not an easy task, though, when one comes to think of the dual character of the author. on the one hand, he is a physical being. this gives him a chance to abandon the work and go beyond it. hence, the author becomes not only an aesthetic category, but also a social and cultural one. on the other hand, the author is a fictional character. nevertheless, there comes a moment when the author’s individuality turns into a character and the type of the character it becomes largely depends on the very individuality of the physical author, as well as on a series of external factors – historical, cultural, social, etc. most researchers are inclined to call the first version a biographical author and the second – aesthetic author or image of the author. however, it is not a rare occurrence that in literary works “it is not the author himself who speaks, but rather the narrator or the lyrical hero. then, who tells us what happens in the lives of the characters? in fact, whoarmenian folia anglistika literature 156 ever it is, the reader hears the voice of the author quite distinctly. then, why can’t we identify the author with the narrator? such identification would not be quite right,narratologists claim, since the narrator is not the sole manifestation of the author’s consciousness. the author does not manifest himself only in the process of telling, but in various parts – the plot, the structure, the organization of time and space (orlova 2008:7): otherwise stated, the author is everywhere and nowhere in the text, thus, he cannot be identified with any of the heroes. as it follows, the narrator is only one of the expressions of the author’s consciousness and it gives the author a chance “to play”. despite the diversity of ideas, the author continued to enjoy a certain superior position in relation to other characters. his role in the process of text interpretation was often decisive. however, his position started to dwindle with the introduction of structuralism and later by post-structuralism. the 20th century saw a merciless criticism of the subject rejecting the existence of an independent and complete subject. roland barthes all alone revolutionized all the ideas voiced before with his essay “the death of the author”. that was a challenge to the traditional approaches. the author was no longer the leading character in the process of text interpretation. moreover, he had nothing to do with the text. this was the key massage that was very quickly supported by a group of followers. the essay “what is the author” by m. foucault was yet another attack.“the writing subject erases the signs of his particular individuality”(foucault 1996:14). in short, one may assume that it is not the author who speaks, but the language itself (barthes 1989:385). any writing is faceless. all the ideas of the voice fade away in the text. this is, in fact, a black and white labyrinth which “kills” any self-expression (barthes 1994:384). barthes believed that by excluding the author from the text, the text acquires additional meanings and it is read and perceived as there is no author at any level of it. the underlying approach of the post-structuralism to this issue may be summed up as follows:by granting an author to the text, we put limits on it. the modern writer (scriptor) is born simultaneously with his text; he is in no way supplied with a being which precedes or transcends his writing, he is in no way the subject of which his book is the predicate; there is no other time than that of the utterance, and every text is eternally written here and now (barthes 1989:387). still, others believed in the intended meaning of the text which was proposed by the author himself. hence, the true interpretation could be possible “the object of interpretation in the humanities is the meaning intended by the author and the historical agents. the meaning is entrusted to meaningful forms that are the objectification of human thought” (betti 1990:164). “even if the text is interpreted as bearing different significance, the meaning is determinate in the sense intended by the author” (hirsch 1967:250). speaking more broadly, the approaches held by linguists and literary critics may be generally classified into two main groups as to the concept of the author and his presence in the text – the one advocated by romantics (the author is central to any work, he is the human being who conveys his experience, emotions and feelings through his own works) and the complete absence of the author. barthes and his supporters excluded the author not only as a personality, a living one who had a direct connection with his own work and armenian folia anglistikaliterature 157 wished to use his work as a tool to show his attitude to the reality, but also the public figure, the bearer of certain historical and moral values. there is no author, so there is no point in searching for him between the lines. if the lack of authorial interpretation of certain developments in a piece of writing does not lead to serious objections, the rejection of his being the heir of historical and social legacy causes much controversy. in a human speech one may always trace some social information indicating his social status and his attitude towards the ideas expressed. it may be satisfaction, indifference, admiration, etc. (stepanov 1965:21). indeed, regardless of the level of professionalism, creative talent, etc. one who is engaged in a creative activity of any kind is also a social being who exists or existed in a certain society at a certain period of time. and each society enjoys a specific mentality, world view and world perception that has been formed throughout long years and is affected by a number of factors geopolitical, psychological, cultural, etc.). each member of the society willy-nilly becomes the bearer of the system of values of the given society without even being conscious of the fact. the artists of any society or people engaged in creative endeavor are the ones who are distinguished as being oversensitive, keen observers. traditionally, they have been held responsible for exposing the evils in the society, upbringing the youth in accordance with moral rules and for providing mental guidance for the nation. this results in books which are directly connected with the political developments of the time and which carry the imprint of the author’s psychology, national identity, culture and the past history. one wonders whether the great number of odes to the french revolution and napoleon and many other works would have ever been penned down had there not been the necessary historical grounds for them. surely, the true work is the one that is able to arouse all kinds of feelings, and genius is the writer who manages to create a universal work with no time and space boundaries. the odes mentioned, though have not lost their aesthetic value, cannot arouse the same feelings among the ordinary french citizens as they did centuries ago. the stanzas that byron wrote to honor napoleon are considered from the perspective of the linguistic characteristics and literary style. however, one may wonder whether such works still serve their initial aim, i.e. to encourage wider sections of the society to engage in the movement, to instill faith and trust in the leader or in the aptness of the route taken. if we manage to do away with the historical and social author, then what are we to do about the biographical one? how are we to treat him? in fact, biography is a certain period consisting of diverse events, feelings, emotions, facts and episodes, etc. it is not uncommon to see literary critics turn to biographical data to explain the works of great writers. the general belief of this approach is that the author puts down his own feelings and emotions since he cannot escape certain developments in his life and the positive and negative influences that they might entail. they are stored in the subconsciousness and may erupt like a volcano one day.in fact this method is quite efficient, because very often it does shed light on the work. the authorial intention becomes clearer when one considers the emotions he had while writing the work. certainly, world literature is full of numerous writings which are open to interpretation and whose meaning seems inexarmenian folia anglistika literature 158 haustible. it is really difficult to give them a single meaning and a single explanation. however, experience shows that it works with unidentified works i.e.pieces of literature which have not been identified as being written by a certain person. isn’t it due to the lack of sufficient biographical information about shakespeare that we have not reached a clear interpretation of his works so far? isn’t it the reason why we are still in search of the dark lady of his sonnets. any field of human activity and interest is related to biography and it may be assumed that biography is the key to all of them, and the human life and human identity form the basis of it (johnston 1927:xv). it goes without saying that trying to explain any work in terms of biography we run the risk of imposing one meaning to the literary text, thus depriving the reader of the opportunity of making his own judgments and interpretations. the text acquires one definite meaning which is surely not in the best interests of the text. it ought to be open to interpretations. that is the key characteristic that sets a literary text apart from a pile of works. this was the idea advocated by the very structuralists when they announced that the author is dead, thus, giving absolute freedom to the reader. it is quite all right if we treat the issue from the point of view of the reader. however, things are different if we are to consider the issue from the part of the author. it should be noted that by saying biography we do not mean documentary evidence. the emphasis is placed on the emotional state and the inner world of the author in strong conviction that the works are the reflection of his soul. in fact, by denying the role of biographical evidence in the process of text interpretation we cast doubt on thousands of studies that aimed to decipher the hidden meaning of the works of various authors. obviously, postmodernism and deconstructionism have done everything to exclude the unwelcome figure of the author getting rid of him as of a real person. authorial intention meets the same fate. “the hand is detached from any voice” claims barthes. and it sounds quite all right until one comes to think of the arm of the author the hand depends on. excluding the author from the work roland barthes gave birth to the reader “the birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the author”. however, the birth of the reader implies resurrection of the author since every time the text is read the author is reborn. the author never dies; the reader, in a sense, nourishes the author by the very act of reading his text. and each different interpretation comes to the concept of the author; each time we offer a new interpretation of the text we confirm once again: the author never dies. note: 1. the title makes reference to an essay by e.r. hirsch. references: 1. orlova, ye. (2008) obraz avtora v literaturnom proizvedenii. m.: mgu. 2. foucault, m. (1996) chto takoy avtor? // volyak ictine. m.: politizdat. armenian folia anglistikaliterature 159 3. barthes, r. (1989) izbrannie raboty. retorika, semiotika. m.: progress. 4. barthes, r. (1994) izbrannie raboty. poetika. m.: progress. 5. stepanov, yu. (1965) frantsuzskaya stilistika. m.: progress. 6. johnston, c. (1927) biography: the literature of personality. usa: century co. 7. hirsch, e.d. (1967) validity of interpretation. new haven, conn: yale university press. 8. betti, e. (1990) hermeneutics as the general methodology of the geistes wissenschaften. / tr. by j. bleicher. // the hermeneutic tradition from ast to ricoeur. / ed. by g.l. ormiston and a.d. schrift. albany: state university of new york press. æ å³ßïå³ýáõãûáõý ñ»õçý³ïç §ð»õçý³ï¦ ñ³û»ó³ï»ñåç ßáõñç μ³ý³í»×» ñá í³í³éíáõù »ý ·ñ³ï³ýáõãû³ý ó¨³ íáñù³ý í³õ ßñç³ýý»ñçó ùçýã ûñë: ð»õçý³ïçý ³ý¹ñ³¹³ñó»é »ý ¹»é¨ë ³ýïçï ßñç³ýáõù ¨ §·³ñ³¹ñ»é¦ éáù³ýïç½ùç ¹³ñ³ßñç³ýáõù: ²ûýáõ³ù»ý³ûýçí, 20-ñ¹ ¹³ ñáõù ³ýñ³ïç å³ßï³ùáõýùç, ù³ñ¹áõ çñ³íáõýùý»ñç áõ ñ³í³ë³ñáõãû³ý ·áí»ñ·ù³ýá ½áõ·³ ñ»é ç ñ³ûï »ï³ý ýáñ ÷çéçëá÷³ û³ï³ý áõõõáõãûáõýý»ñ, áñáýù ñ³ñó³ï³ýç ï³ï ¹ñ»óçý ùçýã ³û¹ áý¹áõýí³í ³í³ý¹³ ï³ý ùáï»óáõùý»ñá: êïñáõïïáõñ³éëçïý»ñá ¨ ³ûýáõñ»ï¨ åáëïëïñáõïïáõñ³éçëïý»ñá §ëå³ý»óçý¦ ñ»õçý³ïçý՝ ßáõýã ï³éáí áýã»ñóáõçý: ´³ûó ³ñ¹ûá՞ù ñ»õçý³ïá ù³ñ³ó»é ¿: ¶áõó» ý³ å³ñ½³ å»ë ýýçáõù ¿: armenian folia anglistika literature 160 maket 2012 1-2:layout 1.qxd on some aspects of linguistic economy in english academic discourse astghik chubaryan, ruzan karapetyan yerevan state university r ecently scientists in cern experiment have found some signs that certain par-ticles travel faster than light. of course this still needs thorough analysis and weighty confirmations, however it indicates the general trend of modern life very precisely – time today passes at a quicker rate than it used to. on second thoughts we all can memorize events which prove the accelerating speed of the modern flow of life. this phenomenon is reflected in practically every domain of life and surely language could not but be affected by this trend. the present article is devoted to the analysis of different genres of the scientific register of speech the qualities of which are predetermined and shaped by corresponding extralinguistic factors. the nature, consequently the function, of science is such that it targets at obtaining and systematizing the knowledge of the world around us. furthermore, it requires that the language, meant for the transfer of scientific knowledge, be compendious, laconic, logically constructed and be capable of transferring more information in less linguistic volume. thus, the issue of linguistic economy, realized via the compression, is taken as central for this work. the analysis of the empirical material really demonstrates the prior role of compression in scientific speech. it is worth mentioning that this priority is increasing, since we viewed this phenomenon on the diachronic plane as well. the following sources served as material for the empirical investigation for our analysis: 1) 42 pages of highly specialized papers from high energy physics, meant for professionals only; 2) a textbook for university students “thermodynamics with chemical applications”; and 3) posters presented at the international conference “optical liquid crystals” held in yerevan, september 25-30 2011 it should be mentioned that a special emphasis is placed on the regularities and differences of linguistic compression usage across genres, which proceeds from the functional characteristics of the given genre. another point to be considered before getting down to the presentation of the data: linguistic compression is a very broad notion and can be realized on different levels and via various methods. the volume of the given work does not permit incorporation of all the aspects of this notion, so we will dwell upon absolute constructions and adverbial participles which are very effective in substituting subordinate clauses in scientific speech, for they are capable of absorbing more information in a lesser volume due to their structural peculiarities. being very capacious these constructions transfer the same amount of information, as the corresponding subordinate clauses, more expeditiously. present below are the examples: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 49 1. this looks like a kind of brane at t = 0, with neumann boundary conditions for the field c. 2. writing the metric as a deformation of the flat space metric gμν = ημν + hμν, imposing the gauge conditions h00 = hi0 = hii = 0 and linearizing the bach tensor,one can write the general solution as (-ij+ k(iζ j)) − ik0tˆ-ij_eik.x, kμ kμ = 0. 3. with i an interval of the time-axis {x _ ht, x1, . . . xdi: x1 = · · · = xd= 0}we seta0(i) _ a(oi) where oi is the double cone i00 _ rd+1, the causal envelope of i. 4. since the equation for c is conformal invariant we simply can consider it in flat space. thus, dropping the denominator in (2.3) we get the flat space metric. 5. thus, we often use ideal-gas heat capacities, these being different for different gases and functions of temperature only. 6. the third axiom does the entropy function what the first axiom does for the internal energy, asserting its existence and providing a relationship which connects it with measurable quantities. the examples demonstrate the effectiveness of these constructions for scientific speech, but at the same time they show that the ellipsis of certain grammatical categories requires additional efforts on the part of readers/listeners to interpret the information correctly. this is connected with the level of professional preparedness of the readers/listeners and must definitely be taken into consideration by speakers/writers. in the examples provided the interconnection of the participial clauses with the main clause is quite ambiguous for non-professionals (temporal, conditional, instrumental, of cause-effect and so on), whereas in science these nuances in meaning are determinative. now let us present how the linguistic compression is reflected in each of the genres. 1) in the scientific papers examined we found 81 cases of absolute constructions and adverbial participles at 42 pages only. this is quite a high concentration, especially in terms of the adequate interpretation of the information. this can be explained by the specificity of the genre of scientific paper itself, which is meant for a narrow circle of professionals who have detailed and complete idea concerning the topic under discussion. thus, a compressed transfer of information can in no way affect the correct perception of the content, consequently it is justified by extralinguistic factors. in other words, the principle of the economical use of linguistic means dominates over the necessity of high level of explicitness in this sphere and this, in its turn is reflected frequent use of the constructions discussed. another interesting fact is connected with diachrony. analysis of the papers written in the years between 1985-91, revealed the following statistics: 29 cases of absolute constructions at 218 pages. whereas, in the papers analyzed for this work we found 35 cases of absolute constructions use at only 42 pages. this is mere statistics, however it might be assumed that the increasing demand of the time to be more concise and laconic is traced in this statistics. 2) the second source examined is a textbook for university students. here we found 21 cases of absolute constructions and adverbial participles at 65 pages. as compared to scientific papers a significant decline of linguistic means fulfilling the function of armenian folia anglistika linguistics 50 compression is observed in this genre. this is predetermined by the necessity to be as explicit as possible, since the utmost goal of textbooks is to teach. as is seen the extralinguistic requirements of the genre in questions are directly proportional with the statistics. thus, it can be supposed that the principles of linguistic economy in the given case are not weighty enough to regulate the use and functioning of linguistic units proper. 3) and the third genre analyzed is posters. this area has very little been investigated and requires a comprehensive insight, so we looked into the problem of narration efficiency both in terms of structural organization of posters and linguistic compression. posters presented at the international conference “optical liquid crystals” held in yerevan, september 25-30 2011 served as material for investigation. we studied approximately 15 posters by italian, canadian, taiwanese, russian and armenian scholars. it is to be stipulated that herein we present only certain preliminary observations, since accurate results and rigid assumptions require an in-depth, all-encompassing analysis of different linguistic levels. the first point to mention is that in posters the cases of linguistic compression via adverbial participles and absolute constructions are practically absent. all in all we encountered just 2 cases of sentences with adverbial participles. perhaps it might be accounted by the fact that in posters simple and concise sentences are more favoured, where the information is contracted to the highest possible extent. from the material analyzed it could be concluded that the data in posters is presented more schematically, either in graphs and figures or in points. these were the first two striking modes for information compression in posters, at least this is what we observed at this level of analysis. this is true practically for all the poster conclusions we examined. here is an example: conclusions • artifact-free, compact “portable” cd spectrograph based on a cycloidal optical axis grating • the diffraction properties of the cycloidal grating allow for real-time cd • extreme simplicity of the method: only the intensities i1 or, perspectives • ecp range 190-360nm ask for uv transparent lc and km • extend the method to circularly luminiscence (cpl) and vibrational optical activity (i.e. roa) an interesting fact to mention and of course this should be taken into consideration when teaching academic writing to armenian students. all the posters by armenian scholars were extremely wordy, long and obviously these were extracts from scientific papers, but the genre of posters does not permit it due to the space restrictions. so the principle of linguistic economy must be taught to students for them to observe the internationally-accepted norms. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 51 and to sum up, it should be mentioned that there are still numerous issues to be studied in the genre of posters on all the linguistic strata, because in posters the principle of linguistic compression is much more pertinent than in the other two sources discusses above.for now, we can state that the two evident ways for compressing information in posters are schematic presentation of data and simple sentences presented in points. references: 1. halliday, m.a.k.; matthiessen, ch. (1997) systemic functional grammar. a first step into the theory. 2. halliday, m.a.k. & martin, j.r. (1993) writing science: literacy and discursive power. london: falmer press. 3. leech, g.; hundt, m. (2009) change in contemporary english. a grammatical study. new york: cup. 4. chubaryan, a.; karapetyan, r. (2004) absolutniye konstruktsii kak sredstvo lingvisticheskoi ekonomii v nauchnoi proze. // foreign languages for special purposes. n 4. yerevan: ysu press. 軽í³ï³ý ùççáóý»ñç ïýï»ëù³ý ëï½μáõýùá ³ý·é»ñ»ý ·çï³ï³ý ¹çëïáõñëáõù 軽 í³ï³ý ùççáóý»ñç ïýï»ëù³ý ëï½μáõýùá, áñá ëáëù³ëï»õíù³ý ³ýμ³ å³ý»éç ù³ë ¿ ï³½ùáõù, ¹ñë¨áñíáõù ¿ μáéáñ 黽í³ï³ý ù³ï³ñ¹³ïý»ñáõù ¨ ÷³ëïáñ»ý ³ûý áõåý ¿, áñáí ï³ñ·³ íáñíáõù »ý 黽í³ï³ý ñ³ù³ï³ñ·ç ½³ñ·³óù³ý íñ³ áõõõ³ïçáñ»ý ¨ ³ýáõõõ³ïçáñ»ý ³½¹áõ ý»ñùçý ¨ ³ñï³ùçý ½³ý³½³ý ·áñíáýý»ñç ÷áëñ³ñ³μ» ñáõãûáõýý»ñá: ¶çïáõãû³ý 黽íç μý³ï³ý å³ñ³ýçý ¿ ÷áë³ýó»é ³é³í»é³·áõûý ï»õ»ï³ïíáõãûáõý` û·ï³·áñí»éáí ñý³ñ³íáñçýë ùçã 黽í³ï³ý ùççáóý»ñ: ê³ ¿é çñ ñ»ñãçý å³ûù³ý³íáñí³í ¿ ùç ß³ñù 黽í³ï³ý ¨ ³ñï³é»½í³ï³ý ·áñíáýý»ñç ³½¹» óáõãû³ùμ, ³û¹ ãíáõù` ùïùç ïáõé ¨ ïñ³ù³μ³ ý³ï³ý ï³éáõóí³íùç ³å³ñáíáõù, ñ³ïçñ×áõãûáõý, ï»õ»ï³ïí³ï³ý ñ³·»óí³íáõãûáõý, å³ù³ý³ïç ¨ ï³ñ³íùç ïýï»ëáõù ¨ ³ûéý: î³ï³ñí³í í»ñéáõíáõãû³ý ýå³ï³ïý ¿ å³ñ½»é, ã» çýãå»ë ¨ çýã ã³÷áí ¿ ¹ñë¨áñíáõù 黽í³ï³ý ùççáóý»ñç ïýï»ëù³ý ëï½μáõýùá ·çï³ï³ý á×ç ï»ùëï»ñáõù` ï»ùëïç ß³ñ³ñûáõë³ï³ý, çù³ëï³μ³ ý³ï³ý ¨ ·áñí³μ³ ý³ï³ý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñç ÷áëñ³ñ³μ» ñáõãû³ý ï»ë³ýïûáõýçó: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 52 microsoft word maket 2020-2(22) (3)-1 (1).doc armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 linguistics 20 emotions, thoughts, words karine kochunts yerevan state university abstract the subject of the present research is the subtle and intricate interconnection of human emotions, thoughts and words. as we know, human cognition is the ultimate form of reflecting the objective reality. emotions reflect not the objective items and phenomena of the real world, but some subjective relationships in which these items exist. thoughts and feelings in the model of the interaction of our consciousness with the world are the two means of its perception. reflection has got two spheres: an intellectual and an affective, and the interaction of these two means that the rational and the emotional in the consciousness and thinking is manifested in the fact that man can emotionally experience what he/she reflects. key words: emotion, sensitive understanding, emotive, emotive seme, emotive meaning, loaded language. introduction what are emotions? are emotions characteristic of human beings only or can be traced in animals too? do emotions convey what people feel or what people think? can a thought be devoid of any kind of emotion? do emotions make people think or do thoughts make people feel? can people feel without thinking and think without feeling? are feelings and emotions the same? is love a feeling or an emotion? very superficial considerations may make us think that feelings should probably last longer than emotions, but the notion of relativity inevitably makes such judgments sound inaccurate. https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2020.16.2.020 linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 21 are emotions and feelings different? oxford learner’s dictionary defines the word emotion as: “a strong feeling of any kind: love, joy, hate, fear, etc.” the second definition is “excitement or disturbance of the feelings” (oxford advanced learner’s dictionary of current english, 7th edition). the word feeling is defined in the same source as “a thing that is felt through the mind or the senses”. the second definition is “an idea or a belief that is difficult to define and not based entirely on reason”. and the third definition, which is no less interesting and provocative, is “a person’s emotions rather than her or his mind; a sensitive understanding”. the analysis of the definitions allows us to come to two thought-provoking conclusions: first, emotions are more likely to be defined as feelings than feelings as emotions. this nevertheless may give us the right to treat them as two nearly identical concepts, second, feelings are not mere emotions, they are also defined as ideas, beliefs, thoughts, consequently they should never be considered or examined separately from thoughts or as something opposed to the process of thinking. in fact emotions and thoughts often overlap: emotions trigger thoughts, thoughts trigger emotions. let us consider word-combinations with the word ”emotion” taken from british national corpus and try to track equivalence with their possible counterparts with the word “feeling”: i tell you, dan, the people here are feeling every emotion in the book. elation, fear, anxiety, everything. "uh, so i started thinking, okay, what’s a different emotion? sadness... well, nobody wants to see a baby sad.” american revolution of its inevitability. each piece of music is specific to an emotion and a character. paris on fire? i want to go all the way take me to emotion...? armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 linguistics 22 its purpose was to create the perfect killing machine. human beings without emotion or fear or remorse. would you like to hear my voice?? sprinkled with emotion?? and i thought, before i have this next baby… even the blurry or out of focus picture was better if it captured the emotion on the face. video game i think is probably the hardest thing to make. if you want emotion, you need the human face, and in the world of film… i keep my true feelings inside because most women can't handle the kind of emotion that i bring. that's what enjoyment looks like on that face i like that emotion i keep emotion out of it. his eyes burst with emotion and he suddenly took off stumbling after it… what's it called? it's called... -?? slow emotion?? crickets chirping, dog barks in the distance, ominous music?? you can only apologize not to act! repentance is a useless emotion. i've known jon long enough to see he isn't devoid of emotion. love is just a leftover emotion from our hairy ancestors. i mean, when your house is under constant attack… linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 23 … percent of your decisions, based on logic, fact and reason, and allow emotion to be the secondary motivator. if you're spending your life with someone, you can't rely on emotion. it never has a chance for an honest emotion or thought ever to get through. and you’re so filled with honest emotion. but after that i just sort of leave it i find it hard to express emotion most of the time although i'm getting on top of that more happy now… …you any harm, but my presence here... is motivated by man's purest emotion greed. thank heaven for an honest man. hmm. gentlemen. …women seek intense and terrifying emotion... because they really enjoy it. the above-adduced examples of various collocations with the word emotion come to prove that in the sematic comparison of the two words, emotion and feeling, the former allows wider use and flexibility, since in many of the collocations the word emotion could not be possibly replaced by the word feeling.for example, a leftover emotion, burst with emotion, capture the emotion, devoid of emotion, slow emotion, take me to emotion, etc. thus, the word emotion better fits into the research field under study. karen lawson from the university of minnesota's center for spirituality & healing states that “thoughts and emotions have a profound effect on one another. thoughts can trigger emotions (worrying about an upcoming job interview may cause fear) and also serve as an appraisal of that emotion (“this armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 linguistics 24 isn’t a realistic fear”). in addition, how we attend to and appraise our lives has an effect on how we feel.” (<https://www.takingcharge.csh.umn.edu>) richard davidson, professor of psychology and psychiatry at the university of wisconsin–madison, goes even further popularizing the idea that “one can learn happiness and compassion as skills just as one learns to play a musical instrument, or train in golf or tennis.” (<https://www.stillnessspeaks.com>) the missing unit in the chain emotions-thoughts the chain emotion→thought or thought→emotion apparently lacks a unit, that is the way thoughts and emotions are actualized in speech. at this point it would not be out of place to remember robert frost’s well-known quote: “poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” there is no doubt that thoughts and emotions must be given way and actualized through words, moreover, they must find the right words (apparently, there are also extralinguistic means of realizing emotions). thus, the missing unit, even if not the closing one, is obviously the word. still, how frequently do we appear in situations when words are unable to express our thoughts and emotions, when they express them at least imprecisely, or we have a feeling that many emotions are simply beyond the words that we have or we know? in his book “start with why” simon sinek points out: “the part of the brain that controls our feelings has no capacity for language. it is this disconnection that makes putting our feelings into words so hard. we have trouble, for example, explaining why we married the person we married. we struggle to put into words the real reason why we love them, so we talk around it and we rationalize it. rationally, we understand that our explanation isn’t the real reason. it is how our loved ones make us feel, but those feelings are really hard to put into words…” dr. richard restak in one of his outstanding books “the naked brain” suggests that “gut decisions” feel right. there is no part of the stomach that controls decision-making, it all happens in the limbic brain. it is not an accident that we use that word “feel” to explain those decisions either” (sinek 2009). thus, the answer is rather often. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 25 the linguistic expression of emotions has often been a target of research for linguists, psychologists and philosophers. from the second half of the xix century the american linguistic school set a clear objective to trace relationships between emotions and language as means of their actualization. according to v.i. shakhovski the essence of the linguistic approach to the study of emotions looks like this: there is the world (the object) and the human-being (the subject) capable of reflecting the world. the reflection of emotional states is localized in the semantic structure of corresponding words, the images of those objects to which they refer. this reflection is coded in the word with the specific components of its semantics which form the emotiveness of the word (shakhovski 2008:3). thus, emotives are words which possess some kind of emotional component in their lexical meaning. the question is how the emotive meaning is referred to the denotational, connotational and lexical meanings of the word? is this meaning inherent in the word or it may appear situationally or as a result of the speaker’s intention? what is, for example, the difference in the emotiveness of the words want, wish, desire? do we know the difference or do we feel it? it may seem that the tendency in the rank of emotiveness in these words is ascending: want is the least emotional, wish is moderately emotional and desire is the most emotional. the analysis of the emotiveness as the semantic component of words can become possible only when its tiniest meanings – the emotive semes – are present in the semantic system of a given language. emotional semes reflect the subjective reality which is however objective for the word itself (shakhovski 2008:74). let us turn to the dictionary definitions of the above-mentioned words proposed by oxford learner’s dictionary: want-v to have a desire for something; to wish for something, wish -v to want something that cannot now happen or that probably will not happen, desire -v to wish for something, to want something; n a strong wish to have or do something (oxford advanced learner’s dictionary of current english, 7th edition). we see that the denotational meanings of the words do not seem to express any difference in the rank of emotiveness, moreover, they are interchangeably defined. then armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 linguistics 26 how can we trace the subjective reality expressed by these words which is objective for the words themselves? what is the objective reality of words? to what extent can they be interchangeably used? the subjective reality expressed by words an attempt has been made to see the frequency of the use of these words in two hundred pages of s. maugham’s sixty-five short stories. the results are as follows: want -201, wish -25, desire -11. thus, if they could be interchangeably used, the difference in number would not be so dramatic. the most neutral emotive seme want is used nearly eight times as much as the more emotive seme wish and twenty times as much as its most emotive counterpart desire. a little native girl brought them a dish of hamburger steak, and after a while the trader came up to see that they had everything they wanted. (p. 116) when people come and ask if i can rent them a room all i want to know is if they’ve the money to pay for it. and she paid me for hers a week in advance. (p. 406) i want to put in her heart the passionate desire to be punished so that at the end, even if i offered to let her go, she would refuse. i want her to feel that the bitter punishment of prison is the thank-offering that she places at the feet of our blessed lord, who gave his life for her.’ (p. 621) in the first two sentences above the author chooses to use the word want, the most neutral of the three, as the context does not seem to prompt a strong emotion. in the third sentence we see want used twice and one use of desire. the noun desire is preceded by the adjective passionate, which multiplies the rank of emotiveness, thus justifying the use of the word, but then a question is linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 27 bound to arise: does the word want not possess the same amount of emotion in the given context? ‘you know there’s nothing in the world i want more than your happiness, isabel.’ (p. 96) there is apparently so much emotion in the context of this sentence that again we may question the appropriateness of the use of the word want. ‘do you wish me to give her that message, edward? oh, i can’t. it’s terrible. it’s never dawned on her for a moment that you don’t want to marry her. she loves you. how can i inflict such a mortification on her?’ (p. 92) what possibly makes the author choose the word wish and not want in the sentences like this? had the author used want, it would most likely diminish the emotional outburst of the character? in long, idle talks he had inflamed their hearts with the desire for gain. (p. 208) a tremendous desire seized him to humiliate that gross and cruel man; he would give anything in the world to see him in the dust, suffering as much as he had made others suffer. (p. 204) in both sentences we see a strong emotion expressed by the word desire: in the first case there is a desire to gain, which is almost always strong and deep, in the second case the word is preceded by a strong attribute (tremendous desire). the analysis of a number of instances where the three words are used by the author allows believing that emotional communication realizes the emotive components of the lexical meaning in the form of the emotive meaning, armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 linguistics 28 connotation or emotive potential. at the same time the emotional potential of the word may be inherent and acquired or situational, objective and subjective. thus, it can be rightfully concluded that “words carry with them something more than a simple description of a concept or an action. they have a “magnetic” effect, an imperative force, a tendency to influence the interlocutor's decisions” (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/loaded_language>). conclusion the research allows us to believe that human emotions, thoughts and words cannot be or appear isolated, they are always and by all means interconnected and often trigger or influence each other. the chain emotions→thoughts→words is represented in the order in which they appear from the perspective of human cognition, which means that the emotional reflection of the world triggers the rational reflection which gets actualized through words. still, because emotions, thoughts and words can sometimes overlap, a thought can precede an emotion, or a word may trigger a thought or/and an emotion. references: 1. davidson, j.r.; begley sh. (2004) the emotional life of your brain: how its unique patterns affect the way you think, feel, and live and how you can change them. uk: hudson street press. 2. hornby, a.s. and wehmeier, s. (2005) oxford advanced learner’s dictionary of current english, 7th ed. oxford: oup. 3. maslow, a. (2011) hierarchy of needs: a theory of human motivation. new york: public affairs (perseuus book group). 4. restak, r. (2007) the naked brain: how the emerging neurosociety is changing how we live, work, and love. new york: broadway books. 5. shakhovski, v.i. (2008) lingvisticheskaya teoriya emociy. m.: gnozis. 6. sinek, s. (2009) start with why: how great leaders inspire everyone to take action. new york: penguin group. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 29 7. taking care of your health and wellbeing. available at: <https://www.takingcharge.csh.umn.edu> [accessed january 2019]. 8. zimmerman, m. (2017) self-knowledge learning needs vs. selfactualization skills. // how to make the world a better place, chapter 8. canada: vintage. sources of data: 1. british national corpus. available at: <https://www.englishcorpora.org/bnc/> [accessed december 2018]. 2. maugham, w.s. (1988) sixty-five short stories. london: octopus books limited. հույզեր, մտքեր, բառեր հետազոտության առարկան է մարդկային հույզերի, մտքերի և բառերի փոխկապակցվածության խնդիրը: ուսումնասիրությունը ցույց է տալիս, որ հույզ-միտք կամ միտք-հույզ շղթայում ակնհայտորեն բացակայող օղակ կա, որի միջոցով մտքերն ու հույզերը պետք է առկայանան խոսքում: ինչպես ռոբերտ ֆրոստն է ասել. «պոեզիան այն է, երբ հույզը գտնում է իր միտքը, միտքն էլ` իրեն անհրաժեշտ բառերը»: հիրավի, հույզերն ու մտքերը պետք է առկայանան բառերի միջոցով, ավելին, պետք է գտնեն համապատասխան բառեր (անշուշտ գոյություն ունեն նաև հույզեր արտահայտող արտալեզվական միջոցներ): այսպիսով, բացակայող օղակը, եթե ոչ նաև եզրափակողը, բառն է: սակայն հաճախ մենք հայտնվում ենք այնպիսի իրավիճակներում, երբ բառերն անզոր են արտահայտելու մեր մտքերն ու հույզերը, կամ արտահայտում են դրանք ոչ լիարժեք կամ համարժեձևով: սույն հոդվածը միտված է նման հարցերի դիտարկմանն ու քննությանը։ received by the editorial board 08.09.2019 recommended for publication by the reviewers 07.10.2019 accepted for print 02.02.2020 maket 2011-2:layout 1.qxd esp/eap as a specific register of scientific english minoo khamesian iran azad university the society we are now living in is not the same as the society our antecedentslived in years ago. there is obviously increasing complexity and diversity. due to this, people are doing their best to improve all the fields possible to help them survive. this includes improving their communication skills. it is common knowledge that there are different languages in the world. however, just some of them fall into the category of international languages, in other words, languages of wider communication groups, e.g., english, french, spanish, russian. however, it is english that is very important nowadays as it is used to publish experimental results, to discuss theories, and to disseminate information in science and technology. and of course people need english to attend universities and colleges of higher education abroad. there are more opportunities for people to get involved in purpose-related communications (scientific, technical and economic) on an international scale. therefore, it is not surprising that the learning and teaching of english as a foreign language specifically for the purposes of science and technology has become a prominent area of english language teaching and applied linguistics. as a result, english is gaining popularity as a working tool that satisfies the particular needs in countries where the majority of people have grown up speaking a different language. english has thus become the lingua franca1 of the modern world and is systematically used in practically every aspect of life. unlike with any other language in the world, non-native speakers of english outnumber the native speakers, which proves how important it is for human interaction on the global scale. thus, it seems clear why whenever two speakers of different languages meet and try to communicate, english will most probably be the language of choice no matter where the meeting takes place, and as long as they are in need for a third language, there is no doubt which language they will primarily reach for in order to understand and communicate with each other. this has created a demand for good communication skills in english around the world. millions of people today want to improve their command of english or to ensure that their children achieve a good command of it. to fulfill this requirement it has been recognized that we have to reach beyond the surface manifestations of technical language and to understand the social contexts where the language is used and the purposes to which it is put. the issue to be concerned is that english courses usually offer focus on general aspects of communication and only a few specialize in certain subject areas such as science or technology. all people speak “normal” english, even chemists or therapists. but they have additional needs; they must also be able to manage “jargon” i.e. the language of specialists. this means that several new words have to be studied, a few new phrases must be introduced which are commonly used and some grammatical features must be studied harder than in “everyday” courses, e.g. the passive voice. armenian folia anglistika methodology 66 the notion of a language with singular characteristics began to take root in the sixties early seventies of the 20 th century, being associated above all, with the pioneering research of halliday, macintosh and strevens (1964), jack ewer and latorre (1969), john swales (1971), henry widdowson (1978), louis and mary todd trimble (1978), and the so called washington school with larry selinker (1979).the main aim of these researchers was to design a syllabus that would give a priority to the language that students need in their scientific studies. in order to teach them specific kinds of language and communicative skills needed for particular roles, the focus on needs analysis has become central to determine the specific characteristics of the language which is used for specific rather than general purposes. what has been mentioned as english for specific purposes (esp) emerged to meet the demands of different “discourse communities” as swales (1990) puts it. the origin of esp the history of esp is not so new as some people may consider. the first examples can be found in the 14th century in a collection of everyday dialogues written for english travellers to france (howatt 1984). in the 16th century, on the other hand, commercial interests created other phrasebooks and polyglot dictionaries to deal with merchants’ needs of learning languages for acquiring some “survival knowledge” for trading. learning languages, however, has been considered mostly as a matter of prestige and pleasure for the sake of enlightenment and reading literature in their original versions rather than as a requirement to get a new job or an activity that could contribute to the accomplishment of shared objectives. but the nature of english for specific purposes, as it is now known, developed in the second half of the 20 th century. it is difficult to establish a particular date for the commencement of esp in its modern sense. however, as it is widely accepted, several events have contributed to its emergence. some political, social and economic facts as well as the application of modern linguistic theoretical trends and techniques greatly influenced the growth of esp. first of all, the end of the world war ii started an era of broad scientific, technical and economic activities on an international scale. this expansion created a unified world, dominated by two powerful forces – technology and commerce – which soon demanded an international language for the exchange of ideas and goods. the university community, scientists, technicians, economists were in need of a common language in order to export and import knowledge and technology. for well-known reasons especially due to economic and cultural influence of the uk and the usa, as well as their status as global superpower countries, this very responsible role has been taken on by the english language which has now become one of the main means of international communication. in a global economy where reliance on technological growth and progress is greater than ever, the power of scientific discourse is conceivably greater as well. this expansion of scientific and technical english gave rise to what is known as english for science and technology (est), also called english for academic purposes (eap), which can be considered as the building block in the continuum of esp and as broadly accepted, its most fruitful branch. armenian folia anglistikamethodology 67 in an interesting retrospective view of this phenomenon since its outset, swales (1988) claims that the article “some measurable characteristics of modern scientific prose” by barber (1962) followed by herbert and others can be considered as a starting point. moreover, scholars such as robinson (1980), and howatt (1984), indicate that esp began in 1969 with the first conference on “languages for special purposes,” although both recognize that the preliminary work had been done during the decade before. as a result, linguistics started moving away (to a certain extent) from focus on grammar as the pivotal component of language abilities to a consideration of how language is used in different contexts of communication. it was realized that if language varies from situation to situation, it should be possible to determine characteristic features of specific situations and make those features the core of learners’ courses (hutchinson & waters 1987; gasparian 1998; richards 2001). the view advanced the point that the english needed by specific group of learners could be identified by analysing the linguistic characteristics of a specialist area of work or study. “tell me what you need english for and i will tell you the english that you need” (hutchinson & waters 1987:8). in this connection widdowson’s works are presumably the first to be mentioned. they undoubtedly paved a way for the paramount idea that language, in spite of its systematic character, is provided with the ability to display different specific features in different spheres of its use. his major finding was that “the language we speak and write varies considerably, and in a number of ways from one context to another”. since language varies depending on the situation of use, features of specific situations will be detected and they will make the basis of the learner’s course/textbook. therefore the direction of study went from the learner to the language and not vice versa (widdowson 1978; 1979). last but not least, new developments in educational psychology regarding teaching and learning emphasized the learners’ goals and their attitudes towards the language they chose to learn. therefore, focus on the learners’ needs became equally paramount as the methods employed to disseminate linguistic knowledge. learners were seen to have different needs and goals, which would have an important influence on their motivation to learn and, consequently, on the efficacy of their learning. the main idea expressed in related publications was that: when we are concerned with communicative language teaching we have to proceed from the assumption that people merely pursue the practice of these or those syntactic patterns but they always aim at fulfilling certain communicative functions. therefore, before starting to teach a foreign language the teacher is obliged to have a distinct idea about the language the learners need to be taught. in other words, to be able to learn and use a foreign language as a medium of effective international communication the learner must be acquainted with the basic language of his profession. as far as the methods of teaching esp is concerned, it should be added that methodologists have seen teacher-oriented language teaching insufficient and outdated, as it is now beyond suspicion that involving the learners in active work in class makes language teaching more effective and provides for the teacher an opportunity to avoid the danger of indulging in excessive talking in class. as armenian folia anglistika methodology 68 a result of learner-centeredness, the learners actually take an active part in the teaching themselves (hutchinson & waters 1987; gasparian 1998; fahady 2001). the development of esp since its early beginning in the 1960s, esp has undergone five main phases of development: (a) register analysis, (b) rhetorical or discourse analysis, (c) target language use (tlu) situation analysis, (d) skills-centered approach and (e) learningcentered approach. register analysis took place mainly in the 1960s and early 1970s, and was associated in particular with the works of strevens (halliday, mclntosh and strevens 1964), ewer (ewer and latorre 1969) and swales (1971). it was based on the principle that the english needed in one scientific field comprised a specific register different from those of other fields of science or general english. register analysis attempted to identify the grammatical and lexical features of different scientific registers. in this phase, esp focused on language at the sentence level. nevertheless, with the development of discourse analysis, esp entered a second phase of development typically known as the phase of rhetorical or discourse analysis. the basic hypothesis of this stage was concisely described by allen and widdowson (1974) who took the view that the difficulties encountered by the students arose from an unfamiliarity with english use rather than from a defective knowledge of the system of english. allen and widdowson (1974) argued that esp students’ needs could best be met by an esp course which developed the knowledge of how sentences were used in the performance of different communicative acts. the implicit assumption of rhetorical discourse analysis is that the rhetorical patterns of text organization differs significantly between specialist areas of use. however, this point was never very clearly examined (swales 1985), and indeed paradoxically, the results of the research into the discourse of subject-specific academic texts were also used to make observations about discourse in general (widdowson 1978). the increasing interest in communicative language teaching as well as the development of communicative syllabi led to the emergence of the third phase of esp: target language use (tlu) situation analysis. tlu situation analysis aimed at establishing procedures for relating language analysis more closely to learners’ reasons for learning. esp courses designed in this phase proceeded first by an identification of the target situation and then by a rigorous analysis of that situation. the identified features then formed the syllabus of the esp course. such a process was usually known as needs analysis. however, chambers (1980) preferred to use the term target situation analysis, as it was a more accurate description of the process concerned. the most complete explanation of tlu analysis was perhaps the system set out in “communicative syllabus design” by munby (1978). the fourth stage of esp development known as skills-centered approach, was an attempt to look below the surface and to consider not the language itself but the thinking processes that underlie language use. the principal idea behind the skills-centered approach was that common reasoning and interpretation processes underlay all language use which made it possible for the students to extract meaning from discourse regardless armenian folia anglistikamethodology 69 of the surface linguistic forms. the implied assumption in this approach was that students did not need to focus closely on the surface forms of the language; they rather needed to focus on the underlying interpretive strategies, which enabled them to deal with the surface forms. as such, a focus on specific subject registers was unnecessary in this approach because the underlying processes were not specific to any subject register (chitravelu1980; grellet 1981; nuttall 1982; alderson and urquhart 1984). the fifth phase of esp which attempted to overcome the shortcomings of its preceding phases was learning-centered approach. proponents of this approach argued that the four preceding phases of esp were all flawed in that they were all based on descriptions of language use whereas a truly valid approach to esp must be based on an understanding of the processes of language learning. in fact, the fifth phase of esp is concerned with the question of what it really means to know a language and it also takes into account the fact that different students learn in different ways. we have to hasten to add that research in applied linguistics has soon shown the affinity between the intra and extralinguistic levels with research on genre analysis (swales 1980; 1981; 1984 and 1986). thus, the language used in the professions has moved from being characterized in terms of syntactic or lexical choices to characters of the textual presentation and formulaic requirements of the different contexts. later on and as a further development of this trend, swales (1990) called for more attention to the communicative purpose of the communicative event. and even bhatia (1997) went further by insisting on taking the purpose as the key characteristic feature of genre. therefore, genre analysis has become more a matter of extensive text-in-context inquiry than straightforward textual or transcriptal scrutiny (askehave and swales 2001). however, all phases have played important roles in performing different approaches to esp and also eap as a movement within it. characteristics and claims of esp/eap eap as a branch of esp is basically defined as the teaching of english with the specific purpose of helping learners to study, conduct research or teach in english. it can also be considered to be esp as the features allocated to it by robinson (1991) are usually thought of as being key features to esp courses. (although some characteristic features are controversial, which are further elaborated on in this article.) firstly, esp is goal directed – the students are not learning the english language for the sake of it, but because they need to use english. eap students are usually current higher education students or they are hoping to go on to higher education after their eap course. they need to learn english in order to succeed in their academic careers. secondly, esp courses are based on a needs analysis, which aims to specify as closely as possible exactly what it is that students have to do through the medium of english. one important feature of eap courses is the close attention that is paid to students’ aims and what they plan to study. the first stage in any eap and esp course is to find out exactly why the students are learning english and therefore what language and skills they will need. often there is a very clearly specified period for the course. most eap students are doing fixed term courses in preparation for an academic course. armenian folia anglistika methodology 70 esp learners tend to be adults rather than children. most eap students are over 18 and they will have made a difficult decision to study in an english medium university. students may need specialist language, but this is not necessarily so. it is the activities that the students will want to engage in that defines the course. as with all esp, an eap lecturer would not take a text and say, “what can i do with this?” the starting point is always, “what will my students need to do with this text and how can i help them to do it?” in some cases, a very high level of proficiency is not required, as long as the students can succeed in their aims. students need to be able to get good marks for assignments. our job as eap lecturers is to find ways to enable them to do this – getting their present tenses correct may not be as important as the overall structure of the essay. also a distinction has been made between english for general academic purposes (egap) and english for specific academic purposes (esap). the former refers to the teaching of the skills and language that are common to all disciplines; whereas the latter deals with the teaching of the features that differentiate one discipline from others (blue 1988a). there are nearly as many definitions of esp/eap as the number of scholars who have attempted to define it. to pave the way, it is better to have a brief look at some definitions and explanations by some specialists in this field. esp in its early age was first known as est (english for science and technology). the pioneers of this teaching approach like ewer and latorre, swales, slinker and trimble were to be considered as revolutionary figures in linguistics. they opposed traditional linguists who were focusing on describing the features of language; whereas the problem with language was to make it flexible to be used in all settings communicatively. this new perspective of the language could be seen as the only way to help facing the demands of “a brave new world” (hutchinson & waters 1987:6), the world that suddenly emerged bringing about new challenges especially on the level of study. esp had already been used as far back as 1964 by halliday, mcintosh and strevens referring to the language varieties typical of a professional activity. the recognition of those varieties brought about many attempts in language teaching to make a deliberate choice of which variety of language is most relevant to particular groups of learners, e.g. english for science and technology. mackay and mountford (1978:2) defined esp as the teaching of english for a “clearly utilitarian purpose”. the purpose they refer to is defined by the needs of the learners, which could be academic, occupational, or scientific. these needs in turn determine the content of the esp curriculum to be taught and learned. they also defined esp and the “special language” that takes place in specific settings by certain participants and claimed that those participants are usually mature as adults, “highly conscious” of the reasons to achieve english proficiency in the very field of their specialization. undoubtedly, adults make use of the specialized language in authentic situations because the activities of their specialization have obliged to use the appropriate esp. in 1980 strevens offered the following working definition for esp and outlined five analytical stages for determining a particular esp requirement and designing an approarmenian folia anglistikamethodology 71 priate course to meet the requirement. he defined esp as: “esp entails the provision of english language instruction (i) devised to meet the learner’s particular needs; (ii) related in themes and topics to designated occupations or areas of study; (iii) selective (i.e. ‘not general’) as to language content; (iv) where indicated, restricted as to the language ‘skills’ included” (1980:108-109). stage one involves a needs analysis, based on information provided by the esp training stakeholders such as learners, sponsors or clients, and other interested parties. stage two involves a content analysis, based on the field or discipline in question. in stage three, the practitioner determines whether the training needs fall under the eap or the eop (english for occupational purposes – the other main division of esp) side of the esp umbrella. in stage four it is further determined whether the training will precede, follow, or be concurrent with content specific training. regarding stage four, strevens notes that esp learners who are already established in their professions are likely to be more motivated, mature, and demanding. finally, in stage five, the practitioner prepares a targeted syllabus and appropriate training materials. for strevens, the fundamental principle of esp is that it “is based on a close analysis of the learner’s needs”. he offers several assumptions regarding esp which are: time and effort are focused exclusively on learners’ needs; mastery of the target material takes less time; esp learners are more motivated than learners of general english; both learners and teachers are more satisfied with the results; esp is more cost-effective. regarding methods and materials, strevens mentions notional/ functional, and communicative approaches as being most relevant to esp. however, he states that esp is not applied to any particular method, technique, or material. in fact, he views the “freedom to innovate” as being one of the “major attractions” of esp (1980:120). hutchinson and waters defined esp as “an approach to language teaching in which all decisions as to content and method are based on the learner’s reason for learning” (1987:19). they believe that lacks are what come to determine curriculum not needs since what we are really interested in is the gap between the target proficiency and the present proficiency of the learners. in other words, esp aims to empower a group of people with specific needs, disregarding if for academic, professional or personal issues. the whole course is tailor-made, so that the focus of the teaching content and method varies according to each field of interest. on the other hand, strevens (1988) defined esp by making a distinction between its absolute and its variable characteristics (although he later changed his belief). he considered the following as absolute characteristics of esp: • designed to meet specified needs of the learner; • related in content (i.e. themes and topics) to particular disciplines, occupations and activities; • centered on the language appropriate for those activities in syntax, lexis, discourse and semantics; according to strevens (1988) the variable characteristics of esp may be: • restriction to the language skills to be learned (reading only); • use of no teaching methodology. armenian folia anglistika methodology 72 robinson (1991) defines esp on the basis of two criteria: 1. esp is normally “goal-directed”; 2. esp courses develop from a needs analysis which aims to specify what exactly it is that students have to do through the medium of english, and from a number of characteristics which explain that esp courses are generally constrained by a limited period of time in which their objectives have to be achieved and taught to adults in homogeneous classes in terms of the work or specialist studies. strevens’ definition is in line with the definition provided by the linguistic school of professor akhmanova (1996) that esp as a variety (register) of english can be featurized by: 1) a particular conceptual orientation and 2) a set of linguistic features in accordance with the concept different from, and less diversified comparing those of typical every day communication. in other words esp is not treated as a mere methodology but is discussed from a virtually philological theoretical point of view, that is to say, it belongs to the sphere of functional stylistics.2 gasparian (1998) in her explanation of esp further elaborates: “when what we are concerned with is communicative language teaching, we have to proceed from the assumption that whenever language is used people do not merely pursue the purpose of practicing these or those syntactic patterns but always aim at fulfilling certain communicative functions. it follows that before setting out to teach a foreign language a teacher must always have a clear-cut idea about what variety of the language her learners need to be taught“ (2002). she adds that language, being an integral compact system, can have great differences and peculiarities in different fields of its application, though. respectively, the real and sensible results of learning could be achieved if the peculiarities of different professional languages are taken into consideration. and on this basis, appropriate curricula are created. a student who learns a foreign language obviously, sooner or later, faces the tasks of; consulting professional literature, dialogueing and discussing over various professional issues, writing scientific abstracts and articles, lecturing in the foreign language, participating in international conferences, etc. the paramount objective for the learner could be mastering the variant of the language that would serve his professional purposes and enable him to communicate with the worldwide scientific thinking. the word specific in the term esp focuses on the purpose of the learner (learneroriented teaching). it does not imply the creation of a “specific language”, but the principles of the choice of certain linguistic means. esp is laid over human natural language which undergoes changes based on (more or less) restrictions of the applied linguistic means. thus, proficiency in the varieties of english and the general extra-linguistic knowledge enables the learner to avoid frequent misunderstandings while communicating, and accelerates mutual understanding. in other words, the specific varieties of language play the role of a so-called “shared code” between the interlocutors. dudley-evans & st. john (1998) who prefer to call esp “an attitude of mind” offer a modified definition and express their revised view on the essence of esp based on absolute and variable characteristics. according to them the absolute characteristics are: armenian folia anglistikamethodology 73 • esp meets the learner’ s specific needs; • esp makes use of the underlying methodology and activities of the disciplines it serves; • esp is centered on the language (grammar, lexis, and register) skills, discourse, and genres appropriate for these activities they consider the following as variable characteristics: • esp may be related or designed for specific disciplines; • esp may use, in specific teaching situations, a different methodology; • esp is likely to be designed for adult learners; • esp is generally designed for intermediate and advanced learners. it is obvious that dudley-evans and st. john (1998) are not considering strevens’ absolute characteristic of esp being in contrast with general english. they have also added more variable characteristics asserting that it is not necessary for esp to be related to a specific discipline. furthermore, esp is likely to be used with adult learners although it could be used with young adults in a secondary school setting. the range of esp has been extended and become more flexible in the latter modified description. anthony (1997) notes that, it is not clear where esp courses end and general english courses begin; numerous non-specialist egp (english for general purposes) instructors use an esp approach in that their syllabi are based on the analysis of learner needs and their own personal specialist knowledge of using english for real communication. aside from the rough separation at the definition level between esp and egp there is an overlapping connection and proportion between them. in order to clarify their relation widdowson (1983) establishes distinctive features of esp and egp. the most important egp features are: 1. the focus is often on education; 2. as the learners’ future needs are impossible to predict, the course content is more difficult to select; 3. due to the above point it is important for the content in the syllabus to have a high surrender value. the most relevant esp features are: 1. the focus is on training; 2. as english is intended to be used in specific vocational contexts, the selection of the appropriate content is easier; 3. it is important for the content in the syllabus to have a high surrender value, most relevant to the vocational context; 4. the aim may be to create a restricted english competence. the surrender value stands for the overall utility (value) of the english taught by a specific course, the higher the surrender value, the greater the utility of the english taught. these distinctive features reveal the true nature of egp and esp. on the linguostylistic method of analysis esp as a variety of english can be investigated and analysed through the method of linguostylistic analysis (akhmanova 1972). in the case of this practice, that is, employarmenian folia anglistika methodology 74 ing stylistic norms for the study of a text, it is a convention that all the intricacies, tools, rules and terms of the discipline of stylistics are applied to the text to be examined. the method deals mainly with two interdependent tasks: a) investigation of special language media which by their ontological features secure the desirable effect of the utterance and b) investigation of certain types of texts (discourses) which due to the choice and arrangement of language means are distinguished by the pragmatic aspect of communication. this method of analysis enables to study any text in great detail, observing what the parts are, and saying what function they perform in the context of the passage. it is, in other words, like taking a car-engine to pieces, looking at each component in detail, then observing its function as the whole engine starts working. in other words, the linguostylistic method of analysis deals not only with tropes and figures of speech, i.e. stylistic devices proper, but also concerns itself with the study of ultimate units of language from the point of view of denotations and connotations (those additional properties of linguistic units which are superimposed on the semantic content proper). otherwise stated, this approach is aimed at investigating a text on two levels: the semantic level and the metasemiotic level. on the semantic level the analysis presupposes the unity of form and content and includes the study of the linguistic units in their direct, nominative meanings. on the other hand, on the metasemiotic level the same linguistic units are studied from the point of view of their functioning in the given context. the two levels, though different, cannot actually be separated from each other, as there is a constant interchange and interplay between them (galperin 1971; akhmanova 1978; gasparian 2002). conclusion as the demand for developing a curriculum to meet the students’ career needs grows, esp has been playing an increasingly important role in facilitating students’ preparation for professional requirements, training and study. as has been mentioned above, there are different attitudes towards esp/eap, but what is notable here is that they all see needs analysis as the common core of esp, since in esp courses learner-centered approach is the cornerstone. its importance lies in the fact that through conducting a needs analysis exercise, curricula-designers can learn two fundamental things: 1) what general and specific language proficiency learners have, and 2) what general and specific language proficiency learners need to acquire (hutchinson & waters 1987; west 1994; gasparyan 1998; dudley-evans & st johns 1998; cook 2003; busturkmen 2006). most esp/eap definitions distinguish three themes: the nature of language to be taught and used, the learners, and the settings in which the other two would occur. these three aspects of esp are very much connected together. esp is the teaching of specific english (specialized discourse) to learners (adults), who will use it, in a particular setting (business, engineering, medical field, science, etc.) in order to realize a practical purpose. esp is considered as a goal directed to a certain kind of language; therefore, the students are not learning the english language for its own sake, but because they are armenian folia anglistikamethodology 75 enforced by a certain motivation to utilize it in the workplace. consequently, esp focuses on developing communicative competence in a specific field (aviation, business, technology, etc). what esp specialists seem not to agree upon is what type of language should be taught (vocabulary, register, jargon, etc.) and how to teach it (in context with content knowledge, communicatively, collaboratively, etc.). however, even though there is disagreement and discrepancy among esp scholars, it is important to note that their many definitions are unequivocally linked to how esp has developed since it was first spoken of in the 1960s. while agreeing in varying degrees, these scholars have either explicitly or implicitly acknowledged that any esp courses should, at the very first place, cater to the target learners’ specific needs (either academic or professional). they should be content-relevant to the learners’ particular disciplines, occupations and activities (i.e. to the target situation). also, the language and skills should mirror authentic use by the target community (e.g. the community of doctors or of mechanical engineering students). ultimately, these considerations of content, language and skills are (and should be) aimed at equipping learners with the necessary knowledge to perform effectively in the target community. notes: 1. lingua franca literally means frankish language, that is the language of the franks, the name that arabic people used for all europeans. it originated in the mediterranean ports in the middle ages amongst traders and crusaders of different language backgrounds and it was composed mostly of the italian language with numerous french, greek, persian, spanish and arabic words. it was used for communication as a diplomatic language in the middle east, and the term has since become common for any language used by speakers of various different languages in order to communicate with each other (richards et al. 1996). 2. functional stylistics is a branch of linguistic stylistics that investigates functional styles, i.e. special sublanguages or varieties of the national language such as scientific, colloquial, business, public and so on. references: 1. akhmanova, o.s. (1972) linguostylistics. thoery and method. moscow: mgu, 2. akhmanova, o. & idzelis, r. (1978) what is the english we use. moscow: mgu. 3. allen, j. & widdowson, h.g. (1979) teaching the communicative use of english. // the communicative approach to language teaching. / ed. by c. brumfit & k.johnson. oxford: oxford university press. 4. askehave, i. & swales j.m. (2001) genre identification and communicative purpose: a problem and a possible solution. // applied linguistics, vol. 23 (2). armenian folia anglistika methodology 76 5. basturkmen, h. (2006) ideas and options in english for specific purposes. new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates, inc. 6. bhatia, v.k. (1997) genre-mixing in academic introductions. // english for specific purposes, vol.16 (3). 7. blue, g. (1988a) individualising academic writing tuition. // developments in esp: a multi-disciplinary approach. / ed. by dudly-evans, t. & st john, m.j. cambridge: cambridge university press. 8. chambers, f. (1980) a re-evaluation of needs analysis in esp. // esp journal. vol. 1 (1). 9. dudley-evans, t., & st john, m.j. (1998) developments in english for specific purposes: a multi-disciplinary approach. cambridge: cambridge university press. 10. cook, g. (2003) applied linguistics. oxford: oxford university press. 11. ewer, j.r. & latorre, g. (1969) a course in basic scientific english. london: longman. 12. grellet, f. (1981) developing reading skills. cambridge: cambridge university press. 13. farhady, h. (2001). on the specificity of esp. <www.aua.am/..../6%200n%20the%20specificity%20esp.pdf.> 14. galperin, i.r. (1971). stylistics. moscow: progress. 15. gasparian, s. (july 1998) esp as an object of learner-oriented teaching. // didaktic und methodic des fremdsprachenunterrichts. heft i, bonn. 16. gasparian, s. & knyazian, a. (2002) academic english for linguists. yerevan: lusakn. 17. hutchinson, t. & waters, a. (1987) english for specific purposes: a learning centered approach. cambridge: cambridge university press. 18. mackay, r. & mountford, a. (eds.) (1978) english for specific purposes. london: longman. 19. munby, j. (1978) communicative syllabus design. cambridge: cambridge university press. 20. nuttal, c. (1982) teaching reading skills in a foreign language. oxford: heinemann. 21. robinson, p. (1980) esp (english for specific purposes). new york: pergamon. 22. robinson, p. (1991) esp today: a practitioner’s guide. new york: prentice hall. 23. selinker, l.; tarone, e. & hanzeli, v. (eds.) (1981). english for academic and technical purposes: studies in honor of louis trimble. london: newbury house. 24. strevens, p. (1988). esp after twenty years: a re-appraisal. // esp: state of the art. / ed. by m. tickoo. seameo regional language centre. 25. swales, j. (1971) writing scientific english, a textbook of english as a foreign language for students of physical and engineering sciences. london: nelson. 26. swales, j. (1985) episodes in esp. hemel hempstead: prentice hall international. 27. swales, j. (1990) genre analysis: english in academic and research settings. cambridge: cambridge university press. 28. widdowson, h.g. & allen, j.p.b. (1974) english in physical science. oxford: oxford university press. armenian folia anglistikamethodology 77 esp/eap ³ý·é»ñ»ýá áñå»ë ·çï³ï³ý ³ý·é»ñ»ýç áõñáõûý á׳ó¨ ðá¹í³íá ¹çï³ñïáõù ¿ ³ý·é»ñ»ýç áõëáõóù³ý ¨ ñ»ï³½áïù³ý` ³ý·é»ñ»ýá ³ï³¹» ùç³ï³ý ýå³ï³ïý»ñç ñ³ù³ñ ï³ù ³ý·é»ñ»ýá ñ³ïáõï ýå³ï³ïý»ñç ñ³ù³ñ ·çï³ï³ñ·ç ï³ñμ»ñ ë³ñù³ýáõùý»ñç ï»ë³ï³ý ñçùù»ñá, í³·áõùý áõ ½³ñ·³óù³ý ñçùý³ï³ý áõõõáõãûáõýý»ñá, çýãå»ë ý³¨ ñ»ï³½áïù³ý ù»ãá¹ý»ñá: øýý³ñïíáõù »ý çýãå»ë ³í³ý¹³ ï³ý, ³ûýå»ë ¿é å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó μ³½ù³ãçí ¨ μ³½ù³½³ý ùáï»óáõùý»ñ: armenian folia anglistika methodology 78 microsoft word maket 2020-2(22) (3)-1 (1).doc linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 9 linguistic deviation in business advertisements marine yaghubyan yerevan state university abstract advertising can be regarded as a means of persuading consumers to take action with respect to products, ideas or services. it is a complex phenomenon because it involves two interacting processes, namely, communication and persuasion, and both processes are many-faceted. when advertisers intend to make the advertisement language creative and inventive, they use language different from the linguistic norm. being unconventional, the advertisements which adopt deviation can give the readers unexpected surprise and make a strong impression on their mind. this kind of language phenomenon is technically called linguistic deviation. then based on some scholars’ classifications, the author classifies different deviations in advertising (deviation of phonology, graphology, lexicon, and grammar) and illustrates each deviation with some typical examples. key words: advertising, business advertisement, linguistic deviation, headline, subheads, body, slogan, phonology, graphology, lexicon, grammar and collocation. introduction advertising is a form of communication that is rooted deeply into our life. it can be seen as present in every aspect of life throughout the day, right from the time we wake up until we go back to sleep and at times even in the sleep as subconscious dreams. advertisements are smart, clever and entertaining puzzles that have been created to catch the immediate attention of the target and leave a lasting impression in their mind (yule 2006:54). https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2020.16.2.009 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 linguistics 10 the principles of advertising texts can be spelled as: attention value, readability (by means of simple, personal, and colloquial style), memorability (most important in the process of advertising is to remember the name of the product) and selling power (leech 1972:132). the deviation of an expression from the expectation of the audience does not really mean that the expression is going to be rejected as nonsensical or faulty, since the deviation occurs at the form level rather than the content level. this article attempts to give a description of language deviations in english advertising, including phonological, graphological, lexical, and grammatical deviation. persuasive function of advertising advertising is a technique used to reach out to the potential customers. the companies advertise to create demands through wants and needs creation and to attract the existing customers towards their brand. it is a form of persuasion which is directed at large numbers of people, accounts for almost a large space of our daily newspaper and a large proportion of the viewing time of tv (laspasanska 2006:78). the most distinctive feature of an advertising language can undeniably be accepted as its capability to stay in sync with the current trend and to reinvent itself continuously, in order to come up with distinctive shapes and to craft totally unforeseen surprise elements for receiving full attention of the audience (vasiloaia 1996:89). the advertisers have to come up very quickly with original and unique ways to formulate and deliver the message. it is important to design the communication creatively and cleverly enough so as to stand out of this huge clutter of advertisements and make a mark in the target’s cognitive structure, since the primary aim of advertising is to gain the attention of the target with the intention of stimulating the recognition and recall of the advertised brand (pearson, nelson 1994:167). in advertisements three important terms are being taken into consideration: headline, subheads and body. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 11 headline is considered the part of print advertisement with prime importance. it is defined as a term that refers to the set of words in the foremost position of any advertisement. the primary role of any headline is to attract the attention of the audience and to be memorable for them. subheads can be seen as small headlines with a purpose to communicate the key pointers of the sales pitch. as it is believed, the majority of the audience read only headline and subheads, therefore it is important to construct them in a way that the sales message gets conveyed and gets registered into the reader’s cognitive structure for some time in the future. body is written to tell the complete story that is to communicate the sales pitch in detail, as a logical continuation of the headline and subhead. apart from headline, subhead and body there is another important term that is given special attention to while writing any advertisement. it is the slogan of the advertisement. through continuous usage these headlines or slogans become standard statements that are used on an everyday basis. slogans are responsible for stability in a campaign and help by summarizing the key idea or message, that the company wants to be associated to its product brand or itself, into a brief statement. most advertising slogans gain their effect by manipulating the linguistic norms of everyday language. an effective slogan is short, simple, memorable, easy to repeat, and helpful in differentiating the product or the company from its competitors. the alternative terms for advertising slogans are theme line and tagline (bovee, arens 1994:274). occurrence of linguistic deviations is not only unique for the text, it has been, however, observed that figurative expressions and deviations are in fact commonly found in everyday speech. a copywriter while writing an advertisement must be aware of the fact that the language with deviations is commonly and widely used for the purpose of actual portrayal of the circumstances in which the advertisement is created. advertisers frequently use language in ways which depart from convention (widdowson 2007:45). armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 linguistics 12 linguistic deviation deviation is opposite to norm and refers to a selection of linguistic items outside the range of normally allowed selections. when people use a language, they must obey some rules (that is called norm). for example, an “s” or “es” must be added to the verb of the third singular present tense or a preposition must be followed by a noun or gerund. deviation is the breaking of rules that others obey (skorupa, duboviciene 2005:98). being against linguistic principle purposively, deviation is sometimes entertaining, while sometimes confusing. linguistic categorization of deviation will be clearly classified in different types of advertisements, moreover, interpreting deviation not only has linguistic significance but also contains a commercial and pragmatic value for advertisers on the application and choice of deviation. to make the discussion complete, we could go for the complete linguistic analysis of deviations in advertising. in the framework of linguistics, there are several types of deviation: deviation of phonology, graphology, lexicon, grammar and collocation. to know a language completely, one must know how to pronounce (phonology) and write the forms of the language units (graphology), that is, how to give them physical realization, one must memorize the vocabulary of that language (lexicon) and learn a set of rules (grammar) showing how the items of the vocabulary are to be used in constructing sentences, that is the formal aspect of the language. when deviation happens, it violates the norm from one aspect or another. phonological deviation. there is not much scope for phonological deviations in advertising language, but it takes into consideration only those messages where the pronunciation of the word is different from the commonly accepted pronunciation. this deviation in the pronunciation might be due to the presence of deviation in the spelling of the word (belch 2003:35). i’m lovin’ it. <https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/corpmcd.html> linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 13 apparently, mcdonald’s has transformed the “loving” to “lovin’”. among teenagers, the pronunciation of [in] is much more popular, consequently [iŋ] has been changed to [in] in teenager’s daily oral english. therefore, as the fashion trend is concerned, “mcdonald’s” makes this change intentionally to attract the attention of its main target consumers, that is, teenagers. different pronunciation creates different effect of hearing. the sound of [w] makes people feel the sense of wave; the sound of [b] indicates that of blow, [d] is related to durable, while [ou] is that of simplicity and sorrow. the advertisement of chips uses [p] three times to present the crispness of the chips. pringles potato chips. <https://www.shutterstock.com/search/potato+chips+logo?im age_type=photo> in advertising messages these phonological deviations are generally represented by the frequent appearance of alliteration, end rhyme, rhyme of the beginning and the end, homograph, etc. in advertisements. the passionate pursuit of perfection. (lexus, fortune, july 12th) giving your ideas more room to roam. (hp, fortune, july 26th) levitra quality counts, count on levitra. (levitra, fortune, july 12th) the first example is an illustration of alliteration of [p] in a car advertisement, from which we can feel the strong determination to make the car perfect. in the second example “room” and “roam” are similar to each other both in pronunciation and form. by associating these two together, the reader’s mind is also expected to ramble. it is worthwhile to give some special attention to the third example. this is called deviation of homograph. the two “count”s are identical in form but different in meaning. the first “count” refers to “value armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 linguistics 14 and importance”, while the second one means “rely on something (here levitra is a name of a kind of medicine)”. these two “count”s combine the sentence coherently and also enhance the idea of the good effect of the medicine (chi and hao 2013:85-89). graphological deviation. this type of deviation is predominantly found in advertising messages. it is the simplest yet effective way to grab the attention of the readers. the deviation provides copywriters a freedom to go on making unlimited changes to the spelling of the words of interest while not disturbing the pronunciation at all. the orthographic devices such as selection of script, its color, type and size are normally used to draw the immediate attention of the consumers. english is rich in deviation of word spelling. for the sake of being emphatic, vivid, associative and conspicuous, spelling deviations come into wide and frequent use by repetition of morphemes, words and punctuations, capitalization, misplacement, deletion, addition, substitution and malapropism. this form of deviation not only retains the original meaning of the phrase but also adds information by putting brand into words and making it stick out and using numbers and symbols (xiangjin 2004:167). as spelling represents pronunciation, any deviation in pronunciation will be definitely reflected in the written form. ● putting brand into words and making it stick out. a typical example of this is a series of advertisements for cnn in time. for peace of mind, stay connected. (cnn, time, sep 6th) every perspe_tive, dime_ sion, a_gle. (cnn, time, sep 6th) in real advertisement, the bold letters of the first example are marked with red color, while the second one uses underlines to leave out several letters in the words. whatever methods it uses, it is for foregrounding the brand of cnn (chi and hao 2013:85-89). linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 15 ● using numbers and symbols with telekom malaysia, it is always good 4 business. (telekom, time, aug 9th) acn-2-acn free calling. (acn, fortune, july 26th) in this group, the two examples use numbers to replace words: 4 instead of “for” and 2 for “to”, which has been very popular in today’s daily life since the spread of the internet language and text messages. numbers are more convenient to transfer the relevant meanings and attract more attention than the common words (chi and hao 2013:85-89). a representative type of lexical deviation is coinage, the invention of new words or phrases. being original and creative, words or expressions can always attract readers’ attention, therefore, the strategy of coinage is widely used in advertisements. the orangemostest drink in the world. <https://www.ebay.com/b/monster-energy-orange-energydrink-advertising/165237/bn_83104034> this advertisement creates the word “orangemostest”, adding “most” and “est” as dual suffix after “orange”. firstly, the new word would refresh the readers’ mind and be impressive. also, the repeated emphasis on the good quality of the orange can win some credit for the product, to some extent. ● coinage or nonce-formation coinage appears most frequently when making up names of a product. the suffix “-ex” is an example, “-ex” is the suffix of top frequency in advertising copy, which is regarded as the clipping form of excellent. it is often used to describe precision instruments or products, such as “rolex”, “memorex”, “pentax”, etc. but nowadays many articles of everyday use benefit from it, like kleenex (a facial tissue), cutex (a nail polish), purex (a decolourant), etc (foster 2001:56). by adding “-ex” to form the name, the advertiser or manufacturer wants to emphasize the high quality of the product. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 linguistics 16 the changing of the normal spelling is also a kind of coinage. for example, a kind of quick dissolving chocolate is called “quik chocolate”. it seems that if we add the aphonic “c”, the dissolving speed of the chocolate will be slowed down (foster 2001:98). ● functional conversion is to change a word’s common part of speech, such as to use a verb as a noun or vice versa (kenworthy 1991:187). to use a noun or an adjective as a verb is to combine the static state with a dynamic one for better linguistic appeal, while to change a noun into an adjective or vice versa is to emphasize the properties or state of the person or object and to make the language more vivid. eat smart. be fit. live well. (cooking light, fortune, july 26th) with solutions that are plat formed and system friendly, but more importantly, business-strategy friendly, too. (ibm, fortune, july 26th) the first example changes the adjective “smart” to an adverb most possibly for rhyme. the other example applies the noun form “platform” to a verb, which means “to make a platform for buyers”. the most frequently used strategy is replacing a word (of any word class) with the brand name, so that the brand name acquires syntactic features of original fictive word. this tendency is still used even after a hundred years. get that pepsi feeling. <https://www.adsoftheworld.com/taxonomy/brand/pepsi> in this advertisement, the word “pepsi” acts as an adjective. deviation of collocation refers to the combination of some words which normally cannot be collocated. the next type is the deviation of grammar. it has often been observed that advertising tends to chop up sentences into shorter bits by using full stops linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 17 where ordinary prose would use commas or no punctuation at all. leech referred to this phenomenon as “disjunctive syntax”. it’s. difficult. to. stay. competitive. if. you’re. always. stopping. to. upgrade. your. hr. technology. outsourcing to hewitt can help. period. (hewitt, fortune, aug 23rd) in this case, almost every word is followed by a full stop, which will cause some trouble to readers when going through the advertisement. by doing this, the advertiser wants to convey to his customers that if they don’t choose the company’s products, their hr technology will not be efficient and will prevent their competing with other companies, just like the difficulties they meet when reading the advertisement. the last word “period” again stresses the completeness of the sentence (chi and hao 2013:85-89). conclusion thus, we can conclude that among all the linguistic attention-attracting strategies employed in advertisements, language deviation needs special attention because it is regarded as the use of language that violates normal rules. based on case studies of language deviation, one can see that deviation is widely used in advertising with good grounds. well-adopted deviation in advertising can attract the audience to go through the advertisement and even persuade them to buy the products advertised. as a whole, the study of language deviation in advertisements can help to interpret the advertising communication. references: 1. belch, g.e. (2003) advertising and promotion: an integrated marketing communications perspective. london: picador. 2. bovee, c.l. and arens, w.f. (1994) contemporary advertising. oxford: blackwell. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 linguistics 18 3. chi r. and hao y. (2013) language deviation in english advertising. china: changchun. 4. foster, t. (2001) the art and science of the advertising slogan. cambridge: cup. 5. kenworthy, j. (1991) language in action. new york: longman. 6. laspasanska, j. (2006) the language of advertising with the concentration on the linguistic means and the analysis of advertising slogans. new york: oup. 7. leech, g. (1972) english in advertising: a linguistic study of advertising in great britain. english language series. london: longman. 8. pearson, c.j. and nelson, e.p. (1994) understanding and sharing: an introduction to speech communication. athens: ohio university. 9. skorupa, p. and duboviciene, t. (2005) linguistic characteristic of commercial and social advertising slogans. new york: springer. 10. vasiloaia, m. (2009) linguistic features of the language of advertising. dordrecht & boston: d. reidel publishing company. 11. widdowson, h, g. (2007) discourse analysis. oxford: oup. 12. xiangjin, t. (2002) english word-spelling deviations and their semantic meaning. foreign language education. oxford: blackwell. 13. yule, g. (2006) the study of language. cambridge: cup. sources of data: 1. https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/corpmcd.html [accessed february 2019]. 2. https://www.ebay.com/b/monster-energy-orange-energy-drink-advertising/165237/bn_83104034 [accessed february 2020]. 3. https://www.adsoftheworld.com/taxonomy/brand/pepsi [accessed february 2016]. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 19 առևտրային գովազդների լեզվական շեղումները առևտրային գովազդն իր ամենատարբեր ձևերով և դրսևորումներով համարվում է հասարակության տնտեսական համակարգի հիմնաքարը: սույն հետազոտության նպատակն է ցույց տալ, թե ինչպիսի լեզվական հնարներ և շեղումներ կարող են օգտագործվել առևտրային գովազդներում: կատարված վերլուծությունների արդյունքում հեղինակը եզրակացնում է, որ շատ հաճախ լեզվական նմանօրինակ առանձնահատկություններով կառուցված գովազդը դրդում է սպառողին հավատալ արտադրողին և մղում նրան գնելու այս կամ այն ապրանքը: received by the editorial board 10.06.2020 recommended for publication by the reviewers 7.07.20 accepted for print 30.09.2020 maket 2011-2:layout 1.qxd structural-semantic analysis of english proverbs with “smile” stella israyelyan gyumri state pedagogical institute phraseology is a kind of a picture gallery in which are collected vivid and amus-ing sketches of the nation’s customs, traditions and prejudices, recollections of its past history, scraps of folk songs and fairy-tales. phraseological units or idioms as they are called by most scholars, represent what can probably be described as the most picturesque, colorful and expressive part of the language vocabulary. in his “book of english idioms” v.h. collins writes: “in standard spoken and written english today idiom is an established and essential element that, used with care, ornaments and enriches the language” (1958:23). according to rosemarie glaeser, a phraseological unit is a lexicalized, reproducible bilexemic or polylexemic word group in common use, which has relative syntactic and semantic stability, may be idiomatized, may carry connotation, and may have an emphatic or intensifying function in a text (glaeser 1998). most scholars today accept the semantic criterion of distinguishing phraseological units from free word-groups as a major approach and base their research work in the field of phraseology on the definition of a phraseological unit offered by professor a.v. koonin, the leading authority on problems of english phraseology. prof. koonin defines phraseological units as stable word-groups with partially or fully transferred meanings (koonin 1996). proverbs which are popular sayings containing advice or stating a generally accepted truth represent one type of idiom proper and form a big group within the system of idioms of the english language. english is particularly rich in proverbs – those modes of expression peculiar to a language (or dialect) which frequently defy logical and grammatical rules. without proverbs english would lose much of its variety and humor both in speech and writing. the question of whether or not proverbs should be regarded as a subtype of phraseological units and studied together with the phraseology of a language is a controversial one. we share a.v. koonin’s opinion and state that proverbs and sayings must be studied on word level. professor koonin labels proverbs communicative phraseological units (koonin 1996) which are very short, just to the point; bear a complete thought and ideology and can’t be analysed on the same level as a sentence. to make the respective statement more general, it must be stated that most proverbs are based on a metaphor. further typical features of the proverb include shortness (average seven words), and the fact that its author is generally unknown (otherwise it would be a quotation). because most proverbs have their origin in oral tradition, they are generally worded in such a way as to be remembered easily and tend to change little from generation to generation, so that sometimes their specific meaning is no longer relevant. proverbs function as “folk wisdom”, general advice about how to act and live. and armenian folia anglistika linguistics 48 because they are folk wisdom, they often strongly reflect the cultural values and physical environment from which they arise. for instance, island cultures such as hawaii, have proverbs about the sea; eastern cultures have proverbs about elephants, and american proverbs, many collected and published by benjamin franklin, are about hard work bringing success. proverbs are used to support arguments, to provide lessons and instructions, and to stress shared values. wolfgang mieder writes: “a proverb is a short, generally known sentence of the folk which contains wisdom, truth, morals, and traditional views in a metaphorical, fixed and memorizable form and which is handed down from generation to generation” (mieder 1985:119). in this paper we shall dwell upon the proverbs that contain the word “smile” and we’ll analyze them from a semantic, grammatical-structural and stylistic angles. semantically the “smile proverb” can be divided into groups which indicate love, kindness, friendship, life philosophy, comparative meaning and so on. below are examples of proverbs belonging to the mentioned groups: life philosophy a smile is a curve that sets everything straight. life is short but a smile takes barely a second. one who smiles rather than rages is always the stronger. the man who gives little with a smile gives more than the man who gives much with a frown. it’s better to make the world smile at what you say than laugh at what you do. don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it’s happened. if you have made another person on this earth smile, your life has been worthwhile. people seldom notice old clothes if you wear a big smile. friendship wear a smile and have friends, wear a scowl and have wrinkles. if you see a friend without a smile, give him one of yours. kindness and love every time you smile at someone; it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing. there are hundreds of languages in the world, but a smile speaks them all. a warm smile is the universal language of kindness. remember that there is no happiness in having and getting, but only in giving. reach out. smile. hug! a smile is a language that even a baby understands. smile; it is the second best thing one can do with one’s lips. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 49 comparative meaning if you’re not using your smile, you’re like a man with a million dollars in the bank and no checkbook. a smile abroad is often a scowl at home. on the grammatical level we analyse sentences in accordance to their communicative types, i.e. narrative that falls into affirmative and negative, exclamatory and interrogative sentences. this concerns not only the simple sentence but also the complex one. which parts of speech appear more frequently in a proverb is also considered to be an aspect of grammatical approach. the word “smile” is often used in subordinate clauses of time, condition, etc. the data at our disposal show that “smile” is more often patterned in the frame of affirmative sentences. a laugh is a smile that bursts. when you were born, you were crying and everyone around you was smiling. live your life so that when you die, you’re the one smiling and everyone around you is crying. if you’re not using your smile, you’re like a man with a million dollars in the bank and no checkbook. if a man smiles all the time, he’s probably selling something that doesn’t work. if you have made another person on this earth smile, your life has been worthwhile. if you don’t have anything nice to say, just smile! our analysis reveals an equal percentage use of nouns and verbs. as to the verb forms, we can state that a bare infinitive is used more often than gerundial forms. the sentences are mainly patterned with the active constructions; not a single passive construction has been found. keep walking and keep smiling. don’t worry! be happy! keep smiling! proverbs can also be analysed on the stylistic level. in this case we dwell on (1) the phonetic expressive means such as alliteration, assonance, rhyme, etc.; and (2) stylistic devices such as repetition and comparison. alliteration is a phonetic stylistic device which aims at imparting a melodic effect to the utterance. the essence of this device lies in the repetition of similar sounds, in particular consonant sounds. a smile is a curve that sets everything straight. smile, even if it’s a sad smile, because sadder than a sad smile is the sadness of not knowing how to smile. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 50 one who smiles rather than rages is always the stronger. keep walking and keep smiling. smiles are the soul’s kisses. smile and the world smiles with you. cry and you cry alone. therefore alliteration is generally regarded as a musical accompaniment of the author’s idea, supporting it with some vague emotional atmosphere which each reader interprets for himself. assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in non-rhyming words. assonance is neither a consonance and nor an alliteration. it doesn’t have to rhyme and if it does, it is only the vowels that rhyme. assonance is more a feature of verse than prose. smile, light the way and have a great day! wear a smile and have friends, wear a scowl and have wrinkles. a smile abroad is often a scowl at home. a smile is a light in the window of the soul indicating that the heart is at home. smile and the world smiles with you. cry and you cry alone. rhyme is the repetition of identical or similar terminal sound combinations of words. rhyming words are generally placed at a regular distance from each other. in verse they are usually placed at the end of the corresponding lines. we distinguish several types of rhyme, among which the masculine rhyme: a rhyme in which the stress is on the final syllable of the words; if you have made another person on this earth smile, your life has been worthwhile. a smile abroad is often a scowl at home. in the feminine rhyme the stress is on the penultimate (second from last) syllable of the words; a winning smile makes winners of us all. repetition is an expressive means of language used when the speaker is under the stress of strong emotion. it shows the state of mind of the speaker. when used as a stylistic device, repetition acquires quite different functions. it does not aim at making a direct emotional impact. on the contrary, the stylistic device aims at logical emphasis, an emphasis necessary to fix the attention of the reader on the key-word of the utterance. wear a smile and have friends, wear a scowl and have wrinkles. keep walking and keep smiling. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 51 smile, even if it’s a sad smile, because sadder than a sad smile is the sadness of not knowing how to smile. the man who gives little with a smile gives more than the man who gives much with a frown. smile and the world smiles with you. cry and you cry alone. antonymous pairs are also frequently used in the proverbs with the constituent “smile”. it makes the message of the proverb more emphatic and impressive. a smile abroad is often a scowl at home. if you’re not using your smile, you’re like a man with a million dollars in the bank and no checkbook. it takes 26 muscles to smile, and 62 muscles to frown. one who smiles rather than rages is always the stronger. the man who gives little with a smile gives more than the man who gives much with a frown. it’s better to make the world smile at what you say than laugh at what you do. a smile is as nice to give as it is to receive. smile and the world smiles with you. cry and you cry alone. as a conclusion we can state that proverbs are widely used in the society on a regular basis. some scholars and popular writers have claimed repeatedly that proverbial language has passed from usage. however, it remains an easily proven fact that proverbs are not “passed” and definitely not dead. this form of language helps to express our thoughts more exactly and vividly. proverbs contain wisdom, humor, and usually fit many purports. proverbs have not lost their well-established popularity, and they continue to be everpresent even in a modern technological society. references: 1. collins, v.h. (1958) a book of english idioms with explanations. london: longman. 2. galperin, i.r. (198) stylistics. moscow: vishaya scola. 3. glaeser, r. (1998) the stylistic potential of phraseological units in the light of genre analysis. oxford: clarendon press. 4. koonin, a.v. (1996) a course of phraseology of modern english. moscow: vishaya scola. 5. miede, w. (1993) proverbs are never out of season. new york: oxford universitty press. 6. vinogradov, v.v. (1978) on the main types of phraselogical units in russian. leningrad. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 52 7. vinogradov, v.v. (1978) selected works. the history of russian language. moskow: nauka. 8. a dictionary of american proverbs (1992) new york: oxford university press. 9. the oxford dictionary of english proverbs. (1970) london: oup, ely house. §äåçï¦ »½ñáí ³ý·é»ñ»ý ³ë³óí³íùý»ñç ï³éáõóí³íù³çù³ëï³ûçý í»ñéáõíáõãûáõý êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù áñáß³ñïíáõù »ý §ååçï¦ »½ñáí ³ë³óí³íùý»ñç ï»õá ï³ûáõý ¹³ñóí³íý»ñç ñ³ù³ï³ñ·áõù` »éý»éáí ýñ³ýó ï³éáõóí³íù³ûçý ñ³ù³å³ñ÷³ ïáõãûáõýçó, çù³ëï³ûçý ³ùμáõç³ï³ýáõãûáõýçó ¨ ý³ë³¹³ ëáõãû³ý ë³ñù³ýý»ñáõù ýñ³ ·ñ³í³í ß³ñ³ñûáõë³ï³ý ¹»ñçó: ì»ñéáõíáõãû³ý ñ³çáñ¹ ûõ³ïáõù ïñíáõù ¿ ýñ³ýó ¹³ë³ï³ñ·áõùý áëï çù³ëï³ûçý ³ùμáõç³ï³ý ï»ñïí³íùç, áëï ý³ë³¹³ ëáõãû³ý ï»ë³ïç áõñí³·íù³ý ¨ áëï á׳ ï³ý ³ñå¨áñù³ý: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 53 maket 2013:layout 1.qxd perception of the world through the prism of culture narine harutyunyan yerevan state university e xisting objectively, the surrounding world is refracted in the human consciousness through the prism of culture, modified on the basis of a person’s individual perceptions. thus, the linguistic worldview includes universal features common to the whole humanity; cultural-specific features – “some kind of a cultural “core,” common to all the members of the social group or community” (leontyev 1997:273); as well as individual features inherent in a certain person. the world is defined by a system of philosophic views, religious beliefs, cultural traditions, moral values, convictions, prejudices and stereotypes. a multitude of subjective factors influences the formation of the worldview: sharpness of the eyesight of the individual, his/her height, spirit of life, profundity of knowledge about the world etc.. in the process of cognition a human being creates conceptual models (the so-called “mental maps” of the world), presenting perceptive images of the surrounding reality in a simplified form. the nature of the worldview of the communicant depends on how universal culture-specific and personality components are balanced in it. from cross-cultural perspective, the worldview of a person who was born and has lived all his/her life in a small, distant village will significantly differ from that of an individual who is used to traveling around the world and has lived all his/her life in megapolis. at the same time, one may not claim that the latter will have advantages from the point of view of the profundity of knowledge about the world: an erudite who has lived all his/her life in one place may have an encyclopedic knowledge about the world as a whole and a profound knowledge about a specific fragment of reality. the vision of the world/worldview is made up of joint insights obtained by means of different organs of sense perception, such as sounds, scents and smells, visual images etc. for example, smell is the most powerful sense for recalling our memories and arousing emotions. when we notice the smell of perfume, perhaps we remember the sweetest/the most bitter moments from our past, because smell evokes much deeper memories than either vision or sound. the power of smell to remind us of the past probably plays a part in people’s emotional attachment to a local place and their childhood homes. if, as ed. hall claims, american society has few smells, then it is not surprising that americans are more mobile than people in some other societies. “in the use of smell americans are culturally underdeveloped. the extensive use of deodorants and the suppression of odor in public places results in a land of olfactory blandness and sameness that would be difficult to duplicate anywhere else in the world. ….our cities lack both olfactory and visual variety. anyone who has walked along the streets of almost any european village or town knows what is nearby. what smells do we have in the us that can compare to those in the typical french town where one may savor the smell of coffee, spices, vegetables, freshly plucked fowl, clean laundry and the characteristic odor of outdoor cafes? olfaction of this type can provide a sense of life” armenian folia anglistika culture studies 130 (<http://www.nicks.com.au/index.aspx?link_id=76.1389>). on the stage preceding language embodiment, the vision of the world is characterized by vagueness and indefiniteness. only when verbalized, subject series and relations between objects acquire vivid shapes and occupy their place in the system of human worldview. the unity of the worldview predestines the existence of a universal semantic component of the language, whereas the idiosyncrasy of the culture of a specific nation adds an ethno-national specificity to it (mechkovskaya 1996:51), thus conditioning the ethnopsycho-linguistic determination of the linguistic consciousness. as a rule, when exploring the linguistic vision of the world, linguists first of all pay attention to the lexical fund of the language that stands out as the “upper level” of linguoculture. lexical units are the surface layer of the language, the cultural specifics of which is the most obvious. however, they do not exhaust the whole set of means by which the national-cultural differentiation of linguistic worldviews is carried out. this explains why mastery of the lexical fund of a foreign language apart from culture does not usually lead to a cardinal transformation of the worldview: the communicant only applies foreign words to his/her own already existing view of reality. “having learnt a foreign word, a person as if extracts a piece of mosaic from a foreign, not completely familiar picture and tries to combine it with the worldview existing in his/her consciousness, programmed by his/her native language” (ter-minasova 2000:48). the inability to combine “jigsaw pieces” during cross-linguistic contacts, to visualize an object denoted by a word leads to incorrect reference and erroneous translations of cultural realia. during cross-cultural contacts a clash of two worldviews takes place. a person appearing in an alien cultural-linguistic space brings with himself/herself an individual image of the world, which does not completely coincide with the linguistic worldview existing in the given linguoculture. the first thing that catches his/her eye are the realias not having any analogues in the native culture of the communicant, as for example: belisha beacon 1, wheel clamp or wheel boot 2. the word denoting a realia of another culture will not evoke any associations in the consciousness of a person who has never seen the corresponding object. on the other hand, the object seen but not named will not take its place in the linguistic worldview of the personality either. but even if the object is correctly identified and named with the help of language, this is not enough for it to organically blend with the individual’s worldview. the same objects in different cultures can take different shapes and/or perform different functions. so, for example, dogs are pets in some cultures and food in others. in some cultures, certain animals are considered sacred and certainly would not be eaten. the hindu elephant-headed god ganesh is accompanied by a rat whenever he travels. rats, like cows, are deified in india. no hindu worship is complete without an offering to ganesh and his companion, the rat. rats are fed and rarely killed in india. perception interpretations can even be revealed in how cultures use food to reinforce and express identities. for example, in china, rice is the symbol of well-being and fertility, that is why leaving one’s job is called “breaking one’s rice bowl”. armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 131 the above is true both for animate nature and inanimate objects. for example, benches with dedications is an inseparable part of the worldview of an englishman. whenever you step in a park or a public square, you are guaranteed to find at least one wooden park bench dedicated to someone who had a history there. hyde park, for example, has hundreds of them, some dating only a few years, other a few decades. one can walking around and imagining all the stories behind the benches. in armenia we can distinguish another realia: pulpulak a public water fountain. they are a significant part of our culture. pulpulaks were and are often used by people to appoint meetings and by couples as dating locations. some pulpulaks are erected in memory of dead relatives. in drinking from a memorial pulpulak, passers by give their blessing to the person in memory of whom it is constructed. each of them has their own faces and many cultural ties with their surroundings. if a person has never been to yerevan, they will remain an abstraction for him/her. thus, observing the view of the world in its dynamics is an extremely difficult task that becomes many times more complicated when we talk about interaction of cultures. the most important condition of successful cross-cultural communication is perceptive readiness to accept differences and expand the vision of the world when the communicant comes across phenomena unfamiliar to him or different from his/her previous experience. notes: 1. a belisha beacon is an amber-coloured globe lamp atop a tall black and white pole, marking pedestrian crossings of roads in the united kingdom, ireland and in other countries (e.g., hong kong, malta) historically influenced by britain. it was named after leslie hore-belisha (1893-1957), the minister of transport who in 1934 added beacons to pedestrian crossings, marked by large metal studs in the road surface. these crossings were later painted in black and white stripes, thus are known as zebra crossings. legally pedestrians have the right of way (over wheeled traffic) on such crossings. belisha beacons provide additional visibility to zebra crossings for motorists, primarily at night. the flash commonly lasts one second in both on and off states. some crossings are set so that each beacon flashes alternately to the other side, but they often fall out of synchronisation over time. beacons with an outer ring of flashing amber led lights, preferred for their brightness and low electricity consumption, are replacing traditional incandescent bulbs in many areas (<http://en.wikipedia.org>). 2. a wheel clamp, also known as wheel boot or denver boot, is a device that is designed to prevent vehicles from being moved. in its most common form, it consists of a clamp that surrounds a vehicle wheel, designed to prevent removal of both itself and the wheel. in the united states, these devices became known as a “denver boot” after the city of denver, colorado was the first in the country to employ them, mostly to force the payment of outstanding parking tickets (<http://en.wikipedia.org>). armenian folia anglistika culture studies 132 references: 1. hall, ed. (1966) the hidden dimension. garden city, ny: doubleday. 2. leontyev, a.a. (1997) osnovy psixholingvistiki. m.: smysl. 3. mechkovskaya, n.b. (1996) socialnaja lingvistika. m.: aspect press. 4. ter-minasova, s.g. (2000) yasyk i mejkulturnaja kommunikatsia. m.: slovo. 5. <http://www.nicks.com.au/index.aspx?link_id=76.1389> 6. <http://en.wikipedia.org> øß³ïáõûãç áëåýû³ïáí ³ýó³í ³ßë³ññáýï³éáõùá ²ßë³ññá å³ëçí ï»ñåáí ãç áýï³éíáõù. ³ûý ñ³ñ³ß³ñå ¿ ¨ μýáñáßíáõù ¿ ïñáý³ï³ý ñ³í³ï³éçùý»ñç, ùß³ïáõã³ûçý ³í³ý¹áõûãý»ñç, μ³ñáû³ï³ý ³ñå»ùý»ñç, ñ³ùá½ùáõýùý»ñç ¨ ï³ñíñ³ïçå»ñç ñ³ù³ï³ñ·áí: ²ßë³ññáýï³éù³ý áýã³óùáõù ù³ñ¹á ëï»õíáõù ¿ ñ³ëï³ó³ï³ý ï³õ³å³ñý»ñ, áñáýù ³ýñ³ï³ï³ý çù³ëïý»ñç ñ»ï ùç³ëçý ³ñï³óáéáõù »ý ï³ñμ»ñ ù³ñ¹ï³ýó ³ßë³ññáýï³éù³ý áý¹ñ³ýáõñ μýáñáß ·í»ñá: àñå»ë ³ßë³ññç å³ïï»ñá ýï³ñ³·ñáõ ¨ μýáñáßáõ ã³÷³ ýçßý»ñ ï³ñáõ »ý éçý»é ï»ëáõ³ï³ý å³ïï»ñý»ñá, ó³ûý»ñá, ñáï»ñá ¨ μáõûñ»ñá, ³ûëçýùý՝ ï³ñμ»ñ ½·³û³ñ³ýý»ñç ùççáóáí ëï³óíáõ áýï³éáõùý»ñá: armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 133 maket 2013:layout 1.qxd online petition as a type of persuasive discourse siranoush ghaltakhchyan yerevan state university “remember that what pulls the strings is the force hidden within; there lies the power to persuade, there the life – there, if one must speak out, the real man.” (marcus aurelius) i t is well known that the innovative technologies and telecommunication means have enabled and accelerated new forms of human interactions through instant messaging and social networking. nowadays people tend to spend more and more time online and do their best to catch up with the digitally driven world. this has promoted creation of a completely new, collaborative and universal culture called social media. it is a form of mass media that provides a new functional domain which allows development of public relations, creation and exchange of information through cyberspace. it refers to the means of internet-based interaction among people in virtual communities, social networking sites. as a matter of fact, social media is relatively new as a concept and media format. since it includes a diverse collection of tools and services, few linguists have attempted to define, classify or categorize this sphere of communication. according to kietzmann, social media employ mobile and web-based technologies to create highly interactive platform via which individuals and communities share, cocreate, discuss, and modify user-generated content. it introduces substantial and pervasive changes to communication between organizations, communities and individuals (kietzmann 2011:241-251). one thing is for sure: social media has become one of the most fast, relatively inexpensive and accessible as well as the most effective and powerful source for netizens worldwide, i.e. citizens of the internet, to promote distribution of news, transfer of information, exchange of ideas and positions utilizing social media (crystal 2004; zappavigna 2012). petition writing is a way of social networking which has created new opportunities for millions of netizens from all over the world not only to publish, access and share information, but also to unite for a particular cause, to promote changes in order to make the world a better place to live in. broadly, a petition is a request or demand directed to a government body or public entity to change something. however, it is first and foremost addressed to the public, persuading them to get together in support of a common cause in the form of electronic signatures.1 petition writing enables people to build social authority in order to achieve influence on the ruling system of the country. its mission is to “close the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want”. at present, there are numerous social networks, social communities that “empower millions of people from all walks of life to take action on pressing global, regional and national issues, from corruption and poverty to conflict and climate change, […], allow thousands of individual efforts, however small, to be rapidly combined into a powerful collective force (<www.avaaz.org/en/about.php>). thus, online petitions are one of the armenian folia anglistika linguistics 100 boldest manifestations of persuasive attempts in our internet-driven world to control and direct public opinion, to call for change (earl & kimport 2011). the study of persuasive discourse dates back to the field of classic rhetoric that involved the comprehensive study of the art of persuasion, i.e. the power of discovering the available means of persuasion in the particular speech situation. it is not surprising, thus, that classical rhetoric has much to offer the modern study of persuasive communication and that the exploration of persuasion should be based on the time-testing principles. it is well known that one of the fundamental principles of classical rhetoric introduced by aristotle is that there are three general means or processes of persuasion: ethos, i.e. the source’s credibility, the speaker’s/writer’s authority, logos, i.e. the logic used to support a claim, also the facts and statistics used to help support the argument, pathos, i.e. the emotional or motivational appeals, emotional language and numerous sensory details (bernet & bedau 1993; berger 2003; aristotel’ 1998). aristotle suggests that in a persuasive communication it is vital to use logos as much as possible; incorporate ethos and pathos as needed (worthington 1994). the present article is an attempt to show that the persuasive processes of logos, pathos, and ethos are well amplified in online petitions. our aim is to prove that success of the persuasive intent of an online petition is dependent largely upon the effective use and integration of these three forces of persuasive communication. the basic questions raised in the paper are whether an argument should be entirely a matter of reason and logic, to what extent an appeal to emotions is necessary, and in what way emotional appeals contribute to the persuasive intent of the online petitions as a modern variant of persuasive discourse. pathos (greek for suffering or experience) refers to the emotional and the imaginative impact of the message on an audience. it means persuading the audience by appealing to the audience’s emotions, sympathy and imagination. the emotions strongly assist, sometimes even determine persuasion. writing about ethos, r. smith notes that persuasion through an appeal to an audience’s emotions encompasses two separate aspects: emotional substance, i.e. persuasion by arousing an emotional reaction in the audience regarding the substance of matter under consideration and medium mood control, i.e. use of the medium of a message to generate emotional reactions in the audience (smith 2008:11). actually, by emotional substance he means an appeal to emotions through the use of linguistic means, and by medium mood control he means the emotional impact on the mood of the recipient through various extralinguistic factors, such as graphics, images, illustrations, audio records and video or links to the videos that are attached to the verbal text and supplement words. linguistic means of persuasive communication appeal to the mind, while the visual material moves the feelings of the percipient. hence, two essential pathetic strategies used in online petitions ensure success and convince the receiver to take a particular action: the wording of the arguments and visual material. petitioners can please the readers by using simple, understandable and grammatically accurate language, whereas the struggle through complicated or grammatically inaccurate writing style can annoy, frustrate or simply distract the reader’s attention. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 101 therefore, in order to make the reader more receptive to the arguments, the language of petition should be devoid of condensed stylistic devices and techniques which will convey clarity and ease to the arguments. instead, words bearing connotative overtones in the given context are largely used in online petitions. it is connotation that helps the writer to construct emotionally-colored persuasive speech, that helps to produce picturesque and vivid images in the mind of the reader. “emotive language reveals the author’s approval or disapproval, assigns praise or blame – in other words make a judgment about the subject” (rottenberg 2000:240). this in its turn heightens the impact of the persuasive message and encourages the reader to accept the offered position. the use of an emotive and colorful language in online petitions has the power to express and arouse deep and sympathetic feelings that draws the readers into the scene and allows them to share mentally the same experience of happiness, comfort, love or pain, fear, horror, panic, etc.words with positive connotation are used to show the subject in an attractive light, meanwhile words with negative connotation help to describe the subject in a less favorable way. for instance, the literal, denotative meaning of the word “home” is “a place of residence” but in a specific context it may reflect attached feelings that have accumulated around the word. so, in the sentence “don’t deprive white bears of their home” the word “home” is actually used with the meaning “love, warmth, security”. similarly, words that are associated with people are often used to refer to animals or even to nature, to show much care and sympathy for them, as well as to stress their vital role and significance in human life, like death/killing of dolphins; torture/sufferingof animals; deportation of animals; curious and charming sea otters;to control sea otter populations, animal welfare; keep animals captive under inhumane conditions; environmental consciousness; beauty of natural landscape; fragile ecosystem; turtles make arduous journey; to ruin wildlife; polystyrene foam is an environmental menace; extraction will jeopardize countless lives of animals, etc. the emotive charge of the message in online petitions is also increased due to the extensive use of intensifiers. these are modifiers, words that quantify the idea they modify, like very, so, quite, just, mostly, really, extremely, drastically, dramatically, awfully, terribly, remarkably, moderately, deadly, slightly, totally, utterly, etc. they help to make the statement or a particular idea sound more exciting. the source can also make something sound less exciting by saying “this is somewhat useful“, downplaying the usefulness. these adverbs can manage the listener’s feelings about the concept. the extralinguistic factors grab the attention and hold the interest of wider audience, provide basis for the perception of the persuasive message and make them more receptive to the substance of the message. due to emotional images, such as e.g. photos of bloody corpse of animals, animals being tested for research, a child crying of pain, pictures of barren land or frozen wasteland and the like, the message becomes more impressive, dramatic or thrilling which gives a warm feeling, stirs anger or pity for the victims, brings a tear to their eyes. the extralinguistic means can in some situations effect a successful outcome of a persuasive communicative situation where words alone would have had little effect. for instance, the claim that “the arctic national wildlife refuge is no longer a home armenian folia anglistika linguistics 102 for poor wildlife, notably polar bears because of global warming” may not mean much until it is reinforced with hearth-breaking image of the poor animals; or the statement “most of anwr land is barren” may not mean much until it is corroborated by a black and white image of hollow and bleak bodies of land; or the claim “chimpanzees are humankind’s closest genetic relative, sharing 96-98% of our dnt and now an estimated 1000 chimpanzees are currently held in u.s. laboratories for research, of which approximately half are federally owned” will not have the desired effect without the image of a fearful and painful expression in the eyes of the poor animals, looking straight into the eyes of the viewers; or the statement “hundreds of dolphins die every year in the hunts from trauma and blood loss.” will not touch reader’s heart so deeply without the video showing a child swimming and playing merrily with a dolphin and then showing dolphins being killed in a manner which any human being may find extremely dist ressing and brutal, etc. images of sufferings, human or animal, can be immensely persuasive and may play a substantial role in increasing public pressure to end, for example, violence or mass slaughter of wildlife. the emotions most often appealed to in online petitions are patriotism, loyalty to mankind, love of nature, desire of getting clean and beautiful environment. other emotions frequently appealed to, as opposed to positive emotions, are threat for shortened and unhealthy life, pity for endangered species of animals, anxiety for contaminated environment, polluted air, harmful food, fear for human evil, etc. the petitioners do their best to encourage the reader to take actions to ban human or animal right violation and to take better care of mother nature. another important component of medium mood control technique is graphical design. visual persuasion in online petitions is frequently obtained with the help of numerous graphic design markers within the verbal text, such as font size, font type, word spacing, capitalization, underlining, highlighting, adding colors to words or phrases, italicizing or making them bold and the like. these techniques help to make the key words or phrases stand out which, in its tern, maximizes their persuasive impact. besides, the focus on graphic design is brought in order to establish the raised question firmly in the memory of the reader in an almost subconscious way. it should be noted in this connection that one should be careful with the usage of highly emotional language as it will not necessarily be in a direction desired by the source. in this connection bettinghaus states that for the receiver who holds relatively moderate views about the topic, a message that uses very extreme language is likely to have a kind of boomerang effect and attitudes may be changed less. there are, of course people, who respond favorably to the use of highly emotional language and its use in certain situations is justified. however, in most persuasive situations the receivers may tend to react negatively toward the use of extremely emotional, highly intense language. it will sound embarrassing and the message will simply be rejected (bettinghaus 1979). nevertheless, one should bear in mind that though the visual means of persuasion have great impact on the readers, they are never self-supporting. they may serve as evidence for the arguments, but they are not arguments themselves. they should be well explained and integrated into the verbal text that provides the logic and principal support of the thesis. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 103 the second aspect of aristotaelian rhetoric, logos (logical appeal, greek for “word”) refers to persuading through reasoning, logic and rational argument. it concerns the internal consistency of the message the clarity of the claim, the logic of its reasons, and the effectiveness of its supporting evidence. the impact of logos on the listener/audience is called the argument’s logical appeal. giving effective, persuasive reasons to back up the source’s claims is the heart of argumentation. it is common knowledge that persuasion is closely tied to argumentation. bernet and bedau draw a distinctive line between persuasion and argument, regarding argument as one form of persuasion that relies on reason; it offers statements as reasons for other statements. meanwhile, persuasion has a broader meaning; to persuade is to win over the interlocutor by giving reasons and appealing to the emotions. still, for an argument to be effective, it must be presented persuasively, i.e. the writer’s/speaker’s tone (attitude toward topic, audience) must be appropriate if the discourse is to persuade the reader (bernet and bedau 1993). the process of persuading through logical arguments is the decisive key to the persuasive communication and plays a vital role in structuring an effective persuasive message of the online petition. the creator of the online petition is supposed first and foremost to state his/her position clearly, make use of arguments based on definition, claims about the nature of things, demonstrate the benefits of his/her position and, if possible, back up the assertions with data (experience, statistics, etc.), appeal to cause and consequences, make analogies or comparisons, cite parallel cases, produce authority by citing the received opinions of experts or public opinion as support for his/her position and, finally present “call to action”, i.e. what the source wants the argument to achieve. the recipient of the message is invited to take an action and the source’s task is to make it easy and desirable for the audience to take that action. a well-organized structure of the persuasive message is of utmost importance for an argumentative discourse, and online petition is not an exception. an effective introduction, like a key, not only opens the persuasive communication, it opens the audience minds by arousing interest. it can make or break the rest of the discourse. the words used in the introductory part of the persuasive message have to paint a picture making the persuasive communication become more than just words. the body of the speech needs to be constructed logically. it needs to be coherent. it needs to flow. the conclusion is created so as to reinforce what has been said in the body to gain the desired response. the call to action is presented in the conclusive part of the message which will encourage the audience to act in a specific way. having studied the overall structure of online petitions posted on different sites,we can state that a well-organized online petition should involve the following five basic questions: 1. what is x? 2. what is the value of x? 3. what are the causes (or the consequences) of x? 4. what is the evidence for my claim about x? 5. what should (or ought or must) be done about x? armenian folia anglistika linguistics 104 the first point implies that an argument will be most fruitful if the interlocutors are well aware of the topic being discussed, if they perceive on what is being written about. the best way to secure such agreement is to produce a clear and precise definition of the key idea i.e. to state the essence of the theme. besides fulfilling the basic function of defining the theme, the opening statement should also be bold and informative enough to arouse the reader’s interest, to stir curiosity and prepare his/her for the rest. for this purpose mainly declarative sentences of affirmative type are used: e.g. bees are dying out of the landscape; hunting is a completely cruel sport; the united nations report in 2006 found that livestock cause 18 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions; the otter is an apex predator; the cost to the uk of rabies or other new diseases becoming established in uk wildlife is huge; the illegal release of otters is posing a potentially disastrous threat to the wildlife; the u.s. navy has been using our oceans as a staging ground for target practice for more than 30 years; day by day our wildlife is in increasing danger, etc. the second point implies that the discourse should have an evaluation concerning the significance of the topic or theme. it normally has two purposes: to set forth an assessment and to convince the reader that the assessment is reasonable. the topic is the problem, its definition, whereas the thesis is the argumentative theme, the author’s primary claim or contention, the proposition that the rest of the argumentative discourse is about to explain and defend. it is advisable to formulate briefly a basic thesis, i.e. a claim, a central point, a chief position in the opening paragraph. here the petitioner states his/her position towards the claim and supports the claim by giving evaluation to the theme. the evaluation should sound objective in order to gain the trust of the reader: e.g. our dogs, cats, and children would be under constant treat because of rabies; smoking should be prohibited in all enclosed public places; the use of gm and cloned crops & livestock should be considered positively; hunting can easily decrease wildlife population and make species endangered; it is believed that most bee’s are dying as a result of loss of habitat and malnutrition; merely ingesting gm crops will not change any one’s own genetic makeup; no local or national government body should carry out, fund, or allow lethal measures to control red foxes which live in urban areas; the international trade in animals for food should be on the hook and not on the hoof, etc. very often the theme or the thesis of the petition is introduced with the help of the rhetorical questions, adding expressive-emotional overtones that have a great impact on the reader. it assumes that only one answer can reasonably be made, and that the readers understand and agree with the questioner’s unstated answer. in fact, this is another way of capturing the readers’ interest and encouraging them to go on reading, and in the end, armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 105 making the necessary post-communicative steps, i.e. giving their e-signatures in favour of the given online petition: e.g. are human activities linked to global warming?; how far will we allow to spread?; why is it that most food options involve frying, grease, and overall unhealthy component?; do we need to fight for domestic oil and gas co’s?; why do we need to fight back against the environment?; what is the trans pacific partnership between countries for?; is it possible for companies to manufacture ingredients, combination of ingredients and final formulations of cosmetics without animal testing?; will you want your life taken away cruelly by someone else the way people have killed these turtles? etc. generally, the definition of the theme and the production of the thesis compose the introductory part of the online petition. besides establishing a common ground, a rapport between the reader and the petitioner, it helps to attract the reader’s attention by setting a dramatic and effective tone for the overall petition so that they feel compelled to read further. the third principle refers to the presentation of the possible causes and consequences the problem can bring. it should be noted that the third and the fourth points are closely interconnected with each other and should be treated together. the petitioner is supposed to present and identify the evidence for and against the claims. it is not enough for an argumentative piece of writing to state the opinion, belief or position, and online petition is not an exception. the bare fact of the sincere belief in what you say or write is not itself any evidence that what you believe is true. one needs to be able to support his/her proposition or the claim in a persuasive and effective way to make his petition really work. in addition, the petitioner must be assured that the arguments provided do not include confidential, false or defamatory statements. these two principles comprise the main factual background of the online petition, and it is in this part of the petition that the above-mentioned logos should be manifested to the best. however, as different from other kinds of argumentative writings, arguments backing the claim in online petitions is presented in a brief way. often each argument is enveloped in a single sentence and is presented as an enumerated list of arguments. hence, this accounts for the reason that arguments should be great in number and be strong, precise and to the point: e.g. our large human population is squeezing wildlife towards extinction; bumble bees, honey bees and many other species are threatened by loss of habitat due to human building; the demise of the eel population means that eels are not available as food, so otters have turned to other species of fish and birds including domestic species, as well as wildlife; though the ecological effect of gm crops are not entirely clear, they are unlikely to be physiologically harmful, as unlike pesticides and weed armenian folia anglistika linguistics 106 killers, specific genes introduced to gm crops produce known natural nontoxic compounds; etc. the fifth point involves policy offering proposal of how to act, what measures should be taken to solve the problem. when submitting an online petition, the author should be aware of the fact that all online petitions should contain a proposal, a call for specific action from the government. in case the online petition does not include a clear statement explaining what action the creator of the petition wants the government to take, it will be rejected. for this purpose the constructions with the modal verbs should, must and modal words expressing certainty, such as surely, certainly, of course, no doubt, undoubtedly, apparently, etc. are used which make the statements sound more alarming and perturbing: e.g. the government should surely withdraw all plants for wind turbines in the southwest of england; the government should immediately take advice from vets, scientists, and others with relevant expert experience and review the potential diseases that pet quarantine protects against, etc. the persuasive intent of the petitioner is often achieved by the use of performative verbs, such as “urge”, “insist”, “request” and the like, which explicitly name the illocutionary act being performed. though the petition is primarily addressed to the government, the construction third person pronoun+should or passive constructions with introductory it are used to express his/her decision or suggestion. this is done with the aim to avoid sounding rude and imperative. these statements are generally placed in the closing paragraph of the petition in order to make the petition more sound and persuasive, and to leave all the responsibility of the cause on the shoulders of the government: e.g. we urge the environment agency to tackle the existing population of otters in the best way possible; we urge the government to reduce immigration into the uk as wildlife has a right to thrive here; it is proposed that the government amend the act, to resolve these impasses for bats & other protected species; it is supposed that the government to subsidize animalfree food as it is more ecologically sound than meat, dairy and eggs; to effectively solve global crises and problems, in particularly environment, energy, global warming and climate change, it is necessary for the global community to adopt a comprehensive and effective plan and actions,etc. it is worth noting that our study showed that not all the online petitions were exactly alike, and not all of them followed these basic principles concerning its structure. throughout our analysis we came across cases when these succeeding steps were intermingled into each other and mixed. some of the petitions were very short in length, consisting only of a single paragraph, others were too long with an elaborate language and tactics of persuading. some were produced in the form of a letter, cararmenian folia anglistikalinguistics 107 rying the characteristic features of an open letter, some were close to the style of formal documents. finally, the third aspect of aristotelian logic, ethos (greek for “character”) often referred to as the argument’s “ethical appeal”, is the trustworthiness of the source, which involves efforts on the part of the persuader to inspire confidence, to establish credibility in the eyes of the reader/listener. according to aristotle, our perception of a speaker’s/writer’s character and credibility plays a significant role in how that audience will respond to the message presented. the more credibility the speaker or writer has, the more receptive the audience will be. the idea is that effective source of the message should convey the idea that they are informed, intelligent, benevolent and honest. bernet & bedau suggest that “when we read an argument we are often aware of the person or voice behind the words, and our assent to the argument depends partly on the extent to which we can share the speaker’s/writer’s assumptions, look at the matter from the speaker’s/writer’s point of view – in short, identify with the speaker” (bernet & bedau 1994:242). we are naturally more likely to be persuaded by a person who, we think, has personal warmth, consideration of others, a good mind and solid learning. we tend to believe people whom we respect. one of the central problems of argumentation for the persuader is to project an impression to the receiver that he/she is someone who is likable and worthy of respect. often recipients know the character of speakers/writers ahead of time. they come with a reputation, with the so-called extrinsic ethos. people, whose education, experience, and previous performances qualify them to speak on a certain issue, earn the special extrinsic ethos of the authority. but, ethos is often conveyed through the actual text we hear or read, i.e. through the tone and style of the message, the way it is written or spoken and what it says. this impression created by the text itself is the intrinsic ethos. the only way to inspire confidence in written discourse is to compose the thoughts so that nothing causes a reader to doubt the writer’s intelligence, honesty, and goodwill. as we know, different circumstances call for different language styles. thus, depending on the topic, audience and the speech situation, the writer’s way of presenting attitude towards the self, the audience, the subject changes. ethical appeal is also important for creating a persuasive petition. extrinsic ethos in online petitions is obtained due to the support of well-known people or organizations. many online petitions are either created or sponsored be famous people, like actors, celebrities or companies that are known to the public for their good deeds or high moral features and are respected, even if they are not experts knowledgeable in the given field. intrinsic ethos achieved through the verbal message itself plays a more decisive role in online petitions. it is obtained due to the above-mentioned factors hinting that the author is well-informed, a person of goodwill or that s/he is greatly concerned with the problem being discussed. to conclude, we can state that much of human action seeks to change feelings, intentions and position, to direct public opinion, to influence public behavior by numerous communicative means. in the world of new technologies and in democratic society, online petition is the best and, probably, the most effective way of achieving this goal. it armenian folia anglistika linguistics 108 is a way of democratization of the internet, the purpose of which is to provide an easy way for the public to engage in people-powered politics in the country and the way online petition is promoted has a critical impact on the outcome of the campaign. notes: 1. nowadays it is largely used especially in the us government system. the right to petition the us government is guaranteed by the first amendment to the u.s. constitution. throughout the history, americans have used petitions to organize around issues they care about from ending slavery, to guaranteeing women’s right to vote, to the civil rights movement. in the 21st century, the internet provides a new means for such petitions to be made. in september 22, 2011 obama administration launched a social platform called “we the people” with a slogan “your voice in our government”, giving all americans the chance for their voices to be heard. in this connection the us president barack obama stated that “when i ran for this office, i pledged to make government more open and accountable to its citizens. that’s what the new “we the people” feature on whitehouse.gov is all about – giving americans a direct line to the white house on the issues and concerns that matter most of them” (<www.gov20.govfresh.com/whitehouse-offers-we-the-people-online-petitions-at-whitehouse-gov>). references: 1. aristotel’ (1998) etika, politika, ritorika, poetika, kategorii. minsk. 2. bernet, s. & bedau, h. (1993) critical thinking, reading, and writing: a brief guide to argument. 5th edition. boston, mass.: bedford books of st. martin’s press. 3. berger, a.a. (2003) media and society: a critical perspective. lanham, md: rowman and littlefield. 4. bettinghaus, p.e. (1979) persuasive communication. 3-rd edition. usa. 5. crystal, d. (2004) language and the internet. cambridge: cup. 6. earl, j. & kimport, k. (2011) digitally enabled social change: activism in the internet age. usa, ma: mit press. 7. kietzman, h.j., et al. (2011) social media? get serious! // understanding the functional building blocks of social media. business horizons. volume 54, issue 3, canada. <www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s007681311000061> 8. lakoff, r.t. (1982) persuasive discourse and ordinary conversation. // analyzing discourse: text and talk. / ed. by d. tannen. washington d.c.: georgetown university press. 9. larson, c.u. (1988) persuasion: reception and responsibility. 4-th edition. belmond: wardsworth publishing company. 10. petty, r.e. & cacioppo, j.t. (1981) attitudes and persuasion: classic and contemporary approaches. usa: westview press. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 109 11. smith, m.r. (2008) advanced legal writing: theories and strategies in persuasion writing. 2nd edition. usa: aspen publishers. 12. surin, n.n. (2007) ritorika. m.: mgiu. 13. rottenberg, a.t. (2000) the structure of argument. usa: bedford/st. martin’s. 14. worthington, i. (1994) persuasion: greek rhetoric in action. london: routledge. 15. zappavigna, m. (2012) discourse of twitter and social media: how we use language to create affiliation on the web. london: continuum international publishing group. 16. <www. change. org> 17. <www. thepetitionsite.com> 18. <www.petitionspot.com> 19. <www.gopetition.com> 20. <www.petitiononline.com> 21. <www.avaaz.org> ²éó³ýó ¿é»ïïñáý³ûçý ëý¹ñ³·çñá áñå»ë å»ñëáõ³½çí ¹çëïáõñëç ï³ñ³ï»ë³ï ðá¹í³íç ñ»õçý³ïý áõëáõùý³ëçñáõù ¿ å»ñëáõ³½çí ýå³ï³ïç çñ³·áñíáõùá ³éó³ýó ¿é»ïïñáý³ûçý ëý¹ñ³·ñ»ñáõù` ñ³ßíç ³éý»éáí ¹ñ³ýó 黽í³ï³ý ¨ ³ñï³é»½í³ï³ý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá: ²éó³ýó ¿é»ïïñáý³ûçý ëý¹ñ³·çñá ¹çïíáõù ¿ áñå»ë å»ñëáõ³½çí ¹çëïáõñëç å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ó¨, áñáõù ë³ï³ûý, å³ñå³ýí»é »ý ¹»é¨ë ³ýïçï ñé»ïáñ³ï³ý ³ñí»ëïáõù ²ñçëïáï»éç ³é³ç³¹ñ³í ñ³ùá½ù³ý ·áñíáýã³óç »ñ»ù ï³ñ¨áñ μ³õ³¹ñçãý»ñá` ¿ãáëá, áñá í»ñ³μ» ñáõù ¿ ëáëáõç/éëáõç ñ»õçý³ïáõãû³ý ùççáóáí çñ³·áñííáõ ý»ñ·áñíáõãû³ýá, å³ãáëá, áñá í»ñ³μ» ñáõù ¿ 黽í³ï³ý, çýãå»ë ý³¨ ³ñï³é»½í³ï³ý ùççáóý»ñáí ñ³õáñ¹³ïóç ó·³óùáõýù³ûçý ¹³ßïç íñ³ çñ³·áñííáõ ý»ñ·áñíáõãû³ýá ¨ éá·áëá, áñá í»ñ³μ» ñáõù ¿ ëáë³ïóç μ³ý³ï³ýáõãû³ý íñ³ ÷³ëï³ñïý»ñç ùççáóáí çñ³·áñííáõ ý»ñ·áñíáõãû³ýá: ðá¹í³í³·çñá ùýýáõãû³ý ¿ ³éýáõù, ã» ëáõûý μ³õ³¹ñçã ï³ññ»ñá çýã 黽í³ï³ý ùççáóý»ñáí »ý ³ñï³ñ³ûïíáõù ³éó³ýó ¿é»ïïñáý³ûçý ëý¹ñ³·ñáõù, ¨ ã» áñù³ýáí »ý ³ñï³é»½í³ï³ý ·áñíáýý»ñá ýå³ëïáõù å»ñëáõ³½çí ý»ñ·áñíáõãû³ý ñ³çáõ çñ³ï³ý³óù³ýá: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 110 maket 2013:layout 1.qxd gender differences in perceiving advertising texts rouzanna arakelyan, margarita sahakyan yerevan state university i t would not be an exaggeration to say that today we live in an era of advertisment. nearly everyone in the modern world is to some degree affected by advertising and other forms of promotion. although few people admit to being greatly influenced by ads, surveys show that a well-designed advertising campaign has dramatic effects. a logical conclusion is that advertising works even below the level of conscious awareness and it works even on those who claim immunity to its verbal and non-verbal messages. as the main purpose of advertising is to attract attention, arouse interest and stimulate sales, its textual message is thought over thoroughly. the language of advertisment should be pure but complicated, soft but ordering, clear but full of expressive devices, the word order should be both complex and simple, in other words, the language should be used to attract the attention of a reader, listener or viewer at once. this could be done also by appealing to emotions through arousing feelings of love, fear or pleasure. the main persuasive goal of ads is to strengthen or change one’s attitude toward a certain product or service. so it is not by chance that many advertisers use more than one technique in attemting to persuade consumers. to make the advertisment more effective, one should know for whom the advertisment is created, thus creation of ads should be carried out taking into account gender differences of consumers as well. difficulties in differentiating gender roles in modern societies can be a perfect example of the social effects of using stereotypes. a division of gender roles is deeply rooted in the social and cultural archetypes. men and women perceive the reality and respond to it differently, so gender has a significant impact on the way we communicate. men are highly visual by nature and more likely to absorb the total picture, wheras women are more detail oriented. it is not by chance that women require a clear product or pocket of text for their eyes to land on, while men will respond to the given images instantaneously. so, men and women are capable of enjoying the same advertisments, but they are likely to respond to and perceive ads differently. and since the process of perception of ads differs, the length of time men and women need to analyze the ad also varies. studies have shown that women are able to retain more information from a 30-second spot than men do. but women are able to retain more information from ads, they also need to see a commercial several times to be convinced to try a product or service. therefore, women also require more information before making purchasing decisions. men tend to be oriented to the present and the visual, they don’t require more information before making purchasing decisions and so will respond more effectively than women to seeing an ad just one time. one more distinctive feature: men have greater propensity to ads featuring humor, distinctive creative styles and a different type of imagery, while women enjoy ads featuring children or a “slice of life’’. in other words, men are prone to intellectual and intriguing ads, while women are prone to emotional armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 31 appeals that border on family and children. and all the above mentioned does not come as a surprise: we often begin life with gendered identities. we communicate our gender identity and popular culture tells us what it means to be man or a woman. for example, some activities are considered more masculine or more feminine. similarly, the programs that people watch on television or the news they read in periodicals or magazines affect how they socialize with others and come to understand what it means to be a man or a woman. as a culture changes, so do notions of what is masculine or feminine. the popular notions of the ideal male (or female) characteristics are largely determined by commercial interests, advertising, and other cultural fources. this is especially true for women. advertisments in magazines and commercials on television tell us what it means, and how much it will cost to be a beautiful woman. perfection is portrayed at every stage in life whether it is a beautiful doll little girls are given to play with or perfect-looking supermodels in fashion magazines. it is not a secret what is accepted and expected. our expression of gender identity not only communicates who we think we are but also constructs a sense of who we want to be. we learn what masculinity and femininity mean in our culture and we negotiate how we communicate our gender identity to others (martin, nakayama 2011:97). as a result, nowadays mass media still uses gender stereotypes, basing on the assumption that they are well known to everyone and help the receivers to understand the content of the message delivered. it should be confessed that the differences between male and female roles are smaller today, however, mass media perpetuates traditionally and socially determine gender stereotypes. though people are aware of the unequal representation of certain social groups in any type of mass media, it is hard to remain objective and insensitive to its influence. the portrayal of women in advertising is an issue that has received a great deal of attention through years. it has been criticised for stereotyping women and falling to recognize the changing role of women in our society. critics have particularly argued that advertising often depicts women as preoccupied with beauty, household duties, and motherhood or shows them as decorative objects or intriguing figures. portrayals of women in television and print advertising have emphasized lack of intelligence and credibility for high levels of efforts. according to s. craig’s research, women can be presented in commercials in several ways. the first one is the most popular: a housewife who is obsessed by a steam on a new tablecloth or a woman whose main problem is lack of ideas for dinner. the other examples are less traditional, however, they are still stereotypical. one more type is a woman whose major concern is to preserve her beauty, so she presents a very healthy life style: she is physically active, uses a wide range of body and facial cosmetics. it should be noticed that one can observe mainly the presence of very thin actresses in this type of commercials, which can lead to the idea that only thin women can be considered an object of beauty. as a result, many female receivers fall into the obsession with their weight, which sometimes can have negative effects (craig and emerson 2000:65). advertising messages about women convey the idea that a woman’s place is in the home, women do not make important decisions or do important things, they prompt us armenian folia anglistika linguistics 32 that women are dependent and need men’s protection, and men regard women primarily as beautiful objects. advertisements have consistently confined women to weak, childish, dependent, domestic, irrational, subordinate creatures, the producers of children and little else compared with men. courtney and lockeretz examined images of women in magazine advertisements. they reported the following findings: women were shown as dependent on men’s protection, they were most often shown in ads for cleaning products, food products, beauty products, drugs, clothing and home appliances. males were most often shown in ads for cars, travel, alcoholic beverages, cigarettes, banks, industrial products, entertainment media, and industrial companies (courtney, lockeretz 1979:92-95). it seems that since then a lot should have been changed. however, the later researches have shown two opposite tendencies. according to one pole only few changes occurred. the view is grounded on the idea that perhaps advertising has this powerful role: to depict women not necessarily how they actually behave, but rather, how we think women behave. furthermore, according to e.goffman, this depiction serves the social purpose of convincing us that this is how women are, or want to be, or should behave. on the other hand, one cannot overlook the fact that there has been a revolutionary change in the workplace and in society since women began to come into the workforce. women nowadays are not only gaining ground in workforce participation, but arealso filling positions once held primarily by men. if women have changed and if society has therefore been altered, then it could not but be reflected in ads as the demands of the society have consequently changed (goffman 2009). whatever effort women put to take men’s positions in various spheres, one thing is certain; there exist vast differences between their behaviors and the way society perceives them. as already mentioned, the concept of beauty is assumed to be one of the central issues in women’s lives. the beauty role the importance of appearing attractive in public, of maintaining standards, of encouraging male attention, is said to become a central preoccupation for girls and remains a concern for women for much of their lives, if not all their lives (barthel 1988:10). for example, the advert of palmolive soap, published in 1950, depicts a naturally beautiful, tall, slender woman wrapped in a towel. from the modern perspective she would be considered rather old-fashioned, especially the way her hair is pulled back and the bow tied in it. another feature which divulges its being out-of-date is the overuse of the text which is a rare thing among modern ads. a full paragraph explains how doctors approve of the beauty soap and how it can help one’s complexion. the ad has little angels around the woman and the bar of the soap. next to each angel is a description of the soap: fragrance...for daintiness, mildness...for loveliness, purity...for gentleness, bath size...for thriftiness. use only palmolive to give your skin this lovely charm... all over! the wording daintiness, purity, gentleness, mildness, loveliness alongside with little cheerful cherubs conveys the message that a woman should be exactly that: a little smiling, mild angel. the language of the ad can also be described as “mild and gentle”. the nouns are mostly formed on the basis of adjectives, like dainty-daintiness, mild-mildness, lovely-loveliness pure-purity, thrifty-thriftiness, gentle-gentleness, which create some light, airy atmosphere. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 33 r. lakoff (2004) attempted to establish features which distinguished women’s language from men’s language. and one of the linguistic features she singled out was the use of “empty adjectives”. these are adjectives that express feelings with no significant meaning. it is argued that this special type of adjectives, distinct from neutral adjectives, is characteristic of only women’s language. among them r. lakoff also listed adjectives like lovely, charming, divine. this advert of palmolive makes use of this type of adjectives. here are some more examples taken from elle women’s magazine: get gorgeous hair and glowing skin for good! the best hair products for shiny, oh-so-voluminous locks starting from the roots. it’s nothing but good hair days ahead this winter with these amazing hair care products. get gorgeously glowing this valentine’s day. beauty tips for perfect eyebrows. though these empty adjectives are believed to express feelings with no significant meaning, they seem to have the power of “imparting certain sense of confidence”; they help the female consumer to imagine herself almost perfect and attractive. these empty adjectives and adjectives in general, add some more emotional coloring and contribute to the overall creation of the image. so, we may conclude, from what has been said, that the ad is full of feminine features from both linguistic and extra-linguistic perspective. the next linguistic feature we are going to discuss seems to have the same property and ability. the feature suggested by r. lakoff and reflected in the “feminine” commercials are the intensifiers linguistic means that make no contribution to the propositional meaning of a clause but serve to enhance and give additional emotional context to the word they modify: mohair is our newest soft wear program: impressively soft impossibly bright and extraordinarily user-friendly. the examples discussed above come to state a rather disputable view women are too much concerned with their appearance and beauty. according to stereotypical views, that is just the proper way she should behave. women are relationship oriented, and look for commonalities, their conversational style is described as consensus-building. in case of women consensus means thinking alike, being in agreement, being the same. this idea of “grouping into a team and being similar” is expressed in advertisements as well. your friends use mary kay, and you? only mary kay and women! dermatologists have put something unusually strong in this skin cleanser. dove. their trust. women trust. the advertisement adduced comes to illustrate the point that women have created their own separate world where they speak of things which they all use and here they may share their experiences and give advice to others. for example, the advert of mary kay suggests that a girl use the product as her friends have already tried it. so her friend’s opinion can serve a kind of guarantee for her. however, it seems there is another motif hidden under the claim “your friends use mary kay”, the so-called “motif of jealousy”. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 34 the ad seems to have a subtext which says; “your friends already possess the product, so hurry and get one for you if you do not want to fall behind them”. your friends will want to look at it. you won’t even want to take it off to shower. years later babies will want to touch its light. little girls will ask to try it on. and long after everything has changed, you’ll look down at it and realize nothing has. lately certain commercials targeting women speak (not always directly) of the possibility of achieving the external beauty through the inner one. the concept of the inner beauty is believed to be closely connected with nature and with the harmony of it. so very many advertisements state the product’s relation with nature. for example; avenda: the art and science of pure flower and plant essences. for lancôme, beauty goes far beyond appearances. beauty is an emotion reflected on the surface of the skin. an awakening of the senses, a harmonious connection between the mind, body and soul. femininity in the last ad is expressed through the use of the words flower, plant which seem to be rare things in adverts designed for men unless they are used with reference to women. in the commercials targeting men the concept of nature is basically used with reference to medicine. perhaps the fact that women are portrayed closer to nature is hidden behind the prototypical perception of nature as a woman. the associations of women with nature are reflected in languages as well. for example in latin, italian, french, russian or spanish the word nature is gendered as female: la natura, la nature, priroda, la naturaleza, etc. besides, woman and nature share the same characteristic features giving birth and providing the balanced life cycle. the concept of infinity is expressed in the ads of cosmetics as well where it stands as an indicator of the reliable quality of the product. the advertisements of estee lauder and max factorassert: lauder lipstick makes lipfinity. max factor lipfinity colour and gloss is an innovative double ended lipstick which gives a depth of multitonal colour and shine for an eye catching look that lasts up to10 hours. here the combination of lip + infinity results in an interesting neologism lipfinity which seems to promise to entirely meet the women’s demands of having long lasting color on their lips which would not fade as soon as they eat or drink something. women targeting advertisements can freely “play with different colors” creating new shades: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 35 first we doubled the color, then we doubled the wear, for lipcolor that’s made to last. and added shimmering reflectants that give your lips dramatic depth. in fifteen shades that will make a lasting impression. double color everlasting lipstick. nonstop color in 15 shades. from petal petal to honey honey.estee lauder lips.buttery yellow, white hot and honey hues ruled the spring runways. our expert shares five tips on how to create—and maintain-the perfect shade... the adverts represent a very interesting interpretation of different hues of colors which probably would be better perceived by women-consumers. generally advertisements designated for women are much more colorful not only from the linguistic perspective. though in the course of time the image of the “newwoman” has undergone a number of changes, there has always been a kind of concern on women’s not losing their femininity. nowadays we may say that women have mostly succeeded in keeping the balance between traditional femininity and traditional masculinity. in advertisements passive, feeling-based adjectives and verbs are now replaced by lively, energetic and “actionrequiring” words which are considered to be men’s property. the woman is encouraged to liberate herself, to be free; she is provoked to take her life in her own hands and to set up her own rules for the game. take control of your life: make him fall for you. nowadays you have to have brains as well as beauty. love me! smashbox’s new “love me” lip gloss range is funky, fresh and full of street cred. male stereotypes are quite different. the first model is “a real man’’, athletic, successful, professional seducer with a nice young lady by his side. the other type is less popular and presents men devoted to their families who can save enough time for them. men are rarely presented during household activities. and if they are, it is rather a satirical image or they appear as experts and they are the ones who advise women how to to do things. on the whole, men are generally shown more knowledgeable, active, aggressive and instrumental than women. nonverbal behaviours involving dominance and control are associated more with men than women. advertisments directed towards children have also been shown to feature more boys than girls, to position boys in more dominant, active roles. here are some examples to illustrate the points mentioned: for the men in charge of change. (fortune buisness magazine) try nivea for men energizing face scrub, a hardworking face scrub for hardworking men. (nivea for men) it is for you. buy the car. own the road. (pontiac grand am) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 36 it’s not your car. it’s not your friends. it’s not your job. it’s your watch that says most about who you are. (seiko watch) the language of ads becomes more expressive with the help of tropes and figures of speech which provide the stylistic effect of advertisements; the use of tropes makes the language of advertisements unique, original, consequently natural. the most frequently used tropes to denote feminine and masculine features include metaphor, metonymy, hyperbola, epithet, simile, personification, etc. epithets are often used with reference to those products which would “flatter” the consumer: cosmetics, perfume, products which offer luxury, etc. epithets are to be extraordinary and, the more unique they are, the better they are remembered. for example: hair care is war/fight. hair is under attack. the environment, heat styling, colouring and bleaching can all take their toll. paul mitchel fight back with new super a 3 part strengthening system for your hair. (paul mitchel luxury hair care) vital oils are high quality essential oils infused into pure, skin-softening organic apricot kernal oil. preservative and colour-free, with nosynthetic perfume, the results are out-of this world aromas. with names that conjure the atmosphere they help to create. choose from restoring comfort, reviving harmony and sensual bliss. similes are often used for introducing something unknown through something familiar. in advertising they are basically used for original sounding, for example, swarowsky. pure like love. metaphors, as means of figurative language, are widely used in advertising because they can arouse and enliven the consumer’s imagination, and represent an effective means to create brand associations and enhance persuasion. in advertising metaphors have the following functions: firstly the metaphor is considered to be “the material” through which the essence or basic idea of an ad is conveyed. one of the specific features of human mind is that an idea is better memorized in case it takes a metaphoric form. and, secondly, metaphor gives birth to new ideas and enforces the inner motivation. it influences indirectly and, what is more interesting, it reduces the level of criticism in consumer’s mind with reference to advertising: it is difficult to contradict one’s own ideas and associations (bernadskaya 2008:67). when used in advertising, metaphors create a picture in consumers’ minds and tap into meaning that is shared both by the advertiser and the consumer. metaphors may not accomplish their desired objective, however, if they are complicated or too abstract. imposing certain feature that is typical of humans on a product may leave an impression as if the product is a part of our life. this is why personification is used in the advertisement of geox shoes where the product is endowed with human ability to breathe: geox shoes that breathe or baon clothes with temper. metonymy involves the substitution of an aspect of a product, thing or person for the thing itself, such as the crown representing the queen. the sunday times is the sunday papers is a form of metonymy, trying to armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 37 get the brand to stand and represent the entire product group (brierley 2002:147). hyperbole very often seems to be an indispensable part of advertising. it is necessary for the psychological influence as it exaggerates certain qualities of this or that object or event and underlines the uniqueness of the product (blackest black from great lash).the following example shows how the producers use certain objects metaphorically for creating a symbolic effect in consumers’ minds. now get extremely big, way-out-there lashes that defy reality. e-long extends natural lashes to supernatural lengths – up to 50 percent longer. super brush separates, defines and lengthens beyond belief. it’s great to exaggerate. the text of any advertisement is thought over thoroughly and delicately as each sentence, each word can be the key to any product’s success. in this sense a great significance is attached to the ability of communicating correctly with both target groups of people and target individuals (berdishev 2008:76). the right knowledge of the communicative process and its main techniques can be effective and can lead to the desired results. the importance given to the linguistic means used in advertisements, allows us to conclude that advertising occupies a special position in the problems related to the development of modern society. advertising deals with ideas, attitudes, and values. it is an interesting issue of discussion from the psycholinguistic perspective, as first and foremost, it is closely connected with the art of speech, with the art of persuasion. commercials are powerful tools used for creating and shaping opinions, as well as forming proper choices. texts of advertisments contain the prevailing characteristics of the objective reality, therefore stereotypes are very often used in the commercials as one of the most popular techniques of persuasion. it is evident that advertising is a huge and pervasive industry: it has a powerful effect that goes well beyond the purpose of selling products to consumers, it affects our culture and our views, therefore it is extremely persuasive. consumer advertising most commonly associates products with symbols that exemplify values, feelings, prestige, status, power, achievement or just plain pleasure. the effect of gendered differences is apparent; gendered advertising beliefs, attitudes, values and consumer behaviour exist, therefore advertisers recognize them, understand them, and use them to design gender specific advertisments. references: 1. berdishev, s.n. (2008) reklamni tekst. metodika sostavleniya i oformleniya. m.: dashkov i k. 2. belch, g.e. and belch, m.a. (2001) advertising and promotion: an integrated marketing communications perspective. san diego state university. 3. bernadskaya, yu.s. (2008) tekst v reklame. m.: yunitti-dana. 4. brierley, s. (2002) the advertising handbook. canada: taylor & francis group. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 38 5. courtney, a. & lockeretz, s. (1971) a woman’s place: an analysis of the roles portrayed by women in magazine advertisements. // journal of marketing research, vol. 8. cambridge: harvard university press. 6. craig, s. and emerson, r. (2000) feminist media criticism and feminist media practices. // the annals of the american academy of political and social science. 7. goffman, e. (1978) gender advertisements. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. 8. lakoff, r.t. (2004) language and woman’s place: text and commentaries. new york: oxford university press. 9. lee, m.; johnson, c. (2005) principles of advertising: a global perspective. ny: the haworth press. 10. talbot, m. (2010) language and gender. cambridge: polity press. 11. martin, j.n.; nakayama, th.k. (2011) experiencing intercultural communication (an introduction). new york: ny. ¶áí³½¹³ûçý ï»ùëï»ñç áýï³éù³ý ·»ý¹»ñ³ûçý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá ¶»ý¹» ñ³ûçý ñ³û»ó³ï»ñåç ñ³ßí³éáõùá ³½¹» óçï ·áí³½¹³ ûçý ï»ùëï»ñ ëï»õí»éáõ ï³ñ¨áñ³·áõûý ùççáóý»ñçó ¿: ¶áí³½¹³ ûçý ñ³õáñ¹ù³ý ý»ñ·áñíáõùý áõ áýï³éáõùý ³å³ñáíáõ ·»ý¹» ñ³ûçý áõõõí³íáõãûáõýá å³ûù³ý³íáñíáõù ¿ ¹ñ³ ã»ù³ïçï, 黽í³á׳ ï³ý ¨ ù»ñ³ï³ï³ý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñáí: àý¹ áñáõù, ·»ý¹» ñ³ûçý áñáß³ïç å³ïï³ý»éçáõãûáõýá ï»ùëïáõù ï³ñáõ ¿ ýßí»é ¨° áõõõ³ïç, ¨° ³ýáõõõ³ïç ó¨áí` ñçùùáõù áõý»ý³éáí ïíû³é ùß³ïáõûãáõù ó¨³ íáñí³í ï³ñíñ³ïçå»ñá: àñù³ý ³í»éç ñëï³ï ¿ å³ïï»ñ³óáõùá ñ³õáñ¹³ïóç ëáóç³é³ï³ý, ñá·» μ³ ý³ï³ý, ï»ýë³μ³ ý³ï³ý ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñç ù³ëçý, ³ûýù³ý ³í»éç μáí³ý¹³ ï³éçó ¨ ý»ñ·áñíáõý ¿ ¹³éýáõù ý»ñï³û³óíáõ ï»õ»ï³ïíáõãûáõýá: ²ñ¹ûáõý³í»ï, ñ»ï¨³μ³ñ ·áñíáõáõãû³ý ¹ñ¹áõ ¿ ³ûý ·áí³½¹³ ûçý ï»ùëïá, áñá ñ³ßíç ¿ ³éýáõù ëáëùç ý»ñ·áñíù³ý ¨ áýï³éù³ý ûñçý³ã³÷áõãûáõýý»ñá ¨ ¹ñ³ýó ·»ý¹» ñ³ûçý å³ûù³ý³íáñí³íáõãûáõýá: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 39 maket 2013:layout 1.qxd a response to everett l. wheeler’s review of the armenian military in the byzantine empire: conflict and alliance under justinian and maurice (alfortville: sigest, 2012) armen ayvazyan matenadaran the institute of ancient manuscripts (yerevan) i considered it a great honor, both for myself and my book, the armenian military in the byzantine empire: conflict and alliance under justinian and maurice (hereafter – the am), that it was reviewed in the journal of military history (hereafter – jmh, 2013, no. 1, pp.318-320), one of the most authoritative periodicals in the field it designates. the review, written by everett l. wheeler of the duke university, presents the contents, the imprint and other particulars of the publication as follows: glendale, calif. (sic): editions sigest, 2012. isbn: 978-2-91-732939-9 (sic). note on armenian personal names and toponyms. illustrations. maps. notes. appendixes. bibliography. index. pp.127. in fact, the am was printed in alfortville (paris, france) rather than glendale (california, usa)! the words glendale and california are nowhere to be found in the am. the questions as to why and how they could have appeared in its review are disturbing. one may even wonder whether the reviewer has ever held the book in his hands, especially if considered that no page references are provided. incidentally – or perhaps not incidentally – two of the four dashes within the isbn number are misplaced too, not an inconsequential mistake in our digital age (the correct isbn is 978-2-917329-39-9). these curious mistakes are only the first indications of the utterly unprofessional and tendentious character of wheeler’s review. in one and a half pages the reviewer manages to accuse me of representing “a supernationalistic branch of armenian historiography prominent since 1991,” while branding my book as “amateurish,” “‘old military history’ in one of its worst forms, featuring presentism and excessively speculative reconstructions of campaigns,” a “curious diatribe,” etc. apparently to ensure full indoctrination of the uninitiated reader, the indictment in nationalism is reiterated in the closing sentence: “the work exemplifies a branch of contemporary nationalistic armenian historiography better than serious scholarship.” to see how successfully wheeler is able to support these sweeping, politically colored, and offensive denunciations, below i will respond to all of his criticisms. on nationalism and armenian historiography wheeler charges that “an idealized view of ancient armenia (apparently identified with the current republic) and armenian culture underlies the narrative, in which patriotic desires for independence and autonomy inspire rebel leaders rather than the personal motives that procopius asserts.” the sentence above lacks clarity and cohesion. the nonsensical allegation that the am somehow identifies the current republic of armenia with ancient armenia is mystiarmenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 175 fying. no criterion is offered to check the veracity of such a bizarre claim. does wheeler suggest that the am identifies current republic of armenia with ancient armenia territorially or perhaps by its state system, to name just two aspects? or does he suggest that the am idealizes the current republic (the grave social deficiencies of which its author has been a loud and vocal opponent, parenthetically)? but nowhere in the am are the republic of armenia, or the word ‘republic’ even mentioned and neither is any historical attempt made to project the present-day realities on the sixth century. the same question poses itself again: has wheeler read or seen the book he undertook to review? or, at least, has he unfolded and read its colour map (inset) which does not even include the territory of the republic of armenia? wheeler is bluntly denying the “patriotic desires for independence and autonomy” of the armenian rebels in 538-539, arguing that they acted according to their “personal motives.” the truth, however, is that the personal motives are inseparably interconnected with the collective ones: the ethnopolitical mobilization of the armenian rebels, and, what is more, their armed resistance to the imperial policies could not have taken place without the ideological component of “patriotic desires,” irrespective of how much the latter were conditioned by purely personal material motivations. most important, the “patriotic desires” of ancient and medieval armenians, including their nobility and clergy, are abundantly represented in the armenian (as well as nonarmenian) primary sources, of which wheeler does not seem to have a solid grasp. it is the classic armenian literature and especially historiography which, from the fifth century onwards, had been accentuating the armenians’ patriotism or “nationalism.” this is a well-known and academically recognized truth, and to deny it, as wheeler does without substantiation, is sad and ignorant of primary sources. if it were not an established historical fact then many western historians should also be branded as representatives of “a super-nationalistic branch of armenian historiography prominent since 1991.” prof. walter e. kaegi, to take just one example, would certainly be among them for his observations about the armenians’ “impulse to local autonomy,” their “will to remain distinctively armenian,” that “in no other region of the byzantine empire… did the local inhabitants have a tradition of being so well armed and prone to rely on themselves and their own family groupings and notables,” and that both the arabs and the byzantines had to take into consideration the “intractability and formidable character of the armenians.” 1 these quotes are provided in the am (p.107), but wheeler has either not read or just chosen to overlook them. as a matter of fact, kaegi is not at all alone and such conclusions have been an encyclopedic knowledge in the west long before 1991. as early as 1967, the encyclopedia americana, enumerating the “factors [that] contributed to the development of a strong sense of [armenian] national consciousness, centuries before its advent on the western european scene,” underlined, in particular, that “the martyrdom of vartan mamikonian [451 ad] provided armenia with a national hero, further reinforcing the armenian sense of isolation, self-reliance, and ethnocentrism.” 2 likewise, the new encyclopedia britannica (1984) speaks about “the strongly individualistic armenian people,” who “retained a fiercely independent spirit” from the ancient times up to the modern period.3 armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 176 “armenian nationalism,” again, is mentioned as one of the factors, which made armenia difficult to govern by the arabs in the seventh century.4 the pertinent issues of ancient armenian identity, including armenian linguistic nationalism and the system of values of armenia’s military class, have been analyzed in some of my other studies, conducted in full accordance with modern western theoretical thought and on the basis of armenian and non-armenian primary sources.5 these studies are evoked and adequately referred to in the am, mainly in part ii. wheeler, however, avoids either appraising or refuting them, presenting instead a bouquet of derisive soviet-type political labels. on the other hand, if we follow wheeler’s logic, then his assumed date of activation for “a super-nationalistic branch of armenian historiography,” the year of 1991 (that is, since armenia gained its newest independence), should be significantly pushed back – by about fifteen centuries, because, as noted, classical armenian historiography had also been markedly demonstrating patriotic (“nationalistic”) motivations. akin to wheeler’s condemnation of the am’s present-day author, the “idealization” of armenia by classical armenian authors was reprehended by nina garsoian, one of the pillars of the american armenian studies, in her following reproaches: “pavstos buzand and movses khorenatzi’s narrative reflects their own ideals – single, united armenia which stands firm against the threats of zoroastrian persia… they stress the unity of the armenian church... they ignore the deep iranian influence on the armenian society and institutions...” 6 at least, as highlighted by these quotes, garsoian, unlike wheeler, recognizes the “patriotic desires for independence and autonomy” of the ancient armenians and their intellectual elite. however, as a major advocate of the hypothesis about ancient armenia’s near total iranization, garsoian disagrees with both buzand and khorenatzi – and, by extension, with the vast corpus of classical armenian historiography – on the cultural substance of ancient armenian society. on armenia’s “iranization” this brings wheeler to detecting the next mortal fault in the am, namely, that “nothing [has been] said about armenia’s iranization (lowercased by wheeler – a.a.) through the parthian arsacid dynasty (66-428).” but to what purpose should anything have been said about armenia’s hypothetical iranization in a book which is concerned primarily with military history and covers mostly the sixth century realities? wheeler’s censure is reminiscent of the mandatory soviet ideological requirement to provide quotations from marx, engels, and lenin in all academic writings, regardless of their subject matter. furthermore, i do not subscribe to the unconvincing assumptions of “armenia’s iranization.” exaggerated beyond measure by its proponents, this theory is especially wrong for the historical period between the fourth and sixth centuries ad – and the am armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 177 deals mainly with the sixth century. here are just a few of my objections, put in brief: armenia and the armenian monarchs had fallen out with the iranian rulers since at least 224 ad, when the sassanids ousted the parthian arsacids from power. many bloody wars had been fought between armenia and sassanid persia in the third, fourth and fifth centuries. armenia adopted christianity in the early fourth century, while iran was officially zoroastrian until its islamization in the seventh. despite borrowings from old and middle persian, the armenian language had been strongly dominant in all armenia since before christ’s era, as evidenced by strabo (see his geography, xi.14.5-6). furthermore, in 405 ad the armenians introduced their own script, which almost immediately brought about national literature in a whole variety of genres. in the fourth-sixth centuries ad, armenia was, as a result, culturally different from iran in language, religion, literature, law, education system, architecture, music as well as in many other important respects. in short, demanding from a historian to speak about armenia’s iranization in the period under discussion is a misconception. (and neither did the strong iranian influence on armenia amount to cultural “iranization” in the earlier period; however that is a topic for another discussion.) concerning the am’s part ii wheeler’s unequivocal assessment of the second part of my book (“on imperial prejudice and expedient omission of armenians in maurice’s strategikon,” pp. 95-113) as “a curious diatribe” is suggested on the basis of a single argument, namely that “in maurice’s day roman territory included three-fourths of armenia.” since wheeler adds nothing else in this regard, the reader could be pushed to surmise – this is the best possible conjecture i can come up with – that the armenians could not have been qualified as eastern roman empire’s possible military opponents and, thus, their omission from maurice’s relevant list could not, and should not, be questioned in any way. however, as the am’s analysis has amply demonstrated, the armenians were both real and potential enemies of the byzantine empire. wheeler has failed to notice three armenian insurrections during maurice’s reign, which should have sufficed to prove the point. he has also failed to notice that the armenian armed forces in the eastern/persian part of armenia continued to be engaged against the byzantines as vassals of the sassanids (besides, the three-fourths of armenia were under the empire’s control only from 591 to 602, while before and after this decennium the proportional control of armenia’s territory by these two feuding empires often maintained a reverse position). further, the reviewer has simply ignored the armenian primary sources, in particular, the seventh-century history of bishop sebeos, where maurice verbatim qualifies the armenians, and their armed forces based in armenia proper, as genuine hostiles to his empire. above all, wheeler overlooks the contemporary historical setting, which manifested the existing hostility between the armenians residing in byzantine part of armenia and the empire. these sources, questions and factors are amply discussed in the am’s part ii. observably, this piece – labeled by wheeler as “a curious diatribe” – has been adequately appreciated by the international community of historians of the late roman and byzantine history as well as political scientists. in a positive review of the am (ancient armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 178 warfare, 2012, vi, 5, pp.54-55), ian hughes, author of belisarius: the last roman general and aetius: attila’s nemesis, assesses the same part ii as “extremely interesting and insightful,” cautioning at the same time that “there is a need to read the section through in its entirety before forming any judgements, as the conclusions are left to the end.” this is exactly what has not been done by wheeler regarding the whole book, rather than only part ii. it is also worth quoting in full the evaluation of the same section by dr. ilkka syvanne, vice chairman of the finnish society for byzantine studies and author of the age of hippotoxotai. art of war in roman revival and disaster 491-63: “the second essay expounds a persuasive set of reasons about why the armenians were omitted from the list of enemies in the strategikon. while doing this, it also unearths some deep-rooted cultural prejudices within the roman empire. on the basis of these findings, it is also easy to see why the arabs were similarly left out of the same list. the original questions put forward here allow the author to reveal explicitly the continuity of – and interplay between – roman and byzantine traditional policies against armenia’s independent or autonomous status on the one hand and ethnic bias against the armenians in roman and byzantine society on the other hand. ayvazyan illustrates how important a role the armenians played in the roman military and how varied, and sometimes hostile, the roman elites’ reactions were towards them. after reading ayvazyan’s analysis, it becomes abundantly clear that the root source of the military effectiveness of the armenian princes and their retinues was their fiercely independent nature. this in turn could cause the roman government to adopt hostile and counterproductive measures to quell their traditionally self-reliant spirit, as exemplified in maurice’s ill-conceived project of transferring the armenian military from armenia to the balkans (see “foreword,” in the am, p.11).” by wheeler’s bizarre standards, syvanne, alongside the authors of britannica and americana encyclopedias and prof. kaegi, should have been also automatically qualified as representatives of “a super-nationalistic branch of armenian historiography.” yet, for some reason, wheeler has bestowed that unrealistic title on me only. the same section of the am, as a separate article, was published, both in english and russian, by such specialized peer-reviewed journals as the medieval warfare (2012, ii.4, pp.33-36) and вестник московского университета [сер. 12]. политические науки [journal of the moscow state university. political science series] (2012, n 1, pp.25-37). 7 on “old military history”, “presentism” and modern terminology to uphold his claim that the am represents “’old military history’ in one of its worst forms, featuring presentism and excessively speculative reconstructions of campaigns,” armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 179 wheeler parenthetically offers two short-formulated examples: “e.g., political assassination as ‘special operations’ and sittas’s death in battle as a planned operation of ‘elite commandos’.” certainly, not all political assassinations can be termed as “special operations,” but only those which entail the following basics: the initial secret planning of the assassination, its implementation by a highly-trained military unit which uses unconventional tactics and combat skills. in addition, special operations typically employ elements of surprise, stealth, self-reliance, speed, and occasionally special equipment. the assassination of gontharis in libya (byzantine africa) in may 546, carried out by the armenian squad of artabanes, utilized all these features (for procopius’s detailed account and its analysis, see am, pp.26-30, 86-90). hence, characterizing this assassination as a “special operation” is thoroughly justified. professional historians have practiced the reasonable application of modern terminology to ancient realities always and on all spheres of human activity. if we consider the military-political-intelligence aspects only, such terms as scorched-earth policy, guerrilla tactics, irregular warfare, counterinsurgency, psychological warfare, tactical planning, strategic advice, public propaganda, espionage, covert action, covert operation, political influence operation, paramilitary operation, influencing political parties, and many others have been increasingly used by military historians.8 “special operations,” the term that unnerved wheeler, has been the title, and major theme, of a recent book on medieval warfare.9 it would be more than appropriate to quote in this regard col. rose mary sheldon, head of the department of history at the same virginia military institute where the journal of military history is published (incidentally, sheldon’s review of the complete roman legions precedes wheeler’s review of the am in the same issue of the jmh): “the ancients certainly did not have our technology, and they rarely used the same terminology… yet to use a term like humint is not inaccurate when describing the collection of intelligence by human means. a spy is a spy, and eavesdropping is eavesdropping whether done by human ear or an electronic device.” 10 to paraphrase sheldon, a special operation is a special operation whether carried out with a machine gun with a silencer or a double-edged sword. the same argument is basically true for the term “the detachment of elite commandos,” which has been used in the am only once (p.69) and in a clearly figurative sense: the killing of a roman general in battle was extremely difficult and rarely accomplished, and it could have been performed only by the best of the best. to sum up, contrary to wheeler’s pontification, the rational use of modern terminology in a historical study is neither “old military history,” nor, moreover, “one of its worst forms.” on the significance of the 538-539 rebellion and efficiency of the armenian forces wheeler’s review carries on with more fault-finding: “procopius’s skeletal account is fattened with hyperbole about the revolt’s significance and the quality and efficiency of the armenian forces, for which maxims of sun tzu and sun pin are cited for support… armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 180 if the revolt were as significant as here alleged, the “satrapies” of southwestern armenia, victims of the same 536 reforms, curiously abstained from participation.” by rejecting this rebellion’s significance, the jmh’s reviewer blatantly – and deliberately (assuming he has read the book at all) – ignores major historical facts, which have been amply elucidated in the am. here is their brief, but sufficient summary. first, the two-year duration of this rebellion best attests to its magnitude (ironically, wheeler admits the am’s conclusion that it lasted for two consecutive years, 538-539: “occasionally a nail is correctly hit on the head,” admits he, with excessive arrogance). second, to quell the armenian uprising, the emperor justinian was forced to send against the rebels two armies, headed by foremost generals of his day. third, the first campaign and its decisive battle against the armenian rebels ended with humiliating defeat; moreover, during the battle, sittas, the roman supreme commander (magister militum), recognized by his contemporaries as an equal to the great belisarius, was killed by the armenians. these facts are more than enough to comprehend the military significance of the rebellion. many other facts revealing its robust logistical capacity, military potential, and critical geopolitical implications (especially, unleashing a new war between the sassanid iran and byzantine empire) are abundantly presented in the am. again, wheeler either has not read the book or intentionally ignored the facts. likewise, it is far from certain whether this liberation attempt in inner armenia was to any extent backed by the so-called satrapies (latin: gentes), the six neighboring autonomous principalities of southwestern armenia, which had been progressively, from 387 ad to 408 ad, detached from the kingdom of great armenia and henceforth firmly allied (foederatae) to the roman empire.11 though there is no direct evidence about their participation, as has been noted in the am, “completely ruling out the presence in this [rebel-controlled] territory of other armenian princely houses only on the basis that their names have not survived is rather excessive” (p.33, note 27). in any case, the considerable military strength of the byzantine armenian rebels in 538-539 does allow for a tentative supposition that at least some of these principalities or their contingents could have participated in this uprising against justinian, especially because the latter abolished the self-rule of the satrapies and merged them into the newly formed regular roman province of fourth armenia only two years before, in 536. the writings of several classical theoreticians of warfare as well as byzantine and iranian treatises on strategy and tactics have served as auxiliary material for penetrating into the thinking and mindsets behind the military campaigns analyzed in the am. wheeler misinterprets when he implies that the maxims of sun tzu and sun bin have been used to directly support the am’s conclusions about the efficiency of the armenian forces. instead of pointlessly rejecting the use of the classics, wheeler should have tried to determine whether the author of the am was able to productively use them or not. the am’s related arguments about the exchange of tactical elements employed by the persian, roman, and armenian military forces as well as the interaction and mutual borrowings of sassanid and late roman military theories (pp.40-41, 71, 77), not surprisingly, have remained unappreciated in his review, too. armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 181 on the identification of oinokhalakon with avnik wheeler disagrees also with the am’s identification of avnik as the location of the decisive battle between the armenians and romans in 539. (as will be shown below, he denies even the actuality of the battle itself.) he reasons that “avnik, without prominence in armenian sources, is an unlikely kalak (city) in a largely un-urbanized armenia.” he further inaccurately claims that it was “michael chamchian (1738-1832), who argued that procopius’s toponym oinokhalakon combines avnik, allegedly pronounced onik in classical armenian, and armenian kalak (city).” in point of fact, the last explanation was elaborated by me (pp.61-62), while chamchian made the same identification without any explanations whatsoever, though presumably on the same basis. if i had the slightest intention to “fatten” my study (as maliciously alleged by wheeler), i could have (and perhaps should have! – i must accept) devoted a whole chapter on the etymology and history of avnik/oinokhalakon, especially because the relevant materials are not available in english. as a scholarly publication, however, the am regularly delegates its reader to the references in the footnotes, for a good deal of additional information. wheeler, inexpertly, did not take the trouble of familiarizing himself with the diversified literature on avnik cited in three consecutive footnotes on page 62, nos. 114-116. the reviewer’s ignorance in the armenian language (both classical and modern), could not serve as an excuse here, since, as a scholar, he is supposed to abstain from passing judgment on – actually scorning – anything he is unable to peruse. in any case, below i will provide the most important details from the literature cited in the am‘s mentioned footnotes that effectively reinforce its argumentation in support of the sameness of avnik and oinokhalakon. concerning the armenian word kalak (city), however, wheeler could have consulted the specialized literature in english, too. as is clear from pavstos buzand’s fifth century text, in ancient and early medieval times kalak designated ‘city’ both in the broad and narrow senses, meaning, in the latter case, “a fortified, garrisoned, and walled stronghold; a fortress,” or, as nina garsoian suggests in her extensive annotation on kalak, a “walled enclosure, city,” and even a “walled hunting preserve.”12 hence, wheeler’s statement on impossibility of avnik being a kalak is inapt, irrespective of whether, in the sixth century, it was just a stronghold, a fortress or a bigger walled settlement. the second known written reference to avnik (after procopius’s oinokhalakon) belongs to byzantine emperor constantine vii porphyrogenitus (905–959). in his famous de administrando imperio, avnik (abnikon) features as an important and populous fortress or city, strategically and commercially tightly interconnected with theodosiopolis.13 the same term of kavstron, translated by the byzantinists both as “city” (jenkins) and “fortress” (bartikyan), is applied by constantine vii, simultaneously, to theodosiopolis, avnik, and manzikert.14 this strategic linkage between theodosiopolis and avnik fully supports the am’s reconstruction of the 539 military campaign in armenia, whereby the armenian rebels retreated to avnik and sittas moved against them from theodosiopolis (see the am, pp.61-67 and also its map 1). that avnik is procopius’s oinokhalachon becomes a convincing certainty, if one considers also this fortress/city’s name variants, preserved in various armenian primary armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 182 armenian folia anglistika sources (note that in armenian berd means “fortress”): avnik, avnkaberd, avnkoberd, avnkuberd, vornik, vornkaberd, unik, onik, ornik, ornkaberd 15. as is easy to see, this toponym was widely known not only by its basic name of avnik, but also with the variants that incorporated also the second component with the meaning of “fortress” (berd), which exactly corresponds to oino[k]-khalak(on), that is avnik/onik-fortress/city. neither is wheeler’s assertion true about avnik being “without prominence” in the armenian sources. the eleventh century history by aristakes lastivertzi relates that, in 1054, tughril beg (ca. 990-1063), the first sultan of the seljuk empire, approached “the impregnable fortress of avnik, where he spotted scores of people and cattle; nevertheless, [deeply] impressed by just its invulnerable appearance, he refused to consider attacking it” and led his army in another direction.16 ever since, this fortress has been mentioned in the later armenian as well as non-armenian sources, featuring conspicuously during mongol invasions too (see the literature cited in footnotes 114-116 of the am). weeler’s loosely formulated, if uncorroborated, objection about avnik being “without prominence” in the armenian sources could further extend to imply that avnik could not be procopius’s oinokhalakon, because the armenian sources had not mentioned avnik before the 11th century. this line of reasoning could also rashly deny avnik’s identification with abnikon, rationalizing that the latter had been mentioned by constantine vii two centuries before avnik was cited by an armenian source (aristakes lastivertzi). however, such a refutation would be doomed, because constantin’s de administrando imperio correctly located this “city/fortress” in the canton of basean (phasiane). by the same perverse logic, it could be even claimed that the armenian rebellion of 538-539 had never happened, because the armenian sources are completely silent about it. but, naturally, the rebellion’s actuality cannot be questioned by such a willful refutation. there were hundreds of fortresses in ancient and medieval armenia, and it should not be surprising that dozens of them were mentioned in armenian sources centuries after their foundation, or that the written historical records regarding many of them have not reached us at all.17 such lack of historical evidence is partly due to the fact that scores of armenian classic and medieval texts have been destroyed during numerous foreign invasions and other national calamities that have befallen upon armenia.18 thus, linguistically, etymologically, historically and geographically, the identification of avnik with oinokhalakon may, i believe, be considered as perfectly accurate.19 wheeler against the primary sources, again! as shown above, wheeler chooses to refute, in just one or two vague phrases, the major findings of the am, which have been substantiated by numerous facts and arguments. another example of such refutations is represented by his following imprecise sentence, intended to prove the nationalism of the am’s author: “byzantine hellenization of armenians and their integration into the byzantine elite (e.g., the emperors maurice and heraclius possibly had armenian blood) are deplored.” since no page of the am is mentioned, nor any passage from it quoted, it is difficult to be certain as to what text exactly wheeler is referring to. his point is nevertheless clear: byzantine policies towards armenia should have been greeted, rather than armenological studies 183 “deplored.” contrary, yet again, to wheeler’s dogmatic stance, the contemporary armenian primary sources – and not the am’s author! – were openly deploring the byzantine policies of incorporation and assimilation, so amiably termed by wheeler as “byzantine hellenization of armenians and their integration into the byzantine elite.” the seventh century armenian historian sebeos, expressing the opinion of a large portion of armenian society, was harshly critical of maurice’s policies of removal of the armenian military forces from armenia or, as he put it, “the perfidious plot by maurice to empty armenia of armenian princes.” the am is a product of historical research and its conclusions are based on the primary sources, while wheeler’s whole unfavorable judgment betrays current ideological banalities and underlying political or, rather, geopolitical preferences. projecting the thoughts and ideas of the primary sources on the living author of the am is an unfortunate attempt at distortion of the historical record. isn’t it natural then that wheeler launches a frontal assault against all ancient and medieval armenian literature, unduly devaluating it thus: “armenian-language sources (of controversial historical value).” not just particular pieces of evidence in these sources are rejected as erratic or unreliable, but the value of the entire voluminous national historiography, rare in most languages, is ludicrously declared controversial – an insensate posture. next, wheeler tries to twist procopius’s concrete evidence regarding the battle of avnik, too. it was not, writes wheeler, “a pitched battle fully planned by the rebels pace ayvazyan, rather than the skirmish procopius describes.” in this passing manner, without any argumentation, two of the major points of the am are flatly rejected: that the military engagement near avnik was a pitched battle, and that it was fully planned by the rebels. meanwhile, the character of this engagement is very clearly defined by procopius: “…since both [roman and armenian] armies were on exceedingly difficult ground where precipices abounded, they did not fight in one place, but scattered about among the ridges and ravines.” 20 as is evident from procopius’s account, this was a battle on the rough terrain where two armies adopted a scattered formation and engaged in numerous isolated combats against each other’s fragmented units. thus, the primary source itself unambiguously resolves the question of whether this was a battle or a skirmish in favor of the former. wheeler ascribes to me what was related by procopius, openly distorting his valuable report and, concurrently, slighting the am’s in-depth analysis of this battle. further, rather than me, it was martindale and syvanne who first rightly categorized the character of this battle, reasonably suggesting that “the ridges and ravines forced both the armenians and the romans to adopt a scattered formation,” which was “so unusual” as even to push procopius of caesarea to pay attention.21 another western scholar, whately, in his phd dissertation on descriptions of battle in the ‘wars’ of procopius preceded me in specifying the battle of avnik as a “pitched” one.22 again, all of these remarks and their authors were specifically referred to in the am, but wheeler has chosen to zero in on me only. as for the battle of avnik being preplanned by the armenian rebel command, the am is putting forward a whole interrelated set of arguments in favor of this version of events. armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 184 rather than trying to refute them, wheeler, again, presents a flat and hollow rejection, which does not qualify as a scholarly critique. dissemination of inaccurate information of personal character wheeler identifies me as “an armenian historian and political scientist associated with the ararat center for strategic research.” thus he tries to belittle even my career, since i am more than just an “associate” of the ararat center; i have been its founding and only director ever since its establishment in 2006. the other important point here is that wheeler fails to mention my much more relevant affiliation (as far as the am is concerned) with the matenadaran, the yerevan institute of ancient manuscripts, where i have been working as a research scholar since 1990 (with several intermissions, connected with my professional career). he could have easily found accurate and freely available information about me on the internet, including on my personal website <www.hayq.org>. but he chose not to. conclusion: on amateurism wheeler, unfortunately, has failed to objectively evaluate my book. he took a nonscholarly path of vicious labeling and empty accusations, which amount to mudslinging against both the am and its author. his methodology of historical research is flawed, with demonstrable infusion of current political-ideological contents. he has been unable even to properly (if at all!) read the am, truly a small book, which he disparages as just “two articles.” wheeler castigates the am as an “amateurish volume.” this is a daring statement for someone who has not made any serious contribution to the study of history of armenia. his brashness is even more unwarranted, when one considers his very limited command of both the primary and secondary sources of the historical theme he claims to assess: while the am uses multi-lingual primary sources and secondary literature with proper research methodology, wheeler often does not know even the subject he is commenting on. in view of his ignorance of armenian and russian, wheeler should have been appreciative, at least, of the considerable portions of historical research in these languages that the am made available for the english-speaking reader for the first time. but the lack of integrity of judgement did not allow him to do that either. indeed, as it has been amply shown above, wheeler himself typifies all the characteristics of a dilettante in the military history of armenia and armenian studies at large. all in all, i am open and would be only too glad to draw on constructive criticisms. certainly the am could have, and does have, deficiencies. to address those that have been detected by myself, the book’s new, second edition, which will be published soon, has been revised and considerably expanded. ps. when my response was ready for forwarding to the jmh, i came across a related piece, written two decades earlier. in 1995, david braund of the university of exeter responded to wheeler’s review of his book georgia in antiquity (oxford university press, 1994). braund notes, in particular, that he had “never received a review so distorted, unsubstantiated and simply unpleasant as that” by wheeler. braund finds wheeler’s armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 185 denunciations as “vague and laden with bile,” his “veiled suggestion” of plagiarism as “false and outrageous.” he objects “to his petulance,” and further characterizes wheeler’s arguments as “annoying,” “silly,” “rather puzzling,” etc.23 braund’s conclusions, of course, are not surprising. it appears that wheeler has not changed. notes: 1. see kaegi, walter e. byzantium and the early islamic conquests (cambridge university press, 1992), pp.189, 198, 202, cf. a separate chapter on “byzantium, armenia, armenians, and early islamic conquests,” ibid., pp.181-204. 2. encyclopedia americana, international ed. (new york: americana corp., 1967, vol. 2), p.332. 3. the new encyclopedia britannica. macropedia (fifteenth ed., vol. 18, chicago, 1984), pp.1039, 1042. 4. ibid., p.1042. 5. “mother tongue and the origins of nationalism: a comparative analysis of the armenian and european primary sources,” armenian folia anglistika (international journal of english studies), no. 1 (2), 2006, pp.123-131 (this is an abridged version of the eponymous study published as a separate book in yerevan, 2001, in arm.); the code of honor of the armenian military, the 4-5th centuries (yerevan, 2000, in arm.); “ancient armenia as a nation-state,” (in arm.) echmiadzin, 2005, no. 5, pp.123-138. 6. гарсоян, н. г. “армения в iv в. (к вопросу уточнения терминов «армения» и «верность»)”, լրաբեր հասարակական գիտությունների, [garsoian, n. g., “armenia in the 4th century (on the question of clarifying the terms ‘armenia’ and ‘loyalty’)” journal of social studies of the armenian academy of sciences], 1971, no. 3. pp.55-56. 7. the russian version was titled as “geopolitical determinant of imperial prejudices and byzantine military pragmatism (from maurice’s strategikon).” 8. some of the terms cited above are derived from sheldon, rose mary, “the ancient imperative: clandestine operations and covert action,” international journal of intelligence and counterintelligence vol. 10, no. 3 (fall 1997), pp.299-315. 9. harari, yuval noah. special operations in the age of chivalry, 1100-1550 (woodbridge: the boydell press, 2007, repr. in 2009, 248pp.). 10. sheldon, rose mary. espionage in the ancient world: an annotated bibliography (jefferson, nc: mcfarland & co., 2003), p.8. 11. on armenian satrapies, see güterbock, karl. römisch-armenien und die römischen satrapien im vierten bis sechsten jahrhundert: eine rechtsgeschichtliche studie (königsberg, 1900). 12. pavstos buzand, history of armenia. transl. and commentary by s. malkhasiantz, yerevan state university press, 1987 (in arm.) (see pp.83, 359, 427, 442, notes 59 and 201); cf. the epic histories attributed to pawstos buzand (buzandaran patmutiwnk). translation and commentary by nina garsoian (cambridge, mass.harvard university press, 1989), pp.535-536. 13. constantine porphyrogenitus, de administrando imperio. greek text edited by gy. moravcsik, english translation by r. j. h. jenkins. new, revised edition (dumbarton oaks center for byzantine studies, washington d. c., 1967), ch. 45, pp.208, 211, 213, 288 14. ibid.; cf. բյուզանդական աղբյուրներ։ հ. բ, կոնստանտին ծիրանածին թարգմ. բնագրից, առաջաբան և ծան. հրաչ բարթիկյանի [byzantine sources. vol. ii, constantine porphyrogenitus. the preface, transl. into armenian from the original and commentary by h. m. bartikyan], yerevan, 1970, pp.15-18, 232 (note 21). armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 186 15. հայաստանի և հարակից շրջանների տեղանունների բառարան [the dictionary of toponyms of armenia and neighboring areas, vol. 1], yerevan, 1986, pp.365-366. 16. aristakes lastivertzi, history (venice, 1901, in arm.), p.80; idem. (tiflis, 1912, p.100, in arm.). 17. see միքայէլ յովհաննէսեան, հայաստանի բերդերը [michael hovannisian, the fortresses of armenia], venice, 1970. 18. here it will suffice to mention only the pillage and destruction of 10,000 manuscripts by seljuk turks in the fortress of baghaberd in 1170 (stepanos orbelian, the history of syunik. rendered into modern armenian and commented by a. abrahamyan, yerevan, 1986. in arm., p.280) or the thousands of manuscripts destroyed during the armenian genocide of 1915-1922. 19. in july 2012, almost immediately after the publication of the am, i managed to visit the site of the battle of avnik (currently in modern turkey) and climbed up the avnik fortress itself. the personal observation of the terrain additionally corroborated my findings. i will be commenting on the resulting insights and new valuable visual materials in the second edition of the book. 20. procopius of caesaria, history of the wars: the persian war. vol. i, books 1-2. with an english translation by h. b. dewing, london: william heinemann-new york: the macmillan co., 1914 (loeb classical library, english and greek edition), ii.3.19. 21. syvanne (syvänne), ilkka. the age of hippotoxotai. art of war in roman revival and disaster 491-636. phd dissertation in history (the university of tampere, finland, 2004), pp.440, 441 (note 1); quoted in the am, p.67. cf. martindale, j. r. the prosopography of the later roman empire: volume iii. ad 527-641 (cambridge university press: cambridge, 1992), p.162. 22. whately, conor campbell. descriptions of battle in the ‘wars’ of procopius. phd dissertation in classics and ancient history, the university of warwick, 2009, pp.155-157, 167-168, 188-189, 195, 199, the battle in question is specifically identified as a pitched one on pp. 155 (note 28) and 199; quoted in the am, p.25, note 7. 23. david braund, “response: georgia in antiquity again,” bryn mawr classical review, 95.09.28, retrieved from http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/1995/95.09.28.html. ä³ï³ëë³ý ·ñ³ëáëçý (²ñù»ý ²ûí³½û³ýç §ð³û ½çýíáñ³ï³ýáõãûáõýá ´ûáõ½³ý¹³ï³ý ï³ûëñáõãûáõýáõù¦ ù»ý³·ñáõãûáõýá ¨ ¾í»ñ»ã ìçé»ñç §·ñ³ëáëáõãûáõýá¦) ² ù»ñçïû³ý the journal of military history (§è³½ù³ï³ý å³ïùáõãû³ý ñ³ý¹» ë¦)-áõù ¸ûáõï ñ³ù³éë³ñ³ýç åñáý»ëáñ ¾í»ñ»ã ìçé»ñá ññ³å³ñ³ï»é ¿ ·ñ³ëáëáõãûáõý ñ»õçý³ïç the armenian military in the byzantine empire: conflict and alliance under justinian and maurice (alfortville: sigest, 2012) ù»ý³·ñáõãû³ý ù³ëçý: ². ²ûí³½û³ýá ù»ï ³é ù»ï ñ»ñùáõù ¿ ³û¹ §·ñ³ëáëáõãû³ý¦ ù»ç ï»õ ·ï³í ³ýñçùý ¹ñáõûãý»ñá: ´³ó³ñ³ûïí³í »ý ·ñ³ëáëç ëçñáõ³ï³ýáõãûáõýá, å³ïù³÷³ëï³ï³ý áõ ï»ë³μ³ ý³ï³ý ëë³éý»ñá, ùçïáõùý³íáñáõãûáõýá, ³õμûáõñ³·çï³ï³ý ñ³ï³ñ³ûï³ï³ýáõãûáõýá: êáõûý å³ï³ëë³ý ñá¹í³íç ïñ׳ïí³í ï³ñμ» ñ³ïá éáõûë ¿ ï»ë»é §è³½ù³ï³ý å³ïùáõãû³ý ñ³ý¹» ë¦-áõù (ï»՛ë the journal of military history, july 2013 issue (vol. 77, no. 3), pp.1207-1210): armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 187 maket 2011-2:layout 1.qxd discourse approach to teaching language and communication skills gohar hovsepyan yerevan state university a number of scholars have emphasized the importance of using findings of studieson the performance of speech acts in real-life conversations for teaching languages and communicative competence. acts of communication such as giving advice or directives involve much more than the performance of a single speech act. the relevance of basing functional language teaching on the findings of discourse analyses has been attested by a number of publications (cook 1989; mccarthy 1998; mccarthy and carter 1994). mccarthy and carter (1995) argue for a discourse approach to teaching grammar, and dornyei and thurrell (1994) believe a systematic approach to teaching conversational skills based on knowledge of how conversations are structured can take learners a long way towards second language acquisition. other studies compare naturally occurring discourse with the language taught in textbooks. for example, pearson (1986) examines agreeing and disagreeing, while scotton and bernsten (1988) analyze the language of direction-giving. both authors draw attention to a discrepancy between the language of real-life discourse and the language of textbooks. previous studies have therefore shown that a great deal can be learned from naturally occurring discourse for different areas of language teaching, ranging from grammar and vocabulary to pragmatic and sociolinguistic competence. pragmatic or functional uses of language, such as thanking, making suggestions, refusing, agreeing, asking for information, are important in many different types of interactions. performing speech acts is a fairly complex phenomenon, which involves sociocultural knowledge about when to perform a speech act and which one to choose as appropriate in a given circumstance. the sociolinguistic knowledge regarding the actual linguistic realization of each speech act appropriate to the particular situation (cohen 1996) is also an important component of the speech act. however, this complexity has not always been recognized in the teaching of speech acts or functions. there has frequently been an overly simplistic tendency to equate speech acts with certain linguistic formulae (mccarthy 1998:19), for instance to teach learners how to give advice, they may receive a list of phrases such as: you should. . . why don’t you. . .? if i were you i’d. . . you ought to. . . such lists tend to obscure the fact that not all these phrases may be appropriate in every situation, depending on such factors as the precise nature of the interaction and the relationship between the speakers (e.g. status and social distance). a further comarmenian folia anglistikamethodology 111 plication may arise if there are sociocultural differences between the culture of the target language and the learner’s culture regarding the type of speech act. cohen (1996) remarks that in one culture a speech act such as thanking might be appropriate at the end of a meal, whereas in another culture the same situation would call for an apology. hymes argues that the study of language must concern itself with describing and analyzing the ability of the native speakers to use language for communication in real situations (communicative competence) rather than limiting itself to describing the potential ability of the ideal speaker to produce grammatically correct sentences (linguistic competence). speakers of a language in particular communities are able to communicate with each other in a manner which is not only correct but also appropriate to the sociocultural context (hymes 1989). another problem is that the teaching of speech acts has often focused on lists of phrases in isolation from any discourse context. performing speech acts, however, usually involves more than such one-line contributions. as cohen (1996) points out, several stages or “semantic formulas”, as he calls them, are often involved, for example, for the act of apologizing: acknowledging responsibility, offering repair, giving an explanation or excuse. in addition, study of real-life conversations shows that performing speech acts is an intrinsically interactive phenomenon. after all, “doing” things like giving advice or making a request usually involves at least some kind of response from an addressee (advice may be either accepted or rejected), and usually a longer exchange. conversation analysts have identified such minimal exchanges, or “adjacency pairs” (such as invite— accept/refuse), as the basic unit of interaction in talk (levinson 1983: 284–370). research in conversation analysis has also demonstrated that the function of any utterance is dependent on its sequential placement in talk-in-interaction. sacks (1987) and schegloff (1984, 1988) show how the analysis of a speech act in isolation can lead to a completely different interpretation than that demonstrably arrived at by the participants in a conversation. hence, speech acts should be seen not as isolated phenomena, but as unfolding in discourse. studying naturally occurring conversation can reveal how such acts or communicative functions are performed within longer stretches of discourse. insights gathered from the analysis of speech acts performed in naturally occurring spoken discourse have important implications for the teaching of functional language. for instance, various studies have indicated, that the performance of direct speech acts by means of performatives seems to be relatively unusual, with their use often limited to very specific communicative contexts and functions: for clarification, as framing devices to signal discourse goals, and as argumentative devices (koester 2000). clearly it is important for learners to be aware of these restrictions on the use of performatives: their incorrect use can have the unintended effect of the speaker sounding too direct or even rude. for example, thomas (1984) shows that the inappropriate use of performatives can result in cross-cultural “pragmatic failure”. hence, it is important for learners to be able to correctly understand and use direct speech acts, and not take them at face value, without looking at the whole stretch of discourse. performing communicative acts, such as armenian folia anglistika methodology 112 giving advice or instructions, is an interactive endeavor, and different speech acts generate different discourse patterns and linguistic choices. the above approach proceeds with the assumption that it is possible to teach pragmatic competence, however, mere exposure to language in natural contexts is not enough. this assumption is supported by a number of studies cited in cohen (1996), showing that formal instruction can improve the ability to perform speech acts. in teaching speech acts, it is important to take into account both micro and macro levels of discourse. at the micro-level, learners need to learn appropriate responses for different types of initiating utterances. to a large extent, this is already part of current teaching practice, for example through “mini-dialogue” practice. what the analysis of naturally occurring conversation can contribute is a more accurate picture of the types of appropriate responses depending on the speech act, such as advice, instructions, offers. for instance, evaluation is usually a component of advice responses (e.g. that’s a good idea), but not of responses to directives. at the macro discourse level, learners need an opportunity to practice the discourse patterns of different types of conversations, including how to open and close conversations. one important aspect of pragmatic competence in this connection is the ability to make discourse frames explicit: to signal (e.g. through meta-statements such as this is only a suggestion, i was kidding, this is a request) what type of discourse one wishes to engage in. taking a discourse approach to teaching functions means that the speech acts to be taught should be generated from discourse types (e.g. making arrangements, giving instructions, service encounters), rather than occurring as separate elements in the syllabus (burns and joyce 1997; mccarthy and carter 1994). the discourse or text types to be included in the syllabus depend of course on the aims of the course: a conversation course will require different discourse types than a course in legal english. one attempt to incorporate a discourse element into the syllabus is described in the learning objectives for the recently revised european language certificates (teichmann and kiefer 1998). one of the specified learning objectives is the ability to engage in the production of certain discourse types, called “scenarios”, such as favor-seeking, narrating, etc. these scenarios integrate discourse structure with functions, strategies and lexical and grammatical features of a particular communicative setting. there are various other options to use the insights gained from naturally occurring talk in instruction. recordings and transcripts of actual conversations can be used for listening practice. instructors can use the data to devise various other classroom tasks promoting communication skills. one well-known communicative activity which can be used to sensitize learners to the fact that conversations have structures and phases is an unjumbling task, where learners rearrange the parts of a conversation into the right order (either the transcript of a real-life conversation or a dialogue modelled on such a conversation can be used). in order to develop learners’ productive ability in this area, role play activities can be devised: for example, learners can develop conversations from skeletons based on the different phases of the discourse. armenian folia anglistikamethodology 113 sometimes minor adjustments to current teaching practice may be necessary. for example, learning how to paraphrase and check information is a skill which is commonly taught. what may be a new insight from discourse analysis is, for example, the importance of checking and clarifying through using “formulas” with performatives. one of the restricted uses of performatives aims at checking and clarifying (e.g. what i mean is. . ., so you’re saying. . .). learners could be taught the use of such devices specifically for the skill of paraphrasing and checking understanding; and this skill can be practiced as a component of instructional discourse. in teaching communicative functions, it is important to move away from simply teaching lists of phrases. in addition to being able to cope with the discourse dimension of speech acts, learners need to develop awareness of the differences between various realizations of the same speech act; for example, between explicit performatives and more indirect ways of communicating the same meaning. this means that language awareness activities should play an important role, which could involve, for instance, exposing learners to real-life recordings. teaching speech acts can also provide a rich opportunity for exploring sociolinguistic and cross-cultural issues. the appropriate realization and level of directness of any speech act is highly sensitive to the sociocultural context. this is particularly important when there is a status or power differential, as in the office environment. again, familiar classroom tasks could be used to develop awareness of such sociocultural issues; for example identifying appropriate speech act realizations depending on speaker relationship (employer–employee or vice versa), i.e. through multiple choice, matching or more creative activities. cross-cultural differences can also be explored, for example by comparing speech acts in the target language with the learners’ language/culture and examining such questions as: which speech acts are appropriate to a particular situation; how these speech acts are realized; in which language or culture they are more direct, etc. to sum up, discourse analysis can provide valuable insights into the way people interact through speaking, and thus its findings can be effectively used in sociolinguistics, cross-cultural communication and different areas of language teaching, including grammar, vocabulary, communication strategies, etc. references: 1. burns, a.; joyce, h. (1997) focus on speaking. sydney: macquarie university. 2. carter, r.a. (1998) orders of reality. // cancode, communication, and culture. elt journal, 52 (1). oxford: oup. 3. cohen, a.d. (1996) developing the ability to perform speech acts. // studies in second language acquisition, 18 (2). cambridge: cup. 4. cook, g. (1989) discourse. oxford: oup. 5. dornyei, z.; thurrell, s. (1994) teaching conversational skills intensively: course content and rationale. // elt journal, 48 (1). oxford: oup. armenian folia anglistika methodology 114 6. hymes, d.h. (ed.) (1964) language in culture and society: a reader in linguistics and anthropology. new york: harper & row. 7. hymes, d.h. (1989) ways of speaking. // explorations in the ethnography of speaking. / ed. by r. bauman and j. sherzer. cambridge: cup. 8. koester, a. (2000) getting things done and getting along in the office. // dialogue analysis vii: working with dialogue: selected papers from the 7th iada conference. / ed. by m. coulthard, j. cotterill, f. rock. tubingen: max niemeyer verlag gmbh. 9. levinson, s.c. (1983) pragmatics. cambridge: cup. 10. mccarthy, m.j. (1998) spoken language and applied linguistics. cambridge: cup. 11. mccarthy, m.j.; carter, r.a. (1994) language as discourse: perspectives for language teaching. london: longman. 12. mccarthy, m.j.; carter, r.a. (1995) spoken grammar: what is it and how can we teach it? // elt journal, 49 (3). oxford: oup. 13. pearson, e. (1986) agreement/disagreement: an example of results of discourse analysis applied to the oral english classroom. // international review of applied linguistics 74: de gruyter mouton. 14. sacks, h. (1987) on the preferences for agreement and contiguity in sequences in conversation. // talk and social organization. / ed. by g. button & j.r. lee. clevedon, uk: multilingual matters. 15. schegloff, e. (1984) on some questions and ambiguities in conversation. // structures of social action: studies in conversation analysis. / ed. by atkinson, j. heritage. cambridge: cup. j.m 16. schegloff, e. (1988) presequences and indirection: applying speech act theory to ordinary conversation. // journal of pragmatics, 12. elsevier. 17. scotton, c.m. bernsten, j. (1988) natural conversations as a model for textbook dialogue. // applied linguistics 9 (4). oxford: oup. 18. teichmann, h.d.; kiefer, p. (1998) the european language certificates: certificate in english. learning objectives and test format. frankfurt am main: wbt weiterbildungs-testsysteme gmbh. 19. thomas, j. (1984) cross-cultural discourse as “unequal encounter”: towards a pragmatic analysis. // applied linguistics, 5 (3). oxford: oup. ¸çëïáõñëç í»ñéáõíáõãûáõýá 黽í³ï³ý ¨ ñ³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý ñùïáõãûáõýý»ñ áõëáõó³ý»éáõ ýå³ï³ïáí êáëáõ³ï³ý ³ïï»ñç ñ³çáõ çñ³ï³ý³óáõùá μ³í³ï³ýçý μ³ñ¹ »ñ¨áõûã ¿, áñá »ýã³¹ñáõù ¿ ñ³ýñ³ùß³ïáõã³ûçý ·çï»éçù ³ûý ù³ëçý, ã» çýã ñ³ý·³ ù³ýùý»ñáõù ëáëáõ³ï³ý ³ïïç çýã ó¨»ñ áõ çýã é³½ù³í³ñáõãûáõý ¿ å»ïù ïçñ³é»é, ã» ïíû³é ³ïïç ï³ï³ñáõùá »ñμ ¿ ï»õçý, ¨ ³ûéý: ê³ï³ûý ýù³ý ñ³ù³ïáõù³ýç ùáï»óù³ý ³ýññ³å»ßïáõãûáõýá ùçßï ã¿, áñ áýï³éíáõù ¨ áý¹áõýíáõù ¿ ëáëáõ³ï³ý ³ïï»ñç áõëáõóù³ý ·áñíáýã³óáõù: ð³×³ë ýï³ïíáõù ¿ ëáëáõ³ï³ý ³ïïá áñáß³ïç 黽í³ï³ý ï³õ³å³ñý»ñç ñ»ï ýáõûý³óý»éáõ ã³÷³ ½³ýó å³ñ½»óí³í ñ³ïáõù: armenian folia anglistikamethodology 115 ¸çëïáõñëç í»ñéáõíáõãûáõýý ³ñå»ù³íáñ ýûáõã ï³ñáõ ¿ ïñ³ù³¹ñ»é 黽íç ³ñ¹ûáõý³í»ï áõëáõóù³ý ñ³ù³ñ, áý¹ áñáõù ï³ñμ»ñ ù³ï³ñ¹³ïý»ñáõù áõ áéáñïý»ñáõù. ã»° ù»ñ³ï³ýáõãû³ý, ã»° μ³é³å³ß³ñç, ã»° ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý é³½ù³í³ñáõãûáõýý»ñç, ùççùß³ïáõã³ûçý ñ³õáñ¹³ïóáõãû³ý ¨ ã»° ñ³ýñ³é»½í³μ³ ýáõãû³ý áõëáõóù³ý ¹³ëáýã³óý»ñáõù: armenian folia anglistika methodology 116 maket 2012 1-2:layout 1.qxd the cooperative learning method in teaching efl to armenian students arus markaryan, naira avakyan yerevan state university t he challenge for any teacher is finding new teaching methods to hold their stu-dents’ interest. one of the best ways to get students involved in the class is through the method of cooperative (collaborative) learning (cl). the application of cl to classroom teaching finds its root in the 1970s when israel and the united states began to design and study cooperative learning models for classroom context (kessler 1992). now cl is applied in almost all schools and, increasingly, in colleges and universities all over the world, and is claimed to be an effective teaching method in foreign/second language education. by far the most notable names associated with cl are the johnsons and the kagans.1 cl is a technique in education based on the idea that two people learn concepts better together than alone. when students collaborate, they learn studying and comprehension techniques from their peers. according to johnson & johnson (1998), cl is grouping students together to accomplish shared learning goals. students work in small groups of three or four to get the most out of their own learning and each other’s learning. they encourage and support each other to learn and are responsible for their own as well as their teammates’ learning. unlike individual learning, people engaged in cl capitalize on one another’s resources and skills (asking one another for information, evaluating one another’s ideas, monitoring one another’s work, etc.). teachers often frown upon the idea of cl. they feel students will waste their time talking more and studying less. yet, research has indicated that discussing a topic that is being learnt leads to better retention. students who study in solitude may have their own techniques of retention. but no one can remember vast amounts of information learnt in solitude; unless, of course, the learnt matter is put into practice.when studying in groups, students automatically put into practice what they learnt by speaking about the topics of study to fellow study-members. a discussion about a topic creates a lot of opinions among the group-members. they start to explain their version of the concept. at the end of it all, a student can actually take an exam without even reading a word. ted panitz lists over 60 benefits provided by cl (panitz 1996). these benefits can be summarized into four major categories: social, psychological, academic and assessment. cl promotes social interactions; thus students benefit in a number of ways from the social perspective. by having the students explain their reasoning and conclusions, cl helps develop oral communication skills. students develop and practice skills that will be needed to function in society and their workplace: leadership, decision-making, trust building, communication and conflict-management. students also benefit psychologically from cl. johnson and johnson claim that cl experiences promote more positive attitudes toward learning and instruction than other teaching methodologies (johnson and johnson 1989). because students play an active armenian folia anglistika methodology 104 role in the learning process in cl, their satisfaction with the learning experience is enhanced. cl also helps to develop interpersonal relationships among students. the opportunity to discuss their ideas in smaller groups and receive feedback on those ideas helps to build student self-esteem. in a lecture format, individual students are called upon to answer a question in front of the entire class without having much time to think about the answer. cl creates a safe environment because solutions come from the group rather than from the individual. errors in conclusions and thought processes are corrected within the group before they are presented to the class. cl methods provide several academic benefits for students as they learn and retain significantly more information than students taught by other methods. sharing their ideas with the group, constant explaining and discussing help students to develop clearer concepts. students also benefit from cl academically in the sense that there is more of a potential for success when students work in groups. individuals tend to give up when they get stuck, whereas a group of students is more likely to find a way to keep going. there are also many benefits of cl from the perspective of assessment. it provides instant feedback to the students and instructor because the effectiveness of each class can be observed. as instructors move around the room and observe each group of students interacting and explaining their theories, they are able to detect misconceptions early enough to correct them. only a few minutes of observation during each class session can provide helpful insight into students’ abilities and growth. along with so many advantages and benefits, the cl method has a number of drawbacks, which discourages many teachers from using this method in their classrooms. the reasons for which teachers may avoid using this method can be the following: loss of control in the classroom perhaps the biggest impediment to cl lies in the fact that many teachers feel they give up control of the class if they give more responsibility to the students for their learning. when a teacher lectures s/he gets the feeling that the content has been covered, because it has been presented to the students in an orderly fashion. lack of self-confidence by teachers it takes a great deal of confidence in one’s self and one’s students to transfer the responsibility of learning to the student. many teachers lack the self-confidence to try methods which may expose them to potentially difficult situations, for example being asked unanticipated questions. fear of the loss of content coverage teachers fear a loss in content when they use cl methods because group interactions often take longer than simple lectures. students need time to accumulate enough information in order to be able to use it within their groups. they need time to work together to fulfill the task. lack of prepared materials for use in class the use of cl requires teachers to build a set of handouts. current textbooks generally offer a set of questions at the end of each chapter which are usually answered by students individually. this lack of materials greatly increases the teacher’s work. lack of familiarity with alternate assessment techniques assessment is a major concern frequently expressed by teachers. they presume that individual accountability will be lost or that one student will dominate the group or do all the work for the group. they are unfamiliar with how to assess group efforts and assign grades to groups. techniques available armenian folia anglistikamethodology 105 for assessing groups include: teacher observations during group work, group grading for projects, students grading each other or evaluating the level of contribution made by each member to a team project, and the use of individual quizzes, exams or assignments. students’ resistance to cl techniques a cause for concern by teachers starting cl is the initial student reaction. the primary approach in schools is one of competition for grades and recognition. students feel that the lecture method is easier because they are passive during the class while apparently receiving the necessary information. in contrast, interactive classes are very intense. the responsibility for learning is shifted to the student. this situation is both mentally and physically tiring. with all its advantages and drawbacks the cooperative learning method has been adopted by schools, colleges and universities throughout the world and is used with varying success in the teaching of all academic subjects. as to armenia, there are three high schools in yerevan which have adopted the method known as collective learning. it was presumably worked out by alexander rivin, a russian pedagogue, at the beginning of the 20 th century, in russia, and later experimented and implemented by his pupils and supporters. as the name suggests, the method greatly resembles the cl method, with a slight difference: though students work in groups and keep helping, teaching, consulting and explaining to one another, in the case of collective learning each student chooses his/her own route, i.e. which units s/he wants to study, in what succession and at what speed. naturally, this creates difficulties in large classrooms with 28-35 students. when asked to share their impressions of this method, the teachers of english at school #118, unhesitatingly admitted its benefits: a much higher degree of student retention, better understanding of the material, engagement of all the students in active work, and higher scores in formative and summative tests. among the drawbacks they mentioned the tremendous amount of work a teacher has to do before, during and after each lesson, high noise level in the classroom, frequent switches to the armenian language, smaller amount of material covered during the term, exaggerated grades in peer assessment, etc. being university teachers of english, we strongly believe that if the cl method becomes the one and only method used in class, its obvious benefits and efficiency will undoubtedly be reduced, because repetition and uniformity lead to boredom. however, the peculiarities of this method offer an excellent opportunity for developing communicative skills, which our students need to develop. so, many of the activities and techniques used in the cl method, can be efficiently used in our classrooms to practice a number of skills: listening comprehension, grammar and vocabulary retention; conversational skills (asking and answering questions, agreeing and disagreeing with statements, polite requests, forming and expressing ideas and individual opinions and sharing them with peers, etc.) as well as social skills (agreeing and supporting one another and resolving conflicts). some of the activities which we think (based on our own teaching experience) can be successfully used in the english class are the following: 1. the teacher asks a question concerning the topic of the lesson. students think silently about it then pair up and exchange thoughts. next, the pairs share their responses with other pairs or the entire group and give the teacher a correct, complete answer. 2. the students are given a topic for discussion. first, individuals interview their partarmenian folia anglistika methodology 106 ners by asking questions to find out their opinion or ideas concerning the topic. then they reverse the roles and finally the members share their partner’s response with the other students and the teacher. 3. teachers stop any time during a lecture or discussion and give the teams three minutes to review what has been said, ask clarifying questions or answer the students’ questions. 4. students do an exercise (e.g. a grammar exercise on a unit they find especially difficult) first as a team, then with a partner, and finally on their own. this can motivate students to succeed in solving problems which initially were beyond their ability. 5. the teacher chooses some students to be teachers, assigns them a grammar unit, gives them time to study it, and prepare a lesson for the rest of their classmates. they should make use of visual aids to enhance their lessons and should be ready to answer questions as well. 6. many textbooks have summarizing questions at the end of each text or unit. instead of answering them individually, students work in a team. groups can answer the questions in the book or formulate their own questions and have other groups answer them. 7. for creative writing or summarizing, the teacher gives the students a sentence starter and asks each team to finish that sentence. then, they pass their paper to the right, take another one from the left, read the one they received, and add a sentence to that one. after a few rounds, several great stories appear. the students can add a conclusion or edit their favorite one to share with the class. 8. when reading out the homework exercises, some students get bored, or their attention shifts to other things and they stop following. instead, they can be asked to compare their homework (e.g. an exercise requiring to insert the correct articles, or prepositions, or use the correct tense-forms, exercises on the vocabulary of the unit, etc.) with their partner, and if there are any differences, discuss them together, try to find the correct answer by explaining, and proving the correctness of their choice. when they come to a joined conclusion, they compare their homework with that of other groups. in the end, the teacher corrects their mistakes, if there are any left, and settles the arguments. students enjoy working in groups for a short period during the lesson. however, a study group might become a failure. it could change from a study group into a gossip group. concentration levels may recede, and students may start talking about something not relevant to the assignment. this can be avoided if the teacher walks about the classroom, visiting each group, assisting those that are facing problems, and helping them solve the issues. at the same time, s/he must remember to praise the students and teams who are making an effort to cooperate and who are progressing nicely with the assignment. notes: 1. roger t. johnson and david w. johnson are brothers who were on faculty at the college of education, university of minnesota. their research regarding cooperative learning initiated in the 1960’s as they began investigating cooperation and competition in learning situations. in 1985, dr. spencer kagan introduced the structural approach to cooperative learnarmenian folia anglistikamethodology 107 ing, which is now used worldwide in classrooms at all grade levels. his wife, laurie kagan, former director of elementary education for the state of nevada, develops all kagan training materials. rather than stressing complex cooperative learning lessons, theme units, projects, and centers, the kagan structural approach makes cooperative learning part of any lesson through the addition of cooperative structures. references: 1. cohen, e.g. (1994) designing group work: strategies for the heterogeneous classroom. new york: teachers college press. 2. johnson, d.; johnson, r. (2001) an overview of cooperative learning. <http://www.clcrc.com> 3. johnson, d.w. & johnson, r.t. (1998) learning together and alone: cooperative, competitive, and individualistic learning (5th edition). boston, ma: allyn and bacon. 4. johnson, d.; johnson, r.; holubec, e.; roy, p. (1984) circles of learning: cooperation in the classroom. alexandria, va: association for supervision and curriculum development. 5. kagan, s.; kagan, l. (2001) structures for emotional intelligence. kagan online magazine, 4 (4). <http://www.kaganonline.com> 6. kagan s. (1994) cooperative learning. san clemente, ca: kagan publishing. <www.kaganonline.com> 7. kessler, c. (ed.) (1992) cooperative language learning. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice hall regents. 8. slavin, r.e. (1990) cooperative learning: theory, research, and practice. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice hall. 9. panitz, t. (1996) 67 benefits of cooperative learning.<home.capecod.net/~tpanitz/ starterpages/articles.htm> 10. panitz, t. (1996) a definition of collaborative vs cooperative learning. <www.londonmet.ac.uk> 11. epshtein, m.; rusakov, a. (2000) kollektivnyi sposob obucheniya, ili paradoksy metoda rivina. <rus.1september.ru/article> ð³ù³·áñí³ïó³ûçý áõëáõóù³ý ù»ãá¹ç ïçñ³éáõùá ñ³û áõë³ýáõý»ñçý ³ý·é»ñ»ý ¹³ë³í³ý¹»éçë ðá¹í³íý ³ý¹ñ³¹³éýáõù ¿ ñ³ù³·áñí³ïó³ûçý áõëáõóù³ý ù»ãá¹ç áñáß ³é³í»éáõãûáõýý»ñçý ¨ ã»ñáõãûáõýý»ñçý, ¨ ³ûý ñùïáõãûáõýý»ñçý, áñ áõë³ýáõá ó»éù ¿ μ»ñáõù ù»ãá¹ç ïçñ³éù³ý ßýáññçí: àëï ñ»õçý³ïý»ñç` çñ ùç ß³ñù ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñç ßýáññçí ³ûë ù»ãá¹á ï³ñáõ ¿ ñ³ïï³å»ë û·ï³ï³ñ éçý»é ûï³ñ 黽íáí ñ³õáñ¹³ïóí»éáõ ñùïáõãûáõýý»ñ ½³ñ·³óý»éáõ ñ³ù³ñ: ²é³ç³ñïíáõù »ý ýûáõãç ïñïýáõãû³ý, ïý³ûçý ³ßë³ï³ýùç ëïáõ·ù³ý, ñ³ñó»ñç ùýý³ñïù³ý ùç ß³ñù »õ³ý³ïý»ñ, áñáýù áõë³ýáõç ñ³ù³ñ ï³ñáõ »ý ñ»ï³ùñùçñ ¨ û·ï³ï³ñ éçý»é: armenian folia anglistika methodology 108 maket 2011:layout 1.qxd workshop as a relevant means of interactive teaching ani manukyan yerevan state pedagogical university “men must be taught as if you taught them not, and things unknown posed as things forgot”. alexander pope m odern pedagogical approaches provide new and exciting opportunities for edu-cators to review their methods of teaching. the teachers’ goal should be raising happy, healthy and productive citizens who can contribute to society and exhibit love for learning. this goal cannot be reached without carefully planned checkpoints along the way of learning. the way we learn often determines the quality and usefulness of the knowledge gained. some argue, that only learning from experience leads to usable knowledge. however, learning only by experience without the benefit of structural education of training, is a slow “hit and miss” process. without the structure and direction of workshops and formal training programs, there is no way to be sure experience is providing all the important learning we need. it is easy for us, educators to get caught in the cycle of performing our day-to-day activities. we get into a teaching routine and rarely stop to think about why we teach the way we teach or if our lessons are designed, implemented and assessed with purpose. we must possess a core set of beliefs that all children deserve respect and a chance to have a better life through the gift of learning. we must furthermore realize that it is the responsibility of the teacher to be a child advocate and encourage him to express his ideas on any information given, have opinion about everyday issues and up-to-date topics of international interest and investigate familiar subjects from new angles. engaging the learners in the process of learning and providing a springboard for their own ideas and communicative needs should be the teachers’ main purpose. one of the promising ways to catch up with this purpose is organizing workshops on various themes and stimulate students to debate, discuss and enjoy the process. workshop is one of the most instinctive features among the human beings as seldom do we accept anything without any argument or discussion about its implications. but still we do not give debating and discussion its due importance as an art which can help in the development of a personality and help an individual to instill confidence in himself. the practical usage of workshops is incredible as it is required for a lawyer in court, as well as a politician in political rallies, as well as in the parliament to take up against the attack of the opposing party (mellander 1993:47-50). even educational systems of many countries recognize the importance of constructive workshops and debating and that is why workshops are a regular fixture in many countries’ school curriculum. teachers as workshop leaders need to understand how people learn in order to fully appreciate and apply new interactive methods of teaching. they should be guides, coacharmenian folia anglistikamethodology 105 es, facilitators, and democratic leaders as opposed to traditional leaders. rather than simply presenting material to a captive and passive audience, you deal with participants who are active, involved and who are able to withdraw their own conclusions. they should assist participants to create and discover their own opinions and insights, help participants to find words for things that they already understand intuitively (kolb 1985:122148). for democratic leadership to be possible, the assumption must be made that participants will be motivated to learn, think, contribute and act appropriately. the group must be willing to work as one. for learning to occur, workshop leaders need to: • encourage questioning and answering questions from their own experience, • provide a supportive and challenging workshop climate, • do away with any sort of punishment and overlook mistakes, because they create differences, and differences enable learning. here are some principles that workshop leaders should take into consideration: • learning is unique to each individual. every person learns at his own pace and his own way. • learners want workshops focused on real life here-and-now problems and tasks, rather than on academic situations. • the material has to be provided in manageable steps. in this way learners understand as they learn, and gradually come to master the complete task. • learners need positive reinforcement when they first practice a new skill. workshop leaders need to avoid: • taking themselves too seriously, • acting defensively when challenged, • answering a learner’s question before allowing other learners to respond, • speaking too long, • asking closed ended questions even though more group input is needed. if we don’t want to live in a dictatorship, we must be vigilant to preserve our freedom. if we wish to preserve our freedom, we must be informed on the issues which require that we become acquainted with alternative points of view. the history of the development of civilization can be seen as the history of workshops on issues (weisboard 1989:35). in democratic societies, there must be public debating and interactive workshops and we must keep in our minds that constructive debating is an art. with all this in mind, the following suggestions are offered. learning objectives • select and apply appropriate methods of communication in various experiences. • work collaboratively with others. • approach communication experiences (both sending and receiving) as active, thinking participants. • manage time and resources when planning communication experiences. • solve problems and make decisions as part of the communication process. • consider various types of reasoning. armenian folia anglistika methodology 106 • consider various appeals to an audience. • consider the communicator’s moral and ethical responsibilities. • demonstrate the ability to find and select relevant text. • speak to clarify and extend thinking. • speak to persuade, demonstrate, or entertain. • attend to voice, body language, and delivery of oral presentations. • set clear objectives for speaking and organize talks in a logical manner. • present arguments and information comprehensively and in a logical manner. • participate in oral communication experiences by listening critically and attentively. • listen to make connections, interpret, or infer. • listen to confirm, summarize, question, or predict. • recognize speaker’s purpose, attitude, tone, and bias. • analyze the way in which topics are organized and identify speakers’ techniques. for democratic leadership to be possible, the assumption must be made that participants will be motivated to learn, think, contribute, and act appropriately. the group must be willing to work and learn together to achieve a given outcome (e.g. solve a problem, plan a programme, initiate a project) (smith 1982:76-78). here are some 5 steps to help the teachers to reach all of the learners in the class. step 1: setting the classroom stage − see how the classroom climate affects the needs of a variety of learners. see ways to build a learning community where all learners are accepted and respected. step 2: knowing the players− understand the critical need to appreciate the variety of student learning preferences. gain a variety of strategies for determining students’ strengths and styles. step 3: working and altering the scripts − know that alternative lesson formats will be necessary for reaching every student. step 4: changing the set − realize that some students will need to be shown information in different ways to be able to fully grasp the concept. see how to present lessons in unique ways that will help visual, logical, spatial, auditory and kinesthetic learners. step 5: getting and giving feedback − last but not least, see how to effectively assess the learner through appropriate feedback. see how to create and carry out assessment to determine learning progress (smith 1982:64-66). when two or more people have a conversation in which they support contradictory ideas there is always a lot of tension and, of course, many factors that can prevent them from reaching a common point. the difficulty is that there is a very thin line on which you can step: you need to be strong and convincing in order for the other person to accept your statement, but at the same time avoid trying to impose your thoughts by any means. moreover, you need to do all this and simultaneously use only rational arguments to armenian folia anglistikamethodology 107 ensure that the conclusion of the conversation is adopted by the other person. emotional arguments are difficult to use because people have different emotions about the same things or events. therefore, at the end of the discussion there is no certainty that both members have the same understanding of the subject. one of the biggest mistakes that prevent an interactive workshop from achieving its main goal is the reason why some people engage in it. these are the ones who participate in it only for “winning”, but let’s not forget that it is not a competition. they are not actually interested in putting a theory or statement to the test and analyze it from an intellectual prospective. they just want to hear those magic words: “you are right!” even if somewhere deep down they share your opinion, consciously or unconsciously, they will still contradict you. we may be tempted to think “well, i know a person just like that”, but the truth is that we all are like that from time to time. it might have something to do with the education we received in school. in the educational system teachers give pupils certain tasks, one of which is to try and come up with arguments in favor of a solution chosen by a character from a novel, for example, even if they do not approve of his actions. this type of exercise can help pupils develop their critical thinking but it can also unconsciously teach them to either support or reject a statement according to their needs. therefore they can find it useful to reject an idea in a conversation with “person a” and then turn around and actively support the same idea in a conversation with “person b”. even if both persons are in the conversation for the right reasons they are still vulnerable to mistakes (kennedy 1993:93-96). consciously or unconsciously, students use false arguments, here are the most common of them: false generalization: first of all, we have false generalization, of which there are two types: illegal induction and incomplete enumeration. • illegal induction is sometimes called rash generalization and it is used on a daily basis. e.g. mark and jane beat their children, therefore all parents do. • incomplete enumeration is also common and can prevent reaching a proper conclusion: in a presumable situation a water extinguished fire. in a situation b water again extinguished fire. therefore, in all situations water extinguishes fire. (this is clearly false because despite the fact that in almost all situations water does extinguish fire there are some exceptions). authority argument: then, there is the authority argument. again a very simple one: statement a is true because (e.g. freud)… says it is. just by involving einstein or kant in the conversation does not mean you are using rational arguments. the “ad hominem” argument: another false argument is the so called “ad hominem argument”. in this case, a person will attack the other person’s shortcomings: 2+2 does not equal 5 because you are drunk. armenian folia anglistika methodology 108 the “majority rules” argument: a very popular argument is the “majority rules” argument: if 10,000 people say that a statement is true, then it has to be true. one more false attempt to be rational is the traditional: this statement is true because you cannot prove it is false. there are of course many more false arguments, but the ones mentioned are the most common. a workshop leader’s attitude is infectious: if teachers are focused, interested and enjoy their work, learners will likely do the same. it’s important to enjoy the adventure of teaching and learning, have a strong sense of yourself, your values and world outlook. references: 1. kennedy, p. (1993) preparing for the twenty first century. toronto: harper collins. 2. kolb, d.a. (1985) learning-style inventory. // self scoring inventory and interpretation booklet. boston: prentice hall. 3. mellander, k. (1993) the power of learning. // fostering employee growth. tilburg: mesoconsult. 4. smith, r.m. (1982) learning how to learn. // applied theory for adults. new york: cambridge book. 5. weisboard, m.r. (1989) productive workplaces. // organizing and managing for dignity, meaning and community. san francisco: jossey-bass. øýý³ñïáõùá áñå»ë çýï»ñ³ïïçí áõëáõóù³ý ï³ñ¨áñ ùççáó å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ù³ýï³í³ñå³ï³ý ùáï»óáõùý»ñá ¨ 黽íç áõëáõóù³ý ù»ãá¹çï³ûç ³ñ³·áýã³ó ½³ñ·³ óáõùá ýáñ³ýáñ ñý³ñ³íáñáõãûáõýý»ñ »ý áýó»éáõù ù³ëý³·»ïý»ñçý í»ñ³ý³û»éáõ áõëáõóù³ý ù»ãá¹ý»ñá, ýáñáíç áýï³é»éáõ áõëáõóù³ý ýå³ï³ïý»ñý áõ ëý¹çñý»ñá ¨ ³ñ¹ûáõý³í»ï ï³½ù³ï»ñå»éáõ 黽í³áõëáõóù³ý ·áñíáýã³óá: ²ïïçí ùýý³ñïáõùý»ñç, μ³ý³í»×» ñç ùççáóáí áõëáõóù³ý ï³½ù³ï»ñåáõùá ëã³ýáõù ¿ 黽íç áõëáõóù³ý ·áñíáýã³óá, ëáíáñáõý»ñçý ý»ñ·ñ³íáõù ëùμ³ûçý ³ßë³ï³ýùç ù»ç, ³ýï³ßï³ý¹ ï³ñíçù ³ñï³ñ³ûï»éáõ, çýùýáõñáõûý éáõíáõùý»ñ ·ïý»éáõ ñý³ñ³íáñáõãûáõý ¿ ï³éçë: armenian folia anglistikamethodology 109 microsoft word maket 2020-2(22) (3)-1 (1).doc armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 translation studies 90 translation of non-equivalent idioms (using english and russian examples) tomáš jadlovský mesrop mashtots university of stepanakert abstract the author analyses possibilities of translating idioms that do not have corresponding equivalents in the target language. in addition to existing methods described in literature, he proposes translation by means of compensation within a narrow context. the substitute idiom should be chosen from the same phraseosemantic field, and thus, both semantic link to the original text and important stylistic level typical of idioms are preserved in the target text. the theory is demonstrated by examples of translation from english into russian and vice versa. key words: translation, idiomatics, non-equivalent idioms, phraseosemantic field, translatological compensation, context, specific stylistic hue of idioms. introduction the theory and practice of idiom translation is one of the newest areas of linguistic research. it began to be studied in more detail in slavic studies in the late 1980s, and today a wide range of translating methods are described and summarized in literature (for example jadlovský 2007:5, 12, 21). the most difficult subject of this branch is represented by idioms that have no equivalents in the target language. they include not only expressions describing unique facts, but also expressions containing a certain connotation of meaning. we shall summarize the accepted translatological methods as well as propose to translate non-equivalent idioms in slavic idiomatics by means of analogues and compensations, where the substitute idiom from the same phraseosemantic field may be used elsewhere in the target text (yadlovskiy 2006:84). this study aims https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2020.16.2.090 translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 91 to employ the mentioned translatological method in languages of various indoeuropean branches – english and russian. we shall evaluate the method theoretically and demonstrate it practically using randomly selected texts from the internet. for this study the phraseosemantic field of wealth – poverty which seems to be a universally understood topic developed in language discourse, has been chosen. translatological methods suggested so far phraseological translatology aims to implement semantic comparison of phraseological items of different languages as exactly as possible. when translating idioms and other phraseological units, it is necessary to assess correspondence of meaning, semantic composition, determining elements of the idiom and complementary shades of meaning. this idea applies to idioms more than to any other lexical item, since their very essence lies in the usage in certain types of texts or utterances with respect to a specific stylistic level. a word or free combination of words can be translated without a special attention to the text environment, while some idioms require understanding of close context in order to define the style level, and to find a suitable translation counterpart. in addition to the general linguistic and stylistic nature of the text, while translating idioms the possible individual usage of the idiom´s component in the near vicinity should be taken into account; it may refer to the idiom and thus change the intention of the speaker or writer. in some extreme cases, even the whole text unit may play a role in translating idioms, if they represent the title of the literary work or the headline of the newspaper article. all contextual possibilities of idioms can never be contained in any dictionary or manual, and it is up to the sense of language and creativity of the translator to assess the adequacy of meaning in both languages. in linguistic literature, the translation of non-equivalent idioms was approached differently. there is the established point of view that prefers translation by calques (literal translations) (kravtsova 1977:149). later, we armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 translation studies 92 observe inclination towards descriptive or literal translation, not giving preference to any of these methods (gläser 1998:16), or translation of idioms by a single-word or free connections of words, or by paraphrasing (buffa 1993:105; čižmárová 2001:119). all these methods, nevertheless, have their drawbacks. literal translation is some kind of neologism while the translator should never be an inventor of new meanings or idioms in the target language. analogical idioms may be difficult to be found and used in specific contexts, and may have unsuitable connotations. descriptive translation brings about loss of stylistic colouring and text dynamics. alternative possibility of translating non-equivalent idioms all the above-mentioned translation procedures are concerned with the search for an equivalent which would stand in the target text in the same place as in the original one. this is a key moment for us to propose improvement of translatological practice. we believe that there should be an idiom in the target language, and that is why we shall develop the idea of translatological analogy and compensation. this method has already been considered by linguists (stepanova, mokienko, malinski 1995:29) whose short comments however did not go into the details of the question. analogues may stand in the same place, but it may happen that we do not find any corresponding expression. as for compensations in translating idioms, we shall not limit our study to their place of occurrence, but also take the context into consideration. we believe that in the absence of a suitable phraseological equivalent, it is possible to use a different idiom, and it could be placed in another part of the target text. this approach is sure to provide a possibility of conserving the stylistic shades of the text that could be lost in case we apply other methods. naturally, this way seems to be more appropriate in certain types of longer texts, mainly in educational, popular or journalistic ones, and also in translations of literature, where the translators’ work is to deal with semantic shades. to scrutinize this method, we should ask two questions: translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 93 1) to what extent is it possible to place a compensatory idiom in the target text or utterance to make it correspond to the original part? we believe that the width of the text or the length of the utterance can be defined very simply – the lesser the better (probably a single sentence or a few sentences). 2) which semantic area should the compensatory idiom belong to? can all contextual possibilities of idiom translation be described? most probably some guidance could be the application of analogy or compensation within the same phraseosemantic field, which will guaratee at least limited connection of the new idiom in the target language with the original idea. phraseosemantic field as a source of substitute idioms meaning shades and their understanding in idiomatics may be unlimited, and idioms may have different meanings depending on their context. meanings can also change during some time and the younger generation may understand the same idioms differently than the older one. likewise, it is improbable to delimit semantic fields so that their boundaries are clear and distinct. every phraseosemantic field overlaps with other ones. therefore, we should keep in mind that the search for a suitable idiom in the target language always depends primarily on the context, and in translation practice usage of an idiom from neighbouring fields is not excluded. we prefer understanding of phraseosemantic fields without word-class constraints. this way, chances of meeting both criteria of sketched compensation – placing idiom as close as possible and, saving connection between meanings of the source idiom and the target one – are more feasible. we shall also try to test synonymic relations of idioms within the phraseosemantic field and use analogues, so that the translator’s choices could be wider. the semantic field of wealth – poverty was chosen for our study as sufficiently rich with regard to the historical and social development of both languages. our english and russian sources are the free dictionary by farlex (<https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/>) and the standard russian language phraseological dictionary (fedorov 1995). armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 translation studies 94 we understand wealth as a high or satisfactory quality of life, consisting of a long-term or permanent surplus or sufficient means of subsistence, with the definitions of financial security, large property or a satisfactory supply of desirable and good food. similarly, poverty could be defined as a poor quality of life, caused by a long or lasting lack of means of subsistence, manifested by definitions of financial distress, inadequate food supply, inadequate clothing or generally cramped conditions. in the practical part we shall use texts randomly selected by the computer to demonstrate whether our theoretical assumptions are correct. first, we shall examine synonymous relations between idioms of the same semantic field to test their mutual interchangeability. king's ransom looking for a gaming laptop that doesn't cost a king's ransom? well, you're in luck. the microsoft store is selling … (<https://www.pcgamer.com/this-17-inch-gaminglaptopwith-an-amd-ryzen-is-on-sale-for-dollar599/>) the advertising article from a professional magazine for advanced computer users tells readers that a certain type of computer can be purchased at a reasonable price, certainly not for a large amount of money. for the english idiom, we have found these russian equivalents – кругленькая копеечка, бешеные деньги, длинный рубль, шальные деньги, шалые деньги, золотой дождь. out of these terms, бешеные деньги seems to be the most appropriate one; we can propose the following translation: ищете игровой ноутбук, который не стоит бешеные деньги? ну, вам повезло. магазин microsoft продает … as for other russian expressions, they could also stand in the same place in the text as fully-fledged equivalents. for instance: ищете игровой ноутбук, который не стоит шальные деньги / шалые деньги / кругленькую копеечку? ну, вам повезло. магазин microsoft продает … in all these options, the translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 95 general meaning of the idiom is faithfully expressed and the stylistic charge is preserved. загребать деньги лопатой ходит легенда, что памятник помогает загребать деньги лопатой, если оставить монету у орудия труда дворника. (<http://avangard.rosbalt.ru/review/pyat-pamyatnikov dvorniku-v-peterburge/>) the tourist information about st. petersburg’s sculptures of city cleaners mentions the possibility of getting a large amount of money if a tourist leaves a coin at the statue of one of them. there are a lot of english idioms for translation: to make a killing, to make out like a bandit, do some fine coin, coin / be coining money / it, line (one's/somebody’s) (own) pocket(s), make / earn a packet, earn / make a mint (of money), make a / one´s fortune(s), mint money, to clean up, to make big bucks. it seems to us that the most appropriate translation into english could be: a legend says that the monument helps to make a packet if you leave a coin at the cleaner’s tools. there are also close synonymic relations between idioms, so the translation could be formed in many ways, for example: a legend says that the monument helps to earn a packet / to make a killing / do some fine coin / make a mint (of money) / make a fortune / to make big bucks if you leave a coin at the cleaner's tools. all the idioms mentioned seem to be full equivalent in the specific context as they represent the same meaning as the original russian idiom and save stylistic hue. thus, both examples show that idioms may be synonymous and interchangeable expressions. they have the same relations as words in general. second, we will examine translations of idioms without suitable equivalents by analogues. (to be) born with a silver spoon (in your/his/her mouth) biden: trump was 'born with a silver spoon in his mouth' that he's now 'choking on' armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 translation studies 96 … "this is a guy born with a silver spoon in his mouth that he's choking on because now his foot's in his mouth along with the spoon," biden said. (<https://www.businessinsider.com/joe-biden-donald trump-silver-spoon-2016-9>) the newspaper article describes the political struggle in the united states where the then democratic vice president joe biden criticized the then republican president candidate donald trump. in his effort to provoke the envy of voters against trump, biden emphasized his rich family background. there is no such idiom in russian, so we shall try to use another expression from the same field within near context. we have to translate this idiom twice, the first time in the headline and the second time in the article proper. there are two options to treat double translation of the same idiom. the first option is to use the same idiom also twice in the target language, for instance: байден: трамп с роду на всем готовом живёт, и всё же ему не хватает … «этому парню, который с роду на всем готовом живёт, всё же не хватает, и хочет больше и больше», сказал байден. we have saved both the meaning and the stylistic hue of the whole article. nevertheless, we can creatively try to use two different idioms in translation, for example: байден: трамп с роду на всем готовом живёт, и всё же ему не хватает. … «этому парню, который с роду живёт на широкую ногу, всё же не хватает, и хочет больше и больше», сказал байден. translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 97 it seems to us that the second option in the particular context is even better, at least it shows the translator's ability to avoid automatic usage of the same substitution. золотая молодежь не служившая в армии "золотая молодежь" вызвала волну возмущения в армении … в высших эшелонах власти армении обеспокоены волной возмущения, которая была вызвана не служившей в армии золотой молодежью, пишет газета "грапарак" (площадь). (<https://newsarmenia.am/news/society/ne-sluzhivshaya v-armii-zolotaya-molodezh-vyzvala-volnu-vozmushcheniyav-armenii/>) the article describes critical sentiments in armenian society towards young men from wealthy families who avoided compulsory military service. the idiom also appears twice, in the headline and later in the body of the article. the same idiom can be used twice. for instance: "upper crust" not serving in army caused wave of indignation in armenia ... the highest echelons of armenian power are concerned about the wave of indignation that was caused by the upper crust boys who did not serve in the army, the hraparak (square) newspaper writes. here again, both the meaning and the stylistic colouring of the whole article are preserved by the choice of the idiom upper crust from the appropriate semantic field, which complements the denotation of rich young people by the connotation of influential strata of society. if we try to use two different idioms in the english translation, we may reach an even better level of armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 translation studies 98 translation and use a synonymic idiom from the same field. for example, we may write: "upper crust" not serving in army caused wave of indignation in armenia ... the highest echelons of armenian power are concerned about the wave of indignation that was caused by the boys of substance who did not serve in army, the hraparak (square) newspaper writes. third, we will examine translations of non-equivalent idioms which cannot stand in the same place as in the original text, but may be compensated in the target language within the close context. house poor house poor: canadians who earn the least pay the most for a home. (<https://globalnews.ca/news/2638885/house-poorcanadians-who-earn-the-least-pay-the-most-for-a-home/>) the economic comment analyses the housing market situation and draws attention to the relative poverty of under-earning population. the nonequivalent idiom forms part of the article headline and is not mentioned further, therefore the usage of compensation is limited within a short statement. we may translate the article into russian the following way: сложная жизнь: канадцы из-за дорогого жилья едва сводят концы с концами. instead of the original idiom we used free word connection, roughly describing the same meaning. from the semantic point of view, we proceeded correctly, but from the stylistic point of view we deprived the text of its translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 99 phraseological tone and dynamics. we compensated it by using another idiom (едва сводить/свести концы с концами) with a close meaning in the place where the original used common words. we have transferred all the semantic elements even though we have changed the structure of the statement. it may be argued that we could try to use the substitute idiom in the same place. then we could have, for instance, the following translation: затягивай туже ремень: канадцы вынуждены переезжать из-за дорогого жилья. in our opinion, the first translation has better saved the meaning of the original, because it contains the connotation of difficult life situation. the second translation with the analogue is semantically more distant, it expresses the idea of cutting down expenses. therefore, the first option is more appropriate. сермяжная душа это что там звякает страшным голосом?! никак тулуп ворот раскрыл?! сермяжная душа, заткнись сию минуту, селюк! (<https://www.neizvestniygeniy.ru/cat/literature/skazki/1853377.html>) the snippet is from a modern fairy tale in which a vase looking like a simple fur coat and flowers in it speak to each other. the flowers are pretentious and call the ordinary vase by the russian idiom poor peasants, trying to offend it as simple and thus incomparable with them. there is no similar idiom in english, and we can use for compensation the idiom the bottom of the heap with the meaning of poor and unsuccessful people who have the lowest position in society. our translation could be as follows: what is it that sounds, that terrible voice?! it is the bottom of the heap opening the gate?! fur coat, shut up just now, boor! armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 translation studies 100 we think we have succeeded to keep all the meanings in the translation – the utterance is intended for the fairy fur coat vase, whose name has been changed in the text for an idiom and vice versa. the connotation of peasant remains in the target language and is represented by the simple word – boor. in this case, it does not seem appropriate to place the substitute idiom in the same place in the target text. although we deal with inanimate objects, the exchange of the russian idiom with the meaning of individual for the english one with the meaning of group would be confusing. if the substitute idiom is used in the second sentence of the snippet, and the following sentence clearly says that the call is addressed to the fairy fur coat, the reader will not be confused. fourth, for the sake of completeness, we shall try to examine the possibility of translating texts without compensation in the close context, but by adding an idiom to the free word translation. an empty sack cannot stand upright …your hypocrisy will be on display. and when others see your hypocrisy, you lose credibility and trust. benjamin franklin, when asked about this subject, quipped that an empty sack cannot stand upright. without principles, you buckle in the face of adversity. (<http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/theterrible-nature-of-expedient-principles/marketing>) the article on ethical principles in life and corporate culture brings in the middle of the text an idiomatic quote by benjamin franklin. it has no corresponding russian equivalent. if the paragraph that mentions franklin's quote is relatively short, and idiomatic dynamics is connected just with the quote, it seems inappropriate to use a substitute idiom in another paragraph. neither can we use another russian analogue in the same place, because we would substantially change the quote of the famous person. in this situation, when the whole text is long, the option to translate the proverb by the free translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 101 word connection in russian, reflecting its meaning, seems to be the best. the lost stylistic shades can be compensated by an idiom standing as supplement. our translation might look like this: … ваше лицемерие будет очевидным. а когда другие увидят ваше лицемерие, вы потеряете репутацию и доверие. бенджамин франклин, когда его спросили об этой теме, пошутил, что недовольный бедняк не может защищать принципы, потому что он в первую очередь сосредоточен на своей более важной проблеме – что в его карманах ветер гуляет. без принципов вы можете легко попасть в беду. although we have abandoned accuracy in terms of the length of the text and set of meanings, in our opinion it is acceptable to save the specific stylistic charge by using another idiom standing close to the original place. nevertheless, this technique is appropriate only for certain types of texts, it would not fit where the same or similar number of words must be used (poetry, titles, headlines) or in simultaneous oral interpretation where the interpreter could lose valuable time and continuity of meaning. лаптем щи хлебать лаптем щи хлебать: как россияне давятся родным россия сокращает импорт автомобилей, одежды, обуви, продовольствия. всего в мае за рубежом было приобретено товаров на $20 млрд, это на 3% меньше, чем в апреле. а по сравнению с прошлым годом… (<https://finance.rambler.ru/money/42401044-laptem-schihlebat-kak-rossiyane-davyatsya-rodnym/>) armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 translation studies 102 the article on economic development in russia has a brief headline with a non-equivalent idiom. it does not appear more below, the whole article is entirely a technical text on economics and its author used the idiom only as a lure in the headline. no english idiom can be used in the same place as an analogue. the headline is relatively short and we cannot proceed as in the previous example. that is why we have to choose whether to leave phraseological stylistic dynamics or to place in the target text any other idiom as close to the original idiom as possible. in our opinion, the translator should always try to maintain the stylistic charge of the original text, so we tend to use the second option, which could be realized in the following way: russia is poorer and lags behind in figures russia tightens her belt; she is reducing the import of cars, clothes, shoes, food. in total, goods worth $ 20 billion were purchased abroad in may, which is 3% less than in april. and compared to last year… in the headline we strictly follow the transfer of meaning. the use of the substitute idiom was not possible there as it would undesirably distort the main idea of the article. we placed the substitute idiom at the beginning of the first article clause, where it is clear that the economic and life-style modesty described by the idiom refers to the import of goods, not to the overall economic situation of russia. the stylistic dynamics is thus missed only in the headline but saved in the article as a whole. conclusion in addition to the existing translation procedures, we have proposed a new method of translation of non-equivalent idioms, which retains both meaning and stylistic value in certain types of texts. the semantic fields of idioms may represent a source of substitute expressions for translators. we have discovered that synonymous relationships between idioms work the same way as generally established in lexicology. idioms of similar meaning may be interchanged and translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 103 used in translating practice. non-equivalent idioms may be translated by means of analogues in the same place of a text or using compensations within the close context. the proposed method has been proved to be applicable. we have reviewed it both for long texts, and for short text sections such as newspaper headlines. if translation by idiom is not possible in the original location, the translator should try to compensate it in another place as close as possible. references: 1. buffa, f. (1993) o poľskej a slovenskej frazeológii. bratislava: veda. 2. čižmárová, m. (2001) ekvivalenčné typy frazém v ukrajinčine a slovenčine. // slavica slovaca, 36. bratislava: sújs sav. 3. (1995) frazeologicheskiy slovar’ russkogo literaturnogo yazyka. / ed. by a.i. fedorov. novosibirsk. 4. gläser, r. (1998) the translation aspect of phraseological units in english and german. // topics in phraseology, theory and practise. vol. 1, katowice. 5. jadlovský, t. (2007) frazeosémantické pole "bohatství – chudoba" v českoruském srovnávacím plánu. / ph.d. dissertation. available at: <https://is.muni.cz/th/m8t1b/> [accessed july 2019]. 6. kravtsova, s.i. (1977) sposoby peredachi frazeologicheskikh yedinits russkogo yazyka na ukrainskiy (na materiale perevoda dramy l.n. tolstogo «vlast’ t’my»). // problemy russkoy frazeologii. tula. 7. stepanova, l.; mokienko, v.; malinski, t. (1995) russkaya frazeologiya dlya chekhov. olomouc. 8. (2019) the free dictionary by farlex. available at: <https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/> [accessed july 2019]. 9. yadlovskiy, t. (2006) perevod frazeologizmov v ramkakh semanticheskogo polya (na materiale russkogo i cheshskogo yazykov). // vesnik bdu seriya 4 – filalohiya – zhurnalistyka – pedahohika, № 1. minsk: bdu. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 translation studies 104 sources of data: 1. laptem shchi khlebať: kak rossiyane davyatsya rodnym. rambler/finansy. gazeta.ru (26 june 2019) available at: <https://finance.rambler.ru/money/42401044-laptem-schi-hlebat-kak-rossiyane-davyatsya-rodnym/> [accessed march 2020]. 2. lilly, p. (2019) this 17-inch gaming laptop with an amd ryzen is on sale for $599. pc gamer. available at: <https://www.pcgamer.com/this-17inch-gaming-laptop-with-an-amd-ryzen-is-on-sale-for-dollar599/> [accessed march 2020]. 3. mehler paperny, a. (2016) house poor: canadians who earn the least pay the most for a home. global news. available at: <https://globalnews.ca/news/2638885/house-poor-canadians-who-earn-the-least-pay-the-mostfor-a-home/> [accessed march 2020]. 4. ne sluzhivshaya v armii zolotaya molodezh vyzvala volnu vozmushcheniya v armenii. ami novosti armenia (4 july 2017) available at: <https://newsarmenia.am/news/society/ne-sluzhivshaya-v-armii-zolotayamolodezh-vyzvala-volnu-vozmushcheniya-v-armenii/> [accessed march 2020]. 5. rose, a. (2019) the terrible nature of expedient principles. multi briefs: exclusive. available at: <http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/the-terrible-nature-of-expedient-principles/marketing> [accessed march 2020]. 6. shishkova, k. (2016) pyať pamyatnikov dvorniku v peterburge. peterburgskiy avangard. available at: <http://avangard.rosbalt.ru/review/pyatpamyatnikov-dvorniku-v-peterburge/> [accessed march 2020]. 7. shust, s. (2017) bomond v litrovoy banke. neizvestniy geniy. available at: <https://www.neizvestniy-geniy.ru/cat/literature/skazki/1853377.html> [accessed march 2020]. 8. tani, m. (2016) biden: trump was 'born with a silver spoon in his mouth' that he's now 'choking on'. business insider. available at: <https://www.businessinsider.com/joe-biden-donald-trump-silver-spoon2016-9> [accessed march 2020]. translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 105 ոչ համարժեք դարձվածքների թարգմանությունը (անգլերեն և ռուսերեն օրինակների օգտագործմամբ) հեղինակը քննում է անհամարժեք դարձվածքների թարգմանության խնդիրը: գրականության մեջ նկարագրված մեթոդներից զատ հեղինակը առաջարկում է անհամարժեք դարձվածքները թարգմանել՝ դրանք փոխարինելով համապատասխան համատեքստով: փոխարինող դարձվածքը պետք է ընտրվի միևնույն դարձվածքային-իմաստաբանական դաշտից, և այդ կերպ հնարավոր է դառնում թարգմանության մեջ պահպանել թե՛ իմաստային կապը բնագիր տեքստի հետ և թե՛ դարձվածքներին բնորոշ կարևոր ոճական երանգը: ներկայացված տեսական նյութը պարզաբանվում է անգլերենից ռուսերեն և ռուսերենից անգլերեն թարգմանությունների փաստական օրինակներով: received by the editorial board 18.05.2020 recommended for publication by the reviewers 20.07.2020 accepted for print 05.10.2020 maket 2012 1-2:layout 1.qxd falsehood in speech and some means of its expression lusine mnatsakanyan yerevan state university t his study serves to attain a better understanding of deception types and the natureof verbal manipulation. psychology and psycholinguistics are among those scientific spheres which touch upon the concept of “lie” in speech, thus revealing some methods if its detection. psycholinguistic approaches to language are quite varied, from those that are concerned with the more concrete operations of the physiological systems involved in producing and perceiving language signals to the more abstract cognitive systems, including memory. today psycholinguistics explores the relationship between the human mind and language. it treats the language user as an individual rather than a representative of a society; an individual whose linguistic performance is determined by the strengths and limitations of the mental apparatus. in fact, the notion “language” that is a product of the human mind gives rise to two interconnected goals: 1. to establish an understanding of the processes which underlie the system we call language, 2. to examine language as a product of the human mind and thus as evidence of the way in which human beings organize their thoughts and impose patterns upon their experiences (garman 1990:15). lying, the main point of discussion in this study, is a widespread phenomenon which everyone does to some extent. the capacity to lie is noted early and nearly universally in human development. a lie is a type of deception in the form of an untruthful statement, especially with the intention to deceive others, often with the hope to maintain a secret or reputation, protect someone’s feelings or to avoid a punishment. to lie is to state something that one knows to be false or that one doesn’t honestly believe to be true with the intention that a person will take it for the truth. a liar is a person who is lying, who has previously lied, or who tends by nature to lie repeatedly. the philosophers saint augustine, as well as st. thomas aquinas and immanuel kant, condemned all lying. however, thomas aquinas also had an argument for lying. according to all three, there are no circumstances in which one may lie. one must be murdered, suffer torture, or endure any other hardship, rather than lie even if the only way to protect oneself is to lie. each of these philosophers gave several arguments against lying, all compatible with each other. among the more important arguments are: lying is a perversion of the natural faculty of speech, the natural end of which is to communicate the thoughts of the speaker. when one lies, one undermines trust in society. lying is typically used to refer to deceptions in oral and written communication. other forms of deception, such as disguises or forgeries are generally not considered lies, though the underlying intent may be the same. however, a true statement can be considered a lie if the person making that statement is doing so to deceive. in this situation, it armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 79 is the intent of being untruthful rather than the truthfulness of the statement itself that is considered. according to michael garman (1990) there can be distinguished several types of lies: • big lie: a lie so colossal that no one would believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. • bluffing: an act of deception that occurs during the game (a gambler deceives other player). • bold-faced lie: a bold-faced lie is one which is told when it is obvious to all concerned that it is a lie. (for example, a child who has chocolate all around his mouth and denies that he has eaten any chocolate has told a bold-faced lie). • contextual lie: one can state part of the truth out of context, knowing that without complete information, it gives a false impression. • emergency lie: an emergency lie is a strategic lie told when the truth may not be told because, for example, harm to a third party would result. • exaggeration: an exaggeration occurs when the most fundamental aspects of a statement are true, but only to a certain degree. it is also seen as “stretching the truth” or making something appear more powerful, meaningful, or real than it actually is. • fabrication: a fabrication is a lie told when someone submits a statement as truth without knowing for certain whether or not it actually is true. although the statement may be possible, it is not based on a fact. rather, it is something made up or misrepresentation of the truth (a person giving a direction to a tourist when the person does not actually know it). • misleading: a misleading statement is one where there is no outright lie, but still retains the purpose of getting someone to believe in an untruth. • noble lie: a noble lie is one which would normally cause discord if it were uncovered, but which offers some benefit to the liar and assists in an orderly society, therefore potentially beneficial to others. it is often told to maintain law, order and safety. • perjury: perjury is the act of lying or making verifiable false statements on a material matter under oath or affirmation in a court of law, or in any various sworn statements in writing. perjury is a crime, because the witness has sworn to tell the truth and for the credibility of the court to remain intact, witness testimony must be relied on as truthful. • puffery: it is an exaggerated claim typically found in advertising and publicity announcements, such as “the highest quality at the lowest price”. • white lie: it is an acceptable lie that helps others. such lies are required in many cultures where saving face is important, and not telling lies to protect others is considered a bad and selfish thing. these lies are also more acceptable from those who are less likely to know the rules for not lying, most notably young children. a white lie would cause only relatively minor discord if it were uncovered, and typically offers some benefit to the hearer. white lies are often used to avoid offense, such as complimenting something one finds unattractive. in this case, the lie is told to avoid the harmful realistic implications of the truth. as a concept, it can not be clearly separated from other lies. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 80 sometimes, being truthful isn’t always the best. there are times when one wants to avoid the full truth, or even tell a lie, in order to protect someone’s feelings, or prevent a conflict. so, one of the most relevant issues in studying lies is the concept of “lie-to-children”. a lie-to-children is a lie, often a platitude which may use euphemisms which are told to make an adult subject acceptable to children. parents lie for many reasons; lying to keep a child from crying when s/he heads out for dinner, or to protect him/her from scary issues, such as lying a child about a murder in the news. common example is the santa claus. parents tell their child fairy stories, about santa claus who is “real”, and later on it turns out that the child has been lied to. but actually nobody wants to lie to their kids, but also nobody wants to bring them up without believing in those things that make a child’s life happy: joy, love, hope and magic are what capture a child’s imagination. but one day the child will reach the stage of mental maturity where s/he will detect the lie that the parent has told for the first time. before that s/he took for granted the fact that the parent was incapable of lying. the thing is that kids need to learn how the world works. still, lying wouldn’t exist if there was no purpose for it. lies can and often do accomplish good ends that the truth wouldn’t. a classical example is lying to an axe-murderer to prevent further harm. we cannot prevent children from telling a lie, as they come across it even in fiction. such as “the adventures of baron munchausen” which covers the story about an 18th century baron who tells outrageous, unbelievable stories which he claims are all true. or “carlo pinocchio” who was a wooden puppet often led into trouble by his propensity to lie. his nose grew with every lie; hence long noses have become caricatures of liars. on the contrary, it is alleged that some belief systems may find lying to be justified, that is “the product of deception and lies for a good purpose”. let’s consider lying in the bible. various passages of the bible (old testament) feature exchanges that are conditionally critical of lying, but in some passages lying seems conditionally promoted. how to detect a lie? lie detection is the practice of determining whether someone is lying or not. it commonly involves the polygraph. many scientists reviewed lie detector research and came to the conclusion that there is no scientific evidence supporting that lie detectors actually work. a classic psycholinguistic problem is parole, or its modern formulation – “performance”. the latter is being viewed as a dialectic of opposite cognitive modes, namely of gesture imagery and language. it is quite natural that so much significance is attached to the study of body language, for our bodily movements and facial expressions constitute an integral part of speech; in fact, they often act as a vehicle for emotion, whether we want it or not. hence we may state that non-verbal gestures are just as important as spoken words. why? it is the body language that has the power to give away a person’s true intentions. thus, for instance, watching facial expressions in order to determine whether a person is lying might just save from being a victim of fraud, or it could help figure out when somebody’s being genuine. the experienced psychologists have yielded certain armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 81 results, for instance the micro expressions (facial expressions) of a person who is lying will exhibit emotion of stress characterized by the eyebrows being drawn upwards towards the middle of the forehead. a micro expression is a momentary involuntary facial expression that people unconsciously display when they are hiding an emotion. they are quick and intense expressions of concealed emotion. a micro expression is caused by involuntary movements in facial muscles. most people cannot control these involuntary muscles which are affected by their emotions (anger, disgust, fear, sadness, happiness, surprise and contempt). hence, people often try to cover the lie by making certain gestures, covering their mouth, touching their nose, rubbing the eyes and avoiding making any kind of eye contact, some people unconsciously pull their collar, become nervous when they tell a lie. timing is off between emotion gestures, expressions and words. for example: someone says, i love it! when receiving a gift, and then smiles after making that statement, rather than at the same time the statement is made. gestures don’t match the verbal statement, such as frowning when saying i love you. but at the same time it should be stated that if someone exhibits one or more of these signs it doesn’t mean that s/he is lying. the above behaviors should be compared to a person’s normal behavior. the more you get to know someone, the better you will become at knowing whether they may be straying from the truth. what has been said above makes it possible to claim that gestures constitute one of the non-verbal means of the expression of falsehood in speech. as it has already been mentioned verbal expression too can give clues to whether a person is lying or not, for example: a) using/repeating your own exact words when answering a question (when asked, did you eat the last cookie? the liar answers, no, i did not eat the last cookie.). b) statement with a contraction is more likely to be truthful (i didn’t do it instead of i did not do it.). c) avoiding direct statements or answers. d) speaking excessively in an effort to convince. e) speaking in a monotonous tone. f) leaving out pronouns. g) using humor to avoid a subject. distancing language is phrasing used by people to “distance” themselves from a statement, either to avoid thinking about the subject or to distance themselves from its content. distancing language is often a means of self-deception, but distancing language used orally may indicate that a person is lying. examples of distancing language: • distancing clinical language partly shields health workers from the impact of workplace experiences, e.g. bled to death substituted with exsanguinated. • military personnel may use a range of distancing terms for combatants either killing or getting killed. they may also employ distancing, dehumanizing terms for combatants on the opposing side. collateral damage for the death of uninvolved civilians is an example. • everyday euphemistic references to death, dying, burial, corpses and to the people armenian folia anglistika linguistics 82 and places which deal with death are also protective, distancing terms either formal or informal, e.g. croaked, bought the farm, expired, passed on. • an indirect statement implying an answer, rather than a direct answer, may indicate lying. for example, replies such as would i do such a thing? or even i wouldn’t do such a thing, rather than i didn’t do it. referring to someone known well by the speaker as that woman instead of using a name or her is another example. • it is also likely that liars will think that the use of speech hesitations and speech errors sound dubious. therefore, they will try to avoid making such liars’ voices and sound tenser than true tellers’ voices. the result concerning speech errors (word/sentence repetition, sentence change, sentence incompletion, slips of tongue and so on) and speech hesitations (use of speech fillers such as ah, um, er ) show a conflicting pattern (scovel 1998:45). friedrich nietzsche suggested that those who refrain from lying may do so only because of the difficulty involved in maintaining the lie. this is consistent with his general philosophy that divides people according to strength and ability; thus, some people tell the truth only out of weakness. thus, deception among humans is not necessarily a bad thing, but is widely condemned when it hurts or has potential to harm people. innocuous deception is practiced by virtually everyone daily as a routine aspect of living. managing the expressions of the face, disguising its features, and enhancing its attributes are important aspects of deception whenever people meet face-to-face. references: 1. birdwhistell, r.l. (1970) essays on body motion communication. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. 2. carroll, r.; prikett, s. (1997) the bible: authorized king james version. oxford world’s classics. oxford: oup. 3. ford, c.v. (2005) lies! lies! lies! the psychology of deceit. washington: american psychiatric press, inc. 4. garman, m. (1990) psycholinguistics. cambridge: cup. 5. granhag, a.; strömwal, l.a. (2004): the detection of deception in forensic contexts. cambridge: cup. 6. hirschberg, j.; benus, s. (2005) distinguishing deceptive from non-deceptive speech. columbia: cup. 7. scovel, t. (1998) psycholinguistics. oxford: oup. 8. steinberg, d.d.; scarini, n.v. (1993) an introduction to psycholinguistics. london: longman. 9. tammer, d.c.; tammer, m.e. (2004) forensic aspects of speech patterns, voice prints, speaker profiling, lie and detection. lawyers and judges publishing co., inc. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 83 î»õíçùç ¹ñë¨áñù³ý ó¨»ñá ëáëùáõù êáõûý ³ßë³ï³ýùá áõëáõùý³ëçñáõù ¿ ëáëùáõù ¹ñë¨áñíáõ ï»õíçùç ñá·» é»½í³ μ³ ý³ï³ý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá: ²ý¹ñ³¹³éý³éáí ï»õíçùç ï³ñμ»ñ ë³ñ ù³ ýáõù ý» ñçý` ý»ñï³û³óíáõù ¿ ¹ñ³ ï³ñμ»ñ ï»ë³ïý»ñý áõ ýï³ñ³·ñíáõù ¹ñ³ýó ïçñ³éáõãûáõýá ëáë ù³ûçý ïáýïñ»ï çñ³¹ñáõãûáõýý»ñáõù: ²ßë³ï³ýùá ùýýáõãû³ý ¿ ³éýáõù ý³¨ ëáë ùáõù ³ñï³ñ³ûïíáõ ï»õíçùç áã ùç³ûý 黽í³ï³ý, ³ûé¨ ³ñï³é»½í³ï³ý ùççáóý»ñá` ¹ç ï³ñ ï»éáí ï»õíçùç μ³ó³ñ³ûïù³ý ñ³ñóáõù ß³ñåùáõýùý»ñç ¹»ñá: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 84 maket 2011:layout 1.qxd on semantic and syntactic structures of sentences with deadjectival causative verbs in modern english robert khachatryan yerevan state linguistic university after v.bryusov b eing a universal notion, causation is expressed differently in different languages.causation may be encoded in a range of linguistic structures, including word semantics, morphemes, prepositions, and periphrastic constructions (comrie and polinsky 1993; dirven 1995; shibatani 1976). the analysis of causative constructions essentially calls forth a synthesis of morphology, syntax, and semantics (song 1996:1). the core of causative meaning is the cause-effect relationship that instigates a certain action or condition in another person or object. dlugosh (1980:13) defines the causeeffect relationship as correlation between the cause and effect, in which the latter is not only a direct consequence of and generated by the former, but also its expression that causes a certain inducement. as inferred from the title, this article investigates the semantic and syntactic structures of sentences formed with deadjectival causative verbs in modern english. the analysis of these structures is carried out at two levels: the surface-syntactic level and the deep-semantic level. the semantic structure of the sentence is determined by the meaning of the deadjectival causative verb (the core of a structure) and a definite number of nominal members which semantically correlate with the core verb. causative verbs under investigation are derived from adjectives by morphological processes and retain semantic and formal correlation with the latter (nedyalkov and silnitsky 1969, 1973). the general word-forming meaning of these verbs is to confer someone or something with properties and qualities, expressed by the adjectival base. to this end, a causative verb embodies several new meanings, namely the categorial meaning of adjective, i.e. quality and property of an object, and the categorial meaning of word-forming formant “to confer, to become.” furthermore, certain lexical groups of deadjectival causative verbs are analyzed in order to reveal consistent patterns of relationship between the lexical meaning of the verb and its semantic and syntactic valences. the following semantic classes of deadjectival causative verbs are investigated in this article (bogdanova 2000): 1. causative verbs expressing changes in volume: to fill to empty. 2. causative verbs expressing changes in size: to shorten, to lessen, to deepen, to enlarge, and to widen. the cause-effect relationship in causative constructions formed with the verbs under analysis entails syntactically obligatory valencies, namely the subject and the object. the analyzed data illustrate that the subject can be expressed by an animate noun (ex.1, 2) or by a pronoun, substituting a noun (ex.4, 5). 1) …mrs. farnaby deliberately shortened the interview and silenced the lovers—still as resolute as ever to keep amelius exposed to the adventurous freedom of a bachelor’s life. (collins, w. the fallen leaves) armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 63 2) miss ingram placed herself at her leader’s right hand; the other diviners filled the chairs on each side of him and her. (bronte ch. jane eyre) 3) i have soon known better in the cheerfulness and contentment that god has blessed me with and given me abundant reason for; and yet i have had to dry my eyes even then, when i have thought of my dear, brave, handsome, bright-eyed charley, and the trust meant to cheer me with. (dickens, ch. the cricket on the hearth. a fairy tale of home.) 4) “good heavens!” i cried. “who would associate crime with these dear old homesteads?” “they always fill me with a certain horror. it is my belief, watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in london do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.” “they always fill me with a certain horror”. (doyle, a. c. selected stories.) the direct object can be expressed both by concrete (animate and inanimate) and abstract nouns depending on the semantics of the verb. for example, the direct object of verbs expressing changes in size and volume of an object is expressed by an inanimate concrete noun if the verb is used in its direct meaning (ex. 5, 6), and by an abstract noun if the verb is used in its figurative meaning (ex. 7, 8). 5) down in the cellars, as up in the bed-chambers, old objects that he well remembered were changed by age and decay, but were still in their old places; even to empty beer-casks hoary with cobwebs, and empty wine-bottles with fur and fungus choking up their throats. (dickens, ch. dombey and son) 6) they ... suddenly widened their eyes. (fletcher j. the paradise mystery.) 7) i have spent an instructive afternoon in the rector’s library, and have enlarged my knowledge by adding the fact that vermissa is a flourishing little town at the head of one of the best-known coal and iron valleys in the united states. (doyle, a. c. selected stories.) 8) i hope neither of us may ever have any cause to lessen our opinion of the other, lucretia. (dickens, ch. dombey and son) the majority of these verbs not only entail two obligatory syntactic valencies, i.e. the subject and object, but also retain optional valencies, which do not necessarily find their expression at the surface structure. the presence or absence of the third optional syntactic valency is determined by a range of factors, such as the semantics of the verb or the semantics of obligatory nominal elements. thus, in the example below (ex.9) the absence of the third element water can be explained by the monosemanticity between the direct object and a possible prepositional object. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 64 9) he followed her into the little kitchen, where she filled a kettle and watched it come to the boil. (dreiser th. the financier.) assumingly, the third element in this example can only be expressed by the noun water as teapot is usually filled with water. if it were filled with another substance, not specific to the given situation, its expression would be conveyed in the syntactic structure of a sentence as an optional element – a prepositional object. 10) right after noon that day he filled the water buckets and went back to the little river for more. he filled his buckets with stones and sank them. (defoe d. robinson crusoe.) the same noun buckets is used in both sentences (ex.10). the first sentence illustrates that the expression of an optional element is not necessarily required; whereas, its omission implies that buckets were filled with water for what they are intended. in contrast, the second sentence illustrates that the expression of the optional element with stones is fully justified as it denotes an object, not specific to the given situation, and therefore, finds its expression in the syntactic structure of the sentence. the expression of the optional element is obligatory if the direct object denotes an item which implies a range of possible optional elements. to this end, its expression at the surface structure is semantically justified, i.e. it explicitly reveals the semantics of the verb. 11) with perfect coolness holmes slipped across to the safe, filled his two arms with bundles of letters, and poured them all into the fire. (doyle, a. c. selected stories.) 12) three smaller windows on the right-hand side filled the apartment with cold winter sunshine. (doyle, a. c. selected stories.) 13) it cost me something in foolscap, and i had pretty nearly filled a shelf with my writings. (doyle, a. c. selected stories.) the objective of this article is twofold: to reveal an archetype of correlation between the lexical meaning of the verb and its semantic valencies and to compare the semantic structures of sentences formed with deadjectival causative verbs with the syntactic ones. causative verbs expressing changes in volume (to fill to empty) this subgroup comprises the antonymic pair of verbs to fill to empty. the verb to fill means to make an object to become full. conversely, the verb to empty means to discharge contents and denotes the emptiness of volume. nevertheless, these antonymic verbs can be used in situations which entail the same members. hence, the semantic structures of these verbs are presumably identical. the meanings of the verbs to fill and to empty entail at least two obligatory semantic valencies which correlate with the syntactic valencies differently. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 65 14) as i watched them stapleton rose and left the room, while sir henry filled his glass again and leaned back in his chair, puffing at his cigar. (doyle, a. c. selected stories.) 15) he filled the tin basin with water, and placed it on the table. (barr r. a rock in the baltic.) 16) the sudden termination of colonel brandon’s visit at the park, with his steadiness in concealing its cause, filled the mind, and raised the wonder of mrs. jennings for two or three days ... (austen j. sense and sensibility.) the analysis reveals a choice of four semantic valencies: agent expressing an animate instigator of the action, patient expressing an animate bearer of the action, objective expressing an inanimate bearer of the action, and cause expressing force or object causing an action or state. the second obligatory element of the semantic structures with the verb to fill can express two basic meanings: patient (ex.16) and objective (ex.14, 15). in tandem with a simple syntactic structure with two obligatory elements the subject and the direct object, the verb to fill generates a complex semantic structure, which entails four obligatory semantic valencies: agent, cause, patient, and objective. agent and cause are in complementary distribution and do not concurrently occur at the surface level. hence, both can only be expressed by the subject. the verb to empty is less frequently used than the verb to fill as the former is mostly used in its figurative meaning. conversely, the verb to empty denotes a certain physical action to make a particular object to become empty or hollow. the sentences formed with the verb to empty may represent the transformations of semantically simple sentences (ex. 17, 18, 19): 17) mrs. sowler emptied her glass, and looked hard at jervy across the table. (collins w. the fallen leaves.) mrs. sowler caused her glass to become x. her glass became empty. 18) the eldorado emptied its occupants into the street to see the test. (london j. the call of the wild.) the eldorado caused its occupants to leave. the eldorado became empty. 19) for good measure they emptied the safe and turned it upside down. (miller h. tropic of capricorn.) they caused the safe to become x. the safe became empty. the verb to empty generates similar situations and entails the same participants as its antonymic counterpart to fill does. the analysis illustrates that the verb to empty denotes a situation where the action is carried out by an animate participant in the semantic strucarmenian folia anglistika linguistics 66 ture, i.e. agent. thus, this semantic valency is expressed by the subject of a sentence. in this case, the syntactic and semantic structures of the sentences completely correspond to each other, and the subject corresponds to an animate participant of a causative situation. 20) what did you do after that? immediately after you emptied the cash drawer? (miller h. tropic of capricorn.) in rare cases, patient and objective can find their expression in an unusual syntactic position at the surface level. 21) one might almost have thought that when the man fell, she stood over him and emptied the contents of the revolver into him. (doyle, a. c. selected stories.) 22) in any other case the conspirators would have simply called out their man, as they had many a time before, and emptied their pistols into his body ... (doyle, a. c. selected stories.) 23) but the next instant holmes had emptied five barrels of his revolver into the creature’s flank. (doyle, a. c. selected stories.) accordingly, the analysis indicates that the semantic structure with the verb to empty is simpler and different from that formed by the verb to fill. almost all the examples indicate correspondence between sentence members and their semantic meanings. causative verbs expressing changes in size (to shorten, to lessen, to deepen, to enlarge, to widen) this subgroup comprises causative verbs which denote an event, causing internal changes in an object, namely increase or decrease in size. these verbs are mostly used in figurative meaning. however, the verb to enlarge in most cases is used in its direct meaning. the causing event may be either expressed by an animate noun which corresponds to agent (ex. 24, 25), or by an inanimate concrete noun which corresponds to cause (ex. 26). 24) having now fixed my habitation, i found it absolutely necessary to provide a place to make a fire in, and fuel to burn: and what i did for that, and also how i enlarged my cave, and what conveniences i made, i shall give a full account of in its place ... (defoe d. robinson crusoe.) 25) first, we rebuilt and enlarged the almshouses beyond all that colonel john mohune could ever think of, and so established them as to be a haven forever for all worn-out sailors of that coast. (falkner j. moonfleet.) 26) she wore horn-rimed glasses that enlarged her eyes and suggested the constant outrage to her soul of the sight she saw. (steinbeck j. pearl.) armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 67 at the surface level, patient and objective correspond to the direct object and may be expressed by a concrete noun in its direct meaning (ex.27), or an abstract one in its figurative meaning (ex. 28, 29). 27) the momentary pleasure of success got the better of her; her eyes enlarged, and she involuntarily smiled in his face. (hardy th. tess of the d’urbervilles, a pure woman.) 28) i have spent an instructive afternoon in the rector’s library, and have enlarged my knowledge by adding the fact that vermissa is a flourishing little town at the head of one of the best-known coal and iron valleys in the united states. (doyle, a. c. selected stories.) 29) during my confinement for want of clothes, and by an indisposition that held me some days longer, i much enlarged my dictionary; and when i went next to court, was able to understand many things the king spoke, and to return him some kind of answers. (swift j. gulliver ‘s travels.) the verb to shorten is the most frequently used verb in this subgroup. the action may be expressed both by agent and cause. more specifically, the analysis (ex. 30, 31, 32) does not indicate any interdependence between the direct and figurative meanings of this verb and its semantic valencies, expressed by the causing event. 30) elizabeth had hoped that his resentment might shorten his visit, but his plan did not appear in the least affected by it. (austen j. pride and prejudice.) 31) but if regina happened to enter the room, or if amelius contrived to find his way to her in some other part of the house, mrs. farnaby deliberately shortened the interview and silenced the lovers still as resolute as ever to keep amelius exposed to the adventurous freedom of a bachelor’s life. (collins w. the fallen leaves.) 32) philip remembered the story of the eastern king who, desiring to know the history of man, was brought by a sage five hundred volumes; busy with affairs of state, he bade him go and condense it; in twenty years the sage returned and his history now was in no more than fifty volumes, but the king, too old then to read so many ponderous tomes, bade him go and shorten it once more... (maugham s. of human bondage.) as substantiated by the analysis, patient (ex.33) and objective (ex.34) may be expressed by an abstract noun. 33) with her constitution she should have lived to a good old age: her life was shortened by trouble”. (bronte ch. jane eyre.) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 68 34) with all the sail i could make, i found i should not be able to come in their way, but that they would be gone by before i could make any signal to them: but after i had crowded to the utmost, and began to despair, they, it seems, saw by the help of their glasses that it was some european boat, which they supposed must belong to some ship that was lost; so they shortened sail to let me come up. (defoe d. robinson crusoe.) thus, the analysis of the semantic structures with causative verbs to shorten, to lessen, to deepen, to enlarge, to widen reveals a pattern that these verbs are often used in figurative rather than literal meaning. the analysis further substantiates that the status of the syntactic structures is determined by their dependency on the semantic structures of the verb. more specifically, these verbs generate one syntactic structure with the subject and direct object and two semantic structures which differ from each other in how they express the causing event, i.e. whether the causing event is expressed by agent or cause. on the basis of the analysis carried out, it can be concluded that deadjectival causative verbs in modern english generate a simple syntactic structure with two obligatory syntactic valencies: the subject and the direct object. conversely, they generate a complex semantic structure with the following obligatory semantic valencies: agent, cause, patient, and objective. by considering semantic features as basic, it is rational to posit that all verbs under consideration entail agent or cause as they perform the role of the causing event. both the former and the latter are in complementary distribution and do not concurrently occur at the surface level. the obligatory semantic valencies patient and objective are embedded in one semantic construction and expressed by one syntactic valency, namely the direct object. finally, and most importantly, it can be assumed that the aforementioned syntactic and semantic valencies are embedded in any causative construction with deadjectival causative verbs in modern english. references: 1. bogdanova, s.yu. (2000) otadjektivnyje glagoly s poslelogami “up” i “down”. // lingvističeskije paradigmy i lingvodidaktika. / tezisy dokladov i soobshenij v megdynarodnoj konferencii. irkutsk. 2. comrie, n. and polinsky, m. (1993) causatives and transitivity. amsterdam: john benjamins. 3. dirven, r. (1995) the construal of cause: the case of cause prepositions. // language and the cognitive construal of the world. / ed. by j.r. taylor and r.e. maclaury. new york: mouton de gruyter. 4. dlugosh, a.m. (1980) anglijskij analitičeskij kauzativ so slugebnym glagolom “to get”. / dissertacija na soiskanije yčënoj stepeni kandidata filologičeskix nauk. kiev. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 69 5. goldberg, a. (1995) constructions: a construction grammar approach to argument structure. chicago and london: the university of chicago press. 6. nedjalkov, v.p. and sil’nickij, g.g. (1969) tipologija morfologičeskogo i leksičeskogo kauzativov. [typology of morphological and lexical causatives]. // tipologija kauzativnyx konstrukcyi: morfologičeskij kauzativ. / ed. by a.a. xolodovič. leningrad: nauka. 7. nedyalkov, v.p. and silnitsky, g.g. (1973) the typology of morphological and lexical causatives. // trends in soviet theoretical linguistics. / ed. by f. kiefer. dordrecht: reidel. 8. shibatani, m. (ed.) (1976) the grammar of causative constructions: syntax and semantics 6. new york: academic press. 9. song, j.j. (1996) causatives and causation: a universal-typological perspective. london and new york: longman. ²í³ï³ý³ñçùù å³ï׳é³ï³ý μ³û»ñáí ï³½ùí³í ý³ë³¹³ëáõãûáõýý»ñç çù³ëï³μ³ý³ï³ý ¨ ß³ñ³ñûáõë³ï³ý ï³éáõóí³íùý»ñá å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù ðá¹í³íáõù áõëáõùý³ëçñíáõù »ý ³ í³ï³ ý³ñçùù å³ï׳ é³ ï³ý μ³ û»ñáí ï³½ùí³í ý³ë³¹³ ëáõãûáõýý»ñç çù³ëï³ μ³ ý³ï³ý ¨ ß³ ñ³ñûáõë³ï³ý ï³ éáõóí³íùý»ñá å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ³ý· é»ñ» ýáõù: ²ûë ï³éáõóí³íùý»ñç í»ñéáõíáõãûáõýá ¨ ñ³ñ³μ» ñ³ïóáõãûáõýá ï³ï³ñí»é ¿ »ñïáõ ù³ï³ñ¹³ ïáíª ù³ï» ñ»ë³ûçý (ß³ ñ³ñûáõë³ ï³ý) ¨ ëáñù³ ûçý (çù³ëï³μ³ ý³ ï³ý): êáõûý ñá¹ í³íç ýå³ï³ïý ¿ μ³ ó³ñ³ûï»é ³ í³ï³ý³ñçùù å³ï׳ é³ï³ý μ³ û»ñç μ³ é³ûçý çù³ëïý» ñç áõ ¹ñ³ýó ³ñåáõã³ï³ýáõãû³ý ñ³ ñ³μ» ñ³ïóáõãûáõýá, çýãå»ë ý³¨ ñ³ù»ù³ï»é ³ûë μ³ û»ñáí ï³½ùí³í ý³ë³¹³ ëáõãûáõýý»ñç çù³ëï³μ³ ý³ï³ý áõ ß³ ñ³ñûáõë³ ï³ý ï³éáõóí³íùý»ñá: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 70 maket_n_verjin.qxp strategies and tactics in gaining public opinion nowadays the growing interest in political discourseis quite evident. such questions as: how is political power won and lost? and how crucial is the role of language in ups and downs of political life? can be better understood through discourse analysis. the analysis through the strategies and tactics used in political campaigns highlights new directions in language study regarding political discourse as a tool of manipulation and persuasion (johnson-cartee, copeland 2004:146). the research is carried out based on american political discourse. the united states managed to create a democratic country with concepts of truth and respect regardless of a person’s nationality or ethnic background. the correct understanding of citizenship, solidarity, and national consciousness were implemented in americans’ minds and souls by professional politicians (chilton 2004:11). language is a weapon and an important tool in attracting public support. we would like to show how the american politicians use the english language and how it demonstrates its powerful creative abilities in gaining public support. traditionally, political clashes take place between the members of two main parties. but what happens when two politicians represent one single party? an investigation of the transcripts of democratic presidential debates between senators hillary clinton and barack obama adds new content information to the flourishing field of political linguistics. the reason for selecting these debates is quite simple. the candidates, as members of the same party, share a number of common and unique features. for example, they have the same target audience who traditionally has adopted the democratic principles of their party. at the same time there must be crucial differences between them – it is the first time in the history of the united states that the candidates for the presidency are – an african american and a woman. an analysis of the transcripts of presidential debates brought us to the conclusion that the two main strategies utilized by both speakers are the strategy of positive selfpresentation and negative other-presentation. the polarization between us and them, and the different ways of expressing negative and positive opinions are enhanced by the choice of various language units. the 2008 democratic party presidential debates in the us are vivid examples of this polarization. the positive self-presentation interwoven with national pride and glory are combined with the portrayal of others which are downplayed by the candidates with strong determination to reveal the difference and threat which they symbolize. 66 armenian folia anglistika linguistics armine simonyan let’s give an example demonstrating the strategy of positive self-presentation by quoting hillary clinton at the democratic party presidential debate in utah. “…i’m running because i think i’m the most qualified and experienced person to hit the ground running in january 2009”. barack obama in la said, “i am confident that we can solve any problem and we can fulfill the destiny that america wants to see, not just next year, but in many years to come”. this strategy on hillary clinton’s part is realized by parallel repetition of the pronoun “i”, which in combination with the superlative degree of adjectives (the most qualified and the most experienced), intensifies the idea and strengthens its impact on the listener. it goes without saying that personal pronouns are extremely important in political discourse. if hillary clinton uses the personal pronoun “i”, barack obama prefers the combination of “i” and “we” focusing the attention of the audience not only on himself but also on the audience, emphasizing the positive characteristics of the whole nation and regarding himself and the american nation as a single entity. in this passage we can solve any problem and we can fulfill the destiny the first person plural pronoun we conceptualizes group identity, distinguishing insiders from the outsiders. the use of the modal verb can shows the speaker’s attitude towards the action indicated by the infinitive. the author wants to point out his strong intention, his ability to realize his future plans. emphasizing positive characteristics of oneself, the politicians often appeal to the illustration of the issue of national identity which is intended to target the broadest number of supporters. this is the reason why both candidates of the democratic party pay special attention to the symbols of national identity. this is reflected either in the beginning or the end of their speeches. the sense of national identity is represented in the phrases “the america people, my fellow americans, all americans”. the strategy of positive self-presentation has been used by politicians to prove their professionalism and competency as they both experience attacks, one for being a woman and the other on the topic of racism.. during the presidential debate in utah hillary clinton was asked: “hello, my name is john mcalpin. i’m a proud serving member of the united states military. i’m serving overseas. this question is to senator hillary clinton. the arab states, muslim nations, believe its women as being second-class citizens. if you’re president of the united states, how do you feel that you would be taken seriously by these states in any kind of talks, negotiations, or any other diplomatic relations?” hillary clinton answered: “thank you john, and thank you for your service to our country. you know, when i was first lady, i was privileged to represent our country in 82 countries. i have met with many officials in arabic, and muslim countries, i have met with kings and presidents and prime ministers and sheiks and tribal leaders. and certainly, in the last 67 linguistics armenian folia anglistika years during my time in the senate, i have had many high-level meetings with presidents and prime ministers in iraq, afghanistan, kuwait, pakistan and many other countries. … it would be quite appropriate to have a woman president deal with the arab and muslim countries on behalf of the united states of america”. senator clinton starts her answer by expressing her appreciation using the tactics of positive politeness. in this way she demonstrates her gratitude putting stress on the existence of common ground between them. afterwards, to enhance credibility, she enumerates numbers of meetings with the leaders of many countries to sound persuasive and convincing. speaking about racism senator obama quotes the bible, seeking to have a strong aesthetic impact on the listeners. the strategy of positive self-presentation backed by famous quotations relates politician’s speech to the sphere of objectivity. “… what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. let us be our brother’s keeper, scripture tells us. let us be our sister’s keeper. let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well”. the tactics of citation used by the politician makes his speech colorful. there is constant interaction between the linguistic units and their desirable effect on the audience. inverted constructions, anaphoric repetition of the phrase let us unite the audience and enhance its positive effect. by the repetition of the word nothing the politician shows how little is demanded to eliminate race discrimination among the people. humor is recognized as another vital tactics in the process of political campaigning; it sustains interest in debates and has relaxing effect on the audience. when blamed for being dishonest: seeking help from the advisers of bill clinton, barack obama tried to stop inappropriate accusations answering in a humorous way. “hillary, “i look forward to you advising me…” if we try to interpret the use of humor in this context we may conclude that humor has rather condensed, double meaning in this context. first senator obama admits that hillary clinton was the most valuable adviser to president clinton and, second, in this campaign barak obama considers himself to be the likely president and would like to see hillary clinton as his adviser. personal pronouns play a crucial role in political discourse. the distinction between the pronoun you in the previous example “you know, when i was the first lady” and the pronoun you in “i look forward to you advising me” according to grammarians is hardly significant. but discourse analysis reveals that in the first case we deal with the indefinite you. the speaker implies to address simultaneously both the audience and the young officer, whereas in the second sentence we come across direct you, barak obama directly addresses his opponent. indefinite you is observed also in the following example “you should vote for me”, in this case the speaker addresses only the audience. high frequency of indefinite you is 68 armenian folia anglistika linguistics explained by the speaker’s appeal to the majority and his desire to regard the audience as an indispensable entity. in the above-mentioned examples the strategy of positive self-presentation takes the form of individual impression management, but when the politicians try to represent their own party the same strategy takes the collective form of presentation. if an individual becomes a public figure, for the sake of the party he belongs to he adopts the obligation or commitment to avoid mentioning negative sides that could damage the positive image of their party. both senator clinton and senator obama are loyal to the principles of the democratic party they belong to. in this respect, the positive self-representation of the democratic party is manifested on the issues which are abandoned by the majority of the population. ideas that are intended to gain public support. are: the provision of proper education, medical care, discrimination against minorities and women, freedom from injustice, religious intolerance and eventually the termination of the war in iraq. the strategy of self-representation as the first constituent of the dichotomy is tied up with its second half i.e. with the strategy of negative other-representation. there is evidence that individuals are inclined to pay more attention to negative information. the policy of bringing out negative traits of their opponents and the complete denial of their own is realized in assessments about others. the candidates may regard as “others” first of all their common enemy, the republican party, and each other in these particular debates. negative evaluation of their ideological rival is based on the common ground of the concepts which are shared by the members of the democratic party. if we leave aside common enemies, we shall come to the battlefield where candidates demonstrate strong performance and expose an extremely vast scope of issues, sometimes they even explore personal matters. clinton’s sharpest attack on obama came when she accused him of plagiarism, of borrowing lines from a speech of his co-chairman. “if your campaign is going to be about words, they should be your own words. lifting whole passage isn’t change you can believe in, it’s change you can xerox”. the semantic strategy of negative other representation is enhanced by the repetition of linguistic units and the use of modal verbs. in political discourse the use of modal verbs indicates the degree of commitment to truth, to ideas the utterer holds or represents. the strategy of negative other representation is demonstrated in another example as well. hillary clinton, criticizing barack obama said: “you know, senator obama, it is very difficult having a straight-up debate with you, because you never take responsibility for any vote, and that has been a pattern.” the semantic strategy of negative other representation is demonstrated through the tactics of description. senator obama is described extremely negatively. he is the person who deviates from straight-forward questions and is irresponsible. the same strategy was used by barack obama too. he said:” senator clinton has, in her campaign at least, has constantly sent our negative attacks on us, e-mail, robo-calls (prerecorded messages), fliers, television ads, radio calls, and we haven’t 69 linguistics armenian folia anglistika whined about it, because i understand that’s the nature of this campaign”. barack obama in this case has appealed to the tactics of argumentation. the strategy of negative other representation is backed up by statistical evidence. the enumeration of these facts creates a negative impression on the audience. it has a persuasive effect and strong impact on the listener. in some cases the strategy of negative other-presentation is combined with the strategy of positive self-presentation. during the iowa caucases hillary clinton said. “some believe you get change by demanding it. some believe you get it by hoping for it. i believe you get it by working hard for change. that’s what i’ve done my entire life.” through the tactics of contrast expressed in the passage hillary clinton wants to bring out her vision of changes. the contrast is created by the verbs characterizing the opponents (to demand, which presupposes a certain portion of aggressiveness and the verb to hope, a verb with a positive connotation but with some traits of idleness or joblessness. the verb to work characterizes hillary clinton. used as a stylistic device, anaphoric and epiphoric repetition of linguistic units acquire not only emotive charge but they also aim at logical emphasis, focusing the attention of the audience on the keyphrases of the passage. furthermore, the repetition of similar sound combinations or rhyming is observed in this passage too. and one of the strongest moments in the clinton’s campaign was in explaining the role of gender. “people are not attacking me because i’m a woman, they are attacking me because i am ahead”. she characterizes her opponent’s use of the word attack of negative connotation. hillary clinton doesn’t want to focus the attention on the problem of gender as if it doesn’t exist. she is projecting to her supporters the image of a person who is ahead in this campaign. here again we face the combination of both semantic strategies. the internal rhyming consolidates the ideas expressed in the sentence. in my opinion this quotation sums up hillary clinton’s platform during these debates: “it did take a clinton to clean up after the first bush, and i think it might take another one to clean up after the second bush”. political discourse is not just words, sentences or ideas expressed by an ordinary citizen, it is an influential tool that might cause concrete forms of action. focusing on crime, violence, terrorism, and the negative properties of others politicians must be, to some extent, exquisitely accurate, as inappropriate definitions can easily lead the audience either to horrors of quarrels and clashes or to the disillusionment of citizens and their loss of interest towards politics itself. references: 1. chilton, paul (2004) analysing political discourse: theory and practice. london & new york: routledge, taylor and francis group. 2. johnson-cartee, karen, s.; copeland, gary, a. (2004) strategic political communication: rethinking social influence, persuasion, and propaganda. maryland: rowman &littlefield publishers, inc. 70 armenian folia anglistika linguistics æýãå»ë ýí³×»é ñ³ë³ñ³ïáõãû³ý ñ³ù³ïñ³ýùá. é³½ù³í³ñ³ï³ý ¨ ù³ñï³í³ñ³ï³ý ñý³ñý»ñ ø³õ³ù³ï³ý ëáëáõûãç ëý¹çñý»ñç ñ»ï³½áïáõãûáõýá å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó é»½í³µ³ýáõãû³ý ³ñ¹ç³ï³ý áõõõáõãûáõýý»ñçó ¿: ø³õ³ù³ï³ý ·áñíãç ñ³ù³ñ 黽áõý ½»ýù ¿ ñ³ë³ñ³ïáõãû³ý é³ûý ½³ý·í³íý»ñç ñ³ù³ïñ³ýùá ýí³×»éáõ ñ³ù³ñ: êáõûý ³ßë³ï³ýùç ýå³ï³ïý ¿ µ³ó³ñ³ûï»é, ã» çýãå»ë »ý ³ù»ñçïû³ý ù³õ³ù³ï³ý ·áñíçãý»ñá ïçñ³éáõù ³ý·é»ñ»ýá` åáõáíñ¹ç ³ç³ïóáõãûáõýá ó»éù µ»ñ»éáõ ³ïýï³éçùáí: ð»ï³½áïáõãû³ý ýûáõãá ²øü-áõù 2008 ãí³ï³ýç ý³ë³·³ñ³ï³ý áýïñáõãûáõýý»ñçý ù³ëý³ïóáõ ã»ïý³íáõý»ñ ðçé³ñç øéçýãáýç ¨ ´³ñ³ï úµ³ù³ûç ùçç¨ í³í³éí³í µ³ý³í»×»ñý »ý: àýïñáõãû³ý å³ï׳éý ³ïýñ³ûï ¿: âíáõù ¿, ã» ã»ïý³íáõý»ñá, áñå»ë ùç¨ýáõûý ïáõë³ïóáõãû³ý ³ý¹³ùý»ñ, ß³ï áý¹ñ³ýñáõãûáõýý»ñ áõý»ý. »ñïáõëý ¿é å³ïï³ýáõù »ý ùç¨ýáõûý ïáõë³ïóáõãû³ýá, ñ»ï¨³µ³ñ ý³¨ áõý»ý åáõáíñ¹³ï³ý ùç¨ýáõûý ëï½µáõýùý»ñçý ñ³í³ï³ñçù éë³ñ³ý: øçýã¹»é ýñ³ýó ùçç¨ ½·³éç ï³ñµ»ñáõãûáõýý»ñý ³ïýµ³ë »ý: ²øüç å³ïùáõãû³ý ù»ç ³é³ççý ³ý·³ù ý³ë³·³ñç ³ãáéý ³ïýï³éáõù »ý ½µ³õ»óý»é ùç ¹»åùáõù ïçý, ùûáõë ¹»åùáõù 먳ùáñã ã»ïý³íáõ: ð»ï³½áïáõãû³ý »ý »ýã³ñïí»é »ñïáõ ã»ïý³íáõý»ñç ïáõùçó ïçñ³éíáõ é³½ù³í³ñáõãûáõýá ¨ ù³ñï³í³ñáõãûáõýá: 71 linguistics armenian folia anglistika maket_n_verjin.qxp c o n t e n t s yerevan state university is 90 years old on preconditions of medieval armenian schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 the state of armenian education in brief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 armenian higher education in the 19th and early 20th centuries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 founding people’s university of yerevan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 on the way to yerevan state university . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 the rectors of yerevan state university . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 renowned graduates of yerevan state university . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 linguistics essence and phenomenon in linguistic content and expression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 ashot abrahamyan (armenia) stereotypical statements as social-psycholinguistic phenomenon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 liana matevosyan (armenia) meaning and association . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 rouzanna arakelyan (armenia) the problem of thinking and language: concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 stela israyelyan (armenia) strategies and tactics in gaining public opinion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 armine simonyan (armenia) 4 metaphor in political discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 anna arakelyan (armenia) stylistic devices in marriage vows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 astghik chubaryan, stella arakelyan (armenia) on some functional-stylistic peculiarities of the language of religion . . . . . . . . 84 naira gasparyan, arevik ajamoghlyan (armenia) on ways of expressing persuasion in discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 siranoush ghaltkhchyan (armenia) on refusal strategies in modern english . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 sirarpi karapetyan (armenia) verbal art: from the polyphony of the word to non-verbality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 seda gasparyan (armenia) metaphor: an element of imagery in gerald durrell’s “my family and other animals” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 armine matevosyan, narine nikoghosyan (armenia) similes in d.h.lawrence’s “sons and lovers” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 armine matevosyan, anna melkonyan (armenia) ways of expressing causation in modern english . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 robert khachatryan (armenia) cohesive properties of modal adverbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 naira martirossyan (armenia) reported speech as a supraphrasal unity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 zara kostanyan (armenia) the psycho-grammatical description of the existential locative “there” constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 armine suvaryan (armenia) structural-semantic patters with suffixes expressing resemblance in modern english and modern armenian. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 lili karapetyan, armine yakhnyan (armenia) 5 the semantic field of phraseological units expressing kindness and malice in armenian, russian and english . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 hasmik ghazaryan (armenia) etymology and word decoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 susanna baghdasaryan (armenia) deixis as a significant element of human communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 yelena yerznkyan (armenia) methodology democratizing and dehegemonizing literature: endeavours of empowerment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 sivakumar sivasubramaniam (united arab emirates) on some issues of foreign language course modeling and theory designing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 karen hayryan (armenia) culture studies the war and peace of languages and cultures. the teacher and the student, 21st century russia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 svetlana ter-minasova (russia) the subjunctive mood: linguo-cultural approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208 chubaryan astghik, karapetyan rouzanna (armenia) on the cultural peculiarities of proverbs and their classification . . . . . . . . . . . . 214 kristine gevorgyan (armenia) literature the woman artist in edna st. vincent millay’s poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220 aleksandra nikèeviæ-batriæeviæ, marija kneževiæ (montenegro) literature and medicine: asperger syndrome in mark haddon’s novel . . . . . . 226 “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time” janko andrijaseviæ(montenegro) 6 rehabilitating martius: audience response to the hero of “coriolanus” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 terence mccarthy (france) muslim romance in diaspora: leila aboulela’s “minaret” (2005) and the ethics of reading in the west . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 john a. stotesbury (finland) armenological studies an important source of information about islamized armenians . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 sergey vardanyan (armenia) mutual influences of new julfa and isfahan mural paintings in the 17th century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262 ani babayan (armenia) some glimpses of the american-armenian press published in english in the 1990s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268 marina chalyan (armenia) 7 maket_n_verjin.qxp founding people’s university of yerevan in 1917-1918 transcaucasia found itself in a dire political situation. making useof the retreat of the russian troops, the young turks attacked. as a result, the continent found itself in a most difficult situation. the transcaucasian saym was decomposed. on may 26, 1918 georgia and on may 27 of the same year azerbaijan announced themselves independent states. on may 28, 1918 with the majority of votes the national council, proclaimed armenia an independent country. the statehood that the nation had been deprived of for so many years was restored. this was a historical event in the life of the armenian nation. for well-known reasons this period of our history was not paid proper attention to in following several decades. whereas during its short life the republic undertook to solve not only social, economic, but also cultural issues and did not spare efforts to realize the long-cherished dream of the armenian intellectuals – the establishment of the national higher educational institution. one of the dreamers, as stated above, was the all-armenian poet h. toumanian, who, on various occasions, voiced the necessity of raising the educational and intellectual level of the nation. admiring the feats of the armenian voluntary regiments fighting violence, in one of his conversations, toumanyan called armenians to rely on the power of reason rather than on that of weapons on the way to the salvage of the nation. he said: “if only after the war a culture-oriented army of 3000 healthy and brilliant young patriots were created, which would fuse with the nation and would spread the brilliant ideas of science and life over its darkest corners. that would be the only straight and shortest path leading the armenian nation to salvage and rebirth”. the most prominent armenian intellectuals began to raise the issue starting from the very first day of the declaration of independence especially when the neighboring countries had managed to set up their own ones. late in 1918 and early in 1919 the issue of founding a university received practical consideration once again. however, the national council found it difficult to solve the problem because of the unfavorable situation in the country. many thought that it was untimely to consider the idea of founding a university under such circumstances. the establishment of a university was indeed hard and at times it seemed even impossible. there were other by-problems to be solved such as the construction of the university building and dorms for students, as well as the publication of the necessary educational material, handbooks, textbooks and many others. it seemed that taking into consideration the existing harsh situation the country had found itself in, the idea of establishing a university should be discarded. however, the very fact that armenia was having a difficult time, and namely because of its being cut from the civilized centres, compelled the authorities to establish a university which would serve as a magnet for the intellectuals and scientific circles spread all over 23 yerevan state university is 90 years old armenian folia anglistika europe, get their creative abilities together and employ them for the welfare of the country. on may 7, 1919, ra national council heard the report by g. melik-gharagiozian on “granting 500 000 roubles of allowance to the university of transcaucasia”. the request was turned down. at the same session, however, the minister was assigned to come up with another report on founding a university in armenia and to present its program and the expenses required. the ministry of education prepared and submitted the proposal of founding a university in armenia to the national council for consideration. on may 16, 1919, the national council considered the issue and gave its consent. on june 1919 the board of ministers adopted the “law on people’s university of yerevan” and on july 8 it confirmed the “temporary regulations of the university”. organizational work concerning the very opening of the university followed these decisions. problem number one was to find a relevant house for the university in yerevan. however, it was not an easy thing to do. after many unsuccessful attempts to find one, it was decided to establish the university in alexandrapol before a suitable building could be found in the capital. the next problem to be solved was the formation of the staff. with this aim, a great many leading specialists in various fields were invited to give a lecture at the new university. at last, on january 31, 1920, the university of armenia was officially unveiled in alexandrapol with grand celebrations. present at the opening were members of the armenian government led by prime minister alexander khatisian, leaders of political parties, and other high-rank officials. prof. youry ghambarian, the rector of the university, came up with the opening speech. nikol aghbalian, minister of public education and art, was next to speak. in his speech he stressed the socialpolitical role the university was meant to play: “ though our country is ruined, and our nation is in poverty, we are establishing a house for education. all that we have now, has been possible through the blood shed by many generations 24 armenian folia anglistika yerevan state university is 90 years old the university building in alexandrapol a. khatisian n. aghbalian who gave their lives to make this day close, so let us honor their memory. we are rebuilding our house and we are establishing temples of education without thinking what our enemies, who have always destroyed them, think. we deeply hope that this time the ship of the armenian nation will pass through the storms safely. our enemies will fail and the torch that we are holding over the armenian plateau will never fade and will light up the progressive asia”. the first lessons in alexandrapol were held on february 1, 1920. the famous scholar and armenolgist stepan malkhasian was the first to give a lecture. on june 21, ra board of ministers came up with the decision to move the university from alexandrapol to yerevan. 25 yerevan state university is 90 years old armenian folia anglistika the steam-engine in which the first specialists armenian by nationality and educated in different universities of europe arrived in yerevan to start their occupation of yerevan state university lecturer. maket 2012 1-2:layout 1.qxd the peculiarities of chronotope in don delillo’s novel “falling man” ella asatryan yerevan state linguistic university don delillo is a prominent novelist of american postmodern literature who start-ed his literary career in the 70s of the 20th century, and still creates new works for his audience. his first book, americana, which was published in 1971, was followed by names (1982), white noise (1985), mao ii (1991), cosmopolis (2003), falling man (2007), point omega (2010) and some other works. preserving the main traditions of postmodern literature, delillo puts forward the essential and actual problems of current times such as the state of an individual in post-war world, the nuclear war, the influence of mass media on an individual and manipulation of the society through it, religious wars and terrorism. delillo’s works reveal the possibilities of development of american society and also give a full image of changes occurring inside the society in the borderline of the 20-21st centuries. in 2001 the whole world was shocked because of the terroristic attacks that took place in new york on september 11. after these tragic events, when the world trade center was completely destroyed and nearly 3000 people were dead, the theme of terrorism obtained a worldwide interest and actuality. authors of different nationalities dedicated their works to this topic, among them the scandalous contemporary french writer frederic beigbeder with his book windows on the world, the algerian writer yasmina khadra with his terrorism, the english writer john updike with his short-story varieties of religious experience, and many other writers. being an american and having witnessed the events, delillo also introduced a book concerning terrorism and its consequences which gives the overall picture of terroristic events of 2001. the book was called falling man. it was released in 2007. the american press was immediately overwhelmed by critical articles acknowledging falling man as the best 9/11 novel. in fact, delillo has written the first major 9/11 novel which is more than a novel. it is a document of america’s progress as a nation, civilization at this particular place in time. it is a well-crafted artistic interpretation of a major event that has, for better or worse, helped shape the nation (shindler 2007:4). so falling man is a 9/11 novel depicting the state of an american family which carries the influence of terroristic events. in this novel the author discloses the problem of terrorism passing from a private point (an american family) to universal point, and stressing the changes that occur in american society’s world perception. in falling man the concept of time/place acquires a new qualitative status and becomes a means that directly influences an individual’s life, decides his identity and claims problems existing in today’s world. this fact makes the author’s work even more significant and provides good material for analyses. the aim of the present study is to give the image of an american society as expressed through literature and to analyze the concept of chronotope within the frames of the novel falling man. during the study the following issues armenian folia anglistikaliterature 131 are to be analyzed: the concept of chronotope, the reflection of the chronotope in the novel, the problem of terrorism, its influence on a whole society, the vision of a new society. after the events of 9/11 don delillo was called a prophet writer since in his previous books, mainly in mao ii, he expresses his anxiety concerning the skyscrapers. the author’s prediction, unfortunately, appears on the reality layer. it must be stressed that the horrible events of 9/11 marked the start of a new world. after 9/11 the world was divided into two parts; before and after. everything now is measured by after. (delillo 2007:138) so this very thought is carried by the members of american society, the heroes of delillo’s work among them. before turning to the main analyses, it is indispensable to pay attention to the title of the novel. why did delillo call his novel falling man? the question can be observed from different points of view. first of all, by entitling the novel so, the author could mean the man who fell down from one of the skyscrapers during the terroristic acts, and whose photo appeared on the first pages of all american and non-american magazines. secondly, the falling man could be the artist who was trying to imitate the people falling down or jumping from the buildings through his art. she’d heard of him, a performance artist known as falling man. he’d appeared several times in the last week, unannounced, in various parts of the city, suspended from one or another structure, always upside down, wearing a suit, a tie and dress shoes. he brought it back, of course, those stark moments in the burning towers when people fell or were forced to jump. (delillo 2007:33) as a matter of fact, the novel is full of overwhelming numbers of falling men. each of the heroes of the novel can be regarded as falling man such as keith, the main hero, who survived the terrorism but preserved his existence carrying inside parts of terror. another falling man is his wife lianne, who was not a direct survivor of the events, but who carried its consequences. falling man are all the people who passed through terrorism, who witnessed it and who make a new society, where terror and fear dominate. it must be stressed that the title includes a deeper interpretation, as the falling man is the usa itself. it is the us fall from grace that occurs when the nation’s abuse of moral authority is set against the values on which it claims to be based (olster 201:119). the novel consists of three parts. the first part is entitled bill lawton which is the encoded variant of bin laden, the second one is ernst hechinger, one of the heroes of the novel, ex-member of a terroristic group, who contemplates about religion and the muslims all the time. through this character the author claims that the usa is responsible for the tragic events. his contemplations can be summed up in one thought. we have met the enemy and it is us. (olster 2011:120) armenian folia anglistika literature 132 the last part of the novel is called david janiak. this part concerns the man, the performance artist who appears in different parts of new york and imitates the flying people from the tower during the terroristic acts. the falling man represents art through which he shifts individual’s attention to those tragic days, never letting it become past. there was one thing for them to say, essentially. someone falling. falling man. she wondered if this was his intention, to spread the word this way, by cell phone, intimately, as in the towers and in the hijacked planes. (delillo 2007:165) though the three parts of the novel concentrate on different problems and issues, this should not confuse the reader, as these parts are inseparably connected to one another, and make one entity having one and the same question in the cornerstone. what should they do after? there was collision, there was break and people were to understand its meaning and its influence on each of them and what was going to be after? the whole existence frightens me. she saw herself in this sentence. (delillo 2007:118) each member of the terrorized society tries to find answers to such questions and find his/her place in the distorted world. all the time the heroes of the novel want to find an answer to the simplest question whether they are already strangers to that new space or not. the world they were living in was already strange and unknown to them. even in new york – i long for new york. (delillo 2007:34) in literature the unity of time and space is called chronotope. the term was coined by m. bakhtin to show the way time and space are described by language, and, in particular, how literature represents them. the peculiarities of time become natural for place, and place, in its turn, obtains new meaning through time and is measured by time. according to m. bakhtin, these two categories constitute a fundamental unity as in the human perception of everyday reality. in literary artistic chronotope, spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought out, concrete whole. time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible, likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history. (bakhtin 2004:85) this gives the idea that narrative texts are not only composed of sequences of events and speech acts, but also of the construction of a particular fictional world or chronotope. the events of the novel theoretically occur in the same place, in new york city, yet armenian folia anglistikaliterature 133 there are temporal and spatial flights from one time layer to the other, which is peculiar to postmodern literature. it is seen from the very first lines of the novel: it was not a street anymore but a world, a time and space of falling ash and near night. (delillo 2007:3) a qualitative change of space can be observed, passing from the notion street to notion world. space ceases to be a private point and becomes a universal one, the carrier of terrorism. so, as a center of terroristic acts, the street turns into a world which carries the features of a terrorized street. carrying the features of terrorism, space becomes the terrorism itself and all the spatial layers are united into a single one. the author recovers the distorted spatial layer. there is no world outside the terrorism and there is no other choice. there exists only one space which is called terrorism. the noise lay everywhere they ran, stratified sound collecting around them, and he walked away from it and into it at the same time. (delillo 2007:4) as it can be viewed, leaving the center of events, the main hero is not able to escape it. he is always directed to the skyscrapers as there is already one spatial unity a new world, a world of terrorism. delillo’s heroes and all other americans and foreigners who are already the carriers of a changed and terrorized way of thinking are living exactly in such kind of world. the concept of time also suffers qualitative changes. in the novel some contradiction comes to the core. on the one hand, time appears as a puzzle. there is no unity of time, instead, one can witness flights from present to past and vice versa and these flights are connected to terrorism. on the other hand, the unity of time is extremely vivid. the terroristic acts took place in the past, yet they are never past, as their influence is undeniably felt in the present and even in the future. so, past is never past, it becomes present and dooms future. this gives birth to a new temporal dimension: present absorbed in past. it is worth mentioning blessed augustine’s famous theses that there is no time distinction into past, present and future: there is only present which contains past, present and future (pusey 2005:158). the analysis of the novel brings to the light the idea that past has so huge influence on an individual’s life that it is fused with present. so, in his novel falling man don delillo creates a new world, new time which correspond with the concept of terrorism. it is necessary to mention that in the frames of the unity of time which is expressed by the idea that there is only one time dimension where time and terrorism appear on the same level, the author suggests distinguishing between inner and outer time of human beings. this approach is clearly seen when we analyze the character of the main hero of the novel, keith, who is a 9/11 survivor. things inside were distant and still, where he was supposed to be. it happened everywhere around him, a car half buried in debris, windows smashed and noises coming out, radio voices scratching at the wreckage. armenian folia anglistika literature 134 he saw people shedding water as they ran, clothes and bodies drenched from sprinkler system. there were shoes discarded in the street, handbags and laptops, a man seated on the sidewalk coughing up blood. (delillo 2007:4) there is a vivid contradiction between the hero’s inner and outer time. in inner time nothing exists and everything is stopped, while in the outer time everything moves and something happens which is the result of tragic events. in inner time everything is stopped, while in outer time everything goes on. the novel falling man presents a very interesting case, as it is a novel which ends at the point where it starts. the reader appears in a closed circle where the beginning and the end have the same event in their base. the beginning of the novel claims the confused state of people after terroristic events. there was something else then, outside all this, not belonging to this, aloft. he watched it coming down. a shirt came down out of the high smoke, a shirt lifted and drifting in the scant light and then falling again, down toward the river. (delillo 2007:5) the ending of the novel again claims the confused state of people after the terroristic events. he could not find himself in the things he saw and heard. two men ran by with a stretcher, someone facedown, smoke seeping out of his hair and clothes. that’s where everything was, all around him, falling away, street signs, people, things he could not name. then he saw a shirt come down out of the sky. he walked and saw it fall, arms waving like nothing in this life. (delillo 2007:246) so, all the events of the novel develop within these events from terrorism to terrorism, which is the same event. this comes to prove that lives of people who witnessed the tragic events are enclosed in a circle where time has somehow stopped, there is no present, as it has already been mentioned above, but a new temporal dimension present absorbed in past. one of the most interesting points of the novel is the case when the author gives parallels between art and terrorism. art becomes a means through which the real state of terrorized society is observed. art becomes the carrier of time and space. in the novel don delillo turns to the paintings of the 20th century italian painter georgio morandi. morandi’s paintings represent the art of still life (natura morta). when observing morandi’s paintings one can see that most of his works are a series of inanimate objects such as jars, vases and bottles. the philosophy of morandi’s art claims that these objects are inanimate, yet they come to satisfy human needs and reflect the possibility of changes in human relations (schweighauser, schneck 2010:101). delillo transferred these ideas armenian folia anglistikaliterature 135 into a literary area and touched upon the works of this painter since his paintings remind the destroyed skyscrapers. the painting in question showed seven or eight objects, the taller ones set against a brushy slate background. the other items were handled boxes and biscuit tins, grouped before a darker background. they looked together. two of the taller items were dark and somber, with smoky marks and smudges, and one of them was partly concealed by a long-necked bottle. the bottle was a bottle, white. “what do you see?” he said. she saw what he saw. she saw the towers. (delillo 2007:49) the art of still life, in this case, comes to show that the consequences of terrorism are still alive and they make the present of the american society. so, the overall analyses of the theme gives us the opportunity to claim that, staying faithful to the main traditions of postmodern literature, don delillo is the best to give the full image of american society after 9/11. in the novel falling man the concepts of time and space obtain new qualitative features and they come to decide the role of a human being in the world. delillo changes all temporal and spatial images, breaks all the borders giving the unity of time and space. this unity is the terrorism itself. time and space appear on the same level with terrorism. so, literature becomes a means through which we see that 9/11 has become a borderline between the life before the events and the life after the events. in the life after humans try to reestimate their life, find their lost ego, understand their place and role in the distorted world, in the world obsessed with fear and despair. the heroes of delillo live in this very world. they represent the model of american society, each member of which is the carrier of terroristic events who do not exclude the possibility of the repetition of 9/11 at any place in the world and at any time. references: 1. bakhtin, m. (2004) the dialogic imagination. // four essays. austin: university of texas press. 2. blessed, a. (2005) the confessions of saint augustine. / tr. by e. pusey. new york: random house, inc. 3. delillo, d. (2007) falling man. new york: scribner. 4. olster, s. (2011) don delillo. mao ii. underworld. the falling man. new york: continuum. 5. schweighauser, p.; schneck, p. (2010) terrorism, media and the ethics of fiction: transatlantic perspectives on don delillo. new york: continuum. 6. shindler, d. “falling” towers as fiction. the denver post. 03 march 2007 http://www.denverpost.com/lifestyles/ci_6047985 armenian folia anglistika literature 136 øñáýáïáåç ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá ¸áý ¸»èçéáûç §àýïýáõ ù³ñ¹á¦ í»åáõù ðá¹í³íá ýíçñí³í ¿ å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ³ï³ý³íáñ ³ù»ñçï³óç ·ñáõ ¸áý ¸»èçéáûç §àýïýáõ ù³ñ¹á¦ ëï»õí³·áñíáõãû³ý í»ñéáõíáõãû³ýá, áñá é³í³·áõûýë ³ñï³óáéáõù ¿ ³ù»ñçïû³ý ñ³ë³ñ³ïáõãû³ý ï³ñ·³ íç׳ ïá 2001 ãí³ï³ýç ë»åï»ùμ» ñç 11-ç ³ñ³μ»ïã³ï³ý ¹»åù»ñçó ñ»ïá` ãμ³ó³é»éáí å³ï³ñ³ñç ïñïýáõãûáõýá ó³ýï³ó³í å³ù³ý³ï ó³ýï³ó³í í³ûñáõù: 9/11-ç ¹»åù»ñá ³ßë³ññá μ³å³ý»é »ý »ñïáõ ù³ëç` ³ßë³ññ 9/11-çó ²è²æ ¨ ³ßë³ññ 9/11-çó ðºîà: ²ûë ï³ñμ³ å³ýáõùý ¿é áýï³í ¿ ëï»õí³·áñíáõãû³ý ñçùùáõù ¨ ñý³ñ³íáñáõãûáõý ¿ ï³éçë ¹çï³ñï»é å³ù³ý³ï-ï³ñ³íáõãûáõý ñ³ëï³óáõãûáõýý»ñç áñ³ï³ï³ý ÷á÷áëáõãûáõýý»ñý áõ ÷³ëï»é å³ù³ý³ï³ûçý ¨ ï³ñ³í³ï³ý μáéáñ ñ³ñãáõãûáõýý»ñç ³ùμáõç³ï³ýáõãûáõýá: armenian folia anglistikaliterature 137 microsoft word maket 2020-2(22) (3)-1 (1).doc linguistics armenian folia anglistika 1 armenian folia anglistika – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english (since 2005) and yerevan state university (since 2015) aims at fostering research of the english language, literature and culture in armenia and elsewhere and facilitate intellectual cooperation between high school teachers and scholars. armenian folia anglistika is intended to be published twice a year. articles of interest to university-level teachers and scholars in english studies are warmly welcomed by the multi-national editorial board of the journal. articles should be directed to the editor-in-chief. in 2007 the editorial board of armenian folia anglistika announced the opening of a new section in the journal – armenological studies, which invites valuable and innovative contributions from such fields as armenian linguistics, literary criticism, ethnic studies, cultural history, gender studies and a wide range of adjacent disciplines. հիմնադիր և գլխավոր խմբագիր` սեդա գասպարյան համարի թողարկման պատասխանատու` լիլի կարապետյան լրատվական գործունեություն իրականացնող «անգլերենի ուսումնասիրության հայկական ասոցիացիա» հկ http:www.aase.ysu.am վկայական` 03ա 065183 տրված` 28.06.2004 թ. yerevan state university press armenian folia anglistika linguistics 2 editor-in-chief seda gasparyan – dr. of sciences (philology), professor, corresponding member of ra nas, honoured scientist of ra, holder of “best scientific work” award of ra nas (2010), holder of “prolific researcher” award of ra state committee of science (2013, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020), head of yerevan state university english philology department, president of armenian association for the study of english. phone: +374 99 25 50 60; e-mail: sedagasparyan@yandex.ru; sedagasparyan@ysu.am editors shushanik paronyan – dr. of sciences (philology), professor, head of the department of english for cross-cultural communication, yerevan state university (armenia). gaiane muradian – dr. of sciences (philology), associate professor of english philology department, yerevan state university (armenia). astghik chubaryan – phd in philology, professor of english philology department, yerevan state university (armenia). mariana sargsyan – phd in philology, associate professor of english philology department, yerevan state university (armenia). editorial advisory board svetlana ter-minasova – dr. of sciences (philology), professor emeritus at lomonosov moscow state university, president of the faculty of foreign languages and area studies, doctor honoris causa at the universities of birmingham, uk (2002), the state university of new york, usa (2007), the russian-armenian slavonic university, armenia, yerevan state university, armenia (2019), visiting professor at the national research tomsk state university, russia (2013), yunshan professor at guangdong university of foreign languages and international relations, china (2016), holder of lomonosov award (1995), fulbright’s 50th anniversary award (1995), boris polevoi prize (2015), member of the council of experts of the international academic forum, japan (2013). angela locatelli – professor of english literature, bergamo university, italy, adjunct professor in the department of religious studies at the university of pennsylvania, philadelphia, faculty member of the international phd network established in 2008 by the university of giessen, germany, holder of a fellowship at the folger shakespeare library in washington (1999, 2008), one of the three general editors of ejes (european journal of english studies) (2004-2010). linguistics armenian folia anglistika 3 olga aleksandrova – doctor of sciences (philology), professor, head of the department of english linguistics at lomonosov moscow state university, holder of lomonosov award (2001), award of the international federation of modern language teachers’ associations at fiplv (2005). john stotesbury – adjunct professor, school of humanities, university of eastern finland, joensuu, finland; and adjunct professor, department of english, university of oulu, finland. elżbieta chrzanowska-kluczewska – professor, dr. hab. universytet jagiellonski, institute filologii angielskiej, katedra jezykoznawstwa angielskiego. cracow, poland. elżbieta manczak-wohlfeld – professor, dr. hab. universytet jagiellonski, institute filologii angielskiej, katedra jezykoznawstwa angielskiego. cracow, poland. alessandra giorgi – phd in philology, full professor, department of linguistics and comparative cultural studies, ca’foscari university of venice, italy. buniyatova isabella – dr. of philology, professor, head of the department of germanic and romance philology, boris grinchenko kyiv university, ukraine. iryna shevchenko – dr. of philology, full professor, v. n. karazin kharkov national university, head of the department of business foreign language and translation, academician of academy of sciences of the high school of ukraine, editor-in-chief of the international journal “cognition, communication, discourse”. ewa salkiewicz-munnerlyn – professor, doctor of cracow academy after andrej frycz modrzewski, cracow, poland. marta dabrowska – associate professor, dr. hab., institute of english studies, jagiellonian university, cracow, poland. peter sutton – freelance editor and translator, uk. sona haroutyunian – doctor of linguistics, professor at the department of asian and african studies, visiting professor at university of california los angeles (2009), nida school of translation studies, new york misano adriatico (2012), california state university fresno (2013), yerevan state university (2015), city university of new york (2017). managing editor lili karapetyan – associate professor of english philology department, yerevan state university (armenia) assistant editor gohar madoyan – phd in philology, associate professor of english philology department, yerevan state university (armenia) © seda gasparyan, 2020 armenian folia anglistika linguistics 4 երևանի պետական համալսարան անգլերենի ուսումնասիրության հայկական ասոցիացիա (անգլերենի ուսումնասիրության եվրոպական ֆեդերացիայի անդամ) անգլիագիտական հետազոտությունների հայկական հանդես միջազգային գրախոսվող ամսագիր համագործակցությամբ՝ երևանի վալերի բրյուսովի անվան պետական լեզվահասարակագիտական համալսարանի (հայաստան) մոսկվայի մ. լոմոնոսովի անվ. պետական համալսարանի (ռուսաստան) կրակովի յագիելոնյան համալսարանի (լեհաստան) բերգամոյի համալսարանի (իտալիա) մոնտենեգրոյի համալսարանի (մոնտենեգրո) երեվան – 2020 linguistics armenian folia anglistika 5 yerevan state university armenian association for the study of english (member association of the european society for the study of english) armenian folia anglistika peer-reviewed international journal in cooperation with: yerevan brusov state university of languages and social sciences (armenia) lomonosov moscow state university (russia) jagiellonian university, cracow (poland) bergamo university (italy) university of montenegro (montenegro) yerevan – 2020 7 maket 2010 nor_n:layout 1.qxd the use of advertisements and adbusters in the course of business english there are many theoretical and practical reasons tocombine media literacy with the course of business english as it fills the gap between the culture of business and students’ skills in business communication and analytical thinking. it is of great pedagogical importance for students to know how advertisements are formed, decoded, analyzed and evaluated. while planning a business english course, it is important to take into account not only the content and functional peculiarities of selected texts, but also age-related and psychological features of students, their professional needs as well as the scope of their interests. while selecting professional texts it is very important to take into consideration inter and intra-disciplinary ties, because a foreign language is not only a means of communication with native and native-like speakers and receiving relevant professional and public information, but also a means of developing professional competence. for instance, learning english helps students orient in critical, creative and other similar situations, as well as make relevant decisions. advertisement texts can play an important role in teaching business english, as they are directly related to the business sphere and reflect on the main characteristics of business english. through ads student-economists get to know and acquire psychological, socio-cultural, professional peculiarities of occupations concerned with the sphere of business. ads are of great importance in the lives of people. goods and services are advertised on mass media, advertisement billboards, the internet, e-mail, etc. as is known, advertisements are aimed at attracting the attention of people of certain age, status and needs to sell certain goods or render certain services. at the same time, the aim of advertisers is to persuade people to buy, give or vote for their specific product or service. the important thing is that advertisements do not usually contain accurate information about the products or services advertised, because of the rough competitiveness in which advertisers are forced to work. the target group for the advertisers is a certain group of people who are classified by their age, sex, race or even social class. research has shown that people tend to remember the advertisement if the object being advertised is unique, if the advertisement itself is extraordinary or if it is of personal significance. the advertisement language must also be taken into consideration in the process of planning a business course. the language of advertisers mainly represents colloquial (informal) set-expressions, which are simple and full of metaphors, as well as speech patterns which are typical of stereotype thinking. according to thorne it is important to remember that the primary function of advertisements is to persuade people and its subarmenian folia anglistikamethodology 125 karine mkhitaryan ordinate function is to provide information (thorne 1997:88). as to the functions of ads, there are various types of advertisements, which make use of the same techniques but cause different feedback from the assumed audience. as is mentioned above, an ad must be persuasive if it is based on the principle of selling approach, the aim of which is to persuade the consumer to go and buy that particular product. advertisements must also be informative. the constructional base for advertisements may be either the product or the audience or its influence. advertisers must use their variants in texts combined with striking images or emotional references. the knowledge of the content and functional characteristics of ads helps students not only to read and understand english advertisements but also create them. ads are efficiently used in a business english course, which is based on the process-genre approach in which students not only plan and revise texts but also meet certain rhetorical and structural requirements based on the audience. in addition, students become more keenly aware of the role of their target audience, they learn how to modify language to communicate through various media (badger, white 2000:153-160). advertisers use various advertising techniques for various mass media; however, there are a number of features which are common to both oral and written advertisements. first, it is always necessary to introduce the advertiser (logo, slogan, brand, differentiating colors or images), the target audience (age, sex, social class) and the advertisement function (e.g.: buy this, generously give this, join us, etc.). thus, the main goal of advertisements is to attract customers by providing high-quality goods and services. people in the sphere of business must be able to create advertisements taking into account the combination of its slogan, image, text and logo. armenian students have to overcome grammar, lexical and stylistic interference connected with the language of ads. it is important to state that it is difficult to overcome socio-cultural interference typical of business english such as business-economic realias, terms and notions characteristic of english-speaking countries. from the pragmatic point of view, it is important for students to learn the non-verbal means of communication common for english-speaking business communities: gestures, manners, mimicry. as is known, in stock markets brokers communicate generally using body language. without knowing this language stock exchange operators, stock brokers, dealers cannot advertise their “goods” or present exchange prices. even stock jobbers have their own professional body language to advertise. in advertisements of various products and brands, advertisers take into account not only inter-cultural, but also intra-cultural, professional stereotypes, with the account that their target audience may have associations with the advertised product or service. it is not a secret that cultural realias are of great significance to foreign language learners from the point of view of acquiring professional stereotypes and “irrelevant vocabulary”. it is important to study not only cultural realias in general, but also business-economic realias in particular. it is worth noting that teaching a foreign language by means of advertisements presupposes knowledge of how to work with self-advertisements and adbusters. selfadvertisement is widely spread and known among students and specialists of various armenian folia anglistika methodology 126 spheres as “resume”, which is translated from french as speech, article or other brief writing, short summary, report or conclusion (andreeva 1997:233). in this context resume is a short autobiography with the description of professional experience and skills. while preparing a resume one must briefly and clearly describe his/her qualifications which are required to occupy the given vacancy or position. according to gorshkov, when one provides information on oneself, it is necessary that he/she preserves such communicative features of speech as accuracy, chronology, validity, clarity and fluency (gorshkov 1996:96). as to adbusters, it is a form of media that looks like an advertisement but actually opposes the values and assumptions presented by a corporation through its advertising campaigns.1 with the help of advertisements it is possible to sell not only products, but also ideas. by creating adbusters on the basis of suggested advertisements, students develop their critical thinking. in order to transform an advertisement into an adbuster, students must have relevant professional, practical and linguistic knowledge. without the above-mentioned knowledge it is impossible to disclose the hidden message of the advertisement, describe codes and conventions used in it, determine the purpose and assumptions of the advertisement, as well as its possible consequences (media education foundation 2005:36). the analysis of hidden messages ensures efficiency of the above mentioned course. active cooperation between teachers and students becomes important, as it requires brain storming, when they try to underline the central idea of the advertisement. it is also important that students take critical approach to the central and hidden messages of the advertisement. advertisement splitting is an important technique of learning a professional sublanguage through advertisements (media education foundation 2005:53); and for this, students must possess relevant analytical skills and abilities. when students disclose central ideas and messages of the advertisement as well as the consequences (as a result of using the advertised product), which were untold of, they can determine which idea they are going to oppose in the adbuster. for example, they can study the side effects of smoking on health or the side effects of cars on the environment. it is important that students write their comments at the end of the class. it is very helpful when the teacher prepares special worksheets which are envisaged for certain groups of students. according to mendonca, it is necessary to develop and use new technologies and strategies with which it will be possible to evaluate the level of a second language acquisition through advertisement texts (mendonca, johnson 1994). as truscott mentioned “since it has been suggested that written feedback in the form of explicit language error correction may not be effective and, in fact, may have a negative effect on a student’s accuracy, it may be most helpful to supply most comments on structure and writing” (truscott 2007:255-272). the created adbuster is presented in the final stage of the course, during which students must do the following within 10-15 minutes: • briefly present and describe their original advertisement, • present their paragraphs, armenian folia anglistikamethodology 127 • present and describe their adbuster, • answer the questions of their classmates. in conclusion, the use of advertisements and adbusters is an effective method of teaching business english. future business-related people, for example economists, financial advisers and businessmen understand clearly well that most available advertisements come from western countries, the usa in particular. it is important to develop skills and abilities of analyzing inter-cultural and intra-cultural sub-texts not only for the creation of advertisements and adbusters, but also for the ongoing development of a professional sublanguage. on the one hand, while creating and analyzing advertisements in english, students create a basis for the development of their professional and practical knowledge. on the other hand, as this activity is rather problematic, goal-oriented, and is based on students’ knowledge and professional requirements and interests, it makes the business english learning process more intensive and efficient. here we deal with the efficient use of the principle of inter and intra-disciplinary ties. while preparing the business course, the language of advertisements becomes highly important. the language of advertisers mainly consists of colloquial patterns full of metaphors. at the same time, it is very important to take into account professional, geographical and intercultural knowledge of future businessmen. as advertisement texts are short, full of hidden messages and codes, they reflect linguo-stylistic, cultural, psychological, professional knowledge and skills of advertisement creators. it is obvious that in order to understand any idea, hidden message, appeal or order reflected in the advertisement or the adbuster, students must have clear ideas about the countries which create the advertisements/adbusters, their people, morals, stereotypes, cultural, economic, psychological, mental realities and realias. it is impossible to understand and disclose the essence of the advertisement/adbuster only with the help of linguistic knowledge. due to the globalization processes, students of english as a second language need more than simple language instruction. foreign language learners merge into this sociocultural situation much easier. they acquire cultural, business situations and realias more efficiently in creating advertisements, resumes and adbusters. one of the important preconditions of using ads and adbusters for teaching/learning purposes is the practical orientation of business english. notes: 1. see http://adbusters.org/spoofads/index.php references: 1. andreeva, n.n., arapova, n.s. et. àl. (1997) slovar inostrannykh slov: aktualnaya leksika, tolkovaniye, etimologiya. m.: citadel. armenian folia anglistika methodology 128 2. badger, r., white, g.a. (2000) process genre approach to teaching writing. // elt journal/oup, 54 (2). 3. bartels, n. (2003) written peer response in l2 writing. // english teaching forum 41 (1). 4. gorshkov, a.i. (1996) russkaya slovesnost: ot slova k slovesnosti: uchebnoe posobie dlya uchashchikhsya 10-11 klassov obsheobrazowatelnykh uchrezhdeniy. m.: prosveshcheniye. 5. media education foundation. (2005) deconstructing an advertisement. (www.mediaed.org/handouts/pdfs/deconstructinganad.pdf.) 6. mendonca, c.o., johnson, k.e. (1994) peer review negotiations: revision activities in esl writing instructions. // tesol quarterly, 28 (4). 7. thorne, s. (1997) mastering advanced english language. new york: palgrave. 8. truscott, j. (2007) the effect of error correction on learners’ ability to write accurately. // journal of second language writing, 16 (4). ¶áí³½¹ý»ñç ¨ ñ³ï³·áí³½¹ý»ñç ïçñ³éù³ý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá ·áñí³ñ³ñ ³ý·é»ñ»ýç ¹³ëáýã³óáõù ¶á í³½¹ ý» ñç ¨ ñ³ ï³ ·á í³½¹ ý» ñç ïç ñ³ éáõùý ³ñ¹ ûáõ ý³ í»ï ùç çáó ¿ ·áñ í³ ñ³ñ ³ý· é» ñ» ýç ¹³ ë³ í³ý¹ ù³ý å³ ù³ ý³ï, ù³ ýç áñ ³ûý »ý ã³¹ ñáõù ¿ 黽 íç ¨ ùççù ß³ ïáõ ã³ ûçý ç ñ³ íç ׳ï ý» ñç í»ñ éáõ íáõã û³ý áõ ý³ ïáõã ûáõý, áñý ¿é ³ýñ ñ³ å»ßï ý³ ë³ å³û ù³ý ¿ áõ ëáõù ý³ ëçñ íáõ 黽 íáí ·á í³½¹ ý»ñ ¨ ñ³ ï³ ·á í³½¹ ý»ñ ëï»õ í» éáõ ñ³ ù³ñ: ð³ñï ¿ ýß»é, áñ û ï³ñ 黽 íç ¹³ ë³ í³ý¹ ù³ý ³ñ¹ ûáõ ý³ í» ïáõã ûáõ ýá ý³ë ¨ ³ é³ç ³ å³ ñáí íáõù ¿ ³ûý å³ ù³ ý³ï, »ñμ ñ³ß íç »ý ³éý íáõù ùç ç³ é³ñ ï³ û³ ï³ý ï³ å» ñá, ³û ëçýùý` ³ûý ï³ å» ñá, á ñáýù ·á ûáõã ûáõý áõ ý»ý áõ ëáõù ý³ ëçñ íáõ û ï³ñ 黽 íç ¨ ³û¹ áõ ë³ ýá õç ù³ë ý³ ·ç ï³ ï³ý μý³ ·³ í³ éç ùçç¨: ¶áñ í³ ñ³ñ á éáñ ïç ³ å³ ·³ ù³ë ý³ ·»ï ý» ñá å»ïù ¿ ïç ñ³ å» ï»ý ·á í³½ ¹ç, ñ³ ï³ ·á í³½ ¹ç 黽 í³ μ³ ý³ ï³ý, á ׳ μ³ ý³ ï³ý ¨ ñá ·» μ³ ý³ ï³ý ³ é³ýó ý³ ñ³ï ïáõã ûáõý ý» ñçý: ø» ãá ¹³ μ³ ý³ ï³ý ï» ë³ýï ûáõ ýçó ýñ³ýù å»ïù ¿ ï³ ñá õ³ ý³ý ëï»õ í»é ·á í³½¹ ý»ñ, ñ³ ï³ ·á í³½¹ ý»ñ ¨ çýù ý³ ï»ý ë³· ñ³ ï³ý ý»ñ (黽 ûáõ ù»)` ïç ñ³ é» éáí ñ³ õáñ ¹³ï ó³ ï³ý ï³ñ μ»ñ ó¨»ñ áõ ù» ãá¹ ý»ñ: armenian folia anglistikamethodology 129 maket_n_verjin.qxp 101 linguistics armenian folia anglistika on refusal strategies in modern english refusals and rejections are forms of negation.almost as soon as we are born, we can use negation, indicating by gesture or other behavior that we reject, exclude or disagree with something. the aim of the present article is to study refusals and rejections (that are forms of negation) and to present those strategies that the speaker applies to make his/her refusal tactful and felicitous. “refusing” means, essentially saying “no, i will not do it” in response to someone else’s utterance, in which he has conveyed to us that he wants us to do something and that he expects us to do it. the focus of our attention here are particularly those refusal strategies that the speaker applies to decline a request. in other words, our aim is to study the interplay between requests and refusals. in terms of pragmatics, requests and refusals are automatic sequences called “adjacency pairs” in the structure of the conversation. “adjacency pairs” is a termonological word combination used for certain consecutive speech turns that are closely related (schegloff and sacks, 1973). they can be described as automatic sequences consisting of a first part and a second part produced by two successive speakers in the way that the second utterance is identified as related to the first as an expected follow-up. having uttered the first part, the speaker immediately expects his/her conversational partner to produce the second part of the same pair. the most common adjacency pairs are greeting greeting, thanking response, request refusal/acceptance, apology acceptance, and question answer. managing adjacency pairs successfully is part of “conversational competence”. request-refusal is an important adjacency pair in that both requesting and refusing are face threatening acts (fta), and therefore demand special attention from the speakers, so that the message can be conveyed in a socially acceptable manner. while requests are pre-event acts, refusals are post-event acts. in everyday life it is not easy to refuse. if you give a flat refusal, it may be interpreted as more than just the refusal itself. in contrast, it can cause both the requester and the requestee a feeling of discomfort. let us consider the following example of a flat or direct refusal of request. “oh, daddy, can’t you give her something to make her stopscreaming?” asked nick. “no. i haven’t any anaesthetic”, his father said. the husband in the upper bunk rolled over against the wall. the sirarpi karapetyan woman in the kitchen motioned to the doctor that the water was hot. nick’s father went into the kitchen and poured about half of the water out of the big kettle into a basin. into the water left in the kettle he put several things he unwrapped from a handkerchief. (e. h., p. 31) as can be seen in the above mentioned example the speaker makes a direct refusal to the hearer’s request and the refusal made is likely to create a feeling of discomfort in the requester (the speaker), as well as in the requestee (the hearer). the reason for this is that requesting and refusing are face threatening acts. as it is known face threatening acts (ftas) impede the freedom of actions (negative face), and the wish that one’s wants be desired by others (positive face) by either the speaker, or the addressee, or both. requests potentially threaten the addressee’s face because they may restrict the addressee’s freedom to act according to his/her will (holtgraves, 2002; 40). refusals, on the other hand, may imply that what he/she says is not favored by the speaker. in an attempt to avoid ftas, interlocutors use specific strategies to minimize the threat according to a rational assessment of the face risk to participants. in other words these ftas lead to a tendency on the part of the speakers to make use of certain refusal strategies such as indirectness and polite expressions in order to avoid conflict (brown and levinson, 1987). these strategies are various: postponement, hesitation, the statement of alternative, silent refusal, etc. they represent different semantic formulae. a semantic formula may consist of a word, a phrase, or a sentence which meets a given semantic criterion or strategy. a semantic formula is described as “the means by which a particular speech act is accomplished, in terms of the primary content of an utterance, such as a reason, an explanation, or an alternative”. (bardovi-harlig and hartford,1991: 48). postponement. the speaker uses postponement as a refusal strategy when he is obliged to give an immediate response to a request and he tries to delay it till some other time. a delay shows that the refuser has a good reason for refusing and implies that the refuser would accept or agree if it were possible. “who are you?” “i am zeno legge”. “what do you want at this hour?” the question wounded me. “my dear uncle”, i exclaimed, “i know you do not intend it, but you make me feel unwelcome. come down and let me in, i beg”. “go to your hotel”, he said sternly. “i will see you in the morning. good night”. he disappeared and closed the window. i felt that i let this rebuff pass, i should not feel kindly towards my uncle in the morning, nor, indeed, at any future time. (b. sh., p. 187) 102 armenian folia anglistika linguistics it is clear from the example that the hearer (who is the speaker’s uncle) doesn’t want to comply with the speaker’s request (namely, to let him in) and he delays their talk till the next morning, instead of directly refusing his request. the statement of alternative. another good strategy for making refusals or rejections is the statement of alternative. “pull back that quilt, will you, george?” he said. “i’d rather not touch it.” later when he started to operate uncle george and three indian men held the woman still. she bit uncle george on the arm and uncle george said, “damn squaw bitch!” and the young indian who had rowed uncle george over laughed at him. nick held the basin for his father. it all took a long time. his father picked the baby up and slapped it to make it breathe and handed it to the old woman. (e. h. p. 31) it is seen from the example that in order not to offend his interlocutor the speaker makes use of the statement of alternative and thus avoids giving a straight refusal. hesitation. when hesitation is used as a refusal strategy, it seems that the speaker hesitates about his response to a request, i.e. he feels unsure about what to say, but in fact his response is similar to a refusal. “i suppose i can call you jon?” “i should think so just”. “all right! but you know there’s a feud between our families?” jon stammered: “feud? why?” “it’s ever so romantic and silly. that’s why i pretended we hadn’t met. shall we get up early tomorrow morning and go for a walk before breakfast and have it out? i hate being slow about things, don’t you?” jon murmured a rapturous assent. “six o’clock, then. i think your mother’s beautiful”. (j. g., p. 93) we can easily see that in the given context jon (the requestee) pretends that he feels uncertain about what to say, whether to comply or not with fleur’s (the requester’s) request to call him jon, but in fact he doesn’t want his response to sound rude or insulting. vagueness. often a speaker can soften his/her refusal by making a vague statement which is another commonly used refusal strategy. 103 linguistics armenian folia anglistika in most cases modal words are used to attach a sense of vagueness to the addressee’s response, making a refusal sound less categorical. we can consider the following example: “do you love me?” “uh, huh”. “will you come over and watch me play indoor?” “maybe”. “aw, hare, you don’t love me. if you loved me, you’d want to come over and watch me play indoor”. krebs’s mother came into the dining-room from the kitchen. she carried a plate with two fried eggs and some crisp bacon on it and a plate of buckwheat cakes. (e. h., p. 109) it is obvious that in this example the modal word “maybe” perfectly works as a refusal strategy. the addressee doesn’t want to offend the addresser and tries not to make a sharp refusal, his response is rather vague. hedging. another refusal strategy is hedging. walter. where i worked before i taught the children for two or three hours, and then was paid by their mother, and back always, to my small room (with a faint smile) with my cooking, which is not so good. you will never know how much i owe to you. louise. my dear boy. tell me about your family. your people in germany. (walter stiffens perceptibly into withdrawal, rises and crosses above the armchair to r of the table). walter. there is nothing to tell. louise. there must be something. (p. sh., p. 80) the extract shows that the addressee avoids refusing directly the addresser’s request (namely, to tell her about his family) and tries to change the subject of the conversation. excuse and explanation. this refusal strategy functions to reassure the recipient of the refusal that he/she is still approved of but there are necessary reasons for refusing the request. in the following extract it is not difficult to see how excuse and explanation can function as means of expressing refusals. clive (showing off to walter). yes, it’s going to be brilliant. all gothic darkness and calamities. it’s called the “black hole of east suffolk”. 104 armenian folia anglistika linguistics (he rises and crosses to lc; mock grave). sit down and i’ll unfold. walter . no, not now. your mother is waiting. excuse me. (walter exits to the kitchen. clive stares after walter. his gaiety leaves him at once. there is a pause). pamela. (rising and moving above the table). what’s wrong? clive. (sitting on the bench). nothing. (p. sh., p. 62) while making his refusal walter (the addressee) apologizes and explains why he can’t wait until clive (the addresser) tells them a story. often an explanation without an excuse may also function as a refusal strategy. hanson. actually, could you lend me five pounds? arnie. i haven’t a cent. it all went on this. (hanson has got up. he eyes the armour suspiciously) hanson. oh. (pause). actually. why did you buy it? arnie. as a present. hanson. for your parents? (arnie nods) (d. s., p. 197) in the given extract arnie (the addressee) rejects hanson’s (the addresser’s) request to lend him five pounds through explaining to him why he can’t give him the money (namely, because he spent all his money on buying a present). answer-requests for additional information. often by making a request for additional information the speaker makes an attempt to hide his/her real attitudes and feelings, thus trying to make the refusal less direct and offensive. this refusal strategy is rather commonly used in everyday communication. louise. now try and be a bit more pleasant, will you? (she moves above the table, removing her rings from her fingers as she goes). joujou, it’s washing-up time, are you going to help me? clive. can’t we leave it for once? louise. it’s all right. i can manage perfectly well without you. (louise exits to the kitchen. there is a pause). clive (tentatively). i’m sorry i said that about the furniture, father. i suppose it was tactless of me. (p. sh., p. 69) it is obvious that in the example the addressee makes use of a good tactic to reject the addresser’s request – namely, he makes a request for additional information. it functions as a perfect refusal strategy. 105 linguistics armenian folia anglistika silent refusal. a speaker may express his/her refusal in response to a request not only verbally, but also by nonverbal behavior. as is well known, sometimes even the best verbal communication skills are not enough to create and sustain successful relationships. very often non-verbal communication speaks louder than words. the term “non-verbal” refers to a number of different communication processes gestures, facial expressions, silence, touch and so on. very often we can refuse people’s requests by keeping silence. in some cases refusals are expressed by means of silence at the same time through making use of body language, for instance, through shaking one’s head. it wasn’t any good. he couldn’t tell her, he couldn’t make her see it. it was silly to have said it. he had only hurt her. he went over and took hold of her arm. she was crying with her head in her hands. “i didn’t mean it”, he said. “i was just angry at something. i didn’t mean i didn’t love you”. his mother went on crying. krebs put his arm on her shoulder. “can’t you believe me, mother?” his mother shook her head. “please, please, mother. please believe me”. (e. h., p. 111) here, krebs’s mother expresses her refusal through silence, just shaking her head without saying a word. there can also be cases in which the situation itself prompts that the addressee makes a refusal to the addresser’s request. louise. you just can’t mean it. (she stretches across the table and takes the newspaper). really, stanley, there are times when i have to remind myself about you actually remind myself. stanley (quietly). suppose you tell me, then. educate me. louise (loftily). clive, dear, explain it to your father, will you? (she opens the paper and prepares to read it). (clive continues eating). (p. sh. p., 42) it is obvious that in this example the situation itself prompts us that clive (the addressee) refuses louise’s (the addresser’s) request by keeping silence and continuing eating. thus, the analysis carried out shows that refusal strategies are various, that there are both direct and indirect strategies, the latter being used in order to try to avoid the task of offending one’s interlocutors, i.e. one’s partners in dialogue. as far as the focus of our attention in this article is the adjacency pair of request – refusal, all the above analyzed strategies refer to requests. by analyzing different refusal 106 armenian folia anglistika linguistics strategies an attempt has been made to discover the interplay between requests and refusals, the various interesting ways in which requests can be rejected. it should be mentioned, however, that refusals can be used not only in response to requests, but also to offers, suggestions and invitations. it is also important to note that the choice of various refusal strategies depends greatly on different social-cultural factors, which include culture, age, gender, social distance, social status, etc. thus, the realization of the speech act of refusing involves not only linguistic, but also pragmatic knowledge. one can have a wide range of vocabulary and a sound knowledge of grammar, but misunderstandings can still arise, if he/she cannot apply pragmatic competence appropriately. references: 1. austin, j.l. (1975) how to do things with words. cambridge-massachusetts: harvard university press. 2. bardovi-harlig; hartford, b. (1991) saying “no” in english: native and nonnative rejections. urbana, il: university of illionois. 3. brown, p.; levinson, s.c. (1978) politeness. cambridge: cambridge university press. 4. close, r.a. (1975) a reference grammar for students of english. harlow: longman. 5. holtgraves, t. (2002) language as social action. mahwah, nj: erlbaum. 6. leech, g.n.; svartvik, j. (1975) a communicative grammar of english. london: longman. 7. levinson, s.c. (1983) pragmatics. cambridge: cambridge university press. 8. searle, j.r. (1976) a classification of illocutionary acts. cambridge: cambridge university press. 9. schegloff, e.a.; sacks, h. (1973) opening up closings. // semiotica, 8. 10. searle, j.r. (1965) what is a speech act? // philosophy in america. / ed. by m.black. london: oxford university press. 11. verschueren, jef. (1999) understanding pragmatics, london-new york: arnold publishers. 12. wierzbicka, a. (1987) english speech act verbs: (a semantic dictionary). sydneynew york: academic press. 13. yule, g. (1996) pragmatics (oxford introductions to language study). oxford: oxford university press. 14. http://www.carla.umn.edu/speechacts/refusals/tt.html 15. http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/june-07-aaae.php 107 linguistics armenian folia anglistika sources of data: 1. galsworthy j. (1954) to let. moscow: foreign lang. publishing house. 2. hemingway e. (1971) selected stories. moscow: progress. 3. (1984) modern english drama. moscow: raduga publishers. 4. shaw b. (1977) a fearless champion of the truth. moscow: progress. ø»ñåù³ý é³½ù³í³ñáõãûáõýá å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù ùýýíáõù ¿ ù»ñåù³ý é³½ù³í³ñáõãûáõýá ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù£ àõëáõùý³ëçñíáõù »ý ù»ñåù³ý ñ³ïï³å»ë ³ûý ó¨»ñá, áñáýù ñ³çáñ¹áõù »ý ëý¹ñ³ýù ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõ ëáëáõ³ï³ý ³ïï»ñçý, ³ûëçýùý` ù»ñ ùýýáõãû³ý ³é³ñï³ý ëý¹ñ³ýùç ¨ ù»ñåù³ý ÷áëý»ñ·áñíáõãûáõýý ¿ å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù: ø³ýñ³ù³ëý ùýýáõãû³ý »ýã³ñï»éáí ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý ·áñíáýã³óáõù ù»ñåù³ý é³½ù³í³ñáõãû³ý ³é³í»é ñ³×³ë ïçñ³éíáõ ó¨»ñá` ñ»õçý³ïá ÷áñóáõù ¿ µ³ó³ñ³ûï»é ¨ í»ñéáõí»é ëý¹ñ³ýùç ¨ ù»ñåù³ý ùçç¨ ³éï³ µ³ñ¹ ¨ ñ»ï³ùñùçñ ñ³ñ³µ»ñ³ïóáõãûáõýá: 108 armenian folia anglistika linguistics 7 maket 2010 nor_n:layout 1.qxd idioms in colours all languages possess a great number of word-groupswhich are known as idioms. the use of idioms much depends on the context. proceeding from the assumption that individual meanings of polysemantic words can be observed in a certain context it is argued that idioms are to be defined through specific types of context. free word-groups make up variable contexts, whereas the essential feature of idioms is a non-variable or fixed context. non-variability is understood as the stability of the word-group. in variable contexts which include polysemantic words, substitution of one of the components is possible within the limits of the lexical valency of the word under consideration (ginzburg 1979:72). idioms are to a great extent a product of culture. they come into being on the basis of the specific worldview of a particular speech community and reflect its empirical, historical and spiritual experience. as a manifestation of national wit as a particular sort of national creativity, idioms through the system of images, symbols and stereotypes fixed in them, carry on from generation to generation the accumulated culture and thus ensure national identity. idioms are claimed to have powerful cohesive force. being institutionalized units of the language they are shared by all members of a given speech community or various subgroups within it and bind the members of such groups together as a manifestation of their identity. at the same time idioms have the power of keeping out non-members of the group and distinguishing such groups from others (new developments in modern anglistics 1997:118). taking into account all these peculiarities, idioms should be translated with special care. our research has shown that the idioms with colour terms that are found in the novels of british and american authors are translated in different ways into armenian and russian. the first variant of translation is to use the equivalent idiom existing in armenian or russian. on the other hand, if a corresponding equivalent is non-existent, idioms can be translated with the help of non-idiomatic expressions. a certain number of examples are adduced below: and round crum were still gathered a forlorn hope of bluebloods with a plutocratic following. (galsworthy 104) ºí øñáõýç ßáõñç ¹»é ñ³í³ùí»é ¿çý ½áõñ ñáõûë»ñáí ï³ñí³í ³½ýí³ï³ýý»ñ᪠¹ñ³ù³ï»ñ áýï»ñý»ñç ßù³ëùμáí: (galsworthy 145) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 62 kristine harutyunyan è âîêðóã êðóìà âñå åùå ñîáèðàëèñü ïåðäñòàâèòåëè ãîëóáîé êðîâè ñ èõ áûëûìè íàäåæäàìè, à çà íèìè òÿíóëàñü ïëó òî êðà òèÿ. (galsworthy 438) it always ends up making you blue as hell. (salinger 94) øçßï ¹ñ³ýó å³ï׳éáí ïñ³ù³¹ñáõãûáõý¹ áýïýáõù ¿: (salinger 120) âå÷íî èç-çà íèõ ðàññòðàèâàåøüñÿ. (salinger 320) in the first example the idiom blue blood has equivalents both in armenian and russian languages (though it is not introduced in the armenian translation), whereas the idiom blue as hell is translated without the use of colour terms. the colour term blue has the meaning of sadness and gloominess only in the english language: i`ve been thinking of the past and i am as blue as the devil. (maugham 62) ðçßáõù ¿ç ³ýóû³éá áõ ³ûýå»ë ïñ³ù³¹ñáõãûáõýë áýï³í: (maugham 72) ß äóìàëà î ïðîøëîì, è ó ìåíÿ òåïåðü ñòðàøíàÿ õàíäðà. (maugham 246) i just felt blue as hell. (salinger 125) ðá·ý³íáõãûáõý ã¿ç ½·áõù, ³éñ³ë³ñ³ï áãçýã ã¿ç ½·áõù, μ³óç ëáëï³éç ïñïùáõãûáõýçó: (salinger 160) âîîáùå íè÷åãî íå ÷óâñòâîâàë, êðîìå æóòêîé òîñêè. (salinger 349) you are seeing blue tonight, old thing. (galsworthy 223) ²ûëûñ ³ù»ý çýã ùé³ûé »ë ï»ëýáõù, ëçñ»éçë: (galsworthy 680) armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 63 ñåé÷àñ òåáå âñå ïðåäñòàâëÿåòñÿ â ìðà÷íîì ñâåòå. (galsworthy 455) i have absolutely got to have an interest in life, or this country will give me the blues. (galsworthy 348) ºë ³ý å³û ù³ý å»ïù ¿ ùç ñ» ï³ùñù ñáõã ûáõý áõ ý» ý³ù ïû³ý ùáõù, ã» ã¿ ³ûë »ñ ïç ñá ë¨ áõñ μ³ ãç å»ë ù» é³ ù³õ óáï ï¹³ñó ýç çýó: (galsworthy 456) ìíå ïðîñòî íåîáõîäèìî íàéòè êàêîé-òî èíòåðåñ â æèçíè, èíà÷å ýòà ñòðàíà íàãîíèò íà ìåíÿ çåëåíóþ òîñêó. (galsworthy 651) the last example seems to be more vivid and interesting as the idiom to give the blues is translated both into armenian and russian with the help of the idioms containing colour terms different from the original, i.e. black and green. though the translators have used different colour terms, the translations are very appropriate as they reflect exactly the same mood that is expressed in the original. the fact that sadness in armenian is of the black colour whereas in russian it is green, can be explained by national and cultural peculiarities of the given languages. one did not reach him or so it was reported by members of the family who, out of old-time habit or absent-mindedness, would drive up once in a blue moon and ask after their surviving uncle. (galsworthy 38) üñ³ ùáï ³ý ï³ ñ» éç ¿ñ ùïý»é, ¨ ï³ù ³û¹ å»ë ¿çý ³ ëáõù ·»ñ ¹³ë ï³ ýç ³ûý ³ý ¹³ù ý» ñá, á ñáýù ñçý ëá íá ñáõã û³ý áõ åáí, ï³ù ¿é óñí³ íáõã û³ý ùç ñá å»çý, ·³ éçë ¿çý ñ³ ½³ ñçó ù»ï áõ ñ³ñó ýáõù ç ñ»ýó áõç ùý³ ó³í ñá ñ»õ μáñ ³ éáõ çáõã ûáõ ýá: (galsworthy 440) äî íåãî íå äîáðàòüñÿ, èëè òàê, ïî êðàéíåé ìåðå óòâåðæäàëè òå èç ðîäíè, êòî ïî ñòàðèííîé ïðèâû÷êå èëè ðàññåÿííîñòè íåòíåò, à çàõîäèëè ñþäà ïðîâåäàòü ñâîåãî ïîñëåäíåãî äÿäþ. (galsworthy 641) then all of a sudden, out of a clear blue sky, old sally said, “look, i have to know”. (salinger 106) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 64 ð³ý ï³ñí, ³ é³ýó ³û騳û éáõã û³ý ê³é éçý ³ ëáõù ¿. – è ëçñ, »ë áõ ½áõù »ù ñ³ë ï³ï ç ù³ ý³é: (salinger 136) âäðóã íè ñ òîãî íè ñ ñåãî, ñàëëè ñïðàøèâàåò: ñëóøàé, ìíå íàäî òî÷íî çíàòü. (salinger 331) the idioms once in a blue moon and out of a clear blue sky have no equivalents in armenian and russian. the majority of the idioms with the colour term white (ëåçï³ï, áåëûé) have positive meaning, whereas the idioms with the colour term black (ë¨, ÷åðíûé) are negative. yet there are some exceptions: white elephant, to show the white feather in the black; ³ãùç ë¨á ëåçï³ï ³ý»é, ë¨çý ëåçï³ï ³ë»é, ëåçï³ï μçí, ëåçï³ï ç³ñ¹; áåëàÿ ãîðÿ÷êà, øòîïàòü áåëûìè íèòêàìè, etc. his truly english pragmatism, could not help feeling that michael would be well rid of a white elephant. (galsworthy 66) êáù ½á çñ μáõý çëï ³ý· éç³ ï³ý åñ³· ù³ ïç½ ùáí, åç ïç áõ ý» ý³ñ ³ûý ½·³ óáõ ùá, áñ ø³ûù éá, ÷³éù ³ëï íá, ³ ½³ï í»ó ùç ×ýßáõ μ» éçó: (galsworthy 455) ñîìñ êàê èñòûé àíã ëè ÷à íèí, ñêëî íÿâ øèé ñÿ ê ïðàã ìà òèç ìó, êîíñòà òè ðî âàë áû ñ îá ëåã ÷å íèåì, ÷òî ìàéêë îò äå ëàë ñÿ îò ãðî ìîçä êî ãî áðå ìå íè. (galsworthy 311) the idiom white elephant is typical only of the english language. plenty of straight men racing but a lot of blackguards hanging about the sport. (galsworthy 92) ²½ ýçí ù³ñ ¹çï ß³ï ï³ý óç³ñ ß³ íç ³ë å³ ñ» ½áõù, μ³ûó ùçã ã»ý ý³¨ ëñç ï³ ý» ñá, á ñáýù åïïíáõù »ý ³û¹ ëåáñ ïç ßáõñ çá: (galsworthy147) â ìèðå ñêà÷åê äîñòàòî÷íî ÷åñòíûõ ëþäåé, íî ñêîëüêî ìåðçàâöåâ ïðèìàçûâàåòñÿ ñî ñòîðîíû! (galsworthy 568) armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 65 well, he would tackle it, write to jon, and put the whole thing down in black and white. (galsworthy 176) ² ûá, çñ ó»é ùá ïí»ñó ýç ëý¹ç ñá, ï·ñç æá ýçý, ë ̈ áí ëåç ï³ ïç íñ³ ïß³ ñ³¹ ñç ³ù μáõç ³û¹ ³ýó û³é å³ï ùáõã ûáõ ýá: (golsuordi 641) îí íàïèøåò äæîíó, èçëîæèò âñå êàê åñòü ÷åðíûì ïî áåëîìó. (galsworthy 778) war-paint? -yes, white waistcoat. (galsworthy 78) èñçí å³ßïáý³ï³±ý: ²ûá, ëåçï³ï μ³×ïáý³ï: (galsworthy 82) ïîëíûé ïàðàä? äà, áåëûé æèëåò. (galsworthy 58) the idioms black and white and white waistcoat are translated with the help of the same colour terms. on the other hand the translation of blackguards is different. this was early in december, so that when black week came, he was enabled to say to everybody… (galsworthy 130) ¸»ï ï»ù μ» ñç ëïç½μý ¿ñ ¹³, ³ûý å»ë áñ »ñμ §ê¨ ß³ μ³ ãᦠíñ³ ñ³ ë³í, üç ùá é³ ëá ï³ñ í»ë ç ñ³ íáõýù ëï³ ó³í μá éá ñçý ñ³û ï³ ñ³ ñ» éáõ… (galsworthy 183) ýòî áûëî â ñàìîì íà÷àëå äåêàáðÿ, òàê ÷òî, êîãäà ïðèøëà “×åðíàÿ íåäåëÿ”, îí ìîã âñÿêîìó ñêàçàòü.. (galsworthy 465) black week is 10-15 december, 1899. during this short period the english army suffered a number of defeats. this expression can be understood correctly in case of one’s good knowledge of the history of britain (cf. black tuesday). coming hastily out of a door, he received simultaneously a black eye. (galsworthy 99) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 66 þï³å ¹áõñë ·³ éáí ùç ¹éýçó, ý³ ùç³ å³ ù³ ý³ï »ñ ïáõ ñ³ñ í³í ëï³ ó³í` ù»ïý ³ã ùç ï³ï, áõñ ï³å ï»ó: (galsworthy 503) ïîñïåøíî âîéäÿ â óìûâàëüíóþ, îí òîò÷àñ æå ïîëó÷èë ñèíÿê ïîä ãëàçîì. (galsworthy 343) in this example again the colour term black is replaced by another one. and he would live to a green old age, like his dear father. (galsworthy 242) àõ áõç-³ éáõç ï³å ñç ùçý㨠ëáñ í» ñáõã ûáõý, çñ ëç ñ» éç ñ³û ñç ïç ýù³ý: (galsworthy 344) è îí äî æè âåò äî ãëó áî êîé ñòà ðîñòè, êàê åãî äî ðî ãîé îòåö. (galsworthy 577) “well”, he said,”they brought me up to do nothing, and here i am in the sear and yellow, getting poorer every day”. (galsworthy 14) -¸»ñ, ³ ë³ó ý³,çýó ù³ý ïáõã ûáõ ýçó ëá íá ñ»ó ñ»é »ý á ãçýã ã³ ý»é, ¨ ³ ñ³ ñç ù³, »ñμ ï»ñ¨ý»ñë ¹»õ ýáõù áõ ã³÷ íáõù »ý ³ñ ¹»ý, û ñçó ûñ ³ í» éç »ù ³õ ù³ ï³ ýáõù: (galsworthy 406) -äà,ñêà çàë îí,ÿ òàê âîñ ïè òàí, ÷òî áû íè ÷å ãî íå äå ëàòü, è âîò òå ïåðü, íà ñêëî íå ëåò ìîèõ, íè ùàþ ñ êàæ äûì äíåì. (galsworthy 618) the colour terms green and yellow refer to an old age only in english. however, in armenian we can see a translation ï»ñ¨ý»ñë ¹»õýáõù »ý where another colour term is used. i am one of these very yellow guys. (salinger 75) ºë ç μý» í³ëïáï »ù: (salinger 95) ß ïî ïðèðîäå òðóñ. (salinger 302) armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 67 it is funny kind of yellowness, wthen you come to think of it, but it is yellowness, all right. (salinger 76) î³ ñû ñç ý³ï í³ë ïá ïáõã ûáõý ¿, áñ ùï³ íáõù »ë, μ³ûó ³û ýá õ³ ù» ý³û ýçí, í³ë ïá ïáõã ûáõý ¿: (salinger 97) ñòðàííàÿ òðóñîñòü, åñëè ïîäóìàòü, íî âñå æå ýòî òðó ñîñòü. (salinger 303) the colour term yellow in english is connected with cowardice and sensation. the meaning of sensation is reflected in armenian and russian (æåëò àÿ ï ðåññà, ¹»õçý ù³ùáõé), but yellow in the meaning of cowardice is peculiar only to english. people live in the world full of colours which acquire different symbolic meanings. the meaning of the idioms containing colour terms is connected with the symbolic associations that exist in the particular speech community. this fact can’t be neglected in the process of translation. idiomatic paremiological dictionaries are full of amusing periphrases of wellknown idioms, proverbs and sayings, which, in fact, have very little to do with the complex meaning of the corresponding unit. it is not surprising therefore that these rather impressionistic definitions are of no or very little help to the user of language who is unable to form the necessary link between the meaning of an idiom and an appropriate discourse situation. especially it affects foreign learners who fail to make a proper choice to match a particular speech event (new developments in modern anglistics 1997:110). references: 1. ginzburg, r. et al. (1979) a course in modern english lexicology. m.: vyshaya shkola. 2. new developments in modern anglistics (1997) m.: moscow university press. sources of data: 1. galsworthy, j. a. (1975) the forsyte saga. books 1, 2. m.: progress publishers. 2. galsworthy, j. a. (1975) modern comedy. books 1, 2. m.: progress publishers. 3. galsworthy, j. a. (1973) saga o forsaytakh. tr. by n. voljina, m. bogoslavskaya, n. bobrova, vol. 1, 2, 3. m.: khudozhestvennaya literatura. 4. galsworthy, j. a. (1973) sovremennaya komedia. tr. by r. rayt-kovaleva, a. krivcova, m. lorie. vol. 1, 2, 3. m.: khudozhestvennaya literatura. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 68 5. galsworthy, j. a. (1977) forsaytneri patmutyun. tr. by k. surenyan. vol. 1, 2, 3. yerevan: sovetakan grogh. 6. galsworthy, j. a. (1980) jamanakakic katakergutyun. tr. by k. surenyan. vol. 1, 2, 3. yerevan: sovetakan grogh. 7. maugham, w. s. (1985) theatre. m.: vyshaya shkola. 8. maugham, w. s. (1983) teatr. tr. by g. ostrovskaya. m.: pravda. 9. maugham, w. s. (1985) tatron. tr. by j. hovhannisyan. yerevan: sovetakan grogh. 10. salinger, j. d. (1982) catcher in the rye. new-york: a national general company. 11. salinger, j. d. (1982) nine stories. m.: progress publishers. 12. salinger, j. d. (1982) raise the roof beam, carpenters. m.: progress publishers. 13. salinger, j. d. (1999) nad propostyu vo rji. tr. by r. rayt-kovaleva. kharkov: folio. 14. salinger, j. d. (1999) devyat rasskazov. tr. by r. rayt-kovaleva. kharkov: folio. 15. salinger, j. d. (1999) vyshe stropila, plotniki. tr. by r. rayt-kovaleva. kharkov: folio. 16. salinger, j. d. (1978) tarekani artum andundi ezrin. tr. by a. ghukasyan. yerevan: sovetakan grogh. 17. salinger, j. d. (1978) tspeghneri bardzr ataghdzagortsner. tr. by a. ghukasyan. yerevan: sovetakan grogh. 18. salinger, j. d. (1978) (1978) iny patmvatsq. tr. by a. ghukasyan. yerevan: sovetakan grogh. ¶áõý³ûçý ¹³ñóí³íùý»ñ ¶áõ ý³ ýáõý ý» ñá ß³ï ñ³ ׳ë û· ï³ ·áñí íáõù »ý ¹³ñó í³íù ý» ñáõù: ¸³ñó í³íù ý» ñá ù» í³ å»ë ùß³ ïáõû ãç ³ñ¹ ûáõýù »ý: ¸³ñó í³íù ý» ñç ç ù³ë ï³ μ³ ýáõã û³ý ñçù ùáõù ß³ï ñ³ ׳ë áý ï³í »ý ïíû³é ³½ ·çý ¨ ùß³ ïáõû ãçý ñ³ ïáõï å³ï ï» ñ³ óáõù ý»ñ ¨ ·³ õ³ ÷³ñ ý»ñ: ¸³ñó í³íù ý» ñç ï³ñ ñ» ñá 黽 í³ ï³ý ï³ éáõû óáõù éç ý» éáí áý¹ ñ³ý ñáõûã` ùç¨ýáõûý å³ ù³ ý³ï ý³¨ ³ ù» ý³³ï ý³ éáõ 黽 í³ ï³ý ³ é³ýó ý³ ñ³ï ïáõã ûáõý ý»ñý »ý, á ñáýù ³ñ ï³ ñ³û ïáõù »ý ³ûë ï³ù ³ûý 黽 íç ³½ ·³ ûçý ñ³ï ï³ ýçß ý» ñá, ýñ³ μ³ é³ ï³½ ù³ ï³ý, ù» ñ³ ï³ ý³ ï³ý ¨ á ׳ ï³ý ýñμ» ñ³ý· ý» ñá: ¶áõ ý³ ýáõý ý»ñ å³ ñáõ ý³ ïáõ ¹³ñó í³íù ý» ñç ç ù³ë ïá ï³å í³í ¿ ïíû³é ñ³ ë³ ñ³ ïáõã û³ý ù»ç ·á ûáõã ûáõý áõ ý» óáõ ·áõ ý³ ûçý ëáñññ ¹³ ýçß ý» ñç ñ»ï: ²ïý ñ³ûï ¿, áñ ³ûë ÷³ë ïá ãå»ïù ¿ ³ý ï»ë íç ã³ñ· ù³ ýáõã ûáõý ý»ñ ï³ ï³ ñ» éçë: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 69 maket 2011:layout 1.qxd on the interrelation between cognitive and emotional minds in speech shushanik paronyan, anna rostomyan yerevan state university r ecent research work carried out within the frames of discourse analysis andcognitive linguistics comes to prove the essential importance of mental activities in linguistic behaviour. communication is treated as a process which is largely based on the mental world of the speakers and embraces a great deal of conscious and subconscious framework. discourse analysts hold that the mental, social and physical realities “get ‘activated’ by the utterer and the interpreter in their respective choice-making practices, and that is how they become part of language use as elements with which the making of choices is interadaptable” (verschueren 1999:88). the aim of the present paper is to focus on some special properties of the mental world which are put to work in the process of communication and to reveal the interplay of the cognitive and emotional aspects of verbal communication. admittedly, a great deal of research work devoted to the analysis of the mental apparatus of linguistic behaviour has been carried out in cognitive linguistics so far (sanders 2005; heritage 2005; kasevich 1989; paronyan 2009). as a result, speech came to be regarded as a rule-governed process of social behaviour which is based on certain knowledge structures stored in the cognitive mind. hence, cognition should be treated as inner mental knowledge which appears on the surface level of the cognitive mind through verbal behaviour. similarly, mental knowledge is verbalized when it reaches the highest, that is, surface level of the cognitive mind. while the importance of the conscious and subconscious control of the cognitive mind in the process of production and interpretation of linguistic signs has become unquestionable, the involvement of the emotional mind in communicative matters still remains open. as a matter of fact, the exceptional importance of emotions in human life has already been stated both in linguistics and in some social sciences (pragmalinguistics, neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive linguistics, social psychology, cognitive psychology, sociology). the analyses of verbal behaviour which proceeds in the form of negative emotional colouring and results in conflict talk illustrate the major role of the emotional mind (the speakers’ emotions, beliefs, desires and wishes, motivations and intentions) in shaping the communicative context. no doubt, the involvement of the negative emotional attitude of the interlocutors in the process of communication becomes obvious in terms of production and interpretation of speech. hence, ruled by certain negative emotions, speakers use language units (words, phrases, structures, speech acts) carrying negative implications and, in doing so, they get involved in contradictory types of interaction (conflict talk, quarrel, argumentation, row, etc.) (paronyan, bekaryan 2007). obviously, the positive/negative emotional attitude of the speaker towards the parameters of the linguistic situation is related to his/her evaluative competence and, therefore, has cognitive significance. thus, we assume that the analysis of the linguistic mechanisms of verbalarmenian folia anglistika linguistics 26 ization of emotions, which has become quite actual today, should be carried out on the basis of cognitive evaluation of emotivity. it should be stated that emotivity is often related to the affective behaviour of the speakers. emotions are defined as strong feelings which constitute the part of the person’s character (oxford advanced learner’s dictionary 1997). naturally, if we want to bring to light the innate nature of the emotive mind, we should penetrate into the inner mental world of the speaker and examine how this or that emotion is articulated in speech. no doubt the linguistic analysis of emotiveness cannot be carried out without any resort to cognitive science – cognitive psychology, cognitive linguistics. the analysis of emotions from the psychological perspective raises the question of the relationship between emotive experience and bodily expression, that is, perception and expression of emotions. in this connection two contradictory points of view can be stated. according to the traditional theory, emotions are feelings or at least experiences of a special type which involve feelings. hence, when faced with an external stimulus, human beings first of all experience emotions, their reaction to the external situation comes next, that is, response follows emotion. the proponents of this theory make it clear that emotions should be regarded as mere sensations which are evoked from any perceived external stimuli and are completely devoid of any cognitive elements (murray 1964). contrary to this, another point of view, which acknowledges the cognitive element in emotions, was put forward by a group of psychologists (w. james, c. lange, w. cannon, ph. bard, et al.). according to the so-called james-lange theory, a person’s immediate psychological response to the outward situation precedes his experience of a particular emotion. in his work “the principles of psychology”, w. james stated that “the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the existing fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion” (james 1890:449). apparently, according to the so-called james-lange theory, conscious experience follows the bodily reactions which are more or less automatic reactions to stimuli in the environment: we feel afraid because we shiver, we feel sorry, disappointed and sad, because we cry, we feel happy because we smile and not vice versa. trying to give a comprehensive solution to the problem of the relationship between emotional experience and bodily expression, some psychologists came to treat emotion as a process and focused mainly on its final part, i.e. expression, ignoring its initial stage – perception. an alternative interpretation of emotions was proposed by m. arnold who is said to have made the initial steps toward the cognitive approach. assuming that not every perception leads to emotional reaction, she holds that there has to be some mechanism for evaluation of the situation, for judgement of the perceived stimuli regarding them either good, beneficial or bad, harmful for the organism’s survival. the fact that the process of evaluation, appraisal develops in the rational mind comes to prove that cognitive elements also take part in the process of emotional experience (arnold 1960). thus, by introducing the element of appraisal in the overall pattern of the emotional state, the notion of emotion was enlarged and comprised the following sequential stages of evolvement: 1. perception – the neutral reception of external stimuli; 2. appraisal – a judgement of the stimuli as good and beneficial or bad and harmful; armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 27 3. emotion – a felt tendency towards stimuli judged as good and away from those judged as bad; 4. expression – a pattern of physiological changes organized towards approach or withdrawal, differing for each emotion, which accompanies the felt tendency; 5. action – approach or withdrawal may occur if another emotion does not interfere (murray 1964:50). current research work on emotions is largely based on the findings of cognitive psychology and philosophy (philosophy of emotions) which can be labeled in terms of the socalled affective neuroscience (damasio 1994; clore, ortony 2000; griffiths 1997; goldie 2000). the focal point in this trend of research is the assessment of the cognitive element in emotional states. research work in this field is aimed at defining to what extent the elements of the mental world – emotion and cognition are intertwined and interrelated. in this connection two theories of emotions can be distinguished: the somatic theory and the cognitive theory. the somatic theory of emotions is based on w. james’ ideas who treated emotions as feelings with some somatic sensations. this theory works within biological framework and treats emotions as physical or somatic phenomena, body states which are contrary to the psychological states of the soul. one of the proponents of the somatic theory of emotions is a. damasio (1994) who holds that any mental image acquires a value of desirability which is a somatic marker and shows the body state. by using a body model and images with predicted future states of the body, he tried to find relations between mental images and the desirability of the body state. thus, we may conclude that according to the somatic theory, our mind is physically associated with our body through brain. it is also noteworthy that a. damasio acknowledges two basic categories of emotions: primary and secondary. primary emotions which are innate should be related to self-preserving and reproduction. their triggering occurs on the subconscious level, when perceptive images excite them and cause a reaction that affects the actual body state. meanwhile, secondary emotions which are experienced in everyday life can work both on the conscious and subconscious levels. a. damasio explains that this phenomenon happens because of the fact that secondary emotions evolve from the primary ones and make use of the mechanisms of the former, but the conscious part of secondary emotions begins to work when they are triggered by some stimulus generated by a rational and conscious thinking. in this way, emotions are believed to be able to change the body’s internal state and, consequently, affect the way the brain processes mental images (damasio 1999). according to the cognitive theory of emotions, which is propounded by some philosophers (de sousa 1987; solomon 1980 et al.), emotions always contain judgement which is either propositional, that is, articulated, conscious, or non-propositional – nonarticulated, subconscious. thus, this theory holds that emotions consist in judgements and, naturally, admits the occurrence of the latter both on the conscious and subconscious levels. this theory also holds that there are certain innate emotions like fear, disgust, joy, etc. which can also occur on the subconscious level. the findings of affective neuroscience as well as cognitive psychology and philosophy of emotions are important for us to understand the linguistic mechanism of explicaarmenian folia anglistika linguistics 28 ture of emotions through verbal tokens. thus, our brief theoretical survey enables us to conclude that a person’s emotions (both conscious and subconscious) are evaluated (that is, assessed, judged) as positive and negative and become part of his/her background knowledge stored in the rational brain. as a result, any information which is able to be processed in the brain evokes certain emotions which may, accordingly, have a great impact on one’s behaviour. consequently, in certain cases one’s verbal behaviour depends on the evaluation made on the spot, due to certain parameters of the communicative situation. furthermore, sometimes emotions can be guided by rational mind due to background knowledge – cultural, ethnic, social, historical information stored in one’s memory. moreover, when making judgements on situations, evaluating events and individuals surrounding them, human beings are often guided by previous experience. therefore, it should be stressed that a person’s previous emotional experience can also determine his/her present emotional state and, accordingly, become verbalized in the process of communication. in tune with modern theorists of emotions (cf. ortony, clore, collins, ledoux, et alias), we regard emotions essentially as subconscious signals and evaluations that inform, modify and receive feedback from higher cognitive processes. in a sense, we have to admit that human beings have two minds which are closely interrelated – emotional and cognitive. we should also admit that cognitive intelligence cannot work at its best potential without emotional intelligence. the fact that every emotion is an experience involving a cognitive element, not merely a state of feeling, can be proved by quoting mctaggart: “we must hold that the cognition of that to which the emotion is directed, and the emotion towards it, are the same mental state, which has both the quality of being a cogitation of it, and the quality of being an emotion directed toward it” (mctaggart 1927:146). this reasoning enables us to put aside the old opposition between raison d’être and feeling (i.e. emotion vs. cognition) and try to find a sensible balance between the two minds. admittedly, the paradigm where reason is seen completely unchained from emotions does not hold true, and a new one should be adopted, in which head and heart, feeling and thought, emotion and cognition are in harmony. the interrelation between emotion and cognition can be seen in chart 1 presented below: chart 1: the interrelation of emotion and cognition armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 29 emotion cognition intermixed elements it is noteworthy that under certain circumstances the balance between cognitive and emotive minds gets lost: emotions come to prevail and, as a result, one loses the ability to properly estimate the situation at hand. truly, in the heat of emotional obsession the ability to regulate his/her thoughts, behaviour and speech can be extremely diminished and in these situations one should take pains not to let emotions govern the cognitive part of the brain: once we lose the balance, we are sure to make wrong decisions and wrongly evaluate diverse situations. consequently, we may even misinterpret different messages from the external world and respond to them inappropriately. this is the reason why when we are emotionally upset or anxious about something, we often state that we just can’t think straight. the fact of being emotionally distressed can even hinder one’s ability to learn and work properly and effectively. sometimes, the influence of the emotions (positive or negative) is so enormous that the emotional mind becomes prevailing and one does not manage to control it. this fact actually finds its verbal and/or non-verbal manifestation – we say things for which we may later regret. consequently, it is advisable that the balance should be kept in order not to be exposed to bewildering and misleading situations and subsequent misinterpretations. a good and sensible piece of advice which, unfortunately, is often so difficult for many of us to follow! the following example comes to prove that emotional intelligence – the stored background knowledge of the interlocutors and their former negative disposition towards each other may greatly influence cognitive judgement in the process of communication. the spouses in the following stretch of talk are involved in conflict talk because the husband is inclined to contradict and argue: husband: “i’m working.” wife: “oh, i see. what i do isn’t important.” husband: “sounds like all you do is gossip.” wife: “only during dessert. during lunch we plan the ball.” husband: “a big society party.” wife: “which raises money for charity.” husband: “which you don’t give a damn about. it’s just another step up the social ladder for you. you’re social climbing and boo’s being raised by consuela!” (m. gimenez 2007:67) in order to interpret the interrelation between emotive and cognitive aspects of speech adequately, it is necessary to turn to the context of situation. what lies at the root of the problem is the fact that the husband is dissatisfied with the behaviour of his wife and perceives it as irrational and inconsiderate. the spouses have drifted apart both physically and psychologically and the wife does not care about her family any longer: but somewhere along the way – when, he wasn’t sure – the heat had faded. and now they slept back to back, separated by two feet of king-sized mattress like a demilitarized zone. (m. gimenez 2007:66) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 30 the husband’s negative emotional mind finds its actual expression through verbalization in the given context. it is being realized with the help of indirect speech acts of reproach/condemnation and cases of negative intensification. the initial emotion which is displayed in the husband’s speech is irritation, annoyance. this negative emotion is caused by his cognitive judgement: he thinks that his wife spends most of her time gossiping, which is bad. as we can see, the emotion spurring stimulus that is perceived by the husband in the negative light is not in the actual context but is a result of previous behaviour: having processed certain information cognitively, the speaker has evaluated it as negative and stored in his mental world. at the moment of speech the cognitive intelligence influences the choice of actual words and results in the expression of negative attitude towards the interlocutor which is expressed through indirect acts of reproach: sounds like all you do is gossip; a big society party. by criticizing his wife, the husband intends to urge her to be more attentive towards her responsibilities. contrary to this, the wife does not oppose overtly and does not impart negative feelings. she just tries to justify herself by proving the social significance of her work: after all she raises money for charity. as a matter of fact, the wife refuses implicitly to change her lifestyle, which adds to the husband’s annoyance. he goes on condemning his wife’s unreasonable behaviour who has left the upbringing of their child to the housemaid. thus, the actual negative emotions – anger, irritation, discontent, disappointment – find their verbalization via the negative intensifier damn in the expression not to give a damn, and the particle just. as we can see, the realization of judgement-making about the external state of affairs occurs on the conscious level and can be considered as cognitive judgement; yet, its actual formation comprises both emotional and cognitive elements. no doubt the negative evaluation of the wife has been stored in the husband’s emotional mind and outbursts in the given context in the form of negative speech units (reproach, condemning, negative denotational and connotational meaning), resulting in conflict talk. our analysis comes to prove that the prior positive or negative disposition of the interlocutors may change in the process of interaction depending on diverse extralinguistic factors. for instance, the tense relations experienced by two people every time they meet each other – such negative emotions as anger, annoyance, discomfort, contempt or irritation, may change in the positive direction, or just vice versa, previous positive emotional disposition may become negative. let us analyze an example illustrating a spontaneous change of emotional mind in the process of interaction: “i wanted to do this personally, scott, so i could explain.” “she filed for divorce?” harry nodded. “trey, the pro, he hired me – or he’s paying me. he’s already won a tournament, a million bucks, so he can afford me.” scott almost laughed. “we played golf how many times, harry? a hundred? and you’re taking the money from the guy my wife ran off with?” (m. gimenez 2007:458) armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 31 in this example the speakers have been good friends for quite a long time and experience positive emotions towards each other. yet harry, who is a lawyer, has accepted to undertake the divorce case of his friend’s wife for money. when scott learns about this, he feels depressed because he regards this act as treachery. so, his feelings towards his close friend change and scott, undoubtedly, begins to experience rather negative emotions such as disappointment, annoyance, anger. thus, the cognitive evaluation in the actual speech situation is negative: scott has been betrayed by one of his best friends. the description of the author also implies this: scott almost laughed. as we know emotions can be expressed both verbally and non-verbally. in this case the act of laughing does not denote the experience of such positive emotions as happiness, joy, delight; instead, it denotes the existence of negative emotions such as sadness, despair, disappointment. the approximator almost also shows that it was only a sarcastic laugh the illocutionary force of which was to condemn harry. thus, scott scolds his friend indirectly, by issuing an act of reproach in the form of a question: we played golf how many times, harry? a hundred? and you’re taking the money from the guy my wife ran off with? the speaker’s negative emotions are also manifested in his word choice: he achieves intensification of the negative effect by appealing to his interlocutor personally (harry), as well as by using the numeral hundred in an elliptical utterance: the speaker experiences a change of emotional mind due to negative evaluation of certain parameters of the communicative situation. this change is expressed in his word choice and results in conflict talk. in conclusion, one of the key claims of the present paper is the admission of the fact that emotions work on the cognitive background in the process of verbal interaction. actually, they include both perception and appraisal functions and are closely related to higher cognitive judgement processes. we firmly believe that the emotional and cognitive minds are interdependent since they influence and regulate one another, with emotions stirring up and the rational mind analyzing, refining and sometimes vetoing or endorsing certain emotions. references: 1. arnold, m.b. (1960) emotion and personality. volume i: psychological aspects. new york: columbia university press. 2. clore, g.; ortony, a. (2000) cognition in emotion: always, sometimes, or never? // cognitive neuroscience of emotion. / ed. by r.lane and l.nadel. new york: oxford university press. 3. damasio, a. (1994) descartes’ error: emotion, reason, and the human brain. new york: g.p. putnam’s sons. 4. damasio, a. (1999) the feeling of what happens: body and emotion in the making of consciousness. new york: harcourt brace and co. 5. de sousa, r. (1987) the rationality of emotion. cambridge ma: mit press. 6. goldie, p. (2000) the emotions: a philosophical exploration. new york, oxford: oxford university press. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 32 7. griffiths, p.e. (1997) what emotions really are. london, chicago: chicago university press. 8. heritage, j. (2005) cognition in discourse. // conversation and cognition. / ed. by h.te moulder et al. cambridge: cambridge university press. 9. james, w. (1890) classics in the history of psychology. // an internet resource developed by christopher d. green of york university. toronto, ontario. <http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/james/principles/> 10. kasevich, b.v. (1989) yazikovie structuri i kognitivnaya deyatel’nost’.// p.m.frumkina (ed.). moskva: in-m yazikoznaniya an sssr. 11. mctaggart, j. (1927) the nature of existence. ii. cambridge: cambridge university press. 12. murray, e.j. (1964) motivation and emotion. new jersey: prentice-hall, inc. 13. oxford advanced learner’s dictionary (1997) oxford: oxford university press. 14. paronyan sh., bekaryan l. (2007) mijandznya hakamartutyan khoskayin drsevorumnery jamanakakits anglerenum. // otar lezunery bardzraguyn dprotsum, n 8, yerevan: eph hratarakchutyun. 15. paronyan, sh. (2009) discoursy vorpes giteliki kodavorman hamakarg. // banber yerevani hamalsarani, n 3/129. yerevan: eph hratarakchutyun. 16. sanders, r.e. (2005) validating “observations” in discourse studies: a methodological reason for attention to cognition. // conversation and cognition. ed. by h. te moulder et al. cambridge: cambridge university press. 17. solomon, r. (1980) emotions and choice. // explaining emotions. / ed. by amélie rorty. los angeles: university of california press. 18. verschueren, s. (1999) understanding pragmatics. amsterdam: arnold press. source of data: 1. gimenez, m. (2007) the colour of law. london: sphere. ¶çï³ïó³ï³ýç ¨ ½·³û³ï³ýç ÷áëñ³ñ³μ»ñáõãûáõýá ëáëùáõù êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù ùýýáõãû³ý ¿ ³éýíáõù ·çï³ïó³ï³ýç ¨ ½·³û³ï³ýç ÷áëñ³ñ³μ» ñáõãûáõýá ù³ñ¹áõ ý»ñ³ßë³ññáõù, çýãå»ë ý³¨ ¹ñ³ýó ëáëù³ûçý ¨ áã ëáëù³ûçý ¹ñë¨áñáõùý»ñç ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ³ý·é»ñ»ý ¹çëïáõñëáõù: ö³ëï³ï³ý ýûáõãç í»ñéáõíáõãûáõýá ï³ï³ñíáõù ¿ ׳ý³ãáõ³ï³ý-·áñí³μ³ ý³ï³ý ñ³û»ó³ï»ñåáí: î³ñ¨áñíáõù »ý ñáõû½» ñç ¹»ñá ëáëù³ëï»õíù³ý ¨ ëáëùáýï³éù³ý ·áñíáýã³óý»ñáõù: ì»ñççýý»ñë ¹çï³ñïíáõù »ý áã ùç³ûý áñå»ë ½·³ó³ï³ý »ñ¨áõûãý»ñ, ³ûé¨ áñå»ë ñ»ýù³ûçý ·çï»éçùý»ñç μ³õ³¹ñ³ï³ññ»ñ, áñáýù ù»í³å»ë ³½¹áõù »ý ëáëùç ׳ý³ãáõ³ï³ý ñ³ù³ï³ñ·ç íñ³: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 33 maket_n_verjin.qxp cohesive properties of modal adverbs cohesion is an essential property of a text, whichhelps distinguish text from non-text. cohesion is more than a mere sum of its constituent parts. interpreting the concept of cohesion v.bogdanov makes the following comparison: it is like a million of crystal particles which if taken in isolation can be easily blown off, whereas viewed as a whole unified piece it may undergo only slight vibration (bogdanov 1977). how is linguistic cohesion achieved? m. halliday and r. hasan regard the concept of cohesion as a semantic unit, referring it to relations of meaning that exist within the text and that define it as text. like other semantic relations, cohesion is expressed through the stratal organization of language, grammar and vocabulary in particular. therefore these authors speak of grammatical cohesion and lexical cohesion (halliday and hasan 1976). the many researches related to the study of modal adverbs are done on the sentence level, the text level being in the shade. i. galperin focuses his attention on the study of text modality claiming that modality is the essence of communication process which can be expressed by elements of different language levels: grammar, lexis, stylistics , etc. (galperin 1981:30). the purpose of the present paper is to view modal adverbs as text-creating elements. modal adverbs constitute a lexical-grammatical means of expressing the category of modality in english. linguists usually acknowledge two types of modality: subjective (modality de dicto) and objective (modality de re). the first type implies the attitude of the speaker to the content of the utterance, while the second type presupposes the attitude of the speaker to reality. modal adverbs are used to express subjective or epistemic modality. in this function modal adverbs may refer not only to the whole utterance, but also to its constituent parts. below are examples to illustrate this: a) perhaps being jewish is not something you can remove like a change of clothing. (segal) b) i might also become something else, instead of an actor-singer, perhaps a lawyer, like my brother. (baldwin) as is seen from the examples, the first ‘perhaps’ refers to the whole sentence, whereas the second ‘perhaps’ is related to the predicative (sentence b). though the sentence and the text refer to different lingual units, the modality of the latter is composed of the modal semantics of the sentences making up the text. this, 134 armenian folia anglistika linguistics naira martirossyan however, does not mean that text modality is the mechanical sum of modalities of individual sentences (bubnova 1984 :35). text modality and sentence modality have their specific features and this requires a detailed study. let’s consider the following example: fortunately, there is a diversity of major industries in california, including defense, aerospace, agriculture, tourism and entertainment (1). the number of new jobs has been pretty well among them (2). because of our large population, we developed a huge labor market which attracts investors in the high technology, electronics and computer industries (3). we work hard at making conditions for them so that they prefer to operate in california rather than in any other area (4). (“aim”, no. 10 ) if we view the modal adverb ‘fortunately’ on the sentence level , we will imagine that the speaker is satisfied only with the fact that there are various industries in california (sentence 1). in fact, he is content with the idea that this fact leads to creating new jobs (sentence 2), since it becomes possible to enlarge the labor market, which can attract investors in the high technology and other industries (sentence3). and finally (which is more important), they will work hard so that the investors choose to work in california instead of another place (sentence 4). so the last circumstance may be considered their ultimate purpose, the fortunate output of their efforts, which makes the use of the adverb ‘fortunately’ in this context quite plausible. all the sentences making up this fragment of the text are linked together through their modal-semantic relations, thus creating a whole unity. as g.kolshanski puts it, we observe the socalled ‘chaining of sentences’ (kolshanski 1978:30). we propose to term this fragment of the text in which the modal adverb attracts the preceding and succeeding sentences a modal-evaluative complex (mec for short). by its form and structure a mec can be viewed as a supraphrasal unity and like it, it usually includes more than one sentence. in this paper we will examine the use of modal adverbs on the mec level. the modal adverbs linking the components of a mec express various semantic relations, anaphora and cataphora included. as is known, anaphora implies retrospective connection, while cataphora indicates prospective connection. below are examples illustrating these two types of connection. anaphora: this was a foul little place (1). unfortunately, she was really hungry, having had a very small lunch (2). (priestley) as we see from the example, the modal adverb ‘unfortunately’ used in he first sentence is not associated with the fact that the woman was hungry (1). rather, the unfortunate circumstance was caused by the fact that the woman had to eat in that disgustful eating-place (sentence 2). 135 linguistics armenian folia anglistika cataphora: fortunately, the mad musketeer had gone to sleep (1). and a weary danny rossi followed thereafter unnoticed (2). (segal) in this example we see that the fortunate situation was created for danny (sentence 2) thanks to the fact that the musketeer had gone to sleep (sentence 1). let’s consider another example taken from “death of a hero” by r. aldington. the english poets and foreign painters were his only real friends. they were his interpreters of the mystery, the defenders of the inner vitality, which he was fighting unconsciously to save. naturally, the school was against him. (aldington) taken out of context, the last sentence does not explain why it was natural for the school to behave so. to understand it, the reader has to go back to the previous sentences. but even so, it will not give the complete reason for the negative attitude of the school teachers towards george. it is a larger context that helps the reader fully understand how the matters stand. and here we come across the following lines: “he (george) got a very bad report that term. for which he was duly lectured and reprimanded”. or prior: “he was supposed (according to the school teachers’ report) to be dull-minded as well as obstinate and unmanly…” or: the head master said: “ you take little or no interest in the school life and your games record is abominable… your form master reports that you have a thousand lines of impositions yet to work off.” considering this character sketch given to george by his teachers, we can easily understand why the author uses the modal adverb ‘naturally’ in the cited example. of special interest is the following example taken from “mrs. dalloway” by v. woolf: clarissa once, going on top of an omnibus with him somewhere, clarissa superficially at least, so easily moved, now in despair, now in the best of spirits, all aquiver in those days and such good company , spotting queer little scenes, names, people from the top o f a bus, for they used to explore london and being back bags of treasures from the caledonian market – clarissa had a theory in those days – they had heaps of theories, always theories, as young people have. it was to explain the feeling of dissatisfaction; not knowing people; not being known. for how could they know each other? … odd affinities she had with people she had never spoken to, some woman in the street some man behind a counter – even trees, or barns. it ended in a transcendental theory which, with her horror of death, allowed her to believe, or say that she believed (for all her skepticism) that since our apparitions, the part of us which appears ,are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places, after death. perhaps – perhaps. (“mrs. dalloway”, 189-190) 136 armenian folia anglistika linguistics as is seen from the example, this unusual use of the modal adverb ‘perhaps’ used at the end of the paragraph and separated from it by parcellation does not refer to the last sentence. it is evident that it belongs to the whole passage (a mec in our case), which describes the heroine’s emotional state: her tension, her feeling of uncertainty about the mode of life she has chosen, her way of evaluating people, the unreliability of human relations, the futility of hopes and dreams. used twice, the adverb ‘perhaps’ still more emphasizes this feeling of disappointment and disillusion and mysticism that embrace the heroine throughout the whole novel, making her think that her life was perhaps a failure. cohesion on the mec level may be provided by means of repetition of the same modal adverb. and now that mrs. kennicott’s been away, maybe she’s got over some of her fool ideas. maybe she realizes that folks simply laugh at her when she tries to tell us how to ruin things. (lewis) cohesion may also be realized through repetition of the same syntactic structure containing a modal adverb, the so-called syntactic parallelism. perhaps he was killed by general the’ because he knew the caodaists. perhaps he was killed by the hoa-haos for making passes at the general’s concubines. perhaps he was just killed by someone who wanted his money. (greene) in some cases cohesion is provided by the presence of synonymous modal adverbs, showing a slightly different degree of modality as in the following example. tubman could not possibly have reached london before vince and there had been no sign of the d.m. and his wife at breakfast. probably they were not even going back the same day. (mackinlay) modal adverbs may link parts of a mec, which are characterized by adversative relations. in this case the modal adverb is combined with an adversative conjunction (mainly but), making up double correlative connectives: maybe, perhaps, probably, naturally…+ but. here are some examples to illustrate this: a) “maybe it makes you smile a little, father brown, to find merton has to live in a fortress like this without even a tree in the garden for anyone to hide behind. but you don’t know what sort of proposition we’re against in this country.” (chesterton) 137 linguistics armenian folia anglistika b) “perhaps you are right”, said the doctor. “but there shall be music” (waugh) c) “no doubt the universal secretary knew more about the doctor’s name than the doctor did. but even the doctor might have some information about his name.” (chesterton) modal adverbs manifest their text-creating function still more explicitly in dialogues, where they can function as answers to questions in conjunction with ‘yes’ and ‘no’ or without them. a) -you don’t have to account to them for every second of your time, do you? of course not. (waller) b) “was portland referring to a patient when he was making these claims? steve asked. “obviously”, kevin said. (f.cure) c) you figure they were carl’s men then? evidently. (f.cure) in some cases a modal adverb may be used for the purpose of emphasizing the idea expressed in the mec. let’s consider the following example: i don’t think i’ll be the same after yesterday. the newspapers are calling what happened a ‘greek tragedy’; but to me it’s an american tragedy. in fact, it’s something i feel so closely that i would call it a death in the family. (segal) here we observe a stylistic device, the so-called gradation, which indicates a gradual strengthening, spotlighting the message expressed in the text: a greek tragedy < an american tragedy < in fact +a death in the family. it is natural that in some cases this expressive use of a modal adverb may entail certain semantic changes in its meaning. this is clearly seen in the following examples. 138 armenian folia anglistika linguistics a) and though i had bought them out of comparison, after living with them i began to like them. indeed, i found a strange beauty in them. (maugham) b) -they have a democracy here. -oh, really? then how does it happen they can’t talk? (brand) ‘indeed’ in (a) acquires a new shade of meaning–moreover; ‘really’ in (b) expresses disbelief, incredulity. this is incongruent with the theory of h.weinrich, who says that word meaning in the text may radically differ from that of isolated sentences and that word semantics must be supplemented by text semantics (weincich, 1963). so we can conclude that in addition to all kinds of morphological, syntactic and lexical connectives, modal adverbs can also function as text-creating elements and link sentences on the supraphrasal level both in monologue and in dialogue speech. they can also be used for stylistic purposes to spotlight the message of the passage; in some cases they may undergo certain semantic changes. references: 1. halliday, m.a.k.; hasan, r. (1976) cohesion in english. longman. 2. weinrich, h. (1963) on the semantic structure of language. cambridge, mass. 3. bogdanov, v.v (1977) semantico-syntaksicheskaya organizatsiya predlojeniya. leningrad: izd.: lsu. 4. bubobova, m.s. (1984) nekotoriye spetsificheskiye cherti modalnosti teksta // sbornik nauchnikh trudov mgpiiya im. m. toreza. moskva. vip. 231. 5. galperin, i.r. (1981) tekst kak obyekt lingvisticheskogo issledovaniya, moskva: nauka. 6. kolshanskiy, g.v. (1978) tekst kak yedinstvo kommunikatsii // problemi obshchego i germanskogo yazikoznaniya. moskva: nauka. ºõ³ý³ï³íáñáõ ù³ïµ³ûý»ñç ï»ùëï³ï³½ùçã ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá î»ùëïç ù³ï³ñ¹³ïáõù »õ³ý³ï³íáñáõ ù³ïµ³ûý»ñá ï³åí³í »ý çýãå»ë ý³ëáñ¹áõ, ³ûýå»ë »é ñ³çáñ¹áõ ý³ë³¹³ëáõãûáõýý»ñç ñ»ï` ëï»õí»éáí »õ³ý³ï³íáñáõ-·ý³ñ³ïáõ³ï³ý ³ùµáõçáõãûáõý, áñý çñ ó¨áí ¨ ï³éáõûóáí ï³ñáõ ¿ ¹çïí»é áñå»ë í»ñ³ëáõûã³ûçý ùç³ëýáõãûáõý` ï³½ùí³í ù»ïçó ³í»éç ý³ë³¹³ëáõãûáõýý»ñçó: ²ûë ³ùµáõçáõãû³ý µ³õ³¹ñçãý»ñá ùçùû³ýó ñ»ï ëï»õíáõù »ý ï³ñµ»ñ çù³ëï³ûçý ñ³ñ³µ»ñáõãûáõýý»ñ, ³û¹ ãíáõù, ³ý³ýáñçï /»ï³¹³ë/ ¨ ï³ï³ýáñçï /³é³ç³¹³ë/: êáõûý ñá¹í³íç ßñç³ý³ïý»ñáõù ÷áñó ¿ ³ñíáõù áõëáõùý³ëçñ»é »õ³ý³ïíáñáõ ù³ïµ³ûý»ñç ï»ùëï³ï³½ùçã ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá çýãå»ë ù»ý³ëáëáõãû³ý, ³ûýå»ë ¿é »ñïëáëáõãû³ý ù»ç: 139 linguistics armenian folia anglistika maket 2013:layout 1.qxd paradoxes in o. wilde’s “the picture of dorian gray” manana dalalyan, hasmik mkrtchyan yerevan state university a ny piece of literary art is a piece of aesthetics. this is obviously one of the essential missions that a literary text may carry out, which may be viewed from different angles of linguistics for different aims. our interest in imaginative literature is focused on the stylistic use of paradoxes. a literary text, irrespective of its genre, is a result of author’s imagination, which aims at leaving an aesthetic impact on the reader by different stylistic means which serves to identify emotiveness of the literary work. our special interest is focused on paradoxes often discussed in the sphere of aesthetics. the aim of paradox is to point out the truth through statements which contradict each other. paradox is a self-contradictory statement as it often contains two statements both true and untrue at the same time. the appeal of paradoxes lies in the fact that, however, contradictory it seems to be, it contains a certain grain of truth which makes it an excellent vehicle for expressing irony. paradoxical expressions are communicative units represented by a wide range of tropes and figures of speech. the main characteristic features of paradoxical expression are characterized by the following three phenomena: • contradiction • grammatical correctness • unity of the object to be characterized. paradoxicality is an inherent feature in a statement defined by the term “paradox” as far as is formulated differently by different authors. another important character of paradox is its grammatical correctness, since not all contradictions can be viewed as paradoxes. the third criterion of creating the picture of paradox is a unity of characterized objects. paradoxes can be objective and subjective while paradoxical expressions can be subdivided into five empiric classes: actual, logical, semantic, which refers to objective ones, rhetorical and poetic, subjective and pragmatic, which occupy intermediate place between the two main groups. w.v. quine (quine 1962:36) distinguished between three classes of paradoxes: • a veridical paradox produces a result that appears absurd but is demonstrated to be true nevertheless. • a false paradox establishes a result that not only appears false but actually is false, due to a fallacy in the demonstration. a paradox that is in neither class may be an antinomy, which reaches a self-contradictory result by properly applying accepted ways of reasoning. • a paradox that is both true and false at the same time and in the same sense despite the fact that the statement is to be exclusively proven or disproved. our interest of paradox focused on the literary work of one of the most prominent irish writers of xix century o. wilde whose technique of writing varies in diversity of armenian folia anglistikaliterature 161 tropes and figures of speech with the help of which statements acquire certain paradoxical overtones. wilde was a follower of aestheticism, philosophy which touted that art should be appreciated only for its beauty: “art for art’s sake”. the notion that art should have any moral or didactic value was rejected. wilde’s work, his own art, defies simple classification as purely aesthetic. wilde showed a very clear purpose beyond simply to entertain or to create beauty, he was rebelling against the restrictive and often hypocritical victorian society in which he found himself. for wilde, aestheticism was a convenience. much of wilde’s impact comes from his ability to turn a common saying. his capacity to come up consistently with the unexpected statements leads his audience first to laughter, then to a great deal of thought. wilde may be viewed to be “the prince of paradoxes”. his mission was to avoid the banal sights of life, trying to illuminate every idea of his own by quoting a phrase which would become a proverb turning inside out as a glove. people say “marriages are made in heavens”, wilde would say “divorces are made in heavens”. people say “time is money”, wilde would say “time is loss of time”. the author often touches upon the main peculiarities of triangle of art where “lie is the truth of other people” and “the debt is the thing which we demand from others, but don’t do it ourselves”. echoing strongly to the opposition of the surrounding reality, wilde himself declares a range of oppositions. he often depicts a sensitive cynic or an immoral moralist, or a dreamy skeptic. he challenges everyone to figure out something comic in tragic and feel tragic in comic. the state of acting neutrally is not common to him. he is sure that idleness is the hardest work in the world, the mask is more interesting than face, theatre is more real than life. oscar wilde’s the picture of dorian gray is itself a critique of the ideals put forth by aestheticism. “dorian gray” is in its heart a story of a man who tries to lead a totally aesthetic life. one of the aesthetic movement’s basic tenets is that only art, not life, can be perfect. as such, life should seek to imitate art. in dorian gray’s image wilde constructs the embodiment of this principle. dorian is enticed by lord henry wotton to fall into the aesthetic lifestyle, which lord henry describes as a new hedonism. “let nothing be lost upon you. be always searching for new sensations. “be afraid of nothing”this is a new hedonism that what our century seeks (wilde 1891:34). dorian does become not only a symbol, but also a living avatar of aestheticism itself. dorian gray, like the aesthetic conception of art, needs no morals and remains ever beautiful. dorian, guided by lord henry, falls rather fantastically into sin. his first brush with love turns sour as dorian finds himself incapable of loving sybil vane for more than her stage art, “he had dreamed of her as a great stage artist, had given his love to her because he had thought her great, then she had disappointed him” (wilde 1891:88). the expression of love causes sybil to be incapable of acting. and dorian becomes responsible for the destruction both of great art and life. dorian is killed at the end of the novel, undone by his own conscience, while the painting survives. the natural order is restored. the painting becomes “a splendid porarmenian folia anglistika literature 162 trait of dorian as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty,” in spite of dorian’s attack on it (wilde 1891:210). and dorian becomes the picture of his picture, “withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage”. in the novel “the picture of dorian gray”, oscar wilde uses symbolism and the depiction of character’s inner thoughts to enhance the meaning of the relationship between beauty and sins. the beautiful hanging represents the appearance of the beauty and youth; however, the painting itself represents his sins and old age. oscar wilde uses the individual’s inner thoughts to put emphasis on the conflict between beauty and sins. in dorian’s thoughts, he is at first fighting against crimes and sins but afterwards, he totally succumbs to all the “infinite passion, pleasures subtle and secret, wild joys and wilder sins” (wilde 1891:77). the author uses a lot of depiction of the transformation in one’s character to portray his inner conflict and also to explore the idea around beauty and sins. the conclusion suggests that art is perfectly capable of existing without morals but human life is not. wilde kills dorian gray, aestheticism itself, on the altar of his own fallacy, believing he could live as art. although art needs no morality affixed to it, ultimately humans are corruptible. the novel touches upon different linked categories – principles of mankind, love, friendship, devotion, betrayal. each of these categories are illustrated picturesquely which need to be elucidated through the light of paradoxes. paradox is a central tactic used in the novel. lord henry’s speeches are paradox-based. paradox is one of the most significant elements in the novel, found lord henry’s speech is expressed by different tropes and figures of speech. wilde’s style of writing is full of charm and wit. in the famous novel lord henry comments on friendship which is a realization of a paradox through anaphora: i choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters and my enemies for their good intellects. a man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. (wilde 1958:28) another realization of a paradox through antithesis in lord henry’s comment on friendship may evoke different feelings and motivations with different ranks of people: laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship and it is far the best ending for one. (wilde 1958:21) in the following example he vividly depicts his attitude to the whole mankind and implicitly shows his negligence towards the people living in the same society. this example is realized through anaphora: i like persons better than principles and i like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world. (wilde 1958:17) armenian folia anglistikaliterature 163 the following example shows a strategy of a universal truth which many people follow without realizing it. the idea of paradox is realized through antithesis: we do not realize that we live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessity. (wilde 1958:30) in the following example lord henry assures that in order to reach his full capabilities, dorian should not have to adjust to the lives of others (by marrying sybil vane) and suggests the idea that selfishness is beneficial for growth. this idea is realized through antithesis which may be viewed as chiasmus as well. when we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy. (wilde 1958:57) dorian accepts the idea that will and attraction of love will be lost, and love will become bothersome and dull. this is later proved when sybil vane is the adorer of dorian gray and yet dorian feels no attraction to her anymore. this thought of women hindering men to do great things indirectly persuades dorian that marriage is not beneficial in life. the following statement is realized through antithesis: women…inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces, and always prevent us from carrying them out.” (wilde 1958:58) the following witticism seems true but it actually puts people down and degrades them. this paradox is realized by means of anticlimax. “men marry because they are tired, and womenbecause they are curious: both are disappointed.” (wilde 1958:34) in the following statement the author again uses anticlimax to create a paradox: there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. (wilde 1958:59) wilde’s paradoxes are full of aesthetics and charm and the following example of paradox is expressed by antithesis: the only way to get rid of temptation is to yield it. (wilde 1958:67) in the following example lord henry shows his attitude towards women through chiasmus: women have no appreciation of good looks: at least good women have not. (wilde 1958:45) armenian folia anglistika literature 164 according to lord henry the whole mankind is divided into two parts. the following statement of paradox is realized by means of antithesis. there are only two kind of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing. (wilde 1958:36) thus we can conclude that our analysis shows that paradoxes used in o. wilde’s “the picture of dorian gray” are full of charm and wit. they are expressed mainly by antithesis, repetition (anaphora), chiasmus, anticlimax which serve a profound basis for making the author’s individual style distinguishable and recognizable. references: 1. wilde, o. (1958) the picture of dorian gray. vol. 3. leiceste, uk: prestwick house. 2. scott, t. (1892) oscar wilde’s comedy. / ed. by darga. / literature resource center. vol. 17. detroit: gale 2002. 3. gasparyan, s.; matevosyan, a. (2008) english style in action. yerevan: ysu press. 4. arnold, i. (2006) stylistics. london: british publishing house. 5. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/oscar_wilde> 6. <http://en.wikipedia.org/w./v.quine> ä³ñ³¹áùëý»ñá úëï³ñ àõ³ûé¹ç §¸áñç³ý ¶ñ»ûç ¹çù³ýï³ñᦠëï»õí³·áñíáõãû³ý ù»ç ¶ñ³ï³ý ëï»õí³·áñíáõãû³ý ñçùý³ï³ý ·áñí³éáõûãý»ñçó ¿ ·»õ³·çï³ï³ý ý»ñ·áñíáõãûáõýá áýã»ñóáõç íñ³: ú. àõ³é¹ç §¸áñç³ý ¶ñ»ûç ¸çù³ýï³ñᦠëï»õí³·áñíáõãûáõýá çñ ·»õ³·çï³ï³ý ý»ñ·áñíáõãû³ý ³é³ù»éáõãûáõýá ï³ï³ñ»é³å»ë çñ³·áñí»é ¿ ¹»é¨ë xix-ñ¹ ¹³ ñçó ç í»ñ: ¶ñ³ï³ý »ñïç ·³õ³÷³ ñ³ï³ý ñ»ýùá ï³½ùáõù »ý å³ñ³¹áùëý»ñá, áñáýù ¿’é ³ í»éç ïå³íáñçã »ý ¹³ñóýáõù ñ»õçý³ïç ëáëùá ¨ ýñ³ í»ñ³μ»ñùáõýùá ³ñï³ùçý ³ßë³ññçý áõ ýñ³ ù»ç ïçñáõ μ³ñù»ñçý: ä³ñ³¹áùëá ý³¨ ·»õ³·çï³ï³ý ï³ï»·áñç³ ¿, áñá ïíû³é ëï»õí³·áñíáõãû³ý ù»ç ³ñï³ñ³ûí³í ¿ ñ³ï³¹ñáõãû³ý, ë³ã³ó¨ù³ý, ýáõûý³ëïç½μ ïñïýáõãû³ý, ççýáõ ³ëïç׳ ý³íáñù³ý ùççáóý»ñáí: ºñμ»ùý ùç¨ýáõûý ³ëáõûãá ï³ñ»éç ¿ ¹çï³ñï»é` »éý»éáí ùç ù³ýç ³ñï³ñ³ûïã³ùççáóý»ñç ¹çï³ýïûáõýçó: armenian folia anglistikaliterature 165 maket_n_verjin.qxp etymology and word decoding the vocabulary or lexicon of a language is a systemrather than a list. its elements interrelate and change subtly or massively from generation to generation. it increases through borrowing from other languages and through word-formation based on its own or borrowed patterns. it may decrease or increase in certain areas as interests change. whole sets of items may vanish from general use and awareness, unless special activities serve to keep them alive. historically, the word-store of english is composite, drawn in the main from the indo-european language family. the base is predominantly germanic (mainly old english and old norse) with a super-structure of romance forms (mainly french and latin) with a technical stratum contributed by greek (mainly through latin and french). in addition, there are many acquisitions from languages throughout the world. the great number of borrowings gave way to the existence of the phenomenon bisociation in english, i.e. the occurrence in a language of pairs of words with similar meanings, one member of each pair being native to that language (such as everyday english sight), the other being a loanword from an influential foreign source (such as vision, a loanword from latin). in english, the vernacular members of such pairs are mainly germanic (usually from old english or old norse), while the loanwords are mainly classical (usually from latin, often mediated by french), as in: freedom/liberty, hearty/cordial, go up/ascend, go down/descend. bisociation in english has often been remarked on. simeon potter, for example, observes: “we feel more at ease after getting a hearty welcome than after being granted a cordial reception” (potter 1950:66). similarly, thomas finkenstaedt has noted: “apparently the elizabethans discovered the possibilities of etymological dissociation in language: amatory and love, audition and hearing, hearty welcome and cordial reception” (finkenstaedt 1973). this kind of semantic parallelism has also occurred in latin, which has absorbed many words from greek, creating such pairs as latin compassio and greek sympathia. in many instances, such pairs have passed into english, leading to trisociation, as with germanic fellow feeling, latinate compassion, and greek-derived sympathy. there are scores of such correspondences in english, the germanic material tending to be part of everyday usage (as with newness), the latinate tending to be more formal and “educated” (as with innovate), and the greek tending to be highly technical and even arcane (as with neophyte). in fact a great part of the latin and greek borrowings doesn’t form a part of our active vocabulary thus hindering their perception. however, it’s impossible to escape the 167 linguistics armenian folia anglistika susanna baghdasaryan necessity of recognizing the latter since we often come across texts pertaining to different scientific domains.1 as it was mentioned above, the contact of english with various foreign languages has led to the adoption of countless foreign words and word parts. these parts were no doubt originally independent words. they came into english ready made and preserving their old meaning became suffixed or prefixed to full english words. there are many prefixes used in scientific terminology, which have come into the language through borrowings. these prefixes are still very productive, especially in scientific vocabulary and are used in scientific terminology.2 prefixes or suffixes, or both are added to a root-form already in existence, and form a new word. these foreign affixes may be used with english roots. they make entirely new types unknown in the language from which they are adopted. these affixes retain their original forms. as a consequence hybrid types of words are composed: a foreign word is combined with a native affix as in clearness or unbutton and a foreign affix with a native word as in breakage or growth. thus, one good approach is to learn how to build up or to tear apart words. a knowledge of these word parts and their meanings can help us to determine the meanings of unfamiliar words belonging to highly specialized areas of the vocabulary. for example the word amorphous which means shapeless according to berger and bowen can be divided into the following parts: a (without, not) and morph (shape, form) with the addition of the suffix ous (having the qualities of) (berger, bowen 2000:71). many other words such as bienniel or perennial can easily be differentiated by the meanings and by choice of affixes: biennial – every two years (bi = two; enniel = year) perennial – present all year (per = present; enniel = year) the role of the etymological factor in the analysis of english words (and not only english) is very important. the result of our study is a list of common english and foreign prefixes, roots and suffixes that may come in handy. 168 armenian folia anglistika linguistics 169 linguistics armenian folia anglistika prefix meaning example illustration a without amoral without moral sense ante before antecedent preceding event or word anti against antibody against harmful bacteria auto self autobiography person's life written by himself bene good beneficial having good effect, helpful bi two bicycle two-wheeled vehicle circum around circumspect to look around com combine merge with co coeditor joint editor col with, together collateral connected con conference meeting cor corroborate confirm di two dichotomy division into two parts dis apart disparity condition of inequality hyper above hyperthermia high temperature hypo below hypothermia low temperature inter between interstate between states mal bad malevolent wishing to do evil, bad to others micro small microscopic extremely small mis wrong mispronounce to pronounce wrongly multi many multiplication a given number of times neo new neophyte beginner poly many polytheism worship of more than one god re again redo to do again retro back retrogress to go or move backward se away, aside secede withdraw semi half semiannual every six months uni one unison oneness of pitch tele far telemetry measurement from a distance thus, by mastering basic word parts through etymology we will be able to unlock the meaning of numerous words. the list of foreign prefixes, suffixes, roots and stems may be several times as much as the above mentioned list but it is not unlimited. whatever is within limit is not difficult to learn. moreover, it is very interesting to go 170 armenian folia anglistika linguistics r oot or s te m m e aning example illus tration agri f ield agrarian one w ho w ork s in the field alt high altitude height anim m ind,soul unanim ous of one m ind bio lif e biology st udy of liv ing things celer sw if t accelerate increase sw if tness cord heart accord agreem ent(from the heart) derm sk in derm atology st udy of sk in ego i egocent ric rev olv ing about self fin end,lim it confine k eep w ithin lim its gam m arriage m onogam y m arrage t o one person dom in t o rule dom inate hav e pow er ov er helio sun heliot rope flow er t hat faces t he sun labor t o w ork laborious dif ficult leg law legitim ate law ful m an hand m anuscript w ritt en by hand m on t o w arn m onitor w at cher, w arner nav ship nav igat e sail a ship om ni all om niscient all k now ing path desease pathology st udy of disease, tissue path f eeling antipathy hostile f eeling psych m ind psychopath m entally ill person rupt t o break interrupt break into sect cut bisect cut into tw o pieces som n sleep insom nia inability to sleep term end interm inable endless urb city suburban outside of cit y v ac em pt y ev acuate com pel to em pty an area v ol w ish v oluntary of one’s ow n w ill suffix meaning example illustration able, ible capable of portable able to be carried ary like, connected with dictionary book connected with words ate to make consecrate to make holy ation that which is irritation annoyance fic making, doing terrifi c arousing great fear ism doctrine, belief monotheism belief in one god ity state of being annuity yearly grant ive like expensive costly oid resembling anthropoid resembling man ose full of verbose full of tears deeper into these studies enlarging our understanding of the vocabulary. “learning thirty key word parts can help you unlock the meaning of over 10 000 words. learning fifty key word parts can help you unlock the meaning of over 100 000!” (green 1998:242). notes: 1. this often results in serious problems in the teaching process as students sometimes have great difficulties in decoding scientific terms. every word derives from its context and only the context will fix the exact meaning of the word which may be too vague or too ambiguous to make sense by itself. sometimes the students succeed in figuring out a word’s meaning by using their knowledge of context clues or by judging them, but very often they fail. 2. one of the commonest and also oldest methods of word-formation – derivation, is found in almost all languages and is considered a general linguistic phenomenon. references: 1. berger, l.; bowen, h. (2000) up your score. the underground guide to the sat. new york: workman publishing. 2. finkenstaedt, thomas; wolff, dieter (1973) ordered profusion. studies in dictionaries and the english lexicon. heidelberg: c. winter. 3. green, sharon, weiner; wolf, ira, k. (1998) how to prepare for the sat 1. hauppauge: barron’s educational series. 4. khidekel, s.; ginzburg, r. (1975) readings in modern english lexicology. leningrad: prosveshcheniye. 5. kinneavy, james e.; warrine, john e. (1998) elements of writing. new york: holt, rinehart & winston. 6. potter, simeon (1950) our language. england: penguin books. 7. www.encyclopedia.com 8. www.english-at-home.com 9. www.linguistics.ucla.edu 10. www.zas.gwz-berlin.de ì³·áõùý³µ³ýáõãûáõý ¨ µ³éç í»ñí³ýáõù 軽íç µ³é³å³ß³ñá ùç ñ³ù³ï³ñ· ¿, áñý ³×áõù ¿ ñçùý³ï³ýáõù µ³é³ï³½ùáõãû³ý ßýáññçí: ì»ñççýë ï»õç ¿ áõý»ýáõù ë»÷³ï³ý ï³ù ÷áë³éýí³í µ³é³ù³ëýçïý»ñç (³ñù³ï ¨ ³í³ýó) ùççáóáí, áñáýù, ³ýï³ëï³í, ý³ëïçýáõù »õ»é »ý çýùýáõñáõûý µ³é»ñ ¨, ý»ñã³÷³ýó»éáí ³ý·é»ñ»ýç µ³é³å³ß³ñ, ï³½ù»é »ý ýáñ µ³é»ñª å³ñå³ý»éáí ñçý çù³ëïá: è³ïçý»ñ»ý ¨ ñáõý³ñ»ý ÷áë³éáõãûáõýý»ñç ù»í ù³ëá ³ïïçí µ³é³å³ß³ñç ù³ë ã»ý ï³½ùáõù. ¹ñ³ýù ñçùý³ï³ýáõù í»ñ³µ»ñáõù »ý ·çï³ï³ý ï»ñùçýý»ñçý: 171 linguistics armenian folia anglistika 7 maket 2010 nor_n:layout 1.qxd stylistic peculiarities of contextual hyperbole in sherwood anderson’s “the book of the grotesque” and “godliness” the study of hyperbole in sherwood anderson’s shortstories is of great importance as hyperbole is a very powerful stylistic means which favors the formation of the writer’s individual style at the same time emphasizing its peculiarities. it is a trope which consists of a deliberate and intentional exaggeration of an action, feature or quality which is accompanied by a specific prosodic pattern. as any other trope it allows to say more than is readily seen on the surface. 1 hyperbole is a means through which literary personages are created. it helps to make the world of literature “colorful”, becoming one of the most powerful and effective means of impact, stirring the reader’s imagination and mind. hyperbole is not only a way of writing but also speaking. it makes the speech sound more exciting, more dangerous, better or worse than it really is (hornby 2005:63). it is the result of a kind of intoxication by emotions which prevents a person from seeing things in their true dimensions. if the reader or the listener is not carried away by the emotion of the writer or the speaker, hyperbole becomes a mere lie. in this connection v.v. vinogradov adds that hyperbole is the law of art which brings phenomena of life, diffused as they are, to the point of maximum clarity and conciseness (vinogradov 1953:74). hyperbole is an irreplaceable stylistic means through which the most ridiculous, negative and sarcastic sides of life are expressed, hence it is often used for humorous or ironic effect. it is also one of the best stylistic means for describing characters and their individuality. the creative use of hyperbole in verbal art requires careful study and artistic effort. the choice of sherwood anderson’s short stories for evaluating hyperbole is not accidental: his literary prose abounds in different stylistic means, among which hyperbole has its peculiar place. a literary text is considered a totality in which different stylistic means and allusive elements are embraced. because of this the reader has to go into the depth of the text, observe its imagery thoroughly, find out those elements which are taken from another text, in this way assimilating the two texts together. the choice of sherwood anderson’s short stories is attractive in this sense too. anderson’s literary prose is important for its stylistic value, and as anderson’s stories mostly reflect biblical elements, it is possible to observe the intertextual links through biblical allusion. what we have especially focused on in the present paper by applying the notions of background knowledge and vertical context is the stylistic peculiarities of contextual hyperbole and its types in anderson’s short stories, particularly in “the book of the armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 95 ani kojoyan grotesque” and “godliness” and, in the case of allusive hyperbole, the cognitive and aesthetic significance of the phenomenon. observing instances, when hyperbole is combined with other stylistic devices in the context of anderson’s short stories, the following types have been distinguished: mixed hyperbole (hyperbole combined with other stylistic means, shaped as instances of simile, pun, antonomasia, irony, personification, etc.), non-mixed hyperbole (hyperbole which is not combined with any other stylistic device) and biblical allusive hyperbole. anderson’s renowned novel “winesburg, ohio” was written in an old house in chicago in a couple of months. while reading the short stories, readers can find glimpses of truth about rural american life. through the stories anderson expresses his disappointment with town life. his stories and what he describes in them are all grotesque and extravagant. he employs grotesque notions very nicely and skillfully, while his material is freighted with a sense of reality. the grotesques are those people whose humanity has been outraged and who had to suppress their wishes to love in order to survive in winesburg. anderson himself mentions that all the characters of “winesburg, ohio” are grotesques themselves. he defines “grotesque” in this way: “truths are beautiful but when truths become fixed in people’s lives they turn people into grotesques – lonely, isolated distortions of people” (anderson 1981). hence, grotesqueness implies both deformity and failure of dreams and emotions. the use of grotesque as a method by anderson is not accidental. the opening story entitled “the book of the grotesque” is somehow symbolic in the sense that all the other stories are centered around it. it serves as a key to understanding the other stories because the latter are the thematic continuation of the former, i.e. the opening story. giving the story such a title anderson points to the possibility that all the ideas in his book should be interpreted in terms of grotesque and exaggeration. “the book of the grotesque” is about an old writer, his feelings, emotions and thoughts. one of the central thoughts of his book is: in the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but not such thing as a truth. man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts. all about in the world were the truths and they were all beautiful… there was the truth of virginity and the truth of passion, the truth of wealth and of poverty, of thrift and of profligacy, of carelessness and abandon. hundreds and hundreds were the truths and they were all beautiful. and then people came along. each as he appeared snatched up one of the truths and some who were quite strong snatched up a dozen of them. (anderson 27) here the whole extract bears an allegorical meaning, but in addition to this, the underlined part expresses hyperbolic meaning as well. 2 the word truth is an abstract and uncountable noun on the semantic level (in the meaning of the quality or state of being based on fact), while on the metasemiotic level; in the context of the present story, being used in the plural form, it becomes countable. still retaining its abstract character it armenian folia anglistika linguistics 96 acquires additional overtones: the truth is only one but when each person creates his own truth, the so-called subjective truth, the truth stops to be a general notion, it rather indicates falsehood, which is not truth at all. so, the use of an uncountable noun in the plural form brings about an obvious intentional exaggeration, which, in its turn, has an aesthetic impact on the reader. moreover, in the word-combination a dozen of truths we have not only exaggeration but also contrast because the word dozen indicates a group of twelve of the same things, while in the context a group of different things is presented. thus, for instance: there was the truth of virginity, the truth of passion, the truth of wealth and poverty, the truth of thrift and profligacy, of carelessness and abandon. so, it is here that not only hyperbolic shades, but also the author’s ironical attitude become even more obvious. in the following sentence – who were quite strong snatched up a dozen of them – the hyperbole becomes more effective; the primary meaning of the verb snatch is itself very expressive: “to take something quickly and often rudely and roughly, by force” (hornby 2005). in fact truth is not visible and because of this it cannot be taken. so, at this level the metaphoric and hyperbolic meanings are merged, combined with each other. in another sentence we read: man made the truths. the verb made is used in the meaning of “create”, whereas the truth cannot be made or created and a man, correspondingly, cannot be a truth-maker. this usage enhances the metaphorical and ironical aspect of the utterance. considering that in the context the truths created by men are vicious, the word truth has acquired its opposite meaning, that of untruth or falsehood. the use of hyperbole interpreted in terms of irony helps to understand the whole meaning of the story; through the use of hyperbole and irony anderson expresses his disappointment with the town and people living in it. in the following extract taken from the same story, another example of hyperbole is found. it is formed in a very peculiar way – by bringing together words which are not semantic synonyms, but rather function as contextual synonyms: in his bed the writer rolled over on his side and lay quite still. for years he had been beset with notions concerning his heart. he was a hard smoker and his heart fluttered. the idea had got into his mind that he would some time die unexpectedly and always when he got into bed he thought of that. it did not alarm him. the effect in fact was quite a special thing and not easily explained. it made him more alive, there in bed, than at any other time. perfectly still he lay and his body was old and not of much use any more but something inside him was altogether young. he was like a pregnant woman, only that the thing inside him was not a baby but a youth. no, it wasn’t a youth; it was a woman, young, wearing a coat of male like a knight. it is absurd, you see, to try to tell what was inside the old writer as he lay on his high bed and listened to the fluttering of his heart. the thing to get at is what the writer, or the young thing within the writer, was thinking about. (anderson 1981:25) armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 97 here we have an example of simile based on hyperbole. the old writer is beset with different kinds of notions and thoughts which disturb him all the time. to show the writer’s excited emotional state the hyperbole emphasizes the troubling condition in which the writer is. the contrast between the sick and old writer’s physical state and his young spirit is revealed through the notion of young thing – youth expressed by the lexical units baby, youth and young woman. the exaggeration is formed by the change of the word baby into the word youth, and the word youth into the word woman, which, in fact, turns into synonymic condensation. the word baby means a very young child. we also know that briskness, liveliness, quickness and vivacity are typical features of babies, as well as of young men and women. the word youth indicates the time of life when a person is young, especially the time before a child becomes an adult. as if trying to find the right definition of his inner state, his ego, the writer finally, through gradation, arrives at the notion of a young woman wearing a coat of male like a knight. interestingly, the writer chooses young woman instead of young man, thus pointing to another contrast in the image (male person with a female soul), and enhancing the hyperbolic simile – he was like a pregnant woman. on the other hand, the three words baby, youth, and the word woman in combination with the adjective young become synonyms on the metasemiotic level as all of them are contrasted to the notion of old dying man. the synonymic condensation gives not only extra emphasis, a kind of meta-effect to the utterance, but also secures the gradual formation of hyperbole. an example of hyperbole combined with another trope may be observed in the following sentence: winesburg had forgotten the old man, but in doctor reefy there were the seeds of something very fine. (anderson 1981:33) this is an example of antonomasia plus an exaggerative meaning. instead of saying people living in winesburg had forgotten the old man the writer uses the place name winesburg but, of course, he does not mean the town itself. through the name of the place he refers to its people. on the other hand, however, we should take into consideration that not all the people living there had forgotten the old man, but perhaps only a part of them, and this is where hyperbole lies. moreover, this example of hyperbole may also be regarded as a case of metonymy based on some kind of association connecting the two concepts: people and winesbug. additionally, there is an element of personification: the human quality of forgetting is ascribed to a city which is an inanimate object and is deprived of such a quality. the following extract presents an example of a non-mixed hyperbole: on that night when he had run through the fields crying for a son he became excited to the edge of insanity. (anderson 1981:62) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 98 the edge of insanity is a hyperbole. the dictionary definition for the word edge is: “the outside limit of an object” (hornby 2005). as for the word insanity, it is “the state of being mad” (hornby 2005). the nominal phrase edge of insanity acquires adjectival meaning in the context, denoting the ultimate degree of madness. so, the noun edge gives exaggerative overtones to the word-combination and shows jesse’s inner and tense mental emotional state. one of the stories entitled “godliness” presents many interesting examples of allusive hyperbole and here is one of them: i am a new kind of man come into possession of these fields,” he declared. “look upon me, o god, and look thou also upon my neighbors and all the man who have gone before me here! o god, create in me another jesse, like that one of old, to rule over men and to be the father of sons who shall be rulers! (anderson 1981:52) the proper noun jesse is a biblical allusive name. it is the name of a biblical king – david’s father who was the king of israel. according to the bible, god orders samuel to anoint david as king of israel. the name of the biblical prototype is used in a complex way. firstly, it coincides with the protagonist’s name. secondly, it indicates antonomasia: create in me another jesse. in this way the proper name jesse becomes a common noun. anderson’s jesse begs god to create in him the biblical jesse, through whom to rule on earth. the selection of the name jesse creates a contrast between the two jesses. and by this contrast anderson not only shows his ironical attitude but also secures the interpretation of irony. moreover, the fictional jesse obviously exaggerates his role, seeing himself as a patriarch. jesse works tirelessly on his farm and he also makes his employees, including his delicate wife, katherine work all day long even when they are not able to bear it any more. but at the same time he is afraid that someone like philistine goliath will take his lands from him. he strongly believes he is chosen by god and it is god’s work that he has come to the land. he wants god to notice and to talk to him. jesse also asks god to send him a son to be called david who will help him to pluck all of his lands out of the hands of the philistines. he compares all people around him with goliath. the above narration of the story embraces a sarcastic tone and is interpreted as irony, simultaneously being combined with hyperbole. the hyperbolic meaning is expressed when the contrast between the two jesses – the biblical jesse and the fictional one becomes obvious. moreover, jesse’s farm is not comparable to the biblical valley of elah, however earnestly he desires it to be. it is obvious that without sufficient background knowledge the biblical allusions and respectively the story could be misunderstood and misinterpreted. the following passage also includes biblical allusive elements with hyperbolic shades: a fantastic impulse half fear, half greediness, took possession of jesse bentley. he remembered how in the old bible story the lord had appeared to that other jesse and told him to send his son david to where saul and the men of armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 99 israel were fighting the philistines in the valley of elah. into jesse’s mind came the conviction that all of the ohio farmers who owned land in the valley of wine creek were philistines and enemies of god. “suppose,” he whispered to himself, “there should come from among them one who, like goliath, the philistine of gath, could defeat me and take from me my possessions. jehovah of hosts,” cried he, “send to me a son. let thy grace alight upon me. send me a son called david who shall help me to pluck at last all of these lands out of the hands of the philistines and turn them to thy service and to the building of thy kingdom on earth. (anderson 1981:54) anderson’s irony toward his character jesse (jesse is sure that he is the only person chosen by lord) is expressed through jesse’s exaggerated self-respect, egotism and selfesteem. hyperbole and irony are created through the introduction of the two controversial characters and hence, the grotesqueness of the situation. the identification with the biblical episodes continues in the next two parts of the story, where jesse wants to sacrifice a lamb – a similar episode is found in the bible when god orders abraham to sacrifice his only son – isaac, in order to test abraham loyalty to him. abraham obeys, and when he wants to sacrifice isaac, the angel stops him and says that god is pleased with him and that now he ascertains that abraham is faithful to him. instead of isaac abraham sacrifices a lamb that was sent by god. after the feeling of exaltation that had come to the farmer as a result of his successful year, another mood had taken possession of him. for a long time he had been going about feeling very humble and prayful. again he walked alone at night thinking of god and as he walked he again connected his own figure with the figures of old days. under the stars he knelt on the wet grass and rose up his voice in prayer. now he had decided that like the men whose stories filled the pages of the bible, he would make a sacrifice to god. (anderson 1981:73) in the passage taken from the story there is a hyperbole based on simile: like the men whose stories filled the pages of the bible. the following biblical allusion combined with two other stylistic means – hyperbole and simile, is a means of characterization. the obvious hyperbole is; jesse identifies himself with the biblical character but evidently he is not, and particularly he is not chosen by god. interestingly enough, when jesse wants to sacrifice a lamb, he destroys his relations with the grandson while in the original (in the bible) abraham who is going to sacrifice his son, sacrifices a lamb, in this way keeping and re-establishing his relations with the son. so, this fact once more intensifies the contradiction and contrast between the episodes of the story and the bible. thus, taking into consideration the study of the theoretical material and the results of the analysis of the above examples we may conclude that the use of hyperbole by sherwood armenian folia anglistika linguistics 100 anderson in his short stories serves as a means of characterization of his complex images and personages. moreover, it is directly connected with the author’s interpretation of the grotesque and the aesthetic. besides, in the context of sherwood anderson’s short stories hyperbole is often fused with other stylistic devices: simile, irony, personification, pun, etc. and finally, the notions of background knowledge and vertical context are essential for the stylistic evaluation of hyperbole based on allusion, namely biblical allusion. notes: 1. hyperbole is a device that is used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression and emphasis. 2. the linguostylistic study of the hyperbole ensures a correct interpretation of the general semantic content and connotative meanings. thus the study goes both along the lines of semantic and metasemiotic levels of investigation. the latter allows to evaluate all the additional overtones that the linguistic units have acquired in the context. references: 1. delahaunty, a. (2001) oxford dictionary of allusions. oxford: oxford university press. 2. hornby, a.s. (2005) oxford advanced learner’s dictionary. oxford: oxford university press. 3. pucci, j. (1998) the full-knowing reader. allusion and the power of the reader in the western literary tradition. usa: yale university press. 4. vinogradov, v.v. (1953) voprosy yazikoznaniya. m.: mgu publishers. literature: 1. anderson, sh. (1981) selected short stories. m.: progress publishers. ð³ù³ï»ùëï³ûçý ã³÷³½³ýóáõãû³ý á׳ï³ý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá ðá¹ í³ íç ýå³ ï³ïý ¿ áõ ëáõù ý³ ëç ñ»é ã³ ÷³ ½³ý óáõã û³ý á ׳ ï³ý ³ é³ýó ý³ ñ³ï ïáõã ûáõý ý» ñá þ. ²ý ¹»ñ ëá ýç å³ïù í³íù ý» ñç ñ³ ù³ ï»ùë ïáõù: îíû³é ýûáõ ãç ï» ë³ ï³ý ù³ ëç áõ ëáõù ý³ ëç ñáõã û³ý, çýã å»ë ý³¨ û ñç ý³ï ý» ñç í»ñ éáõ íáõã û³ý ßýáñ ñçí ñý³ ñ³ íáñ ¿ ¹³é ýáõù å³ïù í³íù ý» ñáõù ³ é³ýó ý³ó ý»é ñ³ ù³ ï»ùë ï³ ûçý ã³ ÷³ ½³ý óáõã û³ý » ñ»ù ñç ý³ ï³ý ï» ë³ï: ¸ñ³ýù »ýª §ë³ éá ã³ ÷³ ½³ý óáõã ûáõý¦, §áã ë³ éá ã³ ÷³ ½³ý óáõã ûáõý¦ ¨ §·ñ³ ï³ý ³ý¹ ñ³ ¹³ñó ñ³ý ¹ç ë³ óáõ ã³ ÷³ ½³ý óáõã ûáõý¦ ï» ë³ï ý» ñá: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 101 maket 2011-2:layout 1.qxd some aspects of computer-aided formative and summative assessments naira avakyan, arus markaryan yerevan state university c omputer-aided assessment (caa) is a term that covers forms of assessment delivered on computer, either online or on a local network, and those that are marked with the aid of computers. caa can be viewed in a few different ways. technically, assignments that are written on a computer and researched online are computer-aided assessments. one of the most common forms of computer-aided assessment is online quizzes or exams. they can be implemented online, and also marked by the computer by putting the answers in. caa covers a range of assessment procedures and is a rapidly developing area as new technologies are achieved. in essence, caa refers to any instance in which some aspect of computer technology is set out as part of the assessment process. some of the principle examples of caa in language learning are: interactive exercises and tests completed on a computer, use of computers to produce coursework, on-screen marking of students’ word-processed writing, use of e-mail for students to receive marks and feedback. computer-based exercises and tests often take the same kind of format. the essential difference between an exercise and a test is the purpose to which it is put. an exercise usually offers instant feedback to the learner and an opportunity to correct any errors that are made, whereas a test may offer little feedback to the learner apart from a raw score at the end of the test, or no feedback at all, e.g. where the results of the test might be stored for analysis by a teacher or examiner. exercises are usually designed to offer the learner practice in specific areas and to motivate and encourage, whereas tests are usually designed to assess the learner’s progress in specific areas, i.e. for self-assessment purposes, for the teacher or for an examination body. the main kinds of tests include: placement, diagnostic, achievement, proficiency, and aptitude tests. placement tests are designed mainly to sort students into teaching groups so that they are approximately at the same level when they join the group. diagnostic tests enable the learner or teacher to identify specific strengths and weaknesses so that corrective action can be taken. achievement / attainment tests are meant to show mastery of a particular syllabus rather than as a means of motivating the learner or reinforcing specific language skills. proficiency tests measure learner’s achievements in relation to a specific task which they are later required to perform. aptitude tests aim to predict how a student might perform in specific areas of a subject. the most common exercise types are: true or false, multiple-choice, gap-filling, word search, text reconstruction, matching, re-ordering jumbled words, re-ordering jumbled sentences, free text entry, crosswords. classroom assessments can include a wide range of options roughly divided into two categories: formative assessments and summative assessments. armenian folia anglistikamethodology 79 formative assessments (fa) are on-going assessments, reviews, and observations in a classroom. teachers use fa to improve instructional methods and student feedback throughout the teaching and learning process. for example, if a teacher observes that some students do not grasp a concept, he can design a review activity or use a different instructional strategy. likewise, students can monitor their progress with periodic quizzes and performance tasks. the results of fa are used to modify and validate instruction. thus, formative assessment is part of the instructional process. it informs both teachers and students about student understanding at a point when timely adjustments can be made. these adjustments help to ensure students achieve targeted standards-based learning goals within a set time frame. although fa strategies appear in a variety of formats, there are some distinct ways to distinguish them from summative assessments. one distinction is to think of fa as “practice”. formative assessment helps teachers determine next steps during the learning process as the instruction approaches the summative assessment of student learning. swearingen draws a good analogy for this – the road test for getting a driver’s license. what if, before getting your driver’s license, you received a grade every time you sat behind the wheel to practice driving? what if your final grade for the driving test was the average of all of the grades you received while practicing? because of the initial low grades you received during the process of learning to drive, your final grade would not accurately reflect your ability to drive a car. your final driving test, or summative assessment, would be the accountability measure that establishes whether or not you have the driving skills necessary for a driver’s license – not a reflection of all the driving practice that leads to it (swearingen 2002). the same is true for classroom instruction, learning, and assessment. another distinction is student involvement. if students are not involved in the assessment process, formative assessment is not practiced or implemented to its full effectiveness. students need to be involved both as assessors of their own learning and as resources to other students. there are numerous strategies teachers can implement to engage students. in fact, research shows that the involvement in work increases students’ motivation to learn. this does not mean the absence of teacher involvement. on the contrary, teachers are important in identifying learning goals, setting clear criteria for success, and designing assessment tasks that provide evidence of student learning. a significant component of engaging students in the assessment of their own learning is providing them with descriptive feedback as they learn. in fact, research proves descriptive feedback to be the most significant instructional strategy to move students forward in their learning. it provides students with an understanding of what they are doing well, links to classroom learning, and gives specific input on how to reach the next step in the learning progression. the following formative assessments are observed in armenian schools and universities: quizzes and essays, diagnostic tests, lab reports, etc. yet, computer-aided formative assessment is not common in armenian educational system. it should be applied more widely to make the assessing process more productive. summative assessments (sa) are given periodically to determine at a particular armenian folia anglistika methodology 80 point in time what students know and do not know. p. black explaining sa through analogy, stated, “when the cook tastes the soup, that’s formative assessment; when the customer tastes the soup, that’s summative assessment” (black 2003). thus, as we have mentioned above, formative assessment focuses on the process of assessing and using feedback, whereas summative assessment tends to focus on the product. concisely, summative assessment is a test, the purpose of which is evaluative. it is used to evaluate the effectiveness of instructional programs and services at the end of an academic year or at a pre-determined time. the goal of sa is to make a judgment of student competency after an instructional phase is complete. examples of sa which are applied in armenian schools and universities are: end-of-unit or chapter tests, mid-term tests, end-of-term or semester exams. computer-aided summative assessment in armenian educational system is becoming more common, especially within republic olympiad tests and entrance exams. in order to maximize the efficiency of summative and formative assessment, the following factors must be considered: variety, volume, validity, and reliability. as for the first factor, traditionally true/false and selected-response test items have been popular methods of assessing students. they are limited in scope and typically test each student’s capacity for rote memorization. however, assessment should include all three domains of learning; cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. in addition, assessments of the cognitive domain should reflect its higher levels, such as synthesis and evaluation. so, instructors should use a variety of assessment techniques, such as portfolios, cooperative research projects, and performance tests. the quantity of assessment which contributes to the final result should be the minimum amount necessary to ensure a valid result. the trouble is that teachers often require more summative assessments than necessary. the validity of assessment refers to the degree to which the assessment measures performance on the aspects of the course which are important. for example, if you want to measure a student’s ability of unknown text comprehension, you are not supposed to give him a test on grammar. the factor of reliability is well illustrated through the following analogy made by kellough. suppose that one wishes to determine how fast one’s car is traveling; a valid assessment tool is the speedometer. however, if one’s car travels at 60 mph the speedometer registers 50 mph, the speedometer is not reliable. similarly, a test can be valid, but not reliable (kellough 1999). however, instructors can facilitate reliability. for instance, one method for ensuring reliability when grading a research paper is using a rubric and allowing the students to have copies of it. if the rubric is well designed, several instructors could score the same paper using the rubric and arrive at similar scores. thus, the hallmark of assessment reliability is the reproducibility of assessment results. to sum up, assessment should be more than merely a test at the end of instruction to see how students perform under special conditions; it should be a central part of instruction that informs and guides teachers as they make instructional decisions. assessment should not merely be done to students; it should also be done for students, to guide and improve their learning. armenian folia anglistikamethodology 81 references: 1. black, p.; harrison, c.; lee, c.; marshall, b. & wiliam, d. (2003) assessment for learning: putting it into practice. berkshire, england: open university press. 2. brookhart, s.m. (1999) educative assessment: designing assessments to inform and improve student performance. san francisco: jossey-bass. 3. brown, s. and glasner, a. (eds) (1999) assessment matters in higher education: choosing and using diverse approaches, buckingham: open university press. 4. davies, p.; hodkinson, s. and reynolds, p. (eds) (2000) innovative approaches to learning and teaching in economics and business higher education. staffordshire university press, stoke on trent. 5. kellough, r.d. and kellough, n.g. (1999) secondary school teaching: a guide to methods and resources; planning for competence. new jersey: prentice hill, upper saddle river. 6. swearingen, r. (2002) a primer: diagnostic, formative, and summative assessment. washington: heritage university press. ð³ù³ï³ñ·ã³ûçý áõëáõóáõ³ï³ý ¨ ³ù÷á÷çã ã»ëï³íáñù³ý áñáß ñçùý³ñ³ñó»ñç ßáõñç ðá¹í³íá ùýý³ñïáõù ¿ ³ý·é»ñ»ýç ñ³ù³ï³ñ·ã³ûçý áõëáõóáõ³ï³ý ¨ ëïáõ·áõ³ï³ý ã»ëï³íáñù³ý áñáß ñçùý³ñ³ñó»ñ: àõëáõóáõ³ï³ý ã»ëï»ñá ùçïáõù áõý»ý ëïáõ·»é ëáíáñáõý»ñç ·çï»éçùý»ñá` áõëáõó³ýù³ý ýå³ï³ïáí: ²ù÷á÷çã ã»ëï³íáñáõùý ³ýó ¿ ï³óíáõù ó»éù μ»ñí³í ·çï»éçùç ·ý³h³ïù³ý ñ³ù³ñ: ðá¹í³íáõù ñ»õçý³ïý»ñá ï³ñ¨áñáõù »ý ð³û³ëï³ýç ïñã³ï³ý h³ù³ï³ñ·áõù ýáñ ½³ñ·³ óáõù ëï³óáõ ñ³ù³ï³ñ·ã³ûçý ã»ëï³íáñù³ý ¹»ñá ¨ ý»ñï³û³óýáõù ùç ß³ñù ·áñíáýý»ñ, áñáýù ïýå³ëï»ý ³û¹ ·áñíáýã³óç μ³ñ»é³íù³ýá: armenian folia anglistika methodology 82 maket 2011-2:layout 1.qxd metonymic similes in newspaper film reviews irina vardanyan gyumri state pedagogical institute t he review genre is well established in the form of literary reviews, traditionallypublished in print, where the reviewers express their opinions by commenting on the book and by telling the readers about their attitude towards it (taboada 2011). baud considers newspaper film reviews as a subgenre of literary reviews. once films gained popularity, many of the conventions of the literary review genre were adopted by the film review genre, still appearing in print and written by professional film reviewers (baud 2003). a film review is not merely a short summary of a film but a critical analysis that examines whether it succeeds in its presentation. the evaluation part in the genre of a review is of great importance, since it emphasizes the merits and shortcomings of the work. the purpose of most film reviews is to help the audience determine whether they want to rent, buy, or see the film (eliashberg and shugan 1997). it strives to find expression for what is seen and heard, bringing the realm of sounds, actions and objects to meet a realm of words and concepts. from a review the audience can get roughly the content of a film as well as other information about it. according to legget the most characteristic trait of film review is the announcement of judgments on the acting, story and cinematography (legget 2005). film review, on the other hand is considered a powerful marketing tool, or word-of-mouth information that has a strong impact on the reader’s decision (duan, gu and whinston 2008). mencher suggests that any film review comprises two main parts: basic information about the work (straight reporting) and the reviewer’s assessment (the criticism) (mencher 1996). the presence of informative and evaluative elements about the film can be explained by the fact that the reviewer who has seen the film tries to attract his readers’ attention and aims to convince the reader to watch that particular film or not. thus, the reviewer’s job is to describe and judge a film the public is not familiar with and advise them on its merits. zhang, dellarocas and awad state that the style of writing and word choices are considered the most essential features to attract reader’s interest (zhang, dellarocas and awad 2004). since the purpose of most film reviews is to help the reader make a decision about watching the film or not, the reviewer tries to make the review more persuasive and convincing, enriching it with different tropes and figures of speech. among various figures of speech and tropes the linguistic phenomenon of simile has its own place in the texts of film review. kirszner and mandell in the brief holt handbook define simile as a “comparison between two essentially unlike items on the basis of a shared quality” (kirszner and mandell 2000). this viewpoint is supported in the american heritage college dictionary where simile is framed as “a figure of speech in which two essentially different things are explicitly compared, usually by means of like or as” (1993). it must be noted that the difference between the simile and the metaphor armenian folia anglistika linguistics 54 lies in the meaning: in case of metaphor there is an advance of meaning, whereas in case of simile there is no transfer in meaning. simile, as a figure of speech is patterned by specific combinations of words, syntactic constructions that are called to strengthen the expressiveness of speech. the present research explores the role of metonymic similes in newspaper film reviews. metonymic similes emphasize contiguity between two referents. paradis defines metonymization as “the use of a lexical item to evoke the sense of something that is not conventionally linked to that particular lexical item” (paradis 2004). in metonymic similes the objects, phenomena, situations are compared in order to explain everything more clearly, give the account of the author’s thoughts, bring the expressed thoughts close to the reader, and give him a chance to appreciate the author’s ideas. associations, lying on the basis of such comparisons, bring the limited number of physical characteristics, such as form, volume, dimensions, colors, etc. metonymic similes are “two-stepped” because the words directly relate to the objects they denote and do not result in the creation of poetic images. they allow the reviewer to express his thought in an original and interesting way, as well as help the reporter grab his readers’ attention. it is noteworthy that metonymic similes are equally used both in informative and evaluative parts of film reviews. let us analyze some examples of metonymical similes, functioning in the part of straight reporting. despite swinton disappearing into her part, the film rambles on and on , a bit like a shaggy dog yarn told by a drunk – engaging to begin with, but increasingly exasperating. (mirror, december 5, 2008) to criticize long and pointless duration of the film, the reviewer compares it with “a shaggy dog yarn”, which is explained as an extremely long-winded tale featuring extensive narration of typically irrelevant incidents, to which the audience listens with certain expectations, which are either simply not met or met in some entirely unexpected manner. the perception and interpretation of a simile depends not only on the reader’s basic knowledge, life experience, and educational background, but also on the context, which bears much importance. it is the context that provides an opportunity to acknowledge meanings, which result from combining things and phenomena that greatly depend on the author’s ideas, creative thinking and imagination. with neither liv nor emma prepared to back down, friendship is tossed like a bridal bouquet and all-out war ensues. plenty of shrieking, too. (mirror, january 8, 2009) the simple and obtainable similes that nigel andrews and david edwards use in the introductions of their reviews (for example, the fact that friendship is not only tossed like armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 55 a bridal bouquet, but is turned into a battlefield at the first disagreement) especially help the reviewers render the film more vividly, thus making it possible for the reader to clearly imagine the plot of the film arousing their interest in the film itself. the trailer for the movie just shows a bunch of young new yorkers running for their lives as the head of the statue of liberty lands in their street, tossed like a bowling ball, amid sounds of approaching chaos and terror. (the daily telegraph, january 13, 2008) the reviewer of ‘the daily telegraph’ skillfully uses a metonymic simile in his review comparing the rolling head of the statue of liberty with a bowling ball. the reviewer writes in such a way as to bring the film into imaginative being for the reader, so that the reader views it in the process of reading. in reading he or she becomes a film viewer. the use of such similes is peculiar to the genre of reviews as due to its imagery character, besides persuading and convincing the reader, it also provides information about the film realizing preaching or anti-preaching function. thus every simile used in the genre of the film review carries out influential, cognitive, persuasive and preaching functions. the data at our disposal reveal an excellent example of a metonymic simile functioning in evaluative part of the review. i can truthfully say that watching this abysmal fantasy-comedy is less rewarding than being slapped across the face with a large wet fish. (the guardian, february 1, 2008) the example adduced above is the introduction of the negative review published in ‘the guardian’, which makes it clear that the reviewer intends not only to enrich it with emotionally coloured syntagmas, but also to achieve some anti-preaching effect. the reviewer’s personal negative attitude towards the film is revealed in the metonymic simile “less rewarding than being slapped across the face with a large wet fish”. the comparison made by the reviewer yields to disgusting associations. the readers with bright imagination would give up the idea of watching that particular film. it is apparent that with the help of such a simile the reviewer succeeds in providing his readers with some metacontent: the film is a blunder. linguists point out that each kind of a review presupposes a specific audience and a specific aim. when writing a film review, the reviewer always considers who the intended audience is for the film and the audience he is writing for. in order to appreciate the value of some similes it is necessary that both the reviewer and the reader have the same background information, as the lack of it results in misunderstanding of the simile, thus making the right perception and interpretation of it impossible. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 56 yuletide trappings here, though demi moore will do as the ghost of hollywood past, rattling her jewelled accessories like a drag-queen jacob marley. (the times, november 26, 2008) in order to understand the meaning of metonymic simile used by the reviewer the reader should have some background knowledge about jacob marley, whose spirit has to carry heavy chains of his own sin and greediness. this simile enables the reviewer to convey the image of the heroine more clearly and vividly. thus, the data at our disposal show that in order to grab the reader’s attention and to arouse the necessary parallels in the reader’s mind, the reviewers make use of metonymic similes in the texts of their reviews, especially in the introductory and evaluative parts, which help them get closer to their readers and establish reliable relations with them. references: 1. the american heritage college dictionary (3rd ed.) (1993) boston: houghton mifflin. 2. baud, d. (2003) analyse de genre: la critique de cinéma dans la presse quotidienne britannique. asp: la revue du geras 39/40 (pp. 37– 45). 3. duan, w.; gu, b. and whinston, a.b. (2008) the dynamics of online word-of-mouth and product sales-an empirical investigation of the movie industry. // journal of retailing, 84 (2), (pp. 233-242). 4. eliashberg, j. and shugan, s.m. (1997) film critics: influencers or predictors? // journal of marketing. n 61 (april), (pp. 68–78). 5. kirszner, l. and stephen, m. (2000) the brief holt handbook (3rd ed). fort worth: harcourt brace college publishers. 6. leggett, b.j. (2005) convergence and divergence in the movie review: bonnie and clyde. // film criticism 30(2), (pp. 1–23). 7. mencher, m. (1996) basic media writing (5th ed). madison: brown and benchmark. 8. paradis, c. (2004) where does metonymy stop? senses, facets and active zones. // metaphor and symbol 19(4), (pp. 245–264). 9. taboada, m. (2011) stages in an online review genre. // text talk, 31(2), (pp. 247269). walter de gruyter gmbh & co. kg. 10. zhang, m.; dellarocas, c. and awad, n. (december 2004) the impact of online movie reviews on box office performance. // workshop on information systems and economics (wise), college park, md. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 57 öáë³ýí³ý³ï³ý ñ³ù»ù³ïáõãûáõýá éñ³·ñ³ûçý ïçýá·ñ³ëáëáõãû³ý ï»ùëïáõù ðá¹í³íáõù í»ñéáõííáõù ¿ ÷áë³ýí³ý³ï³ý ñ³ù»ù³ïáõãû³ý ¹»ñá éñ³·ñ³ûçý ïçýá·ñ³ëáëáõãû³ý ï»ùëïáõù: êáëùý ³í»éç ïå³íáñçã ¨ å³ïï»ñ³íáñ ¹³ñóý»éáõ ýå³ï³ïáí ·ñ³ëáëý»ñá ïçýá·ñ³ëáëáõãû³ý ï»ùëïáõù ·áñí³íáõù »ý ·»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý ñ³ù»ù³ïáõãû³ý ñý³ñá: îçýá·ñ³ëáë³ï³ý ï»ùëï»ñáõù ñ³ù»ù³ïáõãû³ý ·»ñ³ïßéáõ ï»ë³ïá ÷áë³ýí³ý³ï³ý ñ³ù»ù³ïáõãûáõýý ¿, áñç ñçùùáõù áýï³í ùï³½áõ·áñ¹áõãûáõýý»ñá ñçùý³ï³ýáõù ë³ñù³ý³÷³ïíáõù »ý ýç½çï³ï³ý ¨ ³ûé ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñç (ã³÷ç, ó¨ç, í³í³éç, ·áõûýç) ñ³ù³¹ñù³ùμ: îçýá·ñ³ëáëáõãû³ý å³ýñáõù ïçñ³éíáõ ó³ýï³ó³í ñ³ù»ù³ïáõãûáõý çñ³ï³ý³óýáõù ¿ ý»ñ·áñíù³ý, ׳ý³ãáõ³ï³ý, ñ³ùá½ù³ý ¨ ù³ñá½ã³ï³ý ·áñí³éáõûã: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 58 7 maket 2010 nor_n:layout 1.qxd metrical relations between siamanto’s poetry and medieval armenian verse it is an undeniable fact that the poetry of greatarmenian poet siamanto (atom yarjanian) in its constructional form is tuned according to the new poetical system of free verse that was widespread in the literature at the beginning of the 20 th century. siamanto’s poetry, however, is also based on a variety of metrical forms typical of old and medieval armenian verse. creating his poetry in accordance with the main constructional norms of free verse, the author combined poetical meters of armenian medieval lyrics with numerous stylistic elements of modern poetry. in armenian literature the first free version texts are found in historiography, many pages of which look like rhythmical-musical poems. such artistic-descriptive fragments of the 5 th century armenian historiography can be described as having a rhythm of free verse. “histories of armenia” by agathangelos, pavstos buzand, m. khorenatsi testify to this fact. the same can be said about the style of exposition and poetical images that we find in “sebeos’s history” of the 7 th century. the texts of armenian spiritual songs – sharakans which have become an important and indispensable part of armenian spiritual literature since the 5 th century also possess a free construction. over the centuries the already created sharakans underwent certain modifications, and new ones were created. still later, these texts served as a basis for separate literary poetic works. the construction of spiritual verses is closely connected with their content, namely, with the so-called “universal plots” of the bible and spiritual music. due to this connection the spiritual verses are constructed according to definite structural regularities. sharakans as a form of ecclesiastic music don’t refer to rhyme in which the rhythmic aspect becomes an uneven arrangement of syllables and emphasizes certain accents, i.e. their construction is rhythmically free. in later centuries (following the birth of sharakans) ecclesiastical spiritual lyricism gradually inherited the easiness of form typical of armenian national mindset and mentality and artistic taste. it also made wide use of constructional potentialities of the socalled “secular poetry”. many constructional peculiarities of armenian folklore served as a source for not only armenian ecclesiastical lyrics but siamanto’s poetry as well. siamanto’s poems may be conditionally divided into two groups. the first one includes those poems that don’t adhere to any constructional canons (“heroically”, “armenian children”). the second group of poems remains within boundaries of creative free style, at the same time containing lines of metrical verse (“torches of spiritual behavior and hope”, “bloody news from my friend”, “the homeland’s invitation”, “saint mesrop”). the latter poems belong to blank verse and present metrical canons of armenian syllabic verse. the blank verse of siamanto, unlike the armenian medieval poetry, isn’t rhymed. however, internal rhyming (assonance and consonance so typical armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 169 karina asatryan of medieval spiritual and secular lyricism) is evident in some of his verses. siamanto’s poetry is so spontaneous that it may need no rhyming at all although his selective rhyming adds to the beauty of his poems. his thoughts are completed and summed up by rhyming in general and paragraphing in particular, which, although meaningfully important, sometimes give way to the “imaginative set”, i.e. the imaginative environment. what is more, the melodiousness of lines is abundantly charged with the author’s thoughts and boundless and tempestuous flow of emotions thus giving tribute to the modern literary flow – symbolism, at the same time adopting the poetical metrical form typical of armenian ecclesiastical lyrics (hayrenik 1955:21). speaking about the metrical relations of armenian epical verse and the verse of siamanto we should mark that the majority of his poems have identical features with the “historical songs” – the heritage of m. khorenatsi. these songs first of all present epical images which are put in motion or action by plot structure. the epical verse is abundant with other imaginative details in which the rhythm of lines is constructed with and by means of impetuous and, on the contrary, slow action of the images. parallel to emotionality and imaginativeness of epical verse, siamanto’s poetical images are endowed with additional psychological and dramatic tensions. some fragments of his epical verse are constructed and presented in the form of a complete syntactical unit – sentence, in which pauses are marked in accordance with the wholeness and intonational-pronunciational divisions of combinations of words and phrases. the expressiveness of poetical speech is signified by phonetic iteration which in ancient poetry, especially in the medieval armenian poetry, had a particular role. owing to rhythmical vibration of phonetic iteration the speech develops in a more dynamic way. besides expressiveness, the harmony of phonetic iteration is also achieved through musical images in some big fragments of verse.1 in siamanto’s poetry phonetic repetition is a means through which to underline rhythmical vibration and associate different shades of meaning of words. siamanto not only used poetical meter typical of medieval armenian poetry but also developed it according to his creative style. this is especially evident in his poems created in early 20 th century. his poetical prose, his voluminous verse presented the bloody, dramatic facts and events of the epoch of armenian tragedy through a profound analysis of the psychological emotions of the author (“bloody news from my friend”). as all his other creations, the free verse poetry of this period displays peculiarities of armenian canonical verse combined with new structural forms of contemporary poetry. we mean, in particular, the poems “bloody news from my friend”, “torches of spiritual behavior and hope”, “the homeland’s invitation”, “saint mesrop”.2 here is “the prayer of navasart for goddess anahid”:3 îñ³í³ï³ù »ë ç ø»½: ´³·ñ»õ³ý¹û³ý μéáõñý»ñáõý íñ³ ï³ý·áõý, ºë μ³½ù³¹³ñû³ý ¹çó³å³ßï »õ ý罳ﳽ»ý ùáõ áñ¹ç¹, æμñ ³é³ùû³é »õ ëý¹ñ³ñïáõ ø»½ç ïáõ·³ù í»ñáñ»ý,èë»° çýíç, ð³ûïû³ý μ³ùμçéë ¶áõã³ý ñáõ»ý ¿ íý»ñ...: àõëïç ïáõ·³ù: øõ³ùç¹ ùá ñ³ë³ï»»ë í³ñ »õ μ³ñë³ùáõýùç ¹³é³ñ áëï»ñ ç ó»éçë, armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 170 ²ñ³í³ëçï ³ñí³ã óýóáõõ ùá í³ñ¹³ñûáõãáí` ëïçýùý»ñ¹ ûí»éáõ.... ²ñ³í³ëçï ëýï³ù³ý ùá ë³÷áñ³ó»õ, áõñ ïáñí³ýáõù¹ çù ³ñóáõýùá¯íë »ë éí³óç.... ºí ëïí»ñçë ñ»ï»õáõ »õýçïý»ñáí ýíçñ³ï³ý` ø»½ ïù³é»ù...: i believe in you. standing firm on the hills of bakrevant, i, a pagan of many centuries and your son armed with arrows, as a messenger and implorer i come to you grandly, hear me, my haigian castanets were born from the koltan earth... i come as a pilgrim. wearing a chlamys longer than my height and green twigs in my hand as wands, here is a silver pot with rose essence to anoint your breasts... here is an urn-shaped incense dish where i cried for your ruin with my tears... i walk toward you with precious roes following my shadow... considering versifcational relations between the poetry of siamanto and medieval armenian poems, namely the poetical meters abundant in sharakans, it can be stated that the iambic sixteen-syllabic form (4+4+4+4) is common for both. according to e.jrbashian armenian versification “is an important realization of the concept of compound two-feet close foot” (jrbashian 1973:308). two iambic feet consist of one compound foot. the iambic sixteen-syllabic form is four compound feet. this form is found in such poems by siamanto as “the song of the knight”, “expiation”, “brother to his brother”, “the young wife’s dream”, “entreaty of the armenian fields”, “the prayer of navasart for goddess anahid”. the same form is observed in medieval armenian poems of n.shnorhali, h.pluz, k.erznkatsi, h.tlkurantsi. for example: siamanto èë»° çýíç, àëï»õ»ý ù³ûñ, ùá°õûñ ³ñ·³í³ý¹, ùá°õûñ μ³ñáõãû³ý… (4+4+4+4) hear me, golden mother, fertile sister, sister of goodness... g. narekatsi ¶»õ»óçï å³ïùáõ׳ý³õáý ½³ñ¹³ñ»³é ¿ñ, æ ï³åáõïáû, ç íçñ³ýáû, ç μ»ñ»½áû, ç ûáñ¹³ý¿… (4+4+4+4) n. shnorhali æ ñáï ³ýáõß áõç³ïç½»³é ù³ïáõó³ý¿ñ ½çýùý ýáõ¿ñ… (4+4+4+4) ºï»õ»óçù ð³û³ëï³ý»³ûó å³ûí³é³å¿ë ½³ñ¹³ñ»ó³ý… (4+4+4+4) h. tlkurantsi âáõ ½çë ¿ñ»ý ï³é³ûåáõéáí, áñ çù ëáñïçë μáóáý ·áé³û… (4+4+4+4) î»ñ³ïñ»ó³ù ç ùç ë»õ³ý áõ ëáù»ó³ù ç ùç ïáãë³û… (4+4+4+4) armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 171 similarly, the source of the iambic twelve-syllabic form 4+4+4 used by siamanto is the armenian traditional versification. this form is equally typical of siamanto’s “a handful of ash” and “saint mesrop”, p.khapantsi’s (a medieval author) poems and sharakan. for example: sharakan àñ û³ýùýáýçý íáóáû ñûñ ëáý³ññ»³é áñ¹ç »ñ»õ»ó³ñ ç ù»ç »ñïáõó ï»ý¹³ý»³óý… (4+4+4) siamanto ºë ññ»õ»ý ñ³óç¹ ï³ñá¯ï óáñ»ý³ù³õ… i, reaper of wheat longing for your fiery bread... (4+4+4) ²ñû³ý ñýáó, ³ýáõñçý»ñáõ ³ýμçí í³í³é… (4+4+4) furnace of blood, spotless expansion of visions... moreover, in “saint mesrop” siamanto used a variation of the above mentioned form – two compound feet with 7+5, 5+7 constructions, which are found in sharakans and in some medieval poets’ works.4 two other poetical forms used in armenian medieval poetry and then inherited by siamanto and representatives of contemporary literature are iambic fifteen-syllabic form (four compound feet) with one anapest, 4+4+4+3 and iambic fourteen-syllabic form (four compound feet) with two anapests, 4+3+4+3. these forms are observed in siamanto’s “the vintage” and “the song of the knight”. the traditional form most frequently used by siamanto in different positions in “the homeland’s invitation” and “saint mesrop” is the iambic eleven-syllabic form (three compound feet) with one anapest, 4+4+3. with parallel frequency this form is present in the poem-songs of medieval authors g.narekatsi, k.erznkatsi, g.akhtamaretsi, n.hovnatan. the two other types of eleven-syllabic form used in “saint mesrop” are 6+5, 5+6. the same types with nearly the same arrangement of feet are found in medieval poems of n.hovnatan and p.dpir. for example: n. hovnatan à°ã ¹³ñ¹ë ·çï»ë, á°ã ñ³éë ïçù³ý³ë (5+6) à°ã çýë³ý ï³ý»ë, á°ã »ñ»ëá¹ μ³ý³ë… (5+6) p. dpir â³ñ³ëûë ù³ñ¹áû ùûï ãáýëïçë μý³õ… (6+5) siamanto ºë ïáïñ³í ï³ýã»õ »õ å³å³ïû³é å³ïñáõû·… (5+6) i, broken lantern and thirsty wick... in general in all of siamanto’s works the versificational constructions are conditioned by textual content. in g.narekatsi’s poems the five-syllabic compound feet is metrically quite free in exposition and is used in works presenting tempest of thought.5 the similar phenomenon is observed in siamanto’s poems. for example in the fivesyllabic compound feet found in the verses of the collection “bloody news from my friend” the reality seems to be represented by “a man in agony”.6 the poems are rhytharmenian folia anglistika armenological studies 172 mical and naturally more imaginative and expressive. as to the twenty-syllabic form (four compound feet) containing both iambic and anapest feet (5+5+5+5) and initially used by g. narekatsi, in siamanto’s “the prayer of navasart for goddess anahid” ,“the blind” and “the mulberry tree” it changed into a four-syllabic (five compound feet) 4+4+4+4+4 one with iambic feet and four-syllabic (six compound feet) 4+4+4+4+4+4. in “saint mesrop” we come across the ten-syllabic form 2+8 and another type of ten-syllabic form, the 6+4 construction with nearly the same arrangement of feet as in sharakans. the iambic thirteen-syllabic form (three compound feet) with one anapest (4+4+5, 5+4+4) is still another armenian medieval versificational form used by siamanto. for example: g. narekatsi î»ñå ³ýå³ïï³é, ¹¿ùù ³ý³ùûã, »ñ»ë éåñß»³é (4+4+5) siamanto ºë »õï»éç ù³ñï³ý³óáõ, »ë ¹å·áõûý ïýï»ë…. (4+4+5) i, pitiful mortal, i, pale steward... ºõ íý³í ûñ»¹ »õ ³ñ»õ»¹ ùçýã»õ ³ûëûñ…. (5+4+4) and from the day you were born, and from your sun until today... the thirteen-syllabic forms 5+3+5 and 5+5+3 is a characteristic feature of both medieval poems and “saint mesrop”. for example: siamanto ºë ³ý׳鳷³ûã ³õç³ùáõõç »ë` ³ýé³ñ ùý³ñ... (5+3+5) i, ray-less dusk, wire-less lyre... ºë ³ýñáõ³·áñí ¹³ßïáñ³, ßï»ù³ñ³ý ã³÷áõñ... (5+3+5) i, non-farming field man, wine-distributing warehouse... last but not the least nine (5+4, 4+5), eight (5+3, 4+4) and seven (4+3) syllabic forms (two compound feet) are usages in siamanto’s poetry. these forms make certain fragments of the poem more dynamic. for example: siamanto êáëùç° ³õμûáõñ, μ³ýç° μ³ñóáõýù, (4+4) î³ñáõáõãû³ýó ³ýí»°ñç ï³ï³ñ… (4+4) fountain of speech, height of reason, endless summit of abilities… ¸áõý ð»éé»ýý»ñ»ý ñéã³ïí³í, (5+3) ø»í³ïçïõáë ²ïáõùçï… (4+3) you, declared by the hellens as grand-titled academic… armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 173 the line rows with different metrical forms that follow each other help the poet to express the drama of the restless soul, its outbursts of seethe emotions. the imagery conditions changeable forms of expression and free syntactical constructions and each time is presented with new artistic force. the same process is observed in narekatsi’s poetry. summing up whatever has been discussed above we can say that creating his free verse poetry, expressing his wrath of soul, his gust of pain, his unbounded love by streamy speech, the great armenian poet siamanto remained constant to his literary roots – he developed significantly armenian metrical form used by his literary ancestors. notes: 1. repetitions have an artistic and metrical meaning also in many medieval armenian clerical lyric poems (g.narekatsi, n.shnorhali). in narekatsi’s poems-gandzes, taghs and in his famous “narek” (“book of lament”) the art of phonetic iteration attains its perfection. g. narekatsi seethes poetical lines with coloured and vocal surf of assonance and consonance. he managed to create a poetical symphony through mixed meter lines without rhyme. n.shnorhali successfully used phonetic repetition to emphasize the spiritual content of clerical songs and sharakans. 2. literary scholars h.tamrazian and m.mkrian have touched upon such topics as artistic modes of representation and forms of stylization in g.narekatsi’s and siamanto’s works. h.rshtuni discussed poetical forms used by siamanto in his monograph “siamanto” (tamrazian 1969). 3. this and other translations of siamanto’s poems presented in the paper belong to shant norashkharian. 4. medieval armenian poets h.tlkurantsi, z.gnuneants and g.akhtamaretsi are meant. 5. the five-syllabic two compound feet form 5+5 is not typical of siamanto’s poetry although we come across it in “saint mesrop”. in poetical form and thematic content this work reminds of a medieval poem. both medieval poets (g.narekatsi, n.shnorhali) and siamanto used this form to criticize human faults and to glorify god. 6. the fifteen-syllabic form (three compound feet) 5+5+5 with both iamb and anapest feet was used by g. narekatsi in the 10th century. however, this construction is not typical of siamanto’s blank verse. references: 1. jrbashian, e. (1972) the theory of literature. yerevan: yerevan state university. 2. mkrian, m. (1988) works. vol. 2. yerevan: yerevan state university. 3. rshtuni, h. (1970) siamanto. yerevan: hayastan publishers. 4. siamanto. life and work. (1955) n4. boston: hayrenik. armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 174 5. tamrazian, h. (1969) siamanto. yerevan: hayastan publishers. 6. http://www.umd.umich.edu/dept/armenian/literatu/ literature: 1. siamanto and varouzhan (1979) // library of armenian classics. yerevan: sovetakan grogh. êç³ù³ýãáûç åỽç³ûç ¨ ùççý³¹³ñû³ý ñ³û μ³ý³ëï»õíáõãû³ý ï³õ³ã³÷³ï³ý ³éýãáõãûáõýý»ñá êç³ù³ýãáûç åỽç³ý ë»ñïáñ»ý ï³åíáõù ¿ ùççý³¹³ñû³ý μ³ ý³ ëï»õ íáõ ãû³ý ï³õ³ã³÷³ï³ý ³éýãáõãûáõýý»ñç ñ»ï: êï»õí³·áñí»éáí ³½³ï áï³ý³íáñç ï³éáõóí³íù³ûçý ñçùý³ï³ý ûñçý³ã³÷áõãûáõýý»ñç ñ³ù³ó³ûý` ý³ ñ³û ùçç ý³ ¹³ñ û³ý ùý³ñ»ñ·áõãû³ý μ³ý³ëï»õí³ï³ý ã³÷»ñá ½áõ·³ïó»é ¿ ¹³ñ³ëï½μç §ùá ¹»éý μ³ý³ëï»õíáõãû³ý¦ á׳ï³ý μ³½ù³ãçí ï³ññ»ñç ñ»ï: ü»ñï³û³óí³í »ý μ³ ý³ëï»õí³ï³ý ã³÷»ñ, áñáýù ïçñ³éí»é »ý çýãå»ë ùççý³¹³ñû³ý ùç ù³ýç μ³ý³ëï»õíý»ñç, ³ûýå»ë ¿é êç³ù³ýãáûç ïáõùçó: ø³ëý³ïç ³ý¹ñ³¹³ñó»é »ýù ý³¨ ¹ñ³ýó ï³éáõóí³íù³ûçý ÷á÷áëáõãûáõýý»ñçý, áñáýù ï³ï³ñ»é ¿ êç³ ù³ý ãáý: armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 175 maket 2012 1-2:layout 1.qxd polysemy in context diana movsisyan artsakh state university it is generally known that most words represent several concepts and thus possessthe corresponding number of meanings. a word having several meanings is called polysemantic, and the ability of words to have more than one meaning is described by the term polysemy. polysemy is the association of two or more related senses with a single linguistic form (taylor 1989:99). i.v. arnold states that polysemy is inherent in the very nature of words and concepts as every object and every notion has many features, and a concept reflected in a word always contains a generalization of several traits of the objects. hence, the possibility of using the same name in secondary nomination for objects preserving common features which are sometimes only implied in the original meaning is called polysemy (arnold 1986:41). polysemy is one of the most important issues of recent linguistic semantics, since the analysis of polysemy and polysemization processes is indispensable for accurate reading, language acquisition, computational linguistics and similar tasks. although its importance was already recognized in the historical-philological tradition in early 20th century and was emphasized again by s. ullmann, it was not until recently that polysemy became a central issue in linguistic semantics. the complex relations between meanings and words were first noted by the stoics. “however, ‘concrete research into the multiplicity of meaning only began in the 18th century’ and was continued in the 19th century by linguists interested in meaning from the point of view of etymology, historical lexicography or historical semantics” (nerlich 1992:351). the 19th century linguist bréal, whose research into polysemy marked a new starting point, shifted the study of polysemy away from lexicography and etymology and investigated polysemy as “synchronic pattern of meanings surrounding a word, which is itself the ever changing result of semantic change” (cuyckens, zawada 2001:85). the issue of polysemy and the attendant practical task of word sense disambiguation (wsd) take on entirely new dimensions in context where a word might have innumerable possible meanings. hence, the present paper aims at producing useful linguistic analysis of polysemantic words in context, in this way to show the indispensible role of the context for disambiguating polysemy. semantics began to attract the attention of indo-european linguists towards the end of the 19th century. the contextual method of linguistic research, with the meaning realized through what surrounds the word in actual speech is studied in the works of n.n. amosova. in her work “english contextology” she defines context as the minimal stretch of speech determining each individual meaning of the word in its immediate syntactical environment. some linguists don’t distinguish a speech situation (immediate extra-lingual circumstances under which the utterance takes place) from context. g.v. kolshansky discriminates between linguistic and extra-linguistic context, defining context as the whole set of conditions under which a linguistic unit is used (amosova 1968:106). armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 53 the two more or less universally recognized main types of linguistic contexts which serve to determine individual meanings of words are the lexical context and the grammatical context. these types are differentiated depending on whether the lexical or the grammatical aspect is predominant in determining the meaning. in lexical contexts of primary importance are the groups of lexical items combined with the polysemantic word. when we want to describe the individual meaning of a polysemantic word, we find it sufficient to use this word in combination with some members of a certain lexical group. there is a view that if we know all the possible collocations (or word-groups) into which a polysemantic word can enter, we know all its meanings. thus, the meanings of the adjective heavy, for instance, may be analyzed through its collocability with the words weight, safe, table, snow, wind, rain, industry, artillery. the meaning at the level of lexical contexts is sometimes described as a meaning by collocation (<mglukp.narod.ru/lexicology.doc:2>). it is common knowledge that it is the context that prevents from any misunderstanding of meanings. for instance, the adjective dull, if used out of context, would mean different things to different people or nothing at all. it is only in combination with other words that it reveals its actual meaning: a dull pupil, a dull plague, a dull weather, etc. sometimes, however, such a minimum context fails to reveal the meaning of the word and it may be correctly interpreted only through a second-degree context as in the following example: the man was large but his wife was even fatter. the word fatter here serves as a kind of indicator pointing that large describes a stout man and not a big one (<http://cityref.ru/prosmotr/19537-0.htm:5>). the semantic indicator is the element of the same syntactical unit which denotes the meaning. when indication comes from the lexical meaning of the indicator, it is a case of lexical context (amosova 1968:108). in the lexical context of the first degree there is a direct syntactical connection between the indicator and the dependent: he was arrested on a treason charge. in lexical context of the second degree there is no direct syntactical direction between the dependent and the indicator. for example in i move that mr. last addresses the meeting the dependent move is not directly connected to the indicating minimum addresses the meeting (arnold 1986:57). roughly, the context may be subdivided into lexical, syntactical and mixed. lexical meaning, for instance, determines the meaning of the word black. it denotes colour when used with the key-word naming some material or thing, e.g. black velvet, black gloves. when used with key-words denoting feeling or thought, it means sad, dismal, e.g. black thoughts, black despair. with nouns denoting time, the meaning is unhappy, full of hardships, e.g. black days, a black period (arnold 1986:56). the negative evaluative connotation of the adjective notorious is linked with the negative connotation of the nouns with which it is regularly associated: a notorious criminal, thief, gangster, gambler, gossip, liar, miser, etc. it is a common error to see a different meaning in every set of combinations. for instance, an angry man, an angry letter. is the adjective angry used in the same meaning in both these contexts or in two different meanings? some people will say “two” and argue that (man name of person; letter name of object) and, on the other hand, a letter cannot experience anger. true, it cannot; but it can very well convey the anger of the person who wrote it. as to the combiarmenian folia anglistika linguistics 54 nability, the main point is that a word can realize the same meaning in different sets of combinability (<mglukp.narod.ru/lexicology.doc:28>). “adjectives are notoriously hard to divide lexicographically into sense”, says r. moon (moon 1987:86-87). “they are often heavily context-dependent and flexible, taking on as many meanings as you like or leave space for.” the example she gives is light. this, she claims, has only “two main strands of meaning” (which nevertheless “interwine”): not heavy in weight and not intense or great in amount, degree, etc. but she goes on to list ten context groupings each requiring different wordings to explain their meaning: a light rain; a light blue shirt; the light breeze; a light sleep(er); her light voice; light lunch; a light white wine; light injuries; light housework and her light graceful step. thus, although she claims only two true “senses”, at least these ten usages would apparently need to be treated separately in a dictionary. dealing with verbal contexts we can consider linguistic factors: lexical groups of words, syntactic structure of the context and so on. there are cases, however, when the meaning of the word is ultimately determined not by these linguistic factors, but by the actual speech situation in which the word is used. the meanings of the noun ring in to give somebody a ring or of the verb get in i’ve got it are determined by actual speech situations. the noun ring in such a context may possess the meaning of a circlet of precious metal or a call on the telephone (<http://cityref.ru/prosmotr/19537-0.htm:6>). d.a. cruse argued that “the meaning of a word could be known by the company it keeps” (1986:72). a word’s meaning is defined by the pattern of its contextualized associations with other words. “a sense spectrum should be thought of as having at least potentially many dimensions, and as continuously growing, amoeba-like”. according to him “a single sense can be modified in an unlimited number of ways by different contexts, each context emphasizing certain semantic traits, and obscuring or suppressing others” (1986:52). considering cruise’s example of handle, we can note that taking a traditional approach to wsd, the relevant dictionary sense of handle in phrases like handle of door or handle of sword could be: a part of an object which is specially made for holding or opening it (1), and a part which is designed to be held or operated with the hand (2). however, the links between handle and words like sword and door produce very different sets of associations yielding a rich and detailed picture of the meaning of handle in each phrase. the links between handle/door, are much more varied, reflecting more about the functional role that door handles play. the overall weights for handle/sword are higher than those for handle/door. finally, the core aspect of the relevant senses of handle – namely, that handles are used for holding and opening – are strongly weighed only in the case of handle/door. in the case of handle/sword mind net reflects a strong bias in favour of interpreting this pair as referring to the physical aspect of a sword, rather than the manner of its use. the word handle has 22 senses in mind net, most of them unrelated (e.g. the total amount of money bet on an event or over a set period of time) to either doors or swords. yet the context provided by a two-word query – the crudest imaginable linguistic context – allowed us to focus on just salient portion of the enormous graph (cruse 1986:53-54). a search on the web for a single polysemous keyword like line yields a huge set of armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 55 hits reflecting every imaginable sense of this word. begin adding context in the form of other keywords, however – insisting, say, that telephone and wire occur near line – and the set of hits suddenly becomes cohesive. salton & buckley discuss this effect, showing how retrieval techniques that compare similarity vectors to find instance of words used in similar contexts effectively discriminate between word-senses (salton & buckley 1991:1012-1015). to illustrate the role of polysemy in context we will consider the sound complex light which is often used in speech of all functional styles and can appear to be a noun with different meanings, an adjective with a huge variety of meanings, or a polysemantic verb. in the examples below, which were taken from solely the story “the apple tree” by john galsworthy, the role of various types of context is observed without difficulty. watching his friend, lying there, with that smile, and the candle-light on his face, ashurst shuddered. (galsworthy:21) in this very example the word form light is a noun with the meaning the energy that makes us see things. as an ambiguous word the meaning of which can be understood through the context, it is the context dependant. the indicator is the structure the candle … on his face. the indicator revealing a noun is the definite article on the left, the absence of any other noun immediately following light (in this case it would prove to be an adjective). the lexical meaning is clarified by the unit of lexical context of the first degree and is variable – the indicator may be replaced with some other words with the same general meaning without affecting the semantic content of the dependant: light of a torch, light of the sun, light of a lamp. in a kind of intoxication he would watch the pint-white buds of some backward beech tree sprayed up in the sunlight against the deep blue sky. (galsworthy:9) all day ashurst rested his knee in a green painted wooden chair on the patch of grass by the yew-tree porch, where the sunlight distilled the scent of stocks and gillyflowers. (galsworthy:5) the songs of the cuckoos and the blackbirds, the laughter of the yaffles, the level-slanting sunlight, the apple blossom had crowned her head. (galsworthy:10) he lay there a long time, watching the sunlight wheel till the crab-trees threw shadows over the bluebells. (galsworthy:14) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 56 in the above mentioned examples we have illustrated the usage of the word sunlight in various lexical contexts. it is a monosemantic word, on the other hand sunlight is one of the meanings of the polysemantic word light possessing the meaning daylight, daybreak, the light of the sun. prank of the moonlight! nothing! (galsworthy:4) we have the meaning light from the sun received on the earth after reflection by the moon, illumination by the moon. there was no longer light in any window. (galsworthy:22) in this occurrence the word being considered is a noun with the meaning of the thing that produces light. the indicating minimum is the structure no longer … in any window. the context clarifies that it is not an abstract notion, it can be moved physically. the proper part of speech can be identified with the help of the verb. in actual speech the understanding of the meaning requires a chain of dependant-indicator pairs. the context is variable: a window of the hotel, high up, was lighted; he saw a shadow move across the blind. (galsworthy:22) he took a candle, lighted it, and went to his bedroom, which was next to hallidays. (galsworthy:21) in these examples to light is used in the meaning to illuminate or cause to illuminate. another example is the following: (1) on one side of the recessed fireplace sat two small boys, idle and good as gold; on the other sat a stout, light-eyed red-faced youth… (galsworthy:4) (2) this red, blue-eyed, light-lashed, ton-haired face stuck as firmly in his memory as the girl’s own face, so dewy and simple. (galsworthy:5) in the first example light is an adjective indicating the colour of the eyes. the indicating complex is -eyed and -faced. the lexical meaning is clarified through the presence armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 57 of the word eye or elements of the parts of the face and the description of an appearance. consequently, the context can be considered variable. in example 2 light indicates brightness in colour. the stars were bright in a very dark blue sky, and by their light some lilacs had that mysterious colour of flowers by night no one can describe. (galsworthy:22) in this example there is a noun with the meaning the natural medium, natural radiation, that makes sight possible. the proper part of speech is recognized due to the presence of the nouns stars, sky, night. […] and began pacing up and down over the grass, a grey phantom coming to substance for a moment in the light of the lamp at either end. (galsworthy:22) first of all, in this example the lexical homonymy should be eliminated: in the light of does not possess the meaning taking into account. the lexical meaning of the object (here an oil lamp in a container of metal and glass with a handle) assists us to state the meaning of the noun is anything that illuminates, such as a lamp or a candle. and from staring at the framed brightening light ashurst fell asleep. (galsworthy:5) here the indicating minimums are the participles framed and brightening. so, light indicates the meaning anything that lets in light, such as a window. and away over there was the loom of the moor, and away and away the sky stars had not as yet full light, pricking white through the deep blue heavens. (galsworthy:5) in this example light indicates the meaning the outcome of the action of giving light to something, the process of being guided with the light or brightness of countenance. thus, a word changes its meaning under various speech conditions, hence, it is imperative to use contextual indicators in the speech continuum to take away the ambiguity. without minding the context, people would not understand each other, and the natural function of language – to carry out meaning – would not be fulfilled. each context is seen to generate potentially indefinite range of meanings. the idea of context not as communicating or expressing pre-existing meaning but as positioning subjects changes the whole basis of creating meaning. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 58 references: 1. amosova, n.n. (1968) english contextology. leningrad: lolgu. 2. arnold, i.v. (1986) lexicology of the modern english language. m.: vyshaya shkola. 3. cruse, d.a. (1986) lexical semantics. cambridge: cup. 4. cuyckens, h.; zawada, b. (2001) polysemy in cognitive linguistics. selected papers from the fifth international cognitive linguistics conference, 1997. amsterdam, philadelphia: john benjamin’s. 5. moon, r. (1987) the analysis of meaning. chicago: university of chicago press. 6. nerlich, n. (1992) semantic theories in europe 1830-1930. from etymology to contextuality. amsterdan, philadelphia: john benjamin’s. 7. salton & buckley (1991) global text matching for information retrieval. pp. 10121015. 8. taylor, j.r. (1989) linguistic categorization prototypes in linguistic theory. oxford, new york: oup. 9. <mglukp.narod.ru/lexicology.doc> 10. <http://cityref.ru/prosmotr/19537-0.htm> source of data: galsworthy, j. the apple tree. <http://www.online-literature.com/john-galsworthy/five-tales/3/> ´³½ùçù³ëïáõãûáõýá ñ³ù³ï»ùëïáõù ðá¹í³íý áõëáõùý³ëçñáõù ¿ μ³½ùçù³ëïáõãû³ý ñ³ù³ï»ùëï³ûçý ¹ñë¨áñáõùý»ñá, ñ³ù³ï»ùëïç ³½¹» óáõãûáõýá μ³éçù³ëïç ó¨³ íáñù³ý ¨ áýï³éù³ý íñ³: ¸çï³ñïíáõù ¿ ³ý·é»ñ»ýç light μ³ éá æáý ¶áéëáõáñëçç “the apple tree” å³ïùí³íùáõù óáõûó ï³éáõ ñ³ù³ñ, ã» çù³ëï³ûçý çýã »ñ³ý·ý»ñ ï³ñáõ ¿ ³ûý ëï³ý³é ·ñ³ï³ý ëï»õí³·áñíáõãû³ý ñ³ù³ï»ùëïáõù: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 59 maket 2011-2:layout 1.qxd taboos: universalities and differences kristine harutyunyan yerevan state university the word taboo was borrowed by captain cook in 1769 from the polynesian lan-guage spoken on the hawaiian islands. the very fact that europeans use such an exotic word to denote a phenomenon which is common in our own culture is symptomatic of the universality of the phenomenon of taboo in the language system. according to psychological motivation taboos fall under three categories. the first of these categories is fear, which has served as a motivation for creating different taboos on pronouncing the names of certain supernatural beings aloud. these include the name of god, the devil, as well as names of animals ranging from ants, bees and worms to bears, tigers and lions, even butterflies and squirrels. people also try to avoid direct reference to topics they find unpleasant. thus, the second category is delicacy a wish not to mention unpleasant and shameful events. here topics such as death, disease, physical and mental defects, criminal actions are included. the third category is a sense of decency and propriety, where words referring to sex, swear-words and names of certain parts and functions of body are included. while all the above mentioned three types of taboo words are of wide currency, none of them is an unrestricted universal, since they are governed by social and cultural factors, and arise only in certain environments. taboos are part and parcel of different languages and probably represent the layer of language, which is one of the expressions of culture of the given society. there exist various definitions of taboos and taboo words. oxford dictionary gives the following definition for the word taboo: “taboo is a cultural or religious custom that forbids people to do, touch, use or talk about certain thing”. taboo words are the words that are often considered offensive, shocking or rude, e.g. because they refer to sex, the body or race” (oxford dictionary 2000). one of the most popular groups of taboos is represented by words denoting swearing and cursing. english has a fairly elaborate system of swearing. when we talk about swearwords, we must also include fixed expressions such as go to hell, as well as single words such as shit. the reason we can say that go to hell is a fixed expression is that it is impossible to replace go with another verb of motion, such as walk, run or jump (andersson, trudgill 1994:58-59). proper names can also become taboos. in many primitive societies it is rather common for a person to have two names. this phenomenon can be observed in armenian society as well. very often parents use different names to call their children, or sometimes just call them §³å»ñ¦ (brother) or §ùáõûñçï¦ (sister). people believe that by pronouncing their names aloud they may fall under the influence of others (crystal 1997). certain taboos lose their sting over periods of time. in modern western countries most people are more comfortable now than before when they discuss social issues such as alcoholism, depression, divorce, etc. we can say that the first type of taboos is bound to armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 117 become rarer with the progress of civilization, though presumably it will not disappear altogether. medical diseases and disorders such as cancer, aids and suicide aren’t any longer considered to be heavy taboos. on the other hand, the second and, especially, the third type, will be encouraged with the development of higher moral standards and more refined ways of social behavior. societal taboos represent the polarizing issues of sex, death, racism, genderism, ethnicity, nationality, religion, politics, money, socio-economic class, sexual orientation and disability. thus, words may become taboos if they are considered to display bad taste by some people, or should be avoided because they refer to stark or vulgar realities. the existence of taboos throughout the history of mankind has created the need to find words and expressions that enable people to talk about the subjects concerned without feeling uncomfortable, or being afraid of hurting another person’s feelings. such words and expressions are referred to as “euphemisms”. euphemisms can be portrayed in two different ways, either positively or negatively. euphemisms can also be presented in unconscious or conscious positions. positive euphemisms are typically used to inflate and make certain topics more inviting than they really are. an example of this type of euphemism is the word cemetery, which is very common in the english language, but the true motivation of the given euphemism is the word sleeping place. negative euphemisms are also used in english to the negative impacts in the society. an example of this type of euphemism is to try and turn one’s trade into profession, such as the hookers or whores who walk the street are commonly referred to as working girls, which is more appropriate to use when talking about these people’s job. these euphemisms have been used for such a long time in the language that people are probably completely unaware of their indirect nature. today the use of taboos is governed by context and medium. they are most strictly observed in the press, the printed word and broadcasting, but less so in oral usage, especially in male-to-male talk. gender, together with culture differences in using taboo words, has been a major topic of interest in language study. thus, the use of vulgar language is often less associated with women. as noted by lakoff, a number of studies show that men are more likely, than women, to use obscene expressions. in most societies that frown at the use of taboo language by women, it is generally held that men use taboo words more than the women. in such societies, women therefore tend to use what are described as “polished” and “more refined” words than men (lakoff 1980). the question of context of language use may also include the person with whom the speaker is interacting. the data presented by anderson and trudgill show that most students claim they never use taboo words. although the differences are not statistically significant, the data show that it is the female students, than male, who claim not to use taboo words. when the self-reports were analyzed in terms of the person of interlocution, it was observed that more male young adults than the female ones, had claimed to use the words among their friends, while more female informants, than the male, had claimed to use those same words in the presence of just anybody. it is not apparent why more female students would claim to use the words in any context than their male counterparts. there is, however, no statistically significant association between these selfarmenian folia anglistika culture studies 118 reports on context of use of taboo words and the gender of the speaker (andersson, trudgill 1994). it is also stated that taboo words produce physical effects on people who read or hear them. these effects are elevated heart rate, elevated skin conductivity, shallower breathing. it is obvious that the usage of taboos is dependent on the culture of the society where they are used. the use of language in cultural accumulation and historical transmission is obvious and important. this applies not only to sophisticated levels but to primitive ones as well. a great deal of the cultural stock in trade of a primitive society is presented in a more or less well defined linguistic form. proverbs, medicine formulae, standardized prayers, folk tales, standardized speeches, song texts, and genealogies are some of the more overt forms which language takes as culture-preserving instrument (sapir 1961). at present the category that most conforms to genuine taboo, especially in the united states, is that of race. generally, taboo words are rich in fricatives and stops that create a harsh and emotive sound. people use these words to express pain, anger, frustration, annoyance, to insult someone, to invoke supernatural assistance in harming someone or adding emphasis to statements whether negative or positive in content. two experiments concerning the use of taboo words have been performed with english-speaking and armenian-speaking participants. in the first experiment the informants (10 armenian-speaking females and 10 armenian-speaking males; and 10 english-speaking females and 10 english-speaking males) have been asked to write the words which they will not pronounce in public. the list of the words written by the informants included words referring to sex, swear words, parts of body, certain diseases, death. the results have proved that there exist differences in the answers of the informants depending not only on their nationality but also on their gender. all armenianspeaking female informants regarded the words referring to sex and swear-words as taboos, meanwhile only 5 of armenian-speaking male informants regarded sex and 7 of them – swear-words as taboos. on the other hand, only 4 english-speaking female and 2 male informants considered sex and swear-words to be taboos. during the second experiment a photo of a black man was shown to the informants and they were asked to name the person they saw on that photo. none of the englishspeaking informants mentioned the word “nigger”, while the majority of the armenianspeaking informants used the word §ý»·ñ¦ (13 inf.). this fact comes to prove that the word “nigger” is mostly banned in american public discourse, whereas it is quite acceptable for armenians to use this word along with the words §ë¨³ùáñã¦, §ë¨³ï³ý¦, §ë¨¦: as it has already been mentioned, no taboo is known to be absolute universal, but some of them occur in many cultures known to us. in contemporary western societies taboos are closely entwined with the concepts of politeness and face, that is a person’s self-image. the growth and decay of different forms of taboos should be studied systematically in various languages to reveal the social and cultural developments in the societies in which this or that language operates. armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 119 references: 1. andersson, l. & trudgill, p. (1994) bad language. london: penguin. 2. crystal, d. (1997) cambridge encyclopedia of language. cambridge university press. 3. lakoff, g. (1980) metaphors we live by. university of chicago press. 4. oxford english dictionary (2000) oxford university press. 5. sapir, e. (1961) culture, language and personality. university of california press. â³μáõý»ñ. áý¹ñ³ýñáõãûáõýý»ñ áõ ï³ñμ»ñáõãûáõýý»ñ ¶áûáõãûáõý áõý»ý³éáí ·ñ»ã» μáéáñ 黽áõý»ñáõù` ã³μáõý»ñá ý»ñï³û³óýáõù »ý ³ûý 黽í³ï³ý ß»ñïá, áñý ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõù ¿ ³ûë ï³ù ³ûý ñ³ë³ñ³ïáõãû³ý ùß³ïáõûãá: ²ûëûñ ã³μáõý»ñç ·áñí³íáõùá å³ûù³ý³íáñí³í ¿ ³ûý ñ³ù³ï»ùëïáí, áñáõù í»ñççýý»ñë û·ï³·áñííáõù »ý: êáõûý ñá¹í³íç ßñç³ý³ïý»ñáõù ÷áñó ¿ ³ñíáõù ùýý»é ã³μáõý»ñç û·ï³·áñíáõùá ñ³û»ñ»ýç ¨ ³ý·é»ñ»ýç 黽í³ïçñý»ñç ùáï: î³ï³ñí³í ·çï³÷áñóç ³ñ¹ûáõýùý»ñá ¨ë ù»ï ³ý·³ù ³å³óáõó»óçý, áñ ã³μáõý»ñç û·ï³·áñíáõùá ï³ëí³í ¿ ³ûý ùß³ïáõûãçó, áñáõù ³åñáõù ¿ ³ýñ³ïá: â³μáõý»ñç ³é³ç³óáõùý áõ ³ýñ»ï³óáõùá ñ³ñï ¿ áõëáõùý³ëçñ»é ï³ñμ»ñ 黽áõý»ñáõù` í»ñ ñ³ý»éáõ ñ³ë³ñ³ï³ï³ý ¨ ùß³ïáõã³ûçý ½³ñ·³ óáõùý»ñá ³ûý ñ³ë³ñ³ïáõãûáõýý»ñáõù, áñáýóáõù û·ï³·áñííáõù ¿ ³ûë ï³ù ³ûý 黽áõý: armenian folia anglistika culture studies 120 microsoft word maket 2020-2(22) (3)-1 (1).doc armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 linguistics 6 contents linguistics marine yaghubyan linguistic deviation in business advertisements ................................................... 9 karine kochunts emotions, thoughts, words .................................................................................. 20 zara hayrapetyan jeremy corbyn’s manipulative tactics in his manifesto launch speech ........... 30 gevorg barseghyan semantic groups of vocabulary in sports reports ............................................... 47 methodology ani kojoyan, inna aghakhanyan gender in education settings: case study of english. primary school textbooks in armenia. ............................................................... 58 translation studies seda gasparyan the historical background of the king james bible ............................................ 74 tomáš jadlovský translation of non-equivalent idioms (using english and russian examples) ................................................................... 90 culture studies gabriella macciocca the history of the language and the history of the nation ............................. 106 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 7 literature studies vicky tchaparian hypocricy of the rich vs honesty of the poor in the english society of the 18th century .......................................................... 119 armenological studies gaiane muradian falsification of historical figures (the armenian population in turkey before and after the genocide) ............. 131 shushanik paronyan the use of manipulative tactics in hate speech ............................................... 143 book reviews john a stotesbury the armenian genocide: a review of eve makis’s novel, the spice box letters (dingwall, scotland: sandstone press, 2015, 260 pp., isbn 978-1-910124-06-6) .................................................................................... 162 maket 2013:layout 1.qxd the concept “modesty” in the context of british, american and armenian cultural identity gayane yeghiazaryan yerevan state linguistic university “be modest! it is the kind of pride least likely to offend.” (jules renard, 1864-1910) t he question of how we know ourselves and others is of fundamental interest for successful cross-cultural communication. we suggest that identity theory may assist in this regard, and we focus on the analysis of cultural identity, restricting our attention to a particular aspect – the concept of modesty, emphasizing its role in creating a sense of self and self-worth. the contrastive analysis of the concept modesty in english and armenian demonstrates the subtle but crucial differences in the ways socio-cultural relations shape cultural identities. linguo-cultural identity as applied to concept description is a comparatively new and a very interesting topic. it is established as the methodological basis for the description of the common cultural knowledge of a speech community, which serves as the basis for the formation of stereotypical perceptions, including linguo-cultural stereotypes. the term cultural identity, after a comprehensive review of philosophical and psychological literature, was defined as “an individual’s realization of his or her place in the spectrum of cultures and purposeful behavior directed on his or her enrollment and acceptance into a particular group, as well as certain characteristic features of a particular group that automatically assign an individual’s group membership” (sysoyev 2001b:37-38). thus, the concept of cultural identity can be employed as a reference to the collective self-awareness that a given group embodies and reflects. used in its collective sense, the concept of cultural identity includes typologies of cultural behavior, incorporates the shared premises, values, definitions, and beliefs and the day-to-day, largely unconscious, patterning of activities. cultural identity is a very influential factor in behaviour and attitudes, in what one can or cannot do, or even in what one can or cannot imagine doing. all cultures seek for moral and ethical values and ways to preserve these values. how an individual raises these questions and searches for ultimate answers is a function of the psycho-philosophical patterning of cultural identity (adler 1976:362-378). the “links” between the cultural values and cultural identity are reciprocal. on the one hand, cultural values make explicit the nation’s hidden constructs through its attitudes towards the concepts of fate and destiny, power and hierarchy, modesty, and other facets. on the other hand, these values shape and determine this or that cultural identity and dictate the rules and behavior codes for the very nation. in fact, cultural values structure our mental frames, determine our patterns of thinking and can affect social interactions which in their turn are deeply embedded in language. language expresses the patterns and structures of culture, and consearmenian folia anglistika culture studies 134 quently influences human thinking, thus determining cultural identity, which is expressed by different concepts. linguo-cultural concepts can be objectively identified and described through the analysis of dictionary definitions, value-labeled universal statements and the individual content of concepts considering their etymology. one of the social and ethical regulators is the concept of modesty, which is a conscious desire and ability of man not to put himself/herself in the spotlight, while maintaining selfesteem. the ethical concept modesty in british, american 1 and armenian linguo-cultures, along with many similarities, manifests some differences peculiar to these very cultures, thus determining and shaping different cultural identities. the relevance of the study is due to the fact that the concept of modesty reflects the important features of the relationship of man to reality, and thus, the understanding of its specificities will ease cross-cultural communication. the following hypothesis is put forward: 1) the concept of modesty is an ethical value, the contents of which can be represented in the form of certain norms of behaviour and can define a dominant behaviour and speech norms in the compared linguocultures, 2) this concept is characterized by specific conceptual, and value attributes in british, american and armenian linguo-cultures. modesty has been used as a communication pattern, a sociological concept related to self-presentation and self-esteem, and a religious virtue. attention to the concept is far more prevalent in references from the early part of 19th century, and concepts of modesty are determined by cultural as well as historical factors. etymologically linked to the latin modestus, “keeping within measure”, this term originally signified moderation, as in cicero’s “golden mean of living”. gradually, modesty took on the gendered connotation of a sexual virtue particularly important for women.2 since the 1530s it has acquired the meaning of “having self-control, freedom from exaggeration”. since the 1550s the meaning of “having a moderate opinion of oneself” came into use, and since the 1560s the meaning of “womanly propriety” was added (laver 1969). in armenian it has the following origin: ð³ù»ëï ¼ý¹. hamoistri §·» ïçý ½³ñïáõ¦, ñýë. med ³ñù³ïçó, ñùùï. éï. modestus ñáù³ýçßá: åñé. hamestagan §ù³í³ñ³ý ·ý³óáõ ñá·çý»ñá¦:3 the english psychology dictionary defines modesty (also called demureness or reticence) as “the name for a number of norms of behaviour a society expects form the individual people that make up this society”. according to the american heritage dictionary, modesty consists in observing the conventional proprieties in speech, dress, and behaviour. the armenian psychological dictionary defines modesty as a trait of character which presupposes that a person does not boast of his/her achievements, does not overestimate his/her capabilities, and respects others. modesty, then, denotes a moderate self-view seeing oneself as intermediate, rather than as very positive or very negative, on key personal attributes such as personality traits, abilities and skills, physical appearance, and social behaviour. a moderate self-view may be entertained privately or expressed publicly. probably the apprehension of modesty is given substantially the same form by experience irrespective of culture. yet, there are subtle, but, crucial differences in english and armenian concerning the definition of the armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 135 word modesty. it must be emphasized that some underlying abstractions are different and more justified pragmatically and experientially and they will vary somewhat within these linguo-cultures, because they are closely linked with the cultural identifications. roget’s thesaurus defines modesty as: 1. lack of vanity or self importance: humbleness, humility, lowliness, meekness. 2. reserve in speech, behavior, or dress: demureness, diffidence, reticement, self-effacement. 3. the condition of being chaste: chasity, decency, innocence, purity, virginity, virtue, virtuousness. 4. lack of ostentation or pretension: plainness, simpleness, simplicity, unassumingness, unpretentiousness. in armenian dictionaries the following meanings of modesty are stated: ð³ù»ëïáõ ãûáõý 1. ð³ù»ëï éçý»éá, ñ³ù»ëïç ñ³ïïáõãûáõýá` å³ñï»ßïáõãûáõý, ³é³ùçýáõ ãûáõý, ³½ýíáõãûáõý, μ³ñáû³ï³ýáõãûáõý, å³ïí³íáñáõãûáõý, 2. ð³ù»ëï íç׳ï, ëáý³ññ, ñ»½³ μ³ ñá, μ³ ñ»ëçõ×, 3. ¼·³ëïáõãûáõý ³ùáãë³íáõãûáõý, 4. å³ñ½áõãûáõý, ã³÷³ íáñáõãûáõý, μ³ ñ»ë³éýáõãûáõý: though the english synonyms and related words for modesty (reserve, timidity, shyness, coyness, restraint, diffidence, bashfulness, virginity, constraint, backwardness, innocence, demureness, down-to-earthiness, humbleness, lowliness, meekness, humility, unpretentiousness, low-profile, self-deprecation, virtue, goodness, purity, decency, respectability, integrity, propriety, honour, shame, embarrassment, guilt, inhibition, chagrin, discomfort, cringe, ignominy, mortification, etc.) supersede their armenian counterparts (å³ñï»ßïáõãûáõý, ³é³ùçýáõãûáõý, ³½ýíáõãûáõý, μ³ñáû³ï³ýáõãûáõý, å³ïí³íáñáõãûáõý, ã³÷³ íáñáõãûáõý, å³ñ½áõãûáõý, í³û»éãáõãûáõý, å³ïß³×áõãûáõý, åáõåï³éáõãûáõý, ½·³ëïáõãûáõý, ³ýå³ñíáõãûáõý, ³ùáãë³íáõãûáõý, ëáý³ññáõãûáõý, ñ»½áõãûáõý, å³ïï³é³ýù, ³ý·áéá½áõãûáõý, etc.), this does not mean that the concept is of less importance for armenians. the british and americans associate modesty with external human behaviour, and modesty is mainly associated with moderation in clothes and behaviour highlighted as a typical feature of the concept of women’s lack of desire to feel sexually attractive. the perception of modesty is more leisurely and it can be subordinated to factors that are more important for a person from a western background. the individualism and self-reliance ethic characteristic to british and american cultural identity are reflected in the definitions and perception of the concept modesty. in british english modesty is mainly defined as “the quality of not talking about or not trying to make people notice your abilities and achievements”, in american english it is the quality of “correct or socially acceptable behaviour and clothes”. what is called western culture expects that intimate body parts are covered in public places at all times. thus british and american cultural identity suggests that modesty should include: “avoiding attracting attention, by behaving the same way as everybody else, or as society expects; using clothing that generally follows the same norm, avoiding boasting with one’s own accomplishments”. in american english modesty is mainly opposed to wearing gorgeous clothes and too few clothes, and aims at prevention of desire, disgust, shame, or disapproval (laver 1969:79-114). modesty is a feeling or a behavior that is motivated by shame, in that it essentially bears upon the sexualized body… (rubinstein 1995). for the british and americans modesty does exist mainly as a social phenomenon: definitions of modesty that refer to perceptible propriety in dress, conduct, and behavior consistently come first. they armenian folia anglistika culture studies 136 associate modesty with closed clothing and etiquette, and see modesty as a regulative ideal behavior, and this quality is certainly positive, but in reality hinders the achievement of success and prosperity as western culture exhorts people to cultivate ever higher self-esteem. american world view is based on principles of independence, on social attitudes to selfserving, catchy self-assessment and self-evaluation. action, efficacy, persistence and achievement are emphasized and expected: “just do it”, “if there is a will there is a way”, etc. most asian nations that traditionally place a higher value on interpersonal relations see modesty and its significance diametrically opposed. in armenia modesty is venerated and displays a variation in “value” conceptualization. it is centrally defined by “intrapsychic attributes” (bond, kwan & li 2000), that is, a person’s virtue, humbleness, purity, timidity are of utmost importance. a modest person does not take credit, is humble, meek, free from conceit, lowly, thoughtful, not big-headed, plain/not flashy, unpretentious. armenian modesty, bordering with timidity, suggests that modesty is more necessary for women than for men. a vast number of related words to modesty show humbleness, honesty, and/or bashfulness, and not moderation. armenian “modesty” is “fixed” in the heart, the soul of the individual, so it finds expression in the appearance both in verbal and non-verbal behavior (the image characteristics of silence, quiet voice, lowered eyes). armenians say: §ð³ù»ëïáõãûáõýá ½³ñ¹³ñáõù ¿ ù³ñ¹áõý¦, §·³é³ý å»ë ñ»½¦ (as gentle as a lamb), §ñ³é³é ï³ãý³ï»ñ¦ (virtuous), etc., and even have a female name §ð³ù»ëï, ð³ù»ëïáõñç¦, to emphasize the significance of this virtue. the english language doesn’t possess proverbs in which modesty is “respected” so much. in armenian it displays significant capabilities of word-formation: ñ³ù»ëï, ñ³ù»ëï³μ³ý, ñ³ù»ëï³μ³ ýáõãûáõý, ñ³ù»ëï³μ³ñ, ñ³ù»ëï³μ³ ñá, ñ³ù»ëï³·çý, ñ³ù»ëï³¹»ù, ñ³ù»ëï³ïû³ó, ñ³ù»ëï³ó³ûý, ñ³ù»ëï³ý³é, ñ³ù»ëï³ýáõý, ñ³ù»ëï³ßáõù, ñ³ù»ëï³óý»é, ñ³ù»ëï³óáõù, ñ³ù»ëï³÷³ûé, ñ³ù»ëïáñ»ý, ñ³ù»ëïáõãûáõý, ñ³ù»ëïáõñç, ñ³ù»ëïáõý³ï. the british national corpus (byu-bnc), the corpus of contemporary american english (coca), and eastern armenian national corpus (eanc) provide exact statistics of the usage of the word modesty in various periods and genres of the english and armenian languages the statistics is shown in the tables below and is evident how the word modesty/ñ³ù»ëïáõãûáõý has increased or decreased in frequency. modestybyu-bnc (british national corpus (1980-1993) modesty coca (corpus of contemporary american english) (1990-2012) armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 137 ð³ù»ëïáõãûáõý ²ñ¨³ï /eanc/ (1900-2009) when comparing the data of the 20th century, we can see that the word modesty was most frequent in british english: 274 usages from one million tokens (though the data are only for 13 years’ period), the coca gives only 63 tokens per one million usages and 87 tokens in eanc. in the 21st century the frequency of usage of the word modesty decreased both in eanc (85) and in coca (44). it could be concluded that modesty is not appreciated so much as it used to, and other values predominate in the linguo-cultures under study. in sum, the comparative study of the concept modesty makes explicit differences and dissimilarities between different nations’ approaches to ethical values, rooted in the histories, beliefs, norms and values of the nations. thus, for armenians modesty is a virtue and dignity, for the british it correlates with moderation, and for americans as a typical feature of this concept stands out women’s lack of sexual desire to appear attractive and to draw attention, therefore the concept modesty mainly includes external components: demeanor, dress, speech, according to generally accepted standards of etiquette. understanding of the concept modesty in the british, american and armenian consciousness is in polar opposites due to the imperatives of the individualistic culture of the british and americans and collectivist culture among armenians (hofstede 1997). the systems of values, moral and ethical standards and regulators of life that exist in britain, america and armenia, introduce and fix certain patterns and behaviours, and shape identities. and when understanding cultural identity as a multi-faceted construct, it is important to note that in communication the choice of portraying a specific facet of one’s identity will be context specific and negotiated between the participants of the exchange. notes: 1. enlightenment theorists maintained such physical rationale and added a political resonance to the modest woman. according to jean-jacques rousseau, modesty was a necessary virtue in women because of their physical and sexual weaknesses. standards of public honour, like fashions of dress, have changed dramatically over time. standards of female modesty have undergone countless redefinitions over the years, in response to cultural, political, and economic factors (laver 1969). 2. the stems of §ñ³ù»ëï¦ are §ñ³ù¦ and §»ë¦ and this means: “both others and i” that is, not separating oneself from others. 3. while speaking about american linguo-culture, we take it as one entity considering the definitions of the word modesty in dictionaries, though we admit that us is a “melting pot”‘ and a mix of different ethnic and cultural values and beliefs. armenian folia anglistika culture studies 138 references: 1. adler, p. (2002) beyond cultural identity: reflections on multiculturalism. / ed. by r. brislin. culture learning, east-west center press. 2. bond, m. h.; kwan, v. s. y.; & li, c. (2000) decomposing a sense of superiority: the differential social impact of self-regard and regard for others. // journal of research in personality, 34. 3. bray, z. (2004) living boundaries: identity and frontiers in the basque country. brussels: pie peter lang. 4. hofstede, g.h. (1997) cultures and organizations: software of the mind. the netherlands: university of limburg at maastricht. 5. laver, j. (1969) modesty in dress. boston: houghton mifflin. 6. rubinstein, r.p. (1995) dress codes: meanings and messages in american culture. boulder: westview press. 7. sysoyev, p. v. (2001b) language and culture: looking for a new dimension in teaching l2 culture. // foreign languages at school, journal, 4. 8. acharyan, h. (1926) hayeren armatakan bararan. yerevan: yerevani petakan hamalsarani hratakchutyun. 9. (1976) ardi hayereni bacatrakan bararan. vol. 1. yerevan: hayastan. 10. (2011) cambridge academic content dictionary. cambridge: cambridge university press. 11. (1967) hayots lezvi homanishneri bararan. yerevan: nas, gitutyun. 12. (1974) zhamanakakits hayots lezvi bacatrakan bararan. yerevan: nas, gitutyun. vol. 3. 13. <http://www.mediate.com/articles/adler3.cfm#bio> 14. <http://www.harmonia.am/articlesհոգեբանական բառարան22.html#.uanzflwmgii> 15. <http://www.answers.com/topic/modesty#ixzz2uvdopsmg> 16. gale dictionary of psychoanalysis: < http://www.answers.com/topic/modesty#ixzz2uvyz6fw> 17. <http://www.macmillandictionary.com/thesaurus-category/british> 18. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/modesty> §ð³ù»ëïáõãûáõý¦ ñ³ëï³óáõûãá μñçï³ý³ï³ý, ³ù»ñçïû³ý ¨ ñ³û çýùýáõãû³ý ñ³ù³ï»ùëïáõù êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù í»ñéáõííáõù ¿ §ñ³ù»ëïáõãûáõý¦ ñ³ëï³óáõûã᪠μñçï³ý³ï³ý, ³ù»ñçïû³ý ¨ ñ³û ùß³ïáõã³ûçý çýùýáõãû³ý ñ³ù³ï»ùëïáõù: èçý»éáí ñ³ùáý¹ñ³ýáõñ ³ñå»ù³ûçý ïáõùýáñáßçãý»ñçó ù»ïá »ñ»ù 黽í³ùß³ïáõûãý»ñáõù, §ñ³ù»ëïáõãûáõý¦ ñ³ëï³óáõûãá, ³û¹áõñ³ý¹»ñó, ý»ñï³û³ýáõù ¿ ï³ñμ»ñ ¹ñë¨áñáõùý»ñáí: ðá¹í³íáõù ý»ñï³û³óíáõù »ý §ñ³ù»ëïáõãûáõý¦ ñ³ëï³óáõûãç ³ñå»ù³ûçý áýï³éù³ý ýù³ýáõãûáõýý»ñý áõ ï³ñμ» ñáõãûáõýý»ñá »ñ»ù 黽í³ùß³ïáõûãý»ñáõù: armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 139 maket 2012 1-2:layout 1.qxd on foreigner talk ruzanna arakelyan yerevan state university c ommunication is a vital part of human existence. it is generally accepted that thebest way to preserve or create a free society which guarantees its members’ rights and privileges is to learn to communicate effectively both in public and in private. admittedly communication is a buzzword for our time. still, communicative skill is not something we are born with. there are a lot of people who fail to communicate their needs, opinions and ideas to others even in their native language. but it is never late to learn: effective communication, either in mother tongue or in a foreign language, is a skill, which can be acquired. studies have shown that native speakers modify their speech when addressing nonnative speakers. however, such modifications do not always occur. native speakers can vary the extent of their modifications within a single conversation, reflecting their changing perception of what the non-native speakers will vary in their ability to engage in foreigner talk (ft) depending on their communicative style or skills and their prior experience of communicating with non-native speakers. ft appears to exist in most cultures. it is of special interest to psycholinguists because it is relatively consistent across individual speakers of a given language. being an issue closely connected with the problems of foreign language acquisition, it very often brings to misunderstanding between native and non-native speakers. on the other hand, it proves the existence of the so-called interlanguage (approximate system, transitional competence, idiosyncratic dialect) which enables people to communicate with each other more or less sufficiently. linguists even make jokes about ft by asking: “what is two tea to two two?” and the answer is: “it is a chinese asking for two tea to room number twenty-two”. interlanguage, in reality, is an expression of the psychical processes involved in foreign language learning. interlanguage is even thought to be a relatively independent system which results from a vague understanding of what the language one uses is. this brings to simplification, overgeneralization and transfer. in other words, here we deal with an individual set of rules and restrictions on how to use this or that language. a detailed study of ft necessitates a consideration of a number of issues: • the extent to which it occurs in native speaker/non-native speaker interactions. • grammatical input modifications. • ungrammatical input modifications. • interactional modifications. • the discourse structure of ft. • the functions served by it. overall, three functions of ft can be identified: it promotes communication, it signals, implicitly or explicitly speaker’s attitude towards their interlocutors and, finally, it teaches the target language implicitly. in languages where native speakers employ a armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 109 copula in equational clauses in normal communication, they often omit it in talk directed at foreigners. ferguson (1975) suggests that this is because the absence of copula is considered simpler than its presence. the omission of copula is a clear example of ungrammatical ft. ungrammaticality is evident in three ways: 1. omission of grammatical functors such as copula, articles, conjunctions, subject pronouns, and inflectional morphology. 2. expansion, as when you is inserted before an imperative verb (eg., you give me money.). 3. replacement/rearrangement, as when post-verbal negation is replaced by preverbal negation in english ft (eg., no want play.). frequently utterances manifest all the three types. as ferguson noted many of the features found in ft are also evident in pidgins. it should be mentioned that there are striking similarities between ungrammatical ft and learner language. this should not be taken as evidence in favour of the matching hypothesis which claims that the source of learners’ errors is ungrammatical ft, for, as both long and meisel (1988) noted, it may be useful to introduce ungrammatical forms of the kind they observe in learner language into their speech as part of the process of accommodating to their addressee. a number of factors appear to induce ungrammatical ft. long suggested the following four factors to be included in the list: 1. the learner’s level of proficiency in l2 ungrammatical ft is more likely when the learner’s proficiency is low. 2. the status of the native speaker ungrammatical ft is more likely when the native speaker is or thinks he or she is of higher status. 3. the native speaker has prior experience of using ft but only of the limited kind used to address non-native speakers of low proficiency. 4. the extent to which the conversation is spontaneous. however, ungrammatical ft can occur both with interlocutors who are familiar and with strangers, suggesting that factors other than those mentioned are at work. scholars are inclined to think that it is not yet possible to identify the exact conditions that will result in ungrammatical ft, perhaps because native speakers vary both culturally and individually in the kind of ft they prefer to use. one thing is clear: ungrammatical ft is highly marked. in many situations it does not occur, suggesting that it constitutes a particular discourse type. arthur et. al. (1980) recorded sixty telephone conversations between adult non-native speakers of english and airline ticket agents and reported no instance of ungrammatical input modifications. studies of teachet talk (hakansson 1986) also, not surprisingly, report absence of ungrammatical modifications, although other studies (hatch, shapira and wagnergough 1978) did find instances in the language that teachers use to organize and manage classroom activities. grammatical modifications are the norm in most classrooms and, not surprisingly, in the modified texts of the kind found in graded readers. grammatical ft is characterized by modifications reflecting both simplification and elaboration. but how do native armenian folia anglistika culture studies 110 speakers manage to adjust the level of their ft to suit the level of non-native speakers of the language? most adjustments are geared to simplifying utterances to make them easier to process or to clarify what has been said by either the native speaker or the nonnative speaker (hatch 1998). the author characterized the second function in terms of the special kind of affective bond that ft can create between the native speaker and nonnative speaker. in fact ft can reflect either downward divergence, such as when a native speaker deliberately employs ungrammatical forms with a competent non-native speaker to signal lack of respect. or downward convergence such as when a native speaker approximates the inter-language forms used by non-native speakers as a way of signalling solidarity. this double function of ft may help to explain why ungrammatical ft can occur between non-familiar interlocutors in service or workplace encounters and between familiar interlocutors in ordinary conversation. the third function is only implicit because native speakers do not usually have any pedagogic intent, although naro in a response to hatch argued that ft can occur with an explicit teaching function (with the intention of helping a learner to learn). when teaching the target language implicitly, ft is only implicit because native speakers do not usually have any pedagogic intent, although it can be argued that ft can occur with an explicit teaching function, for example, with the intention of helping a learner learn. in english, ft is characterized phonologically by slower speech rate, greater pausing, greater segmentation of words, increased stress marking, more careful articulation and reduced assimilation. lexis is usually simplified, relying on high-frequency items and avoiding idiom and slang. syntax uses a limited range of basic structures and sometimes omits functions and inflections. it may employ syntactic forms which are incorrect (you no like?) there is a preference for transparent forms; full rather than contracted, for shorter utterances and for co-ordination rather than subordination. the standard svo word order is adhered to quite strictly, though there may be some fronting of the current topic of conversation. ft is also characterized by a low level of information per sentence and by a high level of redundancy, including repetition and rephrasing. it has already been mentioned that any of the formal characteristics of ft are very similar to those found in other simplified registers, such as learner language, caretaker talk. this suggests that it reflects universal processes of simplification of knowledge that plays an important role in speakers’ linguistic competence which constitutes part of a speaker’s linguistic competence. still, there are also some differences, however, particularly when the non-native speakers are adults. the main functional intent of caretaker talk is that of directing the child’s behavior, that of ft is exchange of information. it should be noted, however, that when ft is addressed to young children, it appears to resemble caretaker talk fairly closely. so we may assume that the crucial factor, therefore, may be age. some differences are found between simplification registered in ft and that is observed in learner language. whereas some scholars manifest restrictive simplification, for example, the use of an infinitive in place of inflected verb-forms, only learner language manifests elaborative simplification (the use of novel verb forms through such armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 111 processes as overgeneralization). restrictive simplification in both registers serves the purpose of achieving an optimal result in communication, but elaborative simplification occurs when learners are trying to complexify their inter-language system. interlanguage talk (ilt) consists of the language that learners receive as input when addressed by other learners. a key issue is the extent to which ilt provides learners with adequate access to the grammatical properties of the target language. not surprisingly, ilt has been found to be less grammatical than ft ot teacher talk in a detailed study of the ilt produced by intermediate and advanced l2 learners. native speakers come to be able to adjust the level of their ft to suit the level of individual learners in three main ways: • regression, when native speakers move back through the stages of development that characterized their own acquisition of language until they find an appropriate level. • matching, when native speakers assess a learner’s current interlanguage state and then imitate the forms they observe in it. • negotiation when native speakers simplify and clarify in accordance with the feedback they obtain from learners in communication with them. matching seems less likely as it is probably asking too much of learners’ phonology, lexicon, syntax, and discourse with sufficient accuracy to adjust their own language output. thus, the most likely explanation is negotiation. the need of going back to whatever has already been said for clarification reminds negotiation, the participants of which do not understand each others’ aims, but still long for an agreement. this would better be called “negotiation of meaning” or “word meaning”, more specifically. thus, communication in general and communication in a foreign language presupposes much consideration on the part of the interlocutor or language bearer. still, efficient communication, especially in a foreign language is a skill which can be learnt. it is never late to do so, even if you are afraid, you are not sure or you do not know where it will bring you. we need to master communicative skills to feel comfortable, command more attention in the society and, after all, to promote efficient intercultural communication. references: 1. hakansson, g. (1986) quantitative studies of teacher talk. // learning teaching and communication in the foreign language classroom. / ed. by g. kasper. aarhus: aarhus university press. 2. hatch, e.; shapira and j.wagner-gough (1983) simplified input and second language acquistion. // pidginization and creolization as language acquisition. / ed. by r. andersen. rowley, mass.: newbury house. 3. scovel, t. (2001) learning new languages: a guide to second language acquisition. bostone: heinle and heinle. 4. ferguson, c. (1975) towards a characterization of english foreigner talk. // anthropological linguistics. indiana: iup. armenian folia anglistika culture studies 112 5. long, m. (1988) instructed interlanguage development. // issues in second language acquisition: multiple perspectives. / ed. by l. beebe. new-york: newbury house. úï³ñ³é»½áõ ëáëùç ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñç ßáõñç ðá¹í³íý ³ù÷á÷áõù ¿ ûï³ñ 黽íç ·áñí³íù³ý ñçùý³ï³ý ·áñí³éáõûãý»ñá ¨ ³ é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá: ²ûý ³ý¹ñ³¹³éýáõù ¿ ûï³ñ³é»½áõ ëáëùáõù áý ï³é ù³ýá ýå³ëïáõ ³ûýåçëç ÷á÷áëáõãûáõýý»ñç ï³ñ¨áñáõãû³ýá, çýãåçëçù »ý ëáëùç ï»ùåç ¹³ý¹³ õ»óáõùá, ¹³ ¹³ñý»ñç ù³ý³ïá, ³ í»éç ñëï³ï ³ñï³ë³ýáõãûáõýá, ïçñ³éíáõ μ³ é³å³ß³ñç å³ñ½» óáõùá, ß³ñ³ñûáõë³ï³ý ³ ù»ý³ñçùý³ï³ý ï³éáõûóý»ñç ·áñí³íáõùá, ïñïýáõáõãûáõýá ¨ ³ûéý: úï³ñ³é»½áõ ëáëùç áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõýý ³ýùçç³ï³ýáñ»ý ³éýãíáõù ¿ ûï³ñ 黽íç ûáõñ³óù³ý ëý¹çñý»ñç ñ»ï: ² é³ýóý³óíáõù »ý ûï³ñ³é»½áõ ëáëùç » ñ»ù ñçùý³ï³ý ·áñí³éáõûãý»ñ. ³ûý ûå³ý¹³ ïáõù ¿ ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý ·áñíáýã³óçý, ï³ñí»ë »ýã³·çï³ïóáñ»ý ¿ áõëáõó³ýáõù ûï³ñ 黽áõý ¨ ù³ïý³ýßáõù ¿ ëáëáõç í»ñ³μ»ñùáõýùá éëáõý»ñç ýï³ïù³ùμ: armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 113 maket 2011:layout 1.qxd higher levels of discourse ànd understanding of language use iraj safaei keshtegar yerevan state university introduction in the past the tendency has been to concentrate on usage on the assumption that learners will eventually pick up the necessary knowledge of use on their own. there are traditions within linguistics which have always placed emphasis on meaning and use. the most influential linguist is m. halliday. he says, “the more we are able to relate the option in grammatical systems to meaning potentials in the social contexts, the more insight we shall gain into the nature of language system” (halliday 1985). he is completely at odds in this view with chomsky (1957) who assumes that actual language is degenerate and deviate from the rules of grammar. according to h.g. widdowson discourse analysis refers to the investigation into the way sentences are put to communicative use, discourse being roughly defined therefore, as the use of sentences (widdowson 1979). “the schemata, or shared contextual assumptions are of their nature unstable and negotiable in the process of overt interaction” (widdowson 2004). “the intended interpretation of an utterance is not decoded but inferred, by a non-demonstrative inference process a process of hypothesis formation and evaluation” (wilson 1994). we can conclude that the mastery of language use – teaching students how to mean as well as how to form should not be neglected. being a communicator, having what d.h. hymes calls communicative competence, involves more. now that sentences are not supposed to be created, manipulated and assessed in isolation, and it is necessary to reveal more about the learner’s communicative competence, the concept of higher levels of discourse must in some sense be central. subjects seventy-two male and female subjects were randomly selected among the university student population studying general english. the subjects were randomly assigned to two groups of 36 students each. one group became the experimental group and received the special treatment (higher levels of discourse), and the control group which did not receive the treatment. the students’ level was low-level in both the experimental and control groups. materials in the present study 8 extracts have been taken from real-life contexts and situations. a transcribed speech, an interview, a telephone conversation, three daily conversations, a newspaper article and a letter have been selected for the content of these extracts. each of these extracts was followed by some questions. the questions had been devised so that students’ understanding through higher levels of discourse (social relationship, shared armenian folia anglistika methodology 110 knowledge, discourse type, discourse structure, discourse function) could be tested. the treatment was given to the experimental group in persian. procedure in this research a pilot study was conducted, the treatment together with extracts were administered to three students who were studying general english. the results of the pilot study pinpointed that the meanings of some unfamiliar words should be given to students in persian in order to make the piece of discourse more comprehensible. a pretest was administered before the treatment in order to capture the initial differences between the experimental and control groups and make the groups more homogeneous. fifteen minutes were considered for reading and answering the questions. a post-test (4 extracts) was administered after an interval of two weeks. the post-test was intended to help us find out the differences between the two groups which are due to the higher levels of discourse (the treatment). the experimental group was asked to read the treatment (higher levels of discourse) which had been given in persian. so each subject received 4 extracts for pre-test and 4 other extracts for post-test. results the extracts of each subject were scored. four qualified and independent judges gave an overall evaluation of the students’ pre-tests and post-tests. in this study inter-rater reliability was crucial, in order to estimate judgments one rater will also be arrived at and agreed upon by another rater. so each extract was given a point by four judges and the total score was taken into account as the ultimate score. the mean, standard deviations for pre-test scores are presented in the following table: it is obvious that the experimental and control groups are comparable and homogeneous. the difference between their means is not significant. therefore, the baseline knowledge of the two groups about higher levels of discourse can be considered equal. in order to study the significant effect of the higher levels of discourse on the understanding of language use, the data was submitted to a t-test the results of which are shown in the following table: p=.05 armenian folia anglistikamethodology 111 group n ________x______________ s.d experimental 36 59.19 10.88 control 36 56.41 10.72 group n mean s.d t-critical tvalue experimental 36 66.58 15.44 2.000 2.89 70 control 36 57.54 10.57 group d.f therefore, the claim that the higher levels of discourse promote understanding of language use has been supported. conclusion the experiment reported in this study indicates that one might make authentic materials more comprehensible and facilitate students’ understanding of them by providing information on the higher levels of discourse. besides, the findings of this experiment are perhaps not so surprising when one considers what d.h. hymes (1972) stated about the importance of the rules of use without which the rules of grammar would be useless. according to d.h. hymes a person who knows only how to make or recognize correct sentences without any other considerations, would be likely to be institutionalized for saying all kinds of inappropriate, irrelevant and uninteresting things. being a communicator, having what d.a. hymes calls communicative competence involves much more. so the higher levels of discourse revealed most about the learners’ communicative competence. the findings of this study are also consistent with what h.g. widdowson (1978) stated about knowing a language. he says that knowing a language should be supplemented by a knowledge of what sentences count as in their normal use. according to h.g. widdowson (2004), in the grammar, the systems are kept apart. in actual use, however, they are not. when the semantic resources are actualized pragmatically as text, they act upon each other in various ways like topic/comment or given/new and it is a matter of interpretation beyond analysis. the results also confirm the higher levels of achievement stated by m. halliday (1994) as a contribution to the evaluation of the text. at this level, the text is interpreted externally in relation to context. m. halliday explains that we are concerned not with what texts mean but what users mean by texts in their realization of their communicative purposes. moreover, as it is clear from the present study, learners in approaching a piece of discourse need to take some linguistic and situational detail as a cue and form a general hypothesis they deal with a piece of discourse. pedagogical implications discourse analysis is a rapidly expanding field providing insights into the problems and processes of language use and language learning. it examines how stretches of language, considered in their full textual, social and psychological context become meaningful and unified for their user. by taking into account the higher levels of discourse we can gain some insights into problems and processes of language use and language learning. h.g. widdowson (1984) states that indexical meanings must be achieved by the language user associating symbols with some relevant aspect of the world outside language in the situation or in the mind. h.g. widdowson seeks a model of language use in which armenian folia anglistika methodology 112 meanings are realized in context. so context refers to the features of non-linguistic world in relation to which linguistic units are systematically used. students who are familiar with the higher levels of discourse, can achieve meanings both indexically and contextually. higher levels of discourse can serve as an aid to the teachers to provide a general idea of a piece of discourse in the classroom. they can help the students to develop their communicative competence. moreover, higher levels of discourse have implications for textbook writers. they can devise questions based on higher levels of discourse and provide the learners with the authentic materials based on the everyday-life situations. higher levels of discourse will serve as a means for deeper understanding of a piece of discourse. theoretical implications teachers of language try to turn to the processes involved when a language learner deals with a piece of discourse. the outcome of this research provides implications for revealing more about communicative competence. the proposed model in the following figure presents some of the processes which can be used in the development of communicative competence. texts& dialogues information about higher levels of discourse figure 1. some of the processes used in the development of communicative competence armenian folia anglistikamethodology 113 the input to this model is the information about the higher levels of discourse together with texts and dialogues (based on the everyday-life situation) on the basis of which foreign language learners develop their communicative competence and the output is better learning of a piece of discourse. hence, better understanding of a piece of discourse takes place as a result of the interaction between these processes. acknowledgements i would like to express my gratitude to dr. s. gasparyan for her invaluable comments. my special words of thanks should go to dr. i. karapetyan for his critical reading of this research and constructive comments. i am also grateful to all students who participated in the experiment. references: 1. brown, g. and yule, g. (1983) discourse analysis. cambridge: cambridge university press. 2. cook, g. (1990) discourse. oxford: oxford university press. 3. coulthard, m. (1985) an introduction to discourse analysis. second edition. london: longman. 4. halliday, m.a.k. (1994) an introduction to functional grammar. london: longman. 5. harris, z. (1952) discourse analysis. the structure of language (reprinted in fodorand katz, 1964). // language 28. englewood cliffs, n.j.: prentice-hall. 6. hymes, d.h. (1974) foundations of sociolinguistics. pittsburgh: university of pennsylvania press. 7. johnson, k. (1984) skill psychology and communicative methodology. // paper presented at the relc seminar, singapore. oxford: pergamon. 8. little, d.; devitt, s. and singleton, d. (1988) authentic texts in foreign language teaching: theory and practice. dublin: authentik. 9. stubbs, m.w. (2001) words and meanings. oxford: blackwell. 10. savignon, s. (1983) communicative competence: theory and classroom practice. reading mass: addison-wesley. 11. widdowson, h.g. (1983) learning purpose and language use. oxford: oxford university press. 12. widdowson, h.g. (2004) text, context, pretext. oxford: blackwell publishing ltd. ¸çëïáõñëç μ³ñóñ³·áõûý ù³ï³ñ¹³ïý»ñá ¨ 黽íç ïçñ³éù³ý çù³ëï³íáñáõùá ¸çëïáõñëç í»ñéáõíáõãû³ý ï»ëáõãûáõýá ·çï³ï³ý áý¹³ñó³ï áéáñï ¿, áñï»õ ñ³ù³·áñí³ïóáõù »ý ùç ß³ñù ·çï³ï³ý ³í³ý¹áõûãý»ñ, ³û¹ ãíáõù` 黽í³μ³ armenian folia anglistika methodology 114 ýáõãûáõýá, ׳ý³ãáõ³ï³ý ñá·» μ³ ýáõãûáõýá, ëáóçáéá·ç³ý ¨ ³ññ»ëï³ï³ý çýï»é»ïïá: êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù ÷áñó ¿ ³ñí»é μ³ó³ñ³ûï»é ¹çëïáõñëç μ³ñóñ³·áõûý ù³ï³ñ¹³ïý»ñç ¹»ñá 黽íç ïçñ³éáõùá çù³ëï³íáñ»éáõ ·áñíáõù: ²û¹ ýå³ï³ïçý ñ³ëý»éáõ ñ³ù³ñ å³ï³ñ³ï³ý áýïñáõãû³ý ï³ñ·áí áýïñí»é »ý áý¹ñ³ýáõñ ³ý·é»ñ»ý ëáíáñáõ ûáã³ý³ëáõý »ñïáõ ³ñ³ï³ý ¨ ç·³ ï³ý ë»é»ñç áõë³ýáõý»ñ: êáõûý áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãû³ý ³ñ¹ûáõýùý»ñá ñ³ù³å³ï³ëë³ýáõù »ý ð³ûùëç` 黽íç ïçñ³éù³ýá í»ñ³μ» ñáõ ñ³ûïýç ¹ñáõûãçý, áëï áñç ³é³ýó 黽íç ïçñ³éù³ý ï³ýáýý»ñç çù³óáõãû³ý ù»ñ³ï³ý³ï³ý ï³ýáýý»ñý ³ýçù³ëï »ý: êáõûý ñ»ï³½áïáõãû³ý ù»ç áñáß ù»ãá¹³ ï³ý ëáññáõñ¹ý»ñ »ý ïñíáõù μáõñ»ñç ¹³ë³ëáëý»ñçý` çñ»ýó áõë³ýáõý»ñç ñ³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý ñùïáõãûáõýý»ñá ½³ñ·³óý»éáõ ýå³ï³ïáí: armenian folia anglistikamethodology 115 maket_n_verjin.qxp stereotypical statements as socialpsycholinguistic phenomenon anthropological issues have always been in thefocus of attention of philosophers and historians, psychologists and sociologists, men of letters and arts critics who have displayed breathless interest for human nature in the course of all times. linguists also couldn’t parry this issue as humans think and live in language. language is not only a means of communication, but the tool of thoughts and feelings. from this perspective wilhelm von humboldt considers language “the basis of true and veritable linguistic investigation” (humboldt 1985: 377). as far back as in the early 50s of the 20th century emile benveniste, a french linguist, focused his attention on the speaker’s ability of language acquisition in its application process. v.m.shaklein at present claims that, “language represents the language of the speaker, as the tool of his actions, his practical attitude towards the outside world and the means of influence upon people” (shaklein 1999: 507). however, language is social in its nature, “… the origin of language and its formation never belong to an individual, it’s a social phenomenon. linguistic ability is deep in everyone and is put into practice only as a means of communication” (humboldt 1985: 381). language functions in the social environment, and the social factors influence on its function and development. “language serves the society in all its spheres; it embodies the reflection of public consciousness, reacts on the changes in all the spheres of social life and, eventually, is created and formed by the same society. moreover, in social life people treat language and the same linguistic phenomena differently and, by giving preference to one, they refuse the others” (shveitser, nikolskii 1978: 11). frequency is a social factor. the frequency of these or those constructions and word-formations is a fact of social preference. namely, the frequent usage of readymade linguistic units in their constant combinations and constant meanings has led to the formation of speech stereotype/standard or as for v.v.krasnikh, to stereotypepresentation (krasnikh 1999: 270). the concept “social stereotype” belongs to w.lippmann. he states that “our world is recreated and reverberated through a stereotype which “decides” what a person should do. thus, we don’t countervail the world as such, but the very world we have created by the images of our minds” (yazikovoe stroeniye; steriotipi soznaniya i tvorchestvo, 1988: 97). v.v.krasnykh defines stereotype as “some invariant of behavior, invariant of activity” (krasnikh 1999: 266). as for w.lippmann, the outward features of a stereotype are stability, rigidity, the mastering of “the socially sanctioned information” by an individual, the connection of 51 linguistics armenian folia anglistika liana matevosyan the theoretical level of the public consciousness with ordinary/empirical level (yazikovoye soznanie: steriotipi i tvorchestvo 1988: 98). the speech behavior of the speaker is defined by “a complex situational-thematic factor” (lapteva 2003: 56). the situations and aspects of human interaction in their everyday life are often repeated and that is the reason why they are stereotyped. in their turn, the reiteration and stereotype nature of real-life situations have led to the formation of complete stereotype utterances which are known in linguistics as sentence-formulae (o.jespersen), pattern phrases (l.p.yakubinski), phraseological units (p.a.lekant), indivisible (v.yu.melikyan) or stereotypical statements (a.m. peshkovski, n.v.cheremisina). on the other hand, the frequent use of the given “expressions” is determined by the fact that as complete phrases they compile “the assortment of lexicographic and phraseological thinking” (polivanov 1968: 59) or inherent vocabulary of people to express certain ideas. they co-exist in the native speakers’ consciousness as complete, preliminary determined forms where the speaker makes a choice depending on the tasks, conditions and communicative situations. in other words, the stereotype-situation predetermines the stereotype of behavior and the stereotype presentation, i.e. the speech stereotype which is kept in “the human consciousness in the form of a frame-structure” (krasnikh 1999: 270). thus, the stereotype-situation “transport-ticket” gives rise to the stereotype behavior: “asking the nearest passenger” to punch the ticket/pass the ticket, etc… (krasnikh 1999: 270). linguistic consciousness is multifoliated. v.v.krasnikh distinguishes the following layers in linguistic conscience: 1) myth and lyric 2) stereotypical 3) informational 4) metaphoric. “the stereotypical layer is performed particularly by stereotypepresentations both as images and situations connected with these images” (krasnikh 2004: 121). therefore, the stereotypical layer along with myth and lyric, informational and metaphoric layers is the component of the structure of linguistic or “linguisticcultural” (n.f. ufimtseva) consciousness. hence, l.p.yakubinskiy mentioned that the mechanism of the establishment of stereotypical statements is defined by the fact that the frequency of the identical speech situations in communication results in the fact that the communicative units typically used for such situations are apprehended as “attached” stable formulae. in his research “on dialogue discourse” he writes, “our routine life is full of recurrence and banality. all in all a considerable part of our interaction with other people belongs to stereotyped interrelations. however, no matter what kind of interrelation we have, it is always accompanied by speech reciprocity, speech exchange and, correspondingly, the stereotype interrelations change into the stereotype speech interrelations…” (yakubinski 1923: 167). “speaking in terms of the certain daily stereotypes contributes to the creation of the complete stereotype expressions somehow attached to the given daily items and the stereotype topics of communication” (yakubinski 1923: 175). thought stereotype presumes social structure and is reflected in human behavior, particularly, in discourse behavior. as a rule, the discourse behavior adequately recreates 52 armenian folia anglistika linguistics the world around us, particularly, a certain social structure with a certain type of thinking. the emergence of stereotypical statements is conditioned by language pragmatics, its direction towards communication which is much in demand in the required standard. the role of stereotypical statements is vital in the process of communication. in “about the nature of human communication” v.m. sokovnin states, “ evidently, the standardization as the process of stereotype establishment in the subject activity and human relations is one of the general principles of the construction of the organized social systems” (sokovnin 1974: 105). the same idea is emphasized by v.p.levkovich, “in order to function as a whole, as a complicated social system, society should establish such frames of human behavior where it becomes uniform, stable and frequent” (levkovich 1976: 212). at present, stereotypical statements have been elucidated in terms of psycholinguistics and have been substantiated in “stereo-linguistics”. the stereolinguistic approach is such a method to linguistic phenomena which is based on the interlocutor’s perception of the utterance depending on the distance between the latter and the speaker. according to the stereolinguistic approach, a human lives in four concentric spheres. the founder of stereolinguistics, the french linguist j.duren, refers these spheres to cognition and names them cognitive sub worlds (duren 2002: 275-276). the first sphere is the sphere of singular or actuality. the second sphere is the sphere of privacy as well as non-actuality, the usual. this cognitive sub world is characterized by the speaker’s habitual, routine behavior. the third sphere is the sphere of universality. this huge sub world colossal in its size lays claim to universality. j.duren calls the fourth, zero sphere which is the nearest to the human body, a situational sphere (duren 2002: 275-276). j.duren presents his “ideas” in the form of a diagram with the leonardo da vinci’s famous picture in the centre (duren 2002: 277): four spheres of cognition 0 the sphere of situation, infra-syntax i the sphere of singular, actuality ii the sphere of privacy, non-actuality, the usual iii the sphere of eternity, universality however, j.duren himself, taking into consideration the heuristic nature of his approach, finds that “… due to it, the solution to different issues in the sphere of human philogenesis, ontogenesis, psychology and linguistics can be newly interpreted” (duren, 2002: 277). 53 linguistics armenian folia anglistika namely, indivisible stereotypical statements, such as fat chance! åùå áû! you bet! äåðæè êàðìàí øèðå! led duren to the discovery of the fourth, zero sphere, the closest to the human body. “time and space of the zero sphere are narrowed down almost to a dot; the space is the place occupied by the given essence or the bearer of the given feature, and its immediate proximity; the time is the given instant without any conscious past or future. the human being who has just felt the button under his bare feet, has rapped out and mouthed curses gives an idea about the speech (and nonspeech) behavior within zero sphere” (duren 2002: 275). while emphasizing the zero sphere of cognition, j.duren is guided by the position of the french psychologist h. wallon, who sets off practical mind against the discourse or speech mind (wallon 1982: 264-265). h.wallon provides the following example as an illustration of the practical mind. the chimpanzee sees a hanging banana, cries out and flings its arms. then it suddenly drags the box, climbs on it and grasps the banana. but if the banana and the box aren’t in the field of its vision at a time, it does not make the right decision. there are species who cannot find a way out at all. although the human conscious vocabulary possesses stereotype expressions as complete sentences, they come to the surface of the memory only in certain situations (the situation carries out the function of the box in h.wallon’s example). some people do not recall them at all, since the capacity of the operative memory of the human isn’t large and varies in different people. stereotypical statements are arbitrary reactions on the external stimulus, which is a situation. the situation here has a conditional reflex function. thus, linguistic consciousness is multilevel and the reflex-driven stereotype level is considered to be one of its structural supports. the evolution of language and thinking has taken place in close correlation. the study of language and thinking correlation is still in the centre of linguistic research. though the sapir-worf’s hypothesis for the study of this issue was subjected to harsh criticism, it introduced a new research paradigm in scientific practice, “the analysis of the cognitive processes through the contrast of the languages representing cardinally different cultures” (yazik i soznaniye: paradoksalnaya ratsialnost, 1993: 163) “continues to alarm human mind” (mechkovskaya 2000: 65). one of the essential peculiarities of human character is the self-acting behavior in certain situations, i.e. without preliminary consideration and often against objective logic. however, the automation in human actions is not only and so much the corollary of the biological stipulation as the result of the social ascendancy over the individual.the biological factor here embodies “the reduced socialized form” (pedagogika visshei shkoli 1972: 121). the stereotype of thought and speech behavior is apparently conditioned by the fear of people to stay in “isolation”. the main difficulty of any teaching, including language teaching , is to develop and evolve the right skill to remember the claimable rule. despite the specific nature of certain languages, linguistics defines them using principally the same model. the similarity of such models is not commissioned only by reasoning and deduction, but with the specific material of different languages. wilhelm von humboldt considers that “the principle aim of comparative linguistics 54 armenian folia anglistika linguistics is the thorough and circumstantial research of different methods through which different nations solve the universal task of the creation of language” (humboldt 1985: 47). he also states that “not only the elements of the language, but the languages themselves often obey the rules of general analogy” (humboldt 1985: 348). in our opinion, the spoken standard is one of such analogies. the comparison of languages “by analogy with all conceivable rules” (humboldt, 1985: 346) will help to comprehend and reveal the mechanism of the language and thinking interaction in the process of speech activity. it is important and expedient to reveal and describe routine and emotional life situations and, consequently, speech situations in mass communication, since each life situation is guided by the formation of speech and the availability of the list of the communicative units serving for the given situations practically to help the teacher in foreign language teaching.. as an example we will provide the comparison of the following greeting expressions in the russian, armenian, english and japanese languages. the first three languages are in full conformity: some greeting expressions cover broad situations (russian: çäðàâñòâóé (-òå) [zdrastvui (-te)], ïðèâåò [privet]; armenian: ´³ñ¨ (ó»½) [barev (dzez)], àõçáõûý [voghjuin]; english: how do you do! hello!) and temporary situations (russian: äîáðîå óòðî [dobroe utro], äîáðûé äåíü [dobriy den], äîáðûé âå÷åð [dobriy vecher]; armenian: ´³ñç éáõûë [bari luis], ´³ñç ûñ [bari or], ´³ñç »ñ»ïá [bari yereko]; english: good morning, good day, good evening). according to a.a.akishina and k.kamogova (akishina, kamogova 1974: 9-24) japanese greetings are namely distinguished by situational fraction relating to the situations of the speakers’ location, for example the greeting expressions while entering and exiting the building are different. greetings in the russian, armenian and english languages are differentiated according to diverse styles: formal, neutral and informal. greetings in japanese differ due to the level of politeness (informal familiar and respectful). each nation according to its national and cultural peculiarities has its world outlook, attitudes towards life being based on “the language frame” (yazik i soznaniye: paradoksalnaya ratsialnost 1993: 163). r.b.sabatkoyev states, “caucasian nations have strictly regulated forms of addressing, greeting, parting, expressing condolences used to express the benevolence, respect and sympathy towards people. some of them, to a certain, extent differ from the corresponding russian speech formulae” (sabatkov 1999: 472). n.b.mechkovskaya mentions, that “the category of politeness contains seven levels in korean: 1) deferential, 2) respectful, 3) the form of politeness characteristic of female speech, 4) polite, 5) personal, 6) familiar, 7) protective. each form of politeness has its own set of grammatical, word-building and lexical markers. there are also grammatical and lexical synonyms which mainly differ by various levels of politeness” (mechkovskaya 2000: 60-61). according to worf’s terminology these two “linguo-cultural types” belong to the european and eastern standard. .sepir and b.worf assert, that “language is not only the product of society, but also the means of thought and mentality formation” 55 linguistics armenian folia anglistika (mitrophanova 1999: 345). “if the impact of the culture on language is quite evident and diverse, then the issue about the reverse impact of the language on culture is still open” (mechkovskaya 2000: 61). as a solution to this issue, modern linguistics attempts to avoid one-sided determinism giving preference to the interdependent one and trying to find correlations between the structures of language and culture. stereotypical statements are combined in the groups based on thematic unification and similar situations, the so-called thematic-situational groups. separate thematic-situational groups are combined in larger groups, as “urban stereotypes”, “speech etiquette”, “keeping contact”, “expressing different emotions” constituting the essence of the lively speech of the russian language. the last group is perhaps the most interesting and less examined. “evaluation and emotionality are usually emphasized when defining a stereotype” (pishalnikova, sorokin 1993: 96). notes: 1. the concept is suggested by b.m. gasparov. he distinguishes between eastern and western european standards. r. kipling’s famous words “oh, east is east, and west is west, and never the twain shall meet” immediately come to mind. references: 1. akishina, a.a.; kamogova, k. (1974) sravnitelniy analiz russkogo i yaponskogo rechevogo etiketa // lingvostranovedcheskiy aspekt prepodavaniya russkogo yazika inostrantsam, moskva: izd. moskovskogo univ. 2. benevenist, e. (1974) obshchaya lingvistika. moskva: progress. 3. cheremisina, n.b. (1982) statsionarnie predolzheniye kak kollolvialniy fenomen // teoriya i praktika opisaniya razgavornoy rechi. gorkiy. 4. duren, j. (2002) o stereolingvistike // kommunitativno-smislovie parametri grammatiki i teksta. moskva: editorial urss. 5. formanovskaya, n.i. (1979) funktsionalniye i kategorialniye sushchnosti ustoichivikh formul obshcheniya. diss. ... dokt. filolog. nauk. moskva. 6. gasparov, b.m. (1977) vvedenie v sotsiogramatiku // problemi yazikovoi sistemi i yeyo funktsionirovaniya. (uchyonie zapiski tartuskogo gos. univ. trudi po russkoi i slovyanskoi filologii. seriya lingvisticheskaya. vol. 29, tartu: izd.tartuskogo gos. univ. vip. 425. 7. humboldt, v. fon (1985) yazik i filosofiya kulturi. moskva: progress. 8. jespersen, o. (1958) filosofiya grammatiki / pod red. b.a. ilyina. moskva: izd. inostr. literaturi. 9. krasnikh, v.v. (1999) stereotipi: neobkhodimaya realnost ili mnimaya neobkhodimost // materiali ix kongressa maprial. bratislava, 1999: dokladi i soobsheniya rossiyskikh uchyonikh. moskva. 56 armenian folia anglistika linguistics 10. krasnikh, v.v. (2004) sovremennaya nauchnaya paradigma: lingvokognitivniy podkhod // russkiy yazik: istoricheskie sudbi i sovremennost (ii mezhdunarodniy kongress isledovateley russkogo yazika), (moskva, filologicheskiy fakultet, mgu, 18 21 marta, 2004). moskva: izd. moskovskogo univ. 11. lapteva, o.a. (2003) russkiy razgavorniy sintaksis. izd.. 2, stereotipnoye. moskva: editorial urss. 12. lekant, p.a. (1974) sintaksis prostogo predlozheniya v sovremennom russkom yazike. moskva: vishaya shkola. 13. levkovich, v.p. (1976) obichai i ritual kak sposobi sotsianalnoy reguliatsii povedeniya // psikhologicheskiye problemi sotsialnoy reguliatsii povedeniya. moskva: nauka. 14. matevosyan, l. b. (1992) statsionarnoye predlozheniye v sovremennom russkom yazike. yerevan: izd. yerevanskogo univ. 15. matevosyan, l.b. (2005) statsionarnoye predlozhenie: ot standartnogo k originalnomu. moskva-yerevan: institut yazikoznaniya ran, izd. yerevanskogo univ. 16. matevosyan, l.b. (2007) yazikovoe soznanie: stereotipniy plast. moskva-yerevan: institut yazikoznaniya ran, avrorskoe izdanie. 17. mechkovskaya, n.b. (2000) sotsialnaya lingvistika. moskva: aspekt press. 18. melikyan, v.yu. (2002) aktualnie voprosi sintaksisa russkogo yazika: teoriya nechlenimogo predlozheniya. rostov na donu: izd. rostovskogo gos. ped. univ. 19. minskiy, m. (1978) struktura dlya predstavleniya znaniy // psikhologiya mashinnogo zreniya. moskva. 20. mitrofanova, o.d. (1999) lingvodidakticheskiye uroki i prognozi kontsa xx veka // materiali ix kongressa maprial. bratislava, 1999: dokladi i soobshcheniya rossiyskikh uchyonikh. moskva. 21. (1972) pedogogika vishey shkoli. / otv. red. yu. kabanskiy. rostov-na-donu: izd. rostovskogo univ. 22. peshkovskiy, a.m. (1956) russkiy sintaksis v nauchnom osveshchenii. izd. 7. moskva: uchpedgiz. 23. pishalnikova, v.a., sorokin yu. a. (1993) vvedeniye v psikhopoetiku. barnaul: izd. altaiskogo univ. 24. polivanov, e.d. (1968) statyi po obshchemu yazikoznaniyu. izbrannie raboti. moskva: nauka. 25. sabatkoev, r.b. (1999) rechevoy etiket kak vazhnoye sredstvo vospriyatiya kulturi obshcheniya // materiali ix kongressa maprial. bratislava, 1999: dokladi i soobsheniya rossiyskikh uchyonikh. moskva. 26. shaklein, v.m. (1999) lingvokulturnoye soderzhaniye slova i predlozheniya // materiali ix kongressa maprial. bratislava, 1999: dokladi i soobshcheniya rossiyskikh uchyonikh. moskva. 27. shveitser, a.d.; nikolskiy l.b. (1978) vvedenie v sotsiolingvistiku. moskva: vishaya shkola. 28. sokovnin, v.m. (1974) o prirode chelovecheskogo obshcheniya (opit filosovskogo analiza). frunze: mektep. 29. ufimtseva, n.v. (1993) chelovek i ego soznaniye: problema formirovaniya // 57 linguistics armenian folia anglistika yazik i soznanie: paradoksalnaya ratsionalnost. moskva: institut yazikoznaniya ran. 30. wallon, h. (1982) la vie mentale. paris: editions sociales, collection essentiel. 31. yakubinskiy, l.p. (1923) o dialogicheskoy rechi // russkaya rech. trudi foneticheskogo instituta prakticheskogo izucheniya yazikov (sbornik statey). / pod red. l.v. sherbi. peterburg. vip. 1. 32. (1993) yazik i soznanie: paradoksalnaya ratsionalnost. moskva: institut yazikoznaniya ran. 33. (1988) yazikovoye soznanie: stereotipi i tvorchestvo. moskva: institut yazikoznaniya ran. î³ñíñ³ïçå ý³ë³¹³ëáõãûáõýý»ñá áñå»ë ñ³ýñ³¨ ñá·»é»½í³µ³ý³ï³ý ý»ýáù»ý ä³ïñ³ëïç, ³ý÷á÷áë ý³ë³¹³ëáõãûáõýý»ñç ó³ýïá ù³ñ¹áõ é»½í³·çï³ïóáõãû³ý ß»ñï»ñçó ù»ïý ¿, ¨ ëáëáõá, ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý çñ³íç׳ïçó »éý»éáí, ñ³ù³å³ï³ëë³ý áýïñáõãûáõý ¿ ï³ï³ñáõù áõý»ó³í µ³é³å³ß³ñçó: ²ûé ï»ñå ³ë³í, ù³ñ¹áõ ·çï³ïóáõãû³ý µ³õ³¹ñçãý»ñçó ù»ïá ï³ñíñ³ïçå ëáëù³ûçý í³ñù³·çíý ¿, áñá å³ûù³ý³íáñí³í ¿ ï³ñíñ³ïçå çñ³íç׳ïáí: úñçý³ï` ñ³ý¹çå»éçë (§ñ³ý¹çåáõù¦ ï³ñíñ³ïçå çñ³íç׳ï) ù³ñ¹çï çñ³ñ áõçáõýáõù »ý (í³ñù³·íç ï³ñíñ³ïçå) ñ»ï¨û³é ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõãûáõýý»ñáí` ´³ñ¨°, àõçáõ°ûý ¨ ³ûéý (ëáëùç ï³ñíñ³ïçå): è»½í³·çï³ïóáõãûáõýá µ³½ù³ß»ñï ¿, ¨ ýñ³ ï³éáõóí³íù³ûçý ñ»ý³ëûáõý»ñçó ù»ïá é»ýé»ùëçí µýáõûã áõý»óáõ ï³ñíñ³ïçå ß»ñïý ¿: ⻨ ï³ñíñ³ïçå ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõãûáõýý»ñá áñå»ë å³ïñ³ëïç ý³ë³¹³ëáõãûáõýý»ñ ³éï³ »ý ù³ñ¹áõ µ³é³å³ß³ñáõù, ë³ï³ûý ñçßáõáõãû³ý ëáñùáõù ç ñ³ûï »ý ·³éçë ïáýïñ»ï çñ³íç׳ïý»ñáõù, çëï áñáß ù³ñ¹ï³ýó ·çï³ïóáõãû³ý ù»ç ã»ý ¿é ³ñãý³ýáõù í»ñççýý»ñçë µ³ó³ï³ûáõãû³ý å³ï׳éáí: î³ñíñ³ïçå ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõãûáõýý»ñç áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõýá, ýñ³ýó ï³éáõóí³íù³ûçý ¹³ë³ï³ñ·áõùá, µ³ßëáõù᪠áëï ñ³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý çñ³íç׳ïý»ñç áõ ã»ù³ý»ñç, ³ñ¹ç³ï³ý ¿ 黽íç ã»° ï»ëáõãû³ý, ¨ ã»° ¹³ë³í³ý¹ù³ý ï»ë³ýïûáõýý»ñçó: 58 armenian folia anglistika linguistics maket 2012 1-2:layout 1.qxd the azerbaijani version of history of national literature: a critical review hrachik mirzoyan, natalia gonchar yerevan state university w e recently happened to get acquainted with a collection of quite an impressive volume named “the astral cluster. folklore and monuments of azerbaijan’s literature.” this collection was published in 2009 in moscow by the publishing house fiction (khudozhestvennaya literatura) with the support of the interstate fund of humanitarian co-operation of the states – cis members in the series of “classics of cis literature”. the compiler of the collection is a.m. bagirov, the introductory article is written by the director of nasa 1, the institute of literature after nizami, academician of nasa b. nabiev, and the deputy director of the same institute, corresponding member of nasa t. kerimli, that is, by two authoritative scholars, presenting modern literary criticism, historical-literary science of azerbaijan; commentaries belong to t. kerimli and the compiler a. bagirov. at the very beginning the word of polad byulbyul ogli under the title “motherland begins with the native language” is placed where the extraordinary and plenipotentiary ambassador of azerbaijan to russian federation, people’s artist of azerbaijan and professor appeals to “the dearest friends, respectable lovers of books”. while getting properly acquainted with the book published by the efforts of all the above mentioned participants, we observed in it, as expected, a lot of scandalous inaccuracies, illogical and anti-scientific statements, conscious and unconscious falsifications of historical facts, a more than obvious intention to appropriate the literary-cultural values of other peoples and many other phenomena which have nothing to do with such concepts as “science”, “culture”. frankly speaking, the fact that the azerbaijani scholars who have created this book (the compiler, the authors of the introductory article, commentaries, partially the translators) could allow themselves to do this does not surprise us at all, because this practice is not new, but has long been established since soviet times. we are surprised at the utter indifference of the interstate fund of the humanitarian co-operation of the cis member-states to the contents of the book, published with its support. we are even more surprised at the completely careless attitude towards the publication with the support of the above mentioned fund on behalf of an authoritative publishing house such as “fiction”, highly cultured, in our traditional understanding. first of all we surely mean the staff of the publishing house and those listed on the last page, directly responsible for the quality of the “product”. here are some of them: academician of the academy of russian folklore g.v. pryakhin – head of the publishing group, a.a. grishanov, n.a. mukhametishina – deputies of the head, b. ryabukhin – head of the editorial office, a. kapustiuk – editor. at what level of humanitarian arts – either intellectual or verbal – did such a, one would think, authoritative publishing group work on this book can be particularly judged by the coherency of thoughts and coherency (or to be armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 162 more exact, incoherency) of the language use by the two academicians of the introductory article. it goes without saying that in one article it is impossible to consider in detail everything that puzzles and causes objection in this book, that is why we will try to invite the reader’s attention to what we think to be most important. every reader starts reading a book in his/her own way. as far as we are concerned, we first of all prefer to get acquainted with the annotation, which is usually given by the authors, or by the compilers if it is a collection. we begin with this as we believe the annotation reflects the book in the best way. and if within a few minutes one can get a preliminary idea of what the book is about, why should one miss such a chance? accordingly, while reading the annotation in the book “the astral cluster,” we had a great desire to read the book itself. because of the importance of the annotation for our conversation about the book, we think it important to give it full, bringing out certain parts in it. “the collection ‘the astral cluster’ reflects folklore and ancient monuments of literature of the azerbaijan people in the best way. its pieces of verbal folk art and written literature have always stood out with rich and deep humanistic ideas. folklore, having been created by the people for centuries, is its spiritual national wealth. the first folklore samples the baiatis, which are mythical embellishments, are supposed to have been created as far back as bc. the heroic epic ‘the book of our father gorgud’ which appeared in written form in the vii century a.d. is presented in the publication. the poetry of the azerbaijan people has its rich thousand-year-old history. mekhseti gyanjevi, khagani shirvani, nizami gyanjevi, imadeddin nasimi, mukhammed fizuli and alekper sabir are names among the world famous masters of the word. the best samples of folk arts and masters of the poetic word comprising the top of azerbaijan literature are included in the book. the collection is intended for a wide circle of readers.” 2 as can be seen from the words marked out by us, the characteristic feature of the azerbaijan verbal folk arts and written literature is the richness and depth of humanistic ideas. as it is further mentioned, the book presents “the best samples of the folk arts and masters of poetic word, comprising the top of azerbaijan literature”. thus, we can conclude, that the one who has written the annotation considers richness of humanistic ideas typical of all the works included in the collection. there is and there cannot be any doubt, that many works included in the collection – either folk or written creations, either in verse or in prose – are deeply penetrated with humanistic ideas. however, there are undoubtedly quite a few pages in the book full of antihumanistic ideas and moods. we mean, in particular, the “book of our father gorgud” defined as a heroic epic which, just like the azerbaijanians, the turks consider to be their own national epic. moreover, according to the research of many scholars, in terms of its folklore origin, it goes back to the epic stories formed during centuries by the oguz – the turkish speaking peoples of central asia – which the scholars, presenting the structure of the book, did not think important to mention about either in the article or in the commentaries, perhaps supposing that there is no need to burden “the general reader” with superfluous information conarmenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 163 cerning the text intended to assert the antiquity of the azerbaijan literature and by the number of the pages in the book (200p.) exceeding even nizami gyanjevi (140p.) about whom there is at least, some information, though evasive. it is not a secret, that every folk epic exaggerates and praises the physical force and beauty of its hero, his mental and emotional qualities, ascribes to him supernatural force, unusual beauty, intellect, quick wit, whereas the enemy or enemies are, on the contrary, physically weak, deformed, mentally and emotionally helpless, and miserable, which is quite understandable, for it is an epic which aims at evoking heroism, courage, pride and similar qualities in the compatriots. in this respect the oguz epic is not an exception and this is quite natural. it is not a secret either, that in all epics various military actions and battles take place, where people are killed and blood is shed, but all this happens in the battlefield in direct conflict with the enemies. numerous similar episodes can also be found in the oguz epic, which is also quite natural. however, unlike other epics, here “to cut heads, to shed blood” is something usual not only in the battlefield but also in everyday life and these are considered to be the highest virtue and valour. therefore, the basic and, perhaps, the only condition of cognizing the maturity of a boy, a son, as well as the courage, honour and dignity of a mature man is the ability of beheading and shedding blood. this must be the reason why boys are not given names before they are sixteen, i.e. before they display and prove their capability in this respect. likewise, the social status of a mature man, the honour and high regard for him are determined by the number of heads he has cut and the amount of blood he has shed. difficult to believe? here are examples to verify the fact. in the third dastan (chapter) 3 of the epic, entitled “canto about bamsi-beirek, son of kan-bur”, it is told, that bai-bura-bek had no offsprings, which upset him very much, and here he comes to a feast to bayundur-khan and begins to wail and sob that he has no son, nobody to inherit his crown, and after his death his position and lodging will be inherited by nobody. heeding his sobbings, the beks pray the most high god asking for a son for bai-bura-bek. “in that age the beks’ blessings were believed to be real, their curses could call down upon the cursed, their prayers were heard indeed” (p. 32). the most high god naturally gave a son to bai-bura-bek, and the latter was extremely glad. he called his merchants, told them to go to the country of the greeks and bring good gifts for his son before the boy grew up. sixteen years passed before the merchants’ returned, but the bek’s son had no name yet, because “in that age the young man was not given a name before he cut heads, shed blood” (p. 33). it so happened that the djigit still without a name went hunting and on his way he met the merchants returning from istanbul 4. they had been attacked by the unfaithful from the fortress onik 5. the young man without a name, conquered the giavurs, who had stopped somewhere and were busy dividing the money (“whoever of the giavurs raised his head, he killed him, accomplishing a feat for their faith and took back the merchants’ goods”, p. 33). returning home the son tells his father about the merchants’ return, but he does not say anything about his feat. the merchants arrive, welcome the bek, but seeing that their rescuer is sitting next to him – “the djigit, who cut the heads, shed blood” (p. 34), come up to him and kiss his hand. the bek is filled with indignation: “you worthless, born from worthless! why do you kiss armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 164 the son’s hand, when his father is before you?” the merchants apologize, explain that their goods would have been lost in georgia, and they would have been in captivity but for this djigit. this is what the bek-father says: “tell me, did my son cut heads, shed blood? the merchants replied: “yes, he cut heads, shed blood, threw people down on to the ground (ibid). thinking that it was time to give his son a name, bai-bura-bek invites the oguz beks to a feast, and, according to the tradition, grandfather korkut gives a name to the young man and says: “listen to my word bai-bura-bek! the most high god gave you a son, let him keep your son! let your son be a support for the muslims carrying a heavy banner! let the most high god ease his ascent when he climbs up the black, snowy mountains lying before us! let the god ease his crossing when he crosss the rivers stained with blood! let the most high god give your son success when he invades the dense crowd of giavurs!” (ibid). in the fourth dastan of the epic (“canto about how kazan-bek’s son uruz-bek was taken captive”) kazan-bek orders to put up tents, to place silk carpets and call “ninety detachments of young oguzes to him for a talk.” the beks are given golden glasses with red wine, in the centre of all this, is kazan-bek, distributing rich presents. his brother is sitting on his right, the governor on his left, and his son uruz is standing in front of him, leaning on a bow. kazan looks to the right and laughs loudly, looks to the left and is filled with great joy, looks at his son and is extremely upset. his son does not like it, he wonders why his father began to cry looking at him. he wants to know the reason, otherwise he says, “i will get up from my seat, take my black-eyed djigits with me and go to the blood-thirsty people of abkhaz, i will press my hand to the gold cross and kiss the hand of the man dressed in chasuble, i will marry the black-eyed daughter of the giavur and never appear before your eyes any longer”. his father has to explain what the matter is: “when i looked to the right i saw my brother kara-gyune, he cut heads, shed blood, received an award, attained fame. when i looked to the left i saw governor aruz who had brought me up: he had cut heads, shed blood, received an award, attained fame. when i looked in front of me, i saw you, you have lived sixteen years; there will come a day when i die, and you remain; you haven’t drawn the bow, haven’t shot an arrow, you haven’t shed blood, neither have you received an award among the brave oguzes. tomorrow will come the time when i die, and you remain, alas, you won’t be given my crown or my throne; thinking about this, i thought of my end and began to cry” (p. 4950). the son’s answer is not less attractive: he first wonders who learns from whom – the son from his father or the father from his son, and then he adds: “when you used to take me with you, took me to the giavurs’ borders, did you strike with your sword, did you cut heads? what did i see from you, what was i to learn?” feeling happy with this answer, the father decides to start off at once and show him the place “where i shot arrows, where i struck with my sword and cut heads; i will take him with me, go to the borders of the giavurs… this is what the young man needs, beks” (p. 50). kazan-bek, of course, goes to the giavurs’ borders, but it so happens that his son uruz is taken captive, and what happens next has nothing to do with the question we are dwelling on. dastan ten (“canto about sekrek, son of ushun-kodja”) deserves special attention from the perspective of our interest. it is told here that in the age of oguzes there was a armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 165 man called ushun-kodja, and he had two sons; ekrek – the elder, and sekrek – the younger. ekrek is said “to go to kazan’s divan (palace) – the bek of beks, without any obstacle; attacking the beks, he sat in front of kazan without paying any attention to anybody”. once, when he, having attacked the beks was sitting, a djigit named ters-uzamish says to him: “listen, son of ushun-kodja! each of the beks sitting here has won the seat where he is now sitting at by the strikes of his sword, by distributing bread: and did you cut heads, and did you shed blood, did you feed a hungry man, did you dress a barefoot?” (p. 89) ekrek asks; “tell me ters-uzamish, is cutting heads, shedding blood a valour?” he answers without beating about the bush; “yes, it is a valour”. under the influence of such speeches ekrek gets up and asks kazan-bek to give warriors for a foray. kazan gives him warriors for the foray and tells them to set off. the army of raiders gathers round ekrek, they drink and eat for five days in a public house, then they “struck” the people from sherigyuz to gekche-deniz 6, collected a lot of plunder” and went on “striking”, but they came across an unapproachable fortress, the raiders were beaten by the giavurs, ekrek was captured and put to prison. years passed, and his younger brother sekrek accidentally heared where his elder brother was imprisoned, and made up his mind to liberate his brother at any cost. three days and three nights he rode his horse, “passed across the plain sham” (“an area between nakhichevan and djulfa” according to the note on p. 277). the way sekrek liberated his brother is not so important in this particular case. what is of interest to us in this story is that for the first and the only time in the whole epic, ekrek questions the oguz moral, according to which “cutting heads, shedding blood” is a valour, but hearing the determined reply of ters-uzamish, he gives way at once, asks for warriors and starts a robber’s raid with them, that is to say, in order to secure a high position for himself, he goes to cut heads and shed blood. the oguz epic asserts this as a type of “valour”, whereas the fact that the compilers of the book the academic authors of its introductory article and the distinguished worker of culture and diplomacy together with them consider “the book of korkut” to be a work full of humanistic ideas is a matter of their conscience. one thing is doubtless: people’s artist of azerbaijan byulbyul ogli is quite right saying that “the astral cluster” in which, along with other “literary masterpieces”, the epic occupies such an important and an impressive place, will help “to cognize the world of azerbaijan at least partly, to feel the peculiarities of our national character” (p. 5). in fact, while reading this epic, you understand the specificity of not only the azerbaijani, but also the turkish national character, you get convinced, that neither the genocide of the armenians in 1915, nor the massacre of the armenians in shushi in 1920 were accidential, nor were the quite recent mass beatings of the armenians in sumgait, baku and in maragh, nor the brutal murder (with an axe!) of the sleeping armenian officer, committed by an azerbaijani military man, nor the barbarous destruction of the armenian khachkars in djugha, and at last the turkish-azerbaijan practice of raising thugs and murderers to the rang of heroes in recognition of their “valours”. we should hasten to add, that it is partly the fault of the specialists in epic studies for however valuable their work in studying the origin and life of the epic may be, they have hardly paid any attention to the sermon and praise of the brutal aggression and blood-thirst in it. we say “hardly”, because in the literature quite armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 166 known to us, it is only academician v.v. bartold who scratches the surface of the question. in his work “the turkish epic and the caucasus” he writes: “the book about korkud” gives quite an obvious idea in what spirit the cantos were created by the epictellers. the cult of war for the sake of war is vividly manifested. the right to be respected is given to those only who have cut heads, shed blood” (p. 114). a reasonable question arises: when was the turkish-azerbaijani, that is, the oguz epic created? as we have already seen in the annotation adduced above, it is clearly stated: “the heroic epic “the book of our father gorgud” introduced in the publication appeared in written form in the vii century a.d.” the same in a slightly different way is repeated by professor byulbyul ogli: “so, if i am personally asked what azerbaijan begins with, i will promptly answer: with the mother tongue, in which our ancestors spoke, with this cherished and essential word which was at the base of our first written literary monument (marked out by us: g.m., n.g.) – the heroic epic “kitabigrandfather-gorgud”, which in word for word translation means “the book of our father gorgud”. this anonymous literary masterpiece was first rewritten on papyrus more than 1300 years ago” (p. 4). displaying diplomatic caution, the professor does not mention the exact century, but what does “more than 1300 years ago” mean – it means the same vii century a.d. in fact, quite a different point of view is expressed in the introductory article, called “a thousand-year-old school of humanism and beauty,” the authors of which head the academic institute of literature and, as a matter of fact, know the history of the epic better than others. this is what they write: “having been created on the territory of azerbaijan, connected with the toponyms and oiconyms of azerbaijan 7, the heroic epic “the book of our father gorgud” is the oldest verbal monument of our people. the life and activity of father gorgud, accepted by science as the creator of the epic, coincides with the time of muslim prophet muhammed (570-632), and this is testified by the original and by the information given in the introductory part of the literary monument. consequently, the appearance of the verbal version of “the book of our father gorgud” refers to the vii century a.d., which coincides with the epoch of creating orchono-enisei monuments. it is not accidental, as specialists confess, that there is some similarity in the language and style of both monuments (pp. 15-16). as we see, the azerbaijani scholars consider the oguz epic “the oldest verbal monument” of their people. hence, the information included in the annotation that “the first folklore samples – baiatis, mythical embellishments – are supposed to have been created still before christ” is not right, to put it mildly. neither is the respectable ambassador and professor polad byubyul ogli’s statement in the annotation, that the epic received a written form in the vii century. it is wrong, because, judging by a number of real historical events, facts (conquest of constantinople by the turks in 1453, the kingdom of trapezund in 1461, and others) mentioned in the epic, academician v.v. bartold having spent a lot of years on the minute study of the turkish epic and its translation into russian, has long and irrefutably proved, that the composition of the “book about korkud” should be referred to the xv century. as far as “the appearance of the verbal version of the “book of our father gorgud” in the vii century a.d.” and “certain similarities” in its language and style with orchono-enisei monuments are concerned, here armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 167 everything is more than natural and clear. any folk epic, even if it is cursory and unsystematic, directly or indirectly, contains valuable information about the historical past of the people who have created it, about the way they have passed, about their manners and customs, their character and psychology. in this respect the oguz-turkic folk epic is not an exception. as shown by the authoritative researchers of the epic (v.v. bartold, v.m. jirmunski, a.y. yakubovski, k.a. inostrantsev, a.n. kononov and others), it really began to form in the vii century a.d., when the oguz-turks still lived on the territory of central asia, hence “there is certain similarity in the language and style of both monuments.” but as under the pressure of the uigurs, the oguz-turks gradually left their historical motherland 8 and reached historical persia and asia minor moving on throughout the following centuries, it is quite natural for their advances and stoppages, in addition to their achievements and losses, as well as the hardships they caused to others on their way, to be reflected in the oguz epic. here is what v.m. jirmunski – an outstanding scholar and a connoisseur of the oguz epic – writes, proceeding from the results of v.v. bartold’s investigations. “after the fall of the mongol dominion in asia forward since the beginning of the xiv century, the nomandic tribes of oguzes who were among the settled population of trancaucasus and asia minor, form huge tribal unions of the turkmens of “the black sheep” (кара койунлу) and “the white sheep” (ак койунлу). at the head of the latter was the oguz tribe bayindir (v.v. bartold has the version bayundur), from which the ruling dynasty originated. the main centre of this group of the oguz tribes in the xiv century was the town of amid (now diarbekir) in the upper waters of the tigris. the byzantine sources of this time call the turkmens of the white sheep amitiotams. the centre of the other group – the turkmens of the black sheep was initially on the armenian plateau to the north of lake van. the struggle between these two groups was completed with the victory of the first one by the end of the xiv century (1389), and for the second time in the middle of the xv century (1467). “the tribe bayindir”, academician v.a. gordlevski – a historian of the state of oguzes writes, – occupied a dominant position in asia minor in the xiv-xv centuries”. the peak of its might the power of ak-koyunlu reached in the middle of the xv century under uzun-khasan from the dynasty of bayundurs (1457-1478), when it comprised in its borders “southern azerbaijan, karabakh, armenia, kurdistan, diarbekir, iraq arabic (mesopotamia), iraq persian(north-west iran), fars and kirman,” and the capital of padishah was moved to tebriz (from 1468 to 1501). towards the beginning of the xvi century it was ruined under the blows of more steady state unions of the ottoman turks and persian sevefids (“kizilbashes”). from another oguz tribe – kai – the clan of osman originated uniting the oguz tribes in the western part of asia minor, on the border of the byzantine estates. from the middle of the xiv century, the ottomans lead the turkish military expansion to the west, against byzantine and the balkan slaves, occupied constantinopole (1453) and trapezund (1461), by the end of the xv century overrode the remnants of other state unions of the oguzes in asia minor and azerbaijan, and later the arab countries of the forward east, creating on this basis the ottoman empire, the greatest multinational armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 168 muslim state with the centre in istanbul (constantinople)” (pp.136-137). since the historical process of the formation of the oguz-osman state lasted centuries, as rightfully remarked by the scholar, “while dating the origin of epic stories with the help of the historical and geographic facts in them the duration of the process of making the epic should also be taken into account” (p.142). keeping to his methodological principle the scholar writes: “in their last form fixed in “the book of korkut”, the oguz epic stories, as v.v. bartold has shown, are closely connected with the historical and geographic situation of the transcaucasus and, we should add, the eastern part of asia minor, where the oguzes have found their new motherland since the xi century.” “the action”, says v.v. bartold, “takes place on the armenian highland; the giavurs, who the giants have to deal with, are greeks from trapezund, georgians, abkhazians.” the oguz knights make marches as far as amid (in the upper waters of the tigris) and mardina in the south, up to derbent and traspezund in the north; the fortresses baiburt and dizmert (near the black sea) are in the giavurs’ hands; bard and ganja (in the trancaucasus) are on the border of the oguzes’ region”. fairy tale giants live on this very locality – in the armenian highlands – a nomadic or seminomadic way of life, like the contemporaries of the singers, with herds of horses, camels and sheep, with summers in the mountains, as well as gardens and vineyards” (above and here the reference is made to v.v. bartold: g.m., n.g.). perhaps, it would be better to say more exactly: in the stories of the cycle of korkut, the militant tribes are depicted who settled down as owners among the settled population of another tribe or on the borders of the region of ancient settlement, towns and fortresses of “giavurs”, which are the target of their continuous raids” (pp. 142-143). against the background of these raids on the towns and fortresses of the giavurs, continually made by the militant tribes let us remember about the “humanistic ideas” and return to the dating of the epic, fixed by the scholar: “thus, we have every reason to suppose it is in the tribal atmosphere of ak-koyunlu, in the period of the political hegemony and the military expansion of the bayundurs, that is approximately from the middle of the xiv century till the first half of the xv century, that the originally ancient stories of the oguz people, received the last verbal-poetic form, which lay at the base of “the book of korkut”. this process was durable and proceeded in various chronological frameworks for different stories (baiburt as a fortress of the giavurs in the story iii makes us think about the very beginning of the mentioned period). anyway, it had been completed by the time when “the book of korkut” received literary treatment (supposedly in the second quarter of the xv century). however, this latest, middle-eastern period of the creative history of the oguz epic, for a number of epic stories is, undoubtfully, preceded by an earlier, central asian period. as rightfully mentioned by v.v. bartold, “the legends about oguzes, korkud and kazanbek are undoubtedly moved to the west in the epoch of seldjuk empire (xi-xii cc.) to which also refers turkization of azerbaijan, the transcaucasus and asia minor.” this statement is asserted by studying the contemporary folklore of turkic speaking peoples of central asia, first of all the turkmens, the nearest descendants of central asian oguzes, and then of their neighbours – kazakhs, karakalpaks, nomadic and seminomadic uzbeks. vast material of historical and folklore legends is also contained in the armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 169 “genealogy of the turkmens” by khivin khan abulgazi (1660)… it is partly based on the written sources, first of all on the wonderful work by rashid-ad-din (1247-1318), compiled in the persian language: “djami’ at-tavarikh” (“collection of chronicles”, the beginning of the xiv century), which is the basic source on the early history of the turkic and mongol peoples. on the other hand, abulgazi repeatedly refers to the verbal legends of the turkmen people, to the “bakhshi (folk tale narrators) of the past years and notable people from the turkmens, who had spent their life in battles, to “wise old people among the turkmens, who know the history,” to the “notable people and bakhshi among the turkmens, knowledgeable about history”. referring to the historical and folklore sources of central asia, in a number of cases, enables us to assert with quite a high degree of authenticity, which particular stories of the korkut cycle were created by the oguzes in more ancient times in the low waters of the sir-daria, where we find them in the ix-x centuries, and which appeared later in the xii-xiv centuries, already on the territory of the transcaucasus and asia minor. since the move of the oguzes to the west under the leadership of the seljuks took place in the first half of the xi century, we can conclude that the legends about korkut, salor-kazan, alpamishe-bamsi and some others, testified in “the book of korkut” and at the same time in the central asian sources, appeared in central asia not later than at the beginning of the xi century. it goes without saying, that in the verbal tradition of a later time these more ancient epic stories also underwent quite a considerable creative treatment, before they got the ultimate form in which they have reached us in “the book of korkut” (pp. 144-145). at the end of his great, classically scientific historical-philological investigation, v.m. jirmunski summarises: “the book of korkut” is a recording and a written treatment of epic stories and cantos of the oguz folk tale narrators epic tellers. these stories, or “bilins” in terms of bartold (“oguz-name”) were created in different times and by various folk tale narrators, partly on the territory of central asia, in the low waters of the sirdaria (ix-x cc.), partly in the new motherland of oguzes, in the transcaucasus (azerbaijan) and in the neighbouring regions of asia minor (xi-xvcc.). the characters of korkut and salor-kazan, his wife – the stalwart burla-khatun, and his son uzur-bek refer to the centralasian period of the oguz epic; kara-gyne could perhaps join them, as well as kazan’s brother, cantos about whom haven’t reached us, and, possibly, his son kara-budagh, too. the legendary “age of korkut” and salor-kazan, as abulgazi knew from the turkmen tradition, were the ix-x centuries, a time “three hundred years later after our prophet”, connected with the names of the oguz khans from the tribe kai in the semihistorical legends of the turkmen people” (p. 256). we think that the adduced results, gained in the process of the long thorough scientific research of the oguz-turkic epic by authoritative specialists, undeniably testify that: this epic, could not by any means have appeared “in written form in the vii century a.d”, as asserted in the annotation. it is only by misunderstanding (probably because of disinformation, doubtful sources, or perhaps some other reason), that professor byulbyul ogli’s statement saying that “this literary masterpiece (that is, the “book of our father gorgud”, g.m., n.g.) was rewritten on papyrus for the first time more than 1300 years ago” penetrated into the introduction; secondly, neither could the verbal verarmenian folia anglistika armenological studies 170 sion of “the book…” have appeared in the vii century (as was asserted in the introductory article by the academicians) because only the beginning of the formation of the epic refers to this time, it acquired its final form only hundreds of years later – in the xv century, after which it was recorded and passed to the following generations in written form. and as it began to shape, when the oguz-turks (turkmens) still lived in central asia, and was finally shaped in the new territories occupied by them, in particular, in the armenian plateau and in asia minor, hence the similarity“ in the language and style” of the monument, specified in the introduction by the authors, with the orchono-enisei monuments and the existence of the toponyms of the occupied territories in it, including those of azerbaijan. let us see now, in what way another folklore genre – the baiatis are presented in the collection. in the annotation it is said: “the first folklore samples – the baiatis, the mythical sayings, are supposed to have been created still before christ.” first of all, as already mentioned, the academic scholars consider the oguz epic, created, in their own opinion, in the vii century a.d. to be “the most ancient verbal monument” of their people. thus, in fact, they themselves deny the existence of samples of the azerbaijan folklore before the vii century a.d. it follows that the biatis, included into this collection or not, could have been created neither b.c., nor even before the vii century. this purely logical conclusion is also entirely confirmed by the contents of the baiatis presented in the collection. while reading the thirty nine samples of this genre, it strangely turns out that though, still before our era, the azerbaijan people had the notions “motherland” (see baiati 1, numeration is ours-g.m.n.g.) “dear parts” (3), “ruined fatherland” (7) and “dear land” (9), however with the impressive size of azerbaijan’s territory, the unknown authors of the baiati did not choose a single “native” toponym. the only dear to their hearts and worthy of glory were not at all the azerbaijan “araks” (11) and “karabakh” (10, 15, 16). it is obvious how the samples in the collection of nearly the ancient folklore genre are loaded with a current geopolitical subtext. and since in the adduced annotation it is said that the collection “includes the best samples of folk arts and the masters of poetic word comprising the height of azerbaijan literature”, we will adduce the following baiati(16) in order to give the reader some idea of what they are. both on foot and in a bullock cart by kaiaks and ships walked around, travelled all over the world nothing is better than karabakh. by the sequence of the baiatis in the collection, one can suppose that this sequence is based on a chronological principle, and it means, that baiati 16 was created earlier than the next twenty three. opportunely, it can be well seen in the enumeration of the means of transport in it. such means of transport of the xix-xx centuries as train, automobile, plane, helicopter and others are unknown to the nameless author. however one thing is clear: still many, many centuries before us (“presumably b.c.”) one of the courageous sons of azerbaijan, who created these baiatis travelled in bullock carts, by ships and by armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 171 boats all over the world and got convinced that there was no better place on the earth, than karabakh. we are rather well informed about the azerbaijan means of transport, so the travel of the creator of the baiati “on foot” and in “bullock carts” and “by ships” is also quite understandable. but what could it mean “by kaiaks?” as far as this means of transport mentioned by the azerbaijan creator of the baiati is concerned, we looked it up in the encyclopedia and read: “kaiak is a small trading boat, in the past it was widely spread among the peoples of the arctic region (it is still preserved by part of canadian and greenland eskimos). the latticed carcass of the kaiak is made of wood or bone and is upholstered from above with the skin of sea animals. in the upper part a hole is left, which is stretched by a belt around the girdle of the rower. it is operated by two small oars or by one twobladed oar. k. is almost unsinkable and is well adapted to the movements in the sea 9.” thus, we not only found out the meaning of the word, but also learned that in ancient times the unknown creator of the baiati, in order to feel the beauty of karabakh, had to get even to the arctic region and cross its seas by kaiak. though it is more than clear why this and similar baiatis are included in the collection, nevertheless a number of questions arise. let’s ask the compilers and the publishers (who did not think about the literary adequacy but they should have thought about at least the sense quality of the baiatis included in the collection) some of these questions: 1. we wonder if the azerbaijani polar explorer built the kaiaks himself or he took ready made ones from the canadian and greenland eskimos? 2. did azerbaijan not submit an application to include into the guinness book of records the unknown creator of the baiatis, who travelled in the seas of the arctic region in his kaiak? because this fact will some time serve him as solid grounds to try to establish his rights on the arctic region, as he tries today to spread his rights on the territories and cultural values of the neighbouring countries (iran, armenia). 3. how can one explain, that many centuries ago, for the unknown azerbaijanian who travelled in the arctic region in a kaiak, out of all regions of azerbaijan with its natural diversity and richness, with the caspian ñea and its picturesque shores, with other wonderful sights, none of these places turned out to be so dear as karabakh? 4. was there any sense to place the origin of the genre itself into such a long distance of time (b.c.), and send the poor nameless author to such a vast space as far as the arctic region for the sake of this unsuccessful baiati hastily concocted in baku? it has long been known, that the azerbaijan people who, without any doubt, have their unique national culture, and literature in particular, which developed during the last few centuries, but have no, or few cultural, literary values in particular, coming from the depths of centuries, try hard to ascribe the cultural values of other peoples, first of all persians and armenians to themselves. to gain their goal, they are ready to make use of any means – obvious falsification and lie, passing over in silence or distortion of historical facts, statements having nothing to do with reality or logic and so on. it is especially notable that under this disguise, they try to lay scientific, so to say, foundation and on the pseudoscientific basis thought of by themselves, to justify their actions. being guided by this very principle, the academic authors of the introductory article “a thousandyear-old school of humanism and beauty” consciously forget the qualitative difference existing between the natural resources and the spiritual values, and firstly, they put a sign armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 172 of equation between them, and secondly, forgetting the specificity of use of natural resources, suggest spreading it over the spiritual values as well. hence they proclaim the following: “…like all the natural resources of the planet earth the cradle of human civilization refer to the whole mankind no matter whether this or that people or concrete ethnic group lives on this territory or not, by the same reason the treasures of the cultural values belong to the whole mankind, but not to separate peoples, who have created just part of the masterpieces of the world civilization” (p.60). do these authors themselves believe in what they proclaim? if they really do, let them inform us what natural resources mined from which depth and exactly from which territory belong to “the whole mankind, no matter…” maybe they mean oil and gas mined on the territory of azerbaijan, which are sold to other peoples of the planet earth at high prices, and the sums gained are spent on military and political purposes of “a separate people”. if “all the natural resources” really belong to “the whole mankind”, why do then for already decades without coming to an agreement, not only azerbaijan but also all nearcaspian states argue about the oil and gas in the depths of the caspian sea, or let’s ask again why the borders of azerbaijan, also those of turkey are closed for armenia (to please azerbaijan) for already more than twenty years? the authors of the article would be right, if they formulated a different thesis, that is, “the natural resources of the cradle of human civilization of the planet earth” belong only to the people living on the given territory or to the ethnic group, to be more exact, to the political and employer’s top settled down there, whereas the harmful consequences of barbarous exploitation of these resources (pollution of the air, climatic changes, ecological harm in its numerous varieties and so on) which are equally threatening, belong to “the whole mankind, no matter ...’’. if the assertion that the natural resources of the planet earth belong to “the whole mankind” is an obvious nonsense, the inconsistency of the other assertion is even more obvious, for it means that these values belong to any people of the planet earth, “and not to separate peoples, who have definitely created” these “cultural values.” however strange it may be, the academic scholars surely mix the concepts of “belonging” and “using”. of course, unlike “natural resources”, cultural, literary values are open to everyone who wants to make use of them frankly and in a concerned way, but of course, they are not birthless and “ownerless”, they belong to the peoples who have created them, to the national cultures, and no artificial theories will change anything. the authors of such a theory forget that if the natural resources exhaust themselves depending on their use, the literary-artistic and other written-verbal values not only do not exhaust themselves depending on their use, but, on the contrary, to a certain extent they enrich and get enriched. another thing is that it is much easier to make use of the mineral resources given by nature, than by spiritual values, because their pure physical, formal possession does not presuppose at all their mastering or understanding. the latter are acquired in the process of spiritual, intellectual and moral maturing – a process which is difficult and long and, unfortunately, not quite available to everybody, let alone instantly and at one stroke. continuing to develop their geological theory, the authors of the introductory article enrich the methodology of the composition of the story of national literature by introducarmenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 173 ing into it two, in modern terms, innovative approaches – geographic and ethnic. they write in black and white: “azerbaijani folklore and written literature are inseparably connected with the historical development of azerbaijan, it is because of this that while investigating the azerbaijan literature, the necessity for applying two principles taking into account two factors, i.e. territorial and ethnic, arise” (p. 14). a natural question is bound to arise: is there a literature of any country in the world, not connected inseparably with the development of the given country? we think, we can hardly find a historian of literature in the world, who would say, that russian, english, french, german, indian, chinese, japanese, persian literatures are not “inseparably” connected with the historical development of their countries. it appears, that it is not at all “because of this” that the authors introduce the two principles(!) taking into account again two (!) factors: “territorial and ethnic”, but just because they want to ascribe to azerbaijan cultural values not connected with it either in terms of content, or spiritually or artistically. can you not believe it? let us read at least the following: “by the territorial principle, the literature created by the ancient authors on the territory of azerbaijan, is considered to be the wealth of the literary treasure of azerbaijan 10. according to this principle, zoroastr born on the territory of south azerbaijan in the valley of the river araks in the vii-vi centuries b.c. and his creation “avesta” “may be” (!) investigated not only as a common literary monument of the neighbouring peoples, but also as a monument of the azerbaijan people. such samples of albanian literature – people of ancient albania, which is part of the ethnogenesis of the azerbaijan people and created an independent state in the iv-vi centuries a. d., the works “albanian history,” by musa kalankatla, “weeping over the death of the albania’s ruler djevanshir” by the albanian poet davdak are also monuments representing the ancient period of the development of azerbaijan literature 11 (p. 14). let’s give here a short commentary concerning the two “samples” mentioned. at first about the first one. the authors deliberately azerbaijanize the name of movses kaghankatvatsi (kalankatuatsi), in order to conceal his being an armenian. we have before us an example of how the azerbaijani scholars behave in the postsoviet period. some 50 years ago the picture was quite different. in the first volume of the multi-volume “soviet historical encyclopedia” published at that time, in the article “azerbaijan soviet socialist republic” written by the well-known in those years azerbaijani historian a.n. guliev, we read: “at the beginning of the fifth century an alphabet of 52 letters already existed in albania. schools were opened here, which were in the hands of the clergy, books basically of religious character were translated into the language of albans. literature and science developed in albania, beginning from the 7 th century, the formation of the history of albania started (“history of aghvans”), the author of the first part of which was chronologist moisei kalankaitukski (movses kaghankatvatsi)” (ibid, p. 230) 12 we think it is not difficult to see from the clarifications in brackets that the chronologist who composed “the history of aghvans” was armenian (it is written just in armenian and has been preserved). moreover, in the bibliography “sources and literature for the article” it is given: “kagankatvatsi m., history of aghvans (translated by k. patkanov) spb1861 (p. 262).” armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 174 in today’s atmosphere it is worth paying attention to the fact, that in the section “chronology” of the same article compiled by l. alieva and z. a. dulyaeva, it is stated: “1724 a treaty between the azerbaijanians of gandja and the armenians of karabakh (marked out by us g.m. n.g.) on joint struggle against the turkish invaders” (p.254). hence it is clear, that at that time only armenians lived in karabakh, and the azerbaijanians concluded a treaty with them about the joint struggle against the invaders – the turks, but today they are already in union with the same turks and try to seize armenian karabakh. history is full of paradoxes, isn’t it? now let’s come back to the second “sample”. its author’s name is not given in full with an intentional cut off. it is usually given “davtak kertogh”, which means “davtak the poet.” the armenian word “kertogh”, which gives out the nationality of the author of the “weeping”, the scholars have taken away, however forgetting that the word “davtak” (դավթակ) is the diminutive form from “david” in armenian. it should be noted that the reader may get acquainted with this “sample” in the following publication: davtak kertogh. weeping on the death of the grand duke djevanshir. the original in old armenian (grabar) and the translations into modern armenian, russian, english, french, german, spanish, polish. forward, composition and commentaries by levon mkrtchyan (yerevan, 1986). from the fragment from the introductory article adduced above we can see that its scholarly authors apply quite different approaches to the persian and the armenian literary monuments which have nothing to do with azerbaijan literature: in the case of “avesta”, they say, that it “can be investigated not only as a common literary monument of the neighbouring peoples, but also as a monument of the people of azerbaijan”, whereas in the case of the armenian authors movses kaghankatvatsi and davtak kertogh that their works “are also monuments, representing the ancient period of the development of azerbaijan literature.” we think that though the scholars write it, they themselves do not believe that “avesta” may be investigated not only as a common literary monument of the neighbouring peoples, but also as a monument of the azerbaijan people” and that the works by movses kaghankatvatsi and davtak kertogh “are monuments representing the ancient period of the development of the literature of azerbaijan”. how can they believe, that “avesta” created in the vii-vi centuries b.c. and the works by the armenian authors created in the vii century a.d. can be “theirs” and included into the history of azerbaijan literature, if they know perfectly well, that during the creation of these works or even later the ancestors of the current azerbaijanians the oguz-turks were still in central asia and came to the caucasus only in the xi century a.d. as testified by their epic and the investigations of such authoritative specialists as v.v. bartold, v.m. jirmunski, a.y. yakubovski and others. this is not denied by the academic scholars either, who write on the next page (15): “the study of our literature by the ethnic principle shows that monuments created by the turkic ethnos before the xiii century had already received citizenship in it and contributed a lot to the formation of the ethnogenesis of the azerbijan people who had their own contribution to their literature (responsibility for the word order and the use of the capital a in the russian sentence lies on the editors of the moscow publishing house – g.m., n.g.). these monuments of the vi-viii armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 175 centuries are basically presented by orchono-enisei carvings on cliffs, by turkic translations and original monuments of the viii-x centuries, by the work of xi century “divanu lu-gat-i-turk (“combined dictionary of turkic languages”) by makhmud kashgari and by the poem of his contemporary yusif khaza khadjib “kutadgu bilik” – “knowledge of happiness”, considered to be the turkic “shakhname.” “we quite agree with the respectable authors that belonging to the oguz-turkic group of tribes and having lived until the xi century in the language areal of orchono-enisei characters on cliffs, the azerbaijani ancestors naturally had to be nourished and were nourished by “the monuments originally created on this territory and those translated into turkic languages.” but they could not in the same period, i.e. before the xi century, have in any way been nourished by the above mentioned written sources, created in persia and the transcaucasus thousands of kilometres away from central asia. nothing like this could have or has happened in the history of not only the azerbaijan people but any people in general. what has been said above can be proved by the composition of the collection itself with its more than six hundred pages. here in the section “folklore” are presented “myths and legends,” “baiatis,” “lullabies,” “proverbs and sayings,” “tales” (pp. 2161), “book of our father gorgud” (pp. 62-162), “ashugh poetry” (three ashughs are presented: gurbani, ali, alesker, (pp. 263-294). in the second section “poetry” (pp. 295552) the works of 17 poets, including nizami gianjevi, to whom 140 pages out of 257 are devoted, 16 others have a little bit each, though each of them is presented as “an outstanding founder of the azerbaijan poetic renaissance”, “a great azerbaijani poetthinker,” “a brilliant figure of azerbaijan poetry,” “a sensitive lyric poet, a brilliant representative,” “one of the brightest figures,” and so on. even “the magician of the word, singer of love, luminary of the poetry of the east, highly gifted poet-thinker mukhammed suleiman ogli fizuli” who, according to the reference, was born in 1494 in the city of kerbel near baghdad, who died and was buried “in the iraqi land,” “the unsurpassed master of lyric poetry,” who wrote in three languages – turkic, arabic, and persian (p.476) covers only 12 pages in the collection. finally, the section “prose” (pp.555-593) with one story by mirza fatali akhundov and one by mirza jalil mamedkulizade. as we see, neither “avesta”, nor movses kaghankatvatsi, the more so davtak kertogh are presented even by a single line, let alone by a page which is quite natural and understandable, because how can they appear among the pages of azerbaijan literature if they do not belong to it and so far have not been read by the azerbaijan people, as, there is no doubt, they have not so far been translated into azerbaijani. it is even more than logically harmful, rather funny to consider this or that writer to be azerbaijani on the basis of “ethnic factor”, without taking into account other factors – namely, in what language, hence within the scope of what particular poetics the given writer created his works, to what extent they were perceived and understood by the people, and in what way this writer contributed to the historical development of the given people’s literature, which he belongs to by birth. as being guided by these purely-logical, natural principles it is in fact impossible to find at least one writer who created in armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 176 persian, arabic, even in turkish and consider him to be an azerbaijani writer, the scholars are trying to ground their thesis in the following way: “after being included in the territory of arab khalifat in the vii-viii centuries up to nearly the xi century, the azerbaijani poets had to create their works in arabic (why only the azerbaijani, unlike the persian or armenian? – g.m.n.g.). their poetry found its reflection in various anthologies under the name of “al-azerbaijani” (azerbaijani poets). in the works of these poets, the greater majority of whom came from famous azerbaijani families, who had been taken to aravia as amanats – hostages, the theme of motherland, homesickness towards native places, nature, sadness and pain of separation, love to their motherland prevails“ (pp. 14-15). it is at least strange, that the scholars, without taking into account either the historical facts or the most important condition of the trustfulness of a scientific theory, i.e. absence of contradictions in it, assert something contradicting both the facts and the logic. in fact, the territory of present-day azerbaijan was occupied by the arab khalifat “in the vii-viii centuries until the xi century”, but the azerbaijan people had nothing to do here, for at this very time, as has long been fixed by the historical science and as we saw above, the ancestors of the azerbaijan people were still in central asia, and the territory of present-day azerbaijan was inhabited by non-turkic peoples. the authors themselves do not deny this, because they see close links “in the language and style” of the azerbaijani-turkish, to be more exact, the oguz epic and the orchonoenisei monuments. more than that, the authors do not notice the apparent contradiction between the two principles-factors (territorial and ethnic) offered by themselves for the investigation of the azerbaijan literature.” if it is true to say that “those who came from azerbaijan families” and wrote their works in arabic, can be considered representatives of azerbaijan literature only because “the theme of motherland, homesickness towards their native land, native places, nature, sadness and pain of separation, love for native land prevail in their works”, it is also justified to mention that we can see the same feelings in the works by persian nizami gianjevi, moreover that he wrote in his native persian language 13 and on persian subjects (for example, “the seven beauties”), naming many toponyms of historical iran. is it congruous with the principles put forward in the introduction of the book in question, is it convincing, is it scientific to present fizuli (1494-1556) as an azerbaijani poet when, born in iraq, he had never seen and could never know azerbaijan (because this name appeared only in the xx century, you know) and wrote in arabic, persian and turkic? the same question can be asked about nizami (1141-1209) a persian who lived on the territory of present-day azerbaijan and wrote in persian. as a matter of fact neither of them is a representative of azerbaijan literature, as they did not write in the language of this literature. at least, either one or the other, but not both, because one is in contradiction with the other. what has been considered above does not, of course, exhaust every question deserving attention in the book “the astral cluster”. however, we will confine ourselves to this in the present article, reminding the azerbaijani academic scholars, that literatures of all peoples and nations, besides their own peculiarities and uniqueness, also possess universal regularities avoiding which is not permissible in science. to complete this critical review of the azerbaijani version of the history of national armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 177 literature we would prefer to refer to a very important warning or a lesson contained in the article “on the public responsibility of literary criticism” by d.s. likhachev (whose name does not need any commentaries and speaks for itself): “mixing the tasks of investigation with the tasks of popularization creates hybrids, the basic defect of which is its pseudo-scientific nature. pseudo-science is able to squeeze out science or lower the academic level of science. this phenomenon is very dangerous on a world scale, because it opens the gates to various kinds of chauvinistic or extremist tendencies in literary criticism… it is only the high science (a detailed philological study of literary works, texts and their language, demonstrable and unprejudiced nature of arguments, methodical and methodological exactness) that is able to soothe the extremist forces in the struggle for cultural heritage.” 14 notes and references: 1. nasa (national academy of sciences of azerbaijan). 2. later to refer to this publication we mention the page in the text. everything marked in the citations here and further is done by the authors of the present article (g. m., n. g.). 3. it consists of an introduction and twelve dastans (chapters). see, scientific publication in russian: “the book of my grandfather korkut”. oguz heroic epic. translation by academician v.v. bartold. prepared for publication by v.m. zirmunski, a.n. kanonov. m.l., 1962. since this is the best of all the russian publications, all our references are made to this publication. in case we refer to both the translation of the epic, and the works by v. v. bartold (“the turkish epic and the caucasus”, p. 109-120), by a.y. yakubovski (“kitab-and korkud and its meaning for the study of the turkmen society in the epoch of early middle ages”, p. 121-130), and by v.m. zirmunski (“the oguz heroic epic and “the book of korkut”, p. 109259) placed in the section “appendices”, the page is mentioned in brackets in the text. 4. evidently, all this takes place after 1453, that is after constantinople was changed into istanbul. meanwhile, it is stated in the book “astral cluster”, as we shall see later, the epic was created orally in the vii century a.d. according to another assertion, it is in this century that it was rewritten on papyrus (!) 5. in the appendices of the translation by v.v. bartold “onik” is given as “fortress in the district basin, in the region of erzrum, to the south-east (se) of it” (p. 266). 6. in v.v. bartold’s notes: “lake giokcha”, and the compilers have added “now lake sevan” (p. 277). 7. according to a number of investigations of the turkic epic, it was originally created on the territory of central asia, and then together with the oguzes nomadized and penetrated into new occupied territories, that’s why it is connected with the toponyms and oikonyms of not only azerbaijan but also with many others. see the articles in “the appendix and on pp. 281-283 in the publication of 1962 mentioned by us: “literature about “the book of my grandfather korkut.” 8. it is noteworthy that at the beginning of the xix century, the turks displayed a wish to return to their motherland, because as the source says: “asia minor in their eyes is an alien land occupied by force a place for residence, from where sooner or later they had to leave; they consider their motherland to be the countries of south-east which they can’t comprehend fully, it is a motherland but not a fatherland; there is no word “fatherland” in the turkish language, and the concept connected with it is not only unknown to a turk from anatolia but also quite uninarmenian folia anglistika armenological studies 178 telligible.” s.v. lurye, historical ethnology. manual for hei (higher educational institutions), aspect press, 1997, p. 243). 9. “extended soviet encyclopedia,”.v. 11 m., 1973. pp. 561-562 10. could it be possible to imagine that in france or in italy, in germany or in check republic, the historians of national literature announced by the territorial factor that the wealth of the literary treasure of their countries are the works created on the territory of these countries by russian writers and poets, such as gorkey, bunin, tsvetaeva and many others? of course, this is unimaginable. 11. we would like to remark that such and even more incompatible phrases in the article introducing the book to the russian reader are abundant. if not in terms of ideas and facts, at least in terms of the normative use of the russian language the head of the moscow publishing house “fiction” b. riabukhin and the editor a. kapustiuk could have felt more responsibility for the text, so important for the book, not to spoil it even more with the defects of the language use. 12. it should be mentioned in this connection, that in the same volume in the article “albania caucasian”, the outstanding scholar z.i. yampolski writes: “beginning from the 5th century the written language of a.c., accustomed to one of the local languages (the gargarian) began to develop. the alphabet of the albanian language consisting of 52 letters had common features with georgian and armenian alphabets” (p. 354). what the scholar has said is true, because all the three alphabets were created by mesrop mashtots personally or under his direct leadership. 13. it is worth mentioning here, how prof. biulbiul ogli entitled his introductory word: “motherland begins with one’s mother tongue”. further in the text itself: “…if you ask me from what azerbaijan begins for me personally, without thinking, i will answer: with mother tongue, in which our ancestors spoke” (p. 4). one had better stop and think if he/she perceives motherland and mother tongue in this way, before ascribing to azerbaijan literature the works by nizami created in the persian (mother) language. 14. d.s. likhachev, literature reality literature. l., 1984, pp. 244-245. ²½ ·³ ûçý ·ñ³ ï³ ýáõ ãû³ý å³ï ùáõã û³ý ³¹ñ μ» ç³ ý³ ï³ý ï³ñ μ» ñ³ ïá ùýý³ ï³ý ¹ç ï³ñï ù³ùμ ðá¹ í³ íáõù ñ³ý ·³ ù³ ýá ñ»ý ùýýáõ ãû³ý ³é ý» éáí 2009ã. øáëï í³ ûç §¶» õ³ñ í»ë ï³ ï³ý ·ñ³ ï³ ýáõ ãûá õý¦ ññ³ ï³ ñ³ï ãáõã û³ý éáõûë áý í³ û³í §²ëï õ³ ûçý áõ ïáõû½: ²¹ñ μ» ç³ ýç μ³ ý³ñ ûáõ ëáõ ãûá õýá ¨ ·ñ³ ï³ý ñáõ ß³ñ ó³ý ý» ñᦠëïí³ ñ³ í³ í³é åá õá í³ íáõý, ñ» õç ý³ï ý» ñá ùç ß³ñù ³ ý³ é³ñ ï» éç ÷³ë ï» ñáí óáõûó »ý ï³ éçë, áñ ýñ³ ýáõù ï»õ »ý ·ï»é μ³½ ù³ ãçí áõ μ³½ ù³ åç ëç ³ïý ñ³ûï ëë³é ý»ñ, ³ýï ñ³ ù³ μ³ ý³ ï³ý áõ ñ³ ï³ ·ç ï³ ï³ý åý¹áõù ý»ñ, å³ï ù³ ï³ý ëïáõû· ç ñá õáõã ûá õýý» ñç ·ç ï³ïó í³í áõ ã·ç ï³ïó í³í ï»õ íáõù ý»ñ, ³ûé åá õá íáõñ¹ ý» ñç ·ñ³ ï³ý-ùß³ ïáõ ã³ ûçý ³ñ å»ù ý» ñá ë» ÷³ ï³ ý» éáõ ³ý ã³ ùáõûó ýïñïáõ ùý»ñ ¨ ñá·¨áñ ùß³ ïáõû ãç å³ï ùáõã û³ý ·ç ï³ ï³ý áõ ëáõù ý³ ëç ñáõã û³ýý ³ý ñ³ ñçñ ñ³ ù³ý ù³ý ß³ï ³ûé »ñ¨áõû ãý»ñ, çëï áñ áã å³ ï³ë ï³ñ¨áñ ¿` ³û¹ ³ ù»ýý ³ñ í³í ¿ 黽 í³ ï³ý ó³íñ ïáõé ïáõ ñ³ ûáí: ð» õç ý³ï ý» ñç ëá ñçý ñ³ ùá½ ù³ùμ ³¹ñμ» ç³ ý³ ï³ý ·çï ý³ ï³ý ý» ñá ýù³ý ùá ï» óáõ ùý»ñ ¹ñë ̈ á ñ»é »ý ý³¨ ëáñññ ¹³ ûçý ï³ ñç ý» ñçý, áõë ïç, » ã» ³û¹ armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 179 ï» ë³ ï» ïçó ³ýëå³ ë» éç áõ ½³ñ ù³ ý³ éç á ãçýã ãï³, ³ å³ ùç³ý ·³ ù³ûý ½³ñ ù³ ý³ éç áõ ó³ í³ éç ¿ ³ûý, áñ ³û¹ ³ ù» ýá ãáõûé ¿ ïñí³í ²äð ù³ë ý³ ïçó å» ïáõã ûá õýý» ñç ñáõ ù³ ýç ï³ñ ³ ç³ï óáõ ãû³ý ùçç å» ï³ ï³ý ýáý ¹ç ñá í³ ý³ íá ñáõã û³ùμ §¶» õ³ñ í»ë ï³ ï³ý ·ñ³ ï³ ýáõ ãûá õý¦ ñ» õç ý³ ï³ íáñ ññ³ ï³ ñ³ï ãáõã û³ý ïå³ ·ñ³í ·ñùáõù: armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 180 maket_n_verjin.qxp the woman artist in edna st. vincent millay’s poetry1 my candle burn at both ends; it will not last the night; but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends it gives a lovely light! legendary figure, a woman of spirit andindependence, the first one to receive a pulitzer prize for literature, edna st. vincent millay built her poetics by reacting to and confronting the complex issues that has been concerning us forever, “relationship between men and women, compassion for one’s fellows, commitment to one’s country, the tender stewardship of our natural resources” (epstein 2001:156). she transformed those issues into the highly lyrical material, into the poetry of enduring value, molding her poems in a sensational and, sometimes, a highly provocative manner, while insisting on the dynamic vision of reality and showing how every poem of hers is “a work in progress or in process, subject to complex of forces that were, for wimsatt and beardsley, discernibly either ‘internal or external’ to the literary object” (becker-leckrone 2005:12). from the famous twenties in the past century until now, millay has remained both fascinating and repulsive for her readers, throwing them “into unsettling states in which the boundaries of life and death, the stability of meaning, seem constantly threatened” (41). daniel mark epstein, one of her biographers, in his book what lips my lips have kissed: the loves and love poems of edna st. vincent millay, writes that the woman artist in her poetry rebelled against cliche, cant, rhetoric, and superficial sentimentality, and that it is through the fierce treatment of the traditional forms that she performed her rebellion: she revolutionized the poetic form by making it more impressionable of the unstable emotions and chaotic perceptions of the twentieth century. in the oxford companion to american literature, in an entry about millay, she is described as a poet “who exhibited technical virtuosity, startling freshness, and a hunger for beauty” (hart 1995:432). later in her career, especially in a collection of poems titled a few figs from thisles, “she showed that though the disillusion of the postwar years 220 armenian folia anglistika literature aleksandra nikèeviæ-batriæeviæ marija kneževiæ was crowding in upon her, she was attempting to maintain gaiety with a consciously cynical flippancy” (432). in one of the collections that followed, the harp-weaver and the other poems, hart writes that she is noted for poems showing a further deepening from her earlier arch attitude to a more disillusioned bitterness, as well as for mature technical ability, particularly in the sonnet, the form in which her lyric gift, and her directness were exhibited. but, let us for the moment stop in order to avoid imposing an alien perspective on her poetry, although the critics repeatedly remind us that millay must be read in light of her own assumptions, that “the exclusions and necessities she endured, and, therefore her choices, were conditioned by her own world” (becker-leckrone 46), and most explicitely characterized by the central rhetoric device in most of her poems, and that is the use of the personal voice, informed by its own perspective and perceptive in approach to her own poetry. according to epstein, the most remarkable fact in her writing of the period when “the first fig” was published, is the power and enthusiasm of her expression in which there were no traces of “artificial rhetoricism. the fine lyric quality of her verses was allowed to stand forth unobscured by posing and affectuation” (epstein 2001:185). it is well known how the poem affected her career. nancy milford writes that the general reading public was stunned: the poem has usually been demarcated as witty, flippant, defiant, and fun. the change that occurred within the critical perception of her work is stunning itself and although the other scholars might suggest a myriad of alternative approaches to this poem, it might be understood as coding one moment of crisis as according to julia kristeva, whose theoretical postulates in reference to this poem by millay we shall discuss later, the moment of crisis might be defined not as an ultimate resistance, but as an unveiling of the abject. the fact that “the first fig” is basic in understanding of millay’s poetics, essential in formation of the subject, providing a brief but essential account of its formation, cannot be challenged. in fact, the single stanza, what norma millay in her sister’s published latters called “the candle one, surely the most quoated and misquoted quatrain in america” (160), became the hymn of her generation: “here was a quatrain that people, young women especially, took to heart. they took it even further; the jazz babes, as they soon will be called, took it as their rallying cry” (160). some critics suggest that ‘the first fig’ expresses an ideal of latin poets millay knew and loved, implying thus “ a complicated, ‘the heterogeneous practice’ that puts old texts in dialogue with new and involves the reader as well as the ‘writing subject,’ a subject shaped jointly by the forces of history, ideology, the unconscious, and the body,” (becker-leckrone 13) in a sense of bakhtin’s thesis that the text is plural, although millay herself repelled ‘the saturation of old discourses,’ implying that the thematic coherence of this poem with those from the latin tradition, remains undefiable: ‘life is impermanent and in the face of that impermanence, cavort! look death in the eye, tell him you’re as cute as a button, flash a little, defiant guile his way, and tell him to go fast on somebody’s else’s sweet flesh’. (epstein 160) 221 literature armenian folia anglistika the subtle performance of woman artists in millay’s poetry is mediated by class, nationality, sexual orientation, historical era, literary movements and theories of language, influences that kristeva deems important, as well as through the clash between the context and the poet’s imaginative constructs. “the first fig” registers the climax of those influences: as opposites that correlate in the poem they combat with each other, energizing thus the thematical, stylistic and rhytmical concerns in her poetry. the poem further might be defined as being about ‘revealing, examining and criticizing, the possibilities’; it reclames, articulates, and amplifies the modernistic expression of woman’s point of view, the celebration of the survival of this point of view in spite of the challenging forces that have been raging against it. it presents, more concretely, recovery and cultivation of female voice. the character of the author, “the substantial, palpable presence animating her works” (becker-lecrone 38), is divided subconsciously into two protagonsists featured in this poem: the woman poet and the woman reader. the woman poet is standing as a symbol of cultural and political dimension; the second is dialogic. they are engaged in intimate conversation, while the poem stands as a symbol of a female paradigm or, according to kristeva, intersubjective construction of the relationship. the reader encounters not simply a text, but a “subjectified object: the heart and mind of another woman” (39). if we accept the thesis by kristeva it seems that millay is closely introspecting anothers interiority – a power, a creativity, a suffering, a vision – that is similar to her own: “a book is not only a book; it is a means by which an author actually preserves [her] ideas, [her] feelings, [her] modes of dreaming and living. it is a means of saving [her] identity from death… to understand literary work, then, is to let the individual who wrote it reveal [herself] to us in us.” (439) but, why millay and kristeva? because both of them tend to bring the body back: millay into poetic discourse, kristeva into human sciences. furthermore, the reason for making the pregnant inroads into kristeva’s key concepts in the analysis of this poem, is because both of them focus on the significance of the maternal and preoedipal in the constitution of subjectivity (kristeva’s notion of abjection as an explanation for oppression and discrimination can easily be detected in the text of this poem by millay)2; millay and kristeva because of the fact that we have to take into consideration the importance of the context in which millay lived and worked, especially the twenties when she published her most famous poems, at “a historical moment that seems on the verge of upheavals at once linguistic, aesthetic, political, and intellectual” (11). the poem, accordingly conveys two possibilities: “the most intimate discourse of the self to the most collective discourse of mankind (religious, political, and so on.)” (19). 1. in reference to the concept of abjection this poem might be defined as the radical presentation of the speaking subject, of the crisis that subject experiences, in a sense that this poem is a mode of expressing those horrors, instead of repressing them. 222 armenian folia anglistika literature the horror is provoked by the ‘profound upheaval of mentalities’ in the us at the beginning of the century. it presents the paradigmatic instance, the culmination of discompossing horrors that poet faces at one moment in her life. to paraphrase kristeva, in this poem millay shows “extraodinary ability to absorb digest, and neutralize all of the key, radical or dramatic moments of thought” (23); the triad of ‘horror, love and melancholic ambiguity’ present radical manifestations of extreme subjective crisis, kristeva writes. the poem might also be understood as a mask of dissatisfaction with the anticipated image of a female writer, a moment of culmination of pre-oedipal, ‘specular’ relation between an ideal-i, and an actual i. according to lacan, this moment in her poetry might implicate the condition, “by which the subject will relate to objects, distinguish self from other, in the realm of symbolic” (28) as if taking a journey of a solitary soul (reference to kate chopin!), or, as kristeva wrote in her analyzes of celine’s journey to the end of the night, the poem is like a trope of “a journey, during the night, the end of which keeps receding” (32). the abjection draws the subject to the limits of its own demarcated boundaries. the crisis of place in america is characterized by chaos and din, and, according to kristeva, it precipitates a crisis of meaning and identification (“what is that? is that me? what i am? how have i changed?”) (8) in a sense that by this poem both the subject and the author, are summoned from their proper place to a no-man’s land where the subject is not only “beside himself but also almost ceases to be” (33) (when regarded in reference to the context to which she belongs), the no-man land where the abject crisis is mostly evident, as she recalls “infantile pangs of separation or threaten ‘death infecting life’ ” (37) from the presentations and behavioral concepts that were required of her. millay’s model of abjection might further be defined as “cultural taboos regarding the maternal” (38). in her poetry the crisis of context is the crisis of subject, as it seems that in this poem millay sums up the personal experience and her direct account of the era. 2. according to another key concept of kristeva, agape/eros concept, millay is a prototype of a new woman, whose premise is the established image of free love, while the various and specific dynamics affect the amorous protagonists who are revealed out of it. kristeva argues that “the subject must arise in order to unify: the separation from the mother allows the subject to produce an ego, and this production expresses itself in terms of an ego ideal, which makes it possible for the subject to love,” (152), to love her own independence, her own difference. in the light of this concept the subject that the author exemplifies might be defined as dionysian, while the word ‘friends’ indicates the existence of the carnival and carnivalesque to mean a general process of transgressing literary, political, or social norms (153), as we might add that the poem depicts the moment or “an occasion in which the normal order and hierarchies of society are, for a time and in a given place, temporarily suspended” (153). millay, herself is carnivalesque in a sense that she challenges god and patriarchal constructs. 3. the concept of dialogizing, or, according to kristeva the ‘double-voicing’ of american societal concept, according to which millay is on the side of the necessity to 223 literature armenian folia anglistika decentralize, contrary to the tension to centralize that is inherent to the american societal concept. the concept of dialogizing might be considered in reference to relation to the poetic text from an older tradition, latin in this case, what kristeva has termed the ‘interpenetration and interdependence’. 4. the concept of intertextuality in millay’s poem, that according to kristeva stresses the passage from one sign system to another that takes place “as one text creates itself out of the thematic and generic materials of another text” (155), the moment in her opus when we can most easily notice ‘the interpenetration and interdependence’ of historical foreground that provides ‘the very capacity for the meaning to exist’. 5. the interplay of semiotic and symbolic, so important in kristeva’s work, plays the important role in the understanding of this poem (162-165), in a sense that it presents double force or ground from which the poem apprises (162). the semiotic is provoked by a feminine heritage, the figure of mother being very important in millay’s development of ego, while the symbolic is provoked by the origins of the father, symbolically presented by the upheavals of mentalities in the us. thematic changes in this part of millay’s career, constitute changes in the status of the subject (164). reading ‘the first fig’ from the context of kristeva’s key concepts reveals the basic postulates that are existent within the whole corpus of millay’s poetry, although the gradual change in their expliciteness from one poem to another, from one collection to the next, is discernible. the reading through kristeva provides the close interospection of two complex areas: the context and the text, revealing to us that the formation of the woman artist finds its culmination within this short poem. notes: 1. do not consider our paper as hermetic or self-referential, because in it we were relying (by both quoting and paraphrasing) on the certain segments of study about julia kristeva and literary criticism, by megan becker-leckrone, as well as kristeva’s study. 2. in this segment of the paper we paraphrased quotation on kristeva by oliver kelly. see the bibliographical source below. references: 1. becker, leckrone, megan (2005) julia kristeva and literary theory. new york: palgrave macmillan. 2. epstein, daniel mark (2001) what lips my lips have kissed: the loves and love poems of edna st. vincent millay. new york: henry holt and company. 224 armenian folia anglistika literature 3. felluga, dino. modules on kristeva: on the abject // introductory guide to critical theory. http://www.purdue.edu/guidetotheory/psychoanalysis/kristevaabject.html, accessed at august 3, 2007. 4. hart, james, d. (1995) the oxford companion to american literature. new yorkoxford: oxford university press. 5. kelly, oliver: kristeva and feminism. http://www.cddc.vt.edu/feminism/kristeva. html, accessed at august 18, 2007. 6. kristeva, julia (1982) powers of horror.new york: columbia university press. 7. kristeva, julia (1982) poetic language. new york: columbia university press. 8. milford, nancy (2001) savage beauty: the life of edna st. vincent millay. new york: random house. 9. (1980) desire in language. / ed. by roudiez, leon. new york: columbia university press. îçý ³ñí»ëï³·»ïá ¾¹ý³ øçé»ûç åỽç³ûáõù ¿¹ý³ øçé»ûá` é»·»ý¹³ñ ùç ³ýóý³íáñáõãûáõý, ³ñå³ý³å³ïçí ¨ ³ýï³ë ùç ïçý, ï³éáõó»ó çñ ³ßë³ññá ³ý¹ñ³¹³éý³éáí ³ûý µ³ñ¹ ëý¹çñý»ñçý, áñáýù ñáõ½»é »ý ù³ñ¹ïáõãû³ýá çñ å³ïùáõãû³ý áõç áýã³óùáõù` ïçý – ïõ³ù³ñ¹ ñ³ñ³µ»ñáõãûáõýý»ñ, ï³ñ»ïó³ýù ïáõùçýç ýï³ïù³ùµ, ýíçñí³íáõãûáõý ñ³ûñ»ýçùçý ¨ ³ûéý: ²ûë ñ³ëï³óáõãûáõýý»ñá ýñ³ ·ñãç ï³ï ÷áë³ï»ñåí»óçý ¨ ¹³ñó³ý ñ³í»ñå³ï³ý ³ñå»ù áõý»óáõ ùç çýùý³ïçå ùý³ñ³ï³ý ³ßë³ññ` çñ ½·³óùáõýùý»ñçý ñ³ù³ñáõýã: æýãå»ë åý¹áõù ¿ ¸³ýç»é ø³ñï ¾÷ßï»ûýá ³ûë ïçý-³ñí»ëï³·»ïý çñ åỽç³ûáõù áý¹í½áõù ¿ ï³õ³å³ñç, ï»õí³íáñáõãû³ý, ßçýíáõ å»ñ׳ëáëáõãû³ý ¨ ë»ýïçù»ýï³éç½ùç ¹»ù` ³ýëý³ ç³ëç³ë»éáí µ³ý³ëï»õíáõãû³ý ³í³ý¹³ï³ý ó¨»ñá: ¿¹ý³ øçé»ûç é³í³·áõûý ñ³í³ù³íáõý»ñçó áýïñí³í ùç ß³ñù µ³ý³ëï»õíáõãûáõý»ñç í»ñéáõíáõãû³ý ùççáóáí ëáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù í»ñ »ý ñ³ýíáõù ïçý-³ñí»ëï³·»ïç ñá·áõ ·áõïñçï ¹ñë¨áñáõùý»ñá, å³ûù³ñý áõ ³ßë³ññáýï³éáõùá: 225 literature armenian folia anglistika maket 2011:layout 1.qxd byzantine military pragmatism vs. imperial prejudice: possible reasons for omitting the armenians from the list of hostiles in maurice’s “strategikon” armen ayvazyan matenadaran – the institute of ancient manuscripts (yerevan) the problem of the various images of the armenians in byzantium has already become the subject of numerous, if sketchy, historical investigations and remarks.1 as a rule, students of this subject have focused on the images of those armenians who resided beyond armenia proper in the byzantine capital and peripheral provinces as either newly-arrived immigrants or old-established inhabitants. consequently, the shaping of the images of the armenians in byzantine empire was appropriately sought and analyzed in such spheres as ecclesiastical differences between armenian and greek churches, the ethnic peculiarities of everyday life as well as the rivalry in the imperial court between the armenians and greeks, the two major ethnic components of byzantine elite. in contrast, this essay aims to analyze the byzantines’ image of the armenians of armenia, that is, those who continued to live in and exercise military and political authority over their homeland. accordingly, this study focuses on the geopolitical determinant in the construction of armenian images in the imperial strata of byzantine society. the “strategikon”, an influential manual of byzantine military strategy attributed to emperor maurice (582-602), includes a separate chapter, in the words of the author, on “the tactics and characteristics of each race which may cause trouble to our state.” 2 the section deals specifically with “the persians,” “the scythians, that is, avars, turks 3 and others,” “the light-haired peoples, such as the franks, lombards, and others like them,” “the slavs, the antes, and the like.” maurice’s basic approach to these hostiles is down-to-earth military, often even highly complimentary about their particular martial traits. in spite of this pragmatism, however, all of these ethnically different peoples receive, to a greater or lesser degree, their dose of imperial prejudice, which itself was a necessary element for indoctrination of troops. thus, the persians, the old arch-enemy, are described as “wicked, dissembling, and servile”; 4 the avars as “scoundrels, devious…, treacherous, foul, faithless, possessed by an insatiate desire for riches…, very fickle, avaricious…”; 5 the franks and lombards as “disobedient to their leaders,” “easily corrupted by money, greedy as they are”;6 the slavs as having “ill feeling toward one another,” “no regard for treaties,” and hence “completely faithless” (this last reproach sounds especially hollow and cynical, because just a couple of pages earlier maurice is advising his commanders to “pretend to come to agreements” with the enemy), 7 “always at odds with each other.” 8 in this depiction of hostile and troublesome peoples, the “strategikon” conspicuously omits the armenians, who had on many occasions fought the byzantine troops either on their own or, more often, as allies or vassals of persia. 9 furthermore, in the course of armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 141 the 6 th century there were several uprisings in armenian lands under the empire’s control. the rebellion of 538-539 stands out as perhaps the most prominent. first, the armenians killed acacius, who was appointed by the emperor justinian as head of their provinces. then they assembled an army and took full control of the country. the byzantine army sent by justinian against them suffered a humiliating defeat near the armenian town of avnik (procopius mentions it as oenochalakon) in the westernmost edge of the heartland province of ayrarat in armenia proper. in this battle fought in the rugged terrain, the armenians managed to kill the commanding general sittas.10 the latter was one of justinian’s greatest generals. procopius presents him as “a capable warrior, and a general second to none of his contemporaries” with “continual achievements against the enemy.” 11 defining sittas as “a general second to none of his contemporaries,” procopius definitely had in mind the great generals belisarius and narses (who was an armenian), with whom sittas had an equivalent status and reputation during his lifetime.12 after the death of sittas, justinian was forced to send against the armenians another army under bouzes.13 during maurice’s own reign, three armenian insurrections took place: 589, 591 and 601.14 although they did not result in major hostilities and prolonged bloodshed, the military potential for armenian resistance was evident as much as the unique combat capabilities of the armenian troops, which were acknowledged by both the romans and the persians. the absence of the armenians from maurice’s list of hostile forces is all the more remarkable because contemporary armenian primary sources have recorded verbatim his extremely negative attitude towards the armenians. maurice’s critical depiction of the armenians has been preserved in the seventh-century history of bishop sebeos. according to sebeos, maurice, in a special message to the persian king and his ally khosrov (chosroes) ii parviz (590-628) proposed a conspiracy to destroy armenia’s armed forces by removing its military class, the nobility and their troops from armenia and resettling them in remote areas of byzantium and persia. in his message, maurice addresses the persian king as follows: a self-willed and recalcitrant nation lives between us and causes trouble.15 now come: i shall mobilize mine [the armenian princes and their troops] and send them to thrace, while you would mobilize yours and send them to the east. if they perish, our enemies would perish; if they kill [each other], they would kill our enemies, and we shall live in peace. for, if they remain in their country, we shall have no rest. then both [kings] have made an agreement [on the proposed policies].16 sebeos identifies this proposal as “the perfidious plot by maurice to empty armenia of armenian princes.” 17 he also accentuates the bigoted character of maurice’s accusations, calling his message to the persian king “the letter of vilifications about all the princes of armenia and their troops.” 18 armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 142 byzantine and persian policies towards armenian nobility were carried out exactly in terms of maurice’s message to khosrov ii and correctly identified by both contemporary and modern historians as aimed at weakening armenia and undermining its military establishment. 19 the factual, if not textual, authenticity of maurice’s letter, including its strategic prescriptions, can thus be considered as historical reality. the content of this letter or the letter itself could have been passed to the armenian leaders (and through them to sebeos) by no one else than the same king khosrov ii, who immediately initiated a new war against the byzantine empire after the murder of maurice. khosrov needed the support of the armenians and this letter would have served as an incriminating evidence against the ill intentions of byzantium. further, maurice’s letter falls within an earlier roman pattern of representing the armenians as a historically defiant element against both roman and parthian/(later) persian superpowers. precisely the same leitmotif about the armenian image resonates in the following comment by publius (gaius) cornelius tacitus (ad 56–ca ad 120): armenia... from the earliest period, has owned a national character and a geographical situation of equal ambiguity, since with a wide extent of frontier conterminous with our own provinces, it stretches inland right up to media; so that the armenians lie interposed between two vast empires, with which, as they detest rome and envy the parthian, 20 they are too frequently at variance (emphasis is mine – a.a.). [[armenia] ambigua gens ea antiquitus hominum ingeniis et situ terrarum, quoniam nostris provinciis late praetenta penitus ad medos porrigitur; maximisque imperiis interiecti et saepius discordes sunt, adversus romanus odio et in parthum invidia.] 21 the same twofold anti-iranian and anti-byzantine attitudes of the independence-oriented armenians are implicitly validated by the renowned commander-in-chief (sparapet) of the armenian army vasak mamikonian (?-368), who after being treacherously captured by the persian king shapuh ii (309-379) spoke to him as follows (the text is reported by pavstos buzand, the fifth-century armenian historian): ...[while free] i was a giant, one of my feet rested on one mountain, the other on another mountain. when i was leaning on my right foot, i pushed the right mountain into the earth, and when i was leaning on my left foot, i pushed the left mountain into the earth.... one of those two mountains was you, and the other – the king of the greeks [i.e. the roman emporer]... (the emphasis is mine) 22 notably, both tacitus’ and emperor maurice’s judgments were uttered during periods of combined anti-armenian policies conducted by iranian and roman/(later) byzantine empires. what they in fact superbly exemplify – vis-à-vis a full-fledged ethnonational consolidation of the armenians in the historical periods under examination – is the armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 143 important cross-cultural correlation of the frustration-aggression-displacement theory, known as “the more ingroup coordination and discipline, the more outgroup hostility.” 23 these ethnic traits of the armenians were pithily captured by walter e. kaegi, a prominent historian of byzantine empire, who did not omit to note that both the arabs and the byzantines had to take into consideration the “intractability and formidable character of the armenians.” 24 kaegi adds that “in no other region of the byzantine empire… did the local inhabitants have a tradition of being so well armed and prone to rely on themselves and their own family groupings and notables,” noting also the armenians’ “impulse to local autonomy” and their “will to remain distinctively armenian.” 25 as the historical evidence cited above suggests the armenians were fully qualified to be included in the “strategikon” ’s list of troublesome nations and their omission was certainly not a coincidence. to the best of my knowledge, the question of why they are absent from this list has never been posed before. raising it can lead us to several important conclusions and suppositions. below is a set of the possible answers. 1. maurice’s own armenian origin, which has been a subject of contention, 26 if true, could have prevented him from openly portraying the armenians as a hostile people and, thus, attacking indirectly his own reputation. 2. the same motive should have been strengthened by the fact that the armenians already constituted part of the byzantine military and political elite: many byzantine dignitaries and field commanders were of armenian origin. as noted by p. charanis, “procopius mentions by name no less than seventeen armenian commanders, including, of course, the great narses.” 27 although, as mentioned by the same author, the armenian element in the byzantine army was prominent in the armies of justinian and tiberius, “the situation changed in the course of the reign of maurice, chiefly as a result of the avaro-slavic incursions into the balkan peninsula. these incursions virtually eliminated illyricum as a source of recruits and reduced the possibilities of thrace. they cut communications with the west and made recruitments there most difficult. the empire, as a consequence, had to turn elsewhere for its troops. it turned to the regions of caucasus and armenia. in the armies of maurice, we still find some huns and also some lombards. we find bulgars too. but the armenian is the element which dominates (the emphasis is mine – a.a.).28 for the success of his deliberate policies of resettling the armenians into restless frontier regions of the empire, mostly the balkans and especially thrace, maurice was purposefully wooing the armenian military. he relied heavily on their loyalty and military skills.29 therefore, it would have been totally inappropriate to present them as a threat in a major tactics field manual for the officers, many of whom were armenians. 3. in 591 maurice imposed upon the byzantine part of armenian clergy the empire’s dominant chalcedonite christian doctrine. again, the purpose was not a brutal suppression of armenians, but their smooth hellenization. their portrayal as a hostile people would have harmed his ecclesiastical initiative as well. 4. the omission of the armenians from the “strategikon” ’s list of hostile peoples could serve as further evidence in support of dating the composition of this military manual during maurice’s rule from 582 to 602. if considered from this particular omission armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 144 only, a more plausible time frame would have been after persian king khosrov ii ceded parts of eastern armenia to maurice in 591, effectively making the byzantine empire the ruler of the larger part of armenia and simultaneously turning the majority of the armenians into the subjects of the empire. after this, their open representation as a hostile people would have become nearly impossible.30 thus, the byzantine imperial prejudice against the armenians, having been deliberately concealed and censored on the grounds of political and military expediency, did stay fully in place and provided ideological underpinning for the empire’s expansionist policies toward armenia. however, as we have seen above, all this did not prevent traditionally independent-minded armenians from correctly comprehending maurice’s conspiracy aimed at undermining armenia’s own military potential. accordingly, the armenians themselves defined maurice as a hostile monarch and his empire as fundamentally colonialist. notes and references: 1. for an excellent, though unfortunately short, essay, see speros vryonis, jr., “byzantine images of the armenians,” in r. hovannisian, the armenian image in history and literature (malibu, ca: undena publications, 1981), pp. 65-81; cf. а. п. каждан, армяне в составе господствующего класса византийской империи в xi-xii вв. (ереван, 1975), с. 141; nina g. garsoian, “the problem of armenian integration into the byzantine empire,” in hélène ahrweiler, angeliki e. laiou, eds., studies on the internal diaspora of the byzantine empire (washington, dc: dumbarton oaks, 1998), pp. 66-67; armen ayvazyan, the code of honor of the armenian military, 4-5th centuries (yerevan, matenadaran: “artagers,” 2000, in armenian), pp. 25-26, 40-41 (notes 52, 54). 2. maurice’s strategikon: handbook of byzantine military strategy (the middle ages series). translated by george t. dennis (philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press, 1984), pp.113-126. 3. these would be the turkic nomads “in the area east of the black sea and north of persia” (see ibid., p. 116, note 3, referring to john wiita, the ethnika in byzantine military treatises. ph.d. diss., university of minnesota, 1977, p. 122). 4. ibid., p. 113. 5. ibid., pp. 116, 118. 6. ibid., p. 119. 7. ibid., p. 120. 8. ibid., p. 121-122. 9. it should be remembered that in 387 armenia was divided between the roman empire and sassanid persia. the persians took control of its major, eastern part, where the kingdom of armenia continued to exist until abolished in 428. the western part of armenia fell under the roman empire’s rule. 10. procopius of ceasaria, history of the wars: the persian war. vol. i, book 2 armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 145 (london: william heinemann; new york : the macmillan co., 1914), pp. 272-277. 11. ibid., p. 277. 12. on one occasion sittas, together with belisarius, fought and lost against another narses (nerses), an armenian general in the persian army (ibid., pp. 101, 139; for the military career of sittas, see also pp. 131, 133, 137, 195, 197, 201). sittas was well-acquainted with armenian affairs, since in 529-531 he served in armenia in the highest possible capacity of stratelates and magister militum per armeniam (see nicholas adontz, armenia in the period of justinian: the political conditions based on the naxarar system. translated from russian by nina garsoian (lisbon: galouste gulbenkian foundation, 1970), pp. 108-111). 13. ibid., 277. 14. see eduard l. danielyan, political history of armenia and the armenian apostolic church (vi-vii centuries), yerevan, 2000 (in armenian), pp.49-56; cf. the armenian history attributed to sebeos. translated, with notes, by r. w. thomson. historical commentary by james howard-johnston. assistance from tim greenwood. part 1 (liverpool univ. press, 1999), p. xx-xxi; gabriel soultanian, the history of bishop sebeos: redefining a seventh-century voice from armenia (london: bennet & bloom, 2007), p. 45. 15. incidentally, the thesis about the recalcitrance of the armenians was later reiterated by the arabs, who mentioned the armenian prisoners as “the worst among the white slaves.” see а. мец, мусульманский ренессанс (the muslim renaissance) (moscow: nauka, 1966), pp. 138, 140-141. 16. «ազգ մի խոտոր եւ անհնազանդ են, ասէ, կան ի միջի մերում եւ պղտորեն: բայց ե՛կ, ասէ, ես զիմս ժողովեմ եւ ի թրակէ գումարեմ. եւ դու զքոյդ ժողովէ եւ հրամայէ յարեւելս տանել: զի եթէ մեռանին՝ թշնամիք մեռանին. եւ եթէ սպանանեն՝ զթշնամիս սպանանեն. եւ մեք կեցցուք խաղաղութեամբ: զի եթէ դոքա յերկրի իւրեանց լինիցին՝ մեզ հանգչել ոչ լինի»: միաբանեցան երկոքին»: սեբեոսի եպիսկոպոսի պատմություն [the history of bishop sebeos], preparation of the text, the preface and commentary by g. v. abgaryan (yerevan, 1979), p. 86; cf. s. malkhasyantz’ publication of the same history (yerevan, 1939), p. 49. translation into english is mine. there are a few differences from other translations, including the translation of the word ժողովել as mobilize rather than gather, which makes clear maurice’s intention of gathering the troops rather than the armenian civilian. for other translations of this passage into english, see adontz, armenia in the period of justinian, p. 166; charanis, the armenians in the byzantine empire (lisboa: livraria bertrand, 1963), pp. 14-15; the armenian history attributed to sebeos, op.cit., p. 31. 17. «նենգաւոր խորհուրդ մաւրկայ՝ թափուր յիշխանաց հայոց կացուցանել զհայս», (the history of bishop sebeos, p. 86). r. thomson translated this passage as “a letter of accusation… concerning all the armenian princes and their troops” (the armenian history attributed to sebeos, op.cit., p. 31; earlier “a letter of accusation” was suggested by n. garsoian, see adontz, armenia in the period of justinian, p. 166). there are two problems with this translation. first, the armenian armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 146 word գիր ամբաստանութեան (ամբաստանագիր) has also the well-known meaning of “libel,” which corresponds much more adequately to this case. second, maurice’s letter was specifically about the armenian princes who were residing in armenia proper and the armenian original clearly uses the expression “of armenia” (հայաստանեայց). the translation offered in this paper does also correspond to the historical context, because there were many armenian commanders of princely status and origin in byzantine military service, whom maurice clearly did not have in mind, when writing his letter in question. 18. «գիր ամբաստանութեան վասն իշխանացն ամենայն հայաստանեայց եւ զաւրաց իւրեանց» (the history of bishop sebeos, p. 86). 19. adontz, armenia in the period of justinian, op. cit., p. 159-161. grousset r., histoire de l’armenie. paris, 1947, p. 258. e. danielyan identifies these policies as “the maurice doctrine” (danielyan, political history of armenia and the armenian apostolic church, pp. 49-56). recently, j. howard-johnston has advanced a revisionist interpretation of how “the recruiting process… worked to the armenians’ advantage” and, concurrently, rejected sebeos’ assessment of byzantine and persian empires’ real intentions about armenia (see the armenian history attributed to sebeos, pp. xx-xxi). these assumptions, however, are absolutely not convincing and, in fact, contradict the available historical evidence. the byzantine policies of keeping their section of armenia “under strictest guard and exhausted by unwanted taxes”, removing the armenians out of their country and scattering them “to every corner of the roman empire” had been recognized by non-armenian sources even before maurice’s more forceful policies to the same effect (see procopius of ceasaria, history of the wars: the persian war. vol. iv, the gothic war (london: william heinemann; harvard university press, 1924), pp. 422-423. 20. the collocation of “in parthum invidia” should be translated as “vie with the parthian” rather than “envy the parthian.” such a translation is more accurate in terms of historical context as well as the existing semantic option. the french translation of jalousie for invidia is a more adequate option: “...en arménie. de tout temps la foi de ce royaume fut douteuse, á cause du caractère des habitants et de la situation du pays, qui borde une grande étendue de nos provinces, et de l΄autre côté s΄enfonce jusqu΄aux mèdes. placés entre deux grands empires, les arméniens sont presque toujours en querelle, avec les romains par haine, par jalousie avec les parthes” (tacite, œuvres complètes. tradirites en franςais avec une introduction et des notes par j. l. bunouf. paris։ librairie hachette, 1878, p. 79). for a detailed analysis of the existing translations (including those into russian and modern armenian) of this passage, see armen ayvazyan, the cornerstones of armenian identity: the armenian language, army and state (yerevan: “lusakn,” 2007, in armenian), pp. 107-110. 21. tacitus, annales. with an english translation by clifford h. moore (cambridge, mass.-london։ harvard university press, 1969), ii, 56, pp. 472, 474. 22. [ես սկայ էի. մի ոտնս ի միոյ լերին կայր, եւ միւս ոտնս իմ ի միոյ լերին կայր։ յորժամ յաջ ոտնս յենուի, զաջ լեառն ընդ գետին տանէի, որժամ ի armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 147 ձախ ոտնն յենուի, զձախ լեառն ընդ գետին տանէի... լերինքն երկուք, մի դու էիր, եւ մի` թագաւորն յունաց։] pavstos buzand, hayotz patmutiun (history of armenia), tiflis, 1912, book iv, chapter 54. 23. see robert a. levine and donald t. campbell, ethnocentrism: theories of conflict, ethnic attitudes, and group behavior (u.s.a.-canada: john wiley & sons, inc., 1972), pp. 124-125. 24. see walter e. kaegi, byzantium and the early islamic conquests, cambridge university press, 1992), p. 202, cf. a separate chapter on “byzantium, armenia, armenians, and early islamic conquests,” ibid., pp. 181-204. 25. ibid., pp. 189, 198. 26. charanis, the armenians in the byzantine empire, p. 14. for the historical analyses into the armenian origin of maurice, see kaegi, byzantium and the early islamic conquests, p. 64. note 47. 27. ibid., p. 16. 28. ibid., p. 17. 29. in this connection it would be useful to recall that maurice’s predecessor, the emperor justinian was lenient in his treatment of artavan arshakuni (artabanes arshacid), the former armenian rebel leader, to the point of dangerously exposing his own security. even after the discovery of assassination plot against himself, justinian did not severely punish him. for artabanes’ participation in the plot to kill justinian, see procopius, vol. iv, the gothic war (london, 1924), pp. 422-436. this overindulgence with the armenian generals, who previously fought against his armies (according to procopius, artabanes was also possibly the one who personally killed general sittas sent by justinian against the armenian army in 538/539), was clearly stemming from the same desire to use their skills and armed forces. eventually, it was paying off, as in the cases of artabanes, narses and a great number of other talented generals of armenian descent. 30. in this context, the hypothesis by john wiita that the strategikon was authored by philippicus, general and brother-in-law of maurice, between 603-615 (see maurice’s strategikon, p. xvii), looks even less credible. ´ûáõ½³ý¹³ï³ý é³½ù³ï³ý åñ³·ù³ïç½ùý áý¹¹»ù ï³ûë»ñ³ï³ý ý³ë³å³ß³ñùáõýùç (øáñçïç« “êïñ³ï»·çïáý” ³ßë³ïáõãû³ý ãßý³ùçý»ñç ó³ýïáõù ñ³û»ñçý ãáý¹·ñï»éáõ ñý³ñ³íáñ å³ï׳éý»ñá) øáñçï ï³ûëñçý (582-602) í»ñ³·ñíáõ« “êïñ³ï»·çïáý” »ñïá μûáõ½³ý¹³ ï³ý μ³ ý³ïç ëå³û³ï³½ùç ñ³ù³ñ ý³ë³ï»ëí³íª é³½ù³í³ñáõãû³ý áõ ù³ñï³í³ñáõãû³ý ï³ñ¨áñ ó»éý³ñï ¿ñ: ²û¹ ³ßë³ïáõãû³ý ù»ç ï³ ùç ³ é³ýóçý ·éáõë, áñï»õ í»ñéáõíáõãû³ý »ý »ýã³ñïí³í, ñ»õçý³ïç ëáëù»ñáí, ´ûáõ½³ý¹³ ï³ý ï³ûëñáõãû³ýá §íý³ë å³ï׳ é»éáõ áý¹áõý³ï åáõáíáõñ¹ý»ñç ù³ñï³í³ñáõãûáõýý áõ armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 148 ñ³ïï³ýçßý»ñá¦: ð³ï³ý»-ñ³ýí³ý» ùýýí³í »ý §å³ñëçïý»ñá¦, ëïûáõãý»ñá, ³ûý ¿ª ³ í³ñý»ñá, ãûáõñù»ñá ¨ ³ûéù« ßçï³ñ»ñ åáõáíáõñ¹ý»ñá, ³û¹ ãíáõùª ýñ³ýïý»ñá, éáùμ³ñ¹ý»ñá ¨ ³ûéù« §ëé³íáýý»ñá, ³ýï»ñá ¨ ýñ³ýó ýù³ýý»ñá¦: àý¹ áñáõùª ¿ãýçï³å»ë ï³ñμ»ñ ³û¹ åáõáíáõñ¹ý»ñçó ûáõñ³ù³ýãûáõñá ýï³ñ³·ñí³í ¿ ùç ïáõùçóª çñ é³½ù³ï³ý ï³ñáõáõãûáõýý»ñç áõ ñ³ïï³ýçßý»ñç ûμû»ïïçí áõ ñ³×³ë μ³ñóñ ·ý³ñ³ïù³ùμ, ùûáõë ïáõùçóª ï³ûë»ñ³ï³ý ý³ë³å³ß³ñí³íáõãû³ý çñ»ý ïñí³í ã³÷³ μ³åýáí: ¼³ñù³ý³éçáñ»ý, ñ³û»ñá, áñáýù ß³ï ³ý·³ù ¿çý ïéí»é μûáõ½³ý¹³ ï³ý ½áñù»ñç ¹»ù, ¨° ùç³ûý³ï, ¨°, ³ í»éç ñ³×³ëª áñå»ë æñ³ýç ¹³ßý³ïçó ï³ù »ýã³ï³ áõå»ñ, μ³ ó³ï³ûáõù »ý “êïñ³ï»·çïáý甪 ï³ûëñáõãû³ý ñ³ù³ñ ãßý³ùç ï³ù ñ³í³ý³ï³ý ñ³ï³é³ïáñ¹ ¹çïí³í åáõáíáõñ¹ý»ñç ³û¹ ó³ýïçó: êáõûý ñá¹í³íá ùýýáõù ¿ ëý¹ñá ³ é³ñï³ å³ïù³ï³ý å³ù³ý³ï³ßñç³ýáõù ñ³û-μûáõ½³ý¹³ ï³ý ñ³ñ³μ» ñáõãûáõýý»ñá ¨ ³ é³ç³ñïáõù ñ³û»ñçý« “êïñ³ï»·çïáý”-ç ãßý³ùçý»ñç ó³ýïçó ñ³ý»éáõ ñý³ñ³íáñ å³ï׳éý»ñá: armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 149 maket 2013:layout 1.qxd verbal vs non-verbal means of expressing emotion in cmc tatevik kirakosyan yerevan state university i n the last decade there has been an enormous increase in computer-mediated communication (cmc) 1. cmc includes a variety of electronic message and conference systems, which can be supplemented by audio and video links. computerbased communication has become common in our daily lives, and this raises the question of how different online communication is from face-to-face communication. do we chat in the same way in live interactions and via computers? nowadays one can hardly meet a friend or a colleague somewhere and ask for a phone number, rather they will exchange e-mail addresses and chats, which makes the work more efficient. in addition, email and chat services also help us to maintain our relationships with friends and colleagues in different locations. cmc can be synchronous (e.g., chat) or asynchronous 2 (e.g., e-mail), and the messages are predominantly typewritten (adrianson 2001). more and more interactions take place via e-mail and chat, privately as well as professionally. in other words, for most people today it is hard to imagine themselves without a computer and without access to the internet. the aim of this article is to review whether communication of emotions is more difficult in computer-mediated communication (cmc) than in face-to-face (f2f) interaction by using certain verbal or non-verbal means of communication. emotion communication is defined as the recognition, expression and sharing of emotions or moods between two or more individuals. as humans we experience different types of emotions and feelings. emotions determine the quality of our lives. they occur in every relationship we care about. they can save our lives, but they can also cause real damage. we don’t become emotional about everything. emotions come and go: we feel an emotion one moment and may not feel any emotion at another moment. some people are much more emotional than the others, but there are times when even the most emotional do not feel any emotion. the most common way in which emotions occur is when we sense, rightly or wrongly, that something that seriously affects our welfare, for better or worse, is happening or is about to happen. according to p. ekman it is a simple idea but a central one emotions evolved to prepare us to deal quickly with the most vital events in our lives (ekman 2003). many philosophers distinguish between two types of emotion: episodes and emotional states or dispositions. philosophers call episodes occurrents when they refer to the things which happen. episodes may be short-lived 3 or long-lived. philosophers often distinguish between occurrents and endurants. occurrents happen, whereas endurants last, endure. one type of endurant, if common sense is to be believed, is ordinary things and persons. another type of endurant is states. on one common view, states are a type of continuant they last. the category of states has often been applied to affective phenomarmenian folia anglistikalinguistics 111 ena: someone can be in a state of sadness, in a mood or state of melancholy, despair, or bliss. moods as we know are states or frames of mind. the frequency of our emotional episodes is another crucial feature in understanding an individual’s emotional profile. how well we can control what we do and say and feel during an emotional episode is also an important element in each individual’s emotional profile, while another aspect is how clearly we signal others how we are feeling (ekman 2003). there is some confusion over whether emotions and feelings are the same thing. we freely talk about how we feel when describing emotional states, and use the words interchangeably. an emotion is a state of awareness that gives people information about the world, and a feeling is one’s conscious awareness of the emotion itself (damasio 1994; mc lauren 2010). when we say i feel anxious, angry, happy..., what we are really doing is interpreting emotion by how it feels to your mind and body. these may refer either to simple body sensations, such as hot, cold, pain, touch, etc., or they may be feelings associated with emotions as for example love, hate, joy or anger. but what’s important to remember is that emotions rarely occur singly, or in pure form. what we are reacting to in the environment often changes quickly; what we remember and imagine about the situation may change; our appraising changes; and we may have affect-about-affect. typically, people experience a stream of emotional responses, not all the same ones. one of the functions of emotion is to focus our conscious awareness on the problem at hand, the one that has triggered our emotions. typically, our emotions do not operate outside of our awareness, although that can also happen. talking about past emotional experiences can also trigger emotions. we might tell the very person with whom we had an emotional reaction about how we felt. sometimes the simple act of talking about an emotional episode will cause us to re-experience the emotion all over again, just as it happens when we conduct experiments and ask people to try to do so. it is important to remember that emotional signals do not tell us their source. we may know someone is angry without knowing exactly why. it could be anger at us, anger directed inward at his or her self, or anger about something the person just remembered that has nothing to do with us. sometimes we can figure it out from our knowledge of the immediate context: e.g. god knows why such things should ever happen! i hesitate to say that i like this because how can i like something that shows such pair? here we can obviously observe that the speaker is angry or, at least, not contented with the message he had heard (in our case read) and this is seen in the context of his response. when comparing the way in which emotions are communicated in cmc and f2f, it is crucial to consider the contextual differences in these two communication modes. the most important feature that distinguishes both mediums and that is relevant for studying the role of emotions is its different sociality or social presence. although non-verbal cues can indicate what general class of emotions a person is feeling, they typically do not provide detailed information about that person’s emotional state. by seeing that someone armenian folia anglistika linguistics 112 is crying, for instance, we might assume that s/he is sad; by the extent of sobbing we might even be able to infer the intensity of the sadness. but the tears in and off themselves provide no information about the particular experience of sadness. the cognitions that go along with the sadness or the circumstances that lead up to feeling sad are as in the following example: oh, dear. sorry to hear that. god give him power to fight his disease. some authors claim that cmc is a cold and impersonal medium, where emotions are very difficult to express. however, within the scope of this article we are making an attempt to show that the difference between cmc and f2f in this regard is not great. for this purpose we first distinguish between verbal and non-verbal means of online communication. as electronic language is a written text, it is divorced from gestures, facial expressions, and prosodic features such as intonation, rhythm, and volume and these can lead to the difficulty of smooth and comfortable communication. over the past several decades, substantial progress has been made in understanding how emotions are expressed through these non verbal mechanisms (scherer & ekman 1984; fussell & glazer 2010). emoticons (or smileys) have entered cyberspace to provide the electronic communication with emotional and human touch. an emoticon (a word coined from emotion and icon) is a facial expression represented by a combination of punctuation marks, letters or other characters, that viewed from the side resemble a facial expression or, more rarely, gestures. so, cmc does not completely lack non-verbal information, because it has its own version of non-verbal displays, namely emoticons or relational icons, created with typographical symbols that resemble facial expressions (walther & d’addario 2001). emoticons can be considered a creative and visually salient way to add expression to an otherwise strictly text-based form. in the same way as non-verbal cues in f2f, emoticons also help to accentuate or emphasize a tone or meaning during message creation and interpretation (crystal 2001). emoticons like any other emotional word can be understood both in a positive and negative sense. the sad emoticon at the end indicates that the message has a negative interpretation. emoticons serve the function of clarifying textual messages which is similar to non-verbal displays in f2f. like other non-verbal means, emoticons can also supplement the verbal context as well as express the significance independently. besides adopting face-to-face communication methods, people communicate using extra-verbal methods, similar to non-verbal communication but uniquely designed for an online environment. one extra-verbal method in use is the deliberate use of capitalization. in online communication, typing in all capital letters is the equivalent of screaming, that is used to emphasize the emotionality of the messages, in place of “screaming caps”. for example, beautiful? !!!, it’s awsome!!!!!!, soo handsome wow!!!!, you look amazing!!! internet users also strategically use punctuation to get others’ attention and to emphasize their emotional messages online. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 113 e.g. beautiful!!! was this little creature in your yard? ... and which lens did you use??? ******* nice, nice, and, nice.... love you millions. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx in the above utterances, by using different punctuation marks, the speakers emphasize their surprise, admiration and love. verbal descriptions of emotional states can provide quite precise information about the specific form of an emotion, such as anger, sadness, depression, or happiness that a person is experiencing. thus, whether it is easier to commuicate in f2f or cmc depends on the person, character, etc. one thing is obvious, cmc makes it possible to find similar others who share specific interests or emotional needs, and it is as convenient to share emotions with these others as it is with friends in real life, resulting in the development of new close and intimate relationships in cmc. moreover, the findings with regard to the success of internet suggest that the relative anonymity of cmc creates a safer environment for some people to share emotions. as in the case of f2f communication cmc also is not devoid of the presence of negative emotions. one form of negative emotion expression in cmc that has been studied is uninhibited behavior, sometimes also referred to as “flaming”. flaming has been defined as the expression of strong opinions, accompanied by the display of negative, antagonistic emotions in the form of insulting, swearing, offending, or hostile comments (glazer 2010). another means of expressing emotions through cmc is an interjection or the socalled inarticulate exclamation. in the utterance hoorrrraaayyy! the world is white again! after one day without snow on the ground i was getting positively depressed that i was not going to see it again for many months ahead... what a relief! an extreme happiness and a state of relaxation is expressed, and in wow, beautifully done! great job guys! we see tones of surprise. according to some dictionaries, interjections can encode no more than an unspecified emotion, an emotion of any kind. for example, ldotel describes the english oh as “an interjection used to express an emotion of surprise, pain or desire”, and webster describes the english ah as “an exclamation, expressive of pain, surprise, pity, compassion, complaint, dislike, joy, exultation, etc. depending on the matter of utterance” (wierzbicka 2003). other interjections that the netspeakers use repeatedly are yeah!!!!!!! to express relief and excitement and oops!! to express remorse over a misunderstanding or missed deadline, etc. these interjections could have been inserted into a face-to-face conversation with the same effect as they had in the online context. of course, human emotions are not this simple. each emotion can be accompanied by different types of feelings. important as these modalities are, however, paralinguistic and non-verbal channels are insufficient for expressing the full range of human emotional experiences for several reasons. first, although non-verbal cues can indicate what general class of emotions a person is feeling, they typically do not provide detailed information about that armenian folia anglistika linguistics 114 person’s emotional state. by seeing that someone is crying, for instance, we might assume that s/he is sad; by the extent of sobbing we might even be able to infer the intensity of the sadness. but the tears in and off themselves provide no information about the particular experience of sadness. in the example adduced below cognitions go along with the sadness: first off, shame on you for using a child in such a horrible situation to boost your “likes”. secondly, prayer isn’t going to do anything for this child, donate some real money so the parents can pay the hospital bills people. quit talking to yourself and thinking that helps people. and another thing, a like on fb is equal to a prayer!? that’s pretty damn sad. so cute we had to bury a hedgehog in september it was so sad. sad indeed... but i hope you will find more of such friends, allah bless him. as we see verbal descriptions of emotional states can provide quite precise information about the specific form of an emotion, such as anger, depression, or happiness, that a person is experiencing. but interjections are not the only means to express emotiveness in the language. all languages provide speakers with an array of verbal strategies for conveying emotions. in english, for example, we have an abundance of both literal (e.g., irked, angry, furious), and figurative (e.g., flipping one’s lid, blow a gasket) expressions which can be used to describe a theoretically infinite number of emotional states (ekman 2003). emotions are always situational and cognitive, that’s why the choice of linguistic functions always depends on a situation, taking into consideration the fact that there exist at least two functions of expressing emotions: body language and the language of words. in the process of cognition of the world surrounding us, people evaluate the facts and the phenomena by expressing their own subjective attitude towards the reality, which, of course, finds its reflection in the language. these reflections are classified differently by different scholars. d. apresyan differentiates such categories as predicates of emotion, as for example to be sad, metaphoric predicates of emotions as in the case of stiffen, explicit expressions of predicate emotions as in sadness or to be sad, implicit ones, including predicates of emotion with differentiated emotive syntactic expression, e.g. fool, and the emotive-expressives carrying emotive syntactic expression of an interjection like ah, oh, oops, etc. words expressing emotions of these lexical types can also be expressed by such categories as nouns, adjectives and adverbs. e.g. beautiful!! love you girl.... you know you are one of my oldest and dearest friends..... god bless you... honestly i didn’t know what that means, i have to say because of copywrite laws i did take that from a dark looking gentlemen not too long ago. thank you my lovelies soo much!!! beauty!!! awesome! i love it and i am not even at a computer to hear it! will watch when i am !!! i love the chipmanks! thanks hasmik truly magical...nice photography absolutely! your family really helped me out! armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 115 as emotions are an indissoluble part of our lives, the investigation of expressive-emotive speech acts with a definite illocutionary aim can be of great interest. in cmc we very often come across such emotions which contain an additional illocutionary purpose to express desire, compliment, commands or reproaches, warning. speech acts of desire define positive atmosphere and create positive disposition and in most cases stipulate the effectiveness of the interrelation between the participants of communication. e.g. happy birthday dear! celebrate your life!!! happy new year ooooooooooooooooooooooo my dear, my faithful, my super puper, my gorgeous, my incredible, my unforgettable and sweet professor i wish all your dreams comes true, giant kisses and thanks for being in our lives! as for speech acts of compliment, it contains an emphatic purpose aiming at mentioning the positive features of the speaker. e.g. wow, beautifully done! great job. hellen u r so beaitful especially around choclate the best food in the world how nice she was! there’s freshness in her eyes... pretty and elegant! missing you always. it is also worth mentioning that the speech acts of command or reproach serve to make the speaker act more decisively. in most cases this type is not regarded as emotive, but always realizes its pragmatic function: e.g. dont you dare do that to your sister! a foolish idea! not at all funny!! he should be behaved to the same way!! no sense of humors move on...that right there is awesome!!! in on-line communication the speech act of warning is made with the purpose of leading one’s thoughts and actions to the desired direction. the level of emotiveness in this case depends on the subjective quality of the speaker, the situation and their attitude towards each other. e.g. i am a nurse and from experience i warn families to promote hospice.....comfort is going to be the ultimate last experience we have with our loved ones..........it allows us time to have “closure”.....time...in a productive sincable way...... armenian folia anglistika linguistics 116 this may be a joke but people really need to stop pictures like, especially dealing with children. because its only giving the crazy people in this world ideas on how to deal with their children. guaranteed this picture is gonna get to the wrong sick mind... the intentional nature of the speech act of reproach stands for expressing dissatisfaction, disagreement or blaming. when using this emotive speech act the aim of the speaker is either to mention his attitude toward that situation or to show his/her dissatisfaction about that situation. e.g. i’m still angry at you whitney! i hate you cause i love you and always did!!! i hate this kind of things. that picture is over three years old, you stupids. reproach is used in both cmc and f2f interaction, and is considered to be a verbal act, in some cases it contains tone of demand. from this point, it is filled with negative emotivity (bronnikova 2008). thus, it can be inferred from what has been mentioned that in communication we must take into consideration informative function as well as verbal activity, as it creates both positive and negative disposition. words are not emotions, they are representations of emotions. we do need to be careful because our words can mislead us about what our emotions are. the way we use words sometimes can be confusing. we each experience the same emotions, but we all experience them differently. in conclusion, we can say that on the one hand emotions are reactions to matters that seem to be very important to our welfare, and on the other, emotions often begin so quickly that we are not aware of the processes in our mind that set them off. the expression of emotion is an inseparable part of any society and from this point of view the investigation of emotions in terms of different speech acts and other categories is of great importance. expressing emotions, even negative emotions, is natural. channeled appropriately, they help us move energy and take action. only when they become habitual and destructive do they lose their positive power and become an obstacle to our well-being. because of the various opinions on whether cmc is more or less personal than f2f communication, one must recognize that the personal or impersonal qualities of cmc are not inherent to the medium. and one more thing: the personality and circumstances of the users must also be taken into account when analyzing emotions either f2f or in cmc. notes: 1. communication is a process of exchanging information, ideas, thoughts, feelings and emotions through speech, signals, writing, or behavior. in communication process, a sender encodes a message and then using a medium sends it to the receiver who armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 117 decodes the message and after processing information, sends back appropriate feedback/reply using a medium. 2. chatgroups are on-going discussions on a particular topic in which computer users can take part in. the synchronous interaction takes place in real time (chats rooms) and the asynchronous in the postponed time (e.g. bulletin boards, newsgroups, mailing lists). 3. the word short-lived is, like the word tall, elliptic. to be tall is to be tall in comparison with some average or reference class. in affective science, episode is often used to refer to processes or occurrents of relatively short duration. the relevant maximum period of time seems to be the period in between two periods of dreamless sleep (mulligan 1998). references: 1. adrianson, l. (2001) gender and computer mediated communication. / journal computers in human behavior. n17. 2. bronnikova, e.g. (2008) emotsional’nost’ i structura rechevogo akta v texte khudojestvennogo proizvedeniya. abakan: irkutskiy gosudarstvenniy universtitet. 3. crystal, d. (2002) language and the internet. cambridge: cup. 4. ekman, p. (2003) recognizing faces and feelings to improve communication and emotional life. usa: first owl books. 5. glazer, c. (2002) the communication of emotion in an on-line classroom. austin: texas. 6. mulligan, k.; scherer, k.r. (2012) toward a working definition of emotion. vol. 4. switzerland: <er. sugepub.com> 7. fussel, s.r. (2002) the verbal communication of emotion. usa: carnegie melon university press. 8. wierzbicka, a. (2003) crosscultural pragmatics. berlin: mouton de gruyter. 9. <journals.obiolink.edu (ejc.)> 10. <www.facebook.com> 11. <www. topface.com> ðáõû½»ñç μ³é³ûçý ¨ áã μ³é³ûçý ¹ñë¨áñáõùý»ñá ñ³ù³ó³ýó³ûçý ñ³õáñ¹³ïóáõãû³ý ù»ç ðáõû½» ñá ù³ñ¹ï³ûçý ïû³ýùáõù çñ»ýó áõñáõûý ï»õý áõ ¹»ñý áõý»ý: ¸ñ³ýù ³ñï³óáéíáõù »ý ù³ñ¹áõ ûáõñ³ù³ýãûáõñ ·áñíáõý»áõãû³ý áýã³óùáõù, çýãý ¿é ³ñï³ñ³ûïíáõù ¿ ý³ë ¨ ³é³ç 黽íáõù ¨ 黽íç ùççáóáí áã ùç³ûý ³é»ñ»ë, ³ûé¨ ñ³ù³ó³ýó³ûçý ñ³õáñ¹³ïóáõãû³ý ßñç³ý³ïý»ñáõù: ðá¹í³íáõù ï³ñ¨áñ»é »ýù ñáõû½» ñç ï³ñμ»ñ ¹ñë¨áñáõùý»ñá ñ»ýó ³ûë »ñïáõ ñ³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý áéáñïý»ñáõù` ñ³ßíç ³éý»éáí ñáõû½» ñç ³ñï³ñ³ûïù³ý μ³é³ûçý ¨ áã μ³é³ûçý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 118 microsoft word maket 2020-2(22) (3)-1 (1).doc armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 linguistics 30 jeremy corbyn’s manipulative tactics in his manifesto launch speech zara hayrapetyan yerevan state university abstract the present article is directed to explore, find out and interpret the manipulative intentions of jeremy corbyn in his pre-election manifesto launch speech in 2019. the aim of the present investigation lies in a careful and extensive study of manipulative techniques and tactics in the said article to be able to understand and interpret mr. corbyn’s hidden and covert intentions correctly and precisely. we used different linguistic methods for the analyses of the research, such as discourse analyses, linguo-stylistic, syntactic, and pragmatic methods of analysis. all these helped us to thoroughly analyse the manipulative tactics of jeremy corbyn in his manifesto. key words: linguistic manipulation; political manipulation; manipulative techniques; politics; political speech. introduction when we communicate through language, it is always done so with a purpose. language is a code for people to express and share their ideas, thoughts, emotions, and information. done so verbally and in writing, language is the main tool for communication to take place. writers use language to express their thoughts on paper, readers use language to read the writers’ works. teachers use language to teach students different subjects, students use language to understand teachers. politicians use language to communicate with masses, all in the hope of making their speeches understandable, comprehensible, and intelligible. on the other hand, crowds use language to https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2020.16.2.030 linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 31 comprehend and understand what politicians are trying to convey in their speeches. when using language, people often express themselves implicitly, covertly, indirectly, not to be either offensive or impolite, or too direct. however, communicating with people indirectly can lead to misunderstandings and result in the spread of wrong information. language is also used for manipulating with people’s ideas, thoughts, and emotions. people use manipulation by speaking implicitly communicating and exchanging their ideas and thoughts indirectly without necessarily revealing the whole story or giving out all of the information. this is achieved through the use of different techniques and tactics that manipulators employ to reach their own goals manipulating with others. this is done with the aim of getting away of what they want by abusing others trust in them. manipulative tactics in jeremy corbyn’s manifesto manipulation can be defined as a means by which manipulators reach their own goals by deceiving others, making them believe things which may not really be true. as wilkinson (2013:342) said: “to be manipulated can be understood colloquially as being made someone’s ‘puppet on a string’”. ruth faden and tom beauchamp (1986:354-368) define psychological manipulation as “any intentional act that successfully influences a person to belief or behavior by causing changes in mental processes other than those involved in understanding”. the following speech under investigation is the speech1 given by united kingdom labour party leader, jeremy corbyn, about his party’s manifesto for the then upcoming uk general election. the election was held in december 2019, and mr. corbyn used this opportunity to showcase his party’s manifesto in order to gain votes and ultimately regain power for the labour party from the conservatives. the labour party to this end, his use of many techniques and tactics in his speech, is thus of great interest for analysis. jeremy corbyn starts his speech by introducing the manifesto to the public: armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 linguistics 32 labour’s manifesto is a manifesto of hope. a manifesto that will bring real change. a manifesto full of popular policies that the political establishment has blocked for a generation. in this small passage, mr. corbyn repeated the word manifesto four times which can be very interesting. the repeated word tends to put the audience attention to what is said, repeated and emphasised, which is the goal jeremy corbyn is trying to reach. by repeating the word manifesto, jeremy corbyn emphasises the very importance of the labour party’s manifesto, bringing hope to the audience. the tactic of repetition2 is meant to hypnotise the listeners by emphasising the vitality and essence of the speech. he then proceeds to add that the most powerful and richest class in the british society will make people believe that this is all impossible, in fact, nonsense: over the next three weeks they are going to tell you that everything in this manifesto is impossible. that it’s too much for you. because they don’t want real change. why would they? the system is working just fine for them. it’s rigged in their favour. but it’s not working for you. in this passage, we can see how mr. corbyn is delivering the manifesto to woo the audience. firstly, he wants to show that the rest of the parties are planning to convince the citizens that labour party’s manifesto cannot realise all the objectives. this is a bit exaggerated considering that neither conservative’s party leader boris johnson3 nor liberal democrats’ party leader jo swinson4 include in their speeches any passage where they discuss the improbability of jeremy corbyn’s manifesto. however, mr. johnson does mention that no one, including jeremy corbyn, believes in that programme by jeremy corbyn. jo swinson mentioned that jeremy corbyn never mentioned the way he was going to campaign, and never did mention it. thus, taking into consideration the biggest party leaders never mentioned the impossibility of linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 33 jeremy corbyn’s manifesto, we can conclude that mr. corbyn wants to delude the audience by using the tactic of negative other-presentation5. mr. corbyn speaks negatively of his opponents, and how the other two major parties will condemn the manifesto, attempting to misguide and misdirect citizens. he blames the opposition to make himself look better and fairer to the audience. this is nothing but a pure manipulative technique used by jeremy corbyn to lower the status of his opponents and raise the status of his party. the grammatical structure of his sentences is also quite unique in a sense that he uses very short and straight-to-the-point sentences, allowing the public to absorb every word uttered by him and letting the sentence go deep into the conscience of the listeners, and to have a greater impact on people’s minds. he is being sarcastic and ironic towards his opposition as through this way, the audience might get to his side and condemn the powerful people. his use of emphatic sentences full of rhetoric makes him sound quite persuasive and promising. he brings up vital issues such as wages, bills, public services, etc., that most certainly will manage to bring the audience onside: if your wages never seem to go up and your bills never seem to go down, if your public services only seem to get worse, despite the heroic efforts of those who work in them, then it’s not working for you. jeremy corbyn tries hard to convince the public through his rhetoric and emphatic speech that the current system does not work for them. he uses the word heroic in a very ironic way to show that those who currently control and manage the system act like ‘heroes’ and ‘saviours’ of the nation but in reality, they do not do anything for the citizens. he uses the rhetorical device contrast6 in this passage, to make it more convincing, more emphatic and to highlight the crucial points for the people to direct their attention onto those matters. he does everything in his power to change people’s minds and show that the current system is not the best option. taking into close look into the statistics7 we see that the minimum wage increased rapidly over the years. besides this, armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 linguistics 34 we should bring into attention the increase in minimum wage that the government brought into effect in 2020 during boris johnson’s governance8. these facts testify that jeremy corbyn’s efforts of persuading the audience that the wages are not going up as pure misguidance and manipulation. he then proceeds to answer why people have not only lost hope in the system, but in every politician who gets to power. the following below is an example showing why people have given up in general: and that’s why so many people in britain have given up on politics. that’s why you hear people say about politicians: “they’re all the same.” well, not any more. because this party, this movement, this manifesto is different. labour is on your side. and there could scarcely be a clearer demonstration of that than the furious reaction of the rich and powerful. in these passages, the previous and the latter, he uses the tactic of reason9. he shows examples, problems, and issues to give reasons why so many people have lost hope in politicians. then he adds that they are not like everybody else, in that they are different, they evoke the hope in people, and they bring the ‘light’ to people. jeremy corbyn also uses the technique of repetition here, this party, this movement, this manifesto, to emphasize the importance and the change their manifesto will bring to people and to the country. jeremy corbyn tends to target the rich in society, because labour party represents the working class in the society. thus, we can conclude from this that labour party is not for everyone, it only targets certain people in society and tries to put people against one another. he also explains why it is so, as the powerful and the rich show furious reaction to the labour party’s manifesto and promises. what he does not realize is that he does the same towards those people. he uses metonymy10 in these passages, referring to the conservative party as the rich and powerful people in britain. this can also mean that the debasement11 tactic is also present linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 35 here, as he points out the rich and powerful class of britain, while at the same time covertly showing his humble nature – his average status in society. he wants to point out that he is one of the working class of the british society, which sounds very persuasive to the listeners. since he is one of the working class, then he most definitely can solve all of the major and minor issues the working-class people face during their everyday routine. essentially, he wants to convey a specific message to the listeners and citizens of the united kingdom – he is one of them. he understands them and is not disconnected like the conservative party. mr. corbyn then refers to the us former president franklin roosevelt: the us president who led his country out of the great depression, president franklin roosevelt, had to take on the rich and powerful in america to do it…. he compares himself with the us president, who took his nation out of the great depression. he wants to covertly imply that he is planning to do the same as franklin roosevelt did, to get the united kingdom back on its feet. he also implies that he can be the exact leader for the country to take care of all their needs, take down the corrupt businessmen, make the rich pay taxes, and take down tax-dodgers. mr. corbyn implicitly tells the audience that the conservative party, together with the rich businessmen, take the country into a depression. we cannot see the proof here taking into consideration that the country was not and is not in depression. the economy grew over the years according to ons12. he then adds that he accepts the opposition of the billionaires, the hostility of the bad bosses, the implacable opposition of the dodgy landlords, the hostility of the big polluters, the fierce opposition of the giant healthcare corporations, the hostility of the privatized utilities companies, trying to convince the listeners that he is able to take everyone down, that he is courageous and powerful enough to solve every problem the nation is facing. here he uses the pronoun i instead of we as politicians usually do, to look more powerful and armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 linguistics 36 authoritative to the public, to present himself as someone ready to lead the citizens to their peak of fortune. then he continues: we’ll deliver real change for the many and not the few… and you really can have this plan for real change… you just need a vote – and your vote can be more powerful than all their wealth… don’t miss out. this is your chance. if you’re not registered, do it today… here, we can see that he puts himself away from the people. when he uses the pronoun we he means his party and him together, but not the public itself. then he uses the pronoun you which shows that the public is taken separately from their party. he shows that he is superior and powerful. in this passage mr. corbyn performs direct order13 by commanding the listeners to go and vote. the performative can be considered to be true (hadiati 2019) as mr. corbyn has the authority to tell the public to go and vote, the people and circumstances are also appropriate, as the citizens vote for the upcoming elections. thus, we can say that this speech act at large is an implicit order to the audience and is appropriate considering the circumstances and people involved. it is implicit, because he does not include the word ‘order’, he simply tells them to get registered for voting. he then continues his indirect and implicit order to the public: vote for the young person who can’t go to the youth centre… vote for the mum falling into debt… vote for the older person… vote for the soldier… he keeps ordering the audience to go and vote, but not for them, instead, for the people in need, for those who are weak, for those who have lost hope. this way, he manipulates with people’s minds to evoke a reaction in their consciousness, leaving the impression that he is concerned with those people, and that they, the listeners and citizens, should be concerned too. he repeats the word vote to bring into attention the responsibility of the action. the linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 37 listeners might feel obliged or pressured without even realizing that they are being manipulated and pressed on. then he uses charm tactics14 implicitly, trying to gain those people’s attention towards him, who he just enumerated for the public to go and vote for. he gains their appreciation, thus covertly manipulating their minds to go and vote for his party. he also uses reason tactic here, giving all of the reasons why it should be done so, but hiding and glossing over labour’s negative history15 which includes its period of power. in his speech, he continues to use negative other-presentation of the conservative party, specifically targeting its leader, prime minister boris johnson: …but boris johnson is trying to hijack brexit to sell out our nhs and sell out working people. the conservatives want to use brexit to unleash thatcherism on steroids, to inflict more pain on the very communities so viciously attacked by margaret thatcher’s government in the 1980s… that’s why johnson is preparing to sell out our nhs for a us trade deal that will drive up the cost of medicines and lead to the runaway privatization of our health service. in this passage j. corbyn attacks the conservative party and its leader, pm. johnson, to enrage the audience against him. he blames the conservatives of trying to sell the people’s health care system, the nhs (national health system): if you watched the tv debate on tuesday night, you’ll have seen me hold up the censored, blacked-out reports of secret talks between british and american officials about opening up our health service to us corporations and driving up the cost of medicines. you’ll have seen johnson lose his cool, because he’s been found out. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 linguistics 38 in this passage, it is obvious that mr. corbyn does his best to display everything plainly for the public to see that he has defeated pm. johnson that day by showing everyone the secret talks between the uk and the us. he even uses jargon, lose his cool, to humiliate pm. johnson in front of the listeners even more. he also uses passive voice construction16 he’s been found out to emphasize the actual occurrence and result of mr. johnson being revealed, rather than who the agent is. here, the most important aspect is that mr. corbyn has revealed to everybody about pm. johnson’s deals with the us17. we can understand that mr. corbyn tries to humiliate and belittle his opponent to get people on his side, to try to get his hands on the ‘chair’. without having a proof, mr. corbyn states publicly that boris johnson is making deals with the us about their nhs. …you’ll have heard boris johnson claim he will have brexit done, over and over again. that claim is a fraud on the british people. he continues in this passage to condemn and criticize prime minister boris johnson, calling him a liar implicitly. collins dictionary gives the definition of fraud as “crime of gaining money or financial benefits by a trick or by lying. fraud is something or someone that deceives people in a way that is illegal or dishonest.” as can be seen, jeremy corbyn condemns pm. johnson of deceiving the british citizens, but he does so implicitly, not directly. this is because he does not say that pm. johnson has lied, but rather he says that the claim itself is a fraud. on the other hand, recent developments show that since winning the 2019 general election, pm. johnson has managed to pass his brexit deal through parliament, and eventually the withdrawal agreement bill passed through the house of lords18. thus, corbyn’s claims are unnecessary and irrelevant. all this was done to simply gain votes from people. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 39 so, if you want to leave without trashing our economy or selling out our nhs, you’ll be able to vote for it. let’s take this out of the hands of politicians and give the british people the final say. here, mr. corbyn encourages the public to vote for the labour party for a better future and economy, but as we mentioned before, when they were last in power, they oversaw a double-recession and severe unemployment levels. the economy shrank, the financial sector was on the verge of collapsing in 2008 when the labour party was ruling the country19. mr. corbyn encourages everyone to go and vote as he believes it is the right thing for them. however, he has manipulated with the listeners’ minds during his speech, and now tries to show that he is not interfering with their decision. he goes on, representing the labour party’s plan of reviving the country and the life, the jobs, the national infrastructures. and all this time, he uses plus facts20 of what will happen in the future if they are chosen: labour will transform our economy so that no one is held back…. here, corbyn uses metonymy, using labour instead of referring to himself, which is another example of avoiding taking all the responsibility himself, and thus making it a more general and collective responsibility. north sea oil and gas workers have powered this country for decades… we won’t hang them out to dry. here, he uses metaphor21 hang out to dry meaning that he and his party will never abandon those in need. he is always there for everyone. the metaphor makes his speech even more dramatic and emphatic here, leaving the impression of a caring and concerned leader. he then continues: armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 linguistics 40 if you’re a patient or a nurse, labour is on your side… if you’re a student, labour is on your side… if you’re reaching old age, labour is on your side… if you’re a tenant, labour is on your side… jeremy corbyn targets specific groups of people, to gain their vote. he needs those people to get to his side, because they are the majority in the society. he draws everyone’s attention to the fact that he and his party concentrate on the needs of the weak, poor, and those in need – giving rise to the party’s mantra of “for the many, not the few”. he keeps repeating this slogan to be even more persuasive in the eyes of public. however, we should bring into everyone’s attention the conservative party’s manifesto as well, where boris johnson promises fifty thousand more nurses, millions of investments in science and schools22. this means that j. corbyn has no valid proof that the conservative party is not planning to do anything about hospitals, schools, etc. he finishes his speech with the famous lines by pablo neruda, and a direct order: you can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming. vote for this manifesto of hope. it’s time for real change. he wants to point out here that regardless of how bad a condition the country is in, there is always a hope and a chance to cope with. then he proceeds to order the listeners to vote for the labour party because they will bring hope to people. on the other hand, this hope does not guarantee that it will be as labour say it will be. mr. corbyn’s sentences are concise and to the point, which makes his speech even more emphatic and persuasive. his speech contains many implicit orders, and implicit ideas. he delivers his speech indirectly. it contains covert ideas and information that is not really available to the public. he targets linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 41 mostly people who are weak and in need, at the same time concentrating on students, nurses, the old, the working class. he goes on desperate measures of condemning, and humiliating his opposition to try to get the listeners on his side. analysing jeremy corbyn’s speech, we can come to the conclusion that he has used many manipulative techniques and tactics to persuade and convince the audience that the labour party’s manifesto is the best one, full of hopes, promises, and a bright and prosperous future for the nation. conclusion the research attests that manipulation is employed and carried out by politicians at all costs to gain votes and crowd. in the domain of politics, manipulation is meant to fulfill certain political interests and achieve certain political goals. this is done by employing certain manipulative tactics to delude others. the study reveals that politicians strive for meeting unjust political needs through concealing the truth and demagogy. the article under investigation reveals jeremy corbyn’s hidden and covert intentions and ideas in his manifesto launch speech through certain linguistic and non-linguistic aspects of speech. the analyses of the manifesto launch speech reveal that jeremy corbyn employed a number of manipulative techniques and tactics in order to delude the audience, convince them to follow his lead, and vote for his party. jeremy corbyn uses such manipulation techniques in his speech as: metaphor, metonymy, negative other-presentation, repetition, etc. all these techniques help him in misguiding and misdirecting the public to assert power. the humiliation and condemnation of the opposition show that mr. corbyn has to show his value over others, rather than achieving it by more honest ways. the analyses of the article is vital while without being able to analyse the political speech in detail, people will blindly accept and follow those political figures who are in great command of rhetoric and manipulative techniques. people should have the ability to interpret, analyse and reveal the untrue information and cunning intentions of the manipulator not to become their “puppet on a string”. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 linguistics 42 notes: 1. the spectator gives the full transcript of jeremy corbyn’s manifesto launch speech in 21st of november 2019. // <https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/jeremy-corbyn-s-manifesto-launchspeech-full-transcript?fbclid=iwar1so9n_hgmpue77r0_bfkkqb9bmixxaknjkjzuwzaofwgjghuxl1fy4dj0> 2. repetition is a means of stylistic device which is can create the illusion that something is true even though it does not even exist. when people say the same thing over and over again, they start to believe it too (david 2017). 3. boris johnson introducing manifesto of the conservative party did not discuss the possibility of jeremy corbyn’s plan. in the speech, mr. johnson confidently states that whatever mr. corbyn’s plan is, no one believes in it, not even jeremy corbyn himself (<conservatives.com> 2019) // <https://www.conservatives.com/news/my-guarantee-to-get-brexit-doneand-unleash-britainspotential?fbclid=iwar2idiqomyrwqksjxtmylglrfdxfmylznyfdpqy0bp aur1jzz8b5gzviwyi> 4. jo swinson, the head of the liberal democratic party, did not mention the likelihood of jeremy corbyn’s plan. jo swinson states that jeremy corbyn did not unveil how he was planning to campaign in a people’s vote (<barryholiday.org> 2019) // <http://www.barryholliday.org.uk/jo-swinson-launches-lib-dem-manifesto/?fbclid=iwar26gtwmio5wab6xgzxcjgkbgnq5rltnfph0pkq2l-b5al_fmunqrbhkbg0> 5. negative other-presentation is the technique employed by a speaker in which they attempt to degrade and bring down an oppositional speaker (van dijk 2006:373). 6. contrast is a persuasive tactic which immediately attracts the audience as two opposite ideas are being interpreted (david 2017). 7. in statista.com the economic history of national minimum wage is given over the years and we can see that it increased over the years, even more so, under conservative party leadership. // <https://www.statista.com/stalinguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 43 tistics/280483/national-minimum-wage-in-the-uk/?fbclid=iwar3h4ffsrzyloqzfjthgdjrku8d2xlrrtmk9kasw3rpohicrbcj-lzci8a4> 8. “the new rate results in an increase of £930 over the year for a full-time worker on the national living wage. the rise means the government is projected to meet its target for the nlw to reach 60% of median earnings by 2020” (<gov.uk>) // <https://www.gov.uk/government/news/nationalminimum-and-living-wage-increases-come-into-effect?fbclid=iwar2bdbct3soqwqtokkkknsc9ncsi3nhuschg_altmcvb0qwvs3603_mum-i> 9. reason tactic is employed when the manipulator needs others to follow, trust and do they are told, then the manipulator reasons why they should do that way (buss 1987:1222). 10. metonymy is a stylistic device that replaces an idea or phenomenon with a single word (gibbs cited in kulo 2009:04-05). politicians can make use of metonymy to reduce the sense of responsibility or the opposite – undertaking the creation of the desired illusion and idea in front of the audience (beard cited in kulo 2009:05). 11. debasement is used when the manipulator humiliates himself or behaves in a very humble way to receive affection from the target and have them do what he/she wants (buss 1987:1222). 12. according to ons, we can see the increase of the economy to its peak in january 2020, which states the unreasonable and misguiding criticism by labour party leader jeremy corbyn (<ons.gov.uk>). // <https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/bulletins/gdp monthlyestimateuk/june2020?fbclid=iwar2gtlekqoihbxngmm2cjqwbd r6ki7mtdrohg51rmz5_2j8uqzmwdxl7fuk#:~:text=monthly%20gdp%2 0grew%20by%208.7,by%20a%20total%20of%2011.3%25> 13. direct order falls under “directives” in pragmatics, which is a type of command. pragmatically for the utterance to be true, there must be certain conventions for the according to the felicity conditions (hadiati 2019:701703). 14. charm tactic is a widely used tactic, in which people behave this way whenever they need or want something from the other (buss 1987:1222). armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 linguistics 44 15. when labour party was ruling, the united kingdom economy entered a double-recession. during this period, unemployment rose to 2.5 million people and many businesses and companies folded, costing people their jobs and livelihoods (wearden 2009) // <https://www.theguardian.com/business/2009/oct/23/uk-recession-timeline?fbclid=iwar0onb2d51jg3tqxuqer05jfa32evrwyexez4teiprrmkbkdbyqx_0jcpeq> 16. passive construction can cause to the distortion of facts while changing the sentence into the passive voice leads to manipulating with the facts and actions presented in the sentence (nordlund 2003:09). 17. the documents “show the us is interested in discussing drug pricing – mainly, extending patents that stop cheaper generic medicines being used. there is no indication in the documents that the uk team agreed to anything in the talks.” (<bbc news>) // <https://www.bbc.com/news/ukpolitics-50572454?fbclid=iwar17b5n54ryn33i3huvg8xmfadmdkvcweocs600loyniibvmnadlsmnz0pm> 18. the united kingdom is meant to leave eu on january 31 2020, which testifies that brexid was done (<bbc news> 2020) // <https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics51051178?fbclid=iwar2tflfjjw_ jbysj__n2v53m6vfl0kvniekamlsbm1gnzwah03z91xudgke> 19. wearden 2009, the guardian <theguardian.com> // <https://www.theguardian.com/business/2009/oct/23/uk-recessiontimeline?fbclid=iwar0onb2d51jg3tqxuqer05jfa32evrwyexez4teiprr mkbkdbyqx_0jcpeq> 20. plus facts: andersson and furberg (andersson and furberg cited in nordlund 2003:07) call those facts “plus facts” or “minus facts” when manipulators skip a chunk of information from their speech to get the desired reaction from the audience, to serve the facts in their own way, and delude people’s minds. 21. metaphor is a persuasive stylistic technique which can be used to mask or conceal the speaker’s underhanded intentions and ideas by representing seemingly innocent ideas or thoughts (david 2017). linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 45 22. conservatives 2019 <conservatives.com> // <https://www.conservatives.com/news/my-guarantee-to-get-brexit-done-and-unleash-britains-potential?fbclid=iwar2idiqomyrwqksjxtmylglrfdxfmylznyfdpqy0bpaur1 jzz8b5gzviwyi> references: 1. andersson, j. & furberg, m. (1996) språk och påverkan. om argumentationens semantik. 8th edition, stockholm: bokförlaget thales. 2. buss, d.m.; gomes, m.; higgings, d.s.; lauterbach, k. (1987) tactics of manipulation. // journal of personality and social psychology, vol. 52. n 6, pp. 1219-1229. 3. david, m.k. (2014) language, power and manipulation: the use of rhetoric in maintaining managerial influence. // frontiers of language and teaching, vol. 5, n 1, pp. 164-170. 4. faden, r.; beauchamp, t. (1986) a history and theory of informed consent. new york: oup. 5. hadiati, c. (2019) felicity conditions of the speech acts in banyumasan daily conversation. // theory and practice in language studies vol. 9, n 6, indonesia: jenderal soedirman university, academy publication pp. 700705. available at: <http://www.academypublication.com/ojs/index.php/tpls/article/view/tpls0906700705> [accessed march 2020]. 6. kulo, l. (2009) linguistic features in political speeches – how language can be used to impose certain moral or ethical values on people. lulea university of technology digitala vetenskabliga arkivet available at: <http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3a1028973&dswid=-8654> [accessed january 2020]. 7. nordlund, m. (2003) an analysis of how attitudes are displayed in news reporting. lulea university technology. d extended essay english. available at: <http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:10267 15/ full text01.pdf> [accessed january 2020]. 8. van dijk, t.a. (2006) discourse and manipulation. // discourse and society. 17 (2), pp. 352-371. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 linguistics 46 9. wilkinson, t.m. (2013) nudging and manipulation. // political studies. vol. 61: 341-345. ջերեմի քորբինի մտաշահարկային մարտավարությունը նրա ընտրական հայտարարության մեջ սույն հոդվածն ուսումնասիրում է ջերեմի կորբինի 2019 թվականի նախընտրական մանիֆեստի ելույթում դրսևորված մտաշահարկման դեպքերը։ հեղինակը նպատակադրվում է մտաշահարկման մեխանիզմների և տակտիկաների մանրակրկիտ ու խորքային ուսումնասիրությամբ՝ ճշգրիտ հասկանալ և վեր հանել ջերեմի կորբինի քողարկված մտադրությունները։ հետազոտության ընթացքում կիրառվել են դիսկուրս-վերլուծության, լեզվագործաբանական, լեզվաոճական և շարահյուսական քննության մեթոդները։ received by the editorial board 18.05.2020 recommended for publication by the reviewers 09.07.2020 accepted for print 05.10.2020 maket_n_verjin.qxp on preconditions of medieval armenian schools in the course of its centuries-old history, the armenian nation has createdmagnificent monuments of science, literature and art. the most remarkable events in the cultural and spiritual life of the nation were recorded early in the 5th century when the great enlightener and scholar mestrop mashtots invented the armenian alphabet. the armenian alphabet that proved to have decisive significance for the future of the country, was but a historical necessity. it was followed by the establishment of the armenian school, which in its turn aroused the idea of the independent statehood and promoted the spirit of patriotism among the people. in rather a short period of time the armenian culture experienced a dynamic growth. armenian schools opened throughout the country. they trained spiritual leaders, teachers and translators. the graduates of those schools became the first disseminators of the “seeds” of the national language and literature. the establishment of armenian schools was far from being an easy task. the byzantine empire initially resisted and hindered any attempt to set up schools in the western armenia. it is known that in 387 armenia was split between two rival countries – persia and byzantine. however, the armenian elite and the church maintained certain rights with respect to internal governance of the two parts of the country. though persia and byzantine shared the same political goals concerning armenia, they were forced to be tolerant towards various happenings in the country. this was just the case with the invention of the armenian alphabet and the establishment of armenian schools nationwide. persia, for example, was trying to enhance the independence of the armenian church and oppose it to that of byzantine. meantime, byzantine tried not to let armenia experience the impact of the assyrian church and unleashed a violent ideological war against it. this was the reason why the armenian king vramshapuh and catholicos sahak partev sent mashtots to greece to ask them for permission to set up armenian schools in the country. the emperor gave his consent. the formation of the armenian school was followed by rich chronology. the art of translation was in full swing. the works of ancient thinkers such as plato, aristotle, xenon and others were translated into armenian and presented to the public. however, the love of the armenian nation towards language and literature had originated well before the establishment of the armenian school. a great number of young armenians had received education in diverse universities of rome, athens, antioch, edessa, alexandria, etc. they returned home and got involved not only in religious and philosophical activities, but carried out a vast scientific pedagogical activity, came up with valuable studies in this or that filed of science and translated the works of ancient classics. 13 yerevan state university is 90 years old armenian folia anglistika remarkably enough, after mashtots had invented the alphabet, armenian youth left for abroad – rome, greece, egypt and elsewhere, overcoming all sorts of difficulties and hardships in their way. the aim was to improve their knowledge so as to be able to translate the works of antique masters more skillfully and precisely. the thriving spiritual life, the prosperity of culture and science provided grounds and served as preconditions for higher national schools. higher educational institutions were set up in ani, tatev, gladzor, sanahin, haghpat. some of them were called universities. they played an enormous role in the long history of the armenian culture training historians, musicians and top specialists in other fields, as well. the school of ani: one of the medieval armenian schools was that of ani. from the 20s of the 10th century to the 11th century armenia lived in peace. this was a favorable period for economic and cultural development in the country. in 992 when the armenian catholicos moved from argina to ani together with its luxurious store of ancient manuscripts, the school of ani was founded. the first records about the school date back to the 11th century. grigor magistros, the eminent statesman and teacher, was one of the founders of the school. he made great efforts to modernize the school. to achieve the goal, he paid much attention to exact and natural philosophical sciences. he sought to bring teaching closer to the developments in life. the school of ani witnessed significant progress when deacon hovhannes imastaser (appreciating wisdom), a gifted poet, mathematician, grammarian and philosopher took the office of the headmaster. his scientific fame soon swept the whole country. people from nearly all parts of the country came to study in his school. the life and work of the scientist can be compared with the work of an industrious bee and his school may be called a treasury of science and the graduates left school taking with them treasures of science, of course, each according to his ability or “mental powers”. during his tenure, natural sciences were also highly valued. on the way to the development of the university education, the school of ani could have prospered further on, if not for the unfavorable political conditions of the time. gladzor university. the university of gladzor occupies a special place among the medieval higher educational establishments of armenia. it was the best among others with respect to its educational and scientific level, as well as with the great role it played in the social life of the country. the contemporaries described the university of gladzor with utmost delight, calling it “superfamous university”, “the capital of wisdom”, “great home of education”, etc. these descriptions were not least exaggerated. they witness the great fame and popularity the university enjoyed at that time. the university was founded in the vayots dzor province of syunik. in the 12th-14th 14 armenian folia anglistika yerevan state university is 90 years old m. mashtots centuries, under the reign of the mongols, the representatives of orbelyan and khaghbakyan dynasty were able to win the respect and trust of the mongol masters and save their land from being robbed and ruined. the armenian educational center (vardapetaran) that operated in the msho arakelots church was robbed annually by the nomadic tribes. soon the vardapetaran was moved to aghberts church in vayots dzor where there were more favorable conditions to conduct teaching and to expand the educational center, which later developed into a university. the first headmaster was nerses mshetsi. after the death of mshetsi, yesayi nshetsi took the leadership of the university and presided it for over fifty years. the university of gladzor, unlike other medieval universities, was more modern. the philologist g. hovsepyan was quite right when writing: “gladzor was not a church with commonplace way of thinking. it was an excellent school. people came here not only to get education but to improve themselves. it served as an intellectual centre not only for the eastern armenia. people from far off cilicia came to satisfy their thirst of knowledge”. along with theological sciences, “free arts” like grammar, oratory, and logics were also paid special attention to. arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music classes found their place in the curriculum, as well. philosophy was among the leading subjects. it is worth noting that philosophy was banned in the university of byzantine for it was regarded a sectarian and anti-christian discipline. the university of gladzor not only taught the subject but interpreted it properly. the works of the prominent scholars of the ancient and early christian period such as plato, aristotle, etc. were extensively studied. the lecturers and the students of the university worked hard to collect the manuscripts of the ancient armenian scribers and miniaturists to imitate and to duplicate them and prevent them from being ruined. and today we owe the great number of manuscripts that have come down to us due to their endless efforts. during the 60 years of its existence gladzor university carried out enormous work to educate devoted intellectuals. according to the evidence, the number of its graduates exceeded 360. some researchers, focusing on the resemblance in the academic programs, subjects and hierarchy between gladzor university and european universities, observe some similarities. thus, for example, l. khachikyan, compared the university of gladzor with european universities and saw some likeness between them. he writes, “the university of gladzor, being contemporary to one of the most notable and popular european universities the university of paris, rivals it both with its cultural and educational role, the rich heritage of manuscripts, the diversity and depth of subjects taught”. gladzor university and the european universities of that time did have notable similarities. they were more obvious in the subjects taught at universities. unlike higher educational institutions of the ancient world (athens, rome, alexandria), the european universities had a wider scope of sciences included and along human sciences, natural sciences were also paid special attention to. mathematics, medicine and other subjects were equally taught along with philosophy, history and linguistics. this wide scope of subjects comes to explain the fact why the school of gladzor was called a university 15 yerevan state university is 90 years old armenian folia anglistika unlike other medieval educational institutions. theology was considered to take a special place in the schedule of the european universities. hence, the study and interpretation of the works dating back to the early christian times, the particular interest in the same was true for gladzor university, too. the graduate of a european university was to pass an exam and to be awarded a scientific degree. the same hierarchy existed in gladzor. how are we to explain these similarities?. the american-armenian scholar k. sarafyan explains it in the following way: “remarkably enough, the use of the term university in armenia in the first quarter of the 14th century coincides with the period of the development and expansion of the medieval european universities. this proves that at that time armenia was in touch with the intellectual movement in europe and established its educational institutions in accordance with those in europe”. it is beyond any suspicion that in the 13th-14th centuries armenians were in close touch with the people of europe. armenian communities were set up in italy, france and other european countries. armenians had a great opportunity not only to get acquainted with the culture and life of the universities, but to pass the experience they got to their native country, as well. however,there are also other factors explaining these similarities. gladzor university like the european ones had inherited the early christian educational tradition that came from the ancient world. hence, the similarities in the academic plans of gladzor university and the european universities. however, these universities being at a great distance from each other, accepted the ancient method of teaching individually. it was dictated and conditioned by the peculiarities of the national life. this circumstance makes the difference between gladzor university and european universities more than obvious. here are some of them. the western universities were founded at a time when europe experienced more favorable economic, social and political conditions. when the people of europe were welcoming renaissance, armenia was being mercilessly invaded and devastated by foreign conquerors. the financial and economic state of these universities were far from similar. the european universities were supported by the endless funds provided by the vatican and the court. as far as gladzor university was concerned, it survived only due to modest and mediocre means granted by the people and the aristocratic families of vayots dzor. this was the reason why the number of students did not exceed 50 or 60. nevertheless, gladzor university had one distinctive feature compared to those in europe. here, the teaching was conducted in the native tongue. whereas, latin was the only language taught in european universities until the 15th century and this deprived them of the chance to be called national universities. gladzor university had another peculiar feature, as well. it was its social-national position. in the 13th-14th centuries armenians were fighting against foreign invaders. the students of gladzor did not stay indifferent to these developments and had their direct participation in the struggle for the liberation of the country. in 1386, under certain circumstances the university moved to tatev. thus, the university of tatev was the immediate descendant of gladzor university, the direct bearer of its traditions and its follower. however, by the time the university moved here, 16 armenian folia anglistika yerevan state university is 90 years old there had been a school in tatev with a small number of students which underwent further improvement after the establishment of gladzor university. within a period of time it advanced and soon reached the level of a university, itself. the fame of tatev university spread nationwide in rather a short time. people from all over the country hurried here to study. after the death of hovnan vorotnesti, the university was headed by grigor tatevatsi. the latter being a famous scribe and miniaturists is also known as a “skillful pedagogue”, a gifted painter and a musician who had a sweet voice. we are familiar with 20 works by tatevatsi which tell us about the wide spectrum of his scientific and pedagogical views. he was a materialist in his philosophical approaches and attitudes towards life in general. he accepted the existence of the objective world irrespective of a human being and believed that it is recognizable. he thought a person should be aware of the standard practices of the nature. this knowledge, according to him, is not innate. people acquire it through hard work and education. he thought that a child is a blank slate which records everything he can see around. he concluded that a child should be educated and brought up from early years of his life, right from the cradle, as the young are capable of perceiving even more than the grow-ups. tatevasti was sure that the prior responsibility of a good teacher was to arouse love and respect in his pupils towards the country and science. philosophy was a subject of great importance. tatev university was not an educational institution confined to science and pedagogy only. the university displayed an active participation in the public life. it played a decisive role in the ideological struggle against the unitors. the medieval armenian schools and universities played a unique and specific role in the organization of educational centres, the expansion of culture and science and in the development of the traditions of higher education. the 16th century was rather a gloomy period in the history of armenia. the country lived under hardest conditions. armenia was split between two powerful asian dictatorships – safawiyyah persia (safavids) and the ottoman empire. the year of 1512 saw another fierce war between persia and turkey which desolated the country. the cultural life was in decline. those were really harsh times for education. sahak-mesropyan schooling, that was the key condition of the armenian identity, the basis of the nation’s spiritual and cultural life, was endangered. some armenians turned their faces to europe where the art of printing was in full swing. the idea of spreading armenian books through printing was becoming more and more appealing. however, the hard political situation made it impossible for 17 yerevan state university is 90 years old armenian folia anglistika the portrait of grigor tatevatsi (miniature) armenian specialists to found a printing house in armenia. the publication of armenian books abroad seemed the only reasonable way out. hakop meghhapart took the burden of that job. he became the first publisher to found a publishing house in venice and took up that job. in 1512 hakop meghapart issued the first armenian printed book “urbatagirk” and four others the following year. this was the beginning of the armenian publications. future publishers, continued the traditions started by meghapart and handed the art of printing to the succeeding generations. surprisingly enough, only 260 years later, in 1771, the catholicos of all armenians was able to set up a publishing house in armenia, echmiadzin. here in 1772 the collection of his poems was first published. the advent of the art of printing spurred the development of the spiritual life of the nation. 18 armenian folia anglistika yerevan state university is 90 years old urbatagirk maket 2011:layout 1.qxd emotionally intelligent leadership in educational context tamara kuprina ural federal university svetlana minasyan moscow state university of economics, statistics and informatics (yerevan branch) t he problems of modern education system are of great interest at present. ingeneral the crux of the matter consists in teaching professionals who are able to work in complex cross-cultural conditions but lack educational programs. as it is, they should promote technological knowledge as well as special skills, supporting communication with numerous representatives of multicultural environment. one of the most productive methods of teaching is primal (emotionally intelligent) leadership created on the investigations in the field of emotional intelligence which can be the base for developing the emotional cross-cultural competence. so, future specialists can get the main skills in this sphere at universities and develop them, taking into consideration the constantly changeable professional context. at the same time this method demands primal leadership skills of lecturers who should become leaders themselves and demonstrate emotional skills, appropriate behavior and activity in groups of students especially at the initial stage of education. the concept of emotionally intelligent leadership is absolutely new as it is based on the idea of emotion management and aims at making response as the main motivating factor in the process of education. up to now this aspect of teaching process has been treated as insignificant and has been ignored by educationalists. moreover, emotions have been considered to be intolerable at work. still, modern investigations come to prove their exceptional importance because any leader motivates his or her followers, influences how the problem is interpreted, proposes variants of solution and even emotional reactions to it. despite the fact that at present there are a lot of theories of leadership and factors of its effectiveness, there is no universal definition of it. the russian scientist o.n. belokon (2009:60) describes some of them: 1. leadership is a center of group processes and a leader is a central figure, integrator of these processes and relationships. it should be admitted that it is the earliest definition of the phenomenon. 2. leadership is a characteristic feature of the personality and his or her influence. it is an art of making people obey which displays the strength of personality, combinations of characteristic features which help to motivate in achieving the purpose. 3. leadership is a result of group cooperation. this definition is the most actual and reflects the basic meaning of the phenomenon. 4. leadership is the influence on the choice of aims and organizational strategies, their realization, on saving the group, the followers and their organizational culture. o.n. belokon (2009:61) also admits the difference between such terms as “leaderarmenian folia anglistikamethodology 71 ship” and “headship”, referring to s.gibb (1969) who paid attention to the double nature of the term “leadership”. according to him, we can speak about leadership only if the leader’s influence is accepted by his or her followers on a voluntary basis, or if they share common views. otherwise it becomes headship. so, we can determine the term “leadership” only in the context of the present paper. the emotionally intelligent leadership model is synthesized on the basis of emotional intelligence and leadership investigations by d.goleman, r.boyatzis, a.mackee (2008:10). but they admit that in most countries the effective methods of business management have not evolved yet. we should also note that though the western management system has been developed for many years, this phenomenon is absolutely new in russia and, accordingly, its evolvement cannot avoid imitation of the western management models. from our point of view emotionally intelligent leadership based on consciousness of self and others has large perspectives in business as well as in other organizations. in our article we would like to pay special attention to the double aspect of leadership, adapting it to the educational situation. on the one hand, a leader can be a lecturer of the group which can be considered as a model of any teaching organization. the lecturer can demonstrate necessary skills with the help of an educational system which is organized properly. on the other hand, by learning lessons of leadership, the students acquire professionally oriented skills, i.e. professional competence, one of which is the emotional skill. m.l. shankman, s.j. allen (2008:4) offered a new model of developing emotional intelligence in educational organizations. “it was developed in three ways. first of all, marcy and scott summarized the theoretical and practical materials on the topic of leadership development. they worked a lot in the colleges on the subject of leadership. besides, emotionally intelligent leadership is a combination of many ideas concerning transformational leadership (bass 1985; burns 1978), situational leadership (blanchard 1991), contingency theory (fiedler 1972), leader member exchange and emotional intelligence (bar-on 1997; goleman 1998; goleman, boyatzis, mckee 2002; salovey, mayer 1990; segal 1997; weisinger 1998), authentic leadership development (avolio, luthan 2006), positive psychology, organizational culture and organizational behavior. they interviewed dozens of students in north america.” m.l. shankman, s.j. allen (2008:4) point out that personal experience is very important, too. everybody should have their own style of leadership and followership. but in any case we must develop our skills because effective leadership is based on responsibilities, knowledge and flexible behavior which can be achieved by practice. the development of students’ leadership skills is one of the complex but achievable goals. as susan r.komives (2008: xii ), co-editor of “the handbook of student leadership program”, says, in college you have a great opportunity to study and use your knowledge and leadership skills in practice. m.l. shankman, s.j. allen add (4:1) that in college students seem to be in a wonderful laboratory where they can take part in different projects, experiments, life in the campus and also outdoor activities, starting from the life in the city and at home, up to students’ clubs and organizations. armenian folia anglistika methodology 72 m.l. shankman, s.j. allen summarize some experience in this sphere in their book (2008:1), admitting that in spite of the numerous definitions of the term “leadership” (amazon.com more than 178 000, google 269 million), not so many publications are addressed to teaching students leadership skills. they underline that students’ audience is a vast teaching laboratory, a lot of opportunities for training leadership skills for 4-5 years. students can experiment with their approaches to leadership, mastering the most suitable philosophy and style. generally, m.l. shankman, s.j. allen (2008:2) come to the conclusion that teaching leadership to students should be done through: 1. the man or woman people look to in times of need; 2.the person who can be depended on to provide direction and guidance to others; 3.the person who wants to make a difference in the lives of others; 4.the one who is known for personal insights and strong convictions for the cause in which you believe; 5.the person who is known for an inclusive approach and the ability to work through differences. the main peculiarity of the method consists in teaching the students to be both leaders and followers. unfortunately, this approach is often out of the scope of discussions about leadership. leadership is the connection between leaders, their followers and context. it means that in any situation leaders introduce certain knowledge, skills and abilities. followers are the second part of the leadership and they cannot be underestimated. in reality they determine success and failure of leadership. a leader must be able to motivate his or her followers, otherwise it will be difficult for them to achieve goals. context is the third part of leadership dynamics. context includes the environment where leaders and their followers work (shankman 2008:12), more exactly, it combines the environment and situation. the environment is the structure of the organization with leader follower leadership. the situation includes different forces in a definite place and time as well as personalities and organizational policy. it should be mentioned that situations are dynamic. any new context demands different knowledge and skills both on part of the leaders and followers. many people underestimate the role of followers and context. we may suppose if something works well now it will last out in the future. if this does not happen, people blame others and the external factors. it means that we must take into consideration both the internal and external factors for successful communication in a new, changeable environment. as an example we can imagine lecturers working in different cultural contexts. they have to adapt their scheme of teaching according to the cultural context, since their followers (students), the socio-economic conditions and other variables are culturally different. thus, the essence of emotionally intelligent leadership is an ability to adapt to the context and then to motivate followers, taking into account their needs. thus, we can speak about specific competences of the lecturer (leader) without which it is impossible to realize even a brilliant project. after all, only a team governed by an emotionally competent leader can be a success. in this situation the lecturers can improve their methods of teaching and motivation, management of audience. armenian folia anglistikamethodology 73 when leaders provoke positive emotions, they can support the best abilities of their followers, in order to make a kind of response. when they provoke negative reactions, there appears a kind of dissonance which damages the emotional background of the team. it may take place both on the verbal and non-verbal levels of communication. students feel the emotional attitude of their lecturers (leaders). though lecturers may say nothing, students follow their behavior to see the reaction and build their own behavior. according to investigations, emotional intelligence skills are not inborn, but they may be developed. there is no leader who masters all these different skills equally. besides, there are a lot of ways and styles to master them. d.goleman, r.boyatzis, a mackee (2008:266) have determined the following set of emotional intelligence skills: 1. personal skills − skills including emotional consciousness of self: an adequate self-esteem and analysis of emotions and their influence, realizing one’s strong and weak points by using one’s own experience. according to the founder of american leadership forum j.jaworski (2008:34) states: “before you can lead others, before you can help others, you have to discover yourself” (quoted in shankman 2008:34). self-control is another important quality. one must be positive, control his/her negative emotions, be flexible to changes, persistent, full of initiative, active not to lose a chance. emotionally intelligent leadership includes the positive vision of the situation and future. 2. social skills − skills determining our consciousness of others, where empathy is a decisive factor for achieving the main goal of the leader, i.e. making response, understanding other people, their position and problems. communicative context helps to realize empathy. listening with empathy does not mean only physical perception because we perceive both words and proxemics. s. covey (1989) considers empathy as one of the main qualities of highly effective leaders: “seek first to understand, then be understood” (quoted in shankman 2008:78). in this context we can discuss the problem of citizenship, i.e. the obligations and responsibilities that a person has as a citizen. but, once again, citizenship depends on cultural context because it has different meanings for different people. in the context of teaching the students of “world economics” specialization, the following statements should be mentioned: “from the point of view of the world economics, empathy is the most important art for adequate interrelation with colleagues and people of other countries. intercultural dialogue has always been prone to errors and misunderstanding. in this situation empathy is a means which allows people to understand the peculiarities of non-verbal behavior and decode the emotional message behind the words” (goleman 2008:35). having the skills mentioned above, any leader can manage relationships, set goals and motivate his/her followers, symbolizing a corporate culture, confidence and reliability. admittedly, communicative leaders have a set of competences. they can listen to others, establish rapport, have good consciousness of the self and others. it is absolutely important for leaders to understand that goals can be achieved cooperatively. armenian folia anglistika methodology 74 besides, the development of relationships on the basis of emotional intelligence with people who differ from us allows us to see our environment differently. the main idea is to consider differences as valuable properties but not as barriers. thus as a chinese proverb says, “nephrite can be extracted from the stone of somebody else’s mountain as well.” leaders having developed emotional intelligence can build a team (student group), set an example of cooperation. the members of a team develop their potential, talents, personal skills which support an organization in general. a real team should have a high level of confidence which takes time to build. effective communication is a necessary component of a team. moreover, in the epoch of distance working by e-mail, skype or telephone, the question of establishing good relationships is becoming more and more important. it is also actual for the system of education to implement the system of distance learning, establish virtual cabinets and laboratories of linguodidactics. thus, the main competence of the most successful the leaders is competence based on emotional intelligence. the more emotional intelligence skills leaders have, the more effective they can become as they have flexible attitude to different situations (contexts). as the members of the 2001 international virtual conference have noted, new methods of teaching are determined by a new lifestyle, which demands changes. the role of lecturers has changed essentially, too. at present they cannot just be organizers of the teaching process but should become coaches and advisers who support their students’ self-dependent education (see reference 3). references: 1. belokon, o.v. (2009) emotsionalny i socialny intellect i fenomen liderstva. // socialny i emotsionalny intellect: ot protsessov k izmereniyam. pod red. d.v. lusina, d.v. ushakova. m.: institut psikhologii ran. 2. goleman, d.; boyatzis, r.; mckee, a. (2008) emotsionalnoe liderstvo (primal leadership). m.: alpina biznes buks. 3. informatsionnie i kommunikativnie tekhnologii v rusistike: sovremennoe sostoyanie i perspective. (2010) // iii mezhdunarodnaya virtualnaya nauchno-practicheskaya konferentsiya. sbornik nauchnikh dokladov. ef mesi. yerevan: limush. 4. kuprina, t.v. (2010) razvitie emotsionalnogo intellekta. neobhodimoe uslovie sovremennogo obrazovatelnogo protsessa. // mezhdunarodniy zhurnal prikladnikh i fundamentalnikh issledovaniy. n12. m.: akademiya estestvoznaniya. 5. kuprina, t.v.; minasyan, s.m.; ruda, o.v. (2010) upravlenie emotsiyami v zerkale crosskulturnih issledovaniy. yerevan: limush. 6. shankman, m.l.; allen, s.j. (2008) emotionally intelligent leadership. // a guide for college students. usa: jossey-bass. armenian folia anglistikamethodology 75 ¼·³óùáõýù³ûçý ³éáõùáí ë»é³ùçï áõõõáñ¹áõùá ïñã³ï³ý ñ³ù³ï»ùëïáõù ü»ñï³ûáõùë ïñãáõãû³ý ñçùý³ï³ý ëý¹çñá ¹³ë³í³ý¹ù³ý á×» ñç ¨ ù»ãá¹ý»ñç ³ýñ³ù³å³ï³ëë³ýáõãûáõýý ¿ å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ù³ëý³·»ïý»ñç å³ïñ³ëïù³ý å³ñ³ýçý»ñçý: êý¹ñç éáõíù³ý ³ñ¹ûáõý³í»ï ùáï»óáõù ¿ ½·³óùáõýù³ûçý ³é³çýáñ¹áõùá, áñá ñçùýí³í ¿ ½·³óùáõýù³ûçý μ³ý³ï³ýáõãû³ý áéáñïç áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõýý»ñç íñ³: ²ûýáõñ³ý¹»ñó, ëáõûý ù»ãá¹á å³ñ³ýçáõù ¿ ¹³ë³í³ý¹áõý»ñç áñáß³ïç ù³ëý³·çï³ï³ý` ³ýñ³ï³ï³ý áõ ëáóç³é³ï³ý ñùïáõãûáõýý»ñç ½³ñ·³ óáõù: armenian folia anglistika methodology 76 maket_n_verjin.qxp the rectors of yerevan state university as already stated above, due to the tense politicalsituation in the country, the university was reopened only in december,1920 after having been moved to yerevan. yerevan university was officially established in the soviet period. this is the reason why the two periods of the university have been separated. as a result, the true founder and the first rector of the university, youry ghambarian, a professor of law, was somehow forgotten. unfortunately, no archives on his activity have been found. he died in 1926. the exact date is unknown. there are no records of the place he was buried, either. on the 2nd of january, 1921, hakob manandian, a well-known scholar, was appointed rector of the university. instead of the former two, five faculties were opened – oriental studies, natural sciences, the faculty of pedagogy, technical and soviet construction. being a well-bred and reserved individual and a brilliant scholar, manandian was concerned about the universal and aesthetic education of students. during his one-year tenure hakob manandian managed to demonstrate his ability of an organizer by creating a sound teaching staff, enriching the university library, solving the problem of textbooks and manuals. after the most important problems had been solved, manandian left the rector’s position and became the dean of the faculty of oriental studies simultaneously heading the chair of armenian history. he was granted the professor’s title in 1926. a few years later, in 1931 hakob manandian retired from teaching but actively went on with his research in the sphere of history. all his works are sealed with the prudence of a philological and the unerring logics of a historian. manandian died in 1952. in october, 1921 david zavrian became the rector of the university. some time later he went to moscow on business. however, he didn’t return to yerevan after this trip. he began working in the field of chemistry at tiflis road 36 armenian folia anglistika yerevan state university is 90 years old youriy ghambarian, hakob manandian david zavrian constuction institute. thus, in 1922, on the 14th of february a new rector was appointed. this time it was professor hakob hovhannisian, doctor of biology. his name is closely connected with the origin and spread of bio-chemistry in armenia. hakob hovhannisian headed the university until the 9th of july, 1930. due to his efforts, a number of new faculties and laboratories were opened. these years also saw the establishment of a research centre attached to the university. a post-graduate course was opened, as well. after leaving the rector’s position hakob hovhannisian headed yerevan medical institute. he was the author of the first textbook on organic chemistry in armenian. but, unfortunately, hakob hovhannisian fell prey to the stalinist regime in 1937. he was exiled to kazakhstan, but on his way there he passed away. tigran musheghian, a well-known biologist and philologist has a respectable place in the history of yerevan university. he held the office from 1933 till 1935. he was the author of numerous scientific articles and textbooks. he died in 1935. in the same year on the 16th of july a new rector was appointed. it was vram kostanian who had been teaching financial and economic policy at the university since 1929. but kostanyan, too, fell prey to the stalinist regime. in 1937 he was exiled to kolima where he died in 1941. michael yengibarian, an economist and philosopher, was appointed rector in january, 1937. but he was not to hold the office long. he was to become one of the numerous victims of the regime. only three months after his appointment, yengibarian was accused of high treason and was sentenced to death. 37 yerevan state university is 90 years old armenian folia anglistika hakob hovhannisian tigran musheghian vram kostanian michael yengibarian in the same year of 1937, from april till august, the rector’s office was held by professor henry gabrielian who was also doomed to find himself in prison by the end of the same year. luckily the court acquitted him and he was able to return to his work. professor gabrielian dedicated himself to teaching the students and carried on researches in the sphere of philosophy. he headed the ysu chair of philoshophy. for more than 10 years he was the president of the scientific council awarding doctor’s degree of philosophy. professor gabrielian guided a large number of specialists on their way to the world of science. henry gabrielyan was proceeded by anushavan arzumanian, who held the office for only two months (september – october). arzumanian specialized in political economy. he also fell victim to the regime of the time. he was unjustly accused of having disseminated nationalistic ideas. arzumanian was also blamed for having supported aghasy khanjian (the first secretary of the central committee of the communist party of armenia). he was sent to prison, but fortunately, he was acquitted shortly afterwards. he started lecturing at the university again. then arzumanian joined the army during the great patriotic war. in the post-war years he displayed his talent of a theoretician in economics publishing about a hundred scientific articles. he was a well-known expert in world economics. in 1934, following anushavan arzumanian, professor norair dabaghian held the office for two months (october november). but his predecessor’s fate awaited him. norair dabaghian was a specialist in literature. the terror that was raging in the country, struck him when he was making plans for improving the system of the university. kamsar arakelian held the university rector’s office from november 1937 to june1938 as he was also doomed to be exiled to siberia. 38 armenian folia anglistika yerevan state university is 90 years old henry gabrielian anushavan arzumanian norair dabaghian kamsar arakelian in the year of 1938 garegin petrosian was appointed rector of yerevan state university. he had been teaching theoretical physics at the university since 1934. he combined the responsibilities of the rector with those of the head of the theoretical physics chair. in 1965 he became a member of the international academy of the history of natural sciences. in 1941 petrosian joined the army to defend our motherland. yerevan state university was ranked among the best universities in the ussr. the next rector was academician hrachia buniatian (1942, august-1946, may) who was the founder of the armenian school of biochemistry. he played an immense role in “upbringing” specialists in the field of biochemistry. hovhannes poghosian, a philologist, held the rector’s office from january 1947 till december 1948. he did not spare his efforts to train future specialists in the sphere of social studies. his inborn talent of oratory made his lectures exceptionally interesting. and by a strange coincidence death struck him when he was making a speech at the general meeting of the university. academician gagik davtian was appointed rector in 1957 and held the office till may, 1961. gagik davtian was the founder of agro-chemistry in armenia. the theory of industrial hydroponics was developed and it found practical application on davtian’s initiative. he also took an active participation in compiling the armenian encyclopedia. 39 yerevan state university is 90 years old armenian folia anglistika garegin petrosian hrachia buniatian hovhannes poghosian gagik davtian in 1961 the post was taken by nagush harutyunian who was one of the founders of the armenian school of mechanics. the period when nagush harutyunian held the office (1961, may-1963, april) was one of dynamic changes. the work, done previously was evaluated in a new way. the university, being the major educational establishment in the country was also a powerful centre of initiative as far as changes and innovations in public life were concerned. due to nagush harutyunian’s efforts new chairs were opened at the university those of biophysics, nuclear physics and economic cybernetics. among the newly-established laboratories that of radiation-related problems should be singled out. harutyunian’s contribution to the sphere of the mechanics of solid substance is immeasurable. hrant batikian(1963, june-1966, april) the successor to academician harutyunyan, spent his most fruitful years at the university. in 1948 he initiated the foundation of the chair of genetics at ysu. he twice headed the faculty of biology at ysu (1950-1963 and 1968-1978). professor hrant batikian did a lot to improve the working and studying conditions at the university. the new premise of the university was built under his direct supervision. one of the outstanding representatives of the humanities was mkrtich nersisian (1966, april-1977, may) who had been educated by a galaxy of talented scholars such as hakob manandian, manuk abeghian, hovsep orbely, hrachia acharian, stepan malkhasiants, grigor ghapantsian. this generation of scholars carried the burden of developing scientific thought in our country. mkrtich nersisian was their worthy successor. he did researches in armenian history in general and in the history of western armenia in particular. a considerable part of his scientific legacy deals with the problem of the genocide perpetrated by abdul hamid and the young turks in 1876-1917. academician mkrtich nertsisian’s contribution to the investigation of the root-causes leading to the armenian genocide cannot be overestimated. he will always be remembered as an eminent figure in the sphere of armenology. 40 armenian folia anglistika yerevan state university is 90 years old nagush harutyunian hrant batikian mkrtich nersisian mkrtich nersisian was followed by academician sergey hambartsumian. being one of the founders of the school of mechanics in armenia, academician hambartsumian held the office from may, 1977 till february, 1991. in this period yerevan state university became not only one of the leading universities in the ussr, but also a scientific research centre. the university went on growing. new faculties were opened mechanics, mathematics, mathematical cybernetics and research automation, philosophy and sociology, etc. it is beyond doubt that this eminent scientist’s fruitful researches and discoveries are outstanding achievements which have enriched the presentday trends and branches of mechanics. in the years when the soviet union collapsed (19911993) the university was headed by norayr arakelian, who managed to consolidate the efforts of the university staff and direct them to the realization of the main task of the educational establishment. the university faced new challenges because of the changes in the socio-political structure. due to rector arakelian’s efforts the university not only overcame all the difficulties but also underwent certain improvements. the first steps towards the threecycle education were made in this period. yerevan state university got the status of an independent educational establishment. this independence required certain prerequisites, the realization of which was undertaken by the university staff under rector arakelian’s supervision who had his own approaches concerning the development of university education. there was a great need for new methods and new equipment which would promote the process of individualization of education. special attention was paid to the scientific and cultural contact and cooperation with the universities abroad. dedicated sponsors were found who supported the university to overcome the hardships and initiate improvements. academician arakelian held the office for 2 years and 8 months, a period when the sons of armenia were fighting for the liberation of artsakh (nagorno karabakh), when university students and graduates were killed in action, and the country seemed to be in a deadlock. in spite of all this, the university succeeded in regaining its reputation. the process of improvements in the university education was already underway. 41 yerevan state university is 90 years old armenian folia anglistika sergey hambartsumian norayr arakelian the policy of educational reforms at the university was continued by academician radik martirossian who held the office from october, 1993 to may, 2006. the three-cycle education system was implemented. the academic plans and discipline programs were reconsidered and amended. the educational reforms were meant to restructure yerevan state university into an integrated educational system providing multifaceted quality education thus contributing to further international integration in the fields of education and science. academician martirossian’s supervision of the researches carried out in the sphere of radio-physics and electronics was invaluable. the international ties of ysu were growing wider and wider. and every year more and more members of the university participated in joint scientific projects. the present rector of yerevan state university is aram simonian who has been holding the office since may 15, 2006. after graduating ysu faculty of history in 1977, he defended his phd in 1983 and the thesis for doctor’s degree in 2000. he also heads the ysu armenological center. being a historian by profession, a. simonian has greatly contributed to the investigation of the armenian past. he is the author of over 60 scientific and educational works and three monographs. the scientific articles concentrate upon the core issues of the late 19th and the 20th centuries. historical statistics, as well as problems related to the history of artsakh (nagorno karabakh) and zangezur in 1917-1921 are issues of main concern in his works. the university has witnessed years of further improvement since 2006 becoming a window to the world of science and instruction. at present it bridges the country with about 150 educational institutions in the world. under the supervision of prof. simonian ysu realizes student exchange programs every year with the sole objective to boost the development of science through direct contacts and exchange information. with the objective to enter the european higher education area by making its academic standards more compatible and comparable with those existing in europe, the university, along with other educational institutions in the country, has found itself in the complicated but promising bologna process. (armenia joined the bologna process far back in 2005). this process has recently been accelerated under the direct supervision of the current ysu rector who is quite consistent in bringing the level of education at yerevan state university closer to international standards. 42 armenian folia anglistika yerevan state university is 90 years old aram simonian radik martirossian maket 2012 1-2:layout 1.qxd pragmatic aspects of derivatives functioning in fiction alla minasyan yerevan state linguistic university t he question of impact and perception of linguistic signs in the process of com-munication is particularly actual, as the main function of fiction texts is that of aesthetic impact. the study of the effectiveness of perception of derived words in fiction depending on the linguistic characteristics of their organization and aim is of particular interest. the use of linguistic means, and especially stylistic ones, has complex, polyfunctional character and is conditioned by a set of pragmatic intentions. however, one dominating type of intention can be singled out in each particular case. the type of intention is regarded as the general organizing principle of the utterance. the choice of linguistic units (here derivatives) takes place depending on the type of pragmatic intention. due to the type of pragmatic intention the forms of its linguistic realization as well as the effectiveness of impact and perception change. none of the pragmatic intentions is used in isolation, they are interdependent and interconditioned. thus, the pragmatic intention of “attention” is a significant component of all the others, and the pragmatic intention of creating interest is an integral part of the pragmatic intention of emotional impact. the pragmatic intention of the representation of world conceptual picture is the intention of the highest level, it has global character and comprises all the other intentions. thus, in some way, it coincides with the general orientation of the fiction text on the aesthetic impact. it is worth mentioning that with the complication of the type of the pragmatic intention, the process of perception becomes more complicated, but at the same time the effect of the impact and the intensity of perception become stronger. the peculiarities of the structural organization of derived words and the composite character of their structure provide with ample opportunity for realization of the pragmatic intention of “attention”. to draw attention, quite various transformations can take place in the structure of derived words, such as, decomposition, rearrangement, fusion, use of morpheme as an independent word, violation of norms of morphemic compatibility, repetition of morphemes of derived word. due to these transformations, linguistic units forming derivational stylistic devices (dsd) are out of the traditional ways of usage. …and i was glad that he was himself again, or at least the self that i knew, and with which i felt at home. (fitzgerald “the rich boy”) the effect of advancement may be achieved due to the repetition of morphemes (both root and affixal), especially in case of multiple repetition. creator he has created for his creatured ones a creation. (joyce “finnegans wake”) armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 85 in the illustrated example the following stylistic devices can be singled out: repetition of root morpheme, derivational variation, and also violation of the inner valency of the derivative creatured. all these devices draw reader’s attention to the given passage, arouse interest in him and have a great emotional impact which is achieved by the recurrence of repetitions and “enough closeness of the row”, i.e. when the repeated elements are located close to one another. one of the main devices used for the realization of the pragmatic intention of “attention” is a nonce-word which is built on the violation of the inner valency of derivatives, on the deviation from the standard use of linguistic units. any intentional “violation of norm” has one or another stylistic effect, which in its turn influences the perception process. “tell me of your experiences in the war. are you changed like the rest? you have the same stupid and unaging american face, except i know you’re not stupid, dick.” (fitzgerald “tender is the night”) in the given example the nonce-word unaging attracts the reader’s attention not only because of the non-standard form, but also because it does not exist in the language system. the mechanism of creation of such words is based on violation of the norms of semantic compatibility of words and derivational compatibility of morphemes. at the same time, this violation does not lead to the vagueness of meaning, as it is possible here to reconstruct the derivational process. unaging american face – “a face, that does not indicate the age of a person”. reconstruction of the derivational process based on decomposition of words is also used as a device which intensifies the effect of “advancement”. so, the effectiveness of perception of this word is conditioned by all means of impact – by violation of lexical and derivational compatibility, decomposition of the components of derivative, its motivation and stylistic markedness in the utterance. this is a vivid example of differences in perception of simple and derived words. the meaning of the new derivative, in this case the nonce-word, is predictable and easy to guess. the study of cases of affixal repetition comes to prove that it plays the most important role in creating emotional impact on addressee (glazirina 1987:65-71). the definition of the structural and semantic parameters of the repetition of derivational morphemes (rdm), the examination of the peculiarities of its functioning in text and the detection of its role in text forming categories such as informative value and cohesion are of great interest. as an independent stylistic device, rdm differs from other types of morphological repetition first, by its nature and distribution of linguistic units, second, by semantic and stylistic peculiarities of its functioning in text. it should be mentioned that with each repetition the quantity of new information lessens, whereas the effect of providing additional aesthetic information of unit – increases. the analysis of the linguistic material proves that effectiveness of perception is determined by semantic and structural peculiarities of repetition and first of all by semantics armenian folia anglistika linguistics 86 of repeated morphemes. both stylistically marked and neutral affixes are used to create repetition. here negative affixes and diminutive suffixes should be singled out. negative affixes signalizing the absence of what is designated by root make up neutral words in the language system (zimmer 1964). the stylistic dependence of derivatives with negative affix is determined, first of all, by the semantics of the root and not the affix. but in the process of functioning such words are liable to semantic and stylistic transformations, which is conditioned by the stylistic potential of the category of negation and affixal repetition. the peculiarity of the affixes under consideration (-less, un-, in-, dis-) is that in specific conditions – under the influence of the root and the context or in case of repetition – they can transfer emotional-evaluative meaning, due to the potential evaluative seme existing in their structure. the specific feature of the functioning of rdm is that in case of repetition of affixal morpheme, the correlated words of the derivational row undergo emotional-evaluative transposition characterized by muting of lexical meaning and actualization of stylistic semes. but dick’s necessity of behaving as he did was projection of some submerged reality: he was compelled to walk there, or stand there, his shirtsleeve fitting his wrist and his coat sleeve encasing his shirt-sleeve like a dandy – just as another man once found it necessary to ashes. dick was playing some tribute to things unforgotten, unshriven, unexpurgated. (fitzgerald, “tender is the night”) here the multiple repetition of the negative prefix -un provokes the muting of the differential semes and advances the potential evaluative seme “unforgotten, nonerasable from memory”, which expresses the emotional state of the hero. one of the relevant criteria of the stylistic significance of rdm is its frequency. the higher the frequency of affixal repetition, the stronger and the deeper the semantic relations with text units are, the more evident its role in creating the categories of informative value and cohesion are. under these conditions rdm may assist in creating the leitmotif – the main idea repeated and highlighted for many times, or an artistically expressive detail, reiterated in the text. she was laughing hilariously, unashamed, unafraid, unconcerned. no one coming on the scene would have imagined that she had caused it; she laughed as after some mild escape of childhood. (fitzgerald “tender is the night”) while discussing the pragmatic intention of knowledge framework activation, relevant for perception of text information concept, the words derived from proper names are of particular interest. as it is known, the use of proper names as common nouns is called antonomasia. from the point of view of stylistic aspect, these units act as figurative means of characterization, aimed at expressing emotional, subjective-evaluative attitude armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 87 of the addresser towards the described facts. from the angle of the cognitive processes the images of poetic onomastics expressed by means of derivatives act as signals which assist in activation of specific knowledge relevant for communicative aims. “i think they’re growing like swedes – ibsenesque, you know. very gradually getting gloomy and melancholy.” (fitzgerald “the ice palace”) in the story “the ice palace” by s. fitzgerald the derivative ibsenesque is used which is motivated by the proper name ibsen (henry) that activates the mechanism of addressee’s memory, referring his consciousness to a particular author, in case the addressee has some literary competence and specific knowledge. s. fitzgerald draws parallels between henry ibsen’s heroes and the heroes of his story, characterizing the “northerners”. something “ibsenesque”, “scandinavian” can be seen in their image, as they are “very gradually getting gloomy and melancholy, there can always be found a certain brooding rigidity in their character. they don’t indulge in the cheering luxury of tears. these people are freezing up”. activating particular structures of knowledge, the given derivative becomes the bearer of the conceptual information of the given story – its microconcept, which, together with the system of other concepts, forms the conceptual content of the whole story. so, the pragmatic intention of knowledge framework activation (linguistic, encyclopedic and literary) becomes very significant while providing conceptual information of the text and its perception. here derivatives are of much importance due to the mechanisms of motivation, analogy and patterning characteristic of them. the role of derivational means in representation and perception of world picture in the process of literary communication is of particular interest. in general, the question of “world picture in its representation by derivational means” was studied by kubryakova (1988), serebrennikov (1988), arutyunova (1992), sternin (1984), teliya (1996), arkhipov (2000), vejbicka (2001), kolshansky (2005) and others. so, we should examine how the world picture may be represented by derivational means in the process of creation and perception of fiction texts. as it is known, fiction texts are able to model in the addressee’s consciousness picture of “possible” worlds, which reflect the inner spiritual life of mankind. in literary communication with its subjective, aesthetic-evaluative, emotional-evaluative, social-personal orientations, the objects of spiritual world, and consequently, the vocabulary denoting it, are of primary importance. as kubryakova mentions, “derived words, due to their ability to serve as signs of results of human conceptual activity, occupy a visible and important place in the world picture reflected by humans” (kubryakova 1988:169). thus, derivatives play a significant role in literary communication, being the signals of conceptual and aesthetically important information. the linguistic analysis of the derivatives used in the story “ice palace” has underlined the role of derivatives in the process of providing conceptual information of the text and representation of the world picture. it should be mentioned that, first of all, there is armenian folia anglistika linguistics 88 a high concentration of derivatives in the text. the author used derivational patterns mainly within two parts of speech – nouns and adjectives. nouns are represented by the following derivational patterns: adj + -ness � n; adj + -ery(ry) � n, adj + -ity � n, v + -(a)tion � n. the group of adjectives and adverbs is represented by the following examples: lazy, summery, casually, sleepy, drowsy, sleepily, lazily, frosty, gloomy, icy, dreary, icy-cold, cheerless, ice-bound, snobbish, horsey, expensive, superior, privileged. most of the derived adjectives and adverbs refer to emotive-evaluative vocabulary which is quite important for representation of the evaluative picture of the world. in this story the author used semantic groups of words describing natural phenomena (flower-filled summery evenings, dreamy skies, lazy days and nights, lazy cotton-fields, drowsy picturesqueness; frosty station, ice-bound whalers, smokeless, trackless wastes), as well as the inner psychological state of a person; the qualities, feelings and senses characteristic of him (carelessness, generosity, sheer laziness, sleepy old side, lazily, sleepily, lazy sweetness; gloomy and melancholy, icy terror, dreary loneliness, icy breath, stillness). from the point of view of the content, the words characterizing people of the south – warmth, generosity, drowsiness, idleness, sweetness, and words describing people of the north – coldness, loneliness, freezing terror, melancholy, sadness and dreariness prevail. the study of word-formative relations of derivatives proves that the processes of analogical and correlative word-formation, as well as repetition of root and affixal morphemes are widely used in the text. they should be examined from the point of view of text perception and interpretation processes. root repetition forming correlative textual chains promotes the advancement of the key words of the text which mark the conceptually significant notions, during the perception of information. in the given story the following correlations are used hot – heat, summer – summery, dream – dreamy, lazy – laziness – lazily, idle – idly, sleepy – sleepily, still – stillness, ice – icy – icy-cold, lonely – alone – loneliness. they emphasize and emotionally intensify the feeling of warmth and carelessness in the life of the southerners, and in contrast – intensify the feeling of freezing terror, loneliness, stillness and hopelessness of the northerners. thus, our analysis comes to prove that in the process of literary communication the derivational means can somehow represent the picture of the world. references: 1. aznaurova, e. (1988) pragmatika khudozhestvennogo slova. tashkent: fun. 2. arnold, i.v. (1975) interpretatsiya khudozhestvennogo teksta: tipy vidvizheniya i problema expressivnosti. // expressivnie sredstva angliyskogo yazika. leningrad: lgpi. 3. arnold, i.v. (2002) stilistika sovremennogo angliyskogo yazika. (stilistika dekodirovaniya). m.: nauka. 4. glazirina, s. (1987) stilisticheskiy priyom povtora na slovoobrazovatel‘nom urovne v viskazivanii i teksta. // aspekty semanticheskogo analiza viskazivaniya i teksta. tashkent: fun. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 89 5. khanpira, e. (1972) okkazional’nost’ i okkazionalizmi. // stilisticheskie issledovaniya. m.: nauka. 6. kubryakova, e. (1988) rol’ slovoobrzovaniya v formirovanii yazikovoi kartiny mira. // rol’ chelovecheskogo faktora v yazike: yazik i kartina mira. m.: nauka. 7. zimmer, e. (1964) affixal negation in english and other languages: an investigation of restricted productivity. london: clowes. sources of data: 1. fitzgerald, s. (1983) selected short stories. m.: raduga. 2. fitzgerald, s. (1979) tender is the night. m.: progress. 3. joyce, j. (2002) finneguans wake. usa: penguin books. 4. (1998) the oxford dictionary of new words. new york. ²í³ýó³íáñ μ³é»ñç ¹»ñ³ï³ï³ñáõãû³ý ·áñí³μ³ý³ï³ý ñ³û»ó³ï»ñåá ·»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý ·ñ³ï³ýáõãû³ý ù»ç ² í³ýó³íáñ μ³é»ñç ï³զմության ³ é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá, ¹ñ³ýó ï³éáõóí³íùç μ³õ³¹ñû³é μýáõûãá é³ûý ñý³ñ³íáñáõãûáõýý»ñ »ý áýó»éáõù ýå³ ï³ ï³¹ñáõãûáõýý»ñç çñ³ï³ý³óù³ý ñ³ù³ñ: ²í³ýó³íáñ μ³é»ñç ï³éáõóí³íùáõù ï³ñáõ »ý ï»õç áõý»ý³é ½³ý³½³ý ó¨³ ÷áëáõãûáõýý»ñ` μ³õ³¹ñçãý»ñç ï³ññ³éáõíáõù ¨ í»ñ³¹³ ë³íáñáõù, ë»ñï³×áõù, ó¨áõûãç ·áñí³íáõù çμñ¨ çýùýáõñáõûý μ³é, ó¨áõûãý»ñç ñ³ù³ïóù³ý ûñçý³ã³÷áõãûáõýý»ñç ë³ëïáõù, ³í³ýó³íáñ μ³é»ñç ó¨áõûãý»ñç ïñïýáõãûáõý: նշված ձևափոխությունները ¹áõñë »ý μ»ñáõù μ³é³ï³½ù³ï³ý á׳ ï³ý ñý³ñý»ñ ó¨³ íáñáõ 黽í³ï³ý ùç³íáñý»ñá ¹ñ³ýó ñ³ù³ñ ³í³ý¹³ ï³ý դարձած կիրառման ó¨» ñç ë³ñù³ýý»ñçó: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 90 microsoft word maket 2020-2(22) (3)-1 (1).doc armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 culture studies 106 the history of the language and the history of the nation gabriella macciocca university of cagliari abstract the history of the language represents a moment of deep knowledge in the development of the political thought of the nation. with regard to the italian language, we must recognize observations and summaries of linguistic history produced ever since the origins of the language itself. a short number of examples, coming from the history of the italian language, and from the history of italian literature, will be considered. we will consider in which way the language has been taught over time and the university statement. key words: history of language, history of language and history of the nation, history of italian language, the university chair of history of italian language. introduction the representation of the history of a language, in both diachronic and synchronic terms, particularly in the formation of a national language, is always an important cultural operation, with unique elements, providing a starting point or indeed a point of comparison. in the history of the italian language, it may even be said to constitute a distinctive feature, as well as being at the same time a condition and a gateway, and to have done so constantly over time. the landscape inhabited by the history of the language is from time to time delimited, but it does allow us to glimpse the possibility of progressive acquisitions which, in the past and the present, manage to cross the boundary that encloses and separates. up to a certain point in the life of a language, its history may be considered insignificant, since the use of that language becomes more widely spoken and https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2020.16.2.106 culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 107 acquires importance only in a specific historic moment, which is different for each language. from that moment on, chronologies and accounts are written, and together with the history of the language the history of a civilisation is agreed upon and takes shape. it is important here to consider the words with which the parameters of the discipline were established by one historian of the italian language in the 20th century — in the period when the first histories specifically devoted to the language were published: a profile of italian linguistic history is neither a chapter of italian history nor an introduction to italian historic grammar. it is a microcosm of civil history, seen through the family of systems, more or less coordinated amongst themselves, that constitute the language of the community to which we belong. (devoto 1954։1)1 in a wider sense, broadening our viewpoint, «it is a complex of different forms of knowledge and techniques spread across a series of contiguous areas» (serianni 2015:3). the history of the language sheds new light on knowledge, as ghino ghinassi pointed out in the presentation of the work by bruno migliorini: when migliorini’s storia della lingua italiana (history of the italian language) appeared in early 1960, it was immediately perceived as an absolute novelty in the italian scientific panorama: his original identification of the proper ambit of a discipline that had long been called for but was still, we may say, new, together with his endowment of this discipline with an enormous quantity of data, revealed an aspect of italian history that until that time had not been described except by chance or in fragments; his work shone a new light on the history of italy that served to bring key moments and armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 culture studies 108 episodes more clearly into focus and to question anew its overall line of development. (ghinassi 1998:xv) the first histories of the italian language were produced precisely in the 20th century: in 1960, marking the 1000th anniversary of the language, the storia della lingua italiana (history of the italian language) by bruno migliorini was published. it would become a canonical text for the discipline, one whose value has not diminished with time. together with the profilo di storia linguistica italiana (profile of italian linguistic history) by giacomo devoto (published in 1953), migliorini’s work directly entered the life of the nation, first and foremost because they were both linked to the creation of university chairs. the latter were instituted in italy in the first half of the 20th century, later than the creation of the equivalent chair in the history of the french language in france (serianni 2015, 4-11; ghinassi 1998, x-xi). consequently, the impact of these two works was also felt via the education of generations of university students, and not just in the humanities (on the scientific profile of the two historians of the language, and on the linguistic and academic environment in italy in the first half of the 20th century and subsequent developments, see the papers arising from the study meetings in santipolo – viale 2009 and 2011). the physiognomy of the history of the language in order to delineate the scientific physiognomy of the history of the language, we need to examine certain earlier observations made by migliorini in his storia della lingua e storia della cultura (history of language and history of culture, 1932), later included in the collection lingua e cultura (language and culture, 1948), as well as in numerous radio broadcasts, later included in the collection conversazioni sulla lingua italiana (conversations on the italian language, 1949): culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 109 language is the main instrument on which civil life is founded, and to know well the national language is, i would say, the primary civic duty (migliorini 1956: premise). this principle is confirmed shortly afterwards when he says that «the language is closely linked to the national character» (migliorini 1956:11). seen from the perspective of another historian of the language, in the evolution of «different points of view and methods», … it seems obvious that there must be some link between linguistic shifts and the history of culture and society […] a language should be considered and studied as an instrument that is predisposed by its very nature to provide over time solutions to communicative needs that are ever more suitable, more differentiated, more economical. for me language is a complex of mechanisms, which, by means of their assiduous deployment, in response to the stimuli that arise from the cultural climate, are destined to result in progress, which is the goal of all technique. (durante 1981:v-vi) the framework of varieties that make up the italian language and have animated its linguistic history necessarily prompts the linguist to acknowledge the distinction between the functions of the language and those of its dialects, a distinction which – in the case of italian – is fundamental: it is not a stroke of luck, not an arbitrary decision that brings a dialect to the level of language: it is rather a transformation that changes both its functions and its appearance; a transformation that can happen only when historic events cause an entire people to perceive the need for a common language and the urgency of obtaining it. (migliorini 1956:16) armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 culture studies 110 continuing with his definition, migliorini cites the link with dante and the classics of the 14th century, clarifying the literary and conservative character of the italian language that distinguishes it from the other romance languages, pausing to dwell on the decisive moment in which one variety becomes the national language: but every time we would find that the transformation of a language of nature into a language of culture unfolds in tandem with the broadening of the spiritual horizon. (migliorini 1956:19) while thus far we have spoken briefly of the premise and the key features of the history of the italian language in the editions associated with the birth of the discipline and the institution of the university chairs, in reality, observations and summaries of linguistic history have been produced ever since the origins of the language itself. these have included intertextual references and more extensive analyses, in both poetry and prose, which appeared with growing intensity until the dawn of the classics: dante drew the map of the various popular tongues and their link to the ‘cultivated, curial, cardinal’ language, of which he presents an early profile, tracing the period from the sicilian poets down to his own day. a cultural operation of a different kind, reconstructing the genesis of the language, was performed by petrarch. to a greater or lesser extent, we must however acknowledge that the adoption of a particular stance with respect to the existence and the definition of the language, its nature and its use, has been a constant feature of italian writing: every author has expressed his or her idea of the language, in many cases leaving their mark or shifting linguistic history in a new direction. without going into detail, which would take us too far from our chosen path, we shall merely cite the names of pietro bembo, alessandro manzoni, and, closer to our own day, the names of italo calvino and pier paolo pasolini. the scaffolding of the history of italian rests on unmovable pillars: the transformation from latin, the constitution of the language of literary tradition culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 111 (and the language of poetry in particular), the efforts to codify the language in the 16th century and the conquest of the spoken language in modern times. at its heart it remains divided in two, as has been pointed out ever since its origins, representing a balanced form of bilingualism (see the sequence of chapters in devoto 1954 on unconscious bilingualism, aware bilingualism, new bilingualism). history of the italian literature and the history of the italian language by way of demonstrating the premise set out above, let us dwell a moment on another key phase in literary history and the history of the nation, in order to observe the undeniable link between the history of the language and italian writing. in 1870, with the formation of the kingdom of italy almost complete, francesco de sanctis described its language on the same level as its culture, reconstructing the moment of the language’s birth: it is in the nature of culture to call forth new ideas and needs that are less material, to form a more educated and civil class of citizens, to put them in contact with foreign cultures, to bring languages together, developing in them not what is local but what is shared. italian culture produced this double phenomenon: the restructuring of latin and the formation of the vernacular […] this common language is formed more easily where there is a centre of culture, which brings together the cultivated classes and acts as a forum for the most illustrious men. this was seen in palermo in the court of frederick ii, which drew people from sicily, puglia, tuscany, romagna… (de sanctis 1973:63) the linguistic and literary commentaries of various kinds that have taken shape over time have mirrored the results of scientific research: the origins of italian, which for a long period were set by the sicilian school in the 13th armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 culture studies 112 century, have now been put back to the 9th and 10th centuries. the reformulation of the period of the origins is a continuous process, given the discovery of new documents on the language and literary texts in the form of both prose and poetry (for example the most ancient italian poems examined by stussi 1999). the axis on which the history of the language moves is thus retrograde, tending to shift the start further back in time: the language is updated by delving further and further into its past, backdating and broadening the framework of reference of language and style. language and nation the history of the link between language and nation, in particular of language as an equivalent, a signifier, of the nation, was examined by tullio de mauro, from antiquity, with reference to the syriac writer bardaisan, to the 18th century and european romanticism. lingua e nazionalità in italia (language and nationality in italy), the first chapter of another, more modern history of the language, storia linguistica dell’italia unita (linguistic history of united italy, first edition 1963), traces, once again starting in antiquity, the historical and linguistic development of italy up until unification, based on a paradigmatic observation: ever present in the background of every event in italian history, not necessarily decisive, but clearly exerting a strong influence, is the discontinuous geography: even italian historians and linguists who are generally inclined to dismiss the importance of geographical boundaries and other aspects compared to political and administrative boundaries and the landscape created by human beings, when faced with the regional discontinuity of the peninsula, are obliged to admit that especially in periods of less intense economic and social life, it has strongly favoured regional distinctions. (de mauro 1979:17) culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 113 summing up the historical and linguistic interpretations, the italian language constitutes a unique case that has been handed down since the 14th century in the absence of a state or other form of political hegemony: «a language without an empire», as it is called in the title of the essay by bruni (2013:9-21). perhaps the nature of this language is perceived more strongly and described more clearly by foreigners — who have described it as the language of music (folena 1983), or the “language of the angels” (stammerjohann 2013) — than by its indigenous speakers, a language configured on the model of the classics. by backdating slightly, it is possible to broaden the framework of reference: for a brief period in the 13th century, political hegemony influenced both the language and the nation during the reign of frederick ii. this period saw the rise of sicilian poetry, which would become the model of the great italian poetry of the 14th century, from the stilnovisti 2 to dante, petrarch and many others besides. all developments in the culture of a nation influence its language, and from this point of view, the history of the italian language constitutes an adventure without parallel and without precedent, in which various cultural currents have acted simultaneously, in a linguistic landscape that has solidified in a disconnected way, with isolated eruptions in the great sea of medieval latin, against a backdrop of multilingualism. the birth of the language, on the back of the varieties of various political or cultural entities, all sharing a common neo-latin origin, has been refracted over the course of linguistic history and national history, sustaining the dialects, at least in the spoken language, until the middle of the 20th century and, in shifting linguistic manifestations, down to the present day. the adventure descends to the etymological depths, to the point of involving the meaning of the name of the language itself: the word italian is not of geographical derivation, unlike the many names by which italy has been called since the most ancient times and by the most ancient civilisations: the term ‘italiano’ began to solidify in the course of the 13th century, coined with the help of the suffix -ano attached to the word ‘italia’ (migliorini 1998:115116; serianni 2015:36; ghinassi 1998:xx-xxi). the term marks the start of a armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 culture studies 114 linguistic and cultural trail that leads right up to modern times (tomasin 2011:§ iv). the italian language on this polyhedral, multifaceted matrix, the system of the language is inscribed. it is always open to new acquisitions and yet always highly conservative, like a language found in an isolated area (in the words of renzi 1988:20: «it never entirely discards the forms of the phases now concluded, like in a house in which new furniture is purchased, but without ever throwing away the old»). without belonging to an isolated area, the italian language possesses features that derive from the immobile aspect of the written language. as evidence of its conservatism, we may cite first and foremost the extensive complexity of its morphological system, and, to a lesser degree the never abandoned link with latin, on which it draws incessantly: and even when the use of the vernacular began to be widely adopted in writing, latin had not yet fully exhausted its purpose, as the butterfly replaces the chrysalis, but was to remain an active force that would profoundly influence the history and the structure of italian. (durante 1981:v) with regard to innovation, the lexical system is closely linked to the events of political and cultural history, with modifications generated by contact with other languages, or by the interference or supremacy of other languages (such as the introduction of spanish and french words, respectively in the 17th and 18th centuries). in the history of the italian language the longest chapter is the history of the written language, which overlays all the diatopic varieties, making them uniform over time. until the mid 20th century, the written italian language contrasted with the spoken word, which was mainly dialect. culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 115 it is here that a wedge (the representation of speech) is inserted that at the same time both separates and mediates between ancient and modern: from the ancient texts to the modern varieties, the interpretation proceeds precisely according to the use of the spoken word (for an essential basic bibliography, see d’achille 1990, sornicola 1981 and de mauro 1993). the claim that «language is alive» (folena 2002:59) — a key principle in the interpretation of ancient texts, in which we expect to find linguistic innovations derived precisely from the spoken varieties — comes to us from the discipline of philology: from philological research derive both the texts and knowledge of the varieties in which they were composed. the link between the italian language and philology — deeper and more substantial than the other romance languages — and the close connection between history of the language and philology (serianni 2015:§ 1.1) becomes clearer in this context: the tools of the language derive from the history of the texts, and philological operations lead to knowledge of the language over time, while these same tools make it possible to handle innovations and classify the modern language. ultimately, this enables us to connect the two extremes of the italian continuum, whose cardinal points are the language of the speakers and the language of the authors (nencioni 1989:227). conclusion tying up the threads of a discussion that has necessarily been brief, in a broad excavation of a diverse range of historic and social aspects, the principle aim of the history of the language is to recognise the «unity of the culture» in the cultural horizon of each period, or at least to identify its premise, by which is meant: …not only and not so much the unity of anthropological cultures or various sciences or various branches of knowledge and various forms of unity, but the possibility of movement, of shifting within the cultural space, i.e. the restitution to each individual (regardless of the atomisation arising from armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 culture studies 116 the division of peoples, of labour and of social class) of the ability to move freely, by choice, within the cultural space, experiencing first hand its ordered unity. (italics in the original, de mauro 2018:101) note: 1. all quotations in the text were translated from italian into english for this edition. 2. stilnovisti is the collective term for the poetic pioneers and partisans of the italian dolce stil novo in the late 13th century and early 14th . cf. <https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/ 10.1093/ acref/9780199208272.001.0001/acref-9780199208272-e-1084> references: 1. bruni, f. (2013) l’italiano fuori d’italia. firenze: cesati․ 2. d’achille, p. (1990) sintassi del parlato e tradizione scritta della lingua italiana: analisi di testi dalle origini al secolo xviii. roma: bonacci․ 3. de mauro, t. (1979) storia linguistica dell’italia unita. roma-bari: laterza․ 4. de mauro, t. (1993) lessico di frequenza dell’italiano parlato. a c. di tullio de mauro et al.. milano: etas․ 5. de mauro, t. (2018) l’educazione linguistica democratica. roma-bari: laterza․ 6. de sanctis, f. (1973) storia della letteratura italiana. a c. di g. contini, torino: utet․ 7. devoto, g. (1954) profilo di storia linguistica italiana. firenze: la nuova italia 1954, 2 nd ed. 8. durante, m. (1981) dal latino all’italiano moderno. saggio di storia linguistica e culturale․ bologna։ zanichelli․ 9. folena, g. (1983) una lingua per la musica. // l’italiano in europa. esperienze linguistiche del settecento. 217-355. torino: einaudi․ 10. folena, g. (2002) textus testis. lingua e cultura poetica delle origini. milano: bollati boringhieri․ culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 117 11. ghinassi, g. (1998) bruno migliorini e la sua «storia della lingua italiana». // migliorini 1998, vii-xxxviii․ 12. migliorini, b. (1998) storia della lingua italiana. intr. di g. ghinassi, milano: bompiani․ 13. migliorini, b. (1956) conversazioni sulla lingua italiana. firenze: le monnier, 2nd ed. aum. 14. nencioni, g. (1989) disperare dell’italiano? // saggi di lingua antica e moderna. 227-234. torino: rosenber & sellier․ 15. renzi, l. (1988) grande grammatica italiana di consultazione. vol. i, bologna: il mulino 16. santipolo, m.; viale, m. (2009) bruno migliorini, l’uomo e il linguista (rovigo 1896 – firenze 1975), atti del convegno di studi, rovigo, accademia dei concordi, 11-12 aprile 2008. rovigo: accademia dei concordi editore. 17. santipolo, m.; viale, m. (2011) bruno migliorini nella cultura del novecento, atti della giornata di studio, rovigo, accademia dei concordi 23 aprile 2010, acta concordium 19 suppl. a “concordi” 2․ 18. serianni, l. (2015) prima lezione di storia della lingua italiana. roma-bari: laterza. 19․ sornicola, r. (1981) sul parlato. bologna: il mulino․ 20. stammerjohann, h. (2013) la lingua degli angeli. italianismo, italianismi e giudizi sulla lingua italiana. firenze: accademia della crusca․ 21. stussi, a. (1999) versi d’amore in volgare tra la fine del secolo xii e l’inizio del xiii. // vol. lix, 1-2, pp. 1-69. cultura neolatina․ 22. tomasin, l. (2011) italiano. storia di una parola. roma: carocci. լեզվի պատմությունը և ազգի պատմությունը լեզվի պատմությունը տվյալ ժողովրդի քաղաքական մտքի զարգացման վկայությունն է: իտալերենի առումով անհրաժեշտ է հաշվի առնել այն դիտարկումներն ու ամփոփումները որոնք առկա են լեզվի սկզբնավորումից սկսած մինչև մեր օրերը: սույն հոդվածում քննության են armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 culture studies 118 առնվում իտալերեն լեզվի և գրականության պատմությունից բերվող տարբեր օրինակներ, փորձ է արվում ներկայացնելու իտալերենի ծագման ու զարգացման տարբեր փուլեր և դրանց դերը իտալական մշակույթի ու քաղաքակրթության ձևավորման հարցում: received by the editorial board 24.10.2019 recommended for publication by the reviewers 15.01.2020 accepted for print 09.04.2020 7 maket 2010 nor_n:layout 1.qxd limitations of machine translation under the rapid technical and technological advancesthroughout the world, machine translation, as well as computer assisted translation is becoming widespread nowadays. however, there has been some disappointment regarding this issue and even chomsky washed his hands of the matter stating that “machine translation seems to be pointless and probably quite hopeless” (chomsky 1975:40). indeed, correct, precise and high quality machine translation will hardly be achievable at least in the nearest future. even if the computer were suddenly able to communicate meaning, it would still fall short of what humans do with language in a number of ways. this is because linguists have long been aware that communication of meaning is only one among functions of language. these difficulties would tend to place machine translation outside the limits of solvable problems. for instance, if we compare text a meaning exactly the same thing as text b, translation would be no problem at all, and no professional translator would be needed. absolutely anyone able to read would be able to translate any text between these two languages by looking up the number for the words in one language and then substituting the words with the same number in the other language. it would not be necessary to know both languages and, consequently, computer translation in such a case would be easy. 1 but the real truth of the machine translation efforts is that word 60, for example, in language a does not mean exactly what word 60 in language b means. a good experiment of how imperfect computer translation is was carried out by french and english translators, who translated various brief passages. the final results of such a process bore almost no resemblance to the original, however hard technical experts called translators tried. there is at present no evidence suggesting that a computer can turn out high quality text at a rate faster than a human. indeed humans may in some cases be faster than the computer. a human translator, for instance, can only handle 200 to 500 words per hour, which is often true, whereas computers can do far better. many translators report that their non translating colleagues believe it should be perfectly possible for a translator to simply look at a document in language a and just type it out in language b as quickly as though it were the first language. if human beings could do this then there might be some hope for computers to do so as well. but they cannot make the correct choice of the terms in the majority of cases. computer translation developers prefer to ignore many of the limitations of computer assisted translation. they are convinced that computers with limitless power will be able to perform a number of operations today’s computers are not capable of. they are supposed to provide terminologists with a complete list of possible terms to use. but they armenian folia anglistika translation studies 130 gayane shmavonyan may not reliably make the correct choice between the terms in most cases. even in the 1940th prominent linguist l. bloomfield acknowledged that “there must be some way around all the difficulties connected with computer translation. the only hope for a thorough solution seems to lie with technology” (bloomfield 1944). distinction should be made between the two types of translation systems: machine translation (mt) and computer assisted translation (cat). machine translation performs the use of computer software to translate a text or a speech from one natural language to another. this technique is used for more complex translations such as translation of idioms; it is also effective in places where formal language is used, such as translation of official and legal documents. mt has proven useful as a tool to assist human translators; it produces a rough text for a human translator to revise. in a very limited number of cases it can be used in e.g. weather reports. the translator must interpret and analyze all the features of the text: grammar, semantics, syntax, idioms of the source language. the problem how to program a computer that will “understand” a text as a person does and that will “create” a new text in the target language that “sounds” as if it has been written by a person can be solved in terms of two approaches to machine translation: interactive and interlingua approaches. an interactive system prints and displays the text created with no help from the translator, it only consulted with the translator on various words. the so called interlingua approach encodes the information as a universal stage enabling translation back and forth between languages. interlingua machine translation can use a method based on linguistic rules, which means that words will be translated in a linguistic way, the most suitable (orally speaking) words of the target language will replace the ones in the source language. the interlingua approach to machine translation has advantages and disadvantages. the advantage of multilingual machine translation is that no transfer component has to be created for each language pair. the obvious disadvantage is that the definition of an interlingua is difficult and maybe even impossible for a wider sphere. the ideal context for interlingua machine translation is thus multilingual machine translation in a very specific sphere. the machine translation system provides the target text segments that are paired with the source text segments so that the end product is a quality translation. computer assisted translation (cat) is a form of translation where a human translator translates texts using computer software designed to support and facilitate the translation process. computer assisted translation is sometimes called machine aided translation, where the software is designed to help translators do their work. it is a broad term converting a range of tools, from simple to complicate: spell checkers, grammar checkers, word processing software, database created in a program. having discussed the types of translation technology, it is important to turn to translation memory. it should be noted that translation memory is a multilingual text archive containing multilingual texts, allowing storage and retrieval of aligned multilingual text segments against various search conditions. in other words, ase (assisted stock exchange) stores source and target language pairs of text segments that can be armenian folia anglistikatranslation studies 131 retrieved for use with present texts and texts to be translated in the future (webb 1992). a source text sentence or sentence like unit (heading, title) may be segmented into larger units such as paragraphs or small ones such as clauses. as the translator works through a document, the software displays each source segment in turn and provides a previous translation for reuse if the program finds a matching source in its database. if it does not, the program allows the translator to enter a translation for a new segment. after the translation for a segment is completed, the program stores the new translation and moves into the next segment. translation memory is a technology, too. it has proven to be useful, especially in technical fields where electronic documents are constantly being updated and revised. individual translators, translation agencies, clients, and companies with in-house translation divisions can all benefit from this technology. translation memory saves the user time and money under the appropriate circumstances. the key for success is known when, where and how to use it. translation memory should be considered one of the many tools of the translation trade. a painter has a brush and palette; a pianist has sheet music. how painters and pianists use their brushes, palettes and sheet music is what counts. the same can be said of translators and translation memory. unlike the brush, palette and sheet music, however, not everyone recognizes that translation memory is an invaluable tool for the translator and that the translator, like the artist, is the one who must fit all the pieces together to form a work of perfection. the more that is written about this technology, the more translation professionals and their clients will be made aware of its important role in the translation process. how does tm (translation memory) differ from mt (machine translation)? mt creates automated translations and requires an advanced terminology database that includes all grammatical elements of a language. the mt system uses comprehensive dictiona ries to translate the source text while at the same time applying the grammatical rules, or rule sets, from the database in order to produce the resulting grammatically correct target sentences. the technology sounds like an excellent solution. however, there is a catch: the source and resulting target text segments are not stored away in a database for future use. if a similar text (such as an automobile user’s manual for the same model but different year) needs to be translated, the mt system would have to start from scratch. on the other hand, a tm system is used as a translator’s aid, storing a human translator’s text in a database for future use. tm can be used in a few different ways. one way would be to have a translator or a machine translation system translate the original text, using translation memory to store the paired source and target segments. the translator could then reuse the stored texts to create the revised or updated version of the text. only the segments of the new text that do not match the old one would have to be translated. the alternative would be to use an mt system or a different tm system to translate the ori ginal. the new tm system could then be used by a translator to translate the revision or update by aligning the texts produced by the mt system or other tm system and storing them in the tm database for present and future work. the translator could then proceed to translate only the segments of the new text, using tm as described above. armenian folia anglistika translation studies 132 what distinguishes tm from other computer-assisted translation (cat) tools? there are many cat tools available to assist the translator, such as bilingual and multilingual dictionaries, grammar and spell checkers and terminology software but tm goes one step further by making use of these other cat tools while at the same time matching up the original source document stored in its database with the updated or revised document through exact matching. normally, the basic unit of the text in a tm database is a sentence; and the tm user can define what the unit will be. the basic unit might even be a sentence fragment or a paragraph. the translator does not have to retranslate the work he or she has already completed. it is necessary to turn to language as a social phenomenon. how can the computer, a nonhuman, possibly assist the language learning process? language is very much a part of being human. despite our best efforts over 50 years, we still can’t teach the computer how to function in human language like a human being does. despite amazing advances in artificial intelligence and computational linguistics, and promises of products that we see on the market, we will probably always be reliant on humans to negotiate language. this is good news for those of us involved in the language translating business – our job as language translators is certainly secure. no one who knows what he or she is talking about suggests that the computer can take the translator’s place. perhaps the computer would be a failure as a lan guage translator. so would a translator himself. but both the translator and the computer have valuable contributions to make to the lan guage translation process. according to jeff allen, a research linguist and translation lab supervisor at the center for machine translation at carnegie mellon university “it is true that many large companies are looking into automated translation solutions; however, this does not necessarily mean that the companies are trying to replace their valuable and experienced translation personnel with computers, but rather that the companies are trying to reconsider if they are using the time of their translation specialists most effectively and how they can improve it” (allen 2005). translators, agencies and corporations will have to adapt to the new technologies and solutions in order to remain competitive over the long term. notes: 1. human translators are often too inconsistent or too slow in choosing the right equivalents of the given words and expressions. references: 1. allen, j. (2005) machine translation. pennsylvania pittsburgh: carnegie mellon university press. armenian folia anglistikatranslation studies 133 2. bloomfield, l. (1984) language. chicago: chicago university press. 3. chomsky, n. (1975) the logical structure of linguistic theory. chicago: chicago university press. 4. gross, a. (1992) limitations of computers as translation tool. london: london university press. 5. garner, d. h. (1996) faq s and fictions about computers and language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. 6. hackett, ch. f. (1970) a leonard bloomfield anthology. bloomington: bloomington university press. 7. webb, l.e. (1992) advantages and disadvantages of translation memory. san francisco: san francisco state university. ð³ù³ï³ñ·ã³ûçý ã³ñ·ù³ýáõãû³ý ë³ñù³ý³÷³ïáõùý»ñá ²ù μáõç ³ß ë³ñ ñáõù ï»ë ýá éá ·ç³ ý» ñç ½³ñ ·³ó ù³ ýá ½áõ ·áý ã³ó ³ ×áõù ¿ ñ³ ù³ ï³ñ· ã³ ûçý ã³ñ· ù³ ýáõã û³ý å³ ñ³ý ç³ñ ïá: îç ñ³ å» ï» éáí μ³½ ù³ ãçí áõ μ³½ ù³ ½³ý ã³ñ· ù³ ý³ ï³ý ñý³ ñ³ íá ñáõã ûáõý ý» ñç` ñ³ ù³ ï³ñ· ã³ ûçý ã³ñ· ù³ ýáõã ûáõ ýá ³û ýá õ³ ù» ý³û ýçí áõ ýç çñ ã» ñáõã ûáõý ý»ñý áõ ë³ñ ù³ ý³ ÷³ ïáõù ý» ñá: î»ë ýá éá ·ç³ ûç ½³ñ ·³ó ù³ý ý»ñ ï³ ûçë ÷áõ éáõù ã³ñ· ù³ý ãç ïáõ ùçó ï³ ï³ñ í³í ã³ñ· ù³ ýáõã ûáõ ýá ³ í» éç á ñ³ï û³é, ³ñ¹ ûáõ ý³ í»ï áõ ³ñ å» ù³ íáñ ïéç ýç, » ã» ³ûý ñ³ ù³ ï»õ íç ñ³ ù³ ï³ñ· ã³ ûçý ã³ñ· ù³ ýáõã û³ý ñ»ï: armenian folia anglistika translation studies 134 maket_n_verjin.qxp metaphor in political discourse political discourse is a substyle of publicistic prosewhich is one of the most contemporary applications of language and has its own place and role in the social, political and cultural life of the global community. publicistic prose which represents the publicistic style of language, fulfils an important social goal promoting national and international relationships by means of different publications, mass media, and, of course, public speaking which first appeared and developed in the form of the oratorical art.1 political discourse as a teaching and persuasive and effective speech, makes an attempt to give solutions to the most important problems of constructing optimal speech interchange which is of utmost importance independent of its way of realization that can vary from political negotiations to orations and appeals including the ones in the mass media. it is obvious that the audience of a politician is very large and the more prominent and influential the country or the politician, the larger the audience is. for instance, the most powerful countries and their leaders, the world organizations are heroes at the international arena and whatever they say and write is listened to and read and considered by millions of people living and working in different parts of the world. as a substyle or genre of publicistic functional style political discourse is based on the ontological juxtaposition of fact and fiction which is fundamental for the choice of linguistic units and stylistic devices, metaphors included. the persuasive aspect of political discourse also derives from the respective peculiarities of publicism which sometimes is called “persuasive writing”. the variety of the means and ways of combination and presentation of the emotional, expressive, evaluative, subjective elements, on the one hand, and the logical, factual, objective ones on the other, serve the realization of two important functions in political discourse: the cognitive and the persuasive functions. for at least three decades, researchers and political theorists have been interested in how metaphors are used as persuasive devices and they have discussed how this process occurs. they have focused on the necessity of communication in politics and have noted that metaphors have assisted politicians in communicating more effectively by addressing latent symbolic themes residing in segments of the public consciousness. metaphors also fit in with the new information-processing models of political knowledge and its cognition. however, metaphors in politics appear to be only partly effective, as they are to some extent deprived of the strong emotional charge that is typical of metaphor in fiction and are completely unable to carry out their specific aesthetic function which is fully realized in fiction. 72 armenian folia anglistika linguistics anna arakelyan metaphorical thought, in itself, is neither good nor bad; it is simply commonplace and inescapable. abstractions and enormously complex situations are routinely understood via metaphor. indeed, there is an extensive, and mostly unconscious, system of metaphor that is used automatically and unreflectively in political discourse to understand complexities and abstractions. part of this system is devoted to understanding international relations and war. the metaphorical understanding of a situation functions in two parts. first, there is a widespread relatively fixed set of metaphors that structure how people think. this thought combines the metaphorical and the non-metaphorical, the latter being perceived as the real. for instance, a decision to go to war might be seen as a form of cost-benefit analysis, where war is justified when the costs of going to war are less than the costs of not going to war. second, there is a set of metaphorical definitions that allow one to apply such a metaphor to a particular situation. the use of a metaphor with a set of definitions becomes pernicious when it hides realities in a harmful way. it is important to distinguish what is metaphorical from what is not. pain, dismemberment, death, starvation, collapse of human fates and the death and injury of the loved ones are not metaphorical. they are real and in a war they could afflict tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of real human beings. the recent developments in the global political arena have shown that the topic of war has become one of the main themes in public writing. to make this or that political thought connected with war more expressive and persuasive the politicians have not once referred to metaphor. some wars are thought to be morally justified, and it makes sense to think of winning such a war. in such a case it is literally vital for a politician to justify certain acts of his country and to persuade people that his policy is right. he is being especially clever in this case when he is trying to do it through a strong impact on people’s feelings and emotions to lead them to cognize his actions as positive. for example, pronouncing the sentence the us is in the gulf to protect freedom, protect our future, and protect the innocent2 the political leader understands clearly what role metaphorical thought is playing to the brink of war. the broad acceptance of metaphor in politics answers our presumption that the metaphor in politics combines the metaphorical and the real, the literal and the nonliteral. this is an exact model of a metaphor in politics and does seem so natural to foreign policy experts. it perfectly fits into the overall metaphor system for understanding foreign relations and war. and, most importantly, it hides some realities, which, though hidden, are perceived by a sensible reader or listener. all these peculiarities of metaphor in politics form a system of metaphorical thought most commonly used by the general public in comprehending international politics. apart from war, metaphors are widely used in other political contexts. the following remark of disraeli is commonly used by public at large when referring to politicians: most politicians are a block of ice. though political figures won’t describe themselves as a blocks of ice, we consider it a typical example of a political metaphor which is close in meaning to the conventional metaphor a cool person. a block of ice evokes the domain of temperature, and, since it is predicated of a person, it also evokes knowledge of what a person can do or is potentially able to do. since a block of ice is something that is very cold and not able to become warm 73 linguistics armenian folia anglistika quickly or easily, this knowledge is mapped onto being very unaffectionate and not being able to become affectionate quickly or easily. this metaphor carries a lot more cognitive meaning and a lot less figurative meaning. it can be said that it is more literal than metaphorical. again the meaning of the sentence follows only from everyday knowledge and the everyday system of metaphorical mappings. we just need to perceive it. all such perceived connections come from the domain of everyday conventional metaphors and are illustrative of contemporary political metaphor. the experiential basis of political metaphor is the fact that most of what we know comes through vision, and that in the overwhelming majority of cases, if we see something, then we know from our general life experience it is true. achieving a purpose is understood as reaching a destination and as acquiring a desired object. to achieve most of our everyday purposes, we either have to move to some destination or acquire some object. if one wants to achieve success, he must do his best, use all his skills (either positively or negatively if it refers to politics), if a country wants to occupy more territory lawlessly, she must be involved in war. this is a natural correspondence which not always works in the metaphor of fiction but is a norm for the metaphor in politics. the objects connected with human experience are ways in which metaphors impose a structure on real life through the creation of new correspondences in experience. and of course, once such real objects are created in one generation, those objects serve as an experiential basis for that metaphor in the next generation. there are a great many ways in which conventional metaphors can be made real. if they are not made real, they won’t work in the political discourse, whereas in fiction however real they are, they will always serve appropriately their aim of realizing the aesthetical function. besides fiction, metaphors can be realized in such a way in obvious imaginative products such as cartoons, dreams, visions, and myths. but metaphors in political discourse must be made real, at least in less obvious ways, in physical symptoms, social institutions, social practices, law, foreign policy. the experiential basis of the metaphors he clawed his way to the top, he climbed the ladder of success, he’ll rise in the world refers to the human striving to success, promoting a career, becoming famous and influential, making money. thus, the experiential basis is too far from being imaginative. law is a major area where a political metaphor is made real. for example, corporations are persons is a tenet of law, which not only enables corporations to be harmed and assigned responsibility so that they can be sued when liable, but also gives corporations certain rights. foreign policy is a primary topic of communication in political discourse. a state is a person is one of the major metaphors underlying foreign policy concepts. thus, there are friendly states, hostile states, etc. health for a state is economic health and strength is military strength. strong states are seen as male, and weak states as female, so that an attack by a strong state on a weak state can be seen as a rape. a just war is conceptualized as a fairy tale with villain, victim, and hero, where the villain attacks the victim and the hero rescues him. the following passage from the article by miranda sawyer “we’re pretty, oh so pretty” includes a good example of a type of political metaphor called social practice metaphor: 74 armenian folia anglistika linguistics poor, poor isabella rossellini. she appeared at a special performance of the vagina monologues the other week (i know, how dreadful, but that’s not why we should feel sorry for the little lamb), and told her rapt audience that her beauty has been “a curse”, because society is so obsessed with looking good. rossellini was cursed with being the luminous face of lancôme for 14 years, earning millions of pounds in the process. then, at 40, she was sacked. ever since, she has done nothing but moan about her dismissal how dare they drop me because i’ve got a few wrinkles! which sounds a lot less like a feminist’s roar and far more like the bitching of a beauty being overtaken by a younger model. (miranda sawyer, “the observer”, sunday april 14, 2005) the entire text is not devoted to ms. rossellini and her disappointment about not being eternally young. instead, it comments on the stupidity of the beauty regime of many women, who believe that cosmetics make them look better. the background knowledge makes the figurative meanings easily comprehensible. besides the cognitive function, the metaphor here realizes an attractive function, typical of newspaper style while the article itself can also be considered as belonging to the social sphere of political discourse. here is another metaphor of the same sphere about a famous woman: in the 45 years since manned (and yes, we mean manned) space flight began, nearly 450 people have travelled in space, but only 46 have been women . but discovery commander lt col eileen collins0, who blasted off in july, has blazed a trail for female astronauts. as the first woman to fly the shuttle and the first to command one, we say “come on, eileen”. (“the guardian”, friday december 16, 2005) in the article partially quoted below british employment problems are discussed. the metaphor used in it is clearly critical. their inner expressiveness is used not only to realize a cognitive, persuasive and attractive functions but also make the criticism imaginatively excessive. another miserable bank holiday. gradgrind britain, with the fewest national holidays, is the only eu country not to make employers pay out for bank holidays. some 3 million will not be paid if they take the day off; most of them will be low-paid women, it’s a small meanness, but it signifies much. as britain fights to retain its unique opt-out from the 48hour working time directive, the cbi campaigns hard to keep it. it is, it says, “vital to preserve workforce flexibility”. these ideas take time to drip into the body politic. as ever, new labour is a hotbed of think tank optimism when talking among its own kind, but afraid to whisper more visionary ideas in public. its narrow economic focus still fears britain’s only productive advantage comes from driving a large, underpaid, underprotected workforce to work harder and for less than its eu competitors. (polly toynbee, “the guardian”, friday april 9, 2004) 75 linguistics armenian folia anglistika thus, metaphor occupies a most important place in political discourse in the process of thinking and cognizing the social reality. it serves as the form of generalized reflection and cognition of the reality created on the basis of graphic mode of thinking, and it presents an organic unity of conscious-contemplative and rational-abstract forms of cognition. metaphor in political discourse is a logically derivative phenomenon, and, derivative in particular, from some imaginative aspect of language use. it is more pragmatic than imaginative. although there is a sense in which the sentence used metaphorically has a metaphorical meaning, this meaning is itself a consequence of certain conceptual and conventional mechanisms. all the metaphorical utterances have their literal illocutionary forces. since a metaphorical utterance can have its literal illocutionary force, and its literal reference or predication, one is inclined to think that a person who speaks metaphorically is saying what would normally be said by a literal sentence. the metaphor in political discourse is based mostly on literality and carries out a cognitive function while in fiction it is built on certain imaginative fantasies and carries out an aesthetic function. the political metaphor from the passage below represents ellen johnson-sirleaf as an individual and a unique personality who can save her country. winning the election to become president of liberia in november, ellen johnson-sirleaf, a harvard-educated economist, simultaneously became the first female leader of an african state. but here is an unenviable position: liberia has an unemployment rate of 85% , the capital has no electricity or running water, and a 14-year civil war ended just two years ago. “liberia is a country on life support,” kofi annan said. “she is the best opportunity it has had in decades”. (“the guardian”, friday december 16, 2005) in the passage from another article the meeting and negotiations between two powerful european countries – england and france are discussed. the personified metaphors depict the policy of france and the uk clear enough. as mr. chirac held his own meeting with the german chancellor angela merkel, the elysee palace made it clear paris would not budge for the moment. in a sign of tough negotiations ahead, no 10 also made it clear that britain was willing to veto any deal which does not include a “fundamental view” of such subsidies ensuring that france also gives up hard cash before 2013. it is london’s non-negotiable red line. (“the guardian, friday december 16, 2005) as evident from the examples analysed in our study, today metaphor forms a necessary part in internal and international politics. it has become an indispensable part of social and political life. the role metaphorical thought plays in the sphere of politics is vital. thanks to metaphor the 76 armenian folia anglistika linguistics speech of a politician becomes more expressive and influential thus effectively influencing the audience which is of utmost importance in political life. metaphors in political discourse are to some extent deprived of the strong emotional charge that is typical of metaphor in fiction and it is fully acknowledged that the primary and basic purpose of metaphor in political discourse is effectively and fully realized through cognitive and persuasive functions. notes: 1. the art of public speaking was born in the ancient world. already in athens and rome public speaking had a key role in the social and political relations. oratory, the skill of public speaking, was indispensable for achieving a higher social status. a bright persuasive speech influenced masses, made the public speaker, the orator, popular and favorite with them. so, the republican form of governance and the democracy in ancient societies made the art of public speaking the most important and necessary art that opened the way to power. nowadays the art of public speaking is most popular among politicians, state leaders and social figures. while composing any speech, speechmakers and speechwriters take into consideration a number of intertextual and extratextual factors to make the speech first of all pragmatically well-organized and audience targeted. 2. these words have been pronounced by george bush in connection with the gulf war more than once. references: 1. lakoff, george (1991) metaphor and war: the metaphor system used to justify war in the gulf. california: university of california at berkley. 2. lakoff, george; johnson, mark (1980) metaphors we live by. chicago: chicago university press. 3. searle, john (1976) the philosophy of language. camridge: cambridge university press. 4. www.en.wikipedia.org öáë³µ»ñáõãûáõýá ù³õ³ù³ï³ý ëáëáõûãáõù êáõûý ñá¹í³íç ßñç³ý³ïý»ñáõù ý»ñï³û³óíáõù ¿ ÷áë³µ»ñáõãû³ý` áñå»ë 黽íç å³ïï»ñ³íáñù³ý ³ñï³ñ³ûïã³ùççáóç ï³ñ¨áñáõãûáõýá ù³õ³ù³ï³ý ëáëáõûãáõù: öáë³µ»ñáõãûáõýá, ù³õ³ù³ï³ý ëáëáõûãá ¹³ñóý»éáí ³í»éç ³ñï³ñ³ûïçã, ¹çåáõï áõ ³½¹»óçï, ñý³ñ³íáñáõãûáõý ¿ ï³éçë é³ûý éë³ñ³ýçý áùµéý»éáõ ù³õ³ù³ï³ý ùïùç ã³ùýí³í áõ ýáõñµ çù³ëïý»ñá: ²ûý áõýç áã ùç³ûý ñáõ½³ï³ý ¨ ïå³íáñçã ³½¹»óáõãûáõý, ³ûé¨ ïñ³ù³µ³ý³ï³ý áõ ×ßù³ñï³óç ýñµ»ñ³ý·ý»ñ: 77 linguistics armenian folia anglistika maket_n_verjin.qxp reported speech as a supraphrasal unity nowadays most linguists consider the text to be thehighest syntactic unit. this concept goes back to j. firth’s thesis, which says that any linguistic unit must be viewed not as an isolated item but as a constituent part of a particular, relatively complete fragment of communication, i.e. text (firth1957: 1-32). as g.v. kolshanski asserts it is in the text, not in a single sentence, that we deal with a unified coherent utterance, which constitutes a complete informative act whether in the form of monologue or dialogue (kolshanski 1980: 62). this kind of approach has found its confirmation in the works of many contemporary scholars (p. hartman, m. halliday, v. dressler, j.searle, etc.). p. hartman (1965: 115) and z. schmidt (1978: 89-110) hold that in conversing speakers do not usually limit their speech to uttering single sentences. this can be true of reported speech as well since it constitutes a transformed version of direct speech. reported speech in english has always been an object of numerous studies. however, in almost all studies on the subject the analysis of reported speech, particularly its transposition from direct speech, has mainly been carried out on the basis of an isolated sentence. we find this approach not quite plausible, since our speech cannot be restricted to a single sentence, i.e. direct speech is normally represented by more than one sentence, and consequently, it should also be transmitted into reported speech by a unit larger than a single sentence. our goal is to examine reported speech as a supraphrasal unity, which is acknowledged as a unit of the text, larger than a sentence. as we know, reported speech doesn’t reproduce the speaker’s (speaker 1) utterance word for word, but reports it on behalf of another speaker (speaker 2), which leads to a considerable change of the syntactic and semantic structure of direct speech. here it is worth citing e. black, who says, ”in general terms, it seems likely that novelists use direct discourse for what they consider to be the more significant utterances, while relegating the less important to indirect discourse, with its potential for summarising and brevity” (black 2006: 69). sharing on the whole this view, we cannot but observe that reported speech may sometimes play a very important role in describing the characters of a literary work from different angles. therefore reported speech requires detailed examination in view of its difference from direct speech. the important features of the transformation of direct speech into indirect are 1) the arrangement of reported speech as parts of a complex sentence with the mention of speaker 1 in the main sentence; 2) the use of the subordinating conjunctions that, if, 140 armenian folia anglistika linguistics zara kostanyan whether, etc.; 3) the use of a direct order of words in indirect questions and as a result, the deletion of the auxiliary verb do in them; 4) the observation of the rules of sequence of tenses on condition that the verb in the main sentence is used in one of the past tenses. 6) the back-shifting of the so-called deictic words (whose meanings are determined by the changes of a speech situation), i.e. the replacement of words of proximal deixis by those of distal deixis). our analysis shows that the transformation of direct speech into reported speech on the supraphrasal level brings about more changes than it does in case of an isolated sentence. in order to see how this transformation works on the supraphrasal level, we will draw a parallel between direct speech and its reported version. it should be noted that usually speech occurs in the text in the form of either direct or reported speech. naturally, it is rather difficult to come across both forms in the same context. this is particularly evident when we deal with units on the supraphrasal level. but we were fortunate enough to find direct speech and its transformed variant within the same text, which allows us to show some of the changes that attend this kind of transformation. below is the example taken from “seven for a secret” by v. holt. direct speech: she (tamarisk) ... went on: “it might be a little difficult. i can’t stay here, can i? i’m here with you as a guest. if you’re not here, why should i be? perhaps karla would let me have a room here.” (holt: 326) reported speech: i told her (karla) that tamarisk was wondering where she could be when i had gone. she had an idea that she was a guest here because she was accompanying me and naturally, would stay where i was... she thinks that if i’m no longer here she should not be and she should find lodgings. (holt: 326) we will not consider the changes that normally accompany the process of the transformation of direct speech into reported on the sentence level. rather, we will concentrate on transformations that can be observed on the supraphrasal level. these are as follows. first of all, instead of the five sentences (four simple and one complex) we have three complex sentences in the reported speech .the 1st sentence is a blend of the 1st and 2nd sentences of direct speech; the 2nd sentence is a combination of the 3rd and part of the 4th sentence and finally, the 3rd sentence is a blend of the other part of the 4th and 5th sentences. each resultant sentence is presented by an introductory clause, which appears here as a result of the transformation of interrogative sentences (sentences 1 and 2) as well as of the modal adverb ‘perhaps’ (sentence 3): 1. tamarisk was wondering…; 2. she had an idea …; 3. she thinks…. these are some of the changes that take place in the process of the transformation of direct speech into its reported variant. now let’s analyse reported speech more 141 linguistics armenian folia anglistika closely. we will start with the definition of the part of the text containing reported speech consisting of a number of sentences interconnected both semantically and syntactically. we will call this unit reported speech complex (rsc for short). each sentence making up a rsc consists of two components: 1) reporting context (rcthe speaker’s words) and 2) reported speech (rs reported speech proper). we will call this unit reported speech structure rss). so it will have the following formula: rss = rc +rs. a question arises: how can a rsc be detached from the rest of the text? there are some methods to delimit supraphrasal reported speech: 1) segmenting out the supraphrasal unit on the basis of the structural link between its components; 2) defining the boundaries of the supraphrasal unity from the point of the logical and semantic link between its components. it should be noted that the upper boundary of the rsc is quite definite – it’s an rc (the reproducer’s words): “he said, “he asked”, etc. in order to define the lower boundary of the rsc we take into account the following factors –grammatical, lexical, modal and stylistic. below are fragments with reported speech, in which the square brackets mark the demarcation line between reported speech and the rest of the text. 1. the grammatical factor: a) the cease of application of the rules of sequence of tenses, b) presence of exclamatory sentences, characteristic of direct speech. thus for example, a) he said i was a fool and he preferred rachel. he said she was a simpleton and knew it. i was one too and didn’t. that was the only difference between us. [ crispin hates him and he hates crispin] (holt) b) he said he was brought up in france. he said he couldn’t speak any english and that’s why he couldn’t talk to me. [and he couldn’t!] (fitzgerald) 2. the lexical factor: the use of deictic words oriented at speaker 2 (i.e. words of proximal deixis). thus for example, she told me in that place they pushed them out. they were all too sick. all the hospitals were full, and everybody was dying. [but this place was the worst. if i’m going to die, i’m going to die at home, not in a slaughter.] (saroyan) could he be saying in public what he was afraid to say in private? that he had wasted his youth on empty promiscuity. but at last was 142 armenian folia anglistika linguistics changing… growing up? [she now realized why he had left this program till last. for he knew that perhaps for the first time in his life – he would be speaking from the heart.] (salinger) 3. the modal factor: the use of modal words (anyway, perhaps, certainly) pointing to the attitude of speaker 2 towards the information conveyed by speaker 1; the evaluation by speaker 2 of what was said by speaker 1, etc. for example, mal said he didn’t mind but he wasn’t too crazy about the idea. [he didn’t like ackley. anyway, we both went to our rooms to get ready and all.] (salinger) ted told me on the phone that though it hurt he imagined it was for the best. [he does not know how wrong he is.] (segal) 4. the stylistic factor: the use of emphatic and elliptical constructions, including certain stylistic devices. thus for example, he would tell her what colonel julian said if there was any attempt at blackmail we were to tell him. [they won’t dare do it. they can’t. it is too dangerous.] (du maurier) in the last example we observe the use of the contracted forms of the modal and auxiliary verbs, elliptical sentences and also a special stylistic device – gradation indicating the gradual increase of tension of the utterance. so the consideration of the grammatical, lexical, modal and stylistic factors make it possible to detach supraphrasal reported speech from the larger part of the text. now let’s concentrate on the means that provide the semantic and grammatical cohesion of the parts of the whole supraphrasal reported speech (rsc). as m.a.k. halliday asserts cohesion must be considered the most crucial factor in distinguishing text from non-text (halliday 1976: 195). the semantic cohesion of reported speech is predetermined by its communicative task – a report, a transformation of one form of speech to another. the means linking the components of supraphrasal reported speech are introduced in two forms: explicit and implicit. explicit connection is provided by: 1. subordinating conjunctions that, if, whether, etc., which may be found on the sentence level as well. thus for example, 143 linguistics armenian folia anglistika i told her quite truthfully that i did not think she would do any good coming over. that you did not want to see anyone but mrs.de winter. (du maurier) the director of the camp had driven to baltimore to tell them in person… how jim’s mother had been a baltimorean herself, born the year babe ruth was playing for the orioles. how jim’s tomato plants had been acting queerly, producing only tiny green marbles that fell off the vines before they ripened. (tyler) 2) coordinating conjunctions and, so, also, but, still, besides, etc a) he replied that it was his dream to go to harvard – like his father. but of course, he had to do his army service first. (segal) b) he says karen was drunk, talking loud to some reporter starting to make a scene. so he took her to the apartment. (mackinlay) c) miki… was going to tell each of them that he has a sister and a brother-in-law in illinois. he also had profession. and besides, charles lancaster was willing to be his sponsor. (segal) 3) syntactic parallelism smith said that roy was a time server. he said he was a snob. he said he was a humbug. (maugham) she told me to leave her alone. she told me to get out and leave her alone. (mc bain) syntactic parallelism may imply repetition of only part of the structure as in he kept asking if this character was sober. and if i was sober. (maugham) implicit connection is based on the logical-semantic relations that exist between the constituents of supraphrasal reported speech. these relations may be of the following types: 144 armenian folia anglistika linguistics 1. causative-consequential relations a) he had said more than once that he would like to be rid of him. he was a menace to everyone. he had even disturbed poor flora. he created unpleasantness wherever he went. (holt) b) she told him that she had not given much time to considering a man in her life. there had been other things in a sense, compensation. (mackinlay) 2. appositive relations the agent gave them the two camera-cases. he told them that the blue case contained a very powerful smoke-bomb. the red case was the explosive. (hailey) 3. temporal relations when the inner logical link between the parts of a rsc is determined by the chronological description of a natural course of events. a) she told mrs. mcphail that she had no sleep. when the missionary came upstairs from miss thompson he prayed till he was exhausted, but even then he did not sleep for long. after an hour or two he got up and dressed himself, and went for a tramp along the bay. (maugham) b) they told me that an ambulance brought me here. there was an injury to my spine. then they found bone damage and it kept spreading. (maugham) now we will try to give a quantitative characteristics of supraphrasal reported speech, in other words we will find out how many sentences (rss) supraphrasal reported speech (rsc) may be composed of. the analysis shows that their number may be more than two rsss. below are examples to illustrate it: 2 rss jason told eva he was going to pick up a game of tennis. she said she would take a walk and meet him later for dinner. (segal) 3 rss smith said that roy was a time server. he said he was a snob. he said he was a humbug. (maugham) 145 linguistics armenian folia anglistika 4 rss he (mr cox) announced that the british empire was dead and london a morgue. he said that paris was the centre of the intellectual world, if only because it attracted the best american talent. he declared that no englishman was capable of understanding modern experimental art. his arrival in paris (he added) had no political significance, but he hoped that his presence in the quarter would prove a rallying centre for all that was best in american and continental music, literature and art. (aldington) 5 rss british major at the club told me the italians had lost one hundred and fifty thousand men on the bainsizza plateau and on san gabriele. he said they had forty thousand on the carso besides. he said the fighting was over the year down here and that the italians had bitten off more than they could chew. he said the offensive in flanders was going to the bad. if they killed men as they did this fall the allies would be cooked in another year. he said we were all cooked but we were all right as long as we did not know it. (hemingway) as the examples testify the verbs of reporting are not restricted to the verbs say and ask only, but can be verified by such verbs as add, announce, declare, inquire, etc. the analysis of the factual material provides evidence that in case of implicit connection the number of rs is greater than in case of the explicit connection. in the rsc, which contains copious descriptions of any kind, the number of rs may excel 8 sentences, but for economic considerations we do not adduce this type of rss in this article. to conclude, the basic position we have taken in this article is that supraphrasal reported speech, though similar in a number of features to reported speech of a single sentence, has some specific features, which make it possible to separate it from a larger text unit, a statement which comes to once again confirm the postulate put forward by m.a.k..halliday and r. hasan: “a text is not something that is like a sentence, only bigger; it is something that differs from a sentence in kind”. (halliday and hasan 1976) these features are defined by the grammatical, lexical, modal and stylistic factors that underlie the transposition of direct speech into reported speech on the supraphrasal level. references: 1. black, e. (2006) pragmatic stylistics. edinburgh university press ltd. 2. firth, j.p. (1957) a synopsis of linguistic theory // studies in linguistic analysis. oxford: oxford university press. 146 armenian folia anglistika linguistics 3. halliday, m.a.k.; hasan r. (1976) cohesion in english. longman. 4. halliday, m.a.k. (1977) text as a semantic choice in social contexts // research in text theory. grammars and descriptions. / ed. by teun a. van dijk and janos s. petofi. berlin – new york: walter de gruyter. 5. hartman, p. (1965) zur antropologischen funtierung de sprache // symbolae linguisticae in honore g. kurylowicz. warzawa. 6. kolshanski, g.v. (1980) kontekstnaya semantika, moskva: nauka. 7. shmidt, z. (1978) «tekst» i «istoriya» kak bazoviye kategorii // novoye v zarubezhnoy lingvistike. moskva: progress. vip. 8. ²ýáõõõ³ïç ëáëùá áñå»ë í»ñ³ëáõûã³ûçý ùç³ëýáõãûáõý ì»ñ³ëáõûã³ûçý ³ýáõõõ³ïç ëáëùç í»ñéáõíáõãûáõýá óáõûó ¿ ï³éçë, áñ ïíû³é ß³ñ³ñûë³ï³ý ùç³íáñç ñ³ñ³óáõûóá 黽íç ñ³ù³ï³ñ·áõù ó¨³íáñíáõù ¿ áëï ýñ³ ï³éáõóí³íù³çù³ëï³ûçý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñç, áñáýù ¿é ñý³ñ³íáñáõãûáõý »ý ï³éçë ³é³ýóý³ó»é ³ûý ëáëùç áý¹ñ³ýáõñ ñáëùáõù: ì»ñ³ëáõûã³ûçý ³ýáõõõ³ïç ëáëùç ë³ñù³ý³½³ïù³ý ù»ç ï³ñ¨áñ »ý µ³é³ûçý, ù»ñ³ï³ý³ï³ý, »õ³ý³ï³ûçý ¨ á׳ï³ý ·áñíáýý»ñá: 147 linguistics armenian folia anglistika maket_n_verjin.qxp verbal art: from the polyphony of the word to non-verbality theorists since aristotle have argued that literature is notmere entertainment, that the impulses to make poetry, to tell stories and express our feelings in words play a central part in our lives. since ancient times attempts have been made to establish what literature in the proper sense of the word is. it is our firm belief that to come closer to the answer of this question we have to look into the complex correlation of form and content. literary form is known to carry out different functions the basic of which is to give pleasure.1 it is beyond suspicion, that everything in nature has its peculiar form and content. content is the essence of a notion, its essential quality by which all the peculiar features of the notion are determined, whereas form is the sum of all the internal and external elements of the content, its way of exposure and existence. there is no form without content and there is no absolute content without a form. these two elements are interconnected and can never be separated, unless we separate them for methodological purposes. thus, it is not by chance that for hegel “content is the transference of form to content, and form is the transference of content to form”. (hegel, 1958) from what has been said above it becomes clear that in verbal art pride of place should be given to the dialectical correlation of content and form which not infrequently results in ambiguity of literary works, multiple meanings and shades of meanings which are condensed and played upon in a work of verbal creativity, including the so-called below-the-surface meaning, the different additional expressive-emotional-evaluative overtones and associations attached to the linguistic elements in different historical periods and the meanings they may have for different readers. thus, it can be stated, that verbal art is an artistic experience that realizes itself in the medium of language, which does not merely dress our thoughts but shapes and phrases them.2 it should be mentioned in this connection that all varieties of art are meant to make an impact on their addressees. this impact is often not only intellectual but also aesthetic, i.e. we do not only think of what we see but also feel it, as it moves us and causes excitement. verbal art is the only type of art which creates its images exclusively with the help of human language. it is due to language that the writer manages to penetrate into every corner of human relationships and psychology, to raise important social problems and serve social ideals, to lead the reader to certain conclusions, change his inner world, help to find his right orientation in life.3 however, it has always been an uneasy task to decide what the linguistic means are with the help of which this kind of multifariousness of a work of verbal art is achieved. 109 linguistics armenian folia anglistika seda gasparyan it has been established that every piece of writing which claims the title of verbal art is characterized by an original style which largely depends on the unusual way in which words, word-combinations and other linguistic units are chosen and brought together, thus helping the author to express his worldview, to convey his intentions of writing that particular piece of literature and bring it home to his readers what the global purport of the work is. in fact, every linguistic unit becomes an indispensable part of the author’s conception and the scheme of his work. yet, however hard it might be to decide what peculiar features of the formal (linguistic) aspect of a literary work provide its multilateral nature research work along these lines has already established that among the great variety of linguistic means it is especially words that serve as the literary artist’s basic tool to embody his unique, profound and beautiful visions. in this respect, of course, it is the polyphony4 of the word that should be mentioned first of all as it is believed to be one of the most characteristic features of verbal creativity. (gasparyan s.,2008) our assumption is that the term polyphony can be applied to a literary text because we believe that the main difference between literary texts and all other kinds of texts consists in the former being polyphonic. thus, for instance, we can speak of thematic polyphony in a literary text because it is usually characterized by a complex intertwinement of various recurrent themes.5 thematic polyphony brings about rhythmical and sound polyphony because different themes are supposed to have rhythmical and sound arrangements of their own. we can go so far as to speak of verbal polyphony – the polyphony of words and word-combinations. investigations have shown that the established opinion about a polysemantic word actualizing only one of its several meanings in each particular use holds true for intellective prose only.6 when what we deal with is a literary piece, the semantic boundaries of the word are extended and its semantic capacity is realized to the full. the word acquires additional connotative and associative meanings which are very closely linked together in the context of a literary work and evoke multitudes of thoughts, images and explanations. in other words, in works of verbal art words display the tendency of widening their semantic potential, acquiring additional depth and capacity and stimulating the creation of the global “image” of the word in which it is often impossible to pick out separate meanings. it actually appears as an indivisible global whole with all its latent semantic and stylistic potentialities realized simultaneously. otherwise stated, when we deal with verbal art it is the global semantic structure of the word that comes first, and without this globality the word could not serve as the basic implement of verbal art.7 here is an example picked out from “the rainbow” by d.h.lawrence: and lydia, as if drugged, followed him like a shadow, serving, echoing. the role of the polyphonic actualization of the word shadow in the given context cannot be overestimated. all the different meanings of the word (dark shape thrown to the ground; sth. unsubstantial or unreal; smb. weakened, exhausted; faint representation of sth. or smb.; etc) presented in different dictionaries and the shades of meanings 110 armenian folia anglistika linguistics realized in different combinations of the noun shadow with other words (the shadow of death; the shadow of night; the shadow of misfortune; etc) are all condensed here to interpret the enormous power in which the personage – paul lensky, held his wife. it explains the hopelessness and “ignominy” of the state lydia was helpless to cope with. if we try to compare the context adduced above with, say, she was caught like a rat in a trap, it will not be difficult to notice that in the second context we deal with a battered simile in which the writer makes use of a ready-made lexicalized combination of words to suit his purpose whereas in the first case the simile is based on the psychological state the heroine is in. the complexity of the situation is conveyed with the help of the polyphonic word shadow. it is against the background of what has been said above that the terms “verbal” and “non-verbal” can be introduced. they are meant to denote the basic difference between speech as creative art and speech which comes nearer to what is rational and matter-of-fact and is based on the speaker’s ability to manipulate ready-made material. it can be assumed that speech is creative art when it is marked by “non-verbality”, for the essence of creativity is the emancipation from the bondage of ready-made, trivial, properly verbal expressions. in intellective communication “verbality” is indispensable for in this case speaking implies the ability of the speaker to choose this or that combination of words from among already existing ready-made ones. the contexts adduced above show that the difference between “verbal” and “nonverbal” ways of saying things becomes even more obvious when we concern ourselves with “simile” which, as if transfigured in the literary context, becomes aesthetically significant and gives birth to various connotations and associations. its metametasemiotic value is very closely connected with the ideological content of the work and the aesthetic position of the writer. here are more examples: myself, my family, my generation were born in a world of silence, a world of hard work and necessary patience, of backs bent to the ground, hands massaging the crops, of waiting on weather and growth, of villages like ships in the empty landscapes and the long distances between them, ... (l.lee, cider with rosie) the simile villages like ships in the empty landscapes and the long distances between them, ... in this context is poetic for objects from incompatible spheres (villages ships) are brought together only due to the writer’s imagination who with his mind’s eye can observe a common implicit inner feature in the two objects compared. this non-verbal simile not only gives the reader an idea of how physically isolated those villages were but also creates a global poetic image which symbolizes the communicative isolation of people in that, by english standards, empty country. we kissed, once only, so dry and shy, it was like two leaves colliding in air. (l.lee, cider with rosie) 111 linguistics armenian folia anglistika the recurrent use of the lateral sonorant [l] in the simile stirs up the reader’s imagination and he immediately gets the impression of something very light and imponderable floating very softly. the choice of the word collide in the simile, where a bashful kiss is compared to the rustling of the leaves in the air, has not been made at random. its polyphonic actualization in this context conveys the spontaneously pleasant but at the same time embarrassing situation in which the teen-agers – the boy and the girl – found themselves when the first sensations of love crawled into their body and soul. it should be added however that even in verbal art it is not always that simile arises from an imaginative or visionary association of things. thus, for example, and a man came up and kissed the girls and hopped in the road and twisted on one toe. then he fell down in the mud and lay there, working his legs like a frog and croaking a loud song. (l.lee, cider with rosie) this simile is obviously verbal as what we deal with is a very banal situation and the words used in the context and in the simile in particular are in one-to-one correspondence with the referents they denote. the reader has no difficulty in understanding the context. he can easily visualize the situation for the common feature chosen by the writer as basis for comparison is physical and easily perceived. we can observe a similar picture in the following example as well: you could put your head in the water, and open your eyes, and see the sides of the bucket buckle, and hear your caught breath roar, and work your mouth like a fish, and smell the lime from the ground. (l.lee, cider with rosie) here again the comparison is based on outer physical resemblance the understanding of which causes no difficulty to the reader. the words chosen by the writer are quite ordinary, completely devoid of any polyphonic qualities. they fit the writer’s intention of describing the banality and triviality of the situation. thus, we can conclude that the opposition non-verbality vs verbality depends, to a great extent, on the polyphonic vs non-polyphonic actualization of words in verbal art. notes: 1. in simon o. lesser’s opinion, literary form carries out three functions: to give pleasure, to avoid or relieve guilt or anxiety, and to facilitate the perception of the material with the desired degree of clarity, in fact, performing the role of a rational, organizing element. (lesser s.o., 1957) according to sigmund freud, literary form has the benefit of affording pleasure, making the text attractive to the reader and prompting him to take over the imaginative 112 armenian folia anglistika linguistics understanding of the world offered to him by the author. form is, therefore, thought by him to provide an “incentive bonus”, a “fore-pleasure”. however s.freud himself and his followers in the sphere of psychoanalytic literary criticism could see the ancillary role of form in verbal art and art in general for they were sure that the basic thing in literature is the imaginative content conveyed by the writer. s.freud believed that works of art in general and verbal art in particular express the artist’s or the writer’s “most secret mental impulses” through a peculiar kind of expression, transforming the unconscious into verbal or visual forms. (freud s., 1960) 2. in fact, the writer himself cannot know what language he needs before the ideas germinating in his mind “are transformed into an arrangement of the right words in the right order”. (eliot t.s., 1969:97) 3. it is interesting to note that ch. darwin at the end of his life felt really sorry for not having paid appropriate attention to arts, as he had devoted himself to science. he was more than sure that being at a great distance from arts “blunts” one’s spiritual capacities. (belinski v.g., 1954) in hugo roeffaers’ words “the production of meaning is open-ended” in literature as every piece of verbal art “creates its own context of signification, a context which is a-referential”, and this is natural, as literature is not the factological representation but the specific, imaginative reverberation of the world, or, in other words, a fictional reality. (roeffaers h., 2002) 4. polyphony, as is well known, is a musical term meant to denote a form of musical composition in which a number of different independent parts are played simultaneously harmonizing together. (bolshaya sovetskaya enciklopedia, 1975:227) it was by m.m.bakhtin that the term was first applied to dostoevski’s works in which the “voices” of the author and the characters, equally independent, “sound” in harmony,. (bakhtin m.m., 1972) the term has been believed quite acceptable to reflect the multifareous nature and the semantic globality of the literary word, let alone its ability to “sound” variously (both in the proper sense of the word and metaphorically expressed) in the context of a literary work. (gasparyan s., 2008) the notion of the polyphony of the word approximates to what w.empson describes as the semantic “pregnancy” of the word in a metaphoric context.(empson w., 1967) 5. this aspect of word polyphony is discussed by oyama toshikazu who shows that the words monster/monstrous (othello), nothing (king lear), brave (the tempest), etc. in shakespeare’s plays gradually acquire more and more new shades of meanings when intensively used in different situations by different personages and create a pivotal image uniting different thematic parts of the play into a global whole.(toshikazu o., 1980) 6. the polysemy of the word is achieved naturally: the crystallization of the individual uses of the word results in the occurrence of new meanings, thus enhancing the development of word meaning in the system of language. this, in its turn, is conditioned by the changes in the material life of the society and the ideology domineering in it. (vinogradov v.v., 1966; budagov r.a., 1977) 113 linguistics armenian folia anglistika 114 armenian folia anglistika linguistics 7. the polyphonic quality of the word, characteristic of the etic level of language, in a piece of verbal creativity becomes a key to the realization of the author’s intention. references: 1. akhmanova, o., zadornova, v. (1981) speech, pragmatics and creativity // logos semanticos. berlin. 2. bakhtin, m.m. (1972) problemi poetiki dostoevskogo. moskva: khudozh. lit. 3. belinski, v.g. (1954) pilisopayakan yntir yerker. yerevan: haypethrat. vol. 1. 4. budagov, r.a. (1977) chto takoe razvitie i sovershenstvovanie yazika? moskva: nauka. 5. eliot, t.s. (1969) the sacred wood. essays on poetry and criticism. 7th edition. london: methuen. 6. empson, w. (1967) the structure of complex words. michigan university press. 7. freud, s. (1960) the interpretation of dreams. new york: basic book. 8. gasparyan, s. (2008) linguopoetika obraznogo sravneniya. yerevan: lusakn. 9. hegel, g.v.f. (1958) sochineniya. moskva: gos. izd. polit. lit. vol. xvi. 10. lesser, o.simon (1957) fiction and unconscious experience. boston, massachusetts. 11. roeffaers, h. (2002) aesthetic experience and verbal art. university of antwerp. 12. toshikazu, o. (1980) shakespeare’s thematic characterization // shakespeare translation. tokyo. vol. 7. 13. vinogradov, v.v. (1966) iz itorii russkikh slov i virazheniy // voprosi stilistiki. moskva, mgu. ´³é³ñí»ëï. µ³½ù³ó³ûýáõãûáõýçó ¹»åç å³ïï»ñ³ûýáõãûáõý ðá¹í³íá é³ûý ³éáõùáí ýíçñí³í ¿ ·»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý ëï»õí³·áñíáõãû³ý áýï³éù³ý áõ ñ³ëï³óù³ý µ³½ù³µ³ñ¹ ëý¹ñç ùýýáõãû³ýá: àõëáõùý³ëçñáõãû³ý ³é³ýóùáõù ·»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý µ³éý ¿, áñá ëï»õí³·áñíáõãû³ý ñ³ù³ï»ùëïáõù ³ïýñ³ûï ñ³ïáõù ¿ ¹ñë¨áñáõù áý¹é³ûý»éáõ çñ çù³ëï³á׳ï³ý ñý³ñ³íáñáõãûáõýý»ñá` ñ³·»ý³éáí ýáñ ñáõ½³ñï³ñ³ûïã³ï³ý »ñ³ý·ý»ñáí áõ çù³ëï³ûçý ³õ»ñëý»ñáí, ó»éù µ»ñ»éáí éñ³óáõóçã ëáñáõãûáõý áõ í³í³é, ý»ñï³û³ý³éáí áñå»ë ³ùµáõç³ï³ý å³ïï»ñ: ´³éç ³ûë µ³½ù³ó³ûý³ï³ý ³éï³û³óáõùá ³é³ýóù³ûçý ï³ñ¨áñáõãûáõý ¿ ó»éù µ»ñáõù ·»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý ëï»õí³·áñíáõãû³ý å³ïï»ñ³ûýáõãûáõýý ³å³ñáí»éáõ ³éáõùáí, í»ñ µ³ñóñ³óýáõù ³ûý µ³é»ñç å³ñ½ ³ýí³ýáõ³ï³ý ·áñí³éáõãû³ý ù³ï³ñ¹³ïçó, ù³ëý³ïóáõù ëï»õí³·áñíáõãû³ý ·»õ³·çï³ï³ý ³ñå»ùý»ñç ñ³ù³ï³ñ·ç ó¨³íáñù³ýá: maket 2011:layout 1.qxd the psycholinguistic study of language acquisition and communicative processes rouzanna arakelyan yerevan state university f or many years the essence of human mind has been the most accessible and themost inaccessible object of study. it is really so as the structures and the processes which underlie language and thought are subconscious. and that is why in the sphere of human mind and its expression there are so many issues for a psycholinguist to ponder. psycholinguists are among those specialists who are interested in the mental processes that are involved in using language and in learning to speak. in order to study these processes, one must bring together theoretical and empirical tools of both psychology and linguistics. linguists are engaged in the formal description of an important segment of human knowledge − the structure of language. psychologists clarify how linguistic structures are acquired by children, and how they are used in the processes of speaking, understanding and remembering. psycholinguists are more specifically interested in the knowledge and abilities which people must have in order to use a foreign language and to learn to use language in childhood. in order to carry on meaningful conversations in english, for example, one must be familiar with english grammar, phonology, syntax and semantics, as well as the physical and social worlds in which english is spoken. all this knowledge is put to use in the process of speaking and understanding. thus, one of the tasks of psycholinguists is to construct models of processes that make “moment-tomoment” use of stored knowledge. the relation between knowledge and use brings to complex many-leveled questions which have not been resolved completely. psycholinguistics represents an empirical attempt to characterize what one must know about language in order to use it. talking more specifically, it can be stated that psycholinguistic research has moved from early attempts to verify the existence of underlying grammatical structures to studies of how linguistic knowledge is used in the processes of speaking and understanding. communication relies on shared knowledge − knowledge of the language and also knowledge of the world. world knowledge allows ambiguous sentences to be taken for granted. but it is not very often easy to examine these two aspects apart. if we take, for example, such a seemingly simple sentence as “close the window.”, in spite of the agent’s absence, we will recognize it as imperative. the speaker in this very case is also implicit and all we have on the “surface” of the sentence is the word close. in reality, a whole “network” of separate meaningful statements /or propositions/ implicitly underlies this and every other utterance. in this case a variety of surface constructions can communicate the meaning of the above mentioned sentence: “i wonder if you could close the window.”, “it is cold here.”, “don’t you know i have caught a cold so you should close the window?” etc. without the shortcuts made possible by grammar and shared world knowledge, it would be impossible to realize human communication. the use of armenian folia anglistika linguistics 34 grammar, thus, brings to efficient communication. because we are able to use this or that language in certain social interactions both grammatically and meaningfully correct, our knowledge of language must also include pragmatic rules. a full psycholinguistic theory must specify how such knowledge is put to use in linguistic performance. it will have to account for language competence and language performance. communication theorists, sociologists, psycholinguists, discourse analysts and others do not take the same view of what communication processes actually are. the nature of the account is taken off from a variety of sources such as psycholinguistic accounts of sentence production and reading, models of language constructed by linguistic theorists, studies of interpersonal language behaviour and investigations of the role of pragmatics in communication. psycholinguists claim that whatever is done in behaviour is assumed to originate in mental activities in which the factors described have played their role. the mental activities are referred to as plans and strategies. the full description of the communicative process should begin with the account of the operations involved in speech production. any speech act should begin with the existence of some kind of an intention on the part of the speaker. the intention may perform one or even more speech acts with the aim of having an impact on the person addressed. planning the speech act involves deciding (unfortunately, not often consciously) both what is to be said and how it is to be said. the content of the utterance is often decided after the beginning of the utterance, so it is natural that the form of it is not fully determined. both the content and the form of the utterance may depend on the speech situation where the feedback provided by the speaker’s performance and by the perception of the interlocutor’s reactions (rubin 1987). the situational factors of speech are so relevant that the speaker must decide how much of what he wishes to say must be explicit and how much can be left unsaid. in other words, he should decide what should the degree of redundancy, brevity, economy, simplicity be. this is when the speaker needs to select certain contextual variables that fit the social relationship with the person addressed. it is supposed that the selection or at least consideration of those lexical forms should be done earlier. however, there is no one sentence form to express a given content. lexical choice may be affected by the previously used lexical items. the utterance will need to show continuity with the topic of preceding utterances. the syntactic form of a complex message is probably built up by phrasal units. within such units semantic and grammatical choices affect the form of individual words. the phonological shape must be given to the words and this, in its turn, can be interpreted phonetically. in spite of all this complexity, the speech act is performed spontaneously and with effective synchronisation of all the above mentioned decisions made. still, it is very rare that conscious attention is given to lower level skills involved. we very often think that the processes taking place in the receiver’s mind are a simple reverse of the productive processes. this is not so as the listener and the speaker are not dependent on a strict decoding process. as d.wilkins states, the hearer has a great deal of relevant knowledge which enables him to make predictions at any point in the armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 35 speaker’s utterance either exactly, or within a limited range of probabilities how the utterance will continue (wilkins 1985). the hearer actually has got an enormous store of knowledge which may assist his predictions. but he must interpret the speaker’s intentions and relate them to his own perceptions and frames of reference. the speaker’s intentions are determined on a number of levels. it is presumed that a simple linguistic decoding is enough for clarification of lexical and syntactic features of a sentence, but all kinds of ambiguities can be resolved only with the help of contextual information attained. the hearer must actually relate the utterance to a “frame of reference” which is presupossed by the speaker. what is understood must correspond to what has been intended, otherwise communication will not have taken place successfully. anyway, it should be stated that as the hearer may not attach the same significance to what the speaker has said as the speaker himself, it may not be incorporated in his frame of reference in the same way. the processes that have been sketched assume the participants to be fully competent speakers of the language. the characteristics of individuals using a second language is that they do not have full competence of language. more specifically, their lexical and syntactic competence will be somehow restricted. besides, the absence of shared cultural experience with native speakers means that they will operate with different frames of reference. all of this may actually lead to communicative breakdown. unfamiliar social norms may also bring to negative effect on the communicative process. the speaker will have restricted expressive and interpretive skills which will bring to misunderstanding. anyway, we can assume that the individual’s own perception of the source of his communicative difficulties will focus on the inadequacy of his lexical and syntactic competence. this is when he will start using such devices as code-switching, wordcoinage or the use of non-linguistic resources. the history of the attempts to answer the question how people learn foreign languages has shown that we need to be quite careful about the answers that could be given. however, in the field of first and second language acquisition there have been worked out a number of theoretical advances which have not been fully put into practice so that their validity could be checked. it can be stated that there are too many theories of language acquisition. but most of them come to the idea that what learners do in learning languages is perhaps only the small part of what they can do. the learner can learn in a variety of ways; most learners only use a selection of these to complete the task aimed. if summarized, it can be stated that recently there have been five main answers to the question how people learn foreign languages. those are: by practice, by problemsolving, creative construction, monitoring and personality development. the oldest of these answers is the belief that practice at speaking and hearing the language leads to mastery of the language structures. the audio-lingual and audio-visual theorists borrowed the results of earlier psychological work by e.thorndike and c.hull arguing that “drilling” produced learning raises the response strength of language habits. this assumption was critisized by w.rivers using evidence both from psychology and armenian folia anglistika linguistics 36 language teaching. the raise of interest in the ideas of problem-solving and concept attainment as a clue to language learning was raised in the 1960s and 1970s. in this regard e.chastain has claimed that languages are learned by conscious inductive process of rule formulation. his version of problem-solving idea emphasized conscious mastery of given rules before their application to fluent performance. the creative construction process was suggested originally by dulay and burt as an explanation for the appearance of what looked like a “natural order” of acquisition of grammatical morphemes. the nature of this process has not been widely explored as it seems to be sufficient to assume that it is the re-activation of the process by which the first language is acquired. one of the most popular theories of second language development is s.krashen’s monitor model which consists of five basic assumptions such as learning is distinct from acquisition, the natural order hypothesis, the monitor hypothesis, the input hypothesis, the affective filter hypothesis (krashen 1981). the claim that language learning and language acquisition are distinct processes can not be denied today as “the acquisition leads to intuitions of grammatical correctness while learning leads to rule-formulation”. acquisition is a result of creative construction of grammars from exposure to the language; learning can only take place in formal learning contexts where there is rule isolation by syllabus and feedback to the student on his success. in most teaching contexts elements of both formal and informal teaching are present. the monitor hypothesis suggests that learning contributes a consciously constructed set of rules about language which can only act as an output filter on the predictions of the unconsciously acquired language system. the process of monitoring is not unfamiliar: in one sense we do it all the time when speaking and in another we often encourage our students to check what they have written and review what they are saying for considerations of formal accuracy. the question of whether monitoring is dependent on teacher’s explicit training of student’s learning strategies needs furthur investigation. the input hypothesis is the claim that students’ acquisition processes work only on “comprehensible input”. the idea is actually borrowed from the first language acquisition field, one part of which has been concerned with the adaptation of parents’ language when talking to their children so as to use structures, vocabulary and ways of expression which are “roughly tuned” for the child’s presumed level of competence. in the second language case, it suggests two important principles. firstly, acquisition is dependant on the so-called quality of the available input, that is how well the teacher and other suppliers of language can use the initially rather narrow band of language which the learners can understand. the other principle in krashen’s theory is the affective filter. this is essentially e.stevick’s idea that there are defensive and receptive learners. receptive learners do not have to learn or acquire as if through a barrier, while defensive learners find the learning situation threatening and try to control it. despite the criticism demands further research, the monitor model is the best elaborated theory of second language armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 37 development. the importance of the learner’s own strategies for learning and the individual differences should be underlined specifically when talking about the essence of communicative processes. the possible relation between first and second language acquisition has long captured the imagination of second language researchers. mostly models of second language acquisition are, in fact, based on some (usually implicit) assumption regarding the similarity or difference between first and second language acquisition. this assumption is critical to the nature of explanation that is developed for second language acquisition. if the two are the same, then we need look no furthur than models of first language acquisition for a complete explanation of second language acquisition. if the two are different, then we must explain the mechanism of second language acquisition differently. some early theories of second language acquisition differed in this regard. the contrastive analysis hypothesis advanced by lado (1957), for example, claimed that second language acquisition involved replacing the habits acquired during first language acquisition: acquiring a second language was thus not at all like acquiring the first. later, the creative construction hypothesis advocated by dulay and burt (1975) claimed that second language learners begin again in the same way as young children learning their first language. whatever happened during first language acquisition happens again when someone learns a second language. second language acquisition is first language acquisition revisited. in reality second language acquisition is both the same and different from first language acquisition. the paradigm for first language acquisition cannot be imported directly into accounts of second language acquisition, but neither can they be ignored. the solution is to consider three approaches to language learning research: the neurolinguistic, linguistic and psycholinguistic traditions. the study of language acquisition, both first and second, has always included an interest in finding the relation between the neurological structures that provide the material location for language learning and the behavioural indices of that learning. an application of neurological research concerns the localization of language functions in the brain. according to albert and obler (1978), for example, bilingual brains are more bilateral and less fixed with respect to cerebral dominance than are those of monolinguls. such kind of claims have strong implications for theories of acquisition. the second issue taken up by the neurolinguistic approach is the search for evidence that the development of the brain constrains the acquisition of language. this possibility was most clearly formulated by lennenberg, who argued that changes occurring in the brain at around puberty make it more difficult to learn a language after that time. but the thing is that if there are some maturational constraints on language acquisition, then they would most probably apply to the learning of both first and second languages. biological constraints do not guarantee a particular developmental form or a special timetable. the problem of evaluating them basically refers to the areas of language proficiency that appear to be governed by those constraints and the time period during which this armenian folia anglistika linguistics 38 biological influence is most prominent. linguistic theories are not typically or necessarily theories of acquisition, but each linguistic theory has implications for the kind of cognitive or psycholinguistic acquisition theory that is compatible with it. two categories of acquisition theory make different assumptions about language structure. connectionist theories, on the one hand, take an empiricist approach to acquisition: language structure is determined by the linguistic environment. each type of theory will explain language acquisition differently, but the nature of acquisition and that it contributes to an intergrated explanation will be similar. the premise of psycholinguistic approaches is that features of the learner’s mental processes, or changes in the processes that are available, are responsible for the acquisition of language. here, the explanation is an internal description of cognitive resources. there are two problems that psycholinguistic approaches to second language acquisition can address. the first is the relation between meaning and language and how these meanings are learned, the second is the nature of linguistic representation and the way in which two languages are related in such a representation. psycholinguists think that it is the balance between the biological and cognitive influences on the development that distinguishes between first and second language learning. for children learning their first language, most of the variance is left to the innate biological factors. some reorganization of it is necessary to represent the syntactic system, but a considerable part of that structure is under the influence of innate constructs. very little cognitive effort is required for phonology. in general, first and second language learning are the same processes but have different expressions in development. each has a task with a different set of abilities, and, therefore, a different set of advantages. for this reason, first language acquisition and second language learning appear to be more different than they are: the stages and course of development can be quite different. for this reason, too, it is impossible to claim that one group is more privileged than the other. references: 1. dulay, h.; burt, m. (1975) creative construction in second language learning and teaching. washington, dc: tesol 2. krashen, s. (1981) second language acquisition. oxford: the pergamon press. 3. kroll, j.; michael e. (2002) second language research: the development of lexical fluency in second language. new york: vintage international. 4. lado, r. (1957). linguistics across cultures: applied linguistics for language teachers. university of michigan press: ann arbor. 5. rubin, s. (1997) language learning strategies. cambridge: cambridge up. 6. wilkins, d. (1985) communicative processes: what do second language learners need to be able to do? new-york and london: seminar press, inc. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 39 軽íç ûáõñ³óù³ý ¨ ñ³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý ·áñíáýã³óç ñ᷻黽í³μ³ý³ï³ý áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõý êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù ùýýáõãû³ý »ý ³éýíáõù 黽íç ûáõñ³óù³ý ¨ ñ³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý ·áñíáýã³óç ñá·» 黽í³μ³ ý³ï³ý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá: ²ûë ýå³ï³ïáí, ý³ë ¨ ³é³ç ùýý³ñïíáõù »ý ³ûýåçëç ñ³ñó»ñ, çýãåçëçù »ý ëáëùç ³ñï³μ»ñù³ý μý³ï³ýáý áýã³óùá ¨ ¹ñ³ýáõù ñ³ïï³å»ë ï³ñ¨áñíáõ ëáëù³ûçý ùï³¹ñáõãû³ý ó¨³ íáñù³ý ¹»ñá, ëáëù³ûçý ·áñíáõý»áõãû³ý çñ³¹ñ³ûçý ·áñíáýý»ñá, çýãå»ë ý³¨ ûï³ñ 黽íç ûáõñ³óù³ý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñý áý¹·íáõ ï³ñμ»ñ ï»ëáõãûáõýý»ñá: ð³ïáõï áõß³¹ñáõãû³ùμ »ý ¹çï³ñïíáõù 黽íç ûáõñ³óù³ý ·áñíáýã³óá ýï³ñ³·ñáõ ýû³ñ¹³ 黽í³μ³ ý³ï³ý, 黽í³μ³ ý³ï³ý ¨ ñá·» 黽í³μ³ ý³ï³ý ùáï»óáõùý»ñá: ð³ïï³å»ë áý¹·ííáõù ¿ ïíû³é ñ³ñóç í»ñ³μ»ñû³é ï»ë³ï³ý áý¹ñ³ýñ³óáõùý»ñ ³ý»éáõ å³ñ³·³ ûáõù ñá·» 黽í³μ³ ý³ï³ý áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõýý»ñç ïíû³éý»ñç ñ³ßí³éù³ý ³ýññ³å»ßïáõãûáõýá: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 40 maket_n_verjin.qxp deixis as a significant element of human communication the continued interest in deixis as a linguistic andcognitive phenomenon proves the fact of its being in the mainstream of linguistic thought. it is widely recognized among linguists that this linguistic category plays a paramount role in the use and understanding of everyday language. given the great importance of deixis in psychological, philosophical and linguistic approaches to the analysis of language, there has been surprisingly little descriptive work in the area; hence the lack of adequate theory and framework for analysis. the linguistic phenomenon of deixis is a fundamental element of human communication. language is directed towards the other. there are two basic speech act roles, the current speaker and hearer/addressee. they are opposed to the others, which are opposed to a negatively defined non-person category. the deictic system grammaticalizes the roles of participants by different means and primarily by pronouns: typically a first person singular pronoun is used for the speaker, second person pronouns for addressee(s) and a third person pronoun for a category 'neither-speaker-nor-addressee(s)'. speakers use pronouns in order to direct the attention of the addressee to something or someone. usually this act of reference is an integral part of a speech act, or more generally of a communicative exchange. the main function of the classes of deictic words in a linguistic system is that of indexing specific aspects of the communication act. deixis concerns the encoding of many different aspects of the circumstances surrounding the utterance with the utterance itself. deictic elements link two different kinds of situations: the so-called denotational situation, i.e. what is said in an utterance, to the speech situation, i.e. when, where and by whom they are used, thus encoding both the pragmatic and semantic functions of language.the correlation of these two kinds of situations along different parameters has been repeatedly pointed out by different scholars. we can say that 'deixis' is the name given to categories of lexicon and grammar that are controlled by certain details of the communicative situation in which the utterances are produced. these details traditionally include the identity of the participants (the speaker and the hearer) in the communicative act, their location and orientation in space, and the time at which the utterance containing the deictic expression is produced. 172 armenian folia anglistika linguistics yelena yerznkyan while interacting speaker and hearer share a jointly established aim. for understanding to be successful between communicating partners both the speaker and the addressee need to be simultaneously engaged in cognitive processess within which they must be similarly oriented. deixis assumes a special function in the coordination of cognitive representation: it can be understood as a communicative procedure in which the speaker focuses the attention of the addressee by means of verbal expressions and gestures. the idea that utterances are basically rooted in the actual speech situation was first systematically developed by karl bühler in his classical work on the psychological and linguistic foundations of the theory of deixis (bühler 1934: 113). in this pioneering work k.bühler maintains that deictic expressions refer to what he calls the indexical field of language (zeigfeld der sprache), whose zero point the 'origo' in his terminology is fixed by the person who speaks, by the place of utterance, and by the time of utterance. what deictic expressions refer to is determined by the presently relevant 'origo'. in recent years the semantics and pragmatics of deixis has become much clearer especially as a result of papers by charles fillmore (1966, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1982, 1997) and john lyons (1975, 1977) and others. all contemporary works on deixis are founded on the opposition of the so-called naming words (nennwörter) and indexing words (zeigwörter), introduced by bühler. the significance of his works in the field cannot be overestimated. still, in our view, k.bühler's main assumption, that deictical expressions referring to what he calls "indexical field" where the reference point (origo) is fixed by the person who speaks, can be revised. the most immediately obvious examples of deictics such as pronouns you, this, that, temporal and locative adverbs now, then, here, there, overthere, today, yesterday, tomorrow, such verbs as come and go, bring and take etc. as well as tense forms of the verb speak of the fact that deixis is all-pervasive in the vocabulary and the grammar of natural languages. the principal deictic nature of these words reflects the cognitive representation of the speech event, i.e. the relation between two individuals in a conversation exchange. in order to interpret these elements in a piece of discourse, it is necessary to know (at least) who the interlocutors are, and the time and place of the production of the utterance. thus, deictics proper constitute the deictic field of language with its three subdivisions of personal deixis, spatial deixis and temporal deixis. still there is much in language that goes beyond this framework. a great variety of language units, mostly with very abstract meanings have been found to share deictic characteristics although they do not fit into the interlocutors-place-time-of-utterance format (see for details yerzinkyan 1988). the characteristic feature of deictics is that they encode a certain type of relation, the relation between the 'origo' and an intended 'referent'. every act of such reference, i.e. pointing, presupposes a commonly established ground, from which the pointing starts. it is the default assumption that the 'origo' of a pointing act coincides with the speaker of the speech act. however, the 'origo' may be shifted to some other person (or other point in space and time), a process which then has to be marked by certain linguistic means. 173 linguistics armenian folia anglistika in our research we argue for an extension of bühler's concept according to which the centre of the deictic field is too narrowly associated with the speaker. regarding deictic words the main complication to be aware of is that they can also operate relative to a reference point which is not necessarily the actual situation of utterance nor obligatorily the speaker. assuming that the 'deictic centre' the origo is not always the speaker, deixis is dealt with here from a much broader point of view and covers a far wider range of phenomena including all the notional parts of speech. this can be readily illustrated by analysing the meaning of such lexical units as former, current, remote, distant, late, early, soon, nowaday, prewar, postdate, prepay, contemporary, ex-political and the like. the group of words is not homogeneous, but all of them share the deictic feature of being "situationally anchored", though to a different extent. one may go even further and assume that every language sign may have a potential deictic component. thus, deixis in its broad sense is "a marking off point" in relation to which persons, objects and events of reality are characterised. the "point of orientation" concept is expanded to take into account the distinct situation of utterance. this "marking off point" (centre of orientation or reference point, or 'origo' in bühler's terminology) is the central issue in the semantics of deixis. it means that the reference of deictic expressions systematically depends on contextual factors such as the position of the speaker in space and time, etc. at the same time, it should be noted that the centre of orientation of the utterance, based on the speaker's point of view, may be shited in different ways to convey certain meanings. the meaning of deictic signs is of a very special nature. they are not "empty signs" which acquire sense merely in speech. deictics have meaning of their own, which is independent from that of non-deictic signs. personal pronouns "i" and "you", for instance, have a constant and definite meaning, a specific semantic content, i.e. the speech act roles, relating to the speaker and the hearer respectively and constantly alternating with each other. similarly, "here" is largely determined by the context of the utterance as it usually refers to a place that can be identified in relation to the speaker and the hearer. the meaning of deictic expressions is very general, broad, abstract, but very definite. deictics have a stable lexical meaning regardless of the context in which they appear. their specific abstract meaning is "concretised" in speech by being "anchored" to some reference points in particular contexts. a speaker who uses deictic expressions like "yesterday", "recently", "overthere", "left", "current", "later", etc. refers to certain denotata. the hearer who wants to understand this utterance has to identify the specifically intended denotata of deictics. solving the identification problem in deictic reference involves primarily the setting of a basic reference point. sentences like "i'll come to see you tomorrow" seem to have an open slot that is filled by contextual information. this contextual information may be given by prior verbal expression (anaphora), by succeeding verbal expression (cataphora), by common perception of the actual speech situation, etc. thus, what deictics refer to is determined by a presently relevant origo which is revealed either on the basis of its "presence" in the 174 armenian folia anglistika linguistics speaker's or hearer's common perceptual field or of its occurrence in the preceding or following contexts. what is important about deictics is that they are used to refer to items in a linguistic and non-linguistic context. for instance, "now" and "here" as deictics proper refer more often than not to the "now" and "here" of the time and place of speaking; still they can also be established in terms of times and places referred to in a discourse. thus, if we are to look for contexts to state the meaning of deictics we have to look at both linguistic and non-linguistic contexts: both are specified as relevant contexts for deictic expressions. however, there are good reasons for a commensurate limitation of linguistic contexts: firstly, the relation between a lexical item and extralinguistic contexts is often mediated by purely linguistic contexts; secondly, any aspect of an extralinguistic context can be in principle mirrored linguistically. thus, the main characteristics that distinguishes deixis is its inherent indexical property. that is, this class of language units is distinguished by the fact that the complete and explicit semantic interpretation must include a reference to some point of orientation in the context. once this is understood, it becomes clear that the basic problem of deixis is the specification of this point of orientation, the latter being the central issue involved in the semantics of deixis. the specific nature of this language phenomenon makes it necessary to establish a consistent method of studying it. the approach that we consider to be appropriate here is a variety of contextual approach: it is assumed that the semantic and pragmatic properties of a lexical item are fully reflected in appropriate aspects of the relations in contrast with actual and potential contexts. be mirrored linguistically. proceeding with the establishment of a consistent method of deictic analysis it should be noted that the information conveyed in grammars and dictionaries is far from always being exhaustive. this may be explained by rather complicated character of deictic semantics. that is why we think it necessary for the deictic analysis to carry out experiments in order to find out the semantic and pragmatic conditions, to observe language use in context, varying experimentally the relevant context and to find out which are the situational factors that enter into the rules of use of deictic expressions and which are inherent in their semantics. to sum up, let us state once again that deictic elements are distinguished by the fact that they can only be completely defined if the relationship of these elements to some point outside of themselves, which is considered to be a deictic centre, is taken into account. this particular class of signs is peculiar in that the reference of each occurrence of a deictic sign is an obligatory part of its semantics. thus, the meaning of each occurrence of a deictic sign is unique, whereas for non-deictic signs the meaning is normally constant for all occurrences. in most natural languages the majority of utterances are deictically anchored, i.e. they contain linguistic expressions with inbuilt contextual parameters whose interpretation is relative to the context of utterance. successful deictic reference is embedded in a specific speech event and depends on the participants' (interlocutors') awareness of its constituents. place, time and person (participant roles) are the constitutive elements of the speech act and all 175 linguistics armenian folia anglistika languages have deictic means to refer to these entities, though there are differences in the way each language conceptualises and encodes these local, temporal and personal entities. languages also vary with respect to the degree to which they grammaticalise or lexicalise social, spatial, and temporal deixis. it is important to realise that even superficially similar languages may differ considerably in various details. while the general outline of the semantics of deixis seems clear, each language is to be separately examined in the light of variables affecting the big picture. only then, will more specific universals concerning the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of deixis come to light. references: 1. bühler, k. (1934) sprachtheorie: die darstellungsfunktion der sprache. jena: fischer. 2. clark, h. (1996) using language. cambridge: cambridge university press. 3. fillmore, ch. (1966) deictic categories in the semantics of "come" // foundations of language. vol. 2, n 3. 4. fillmore, ch. (1971) towards a theory of deixis // working papers in linguistics. vol. 3, n 4. 5. fillmore, ch. (1973) may we come in? // semiotica, vol. 9, n 2. 6. fillmore, ch. (1975) santa cruz lectures on deixis. indiana university linguistic club, mimeo. 7. fillmore, ch. (1982) towards a descriptive framework for spatial deixis // speech, place and action. chichester, etc.: john wiley& sons. 8. fillmore, ch. (1997) lectures on deixis. stanford, calif.: csli publ. 9. fuchs, a. (1993) remarks on deixis. heidelberg: groos. 10. weissenbom, j.; klein w. (ed.) (1982) here and there: cross-linguistic studies in deixis and demonstration. amsterdam, philadelphia: john benjamins publishing company. 11. lyons, j. (1975) deixis as the source of reference // formal semantics of natural language. cambridge: cambridge university press. 12. lyons, j. (1977) semantics. london, etc.: cambridge university press. vol. 1-2 13. rauh, g. (ed.) (1983) essays on deixis. turingen: gunter narr. 14. green, k. (ed.) (1995) new essays on deixis: discourse, narrative, literature. amsterdam: rodopi. 15. yerzinkyan,y. (1988) deikticheskaya semantika slova. yerevan: izd. yerevanskogo gos. universiteta. 176 armenian folia anglistika linguistics òáõó³ûýáõãû³ý ¹»ñá ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý ù»ç ðá¹í³íáõù ÷áñó ¿ ³ñíáõù í»ñ ñ³ý»é óáõó³ûýáõãû³ý ï³ñ·ç çù³ëï³ûçý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá, áñáýóáí çëï å³ûù³ý³íáñíáõù ¿ óáõó³ï³ý (¹»ûïïçï) µ³é»ñç ¹»ñá ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý áýã³óùáõù: òáõó³ûýáõãûáõýá ¹çï³ñïíáõù ¿ áñå»ë 黽í³ï³ý ³ýí³ýáõ³ï³ý ùççáó, áñá ù³ïý³ýßáõù ¿ ñ³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý ³ïïç ñçùý³ï³ý µ³õ³¹ñçãý»ñá` ï»õá, å³ù³ý³ïá, ëáëáõçý ¨ éëáõçý: òáõó³ï³ý µ³é»ñá ëáëùáõù çñ³ñ »ý ï³åáõù »ñïáõ ï³ñµ»ñ ïçåç çñ³¹ñáõãûáõýý»ñ` µáí³ý¹³ï³ûçý (³ûý, çýãç ù³ëçý ëáëíáõù ¿ ³ëáõûãáõù) ¨ ëáëù³ûçý, ³ñï³é»½í³ï³ý (³ûý, ã» »ñµ, áñï»õ ¨ áõù ïáõùçó ¿ çñ³ï³ý³óíáõù ñ³õáñ¹³ïóáõãûáõýá): 177 linguistics armenian folia anglistika maket 2012 1-2:layout 1.qxd the characteristic features of the academic fiction genre syuzanna poghosyan yerevan state linguistic university e nglish american academic novel became one of the dazzling appearancesof the xx-xxi centuries. while searching for a good explanation to this fact we come across a chain reaction. firstly, there comes the baby-boom after both of the ww-s which in its turn means an incessant growth of the world population in general. then there appears the problem of ww veteran employment. “even welch, in an unwonted display of compassion, remarks that ‘it’s only to be expected, after a war’ that young men should find it difficult to settle into a job” ( amis k. “lucky jim”, pp x-xi ). therefore academic institutions (as all other institutions) are both expanding and increasing in number in order to educate and employ the growing population. in their turn the problems more or less often occurring inside the academic walls also begin to multiply rapidly. academic novels describe life situations in which moral characteristics of the heroes are disclosed and tested. they touch upon many human values. the appalling and miserable fortunes of the main heroes of the novels reveal the ailing life atmosphere where many social and personal problems come into view. thus the foremost aim of the academic novel genre is to introduce the various new themes which are closely connected with the small but autonomic campus world. hence the adequate criterion according to which a novel may be classified as belonging to this genre is the following: an academic novel is a work of fiction the primary thematic concern of which is closely related to the world of higher education. however this is not a static but quite young and yet rapidly developing genre. this genre was founded somewhere in 1950-s, when in 1952 “the groves of academe” by mary mccartney and “lucky jim” by k. amis were published. they were and still are followed by many talented writers. the most celebrated among these writers are: malcolm bradbury, mary mccartney, phillip rote, alison laurie, john maxwell coetzee, francine prose, etc. they keep in step with the times, introducing a whole range of problems that arise from student-teacher-family relationships. with the help of invented people and places these authors bring up and discuss real-life situations and the hottest problems nowadays. for an accurate description of the genre we have looked through many articles, dictionaries and encyclopedias. the theoretical criticism of the genre is based on the great contribution made by such experts of academic fiction as mortimer proctor, david bevan, ian carter, wolfgang weiss, janice rossen and kenneth womack. in particular m. proctor has done a considerable work in his book “reform and the university novel” where he gave the early literary portraits and the decline of oxford and cambridge as two of the oldest universities in the world with well-developed and complicated traditions and peculiar characters among both lecturers and students. in armenian folia anglistika literature 138 chapter iv of the same book the author discussed the university novel itself which is a narrower branch of the academic fiction genre (proctor 1977:11-66; 150-203). such literary commentators and theorists as elaine showalter, john lyons, malcolm bradbury, david lodge and others suggested the classification of the academic novels. for example, while constructing the history of the genre david lodge suggests distinguishing two variations of academic novel. american university novel becomes known as a campus novel, while the british variant is known as a varsity novel. this is due to the mere fact that campus is purely american phenomenon. besides, a varsity novel concentrates mainly on the student-student relationships, while a campus novel depicts the student-lecturer relationship. but very little is done in the sphere of defining the borders of the genre as well as its characteristic features. thus, while defining the features of the genre we will refer to four famous novels, namely: k. amis’s “lucky jim” (1952), malcolm bradbury’s “the history man” (1975), j. m. coetzee’s “disgrace” (1999) and f. prose’s “blue angel” (2000). kingsley amis (1922-1995) born in london was a cultural democrat that valued honesty, civility and the lack of pretense. his friends and colleagues described him as great storyteller and a genuine comic writer. he became the founder of the academic fiction genre by his brilliantly funny novel “lucky jim” (1952). it is about the stuffy, provincial bourgeois world into which jim dixon the main hero of the novel is promoted …. and against whose values and codes he rebels…” (amis 2002:viii-ix). jim dixon finds it very difficult to settle down after returning from the wwii. he starts to lecture at one of britain’s new red-brick universities. the novel describes his rather difficult relationships with the chair head, his students and colleagues. “jim is ill-at-ease and out of place in the university because he does not at heart subscribe to it’s social and cultural values, preferring pop music to mozart, pubs to drawing rooms, non-academic company to academic. looking into the face of a not particularly attractive bar-maid … ‘he thought how much he liked herand had in common with her, and how much she’d like and have on common with him if she only knew him”, by david lodge (amis 2002:xi). to tell the truth jim hates his job and especially mr. welch – the chair head – because the latter often organizes music parties and appreciates only those who can sing madrigals or play musical instruments. at one of such musical evenings jim meets welch’s son bertrand and his girlfriend christine. a very deep and sincere feeling towards christine changes jin completely. he understands that he needs to find his place in this life and must fight for his happiness. in the end he gets a good job offer and his beloved woman. malcolm bradbury’s (1932-2000) “the history man” (1975) introduces the age of “glass and steel” universities which came to substitute the old red-brick buildings. on the one hand, these new buildings were very cheap and easy to build but on the other hand, they lacked the warm and cozy academic atmosphere which is very essential for a successful academic process. the novel introduces the kirks – howard and barbara. the reader witnesses the rapid metamorphosis of this family which leads to barbara’s armenian folia anglistikaliterature 139 suicide at the end of the novel. this suicide proves that the so called society development in the novel was going in the wrong direction. john maxwell coetzee was born in cape town, south africa, in 1940. coetzee has gained many awards throughout his career, although he has a reputation for avoiding award ceremonies. he was the first author to be awarded the booker prize twice. on 2 october 2003 it was announced that he was to receive the nobel prize in literature, making him the fourth african writer to be so honored. the press release for the award also cited his “well-crafted composition, pregnant dialogue and analytical brilliance,” while focusing on the moral nature of his work. coetzee’s “disgrace” (1999) is about a 52-years-old professor david lurie who is divorced. at this age he is still filled with desire but lacks the passion. an affair with a student leaves him jobless and homeless. his friends and colleagues turn away from him and he embarrassingly retreats to his daughter’s smallholding. the complicated racial complexities and the apartheid policy (a system of legal racial segregation enforced by the national party government of south africa between 1948 and 1994, under which the rights of the majority ‘non-white’ inhabitants of south africa were curtailed and minority rule by white people was maintained) caused an incident of terrible violence which smashed the only remaining relationship and made the father and the daughter confront each other. francine prose was born in 1947, in brooklyn, ny. prose uses a rather simple and laconic language, brings up urgent and up-to-date social, political and other issues. prose’s novel “blue angel” (2000) became the winner of the national book award. this book is about a man’s crashing journey towards new life. professor swenson teaches creative writing at euston college. once a quite successful writer at present he is choking in the lifeless and themeless atmosphere of an academic town. the situation gets even worse because it’s been quite long since any of his students have shown promise. and poor professor realizes that it’s impossible to teach talent. talent is something divine and given from the birth. thus it can be developed but never taught. right at that moment a pierced and tattooed girl named angela argo enters his class. she seems to possess a rare talent for writing. she pretends needing his help desperately. but when swenson fails to fulfill her high intentions she tramples him into mud. this novel shows best what happens when academic politics collides with political correctness. the authors of this genre put a special accent on the theme of the “lost generation”. after the world war ii the situation repeated the one after the world war i: people and especially youth lost their faith in future and lived mainly by the day. on the other hand, they desperately wanted to taste all the pleasures of the life as quick as possible since the life proved to be very fragile and short. professor welch’s son bertrand courts christine bearing in the back of his mind totally different intentions: namely, bertrand’s expectations are to get a well-paid job at her uncle’s office. here it needs to be clarified that in the later novels other wars, not necessarily as great and consuming as the wwii, left the same influence on people making them act in the way which can be harmful for others. here are also included such “wars” as the ones armenian folia anglistika literature 140 between males and females, blacks and whites. wars in general teach people to become absolutely egoistic and not to care about building or preserving relationships. therefore, without any remorse people generally made use of others just like things and gave them up as soon as there was nothing to expect from them. this was the case with both angela argo and melanie isaacs. the first girl is the main heroine of the novel “blue angel” by francine prose. angela uses her teacher to achieve her dream to become a writer and when she sees that he is not strong enough to represent and stand up for her, she trashes him. she resembles one of the amazons (a nation of all-female warriors in classical antiquity and greek mythology. no men were permitted to have sexual encounters or reside in amazon country. but once a year, in order to prevent their race from dying out they visited the gargareans, a neighboring tribe. the male children who were the result of these visits were killed, sent back to their fathers or exposed in the wilderness to fend for themselves; the females were kept and brought up by their mothers, and trained in agricultural pursuits, hunting, and the art of war. in other versions when the amazons went to war and they brought some men as slaves, and once or twice a year they would have sex with their slaves.) who cunningly called in men to their island, used them and then cold-heartedly killed their lovers. as for melanie isaacs, she is the heroine of the novel “disgrace” by j.m. coetzee. she manipulates with her professor’s feelings at first to get a shelter, then a passing grade on his subject. melanie “sells” her body for a passing mark and is rather shaken by surprise when her professor tries to make her take the test by all means. “she stares back at him in puzzlement, even shock. ‘i am no longer just a student’ how can you speak to me like this? ‘i can’t take the test’ she raises her chin” (amis 2002:34-35) and leaves not dignifying her professor with a reply. her act of laying a charge of sexual abuse is kind of revenge, as well as an opportunity to get rid of an unhelpful person. the foremost characteristic feature of the genre is the following – the university with its routine and people becomes the corner stone of the novel. sometimes the university itself is described in detail and becomes a novel character. m. bradbury leads the reader of his novel through the campus speaking about every corner of the university of watermouth. this tour around the university campus has a special purpose – to show the ugly cold and dull atmosphere in the new “glass and steel” buildings. it is rather cheap, easy and fast to build them. “…they grow everywhere like mushrooms after the rain” (bradbury <www. modern lib.ru/современная проза/брэдбери малькольм стэнли/историческая личность>). but they lack the warmth and hospitability. there is no proper academic atmosphere in those glass and steel buildings. for another group of novels the campus description and its history somehow foretell the further development of events. in the novel “blue angel” the narration starts with the history when, how and why euston college was built. “elijah euston founded euston academy to educate his … sons and daughters… three daughters died from diphtheria, two more committed suicide. … the campus is haunted by the ghosts… the spirits with an appetite for the souls of undergraduate women” (prose armenian folia anglistikaliterature 141 2000:14-15). other academic novels introduce the university by telling much about the students and the staff, depicting the deeds and the struggles that different characters of the novel go through. these characters are portrayed with such genuine skill that they seem very realistic and lively. the authors use them to reflect problems of reality; on the one hand these characters receive such precise psychological features and shading that they seem quite real and concrete; on the other, they become a collective characters for the very human kind. let’s take as an example professor welch (amis 2002). right at the beginning of the first chapter rather clear physical description of the man is given: professor welch is “…tall and weedy, with limp whitening hair…” (amis 2002:8). the quotation brought above helps to draw a clear portrait of a man. but while one continues reading the novel the professor begins to obtain the features of a person who is truly unsuitable for the position he occupies. as a department head welch requires that everybody fullfils their professional duties as well as it is possible, but he himself does not set a good example and isn’t a helpful supervisor either. as a matter of fact he makes dixon deliver a lecture according to the normative, even though dixon is neither ready for that challenge nor he feels inclined to do that. the first academic novels contained much irony. “lucky jim” is a classic comic campus novel. one of the most famous contemporary literature critics david lodge declared this book as “a novel that changed a generation” (amis 2002:v). in his hilarious send-up of academic life, k.amis poked devastating fun at a very british way of life, and gave a post war fiction a new and enduring figure to laugh and laugh at. although there are a lot of places in the novel where we are invited to chuckle, there are also passages which describe precisely many sad aspects of the present-day life. as for the comic feature of the novel, it needs to be said that the comedy in the novel derives from two sources: the comedy of situation and the comedy of style. the comedy of situation is inseparable from the style. in other words, the situation causes laughter when it is described in a comic language. whereas the comedy of style is based purely on the way language means and stylistic devices are used. and in this case there is neither situation nor action. amis’s comedy introduced a new tone into english fiction. it has some traditional elegance. on one hand it is very educated, on the other – rather classless. amis’s vocabulary is rich and juicy. the author brings some freshness to the satirical observation of everyday life. then k. amis’s light and juicy irony developed into dark satire in the novel “history man” by m. bradbury. this novel belongs to the second time-period of the historical development of the academic novel genre. therefore it is full of dark satire. in the very beginning of the book it is described how the kirks awaken each day and run to the window and examine steadily the skies to see if some dark hands, or thunders sent by gods or some dark horsemen had appeared to announce at last the birth of a new and better world. (bradbury <www. modernlib.ru/современнаяпроза/брэдберималькольмстэнли/историческая личность>) armenian folia anglistika literature 142 at present we see a tight mixture of satire and tragedy. if we analyze the disgraceful situation in which professor david lurie finds himself after being fired from cape town university is both comical and tragic. once a respected professor, david now has to give up all his high ambitious intensions to write an opera on byron’s stay in italy and become a humble peasant and a dog-man. and due to the political and social changes in south africa david becomes a helpless and invaluable social unit. j.m. coetzee like other authors does not and even cannot directly describe own feelings and thoughts about political and social issues. so, the author “hides” himself behind the heroes. the reason is that the true art cannot be enclosed in the narrow boundaries of oneself. the genre of academic novel has a unique type of the novel hero. the hero is a very highly intellectual person and therefore finds it very difficult to fit into the university sphere. this is the reason why these characters are totally unable of co-existing with the rest of the campus society. this hero does not see that he has chosen a wrong life path and it wears out his mental and physical strength. he starts to live like an automat. but life is a precious gift and it requires that one understands the value of each moment. that is why the hero is getting punished in order for him to realize that he does not have a right to simply waste time. all the main heroes form the above mentioned novels – jim dixon, howard kirk, professor david lurie and professor swenson – fit into this description. there are few characters in the academic novel. they are usually presented by opposing couples. this technique helps to increase the dynamics of the novel. all the heroes have their opposition. but the most interesting is the couple formed by the main hero and the trickster (<http://abuss.narod.ru/texthtml/trickster.htm>). the foremost aim of the trickster is destruction. the trickster helps to underline the positive features of the main hero. in some sense this so called trickster is the shadow of the main hero. if professor swenson is the main hero of the novel “blue angel” then angela argo is his trickster. professor lives in some self-invented world. he fancies that he and angela argo can have something in common because she seems to him a talented writer. furthermore he wants her to become a creative and ingenious coauthor of his imaginative world. but he is dreadfully mistaken because unlike him angela uses her talent only to get fame, she doesn’t find contentment and sole tranquility in writing like he does. just another characteristic feature of the genre is the ball/the evening party which seems to be the peak when the tension tightens most. it makes possible to gather all the characters of the novel together and create all kinds of bonds among them. it is during this party that all the professional and personal conflicts reach their highest point. a good example will be the party the kirks throw at their house when different characters come in touch with each other to form and break relations. the warmth, coziness and alcohol help to relax and therefore reveal the true self of each character. hence we get an opportunity to examine each person. and since each one represents a true human being we acquire an unlimited life experience in the sphere of human characters and relations. the annual university ball at a provincial university marks armenian folia anglistikaliterature 143 the turning point in jim dixon’s life. he realizes that he is much fond of christine and gathers strength to break up with margaret and look forward to new life opportunities. the next characteristic feature can be the new aspect in man-woman relationship. in the first novels these relationships involve only the university staff. for example, let us take jim’s relationship with margaret and later with christine. the next step to make the novels more dynamic and interesting a sexual relationship between a professor and a female student is considered. this kind of relationship emerges due to different reasons. sometimes a male staff exploits his position. just like in professor david lurie’s case who probably not deliberately but consciously traps the young girl. he gives her a shelter and a passing mark just for the sake of being able to keep her by his side. other professors, like howard kirk, imagine that by having an affair with their students they fulfill their responsibilities as tutors. and at last some pitiable weak persons like professor swenson fall in love with their students just because of the latter’s remarkable writing talent. it goes without saying that any writer in any times cannot neglect different sociopolitical urgent issues of his epoch. therefore reading different novels of this genre one comes across problems of the xx-xxi centuries like plagiarizing, feminism, antifeminism, apartheid policy with its consequences, etc. summing up, we come to the following important reason why academic novel has become one of the most meaningful happenings in present day literature. it is because it has the widest intellectual-philosophical potential which opens new perspectives on how to solve problems in the sphere of man-society relationship. as a literary genre the academic novel has already got several concrete features, namely: the university as the corner stone of the novel; an evening party or ball which brings the novel to its climax; the unique type of hero; the opposing couples which helps to increase the novel dynamics; ironic/satiric mood of the narration. references: 1. antsiferova, o. (2008) universitetskii roman: zhizn i zakonizhanra. // voprosy literatury, iyul-avgust. n4. 2. bakhtin, m.m. (1986) formy vremeni i khronotopa v romane. ocherki po istori cheskoi poetike. // literaturno-kriticheskie stat’i. m.: khudozhestvennaya literatura. 3. bakhtin, m.m. (1875) voprosy literatury i estetiki. m.: khudozhestvennaya literatura. 4. genieva, y.y. (1979) ne tipichnie i tipichnie angliiskie romany. // inostrannaya literatura. n 8. 5. matthew, h.g.f. (1998) the british and american academic novel. the professor romane: the comic campus, the tragic self. george washington university press. armenian folia anglistika literature 144 6. (2000) oxford advanced learner’s dictionary of current english. oxford 7. proctor, m.p. (1977) the english university novel. issue 15. ayer publishing. 8. zhlutenko, n.yu. (1988) angliiskiy psikhologicheskiy roman xx veka. kiev. sources of data: 1. amis, k. (2002) lucky jim. usa: penguin books. 2. bradbury, m. (1976) history man. boston: houghton mifflin. 3. coetzee, j.m.(1999) disgrace. penguin books: usa. 4. proctor, m. (1977) the university novel. issue 15. 5. prose, f. (2000) blue angel. harper perennial. 6. <http://abuss.narod.ru/texthtml/trickster.htm> §ð³ù³éë³ñ³ý³ï³ý í»å¦ å³ýñç ·ñ³ï³ý »½ñ³·í»ñá ²ý·éá-³ ù»ñçïû³ý ñ³ù³éë³ñ³ý³ï³ý í»åá xx-xxi ¹¹ -ç óýóáõ ·ñ³ï³ý çñ³¹³ñóáõãûáõýý»ñçó ¿: ²ûë å³ýñçý ëïç½μ ¹ñ»óçý 1952 ã. ùç³å³ù³ý³ï éáõûë ï»ë³í »ñïáõ ëï»õí³·áñíáõãûáõýª ø»ñç øùù³ñãýçç §ð³ù³éë³ñ³ý³ï³ý ³ñ³ñ»ïý»ñᦠ¨ øçý·ëéç ²ùçëç §ð³çáõ³ï æçùá¦: ì»ñáýßû³é ½áõû·çý ñ³çáñ¹»é »ý μ³½áõù ï³õ³ý¹³ íáñ ñ»õçý³ïý»ñ, áñáýóçó ñ³ïï³å»ë ³ýññ³å»ßï ¿ ýß»é ø³éùáéù ´ñ»¹μ» ñççý (1932-2000), üçéçå øçéãáý èáãçý (1933), ² éçëáý èáõñççý (1926), æáý ø³ùëí»é øáõ¹½»çý (1940) ¨ üñ³ýëçý öñááõ½çý (1947): ²ûë å³ýñç í»å»ñáõù ý»ñï³û³óíáõù ¿ çñ³¹ñáõãûáõýý»ñç ùç ³ùμáõç ß³ñ³ý, áñï»õ ³ñï³óáéíáõù »ý áõë³ýáõ-¹³ ë³ëáë-áýï³ýçù »é³ýïûáõýáõ ÷áëñ³ñ³μ» ñáõãûáõýý»ñá: §ð³ù³éë³ñ³ý³ï³ý í»å¦ å³ýñá áõýç ³ñ¹»ý ó¨³ íáñí³í, ûáõñ³ñ³ïáõï ñ³ïï³ýçßý»ñ: úáõñ³ù³ýãûáõñ í»å ù³ýñ³ù³ëý ý»ñï³û³óýáõù ¿ ³ûý ñ³ù³éë³ñ³ýá, áñï»õ í³í³éíáõù »ý í»åç ñçùý³ï³ý, ñ»ñáëç ñ³ù³ñ μ³ëïáñáß ·áñíáõáõãûáõýý»ñá: êï½μý³ï³ý ßñç³ýáõù ³ûë å³ýñç í»å»ñçý μýáñáß ¿ñ ã»ã¨ íçí³õ³ß³ñå í³õñ³ýùá, áñá ñ»õçý³ïý»ñç ñç³ëã³÷áõãû³ý ³ ×ç ñ»ï ½áõ·³ ñ»é ³ëïç׳ ý³μ³ñ ÷áëíáõù ¿ ëáñá ¨ ¹³ éá »ñ·çí³ýùç, ¨ ³ 峪 í»ñ³×áõù áõμ»ñ·áõãû³ý: ì»å»ñç ïç½³ ï»ïá å³ñ³ñ³ý¹»ëý ¿ ï³ù » ñ»ïáû³ý ëýçáõûùá, áñï»õ ëïç½μ »ý ³éýáõù í»åç ñçùý³ëý¹çñý»ñá, ¨ í»ñç³å»ë áñï»õ ½·áõßáñ»ý ³ïý³ñïíáõù »ý ³û¹ ëý¹çñý»ñá éáõí»éáõ ñý³ñ³íáñ ï³ñμ» ñ³ïý»ñá: ð³ù³éë³ñ³ý³ï³ý í»åç ç ñ³ûï ·³ éá ¹³ñó³í ³ñ¹ç ·ñ³ï³ýáõãû³ý ³ ù»ý³çù³ëï³éçó çñ³¹³ñóáõãûáõýý»ñçó ù»ïá, ù³ý½ç í»ñáýßû³é å³ýñá ñý³ñ³íáñáõãûáõý ¿ áýó»éáõù ýáñ ï»ë³ýïûáõýçó ¹çï»é ¨ ·ý³ñ³ï»é ³ýñ³ï-ñ³ë³ñ³ïáõãûáõý ÷áëñ³ñ³μ» ñáõãûáõýý»ñá: armenian folia anglistikaliterature 145 microsoft word maket 2020-2(22) (3)-1 (1).doc armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 169 author guidelines manuscript submission manuscripts should be submitted by one of the authors of the manuscript through the online manuscript management system. only electronic word (.doc, .docx) files can be submitted. only online submissions are advised strongly to facilitate 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subtitles 11pt bold, separated from the text above by one space line. info about the author 11pt (affiliation, current position, title, email). titles and subtitles e.g.: title of the article name surname affiliation abstract key words: (5-7 word) introduction the body of a manuscript opens with an introduction that presents the specific problem under study and describes the research strategy. the structure of the introduction should necessarily comprise the author’s aims / tasks / objectives, the subject-matter and the material of the study. the necessary requirements run as follows:  exploration of the importance of the problem. the article should state how it is related to previous work in the area.  the description of the relevant related literature. this section should review studies to establish the general area, and then move towards studies that more specifically define or are more specifically related to the research you are conducting.  the statement of hypotheses and 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(2012) conceptual blending. available at: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/conceptual_blending> [accessed june 2012]. transliteration references both in and out of text other than in english should be given in a transliterated form. dual submissions submission of a paper to afa implies that it has not been published before and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere. please, send the papers to seda gasparyan, editor-in-chief: sedagasparyan@yandex.ru lili karapetyan, managing editor: afajournal@ysu.am 7 maket 2010 nor_n:layout 1.qxd phraseological units with the component “heart” expressing love and devotion the heart has long been thought of as the seat of emo-tions but why do we think of the emotions as being centered in the heart? of course, they are centered in the brain. but when we experience a powerful emotion – fear, anger, grief, love – adrenaline pours into the blood, increases the blood pressure and accelerates the heart. so, it makes perfect sense to think that the heart controls all our thoughts and emotions. by means of the word “heart” people express their feelings, emotions, wishes, etc. as well as their attitude towards people’s behaviour and character. in different languages the word “heart” may have different symbolic and semantic values. these symbols and meanings can differ from language to language, but quite often they are found to be similar. sometimes these meanings can undergo certain changes. it should be mentioned that in the course of time not only the meanings of the word “heart” but also those of the abstracted word-groups including this word undergo semantic changes. how and why does this happen? based on their centuries-old visual observations and experiences people have always tried to explain the phenomena taking place in a man’s organism. thus for instance, they have noticed that when one is angry he gets black or red in the face, unhealthy people look pale, when experiencing strong fear one’s face becomes white and so on. these observations have resulted in the formation of some phraseological units like ëåçï³ï ù³ã³ý ¹³éý³é, êðàñíåòü äî êîðíåé âîëîñ, blue baby, etc. but sometimes there has been no opportunity for such observations. in this case people have made mental abstractions and achieved a moral and psychological perception of the phenomena and formed phraseological units such as ëçñïá ׳ù»é, ëçñïá ÷áñçó ñ³ý»é, ï³ý»é, ïîêîðÿòü ñåðäöå, ñåðäöå çàêàòèëîñü, affair of the heart, one’s heart goes towards sb., etc. these semantic changes take place by means of certain stylistic devices, such as metaphor, metonymy, hyperbole, simile, etc. it should be noted that as a result of these changes in meaning, the words are transferred into another semantic field. in linguistics, a semantic field is considered to be an entity of words belonging to different parts of speech but expressing one conception, and it is this very conception that embraces all these words in a given field. like words, phraseological units can belong to different semantic fields. in this case these linguistic units are placed in these fields according to the whole meaning expressed by their components regardless of their grammatical, structural, stylistic and other peculiarities. the goal of this paper is to study, analyze and compare the semantic fields of the armenian, russian and english phraseological units with the component “heart” armenian folia anglistika linguistics 70 hasmik ghazaryan expressing love and devotion. what is love? it is one of the most difficult questions for mankind. centuries have passed by, relationships have bloomed and so has love. but no one can give the proper definition of love. to some love is friendship set on fire, for others love is like luck. you have to go all the way to find it. no matter how you define it or feel it, love is the eternal truth in the history of mankind. love is patient and devoted, love is kind, benevolent and generous. it isn’t envious, nor it boasts itself and it is never proud. it rejoices over the evil and is the truth seeker. love protects, preserves and hopes for the positive aspect of life. these feelings become the origin of linguistic abstraction by stirring and exciting the soul of a man, thus becoming the source of the phraseological units mentioned above. here are illustrations of some armenian, russian and english phraseological units expressing love and devotion. êçñ ïá áýï ý»é – fall in love with sb. æù í³é ë»ñë μá óáí-»ñ ·áí ëñï»ë ëáõ ñ³ó, ëçñï¹ áý ï³í (isahakyan i:80). êçñ ïá ã³ ÷³ý ó»é – be infatuated with sb. ²ý ¹ç ù³¹ ñ» éç ññ³ åáõ ñ³ýù ý» ñáí éç ëçñï »ù ã³ ÷³ý óáõù (toumanyan i:103): ´á éá ñ᪠ù»í áõ ÷áùñ ùý³ ó»é ¿çý ñç³ ó³í, ï»ë ý» éáí, áñ ùç ï³ë ý»ñ ïáõ ï³ ñ» ï³ý å³ ï³ ýç ù³ñ¹ ï³ýó ëñïç ëáñ ù»ñý ¿ ã³ ÷³ý óáõù (aghayan:554). ê» ñá ëçñ ïá ó·»é – make sb. fall in love with sb. æù ·áíùý ³ ñ»ù ¸³í ãç ³ é³ç, ë»ñë ëçñ ïá ó·» ó»ù (toumanyan iv:42). êñïçý ïç ñ»é – fascinate, enthrall sb.’s feelings. â» ïç ñ»ë, ù»í ß³ñ, ¹áõ ýñ³ ëñïçý, â³ ãáõéý ¿é ³ý ½áñ ïáýï ýç áï ùç¹ ï³ï (toumanyan iv:50). ¸ç³ã ïá íá ëïë³í å³ï ù»é,ã» çýã ñý³ñ ùáí ý³ ïç ñ»ó û ñçáñ¹ êá ýçç ëñïçý (raffi iii:167). ²ûý ³ é³ç ¿ñ, »ñμ »ë, ÷³ ÷³ ·» éáí ïç ñ³ ý³é ó»ñ ëñïçý, ïí»é ¿ç ó»½ ³ ù»ý μ³ý (shirvanzade:19). êñïçý ³ýó ý³ ïáõñ éç ý»é – love sb, be infatuated with sb. ì³û ýñ³ý, áí ³ý ó³ ïáõñ ¿ éç ýáõù ñ³ ñ³ ÷á ÷áë ëñïçý (hugo i:130). êñïç ñ³ ïáñ – a very beloved person. ² õ³í ýçý ùï³í çñ ýýç³ ë»ý û³ ïá, çý ï³í çñ ù»ï ñ³ ïçï ëñïç ñ³ ïá ñç û ñá ñá óç íñ³ ¨ ëïë³í μ³ñó ñ³ ó³ûý é³é (totovents i:256). êñïç ïïá ñá – dear, cordial. ²ûë ¿é çù ïç ýá, çù ëñïç ïïá ñá` çù é³í ü³ë ßáõ ýá (torgomyan:480). êñïç ã³ ·áõ ñç – a sweetheart. ¸áõ »ë çù ëñïç ùýùáõß ã³ ·áõ ñçý, ºñ ·çë, » ñ³ ½çë ãùý³õ ¹ç óáõ ñçý (isahakyan i:86). armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 71 êçñ ïá ï³ ù³ó ý»é – make sb. fall in love with sb. êáõûý çëï ïýá çá í³ñ ó»é ¿ñ ê³ ùáý, éñï»ë ¿ñ ï³ñ ·»é ê» ã³ ýç ï³ý í» ñ³` ð»õ ý³ ñç ëçñïý ûáõñ íñ³ ï³ ù³ó ý»é ¨ êùμ³ ïçý ³ ï»é ï³ éáõ å³ï í»ñ ý»ñ ¿ñ ïí»é (proshyan:240). êçñ ïá å³ï ï³ ý»é ù» ïçý – love sb. ¸³ ýñ³ ñ³ ù³ñ ¿, áñ ýñ³ ëçñïý çýó ¿ å³ï ï³ ýáõù (hugo i:178). êçñ ïá ýíç ñ»é – love sb. à¯í çù ²ý ï»ë-²ýý ù³ý, ³é ³ûë ÷áõýçý çý ó³ ýçó, ëñ³ ñ»ï ù»½ »ù ýíç ñáõù »ë ý³¨ çù ëçñïý áõ ñá ·çý (aghayan:550). êçñ ïá ïåã»é (ù» ïçý) – fall in love with sb. ôáñã ³, ð» ñçù ý³ ½çý ëáëù ¿ç ïí»é, áñ ñáñë ëáë ùç óá ¹áõë ã·³ù, μ³ûó ëçñïë ã¿ñ ïåãáõù (proshyan:340). ò»ñ ïõç μ³ëïý ¿é, »ñ¨ç, ¿¹ ³õ ççïý ¿, áñ ëçñ ïá ïå»é ¿ ¹ñ³ý (toumanyan :205). êçñ ïá ·» ñ»é – win sb’s heart. î³ñ í³í »ë » õ»é ýáõûý ³ûý ·ñù» ñáí, áñ ï»õ ñ» ñá ëç-³ë å» ïç ¹» ñáõù »ë ¿ç ïñïçý ùá ëçñ ïá ·» ñáõù (sevak i:137). þ³ï å³ñ½ μ³ý ¿ ³û¹ ¨ ó»ñ ç ñ³ íáõýùý ¿ ëñï»ñ ·» ñ»é (hugo iii:540). êçñ ïá ·ñ³ í»é – make sb fall in love with sb. îç ïç ýá ã¿ñ ó³ý ï³ ýáõù, áñ ñ³û ³õ çç ïá μ» ïç ïç ýá éç ýç, á ñáí ñ»ï¨ ý³ ·» õ» óçï ¿ñ ¨ ï³ ñáõ ¿ñ ùç³ý ·³ ù³ûý ·ñ³ í»é μ» ïç ëçñ ïá (raffi iv:371). øç±ã» ³û¹ ³õ ççïý ³û¹ ù³ý ·ñ³ í»é ¿ »õ μáñë ëçñ ïá (torgomyan:84) ü³ ³ù μáõ çá íçý ·ñ³ í»é, ³û ñ»é ¿ çù ëçñ ïá (torgomyan:105). äà ìà ñåðä öà — a sweetheart. íà òå áå âîçü ìè,-ïðè áà âè ëà îíà, áðî ñàÿ ãà ãè íó âåò êó ãå ðà íèó ìà,-âîîá ðà çè,÷òî ÿ äà ìà òâîå ãî ñåðä öà (turgenev:19). çàâ ëà äåòü / îâ ëà äåòü ñåðä öåì – win sb.’s heart. ïðåç ðåí íûå õèò ðîñòè! ïðè áå ãàòü ê ëó êàâñò âó, ÷òîá îâ ëà äåòü ñåðä öåì æåí ùè íû!ñ íå ãî äî âà íèåì çà ìå òèë àëåê ñàíäð (goncharov:136). ïî êî ðÿòü ñåðä öå — win sb’s heart. íà âòî ðîé æå ãîä ïîñ ëå å¸ ñâàäü áû ñ êà ëà òè íûì, êî òî ðûé â íåñ êîëü êî äíåé óñ ïåë ïî êî ðèòü å¸ ñåðä öå (turgenev:4). îò äà âàòü/îò äàòü ñåðä öå – love sb. äðó ãîé! íåò, íè êî ìó íà ñâå òå íå îò äà ëà áû ñåðä öå ÿ! (pushkin:96). armenian folia anglistika linguistics 72 ïî ñåðä öó – like sb/sth. ß íå ìî ãó îøè áèòü ñÿ.òû ïðè øåë ñÿ åé ïî ñåðä öó (turgenev:269). ñìè ðèâ ñî âðå ìå íåì êàê çíàòü? ïî ñåðä öó ÿ íàø ëà áû äðó ãà (pushkin:95). ×å ëî âåê èç âåñò íûé, êíÿçü, ñ ñîñòîÿ íèåì, ÷å ëî âåê õî ðî øèé è êî âñå ìó òî ìó ïðè øåë ñÿ åé ïî ñåðä öó (dostoevski:352). absence makes the heart grow fonder (prov.) – parting makes love stronger. give one’s heart to sb./sth. –love sb., be devoted to sth. as though to her music she was giving a heart he had never seen (galsworthy:38). lose one’s heart (to sb./sth.) – fall in love with sb./sth. i declare i’ve lost my heart to you already (cronin:110). put heart (and soul) in sth. – have one’s whole heart in sth. he had put his heart into that house, indeed (galsworthy:45). it’s not my fault that i haven’t been able to put my heart into it (galsworthy:216). set one’s heart on sb./sth. – strive for sb./sth., be infatuated with sb., dream of sb. that’s a good one, that is, for me that’s set my very heart on winning it (cronin:609). well it’s a mess. she’s set her heart upon their boy (galsworthy:168). fate had driven him seventeen years ago to set his heart upon this woman-so utterly, that even now he had no real heart to set on any other (galsworthy:192). possess one’s heart (possessor of one’s heart) – win one’s heart. bosinney – the one man who had possessed her heart, to whom she had given her whole self with rapture (galsworthy:341). he stood up and walked about, dreaming his dream of a life continued with this lovely possessor of his heart (dreiser:289). win sb.’s heart – make sb. fall in love with sb. the grace of this woman had won carrie’s heart (dreiser:349). admire his collection of coins, prints and water-color drawings, and you will win his heart (collins:30). studying the phraseological units mentioned above, one can notice that besides their main meaning according to which they are included in this semantic field they posses some other shades of meaning as well. we should mention that some of those shades are peculiar to all the languages under consideration, while others – to one or the other. thus for instance, the units of all the three languages have the semantic shades of falling in love and being infatuated with somebody: ëçñïá áýïý»é, ëñïçý ³ýóý³ïáõñ éçý»é, ëçñïá ëçñáí éóí»é, ëçñïá ïåã»é, ëçñïá ×õμ³é, çà ñåðäöåì, îòäàâàòü ñåðäöå, give one’s heart to sb, lose one’s heart to sb/sth, etc. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 73 another shade which can also be found in all the languages considered is possessing somebody’s heart, making somebody fall in love with somebody at the cost of great efforts, e.g. ë»ñá ëçñïá ·ó»é/ó·»é, ëçñïá ·»ñ»é, ëçñïá ÷áñçó ñ³ý»é ï³ý»é, çàâëàäåòü ñåðäöåì, ïîêîðÿòü ñåðäöå, possess/take possession of sb’s heart, win sb’s heart, etc. some units in the mentioned languages express a meaning concerning “the beloved person”: ëñïç ñ³ïáñ, ëñïç ïïáñá, ëñïç ã³·áõñç, äàìà ñåðäöà, èçáðàííèê ñåðäöà, the darling of all hearts, etc. the shade of devotion can be found only in armenian and english: ëçñïá áïùç ï³ï ¹ý»é/éçý»é, have one’s heart in sth., put heart and soul in sth., etc. a number of phraseological units found in the following semantic field are in antonymic relations with the units considered above, i.e. these units possess the meanings of indifference, despair, feeling of not liking or loving, etc. here are some units with those meanings: êçñ ïá ³ ½³ï éç ý»é – not to love, not to be in love with sb. æëï ¹áõù ³ûé »ù, ó»ñ ëçñïý ³ ½³ï ¿ (shirvanzade:59). êçñ ïá ïïñí»é – part, leave, become indifferent. ºñ ï³ñ ëå³ ë» óç, áã ·³ éçë ¿çñ, áã ¿é éáõñ ï³ù ý³ ù³ï áõ õ³ñ ïáõù, ¨ ëçñïë ùç³ý ·³ ùçó ïïñí»ó (torgomyan:230). êçñï ïïñ»é – make indifferent, part. ê»ñ ãïíçñ, áõ ³ß ë³ñ ñ»ý ëçñïë ïïñ³í, þáõ ß³ý 糯ý (isahakyan i:135). êçñ ïá ë³ éá éç ý»é – be indifferent to sb./sth. ² ûá°, û ñçáñ¹ êá ýç, ç»ñ ùáõã û³ý ñá ïá ù³ ñ» ó³í çýó ýáõù, ¨ çù ëçñ ïá ¨ë ³ûý å»ë ë³éý ¿ ³ûåù, çýã å»ë çù ó»é ù» ñá (raffi iii:171). ø»ýù ³ñ ¹»ý ýß»é »ýù, áñ áõã ï³ ñ» ï³ý ñ³ ë³ ïáõù ýñ³ ëçñ ïá ë³éý ¿ñ (hugo ii:146). êçñ ïá ë³é ã»é – fall out of love. ¼³ñ ù³ ý³ éç μ³ý ¿ ³û¹ ëçñï ïáã í³ íá, ý³ ßáõ ïáí ïáïñ íáõù ¿, ßáõ ïáí ë³é ãáõù ¿, ý³ ßáõ ïáí ù»é ýáõù ¿ (raffi iii:171). ²¯ë, ¿¯é ã ï³ý ³ñ¨ û ñ»ñ, êçñïë ¿é ë³ é»ñ ¿ í³ õáõ¯ó (isahakyan i:83). êçñ ïá å³ õ»ó ý»é – make sb. indifferent, not to love sb. ê¨ ñ³ ·çñ, ëáõ· ùïçñ, áõ μ³, ë³ éá çáõñ ³ íçñ ·» ñ»½ ù³ ýçý, ëç°ñï¹ å³ õ»ó ñáõ° (demirchyan:525). êçñ ïá ù»éó ý»é/ù»é ý»é – kill the feeling of love, become indifferent. ²ë ëçñïë ù» é³í íáí-¹³ñ ¹» ñç ù»ç, ¶³ñ ý³ý ½áõù ë» ñçý ùý³ó ï³ ñá ïáí (isahakyan i: 152). armenian folia anglistika linguistics 74 êçñ ïá ¹³ ï³ñï ùý³é/éç ý»é – not to love, be gloomy, cold, indifferent towards sth. æñ ëçñ ïá ¹³ ï³ñï ¿ñ, ×ýßí³í (torgomyan:542). ² í³¯õ … ëçñïë ¹³ ï³ñï ùý³ó` øáõ ñ³ó ï³ ýç ³ ÷ç ýù³ý (isahakyan i:241). in the following examples too, some semantic shades such as indifference, feeling of not liking, etc. can be found. thus for instance, the armenian units ëçñ ïá ³ ½³ï éç ý»é and ëçñ ïá ¹³ ï³ñï ùý³é both have the same meaning: the feeling of not loving. besides this the second unit possesses a shade of pity and bitterness as well. this semantic field also includes some other phraseological units such as: ëçñ ïá íñ³ý ï³ù éç ý»é/å³ ñ»é, ëçñ ïá μéý»é, ëçñ ïá ï³é, ëñïç ï»ñ ïç ñ³ ï³é, ëñïç ׳ý å³ñ ñá ·ïý»é, ëñïç ³ é³ñ ï³, ëçñ ïá ç»ñ ù³ó ý»é, ëñïçý ùáï éç ý»é, ëçñ ïá ù» ïç íñ³ éç ý»é/å³ ñ»é, ëçñ ïá ñ» ïá ·ý³é, ùç ï³ã ³ñ ûáõý ¹³é ý³é` ï³ ã»é ëçñ ïá, ëçñ ïá ÷á ñçó ñ³ ý»é` ï³ ý»é, ëñïç ëûáõ ýá, ëçñ ïá ×õμ³é, ëçñ ïá ñ» ïá ·ý³é, ñåðäöå ïðè íàäëåæèò, âîéòè â ñåðäöå, èçá ðàííèê ñåðäöà, çà ñåðäöåì, íàõîäèòü äîñòóï ê ñåðäöó, dear heart, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, close/near to one’s heart, affair of the heart, have a soft/warm corner in one’s heart for sb., etc. structurally the phraseological units with “heart” belong to different types. although most of the units are two-member (ëñïçý ýëï»é, ëçñ ïá ·» ñ»é, ëçñ ïá ï³é, ëçñ ïá ýí³ ×»é, çàâ ëàäåòü ñåðäöåì; ïîêîðÿòü ñåðäöå; çàâîå âàòü ñåðäöå, etc), three-member (ëñïçý ³ýó ý³ ïáõñ éç ý»é, ë» ñá ëçñ ïá ó·»é, ëçñ ïá ëç ñáí éóí»é,ëçñ ïá ó»éù μ» ñ»é, ëçñ ïá ½μ³õ í³í éç ý»é, ëçñ ïá ³ ý³ å³ï ¹³ñó ý»é, íàéòè äîñòóï ê ñåðäöó, possess one’s heart, win one’s heart, etc) and multi-member (ëçñ ïá ÷á ñçó ñ³ ý»é` ï³ ý»é, ëçñ ïá á ïç ï³ï éç ý»é, ùç ï³ã ³ñ ûáõý ¹³é ý³é` ï³ ã»é ëçñ ïá, lose one’s heart to s, have a soft corner in one’s heart; set one’s heart on sb./sth.) many verbal constructions, some substantive (ëñïç ëûáõý(á), ëñïç ñ³ ïáñ, ëñïç ïïá ñá, ëñïç ïç ñáõ ñç, ëñïç ïç ñ³ ï³é, äà ìà ñåðäöà; èçá ðàííèê ñåðäöà, affair of the heart; possessor of one’s heart; the darling of all hearts) and modal (ñåðöå ìî¸, dear heart) units can also be found. several complex communicative units are also found (the heart that once truly loves never forgets, the way to the man’s heart is through his stomach, ïóòü ê ñåðäöó ìóæ÷è íû ïðîõîäèò ÷åðåç æåëóäîê, ïõ³ ù³ñ ¹áõ ëçñ ïá ï³ ýáõ ׳ ý³ å³ñ ñá ³ýó ýáõù ¿ ýñ³ ëï³ ùáù ëáí: we think that the russian equivalent of the unit the way to the man’s heart is through his stomach has been borrowed from english and the corresponding armenian equivalent – from the russian one. some units in russian such as çà ñåðäöåì; ïî ñåðäöó; íå ïî ñåðäöó are considered to be “one-top” units. several nominal and verbal grammatical categories function in these units. it is not our aim to analyze those categories in detail here. we would like to mention only that some of these categories have a meaning-distinguishing role, and the units would be deprived of their meanings if those categories were used otherwise. the syntactical relations between the components of the units are expressed by the typological peculiarities of the languages under consideration. there are few phraseological variants in the field: ëñïç ëûáõý(á), (grammatical), ëçñ ïá ù³ù áýï ý»é/ù³ù í»é (lexical), have one’s (whole) heart in sth. (quantitative) etc. several synonymic rows can be found among the units of this field: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 75 ëñïç ïïá ñá ëñïç ïç ñáõ ñç ëñïç ã³ ·áõ ñç ëñïç ïç ñ³ ï³é, ëçñ ïá ·» ñ»é ëçñ ïá ýí³ ×»é ëçñ ïá ·ñ³ í»é ëñïçý ïç ñ»é, ëçñ ïá ë³é ã»é ëçñ ïá å³ õ»é ëçñ ïá å³ õ»ó ý»é ëçñ ïá ïïñ»é ëçñ ïá ïïñí»é ëçñ ïá ³ ý³ å³ï ¹³ñó ý»é ëçñ ïá ù»éó ý»é ëçñ ïá ¹³ ï³ñï ùý³é, ëçñ ïá áýï ý»é ëçñ ïá ëç ñáí éóí»é ë» ñá ëçñ ïá ·ó»é ëçñ ïá ÷á ñçó ñ³ ý»é, ï³ ý»é ëçñ ïá ïåã»é ëçñ ïá ã³ ÷³ý ó»é, çàâ ëàäåòü ñåðäöåì çàâîå âàòü ñåðäöå ïîêîðÿòü ñåðäöå, äà ìà ñåðäöà èçá ðàííèê ñåðäöà, íàéòè äîñòóï ê ñåðäöó âîéòè â ñåðäöå, give one’s heart to sb/sth lose one’s heart to sb./sth. set one’s heart on sb./sth., have one’s heart in sth put heart and soul in sth., take possession of one’s heart win one’s heart. there aren’t antonymic units within the first and the second groups, but on the whole the units of the first group are in antonymic relations with those of the second group: ëçñ ïá ½μ³õ í³í éç ý»é ëçñïý ³ ½³ï éç ý»é ëçñ ïá ëç ñáí éóí»é ëçñ ïá ¹³ ï³ñï éç ý»é ëçñ ïá ï³ ù³ó ý»é ëçñ ïá å³ õ»ó ý»é/ë³é ã»é ïî ñåðäöó íå ïî ñåðäöó have a soft corner in one’s heart the heart hardens. the phraseological units of this field are used in different functional styles of the language. some of them are used in colloquial language, one or two – in dialects (in armenian). fiction is in fact very rich in them. the investigation of the phraseological units of this semantic field indicates that some of the units in different languages have their equivalents in one or two languages. these equivalents are mostly both semantic and componential: ëñïçý ïç ñ»é çàâ ëàäåòü ñåðäöåì possess one’s/sb.’s heart/take possession of sb.’s heart, ëñïç ù»ç ùïý»é âîéòè â ñåðäöå, ëñïç ïç ñáõ ñç ëñïç ã³ ·áõ ñç ëñïç ³ é³ñ ï³ ëñïç ï»ñ/ïç ñ³ ï³é äà ìà ñåðäöà èçá ðàí í èê ñåðäöà, ëçñ ïá ýí³ ×»é çàâîå âàòü ñåðäöå win sb’s heart, ëçñ ïá ï³é ëçñ ïá ñ³ýó ý»é î ò äà âàò ü ñåðäöå give one’s heart to sb, ëçñ ïá ·» ñ»é ïîêîðÿòü ñåðäöå, ëñïçý ùáï éç ý»é be close to one’s heart, ëçñ ïá ë³ éá éç ý»é the heart hardens, ñåðäöå ìî¸ dear heart. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 76 as we can see there are many similarities and differences between the semantic, structural and grammatical characteristics of the phraseological units studied in the paper. these similarities indicate to commonness and differences, universal features and certain peculiarities typical of the linguistic thinking of different peoples. dictionaries: 1. brewer’s dictionary of phrase and fable. (1956) london: harper collins publishers. 2. kunin, a.v. (1984) anglo-russky phrazeologicheski slovar. m.: russky yazik. 3. phrazeologicheski slovar russkogo yazika. (1978) ed. molotkova a.i. m.: russki yazik. 4. sukiasyan, a., galstyan, s. (1975) hayots lezvi dardsvatsabanakan bararan. yerevan: ysu publishers. 5. zhamanakakits hayots lezvi batsatrakan bararan (1969 –1980) yerevan: asra publishers. sources of data: 1. aghayan, gh. (1979) yerker. yerevan: sovetakan grogh. 2. collins, w. (1934) the woman in white. uk: chapman and hall. 3. cronin, a.j. (1963) hatter’s castle. m.: fl publishers. 4. cronin, a.j. (1957) the citadel. m.: fl publishers. 5. demirchian, d. (1987) vardanank. yervan: luys. 6. dostoyevski, f.m. (1981) idiot. m.: pravda. 7. dreiser, th. (1968) sister carrie. m.: fl publishers. 8. galsworthy, j. (1955) to let. m.: progress publishers. 9. galsworthy, j. (1955) in chancery. m.: progress publishers. 10. galsworthy, j. (1955) the man of property. m.: progress publishers. 11. goncharov, i.a. (1968) obyknovennaya istoria. m.: khudozhestvennaya literatura. 12. hugo, v. (1987) tshvarner. yerevan: luys. 13. isahakyan, a. (1973) yerkeri zhoghovatsu. vol. i. yerevan: hayastan. 14. proshyan, p. (1968) hatsi khndir. yerevan: hayastan. 15. pushkin, a.s. (1982) poemy. m.: khudozhestvennaya literatura. 16. raffi, (1984) yerkeri zhoghovatsu. vol. i, ii, iii. yerevan: sovetakan grogh. 17. sevak, p. (1968) yerkeri zhoghovatsu. vol. i. yerevan: hayastan. 18. shirvanzade, a. (1950) yerkeri liakatar zhoghovatsu. vol. vi. yerevan: pethrat. 19. shirvanzade, a.(1995) chaos. yerevan: luys. 20. turgenev, i.s. (1979) tri vstrechi. leningrad: khudozhestvennaya literatura. 21. turgenev, i.s. (1952) dvoryanskoye gnezdo. m.: khudozhestvennaya literatura. 22. turgenev, i.s. (1977-78) sobraniye sochineniy. vol. v. m.: khudozhestvennaya lite ratura. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 77 23. toumanyan, h. (1990-1996) yerkeri liakatar zhoghovatsu. yerevan: asra publishers. 24. torgomyan, ts., (1959) anmar krakner. yerevan: haypethrat. 25. totovents, v. (1988) yerker. yerevan: nairi. 26. zoryan, s. (1960) yerkeri zhoghovatsu. vol. i, ii. yerevan: hayastan. §êçñï¦ μ³õ³¹ñçãáí ë»ñ ¨ ýíçñáõù ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõ ¹³ñóí³íùý»ñ êáõûý ñá¹ í³ íç ýå³ ï³ ïá ñ³ û» ñ» ýç, éáõ ë» ñ» ýç ¨ ³ý· é» ñ» ýç §ëçñï¦ μ³ õ³¹ ñç ãáí ë»ñ ¨ ýíç ñáõù ³ñ ï³ ñ³û ïáõ ¹³ñó í³íù ý» ñç áõ ëáõù ý³ ëç ñáõã ûáõ ýá, í»ñ éáõ íáõã ûáõýý áõ ½áõ ·³¹ ñáõùý ¿: üßí³í é» ½áõ ý» ñáõù ³û¹ ¹³ñó í³íù ý» ñá áõ ý»ý ï³ éáõó í³í ù³ ûçý, ù» ñ³ ï³ ý³ ï³ý, á ׳ ï³ý ¨ ç ù³ë ï³ μ³ ý³ ï³ý áñ¹ ñ³ý ñáõã ûáõý ý»ñ ¨ ï³ñ μ» ñáõã ûáõý ý»ñ: àý¹ ñ³ý ñáõã ûáõý ý»ñý ³ñ ï³ óá éáõù »ý ýßí³í é» ½áõ ý» ñáí ëá ëáõ åá õá íáõñ¹ ý» ñç 黽 í³ù ï³ íá õáõã û³ý áý¹ ñ³ý ñáõã ûáõý ý» ñá, ùçýã ¹»é ï³ñ μ» ñáõã ûáõý ý» ñá íï³ ûáõù »ý ïíû³é åá õáíñ ¹ç 黽 í³ù ï³ íá õáõã û³ý ûáõ ñ³ ñ³ï ïáõã ûáõý ý» ñç ù³ ëçý: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 78 maket 2011-2:layout 1.qxd why integrity and not coherence? gayane gasparyan yerevan state linguistic university to answer the above question one should clearly determine what integrity is.being of latin origin and used to represent one of the textual parameters or categories, the term comes to denote wholeness. it reveals the interdependence and interaction of all parts of any utterance, both oral and written, bringing to its completeness. integrity is a term mostly used by russian linguists to define one of the constituent components of a whole text, a category which comes to make the text coherent. it is considered one of the most powerful textual categories which leads to the unification of all parts of an utterance and reveals the author’s conceptual approach towards the reality described in the text. while speaking about the category of integrity i. galperin mentions that it shouldn’t be confused with the category of cohesion (galperin 1981). he defines cohesion as a certain type of grammatical, lexical, semantic linkage between separate sentences, supraphrasal unities and other independent parts of the text. according to his definition of integrity the latter does the same but in another way, by means of different logical and associative issues which reveal the interrelation and interdependence of different portions of factual information. the same definition may be found in “interpretation of text” by v. kukharenko (1988). thus, basically i.galperin and his followers describe cohesion and integrity in similar terms. according to them both categories come to link the portions of the text and ensure the successive comprehension of factual information. though, while speaking about integrity they single out the so-called integrity core which may be placed in any part of the text and accumulate all the information, either factual or conceptual. the chief idea/concept of the text, according to their definition, is located in this core, and the successive development of the information becomes a double-sided process: it may be centripetal, on the one hand, and centrifugal on the other. it means that the information, mainly the conceptual one, either acquires the power of progressive development, moving towards this integrity core, or withdraws from it and spreads all over the text. they state further that the integrity core accumulates mostly conceptual, but not factual information within itself. consequently, the difference between cohesion and integrity becomes apparent: cohesion forces the successive development of factual information, whereas integrity reveals the process of unification of all the conceptual information to achieve wholeness and completeness of the text. thus, cohesion is considered to be a logical category, whereas integrity is a psychological one. consequently another question may occur: why cohesion is a logical and integrity a psychological category. the answer actually can be found within the course of discourse analysis of a text based on its communicative value and interactants’ cooperation in a certain communicative situation. if a text is an integral part of such a situation located in between two communicants, then cohesion absolutely depends on the author of the utterance as it is arranged by him/her to foster the logical-successive development of the events armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 15 described in the text. cohesion can actually be considered a logical category because it is “visible”, explicit due to the language means it is created by. on the other hand, integrity created by the author becomes relatively independent of him/her as much depends on the recipient’s ability to perceive correctly whatever the author’s intention is. thus, the category of integrity becomes a psychological one, as it is not quite easily found in the text, it is rather implicit and depends on the interpretative perception of the recipient, as the one who sends the message is not absolutely sure, whether it will be perceived and interpreted by the one who receives it accordingly in the way he/she desires to. integrity depends on comprehension and mutual understanding, it lies outside the text and creates certain psychological interconnection between the communicants. this communicative situation viewed as a certain type of discourse creates interdiscoursive relations between the author, the text and the recipient. all of these together become a sort of constituents of a communicative act where the text is the chief linking point between the communicants. thus, both cohesion and integrity create inside-the-text and outside-the-text strategies: logical links within the frames of the text by means of cohesion and psychological relations between the communicative situation and the text itself. the term integrity is not so much used in other theories. instead, coherence comes to indicate different issues which determine the category of integrity. the terms cohesion and coherence, or local and global cohesion are more often used to describe the properties of an utterance in discourse analysis and text linguistics. for all those who do not know the difference between cohesion and coherence, the two terms seem very much alike because of their pronunciation, semantic significance and communicative directives. but for those who know the difference they are absolutely different in their pragmatic determination and functioning values within the frames of a text/discourse. they both are described as integral parameters of any text/discourse without which the latter cannot exist. they both are rather disputable linguistic phenomena as there does not exist a finalized and properly distinguished approach towards them. some modern approaches are mainly based on m.a. halliday’s and r. hasan’s (halliday, hasan 1976) taxonomy of cohesion. according to them the surface structure of the text is more important for indicating its cohesive means, hereby sentence becomes the measurable unit of discourse. but the opponents of this viewpoint seek to prove that the focus on sentence makes the deep sense of text cohesiveness incomplete. thus, according to u. connor’s definition cohesion is determined by the use of explicit linguistic devices to signal relations between sentences and parts of texts. among the cohesive devices those words and phrases are mentioned, which help the reader associate previous statements with subsequent ones (connor 1996). consequently, coherence acquires semantic value and is absolutely based on semantic relationships. this is the reason why, while speaking about coherence, t.a. van dijk focuses mainly on semantic aspect. he keeps to the viewpoint that coherent texts make sense to the reader, that coherence is a semantic property of discourse formed through the interpretation of each individual sentence relative to the interpretation of other sentences, with “interpretation” implying interaction between the text and the reader (van dijk 1988). armenian folia anglistika linguistics 16 thus, cohesion is usually regarded as a clearly linguistic means that links different sentences, parts and sections of a text/discourse, whereas coherence is actually a pragmatic concept that forces logical thinking. therefore cohesion depends upon the author’s will and desire how to create the logical succession and interdependence of separate facts and portions of information in text/discourse. being an absolutely pragmatic notion coherence at a higher degree depends upon the recipient/reader/listener, upon his/her background knowledge in its broadest sense. from this particular viewpoint integrity may be regarded as a process of unification of all the portions of factual information within the course of cohesion that ensures the progressive development of conceptual information within the course of coherence. it leads to the consolidation of an informative and semantic environment inside (cohesion) and outside (coherence) the text and achieves the target tasks any “text – discourse” relations perform: correlation – wholeness – completeness. thus, cohesion comes to reveal the author’s attitude towards the facts and their correlation within the text, whereas coherence exposes the author’s attitude towards the actual reality and the facts described in the text. they both may be described in terms of local and global coherence suggested by t. van dijk and v. kinch (1988). anyhow, the terms used to denote the inside and outside relations between the facts described in the text and the reality existing around the text (the out-of-text environment) may be different and numerous in number, though they refer to the same phenomena and determine the same certain types of correlation within the course of their functioning. and whatever is mostly important, they expose different types of attitude on both author’s and reader’s/listener’s part. very briefly s. thornbury describes these categories in the following way: “a text is cohesive if its elements are linked together. a text is coherent if it makes sense. it should be clear that these are not the same thing. that is, a text may be cohesive (i.e. linked together), but incoherent (i.e. meaningless)” (thornbury 2005). as seen, once again cohesion is viewed as an inside-the-text purely structural category, whereas coherence is an outside-the text logical category. this is why when we speak about the “meaning” of a text, we do not absolutely mean the factual information developing within the frames of the text, we mostly mean the author’s conceptual approach towards the reality perceived by him/her, reconstructed in his/her personal way and reproduced in his/her individual manner. hence the actual representation of the world depends upon the author on the one hand when it is reflected in the text/discourse and the recipient on the other, when a double-phase perception is brought forth. the latter means that the actual reality is first perceived by the author, secondly reflected in his/her utterance and then both the outside-the-utterance and inside-the-utterance reality is accordingly perceived by the recipient. coherence in this case becomes a key aspect of discourse comprehension, it forces the recipient’s interpretative and evaluative perception. but if the interpretative and evaluative aspects of the recipient’s perception do not operate, the utterance loses its meaningfulness and purposefulness and becomes incoherent. the communication between the interactants becomes ineffective due to their misunderstanding of the situation. the same may be applied to the text as a certain type of utterance. if the reader’s interpretative perception does not lead to evaluative armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 17 partnership between the author and the reader, the author’s intention remains unrecognized and the text becomes incoherent (meaningless) for the reader. he/she will easily single out the cohesive markers within the text, but won’t grasp its sense because will not imagine the context outside the text. the reader will not be able to realize the conceptual information and the text will remain incoherent for him/her. in this case one more question may occur: doesn’t coherence lead to integrity? yes indeed, it really does, as it performs the same function – it determines wholeness and completeness of the text. the discourse creating power of both categories (coherence and integrity) makes them very much alike and puts them close within the course of text interpretation. hence they both may be regarded as one and the same aspect of text/discourse comprehension, a “container” of author – reader mutual understanding in the course of their intercommunication. references: 1. galperin, i.r. (1981) tekst kak objekt lingvisticheskogo issledovania. m.: nauka. 2. kukharenko, v.a. (1988) interpretacia teksta. m.: prosveschenie. 3. halliday, m.a., hasan, r. (1976) cohesion in english. london: longman. 4. connor, u. (1996) contrastive rhetoric: cross-cultural aspects of second-language writing. cambridge: cambridge university press. 5. van dijk, t.a. (1988) text and context: explorations in the semantics and pragmatics of discourse. london: longman. 6. van dijk, t.a., kinch, v. (1988) strategii ponimania svjaznogo teksta. // novoe v zarubezhnoj lingvistike xxiii. / kognitivnie aspekti jazika. m.: progress. 7. thornbury, s. methodology: coherence and cohesion. <http://www.onestopenglish.com/ support/ask-the-experts/methodology-questions/methodology-coherence-and-cohesion/154867.article> æýãáõ± çýï»·ñáõù ¨ áã ï³å³ïóí³íáõãûáõý ðá¹í³íáõù ¹çï³ñïíáõù »ý ï»ùëï³ûçý ³ûýåçëç ï³ñ·»ñ, çýãåçëçù »ý çýï»·ñáõùá ¨ ï³å³ïóí³íáõãûáõýá: ì»ñççýë ûï³ñ³é»½áõ ñ»ï³½áïáõãûáõýý»ñáõù ³ñï³ñ³ûïíáõù ¿ »ñïáõ ï³ñμ»ñ »½ñ»ñç ùççáóáí` (cohesion, coherence): ºñïáõ »½ñ»ñç ýï³ïù³ùμ ·áûáõãûáõý áõý»ý ï³ñμ»ñ ùáï»óáõùý»ñ, áñáýù ë³ï³ûý ñ³ý·áõù »ý ·ñ»ã» ùç¨ýáõûý »½ñ³ï³óáõãû³ýá` ³é³ççýá (cohesion) ý»ñï»ùëï³ûçý ùç³íáñý»ñç ï³å³ïóù³ý ùççáó ¿, çëï »ñïñáñ¹á (coherence) ï»ùëïç ³ùμáõç³ï³ýáõãûáõýý ³å³ñáíáõ ³ûý ï³ñ·ý ¿, áñá ï³å ¿ ñ³ëï³ïáõù ã»’ ý»ñï»ùëï³ûçý ¨ ã»’ ³ñï³ï»ùëï³ûçý çñ³íç׳ï-ùçç³í³ûñ»ñç ùçç¨: æýï»·ñáõùá (integrity) çñ ñ»ñãçý ¹çï³ñïíáõù ¿ áñå»ë ï»ùëïç ï³å³ïóù³ý ³ûýåçëç ùççáó, áñç ßýáññçí ëï»õííáõù ¿ ý»ñï»ùëï³ûçý ¨ ³ñï³ï»ùëï³ûçý ùç ùç³íáñ/ñ³ù³ï»ùëï, áñá ë»ñïáñ»ý ³éýãíáõù ¿ ï³å³ïóí³íáõãû³ý (coherence) ï³ñ·çý: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 18 maket 2011-2:layout 1.qxd marginal in/for literature: topographical and rhetorical aspects yordan lyutskanov academy of sciences of bulgaria iam revisiting the theme of a summer school held in sofia in june 2011. if i had theopportunity to change that title, i would simply rename it “literature and marginality”. “the marginal in/for literature” has cut off one quite actual thematic focus: the marginality, or marginalisation of literature and literary studies. some of the participants demonstrated a spontaneous affinity towards this topic. having interpreted the title formula, i shall attempt to enlarge on ontology of the marginal with regard to literature. i initiated this task long before the summer school was open, in order to facilitate the structuring of a thematic programme for the school.1 when possible, i shall support my considerations with examples from the papers delivered there.2 і. literature fluctuates in its semantic scope. trying to systematise these fluctuations, i propose to delimitate the following thematic domains: 1. marginal in/for the literary institution; 2. marginal in/for the literary text [as a verbal structure]; 3. marginal in/for the book3; 4. the marginal as represented/understood/promoted/annihilated/created by literature.4 the third domain was gravely underrepresented during the summer school. such an important aspect within the first one, especially from sofia, as marginal literatures 5 was thematised in one lecture only (hristov 2011).6 іі. how are the juxtaposed notions (literature and the marginal) related? 0. on the one hand, “marginal for literature” implies that literature is an agent. a relevant idea here is, therefore, the idea that literature creates our (actual, possible, social etc.) life. in fact the formulation helps us to be open for both possibilities: of literature being a real agent, and of being only an instrument. on the other hand, “marginal in literature” presumes the interpretation of literature as media or a mediator (a ‘window’, a ‘mirror’ – but hinting at a certain materiality and at a consistency of its own). and here two ideas appear to be relevant: first, literature represents, reflects and so on; second, it represents or reflects itself. it is worth mentioning that our formulation lacks the idea of literature as an object. 1. if we ignore the subtleties of linguistic expression, one of the first interpretative reactions to the formulation would be: what is not important for literature? what remains unnoticed, and what is perceived as unimportant and/or non-central when we read it? and, probably: what remains unattended in the study of literature? ііі. what does marginal mean? 1. the thought about the marginal gravely depends on the virtual (and culture-experiential) image of the page with its margins; its conceptualisation depends on what might armenian folia anglistikaliterature 137 be called the page metaphor.7 (in conceptualising and interpreting marginality, it is difficult to escape from the spatiality of its prototype, the page. given the experience of the sofia school, escaping from page’s materiality is easier.) therefore i think that one more type or, rather, mode of marginality (besides the historical, geographical, linguistic, sociological and aesthetic summarised by györgy m. vajda (1983)) regarding literature should be outlined. we could designate it as ‘-textual’8 or medial marginality. the lack or the insufficiency of intention to classify as regards medially/ -textually/ literally marginal literature in vajda’s work could be explained with its strong links with the pre-“topographical turn” humanities. i would suggest that a post-turn work could have speculated on its own spatially engendered conceptualising premises. as for my own preoccupation with aspects of marginality embedded in and developing the page metaphor, it could be linked with the current propulsion of topography-focused investigations in the humanities, despite some puzzling particularities.9 what is more important, however, is that the turn opens horizons for converging the quests and queries of medievalists and non-medievalists: this being, at least in bulgarian literary scholarship, an under-recognised necessity and, memorising the experience of the school, a completely unutilised opportunity.10 the marginal could be regarded as a synonym of peripheral. we put now this possibility aside. the “marginal” and the “peripheral” could be considered within a common model. the page-based model could be juxtaposed with a more abstract one, of the centre – periphery differentiation, to produce a triple structure: centre periphery margin. one of our invited scholars, krasimir stanchev (stanchev 2011), justly insisted on differentiating between the peripheral and the marginal. he offered the following distinction. the peripheral, unlike the marginal, pertains to the main text, belongs to the same author (or textual authority) and can become central. he distinguished between two kinds of peripheral, which can be detected by two different approaches: typologising and evaluative. according to the first approach, peripheral is the text which is so distant from a model that it approximates the model of another text or non-text. according to the second one, a text is peripheral when it follows the model strictly but remains of low quality or intensity. our invited scholar distinguished between two kinds of marginality, too. first, one can add a note simply because there has been blank space on the margin. and, second, one can add a note to initiate a dialogue with the text. having made these distinctions, stanchev promoted his particular topic and thesis: “the literature of the bulgarian catholics of the 17 th century was marginal for the east and peripheral for the west, but it indicated the future model of bulgarian development”. it occurred that in some particular cases the marginal could become central: when a radical change of the model is anticipated and/or takes place. from this perspective, the marginal turns to be no more and no less than a degree of the peripheral, a latent periphery (just as the periphery is a latent centre). it is not difficult to discern in stanchev’s considerations the template of yuri lotman’s semiotics of culture: one extrapolating the structure of a/the text upon the extra-textual (ir)reality, and one gravely relying on exploitation of data armenian folia anglistika literature 138 from the history of literature.11 yet the experience of a medievalist dictated to modify the template’s superstructure to underline the difference between the marginal and the peripheral. the ternary (and quantitative rather than qualitative) model centre periphery marginalia could be substantially enriched, given the experience of two works presented at the school – one on the variety of discourses, besides the dominating one, in the soviet georgian literature (ratiani 2011) 12, and the other on the wide gamma of degrees of canonicity in late antique and medieval christian literatures (but especially in late medieval bulgarian literature) (miltenova 2011). the resultant elaborated version of the page metaphor could be juxtaposed with pierre bourdieu’s theory of the field of (artistic) production (burdio 2004) in order to produce a more complex and efficient model; and, besides, given the obvious (in)dependence of works of each field of production on two centres of “heteronomy” – political power and market – and on the centre of the “autonomy” of the corresponding field, to explain some particular cases of remarkable success of works marginal in more than one dimension (a ‘biography’ of such a work was developed in grigorov 2011). an actional model might help to overcome the typical one-sidedness imposed by the page-based model. a marginal note is not only added; the process of dissolution within a text may lead to an expulsion of certain fragments as marginal notes. another paper delivered at the school unintentionally showed (kuzidova-karadžinova 2011) that the marginal is subject to the dialectic of inclusion and exclusion. the observation of the process of translation and a sequence of translations or different versions of one and the same work could support this notion. the marginal could be identified with the lost and with the acquired via translation; with a by-product of translation. the translator’s notes present one possible materialisation. sometimes the translation of a text might serve only as an excuse to articulate something on one’s own. in this drastic case the translation itself turns to be the marginal. the creation of a dynamic model of the marginal without abandoning the page metaphor, or archetype, seems to us most apt on the basis of the so called “genetic criticism”, if we are to resist within the field of literary criticism. let us take the “marginalist economy of textual genesis” launched by daniel ferrer, for example: its main subjects are the marginal notes as textualised intervals between texts read by a writer and texts that are (not) to be written by him.13 now we closely approach the inter-agent or even inter-personal perspective on marginality.14 a paper was held on how a canadian painter and writer pled for the cultural heritage of some ingenious indian people in the state of british columbia and how she employed their artistic traditions in her own art (álamo martín 2011). a question was posed from a listener: patronising someone marginalises him, doesn’t it? then picasso’s instrumentalising of african primitive art was recalled and another question was posed: whether the ambiguity (of neither full identifying with someone nor detached instrumentalising of his or her achievements) was the most dangerous mode of behaviour. “dangerous” was meant in the sense of the moral vulnerability of attitude and of its marginalising effect on the counterpart.15 our speculative attention was brought to the folarmenian folia anglistikaliterature 139 lowing identification of the marginal: with something which or someone who is neither a mere means, nor a goal (neither it nor thee).16 marginality seems to be a kind of in-between-ness. as i already said, materiality of the text-and-margin was much easier to ignore than their spatiality. the reminiscence of textual margin involves recalling the material (paper, parchment, ink and so on) and decoration of the page. for centuries (during the middle ages) and for decades (during the lifetime of experimental modernism) literary works have been transmitted in an intermedial ambience, and this multi-sensory milieu has been either interiorised as synaesthesia and ekphrasis or expelled outside the sheet of paper. this aspect of marginality in and for literature was attended in three papers only (cleminson 2011; álamo 2011; rakjovsky 2011); it is noteworthy that only one of them was delivered by a medievalist scholar. (moreover, in a paper, devoted to the acrostic and to its ambiguous marginality – it occupies the edge of the field of vision but expresses the essence, (petrova 2011) – its visual and material aspects were completely disregarded.) let us examine the intellectual archetype of the page once more. we are urged to think in spatial and visual terms and metaphors and, what is more, in the terms of measured space (that is, space subject to geometrisation and geographisation). but, at the same time, we are invited to conceive and employ the space–time opposition. and in fact the archetype of the page introduces not only visual but tactile metaphors. the marginal, therefore, could be conceived as a ‘spatial frame near/beside/across/around a temporal flux’. but it could be recognised in the opposite side, too: the marginal could be associated with the fluent, immeasurable or ephemeral within a regularised, measured, hierarchical and probably static world. both ideas could be supported by the appearance of an illustrated manuscript page. the marginal is sediment or moving sands. the sediment could attain shape. architecture could be the marginal in and for literature. to my fancy, the following notion of the marginal would be suitable: marginality is what is on the verge between the visible and the invisible, and what makes the core (the non-marginal) look ‘natural’, coherent, and core by nature. in this sense literature is the marginal for and in architecture. before abandoning the centre – periphery scale, let us try to maximise the differentiation within it. for this purpose i shall employ an analogy. the classic, the mannerist, the epigone and the plagiarist form a sequence which could have its projection on the page: the archetype or referent of the work (in fact the centre), the beforehand text (the periphery), the margin and… the outside of the sheet of paper.17 the page metaphor 18 suits the text-centric approach to literature. it leaves the reader half-objectified, assigning him to the margin. permission into the boundary zone appears to be the only possible extent of recognising and accepting the other into the self. 2. if we try to ignore the centre – periphery opposition, the marginal would not be identified with a degree of the peripheral and would appear as something different. it would be, for example, the element which: а) introduces, b) leads away from, c) accompanies, d) sets the conditions/the rules of reading the non-“marginal”. an example for (d): the strategy of narrating and representing in the 19th-century realism – one which sucarmenian folia anglistika literature 140 ceeds in imposing the illusion that what it represents “corresponds” to “life”, to “reality”; that what is represented is ‘natural’, non-intended, unmade. now, we may try to use the following definition: the marginal occurs to be the factor or element which manipulates us to perceive the ‘made’ as ‘natural’. “the factor… which” could be personified: such agents of manipulation represent themselves the narrator and the implicit author. they pertain to the domain of the “marginal for/in the literary text”. the analogous agent in the realm of the “marginal in/for the book” is the commentator (scholiast). but let us put the personifications of the marginal aside. let us remind the etymology of the term ‘margin’. it is in-between but not in the middle. it could be associated with the boundary where the opposites of a spectrum meet. this notion of the marginal dangerously approximates the domain of another notion, of frame. 3. it is quite probable that i confuse the ‘marginal’ with what is on the edge of visibility and is more invisible than visible (and the marginal being more visible than invisible). i suppose that introducing the concept of ‘effort’ here will help to identify the marginal more definitely. things exist which escape attention, which are difficult to focus even if we make effort; and other things exist, which escape attention but which we succeed in focusing when certain efforts are made. the ‘marginal’ belongs to the second group: it is the graspable un-grasped. let us exemplify this notion of the marginal by placing it in the temporal perspective. first, some things are too new to be noticed. second, there are things which are too well known to be explicated: they pertain to the so-called tacit knowledge (michael polanyi) which, in fact, makes communication in general and reading in particular possible19 third, we may underestimate an inert phenomenon representing itself a potential connection with the past and the future; perceiving it/thinking of it as (of) useless “rubble”, we are blocking our perception for its openness towards past and future and, of course, we are marginalising it.20 being situated in the zone of the graspable but un-grasped, the marginal might escape pressure and preserve its freedom, which is probably the main asset of marginality (as a paper on the marginality of bulgarian academic discourse on russian émigré culture suggests: petkova 2011). 4. we are somewhat confused when we try to define the marginal within a risomatic world model. it could probably be identified with what falls outside (or beside) the felicitous chain of territorialisations and de-territorialisations; the sedentary, in contrast to nomadic; the orderly (reducible to a pattern of spatial symmetry), in contrast to chaotic; the typical, in contrast to singular. sometimes the textual or media archetype of conceiving marginality – the topography of a (manuscript) page – urges us to abandon the central – marginal correlation. such is the case, for example, with the topography of page in some manuscripts (both drafts and fair copies) of walter benjamin (giuriato 2004). “marginality manifests itself in two ways: first, in the topography of the manuscript to the degree that the margins are a space where the interior is exposed; second, in the physical gesture of folding the manuscript, making manifold writing possible in the literal (and manual) sense of the word. the gesture of writing thus gains influence over the semantics of the written and in this case reparmenian folia anglistikaliterature 141 resents a marginal writing scene21 in which the text continually exposes itself” (ibid: 202–203). “the marginal note in benjamin’s work develops neither a segregated accidentality of the written that could entirely be integrated into the main text, nor a vertical hierarchy of (self)commenting meaning, sanctioning the order of the text and the subordination of the parergon. the folding of the manuscript is thus not simply a technical preparation, nor are the marginal notes just a supplement to the text, or simply a correlative, but the inner exposition of writing as a gesture that cannot be completed” (ibid: 206). thus writing opens an infinite sequence of relative deterritorialisations (in the sense of deleuz and guattari). can we attribute this kind of de-centred writing to modernist experimentalism and modernist fusion of representative and private only? the already mentioned lecture of ralf cleminson (2011), “margin as text”, offers a de-centralising epistemic perspective (margin can serve not as a margin but as a field for separate text) and attends to ambiguous cases: of commentary occupying not the margin but a parallel text column; of text “still” in large letters but literally marginalised22. of course, regarding them similar to the case with benjamin’s manuscripts would be a hasty judgement. i would suggest that we have rather a system-supporting fluctuation in the representational amount assigned to different hierarchical positions23 (and even not mutual replacement) than loss of hierarchy and infinite unfolding. yet the electronic texts offer a set of links to hypertexts instead of placeable paratext(s), it refers to different files “without visual status”; the endnotes being the only trace from a visual structure anchoring the text (given the contingency of the text – screen relation).24 it seems that “medial” marginality disappears.25 i am tempted to see a kind of intermediate stance in benjamin’s unfolding manuscripts: between the topography of a misbalanced hierarchy availed by some medieval manuscripts and the non-‘spatialisable’ flow of e-text. 5. we may approach the problem bearing in mind our empirical experience as literary scholars. which are the objects of interest in literary criticism that we may regard as marginal? we can regard as marginal: a) notes and pictures on printed and handwritten book margins; b) all kinds of paratexts (title, epigraph etc.); c) all kinds of un-marked positions within a text (starting with what cannot be identified as the text beginning and end); d) all kinds of unmarked positions within the literary field (works of average or low quality, writers considered epigones or second-hand, works and writers that had no conspicuous relation to the great ones); e) all kinds of boundary positions (between genres, between fiction and documentary, high and low26, poetry and graphomania, literature and everyday wording27). it seems that there is a contradiction between (b) (paratexts) and (c) (unmarked positions) – given the fact that paratexts are marked, i.e. they mark (point at) their own position. the contradiction is false. paratextual elements/units are outside the text or on its border. it becomes clear that when the viewpoint or the distance changes different things can be recognised as marginal. i have just mentioned that the paratextual elements/units do mark their positions. here we may assume that the ‘material’ which is to be used in paratext has or acquires the characteristics of a ‘marker’. and there is, correspondingly, such a ‘material’ which contributes to de-marking the position it is introduced into, a ‘material’ which makes the position invisible or ignorable28. it should armenian folia anglistika literature 142 be ‘material’ introduced with the intention of detracting attention; or material detracting it devoid of intention. so we may define the marginal as what remains, after all positions “that matter” are outlined. it is obvious that it will constantly shrink. but the implicit hierarchy we are building, while making it retreat, does constitute it.29 if we leave the page metaphor which conceptualises our thinking of the marginal it would be easier to catch the marginal in terms of temporality. thus, a. alexieva (aleksieva 2011) spoke about the “teachers’ poetry” within the 19th century bulgarian literature. it experienced a short momentum in the mid-19th century, and then rapidly lost popularity and was even stigmatized, since it was “helpless verse-making” and expressed loyalty to the sultan. it became unacceptable for one more reason – it modelled local chronotopes, and not the supra-local of the emerging modern nation. if we try to extract another definition of the marginal from here, we would say that it coincides with the short-lived which, in addition, does not affect the subsequent development. it might be said that the teacher’s poetry exercised only a ‘negative’ effect, serving as an object from which to detach. returning to spatiality, we would say, next, that the ‘marginal’ within the live-space of a national community is the local (and the ethno-national would have been the ‘marginal’ within a supra-national imperial order), the every-day and the intermediate between the community under construction and the individual. teachers’ poetry is marginal insofar it falls outside the mainstream, not being within it during the preceding epoch as well: it is a phenomenon of the short-lived ‘in between’ period associable with enlightenment, period of enlightened local civil communities, after the middle ages and before the romanticism of the national revolution. it is a kind of temporal marginality, of in-between-ness, which does not recognise the particular profits of a marginal position: contrary to, quite characteristically, the avant-garde which had adopted what renato poggioli called the conscience and strategy of agonism (“[…] this immolation of the self to the art of the future must be understood not only as an anonymous and collective sacrifice, but also as the self-immolation of the isolated creative personality” (poggioli 1968:67–68)). but we ought to differentiate between marginality as an unwanted and even un-supposed destiny and as a self-affirmative and self-distinguishing choice, on the one hand, and marginality as an inherent yet conscious mode of experiencing the world and the self, on the other hand. i have in mind the so called ‘medieval man’. “most people today consider that man is at centre of an ethnocentric world system, both politically and aesthetically. in contrast, the people of the middle ages saw themselves at the edge, the last ageing dregs of a falling-off of humanity, the dissipated end of a golden age eagerly awaiting the last judgement.” (camille 1992:53).30 one more dimension of ‘medieval man’ marginality: he is chronically trespassing against a borderline constitutive for selfand world-order, the one between sin and virtue, or is gliding on its verge, as regina koycheva’s paper on marginality in the chronotope of the old bulgarian commemorative hymnography reminded us (kojčeva 2011). the enumeration based on empirical experience could go on. yet we anticipate the following: any structural unit and any structural factor could appear as or be marginal – for a period of time, from a certain standpoint. it would be apt to speculate on and conceptualise different modes of marginalisation and de-marginalisation. armenian folia anglistikaliterature 143 6. it would be much easier to identify the marginal disregarding literature and then to make account on how literature represents, instrumentalises, and creates it (it or its image). the “feminine” would serve a good example. and everything that does not coincide with any of the poles in a dy-, tryand whatever poled contradiction/constellation, and which we do not tend to identify with its solution or synthesis. an example: bulgaria is neither east nor west (and it could hardly achieve or represent a kind of synthesis of those), ergo bulgaria is marginal. marginal is the fact of non-belonging to any position recognisable as a ‘pole’ in a constellation. thus understood, marginality could be a geopolitical, geocultural, geopoetical31 condition. it is an aspect of marginality caught in the recently coined historiography and culturology term “balkanism”. in a wider sense, “balkanism” is as old as the roman historiography and may be older: in his annals tacit wrote of armenia and armenians: “this had been of old an unsettled country from the character of its people and from its geographical position, bordering, as it does, to a great extent on our provinces and stretching far away to media. it lies between two most mighty empires, and is very often at strife with them, hating rome and jealous of parthia.” (tacitus 2 [56]); “besides, the armenians in the fluctuations of their allegiance sought the armed protection of both empires, though by their country’s position, by resemblance of manners, and by the ties of intermarriage, they were more connected with the parthians, to whose subjection, in their ignorance of freedom, they rather inclined.” (tacitus 13 [34]). within the summer school, marginality as civilisational and geopolitical in-between-ness was approached in a paper inspecting manifestations of “orientalism” and “occidentalism” in the 19th century balkan cultures (aretov 2011). the balkan mentality seems to have been fluctuating between orientalism and occidentalism, between intimate adopting them and detached employing them. i have mentioned above that a work (petkova 2011) touched upon the issue of the acceptability of marginality when it provides secure invisibility. marginality could have one more (and much more important) asset: it could combine the experience of and the knowledge of worlds neighbouring and conflicting with each other32 (a specific pride for one’s marginality sees aretov in the “the spring of the white-legged”, 1873, a work from petko slaveykov firmly set in the national literary canon of bulgaria. ‘marginal’ is what falls in between the conflicting ‘protagonists’, what could employ the self-constitutive strategies of them both. however, it seems to be a local, guerrilla-like, employment, not a global one.33) hence we are urged to utter two radically different notions of marginality: it is a zone of multiple potentialities (even more: one imbued with the generating principles of a multitude of systems) vs it is a zone of relative instability generated by a centre in order to perform its own stability.34 an agent could collate the two opposite conditions if (s)he/it succeeds in acquiring multiple levels of awareness, of understanding and acting on different epistemological levels. it was the intimate interdependence between orientalism and occidentalism, the trace of marginality in both of them and the peculiar imbalance between them that intrigued me most. they form a characteristic interactive chain of marginalisation, of anxiety of marginalisation and of compensatory resistance against it. defining mararmenian folia anglistika literature 144 ginalisation, that is, the first step, aretov departs from the idea that it might come as a self-marginalisation, as a result from adopting an outsider’s frame of reference and selfconceiving through it; thereby he recalls the concept of ‘self-colonisation’35 but he could have recalled the ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ as well. the basic commonality between ‘orientalism’ and ‘occidentalism’ is the thrust to design the ‘other’ as one’s own negative and most probably inferior double. both strategies are fed by a kind of dualism which is interrelated with a kind of reductionist universalism. if we assume the claim of buruma and margalit (buruma/margalit 2006) that occidentalist ideas have western provenance, we could claim that occidentalism is doomed to be late, to be the belated pretender for dominance. and if we attend to the civil-and-metropolitan rhetoric of orientalism and to the ruralist rhetoric of occidentalism, we would associate the former with the ideology of a rising or already dominating former contact zone (or with the ideology of the polis), and the latter with the ideology of a descending or still dominated rural heartland (or with the ideology of the ethnos). one more asymmetry is worth mentioning: while orientalism produces hegemony, occidentalism pleads for destruction. i am inclined to think that both ‘orientalism’36 and ‘occidentalism’ produce a variety of attitudes to dissolve the ‘other’, or the others, or to displace them in different positions: peripheral, marginal, frontier-line, transcendent. being (dis)placed in a given position, the animated fragment of ‘otherness’ is likely to experience some attitudes more frequently than other attitudes (thus we can expect that the transcendent would be hated or respected rather than neglected). the ‘marginal’ would be the strata which is negligible but which, in a time of danger, is seen as the transcendent enemy in miniature. one wonders whether the ‘marginal’ could be delegated the role of a mediator. probably not; it is a role for what is positioned as a/the ‘frontier-line’, and the ‘marginal’ – by definition – skips, misses to take this position. if the ‘marginal’ is driven to the role of mediator during this fluctuating attitude toward it, it just means that it has changed its position, its strata, and has moved to the ‘frontier-line’. this conflict appears to be a cultural universal and is associable with a conflict between two semiotic orders: the conventional or liquid signification and the non-conventional or textbound signification. we may return to the monistic hypothesis of the world which means not looking from the outside to the ‘pole’ or position with which we identify ourselves. we would identify our position with the truth and the other position would be the absolute evil. we would say that the latter has no right to exist, and we speak with it for the sake of tactical manoeuvre. the ‘marginal’ coincides with the other, with the evil. let us now look at the group of noble men fighting against evil. in fact only some voices here are of importance. and it wouldn’t matter whether voices of men whose opinion is of no importance would be conformist or oppositional: they would be marginal. the ‘marginal’ coincides with whom or what is disrespected. as the author of the paper on orientalism and occidentalism noted, conceiving oneself marginal can indeed make one marginal. another participant re-accessed the issue on the example of 19th and 20th century bulgarian culture (hristov 2011). an involvement in a global literary economy conceived as an exchange of gifts between agents that armenian folia anglistikaliterature 145 are dominating and agents that are dominated could initiate a spiral of self-marginalisation. synonymous to this involvement is subsuming to the feeling that you are obliged to be grateful for being civilised. in such a case your return gift is doomed never to gain recognition. (“[l]iterature is of value to the extent it gives valuable knowledge to the enlightened nations, the masters of the world. […] one cannot claim that knowledge is valuable if the foreigners do not value it. […] but if this is the case, then returning the gift of literature […] produces a subject position […] proving not the value of the nation that offers it but its inability to offer anything of value” (hristov 2011:12). the civiliser becomes a hegemon. following ernesto laclau and chantal mouffe, the lecturer defined hegemony as “any knowledge which is so powerful that it makes knowing the opposite indefensible”.37 7. of course, literature can make its theme or even its fate all these kinds of marginality and much more concrete ones. but sometimes it succeeds in representing the very vague idea of marginality. i mean modernist literature. a piece of it could reproduce what one of the participants (tenev 2011) called “a machine for production of marginality”, pointing at james joyce’s novels “ulysses” and “finnegan’s wake”. examining the ways in which the new characters are introduced into the modernist narrative, he realises that the marginal ones cannot be associated with indeterminacy and the central ones – with determinacy. (on the contrary, the classical narrative is determinate as regards the central characters and indeterminate regarding the marginal.) what is more, the newly introduced characters could become indistinguishable from the central ones and from inanimate objects, thus subsisting chronic indeterminacy. the proper nouns, as guarantees of determinate identity, have “unstuck” from their usual referents in order to accompany the emerging “nebular” agents of subjectivity (neither central nor peripheral, neither animated nor inanimate). this mechanism of dissolving identities and criteria for ranking agents prevents the emerging of centre and thus marginality appears to occupy the central position.38 to summarise, in this paper i tried to demonstrate the heurism of the “page model” in conceptualising the marginal, especially when moved aside from the close context of medievalist textual scholarship. i also tried to show the interoperability between the notion(s) of (the) marginal and such phenomena and/or ideas as attitude (of mind), intention, will, (self)evocation, s/self(ness), o/other(ness), (self)alienation, (self)indoctrination and the like. in brief, i tried to outline what i had designated as topographical and rhetorical aspects of marginality. i suppose that the diverse and sometimes contradicting notions of marginality, which i made articulate or stumbled upon, could be cohered via an understanding of marginality which does not simply merge, but synthesises its topographical and rhetorical aspects. the texts delivered at sofia summer school stimulated a monologue i find productive. thus, whatever the deficiencies as regards direct approaching and unselfish interest in the theme, it has fulfilled the main task of a scholarly forum. armenian folia anglistika literature 146 notes: 1. the programme is available on-line: http://www.ilit.bas.bg/bg/summer_school_2010.php. the volume of the proceedings with the final versions of the texts (which are not the ones i refer to here) is already under preparation for print. in my paper i shall attend to or mention not more than half of the contributions (a conference review being just a side task for me). 2. thus i shall be able to check the interoperability between my anticipations and the actual event. 3. i mind the book as a material form of the literary text. here printed and handwritten books, scrolls and codices, and also epigraphs in the original sense might be considered. and the digital book and the different digital literary forms as well. 4. this domain of inquiry is exemplified by works like (hughes 2001) which explore “how cultural centres require the peripheral, the outlawed, and the deviant in order to define and bolster themselves” (from the publisher’s introductory note). 5. i borrowed the term from (marginale 1983). the introductory paper of the volume outlined the main aspects of marginality in literature – stressing especially on historical, geographical and linguistic – noting the relativity of each (vajda 1983:5–9); it seems that marginality of literature from sociological and aesthetical viewpoints (ibid: 10–12) had been much more frequently under focus. 6. these four domains intersect. nevertheless i think they are almost equally distant from each other and that they cover the whole volume of literature’s variability. 7. i recall here george lacoff’s idea of “conceptualising metaphor”. 8. the hyphen leaving room for a prefix (para-, hyper-, meta-) is not less important than the root of the word. 9. i stumbled upon a recent work which thematises the turn (geopoetiken 2010) after i had written my present work and almost completed it; and i am still not acquainted with such a groundbreaking work of the turn as j. hillis miller’s “topographies”. i could link my preoccupation mentioned above with the move towards convergence of textual scholarship and literary criticism characteristic of the anglo-american academia since the 1980s (see the anthology of anglo-american works in textual scholarship (1980–2005) in ecdotica 2009) – in fact a convergence theoretically coherent with the “turn” – but i cannot derive it from there (personal anamnesis does not support the suggestion). 10. an insightful and emblematic work synthesising theoretical, history of medieval literature and history of post-medieval literature perspectives (georgiev 2004 [1990]) distinguished three genres of ‘medially’ marginal literature, or of marginalia, within bulgarian literature of the ottoman period. in citing it the only work “frontally” and plainly theoretically dealing with marginality at the forum devoted to marginality (milchakov 2011:4) remained alone. i regard the first fact as one among several which witness for the fragmentation of the field of literary studies in bulgaria (the main but not the only gully being that between medievalists and non-medievalists); and the second one as symptomatic for a characteristic malaise of scholarly forums: armenian folia anglistikaliterature 147 participants adjusting the thematic horizon of a forum to their personal interests and/or themes and not vice versa. 11. remember yuri tynyanov’s idea of literature dynamism: periodical movement of genres from the centre towards the periphery, together with underwater counter currents or weak side currents. 12. the 1970s situation (ratiani 2011:10–11) seems particularly pointing. 13. ferrer 2004. – the work contributes to a thematic (as all others are) issue of “variants”, the journal of the european society for textual scholarship, devoted to “reading notes” (marginal as well as such produced by “extraction” and laid down not on margins). – compare: “as heather jackson argues in her fascinating study on marginalia, notes in the margins are not only a ‘responsive’ type of writing that looks back to the text onto which the notes are grafted, they also look forward to an original expression of personality in many cases even to a new act of writing” (van mierlo 2004:147). 14. the page archetype supports this perspective: “marginalia assert the presence of a personality whose annotations […] record ‘a transaction between minds’” (wim van mierlo cites h. jackson in van mierlo 2004:147 (note 23)). 15. compare with a similar concern in a recent book on marginality in french late 19th and 20th c. literature: “[…] gesturing towards cultural difference in no way guarantees dialectical engagement with it. indeed, it is often an ambivalent move, entailing the pursuit of private goals – sexual, political, aesthetic – and the collateral exclusion of the other” (hughes 2001:8). 16. the discussion provoked by a paper devoted to a canadian artist-and-writer’s paintings made evident the faint interest in intermediality and the active one in intercultural communication. one more time the social dimensions of marginality vis-à-vis literature overshadowed the poetological ones. see about possible intersections between sociologically thoughtful and topographically aware literary study below. 17. but compare with the following type of three-level structure: biblical text – commentary – biblical quotations within the commentary’s text (recalled by margaret dimitrova during the discussion after ralph cleminson’s lecture). which variant is more apt: to regard the commentary as marginalia and the biblical quotations as periphery or vice versa? 18. note the problematic functionality of a very similar metaphor – i would call it folial or leaf metaphor. 19. one of the papers thematised the tacit knowledge invested in the so called current criticism and the heurism of discovering and articulating it for the history of literature: mikkel 2011. 20. thus, for example, a paper (rakjovsky 2011) thematised the following issue: the works of x and y are considered to witness that a certain style, movement and aesthetic epoch has begun; but in fact it is only the usually neglected background of their works, a background inhabited by works and authors doomed epigones, which makes the phenomenon un-occasional, “dense” and therefore real. what is more, one of these “epigones” (in fact a less talented or less adequately talented co-founder who armenian folia anglistika literature 148 was unable to overcome the preparatory phase) developed a technique which was sought after later, within the next style of the epoch. 21. “rüdiger campe has proposed the term “writing scene” for a type of writing that comprises three heterogeneous aspects, namely language (semantics), technical preparation (or instrumentality) and bodily gesture” (giuriato 2004:199). 22. a rhetoric question from the public (álamo martín) was raised on whether this displacement of text by the commentary is similar (or probably prefigures, i would add) to the condition of modern literature, often overwhelmed by literary criticism. unfortunately, the asserted statement was not followed by further speculations on the topic. 23. roughly speaking, the higher in hierarchy could require less explicit attention; generally speaking, it is a possibility transposing the distrust in iconic representation from the qualitative (compare iconicity – an-iconicity; cataphasis – apophasis; visual beauty of the image – visual ugliness of the image) into the quantitative order. 24. i am postponing a careful examination of cleminson’s contribution. 25. if i am to speculate on the relation between such a disappearance and the condition of social etc. marginality (that is, of marginality outside the text), i would suppose its veiling function: it veils the persistence of hierarchy, persistence in a sort of a-spatiality (and therefore becoming both more elusive and more fundamental). 26. at least two papers dealt with a specifically ambiguous, between “high” and “low”, stance: modebadze 2011 on the drift of soviet science fiction toward “high” literature and aleksandrov 2011 on margaret atwood’s dystopian novels’ uneasy inbetween-ness (they are neither ‘enough’ “high” nor ‘enough’ popular). 27. a recent bulgarian work on para-literature written by evdokia borisova, plamen shulikov and yani milchakov (borisova/šulikov/milčakov 2009) is worth to be mentioned here; it investigates theoretical and historical aspects of bulgarian literature’s intersections with its school, beau-monde and mass culture ambience (which produced albums, popular songs brochures, dime-novels series etc.). 28. the corresponding category would fit well in an aesthetics which opposes the aesthetics of provocation. 29. we are used to think that, if a certain piece of artistic stuff is introduced on a marked position, it gains in weight, in significance. but the reciprocal is valid too: a piece of stuff could transform a position into a marked one. it is no coincidence that a position habitually perceived as marked could promote a disappointing stuff which would make the recipient’s interest shrink, within a tendency to perceive as unmarked. 30. dilyana radoslavova’s contribution (radoslavova 2011) offered an even more interesting perspective on temporal marginality (as well as on its intersections with topographical, of different scopes), for it discussed the borderland and ambiguous seventeenth century in bulgarian literature and language history (usually considered the last from the middle ages) and the dissemination and structure of its ambiguous genre protagonist, the damaskini. 31. on geopoetics see geopoetiken 2010 and works referred at there: white 1987: 272–293; sid 2008 etc. merging of conceptualisations of geopoetics (moreover, of its armenian folia anglistikaliterature 149 different versions (on them: frank 2010:20–24)) with the conceptualisations of edward said and like could be fruitful (compare frank 2010:27–31) but for reasons of clarity i am postponing it. 32. what aretov failed to say explicitly (but what he certainly had in mind) is that a situation on the bulgarian-made 19th century mental map emerges within which the bulgarians are the ‘centre’ – being localised between the brutal (asian) evil (the turk) and the sophisticated european one (the greek), “as in some variants of the sujet about stoyan vojvoda”. 33. but compare with the rise of caliphate from the in-between of east roman and sassanian iran empires: (non)marginality, taken only as a term of topographic description, has deficient explanatory force. 34. diverse data could support the second one. the “lack of an alternative […] prevents medieval joke-making from becoming subversive”, including the consciously subversive text of marginal illustrations (camille 1992:43). “unlike proust, camus, and genet, loti, gauguin, and montherlant are not canonical writers. yet the works of each of these authors, major and minor alike, express a cultural malaise in which the insufficiency of self regularly awakens a desire to explore as well as to police the exotic horizon” (hughes 200:7). 35. a concept revitalised, within the context of contemporary bulgarian humanities, by alexander kyossev in the 1990s. 36. note the move from the status of a proper noun. 37. the conditions of falling into marginality, choosing marginality, and professing it have been a matter of consideration in the paper of amelia licheva, devoted to writers’ and literary scholars’ condition in post-communist bulgaria (ličeva 2011). here marginality is meant in its sociological sense. it is not difficult to associate the three stances mentioned with certain positions within an autonomous field of production ala bourdieu. what i miss and what i fail to conceptualise here is a kind of sociology-free (up to the possible degree) and psychology-free intention-bound, volition-relevant personalist theory of literary marginality. 38. another paper (thurston 2011) approached the same basic condition differently, claiming that the poetics of modernism was in fact a poetics of a disaster; the trench, the world of war-born existence in parenthesis and in-between became the norm. – a study of medieval book illumination on the west (camille 1992:18–26) reveals a semiotic overturn which resembles the negative of modernist overturn: it is after the 12th century that the marginal images, which were amidst the body of the text before, emerge. references: 1. aleksandrov, d. (2011) the postmodern dystopian novels of margaret atwood. // paper, delivered at the “marginal in/for literature” summer school held in sofia 6–10th of june 2011 (pp. 1–18). armenian folia anglistika literature 150 2. aleksieva, a. (2011) poetičeski marginalia na vŭzraždaneto: daskalskata poezija [poetical marginalia of the national revival period: the teachers’ poetry] // paper…, (pp. 1–12). 3. álamo, m.r. (2011) emily carr’s writing and painting: a modernist experiment of interdisciplinary in the margins. // lecture, delivered at the “marginal in/for literature” summer school held in sofia 6–10th of june 2011 (pp. 1–15). 4. aretov, n. (2011) strahŭt ot marginalnost i problemŭt za oksidentalizma v balkanskite kulturi [the fear of marginality and occidentalism in the balkan cultures] // lecture…, [1]–[12]. 5. borisova, e.; šulikov, p. and milčakov, j. (2009) paraliteraturata. tekstologija, sotsiologija, mediatori [the paraliterature. textology, sociology, mediators]. veliko tŭrnovo: faber. 6. burdio, p. (2004) pravilata na izkustvoto: genezis i struktura na literaturnoto pole. / tr. by s. atanasov, m. velinova, a. želeva, a. robova. sofia: maison des sciences de l’homme et de la société, 2004. [translation of: pierre bourdieu, les règles de l’art: genèse et structure du champ littéraire, paris, seuil, 1998, 1992] 7. buruma, i. and margalit, a. (2006) oksidentalizmŭt: kratka istorija na antizapadničestvoto. / tr. by g. atanasov. sofia: kralitsa mab. 8. camille, m. (1992) image on the edge: the margins of medieval art. cambridge (mass.): harvard up. 9. cleminson, r. (2011) margin as text. // lecture…, 46’30’’ [no print version available. accessible via you tube at http://www.ilit.bas.bg/bg/marginal literature_video.php] 10. ecdotica (2009) ecdotica. / ed. by f.d. corte et al.. bologna – madrid – roma: carocci, vol. 6. 11. ferrer, d. (2004) towards a marginalist economy of textual genesis. // variants. / ed. by d. van hulle & w. van mierlo, amsterdam – new york: rodopi, vol. 2/3: reading notes (pp.7–18). 12. frank, s. (2010) geokulturologie – geopoetik. definitionsund abgrenzungsvorschläge. // geopoetiken: geographische entwürfe in den mittelund osteuropäischen literaturen, hg. v. m. marszałek u. s. sasse (pp.19–42). berlin: kadmos. 13. geopoetiken (2010) geopoetiken: geographische entwürfe in den mittelund osteuropäischen literaturen, hg. v. m. marszałek u. s. sasse. berlin: kadmos. 14. georgiev (2004 [1990]) pisaha ne samo da se znae [they wrote not only to be remembered]. // liternet. / ed. by g. chobanov, varna: liternet, n 8 (57) (august 2004), http://liternet.bg/publish/ngeorgiev/statii/pisaha.htm 15. giuriato, d. (2004) folded manuscripts: walter benjamin’s marginal writing. // variants 2/3 (pp.195–206). 16. grigorov, g. (2011) “šumi marica” – ot oficializiraneto do marginaliziraneto í [“shumi maritsa” – from officialisation to marginalisation]. // paper..., [1]–[17]. 17. hristov, t. (2011) the gift of literature: global and local in the economy of a national literature. // lecture…, (pp.1–22). 18. hughes, e.w. (2001) writing marginality in modern french literature: from loti to armenian folia anglistikaliterature 151 genet. cambridge: cambridge up. 19. kojčeva, r. (2011) interpretacii na marginalnoto v starobŭlgarskata himnografija [interpretations of the marginal in old bulgarian hymnography]. // paper..., [1]–[17]. 20. kuzidova-karadzhinova, i. (2011) slavjanskata versija na “žitieto na sv. ilarion veliki” ot jeronim blaženi [the slavonic version of blessed jerome’s vita hilarionis]. // paper…, (pp.1–17). 21. ličeva, a. (2011) perifernite zoni v literaturata: tekstove, ličnosti, konflikti [the peripheral zones in literature: text, personalia and conflicts]. // lecture..., (pp.1–14). 22. marginale (1983) “marginale” literaturen. “marginal” literatures. littératures “marginales”. / ed.by w. bader, h.j. lüsebrink, r. sander. [a thematic issue of] komparatistische hefte, heft 7. bayreuth: universität bayreuth. 23. mikkel, m. (2011) contemporary literature in the knowledge of the readers: the example of the estonian literary criticism of the beginning of the 20th century. // lecture… 24. milčakov, j. (2011) marginalnoto – opisatelna ili cennnostna kategorija? [the marginal – a descriptive or an axiological category?]. // lecture..., (pp.1–9). 25. miltenova, a. (2011) marginalnost, intertekstualnost, paratekstualnost v kŭsnoantičnata i srednovekovnata knižnina [marginality, intertextuality, paratextuality in the late antique and medieval literature]. // lecture..., (pp.1–24). 26. modebadze, i. (2011) sovetskaja fantastika – “begstvo ot dejstvitel’nosti” ili...? [the soviet science fiction – “an escape from reality” or…?]. // lecture…, 1–16. 27. petkova, g. (2011) marginalizatsijata – dostatŭčnijat ezik v govoreneto za ruskata emigratsija v bŭlgarija (1919–1940)? [marginalisation – the sufficient discourse in speaking of russian émigré community in bulgaria (1919–1940)]. // lecture..., (pp.1–11). 28. petrova, s. (2011) akrostihŭt – izraz na sŭštnostta v periferijata [the acrostic – an expression of the essence in the periphery]. // paper…, 1–10. 29. poggioli, r. (1968) the theory of the avant-garde. / tr. by g. fitzgerald, cambridge (mass.) and london (eng.): the belknap press of harvard up, s.a. [digital reprint of the 1968 edition]. 30. radoslavova, d. (2011) graničnijat sedemnadeseti vek. bŭlgarskata pravoslavna knižnina – fenomenŭt ot periferijata [the marginal seventeenth century. bulgarian orthodox literature – a phenomenon from the periphery]. // paper…, 26’44’’ (http://www.ilit.bas.bg/bg/marginal_literature_video.php). 31. rakyovsky, t. (2011) kanonizirani figuri – marginalni avtori: ivan mirčev, ivan grozev, d. panteleev, sirak skitnik [canonised figures – marginal authors…]. // lecture…, (pp.1–23). 32. ratiani, i. (2011) sovetskij totalitarizm i formy literaturnogo diskursa [soviet totalitarianism and the forms of literary discourse]. // lecture..., (pp.1–12). 33. sid, i. (2008) osnovnoj vopros geopoetiki [the chief question of geopoetics] // krymskij klub: pervaja konferencija po geopoetike (moskva, 1996), http://liter.net/geopoetics/penin.html. armenian folia anglistika literature 152 34. stanchev, k. (2011) literaturata na bŭlgarite-katolitsi: marginalna za iztoka, periferna za zapada, no indicator za bŭdeštija model na bŭlgarskoto razvitie [the literature of bulgarian catholics: marginal for/from the east, peripheral for/from the west, but indicative of the future model of bulgarian development]. // lecture…, (pp.1–16). 35. tacitus annals. // the works of tacitus. / tr. by a.j. church and w.j. brodribb [18641877], http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/tac/index.htm#section_000 36. tenev, d. (2011) neopredelenost i marginalnost pri vŭveždane na personaži vŭv fiktsionalni proizvedenija [indeterminacy and marginality in introducing characters in fiction] // lecture…, (pp.1–18). 37. thurston, l. (2011) david jones: in parenthesis, at the margin. // lecture…, (pp.1–16). 38. vajda, g.m. (1983) einleitung: marginale literaturen. // komparatistische hefte: “marginale” literaturen.../ hg. j. riesz, r. taylor, t. bleicher, bayreuth: universität bayreuth, heft 7 (pp. 5–14). 39. van mierlo, w. (2004) reading w. b. yeats: the marginalia of t. sturge moore. // variants 2/3 (2004) (pp.135–172). 40. white, k. (1987) éléments de géopoétique. // ibid: l’esprit nomade. paris: grasset, (pp. 272–293). ¶ñ³ï³ý »ñïç ù³ñ·çý³éáõãû³ý ï»õ³·ñ³ï³ý ¨ ñé»ïáñ³ï³ý ñ³û»ó³ï»ñå»ñá êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù ùýý³ñïíáõù ¿ ·ñ³ï³ý »ñïç çù³ëï³ûçý ë³ñù³ýý»ñç ëý¹çñá, ¨ íç׳ñïíáõù ¿ ³ûý ñ³ñóá, ã» áñ »ñ¨áõûãý»ñý »ý ñ³ù³ñíáõù ë³ñù³ý³ûçý, ³ûëçýùý` ù³ï»ñ»ë³ûçý ·ñ³ï³ý »ñïç ñ³ù³ñ: ð»õçý³ïá ýßáõù ¿, áñ ù³ñ·çý³éáõãûáõýá í»ñ³μ» ñáõù ¿ íçñïáõ³é å³ïï»ñý»ñçý, áñáýù ³é³ç³ýáõù »ý ·ñ³ï³ý »ñïý áýã»ñó»éçë, çýãå»ë ý³¨ ïå³·ñ³ï³ý ¿ çç å³ïï»ñý»ñçý, áñáýù ï³ñμ»ñ ï³ñ·ç ÷áë³μ» ñ³ï³ý çù³ëïý»ñ »ý ³é³ç³óýáõù: armenian folia anglistikaliterature 153 maket 2013:layout 1.qxd inter-textual relations between reginald scot’s “the discoverie of witchcraft” and shakespeare’s “macbeth” ani kojoyan yerevan state university l iterature has its specific world, and in that world texts do not exist separately. they collaborate with one another creating complicated inter-textual dimensions. literature also provides a space where the diverse imaginative elements with their inherent and adherent connotations are applied in, and where texts appear in such inter-textual relations that reading and appreciating a piece of literary work becomes more and more complicated because it requires an ability of creative and analytical disposition to see and understand more than is directly stated in the context. a literary text is considered a totality, in which several allusive elements are embraced and because of this we should go into the depth of the text and study it thoroughly to find out those elements which are taken from another text. this is a way to assimilate the two texts together and to observe not only allusive elements within the texts but also the influence of one text on the other. thus, the present article focuses on the influence of reginald scot’s the discoverie of witchcraft on william shakespeare’s macbeth. we will try to find out in what inter-textual dimensions these texts appear, and at what specific levels the influence of scot’s book can be observed on the above mentioned play. the discoverie of witchcraft is considered one of the most useful and primary sources for the study of witchcraft and magic not only for literary, but also for culturalanthropological and social-historical studies. the book is a collection of different sources. scot used a wide range of both contemporary and ancient materials and stories from the writers of the inquisition about the so-called supposed witches. scot was also familiar with a number of witchcraft pamphlets and trial records which had their manifestations in the discoverie of witchcraft (almond 2011:4-5, 16-21). scot was a critical and skeptical person toward the issues concerning witchcraft and magic. the writer’s critical position and his skepticism are emphasized and repeated again and again throughout the whole work. even from the very beginning the author’s position on the subject becomes clear: “the fables of witchcraft have taken so fast hold and deepe root in the heart of man, that fewe or none can (nowadaies) with patience indure the hand and correction of god. for if any adversitie, greefe, sickness, losse of childen, corne, cattell, or libertie happen unto them; by & by they exclaim euppon witches. as though there were no god in israel that ordereth all things according to his will; punishing both just and unjust with greefs, plagues, and afflictions in maner and forme as he thinketh good…” (scot 1972:1). reginald scot’s the discoverie of witchcraft provides such a wide range of information on witchcraft and the occult that it really could serve as a real encyclopedia and a good sourcebook for several writers. focusing on our specific topic we should note that while drawing textual parallels it seems that the following extract taken from macbeth has its accurate echoes in scot’s the discoverie of witchcraft: armenian folia anglistika literature 166 first witch: where hast thou been, sister? second witch: killing swine. (“macbeth” i.iii.1-2) a similar narrative of livestock killing by the supposed witches is found in in scot’s book 1, chapter 1 (for if any adversitie, greefe, sicknesse, losse of children, corne, cattell, or libertie happen unto them; by and by they exclaime upon witches (scot 1972:12). moreover, in another chapter of the same book scot writes: “…sometimes she cursseth one, and sometimes another; and that from the maister of the house, his wife, children, cattell, etc. to the little pig that lieth in the stie. thus in the processe of time they have all displeased hir, and she hath wished evill lucke unto them all …” (scot 1972:5). however, in macbeth the reference to the village witchcraft story of killing domestic animals by the so-called witches is very brief. it is expressed only within a few lines in the play. as diane purkiss suggests in the witch in history, it is “condensed into a single gesture” (purkiss 2002:209). according to the narrative of attacking cattle in villages, the supposed witches were poor and old women who would usually beg and ask something to eat from their neighbours, and if they were refused, they could take revenge by cursing and killing their neighbors’ children, domestic animals, etc. (scot 1972:4-7). in the same chapter of his book scot writes that sometimes those miserable and poor women themselves believed that they could really do such things which he finds to be beyond the abilities of human nature. scot states that all those things were the results of people’s fantasies only. however, shakespeare’s reference is too short and implicit to enable us to conclude that shakespeare was also skeptical on the subject of witchcraft in the same way as scot was. and the fact that shakespeare did not go into the depth of the witchcraft stories in macbeth and made only a slight reference to them, might mean that shakespeare was not especially interested in an accurate, exact and thorough presentation of witch-lore and also in the presentation of the social problems of the village women in details on stage. however, whether he was interested in it or not, through this one-line presentation of village witch-lore stories he portrays the figure of the witch in his play. thus, by “killing swine”, he automatically endows his witch with attributes which the so-called village witches were thought to possess in those days. however, as the next examples will show, the play-witch is not a pure village witch in macbeth, but a more complicated product, a compound figure of a “witch” created by the author. the act of revenge by the witch for being refused in food is more explicitly revealed in the next lines within the same scene: first witch: a sailor’s wife had chestnuts in her lap, and munched, and munched, and munched. ‘give me’, qouth i; ‘aroynt thee, witch’, the rump-fed ronyon cries. her husband’s to aleppo gone, master o’th’ tiger; armenian folia anglistikaliterature 167 but in a sieve i’ll thither sail, and like a rat without a tail, i’ll do, i’ll do, i’ll do. second witch: i’ll give thee a wind. third witch: and i another. first witch: ...i’ll drain him dry as hay; sleep shall neither night nor day… (“macbeth” i.iii.4-10; 18-19) we could consider the following passage an allusive element from scot’s work as the archetypes of the witch stories found in the following extract have their traces in the discoverie of witchcraft, and, naturally, for this scene shakespeare might also consult scot’s book. in the play the cause of the witch’s revenge is stated more obviously in the present extract rather than it was in the previous one: the witch asks for chestnuts, she is refused, and she is ready to revenge. but at this time the target of her revenge is not a domestic animal, as it was in the previous example, and neither the victim is directly the sailor’s wife but it is the sailor. the first witch knows that her husband’s to aleppo gone, master o’th’ tiger, and she decides to sail there and to take revenge. the other weird sisters are going to help her by raising storms. the first witch also decides to drain him dry as hay, in other words she is going to make the sailor impotent, thus destroying family relationship between the husband and the wife. as for the act of raising a storm, on this scot also writes that the witch-hunters believed that the supposed witches were able to raise a wind, storm, tempest, etc. yet we read in malleomaleficarum of three sorts of witches. “and among the hurtfull witches he saith there is one sort more beastlie than any kind of beasts … for these usuallie devoure and eate young children … . these be they (saith he) that raise haile, tempests, and hutrfull weather; as lightening, thunder, etc.” (scot 1972:5). in the same chapter scot concludes that all people who believed in all those things were faithless people, as only god could possess such power to create storms, tempests, etc. according to another tradition stated in that skeptical book, the supposed witches could also make men become impotent: but here again we may not forget the inquisitors note, “to wit; that manie are so bewitched that they cannot use their owne wives: but anie other bodies they maie well enough away withal” (scot 1972:45). scot finds this ridiculous and writes: “… witchcraft is practiced among manie bad husbands, for whom it were a good excuse to saie they were bewitched” (ibid). in the above extracts taken from macbeth three village witch-lore stories were combined and expressed simultaneously within a few lines. in all three examples shakespeare gives a very short reference to those village witch stories. no direct verbal borrowings can be noticed from the discoverie of witchcraft in macbeth. neither shakespeare follows any single discourse to present the subject of witchcraft and the figarmenian folia anglistika literature 168 ure of the witch in his play. most of his references are implicit and very brief which, in turn, makes it difficult to interpret both the character of the witch in macbeth and shakespeare’s own attitude toward the subject. while scot’s criticism and skepticism on the subject of witchcraft are emphasized in each chapter of his book, shakespeare uses a laconic style while introducing the notions of witchcraft in his play: he provides as much information on witchcraft stories as it is necessary for him to create the figure of the witch in macbeth. and there is only one instance in the play which could be considered an explicit allusion from scot’s book. while drawing parallels between scot’s text and the play, it becomes obvious that the physical depiction of the witches in macbeth stands very close to the witch description given in scot’s book. banquo: what are these, so withered, and so wild in their attire, that look not like th’inhabitantso’th’ earth and yet are on’t? – live you, or are you aught that man may question? you seem to understand me, by each at once her choppy finger laying upon her skinny lips. you should be women, and yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so. (“macbeth” i.iii.39-46) in macbeth the secret, black, and midnight hags who are old, ugly, deformed women with skinny lips remind us those witches that can be found in the discoverie of witchcraft: “one sort of such as are said to bee wicthes, are women which be commonly old, lame, bleare-eied, pale, fowle, and full of wrinkles; poore, sullen, superstitious…” (scot 1972:4). according to scot, those women who were old and poor could become potential targets of supposed witches in villages. the author criticizes severely such kind of attitude toward those poor, old and vulnerable women who were not even able to protect themselves from witch-mongers. scot finds all such stories false and ridiculous. as for shakespeare, he very skillfully creates a theatrical figure of a witch without providing any additional information that could help us to comment on his position toward the subject in general. shakespeare leaves a question of the interpretation of the witch figure open in the play but at the same time he gradually emphasizes the play-witches’ dual nature which gradually becomes more visible throughout the whole play. the next textual parallel between the works that can be observed is the scene of the cauldron where the witches go into dance: third witch: scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, witch’s mummy, maw and gulf of the ravined salt-sea shark; root of hemlock, diggdi’th’ dark; finger of birth-starngled babe armenian folia anglistikaliterature 169 ditch-delivered by a drab: make the gruel thick and slab; add thereto a tiger’s chawdron, for th’ ingredience of our cauldron. (“macbeth” iv.i.22-25; 30-35) when we draw parallels between the play cauldron scene and that of scot’s version, we find out that the cauldron and the dancing-singing rituals around it are typical of continental witchcraft tradition and not of the english one: “so as, if there be anie children unbaptised, or not garded with the signe of the crosse, or orizons; the witches may and doo catch them from their mothers sides in the night…, or otherwise kill them with their ceremonies… and seeth them in a caldron, until their flesh be made potable. of the thickest whereof they make ointments, whereby they ride in the aire … these night-walking or rather night-dansing witches, brought out of itlalie into france, that danse, which is called lsvolta” (scot 1972:23-4). in the same chapter scot writes that all these things are untrue and fake stories created by witch-hunters. and finally, scot denies definitely the existence of witches and witch stories when he writes: “but what sorts of witches so ever m. mal. or bodins aie there are; mosess pakeonlie of foure kinds of impious couseners or witches (whereof our witchmongers old women which danse with their fairies, etc; are none” (scot 1972:62). thus, in macbeth the old and ugly hags are also endowed with continental witches’ features of dancing-singing about the cauldron. but at the same time it seems that shakespeare is not interested in presenting the cauldron traditions accurately in the play. though he provides a long list of ingredients which should go into the cauldron, none of those ingredients has its real archetype, and probably they are chosen “to give a frisson shock rather than to follow english or continental practice” (purkiss 2002:212). and only one of those ingredients, “finger of birth-strangled babe” has its pre-textual archetype in scot’s work. as it can be seen from the above mentioned extract cited from the discoverie of witchcraft, the cauldron ritual is more related to the continental sabbaths, in which unbaptized babies were said to be boiled for making flying-ointments. and again from the whole narrative of the witchcraft rituals shakespeare makes a general and brief hint to those stories in macbeth. taking into consideration all the above mentioned facts, the analyses of the examples and textual parallels we may conclude that both direct and indirect brief references cannot serve as a means for understanding and interpreting the figure of the witch in the play properly. the figure of the witch created in macbeth is complicated. the witches have a dual nature in the play: they are old and poor, but at the same time they dance and sing happily and actively around the cauldron; they are village witches who are endowed with features of the continental witchcraft characters and not only of the english ones; they make prophecies which can be understood or interpreted in terms of failure or success, truth or lie; they “should be women” and yet their beards give a basis for hesitation. throughout the whole play shakespeare gradually introduces a new type of a witch, a play-witch which, in turn, due to its mixed and compound character becomes a non-interarmenian folia anglistika literature 170 pretable figure. interestingly, shakespeare does not give specific names to the witches either. they are called as the weird sisters, and the word witchis is mentioned only once in the play in act 1, scene 6. thus, by making them somehow nameless by not exactly naming them as witches, shakespeare probably suggests that we think over their dual nature. he never gives a final solution for the character interpretation of the weird sisters. and it seems that shakespeare again emphasizes the witches’ dual character in macbeth. it is also noticeable through drawing parallels between macbeth and the discoverie of witchcraft, that, unlike scot, shakespeare never expresses, at least, explicit skepticism toward the phenomenon of witchcraft. shakespeare uses witchcraft material as much as he needs for depicting the figure of a play-witch, and his allusions are too brief to enable us to conclude anything concerning his position toward witchcraft. however, the figure of a dual-character witch could be considered a means through which shakespeare could “invite” us to see skepticism as a tool of investigation of the subject, which would allow exploring what was “fair” and what was “foul”. moreover, king james, who had been credulous in his work demonology, gradually adopted a skeptical view becoming an exposer of fraud rather than a persecutor of witches (brooke 1990:20). hence, shakespeare’s created figure of the play-witch, the status of which was not fixed because of its dual and complicated character and because shakespeare does not follow any single specific witch-lore tradition while creating the witch’s figure, could be considered an implicit appeal to james king’s gradual increasing skeptical view toward the subject. references: 1. almond, ph. (2011) england’s first demonologist: reginald scot and “the discoverie of witchcraft”. london: i.b. tauris. 2. purkiss, d. (2002) the witch in history, early modern and twentieth-century representations. london and new york: routledge. 3. scot, r. (1972) the discoverie of witchcraft. / ed. by summers. new york: dover. 4. scot r. the discovery of witchcraft (electronic resource). london: printed for andrew clark, 1965. <http://eebo.chadwyck.com/search/fulltext?action=byid&warn =n&id=d10000120436 380421&div=1&sequence=0&source=config.cfg&file=default> 5. shakespeare, w. (1990) macbeth. / ed. by n. brooke. oxford: clarendon press. è. êïáïç ‹‹î³ë³ñ¹áõãû³ý μ³ó³ñ³ûïáõùá›› ·ñùç ¨ ì. þ»ùëåçñç ‹‹ø³ïμ»ã›› áõμ»ñ·áõãû³ý ùççï»ùëï³ûçý ï³åá êáõûý ñá¹í³íý ³ý¹ñ³¹³éýáõù ¿ è»ççý³é¹ êïáïç ‹‹î³ë³ñ¹áõãû³ý μ³ó³ñ³ûïáõùá›› ·ñùç ¨ þ»ùëåçñç ‹‹ø³ïμ»ã›› áõμ»ñ·áõãû³ý ùççï»ùëï³ûçý ñ³ñ³μ» ñáõãûáõýý»ñç áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãû³ýá: ²ûë »ñïáõ ï»ùëï»ñá ·ïíáõù »ý μ³ñ¹ ùççarmenian folia anglistikaliterature 171 ï»ùëï³ûçý ñ³ñ³μ» ñáõãûáõýý»ñç ù»ç: ²ûëå»ë, êïáïá çñ μ³ó³ñ³ûï ï³ëï³íý»ñý ¿ ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõù ï³ë³ñ¹áõãûáõý »ñ¨áõûãç ¨ ï³ë³ñ¹ý»ñ ñ³ëï³óáõãû³ý ýï³ïù³ùμ: þ»ùëåçñý ³ù»ý³ûý ñ³í³ý³ï³ýáõãû³ùμ ³ý¹ñ³¹³ñó»é ¿ êïáïç ëï»õí³·áñíáõãû³ýá çñ áõμ»ñ·áõãû³ý »ñ»ù ·áõß³ï-ï³ë³ñ¹ ùáõûñ»ñç ï»ñå³ñý»ñá ï»ñï»éçë ¨ ýï³ñ³·ñ»éçë: àõ 㻨 ³ïýñ³ûï ¿ þ»ùëåçñç ³ý¹ñ³¹³ñóá êïáïç í»ñáýßû³é ·áñíçý, ³ûýáõ³ù»ý³ûçí, ùç μ³ý ùýáõù ¿ áã ³û¹ù³ý å³ñ½. ¹åí³ñ ¿ ùç³ýß³ý³ï »½ñ³ï³óý»é, áñ »ñïáõ ·ñáõý»ñý ¿é ïçëáõù ¿çý ùç¨ýáõûý ï³ñíçùá ï³ë³ñ¹áõãûáõý ¨ ñù³ûáõãûáõý »ñ¨áõûãý»ñç ýï³ïù³ùμ: ²û¹áõñ³ý¹»ñó, ï³ñ»éç ¿ »½ñ³ï³óý»é, áñ êïáïý áõ çñ ëï»õí³·áñíáõãûáõýá ï³ñ¨áñ ¹»ñ »ý ë³õáõù ß»ùëåçñû³ý ëï»õí³·áñíáõãûáõýá áõëáõùý³ëçñ»éáõ ¨ í»ñéáõí»éáõ ·áñíáõù: armenian folia anglistika literature 172 maket_n_verjin.qxp meaning and association approaching the problem of meaning byconsidering the responses to a word is a psychological tradition. the history of psychology is abundant in theories which have attempted to account for “the mind” by appealing to doctrines of association: locke spoke of associations between ideas, titchener of associations between sensations, thorndike and hull of associations between stimuli and responses. in all the cases the associations referred to are theoretical, that is, they are not observable or directly measurable in any way. they are events of the mind or of the central nervous system, depending on which theory is being considered. associationists have been concerned with the relative innateness of psychological processes and the contents of the mind. they typically side with those who feel that most of these processes and contents are learned. (boring 1950:29) on the opposite side are those who speak mainly of innate mental organizers, ideas, and the like, and who also tend to be non-associationistic in their thinking. experimental psychologists from the time of wundt and ebbinhaus have considered meaning to be the function of associations. one thing could have meaning only if it was associated with something else; the nature of meaning depended on the particular associations and the multiplicity of associations involved. it should be noted that these early theorists used the term “association” in a more or less technical sense. in other words, associations were interpreted as important links between ideas or between sensations. the desire for more precise experimental investigations of psychological problems led to the idea of measuring the number and the kinds of associations. the relationship between associations and learning is by no means a universally accepted conclusion. it should be realized that something’s having association with another thing is not identical with its having meaning in a non-linguistic sense. in psychology and psychiatry associations are used for the study of human behaviour and mentality whereas psycholinguists are interested in the study of verbal associations to understand the peculiarities of mentality and its verbal expression.* there are two basic ways of measuring associations to words. the first method expounded by kent and rosanoff is regarded as the method studying the situation when the subject is presented with a stimulus word and asked to respond with the first word he thinks of. (terwillinger 1968:166) when talking about the nature of associations, we need to refer to associations given by a large number of subjects to a large list of stimuli. the degree of commonness of the most typical responses varies from word to word but in some cases may exceed 80 per cent. in other words, it is not unusual for a vast majority of the subjects to agree upon the association given. words vary in their distributions of associations some words reliably have associations more equal in their frequency of occurrence than others. 59 linguistics armenian folia anglistika rouzanna arakelyan it is much more difficult to be precise about the qualitative nature of the associations given. we find that synonyms (cross-angry, glad-happy, merry-happy, boring-dull, attractive-pretty, astonished-puzzled, beautiful-pretty) and antonyms of the stimuli (good-bad, interesting-dull, happy-unhappy, handsome-ugly, sad-happy) are the most common associations. to some extent it is possible to divide associations into two categories: those which reflect or respond to the referential characteristics of the word, and those that reflect its uses in utterances. it is worth mentioning that the first type of associations is more common in children rather than adults. very often subjects reflect certain mood or evaluative judgements which are beyond the understanding of experimental psycholinguists partly because they are not associations which are relevant to the common social uses of language. among such are the cases when the subject responds with a proper name to a stimulus word (surprised-newton). it should be noted that there are subjects who clearly ignore the instructions and give associations which represent non-uses of the word in order to confuse the experimenter. what they fail to realize is that by doing so they are giving data potentially as useful as that given by more co-operative subjects. when subjects, consciously or unconsciously, give words that are not associates of the stimulus, they define the meaning of the word as accurately as if they gave associates consciously. this phenomenon occurs because the meaning of words can also be defined in contexts in which the word is not used. no verbal subject can remain independent of verbal stimuli; he may obey or ignore instructions, but he responds to the stimuli nevertheless. in the other association method the subject is given a stimulus word and asked to give as many associations to it as he can within a given period of time. the results are presented in terms of the average number of associations given by the average subject. this method has obvious advantages as a simple description of meaningfulness or the quantity of associations. it should also be mentioned that the method described has one methodological drawback: one can’t be sure that the experimentee is always really responding to the stimulus word. it is possible that the subject is giving first an association to the stimulus word, and then an association to the first reaction. these types of associations are usually based on phonetic similarities (calm-sum, dumb, luckyfeeling, dealing). this is called chaining of associations which is of little importance to the expert if he is not interested in the quantity of responses. in “free-association” method the stimuli are removed from any normal context in which they might ordinarily be used. but they are not free of contextual effects. according to kent-rosanoff’s approach to associations as indicators of personality variables, they are determined by idiosyncratic contexts chosen by the participants of the experiments. the association methods while equally permissive with respect to context, permit the subject to “use” the word, or respond to it, in any way he chooses – providing, of course, that the response is another single word. the responses obtained, then, could be more relevant to the actual use of the word and it would seem that a subject might tend to use the word in a way in which he was accustomed to using it, providing that the 60 armenian folia anglistika linguistics instructions for the associations obtained in the so-called free-association studies may well reflect or be related to the actual use of the stimuli. it is also clear that verbal associations do not represent the totality of what we would call the meaning of a word. these associations are indeed uses of the word, but they are uses made in the restricted environment of the psychology laboratory. it would be right to say that, in general, the associations obtained from the subject in the association method represent a set of verbal descriptions of how the subject uses the words. the associatons are clearly related to the meaning of the words. thus, the assumption that a word which is used in different ways will call out different verbal descriptions of those uses. accordingly, it is true that the number of different verbal descriptions will be proportional to the number of different uses. (popova 2006:12) there are two different situations in which we must evaluate the above mentioned assumption. first, let us consider the case in which the subject gives many responses to a single stimulus. here it seems quite safe to assume that the more meanings a word has for the subject, the more verbal description he will give of it. presumably we might infer something about the number of meanings from the number of responses given. when each subject gives one response per stimulus, the number of different descriptions is determined across subjects, rather than within one subject. if we assume that an individual has several possible uses for a word and he must pick one of them to use in an otherwise ambiguous situation, there are certain things we expect to find. if we presume that some uses are more common than others, we might assume that he would pick accordingly from among the possible varieties. in a large number of subjects, the probability distribution would be identical to the individual. so if language is to function as language, it must be shared by members of the linguistic society. since social agreement is by definition a characteristic of language, we might expect to find agreement among associations as well. (zif 1960:68) we assume that the number of different associations given by either association method is proportional to the amount of the stimulus word. likewise, the obtained probability of any given association is proportional to the probability of the particular word use that the association in question describes. it becomes clear that verbal associations do not directly constitute meaning; they are in reality descriptions of meaning or use. we propose to be neutral about how much of the mind is learned and postulate the following idea: whether it is learned or innate, it is properly describable in associationistic language. notes: * one of ch.darwin’s cousins, sir f.galton, was the first to conduct a psycholinguistic experiment. he chose 75 words, wrote them down on separate cards and did not touch them for a few days. then he took the cards and looked at them for some time trying to define how much time passed since his seeing the word and the first reactions coming to his mind. he wrote down the reactions, but 61 linguistics armenian folia anglistika never published them, because he thought that it would uncover the essence of man’s mind so vividly and truthfully that it would become world’s property. since then this method has been widely used by psychologists and psychiatrists, and later on by psycholinguists for the purpose of studying personality’s psychics and mentality. references: 1. boring, e.g. (1950) a history of experimental psychology. new york: academic press. 2. popova, t. (2006) assostiatsivniy eksperiment v psikhologii. moscow: prospect. 3. terwillinger, r. (1968) meaning and mind: a study in the psychology of language. new-york-london: oxford university press. 4. zif, p. (1960) semantic analysis. hove: cornell university press. üß³ý³ïáõãû³ý ¨ ½áõ·áñ¹ù³ý ÷áëñ³ñ³µ»ñáõãûáõýá ¼áõ·áñ¹áõùý»ñç áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõýá ñá·»é»½í³µ³ý³ï³ý ¹çï³ýïûáõýçó ýå³ëïáõù ¿ ùï³íáõáõãû³ý ¨ ¹ñ³ ³ñï³ñ³ûïù³ý ó¨»ñç ³é³í»é ñ³ù³å³ñ÷³ï ýï³ñ³·ñáõãû³ý ý»ñï³û³óù³ýá: ê³ ñý³ñ³íáñ ¿ ñá·»é»½í³µ³ý³ï³ý ·çï³÷áñóç áýã³óùáõù ù³ëý³ïçóý»ñç ïáõùçó ý»ñï³û³óíáõ µ³é³ûçý ½áõ·áñ¹áõùý»ñç ¹³ë³ï³ñ·ù³ý áõ í»ñéáõíáõãû³ý ùççáóáí: ²ñ¹ûáõýùáõù å³ñ½ ¿ ¹³éýáõù, áñ µ³é³½áõ·áñ¹áõùý»ñç µýáõûãý ³ýùçç³ï³ýáñ»ý ï³åí³í ¿ µ³é»ñç ûáõñ³óù³ý ¨ ¹ñ³ýó ïçñ³éù³ý ³ýñ³ï³ï³ý µýáõûãáí: ì»ñççýë ¿é áñáßíáõù ¿ ã»° 黽í³ï³ý ¨ ã»° ³ñï³é»½í³ï³ý ·áñíáýý»ñáí: ¼áõ·áñ¹áõùý»ñý ³ûý ï³ñ¨áñ ùï³í³ï³ý ï³å»ñý »ý, áñáýù ³å³ñáíáõù »ý é»½í³·çï³ïóáõãû³ý ï³ñ·³ûý³óáõùá: 62 armenian folia anglistika linguistics maket 2011-2:layout 1.qxd partial intersection and discrepancy of concepts in cross-cultural communication narine harutyunyan yerevan state university serving as basic supporting elements of the language, concepts unite representa-tives of a certain linguoculture, providing foundation for mutual understanding between them through “bundles of meaning”, in which the spirit of the nation is embodied. the conceptual space of a separate language individual and linguoculture as a whole are organized into a concept-sphere, the main characteristics of which are those possibilities of joint “meaning-making” that it opens up before the native speakers. we believe that the most effective way of “reading” the national-specific concepts from languages is their interlinguistic comparison. one can agree with v.i. karasik, who deems it possible to present the ethnocultural specifics of concepts by means of “mapping corresponding lexical and phraseological groups, comparing value judgments ensuing form stereotypes of behavior fixed in the meanings of words, set expressions, precedent texts,” as well as by means of the analysis of the inner form of words (karasik 1996:14). the ability of concepts to grow and enrich due to the individual emotional and cultural experience of native speakers conditions their elasticity, instability, and mobility. on the one hand, the dynamic nature of concepts impedes their “docking” between different cultures. on the other hand, the circumstance that they “spill over” one another forming a united space of culture creates the possibility for creative flight and search for a “compromise” between non-coincident concepts of different linguocultures. typical examples of the linguistic embodiment of the comparable but not coinciding concepts of two linguocultures are words that are traditionally used as equivalents, but at the same time they only partially intersect from the point of view of the content inherent in them. as an example we can point out a discrepancy between the american and armenian concepts friend and ընկեր. for an american the word friend is applicable to any person who is not an enemy. this reflects the unwillingness of americans to establish very deep and long-term relationship, which is often accounted for by their individualism and geographic mobility. we, on our part, are much “pickier” with respect to who we can call a friend. armenians feel they can count on a friend for assistance at any time. in the united states, the word friend is used loosely to include acquaintances, which is confusing to armenians. for us, armenians, a friend signifies a much closer relationship than it does for the americans. according to the two armenian proverbs given below, “death with a friend is a feast” or “friends are better than hundreds of dollars”. àýï»ñáíç ù³ñá ñ³ñë³ýçù ¿: øç áõý»óçñ ñ³ñûáõñ ¹³ñ»ï³ý, áõý»óçñ »ñïáõ μ³ñ»ï³ù. armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 121 another example is the english word fun, which with a big stretch can be translated as áõñ³ëáõãûáõý, ½í³ñ׳ýù, nevertheless has a wider semantics; it can stand for any positive emotions and refer to virtually any type of activity. are you having any fun? is a capacious phrase from broadway musical “george white’s scandals of 1939” full of irony and at times even sarcasm, and virtually not translatable into armenian. the armenian ¸» çýã, ³ñ¹»ý é³í »ù is a weak reflection of what the original encloses. when comparing american and armenian concept spheres, one thing that calls for attention is that armenian concepts referring to the spiritual and emotional side of life often do not have american analogues. at the same time american concepts not translatable into armenian mainly reflect the pragmatic and activist nature of the american culture. we can oppose the concepts soul and self as key notions characterizing the armenian and american personality. in the us the presentation of a self is the preferred form of communication activity, indicating personal experience, thoughts and feelings, which is considered to be an adequate way of self-expression. the self is something internal and unique, valued in the society and implicitly suggesting the dignity of both the speaker and the interlocutor. the former soviet concept of the self linked with dimensions of individualism-collectivism. it is well-known, that individualists give priority to personal goals over the goals of collectivists. such traditional vital orientation stimulates a person’s practical efforts and aspirations, which are associated with individual success and with the american popular symbol and hero — the self-made man. this concept can be illustrated with the help of the following phraseological units: to lock horns ù»ý³ù³ñïç ù»ç ùïý»é to stand up to one’s licklog ³ñçáõãûáõý óáõó³μ»ñ»é to shoot niagara éçëïç ¹çù»é to stand the gaff ãëáõë³÷»é ¹åí³ñáõãûáõýý»ñçó to come up to the rack å³ï³ëë³ý³ïáõ éçý»é ³ñ³í ·áñíáõáõãûáõýý»ñç ñ³ù³ñ to cut one’s eyeteeth on something ëïë»é /ñçùù ¹ý»é ë»÷³ï³ý ·áñíá/çý, etc. the number of words found in any american english dictionary that are compounded with the word self is the indicator of how american english reflects individualism. one is likely to find in any english dictionary no fewer than 150 such words, including: self-absorbed, self-appointed, self-centered, self-confident, self-supporting, etc. (cambridge international dictionary of english 1995). in armenian culture cordiality and warmth of feeling are more predominant than the individuality. that is why in malxhasiants’ dictionary (1944) one can find approximately 200 compounded words with the word ñá·ç (soul): ñá·»ïáõé, ñá·»ã³ã³ë, ñá·»ñ³ïáñ, ñá·»ë³ñïçã, ñá·»ëáñ, ñá·»ïáõý, etc. in the armenian discourse, one of the main dimensions of interpersonal communicaarmenian folia anglistika culture studies 122 tion is the cordial talk. thus, on the one hand, there is the “soul” community in which communication is based on the notions of morality and ethics of social life; on the other hand, there is a group of individuals, and factual information revealing their personal experience of interacting with the society lies in the basis of their communication. as a result, armenians often perceive americans as “soulless,” and americans think we do not possess enough analytical thinking skills and ability to use factual information. as a parallel to the concept of ñá·ç (soul) one may single out the african-american concept of “soul,” significantly differing from the anglo-saxon concept and signifying deep sincerity, cordiality, and emotionality inherent in the black culture. this concept, which does not coincide with the armenian one, can nevertheless be compared to it in terms of emotional richness and depth. its “sphere of influence” includes such notions as soul brother – a black person, the same goes for soul sister (speaking of a girl or a woman), and soul music, a variety of the “rhythm-and-blues” trend that contains elements of black spirituals and is characterized by distinct rhythm and emotionally rich vocal (leontovich, sheigal 2000). however, the “aura” of armenian and the africanamerican concepts and the cultural associations evoked by them are very different and can be compared only to explain the “cordiality” typical of them. if there was a need to single out key american concepts, one could suggest challenge and privacy, the intranslatability of which into armenian is obvious. in the dictionary “life and culture of the usa” (2002) the concept challenge, basically having no analogue in armenian concept sphere, is explained as follows: 1. task 2. problem, difficulty 3. trial 4. defiance . defiance (ë»÷³ï³ý áõå»ñç ùýýáõãûáõý, ëïáõ·áõù; ÷áñóáõãûáõý; áñ¨ ¿ μ³ýç ñ³í³ëïçáõãûáõýá ñ³ñó³ï³ýç ï³ï ¹ýáõ μ³ý; ù³ñï³ññ³í»ñ. challenge is one of the key words to understand the american national character; it expresses courage, readiness to take risks in order to test oneself, the spirit of adventure, striving to compete, and so on. it is not without reason that the name “challenger” was given to an american spaceship. for example even the simplest sentences spoke about your sufferings and challenges or we are anchored in one of the most challenged but spirited cities in the usa are hard to translate into armenian. and its more difficult for us to catch the meaning of the word challenge in connection with political correctness, for example, challenged (instead of disabled, crippled), or a physically challenged person (instead of invalid) and visually challenged (instead of sightless). adventurism and ability to take risks are more inherent in americans than in armenians. the concept privacy, meaning private space as well as the right for the non-intrusion into private life, occupies an important place in the system of american values and is manifested in all spheres of life: relations between children and parents, teachers and students, colleagues and acquaintances. let me bring an example about privacy from american scholar lurie’s article: “privacy is a concept with far reaching implications, absolutely untranslatable into russian or into the languages of the other 15 republics of the soviet union. it would be unfair to ascribe the lack of this concept solely to living conditions in the soviet era, though, needless to say, communal apartments where from 4 to 10 families share a bathroom, dormitories and the thin-walled barracks where a few generations lived their lives, as well as the overcrowding in today’s urban dwellings, did armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 123 and do little to foster the introduction of that concept into our daily experience” (lourie, mikhalev 1989:38). in the conditions of the soviet union the divergence of concepts that reflects the spirit of the nation, the specifics of thinking and the nature of perceiving reality by representatives of different linguocultures, can lead to the attempt of comprehending the other culture through one’s own concept sphere and by doing so provoke situations of lack of understanding. the conflict of concepts formed in different “hypertexts,” on the intersection of different meanings and associations, leads to delusions with respect to one another as a result of the defeated expectancy effect. coming to armenia, americans often try to find their “network of coordinates” to analyze the phenomena of our life. for example, in grant competitions american organizations have armenian participants fill out forms and evaluate the level of their professional competence through the prism of concepts widely spread in the american society, but not well-known to armenians. that is why key american concepts such as pluralism and diversity often become a stumbling block for armenian participants, who are not able to relate their own experience with concepts of another culture. a person who is not familiar with concepts of another culture does not experience inconvenience because of it. the study of lexis and grammar of a new language is not necessarily accompanied with mastering new concepts. in the opinion of a.a. zalevskaya “when perceiving a new foreign language unit, a bilingual individual is inevitably trying to “adjust” the denotations of the correlative words in the contacting languages” (1978:72). the mastery of the concept sphere of a foreign language signifies a qualitatively new level of cultural-linguistic competence of an individual, the beginning of the existence of two linguocultures in “parallel worlds.” great experience is required for an individual who appears in new cultural surroundings to “synchronize” his/her concepts as mental formations with the mental formations of the interlocutor a bearer of given linguoculture. references: 1. cambridge international dictionary of english. (1995) cambridge: cambridge university press. 2. karasik, v.i. (1996) kulturnye dominanty v yazike. // yazikovaya lichnost. kulturnye koncepty. volgograd: peremena. 3. life and culture of the usa. (2002) stanford: stanford university press. 4. lourie, r., mikhalev, a. (june 1989) why you’ll never have fun in russian. // new york times book review. 5. malxhasiants, s. (1944) hajeren bacatrakan bararan. yerevan: hajkakan ssr petakan hratarakchutjun. 6. shejga, e.i. (2000) semiotika politicheskogo diskursa. volgograd: peremena. 7. zalevskaja, a.a. (1978) ob eksperementalnom issledovanii struktury yazikovogo znaka v usloviaxh bilingvizma. // psixholingvisticheskie i lingvisticheskie problemy yazikovixh kontaktov. kalinin: kgu. armenian folia anglistika culture studies 124 îáýó»åïý»ñç ù³ëý³ïç ñ³ïáõùá ¨ ñ³ï³ëáõùá /³ýñ³ù³å³ï³ëë³ýáõãûáõýá/ ùççùß³ïáõã³ûçý ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý áýã³óùáõù æýãå»ë ñ³ûïýç ¿, ïáýó»åïý»ñá ³ßë³ññ³ñ³ûóù³ûçý ·³õ³÷³ñý»ñç ¨ å³ïï»ñ³óáõùý»ñç ù»ï ³ùμáõçáõãûáõý »ý, ëï³óí³í ùç ñ³ù³ï³ñ·, áñý ³ñï³ñ³ûïíáõù ¿ 黽í³ï³ý áñáß³ïç ï³ññ»ñç ùççáóáí: ð³×³ë ñ³ëï³óáõûãý»ñá, áñáýù û·ï³·áñííáõù »ý ï³ñμ»ñ 黽í³ùß³ïáõûãý»ñáõù áñå»ë ñ³ù³ñå»ùý»ñ, çñ»ýó ý»ñùçý å³ñáõý³ïáõãû³ý ï»ë³ýïûáõýçó ñ³ïíáõù »ý ùç³ûý ù³ëý³ïçáñ»ý: ²ûë »ñ¨áõûãá å³ûù³ý³íáñí³í ¿ ùß³ïáõã³-å³ïù³ï³ý ¨ ñ³ë³ñ³ï³ï³ý ½áõ·áñ¹» éçáõãûáõýý»ñç ß»ñï»ñáí, áñáýù å³ï»éáí ñ³ëï³óáõûãá ï³éçë »ý ýñ³ý ³½·³-ùß³ïáõã³ûçý »ñ³ý·³ íáñáõù: øççùß³ïáõã³ûçý ñ³õáñ¹³ïóáõãû³ý å³ûù³ýý»ñáõù ïáýó»åïý»ñç §ï³ ñ³ó³ûýáõãûáõýᦠï³ñáõ ¿ ñ³ý·»óý»é ùß³ïáõã³ûçý μ³ëáõùý»ñç: ²û¹ μ³ëáõùý»ñçó ëáõë³÷» éáõ ñ³ù³ñ å³ñ³ýçíáõù ¿ 黽í³ùß³ïáõûãý»ñç ïáýó»åïáéáñïý»ñç ëáñá áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõý: armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 125 7 maket 2010 nor_n:layout 1.qxd emotions in linguistic behaviour when dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion. dale carnegie being humans we always experience some sort ofemotion or feeling. moreover, our emotional state varies throughout the day depending on what happens to us and on the stimuli that we perceive. however, we may not always be conscious of it; we may not know or express with clarity which emotion we are experiencing in a given moment. the experience and expression of emotions comprise a routine, yet extraordinarily complex and influential facet of the human experience, particularly in the realm of interpersonal communication. v.j. wukmir states that emotion is an immediate answer of the organism that informs about the degree of favourability of the perceived situation. 1 if it seems to favour its survival, the living being experiences both positive (happiness, satisfaction, peace, etc.) and negative (grief, sorrow, horror, etc.) emotions when the situation seems to be unfavourable for its survival. all living beings have this mechanism of emotion which guides them all the time, acting as a compass, to find favourable situations to survive (those which produce positive emotions) and to move away from those which are thought to be unfavourable for survival (which produce negative emotions). this emotional appraisal is carried out by means of many diverse physico-chemical mechanisms depending on the complexity of the organism. the elaboration of the emotions is an involuntary process, of which one can only be partially conscious. it is true that we often speak about emotional control or about controlling the emotions as a necessary ability for successful social relationships. nevertheless, it should be mentioned that we do not have control about the emotion itself and we can just control its external manifestation (wukmir 1967). based on the overall findings of our study on emotions, we have come to think that, although the list of feelings and reactions we include under the term emotion is almost infinite, generally the great variety of emotions in our emotional repertoire can be classified into two opposite poles: positive vs. negative, which are reflected respectively in our everyday speech. in their book “principles of communication and emotion in social interaction” andersen and guerrero assert that although there may be slight differences in how positive or negative emotions are viewed in particular situations, they generally tend to have either positive or negative reputations (andersen and guerrero 1998). 2 we have revealed that the problem of emotion involves a number of important issues: perception, processing and evaluation of emotions and emotional states; verbal and nonverbal means of expressing emotion. facial expressions, together with bodily movements armenian folia anglistika linguistics 102 anna rostomyan form non-verbal means of communicating the emotional state of the speaker. since emotions find their verbalization in our everyday speech, they are reflected consequently in speech acts having positive or negative implications. it is true that emotions are very complex experiences and when expressing them, we use a great variety of words and word combinations to express them. nonetheless, we could use all the words of a dictionary to express different emotions and still lack the ability of expressing the actually felt emotion in an accurate way. therefore, due to the infinite extension of emotional phenomena, it is impossible to make a full description of all the emotions that we can experience. the complexity of the phenomenon makes the impression that we always lack words to describe our emotions accurately. but under this complexity, there is a common factor typical of all emotions: each emotion expresses a quantity or magnitude on a positive/negative scale. in this way, we experience positive and negative emotions in different degrees and with diverse intensity. we can experience abrupt or gradual changes of emotional intensity, towards either the positive or negative side. that is to say, all emotions represent a magnitude or measurement along a continuum that can take positive or negative values. in everyday language we express our emotions with a positive/negative scale and in variable magnitudes with the help of different means of emotive emphasis, such as i feel quite well, i feel well, i feel very well (showing degrees for positive emotions) or i feel quite bad, i feel bad, i feel very bad (showing degrees for negative emotions). according to the situation in which a certain emotion is aroused, we choose words such as love, friendship, fear, uncertainty, respect, etc., that, at the same time, show the emotional sign (positive or negative). and according to the intensity of the emotion we choose words like quite, awfully, enough, very, etc., and, in this way, we compose the description of emotions. we say, for example, i feel very well understood (positive) or i feel a little depressed (negative). as a result, we can recognize two well differentiated components in all emotions. on the one hand, there is a qualitative component that is expressed by means of the word that we use to describe the emotion (love, friendship, fear, insecurity, etc.) determining the “positiveness” or “negativeness” of the emotional sign. on the other hand, all emotions possess a quantitative component that is expressed by means of words of magnitude (little, quite, enough, a lot, great, some, much, etc.). it is generally believed that emotion plays the role we expect it to, i.e. communicating information about our internal states, feelings, beliefs and desires (goleman 1995; murray 1964). however, in some circumstances we observe that emotions are not demonstrated so explicitly in speech or just vice verse: sometimes people tend to sound more emotional so that to have an impact on the interlocutors and thus to achieve their desired communicative goal. besides, when undergoing very strong emotions the speakers are not able to control them or to try to minimize the degree of the felt emotion, and consequently, the experienced emotions are being manifested in speech. in fact the linguistic expression of emotions has to do with pragmalinguistic approach to language phenomena since the conveyance of emotions is necessarily linked with the perlocutionary level. hence, in order to analyze the role of emotions in speech, expressive speech acts should be taken into consideration since expressives are those kinds of speech acts that armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 103 state what the speaker feels: apologizing, thanking, congratulating, condoling, welcoming, deploring, and objecting. they express psychological states and can be statements of pleasure, pain, joy, sorrow, etc. thus, we see that the emotional state of the speaker plays an irreplaceable and important role which is undoubtedly reflected in his or her speech (yule 1996:53-54). as we know, spoken language is not a ready-made or artificially created unit; it is something natural, created spontaneously so that to some degree it truly reflects our emotional world. actually, in everyday communication the speakers not only exchange ideas, code and decode information, urge the hearer to do something but also convey via language means their feelings and emotions which, as it follows from our earlier discussions, are very complicated. the investigation of the expression of emotions is not a very easy task. in everyday communication all of us, to some extent, make use of different relevant parameters in order to make our speech more expressive: e.g. pitch, amplitude, voice quality, pause, etc. prosody is the main constitutive cue of emphatic speech-style, alongside lexical devices, such as intensifying lexical items and syntactic devices. in fact people try to make their speech expressive so that to have a better impact on the audience, to gain a better opportunity to achieve their desired positive or negative perlocutionary effect. for this very reason, they often make use of diverse function words, called intensifiers, which amplify the meaning of a whole sentence or only some part of it, and, particularly, the emotional content. actually, normal english conversation abounds in a number of intensifiers which may be expressed by various parts of speech. intensifiers constitute a large group of words belonging to different parts of speech, mostly adverbs, sometimes adjectives and particles homonymous with adverbs. they usually modify or intensify the word (or sometimes a phrase) immediately following them and serve to emphasize or restrict the meaning of this word (or phrase) (buzarov 1998:316). the list is fairly long, and we create new intensifiers frequently, especially as slang. the common intensifiers are very, quite, really, pretty, too, fairly, more, rather, most, still, even, much, somewhat, not so, ever so, as well as many others. for instance, he’s too awful, she’s awfully attractive, it’s pretty late. belonging to the nonstandard language are the intensifying adjectives awful and real and the like, (i’ve got an awful bad cold, she was real nice to us). there exists yet another class of intensifiers, slang intensifiers, which are used by students and are constantly renewable. the intensifier wicked was in vogue a short time ago on many campuses (that was a wicked bad exam). another intensifier which is also being heavily overworked these days is the intensifying adjective outstanding (she has an outstanding new car). and it should also be mentioned that as time passes, with the development of technology or due to some other extra-linguistic factors, new intensifiers (particularly when talking about colloquial language) come into being, whereas some older ones tend to fade away. in addition, sometimes intensifiers may be combined, so that to express much more reinforced meaning as damn a lot, an awful lot, very much and so on. let us examine a case of positive intensification achieved by the combination of two intensifiers: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 104 “i know what you mean,” said anne elizabeth, ruffling up his hair. “you’re an artist, dick, and i love you very much ... you’re my poet, dick.” (john dos passos “u.s.a.”, part 2, 1960:325) in this passage anne elizabeth expresses her positive emotions, i.e. love, caring, warmth, tenderness, etc., towards her beloved person. to give extra emotive emphasis to her expressive speech act, she uses the intensifying adverb very, followed by the other adverb much. in the next example by means of combining several intensifiers reinforced negative meaning is implied: “you sick?” a man asked fuselli. “naw, i’m not sick; but sarge sent me to get some stuff for some guys that’s too sick to move.” “an awful lot o’ sickness on this boat.” (john dos passos “three soldiers”, 1921:47) the example well demonstrates a case of negative emotive emphasis used in conversational english. the speakers are worried about the health of people on board. as we know during war time people experience negative emotions connected with a lot of factors, mainly with the health state of the soldiers; consequently those very negative emotions are actually expressed in speech. the second speaker reinforces the meaning of sick by attaching the intensifier too to it. the last speaker by combining different intensifying means, i.e. awful + a lot of, gives extra emotive emphasis to his representative speech act, which also implies negative emotions showing worry and concern. generally, the implications of this speech event are negative. positive intensification achieved via intensifiers having negative connotations there is a curious pattern of intensification that uses negative words to intensify positive ones. this class of intensifiers includes such adverbs as: awfully, dreadfully, fearfully, terribly, crazily, ridiculously, insanely, horribly, hideously, etc. thus, for instance: she is dreadfully beautiful. what an insanely good idea! what actually is happening here is that many strong emotions are negative, so when using them in a positive context the intensity of emotion, though being negative, shows that the real meaning is positive, i.e. an additional effect achieved through combining negative and positive words in the same sentence, creates confusion. the disclosure of the meaning greatly depends on the context, the extralinguistic reality, the relationship between the speakers, as well as some other extralinguistic factors. let us consider the following examples: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 105 he interrupted her by starting to play again. as he played without looking at her, he felt that her eyes were fixed on him, that she was standing tensely behind him. her hand touched his shoulder. he stopped playing. “oh, i am dreadfully sorry,” she said. “nothing. i am finished.” (john dos passos “three soldiers”, 1921:346) we may guess that in this speech event the young lady feels a bit embarrassed, timid, and guilty for disturbing the person who was playing the piano. this implies that she experiences negative emotions. the intensifying adverb dreadfully modifies the word sorry giving negative emotive emphasis to the act of apologizing. accordingly, the phrase to be dreadfully sorry is equal to the phrase to be sorry very much which itself is an intensified expression owing to very much. in the next example we witness positive evaluation achieved via a word which itself bears a negative meaning: she stepped over and took his arm. “let’s go in,” she said. “the surf scares me, but it’s terribly beautiful…” (john dos passos “u.s.a.”, part 3, 1960:70) here the character performs an expressive speech act on her evaluation of the surf. we observe a clash of two opposite poles which in result, creates confusion. on the one hand she feels scared but on the other hand she admires the beauty of the surf. it is this very clash of meanings that generates the actual intensified positive meaning. in fact, the adverb terribly intensifies the meaning of the adjective beautiful. in the next example we may detect another case of intensification achieved via the adverb crazily used to express positive emotions: she sat down rather stiffly in the straight-backed armchair beside the fire. “how pretty the fire is,” she said. “jeanne, i think i’m crazily in love with you,” said andrews in an excited voice. (john dos passos “three soldiers”, 1921:360) here, as it can obviously be guessed, the speakers are experiencing positive emotions like love, care, affection and the like. thus, the speaker uses the intensifying adverb crazily to reinforce the actual positive implication of the statement and to stress the state of being in love. sometimes intensification is done deliberately but with the opposite intent. this use of sarcasm may be done against another person or may be used in a more ironic sense about this or that particular situation. for example, oh, very clever! (actually meaning rather stupid) is equal to the imperative sentence how clever! that can also be used in negative sense. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 106 as a generalization we can state that people when undergoing very strong emotions do not manage to control the felt emotion or minimize its degree and consequently express those very emotions in speech. moreover, they often tend to look for ways to emphasize how special the subject under discussion is. so they make use of different intensifiers and sometimes even exaggerate the display of their emotions on purpose to be able to change the listeners’ opinion via their utterances, in other words, to have an emotive impact on the audience. actually, with the help of intensifiers one may suggest to the listeners what emotions they should feel. when we speak emotionally, the other person has to consider the expressed emotions and hence, begins to feel them. in the same way, intensifiers may be used to reduce the natural emotional content of a sentence or some part of it. for this very purpose different structural means can be used (de-intensification, intensification, approval of the statements, etc.). thus, while performing expressive speech acts people use different ways of intensifying the meaning of the whole sentence or some part of it, particularly the emotional content. consequently we come to think that the role of emotions in speech should not be underestimated, since far too much of what happens in the process of communication occurs on the emotional level. notes: 1. the arousal of emotion (edward j. murray 1964: 51-56) maintains that emotions are aroused by a variety of innate stimulus patterns, learned stimuli and social situations. firstly, he speaks about innate emotional arousal. for example, the emotion of fear can be produced in an animal, a child, or an adult by nearly any sudden and intense stimulus innately. secondly, he claims that growing up both humans and animals may be afraid of much more things. a large part of the introduction of new fears and the elimination of old ones depends on learning. murray states that this phenomenon is known in psychology as learned emotional arousal. according to him, another important factor in the arousal of emotion is one’s personal threat. in this case emotional arousal depends on some of sort of personal evaluation of the threat, on a threat to something of personal importance. 2. andersen and guerrero (1998) divide their book on emotions into “the ‘dark side’ of emotions” (e.g., embarrassment, hurt, jealousy, anger, etc.) and “the ‘bright side’ of emotions” (e.g., comforting, support, warmth, loving, etc.). references: 1. andersen, p.a., guerrero, l.k. (1998) principles of communication and emotion in social interaction. // handbook of communication and emotion. san diego: academic press. 2. austin, j.l. (1962) how to do things with words. oxford: oxford university press. 3. buzarov, v.v. (1998) essentials of conversational english syntax. m.: crone-press. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 107 4. gilbert, m.a. (1999) language, words and expressive speech acts. // proceedings of the fourth international conference of the international society for the study of argumentation. www.yorku.ca/gilbert/argthry/argthry/arg-papers/mag1999-langwds.pdf 5. goleman, d. (1995) emotional intelligence. new york, toronto, london, sydney, auckland: bantam books. 6. grice, h.p. (1969) utterer’s meaning and intentions. // philosophical review. new york: academic press. 7. leech, g.n. (1983) principles of pragmalinguistics. london: longman. 8. levinson, s.c. (1983) pragmalinguistics. cambridge: cambridge university press. 9. murray, e.j. (1964) motivation and emotion. new jersey: prentice-hall. 10. volf, e.m. (1985) funkcianalnaya semantika otsenki. m.: nauka. 11. wukmir, v.j. (1967) emoción y sufrimiento. barcelona: labor. 12. yule, g. (1996) pragmalinguistics. // oxford introductions to language study. oxford, new york: oxford university press. sources of data: 1. dos passos, j. (1921) three soldiers. new york: modern library. 2. dos passos, j. (1960) u.s.a. trilogy. boston: houghton mifflin. ðáõû½»ñç ¹»ñá ëáëùáõù êáõûý ñá¹ í³ íá ýíçñ í³í ¿ ñáõû ½» ñç áõ ëáõù ý³ ëç ñáõã û³ ýá ëáë ùáõù: ø³ñ ¹çï ñ³ ׳ë ÷áñ óáõù »ý ç ñ»ýó ëáë ùá ¹³ñó ý»é ³ñ ï³ ñ³û ïçã` ëá ë³ ïçó ý» ñç íñ³ ³ í» éç é³í ý»ñ ·áñ íáõã ûáõý áõ ý» ý³ éáõ, ç ñ»ýó ó³ý ï³ ó³í ëá ëá õ³ ï³ý-ý»ñ ·áñ í³ ï³ý ³ñ¹ ûáõý ùçý ³ í» éç ñ»ß ïáõã û³ùμ ñ³ë ý» éáõ ñ³ ù³ñ: ²û¹ çëï å³ï ׳ éáí ýñ³ýù ·áñ í³ íáõù »ý ½³ ý³ ½³ý ë³ëï ï³ ï³ý μ³ é»ñ, á ñáýù áõå· ý³ó ýáõù »ý áõç ý³ ë³ ¹³ ëáõã û³ý ï³ù ¹ñ³ áñ¨ç ó» ³ý ¹³ ùç ç ù³ë ïá: ø³ ýç áñ ñáõû ½» ñç 黽 í³ ï³ý ³ñ ï³ ñ³û ïáõùý áõ í»ñ í³ ýáõùý ³ý å³û ù³ ýá ñ»ý ï³å í³í »ý ëá ëá õ³ ï³ýý»ñ ·áñ í³ ï³ý ù³ ï³ñ ¹³ ïç ñ»ï, ëý¹ñç éáõ íáõ ùá å³ ñ³ý çáõù ¿ ·áñ í³ μ³ ý³ ï³ý ùá ï» óáõù: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 108 maket 2012 1-2:layout 1.qxd on psychological, semantic and structural aspects of english colour terms naira avakyan, naira nersissyan yerevan state university o ver centuries colours have come to mean many things to different cultures. theyhave always fascinated humankind. they provide us with the ability to differentiate many things. we think of colour as an independent concept with a part to play in every aspect of our lives, e.g. we have favourite colours for our clothes, our rooms, etc. the recognition and interpretation of colour are determined by many factors – cultural, religious, spiritual, biological, and psychological. the natural development of colour recognition is participatory, and the perception of the mind is unconsciously influenced by these factors. for example, ancient greeks had no word for the colour blue, so they described the sea as wine-darkand the sky as bronze. to them, blue was not a colour in our sense, but the quality of darkness. the terms used to describe colour were psychological attributes such as fresh, dark, moist, or alive. the value of colouris extensive. it ranges from the use of language to artists and designing. the most important aspect of colour in daily life is probably the one that is least defined and most variable. it involves aesthetic and psychological responses to colour, and influences art, fashion, commerce and even physical and emotional sensations. one example of the link between colour and emotion is the common perception that red, orange, yellow, and brown hues are warm, while the blue, green and grey ones are cold: the red, orange, and yellow hues are said to induce excitement, cheerfulness, stimulation, and aggression; the blues and greens– security, calm and peace; and the browns, greys, and blacks– sadness, depression, and melancholy. green monster of jealousy, red with anger, and feeling blue – these are emotions that are described in relation to colours. in these simple english phrases, colours are a symbol of feelings. colours make these emotions more vivid and descriptive. it is one of the many steps to take language to a higher level of sophistication and beauty. emotions will be much too simple if we were just to describe ourselves by a mere feeling. it does not provide enough exaggeration and amplification of the feeling. being red with anger makes the feeling of fury more tragic and dramatic.the use of colour terms allows us to express ourselves better and appreciate words since we do not need to use pompous words to describe our feelings, thus economizing on words. in addition to emotional associations, factors that affect colour perception include the observer’s age, mood, and mental health. many psychologists believe that analysing an individual’s uses of and responses to colour can reveal information about the individual’s physiological and psychological condition. colours are not universal. some languages do not possess separate words for green and blue or for yellow and orange, while the eskimos use 17 words for white as applied to different snow conditions (soft snow, frozen snow, melted snow, etc.). as for us, we, armenians, do not yield to the limitation of colours; it can be said without scruple that armenian folia anglistika linguistics 60 there exist 27 synonyms for white, not to mention their flexible combinability. colour terms are widely used in languages; they are used in english as well. like colour terminology, colour harmony, colour preferences, colour symbolism, and other psychological aspects of colour are culturally conditioned, and they vary considerably in terms of place and historical period. one cross-cultural study showed that american and japanese concepts of warm and cold colours are essentially the same, but that in japan blue and green hues are perceived to be good and the red-purple range as bad, while in the united states the redyellowgreen range is considered good and oranges and red-purples– bad. the colour of mourning is black in the west, yet other cultures use white, purple, or gold for this purpose. besides many colours, there are a lot of shades of them e.g. the colourred has many shades: scarlet, crimson, cherry, etc. sometimes if we want to show what shades of the colour we exactly mean, we can use them with other words, for instanceoilbrown and oil-green, lead-white and grey as lead, etc. at the same time one particular colour may have many different first members like chalk-, frost-, milk-, wall-, swan-, silver-white. now we shall consider only the part of the field which covers the words red, orange, yellow, green and blue. each of these terms is referentially imprecise, but their relative position in this lexical system is fixed (and as a set they cover the greater part of the visible spectrum); orange lies between red and yellow, yellow – between orange and green and so on. it is part of the sense of each of these terms that they belong to this particular lexical system in english. it might appear that the notion of sense is unnecessary here, and that an account of the reference of colour terms would be sufficient as a description of their meaning. consider, however, the conditions under which one might come to learn or be said to know the reference of these words. the child learning english cannot first learn the reference of blue and then subsequently the reference of green or yellow, so that at a particular time he could be said to know the reference of one but not the other. (it is true that he might learn, that green referred to the colour of grass or the leaves of a particular tree, or one of his mother’s dresses; but the reference of green is wider than any particular instance of its application and knowledge also of the boundaries of its reference). it must be supposed that over a certain period the child gradually learns the position of green with respect to blue and orange, and soon until he has learnt the position of each of the colourterms with respect to its neighbour in the lexical system. it has often been shown that other languages impose a different form upon the substance by recognizing different members of areas within it and drawing the boundaries at different places. to refer to an example used above; the russian words ñèíèé and ãîëóáîé together cover roughly the same area as the english word blue, or ñè ðå íå âûé and ôèîëåòîâûé cover the same area as the english word violet. in armenian the same can be said about ·³½³ñ³·áõûý, ý³ñýç³·áõûý and íçñ³ý³·áõûý which areequivalent to the english orange. the words ñèíèé and ãîëóáîé refer to distinct but contiguous colours co-ordinated in the system with the words çåëåíûé and æåëòûé (green and yellow). they’re not to be regarded as terms which refer to different shades of one colour, in the way that crimson and scarlet with other terms subdivide the area covered by red in english. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 61 colour terms are often used in phraseological units. we can compare word-groups where colourterms are used to name an object exactly of that colour and word-groups where it is used in quite a different meaning. free word-groups make up variable contexts, whereas the essential feature of phraseological units is a non-variable or fixed context. so, depending on the context the names of colours can show not only the colour but also some other qualities of the word which they qualify (amosova 1963). while discussing phraseological units we must also pay attention to motivation,e.g. nominal groups like red flower, blue dress, grey stone, etc. are lexically motivated. the combined lexical meanings of these groups are deducible from the meanings of their components, whereas structurally identical word-group red-tape –official bureaucratic methods are lexically non-motivated. in these groups the constituents do not possess any individual lexical meaning of their own as the word-groups under discussion seem to represent single indivisible semantic entities. the degree of motivation may be different. between the extremes of complete motivation and lack of motivation there are innumerable intermediate cases,e.g. the degree of lexical motivation in the nominal group black market is higher than in black death, but lower than in black dress, though none of the groups can be considered as completely non-motivated. the constituent red in the free word-group red-flower may, if necessary, be substituted for by any other adjective denoting colour(blue, white, etc.) without essentially changing the denotational meaning of the word-group under discussion (a flower of a certain colour). in the phraseological unit red tape (bureaucratic methods) no such substitution is possible as a change of the adjective would involve a complete change in the meaning of the whole group. a blue (black, white, etc.) tape would mean a tape of a certain colour. it follows that the phraseological unit red tape is semantically non-motivated, i.e. whether the semantic relations between words are identical. so the word-group redflower may be deleted and transformed into flowers without making the sentence nonsensical, e.g. i love red flowers, i love flowers, whereas i hate red tape cannot be transformed into i hate tape or i hate red. it’s also argued that non-variability of the phraseological unit is not confined to its lexical components. the grammatical structure of phraseological units is to a certain extent also stable. thus, though the structural pattern of the word-groups red-flower and red tape is identical (a+n), the noun flower may be used in the plural (red flowers), whereas no such change is possible in the phraseological unit red tape; red tapes would then denote tapes of red colour but not bureaucratic methods. this is also true of other types of phraseological units. sometimes, however, the plural ending -s may change the meaning of the idiom completely but it will still remain as an idiom though quite another one,e.g. white horse means cowardice while white horses means white-crested waves at sea (áàðàøêè íà ìîðå). so here we have two different idioms. sometimes extra-linguistic factors may account for the loss of motivation, to show the armenian folia anglistika linguistics 62 white feather – to act as a coward, e.g. can be traced back to the days when cock-fighting was popular. a white feather in a gamecock’s plumage denoted bad breeding and was regarded as a sign of cowardice. now that cock-fighting is no longer a popular sport, the phrase is felt as non-motivated. so, we see now that motivation is rather important for the phraseological units, in this case for idioms with colour names. now we can refer to them from the point of view of context. so, the colours are polysemantic words. it will be recalled that in analyzing, e.g. the semantic structure of the polysemantic word yellow we can observe that some meanings are representative of the word in isolation, i.e. they invariably occur to us when we hear the word or see it written on paper. other meanings come to the fore only when the word is used in certain contexts. so, the adjective yellow when used in isolation denotes a certain colour, whereas other meanings of this word, e.g. envious, suspicious, sensational, corrupt are perceived only in certain contexts, e.g. a yellow look, the yellow press, etc. we see here that the quality of colour isn’t essential in these expressions at all; a look can’t have a yellow colour, press isn’t yellow either. the same is true for other colours, e.g. white frost means the frost with snow and rime, which isn’t exactly of white colour (and black frost means frost without snow), white meat means the meat which is easily digested, white heat means extremely great heat. sometimes the colour is even less obvious, white wine is usually of yellow colour, white herring (and red herring) means just the fresh one, white coffee is brown, brown bread isn’t exactly brown, etc. here white denotes just the lightest in colour of that usually to be found. but it can also be used metaphorically,e.g. white can mean the one that is good, kind, again light but from another point of view. so white day – happy day, white lie –a diplomatic untruth, told with good intentions, white witch –the kind one. black is also used in phrases like black coffee or black people though they are not black in their colour. and it is used as a negative factor opposite to white. so black humour means a morbid form of humour, black list–a list of persons or organizations to be disapproved or suspected of disloyalty, misconduct, etc., black market –the selling of goods at illegal quantities, black sheep–a person considered disgraceful by his family, etc. but not only black can mean something that is bad as in yellow look, or green with envy– very envious, very jealous, red flag–sign of danger, red-handed–in the act of committing a crime, in the red–losing money, etc. the same is true for brown the archaic meaning of which was dark. so we can say brown study –a mood of deep absorption or thoughtfulness. even white doesn’t always mean something good,e.g. white elephant means a possession that is no longer wanted by its owner, often because it is useless, expensive, or troublesome to maintain. to sum up,colour is a silent language. without words and across differing cultures, colours can be used for communication among people. colours are rich in hidden meanings and symbolisms.colour symbolism serves an important role in art, religion, politics, and ceremonials, as well as in everyday life. its strong emotional connotations can affect colour perception so that, for example, an apple or heart-shaped figure cut from orange paper may seem to have a redder hue than a geometric figure cut from the same paper armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 63 because of the specific psychological meaning that is associated with the shape.what is more, colours have a very interesting story to tell. they hold information and transmit messages. intuitively and instinctively, human memory is stored within a colour-coded resonance. references: 1. amosova, n.n. (1963) osnovy anglijskoj frazeologii. leningrad: izdatelstvo leningradskogo universyteta. 2. smith, e.e. & medin, d.l. (1981) categories and concepts. cambridge, mass.: harvard university press. 3. sonomura, o.m. (1996) idiomaticity in the basic writing of american english. new york: peter lang publishing, inc. 4. taylor, j.r. (1995) linguistic categorization. prototypes in linguistic theory. oxford: clarendon press. 5. wooten, b. & miller, d.l. (1997) the psychophysics of color. cambridge: cup. ²ý·é»ñ»ýç ·áõý³ýáõýý»ñáí ¹³ñóí³íùý»ñç ñá·»μ³ý³ï³ý, çù³ëï³ûçý ¨ ï³éáõóí³íù³ûçý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñç ßáõñç ¶áõý³ûçý ëçùíáéçï³ý ù»í ¹»ñ áõýç ³ñí»ëïáõù, ïñáý³ï³ý í»ë»ñáõù ¨ ³ù»ýûñû³ ïû³ýùáõù: ¶áõý³ýáõýý»ñá ñ³×³ë ñ³ý¹çåáõù »ý ¹³ñóí³íùý»ñáõù, áñáýó çù³ëï³ñá·» μ³ ý³ï³ý ñçùùáõù áýï³í »ý ïíû³é ³½·çý ¨ ùß³ïáõûãçý μýáñáß å³ïï»ñ³óáõùý»ñ: ¸ñ³ýù ³ñï³óáéáõù »ý ïíû³é 黽íçý μýáñáß çù³ëï³μ³ ý³ï³ý, ù»ñ³ï³ý³ï³ý, μ³é³ï³½ù³ï³ý ¨ ñá·» μ³ ý³ï³ý ³ é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá: ðá¹í³íá ùýý³ñïáõù ¿ ³ý·é»ñ»ýç ·áõý³ýáõýý»ñáí ¹³ñóí³íùý»ñç ñá·» μ³ ý³ï³ý, çù³ëï³ûçý ¨ ï³éáõóí³íù³ûçý áñáß ñ³ñó»ñ: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 64 maket 2011-2:layout 1.qxd an iranian view on linguistic competence in using a foreign language: a survey among high school graduates who have not attended private language institutes karo karapetyan, heidar nargesy yerevan state university an old definition for a new study chomsky’s (1965) distinction between competence and performance was the origin of communicative competence ideas. chomsky defines competence as the shared knowledge of the ideal speaker-listener set in a completely homogeneous speech community. such underlying knowledge enables a user of a language to produce and understand an infinite set of sentences out of a finite set of rules. hymes (1972) says that the transformational theory “carries to its perfection the desire to deal in practice only with what is internal to language, yet to find in that internality that in theory is of the widest or deepest human significance.” he concludes that a linguistic theory must be able to deal with a heterogeneous speech community, differential competence and the role of sociocultural features. he believes that we should be concerned with performance, which he defines as the actual use of language in a concrete situation, not an idealized speaker-listener situation in a completely homogeneous speech community. hymes deems it necessary to distinguish two kinds of competence: linguistic competence that deals with producing and understanding grammatically correct sentences, and communicative competence that deals with producing and understanding sentences that are appropriate and acceptable to a particular situation. thus, hymes coins a term “communicative competence” and defines it as “a knowledge of the rules for understanding and producing both the referential and social meaning of language.” since hymes revised the idea of communicative competence, a lot of complementary ideas have come up in this regard ; many to define, some to make derivations and a few to criticize. spitzberg defined communication competence as “the ability to interact well with others”. he explains, “the term ‘well’ refers to accuracy, clarity, comprehensibility, coherence, expertise, effectiveness and appropriateness” (spitzberg 1988:68). a much more complete definition is provided by friedrich (1994), when he suggests that communication competence is best understood as “a situational ability to set realistic and appropriate goals and to maximize their achievement by using the knowledge of self, others, context, and communication theory to generate adaptive communication performances.” communicative competence is measured by determining if, and to what degree, the goals of interaction are achieved. the function of communication is to maximize the achievement of “shared meaning”. parks emphasizes three interdependent themes: control, responsibility, and foresight; and argues that to be competent, we must “not only armenian folia anglistikamethodology 59 ‘know’ and ‘know how’, we must also ‘do’ and ‘know that we did’” (parks 1985: 174). he defines communicative competence as “the degree to which individuals perceive they have satisfied their goals in a given social situation without jeopardizing their ability or opportunity to pursue their other subjectively more important goals” (p. 175). this combination of cognitive and behavioral perspectives is consistent with wiemann and backlund’s (1980) argument that communication competence is: the ability of an interactant to choose among available communicative behaviors in order that he (sic) may successfully accomplish his (sic) own interpersonal goals during an encounter while maintaining the face and line of his (sic) fellow interactants within the constraints of the situation (p. 188). the component model of competence is a useful framework for understanding communication competence designed by spitzberg & cupach (1984) and is known as that because it is comprised of three specific dimensions: motivation (an individual’s approach or avoidance orientation in various social situations), knowledge (plans of action; knowledge of how to act; procedural knowledge), and skill (behaviors actually performed). lane (2001) defines six criteria for assessing communication competence of canary and cody (2000). they include adaptability, conversational involvement, conversational management, empathy, effectiveness, and appropriateness. they are explained in more detail below: reviewing types of communicative competence researchers and scholars interested in communicative competence discussions, have known some categories and subcategories. they have tried to introduce some names which are interrelated and all are dependant on the context in which they occur. when someone can recognize literary techniques such as humour, irony, contrasts and vocabulary with nuances in various texts and can also express herself or himself precisely and with a varied vocabulary, when he/she employs suitable verbal, non-verbal and paralinguistic features of speech in both prepared and improvised oral expressions and also has the ability to differentiate and exemplify word-formation processes in a text, when learners identify vocabulary, words and their word-forms and form words from given common syntactic roots/stems (word formation) and they are able to use lexical aids (dictionaries, glossaries, thesauruses) in written and electronic forms, and when one can consolidate processes of lexical enrichment of the l2 language and can also find characteristics of word formation, irregular processes and lexical innovation and can deduce the meaning of words from their context, we can say that they have linguistic competence. the ones with a grammatical competence can distinguish the meaning-based relationships between grammatical units in a clause and a compound or complex sentence and those who are said to have semantic competence are the ones who are able to explain the meaning of the given words/word phrases from the texts and they can select appropriate and effective vocabulary corresponding to the meaning (when producing texts). orthographic competence is another subcategory of communicative competence and a subdivision of linguistic competence, with the ability to observe spelling, technical accuracy of syntax in phrases, clauses, sentences, texts and note deviations from stanarmenian folia anglistika methodology 60 dards, to use spelling and punctuation aids (in written and electronic form) when producing texts and to identify orthographic (punctuation) mistakes in their own and other texts, correct them and give reasons and arguments for their corrections. another form of competence could be phonological competence in which one can practise and master pronunciation of formal language (words, sentences and texts), try to speak as formally as possible in conversation and during the intercourse with their teachers, detect their own and other pronunciation mistakes (correct and reduce mistakes). sociolinguistic competence is another discussion in which one who is said to have sociolinguistic competence can identify the most significant characteristics with regard to customs, norms, attitudes and values of the society whose language is being studied; respect for cultural patterns different to the students’ own. there is also another aspect of competence named pragmatic competence which is divided into three other discursive, functional and interactive competences. as we intend to study the dimensions of linguistic competence, we don’t explain the others in detail. a 1977 evaluation experience to evaluate the communicative competence some efforts have been made. wiemann (1977) created the communicative competence scale (ccs) to measure communicative competence, an ability “to choose among available communicative behaviors” to accomplish one’s own “interpersonal goals during an encounter while maintaining the face and line” of “fellow interactants within the constraints of the situation” (p. 198). originally, 57 likert-type items were created to assess five dimensions of interpersonal competence (general competence, empathy affiliation/support, behavioral flexibility, and social relaxation) and a dependent measure(interaction management). he tested some 239 college students to rate videotaped confederates enacting one of four role-play interaction management conditions (high, medium, low, rude). the 36 items that discriminated the best between conditions were used in the final instrument. factor analysis resulted in two main factors general and relaxation indicating that the subjects did not differentiate among the dimensions as the model originally predicted. but it can be a reliable type of test according to the evaluating measurements that were available. communicative competence in foreign language teaching in iran for many years, teaching english has been the main foreign language teaching procedure in iran. the current government has followed the same teaching styles and human force education without any prominent changes. it doesn’t seem reasonable to continue with the same system for those many years. there are so many authorized books in the market which are being taught by the non-government private language institutes. these are the books which have passed through different filters and have been designed by experienced language experts and researchers. tested in some countries, with tapes, cds, teacher’s books, activity books and etc. these books can be reliable authorized sources that decrease a lot of problems of the authors and experts and save a lot of energy and money. armenian folia anglistikamethodology 61 we can’t see suitable well designed textbooks and up to dated teaching styles and approaches as well. every year groups of english teachers in different provinces gather together and send their teaching reports, criticism on the textbooks and their suggestions to the high office of textbook publication, but no one minds it. these are just some factors resulting in the lack of satisfactory communicative competence of iranian high school learners of english. this research has tried to show this by testing, gathering data and analyzing it to prove the inefficiency of language teaching system in iran. a system which, as it was stated, has been on the curriculum for about thirty years. the research aims at showing the low level of linguistic and sociolinguistic competence of these learners in learning english as a foreign language. research method in this research, the means to gather data is a questionnaire based on which some different types of competences of the students were controlled. with the cooperation of education organization offices in different province centers, more than 320 questionnaires were distributed and completed. among them 305 were returned and finally 296 were approved as answered properly. the data was fed to computer and analyzed by spss software (statistical package for the social sciences) version 16. the results of each question were illustrated in separated tables and diagrams and then interpreted. at the end the reliability of the questionnaire was tested and it was proved reliable. data and analysis in this section the research findings in relation to the particular research questions or hypotheses are presented. it is actually the core of the research which includes discussions, analysis, tables and diagrams. the data are illustrated in detail in the tables. the process of the data has been done in two levels: a) the description of the data b) the analysis and explanation of them based on the previous chapters this research studies the rate of communicative competence among the senior high school students. at the description level, the research sample has been described and a picture of this condition is presented. in this section statistics aren’t used to confirm or reject a specific hypothesis, because in this step the relationship between variables is not considered and only the main variables of research are described. in the next section inferential statistics have been used to study the relations among variables, findings and the results related with determining the rate of communicative competence among the senior high school students in using the english language in biand multivariable analysis. statistical sample: 296 senior high school students in iran. hypotheses five aspects of linguistic competence were tested and the following hypotheses were studied during this experience: armenian folia anglistika methodology 62 hypothesis 1: iranian senior high school students lack satisfactory lexical competence. hypothesis 2: iranian senior high school students lack satisfactory grammatical competence. hypothesis 3: iranian senior high school students lack satisfactory semantic competence. hypothesis 4: iranian senior high school students lack satisfactory orthographic competence. hypothesis 5: iranian senior high school students lack satisfactory phonological competence. interpretation of the results regarding lexical competence the results received from 296 iranian senior high school students who completed the questionnaire, the highest percentage (79.1%) of them are believed to have low oral knowledge of vocabulary to express their opinions. the total result is not satisfactory and diagram 1 shows this well. the highest percentage (74.7%) of them are believed to have low written knowledge of vocabulary to express their opinions and information about different school conditions properly. the results of the test on the students’ grammatical competence ability show that the highest percentage (81.4%) of them to have low ability to express different grammatical functions using language and its description. the total result is not satisfactory and diagram 10 shows this well. the highest percentage (64.9%) of them to have low knowledge to distinguish the base, prefix and suffix. the total result is not satisfactory and diagram 11 shows this well. the highest percentage (64.2%) of them are believed to have low ability to distinguish different sentence components. the total result is not satisfactory and diagram 12 shows this well. the results related to the semantic capability of the students indicate that the highest percentage (80.4%) of them are not capable enough to express their own ideas regarding the language, characters and people living in the past and nowadays. the total result is not satisfactory and diagram 16 shows this well. the highest percentage (81.1%) of them say that they use very little of techniques like repetition, simile and contrast in using language. in orthographic competence, the results show that the highest percentage (77.7%) of them believe to have low knowledge of using morpho-syntactic examples. the total result is not satisfactory and diagram 27 shows this well. the highest percentage (73%) of them lack a proper knowledge of punctuation rules. the total result is not satisfactory and diagram 28 shows this well. the highest percentage (79.4%) of them are thought to be unable to present written texts on paper, respecting rules of grammar, spelling and punctuation. the total result is not satisfactory and diagram 29 shows this well. and the highest percentage (83.8%) of them believe to have low capability to observe spelling, technical accuracy of syntax in phrases, clauses, sentences, texts and note deviations from standards. the total result is not satisfactory and diagram 30 shows this well. and ending in phonological competence, we can see that the highest percentage (84.5%) of them believe not to have the ability to distinguish written and phonological forms of words and divide them to different segments and short and long vowels. the armenian folia anglistikamethodology 63 total result is not satisfactory and diagram 31 shows this well. the highest percentage (84.5%) of them believe to have low ability to set the stress pattern, intonation, pauses and speech speed based on the communicative intention. the total result is not satisfactory and diagram 32 shows this well. the highest percentage (85.1%) of them believe to have low capability to distinguish standard from nonstandard phonological forms. the total result is not satisfactory and diagram 33 shows this well. conclusion and recommendations based on the results driven from the questionnaires, iranian system of teaching english as a foreign language hasn’t been able to develop different aspects of communicative competence among the senior high school students. during more than three decades no significant changes have been seen in curriculum design, textbook publications and neither can we see any prominent changes in teaching styles of the teachers whereas we can observe lots of changes in different fields of foreign language teaching and learning in the world. the story gets weirder when we can see that our university professors and language teaching pioneers are so active in holding international seminars related to the english teaching and learning and english literature. while we can see a lot of progress in different english speaking countries regarding developing communicative skills and techniques to improve communicative competence and performance of the language learners, we have no such movements in the basic skeleton of our academic system of foreign language learning and teaching. thanks to our nongovernmental and nonacademic institutions, which are in a race to overtake each other in teaching english, we can still see some of our learners attempt to make progress in language learning. after all, what can be advised to make the situation better is to find the exact reasons of these deficiencies and to try to get help from different scholars and experts in writing textbooks, training human forces, designing curriculum and in a word to revolutionize the language teaching system in iran. references: 1. chomsky, n. (1965) aspects of the theory of syntax. cambridge, ma: mit press. 2. cody, m.j. & mclaughlin, m.l. (1985) the situation as a construct in interpersonal communication research. / ed. by m.l. mclaughlin & g.r. miller. handbook of interpersonal communication (pp. 263-312). beverly hills: sage. 3. friedrich, g.w. (spring, 1994). [lecture notes]. university of oklahoma, norman. 4. hymes, d. (1972) on communicative competence. // sociolinguistics: selected readings. / ed. by j.b. pride & j. holmes. baltimore: penguin. 5. mccroskey, j.c. (1982). communication competence and performance: a research and pedagogical perspective. // communication education, 31 (pp. 1-7). 6. parks, m.r. (1985) interpersonal communication and the quest for personal armenian folia anglistika methodology 64 competence. / ed. by m.l. knapp & g.r. miller. handbook of interpersonal communication (pp. 171-201). beverly hills, ca: sage. 7. rothwell, w.j. (1996) astd models for human performance improvement. alexandria, va: american society for training and development. 8. rothwell, w.j.; sanders, e.s. & soper, j.g. (1999) astd models for workplace learning and performances. alexandria, va: american society for training and development. 9. rubin, r.b. (1983) conclusions. // improving speaking and listening skills. / ed. by r.b. rubin, (pp. 95-99). san francisco: jossey bass. 10. rubin, r.b. (1985) the validity of the communication competency assessment instrument. // communication monographs, 52 (pp. 173-185). 11. spitzberg, b.h; cupach, w.r. (1984) interpersonal communication competence. beverly hills: sage publications. 12. spitzberg, b.h. (1988) communication competence: measures of perceived effectiveness. / ed. by c.h. tardy. handbook for the study of human communication (pp. 67-105). norwood, nj: albex. 13. wiemann, j.m. & backlund, p. (1980) current theory and research in communication competence. // review of education research, 50 (pp. 185-199). 14. wiemann, j.m. & bradac, j. (1989). metatheoretical issues in the study of communicative competence: structural and functional approaches. / ed. by b. dervin & j. voigt, progress in communication sciences, vol. ix (pp. 261-284). norwood, nj: ablex. úï³ñ 黽íç ïçñ³éù³ý 黽í³ï³ý çñ³½»ïáõãû³ý çñ³ýû³ý ï»ë³ï»ï (áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõý ñ³ýñ³ïñã³ï³ý ¹åñáóç áñáß ßñç³ý³í³ñïý»ñç ßñç³ýáõù, áñáýù ã»ý ñ³×³ë»é áñ¨¿ ù³ëý³íáñ 黽í³ï³ý ñ³ëï³ïáõãûáõý) ² í» éç ù³ý » ñ»ù ï³ë ý³ù û³ï ý» ñç áý ã³ó ùáõù ýß³ ý³ ï³ éç ÷á ÷á ëáõã ûáõý ý»ñ ï» õç ã» ý áõ ý» ó»é ³ý· é» ñ» ýá áñ å»ë û ï³ñ é» ½áõ ¹³ ë³ í³ý ¹» éáõ ç ñ³ý û³ý ñ³ ù³ ï³ñ ·ç áõ ëáõù ý³ ï³ý íñ³· ñ» ñç, ¹³ ë³·ñ ù» ñç, çýã å»ë ý³¨ ¹³ ë³ í³ý¹ ù³ý » õ³ ý³ï ý» ñç ù»ç, ùçýã ¹»é ³ù μáõç ³ß ë³ñ ñáõù û ï³ñ 黽 íç ¹³ ë³ í³ý¹ ù³ý ï³ñ μ»ñ μý³ ·³ í³é ý» ñáõù ï³ ñ» éç ¿ ï»ë ý»é μ³ ½áõù μ³ ñ» ÷á ëáõù ý»ñ: êáõûý ñ» ï³ ½á ïáõã û³ý ù»ç ÷áñó ¿ ³ñ í»é áõ ëáõù ý³ ëç ñ»é 黽 í³ ï³ý ç ñ³ ½» ïáõã û³ý ï³ñ μ»ñ ïáõ ù» ñá ñ³ý ñ³ïñ ã³ ï³ý ¹åñá óç á ñáß ßñç³ ý³ í³ñï ý» ñç ùáï, á ñ³ýù ³ý· é» ñ»ý ã»ý ëá íá ñ»é áñ¨¿ ù³ë ý³ íáñ ñ³ë ï³ ïáõã ûáõ ýáõù: àõ ëáõù ý³ ëç ñáõã û³ý ýå³ ï³ïý ¿ñ å³ñ ½»é, ã» áñ ù³ ýáí ¿ ³ ï³ ¹» ùç³ ï³ý ïñã³ ï³ý ñ³ ù³ ï³ñ ·á áý¹áõ ý³ï ³ ß³ ï»ñï ý» ñçý ³ý· é» ñ»ý ëá í» ñ»ó ý»é: armenian folia anglistikamethodology 65 maket_n_verjin.qxp the state of armenian education in brief the fate of armenia has been extremely harsh and exceptionally hard. roman,persian, byzantine, arabic, seljuk, mongol, and ottoman invaders passed through armenia spreading awe and terror around. they ruined and devastated armenia, destroyed its cultural values. the armenian people who left for distant countries continued their work there. deprived of a statehood of any kind, armenians developed their culture mostly beyond the borders of the country – in russia, the crimea, georgia, italy, poland, france, india and elsewhere. the western school has also an interesting history. basically it developed out of armenia. the western school of armenia was relatively organized in two cities – in karin and van. in the early 19th century costantinople with more than 200. 000 armenians presented the mosaique of western armenians. in 1859 there were 42 and in 1901 40 armenian elementary and secondary schools in k. polis. under the reign of bloody abdul hamid, the armenian school was gradually formed and later became the victim of the armenian genocide in 1915. the second city next to costantinople with regard to its armenian population was zmurnia – izmir, where in 1799 the mesropian school – one of the famous and lasting educational institutions, was founded. in 1877-1878 on the eve of the russian-turkish war, the number of armenian schools in operation on the territory of turkey reached 450. they had more than 24.000 pupils. the academic life was relatively in a better state in russia, where a great number of armenians had found their homes. in 1813 nerses ashtaraketsi, the catholicos of all armenians, managed to reopen a school in echmiadzin. at that time there were a few private schools in yerevan. by 1828 eastern armenia had become a part of russia. favorable conditions were created for the revival of the economic and cultural life in the country. besides the schools in moscow, astrakhan, teodossia, new nakhijevan, schools were also set up in the cities of transcaucasia. in 1874 gevorgyan chemarian was established in echmiadzin, which aimed at training teachers and clergymen of the armenian church. the gevorgyan chemaran (college) greatly boosted the development of the armenian culture, literature and the armenian language, in particular. besides armenian, foreign languages were also included in the curriculum. most of the graduates were engaged in pedagogy, social-political or scientific activities. the number of national educational institutions kept on growing. parish and elementary schools were opened one after another in rural areas. in 1830-1895, 208 elementary and secondary schools were set up in eastern armenia. two systems of school education 19 yerevan state university is 90 years old armenian folia anglistika were developed in the country – elementary single-form, two-form schools and state secondary schools where the teaching was conducted in russian. state secondary schools were financed by the tsarist government and by the parents of the pupils. as far as single-form, two-form schools and spiritual ones are concerned, the subjects were taught in armenian and the schools were supported by the means of the population, various charities and partly by the church. the tsarist government was seriously concerned about the alarming number of growing schools. this was the key reason why all armenian churches and diocesebased schools were closed down in 1896. the situation partly changed in 1905-07, during the period of the first russian revolution when the tsarist government permitted to open the armenian schools. in rather a short period of time not only the old ones were reopened, but new schools were established, as well. in 1915-1916 there were already 12 state and 195 elementary schools with 36,544 pupils. the number of the secondary schools reached 12: the gymnasium, trade schools, parish school, gevorkian chemaran (academy), teachers’ seminary etc. where more than 4300 pupils studied. the situation changed drastically in 1916. the education in armenia suffered a serious decline because of the first world war. lazarian chemaran (academy) in moscow and nersisian school in tbilisi played a crucial role in the history of the armenian culture and education. these institutions operated a whole century and played a most decisive role in the development of the national education and culture. within 10 years this university gave the country more than 155 armenian doctors and 230 lawyers. many armenians graduated from many other higher educational institutions in russia in addition to moscow university. late in the 19th century the number of armenians studying in european universities increased, too. 20 armenian folia anglistika yerevan state university is 90 years old gevorkian chemaran (academy) lazarian chemaran (academy) maket 2012 1-2:layout 1.qxd the problem of mutual understanding across regional varieties of english mariana sargsyan yerevan state university t he present paper is aimed at discussing the language-culture interdependencesfrom the perspective of transformations that the culture component may bring forth in language vocabularies. the analysis is conducted within the frames of the vocabulary units of english and its regional varieties. nowadays the on-going changes in the structure of english and its varieties attract an increasing number of specialists. the latter constantly sound the alarm that traditional general english is gradually disappearing, giving way to a simplified means of global communication. on the other hand, specialists accentuate that all the regional varieties of english grow more and more different and distant from general english. it is roughly estimated that some 30-50 years later nations officially speaking english will be in a sore need of an interpreter-translator in order to reach mutual understanding even on common topics. the reason for such a drastic turn of the situation is quite understandable. having spread all over the world, english has undergone deep changes which primarily affected the semantic layer of the language. in fact the vocabulary of any language is the most sensitive to external changes. if viewed from the culture perspective, the core of the problem obtains tangibility to a certain degree. one can no longer reject the fact that the specific way of perceiving the world by a man and his role in it account for the way the world itself finds its reflection in man’s consciousness. perception of the objective reality varies from nation to nation, being conditioned by a wide range of factors, among which culture plays the key role. presently, interdisciplinary investigations in language and culture are based on the assumption that language is closely related to culture, moreover, it is developed within and expressed through culture itself. on this, i remembered a tv debate between the british prime minister and the american secretary of state over the situation in the middle east. in the course of the debates the talks were becoming hotter and hotter, and the journalist appealed to them to come to a compromise. the talk show really ended in a compromise, with the british prime smiling at the cameras and congratulating his american colleague and the american secretary, by the way, with a broad smile on his face, refusing to give any comment concerning the outcomes of the debates. so, is the reaction of the two people just the result of mere satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the results of the debates, or can the reactions be traced back to the mental and cultural identity of the two people involved? evidently, the answer is not on the surface. in oxford advanced learner’s dictionary of english the word compromise is defined as an agreement between two people or groups in which each side gives up some of things they want, so that sides are happy at the end. if so, why is the american dissatisfied with the idea of compromise? the explanation of the word meaning proves to be inefficient in terms of clear understanding of the problem and asks for consulting a considerable armenian folia anglistika culture studies 114 amount of knowledge supported by anthropological, psychological and cultural data. to overcome the barrier, it is worth consulting the american anthropologist john m. townsend’s renowned chart of the most explicit traits of american character compared with those of other nationalities. if generalized, most typical traits of the american character can be represented as follows: reality – mechanical, rational; values – material; life – a problem that should be solved; man – rules nature; time – is money; time orientation – future is most important; friends, people – relationships are on the surface; first “i”, then the rest; life expectations – immediate reward. as a consequence, the concentration of self-orientation and egocentrism in the american character can be highlighted nearly in all the aspects of life. accordingly, a self-oriented nation will surely be unwilling to share anything with others unless there is no more choice left. in spite of the fact that the british and the americans share the same language, their notion of the objective reality is diverse. moreover, perceptions of their role in the world economics, politics, culture, etc., coincide but only partially. thus, the aforementioned example proves to be rather a weighty one making us adhere to the standpoint that language does not influence the world outlook of people, but just the contrary takes place. as far as the word compromise is concerned, let us generalize at this point that the british are quite reserved, tolerant and peace-loving by nature, which well accounts for a neutral, or more or less positive connotation of the word in the british english, in contrast to the negative associations in its trans-atlantic variant. english is not the official language of the british isles and the usa only. among others, it is the official language of canada, australia, new zealand, etc. alongside with common cultural knowledge among people inhabiting all the english speaking countries, there exists specific knowledge correlated with particular geography, history, flora and fauna, economy, social life, etc. meanwhile, the world outlook of every nation has brought some typical spices into the regional variants, creating new words and phrases on the one hand, and has enriched the meanings of existing words with overtones and connotations tracing back to peoples’ cultural identity. in fact, it is these imposed overtones and connotations that result in gaps in terms of adequate mutual understanding. here it is expedient to cite a. wierzbicka’s famous statement on the problem: “the vocabulary units with marked cultural component serve as a special ideological tool reflecting the nation’s experience in all the spheres of life.”(wierzbicka:1997). now, with the view to specifying the above-mentioned statement in terms of english and its regional varieties, let me switch to the analysis of several typical words and idioms, the origins and connotative meanings of which can be well explored in the cultural context. in new zealand and australia in families of lower-middle-class it is a usual practice armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 115 to invite people to social gatherings asking them to bring a plate. to bring a plate is a phraseological unit which constitutes the request to people attending to arrive with a plate full of food because catering will not be provided. many new arrivals to new zealand have been bamboozled by the instruction and turned up with an empty plate. hence, an englishman, moreover any other person with a fair knowledge of english might do the same, because such invitations are usual practice in new zealand and a declining one in australia. accordingly, to bring a plate is a typical idiom, the metonymic meaning of which is confined only to regional varieties of english. turning to the australian reality, one can easily explore a wide range of culture-based changes in semantic structures, among which the most prominent role can be attached to national symbols. so, koala, a slow-moving australian arboreal marsupial, is the national symbol of australia, the preservation of which is under state’s control. it is this very factor that contributed to enriching the word meaning with extra connotations. in the australian variant the word now stands for anything that enjoys state attention. e.g. cars with state initials are also referred to as koalas. hence, the utterance there is a koala running along the street may give the impression that the animal itself is running. meanwhile koala is the car which has diplomatic id numbers and can violate the traffic laws without punishment. proceeding with the topic of animalistic symbols in australia, let us dwell upon the less exotic, but nevertheless a more important one – “his majesty the sheep”. it goes without saying that sheep has made a considerable contribution into the state’s economy. of course it is not a sacred animal and is not worshiped like the hinduism “cow” in india, nor it can be compared with any aggressive symbols of nationalism, but still it is respected for the indisputable contribution to the country’s economic growth and the welfare of the australian people. now let us observe what were the after-effects of the “sheep-based” economy in the australian variant of english. the “sheep-based” economy gave birth to a new idiom riding on sheep’s back, which actually symbolizes the flourishing period of the australian economy. it remains only to conclude that the idiom is unique both in its structure and meaning as far as it is closely related to a certain period of australia’s history. english has to pay her homage to sheep, since sheep-breeding and all the technology connected with the process have enriched the language with many terms covering sheep hairdo, wool classification, sheep breed, etc. while analyzing the english vocabulary, one cannot but notice the huge amount of idiomatic units that each variant of english abounds in. idioms undoubtedly remain the sphere of the vocabulary which bears and reflects the national mentality more explicitly than any other langu age unit. let me bring several idioms from informal australian (aussie) and new zealand, which struck me as most explicit in terms of concentrating cultural and national elements: queen street farmer, widely used in new zealand, stands for as a pejorative term for an investor in rural land with no knowledge of land use; up the puhoi, which means far from civilization, or simply a faraway point, originating from the river named “puhoi” passing just the north of auchland; armenian folia anglistika culture studies 116 little aussie battle, which stands for a person who works hard to make ends meet, someone who is doing it tough and does not whinge, originating from henry lawson’s story, where the author categorizes people into 3 classes: the rich, the poor, the battlers); miserable as a bandicoot, stands for an extremely unhappy person, originating from the australian long-faced marsupial bandicoot, which has been given a role in australian english in similes that suggest unhappiness or some kind of depreciation; buckley’s chance, equivalent to “no chance at all”, originating from the name of the convict william buckley, who escaped from port phillip in 1803 and lived for 32 years among the aborigines in south victoria; clayton’s job, low quality imitation; not the real thing; e.g. a hasty, temporary repair may be only a clayton’s solution to the problem, originating from the brand-name of an australian non-alcoholic whisky-flavored beverage. among different vocabulary units which demonstrate a highest potential of concentrating cultural data proper names stand apart, embracing geographical names, names of real people, legendary or historic personages, and names of famous people. the problem of adequate understanding comes to the front line when proper names stop to function in their primary denotational meaning and obtain the status of a common noun, as is the case with the word bradman (a promising golf player) which has originated from the famous australian cricket player donald bradman’s name, or ned kelly (a brave heart, especially common in “as game as ned kelly”), originating from ned kelly – a historic figure who is considered to be robin hood’s australian counterpart. of course, while considering vocabulary enrichments of the regional varieties, i am not inclined to underestimate the role of the process which, for convenience, i would term “transculturation” of language units. in a wider sense, i would define this process as a mutual enrichment of language varieties due to trans-cultural penetrations. to specify the aforementioned, let us observe the essence of this phenomenon, analyzing the semantic structure of the unit walkabout. in aussie english the word walkabout stands for the periodical wanderings of aborigines, which is quite typical of their traditional lifestyle. when used in an ordinary speech in a sentence like he is in his usual walkabouts the speaker expresses his contempt toward the subject’s aimlessness and inclination to waste time. somehow, walkabout has lately penetrated into british english and has obtained the status of a “stylish” word. it is frequently used in reference to the queen, members of the royal family or politicians, in situations when they deliberately show informality speaking to common people in streets trying to create the false impression of equality. the aforementioned can be treated as one of the many cases convincing us that english and its regional varieties are not altogether isolated from each other. the process of mutual enrichments and transformations is an on-going one, taking place regardless of time and distance. nowadays, with the view to getting a deeper understanding of the essence of culturebased transformations, their origin, nature and after-effects in general english, linguists armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 117 widely investigate the spheres of human life which are most likely to generate culturally and nationally marked words. it is assumed that this kind of knowledge will help to keep the process of semantic transformations under control and handle communicative acts successfully. however, as the preliminary survey shows, there cannot be found any unanimous answer as to the spheres, since the objective reality is changing rapidly and man’s attitude toward the realia change at nearly the same pace. hence, adequacy of communication widely depends on enlarging people’s knowledge in culture, history, geography or other relevant spheres of the regional variety. the process of teaching english nowadays seeks for compiling one integrated course of language and culture with the maximum inclusion of the cultural component. effective communication is realizable on the condition that the participants possess a certain amount of shared knowledge, since interpretation is carried out through the prism of categories which constitutes the frames of our consciousness. references: 1. lewis, r. (1996) when cultures collide. london: nicholas brealey publishing house. 2. mead, m. (1988) the application of anthropological techniques to cross-national communication. new york: the harper and row reader. 3. pennycock, a. (1994) the cultural politics of english as an international language. london – new york. 4. ruseckaja, l.a. (1989) o lingvisticheskoy suwnosti realiy i ikh znachimosti v formirovanii nacional’nykh variantov angliyskogo yazika. // yazik i istoriya problemy lingvokul’turnoy tradicii. tez. dok. m.. 5. ter-minasova, s. (1995) sociocultural aspect of foreign language teaching. // language, culture, communication. m.: center of cross-cultural studies. 6. white, r. (1981) inventing australia images and identity 1688-1980. sydney: george allen and unwin. 7. wierzbicka, a. (1997) understanding cultures through key words. new york: oup. öáëñ³ëï³óù³ý ëý¹çñá ³ý·é»ñ»ýç ï³ñ³í³ßñç³ý³ûçý ï³ñμ»ñ³ïý»ñáõù ì»ñççý ï³ñçý»ñçý 黽í³μ³ýý»ñçý ëçëï ùï³ñá·áõù ¿ ³ûý ÷³ëïá, áñ ³ý·é»ñ»ýç ï³ñ³í³ßñç³ý³ûçý ï³ñμ» ñ³ïý»ñá ³ëïç׳ ý³μ³ñ ñ»é³ýáõù »ý ùçùû³ýóçó: î·³ ùç å³ù³ý³ï, »ñμ ýáõûýçëï ³ éûñû³ ã»ù³ý»ñç ßáõñç éç³ñå»ù ñ³õáñ¹³ïóáõãûáõý çñ³ï³ý³óý»éáõ ñ³ù³ñ μáéáñ ³ý·é³ëáëý»ñá ï³ñçù ïáõý»ý³ý ¹çù»éáõ ã³ñ·ù³ýãç û·ýáõãû³ý: ðá¹í³íáõù ýå³ï³ï ¿ ¹ñí»é éáõë³μ³ ý»éáõ μ³ éçù³ëïç ½³ñ·³óù³ý áñáß ³ é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñ, áñáýù ³éï³ »ý ³ý·é»ñ»ýç ï³ñ³í³ßñç³ý³ûçý ï³ñμ» ñ³ïý»ñç μ³ é³ýáý¹áõù: ö³ëï³ï³ý ýûáõãç í»ñéáõíáõãû³ùμ óáõûó ¿ ïñíáõù, áñ ¹ñ³ýù ù»í ù³ë³ùμ å³ûù³ý³íáñí³í »ý ïíû³é 黽áõý ïñáõ åáõáíñ¹ç áñáß³ïç ùß³ïáõã³ûçý ñ³ù³ï³ñ·ç å³ïï³ý»éáõãû³ý ·áñíáýáí: armenian folia anglistika culture studies 118 maket 2013:layout 1.qxd utilization of metaphor as a method of language teaching ofelya poghosyan yerevan state university m any linguists have focused on different aspects of metaphor. metaphor is the use of a word or phrase to indicate something different from (though related in some way to) its literal meaning, e.g. she has a heart of stone. the term “metaphor”, (as the etymology of the word indicates) means transference of some quality from one object to another; the transference of meaning from one word to another. being one of the most important stylistic devices, metaphor, decorates speech, making it expressive and emotionally coloured. however, metaphor is not confined to its ornamental function only. the ability of metaphor to explain the unknown in terms of the known makes its use in the sphere of intellective communication not only possible but also necessary. it is here that metaphor acquires a cognitive function and serves as a basis for conceiving and describing facts established in the objective reality. moreover, it suggests a completely new piece of information and clarifies the mechanisms through which the latter originates (gibbs, steen 1992). otherwise stated, metaphor is declared to have a specific power of novelty. as a speech phenomenon metaphor has been studied more than once since ancient times. different linguists have tackled the problem from different standpoints stating its vital importance in literature (especially in poetry), philosophy, and even in different fields of social and natural sciences. the role of metaphor is very important in the language of science. scientists use metaphors to solve different scientific problems. on the basis of scientific discoveries different metaphorical models have originated and those models, in their turn, play an important role in suggesting this or that new model (conception) of the world. the example of this phenomenon can be found in newton’s works. it’s well known how newton discovered the law of gravity. the young student of cambridge university was on a visit in his native village where he happened to see an apple fall from a tree and began wondering what force made the apple fall. it was then that the great scientist discovered the law of gravity force that attracts objects towards each other in space, and pulls them towards the centre of the planet on the earth. newton examined the attraction of one mass by another and showed that one massive sphere (as in the example with the apple) attracts another one as if the whole mass were in the centre. the law of gravity force helped the scientist find the solution to many other problems. later he also demonstrated that the gravitation pull of the earth extends as far as the moon and keeps it in its orbit. he demonstrated that this pull is in accordance with the same law as that by which a stone falls to the ground, or if anyone jumps, he finds himself on the ground. thus, proceeding from this example, it can be stated that a metaphorical phenomenon to explain the unknown in terms of the known can give rise to the solution to different scientific problems. in the present article an attempt is made to show the educational value of metaphor, the role it plays in the teaching process. armenian folia anglistikamethodology 119 metaphor influenced the further development of pedagogical thinking. experiments have shown that any metaphorical expression prompts the reader to contemplate and look into the reason why this or that connection between certain elements of metaphor has become possible. as a language concept it has been considered an indispensable means of creating the picture of language world. meanings which already existed in language began to be rebuilt on the cognitive basis, and all that made it possible to create different new concepts. metaphor helps the scientific enterprise, in educational or pedagogical aspect – to explain a principle or theory. with the help of metaphors new methods, theories and hypotheses are easily introduced. examples of the same phenomenon are found in the observations and experiments by benjamin franklin in the field of electricity. formerly people did not have the first idea about fire and once, quite by chance, they noticed that as a result of friction of two hard materials some sparks appeared. thus, this phenomenon, as something already known and familiar, helped the scientists explain that energy occurred in certain particles (electrons and protons) and hence in larger bodies, since they contain these. later this idea helped to explain why and how lightning (flash in the sky produced by natural electricity passing between clouds or from clouds to the ground) strikes. philosophers regard the pedagogical aspect important for the cognitive status of theories, means of explanations, interpretations and, therefore, important for science itself (taylor, maclaury 1995). thus, it is natural to believe that if metaphor explains the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar, then it can be very useful for a student, let alone for a theorist, as it develops the learners’ ability to gain a deep insight. the use of metaphor in the teaching process is very important, of course, but it must be done very carefully. the following examples help us to demonstrate how metaphor can influence the teaching process making the introduction of the new material clearer, brighter and more interesting for the learners. guiding the lesson on the themes of reading and listening, writing and speaking, teachers often conclude that most of the students don’t understand the true nature of those undertakings, because they consider reading and listening to be passive activities. meanwhile, they are believed to be as active as writing and speaking. how can these difficulties be overcome? some methodologists think that reading and listening are passive as compared with writing and speaking, but many others consider both of them to be active undertakings (adleran 1975). it is believed that the writer or speaker must put out some effort, but no work needs to be done by the reader or listener. reading and listening manifest a process of receiving information from someone who is actively engaged in giving or sending it. it is wrong to suppose that receiving information is like receiving a blow or a judgment from court. on the contrary, the reader or listener is much more like a catcher in a game of baseball. catching the ball is just as much an activity as pitching or hitting it. the pitcher is the sender in the sense that his activity initiates the motion of the ball. the catcher is the receiver in the sense that his activity terminates it. both are active, though the activities are different. nothing is passive here but the ball. it is the inert thing that is put into motion and stops, whereas the players are active, moving to hit or catch. armenian folia anglistika methodology 120 the same process takes place while writing and reading. the thing that is written and read, like the ball, is the passive object common to the two activities that begin and terminate the process. thus, if we tell the students that the relation of the pitcher and the catcher in this example is the same as that of a writer and a reader, they will understand the phenomenon much better because such kind of explanation will help the learners acquire the unknown in terms of the known. the educational value of metaphor in the above mentioned example is quite obvious. the example below proves the same. according to their reading skills readers can be good, average and poor. if anybody wants to find out exactly how well he reads and how much improvement he achieves as he goes along, he must make careful measurements. reading is a very complex mental process involving many different skills two of which: speed and comprehension, are fundamental. measuring the development in reading is comparable to measuring a child’s physical growth. if we want to know how fast our child is growing, we periodically weigh and measure his weight. then we make comparisons in terms of exact units: pounds and inches. we must do the same sort of thing in evaluating the development of our reading. thus, the student will understand that physical growth is judged in terms of height and weight and teachers can explain to them the facts on the basis of known ones. hence, development in reading can be judged in terms of progress in two basic skills: speed and comprehension. the educational aspect of metaphor is well expressed in the following example as well. guiding the lesson and trying to help students to develop their writing skills, we tell them that any piece of writing has to be planned. the students don’t usually know how to make a plan. thus we tell them, “think of a week-end trip which you can’t just blindly go on ahead on saturday morning not knowing what’s going to happen. instead, during the week, you make plans. you make up your mind when you want to start and when you want to be back; you decide where you want to spend saturday night and what you want to do on saturday morning; you get yourself a map and find out which route to take; you spot a place to eat lunch and another to eat dinner; and you work out a different route to go back on sunday afternoon and evening. when you are through, you have a plan. you know where to start, where to go first, second, and third, and where to end.” writing works the same way. the thing to do is to plan ahead, to map beforehand what word-trip you are going to take. know your starting point and know your next way stations, and be quite sure you know where you’re going to land at the end. your plan is in words and sentences you have in your mind and that plan generally consists of the start, the main in between stops, and the end. the attempts to use metaphorical approach as a method are employed in language teaching process and many english teachers state that the results of their experiments are quite effective. from the cognitive linguistic view, metaphor can be defined as understanding one conceptual domain in terms of another one. different metaphorical models emerged on the basis of scientific discoveries and new “understanding” has appeared in terms of these new conceptions of the world. examples of the above mentioned can be observed when we talk and think about life in terms of journeys (he is without direction in his life. i’m at the crossroads in my life. she’s gone through a lot in life.); about arguments in terms of war (he attacked every weak point in my armenian folia anglistikamethodology 121 argument. his criticisms were right on target. i have never won an argument with him.); about theories in terms of buildings (is that the foundation for your theory? the theory needs more support. so far we have put together only the framework of the theory.) and many others. a convenient short-hand way of capturing this view of metaphor is the following: conceptual domain (a) is conceptual domain (b), which is what is called conceptual metaphor (kövecses 2002). a conceptual metaphor consists of two conceptual domains, in which one domain is understood in terms of another. thus, for example, we have coherently organized knowledge about theories that we rely on in understanding buildings. so we need to distinguish conceptual metaphor from metaphorical linguistic expressions that come from language or terminology of the more concrete conceptual domain (i.e., domain b). thus, the above mentioned expressions that have to do with life, argument, theories and that come from the domain of journey (for life), war (for argument), buildings (for theories) are linguistic metaphorical expressions, whereas conceptual metaphors that they display are: life is a journey; argument is war; theories are buildings. the two domains that participate in creating a conceptual metaphor have special names. the conceptual domain from which we draw metaphorical expressions to understand another conceptual domain is called source domain, while the conceptual domain that is understood this way is the target domain (kövecses 2002). thus, life, arguments, theories are target domains, while journeys, wars, buildings are source domains. the target domain is the domain that we try to understand through the use of the source domain. in conclusion, in the present article an attempt was made not only to focus the readers’ attention on the cognitive function of metaphor, but also to show that the use of metaphors, metaphorical expressions can serve as a certain method in the language teaching process. references: 1. gibbs, r. and steen, g. (1992) metaphor in cognitive linguistics. amsterdam: john benjamins. 2. taylor, j.r. and maclaury, r.e. (1995) language and the cognitive construal of the world. berlin: gruyter. 3. adleran, m.j. (1975) how to read a book. new york: simon and schuster, inc. 4. kövecses, z. (2002) metaphor. oxford: oxford university press. öáë³μ»ñáõãû³ý ïçñ³éáõùá áñå»ë ¹³ë³í³ý¹ù³ý ù»ãá¹ ¶ñ³ï³ýáõãû³ý ù»ç ÷áë³μ» ñáõãûáõýá ñ³×³ë ïçñ³éíáõù ¿ áñå»ë á׳ ï³ý ñý³ñª áýã»ñóáõç íñ³ ·»õ³·çï³ï³ý ý»ñ·áñíáõãûáõý áõý»ý³éáõ ýå³ï³ïáí: ²û¹áõñ³ý¹»ñó, ç ßýáññçí çñ ñçùùáõù áýï³í ׳ý³ãáõ³ï³ý ·áñí³éáõûãç, ÷áë³μ» ñáõãûáõýá ï³ñáõ ¿ ñ³çáõáõãû³ùμ ïçñ³éí»é 黽íç áõëáõóù³ý åñáó»ëáõùª ëáíáñáõç/áõëáõó³ýáõç ëï»õí³·áñí³ï³ý ùçïùá ½³ñ·³óý»éáõ ¨ 黽íç ¹³ë³í³ý¹ù³ý ³ñ¹ûáõý³í»ïáõãûáõýá μ³ñóñ³óý»éáõ ýå³ï³ïáí: armenian folia anglistika methodology 122 maket 2011:layout 1.qxd equivalence in translation ali reza ghanooni yerevan state university t he prevalent concept in the 1950s for most translation theory is equivalence.translating is generally seen as a process of communicating the foreign text by establishing a relationship of identity or analogy with it. equivalence can be said to be the central issue in translation although its definition, relevance, and applicability within the field of translation theory have caused heated controversy, and many different theories of the concept of equivalence have been elaborated within this field in the past fifty years. approaches to the question of equivalence differ radically. theorists as catford (1965), nida & taber (1969) and koller (1995), define translation in terms of equivalence relations, while others, such as snell-hornby (1988) reject the theoretical notion of equivalence, holding that it is either irrelevant or damaging to translation studies. however, baker (1992) adopts a middle course, using this notion for the sake of convenience because most translators are used to it rather than because it has any theoretical status. those in favor of equivalence-based theories of translation define equivalence as the relationship between a source-text and a target text that allows the tt to be deemed as a translation of the st in the first place. theorists who maintain that translation is contingent upon equivalence, have attempted to develop typologies of equivalence, either focusing on the rank (word, sentence, text) at which level equivalence is said to obtain, or on the type of meaning (denotative, connotative, pragmatic, etc.) (baker 1997). in this article the viewpoints of translation scholars as regards “equivalence” will be taken into account. these theorists have studied equivalence in relation to translation process, using different approaches. roman jackobson (1959) is a figure who theorizes about equivalence. his study of equivalence gave new impetus to the theoretical analysis of translation since he introduced the notion of “equivalence in difference”. on the basis of his semiotic approach to language and his aphorism “there is no signatum without signum” (1959:232), he suggests three kinds of translation: • intralingual (within one language, i.e. rewording or paraphrasing) • interlingual (between two languages or translation proper) • intersemiotic (between sign systems or transmutation) he goes on to examine the key issues of translation, notably, linguistic meaning and equivalence. he considers the problem of equivalence in meaning between words in different languages. according to him (1959:114), there is no full equivalence between code-units. in his description, interlingual translation involves substituting messages in one language not for separate code-units but for entire messages in some other language. the translation involves two equivalent messages in two different codes. an example he gives is that of cheese in english, which is not identical to the russian word syr, since the russian code-unit does not include the concept of cottage cheese, therefore, the best way is to expand the word in the tl. he acknowledges that “whenever there is deficienarmenian folia anglistika translation studies 116 cy, terminology may be qualified and amplified by loanwords or loan-translations, neologisms or semantic shifts, and finally, by circumlocutions”. it can be concluded that jakobson’s theory is essentially based on his semiotic approach to translation according to which the translator has to recode the st message first and then she/he has to transmit it into an equivalent message for the tc. vinay and darbelnet (2000:83-93, quoted in munday, 2001) identify two translation strategies, “direct translation and oblique translation”. borrowing, calque and literal translation procedures are the procedures used for direct translation in cases where the items pose no real problem and can be easily relayed. however, there are cases in which literal translation is not possible and, for this reason, the translator should avail himself of “oblique translation”. it includes “transposition, modulation, equivalence and adaptation”. vinay and darbelnet view equivalence-oriented translation as a procedure which “replicates the same situation as in the original, whilst using completely different wording” (ibid.:90). they also suggest that if this procedure is applied during the translation process, it can maintain the stylistic impact of the sl text in the tl text. according to them, equivalence is therefore the ideal method when the translator has to deal with proverbs, idioms, clichés, nominal or adjectival phrases and the onomatopoeia of animal sounds. catford’s approach to translation equivalence clearly differs from that adopted by nida: catford had a preference for a more linguistic-based approach to translation and this approach is based on the ideas put forward by firth and halliday. the latter treat language as communication that operates functionally in context and on a range of different levels (e.g. phonology, graphology, lexis, grammar) and ranks (sentence, clause, group, word, morpheme). catford proposed very broad types of translation in terms of three criteria: 1. the extent of translation (full translation vs partial translation); 2. the grammatical rank at which the translation equivalence is established (rank-bound translation vs. unbounded translation); 3. the levels of language involved in translation (total translation vs. restricted translation). in this article the second type of translation will be referred to, since it concerns the concept of equivalence. we will then move on to analyze the notion of translation shifts, as elaborated by catford which are based on the distinction between formal correspondence and textual equivalence. in rank-bound translation an equivalent is sought in the tl for each word, or for each morpheme encountered in the st. in unbounded translation equivalences are not tied to a particular rank, and we may additionally find equivalences at the levels of the sentence, the clause etc. catford makes a distinction between “formal correspondence” and “textual equivalence”. in this dichotomy the former is “any tl category (unit, class, element of structure, etc.) which can be said to occupy the same place in the economy of the tl as the given sl category occupies in the sl” (catford 1965:27). the latter is “any text or portion of text which is observed on a particular occasion to be the equivalent of a given sl text or portion of text”. translation theorists who privilege equivalence must inevitably come to terms with armenian folia anglistikatranslation studies 117 the existence of “shifts” between foreign and translated texts. catford defines them as “departures from formal correspondence in the process of going from the sl to the tl” (ibid.:73). catford argues that there are two main types of translation shifts, namely level shifts, where the sl item at one linguistic level (e.g. grammar) has a tl equivalent at a different level (e.g. lexis), and category shifts which are divided into four types: structure-shifts, which involve a grammatical change between the structure of the st and that of the tt; class-shifts, when a sl item is translated with a tl item which belongs to a different grammatical class, i.e. a verb may be translated with a noun; unit-shifts, which involve changes in rank; intra-system shifts, which occur when “sl and tl possess systems which approximately correspond formally as to their constitution, but when translation involves selection of a non-corresponding term in the tl system” (ibid.:80). for instance, when the sl singular becomes a tl plural. finally, catford comes to the conclusion that “translation equivalence does not entirely match formal correspondence”. however, catford was criticised for his linguistic theory of translation. the translation process cannot simply be reduced to a linguistic exercise, as claimed by catford, for instance, since there are also other factors, such as textual, cultural and situational aspects which should be taken into consideration when translating. in other words, snell-hornby (1988) does not believe that linguistics is the only discipline which enables people to carry out a translation, since translating involves different cultures and different situations at the same time and they do not always match in the languages under question. as might be imagined, scholars working in non-linguistic translation studies have been critical of the notion of equivalence. bassnett (1980:25) summarises the major problems as she sees it: “translation involves far more than replacement of lexical and grammatical items between languages. once the translator moves away from close linguistic equivalence, the problems of determining the exact nature of the level of equivalence aimed for begin to emerge”. for nida (1964a:159), there are two types of equivalence: “formal equivalence” and “dynamic equivalence”. the former focuses attention on the message itself, in both form and content. one is concerned that the message in the receptor language should match as closely as possible the different elements in the source language. it is oriented towards the st structure. typical of this kind of translation is “gloss translation”, with profuse footnotes, allowing the reader to gain close access to the language and customs of the source culture. on the other hand, “dynamic equivalence” is based on “the principle of equivalent effect”, where the relationship between receptor and message should be the same as that which existed between the original receptors and the message. they argue that “frequently, the form of the original text is changed; but as long as the change follows the rules of back transformation in the armenian folia anglistika translation studies 118 source language, of contextual consistency in the transfer, and of transformation in the receptor language, the message is preserved and the translation is faithful” (nida and taber 1969:200). for nida, the success of the translation depends on achieving equivalent response with four requirements: making sense, conveying the spirit and manner of the original, having a natural and easy form and producing similar response. in order to answer the question “what exactly has to be equivalent”, koller (1979a:186) describes five types of equivalence: 1. denotative equivalence: the sl and tl words refer to the same thing in the real world. he calls it “content invariance”. 2. connotative equivalence: the sl and tl words trigger the same or similar associations in the minds of the native speakers of the two languages. it is related to the lexical choices, especially between near synonyms. koller sees this as “stylistic equivalence”. 3. text-normative equivalence: this is pertinent with text-types, with different kinds of texts behaving in different ways. this is closely linked to work by catharina reiss who classifies the text as informative, expressive and operative. 4pragmatic equivalence: this type is oriented towards the receptor language reader, called “communicative equivalence”. this is nida’s dynamic equivalence. 5. formal equivalence: this is related to the form and the aesthetics of the text, including the stylistic features of the st. however, baker (1992) puts together the linguistic and the communicative approach. she puts a distinction between equivalence in translation that can appear at word level and above word level. baker acknowledges that in the bottom-up approach to translation equivalence at word level is the first element to be taken into consideration by the translator. in fact, when the translator starts analyzing the st she/he looks at the words as single units in order to find a direct “equivalent” term in the tl. baker gives a definition of the term word, since it should be remembered that a single word can sometimes be assigned different meanings in different languages and might be regarded as being a more complex unit or morpheme. this means that the translator should pay attention to a number of factors when considering a single word, such as number, gender and tense (ibid.:11-12). when referring to the diversity of grammatical categories across languages, she speaks about grammatical equivalence. she states that grammatical rules may vary across languages and this may pose some problems in terms of finding a direct correspondence in the tl. in fact, she claims that different grammatical structures in the sl and tl may cause remarkable changes in the way the information or message is carried across. these changes may induce the translator either to add or to omit information in the tt because of the lack of particular grammatical devices in the tl itself. amongst these grammatical devices which might cause problems in translation, baker focuses on number, tense and aspect, voice, person and gender. textual equivalence is referred to when discussing the equivalence between a sl text and a tl text in terms of information and cohesion. texture is a very important feature armenian folia anglistikatranslation studies 119 in translation since it provides useful guidelines for the comprehension and analysis of the st which can help the translator in his or her attempt to produce a cohesive and coherent text for the tc audience in a specific context. it is up to the translator to decide whether or not to maintain the cohesive ties as well as the coherence of the sl text. his or her decision will be guided by three main factors, that is, the target audience, the purpose of the translation and the text type. pragmatic equivalence is referred to in connection with implicatures and strategies of avoidance during the translation process. implicature is information which is not said explicitly but is implied. therefore, the translator needs to work out implied meanings in translation in order to get the st message across. the role of the translator is to recreate the author’s intention in another culture in such a way that enables the tc reader to understand it clearly. to sum up, the concept of equivalence is very vague, encompassing diverse points of view, not enjoying a unique base to place the translation on. for this reason, this concept has lost color and popularity. in general, these theories can be divided into three categories. a group of translation scholars are in favour of a linguistic approach to translation, considering translation as merely a matter of linguistics. however, the translator is also dealing with two different cultures at the same time. this particular aspect seems to have been taken into consideration by another group of theorists who regard translation equivalence as being essentially a transfer of the message and a pragmatic/functionally oriented approach to translation. finally, there are other translation scholars who seem to stand in the middle, such as baker for instance, who claims that equivalence is used “for the sake of convenience − because most translators are used to it rather than because it has any theoretical status”. references: 1. baker, m. (1992) in other words: a coursebook on translation. london: routledge. 2. baker, m. (1997) the routelege encyclopedia of translation studies. london and new york: routlege. 3. bassnett, s. (1980) translation studies. london and new york: routledge. 4. catford, j.c. (1965) a linguistic theory of translation: an essay on applied linguistics. london: oxford university press. 5. jakobson, r. (1959) on linguistic aspects of translation. // on translation. / ed. by r.a. brower. cambridge. ma: harvard university press. 6. koller, w. (1979a) einführung in die übersetyungswissenschaft. heidelbergwiesbaden: quelle und mezer, the english translation of the chapter appears in a. chesterman (ed.) (1989). 7. nida, e. (1964) towards a science of translating. leiden: e. j. brill. 8. nida, e. and taber, c.r (1969/1982) the theory and practice of translation. leiden: e. j. brill. armenian folia anglistika translation studies 120 9. snell-hornby, m. (1988) translation studies: an integrated approach. amsterdam: benjamins. 10. vinay, j.p. and darbelnet, j. (1995) comparative stylistics of french and english: a methodology for translation. / tr. by j.c. sager and m.j. hamel. amsterdam / philadelphia: john benjamins. â³ñ·ù³ýáõãû³ý ñ³ù³ñå»ùáõãûáõýá êáõûý ñá¹í³íç ñ»õçý³ïá ³ý¹ñ³¹³éýáõù ¿ ã³ñ·ù³ýáõãû³ý` μý³·ñçý ñ³ù³ñå»ù éçý»éáõ ï»ëáõãû³ýá: ð»õçý³ïç ñ³í³ëïù³ùμ, ã³ñ·ù³ý³μ³ ýáõãû³ý ù»ç ã³ñ·ù³ýáõãû³ý ñ³ù³ñå»ùáõãû³ý ëý¹çñá ùýý³ñïí»é ¿ ý³ëáñ¹ ¹³ñç »ñïñáñ¹ ï»ë»ñçý, ¨ μ³½ù³ãçí μ³ý³í»×» ñç ¨ ï³ñ³ï³ñíáõãûáõýý»ñç ³éçã ¿ ¹³ñó»é: øýý³ñï»éáí ·áûáõãûáõý áõý»óáõ çñ³ñ³ù»ñå ï»ë³ï»ïý»ñá` ñá¹í³í³·çñá ùýý³¹³ ï³μ³ñ ¿ ùáï»ýáõù ¹ñ³ýóçó ûáõñ³ù³ýãûáõñçý ¨ ñëï³ï»óýáõù çñ áõñáõûý ùáï»óáõùá ùýý³ñïíáõ ñ³ñóçý: armenian folia anglistikatranslation studies 121 7 maket 2010 nor_n:layout 1.qxd visualization of death in armenian culture the article capitalizes on the nature of certain socio-logical and cognitive concepts as death and memory. death is a phase of transition involving loss and adjustment and the aim of the article is to examine the ways in which memory comes into play as an important aspect of the process of dying, mourning and grief. the research work is comprised of four logical parts. in the first section of the paper our point of departure is an extended discussion of memory making. material culture mediates our relationship with death and the dead; objects, texts, images and practices as well as places and spaces call to mind or are made to remind us of the deaths of others and of our own mortality. in the second part of the work special emphasis is laid on the analysis of the corpse as memory “object”. we begin by considering the significance of the visual in the shaping of memory and then move on to the analysis of the linkage of death and memory through the body and its imaging. examining the visual aspects of memory in this context, we acknowledge the complex relations between immediate visual experience in lived social spaces, and the production of visual representations, which link the tangible present to other (past and future), remembered or imagined bodies, times and spaces. we consider the body itself as something which is devoid of living form but can be reanimated as a material of memory through death. section three deals with photographic images. in the last part writings which are dedicated to the public memories of “past lives” are studied. memory making “what is memory for?” the easiest and spontaneously given answer to this question is that “memory is for storing information about the past”, “memory helps us preserve past events”, (boyard, wertshch 2009:3). human memory is fragile and finite. we mentally store the events of life as memories. however, memories are easily forgotten, and the retrieval of memories through the acts of recall is inexact and faulty. that is why, human societies have created a series of devices for storing memory in extrabodily form. these devices include marble funerary monuments and stone tablets, and, at a later stage, drawings, photographs, phonographs, videos and other recording technologies. each of these offers an increasing capacity for the storage of memory. first of all we would like to elucidate the relationship between the conceptions of memory and materiality of the social domains. here we trace connections between the crises of death and the formation of memory, the interplay of loss and recovery, the ways armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 176 hayk galstyan in which memories operate to render present that which is absent, we find concepts of death and memory interwoven intimately. it is at the time of death that embodied persons disappear from view; and, consequently, their personal relationships with others come under threat. indeed, in contemporary contexts, the threat of death is very much bound up with the possibility of oblivion. as it is, individuals or certain groups of people may believe that there is no independent existence after death; they may also face the possibility of social erasure and the annihilation of identities that they have lived out. in some cases effigies are used as a factual material which represents the past life of the deceased and creates their future social reputation. as the natural body decays, the ritualized monumental body prevents the social body from being overwhelmed by a similar fate. the monumental body is to be set up at the place of burial to mark its site and is designed to stand forever as a replacement for the social body. as a subsidiary function, it also acts as a reminder of the living form of the natural body (llewellyn, 1991:101). there is no doubt that while the effigy masks the decaying natural body which will inevitably disappear, it also creates a stable social body that is assured continuity. hence, the material, design, symbolic features, inscriptions and physical location of monuments – all these work to reinforce this continuity. let us take, for example, the pagodas in the shaolin temple, where abbots of the temple were buried since the tang dynasty (618 907 ad). nearly 250 stone and brick pagodas of various sizes and shapes, with carvings and inscriptions have been found. it should be noted here that the height as well as the size of the monument (in relation to other monuments) is also taken as an indication of social status. the higher the pagoda, the higher the rank of the departed was. the same traditions can be traced in armenian culture in the construction of tombs, the latter serving as a means of retaining the social presence of the dead person with the present. the function of tombs is commemoration of persons who do not exist materially and, at the same time, visual demonstration of the social and political ranks of the deceased. for people of higher rank – the ruling or intellectual elite, the rich, etc. – tombs convey a sense of permanence, provide a continuity of authority and social position. that is why the tombs of these persons are made of precious material, with special designs and structures. on the other hand, the graves of wretched and lonely people are very often inconspicuous. thus we can agree with the statement that ‘‘if memory and memories are grasped through sets of associations with material structures and objects, this is suggestive of broader social and cultural processes that link persons or subjects with material domains. the materials of memory, whether in the form of texts, visual images, objects or bodies, hinge upon and acquire their significance through conceptual linkages between personhood and the material world. if personhood and social identity are fashioned through the body and the material objects with which this body is associated, then it is through that body and these objects (either directly or via associations with further bodies and objects) that the deceased are kept within memory” (hallam, hockey 2001:36). armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 177 the corpse as memory “object” the capacity of the corpse to trigger and shape the memories of the living depends upon the ways in which death is conceptualized – continuity, rebirth, or the absolute end of life. in armenian culture, for instance, the prevailing christian notion about death is the release of the spiritual from the material body. this interpretation enables the members of the community to treat the corpse as a material thing which fades away in contrast to the continuity of the spirit which lives on. the corpse is buried, while the social presence of the body can be maintained via a stone or a marble funerary monument. it is important to point out that armenians made huge cross-stones for this purpose. the latter were carved after the armenians had adopted christianity in 301, thus becoming the first christian nation in the world. cross-stones were placed as gravestones in holy places, in graveyards, near the roads and sometimes on hills and cliffs. ancient armenian graveyards are rich in these magnificent creations of human mind and skill. the medieval cemetery in noratus village is a vivid example of visual and verbal commemoration of the dead: 900 cross-stones, some of which are about 1.5 m tall. the use of cross-stones as well as sculptures as a means of representing the earthly life of the deceased and creating their future social reputation continued in the modern period. very often the human body sculpted posthumously indicates an ongoing relationship with the dead. while the corpse is allowed to recede and return to dust after death, the stone or marble monument marks a death and, simultaneously, refers back to a “life”. thus, when certain visual signs of social class affiliation and status are deployed, for example, by displaying the deceased in sculptured clothing and jewellery, the personal image of the deceased is retained partially. funerary monuments of this type rest upon a precarious boundary somewhere between the status of a corpse and a socially “living” body. not only cross-stones or sculptures but also memorial drinking fountains are used for this purpose in armenia. these fountains, which are usually placed in streets, yards, parks and other public places, have armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 178 various inscriptions and the names of the deceased on them. their fundamental role is to create and sustain temporal relationships between the living and the dead. this drinking fountain made of granite has the form of a cut tree with deep roots symbolyzing the social position of the deceased. the head of the family passed away but the roots are deep and the departed will not be forgotten and will live forever in the hearts of his friends and relatives. the form of the tree reinforces the capacity of the drinking fountain to preseve social ties with the dead – here the significance of close family relations is displayed. the social status of the dead is revealed through the visibility, the forms and media of the material markers. people probably tend to salvage and redeploy memory directly because after death the material body is perceived as something to be lost or decayed. our investigation has revealed that in armenian culture hair has been the most important form of materialized memory. for example, in many villages elderly women keeping their departed mothers’ or daughters’ hair can be found. hair is thus positioned as a visual medium infused with special powers of recall, holding in view both particle of deceased persons and spaces dedicated to memory. not only hair but also combs, hairpins, hairgrips, hair slides and many other personal items are used to connect the body of the deceased with that of the living. the physical remains of the dead can be regarded not only as a material reminder of the embodied, living person, but as a medium through which the dead might communicate directly with the living. human material that was regarded as “dead” while the person was living, is thus transformed into a “living” substance at death in the sense that it is reanimated as a possession capable of sustaining the deceased in close proximity to the bereaved (kwint 1999:9). the physical durability of hair allows it to contrast with the unstable fleshy body. the quality of endurance and the specificity of reference to a particular individual renders hair especially appropriate as a form of memory. thus we “keep” and “preserve” our memories almost as though they are objects in a personal museum (hallam, hockey 2001:141). we choose when to disclose or display our memories to others, either in the form of sculptures, different objects or photographs. body, death and memory in photographs the photograph has the capacity to preserve or maintain as living periods of time which have passed and people who have died: “to enshrine identity, creating a memorial which pleads for deathlessness and issues a challenge to time – on behalf of someone” (warner 1995:41). in this context photographs establish particular relations with the body – they do not comprise human flesh as in the case of relics, but they do rely upon physical proximity at the time the photograph was taken. it is this closeness, contact, or the shared physical space of camera and person that gives the photograph the power to evoke sensations of intimacy with the departed. photographs are created with a view to the future – they are a means to preserve, in the form of a “transparent” image, the present moment for later contemplation (edwards armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 179 1999:228). hence the material dimensions of photographs, including their styles of display and positioning in lived environments, inflect the ways in which they act as a form of memory making. we have observed that in armenian culture the association of the memorial stone with the departed body is often consolidated with the use of photographs. the photographs tend to be fashioned as framed portraits that are attached to the headstones. however, new technologies have opened up a wide range of designs and nowadays we can find the transfer of photographs directly to the stone. in this case the material of the stone is effectively fused with the living bodily trace of the departed, thus establishing the gravestone as a distinctive physical presence that “lives”. the healthy, active and often happy-looking person is brought into the present, obscuring the painful phases of dying and death. besides photographs, memorial inscriptions rendered in stone may also become ways of creating a sense of presence and unbroken immediacy to the dead. writing after death writings which appear on tombs (probably beginning with the 14th c. bc in egypt) are meant to be read by someone. writing or the construction of a text that outlives the dying, was recognized as a precarious process in that all aspects of the material world were open to decay (hallam, hockey 2001:168). the inscription of words is often very important in establishing relationships between the memory object (e.g. a gravestone) and the subject to be remembered. the text establishes a social and emotional continuum, the prospect of reunion with the deceased and the anticipation of return. classically, a gravestone includes some basic information about the deceased, such as his or her name, date and place of birth, and date and place of death. in armenia the inscribed name is a primary marker of individual personality; it is a means of relating to persons after their death. mainly the name and surname as well as the dates of birth and death of the deceased can be found on an armenian gravestone. however, sometimes we can find brief messages engraved on gravestones, including quotes from religious texts, lines from poems, or verses composed especially for the deceased. the latter generally do not have any literary value. for example, the inscription on one of the tombs reads: armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 180 passer-by bend your proud head here rests a handful of space. the inscriptions often give clues as to how the person died. our local graveyard has facts such as “tragically killed in a road accident” or “an innocent victim of march 1, 2008”, and so on. the latter refers to the developments following the 2008 presidential elections in armenia, when 8 people died and 200 were injured during the tragic events of march 1. in most cases the memorial texts indicate some sense of continuity beyond death, that the deceased and the bereaved will meet again, or simply that life goes on or the departed will “live” in our memories, etc. for example, an inscription on a gravestone reads: who says i shall die that’s not true, i do not believe my roots are deep, my dreams are clear i shall live forever! it is worth mentioning here that citing the deceased seems to invoke her or his voice and in this way maintain spiritual and social relationships between the living and the dead. as mentioned above, memorial inscriptions can also be found on cross-stones and drinking fountains. the latter are of particular interest as the words on the fountains are often addressed to the citizens, to someone and to nobody at the same time, to a potential reader. when a person slakes his/her thirst by drinking cold water from the memorial drinking fountain, he/she stands for a while, reads the inscriptions and the name of the departed and says “oghormi kez”, which means “may you rest in peace”. in this respect the past presence and the present absence are condensed into an object which is located spatially, a memorial drinking fountain. its materiality feeds memory and the survivors form a sense of the person who is absent. the discussion of materials presented comes to prove that memories emerge and operate within wider social contexts. we have focused on materials of memory that are linked to the bodies of the dead and the living in particular ways – as fragments of the body or as photographic traces which are constituted as “living”. the armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 181 writings after death also tend to connect the bodies of the dying, the dead and the bereaved. we have come to the conclusion that textual forms of memory making are significant aspects of material cultures associated with the process of dying and retaining the social lives of the dead. thus having explored the links between death and memory we can assert that memory making which has material dimensions does not only mark death but also signifies social and cultural processes through which lives are remembered and futures are imagined. notes: 1. the modern is coming from the indian , a tomb-like structure where sacred relics could be kept safe and venerated. the architectural structure of the stupa has spread across asia, taking on many diverse forms as details specific to different regions are incorporated into the overall design. 2. a typical cross-stone (khachkar) is made out of slate of volcanic basalt or tuff. in the center of the cross stone is the symbol of christ’s crucifixion, which is usually resting on the symbol of the sun, or of the wheel of eternity. the cross itself and its surroundings is usually covered by fine patterns, or images of grapes and leaves. it is very typical of armenian cross-stones to have branches of date-palm symbolizing christ’s glorious resurrection. 3. we also need to note that memorial drinking fountains are often located in places where the inhabitants are familiar with the deceased, e.g. in the yards of the block of flats or in the parks of the districts where the departed lived. references: 1. boyard, p.,wertshch, j. v. (2009) memory in mind and culture. cambridge: cambridge university press. 2. edwards, e. (1999) photographs as objects of memory. // material memories: design and evocation. / ed. by m. kwint, c. breward and j. aynsley. oxford: berg, 221-237. 3. hallam, e., hockey j., (2001) death, memory and material culture. oxford: berg 4. kwint, m. (1999) introduction: the physical past. // material memories: design and evocation. / ed. by m. kwint, c. breward and j. aynsley. oxford: berg, 1-16. 5. llewellyn, n. (1991) the art of death: visual culture in the english death ritual, c. 1500 1800. london: reaktion books ltd. 6. warner, m. (1995) the unbearable likeness of being. tate: the art magazine, issue 6, summer, 40-47. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 182 armenian folia anglistikalinguistics ø³ñí³ý å³ïï»ñ³íáñáõùá ñ³ûï³ï³ý ùß³ïáõûãáõù êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù ùýýáõãû³ý ¿ ³éýíáõù ù³ñí³ý, ñçßáõáõãû³ý ¨ ýûáõã³ï³ýç ï³åá ñ³ûï³ï³ý ùß³ïáõûãáõù: ø³ñ³ó³í ù³ñ¹áõ å³ïï»ñá ï³ñáõ ¿ í»ñ³ï»ý¹³ ý³ý³é ýñ³ ù³ñçó ñ»ïá` ¹³éý³éáí ýûáõã³ï³ý ñçßáõáõãûáõý: ²û¹ ñçßáõáõãûáõýá ëáíáñ³μ³ñ å³ñå³ýíáõù ¿ ï»ý¹³ ýç ù³ñ¹áõ μý³ï³ý ù³ñùçýá ÷áë³ñçýáõ ³ñó³ýý»ñç, ·»ñ»½ù³ý³ù³ñ»ñç, ë³ãù³ñ»ñç ùççáóáí: ðá¹í³íáõù ³ý¹ñ³¹³ñó ¿ ³ñíáõù ý³¨ éáõë³ýï³ñý»ñç ñ³ë³ñ³ï³ï³ý çù³ëï³íáñù³ýá, çýãå»ë ý³¨ ùýýáõãû³ý »ý ³éýíáõù ·»ñ»½ù³ý³ù³ñ»ñç íñ³ ³ñí³í ·ñ³íáñ ëáëùç ýùáõßý»ñ, áñáýó ýå³ï³ïý ¿ 黽íç ùççáóáí ñ³ë³ñ³ï³ï³ý ï³å ëï»õí»é ïû³ýùçó ñ»é³ó³í ³ýóç ¨ ñ³ë³ñ³ïáõãû³ý ùçç¨: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 183 historyitem_v1 nup create a new document trim unused space from sheets: yes allow pages to be scaled: no margins: left 0.00, top 11.34, right 0.00, bottom 2.83 points horizontal spacing (points): 0 vertical spacing (points): 0 add frames around each page: no sheet size: 200.000 x 200.000 inches / 5080.0 x 5080.0 mm sheet orientation: wide layout: rows 1 down, columns 1 across align: top left 2.8346 10.0000 20.0000 0 corners 0.3000 tofit 1 1 0.7000 0 0 1 0.0000 1 d:20101120145854 14400.0000 maximum blank 14400.0000 wide 316 107 0.0000 tl 0 currentavdoc 11.3386 1 2 1 0 0 qite_quiteimposing2 quite imposing 2.9a quite imposing 2 1 1 historylist_v1 qi2base maket_n_verjin.qxp literature and medicine: asperger syndrome in mark haddon’s novel “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time” there are various meanings one can assign toliterature. one of them is dealing with truth. but truth is the most difficult thing to deal with, simply because we do not know what ultimate truth and ultimate reality are. we can only see the top of truth’s iceberg which is above the water, but its main bulk is hidden underneath. we can only focus on one or just a few of its aspects at a time, although it simultaneously contains all aspects there are. still, we have our guesses at truth all the time. we analyze and synthesize, use reason and intuition, and come a little bit closer to the truth, or a little bit further away from it. but we actually never get to the heart of it, because then there would be no mystery of human existence, and without this mystery the world as we know it would not exist. there would only be bliss. knowing more is thus the essential mission of our lives, and literature is one of the most powerful spurs in this mission, for it treasures an abundance of impulses of coming closer to the truth. the only thing is to be able to recognize them, to find the way to pick them up, and most certainly one of the ways for this is never to stop building bridges between literature and all other sides of human life literature contains within its mighty lore. human brain is normally lacking the ability to comprehend the simultaneous multifaceted quality of truth, but it is probably evolving in this direction. one of the ways of approximation to deeper truth is certainly the analysis of single elements and aspects. however, analyses are just compromises with our restricted mental potentials, for it is much easier for us to research one thing a time, unencumbered with all corresponding relations it contains. so, the necessary step to be taken after analysis is to get the achieved results in touch with as many aspects of the phenomenon in question as possible. this paper is a very humble attempt hinting at the relationship between literature and medicine, and although it is simply impossible to be equally well versed in various sides of reality, such bridge-building approach at least points to the direction where literature can help us understand our lives a little bit better, which is, probably, one of its great goals. being healthy has always been one of our main preoccupations. being ill, on the other side, is a very hard experience, although different people experience it in different ways. 226 armenian folia anglistika literature janko andrijaseviæ however, one of the most difficult things is to understand those who suffer from certain illnesses which we have never had. how to be emphatic and see the world from the perspective of another body with certain dysfunctions alien to us? can detailed scientific descriptions and medical records make us feel what certain patents feel? or can literary accounts provide us with all necessary information about an illness? and which of the two is more important? this paper will try to deal with the above question, taking as the example the novel the curious incident of the dog in the night-time, written by mark haddon. mark haddon is a british author who wrote a lot for children, and his first novel the curious incident was published both for young adults and as a literary novel, although the writer says that it is “definitely for adults” (weich 2003). the novel won the whitbread book of the year 2004. it is a story of a fifteen-year-old boy christopher boone who suffers from a mental disability. the name of his syndrome is never mentioned in the book, although it is most likely that he has a kind of autism called asperger syndrome. christopher finds a dead dog in his neighbour’s garden, and since he is a fan of sherlock holmes and mystery novels, he sets off to find out who the murderer is, which he eventually accomplishes. the quest for the criminal gradually starts to involve the story of christopher’s parents, so the dog is not the main point in the end, when all the pieces of the puzzle fall into their place. it is both an outer and an inner adventure in which we get to know how a disordered mind functions, and in which we follow the minds of those who are officially mentally sane. haddon had worked with children with disabilities for a while, which can be perceived in the book, because he vividly and realistically depicts many situations in the life of christopher boone. although he does not associate christopher’s condition with any particular diagnosis, it can for the large part fit into asperger syndrome. it is a neurobiological disorder named for a viennese physician, hans asperger, who in 1944 published a paper which described a pattern of behaviours in several young boys who had normal intelligence and language development, but who also exhibited autistic-like behaviours and marked deficiencies in social and communicative skills. in spite of the publication of his paper in the 1940s, it wasn’t until 1994 that asperger syndrome was added to the dsm iv and only in the past few years has as been recognized by professionals and parents. (kirby) that christopher most likely has this syndrome can best be shown by comparing particular symptoms of this disability with his own behaviour. as already stated, individuals with as have normal intelligence and language development. however, although they can know an outstanding number of words, they do not “truly understand the nuances of language and have difficulty with language pragmatics” (freisleben-cook). this is why christopher doesn’t understand idioms, metaphors, allusions, or jokes. he understands only the most literal meaning of words, and, he says, “if i don’t know what someone is saying i ask them what they mean or i walk away” (haddon 2004:3). it is for the same reason that he cannot understand jokes, because they are frequently based on multiple meanings of words, and for christopher 227 literature armenian folia anglistika “making the word mean three different things at the same time […] is like hearing three different pieces of music at the same time which is uncomfortable and confusing” (haddon 2004: 10). and although christopher knows the definition of metaphor, and its etymology, he fails to comprehend it, but he is ok with similes, he even uses some: the inspector “had a very hairy nose […] as if there were two very small mice hiding in his nostrils” (haddon 2004:22). the reason he understands similes is that “it really did look like there were two very small mice hiding in his nostrils” (haddon 2004:22). it was not like, for example, the metaphor “they had a skeleton in the cupboard” (haddon 2004:19) because “people do not have skeletons in their cupboards” (haddon 2004:20). christopher calls metaphors lies, and there is nothing he hates more than any kind of lies. truth is the principal cult in christopher’s system of values. once he hit a policeman because the policeman wanted to touch him (christopher hates being touched). the interrogation with the police officer went like this: ‘i have spoken to your father and he says that you didn’t mean to hit the policeman.’ i didn’t say anything because this wasn’t a question. he said, ‘did you mean to hit the policeman?’ i said, ‘yes.’ he squeezed his face and said, ‘but you didn’t mean to hurt the policeman?’ i thought about this and said, ‘no. i didn’t mean to hurt the policeman. i just wanted him to stop touching me.’ then he said, ‘you know that it is wrong to hit a policeman, don’t you?’ i said, ‘i do.’ he was quiet for a few seconds, then he asked, ‘did you kill the dog, christopher?’ i said, ‘i didn’t kill the dog.’ he said, ‘do you know that it is wrong to lie to a policeman and that you can get into a very great deal of trouble if you do?’ i said, ‘yes.’ he said, ‘so, do you know who killed the dog?’ i said, ‘no.’ he said, ‘are you telling the truth?’ i said, ‘yes. i always tell the truth.’ (haddon 2004: 22-23) when christopher finds out that his father lied to him, he runs away from home, which is a terrifying experience for him, because he has great difficulties to be in new places and among strange people. however, even such a horrible experience is better for him than to live with someone who tells lies. he always knows his priorities. truth is unquestionably the main prerequisite for christopher to function. besides, “if you don’t tell the truth now, then later on … later on it hurts even more” (haddon 2004: 150). still, christopher sometimes tells white lies, when he has a good reason, and we can hardly blame him for that. this is how he justifies the use of white lies: 228 armenian folia anglistika literature a white lie is not a lie at all. it is where you tell the truth but you do not tell all of the truth. this means that everything you say is a white lie because when someone says, for example, ‘what do you want to do today?’ you say, ‘i want to do painting with mrs peters,’ but you don’t say ‘i want to have my lunch and i want to go to the toilet and i want to go home after school and i want to play with toby and i want my to have supper and i want to play on my computer and i want to go to bed.’ (haddon 2004:62.) people with asperger syndrome are said to “have difficulties with transitions or changes and prefer sameness” (kirby). one of the reasons they do not like new places is that they get too many impressions from them. when ordinary people travel through countryside, for example, they see “some cows in the fields” (haddon 2004:174). when christopher travels in the countryside he sees “19 cows in the field, 15 of which are black and white and 4 of which are brown and white” (haddon 2004:175), and he can also draw the particular pattern of every single cow. so, he says: “when i am in a new place, because i see everything, it is like when a computer is doing too many things at the same time and the central processor unit is blocked up and there isn’t any space left to think about other things” (haddon 2004:177). and this is how he felt when he was travelling alone from swindon to london: “i could feel my heart beating very hard and i could hear a noise like the sea in my ears” (haddon 2004:210). one of the basic problems christopher has is his inability to understand human emotions. instead of feeling them instinctively, he has to use his reason and make his rational conclusions about how somebody else might feel. for example, he knows his father is angry by the volume of his voice, not by its tone or his facial expression or body gestures. this is why he prefers dogs to people: “you always know what a dog is thinking. it has four moods. happy, sad, cross and concentrating. also, dogs are faithful and do not tell lies because they cannot speak” (haddon 2004:4). on the other hand, he finds people confusing because “people often talk using metaphors” (haddon 2004:19) and “do a lot of talking without using any words” (haddon 2004: 19), which he doesn’t understand. for christopher, “loving someone is helping them when they get into trouble, and looking after them, and telling them the truth” (haddon 2004:109). this is the extent to which he can stretch his emotional intelligence, but still his sense of morality and justice is impeccable, regardless of the fact that he cannot understand emotions. this also does not mean that he is rid of emotions – they are sometimes so strong that he has to fight them hard. “the narrator may not recognize them, but emotions lurk behind virtually every clue he uncovers” (weich 2003). christopher is emotionally upset when people shout at him, when they try to touch him, when he is in a new place, when he is in a crowd, when he talks to strangers. in order to restore his peace, he finds many ways to fence himself off from the sources of unrest. “i put my hands over my ears and closed my eyes and rolled forward till i was hunched up with my forehead pressed onto the grass. the grass was wet and cold. it was nice” (haddon 2004:4). sometimes he makes 229 literature armenian folia anglistika the noise that father calls groaning. i make this noise when there is too much information coming into my head from the outside world. it is like when you are upset and you hold the radio against your ear and you tune it halfway between two stations so that all you get is white noise and then you turn the volume right up so that this is all you can hear and then you know you are safe because you cannot hear anything else (haddon 2004: 8). in other situations he performs mathematical operations in his head: “i doubled 2s in my head because it made me feel calmer. i got to 33,554,432 which is 225, which was not very much because i’ve got to 245 before, but my brain wasn’t working well” (haddon 2004:149). is this something he does instinctively, or does he use his intelligence to protect himself from negative emotions? if the latter is true, is this not something the mentally acceptable masses should learn from christopher? besides, he also knows which things make him uneasy and which calm him down. it is always knowledge about things that brings him peace – to know where he is, what time it is, what he is going to do, what is going to happen, briefly – order, routine, certainty. he knows what is good for him, and he always helps himself and tries to find his peace. another lesson from christopher? “the individual [with as] exhibits an unusually intense circumscribed interest or restricted, repetitive and stereotyped behaviour, interest and activities” (slater-walker 2002: 46).1 christopher has several strong interests: science fiction, ocean depths, mathematics. he even passes the a level in mathematics with an a grade, because he is a math genius. it is generally believed that all people with as are exceptionally gifted for certain areas, but the truth is that it applies to only a fraction of them. still, those who are gifted can really reach enormously high achievements in their fields of interest. ioan james offers an interesting idea in his book asperger’s syndrome and high achievement. he states that some famous personalities (including michelangelo, isaac newton, jonathan swift, van gogh, albert einstein, andy warhol) had “strange idiosyncrasies, of the kind associated with the mild form of autism known as asperger’s syndrome” (james 2006:7). is this too daring a statement? or is as still so unfamiliar as to be accepted to such a scale? the perception of people with as is very different from average people. they are “often overly sensitive to sounds, tastes, smells, and sights […] may prefer soft clothing, certain foods, and be bothered by sounds or lights no one else seems to hear or see” (kirby). different foodstuffs on christopher’s plate must not touch each other, because if they do – he does not eat them any more. he never eats yellow and brown things, or at the best he puts red food colouring into them if he really likes something which is yellow or brown. he states his own reasons for hating yellow (custard, bananas, double yellow lines, yellow fever, yellow flowers, sweetcorn – “because it comes out in your poo,” haddon 2004:105) and brown (dirt, gravy, poo, wood, melissa brown – “who is a girl at school who is not actually brown like anil or mohammed, it’s just her name, but she tore my big astronaut painting into two pieces and i threw it away even after mrs 230 armenian folia anglistika literature peters sellotaped it together again because it looked broken,” haddon 2004:106). such tastes and behaviour are “not the result of intentional rudeness” (kirby) and people dealing with as patients have to be aware of that. the reaction of mr shears, who is christopher’s mother’s lover, is thus so out of place: you think you’re so fucking clever, don’t you? don’t you ever, ever think about other people for one second, eh? well, i bet you’re really pleased with yourself now, aren’t you?” (haddon 2004:252). is there any need now to repeat how much reconsideration many so-called mentally sane people need? there are other symptoms of as, too, such as “failure adequately to use eye-to-eye gaze, facial expression, body posture and gesture to regulate social interaction” (slaterwalker 2002:43), “a tendency to be clumsy” (freisleben-cook 2), “failure to develop […] peer relationships” (slater-walker 2002: 44), “rarely seeking and using other people for comfort and affection at times of stress and distress” (slater-walker 2002:44), “apparently compulsive adherence to specific, non-functional routines or rituals” (slater-walker 2002: 47), etc., all of which can, in one way or another, be associated with christopher’s behaviour. in this novel written in a very simple, “clipped” (weich 2003) style, mark haddon has managed to make the reader “slip inside his [christopher’s] head, and it seems like the most natural thing in the world” (weich 2003).2 while i was reading the book i started worrying a bit, because christopher’s reasoning and ‘non-functional rituals’ became quite usual to me, and i started to ask myself whether i was completely mentally healthy. then, to my relief, i read that many readers “found themselves walking around thinking like christopher” (weich 2003). even the author’s father “discovered that three yellow cars were habitually parked in the street in a row [which is a very bad sign for christopher], so he had to go round the block” (weich 2003).3 however, it is probably not that all of us who identified with christopher tend to have anything similar to as, it is just that all of us have been in situations of great tension like christopher, and because, apparently, “there is something more wrong with the people around christopher than with him” (weich 2003).4 and had we met christopher face to face, or read the detailed medical accounts of as, we certainly would not have got such an emphatic understanding of a person suffering from this disability as we do reading haddon’s book. which is to be thanked to the magic of literature. in the end, it is probably redundant to repeat the question mentioned previously – whether it is medicine or literature that are more valuable for our understanding of various illnesses. medicine is a science, precise and objective, literature is art, imprecise and subjective, but both are unavoidable, because they cast light on the truth from different perspectives, both of which are inherent in us. this paper could, as well, have brought in other perspectives, such as philosophical, spiritual, historical ones, etc., but it is a rather formidable task i shall refrain from, but i hope this tiny bridge that i tried to build in this paper at least exposes the direction i am pointing to. 231 literature armenian folia anglistika notes: 1. quoted from who icd-10 (1993) (world health organization, international classification of diseases) 2. mark haddon, quoted in weich 2003. 3. ibid. 4. ibid. references: 1. freisleben-cook, l. a more down-to-earth description // o.a.s.i.s. http://www.udel.edy/bkirby/asperger/aswhatisit.html, accessed at 3 april 2007. 2. haddon, m. (2004) the curious incident of the dog in the night-time. london: vintage books. 3. james, i. (2006) asperger’s syndrome and high achievement. london and philadelphia: jessica kingsley publications. 4. kirby, b. l. what is asperger syndrome // o.a.s.i.s. online asperger syndrome information and support. http://www.udel.edy/bkirby/asperger/aswhatisit.html, accessed at 3 april 2007. 5. slater-walker, g. & c. (2002) an asperger marrige. london and philadelphia: jessica kingsley publications. 6. weich, d. (2003) the curiously irresistible literary debut of mark haddon // powells.com interviews – mark haddon. http://www.powells.com/authors/haddon.html, accessed at 3 april 2007. ¶ñ³ï³ýáõãûáõý ¨ µåßï³·çïáõãûáõý. ²ëå»ñ·»ñç ëçý¹ñáùá ø³ñù ð³¹¹áýç “þ³ý ·çß»ñ³ûçý ï³ñûñçý³ï ùçç³¹»åá” í»åáõù ä³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ´ñçï³ý³óç ·ñáõ ø³ñù ð³¹¹áýç “þ³ý ·çß»ñ³ûçý ï³ñûñçý³ï ùçç³¹»åá” µ³ý³í»×-í»åç ·éë³íáñ ñ»ñáëá` 15-³ùû³ øñçëïáý»ñá, áõýç ñá·»ï³ý ß»õáõù (²ëå»ñ·»ñç ëçý¹ñáù), áñç ù³ëçý çýùá ï»õû³ï ã¿: ð³¹¹áýá ññ³ß³éç ³ý·é»ñ»ýáí ³ûýù³ý ñ³çáõ ¿ ý»ñï³û³óýáõù ñá·»ï³ý ß»õáõù áõý»óáõ ù³ñ¹áõ ³ßë³ññáýï³éáõùá, áñ áýã»ñóáõá ³ï³ù³ûçó ýù³ýáõãûáõý ¿ ï»ëýáõù çñ ¨ ³û¹ ïõ³ûç ùçç¨: âý³û³í ñçí³ý¹áõãû³ý ³ýáõýá í»åáõù ãç ýßíáõù, ¨ ýñ³ýáõù ãï³ý µåßï³ï³ý ýï³ï³éáõùý»ñ, ³ûý í»åáõù ³í»éç í³é ¿ ³ñï³ñ³ûïíáõù ¨ ³í»éç ³ñ¹ûáõý³í»ï ¿ ýï³ñ³·ñíáõù, ù³ý áñ¨¿ µåßï³·çï³ï³ý ½»ïáõóù³ý ù»ç: ðá¹í³íáõù ùýýíáõù ¿ ·ñ³ï³ýáõãû³ý ¨ µåßï³·çïáõãû³ý ñ³ñ³µ»ñ³ïóáõãûáõýá, áñáýù ý»ñï³û³óýáõù »ý ù³ñ¹áõ ùç³ëýáõãû³ý »ñïáõ ïáõù»ñá ¨ ³û¹ å³ï׳éáí å»ïù ¿ ñý³ñ³íáñçýë û·ï³·áñí»ý ùçùû³ýó ýí³×áõùý»ñá, áñå»ë½ç éáõûë ë÷é»ý ù³ñ¹ïáõãû³ý ·áûáõãû³ý ³é»õíí³íç íñ³: 232 armenian folia anglistika literature maket 2011:layout 1.qxd on some peculiarities of bilingual children’s speech development naira avakyan yerevan state university t he knowledge of two or more languages truly gives children so many advantagesin life. bilingual children have the advantage of knowing two cultures, of being able to communicate with a wider variety of people, and have possible economic advantages in their future. research has even shown advantages in thinking skills among bilingual individuals. but deciding to raise bilingual kids is a decision that should be carefully considered as it affects children for the rest of their lives. “parents need to consider the child’s self identity, self-esteem, schooling options, as well as social factors when planning for bilingualism. becoming bilingual is a special gift parents can offer their children, but the gift must be planned and presented with care for it to be well used and appreciated” (rosenberg 1996:6). parents who speak more than one language are generally eager to share their languages with their children. as they begin this important undertaking, parents frequently have questions about how second language learning affects reading ability, social skills, and scholastic achievement. whether or not they speak more than one language themselves, many wonder how best to help their children learn more than one language. the reasons for choosing to raise children with two or more languages are as varied as the families themselves. even the word bilingualism has different meanings for different families. for some families, having the ability to listen in two languages but speak in just one may constitute bilingualism, while other parents expect their children not only to be bilingual, but also literate in both languages. whatever the goals for developing bilingualism in each family may be, success appears to depend on whether a “language plan” has been worked out in advance. families, who take the time to consider how their children will develop two languages, and how to make the necessary commitments to bilingual language development, tend to be more successful in raising bilingual children. there are two major patterns in bilingual language acquisition: simultaneous bilingualism and sequential bilingualism. in simultaneous bilingualism, the child acquires two languages at the same time before the age of 3. the child may mix words or parts of words from both languages in the first stage. stage 2 (sequential bilingualism) occurs at 4 years and older when distinction between the two languages takes place, and the child uses each language separately. sequential bilingualism may also occur before the child is 3 years old, but the child can draw on the knowledge and experience of the first language while acquiring the second language. the term balanced bilingualism is used to describe individuals who have the same fluency in two languages, while semilingualism refers to those who have deficiencies in both languages compared with monolinguals. these deficiencies could be in a reduced vocabulary, incorrect grammatical patterns, etc. few people are truly balanced bilinguals in both languages in all situations. one language is usually dominant. this dominance armenian folia anglistikamethodology 77 may be different for listening and speaking or for reading and writing and usually changes over time. research suggests that children who learn a second language are more creative and better at solving complex problems than those who do not. studies have shown that bilinguals outperform similar monolingual peers on both verbal and non-verbal tests of intelligence and tend to achieve higher scores on standardized tests. individuals who speak more than one language have the ability to communicate with more people, read more literature, and benefit more fully from travel abroad. knowing a second language also gives people a competitive advantage in the workforce. these are some of the compelling reasons for parents to encourage the development of a second, or a third language with their children. one can state that learning two languages for a child perhaps is accessible, but more than two may seem too much. “raising a bilingual or multilingual child in a monolingual country can be challenging, but learning an extra language is easier during childhood when the human brain is absorbing everything like a sponge” (darseno 1996:4). considering how much babies have to learn in their first years of life, another language really does not add much to the load. as long as the child is getting regular interactions in the second (or third) language, there will be no problems. also, even if your child does not end up speaking all the languages, do not underestimate the value of a passive language, i.e. understanding it but not yet speaking it. if you already understand a language, it will be easier to learn it later in school or as an adult, compared to someone who had never heard it before. so, even “just” understanding another language is most definitely not a wasted effort. learning a second language is simple for children, relative to adults, but in the beginning they actually need to hear a word thousands of times before it sticks − unless it is a bad word, then miraculously you only have to say it once. if the child picks up a bad word from the street, he is likely to forget it soon if you pay no attention to it, and if you do not scold him. but if you threaten the child to punish him in case he repeats the word once again, he is sure to use it later. there is something in human nature − to do what is forbidden (remember the bible − adam, eve and the apple). in some cases parents smile at it, thus subconsciously (perhaps not deliberately) encouraging the child to repeat it. many parents worry that raising children in a multilingual environment may delay their speech or lead to learning difficulties at school. although parents often report that their multilingual children start talking 3 to 6 months later than their monolingual peers, research shows that they reach major language developmental milestones at similar times. it is important to differentiate between the popular use of the term language delay in reference to a child who is perceived to take longer than average to begin to speak but who is well within the normal range of productive vocabulary development, and the clinical use of the term to refer to significant delays in the development of language, which can be either primary (not associated with another disorder) or secondary (associated with conditions such as autism). a lack of understanding of the different uses of the term may result in unjustified concern for some parents interested in raising their children with armenian folia anglistika methodology 78 two languages. “you can always ask if they think einstein’s intellect suffered growing up with both german and italian. and, he didn’t start talking until he was three years old either, but he certainly seemed to make up for lost time!” (bosemark 2003:16). some people believe that children will be confused by learning more than one language. it is true that some mixing will occur, but that is both harmless and temporary. children often use the grammatical structures of the language which is dominant. it may be the language of the country they live in, which may prevail over the one spoken only in the family. however, our observations have revealed that in bilingual families children more often use the grammatical structures of the language the bearer of which is the mother. this is due to the fact that mothers spend more time with their children, thus taking more active part in the process of upbringing. let us view two cases: (1) examples taken from the speech of a child with an armenian-speaking mother and a russian-speaking father, and (2) a child with a russian-speaking mother and an armenian-speaking father. 1. here are some examples of lexico-grammatical hybrids made up by a child belonging to the first group: папа, я рисуем / я кушаем. the misuse of the verbal ending is the influence of the armenian auxiliary verb − »ù (ýï³ñáõù »ù, áõïáõù »ù). it might also be interpreted as the plural form of the russian verb, but it is less probable. мы приехали автобусом, а они машиной. here we see the influence of the armenian ending − áí (³íïáμáõëáí, ù»ù»ý³ûáí). мама в кухне. the misuse of the preposition is the influence of armenian − ëáñ³ýáóáõù). папа, тот мальчик берет меня за руку. in this case we see a misused idiomatic expression (the child is complaining that he is being teased − in armenian ó»éù ³éý»é). in the examples above the influence of armenian grammatical structures is noticeable. we may also observe language interference (mixture) in the child’s speech. знаешь, папа, завтра мы с мамой пойдем в газананоц! татуля мне подарила красивый шалварик. 2. now let us view the speech of a child belonging to the second group. øáõûñçïë çýó ãç ï³éçë ùý»ù: (сестра не дает спать.) æýó ùáï ýáñ ë³õ³éçù ï³: (у меня новая игрушка.) æýó óáõñï ¿: (мне холодно.) in the following examples we see misused prepositions: ï³ùëçç íñ³ »ï³ýù (приехали на такси) ùáõûñçïë ¹áõñë »ï³í ÷áõáóç íñ³ (вышла на улицу) ïñ³ï»é ãéãáõýç ù»ç (стрелять в птичку) å³å³ý ³ßë³ï³ýùç íñ³ ¿ (папа на работе) ýí³·áõù »ù çáõã³ïç íñ³ (играю на скрипке) armenian folia anglistikamethodology 79 in the examples below we have both lexical and grammatical mixture. ºë ã»ù ùñëáõù, »ë å³éïáûç ù»ç »ù: (я в пальто.) äçé»ïç / ßáõμ³ûç ù»ç »ù: (я в жилете / в шубе.) in some cases we may notice word for word translation of idiomatic expressions: àñï»õç±ó: àõõïçó: (откуда? − от верблюда.) æù μ»ñ³ýá ïáõå»ùç íñ³ ¿: (у меня рот на замке.) as we see, in the first case (with an armenian-speaking mother) armenian grammatical structures prevail over russian ones, whereas in the second case (with a russianspeaking mother) we observe the opposite phenomenon. as the child builds his vocabulary in each language, this phenomenon automatically disappears. how many monolingual children mechanically make mistakes after correct usage has been learned? eventually, the multilingual child learns correct usage in the same way as any other child. if parents do not mix languages in their own conversation, it will be much simpler for the child to remain consistent as well. to sum up, arming the child with more than one language can lead to more job opportunities down the road, as well as the ability to connect to more people, both socially and professionally. studies even show that being bilingual can help people keep a sharp mind through old age. references: 1. bialystok, e. (2001) bilingualism in development: language, literacy, and cognition. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. 2. bosemark, ch. (2003) raising bilingual children. ca: art galleries & dealers in san francisco. 3. darseno, d. (1996) how to raise bilingual children. newbury park, ca: sage press. 4. de houwer, a. (1998) bilingualism and migration. new york: mouton de gruyter. 5. eisenberg, a.; murkoff, h. & hathaway, s.e. (1989) what to expect the first year. new york: workman. 6. rosenberg, m. (1996) raising bilingual children. // the ambassador, alumni & community magazine, vol. 10 (3), article 10. concordia. ºñï黽í³ïçñ »ñ»ë³ý»ñç ëáëùç ½³ñ·³óù³ý áñáß ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñç ßáõñç ðá¹í³íá ùýý³ñïáõù ¿ »ñï黽í³ïçñ »ñ»ë³ý»ñç ëáëùç ½³ñ·³óù³ý ÷áõé»ñá ¨ ¹ñ³ýó ³éýãíáõ áñáß ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñ: ºñï黽í³ïçñ »ñ»ë³ý»ñç ëáëùç ½³ñ·³óù³ý áýã³óùáõù ¹çï³ñïíáõù »ý ³ûýåçëç »ñ¨áõûãý»ñ, çýãåçëçù »ý áõß³ó³í ëáëùá ¨ 黽áõý»ñç ùç³ë³éýáõùá: ´»ñí³í ûñçý³ïý»ñá óáõûó »ý ï³éçë áýï³ýçùç ï³ñ¨áñ ¹»ñá »ñï黽í³ïçñ »ñ»ë³ý»ñç ëáëùç ½³ñ·³óù³ý ·áñíáýã³óáõù: armenian folia anglistika methodology 80 maket 2011-2:layout 1.qxd game as educational activity (with special reference to w. saroyan’s “papa, you’re crazy”) seda gabrielyan yerevan state university the ability to use language is a very important part of human cognition. this amazing human ability to communicate through language is both the result and the cause of our uniqueness as human beings. language is a tool indeed; simple enough for a child to grasp effortly, yet so complex that we may never completely understand just how genetics and experience interact to produce this most integral human trait. language development is the process by which children come to understand and communicate language from early childhood. it is a process starting early in human life when a person begins to acquire language by learning it as spoken or by mimicry. language acquisition is enriched through various productive ways. for language acquisition to develop successfully, children must be in an environment that allows them to communicate socially in that language. the most productive way of enriching child’s language is the verbal interactions with other children and adults. parents have the most significant impact on the child’s language development. in addition, language based interaction appears to increase a child’s capacity to learn. all the possible average stages of language development (phonological, semantic, grammatical and pragmatic) are covered through the most desirable activities, i.e. games. teaching through games has always played an essential role in bringing up children, as it is through games that children can explore the world, develop new concepts, come up with new ideas and grow both physically and mentally, develop various creative skills and ability to face different situations and to seek a way out. it enables them to express themselves fully. all the games roughly analyzed and classified are aimed at the development of: a. perceptual (visual and auditory) interactions (recognition of sounds, images, colours); b. creativity (fantasy, role-play, modeling up the patterns of social interaction); c. motor and substance manipulation (construction, clay games). some of the recommendations that professionals give for encouraging language development in children are: talking to them as much as possible and giving them opportunities to respond; teaching the give-and-take of conversation; talking about on-going activities; asking questions; singing songs; commenting on sounds and forms and different phenomena in the environment; talking in a way to attract the child’s attention; using correct pronunciation and playing with words and sounds; providing objects and experiences to talk about; careful verbal interaction with children; discipline or drills, etc. most of the recommendations mentioned above are vigorously illustrated in literary discourse. thus, autobiographical in many aspects, w.saroyan’s novel “papa, you’re armenian folia anglistikamethodology 83 crazy” is primarily a piece of fiction with all its educational sides and should be perceived as such. this work can be considered the best legacy william saroyan could have left, as it can help us understand better our ‘fathers’ and ourselves. a father and a son any father and any son are very nearly the same man, one old and one young, but at the same time they are strangers, too. but with this particular father and son in the novel, it is very interesting to notice that when it comes to just doing any kind of activity together, they become just one. the way of choosing an activity to do together is really noteworthy. the father asks whether the son is done with his lessons, his daily duties, after making sure he is, they choose, listening to music, going out to walk on the beach and talk or the most important activity, playing games, or it can even be few at a time: “what about your lessons? everything in order for tomorrow?” asks the father. “sure”, responds the son. “in that case more music? or a game?” “how about both?” “o.k. what music would you like to hear?” “the dodger song.” (p. 18) and they listen to the song and sing along with the song as well. and then comes the time for the game. as fostering a child’s language and communication skills at a young age is essential in preparing them for the life they will lead as an adult. the extent to which a child masters things like spelling, vocabulary, grammar and elocution, will be important factors in determining socialization, career paths, earning potential. in this the father, being a writer himself, is trying to foster his son’s rhyming abilities and thus he suggests a kind of a game with words that can greatly enlarge the child’s vocabulary as well, besides the fact that he will need to think and react quick with finding words that rhyme as well. “now, then,” my father said, “the game. words. i say one, you say one back that rhymes with it. and then you say one to me that i’ve got to match with a rhyming word before i can say one back to you. you want to start?” “o.k. dodger.” (p. 19) the first word that comes to the son’s head is the word dodger, as before they were listening to music, to a song called the dodger song, so it shows that even the simple activity of listening to music can be so effective and still enrich the child’s word-stock. “lodger,” my father said. “liar.” “fire,” i said, and then, “ocean.” “motion. lazy.” “crazy. tide.” armenian folia anglistika methodology 84 “ride. time.” “crime. school.” “rule. sleep.” “deep. dream.” “good idea,” my father said. “let’s go to bed, so we can get up before daybreak.” one could easily notice that this word play was not based only on simply rhyming the words with each other, but it was based on making associations as well; such as the father says ‘school’, and the son promptly associates it with ‘rule’, or ‘sleep’ and ‘deep’. it awakes the ability in the child to make associations which is undeniably a great asset to child’s mental and language development as well. rhyming also enables children to develop more refined listening skills, it also helps to develop sensory skills. since the father is a writer and he expresses his wish for his son to become a writer as well, he tries to develop his son’s creative skills not only by rhyming simple words together but also creating sentences matching with those words. in this particular case they play a game with names. in this game the father uses a wellknown technique that is recommended by professionals for encouraging language development in children, i.e. also using complete sentences and adding details to expand on what a child has just said. the game goes on as follows: “any ideas for a game while i clean up?” “names.” “you start, then.” “louise,” my father said. “louise has new knees and still climbs trees.” “yew trees,” my father said. “yew is y-e-w. look it up in the dictionary while i clean these dishes.” (pp. 42-43) in fact this game not only contributes to practicing rhyming skills and building up creativity but it also helps to learn new words even by looking them up in the dictionary, which is also helpful as it teaches the kid how to use a dictionary in a correct way. so he gets the dictionary and turns it to y and pretty soon finds the definition of yew – “an evergreen tree … valued for its wood.” and then they continue playing the game, but this time not only creating one line for the name, but with two matching lines: “alice,” i said. “alice lives in a palace,” my father said, and stopped. “what else?” “well, let me see. alice lives in a palace. imaginary, alas.” “grace,” my father said. “grace washed her face. now the hard part. grace washed her face, and came in last.” armenian folia anglistikamethodology 85 “what?” “hah, hah, hah. i mean in the race’” “what race?” “the race she ran, that rhymes with face, like grace washed her face and ran a race.” “what about the part that she comes in last?” “well, grace washed her face and ran a race. she came in last and lives in a palace, too, alas.” “how about, she came in last, but ran quite fast?” ”i guess so.” (p. 44) as professionals state, parents of children of this particular age should talk to their children, encourage conversation all the time by asking questions that require more than answering yes or no. it is very motivating to see how the father manages to do that perfectly in his own ways, the ways that certainly are not so widespread and usual. once the son gathered shells and pieces of driftwood on the beach and when he got home and showed them to the father, this is what the latter told him: “they’re great, everything you’ve found is great. hold them under the faucet and look at each of them carefully. that’s the way you learn to write by looking at everything carefully.” so while my father got breakfast i washed the rocks and shells and the piece of driftwood, and i looked at each of them very carefully, turning them around so i could see them from all sides, and i saw plenty. i saw stuff i never would have seen if i hadn’t looked carefully. i saw that every little thing in the world is a lot more than it seems to be. there was a pebble about half the size of a walnut that was black with a little red in it, a perfect line of white separating one part of the pebble from another, almost as if the little pebble was a whole world of some kind, the white line separating the land from the water. looking at the pebble made me think about a lot of things and it made me feel glad about being able to see a thing so clearly, to see such a small thing so big, almost as big as anything anywhere.” (p. 23) it is very vital for everyone, especially for a child to be able to notice and also think about a simple pebble the way he does, as he says – “the pebble made me think about a lot of things..”, it is also significant that the child is also able to describe what he sees apart from just seeing. the father who is aware that his son has difficulty in spelling which means not clearly visualizing the words, knows the best way of training him; he doesn’t keep the child concentrated on what he is going to learn; it is again done through a game they invented together, which is the best method in this case, both amusing and effective. armenian folia anglistika methodology 86 “after supper my father said, “well now, it’s back to school tomorrow morning, so what are you doing poorly in?” “spelling. that’s my worst subject. one day i can spell a word right and the next day i can only spell it wrong.” so we worked on spelling, but my father told me not to worry about it. he told me to learn how to use new words properly all the time, because that’s the important thing. we invented a little game to help me get the hand of words. take a word like bat, for instance, and then run through the alphabet, and change the word as often as possible ֊ from bat to cat, and then from cat to fat, and so on. doing that teaches you a lot about words, and you get a few surprises now and then, too.” (p. 104) it was already stated, in order to enhance language development in children, one of the essential things a parent should do, is to talk to them as much as possible and give them opportunity to respond and teach them the give-and-take of the conversation. and one of the ways is through creating such a comfort zone that would let the child be confident and ask questions about things that he doesn’t know the answers and the explanations to, but is willing to know. this is something special that we should particularly focus our attention on, as throughout the novel the son asks various questions to his father the answers to which he is curious to reveal; things that really interest him and things that will help him understand the world and the way it is. the questions asked by the son to his father are various: “what is a church?”, “what is an art?”, “what is a novel?”, “what is a story?” the father’s explanations are philosophical but at the same time simple and understandable. one day a long time ago i asked my father what he was writing, and he said a novel, so then i asked him to tell me what a novel is, and he said it’s a fire in the form of a long story written by a writer. i then asked him what the story was about, and he said a good story is always about everything. i told him i wanted to write a story some day, and he said, “you write one every day.” he said every man in the world lives a story every day. it’s a kind of letter to god, he said. they write it every day, but that doesn’t mean the people aren’t the ones who really write it. i thought about the story i had lived that day. well, it seemed to me that it was a story, and that i had been writing it all day. it began when i got up early in the morning... (and he recounts his all day). but the best thing in the story weren’t things like that at all. they were the things that were going on at the same time. i don’t mind writing like that, the way every man in the world does, but i want to write the way my father writes, too. sit down at a table with a typewriter in front of me and write with words. i’m going to do it some day, too. i don’t know when, but i know i’m going to. i’ve got to wait awhile, i guess, because i don’t know how to type yet. i armenian folia anglistikamethodology 87 can’t spell most of the words i say and understand, either. i can’t keep up with all the things i want to get into the story, either... but i’ll learn how. (pp. 67-68) thus, the explanation the father gave had its positive effects on the son and not only one, but several at the same time; first the son got the answer to his question, second, that answer made him think that he already writes a novel and he does it every day like everyone else. he gained confidence in himself that he can learn to do it the way his father did it, as for a kid of that age it is always desirable to be able to learn to do what his parent, especially his father, does. thirdly, it made him also recount his whole day activity, which means analyzing his day. but what is most important, being only ten years old he already realizes what he has to work on to be able to reach the goal he wants to, in this case it is to be able to learn to type like the father, to be able to spell the words correctly he knows. the greatest asset in this case is his will – “...but i’ll learn how.” the process of fetching new information or training the brain can fully be expressed by asking questions and receiving not only yes or no questions and not only by encouraging the child to ask questions and seek new information. the father also knows how to find a way to get the son concentrated in just few minutes and the interaction does not consist only in asking questions. the father applies just a little warm-up task for the process of training the brain and promoting language skills at the same time more effective. this can be done, for example, in the morning before the child goes to school. the father himself asks simple questions and waits for response: “now,” my father said, “before i take you to school, let’s have a few basic, or kindergarten questions and answers. what’s the beginning?” “what do you mean, pop?” “listen to the question, consider it, and then answer it any way you like. what’s the beginning?” “i am.” “when is the beginning?” “when i wake up in the morning?” “what’s the end?” “when i don’t wake up in the morning any more.” “very good,” my father said. “what’s between the beginning and the end?” “i am.” “”who are you?” “damned if i know, pop? you tell me.” “i can’t do that.” the simple and hasty questions asked by the father one after another indeed made the kid think in a careful but quick way and promptly respond them. but the most important thing in this case is that the child does feel easy and can really be frank and answer the way he really wants to and his answers can be seen as a mirror to his mentality and way of thinking. he didn’t answer the question “who are you?” and turned to his father for an armenian folia anglistika methodology 88 answer, who certainly did not do it instead of him. one can be sure that later on he will certainly look for the answer to that question as he already has his character formed being only ten years old. while reading the novel we come across not only games connected with fostering certain mental or language skills, but also lots of activities organized for strengthening physical skills or both together; such as doing some kind of an outdoor activity, i.e. running, walking outside, breathing fresh sea air, riding or throwing football passes any kind of activities, along with playing new games or thinking about how things are. it is really attracting to see that the son is taking the initiative sometimes and invents outdoor games: “i invented a race and its rules. we run as fast as we can go, and the one who stands on the highest point of the rock first wins the race and is king of the rock.” (p. 32) so the game is ready, he invented a game, with rules, with a prize for the winner (“king of the rock”), what else is needed? during the running race which the son invented, he does not even admit being tired and not being able to run anymore. such as once when running together, he felt how tired he was and he kept trotting but he did not stop, but as he confessed later on, it was good that he didn’t stop, “because pretty soon i felt strong again”. though the father strongly appreciates this in his son and even encourages him by saying how good it is to find out that one can do a lot more than he thinks he can; “we can always go farther than we think. and we can get along on a lot less than we think, too. and we need to be reminded of these things now and then.” but the father also knows that his son needs to learn about losing as well, as one cannot always win in his life; and as the father says, it is always better to learn how to lose in a game. the father is trying to make his son get used to this idea in a card game. it was really exciting for the son to win: i jumped up and laughed again, because it’s good to win, it’s the greatest thing in this life to win, even if it’s only a hand of rummy with your father, winning is the thing, it’s one of the great things. i love to play, but most of all i love to hope to win, and then to win. (p. 126) they continued to play, so the father took the cards again and shuffled and dealt: “do you get mad when you lose, pop?” “of course, not. to lose is the one thing a man must learn to do as quickly as possible. to lose with grace, i mean, and i don’t mean at cards. now, you’ve won two games and you feel good, as you should, but you must know that it is possible to lose two games just as easily as you won two….if that happens, you have got to know it is in order for it to happen, and you have got to be ready for it. if you are willing to gamble, you must be prepared to lose…” “even so, pop. i hate to lose. no matter what the armenian folia anglistikamethodology 89 game is, i hate to lose. i feel cheated when i lose, and i feel good when i win.” “sure you do.” (p. 126) the parent’s role in this game was to let his son know that if there is the concept of winning in this life, he must know that there exists also the opposite side of it losing. the son was really worried and mad and he really hated the feeling, but the goal of the game was for him to get used to that feeling and better in a game, where it is easier to cope with certain feelings than in real life. by tearing down the boundaries and defying convention, children are able to discover and learn more, thereby expanding their experiences via thought-provoking play, which can also be named as an imaginative play. additionally, imaginative play can help with social skills, exposing a child to a variety of perspectives through simple activities. those activities in this case include thinking, inventing new words, thinking of a name for the hero of his novel, creating names. this idea of creating new words derives from a sentence that the father once told his son: “in the beginning was the word.” but in fact the son thought about this phrase a lot, but couldn’t figure out what it means. and when he asked his father the meaning of the phrase, the father answered; “it means everything worth anything, so find out about words, find out for yourself, and if possible invent a few.” (p. 54) and here the son comes up with a new word, which he just invented without even realizing what he put in it: “clure.” “what’s that?” “i don’t know, but i just invented it.” “let’s just see if we can figure it out. clure. clear and sure?” “clear and sure is o.k., but clure is the word i invented.” “so it is. sure and clear clure. is that the value you had in mind?” “i had no value in mind.” “you must have. you may think you had no value in mind and have invented it, too.” we come across another game which is associated with language, memory, logic and creativity. the concept of this game is also making new words, but this time by shifting the letters of the taken word, anagram, the son invents a name of the hero in his novel, as he is going to write a novel very soon, just as his father told him: “when we got home my father went to work getting supper, and i went to work at his desk inventing words and names. i sat down and took the first word that came into my head to se what i could do with it, the word ocean , but the only name i could get out of it was caneo, and then the armenian folia anglistika methodology 90 word canoe, and the name ancoe, and then ocane. but i couldn’t get any word or name that i liked very much, so while my father talked and sang in the kitchen, just beyond the counter between the kitchen and the living room, i tried to invent a real good name. i heard my father once that the best inventor of names was charles dickens, so i tried to think of some of the names charles dickens invented, but all i could think of was scrooge. i wrote scrooge on a piece of paper, to see if i could invent a good name out of the letters in the name. gorosec, rosogec, and secogor, but nothing i wanted, so i started all over again.” (p. 122) in this type of a game a very important factor is the son’s individual play. perhaps, just as important as fostering cooperation and collaborative skills, teaching a child the importance of independent play is beneficial in a variety of ways. in addition to aiding in concentration and memory skills, independent play teaches children the importance of their role as an individual, fostering self-esteem and confidence. it’s also proved that selfsufficient children often grow to be self-starters in their adult life. the independent play also fosters child’s imagination and the ability to bring forward something new on his own. particularly in this novel the expression of that idea is clearly indicated in the last chapter where the son appears with a new kind of a ‘thinking game’, which may be called a “circle”. this game suggested by the son is the result of his lively imagination. in his independent and new game he suggests that his father should switch with their roles: “let’s pretend you’re me and i’m you. you’re ten years old and i’m forty-five.” it’s more likely that the son is very eager to see how it feels to be a grown-up; “i thought about being forty-five for a minute, and then all of a sudden i was forty-five, and, boy, i did feel old. but at the same time i felt real good, too. i thought about my father being me and then all of a sudden he was me. the first thing that came to my head, which was fortyfive years old, now, was to take a piece of driftwood and draw a very big circle in the sand.” “a circle, and i’m right at the center of it, and you’re on the outside of it. but that’s just the beginning. you see, this circle is where a man can really think. everybody wants to get into it, because everybody wants to be able to think.” (p. 160) thus, the rules of the game are the following; the one who is out of the “thinking circle” needs to guess what is the one, inside the circle thinking, and when doing it right, he will get the chance to enter the circle where he can really think. “what are you thinking?” my father said. “i am thinking how lucky i am to be in the circle at last. now, you want to get in here, too, but the only way you can do it is to tell me what i’m thinking.” (p. 161) armenian folia anglistikamethodology 91 the thinking process is very important for the son, that is why he is coming up with a game like this. he wants to feel like a grown-up, like his father and in this way understand him. so in a game like this the father needs to act like his ten-year-old son, while the son needs to be able to play his dad’s role and think the way he does. “wrong. i was thinking that, but now i’m thinking something else.” “you’re thinking how unlucky you are to be in the circle, then.” “wrong.” “you’re thinking i’ll never guess what you’re thinking.” “wrong.” “you’re thinking about the play,” my father said. “right. how did you guess?” “i don’t know. i guess i guessed because i was thinking about it, too. do i get to come into the circle?” “you sure do.” my father stepped into the circle and i stepped out. it was my turn now to guess what he was thinking. “you’re thinking about money.” “right,” my father said. he stepped out and i stepped in and again he tried to guess what i was thinking. he guessed wrong more than ten times and then i started to laugh and he said, “o.k. i give up. what are you thinking?” “i’m thinking what a sad thing it must be not to be alive.” “now, why couldn’t i guess that that was what you were thinking?” “because you’re only ten years old,” i said, “and not as smart as me, pop.” (p. 162) “papa, you’re crazy” is a story of the relationship between a caring forty-five-yearold father and a loving ten-year-old son, between any father and his son, a continuation of generations. saroyan succeeded in creating the atmosphere of warmth and understanding between the father and the son, the key factor being the common language: language of play/game. the method of teaching through games has left its seed in fiction as well, which the readers can now plant themselves and develop their own “tree” of teaching methods through game, using william saroyan’s novel “papa, you’re crazy” as a guide book. references: 1. brooks, p. (1996) psychoanalysis and storytelling. cornwall. 2. carmichael, k. (2006) play therapy. an introduction. glenview, ii. 3. saroyan, w. (1957) “papa, you’re crazy”, 2nd ed. armenian folia anglistika methodology 92 ê³õá áñå»ë ¹³ëïç³ñ³ïáõãû³ý ùççáó (ì. ê³ñáû³ýç §ð³ûñçï, ¹áõ ë»ýã »ë¦ íçå³ïç ýûáõãç íñ³) ðá¹í³íç ýå³ï³ïý ¿ ý»ñï³û³óý»é ë³õç ¹»ñá »ñ»ë³ûç ñá·» μ³ ý³ï³ý ï»ñå³ñç ï»ñïù³ý, ýñ³` áñå»ë ëáóç³é³ï³ý ¿³ïç ï³û³óù³ý ·áñíáõù: àõëáõùý³ëçñáõãû³ý ýûáõãá ·»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý ·ñ³ï³ýáõãûáõýý ¿, ù³ëý³íáñ³å»ë ì. ê³ñáû³ýç §ð³ûñçï, ¹áõ ë»ýã »ë¦ íçå³ïá, áñï»õ ñáñ ¨ áñ¹áõ ñ³ñ³μ» ñáõãûáõýý»ñá ½³ñ·³ ýáõù »ý μ³½ù³μýáõûã ë³õ»ñç ùççáóáí, áñáýù ¿é çñ»ýó ñ»ñãçý ýå³ëïáõù »ý »ñ»ë³ûç ã»° 黽í³ï³ý áõý³ïáõãûáõýý»ñç, ã»° ïû³ýùç ñùïáõãûáõýý»ñç ó¨³ íáñù³ýá: øýý³ñïíáõ íçå³ïá ùç ûáõñûñçý³ï áõõ»óáõûó ¿ íýáõý»ñç ñ³ù³ñ` » ñ»ë³ûç ¹³ëïç³ñ³ïáõãû³ý ñ³ñóáõù: armenian folia anglistikamethodology 93 maket_n_verjin.qxp renowned graduates of yerevan state university the decision to establish a university in armenia was successfully realized andnow yerevan state university, having always played an exceptional role in higher educational system of the republic of armenia, stands at the peak of its 90th anniversary. being founded at the beginning of the 20th century it gave rise to the majority of higher educational institutions in armenia. today more than 13 000 students are specializing at 21 faculties. out of 1200 ysu lecturers 200 have doctoral degrees and more than 500 are candidates of sciences. more than 30 academicians of nas of ra are lecturing at the university. during its 90-year-old fertile history ysu educated a great number of outstanding scholars, professionally competent and highly skilled specialists promoting sciences, the humanities as well as cultural and industrial progress in the republic. among them were such notable and remarkable personalities as gevorg jahukian, edward aghayan, edward jrbashian, hrachik simonian, armenak mnjoyan, sergey mergelian and many others representing different branches of sciences and the humanities. gevorg jahukian (1920-2005) was an outstanding linguist, doctor of philological sciences, professor, academician of the academy of sciences of armenian ssr. for more than forty years this great scholar immensely contributed to the formation of modern armenian linguistics, being the initiator and the author of various scientific achievements. more than twenty voluminous monographs, a great number of articles and etymological researches, over one hundred and thirty scientific publications are the striking illustration of his fruitful research work. jahukian’s contribution to the sphere of general linguistics is beyond any appraisal. g.jahukian lectured at yerevan state university for almost half a century. under his guidance many young scholars have defended their ph.ds and doctoral theses. the great scholar was honoured not only in our country but also in europe and the usa. being a member of european and american scientific organizations he did his best to represent the achievements of the armenian linguistic school to the international scientific community. in 1997 gevorg jahukian was acknowledged as “the international man of the year” by cambridge international biography centre. 43 yerevan state university is 90 years old armenian folia anglistika gevorg jahukian another great name in the field of linguistics is edward aghayan (1913-1991) a linguist, doctor of philological sciences, professor, academician of the academy of sciences of armenian ssr. ed. aghayan is the founder of new linguistic trends and methods in the field of armenian studies. his various scientific works are a great contribution to such branches of linguistics as general linguistics, history of armenian linguistics, history and comparative grammar of the armenian language, dialectology and contemporary armenian. ed.aghayan is also an outstanding lexicographer. his defining dictionary of contemporary armenian in two volumes published in 1976 is still considered to be unique in armenian lexicography. apart from being an outstanding scholar edward aghayan was a man of high principle and was deeply respected by his students and colleagues. he left a huge army of disciples who successfully continue their teacher’s work in various fields of armenian studies. most of them are well known scholars today. edward jrbashian (1923-1999) – a literary critic, doctor of philological sciences, professor, academician of the academy of sciences of armenian ssr, a name that will never be forgotten. in 1945 edward jrbashian entered yerevan state university, the faculty of armenian language and literature. after graduating he became a post-graduate student simultaneously lecturing theory of literature and history of armenian literature . for a long time ed.jrbashian was the head of the chair of theory of literature and aesthetics, later he headed the chair of foreign literature and theory of literature. ed. jrbashian is the author of more than ten books and 250 articles. most of his publications are devoted to the issues of the theory of literature. jrbashian thoroughly studied the peculiarities of the armenian poem, its syllabic features and gave its classification. he has a number of valuable researches on av.isahakian, v.terian, m.nalbandian, m.metsarents, d.varuzhan, r.sevak, g.sundukian and gh.alishan well-known names in armenian literature. the outstanding scholar has made a great contribution to the investigation of h. tumanian’s life and literary career. jrbashian newly interprets the artistic peculiarities of tumanian’s poems and other works. the great scholar has closely studied the history and theory of the formation and development of the new armenian poem, the literary trends of eastern and western armenian literatures of the 19th and 20th centuries with their variety of genres and ideology. jrbashian’s studies devoted particularly to the literary heritage of e.charents and a.bakunts are really noteworthy and valuable. 44 armenian folia anglistika yerevan state university is 90 years old edward aghayan edward jrbashian the present review wouldn’t be complete without mentioning another outstanding personality, a true scholar and distinguished historian. hrachik simonian (born in 1928) is a doctor of history, professor, academician of nas of ra. after graduating from the faculty of history of yerevan state university h.simonian devoted himself both to scientific and public activities. in earlier stages of his work the field of his scientific interests was armenian diaspora. the result of his thorough examinations was the book “ armenian diaspora in its social-political fight”, published in 1968. since the late 1970s the scholar concentrated on different problems of armenology. and after a number of publications his monograph “ on the history of turkish-armenian relations”(1991) came out, which was followed by a more profound and valuable work – “ andranik’s time”. this work is absolutely a new word about the life and military career of the national hero. his latest book is “the massacre of armenians in cilicia (april, 1909)” (2009). the list of the scientific research works of the well-known scholar is rather impressive – more than one hundred researches among them twenty books and monographs. in addition to doing research h.simonian has lectured at the faculties of history and philosophy of ysu and other higher educational institutions of the republic since 1964. his brilliant reports made in moscow, leningrad, tbilisi, usa, france, germany aimed at befittingly presenting the achievements of the armenian scientific world. some of his researches were published in czechoslovakia, usa, lebanon. owing to highly qualified scientists, significant researches related to different scientific branches have always been carried out in ysu. in the field of chemistry the name of armenak mnjoyan, a doctor of chemistry, professor, academician of the academy of sciences of armenian ssr, is worth mentioning. the main field of research of this outstanding chemist was the synthesis of new efficient medicines and the study of their influence upon the human organism. the talented chemist and organizer of scientific activities is truly considered to be the founder of the modern scientific school of synthesis and research of physiologically active materials. due to his great efforts a considerable number of medical substances came into being and are successfully used for the treatment of cardiovascular, neurological, infectious and other diseases as well as for the treatment of cancerous growths. a.mnjoyan is the author of more than 260 scientific publications a number of monographs among them. he was not only a scientist devoted to his scientific work but also a talented teacher. a great number of chemists and pharmachologists are still quided 45 yerevan state university is 90 years old armenian folia anglistika hrachik simonian armenak mnjoyan by his great scientific ideas. after his death in 1972 yerevan institute of soft organic chemistry was named after armenak mnjoyan and was awarded the order of red banner of labour. the field of mathematics in armenia has always had eminent names that are well known not only in our country but worldwide. among such talented mathematicians is sergey mergelian (1928-2008) doctor of physics and mathematics, professor, academician of the academy of sciences of armenian ssr. sergey mergelian showed unique mathematical abilities still at school. in the 8th form he became the winner of mathematics and physics competition in the republic. some months later he successfully passed the examinations of the 9th and 10th forms and entered yerevan state university which he graduated in three and a half years. in 1949 when 21-year-old sergey mergelian was defending his ph.d thesis he was unanimously awarded the degree of a doctor of physics and mathematics. soon afterwards the talented mathematician proved his well-known theorem on the polynominal proximity and such expressions as “mergelian’s theorem” and “mergelian’s set” found their stable place in the treasury of mathematical sciences. great is s. mergelian’s contribution to the establishment and further development of the internationally acclaimed armenian scientific school of mathematics. he also played an irrefutable role in the spread of computational technique and technology and cybernetics in the country. mergelian was also engaged in pedagogical activity. numerous mathematicians were educated by his excellent lectures read at the faculties of mechanics and mathematics and applied mathematics of ysu. in 2008 for his active and fruitful scientific and pedagogical work the outstanding mathematician was awarded the medal of st. mesrop mashtots. 46 sergey mergelian armenian folia anglistika yerevan state university is 90 years old 7 maket 2010 nor_n:layout 1.qxd alternative questions in english (functional-pragmatic analysis) choice as a philosophical category means freedomto act in accordance with one’s own interests and purposes. people do not choose objective conditions for their activity, but they are free in choosing aims for their activity and finding means to realize them. therefore the freedom of choice is not abstract, it is relative to some extent and is implemented by choosing a certain course of action. to make a choice thus means to select one possibility from two or more alternatives, a choice which best suits one’s aims and expectations. linguistically such alternation is expressed by means of alternative questions. it is these questions that will be discussed below in the light of speech act theory, i.e. alternative questions will be studied considering certain pragmatic and functional aspects. questioning is a three-step speech act: locutive, illocutive and perlocutive (austin 1962). the locutive meaning of questioning is to formulate the question with the intonation and syntactic structure typical of an english interrogative sentence. its illocutionary force aims at asking for new information. the aim of a real question is to get the hearer react to it, and this is the perlocutive effect of questioning. questions have both direct and indirect pragmatic functions. when the function of an interrogative sentence such as have you been to egypt? is to question, it is described as a direct speech act. but interrogative structures are often used to express other functions than to question, i.e. requests, commands or statements. in this case they function as indirect speech acts. for example, the interrogative form can you translate this word into french? is normally understood as a request, though its literal/direct meaning is are you able to translate this word into french? in this case nothing more than the addressee’s knowledge of french and his ability of translating is being questioned. alternative questions imply a choice out of two or more possibilities represented by general questions. they are of two types: 1) alternation refers to a part of the sentence, 2) alternation is represented by separate clauses. the first part of the alternative question is usually pronounced with a rising intonation, the second with falling one. if the second part is uttered with a rising intonation, then the alternative question should be perceived as a general question (quirk and greenbaum 1978:198199). armenian folia anglistika linguistics 30 yelena mkhitaryan sona sargissyan for example: general question: shall we go by bus or train? no, let’s take the car. alternative question: shall we go by bus or train? by bus. alternative questions are not usually followed by yes and no responses as the speaker expects the addressee to choose one out of the two proposed possibilities, and this one becomes the content of the response. practically any general question can be transformed into an alternative question by adding the negative particle not. are you coming? are you coming or are you not coming? as a rule, the second part of the alternative question undergoes different degrees of ellipsis. the above sentence can be ellipted in the following way: are you coming or are you not? are you coming or not? both parts of the alternative question may undergo maximum ellipsis, in which case the structure preserves only those parts which make up the objects of alternation, in other words, only the rhematic part of the utterance. this kind of ellipsis can be accounted for by the speech situation suggestion or advice-making. coffee or whiskey? coffee, please. (sheldon 150) when an alternative question is represented by separate clauses (with different subjects and predicates), ellipsis normally does not occur. will you go up or shall we have tea? i’m not particular. (houghton 32) the first part of the alternative question may be expressed by a special or a wh-question. a) who do you work for, me or kagle? (heller 391) b) it’s not how you play the game, it’s whether you win or not? (sheldon 153) c) what do you say? go or stay?(shaw 249) as evident from example (c), the second part may be separated from the main part of the sentence. this is especially usual with alternative questions made up of separate clauses as can be seen below. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 31 but really , i think i am quite fit to be in the streets now that i’ve put my dress to rights. or do you think i am not? (ibsen, 130) and there was nothing he could do about it. or was there? (segal 235) in the above two examples the first part of the alternative question is represented by a declarative sentence. there are cases when both parts of the alternative questions are expressed by a declarative question, i.e. declarative sentences are uttered as a question. so i can call you at the office to talk about my career plan? or we could have a drink? absolutely. er … good idea. (kinsella 388) when the alternative clause is part of a complex sentence (as an object subordinate clause), it cannot represent alternation as the general meaning of the whole sentence. in this case alternation finds its reflection in the response. why can’t i remember if i enjoyed it or not? because, baby, you were higher than a rocket ship. (segal 219) the response itself shows that the main meaning of the whole question is not alternation; the question is directed at finding out the reason for the action not being performed. hence we have the question why… and the answer because…. of special interest are alternative questions in which the second constituent is expressed by something, anything, what ant the like. this kind of questions are used when the speaker is uncertain about the second alternative, or cannot exactly define it. gee, you sure seem hungry? got a family to support or something? no, i’m a freshman at harvard and need the dough for tuition. (segal 22) no morning sickness or anything like that? no. (maurier 185) isn’t she trying to stir up trouble, or what? young lady’s asking if you want a pound on demand. (o’casey 362) are you deaf or what? i’m a protestant and a worshipper in this church. (o’casey 347) the pragmatic value of these structures as put by e. hatch is “to weaken the criticism given in the message” (hatch 1992:311). we think that the structures containing or what seem to sound somewhat less polite than those with something and anything. as for responses, they all refer to the first part of the question, which is quite logical. alternative questions often imply opposing statements. here are some examples to illustrate this. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 32 a) is it love you feel or is it pity merely? it is love, robert. love and only love. (wilde 275) b) would you rather be poor and go to heaven or rich and go to hell? “go to hell,” she tells me, picking up my cue. (heller 439) c) “are you mad or glad?” i demand with a grin. oh, daddy,” she answers. “whenever you make one of us unhappy, you always try to get out of it by behaving like a child.” (heller 108) we see from the examples (a, b, c) that the responses reflect the addressee’s concrete choice out of the proposed alternatives. it must be noted here that this is not always the case, as very often the response may show the addressee’s being uncertain (d), unresolved (e) or unscrupulous (f) as to the object of choice. d) “coffee or tea?” angela asked. “whatever you’re having”, calhoun said. (cook 323) e) do you hate him too, or are you so devoted to him that you didn’t want to share him? it’s not like that at all. i used to love him once. (christie 81) f) did you actually see this man talking to the district attorney, or was he just in the group around him? i – i just don’t know. (segal 47) the addressee may have the choice of both the alternatives proposed. do you want rice, bob, or noodles? both. (cgoe) in some cases the addressee suggests another alternative as different (or making it more specific) from those proposed in the question. is it a snow job or a hatchet job? “i hope it’ll be an honest job,” the reporter replied. (segal 501) when an alternative question functions according to its direct communicative aim, i.e. suggests an alternation, its function is considered to be direct. as for responses, they are direct if they really show a choice of a concrete object from those proposed (a, b, g). in cases the answers are evasive or uncertain, we have indirect responses (c, d, e, f). like other types of interrogative sentences, this type of question also has a number of indirect pragmatic uses. the second alternative may have the implications of advice: so do i take it then you accept my offer, george? or do you want to think about? maybe talk over with your faculty adviser? all right. i’ll explain things to zbig. (segal 158) armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 33 the above example is noteworthy in that the modal adverb maybe can be replaced by another or, since their meanings are similar in this context (or talk over with …?). threat: “do you mind leaving the house?” said max, “or do you want crawley and me to chuck you out?” “steady a moment, steady a moment,” said favel. (maurier 338) there is a hidden condition in the above example: if you mind leaving the house, crawley and i will chuck you out. the same implication of condition is observed in the following example: for the love of god, one of you tell me if the reverend clinton’s here or have i to crawl a long way further? he’s here; i’m here, my good woman. (o’casey 342) the meaning of the whole utterance may be understood as if you don’t tell me if the reverend clinton’s here, i’ll have to crawl a long way further. annoyance, anger: are you going to talk like a grown man or aren’t you? sit down, dear. don’t be angry, what’s the matter? (miller 404) reproach: mother, are you quite sure that you wouldn’t advise me to try the waterloo bar, or marry a laborer, or even go into the factory? of course not. what sort of mother do you take me for! (shaw 218) uncertainty: a) miss norma restarik left crosshedges on sunday or was it monday morning? she left there sunday night but she has not arrived at bordene mansions. (christie 37) b) i rang up to ask you what is the girl’s address somewhere in south ken, isn’t it? or was it knightsbridge? …i wrote down the address, but of course i’ve lost it as usual. i can’t even remember her name: is it thora or norma?… yes, i thought it was norma. (christie 17) c) the game’s up, you know, mr.restarik or shall i call you robert orwell? (christie 182) the use of the alternative questions in the above examples can be accounted for by the failure of the speaker’s memory (a). in other cases (b, c) it may be conditioned by the change of the circumstances entailing quite a new situation. in the last example as a result of the cross-examination it was found out that mr. restarik’s real name was robert orwell, therefore these two names are joined together by means of the conjunction or, which obviously does not imply alternation. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 34 we will observe another example, in which the alternative question is used to show the differences that the change of the situation has brought about and which the speaker expects to be exactly perceived and truly appreciated by the addressee. did she want to be friends with me at last? or did she realize that it had not been me at all who had told maxim about favel, and this was her way of thanking me for my silence? (maurier 207) alternative questions may sometimes occur in monologues, in which they have the sounding of a rhetorical question. in the example given below the speaker (the mother) describes to her daughter the situation that would have happened if she had not been given the opportunities that mother had created for the latter. the mother expects her daughter to understand her, to share her troubles, to show some kind of tolerance and compassion towards her. do you want to find that out, like other women, at forty, when you’ve thrown yourself away and lost chances; or won’t you take it in good time now from your own mother, that loves you and swears to you that it’s truth; gospel truth? (shaw 252) the alternative question may also have the implication of comparison. consider the following example: “which is more important?” my wife makes the mistake of asking, “your own wife and daughter, or those other important things?” interestingly enough, structures with the conjunction or in certain contexts may lose the meaning of alternation and acquire a new shade of meaning that of the conjunction and joining homogeneous parts of the sentence. what do the people know about people like me? when did they ever meet me, or speak to me, or let anyone tell them about me? would they ever have done for you if i hadn’t paid them? (shaw 252-253) mother, are you quite sure that you wouldn’t advise me to try the waterloo bar, or marry a laborer, or even go into the factory? of course not. what sort of mother do you take me for! (shaw 218) in the second and the third questions of the first example the conjunction or does not convey the meaning of alternation, but serves to join the homogeneous parts of the utterances, which can easily be substituted by the conjunction and (what do the people that taught you know about life and people like me? when did they ever meet me and speak to me…?) in the second example the speaker expresses her resentment towards her mother by enumerating all kinds of humiliating jobs that her mother armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 35 (according to the daughter’s opinion) could wish her to get into. the same is observed in the following example: did you ever think what you were doing when you abandoned us? did you ever even try to find out how father was? or me? or even aniko? he suddenly grew cold… he’d felt a piercing shame. (segal 431) in the above example there are two or-phrases which, when parcellated still more strongly, emphasize the sister’s resentment against her brother’s callous, heartless attitude towards his own family the members of which are presented separately by. so we can say these or-phrases have no implication of alternation as they may be easily substituted by and-phrases. (did you ever even try to find how father was and me and even aniko?) therefore we can call this use of the alternative question inclusive (including all the items) as compared with those uses discussed earlier and which may be called exclusive when the addressee is expected to choose only one item to the exclusion of the others. it is worth mentioning that in english there is another type of clause with or which is devoid of the meaning of alternation whatsoever. in the example below the conjunction or implies approximation meaning with about (about five/six). what about five or six eggs and bacon and toast? (segal 106) summing up, we can say that alternative questions like other types of questions in english, function as direct and indirect speech acts, the latter manifesting a wide scope of pragmatic meanings (advice, threat, reproach, anger, uncertainty). as for the structural and semantic aspects, alternative questions present a wide variety of meaning and structure. some structures with or do not imply the meaning of alternation at all. examining the responses to the alternative questions functioning as indirect speech acts, we come to the conclusion that they either are absent or have the meaning of indirect (evasive) responses and only in some cases do we observe a direct response. references: 1. austin, j.l. (1962) how to do things with words. oxford: claredon press. 2. clark, h.h. (1991) responding to indirect speech acts. // pragmatics. s.davis (ed.). oxford: oxford university press. 3. hatch, e. (1992) discourse and language education. cambridge: cambridge university press. 4. quirk, r., greenbaum, s. (1990) a university grammar of english. london: longman. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 36 sources of data: 1. christie, a. (1970) third girl. london and glasgow: collins clear-type press. 2. cook, r. (1995) fatal cure. new york: berkley books. 3. francis, j.o. (1966) birds of a feather. 24 one-act plays. j.m. london: dent &sons ltd. 4. heller, j. (1974) something happened. new york: del publishing group, inc. 5. ibsen, h. (1967) the master builder. six great modern plays. new york: dell publishing co., inc. 6. mankowitz, w. (1966) the bespoke overcoat. 24 one-act plays. new york: j.m. dent & sons ltd. 7. maurier, du d. (1978) rebecca. london: hunt barnard printing, ltd. 8. miller, a. (1967) all my sons. six great modern plays. new york: dell publishing co., inc. 9. o’casey, s. (1966) a pound on demand. 24 one-act plays. new york: j.m. dent &sons ltd. 10. segal, e. (1986) the class. new york: dewsbury international, inc. 11. shaw, b. (1967) mrs. warren’s profession. six great modern plays. new york: dell publishing co., inc. 12. sheldon, s. (1980) rage of angels. london: william collins sons & co. ltd. ºñïáýïñ³ï³ý ñ³ñó»ñá ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù (·áñí³é³ï³ý-·áñí³μ³ý³ï³ý ùýýáõãûáõý) ²ý· é» ñ» ýç »ñ ïáýï ñ³ ï³ý ñ³ñ ó» ñá, çýã å»ë ùûáõë ñ³ñ ó³ ï³ý ý³ ë³ ¹³ ëáõã ûáõý ý» ñá, ï³ ñáõ »ý ñ³ý ¹»ë ·³é áõ õçõ ¨ ³ ýáõõ õ³ ïç ëáë ù³ ûçý ³ï ï» ñç ·áñ í³ éáõûã ý» ñáí, í»ñ ççý ¹»å ùáõù ³ñ ï³ ñ³û ï» éáí ½³ ý³ ½³ý ·áñ í³ μ³ ý³ ï³ý ç ù³ëï ý»ñ (ëáñ ñáõñ¹, ëå³é ý³ éçù, íñ¹áí ùáõýù ¨ ³ûéý): ò ̈ ç áõ ï³ éáõó í³í ù³ ûçý ï³ ë³ýï ûáõ ýçó ³û¹ ï» ë³ ïç ñ³ñ ó³ ï³ý ý³ ë³ ¹³ ëáõã ûáõý ý»ñý ³ã ùç »ý áýï ýáõù μ³½ ù³ ½³ ýáõã û³ùμ: à ñáß ¹»å ù» ñáõù or ß³õ ï³ åáí ñ³ñ ó³ ï³ý ý³ ë³ ¹³ ëáõã ûáõý ý» ñá ã»ý å³ ñáõ ý³ ïáõù »ñ ïáýï ñ³ý ùç ç ù³ëï: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 37 maket 2012 1-2:layout 1.qxd gender and positive politeness in facebook communication marta dąbrowska jagiellonian university t he current paper is a contribution to the discussion in progress for about fortyyears which concerns the existence of possible differences in the speaking styles of women and men, initiated on a more global scale by the publication of a seminal paper by r. lakoff (1975). the main thesis of her paper could be summed up in brief by a statement that women’s language is deficient, as it is (according to the author) characterised by a number of features indicating that women speak from a position of powerless persons. more specifically, they tend to be excessively polite (which manifests itself through a large number of standard language forms, hedges, question tags, and questions), they show lack of confidence in what they are saying due to a frequent use of the hesitant, rising intonation. what is more, their language is overly affective as they often “speak in italics”, and what they say lacks substance, which is visible in the high frequency of the so called “empty” adjectives, as e.g. cute, lovely, etc. the above statements have proved quite controversial to both men and women, which has led to extensive research into male-female linguistic differences (more than similarities, for obvious reasons). this, in turn, has generated a wealth of data and has been able to bring in new perspectives, especially as far as the language used by women is concerned, moreover, in many cases it has disproved lakoff’s original claims. a fairly long list of differences in terms of male and female speaking styles could be drafted as a result, especially as regards the use of language in interaction, e.g., a much greater tendency to interrupt their interlocutors, to occupy a longer speaking time, and to initiate the subjects of conversation on the part of men, a different meaning and frequency of the use of backchannel noises in the speech of the two genders, the character and the meaning of hedges and question tags, the male preference for generalisation as opposed to the female personalisation, and indeed, among others, a greater tendency to resort to polite forms of language on the part of women (cf. swann 2000; stockwell 2002). the latter feature, among others, has particularly been singled out by feminist researchers who have analysed single-sex interactions (viz. coates 1993; cameron 1995), as a result of which a new approach towards specifically the female style of speaking has been proposed following the assumption that when interacting women employ a cooperative style of communication and support each other. this goal can indeed be achieved by means of the above-mentioned features of the female genderlect, and the polite style of speaking occupies a prominent position among them. the above processes progressed parallel to the developments in the study of linguistic politeness, which has featured a number of influential approaches to date (viz. leech 1980; 1983°; fraser 1990; janney and arndt 1992), but the study which has proved most seminal is that of brown and levinson (1987/1994). brown and levinson’s research adopted goffman’s (1967) concept of face as its foundation, as a result of which the armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 7 notion of a face threatening act, a speech act which can potentially be threatening to both the hearer’s and/or the speaker’s face, was developed, and this, in turn led to the distinction between four types of polite behaviour. and thus, depending on the intention of the speaker behind a given speech act and the communicative strategies used, the authors distinguished bald on-record politeness (most face-threatening, as it aims for the clarity of expression more than showing attention to the addressee’s feelings), off record politeness (most difficult to interpret, as the speaker uses many evasive methods in order to express his or her meaning indirectly), on-record negative politeness (the one which is most identified with the traditional concept of speaking politely, and one which attends to the hearer’s negative face needs, i.e. the needs to be respected, unimpeded in one’s actions, etc.), and finally on-record positive politeness, i.e. one which is directed towards the hearer’s positive face needs, i.e. his or her wish to be accepted, liked, admired. it is the latter type of politeness that i wish to elaborate on in the context of the genderlect discussion. positive politeness makes use of a number of strategies which allow one to attend to the hearer’s positive face, most typical of which would be, e.g., intensifying interest in the hearer, asserting common ground, using in-group identity markers, promising, giving gifts, seeking agreement, being optimistic, to name just a few. these may be implemented by means of more specifically defined speech acts, as thanks, offers, invitations, compliments, etc. (cf. brown and levinson 1987/1994). this type of politeness, as indicated above, has been mostly identified with the female style of speaking, which has been confirmed by a number of subsequent studies motivated by lakoff’s paper (cf. tannen’s rapport talk (1990), holmes’s affective speaking (1993, 1995), coates’s (1993) and cameron’s (1995) studies of all-female interaction). the traditional genderlect studies naturally have focused on the spoken medium most, i.e. on face-to-face interaction. the purpose of the current study is to examine some real language samples generated by a new study context which is the computer mediated communication, according to some linguists possibly as a separate channel from speech and writing (viz. stockwell 2002). i have already studied different aspects of genderlects in the context of email (viz. dąbrowska 2007a, d, e). examined here will be the cmc context of a social network, represented by facebook. the main goal will be to establish whether women indeed do have a greater tendency than men to resort to positive politeness in the semi-formal and informal language context, and if so, which strategies, if any, appear to be most popular among the language users. the study will be based on language samples collected among native british english facebook users, so that integrity of the study assumptions and findings can thus be maintained. in view of the latest observations made in the context of genderlect studies it is believed that in order to make any justified comments about the two speaking styles, one needs to focus on the language of fairly well defined language communities, and not merely make some vague and sweeping statements about all men and all women (cf. bing and bergvall 1996; mills 2003). hence my choice of the native british english facebook users. firstly, it is the most numerous group i interact with by means of facebook, which allows me to investigate the language samples of persons from different generations, and secondly, the studies of genderlects have focused extensively on the speakers of english, mainly its american, armenian folia anglistika linguistics 8 british, new zealand and australian variants (cf. lakoff 1975; tannen 1990; holmes 1993, 1995; coates 1993; cameron 1995; eisikovits 1987, 1988), thanks to which it will be possible to verify my findings against the already available knowledge. as far as the choice of the medium for the selection of the language samples is concerned, as i have already stated in my former papers concerning the analysis of the facebook data (cf. dąbrowska 2011 and forthcoming), i believe that, due to its worldwide recognition, social networks, and notably facebook, contain a wealth of most natural, informal and semi-formal language samples which are available in large quantities for a sociolinguistic study. facebook creates a friendly, encouraging environment in which the users want to share their thoughts, feelings and experiences with their friends and acquaintances in a safe context, they also want to discover similar things about their facebook contacts. my assumption is, therefore, that focus is placed more on the social aspect of interaction rather than on the referential one. for this reason facebook is a source of predominantly naturally occurring language, though obviously modified up to a point by the fact that it does, after all, make use of writing, writing that will be read by many, which in the case of some users may evoke a greater attention to the language correctness. another important reason behind the choice of facebook as a source of data is the fact that it is a form of cmc whose main purpose is to maintain contacts with other people. this may be done by sharing some factual information and initiating a discussion on some issues or events happening in the world, but more often than not it is a space where one shares personal information and expects the same from their network contacts – it is a medium which enhances positive relationships with people, and as such it also serves as a very valuable source of data concerning the phatic aspect of human communication. politeness, and particularly the on record positive politeness has a very integral part in how we want to nurture our contacts with others. showing our friends and acquaintances that we care about them, like or admire them as well as their views, experiences, etc. is a vital part of building and maintaining friendships and enhancing good relations with people. we often attend to the other’s positive face because we expect the same in return. my assumption is therefore that a number of language samples collected through the facebook medium will serve as positive politeness carriers and as such will generate data which will allow me to explore the gender-related aspects of language use more thoroughly. the samples analysed here have been collected among the posts generated by 24 users of facebook, all of them native speakers of english from great britain. the figure, albeit not very high, comprises 12 female and 12 male users, and each of the groups is composed of four young persons (aged between 20-35), four middle-aged (aged between 36-55) and four senior ones (aged 56 and more), thereby allowing for a fairly balanced representation of the two genders as exemplified by various age groups. it is obvious that each user possesses some unique characteristics, however, it is believed that certain common traits and behavioural tendencies can still be found across the gender and age groups. the samples were as a rule collected from among posts written in the course of one month, although there were a few exceptions of longer periods in the case of the persons who are not very avid facebook users. the examination of altogether 192 posts in search for the manifestations of positive politeness (96 posts for each group) allowed me armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 9 to identify 260 examples of speech acts which could be recognised as carriers of positive politeness. more specifically, there were 141 (i.e., 54%) of positively polite speech acts generated by the female users and 119 (46%) examples of positive politeness produced by the male users. thus, already at this stage it may be noted that there is a greater tendency to make use of positive politeness strategies on the part of women, although indeed the difference is not huge. it might be an indication that, as in the case of emotional aspects of language analysed in the email communication (cf. dąbrowska 2007a) one of the primary uses of which is that of maintaining social relationships, women and men do not differ so significantly in terms of the language strategies selected as it might be the case in public contexts (cf. holmes 1995). the analysis presented below will focus on the characteristics of the variety of speech acts which were identified in the posts as carriers of positive politeness, and notably on their numbers, their use across the gender groups, and the more specific traits which might possibly characterise their use by the two genders. more specifically, the speech acts which were identified as markers of positive politeness in the facebook language samples could be divided into 7 general categories, i.e. 1. wishes, 2. thanks, 3. praises, compliments and congratulations, 4. expressions of positive hope, 5. expressions of interest, 6. expressions of a wish to meet, and 7. miscellaneous speech acts (comprising expressions of satisfaction, promises, and invitations). wishes in keeping with my original assumptions, wishes constitute the largest portion of manifestations of positive politeness, since facebook itself encourages users to send each other wishes by sending them reminders of their friends’ birthdays. thus, the number of wishes, the overwhelming number of which were birthday wishes, amounts to 78 (70 birthday wishes and 8 wishes concerning other events), i.e. 30% of all the positively polite speech acts. this figure, surprisingly, can be split into as many as 46 wishes sent by males and only 32 sent by females. this group, however, represents one of only two speech acts (the other being invitations, included in the miscellaneous category) in terms of which the male facebook users exceeded the female ones in terms of attending to the addressee’s positive face, and constitutes as much as 42% of all the manifestations of positive politeness (divided into the above-mentioned 7 categories) identified in the posts written by men vs. only 24% of the positively polite speech acts found in the posts produced by women. it is believed that the facebook’s “nudging” its users in order to send wishes to their contacts is partly responsible for the high number of wishes found in the case of men, considering that the remaining 58% covers all the other 6 categories of speech acts, so the distribution of various strategies of positive politeness in the case of men is markedly uneven. also, the fact that only 17% of them are more elaborate structures going beyond the traditional happy birthday phrase (viz. 31% in the female posts) is also to be noted. the overview of the forms of wishes used by the male facebook users singles out the phrase happy birthday x (where x stands for the name of the addressee) as the most numerous one, exemplified by 23 posts, occasionally also in the abbreviated cmc language, viz. happy bday x, as well as happy belated birthday x. this group difarmenian folia anglistika linguistics 10 fers just slightly from an even simpler one, i.e. happy birthday, occasionally followed by a smiley, used 8 times by men. the remaining group covers a variety of forms, viz. many very happy returns; many happy returns mate; all the best, have a good one; hooray for your birthday; hip hip hoorah for you and much love from me!; belated hippo birdie 2 u; enjoy your special day!,…and yet another year younger…. as indicated above, occasionally the wish element got extended by some additional birthday-related comment. in the case of the posts written by the males those may be represented by the following: happy birthday x. have a great day and a blessed year!; happy birthday x! have a great day with all your family and a year ahead; happy birthday x. all the best. finally, the remaining group of wishes is small (5 items) and concerns a variety of things, e.g., eid mubarak to you too (on the muslim celebration of eid); hope you have a gr8 wkend; good wishes; good luck; love to your tribe. thus, it may be seen that the variety in terms of the structures used and the meaning expressed is fairly limited, and otherwise the users resort to the most typical, traditional phrases. the examination of the posts written by women demonstrates a smaller number of the expressions of wishes, but a greater variety of those in terms of the form they have taken. this time the primary choice is the simplest form happy birthday, used 13 times, including also belated happy birthday (1), yet this phrase is more often than in the case of men followed by another sentence with some additional wish. second to this is the phrase happy birthday x with its 10 uses, also sometimes followed by another sentence. the phrases which represent some variation of the form are exemplified by 5 posts, viz. have an unreal birthday!; happy birthday from all of us; happy 18th x; hope you have an enjoyable celebration; have a super first in (country) celebration. it may thus be seen that the variants are slightly more traditional and also more emotional than those used by some men – the latter, on the other hand, showed a greater tendency towards using more humorous expressions. as said above, more women chose to go beyond just the expression of the wish and added some additional phrase to enhance the emotional value of the wish. these took a variety of forms, e.g., i hope you have a lovely day; best wishes for the year ahead; just for you!; happy memories of kangaroos and cold in (name of a city); have a great day but be careful!; but what stood out most in terms of the frequency were some more emphatic additions like love; love and hugs!, love you both; lots of love!, love from us both!, much love (in 7 wishes), which were missing in the posts written by men. another, seemingly unimportant feature, which, however, was found only in the wishes offered by women (apart from other speech acts analysed) was the use of the traditional x or xxx as a symbol of a kiss – they were found in as many as 12 posts expressing wishes written by women, but in none whatsoever among those written by men (cf. dąbrowska forthcoming), which is an undeniable sign of affection, as one does not use this device if one does not want to stress positive feelings towards the other person, and therefore, a manifestation of positive politeness as well. finally, in order to cover the question of wishes, it needs to be added that women also sent wishes to their friends on other occasions, though these were very limited (3 items), i.e. happy 2nd anniversary!; stay safe, x!, good luck, x, you deserve to get a fantastic grade. in summary of this speech act it therefore needs to be stressed that, albeit there were numerically more armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 11 posts with wishes written by men, the female way of offering wishes tends to be more elaborate and affectionate than that of men, and this may be marked by both some additional comments aiming to stress the importance of the occasion or show others how much they are loved, or by the use of the xxx in order to stress the emotional bond with that person and show how much the female senders liked them. when it comes to any possible age differences in relation to the age groups the post authors represented, most likely due to the fact that wishes tend to be highly conventionalised, as the above analysis has demonstrated, no particular distinctions could be found. praise, compliments and congratulations telling someone that we admire them or the items which belong to them or else the activities performed by them is certainly one of the principal ways of showing positive politeness towards that person. also, the facebook context, with the help of which the users share with their contacts what they have done, what has happened to them, etc. greatly encourages some sort of response, and, as the overview of facebook posts has proved, these are hardly ever negative responses. because of the nature of facebook, which is meant to connect rather than divide people, the users would rather withhold any reaction at all when disagreeing with or disapproving of what another person has written on their wall than comment on it in outwardly negative terms. on the other hand, when liking what the other person writes, the user has a choice of either marking it with the thumbs up symbol, by far the most popular way of showing positively polite attitude towards others, or writing something below the original post. the comment may obviously focus on the factual aspect only, however, the present analysis has proved that in addition to that facebook friends very often say something nice about what the author has written. it is therefore self-explanatory that expressions of praise, compliments and congratulations, which i have decided to put together due to their similar nature, occupy the second highest position on the list of the most frequent positively polite speech acts to be found on facebook, after wishes. however, unlike in the case of wishes, which are induced by facebook, and ignoring of which may be viewed as an outward manifestation of negative feelings towards or about the birthday addressee, as giving wishes is an expected social custom, in the case of reacting to the other persons’ posts the recipients are free to take no steps at all, and this entails no anathema or negative feelings. therefore, when they do decide to respond to the posts, and what is more, when they respond by praising, complimenting or congratulating, the positive value of such a response is particularly high. the overall number of praises, compliments and congratulations for both groups consisted of 49 examples. out of this figure 15 (31%) were offered by men, whereas as many as 34 (i.e. 69%) were found in the posts written by women. this is one of the three categories of positively polite speech acts (beside expressions of interest in the addressee and expressions of hope for another meeting) where the discrepancy between the two genders was most visible. among the objects of praise those which evoked a very similar number of reactions from both genders were various items belonging to the post authors, and notably photos or things they were the authors of (e.g. a cake, a decoration of a coffee jar). in this catearmenian folia anglistika linguistics 12 gory men wrote 7 posts and women 8, viz. great photo; that is a really beautiful picture; great photo x; wonderful picture j, vs. i like your profile picture; great pic; nice picture of your mum; looks great!; best dressed coffee i’ve ever seen. the fact that both groups chose to praise those objects in a similar way proves that complimenting others on their belongings appears to be safest of all, least face-threatening. a similar approach, though of a much lower frequency, can be found in the case of ideas that the post authors expressed, and which were offered by men 4 times, and by women – 3, e.g. sounds like a good plan; that’s cool, nice one, x; vs. really like your idea; fantastic; wonderful. what needs to be noted here is the use of informal language and structures, illustrated by, e.g. the deletion of the subject phrase of the sentence, the use of common, often “empty” adjectives, etc. the situation appears to be similar in the case of praising events, although there seems to be a slightly greater discrepancy between men (2 praises) and women (6 praises). some examples to be quoted here are: hey x, nice memory! vs. it was lovely x j, i was impressed by your long walk last year; had a great time with x; great working with you. the aspect where the greatest differences between the two genders are to be observed, however, are praises, congratulations and compliments offered to the other in terms of their achievements (men – 2, women – 11), looks (men – 0, women – 3) and also people (men – 0, women – 2). the first of the three is particularly striking, as it would have seemed only natural to commend someone on what they did or congratulate them on their success. women do it quite readily, viz. congratulations, lovely lady! well done for getting a fab degree, can’t wait to see the pics; awesome – congratulations to you both j xxx; congratulations to you too as i gather you are now dr x!; well done you!; well done to x on getting on to her college course; well done to x!; wehay! well done to x!; congratulations on your graduation day! vs. well done for getting the grades fresh ones!; congrats x! in the case of men. congratulating someone on their achievements, as can be seen, is typically accompanied by high emotionality, which is reflected in may examples by means of exclamation marks, smileys and, in the case of women, xxx. female facebook users appear to offer such comments to their contacts freely, as it does strengthen their bonds of friendship with the others. the comparative lack of such expressions on the part of men may possibly stem from some hidden feeling of jealousy – men on the whole like to compete against each other (cf. tannen 1990), so possibly acknowledging the other person’s success may not come to them easily (cf. also the use of compliments in holmes (1995)). if congratulating others on their achievements is considered face-threatening, then complimenting others on their looks is an even greater danger to the male face, as studies of some materials have demonstrated (cf. herbert 1989, 1990; holmes 1995). men hardly praise the other person’s looks – it is a risky action with regard to a female addressee, as it may be perceived as an act of sexual harassment, and it is even more risky when addressed to another man, as then the speaker may be accused of homosexual orientation. that is why the collected material contains only a few comments from women, viz. nice hair.. x; you look gorgeous, x!, x, you look like such a cool customer!, and none from men. in a similar way, praising people for what they are like as people (not just their armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 13 looks) may lie more in the domain of women, hence the two additional comments offered by female facebook users, viz. i have such wonderful friends and you are very kind. thus, the overview of the use of this group of speech acts shows unmistakably that, to quote holmes’s (1993) title she used for one of her papers, “[new zealand] women are good to talk to,” as they strive to make their interlocutor feel nice and appreciated (cf. also coates 1996). thanks thanks are also on the whole used as markers of positive politeness in that they express gratitude, i.e. they indicate approval of the other person. unlike the two previous speech acts, thanks, represented by 45 examples, present little difference in terms of their use by the two genders, as the male users thanked their facebook friends for something 22 times, and women – 23 times. thus, the figures in both cases are fairly high when compared to the numbers of various other speech acts used here. this may be caused by the fact that thanking is perceived as a primary sign of good upbringing and politeness in the very conventional sense. one is expected to thank the speaker on receiving gifts (cf. brown and levinson 1987/1994), here verbal gifts, as e.g. wishes of various kind or praises and compliments discussed above. on a closer examination of the thanking strategies opted for by facebook users it may be noticed that the options are not very numerous, and with a slightly lower number of thanks used by men there is somewhat greater variation in the forms here (5 categories used by men vs. 4 used by women). the form that by far exceeds the others is the simplest thanking formula, viz. thanks, which may stand alone or be followed by some more elaborate phrase. it was used by men 14 times, and by women as many as 18 times, e.g. thanks!; thanks x!; thanks for remembering!; thanks for the email; vs. thanks!; thanks x; thanks friends; thanks guys; thanks for inviting us; thanks to everyone that came on saturday; thanks for the likes and reading the posts!; thanks for the invite; thanks to all of you for the surprise birthday & leaving dinner!. occasionally the word thanks was modified to make the meaning more affective, which in fact was found more often in the phrases used by men, viz. hi thanks a lot!; hi x thanks a lot; hey x thanks a million (such variants were used 4 times) as opposed to only one phrase of this type used by a woman, i.e. thanks so much. next to the most neutral and at the same time informal word thanks the more official thank you was also found, usually with the complement to follow, but it was used far less frequently than the above option, i.e. twice by men and three times by women, viz. thank you; thank you, i will vs. thank you everyone for the birthday wishes; thank you for the ‘congratulations’ texts; thank you for being there for me when i need you. it may be noticed, therefore, that the full phrase is used to carry thanks in slightly more serious contexts where the use of thanks might be perceived as too neglectful. in addition to the bare form of thank you men decided to use two more options which are again more emphatic as a result of modifying the phrase by the intensifying adverbs so and very, thereby making the expressions of thanks stronger but also more formal sounding, i.e., thank you very much; x thank you so much for your greetings. on the other hand, only one person, this time a young woman, went for a much armenian folia anglistika linguistics 14 more colloquial option, typically found with the younger generation, i.e. cheers, as in cheers ma, you too! to sum up, it may, therefore, be stated that thanks, although quite abundant, but simple in their form, are used by facebook users probably more out of convention; any more affectionate form of thanks would have probably been reserved for a more personal, one-to-one message. expressions of positive hope the next item on the list of the speech acts which carry positively polite meanings towards one’s friends are what i have decided to call expressions of positive hope, as i was quite struck by the number of expressions addressed towards a friend which started with [i] hope that…and then they were followed by some sort of an indirect wish about either the present situation (which appeared to be the most numerous), the future or, least often, about the past. the numbers, similar for both genders, one more time showed a slight bias towards the female users. they were used 34 times in all – 15 times by men and 19 times by women. both groups had almost the same numbers for the expressions of hope about the present (9 and 10, respectively), about the future (5 in each group), only with regard to the expressions of hope concerning some past event women exceeded men more (4 for women vs. 1 for men). the structure of those is similar, i.e. for the present: i hope that all is well with you and that you are doing well; hope all is well with you; hope you are all well; i hope you and yours are flourishing; hope you are having a great time (men) vs. hope you are doing ok, hope you are all well and lovely; i hope you and your family are well; hope that you are making the most of it in your new home; hope you’re taking full advantage of chilling out before the job starts!!! xx; hope life is good; hope all well at hospital? (women); for the future hope we can see you sometime; i hope to see you or talk to you soon; hope it’s a great day and a blessed year x; hope u hve a gr8 wkend (men) vs. hope to do it again some time soon; i hope you have a great day x; i hope we will all come see you; hope you have an enjoyable celebration (women); and the past hope x was ok for you (men) vs. hope you had a great day; hope you all had a good time; hope you celebrated (women). thus, the overview of the collected examples demonstrates that the senders show their addressees that they like them and care for them as they express all those positive hopes with regard to their friends. the frequent use of this strategy proves to be a specially useful device in that it shows that others are important to us, that we care about them. expressions of interest in others the number of elements in this category is significantly smaller than in the abovementioned ones, giving us 20 items in all, but this strategy is worth mentioning in greater detail as one of those where the gender difference may also be noted, albeit on a small scale. out of the overall number only 7 examples of this speech act were found in the posts written by men, and as many as 13 in the posts written by women. expressing interest is most typically shown through questions about the other’s well being, less often by stating that we are missing that person. the first option may be illustrated by the following posts: how are you/u; how and where are you these days?; all ok with you?; armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 15 how are you celebrating tonight? vs. how are things with you; how is your voice?; the second category of speech acts illustrating this strategy here are i sometimes wonder about you and what you are doing; thinking of you often (men) vs. missed you this weekend; i miss you already; i’m missing you too; miss you too; thinking of you (women). the remaining few are much sympathy; send photos of the new place!. the overall examination thus shows that there is a significant numerical difference between the two genders, with women as natural carers and affectionate persons having expressed interest about the others more. what is particularly striking is the use of phrases like miss you too, i miss you already, i’m missing you, etc. men never ventured such an open display of emotionality. expressions of a wish to meet this category of items which fall under the strategy of positive politeness is difficult to label. in other genres, notably letters and email messages, they would most likely be described as closing turns, as they usually come at the end of the message. however, a closing turn, strictly speaking, would include expressions of good-byes which might or might not be complemented by additional elements like those of expressing a wish to meet again. i am interested in that last item in particular, since expressions which contained such type of message constituted a visible part of the collected material – they, however, do not always come at the end of the post or a whole sequence of posts, but may constitute a separate item, and the posts may not contain farewell words at all, hence the difficulty with their classification. this group of positively polite phrases, which altogether consists of 17 items, also belongs to the types of expressions which bring out differences in the facebook behaviour of men and women. whereas men expressed a wish to meet with the addressee again 6 times, women indicated their willingness to see the person again or soon 11 times. thus, although the group is altogether small, the numerical values still mark the gender differences quite clearly. the expressions used by men are not only less numerous, but also less emphatic, and there is hardly any difference in how they approach both male and female addressees. the expressions recorded are see you in a few weeks; see you soon; look forward to see you in x; i long to see you and the family; much looking forward to see you in september and looking forward to welcoming all of the freshlings to x. the expressions used by women, both to female and male addressees, may make use of neutral forms, as e.g. see you monday/saturday/on the 3rd; looking forward to seeing you soon; and we will look forward to seeing you whenever you make it; look forward to catching up with you and x soon, but some of the expressions, in particular those written on the walls of other females, take a more affective form, e.g.: can’t wait to see you xxx, and i can’t wait to meet up with you in x. in conclusion, making use of this type of expressions makes the overall message particularly pleasant to read, they are therefore a useful marker of positive politeness, and making such expressions more emphatic, which is typically the case of women, make the speaker’s intention sound particularly genuine. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 16 miscellaneous (expressions of satisfaction, promises, invitations) the final category of items which can be classified as markers of positive politeness in the collected material includes the remaining types of speech acts whose number was much lower than that of the expressions discussed above, and for this reason they have been classified together. there are 17 items in all, and they fall into three categories: expressions of satisfaction connected with the other person (best represented 9 items altogether, spread equally between the two groups, i.e., 4 written by men and 5 by women), promises (4 items, 2 written by men and 2 by women) and, finally, invitations (4 items, all produced by one man). a brief discussion of each is as follows: expressing satisfaction in connection with the other person (i.e. about meeting with them or experiences related to them). most of them do relate to the fact that the author of the post had a chance to meet with the other person. examples of the strategy are as follows: glad to meet you at x; glad you can come up man!; glad you’re enjoying it out there! and glad to see your film again at x a couple of days ago, which were written by men, as opposed to it was nice to see you this summer; nice to see you in spite of the circumstances; glad you like it lol x; lovely to see x’s new set up and visit friends in x; was delighted to hear you and x are moving in produced by women. such a small group does not allow for much generalisation, it might be, however, possible to conclude that if men decide to make a comment of this type, it will refer to the most obvious and least facethreatening subject as a meeting, while women might show a greater inclination towards expressing happiness about a variety of aspects connected with the other person, which on the whole creates a pleasant atmosphere of approval. promises: making promises is to reassure the addressee that something they care about will happen, it appeases them, and as such may be considered to be a type of a gift that brown and levinson (1987/1994) speak about. there were very few promises made on facebook, however. it might be that promises are more readily used in speech, and not so much in spontaneous writing in a public context, especially in cmc. the four items found in the material are: will do my best to get over and see you; we promise to leave at 9 before the x starts (written by men) and i will be in touch once we have the opening night; i will be in touch soon about next week (written by women). thus, as can be seen, they concern some arrangements made earlier. here making a promise acts as an additional bond strengthening friendship, as the senders want to show that they care about the other person’s feelings, hence their classification as a positive politeness strategy. invitations: this speech act is certainly a very clear marker of positive politeness since, when we invite someone over for a visit, we show particularly strongly how much we like or admire the person inviting someone over goes further than just uttering kind words, it also entails quite a lot of action, often troublesome for the inviter. it is probably for this reason that invitations were generally not found, except for one person, as they, however encouraging they may sound to the invitee, are also very face-threatening to the speaker. the fact that four items of this speech act were found in the case of one man is connected with his life circumstances (he and his wife have just moved to a new place and after settling down there they were particularly keen on having their friends armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 17 over). hence such expressions as when are you and x coming for a visit?; when are you coming to x; how about coming to x for a holiday in our little guest house which is going up next week?; we look forward to a visit from you both, seriously! in order to evaluate the use of this speech act properly, however, it would be necessary to find other persons experiencing similar life circumstances. the lack of such an opportunity forces us to merely take note of the option. conclusion the above discussion constituted a scrutiny of language strategies which may be used to indicate positively polite behaviour, one of four types of politeness put forward by brown and levinson (1987/1994) which appears to be particularly visible in a popular form of cmc which social networks nowadays constitute. as many as 9 different linguistic strategies (grouped into 7 categories) were found to express this specific type of meaning, thereby stressing the predominantly phatic character of the cmc facebook communicative style and function. the brief analysis of the male and female behaviour recorded in the context of facebook, an example of a social network, has managed to demonstrate that, in keeping with the initial assumption, the behaviour of native english speakers does show divergent tendencies in terms of the gender of the users. out of the 9 categories of speech acts analysed, as many as 5 demonstrated a higher frequency of use on the part of women, and in particular in 3 of them, i.e. praises, compliments, congratulations, expressions of interest about the other, and expressions of a wish to meet were almost twice as often used by women than by men. as regards the remaining 4 types of speech acts, two of them, i.e. thanks and promises, respectively, did not show any significant divergence in terms of distribution between the two groups. the last two groups, i.e. wishes and invitations turned out to have been more often used by men, although for the lack of comparable context the category of invitations must be treated just as a possibility to be tested in other contexts. as regards the high number of wishes produced by men, it is possible that the facebook reminders tend to make the male users more keen to fulfil the expectations. it is probably similar in the case of thanks (in the case of which the two groups behaved almost identically) – their frequent use might result from the fact that it is a kind of a social obligation not only to acknowledge the other person’s birthday but also thank for wishes. in the analysis of the material no particular differences concerning the age of the post authors were found, with the numbers of particular types of expressions distributed among the three age groups very evenly. on the other hand, however, an additional difference could be found in terms of gender, namely a much greater emotional character of the posts written by women. this could be seen both in the more affective character of posts indicated by suitable structures and vocabulary used and the liberal use of the xxx to end the posts. hardly any use of the above was found in the group of posts written by men. to sum up, it is to be concluded that male and female native english speakers do tend to behave somewhat differently in an informal or semi-formal context, of which armenian folia anglistika linguistics 18 facebook appears to be a particularly good example. it remains to be tested whether a similar tendency is also to be found in the case of other cultural and ethnic groups as well as in other language contexts. references: 1. bing, j.; bergvall, v. (1996) the question of questions: beyond binary thinking. // rethinking language and gender research: theory and practice. / ed. by v. bergvall, j. bing, and a. freed. london: longman. 2. brown, p.; levinson, s. (1987/1994) politeness. some universals in language usage. cambridge: cup. 3. cameron, d. (1995a) rethinking language and gender studies: some issues for the 1990s. // language and gender: interdisciplinary perspectives. / ed. by s. mills. harlow, essex: longman. 4. coates, j. (1993) women, men and language. london: longman. 5. coates, j. (1996) women talk. oxford: basil blackwell. 6. dąbrowska, m. (2007°) modifiers in male and female expressions of emotions. // b.a.s. british and american studies. / ed. by h. parlog. timisoara: euv editura universitătii de vest. 7. dąbrowska, m. (2007d) female acts of identity. // journal of languages and translation. vol iii – no ii, part ii a special issue for the proceedings of the fourth international conference of the faculty of al-alsun, minia university “preserving linguistic and cultural identity in the age of globalization. / ed. by a.m. kamal. minia: minia university printing house. 8. dąbrowska, m. (2007e) male and female strategies of communication in e-mail discussion groups. // armenian folia anglistika. international journal of english studies 2(4)/2007. / ed. by s. gasparyan. yerevan: lusakn. 9. dąbrowska, m. (2011) hindi-english code-switching as a community of practice marker. // english in action. language contact and language variation. / ed. by e. willim. kraków: kraków society for education afm publishing house. 10. dąbrowska, m. “you look fab on this pic!” gender and age in facebook communication. // languages, literatures and cultures in contact: english and american studies in the age of global communication, vol. 2: language and culture. / ed. by m. dąbrowska, j. leśniewska, b. piątek, forthcoming. 11. eisikovits, e. (1987) sex differences in inter-group and intra-group interaction among adolescents. // women and language in australian and new zealand society. / ed. by a. pauwels. sydney: australian professional publications. 12. eisikovits, e. (1988) girl-talk/boy-talk: sex differences in adolescent speech.// australian english. / ed. by p. collins, d. blair. brisbane: university of queensland press. 13. fraser, b. (1990) perspectives on politeness. // journal of pragmatics 14 (2). amsterdam: elsevier. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 19 14. goffman, e. (1967) interaction ritual: essays on face-to-face behavior. garden city: new york: doubleday. 15. herbert, r.k. (1989) the ethnography of english compliments and compliment responses: a contrastive sketch. // contrastive pragmatics. / ed. by w. oleksy. amsterdam: john benjamins. 16. herbert, r.k. (1990) sex-based differences in compliment behaviour. // language in society 19. cambridge: cambridge university press. 17. holmes, j. (1993) new zealand women are good to talk to: an analysis of politeness strategies in interaction. // journal of pragmatics 20(2). oxford: elsevier science. 18. holmes, j. (1995) women, men and politeness. harlow, essen: longman. 19. janney, r.w.; arndt, h. (1992) intracultural tact versus intercultural tact. // politeness in language: studies in its history, theory and practice. / ed. by r. watts, s. ide, k. echlich. berlin: mouton de gruyter. 20. lakoff, r. (1975) language and woman’s place. new york: harper and row. 21. leech, g.n. (1980) explorations in semantics and pragmatics. amsterdam: john benjamins. 22. leech, g.n. (1983°) principles of pragmatics. london: longman. 23. mills, s. (2003) gender and politeness. cambridge: cup. 24. stockwell, p. (2002) sociolinguistics. / a resource book for students. london and new york: routledge. 25. swann, j. (2000) gender and language use. // introducing sociolinguistics. / ed. by r. mesthrie, j. swann, a. deumert, w.l. leap. edinburgh: edinburgh university press. 26. tannen, d. (1990) you just don’t understand: women and men in conversation. new york: william morrow. ¶»ý¹»ñá ¨ ¹ñ³ï³ý ù³õ³ù³í³ñáõãûáõýá ý»ûëμáõùáõù ðá¹í³íáõù ùýý³ñïíáõù »ý 黽í³ï³ý é³½ù³í³ñ³ï³ý ùç ß³ñù ùççáóý»ñ, áñáýù ñ³ý¹»ë »ý ·³ éçë áñå»ë ¹ñ³ï³ý ù³õ³ù³í³ñáõãû³ý ïñáõý»ñ /ï³ý³ýó ¨ ïõ³ù³ñ¹ï³ýó ñ³õáñ¹³ïóáõãûáõýý»ñáõù/ ý»ûëμáõù ëáóç³é³ï³ý ó³ýóáõù: æ ùç μ» ñ»éáí áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãû³ý ³ñ¹ûáõýùý»ñá` ñ»õçý³ïá »½ ñ³ï³óýáõù ¿, áñ ïçý ¨ ïõ³ù³ñ¹ ñ³õáñ¹³ïóíáõý»ñç 黽í³ï³ý ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõùý»ñá ùçùû³ýóçó ¿³ å»ë ï³ñμ»ñíáõù »ý áã ùç³ûý ³ éûñû³ ï³ù ïçë³å³ßïáý³ï³ý ñ³ù³ï»ùëï»ñáõù, ³ûé¨ å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ñ³ù³ï³ñ·ã³ûçý 黽íáõù, áñç í³é ûñçý³ïý»ñçó ù»ïý ¿é ý»ûëμáõù ëáóç³é³ï³ý ó³ýóý ¿: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 20 maket_n_verjin.qxp 115 linguistics armenian folia anglistika metaphor: an element of imagery in gerald durrell’s “my family and other animals” it is common knowledge that author–readerrelationship is pivotal in a piece of imaginative writing. it is a constant interplay in the process of interpretation and evaluation of literature. all writers have an image of the reader in mind when they construct their narrative. the readers, in their turn, have the writer in their mind when they render the power of his imagination and talent. the concept of implied author and implied reader are of paramount importance as by means of this circle we develop our ability to recognize and evaluate the devices of figurative language used in creating a text. our understanding of metaphorical language depends not only on our linguistic competence but also our cultural sensitivity and our background knowledge. imagery is a distinctive feature of fiction for the writer conveys his ideas through images. fiction, which is a form of literature, deals with a large system of verbal images, the creation of which also aims at securing the process of transmission and exchange of creative information. hence, the most important categories of fiction in general are the categories of imagery (all the events in the text are presented in an imaginative way) and interpretation (babenko 2000). image is a complicated and multidimensional notion. it is a form of reflection of the reality through art, it is concrete and, at the same time, the generalized picture of human life which is transformed due to the artist’s aesthetic ideas and creative imagination. it realizes not only cognitive but communicative and aesthetic functions, the latter being first and foremost primarily dependant on metaphor as an element of imagery in verbal art. metaphor is pervasive in language and it is important because of its functions, i. e. explaining, clarifying, describing, expressing, evaluating, entertaining. where we have a choice, we choose metaphors in order to communicate what we think or how we feel about something; to explain what a particular thing is like; to convey a meaning in a more interesting or creative way; or to do all of these (knowles 2006). metaphor is a tool of discovery, providing a way of imposing or discovering structure or unfamiliar situations. armine matevosyan narine nikoghosyan 116 armenian folia anglistika linguistics metaphor is also an important means by which language develops, but again we can provide literal paraphrases of what metaphors convey, at least, in so far as we are concerned with their cognitive content. metaphor may be considered an ornament to language but it is not merely an ornament, it need not subvert communication and obfuscate meaning. language would certainly be much duller, and would more importantly have been unable to develop its complex and powerful resources of generalization and abstraction without the resources of metaphor. metaphor which is considered to be one of the powerful means, endows language with evaluative overtones, thus giving birth to new emotions and impressive images in the reader’s mind. hence, metaphor is one of the major elements in creating imagery which not only makes language more vivid and enforces its imaginative features but also reveals certain human characteristics or different circumstances and situations. the language of verbal art can be understood only in connection with the imaginative system which is at the heart of the work. it defines the motivation and the choice of lexical, syntactic, phonetic means with the help of which this or that image is created. obviously, the perception of a literary work is inconceivable without taking into account the lexical, phraseological, grammatical peculiarities of the language. the research in this paper is carried out along the lines of gerald durrell’s “ my family and other animals”.* it is an autobiographical work by gerald durrell a naturalist, telling of his childhood spent in greek and the island of corfu between 1935 and 1939. it describes the life of the durrell family on the greek island in a humorous manner, and also richly discusses the fauna of the island. the analysis showed that metaphor as an element of imagery is always present in nature descriptions. here is an example: the villa was small and square, standing in its tiny garden with an air of pink-faced determination. its shutters had been faded by the sun to a delicate creamy-green, cracked and bubbled in places. the garden, surrounded by tall fuchsia hedges, had the flower-beds worked in complicated geometrical patterns, marked with smooth white stones. roses dropped petals that seemed as big and smooth as saucers, flame-red, moon-white, glossy, and unwrinkled; marigolds like broods of shaggy suns stood watching their parent’s progress through the sky. in the low growth the pansies pushed their velvety, innocent face through the leaves, and the violets drooped sorrowfully under their heartshaped leaves. in the darkness of the fuchsia-hedge a thousand ballerinalike blooms quivered expectantly. the warm air was thick with the scent of a hundred dying flowers, and full of the gentle, smoothing whisper and murmur of insects. (p.30) 117 linguistics armenian folia anglistika the environment is ‘breathing’, the scenery is natural and lively. the plot gains new shades of meaning and is developed with the active help of metaphoric images (… tiny garden with an air of pink-faced determination; in the darkness of the fuchsia-hedge a thousand ballerina-like blooms quivered expectantly etc). another overriding poetic device which has become an important issue in the passage and is closely connected with the use of metaphor, is personification. the author describes nature alive, sensible and full of feeling as humans are. various images of the text the garden, the moon, the sun, the flowers refer to the poet’s own self. each of these, therefore, gains human features; that is, each is personified. for example, in …the villa stands with an air of pink-faced determination, roses are unwrinkled, marigolds stand watching their parent’s progress, pansies with their innocent faces, violets drooped sorrowfully under their heart-shaped leaves, we enter freely into the processes of nature. the reader feels he is in some harmony with nature, entering into it and allowing it to enter into his soul, crossing the very boundaries between himself and the nature. the whole image of the text may be divided into many pieces which will allow us to examine each as an independent unit, micro images, and each such small image can “live” on its own having its own bearing of aesthetic power. the plot always gains new shades of meaning and is developed with the active help of metaphoric images. special attention is also worth to be paid to portrait images through which the plot becomes, somehow moveable. here is an example: he had a fairy-tale air about him that was impossible to resist, and i used to look forward eagerly to my infrequent meetings with him. … he had a sharp, fox-like face, with large, slanting eyes of such a dark brown that they appeared black. …he was short and light, with a thinness about his wrists and neck that argued a lack of food. his dresswas fantastic and on his head was a shapeless hat with a very wide, floppy brim. …his shirt was worn and frayed, grey with sweat, and round the neck dangled an enormous cravat of the most starling blue satin. (p.46) this is one of the most weird and fascinating characters, the rose–beetle man, whom the author met while travelling. the author describes the man in details and shows his sympathy towards the rose–beetle man. the following metaphoric word–combinations (he had a fairy–tail air about him, he had a sharp, fox–like face; with a thinness about his wrists and neck that argued a lack of food) not only arise interest in our mind but make us penetrate into the deep image of the man. the imagery becomes more vivid when the author uses another stylistic means climax (his shirt was worn and frayed-grey with sweat-round the neck dangled an enormous cravat of the most startling blue satin) which helps the reader to have a full picture of the hero, once being worn and frayed, grey with sweat, then becoming an enormous cravat made of startling blue satin. one of the main characteristic features of gerald durrell’s novel is the imagebearing nature. durrell has a unique ability to combine completely diverse emotions, to 118 create infinitely charming images. his images appear in entirely different shapes from extended ones to more common. for example, july has been blown out like a candle by a biting wind that ushered in leaden august sky. a sharp, stinging drizzle fell, billowing into opaque sheets when the wind caught in. (p. 1) along with the figurative setting of the plot the passage is packed densely with various stylistic means, the use of simile which ( july has been blown out like a candle by a biting wind…) evokes visual images. it is a good illustration of poetic onomatopoeia. the example is alliterative because it foregrounds a certain type of consonant sounds [b], [s], [t], in order to ascribe a quality of coolness, coldness, and emptiness. it becomes clear that durrell`s aim is to create the stunning image of the english weather in late summer. then the scene is enforced by the author: along the bournemouth sea-front the beach-huts turned blank wooden faces towards a greeny-grey, froth-chained sea that leapt eagerly at the cement bulwark of the shore. it was the sort of weather calculated to dry anyone`s endurance.(p.1) the metaphoric expression … the beach-huts turned blank wooden faces… catches the reader`s attention. beach-huts symbolize those inhabitants who are tired of the change of weather and have blank faces, which means that their wooden faces are devoid of emotions. the metaphoric use of the verb to turn makes the image more alive. it seems that everything is moveable, even the huts, and that they are turning towards the sea wishing to get rid of the unbearable, unendurable weather. thus, we may conclude that the metaphoric passages analyzed above combine the ‘imagined’ and the ‘real’. neither term has priority, nor complete independence from the other. imagination without reality would be empty. and we, readers, try to unfold the fertile creativity of figurative means in an ongoing chain. in one way each of the means in the chain represents others through likeness and difference, so that the images themselves stand in metaphorical relationship to each other, involving overt similes, and epithets, climax and personification. and metaphor which does not offer definitive and determinate likenesses, but suggests a much more fluid interrelationship between likenesses and differences makes the figural activity productive, creative and imaginative. notes: *. the book is presented as autobiographical and hence factual (if not always completely objective). the events described cannot always be taken as literally true. larry, in particular, who is described as living together with the rest of his armenian folia anglistika linguistics 119 family, was not in fact sharing a house with the durrells during their journey on corfu, instead living separately with his wife nancy, whom gerald does not mention at all; the chronology of events as they occur in the book is also inaccurate, the reason for the durrell`s departure from corfu (world war 2) is not given. however, the book does succeed in preserving the impressions of ten to fifteen year old gerald extremely vividly and with a great deal of light-hearted humour. a special study of simile in g. durrell’s book has been carried out by s. gasparyan (2008). references: 1. babenko, l.g.; vasilyev, i.e.; kazarin, yu.v. (2000) lingvisticheskiy analiz khudozhestvennogo teksta. ekaterinburg: nauka. 2. gasparyan, s. (2008) lingvopoetika obraznogo sravneniya. yerevan: lusakn. 3. knowles, m.; moon, r. (2006) introducing metaphor. london and new york: routledge, taylor and francis group. 4. lakoff, g.; johnson, m. (2003) metaphors we live by. chicago: university of chicago press. öáë³µ»ñáõãûáõýá áñå»ë å³ïï»ñ³ëï»õí ñý³ñ æ»ñ³é¹ ¸³ññ»éç “æù áýï³ýçùá ¨ áõñçß ï»ý¹³ýçý»ñ” í»åáõù ðá¹í³íáõù ùýýáõãû³ý ¿ ³éýíáõù ÷áë³µ»ñáõãûáõýá, áñá µ³é³ñí»ëïç ëï»õí³·áñíáõãû³ý ³ù»ý³ñ³ý·áõó³ûçý ³ñï³ñ³ûï³ùççáóý»ñçó ù»ïý ¿, çñ áõñáõûý ¹»ñý áõýç ·»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý å³ïï»ñý»ñç ëï»õíù³ý ·áñíáõù: æ»ñ³é¹ ¸³ññ»éç ëï»õí³·áñíáõãûáõýý»ñáõù å³ïï»ñý»ñç ñ³ù³ï³ñ·á ëáñý ¿ áõ µ³½ù³ó¨` ï³½ùí³í ùçïñá/ù³ïñá å³ïï»ñý»ñçó, áñáýóçó ûáõñ³ù³ýãûáõñç “³ñï³µ»ñ³í” ·»õ³·çï³ï³ý, çù³ó³µ³ý³ï³ý ¨ ÷áë³µ»ñ³ï³ý ý»ñáõåá ñ³ý·»óýáõù ¿ ù»ï ³ûé ·»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý å³ïï»ñç ëï»õíù³ýá: ðá¹í³íç ýå³ï³ïý ¿ áã ùç³ûý í»ñéáõí»é ÷áë³µ»ñ³ï³ý ï³éáõûóý»ñá, ³ûé¨ ù»ïý³µ³ý»é áõ ¹çï³ñï»é í»ñççýý»ñë áñå»ë å³ïï»ñ³ëï»õí ñý³ñ: linguistics armenian folia anglistika maket 2012 1-2:layout 1.qxd lexical causatives in modern english: on classification of kill-verbs robert khachatryan yerevan state linguistic university t he notion of cause is an indivisible part of human cognition and language. the majority of actions and happenings are interconnected and interdependent. one event can usually be a cause for another one. this phenomenon is called causation, i.e. a relation between situations (events). the notion of causation finds its expression at the linguistic level, incorporating special structures and meanings. situations that include the notion of causation are comprised of actions rather than states. some actions not only execute the meaning they denote, but initiate a single or series of further actions as well. to put it differently, causation is “some relation of determination between two events, with a prior event resulting in or giving rise to a subsequent event” (frawley 1992:158). accordingly, causation and its means of expression in language constitute a significant area in linguistics. the objective of this article is to reclassify lexical causatives (also known as covert or underived causatives), namely verbs of killing or kill-verbs, formerly classified by levin (1993) and lemmens (1998). the method of suggested classification is to categorize kill-verbs according to the instrument (if the instrument of killing is mentioned or embedded in the definition), the motivation (if special reasons for killing are mentioned or embedded in the definition), and the manner (if the special way of killing is mentioned or embedded in the definition). the new classification elaborates on the expression of the nuclear meaning “to cause to die” and the features of kill-verbs on periphery, and it also introduces more decisive criteria for categorizing the subgroup of lexical causatives, i.e. kill-verbs. furthermore, verbs with the most frequent occurrences in speech are studied on the basis of linguistic data from the british national corpus (the bnc), which may entail discern patterns of usage and semantic differences. moreover, as words may acquire a broader meaning and usage in fiction, especially when used in metaphors, cases of metaphoric use of kill-verbs have not been considered. the notions of cause and effect in modern english may either be expressed morphologically, syntactically or lexically (khachatryan 2009). first two types of causatives are formed with the help of affixes and auxiliary verbs respectively, while lexical causatives do not embed any affixes or auxiliary words. they incorporate the meanings of both cause and effect in the root morpheme. thus, lexical causatives are underived and embed the meaning of causation in their semantics. the majority of lexical causatives form causative alternations with their counterparts, called anticausatives (dowty 1979:40). the causatives express the cause and the effect at the same time, while the anti-causatives refer only to the effect, i.e. the result of the action, and are devoid of any causative meaning. some of the non-causatives embrace dissimarmenian folia anglistikalinguistics 91 ilar stems, for example to kill – to die, to feed – to eat, to teach – to learn. others differ in vowel alternations, like to rise – to raise, to lay – to lie. further on, the majority of causative alternations differ on the grounds of transitivity/intransitivity, for instance to change (transitive) – to change (intransitive), to open (transitive) – to open (intransitive), to stop (transitive) – to stop (intransitive), to smash (transitive) – to smash (intransitive), etc. unlike syntactic and morphological causatives, lexical causatives stand on a completely different platform due to two features. first, they bear the meaning of causation from within; hence, these verbs are always causative even though they can sometimes be used in non-causative constructions. this may be illustrated with the lexical causative verb to kill, which has the nuclear meaning of “to cause to die”. in the example charlie killed the goat with his blade. ⇒ charlie caused the goat to die. the verb to kill expresses the actual act of killing, i.e. charlie intentionally caused the goat to die by undertaking certain actions, namely cutting the throat of the goat. whereas, in the example charlie was devastated and ready to kill, the verb to kill is used as an infinitive to express the agent’s ability and readiness, not causation. this is due to the fact that minimum two participants, causer and causee, are required in causative relations to indicate the causeeffect relationship. thus, in the first example we observe the cause-result, while the second illustrates the event without result. levin and lemmens introduce classifications of kill-verbs to better conceptualize their semantic characteristics. to start with, levin (1993) presents two categories of kill-verbs: murderand poison-verbs. her main criterion for such classification is embedded in the way of killing. in the murder category, verbs express intentional killing but “none of the verbs in this class lexicalizes a means component; that is, none provides any information about how the killing came about” (levin 1993:231), while in the case of poison-verbs the means of killing is incorporated in the semantics of the verb. she posits, “some of poison verbs are not exclusively verbs of killing, since they describe actions that have death as only one of their possible results” (levin 1993:233). lemmens (1998) argues the levin’s classification, particularly the category of poisonverbs, pointing out the heterogeneity of the group and suggesting re-classification by emphasizing the semantics of the verbs, ignored by levin. additionally, lemmens (1998:56) criticizes the cross-classification employed by levin to highlight the suffocate-verbs. instead, lemmens presents his own classification with six categories. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 92 lemmens treats these six categories as flexible and expansive towards new kill-verbs, but leaves out the verb to electrocute (to injure or kill by electric shock). in this context, lemmens mainly discusses the instrument-verbs, considering the inclusion of any verb that incorporates the idea of killing and its possible instrument. he illustrates his point with the example i am sure going to be chaired, which denotes killing via an electric chair (lemmens 1998:57). lemmens also pays attention to the transitivity/ergativity of kill-verbs, classifying the murder-, instrumentand decapitate-verbs under the category of transitivity and grouping the verbs: to starve and suffocate (with the exception of strangle, throttle, and smother) as ergative (lemmens 1998:59). although levin and lemmens elaborate on the idea of general definition (“to cause to die”), they do not reflect on it as a nuclear criterion for classification. lemmens chooses kill -verbs for analysis based on their frequency of use in speech, but does not connect it to the hierarchy of nuclear features of kill-verbs. taking into account the previous classifications of kill -verb, this article suggests a new classification, based on three features of these verbs: the instrument, stimulus, and manner. the main criteria employed for the classification are the nuclear meaning “to cause to die” and the occurrence of additional features in definitions, crosschecked in oxford english dictionary (oed) and longman dictionary of contemporary english (ldoce). armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 93 the verbs directly relating to the nuclear meaning are to kill (to cause the death of a person or other living thing) and to murder (to conduct the unlawful premeditated killing of one person by another). these verbs denote the nuclear meaning “to cause to die” without any additional information on the instrument, motivation or manner. therefore, the most expedient method of classification of kill-verbs is to categorize them according to the instrument (if the instrument of killing is mentioned or embedded in the definition), the motivation (if special reasons for killing are mentioned or embedded in the definition), and the manner (if the special way of killing is mentioned or embedded in the definition). the first subcategory, the instrument features, includes the following verbs: • garrotte (to kill by strangulation, especially with a length of wire or cord), e.g. “did you know you can garrotte someone in a few seconds?” (bnc 2007:h90 1930) • stab (to thrust a knife or other pointed weapon into someone so as to kill), e.g. “what sort of a person would stab a child to death?” (bnc 2007:anl 589) • shoot (to kill a person or animal with a bullet or arrow), e.g. two children have witnessed their father shoot their mother then commit suicide at a house in london. (bnc 2007:k1t 1835) • knife (to stab someone with a knife), e.g. the victims had been knifed more than seventy times. (bnc 2007:cen 3338) • poison (to administer poison to a person or animal), e.g. “her sister, goneril, who has poisoned her, isn’t surprised: ‘if not, i’ll ne’er trust medicine.” (bnc 2007:bnh 643) • hang (to kill someone by tying a rope attached from above around their neck), e.g. “he hung himself in his cell three months after the trial.” (bnc 2007:guu 2984) • drown (to kill a person or animal by submerging under water or other liquid). e.g. “he had drowned himself in the rectory pond.” (bnc 2007:ab4 834) e.g. owen lloyd, a nine-year-old boy, drowned a four-year old friend. (bnc 2007:h7a 1496) the verb crucify (to put someone to death by nailing or binding them to a cross), proposed by lemmens under the category of instrument-verbs, occupies a marginal position because it embeds instruments like nails, on the one hand, and the act of putting to death, which is carried out by means of nailing to a cross, on the other hand. thus, the definitions illustrate that each of these verbs performs the act of killing by using a certain instrument, i.e. a wire, a pointed weapon, a bullet/an arrow, a rope, a knife, poison, and a cross respectively. additionally, all the verbs mentioned above carry the nuclear meaning of “to cause to die”. the second subcategory incorporates the motivation features, i.e. the semantics of these verbs denotes or embeds the stimulus of killing. analyzing this category, it becomes clear that usage of the verbs mentioned below is limited only to people with cerarmenian folia anglistika linguistics 94 tain status and strictly dependent on the context, entailing one of the features of killing people who stand out with their reputation, faith, crime history, etc. however, the nuclear meaning to cause to die is still preserved. the verbs under this subcategory are: • assassinate (to murder an important person for political or religious reasons), e.g. a prime minister who sought to push an unpopular agreement through was assassinated by a religious nationalist in march 1951. (bnc 2007:g3r 911) e.g. on 2nd june 1914, the archduke franz ferdinand and his wife, were assassinated by a bosnian serb and that triggered a series of events that led to the outbreak of war on 4th, august 1914 the war that became known as the great war. (bnc 2007:aly 613) • execute (to carry out a sentence of death), e.g. he executed, imprisoned or dispossessed many of his own relatives to ensure the containment of their territorial ambitions and safeguard against any attempted seizure of the throne. (bnc 2007:ef2 550) e.g. chinese authorities have executed a bank accountant who embezzled more than $175,000 in the country’s first such case of computer fraud, the xinhua daily telegraph newspaper reported yesterday… (bnc 2007:cpk 343) • lynch (to kill someone for an alleged offence). e.g. he was to become one of the leading advisers of the merovingian king theudebert i, and was lynched after the king’s death as being responsible for taxing the franks. (bnc 2007:hy0 387) e.g. on april 23, police fired upon demonstrators who attacked a kathmandu police station, and six policemen were lynched by angry crowds. (bnc 2007:hkt 144) • martyr (to kill someone because of their beliefs), e.g. at glasgow cross near gallowgate where, once, men had hung, and where a saint, john ogilvie, was martyred. (bnc 2007:bnc 499) e.g. peter was probably martyred in rome during the persecutions of nero in 64–5 ad. (bnc 2007:cej 346) the third basic subcategory to be considered, the manner features, is by far the largest and incorporates different manners of killing. despite the uniting criterion of the manner, the components of this subcategory can be cross-classified on the basis of similar definitions. the following examples illustrate few verbs that denote the act of killing in an elaborate way: • behead (to kill or execute by decapitation), e.g. saudi arabia yesterday publicly beheaded four people — two saudis and two indians — convicted of murder, taking the total number of people beheaded this year to 99. — reuter. (bnc 2007:aat 83) e.g. when the clumsy plotting of the queen of scots against elizabeth finally exasperated the english beyond endurance, mary was beheaded at fotheringhay. (bnc 2007:ef2 1194) • butcher (to kill people in a very cruel and violent way), armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 95 e.g. the irish rebels were butchered without mercy. (bnc 2007:b1x 241) e.g. millions of men had been butchered during the first world war, and in post-war years, the ratio of births, as i understand it, was four to one in favour of baby girls. (bnc 2007:bn3 1420) • massacre (to kill a large number of people, especially in a cruel way), e.g. red cross officials are trying to confirm reports that 1,200 people had been massacred at a serb detention camp at lukavac. (bnc 2007:ch6 7186) e.g. for the first time in european history the jews were not only persecuted, they were massacred. (bnc 2007:bmv 380) • slaughter (to kill a large number of people or animals violently), e.g. nine hundred prisoners were slaughtered on the battlefield and as arundell was escorted from cornwall to the tower of london, he saw many a miserable peasant dangling from a crossroads gibbet. (bnc 2007:b0g 692) e.g. in the early 1980s, the army slaughtered thousands of guatemalans in a brutal counter-insurgency campaign. (bnc 2007:crc 1517) • slay (to kill somebody in a war or a fight) e.g. and in the year 1037 ferdinand slew bermudo the king of leon in battle, who was his wife’s brother, and conquered his kingdom, and succeeded to it in right of his wife doña sancha. (bnc 2007:asw 472) e.g. in battle, aenarion slew foes beyond reckoning. (bnc 2007:cm1 581) other verbs under this subcategory denote the act of killing by imposing deficiency of vital needs: asphyxiate (lack of air), decapitate (absence of a vital organ), drown (lack of air), famish (lack of food), smother (lack of air, i.e. to kill somebody by covering their face so that they cannot breathe), stifle (lack of respiration), strangle (lack of air), suffocate (lack of air), throttle (lack of air) and starve (lack of food). finally, there is a group of kill-verbs, which do not fall under any of the aforementioned features; thus, constituting a group of verbs with the features on periphery. these verbs are usually used in formal speech as a euphemistic way of denoting killing. it is also worth mentioning that oxford english dictionary grants to the verbs to dispatch and to liquidate the definitions “to kill a person or an animal” and “to get rid of, especially by killing” respectively. a group of verbs with the features on periphery constitute the following verbs: • eliminate (to kill somebody, especially an enemy or opponent), e.g. by 1614 he had eliminated hideyoshi’s heir and overcome the final military opposition to his hegemony. (bnc 2007:ee2 45) • exterminate (to kill all the members of a group of people or animals), e.g. the original breeding population of this raptore in sussex was exterminated in the interests of game preserving during the 19th century, breeding being last recorded in ashdown forest in 1882. (bnc 2007:b31 1452) e.g. in the course of about twenty-four hours ed riverton had been brutally exterminated in finland — and his wife had been eliminated with equal brutality in east anglia, over a thousand miles away. (bnc 2007:cn3 325) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 96 considering the variety of features of english causative verbs, there can be many potential criteria for classification, which may lead to further elaboration on the classification suggested in this article. if a comprehensive classification has to be developed, it must be based on the most important feature, i.e. one characteristic that both unites the whole class of causatives and divides them into subgroups. that one main feature of killverbs is their nuclear meaning “to cause to die”. firstly, verbs must be categorized according to their relation to the nuclear meaning. secondly, they must be subcategorized and compared with each other based on the additional features they denote parallel with the nuclear one. the verbs can be further cross-categorized and cross-compared, but this should be performed not within the scope of the main classification. to summarize, it is undeniable that even though the verbs mentioned above express killing, their use is limited to specific contexts. the so-called “feel for the language” is strongly connected to the right choice of seemingly similar words. mutual characteristics of verbs must also be taken into consideration to determine the possibilities of substitution. it is important to note that the context plays a focal role in substitution and it can prevail over some characteristics of the causative verbs, and emphasize the others. overall, the new classification suggested in this article is to establish the nuclear meaning “to cause to die” as an axis of classification. the classification unites the verbs with the same nuclear meaning and emphasizes their additional features at the same time. to clarify, verbs like to eliminate are strongly dependent on the context and formal/informal style of the speech. in informal speech the verb to eliminate might not have the meaning of “to cause to die”, while in formal speech the verb will be treated as a euphemism for other kill-verbs, i.e. to kill, to murder. the suggested classification of semantic classes of lexical causative verbs cannot be considered exhaustive. as linguistic data suggest, modern english employs structured classifications of causative verbs that are already being analyzed from the surface-syntactic and deep-semantic viewpoints. all verbs under this classification have been classified according to their meanings and additional features, such as the expressed or embedded instrument, motivation and manner. however, a detailed classification of kill-verbs will be a new ground for further research. all theoretical assertions made in this article are subject to further empirical investigation because causatives constitute an undiscovered domain, which has the potential to reveal new findings about structures and usage in different languages. references: 1. the british national corpus, version 3. (2007) distributed by oxford university computing services on behalf of the bnc consortium. url: <http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk>. 2. dowty, d. (1979) word meaning and montague grammar. dordrecht: reidel. 3. frawley, w. (1992) linguistic semantics. hillsdale: lawrence erlbaum associates. 4. halliday, m.a.k. (1994) an introduction to functional grammar. london: edward arnold. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 97 5. khachatryan, r. (2009) ways of expressing causation in modern english. // armenian folia anglistika. yerevan: lusakn. 6. kemmer, s. & verhagen, a. (1994) the grammar of causatives and the conceptual structure of events. cognitive linguistics. 5(2), (115-156). 7. lemmens, m. (1998) lexical perspectives on transitivity and ergativity: causative constructions in english. amsterdam and philadelphia: john benjamins. 8. levin, b. (1992) english verb classes and alternations. chicago: university of chicago press. 9. levin, b.; comrie, e.; polinsky, m. (eds.) (1993) more on the typology of inchoative/causative verb alternations. // causatives and transitivity. amsterdam and philadelphia: john benjamins. 10. levin, b. and rappaport, h.m. (1995) unaccusativity: at the syntax-lexical semantics interface. cambridge: the mit press. 11. longman dictionary of contemporary english. available online <http://www.ldoceonline.com>. 12. oxford english dictionary. <http://oxforddictionaries.com>. 13. talmy, l.; shopen, t. (eds.). (1985) lexicalization patterns: semantic structures in lexical forms. // language typology and syntactic description. vol. iii: grammatical categories and the lexicon. cambridge: cup. ä³ï׳é³ï³ý μ³û»ñá å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù. §ëå³ý»é¦ ýß³ý³ïáõãû³ùμ μ³û»ñç ¹³ë³ï³ñ·ù³ý ßáõñç êáõûý ñá¹í³íç ýå³ï³ïá å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ³ý·é»ñ»ýç å³ï׳é³ï³ý μ³ û»ñç, ù³ëý³íáñ³å»ë §ëå³ý»é¦ ýß³ý³ïáõãû³ùμ μ³û»ñç ýáñ ¹³ë³ï³ñ·áõù ³é³ ç³¹ñ»éý ¿: üßí³í μ³û»ñý ³é³ç³ñïíáõù ¿ ¹³ë³ï³ñ·»é »ñ»ù ñ³ï ï³ ýçß ý»ñáíª áëï ·áñíçùç (ë³ñù³ýù³ý ù»ç ëå³ý»éáõ ·áñíçùç ù³ïý³ýßáõù), áëï å³ï ׳éç (ë³ñù³ýù³ý ù»ç ëå³ý»éáõ ñ³ïáõï å³ï׳éç ù³ïý³ýßáõù) ¨ áëï ó¨ç (ë³ñù³ýù³ý ù»ç ëå³ý»éáõ ó¨ç ù³ïý³ýßáõù): armenian folia anglistika linguistics 98 microsoft word maket 2020-2(22) (3)-1 (1).doc linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 47 semantic groups of vocabulary in sports reports gevorg barseghyan yerevan state university abstract nowadays sports as a separate component of social life includes a great many varieties which enable millions of sportsmen and fans to communicate with one another. thorough research is carried out on various aspects of sport: from the philosophy of sports to exquisite psychological observations of individual sportmen. thus the study of the forms and the style of sports reports as well as their linguostylistic peculiarities has become an imperative. the aim of our research is to reveal the characteristic features of sports reports with reference to the vocabulary used, namely – the semantic groups most frequently occurring in sports speech. key words: semantic groups of vocabulary, semantic similarity and difference, synonymy, contextual synonyms, antonymy. introduction it has been established that words can generally be grouped thematically but their classification according to their semantic similarities and differences is also of utmost importance. when one aims at communicating on a concrete topic it is always very important to consider the extralinguistic relations of the things meant in real life. on the other hand, typical speech situations often presuppose the use of words with common contextual association in the same semantic group. one of the essential principles of the investigation of vocabulary is the classification of words based on the criterion of their semantic similarity which exposes the synonymic relations between lexical elements. the absence of a https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2020.16.2.047 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 linguistics 48 conclusive solution to the problem of synonymy basically consists in the controversy of approaches to the problem of the criterion of semantic equivalence and the ways meaning is conveyed in language (cruse 2000). without going into the details of the discussion along these lines we however believe that two separate words cannot semantically be exactly the same (bloomfield 1984) (except for very rare cases of terminological units), particularly if the meaning of a lexical unit is viewed from the point of view of the complex correlation of its literal meaning (denotation) and the emotional weight of the word (connotation). we shall now turn to the concrete object of our study proceeding from our preliminary observations which reveal a rather frequent use of synonyms in sub-styles of public writing and newspaper language including sports reports and different publications on sports. since any reported news aims to make an effect on the public, the application of various means of reporting, including synonyms, calls for additional attention to the problem. synonymic pairs in sorts reports to avoid monotony as well as unnecessary repetition of words and expressions in sports reports, reporters turn to synonyms which, emphasizing different aspects and shades of meaning, provide the presented news with diversity and more impressiveness. our observations confirm that although the phenomenon of synonymy is first and foremost associated with the notion of semantic relations between words, however, in sports reports (and in general) semantic equivalence occurs also between word-groups and even sentences. as far as the interchangeability of synonyms is concerned, we have to bear in mind that this greatly depends on the context. synonyms can emerge in conversational style, particularly in interviews and direct addresses. everything depends on the personality of the speaker, his/her ability of figurative thinking. in this case, conversational forms can be applied parallel to the literary ones. thus, for example, linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 49 “at the beginning of the season everybody said that our veterans will get out of breath a month later, will not be able to play”. (sport europe, n.46/99, p. 47) the close study of the context above shows quite clearly that the wordgroups get out of breath and will not be able to play are not synonyms in the proper sense of the term, though the idea expressed by both of them is the same. the impact produced by the context is provided by the clash of the literary neutral word-group will not be able to play and the colloquial get out of breath. in the next passage the situation is more or less the same: “now my hand aches terribly, it became tired and weak during the wrestling, and thus i want to finish, to put an end. i don't have power any more”. (sport, 7/96, p.17) here the use of the qualitative adjective weak following the word-group became tired, and then the advancement of the context to present the occurrence of another pair (finish – to put an end) disappoint the reader and create an atmosphere of pity and grief for the beloved wrestler of the fans whose physical strength and powers have abandoned him. due to this particular choice and arrangement of the elements of both synonymic groups (become tired – weak; finishput an end) a kind of synonymic gradation arises which intensifies the impressive power of the context. the fact that in both pairs the first components are from the neutral layer of the vocabulary (become tired and finish) requires particular attention. this use of synonymic pairs is, of course directly connected with the positive attitude of the speaker towards the sportsman and his/her figurative thinking as well. elements of the same group of synonyms help to make a more detailed picture of the given phenomena. let’s look into the passage below. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 linguistics 50 “five minutes later the yugoslavians left the stadium. and belov sitting on the bench was bandaging his painful, fractured leg. he rose slowly, when other teams appeared in the stadium. but the audience didn't leave and disregard him. who shouldn't leave alone unnotable. the team was defeated but it played encouraged, brightly during all the tournament and left proudly, as a winner. it devoted everything; its emotions and sports wickedness and its latest power for its victory and the hall accompanied it standing”. (olympic moscow 1980, p. 23) the synonyms used in the extract adduced above not only make the speech more expressive, but also convey detailed information about everything that happened after and before the match, i.e. they help the speaker be more exact in his description of the events. after a very difficult and persistent fight, belov got injured. therefore, the reporter used not only the adjective painful, but also fractured, that speak of the severity of the injury and the strong will of the sportsman. he did not leave the arena. when other teams appeared in the stadium, “he rose” signaling not only the end of the fearless fight, but also the end of all those unparalleled, exceptional and truly memorable moments of the sports feats that the sportsman had previously presented to millions of people. hence, sports fans would not dream of leaving or disregarding him. though the team was defeated, belov showed an encouraged and bright performance throughout the tournament. otherwise stated, he invested all his physical and mental strength, as well as his professional talent of a sportsman in it. that’s why the phrase “belov left the stadium not only with his head up” used by the reporter in the larger context of his sports news is intended to emphasize the fact that belov excels everyone and leaves as a true winner. but he receives such descriptions because he and his team have devoted all their emotions and passion, sports wickedness and skills and, last but not least, their latest power to win. it is evident, that without the use of synonyms the reporter could not have linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 51 conveyed the inner drama and the tension of the match and the given sportsman. neither could the reporter enhance the idea of his strong will to win, his hard work of long years, his professional performance, and at the same time the unavailability and inaccessibility of the victory. and again, in this case, too, the use of the semantic groups painful – fractured, leave – disregard, encouraged – brightly, its emotions – sports wickedness – its latest power creates rows of semantic equivalence through which the pride and devotion of the sportsman and his team are emphasized. in colloquial style which is more often reflected in dialogues, one can also meet emotive and expressive synonyms such as shoot – kick, win – gain, notable – famous, powerful – strong, wrestler – fighter, sprinter – dashman, etc. these elements demonstrate the evaluative attitude of the speaker and provide detailed information about the sport event. it should be noted that even the slightest semantic differences play a very important role from a stylistic point of view, meanwhile contributing to the application of most diverse and unusual forms of thoughts. otherwise stated, the reporter enriches his statements with various figurative expressions without introducing unnecessary repetitions into his speech. thus, synonyms differ in form, but express the same general meaning despite the small stylistic differences. the “neutral” word usually contained in any synonymic group acts as the main word, while others offer differences in additional expressive-emotional-evaluative nuances. the study of our material reveals that the use of synonymic rows like to think – to judge – to ponder, known – famous – outstanding, fearless – frightless – riskful, shoot – kick – fire, etc. is rather frequent in sports reports. the extract below is a case in point. “his ability to dribble, kick and shoot with both feet is making him a contrast nuisance”. (footballasia, june 2003, p. 38) the word shoot, which in the oxford advanced dictionary of current english is defined as “make a shot at scoring a goal”, in the given example is armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 linguistics 52 obviously used to intensify the meaning of kick (hit with the foot)1, to enhance the impression achieved by kick in the context, as well as reveal the attitude of the speaker towards the sportsman he/she introduces to the readers. the function of intensifying is also present in the following passage from a sport report where the word crush (pressing to cause to lose shape) is obviously used figuratively to intensify the meaning of must be broken down and make the impact of the context much stronger. “the resistance must be broken down, crushed, otherwise will be impossible to resist their suppression”. (sport vision, n 121/january 1998, p. 23) the role of antonyms in sports reports the linguostylistic value of sports reports is enriched by the use (though not very frequent) of antonymous elements which have long been established as a regular and very natural feature of language (gao 2014). just like synonymy, for antonymy as well the presence of a common feature is a must, only in this case it serves as basis of opposition. it is well known that the stylistic value of antonyms is demonstrated in opposition, i.e. in semantic polarity (girunyan 2009). it is important to note that in antonymic semantic relations the contrast is based on only one feature, and the component of connotation, i.e. the additional expressive-emotional-evaluative overtones are not taken into consideration. in speech, they can oppose each other in different ways. in sports reports the opposition represented in speech is very often absolute. in this case the antonymic pairs share a characteristic which by some linguists is described as definitive in understanding the antonymic relations in the pair. this means that each of the members of the antonymic pair denotes this or that degree of some property which can be intensified in opposite directions (e.g. high-low, easy-difficult, short-long, fast-slow, to become strong-to become week, to climb-to come down, etc.). it is obvious that antonyms are fewer in language than synonyms, since it is simply difficult to find opposite meanings for many words used in a language linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 53 (e.g. point, ball, goal, whistle, etc.). naturally, the majority of pronouns, numerals, conjunctions, connectives, exclamations, etc. do not form antonym pairs. the use of antonym pairs in sports reports avails the reporter of the opportunity to present a thorough description of the sport event. thus, for example, “the skiers were rising and coming down through the bosom of the mountain with the greatest intension to reach the winding. the power must be kept in order to overcome the height. the fast skate run of the sportsmen is opposed to the cars slow run, the audience slow walk is incomparable with their studious movements”. (panorama, n 1-2 july, 1996, p. 45) in this extract, with the help of the antonym pairs rise-come down, fastslowly, slow-studious the reporter draws the attention of the reader to the track followed by the skiers. no victory is easily achieved. it takes the utmost concentration of all efforts so that the easier section of the road, the winding, gets closer. to indicate the high speed of the run of the skiers, the reporter compares, or rather, contrasts it with the slow movement of the cars (though in reality, cars do not move slowly). still, the reporter considers the comparison insufficient and immediately offers another contrast – the audience slow walk and the studious movements of the skiers, thereby enhancing the lasting, tense work of the sportsmen. calmness and laziness have nothing to do with them. it is common knowledge, that antonyms are divided into two groups – language and speech antonyms (barber 1971; minayeva 1982; carter 1988). language antonyms express opposite meanings and are only linguistic realities whereas speech or contextual antonyms do not have opposite meanings at the language level. rather, they acquire them in their concrete uses. here are some examples. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 linguistics 54 “milan” showed an interesting, animated and flexible game. the opposite team was satisfied only with standard passes and polite manner”. (uefa flash, june 2000, p. 2) “japan did quite well, in particular with its women’s team. however they did miss some big chances, especially in the backstroke”. (swimming, 1998, n1, p. 13) “i felt i was winning. let the referees think in another way. the justice won when the competition stopped because of the technics knock out”. (boxing magazine 1995, n32, p. 21) in these examples, the highlighted words are obviously not antonyms at the language level. antonymic relations between them are established only in this context. the reporter describes the performance of milan as interesting, animated, then adding the adjective flexible he contrasts it with the rival’s weak and uninteresting performance using the semantic groups “standard passes and polite manners”. the acquisition of opposite meanings is situationally bound. it is natural to think that the language could have sounded poorer, weaker and unimpressive, if, when talking about his favorite team, the reporter confined his choice to language antonyms. the same is equally true for the contextual antonym in the last example. the sportsman feels that he has an obvious advantage over his rival (…i felt i was winning) while the referees think otherwise. the sportsman’s determination to win is opposed to the manners and positions of the referees. another contrast-based interesting stylistic structure observed in sports language is the oxymoron which combines incongruous and apparently contradictory words and meanings for a special effect (jrbashian 1980), namely – for enriching the speech with more impressive, unexpected and unusual descriptions. in fact, these elements detract each other rather than seek a union. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 55 frequently occurring examples of oxymoron expressed by word combinations built with opposites are: delayed victory, aged youth, victorious defeat, innocent guilty, the honorable last place, etc. “the participation of spain small club ‘’alaves’’ in the final of uefa cup 2000/01 was major achievement, as the spanish side returned home with a victorious defeat 5:4 in extra time from english giants ‘’liverpool’’. (uefa direct 10.02, p. 5) sometimes there also occur cases of oxymoron built as illogical combinations with different words and phrases such as unflammable fire, a sad victory, unaware knowledge, an implacable intimacy, etc. sometimes one of the constituent words of this figure of speech can take a negative prefix as in unbalanced balance, unwise cleverness, unended edge line, etc. “a silent chat was going on between the coach and the wrestler standing in the corner. everything was an unusual, usual day for max fyoler”. (sport europe, n 43/99, p. 28) as can be observed, the stylistic value of the oxymoron is remarkable in the context as it makes the speech more interesting and emotionally coloured meanwhile introducing a touch of intrigue into the context. conclusion the investigation of the semantic groups of the vocabulary of sports reports from the viewpoint of their stylistic value brings us to the conclusion that the most widely used elements are the words similar in meaning but different in their stylistic reference. our observations, however allow us to note that not infrequently those similarities are context-bound, as generally the semantic nuances of words arise in use, in our case in the context of presenting this or armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 linguistics 56 that sport event. in other words, it is the minimal stretch of speech reproducing the actual setting of this or that sport event that determines the individual meaning of the word-groups used in speech. of no less importance is the use of antonym pairs based on contrasting semantic features. as a result of the abundant application of these elements in sports reports, speech is endowed with additional expressive-emotional-evaluative shades of meaning which add to the impact made on the reader. notes: 1. the meanings of the words kick and shoot adduced in the text above are presented in the oxford advanced learner’s dictionary of current english with reference to the sphere of sports. cf. oaldce, 3rd edition, 1974, oxford university press, pp. 464, 790. references: 1. barber, ch. (1971) linguistic change in present day english. london: college london. 2. carter, r.; mccarthy, m. (1988) vocabulary and language teaching. london: routledge. 3. cruse, d.a. (2000) meaning in language: an introduction to semantics and pragmatics. oxford: oup. 4. cruse, d.a. (2001) lexical semantics. new york: cup. 5. gao, ch. (2014) a linguistic study of antonymy in english texts. // journal of language teaching and research, vol. 5, n 1, pp. 234-238. 6. bloomfield, l. (1984) language. chicago: university of chicago press. 7. girunyan, g. (2009) english lexicology (theoretical course). yerevan: gasprint. 8. jrbashian, e. (1980) grakanutyan tesutyun. yerevan: ysu press. 9. minaeva, l.v. (1982) a manual of english lexicology. moscow: msu press. 10. opposite (semantics) available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/opposite_(semantics)> [accessed june 2019]. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 57 բառապաշարի իմաստային խմբերը սպորտային մեկնաբանություններում ներկայումս սպորտը, որպես սոցիալական կյանքի բաղկացուցիչ մաս, ներառում է բազմաթիվ տեսակներ, որոնք միլիոնավոր մարզիկների և երկրպագուների հնարավորություն են տալիս շփվել միմյանց հետ: մանրակրկիտ ուսումնասիրություններ են իրականացվում սպորտի տարբեր ոլոտներում՝ սպորտի փիլիսոփայությունից մինչև անհատ մարզիկների նուրբ հոգեբանական դիտարկումներ: այսպիսով, սպորտային մեկնաբանությունների ձևերի և ոճի, ինչպես նաև դրանց լեզվաոճական առանձնահատկությունների ուսումնասիրությունը դարձել է հրամայական: սույն հետազոտության նպատակն է՝ բացահայտել սպորտային մեկնաբանություններում օգտագործվող բառապաշարի բնորոշ առանձնահատկությունները, այն է՝ սպորտային խոսքում առավել հաճախ հանդիպող իմաստային խմբերը: received by the editorial board 20.05.2020 recommended for publication by the reviewers 14.08.2020 accepted for print 05.10.2020 maket_n_verjin.qxp stylistic devices in marriage vows aliteral text is not merely an entity of lexical andgrammatical, but also of special linguistic units called stylistic devices and expressive means. stylistic devices are used by the writer or speaker to intentionally intensify some typical structural or semantic property of a language unit (galperin 1977:29-30). the use of a certain stylistic device in a piece of discourse is the proof of the writer’s or speaker’s subjective original view and of his/her evaluation of things. accordingly, viewing and evaluating something subjectively aims at having a specific impact on the reader or hearer. thus, this or that stylistic device embodied in a literary text makes it more expressively, evaluatively and subjectively connoted, which, in its turn, presupposes the existence of a stylistically coloured piece of discourse. marriage vows as a type of formulaic discourse are not an exception in this respect. furthermore, a marriage vow is considered to be a kind of discourse, where the use of certain stylistic devices is even “demanded”. the necessary and preferable use of some lexical and structural syntactical stylistic devices is logically argued. marriage vows are a piece of formulaic discourse where creative images are inserted, inasmuch as there is an accepted point of view that vowers are fond of going indepth and are creative in their wedding speech. it means that each vower wishes his/her speech to be more impressive than the other’s, and its impact to be stronger. thus, the application of some lexical and structural syntactical stylistic devices in marriage vows proves that pledgers, both the male and the female, are apt to provide their “listener” with additional information, either emotional or logical. hereinafter, two of the most potent means of creating images and conveying the subjective attitude of the writer, that is, metaphor and epithet are the objects of our study. metaphor is one of the most powerful means of creating images due to the power of realizing two lexical meanings simultaneously (galperin 1977:140). the metaphors we come across in wedding vows are mainly speech metaphors. all the belowmentioned genuine metaphors are made up and used by the speakers in their speech. they are all characterized by their unexpectedness and unpredictability. in the following analysis we have three cases of metaphors, all expressed by verbs. here is a metaphor expressed by the verb to fail: “our love will never fail”. based 78 armenian folia anglistika linguistics astghik chubaryan stella arakelyan on the view that there is no true similarity, but a kind of identification (galperin 1977:140), we can conclude that the action of failing is probably identified with the action of losing. if the author preferred the verb to lose instead of the verb to fail, the stylistic colouring of his speech would be neutral, i.e. devoid of any stylistic overtones. in case of a failing love the speaker’s words acquire more expressiveness, as the lexical meaning of the verb to fail defines the feeling of loss more deeply. words like a needle can etch if they are sharply and duly said, as in “every word you said it etched in my heart”. if the speaker uttered his thoughts saying “every word you said impressed me a lot” or “every word you said deeply influenced me”, he would not sound as dramatic as he wished. the use of the verb to etch in the above example is stylistically coloured. the verbs to impress or to influence are considered to be neutral words, which implies lack of stylistic colouring. the verb to etch is used here in its metaphorical meaning; the action of etching is probably identified with the action of making painful effects on somebody. so, this stylistic connotation makes the speaker’s idea more emphatic. using the metaphor my faith wavered, the groom means that he had some hesitations about his love and attitude to his bride in the past as it may be true about every newly born feeling. in case the speaker utters some stylistically neutral speech, he/she sounds less expressive, thus making a less expressive impact on the hearer. lack of impressiveness in its turn presupposes less emotional or evaluative connotation of speech. if the speaker said “i hesitated about keeping faith with you”, his speech would fail to have the due expressive-evaluative stylistic effect. meanwhile the use of the verb to waver in its metaphorical meaning truly expresses the speaker’s exact idea about his behaviour. in marriage vows we are sure to come across metaphors, like to repair and restore their marriage and their family, to celebrate life with you, god has ordained this love, i happily give you life, i broke your heart, yesterday’s pain will fade away, i have never waved in the strength of my love for you. the epithet is a less strong means of displaying the writer’s or speaker’s emotional attitude to his communication than metaphor, but still a forceful one. the epithets used in marriage vows convey the subjective attitude of the speaker, that is, the groom or bride, to his or her speech. the presence of an epithet in the vower’s speech means that his/her aim is to personally characterize and evaluate some object or phenomenon and, consequently, impose his/her subjective perception and evaluation on the hearer. and it is not by chance that the prevailing epithets used in marriage vows are associated epithets, such as true wife/husband, lifelong commitment, enabling power, deep love, full devotion, helping hand. the adjectives true, lifelong, enabling, deep, full and helping point to a feature which is essential to the person/object/phenomenon they describe, and the idea expressed in the epithet is in some way inherent in the concept of the object. so, it is vital for the wife/husband to be true; that is, faithful, devoted. along with associated epithets there appear unassociated epithets, such as holy ordinance, shared tears, holy desire, lonely street, burning love, which may characterise the object by an unexpected feature. if, for example, the groom addresses his words to his bride saying “i have a big desire to take you to be my wife”, the adjective big expresses the very inherent feature 79 linguistics armenian folia anglistika of the noun desire and does not strike the hearer by its novelty, whereas the adjective holy referring to the same noun does. and the speaker emphasizes his idea through the use of the epithet holy desire inasmuch as he aims at “compelling” his bride to see and evaluate his desire the way he does. so, we can conclude from the above-mentioned that the emotional-evaluative perception of the epithet by the addressee is highly conditioned by the same emotional-evaluative perception on the part of the addresser. this is what the bride or groom wishes to achieve when she or he uses an epithet. there are many marriage vows including different types of epithets, which are not directly connected with the vowers’ desires and intentions, but do have their specific colouring referring to this or that noun. they are transferred epithets, such as soulless city, divine assistance, funny hand, and reversed epithets, such as, time of failure, journey of marriage, hour of happiness, a time of triumph, a vision of hope. the next lexical stylistic device worth mentioning is stylistic periphrasis mostly used in marriage vows. the sentence “in sickness, i will nurse you back to health” is the affirmation of periphrasis. a full sentence “i will nurse you back to health” is a periphrasis, a phrasing in place of a possible shorter form of expression, such as to cure or to treat. the purpose of the speaker to give his/her preference to this stylistic periphrasis is to produce the necessary stylistic effect by expressing an individual idea of the concept because by saying “in sickness, i will cure you” or “in sickness, i will heal you” he would not sound expressive and emotional enough. here is another example of stylistic periphrasis: “in this sacred place i want you to know that…”. the adverbial modifier of place “in this sacred place” is a periphrasis for the word church. this periphrasis is widely used in marriage vows for in the vast majority of cases marriage vows are pledged in church. the deciphering of the concept is not difficult as it is present in a clearly understandable context; the bride or groom is uttering these words in church in his or her wedding vow speech. an affirmation of love is one more example of periphrasis, which stands for vow. an affirmation of love is deliberately preferred by the speaker as the noun vow would certainly be devoid of any aesthetic value, whereas the expression an affirmation of love carries not only that aesthetic value, but is also emotively coloured. formulaic discourse, like any other type of discourse, is of great interest not only from the viewpoint of lexical stylistic devices, but also from that of structural syntactical stylistic devices. syntactical stylistic devices are perceived as elaborate designs aimed at having a definite impact on the reader (galperin 1977:203). vows are written according to the writer’s values and taste; the formulas vary in accordance with the educational background of the person. nevertheless, in the vast majority of vows the sentences are syntactically arranged in the same way. the word order in this type of formulaic discourse is 95% fixed, which can be illustrated by sentences, like “i love you”, “i marry you”, “i give you my life”, “i will cherish our union”, “i promise you”, “i choose you”. the fixed word order in this type of formulaic discourse does not mean that stylistic inversion lacks. unlike grammatical inversion, stylistic inversion does not change the structural meaning of the sentence. it aims at attaching logical stress or additional emotional colouring to the surface meaning of the utterance (galperin 1977:204). 80 armenian folia anglistika linguistics the role of inversion is significant as it gives the full sentence expressive-emotional colouring. different patterns of stylistic inversion are met in the discourse of marriage vows. the most common uses of inversion are when the adverbial modifier is placed at the beginning of the sentence. in english the adverbial modifier or clause of time usually goes to the end of the sentence. as prof. smirnitsky states, “the use of the adverbial modifier of time in front position of the sentence should be highly motivated”. and that motivation is the speaker’s or addresser’s intention to specially intensify the time. in the following examples of inversion “in health, i will encourage you on your path”, “from this moment i, name, take you, name, as my best friend for life”, “in sickness, i will nurse you back to health”, “when our way becomes difficult, i promise to stand by you and uplift you” the above-mentioned is evidently fixed. encouraging his way on her path or promising to stand by is important for the groom to do, but it is of more significance to say and emphasize when he is going to do. that is why the adverbial modifiers or clauses appear in the front position in the sentences given above. so, the communicative focus of the utterance is not what to do, but when to do it. if we carry out our analysis on the basis of functional sentence perspective, that is, on the basis of theme-rheme distinction, we can suggest that in health, in sickness, from this moment and when our way becomes difficult become the rheme of the sentences. in the sentence “always will i perform my headship over you” both the adverbial modifier of time and the auxiliary verb are placed before the subject. here stylistic inversion aims at attaching not only additional emotional colouring, but also logical stress. the adverb always and the auxiliary verb will acquire logical stress and may be included in the rhematic part of the sentence. the same function is realized by the adverbial modifier of place or direction in front position. by putting it at the beginning and making it the rheme of the sentence the speaker intends to make his/her speech emotively coloured. the following examples are taken from various marriage vows, “in this sacred place i want you to know that….”, “through the pressures of the present and the uncertainties of the future, i promise to be faithful to you”, “through all the uncertainties and trials of the present and future, i promise to be faithful to you and love you”, “through the good and bad, i want you to always know that i will be by your side”. giving a promise to be faithful, be by her side and love her is not the fundamental idea the groom is eager to express. the expressiveness of his speech lies in emphasizing the condition of his actions by using the adverbial modifier in front position. it’s worth mentioning the obvious difference between the first “in this sacred place i want you to know that” and the following three examples “through the pressures of the present and the uncertainties of the future, i promise to be faithful to you”, “through all the uncertainties and trials of the present and future, i promise to be faithful to you and love you”, “through the good and bad, i want you to always know that i will be by your side”. in the first case the place indicated is a place in the literal meaning of the word, in this sacred place, whereas in the other cases place is used in a metaphorical sense: through the pressures of the present and the uncertainties of the future. there is a tendency to account for inversion in poetry by rhythmical considerations (galperin 1977:205). but almost any piece of prose, though in essence arhythmical, can 81 linguistics armenian folia anglistika be made rhythmical by isolating words or sequences of words and making appropriate pauses between them (galperin 1977:135). the following two examples of marriage vows are the best ones to illustrate the presence of rhythm in inversion. “in sickness, i will nurse you back to health. in health, i will encourage you on your path. in sadness, i will help you to remember. in happiness, i will be there to make memories with you. in poverty, i will do all that i can to make our love rich. and in wealth, i will never let our love grow poor.” “once before i have stood with you before family and friends; once again i take your hand as my partner.” the parallel construction is another syntactical stylistic device, which may be encountered in the discourse of marriage vows. sentences may comprise parallel constructions by repetition of words: “i will love you through the good and bad, through the joy and the sorrow”: besides, there may be identical syntactical structures in two or more sentences or parts of a sentence in close succession: “now we will feel no rain for each of us will be shelter to each other. and now we will feel no cold for each of us will be warmth to each other”. the following sample is an illustration of not only a parallel construction, but also of repetition, “i, , give to you, , a new promise and yet not so new; a new (husband/wife), and yet so new; and a new affirmation of love”. giving preference to the above-mentioned two stylistic devices the addressers intend to emotionally influence their addressees. but compared with parallel construction, which is more emotional in nature, repetition as a stylistic device is of more logical than emotional character. uttering “i will love you through the good and bad, through the joy and the sorrow” the bride/groom does not logically emphasize this or that word, especially when there is no stylistic inversion. in case of repetition “i, , give to you, , a new promise and yet not so new; a new (husband/wife), and yet so new; and a new affirmation of love” the speaker emphatically utters some word (new) or expression (yet not so new), because he finds it necessary to fix the attention of his hearer on the key word or idea. many betrothed ones get together and first discuss general rules for their vows. for example, they discuss how long their vows should be (approximately 5 or 6 sentences), whether or not they should use the words i love you or you are my best friend. and it must be natural that none of them is eager to write a book of vows while the other just says a few simple things, so they make sure to discuss it beforehand. thus, this jointly written piece of discourse should result in having repeated speech. male: “i, , take you , to be my wedded wife. to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness or in health, to love and to cherish, ‘till death do us part. and hereto i pledge you my faithfulness”. female: “i, , take you , to be my wedded husband. to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness or in health, to love and to cherish, ‘till death do us part. and hereto i pledge you my faithfulness”. it is quite easy to suggest that each vower is in some way under the stress of strong 82 armenian folia anglistika linguistics emotions. so, we can say that the use of these stylistic devices is logically grounded. hence, we may conclude from our analysis how important the application of this or that stylistic device is. the bride or groom uses a lexical or syntactical stylistic device in his or her marriage vow as he/she aims at having some impact on the hearer, be it logical or emotive. that is to say, the choice of the stylistic device is highly conditioned by the pledger’s speech and communicative intention. references: 1. galperin, i.r. (1977) stylistics. 2-nd edition. moscow: vishaya shkola. 2. smirnitsky, a.i. (1957) syntaxis angliyskogo yazika. moskva. 3. torfing, j. (1999) new theories of discourse. oxford: laclau, mouffe and thithek blackwell. 4. wray, a. (2002) formulaic language and the lexicon. cambridge: cambridge university press. 5. wray, a., perkins m.r. (2000) the functions of formulaic language // an integrated model language and communication. 20. 6. http://www.foreverwed2.com/religious_ceremonies/ceremony%20sample% 20one.htm 7. http://www.foreverwed2.com/religious_ceremonies/vowrenewals.html 8. http://www.brilliantweddingpages.com/couples/weddingvows.asp 9. http://www.documentsanddesigns.com/verse/verse-contemporary%201.htm à׳ï³ý ñý³ñý»ñç ·áñí³íáõãûáõýý ³ùáõëý³ï³ý »ñ¹áõùý»ñáõù êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù ùýýáõãû³ý »ý ³éýíáõù ³ùáõëý³ï³ý »ñ¹áõùý»ñáõù ïçñ³éíáõ á׳ï³ý ñý³ñý»ñá: ²ùáõëý³ï³ý »ñ¹áõùý»ñç 黽í³á׳ï³ý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñç áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõýá óáõûó ¿ ï³éçë, áñ ³ûë ï³ù ³ûý á׳ï³ý ñý³ñç ·áñí³íáõãûáõýá ñ»ï³åý¹áõù ¿ ïáýïñ»ï ñ³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý ýå³ï³ïý»ñ, ³ûý ¿` ëáëùçý ñ³õáñ¹»é ½·³óùáõýù³ûçý-·ý³ñ³ïáõ³ï³ý »ñ³ý·, á׳ï³ý ³ñï³ñ³ûïã³ï³ýáõãûáõý ¨ å³ïï»ñ³íáñáõãûáõý: þ³ï ³ùáõëý³ï³ý »ñ¹áõùý»ñáõù ï»ë³ý»éç ¿ ½áõû·»ñç ëï»õí³·áñí ùçïùá, ³ýóý³ï³ý í»ñ³µ»ñùáõýùý áõ í³é »ñ¨³ï³ûáõãûáõýá` ³ñï³ñ³ûïí³í ³ûýåçëç 黽í³á׳ï³ý ñý³ñý»ñáí, çýãåçëçù »ý ÷áë³µ»ñáõãûáõýá, ù³ï¹çñá, ßñç³ëáõãûáõýá, á׳ï³ý ßñçáõý ß³ñ³¹³ëáõãûáõýá, ½áõ·³ñ»é³ï³ý ï³éáõûóý áõ ãí³ñïáõùá: 83 linguistics armenian folia anglistika maket 2013:layout 1.qxd conflict management in interpersonal communication gohar harutyunyan, susanna baldryan yerevan state university i f we stop for a moment and look around we will see diversity in age, race, gender, nationality, religion, personality, education, skills, communication style, ability and disability, goals and interests, values and beliefs, to name only a few. on a daily basis we constantly interact with other people. however, interactions are not neutral. while some reinforce social support, others can create conflict, and with respect to all the factors that distinguish us from one another, we are not likely to be successful in life without having a few conflicts with others. moreover, the potential of being engaged in conflict situation is present whenever two people relate to each other. thus, the question of conflict and conflict management has become very actual. no doubt, peace is desirable, but conflict is a natural and inevitable part of our life. it can arise between friends, within our families, at work, on national or international levels. so far there has been not a single view on how this term should be defined. there exist a significant number of definitions depending on from what perspective this or that scholar considers it. generally speaking on the basis of most definitions lies the idea, that “conflict is two or more competing responses to a single event, or differences between and among individuals, or mutual hostility between and among groups, or a problem to be solved.” (lulofs, cahn 2000:3). throughout the development of conflict studies scientists have attempted to come up with a general classification of conflict. for instance, conflicts may be classified on the basis of their sources, antecedent conditions or organizational levels they originate from (rahim 2011). however, the traditional classification of conflict is the one based on the level of its origin and thus four main conflict types are distinguished (2011:22): intrapersonal – a conflict that an individual experiences within himself or herself. interpersonal – a conflict experienced between two or more individuals. intragroup – conflicts among members of a group, between subordinates and superiors, or between two or more subgroups within a group. intergroup – a conflict between two or more groups. it is important to understand and acknowledge the type of conflict we are engaged in, because different types of conflicts require different methods of management. since the field of study of conflict is broad, in this article we will narrow down our scope of inquiry and concentrate chiefly on interpersonal conflicts and particularly on conflicts in the socalled “intimate relationships”. an intimate relationship is perhaps the most important type of interpersonal relationships for us. the reason is that they involve higher level of attachment, commitment or affection. researchers have spent years studying conflict that can occur within a romantic relationship and more specifically the reasons why these conflicts occur. the potential topics of conflict between relational partners are virtually infinite. these can include issues related to jealousy, sex, trust, betrayal, household chores, finances and the like. armenian folia anglistika culture studies 140 given the emotional aspect of this relationships conflict takes a different meaning or value in close relationships. relationship between the conflict participants affects the way they perceive, respond and most importantly manage a conflict. the traditional five-style model of conflict management was suggested by k.w. thomas, and r.h. kilmann. the model is based on two dimensions (rout; omiko 2007): • assertiveness – the extent to which an individual is willing to satisfy his or her own needs and concerns, • cooperativeness – the extent to which the individual is prone to satisfy others’ needs and concerns. the five conflict management styles are: avoidance, collaboration, accommodation, competition and compromise (rout; omiko 2007:83). as the name implies, avoidance is a preference for not addressing conflict at all. individuals prefer to stay away from the conflict by keeping the disagreements to themselves or refusing to acknowledge their existence. however, avoidance is not always effective, because it does not lead to a resolution of the conflict. conflicts need to be resolved; otherwise they can heat up and grow into a larger problem. avoidance is mainly appropriate when the conflict issue is trivial (wilmot; hocker 2010). collaboration requires both assertiveness and cooperativeness. it can produce a resolution that fully satisfies all parties. the individuals have personal interests, but also respect those of others’. it can generate new ideas, as the parties will collaborate and confront the conflict until they find a mutually satisfying resolution to the problem. collaboration is the most difficult style to achieve, yet it affirms the importance of the relationship. accommodation is one of the most common conflict handling styles. it is an unassertive, but definitely a cooperative conflict handling style, since the individuals strive to preserve the relational harmony. sometimes the accommodator may not be aware that he or she is employing it. however, it is not completely positive. this style is productive when the issue is more important to one party than the other or if harmony in the relationship is the most important goal. no doubt, this can help to minimize losses. nevertheless, the disadvantage of this style is that accommodation is, in effect, a losewin strategy. as for the competition, the style indicates high concern for self and low concern for others. it involves participants who refuse to acknowledge the needs and wishes of the other party. people using this style are highly uncooperative; they try to gain power by direct confrontation. this type of conflict management affects the relationship quality; as it creates a kind of emotional and psychological tension in the relationship. compromise involves both a degree of assertiveness and a degree of cooperativeness. individuals involved give up something and make concessions in an attempt to find a solution that partially satisfies both of the parties. none of these strategies is wrong to use, but there are right and wrong times to use each. individuals select different conflict management styles depending on the type of interpersonal conflict they are engaged in and on the intensity of the conflict. it is not armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 141 conflict that endangers relationships, rather the way in which it is managed. as we study conflicts in romantic relationships, which normally includes relationships between a male and a female, it is also important to pay attention to gender differences in conflict situations. some scholars consider that gender differences in conflicts are sometimes exaggerated. while others support the idea that “men and women have biologically different brains that create startlingly different behaviour” (lulofs, cahn 2000:48). one of the primary views is that gender differences in conflict interaction are in charge of the communication differences tradition. the point is that men and women in general have different styles of communication and therefore they respond to conflict in different ways. namely, women tend to be concerned with the emotional aspect of the relationship. in conflict women talk more about their feelings and concerns. women usually have the “listening” role rather than “lecturing”. women are better at expressing themselves non-verbally. men are more likely to be dominant in conversation, take control of it and lead in the direction they want. gender also affects conflict handling mechanisms. men and women in intimate relationships tend to favour different conflict management styles. women learn how to prevent conflict and try to avoid conflict situations, but when in conflict they are more confrontative, while men are more avoidant, they are more likely to withdraw from conflict when women try to talk about the problem. conflict and conflict management styles are also highly sensitive to culture. different cultures have different attitudes towards conflicts and different conflict management preferences. in conflict situations cultural background does influence its process and outcome. when people engage in conflict, they bring to the encounter not only their personalities, but also their cultural identities. the present article therefore aims to compare conflict management style preferences of american and armenian cultures based on the cultural dimension of individualism vs. collectivism. this pair of dimensions is considered to be the major dimension of cultural variability that best displays differences in conflict negotiation process. even though no culture can be described as exclusively individualistic or collectivistic, still, each culture tends to be more disposed to either of them. hofstede’s study (2001), conducted across 40 countries, brought him to the conclusion that american culture is highly individualistic. considerable research has been devoted to the study of cultures of west, middle east and asia. to our regret, all of them have sidestepped armenian culture. in this connection, for armenian culture, we are guided by the general assumption that it incorporates more collectivistic values. our hypothesis is accounted for by historic, more precisely social and political developments, since individual values are considered to be strongly influenced by sociopolitical systems. for over 70 years of period armenia has been a part of the soviet union. surveys conducted by umpleby in 1985 (shafiro, himelein, best 2003) suggested that it belonged to collectivistic cultures. the collapse of the soviet union did not fundamentally change our collectivistic mentality, its evidences still can be found in different aspects of our culture. it is also striking to observe that in armenian there is no one-to-one equivalent for the armenian folia anglistika culture studies 142 english word “privacy”, which is an underlying component of individualism. in the english-armenian dictionary by h. asmangulian and m. hovhannisian for the word privacy we can find such armenian words as §ù»ýáõãûáõý¦, §ù»ïáõë³óí³íáõãûáõý¦ (1991:731), however they do not fully express the essence, the real meaning of that concept. besides, in armenian those words have a negative connotation, being associated more with loneliness or isolation. thus, in accordance with these, we consider armenia to be mainly a collectivistic culture. in collectivistic cultures there is a high value for relationships. people dislike assertiveness, disagreements or conflicts, which disrupt the social harmony. collectivists show high concern for the other party. hence collectivism is usually associated with cooperation. however, this does not mean that people more frequently use collaborating style of conflict management. individuals from collectivistic cultures are more likely to use avoiding or accommodating styles to manage conflicts, since they are primarily concerned for maintaining their relationship. competing style is more preferred by the representatives of individualistic cultures. individuals are likely to value their own perspective, placing their own goals above those of others’. to see how the theories about individualistic and collectivistic cultures and their culturally specific ways of perceiving and responding to conflicts work in practice, let us consider examples of interpersonal conflict from american and armenian films1. a conflict situation from the film “why did i get married, too?” will serve as an example of american conflict management style. lawyer 1: all the bank accounts divided down the middle, we’re showing that between investments, savings, ira retirements and 401ks. you two will be splitting $970000. patricia: yeah, that sounds about right. yeah, gavin: don’t forget about the other account, lawyer 2: gavin was telling me that there was another account that’s not listed here. it has about $800000 in it. patricia: yeah, that’s the money from my book, lawyer 2: that’s not included? lawyer 1: we’re not offering that. gavin: well, i didn’t know that. patricia: but why would i gavin? gavin: it’s ours. patricia: ours? gavin, that’s the money i made from my book sales, why would i include that in the settlement? gavin: it’s what we built together. patricia, patricia: we? gavin: we patricia: “we”? what page did you write, gavin? what boot tour lecture were you on? armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 143 gavin: patricia, how many nights did i stay up all nights listening to you and your ideas and giving you some of mine? patricia: yeah, but, gavin, i didn’t use not one of your ideas. gavin: yes, you have. you always do, i’ve always been your case study. patricia: are you serious? gavin: are you serious? patricia: all right, gavin, let’s be reasonable about this. it’s my money. i earned it. so, can we move on, please? gavin: no, we’re not just gonna move on. okay? you wanna be reasonable? (to the lawyer) you include that. patricia: are you really trying to do this? gavin: absolutely. patricia: all right, fine lawyer 1: (to patricia) so, you wanna include it? patricia: no, i’m not including it, dianne. gavin: no? patricia: you know what? gavin? this ain’t about the money. this is about greed. your greed. gavin: you’re right. yeah. patricia: thank you. gavin: i should be greedy, ’cause i’ve been starving in this relationship. (“why did i get married too?” 2, 2010) after years of marriage gavin and patricia decide to divorce. the conflict arises when the couple divides their joint property. patricia is a psychologist and an author of a profitable book. gavin and patricia have different views on patricia’s book and the money made on it. gavin demands the income to be divided, while patricia is against it. in the given situation both of the partners use competition as a conflict handling strategy. verbal aggression and insults, which are typical of competing style, are also present. being representatives of individualistic cultural heritage they put the focus on the “self”, they emphasize their success or achievements patricia mentions that the book is only her achievement, attained through her hard work, self-reliance and self-determination. her sense of individualism is too high to let her acknowledge her husband’s help. it is striking to observe that they don’t avoid open confrontation; they easily voice their opinions and their indignation. both patricia and gavin strive to fulfill their own goal, even at the expense of their relationship. for them their inner harmony is more important than the relational harmony. this conflict is more about self-assertion and individualization than money or greed. let us consider another example from the film “the break-up”. brooke: i’m going to do the dishes. gary: cool. armenian folia anglistika culture studies 144 brooke: it’d be nice if you helped me. gary: (playing a video game) no problem. i’ll get them a little bit later. i’m just gonna hit the streets here for a little bit. brooke: gary, come on, i don’t want to do them later. let’s just do them now. it’ll take 15 minutes. gary: (lying on the sofa) honey, i am so exhausted. i just honestly want to relax for a little bit. (sighs) if i could just sit here, let my food digest, and just try to enjoy the quiet for a little bit. […] and well…you know, we can clean the dishes tomorrow. brooke: (frowns and talks in reproaching tone walking in the room) gary, you know i don’t like waking up to a dirty kitchen. gary: who cares? brooke: (getting irritated) i care! all right? i care! i busted my ass all day cleaning this house and then cooking that meal. and i worked today. it would be nice if you said thank you and helped me with the dishes. gary: (looking annoyed and reluctant) fine. (gets up) i’ll help you do the damn dishes. (“the break-up” 3, 2006) here we have a conflict between a married couple – gary and brooke concerning household chores. brooke wants her husband to help her with the dishes, while gary tries to shirk it in every possible way. but as brooke continues standing on her ground and the situation gets heated he finally adopts an accommodating style – setting aside his priorities and preferences. on the one hand accommodation style is productive in this situation as the issue is more important to brooke than to gary and it may resolve conflict faster. on the other hand, it is not completely positive. the drawback is that gary sacrifices his own interests and wishes in order to maintain smooth relationships. moreover, taking into account his non-verbal cues, which show his dissatisfaction and resentment, we can say that it is actually a seeming resolution and the negative aspect here is that later on, in case of unfavourable conditions, it can transform into something more serious or complicated. here is an example from the armenian film §àãçýã ãç ùý³¦. arsen: (addressing his wife) ¾±¹ ãç ó»ñ áýï³ýçùá: ¸»ûíç¹ ¨ ¾éçë: üñ³ýó áý¹ñ³ýáõñ ñ³ïï³ýçßý»ñý »ý` åáñï³μáõíáõãûáõý, ñáõéáõãûáõý ¨ ³μáõéç³: ¶çï»±ë çýã ³ ýß³ý³ïáõù ³μáõéç³: ²³³¯... âáñë ï³ñç ³ ³ùáõëý³ó³í »ù ùá ñ»ï, í»ñçá ·ï³ ùá çëï³ï³ý ³ýáõýá: (elisa frowns) ¾°û, ¹á°õ, ³μáõéç³ »ë, μéμáõéç³ »ë... elisa: (speaking in a low voice) ºë ñçù³ ï·åí»ù: arsen: (shouting) â»ë ¿é ·åíáõù, ·áý» ùç μ³ý ³ñ³í ïéçý»ë: ð³, μ³ûó »ë ù»½ ñéá ã»ù ³ë»é çýã ³ ýß³ý³ïáõù ³μáõéç³, ñéá ùç ñáå»: ²ñ³°, ëý¹ñ»°ù: (he takes the dictionary and looks it up) §ðáõý³ï³ý §³¦ åëï³ï³ý ù³ëýçïçó ¨ §μáõ黦 ï³ùù μ³éçó` §ï³ù³½ñïáõãarmenian folia anglistikaculture studies 145 ûáõý, ÷áùñá·áõãûáõý, ùï³íáñ ë³ñù³ý³÷³ï áý¹áõý³ïáõãûáõýý»ñ¦: ²ñ³° çù ïçýá, ó»ñ ³éç¨ §îçïçý ²μáõéç³ý¦ ¿: (elisa continues working quietly) (§àãçýã ãç ùý³¦ 4, 2008) this is a marital conflict between arsen and elisa. the conflict is actually quite inane and senseless. the initiator is the husband – arsen, who also escalates it by deviating from the actual topic, insulting elisa and her family members. in spite of this she prefers to keep quiet and not confront the conflict, she feels less confident with the situation. elisa does not voice her resentment; instead, she expresses it non-verbally – by means of facial expression. in this particular example the culture also plays a certain role. avoidance can also be interpreted as lack of power. being a masculine 5 culture, it is expected of armenian women to be obedient to their husbands and avoid any conflict or disagreement. usually in man-woman relationships women are not encouraged to express their objections and protests. the wife’s avoidance of conflict is a determinant factor. in fact, it is a classic example of a destructive conflict. the conflict might not be so destructive if the parties involved dealt with it appropriately. the example discussed below considers conflict handled by another management style. the example is from an armenian film §²ýù»õ ù»õ³íáñý»ñá¦. mike: þ³ï å³ñ½ ñ³ñó ³: æáñçá ùá ç±ýãý ³: mariam: àýï»ñë ³: (sarcastically) î³ñí»ù ùá áýï»ñý ¿é ³, 㱿: mike: æëï ùá ¹áõñá ï·³±ñ, áñ »ë áýï»ñáõñç áõý»ý³ûç: mariam: æýãç ãáõý»±ë: mike: àõ±ù áõý»ù: mariam: ¸» ³ë»ýù ¾ýççý... mike: ¾ýççý áýï»ñáçë ùáõñý ³, ø³ñç³°ù: ¾¹ éñçí ï³ñμ»ñ μ³ý»ñ »ý: mariam: ¸» æáñçý ¿é áýï»ñáçë áýï»ñý ³: æ±ýã ï³ñμ»ñáõãûáõý: mike: (shouting at her) ø»¯í ï³ñμ»ñáõãûáõý: æáñçá ïõ³û³, ¹áõ` ³õççï: mariam: ð»ïá±: mike: ºë ù»½ í³μß» ã»ù ñ³ëï³ýáõù: mariam: ºë ¹³ í³õáõó »ù ýï³ï»é, μ³ûó ¿¹ ùá åñáμé»ùý ³: mike: (shouting in a threatening tone) â³÷»ñ¹ ³ýóýáõù »ë, ³õçç¯ï: mariam: (stands-still for a minute and then speaks in a scolding tone) àõ½áõù »ù ñçß»óý»é ä³ñáý ð³ïáμû³ý, áñ ¹áõ çù ë»÷³ï³ý³ï»ñá ã»ë: àõ áã ¿é »ë ùá ë³õ³éçùý »ù, áñ »ñμ áõ½»ë, áýó áõ½»ë çù íñ³ ·áé³ë: ä³ñ½ ³±: mike: (still shouting) àõñ»ùý ùç ý»éí³ûý³óñ³... mariam: (speaks angrily with raised voice) àõ áý¹ñ³°ýñ³å»ë, »ë áã ù»ïçý çñ³íáõýù ã»ù ïí»é çù ñ»ï ï»ýó ïáýáí ëáë³: (gets up and leaves) (§²ýù»õ ù»õ³íáñý»ñá¦6, 2012) armenian folia anglistika culture studies 146 we have a conflict between a dating couple mike and mariam. in this case both of the conflicting sides have adopted a competing strategy and adhere to it, as none of them wants to give in. mike is guided by jealousy and hence he is not able to judge the situation reasonably. instead, he escalates the situation by his stubbornness. mariam, in her turn, is confident in her innocence in the situation and does not want to give in, even for smoothing over the conflict for the sake of their relationship. they act highly uncooperatively and aggressively. these types of conflicts affect the relationship quality. in this situation conflict creates a kind of emotional and psychological tension in the relationship. this can be noticed in mariam’s speech, as she addresses mike with §ä³ñáý ð³ïáμû³ý¦ (mr. hakobyan) rather than with his first name. the formal address implies a distance in the relationship. in fact it is the most destructive conflict management style. as the theory suggests the resolution to this conflict cannot be considered typical of collectivistic cultures. our observations have shown some deviations from the theory. people usually act according to their cultural values, but cultural values do not predict individual behaviour all the time. no doubt, the impact of cultural differences in conflict situations is significant in both positive and negative ways, but we cannot consider it as an unequivocal factor for predicting the process and the outcome of conflicts. in such situations the role of personality traits of an individual cannot be underestimated. another important achievement of this article concerns conflict perception and conflict management in armenian culture. most of the research concerning conflict management styles was originated in the west, with regard to american culture or popular european cultures, leaving out armenian culture. for this purpose, a research was conducted with the aim to find out how armenians view conflict, what they associate it with, what more probably can cause a conflict, what their preferred styles of dealing with conflict are and how prone they are to admit their guilt. responses from a total of 200 participants, all of armenian nationality (without age or gender limitation), were included in the analysis. the participants completed a questionnaire consisting of 15 questions altogether. after providing demographic information they answered questions about conflict and their own experiences with it. it is important to mention that some of the results were quite unexpected. for instance, 16.5% of all respondents considered themselves contentious, while the majority mentioned that they prefer not to get involved in conflicts. even though the number of people who feel comfortable with conflicts greatly yields to that of those who don’t, it was still surprising for us to get affirmative answers in such quantity, taking into account armenians’ cultural membership to collectivistic cultures, where harmony between individuals or group members is an essential part of life. that’s why it is not surprising that most of the respondents have mainly negative connotations about conflict, viewing it mainly as destructive. armenian culture can be characterized by the fear of disagreement and a preference for repression of any situation or behaviour that can threaten the relationship or disrupt the normal pace of life. for armenians public opinion holds an important place and living according to social norms and public morals is a natural phenomenon. accordingly, armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 147 any deviation from accepted norms, including a conflict, is considered negative and undesirable. it is interesting to mention that irrespective of age and gender factors, many of the participants have the same associations with the concept of conflict, as they have chosen the same words for describing it. the majority of the respondents often associated it with chaos, problem, quarrel, tension, hostility, clash, raised voices, crying, headache, fighting, stress, mutual insults, intolerance, negative emotions. the fact that people describe conflict using negative terms indicates that it is what they usually experience. only a few of the respondents described it in neutral terms and even fewer in positive terms. thus, we can say that conflict is viewed more as a problem which is beyond our control, than as an opportunity. the causes and motives of interpersonal conflicts among armenians are numerous; however, some of them appear to be more frequent and serious than the others. according to the data collected, the top of the hierarchy includes lies, injustice, misunderstandings, misbehaviour, disagreements on various issues, abuse, insults, false accusations, aggression, distrust and others. as it can be seen, these are conflicts regarding specific actions or behaviours. most of them, in fact, are self-oriented. unlike the representatives of collectivistic cultures, armenians showed a stronger preference for collaborative style of conflict management. collaboration is a problemsolving approach. this is a more direct and confrontational style, which requires a great amount of self-confidence. even though collaboration is not the most typical conflict management style for individualistic cultures, still it is more characteristic of individualistic cultures than collectivistic ones. this contradicted our initial hypothesis, since we expected a greater inclination towards the avoiding or accommodating style, given by the fact that they are more characteristic of collectivistic cultures. meanwhile the latter were the least preferred options among the respondents. it is rather interesting to note that 63% of the participants agreed that all conflicts are resolvable. the high index points to the fact that the individuals are open for discussions, they have the willingness to collaborate and solve the problem, which is also important for individualistic cultures. another important point is that not all of the respondents are disposed to admit their guilt in conflict situations. this can also be accounted for by the presence of individualistic qualities, where the individual’s goals and dignity are more important than peace in the relationship and it is not that easy to give in. besides, according to the data collected, qualities such as pride and dignity may prevent them from falling back on someone’s help. however, this question is a bit controversial, as it can also be interpreted from another angle – showing the collectivist nature of armenian nation. turning to someone for help or attending mediation sessions can be viewed as a tacit admission that a dispute exists. given their view of conflict as a natural phenomenon, individualists generally are able to acknowledge conflict and participate in mediation without experiencing shame. for collectivists, however, even a tacit acknowledgement of conflict can cause loss of face. armenian folia anglistika culture studies 148 the findings have revealed that although the theory and the discussed examples indicate that armenian culture is closer to collectivistic cultures our research results are quite different. the similarities of armenian culture with individualistic cultures in terms of approaches to conflict and conflict management styles outweighed our expectations. as research shows, armenians are mostly engaged in characteristically “individualistic way” of resolving conflicts. previously armenian culture has been classified as collectivistic. however, because of political and economic changes, alterations in our values and mentality, we can observe a switch from a collectivistic culture to an individualistic one. thus, it may well be concluded that conceptualization of the armenian culture as purely collectivistic may be oversimplified. armenian culture may be viewed as a mixture of both collectivistic and individualistic values. notes: 1. all the examples discussed in this article are taken from american and armenian modern feature films, owing to the fact that speech in films differs in its expressiveemotional-evaluative overtones. it is closer to everyday conversations, the actions and emotions are more expressive. four movies are chosen as context of study: “anmegh meghavornery” (2012); “vochinch chi mna” (2008); “why did i get married too?” (2010); the “break-up” (2012). 2. four couples find themselves struggling to save their marriages once again on their annual marriage retreat, while each of them battle through financial, physical, mental, and emotional issues. 3. a once-loving chicago couple finds their romance complicated when both parties refuse to move out of the pair’s recently purchased an apartment. their confrontation is endlessly fueled by mean-spirited suggestions of revenge tactics from friends and family and their stubbornness. as the competition to drive one another out grows increasingly intense and outrageous, brooke eventually realizes that she is not fighting for possession of the apartment as much as she is fighting to salvage her relationship with the man she once viewed as the love of her life. 4. arsen and elisa have been married for 4 years. arsen is a journalist, while elisa is a housewife. before the marriage elisa moved from the usa to live in armenia. they rent a flat together with narek – arsen’s friend. everything changes after the arrival of elisa’s best friend – helen. helen betrays their friendship, destroys their family and starts going out with arsen. 5. masculinity-femininity is a pair of cultural dimensions proposed by hofstede (2001). it refers to the division of emotional roles between men and women. a masculine society expects men to be aggressive, competitive, ambitious, and to strive for material success while women care for children, the weak, and strive for a nonmaterial quality of life. 6. real stories taken from life: love, hatred, luxury and difficulties overcoming of which armenian folia anglistikaculture studies 149 becomes a lifestyle on the other side of the ocean. human characters that change because of some situations in this life or accommodate themself to the demands of life. references: 1. canary, d.; cupach, w.; messman, s. (1995) relationship conflict: conflict in parent-child, frinedship and romantic relationships. california: sage. 2. hofstede, g. (2001) culture’s consequences. california: sage publications. 3. lulofs, r.; cahn, d. (2000) conflict from theory to action. massachusetts: allyn and bacon. 4. rahim, m. (2011) managing conflict in organization. new jersey: transaction publishers. 5. rout, e.; omiko, n. (2007) corporate conflict management. concepts and skills. new delhi: phi learning pvt: ltd. 6. shafiro, m.; himelein, m.; best, d. (2003) ukrainian and u.s. american females: differences in individualism/collectivism and gender attitudes. / journal of crosscultural psychology. vol. 34. n. 3, 297-303. california: sage publications. 7. wilmot, w.; hocker, j. (2010) interpersonal conflict. new york: mcgraw-hill. 8. (1991) english-armenian dictionary. yerevan. øçç³ýóýû³ ïáýýéçïïç ñ³õã³ñ³ñáõùá (ùß³ïáõã³ûçý ùáï»óáõù) êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù ùýýáõãû³ý »ý ³éýíáõù ùçç³ýóýû³ ïáýýéçïïý»ñç ³ñ ï³ ñ³ûï ù³ý ¨ ¹ñ³ýó ñ³õã³ñ³ñù³ý ù³ñï³í³ñáõãûáõýý»ñç ï³ñμ»ñáõãûáõýý»ñá ³ûýåçëç ùçùû³ýóçó ï³ñμ»ñ ùß³ïáõûãý»ñáõù, çýãåçëçù »ý ³ù»ñçïû³ýá ¨ ñ³û ï³ ï³ýá: ðá¹í³íç ßñç³ý³ïý»ñáõù ý³¨ ÷áñó ¿ ³ñíáõù ñ³ñóù³ý ùççáóáí ¹ç ï³ñ ï»é ïíû³é »ñ¨áõûãç ¹»ñý áõ ýß³ý³ïáõãûáõýá ñ³ûï³ï³ý ùß³ïáõûãáõù: armenian folia anglistika culture studies 150 maket_n_verjin.qxp structural-semantic patters with suffixes expressing resemblance in modern english and modern armenian. there may be over a million words in the englishlanguage. but most people do not know all of those words, and perhaps do not need to either. knowledge of the most frequent words can help in general, as those words form a basic vocabulary. it has been estimated that about 100 words make up 50% of people’s daily vocabulary. as we add to our knowledge of good english, we expand our mastery of the basic vocabulary. to promote this process it is of tremendous importance that linguists work out clearly defined rules and observations. since there are so many words, and since the long-term memory is rather slow in picking them up outside a natural english-speaking setting, a little semantics is of great help. thus, common factors involved in many words help to comprehend words, which in its turn facilitates memorizing. some words consist of “building blocks” that are fit together. to find out how these building blocks are put together we shall have to turn to word-formation: the main basis for so many words existing in a language. as p.karashchuk puts on, word-formation must first of all deal with the investigation of the problem “how the words are built” which will help us to solve the problem “how to build a word” (karashchuk 1997) our study focuses on the formation of derivative adjectives containing suffixes expressing resemblance in modern english and armenian on the synchronic level. the choice of derivative adjectives is accounted for by the fact that adjectives form a considerable part of the word-stock of the english and armenian languages and that both languages are rich in affixes (especially in suffixes). as it is known the number of simple adjectives in all the languages is extremely limited. most adjectives have been formed by means of affixation and compounding. the problems connected with the english word-formation have been studied by h. marchand, h.koziol, i.arnold, v.adams, z.kharitonchik, y.kubriakova, p.karashtchuk and others. the contribution of armenian linguists to this issue is of no less importance as evident in the works by m.abeghian, e.aghayan, a.mourvalyan, h.ohanyan and 152 armenian folia anglistika linguistics lili karapetyan armine yakhnyan others. at present the comparative study of word-building systems of native and foreign languages (in the case discussed armenian and english) is of great significance as it reveals similarities and differences of word-building systems of the languages concerned. while comparing word-building systems of related languages, linguists very often proceed from genetically identical affixes. such an approach is not applicable to the languages under study since here we can hardly speak of etymological identity of affixes. however, it must be mentioned that the indo-european languages under investigation (english and armenian) have some similarities in the means and ways of word-formation, morphemic composition of words, grouping words into parts of speech, word-building relations between parts of speech although they belong to different morphological types of languages: english is basically an analytical language, while armenian is mainly an agglutinative one. word-building patterns help to better understand the peculiarities of word-building systems in both languages. as h.marchand, z.kharitonchik, y.kubriakova, we also have tried to proceed from these patterns in our study. to describe the system of suffixation of adjectives in modern english and armenian we have found the following productive word-building patterns: english armenian n+s=a n+s=a v+s=a v+s=a adj+s=a adj+s=a num+s=a num+s=a adv+s=a in these patterns n stands for noun stems, v for verb stems, adj for adjective stems, num for numeral stems, adv for adverb stems, s for suffixes and a for derived adjectives. proceeding from the assumption that each pattern possesses a structure and meaning, we have studied not only the structure of the patterns, but their meanings as well, both of the stems and affixes and dynamics of their interrelation, which is very important because in order to coin words it is necessary not only to know the morphemes of which they consist but also to reveal their recurrent regular combinations and the relationship existing between them. so, alongside lexical and grammatical meanings of a derived word we distinguish its word-building meaning, by which we understand the meaning of the derived word which is inferred from the meanings of the structural components of the pattern. as within the limits of the present article it is impossible to give an exhaustive description of the stems and affixes functioning in the above mentioned word-building patterns, we shall confine ourselves to the study of suffixes expressing resemblance in modern english and modern armenian. thus, on the structural level we single out the following structural patterns with 153 linguistics armenian folia anglistika suffixes expressing resemblance in modern english and armenian, which are listed according to the degree of productivity: english armenian n+-like=a n+-³ï³ý=a n+-ish=a n+-³ûçý=a n+-y=a n+-»=a n+-ly=a adj+-³íáõý= a adj +-ish=a adjectives formed after these patterns have the following meanings: a1 – resembling in appearance to the noun expressed by the derivational base a2 – resembling in behavior to the noun expressed by the derivational base a3 – resembling in qualities to the noun expressed by the derivational base a4 – resembling in character to the noun expressed by the derivational base a5 – resembling in a weak degree to the quality of the adjective expressed by the derivational base a thorough examination of the above mentioned patterns reveals the following: in the structural pattern n+-like =a we differentiate three meanings of the suffix like: -like1 resemblance in appearance -like2 resemblance in behaviour -like3 resemblance in quality the suffix -like is used to convert nouns into adjectives expressing resemblance to the noun; as, manlike, like a man; childlike, like a child; godlike, like a god, etc. such compounds are readily formed whenever convenient such as crescentlike, serpentlike, hairlike. thus, on the structural-semantic level we single out the following patterns with the suffix in question: n1+-like1=a1 (bridelike, groomlike, girllike, boylike, ladylike, babylike, childlike, workmanlike), where n1 stands for nouns denoting persons. n1+-like2=a2 (childlike, babylike, ladylike, motherlike, fatherlike, brotherlike, sisterlike). n3+-like1=a1 (batlike, wolflike, serpentlike, foxlike, piglike, ratlike, lionlike, mouselike, cocklike, sheeplike, birdlike, catlike, doglike), where n3 stands for animal names. n8+-like1=a1 (londonlike, moscowlike, parislike, berlinlike, senalike, volgalike), where n8 stands for geographical names. n6 +-like3=a3 (goldlike, pearllike, glasslike, silverlike), where n6 stands for nouns of material. the armenian equivalents of the suffix -like appear to be -³ï³ý and -»: 154 armenian folia anglistika linguistics n1+-³ï³ý=a1 (³ß³ï»ñï³ï³ý, áõë³ýáõ³ï³ý, »ñ»ë³û³ï³ý, ïõ³û³ï³ý, ³õçï³ï³ý) (cp. pupillike, studentlike, childlike, boylike, girllike), where n1 stands for nouns denoting persons. n2+-³ï³ý=a1 (³½ýí³ï³ý³ï³ý, ã³·³íáñ³ï³ý, ¹ùë³ï³ý, ½çýíáñ³ï³ý, µ³ñáý³ï³ý) (cp. noblelike, kinglike, dukelike, soldierlike, baronlike), where n2 stands for nouns denoting rank or position. n6+-»=a3 (ù³ñù³ñ», áëï», »ñï³ã», ñáõ», ½ùñáõëï», ³å³ï», ù³ñ·³ñï», ã³íß», ï³í», ³ñí³ã») (cp. goldlike, pearllike, glasslike, silverlike), where n6 stands for nouns of material. another suffix expressing resemblance is the suffix -ish. the suffix -ish derives from the old english suffix -isc. we distinguish the following types of -ish: -ish1resemblance in appearance -ish2 resemblance in behaviour -ish3 resemblance in a weak degree of quality -ish4 resemblance in character so, the structural pattern n+-ish =a produces the following structural-semantic patterns: n1+-ish1=a1 (babyish, girlish, boyish, childish), where n1 stands for nouns denoting persons. n1+-ish2=a2 (babyish, girlish, boyish, childish). n3+-ish3=a1 (wolfish, foxish, piggish, cattish, cockish, doggish, battish, rattish, bearish, goatish), where n3 stands for animal names. n5+-ish1=a1 (queen annish, king arthurish, princess dianish, mark twainish, lawerencish, freudish), where n5 stands for personal names. adj1+-ish3=a5 (brownish, reddish, bluish, blackish, greenish), where adj1 stands for adjectives denoting colour. adj2+-ish3=a5 (roundish ,longish, shortish), where adj2 stands for adjectives denoting shape. the english suffix -ish is equivalent to the armenian suffixes -³ï³ý and -³íáõý: n1+-³ï³ý=a1 (»ñ»ë³û³ï³ý, ³õçï³ï³ý, ïõ³û³ï³ý) (cp. babyish, girlish, boyish, childish). adj1+-³íáõý=a5 (ï³ñùñ³íáõý, ï³ý³ã³íáõý, ï³åï³íáõý, ¹»õý³íáõý) (cp. reddish, greenish, bluish, yellowish), where adj1 stands for adjectives denoting colour. adj2+-³íáõý=a5 (ïéáñ³íáõý, »ñï³ñ³íáõý, ï³ñ׳íáõý, µ³ñ³ï³íáõý) (cp. roundish, longish, shortish), where adj2 stands for adjectives denoting shape. the next suffix to be analysed is -y, which descends from the old english adjective suffix -ig. the general sense of the suffix is ‘having the qualities of’ or ‘similar to something’ 155 linguistics armenian folia anglistika as in doggy, catty , piggy or ‘full of’ which is denoted by the stem to which it is added, as icy = (1) of the nature of or having the coldness, hardness of ice; (2) full of or covered with ice. such adjectives were numerous in old english, and large additions were made at particular periods, especially in the 14th century as dirty, healthy, saucy. from the 13th century the suffix -y has been added to verb-stems to express the meaning ‘inclined or apt to’ or ‘giving occasion to’ a certain action as blowy, drowsy, sticky. some monosyllabic adjectives were extended by means of this suffix as early as the 15th century, as chilly, dusky, vasty. a sense ‘addicted to’ or ‘similar to’, as in doggy, horsy, is of modern growth. the suffix has frequently come to express the same notion as -ish, particularly with colour-epithets, and especially when these are used as quasi-adverbs, as greeny-blue. (marchand 1960: 287) before passing to the study of word-building patterns containing the suffix -y we shall consider the meanings of the suffix in question: -y1 resemblance in appearance -y2 resemblance in character -y3 resemblance in a weak degree of quality in the structural pattern n+-y =a the following structural-semantic patterns are observed: n3+-y1=a1 (batty, beary, foxy, doggy, dovy, spidery, mousy, wolfy, piggy, catty, horsy, liony), where n3 stands for names of animals. n3+-y2=a4 (foxy, doggy, mousy, wolfy, piggy, catty, horsy, liony). n9+-y3=a3 (fishy, soucy, meaty, porky, beefy, minty, milky, peppery, winy, beery), where n9 stands for names of foods and drinks. the armenian equivalent of the english suffix -y is -³ûçý, though not every structural pattern has its equivalent in armenian: n9+-³ûçý=a3 (ï³ãý³ûçý, óïý³ûçý) (cp. milky, fishy), where n9 stands for names of foods and drinks. no equivalents have been found for meaty, porky, beefy, minty and etc. the last suffix expressing resemblance is the derivational suffix -ly. the suffix -ly basically adds to the notion of ‘like’ or ‘in this way’ to nouns. its oldest spellings were variations of -like, such as -lic, -lich and -liche, eventually reduced to -li or -ly. words such as goodly, stately, and kindly reflect a more purely grammatical use of -ly to mean ‘having to do with’. the origins of their meanings are often usages of the base word that are uncommon or obsolete now. (marchand 1960: 267) the suffix appears only in the n+-ly=a structural-semantic pattern and expresses the meaning ‘similar to’. words such as queenly, kingly and cowardly, fatherly mean ‘like a queen, king / coward, father’; the former refers to appearance or behavior, while the latter is more particularly about behavior alone. so in the examples given below the suffix in question has the following two meanings: -ly1 resemblance in appearance 156 armenian folia anglistika linguistics -ly2 resemblance in behaviour in the structural pattern n+-ly =a the following structural-semantic patterns are singled out: n1+-ly2=a2 (bridely, groomly, burglarly, ghostly, manly, wifely, womanly, childly), where n1 stands for nouns denoting persons. n2+-ly1=a2 (baronly, kingly, queenly, dukely, priestly, monkly, popely, princely, soldierly), where n2 stands for nouns denoting rank or position. n16+-ly2=a2 (motherly, fatherly, daughterly, cousinly, sisterly, brotherly), where n16 stands for nouns denoting kinship relations. the armenian equivalent of the suffix -ly appears to be -³ï³ý: n16+-³ï³ý=a2 (ñ³ûñ³ï³ý, ù³ûñ³ï³ý, áñ¹ç³ï³ý) (cp. fatherly, motherly), where n16 stands for nouns denoting kinship relations. as it can be seen from the examples adduced in the article we see that suffixes expressing resemblance both in english and armenian are chiefly added to n-stems. as a matter of fact only one suffix, the suffix -ish, can coin adjectives from adj-stems. it has been noted that suffixes expressing resemblance deal mostly with concrete nouns, both common and proper. it is also noteworthy that in modern english adjectives formed after these patterns are chiefly relative which is not characteristic of the armenian language where derivative adjectives are mostly qualitative. this lies in the fact that in modern armenian suffixes forming relative adjectives are few in number (9 suffixes in total) while in english qualitative adjectives are chiefly simple by their morphological composition. thus, our study of adjectives expressing resemblance in modern english and armenian has revealed some similarities and differences of word-building systems of both languages, which will go a long way in working out the typology of patterns. and our next logical step will be to study these patterns further to make a complete list of structural-semantic patterns of adjectives in modern english and armenian. references: 1. akhmanova, o. (1979) patterns and productivity. moscow: mgu 2. ginzburg, r.s. (1979) a course in modern english lexicology. moscow: vishaya shkola. 3. marchand, h. (1960) the categories and types of present day english wordformation.wiesbaden: otto harrassowitz. 4. eloyan, m. (1962) zhamanakakits hayereni atsantsnery. yerevan: h.kh.s.h. git. akademia. 5. galstyan, m.a. (1975) goyakan himqerits atsakan kazmogh verjatsantsnery zhamanakakits hayerenum. yerevan: yerevani hamals. hrat. 6. karapetyan, l. ( 2007) the role of derivative word-building patterns in enriching 157 linguistics armenian folia anglistika learners’ vocabulary // armenian folia anglistika. / yerevan, n1(3). 7. karapetyan, l. (1998) verjatsantsavor kaghaparneri karutsvatsqa-imastayin verlutsutian mi qani hartser zhamanakakits anglereni yev hayereni handipadrutyamb // otar lezunery bardzraguyn dprotsum. yerevan: yerevani hamals. hrat. 8. karashchuk, p.m. (1997) slovoobrazovaniye angliyskogo yazika. moskva: nauka. 9. kharitonchik, z.a. (1971) semantika proizvodnogo slova. avtoreferat candidatskoy dissertatsii. moskva, m.g.p.i. 10. kubriakova, y.s. (1965) chto takoye slovoobrazovaniye. moskva: nauka. 11. (1985) the oxford dictionary of english etymology. oxford: oxford university press. 12. asmangulyan, h.a. (1984) angleren-hayeren bararan. yerevan: hayastan hrat. 13. (1978) the short oxford english dictionary on historical principles. oxford: clarendon press. vol. 2. üù³ýáõãûáõý ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõ í»ñç³í³ýóý»ñáí ï³éáõóí³íù³çù³ëï³ûçý µ³é³ï³½ù³ï³ý ï³õ³å³ñý»ñá å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù ¨ ñ³û»ñ»ýáõù êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù ùýýáõãû³ý »ý ³éýíáõù ýù³ýáõãûáõý ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõ í»ñç³í³ýóý»ñáí ï³éáõóí³íù³çù³ëï³ûçý µ³é³ï³½ù³ï³ý ï³õ³å³ñý»ñá å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù ¨ ñ³û»ñ»ýáõù: àõëáõùý³ëçñíáõù »ý ýßí³í ï³õ³å³ñý»ñç µ³õ³¹ñçãý»ñç (ñçùù»ñç ¨ ³í³ýóý»ñç) ÷áëñ³ñ³µ»ñáõãûáõýý»ñç ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá çýãå»ë ï³éáõóí³íù³ûçý, ³ûýå»ë ¿é çù³ëï³ûçý ï»ë³ýïûáõýçó` í»ñ ñ³ý»éáí ýßí³í »ñïáõ 黽áõý»ñç µ³é³ï³½ùáõãû³ý áñáß ýù³ýáõãûáõýý»ñ áõ ï³ñµ»ñáõãûáõýý»ñ: 158 armenian folia anglistika linguistics kazm.cdr computer design: heghine gasparyan armenian folia anglistika is the reviewed international academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english. its aim is to foster research of the english language, literature and culture in armenia and elsewhere, facilitate intellectual cooperation between high school teachers and scholars. armenian folia anglistika is intended to be published twice a year. articles of interest to university-level teachers and scholars in english studies are warmly welcomed by the multi-national editorial board of the journal. articles should be directed to the editor-in-chief. the editorial board of armenian folia anglistika announces the opening of a new section in the journal armenological studies, which invites valuable and innovative contributions from such fields as linguistics, literary criticism, ethnic studies, cultural history, gender studies and a wide range of adjacant disciplines. editor-in-chief: dr seda gasparyan, prof. yerevan state university alex manoogian 1 yerevan 375049 armenia tel: (3741) 571660 fax: +(3741) 571660 e-mail: romano@xter.net editorial board: yelena mkhitaryan, prof. (armenia) dr svetlana ter-minasova, prof. (russia) dr olga alexandrova, prof. (russia) dr vincent gillespie, prof. (england) peter sutton, editor (england) shoushan paronyan, assist. prof. (armenia) gayane girunyan, assist. prof. (armenia) lusakn publishers 6 grigor lusavorich,yerevan tel: 52-79-74, 52-79-47, e-mail. lusakn@rambler.ru ðçùý³¹çñ ¨ ·éë³íáñ ëùμ³·çñ` 꺸² ¶²êä²ðú²ü ð³ù³ñç ãáõ³ñïù³ý å³ï³ëë³ý³ïáõ` þàôþ²ü ä²ðàüú²ü èñ³ïí³ï³ý ·áñíáõý»áõãûáõý çñ³ï³ý³óýáõ §²ü¶èºðºüæ àôêàôøü²êæðàôâú²ü ð²úî²î²ü ²êàòæ²ò沦 ðî ìï³û³ï³ý` 03² 065183 îñí³í` 28.06.2004ã. ²ý·é»ñ»ýç áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãû³ý ñ³ûï³ï³ý ³ëáóç³óç³ (²ý·é»ñ»ýç áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãû³ý »íñáå³ï³ý ý»¹»ñ³óç³ûç ³ý¹³ù) ²ü¶è沶æî²î²ü ðºî²¼àîàôâúàôüüºðæ ð²úî²î²ü ð²ü¸ºê øçç³½·³ûçý ·ñ³ëáëíáõ ³ùë³·çñ ñ³ù³·áñí³ïóáõãû³ùμ` ºñ»õ³ýç å»ï³ï³ý ñ³ù³éë³ñ³ýç (ð³û³ëï³ý) ºñ»õ³ýç å»ï³ï³ý 黽í³μ³ý³ï³ý ñ³ù³éë³ñ³ýç (ð³û³ëï³ý) øáëïí³ûç ø.èáùáýáëáíç ³ýí. å»ï³ï³ý ñ³ù³éë³ñ³ýç (èáõë³ëï³ý) îñ³ïáíç ú³·ç»éáýû³ý ñ³ù³éë³ñ³ýç (è»ñ³ëï³ý) ê³ñ³·áë³ûç ñ³ù³éë³ñ³ýç (æëå³ýç³) ø»ùýçëç ñ³ù³éë³ñ³ýç (²øü) ºðºì²ü 2007 2 aarrmmeenniiaann aassssoocciiaattiioonn ffoorr tthhee ssttuuddyy ooff eenngglliisshh ((mmeemmbbeerr aassssoocciiaattiioonn ooff tthhee eeuurrooppeeaann ssoocciieettyy ffoorr tthhee ssttuuddyy ooff eenngglliisshh)) aarrmmeenniiaann ffoolliiaa aanngglliissttiikkaa reviewed international journal in cooperation with: yerevan state university, armenia yerevan state linguistic university, armenia moscow state lomonosov university, russia jagiellonian university, krakow, poland university of zaragoza, spain university of memphis, usa yyeerreevvaann 22000077 3 maket 2011:layout 1.qxd on some linguistic peculiarities of internet slang narineh madoyan yerevan state university i n examining language in social context we come to see that the ongoing socialprocesses do have great impact on the evolution of language. language itself can’t be taken apart from society so the changes in the latter will subsequently affect the language, i.e. language is the reflection of the social situation and the shifts in social situation result in implementing new means of communication. in a given culture or subgroup, common ground, such as mutual knowledge, mutual beliefs, and mutual expectations, shift to accommodate the circumstances and the parties with whom we are conversing. the widespread use of the internet forces the members of the virtual community to create and establish new linguistic means which enable them to communicate within the scope of the virtual medium. as a result a new type of communication has emerged and become an inseparable part of our reality. as there is no unanimously accepted term for this new discourse variety, it is most generally referred to as internet language or internet discourse. many alternative terms, such as: “netlish”, “weblish”, “cyberspeak”, “computer-mediated communication (cmc), “electronic language”/“e-language”, “online english”, “virtual discourse”, etc. are also widely used. the famous british linguist and founder of internet linguistics david crystal prefers the term “netspeak” to “netlish” or “weblish” on the grounds that the latter two are associated with english which is not exactly the language used on the net, while “netspeak” inherently reflects the multilingual character of the internet discourse (crystal 2004:17). another term to define the aforementioned variety of speech is “internet slang”, which, although in the broad sense of the word refers to the internet language in general, in the narrow sense of the word is somehow associated with the notion that the word “slang” expresses, i.e. informal language that is more common in speech than in writing and is typically restricted to a particular context or group (http://www.wordreference.com). it is the distinctive features of the “narrow sense” internet slang that is investigated in the present paper. slang is an informal set of words and phrases that are used to reinforce or establish one’s identity within a social group or a trend in society (eble 1996:11). slang is an important aspect of language to touch on because it is vocabulary that embodies the social functions of language. slang seems to be as old as language itself given that it is part of ordinary interactions in all languages in which communities are large and diverse enough to have identifiable subgroups (eble 1996:11). based on the existent theoretical approaches internet slang goes far beyond the general descriptions of slang in general. but as studies show internet slang as an existing linguistic phenomenon shares some global characteristics common to slang. internet slang is the broad definition to acronyms 1, abbreviations 2 and emoticons 3 created to eliminate keystrokes online and distinguish the newly emerged discourse and its users. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 49 according to bethany k. dumas and jonathan lighter, an expression should be considered “true slang” if it meets at least two of the following criteria: • it lowers, if temporarily, the dignity of formal or serious speech or writing. • its use implies that the user is familiar with whatever is referred to, or with a group of people that are familiar with it and use the term. • it is a taboo term in ordinary discourse with people of higher social status or greater responsibility. • it replaces “a well-known conventional synonym”. this is done primarily to avoid “the discomfort caused by the conversational item or by further elaboration” (dumas, lighter 1953:5-17). people well-aware of conventions of netspeak will obviously agree that the slang used on the net meets even more than two of the above mentioned criteria. internet slang consists of slang that users of the internet have developed and utilized and as compared with general slang it does belong to the subculture of the virtual medium. as mentioned above many terms of the internet slang originated with the purpose of saving keystrokes. the following examples are obvious illustrations of the notion: u for “you”, r for “are”, 4 for “for”, etc. the slang terms often appear in lower case, with capitals they are reserved for emphatic use. for example, the first person singular pronoun “i” is mainly used as i, but when a certain amount of attention is needed, the capitalized version is used. those who by no means are involved in the subculture of the virtual community may find this type of code language unintelligible. sometimes users make up internet abbreviations on the spot, therefore many of them seem ambiguous, vague, or even nonsensical to those who are far beyond the scope of the culture of virtual medium. due to the widespread use of the internet today, more and more new words are being coined to denote newly originated computer technicalities, leet being one of them. also known as eleet, the term denotes an alternative alphabet for the english language that is primarily on the internet. leet is traditionally used by programmers and online gamers, while much larger communities of internet users commonly use internet slang. the vocabulary of the internet users has really come to convey some innovative characteristics of slang. one of the main obstacles of the virtual communication is that the interactants don’t have the possibility to express their emotions and thoughts in the way they do in face-to-face communication. unlike in verbal communication, where paralinguistic features are a key factor for the communicators to express clearly their true emotive state of the moment, in virtual communication the speakers are deprived of expressing happiness, fear, love, anger through voice, facial expression and gestures. in such cases netizens may use emoticons to express their feelings. they may utilize emoticons both genuinely and sarcastically; for example -p as an emoticon expresses either genuine amusement and a sense of fun, or a negative sarcastic comment on something another user might have said. the range of emoticons coined to express feelings may be infinite and can’t be limited as any individual is capable of devising something new and denoting an own meaning. as studies show, netizens seem to have developed many slang terms over the years. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 50 acronyms are an inseparable part of the internet slang. acronyms have always been an integral part of computer culture, and they have since spawned a new language on the internet. one of the main characteristics of acronyms is that you pronounce the letters as a new word. for example, fubar (fouled up beyond all recognition) is pronounced foo-bar and radar (respecting accuracy in domestic abuse reporting) is pronounced ray-dar. chat acronyms or chaq (pronounced chalk) originally developed on pre-internet bulletin board systems. it should also be noted that acronyms are generally typed in all capital letters. as far as emoticons are concerned there seems to exist a subdivision according to which emoticons can be classified into western and eastern types. the western use of emoticons is much different than the eastern use. western style emoticons are frequently written from left to right. generally, a colon is used for the eyes of the face. the combination of a colon with other graphic symbols may designate different emotive states: • : ) shows smiley or happy face ((), • :d is used for a big smile, • : d is used to express laughter, • d : is used to indicate madness • : /:/ expresses annoyance, • : ( is used to express frown (<http://www.netlingo.com>). in contrast to western codes for smiley faces, eastern emoticons can be read without tilting the head. easterners focus much greater attention on the eyes and make significantly more errors than the westerners. the cultural specificity in eye movements that they show is probably a reflection of cultural specificity in facial expression. westerners use the whole face to convey emotion while easterners use the eyes more and mouth less. we can assume that culture not only has a great impact on the verbal but also on the virtual communication. primarily use the mouth to convey emotional states, e.g. : ) for happy and : ( for sad, whereas use the eyes, e.g. ^.^ for happy and ;_; for sad (<http://www.netlingo.com>). the pragmatic aspect of the internet language may also be a source of interesting revelations. being devoid of any paralinguistic features, internet language may give rise to many misinterpretations. internet writing is, by its nature difficult to interpret, especially in chat rooms, because much of it is quickly input and many assume falsely their interlocutors know their “body” language. in order to be able to convey one’s true communicative goal, it is best to be as explicit as possible in the process of the virtual communication. members of the virtual community must be cautious with the choice and arrangement of graphic symbols, as the misplacement of the same symbol may cause misunderstanding between communicators. the arrangement of the symbols must be precise as, for example, the colon combined with bracket may express both positive and negative emotions, a colon combined with a dash and an opening bracket is used to express dissatisfaction, while the combination of the latter with closing bracket expresses good mood or happiness. as mentioned before, one of the important identifying characteristics of slang is its group-identifying function. slang is often used when the user wants to be accepted by a select social group (eble 1996:119). a strong sense of belonging can stem from the shararmenian folia anglistikalinguistics 51 ing and maintaining of an ever-changing vocabulary that undoubtedly serves to include and exclude members from social groups (eble 1996:119). the same tendencies are noticeable within many groups of internet users, especially the chatgroups.4 howard rheingold describes the internet as an “ecosysytem” of subcultures (rhiengold 1993:3). crystal states that the internet users want to interact only with those who share their common interests, i.e. belong to the same subculture (crystal 2004:60). this means that the internet situation imposes some constraints on the use of linguistic means by the members of the virtual community. crystal enumerates some identifiable subgroups among which he enlists hackers who elaborated their own slang and which enables them to distinguish between hackers and non-hackers, thus identifying one as an insider and the other as an outsider (crystal 2004:67). most net audiences are relatively small groups who have their own identity and “speak” the same language. their language is marked by many new words especially coined to denote new phenomena that has emerged in the virtual medium. such words place the members of the virtual community in certain subgroup e.g. wannabees – aspiring hackers who can’t hack (crystal 2004:82), lurkers – people who access a chatgroup but don’t contribute to the discussion (crystal 2004:53). some identify lurking with spying. flamers are those who send aggressive messages related to a specific topic and directed at an individual recipient (crystal 2004:55). flaming is more likely to happen in chatgroups than in e-mails. newbies are the newcomers who don’t have sufficient skills in the internet communication (crystal 2004:53). the introduction of even the above not numerous data shows that the interconnection of internet slang and slang in general is obvious. considering the main characteristics of general slang we have come to understand that the given linguistic phenomenon is accepted and used by members of certain subculture or group. as far as internet language is concerned it cannot be understood apart the internet medium. being the language of a certain subculture internet slang can be considered a new variety of slang and as any other variety of slang it has its unique characteristics that is accessible to the members of the virtual community. notes: 1. mainly derived from the first letters of a phrase, acronyms are meant to make the phrase easier to say and remember. 2. abbreviation (from brevis (“short”) is strictly a shortening, but more particularly, an abbreviation is a letter or a group of letters, taken from a word or words, and employed to represent a certain notion in brief. 3. emoticons are a form of commonly used in messages, in online , or in . an emoticon is a textual expression representing the face of a writer’s mood or facial expression. the use of emoticons can be traced back to the when they were commonly used in casual/humorous writing. 4. this does not refer to e-mails as the e-mail language is totally different from that of the chatgroup discourse. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 52 references: 1. bethany, k.d. and lighter, j. (1978) is slang a word for linguists? // american speech 53: 5-17. 2. crystal, d. (2004) language and the internet. cambridge: cambridge university press. 3. eble, c. (1996) college slang: in-group language among college students. chapel hill: university of north carolina press. 4. hotten, c.j. (2008) a dictionary of modern slang, cant and vulgar words. michigan: university of michigan. 5. rhiengold, h. (1993) the virtual community: homesteading on the electronic frontier. newyork: harper collins. 6. <http://www.wikipedia.org> 7. <http://www.netlingo.com> 8. <http://www.netlingo.com> 9. <http://www.wordreference.com> ð³ù³ó³ýó³ûçý ëé»ý·ç 黽í³ï³ý ûáõñ³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñç ßáõñç êáõûý ñá¹í³íá ùýýáõãû³ý ¿ ³éýáõù ñ³ù³ó³ýóáõù ³éï³ é»½í³ï³ý ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý ùççáóý»ñá: ð³ù³ó³ýóáõù ³éï³ é»½í³ï³ý ¹ñë¨áñáõùý»ñá áñ³ï»éáõ ·áñíáýã³óáõù ñá¹í³íç ñ»õçý³ïá ï³ñ¨áñáõù ¿ 黽áõ ¨ ëé»ý· ñ³ñ³μ»ñïóáõãû³ý í»ñéáõíáõãûáõýá: ðçùýí»éáí áñáß³ïç ÷³ëï³ï³ý ýûáõãç í»ñéáõíáõãû³ý íñ³` ï³ñ»éç ¿ »½ñ³ï³óý»é, áñ ñ³ù³ó³ýóç 黽áõý ãç ï³ñ»éç ¹çï³ñï»é áñå»ë ýáñ ó¨³ íáñíáõ 黽íç ï³ñ³ï»ë³ï: êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù ý»ñï³û³óí³í ¿ ëé»ý·çý μýáñáß ñ³ïï³ýçßý»ñá` áý¹ñ³ýñóý»éáí ëáõûý ñ³ïï³ýçßý»ñá, ï³ñ»éç ¿ ñ³ù³ó³ýóç 黽áõý μýáõã³·ñ»é áñå»ë ³ñ¹»ý ñëï³ï ó¨³ íáñí³í ëé»ý·³ ûçý ï³ñ³ï»ë³ï: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 53 angl10002 angl10003 angl10004 angl10005 angl10006 angl10007 angl10008 angl10009 angl10010 angl10011 angl10012 angl10013 angl10014 angl10015 angl10016 angl10017 angl10018 angl10019 angl10020 angl10021 angl10022 angl10023 angl10024 angl10025 angl10026 angl10027 angl10028 angl10029 angl10030 angl10031 angl10032 angl10033 angl10034 angl10035 angl10036 angl10037 angl10038 angl10039 angl10040 angl10041 angl10042 angl10043 angl10044 angl10045 angl10046 angl10047 angl10048 angl10049 angl10050 angl10051 angl10052 angl10053 angl10054 angl10055 angl10056 angl10057 angl10058 angl10059 angl10060 angl10061 angl10062 angl10063 angl10064 angl10065 angl10066 angl10067 angl10068 angl10069 angl10070 angl10071 angl10072 angl10073 angl10074 angl10075 angl10076 angl10077 angl10078 angl10079 angl10080 angl10081 angl10082 angl10083 angl10084 angl10085 angl10086 angl10087 angl10088 angl10089 angl10090 angl10091 angl10092 angl10093 angl10094 angl10095 angl10096 angl10097 angl10098 angl10099 angl10100 angl10101 angl10102 angl10103 angl10104 angl10105 angl10106 angl10107 angl10108 angl10109 angl10110 angl10111 angl10112 angl10113 angl10114 angl10115 angl10116 angl10117 angl10118 angl10119 angl10120 angl10121 angl10122 angl10124 angl10125 angl10126 angl10127 angl10128 angl10129 angl10130 angl10131 angl10132 angl10133 angl10134 angl10135 angl10136 angl10137 angl10138 angl10139 angl10140 angl10141 angl10142 angl10143 angl10144 angl10145 angl10146 angl10147 angl10148 angl10149 angl10150 angl10151 angl10152 angl10153 microsoft word maket 2020-2(22) (3)-1 (1).doc literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 119 hypocricy of the rich vs honesty of the poor in the english society of the 18th century vicky tchaparian lebanese university abstract during the 18th century, life was unpleasant and disturbing due to the horrible plague and the great fire that attacked england and turned the english society upside down. there was a big gap between the rich and the poor. violence and crimes were everywhere. however, along with all the misfortunes, 18th century was also a period of elegance for england. education flourished, and the novel genre developed impressively along with fine music and theatre performances. during these times, the rich led a luxurious life, while the poor in extreme poverty hardly preserved their miserable existence. the whole atmosphere was that of contrasts between brightness and staleness, wellness and sickness, abundance and insufficiency, virtue and vice, along with charity and selfishness which, combined with other characteristic features of the english society, created a chaotic situation. henry fielding’s novel, the history of the adventures of joseph andrews and his friend mr. abraham adams, often called joseph andrews artistically mingles all these contrasts on different levels of different aspects of life, depicting the age he lived in while giving credit to the poor and the abandoned, making the good successfully triumphant and the bad miserably overwhelmed until at the end he makes his characters reach poetic justice punishing the vicious and rewarding the virtuous. the article aims at revealing the chaotic situation of the 18th century england through h. fielding’s novel in question and the writer’s critical attitude to it. key words: 18th century english society, class distinction, honesty of the poor, hypocrisy of the rich, vice, virtue, reward, love, gossip. https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2020.16.2.119 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 literature studies 120 introduction the rise of the novel coincides with the rise of the middle class in western europe, including england. it is important to mention that the profound social and economic changes during the 18th as well as the early 19th centuries such as the technology of printing, made the novel genre a primary form of popular entertainment. britain and the british society were rapidly changing, and towards the end of the 18th century, england already became a strong world power (<https://www.britannica.com/place/united-kingdom/18th-centurybritain>). so, as a result of this change, a shift in wealth had induced and “propelled the gentry into the highest social class, alongside with nobility and even royalty.” (<https://study.com/academy/lesson/english-class-system-in-the18th-century.htm>) meanwhile, because of these profound economic changes, the middle class representing priests, land-owning farmers, successful merchants, and other people was also being formed. henry fielding, an 18th century english novelist, who was of an aristocratic landowning family and had a judge as his maternal grandfather along with a clergyman as his paternal grandfather, depicts the details of the lifestyle of the english people of his time in his unique picaresque novel called the history of the adventures of joseph andrews and his friend mr. abraham adams. having been affected by both his grandparents, fielding brought a new ground to the genre of novel with its blend of comedy and seriousness as well as his realism and eccentricity. through the creation of the eccentric character of parson abraham adams, a friend and adviser of joseph andrews, fielding depicts a good example of virtue and chastity, alongside the characters of parson trulliber and mrs. booby, representatives of vice and hypocrisy that dominated upon the rich class of the english society of the 18th century. virtue rewarded in henry fielding’s joseph andrews henry fielding’s joseph andrews, published in 1742, was written as a reaction against samuel richardson's novel called pamela orvirtue rewarded after two years of its publication in 1740. virtue rewarded, which is an epistolary novel, literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 121 provided a new way to measure reading and writing skills during the 18th century (whyman 2007). it is the story of a chaste servant, who fears but is strongly attracted towards her employer, the rich mr. b. when he makes advances to her in the summerhouse, pamela can no longer doubt his sexual intention, however, she preserves her virginity until he marries her. margaret doody considers this work a case of “sexual harassment and marriage” (doody 2018), yet i believe that it is a story of a smart female servant, in love with her employer, but not ready to give herself just for the sake of love, and so preserves herself till marriage in a male dominant society during the age of patriarchy. having this epistolary work in mind, henry fielding writes a picaresque novel, a comic epic in prose, and calls it joseph andrews. fielding creates both honest and hypocritical characters, he makes them pass through difficult circumstances, undergo different tests and prove to be either virtuous or vicious. at the end of joseph’s journey, the writer rewards those characters who prevail and preserve their virtue and punishes those who give their virtue up and act in hypocricy. fielding portrays several women “who are no longer young but who still want love and sextual relationship”, they are both landlords and servants, of rich and poor heritage, such as the rich and hot blooded widow mrs. booby as well as the “unpleasant” servant mrs. slipslop (butler 1996). mrs. booby, who is an excellent representative of the rich women of her age, is attached to the city life, she is shallow in her feelings and blind to her own motives and consequently to those of others. throughout the novel, she uses every way possible to seduce the footman in her husband’s farm. although she knows she belongs to a social class, different from that of poor joseph, yet she has her reason and her passion at odds. she is clearly the agent of confusion in fielding’s comic plan. she pretends to be a caring and chaste person, but in fact she is a hypocrite. the energy and vividness with which lady booby is portrayed in her troubles prevent us from seeing her as a supreme villainess. she is more than a pawn in fielding’s game. she pretends that she is mourning her husband’s loss, but in fact she is seducing a young and handsome boy of armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 literature studies 122 poor parenthood. she likes to walk with joseph in the park, and spend a lot of time alone with him leaning on his shoulder. she would now walk out with him into hyde park in a morning, and when tired, which happened almost every minute, would lean on his arm, and converse with him in great familiarity. whenever she stepped out of her coach she would take him by the hand and sometimes, for fear of stumbling, press it very hard... (p. 25) not even a week after her husband’s death she invites poor joseph into her room and talks with him about women, meanwhile trying to seduce the poor young man and make him discover the fact that she is naked under the covers of her bed. although joseph resists lady booby, yet the hot lady still dreams of having him in her arms. on a sunday morning, when she goes to church and hears parson adams announce the coming marriage of joseph and his beloved fanny, she commands the parson not to allow them to have a church marriage threatening to dismiss the poor parson from the curacy in case he doesn’t follow her commands. she then, sends for lawyer scout, an unprincipled and unscrupulous lawyer, to prevent joseph and his sweetheart from residing in the parish; she claims that fanny is too beautiful and too young, and she will breed many children who will need charity. later, when the parson announces their marriage, she commands the scout to have both joseph and fanny removed from the parish. thus, lady booby, the rich landlord’s wife, a woman of “gaiety” who considers herself superior to all, who is extremely interested in men and especially her handsome footman joseph, grieves her husband’s loss among the gossipy women of her rank, yet she is ready to have this same servant of poor parentage in her bed by any means. it is obvious, that through the character of lady booby, henry fielding reveals most of the rich women of the18th century who pretend to be virtuous, but in fact are full of profligacy, lechery, and immorality. literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 123 another vicious character of fielding’s creation, through whom he unveils the characteristics of the rich holding religious positions, is parson thrulliber, a supposedly virtuous and charitable priest, but in fact, a sinful person who is a man of god only on sundays and a farmer for the rest of the week. when parson adams asks parson trulliber for some money when he was in need, he refuses to help him and fires him out of his house. although one of the greatest virtues of a christian is to be charitable and loving, yet, it is obvious that parson trulliber is neither one of them. on the contrary, he is a good representative of vice and hypocrisy. however, since fielding had a firm sense of christian morality, he never left an obscene character flee with his/her act and gave him/her the suitable punishment thus achieving poetic justice. poetic justice, an outcome in which vice is punished and virtue rewarded usually in a manner ironically appropriate (webster 1993), is the ideal form of justice, in which ultimate virtue is rewarded and viciousness is punished by an ironic twist of fate related to the character's own actions (<www.wikipedia.org>). this literary device is very obviously used in fielding’s novel since the hot mrs. booby’s trials to have the handsome footman in her bed never prosper until the end, nor can parson trulliber realize his dream of wealth and abundancy even though he tries hard farming five days a week. apparently, it is important to mention that lady booby and parson trulliber reveal the vicious and obsolete characteristic features of the high class of the patriarchal english society of the 18th century. another important fact to mention here is that the upper class had an obviously very different lifestyle than the low class citizens in england. as hochmanova puts it in the rhetoric of virtue and vice in early 18th century england , “after acquiring their new rights, the ruling elite were urged to create an appropriate image and distinguish themselves from the rest of the society” (hochmanova, 2013). most of the ruling class distinguished themselves from the rest of the society, however, what is explicitly revealed throughout joseph andrews is the fact that henry fielding didn’t miss the chastity and sagacity of those englishmen who were part of the ruling elite, yet, they were not poisoned armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 literature studies 124 with their titles and positions. for example, through the character of parson abraham adams who was a charitable priest, fielding reveals the type of clergymen who were virtuous and were not affected by the vice that dominated in the society, even though they were desperately in need, yet they didn’t replace their christian virtues with vice and didn’t accept a bribe, neither did they behave in evil ways. unlike parson trulliber, who distinguished himself from the rest of the society behaving in vicious ways, parson adams was a man of honor, ready to fight even for strangers with only a stick in his hand. he was a true clergyman and served as a moral guide for joseph and his sweetheart throughout the novel (mavor 1994). although parson adams is a comic figure, he is the firm pivot and the axis of the novel's moral influence. it is his belief in charitable acts which distinguishes him as a parson/vicar from such hypocritical boors and clowns as parson trulliber (mavor 1994). like joseph and fanny, he acts on his feelings, and it is because of this affinity that he is such a fine guardian and guide to the young pair. his unchanging quality of innocence is part of adams’ merits as a valuable character. throughout the novel, he never develops, never changes, but we know what he stands for; he is the ever active, ever charitable moral guide without whom joseph and fanny’s love bond would have long been untied. thus, for all his virtues and chastity, for all his honesty and integrity, at the end of the novel, fielding rewards parson abraham adams by giving him another parish to take care of, filling up the financial gap that he and his family had. joseph andrews, fielding’s protagonist, the model of male chastity, the handsome young fellow battles for his virginity throughout the novel. his chief qualities are his self-control, his virtue, and his devotion to his one and only lover, fanny goodwill. although he is handsome and physically attractive, and can fill up his time with all the women who gather around him like bees around their hive, yet he remains trustful and uncorrupted spending his leisure time on music, thinking of fanny, and avoiding women. he has parson adams as his role model and behaves as he tells him to. in a letter to his sister pamela, he says: literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 125 mr. adams hath often told me that chastity is as great a virtue in a man as in a woman. he says he never knew any more than his wife, and i shall endeavor to follow his example. indeed, it is owing to his excellent sermons and advice, together with your letters, that i have been able to resist, a temptation which, he says no man complies with…. (p. 41) he is a man of virtue and genuine emotion, and it is this very quality which inspires him to do all the virtuous acts that fielding believes to be so important. in the sixth chapter of the third book, during a long monologue on charity, joseph maintains his moral reflections saying that the desire for honor should lead a man, not to material acquisition but to charity. he says: i defy the wisest man in the world to turn a true good action into ridicule. i defy him to do it. he who should endeavour it would be laughed at himself inistead of making others laugh. nobody scarce doth any good, yet they all agree in praising those who do. (p. 198) it is true that joseph is always ready for a good action and a battle for a stranger, however, throughout the novel his main battles are for his chastity and purity. because of his handsomeness, joseph is seduced by all the women in his circle; be it the rich lady booby, or the poor housekeeper mrs. slipslop, and even poor betty, yet, he remains incorrupt and immaculate. throughout the novel, joseph remains a symbol of male chastity and of genuine emotion. because he always battles to preserve his purity in a society full of vice and hypocrisy, at the end of his novel, fielding rewards him by letting him get the virtuous fanny goodwill, his beloved, as a wife. to double his reward after that many trials, fielding makes joseph also encounter the rich mr. wilson, who turns out to be his biological father. mr. wilson, who had been the son of a very rich man, in his young days had had too many affairs with women. he first armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 literature studies 126 had had a cohabitation with a mistress with whom he had pasted ways but soon the woman started flirting with another man. later, he encountered a young girl, who was to be married with a linen-draper, but as mr. wilson puts it: i represented him in so low a light to his mistress, and made so good a use of flattery, promises, and presents, that, not to dwell longer on this subject than is necessary, i prevailed with the poor girl and conveyed her away from her mother! in a word, i debauched her.” (p. 175) they lived together in happiness but they grew sick of each other and began fighting constantly, then the woman ran off with mr. wilson’s money. having had enough troubles with too many women, eventually mr. wilson decided to end his affairs and pursue other activities to entertain himself with. so, he turned away from all the bad things he had done, and finally got himself a good wife and lived happily together with their children. however, he encountered a misfortune, and the gypsies stole his baby boy, joseph. however, to be fair with mr. wilson, like all other virtuous characters, fielding cannot but reward him as well for his repentance and decency. so, after different trials, fielding makes mr. wilson find joseph, his only son, and lets him inherit his son a house where he could live happily with his wife. thus, it can be deduced that fielding has created a vice, rich, and vain womanizer, mr. wilson and has made him undergo too many trials and tribulations, has made his son be stolen by the gypsies, and has punished him making him poor. however, because he ended up living in decency, after so many years, he is rewarded by having back his lost son. to add to his insistence on rewarding the good and reaching poetic justice in his literary work, fielding has created another character who is extreemly poor, however, she is so gorgeous that she is the center of everybody’s attention, whether men or women. her outward beauty matches her inner qualities just like that of her man, joseph andrews. she is called fanny goodwill – a sensible, sweet, and gentle servant in lady booby’s house, only literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 127 nineteen years old, tall, beautifully shaped, with a deep sense of modesty, and a little too perfect. like joseph, she is also exposed to trials by different people such as beau didapper and lawyer squire but she rejects them both. moreover, once she was exposed to a sexual trial by beau didapper who, though promised to take her to london, in fact had other ideas in his mind. if it were not for parson abraham adams, who was ready to defend people at any cost, fanny goodwill might have long been raped by beau didapper. fanny was also sexually tried by lawyer squire, whom she encountered after leaving mr. wilson’s house with both parson adams and joseph. after the squire’s dog attacked the three pedestrians lawyer squire arrived and invited them all to dinner at his estate. but later he made an attempt to get joseph and parson adams drunk, so that he and fanny could spend some time alone. but parson adams, feeling unsafe, left lawyer squire's estate with both joseph and fanny, with a heavy feeling of disgust towards the lawyer. however, lawyer squire didn’t give up his vicious plans about fanny and sent three of his men to go and kidnap her. luckily, fanny got saved by peter pounce and was taken to her beloved. thus, fanny, like joseph, always rejected the rich and the famous who felt only sexually attracted to her and kept on seducing her. towards the end of the novel, fanny was rewarded for her virtue and chastity by having joseph, her one and only love, as her husband. moreover, she was also gifted a house by her father in law, where she could start her new life and new family. here again fielding achieved poetic justice by rewarding virtue and chastity. he was happy to reveal the fact that although there was vice among the rich, there was also some virtue in the low class citizens of the 18th century england. conclusion thus, it can be deduced that fielding’s novel joseph andrews depicts a good example of the vice that dominated upon the rich class of the 18th century patriarchal english society. accordingly, throughout the novel characters such as lady booby and parson trulliber never register any progress and never reach their goals, whereas characters such as joseph andrews, fanny goodwill, armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 literature studies 128 parson adams, and mr. willson get what they long for. this shows that along with the vice dominating in the english society during the18th century, there were also virtuous and chaste people, who deserved a reward and got it at the end. throughout the entire novel fielding tries to teach the reader a lesson in morality, which is: “feelings should be kept under control since natural desires can’t be fulfilled through primal pleasures”. fielding allows sexual advances to be made on both joseph and fanny by characters like lady booby, betty, beau didapper, and lawyer squire. however, neither of the lovers respond to these trials. fielding also teaches his readers to have some restrain and modesty. so, he makes both lovers have the moral reason of not simply losing self-control in the face of lust and desire, and for that very reason they are bestowed the gift of a happy ending, the gift of marriage they both desperately longed for. likewise, he rewards parson abraham adams by giving him a new parish, so that he can earn for his living, as the only thing he lacked was money. fielding also rewards mr. wilson, who, although having been on the wrong path in his young days, chose to live in decency later. in fielding’s novel, as it is in life, it is through trials and tribulations that a character proves to be virtuous, and be rewarded with what he loves and lacks the most. references: 1. butler, j. (1996) sexual desire and the ages of women in fielding’s “joseph andrews and tom jones”. // presses sorbonne nouvelle. available at: <books.oepnedition.org.> [accessed may 2020]. 2. doody, m. (2018) discovering literature: restoration & 18th century. an introduction to pamela, or virtue rewarded. available at: <www.bl.uk.org.> [accessed may 2019]. 3. english class system in the 18th century. available at: <https://study.com/academy/lesson/english-class-system-in-the-18thcentury.htm> [accessed june 2019]. 4. hochmanova, d. (2013) image and discourse: the rhetoric of virtue and vice in early 18th century england. // theory & practice in english literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 129 studies, vol. vi, issue 1. available at: <https://digilib.phil.muni.cz/bitstream/handle/11222.digilib/129816/2_the pes_6-2013-1_3.pdf?sequence=1> [accessed february 2020]. 5. mavor, m. (1994) cliffsnotes on joseph andrews. nebraska: lincoln. 6. united kingdom, 18th century britain, 1714-1815 britannica. available at: <https://www.britannica.com/place/united-kingdom/18th-centurybritain> [accessed march 2020]. 7. webster, m. (1993) merriam-webster’s collegiate dictionary. 10th edition. massachusetts. usa: springfield. 8. whyman, e.s. (2007) letter writing and the rise of the novel: the epistolary literacy of jane johnson and samuel richardson. // huntington library quarterly. vol. 70, n. 4 (december 2007), p. 579 (30 pages). usa: university of pennsylvania press. available at: <https://www.jstor. org/stable/10.1525/hlq.2007.70.4.577?seq=1 > [accessed march 2020]. 9. wikipedia. the free encyclopedia. available at jstor database: <https://en.wikipedia.org> [accessed march 2020]. source of data: 1. fielding, h. (1988) joseph andrews. librairie du liban. beirut: york press. հարուստների երեսպաշտությունն ընդդեմ աղքատների ազնվության 18-րդ դարի անգլիական հասարակությունում 18-րդ դարում կյանքը դարձել էր ավելի անտանելի ու դաժան սարսափելի ժանտախտի ու մեծ հրդեհի պատճառով, որը պատուհասել էր անգլիային և տակնուվրա արել անգլիական հասարակությունը։ այն ժամանակ հարուստներին ու աղքատներին բաժանում էր հսկայական անդունդը։ ամենուր դաժանություն էր ու հանցագործություններ։ այնուամենայնիվ, ի հեճուկս այդ դժբախտությունների, 18-րդ դարը նաև նրբաճաշակության շրջան էր անգլիայի համար։ ծաղկում էր կրթությունը, երաժշտական և թատերական ներկայացումների հետ մեկտեղ մեծ արագությամբ զարգանում էր վիպագրությունը։ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 literature studies 130 այս ընթացքում, հարուստները շքեղ կյանք էին վարում, մինչդեռ աղքատները շարունակում էին թշվառ կյանքով ապրել։ անգլիական հասարակության մեջ առկա տարբեր դասակարգերում տիրում էր հակասությունների մթնոլորտ` լույսի ու խավարի, առողջության ու հիվանդության, շռայլության ու ընչազրկության, առաքինության ու արատների, բարեգործության ու եսասիրության միջև` ինչը քաոսային իրավիճակ էր ստեղծում հասարակությունում։ հենրի ֆիլդինգի «ջոզեֆ էնդրյուզի և նրա ընկեր պրն. աբրահամ ադամսի արկածները» վեպում, որը հաճախ պարզապես անվանում են «ջոզեֆ էնդրյուզ», հեղինակը հմտորեն միախառնում է կյանքի տարբեր մակարդակներում առկա այս բոլոր հակասությունները` պատկերելով այն դարաշրջանը, որում նա ապրում էր: միևնույն ժամանակ նա ընչազուրկներին ու լքյալներին` դրական կերպարներին հաղթանակ է պարգևում, իսկ բացասականներին ներկայացնում մռայլ լույսի ներքո: վեպի վերջում հաստատվում է «գեղարվեստական արդարություն». հեղինակը պատժում է արատավորներին ու պարգևատրում առաքինիներին։ այսպես է հենրի ֆիլդինգը տեսնում արատներից ազատվելու ելքը: received by the editorial board 14.05.2020 recommended for publication by the reviewers 21.07.2020 accepted for print 15.09.2020 maket_n_verjin.qxp the problem of thinking and language: concept the paper focuses on the distinction of language andthinking in the scope of conceptology. let us first make a clear distinction between what we know about thinking and language from what we do not know. we know that thinking is a process that takes place in the nerve nets of the brain. v. turchin calls thinking “a stream of conscious representations”. he writes, “representations of linguistic objects, words and sentences, occupy a distinct place among all representations in the process of thinking” (turchin 1985). while imagining a certain word in our mind we mentally pronounce it, listen, and possibly see it written. this phenomenon is called “linguistic representation”. according to v. turchin, the stream of linguistic representations is precisely what is ordinarily called thinking. thinking is characteristic of human beings; it is not found in animals. the so-called ‘’abstract’’ thinking is actually thinking in words, the stream of linguistic representations. without abstract thinking, the achievements of thought in which the human race takes such pride would have been impossible. the importance of “linguistic representations” is that they are uniquely related to words and sentences as the material elements of the material system ‘’language.’’ this system is the aggregate of all words and sentences pronounced orally, transmitted by telephone and radio, written on paper, and so on, in short, the aggregate of what might be called the higher nervous system of the material body of culture. as for the essential nature of language it is cognitive. we are interested in the form of language in which the human mind is completely reflected. language functions as a means of communication, it is fashioned as a system of signs to meet the elaborate cultural and communal needs of human societies. michael halliday calls language “social semiotics”, that is to say, language is a system of signs which are socially motivated or informed in that they have been developed to express social meanings. the meaning of a word is determined by the way this word is used in linguistic activity. each word bears the imprint of all the sentences in which it has ever been used. language is a means of human communication and functions as the treasure-house of culture. between these two phenomena, that is to say, language and culture, stands a human being. language, culture and human beings are interconnected and interdependent, they cannot function separately. a human being sees the real world in his/her own way, represents it with the help of language the elements of which are the words that have different meanings. we have tried to draw a scheme to illustrate what has been said above: 63 linguistics armenian folia anglistika stela israyelyan real world thinking/culture language things, phenomena representations words as is seen from the scheme, thinking and language are closely connected with culture. a word expresses not the thing or phenomenon of reality itself but its representation which is bound to the thinking of a human being. language as a means of expressing culture fashions the individuality of a person, his/her mentality, behavior, etc. words are the elements of language, representations are the elements of thinking. the interconnection and interdependence of language and culture result in the concept. thus, a concept is an element of linguo-culturology. one of the most desirable wishes of people is to be understood by others. in order to understand others one must know the concepts of the nation whose languages one is trying to learn. every language has its concepts. the main components of concepts are, on the one hand, the meaning, and on the other hand, the values which can be different among various nations. there are two main ideas when describing concepts; either we agree that each word is a concept or there must be some distinction between simple words and concepts. a word can be a concept in one language but not in another. for example, a smile is a concept for americans. it is well seen in the motto of the american life “don’t worry, be happy, keep smiling”. but “a fixed smile” is a sign of stupidity for armenians. most of the concepts that people learn and use are those that they choose from the culture in which they are brought up. the individual does not invent them, he/she acquires them in the course of communication. the invention of new concepts is much more difficult. functionally, a stream of linguistic representations does not differ from a sequence of their material correlatives, words. in fact, it is precisely the linguistic objects which preserve and transmit information and “operate as the elements of linguistic models of reality” (turchin 1985). linguistic activity is taught to the child in the same way as he/she is taught to walk, to play, to wash, to eat, etc. as a result the child becomes, so to speak, plugged into the language: he uses the models already available and enriches it with new ones. so is the case with the concepts. people do not invent new concepts with ease, they rather acquire the concepts of their nations just as the words. the words are different linguistic objects but we consider them to be carriers of a single concept because they are indistinguishable in the course of communication. language is a system and its concepts have meaning only as elements of the system. a word acquires its meaning by the way it is used in linguistic activity. v. kassevich recognizes the following two functions of the concept: 1. to serve as an element of reasoning that is, to be a method of shaping thought. 2. to concentrate the already existing thoughts and knowledge of an object in oneself. “this duality is a result of the system nature of the concept. the linguistic object (word), which expresses a concept is used as an element for constructing a model of reality and is associated functionally that is, in linguistic activity (also in our imagination) with all models in which it participates” (kassevich 1977). there are several general classes of concepts. following v. f. turchin, we distinguish two types of concepts in the scope of language and thinking problem. he says, “we have 64 armenian folia anglistika linguistics before us two cybernetic systems. the first system is the human brain. its functioning is individual human thinking. its task is to coordinate the actions of separate parts of the organism in order to preserve its existence. this task is accomplished, specifically, by creating models of reality whose material body is the nerve nets and which we therefore call neuronal models or concepts. the second system is language. its functioning is linguistic activity in society. its task is to coordinate the actions of individual members of society in order to preserve its existence. this task is accomplished, specifically, by creating models of reality whose material body is linguistic objects and which we therefore call linguistic models. like the brain, language is organized hierarchically. the functional elements of this hierarchical system are the logical (linguistic) concepts” (turchin 1985). when a baby begins to understand speech and talk he/she acquires initial neuronal concepts which are considered to be independent of language, and then logical concepts can be considered reflections of these initial neuronal concepts. under the great and direct influence of language the most complex concepts are formed. the linguistic activity of the society dictates the association of representations on which these concepts are based. the concepts are plugged into the child’s brain in the process of learning the language. thus, the linguistic system is set in motion by the human brain. without the brain, language is dead. the brain is strongly influenced by language. the concept stands between language and thinking. each person thinks and expresses his thoughts in his own way with the help of words. each word, or more exactly, each notion can become a concept. one notion can be a concept in one language and not be one in another.it is connected with the culture, ethnic mentality, way of living, geography, history and many other social conditions of the given language. our conclusion can be illustrated with the help of the following scheme: thinking concept language references: 1. glushkov a.n. (ed) (1979) cybernetics dictionary., kiev: ure. 2. kassevich v.b. (1977) elements of general linguistics. moscow: nauka. 3. turchin v.f. (1977) the phenomenon of science. new york: columbia university press. 4. halliday m.a.k. (1976) cohesion in english. london: longman group ltd. 軽íç ¨ ùï³íáõáõãû³ý ÷áëñ³ñ³µ»ñáõãûáõýý»ñ. ñ³ëï³óáõûã ðá¹í³íáõù ÷áñó ¿ ³ñíáõù 黽íç ¨ ùï³íáõáõãû³ý ÷áëñ³ñ³µ»ñáõãûáõýý»ñç ßñç³ý³ïý»ñáõù ³ý¹ñ³¹³ñó ï³ï³ñ»é ñ³ëï³óáõûãç ¿áõãû³ý ñ³ñó»ñçý: øï³íáõáõãûáõýá åñáó»ë ¿, áñá ï»õç ¿ áõý»ýáõù áõõ»õç ýû³ñ¹³ûçý µçççý»ñáõù: 軽áõý ùççáó ¿ ùïù»ñý ³ñï³ñ³ûï»éáõ ñ³ù³ñ: àëï ê. î»ñøçý³ëáí³ûç 黽áõý ãç ï³ñáõ ·áûáõãûáõý áõý»ý³é ³é³ýó ùß³ïáõûãç, áõëïç ñ³ëï³óáõûãá ùçç³ýïû³é ¹çñù ¿ ·ñ³íáõù 黽áõ, ùï³íáõáõãûáõý ¨ ùß³ïáõûã µ³õï³óáõóçãý»ñç ùçç¨: 65 linguistics armenian folia anglistika maket_n_verjin.qxp some glimpses of the american-armenian press published in english in the 1990s the problem of the american-armenian presspublished in english has not yet been thoroughly investigated in spite of its considerable practical importance. nowadays, there are more than 15 armenian newspapers published in english in the usa (hay spyurq hanragitaran 2003: 76-85). out of the great number of diasporan newspapers three most interesting and reputable publications have been selected for this research and, as our investigation shows, the choice seems to be justified. it should be mentioned that at present the armenian press in diaspora is facing difficulties. as some leaders of political parties state, the majority of the diasporan armenians are not politicized and are mainly concerned with the problem of survival in the modern world. the younger generation, in particular, cares less about politics and gives preference to the electronic mass media. as a result, there is little demand for regular newspapers, the publication of which drops from year to year. many of the armenian newspapers are not able to cover their own expenses and are directly dependant on various charity contributions; they are financed by individuals or some private organizations. so, the editorial staff of many publications is obliged to apply to the owners of different restaurants, laundries, shopping centres and other companies with a request to finance one or the other series of publications, even the publication of certain articles or photo series. this makes the diasporan media dependent on sponsors, who retain the right to impose their own taste, will and political views on the editorial staff. thus, obviously, this has a negative impact on the quality of the publications. sometimes the newspapers contain articles which are not in line with the political focus of the newspaper, which in its turn breaks the balance among the articles of a single issue of the daily or its consecutive series. as a result, the public may be left with the impression that many editorial staffs of newspapers lack a clear and definite position on this or that issue. the other problem that the armenian publications face is once again caused by the insufficient financial resources. the editorial staff cannot afford to employ full-time journalists and that is the reason why the staff is mostly comprised of reporters of retirement or pre-retirement age who are either volunteers or just under-paid. the point is that the journalists of the older generation (many of them from the middle east and even without a relevant education) are deprived of the possibility to find a job with more 268 armenian folia anglistika armenological studies marina chalyan successful newspapers. whereas, as a rule, the english speaking and highly educated younger generation does not participate in the activities of the mass media, and even if they do get involved, it is only a short-term activity on a contractual basis. this accounts for the poor quality and low circulation rate of the newspaper. besides, the diasporan publications do not receive newspapers from motherland and do not have their special correspondents in armenia which sometimes brings about erroneous and vague understanding of the developments in armenia. at present the armenian assembly of america attempts to change the situation. with this goal set before itself, the assembly has recently set up an information and analysis centre in yerevan which aims at providing the diasporan media with accurate information. the above mentioned clearly indicates that the armenian press in diaspora still remains in an inconsolable situation. only the armenian reporter, the armenian mirror spectator and the asbarez weeklies, chosen as objects for our research, are the rare exceptions. they have relatively stable sources of funding, are published regularly and have their regular readers. these newspapers have survived the late 80s and still reflect the diverse strata and political points of view of the american-armenians. these weeklies differ from other diasporan publications of the west in one aspect they come up with analytical publications more often, and the armenian leit-motif is always presented in a deeper political coverage without overlooking the values of the mankind. besides, in comparison with other provincial-like diasporan newspapers that publish materials of local importance only, the aforementioned publications, have, at least during the period under review, always highlighted the developments in armenia, have covered issues related to the church, language, culture, history, environment of armenia. moreover, the armenian reporter, the armenian mirror spectator and the asbarez weeklies have a number of significant advantages, too. before the week ends, these publications already have the information and the material verified and filtered. compared to daily newspapers, they do not touch upon insignificant and trivial events. as a rule, these publications present the analysis of the most interesting and up-to-date news of the past week, which is, of course, very useful for those studying the events of that period. we should hasten to add that the newspapers in question employ more professional and educated journalists who are official employees of leading american newspapers and magazines, and they simply work for the armenian weeklies on a parttime basis. the materials they prepare are not only interesting, but written in perfect english, as well. the english-speaking american-armenian of the third or second generation who reads the armenian news in english, is well-educated and is brought-up on the best traditions of the american press, and thus is very demanding towards the quality of the materials published. though the readers of these publications are mainly armenians, very often they may also serve as a source of information for non-armenian readers. it is known that the us state department is a subscriber to all the weeklies mentioned. it enables the american politicians and state officials to get introduced to armenian viewpoints without any distortions. this was particularly important during the years of the liberation of arstakh [ed. nagorno karabakh] when the american english press voiced not only the thoughts and concerns of the armenian political elite of the 269 armenological studies armenian folia anglistika usa, but also those of the armenians worldwide. thus, the editorial staffs of the three weeklies enjoying the highest circulation rate in the us armenian diaspora do not spare their efforts to guarantee the highest possible quality. for example, the asbarez has a circulation of 8,000 copies, the armenian reporter and the armenian mirror spectator – 3,000 copies each. the other newspapers are printed in relatively fewer copies; the armenian weekly – 1,800 copies, the abaka – 1,000 copies, etc. (armyanskie gazety kalifornii izdayushchiesya na angliiskom yazike. national archives f. 326, 1.7, d.236, p. 2-3). meanwhile, many of them are published regularly, sometimes with rather long intervals, which is also a very important factor. however, all these publications have one distinct advantage: they are in a better state as compared with other armenian publications in the usa, due to the fact that they are published in the eastern states of the usa and they have their publishing houses in both the east and the west coasts. in the course of history, the eastern states (virginia, new england) became more developed than the western states. this could not but have its impact on the level of education and the living standards of the population. therefore, the most well-known american publications are published in the east coast and they stand out from the rest of the publications with the quality materials and agreeable language they present. it is impossible to identify the newspapers published in the east coast out of the galaxy of all american publications with a naked eye. among them are the washington post, the new york times, the chicago tribute, the boston globe, christian science monitor and several others. many of them, especially the boston globe and the christian science monitor, display pro-armenian approach. being a newspaper with a christian-democratic focus, the christian science monitor has always been faithful to the values of the mankind and has treated the eastern christians, especially armenians, with the greatest sympathy. it is natural, that the armenian journalists work for the newspapers published in the east coast and highlight issues on the happenings in the caucasus in general and in armenia, in particular. cooperation with the giants of the american mass media industry has given the armenian journalists the opportunity to obtain first-hand accurate and unbiased information. moreover, many diasporan publications make use of some parts of the analytical articles from these weeklies. that is why the three armenian weeklies are reputed as ones that contain the most reliable and impartial information. references: 1. (2003) hay spyurq hanragitaran (armenian diaspora: encyclopedia). yerevan. 2. national archives f.366, l.7, d.236, p.2-3. 3. (1988-1998) the armenian mirror-spectator. 4. (1988-1998) the armenian reporter. 5. (1988-1998) the asbarez. 270 armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 1990-³ï³ýý»ñç ³ù»ñçï³ñ³û ³ý·é³é»½áõ ù³ùáõéá ðá¹í³íá ýíçñí³í ¿ ñ»ï³ùñùçñ ¨ ·ñ»ã» ãáõëáõùý³ëçñí³í ã»ù³ûç: ì»ñéáõíáõãû³ý »ý »ýã³ñïíáõù ùç ß³ñù ñ³ûï³ï³ý å³ñµ»ñ³ï³ýý»ñ øç³óû³é ý³ñ³·ý»ñáõù, µ³ó³ñ³ûïíáõù »ý ²øü-ç ñ³ûï³ï³ý ³ý·é³é»½áõ ù³ùáõéç ³éç¨ í³é³ó³í ¹åí³ñáõãûáõýý»ñá` ·³õ³÷³ñ³ëáë³ï³ý, µáí³ý¹³ï³ûçý, ýçý³ýë³ï³ý ¨ ³ûéý: ü»ñï³û³óíáõù »ý ã»ñã»ñç ù»í ù³ëç ó³íñ áñ³ïç ¨ ÷áùñ ïå³ù³ý³ïç å³ï׳éý»ñá: ¸ñ³ ñ»ï ù»ïï»õ í»ñéáõíáõãû³ý ¿ »ýã³ñïíáõù ñ³ù»ù³ï³µ³ñ ³½¹»óçï ñ³ûï³ï³ý ³ý·é³é»½áõ å³ñµ»ñ³ï³ýý»ñç` “asbarez”, “armenian mirror spectator”, “armenian reporter”, ñ³çáõáõãû³ý ·ñ³í³ï³ýá: ²ñ¹ç å³ûù³ýý»ñáõù ë÷ûáõéùç ñ³ûï³ï³ý ù³ùáõéý ³åñáõù ¿ ¹åí³ñçý å³ù³ý³ïý»ñ: æýãå»ë íï³ûáõù »ý çñ»ýù` ë÷ûáõéùç ù³õ³ù³ï³ý ïáõë³ïóáõãûáõýý»ñç õ»ï³í³ñý»ñá, ë÷ûáõéù³ñ³ûáõãû³ý ù»í³ù³ëýáõãûáõýá ù³õ³ù³ï³ý³óí³í ã¿ ¨ ñçùý³ï³ýáõù ùï³ñá·í³í ¿ å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ³ßë³ññáõù ·áû³ï¨»éáõ ¹åí³ñçý ëý¹çñý»ñáí: ð³ûï³ï³ý å³ñµ»ñ³ï³ýý»ñç ùûáõë ëý¹çñá µëáõù ¿ ýçý³ýë³ï³ý ëáõõ ùççáóý»ñçó: â»ñã»ñç ëùµ³·ñáõãûáõýý»ñý ç íç׳ïç ã»ý å³ñ»éáõ ñ³ëïçù³ûçý ³ßë³ïáõý»ñ, áñç å³ï׳éáí ³ßë³ï³ï³½ùá ñçùý³ï³ýáõù ï³½ùí³í ¿ ãáß³ï³ûçý ï³ù ý³ë³ãáß³ï³ûçý ï³ñçùç éñ³·ñáõý»ñçó, áñáýù ³ßë³ïáõù »ý ñ³ë³ñ³ï³ï³ý ñçùáõýùý»ñáí ï³ù ëï³ýáõù »ý ó³íñ ³ßë³ï³í³ñó: øûáõë ëý¹çñý ³ûý ¿, áñ ë÷ûáõéù³ñ³û å³ñµ»ñ³ï³ýý»ñá ñ³ûñ»ýçùçó éñ³·ñ»ñ ã»ý ëï³ýáõù ¨ ð³û³ëï³ýáõù ñ³ïáõï ãõã³ïçóý»ñ ãáõý»ý: ²û¹ å³ï׳éáí ë÷ûáõéù³ñ³û ù³ùáõéá ãûáõñ ¨ ³õáï å³ïï»ñ³óáõùý»ñ áõýç ð³û³ëï³ýç çñ³¹³ñóáõãûáõýý»ñç ù³ëçý: ²ûëï»õçó å³ñ½áñáß »ñ¨áõù ¿, áñ ë÷ûáõéù³ñ³û ³ý·é³é»½áõ ù³ùáõéý áý¹ñ³ýáõñ ³éù³ùµ ß³ñáõý³ïáõù ¿ ùý³é ³ýùëçã³ñ íç׳ïáõù: ´³ó³éáõãûáõý »ý ï³½ùáõù ùç³ûý ùýýáõãû³ý »ýã³ñïíáõ “asbarez”, “armenian mirror spectator”, “armenian reporter” ß³µ³ã³ã»ñã»ñá, áñáýù áõý»ý³éáí ýçý³ýë³íáñù³ý ñ³ù»ù³ï³µ³ñ ï³ûáõý ³õµûáõý»ñ ññ³ï³ñ³ïíáõù »ý ï³ýáý³íáñ ¨ áõý»ý ùßï³ï³ý áýã»ñóáõý»ñ: ²û¹ éñ³·ñ»ñá »õ»é ¨ ùýáõù »ý ³ù»ý³ï»ýëáõý³ïý»ñá ¨ é³í³·áõûýë ³ñï³óáéáõù »ý ³ù»ñçï³ñ³ûáõãû³ý ï³ñµ»ñ ë³í»ñç áõ ïáõë³ïóáõãûáõýý»ñç ù³õ³ù³ï³ý ñ³û³óùý»ñá: 271 armenological studies armenian folia anglistika 1(2)2016+.pdf computer design: heghine gasparyan _____________________________________________________ lusakn publishers 6 grigor lusavorich,yerevan tel:ª 52-79-74, 52-79-47, e-mail. lusakn@rambler.ru armenian folia anglistika is the reviewed international academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english. its aim is to foster research of the english language, literature and culture in armenia and elsewhere and facilitate intellectual cooperation between high school teachers and scholars. armenian folia anglistika is free for the members of the association and is intended to be published twice a year. articles of interest to university-level teachers and scholars in english studies are warmly welcomed by the multi-national editorial board of the journal. articles should be directed to the editor-in-chief. editor-in-chief: dr seda gasparyan, prof. yerevan state university alex manoogian 1 yerevan 375049 armenia tel: (3741) 571660 fax: +(3741) 571660 e-mail: romano@xter.net editorial board: dr gevorg jahukyan, acad. (armenia) yelena mkhitaryan, prof. (armenia) dr svetlana ter-minasova, prof. (russia) dr olga alexandrova, prof. (russia) dr vincent gillespie, prof. (england) peter sutton, editor (england) shoushan paronyan, assist. prof. (armenia) gayane girunyan, assist. prof. (armenia) call for papers for the forthcoming issues of armenian folia anglistika kazm.cdr the syntagmatics of noun collocations in english human beings store not just words in isolation in theirbrains, but also the prototypical syntagmatic patterns associated with each word. each syntagmatic pattern is associated with the potential of a word or phrase to contribute in a given context to the meaningfulness of an actual utterance. from a cognitive point of view, the idiosyncratic set of prototypes associated with each word, may be slightly different in the same speech community, but such is the normative power of social pressures that any gross differences in prototyping are in due time eliminated and stereotypes of word usage emerge. the linguistic theories of the past have proved utterly inadequate as a foundation for a satisfactory lexicographical account of words, phrases, word partnerships, multi-word chunks and their semantic values, and only the development of very large corpora and the study of concordances of words in a large corpus providing evidence for how words are actually used in different syntagmatic units, made it possible to identify patterns of linguistic behaviour associated with each word. therefore, what a large corpus enables us to discover and learn, is a stereotypical set of syntagmatic prototypes. the target word of a syntagmatic unit (collocation, word-combination, word partnership) can be identified only through considering different groups of its normal uses according to its common syntagmatic features. a large corpus provides evidence of the patterns of usage with which meanings are associated. the larger the corpus, the more strikingly the patterns stand out. syntagmatic linguistic behaviour (the semantic value of the words) tends to recur as a norm, so it is quite reasonable that the association of meanings with patterns will have considerable predictive power for interpreting the meaning of words. such norms for nouns are constructed quite differently from norms for verbs and other parts of speech. noun norms focus on significant collocates, mainly making statements about prototypical usage. the function of the whole unit is thus conditioned rather by the collocate than by the target word. studying the nature of the target noun nature, we have observed that most significant collocates in syntagmatic units with it are in a standard syntactic relation with the target word, e.g. course, return, dog, gases, study, human, worship, cure, good are statistically significant collocates of nature, and usually occur in the phrases course of nature, return to nature, dog nature, nature of gases, nature study, human nature, nature worship, nature cure, good nature. the nature can be violent, severe, tough, fearful, terrible, disastrous, rough. the man can be deceitful, kind, fierce, savage, sympathetic, unselfish, willing, thoughtful, cruel, strong, proud, ambitious, furious, unflinching by nature. it must be mentioned that there are other collocates that are not in any fixed 57 linguistics armenian folia anglistika gayane muradyan syntactic relation to nature, but are freely associated with words or word-combinations of four different semantic groups qualifying the nature of the noun nature: universe, weather, rain, forest, animals, plants, trees, insects, disasters, torrents, floods, oceans, lakes, rivers, forces controlling the world; outdoor, animal-like and uncivilized existence, primitive and simple life; characteristics of a person or thing (mental or spiritual), qualities of non-material things (eg art, knowledge, language); sort, kind together, all such statements are in no way random and add up to the cognitive profile of the noun nature which is normally organized and used on the basis of the relations between the target word and its significant collocates. the adjective or other pattern collocates in the noun syntagms are generally prototypical. to activate the correct interpretation of the target word, it is necessary first to distinguish between those classifying collocates that identify the target word. in the case of nature it should be initially distinguished whether nature is considered as a natural phenomenon, a quality, etc and this can be done only through the collocate. the frequency of the set of classifying adjectives and noun modifiers that activate the sense of noun syntagms is very large indeed, virtually unbounded. suffice it to bring some more examples in addition to those mentioned above with the noun nature: social nature political nature financial nature religious nature rigid nature avaricious nature mean nature dishonest nature quiet nature unargumentative nature ferocious nature courageous nature unfathomable nature sly nature unique nature in all the above cases the syntagmatic relationship between the target word and the collocate is quite clear. whether the syntagm carries literal (social nature) or figurative meaning (unfathomable nature) is mostly identified as such by the collocate. in fact, not only the meaning of the collocation but also each of the metaphorical or nonmetaphorical uses can be identified by a particular collocate. in a few cases it is helpful or even necessary to import knowledge from outside the immediate context to make a correct interpretation. the wider context confirms the meanings to the point of certainty. the most literal uses of nature involve nature curing or selecting. in other cases, 58 armenian folia anglistika linguistics the word nature itself may be used in a literal sense, but the associated verb is more metaphorical, i.e. the fact that the noun nature is being used in a metaphorical sense is signalled by the related verb. typical of this second class are the expressions in which nature awakens, forces and demands. the degree of metaphoricity descends when nature ravages places or rages or when the human beings struggle with nature. these clichés are so common that it is easy to overlook the metaphorical status of the verb. however, there is another case when the literal direct object in the form of nature follows a literal causative verb, and the apparent mixing results in a proper metaphoric verbal syntagm, namely to unleash nature. such metaphorization has proved no obstacle to this collocation being conventionalized as a normal expression in english. thus, it is very important to mention that to a great extent it is the syntagmatic criteria that makes it possible to distinguish the metaphorical uses from the literal ones. it should also be noted that many of the phrases with nature may be taken not as a chunk used in a metaphorical way but also as a chunk, formed on the basis of idiomaticity proper of the word-combination: pay the debt of nature. be in a state of nature. become a second nature. answer /obey a call of nature. the prototypical syntagmatics of all the four idiomatic uses of the word nature indicates that the last four collocations containing the word nature are evident enough to be comprehended as idioms proper but not easily guessed through the meanings of the target word and the collocates though. semantically they express more than the sum of their parts, i.e. their meanings cannot be derived from the analysis of the literal meanings of the words of which they are composed. the longman’s dictionary of english idioms (1999) and the ntc’s thematic dictionary of american idioms (2001) define the idiom to pay the debt of nature as “to die”, to be in a state of nature as a euphemistic expression of “naked”, “with no clothes on”, to become a second nature as an acquired trait of a person’s natural character and to answer/obey a call of nature as a humourous expression of “the need to go to the lavatory”. however, further textual clues can add to the determination of the meaning of both literal and figurative syntagmatic noun units without preliminary knowledge of them. the semantic parameters are set by the text type, i.e. the most important clue in such cases is the domain or discourse type in which the text belongs: fiction, science, news, arts, etc. the meaning of the syntagm in a text or discourse becomes more and more functional as the writing (called “document” by patrick hanks) proceeds. as we have already noted, more information from the wider context is required to enable the reader to know what’s going on. in such cases, pragmatic knowledge about the domain is often important: one has to know not only what kind of paper one is reading but also what normally happens in that kind of writing. generalizations made on the study of syntagmatic patterns with the word nature, demonstrate clearly enough the significant syntagmatic characteristics of the english noun collocations. 59 linguistics armenian folia anglistika the syntagmatics of noun collocations is a norm, in each noun syntagm a special norm based on a stereotypical syntagmatic prototype has become established and to this extent all the collocations are like single words: each is associated with a set of prototypical patterns of usage. another noteworthy feature of the syntagmatic criteria is that the significant collocate conditions the nature of the whole syntagmatic pattern to a great extent.the prototypical syntagmatic criteria for idiomaticity, metaphoricity and non-metaphoricity is identified through distinguishing the meanings by the syntagmatic relationship of the collocations. the task of identifying and producing meaningful utterences can be carried out effectively by systematic classification of observed uses of collocations as norms in a procedure called corpus pattern analysis. at large, the syntagmatic set of various prototypes or the major syntagmatic patterns contribute to the norm for general english. the functional stylistic motivation or the discourse type is to a great extent signalled by the syntagmatic linguistic behaviour of collocations. references: 1. alexandrova o.v., ter-minasova s.g. english syntax (collocation, colligation and discourse). moscow, 1987. 2. fillmore charles j. framenet and the linking between semantic and syntactic relations. geneva, 2003. 3. hanks patrick. the syntagmatics of metaphor and idiom. berlin: brandeis university and berlin-brandenburg academy of sciences, 2004. 4. kilgarriff adam, tugwell david. word sketch: extraction and display of significant collocations for lexicography. france, toulouse: acl, 2001. 5. lewis m. the lexical approach. prague, hove: language teaching publications, 1993. 6. taylor john r. linguistic categorization: prototypes in linguistic theory. oxford university press, 1995. ¶àú²î²ü²î²ü ´²è²î²ä²îòàôâúàôüüºðæ þ²ð²î²ð¶²úæü ð²ð²´ºðàôâúàôüüºðà ²ü¶èºðºüàôø ´³é³ï³å³ïóáõãûáõýý»ñç ß³ñ³ï³ñ·³ûçý ñ³ñ³μ»ñáõãûáõýý»ñç áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõýá ãáõûé ¿ ï³éçë å³ñ½³μ³ý»é μáéáñ ³ûý ï³ýáý³ï³ñ·í³í ñ³ëï³ïáõý çù³ëï³ûçý ï³éáõûóý»ñá, áñáýù μýáñáß »ý ïíû³é 黽í³ï³ý ùç³íáñçý, ³ûë ¹»åùáõù ·áû³ï³ýçý: ²ý·é»ñ»ýç ·áû³ï³ý³ï³ý μ³é³ï³å³ïóáõãûáõýý»ñáõù ³ùμáõç ï³éáõûóç ·áñí³éáõãûáõýá å³ûù³ý³íáñí³í ¿ áã ³ûýù³ý ïíû³é ·áû³ï³ýáí, áñù³ý ï³å³ïóáõãûáõýá ï³½ùáõ ùûáõë ï³ññ»ñáí: ¸ñ³ýó ùççáóáí »ý áýï³éíáõù ï³éáõûóç áý¹ñ³ýáõñ çù³ëï³ûçý »ñ³ý·ý»ñá, ÷áë³μ»ñ³ï³ýáõãû³ý ¨ áõõõ³ïçáõãû³ý ï³ñμ»ñ ³ëïç׳ýý»ñá: 60 armenian folia anglistika linguistics 7 maket 2010 nor_n:layout 1.qxd benefits of implementing group work into the efl classroom group work is an effective technique for teaching andlearning and is a key factor to sustain interaction in a language classroom. group work in the efl classroom has largely been accepted as an effective strategy in the development of students’ communicative proficiency in english (chen & hird 2006). it has become an integral part of english teacher’s repertoire of approaches and strategies. group work (also called cooperative learning, collaborative learning, collective learning, group study, etc.) covers a variety of techniques in which two or more students are assigned to do a single task together (brown 2001). it developed as an active strategy with its proper characteristics and practical implications. a characteristic proper to group work is that communication is established at two levels: the vertical level (communication between the teacher and the learners), and the horizontal level (communication between the learners themselves). this results in intensive communication and interaction between the classroom members, leading to a rich source of feedback for both the teacher and the learners. in general, the advantages of group work can be classified into three types: cognitive, psychological and social. in terms of cognitive advantages learning in groups is a kind of training for logical and creative thinking and for the development of the learners’ learning strategies and abilities as they are working collectively and co-operatively to achieve specific tasks. when students have to explain and negotiate their contributions to a group project, it assists them in developing and increasing their meta-cognitive awareness. that is, in “low risk” contexts they begin to realize what they know and what they have yet to learn or find out. the psychological implications concern the affective involvement of the learners as group work facilitates the development of communication and interaction among the classroom members. this would enable the learner to know better his self and try to develop his personal characteristics by adopting positive ones such as the sense of responsibility, a positive self-image and confidence in himself and in other participants. this is because the learner would feel more at ease and less dependent on the teacher when he works collectively with his friends. as far as the social implications of group work are concerned, the latter stimulates the learner’s integration in the group, which can be a means for acknowledging and utilizing individual students’ additional strengths and expertise. through communication armenian folia anglistikamethodology 113 syuzi hovhannissyan lili karapetyan and interaction, group members gradually become familiar with each other (harrison & carroll 1991). the quality of relationship with the other group members is a major factor in the overall success of the group, so it is important to spend time getting to their friends. thus, it can foster the development of good social attitudes and moral values such as the spirit of co-operation and help, mutual respect, receptivity and openness to others, to their opinions and ideas. one difficulty with group work is that you can’t work as quickly as you can by yourself. patience, communication skills and commitment are all required to make the most of the contributions of all group members. consequently, effective group work requires each member to focus on the process rather than just the product. in class activity students are involved to actively participate, cooperate, share experiences, work together, analyze, summarize and reflect on their activities. the teaching-learning process is more student oriented, while the role of the teacher is to be a facilitator. doing the assignments in groups will create communicative positive atmosphere in which students are able to exchange their thoughts, ideas and learn to negotiate with one another. vygotsky stated that students need an opportunity to express their verbal ability. by involving students to speak, they will internalize what they had told to be a thought and evaluate their weaknesses and strengths (vygotsky 1978). in line with the above point of view, vernon a. magnesen claimed that people learned 90% from what they said and did. piaget is also convinced that students learn through concrete experience by reflecting their experience. working together in groups also gives students the opportunity to learn from and teach each other. classroom research has shown that students often learn better form each other than they do from a teacher (kelas 2008). studies have also shown that a group can be highly effective when individual members’ goals are linked to the group goal (martocchio & frink 1994). brown, davis and long show that students learn more and memorize better when they work in small groups, rather than when they work individually. in order to have successful peer-group work, students must have common understanding of the goal of the task and come to one conclusion: what they are willing to achieve (brown 2001; davis 1993; long 1985). there are three general types of group work: informal learning groups, formal learning groups and study teams. informal groups are formed by just randomly clustering students within a single class period. formal groups are established to fulfill a specific task with an outcome, such as writing a report or, for example, preparing a career paper, etc. to set up formal learning groups teachers are suggested to discuss and use the following steps: a) plan each stage of group work, b) explain the objectives of groups, c) make the group work relevant to the students’ skills and abilities, d) divide the work equally among all group members. study teams, unlike informal learning groups, are long term groups whose members remain the same through a whole term or so. their role is to provide members with support, encouragement, and assistance in completing course assignments and requirements (davis 1993). armenian folia anglistika methodology 114 pedagogical arguments for group work there are many pedagogical arguments for group work introduced by different authors. according to them group work may: • increase the language practice opportunities. long and corden argue that group work generates student talk; they get to talk more than they do during a whole class activity. thus, the time for practising the new language increases (long 1985; corden 2001). • improve the quality of student talk. because group is a natural setting for a conversation, students feel secure and out of public display, this way the quality of their talk improves, they do not have teachers “at hand” to correct them right away. • individualize instruction. as long, richards, rodger and davis argue, group work helps to assign individual students different assignments and responsibilities, in this way each of them will be responsible for their portion. so, having different skills and abilities students will get assignments which will be equivalent to their skills and abilities (long 1985; richards & rodgers 2001; davis 1993). • provide a “positive affective climate” (brown 2001). in small groups students feel more secure, even those students who talk rarely in the classroom get motivated to talk in small groups. thus, small groups provide a more supportive climate to express oneself (long 1985). in small groups students are less vulnerable and less criticized. even not talkative students become active and cooperate with their peers (brown 2001). • motivate learners. dornyei and long argue that group work motivates learners to speak freely. they highlight two aspects of group dynamics, i.e. group cohesiveness and group norms. the cohesive group is the one where all the students feel the strength of “we”, they are happy to be a part of “we”. this way they stick to each other, and the commitment to excellence is more obvious. these positive relations serve as keystones to motivate each other, to “pull each other along” and create an enjoyable atmosphere for themselves. on the other hand, if the group establishes effective norms for learning, group motivation increases greatly (dornyei 2001; long 1985). however, methodologists are not unanimous as to how many participants a group should involve. richards & rodgers and davis claim that group size should not be too large, i.e. maximum five people should be engaged in one group. but they also state that it depends on the tasks the learners will carry out, as well as on the time limits they will have. groups should be small in order to allow each student to express himself/herself. in this case they will also have more time to communicate (richards & rodgers 2001; davis 1993). student behavior in small groups a lot of research has been done to discover how students behave while learning in small groups. the research by muller shows that children in autocratically led groups seem to be discontented, often aggressive and there is a lack of motivation. whereas in armenian folia anglistikamethodology 115 democratically led groups they are far more productive and complete tasks successfully. sometimes student behavior depends not only on their personalities but also who they are working with. in her study muller shows empirical evidence of 6 groups working together; some groups were successful, while the others were not, mostly because they coul dn’t find common understanding of the task (muller 2001). group work is a keystone for sustaining interaction in a big classroom and for motivating learners to practice their language. however equal time should be provided to the students to participate and cooperate in small group discussions. this way they all get turns to share their ideas with each other as well as to the audience they will be exposed to later. group work promotes learners to be responsible, it encourages taking risks and helps to overcome difficulties with an impressive ease. implementing group work into the armenian educational setting despite the above mentioned benefits of group work it is hardly ever used in the armenian formal educational setting where the whole studying process is teacher-centered rather than learning-centered. the majority of learners undergo the process of learning through traditional educational methods in which they are not likely to experience a student-centered learning environment in terms of group work. most of the language teaching and learning processes in classrooms do not develop contextual communication atmosphere whereas students cannot use contextually fixed expressions in communicating with one another. in real classroom situations teachers just ask students to arrange a dialogue, memorize the dialogue, then perform it. on the other hand, teaching and learning activity is often disturbed by several factors i.e. the thought that english is difficult to learn, has complex grammar and strange pronunciation, etc. these make students speak less. in learning activity, students seldom get an opportunity to express ideas, opinions, and thoughts, the activities often seem monotonous, there is less interaction between teachers and students on the one hand, and students to students on the other hand. whereas, as kelas states “teaching english as a foreign language should be directed to be a lively communicative process” (kelas 2008). we strongly believe that implementing group work into the armenian educational establishments will stimulate effective learning and teaching, active involvement of learners who will find more opportunities to express themselves and feel less anxious and more capable to communicate with the teacher and even with each other in the group. group work will provide armenian efl students with opportunities for developing skills like organization, negotiation, team work and co-operation which armenian students very often lack. references: 1. brown, h. d. (2001) teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy. ny: pearson education. armenian folia anglistika methodology 116 2. chen, b., hird, b. (2006) group work in the efl classroom in china: a closer look. // relc journal, vol. 37(1). www.relc.org. 3. corden, r. (2001) group discussion and the importance of a shared perspective: learning from collaborative research. relc journal, 1(3). www.relc.org. 4. davis, b. g. (1993) collaborative learning: group work and study teams. retrieved october 23, 2009, from http://teaching.berkeley.edu/bgd/collaborative.html. 5. dornyei, z. (2001) motivational strategies in the language classroom. uk: cambridge university press. 6. harrison and carrol, (1991) the dynamics of cultural influence networks. // administrative science quarterly (43). california: california university press. 7. long, m. h. (1985) group work, interlanguage talk, and second language acquisition. tesol quarterly, 19(2). california: california university press. 8. martocchio, p. (1994) a review of the influence of group goals on group performance. // academy of management journal, vol. 37(5). texas: texas university press. 9. muller, a., fleming, t. (2001) cooperative learning: listening to how children work at school. // journal of educational research, 94(5). penssylvania: penssylvania state university. 10. richards, j.c., rodgers, t.s. (2001) approaches and methods in language teaching. cambridge: cambridge university press. 11. vygotsky, l.s. (1978) mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. êùμ³ûçý ³ßë³ï³ýùç ý»ñùáõíù³ý ³é³í»éáõãûáõýý»ñá ³ý·é»ñ»ýç` áñå»ë ûï³ñ 黽íç ¹³ë³í³ý¹ù³ý ·áñíáýã³óáõù êáõûý ñá¹ í³ íáõù ï³ñ¨áñ íáõù ¿ ëùμ³ ûçý ³ß ë³ ï³ý ùç ý»ñ ùáõí ù³ý ¹» ñá ³ý· é» ñ» ýç` áñ å»ë û ï³ñ 黽 íç ¹³ ë³ í³ý¹ ù³ý ù»ç, ù³ ýç áñ ³ûý ³ñ¹ ûáõ ý³ í»ï ùç çáó ¿ ½³ñ ·³ó ý» éáõ û ï³ñ é» ½áõ ëá íá ñáõ ý» ñç í»ñ éáõ í³ ï³ý ùï³ íá õáõã ûáõ ýá, çýã å»ë ý³¨ ýñ³ýó ñ³ õáñ ¹³ï ó³ ï³ý ñùïáõã ûáõý ý» ñá: êùμ³ ûçý ³ß ë³ ï³ý ùç ý»ñ ùáõ íáõ ùá áõ ýç ׳ ý³ ãá õ³ ï³ý, ñá ·» μ³ ý³ ï³ý ¨ ñ³ ë³ ñ³ ï³ ï³ý ýß³ ý³ ïáõã ûáõý: ð» õç ý³ï ý» ñá ñ³ï ï³ å»ë ³ñå¨á ñáõù »ý ëùμ³ ûçý ³ß ë³ ï³ý ùç ïç ñ³ éáõ ùá ñ³û ï³ ï³ý éë³ ñ³ ýáõù, áñ ï»õ, ýñ³ýó ï³ñ íç ùáí, ýù³ ý³ ïçå ³ß ë³ ï³ýù ý» ñá å³ï ß³× áõ ß³¹ ñáõã û³ý ã»ý ³ñ å³ ý³ ýáõù: armenian folia anglistikamethodology 117 1(2)2016+.pdf metaphor in the author’s comments the ability to read, understand and appreciate a piece ofliterature is not an easy task at all, for literature is a “specific world” giving a good opportunity to study the diversity of imaginative elements, those inherent and adherent connotations which give birth to many new meanings. it goes without saying that in the language of fiction there is a constant interplay of language units which offers a whole range of interpretations and makes an aesthetic impact on the reader. in this respect the creative use of stylistic devices in verbal art is worth mentioning, for tropes and figures of speech require careful study, inspiration and artistic effort. among all language units metaphor is one of the most powerful means, revealing the author’s personal understanding of the surrounding world, his ideas and intentions. metaphors figuratively suggest the author’s goal, create artistic effects, and conjure up poetic images. human language is profoundly metaphorical, and language as a whole has been figuratively defined as “a dictionary of faded metaphors”.1 the present article touches upon the use of metaphor, its effect and realization in the author’s comments in d.h. lawrence’s short stories. lawrence’s writings are beautiful and filled with sensual images. each story seems to be simply a slice of life that describes the existence of simple people in simple circumstances, yet seen from extraordinary points of view. the beautiful use of language and imagery will attract the attention of almost every reader. lawrence’s short stories offer brilliant flashes. he “can pack so much into such little space”(william york tindalli,1961). lawrence expresses his attitude towards the life of simple people in a succinct way, yet in every uttered word there is a hint of wisdom. lawrence was anxious to explore reality. “his great theme is the relationship: between man and man, woman and beast or anybody and the radiant universe”2. the stories prove and expand these connections. man’s great impulse, he said, is “to build a world, his own belief and to make through his own efforts something wonderful in this world” (william york tindalli, 1961). d. h. lawrence is always “present” in his stories, as if he is following every action of his characters. sometimes he interferes in the dialogues and gives his own reasons and motives, represents the heroes, their feelings, passions, beliefs, describes the subtle 26 armenian folia anglistika linguistics armine matevossian 7 maket 2010 nor_n:layout 1.qxd repetition in walt whitman’s ‘‘a passage to india’’ poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words. edgar allan poe the language of poetry is specifically melodious andextraordinary. in it every component, word and word order, sound and pause, image and echo is significant, significant in that it always means more. its elements are figures and tropes in which each component can open new meanings, connotations, dimensions and resonances. no word is idle or accidental. each word has a specific place within an overarching pattern. all the elements together create meaningful and beautiful designs.1 repetition (from latin “repetitio”) of a sound, syllable, word, phrase, line, stanza or metrical pattern is a basic unifying device in all poetry. repetition aims at logical emphasis, an emphasis necessary to fix the attention of the reader on the key word of the utterance. the primary function of repetition is the intensification of the utterance which is the direct outcome of the use of expressive means employed in ordinary intercourse. when used in outer compositional patterns, the immediate emotional charge is greatly suppressed and is replaced by a purely aesthetic aim. this aim is especially evident in poetry, including walt whitman’s poetry.2 the american author walt whitman changed the course of poetry. generally recognized as the father of free verse, he liberated poetry from rhyme and meter, opening it up to the flexible rhythms of feeling and voice. 3 his verse is a strong sense of inclusion, excitement, and invitation. it intends to initiate each individual into possibilities of poetic creation (wolosky 2001). and his own poetic creations include many different kinds of repetition all of which play a key role, particularly in his praise. alliteration is a repetition of the same consonant at the beginning of neighboring words or accented syllables (mostkova 1967). alliteration may also be carried beyond the limits of a single line and may even operate in elaborate patterns throughout a poem as a counterpoint to other relationships indicated by different sorts of repetition, such as rhyme, metrical pattern, and assonance.4 whitman uses alliteration as a tool when describing different phenomena: human suffering, description of war and beauty of nature. whitman’s poem “a passage to india” is a typical example of good repetition. when the suez canal opened in 1869, whitman wrote this poem as a reason for celebration. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 83 armine matevosyan anna melkonyan not you alone, proud truths of the world, nor you alone, ye facts of modern science, but myths and fables of eld, asia’s, africa’s fables, the far-darting beams of the spirit, the unloos’d dreams, the deep diving bibles and legends, the daring plots of the poets, the elder religions; o you temples fairer than lilies, pour’d over by the rising sun! o you fables, spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known, mounting to heaven! you lofty and dazzling towers, pinnacled, red as roses, burnish’d with gold! towers of fables immortal, fashion’d from mortal dreams! you too i welcome, and fully, the same as the rest! you too with joy i sing. passage to india! lo, soul! seest thou not god’s purpose from the first? the earth to be spann’d, connected by network, the races, neighbors, to marry and be given in marriage, the oceans to be cross’d, the distant brought near, the lands to be welded together. a worship new i sing, you captains, voyagers, explorers, yours, you engineers, you architects, machinists, yours, you, not for trade or transportation only, but in god’s name, and for thy sake, o soul. the poem is full of different kinds of repetition which are used in different functions. the lines greatly vary in length, with each one determined as a single sentence. each sentence has its unique syllabic form and is independent. but all the lines together become a complete idea directed to humanity and god. the author’s poetic voice is evident in each line, stanza.5 alliteration is expressed in the accumulation of consonants (d,p,b) for a certain aim; to add emphasis to the celebration. whitman doesn’t put racial discrimination between nations and this is obviously relevant in his praise. but myths and fables of eld, asia’s, africa’s fables, the far-darting beams of the spirit, the unloos’d dreams, the deep diving bibles and legends, the daring plots of the poets, the elder religions whitman rejects most traditional poetic norms. the lines 6 vary in length but are held together both rhythmically and through sound repetition. these lines are further bound together through alliteration, the heavy repetition of sounds, not by rhyming, but grouping together words that begin with the same letter. whitman intentionally uses alliteration to imply his unique style. the use of alliteration serves multiple functions in mainarmenian folia anglistika linguistics 84 taining poetic quality. on the one hand it shapes his poetry by repeating constant sounds, on the other hand it gives rhythm to the poem. whitman’s style encompasses repetition to improve the quality of his poetry. he dreams about a new era that would be peaceful. thus, the speaker announces: you captains, voyagers, explorers, yours! you engineers! you architects, machinists, yours! you, not for trade or transportation only, but in god’s name, and for thy sake, o soul. the far-darting beams of the spirit, the unloos’d dreams, the deep diving bibles and legends, the daring plots of the poets, the elder religions; in the lines beginning with you we come across the use of a specific, anaphoric repe tition. anaphora is a literary device which employs the repetition of a first word in each phrase. here each line begins with you. whitman uses anaphora to mimic biblical syntax and gives his work a weighty, epic feeling. the anaphora expressed by the personal pronoun you emphasizes each man’s individuality and applies to every one in one’s own way. each line ends with yours which apparently strengthens the meaning of the utterance. there is anaphora in the last three lines as well. besides you we have the repetition of the definite article the emphasizing the meanings of the given words. generally in whitman’s poetry anaphora is expressed mainly by personal pronouns i, you, we. these are the author’s key words which mark his and the readers’ presence through the whole poem. the usage of different kinds of anaphora (expressed by personal pronouns, by definite articles, etc) realizes different functions in his praise – on the one hand it deepens the author’s ideas, on the other hand it gives structure to the poem. whitman’s verse form is shaped by social context and social purpose which is typical of the writing of mid-nineteenth-century america. the poet consciously set out to redefine the relation between poet and the reader and ultimately the audience that poetry would address. the poet-audience relationship is deeply reflected in his poem. another thing that strikes the eye of the reader in the poem is the dominant use of the letter s. the sound is not used at random, it aims at a deliberate and intentional purpose and plays an important role in the rhythmical organization of the poem. concentrating our attention on the nouns given in the poem (truths, facts, fables, beams, dreams, bibles, legends, plots, poets, religions, temples, lilies , towers, roses, races, neighbours, oceans, lands, captains, voyagers, explorers, engineers, architects, machinist) we notice that almost all of them are used in plural. generally in english grammar the sound s is used to formulate the plural form but in whitman’s praise , besides this, the formation of the plural has acquired a symbolic value. it has become the author’s appeal – an appeal for unity and solidarity among all nations. here the concept of equality and the author’s devotion to all peoples and god becomes the vital call of the poem. this basic idea of his governs the concept and form of the poem. there are other kinds of repetitions in the poem worthy of notice. whitman has armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 85 applied to the repetition of syntactic patterns which are used to strengthen the structure and bind the poem together. not you alone, proud truths of the world, nor you alone, ye facts of modern science… o you temples fairer than lilies, pour’d over by the rising sun! o you fables, spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known, mounting to heaven… this grammatical pattern creates an energy that is endlessly creative and open. this kind of structure is very typical of whitman’s style. another interesting thing that strikes the attention of the reader is the repetition of the ing form. the far-darting beams of the spirit, the unloos’d dreams, the deep diving bibles and legends, the daring plots of the poets, the elder religion; o you temples fairer than lilies, pour’d over by the rising sun! o you fables, spurning the known, eluding the hold of the known, mounting to heaven! you lofty and dazzling towers, pinnacled, red as roses, burnish’d with gold! towers of fables immortal, fashion’d from mortal dreams! the poet’s view of the world is dominated by its change and fluidity, and this accounts for his frequent use of ing form which is an apparent proof of his criterion. inner rhyme (darting – diving – daring – rising – spurning – eluding – mounting – dazzling) contributes not only to the rhythmical effect but gives additional emotional nuances as well. thus, repetition with its different kinds and functions plays an important role in the poem. whitman has intentionally used it to achieve his purposes. as a brilliant master able to create an emotive atmosphere where the reader is greatly impressed, he well realizes the power of repetition. whitman’s vocabulary is usually vigorous and often startling. many of his unusual words surprise the reader by their very simplicity. these are not long and learned words but sturdy ones that reflect his interest in life’s simple pursuits. whitman’s style remains consistent throughout, however. the poetic structures reflect his democratic ideas. whitman hopes to give his readers a sympathetic experience. he often uses obscure, foreign, or invented words. whitman largely avoids rhyme schemes and other traditional poetic devices. he does, however, use meter in masterful and innovative ways, often to mimic natural speech. in these ways he demonstrates that he has mastered traditional poetry but is no longer subservient to it. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 86 notes: 1. in poetry there are multiple reasons for choosing and placing words. there is not one single pattern in a poem but rather a multiplicity of patterns all of which ideally interlock in wider and larger designs (wolosky 2001). 2. see gasparian s.k, matevosian a.i. english style in action (2008) yerevan: lusakn. 3. free verse poetry, rhymed or unrhymed is composed without attention to conventional rules of meter. free verse was first written and labeled “free verse” (“vers libre”) by a group of 19th century french poets. their purpose was to deliver french poetry from the restrictions of formal metrical patterns and to re-create instead the free rhythms of natural speech. they wrote lines of varying length and cadence, usually not rhymed. the emotional content or meaning of the work was expressed through its rhythm. free verse has been characteristic of the work of many modern american poets including walt whitman. (http://sandyshorespoetry.tripod.com/id22.htm) 4. the latter is repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds, especially in stressed syllables, with changes in the intervening consonants, as in the phrase tilting at windmills. 5. poetic voice is often assumed, in the lyric, to mean the voice of the poet. it is rather a pure, single or personal voice and can be complex with a range of different representations, different viewpoints for a variety of purposes. it also involves diction which can help define a poem’s speaker, whether in the role of the author or the characters who may be quoted or introduced as other speakers in the text, almost in the mode of reported or represented speech. the complexity of poetic voice is most obvious in poems that are quite explicitly structured through a speaker who is not the poet. in such a poem, the speaker is specifically defined or presented as an invented character and is often presented as if speaking to an invented addressee. this form is called a dramatic monologue, a poem which seems to be a speech taken from some dramatic encounter between an imagined character and the one addressed (wolosky 2001). 6. poetry is often separated into lines on a page. these lines may be based on the number of metrical feet, or may emphasize a rhyming pattern at the ends of lines. lines may serve other functions, particularly where the poem is not written in a formal metrical pattern. lines can separate, compare or contrast thoughts expressed in different units, or can highlight a change in tone. lines of poems are often organized into stanzas, which are denominated by the number of lines included. these lines may or may not relate to each other by rhyme or rhythm (wikipedia). armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 87 references: 1. asselineau, r. (1962) the evolution of walt whitman: the creation of a book. cambridge: cambridge university press. 2. chukovski k.i. (1968) visokoye iskustvo. m.: sov. pisatel publishers. 3. gasparov, m.l. (1997) izbranniye trudi. o stikhakh. vol. 2. m.: progress. 4. gasparian, s.k., matevosian, a.i. (2008) english style in action. yerevan: asoghik publishers. 5. harutyunyan, a. (2000) yntrani amerikean u angliakan poeziayi. yerevan: apolon. 6. martinez, e.e. (1969) walt whitman: homage to walt whitman. alabama: university of alabama press. 7. wilson, a.g., bradley, s. (1955) the collected writings of walt whitman’s poems: selections with critical aids. new york: new york university press. 8. wolosky, sh. (2001) the art of poetry. usa: oxford university press. literature: 1. whitman, w. (1982) complete poetry and selected prose of walt whitman. justin kaplan (ed). new york: the library of america. îñïýáõãûáõýá àõáéã àõçãù»ýç ‘‘a passage to india’’ μ³ý³ëï»õíáõãûáõýáõù êáõûý ñá¹ í³ íáõù áõ ëáõù ý³ ëç ñáõã û³ý ýûáõã ¿ ¹³ñ ó»é ïñïýáõã ûáõý á ׳ ï³ý ñý³ ñá, á ñá à õçã ù» ýç åá» ½ç³ ûáõù ³ é³ýó ù³ ûçý ýß³ ý³ ïáõã ûáõý áõ ýç: ²ûý ýå³ë ïáõù ¿ áã ùç³ûý éçã ùç áõ ý»ñ ¹³ß ý¹³ ïáõã û³ý ¹ñë ̈ áñ ù³ ýá, ³ûé¨ ³ñ ï³ ñ³û ïáõù ¿ ³ í» éç μ³ñóñ μ³ ñá û³ ï³ý ³ñ å»ù ý»ñ` ç ù³ë ïáõã ûáõý, μ³ ñá û³ ëá ëáõã ûáõý, ù³ñ¹ ï³ ûçý ³ ù» ý³ ï³ñ μ»ñ ñá ·» íç ׳ï ý»ñ áõ ïñ³ ù³¹ ñáõã ûáõý ý»ñ: à õçã ù» ýç åá» ½ç³ ûáõù ïñïýáõã ûáõ ýá çñ é³ûý ¹ñë ̈ á ñáõù ý» ñáí, μ³ ó³ éçï ûáõ ñ³ ñ³ï ïáõã ûáõý ¿, ³ é³ýó á ñç ³ýñ ý³ñ ¿ å³ï ï» ñ³ó ý»é à õçã ù»ý μ³ ý³ë ï»õ íçý çñ ßù»õ ëáë ù³ñ í»ë ïáí: ²ý ï³ ñ³ ïáõûë, ýñ³ åá» ½ç³ý ïñïýáõã û³ý ³ñ í»ë ïç μ³ñó ñ³ ï»ïý ¿: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 88 7 maket 2010 nor_n:layout 1.qxd the word yeghern and the semantic field of its equivalence in english in the beginning was the word, and the word was with god, and the word was god. (john 1.1) the vocabulary of a language is the richest repository,in fact, the most reliable criterion of its wealth. it is through words that one gets to know and to explore the surrounding world, that one learns to think, to express one’s thoughts and concerns, emotions and experiences. and since words undergo semantic changes over the centuries, reflecting a variety of social, historical and political impacts as well as that of everyday life, their appropriate choice in speech making acquires utmost importance. in maupassant’s words, “no matter what you are going to talk about, there is only one word you can express it by, only one adjective you can describe it with, only one verb to animate it with. … thus, one must look for that very noun, that very adjective and that very verb…..” 1 the meaning of a word may broaden as the word becomes richer and richer under the influence of various linguistic and extralinguistic factors, acquiring new semantic meanings and shades of meanings, new expressive-emotional-evaluative overtones. the word may grow in depth and width, and become more capacious both semantically and stylistically, thus expressing “a whole world”. 2 this is clearly evident in speech whenever an “inanimate unit” of language revives, becomes more dynamic and presents the speaker’s emotional attitude in a condensed way. 3 the issues associated with such an intricate unit of language become even more complicated when one tries to reproduce a word adequately using the linguistic means of another language, i.e. to overcome the obstacles posed by multilingualism in the path of mutual recognition and understanding between nations. in our analysis of this question below an attempt will be made to study the semantic field of equivalence of the armenian word yeghern (»õ»éý) and the problem of its adequate translation into english. the semantic structure of yeghern (»õ»éý) as an initial stage in our investigation, however, it is necessary to clarify the semantic structure of the lexical unit in armenian. the “fundamental etymological dictionary of the armenian language” 4 by hrachia acharyan presents the opinion of the great linguist sophus bugge who claims that the armenian words yeghern, yegher, yeghuk (»õ»éý, »õ»ñ, »õáõï) originate from the root gel in the indo-european protolanguage. armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 138 seda gasparyan comparison with “quelan” in old high german, “quellian” in saxon, and “cwelan”—— kill 5 in old english makes it quite clear that the underlying meaning of all these words is to kill, to commit a crime. a. sukiasyan suggests a whole range of synonyms in his “monolingual dictionary of armenian synonyms” 6: á×çñ /crime/, á×ñ³·áñíáõãûáõý /felony/, »õ»éý³·áñíáõãûáõý /villainy, crime/, ã³ñ³·áñíáõãûáõý (ù³ñ¹³ ëå³ ýáõ ãûáõý) /malefaction, murder/, í³ýñ ñ³ýó³·áñíáõãûáõý /grave, serious crime/, ëå³ýáõãûáõý /killing, murder, homicide/, ïáïáñ³í /massacre/, ç³ñ¹ /mass killing, massacre/, ý³ë×çñ /carnage/, ëå³ý¹ /slaughter/, ³ñûáõý/³/ñ»õáõãûáõý /blood-shed, carnage, massacre/, ëñ³íáõãûáõý /massacre, butchery, slaughter/, û³ã³õ³ý /killing with a turkish dagger/, ëáõëáõáõù /killing cruelly, butchery, slaughter/, »õ»éýáõãûáõý/ñýó./ /harm, malice, rascality/, ó»õ³ëå³ýáõãûáõý /genocide/. these are not absolute synonyms, of course, but they all have the semantic constituent to kill (i.e. to commit a crime) in their semantic structure.7 a study of the data presented in armenian-english dictionaries 8 provides the following explanations of the word yeghern (»õ»éý): crime (á×çñ), misdemeanor (ã³ñ áýã³óù, í³ï³μ³ñáûáõãûáõý), offence (³ý³ñ·³ýù), rascality (ëïáñáõãûáõý, ³ýá½·³ùáõãûáõý), slaughter (ëå³ý¹, ý³ë×çñ, ïáïáñ³í, ç³ñ¹), carnage (ý³ë×çñ), massacre (ïáïáñ³í, ç³ñ¹) and genocide (ó»õ³ëå³ýáõãûáõý). in this comprehensive field of synonyms one can trace similarities as well as obvious differences. for example, the word crime is defined as an act (usu. grave offence) punishable by law; evil act; such acts collectively (cod 9 : 242); an act committed in violation of law forbidding or commanding it, and for which punishment is upon conviction (hindel : 313), while the word misdemeanor is used to mean an action, which though being punishable by law, is not so grave or serious as, for instance, stealing or murder (ldce). the presence of the semantic constituent of crime in the lexical units offence (attacking, aggressive action cod) and rascality (dishonest behaviour ldce), may be said, not to be always obvious. the intention of an offence in the sense of aggression or dishonest behaviour is not necessarily accompanied by murder. while “the modern tendency is to refer to crimes as offences” (odl, p. 317), and the words offence and rascality carry a negative inherent connotational overtone, this is presented with far less force than in the lexical unit crime. as far as the definitions of the words slaughter (the killing or slaying of people in large numbers oed), carnage (the slaughter of a great number, esp. of men; butchery, massacre oed), massacre (the indiscriminate, merciless killing of a number of human beings wnwd) are concerned, they are relatively closer in meaning to yeghern (»õ»éý) and the prevalent constituent in their semantic structure is crime (criminal act not conditioned by a lawful necessity). genocide is a comprehensive term, and its semantic structure is the most inclusive. among the interpretations suggested by various monolingual english dictionaries, the one proposed by the wtnid seems to be the most complete from the point of view of the semantic globality of the word: the use of deliberate systematic measures /as killing, bodily or mental injury, unlivable conditions, prevention of birth/ calculated to bring about the extermination of a racial, political, or cultural group, or to destroy the language, religion or culture of a group. the fact that this lexical unit was introduced into different armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 139 fields of humanitarian research only after the 1940s is accounted for by the chronology of its occurrence. the word genocide was first coined in 1943 by raphael lemkin a polish-jewish lawyer, who, in one of his articles (“crime of barbarity”) used the word with reference to the massacre of the armenians in the ottoman empire in 1915 and interpreted genocide as a crime against international law. 10 later he defined genocide as any act which is carried out with the aim of partial or total annihilation of any national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such and, with the encouragement of the united states, he submitted his definition to the un general assembly for consideration. much later, on december 9, 1948, the un adopted the convention on “the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide” and lemkin’s definition served as the basis for article ii of the convention. 11 the word genocide originates from the latin gens, gentis (origin, race, gene/biolog/, type) or the greek genos (with the same meaning) and the latin lexical unit cidium (cutting; killing) which entered the english language through french as cide (the act of killing). adequate translation coming to the problem of adequacy, terminological dictionaries offer three different definitions of the term translation. 12 at the emic level and in the field of lexicography in particular, translation is defined as the juxtaposition of two or more languages, with the object of tracing semantic similarities between the units of those languages. in other words, translating means finding elements in the target language which are capable of conveying the semantic contents of the source language words adequately. the study of the aforementioned dictionary data shows that the word as a meaningful unit not infrequently presents a complex structure, and since there can almost never be absolute coincidence of the minimal distinctive semantic features operating in the semantic structures of different lexical units, we can never speak of absolute synonymy. each of the smallest elements making up the content plane of the meaning of a word may be realized through varying applications of the same word depending on the speech situ ation. it is here that the well-known language/speech dichotomy, 13 which is of fundamental significance in linguistics, should not be underestimated. this proposition makes it possible to regard the problem of adequate translation as a dialectical correlation of equivalence at the level of language, and equivalence at the level of speech. this, however, does not imply at all that the only precondition for finding the equivalent unit is to examine the original context and the speech situation. the first step in this process is to establish those constituent elements of the target language system which, irrespective of the context and the speech situation, are always equivalent to the corresponding units of the source language. in other words, the first step is to achieve semantic equivalence. the basic and most reliable sources of information for language adequacy are, undoubtedly, monolingual dictionaries, and dictionaries of synonyms that are based on the results of study of the semantic constituents of the meanings of words. armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 140 in the semantic field of equivalence of the word yeghern (»õ»éý), crime may be viewed as a non-differentiated unit, as the meaning it expresses is general and can be traced in nearly all the units in the field. the variants slaughter (mass killings, execution, massacre), carnage (massacre, bloodshed, butchery), massacre (mass murder, annihilation, huge loss of life following disease) are considerably closer to yeghern (»õ»éý). they nevertheless emphasize different semes contained in the semantic structure of the word in question, while the complete and global picture of the phenomenon is reflected in the word-unit genocide. however, the context plays a highly important role in the adequate choice of the equivalent word. full equivalence is attained where there is not only semantic, but also functional-stylistic and pragmatic adequacy, i.e. when the target language unit (a word, a sentence, a text, etc.) is equivalent to the source language unit in all the semantic, stylistic and pragmatic values that this carries. and although the semantic constituent is of prime importance, and the basic function of translation, i.e. interlingual communication, will not be realized, unless semantic adequacy is achieved, the role of the other constituent elements in achieving the desired adequacy is of no less significance. the reason for this is that it is in a particular context and in a certain speech situation that words, under the influence of various linguistic and extralinguistic factors, take on additional semantic and stylistic overtones and carry diverse pragmatic meanings. contextual realizations of the meaning expressed by yeghern (»õ»éý) an attempt will now be made to look into several different contextual realizations of the meaning expressed by the armenian word yeghern (»õ»éý). if nations are allowed to commit genocide with impunity, to hide their guilt in a camouflage of lies and details there is a real danger that othebutal regimes will be encouraged to attempt genocides. unless we speak of the armenian genocide and unless the government recognizes this historical fact, we shall leave this century of unprecedented genocides with this blot on our consciences. caroline, baroness cox house of lords, 4/1/1999 14 in the extract adduced above the speaker voices a deep concern that by failing to re cog nize the armenian genocide openly we may abet similar atrocities on the part of other regimes. if nations are allowed to commit genocide and get away with it, covering up their sin with a veil of lies and denials, our age may turn into a period of continuing genocides. the passage is rich in a number of units carrying negative connotations (commit genocide, impunity, hide the guilt in a camouflage of lies and denials, danger, brutal regimes, unprecedented genocides, blot), the combination of which in this context reveals the negative attitude of the speaker towards those who turn a blind eye to the armenian genocide, let alone perpetrate it or any other genocide. baroness cox is conarmenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 141 vinced that if the armenian genocide fails to be recognized as such, mankind will always have to bear this blot on its conscience. the application of the word genocide in this small passage more than once is intended to warn the listener against the scale and the disastrous nature (a real danger) of this possible threat to humanity as a whole, to open the eyes of those who play a key role in the discussion of this issue, and to induce them to be honest and just. the next passage is taken from the speech of john evans, the former us ambassador to armenia, addressed to the armenian community in america. today i will call this armenian genocide. i think that we, the us government, owe you, our fellow citizens, a more straightforward and honest discussion of this problem. i can tell you as a person who has studied this problem – i have no doubts about what happened. i think that it is inappropriate for us, the americans, to play with words in this case. i believe that we must call a spade a spade. john evans us ambassador to armenia addressed to american armenians on february 19, 2005 15 the context of the passage obviously differs from the previous one with respect to its emotional-expressive charge. stylistically neutral units are dominant here (us government, fellow citizens, straightforward discussion of the problem, tell, a person who has studied this problem, about what happened, etc.). their presence in the extract indicates that the goal of the speaker is to present to the public the firm belief to which he has come on the basis of his own thorough investigation of the historical evidence, according to which the massacre of the armenians committed by the ottoman empire was nothing but genocide. here, the speaker does not set out to influence the listener by inflaming his/her wounds, which are still fresh. his speech is based on the truth he has arrived at after his own examination of the historical facts (as a person who has studied this problem). the use of idiom (to call a spade a spade) in this speech is of core importance. on the one hand, it confirms that the word genocide is the most appropriate in the light of evaluation of the events as such, and on the other hand, it implies a plea to leave political considerations aside and to call the phenomenon of the armenian genocide by the word that equates to it internationally, i.e. genocide. the text presented below is the appeal of 68 professionals representing various spheres of activity sent to the swedish parliament in 2008. the armenian genocide, which also engulfed the assyrians, pontic greeks and other minorities in the ottoman empire, began more than nine decades ago in 1915, but this issue gains added urgency the longer that denial of the crime continues. the genocide, or “extermination” as it was labeled by the international media and diplomatic corps, was an estabarmenian folia anglistika armenological studies 142 lished fact for the world community. during the brief postwar period following the defeat of turkey in 1918 until the rise of the turkish nationalist movement led by mustafa kemal, the annihilation of the armenians was discussed openly. turkish court martial tribunals tried political and military leaders implicated in “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity”. several of the accused were found guilty and were sentenced to death or given prison terms. postwar turkey passed through a phase similar to that of germany after world war ii. during these proceedings the truth about the persecution of the minorities in the ottoman empire was brought to light with horrifying details. the process did not last long, however. the rise of the turkish nationalist movement ad rejection of the sultan’s government ultimately led to the disbanding of the tribunals and the release of most of the accused. almost all of the remaining christian population – armenian, assyrian and greek – was then cleansed from their homelands of several millennia. much of the court data and protocols disappeared, and turkey entered a period of trying to erase all traces of armenian existence in anatolia and the historic armenian plateau to the east. nine decades later, the once called “forgotten genocide” is no longer forgotten and warrants growing attention among academic and political circles. it is seen as a prototype of mass killing in the twentieth century and can be viewed as one of the most successful campaigns of genocide and ethnic cleansing in all history. the victimization of the armenians extended to the assyrian, greek, yezidi and even kurdish population , which was subjected to extensive “social engineering” through forced relocation and resettlement. as it happened, the turkish beneficiaries of an “armenia without armenians” and, despite worldwide pledges and promises to punish the perpetrators, escaped any responsibility for the crime. today, turkey implements an active campaign of denial. silence and passivity on the part of the world community, including sweden, can only aid an abet this campaign. all the arguments relating to the need to further research or lack of consensus among scholars are spurious. the archives of every major country in europe leave no doubt about the campaign of annihilation which occurred under the cover of a world conflict. the denialist arguments are all politically motivated and have nothing to do with the historical record. they are more credible than those of holocaust deniers such as robert faurisson, david irving , willis carto, and ernst zundel. raphael lemkin, who coined the term genocide in the 1940s and was the principal author of the u.n. convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide, was deeply aware of the armenian calamity and the failure of the international community to intercede or at least to punish the authors of the genocide. recent research has demonstrated how deeply he was affected by the absence of effective internationarmenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 143 al machinery to intervene at the times. he was also troubled by the persecution and massacres of the assyrians in iraq during the 1930s. what is more, newly conducted research at uppsala university confirms that the swedish foreign department and government, through the reports of ambassador per gustaf august cosswa anckarsvard’s and military attache einar af wirsen, were well aware of the annihilation that was occurring in the ottoman empire. today sweden is internationally regarded as a champion of human rights. it is incumbent on the swedish authorities to live up to this reputation and to reject any compromise with negationism and denial. the swedish government should attempt to assist turkey to become a better democracy by facing its history and acknowledging the truth, not by continuing to stagger in the darkness of self-deception and pretense. today, the data and information about the genocide are so extensive that no serious politician can honestly cite insufficient or inconclusive research as an excuse to avoid recognition. refusal to recognize established fact based on qualitative and quantitative research may be regarded as being tantamount to denial. the researchers have done their job in establishing the reality of the armenian genocide. now, the turn has come for the political leaders to fulfill their responsibility by recognizing this calamity for what it was. the signatories of this letter do not consider there is any doubt that the massacres of christians and other minorities in the ottoman empire during the world war i constituted genocide. even though research must and will continue, the existing information is compelling and must be acknowledged as such 16. this appeal, based on documentary data, is meant to voice the firm belief of the signatories that the recognition of the armenian genocide is the most honest, just and indeed the only way to avoid the necessity of finding an excuse for turning a blind eye to what the world community now regards without doubt as an established truth. it is also the best way to help turkey put an end to its decades of self-deception, to evaluate its history as it is and to move more steadily towards democratization. post-war turkey witnessed a few attempts at consideration and condemnation of the most dreadful and awesome persecutions, carried out by the ottoman empire in ways beyond human imagining, labeling them war crimes. however, the process did not last long. with the turkish nationalists gaining more power, the courts were closed, many of the convicts were set free and many of the court protocols and documents reflecting the truth disappeared. but are we aware of the fact that armenians were not the only nation sacrificed on the altar of turkey? there were also assyrians, greeks, yezidis and even kurds. moreover, the truth is that despite the pledges and promises the international community gave to the people of armenia, the crime remained unpunished. today turkey has launched an even stricter campaign of genocide denial. silence and passivity will only encourage this campaign of lies. and all the arguments about lack of agreement in academic circles and the armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 144 need to continue research in order to clarify the issue, are nothing but false and simulated. the archives piled up in different european countries are sufficient to prove that what is labeled a consequence of war was, in fact, a campaign of extermination of an entire nation. the context of the appeal addressed to the swedish parliament is of great interest in the sense that almost all the constituents making up the semantic whole of the word genocide (extermination, crime, ethnic cleansing, cleanse from their homelands of several millennia, victimization, forced relocation and resettlement, campaign of annihilation, mass killing, massacre) are introduced through different linguistic units. despite its apparent informative, documentary nature from the point of view of pragmatics, the passage is not devoid of certain elements typical of public writing, including units with emotive-expressive-evaluative overtones. this is accounted for by the fact that the speech is designed to win over others to the attitude of the swedish parliament, to awaken the international community from the deep sleep of indifference towards human destinies, and to arouse a wish to be just and honest in the approach to the question. apart from the aforementioned units which are of exceptional interest as objects of our study and all carry an inherent negative connotational value, the passage as a whole is drenched with negative evaluative overtones both in its verbal, horizontal context and in the denial of the historical and political events condensed between the lines (i.e. the vertical context) (accused, guilty, sentenced to death, persecution of the minorities, horrifying details, much of the court data and protocols disappeared, a period of trying to erase all traces of armenian existence in anatolia, the victimization of the armenians extended to assyrian, greek, yezidi and even kurdish population, “social engineering” through forced relocation and resettlement, turkish authorities became the beneficiaries of an “armenia without armenians”, …. escaped any responsibility for the crime, etc.) the use of the word combination social engineering which also has a terminological value, should be singled out for having no connection with the general context. 17 it creates a kind of stylistic contrast with the help of the trope of enantiosemy and acquires an obvious ironical meaning. the role of inverted commas in the realization of this stylistic device of irony should also be noted. the pragmatic goal of the authors’ intention is made clear through the combination of all these linguostylistic devices, which are intended to present the true picture of the genocide committed at the very start of the 20 th century and to show the abhorrence of such anti-human acts by the progressive peoples of the world. the supporters of the appeal hold to a firm belief that the swedish parliament will find a place among those representatives of progressive nations. surely enough, the swedish parliament recognized the armenian genocide on march 11, 2010, as well as the act of the annihilation of assyrians and pontic greeks, thereby proving the efficiency of this appeal. the word calamity (³õ»ï) used in this context may be characterized as a lexical unit with an extremely general and non-differentiated semantic meaning. from a study of the wide array of synonyms of calamity in dictionaries of english synonyms 18 (1. trouble, distress, misfortune, misery, unhappiness, affliction; 2. referring to an instance of what is calamitous: trouble, misfortune, misery, distress, disaster /implying unforeseen armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 145 and adverse forces/, catastrophe /with implications of finality/, blow, scourge /implies severe and continued calamity/; curse/spec./ fatality) the following conclusion may be drawn: although any tragedy or evil, including wars, massacres and devastations may be termed a disaster in the broadest sense, 19 the word calamity appears unable to convey the global meaning of the armenian genocide in all its manifestations. conclusion: the adequate english equivalent of yeghern (»õ»éý). the results of the research may be summed up through the following diagram. hence, the study of the word yeghern (»õ»éý) in armenian and the examination of its semantic, stylistic and pragmatic fields of equivalence in english at both language and speech levels reveal that the english equivalent for the armenian word yeghern is genocide – the only unit acknowledged internationally and used within the scope of international law. 20 notes: 1. see guy de maupassant, etude prefacant le livre lettre à george sand; par gustave flaubert. paris: g. charpentier et cie; 1884. http://flaubert.univ.rouen.fr/bovary_ 6/temoins/guy2.html 2. the qualification offered by toumanian is quite well-known. see r. ishkhanyan, arevelahay banasteghtsutyan lezvi patmutyun (the history of the language of eastern armenian poetry). yerevan: yerevan university press, 1978. 3. see paruyr sevak, sayat nova. yerevan, 1987, p.136. in the poetic speculations of razmik davoyan “gishakerneri, antaghandneri strukn e bary/ na hantcharin e armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 146 genocide yeghern destruction of language (crime) destruction of religion, culture (crime) massacre mass killing (crime) slaughter (crime) victimization (crime) race murder (crime) forced relocation of children and grown ups (crime) ethnic cleansing (crime) annihilation of a race (crime) carnage (crime) racial extermination (crime) miayn havasar” (the word is a slave of beasts, the untalented/ it is equal only to the genius). r. davoyan, bary (the word)// meghrahats. yerevan: hayastan press, 1973, p. 15. 4. hr. acharyan, hayeren armatakan bararan (fundamental etymological dictionary of the armenian language). yerevan: yerevan university press, 1973, vol.2, p.17. 5. see a.i. smirnickij, khrestomatiya po istorii anglijskogo jazyka. moscow: literatury na inostrannykh jazykakh publ., 1953, p. 160. 6. see a. suqiasyan, hayots lezvi homanishneri batsatrakan bararan (explanatory dictionary of armenian synonyms). 2nd edition, yerevan, ysu press, 2009, p. 264. 7. for thorough examination of the word yeghern see p. meitikhanyan, yeghern bari lezvakan qnnutyn (linguistic analysis of the word yeghern), pan-armenian journal vem: yerevan, 2009, no. 1(26), p. 144-147. 8. see m. guyumtchean, yndardzak bararan hayerene angleren (armenian-english extended dictionary). peyrut: atlas, also n. baratyan et al., armenian-english dictionary. yerevan: macmillan armenia, 2002. 9. the following explanatory dictionaries have been used in the article: the concise english dictionary (cod). oxford: oxford university press, 1976; the heritage illustrated dictionary of the english language (hidel). new york, 1973; longman dictionary of contemporary english (ldce). g.b.: longman group, 1978; the oxford dictionary of law (odl). oxford: oxford university press, 4th ed., 1997; the oxford english dictionary (oed). oxford: clarendon press, 19611970, v. ii; webster’s new world dictionary (wnwd). cleveland & new york: the world publishing comp., 1951; webster’s third new international dictionary (wtnid). springfield, mass.: merriam-webster inc., 1981. 10. in 1944 the us saw the publication of axis rule in occupied europe by lemkin in which the author came up with a thorough and detailed legal analysis of the policy of the nazi germany during world war ii. the work is also noted for the scrupulous examination and further addition to the comments on the term genocide. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/genocide 11. in the present convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such: a/ killing members of the group; b/ causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c/ deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d/ imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e/ forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. (see convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide, article ii). 12. see o.s. akhmanova, slovar’ lingvisticheskikh terminov. moscow, sovetskaya entsiklopediya press, 1966. 13. see a. i. smirnitskij, ob’yektivnost’ sushchestvovaniya yazika. moscow, mgu, 1954. 14. www.genocide1915.info/quotes/ armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 147 15. http://www.genocide-museum.am/eng/quotations.php 16. itwasgenocide.armenica.org 17. the wtnid english dictionary interprets the terminological combination of “social engineering” as manipulation of human resources to affect the role and the function human beings have in society. 18. see webster’s new dictionary of synonyms. springfield, mass.: mirriam-webster inc. publishers, 1984; sturges, allen, synonyms and antonyms. maud publication, 1994. 19. see ed. aghayan, ardi hayereni batsatrakan bararan (explanatory dictionary of contemporary armenian). yerevan: hayastan press, 1976, vol. 1. 20. the present research allows us to conclude that when uttering the phrase “the medz yeghern” in his speech on april 24, 2009, referring to the events carried out in the ottoman empire in 1915, the us president barack obama was well aware of the equivalence of these units/ http://www,whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/ the logically grounded development of this event, must naturally, be the application of the term genocide which in the domain of international law seems to be the only established term. ºõ»éý μ³éç ñ³ù³ñå»ùáõãû³ý ¹³ßïá ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù ðá¹í³íáõù ùýýáõãû³ý ¿ ³éýíáõù ñ³û»ñ»ý »õ»éý μ³éç ã³ñ·ù³ý³ï³ý ³ý· é» ñ»ý ï³ñμ»ñ³ïý»ñç ¨ ¹ñ³ýó çù³ë ï³ ûçý ñ³ù³å³ï³ëë³ýáõãû³ý ëý¹çñá: ºé ý»éáí 黽í³μ³ýáõãû³ý ù»ç ñçù ý³ ñ³ñ ³ñå»ù áõý»óáõ 黽áõ/ëáëù ñ³ ï³ ¹ñ³ ùç ³ë ýáõãû³ý ¹ñáõûãçó` ñ»õçý³ïá ùýýáõù ¿ ïíû³é μ³éá ùç ïáõ ùçó áñå»ë 黽í³ï³ý ñ³ù³ï³ñ·ç ùç³íáñ, ùûáõë ïáõùçó áñå»ë ï»ý¹³ýç ù³ñ¹ï³ûçý ëáëùáõù áñáß³ïç ¹çý³ùç½ùáí ûåïí³í ¨ á׳ï³ý áõ ·áñí³μ³ý³ï³ý çù³ëï³ûçý »ñ³ý·ý»ñáí ñ³ ·»ó³í ï³ññ: ðá¹í³íáõù »õ»éý μ³éç ùýýáõãûáõýá 黽íç ù³ï³ñ¹³ïáõù ñçùýíáõù ¿ μ³½ù³ãçí μ³ó³ïñ³ï³ý, ñáù³ýß³ûçý ¨ »ñï黽íû³ μ³é³ñ³ýý»ñáõù ý»ñ ï³û³óí³í ïíû³éý»ñç íñ³: ²ûë ùç³íáñç ïçé³éáõãû³ý ëáëù³μ³ý³ï³ý ûáõñ³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñç áõëáõù ý³ ëçñáõãûáõýá ï³ñíáõù ¿ 2008 ãí³ï³ýçý ï³ñμ»ñ áéáñïý»ñç` ãíáí 68 ù³ë ý³ ·»ïý»ñç ïáõùçó þí»¹ç³ûç ëáñññ¹³ñ³ýçý áõõõí³í ïáãç ñçù³ý íñ³` ñá ñç ½á ý³ ï³ý ¨ áõõõ³óç· ñ³ù³ï»ùëï»ñç ñ³ßí³éáõùáí: àõëáõùý³ëçñáõãû³ùμ ñ³ëï³ïíáõù ¿, áñ ãý³û³í ³ûë ùç³íáñç é³ûý ñá ù³ýß³ ûçý ¹³ßïç ³éï³ûáõãû³ýá çýãå»ë ñ³û»ñ»ýáõù, ³ûýå»ë ¿é ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù, »õ»éý μ³ éç ñ³ù³å³ï³ëë³ý ñ³ù³ñå»ùý ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù genocide μ³éý ¿` 1948 ãí³ï³ýçó ç í»ñ ùçç³½·³ûýáñ»ý ñ³ëï³ïí³í ùç³ï ñ³ù³ñå»ù ùç³íáñá: armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 148 angl20002 angl20003 angl20004 angl20011 angl20012 angl20013 angl20014 angl20015 angl20016 angl20017 angl20018 angl20019 angl20020 angl20021 angl20022 angl20023 angl20024 angl20025 angl20026 angl20027 angl20028 angl20029 angl20030 angl20031 angl20032 angl20033 angl20034 angl20035 angl20036 angl20037 angl20038 angl20039 angl20040 angl20041 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angl20142 angl20143 angl20144 angl20145 angl20146 angl20147 angl20148 angl20149 angl20150 angl20151 angl20152 angl20153 angl20154 angl20155 angl20156 angl20157 angl20158 angl20159 angl20160 angl20161 angl20162 angl20163 angl20164 angl20165 angl20166 angl20167 angl20168 angl20169 angl20170 angl20171 angl20172 angl20173 angl20174 angl20175 angl20176 angl20177 angl20178 angl20179 angl20180 angl20181 angl20182 angl20183 angl20184 angl20185 maket 2011-2:layout 1.qxd english as a “shared code” for international scientific communication ofelia poghosyan yerevan state university in recent years the role of english has become crucial in the ongoing process ofglobalization worldwide. today the public recognition of the global position of english is already a fact, and, presumably, there is nothing to stop the spread of english as a global lingua franca in the foreseeable future. as a consequence of globalization, a range of language situations, either physically or virtually (e.g. through internet communication), have emerged. as far as the present research work is concerned, the physical contact situations are frequently observed at conferences, debates, discussions, lectures, round tables, etc..., when the participants have to make presentations, ask/answer questions, when they do not only have to introduce their new ideas or express their own viewpoints on this or that professional problem/issue, but also understand and share thoughts with each other. actually, it is the lack of necessary professional language skills that makes it difficult for a scientist-speaker/listener or scientist-writer/reader to send and receive information on a particular subject for professional/specific purposes. in this connection it is indisputable that due to today’s requirements of the english language acquisition, some new approaches and strategies of language teaching/learning are needed. h.g. widdowson (1978) states that even though language itself is a complex system, it may display certain peculiarities of usage as a means of communication in certain professional spheres. such peculiarities are closely connected with the characteristics of this or that profession. in this respect various perspective paths for teaching/learning english for specific purposes should be paved. it goes without saying that teaching scientific english (se) plays an indispensable role in the sphere of international scientific communication (isc), as the learning process of the latter can be implemented on the basis of se. se, which is, in fact, a language for specific purposes, is important for every scholar to master not only because it is a key to understand and be understood in scientific communication environment, but also because it is necessary for a scientist to be aware of the process of the development of international scientific thought. in terms of functional styles the language of science serves to perform an informative function, and that is a top priority for this style of language. as it is assumed, the language of science is used to convey scientific information and facts. however, it is also well known that either the sender or the receiver of information (those involved in scientific communication) are human beings, therefore, the language they use for specific purposes cannot be devoid of emotions at all (bragina, dodrokhotova 1988; budagov 1976). in other words, though in scientific discourse the stylistic function proper is that of informative, in some situations the function of impact also works. in this respect the function of impact is used to express not only the exquisiteness of the author’s (scientistarmenian folia anglistikalinguistics 19 speaker’s/writer’s) personal style (as it generally occurs in fiction), but also to make the so-called dry, complicated style of scientific language more attractive and achievable, as well as, to introduce the scientific information as clearly, concisely and vividly as possible. thus, on the one hand the language of science contains linguistic elements with the help of which the informative function is realized, on the other hand there are words and word-combinations which are used to implement the function of impact. however, in this respect it should be pointed out that the function of impact works differently in the styles of scientific language and fiction (or verbal art). this fact is quite grounded, since the aim of communication in different functional styles (genres, registers) is different. it is generally an acknowledged fact that the function of impact is characteristic of verbal art. it is mainly used to meet the aesthetic purposes of the reader/listener, as well as to express the beauty, originality or uniqueness of the author’s personal style of writing, the level of flight of his/her imagination and objective reality in general. in contrast, the function of impact in the language of science is aimed at making the information and facts of scientific discourse more impressive and comprehensive as well as demonstrating the author’s diversity of knowledge, the properties of his/her personal style. before passing to our target issue, which may be one of the key strategies of international scientific communication, it is worth shedding light upon some approaches to lsp. some linguists, such as p. strevens, p. robinson, t. hutchinson & a.waters etc, hold that lsp deals with language teaching methods rather than with language system. the linguists state that lsp has to work out special methods and principles which will meet the learners’ educational needs. the learners’ needs have necessarily to be taken into account in the process of teaching. however, we should assume that no method can work unless the learner of lsp has the basic knowledge of general english. no one would probably deny the fact that it is impossible to construct anything if one does not have the necessary building materials, even if the most modern tools are available for that purpose. the same phenomenon is observed in language teaching sphere. consequently, it should be taken into account that a certain level of language knowledge (speaking/writing skills) is required for the implementation of verbal communication in general and in scientific environment in particular. in this respect we side with the standpoint of such linguists as o. akhmanova, r. idzelis, z. bareikite, v.g. kostomarov, o.d. mitrofanova, l. hoffman etc., who state that lsp is a variety of language whose mastering requires a certain level of language medium necessary for communication on professional matters. thus, in connection with the concept of lsp, it should be concluded that the question “what shall we teach?” is of more importance than that of “how shall we teach?”. research work has shown (akhmanova, idzelis 1978; ter-minasova 1986; gasparyan 2000) that lsp is aimed at realizing an effective and purposeful scientific communication. the thorough linguostylistic analyses of linguistic texts, literary-critical texts, law-texts, etc. have brought us to the conclusion that the three basic levels of the vocabulary of scientific prose style (1. words of general language; 2. general scientific armenian folia anglistika linguistics 20 vocabulary; 3. terms proper: terms and terminological words or word-combinations (akhmanova, idzelis 1978), in fact, build up the core of the vocabulary of international scientific communication. how can these layers be revealed in the text? in this respect the method of linguostylistic analysis of a text can be helpful, as it includes the semantic and metasemiotic levels for the study of the vocabulary of a text as a whole. on the semantic level, we treat the linguistic units (words, word-combinations, grammatical forms, patterns of major syntax) as such, as parts of the emic system of language. in other words, we concentrate on the general semantic content, or the so-called nominative (direct) meanings of these units. but all this is a preliminary linguistic investigation from which we necessarily have to pass to the metasemiotic, or stylistic analysis proper. after having analysed the semantic level, we proceed to the analysis on the metasemiotic level. now let us study the connotations which words acquire in oral or written speech. the linguostylistic study of the text would be incomplete without the analysis in terms of rhythm and timbre suprasyntactics. we must understand what the text actually sounds like, how emotional-expressive-evaluative overtones are expressed in the oral form of speech. the two levels, though basically different, are in constant interaction, because the relationship between them is dialectical. the metasemiotic level is based on the semantic one and cannot exist without the latter. at the same time the semantic level as such is unable to reveal the refinements of textual analysis. the method of linguostylistic analysis is universal in the sense that it can be applied to all kinds of texts, irrespective of register. even intellective texts, which by definition aim at disseminating information, may contain a certain amount of metasemiotic utterances. this method can be easily taught to undergraduate students and all learners in general. this simple, step-by-step methodology gives the learners an idea of how to work with the text so as to be able to reveal and take into consideration those properties which are superimposed on the semantic content proper (akhmanova, alexandrova 1989). as the method of linguostylistic analysis is universally applicable to any kind of text (no matter what functional style it belongs to), we will attempt to use it for the study of the following extract from a literary critical text where the author expresses his own viewpoints on e. hemingway’s style of writing: “hemingway’s style of writing is striking. his sentences are short, his words simple, yet they are often filled with emotion. a careful reading can show us, furthermore, that he is a master of the pause. that is, if we look closely, we see how the action of his stories continues during the silences, during the times his characters say nothing. there are times when the most powerful effect comes from restraint. such times occur often in hemingway’s fiction. he perfected the art of conveying emotion with words. in contrast to the romantic writer, who often emphasizes abundance and even excess, hemingway is a classicist in his restraint and understatement. he believes, with many other classicists, that the strongest effect comes with an economy of means. this is not to say that his work is either emotionless or dull. “in another country”, the short story is filled with emotional overtones. its dominant feeling is one of pity for armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 21 misfortunes that can never be remedied. a hand crippled is, and will always be, a hand crippled. a beloved wife lost through death is lost indeed. perhaps we should be resigned to such misfortunes, but the italian major in this story laments that he cannot be resigned. the tragedies of life cannot really be remedied” (curry, 1995). our first step will be semantic analysis. we must make sure that we understand the general semantic content of all linguistic units. the words of this text (as in any other intellective text) fall into 3 groups: 1) words of general language; 2) general scientific vocabulary; 3) terms proper. the first group of words words of general language, comprises such examples as: life, emotion, action, wife, master, etc. words like sentences, reading, writing, writer, means, etc. can be referred to the second group that is to say, the units of general scientific vocabulary. the following terms and terminological combinations are referred to the third group: style of writing, short story, fiction, classicist, romantic writer, etc. a considerable number of units with obvious expressive-emotional-evaluative connotations are found in the following extract: “hemingway’s style of writing is striking, the most powerful effect, misfortunes that can never be remedied, lament, crippled, a master of pause, action continues during the silences ...” the sentence “the tragedies of life cannot be really remedied”, used by the literary critic in his piece of critical writing, is a result of the influence of hemingway’s style itself, and the critic, actually, agrees with the author of the short story in expressing the opinion that ‘the misfortunes of life are difficult to overcome and are impossible to forget.’ it goes without saying that the linguostylistic analysis of the text will be incomplete without the study of both syntactic and rhythmical structures of the passage. on the whole, this text is constituted with the help of short, concise and clear sentences which are characterized by a monotonous rhythm peculiar to the language of science. however, the present extract (taken from a literary critical text) has some stylistic properties similar to those of fiction. therefore, in the extract we come across not only sentences with serious, monotonous rhythm, but also those which require a specific prosodic coloring and sound categorical. for instance, let us see how the intonations of the following sentences differ from each other: 1. a careful reading can show us furthermore, that he is a master of pause. 2. his sentences are short, his words simple, yet they are often filled with emotion. in the first example the intonation should be serious. as far as the second example is concerned, the intonation there should sound with some prosodic coloring, as here we come across the succession of the following: “sentences are short, his words are simple, yet they are often filled with emotion”. let’s analyze another piece of the extract: “in contrast to romantic writer, who often emphasizes abundance and even excess, hemingway is a classicist in his restraint and understatement.” in this passage the author expresses his critical, somewhat categorical attitude to the differences between the style of writing of a romantic writer and that of a classicist. on the whole, the extract serves to realize an informative function. now let us compare this extract with the one brought bellow and try to reveal the stylistic differences armenian folia anglistika linguistics 22 between them: “curtis writes with a razor-sharp intelligence that grabs the reader by heart and never lets go. his utterly believable depiction of the self-reliant charm and courage of bud, not buddy, puts this highly recommended title at the top of the list of books to be read again and again” (curtis, 2002). the critic’s words about the author of the book “bud, not buddy” include emotional-expressive-evaluative units such as: razor-sharp intelligence, grabs the reader by heart… etc, which serve to perform the function of impact. however, in this piece of writing the critic does not aim at expressing aesthetic values since on the whole, he actually intends to give information about curtis’ style of writing. thus, we can state that the emotionally colored elements used in literary critical texts differ from those used in fiction in quality. it is just a matter of the author’s (critic’s) personal style of writing. in connection with the aim of the present article, it is important to mention that the connotative elements should be included into the vocabulary of international scientific communication. it is an acknowledged fact that the study of texts in terms of connotation shows that human speech can basically be divided into intellective and imaginative. researches have been done to draw a distinct line between the informative function of speech and verbal art (based predominantly on the function of impact). it has always been assumed that in intellective communication the speaker or writer, whose basic aim is to send information, does not rely on the connotative values of words and utterances. thus, the research on how scientific english can serve as a means of international scientific communication brings us to the following conclusion: all the 3 layers of the vocabulary of scientific prose can serve as a sort of “shared code” for scientists to communicate in this or that scientific environment. in fact, this refers to all the languages for specific purposes. consequently, it can be assumed that the core of the language of science, i.e. the three layers of the vocabulary of scientific prose, can serve as a “shared code” for all those who are involved either in oral or written communication in the sphere of science, otherwise stated, it can serve as a “shared code” for international scientific communication. references: 1. akhmanova, o.; alexandrova, o. (eds) (1989) a manual of english. m.: moscow university press. 2. akhmanova, o.; idzelis, r. (1972/1978) what is the english we use? m.: moscow university press. 3. bareikite, z. ustoichivost’ slovosochetanij v nauchnoi rechi (k voprosu ob optimizatsii nauchnogo teksta). / avtoreferat dis. kand. fil. nauk. moskva. 4. bragina, n.n.; dodrokhotova t.a. (1988) funktsionalnie asimetrii cheloveka. m.: medicina. 5. budagov r.a. (1976) chelovek i yego yazik. m.: nauka. 6. gasparyan, s.k. (2008) lingvopoetica obraznogo sravneniya. (2-oe izd.). yerevan: lusakn. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 23 7. gasparyan, s.k. (2000) figura sravneniya v funktsionalnom osveshchenii. yerevan: ygu. 8. gasparyan s.; knyazian a. (2002) academic english for linguists. yerevan: ysu press. 9. hutchinson, t.; waters a. (1987) english for specific purposes: a learning-centered approach. cambridge: cambridge university press. 10. kostomarov, v.g.; mitrofanova, o.d. (1984) metodicheskoe rukovodstvo dlya prepodavateley russkogo yazika inostrantsam. m.: russkij yazik. 11. poghosyan, o. (2009) grakanagitakan sharadranqi gortsarakan-haghordaktsakan hayetsakerpy. / teknatsuakan atenakhosutiun. yerevan. 12. robinson, p.c. (1980) esp (english for specific purposes). oxford: oxford university press. 13. strevens, p. (1977) new orientations in teaching english. oxford: oxford university press. 14. ter-minasova, s.g. (1986) sintagmatika funktsionalnikh stilei i optimizatsiya prepodavaniya inostrannikh yazikov. m.: mgu. 15. widdowson, h.g. (1978) teaching language as communication. oxford: oxford universitiy press. ²ý·é»ñ»ýá áñå»ë ùçç³½·³ûçý ·çï³ï³ý ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý ùççáó ²ûëûñ ù³õ³ù³ï³ý, ïýï»ë³ï³ý, ·çï³ï³ý, ùß³ïáõã³ûçý ¨ ³ûé áéáñïý»ñáõù μ³½ ù³μýáõûã ëý¹çñý»ñç éáõíù³ýý »ý ýå³ëïáõù ³ßë³ññç ï³ñμ»ñ »ñïñý»ñç ùçç¨ ûñ»óûñ ëáñ³óáõ ß÷áõùý»ñá: ²ïýñ³ûï ¿, áñ ³ûëåçëç çñ³íç׳ ïáõù ³ý·é»ñ»ýçý, ù³ëý³íáñ³å»ë ·çï³ï³ý ³ý·é»ñ»ýçý ïçñ³å»ï»éá ññ³ï³å ¿ ¹³éýáõù: ²û¹ ³ éáõùáí ëáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù ÷áñó ¿ ³ñíáõù ï³ï³ñí³í μ³½ ù³μáí³ý¹³ï áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõýý»ñç ñçù³ý íñ³ áñáß³ïç³óý»é áõ í»ññ³ý»é 黽í³ï³ý áõ á׳ ï³ý ³ûý ùççáóý»ñá, áñáýó ïçñ³å»ï»éá ïýå³ëïç ï³ñμ»ñ ³½ ·áõãû³ý ·çïý³ï³ýý»ñç ùçç³½·³ ûçý ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ýá ù³ëý³ïçó ¹³éý³éáõý: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 24 maket 2011-2:layout 1.qxd a sociolinguistic approach to the problem of anglicisms in armenian anahit galstyan, hayk galstyan yerevan state university introduction the methodological and theoretical foundations for researching attitudes were established in the parent disciplines of sociology and psychology in the first half of the twentieth century. attitudes in general, and language attitudes in particular, are of considerable interest to social psychologists, sociologists and sociolinguists. while reviewing studies in this field, we noticed that there is a great number of researches wherein the language attitudes of inhabitants from different bilingual settings within the same country are examined as well as transnational studies involving the majority and minority languages concerned in different bilingual areas (ryan & giles1982; baker1988; edwards 1999; garvett, coupland & williams 2003; giles & billings 2004; mckenzie 2010 and many others). however, attitudes towards english as a foreign language has been researched in a few studies (e.g. lasagabaster, huguet 2007). besides, the attitude of armenians towards the english language has not been examined yet. developing sociolinguistic theory has demonstrated that people’s attitudes and perceptions towards language help to shape their usage, and these perceptions shape governmental and educational policy and language planning (stockwell 2002:61). hence,we aimed at carrying out a sociolinguistic as well as sociological study of purists’ and ordinary native speakers’ attitudes towards lexical enrichment of armenian. intelligibility and acceptability tests were made with young/old, town/country, educated/‘backward’ armenian speakers from ra and from the usa, california (los angeles and fresno). our research in the usa was possible thanks to esse bursary 2009. the informants were mainly from glendale and hollywood (los angeles county), which are the cities where most of armenian-americans live. glendale is home to 53,860 armenian-americans, making up 27.6% of the total population. as of 2009, one out of five members of glendale city council was of armenian descent – ara j. najarian. former armenianamerican mayors of glendale were, larry zarian, bob yousefian, rafi manoukian, and aranajarian. armenian families have lived in the city since the 1920s, but the surge in immigration escalated in the 1970s. armenian-americans are well integrated into the city, with many businesses, several armenian schools, and ethnic/cultural organizations serving this ethnic group. the research was also carried out in fresno county, a melting pot of ethnic heritages and rich in cultural diversity. the population of fresno county now exceeds 786,000 and includes basque, asian, indian, armenian, hispanic, chinese, portuguese, and japanese among its residents. this visit enabled us to study the bilingual individual in a natural setting. in this context, ‘minority language’ is understood as the language spoken by a socially – and usually numerically – subordinate group within the total population of a given society. as stated in “concise encyclopedia of pragmatics” (mey 2009:44): armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 165 language choice is not a purely linguistic issue. in many countries of the world, much of the social identification of individuals, as well as of groups, is accomplished through language choice. by choosing one or another of the two or more languages in one’s linguistic repertoire, a speaker reveals and defines his or her social relationships with other people. at a societal level, whole groups of people, and in fact, entire nations, can be identified by the language and languages they use. language, together with culture, religion, and history, is a major component of national identity. in the usa we deal with a situation when a small weak language (in our case armenian) comes into contact with a large powerful language (english) used by the majority or dominant group. the two languages in close contact can lead to interference in all aspects of language, from the sound system to conversational rules. on the other hand, we have quite a different situation in the republic of armenia. after proclaming independence from the ussr in 1991, armenians ceased to consider russian as lingua franca. instead, english has become the main foreign language taught in schools and is used for the communication with the world, acquisition of technology and development at large. in order to be able to judge the validity of certain attitudes and evaluate the actual impact of english on armenian both in the usa and ra, we have drawn information in two different ways: by questionnaires and interviews. interviews provide a good deal of data, and are therefore invaluable in studying in depth the language attitude of the subjects. interviews are much more flexible, but of course limited because of the time they take to give and analyze. however, to obtain statistically analyzable data about attitudes and behaviors, a common technique is the questionnaire.the number of informants to those questionnaires in the republic of armenia was 564. the collection of the data and their sociolinguistic analysis took us a year (from 2010 to 2011). in the usa 320 people participated in our research, the results of which were compared and contrasted with the findings of our investigation in ra. it should be noted that the same questionnaire was used and the same methodology was applied in each setting (in the usa and ra). by repeating the same question in different forms, we could get some idea of the reliability of the answers, and by careful wording of questions, attention was focused on those features that were to be analyzed. one of the difficulties is that questionnaires are fixed in advance and so they might leave out questions that seem interesting later on. to eschew these shortcomings, we carried out a small-scale pilot study before the main survey. about 45 informants answered the questionnaires, which enabled us to make amendments in them. the questionnaire utilized to gather the data can be divided into three main parts. the first one deals with personal information, such as age, sex, origin, etc. in the second section the participants are invited to answer questions concerning the use of anglicisms in their speech. the final section touches upon the problem of improvement of the current situation and finding ways of struggle for the purity of our national language. armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 166 the sociolinguistic study as hudson (1980:21) states, “….some linguistic items, such as items of vocabulary, are different from all other items with regard to the kind of person using them, or to the circumstances in which they are used”. thus we can assume that every individual in a community is unique in his language. opinions, attitudes, and self-awareness of individuals and communities can affect linguistic usage. “throughout history, people have altered their own language or forced others to change their language because of their own attitudes and beliefs” (stockwell 2002:13). this is the reason that we have tried to survey individual’s attitude towards the use of anglicisms in armenian speech. the informants from ra and the usa have provided crucial information about the linguistic and extralinguistic factors that have contributed to the use and assimilation of anglicisms in armenian. as mentioned above, the first part of the questionnaire (in armenian) established the social background of the participants: males – 31.6% usa / 14.4% ra females – 68.4% usa / 84.6 ra permanent residence – 98% were the citizens of the usa. however, only 8.8% of them were born in the usa, whereas 77.5% were immigrants from the republic of armenia, 13.7% from other countries, such as egypt, iran, lebanon, syria. 2% of informants were in the usa by educational projects or as temporary workers. why the number of the informants who were born in the usa is small can be explained by several factors: first, the estrangement of most third-generation armenians (especially with roots in the ottoman empire and mid-east), which is mainly the result of intermarriages as well as cultural assimilation. most of these third-generation immigrants live outside the organized community in an institutional vacuum. second, the division of the diaspora into two different groups: the older diaspora (immigrants from 1920s to 1950s) and the new wave from armenia.the several waves of soviet emigration over the past 50 years have had a negative impact on the attitudes of older diaspora, who have mostly distanced themselves from immigrants with soviet lifestyle and mentality. rigorous analysis of the data collected in the current study has revealed that attitudes towards the use of english words in armenian speech are considerably more complex than previously thought. 81.7% of armenian-americans think that the use of anglicisms distorts our national language, whereas 8.7% admit that this is one of the means of enrichment of armenian word stock; 3.8% believe that it is easier to understand the speaker when an anglicism is used rather than it is translated or calqued; others perceive it as xenomania. grouping the answers and presenting them with the help of two variables: positive and negative, we shall have the following picture: 82.7% of armenian-americans and 49.5% of the citizens of ra consider it to be a negative phenomenon, 17.3% from the usa and 50.5% from ra believe it to be a positive one: 29.1% of ra participants think that anglicisms contribute to the enrichment of the vocabulary of the armenian language; 6.8% – do not find the use of anglicisms blameworthy; 5.5% – have positive armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 167 attitude, but they are against the unnecessary application of anglicisms in armenian speech. the outcomes revealed that the use of anglicisms is not a problem among 23.1% of armenians in the usa and 27.9%of ra citizens, while the majority of armenians both in ra and abroad (68.2% usa / 77.3% ra) consider it to be a serious problem. the informants are also asked whether there are elements or phenomena in their environment that contribute (encourage, stimulate) to the use of anglicisms. the answers are as follows: 1. yes – 23% usa / 84.8% ra 2. no – 46% usa / 9.1% ra 3. it is difficult to answer – 31% usa / 6.1% ra. informants were encouraged to give details and examples in addition to their “yes/no” answers. hence, armenian-americans claim that the english environment, the lack of armenian equivalents to english terms, or the lack of knowledge of the corresponding armenian words contribute to the use of anglicisms. on the other hand, most of the informants from ra believe that the main stimulating factor is xenomania; 36.4% consider it to be the internet and the development of information technologies; 12.1% – theestablishment of the english language as the global lingua franca. we have also inquired about the domains, where the anglicisms are often used.44.5% of us residents and 56.1% of ra citizens are sure that armenian mass media (both in the usa and in the republic of armenia) are flooded with anglicisms. 8.1% of armenian-americans use english words in clubs, 7.1% – at home, 1.6% – in armenian educational institutions, whereas 11.5% from ra use english words with friends and relatives, 4.8% – in political parties, 2.9% – in educational institutions. with respect to the importance given to the struggle against the use of anglicisms in armenian speech, the higher percentages refer to “very important” (70.3% usa / 57.3% ra), followed by “partially important” (16.2% usa / 30.5% ra), and finally“not important” (13.5% usa / 12.2% ra). armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 168 when analyzing the attitudes towards the purity of the national language, we observed that the percentage of more favorable attitudes was high: 57.7% of armenians are sure that the struggle for the purity of armenian is considered to be one of the main ways of maintenance of their national identity; 11.5% of participants think that this struggle will prevent the language from distortion and will contribute to the development of people’s abilities to communicate in pure armenian. those who find this struggle as “partially important”, mention that in certain situations the use of an english word becomes preferable. unfavorable attitudes are very low in percentage: a small number of informants do not find it important to struggle for the purity of their national language and express an opinion that it is natural for armenian-americans to use english words, even to speak english instead of armenian. they are sure that the citizens of ra should struggle for the purity of the language instead of the diaspora. the mere fact that armenian is still spoken by armenian-americans is considered to be a victory by some informants: “it’s positive that you speak armenian in the usa, it’s a victory!” says one of the participants. several people in the republic of armenia think that in this globalizing world languages must be interlaced, and it is useless to struggle for the purity of the national language. 1.2% are convinced that people should struggle not against anglicisms but against argo terms. we found it striking that 87% of informants from the usa and 64.4% – from ra use anglicisms in their speech. they mostly belong to the age-group 21-35. frequently applied anglicisms by armenian-americans are: bill, bye, channel, check (anel), coffee, computer, date, excuse me, freeway, good, have a nice day, i love you, impression, insurance, lunch, no, ok, please, see you, sorry, stop (anel), thank you, tv, welcome, yes, all right, etc. ra citizens often use the following english words: ok, hi, love, sorry, nice, of course, party, design, bank, fast food, good, maybe, online, of my god, super, hot-dog, bye, player, save, gentleman, office, mail, relax, message, file, credits, and many others. to improve the current situation, the informants suggest: 1. perfecting the methods and means of teaching armenian – 28.1% usa / 31.7% ra, 2. encouraging the use of armenian in different spheres of life – 15.8% usa / 28.7% ra, 3. establishing a special institution for the struggle against the use of anglicisms – 11.8% usa / 6.5% ra, 4. creating conditions for the faultlessness of armenian speech – 19.2% usa / 24.8% ra, 5. lessening tolerance of armenian speakers for the use of anglicisms – 4.3% ra, 6. leaving the question unsettled – 3.9% ra. according to the analyzed data 44.2 % of informants from the usa and 22.8% – from ra claim that it will be immposible to do away with anglicisms; that the use of the latters can be partially restricted (31.7% usa/42.3% ra); 15.4% of the us residents think that the number of anglicisms in armenian speech can be reduced, and only 1% usa residents and 1.9% ra citizens are sure that we can stop using anglicims. the outcomes revealed that the restriction of the use of anglicisms in ra is mainly armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 169 conditioned by the work of the following institutions: language inspectorate (24.6%); educational institutions (16.2% – schools, 9.6% – higher educational institutions); mass media (18%); ministry of education of ra (7.8%). only 7.2% of ra citizens have mentioned the role of the family in the reduction of the number of anglicisms in armenian speech. on the other hand, the diaspora think that the struggle against the application of anglicisms should be carried out in armenian schools (23.6%); in churches (10.2%) and in families (10.2%). conclusion contrasting our findings in the usa with the results of our survey in the ra we have come to the conclusion that armenian-americans are more interested in the purity of their national language than the informants living in ra. we have also noticed some differences of attitudes between those informants who were born in the usa and the immigrants. thus 4.3% of our compatriots born in the usa have “positive” attitude towards the use of anglicisms in armenian speech; 60.9% – believe it to be a “negative” phenomenon; 34.8% – are indifferent to this problem. among armenian-americans who immigrated from armenia, 22.4% have a “positive” attitude to this problem, 51.3% – “negative”, 26.3% – “neutral”. my interviews with this group of people have revealed that they are more concerned about the mastery of the english language than the purity of armenian. to sum up we can say that this sociolinguistic investigation gave us an opportunity to find out the ability of speakers of the republic of armenia as well as armenian diaspora to stand up to the pressure of more powerful language – english. references: 1. baker, c. (1988) key issues in bilingualism and bilingual education. clevedon, uk: multilingual matters. 2. baker, c. (1992) attitudes and language. clevedon, uk: multilingual matters. 3. edwards, j. (1999) refining our understanding of language attitudes. // journal of language and social psychology. n 18 (pp.101-110). 4. garvett, p.; coupland, n. & williams, a. (2003) investigating language attitudes: social meanings of dialect, ethnicity and performance. cardiff: university of wales press. 5. giles, h. & billings, a. (2004)assessing language attitudes: speaker evaluation studies. // handbook of applied linguistics (pp.187–209). / ed. by a. davies & c. elder oxford: basil blackwell. 6. hudson, r.a. (1980) sociolinguistics. cambridge university press. 7. lasagabaster, d.; huguet, á. (2007) multilingualism in european bilingual contexts: language use and attitudes. clevedon: multilingual matters. 8. mckenzie, r.m. (2010) the social psychology of english as a global language: armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 170 attitudes, awareness and identity in the japanese context. berlin: mouton de gruyter. 9. mey, j.l. (2009) concise encyclopedia of pragmatics. elsevier ltd, uk. 10. ryan, e.b. & giles, h. (eds.) (1982) attitudes towards language variation: social and applied contexts. london: edward arnold. 11. stockwell, p. (2002) sociolinguistics: a resource book for students. routledge. ð³ýñ³é»½í³μ³ý³ï³ý ùáï»óáõù ñ³û»ñ»ýáõù ³ý·é³μ³ýáõãûáõýý»ñç ïçñ³éáõãû³ý ëý¹ñçý ð³ýñ³é»½í³μ³ ý³ï³ý ñ»ï³½áïáõãûáõý ¿ ï³ï³ñí»é ²øü-áõù ¨ ð³û³ëï³ýç ð³ýñ³å»ïáõãûáõýáõù ³åñáõ ù»ñ ñ³ûñ»ý³ïçóý»ñç ßñç³ýáõù, áñç ýå³ï³ïý ¿ñ å³ñ½»é ñ³û³ëáë ñ³ýñáõãû³ý í»ñ³μ»ñùáõýùá ñ³û»ñ»ý ·ñ³íáñ ¨ μ³ ý³íáñ ëáëùáõù ³ý·é»ñ»ý μ³ é»ñç ¨ ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõãûáõýý»ñç ïçñ³éù³ý ëý¹ñçý: àëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõýá ï³ï³ñí»é ¿ »ñïáõ ù»ãá¹áí` ëáñçý ñ³ñó³½ñáõûóç ¨ ³ýï»ï³ûçý ñ³ñóù³ý ùççáóáí: ð³ñóù³ýá ù³ëý³ïó»é »ý ²øü-áõù ³åñáõ ù»ñ ñ³ûñ»ý³ïçóý»ñçó 320-á, ð³û³ëï³ýç ð³ýñ³å»ïáõãû³ý ù³õ³ù³óçý»ñçó` 564-á: ä³ï³ëë³ýý»ñç ñ³ù³¹ñáõùý áëï íýý¹³í³ûñç ¨ ³ý·é³μ³ ýáõãûáõýý»ñç ïçñ³éù³ý ñ³ý¹»å í»ñ³μ»ñùáõýùç ³ñï³óáéáõù »ý ñ»ï¨û³é å³ïï»ñá. ûï³ñ »ñïñáõù íýí³í ù»ñ ñ³ûñ»ý³ïçóý»ñý ³ é³í»é ñ³ïí³í »ý å³ûù³ñ»éáõ 黽 íç ³ ý³õ³ñïáõãû³ý ñ³ù³ñ, ù³ý ð³û³ëï³ýç ð³ýñ³å»ïáõãû³ý ù³õ³ù³óçý»ñý áõ ²øü ý»ñ·³õã³í ñ³û»ñá: ì»ñççýý»ñçë ³ í»éç ß³ï ñáõ½áõù ¿ ³ý·é»ñ»ýçý ïçñ³å»ï»éáõ ëý¹çñá, ù³ý ñ³û³å³ñå³ýáõãû³ý ¨ ñ³û»ñ»ýç ³ ý³õ³ñïáõãû³ý ñ³ñóá: armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 171 kazm.cdr joseph brodsky and his self-ttranslations joseph brodsky is known to be both a russian and anamerican poet. he lived his life in russia as well as in america. he used to write either in russian or in english. both his russian and, especially his english have been criticized from different standpoints. nevertheless, all critics admit brodsky’s high professionalism and unrivalled poetic talent. joseph brodsky was born in leningrad in 1940. he spent the first part of his life in soviet russia, writing poems in russian. he is the author of the so-called genre of “grand poems”. he became world famous after the trial in 1964, during which he was accused of decadence and parasitism and was sentenced to five years of labor camp in the region of arkhangelsk. but with the help of his russian and foreign colleagues he served in arkhangelsk only for 17 months, after which he was forced to emigrate to the united states of america in 1972 as an involuntary exile from the soviet union. in the united states he became a “poet in residence”, lecturing at harvard university, queens college, mount holyoke college, etc. while living in the states, brodsky continued writing poems in russian, and, simultaneously, he started writing prose, and especially essays, in english. in 1987 j. brodsky was awarded the nobel prize “for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity”. he was elected by the library of congress as poet laureate of the united states in 1992. j. brodsky’s poetry has been published in twelve languages. his collections of poems include “a part of speech” (1977), “to urania” (1987) and “so forth” (1996). he has two published plays, “marbles” (1986) and “democracy!” (1992). his books of essays are entitled “less than one” (1986), “on grief and reason” (1996) and “watermark” (1992), the last one is a long essay on venice. it’s also worth mentioning that “less than one” was named the best literary-critical book in 1986 in the united states. * * * * * as has already been mentioned, brodsky used to write poems mainly in russian and prose mainly in english. at first, missing his parents and his native city, brodsky went on writing russian poems in the states. later, aiming at sharing the singularity and the sense of his poems with the english-speaking community, he started translating many of his poems into english. among others, the following self-translations can be mentioned: “may 24, 1980”, “elegy”, “folk tune”, “letter to an archeologist”, “seven strophes”, “to urania”, “from nowhere with love…”, etc. besides doing selftranslations, he also assisted translators in their efforts to translate his poems into english. one of brodsky’s self-translations is the poem entitled “may 24, 1980”, which is presented below in its full size: 141 literature armenian folia anglistika milena nahapetyan i have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages, carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters, lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis, dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles. from the height of a glacier i beheld half a world, the earthly width. twice have drowned, thrice let knives rake my nitty-gritty. quit the country that bore and nursed me. those who forgot me would make a city. i have waded the steppes that saw yelling huns in saddles, worn the clothes nowadays back in fashion in every quarter, planted rye, tarred the roofs of pigsties and stables, guzzled everything save dry water. i’ve admitted the sentries’ third eye into my wet and foul dreams. munched the bread of exile; it’s stale and warty. granted my lungs all sounds except the howl; switched to a whisper. now i am forty. what should i say about my life? that it’s long and abhors transparence. broken eggs make me grieve; the omelette, though, makes me vomit. yet until brown clay has been rammed down my larynx, only gratitude will be gushing from it. ß âõîäèë âìåñòî äèêîãî çâåðÿ â êëåòêó, âûæèãàë ñâîé ñðîê è êëèêóõó ãâîçäåì â áàðàêå, æèë ó ìîðÿ, èãðàë â ðóëåòêó, îáåäàë ÷åðò çíàåò ñ êåì âî ôðàêå. ñ âûñîòû ëåäíèêà ÿ îçèðàë ïîëìèðà, òðèæäû òîíóë, äâàæäû áûâàë ðàñïîðîò. áðîñèë ñòðàíó, ÷òî ìåíÿ âñêîðìèëà. èç çàáûâøèõ ìåíÿ ìîæíî ñîñòàâèòü ãîðîä. ß ñëîíÿëñÿ â ñòåïÿõ, ïîìíÿùèõ âîïëè ãóííà, íàäåâàë íà ñåáÿ ÷òî ñûçíîâà âõîäèò â ìîäó, ñåÿë ðîæü, ïîêðûâàë ÷åðíîé òîëüþ ãóìíà è íå ïèë òîëüêî ñóõóþ âîäó. ß âïóñòèë â ñâîè ñíû âîðîíåíûé çðà÷îê êîíâîÿ, æðàë õëåá èçãíàíèÿ, íå îñòàâëÿÿ êîðîê. ïîçâîëÿë ñâîèì ñâÿçêàì âñå çâóêè, ïîìèìî âîÿ; ïåðåøåë íà øåïîò. òåïåðü ìíå ñîðîê. ×òî ñêàçàòü ìíå î æèçíè? ×òî îêàçàëàñü äëèííîé. òîëüêî ñ ãîðåì ÿ ÷óâñòâóþ ñîëèäàðíîñòü. íî ïîêà ìíå ðîò íå çàáèëè ãëèíîé, èç íåãî ðàçäàâàòüñÿ áóäåò ëèøü áëàãîäàðíîñòü. this is the first poem in brodsky’s collection of poems “to urania”, where it is presented in brodsky’s translation. brodsky wrote this poem on the occasion of his 40th anniversary. in the poem he recollects the turning points of his life and analyzes them. brodsky mentions about the prison (“i have braved <…> steel cages”); about being exiled (“carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters”); refers to the time of immigration (“dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles. / from the height of a glacier i beheld half a world”); mentions his attitude toward his homeland (“quit the country that 142 armenian folia anglistika literature bore and nursed me. / those who forgot me would make a city.”) and finally, his attempts to forget all the bitterness he experienced (“guzzled everything save dry water”). the second part of the poem may be called a brief summary as brodsky summarizes the turning points of his life and comes to certain conclusions. however, these conclusions are bitter: “what should i say about my life? that it’s long and abhors transparence. / broken eggs make me grieve; the omelette, though, makes me vomit.”. who would say at forty that his life has been long? only a person who has suffered much; a person who sees no reasons for joy in this life. in this case “gratitude” seems a little strange, doesn’t it? the most interesting thing about this poem is that it is built on confrontation, contrast: brodsky describes the “steel cage” of the labor camp, but after that comes the endless sea; the world from the top of the glacier is followed by descriptions of death; brodsky says that he “munched the bread of exile” but then he uses the bookish “granted the lungs all sounds”, etc. the intonation of the whole poem is also shifting we can hear bitterness for the painful experience he has had, but it is mixed with the “gratitude” for just living. thus, brodsky summarizes his life – it has been long, but full of events, people, thoughts and feelings. and gratitude will be gushing from brodsky’s larynx until they are rammed down with brown clay. brodsky was very much criticized for this last sentence (“yet until brown clay has been rammed down my larynx, / only gratitude will be gushing from it”). one of the critics wrote that it is an outrageous phrase and that brodsky seems to talk about the blockaded leningrad or state criminal camps in the north of russia siberia. but there is an abstract in an article entitled “brodsky and translation. a dual mimesis” published in “an international journal of poetry, translation and art” by daniel weissbort that runs: “the first poem in “to urania” is “may 24, 1980”. it is translated by the author. joseph marked it in my copy of the book, evidently proud, too, of what he had managed to achieve as a translator. clearly he believed he had successfully demonstrated that rhetorically mimetic translation between russian and english was possible”. brodsky seemed to be satisfied with the quality of his work, otherwise he would not do it. but the feedback of the modern criticism for brodsky’s self-translations was not ordinary. some critics responded positively, others were very unfavorable. for example, one of the critics, who approved of brodsky’s self-translations, noted that he is “a brilliant self-translator of his own often brilliant poems”. derek walcott said, “joseph’s poetry has enriched english 20th-century poetry” (walcott,1992). daniel weissbort writes: “what is surprising, perhaps, is how often brodsky’s competence was sufficient or how often he was able to fashion a self-consistent, if non-standard english text to match the russian original. this highly intellectual poet was also working at a level almost of pure sound and movement” (brodsky, 2001). the poet lachlan mackinnon refers to brodsky’s self-translations: “those who complained about apparent technical deficiencies too easily forgot that brodsky was engaged in creating a new idiolect, precisely the half-english of a deracinated man. <…> the resulting style is, while sometimes disconcerting, usually self consistent and achieved” (mackinnon, 1996). conversely, some critics used to knock and criticize brodsky’s self-translations and his english, saying that the influence of russian is huge. brodsky was criticized for his 143 literature armenian folia anglistika attempts “to resurrect his russian poems bodily. he tries to reproduce the structure of the original, its weight, and the physical place it makes for itself” (brodsky, 2001). he cares “for the russian text to be imported whole into english, in which case the target language would have to be russianised and would be denatured”. among the most negatively disposed critics, who criticized brodsky for his english, christopher reid and craig raine should be mentioned. craig raine even called brodsky a “mediocre”. the poet-translator michael hoffman, on the contrary, thinks that “even in english, brodsky’s poems have irresistible verbal authority, <…> because he wrote in such a way as to draw on american and russian at the same time. there is something bipolar about the writing” (hoffman, 1997). m. hoffman may have been closest to the truth – brodsky, through his selftranslations, tried to express himself in russian and american simultaneously. as to importing the whole russian text into english, vladimir nabokov proclaims: “the person who desires to turn a literary masterpiece into another language, has only one duty to perform, and this is to reproduce with absolute exactitude the whole text, and nothing but the text. the term “literal translation” is tautological since anything but that is not truly a translation but an imitation, an adaptation or a parody” (weissbort, 2003). whatever the opinions of critics are, we are inclined to think that brodsky’s selftranslations are very skillful and of special value from the linguistic point of view. they create links between the two most popular world languages. besides, these selftranslations are a good opportunity for non-russian speakers to get acquainted with the works of the famous russian-american poet, nobel prize laureate joseph brodsky. references: 1. brodsky j. the collected poems in english. new york: farrar, strauss and giroux, 2001. 2. hoffman m. on absenting oneself. // times literary supplement, london: news international, 1997, january 10. 3. mackinnon l. joseph brodsky. // the independent, london, 1996, march 23. 4. walcott d. brodsky through the eyes of his contemporaries. ed. by v. polukhina. london: palgrave macmillan, 1992. 5. weissbort d. brodsky and translation. a dual mimesis. // an international journal of poetry. melville, new york: translation and art, 2003, december, vol. 1. æàêæü ´ðà¸êîæü ºì üð² æüøü²â²ð¶ø²üàôâúàôüüºðà æáëçý ´ñá¹ëïáõ ï³ï³ñ³í çýùý³ã³ñ·ù³ýáõãûáõýý»ñá áõñáõûý ³ñå»ù »ý 黽í³ï³ý ³éáõùáí, 㻨 ùýý³¹³ïý»ñá ñ³ï³ë³ï³ý ï³ñíçùý»ñ »ý ñ³ûïý»é ¹ñ³ýó ù³ëçý: 144 armenian folia anglistika literature 1(2)2016+.pdf contrastive linguo-cultural analysis of the concept “faith/belief” in the last ten years many linguists working in the fieldof linguo-cultural studies have shown an active interest in the theory of concepts. cultural concept, which is the main unit of this science, is a multi-graded semantic formation having its expressive, valuable and notional characteristics. the most difficult concepts for comparative analysis are those at “the highest level” such as love, liberty, happiness, faith/belief. all these so-called “universal concepts” of spiritual culture give a sense and purpose to people’s existence that is outside their individual being. among all the concepts mentioned, faith is the most valuable. the importance of happiness, love and liberty in real life is fragile, and only faith can relieve a person of disappointment. human beings are mortal and horror-stricken by the thought of death. only faith in immortality and life after death can ease one’s spiritual longing. without belief human life becomes senseless. “faith is the strength of life”, says l.n.tolstoy. “faith”, which conveys meaning to socio-cultural life, is the most global and universal concept. it embraces all other universal concepts, such as love (from faith to love the way is short), liberty/justice (if you believe in truth don’t try to convince, it will win by itself (rostin)), happiness (only two things make happiness: faith and love (nodje)). history proves that human beings have never lived without belief in something higher, supreme, surpassing them and absolute. every culture goes through spiritual selfdetermination, asserting faith in something eminent and unattainable, something which fosters sense and provides salvation from the uncountable metamorphoses of nature. so in the course of history we move from belief to unbelief and from unbelief to the search for new belief, new values in life which can give sense to our existence. faith is the main value influencing the functioning of governments and social institutions and also individuals. hence the study of this concept is extremely pertinent. but what does it mean to believe? the hebrew word denoting the concept of belief in the old testament is aman, which is actually the word we normally use at the end of our prayers (amen, which should really be pronounced amein). we say, in the name of jesus, amen, which means, “i believe it”. believe means “to lean upon”, that is why there are a number of words with the preposition “upon” in the semantic field of this concept, such as reckon upon, depend upon, count upon, build upon, rely upon, rest upon, calculate upon, pin one’s faith upon, upon my faith, etc. analyzing the etymology of the word faith/belief in different languages, florensky 90 armenian folia anglistika culture studies narine harutiunian 1(2)2016+.pdf the maxim of truth in political interviews for centuries language and politics have beenpermanently interwoven. this interaction reveals not only politics itself but the capacity of human language. politics is mainly viewed as a struggle for power. this approach deals with the political institutions of the state canonized in the constitution, civil and legal codes, state institutions and parties, the speeches of professional politicians, interest groups, etc. according to p. chilton, politics is a means of cooperation within different layers of a society for determining clashes of interest over money and influence, which presupposes conflicts of dominance between individuals, genders, social groups of various kinds (chilton 2004). in totalitarian countries, a political system is implemented exclusively by violence and force. in contrast, politics in a democratic nation demands persuasion, truth and civil morality bound by the paramount grip of language. politics is thus predominantly the use of language. only in and through language can one issue commands and threats, ask questions, and make offers and promises. only language can provide a political institution with an outlet to declare war, claim innocence or guilt in court, and raise or lower taxes. the use of language can also create an institution. for example, swearing an oath is a specific institution which presupposes special legal training carried out by a professional lawyer. swearing an oath is at the same time an act of speech. speech act theory and pragmatics have adopted a completely different approach to the language of politicians, revealing the discrepancy between what is said and what is meant. “in the european and american cultural contexts, politicians are generally expected to act better and thus be better than ordinary people. they are expected to be faultless, perfect citizens, who not only preach but also practice what they preach. in other words, the private and public domains of politicians are expected to be coherent. unfortunately, very often in politics a speaker may say something but actually mean something else” (fetzer 2002). politicians are said to employ numerous indirect speech acts in order to remain diplomatically unclear about controversial issues. the differentiation between direct and indirect communicative intention in politics is quite relevant within the sphere of political interview. what do the following communicative situations have in common an ordinary, mundane, face-to-face conversation and a special type of interaction known as a political interview? 61 linguistics armenian folia anglistika armine simonyan 1(2)2016+.pdf the novel “ararat”: the way to salvation the novel “ararat” was written by the american writerelgin groseclose who was born on november 25, 1899 in waukomis, ok, and died after a stroke, april 4, 1983. groseclose performed refugee work in the soviet caucasus during the 1920’s, which served as the basis of his novel “ararat”, winner of two awards: the 1939 national book award and the 1940 foundation for literature award. the main concern of elgin groseclose in the novel “ararat” is to try to find the answer to one basic question: “upon what does survival depend?” (p.xiii) how does it happen that some nations survive, while others disappear? how did the jews, the nestorians, the ainu survive? does it depend on the will of god? “can we say that god, for some purpose inscrutable to man, has willed the preservation of certain ones, certain communities, certain cultures, while permitting others to perish?” (p. xiii) to answer this riddle he dares to turn to the armenians: to those who have been through the flood, those who have descended the mountain after the receding waters, “who have seen nations come and go, kings arise and fall, and the plow follow the sword.” (p. xii) “ararat” is a novel about a small community of armenians which survives the bloodshed organized by abdul hamid, and which under the guidance of an american missionary, amos lyle, finds refuge in a plain called bartzan, not far from kars, on the bank of the araxes, just at the foot of ararat. they live and prosper here for more than ten years, but then the community gradually dies. the moneylender of the community goes to america to have a larger and safer perspective of development, and the mayor of the community, who is a member of dashnak party, is invited to erivan to have a vaster arena of activities. the missionary’s ministry, which lasted for 25 years, comes to an end, and he, together with 12-year-old sirani, an orphan, moves to kars. there he goes on with his work as a missionary, gathers homeless children from all over armenia and takes care of them with the scarce means provided by the missionary board and some occasional individuals. paul markov, a captain of the russian imperial army, who flees from the wrath of the red revolution, sees two orphans at a railway station on his way to america. filled with compassion for them, he takes them on the train, where a man advises him to take the children to amos lyle. doing so markov finds himself under the roof of the missionary and his daughter sirani. the appalling condition of the children, who are left 118 armenian folia anglistika literature svetlana toumanian kazm.cdr the role of english in the acquisition of intercultural competence by russian students 1. introduction since we use language differently, our lives are shapedby the way we use it. it is necessary for students of foreign languages to examine the interaction between language and social behaviour. the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century are marked by the extensive development of cultural ties and great interest in research into language and sociocultural context. the interaction of language and social behavior is becoming of prime interest in linguistics. scholars look upon language from the point of view of its function, i.e., how it can be used for specific purposes. they are becoming more and more interested in various speech activities. as a result, a new branch of linguistics pragmalinguistics has emerged. language is being looked upon as an instrument of social power, with the main questions being: “how to do things with words?” and “how does language influence social behavior and human mentality?” (i.e. how the human factor influences language). teaching russian students an elementary, stereotyped form of social behaviour typical of people in english-speaking communities requires that academic priority be given to teaching patterns of speech and ways of manipulating language for specific purposes. for instance, western pragmatism and advertising enthusiasm are fully reflected in everyday speech. when the english need a piece of advice, they often use emotively coloured words like wonderful, amazing, great, fantastic, incredible, smashing, sensational, brilliant, etc. thus, the advice is turned into an idea which is sold without a hard shell, and the “customer” takes the bait. russian students should be motivated to acquire intercultural competence in the english context by investigating the disparities in language use and in cultures/mentalities. thus, the phrase “don’t touch the dog, darling. it may not be friendly”, sounds very unusual to the russian speaker who would hardly ever associate the image of a dog with friendliness in a similar situation, but rather with aggressiveness. we checked the reaction of russian speakers to the image of a dog. it turned out that most russians would say to the kid “don’t touch the dog, darling. it may bite you.” so, one of the challenges for russian students within an english context is investigating disparities in language use which are culturally determined. to avoid any misunderstanding in intercultural relationships, russian students should primarily be given an explicit statement of english values and ethos. karen hewitt, in her book “understanding britain”, which is specially written for the russian reader, gives a few 77 culture studies armenian folia anglistika valentina golysheva generalizations about the british and their social priorities. hewitt observes: “naturally, they will not be true for everyone, but they are common attitudes which sometimes distinguish us significantly from other western countries. if you talk to parents of all social groups, you will find there is a general agreement that children should be taught to be kind, to be honest and to be fair; and that it is wrong to be cruel, to steal or to destroy the happiness of other people. children should also learn to be loyal to their own group” (2002: 83). 2. politeness strategy how do parents in britain teach their children the difference between “right” and “wrong”; how do they teach their children to behave morally? one of the most distinct features of english culture is the ability of people to observe the politeness strategy. people in english-speaking communities tend to encourage tact, sympathy and respect for other people. scarrot comments on the politeness strategy in english social behaviour: “in today’s mad world, politeness is more important than ever...being polite and considerate should be a top priority” (2000: 49). social priorities in the englishspeaking communities are clearly reflected in their language (see, jones, 1989; blundell, 1992). on the basis of the functional approach to language, a great number of works have appeared on the theory of politeness of speech. the numerous authors supporting this theory have successfully developed a typology of speech acts their cognitive status, cultural dependence and speech norms (see the review of papers by kasper, 1990, 2001). it is already axiomatic that “any language reflects the culture and mentality and it is vividly seen in the speech etiquette” (wierzbicka, 1990). politeness and respect are deeply rooted in the british governmental policies for educational institutions. the mass media give wide coverage to the question of ethics at school. for instance, the guardian, in one of its leading articles “ethics in schools”, emphasizes that “a key government adviser addresses a conference of secondary school head teachers and talks about the need to ensure children not only achieve good academic standards, but also a highly developed sense of ethics”(1998, 17). schools in english-speaking communities pledge themselves to such moral values as honesty, respect for others, compassion and justice. for example, a parent’s handbook, (forfar academy, scotland), commenting on pupils’ spiritual, moral and cultural values, states: “it is a fundamental principle of our school that all who are involved in the life of our school, both have a right to be respected as individuals and carry responsibility to act in a considerate and respectful manner towards others” (1995, 19). it is indisputable that the task of a foreign language teacher is to examine the extent to which language communities differ in their application of the politeness principle pp. it might be of interest to show by the example of several different situations how widely speech etiquette varies in the english and russian communities. • when the russian guest is a little slow in the morning and fails to be in time for breakfast, the wife in the host family may invite the guest in an extremely polite way, avoiding a direct injunction: “it’s been decided that you should be ready for breakfast.” in the russian family it’s quite possible to hear the imperative phrase 78 armenian folia anglistika culture studies like “why don’t you go for breakfast? hurry up! you keep everybody waiting for you”. when an english wife doesn’t like the idea that her husband is going to water the flowers in the garden in the heat, she might say in a very evasive way, “you don’t want to water the flowers now, darling”. the russians will most probably use the negative imperative “don’t water the flowers now! or “you mustn’t water the flowers now!” • the english mother always finds a good reason to make her child help her about the house: “please, could you just wash the things up? i am so tired”. this request sounds less imperative than the one made in a russian home: the child is not asked but is usually given an imperative command, “ann, go and wash up the dishes at once”. • the english, when discussing their employment with somebody, try to avoid the direct question of payment: “is your sister well-paid? how is it from the money point of view?” in the same situation the russians will ask directly: “how much does your sister earn? what is her salary?” so the politeness strategy in british culture, as well as the diversity of its verbal expression, might be of inestimable value to the russian students of english. one of the striking features of english social behaviour in terms of verbal politeness is the ability to avoid direct imposition either in conditional requests or in public imperatives. it might be of interest to illustrate this principle. 2.1. conditional requests to begin with, people in english-speaking cultures are very sophisticated in expressing requests in a most polite way. thus the sentence “can’t you give me your book?” sounds to the english somewhat impolite and even aggressive because of the negation in it (which is a norm for russian). in this case the english-speaking person will try and mask the imposition by employing a variety of indirect illocutions: can i ask you to give me your book? could i ask you...? could i possibly ask you...? i wonder if you could give me ...? i wonder if you could possibly give me…? would it be all right / o’ kay, if i ask you...? i hope you don’t mind my asking you....? etc. politeness strategy exploits here the maxim of relation (a ‘hinting strategy’ according to leech, 1983). as we see, in english-speaking communities people tend to be more apologetic and prefer not to reveal their true feelings, but mask them instead with verbal politeness. in reference to the example given above, teachers of english have to explain to the russian students that requests given in the negative form may sound impolite and even sarcastic to an englishman. it might be interesting to note that an english-speaking person is likely to use the 1st person singular in his request (can i…?), taking the problem on himself. in contrast, the russian speaker gets the 79 culture studies armenian folia anglistika addressee/interlocutor involved in his problem by using second person singular in his request (can’t you?). in fact, it is a face threatening act (fta, for details see, brown and levinson, 1994), because the request is expressed directly. it is quite important for the russian student of english to realize that lack of politeness strategy in his speech may be associated with aggressiveness by the members of the english-speaking community. 2.2. public imperatives due to the politeness strategy actively employed by english-speaking people in verbal communication, most officials tend to make their notices and announcements sound less imperative: in the interest of security, visitors to school are required to wear a badge of identification. thank you for your co-operation. we are a non-smoking school. your co-operation is much appreciated. the strategy of disguised imperatives is extremely popular in announcements for most public places, like cafes, restaurants, movies, museums, gyms, pubs, etc. they usually illustrate an amazing variety of verbal expressions carrying implicit imposition: thank you for not smoking in this area. in the interest of hygiene. no dogs. please, ask before bringing in pushchairs, buggies, etc. thank you. please, could gentlemen wear shirts or a top while in this restaurant. thank you. you must be 16 to buy alcohol. most english pubs don’t welcome under 18’s. some owners of stores and cafes display a sense of humour and their verbose notices can evoke a smile: with immediate effect. this store will not sell alcohol to persons fortunate enough to look under 21 years of age, unless proof of age shows they are over 18. this is company policy (a store in streatley and goring). it is required by law that dog mess must be cleared from paths, roads, grass and the beach. hornsea and dogs deserve a better image (hornsea, yorkshire). please, ensure you are showered and suitably dressed before using the bar (bistro in wootton, bedford). it must be admitted that the only exception are the direct imperatives accounting for security needs: kill your speed! mind the step! beware of the dog!, etc. such imperatives may even contain strong but justified epithets like: don’t be an idiot! keep off the railways! (edinburgh railway station) 3. euphemisms to avoid offensive overtones or refusal, the english also tend to use subtle euphemisms, the so-called periphrastic expressions that make the implicit imposition or 80 armenian folia anglistika culture studies request sound milder, vaguer, less blunt or disagreeable. one can often see a very subtle notice in cathedrals and museums which encourages visitors to pay admission money: (1) all the exhibitions in the portrait gallery this year are free, but they cost money to mount. if you enjoyed this exhibition and would like to support the gallery and its activities, your contribution would be much appreciated (portrait gallery, edinburgh). (2) inside york minster there used to be a two-sided poster which was publicly displayed at the entrance. it contained two notices which skilfully masked the notion of raising the fund with admission money. one notice was supposed to be read when you entered the cathedral and the one when you left it. on entrance: we make no charge for entry. please, help us to maintain york minster by donating 2 pounds. on exit: we hope you are inspired by your visit to the great cathedral. please, leave a gift if you haven’t done so already. as we see, the administration prefers to use euphemisms like donation and contribution, as well as the periphrastic expression to leave a gift. such mild expressions certainly have their impact on the visitors, and as a result, they are ready to leave some extra money in the cathedral. euphemistic language also reveals social attitudes. it seeks to put a finer gloss on relationships and it may be referred to as a social jargon (buzz words) or taboos (auto, 1993). (3) we thank you for cooperation in refraining from smoking or talking loudly during the performance, as it may offend other patrons (cinema in hull). as can be seen from the notice, the imperative is again skilfully disguised here. the effect of mild imposition is achieved due to the combination of official style and a periphrastic expression: the words refraining and cooperation are used together with the euphemism patron. the role of this euphemism is to upgrade the social status and selfrespect of the visitor to the movies. the whole request sounds less blunt and disagreeable. at least the visitor is not irritated by the implicit imposition, i.e. when he/she is enforced/pushed to comply with the rules of the public place. obviously, there are psychological reasons for the way english-speaking people formulate thoughts, being aware of how they sound. this basically concerns instructive information. people do not appreciate being told what to do. 3. functions of euphemisms the use of euphemisms is widely discussed in the theory of language planning, socalled political correctness (see the origin of the term and concept of “political correctness” (pc) in cameron, 1994; 1995; christian, 1993). verbal politeness in english presupposes two main functions of euphemisms: they may be used either for achieving a positive effect of the message conveyed or upgrading the social status of people. in fact, most people in english-speaking communities prefer to use words with 81 culture studies armenian folia anglistika preferably positive evaluative overtones. this positive tendency is one of the social priorities of the english-speaking countries. in order to achieve a positive effect, words with negative connotations are usually avoided by english-speaking people in their speech and are replaced by euphemisms instead. this process is usually observed in everyday life (“the dog may not be friendly”) as well as in some particular spheres, such as politics (non-british citizens instead of foreigners). the following dialogue between a russian customer and the owner of a clothing shop in belfast may serve as a typical example of the use of euphemisms in everyday life: (4) customer: “do you have any chheap fabric? owner: “yes, we’ve got plenty of innexxpennsive stuff”. one and the same notion of fabric is given a different nomination due to the evaluative qualifiers. but the variant inexpensive stuff is preferable for the native speaker because of its positive colouring as compared with the notion “cheap”. it is the so-called sugar-coated statement which neutralizes the negative connotation of the nomination. for instance, when a wife burns a piece of toast at breakfast, she may present it to her husband as a “well-done” toast just for fun. or when an old lady gets a bus pass, she calls herself a senior citizen and gets a discount. in the sphere of politics, euphemisms are used very efficiently (see the review of the papers in fairclough, 1998). for instance, when, the british ship “antelope” sank during the argentine crisis on 25 march 1982, this fact was commented on differently in the british media: blaze of glory (the daily mail); senseless sacrifice (morning star). references: 1. auto j. euphemisms (doe). london: bloomsbury, 1993. 2. blundell j., higgens j., middlemiss n. function in english. oxford university press, 1992. 3. brown penelope, levinson stephen c. politeness: some universals in language usage. cambridge: cambridge university press, 1994. 4. cameron d. words, words, words: the power of language. // the war of the words. / ed. by sarah dunant. london: virago, 1994. 5. cameron d. verbal hygiene. london: routledge, 1995. 6. christian d. language planning: the view from linguistics. // linguistics, the socio-cultural context. cambridge university press, 1993. 7. davis a. politicized language. // concise encyclopedia of sociolinguistics. / ed. by rajend mesthrie. oxford: elsevier ltd., 2001. 8. ethics in school. // “guardian”. 24.03.1998. 9. fairclough n. power and language. // concise encyclopedia of pragmatics. / ed. by jacob l. may. oxford: elsevier ltd., 1998. 82 armenian folia anglistika culture studies 10. hewitt k. understanding britain. perspective publications ltd, 2002. 11. jones l., von baeyer c. functions of american english. // communication activities for the classroom (student’s book). cambridge university press, 1989. 12. kasper g. linguistic politeness. // journal of pragmatics. north holland, 1990, ¹14. 13. kasper g. politeness. // concise encyclopedia of sociolinguistics. / ed. by rajend mesthrie. oxford: elsevier ltd., 2001. 14. leech g. principles of pragmatics. london new york, 1983. 15. pupils’ spiritual, moral and cultural values. // parent’s handbook. scotland: forfar academy, 1995. 16. scarrot t. don’t be silly, be polite. // yorkshire riding magazine. june-july, 2000. 17. wierzbicka a. cross-cultural pragmatics. berlin: mouton de gruyer, 1990. ²ü¶èºðºüæ ¸ºðà èàôê àôê²üàôüºðæ` øææøþ²îàôâ²úæü î²ð´ºðàôâúàôüüºðæ æ𲼺îàôâú²ü ¶àðìàôø êáõûý ñá¹í³íá éáõë³μ³ýáõù ¿ 黽íç ¨ ëáóç³é³ï³ý í³ñù³·íç ÷áëý»ñ·áñíáõãûáõýá, áñý ³í»éç ù»í ï³ñ¨áñáõãûáõý ¿ ó»éù μ»ñ»é 21-ñ¹ ¹³ñáõù` ùß³ïáõã³ûçý μ³½ù³½³ý ï³å»ñç ½³ñ·³óù³ùμ å³ûù³ý³íáñí³í: ø»ï ³ý·³ù ¨ë áý¹·í»éáí ³½·»ñç ùß³ïáõã³ûçý ¨ ùï³í»éï»ñåç ï³ñμ»ñáõãû³ý ëáãáý¹áïý»ñá 黽áõý áùμéý»éáõ ·áñíáõù, ñ»õçý³ïá ï³ñ¨áñ ¿ ñ³ù³ñáõù ïíû³é ³½·ç ·éë³íáñ ³ñå»ùý»ñç ¨ ¿ãçï³ûç áõëáõùý³ëçáõãûáõýá: ²ý·éç³ûç ¹»åùáõù ³é³çý³ûçý ¿ ù³õ³ù³í³ñçáõãû³ý ¹ñë¨áñáõùá ëý¹ñ³ýùç ï³ù ññ³ù³ýç ï³ñ³ï»ë³ïý»ñáõù (å³ûù³ý³ï³ý ëý¹ñ³ýù, ñ³ýñ³ûçý ññ³ù³ý): ðá¹í³íá ùçïí³í ¿ ³ý·é»ñ»ý áõëáõùý³ëçñáõ éáõë áõë³ýáõý»ñçý çñ³½»ï»éáõ ³û¹ 黽íáõù ëý¹ñ³ýùá ï³ù ññ³ù³ýá ³í»éç ù³õ³ù³í³ñç ñ³õáñ¹»éáõ §ù»ë³ýç½ùý»ñçó¦ ùç ù³ýçëá, áñáýù ñçùý³íáñíáõù »ý μ³½ù³ãçí ûñçý³ïý»ñáí ¨ ñ³ù»ù³ïáõãûáõýý»ñáí: ²ûýáõ³ù»ý³ûýçí, å»ïù ¿ ýß»é, áñ ñ³ïáõï ß»ßï³¹ñíáõù ¿ á׳ï³ý ñý³ñý»ñçó ù»õù³ëáõãûáõýá` áñå»ë ù³õ³ù³í³ñç ëáëùç ï³ñ¨áñ μ³õ³¹ñçã: 83 culture studies armenian folia anglistika kazm.cdr cc oo nn tt ee nn tt ss linguistics english syllabics as part of the british-american voiceworks ................................. 6 svetlana decheva some remarks on a usage dictionary of anglicisms in sixteen european languages ........................................................... 18 the virtual discourse in on-line newspapers .......................................................... 28 lusine fljyan net english: the language of on-line communication .......................................... 36 ani nazaryan acts of persuasion in jane austen’s novels ............................................................... 41 svetlana galstyan siranoush ghaltakhchyan on the problem of implicitness in metaphoric similes ............................................ 48 gohar haroutunyan the salience of colour terms .................................................................................... 53 christine harutyunyan the syntagmatics of noun collocations in english ................................................. 57 gayane muradyan “politicized” syntagms in action ............................................................................... 61 mara baghdasaryan emphatic constructions in english scientific prose ................................................ 68 siranush vardanyan the place of academic english in scientific discourse ............................................ 73 ofelya poghosyan culture studies the role of english in the acquisition of intercultural competence by russian students .................................................. 77 valentina golysheva 4 methodology the ratio of l1 influence in pronunciation errors of business english students .......................................................................... 84 amalia babayan enriching learners’ vocabulary by means of derivative word-building patterns ...................................................... 92 lili karapetyan translation stadies general tendencies in semiotic research ................................................................. 96 diana hambardzumyan literature metafiguration ........................................................................................................... 101 el bieta chrzanowska-kluczewska the neutralization of tropes in fairy tale narratives ........................................... 107 alvard jivanyan symbols in virginia woolf ’s novels ......................................................................... 116 anna knyazyan the correlation of myth and symbol in d.h.lawrence’s novels ......................... 120 mariana sargsyan shakespeare’s bawdy language .............................................................................. 125 lala charchoghlyan women’s writing of the first world war .............................................................. 130 aleksandra kedzierska joseph brodsky and his self-translations ............................................................. 141 milena nahapetyan armenological studies christianization of fairies in armenia .................................................................... 147 alvard jivanyan frederic conybeare’s translation of hovhannes yerets khnusetsi’s the key of truth ................................................... 152 paruyr sahakyan 5 maket 2011-2:layout 1.qxd establishing and developing critical thinking in the courses of educational institutions ani manukyan armenian state pedagogical university critical thinking is the ability to apply reasoning and logic to unfamiliar ideas,opinions and situations. it helps to function effectively in the changing world of the 21st century. thinking critically involves seeing things in an open-minded way. this important skill allows people to look past their own views of the world and to adopt a more aware way of viewing the world.the ability to think critically is essential, especially in a globally-minded world. critical thinking is the process of analyzing, interpreting or evaluating both the tangible and intangible world. the ability to be open-minded is a large part of thinking critically, and allows a person not only to seek out all possible answers to a problem, but also to accept an answer that is different from what was originally thought. a person must not always assume that his way of approaching a situation is always the best, or even right. critical thinking has not ever been an objective in education in armenia. in many european countries school system, the syllabus offers critical thinking as a subject which 16-18-year-olds can take. the exam tests candidates not on particular information they have learned during the course, but on their ability to think critically about, and analyze arguments on their deductive or inductive validity. the subject is very challenging and extremely useful for degree courses in politics, philosophy and history providing the skills required for critical analysis. as compared with the western countries, which have more practice in the development of critical thinking, the situation in armenia is completely different. learners are not encouraged to improve themselves as thinkers. emphasis is put on information transmission. however, accent on memory, practice, rote learning and little focus on higher-order thinking has a negative effect on the quality of teaching/learning. the majority of school leavers, who are being fed with finished statements, are not able to think rationally: they can’t consider the problem from different perspectives, back arguments with evidence and reference to consequences, formulate their own conclusions, defend their assertions with reasons. actually, parents, and the professional public are greatly concerned that young people at secondary schools fail to acquire the necessary skills and knowledge to meet the reallife challenges and benefit from a world which offers enormous opportunities. employers are also very critical about young people’s readiness to join the labor market.they consider that many of the employees do not possess the knowledge and skills to be competitive in a rapidly changing world. this confirms that traditional educational strategies based on passive learner role and work with information by learning it by heart fail to meet the changed society needs and, therefore, have to be replaced by problem based, meaningful activities where a learner is placed in the center of educational processes. the curricula of educational institutions should provide a special system to develop the ability to think critically. the importance to develop critical thinking in conarmenian folia anglistikamethodology 101 temporary educational systems should also be outlined. critical thinking is considered to bean essential constituent of the academic world generally because this is the main way that knowledge is added to a field. critical thinking is a desirable skill in all aspects of university work because it allows knowledge andskills to develop and evolve. it is necessary in students’ reading, note making, assignment writing, tutorial presentations and professional practice. therefore, under present circumstances, the development of critical thinking becomes a promising strategy helping to increase learning effectiveness while teaching any subject matter. thus, only conscious learning and reasonably active teaching with the focus on critical thinking skills might help a learner achieve positive results in any field, foreign languages included. the problem is that the basic intellectual standards essential to critical thinking are not typically taught in schools. therefore young people at the university frequently display poor reasoning and problem-solving skills. creative thinking should be incorporated into the development of critical thinking through collaborative learning activities. almost all of the thinking which we undertake contains some critical and creative aspects. creative thinking is generally considered to be involved with the creation or generation of ideas, processes, and experiences, whereas critical thinking is concerned with their evaluation. therefore critical and creative thinking, as interrelated and complementary aspects of good thinking processes, should be developed together (chubinski 1996:64-73; klenz 1987:36-51). collaborative learning structures can also contribute to the development of critical thinking if the right strategy is chosen. it is determined that a correct strategy while developing critical thinking should include: • interpersonal contact: to put different learners together, • creating mutual interdependence and common aim: there should not be too strong competition between team members. they have to take care to create conditions for interdependence and not for too individual work, that is, a good group climate should be realized, • equal status among members: a different role exists only in the leader status, but the leader of a team should have only a limited power. he/she should be more a coordinator than a ‘boss’, • a teacher should perform the role of a consultant offering the students a strong support to seek imaginative, constructive, ethical solutions to problems (chaffee 1985:87-95). critical thinking assignments don’t need to cover alloutcomes at one time but they can vary throughout the course. it is necessary to modify old and create new assignments that use critical thinking criteria. another aspect of criticalthinking is the ability to think rationally. rationality requires analyzing all known evidence, not leaving something out because it doesn’t fit your accepted view. rationality does not rely on emotions for evidence, but instead relies on hard proven fact. critical thinking also requires a non-judgmental and honest approach to reasoning. being honest requires noting and acknowledging personal goals, motives, and emotions that might color opinions or thought processes. armenian folia anglistika methodology 102 s. ferrett advances the following characteristics of critical thinker: 1. asks pertinent questions. 2. assesses statements and arguments. 3. is able to admit a lack of understanding or information. 4. has a sense of curiosity. 5. is interested in finding new solutions. 6. is able to clearly define a set of criteria for analysing ideas. 7. is willing to examine beliefs, assumptions, and opinions, and weigh them against facts. 8. listens carefully to others and is able to give feedback. 9. sees that critical thinking is a lifelong process of self-assessment. 10. looks for evidence to support assumptions and beliefs. 11. is able to adjust opinions when new facts are found. 12. looks for proof. 13. examines problems closely. 14. is able to reject information that is incorrect or irrelevant (ferrett 1997:34-76). the variety of ways in which critical thinking is conceptualized gives rise to different interpretations as far as its key elements (abilities, knowledge, skills, processes, values, attitudes) are concerned. while the knowledge base required for critical reflection varies from subject to subject, the underlying values and attitudes remain constant across school subjects. although skills and processes are somewhat dependent upon specific subject matter, the same values and attitudes are required in all subjects for their execution. therefore it is very important to evaluate the above mentioned elements while incorporating critical thinking into the teaching. critical thinking is not only a matter of accumulating information. a person with a good memory and who knows a lot of facts is not necessarily good at critical thinking. a critical thinker is able to deduce consequences from what he knows, and he knows how to make use of information to solve problems, and to seek relevant sources of information to inform himself. critical thinking should not be confused with being argumentative or being critical of other people. although critical thinking skills can be used in exposing fallacies and bad reasoning, it can also play an important role in cooperative reasoning and constructive tasks. critical thinking can help us acquire knowledge, improve our theories, and strengthen arguments. good critical thinking might be seen as the foundation of science and a liberal democratic society. science requires the critical use of reason in experimentation and theory confirmation. the proper functioning of a liberal democracy requires citizens who can think critically about social issues to inform their judgments about proper governance and to overcome biases and prejudices. the key to critical thinking is to develop an impersonal approach which looks at arguments and facts and which lays aside personal views and feelings. this is because academic discourse is based on key principles which are described as follows by northedge: armenian folia anglistikamethodology 103 • debate: arguing different points of view. • scholarship: awareness of what else has been written, and citing it correctly. • argument: developing points in a logical sequence which leads to a conclusion. • criticism: looking at strengths and weaknesses. • evidence: ensuring that the argument is backed by valid evidence. • objectivity: the writing should be detached and unemotional and without direct appeal to the reader. • precision: anything that does not assist the argument should be omitted. critical and analytical thinking should be applied at all points in academic study to selecting information, reading, writing, speaking and listening (northedge 2005:23-43). here are five important proofs why critical thinking should be studied: • critical thinking is a domain-general thinking skill. the ability to think clearly and rationally is important whatever we choose to do. if you work in education, research, finance, management or the legal profession, then critical thinking is obviously important. but critical thinking skills are not restricted to a particular subject area. being able to think well and solve problems systematically is an asset for any career. • critical thinking is very important in the new knowledge economy. the global knowledge economy is driven by information and technology. one has to be able to deal with changes quickly and effectively. the new economy places increasing demands on flexible intellectual skills, and the ability to analyse information and integrate diverse sources of knowledge in solving problems. good critical thinking promotes such thinking skills, and is very important in the fastchanging workplace. • critical thinking enhances language and presentation skills. thinking clearly and systematically can improve the way we express our ideas. in learning how to analyse the logical structure of texts, critical thinking also improves comprehension abilities. • critical thinking promotes creativity. to come up with a creative solution to a problem involves not just having new ideas. it must also be the case that the new ideas being generated are useful and relevant to the task at hand. critical thinking plays a crucial role in evaluating new ideas, selecting the best ones and modifying them if necessary. • critical thinking is crucial for self-reflection. in order to live a meaningful life and to structure our lives accordingly, we need to justify and reflect on our values and decisions. critical thinking provides the tools for this process of self-evaluation. although most people would agree that critical thinking is an important thinking skill, they also do not know how to improve their own thinking. this is because critical thinking is a meta-thinking skill. it requires careful reflection on the good principles of reasoning and making a conscious effort to internalize them and apply them in daily life. this is not easy to do and often requires a long period of training. armenian folia anglistika methodology 104 references: 1. barnett, r. (1997) higher education: a critical business. buckingham, srhe: open university press. 2. beardsley, m. (1975) thinking straight. boston: prentice-hall. 3. chaffee, j. (1985) thinking critically. boston: houghton mifflin co. 4. chubinski, s. (1996) creative critical-thinking strategies. london: nurse educator. 5. debono, e.(1992) teach your child to think. london: penguin. 6. ferrett, s. (1997) peak performance. // online professional development at http://www.ket.org/ged2002/critical/cr3.htm. 7. klenz, s. (1987) critical and creative thinking. washington, d.c.: american society of association executives. 8. northege, a. (2005) adult learning. pretoria: university of south africa. øýý³¹³ï³ï³ý ùï³íáõáõãû³ý ý»ñ¹ñáõùý áõ ½³ñ·³óáõùá ïñã³ï³ý ñ³ëï³ïáõãûáõýý»ñç íñ³·ñ»ñáõù ðá¹í³íáõù ï³ñ¨áñíáõù ¿ ³ñ¹ç å³ù³ý³ï³ßñç³ýáõù ùýý³¹³ ï³ï³ý ùï³íáõáõãû³ý ý»ñ¹ñáõùý áõ ½³ñ·³ óáõùá ïñã³ï³ý íñ³·ñ»ñáõù: üßíáõù ¿, áñ ³í³ý¹³ ï³ý ïñã³ï³ý ù³ñï³í³ñáõãûáõýý»ñá, áñáýù ñçùýíáõù »ý å³ëçí ëáíáñáõç, ï»ëáõãû³ý ¨ ï»õ»ï³ïíáõãû³ý ÷áë³ýóù³ý íñ³, í³õáõó ³ñ¹»ý ³ñ¹ûáõý³í»ï ã»ý, ¨ áñ ³ýññ³å»ßï ¿ ½³ñ·³óý»é ëáíáñáõç ùýý³¹³ ï³ï³ý í»ñ³μ»ñùáõýùá ³ûë ï³ù ³ûý ëý¹ñç ýï³ïù³ùμª ß»ßïá ¹ý»éáí çñ³ï»ë³ï³ý, μ³½ù³ïáõù³ýç ¨ μ³½ù³μáí³ý¹³ï ùï³íáõáõãû³ý ¨ í»ñéáõíáõãû³ý íñ³: armenian folia anglistikamethodology 105 7 maket 2010 nor_n:layout 1.qxd existential and possessive constructions in english and german the present paper focuses on semantic and syntacticdistinction among the various german counterparts of existential there and presents ways in which constructions with there can be taught more effectively to native speakers or learners of english. the study comes to prove that there is also a close relationship between existential expressions and possessive constructions containing haben or have in german and english. a striking case of non-congruence between the sense relations of german and english concerns the ways in which the existence of a particular entity is communicated. for this purpose english frequently uses the presentative phrase there is. there is a book on the table. there are many animals in the zoo. german has three expressions corresponding to the english introducer there is which are syntactically and semantically distinct. these expressions are: es gibt, da ist, es ist. the primary meaning of existential construction es gibt is found to be that of absolute existence. unlike this construction, the two other constructions containing sein (es ist and da ist) express locative, implicitly non-permanent existence. current theories of communicative function show the ways in which german and english, despite their word order differences, achieve the communicative goals of the existential construction. es gibt is equivalent to english there is or there are. it is followed by the accusative case (moeller 1996:120). this is the explanation given for the meaning and usage of es gibt in a widely used textbook, deutch heute. this description appears to be standard; there are similar statements in various other textbooks currently in use for the teaching of german in the united states. in english, existential 1 sentences typically begin with the introducer there: there are elephants in africa. there is a new school in this district. this introductory there is often followed first by a form to be, then an indefinite noun phrase and a locative adverb. the close relationship between existential expressions in german and english and possessive constructions with haben or have has been noted by various linguists. lyons, for example, using evidence from english and russian theorizes that the existential and possessive constructions of each language are actually derived from the same source the locative (lyons 1967). armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 45 siranush khandanyan clark and freeze concur with lyons that this sentence types are all locative in origin and are related in many languages. clark illustrates this relationship using the sentences shown below: 1.there is a book on the table. (existential) 2.the book is on the table. (locative) 3.tom has a book. (possessive) 4.the book is tom’s. (possessive) each of these constructions describes the location of an object, either in some physical space, as in (1) and (2), or in someone’s possession, as in (3) and (4). according to freeze, in many languages the predication have and the existential share the same constituents in the same order (when the possessor is considered to be a locative element). for example, quirk refers to existential sentences with have “asserting that the subject of have in these constructions denotes a person, thing, etc. indirectly involved in the existential proposition” (quirk 1972:961). the following sentence pairs show that this type of lexical relationship holds both in english and german: 1. a. there are a lot of restaurants in my town. b. my home town has a lot of restaurants. 2. a. es gibt viele restaurants in meiner heimatstadt. b. meine heimatstadt hat viele restaurants. these sentence pairs show that there is a great deal of similarity between the two languages as far as their existential and have constructions are concerned. the sentence in 1.b can be reordered as a sentence with the unstressed there introducer and the sentence in 2.b can be reformulated as a construction beginning with es gibt. erdman points out that some existential constructions with there, like the sentence 3.a can never be replaced by a have construction (erdman 1978): 3. a. there is a stranger at the door. b. the door has a stranger (at it). he attempts to divide the various types of have constructions in english into subgroups based on apparent syntactic differences, e.g. use or non-use of a locative (prepositional) phrase. he notes, for example, that some sentences do not include a locative phrase while others do, and that there are still other sentences in which the use of the locative phrase is optional. here are a few sentences to illustrate this: 4. a. the ground has snow. b. the ground has snow on it. 5. a. the mattress has a rent. b. the mattress has a rent in it. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 46 the difference among the sentences 3, 4, and 5 actually reflects differences in their semantics, and the use (or non-use) of a locative phrase in have constructions in english follows a predictable set of rules, and besides, the restrictions on the use of a locative phrase in german have constructions are more complex than those in english. as it has already been stated, the german expression es gibt is used to indicate permanent existence. sentences containing es gibt which also contain a locative phrase can frequently be transformed into have construction: 6. a. es gibt viele klassenzimmer in der schule. (there are many classrooms in the school.) b. die schule hat viele klassenzimmer. (the school has many classrooms). 7. a. es gibt viele lowen in africa. (there are many lions in africa) b. africa hat viele lowen. (africa has many lions). 8. a. es gibt einen brunnen im garten. (there is a fountain in the garden). b. der garten hat einen brunnen. (the garden has a fountain). the have construction in english is used for both permanent and temporary conditions. for example, when the condition in the have construction is temporary, this is indicated by the addition of a prepositional phrase that includes an anaphor for the locationpossessor denoted by the subject: 9. a. there is mud on her dress. b. her dress has mud. c. her dress has mud on it. her dress has mud on it is a temporary and not a permanent condition; it therefore requires the inclusion of the locative expression on it. while describing have constructions showing permanent condition, it is possible to come across a prepositional phrase: 10. the library has a lot of books (in it). it is apparent that both variants (with and without the locative phrase) are acceptable. kirkwood overlooks important differences between the ways in which possessive have constructions behave in english and german. he provides two sample sentences in german which include a prepositional phrase and which are, therefore, both stylistically unacceptable (kirkwood 1969:35): armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 47 11. der stuhl hat ein schild dran. the chair has a sign on it. 12. die flasche hat noch wein drin. the bottle still has wine in it. kirkwood notices that this pattern (with a prepositional phrase) “has less wide distribution in german than its english counterpart has in english” and, therefore “is just barely acceptable”. on the other hand, the following have constructions are considered to be acceptable (kirkwood 1969): 13. a. ich habe ein glas vor mir. i have a glass before me. b. es gibt ein glas vor mir. 14. a. sie hat ein buch vor sich. she has a book before herself. b. es gibt ein buch vor ihr. like their english counterparts, these constructions can be used to describe a situation that is temporary. and as a result the sentences 13.b and 14.b cannot be reformulated as existential constructions es gibt. in german, if the subject in the possessive haben construction is -animate then the possessive haben construction, like constructions containing es gibt, expresses permanence. this possessive haben construction does not permit the inclusion of an anaphoric locative prepositional phrase. if the german possessive haben construction has a +animate subject instead, it may contain a prepositional phrase (which includes an anaphoric dative pronoun. unlike constructions having a -animate subject, these possessive haben constructions do not connote permanence and can, therefore, not be reformulated as a construction beginning with es gibt. in english possessive have constructions may express either permanence or impermanence, regardless of whether they have an animate or a non -animate subject. when impermanence is expressed, they require the inclusion of a locative prepositional phrase, which includes an anaphor for the subject. constructions expressing permanence may also include a locative prepositional phrase. finally, the reformulation of a there sentence as a have construction is possible only when the preposition appearing in the locative phrase expresses concrete spatial relations. hence, the study has shown that although there is a close relationship between english and german existential and possessive have constructions, these constructions are subject to different restrictions in each of these languages. notes: 1. sentences which express the existence of a person or entity – often in a particular location are known as existential. the term “existential” is introduced by jespersen in his philosophy of grammar to refer to sentences “corresponding to english senarmenian folia anglistika linguistics 48 tences with there is or there are, in which the existence of something is asserted or denied” (jespersen 1924:155). references: 1. breivik, l. (1977) a note on the genesis of existential “there”. // english studies 58. issue 4. 2. clark, ev. (1970) locationals: a study of the relations between “existential”, “locative”, and “possessive” constructions. // working papers on language universals. language universals project. stanford: stanford university press. 3. erdman, p. (1978) “there” constructions in english and german. iral, 16.3. 4. freeze, r. (1992) existentials and other locatives. // language, 68-3. linguistic society of america. 5. hawkins, j.a. (1986) a comparative typology of english and german. texas: routledge and university of texas press. 6. jespersen, o. (1948) a modern english grammar on historical principles: part iii syntax. northampton: john dickens and co. ltd. 7. keith, a. (1971) a note on the source of “there is” existential sentences. // foundations of language 17. beijing: world publishing corporation. 8. kirkwood, h. (1969) remarks on existential-locative and possessive-locative sentences in english and german. // philologica pragensia 4. 9. lyons, j. (1967) a note on possessive, existential, and locative sentences. // foundations of language 3. beijing: world publishing corporation. 10. moeller, j. and others (1996) deutch heute. grundstufe sixth edition. boston: houghton mifflin co. 11. quirk, r. (1951) explitive or existential “there”. london: medieval studies 2. ¶»ñù³ý»ñ»ýç ¨ ³ý·é»ñ»ýç ¿·½çëï»ýóç³é ¨ ëï³ó³ï³ý ï³éáõûóý»ñç ÷áëñ³ñ³μ»ñáõãûáõýá êáõûý ñá¹ í³ íáõù ùýýáõã û³ý »ý ³éý íáõù ·»ñ ù³ ý» ñ» ýç ¨ ³ý· é» ñ» ýç ¿· ½çë ï»ý óç³é (es gibt / there is) ¨ ëï³ ó³ ï³ý (have / haben) ï³ éáõûó ý» ñç ç ù³ë ï³ μ³ ý³ ï³ý ¨ ß³ ñ³ñ ûáõ ë³ ï³ý ³ é³ýó ý³ ñ³ï ïáõã ûáõý ý» ñá, çýã å»ë ý³¨ áý¹·í íáõù »ý ¹ñ³ýó ¹³ ë³ í³ý¹ ù³ý ³ é³ í»é ³ñ¹ ûáõ ý³ í»ï áõ õç ý» ñá ³ý· é» ñ» ýá áñ å»ë û ï³ñ é» ½áõ áõ ëáõù ý³ ëç ñáõ ý» ñç ñ³ ù³ñ: àõ ëáõù ý³ ëç ñáõã ûáõ ýá óáõûó ¿ ï³ éçë, áñ í» ñá ñçß û³é ï³ éáõûó ý» ñá, áõ ý» ý³ éáí ùç ß³ñù ß³ ñ³ ¹³ ë³ ï³ý ¨ ç ù³ë ï³ μ³ ý³ ï³ý áý¹ ñ³ý ñáõã ûáõý ý»ñ, ³ é³ýó ý³ ýáõù »ý çýù ý³ ïçå ³ñ ï³ ñ³ûï ã³ó¨» ñáí, áñý ¿é çñ ñ»ñ ãçý ýå³ë ïáõù ¿ ï³ õ³ å³ñ ý» ñç ïç å³ μ³ ýáõã û³ý ùß³ï ù³ ýá: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 49 kazm.cdr the virtual discourse in on-line newspapers the internet’s recent emergence into our reality hasmodified, influenced and even changed different aspects of human life. the process of a technology coming to acceptance involves more than just creating better hardware and software. the development of electronic or on-line communication has created a new type of a discourse – virtual, which exists both in spoken and written forms and may be treated as a hybrid of other traditional discourses. “virtual reality is now widely recognized as a credible technology, and has a tangible discourse”.1 today the www (world wide web) comprises a large number of processes, communities, styles and genres as everything may be on-lined and transmitted via the global net. language, literature, commerce, arts may be digitalized and introduced electronically to an auditorium of huge sizes and in a large spectrum of forms. in “writing space: the computer, hypertext, and the history of writing”, jay david bolter says: “we have begun by using word processors and electronic photocomposition to improve the production of printed books and other documents. yet it is already becoming clear that the computer provides a new writing surface that needs conventions different from those of the printed page.” “true electronic writing,” he continues, “is not limited to verbal text: the writeable elements may be words, images, sounds, or even actions that the computer is directed to perform.”2 the term “virtual reality” is particularly powerful, because it can attach to a broad range of meanings. it developed from fiction in 1984 to a rich discourse and a marketed technology by 1992. specialists of virtual reality often observe that it seemed to appear independently in several places at once and it is hard to identify one origin. the virtual discourse that is formed within the cyberspace has colonized other discourses for a specific on-line community. to construct a new type of electronic communication, virtual discourse and virtual reality proponents had to establish a shared terminology and set of assumptions and they did it by incorporating and adapting the language of other discourses. michel foucalt used the term “colonization” to mean “the coming to dominance of certain ways of viewing the world”3, and this has clearly happened with virtual reality. virtual reality is a computer-based technology but as a discourse it has attempted to colonize a range of older, traditionally non-computer based discourses: among them design, art, entertainment, communications and philosophy. it claims to have an “enabling technology” which can do old things better. this process involves retroping (changing the meanings associated with) both the technology and the traditional discourses. 28 armenian folia anglistika linguistics lusine fljyan the electronic communication consists of the following genres: e-mail, chat, online advertisements, on-line literature, scientific articles, videoconferences, distant education, on-line mass media, which involves electronic newspapers, journals, virtual newsstands, radio broadcasts and so on. the present article aims to describe and examine the virtual discourse in the genre of on-line newspapers. a genre-oriented analysis is particularly useful because it encourages a focus on the medium within which the discourse is embodied. what is an on-line newspaper? we define it as a new digitalized technology that introduces different contents of mass information in a hypertextual, non-linear form in the world wide web. any on-line newspaper is global, as potentially all the world may become its reader. even local virtual newspapers may have a larger auditorium than such global printed publications as tribune, the guardian, financial times and so on. the auditorium of virtual newspapers is not restricted by place and time, and the new reading structures are coined due to the technical opportunities of the internet. what are the basic features and characteristics of virtual newspapers that are common with printed ones? first of all in both of them the articles are written by real authors journalists, both variants have their editorial boards that are responsible for the quality of the information introduced in them. in both of them the urgent events of the day are introduced on the first page. both types consist of various sections according to their main interests. in printed as well as in virtual newspapers the articles may have one or a collective author.4 both the on-line and printed newspapers serve to perform the main two functions of the style: the informative and evaluative, and, hence, in both of them the communicative purposes are to introduce information and to make some influence on the reader. after defining the similarities of printed and on-line newspapers, we can take our analysis a step further and provide a more detailed description of electronic newspapers. virtual reality or cyberspace has created a number of advantages of on-line newspapers over their printed counterparts. • “the article is completing only when the described event is completed. the articles are written in the way so that the last phrase might be added.”5 • the hypertextual character allows searching different materials, finding references and links, and in this sense the process of reading an on-line newspaper is becoming more comprehensive, more profound and varied. • virtual newspapers have greater promptitude. they very often overtake printed newspapers and even tv media in the speed of the appearance of its materials. • the language of on-line newspapers has also its specific rules that should meet the main requirements of on-line communication. the abstracts should be short, and the sentences even shorter. it spares not only space on the web page but also the efforts of the reader to percept the information. the availability of blank space between the abstracts also facilitates the perception. the following article is from “washington monthly online”, written by kevin drum on november, 30, 2005: 29 linguistics armenian folia anglistika taxing capital....max sawicky ripped off his blogging cape today and adopted the guise of mild mannered serious economist in order to hold. very quickly, though, the debate turned to the subject of capital gains taxes specifically whether max was willing to raise his hand and say: “i want to in essence double the real rate of taxation on capital income. i don’t think the growth rate will fall.” here’s how tyler put it: max, are you willing to raise your hand and say: “i want to in essence double the real rate of taxation on capital income. i don’t think the growth rate will fall?” sadly, the results were unedifying. i demand a rematch. basically, i’m on max’s side: i think taxation of capital should be at roughly the same level as taxation of labor income. however, i believe this mostly for reasons of social justice, and it would certainly be handy to have some rigorous economic evidence to back up my noneconomic instincts on this matter. something juicy and simple for winning lunchtime debates with conservative friends would be best. unfortunately, max punts, saying only, “as you know, empirical research seldom settles arguments.” tyler then accuses of max of obscurantism and asserts without evidence that “i am asking you to believe that low rates of capital taxation are good for an economy; this accords with most empirics and with most theory.” perhaps so. but on a question this messy i have little faith in theory. i’d like to hear more about those empirics. max makes the point that u.s. tax rates on capital are higher than in most countries, and yet our economy is one of the best performing in the world. what’s more, we’ve had higher rates in the past, and have had booming economies regardless. these are good points. and yet, surely there is some serious comparative research on this matter? perhaps a consensus within the economics profession? or not? inquiring minds want to know. • the relations between authors and readers in virtual newspapers may be both synchronous and asynchronous, while in ordinary newspapers only asynchronous relations are possible. in on-line newspapers the readers may become interactants and participate in discussions and forums introduced after the article. the active participation and interaction of readers is possible in printed newspapers too. they may write letters to the editorials’ office or phone them for expressing their ideas, views, agreements and objections on different issues discussed in them. in the guestbooks that are part and parcels of electronic newspapers the readers are becoming interactants. they may react immediately after reading the article. if the readers of printed newspapers should necessarily introduce themselves in their letters or calls, in virtual guestbooks the readers may hide their names, may act anonymously or using their first names only, or nicknames. the readers’ messages can be represented with errors, omissions, changes of plan, hesitations, which are peculiar to spoken communication. the guestbooks are “the hot lines” of on-line newspapers through which the readers are becoming co-authors of the articles, reports and announcements. hence, in electronic newspapers the readers are becoming not only the objects, but also the subjects of cybercommunication. below are some of the comments made by readers on the article “taxing capital”: 30 armenian folia anglistika linguistics posted by: on november 30, 2005 at 11:31 pm (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_11/007670.php#765091) every time the subject of taxes comes up, the looney right starts barking about how lower is always better, despite the fact that we have had several periods in history when raising taxes was the right thing to do, and was done, and everyone went home a winner. it’s just a religious argument with these people to that extent, it is actually true that “empirical research seldom settles arguments.” posted by: on november 30, 2005 at 11:41 pm (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_11/007670.php#765096) if you don’t think that government does any good, you obviously won’t like taxes. i don’t care if capital gains are taxed specifically there may be reasons why that might not be the best plan. all i care about is that enough taxes are levied for the government to do a full-assed job and that the taxes are levied in as progressive a manner as possible. if that means taxing a stock dividend, fine. if it means taxing a filet mignon or an inheritance or a juicy real-estate sael, fine. fine. fine. 1) adequacy: if government needs go up, so should taxes. 2) progressivity: self explanatory. anything else is open for debate. posted by: on december 1, 2005 at 12:01 am (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_11/007670.php#765115) it doesn’t really matter. the market (like magic) will factor everything in. seriously. if you raise taxes on capital income, and change nothing else, you lower the real rate of return on capital investments. such changes don’t occur in a vacuum, however. other factors, such as interest rates, prices, the inflation rate, etc. (the relationships between these factors aren’t as fixed or predictable as we’d like to believe), will adjust accordingly to compensate. the macroeconomy (i.e. “growth”) will continue as it would have regardless. investors will always find the best available real rate of return, whatever it is, wherever it is. as has been shown empirically throughout history, tax rates don’t determine the rate of growth in the macroeconomy (low rates didn’t stop low growth during the hoover administration, or during the two bush admins; high rates didn’t stop growth during the 1960s). tax rates do, however, determine who pockets the profits. low capital income tax rates are, in effect, a government handout to the investor class. posted by: on december 1, 2005 at 12:01 am (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_11/007670.php#765116) looks to me like capital is plenty cheap already, given today’s high valuations and low interest rates. bring on the taxes! posted by: on december 1, 2005 at 12:03 am (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_11/007670.php#765118) don’t you folks at washington monthly know any real economists you can 31 linguistics armenian folia anglistika interview? i mean, we here in the comments can opine and dissect theories and anecdotal evidence until the cows come home, but for this sort of thing, you really should just use your clout to consult the experts. posted by: on december 1, 2005 at 12:08 am (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_11/007670.php#765126) there’s a difference between taxing capital, and taxing capital gains. i’m pretty sure you are talking about the latter, but please be more precice in your terminology, kevin. i believe that taxing capital (i.e. taxing wealth rather than income) was considered in the uk after wwii but was never implemented. posted by: on december 1, 2005 at 12:09 am (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_11/007670.php#765128) when you say you want them to be equal? do you mean the top tax bracket or somewhere in the middle? posted by: on december 1, 2005 at 12:40 am (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_11/007670.php#765141) inflation is also a tax on savings, so don’t forget to factor that in. inflation is not a tax, ok? inflation is an organic component of any monetary system. a tax is an instrument of funding government activity. oi. posted by: on december 1, 2005 at 12:41 am (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_11/007670.php#765143) capital is in fact taxed very widely. in almost all states and localities it takes the form of real estate taxes. some states also have personal property taxes (like car registration rates in ma, based i believe on the value of the car). it just isn’t taxed by the feds. armchair economist is right about investment decisions being made in a larger context, and about cap-gains taxes mostly determining where profits go. apropos of this, i’m old enough to remember the school of thought that said that manufacturing investment actually benefits from mild inflation because it improves prospects of nominal profit growth. but that’s not orthodoxy at the fed these days. unfortunately, max is also right that empirical research doesn’t settle arguments. exhibit a is cowen’s pleading with max to “believe.” posted by: on december 1, 2005 at 12:43 am (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_11/007670.php#765145) as has been shown empirically throughout history, tax rates don’t determine the rate of growth in the macroeconomy ... tax rates do, however, determine who pockets the profits. clear and succinct. 32 armenian folia anglistika linguistics posted by: on december 1, 2005 at 12:44 am (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_11/007670.php#765146) when you say you want them to be equal? do you mean the top tax bracket or somewhere in the middle? why can’t “equal” just mean “equal”, as in “all income is treated alike, whether from capital or labor”. sure, there are measurement issues, but there are measurement issues with income, anyway. posted by: on december 1, 2005 at 12:46 am http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_11/007670.php#765147 history serves as one existence proof. in the 50’s and 60’s, we had much higher tax rates on capital gains and enjoyed greater economic growth and job creation than we do today, as it is well seen from the comments, in virtual communication there is less pressure for readers to conform to the norms of the language. the device that transmits the communication blurs distinction between writing and speech. in total 98 readers took part in the discussion of this article, expressing different viewpoints on the rate of taxation on capital income in the usa. for a local newspaper just this one article has picked up a rather large auditorium of active participants. what are the advantages of such an exchange of opinions? we can say that readers are more socially confident than in face-to-face or letter communication: “more input is offered and this input is more freely opinionated”.6 • the on-line newspapers contain a large number of references and links to other authors, texts, sources of information. the ordinary printed newspapers contain only citations from other sources or authors that are introduced in a linear form. through the links the readers may be connected to other information sources relevant to this or that article. don’t bomb us....in the ever expanding blogosphere, the latest entry is a blog from several al jazeera staffers titled, appropriately, "don't bomb us". here are five things they would like you to know: 1. al jazeera was the first arab station to ever broadcast interviews with israeli officials. 2. al jazeera has never broadcast a beheading. 3. george w. bush has received approximately 500 hours of airtime, while bin laden has received about 5 hours of airtime. 4. over 50 million people across the world watch al jazeera. 5. the al jazeera websites are (arabic) and (english). aljazeera.com, aljazeerah.info and all other variations have nothing to do with us… • the advertisement introduced in electronic newspapers may immediately connect the reader (the customer) with the advertised product company in case the reader 33 linguistics armenian folia anglistika wishes to purchase the product via the internet. the advertisements in printed publications are devoid of this advantage, hence, the advertising and commercial opportunities of on-line newspapers are much broader. thus, for example, let your body absorb more oxygen with better breathing. j26.99 • virtual newspapers contain a number of technical advantages: automatic delivery system, unlimited capacity of archives, the absence of the notion of copies, the availability of searching services. summing up the above mentioned, we might say that an on-line newspaper as electronic mass medium plays a significant role in creating computer-mediated communication between people. the virtual discourse between the newspaper writers and readers is more direct and reader-oriented than in ordinary printed newspapers, and the readers are becoming not only the objects but also the subjects of such a discourse. the newspaper articles represent formal english with the accurate observance of grammar and punctuation rules. however, the readers’ comments represent rather informal than formal speech, full of informal lexis and idioms. the advertisements in online newspapers are also interactive, as they can link the readers to the advertised companies for buying various advertised products. ultimately, the virtual discourse of on-line newspapers is a non-linear, hypertextual phenomenon that represents a specific type of asynchronous and synchronous communication between the newspaper authors and readers (interactants).the information is transmitted not only from the newspaper to the readers but also vice versa. hence, the virtual discourse of an on-line newspaper is a sort of a written interactive dialogue between the communicants where the language choice depends on the extralinguistic motivation, genre peculiarities and electronic medium features. references: 1. chesher chris. construction of the discourse of virtual reality, 1984-1992.// cultronix – issue one – fall 1994. (http://eserver.org/cultronix/01/), 1994, p.3. 2. bolter jay david. writing space: the computer, hypertext, and the history of writing. hillsdale, nj: erlbaum, 1991. (http://www.cas.usf.edu/english/walker/papers/#bolter) 3. munslow alun. discourse and culture: the creation of america 1870-1920. 1992, p.2. 4. nosik anton. gazeta.ru: why do we need it? internet magazine, #14(http:www.gazeta.ru) 5. zasurskij ya. n. the information society, the internet and the new means of mass media. // information society, 2001, vol. 2. p.26. 6. sellin rob; winters, elaine. cross-cultural communication. section 7: internationalization of documentation. internet communication. (http://www.bena.com/ewinters/sect7.html), 1999. 34 armenian folia anglistika linguistics ìæðîàô²è êàêàôúâà ¾èºîîðàü²úæü èð²¶ðºðàôø ðá¹í³íáõù í»ñéáõííáõù »ý ¿é»ïïñáý³ûçý éñ³·ñ³ûçý ëáëáõûãç ñ³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá: ìçñïáõ³é çñ³ï³ýáõãûáõýá çýï»ñý»ï³ûçý éñ³ïí³ùççáóý»ñç ñ³ù³ñ ëï»õíáõù ¿ ùç ß³ñù ³é³í»éáõãûáõýý»ñ. ¿é»ïïñáý³ûçý éñ³·ñ»ñç ï³åá áýã»ñóáõç ñ»ï ß³ñáõý³ï³ï³ý ¿, ¨ ó³ýï³ó³í ñá¹í³íç μáí³ý¹³ïáõãûáõý ï³ñ»éç ¿ ÷á÷áë»é, ³í»é³óý»é ï³ù å³ï³ë»óý»éª çñ³¹³ñóáõãûáõýý»ñç ó³ñ·³óù³ýá ½áõ·³ñ»é ï³ù ñ³ßíç ³éý»éáí ñ³õáñ¹³ïçóý»ñç (áýã»ñóáõý»ñç) ¹çïáõáõãûáõýý»ñá: ¾é»ïïñáý³ûçý éñ³·ñ»ñç íçñïáõ³é ëáëáõûãáõù ï³ñ»éç ¿ çñ³ï³ý³óý»é ¨° ñ³ù³å³ù³ý³ïû³ ¨° ï³ñå³ù³ý³ïû³ ñ³õáñ¹³ïóáõù, çýãç ßýáññçí çýï»ñý»ï³ûçý éñ³·ñç ñá¹í³íá í»ñ³ííáõù ¿ çýï»ñ³ïïçí ½ñáõûóç ñá¹í³íç ñ»õçý³ïç ¨ áýã»ñóáõý»ñç ùçç¨: 35 linguistics armenian folia anglistika maket_n_verjin.qxp similes in d.h.lawrence’s “sons and lovers” the ability of understanding a piece of literature isnot an easy task at all, for literature is a specific world giving a wide opportunity to study the diversity of imaginative elements, those inherent and adherent connotations which give birth to many new meanings. in fiction the constant interplay of language units offers a whole range of interpretations. in this respect the creative use of stylistic devices in verbal art is of paramount importance. verbal art as opposed to intellective prose is the mediated reverberation of the objective reality. it does not reflect real facts directly as they are. the latter go through the imaginative mind of the writer, get transformed and, in this sense, turn into something fictive. the present paper goes along the lines of interpretation of simile or literary comparison which is a figure of speech consisting in an explicit likening of one thing to another on the basis of a common feature. in verbal art simile is one of the most powerful means, which reveals the author’s understanding of the surrounding world, his thoughts and ideas. in our study we have singled out two types of similesmetonymic and metaphoric. the terms and definitions have been introduced by prof. s. gasparyan according to whom the interpretation and understanding of metonymic simile does not cause any special difficulty and efforts, for linguistic units are rationally regulated and presuppose the ability of the reader to perceive the meaning easily. the picture is completely different in the case of metaphoric similes where the linguistic elements are never used at random, their choice and arrangement is always pragmatically conditioned. (gasparian s., 1991, 2000, 2008) in our study, however, our main concern is the metaphoric simile, its effect and realization in d.h. lawrence’s “sons and lovers”. as a skillful master of verbal art lawrence goes deep into the human mind and soul and is never satisfied with mere fiction. emotional manipulation is at the core of his most intriguing novel, “sons and lovers’’ which greets the reader with the author’s elegant prose while systematically immersing the story in a swirling cloud of tangled dysfunction. 120 armenian folia anglistika linguistics armine matevosyan anna melkonyan the novel can be considered lawrence’s autobiography, as it resembles much of the writer’s own life. it gives, therefore, an interpretation of how close lawrence and his mother really were. in this relation he is very vulnerable, because he not only expresses himself as the son, but also as the inevitable lover. paul, the main character, living with two women (clara and miriam) understands that neither clara nor miriam can replace his mother and this mutual psychological bondage makes him suffer. the use of the simile in this context helps the reader to penetrate into the character’s inner world, discovering new and intricate facts of his life. paul suddenly looked at her. “why are you so sad?” he asked her. “sad?” she exclaimed, looking up at him, with startled, wonderful brown eyes. “yes, he replied. “you are always, always sad!” “oh, i am not, not a bit!” she cried. “but even your joy is like a flame coming off of sadness,” he persisted. “i wonder, why?” because you are not: because you are different inside like a pinetree, and then you flare up: you are not an ordinary tree, with fidgety leaves and jolly.” (d.h.lawrence, “sons and lovers”, p.202) in the analysis of the passage special attention should be given to the metaphoric simile “your joy is like a flame coming off of sadness”. here the rules of conceptual compatibility are obviously violated: joy does not denote a tangible object, whereas flame expresses a tangible and visible quality. the word flame (a bright light; an intense feeling) has gained negative polyphonic meaning: sad, sorrowful, mournful, showing or causing sorrow. the metamorphosis here is conditioned not only by intermetaphoric interactions, but also by the general mood of the work itself and the inner world of the main character. the meaning of the above mentioned simile is intensified when another simile follows: you are different inside like a pine-tree. it is worth mentioning that the interpretation of metaphorical similes may differ among the readers. it generally depends on the profundity of their knowledge, on their mental outlook. the picture is quite different in the case of metonymic similes, where the reader does not need to analyze the given simile thoroughly. the author’s intention is quite conceivable. as has been mentioned above the word flame has acquired a new meaning. it has got the meaning of grief, bewailing, lamentation. the similes used by the author are not aimless as they help the reader to penetrate into the hidden essence of the character. paul is in delusion. finding in his mother all the important prerequisites for life, he 121 linguistics armenian folia anglistika loses his sympathy with miriam. she, now, is depreciated. she becomes invisible one who does not exist. after all he breaks off with miriam. however miriam believes that his chief need in life is she herself. if she could prove it, both to herself and to him, she would simply trust the future. new relations began between clara and paul. for paul’s mother clara was better than miriam yet she was not the right one she wanted. but the mother’s influence is so great that neither miriam nor clara can help him. and one day he feels the nonsense of clara. clara and paul loved the lincolnshire coast and she loved the sea. in the morning they often went out together to bathe. as usual she went to the sea but paul decided not to bathe but just have a look at her. she was in water moving deeper and deeper… she seemed to move very slowly across the vast sounding shore. as he watched, he lost her. she was dazzled out of sight by the sunshine. again he saw her, the merest white speck moving against the white, muttering sea-edge. “look how little she is!” he said to himself. “she’s lost like a grain of sand in the beach just a concentrated speck blown along, a tiny white foam-bubble, almost nothing among the morning. why does she absorb me?” the morning was altogether uninterrupted: she was gone in the water. far and wide the beach, the sandhills with their blue murrain, the shining water, glowed together in immense, unbroken solitude. “what is she, after all?” he said to himself. “here’s the sea-coast morning, big and permanent and beautiful; there is she, fretting, always unsatisfied, and temporary as a bubble of foam. what does she mean to me, after all? she represents something like a bubble of foam represents the sea. but what is she? it’s not her i care for.” (d.h.lawrence, “sons and lovers”, p.425) the passage is very typical and it requires a specific and thorough examination. it is clear from the passage that paul compares clara with a grain of sand showing her smallness and meanness. now she has no value for him. to emphasize the meaning of the conception deeper, the author continues the range of similes comparing clara to a bubble of foam. in the expression she is temporary like a bubble of foam the word temporary is worthy of notice. the author shows that clara is also temporary for paul. she is unstable like a bubble of foam and can appear and disappear any time. he finds now no stable values in her. for him she seems a temporary pleasure. the author uses alliteration, which gives words additional emotional coloring and unique sonority as [l], [k], [g] (she is lost like a grain of sand). the context is not confined to alliteration only. in the given simile we come across the use of accumulation of attributes, as synonymic condensation, which help the reader 122 armenian folia anglistika linguistics to reveal the hidden, undiscovered nature of the character. the attributes (a tiny, white, foam( bubble); fretting, unsatisfied, temporary ( like a bubble of foam) are the key words which expose the spiritual world of the character. in the example adduced below one can face a brutally frank portrayal of the relationship between a domineering mother and the son, a relationship that colors every aspect of the protagonist’s life. the author paints this portrait with very fine brush strokes, pays a lot of attention to descriptive detail and succeeds in one of the best characterizations in modern english literature. it was very dark, with an attempt at snow, although the spring was so far advanced. morel had not much time; he plunged forward. the town ceases almost abruptly on the edge of a steep hollow; there the houses with their yellow lights stand up against the darkness. he went over the stile, and dropped quickly into the hollow of the fields. under the orchard one warm window shone in swine head farm. paul glanced round. behind, the houses stood on the brim of the dip, black against the sky like wild beasts glaring curiously with yellow eyes down into the darkness. it was the town that seemed savage and uncouth, glaring on the clouds at the back of him. some creature stirred under the willows of the farm pond. it was too dark to distinguish anything. (d.h.lawrence, “sons and lovers”, p.433) the passage is very expressive and full of colorful images. it immediately disposes the reader to grasp the tense atmosphere of the inner tragedy and riot of the hero. the whole segment is fully metaphoric. as we see the author compares houses to wild beasts. in this metaphoric passage the author does not say openly that the hero is in desperate situation. that spiritual indignant state is vivid in the above adduced paragraph. at first sight it seems strange for he always admired the beauty of his town. the town, the houses, the own yard that were so dear to him now have no value and have turned to be wild beasts as if they want to attack him. the expression wild beast which is a very ordinary expression acquires polyphonic coloring only in the metaphoric combination with such a word as house (houses like wild beasts). the hero’s mental riot is the result of his mother’s inconsolable state. the thought that soon his mother would leave him, leave the world, the house where she lives, makes him suffer so bitterly. the peculiarities of the segmental aspect of the passage also deserve a lot of attention. we find an interplay of alliteration: [b], [g], [d]. (behind, the houses stood on the brim of the dip, black against the sky like wild beasts glaring curiously with yellow eyes down into the darkness.) the condensation of these consonants conveys gloomy overtones to the passage. in conclusion we can state that in portraying his characters d.h.lawrence is a brilliant master. he uses stylistic devices and expressive means abundantly to describe his character’s nature. the wide application of simile as well as other stylistic devices 123 linguistics armenian folia anglistika (metaphor, repetition, allusion, alliteration), enriches the work making it more expressive and sonorous. the use of similes helps the reader to penetrate into the hidden essence of lawrence’s characters and to discover such secret aspects that are hidden between the lines. references: 1. akhmanova, o. (1972) linguostylistics. theory and method. moscow: mgu. 2. galperin, i.r. (1977) stylistics. moscow: vishaya shkola. 3. grenville, kleiser (1925) similes and their use. new york and london: funk and wagnalls comp. 4. karapetyan, k.m. (1984) english similes. yerevan: ysu. 5. sosnovskaya, v.s. (1974) analytical reading. moscow: mgu. 6. gasparyan, s.k., (1991) lingvopoetika obraznovo sravnenya. yerevan: izd. yerevanskogo universiteta. 7. gasparyan, s.k. (2000) figura sravneniya v funktsionalnom osveshchenii. yerevan: izd. yerevanskogo universiteta. 8. zadornova, v.i., (1986) stilistika angliyskogo yazika. moskva: mgu. 9. zadornova, v.i., (1984) vospriyatie i interpretatsiya khudozhestvennogo teksta. moskva: mgu. ä³ïï»ñ³íáñ ñ³ù»ù³ïáõãûáõýý»ñá ¸.ð. èááõñ»ýëç §àñ¹çý»ñ ¨ ëçñ»ï³ýý»ñ¦ í»åáõù êáõûý ñá¹í³íá ýíçñí³í ¿ å³ïï»ñ³íáñ ñ³ù»ù³ïáõãû³ý áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãû³ýá ¸. ð. èááõñ»ýëç §àñ¹çý»ñ ¨ ëçñ»ï³ýý»ñ¦ í»åáõù: ð³ù»ù³ïáõãûáõýá ·»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý ëáëùç å³ïï»ñ³íáñù³ý ùççáóý»ñçó ¿, áñý áýã»ñóáõçý ³ùµáõç³ï³ý å³ïï»ñ³óáõù ¿ ï³éçë ï»ñå³ñý»ñç ¨ ýñ³ýó ý»ñ³ßë³ññç ù³ëçý: èááõñ»ýëá ñá·»µ³ý³ï³ý í»åç ³ûý ñ»õçý³ïý»ñçó ¿, áñáýù, í³ñå»ïáñ»ý û·ï³·áñí»éáí ñ³ù»ù³ïáõãûáõýá, ï»ùëïçý ñ³õáñ¹áõù »ý ñáõ½³ï³ýáõãûáõý ¨ ñýã»õáõãûáõý: 124 armenian folia anglistika linguistics maket 2012 1-2:layout 1.qxd i-narration: revealing narrator’s selfhood marika tonyan yerevan state university t he notion that a narrative literary text can be interpreted as an act of communi-cation seems to be firmly established nowadays. the task of constructing a typology of narrative texts on the basis of this parallelism, one of the most important tasks of semiotics, has been successfully carried out. according to the narrative mode – the set of methods that the author of a literary text uses to relate the plot to the addressee – different types of texts can be distinguished, the most common being the firstand third-person modes of narration. the first-person narrative is used as a means to directly communicate the internal – and otherwise invisible – thoughts of the narrator to the reader. the third-person narration can be objective and subjective. the former uses a narrator who tells a story without conveying the characters’ thoughts or feelings, and giving an impartial point of view instead. besides fiction, this mode of narration, sometimes described as a “fly on the wall” or “camera lens” approach (since it can only record the observable actions) is commonly made use of by newspaper articles, biographical documents, and scientific journals. in the third-person subjective narrative mode, also called the “over the shoulder” perspective, the narrator, almost always the protagonist, describes only the events perceived by a character. in this article we are going to discuss the correlation between the firstand third-person narrative modes and the semantics of the pronoun “i” as opposed to that of the thirdperson pronoun. jerome david salinger’s short story for esmé – with love and squalor, one of the most brilliant short stories in world literature, has served as material for our analysis since it contains i-narrative and he-narrative alternating with each other, and the variation of the narrative modes proves to be critical for its poetics and philosophy. while it is obvious that the firstand third-person objective narrations differ fundamentally, the first-person mode of narration seems close to the third-person subjective narration, since both relate the subject’s inner thoughts and feelings. however, as we will see, there is an important difference between these two types of story-telling. as paul ricoeur says, “when the state of consciousness is ascribed to oneself, it is felt, when it is ascribed to another, it is observed” (ricoeur 2008:58). тherefore, even when the subject’s perception is related, provided that this is done in the third person, it is not felt (as it would be the case with an i-narrator), it is observed. starting with émile benveniste, the first-person pronoun has been characterized as presenting its referent as a “subject”, thus “bringing out subjectivity in language”: “the ‘subjectivity’ we are discussing here is the capacity of the speaker to post himself as “subject”.[...] .‘ego’ is he who says ‘ego’” (benveniste 1974:287). olga seliverstova introduced a dimension of individualization which is similar to benveniste’s approach: “the meaning of the pronouns ‘i’ and ‘you’ contains information that the participant of the situation is characterized as an individuality, a personality, armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 21 while the features of this individuality remain unrevealed” (seliverstova 1988:33). the individualized description of the referent does not present the individual as a member of a certain class, but as a totality of his/her personal characteristics. in his book “oneself as another”, ricoeur states: “on the whole, individualization can be characterized as a process, opposite to the process of classification, which rejects singularities in favour of a notion” (ricoeur 2008:45). logicians and semanticists combine under the general term of operation of individualization such diverse operations as definite descriptions – “the first man to walk on the moon”, “the inventor of printing”, proper names – “socrates”, “paris”, “moon”, and shifters –“i”, “you”, “this”, “here”, ”now”. ricoeur suggests that the problem of personal identity is the point of intersection between two basic meanings. this notion implies that two things are correlated: “...identity is seen, on the one hand, as sameness (latin: idem, german: gleichheit), on the other hand, as selfhood (latin: ipse, german: selbstheit)” (ricoeur 2008:145). we will examine the development of the narrator’s identity in the story for esme – with love and squalor in terms of the category of selfhood. we will try to show that by switching from the pronoun “i” to “he”, the author presents the narrator as someone who has lost his sense of selfhood. j.d. salinger’s short story for esmé – with love and squalor was originally published in the new yorker in 1950, and was included in salinger’s anthology nine stories two years later. the story was referred to by salinger’s biographer paul alexander as a “minor masterpiece,” and time has called it “the warmest and best of the nine stories.” if we look at the sheer facts of this story, it is very simple. according to the mode of narration, the text can roughly be divided into three parts. the first contains i-narration in which the narrator is assumed to be writing at the present moment, as if talking to the reader. in it we are told that the narrator has received an invitation to esmé’s wedding, and that after deciding that he cannot go, he makes up his mind to write down some notes for her and the groom. the second part also contains i-narration, only this time the narrator is transferred to a period prior to the narrative time of the first part. the events related are as follows: the story-teller, then an american soldier, is in a secret training program in england, and before being sent into combat, he meets a rather extraordinary girl, thirteen-year-old esmé and her five-year-old brother charles. he chats with esmé about the war, her deceased parents, and her plans for the future. they part after exchanging addresses, and esmé wishes him luck in the war. the last part is in a third-person narrative mode: some time later, sergeant x (this is how the narrator now refers to himself) is recovering from the war; he is close to a nervous breakdown, and does not seem to be coping with reality. his friend tries to talk him out of his depression but fails to do that. only after reading a letter from esmé, does x feel pacified; he eventually is able to relax – he falls asleep with a feeling that he will be able to recuperate. there are styles of writing in which i-narration and he-narration do not differ significantly as regards the choice of words denoting properties and actions characterizing the subject of consciousness. there are yet other styles in which there is a most important difference armenian folia anglistika linguistics 22 between things that are performed by the subject of consciousness and those which are perceived by him/her. the short story under consideration belongs to the latter category. i-narration is comparable to a dialogue in which the narrator is the addresser/speaker and the potential reader is the addressee/hearer. this being the case, speech is organized so that in this or that way there is reference to the main parameters of the act of speech – the speaker, the hearer, the place and the time of speaking, and the message itself. in the introductory part, the i-narration is similar to a dialogue between the writer and the potential reader. moreover, the narrator does not conceal the fact that he is going to write something to be read later on. in other words, there is an open device of “metanarration” – narration about narration. who is the text intended for? first of all, it is addressed to esmé, to whom the story is dedicated: [esmé]: “i’d be extremely flattered if you’d write a story exclusively for me sometime. i’m an avid reader.” i told her i certainly would, if i could. [esmé]: “…i prefer stories about squalor.” “about what?” i said, leaning forward. [esmé]: “squalor. i’m extremely interested in squalor. (p.100) the second addressee is esmé’s bridegroom: “if my notes should cause the groom, whom i haven’t met, an uneasy moment or two, so much the better”. however, these notes are not intended exclusively for those characters – there exists an extratextual addressee, namely the reader of the story. the next part of the text contains reference to the events that took place six years before the story was written: in april of 1944, i was among some sixty american enlisted men who took a rather specialized invasion training course, directed by british intelligence, in devon, england. and as i look back, it seems to me that we were fairly unique, the sixty of us, in that there wasn’t one good mixer in the bunch. we were all essentially letter-writing types, and when we spoke to each other out of the line of duty, it was usually to ask somebody if he had any ink he wasn’t using. (p.88) similarly to “i”, the pronoun “we” characterizes its referent as an individual, a personality. it is a well-known fact that “we” is not the plural of “i”: since the individual is unique, he/she cannot be pluralized. as john lyons, says, “we” does not refer to “i” in the same way as “boys” refer to “boy”, or “cows” refer to “cow”. “we” should be understood as “i plus one or more persons”, and these other people can include or exclude the hearer (lyons 1972:293). this pronoun shows that there exists a kind of in-group around the speaker, and the members of the group are of the speaker’s type. consequently, the concept of individualization is preserved, and the resulting tone of narration is intimate. in the third part salinger shifts to he-narration: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 23 this is the squalid, or moving part of the story, and the scene changes. the people change, too. i’m still around, but from here on in, for reasons i’m not at liberty to disclose, i’ve disguised myself so cunningly that even the cleverest reader will fail to recognize me. it was about ten-thirty at night in gaufurt, bavaria, several weeks after v-e day. staff sergeant x was in his room on the second floor of the civilian home in which he and nine other american soldiers had been quartered, even before the armistice. (p.103) not only does the third person pronoun replace “i” in this part, but the narrator is given an obviously anonymous status, and is referred to as “sergeant x”. the deictic “i” transforms into anaphoric “he”, and “he” stands for “sergeant x”. the noun “sergeant” puts him in a certain class, and “x” deprives him of his individual name. as mentioned above, individualization is realized not only through the personal pronoun “i”, but also by means of proper names. according to ricouer, “the advantage of proper names, which are given to people, depends on their further roles – to confirm the identity as well as the sameness-ipse of these people. […] their role is to denote one individual – excluding all the others from the class being analyzed” (ricoeur 2008:47). so, by giving the character a sign as a name, salinger openly declares the writing method of detachment from the narrator’s ego. besides, instead of the individualizing pronoun “we”, he uses the collective noun “people”: the young man is now one of many soldiers, impersonal figures frustrated by the war: but he was a young man who had not come through the war with all his faculties intact,…. (p.104) by using the third-person pronoun (instead of “i”), a common noun and the depersonalizing “x” (instead of the proper name), salinger shows the splitting of the young man’s identity into someone who is feeling and into another one who is watching the suffering person, as if at a distance. the use of the third-person narrative mode in this part is justified by yet another important circumstance. only by recounting the situation as an observable one, can the narrator dwell on the body language of the character, and describe another person’s reaction to it (on body language in the story see corte 1997:105). in the story’s third part, corporal clay repeatedly draws attention to the symptoms of sergeant x’s nervous condition while the two are talking: undarkened, clay watched x trying to get a cigarette lit. “jesus,” he said, with spectator’s enthusiasm, “you oughta see your goddam hands. boy, have you got the shakes. ya know that?” x got his cigarette lit, nodded, and said clay had a real eye for detail. (p.107) armenian folia anglistika linguistics 24 thus, the detachment from the personality of the character makes it possible to speak about the outside signs of his inner condition, only possible in the third-person narrative mode. finally, the last part of the he-narration has several linguistic elements suggesting return to i-narration, which in its turn signals the possible revival of the young man’s psychological completeness. first, the young man is not “x” any more, because by addressing esmé by her name, he regains his own name – in the world where the girl was called “esmé”, the narrator also had a name. second, by using the second-person pronoun to address esmé, the narrator naturally takes up the position of the speaker denoted by the first person pronoun, which means that he is getting back the ability of referring to himself as a personality. and lastly, there is a direct statement that he is regaining spiritual health, becoming a “man with all his faculties intact”. to sum up, the alternating techniques in salinger’s story show the interrelation between the semantics of personal pronouns, and the poetics of the given literary text. the egocentric “i” and “we” make the narrator’s personality visible. the use of the thirdperson narration demonstrates loss of sense of selfhood. the final sentence, in which the personal pronoun “you” is employed, prepares return to the individually characterized narrator. references: 1. benveniste, e. (1974) priroda mestoimeniy. // obshaya lingvistika. m.: progress. 2. corte, b. (1997) body language in literature. toronto: university of toronto press incorporated. 3. lyons, j. (1972) introduction to theoretical linguistics. cambridge: cup. 4. ricoeur, p. (2008) ya-sam kak drugoy. / tr. by b. skuratova. m.: izdatelstvo gumanitarnoi literatury. 5. seliverstova, o. (1988) mestoimeniya v yazyke i rechi. m.: nauka. ²é³ççý ¹»ùùáí ·ñí³í å³ïáõù` å³ïùáõç çýùýáõãû³ý μ³ó³ñ³ûïáõùá ² é³ççý ¨ »ññáñ¹ ¹»ùùáí ·ñí³í å³ïáõùá ï³ñμ»ñ ó¨áí ¿ ¹ñë¨áñáõù å³ïùáõç çýùýáõãûáõýá: ºã» ³ é³ççý ¹»åùáõù å³ïùáõá ý»ñï³û³ýáõù ¿ áñå»ë ³ýñ³ï³ï³ýáõãûáõý, ³ å³ »ñïñáñ¹ç å³ñ³·³ ûáõù ýñ³ ³ýñ³ï³ï³ýáõãûáõýá ùýáõù ¿ ëïí»ñáõù: ²û¹ ï³ñμ» ñáõãû³ý ñçùùáõù áýï³í »ý ³ýóý³ï³ý ¹» ñ³ýáõýý»ñç çù³ëï³μ³ ý³ï³ý ³ é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá: üáõûý ï»ùëïáõù »ñïáõ å³ïáõùý»ñç ÷á÷áëíáõ ï»ëýçï³ý ëï»õíáõù ¿ ïíû³é ï»ñå³ñç μ³ñ¹ ñá·» μ³ ï³ý å³ïï»ñ: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 25 kazm.cdr the neutralization of tropes in fairy tale narratives yuri lotman has once commented on the propensity of theromantics to get rid of tropes. it is possible that this tendency could be accounted for by their deep love of the fairy tale, for one of the important stylistic features of the fairy tale is its tendency to neutralize tropes at the expense of the intentional enlivening of their worn, hackneyed semantics.1 a very similar process was observed by zvetan todorov in his major study of the fantastic where he examines the different ways that connect the figures to the fantastic. in a detailed analysis of william beckford’s vathek he comments that the supernatural appears as an extension of a rhetorical figure, realizing the literal sense of a figurative expression (todorov, 1975: 79). further he extends this important observation on the whole genre of the fantastic: ... we are not concerned here with an individual feature of style, but with a property linked to the structure of the fantastic as a genre. the different relations that we have observed between the fantastic and figurative discourse shed light on each other. if the fantastic constantly makes use of rhetorical figures, it is because it originates in them. the supernatural is born of language. it is both its consequence and its proof…the supernatural thereby becomes a symbol of language, just as the figures of rhetoric do, and the figure is, as we have seen, the purest form of literality (todorov, 1975: 82). as a result of the process of animation the figurative meaning of the trope is neutralized. from a stylistic device it changes into a narrative device, giving the story a powerful push forwards. it is true the studies related to the animation of tropes are mainly carried out in the domain of the fantastic (todorov, 1975) and the literary fairy tale (sutherland, 1970; dobzinska, 1990), however, to a large degree the conclusions these scholars came to are relevant in the case of the traditional fairy tale too, especially if we admit that in its broadest sense the folk fairy tale can be held as fitting in the genre of the fantastic. normally, in cases described above only the animated phrase is present in the text whereas the rhetorical figure itself may be absent. many of them can be easily restored owing to the fact that they are hackneyed figures known to the listeners or readers. however, in such instances it is difficult to state the type of the extended trope, for the animation of both simile and metaphor can result in identical structures. to use the terms of zvetan todorov, the animated phrase and the figure can be said to be in “diachronic” relations. here is a folk tale passage where the animation of the simile tears flew like a 107 literature armenian folia anglistika alvard jivanyan river is rather obvious. the passage is taken from the armenian tale the wicked woman. it was recorded by margarit grigorian in 1949 and included into her collection of artsakh (nagorno karabakh) folk tales. the teller is a peasant woman araksya hambardsumian. a poor maiden is persecuted by her mischievous step mother for having lost a piece of bread. after futile efforts to find the lost bread she proceeds to the forest: crying bitterly she wandered and looked for the lost bread. she cried so much that her tears became a river and flowed. the waters of that river reached a shepherd. the shepherd drank of the river and felt it was salty. at this he was very surprised and decided to find out where the water was coming from. he walked a long way and a short way and finally saw a girl who was crying bitterly (abrahamian, 1966: 615). the quoted phrase her tears became a river is to be understood and interpreted literally. in case of alternative, i.e. metaphoric interpretation, the succeeding text may be under threat of logical and semantic collapse.2 the magic transformation of tears into a river has a distinct narrative function: only through a river of tears can the step daughter reach the shepherd and be rescued from the persecutions of her cruel step parent. it is interesting that max lüthi writing about the lack of descriptions of the emotional state of folk tale personages has rightly commented on a related tale text: if a folktale hero sits down crying on a stone because he is at a loss over how to help himself, we are not told this so as to be shown the state of his soul, but because in such a situation it is just this kind of reaction on the part of the hero that leads to contact with an otherworld helper (lüthi, 1986: 14). it is also possible to claim that the river in this example is a disguised temporal unit paralleling the flow of time. sorrow becomes a unique time module: tears turn into a repetitive pattern measuring it. on such a backdrop cummings’s famous a grief ago seems more understandable. it is a well known fact that the fairy tale narrative seldom includes accurate temporal information. it prefers specific, often oblique means of denoting time continuum. the passage of time here can be covertly implied with the help of iron boots getting worn, a handful of raisins being eaten etc. to compare, we consider an analogous episode from tattercoats included into joseph jacob’s collection of english fairy tales. here tears are shown as a time pattern even more explicitly: so he turned his back, and sat by his window looking out over the sea, and weeping great tears for his lost daughter, till his white hair and beard grew down over his shoulders and twined round his chair and crept into the chinks of the floor, and his tears, dropping on to the window-ledge, wore a channel through the stone, and ran away in a little river to the great sea (jacobs, 1993: 281). 108 armenian folia anglistika literature as in the armenian example, it is possible to claim that the phrase his tears, dropping on to the window-ledge, wore a channel through the stone, and ran away in a little river to the great sea emerges at the expense of the animation of a trope (either a simile, tears flew like a river, or a hyperbole, a river of tears etc). the window through which the river of tears flows towards the sea may stand as a masked metaphor for the eye shedding tears. in fewer tales the original rhetorical figure is present. the tale shows the tropes and their animation in the same textual cut. here, to use todorov’s definition, we are faced with “synchronic” relations: …the figure and the supernatural are present on the same level, and their relation is functional, not “etymological”. here the appearance of the fantastic element is preceded by a series of comparisons, of figurative or simply idiomatic expressions, quite common in ordinary speech but designating, if taken literally, a supernatural event — the very one that will occur at the end of the story (todorov, 1975: 79). the following stretch of narrative is taken from the armenian folk tale sadaphia khanum (lady mother-of-pearl). it was recorded by gevorg sherents and included into his beautiful collection of van (historical armenia) folk tales. the teller is unknown: by lord’s command the maiden jumped out of the sea hollow. the sea waves took her and brought to a piece of land. she looked around and saw nothing except the bottomless sea and the vast fields. neither men nor beasts could be seen. sometimes birds would come down from the sky and then fly back again. the maiden cried, cried and the tears from her eyes flew down and fell around her like beads of pearl — so much for the maiden. another queen had sworn that if she could have a boy child may it remain in the shape of a bird for seven years, see the whole world and then only marry the girl he wanted. now the six years had already passed. once the prince came down the island and what did he see there but a fairy like girl. she was helpless? naked and bare-footed, hungry and thirsty. immediately the bird flew to houses which had laundry hanging on the lines and stole some clothes from here and there and covered the girl’s body. her tears, which had turned into pearls, he gathered and put into a box. then he took the maiden on his wings and flew her to his house (sherents, 1899: 101). in the quoted passage we can easily identify the expression the tears from her eyes fell down like beads of pearls as a simile. further in the narrative the tears change into real pearls. it is interesting that this transformation is represented by the narrator in a rather casual way which is seen even on the level of syntax: it is set in a subordinate clause. this transformation is important on the narrative level. it is not by chance that the bird-man puts the tears which had been changed into pearls into a box and keeps them. later they could serve as a kind of proof of her grief for losing her lover, as tokens 109 literature armenian folia anglistika of her devotion to him. the box is not unlike the lachrymal vases or tear bottles in oriental cultures meant to show the truthfulness and love of the wife for her absent husband. the pearls stored in the box would also serve as a proof of her purity. as the further narrative proves the young woman marries the bird prince but remains untouched and true to her first spouse. in times old and new tears of a woman have been associative of womanliness. in many cultures the brides are supposed to cry at the wedding party. there seems to exist an almost misogynic belief stating: the crying woman is a beautiful woman. this attitude is relevant in our days too.3 it is important to mention that the extension of rhetoric figures is not merely a means of developing the story but also reveals implicit layers of characterization which may remain blocked in case the rhetoric figure were not animated. fairy tale heroines crying in pearl tears are very often renounced children, daughters of absent or passive fathers, offspring of abandoned women. though the father in this tale does not literally renounce his daughter, he does not object to the readiness of his wicked spouse to give the girl to be devoured by the snake – prince. the only help the girl may hope to get is the advice of her late mother. in many tales the gift of crying in pearl tears is bestowed upon the girl child at her very birth or at the christening: one day three women came to their house. each of them made a good wish for the child. the first woman said, “i will give her such a beauty that whoever sees her will be enchanted and will love her immensely”. the second woman said, “i will give the girl strength to grow in a day as much as other children grow in a year. when she cries may pearls drop of her eyes instead of tears. when she laughs may roses and violets fall down from her mouth. and may precious stones appear on the ground she treads on”. the third woman said, “i am giving her a cross which will make her immortal as long as she keeps it hung from her neck” (abrahamian, 1966: 42). curiously, similar episodes in their turn can be understood allegorically as they are reminiscent of actual baptismal rites current in armenia until now: when a girl child is being christened, those present cast some gold and pearls into the baptismal water. to confirm the view narrated above let us mention that the tale lady mother of pearl includes other story elements denoting at the heroine’s status of a renounced daughter. heeding to the advice of her deceased parent the girl dresses herself in a hedgehog’s skin. “girl”, she said, “why are you crying? get up and listen to what i will tell you.” when they take you to the king’s palace ask them to give you a hedgehog’s skin. draw the skin on your face, sit right in front of the snake and look into its eyes (sherents, 1899). apart from its defensive function an animal skin has a very distinct signification in a great number of fairy tales. it points at the status of the disowned child, mostly a female 110 armenian folia anglistika literature child. in this particular tale the girl herself admits and exposes her disgrace, the disgrace of being cast in front of a monster as food by her own parents. the disgrace of being renounced may suggest a voluntary self-abasement, a self-willed deed acknowledging and displaying the hurting status of the disowned. comparable examples can be easily found in folklores of most cultures. at the same time, wearing animal skins or plant clothes instead of proper outfits is a kind of silent reproach, a challenge addressed to the cruel or, in this case, indifferent parent. no wonder in some fairy tales the degraded characters clad in strange clothes conceal their former names, in this manner renouncing their descent and their parents, the father in the first place.4 thus before marrying the snake prince the heroine is nameless. wearing habits made of animal furs, skins or plants is renouncing also one’s own kind and even hints at a partial shape shifting. the heroine chooses to show herself as a beast, a non-human. where a human is under threat coming from his likes, an animal or a plant can survive. it is not accidental that in several tales of the donkeyskin cycle the personage does not merely wear an animal skin but actually changes into one. it is true wearing unusual clothes might have another signification in fairy tale narratives: it implies the character’s pre-matrimonial status, her passage from maidenhood to womanhood, the temporary fall before achieving a higher, royal status through marrying a prince. ruth bottigheimer defines such stories as restoration tales (bottigheimer, 2002: 11). wearing herbal clothes means that one is not dressed properly but is not naked either. in this sense tales of this series remind very much those relating of the clever maiden expected to be taken to marriage on condition she appears neither dressed nor naked, to put the marriage condition into grimms’ words: komm zu mir nicht gekleidet, nicht nackend…und wenn du das kannst, will ich dich heiraten. understandably, in the case of synchronic arrangement of the figure and its extension, the animated phrase succeeds the rhetoric figure. probably a unique case when the animated phrase precedes the trope is found in grimms’ mother hulda: what are you afraid of, my dear child? come and live with me, and if you do the house-work well and orderly, things shall go well with you. you must take great pains to make my bed well and shake it up thoroughly, so that the feathers fly, and then in the world it snows, for i am mother hulda (brothers grimm, 1993: 207). and further as the old woman spoke so kindly, the girl took courage, consented, and went to her work. she did everything to the old woman’s satisfaction, and shook the bed with such a will that the feathers flew about like snow flakes: and so she led a good life, had never a cross word, but boiled and roast meat every day (grimm, 1993: 129). here the order of appearance of the mentioned structures is reversed and it is permissible to conclude that the reversion was done owing to the interference of the 111 literature armenian folia anglistika recorders. the folk version would hardly have a simile succeeding the transformation as this makes the text redundant in terms of narrative logic. often relations between a figure and its extension are revealed in two different versions of the tale or tales of different types. the tale nouri hadig (the pomegranate seed), the armenian version of snow white involves an implicit comparison of the young heroine’s beauty to a pomegranate. she is as white and red as a pomegranate. this version was recorded by s. hoogasian in the usa from the words of her grandmother, a van (historical armenia) immigrant: there was once a rich man who had a very beautiful wife and a beautiful daughter called nourie hadig (tiny piece of pomegranate). every month when the moon appeared in the sky, the wife asked: “new moon am i the most beautiful or are you?” and every month the moon replied, “you are the most beautiful”. but when nourie hadig came to be fourteen years of age, she was so more beautiful than her mother that the moon was forced to change her answer. one day when the mother asked the moon her constant question, the moon answered: “i am not the most beautiful nor are you. the father’s and mother’s only child nourie hadig is the most beautiful of all.” nourie hadig was ideally named because her skin was perfectly white and she had rosy cheeks. and if you have ever seen a pomegranate, you know that it had red pulpy seeds with a red skin which has a pure white lining (hoogassian, 1982: 85). another version of this tale which is recorded in van, almost a century before hoogassian published her tale, explains the origin of the child’s name differently. there was and there was not a woman. one day she was sweeping the couch and found on it a grain of pomegranate which she threw into her mouth and ate. by the end of nine years, nine minutes and nine months she gave birth of a fairylike pretty daughter and called her nar khatyun (pomegranate queen, v.14: 543). in this version of the tale the comparison is neutralized giving way to the supernatural, the birth of a girl child as a result of swallowing a seed of pomegranate. it is possible that in folk tales, as different from the literary fairy tale, the dichotomy-trope and its extension are mediated by a masked intermediate, transitional link, mostly a folk belief or some kind of superstition, and the animated phrase is the extension of not so much the rhetoric figure but the folk belief. if we consider the above quoted passages we will see that the simile a girl as red and white as a pomegranate and the extended phrase a girl is born from a pomegranate seed are interceded with the folk belief according to which many armenian women, when pregnant, crave for pomegranates possibly owing to the sour-sweet taste of this succulent fruit and its highly nutritional value. additionally, this belief is paralleled by others stating the appearance 112 armenian folia anglistika literature of the child to be born depends on the food the pregnant mother craves for or looks at.5 it will not be far-fetched to assume there should have been a folk medical belief according to which if a pregnant mother eats pomegranate she will bear a beautiful child.6 in many tales this fruit denotes outstanding, often non-human beauty. fairy maidens are believed to be enclosed in pomegranates and are born as brides for human princes. in such cases the fruit serves as a kind of womb where the child is enclosed and is not very different from impregnation from a seed of pomegranate. on the other hand, such narrative episodes can be explained as an echo of child marriages once being in practice in armenia. the relations between a trope and its enlivened variant can be observed between tales belonging to diverse cultures. a good example is the german snow white and the russian snegourochka (snow maiden). snow white is as white as snow, snegourochka is a girl made/born of snow. the two are mediated by the belief that a child’s appearance is dependent on things, snow, for example, its mother has looked upon when pregnant. judging from alexander pushkin’s version of snow white, in russia it was believed that snow gazing would help to bear a white skinned child. by what right is she my rival? such young folly i shall bridle. so she’s grown up me to spite! little wonder she’s so white: with her bulging mother gazing at that snow what’s so amazing! (pushkin, 1973: 3). of importance, the translation of analogous tales requires accuracy. thus one of the oldest russian translations of brothers grimm published in 1893 presents the similative name snow white as snegourochka (snow maiden, the companion of ded moroz, the russian counterpart of santa claus). the seemingly innocuous translation mistake resulted in a rather serious change in the meaning of the story; the human child was transformed into a supernatural creature. this blemish in the translation of the name is explained in the translator’s notes to the text where he reveals his wish to find counterparts for the characters in russian folk culture rather than to translate their names literally (polevaya, 1893). an almost identical mistake was found in the armenian translation of the grimms. snow white was translated as dzunanuysh meaning a snow fairy or a snow maiden. we must admit, though, that the translation error was easily neutralized in the very context of the tale which shows unambiguously that snow white is the offspring of human parents. later translators of the tale made an attempt to correct the mistake by coining the literary translation of snow white spitakadzunik. though more accurate, this variant 113 literature armenian folia anglistika sounds rather unnatural in armenian. at the moment both names are current in armenian translations of both the grimm tale and disney’s story. a solution of this problem would probably consist in admitting that the word dzunanuysh (snow maiden) has simply acquired a second meaning a girl as white as snow. notes: 1. it seems important to add that in genres different from the fairy tale, in nonsense literature, for instance, the enlivening of a trope or a literal understanding of an idiom may not result in the supernatural but will rather create a comic effect. a real river/sea/lake of tears in a fairy tale expresses the sufferings of the personage and at the same time moves the narrative forward. the sea of tears carroll’s alice and the ‘curious animals’ swim in is meant to cause a humorous effect. 2. let us mention that the literal understanding of a narrative does not exclude its possible symbolic interpretation. to have a deeper insight into the meaning of this narrative passage we can refer to a jungian interpretation. in terms of such an approach, crying is seen as the beginning of initiation which in view of the plot development of numerous similar tales is difficult to disagree with: tears are a river that takes you somewhere. weeping creates a river around the boat that carries your soul-life. tears lift your boat off the rocks, off dry ground, carrying it downriver to someplace new, someplace better. …a woman’s crying has been considered quite dangerous, for it loosens the locks and bolts on the secrets she bears. but in truth, for the sake of a woman’s wild soul it is better to cry. for women, tears are the beginning of initiation into the scar clan , that timeless tribe of women of all colors, all nations, all languages, who down through the ages have lived through a great something, and yet who stood proud (pinkola estes, 1996: 374). 3. tears as symbol of womanliness are often used by top fashion designers. in his 1998 show the house of dior presented an embroidered hair net. the model wearing it had pearl tears on her eyes (l’oficiel, 1998: 16). the italian firm la perla advertised women’s underwear showing a model with tears flowing down her cheeks; the association between pearls and tears is more than obvious. 4. if placed into the armenian context namelessness can be accounted for by a different reason. formerly in certain regions of armenia girls did not have names but were called by their fathers’ names the word daughter added to them. 5. greeks, for example, used to throw black pepper on expectant mothers on st. simon’s day. this was supposed to cause moles on the child, etc. (daniels & stevans, 1971: 39). 6. interestingly, in other cultures pomegranate was among the fruit tabooed for the pregnant. according to daniel’s and stevans’s encyclopaedia of superstitions, 114 armenian folia anglistika literature folklore, and the occult sciences, the albanian women are discouraged to eat pomegranate or bad luck will come to their child (daniels & stevans, 1971, 39). references: 1. abrahamian s.(ed.) char parave. // hay zhoghovrdakan hekiatner. yerevan: akademiayi hratarakchutyun, 1966, pp. 615-616. 2. abrahamian s.(ed.) pirenen vard manishak tapogh akhchike. // hay zhoghovrdakan hekiatner. yerevan: akademiayi hratarakchutyun 1966, pp. 41-49. 3. bottigheimer ruth. fairy godfather. // straparola, venice and the fairy tale tradition. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press, 2002. 4. estes clarissa pinkola. women who ran away with the wolves. london: rider books, 1996. 5. grimm jacob, wilhelm. mother hulda. // grimms’ fairy tales. hertfordshire, wordsworth’s children’s classics, 1993, pp.128-131. 6. hoogasian-villa susie. one hundred armenian tales. wayne state university press, 1982. 7. jacobs joseph. tattercoats. // more english fairy tales. london: everyman’s library children’s classics, 1993, pp.281-285. 8. luthi max (transl. john d. niles). the european fairy tale. bloomington and indianapolis: indiana university press, 1986. 9. pushkin alexander. the tale of the dead princess and the seven knights. moscow: progress publishers, 1973. 10. sherents gevorg. nar khatyun. // vana saz. tiflis: 1885, vol. 1, pp.106-112. 11. sherents gevorg. sadaphia khanum. // vana saz. tiflis: 1899, vol. 2, pp. 99-105. àö²î²ü ðü²ðüºðæ ⺼àø²òàôøà ðºøæ²âæ ð²ø²îºøêîàôø ð»ùç³ãç ñ³ù³ï»ùëïáõù ï»õç ¿ áõý»ýáõù á׳ï³ý ï³ñμ»ñ ñý³ñý»ñç, ñ³ù»ù³ïáõãûáõýý»ñç, ÷áë³μ»ñáõãûáõýý»ñç, ã³÷³½³ýóáõãûáõýý»ñç μ³é³óç çù³ëïý»ñç í»ñ³ï³ý·ýáõù: ²ûë »ñ¨áõûãá ï³ñ»éç ¿ ¹çï»é áñå»ë ýßí³í á׳ï³ý ñý³ñý»ñç 㻽áù³óáõù: ´³é³óç çù³ëïý»ñç í»ñ³ï³ý·ýù³ý ³ñ¹ûáõýùáõù ·áû³ýáõù ¿ ÷áë³ï»ñåáõù (ù»ï³ùáñýá½)ª ñ»ùç³ãçý ³ù»ý³μýáñáß é»½í³á׳ï³ý ñý³ñá: 115 literature armenian folia anglistika 1(2)2016+.pdf analytic causative constructions in english (viewed in the light of cognitive semantics) the subject of our analysis is causative constructionsof john made jack run type, in which the relation between the nominative part (john) and the verb (made) is considered to be primary predication, while the relation between jack and run secondary predication. though both the predicative links take a two-sided direction, they are not identical syntactically: the first predication constitutes the nucleus of the sentence, whereas the same cannot be said about the second syntactic bond. on the other hand, the secondary participant of the situation occupies a more privileged syntactic position, thus reducing the status of the nucleus subject to that of the benefactive, instrumental, etc. (plungyan, 210). this kind of approach prompts us to look at the nature of causative verbs in the light of cognitive semantics. as is known, cognitive linguistics implies that language uses not only linguistic, but also extralinguistic factors to interpret language facts such as our perception of reality, the links between objects and phenomena, etc. when describing analytic causative constructions from the point of cognitive semantics, we will make use of the theory of force dynamics suggested by l.talmy. this theory was successfully applied by the author in his description of english modal verbs. l.talmy introduced the concepts of agonist and antagonist while analyzing this class of verbs from the semantic point of view (talmy, 2-79). thus, in the sentence you must go you is used as the agonist, i.e. the agent of the action (go). the antagonist is present only implicitly: it is the speaker in the referent situation, who induces the agonist to act in this or that way. transferring this theory into the sphere of analytic causative constructions, we will view the subject of primary predication as the antagonist (ant), i.e. the inducer of the action expressed by the causative verb (vc), while the agonist (ag) is the subject of secondary predication, i.e. the agent of the action expressed by the resultative verb (vr). 6 armenian folia anglistika linguistics yelena mkhitaryan sophie sarkissyan 1(2)2016+.pdf metaphor in the bible metaphor is one of the main stylistic devices ofimagery. it is widely used in the bible and the imagery of the holy book largely depends on this stylistic device. metaphor is a comparison reduced to a single word expressing similarity without the signs of comparison. a simile says that it is like this, a metaphor says it is this. in luke 13:31-32, jesus says of herod: “go and say to that fox.” if he had said, “go and tell that man that is like a fox,” it would have been a simile, but jesus used the forceful metaphor. in 1 corinthians 3:16 “you are a temple of god” is a metaphor. in matthew 26:26-28 jesus takes a loaf and says “this is my body” and he takes up a cup and says “this is my blood of the covenant”: these are metaphors. how many controversies on the lord’s supper would have been settled if brethren had realized that this was metaphorical language! the bible gives us not only examples of metaphors in words or sentences, but also metaphorical narratives. the way the author of mark’s gospel tells the stories of the two blind men, to whom jesus gives sight, provides an illuminating example. the two stories frame the great central section of that gospel – a section that describes jesus’ final journey to jerusalem, contains three solemn sayings about this impending death and resurrection, and speaks of discipleship as following jesus on his journey. mark places the story of the blind man of bethsaida at the beginning of this section. jesus restores his sight in two stages. after the first, the blind man sees people but not clearly: “they look like trees walking”. after jesus lays his hands on him a second time, the blind man sees “everything clearly”. at the end of the section is the story of a blind beggar named bartimaeus. he cries out to jesus, “have compassion on me!” jesus asks, “what do you want me to do for you?” in superbly evocative language, bartimaeus expresses his desire: “let me see again.” then we are told, “bartimaeus regained his sight and followed jesus on the way”. unlike metaphors in fiction, which may maintain a strongly individual character, biblical metaphors have a real basis. although it would be rather difficult to show examples of allegories in the genealogy of adam, cain or noah in genesis, it is a fact and it has been proved that various ideas are contained in the names given in chronological sequence, conveying certain symbolic meanings to the names noah (rest, 31 linguistics armenian folia anglistika gourgen gevorgyan hin.qxd new tendencies in the development of modern english the second half of the 20th century wascharacterized by the emergence of new approaches in language studies. e.s. kubriakova singles out four main features of linguistics in the 20th century: functionalism, anthropocentrism, expansionism, and explanatory character.1 it is a well-known fact that language is an indispensable part of a human being, it lives and develops together with him and the surrounding world. in general, science developed dramatically in the 20th century, together with the rising interest in language as one of the main means of communication. furthermore, the need to categorize the external world grew considerably. the integration and cooperation of different scientific trends required language to be treated as a multisided phenomenon, which was directly connected with such branches of human knowledge as the theory of communication, pragmatics, semiotics, the theory of politeness, anthropology, sociology and many others. the main characteristic feature of linguistic research now is the study of the functional peculiarities of linguistic units, and the importance of understanding how to use different linguistic units in different communicative situations. in this respect, it is not only purely linguistic factors that are important, but also many different aspects of the extralinguistic context. the functional approach to the study of language is not clearly defined yet, though the majority of linguists emphasise the importance of this approach for modern linguistics. in very many respects this is connected with the already established postulates in linguistics, which recognize the relative stability of the grammatical system. the latter has a lot of common features in different languages and changes more slowly than any other part of the language. functionalism is characteristic of typologically oriented linguistics, assisting in the handling of the corpus of data and allowing attention to be given to data from other branches of knowledge, which are important for linguistic study, especially on the interdisciplinary level. the last decades of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century are characteristic of a new trend in linguistics – the cognitive approach to the study of language. it has become possible to understand the utterance and its role in the text on 21 linguistics armenian folia anglistika olga alexandrova the basis of a wider background of discourse. discourse studies are usually done on a textual basis, but until now it has been difficult to speak about some of the generating potential of discourse which may be characteristic of different texts belonging to different functional styles. in the present paper the term “discourse” is used to emphasise the dynamic character of the texts under investigation. the meaning of this term is discussed by many linguists (and not only linguists), and it is differently defined by different scholars. naturally, it is not a new phenomenon in linguistics. initially, it was applied to oral speech. it first appeared in american linguistics and was probably introduced because linguists wanted to go beyond the limits of the isolated sentence. nowadays this term is used in much a wider sense, in reference to speech in particular. the peculiar feature of discourse is that it presupposes two-sided communication: first of all, it is directed at some specific receiver and has a sender who has certain subjective characteristics reflecting his social status. a great number of factors are involved in the process of discourse creation: social, communicative, pragmatic, cultural, historical and so on. there may be political, artistic, musical, theatrical and other types of discourse. in recent years scholarly attention has been focused on a new type of discourse – internet texts. users know that it is possible to find different kinds of texts on the internet: fiction, academic writing, mass media – practically all possible existing types. of special interest is communication between people within the internet itself. so-called electronic language is attracting more and more attention from linguists, who are concerned with its possible influence on language in general. of course, the priority in this respect should be given to the english language: it is the first language of the internet and its use is spreading. its presence in the internet supports its position as the primary language for international communication: a great many words which were introduced into the english language with the development of computer systems have now been borrowed by other languages, and language has acquired a codified system of units. linguists are also concerned with the influence this system may have on the living language. it is known that similar apprehensions existed in connection with the development of printing, the telephone, radio and television. sometimes internet language is compared to artificial languages, like volapuk or esperanto. but the great difference consists in the fact that english is a living language and had already been the language of international communication by the time the internet appeared. internet language is based on this living language – english – or to be more exact, american english. some linguists suggest that the internet, in conjunction with radio and television, telephone communication and printed materials, has created a universal information net, which they call “cyberspace”, and that all of us are the “netizens” in this net (the word is easily associated with “citizens”). the language we use in the internet is “netspeak” and the corresponding derivations – “netlish” and “weblish” (easily associated with english), or electronic discourse, interactive written discourse, etc.2 here a very important question arises: for many years linguists have been discussing the interrelationship between oral and written speech. it is accepted that oral speech is primary, and that written speech changes under the influence of oral speech. some 22 armenian folia anglistika linguistics features which were assumed to be ungrammatical formerly and were considered to be peculiar to oral speech, have now become the grammatical norm. take, for example, nominative, andand butsentences, ellipsis, etc., which until recently were beyond the limits of normative english grammar. the language of the internet combines oral and written speech: there are more or less normalized materials, but at the same time there is communication – online chatrooms, e-mails and e-worlds, which presuppose some response from those to whom they are addressed. there is a great difference within the two-sided communication in the internet: there may be an immediate response, an indirect response, or no reaction at all, it may take time to receive the answer, and so on. also, when communicating orally, participants are united by the extralinguistic situation. in the case of internet communication such a context is out of the question, while in oral communication it is impossible to react to the message without mimics or gesture, but as we shall see later, the situation has changed even here. the phenomenon of the internet is not simply a technological fact, it is also a social fact, in which language plays the most important role. and one can see again how language reflects changes in people’s everyday lives, and how these changes in language are reflected in turn in people’s lives. do these changes mirror the changes in the human mind which are going on now, i.e. the changes in our cognitive picture of the world? for example, in internet communication, as well as in mobile phone text messaging, it has become quite usual to create messages in the form of a peculiar kind of slang, where the forms of the words are minimized, a large number of abbreviations are used, and numerals combined with words may be present. there is also a system of signs to show accompanying emotions. people are even taught how to write and decodify this kind of message. thus, in one of the recently published textbooks students are asked to decode the following message: man: do u wan2 c me l8r 4 a drink? woman: wot ru trying 2 say? man: i luv u woman: oic : o man: pcm woman: im w/ some1 man: wot about yr friend? i luv her 2. is she w/ ne 1? woman: i h8 u3 this actually means: man: do you want to see me later for a drink? woman: what are you trying to say? man: i love you. (happiness) woman: oh i see. (surprise) 23 linguistics armenian folia anglistika man: please call me. woman: i am with someone. (sadness) man: what about your friend? i love her too. is she with anyone? woman: i hate you. an incident that happened in a british school shows the influence of mobile technologies on the way people formulate their ideas in written speech. a thirteen-yearold schoolgirl was asked to write a composition about her recent holidays. one can only imagine the surprise of the teacher when she saw the following text: my smmr hols wr cwot. b4 we used 2 go 2 ny 2c my bro, his gf @ thr 3:kids ftf. ilny, it’s gr8 plc. translated into “normal” language it would run as follows: my summer holidays were a complete waste of time. before we used to go to new york to see my brother, his girlfriend and their three screaming kids face to face. i love new york. it’s a great place! in these cases we may observe that when the borderline between oral and written speech is practically erased, there is a kind of imitation of oral speech in writing. this is especially true of chats, e-mails and mobile messages, which contain a lot of misprints, violations of grammatical rules, etc. it is interesting to note that the word internet itself appeared only in 1994, and in 1998 it was already listed in dictionaries. it is really surprising how quickly it became a part of the vocabulary. it was borrowed by the russian language without any change of form and, although according to the spelling rules we expect to have the initial small letter, it is used with the capital letter. internet slang is widely used nowadays all over the world. it has become international, internet words have been borrowed by many languages. thus, in the russian language such elements as ‘see you’ or ‘e-mail’ are quite common now. such words as ‘file’, ‘portal’, ‘sight’, ‘server’ and many others are quite normal even to the ear of the philologist, and russified computers do not reject them as being alien to the russian language. it is a well-known fact that english punctuation is more semantic-stylistic than logical, especially as compared with the strict russian system of punctuation, but even this strict system of punctuation is very often violated in electronic texts. linguists think that this neglect of punctuation may lead to some deplorable consequences. here i would like to refer to the definition of punctuation given by lynn truss in her recently published book: “punctuation has been defined in many ways. some grammarians use the analogy of stitching: punctuation as the basting that holds the fabric of language in shape. another writer tells us that punctuation marks are the traffic signals of language: 24 armenian folia anglistika linguistics they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop. i have even seen a rather fanciful reference to the full stop and comma as “the invisible servants in fairy tales – the ones who bring glasses of water and pillows, not storms of weather or love.” but best of all, i think, is the simple advice given by the style book of a national newspaper: punctuation is ‘a courtesy’ designed to help readers to understand a story without stumbling.”4 the author gives many interesting examples of the neglect of punctuation and comments on its disastrous effect. for example, here is a headline in a newspaper: ‘dead sons photos may be released’, where the apostrophe is left out. the title of lynne truss’s book is: ‘eats, shoots and leaves’. it may sound strange unless you know the anecdote: “a panda walks into a café. he orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air. ‘why?’ asks the confused waiter as the panda makes towards the exit. the panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder. ‘i am a panda,’ he says at the door. ‘look it up.’ the waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, he finds an explanation: ‘panda. large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to china. eats, shoots and leaves.’” the question of internet discourse is increasingly attracting the attention of linguists, but these are only the first attempts to understand this new phenomenon. it will be important for the further development of languages, the english language in particular, and of linguistic policies in general, which are directly connected with the life of society and its future. a well-known british linguist david crystal asks the rhetorical question: “will the electronic revolution bring revolutionary changes into the language?” there is every reason to think that the answer is positive. the phenomenon of internet discourse may drastically change our understanding of language. internet language, although closely connected with oral and written speech, is an absolutely new phenomenon. there is no doubt that its communicative and cognitive importance will grow. does it endanger the development of languages such as english or russian? scholars who have dealt with this problem take the opposite view: it will enhance the development of languages, it will enable languages to reflect the peculiarities of the new discourse, thereby reflecting a true picture of the world. it would be most regrettable to read this in future: 25 linguistics armenian folia anglistika mi deer jo i ope u r krwite well i ope i shal son b habell 4 2 teedge u jo an then we shorl b so glodd an wen i m prengtd 2 u jo wot larx an bleve me inf xn pip. which is, in fact, the writing of infant pip in “great expectations”. my dear joe, i hope you are quite well. i hope i shall soon be able to teach you, joe – and then we shall be so glad. and when i am apprenticed to you, joe: what larks! believe me, in affection, pip references: 1. êóáðÿêîâà å.ñ. ýâîëþöèÿ ëèíãâèñòè÷åñêèõ èäåé âî âòîðîé ïîëîâèíå 20 âåêà (îïûò ïàðàäèãìàëüíîãî àíàëèçà). â êí.: ßçûê è íàóêà êîíöà 20 âåêà. ì., 1995. 2. crystal, david. language and the internet. cambridge, 2001. 3. jones, v., kay, s. inside out / upper intermediate. macmillan, 2002. 4. truss, lynn. eats, shoots and leaves. the zero tolerance approach to punctuation. profile books, 2003, p.7. ¼³ñ·³óù³ý ýáñ ùçïáõùý»ñ å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù 21-ñ¹ ¹³ñý ³ãùç ¿ áýïýáõù ï»ëýáéá·ç³ï³ý ½³ñ·³óáõùý»ñç ùç³ý·³ù³ûý ýáñ ù³ï³ñ¹³ïáí, áñý ¿é ýï³ï»éç ³½¹»óáõãûáõý ¿ ·áñíáõù çýãå»ë ù³ñ¹ï³ýó ï»ýë³ï»ñåç, ³ûýå»ë ¿é ýñ³ýó 黽íç íñ³: ºí ù³ýç áñ 黽áõý ׳ý³ãáõáõãû³ý ï³ñ»õáñ³·áõûý ùççáóý ¿, ³ûý ¿³ï³ý ¹»ñ áõýç ³ßë³ññç ½³ñ·³óù³ý åñáó»ëáõù: ²ûë ³éáõùáí, ³ý·é»ñ»ýá, áñá ý»ñï³ûáõùë ùçç³½·³ûçý ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý ù»ç ³ù»ý³é³ûý ïçñ³éáõãûáõýý áõý»óáõ 黽áõý ¿, ã»ñ»õë ³ù»ý³×ïáõýý ¿: ²ûý ³ñï³ùçý ·áñíáýý»ñç »õ ù³ñ¹ï³ýó ÷á÷áëíáõ ùï³íáõáõãû³ý ³½¹»óáõãû³ùμ ýï³ï»éç ÷á÷áëáõãûáõýý»ñ ¿ ³ñó³ý³·ñáõù çýãå»ë μ³ý³íáñ »õ ·ñ³íáñ ëáëùç ù³ï³ñ¹³ïáõù, ³ûýå»ë ¿é 黽íç ñ³ù³ï³ñ·áõù: 26 armenian folia anglistika linguistics hin.qxd literary translation as semiotic interpretation in the light of philological hermeneutics i t is a commonly accepted point of view nowadaysthat translating does not simply mean transfering. as once j.c.catford stated, “in translation, there is substitution of tl meanings for sl meanings: not transference of tl meanings into the sl. in transference there is an implantation of sl meanings into the tl text. these two processes must be clearly differentiated in any theory of translation”.1 susan bassnett-mcguire interpreted this statement, on the one hand, as “a new stage of the debate on translation”, on the other hand, as “a restricted one as it implies a narrow theory of meaning. discussion of the key concepts of equivalence and cultural untranslatability has moved on a long way since his book first appeared”.2 every translator should bear in his/her mind: translating fiction accurately involves substituting not only the semantic layer of this or that language /sl/ vocabulary used in the specific text with the appropriate counterparts existing in the tl, but also the peculiar aura created by the writer using the language in speech. thus, susan bassnett-mcguire is absolutely right to conclude that the discipline of translation studies bridges the gap between the vast area of stylistics, literary history, linguistics, semiotics and aesthetics, but at the same time it is firmly rooted in practical application.3 it is a well-known fact that language and speech are separated from each other quite artificially, for the sake of investigation, insofar as language cannot but exist only in speech, and speech can only be realized on the basis of language and through language. language units are considered to belong to both language and speech spheres. according to the semiotic concept, a linguistic sign consists of two planes: content and expression. language is realized in speech as the content has its way of expression. language, i.e. the content, is the signifier /signifiant/, speech, i.e. the expression, is the signified /signifie°/ plane of the sign. the fact that language itself makes use of both the content and the expression planes as speech does, gives us grounds to investigate separate language units not only as belonging to merely language /the content plane/, but also appearing in speech /the expression plane/. thus, in this respect language units such as: texts, word combinations, words, phonemes, phonesthemes, etc., being included into the 116 armenian folia anglistika translation studies diana hambardzumyan sphere of language-speech dialectical unity, are considered to be a part of a linguistic sign. thus, the relationship between linguistics and semiotics is obvious. as far as texts are concerned, semiotics deals with them as it is a philological study of various linguistic phenomena functioning in speech. in his book “structuralism and semiotics” t.hawkes confirms that translation belongs to semiotics as far as the translation process “involves a whole set of extra-linguistic criteria also”.4 in recent years translation, and specifically literary translation, is comprehended as “interpretation”. more than four decades ago roman jakobson described translation as an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs in the same language /intra-lingual translation/, an interpretation of verbal signs by means of some other language /inter-lingual translation/, an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems /inter-semiotic translation/.5 thus, widely interpreted, literary translation as a product and process should be analysed alongside with the original which is also a product and process. it is a twosided object of investigation in philological hermeneutics. according to nazarova t.b., “discourse-oriented semiotics aims at typological investigation of narrative and has more to do with narratology, logic, cohesion and syntax”.6 as far as structure-oriented semiotics is concerned, it “deals with schematic synopsizing of literary texts and owes its present-day worldwide recognition to the russian scholar v. propp, whose findings were later /in the 50s/ used as the basis of the structural-semiotic presentation of literary works”.7 as has been mentioned above, the two equally essential components of the linguistic sign are content and expression, from the point of view of semiotics, the plot of the original invested in language units /the content/ cannot be investigated separately, taken out of its structure /the expression/. in addition to this, all the specific codes created by an author should be comprehended and adequately interpreted within a national-cultural context, then only decoded and reconstructed in the tl. contemporary scholars in semiotics believe that language units are inevitably defined by their extra-lingual relations. in respect of a literary work, its extra-lingual cultural background includes not only the historical epoch depicted in the work, the writer’s world-view and his creative peculiarities, but his overall biographical data as well. it is in this case that the linguopoetic analysis of a literary work enables the investigator, among other things, to go deep into the extra-lingual relations of linguistic signs, to single out those parts of the work and its translation, which are of literary, moral, ethical and aesthetic value in the work. thus, linguosemiotics is not only closely connected with philology, but is particularly essential to literary translation, which being quite a separate branch of investigation, combines the two aspects of philology: literary studies and linguistics. 117 translation studies armenian folia anglistika references: 1. catford j.c., a linguistic theory of translation, london, oxford university press, 1965, p.32-37. 2. susan bassnett-mcguire, translation studies, london, new york, methuen & co, 1980, p.6. 3. ibid. p.6-7. 4. hawkes t. structuralism and semiotics. berkeley, 1977. 5. jacobson r. on linguistic aspects of translation. in: on translation ed.by brower r.a. cambridge, mass., harvard university press, 1959, p.232-239. 6. íàçàðîâà ò.á. ôèëîëîãèÿ è ñåìèîòèêà: ñîâðåìåííûé àíãëèéñêèé ÿçûê. ì., âûñøàÿ øêîëà, 2003, ñ.168. 7. ibid. p.168. ¶»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý ã³ñ·ù³ýáõãûáõýá áñå»ë ýß³ý³·çï³ï³ý ù»ïý³μ³ýáõãûáõý μ³ý³ëçñ³ï³ý ñ»ñù»ý¨ïçï³ûç éáõûëç ý»ñùá ì»ñççý ï³ñçý»ñçý ã³ñ·ù³ýáõãûáõýá, ù³ëý³íáñ³å»ë ·»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý ·ñ³ï³ýáõãû³ý ã³ñ·ù³ýáõãûáõýý áýï³éíáõù ¿ áñå»ë §ù»ïý³μ³ýáõãûáõý¦: øç ù³ýç ï³ëý³ùû³ï ³é³ç èáù³ý ú³ïáμëáýý ³é³ç ¿ ù³ß»é ·»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý ã³ñ·ù³ýáõãû³ý ýß³ý³·çï³ï³ý í»ñéáõíáõãû³ý ¹ñáõûãá` ï³ñμ»ñ³ï»éáí ã³ñ·ù³ýáõãû³ý ý»ñ黽í³ï³ý, ùçç黽í³ï³ý ¨ ùççýß³ý³ûçý ïçå»ñá: ºã» ý»ñ黽í³ï³ý ã³ñ·ù³ýáõãûáõýá ùç¨ýáõûý 黽íáõù 黽í³ï³ý ýß³ýý»ñç ù»ïý³μ³ýáõãûáõýý ¿ ³ûé ýß³ýý»ñç û·ýáõãû³ùμ, ùçç黽í³ï³ý ã³ñ·ù³ýáõãûáõýá ù»ï 黽íç 黽í³ï³ý ýß³ýý»ñç ù»ïý³μ³ýáõãûáõýý ¿ ù»ï ³ûé 黽íç ýß³ýý»ñç ùççáóáí, ³å³ ùççýß³ý³ûçý ã³ñ·ù³ýáõãûáõýá 黽í³ï³ý ýß³ýý»ñç ù»ïý³μ³ýáõãûáõýý ¿ ³ñï³é»½í³ï³ý ýß³ýý»ñç û·ýáõãû³ùμ: àõëïç, ñ³ù³ó³ûý ³ñï³é»½í³ï³ý ýß³ýý»ñç ñ³ù³ï³ñ·ç ã»é³¹ñ³í ï³ýáýý»ñç` ã³ñ·ù³ýáõãûáõýý áõëáõùý³ëçñáõç ï³ñ¨áñ³·áõûý ëý¹çñá ³ûý ³ñï³é»½í³ï³ý »ñ¨áõûãý»ñç ùýýáõãûáõýý ¿, áñáýù ³å³ñáí»é »ý μý³·ñç ñ³ùáý¹ñ³ýáõñ áõõõ³ñ³û³ó ñ³ù³ï»ùëïç ·áûáõãûáõýá: ´ý³·ñç ¨ ã³ñ·ù³ýáõãû³ý ýß³ý³·çï³ï³ý ùýýáõãûáõýá å³ñï³¹ñáõù ¿ áõõõ³ñ³û³ó ñ³ù³ï»ùëïç` ëï»õí³·áñíáõãû³ý ·ñ³ï³ý, ·»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý, μ³ñáû³ï³ý, ·»õ³·çï³ï³ý ³ñå»ùý»ñç í»ññ³ýáõù ¨ ù»ï ³ûé 黽íç ³ñï³é»½í³ï³ý ýß³ýý»ñç û·ýáõãû³ùμ ¹ñ³ýó í»ñëï»õíáõù ã³ñ·ù³ýí³íùç ù»ç: 118 armenian folia anglistika translation studies 1(2)2016+.pdf on some issues promoting successful second language learning and teaching this paper is concerned with some means of facilitatingsuccessful second or foreign language learning and teaching. it indicates that: a) a favourable attitude and a high level of motivation go hand in hand with successful learning; b) in the foreign language classroom the employment of authentic texts is effective; c) autonomy is one of the necessary conditions for successful language learning. the article also aims at emphasizing the crucial importance of language learning strategies in foreign language learning and the teacher’s role in strategy training. motivation second language acquisition is a complicated psycholinguistic process. the success of this process depends crucially on a well-organized schedule of learning, on the activity of its participants, i.e. learners and teachers, and also on the creation of conditions that feed the natural learning process. the role of motivation is very important in facilitating successful second language learning. positive attitudes are conducive to increased motivation, while negative attitudes have the opposite effect. research tends to confirm that a favourable attitude and a high level of motivation go hand in hand with second-language learning success. according to most scholars, motivation is one of the key factors that influence the rate and success of second or foreign language learning. the learner’s psychological state in second language learning is crucial. the positive influence of motivation on the psychological state of learners ensures success. experience has shown that the best success is achieved by those learners who are the most motivated. psychological preparation, predisposition, positive motivation and successful learning are closely interrelated. this can be shown graphically. psychological preparation motivation success 96 armenian folia anglistika methodology anahit zatikian hin.qxd the functional value of the participle in a patent text the present research deals with the participle inthe american patent text identified as patent specification. the official character of the detailed description of the invention is provided by different linguostylistic means – phenomena which are not usually available in official documents in the strictest sense of the word. the present study of patent specifications has revealed a completely new and unique field of linguistic research that explores the complex correlation and intertwining of the stylistic elements, functionally characteristic of scientific discourse and official documents. the legally established structural features of a patent determine the stylistic value of language units in patent specification. the use of the participle emphasises the logical coherence of the text under discussion. a more profound examination of the participle makes the motivation for our choice of subject matter absolutely clear. as has already been established, the participle is, according to frequency of use, one of the most prominent language units in a patent text and plays an important part in text organization. the task of the present report is to show that the participle in a patent text is very often a stylistically coloured element. it should be noted that the whole layout of a patent text is represented in several conventionally agreed chapters. the way a patent specification is compiled and the way a patent text is organized generally can already be viewed as a linguostylistic peculiarity. the aristotelian maxim that “every whole is a unity of a beginning, a main part and an end” proves to the point when applied to the field of text. the process of perceiving a text as a whole can be successfully realized if it is viewed as a unity of all its parts – the title, the beginning, the main body, and the end. they focus the reader’s attention on the most characteristic features of the object or phenomenon described. the first page of a patent, arranged in a universally accepted way, contains information about the country, the sphere of the invention, the application date, the field of research, the references cited, other publications, information about the experts who checked the existence of novelty, the registration number of the patent, the abstract (which is written according to the usual rules for writing a good scientific abstract), etc.2 every patent specification consists of certain parts with subheadings dealing with the technical field, the background knowledge of the field, and the description of the 66 armenian folia anglistika linguistics naira gasparyan invention. as a rule, the closing passage of the final part contains claims and is saturated with information, since it is the concluding part of a patent that reveals the author’s actual desire to be granted the monopoly of the invention. the patent heading is the shortest and most informative part of the text. for this sole reason, it is common for several noun attributes to be piled up before the noun they qualify. in the heading of a patent, the participle emphasises certain essential qualities of the object invented. 1. sensitized epitaxial infrared detector 4, 447, 446; 2. graded bandgap multilayer avalanche photodetector with energy step backs 4, 476, 477; 3. avalanche photodetector including means for separating electrons and holes 4, 486, 765. in the first two examples, the forms of the past participle sensitized and graded stress the qualities that have been improved. in the third example the present participle including does not emphasise a quality that the proposed avalanche photodetector possesses but, instead, it prepares the reader to concentrate on the idea that follows it, that is, means for separating electrons and holes. the study of the above-mentioned examples shows that the use of the participle in a patent heading is connected with the disclosure of the gist of the invention. as is seen from the examples above, very often the participle appears to complete the information conveyed by the key noun of the utterance. the requirement that the heading should be made specific is justified because special catalogues are compiled from patent headings, enabling specialists to carry out thematic searches in patent libraries. participles appearing in the chapter ‘technical field’ complete the description of the object invented or of the field to which the invention pertains. if the text of a patent begins with an introductory chapter, ‘cross reference to related application’, the participle related forms a patent term together with the noun application and carries significant information. its presence in the text suggests that the previously existing patent dealing with the same invention has lost its power. the sentence following the subheading states this fact. additionally, the participle abandoned beside the patent number in this introductory passage indicates this. a thorough observation of all chapters of a patent text proves that the use of the participle is either connected with the discussion of the existing properties of the matter under observation, or with the new and advantageous characteristics of the invention. 1. the present invention relates generally to semiconductor devices and more particularly to photodetectors intended for use in the infrared region… 2. … a number of different types of devices for use have been proposed for different applications requiring different combinations of size, image, quality… 67 linguistics armenian folia anglistika 3. yet another object is to provide an x-y addressed array of infrared detector devices requiring only one gate electrode per line of such devices. some authors, in order to stress this or that particular feature or aspect of their invention, make use of inversion. this stylistic-syntactic device has a primary purpose – to indicate the part of the object in which the advantageous changes (fundamental or partial) have taken place. this, on the other hand, gives the author a chance to establish a contact with his expected reader, draw the attention of the latter to the novelty of his invention and convince him in the privilege of the object he offers to him. a) in a semiconductor avalanche photodetector… b) in accordance with the principles of the present invention… c) in a particular embodiment of the invention… d) in an alternative possible mode of operation… the above-mentioned examples of inversion contain no participle, since the latter generally does not appear when particular details about the object under consideration need to be mentioned. participle i often found in participial clauses, mainly attributive, serves as a linking element. this phenomenon is known as definitization and characterizes scientific and technical writing. the frequent appearance of participial clauses in this type of texts can be explained in the following way. linking elements like ‘that’ and ‘which’ do not carry any scientific or technical information. moreover, they appear to separate the participial clause from the main clause. ‘that’ and ‘which’ subordinate clauses drive the rheme of the sentence far from the theme and, hence, distract the reader’s attention from the core issue, while the participial clause introduces the rheme without delay. … it (the gate electrode) forms a fringing field extending into the detection area which further facilitates the conduction of the excited electrons in the detection areas into the gate region… separating the given passage into minimal perspective units, we shall obtain the following: it (the gate electrode) theme forms a fringing field rheme1 extending into the detection area rheme2 which further facilitates the conduction of the excited electrons in the detection area into the gate region rheme3 68 armenian folia anglistika linguistics as can be observed in the example above, the two parts of the same idea (rheme1; rheme 2) follow each other directly. the participle extending introduces the whole idea at once, without delay; the noun field is not separated from the idea extending into the detection area by unnecessary whconnectives. attributive clauses with whconnectives help the reader to keep his attention on the issue longer, thus giving him a little more time for further consideration. the ‘which’ clause (rheme 3) in the above-mentioned sentence is no less important from the point of view of bearing scientific information, and actually it is the logical continuation of the participial clause. the observation shows that the specifically important information is delivered through a whclause whose connection with the main clause is looser, while the connection of the participial clause with the main clause is tighter. in a patent text the participle is also found in a compositional pattern of syntactical arrangement known as parallel construction in which the repetition of a certain language unit, the participle in this case, backs up the parallel construction. the use of the participle in factological writings in general, and in a patent text in particular, carries the idea of semantic equality of the parts of the construction. in the text of a patent some parts of successive sentences or clauses are repeated in a parallel arrangement, as in the following articles of the patent formula (patent 4.486,765) (from 11 to 17): 11. a device as recited in claim 10 in which… 13. a device as recited in claim 12 comprising… 14. a device as recited in claim 12 or 13… 15. a device as recited in claim 14 wherein… 16. a device as recited in claim 15… 17. a device as recited in claim 16… this kind of syntactic (compositional) pattern appears after the expressions that introduce the claims (claims; i claim; we claim; what we claim is; what is claimed is). these phrases, always followed by a colon, introduce the novelty of the invention and have the core information at the top of the pattern, whose language cannot be imagined without participles. the whole pattern makes one grammatically independent system and should be viewed as one syntactic whole (a supra-phrasal unit). the participle in a syntactic parallel construction backs up perfection of expression in a patent formula, while participial clauses in the part of the text appearing before the claims are intended for a more economical organization of the information. syntactic parallelism is traditionally used to enumerate this or that group of facts or arguments. its use in a patent formula (the closing section of a patent text1) is a norm which aims at attracting and focusing the reader’s attention on the most important part of the text – the novelty of the invention. the legal significance of the document is provided by the syntactic and semantic layout of the formula.2 the syntactic-stylistic analysis of a patent formula suggests that in this part, 69 linguistics armenian folia anglistika particularly, we deal with another style of intellective prose – the style of business documents. the research shows that the participle can be found 1) in expressions established as patent terms, such as ‘related application, ‘those skilled in the art’; 2) in those parts of a patent text which deal either with the detailed description of the object invented, or with the advantages of the new invention discussed in contrast to the main disadvantage of the previously existing object; 3) in participial attributive clauses, when the flux of information needs to be directed to the reader without delay; 4) in the concluding part of the text (patent formula), which is compiled so that participle i is the cornerstone of primary articles and the participle ii is that of supplementary articles3. the linguistic structures in which the participle is used makes one aware of language as a sequentially organized communication system in which emphasising may be important for the proper understanding of the message and its implications. our investigation has shown that in the case of the american patent text, participial clauses appear even more frequently as the patent law of the united states requires the full and precise discussion of each topic, which, in turn, presupposes the use of longer sentences (complex, compound and complex-compound). in the text under study, attributive clauses are introduced by the participle since connecting words, not informative by nature, weaken the bond between the main clause and the subordinate clause. the use of the participle makes the linkage smooth and the information direct and more vivid. the structure of the patent presents a logical sequence of sentences combined into paragraphs adhering in the most accurate way, so that the layout of the facts in the text leaves no place for ambiguity. the research has shown that the participle is abundantly used in patent specifications and although there are many other structural elements, the participle (i and ii) is the one that can never be substituted by other structural means. however, our thorough observations have proved that each particular case of the participle has some additional stylistic and pragmatic value motivated by the logical and legal purpose of a patent text. references and notes: 1. many authors have touched on the importance of the concluding part of a literary work, but the concluding part of a patent text has not been previously mentioned as a separate type. our investigation has revealed that there is no discussion in the literature on the stylistic-semantic value of a patent formula, or of its pragmatic and stylistic functions. the establishment of its pragmatic and stylistic functions will help to clarify and understand the whole text as one inseparable unit. the logical arrangement of a patent formula reminds the reader of a summary, but its stylistic-semantic expression is unique. it seems to resemble a mathematicallogical sequence of thoughts compiled to meet the strict requirements of the patent law of the united states. 70 armenian folia anglistika linguistics 2. on the structure of american patent specifications see: øåïåëåâ è.ï. ñòðóêòóðà ïàòåíòíûõ îïèñàíèé /òðóäû öíèèïè, ì., 1967. 3. ¶³ëå³ñû³ý ü. ²ñïáý³·ñ³ûçý μ³ý³ó¨ç ã³ñ·ù³ýáõãû³ý áñáß ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñ, ²ëïõçï, 1998: participle-ç ·áñí³é³ï³ý ³ñå»ùá ³ñïáý³·ñç ï»ùëïáõù participle-ç ·áñí³íáõãûáõýá ³ñïáý³·ñç ï»ùëïáõù ³ûý ¹³ñóýáõù ¿ ëçëï ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïáõï ¨ ñ»ßïáõãû³ùμ ׳ý³ã»éç: øç ïáõùçó, participle i-á ï³ñ¨áñ ¹»ñ ¿ ï³ï³ñáõù ·éë³íáñ ý³ë³¹³ëáõãû³ý ¨ participle-áí ý»ñùáõííáõ ¹»ñμ³û³ï³ý ¹³ñóí³íç ùçç¨, ùûáõë ïáõùçó, ñ³ý¹»ë ·³éáí ³ñïáý³·ñç í»ñçý³ñ³ïí³íç ·éë³íáñ ñá¹í³íý»ñáõù, ýå³ï³ï ¿ ñ»ï³åý¹áõù í³ýáã³óý»é ¨ ùýý³ñï»é ·ûáõïç ³é³ñï³ûç ýáñ³·áõûý ¿³ï³ý ñ³ïï³ýçßý»ñ᪠ëáõë³÷»éáí ³ýï³ñ¨áñ μ³é»ñç ·áñí³íáõãûáõýçó: ²ñïáý³·ñç ï»ùëïáõù ³ûý ý³¨ ã»ù³-é»ù³ïçï ñ³ñ³μ»ñáõãûáõýý»ñç ïñáõ ¿: 71 linguistics armenian folia anglistika maket 2012 1-2:layout 1.qxd the third-generation armenian american writers echo the quest for self-identity with the genocide at its core rubina peroomian university of california t he armenian genocide in the ottoman empire is almost a century old, butunanswered questions persist: why did it happen? why the world let it happen? why this terrible injustice has not been acknowledged and restored? obsession with the collective cataclysmic experience keeps surfacing in armenian literature, in this case the armenian-american literature. the turkish denial of the crime fuels this obsession. then, there is also the vague image of a lost homeland that kindles a sense of deprivation even in the most integrated and acculturated american-armenians of the present generation. the armenian-american genocide literature—narrative prose or poetry, eyewitness accounts, memoirs—reflects the interconnection of the armenian genocide and the armenian-american self-image or identity. looking into the past, searching for one’s roots, in other words, exploring ones ethnic identity and sense of belonging to the past, to history shared by other members of the group grew deeper under the influence of a trend in the united states in the 1960s and 70s mostly among the african-americans. the american culture of the time facilitated group affiliation and identification. the armenian past was obviously associated with the massacres and deportation, thus becoming the source of self understanding, self-consciousness, and selfidentity. the catalyst for this process was the transmitted horrifying memories of the massacres and nostalgic reminiscences of the old country, or the homeland lost, the pain of adjusting to the new world that inundated the armenian press of the 1920s and 30s. mostly wanting aesthetic value, this literature functioned, however, as a source of knowledge and inspiration linking the generation growing up in america to the armenian past. curiously, the second-generation survivors to a large extent served as silent transmitters, in some cases passively, in others reluctantly bridging between their parents and the next generation. they too had to face the challenges of the new world. the burden of survival consumed them too, as they fought to get ahead and prove themselves against the “failure” of their parents and against the prevailing prejudice. david kherdian writes of his mother “victim of america who escaped the turkish genocide” (kherdian 1970).1 it is certainly true that no matter how hard the survivors tried to make a healthy and happy environment, free of the scars of the past for their children to grow in, they did not succeed. or in other cases, these children grew sick and tired of their parents’ incessant tragic stories; they turned a deaf ear, and silenced their parents’ urge to relieve the burden of memories by speaking out and telling their painful stories. “mother, if you are not going to speak english, then don’t speak at all. and so mother didn’t,” victoria remembers (foston 2001:98). in all cases, even if these children were shut out or they shut themselves out of their parents’ traumatic past, its psychological effects were impressed upon them. historical memory was transmitted. armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 149 in the last thirty years or so, there is an upsurge of memoir writing. decades after the immediate armenian language responses, survivors in their old age and with the encouragement of their children began to write: kerop bedoukian’s memoir, some of us survived (1979) from the unique perspective of a nine-year-old boy from sivas observing the world of atrocity around him. alice muggerditchian shipley’s memoir, we walked then ran (1983), an unusual route of escape from the horrors of turkish atrocities from their native diarbekir to kharbert, dersim, erzinjan, erzerum, and then to tbilisi, baku, astrakhan, up the volga river, over the arctic ocean and the north sea to great britain and freedom. john minassian’s many hills yet to climb, john (hovhannes), native of gurun and sivas, motivated by the words of an older inmate in the turkish prison: “we may not survive, but your generation has a call and a duty” (minassian 1986:3-4). yes, the call and duty of telling the world. bertha (berjuhi) nakshian ketchian wrote her story, at the behest of her son and daughter. in the shadow of the fortress: the genocide remembered. in the introduction she writes, “we—the survivors—are living eyewitnesses of the genocide of armenians by the turks. what was documented in writing and pictures at the time is now being denied” (nakshian ketchian 1988:ix). so she writes to fight against the denial and believes, that “recognition of the crime does not bring the victims back, but it eases somewhat the pain of the living” (nakshian ketchian 1988:x). hovhannes mugrditchian of lapajle (baghché) wrote his memoirs in armenian, and his son paul martin, had them translated into english as to armenians with love, the memoirs of a patriot. “for our children and grandchildren, we knew we had to have an english-language version,” (mugrditchian, 1996:xvii-xviii) paul martin believed. through these memoirs—of which only a few examples were mentioned—we hear the slaughtered nation speak. each tells the story of a life experience that in the general sense is similar to others—no matter where the story originates, whether in sivas, kharbert, erzerum, husainig, mezré, or elsewhere. at the same time, the unique details of each writer’s story lights up a dark corner of the calamitous story of the armenian genocide: a torturous journey, a first encounter with the sight of rotting corpses, an alarming signal foreboding the end they themselves might be destined to meet, then the looters snatching all belongings, the chettes smashing dead small children, kidnapping pretty girls, raping women young and old, and dead corpses too, the tearing open of the bellies of pregnant women and throwing the fetus in the air or smashing it against a rock, the victims screaming in horror and pain, pleading for mercy, and the zaptiés looking on all this with pleasure or indifference at best, or themselves participating in the carnage. it is not easy to read these stories. these macabre scenes of cold-blooded murder and rape, starving children, and the unscrupulous orgies of turkish officers feasting on armenian maidens can leave the reader depressed and bewildered for days. these are books that, as kafka says, “come upon us like ill-fortune and distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide” (rosenfeld armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 150 1988:18).2 the first generation genocide literature, as well as the oral or written testimonies, served as raw material to inspire literary responses by the second and third generations and was transformed into a structured, organized memoir or a novel even poetry with a specific form and style, embellished by the author’s artistic qualities and rich imagination. peter najarian’s voyages (1971) is the site of the painful conflict and attempted reconciliation between the past and the present. it is the ever-present past constantly pressuring the present, defeating the efforts of the characters to rise above the unhappiness, to find their identity and adjust to their adopted country. najarian’s daughters of memory (1986) is again a search for identity and an effort to hold on to the memory of the genocide. the conversations and reminiscences between a group of old armenian women who experienced the genocide in their youth, provide the background and trace the history of the armenian genocide. david kherdian also gives one of the earliest examples: the road from home: the story of an armenian girl (1979), a touching account of young veron dumehjian, david’s mother, and her miraculous survival. efronia: an armenian love story (1994) is another example. efronia katchadourian’s memoir of some 500 pages was translated into english by her son and then turned into a nicely-wrought piece of imaginative literature, a love story, by her nonarmenian daughter-in-law, stina katchadourian.3 gradually, after the parent’s death, through fragmented memorabilia left behind, or because of renewed interest and the usual reverence that creeps into one’s heart toward a dead parent, the son or daughter discovered the full scope of the source of that unexplained pain and disposition, the tremendous burden of memory that had weighed so heavily upon the parent. virginia haroutounian’s orphan in the sands (1995) is the story of the author’s mother, who only in the final days of her life shared with her daughter her terrible ordeal during and after the genocide. it is also the story of the daughter, who resented her mother’s strange behavior and all her life strove to adjust to it, only to learn in the end that it was the genocide and its aftereffects that caused her unfathomable, peculiar behavior, ruining her mother’s and her own life. david kherdian speaks of the same experience with his father (1970): why have i waited until your death to know the earth you were turning was armenia, the color of the fence your homage to adana, and your other complaints over my own complaints were addressed to your homesickness brought on by my english. (kherdian 1970) 4 armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 151 in another poem, kherdian again describes his father, who “always carried a different look and smell into the house when he returned from the coffee houses in racine”: years later, reading the solemn and bittersweet stories of our armenian writer in california,5 who visited as a paperboy coffeehouses in fresno, i came to understand that in these cafes were contained the suffering and shattered hopes of my orphaned people. (kherdian 1970) agop hacikyan knew very little of the armenian past when he was growing up in istanbul. his parents, both survivors of the genocide, kept silent, and their reason, obviously, was not only psychological but also political. the new regime in turkey had successfully suppressed the historical memory of its citizens. but the conspicuous silence and the occasional references to aksor (meaning exile, as survivors referred to the deportation) were factors that spurred hacikyan to write a series of novels decades later, beginning with tomas (1970) and eté sans aube (1991) which was translated into english as a summer without dawn (2000). and here is the epitomization of the answers to why it happened, scratched on the wall of a turkish prison, “the just are condemned because of their race, their language and their faith, and here they await their death” (hacikyan 2000:142). helene pilibossian knows that she is a product of her parents’ traumatic experience with the old country present in her subconscious. in one of her collections of poems titled history’s twists: the armenians (2008) she travels through the bumpy roads of armenian history “with the stories of the desert of der-el-zor so long ago” taking her to the labyrinth of “the scrambling turkish will” showing her the “diaphanous spider web” that is the survival of the nation built on remembrance.6 one way or another, the entire nation was bearing the effects of victimization. for diana der-hovanessian, all armenians are survivors of genocide. it does not matter whether or not one has lost family members in the death marches. “we are children of der zor,” she writes. even though your mother was a baby in worcester, and safe and your father a young soldier in mourad’s mountains and you a generation from being born, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . even without a single relative who lived to march, lived past the march. we are children of der zor. (der-hovanessian 1987) 7 armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 152 is it possible? elie wiesel says, “yes, one can live a thousand miles away from the temple and see it burn. one can die in auschwitz after auschwitz” (berger and berger 2001:1).8 the transgenerational psychological impact can shape the outlook and the individuality of succeeding generations and can be as deep and effective as to produce the feeling of dying in der el-zor without having been there. the burden of tragic memories had been indirectly yet effectively transmitted, for it fits perfectly into the family atmosphere and the parent-children relationship experienced by the generation born to the survivors of the genocide. the result was a small but valuable output of genocide literature. the third generation responses are crafted from a distance of time and space without direct experience of the genocide, with the impetus of a transmitted pain or a suddenly discovered past, bearing the influence of different cultural, religious, environmental, and sociopolitical factors, and within different levels of skill and understanding of the poetics of genocide. they are created with a variety of thrust and motivation: they may seek a catharsis in order to relieve the transgenerational pain, they may strive to establish further factual evidences in order to combat denial, or they may reflect the author’s unabated frustration with the continuing injustice and the conspiracy of world silence. for all intents and purposes, these responses encompass the echoes of the nation’s collective psyche shaped by the violence, the pain of dispersion, the effects of self-accusation, the search for identity or the struggle to cope with a dual identity, the effects of the past and present roles of the perpetrators and world bystanders. to elucidate my point here i would like to underline three examples of motivation and purpose in regards to the 3rd generation writers. a self-assumed mission in rise the euphrates (1994), carol edgarian skillfully blends the facts of the armenian genocide and the traumatic experience of the survivor generation with the attractions and fun and multiple opportunities that american culture can offer a thirdgeneration armenian teenager (edgarian 1994). it comes through clearly in edgarian’s work that no matter how deeply assimilated to the culture and lifestyle of the mainstream, no matter how aloof from the armenian past, this american-born generation still carries traces of the wounds of the genocide. her work stands as a bulwark against denial. mae m. derdarian speaks with the voice of her grandmother, adding her own imagination and artistic skill to create a work of art, vergeen: a survivor of the armenian genocide, based on a memoir by virginia meghruni. the author’s motivation to embark on such a difficult project was not only to tell the story of her grandmother, but also, “to immerse the reader in her story and to refute historical revisionists who deny and distort the facts of the armenian holocaust.” with her story, she cries out to the world and to the deniers, “i was there! i was an eyewitness! i was a victim!” (derdarian 1996). lines in the sand, a novel by thomas a. ohanian, subtitled “love, tragedy, and the armenian genocide”. it is, according to the author’s note, “a work of fiction in a background of history.” it is the armenian genocide fictionalized, wherein public personages appear in their historical roles while fictitious characters people the stage as armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 153 the devastating story of the first world war unfolds. notably, the novel ends with a reminder of hitler’s statement, who remembers today the annihilation of the armenians, and the news of the jews being killed, and then another juxtaposition: “the little black lines of news type became trains carrying jews, moving through the dense forests, breaking and cracking off branches that fell into the snow. and as the wheels swerved along the curving track the snaking train turned into shifting, moving people. walking, in the desert. lines of people. lines in the sand” (ohanian 2001:300) clearly, a reminder to the world that forgetting past atrocities is the best encouragement for future atrocities to occur. mariam manoukian and her daughter, 13-year-old elize had a different mission when they set out to revive the old pages of a diary left by mariam’s grandmother hranoush when she was 13 and caught in the turmoil of the defense of van and the entire population’s torturous trek to eastern armenia during the armenian genocide: on the other side of mount ararat, a story of a vanished city (2005). this mother and daughter team intended to write for young english readers to acquaint them with armenian history and the genocide. a sudden discovery of the past peter balakian’s black dog of fate (1998) is a perfect example of a journey into the past after a sudden discovery of a family secret tied with the old world. balakian is motivated to also record the history of the armenian genocide. the result is a mélange of memoir and documentation. it is an attractive source of reference for non-armenians and new-generation armenians. it is, as the author himself puts it, a “polyphonic, multilayered memoir” in which “personal discovery and history merge.” 9 here, the armenian component is gradually extracted from a nebulous memory hole to become an important dimension in the american-armenians’ self-identity. these historical interjections are vivid examples of history and memory juxtaposed. besides the jarring change of style, from the inherent dryness and factuality of the one to the somber elegance of the other, the juxtaposition reveals the difference between the two in terms of shaping the image of the armenian genocide in the reader’s mind. this is the intrinsic value of genocide fiction or symbolic poetry in the understanding of the armenian genocide and as elucidators of universal truths that lie at the roots of historical facts, putting inconceivable realities into human perspective (peroomian 1996:22-25). many historians reject the role of artistic literature in assisting readers to grasp the meaning of a historical event. yosef hayim yerushalmi declares with dissatisfaction, “the holocaust has already engendered more historical research than any single event in jewish history, but i have no doubt whatever that its image is being shaped, not at the historian’s avail, but in the novelist’s crucible” (langer 1991:51) historians may disagree and may disapprove of the departure from historiographic methodology, but documents, statistics, and data do not provide the full story. it is not possible to penetrate the world of the armenian genocide without reading the memoirs, the artistic literature, and the eyewitness accounts. vickie smith foston’s amazing journey into the past is another example. she sets out armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 154 to unveil a well-kept family secret that involved her grandmother, victoria’s (also her namesake) suicide half a century earlier. in the course of her cumbersome research, foston comes across the astonishing truth about her roots, heritage, and background. in contrast to the false information handed down to her about her father’s grandfather being french and her mother’s family originating in italy, she finds out that her ancestors came from mush, pure-blooded armenians who escaped the turkish persecutions and massacres of 1894-96. not exactly a genocide survivor’s account, victoria’s secret: a conspiracy of silence (2001) is the story of an immigrant family in which the conflict between forgetting the past and assimilating into the mainstream on the one hand, and adhering to ethnic identity and traditions on the other hand creates family quarrels that deepens dangerously. and although assimilation is the name of the game, national pride and ethnic consciousness, nonetheless, find expression in deeds and behaviors, in a family project, a collective work of art, a beaded tableau of mother armenia lamenting over the ruins of the homeland, or in a charcoal landscape of armenia with mount ararat in prominence. in the course of foston’s quest, the story of the armenian people and the process of the turkish annihilation of the armenian population of the ottoman empire unfold. this sideline story, however, is not given the chance to develop within the context of the main story. insertions are made arbitrarily in the form of reminiscences of a tradition passed on to the author’s mysterious grandmother by her mother, foston’s great-grandmother. these passages, which rather sound like history lessons the author herself has learned, are fortunately fairly brief and do not detract too much from the novel’s otherwise solid structure. the same technique breaks the smooth flow of the narrative in peter balakian’s “black dog of fate” (1998). reminiscences become more plausible and flow more smoothly and naturally when foston relies on the memories of genocide survivors living in fresno, where refugee women and children often gathered in the streets to tell their stories of starvation, rape, murder, pain, and suffering, and above all their determination to survive. “i was lost in these stories as if they were my own,” says foston’s mysterious grandmother, victoria, from her grave and continues, “i am sure this group of family and friends had no idea of the impact these images would have on my life” (foston 2001:95). this key sentence embodies the reality of the widespread psychological effect of the armenian genocide not only in the sense of vertical ascension, that is, the transgenerational impact, but also its horizontal spread, involving armenians whose lives were not directly touched by the catastrophe. micheline aharonian, marcom, in her novel three apples fell from heaven (2001) attests that her mother was raised in beirut on stories of the genocide. “afternoons were spent during her childhood listening to her mother and the other ladies of the neighborhood remembering the atrocities.” 10 micheline’s mother married an american and moved to america in part to leave the old world behind, and she habitually refrained from speaking of the gloomy stories she was raised on, a typical second-generation reaction. on occasion, however, few sentences would slip out of her mouth: “the turks pulled out their fingernails, beat the soles of their feet. . . pregnant girls had their babies armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 155 torn from their bellies. nané [micheline’s grandmother] saw them march to their death.” micheline knew very little about her family and the history of her people. she says that was a reason she began to write what would be her first novel, “i had an incredible need to know my family history, to figure out my place.” she wanted to fill in the world behind the phrases she had heard here and there about her grandmother, that brave woman who had walked the death marches as a young girl and saved her sister and three younger brothers and raised them in beirut. she wanted to know about kharbert and mezré which her grandmother had called home. unlike other survivors’ life stories, fictionalized or recounted, three apples fell from heaven is not a straightforward narrative about the survival of micheline’s grandmother anaguil (nané), but an abstract and complex tapestry wherein the voices of the dead and the living intermingle to evoke an abstract tableau of suffering and death. in this multilevel narration, we come across the story of sarkis who is gradually going mad in the dark attic where his mother has hidden him in woman’s clothes to save him, her last son, from the gendarmes. we share the feelings of kamil, a turkish soldier enduring the harsh winter on the russian front. kamil deems it his duty to fight for his homeland, but he has no desire to conquer russian soil. he is fighting against giavours, the infidel armenians of anatolia, who “joined the battle with our age-old enemy and tried to strike our army in the back ... who became rich off of us. they have always been the money-grubbers, merchant vultures. they stab us in our naked backs, they laugh at our chapped feet. we lost greece, bulgaria, and serbia to the christians. will we lose again brothers?” (marcom 2001:124). another character is rachelle, whose sad story weaves another shade of gloom into the morbid tapestry. her fate is strikingly similar to that of her biblical namesake, who had sworn to jacob that “she would die without children, and she died on the birthing stool”. in the novel, rachelle is cognizant of that tradition, thinking as she plunges to her death in a dark well “how my name had pressed its regimen onto my skin, deep to the very bones” (marcom 2001:36). the judeo-christian tradition is very much alive in the minds of victims and at time of death it becomes the only source of meaning and explanation. when sarkis, the young man hiding in the attic, tries to find meaning in the atrocity to which his people are subjected, a judeo-christian explanation of catastrophe is again proposed in the concept of sin and punishment: “did we do some thing (evil) to bring this down upon our heads?” (marcom 2001: 46). yet sarkis is not bound to believe in that explanation wholeheartedly. even if that is god’s will, and the turks are only the executors of that will and the tool of the punishment, what is it that enables them to commit such a crime? how they must hate armenians to be able to kill a neighbor with whom they have shared bread; to kill a faithful customer who frequented their shop; to kill a fellow college student, with whom they had sat and studied, or watched a soccer game together, or shared the poetry of whitman whom they both adored. then there is hagop, another victim of injustice, standing hands tied in the police station with others like him, not knowing for what crime he is being detained. this was an ordinary scene in those days, but micheline’s imagination takes flight to give it the form of abstract art. hagop hears the whispering of men, “not of the bound men who stand at his side, but of the armenian men who have haunted these valleys and plateaus armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 156 and plains for centuries. he thinks he can hear their handless spirits saying to him in the spring night, brother, do you believe a few thousand years of history make any difference to armed men?” (marcom 2001:103). the success of these memoirs turned into novels or other sub-genres of genocide literature in prose and poetry can be attributed to the fact that they are being produced within the conventions of western culture. they are palatable to western taste and interest in horror stories. the third generation poet or writer has mastered the criteria. as arpiné konyalian grenier terms it, the new writer “faces the tragedy, accepts it, mourns it and transcends it.” she later adds, however: “it is tricky and slippery to face emotion and express it in unadulterated fashion” (grenier 1993: 26-27). it is indeed a challenging task, for it is sometimes impossible not to succumb to the waves of irrepressible emotion. and this will bring me to another subgenre in the 3rd generation responses. in the grips of the past leonardo alishan, a third-generation iranian-armenian-american writer, was never able to transcend, or rather he never tried to transcend the tragedy that was his grandmother’s, the tragedy that became his fate at the age of nine. his strongest literary creations are about his “granny” and “bearing witness to her agony.” he shares her agony; he is part of it: “i try to be a spectator of that tragedy which culminated in a london hospital room in 1978 where granny saw turkish horsemen around her bed before she died. but, alas, i am not the spectator. i am a character caught in that play which never, never, never reaches its equilibrium” (alishan 1992:352) alishan remained gripped by the nightmare of genocide. his granny, “gayané, the living martyr,” as he pictured her, governed his life and his emotions. she was a constant presence in his dreams, in his waking thoughts. it was through his grandmother, as it is the case of most third-generation writers, that alishan saw the armenian suffering, the genocide: in the center of my dream there is a church of stone in van sealed from outside exhaling screams and smoke from the inside, its congregation of armenian folk replacing the candles with their flesh. there is a church in my dream made with the bones of dead gods, babies and parrots’ prayers; always, all night, in flames but never burning to the ground. and in the church burns a statue of mary with my granny’s face, wax dripping down her eyes drop by drop, on the skin of my dreams. (alishan 2002) 11 armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 157 leonardo alishan was himself a victim of the armenian genocide who carried upon his frail and weak shoulders the immensity of the traumatic past personified in his grandmother all his life until his tragic death/suicide in 2005. he was only 54. . . . i search hopelessly for some shade in this ashen april desert to put my granny down and rest. she is heavy and i am old now and feel the weariness. and it does not seem to matter that i first began to carry granny on my back when she was thin and fourteen and i was barely nine years old. (from an unpublished poem 2002) 12 the replay of the tragic memory of the armenian genocide, even though not at peak intensity, nor as devastating as it was for the first-generation survivors, has been transmitted to subsequent generations and is inspiring literary creations. the topoi associated with the genocide appear as fragmented images imposing themselves upon everyday life in the new world. many of peter balakian’s poems in sad days of light (1983) illustrate this duality. through a commingling of images past and present, balakian registers 1915 in his grandmother’s mind (shirinian 1990:110-115).13 to conclude north american-armenian writer-critic lorne shirinian observes, “1915 functions as a symbol through which armenians have knowledge of themselves and see themselves. having survived genocide, not only do they have to believe in themselves, but they have to convince others of their existence. armenian diaspora literature is an expression of this necessity” (shirinian 1990:60). indeed, the quest for self-identity takes imaginative literature along different paths; yet the genocide and the reconstruction of the memory of it remain at the core as the leitmotif. this is true in the case of the second-generation survivor writers, and examples are many. the intensity of this struggle for an armenian identity, however, does not necessarily exist to the same degree in all american-armenian communities. in some cases, the struggle is only that of the intellectual elite, and the wound of the genocide bleeds through the literary works they produce. the third generation is still caught in that struggle and their responses emerge from the attempt to confront the genocide in order to grasp its historical and psychological impact, and to uphold memory with which to relate and identify. in this context, i would love to have the time to discuss nancy krikorian’s “zabelle” and her other novels, mark arax’s “west of the west”, aris janigian’s “riverbig”, nancy agabian’s “me as her” and more. i would want to expand this study and take up the genre of dramaturgy reflecting the effects of the armenian genocide. but i will stop here and make my last comment: armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 158 the literary representations of the armenian genocide will continue to shape the understanding of this unresolved injustice for generations to come. they will function as the most effective transmitters of memory, shoring up commitment to the national struggle. indeed, it is the artist’s creative power that can capture the unthinkable horrors of the genocide and bring them into the arena of the reader’s imagination. in spite of yehuda baur’s warning against the holocaust being understood through the works of imaginative writers and his labeling this kind of understanding as “metaphysical comprehension,” in spite of yerushalmi’s dissatisfaction with the image of the holocaust being shaped by novelists, there is an undeniable truth in the power and intensity of the impact that a literary representation of genocide can make and the crucial role it can play (young 1988:7). emil fackenheim states, to renew the past for present life has always been an essential obligation of historians, philosophers, and theologians (i would add, of the literati as well). and never before has this task been so indispensable and so difficult (morgan 1997:172). therefore, i would like to submit that responses to the armenian genocide will stand as a monument to the memory of the armenian tragic past, to the armenian aspiration to become a nation again, and to find a way to resolve the tragedy in order to make national survival and perpetuation possible. notes: 1. the line is from the poem “a family of four” by david kherdian (1970) from the collection, on the death of my father and other poems. 2. cited in alvin rosenfeld, a double dying reflections on holocaust literature (1988). 3. for a brief analysis of this work, see the review by rubina peroomian, journal of the society for armenian studies 7 (1994): 205-08. 4. this poem (“for my father”) and the poem quoted next (“my father”) are examples of many which resonate the ineffaceable, tormenting memory of the genocide indirectly transmitted to the author through his father to whom the collection homage to adana (1970) is dedicated. 5. the reference to “our armenian writer in california” is to william saroyan. 6. for a brief analysis of pilibossian’s poetry, see the review by rubina peroomian, journal of the society for armenian studies 18, 2 (2009): 145-48. 7. the quoted piece is from part 2 of the three-part poem “tryptich” titled “why sand scorches armenians.” see about time (1987), p. 14. 8. for the citation of this tale by uri zvi greenberg and elie wiesel’s commentary on it, see alan l. berger and naomi berger (2001). 9. quotation from the chronicle of higher education, june 12, 1998, p. b7. 10. this and the next citation are from marcom’s testimonies on the occasion of the publication of her book in the uc berkeley armenian alumni newsletter. 11. from an unpublished poem, titled “ecce homo.” armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 159 12. “growing with my heritage (for two victims of the armenian genocide),” fourth in the sequence of four poems he titled “victims: the return of the cruelest month.” he wrote this sequence in april/may, 2002, unpublished. 13. for an analysis of these images in “the history of armenia,” see lorne shirinian (1990). references: 1. alishan, l. (1992) an exercise on a genre for genocide and exorcism. // the armenian genocide: history, politics, ethics. / ed. by r.g. hovannisian. new york: st. martin’s press. 2. balakian, p. (1983) sad days of light. new york: sheep meadow press. 3. (1998) black dog of fate. new york: broadway books. 4. berger, a.l. and berger, n. (eds.) (2001) second generation voices, reflections by children of holocaust survivors and perpetrators. syracuse, ny: syracuse university press. 5. derdarian, mae m. (1996) vergeen: a survivor of the armenian genocide. los angeles: atmus press. 6. der-hovanessian, d. (1987) about time. new york: ashot press. 7. edgarian, c. (1994) rise the euphrates. new york: random house books. 8. foston, v.s. (2001) victoria’s secret: a conspiracy of silence. sacramento: victoria lazarian heritage association. 9. grenier, arpiné konyalian (1993). “the apprentice in exile: toward an armenianamerican poetics,” aspora 1;1: 17-32. 10. kacikyan, agop, christina le vernoy and joyce bailey tr. (2000). a summer without dawn. toronto: mcclelland & steward. 11. katchadourian, s. (1994) efronia, an armenian love story. boston, ma: northeastern university press. 12. kherdian, d. (1970) on the death of my father and other poems. fresno: giligia press. 13. (1970) homage to adana, fresno: giligia press. 14. (1979) the road from home: the story of an armenian girl. new york: greenwillow. 15. langer, lawrence l. (1991) holocaust testimonies, the ruins of memory. new haven and london: yale university press. 16. manoukian, mariam and elize (2005) on the other side of mount ararat, a story of a vanished city. glendale, ca: abril book publishing. 17. marcom, micheline aharonian (2001) three apples fell from heaven. new york: riverhead books. 18. minassian, j. (1986) many hills yet to climb, memoir of an armenian deportee. santa barbara, ca: jim cook. 19. morgan, m.l. (1997) to seize memory, history and identity in post-holocaust armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 160 jewish thought. // thinking about the holocaust, after half a century. / ed. by a.h. rosenfeld. bloomington and indianapolis: indiana university press. 20. mugrditchian, h. (1996) to armenians with love: the memoirs of a patriot. hobe sound, florida: paul mart. 21. nakshian ketchian, bertha (1988) in the shadow of the fortress: the genocide remembered. cambridge, ma: the zorian institute. 22. ohanian, th.a. (2001) lines in the sand: love, tragedy, and the armenian genocide. published by lines in the sand press. 23. peroomian r. (april 1996) how to read genocide literature, the problematics, the search for a canon. // international network on holocaust and genocide. 24. pilibossian, h. (2008) history’s twists: the armenians. watertown ma: ohan press. 25. rosenfeld, a. (1988) a double dying reflections on holocaust literature. bloomington and indianapolis: indiana university press. 26. shirinian, l. (1990) armenian-north american literature, a critical introduction: genocide, diaspora, and symbols. lewiston, queenston, lampeter: the edwin mellen press. 27. young, j.e. (1988) writing and rewriting the holocaust. bloomington and indianapolis: indiana university press. ø»í ºõ»éýá »ññáñ¹ ë»ñý¹ç ³ù»ñçï³ñ³û ·ñáõý»ñç çýùý³ñï³ñ³ûïù³ý ñçùùáõù ðá¹í³íá ³ý¹ñ³¹³éýáõù ¿ μ³½ù³ãçí ³ù»ñçï³ñ³û ·ñáõý»ñç` ºõ»éý í»ñ³åñ³í ý³ëýçý»ñç ë³ñë³÷» éç ׳ï³ï³·ñ»ñá ·»õ³ñí»ëïáñ»ý å³ïï»ñ»éáõ ùççáóáí çñ»ýó ³ñù³ïý»ñá ·ïý»éáõ ó·ïù³ýá: ²ý·é»ñ»ýáí ý»ñï³û³óí³í ³ûë å³ïùáõãûáõýý»ñá ïñáõù »ý ñ³û»ñç` ³ñ¹»ý »ññáñ¹ ë»ñý¹çý μýáñáß ùß³ïáõã³ûçý, ïñáý³ï³ý, ëáóç³é-ù³õ³ù³ï³ý ùç ß³ñù ³½¹» óáõãûáõýý»ñ ¨ ß³ï μ³½ù³½³ý »ý: ²ûýáõ³ù»ý³ûýçí, ¹ñ³ýó μáéáñç ñçùùáõù áýï³í ¿ ºõ»éýç ¨ ó³ûëûñ ¹ñ³ åëïù³ý ñ»ï ï³åí³í ñ³ù³½·³ ûçý, ñ³ù³ñ³ûï³ï³ý ù»í áõμ»ñ·áõãûáõýá: armenian folia anglistikaarmenological studies 161 maket 2011:layout 1.qxd 6 armenian folia anglistika 7 the republic of armenia celebrates the 20th anniversary of independence in 2011 on august 23, 2010 armenia celebrates the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the declaration of independence in armenia. on august 23, 1990 armenia declared its severeignity from the soviet union. it took another 13 months for armenia to fully become independent after an overwhelming majority of armenians on september 21, 1991 voted in a referendum to become an independent nation. it is the day which signifies the point in time when dreams of the people of armenia and the entire armenian nation began to turn into play, it also symbolizes our centuries-long yearning for independence. many armenians believe and say ''as we celebrate this monumental turning point in our nation’s history and acknowledge the advances made in nation-building and the preservation of our statehood, we, as a nation, must pledge to uphold the sacred principles outlined in the document and marshal the effort to ensure armenia’s independence and freedom''. hin.qxd issn 1829-0337 computer design: heghine gasparyan _____________________________________________________ lusakn publishers 6 grigor lusavorich,yerevan tel:ª 52-79-74, 52-79-47, e-mail. lusakn@rambler.ru armenian folia anglistika is the international academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english. its aim is to foster research of the english language, literature and culture in armenia and elsewhere and facilitate intellectual cooperation between high school teachers and scholars. armenian folia anglistika is free for the members of the association and is intended to be published twice a year. articles of interest to university-level teachers and scholars in english studies are warmly welcomed by the multi-national editorial board of the journal. articles should be directed to the editor in chief. editor iin cchief: dr seda gasparyan, prof. yerevan state university alex manoogian 1 yerevan 375049 armenia tel: (3741) 571660 fax: +(3741) 571660 e-mail: romano@xter.net editorial board: dr gevorg jahukyan, acad. (armenia) yelena mkhitaryan, prof. (armenia) dr svetlana ter-minasova, prof. (russia) dr olga alexandrova, prof. (russia) dr vincent gillespie, prof. (england) peter sutton, editor (england) shoushan paronyan, assist. prof. (armenia) gayane girunyan, assist. prof. (armenia) call for papers for the forthcoming issue of armenian folia anglistika to be published in spring 2006 ²ý·é»ñ»ýç áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãû³ý ñ³ûï³ï³ý ³ëáóç³óç³ (²ý·é»ñ»ýç áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãû³ý »íñáå³ï³ý ý»¹»ñ³óç³ûç ³ý¹³ù) ²ü¶è沶æî²î²ü ðºî²¼àîàôâúàôüüºðæ ð²úî²î²ü ð²ü¸ºê ðáí³ý³íáñáõãû³ùμ` ð³û³ëï³ýáõù ´ñçï³ý³ï³ý ëáñññ¹ç øçç³½·³ûçý ³ùë³·çñ ù³ëý³ïóáõãû³ùμ` ºñ»õ³ýç å»ï³ï³ý ñ³ù³éë³ñ³ýç (ð³û³ëï³ý) ºñ»õ³ýç å»ï³ï³ý 黽í³μ³ý³ï³ý ñ³ù³éë³ñ³ýç (ð³û³ëï³ý) øáëïí³ûç ø.èáùáýáëáíç ³ýí. å»ï³ï³ý ñ³ù³éë³ñ³ýç (èáõë³ëï³ý) øáëïí³ûç å»ï³ï³ý 黽í³μ³ý³ï³ý ñ³ù³éë³ñ³ýç (èáõë³ëï³ý) ê³ñ³·áë³ûç ñ³ù³éë³ñ³ýç (æëå³ýç³) ø»ùýçëç ñ³ù³éë³ñ³ýç (²øü) ºðºì²ü 2005 2 armenian association for the study of english (member association of the european society for the study of english) armenian folia anglistika sponsored by british council armenia international journal with the participation of: yerevan state university, armenia yerevan state linguistic university, armenia moscow state lomonosov university, russia moscow state linguistic university, russia university of zaragoza, spain university of memphis, usa yerevan2005 3 1(2)2016+.pdf reading artistic prose through colour terms (“the great gatsby” by f.scott fitzgerald) the question of colour terms and their functioning inenglish literature has long been the center of scholarly attention, and especially in the last few decades colour terms have been studied in terms of their lexical, phraseological and linguocultural values. the present article focuses on the significance of colour terms as all-important ‘elements’ of philological reading, something the study of which might make the process of reading an enjoyable and rewarding one. we proceed from the assumption that the philologically oriented reader should penetrate into the author’s artistic design as deeply as possible and in doing so create visual images of his own provided every aspect of the linguistic expression that the text can offer is taken into account. in this respect the use of colour terms proves especially important since it can be viewed as one of the basic means of encoding the author’s purport in the text. as the previous research shows1, whenever an author introduces a colour term into his or her text, it is always done for a particular purpose. our analysis is based on the text of the great gatsby by f.scott fitzgerald, the well-known american author of the jazz age. in the novel colour seems to play an increasingly important role. it introduces ‘polyphony’ in the text the polyphony of colour and meaning which almost acquires a symbolic significance. of special interest here is the beginning of the novel, where the writer introduces daisy, his main heroine, to the reader, as if setting her in a painting of an interior, dressed all in white: the windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. a breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out at the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-coloured rug, making a shadow on it, as wind does on the sea. the only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. 68 armenian folia anglistika linguistics irina maguidova natalia decheva hin.qxd verbal and non-verbal representations of conflict in speech in everyday quarrels, public disputes, and internetchatrooms we often resort to various means to demonstrate our negative attitude towards our interlocutors, to show our disagreement or simply to confront with them. it is interesting to note that in doing so we frequently fail to notice the huge number of verbal and non-verbal cues we deploy in speech. there is no need to say that some of them seem really inept, if not offensive in communication, and were we aware of this fact, we would definitely think twice before coming into conflict. on the other hand, we have to admit that in some conflictual situations, where the tension is quite high, nerves are overstrained and the pitch of negative emotions is extremely high, it seems very difficult to avoid using violent gestures, facial expressions and distasteful words in speech. conflict plays a crucial role in social interactions, and representations of conflict are an important aspect of language. the vast amount of research on conflict theory tends to show that conflict and conflictual relations have become the subject of various disciplines like social psychology, politics, e-discourse, management, etc. there has been, however, a wide range of controversies among writers over the exact definition of the term conflict. much of the disagreement rests upon the nature, causes and the description of conflict. thus, some psychologists consider the existence of opposing conditions to be a sufficient factor for conflict.1 others argue that it is incumbent that a person’s actions be perceived as reflecting a conflict of interests.2 sociologists in their turn tend to be less scrupulous and state that conflict exists whenever incompatible activities occur.3 being an inevitable part of our life, conflicts have also found their reflection in language. thus, in some bilingual communities and countries it has become normal to speak about the so-called ethnolinguistic conflicts where languages rather than people are involved in confrontation. nowadays, new terms flames, to be flamed and flamers have been introduced into the word stock of the english language. flames denote verbal attacks in electronic forms, like via e-mail or in a chatroom, and flamers are people keen on starting fights in virtual reality. in our paper we attempt to reveal how conflictual relations between participants can find their reflection in speech and what verbal and non-verbal cues can be employed by 44 armenian folia anglistika linguistics lilit bekaryan them in conflictual interaction (ci). for this reason, we have conducted an analysis on conflict-based situations retrieved from modern american plays. it is worth mentioning that our analysis chiefly covers the interfamily conflict. to motivate our choice, we would like to state that family remains one of those rare spheres in society where people are relatively sincere in expressing their emotions, thoughts and feelings. thus, while we might feel a bit uneasy to contradict our interlocutors in public places for fear of being deprived of our status in the society, power, authority, work or salary, we might not fear the aforementioned consequences when conflicting with a family member. according to the recent statistical data, words account only for 40 percent of communication, 60 percent of communication is non-verbal. this comes to prove that while intending to convey their true emotions, thoughts and feelings, people more frequently resort to the so called non-verbal beahaviour. the term non-verbal communication can refer to facial expression, eye contact, posture, gesture and interpersonal distance or proxemics between the speakers. in support of the same theory, it is worth mentioning that there exists some disagreement among writers concerning the true meaning of non-verbal communication. part of the disagreement stems from the fact that in most cases verbal messages are simultaneously communicated with non-verbal messages and in this way being mixed together are really difficult to be separated from each other. such vocal aspects of speech as intonation, stress, speech rate, accent and loudness, vocal expressiveness and various non-word signs such as giggles, grunts, chuckles, hesitation markers fall into this category. therefore, some authors tend to distinguish between direct non-verbal communication and paralanguage.4 thus, the most important types of direct non-verbal communication distinguished by these scholars are appearance, body movement or kinesics, eye contact or oculesics, touching or haptics and proxemics (the use of personal space). as the experience shows, all five of these direct non-verbal communication forms can have a significant impact on receiving and decoding the linguistic message. consequently they can also affect the nature and the level of conflict. apart from this, participants might as well be influenced with paralanguage, which, as we have already mentioned, involves significant uses of the voice, as well as significant uses of graphology, or of the materials used in written discourse. thus, the use of non-verbal cues is supposed to communicate relevant information on speakers’ emotions, speech, individual differences and interpersonal relationship. similarly, the content of individuals’ thoughts, emotions and concerns can also have its impact on the rise and further development of ci. as our research shows, some verbal strategies employed by speakers might affect their interlocutors negatively, serving as an extra stimulus to conflict, whereas others might have a kind of soothing effect on them. in this respect, it is worth mentioning j.gibb’s work on communication environment or climates5, where the author distinguishes between two opposing climates for communication and describes the effects of each on the interaction and the behaviour of the participants. accordingly, he defines the first type of communication climate as supportive, collaborative, characterized by mutual trust, sincerity and cooperation. the second type of climate gibb calls defensive and describes it as a type of behaviour, which takes place when an individual perceives or anticipates threat in the group. 45 linguistics armenian folia anglistika according to gibb, in defensive behaviour individuals are likely to produce postural, facial and verbal cues, which raise the defense level of communication. taking this into consideration, we define the climate for ci as highly defensive. on the other hand, it seems appropriate to distinguish between various degrees of conflictual interaction respective of the intensity of conflict. it seems natural to assume, that conflicts do not start from scratch but can be the result of some hidden inner aggression, a possible consequence of an unpleasant event marked in the history of relationships of speakers, or simply an outcome of a negative disposition towards the interlocutor. it is worth mentioning, that the frequency of non-verbal cues as well as the expressive level of verbal cues can vary according to the stage and intensity of ci. the study of the factual material allows us to distinguish between three intensity levels of ci, which we with some reservations define as low, mid and high. correspondingly, each level is marked with its own peculiarities in terms of verbal and non-verbal strategies. thus, when we deal with the so-called opening for conflict we deal with the low level of ci. the tension at this level is moderately low, as participants try to be relatively polite, more careful in the choice of their words and mainly express their negative disposition with the help of accusations, threats, reproaches and complaints. thus, grammatically participants avoid imperatives and use grammatical structures made with the help of conditionals and constructions i wish + that intending them to act as softened equivalents to their indirectly expressed accusations, complaints or reproaches. syntactically, when trying to find a fault with the other party, individuals use a special type of questions to accuse the interlocutor. in the psychological literature these questions are known as hostile or accusatory questions. in a way they are closer to rhetorical questions as, in fact, they do not need to be answered. apparently, any answer offered to hostile questions will provoke additional accusation on the part of the speaker. another syntactic tool deployed at this level of ci is deliberate repetition. it is generally accepted, that in conversation speakers should avoid repetition regarding it as unnecessary and time-consuming. however, frequent are the situations when speakers repeat vocabulary and syntactic structures on purpose. this is known as deliberate repetition when speakers aim for emphasis as it is in the case below. nancy: i want a new life. i want to go discothequing and skiing and to the beach. i want to drive through europe on a motorcycle. all we ever do is see movies. allan: i write for a film magazine, they send me. besides, i happen to like movies. nancy: you like movies because you’re one of life’s great watchers. i’m not like that. i’m a doer. i want to participate. i want to laugh. we never laugh together. (6:566) as can be seen from this exchange, the wife indirectly accuses her husband of not providing a full and interesting life for her. for this reason, she repeats the structure i 46 armenian folia anglistika linguistics want thrice as if intending to emphasize that her wishes do not coincide with the actions of her husband. at the same time she ignores her husband’s attempts to justify himself and goes on with her charges calling her husband a watcher, whereas she, herself, is a doer. in fact, here nancy makes her semantic selection, employing another verbal strategy and deliberately creating a kind of antonymous link between the words doer and watcher. individuals engaged in conflict may also use verbal conventions aiming to hurt others and exacerbate the differences between people. stereotyping belongs to these conventions. rather than contributing to breaking the tension, stereotypes create defensive atmosphere in communication. stereotypes should be differentiated from generalities, which are often selected by participants at the low level of interaction. as we know, generalities occur when individuals resort to ambiguous, or exaggerated rather than concrete terms when describing feelings, events and situations. correspondingly, generalities, as well as stereotypes prove to be very “handy” in making accusations or complaints. an example of a generality can be found in the exchange presented above where nancy reproaches her husband for the fact that they never laugh together. inevitably, our analysis cannot be complete from the point of view of non-verbal cues as it seems impossible to reproduce in writing all the features of voices, movements, expressions of the participants of the conversation. yet, to compensate for this, writers tend to influence the reader with peculiar features of typography like representing the message in bold typeface or in upper case, etc. similarly, they describe in brackets the intonation, the tone or other vocal aspects, which affect the meaning of the utterance. the role of non-verbal cues seems to be very important at the low level of ci as here the participants being deprived of the opportunity to express their thoughts and feelings openly, subconsciously resort to various paralinguistic features to make their interlocutors realize not only what they say but also what they feel. the sample illustrated below reflects a similar case. cora: i wish you were home more, rubin. rubin: i gotta make a livin’. cora: other men make a living without traveling all over country selling harness. rubin: the way other men make a livin’ is their business. i gotta make mine the best way i know how. i can’t be no schoolmaster like your old man was when he brung you all out of here from pennsylvania. i can’t be no dentist like your brother-inlaw morris. i was raised on a ranch and thought i’d spend my life on it. sellin’ harness is about all i’m prepared for … as long as there’s any harness to sell. cora: (with a trace of self-pity) i envy women who have their husbands with them all the time. i never have anyone to take me any place. i live like a widow. (7:107) 47 linguistics armenian folia anglistika as has already been mentioned above, much in the development of ci depends on psychological factors, like the history of relations, the age, educational background, the personality traits of the interlocutors, etc. the aforementioned exchange takes place between a wife and a husband. meanwhile, the husband, despite his low background and upbringing, is definitely the one who is endowed with power in the house. in view of that, to soften her accusation and to sound less direct, the wife builds her speech act with the help of the construction i wish +that. the husband, however, does not make any attempts to justify himself. meanwhile the generalities (other men make a living without traveling all over country selling harness), (i never have anyone to take me any place) and the stereotypical assumptions employed by cora, as well as the paralinguistic features of her utterance (with a trace of self-pity) come to prove once again that the wife does not accept her husband’s explanation and sticks firmly to her opinion, though afraid to express it openly. unlike the low level of ci where the intensity of disjunctive emotions between participants is quite implicit, the second mid level of ci is generally marked with explicitly expressed disagreement on the part of the speakers. therefore, this stage is mostly characterized with situations reflecting disagreement and contradicting. the semantic selection prevailing at this level comprises words showing disagreement, structures denoting the wrongness of the speaker, as well as adjectives, which negatively evaluate the speaker, thing or the person of which the speaker approves. very often in order to express his negative attitude towards the person or the thing, the speaker can refer to them with the help of deictic markers. this choice of the speaker can be motivated by some psychological factors. thus, subconsciously, the speaker might consider the referent of so little importance that does not find it appropriate even to mention his name in speech. let us adduce an example: vandergelder: i had a talk with that artist of yours. he’s a fool … ermengarde: but uncle, i love him! vandergelder: i tell you that you don’t. ermengarde: but i do. vandergelder: and i tell you, you don’t. leave those things to me. (8:539) it is interesting to note that mid level of ci is generally typical of those family relations, which are based on subordination, like parents children, or uncle niece, as it is in the sample presented above. vandergelder does not approve of the choice of his niece referring to the young man as that artist. moreover, he calls the young man a fool and ignores ermengarde’s attempts to contradict him. as we have already mentioned, the factor of power plays not the least role in this sample and vandergelder imposes his opinion on his niece forcing her to leave those things to him. it is important to note that the frequency of non-verbal cues is the lowest at this level of ci. in fact, the highest 48 armenian folia anglistika linguistics frequency is observed at the third level of ci, the standard manifestations of which are wrangles, scuffles and rows. as our studies show, wrangles tend to prevail in discourse between children. the clue perhaps should be sought in the fact that children, usually not mature enough to motivate their actions with reason, often resort to derogatory, swear words in confrontation. therefore, wrangles are usually nothing more than a reciprocal exchange of insults, verbal abuse and name-calling. another verbal strategy very often employed in wrangles is sarcasm. in view of this, wrangles are very often perceived as a game by the interlocutors themselves and, in order to be terminated, need a third party intervention. in the role of the third party usually there is a person enjoying the authority and respect of the participants. very often, the pitch of negative emotions is so high in communication that interlocutors do not consider mere words sufficient to confront with the partner. this fact may result in a scuffle, a fight of rough and noisy character. as we know, narrators are denied the opportunity to convey a complete illustration of such situations in written discourse. therefore, they may resort to some typographic and semantic aids like excessive punctuation, underlining, upper case or describing in brackets the hostile actions taken by the interlocutors, as well as their emotional state and the pitch of their voice. to conclude, conflicts are an inescapable part of our life, language and culture. to try to avoid them seems virtually impossible. on the other hand, being able to conflict appropriately is considered to be a kind of art, which requires enough competence and proficiency. therefore we, individuals, have to be careful in our selection of verbal and non-verbal strategies in order to contribute to the relatively smooth and civil development of conflictual interaction. references: 1. brickman p. rule structures and conflict relationships. in: social conflict ed.by brickman p., lexington, ma: heath, 1974; lewin k. the background of conflict in marriage. in: resolving social conflicts: selected papers on group dynamics ed.by lewin g.w., new york, harper, 1948. 2. pruitt d.g.; rubin j.z., social conflict: escalation, stalemate, and settlement. new york, random house, 1986. 3. deutsch m. the resolution of conflict: constructive and destructive processes. new haven, ct, yale university press, 1973. 4. borisoff d.; victor d., conflict management: a communication skills approach (2nd ed.). allyn & bacon, 1998; harrison r.p. beyond words: an introduction to nonverbal communication. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice-hall, 1974. 5. gibb j.r. sociopsychological processes of group interaction. in: the dynamics of instruction groups (fifty-ninth yearbook of the national society for the study of education), part 11, ed.by henry n.b., 1960. 49 linguistics armenian folia anglistika sources of data: 6. allen w. play it again, sam. best american plays 1967-1973, crown publishers, inc., new york, 1975. 7. inge w. the dark at the top of the stairs. best american plays 1958 1963, crown publishers, inc., new york, 1963. 8. wilder th. the matchmaker. best american plays 1951-1957, crown publishers, inc., new york, 1987. ð³ï³ù³ñïáõãû³ý ëáëù³ûçý ¨ áã ëáëù³ûçý ¹ñë¨áñáõùý»ñá ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý ù»ç ð³ïáý¹¹»ù ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý ù»ç ù»í ¹»ñ ¿ ë³õáõù ³ûý ñ³ý·³ù³ýùá, 㻠黽í³ï³ý çýãåçëç ùççáóý»ñ »ý áýïñáõù ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý ù³ëý³ïçóý»ñá ùçùû³ýó ýï³ïù³ùμ çñ»ýó ¹çñùáñáßáõùý ³ñï³ñ³ûï»éáõ ñ³ù³ñ, áñý ¿ ýñ³ýó ý³ëáýïñ³í é³½ù³í³ñáõãûáõýá, çýãåçëç ñáõ½³ñï³ñ³ûïã³ï³ý ¨ ñ³ñ³é»½í³ï³ý ùççáóý»ñç »ý ýñ³ýù ¹çùáõù çñ»ýó ëáëùáõù: ðá¹í³íáõù ÷áñó ¿ ³ñíáõù μ³ó³ñ³ûï»é, ã» çýãåçëç ëáëù³ûçý ¨ áã ëáëù³ûçý ùççáóý»ñç û·ýáõãû³ùμ ¿ ñ³ï³ù³ñïáõãûáõýá ¹ñë¨áñíáõù ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý áýã³óùáõù: àý¹ñ³ýñ³óý»éáí áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõýý»ñç ³ñ¹ûáõýùý»ñá` ³é³ýóý³óí»é »ý ñ³ïáý¹¹»ù ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý áõå·ýáõãû³ý »ñ»ù ³ëïç׳ý` ù»õù, ùçççý ¨ áõå·çý: 50 armenian folia anglistika linguistics hin.qxd global english and new sociocultural concepts in armenia this article aims at revealing and acknowledgingarmenian and english linguistic manifestations of realias which have become salient as a result of the new managerial practices whose language is becoming english. along with almost all the former soviet bloc countries, armenia underwent a collapse and adopted a variant of “shock therapy”, trying to introduce a series of major political and economic reforms as rapidly as possible. the armenian collapse had its specific features: in 1991 the country became independent after the earthquake (1988) and with the karabakh movement. since that time the “western countries” have begun supporting armenia and its developing policies. changes, taking place in post-soviet armenia, have currently influenced the sociolinguistic status of english, which, in its turn, has a direct impact on the objectives and perspectives of sociolinguistic research. innovations in restructuring and rescaling of society told on local discourses which were once open to russian but became now open mostly to english. the universally recognized status of english as an international language, though not officially confirmed, doesn’t need any proof, and its status as an adopted language of management seems natural in the armenian setting1. however, the “choice” of the adopted form of government/management is beyond our competence. we are concerned with the understanding and interpretation of the linguistic problems of interwoven practices that arise in the result of english-armenian interaction. the research is carried out with special reference to the sociolinguistic status of english. in many respects our approach to analysis can be termed discourse-historical, focusing on the centrality of the language, because meaning relies on representation through language, and representation is different across cultures and historical periods. we proceed from the hypothetical assumption that foreign language discourse (acquisition and public discourse)2 in the armenian setting can be divided into four stages. the first stage stretches from 1918 until about 1920, the end of the first armenian republic, whose language of public discourse (official/non-official) was armenian. the second stage, from the pre-stalinist period including the stalinist soviet armenia until 1953 (stalin’s death), is marked by the establishment of soviet practices 90 armenian folia anglistika culture studies nvard yernjakyan (ideological, economic and social order) created in moscow in russian. however, the official language of public discourse remained armenian, it being a state language. the third stage, from 1953 until around the independence, is marked by a tremendous expansion of russian as a language of not only semi-official, professional and private communication but also a necessary prestigious attribute for the intelligentsia, though in fact armenian remained the official language of public /managerial discourse. the fourth stage following independence is, on the one hand, marked by the tendency of excluding russian from official/public discourses and the establishment of the national language purism policy, and on the other, it was influenced by the processes of ‘coming global’ with the spread of ‘global english’ in armenia. however, the armenian language continues to be a state language and the language of public discourse as well. during the first three stages english, along with other foreign languages, functioned mainly in educational and scientific spheres as well as translations and official contacts, all being controlled and censored by governing bodies, whereas in the present reality the business or partnership contacts are not either limited or directly controlled, and are available for all layers of society. actually, the ‘limit’ today is dependent on language competence, and the communication between the partners needs to be translated either in writing (agreements, contracts, laws, etc.) or orally. international and intergovernmental agreements can be considered a basis, a legal argumentation to provide new management and, therefore, it is natural that a new managerial language3 is implemented in the economic and social life of the republic. such organizations as un, tasis, usaid, world bank, oxfam, peace corpse office, etc., realizing different projects in armenia, play an important role in establishing new managerial structures and working habits which provide the linguistic field with new concepts and terms. thus, knowing english harmonizes with definitions like ‘coming global’, with the language of free market relations (as the new social-economic order in armenia nowadays is likely to be called). under the pressure of the restructuring and rescaling of public management not only new words and concepts emerge and penetrate into armenian but also new ways of acting and interacting are introduced into life. these new elements stimulate the occurrance of new linguistic transformations, which have different origins and habitat in local and adopted cultures. thus, the following words and word combinations such as post-employment benefice, religious minoroties, community, community development, grant, presentations, monitoring, householder, homeless, etc., though peculiar to the official and public language, have found their equivalents in folk language as well: instead of saying family poverty benefice, or real estate fees, or homeless, people just say benefice, renting fees, bomjh4. however, we think that the level of secondary education and awareness of the legal field cannot be considrerd the main reasons for the formation of people’s perceptions and evaluations of the formal order and institutions. it may probably be assumed that those who don’t have power, create unofficial methods and procedures for the realization and defence of their interests in answer to their estrangement from power. these methods and procedures have their own language5 91 culture studies armenian folia anglistika and system of moral justification safeguarding their parallel coexistance with the official language, procedures and publicly recognized morals. coexistance of the official language of management and the unofficial language of people’s social activity, vitally fundamental strategies and concepts, created in the process of interaction with authorities, change according to their own discretion6. the denotation of the concept of an ‘unofficial language of social activity’ is not an end in itself but, as far as the phenomenon has to be somehow defined, we give our preference to “folk language”, as a counterbalance to the “language of authorities”7. unlike russian, which had already been widely used in armenia for about a hundred years by the time of the soviet power establishment, english as the language associated with curent democratic processes in the country doesn’t have similar historical background. english has been and remains the language of professionals and translators, whose mediating mission is of special importance in the establishment of new institutions. however, the new institutions created by international and local experts are mainly for the citizens living in the present setting of armenia. the mission of the adepts of globalization consists not only in transmitting the english managerial discourse into the armenian reality, but also adapting it to the armenian linguistic mentality. the mission is not an easy one, especially in the sense that there is a great difference between social and linguistic practices of generations. for example, the associations of the statement he sold his flat are completely different for people of different generations, as the idea of private flats has been introduced into armenian life only recently. to fit the scope of the analysis within the confines of this article, we concentrate on the study of the metaphoric perception of home in both english and armenian linguocultural traditions. the word and image characteristics of home allow us to trace three different connotations, in it: 1) of place, 2) of family, 3) of privacy. the connotation of place is peculiar to both linguistic traditions. for example to go home (ïáõý ·ý³é), in which home is equalized to a proper name, like in the case of to go to town, i.e. a known place or one and the same place (in this respect it is relevant to refer to the roman tradition, in which rome was called urbs – town). the associative connotations of family in many ways are more vividly expressed in the armenian culture. for example, to destroy home (to do harm to a family) or to keep the smoke alive (to beget a male child and provide prosperity to the family) in the armenian tradition refer rather to the family than the physical object (the house). the understanding of home as a physical object giving refuge to an individual at a certain period of time and providing his privacy is characteristic of the british culture and identity8. with reference to ‘coming global’ in armenia, with home/house in mind, it should be mentioned that apart from cultural symbolism, these notions have acquired socialeconomic significance for people. thus, legal and social economic discourses are in vanguard as far as after privatization public/managerial discourses as well as private communication became 92 armenian folia anglistika culture studies abundant in such terms as “household”, “householder’s living status”, “condominium”, “accommodation service fees”, “real estate fees”, etc. what is of special interest about housing in general and terms related is the objectword-meaning correlation, on the one hand, and peoples’ perceptions and awareness of legal field, on the other. some observations of public, managerial and legal spheres of community life have shown that by the inertia of the former soviet social order regime, when people (urban population mainly) would feel owners, but in fact rented their homes from the state, nowadays being actual owners, still keep saying go to jhek (the russian abbreviation for the governmental office in charge of domestic accommodation service), to pay the renting fees, hardly distinguishing between condominiums, private houses and private flats. another source of housing/domestic terms are the investigations coming out in the information analytical bulletins, numerous reports made by undp missions on poverty and the impact of macroeconomic policy, all targeting at highlighting the information regarding the regions. thus, our study of the public/managerial discourse in armenia shows that the tendences in the language development depend, to a great extent on the social, cultural processes leading to globalization. references and notes: 1. çíàìåíñêàÿ ò.ë. ßçûêîâûå ãèáðèäû êàê ïðîäóêò ñòàíäàðòèçàöèè àíãëèéñêîãî ÿçûêà â ñôåðå ïðîôåññèîíàëüíîãî è ìåæäóíàðîäíîãî îáùåíèÿ. // âîïðîñû ôèëîëîãèè, 2003, ¹ 9, ñ.5-8. http://www.ebiblioteka.ru/sources/article.jsp?id=5846239 2. yernjakyan n.v., gulyan a.m., on some extralinguistic and paralinguistic aspects of the acquisition of english in armenia // úï³ñ 黽áõý»ñá μ³ñóñ³·áõûý ¹åñáóáõù: ºñ¨³ý, 2002. 3. fairclough n. language in new capitalism. // discourse and society. london, sage publications, 2002, v.13(2), p.163-166. 4. bomjh is a transformed soviet reality survival, a russian abbreviation, naming somebody who had no definite place to live and was liable to be sued by soviet law for tramping. currently it has acquired a new connotation denoting n officially extreme form of poverty not to be punished legally. 5. in other words when those who have no power make sure that authorities either ignore them or pretend not to be ignoring, there arises no necessity of using the official language. in such cases we rather deal with a creation of one’s own language than unawareness. we think that the following example of political folklore not only expresses the negative evaluation of the first armenian president’s policies but also shows the lack of a dialogue between the authorities and people. in the first stages of his presidency l.ter-petrossian’s knoweledge of languages was estimated positively but in a later period, when people’s 93 culture studies armenian folia anglistika frustration culminated as a result of his destructive policies, a folk joke went round as if levon, being an expert in dead languages (not understandable to people), was driving the country to death. 6. graham phil. hypercapitalism: language, new media and social perceptions of value // discourse and society. london, sage publications, 2002, v.13(2). 7. our aim here is not to give a definition of the concept. we only define a bare outline of the phenomenon under consideration. it seems to us definitions won’t make things clearer. on definitions see: âåæáèöêà a. ñåìàíòè÷åñêèå ïðèìèòèâû. // cåìèîòèêà. ïîä.ðåä. ñòåïàíîâà þ.ñ. ìîñêâà, ðàäóãà, 1983, ñ. 227–230. 8. in terms of british house metaphor it is interesting to mention that a comparative survey of ch.dickens’ “bleak house”, “hard times” (the 19th century reality) and rosamund pilcher’s “winter solstice” (a modern bestseller) reveals no great difference between both traditional exterior/interior descriptions and psychological perceptions. actually the prestigious detached british houses can well contribute to this understanding of ‘home’ not only in architectural design but also isolation in terms of being impartial, indifferent. as tony blair said, “globalization is a fact, the alternative is isolation, and the issue is not how to stop globalization but to use the power of the community to combine it with justice”. interestingly, isolation as an alternative is quoted by a representative of a culture where the cherished detached houses are likely to be providing individual’s economic independence and privacy. condemning the nationalist movement leaders for propagating national isolation, michael gorbachev a representative of soviet culture, remarked, “we cannot isolate ourselves in our national flats”. ¶éáμ³é ³ý·é»ñ»ýç ¹ñë¨áñáõùý»ñá ñ³ûï³ï³ý ýáñ çñáõáõãû³ý ù»ç ð³û³ëï³ýáõù ï»õç áõý»óáõ ù³õ³ù³ï³ý, ïýï»ë³ï³ý ¨ ëáóç³é³ï³ý ÷á÷áëáõãûáõýý»ñý çñ»ýó ³ýùçç³ï³ý ³½¹»óáõãûáõýý áõý»ý çýãå»ë 黽í³ï³ý çñáõáõãûáõýý»ñç, ³ûýå»ë ¿é 黽í³μ³ý³ï³ý áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõýý»ñç íñ³: ðá¹í³íáõù ¹çï³ñïíáõù ¿ å³ßïáý³ï³ý ñ³ýñ³ûçý ï³é³í³ñù³ý 黽íáõù ï»ýó³õ³í³ñáõ ³ý·é»ñ»ý μ³é»ñç áõ μ³é³ï³å³ïóáõãûáõýý»ñç å³ßïáý³å»ë áý¹áõýí³í ¨ åáõáíñ¹³ï³ý ñ³ù³ñå»ùý»ñý çμñ¨ ·éáμ³é ³ý·é»ñ»ýç ³½¹»óáõãûáõý, áñá ñçùý³ï³ýáõù ùçç³½·³ûçý ï³½ù³ï»ñåáõãûáõýý»ñç μ³½ù³μáí³ý¹³ï ·áñíáõý»áõãû³ý ³ñ¹ûáõýùý ¿: 94 armenian folia anglistika culture studies maket_n_verjin.qxp on ways of expressing persuasion in discourse to be human is to want change. there are, of course,a huge number of ways of making an influence on people’s mind or behavior and changing their attitudes, beliefs or behavior. but the most frequently used and the most effective tool that people manipulate to achieve change during their interaction is persuasion. interest in developing some general principles of persuasion is not new. in the fourth century bc aristotle concerned himself with the persuasive communication and identified three kinds of persuasion: “of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. the first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, provided by the words of the speech itself. […] persuasion may come to the hearers when a speech stirs their emotions. secondly, persuasion is affected through the speech itself when we have proved a truth or an apparent truth by means of the persuasive arguments suitable to the case in question” (petty 1981:5). the american social psychologist j.w. zanden defines persuasion as “a deliberate attempt on the part of one party to influence the attitudes or behavior of the other party, so as to achieve some predetermined end” (zanden 1977:11). in writing about persuasive speaking t.s. scheider states that it can be described to be that activity in which the speaker and the listener are “conjoined” and in which the speaker consciously attempts to influence the behaviour of the listener by “transmitting audible and visible symbolic cues” (scheidel 1985). a careful and detailed investigation makes it possible to give a more or less complete definition of the persuasive communication. any conscious, deliberate and predetermined attempt of an individual to make certain changes in the interlocutor’s cognition or behaviour, i.e. to make the interlocutor adhere to his/her own point of view through the transmission of some message can be considered to be a persuasive behaviour. whenever some changes are apparent in part of the recipient in favour of the message, the process of persuading can be viewed as successful. what is important here is that how e.p. bettinghaus notes “success in persuasive communication must be based on a series of decisions, each having its roots in the central question of what is best for mankind” (bettinghaus 1980:7). the aim of this paper is to bring together and analyze different theories on persuasive communication taking into account the theory of speech acts and the theory of conversational implicature. our task is to attempt to discover first of all the basic features of persuasive communication, the necessary conditions of its effectiveness. we shall try to place emphasis on the different means and strategies that different people may choose to use in order to achieve an effective end in persuasive communicative situations. 93 linguistics armenian folia anglistika siranoush ghaltkhchyan 94 the in-depth investigation of various persuasive communicative situations comes to prove that persuasion is not only a linguistic but also a psychological action. to approach the problem it would be preferable to cast a brief glance at the psychological aspect of persuasive communication that will consequently lead us to a better understanding of the complex nature of persuasive communication. for a communicator to satisfy his/her communicative needs and to be a success in a persuasive communication, s/he should necessarily take into consideration and observe the psychological factors of persuasion. in any persuasive communicative situation a formula is always apparent that should be necessarily observed in order to understand the process properly. that is ‘who says what to whom and how’. these are accordingly four basic factors engaged in the process of communication: the source (who says it), the message (what is said), the recipient (to whom it is said), and the channel (medium or means of communication). the interrelation among these factors may produce persuasion. when situations become more and more complicated, these factors necessarily remain, though there may be circumstances with more than one source, more than one receiver, many different messages and various channels. most of the time the process of persuasion takes place in the following way: the persuasive context, i.e. the source and the message, question the receiver’s initial attitude, recommend the adoption of a new attitude and provide ‘incentives’ for understanding, yielding to and retaining the new rather than the initial attitude. each of these factors is of great importance and all of them do play certain role in affecting the effectiveness of a persuasive intent and can greatly account for persuasive changes. in his meditations about persuasion plato puts to the fore the importance of the message factor in any persuasive communication. he regarded persuasion as the key to power and the message as the key to persuasion. “what is there greater than the word which persuades the judges in the court, or the senator in the council, or the citizen in the assembly, or at any other meeting? – if you have the power of uttering this word, you will have any person your slave. even the money maker of whom you talk will be found to gather treasures, not for himself, but for you, who are able to speak and to persuade the multitude” (petty 1981: 69). nevertheless, the most significant and the most decisive role in any persuasive communicative situation belongs to the source factor, for, it is up to the sender of the massage to determine how to organize his/her persuasive speech, how to construct the structure and the stylistic design of the message to conduct persuasion. moreover, along with verbal communication the source may make use of the so-called extralinguistic cues or paralinguistic means that include gestural and postural system, intonation, spatial distance from the receiver, rate of speech, length and frequency of pauses, eye contact and so on. such non-verbal cues are generally very informative. they may add a new dimension to the given verbal message and contribute greatly to the total purport of the persuasive massage. in many persuasive communicative situations the effectiveness of a persuasive attempt may be very much dependent even upon the source’s appearance, social status, lifestyle, age, sex, relationship to the receiver, manner of dressing and behaving, approaches to this or that phenomenon or to life in general. the belief that the source of the message acquires great significance in any persuasive armenian folia anglistika linguistics communication can be traced back to aristotle who wrote that “persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. we believe a good man more fully and more readily than others. it is not true, as some writers assume in their treatises on rhetoric, that the personal goodness revealed by the speaker contributes nothing to his power of persuasion; on the contrary, his character may always be called the most effective means of persuasion he possesses” (roberts 1886: 7). so, one of the most straightforward findings of the investigations on persuasion is that the higher a person’s evaluation of the communicator, i.e. source, the more likely is s/he to yield to the persuasive communication. the two major elements in the target individual’s evaluation of a communicator are the source’s credibility, i.e. certain perceptions about the source held by the recipient and the source’s attractiveness to the recipient, i.e. the degree to which the communicator is liked by the target individual. hence, high-credibility communicators are more effective in producing attitude change than low-credibility communicators are and the better the communicator’s appearance, style of speaking, gestural and postural system the more persuasive s/he may be (bettinghaus1980). nevertheless, the recipient factor is not less important in the process of persuasion, for, in many cases the failure or success in a specific persuasive communicative situation may depend greatly on the receiver of the massage. j.w.zanden notes in this connection that there are two main kinds of people. some people are gullible pushovers, while others stubbornly stick to their guns (zanden 1977). attention should be focused on such factors as age, gender, intelligence of the recipient. zellner suggest the importance of self-esteem which is positively related to intelligence. self-esteem refers to the value, worth or regards one places on himself/herself. it has been proved that people with low self-esteem are less confident and less competent, view themselves as less capable than people with high self-esteem. consequently, an individual with low self-esteem is usually more persuasible, i.e. more easily persuaded than an individual with high self-esteem. “what you think of yourself will much depend upon the degree to which your actual successes coincide with the goals and aspirations you have set for yourself” (bettinghaus 1980:54). skolnick and keslin develop the idea that addressees high in the “need for social approval”, i.e. the desire to be liked by others, are often easier to influence than individuals lower in this need (shaver 1977). if we investigate the problem from the pragmalinguistic angle the massage factor comes to the fore. it is a well-proved fact that most of the time sentences uttered are not just “innocent statements”, that utterances in addition to the semantic meaning they convey perform specific actions, i.e. the interlocutors do things with words in particular speech situations either consciously or subconsciously (austen 1969). independent of syntactic and semantic categories, utterances can be used to mean different things in different contexts depending on how they relate to the context or speech event in which they are uttered. thus, it is likely that the sentences uttered have a finite set of functions, speech acts that sometimes may even convey meaning opposite to the sentence meaning (searle 1976). j.l. austen goes on stating that any linguistic string uttered or proposition, i.e. a locutionary act may possess a specific intention or function, i.e. illocutionary act which is intended on the part of the addresser to have an effect of some kind on the addressee, i.e. perlocutionary effect (austen 1969). it should be noted in this connection that the 95 linguistics armenian folia anglistika communicator should know what to utter and how in the specific context to get the wanted perlocutionary effect. in the p.h. grice’s theory this implies to the conventional implicature which can be defined as the literal truth condition of the utterance and conversational implicature which provides some explicit account of how it is possible to mean more than what is literally expressed by the conventional sense of the linguistic expression uttered (grice 1975). with this regard the notion of implicit and explicit utterances is introduced. what is said is the literal, explicit meaning and what is meant or implicated is the implicit meaning of an utterance, the second being solely dependent upon a particular context and the general background knowledge of the interlocutors. hence, if persuasive communication is investigated from the pragmalinguistic angle, we can surely state that persuasion can be described as a perlocutionary act, the effect of some linguistic behaviour and we have to admit that there exist two basic ways of making an influence and changing the interlocutor’s standpoint: explicit and implicit. some communicators prefer to be straightforward while speaking and command their wish explicitly, letting the recipient obviously realize their communicative intent. to make the point clear let us firstly observe a set of interesting examples. come fanny, these are fine times for you, but you must not be always walking from one room to the other and doing the looking on, at your ease, in this way,i want you here.i have been slaving myself till i can hardly stand.” fanny took the work very quietly without attempting any defense. (j. austen: 120) what a piece of work here is about nothing,i am quite ashamed of you, fanny, to make such a difficulty of obliging your cousin in a trifle of this sort, -so kind as they are to you!take the part with a good grace, and let us hear no more of the matter. (j. austen: 170) fanny now that you are going into company without any of us; i do beseech and entreat you not to be putting yourself forward, and talking and giving your opinion as if you were one of your cousins as if you were dear mrs. rushworth or julia. that will never do, believe me. remember, wherever you are, you must be the lowest and last, and as to coming away at night, you are to stay just as long as edmund chooses. leave him to settle that. (j. austen: 158) stay, stay fanny! what are you about? where are you going? don’t be in such a hurry. depend upon it, it is not you that are wanted; depend upon it, it is me, but you are so very eager to put yourself forwards. what should sir. thomas want you from? it is me, baddeley, you mean, i am coming this moment. you mean me, baddeley, i am sure, sir thomas wants me, not miss price. (j. austen: 84) as we see, in these examples the act of persuasion may sound synonymous to such directive acts as requesting, questioning, ordering, instructing, urging etc. we come to 96 armenian folia anglistika linguistics realize or presuppose that these are persuasive attempts when we take into account the context of the speech acts, for, it is the nature of the speech event that determines the kind of speech act of an utterance. otherwise, these utterances can be regarded as infelicitous or inappropriate. so, the communicators apply to the illocutionary force of requesting, questioning, ordering to have the perlocutionary effect of persuasion. though, actually, the directives ‘beseech’, ‘entreat’ are used in one of the examples, they are uttered in such a tone that it becomes apparent that they mean just the opposite. the emphatic use of inverted word order in the sentence contributes greatly to the same stylistic effect. the studies have shown that those communicators who resort constantly to explicit persuasion are generally middle-class people with low level of intelligence and with low level of consciousness, of dictatorial character and insolent manners, who overestimate their ‘wisdom’ and ‘intelligence’ and are always convinced of their ‘truthfulness’. not less important is also the recipient factor. explicit persuasion is mostly exposed upon addressees with low self-esteem, of humble and submissive nature and, what is more important, of a lower social level. nevertheless, explicit persuasion, as a rule, decreases the effectiveness of a persuasive message to a great extent and reduces the chances to succeed in persuasion. hence, the source’s persuasive attempts in case of explicit persuasion almost always end in failure. fortunately enough, the instances of explicit persuasion expressed through imperative sentences are not very frequently observed in discourse, for, in their form and structure such speeches used in any persuasive communicative situation sound rather rude, impolite and inadequate and may only hinder an effective communication. communicators more frequently choose the implicit way of convincing, when an attempt is made by the source to measure and alter the recipient’s initial attitude, belief or behaviour, disguising his/her real intention, trying to persuade the other party in an indirect way as if advising, encouraging, complimenting or just giving information. the choice of the way of persuading is much conditioned by not only the addresser of the message but also and mainly by the addressee of the massage, his/her age, gender and, what is of utmost importance, of the self-esteem and intelligence of the receiver. it has been proved that more intelligent addressees are more likely to be persuaded by complex messages than less intelligent ones would. the more intelligent the addressee is, the more difficult it is for the communicator to make him/her yield to the persuasive massage because of his/her greater critical faculties (bettinghaus 1980). hence, it is necessary to change the nature and style of the persuasive massage and resort to the implicit way of persuading when one has to do with a receiver higher in self-esteem and intelligence, since the explicit persuasion in this case is sure to fall flat. to elucidate the point let’s examine the following speech event where one of the heroines of the novel “mansfield park” after j.austen, mrs. norris tries to persuade sir thomas to take care of her poor sister’s daughter. the communicator’s speech here is rather long, well-prepared and carefully elaborated with lots of transitions and repetitions, since sir thomas is an intelligent and very respected man among the upper class society and persuading him requires much strength and skills. the addresser makes use of the so-called ‘sleeper effect’ method, i.e. she tends to produce attitude change in 97 linguistics armenian folia anglistika a period of time in a brain-washing manner, prolonging her speech on purpose in order to make persuasion clandestine (shaver 1977). my deer sir thomas, i perfectly understand you and do justice to the generosity and delicacy of your notions, which indeed are quite of a piece with your general conduct; and i entirely agree with you in the main as to the propriety of doing everything one could by way of providing for a child one had in a manner taken into once own hands. […] i thoroughly understand you; you are everything that is generous and considerate, and i am sure we shall never disagree with on this point. […] whatever i can do, as you well know, i am always ready enough to do for the good of those i love, and, though i could never feel for this little girl the hundredth part of the regard i bear to your own dear children, nor consider her, in any respect, so much my own, i should hate myself if i were capable of neglecting her. […] is not she a sister’s child? and could i bare to see her want, while i had a bit of bread to give her? my dear sir thomas, with all my faults i have a warm heart, and, poor as i am, would rather deny myself the necessaries of life, than do an ungenerous thing. [...] i am sure i should be the last person in the world to withhold my mite upon such an occasion. having no children of my own, who should i look to in my litter matter i may ever have to bestow, but the children of my sister? but you know i’m a woman of few words and professions. [...] do not let us be frightened from a good deed by a trifle. give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and, ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without farther expense to anybody. a niece of ours, sir thomas, i may say, or, at least of yours, would not grow up in this neighbourhood without many advantages. [...] so, if you are not against it i will write to poor sister tomorrow, and make the proposal, and as soon as matters are settled i will engage to get the child to mansfield park, you shall have no trouble about it. my own trouble, you know, i never regard. i will send mary to london on purpose. (j. austen: 5-6) so, the heroine starts her persuasive speech applying to the illocutionary force of praising and complimenting sir thomas on “his generosity and delicacy of his notions”, on having “considerate and compassionate heart” always addressing him with the vocative “my dear sir thomas”. so, initially it becomes difficult to presuppose that this is a persuasive attempt. as she goes on with her persuasive communication she passes to the encouraging and then to the advising method, speaking of her readiness and willingness to help those she loves as if implying that she was never reluctant to be of help as far as sir thomas’s own children are concerned. she desires to touch upon his heart declaring that she would never trouble him on this problem unless she was rich enough and if her health was not in such a “miserable” condition. meanwhile, she threatens sir thomas that it would be a rather “disgraceful and ungenerous thing” not helping his poor relative, knowing very well that sir thomas pays much attention to the public opinion. then she makes her persuasive speech more powerful 98 armenian folia anglistika linguistics using rhetorical questions such as “is not she a sister’s child?”; “and could i bare to see her want, while i had a bit of bread to give her?; “having no children of my own, who should i look to in my litter matter i may ever have to bestow, but the children of my sister?”. she alters the style of her speech to an extent when she goes further and gives a more decisive and compulsory colouring to her persuasive speech. this can be best illustrated by the grammatical structures of the sentences that are similar to that of imperative sentences. the persuasive intent of mrs. norris’s speech becomes apparent not only on the syntactic level of the analysis but also on the semantic level. the specific choice of this or that word in a given speech event makes it possible for the perlocutionary effect to be more powerful. at the end of her speech the usage of the vocative without any endearment pronounced with a firmer tone of voice and the replacement of the pronoun ‘ours’ with the more emphatic ‘yours’ has the effect of stressing sir thomas’s responsibility and obligations towards his poor relatives. in the end, we should state that all her endeavours were not in vain. mrs. norris accomplished her goal and managed to persuade sir thomas in adopting the little girl. so, this long and carefully elaborated persuasive speech asserts the idea that there may be more than one speech act in the very same speech event, one interwoven inside the other and each of which is acceptable with respect to the previous one. this is done on purpose to reach an effective end in the persuasive communicative situation. these instances allow us to state that implicit ways of expressing the illocutionary force of the persuasive massage depend on the speaker’s wish to sound more polite and avoid negative answers in reply to his persuasive massage on the one hand, and avoid communicative conflicts in case of refusal on the other hand. to sum up, we can deduce that persuasion may be viewed as a strategy of human interaction which requires linguistic choices to be made on a wide range of languageinternal levels (phonetic, morphological, syntactic, lexical, semantic), as well as languageexternal levels, such as paralinguistic means of interaction (gestures, facial expressions, etc.) and also the illocutionary force of indirect speech acts. so, the variable range of options is extremely wide and depends on the awareness of the processes the interlocutor is involved in. hence, persuasive communication which employs the strategy of persuasion depends largely on language adaptability in which the speaker makes linguistic choices from a variable range of options in such a way as to satisfy his/her communicative need. references: 1. austen, j. (1992) mansfield park london, penguin popular classics. 2. austin, j.l. (1962) how to do things with words. london: oxford university press. 3. bettinghaus, p. e. (1979) persuasive communication. 3-rd edition. new york. 4. brown, p.; levinson, c. s. (1995) politeness: some universals in language usage cambridge university press. 5. byrne, d. (1981) social psychology: understanding human interaction, 3-rd edition. new york. 6. grice, h. p. (1975) logic and conversation // syntax and semantics. / ed by cole p. and morgan j.l. new york: academic press. vol. 3. 99 linguistics armenian folia anglistika 7. jule, g. (1996) pragmatics. / ed. by widdowson h.g. london: oxford university press. 8. larson, c.u. (1988) persuasion: reception and responsibility. 4-th edition. belmond: wardsworth publishing company. 9. leech, n. g.; short, h.m. (1981) style in fiction. united states of america, new york: longman inc. 10. levinson, c. s. (1983) pragmatics. cambridge: cambridge university press. 11. osgood, e. ch.; sebeok, a. t. (1965) psycholinguistics: a survey of theory and research problem with psycholinguistics. bloomington, ind.: indiana university press. 12. petty, e. r.; cacioppo, t. j. (1981) attitude and persuasion; classic and contemporary approaches. united states of america. 13. searle, j.r. speech acts: (1969) an essay in the philosophy of language. london: cambridge university press. 14. scheidel, t. (1985) persuasive speaking, london. 15. shaver, g. k. (1977) principles of social psychology. cambridge. 16. vreschueren, j. (1999) understanding pragmatics. new york: oxford university press. 17. zanden, j. w. (1977) social psychology. new york. ð³ùá½ù³ý ëáëáõ³ï³ý ³ïïç ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõãûáõýá ëáëáõûãáõù ð³ùá½áõù ¿ ñ³ù³ñíáõù 黽í³ï³ý ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý áýã³óùáõù ï³ï³ñí³í ûáõñ³ù³ýãûáõñ ï³ýë³ùï³íí³í ÷áñó, áñý áõõõí³í ¿ ëáëùç ùççáóáí ³½¹»éáõ ëáë³ïóç ùïùç ï³ù í³ñù³·íç íñ³ ¨ áñáß³ïç ÷á÷áëáõãû³ý »ýã³ñï»éáõ ëáë³ïóç ï»ë³ï»ïá ï³ù ñ³ùá½ùáõýùᣠ²ûý ùçïáõù áõýç ýñ³ý ùõ»éáõ áñáß³ïç ·áñíáõáõãû³ý: êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù ÷áñó ¿ ³ñíáõù áõëáõùý³ëçñ»é ñ³ùá½ù³ý ëáëáõ³ï³ý ³ïïá áñå»ë ñá·»µ³ý³ï³ý ï»ëáõãû³ý ¨ é»½í³·áñí³µ³ý³ï³ý ùýýáõãû³ý ³é³ñï³, áñç ýå³ï³ïý ¿ í»ñ ñ³ý»é ñ³ùá½ù³ý ëáëáõ³ï³ý ³ïïç ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá ¨ µ³ó³ñ³ûï»é ³ûý ³ýññ³å»ßï ¨ µ³í³ñ³ñ å³ûù³ýý»ñá, áñáýù ³é³í»é ³ñ¹ûáõý³í»ï ï¹³ñóý»ý ëáëáõ³ï³ý ³ïïá: øýýáõãû³ý »ý ³éýíáõù ý³¨ ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý ñçùý³ï³ý µ³õ³¹ñçãý»ñá ¨ ¹ñ³ýó ¹»ñá ñ³ùá½ù³ý ëáëáõ³ï³ý ³ïïá ïçñ³é»éáõ áýã³óùáõù: ðá¹í³íáõù ï³ñ¨áñíáõù »ý 黽í³ï³ý ¨ ³ñï³é»½í³ï³ý ³ûý ùççáóý»ñá, áñáýù ³é³í»é³å»ë ñ³ùá½çã »ý ¹³ñóýáõù ëáëùá: ²û¹ ùççáóý»ñç áýïñáõãûáõýá ñçùý³ï³ýáõù å³ûù³ý³íáñí³í ¿ ëáëáõç ¨ éëáõç ·çï³ïó³ï³ý ù³ï³ñ¹³ïáí ¨ µ³ñáû³ï³ý ñ³ïï³ýçßý»ñáí: êáëáõ³ï³ý ³ïï»ñç ï»ëáõãû³ý ¨ ·áñí³µ³ýáõãû³ý ï»ë³ýïûáõýçó áõëáõùý³ëçñ»éçë ñ³ùá½ù³ý ëáëáõ³ï³ý ³ïïá ¹çïíáõù ¿ áñå»ë å»ñéáïáõïçí ³ïï (ïáýïñ»ï ëáëáõ³ï³ý í³ñùç ³ñ¹ûáõýù): ²ûý ï³ñ»éç ¿ çñ³ï³ý³óý»é »ñïáõ ï³ñµ»ñ »õ³ý³ïáí` ý»ñ³ï³, »ñµ ëáëáõá ÷áñóáõù ¿ ³ñ¹ûáõýùç ñ³ëý»é` ùáõ³ñï»éáí çñ µáõý ýå³ï³ïá, ¨ ³ñï³ï³, »ñµ ëáëáõá ãç ã³ùóýáõù çñ ýå³ï³ïá ¨ ãáõûé ¿ ï³éçë, áñ éëáõá å³ñ½áñáß ·çï³ïóç ñ³ùá½ù³ý ëáëáõ³ï³ý ³ïïá, áñý ³ûë ¹»åùáõù çñ³ï³ý³óíáõù ¿ áõõõáñ¹»éáí, ññ³ù³û»éáí ï³ù ëïçå»éáí: 100 armenian folia anglistika linguistics maket_n_verjin.qxp the semantic field of phraseological units expressing kindness and malice in armenian, russian and english nothing is perfectly static in language. every word,every grammatical element, every sound and accent is a slowly changing configuration moulded by the invisible and impersonal drift that is the life of language. this heraclitean conception of a perpetual drift in language refers particularly to semantics since of all linguistic elements meaning is probably the least resistant to change. here we should mention that in the course of time not only the meanings of the words but also those of the abstracted word-groups arising in the colloquial speech undergo semantic changes. how and why does this happen? based on their centuries-old visual observations and experience people have always tried to explain the phenomena taking place in a man’s organism. thus, for instance, they have noticed that when one is angry he gets black or red in the face or unhealthy people look pale or when experiencing strong fear one’s face becomes white and so on. these observations have resulted in the formation of some phraseological units: red in the face; be green around the gills; as white as a sheet; blue baby, etc. but sometimes there is no opportunity for such observations. in this case, people make mental abstractions and achieve a moral and psychological perception of the phenomena and form phraseological units such as black heart; evil eye; live from hand to mouth; one’s heart goes into one’s boots, etc. these semantic changes take place by means of certain stylistic devices, such as metaphor, metonymy, hyperbole, simile, etc. it should be noted that as a result of these changes in meaning, the phraseological units created are transferred into another semantic field. in linguistics, a semantic field is considered to be an entity of words belonging to different parts of speech but expressing one conception, and it is this very conception, that embraces all these words in a given field. like words, phraseological units can belong to different semantic fields. in this case linguistic units are placed in those fields according to the whole meaning expressed by their components independent of their grammatical, structural, stylistic and other peculiarities. a great number of phraseological units comprising names of body parts can be found in armenian, russian and english. by means of these picturesque linguistic units people express the inner world of a person, and different phenomena, their nature and behaviour as well as their feelings and emotions, desires and hopes. 159 linguistics armenian folia anglistika hasmik ghazaryan body names can have different symbolic and semantic values in armenian, russian and english, which often coincide. this is evidence of similarities found in the linguistic thinking of the peoples speaking these languages; on the other hand the differences between the meanings and symbols reflect the peculiarities of the linguistic thinking of those nations. the goal of this article is to study, analyse and compare the semantic fields of the armenian, russian and english phraseological units with the components “heart” and “eye” expressing kindness and malice. kindness and malice, the two main categories of ethics, characterize individuals, give a moral evaluation of groups of people and great historical events and make up the contents of the moral and the immoral. kindness is what the society considers to be moral, positive, proper, worth imitating. malice regards negative deeds and phenomena as opposed to social development and are considered by the society to be unacceptable, immoral and condemnable. kindness involves such conceptions as generosity, tender-heartedness, sympathy, softness, while malice on the contrary – cruelty, atrocity. the positive or negative feelings arising in a person’s soul are the origin of those kind and evil phenomena which characterize people and their actions as kindness and malice. perhaps these very feelings become the origin of linguistic abstraction by stirring and exciting the soul of a man, thus becoming the source of these phraseological units. two subfields can be noted here: the subfield of phraseological units expressing “kindness”. the subfield of phraseological units expressing “malice”. here are illustrations of some phraseological units expressing kindness: êçñïá µ³ñç good-hearted, merciful. ü³ ·çï», áñ çù ëçñïá µ³ñç ¿, 黽áõë ¿ ùç³ûý ã³ñ£ (shirvanzade 1950: 284): àëïç ëçñï (áõý»ý³é)-to be kind and compassionate. øáõñ³¹á áëï» ëçñï áõýç£ (shirvanzade 1950: 456) ø»í ëçñï, ù»í ëñïç ï»ñ generous, magnanimous. âý³û³í ó³ñ³ï³ý ùçýçëïñ èáµ³ýáíç ñ³ûï³ñ³ñáõãû³ýá` éáõë ù»í åáõáíáõñ¹á ù»í ëçñï áõýç£ (torgomyan 1959: 51) êçñïá é³ûý / é»ý hospitable, sociable. îñ³í íßï»ñç ã³÷ é³ûý áõ ù»í ¿ ëçñïá çù ñ³û åáõáíñ¹ç£ (sevak l: 1968,162) êçñïá ß³ñå(í)»é get excited, have mercy on, make somebody feel mercy. ê³ ã»ïáõ½ »ñ»ëáõý ï³ñáí ¿é ç³ñ»é³ý³, ¹³ñóû³é ãç ï³ñáõ çù ëçñïá ß³ñå»é, áõñ ùý³ó` ñçùç£ (toumanyan: 1994, 338) øýùáõß ëçñï a soft person. ü³ áõýç ùýùáõß ëçñï, µ³ûó ³ùáõñ ï³ùù, çýãå»ë çñ ñ³ý·áõóû³é ù³ûñý ¿ñ£ (shirvanzade 1950: 330) êçñïá ù³õóñ³óý»é soften somebody’s heart, gain somebody’s gentle disposition. î³ýá ·çýç-³ñ³õ ã»ý ãáõ»é` í³ë»é`ëñ³-ýñ³ ÷áñý »ý ³í»é, ùáíñáíç ëçñïá ã»ýù ï³ñ³ó»é ù³õóñ³óý»é£ (proshyan 1968: 272) êçñïá ÷³÷áõï / ï³ïáõõ (dial.) sensitive, delicate. ´³ý³ëï»õíç ùá ëçñïá ÷³÷áõï ¿, ³ù»ý³ã»ã¨ ëáëù» ùá ïíçñ³íáñíç£ (paronyan: 1979, 238) êçñïá µ³ñ³ï»é become delicate, sensitive. ¶çï»±ë, áñ¹ç, çù ëçñïý ¿é µ³ñ³ï»é ¿, ß³ï µ³ñ³ï»é, ¿é ³é³çí³ àëï³ýá ã»ù£ (shirvanzade 1950: 480) 160 armenian folia anglistika linguistics êçñïá ÷³÷ï»é become sensitive, delicate. øçã» ùá ëçñïá ¹»é ãç ÷³÷ï»é£ (toumanyan: 1994, 420) ´³ñç ³ãù 1. benevolence. 2. a good treatment, a kind wish. øá µ³ñç ³ãùáí ï»ëýáõù »ë ¿éç, ø³ñç, ñáõç ñ»ï ïéçí »ýù ï³éç£ (toumanyan iii: 1989, 70) ²ãùá ù³õóñ éçý»é/ å³ñ»é be benevolent, look with a kindly eye, patronize. àëïçý å³ñ»é »ù ø»éçùç ñ³ù³ñ, áñ ù³õóñ éçýç ³ãùá ù»½ íáñ³£ (toumanyan i: 1991, 21) ²ëïíá(áõ) ³ãùá ù»ïç íñ³ (ù³õóñ) å³ñ»é/ éçý»é look at somebody with a kindly eye, help him. æëï »ë ï³ñíáõù ¿ç, ã» ¹áõù ñ³½³ñ³íáñ áëï»·ùµ»ã ï³×³ñý»ñ áõý»ù, ýñ³ýó ù»ç ³ý¹³¹³ñ ³õáãáõù »ý ó»ñ ñá·¨áñ ñ³ûñ»ñá áõ ³ëïíáõ ³ãùá ù³õóñ »ý å³ñáõù ó»½ íñ³£ (toumanyan: 1994, 259) ²ãùá ù³õóñ³ý³é to become gentle, benevolent, look with a kindly eye. ²ë»ýù ÷»ë»¹ çñ ë³é³ãý ³ù»ý ï»õ ï³éýç, ñ³éµ³ã ùç ù³ýç ³ëï³í³ë»ñý»ñç ³ãùý ¿é ù»ñ íñ³ ïù³õóñ³ý³£ (proshyan 1968: 94) ²ãùá ù³õóñ– kind and gentle. æ±ýã ¿ ³ñ»é þ³ñá ó»½ í³ï, ²ãùý ¿é ù³õóñ ùçßï ó»½ íñ³£ (toumanyan i:, 1991, 181) è³í/ ³õ»ï ³ãùáí ý³û»élook with a kindly eye. ºí ëý³ñ³í³ï ø³ëçëû³ýá ã¿ñ ï³ñáõ ãýï³ï»é ³û¹, ¨ ¹ñ³ ñ³ù³ñ ëïë»ó ý³ ñ»ï½ñ»ï» é³í ³ãùáí ý³û»é ù³ýáõï ·ûáõõ³óáõ íñ³£ (raffi iii: 1984, 239) ø³õóñ ³ãùáí ý³û»é/ ùïçï ³ý»é/ ùïçï ï³é to be benevolent, careful. øç³ûý ù»ñ »ñïçñ ù³ñáõù³ý¹ ã³ý»ë àõ ù³õóñ ³ãùáí ù»½ ùïçï ³ý»ë£ (toumanyan iv: 1991, 11): ²ëïí³í ã³ñ ³ãùçó å³ñç god save from misfortunes. ²ëïí³í ù»½ ûáãç ï»õ ùç »õµ³ûñ ¿ ïí»é, ³õ³ãçñ ýñ³ý, áñ å³ñç, å³ñå³ýç ùçýçï »õµáñ¹ ã³ñ ³ãùçó, ã³ñ ýç³ãçó£ (shirvanzade 1950: 500) ²ãùá (¿ý) µ³ñçý ï»ëýç you should have seen how much brave, kind he was. ¸áõ á°ã ù»éýçë, ³õ³ ç³ý, ³ãù¹ µ³ñçý ï»ëýç, çýã áñ ¿ë ë³éëý ³ ï»ëýáõù£ (proshyan 1968: 315) çîëîòîå ñåðäöå kind, loving, honest. ó òåáÿ òàêîå çîëîòîå ñåðäöå, ÷òî õîòÿ îíè è íå ïðîñòÿò ìåíÿ, íî âèäÿ, ÷òî è òû ïðîñòèë, ìîæåò áûòü, õîòü íåìíîãî ñìÿã÷àòñÿ íàäî ìíîé. (dostoyevski 1971: 166) îò äîáðîãî ñåðäöà with kind motives, with no evil thoughts. âîò åù¸ íàø¸ëñÿ!ñêàçàëà îíà âäðóã, îáðàùàÿñü îïÿòü ê äàðüå àëåêñååâíåà âåäü âïðÿìü îò äîáðîãî ñåðäöà, ÿ åãî çíàþ. (dostoyevski 1981: 191) ñåðäöå/äóøà ïåðåâ¸ðòûâàåòñÿ / ïåðåâåðíóëîñü sympathize with somebody. âñ¸ ñåðäöå åãî ïåðåâåðíóëîñü … íî âîò è îí äîø¸ë äî ðîêîâîãî ìåñòà. (dostoyevski 1983: 505) a heart of gold generous. indeed she really was if reality were visible as a dear little thing with a heart of gold. (maugham 1980: 132) have a good/ kind heart be kind and generous. young michael had a good heart. (galsworthy 1956: 238) one’s heart goes out / warms to/ towards sb. to comfort heartily, to have warm feelings towards somebody. my heart has gone out to you to see how you’ve been upset. (cronin 1963, 371) mrs carey thought philip very young for this, and her heart went out to the motherless child. (maugham 1975: 30) 161 linguistics armenian folia anglistika one’s heart melts to soften, become mild. i don’t know, he laughed, unless just by loving you hard enough to melt the heart of a stone, much less the heart of living, breathing woman you are. (london 1953: 200) look with a kindly eye be benevolent. they would not view all that with a kindly eye. (dreiser 1968: 194) this subfield also includes: ö³÷áõï ëçñï, ëçñïá µ³ñ³ï, é³ûý ëçñï áõý»ý³é, ëçñïá ù³ñ»ùñçï ·³é(dial.), ëçñïá ·áõã áýïý»é, ëçñïá é³ûý å³ñ»é, ëçñïá ÷³÷ï³óý»é / ï³ïõ³óý»é, ³õù³ïç ³ãùá ëñµ»é, µ³ñç ³ãùáí ý³û»é, ³ãùç éáõûëá »ñã³é, ³ãùá ù»ïç íñ³ ù³õóñ³óý»é/ ù³õóñ éçý»é, ³ëïí³í ³ãùçó å³ï³ë ã³ýç, ³ãùç éáõûëáí å³é³í»ë, ³ãùá ï³ý»é, ³ëïí³í ù³õóñ ³ãùáí ùïçï ³ýç/ ý³ûç, ñ³ßï ³ãùáí ý³û»é, áîëüøîå ñåðäöå, äîáðîå ñåðäöå, ñåðäöå ðàñòàÿëî, ñìÿã÷èòü ñåðäöå, a big heart, a kind soft/ sympathetic / warm heart, have one’s heart in the right place/ one’s heart lies in the right place, kind hearts are more than coronets (prov.), have a soft corner in one’s heart for sb., etc. we can see that the phraseological units of this subfield with the component “heart”, besides their main meaning have some additional shades of meaning, thus, for instance, the armenian units have shades of tender-heartedness, sympathy, conscience, generosity and nobleness, hospitality, friendliness, clemency. the shade of honesty can be observed in russian while in english – the shades of kind intensions as well as sensitiveness, concession and warmth. the phraseological units including the word “eye” also possess the shade of goodwill both in armenian and english. the shades of attention and care towards sb., patronage, support and tolerance can be noted in armenian. we can see some equivalent phrases which, we think, are not calques, but phraseological units arisen independently in different languages: ëçñïá µ³ñç – äîáðîå ñåðäöå – a kind heart; áëïç ëçñï – çîëîòîå ñåðäöå – a heart of gold ; one’s heart melts – ñåðäöå ðàññòàÿëî; µ³ñç ³ãùáí ý³û»é – look with a kindly eye. in the case of the last pair a question arises whether the armenian phraseological unit is a borrowing from english or maybe the mentioned units have arisen independently in armenian and english, or maybe the armenian phraseological unit has come into eastern armenian through western armenian (²õ»ï ³ãùáí ý³û»é). is the english unit a basic phrase or is it a borrowing? we will consider this in a later study. b) now we refer to the second subfield. êçñïá ù³ñ³ý³é / ù³ñ ïïñ»é become merciless, ruthless. ²ñ³ ³ûëù³ý ·»õ»óçï, ³ûëù³ý µ³ñç áõ ³ûëù³ý ëçñ»éç ¿ñ ²ñ¨ñ³ïá, µ³ûó ç±ýã ï³ý»ë, áñ ëáñã ùáñ ëçñïá ù³ñ³ó»é ¿ñ£ (aghayan 1979: 390) êçñïá ù³ñ³óý»é make somebody merciless, cruel. ´ýáõãûáõýý çýùý ¿ ù³ñ³óýáõù ù³ñ¹áõ ëçñïý ³û¹åçëç ¹»åù»ñáõù£ (mouratsan 1957: 156) êçñïá ã³ñ envious, a man of black deeds. â» áñ »ë ã³ñ ëçñï áõý»ý³ûç, »ã³ýç ¹»ù ù»ý, ùç ý³ë³ýó ëñïáõùë å³ñ³í áéý»ç, ñçùç ã¿ç óç³íáñíçé áõ óçáõë ïñ³ù³óý»éáí ù³ù³ïçó¹ ñ³ëýçé£ (proshyan 1968: 327) ¸åáëù í³é»é ù»ïç ëñïáõù (book) commit evil, torture somebody. ²ëáõù »ë, 162 armenian folia anglistika linguistics áñ ꨳ¹³ý ý»ñ»é ¿ ýñ³ý, çýãáõ áõñ»ùý, ³û¹ í»ñáõïá ¹åáëù í³é»ó çù ëñïáõù£ (mouratsan 1957: 149) êçñïá å³ýï cruel, merciless. øç¨ýáõûý ¿, ã» ñçù³ áñï»õ »ë ù³ßáõù øá ïáßçùý»ñá ýñµçý ¨ ùá ëçñïá å³ýï£ (sevak i, 1968: 224) êçñï ãáõý»ý³é to be merciless, ruthless. ⿱ áñ ù³ñ¹çï ¿°é ëçñï ãáõýçý, ²ýëçñï ù³ñ¹á ó³í ãáõýç£ (isahakyan i, 1973: 82) â³ñ ³ãù an envious eye. ¸áõù å³ñáýý»ñ, ã³ñ ³ãùáí ½³ñï»óçù çù µ³ëï³íáñáõãû³ýá,å³ï³ëë³ý»ó ¸ñ³ãïáíá µ³ñïáõãû³ùµ£ (raffi iii: 1984, 186) â³ñ ³ãùáí ý³û»é/ ùïçï ï³é to wish somebody bad, show ill-will. ø³ûñë ³ëáõù ¿, ã» å³é³í ¶á½»ý ã³ñ ³ãùáí ïí»ó, ·çï»ë ý³ ã³ñ ³ãù áõýç, ü³ñ·çë£ (raffi i: 1983, 318) ²ãùáí ï³é according to prejudice: to hurt with an evil eye. à±í ³ýçí»ó, ³ãùáí ïí»ó çù ³ýáõß µ³é³£ (torgomyan 1959: 242) ê»ã ³ãùáí ý³û»é/ ùïçï ï³é 1. give a sullen look. 2. show ill-will. ì³ñ¹³ýá ë»ã ³ãùáí ý³û»ó ýñ³ »ñ»ëçý ¨ áãçýã ãå³ï³ëë³ý»ó£ (raffi iv: 1984, 396) ñåðäöå îáðîñëî ìîõîìsomebody has become merciless, ruthless. èëü ñêàæåò ñûí, ×òî ñåðäöå ó ìåíÿ îáðîñëî ìîõîì. (pushkin: 1982, 101) äóðíîé / ëèõîé / õóäîé ãëàç – according to prejudice: a look of a malevolent person that causes misfortune. ׸ðíûé ãëàç– a bad, evil, malevolent look. evil eye 1. a bad, evil eye. 2. a malevolent look. look with an evil eye look at somebody or something with malice. before she comes here, say nothing about her, if you please, to the doctor, because he will look with an evil eye on any nurse of my providing. (collins 1934: 360) a hard heart a cruel person. indeed it would have been a hard heart that failed to be moved by the sight of frank, that lionhearted woman, crying her eyes out. (maugham 1980: 365) a heart of stone, stony hearted a merciless, ruthless person.then huckleberry and tom stood dumb and staring, and heard the stony-hearted liar reel off his seven statements. (twain 1948: 75) a wicked hearta wicked person. i wouldn’t trust them as far as i could see them – a pretty face may cover a wicked heart. (cronin 1963: 92) this subfield also includes: ë¨ ëçñï ëçñïá ï³ñíñ³óý»é, ëçñïá ù³ñ (ã) (éçý»é), ëçñïá ûó ïí»é, ëçñïá ã³ñçý ï³é, ëçñïá ïáñóý»é, ë¨ ëñïç ïõ³, ³ãùá ãï³ý»é, ³ãù ï³é, ³ãùá í³ýñ, ó íåãî íåò ñåðäöà, harden one’s heart, black heart, a honey tongue, a heart of gall (prov), ²ãùç ·³é, ²ãùá ã³ñ, etc. it can be seen that the phraseological units with the component “heart” also have some semantic shades together with their main meaning, such as mercilessness, cruelty and envy, committing evil and torturing sb., indifference and false appearance. thus for instance, the shade of ill-will is apparent in armenian, russian and english. the shade of being harmed from an evil eye, as well as experiencing unhappiness or misfortune are expressed in armenian and russian, while the shade of envy, ill-treatment, not assisting, 163 linguistics armenian folia anglistika patronizing sb. and intolerance towards sb. exist only in armenian. it can also be seen that in the languages understudy some of the phraseological units have been formed on the basis of one and the same prejudice. however, all the units are regarded as equivalents independent of their constitution and semantic shades. here are some illustrations: êçñïá ù³ñ³óý»é – harden one’s heart; êçñï ãáõý»ý³é – ó íåãî íåò ñåðäöà; êçñïá ã³ñ – a wicked eye; â³ñ ³ãù – äóðíîé ãëàç / ×åðíûé ãëàç – evil eye ;â³ñ ³ãùáí ý³û»é – look with an evil eye; ë¨ ëçñï black heart these equivalents differ only in their structural types. this subfield also includes units which are peculiar to this or that language: ¹åáëù í³é»é ù»ïç ëñïáõù, ëçñïá ûó ïí»é, ë¨ ëñïç ïõ³, ëçñïá ïáñóý»é, ñåðäöå îáðoñëî ìîõîì, a honey tongue, a heart of gall, etc. the last phraseological unit may be considered identical to the armenian saying “ë¨ ëçñï, ëåçï³ï ³ï³ù”, which, like the english phraseological unit, means “the soul isn’t the same as the appearance”. the phraseological units included in this semantic field belong to different structural types. thus for instance, the armenian phraseological units tend to be substantive, attributive or verbal constructions. in russian, the tendency seems to be for substantive, verbal and adverbial as well as sentence-level units while int english these units tend toward the substantive, adjectival, verbal and sentence-level. several nominal and verbal grammatical categories function in these units. we won’t analyze these categories in detail here. we would mention only that some of these categories have a meaning-distinguishing role however, and the units would be deprived of their meanings if those categories were used otherwise. the syntactical relations between the components of the units are expressed by the typological peculiarities of the languages under consideration. if we compare the phraseological units involving the components “heart” and “eye”, we can see that although they coincide in their main meaning, they differ in expressing additional semantic shades. if the phraseological units of the subfield “kindness” with the component “eye” have shades of good-will, patronage, tolerance, care, adaptability, in the corresponding subfield of the phraseological units with “heart” we can find shades of mercy and sympathy, conscience and generosity, honesty, hospitality, sensitivity and warmth. the same can be seen in the subfield expressing “malice”. here the phraseological units with the component “eye” express envy, ill-will, prohibition, intolerance, as well as harm, whereas in the phrases with “heart” we find the shades of mercilessness, cruelty and envy, committing black deeds and indifference, etc. in the subfields “kindness” and “malice” we can note some phraseological variants in the languages under discussion: êçñïá ß³ñåí»é (grammatical); êçñïá ù³ñ³ý³é/ ù³ñ ïïñ»é (lexical); ´³ñç ³ãùáí ý³û»é/ ùïçï ³ý»é (lexical); è³í/ ³õ»ï ³ãùáí ý³û»é (lexical); a kind/ soft/ sympathetic/ warm heart (lexical); ñåðäöå/äóøà ïåðåâåðòûâàåòñÿ/ ïåðåâåðíóëîñü (lexical and grammatical); äóðíîé/ ëèõîé/ õóäîé ãëàç (lexical). in the broader sense the phraseological units of each subfield can be considered as 164 armenian folia anglistika linguistics synonymic phrases, but some narrower synonyms can be seen as well: øýùáõß ëçñï – ö³÷áõï ëçñï; êçñïá µ³ñ³ï»é – êçñïá ÷³÷ï»é – êçñïá ÷³÷ï³óý»é; ´³ñç ³ãù – ø³õóñ ³ãù ²ãùá ù³õóñ; ²ãùá ï³ý»é – ð³ßï ³ãùáí ý³û»é; ñåðäöå ðàññòàÿëî – ñìÿã÷èòü ñåðäöå; etc. on the whole the two subfields are in antonymic relations. there are a few blessings and curses among the mentioned units, especially in armenian. from the semantic point of view the main components in the phraseological units are “heart” and “eye”. in the armenian unit – ë¨ ëñïç ïõ³ the colour component is as important as the component “heart”. in case of removing either of these components the whole unit will be deprived of its meaning. the units are mainly used in colloquial speech, a few in dialects or literary style. fiction is quite rich in them. so, we can conclude that there are many similarities and differences between semantic, structural, and grammatical characteristics of the phraseological units studied. these similarities indicate the common features of the linguistic thinking of the peoples speaking those languages, while the differences show the peculiarities of their linguistic thinking. references: 1. (1995) brewer’s dictionary of phrase and fable. cassell london: harper collins publishers. 2. kunin, a.v. (1984) anglo-russky phrazeologicheski slovar. moskva: russkiy yazyk. 3. (1978) phrazeologicheskiy slovar russkogo yazika. / pod red. molotkova a.i. moskva: russkiy yazik. 4. sukiasyan, a.; galstyan s., (1975) hayots lezvi dardsvatsabanakan bararan: yerevan: yerevani hamals hrat. 5. ulman, st. (1977) semantics: an introduction to the science of meaning. oxford: basil blackwell. 6. verdieva, z. n. (1986) semanticheskiye polya v sovremennom angliyskom yazike. moskva: visshaya shkola. 7. (1969-1980) zhamanakakits hayots lezvi batsatrakan bararan, hat. 1-4, yerevan: ga hrat. sources of data: 1. aghayan, gh., (1979) yerker. yerevan: sovetakan grogh. 2. isahakian, a. (1973) yerkeri zhoghovatsu. yerevan: hayastan hrat., hat. 1. 3. mouratsan (1957) gevorg marzpetuni. yerevan: haypethrat. 4. paronian, h. (1979) yerker. yerevan: sovetakan grogh. 5. proshian, p. (1968) hatsi khndir. yerevan: hayastan hrat. 6. raffi (1984) yerkeri zhoghovatsu. yerevan: sovetakan grogh, hat. 1,3,4. 165 linguistics armenian folia anglistika 7. sevak, p. (1968) yerkeri zhoghovatsu. yerevan: hayastan hrat., hat. 1. 8. shirvanzade, a. (1950) yerkeri liakatar zhoghovatsu. yerevan: pet. hrat., hat. 6. 9. toumanian, h. (1990-1996) yerkeri liakatar zhoghovatsu. yerevan: ga hrat. 10. torgomian, ts. (1959) anmar krakner. yerevan: haypethrat. 11. dostoyevskiy, f.m. (1981) idiot. moskva: pravda. 12. dostoyevskiy, f.m. (1971) unizhenniye i oskorblyonniye. moskva: khudozhestvennaya literatura. 13. dostoyevskiy, f.m. (1983) prestupleniye i nakazaniye. moskva: khudozhestvennaya literatura. 14. pushkin, a.s. (1982) dramaticheskiye proizvedeniya, proza. moskva: khudozhestvennaya literatura. 15. collins w. (1934) the woman in white. usa. 16. cronin, a.j. (1963) hatter’s castle. moscow: fl. publ. house. 17. dreiser, th. (1968) financier. moscow: higher school publishing house. 18. galsworthy, j. (1956) the silver spoon. moscow: progress. 19. london, j. (1953) martin eden. moscow: fl publishing house. 20. maugham, w. s. (1980) complete short stories. gb. vol. 1, 4. 21. maugham, w. s. (1975) of human bondage. london: pan books ltd. 22. twain, m. (1948) the adventures of tom sawyer. moscow: fl publ. house. ´³ñáõãûáõý ¨ ã³ñáõãûáõý ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõ ¹³ñóí³íùý»ñç çù³ëï³ûçý ¹³ßïá ñ³û»ñ»ýáõù, éáõë»ñ»ýáõù ¨ ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù í»ñéáõííáõù ¨ ñ³ù»ù³ïíáõù »ý µ³ñáõãûáõý ¨ ã³ñáõãûáõý ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõ ¹³ñóí³íùý»ñç çù³ëï³ûçý ¹³ßï»ñá ñ³û»ñ»ýáõù, éáõë»ñ»ýáõù ¨ ³ý·é»ñ»ýááù: øýýáõãû³ý »ý ³éýíáõù ý³¨ ù³ñùýç ù³ë»ñ å³ñáõý³ïáõ ¹³ñóí³íùý»ñ: üßí³í 黽í³ï³ý ùç³íáñý»ñç ùýýáõãûáõýý û·ýáõù ¿ µ³ó³ñ³ûï»éáõ ³û¹ 黽íáí ëáëáõý»ñç 黽í³ùï³íáõáõãû³ý ýù³ýáõãûáõýý»ñý áõ ï³ñµ»ñáõãûáõýý»ñá: 166 armenian folia anglistika linguistics microsoft word maket 2020-2(22) (3)-1 (1).doc armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 131 falsification of historical figures (the armenian population in turkey before and after the genocide) gaiane muradian yerevan state university abstract the argument and objective of the present case study is to prove, through the scientific method of analysis, that the online news medium azerbaijani vision (en.azvision.az), applying history falsification (negationism and revisionism) referring to the 1915 armenian genocide in general, and to the historic figures on the number of ottoman armenian population before and after the genocide in particular, leverages technology to produce and disseminate false and fabricated figures about the mentioned data of armenian population within the frames of its anti-armenian propaganda. my assumption will be that the false model of history serves its function for a certain while because societies eventually enter a period when distorted representations stop serving the intended ends and impartial and unbiased research starts seeking the truth. key words: anti-armenian propaganda, historical negationism and revisionism, falsification of historical data, news media, ottoman armenians, population number. introduction truth is important, concealing historical truth is dishonest and destructive, but far worse is when it is lied about to make into propaganda. in totalitarian societies truth is found not in objective principles about the present and the past, but in certain desired aims and purposes, which, when already set, start to propagate the “invented” truth. in such cases to propagate the false truth all https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2020.16.2.131 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 armenological studies 132 other forms and modes of information are tailored through the application of different manipulative techniques. “reason is henceforth thrown out the window and the state’s version of truth is beyond contestation” (hunter 2017). this means that a series of propaganda tactics (linguistic and psychological manipulation, logical fallacies, distortion of facts, data and figures, outright deception) which create an argument that favours a particular interest are involved to suppress the true information channels and induce people to believe in the falsely created truth or just distract their attention on the assumption that the public has a limited attention span. public opinion expresses itself through channels which are provided by the mass media of communication without which there could be no propaganda (ellul 1973). today, as a part of mass media, social media too is involved not only in sharing true information but also in making new attempts to serve dishonest propagative ends and accomplish certain political objectives. in relation to armenia and the armenian genocide, this is at large practised through falsification of history: through historical negationism and revisionism, i.e. distortion and reinterpretation of historic record, historical facts, events, data and figures. thus, the present case study will focus on history falsification (negationism and revisionism) referring to the 1915 armenian genocide in general, and on the falsification of historic figures on the number of ottoman armenian population before and after the genocide in particular. the falsified data belong to azerbaijani vision (<en.azvision.az>) news medium which leverages technology to produce and disseminate false figures within the frames of its anti-armenian propaganda. historical negationism and revisionism the implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the leader, or some other clique, controls not only the future but also the past […]. this prospect frightens me much more than bombs. (orwell 1943) armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 133 historical negationism and revisionism are indispensable elements of history falsification. falsification of history denotes to the deliberate change of the course of history by altering past historical facts, events, data and figures through information intervention, manipulative propaganda tools and techniques. the aim is to erase people’s recollection of the previous timeline to achieve certain political gains. the falsifiers know quite well that the ideological basis of a nation, culture, identity is the historical memory and historical consciousness without which the entity will fall apart. this is the direct objective of the so-called information warfare of turkey and azerbaijan against armenia and armenians. there were roughly 2,100,000 armenians in the declining ottoman empire on the eve of world war i and before the 1915 armenian genocide (redgate 1998:271; university of minnesota center for holocaust & genocide studies 2019). by 1922, there were fewer than 400,000 (ibid.) up to 1.5 million were killed in one of the most flagrant mass violations of human rights in modern history. this massacre was a contributing factor to hitler’s extermination of the jews of europe a quarter of a century later. yet, turkey does not accept the fact of the genocide. it recognises killings as a consequence of wwi, despite the opposing views by modern research, that ethnic armenians were systematically targeted, and it continues its information warfare to date. now, azerbaijan has joined in this battle presenting new examples of historical negationism and revisionism. historical negationism/denialism1 denotes not only the distortion of the historical record but also a legitimate academic pursuit of reinterpretation of the historical record and questioning of the accepted views (ravetto 2001:33; historical negationism 2019). it also “rejects the entire foundation of historical evidence” (berger 2002:154). in its attempt to revise the past, it uses techniques inadmissible in proper historical discourse, i.e. (1) presents forged documents as genuine, (2) invents ingenious but implausible reasons for distrusting genuine documents, (3) attributes conclusions to books and sources that report the opposite, armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 armenological studies 134 (4) manipulates statistical series to support the given point of view, and (5) deliberately mistranslates texts (evans 2001:145). examples of negationism are the denials of the holocaust, the armenian genocide, the soviet crimes, the japanese war crime, etc. today negationism, referring to the mentioned crimes, is spread far and large via the new technological media. the purpose of historical negationism is to achieve a national or political aim (with the consent of the government) by providing an illusion, a myth of positiveness at the expense of the so-called “enemy” thus controlling not only the ideological but also the political influence. often the purpose is to present a consciously-falsified or distorted interpretation of the past so that it can serve partisan or ideological purposes in the present (mcpherson 2003). to achieve this, deception and denial are practised: information is falsified, truth is obscured, public opinion is manipulated, a revised historical event, data or figure is discussed, certain documented information is protected from being shared with others. article 301 of the turkish penal code is a good example of legalized historical negationism.2 turkish history textbooks and other sources referring to the armenian genocide as a lie (claiming that armenians were relocated to prevent them from attacking turkish citizens) is an excellent example of history falsification. as to azerbaijan, different authors (schnirelmann 2001:196-197; hewsen 2001:39; bournoutian 2009:8-14) have stated that since 1960s its historical negationism is demonstrated in removing primary historical sources on the south caucasus including any mention of armenians, replacing the word armenian by albanian. the mentioned and many other forms of history falsification are applied to create an impression that historically there was no armenian presence in the territory. historical revisionism identifies the reinterpretation of the historical record. it usually means challenging the established, accepted or traditional views and older moral judgements held by professional scholars about a historical event, data, figure, and introducing contrary evidence or reinterpreting the motivations and decisions of the people involved (historical revisionism 2019). at a basic level, true judgements are depicted as false and armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 135 negative, false conclusions are added to books, statistical data is manipulated, and texts are deliberately mistranslated. the use of forged documents and neglect of genuine sources turn historical revisionism into historical negationism. this is especially the case when historical revisionism is applied to the armenian genocide denial. for example, according to t. akčam (2014) in turkish history textbooks the revisionists claim that armenians killed 600,000 turks, that the deportations were organized to save armenians from furious armenian gangs, that the displaced armenians were able to return to turkey and reclaim their properties. a vivid case in point the history falsification (both history negation and history revision) in general and falsification of figures in particular is the english language online paper of 15 may 2017 of azerbaijani vision (en.azvision.az) entitled is university of minnesota aware of mathematics? which will be discussed below. the number of ottoman armenians before and after the genocide the falsification of the past is a rather common phenomenon inherent in azerbaijani research and media publications (including modern technology media) today. an obvious, intentional, blatant and premeditated falsification referring to the armenian genocide is in full swing as well. the above mentioned publication of azerbaijani vision contains evident false information and represents a clear distortion of historical data distortion of historical figures referring to the number of ottoman armenians before and after the genocide, to be more exact. the general narrative scheme the unknown author or authors employ in their falsification exercise relates to the following table of data presented in the history section of the web portal of the university of minnesota center for holocaust & genocide studies.3 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 armenological studies 136 criticising the university of minnesota scholars, the unknown author(s) cite new figures and numbers which either fail to concur to the university’s comparative data about the ottoman armenians in 1914 (before the genocide) and in 1922 (after the genocide), or contradict them explicitly. firstly, the medium referring to the table and comparing the total figure of ottoman armenians before and after the genocide (respectively 2,133,190 and 387,800) questions the number of the victims (1,750,000) as well as the number of the ottoman armenians in 1922. establishing the exact size of the population is very important in determining an accurate estimation of armenian losses between 1914 and 1922, and although this is a controversial topic, let us try to consider some statistics of ottoman armenian population in the mentioned period. at large, most estimates by western scholars range from 1,500,000 to 2,400,000 or they just mention “more than two million”. most researchers (kevorkian and paboudjian 1992; redgate 1998; mccarthy 2001) indicate the figures of 1,914,620 or 2,100,000 for the entire ottoman armenian population in 1913-1914 (the figure armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 137 is drawn from the constantinople armenian patriarchate statistics). in an interview to the turkish newspaper hurriyet of april 27, 1987, the turkish historian dr. secil akgun said, “the ottomans do not have a definite number. that is, we have in our hands contradictory numbers regarding the armenian population within the borders of the ottoman empire. […] this is to be between two and three million.” while there is no clear consensus as to how many armenians lost their lives during the genocide and what followed, again there seems to be a consensus among western scholars for the figure of 1,200,000 to 1,500,000 or “over one million” for the period between 1914 and 1922 or, as a. e redgate (1992:272) states, despite varied estimates, it seems that about 1,000,000 people were killed. german sources, most probably due to their access to murder sites (germany was ottoman empire’s ally then), gave the most exact and highest estimates of armenian losses 1,500,000 on the basis of a report entitled die türkei (134/35, a18613) and addressed to the german foreign office in february 1916. the official ottoman population statistics were often deliberately falsified to make the desired political point, hence the official statistics, compiled for the period between 1915 and 1918 (ottoman gazette 1920:3-4), mention only 800,000 killed. moreover, this underestimated number originated from the bureau of ahmed djemal (jemal pasha) the ottoman military leader who was one of the main figures who initiated and carried out the genocide. thus, the figure of 800,000 seems to be fiction. considering numerous other factors and reasons which could have resulted in more deaths (of which there is ample evidence) during the mentioned period, and carrying out a mere superficial comparison of the above data, we can say that in 1922-1923 the ottoman armenian population in turkey could not have been more than 400,000. the unknown reporter of azerbaijani vision questions not only the fact of the genocide (using wording like so called armenian genocide, the place that forms the basis of the ‘genocide’ claims where supposedly ottoman armenians had been killed) but also the university of minnesota figure of 387,800. the medium presents its own viewpoint in text references indicating to the numbers armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 armenological studies 138 486,000 and 624,000, and unethically blames the university of minnesota scholars for deliberate inaccuracy (the first question that comes to mind is whether this table was prepared by an academical institution or not; does the university of minnesota know mathematics? they start taking calculus courses). questioning the validity of the in text sources and checking all the references, i found out that not a single fact referring to the figures 486,000 and 624,000 is confirmed the references are taken from a web paper entitled tall armenian tale: 1.5 million genocide victims, lies vs archives (liveleack.com) a one page material including the same in text references. moreover, the rest of the azerbaijani paper is university of minnesota aware of mathematics? is an identical copy of the mentioned liveleack.com article (<https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=628_1439921546>). secondly, both the identical copy and the original claim that 250,000 or 300,000, or even 400,000 armenians moved to caucasus armenia from anatolia fighting illnesses and war conditions, 40,000 to iran, 70, 000 to south russia, 20,000 to georgia. adding to this the number 624,000 of ottoman armenians who remained in turkey after the genocide, the medium of information azerbaijani vision concludes: without even questioning or examining the validity of the references of university of minnesota, quoting the population of ottoman armenians as 2,133,190 in 1914, we conclude that 1,154,000 ottoman armenians were alive in 1921. all the reference sources to the above figures termed as official documents from us, british, armenian and league of nations archives and particularly as [u.k.fo 96/225]; archives des afferes etrangeres de france, serie levant, armenie; an official american document published in 1919; mr. lodge washington government printing office; national geographic; fridtjof nansen-league of nations, again redirected me to the twin article in liveleack.com with identical text references. what is more ridiculous, the authors of this “research paper” call others, the university of minnesota center for holocaust & genocide studies in particular, to prove the documents shown in their paper to be fake to avoid the powerless or weak position that many academical institutions have to go through because of their need for donations from different lobby groups. armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 139 thus, the above mentioned illiterate piece of writing of azerbaijani vision cannot be characterized otherwise than anti-armenian propaganda, history falsification, negationism and revisionism. in addition, it is an evident case of plagiarism and scientific falsification; it goes against everything that the scientific method stands for. such falsification and fabrication of evidence is an unethical and dangerous crime, and one of the worst misconducts that anyone in research community can commit. conclusion over the course of time, historical data can be wiped away into oblivion or not realize their social function. moreover, political attitudes to the past may alter, and the past may drift into altogether different observational and interpretational context. however, the false model of history serves its function for a certain while because societies eventually enter a period when distorted representations stop serving the intended ends and impartial and unbiased research starts seeking the truth. today online media plays an important role in finding and sharing information, and engaging new audiences. to accomplish political objectives, different media around the globe are using technology to manipulate media coverage and propagate certain political objectives. a vivid case in point is the online medium azerbaijani vision which, in its article is university of minnesota aware of mathematics?, distorts, lies about and politicises the historical reality for the advancement of its anti-armenian goals. falsification techniques such as (1) presenting forged documents as genuine, (2) manipulating statistical data and figures, (3) using non-existent documents, and (4) neglecting genuine sources have been used in the history falsification exercise. my assumption is that the blatant falsification of history of any nation and culture should be stopped because it impedes and hinders the development of human society at large. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 armenological studies 140 notes: 1. the term was coined by the french historian henry rousso in 1987. he argued that it was necessary to distinguish between legitimate historical revisionism in holocaust studies and politically motivated denial of the holocaust, which he termed negationism (in alain 1998). 2. see about this in detail in the monograph the use and abuse of language in the legal domain (gasparyan, paronyan, muradian 2019) montreal: arod books. 3. chgs (the center for holocaust and genocide studies 2019) promotes academic research, education and public awareness on the holocaust, armenian genocide and other forms of mass violence. it provides academic programs, scholarly research and inquiries aiming at gaining understanding of the causes and consequences of mass violence, collaborating and sharing expertise and resources with other academic institutions and individuals, providing opportunities for interaction with leading experts in the field, supporting educators by providing online resources, workshops, and seminars, and finally fighting hatred and ensuring a more peaceful and just world. references։ 1. akcam, t. (4 december 2014) textbooks and the armenian genocide in turkey: heading towards 2015. the armenian weekly. available at: <https://armenianweekly.com/2014/12/04/textbooks/> [accessed october 2019]. 2. alain, f. (1998) the future of a negation: reflections on the question of genocide. lincoln: university of nebraska press. 3. berger, r.j. (2002) fathoming the holocaust: a social problems approach. aldine: transaction. 4. bournoutian, g.a. (2009) a brief history of the aghuank region. michigan: mazda. 5. ellul, j. (1973) propaganda: the formation of men’s attitudes. translated from french by konrad kellen & jean lerner. new york: vintage books. armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 141 6. evans, r.j. (2001) lying about hitler: history, holocaust, and the david irving trial. ny: basic books. 7. falsification of history. wikipedia. available at: <https://yugipedia.com/wiki/falsification_of_history> [accessed october 2019]. 8. gasparyan, s.; paronyan, sh.; muradian, g. (2019) the use and abuse of language in the legal domain. montreal: arod books. 9. hewsen, r. (2001) armenia: a historical atlas. chicago: university of chicago press. 10. historical negationism. // wikipedia. available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/historical_negationism> [accessed october 2019]. 11. historical revisionism. // wikipedia. available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/historical_revisionism> [accessed february 2019]. 12. hunter, b. (2017) education is the state’s greatest tool for propaganda. fee. available at: <https://fee.org/articles/education-is-the-states-greatesttool-for-propaganda/> [accessed september 2019]. 13. is university of minnesota aware of mathematics? (15 may 2017) azerbaijani vision. available at: <https://en.azvision.az/news/65156/armenian-genocide,-the-best-falsigication-of-20th-century.html> [accessed april 2019]. 14. kevorkian, r.h. and paboudjian, p.b. (1992) les arméniens dans l'empire ottoman à la vielle du génocide. paris: arhis. 15. mccarthy, j. (2001) the population of ottoman armenians. // the armenians in the late ottoman period. ankara: tbmm/ttk. 16. mcpherson, m.j. (1 september 2003) revisionist historians. the newsmagazine of the american historical association perspectives on history. 17. orwell, g. (1943) looking back on the spanish war. london: new road. 18. ottoman gazette takvimi vekâyi (21 july 1920) no. 3909. available at: <https://fr.images.search.yahoo.com/search/images> [accessed november 2019]. 19. ravetto, k. (2001) the unmaking of fascist aesthetics. minessota: university of minnesota press. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 armenological studies 142 20. redgate, a.e. (1998) the armenians. gb: blackwell. 21. schnirelmann, v. (2001) the value of the past: myths, identity and politics in transcaucasia. senri ethnological studies, 57. osaka: national museum of ethnology. 22. tall armenian tale: 1.5 million genocide victims, lies vs. archives. available at: <https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=628_1439921546> [accessed november 2019]. 23. university of minnesota center for holocaust & genocide studies. available at: <https://cla.umn.edu/chgs/about> [accessed november 2019]. պատմական փաստերի կեղծում (թուրքիայի հայ բնակչության քանակը ցեղասպանությունից առաջ և հետո) սույն հոդվածի նպատակն է՝ ի ցույց դնել, որ ադրբեջանական առցանց «azerbaijani vision» լրատվականը, իր հակահայ քարոզչության շրջանակներում թուրքիայի հայ բնակչության թվաքանակի (1915 թ. ցեղասպանությունից առաջ և հետո) վերաբերյալ կեղծ և շինծու թվեր է հրապարակում՝ հիմնվելով այնպիսի միջոցների վրա, ինչպիսիք են կեղծված փաստաթղթեր ներկայացնելը, փաստական տվյալներ մտաշահարկելը, ճշգրիտ գիտական աղբյուրներն անտեսելը և գրագողությունը: received by the editorial board 14.12.2019 recommended for publication by the reviewers 01.02.2020 accepted for print 25.05.2020 maket 2011-2:layout 1.qxd linguostylistic peculiarities of us medical leaflets naira gasparyan yerevan state university medical leaflets present a genre belonging to the domain of scientific documentswhere two major functional varieties are interwoven to present a specific piece of text wrought in a strict documentary form and saturated with scientific terms. although medical leaflets are meant for masses and not specifically for medical people, the amount of terms is still high here, but as compared to the literature specifically oriented towards medical professionals, the number of terms in leaflets is relatively low. research has established that the vocabulary in scientific medical texts is dispensed in a different way as compared to the average scientific piece of text. actually in medical texts the words belonging to general english have the least amount, while special medical terms cover the greatest part of the vocabulary. in the majority of cases the intended reader of medical leaflets is the casual citizen, and the content of the leaflet (how to use the drug in every particular case) is explained to the user by a medical worker: either by the doctor who writes the prescription, or by a medical advisor in the drug store. any medical leaflet, irrespective of the country it is compiled in, strictly meets certain linguistic requirements based on the extra-linguistic reality of that very country. the us medical leaflet is compiled according to a scheme almost similar to a leaflet of any other country, but visually it has a bigger volume because it includes extra columns. these columns presenting such details as information about the drug tests on animals and humans, the corresponding patent information as well as faqs or patient information are left out in the leaflets of other countries. since the message of the last section in a us leaflet is oriented towards the average and even less than the average member of the society, it is transmitted to the addressee through: 1. the vocabulary of general english, with the minimum use of scientific medical terms and; 2. complicated grammatical patterns, like parallel constructions including stylistic repetition and/or enumeration, that can be understood without much effort, hence, making the content of the message available and open to perceive. the most complicated piece of the text from the point of both grammar and vocabulary is the patent information since the addressee here is the medical specialist and not the average citizen. being a medical official document, leaflet texts are deprived of emotional-evaluative overtones. the addressee orients a message which carries certain instruction appeals to the reader immediately and involves him directly into the process of treatment. the form–function relationship manifesting itself on the firm ground of instructing makes the document a specific genre where the directive language function is realized through a variety of expression aiming at either causing or preventing action. negative behavior is warned and dangerous situations are mentioned. although imperative mood is used in such cases, the verb modal should affirmative or negative (should not) can armenian folia anglistika linguistics 36 appear to indicate warning. the directive function seems to be domineering in this type of a text at first sight, but there is the opinion that when one function is accentuated, it tends to diminish the importance of all the others. yet, there is another opinion that some functions are generally paired in an even more definite relation. thus, in the material of our investigation, as the observations show, the conative function, which aims at appealing to the addressee’s mind and will in order to exhort and persuade him, is the actual pair of the directive function and is realized with the help of the modal should, present simple negative and imperatives. our observation has also revealed that paragraphs of the whole document of the leaflet are arranged in a fixed structure establishing a thematically and logically coherent sequence where not only the directive-conative pair, but also the referential-informative, phatic-communicative, and the cognitive functions are realized to secure the official and medical value of the document. the referential-informative pair of functions, oriented toward the context, is realized through certain lexical (terms) and grammatical (present simple, past simple, the present perfect, the passive voice, the modal may, etc.) phenomena. the phatic-communicative pair of functions is realized through establishing a certain communication between the addressor and the addressee. what matters here is the construction of the text of the leaflet. naturally, before coming to the part where the dosage and instructions are discussed, the leaflet defines the medicine presenting some vitally important, precise and trustworthy information about its physical and chemical properties, then passes on to the health problems it can cure and, finally, the possible symptoms of the instances are described. obviously, these parts of the text prepare the patient and/or the caretaker to perceive the importance of the use of that very drug, and if the patient is successfully persuaded that the drug can help to effectively handle that particular case, he will immediately follow the instructions. certain passages especially of patient and patent information and of the core text as well, including paragraph heads, are realized through certain cognitive constructions which will be discussed within the frames of the present work. the directive function realized on a firm basis, is the head while the other above-mentioned functions serve as a body, and they all act together as parts of a whole. now we intend to establish the extra-linguistic factors that have their fixed impact on leaflet texts. the us government has set targets for the supply of useful written information to patients when they get their first supply of medicine. the law defines this useful written information as being scientifically accurate, non-promotional, specific and comprehensive, understandable and legible. then meeting the society’s demand, in 1996, it was decided that people who suffer should help write leaflets 1. this is how the patient information section appeared. it was also settled that leaflets should have a plain language, good design, and describe the degree of any risk. actually this is what can be called the extra-linguistic reality for the us medical leaflets. now we’d like to single out those lexical and grammatical peculiarities that successfully convey the addressor’s message and can be viewed as cognitive constructions (the leaflets are written and produced by third parties, such as us pharmacopeia, american medical association, american society of health system). armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 37 the functions of language realized on the mentioned extra-linguistic basis determine the linguostylistic peculiarities of the texts of medical leaflets. we have singled out the following groups of the mentioned peculiarities: 1. the following syntagms noun+noun; noun+and+(adj.)+noun and adj.+noun appear to be cognitive constructions for this specific type of a text as they introduce thematic paragraphs, e.g. noun+noun: system organ class, adverse reaction, adverse disorders, gastrointestinal disorders. noun/adj.+and+(adj.)+noun: renal and urinary disorders, general disorders and administration site conditions, reproductive and breast disorders, male and female disfunctions, indication and usage. 2. single nouns also can appear to be used as carriers of a certain message, like warnings, precautions, overdosage, description. 3. ...of... constructins are another peculiarity of the document as in management of overdose, mechanism of action. 4. latin phrases like in vivo (is experimentation using a whole, living as opposed to a or dead organism); in vitro (within the glass, i.e., in a test tube or a petri dish). 5. the use of acronyms, which have their corresponding full variants used for the first time in the text of that particular leaflet, like nsaid (non steroidal and inflammatory drug), bp (blood pressure), cv (cardiovascular), sjs (stevens-johnson syndrome), ten (toxic epidermal necrolysis), gi (gastrointestina), cabg (coronary artery bypass graft). 6. the use of modals should, can, may: an airway should be established; indometacin should not be given to patients who have experienced asthma; patients taking thiazides or loopdiuretics may have impaired response to these therapies…; blood pressure (bp) should be monitored closely…; indometacin may cause serious side effects…; acute overdosage with tramadol can be manifested by respiratory depression. 7. the use of present (active and passive) and past simple, present perfect: ultram er is not recommended for obstetrical preoperative medication; gender did not influence atomoxetine disposition; atomoxetine did not effect…; lisinopril has been found to be generally well tolerated in controlled clinical trials…. 8. negative constructions introduced by no: no fetal effects were seen when pregnant rats were treated with..; no adequate and well controlled studies have been conducted in pregnant women. 9. inversion introduced by the preposition in: in vitro drug –displacement studies were conducted with atomoxetine; in 1 or 2 studies, decreases in pup weight and pup survival were observed (rats); in late pregnancy as with other nsaids, indometacin should be avoided. 10. anaphorial parallel constructions forming periods with stylistic repetition: nsaid medicines may increase the chance of heart attack or stroke that can lead to death. the chance increases: with longer use of nsaid medicines in people who have heart disease. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 38 nsaid medicines should never be used right before or after a heart surgery called a cabg. nsaid medicines can cause ulcers and bleeding in the stomach and intestines at any time during treatment. nsaid medicines should only be used. summing up it can be said that american drug instructions are very specific as compared to those of european and armenian ones and contain parts which are very often detached. having an official documentary value, american drug instructions nevertheless do not contain officialese and are very essential for cognition. as far as the translation of leaflets is concerned, it should be mentioned that leaflets are professional documents and while translating them into armenian certain rules are observed: the patient and patent information is omitted since armenian medical law does not have any requirement concerning the availability of patient and patent information as well as faqs. actually the translation of the leaflet turns out to be a new text compiled according to the law in action in armenia. note: 1. the us government has set targets for the supply of “useful written information” to patients when they get their first supply of medicine. <www.mcppnet.org/publications/issue07-2.pdf> ²ù»ñçïû³ý ¹»õ³ùççáóý»ñç ññ³ñ³ý·ý»ñç 黽í³á׳ï³ý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá ² ù»ñçïû³ý ¹»õ³ùççáóý»ñç ññ³ñ³ý·ý»ñá ï³½ùíáõù »ý ñ³ù³ó³ûý ²øü-áõù ·áñíáõ ûñ»ýë¹ñáõãû³ý: üñ³ýù ï³ñμ»ñíáõù »ý »íñáå³ï³ý ¨ ñ³ûï³ï³ý ¹»õ³ùççáóý»ñç û·ï³·áñíù³ý í»ñ³μ»ñû³é ññ³ñ³ý·ý»ñçó, ù³ýç áñ å³ñáõý³ïáõù »ý ï»õ»ï³ïíáõãûáõý ¹»õ³ùççáóç ñ³ù³ñ ïñí³í ³ñïáý³·ñç, ·áñí³íáõãû³ý ³ýñ³ï³ï³ý ¹»åù»ñç í»ñ³μ»ñû³é, çýãå»ë ý³¨ ý»ñï³û³óýáõù »ý ³ûý ñ³ñó»ñç å³ï³ëë³ýý»ñá, áñáýù ï³ñáõ »ý í³·»é ïíû³é ¹»õ³ùççáóá ·áñí³í»éçë: ²û¹ ññ³ñ³ý·ý»ñá, éçý»éáí å³ßïáý³ï³ý ÷³ëï³ãáõõã, ã»ý å³ñáõý³ïáõù å³ßïáý³ï³ý ÷³ëï³ãõã»ñçý ñ³ïáõï μ³é³å³ß³ñ: ö³ëï³ãáõõãá ¹³éýáõù ¿ ׳ý³ã»éç ûáõñ³ñ³ïáõï ׳ý³ãáõ³ï³ý ï³éáõûóý»ñç ¨ μåßï³ï³ý ï»ñùçýý»ñç ßýáññçí: ö³ëï³ãõãç ñ³û»ñ»ý ï³ñμ» ñ³ïá, áëï ¿áõãû³ý, ý»ñï³û³ýáõù ¿ çμñ¨ ýáñ ï»ùëï` ï³½ùí³í áëï ð³û³ëï³ýç ñ³ù³å³ï³ëë³ý ûñ»ýë¹ñáõãû³ý: armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 39 maket_n_verjin.qxp democratizing and dehegamonizing literature*: endeavours of empowerment apoint of departure the rampant prevalence of a technological-rationalist stance in our educational settings has done more harm than good to the use of literature in language teaching. under its hegemony, the teaching of literature and writing about it have come to be viewed in narrow, reductive terms. in the ‘interest of measurable efficiency’ (lehtovaara in kohonen et al 2001:145) literature appears to have been increasingly subject to one right reading, received understanding and objectified rhetoric. this has set off a pernicious ‘methodological scrupulosity’ (alter 1996:11) that has led our students to believe that the premises of discussion about literature are more important/valuable than the discussion of literature itself. such a belief system neither allows our students to understand the edifying role of literature nor appreciate the sense of personal gratification it promotes. therefore, ‘a whole generation of professional students of literature have turned away from reading’ (alter 1996:11). how can we expect our students to invest in their personal engagement with literature when the very endeavour of teaching and writing about literature comes in their way of personalizing their experience of reading literature and the sense of agency it promotes? this is an educational malaise, which if left unchecked can weaken their capacity to understand how their world is affected by their reading and writing, and in turn how their reading and writing affect their world. in this respect, our students should be seen as illiterate even if they can read and write. this kind of illiteracy has far-reaching implications. it not only threatens the economic status of a society but also constitutes an injustice by preventing the illiterates from making decisions for themselves or from participating in the process of educational and social change. in short, it strikes at the foundations of democracy. this poverty of reading and the culture of ignorance it creates need to be addressed in institutions of higher learning (mccormick 1994; rosenblatt 1995). i hasten to suggest that by proposing a concept of literacy which encourages democratic and liberatory change, it might be possible to educate our students about the dialectical relationships between them and the world on the one hand, and language and change on the other (freire and macedo 1987). in light of this, literature pedagogies and practices that promote students’ experience and response assume immediacy and primacy. it is argued that such pedagogies will teach our students to assert their rights and responsibilities. it will not only teach them to read, understand and transform their own experiences, but will also teach them to redefine their relationship with their society. as 178 armenian folia anglistika methodology sivakumar sivasubramaniam a result, our students will be better equipped to process knowledge that is beyond their experience and to view their reading and writing as acts of empowerment (freire and macedo 1987). the issues discussed so far signpost my faith in the potential literature for nurturing critical consciousness, especially when delivered through pedagogies of response. however, most of us are fully aware as to how our institutional practices and dictates come in the way of implementing our well-informed choices. many universities homogenize their teachers into teaching in a particular way and their students into learning in a particular way. this is because they believe that homogenizing their teachers and students into particular ways of functioning will provide for better control and power relations (mccormick 1994; mcrae 1991). the unrewarding and unchallenging institutional practices offer little or no scope for both the teacher and the students to reclaim their language both while reading literature and writing about it. in other words, neither the teacher nor the student will have an opportunity to reformulate their language of response and involvement. as a result, the teaching and learning of literature fails to develop critical consciousness in the classroom thereby promoting an illiteracy of disengagement. in order to promote learning through response and experience, we need to ‘democratize and dehegamonize’ the deployment of literature (carter 1997:109) in our educational settings. only then can we draw on the challenging content of literary texts to demolish the culture of ignorance and the illiteracy of disengagement created by a commodified approach to literature. i hope to address these matters in the following sections of this paper. what is literature? we can see it as a body of written texts produced by a culture and valued within that culture. at another level, literature is seen as discourse. such a view articulates the interpersonal/intersubjective nature of literature, which serves to illustrate how a particular way of language use is intrinsic to the social, economic, technological and theoretical needs of the cultures concerned (fowler 1981). if we accept fowler’s view of literature, then we should see it as a social artifact constructed and validated within the discourse practices of a society. viewed from a constructivist standpoint, literature as social discourse could be instrumental in promoting interpretive discourse among our students and, as a result, democratize and free literature from its exclusionist and elitist shackles (carter 1997:109). literary critics and linguists have always raised serious issues regarding the division between language and literature. while literary critics uphold the centrality of literary criticism, the linguists have been critical of the deviant use of language in literature and the privileged status accorded to it. the current adherence to metadiscourse centered approach to literature appear to favour such practices that emphsise the premises for ‘about talking about literature’ rather than talking about a reading experience of literature. jacobson (1960) has made an attempt to synthesize these conflicting views in his paper, ‘linguistics and poetics’ (lodge 1988: 32-57). the paper states that ‘a linguist 179 methodology armenian folia anglistika deaf to the poetic functioning of language and a literary scholar indifferent to linguistic problems and unconversant with linguistic methods are equally flagrant anachronisms’. jacobson’s view suggests that literature, primarily, is to be taken as text, as discourse. the language of literature is the medium through which a writer conveys a message about reality to the reader. proceeding along this line of inquiry; jacobson suggests that ‘literariness’, meaning, the language of literature is its poeticity. it is like oil in cooking. it cannot be had on its own. but when used with other foods, it is more than a mere addition; it changes the taste of the food to the extent that some dishes no longer appear to have any connection with their oil-less ingredients. this is to suggest that there is some connection between poeticity (i.e. literariness) and reality. the connection between poeticity and reality might serve to illustrate the indestructible link between the human mind and the figurative aspects of language and thought (gibbs 1994). as my position rejects an exclusive/isolationist view of literature, it looks upon the notion of literariness as one of disposition brought to bear upon the text by the reader. if this position is accepted, then one needs to accept that literature with a capital ‘l’ – canonical literature, and literature with a small ‘l’ – non-canonical texts ranging from proverbs to advertisements, could co-exist (carter 1997; mcrae 1991). teachers, who support an exclusive view of literature, (one in which canonical texts reign supreme) might view this co-existence offending. however, it is argued that the canonical status of literature is not as important as the creative and imaginative potential of literature in facilitating an emotional engagement with the target language for the l2 learner. given that literary language is patterned in creative play, the emotional involvement of the reader results in creative and imaginative interpretation of the words and structures, which sets it apart from a literal reading (carter 1997). in the post-modernist/deconstructionist age, the hegemony of the classical cannon has been challenged and its reverential status has been rendered untenable. today, our view of what literature is has been expanded to ‘include feminist and gay writing, genres such as detective fiction and horror, and – most notably–the new literatures developing in countries such as india and singapore…’(maley in carter and nunan 2001:181). furthermore as observed by alter (1996:19), ‘literature is not just a self-referential closed circuit but it is connected in meaningful and revelatory ways with the world of experience outside the text’. if we accept this position, then, the weighty historical and cultural baggage which assume centrality in canonical approaches to literature are not only irrelevant but are also not so useful in signposting the attractiveness, colour and magic of literary language. in light of this, we need to recognize the frequent occurrences of literary devices such as parallelism, rhyme, rhythm and metaphor in adverts, graffiti, public notices and even television soap-operas. the immediacy and relevance in these texts are easy for our students to understand (maley in carter and nunan 2001). the provisionality of these interpretation provides scope for multiple readings through renegotiated discourse, which in turn might serve to rehearse the readers’ meaning-negotiating capacity. therefore, i situate literature in tentative readings of text and discourse rich in creativity and imagination (carter 1997; sivasubramaniam 2004). 180 armenian folia anglistika methodology imaginative language/literary language and its place in human existence. having attempted a view of literature that frees it from an elitist/exclusionist view, i propose to focus on the role of imagination and how its unavoidable prevalence in literary language confers agency and voice to human existence in this section of the paper. britton (1993) claims literature can be assigned its rightful place by understanding the continuing role of creative language in our everyday life and its intrinsic link to human existence. vygotsky (1978:93) explains how this creative language represents a transition from make-believe behaviour to imagination: “imagination is a new psychological process for the child; it is not present in the consciousness of the very young child, is totally absent in animals, and represents a specifically human form of conscious activity. like all functions of consciousness, it originally arises from action. the old adage that child’s play is imagination in action must be reversed: we can say that imagination in adolescents and school children is a play without action”. the above quotation serves to illustrate the developmental link between makebelieve play in infancy and the practice of all the arts at all stages from childhood to the grave. this link, which could be formulated in many different ways, is characterized by piaget (1951:155) as ‘symbolic assimilation’ and is reassigned into thought as imagination. vygotsky (1978) is of the view that the poet does the same things as the child at play in that he/she creates a topsy-turvy world which he/she views with animated joy and delight and deliberately sets it apart from reality. continuing on this line of analysis, vygotsky points out that by dragging a child into this topsy-turvy world we provoke his/her intellect as a preparation for mastering the laws regulating the real world. although rhymes and stories are rich in this effect, they will only serve a diminishing purpose as the child matures into adulthood. t.s.eliot’s poem entitled “animula” (britton 1993:7) shows how the imperatives of ‘is’ and ‘seems’ weaken over time. vygotsky suggests that, while adults have no such conditioning of ‘seems’ over ‘is’ to contend with, there is a similar duality for them to see in any form of art. art serves to modify and distort perceptions of reality, and by doing so strengthens the viewer’s understanding of reality, at the same time helping the viewer to explore the structures of ‘what might become’. this perspective is very much akin to what john stuart mill (britton 1993:1) has said ‘that which enables us, by a voluntary effort to conceive the absent as if it were present, the imaginary as if it were real, and to clothe it in the feelings which, if it were indeed real, would bring along with it.’ viewed in light of the above-mentioned insights, literature by signposting the language of imagination and creativity, not only becomes an art but also a way of building life. the paper considers this underpinning particularly important to an expressivistprocess approach to reading literature, as it has a large store of pedagogical benefits for the learner. it is only through a reading of literature and responding to it that students come to know and realize how human development and creative use of language are inextricably intertwined (vygotsky 1978). such an edifying realization is often lost when students of literature are trapped in a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ (alter 1996:11), which makes them feel disenfranchised about their encounter with the literary texts. 181 methodology armenian folia anglistika the notion that meaning is created through interpersonal and interactional exchanges presupposes the futility of an isolated self signifying ‘the objective’ at the expense of `the social’ (vygotsky 1978) and ‘the creative’. the same notion finds an equally succinct expression in the french philosopher, georges gusdorf (1965:48): “in essence, language is not one but of many; it is between. it expresses the relational being of man.... the self does not by itself alone have to carve out for itself an access to being–because the self exists only in reciprocity with the other”. volisnov (1973: 118) in providing a corollary to this view claims: “everything vital to the evaluative reception of another’s utterance, everything of ideological value, is expressed in the material of inner speech. after all, it is not a mute, wordless creative that receives the utterance, but a human being full of inner words. all his experiences.... exist encoded in his inner speech and only to that extent do they come into contact with speech received from outside. word comes into contact with word”. this perspective locates encoding in biological, psychological and social aspects of life reflected in a process of individual responsibility. besides the biological, psychological and social influences on what has been encoded, there is a possibility that a person’s changing conception of the world could either shrink or expand the encoding. if our students’ responses/reactions to literature fail to reflect this, then teaching and writing about literature becomes pointless. i will now focus on i.a. richard’s “practical criticism: a study of literary judgement” (1935) to cite a real-life situation that can illustrate the dangers of trained appreciation and judgement of literary texts. i believe that this can further strengthen the belief and value systems underpinning my paper. i.a. richards asked his class at the university of cambridge to write responses and reactions to some unidentified poems. he avoided giving clues to title, authorship, period, and school, as he wanted to test his students’ capacity to engage with poetry through personal response. the students were expected to base their responses on their own sense of engagement with the poems. most of the students found their experience with the poems bewildering as their training in literary traditions, critical approaches, and judgemental methods was of little or no use in their handling of their plain responses. as a result, their responses showed a barrier to understanding and appreciating the poems in spite of the specialist training they had received. their writing indicated how exposure to ready-made responses and associations interfered with their personal sense of literature. this can be further supported by rosenblatt’s (1995:92) observation that ‘the impact of the literary work is dulled when the reader brings to the text a fund of ready-made, sharply crystallized ideas and habits of response.’ the points discussed so far have served to explain the purpose of literature and the dangers that can accrue when the interpersonal and intersubjective credentials of literature are discarded in favour of those approaches that objectify literature. if one accepts the poetics of mind, that is, the capacity of the human mind to produce and engage in creative thought and language (gibbs 1994), then one should trust in the power of literature which employs imaginative language to assign meaning and purpose to our existence (britton 1993; vygotsky 1978; gibbs 1994; langer 1992; and rosenblatt 1978, 1995). 182 armenian folia anglistika methodology perceptions, priorities and procedures ahead. the discussion so far has articulated the urgent need for the fostering of interpersonal and intersubjective discourse in the practice of literature teaching. does this mean that it is possible to process literary expression without any reliance on trained analytic attention? as illustrated earlier (see the preceding section), it is possible to do so because ‘we read literature with the same set of complex skills we use to read newspapers, legal rulings, menus, advertisements…’(alter 1996:23). this is to suggest that there are strong commonalities and complementarities between the ways by which we read literary texts and the ways by which we read other types of texts. we do not require specialized training, ‘like taking courses in sanskrit or calculus, in order to make sense of the simplest story or poem’ (alter 1996:24). in order to democratize literature, we need to subvert/challenge the belief system that upholds the ‘self-sufficiency’ and ‘referential stability’ (mackenzie 2002:46) of the literary text. only then can we free a literary text from its author’s words in order to signpost the creative consciousness that operates behind it. such a position opens the door to ‘applicative reading’ (mackenzie 2002:46), which can empower our student readers of literature to interpret it according to their own beliefs and desires. the ensuing vibrant accrual of a plurality of meaning can assign a new sense of agency and voice to the reading process undertaken by our students (rosenblatt 1995). in light of this, literature, which is often viewed as a product that contains objective meanings is transformed into a robust productive process. such a transformation dispels the author’s reverential status in the text as an arbiter of objective meanings, thereby freeing the reader from following the roles and conventions prescribed by the text. as a result, literary reading need not limit itself to attempted communication, one in which a heuristic stimulus for the creation of new meanings overwhelm the compulsions of recovering a particular set of explicatures and implicatures contained in the text (mackenzie 2002:46). by accentuating the role of the reader and his/her personal sense of literature, we lay the groundwork for a personal enrichment approach to literature, which will free literature from its exclusivist shackles. this approach uses literary texts to promote a personal sense of literature in students. by providing an emotional and intellectual engagement with literary texts, this approach fosters a personal sense of involvement in students. as this sense of personal involvement develops, students begin to look upon reading literature as a gratifying experience. the scope for group work through frequent interactions is a key feature of this approach. it is argued that the emotional security provided by group work to students can make them feel emotionally secure rather than feel intimidated in their encounters with literary texts. when their personal sense of involvement strengthens, it can promote learner autonomy in them with which they can make independent explorations into texts. texts/materials used in this approach reflect students’ interest and its link to personal involvement. the presence of theme-based texts in the approach alerts us to the potential they have for addressing educational and social concerns (lazar 1993; freire and macedo 1987; rosenblatt 1995). 183 methodology armenian folia anglistika democratizing literature in the educational practices of reading and writing requires the support of a learner-centred educational ideology, which views education as a way of empowering learners to teach themselves how to learn. synonymous with progressivism, such an ideology articulates the centrality of experience to learning and the outcome of that learning as growth. viewed in light of this ideology, knowledge assumes speculative and perspectival attributes (clark 1987). so, it cannot be value-free and close-ended as seen by the traditional approaches to literature reminiscent of classical humanism and reconstructionism. as an open-ended approach to knowledge, progressivism makes for emotionally and socially enriching learning experiences, which help the learners to view themselves as whole persons rather than fragmented individuals. such a process is important to this undertaking as it opposes homogenizing students on the basis of norm-referenced learning and assessment (clark 1987; nunan, 1988). therefore, personalizing learning through a personalizing approach to literature becomes the most important priority for this inquiry. it is hoped to discuss this further in terms of the pedagogy of response to be proposed in the subsequent sections of this paper. a personalizing approach to literature necessitates the learners’ active involvement with it, by which the learner becomes an active participant in the learning process. this is in contrast to the passive role assigned to the learner in classical humanism and a subservient role demanded of the learner in reconstructionism (sivasubramanaim 2004). the active role envisaged for the learner encourages the learner to react to and reflect on learning process. such a role can help both the learner and the teacher to take an associative/negotiative view of learning and assessment. in this regard, the learner finds it an educating experience to voice and share his/her perceptions of what has been learned. as a result, learning and assessment become a learner-centred undertaking. this is not to suggest that the teacher will assess the learner as the learner wishes to be assessed. but it is to suggest that the participatory role of the learner can make him/her take responsibility for learning and take control of how the learning tasks and strategies proposed by the teacher should be handled (clark 1987; nunan 1988). the concern for learner involvement and autonomy expressed by progressivism can be matched with its similar emphasis on empowering teachers into becoming reflective practitioners. very often teachers carry out the choices and pre-determined objectives of a curriculum designed by someone else. because of this they do not critically examine the role of the curriculum and their role in deploying it. an uncritical engagement with the curriculum reduces their teaching role to that of a perfunctory task. as a result teachers become ‘curriculum clerks carrying out other people’s decisions about subject matter and classroom management’ (delawter 1992:101). in the light of this, the progressivist emphasis on teacher empowerment leads teachers to believe that they need to voice their professional beliefs and concerns in order to consider and construct new perspectives on their role as teachers. it is argued that metaphors in current educational use liken educational practices to those followed in the fields of business, computer industry and the military. such a likening projects educational practices as prescribed systems to be followed with utmost care. as a result the teachers’ role gets basalized (smith 1988). it 184 armenian folia anglistika methodology is further argued that there is urgent need to discard the teacher as a curriculum clerk metaphor and put in its place the teacher as an explorer metaphor. such a metaphor can reinforce the progressivist concern for teacher empowerment through reflective teaching practice. by voicing their beliefs and concerns, teachers can experience a sense of freedom. this sense of freedom can alert them to new alternatives to perspectives on their teaching practices. thus they can become explorers of knowledge through reflective teaching practice (smith 1988) if literature is democratized and dehegamonized from its exclusivist shackles. at this juncture, it should be stressed that promotion of literature in society is contingent on the teachers’ belief in its educational and social values for the students. in the light of this point, when teachers empower themselves into becoming questioning professionals, they will encourage their learners to empower themselves into becoming questioning citizens. the issues and insights discussed so far signpost a process-centred view of reading and writing about literature as the mainstay of a pedagogy of experience and response that has assumed special prominence and substance in this paper. viewed in the light of the attitude and beliefs underlying my stance, received knowledge, pre-determined learning behaviour, tutored learning in the guise of focused instruction and norm-based assessment of goals, and are believed to be detrimental to current educational practices. the following views of skilbeck (1982:20) support my rejection of classical humanism and reconstructionism: “externally imposed syllabuses, text books, and examinations all define educational values and set certain standards which are important from the standpoint of the individual as well as for national and social purposes; however, they make the spontaneity, flexibility and diversity which are an equally important part of education much more difficult to achieve”. it is argued that spontaneity, flexibility and diversity can accrue only through a process-centred pedagogy of response. a prolonged neglect of spontaneity, flexibility and diversity in the literature/language classroom will not only impede the democratization of literature but will also hasten its extinction. therefore, it should be noted that progressivist concerns would determine the form and substance of the pedagogy of response that is central to this undertaking. such a position is consistent with a constructivist epistemology that underpins our approach to democratizing literature. at this juncture, i wish to stress that the process-centred approaches to learning have thrown up a new emphasis, which has come to be known as constructivism (applebee 1992: 12-16). constructivism can be looked at metaphorically and philosophically. as a metaphor, it means understanding knowledge and learning through experience. as a philosophy of learning it emphasizes the premise that by reflecting on our experiences we construct our own understanding of the world we live in. in doing so, we make sense of our experiences by constructing our own mental models to interpret new experiences (reagan 1999; osborn, 2000). constructivism as a philosophy of learning opposes transmission-based approaches to literature. in this regard it challenges the tenets of classical humanism and 185 methodology armenian folia anglistika reconstrustionism. in a constructivist model of learning, learners personalize their experiences in order to construct knowledge. it should be recalled here that this position is consistent with the living through experience by students and the telling of the story of reading by them in the process of aesthetic reading as envisaged in reader response approaches to literature (rosenblatt 1995). the living through experience and the telling of the story of reading serve to exemplify the two strands of constructivist perspective: 1) radical constructivism and 2) social constructivism. radical constructivism relates to knowledge as an outcome of the learner’s active mental effort emphasized by the living through experience. social constructivism relates to knowledge as an outcome of the learner’s personal effort in a social cultural context where telling of the story of reading unfolds as a social event (rosenblatt 1995; reagan 1999; osborn 2000). i believe that by synthesizing the two strands of the constructivist perspective we can facilitate a constructivist-learning environment for the deployment of a pedagogy of response. in light of this, i believe it will be helpful to visit the eight characteristics proposed by jonassen (1994: 34-37) that describe a constructivist-learning environment which aim to synthesize the two strands of the constructivist perspective. constructivist learning environments: 1. encourage multiple representations of reality. 2. avoid oversimplification to represent the complexity and diversity of the real world. 3. view knowledge as ‘constructed’ not as ‘given’. 4. emphasize authentic activities and meaningful contexts. 5. focus on real world settings and non-linear instruction. 6. provide stimulus for reflecting on experience. 7. articulate context-bound characteristics of knowledge. 8. acknowledge collaborative construction of knowledge through inter-personal associations/negotiations. i hasten to suggest that these eight characteristics not only serve to reinforce all the key theoretical issues raised so far, but also necessitate an understanding of a problemposing model of education situated in a constructivist approach to literacy education proposed by freire (1973). in order to understand ‘the problem-posing model’ we need to look at its antithesis, the banking-model of education. according to freire the banking-model of education is one where the teacher’s primary objective is to deposit information into students as they would deposit money into a bank. such an approach as mentioned by freire (1972: 46-47) has the following characteristics: the teacher teaches and the students are taught. the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing. the teacher thinks and the students are thought about. the teacher talks and the students listen. the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined. the teacher chooses and enforces his choice and the students comply. the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the teacher. 186 armenian folia anglistika methodology the teacher chooses the program content and the students adapt to it. the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his own professional authority, which he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students. the teacher is the subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects. these characteristics envisage an order of learning in which students are discouraged from finding out how and why they are being asked to do certain learning tasks because the teacher imposed them to be done. so it is unlikely that they will feel involved or engaged with the learning tasks. thus they pick up on a survival orientation, which directs them to believe that passing a course is the primary objective of their learning. such a belief not only defeats the purpose of education but also feeds into a culture of illiteracy as pointed out earlier. the problem-posing model of education encourages a dialogic nature of learning. this means that the teacher and the student interact with each other as ‘knowledgeable equals in a situation of genuine two-way communication’ (freire 1972:52-59). therefore, the lecture-based learning dominant in the banking model is replaced by a model in which teachers and students discuss issues of concern in their lives in a nonthreatening encounter. the use of themes in the form of open-ended texts provides unrestricted scope for discussing and problematizing the issues seen in the texts. the open-ended questions encourage students to elaborate and hypothesize on what they see in these texts. thus, the process discussed here can reverse the culture of illiteracy by teaching students to read the world. such an outcome is not only vital to literature education but also central to our understanding of the efficacy of literature in our educational and social process (freire 1972, 1973). therefore, the problem-posing model of education and its constructivist underpinnings assume centrality in our undertaking to democratize literature. as a result, we are now better placed to understand the curricular shift that is required and along with that, the perceptions and procedures for democratizing and dehegamonizing literature from its exclusivist shackles. signposting a curricular shift. the problem-posing model of literature education demands a curricular shift in order to maximize its beneficial outcomes. this according to schon (1983: 333) will view the literature curriculum as: “…an inventory of themes of understanding and skill to be addressed rather than a set of materials to be learned. different students present different phenomena for understanding and action. each student makes up a universe of one, whose potentials, problems and pace of work must be appreciated as the teacher reflects-in-action on the design of her work”. such a curricular position will conceptualize each reader as ‘a universe of one’ dispelling the notion of the normative responses to literary texts that overwhelm traditional approaches to literature. as such it can answer several questions that underlie our agenda for democratizing and dehegamonizing literature: 1. what different processes operate during reading/writing? 2. what types of responses are readers likely to make? 187 methodology armenian folia anglistika 3. what orientations do readers bring to literary texts? 4. how has their awareness of textual and social conventions and their reading encounters at home and in class influenced their responses? 5. what types of strategies do they use in responding to literature? 6. how does their knowledge, ability, attitude, interest, personality or purpose influence their responses? as a sequel to above mentioned points, i wish to question the notion of nativespeaker competence, which presupposes that native speakers have the requisite linguistic, literary and cultural competence to read texts and write about them. this may not be true if viewed from a perspective of interpretive literacy, which is analogous to a capacity for reading the world. the problem of literacy for native language as well as foreign language readers is that there is no uniform competence. as kern observes (2000: 116): “all interpretation is partial because all competence is partial. foreign language readers need not see themselves as hopelessly handicapped by their ‘outsideness’ with respect to the texts they read. on the contrary, their very outsideness can provide them with insights that would not necessarily occur to ‘native’ readers. when learners feel that the knowledge they can bring to a particular text is illegitimate or inappropriate, they will feel like keeping their interpretations to themselves. what teachers need to do, therefore, is to motivate learners to share their varied interpretations in order to make them aware of how all reading is mediated experience, and that many factors will contribute to the particular ways in which that mediation takes place during a given act of reading”. i am aware at this juncture that there are many dimensions to writing and individuals can be found at different points on each dimension. so we should never assume, as smith (1982: 5) observes ‘that the way we ourselves write is the way everyone writes. teachers must not assume that their own idiosyncrasies are the only or even the best way to write.’ writing, like the language, can contribute to every aspect of our lives. it can extend and reflect our efforts to develop and express ourselves in the world. any mystification that regards writing about literature as an esoteric skill that only a few can master at the cost of great effort, should be dismissed. the benefit of writing extends to anyone who can speak and read (smith 1982). by the same token it is unbeneficial to view writing as a special kind of activity that requires exceptional talents or extensive training and one which can be used for specialized ends that might concern select individuals. writing not only requires reading for its completion but also promotes the kind of reading it requires (lodge 1977). given that both first and second language writing involve similar processes (kern 2000), we need to adopt a sympathetic/positive attitude rather than a dismissive/punitive attitude to students’ writing about literature. so accuracy and objectivity in writing should not be a cause for concern in the scheme of things proposed in this paper. to this effect, motivational factors and personal response factors should be tuned to initiate students into writing. in order to inspire students to write, we can use situated practice, that is, the students’ immersion in writing as an act of designing meaning rather than fulfilling a mechanistic act of literary response predicated on trained use of 188 armenian folia anglistika methodology conventions such as grammar, vocabulary and syntax (kern 2000; smith 1982). through situated practice, we can facilitate immersion techniques, which will foster free writing, response chronicles and dialogue/response journals. over a period of time these interactive, facilitative, negotiative and associative investments can evolve into cooperative classroom literature, which will not only humanize students’ involvement with literature, but will also aggrandize its merit and lasting value in our educational practices. some possible outcomes. democratization of literature envisages an order of learning and teaching literature, which can help promote the following outcomes: 1. it might reduce the examination-oriented mentality and take reading beyond mere performance in an examination. 2. it might emphasize reading as a space for the exercise of mental energy and creativity. 3. it might initiate an understanding of the exigencies of text and student, and above all, of communication. 4. it might instill a love for books in students by which it is hoped, it will encourage them to acquire books for themselves both for their own enjoyment and for their longer term education benefit, as their range of reading expands. 5. it might encourage students to explore other texts, which might not have been read in class and to start building up a library of books they are happy to own. 6. it might foster a high degree of reader autonomy which will not only develop extensive reading but will also take them far beyond the imaginative learning benefit of the original classroom encounter with the texts. 7. it might use reading as a valuable input to develop writing as a response to reading. 8. it might help students discover the personal utility of writing and the life-long joys and delights associated with writing. when viewed from a soco-psychological perspective, the process of learning literature in a second language itself takes on special significance. from this viewpoint (lambert, et al 1960), one would expect that, if the student is to be successful in his/her attempt to learn another social group’s language he/she must be both able and willing to adopt various aspects of behaviour, including verbal behaviour, which characterizes members of the other linguistic-cultural group. democratization of literature will promote receptivity to the experience of becoming a speaker/reader/writer of another language or somebody else’s language. it will encourage the teachers to shed their traditional pedagogue image and take on the role of facilitators who would be keen to deal with their students on a first-name basis. by doing so, the literature classroom will promote receptivity to the teacher as a person and by stressing group work in class, it hopes to promote receptivity to fellow learners notwithstanding the need to address the inter-ethnic or political prejudices of the learners by emphasizing diversity in class as a learning resource to the learners (allwright and bailey 1991). 189 methodology armenian folia anglistika this journey of understanding has so far served to point out the urgent need to democratize the literary texts so as to reverse the culture of ignorance and illiteracy through a response-centered reading-the-world approach to literature. in light of this, it is argued that the educational and social developments of our students are inextricably linked to their reading and writing about literature. in this respect, the stultifying and disempowering role of a canonical approach to literature needs to be eliminated with the help of the issues and insights articulated in this paper. it is only through reading and provisional understanding of literary texts that our students can come to realize its transformative and the empowering influences on living and learning. such a realization is crucial to the functioning of civilized societies and democracies. as rosenblatt (1995: 171), observes: “education in this era of social transformation must serve both critical and constructive ends. on the one hand youth need the knowledge and the intellectual tools required for critical appraisal of ideals and social mechanisms -new and old. on the other hand, youth need to develop positive emotional drives that will quicken intellectual insight. thus they will be enabled to free themselves from antisocial attitudes and will be impelled to achieve a world that will safeguard human values”. therefore a safeguarding of human values demands an assimilation of ideas and attitudes, which can only accrue through a personal and provisional reading of literary texts and writing about them. needless to say that the prevalence of literature is fundamental to our educational practices, a well-informed democratization of the ways in which we encourage our students to read and write about what has been read will enhance all that we stand for as human beings in a world that is being increasingly characterized by a predominance of consumerism, corruption and moral/social decay. notes: * the stimulus for this paper derives from professor 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(1935) practical criticis: a study of literary judgement. london: kegan paul, trench, trubner. 33. schon, d. (1983) the reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action. new york: basic books. 34. sivasubramaniam, s. (2004) an investigation of l2 students’ reading and writing in a literature-based language programme: growing through responding. unpublished phd thesis uk, university of nottingham. 35. skilbeck, m. (1982) school-based curriculum development // planning in the curriculum. / lee, v.; zeldin, d. (eds.) sevenoaks: hodder and stoughton. 36. smith, f. (1982) writing and the writer. jordan hill. oxford: heinemann educational books. 37. smith, f. (1988) misleading metaphors of education // joining the literacy club. / smith, f. (ed.) portsmouth. new hampshire: heinemann educational books. 38. volisnov, v.s. (1973) marxism and philosophy of language. london: seminar press. 39. vygotsky, l.s. (1978) mind in society: the development of higher psychological process. cambridge. massachusetts: harvard university press. ¶ñ³ï³ýáõãû³ý åáõáíñ¹³ûý³óáõù ¨ ³å³ñ»·»ùáý³óáõù. ç³ýù»ñ éç³½áñáõãûáõýý»ñ ýí³×»éáõ ׳ý³å³ññçý ü»ñï³ûáõùë ³ùµáõç ³ßë³ññáõù ·ñ³ï³ýáõãû³ý ñ»·»ùáý³óí³í ¨ ùß³ïí³í ù³ïáõóáõùá áõë³ýáõý»ñç ùáï ³ýï³ñµ»ñáõãûáõý ¿ ³é³ç³óýáõù ·ñ³ï³ýáõãû³ý ýï³ïù³ùµ, áñá ¨ ³ëïç׳ý³µ³ñ µ»ñáõù ¿ ·ñ³ï³ýáõãû³ý ñ³ý¹»å ýñ³ýó ñ»ï³ùñùñáõãû³ý ýí³½ù³ý: êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù ³é³ç³ñïíáõù ¿ ëï»õí»é ³ûýåçëç íñ³·ñ»ñ, áñáýù ·ñ³ï³ýáõãû³ý ýï³ïù³ùµ ïóáõó³µ»ñ»ý ï»ùëï³ï»ýïñáý ùáï»óáõù, ³ûý ¿` ¹³ë³í³ý¹áõý»ñá å»ïù ¿ ³½³ï éçý»ý áýïñ»éáõ ³ûýåçëç áõëáõùý³ï³ý ýûáõã»ñ, áñáýù ï½³ñ·³óý»ý áõë³ýáõý»ñç 黽í³ï³ý áõý³ïáõãûáõýý»ñý áõ ïëã³ý»ý ýñ³ýó »ñ¨³ï³ûáõãûáõýá: øç³ûý ýù³ý ùáï»óù³ý ¹»åùáõù ù»ýù ïï³ñáõ³ý³ýù ñ³ëï³ý³é áõ ·ý³ñ³ï»é ·ñ³ï³ýáõãû³ý û·ï³ï³ñáõãûáõýá ïñã³ï³ý áõ ñ³ë³ñ³ï³ï³ý ·áñíáõý»áõãû³ý ù»ç: 192 armenian folia anglistika methodology maket_n_verjin.qxp rehabilitating martius: audience response to the hero of “coriolanus” my subject is coriolanus but i would like to beginwith jane austen. when she was about to start work on her novel emma, jane austen wrote to her sister cassandra “i am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like” (austen-leigh: 203). i sometimes wonder whether shakespeare ever wrote in similar terms to his sister when he was about to start work on coriolanus “i am going to take a hero whom no one but myself will much like”. i may be taking too much for granted: perhaps shakespeare did not like coriolanus much either, but in that case he must, at least, have liked the challenge of writing about such a disagreeable protagonist. in fact, of course, jane austen’s rather defensive remark turned out to be quite unnecessary, and the phrase is so famous precisely because it has been quoted so many times, but always to be contradicted. most of us do like emma woodhouse. she is infuriating, of course; we would willingly wring her neck at times and we feel that mr knightley must have been a saint to marry her, but we like her. on the other hand, very few people ever like coriolanus. a.p. rossiter summed the matter up nearly fifty years ago: “there is no reason that i can see to like coriolanus at any stage of the play” (rossiter: 242). perhaps we should just leave it at that and get on with other, more important things. after all, it is hardly the most sophisticated literary approach to talk about liking or not liking a particular character. yes, we like elizabeth bennet, or orlando and rosalind, or the wife of bath, and personal reactions of the kind are only natural as we read. but they are not very profound, and sometimes the notion of liking can be totally inappropriate. we would not get far with wuthering heights if we had to like heathcliff?1 and yet i can’t help feeling that, in the theatre, or in the shakespearean theatre, personal response is an essential part of the aesthetic experience, an experience which does indeed involve an emotional commitment. these imitations of life arouse reactions that imitate reactions we have in life. we may respond differently in the theatre, but we do respond, and along similar lines. at a performance of twelfth night, we warm readily to the unbridled exuberance of sir toby belch and are glad to see the po-faced malvolio brought down a peg or two, even though, back in our appartment block, we would much rather have malvolio as a next-door-neighbour. well, at least i would, especially at 3 o’clock in the morning. 233 literature armenian folia anglistika terence mccarthy the problem for literary scholars is this: can we make a valid and intellectually satisfying literary judgement based merely on a question of sympathetic response; do we not feel more at-ease with our colleagues from the science faculties if we construct our readings of texts with a more solid theoretical grounding, preferably with reference to the great and good in academia: lacan and levi-strauss, barthes and bakhtin, derrida and (why not?) freud. saying that the problem with coriolanus is that we don’t like caius martius, the hero, is sure to bring a patronising smile to the lips of physicists or chemists, confirmed in their low opinion of what we call work. according to them, we read books, say whether we enjoy them and call it research. and yet in spite of the benign irony of our scientific colleagues, the fact remains that audience response to the hero of coriolanus has had an effect on the play’s reputation both in the theatre and in the classroom, and is something the literary scholar cannot merely ignore. basically, i would suggest, we must refuse to be browbeaten by our colleagues from the science faculties and have the courage of our convictions. they do not have the monopoly on learning. our research is different from theirs, but so what? and the expression “scientific knowledge”, included in the title of this conference, is somewhat provocative–and a trifle tautological. it says the same thing twice, for what is science if not knowledge? unless the knowledge of so-called “scientists” is better than ours. they, of course, think it is. we are frequently reminded that our research serves no purpose (i have avoided the word “useless”) even though our scientific colleagues, with a little modesty, ought to be more ready to admit that much of their research leads nowhere and serves no purpose at all. but, of course, the mere fact of knowing that – that they have reached a dead-end – is, in itself, knowledge, and all knowledge – useful or not – is important. even ours. that’s why i have become very ill-at-ease with all the pseudoscientific vocabulary that literary researchers arm themselves with as a kind of salve to their conscience or a self-defence, especially those who insist on referring (frequently) to their travaux scientifiques. they mean their academic work, but the word “scientific” has greater cachet. you will understand why i am so pleased that at our present conference here in yerevan we are divided into seminars and panels – plain, unpretentious words. so often literary gatherings are split into workshops and ateliers, while in france, i belong to a laboratoire de recherche no less. soon we will all be wearing white lab-coats. i wonder if i should get myself a bunsen-burner and a few test tubes, just in case… my heavy-handed irony makes it quite clear that i persist in believing that literary scholarship is a valid university discipline and that we should not allow ourselves to be marginalised, to become a sort of poor relation, the fanny price of academia, present on sufferance and fed with the scraps that fall from the overflowing research budgets of the science faculties. we have no cause to be ashamed of our work in the arts, which has both its own specificity and its own validity. perhaps, indeed, the trouble started when we did nothing to prevent our universities from being divided into arts and science faculties, as though the arts were not science. personally i take comfort from the recollection that my first university, cambridge, still awards no science degrees. students of chemistry and physics may belong to the faculty of natural sciences, but they are awarded a b.a. – bachelor of arts – in line with the ancient tradition in which the seven liberal arts were the basis of all science. 234 armenian folia anglistika literature and so – for you were beginning to think that i would never return to coriolanus – if shakespeare has chosen to present a thoroughly disagreeable protagonist who seems entirely indifferent to the good opinion and approval not only of everyone around him on stage (except perhaps his mother), but also in the audience, this places spectators (and readers) in a challenging position; how are we meant to react? the aesthetic impact is one we are justified in examining. are we meant to like martius or not? unsophisticated as the question may be, it is one the play invites, indeed, forces us to ask. perhaps we could merely argue that in the medieval tradition tragedy presents the fall of a great – but not necessarily admirable – man. nero, for example, is famously to be found in the list of tragic heroes provided by chaucer’s monk (chaucer: 195). alternatively, we might say that military greatness, as such, commands our admiration. after all, what more does macbeth have before he goes off the rails? in elizabethan eyes, achievement in combat was, in itself, a moral quality, and indeed, down until the midtwentieth century a man in uniform incited respect and admiration. he had, de facto, charisma, not to mention sexual attraction. just ask lydia and kitty bennet, who were moths around a flame when there were officers billeted in town but even though we acknowledge martius’s military exploits – and shakespeare, unusually, spends most of a long first act presenting them before our eyes (not merely in reported narrative) – we never accord more than our token admiration. macbeth elicits our sympathy in a way that martius, another “bellona’s bridegroom” (1.2.55), if ever there was one, does not. from the start we genuinely dislike him. and shakespeare seems to take positive steps to ensure our disapproval. at first this might not seem true since, although the plays opens with uncompromising criticism of martius, the attacks are put into the mouths of a violent mob. martius is declared to be “chief enemy to the people” (1.1.7-8) and “a very dog to the commonalty” (1.1.26), but these common people are not the likeable, witty plebeians in party mood who open julius caesar2: they appear carrying “staves, clubs, and other weapons”, as the first stage direction of the play says, and the potential danger that they represent is so theatrically obvious – coriolanus “is unique among plays of the period in opening with a scene of public violence”, philip brockbank reminds us (brockbank, arden: 95) – that shakespeare seems to be arousing our initial sympathy for martius, and the objection “he hath faults, with surplus, to tire in repetition” (1.1.42-43) sounds like one of those vast and vague exaggerations which show that the accusations are inflated and ill-founded. as it turns out, this initial sympathy is something of a red herring, for any good feelings we might be ready to have for martius are shattered as soon as the man himself walks on stage. martius has barely reached the end of his first iambic pentameter before he is hurling abuse at the crowd of “dissentious rogues” (1.1.161), and the moral disdain and physical repulsion that he feels for the plebeians are expressed without compromise and at considerable length. later, when he is persuaded to stand for office, the idea that he must curry favour with the people to earn an election that he considers he has already, and amply, earned is anathema to him, and he dismisses the calls from family and friends for a more diplomatic approach to playing the political game, as though it were the direst 235 literature armenian folia anglistika form of corruption. rubbing shoulders with the masses can only contaminate and martius expresses his repugnance without caring who hears him. in twenty-first century terms, martius is outrageously politically incorrect, but it will not do merely to invoke the different attitudes of elizabethan england with its more rigid hierarchy. for even by shakespearean standards there is something decidedly distasteful about martius and his political agenda. other people in shakespeare’s plays express moral and physical contempt for the masses, but we are not called upon to admire them. richard ii is not seen to his advantage when he despises his people and accuses bolingbroke of base sycophancy for lowering himself to seek popular support (1.4.20-36). perhaps most of all we remember that queen elizabeth herself spoke frequently of her love for her people and valued their love for her. elizabeth’s love may have been more verbal than practical – one of her courtiers might have adapted menenius’s words to her: [she] loves [her] people, but tie [her] not to be their bedfellow. (2.2.62-3). but martius never even manages to pay lip service to any fabricated love for the crowds. of course, elizabeth was dead by the time coriolanus was written, but the initial years of disenchantment that followed immediately on her death, at a time when london was welcoming james with enthusiasm, gradually – as teresa bela has shown (bela: passim) – gave way to nostalgic affection for gloriana as the new monarch turned out to be a disappointment. for james never sought or valued the affection of his people. in our age, we have grown used to the play-acting of politicians3, who find time to kiss babies and shake the hands of workmen during election campaigns but who withdraw to their political ivory towers far from dribbling infants and soiled labouring hands once the votes have been counted. we are not therefore shocked when martius’s entourage calls on him to play the game and go through the usual electioneering motions like all his predecessors. that martius refuses and protests an unbending integrity should perhaps give us pause, should make us ashamed of our laxism in the face of such patent political hypocrisy. but in fact it does not. it is, rather, martius’s brand of honesty that is misplaced. menenius, exasperated, pays tribute to martius with the famous words “his nature is too noble for the world” (3.1.257). but this means not only that martius stands out; more importantly it means that he cannot fit in. martius’s unbending integrity hides a total lack of political awareness and human understanding. he tells the plebeians to their face what he thinks of them and expects them to give him credit for his honesty. at times he appears frankly obtuse, as though he has never thought things through. i am reminded of a remark once made – i have forgotten by whom – about mrs thatcher: “when she speaks without thinking, she says what she thinks”. the same is eminently true of martius, who is ultimately something of a political liability. another name for candour is misjudgement, and no statesman should ever speak without thinking. in act 3, martius quite simply talks himself out of the statesman’s job. 236 armenian folia anglistika literature all he has to recommend him as a leader is his military achievement, and even there he is too noble for the world. his exploits are exemplary, excessive – as we say today, over the top. he does not inspire his men by his example; what for him is bravado is, for them, mere “foolhardiness” (1.5.17), and they let him go it alone, which is ultimately what he prefers. martius is a killing machine daubed in blood. he does not encourage his men with generosity of spirit and reward their feats, like antony; he is unready to accept lesser achievements than his own and he goads his men into battle with threats. in act 1 scene 8, he does seem to inspire his men and attracts a group of volunteers to go along with him. for once he even speaks warmly to ordinary soldiers, but cominius thinks the initial enthusiasm will subside and that in the end they might not “make good this ostentation” (1.8.87). in war as in peace, he can only set himself apart. coriolanus is, quite simply, the hero who has difficulty belonging. he is intensely aware of the plebeians as the enemy, the “them” who are opposed to the nobility he represents. but martius never gets round to saying “us”; the first person singular pronoun is the one with which he is most at ease. and while shakespeare reveals his greatness, he also reveals him for what he is – a man who lives in the public eye and who has never had time for a private life. right at the beginning of the play, shakespeare interrupts the opening political and military scenes to show the domestic setting to which the hero belongs – we meet the hero’s mother and wife. but the scene, one of shakespeare’s inventions, is also one of shakespeare’s red-herrings, for all it seems to provide martius with is a non-existent domesticity. even as a boy, he had been sent away from the pleasures of a home life by his mother, and, to be flippant, one might “venture to assert that [martius] [n]ever called [her ‘mummy’]4. he was given an education in destruction by a matriarch who values family honour more highly than filial affection and who is already preparing the next generation of killers with her grandson, a little thug who “mammocks” (1.3.68) butterflies. martius is such a stranger to domestic comfort that his idea of utter defeat for the enemy is to “beat them to their wives” (1.5.12), back to the company of women that emasculates a man and undermines his status as a soldier, which is all that seems to be of interest to martius5. the shakespearean hero has doubts and questions his motives, but not martius, and the solitariness of his position both in military exploit and political theory never, for one moment, makes him wonder whether he might not be wrong. this is, perhaps, why we never quite admire his singlemindedness of purpose: it has never been put to the test. nothing in the first part of the play warms us towards martius, who is a public figure without a private persona. so many of shakespeare’s plays show the conflict between the function and the individual: inside the public man is a private man trying to get out and express himself. but inside martius there is no one-like italo calvino’s cavaliere inesistente. with martius, what we see is what we get. none of those outrageous public declarations is ever toned down or given greater nuance by the expression of private hesitations and doubts when he is alone. it is as though martius has no hesitations and doubts and it is for this reason that shakespeare never gives him a soliloquy. he would not know what to do with one. i am exaggerating in fact: martius 237 literature armenian folia anglistika is, indeed, given a soliloquy in act 4 (scene 4, 1-6 and 12-26), but instead of expressing his doubts and fears, the hesitations and regrets now that he has reached antium and is about to make a momentous decision, instead of confiding in us to give us a clearer picture of himself, he merely uses his soliloquy first to describe the scenery and then to blame the “slippery” world for forcing him to do what he has already decided to do. if he had any doubts, he dispensed with them in the wings, while he was waiting to come on stage. if the play had continued like this it could hardly be expected to function as a tragedy. martius’s death would have little or no impact because he has never been allowed to arouse our interest, let alone our sympathy. when a tragic hero dies and we just do not care, or do not care much, there is something theatrically wrong. we expect a sense of loss or waste, the feeling that things will not be the same again, that a whole age has gone, that the world continues but in little. with richard iii, perhaps, there is even a thrill of satisfaction. but we do not expect to leave the theatre after a tragedy with no more than a shrug of the shoulders. in fact, by the time martius gets his soliloquy, he has already changed – or rather shakespeare’s method has changed and he allows us to see a different martius. the break comes right at the beginning of act 4. there are those who believe that the act division between 3 and 4 as it stands in the 1623 folio text is unlikely to be by shakespeare. the first two scenes of act 4 are clearly part of the aftermath of the banishment, they suggest, and the real break comes (as it is often placed in performance) with act 4, scene 3, when the action moves from rome to antium and some time has passed. personally, i am not convinced and would prefer not to quibble with the folio’s act division. not only does act 3 come to an end at a dramatic high point, but act 4 presents us with an entirely new martius, who has changed considerably in spite of his disclaimer to his family and friends: while i remain above the ground you shall hear from me still, and never of me aught but what is like me formerly (4.1.52-4). the full ironic force of the change comes later when martius goes over to the other side and, de facto, becomes their leader, as though he were realising that ambition he had so ominously voiced at the beginning of the play in reference to the volscian leader, aufidius: were i anything but what i am i would wish me only he. (1.1.229-30). at the beginning of act 4, that wish has not yet come true, but none the less we discover a martius who is by no means “like [himself] formerly”. the difference comes with defeat, although it does not appear at once. when martius is banished by the plebeians, there is defiance on his lips. he refuses to give up the initiative and he banishes them, just as he refuses to admit the loss of his homeland, 238 armenian folia anglistika literature by proclaiming “there is a world elsewhere” (3.3.136). but like it or not, he has been defeated and it is when he has, indeed, lost the initiative and is no longer giving orders that we begin to see martius the man. now that he has been forced out of public life, the private man has time for other things. defeat, as it were, makes him human, cuts him down to size. defeat is something he knows nothing about and when he tastes it he tastes common humanity. he sees how the other half live. being rejected by the people has made him think again, just as earlier in the play, being rejected by his mother made him relent (3.2.125-30). martius’s career has been devoted to distinguishing himself, to being better than anyone else, to being different. he is used to being given “the whole name of the war” (2.1.132). his great victory at corioles is achieved single-handedly, and his final boast is “alone, i did it” (5.6.117). and as martius regularly rejects the shared patterns or principles that the roman patricians have accepted, as he refuses all compromise, he surrounds himself with the solitude of higher standards and constantly cuts himself off. but now, when the people cut him off, he finds a more ordinary and shared humanity, and in act 4 scene 1 we discover a new man who sees the situation with almost bemused irony. “the beast/ with many heads butts me away” (4.1.1-2), he remarks wryly and, instead of pouring scorn on the masses and on the weakness of the patricians, as he did in act 1 scene 1 and act 3 scene 1, he is full of consideration for his family and friends. it is not they who console him, bid him to take heart and keep his spirit up; he does the consoling, and with considerable affection, chivvying them up almost teasingly with that ironic promise that he will not change: he will still be the same old martius whatever happens (4.1.52-4). except that, in a way, he has changed already. his role has certainly changed, and significantly so. until now he had been the great hero who defends the city, a jack the giant killer single-handedly protecting the community against a villainous enemy, but when he is banished, when rome turns its back on him and he on rome, we realise that although perhaps he was not quite a jack – a simple widow’s son – he has certainly become the giant. the image shakespeare uses is a little different: martius is the dragon in its fen, a dormant threat. this is how he sees himself (4.1.31) and how others see him (4.7.23 and 5.4.13) he is no longer beowulf; he has become grendel, and when martius is more the scourge than the saviour, shakespeare suddenly seems to be on his side. one is reminded of the splendid phrase c.s. lewis used to characterise tamburlaine, “a hideous moral spoonerism: giant the jack killer.” (lewis 1954: 52). there is something of a similar feeling in the second half of coriolanus. martius sees himself as the lurking monster, but, at the same time, we become aware that the outcast hero has a humanity we never noticed in martius the roman. he is certainly not the man he used to be. and the same can be said about volumnia: she is not the man she used to be either. defeat has brought out the feminine, vulnerable side in her: she needs comforting and martius shows himself to be a caring and attentive son. in the next scene, with the tribunes, she continues to revile and curse but her sting, as it were, has been drawn. back in act 2, scene 1, the tribunes kept out of her way, too insignificant to merit her attention and appear in her presence; by act 4, scene 2, they have no need to sidle away or feel inferior. it is they who walk off, no longer willing to give her the time 239 literature armenian folia anglistika of day. in defeat, volumnia has gone to pieces. the daunting dowager has become merely dotty, if i may imitate the scornful alliteration they use to dismiss her: why stay we to be bated with one that wants her wits. (4.2.46-7). they are wrong, of course, but she is, none the less, diminished. the same human, as opposed to heroic, virtue is in evidence at the end of the play when the women come in the envoy. martius has been implacable with cominius and menenius, relenting only by sending letters. but personal values come to the fore as soon as the women arrive., virgilia, as martius’s wife, comes first, as of course she should, no longer playing second fiddle to her domineering mother-in-law, and the tribute she receives is full of devoted, romantic attachment (5.3.27-8 and 44-48, for example). at last we understand the feelings virgilia expressed in act 1 scene 3, and we suspect that martius cannot have given up “the embracements of his bed” (1.3.4), as readily as volumnia imagines. the tribute to his mother is equally fitting and moving, while martius speaks to his little son with the kind of warm, fatherly affection – “that’s my brave boy” (5.3.77) – full of the proud encouragement that must surely have been better for the lad than all volumnia’s incitations to violence. martius himself is so touched by what he sees that he describes it all to himself as it happens in a series of half-soliloquies that suggest that he did know, after all, about the possibilities that the soliloquy has to offer. we see a man who learns what belonging means as he sees those who belong to him coming to beg for mercy. he realises that his ideal of being “author of himself”, a man that “knows no other kin” (5.3.36-7) is quite untenable. act 5 scene 3 offers a scene of an emotional intensity we have not witnessed before. the uncompromising, inhuman, political and military values give way to the shared values of common humanity, while the very last scene of the play, when martius returns to antium, shows another aspect of the hero that warms us to him but, of course, too late. the invincible martius becomes the vulnerable martius. he returns to antium with the support of the people (a detail not found in plutarch) and for once he has no scornful invective for them, apparently aware at last of the value of popular support. but he is no longer in control. he returns with an assurance that he has acted well, and, for once, not by “run[ning] reeking o’er the lives of men as if/ ‘twere a perpetual spoil” (2.2.117-8), not by shedding blood but by avoiding bloodshed, by reaching a compromise, by taking into account – as he has not done so far – the opinions of others.: we have made peace with no less honour to the antiates than shame to th’ romans (5.6.79-81) but his self-assurance has made him vulnerable; his own right-doing has made him blind to the deviousness of others. and as he dies, we remember that he is, indeed, a man of integrity, a man not open to corruption, a man of his word, a man who can be trusted where others cannot. in this he has distinguished himself, but martius has an innocence that his own nobility of spirit imposes on him, and he misreads the political situation to the very end. he fails to see what is coming. 240 armenian folia anglistika literature by the end of the play, shakespeare has manipulated our sympathies and presented the erstwhile disagreeable martius in such a way that his death arouses a personal reaction that is all the more essential to the impact of the play in that it is by no means what we have been led to expect. we are still not allowed to forget what, in the past, martius stood for and, indeed, the final words of the play call to mind the widows and “unchilded” women (5.6.152) he has so grievously offended. but the “noble memory” (5.6.154) he has earned seems eminently fitting. although his enemies pour scorn on the “boy of tears” (5.6.103) who puts personal sentiment before military obligations, we realise that martius has finally endorsed the values of family and community, which he seemed so often to dismiss, the shared values of one who, at last, realises what is meant by belonging. as aufidius takes his devious revenge, it is valour itself that weeps, and valour, the highest virtue rome had to offer (2.2.82), represents ideals that martius clearly embodied. the question of liking or not liking martius, which may have seemed so trivial, so unscientific, is one that cannot simply be dismissed, and however much the kind of research undertaken by our colleagues from the science faculties seems to set the standard for all academic endeavour, the literary historian has the right to claim the specific nature and value of his own field of study. our analyses of texts involve close, sensitive and, above all, informed reading. the examining, sifting and weighing up of evidence require experience, training, and considerable background knowledge and form the basis of a justifiable academic discipline – we are not just reading books and saying whether we enjoy them. that we enjoy our work – as i hope we do – does not undermine its value. if our scientific colleagues do not find enjoyment in their work, that is not our fault. the contemporary paradigm of scientific knowledge leaves ample place, i am convinced, for language and literature. notes: 1. personally, i do not like hamlet, at least not until he returns from england. hamlet is a play like coriolanus: the hero is presented backwards, as it were. we only start liking him when it is too late. i would like to thank my friend and former colleague, dr. margaret tomarchio, for her careful reading of this paper and for making many helpful suggestions. 2. and even they are potentially dangerous, as cinna the poet finds out. 3. and throughout coriolanus the political game is seen in images of theatrical performance. 4. i am, of course, adapting a remark made by c.s. lewis’s private tutor to characterise the somewhat dour nature of john milton: “i would venture to assert that no human being ever called him johnnie” (lewis 1966: 64 and, for the complete letter, lewis 2004: 563). 5. some editors suggest that martius and his men will get to their enemies’ wives first, but this idea of the sexual rewards of warfare fits ill with martius’s integrity. when he speaks of “that kiss/ i carried from thee, dear, and my true lip/ hath virgined it e’er since” (5.3.46-8), i see no reason to doubt his words. 241 literature armenian folia anglistika references: 1. austen-leigh, j.e. (1926) a memoir of jane austen. / ed. by r.w. chapman. london: oxford university press. 2. bela, t. (2000) ‘the queen is dead, long live the queen’: eulogy and nostalgia in jacobean literature // les débuts de siècles. / ed. by terence mccarthy, dijon: ufr de langues et communication. 3. brockbank, p. (ed.) (1976) coriolanus. arden edition. london: routledge. 4. chaucer, g. (1957) the complete works of geoffrey chaucer. / ed. by f.n. robinson. london: oxford university press. 5. lewis, c.s. (1954) english literature in the sixteenth century excluding drama. oxford: clarendon press. 6. lewis, c.s. (1966) letters of c.s. lewis. / ed. by w.h. lewis, london: geoffrey bles. 7. lewis, c.s. (2004) the collected letters of c.s. lewis, family letters 1905-1931. / ed. by walter hooper. new york: harpersanfransisco. 8. shakespeare, w. (1994) coriolanus. / ed. by r.b. parker. oxford: oxford university press. 9. shakespeare, w. (2002) king richard ii. / ed. by c.r. forker. arden edition. london: thomson. 10. shakespeare, w. (1951) macbeth. / ed. by kenneth muir. arden edition. london: methuen. ø³ñãçáõëç í»ñ³í³ñïáõùá. ñ³ý¹çë³ï»ëç ³ñó³·³ýùá îáñçáé³ýç ñ»ñáëçý è³ûýáñ»ý ï³ñ³íí³í ³ûý ï³ñíçùá, áñ îáñçáé³ýá þ»ùëåçñç áõµ»ñ·³ï³ý ñ»ñáëý»ñçó ³ù»ý³³ýáý¹áõý»éçý ¿, µëáõù ¿ »ñïáõù »é³ï»ï³ûçý ñ³ý¹çë³óáõ ù³õ³ù³ï³ý çñ³íç׳ïçó ¨ ¹³ë³ûçý ñ³ï³ù³ñïáõãû³ý ñçùý³ñ³ñó»ñç ßáõñç ý»ñï³ûç áõ ³ýóû³éç ï³ñµ»ñ ùáï»óáõùý»ñçó: äñáï³·áýçëïý»ñç µ³ó³ë³ï³ý ³ñó³·³ýùá ¨ë çñ ñ»ïùá ãáõ»ó »ñïç åáõáíñ¹³ï³ýáõãû³ý íñ³ çýãå»ë ã³ïñáýáõù, ³ûýå»ë ¿é éë³ñ³ýáõù: æýãå»ë ýß»é ¿ èáëçï»ñá §...áõµ»ñ·áõãû³ý ³ùµáõç áýã³óùáõù áýã»ñóáõá îáñçáé³ýçý ñ³ù³ïñ»éáõ áã ùç »½ñ ãç ·ïýáõù¦: êáõûý ³ßë³ï³ýùá ï³ëï³íç ï³ï ¿ ¹ýáõù èáëçï»ñç ³ûë ùáï»óáõùá` ÷³ëï³ñï»éáí, áñ »ñïç í»ñçáõù ñáõ½³ï³ýáõãû³ý ó³ûïáõý ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõãûáõýý ¿, áñ ñ»ñáëç ýï³ïù³ùµ ³é³ç³óýáõù ¿ ýù³ý ãí³óû³é ³ýñ³ý¹áõñåáõ³ï³ýáõãûáõý: æëï í»åç í»ñçáõù çßëáõ ·³õ³÷³ñá ³ïýñ³ûïáñ»ý áã ã» ù³õ³ù³ï³ý ¿, ³ûé ñ³ù³ù³ñ¹ï³ûçý ³ûý í»ñ ·³õ³÷³ñý»ñç áõ ³ñå»ùý»ñç í»ñ³·ý³ñ³ïáõùá, áñáýù ³ûýù³ý ñëï³ï ù³ñùý³íáñí³í »ý ø³ñãçáõëç ï»ñå³ñáõù£ 242 armenian folia anglistika literature kazm.cdr “politicized” syntagms in action in the present article an attempt is made to study theinteraction of some lexical syntagms in the context of political discourse, that is to observe them in action in political reality. the analysis of these syntagms is intended to reveal their role and function in political discourse. the linguistic material is taken from selected speeches both by world superpower and armenian political leaders. the extralinguistic reality present in the analyzed samples of political discourse is the intersection of the big politics of powerful and “small” countries with their own problems each and, at the same time, common challenges that should be negotiated upon and handled collectively, effeciently and without delay. the modern political discourse is predominantly action-oriented and the linguistic means typical of its construct should be up to its spirit and intent. actually, any mature professional politician who is going to deliver a speech has two intentions in mind and two tasks set forward – to persuade and to influence. the first one is mainly realized through logical arguments, while the second one considers human emotions and expressiveness as priorities. with this end in view, a politician becomes highly selective in the ways and means of his or her linguistic expression as this is largely representative of his or her self-image, political ambitions and abilities. on the one hand, the statements should be or seem truthful, unbiased and logical (the actual correlation of the message with the objective reality is not relevant here). on the other hand, they should show the speaker’s sincere concern and emotional involvement in the socially relevant matter and his or her will-consistency to pursue its settlement in the way most beneficial to ordinary citizens. thus, it can be assumed that politicians need such linguistic units which are logical-factive, emotional-evaluative, and, preferably, action-oriented (the latter refers to the semantics of the lexical unit). the study of our textual material, the speeches by the uk prime minister tony blair, the us president george bush, the ra president robert kocharian and the ra minister of foreign affairs vartan oskanian, has revealed that the lexical syntagms with the suffix able / -ible are quite frequent and varied in this kind of discourse. to begin with our analysis, we think that it is necessary to focus on the termconcept “lexical syntagm”, proposed and defined by the representatives of the russian school of linguistics. lexical syntagms are those words, which, being clearly divisible in terms of derivation, may be coined, brought to life, regularly reproduced, or regenerated by the speaker at will. in other words, lexical syntagmatics deals only with those 61 linguistics armenian folia anglistika mara baghdasaryan derivative words, the creation or the very existence of which is based on the quite definite, well-fixed rules of combining morphemes according to productive patterns, i.e. rules determined by the lexical-morphological categories of the language under investigation (alexandrova, ter-minasova, 1987). the lexical syntagms with the suffix -able/-ible express possibility of production (realization) of action and clearly indicate the functional intent of the speeches under research. this is apparently due to the combination of two semantic components in these syntagms, those of action and emotional evaluation which is commonly inherent to the class of adjectives. the semantic component of action turns these syntagms into carriers of the notion of dynamism which is generally typical of active verbs. our analysis comes to prove that the lexical syntagms with -able/-ible are the second in the frequency of occurrence in the political speeches of the mentioned political leaders. due to their particularly high frequency some of these syntagms have even acquired certain value of political terms, and collocated with other words tend to form clichéed political expressions. here are some minor contexts containing the above-mentioned type of syntagms. 1. the allies of terror are equally guilty of murder and equally accountable to justice. (g. bush, 10 november 2001) 2. what is more, their alternative judgement is both entirely rational and arguable. (t. blair, 30 june 2004) 3. and it was driven not by a set of negotiable political demands, but by religious fanaticism. (t. blair, 30 june 2004) 4. the south caucasus, as the boundary of the european continent, should be considered an indivisible part of european security. (r. kocharian, 22 november 2002) 5. many of today’s social ills, and the economic ones, too, will be well on their way to disappearing if human rights are accepted, absorbed, respected and implemented as inarguable, inalienable, unalterable rights. (v. oskanian, 15-16 march 2004) 6. as a result, this continent [europe] has produced a reliable and unique system of interdependence. (r. kocharian, 25 january 2001) some lexical syntagms such as accountable, arguable, negotiable, reliable express possibility of production of action, others, like inarguable, inalienable, unalterable, indivisible, on the contrary, express impossibility of production of action, that is rejection of that possibility by means of such negative prefixes as inor un-. taken in isolation, these lexical units do not have any “political colouring” or “orientation”: they belong to the common word-stock of the english language. anyhow, as far as they occur in a “political environment”, that is, in a political context, they become “politicized”. when these linguistic elements are transposed and interwoven with political discourse, they establish relationships with other linguistic and extralinguistic elements of their new environment and change functionally. this means if we admit the 62 armenian folia anglistika linguistics fact that the functional style defines the character of a lexical syntagm, we have to admit the opposite assertion as valid, too: the character of a lexical syntagm can serve as a distinctive feature of the functional style. now an attempt will be made to examine the examples adduced above in terms of the opposition message vs impact and in terms of the system of categories and parameters (alexandrova, ter-minasova, 1987; òåð-ìèíàñîâà, 1980). in the first, second, third and fourth mini-contexts the lexical syntagms accountable, arguable, negotiable, indivisible represent the objective, logical, formal, direct and real aspects of the opposition message vs impact. obviously, the intellective function of transmitting information, which is carried out with the help of these syntagms, dominates in the contexts under observation. the analysis of these syntagms according to the system of categories and parameters shows that these lexical units possess the characteristics of such categories as reproducibility (clichéedness), sociolinguistic and conceptual determination. the presence of the category of reproducibility clearly indicates that the realization of these syntagms in these specific contexts is quite natural, usual and corresponds to language norm. in political discourse these syntagms very often occur in such collocations as accountable to justice, judgement is both entirely rational and arguable, negotiable political demands, indivisible part and the like. this is largely due to the sociolinguistic and conceptual determination of the lexical syntagms accountable, arguable, negotiable, indivisible whose semantic contents, conceptual meanings and the extralinguistic reality they reflect are in one to one correspondence. this predetermines the reign supreme of the function of message rejecting any connotativeness, the latter being in the domain of the function of impact. thus, the information passed on via these four utterances is presented as strictly logical and objective, and the utterances themselves realize the intellective function of speech. we would like to stop for a while on the conceptual and socioliguistic contents of the selected lexical syntagms. the conceptual contents of the syntagm accountable becomes condensed due to the lexical intensifier equally. at the same time, the lexical unit accountable seems to have somewhat lost its semantic content and it is due to its collocation with the intensifier equally that it regains its meaning at full. this semantic change is largely conditioned, on the one hand, by a linguistic factor and, on the other hand, by an extralinguistic one: firstly, since the syntagm accountable has frequently been used in the context of political discourse it has become clichéed, and clichéed words, as it is known, are not expressive enough; secondly, though this syntagm is frequently used by g. bush, t. blair and other world leaders, terror, terrorists and their allies do not decrease. hence, as we see, the action underlying the concept of this lexical unit, for this or that reason, is not very often realized in our reality. it can be assumed that the conceptual determination of the syntagm accountable has weakened because of its current specific sociolinguistic determination. the combination of the lexical syntagm negotiable with the expression political demands is, to a great extent, sociolinguistically burdened. nowadays the world faces 63 linguistics armenian folia anglistika numerous and various challenges which are often presented in the form of different political demands. the concept of negotiation and, consequently, also the concept of negotiable political demands, are cultivated in the social-political life of the modern progressive society. thus, when a demand is political and negotiable, it can be handled and met. being negotiable is already considered a positive start for the solution to the problem, as opposed to religious fanaticism which is considered uncontrollable and impossible to be perceived and overcome rationally. the second example is an utterance made by tony blair in which the lexical syntagm arguable is used. this lexical unit is quite frequent in political discourse. so, it could be said that it is observed in a natural environment presented via the following mini-context: “…judgement is both entirely rational and arguable”. though the syntagm arguable does not stand next to the syntagm judgement, the former is directly attributed to the latter on the conceptual-semantic level. so, it can be transferred into the combination arguable judgement which is politically marked and is considerably reproducible, sociolinguistically and conceptually determined. the discussed expression is used by mr blair in reference to his opponents’ standpoint on the matter of the war in iraq, which the uk took part in. he does not criticize his opponents for their opposite judgement but, on the contrary, qualifies it as arguable and gives objective, logical reasons for that. further he also gives a reason justifying his own judgement and decision. as a result, the speaker’s reason acquires more persuasive force against the background of his rational approach to his opponents’ standpoint. the use of the lexical unit arguable is a diplomatically justified step for, on the one hand, it calms down the people opposed to the decision, and, on the other one, supports the very decision. in the fourth example the collocation of the lexical units indivisible and part is analyzed. this collocation is very usual in political discourse: indivisible part of a country; indivisible part of territorial integrity; indivisible part of the european family; indivisible part of european security. the lexical syntagm indivisible and its combination with part have become clichés that vividly express the modern political mentality of the world. this means that they reflect the extralinguistic reality by means of their sociolinguistic determination. in this case the extralinguistic reality is the geopolitical position of the south caucasus region and the european continent and the social-political situation in these areas. though the south caucasus is a geographically indivisible part of the european continent, and this requires no proof, it is not an indivisible part of european security, while the opposite state of things would be logical with respect to the first part of robert kocharian’s statement. here we deal with the pragmatic presuppositional aspect of the utterance: “the south caucasus … should be considered an indivisible part of european security” but, actually, it is not and this is not right or fair on the part of the other european countries that consider themselves as indivisible parts of the european family and security and do not consider the south caucasus as an equally indivisible part of the european security. in the fifth example a frequent use of syntagms with the suffix -able is observed: “human rights …as inarguable, inalienable, unalterable rights”. mr vartan oskanian 64 armenian folia anglistika linguistics tends to be maximum objective and logical in his evaluation of human rights. he also tends to present this in a direct and factive manner. the use of these lexical units in the given context is both sociolinguistically and conceptually determined, and it is even the demand of the time the 21st century, and the occasion the 60th session of the commission on human rights, on which the speech was presented. the use of such attributes with the word-combination human rights which has already become one of the key social-political terms is quite reproducible (clichéed) in political discourse. the adjectives inarguable, inalienable, unalterable have so frequently been used to modify the above-mentioned word-combination that have become somewhat hackneyed and tend to lose their full semantic meaning. but when these three adjectives occur in immediate succession they become a kind of intensifiers for one another and contribute to the reconstruction of the meaning of the underlying concepts at full. the clichéed environment gives way to the emotional-expressive o ne, and this brings about a pathetic element introduced into the speech. as a rule, in such cases the speech becomes brighter and the target-audience more liable to perceive it. this peculiar interchange of the objective-logical and emotional-evaluative elements in these lexical syntagms comes to prove that these lexical units are “politicized”, that is, they are politically marked and have a specific functional value. the simultaneous coexistence of different parameters in a linguistic unit obviously shows that no hard line between the categories can be drawn, and what is relevant to speak about in this context is the balance, the proportion of the categories present in this or that particular case. actually, there can be found not only purely connotative or clichéed lexical syntagms, but also a great variety of intermediate cases. in the sixth example the lexical syntagm reliable is under study. it is realised in the following lexical-syntactic environment: “… a reliable and unique system of interdependence”. if we compress the environment even more, the combination of immediate constituents reliable system will be left. this word-combination is typical of social-political discourse. reliable system is what is sought for in every country, every region, every organization nowadays. the adjective reliable is used to attach objective, logical evaluation to the reality denoted by the lexical unit system. but, at the same time, we should bear in mind that this evaluation is made by one individual and, thus, it cannot be regarded purely objective even if this opinion is shared by other individuals. also, it should be taken into account that the criteria for reliability may be different for different individuals, groups of people, political parties and nations. according to president robert kocharian, europe has produced a reliable and unique system of interdependence. on the part of the speaker this can be regarded quite an objective, factive statement which may have its supporters and opponents. but it is not a secret that a number of politicians and political scientists in the world think that the system of the european family has to some extent consumed itself and does not fully meet the everchanging challenges the countries and nations of the continent face at present. hence, the syntagm reliable synthesizes both the components of objectivity and subjectivity in its semantic content. the coexistence of these oppositional elements 65 linguistics armenian folia anglistika indicates that the relations of the lexical syntagm reliable to the linguistic environment it is found in and to the extralinguistic reality it refers to are not identical. the use of this syntagm in the given context is by all means sociolinguistically determined. the lexical syntagms with -able/-ible really form a specific group of adjectives in the english language. being originated on mostly verbal bases, they realize the category of possibility of production of action and the category of quality that are actually present in a great variety of pure and intermediate forms in real speech situations. in these syntagms the verbal component of meaning accounts for the semantic element of process which makes them carriers of dynamism and action. this is an essential characteristics for the functional context these syntagms are observed in. political discourse, or, speaking more accurately, political speeches have a definite functional orientation – persuasion and impact on the audience, that is logical argumentation and emotional influence, promoting the hearers to certain activity “encoded” in the speeches. hence, the speeches themselves should also have a dynamic and action-oriented content. this makes the politician’s speech lively and effective. our observations come to show that a large variety of lexical syntagms with -able / -ible due to their high frequency of use in political discourse, have already acquired the value of political terms or, in other words, they have become “politicized” and tend to form clichéed political expressions in collocation with other lexical units. the above-mentioned lexical syntagms have acquired a distinctive feature of the functional substyle of political discourse. but this is only realized via and owing to certain functional linguistic environment and the transactions of the lexical units with the concepts of the social reality and the reflections of the latter in these lexical units. references: 1. halliday m. a. k. explorations in the functions of language. london, 1973. 2. halliday m. a. k. language as social semiotic. the social interpretation of language and meaning. london, 1978. 3. alexandrova o., ter-minasova s. english syntax: collocation, colligation and discourse. m., 1987. 4. âèíîãðàäîâ â. â. èòîãè îáñóæäåíèÿ âîïðîñîâ ñòèëèñòèêè. // â.ß. , ¹1, 1955. 5. êîæèíà ì.í. ê îñíîâàíèÿì ôóíêöèîíàëüíîé ñòèëèñòèêè. ïåðìü, 1968. 6. ìèêîÿí à.ñ., òåð-ìèíàñîâà ñ.ã. ìàëûé ñèíòàêñèñ êàê ñðåäñòâî ðàçãðàíè÷åíèÿ ñòèëåé. ì., 1981. 7. ðàçèíêèíà í.ì. ôóíêöèîíàëüíàÿ ñòèëèñòèêà. ì., 1989. 8. ñìèðíèöêèé à.è. ìîðôîëîãèÿ àíãëèéñêîãî ÿçûêà. ì., 1959. 9. òåð-ìèíàñîâà ñ.ã. ñèíòàãìàòèêà ðå÷è: îíòîëîãèÿ è ýâðèñòèêà. ì., 1980. 10. ×àêîâñêàÿ ì.ñ. òåêñò êàê ñîîáùåíèå è âîçäåéñòâèå. ì., 1986. 66 armenian folia anglistika linguistics §ø²ô²ø²î²ü²òì²ì¦ þ²ðàôúâüºðà ¶àðìàôàôâú²ü øºæ êáõûý ³ßë³ï³ýùáõù ÷áñó ¿ ³ñíáõù ùýý»éáõ áñáß μ³é³ûçý ß³ñáõûãý»ñç ÷áëý»ñã³÷³ýóáõùá ¨ ¹»ñá ù³õ³ù³ï³ý ¹çëïáõñëáõù, ³ûëçýùý ¹çï³ñï»éáõ, ã» çýãå»ë »ý ¹ñ³ýù ·áñíç ¹ñíáõù ý»ñï³û³óý»éáõ ù³õ³ù³ï³ý çñ³ï³ýáõãûáõýá: àõëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõýá óáõûó ¿ ï³éçë, áñ ¹çï³ñïíáõ μ³é³ûçý ß³ñáõûãý»ñá ù³õ³ù³ï³ý ¹çëïáõñëç ïíû³é ï»ë³ïáõù ïçñ³éù³ý μ³ñóñ ñ³×³ë³ï³ýáõãû³ý ßýáññçí ó»éù »ý μ»ñ»é ù³õ³ù³ï³ý ï»ñùçýý»ñç ³ñå»ù ï³ù, ³ûé ï»ñå ³ë³í, §ù³õ³ù³ï³ý³óí»é¦ »ý ¨, ³ûé μ³é³ûçý ùç³íáñý»ñç ñ»ï ·áñí³íí»éáí, ùçïáõù áõý»ý ó¨³íáñ»éáõ í»ñ³ñï³¹ñ»éç ï³ù ï³õ³å³ñ³ûçý ù³õ³ù³ï³ý ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõãûáõýý»ñ: 67 linguistics armenian folia anglistika microsoft word maket 2020-2(22) (3)-1 (1).doc armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 translation studies 74 the historical background of the king james bible seda gasparyan yerevan state university abstract the present article aims to investigate the historical and religious circumstances which incited king james to initiate and start the translation of the holy script anew though two other versions of the bible in english were already there. the stormy period england and the english church were going through in mid-xvi century and the succession of prince james vi of scotland to throne (who became king james i of england) and his unfavorable attitude towards protestantism made him conceive the idea of the necessity of creating a new english version of the bible which will provide appropriate influence on the church and keep it away from calvinist views and ideas. through the employment of the descriptive method, the author on the other hand tries to analyse the most prominent events and activities which preconditioned the creation of the new english version of the bible, known as the king james bible, which has long proved to be the best translation of the bible in english. key words: bible translations, the king james bible, the domineering popularity of the geneva bible, to delimit the puritan effect, modifications of the bible text. introduction the investigations of the biblical texts have always been the topic of heated discussions among theologians, linguists as well as representatives of other scientific disciplines. over the years the biblical stories and testimonies have been persistently challenged by various scholars, with particular emphasis on the language of the bible. the original texts and manuscripts in greek, hebrew and aramaic were produced over a period in which the living conditions of the https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2020.16.2.074 translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 75 writers – political, cultural, economic and ecological – varied enormously (riches 2000). nevertheless, the bible is considered, by and large, as the bestselling book of all time with estimation of 100 million copies sold per year and has a tremendous influence upon the history and literature of all christian cultures. it has been translated approximately 469 languages, and this number continues to increase. the greatest number of translations of the holy bible, which differ from one another in terms of theology and language, has been accomplished in english. this is by no means accidental as at present english is the most widely used language in the world. there are over 200 versions of the holy book translated into english – each of them rendering the text slightly differently and claiming to be the best and most precise translation available on the market. however, this was not the case three hundred years ago, when the only english bible accessible to public at large was the king james version (kiv), otherwise known as the authorized version. reasons for creating a new translation of the bible the particular translation of the holy scripture was accomplished under the reign of king james i in 1611. the authorized or the king james version quickly became the standard for english-speaking protestants. its elevated language and rhythmical prose has had a profound influence upon the english literature of the past 400 years. nevertheless, in the beginning of the 20th century new translations of the bible into the english language were undertaken. the number one motivation for the commencement of renovation of the biblical texts was induced by the precarious assumption that the language of the king james bible had become obsolete and out-of-date, which created certain abstracts in the process of reading and comprehending the word of god. the modifications brought about by the newly translated versions, be that as it may, were not merely confined within the frames of simplifying and modernizing the language, but penetrated into all levels of language structure. as a result, the changes introduced into the linguistic form of an expression have given rise to various changes into their semantic structure as well. even armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 translation studies 76 the most trivial substitution of a punctuation mark has brought about some drastic consequences related to the doctrine and theology. the linguistic and, consequently, theological divergences which have been engendered in the result of numerous translations of one and the same text have thereby become an inevitable fact. in the last century 150 versions of the bible in english were produced. the question is: why does the english language need over two hundred translation when there are over 400 ethnic languages that can happily live with one or two translations? the answer is evident: the particular tendency of translating, printing and afterwards, selling so many versions is largely conditioned by the amount of money to be gained by publishing yet another ‘trendy’ translation of god’s unchanging words. however, let us not forget the words of a wise man who once said, “a man with a watch knows what time it is, but the one with two watches must decide which one to trust”1. this very saying is highly relevant for the depiction of the present abundance of english versions of the bible. nonetheless, despite the presence of so many english versions of the holy bible available on the market today, the kjv is still recognized as a standard of comparison by which all other translations are measured. the research carried out within the framework of the present paper aims to study the historical circumstances against the background of which the king james bible – one of the most outstanding and mysterious phenomena ever, has been created. the king james version (kjv) also known as the king james bible (kjb) is an english translation of the christian bible by the church of england undertaken in 1604 and entirely completed by the end of 1611. it is widely believed that kjv constitutes the only standard by which all other versions and translations are measured. some people have even gone so far as to claim that kjv was inspired by god himself and is completely free of errors and imperfections. king james bible, however, was only the third translation of the bible into english that gained the approval of the english church. the first bible authorized by the church of england was the great bible that came out in1538 translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 77 under the reign of king henry viii. the great bible was prepared by myles coverdale who extensively made use of tyndale’s bible (1525). william tyndale2 in his turn had made translations of the bible into english directly from the greek and hebrew texts and manuscripts. however, prior to his execution in 1536 tyndale had only finished translating the entire new testament and roughly half of the old testament. thus coverdale had no other option but to translate the remaining books of the old testament and apocrypha3 from the latin vulgate and german versions rather than having at one’s disposal aramaic, hebrew and greek texts. as a result of working with secondary sources rather than with original texts the great bible by coverdale was subsequently regarded inadequate in rendering the “word of god” and was thereupon superseded by the bishops’ bible. the geneva bible and the rejection of the calvinist views the bishops’ bible was the second bible in the english language authorized by the church of england in 1568. the emergence of the bishops’ bible was necessitated by the fact that in the second half of the 16th century the spiritual life in england was heavily dominated by the geneva bible which propagated the calvinist4 views on the religion and had become the symbol of protestantism5 in england. the geneva bible was a specifically significant work as for the first time in history it was mechanically printed and made accessible to public at large. it came out with a variety of marginal notes, footnotes, maps and tables and was often called a study bible. nevertheless, this authoritative dominion of the calvinist bible (the geneva bible) could not leave impartial the high clergymen of the church of england to which all of the bishops subscribed. they considered calvinism as a religious movement that aspired to replacing the episcopalian6 tradition of the church governance. hence, ‘retaliatory measures’ were taken, and the church of england responded with the bishops’ bible which was first published in 1568 and republished in an overwhelmingly revised form in 1572. the second version of the bishops’ bible got rid of those cross-references, footnotes and marginal notes that were present in the geneva bible, and which contained much of the controversial theology, armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 translation studies 78 irrespective of the fact, that they were much of a help to people to whom the bible was still a new ‘device’. in the revised form of the bishops’ bible (1572) the language was substantially taken to the level of ecclesiastical traditions. the bishops’ bible obtained the royal authority warrant and became the second bible (after the great bible) which was so highly privileged as to be appointed to be read aloud in church services. however the bishops’ bible did not come up to expectations as it was printed only in lectern editions and at a cost of several pounds which was not commonly affordable among common people. consequently, the geneva bible persisted in dominating the british market as it came out in small editions and was available at a relatively low cost (campbell 2010). presently, with the death of queen elisabeth i7, prince james vi of scotland succeeded to the throne, thus becoming king james i of england. the new king was notoriously famous for his hostility to puritans8 and their calvinist views on religion and church. king james insisted on the divine rights of kings, and his brutality towards the followers of protestantism had reached the level of utmost severity. shortly after ascending the throne his primary task became eliminating the popularity commanded by the geneva bible and the influence it exerted upon the people of england (cogswell 1989). the approaches and principles guiding the translators in july 1604 king james summoned a committee to hampton court to get prepared for one of the most influential and significant undertakings that had ever occurred in the history of the english church. the aim of the congregation was to ‘forge’ the one and only ‘authorized’ translation of the bible that would be accessible to every single citizen inhabiting the british isles. thereupon, james i convened all the meetings, planned down the whole process of the translation and financed the entire project. one of the most momentous tasks, i.e. the new translation of the bible was undertaken by 47 scholars – almost all being members of the church of england. the number one task that the translators of kjv were to fulfill was to delimit the puritan effect on the new version on the one hand, and evade the translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 79 undesirable influence that was indirectly exercised upon the spiritual life of england by the roman catholic church on the other. the most significant peculiarity that made a difference between the kjv and the geneva bible was the fact that the translators of kjv were strongly forbidden to add any marginal notes, footnotes or cross-references by which the geneva bible had been abundantly characterized. moreover, king james instructed the scholars to implicate the elevated style of language that would conform to the ecclesiology of the english church. particularly, there were a certain number of greek and hebrew words that were to be translated in a way as to reflect the traditional use of terminology characteristic of the church of england. for an example we could refer to the greek word εκκλησία9 which has two meanings: congregation and church. instead of translating as congregation – as was the case with the geneva bible, they rendered it into english as church. regardless of the fact that a completely new translation was endeavored, the text of the bishops’ bible would serve as a starting point, a primary guide for the scholars and translators. this very fact suggested that all the familiar proper names of the biblical characters should be retained. still, in case the translators faced certain ambiguity in consulting the bishops’ bible they were permitted to resort to previously published and ‘infamously’ abandoned bibles, such as the tyndale’s bible, the coverdale’s bible, the great bible, and even though seemingly incongruous, they could also make use of the geneva bible. nevertheless, the authorized version was translated primarily from the greek, hebrew and aramaic texts, with secondary reference to the latin vulgate. the team of the old testament translators used a text originating in the editions of the hebrew rabbinic bible10. in the 16th-17th centuries hebrew scholarship was re-emerging once again from the ‘ashes of the unknown’. the scholars working with the hebrew texts were outstandingly proficient in the latin, greek, hebrew, aramaic and arabic languages. in fact the hebraic proficiency of the old testament translators’ team included not only knowledge of the book in the original hebrew but also accomplishments in the medieval jewish exegesis and grammar. the hebrew text which the kjv translators were working on was the one widely known as leningrad codex11. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 translation studies 80 although the latter could not be classified as very ancient, it could be considered the most complete and reliable manuscript which dates from approximately 1008 ad and constitutes the most important fragment of the hebrew bible (mcgrath 2002). naturally, it was easier to ‘dig out’ a good deal of proficient specialists of greek than of hebrew to translate the new testament, for virtually all educated englishmen knew greek as well as latin. ironically, however, the ‘squad’ of the new testament translators faced much more disastrous obstacles than they could have envisioned. the number one problem came along the fact that the translators of the new testament had at their disposal the greek edition of the new testament (1588) compiled by no less a man than theodore beza – a french protestant christian theologian and scholar who played a significant role in the reformation. more importantly, beza was a disciple of john calvin – the most prominent propagator of puritanism. consequently, the translators were challenged to solve the problem of eliminating the ‘puritan effect’ that was vividly exposed on the surface of beza’s work. therefore, the kjv translators were sensitive to the significance of the context in the meaning of words, and they translated the words according to their contextual meaning as well as dictionary definition, thus avoiding the “biased approach and scrupulosity of puritans” at the same time retaining the capability of shunning the papists (the douay-rheims bible12) so that the scripture may speak by itself and be comprehensible even to the very vulgar. eventually, all the translators completed their sections by 1608, apocrypha committee finishing first. the original printing of the authorized version was published by robert barker13, the king's printer in 1611. the original printing had been made before the english spelling became standardized so printers could usually indulge themselves in expanding and contracting the spelling of one and the same word in different places in order to achieve (for instance) an even column of the text. they would utilize v for initial u and v, and u for u and v everywhere else. when there was a necessity to save the space the printers used ye instead of thee, ä for an or am, and even & for and. conversely, they could also insert the above mentioned words in their complete translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 81 form wherever the lines needed to be padded. naturally, punctuation was relatively heavy and profoundly different from the modern punctuation rules. the original printing contained two prefatory texts: “epistle dedicatory to the most high and mighty prince king james” and “the translators to the readers”. the latter represented a critical and explanatory essay where the translators were trying to justify the necessity of creating the new translation of the bible and its importance to the future generations. they particularly claimed: “we do not deny, nay we affirm or avow, that the very meanest translation of the bible in english is set forth by men of our profession (for we have seen none of theirs of the whole bible as yet) containeth the word of god, nay is the word of god”. however, the wide acceptance of the authorized version by public took longer. the geneva bible continued to be the most popular version despite the fact that its printing in england had been largely suspended since 1616. the newly published editions of the geneva bible were mainly imported to england from amsterdam. nonetheless, the overwhelming predominance of the g.b. did not last long as shortly after the english restoration14 it became politically “biblia non grata” and merely served as a reminder of the temporarily forgotten puritan era. thus, since the first half of the 18th century the authorized version has become the “one and only” version circulating among the english speaking people. by the mid-18th century as a result of a 130-year-old publishing and republishing of the kjv, the authorized version accumulated so many notorious misprints and instances of misinterpretations that it could not pass unnoticed. therefore, a number of scholars from the universities of cambridge and oxford set out to resolve the matter and produce an updated version of the text. the cambridge edition came first in 1760. it was an outcome of the hard work and dedication by francis sawer parris15, who died in the same year of the armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 translation studies 82 publication of his work. subsequently, the cambridge version was heavily superseded by the oxford edition 1769. the revised version of the oxford publication was created by benjamin blayney16, and in comparison to the cambridge edition it contained comparatively few changes and corrections. thus, the cambridge edition became the only valid standard and has been since reprinted almost with no incorporated changes. the changes that were introduced in 1769 publication were of five kinds: a) greater use of italics, b) minor changes in the text, c) the adaptation of modern spelling, d) changes which consist in incorporating a good deal of marginal notes and references, e) corrections of the printers' errors. let us move on considering the essential features of these corrections one by one. a) use of italics: the kjv was originally printed in the type style known as “black letter”. here, the printed letters were too thick and a huge amount of ink was unscrupulously wasted. it had the following appearance: “the book of the generation of jesus christ”. interestingly enough, the english words in translation that were absent in the original and were merely implicated to make the meaning clearer were more commonly set in small “roman type”: “when herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled”. yet, in later editions, the ordinary text was set in “roman” type with the supplied words in “italics”: when herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled. b) changes in the text: the minor corrections and changes in the text of 1611 edition do not involve corrections of doctrinal or philosophical nature but rather appertain to the changes introduced in spelling rules, capitalization and translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 83 punctuation. among those changes we may come across, for instance, the following types of alternations: mathew 9:34 omission of the definite article the before devil mathew 16:16 omission of the definite article the before christ acts 24:24 jewess instead of jew corinthians 9:5 and instead of not eph 4:24 the new man instead of that new man c) the adoption of modern spelling: the problems associated with spelling, capitalization and punctuation were of much more problematic character. as we know the period of standardization of the english spelling had started in the late 17th century as a result of the activity of scholars and was completed by the end of the 18th century. the dictionaries and grammars fixed the written forms as obligatory standards; numerous variant spellings of the early modern english period went out of use. in the 18th century the sound changes slowed down, standard pronunciation (later known as received pronunciation) and standard spelling were firmly established, and the gap between the spoken and written form of the word was perpetuated. the conventional use of letters had prevailed over their original, phonetic use. thus, we can easily notice that in 1611 edition a great amount of ambiguity in the use of spelling system is detected. for example: feare–fear, shee–she, sonne–son, publique–publick, and– &, sinnes–sins. d) capitalization was another problem as the use of capital letters was not fully regular, and in addition to proper nouns that came necessarily in capital form, some common nouns referring, for instance, to important persons were also capitalized. below we can see the changes that were introduced in 1769 edition, the first chapter of mathew: angel of the lord – angel of the lord, holy ghost – holy ghost, his name jesus – his name jesus, behold, a virgin – behold, a virgin. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 translation studies 84 as far as the punctuation is concerned we shall firmly state that the 1622 edition was more heavily punctuated than the later or more recent editions, for the heavy punctuation was commonly the case for older books. e) marginal notes: finally, the introduction of marginal notes should be mentioned that indicate various readings and renderings from greek, hebrew and latin manuscripts (weigle 1962). as we have already noted, the kjv did not immediately overshadow its predecessors, for the geneva bible continued to retain its dominion among average citizens of england. however, by the beginning of the 18th century it had lost its grip on the british public. thence, only after 50 years of publication did the victory of kjv become complete. since then, the kjv has been conceived to be the only valid text that has the sacred right to render the voice of god. in fact, the kjv prevailed not by demolishing its predecessors, but by learning from them and ‘inhaling’ all the best that could be detectable in older translations. conclusion thus, our study of the historical background of the king james bible shows that the creation of this version of the bible was necessitated by the specific tendency of the english church to shrink away from the dominance of the roman papal dictatorship. the accomplishment of this translation was considered to be extremely important for both king james and the english church as it was the demand of the time, and the committee of the translators carried out their mission brilliantly. the king james bible has had an unprecedented influence upon the english language becoming the major source of inspiration for english poets and writers for about three hundred years. its significance can never be overestimated. notes: 1. a proverb commonly known as segul’s law. it is a humorous reference to the potential pitfalls of having too much conflicting information before translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 85 making a decision. retrieved october 5, 2020 from: < https://www. google. com/search?q=segul%e2%80%99s+law&rlz=1c1chbf_enam885am885 &oq=segul%e2%80%99s+law&aqs=chrome..69i57j0.1674j0j4&sourceid=ch rome&ie=utf-8> 2. william tyndale an english scholar who became a leading figure in protestant reform in the years leading up to his execution. he is well known for his translation of the bible into english. he was influenced by the work of desiderius erasmus (a dutch philosopher and one of the greatest scholars of northern renaissance) who made the greek new testament available in europe, and by martin luther (a german professor of theology, priest, author, composer, a seminal figure in the reformation). retrieved september 16, 2020 from: <https://www.britannica.com /biography/william-tyndale> 3. apocrypha is a name given to the collection of the ancient biblical books believed to have been written in the period between 200 bc – 400 ad and included in the body of different versions of the old testament. retrieved july 12, 2020 from: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/biblical_ apocrypha#:~: text=the%20biblical%20apocrypha%20(from%20the,200%20bc%20and% 20400%20ad.> 4. calvinism (also called the reformed tradition or the reformed faith) is a major branch of protestantism that follows the theological tradition and forms of christian practice of john calvin and other reformation-era theologians. calvinists broke with the roman catholic church but differed from lutherans on the question of the real presence of christ in the lord's supper, theories of worship, and the use of god's law for believers, among other things. retrieved august 20, 2020 from: <https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/biblical_apocrypha#:~:text=the%20biblical%20apocrypha%20(from %20the,200%20bc%20and%20400%20ad>; <https://www.christianity. com/church/denominations/what-is-calvinism.html> 5. protestantism, being a "branch" of christianity, however encompasses forms of christian faith and practice that originated with doctrines and religious, political and ecclesiological impulses of the protestant armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 translation studies 86 reformation against what they considered the errors of the roman catholic church. the term refers to the letter of protestation by lutheran princes against the decision of the diet of speyer in 1529, which reaffirmed the edict of the diet of worms condemning the teachings of martin luther as heresy. however, the term has been used in several different senses, often as a general term to refer to western christianity that is not subject to papal authority, including some traditions that were not part of the original protestant movement. retrieved august 8, 2020 from: <https://www.britannica.com/topic/protestantism/the-reformation-inengland-and-scotland>; https://www.britannica.com/topic/protestantism> 6. the episcopal church stands squarely in the reformed, or protestant, tradition and yet they consider themselves to be equally directly descended from the early church as the roman catholic or eastern orthodox churches. while we worship in ways similar to the roman catholic tradition, we do not recognize a single authority, such as the pope. the episcopal church is often referred to as the “middle way” since it contains elements of both the catholic church and protestant churches. retrieved august 10, 2020 from: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/anglican_ episcopal_ church> 7. elizabeth i (7 september 1533 – 24 march 1603) was queen regnant of england and ireland from 17 november 1558 until her death. sometimes called “the virgin queen”, “gloriana” or “good queen bess”, elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the tudor dynasty. retrieved september 15, 2020 from: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/elizabeth_i> 8. the puritans were a group of english protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries, including, but not limited to, english calvinists. puritanism in this sense was founded by some marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of elizabeth i to the throne of england in 1558, as an activist movement within the church of england. retrieved september 5, 2020 from: https://www.history.com/topics/colonial-america/puritanism translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 87 9. details about the definition and use of the greek word εκκλησία can be found in d. [dimitrios] dimitrakos (1964) mega lexikon olis tis ellinikis glossis, vol. 5, athens n.d.: hellenic paideia, p. 2343. 10. hebrew rabbinic bible is a volume covering jewish texts of great importance which were compiled in palestine and babylonia in late antiquity. in fact it is an edition of tanakh (in hebrew). retrieved september 8, 2020 from: <https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-greatrabbinic-bible> 11. the leningrad codex is the oldest complete hebrew bible still in existence today. while there are older codex's of bibles still in existence (i.e. the aleppo codex), they are not the complete text of the hebrew bible, containing all the books of the bible. the leningrad codex is considered one of the best examples of the masoretic text (which serves as basis for the old testament translations, the king james version included) represented by the ben-asher family. retrieved july 23, 2020 from: <https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-leningrad-codex> 12. the douay-rheims bible is an english version of the bible translated from latin vulgate which in its turn had been translated from hebrew, aramaic and greek texts. retrieved august 4, 2020 from: <http://www.douayrheimsaudiobible.org/> 13. robert barker (died 1645) was a printer to james i of england and son of christopher barker, who had been primer to queen elizabeth i. barker was most notably the printer of the king james bible, one of the most influential and important books ever printed in the english language. 14. the restoration of the monarchy began in 1660 when the english, scottish and irish monarchies were all restored under charles ii after the interregnum that followed the wars of the three kingdoms. the term restoration may apply to the actual event by which the monarchy was restored, and to the period immediately following the event. retrieved august 5, 2020 from: <https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/theenglish-restoration> armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 translation studies 88 15. francis sawyer parris (1707 – 60) was an english biblical scholar. his textual corrections, italicizations, marginal notes, column headings and cross-references played a major part in updating and standardizing the 1611 authorized king james version of the bible. retrieved august 10, 2020 from: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/francis_parris> 16. blayney, benjamin (1727/8—1801), hebraist and a clergyman in the church of england. retrieved august 12, 2020 from: <https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0 001/odnb-9780198614128-e-2628> references: 1. campbell, g. (2010) the story of the king james version. london: oup. 2. cogswell, th. (1989) the blessed revolution: english politics and the coming of war, 1621-1624. new york: cup. 3. mcgrath, a. (2002) in the beginning: the story of the king james bible. newcastle: anchor. 4. riches, j. (2000) the bible: a very short introduction. oxford: oup. 5. weigle, l.a. (1962) new testament octapla: eight english versions of the new testament. in the tyndale king james tradition. available at: <https://www.biola.edu/talbot/ce20/database/luther-allan-weigle> [accessed may 2020]. «ջեյմս թագավորի աստվածաշնչի» ստեղծման պատմական նախադրյալները հոդվածում նպատակ է դրվում ուսումնասիրելու պատմական ու կրոնական այն հանգամանքները, որոնք դրդեցին ջեյմս թագավորին ձեռնարկելու սբ. գրքի թարգնանությունը նորովի: xvi դարի կեսերին, անգլիայի և անգլիական եկեղեցու համար չափազանց փոթորկուն այդ ժամանակաշրջանը և հատկապես շոտլանդիայի ջեյմս vi արքայազնի գահակալությունն ու վերջինիս՝ բողոքականության հանդեպ դրսևորած անբարեհաճ վերաբերմունքը ծնունդ տվեցին աստվածաշնչի անգլերեն translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 16, issue 2 (22), 2020 89 նոր տարբերակի ստեղծման գաղափարին, քանի որ դրանով թերևս հնարավոր կդառնար եկեղեցին զերծ պահել կալվինիստական գաղափարներից: նկարագրական մեթոդի կիրառմամբ՝ հեղինակը փորձում է վերլուծել այն կարևորագույն իրադարձությունները, որոնցով պայմանավորված է սբ. գրքի թարգմանության նոր տարբերակի ստեղծումը: received by the editorial board 19.08.2020 recommended for publication by the reviewers 07.09.2020 accepted for print 05.10.2020 kazm.cdr christianization of fairies in armenia about 1700 years ago armenians were converted intochristianity. the new religion was brought into armenia from assyria and asia minor, preached by gregory the illuminator, the future bishop of the country, and was adopted as a state religion by tiridates iii, the haughty king of armenia. tiridates hoped christianity would make him independent from his two powerful and dangerous neighbors: rome and persia. though an ally of armenia, rome was imposing his patronage on the country, trying to weaken it by making the coronation of armenian kings the privilege of rome. to an extent the conversion would solve the problem, for christian kings could not be chosen by pagan rome. the sassanian threat was no less real. a considerable part of armenian nobility was zoroastrian and would serve the sassanians rather than an armenian king appointed by the romans. conversion into christianity, suggesting intolerance towards zoroastrianism, would bring armenian gentry together and distance them from persia. with the establishment of christianity in armenia the early church began to show intolerance towards any expression of paganism. pavstos buzand’s history of armenians, though rich in ridicule and criticism, gives a true and valuable picture of the newly converted nation still strongly attached to the pagan religion: they were like children absorbed in their play and their minds were busy with vain and useless things …they wasted their time on unworthy knowledge, pagan traditions and wild barbarous thoughts. they loved their myths and songs and they worshipped their old gods at night as if committing fornication (buzand, 1987: 70). unforgiving towards pagan gods, the early church was more tolerant towards minor heathen spirits: it found it sufficient to declare that fairies were evil spirits, regarding them as various transformations of the devil. an outstanding armenian scholar of the 5th century, yeznik koghbatsi, in his yeghts aghandots (the denial of sects), denies the existence of other rational creatures apart from angels, devils, and humans: “the devil likes to show itself in different appearances, and people give names to them” (koghbatsi, 1994: 81). the tendency to introduce fairies as devils could be traced as late as the 14th century. gregory of tatev, an armenian philosopher and theologian, though did not identify fairies with devils, but spoke of their affinities, stating: “like devils, fairies can deceive the humans with an illusion of false joy” (alishan, 1910: 15). interestingly, a similar situation arose in europe, in ireland, for example. in daith 147 armenological studies armenian folia anglistika alvard jivanyan o’ hogain’s an encyclopedia of the irish folk tradition we read: the monk who committed the ancient lore to writing had, from the beginning, been somewhat uncomfortable theologically when describing the otherworld of prechristian belief. at times the writers regarded it as a simple realm of story, at other times they felt compelled to reduce its characters to the plane of ancient history, but when its mythical and spiritual nature became too awkward to handle they resorted to demonizing it (o’hogain, 1990: 187). in england with the growth of puritanism “the view of fairies became darker and the fallen angels began to be regarded as downright devils, with no mitigating features” (briggs, 1979: 320). but the common people had another attitude towards the fairy folk, quite different from that in christian writings. those better than we was a euphemism for fairies current in armenia until lately, very similar to the irish laudatory good people and scottish good neighbours and honest folk. such euphemisms did not only suggest that people were scared of these wanton creatures, but also showed humans esteemed them as being of higher rank. in the province of van, fairies were so favoured that g. servantsian, writing on the possible etymology of the word pari/peri (fairy), suggested that it might be derived from bari (kind) (servantsian, 1978: 45). the suggestion sounds plausible. pari, however, in armenian is a persian borrowing. it is very tempting to suggest english fairy is a persian borrowing, having a far more obvious commonality with pari or peri than with fata; this view, however, has long been denied as deceptive, though attractive (keightley, 1981: 5). in armenia the belief in fairies was uniquely mirrored in naming. the name pari was often given to a new-born girl in expectation that she should be a beauty. true, often the name was associative of ill-humour; irritable women in artsakh villages were called gizh pari (mad fairy). the artsakh tale huri-peri portrays the heroine in the following way: there was and was not a very beautiful girl whose name was huri-peri. this girl was so beautiful that whoever saw her was astonished but she was so ill-tempered that nobody wanted to take her into marriage. she was very ill-tempered and her conduct was rude, objected to everything and would not get along with people, was loud-mouthed, shameless and obstinate (hay zhoghovrdakan heqiatner, vol vi, 1973: 207). according to seriné in van (artchak) “it was a sin to cross one’s face when seeing a mermaid, for water fairies are created by god to protect humans from evil. on moonlit nights they come out of water and tread on the snakes’ nests, killing them. if not for the fairies the world would be filled with these evil creatures (seriné, 1978: 111). this was a rather strange mission for even today, armenian folk beliefs have elements of snake worship. in fairy tales fairy princes and princesses frequently appear to humans in the shape of beautiful snakes. further, in the same work we read: “the lake where the water 148 armenian folia anglistika armenological studies spirits dwell, is blessed by god… on its bottom stands an inviolable church”(seriné, 1978: 111). the dwelling of fairies in close neighborhood of a church speaks of the reconciliation of heathen creatures with christianity. of interest, this issue can be looked upon in comparison with material from scandinavian folklore. as christiansen puts it: many references occur to the churches of fairies, to their divine services and to their priests. thus there are stories about disputes between the fairy priest and the minister of the parish in consequence of the latter having declared that the fairies had no religion at all (christiansen: 1958: 91). according to a folk legend gregory the illuminator caught all the devs (fairies of huge size and revolting appearance) and threw them into a dungeon. the lame dev, however, begged gregory to set him free, promising to serve at st. karapet’s monastery in mush till the judgment day. it was his duty to gather the ashes left from the monastery fires and, walking two days’ way to the town of tigranakert, throw them into the river ephratis (servantsian, 1978: 75). similar legend material, common in eastern and southern norway, is presented in reidar christiansen’s list of legend types under type 5050 fairies prospect of salvation (christiansen, 1958: 89). of interest, irish fairies, too, grieved their isolation from the christian community: “having lost their places in heaven, the fairies were believed to be anxious to regain them,” writes dr. daith o’hogain. he mentions an irish folk legend about fairies asking a traveling priest if they would ever gain salvation. hearing a negative answer they began to wail pitifully (o’hogain, 1990: 188). a version of the legend, the priest’s supper, is narrated by w.b. yeats in irish folk and fairy tales: then said the little speaking fairy, while the rest came crowding after him from all parts, “go and ask father horrigan to tell us whether our souls will be saved at the last day, like the souls of good christians; and if you wish us well, bring back what he says without delay (yeats, 1962: 12). a number of folk legends try to relate the origin of fairies to the figure of christ. thus, according to a series of biblical legends, fairies are the descendants of humans, who for trying to deceive christ were cursed by him and their children became invisible kajks – evil fairies (ghanalanyan, 1969: 356-357). a popular legend suggests fairies take their origin from noah’s granddaughter. god had forbidden noah and his sons to lie with their wives during the deluge. one of noah’s sons, however, disobeyed and a daughter was born to him. when the waters subsided, and it was time to leave the ark, noah made up his mind to leave the new-born child in the ark. then god’s angel appeared and asked, “noah, is there anyone inside?” “no,” was the answer. “if there is someone,” said the angel primly, “may it become invisible.” 149 armenological studies armenian folia anglistika so the girl became a huri-peri (fairy), approached men and multiplied the race of the fairies in our world (bensé, 1972: 57). rather explicitly the christianization of fairies can be seen in armenian fairy tales. in the tale of prince armen, a fairy, finding out her wings are stolen by a young girl, asks god to change her into a boy (hay zhoghovrdakan heqiatner, vol ix 1968, 89). in fairy lores of christian nations, fairies, as a rule, do not address god and are not members of christian community. it is notable that a similar process of adapting supernatural personnel to the dominant religion can be traced also in muslim folklore. peris and deevs, who most probably have arisen from the zoroastrian mythology of ancient persia, in iranian fairy tales often address allah and see themselves entirely dependent on him (braginsky, 1977: 272). the above said makes it possible to speak of the reconciliation of christian religion with elements of paganism, as diaramind o’giollain puts it of “pre-christian phenomena being christianized and surviving non-christian phenomena taking on a christian frame of reference” (o’giollain, 1991: 203). in other words we speak of syncretism when it is understood “positively, as a sign of tolerance” (van der veer, 1994: 209). the syncretism of fairy personages can be seen in armenian medieval painting. medieval bible miniatures and decorations abound in fairy figures. the bird maidens on the title page of a 1390 bible illuminated by hovhammes khisantsi have crosses hung from their necks. thus the christianization of fairies stimulated the survival of fairy beliefs during centuries of christianity. such is the result of the interaction of heterogeneous beliefs belonging to chronologically different layers. references cited: 1. alishan ghevond. hin havatq hayots. venetik: s.ghazar, 1910 (in armenian). 2. bensé harq. hay azgagrutyun yev banahyusutyun, vol. 3. yerevan: hayastani ga hratarakchutyun, 1972. 3. briggs katherine. dictionary of fairies. harmondsworth: penguin books, 1979. 4. buzand pavstos. patmutyun hayots. yerevan: yerevani hamalsarani hratarakchutyun, 1987 (in armenian). 5. christiansen reidar th. the migratory legends: a proposed list of types with a systematic catalogue of the norwegian variants. helsinki: academia scientiarum fennica, 1958. 6. ghanalanyan aram. avandapatum. yerevan: hayastani ga hratarakchutyun, 1969 (in armenian). 7. hay zhoghovrdakan heqiatner. vol.1-15. yerevan: hayastani ga hratarakchutyun, 1959-1999 (in armenian). 8. o’giollain diarmuid. the fairy belief and official religion in ireland. // the good 150 armenian folia anglistika armenological studies people. new fairylore essays, peter narvaez (ed.). new york and london, 1991. 9. o’hogain myth, legend and romance. an encyclopaedia of irish folk tradition. ryan publishing, 1990. 10. keightley thomas. fairy mythology. salem house publishers: 1983. 11. koghbatsi yeznik. yeghts aghandots. yerevani hamalsarani hratarakchutyun, 1994 (in armenian). 12. seriné artchak. hay azgagrutyun yev banahyusutyun. vol. 8. yerevan: hayastani ga hratarakchutyun, 1978 (in armenian). 13. servantsian garegin. grots-brots. yerevan: hayastani ga hratarakchutyun, 1978 (in armenian). 14. thompson stith. motif-index of folk-literature (1st edn., 1955-1958). bloomington & london: indiana university press, 1975. 15. van der veer peter. syncretism, multiculturalism and the discourse of tolerance. // the politics of religious synthesis. (eds.) ch. steward and r.shaw. london: routledge, 1994. 16. yeats w.b. irish fairy and folk tales. new york: the modern library, 1970. öºðæüºðæ øðæêîàüº²òàôøà ð²ú²êîüàôø ì³õ ùñçëïáý»áõãû³ý ßñç³ýáõù ñ³ûáó »ï»õ»óçý ³ýñ³ý¹áõñåáõ³ï³ýáõãûáõý ¿ óáõó³μ»ñáõù ñ»ã³ýáëáõãû³ý ó³ýï³ó³í ¹ñë¨áñù³ý ñ³ý¹»å: ð»ã³ýáë ³ëïí³íáõãûáõýý»ñý áõ á·çý»ñá (÷»ñçý»ñá) ï³ù åëïíáõù »ý, áñå»ë §ã³ñç¦ ¹ñë¨áñáõù, ï³ù §ùñçëïáý»³óíáõù¦` ó»éù μ»ñ»éáí ý»ñ ïñáýç å³ûù³ýý»ñáõù ·áû³ï¨ù³ý ñ³ù³ñ ³ýññ³å»ßï ·í»ñ: ²ûë »ñ¨áõûãá ýï³ï»éç ¿ ý³¨ μ³ý³ñûáõë³ï³ý ï³ñμ»ñ ß³ñ³¹ñ³ýùý»ñáõù, ù³ëý³íáñ³å»ë åáõáíñ¹³ï³ý ñ»ùç³ãáõù: ðá¹í³íáõù ½áõ·³ñ»éý»ñ »ý ï³ñíáõù ³ûé ùß³ïáõûãý»ñáõù ï»õ ·ï³í ñ³ù»ù³ï»éç »ñ¨áõûãý»ñç ñ»ï: 151 armenological studies armenian folia anglistika 1(2)2016+.pdf semantic and structural characteristics of impersonal sentences with introductory “it ” language learners face the monumental task ofacquiring new vocabulary, syntactic patterns and phonology, as well as the indispensability of developing discourse competence. without the knowledge of discourse structure and sociocultural patterns of the target language, the strategies acquired as part of their first language development may be inappropriate for the second language setting and may lead to communicative difficulties and misunderstandings. therefore, one of the goals of second language teaching is to expose learners to different discourse patterns in different texts and interactions. we should more closely examine the patterns of language use in the classroom and the effect these established patterns have on the learning process. the problem is how to analyze these patterns. one of the approaches of speech pattern analysis is dynamic semantics. in recent decades semantic theory has been marked by a continuing shift from a static view of meaning to a dynamic one. dynamic semantics is a shift from sentence semantics to discourse semantics. the analysis moves from isolated sentences to larger units of discourse and text. the present theory (dynamic semantics) has developed as a modification of dynamic logic and treats the meaning of a sentence as the relation between its “input” and “output” referential links. the increasing interest in extending semantic analyses from isolated sentences to larger units of discourse has forced the intensive study of speech patterns. we should consider sentences of the type it is important to go. (1) it is important that he is coming/he come. (2) the main goal of this article is to reveal the structural and meaningful peculiarities of sentences of the type it is … that ….where that introduces an embedded noun-clause and the extraposed it is is followed by an adjective. it is commonly acknowledged that the existence of personal and impersonal models is the result of different psychological perceptions of the outer world. being built on the general model “subjectpredicate-object”(s-p-o), english impersonal sentences, including it as a pseudo-personal subject, have the following grammatical peculiarities: 1. contrary to the definite-personal subject, it has no indication towards any concretely 12 armenian folia anglistika linguistics anahit hovhannisian kazm.cdr enriching learners’ vocabulary by means of derivative word-building patterns english vocabulary has increased greatly in more than1500 years of development. it has been estimated that the present english vocabulary consists of more than one million words, including slang and dialectal expressions, scientific and technical terms, many of which only came into use after the middle of the 20th century. thus, the english language has one of the most extensive vocabularies in the world. however, the average native speaker uses around only five thousand words in everyday speech. extensive, constant borrowings from major languages, especially from latin, greek, french, the scandinavian languages, and from numerous minor languages, account for the great number of words in the english vocabulary. in addition, certain processes have led to the creation of many new words, as well as to the establishment of patterns for further extension. among these processes are affixation, compounding and conversion, which are the three main types of word-formation characteristic of the english language. since there are few established rules of compounding and conversion, it would be reasonable to focus on affixation, which is probably the most important of the above mentioned processes and appears to have added the largest number of words to the english vocabulary. suffixes continue to be productive in the formation of many new words in english. for example, -iac has been added to the word brain to create the new word brainiac (someone who spends a lot of time studying and thinking about complicated ideas, but who is often unable to communicate with people in ordinary social situations). a large number of new words have also been created through the addition of the suffix -ization, as in dollarization (a situation in which countries outside the us want to use the dollar rather than their own country’s currency) or globalization (the process by which countries all over the world become connected, especially because large companies are doing business in many different countries). prefixes have become more widespread recently. cyberis a good example of prefix which has been used to create a range of new words (originally meaning “computer”, now often meaning “to do with the internet”) cybercrime, cyberfraud, cyberland. dozens of new words formed by prefixes relate to size, both large and very small , such as micro-, super and multi-, as in microbrewery (a small company that makes only small quantities of beer), microengineering, supersize, multi-tasking. 92 armenian folia anglistika methodology lili karapetyan the vast majority of the new words entering the language are made up out of existing components. in the context of learning english as a foreign language, a good syllabus could do a lot to heighten learners’ awareness of high-frequency patterns of affixation in english. to teach learners strategies, to help them cope with the language that is new to them, r. gairns and s. redman (2001) suggest a variety of different classroom activities which focus on different aspects of word-building. they point out that the time and effort devoted to this area in the classroom will depend on the teaching situation, the needs and goals of learners. it must also be mentioned that learners’ ideas of the word-building possibilities of the target language are strictly influenced by their native language. for speakers of latin-based languages, certain prefixes and suffixes in the english language will be similar to those of their mother tongue and, therefore, will present little difficulty. meanwhile armenian speakers will have difficulties in learning these affixes since armenian and english have different morphological systems. learners also need to be autonomous and independent and to make conscious efforts to learn vocabulary outside the classroom because the exposure to the target language is limited in class. so, explicit vocabulary teaching is necessary for learners to be able to guess the meaning of some unknown words without a dictionary and also to make up some potential words words which do not exist but which could conceivably become part of the language. this aim can be achieved through word-building patterns, by which we understand a ‘fixed structure which has a generalized word-building meaning and can be filled with various material’ (ñòåïàíîâà, 1968). and by word-building meaning we understand the meaning of the derived word, which is inferred from the meanings of the structural components of the pattern. inference to a great extent depends on the correspondence of the structures of the foreign language to those of learners’ native tongue. if the structural and semantic relations existing between the affix and the base coincide, or if a regular correspondence can be established between them, the degree of inference of the words built on that pattern becomes considerably high. according to this principle, such word-building patterns as “un+ adj” (unpleasant), “n + -less” (useless) ,“ adj + -ness” (darkness), “adj + -y’’ (cloudy), etc. can be selected for teaching purposes, while patterns like “n + -esque” (arabesque), “adj + -some’’ (wholesome) and the like cannot as in the first case the semantic relations between the elements are clear, while in the latter case they are not. the clearer the word-building pattern, the freer the formation of new words analogous to it will be. derivative word-building patterns will help to develop language learners’ receptive and reproductive skills. with receptive skills learners will be able to make informed guesses about the meaning of unknown units; in terms of reproductive skills a knowledge of some productive word-building patterns will widen learners’ creative abilities, which can also be treated as a communicative strategy. 93 methodology armenian folia anglistika for teaching purposes we give preference to developing receptive skills for learning word-building patterns since the possibilities of word-creation are limited in every language. in this respect, learners need to acquire receptive skills to enable them to understand the meanings of unknown words while reading texts. in fact, studies show that skilled readers fill in sentence blanks with the morphologically correct words, regardless of whether the word choices are real or nonsense words. they are able to respond to the components of the patterns themselves and not just to familiar words. not only does this strategy help learners read more words quickly, it also helps them distinguish between true morphological relationships (such as, ‘space/spacial’) and false ones (like ‘tail/tailor’), which, in turn, speeds reading efficiency. the ability to infer the meaning of a derived word leads to the extension of learners’ potential vocabulary and the development of grounded linguistic guesswork. as bright and mcgregor (1970: 31) point out: “perhaps the most important thing of all is to remember that the ability to infer in this way is a skill that can only be acquired by practice. every time we tell a pupil what a word means, we are robbing him of a chance to practise that skill”. nation, however, argues that using affixation and roots alone as a means of guessing is unreliable, and states that, if it is used as an initial step in the guessing process, this guess at the meaning is more likely to lead to twisting the interpretation of the context than allowing interpretation of the context to modify the guess at the meaning. in other words, when learners make an incorrect guess based on word form, they try to interpret the context to support the incorrect guess. indeed, the same derivative word can have different meanings, and it is the context that determines the right meaning. thus, in the sentences 1. he has foxy lips. 2. he is a foxy guy. 3. he has foxy hair. the adjective foxy has quite different meanings 1. similar to an animal, 2. similar to a man possessing some qualities of that animal, 3. a definite colour reddish-brown . as has already been stated above, word-building patterns can be looked upon as a resource in the language, something the learners should be allowed to experiment with and use strategically. isolating a small group of highly productive word-building patterns, we might observe, for example, whether they can encourage learners to create new words. some of their creations will probably be words that already exist in the language, others will be non-established words. this latter group need not be ignored, but can be explored for literary value or simply for filling ‘gaps’ in the language. creative word-formation can also be seen as a communicative strategy, for supplying formations when the right word cannot be found. thus, the better a foreign language learner masters the word-building structures of the language, the wider his possibilities of assimilating the vocabulary are. 94 armenian folia anglistika methodology references: 1. ñòåïàíîâà ì.ä. ìåòîäû ñèíõðîííîãî àíàëèçà ëåêñèêè. ì., 1968. 2. bright j.a., mcgregor g.p. teaching english as a second language. london, 1970. 3. nation p. learning vocabulary in another language. cambridge: cambridge university press, 2001. 4. gairns r., redman s. working with words (a guide to teaching and learning vocabulary). cambridge: cambridge university press, 2001. 5. mccarthy m. vocabulary. oxford: oxford university press, 2001. ²ì²üòø²ü ´²è²î²¼ø²î²ü î²ô²ä²ðüºðà àðäºê úî²ð 躼àô êàìàðàôüºðæ ´²è²ä²þ²ðæ ð²ðêî²òø²ü øææàò ²ý·é»ñ»ýç μ³é³å³ß³ñá çñ ½³ñ·³óù³ý ³í»éç ù³ý 1500 ï³ñçý»ñç áýã³óùáõù ù»í³å»ë ñ³ñëï³ó»é ¿: 軽íç ½³ñ·³óù³ý ï³ñμ»ñ ÷áõé»ñáõù ëï»õíí»é »ý μ³½ù³ãçí ýáñ μ³é»ñ, çýãå»ë ý³¨ μ³é³ï³½ù³ï³ý ï³õ³å³ñý»ñ, áñáýù ýå³ëï»é »ý μ³é³å³ß³ñç ñ»ï³·³ ñ³ñëï³óù³ýá: ²ý·é»ñ»ýçý μýáñáß μ³é³ï³½ù³ï³ý ùççáóý»ñçó »ý ³í³ýóáõùá, μ³é³μ³ñ¹áõùá ¨ ÷áë³ï³ñ·áõãûáõýá: ø³ýç áñ μ³é³μ³ñ¹ù³ý ¨ ÷áë³ï³ñ·áõãû³ý ñ³ù³ñ ñ³ëï³ïí³í ï³ýáýý»ñá ë³ï³í »ý, áõëïç áõëáõóù³ý å³ù³ý³ï ³í»éç ýå³ï³ï³ñ³ñù³ñ ¿ áõß³¹ñáõãûáõýá ï»ýïñáý³óý»é ³í³ýóù³ýª ù³ëý³íáñ³å»ë ³í³ýóù³ý μ³é³ï³½ù³ï³ý ï³õ³å³ñý»ñç íñ³: üßí³í ï³õ³å³ñý»ñá ù»í ã³÷áí ïýå³ëï»ý ûï³ñ 黽áõ ëáíáñáõý»ñç áýï³éáõ³ï³ý ¨ í»ñ³ñï³¹ñáõ³ï³ý ñùïáõãûáõýý»ñç ½³ñ·³óù³ýá: àýï³éáõ³ï³ý ñùïáõãûáõýý»ñç ½³ñ·³óù³ý ßýáññçí ëáíáñáõý»ñá ïï³ñáõ³ý³ý ñ³ëï³ý³é ï»ùëïáõù ñ³ý¹çåáõ ³ýí³ýáã μ³é»ñç çù³ëï᪠¹ñ³ýáí çëï ñ³ñëï³óý»éáí çñ»ýó ý»ñáõý³ï μ³é³å³ß³ñá, çëï çýã í»ñ³μ»ñáõù ¿ í»ñ³ñï³¹ñáõ³ï³ý ñùïáõãûáõýý»ñçý, ·áñíáõý μ³é³ï³½ù³ï³ý ï³õ³å³ñý»ñç çù³óáõãûáõýá ïû·ýç ½³ñ·³óý»é ëáíáñáõý»ñç ëï»õí³·áñí³ï³ý áõý³ïáõãûáõýý»ñá: ì»ñççýë ï³ñáõ ¿ ¹çïí»é ý³¨ áñå»ë ñ³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý é³½ù³í³ñáõãûáõý: 95 methodology armenian folia anglistika 1(2)2016+.pdf deixis in polite interaction linguistic interaction is necessarily social interaction.it has been repeatedly proved empirically that language as the major means of human communication fulfills many different goals. we communicate factual information, ideas, as well as beliefs, emotions and attitudes or any other socially meaningful content in our everyday interaction. we construct, establish and maintain social relationship within various social contexts by performing speech activities and employing appropriate language means to ensure harmonious interpersonal relations and cooperation. one important socio-cultural aspect which speakers may convey is that of politeness, which can be expressed using various linguistic as well as nonlinguistic strategies. every culture has developed various linguistic means to mark the politeness intentions of the speaker. moreover, every culture has its own understanding of what constitutes “polite” and socially “appropriate” linguistic behaviour. the latter is determined by culture-specific values and is supposed to be shared by all members of the community. it is universally recognized that the language of politeness cannot be dissociated from the social relationship between the speaker and the hearer. and from this point of view deixis understood as a linkage between the utterance and its spacio-temporal and personal context plays a crucial role in politeness as a language category. in this paper the concept of politeness will be dealt with with reference to the deictic means of expressing various degrees of politeness. although there is a comprehensive literature on politeness, little work has been done to reveal the interrelation between these two linguistic categories. for an adequate observation of the relationship between deixis and politeness, one should first clarify the fundamental notion of politeness and that of deixis. linguistic politeness as a field of study has always attracted attention among researchers of different schools, perhaps because of its almost universal relevance to the activities of everyday life. the politeness principle plays an essential role in a social interaction where basically the speaker and the hearer (addressee) are involved. in the utterance conveying politeness, the speaker’s attitude towards the social context of the interaction is reflected. it covers “the speaker’s relationship with and sensitivity toward the hearer, the importance of the information to be conveyed, the formality of the situation, and the effect the speaker wishes to achieve via utterance” (koike, 1989: 189). 36 armenian folia anglistika linguistics yelena yerznkyan kazm.cdr net english: the language of on-lline communication as the internet comes increasingly to be viewed from a social perspective, so the role of language becomes central ... what is immediately obvious when engaging in any of the internet’s functions is its linguistic character. if the internet is a revolution, therefore, it is likely to be a linguistic revolution. david crystal it is a well-known fact that language is a historicalcategory and an indispensable part of human existence, it lives and develops dynamically in all the phases of the history together with people and the surrounding world. socio-technological extralinguistic changes result in intralinguistic modifications. therefore, it is no surprise that in the present stage of development of modern english, many non-traditional varieties of speech, substyles and genres are coming into being due to social and technological processes (extralinguistic factors) taking place in the society. of importance have become not only texts representing the two basic functional styles scientific vs fictional and other intermediate traditional speech varieties, but also substyles and genres budding off present extralinguistic reality and attracting scholarly attention of functional linguists.1 existing side by side with other media, the new discourse type or register of internet communication has changed our communicative behaviour enormously.2 the so-called electronic language3 has aroused great interest and attracts more and more attention of the linguists who are really concerned with the possible influence this system may have on a living language. generally speaking, at the present phase of its development english is the main language of pop music, books, newspapers, air traffic control, international business, academic conferences, science, technology, diplomacy, sports, international competition and advertising. it has also become the universal language on the internet though it has no official status as such. nowadays nobody can dismiss the fact that the wide use and spread of english as the lingua franca has taken its toll on the internet, where even the computer code is based on english.4 this priority also supports the position of english as a primary language for international communication: a lot of words which were introduced into the english language with the elaboration of computer systems, are borrowed now by other languages (burble, compunications, cyberstyle,5 emoticons, egosurfing, geek, go cyrillic, intranet, list nazi, mouse potato mud, nerd, net police, nooksurfer, on-line, off-line, outernet, homepage, nomepage, nymrod, 36 armenian folia anglistika linguistics ani nazaryan rom-brain, shovelware, smileys, snail mail, sysop, tetwrist, treeware, user eye-d, webmaster, zen mail, etc.). with its numerous major and minor expressions and forms electronic discourse has given radical opportunities to develop new stylistic rules. the new forms of interaction seen in internet exchanges are far more important than changes in vocabulary, grammar, and spelling.6 people unfamiliar with the mechanisms of on-line communication and familiar with the conventions of off-line communication (standard english), think that there can be no analogy of on-line communication with speech. chatrooms and the like are too constrained by their response times and the slow speed of typing to be considered as a good analogy of speech. regarding some broad pragmatic themes (communicative effectiveness, spamming, lurking, paralinguistic cues, virtual phonology, acronymization, relexicalization, addressivity, accentualization), the comparative brevity of on-line communication, its lack of formality and the inclusion of “framing”, web pages, e-mail and other mechanisms are too transient or easily modified to be equivalent to the printed word. this is a good example of one way that on-line and offline communications differ. the electronic discourse, based on the living language english, has already occupied its “place in the sun” in the functional system of the language. trying to define its exact place in the system, we can say that despite the fact of including numerous types of texts: fiction, academic writing, advertisements, letters; practically all possible existing types of texts,7 internet language as a whole can surely be considered a new form of mass communication called on-lline communication. in conjunction with radio and television, telephone communication and printed material, it has created the universal information net, called cyberspace and all the people using the net are netizens (the word is easily associated with “citizens”). the unique language, argo or vernacular used in the net is netspeak8 and the corresponding derivations: netlish, weblish, netois, net patois. there are a great number of other names like electronic discourse, net discourse, interactive written discourse, internet language, web language, on-line communication, computer-mediated communication (cmc), virtual discourse, net lingua or net lingo, internet language, netslang, etc. the regular users are webies, the new ones -newbies. the communicators in netspeak observe common rules called netiquette (a pun on “etiquette” referring to proper behavior on a network). changes in communication technology are invariably accompanied by concerns about language because people notice a growth of informality in language use, their concerns center around whether this will cause a general deterioration in the quality of the language.9 moreover, in the minds of many, net discourse is a little more than linguistic vandalism, illiterate on-line expression where grammar is gone and spelling is superfluous. some traditional thinkers even agree that internet relay chat is an antilanguage10, the speech of a community sometimes called antisociety. they are right in the way that it is naive to think that in the potentially infinite universe of this new language variety there is no place for antilanguage. there are really text-based virtual realities with exclusively antilinguistic tendencies. however, the language used on-line is that of real people of great diversity, who 37 linguistics armenian folia anglistika employ different language varieties for purely practical reasons and whose output is largely unedited by proofreaders or publishers. the language of this immense community affects even people who never log on or use the letters awhf in regular communication to ask are we having fun?, tmot, that is trust me on this, ru, that is are you?, say ppl instead of people, hand instead of have a nice day!, or write hey can u gimme a lift 2 the party 2nite? (can you give me a lift to the party tonight) and ne1 wanna chatto 17/m (does anyone want to talk with a 17 year-old male?) the common fact that the mode of technology imparts something of its nature to public experience and the extralinguistic reality dictates its new rules and norms to the language, cannot be ignored. giving a linguist’s appraisal of electronic discourse, the well-known british linguist david crystal points out that we are on the brink of the biggest revolution in language ever, that netspeak, this is how he calls on-line language, is not a monolithic creation, but rather a disparate set of communication methods and types such as e-mail, chatrooms, internet relay chat, world wide web pages, websites, etc. looking at features common to most internet communications, netspeak is better seen as written language which has been pulled some way in the direction of speech than as spoken language which has been written down. he suggests that on-line language is best viewed as a new species of interaction, a genuine “third medium” (besides the written and oral forms of english), which is evolving its own systematic rules to suit new circumstances. rather than condemning this new linguistic fact, we should exult at having a chance for academic study, a new opportunity “to once more explore the power of the written language in a creative way” (crystal, 2001).11 thus, the universal language of online communication is english, or more exactly a collection of languages called “english”. a great number of people whose native language is not english proper, know english as a foreign language. they typically use a more or less simplified variant, e.g. excluding most of the idioms of british, american, australian, canadian, or other variants of english. of course, they make mistakes, and sometimes the english used by people as a foreign language on the internet is almost incomprehensible to anyone else. in addition, on the other hand, people who use english as their native language do not know how to spell difficult words, since they basically know english as a spoken language. english is globally becoming the official language and the common language of educated people. researchers know english and use it a lot, and often the relevant terminology is more stable and well-known in english. thus, to maximize the number of interested people that can understand any text, internet users select english. the maintenance problem is especially important for documents on the world wide web the information system where one crucial feature is the ability to keep things really up-to-date. consequently, the use of english in essentially national contexts tends to grow too.12 being mindful of the diversity of internet communities and communication, we consider that linguistic study of this new variety of speech and the effects of it on broader language have become of utmost importance today. netspeak, different though from other speech varieties of off-line communication, has grown into a linguistic medium whose principles and standards are evolving constantly as many millions of readers, or 38 armenian folia anglistika linguistics visitors, ingest the pages with its countless web sites offering information. a new academic study of internet linguistics includes and will include, at the very least, the study of linguostylistic peculiarities of this new register of english, a comparative study of the style of different formats and the development of language change within these new media. notes and references: 1. functionalism is characteristic of the typologically oriented linguistics, it helps to operate with the help of the corpus of data, it permits to take into consideration the data of other branches of knowledge, which are important for the linguistic study, especially on the interdisciplinary level. 2. see the european english messenger. vol. 14.1. portugal: grafica de coimbra, 2005. 3. of interest are also such modern stylistic varieties of speech as political discourse, formal scripted speeches, information talks, papers, the language of sports reports. we see a real renaissance at this point in the form of the on-line diary, web log or “blog”. 4. see english the universal language on the internet? 2005. www.google.am 5. the writing style used in most on-line communications is characterized by one or more of the following traits: frequent use of abbreviations, acronyms, and jargon; “street” slang (e.g., using “cuz” instead of “because”); typos, misspelled words, and a general inattention to grammar and sentence structure; a rambling, stream-ofconsciousness style. 6. see crystal d. language and the internet. cambridge: cambridge university press, 2001. 7. different discourse types are more interwoven and thus the borders between them much more blurred here than anywhere else. 8. the term was first used by david crystal in his book “language and the internet”. 9. according to popular mythology, the internet will be bad for the future of the english language. technospeak will rule, standards will be lost, and creativity diminished as globalization imposes sameness. there are those who say that the internet is an irresistible force churning over the earth’s surface, crushing languages and cultures as it propels english to world domination. david crystal, one of the foremost authorities on language, argues the opposite, claiming that the internet is enabling a dramatic expansion of the range and variety of language, and is providing unprecedented opportunities for personal creativity. 10. this is the definition given in halliday m.a.k. language as a social semiotic. london: arnold, 1978. 11. trying to avoid ambiguity david crystal adds: “there is of course, a role for educationalists in teaching children which style is the most appropriate and where”. (crystal d., 2001) 12. the importance of internet grows rapidly in all fields of human life, including not 39 linguistics armenian folia anglistika only research and education but also marketing and trade as well as entertainment and hobbies. this implies that it becomes more and more important to know how to use internet services and, as a part of this, to read and write netlish which replaces the traditional methods of communication. in such a situation the internet illiterates (opposite to internet users), may find themselves in an awkward position. 躼ì²î²ü ðºô²öàêàôâúàôü ²ü¶èºðºüàôø. ð²ø²î²ð¶â²úæü 躼àô ²ûý ÷³ëïá, áñ ³ñï³é»½í³ï³ý çñ³ï³ýáõãûáõýý çñ ï³ýáýý»ñý ¿ ã»é³¹ñáõù 黽íçý, çñ ñ³ëï³ïáõùý ¿ ·ï»é ýáñ ·áñí³é³ï³ý ¹ñë¨áñáõù ñ³ù³ñíáõ ñ³ù³ï³ñ·ã³ûçý ¹çëïáõñëáõù: ¼³ý·í³í³ûçý ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý ³ûë å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó á׳ó¨á ³ñ¹»ý ñ³ù³ñíáõù ¿ §ð³ù³ï³ñ·ã³ûçý 黽í³μ³ýáõãû³ý¦ áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãû³ý ³é³ñï³ý: ²é³ýóý³ïç ñ»ï³ùñùñáõãûáõý ¿ ý»ñï³û³óýáõù ¿é»ïïñáý³ûçý 黽íç ï³ñμ»ñ ¹ñë¨áñáõùý»ñç 黽í³á׳ï³ý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñç, 黽íç ³û¹ áéáñïáõù ïñ³í ÷á÷áëáõãûáõýý»ñç ¨ å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ³ý·é»ñ»ýç íñ³ ñ³ù³ï³ñ·ã³ûçý 黽íç ³½¹»óáõãû³ý ëý¹çñý»ñç ùýýáõãûáõýá: 40 armenian folia anglistika linguistics 1(2)2016+.pdf creating contexts for adult motivation for foreign language learning and acquisition all teachers ask themselves: “what shall i do to helpmy students get started?”, “what will help them to sustain interest in what they learn?” in search of “what?” we arrive at the question of motivation. it is common knowledge that two people of the same ability, age and gender will achieve different results in working on the same task if they have different degrees of motivation. motivated students are willing to learn by listening, asking questions, reacting, participating. they enjoy being able to contribute to the learning process and class work. they are “more psychologically open to the learning material and enhance information processing” (wlodkowsky, 1993). motivation is a reason or a group of reasons, for which people do things. in applied linguistics it is referred to as one of the variables affecting second/foreign language acquisition. along with variables of self-esteem and the level of anxiety, it “lowers the affective filter1”, which does not allow the comprehensible input to “enter the language acquisition devise” (krashen, 1981). thus, motivation secures productive learning and acquisition. this research considers the problem of foreign language learning/acquisition by young adults (17-20 years old). in order to understand how to motivate adults, and why they need to be motivated, it is necessary to see how they learn a foreign language. first, they start learning a language having certain experience and established way of thinking, which gives them advantage over younger learners. second, they are conscious of learning a new language and have their preferred learning styles, which must be considered in the choice of teaching materials and methods. third, they have formed native language skills, which allow them to produce a foreign language using the conscious grammar to adjust to target language structures. fourth, adults are better communicators (scarcella and higa in press as cited in krashen, 1981), which considerably expands learning opportunities. also, they may have numerous cognitive demands for using a foreign language, such as filling out tax forms, job applications, writing cover letters, corresponding and solving problems through e-mail, etc. thus, what they learn can be directly applied to their lives (escamilla, 2002). at the same time, adults can face difficulties. for instance, sometimes native 101 methodology armenian folia anglistika marina karapetyan hin.qxd 6 the foundation of aase and its first international conference is of great significance in this historical period when the republic of armenia is on the way of joining the european society. i hope the association will promote close contacts between specialists from different countries and different regions of armenia radick martirossyan rector of yerevan state university, armenia those of you who teach english open a window on the world for your students . those who learn will be better equipped for the practical demands of the 21st century. the english language gives you a chance to explain armenia to the world in a language that so many in the world speak, because armenia has something to offer to the world.thorda abbott-watt extraordinary and plenipotentiary ambassador of uk to armenia i applaud your dedication to your profession. not only as facilitators of communication and exchange and as developers of the skills that are necessary for international collaboration but i comment you also as teachers, students and scholars. at the time in history when the need not only for mutual understanding but also for reflection on spiritual values is very great, the world certainly needs you.john evansextraordinary and plenipotentiary ambassador of usa to armenia . 7 it was a true pleasure to meet and work with the dedicated and highly qualified members of aase. the spectacular organization, the informative presentations, and most importantly, the amazing hospitality of my hosts made this conference one i will never forget. i want to thank them for allowing me to participate: it was an honour. charles hall university of memphis, usa one thing is evident... the study of english in armenia is taken to a very high level. people now understand that english is an international language, which is now yours as much as it is mine. please, use it to explain armenian culture and history to the world and make contacts and friendships with other people, and this is one main thing that comes out of the aase and its conference. peter sutton freelance translator, editor, uk we need aase and aase needs us to encourage the academic and modern teaching methods in higher educational institutions in armenia, as well as develop close intercultural relations with professionals involved in english studies world-wide. karo karapetyan dean , romance and germanic philology faculty, ysu, armenia 8 the eighteenth century aphorist, lord chesterfield, once gave the advice that learning should be worn like a pocket watch – in a private pocket and not merely pulled out and struck just to show that you have one! the articles in this journal are very much not merely being ‘pulled and struck’ for display but present the research, thoughts and enthusiasm of their writers who are keen to share with others their ideas and their opinions. reading this journal, you will have the opportunity to explore a wide range of issues both related to english language teaching and learning in armenia and produced by practitioners from the armenian elt community itself. articles in the journal investigate in depth topics from the language itself to the literature which is expressed in that language to a range of practical aspects of teaching including a focus on english for specific purposes. i am really very impressed by the range of articles here and by the conference which encouraged their production, and by the extent to which they make a significant contribution to the elt world here and further afield. i hope you will enjoy reading the journal as much as i have, especially that it acts as a catalyst for still more discussion and thought! andy keedwell english language support manager, acting director, british council armenia 9 the great mission of aase to propagate the study of english can’t be overestimated, for the latter is no longer a mere means of communication within a nation but also plays an important role in developing intercultural relations. ara avetissyan vice-rector for international relations at ysu, armenia i see the main task of aase in fostering the study of english in armenia and making it serve the development of a new society in our country, also contributing to european and, largely speaking, international trust and human achievements through the wide use of the english language. seda gasparyan president of aase 1(2)2016+.pdf on the emotive-evaluative meaning of phraseological units the content of information is two-fold: it has logicaland emotive-evaluative components. logical meaning is the precise naming of a feature of the phenomenon or object, the name by which we recognize the whole of the concept (this meaning is also called referential or direct). “emotive meaning also materializes a concept in the word, but, unlike logical meaning, emotive meaning has reference not directly to things or phenomena of the objective reality, but to the feelings and emotions of the speaker towards these things or to the emotions as such” (galperin, 1977: 66). therefore emotive meaning bears reference to things, phenomena or ideas through a kind of evaluation. to establish meanings as features of types of word groups, we have to start from the fundamental and referential distinction between referential and attitudinal meanings. “referential meaning is defined as merely denoting, or referring to something, either by naming it or by pointing it out, whereas attitudinal meaning is defined as the expression of an attitude of the speaker towards the facts of the objective reality” (william de groot, 1975:69). one of the aspects of meaning that has variously been called “cognitive” or “denotational” is by no means the only kind of meaning and it is not even clear whether it is the most important. much of what we say is not a statement of a fact but an evaluation (palmer, 1982:29). all the above-mentioned definitions of word meaning anticipate the necessity of identifying the phenomenon of connotation. many scholars emphasize the existence of some additional meaning which is secondary to denotative meaning, and which is variously called connotation or signification (galperin, 1977; àðíîëüä, 1981; àðóòþíîâà, 1976; áàðò, 1975; stierle, 1975). there is no unanimity of opinion among scholars as to the definition of connotation. but they are unanimous in admitting the existence of emotive, evaluative and expressive components of connotation (øàõîâñêèé, 1986:14). connotation may more or less generally be defined as “emotional, social or moral value that is associated with a word” (maclin, 1996:119). the semantic pivot of connotation is the emotive component, which is always both evaluative and expressive. as j. a. leech states, “a distinction should be made between evaluative meaning, on 75 linguistics armenian folia anglistika gayane yeghiazarian hin.qxd on the concept of emphatic rheme t he notion of functional sentence perspective(fsp) suggested by the czech linguists has been of great importance to the description and interpretation of the semantic-informative structure of the utterance. according to their theory, parts of the sentence, representing the given information, i.e. the theme, have a much lower degree of communicative dynamism (informative charge) than parts representing new information, i.e. the rheme.1 m.a.k. halliday notes that all languages are characterized by fsp, but the means of its actualization are different for different languages.2 in english word order plays a crucial role in distinguishing between the theme and the rheme. the rheme occurring at the end of the utterance carries a higher degree of communicative dynamism (cd) than when occurring initially. the degree of cd may still be heightened by the use of a special stylistic device known in linguistics as parcellation. it is a type of syntactic arrangement in which the most expressive part (predominantly the rheme) of the utterance is separated from the base by intonation (in writing by a period) and presented as an isolated structure. this kind of segmentation implies the highest degree of communicative dynamism, adding more significance and emphasis to the rhematic part of the utterance. we would suggest a special term for it – emphatic rheme as opposed to its syntacticallyneutral, i.e. non-parcellated counterpart. this function of parcellation can be explicitly illustrated by an example taken from v.woolf’s novel “mrs.dalloway”: he was in love. not with her. with some younger woman of course, in which he was in love is the theme and the rest of the utterance is the rheme. if we change this sentence into a non-parcellated version he was in love not with her, but with some younger woman of course, we will see that transformation clearly deprives the parcellas not with her. with some younger woman of course of their position of greater prominence and emphasis, turning them into an ordinary stylistically less coloured part of the utterance. the results of the study provide evidence that a greater amount of parcellas do not represent the whole rheme but only a part of it, which we propose to name emphatic rheme partial as opposed to emphatic rheme full including the whole of the rhematic part of the utterance. it is a fragment separated from the rhematic base in the main body of the utterance, which is characterized by the highest peak of communicative dynamism and strongest emphatic impact. 27 linguistics armenian folia anglistika yelena mkhitarian consider the following sentence: whatever he had expected had not come true. yet. ( e.segal) if we transform this sentence into a non-segmented structure, we will have a nonemphatic rheme, with the predicate negated had not come true yet. with the parcella yet, however, the idea is emphasized that although the hero’s expectations had not come true, there was some hope they would materialize some day. some researchers, studying the phenomenon of parcellation from the syntacticstylistic point of view, rank it among devices of extensive syntax such as insertion, repetition, syntactic parallelism, etc. this statement needs to be interpreted. on the surface it may seem that as a result of parcellation, we have two separate structures though the number of words making up the sentence remains the same. but it is evident that we gain economy of language means by introducing the most direct and effective way of indicating the most essential part of the information. compare the above example containing emphatic rheme partial with its nonsegmented version, in which the impact of the parcella yet may be expressed hypothetically in the following way: whatever he had expected had not come true yet, but still he hoped he would soon be able to realize it . so we see that parcellation does not extend the sentence. rather the contrary: it condenses the linguistic means of the expression plane. some linguists claim that from the semantic point of view a sentence and its segmented version are quite identical: they mark only the stylistic aspect as a distinctive feature between them.3 but this is not always the case. if we analyze the previous example from this point of view we will come to the conclusion that the parcellated version has a strong emphatic effect, which makes the negation sound less categorical, less decisive, underlining the idea that the failure has a temporary character. consider another example: the housekeeper said that they had left for israel on the previous night’s plane. to attend the funeral. (e.segal) the emphatic rheme partial expressed by the infinitive phrase to attend the funeral stresses the idea that it was not for the first time they (jason’s parents) left for israel (they had been there before to visit their daughter-in-law and grandchildren). but this time it was a most tragic occasion: their son jason was killed in the war with the palestinians and they went to attend the funeral. 28 armenian folia anglistika linguistics the research shows that in some cases the splitting of the sentence may be so great that it can bring about certain modifications in the semantics of the emphatic parcella. here is an example to prove it: i got the message and happily entertained her for the next few days. and nights. (e.segal) while days in the rhematic base retains its denotational meaning (time), the second component of the phrase and nights, when parcellated, acquires an additional meaning: intimate relations. otherwise introduced this phrase implies “all the time” as we see it in the following sentence: i got us on my mind, sid. day and night. (odets) the parcellated phrase day and night emphasizes the idea that the speaker is thinking about herself and sid all the time, without cessation, with something worrying her continuously. this kind of segmentation occurs not only on the level of a simple, but also composite sentence. consider an example of a complex sentence with an adverbial clause of reason:4 you’re staying with him? because of what people might say? have you gone crazy? (cook) the parcellation affects the secondary clause, which in this context is the rhematic part of the utterance: because of what people might say? if we eliminate the parcellation, the utterance may be taken for a question: the speaker wants to find out whether the interlocutor is staying with that man for fear of the public opinion. in case of parcellation, however, we feel indignation and resentment on the part of the speaker in connection with the interlocutor’s decision, which becomes still more evident by the succeeding sentence have you gone crazy? the emphatic rheme may have a most unusual position when it breaks the linear arrangement of the parts of the sentence and occurs on a new line, occupying a vertical position as to the remaining part of the utterance. here is an example to illustrate it: this was the beginning of the end. they had met once more and just had time enough to learn that they liked one another. and to say good-bye. (e.segal) 29 linguistics armenian folia anglistika the parcellation highlights the importance of the contradicting idea expressed in the second part of the antithesis (and to say good-bye), which comes up as quite a sudden, unexpected and disappointing fact. summing up, parcellation is an effective syntactic-stylistic device, which helps point out the rhematic part of the utterance in a most expressive way by separating it from the base and presenting it either wholly (emphatic rheme full) or partially (emphatic rheme partial). in some cases the detachment of the rhematic part of the utterance from the base may be so powerful that it can entail certain changes in the meaning of the parcellated structure. references: 1. firbas, jan. some aspects of the czechoslovak approach to problems of functional sentence perspective.in: papers on functional sentence perspective ed.by f.danes, prague: academia, 1974. 2. halliday m.a.k. the place of “functional sentence perspective” in the system of linguistic description. in:papers on functional sentence perspective ed.by f.danes, prague, academia, 1974. 3. ñòðåëüöîâ â.í. ïàðöåëÿöèÿ â ñòðóêòóðå ñëîæíî-ïîä÷èíåííîãî ïðåäëîæåíèÿ â àíãëèéñêîì ÿçûêå, ì., 1973. 4. ôèëîíîâà í.ê. ïàðöåëëÿöèÿ ïîëèïðåäèêàòèâíûõ âûñêàçûâàíèé â ñîâðåìåííîì àíãëèéñêîì ÿçûêå, ë., 1982. þ»ßïí³í é»ù³ûç ñ³ëï³óáõãû³ý ßáõñç î³ñ³ýç³ïáõùá ³ñ¹ûáõý³í»ï ß³ñ³ñûáõë³ï³ý ñý³ñ ¿, áñý û·ýáõù ¿ ù³ïý³ýß»é ³ëáõûãç é»ù³ïçï ù³ëá ³ù»ý³³ñï³ñ³ûïçã ó¨áíª ³é³ýóý³óý»éáí ³ûý ý³ë³¹³ëáõãû³ý ñçùùçó ¨ ý»ñï³û³óý»éáí ³ûý ï³°ù ³ùμáõçáõãû³ùμ, ï³°ù ù³ë³ùμ: àñáß ¹»åù»ñáõù ï³ñ³ýç³ïáõùá ï³ñáõ ¿ éçý»é ³ûýù³ý ³½¹»óçï, áñ ï³ñáõ ¿ ³é³ç³óý»é çù³ëï³ûçý ÷á÷áëáõãûáõýý»ñ ï³ñ³ýç³ïí³í ï³éáõûóáõù: 30 armenian folia anglistika linguistics microsoft word maket 2021-2(24) 2.11.doc linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 53 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2021.17.2.053 sarcasm as a breach of linguistic politeness: some theoretical assumptions hayk danielyan yerevan state university the current paper is devoted to the analysis of sarcasm as a breach of principles of politeness. the aim of the paper is to elicit the peculiarities of sarcasm as an exception to the politeness principle suggested by g. leech (2014) and its conversational function incorporated into the irony principle as mock politeness. the politeness principle demonstrates that sarcasm is apparently its exploitation as in the case of sarcastic utterances the illocutionary goal opposes the social goal thus providing breach in the model of politeness. the irony principle illustrates an explanation of polite utterances appearing as impolite arguing that polite interpretations of such utterances are unsustainable. to support the theory certain examples are analyzed retrieved from an american depression-era author john dos passos’s novel “1919”. as a matter of fact, the debate is around the question whether sarcasm is an apparent exploitation of polite implicature of utterances or it is a category of impoliteness appearing as mock politeness. keywords: sarcasm, conversational irony, politeness, politeness principle, irony principle, impoliteness. introduction sarcasm or conversational irony as referred to by many theorists (leech, 2014; gibbs & colston, 2007) is an apparent exception to the politeness principle (pp) at the same time actually being an exploitation of it. leech (2014) argues that the “irony strategy” is a second-order strategy rooted in violations of the politeness principle which is analogous to grice’s (1975) cooperative principle (p. 100). in order to grasp a complete understanding of the abovementioned argument we need to elicit the pragmatic conception of the politeness principle and find out its relations to sarcasm as a breach of linguistic politeness which is the main concern of the current research. conversational irony is a term that is preferred by different theorists over  hayk.danielyan3@ysumail.am this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 30.04.2021 revised: 28.06.2021 accepted: 15.09.2021 © the author(s) 2021 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 54 sarcasm to limit the denotation of the term irony. irony is apparently referred to as a non-verbal phenomenon. in literary studies irony is classified in the group of rhetorical devices or figures of speech. the irony principle suggests that the conversational function of irony exposes its infelicity conditions by impolite behavior implicating that polite interpretations of impolite utterances are unsustainable. ironic interpretations of the utterances may be considered as breaches of quality and quantity maxims in the sense that they indicate overstatement and understatement of truth. the object of the current research is the study of sarcasm from a pragmalinguistic point of view to discover its relations with politeness principles. the research is inclined to review the irony strategy to provide some explanations of sarcasm as a category of impoliteness. for this purpose, descriptive and contextual methods of analysis are applied in the present study. the novelty of the research is determined by the fact that sarcasm is viewed as a breach of politeness principles as it is debatable whether sarcasm is a category of politeness conveying impolite implicature as an overstatement of truth, or a category of linguistic impoliteness as an understatement or attitude clash. the politeness principle the model or theory of politeness was first proposed to be adopted by leech in 1983 and then restated in 2014. leech’s model is strongly contradicted by brown and levinson’s seminal exposition of politeness (1987). the most highlighted contradiction lies under the definitions of positive and negative faces as pragmatic categories. brown and levinson’s definitions are as follows: positive face: the positive consistent self-image or personality (crucially including the desire that this self-image be appreciated and approved of) claimed by interactants. negative face: the basic claim to territories, personal preserves, rights to non-distraction i.e. to freedom of action and freedom from imposition (brown, & levinson, 1978, p. 61). these definitions are considered to be universalist claims of western societies and are rejected by eastern critique (gu, 1990; mao, 1994; ide, 1993; matsumoto, 1988; wierzbicka, 1991/2003). commonly referred to as “universal maxims” these claims never got accepted by the majority of theorists and were criticized. leech argues the idea of “universal principles” and states that a model of politeness should be generalizable to various cultures and provide the basis for studying (im)-politeness in different languages and linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 55 societies (leech, 2014, p. 83). the conception of politeness between societies may vary yet without being greatly separated. polite communication assumes that the speaker is taking into consideration both individual and group values. it is generally assumed that in eastern societies group values are stronger, whereas in western societies individual values are of greater relevance. despite all the criticism, leech’s restatement of the treatment of the principles of politeness is the basic model to comprehend the notion of politeness as a pragmatic phenomenon. according to the theory, politeness is a restriction examined in human communicative behavior, affecting the speakers to avoid communicative offense or discord, and increase communicative comity or concord. politeness is an aspect of goal-oriented behavior. to say that the speaker is being polite in using a specific utterance is to say that the speaker’s goal in using that utterance is to convey an impression of politeness towards other people. however, politeness is concerned with avoiding discord and fostering concord, only insofar as these are manifested through communication, especially through what meanings are expressed or implicated (leech, 2014, p. 87-88). to project this conception to the idea of sarcasm or conversational irony as a mock politeness we need to take into account the two kinds of politeness scale. the two ways of looking at politeness are as follows: pragmalinguistic politeness scale: we can order utterances on a scale of politeness while keeping context invariant. for example, out of context, on the pragmalinguistic scale of politeness, we can judge that can i borrow your camera? is more polite, as a request, than lend me your camera, and is less polite than could i possibly borrow your camera? sociopragmatic politeness scale: this is politeness relative to norms in a given society, group, or situation. unlike the absolute or semantic scale, it is sensitive to context and is a bidirectional scale. hence it is possible that a form considered more polite on the pragmalinguistic politeness scale is judged less polite relative to the norms for the situation. for example, could i possibly interrupt? could be understood as “too polite,” say, if spoken to family members monopolizing the conversation; it would probably be interpreted as sarcastic and hence offensive (leech, 2014, p. 88). thus, the model of politeness stretches the first reference to sarcasm as an offensive utterance interpreted in sociopragmatic politeness scale. this means that the goal-oriented behavior of the speaker to appear polite may be breached if the utterance could be understood as “too polite” in an unexpected context, armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 56 hence providing the implication of the speaker to mean the opposite of what is uttered, i.e. appearing sarcastic. according to leech (1983), there are certain maxims (tact and modesty) to represent the goals speakers pursue to maintain communicative concord. this assumes that there are some illocutionary goals that we want to achieve in our linguistic communication. but besides this, there are also certain social goals of communication, like to maintain strong communicative relations, and illocutionary goals may sometimes match or oppose the social goals. if we want to maintain good relations, we say something polite. in this case the illocutionary goals match the social goals. but if we make a request or criticize, the illocutionary goal opposes the social goal. now, in the case of sarcastic utterances the illocutionary goal opposes the social goal, thus providing breach in the model of politeness and can be viewed as negative politeness. this kind of politeness may involve a negative purpose and intend to avoid a direct offense or verbal aggression. and the reason to use this kind of politeness is to mitigate the degree to which the speaker’s goals are imposed on the hearer. the further study of politeness principles shows that the concept of politeness should not be oversimplified, as in practice, politeness is a matter of degree and can be conditioned by different factors. here, it is important to mention the pragmatic category of horizontal distance like the communication between familiar interlocutors. when the horizontal distance is reduced, the need for politeness is also reduced, hence like grice’s cooperative principle, the politeness principle can be violated, exploited or suspended (leech, 2014, p. 99), and sarcasm or conversational irony is ascribed to be one of those exploitations conveying more of an impolite communicative behavior. as mentioned in the introductory part of the research, sarcasm is an apparent exploitation of the politeness principle and is referred to as mock politeness. culpeper treats sarcasm as a category of impoliteness. according to him sarcasm or mock politeness is performed with the use of politeness strategies that are obviously insincere, and thus remain surface realizations. sarcasm is mock politeness for social disharmony and is clearly the opposite of banter which is mock impoliteness for social harmony (culpeper, 1996, p. 356357). thus, sarcasm is contrasted to banter, as being a category of impoliteness, it actually mocks by polite behavior, whereas banter mocks by impolite behavior. leech states that if you must cause offence, at least do so in a way which doesn’t overtly conflict with the politeness principle, but allows the hearer to arrive at the offensive point of your remark indirectly, by way of an linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 57 implicature (leech, 1983, p. 82). he believes that this is a starting point to go further in considering the function of conversational irony and the variety of effects it can have. in particular, this declaration does not explain why people opt for sarcasm, rather than simply choosing direct face attack – impoliteness and rudeness. the irony principle: mock politeness the term sarcasm is mainly used by theorists to limit the denotation of the term irony, which can be broadly encountered in many contexts. irony generally refers to non-verbal phenomena. in literary studies, irony is referred to as a rhetorical device or a figure of speech. some writers as john dos passos used the conversational function of irony as a linguistic technique by which two or more contrasting meanings challenge one another. what is the conversational function of irony? to tighten up the definition we need to state the irony principle suggested by leech. in order to be ironic, the speaker expresses or implies a meaning that associates a favorable value with what pertains to other persons, mainly the addressee, or associates an unfavorable value with what pertains to the speaker. at the same time, by means of the first meaning and the context, the speaker more indirectly implies a second, deeper meaning that cancels out meaning i by associating an unfavorable value with what pertains to the other person, or associating a favorable meaning with what pertains to the speaker. the derivation of meaning ii from meaning i is by means of two paths of inference: first, meaning i is infelicitous (i.e., pragmatically untenable in context, often because of violation of the cooperative principle) and therefore to be rejected; and second, given that the meaning is infelicitous and in accordance with the politeness principle, the obvious way to make sense of it is to look for a related interpretation that is felicitous and not in accordance with the politeness principle – which is what the irony principle provides. the irony principle is a second-order principle because it is impossible to understand a remark to be ironic unless we understand it as superficially observing the politeness principle (leech, 2014, p. 233). the irony principle apparently involves an explanation of polite utterances appearing as impolite arguing that polite interpretations are unsustainable. in addition, the ironic interpretations may be supported by the notion of pragmaticalization. grice’s (1975) example: “you’re a fine friend” (p. 53), may have both polite and ironic interpretations. as an ironic interpretation the armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 58 utterance may be considered as a violation of quality maxim implicating that the hearer might be the opposite of friendly. leech suggests a change of word order in grice’s example to: “a fine friend you are”; specializing in an ironic interpretation as an example of pragmaticalization (leech, 2014, p. 234). the positioning of the intonational stress on you reinforces the ironic interpretation of the utterance. it is worth mentioning that sarcastic utterances may also provide infelicity of the apparent meaning emerging from intentional exaggeration which in literary studies is ascribed as the rhetorical device of hyperbole. now, hyperbole is apparently a breach of quality maxim in the sense that it indicates an overstatement of the truth. to support the theory let us consider some examples of the usage of hyperbole retrieved from john dos passos’s depression-era novel “1919” to implicate the mock politeness that appears as a sarcastic utterance: (1) special grand jury asked to indict bolshevists (passos, 1932, p. 248). the deliberate exaggeration in the example appears as an infelicity condition of the apparent meaning of the utterance and a breach of quality maxim, as overstatement of the historical truth exposes the sarcastic intention of the utterance to express mock politeness. another expression of an overstatement appears in the following example: (2) the cavalree artileree and the goddamned engineers will never beat the infantree in eleven thousand years (passos, 1932, p. 17) passos’s sarcastic overstatement about the “unbeatable” infantry is an apparent breach of quality maxim as well as a violation of politeness principles. the expression “eleven thousand years” is an infelicitous statement considering the context that it appears in. in another example passos uses an overstatement such as “eighty year old boy” referring to the historical unjust conditions: (3) eightyearold boy shot by lad with rifle (passos, 1932, p. 90). linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 59 all these examples are utterances with apparent infelicitous meanings being used as deliberate exaggerations by the author and convey an impolite implication as though appearing polite. the irony principle presupposes two triggers for conversational irony: understatement and attitude clash (leech, 2014, p. 237). conversational irony was previously characterized in the paper as polite interpretation appearing untenable in context – basically because of its apparent breach of the politeness principle, and the contradiction between what is uttered and the attitude of the speaker no matter whether expressed through tone of voice, intonation, or other nonverbal signals. as a whole, these can be considered as “triggers” of the ironic interpretation. in grice’s terms, understatement occurs when the speaker makes obviously inappropriate claims providing less information than needed to describe some phenomena (grice, 1975, p. 53). this apparently is a breach of the quantity maxim where people try to be as informative as they possibly can, and give as much information as is required, and no more. in another example from passos’s “1919” we see how the sarcastic usage of understatement breaches the maxim of quantity: (4) war decreases marriages and births (passos, 1932, p. 91). the second trigger for ironic interpretation of the utterance is the attitude clash. culpeper introduces the attitude clash as a case where the apparent polite meaning and the impolite meaning of conversational irony appear alongside in the same utterance (culpeper, 2011, p. 174). for instance, in the utterance thanks for nothing the polite expression thanks meet the attitude clash of the impolite criticism nothing. the sarcastic interpretation of the utterance breaches the politeness principles involving both polite and impolite implicatures. the attitude clash does not fully comply with the essence of conversational irony as the polite and impolite meanings both appear overt in the context. however, it is significant to mention that the sarcastic interpretation emerges from the impolite part of the utterance, like in the following example where passos demonstrates two opposite attitudes towards the same issue: (5) oh the oak the ash and the weeping willow tree and green grows the grass in north amerikee (passos, 1932, p. 28). armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 60 in the first line the elements “the oak”, “the ash”, “the weeping willow tree” convey a negative interpretation of the utterance and do not positively correlate with the expression represented in the second line – “green grows the grass”, which apparently exposes the implied sarcastic meaning. conversational irony is inclined to be more complex, creative, witty and entertaining than a direct application of impoliteness. sarcasm appears at different levels of delicacy and seriousness. it generally has its target but it should not be confused with direct face-attack. it primarily demonstrates a controlling behavior by the speaker. the sarcastic utterances can be considered as implicit threats but are relativity innocent in their undisguised meaning. sarcasm works in favor of the speaker both offensively and defensively. offensively, it achieves its impolite goal towards other people, in a way that can be interpreted as face-depriving both by the hearer and by other people present. defensively, it means the speaker cannot easily be accused of causing offense. as a matter of fact the speaker can always claim or imply that the undisguised “innocent” interpretation is intended. conclusion summing up the outcomes of the current research it becomes apparent that sarcasm is a manifest breach of politeness as a pragmatic category. the analysis of politeness principle suggested by leech provides insights on the exploitations of politeness considering sarcasm or conversational irony as one of them. it has been revealed that in sarcastic utterances the illocutionary goal opposes the social goal thus providing a breach in the model of politeness and can be viewed as negative politeness. this kind of politeness involves a negative purpose and is intended to avoid a direct offense or verbal aggression. as a category of impoliteness, sarcasm or mock politeness is performed with the use of politeness strategies that are obviously insincere, and thus remain surface realizations. leech’s irony principle exposes the conversational function of irony considering polite utterances as impolite and arguing that polite interpretations are unsustainable. ironic interpretations of utterances imply breaches of the quality maxim, provided by the infelicity condition of overstatement of truth, and the quantity maxim by understatement and attitude clash. being an apparent breach of politeness, sarcasm or conversational irony tends to be more complex, creative, witty and entertaining than a direct application of impoliteness appearing on different levels of delicacy and seriousness. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 61 references brown, p., & levinson s. c. (1978). universals in language usage: politeness phenomena. in e.n. goody (ed.) questions and politeness. (pp.56-311). cambridge: cambridge university press. retrieved from: https://www.academia.edu/26395652/politeness_some_universals_in_language_usage culpeper, j. (1996). towards an anatomy of impoliteness. journal of pragmatics, 25(3), 349–367. retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(95)00014-3 culpeper, j. (2011). impoliteness: using language to cause offence. cambridge: cambridge university press. gibbs, r., & colston, l. (2007). irony in language and thought. new york: taylor & francis group. grice, h. p. (1975). logic and conversation. new york: academic press gu, y. (1990). politeness phenomena in modern chinese. journal of pragmatics, 14 (2), 237–257. retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(90)90082-o ide, s. (1993). preface: the search for integrated universals of linguistic politeness. multilingua, 12 (1), 7–11. retrieved from: http://www.sachikoide.com/1993_preface_the_search_for_integrated_universals.pdf leech, g. (1983). principles of pragmatics. london: longman. leech, g. (2014). the pragmatics of politeness. new york: oxford university press. mao, l. m. (1994). beyond politeness theory: “face” revisited and renewed. journal of pragmatics, 21, 451–486. retrieved from: https://www.academia.edu/5436544/beyond_politeness_theory_face_rev isited_and_renewed matsumoto, y. (1988). reexamination of the universality of face: politeness phenomena in japanese. journal of pragmatics, 12, 403-426. retrieved from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0378-2166(88)90003-3 wierzbicka, a. (1991/2003). cross-cultural pragmatics: the semantics of human interaction. berlin: mouton de gruyter. sources of data passos, j. d. (1932). nineteen nineteen. new york: harcourt, brace and co. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 62 սարկազմը որպես լեզվական քաղաքավարության խախտում. որոշ տեսական դիտարկումներ հայկ դանիելյան սույն աշխատանքը նվիրված է սարկազմի վերլուծությանը որպես քաղաքավարության սկզբունքների խախտում: աշխատանքի նպատակն է բացահայտել սարկազմի առանձնահատկությունները որպես` լիչի կողմից առաջարկված, քաղաքավարության մոդելի բացառում և հեգնանքի ռազմավարության շրջանակներում` սարկազմի խոսակցական գործառույթ: քաղաքավարության սկզբունքը ցույց է տալիս, որ սարկազմն այդ սկզբունքի ակնհայտ շահագործումն է, քանի որ սարկաստիկ ասույթների դեպքում խոսակցության նպատակը հակադրվում է սոցիալական նպատակին՝ դրանով իսկ հանգեցնելով քաղաքավարության մոդելի խախտման: այն կարող է դիտվել որպես բացասական քաղաքավարություն: հեգնանքի սկզբունքը պնդում է, որ քաղաքավարի ասույթներն անքաղաքավարի են թվում այն դեպքում, երբ քաղաքավարի մեկնաբանություններն անկայուն են: ի պաշտպանություն այս տեսական դրույթների հոդվածում ներկայացվում են օրինակների որոշ վերլուծություններ, որոնք վերցված են ամերիկյան դեպրեսիայի դարաշրջանի հեղինակ ջոն դոս պասոսի «1919» վեպից: ըստ էության, բանավեճը ծավալվում է այն հարցի շուրջ, թե արդյո՞ք սարկազմը արտաբերված խոսքի քաղաքավարի ենթատեքստի ակնհայտ շահագործում է, թե՞ անքաղաքավարության կատեգորիա, որը հանդես է գալիս որպես քաղաքավարության ծաղրանք: բանալի բառեր. սարկազմ, խոսակցական հեգնանք, քաղաքավարություն, քաղաքավարության սկզբունք, հեգնանքի սկզբունք, անքաղաքավարություն: kazm.cdr the correlation of myth and symbol in d.h. lawrence’s novels ashas already been established, the study ofsymbolic units within the scope of a literary text is directly interrelated with the study of the author’s individuality and his philosophical outlook, and, therefore, has to deal with a number of extralinguistic factors. every writer is a bearer of unique qualities which are reflected in his original manner of writing. the individual manner of writing (within a literary text) is materialized through a specific choice of phonetic, semantic and syntactic units, linguostylistic and linguopoetic expressive means. these, on the one hand, reveal the individual traits in the writer’s character, and, on the other hand, get enriched with additional overtones, expanding their preliminary semantic borders. this fact, in its turn, brings forward special correlations between form and content, in which, as usual, the form dominates, since the reader attaches more importance to the manner of presentation than to the object. thus, in the reader’s imagination, the whole system of units from phonetic, semantic and syntactic levels of the literary text brings forth concrete images that reveal the writer’s psychological peculiarities, his way of thinking and his manner of reproducing the objective reality. d.h. lawrence’s world view and his own method of reproducing the objective reality are associated with generalization and introduction of various symbolic images, which obtain additional semantic volume within the philological context of his creative work. necessarily, the adequate perception of the latter demands a systematic approach. d.h. lawrence, an exclusive representative of the psychological novel, introduces a special system of symbolic images and conveys the idea that the era of industrialization spreads but malice and vice upon the world, depriving human life of vital contact with nature. in his works d.h. lawrence shows that the bourgeoisie has exhausted itself and, under such conditions, the ever-going “man society” discordance and one’s protest against the deeply rooted evils gain grounds. therefore, great changes in social, political and economic spheres of life become imminent. all these observations are combined with thorough penetration into the very depths of human essence, man’s inner world full of passions, instincts and emotions of various nature. it is exactly due to these factors that d.h.lawrence’s works undergo global philosophical transformation and become liable to versatile studies. modern civilization, which has buried itself alive because of industrial achievements, is described as anti-social and anti-humane, as a “machine” devouring the natural essence of human beings. d.h.lawrence criticizes modern civilization proposing his own model of recovery: “return to natural sources, by intermingling with nature and the whole universe, freeing instincts and, finally, the 120 armenian folia anglistika literature mariana sargsyan triumph of instincts over the reason”.1 in everyday struggle with society, a human being has to suppress his feelings, instincts and passions, and this brings to alienation. as a result, man’s personality, his inner world with all the vast rainbow of feelings and boundless emotions gradually degrade. in prehistoric times, the relationship between man and nature was quite intimate: the prehistoric man was full of emotions and prejudice, unlike his modern counterpart, whose tastes, feelings and ideas are imposed by capitalistic civilization. according to d.h.lawrence, any living creature in nature is endowed with anima which is even more powerful than the human being himself. that’s why, in his model of world view, like in primeval religious worships, it is increasingly difficult to draw a clear line between the organic and inorganic, material and animistic essence. thus, in d.h.lawrence’s creative works we face the rebirth of many prehistoric mythical symbols derived from animistic religions. natural phenomena (the sun, the sea, a flower, snow, the moon, flame, etc.) transform through the prism of the writer’s imagination, thus concentrating and generalizing his observations on the possible model of further development of the society and his standpoint towards this or that phenomenon. myth and symbol are so closely interrelated with each other in d.h.lawrence’s works that sometimes it is not easy to distinguish between them. however, our research has brought us to the conclusion that myth serves as background for deriving symbolic images concepts which come forth to fill the gap between the author’s motive and the reader’s imagination. thus, symbolism is used as an all-round method to act upon the reader’s imagination and, as d.h.lawrence states himself, “symbols do not mean something, but they stand for whole units of human feelings and experience”.2 in this case myth serves as background which helps to achieve a deeper isight into the symbolic images. thus, in d.h.lawrence’s imagery, a myth can be described as the final stage in the development of symbolic images. many mythical phenomena and personages are revived in his novels and, in fact, they make part and parcel of his works. however, the most conspicuous one among them is the mythical image of the sun which plays a pivotal role reflecting the old worship of the sun as an endless source of energy. it is not strange at all that the image of the sun gains a central role, as this fact directly results from the role of the sun itself, its place in the universe and its importance in sustaining life on the earth. “man nature” relationship is an ever-going process, as in everyday life man gets in touch with nature. anyhow, the interrelation between man and the sun is of great importance, since the sun itself is a kind of universe from which one can endlessly derive wisdom, power, self-cognition and love. “the prayer to the universe”, as d.h. lawrence insists upon, “ends significantly with the organic sun. what we want is to destroy our false, inorganic connections with the cosmos, the sun and the earth, with mankind and nation and family. start with the sun, and the rest will slowly, slowly happen”.3 “sun” and “the woman who rode away” reflect the mythical image of the sun most explicitly, though d.h.lawrence’s contradicting, or even dualistic principles retain their validity in reflecting the old myths about the sun. 121 literature armenian folia anglistika in “sun”, with the introduction of the image of the sun in the title of the novel, the author underlines its central role. in this story this image reflects the old belief of the sun as an endless source of energy and a great healer of human souls: again a morning when the sun lifted himself naked and molten, sparkling over the sea’s rim. the house faced south-west. juliet lay in her bed and watched his rise. it was as if she had never seen the sun rise before. they had never seen the naked sun stand up pure upon the sea line, shaking the night off himself. so the desire sprang secretly in her to go naked in the sun. she cherished her desire like a secret. (“sun”, p.342) in the above mentioned context, we see juliet who, desiring to come into close contact with nature, fleeds away from the society. at first, she finds this contact quite unexpected and thrilling, but, suddenly, her relationship with the sun becomes intimate. she is lying naked, laughing to herself, with a flower in her navel. juliet cannot even imagine how she has lived in town full of dust and it is just enough for her to see the naked sun rise in the sky to feel and be overpowered with its healing energy. at first glance her behavior may seem somewhat odd to the reader. anyhow, reading between the lines, we feel the author’s great sympathy for those who lack vital connections with nature. people have gone too far and have alienated themselves from the sun, i.e. from nature, but, in fact, “man nature” relationship should be the only existing reality. thus, juliet proceeds with her contact with the sun, getting closer to the universe. every day, in the morning towards noon, she lay at the foot of the powerful, silverpawed cypress tree, while the sun rode jovial in heaven. by now she knew the sun in every thread of her body, there was not a cold shadow left. and her heart, that anxious straining heart, had disappeared altogether, like a flower that falls in the sun, and leaves a ripe seed-case. (“sun”, p. 345) juliet awakens emotionally in the elemental presence of the sun, she feels the greatest sun through all her body, every little breathing cell in her becomes filled with the healing energy of the sun. thus, her soul and mind are directed to the endless universe and she is ready for new germination. one of the typical peculiarities of any mythical object or phenomenon (which finds its reflection in symbolic images) is personification. in ancient times myth dominated men’s thought, as it was believed that any object or natural phenomenon had its soul and power and that life wholly depended on their will. it is exactly for this reason that d.h.lawrence refers to the sun as a phenomenon of masculine gender (he, himself, him) underlying its almighty power. “sun woman” relationship is like “man woman” 122 armenian folia anglistika literature relationship, as in prehistoric times the sun symbolized male essence. thus, in this novel the image of the sun symbolizes vitality as a source of life. we observe a different symbolic image of the sun in “the woman who rode away”. here we come across with traces of indian (aztec) savagery of sacrifice, an almighty power which constantly demands sacrifice for the vices committed on the earth or as a manifestation of veneration. with the introduction of a consistent system of images, the author accentuates the ever-going vices upon the earth and nature, with the sun at its head, is hostile towards people since they have lost their touch with the latter. ‘i came away from the white man’s god myself. i came to look for the god of the chilchui’. ‘does the white woman seek the gods of the chilchui because she is weary of her own god?’ came the question. ‘yes, she does. she is tired of the white man’s god’, she replied, thinking that was what they wanted her to say. she would like to serve the gods of chilchui. (“the woman who rode away ”, p. 345) juliet’s behavior (“sun”) is similar to that of the woman who rode away. they both have fled away from the existing reality in search of a new reality, new god, hoping to find the true meaning of existence. in the philological context of these works, the image of the sun is perceived as a means of gaining freedom, and creating a new mode of life, where there are no individuals, and the only reality that matters is the relation between man and nature. we have lost our power over the sun, and we are trying to get him back. but he’s wild with us, and shy like a horse that has got away. we have to go through a lot. (“the woman who rode away”, p. 330) d.h. lawrence himself worshipped nature. the living nature, its powerful energy and its activity are contrasted to the man’s life full of conventionality and restrictions imposed by modern civilization. so, the sun is “wild” with people, and with the introduction of the image of the “wild” sun (he’s wild), the writer imparts to the reader his own attitude towards people who have alienated themselves from nature. however, this situation finds its solution. the woman who rode away is sacrificed to the gods of chilchui. d.h.lawrence reserves death and consummation for those who lack vital connections. the ritual of sacrifice itself carries a symbolic meaning, as, according to ancient tradition, the “blue” color in which the woman is dressed, symbolizes death, exhaustion of vital powers. nevertheless, the ritual of sacrifice presupposes rebirth and resurrection. “departure and return, the pattern of most ancient myths, became d.h.lawrence’s formula”.3 thus, within the context of the above-mentioned two stories, we observe the symbolic image of the sun, the nature of which becomes polarized due to the reflection of opposite mythological realities. it is an evident fact that the dualistic structure of 123 literature armenian folia anglistika d.h.lawrence’s system of images has long been a question of acute debates and contradictory arguments. it is, perhaps, for this reason that his works have not got consistent estimation in the circle of literary critics and d.h.lawrence’s contribution to the development of novel has been belittled. however, in d.h.lawrence’s creative works the symbolic images play a most important role in generalizing the objective reality. the symbolic image of the sun is not only an ideological but also an expressive unit. hence, having been revealed through the symbol, the myth tends to become more than philosophy, more than mere art. it is striking to observe how organically the symbolic image of the sun gets intermingled with the whole system of images which are enriched with allegorical overtones, thus becoming one of the basic means of realistic generalization. d.h.lawrence conveys not only the idea of vagueness of the reality but also reveals its ever-going, moving essence, and the symbol becomes a good means of conveying this ever changing particularity of the reality. references: 1. modern masters: d.h.lawrence. / ed. by frank kermode. new york, 1978. 2. the later d.h.lawrence. new york, 1952. 3. lawrence d.h. phoenix: the posthumous papers of d.h.lawrence. new york: viking, 1964. ²è²êäºèæ ºì êàððð¸²üþæ öàêð²ð²´ºðàôâúàôüà ¸.ð. èààôðºüêæ êîºô첶àðìàôâúàôüüºðàôø êáõûý ñá¹í³íç áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãû³ý ³é³ñï³ý ¸.ð.èááõñ»ýëç ëï»õí³·áñíáõãûáõýý»ñáõù ³ñï³óáéí³í ëáñññ¹³ýß³ï³ý å³ïï»ñý»ñý »ý: ¸.ð. èááõñ»ýëç ëï»õí³·áñíáõãûáõýý»ñáõù ëáñññ¹³ýß³ï³ý å³ïï»ñý»ñá ïáãí³í »ý çñ³ï³ý³óý»éáõ μ³é³ñí»ëïç ëï»õí³·áñíáõãû³ý ñçùùáõù áýï³í ·³õ³÷³ñ³ëáëáõãûáõýý áý¹ñ³ýñ³óýáõ ¨ ³ùμáõç³óýáõ ·áñí³éáõûã: ¸.ð.èááõñ»ýëç ëáñññ¹³ýß³ï³ý å³ïï»ñý»ñç ñ³ù³ï³ñ·áõù ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïáõï áõß³¹ñáõãû³ý »ý ³ñå³ýç μýáõãû³ý »ñ¨áõûãý»ñç ëáñññ¹³ýß³ï³ý í»ñ³çù³ëï³íáñù³ý ¹»åù»ñá, áñáýó ñçùùáõù áýï³í ¿ ³é³ëå»éá, áñá ëáñññ¹³ýß³ï³ý å³ïï»ñý»ñ ï»ñï»éáõ ³ýëå³é ³õμûáõñ ¿: êáñññ¹³ýçßý áõ ³é³ëå»éý ³ýù³ïï»éçáñ»ý ùç³óáõéíáõù »ý, ¹³éýáõù 黳éçëï³ï³ý å³ïï»ñù³ý ñ½áñ ùççáó: ²é³ëå»éá ýáñ ßáõýã ¿ ëï³ýáõù ëáñññ¹³ýß³ï³ý å³ïï»ñçý»ñç ùççáóáíª ¹³éý³éáí ³í»éç ù³ý ÷çéçëá÷³ûáõãûáõý: 124 armenian folia anglistika literature hin.qxd “what a soul in those soaring shapes”: transcaucasia in xix century british writing f or centuries the caucasus, ararat and armenia have exercised a powerful hold over the imagination of many british authors. the title of the paper may seem somewhat large and ambitious for now, after numerous books, articles and symposia have explored and described many aspects of the problem. my topic has only a limited focus. a new field is not to be introduced, but the potentials of the proposed research are, nevertheless, limitless. each decade pronounces its own judgement on the transcaucasian phenomena and always leaves something new and more correct to be said by the next decade. the relations with immediate neighbours in transcaucasia are the toughest issues today. in what way is the present day situation different from what happened in the past? the present paper is devoted to the study of three works written by j.bryce a british statesman, jurist and author, h.f.b. lynch a british traveller, businessman, jurist and politician, w.watson a poet. the essential thing the books have in common is the fundamental honesty of the authors who see themselves obliged to tell their readers the truth “without a prejudice in favour of either of the states… in the regions… described.”(j. bryce) the authors do not claim their judgements as final and “absolute truth” and are prepared to leave the assessment of their works to the future generations. a shrewd foreign observer may reveal significant facets in the life of a country. thus, it is not surprising at all that j. bryce, the founder of the anglo-armenian society, in his “transcaucasia and ararat” (first edition 1877) gives a popular account of his journey in the autumn of 1876 through the west-asiatic parts of russia and turkey, of his ascent of mount ararat on september 12, 1876. even “the beaten tracks” to which the author almost entirely kept were unlikely to be familiar to english readers. he also complied with curiosity regarding mount ararat in england. bryce proved to be a capable observer, his chief interest being aroused by ethnological questions, ethnic rivalry and ethnic co-operativenes in the region. his particular interest lies also in the various learned institutions existing in transcaucasia, with special reference to native literature, literary magazines. the devoted admirer of i. s. turgenev, whom he presented in the oxford sheldonian theatre when the latter received his doctor of civil law, bryce distinguishes himself in “transcaucasia and 119 literature armenian folia anglistika stella nuralova ararat” as a remarkable author. the portrayal of the pastoral beauty of georgia, the poetic panorama of armenia with its ancient monasteries, towns and villages, the mountain of the ark is marked with more than an ordinary narrative skill. bryce has an important gift of distinguishing the important from the trivial. a considerable part of the book is devoted to the historical and political surveys in the armenian question. bryce disproves the stereotyped conceptions of the caucasus “as a chain of snowy mountains… inhabited by a race of patriotic heroes and beautiful women.”1 another stereotype he refutes is about “the utterly remorseless cossacks.”2 the author presents a truthful picture of ethnic rivalry in the caucasus where almost “each man, like the cyclopes in homer, rules over his wife and children, and cares nothing for his neighbours.” bryce tells his readers about “ne’er-do-wells” of the caucasian family and “mostly industrious, well-disposed people” of the region.3 the phenomenon of brilliant ethnic co-operation the author finds in the capital of transcaucasia, the city of tiflis, “a little paris in its way.”4 there, without losing their identity, “six nations dwell together in a town smaller than brighton, and six languages are constantly, three of four more occasionally, to be heard in the streets.”5 “probably nowhere in the world,” the author concludes, “can so great a variety of stocks, languages and religions be found huddled together in so narrow an area as in the caucasian chain.”6 the outbreak of russian-turkish war (1877-1878) attached unexpected importance to bryce’s book. the competition for influence in transcaucasia has always been a pressing question. it is obvious that every war brings about certain processes. the treaty of san stefano (1878) and the congress and treaty of berlin (1878) redistributed territories, tried to create a new balance of power in the caucasian subsystem and establish a consensus on common interests. h.f.b. lynch’s “armenia. travels and studies” written more than twenty years after bryce’s book showed that common problems still existed for armenians in the russian and turkish empires, however, equitable solutions were never found. lynch began his travels in western asia (1889) in support of financial interests of lynch brothers firm. the journey to armenia in 1893 was the beginning of his life-long interest in the biblical country. he also made the ascent of mount ararat. in 1898 he returned to armenia and brought out the results of his journeys in a resplendently illustrated 2-volume study which is often considered to be the best travel book about armenia written in english. since then lynch has been recognized an authority on armenia. early in the 20th century he received acclaim, though he was reproached for being pro-armenian. it was obvious that the book should be studied by every scholar and politician who wished to understand the complex ethnic relations in the district. the impact of lynch’s book on the succeeding investigations of the region was great. a very interesting personality, lynch was a good writer as well. he had a sense of history and the subtlety of a genuine artist. he captured the imagination of english readers because his vivid pictures of armenian daily life had both pathos and warmth. the description of the outskirts of yerevan produce an almost painterly effect by his juxtaposition of the rich colours of the luxuriant gardens and orchards.7 enthusiastic, 120 armenian folia anglistika literature kind-hearted and slightly humorous is the description of a wedding at alexandropol.8 the author feels genuine affection for and tremendous respect towards armenian artisans and craftsmen at van.9 the pictures of dukhobortsy village gorelovka are invested with dramatic narration.10 “the olympian eminence of the grand duke’s circle…the steps of the imperial throne ”11 are close to the pictures of a military camp and “abyss of a … prison”. the final paragraph of the chapter “the heart of ararat” is monumental, solemn and poetical.12 lynch’s comments on the religious and political differences in the region, the relations between the russians, armenians, turks and kurds, the christians and muslims, are still cogent. he thoroughly examines the educational policy in the russian and turkish provinces of armenia. “the pillar of armenian nationality” for long ages has been the church, “and the schools were affiliated to it”. “perhaps the best introduction to the population of a city”, the author believes, “consists in a visit to the schools”.13 in spite of certain drawbacks, the author could not but “congratulate the state schools” in yerevan “upon such a salutary feature” as the ability of classmates, “mohammedan and christian, russian orthodox and gregorian armenian,” to respect each other and “tolerate each other’s faith.”14 each volume has a chapter specially devoted to statistics and politics. lynch comes to a distressing conclusion on unworthy methods of government in russia and turkey, or in “policy adopted by those states towards their armenian subjects.” for armenians the 19th century ended with the horror of genocide and extermination carried out in ottoman turkey. the massacre of 1895 was not only the tragedy of the armenian people, “it had touched the conscience of the west,” (lynch) though it remained unpunished. among those who went heart and soul into defence of dying and homeless people was the poet w. watson. the tragic voice of the poet sounds in “the purple east: a series of sonnets on england’s desertion of armenia”. this was a cry of despair and anger against “the continued torture, rape and massacre of a christian people under the eyes of a christian continent”.15 after the publication of the first seven sonnets, there appeared an exasperated reply from a.austin, the poet-laureate. austin, known for his affected official verse, had become once more a critical butt. watson in his answer to the poet-laureate claims that regardless of by whom and against whom it is committed, any crime of genocide should be condemned, “that something besides lamentation alone is even yet possible.”16 watson hurls bitter accusations upon turkish murderers, upon all those who had condoned the disgraceful crime. motifs of denunciation ring through his verses with unusual force. the typical romantic theme of man’s defiant faith in struggle against tyranny dominates most of his poems in the collection. poems such as “the turk in armenia”, “craven england”, “how long?”, “repudiated responsibility”, “the bardin-waiting”, “the plague of apathy”, pitilessly strip off the dressings from the “passive connivance of non-intervention”. the lyrical note sounds now “with wrath divine ,” now “cries aloud, with the tongues of thrice a hundred thousand martyrs.” the laments in the collection have something in common with some of byron’s verses. though watson lacks byron’s celebrated drive and vigour, the emotional climate of “the purple east” may be compared with that of “journal in cephalonia”. both the poets treated art as a 121 literature armenian folia anglistika vehicle of social conscience, both may be referred to as “the poets of world sorrow.” like his famous precursor, watson exclaims, “because i crouch not fawning slaves among, how is my service proved the less sincere?”17 the eternal questions watson puts in his sonnets contain more than condemnation of genocide. the poet raises the questions of liberty and violence, of great responsibility of man and of state towards history. but if ye could and would not, oh, what plea, think ye, shall stead you at your trial, when the thunder-cloud of witnesses shall loom, with ravished childhood on the seat of doom, at the assizes of eternity?18 the “cruel age” of transcaucasia is not yet over and watson’s sonnets still, years later, touch the right chord in modern readers. the keen observations of j. bryce, h.f.b. lynch, w. watson on national and regional identities, on the competition for influence in transcaucasia, on the language policy in the region are pressing questions today when a new world order is in the works. references: 1. bryce j. transcaucasia and ararat, london: macmillan, 1896, p.43 2. ibid., p.307 3. ibid., p.62 4. ibid., p.121 5. ibid., p.119 6. ibid., p.120 7. lynch h.f.b. armenia. travels and studies. 2vols, longmans, 1901, v.1., p.142 8. vol.1, p.129-131 9. vol.2, p.90-91 10. vol.1, p.115, 116 11. vol.1, p.54, 55, 58 12. vol.1, p.196-197 13. vol.1, p.218 14. vol.1, p.224 15. watson w. the purple east: a series of sonnets on england’s desertion of armenia. preface, p.8 16. ibid; p.9 17. op. cit., p.17 18. op. cit., p.42 122 armenian folia anglistika literature §æýãåçëç ñá·ç ³û¹ ׳ëñáõ áõñí³·í»ñáõù¦. ²ý¹ñïáíï³ëá 19-ñ¹ ¹³ñç μñçï³ý³ï³ý ·ñ³ï³ýáõãû³ý ù»ç æ.´ñ³ûëá` ³ý·éá-³ù»ñçïû³ý áýï»ñáõãû³ý ñçùý³¹çñá, çñ §²ý¹ñïáí-ï³ëá ¨ ²ñ³ñ³ïᦠëï»õí³·áñíáõãû³ý ù»ç ñ»ñùáõù ¿ ²ý¹ñïáíï³ëç ù³ëçý ï³ñíñ³ó³í å³ïï»ñ³óáõùý»ñá, óáõûó ¿ ï³éçë ¿ãýçï ñ³ù³·áñ-í³ïóáõãû³ý çñ³ï³ý å³ïï»ñá ï³ñ³í³ßñç³ýáõù ¨ ý»ñï³û³óýáõù ²ñ³ñ³ï é»é³ý ßáõñç »õ³í ñ»ï³ùñùñáõãûáõýá ²ý·éç³ûáõù: ø»ï ³ûé ñ»õçý³ïç` ð.ü.´.èçýãç §ð³û³ëï³ý. ׳ù÷áñ¹áõãûáõý ¨ áõëáõùý³ëçñáõ-ãûáõý¦ ·çñùá ñ³ù³¹ñáõùý ¿ »ñïáõ ³é³ýóçý ׳ù÷áñ¹áõãûáõýý»ñç, áñáýù ý³ ï³ï³ñ»é ¿ 1893-1898 ãí³ï³ýý»ñçý: èçýãá á·¨áñáõãû³ùμ ¿ ·ñáõù §î³å³ýç é»é³ý, ³é³ëå»é³ï³ý ¹ñ³ëï³í³ûñç¦ ù³ëçý: ºí í»ñç³å»ë, ì.ì³ãëáýá çñ ëáý»ïý»ñç ùç ß³ñùáõù` í»ñý³·ñí³í §´áëáñ ²ñ¨»éù¦, áõç ñá·áí å³ßïå³ýáõù ¿ ù³ñ³óáõ åáõáíñ¹çý` §ùç ³ýïáõý åáõáíñ¹ç¦, áñý §çñ ó»éù»ñý ¿ »ñï³ñáõù ³õáã»éáí¦: üßí³í ñ»õçý³ïý»ñç ëï»õí³·áñ-íáõãûáõýý»ñá ï³ñçù áõý»ý ù³ýñ³ù³ëý áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãû³ý ñ³ïï³å»ë ³ûëûñ, »ñμ ³ßë³ññç ýáñ ï³ñ·ý ³ñ¹»ý áýã³óù ¿ ³é»é: 123 literature armenian folia anglistika armenian folia anglistika – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english (since 2005) and yerevan state university (since 2015) aims at fostering research of the english language, literature and culture armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 translation studies 96 literary translation as performance. theoretical questions and a literary analogy angela locatelli  university of bergamo the aim of this essay is to propose a view of literary translation as “performance”, i.e., as both an art and an activity endowed with specific affinities with those of the actor or the musician. actors and musicians offer subjective interpretations of the dramatic texts and of the musical scripts that they present on stage and in the concert hall. likewise, the translator presents her/his interpretation and her/his rendering of a specific text to readers whose mother tongue and culture may either be close or remote from the ones of the original. in other words, a translator of artistic literature is ‘a performer’ and each translation an ‘execution’ i.e., a unique ‘rendering of the script’ (t1), and it is both a recognizable prior text (t1) and yet also a specific variation of it (t2). after some theoretical observations on translation (part 1 of the essay), my thesis will be developed in connection with an interpretation of the character of bottom, the weaver-actor in a midsummer night’s dream, because his experience and ‘personality’, seem to bear interesting metaphorical affinities with those of the translator as performer of poetic texts (part 2 of the essay). keywords: translation, performance, aesthetic enjoyment, theory and poetics of translation, literature, shakespeare. introduction several valuable approaches to translation have been proposed for centuries (one may think of biblical translations as compelling examples). more recently, the focus has been on new theoretical definitions and methods. starting from the findings of recent studies on translation, this article wishes to contribute to the issue by suggesting an idea of “translation as  angela.locatelli@unibg.it this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 01.02.2021 revised: 10.04.2021 accepted: 20.05.2021 © the author(s) 2021 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2021.17.1.096 mailto:angela.locatelli@unibg.it https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 97 performance”. in other words, the translator, like the artist or musician is here perceived as one who offers a specific “execution” of the prior text, a unique rendering of t1, which is based on the translator’s purposes towards the imagined recipients, as well as on her/his specific linguistic and cultural competence. the psychological and methodological attitudes of the translator clearly have a strong impact on the result of her/his work. the complex position of the translator are here explored and discussed in relation to those of a well-known literary figure, bottom, because this shakespearean character embodies the multifaceted desires and abilities of a lively “performer”. some theoretical remarks on translation as performance our experience of the enjoyment of music demonstrates that we receive and appreciate a symphony or a concerto (for example vivaldi’s or chopin’s) in the specific rendering that an artist-musician offers us. for instance, we can relish vivaldi’s four seasons played either by victoria mullova or by giuliano carmignola, and we are moved by chopin nocturnes played either by maurizio pollini or by vladimir ashkenazy. in these cases, our reception, and concomitant aesthetic emotions, are rooted in a double recognition: the recognition of the musical piece (for example, the four seasons or the nocturnes) and simultaneously another recognition concerning the performer’s specific rendering (mullova or carmignola’s, pollini or ashkenazy’s execution). something similar happens in our enjoyment of plays when we already know the script, or of plays which we have already seen in different performances. our aesthetic pleasure is bound to the double perception of the script and the director’s and actors’ joint rendering of it. the double recognition we experience in music and in the theatre is similar to our enjoyment of translation(s) as a specific performance of the original script. the performance of the translator concerns both the activity of translating and the result of such endeavor. the former includes the hermeneutic activity that precedes and accompanies any act of translation (schleiermacher, 1838/1998; mueller-vollmer, 1989; gasparyan, 2018; thiselton, 2019), and the translator’s execution of the text includes also the numerous questions at philosophical (derrida 1985, 2012; hermans, 1985; armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 translation studies 98 graham, 1985), linguistic, and technical level, which the translator, and especially the good translator, must ask and answer while completing her/his task. the result always elicits a double response in readers who are familiar with t1 (the script); in this sense a satisfactory translation resembles a good performance. the translator as performer means that the reader of the original, who knows both the language of departure (of t1) and of arrival (of t2), can evaluate and appreciate the strategies and stylistic choices made by the translator, which remain her/his choice and responsibility. the translator has therefore to be accountable to herself/himself and to be the judge (albeit certainly not the only one) of her/his work. readers are also entitled to evaluate a translation according to their own parameters, which are indebted to cultural norms, to moral and aesthetic values, as well as to individual tastes. such appraisals will necessarily be both subjective and time and culture specific. no two translations of the same text will ever be the same, because the art of the translator is genuinely creative, and we can legitimately talk of a “poetics” of translation, as well as of “theories” (pym, 2014; van doorslaer, 2013; bachmann-medick, 2013; peeters, 2005; frawley, 1984), and “methods” (flynn & gambier, 2011; larson, 1984) of translation. different texts call for different translation strategies and a basic distinction between technical and scientific texts versus poetic texts and artistic narratives must set the agenda towards a basic approach to the translation (delabatista, 2011; hermans, 1985; frawley, 1984). while technical and scientific texts should prioritize information and provide a univocal and unequivocal meaning (for example, i need clear details in order to understand how to run machinery or sail a boat), literary translations should remain open to the polysemy of the original and to its semantic complexity (locatelli, 2009), intertextual allusions, and poetical suggestiveness. if we are speaking of translation in a strict sense, the priority of the original text seems out of the question; however, this does not mean that such priority amounts to a literal rendering. given the often incommensurable philosophical, semiotic, grammatical and lexical translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 99 dimensions between the two languages involved, literal translations are impossible, and usually far from satisfactory. the translator’s freedom in t2 is intrinsic to her/his rendering of t1 (i.e., to her/his performance, in the above sense) and must be defended as an expression of her/his style. a translation is always an individual response to a text, and to the challenge that it poses for whoever wishes to make it accessible to others. i propose therefore to differentiate between “translations”, “adaptations”, “re-writings”, “transformations” of t1. all of them are legitimate and should be evaluated in their own terms, but the use of t1 is widely different in each of them. in “adaptations”, “re-writings”, “transformations” t1 becomes the mere “material” for a new aesthetic object, while in “translations” proper t1 is respected, as far as possible, given the incommensurability of the two languages involved. respect in translation is a necessary virtue: it grows out of a keen and informed attention to the structures of the original, and to a dialogical, rather than predatory attitude towards the work of the author of t1. when dialogue and respect are activated we have the premises for a successful translation. in fact, i believe that a good translation is one which affords the interpretative richness and complexity of the artistic source text (t1). a translation is most satisfactory and pleasurable when it provokes as many (or nearly as many) interpretations as the ones which the original evokes in readers of t1 in any given place and time. a full and precise rendering of the translated text will never be absolute or definitive, but any rendering will be an approximation by degrees that reaches out towards the (shifting) hermeneutic potential of t1. in fact, new horizons of meaning are disclosed in history on the same literary text (this is why interpreting the classics is an interminable activity). since new meanings emerge in different cultural and geopolitical contexts, it follows that translations need to change, with the variations in interpretation that t1 incessantly undergoes (locatelli, 2021, in press). bottom’s experience and the translator’s performance my approach to exploring the nature of translation as performance will, from now on, be supported by my interpretation of an intriguing character in armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 translation studies 100 a midsummer night’s dream, i.e. nick bottom, the weaver-actor of the comedy’s play-within-the play. why do i turn to a shakespeare play, a literary text par excellence, to probe into the issue of translation, from an unusual, and hopefully innovative perspective? because i have chosen to let literature itself tell us what the art of translation is about. andrew chesterman and emma wagner’s seminal question: “can theory help translators?” (2002) must be answered in the affirmative, and also bearing in mind that literature itself provides important metalinguistic clues to sensitive and careful translators. in other words, literature can enhance the progress of theory. i am aware of the fact that this critical proposal may seem adventurous, if not a hazard, to some theorists of translation, but i believe that this is a gesture of legitimate and genuine transdisciplinarity, moving across fields that have been kept apart, but that have an interesting potential in cross fertilization. moreover, as philosophers gilles deleuze & felix guattari (1975) have convincingly explained, the true poet inhabits her/his own language as a foreigner. in this sense i believe that artistic literature is always already a “translation”, it is a “difference” within language itself. no one like the poet can exploit the potential of the language s/he uses, whether s/he is aware of this fact or not. like poets, the best translators have a rich, serious and complex relationship with at least both languages involved in what they deal with. in my opinion bottom’s diverse experiences, as well as his lively and shrewd personality and attitude represent quite convincingly, if somehow surprisingly, the art and technique of the translator. this protean character provides precious clues, suggestions, prescriptions and proscriptions on the nature and task of the translator’s work as performance. as we know, bottom is one of the athenian “mechanicals” chosen to perform a play in honor of theseus, the duke, on the occasion of his wedding with hippolyta, queen of the amazons. the “director” of the play is peter quince, a carpenter, who has the difficult task of harnessing the five commoners into their respective acting roles. together with bottom, the company is made up of a rather odd assortment of artisans: francis flute, a bellows-mender, tom snout, a tinker, snug, a joiner, robin starveling, a tailor. translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 101 the first time we meet bottom is in act i. scene 2, when quince is assigning their respective roles to each of them. bottom is curious and inquisitive: first, good peter quince, say what the play treats on, then read the names of the actors: and so grow to a point (ii.i.8-10 emphasis mine). the translator should likewise be inquisitive about the general topic of t1 and, once he has acquired a sufficient competence on the subject, s/he must focus on other elements, such as: the tone of the text s/he is translating, its intertextual dimensions, style, genre conventions, and linguistic stratifications. from this knowledge s/he should figure out what tools (theoretical and methodological) can assist her/him in his planned goal, and last, but not least, s/he should have a clear mind about her/ his purpose (i.e. grow to a point, as bottom suggests). moreover, a good translator, like bottom who is very concerned on how the ladies will receive the performance (he is worried that the lion might scare them), has an audience in mind (and s/he has a point to make with her/his readers). the aims and purposes of the translator are her/his own choice entirely, they are her/his responsibility, and from this very start is the translator’s work a genuinely creative performance, like the actor’s or the musician’s. some translations aim at an almost exclusive and immediate use for the stage, others aim at erudite readers, others to a general public. the virtual readers are often contemporaries of the translator. this explains why translations have a specific duration in time that is relative to both the cultural and historical contexts of their making and to the conditions of their reception. if most 18 th and 19 th century translations of the classics (i am thinking, for example, of the italian translations of shakespeare, see locatelli, 1999) have an unmistakable elegant taste, but are no longer enjoyable today, this is due to the fact that, as stated above, literature and poetics are in a permanent state of transformation. moreover, the purpose(s), i.e. what bottom calls the point of translation may be highly different: i.e. information, amusement, cultural mediation, updating previous (but by now obsolete) translations, or even adaptation or re-writing of t1. another important aspect of bottom’s affinity with the translator is the fact that he wishes to play nearly all the roles of the interlude. he is not satisfied with performing the leading role of pyramus, and even in this role he wishes to act a double dramatis persona: both the “lover” and the armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 translation studies 102 “tyrant”. when flute is assigned the role of thisbe and is unhappy with it (because he says: i have a beard coming), bottom immediately proposes to act it himself: an i may hide my face, let me play thisbe, too. i’ll speak in a monstrous little voice: thisne, thisne! (i.ii. 47-48). but this is not the last of bottom’s ambitions: in fact, he also wants to play “the lion” (a task assigned to snug, the joiner): bottom: let me play the lion too. i will roar that i will do any man’s heart good to hear me… (i.ii.66-67). bottom is reminded that the lion may frighten “the ladies”, but his determination is such that he promises: i grant you, friends, if you should fright the ladies out of their wits they would have no more discretion but to hang us, but i will aggravate my voice so that i will roar you as gently as any sucking dove. i will roar you an ‘twere any nightingale (i.ii.74-78). bottom’s determination and the eagerness to adapt he displays in his comical malapropisms underline the fact that he is ready to take his voice across a spectrum from roaring lion to gentle sucking dove and even melodious nightingale. bottom’s omnivorous appetite and his vocal flexibility takes me to the translator’s imperative to “hear” and then perform the widely different voices that are present in any literary text. t1 cannot be rendered in a single tone, a single stimmung, a homogeneous style, or t2 would be unbearably flat. the translator has to respect the polyphony of t1 and therefore impersonate different voices in t2, otherwise s/he would efface the many nuances that are proper to each character’s speech, to linguistic registers, rhetorical orchestration, authorial voice, etc. a homogeneus tone, in fact, makes some 19 th century translations of shakespeare into italian (michele leoni, carcano, giunio bazzoni-giacomo sormani and andrea maffei) quite unpalatable today since their high, gentrified, but uniform poetic register, makes t2 too tedious (locatelli, 1988). as far as i have seen this holds true for similar translations in other languages (which i cannot obviously exemplify in this essay). a translator, in other words, is an impersonator of many voices, while her/his own voice remains manifest in her/his unique style, i.e. in her/his unique execution of t1. just like bottom, the waver, the translator is a weaver of texts, his cognitive, erudite and technical knowledge makes her/him the provider of textual artefacts that have a precise and beautiful design. translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 103 bottom’s experiences have a few more features that recall the work of the translator. in act iii scene1 he asks quince to write me a prologue in order to explain to the audience that pyramus dies not in earnest, but in jest. this concern and precaution on the part of shakespeare’s weaver parallels a similar solicitude in translators who add footnotes to their t2, either to explain cultural elements in t1 that readers of t2 are not familiar with, or to highlight philological issues, but also to illustrate the translator’s own dilemmas as to the best rendering of a line, a word, an utterance. bottom’s famous erotic dream suggests one more analogous experience in the art of translation: the dream concerns the doting of the queen of the fairies, titania, who despite the fact that bottom is wearing an ass head falls in love with his song: i pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again./ my ear is much enamoured of thy note; /so is myne eye enthralled to thy shape;/ and thy fair virtue’s force perforce doth move me/on the first view to say, to swear, ! love thee (iii.ii.130-134). the same attitude is expressed in iv.i., where titania, after calling bottom my gentle joy, exclaims: o how i love thee, how i dote on thee! (iv.i.44). this scene of seduction allows a metaphorical understanding of the translator’s encounter with t1 as a coup de foudre, where t1 is perceived as irresistible, a text that calls for a further and wider dissemination, so that that others may be in turn seduced by its qualities, beauty and charm. the translator can be seen as both a passive and an active subject of seduction, once seduced, a seducer; this seems plausible since many translators have admitted selecting for translation the texts they most “love”. the aim of the translator who deals with his favorite texts is to pay homage to both the text and the author that have seduced him, and then to extend such an experience to her/his readers. the charm of the original for the translator sets the conditions for a dialogue with the prior poet (rather than an abuse of power over her/him). such dialogue is of course possible if the translator is a good reader/listener, one who “lends an ear” to the notes and echoes of t1. the translator’s relationship to his “favorite texts” and the concomitant decision to perform them in translation is, as i have said, one of her/his responsibilities. let me now focus on what bottom describes as the central feature of his famous dream. he says: it shall be called ‘bottom’s dream’, because it hath no bottom (iv.i.212-213 (emphasis mine). this is obviously a shakespearian pun on the protagonist’s name, but it says more than just this. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 translation studies 104 a bottom-less dream is a dream without bottom, which may allude to the “impersonality” of the translator, or better to her/his respect of the original text rather than an intrusive and narcissistic manipulation of it. we are often put off by translators who foreground their own voice at the expenses of the voices in t1. likewise, we do not condone the arrogance of those who even claim to “improve” the original text. however, this does not mean that the translator is, or should be “absent” or “invisible”. quite the contrary: s/he leaves her/his fingerprints on the translation, because her/his work is always a unique performance. this is why we can talk of a “style” and a “poetics” of translation. moreover, the image of a “bottomless” dream speaks of the work of the translator as interminable, in more than one sense. bottom’s vision is, in turn, “translated” into a ballad by quince, the director of the play-within the play, and one may surmise that there will be many subsequent versions of it. as i have argued, translations are not everlasting: they must be done again and again in time, but “interminable” also means that there will always be something “left out” and unexpressed even in the best translation, which, like the best poetry, invokes endless further investigation and expression, and opens the path towards other performances. when bottom returns to the everyday world out of the “wood”, 1 and to the company of the “mechanicals”, his fellow artisans-actors say that bottom is “changed”, “transported” and “translated” (bless thee, bottom, bless thee. thou art translated (iii.ii.113 emphasis mine). this is no doubt the effect of the “most rare vision” he had. in this sense, bottom offers one more metaphorical image of the translator of poetic texts. the translator is, in turn, “translated” by her/his activity, which means that her/his experience of the two worlds that are intrinsic to the two languages he comes to terms with changes his relationship with both languages, and hence with his own way of being in the world. like bottom (who inhabits athens, but also the wood, daylight rationality but also a dream), translators inhabit, in a philosophical and experiential sense, in two or more worlds relative to the languages and texts they deal with. translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 105 conclusion instead of proposing a “method” of translation in the commonsensical acceptation, i wished to address the possibility of viewing translation “as a performance”, and to show that some theoretical premises and some practical and psychological attitudes are always necessary to the translator’s successful activity. in fact, like bottom the actor, the translator “performs” his work best when s/he is inquisitive, has a purpose, has an audience in mind, is able to render the polyphony of the original by impersonating the many voices in t1. the style of his rendering is unique and recognizable, even if his presence is discreet, like that of an actor who does not foreground her/himself by effacing the dramatic persona s/he is performing. moreover, the translator’s work is interminable (“bottomless”), and s/he shares, with(in) literature and language(s), bottom’s fantastic experience of seduction and change, i.e., he is, like shakespeare’s weaver, “translated”. notes 1 wood is a term that connotes a locus of madness in early-modern english. references bachmann-medick, d. 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(2005). on the relationships between translation theory and translationp. frankfurt am main and berlin: peter lang. pym, a. (2014). exploring translation theories. london and new york: routledge. schleiermacher, f.d.e. (1998). schleiermacher: hermeneutics and criticism. cambridge: cambridge university press. shakespeare, w. (1988). a midsummer night’s dream. in s. wells & g. taylor (eds.). the oxford shakespeare. the complete works, 311-333. oxford: clarendon press. thiselton, a. c. (2019). on hermeneutics. london and new york: routledge. van doorslaer, l. (2013). impact of translation theory. in y. gambier & l. van doorslaer (eds.). handbook of translation studies, vol. 4, 77-83. amsterdam: john benjamins publishing company. գրական թարգմանությունը որպես «ներկայացում» անջելա լոկատելի սույն հոդվածի նպատակն է գրական թարգմանությունը դիտարկել որպես «ներկայացում», այսինքն որպես արվեստ և գործունեություն, որը հատուկ կապ ունի դերասանի կամ երաժշտի հետ: դերասանը կամ երաժիշտը ներմուծում է բեմադրության համար նախատեսված տեքստին և երաժշտական սցենարին վերաբերող իր սուբյեկտիվ մեկնաբանությունները, որոնք ներկայանում են բեմերում և համերգասրահներում: նմանապես, թարգմանիչը թարգմանվող տեքստին առնչվող իր սեփական մեկնաբանությունները ներկայացնում է ընթերցողներին, որոնց մայրենի լեզուն և մշակույթը կարող են մոտ կամ հեռու լինել բնագրի լեզվից: այլ կերպ՝ գեղարվեստական ստեղծագործության թարգմանիչը «կատարող», «ներկայացնող» է, և թարգմանությունը` ինչպես բնագիրը ներկայացնող առաջնային, այնպես էլ դրա մի երկրորդային «կատարում» է: բանալի բառեր. թարգմանություն, ներկայացում, գեղագիտական հաճույք, թարգմանության տեսություն և պոետիկա, գրականություն, շեքսպիր: maket 2012 1-2:layout 1.qxd the introduction of academic articles on civil engineering and its linguostylistic analysis minoo khamesian yerevan state university t he strategy of participants’ behavior in the field of science communication isimplemented through specific speech acts, which are the optimal choice of means and methods of communication. what matters is not only the choice of style but the choice of genre and compositional form of the text. the properties of written scientific texts are the result of the language use on the basis of certain “communication code”, which operates in a scientific corporative community. this code is based on common conventions and rules of communication and is supplemented with standards inside the corporative community. through this community the process of intercultural communication in science is developing and expanding. unlike in other areas written communication plays a vital role in science. research articles in english favor the prestigious status of being the major channel of sharing scientific knowledge among the members of academic/domain specific discourse community mainly because of the position of english as the international language of science and technology. in the world of an increasing international academic and research collaboration, the ability to read and write research articles in english is crucial for academic success (kanoksilapatham 2005). like other genres, research articles possess their own communicative and rhetorical conventions. to facilitate the long and arduous process of getting accepted as academic discourse community members, especially at its initial stage, this study focuses on the analysis of a civil engineering data set to investigate how research articles are constructed. civil engineering is known to be an academic discipline dating back to the year of 1711, when john smeaton, the founder of a society of engineers and the builder of the famous eddystone lighthouse in great britain, claimed to be the first civil engineer (<http://whatiscivilengineering.csce.ca/ civil1.htm>). with this long history, needless to say, any academic institution in the world that offers a degree in engineering tends to offer a degree in civil engineering. an insight into the analysis of civil engineering articles will thus be beneficial to a large number of scholars, practitioners and fellow students in the field. hence, the present article will attempt to scrutinize various linguistic patterns of the introductory part of a civil engineering research article successfully published in the international journal of civil engineering, allowing scientists and practitioners in the field to both effectively share and update their scientific knowledge and contribute to the growth of the discourse community. we should hasten to add that introduction is evaluated as the representation of the entire content of papers. as a result, readers often make the introduction as the guide to understanding the content of the research paper. even to some readers, introduction is a guide to deciding whether they need to continue reading or the content satisfies their needs. armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 35 the passage adduced below presents the introductory part of a research article in civil engineering. in designing an ordinary moment resisting frame, often the principle of strong-column-weak beam is implemented in order to make sure that plastic hinging occurs in the beams and as such the frame is capable of dissipating significant energy while remaining stable in the inelastic region. the stability in this context is defined as the ability of the frame to maintain its elastic level of resistance throughout the entire inelastic range of response. using this principle, plastic hinges would develop in the beams adjacent to the joints and usually very close to the column face. the problem is that this closeness may allow cracks caused by plastic hinging to propagate into the joint core region and as such initiate a brittle failure mechanism. attempts have been made in the past in order to develop methods of relocating a plastic hinge away from the column face. most of the methods, however, have been on detailing of reinforcing bars, which can only be utilized in new construction. for example, abdel-fattah and wight [1] showed that the use of intermediate longitudinal beam reinforcement combined with extra top and bottom steel in the beam at a specific length can help in successfully relocating a plastic hinge away from the column face. the relocating was also studied by jon et al. [2]. four half-scale rc interior beam-column joints with different reinforcement details in the beam in the region adjacent to the column were tested under cyclic loads in their investigation. their results showed that the bond deterioration within the joint may be prevented by the relocation of plastic hinge, while shear sliding may occur at the plastic hinge zone due to the increased shear force at the beam end. jon et. al. [2]) proposed a new arrangement for the beam bars in order to improve the plastic hinging. paulay and priestley [3] also proposed that the beam bars may be curtailed so that stresses in the reinforcement would not exceed yield stress at the face of the column, while strain hardening may be developed at the critical section of the plastic hinge. paulay and priestly [3] concluded that the critical section must be a sufficient distance away from the column face. they recommended that because the nature of shear transfer across the critical section of a plastic hinge is complicated, care must be taken with detailing of the shear reinforcement. paulay and priestley [3] proposed that this necessitates stirrups extending between these two regions, perhaps supplemented by specially bent top beam bars, to carry the entire shear force and also suggested that to ensure that the critical section occurs at a chosen place, extra flexural reinforcement can be provided by bending some of the top and bottom bars at the angle of 450 or less into the opposite face of the beam. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 36 many already existing moment resisting frames do not posses correct joint reinforcement detailing as they have been designed based on older codes. a different method which can upgrade the joints of these frames in an efficient and cost effective way is consequently desirable. this paper presents results of an experimental investigation into the effectiveness of frp wraps in controlling the location of a plastic hinge in an ordinary moment resisting frame (omrf). the proposed method is to stick carbon frp sheets of specific lengths to the sides of the beams of a reinforced concrete joint (i.e. web-bonded frp) and extend them over the joint to act as an anchor. the performance of this method has been investigated by the authors and is presented in the following. other aspects of the investigation can be found in papers [4, 5]. the method can be used just as effectively for the repair of earthquake damaged rc exterior joints. this introductory part presents how a new method can promote the joints of moment resisting frames in order to avoid the problem of cracking by plastic hinging which proliferates into the joint core region and brings about a brittle failure mechanism. as has widely been mentioned the method of linguostylistic analysis (akhmanova 1972) is quite a safe and reliable method to be applied to any linguistic material as it can help the investigator bring out all possible linguistic peculiarities of the given discourse. understanding the direct, nominative meanings being our very first task in the investigation (entirely based on dictionaries of contemporary english), we start with such words as: verbs: implement, maintain, present, extend, investigate; nouns: frame, principle, reinforcement, performance; adjectives: capable, stable, adjacent, effective. our research has revealed the following nominative meanings: implement: (1) to give practical effect to and ensure of actual fulfillment by concrete measures, (2) to provide instruments or means of expression for (webster 2008). maintain: (1) to keep in an existing state (as of repair, efficiency, or validity), (2) preserve from failure or decline (maintain machinery) (webster 2008). present: to act the part of; perform (webster 2008). extend: to cause to be of greater area or volume; enlarge (webster 2008). investigate: to carry out a systematic or formal inquiry into (an incident or allegation) so as to establish the truth (concise oxford english dictionary 2004). frame: a rigid structure surrounding a picture, door, etc. (concise oxford english dictionary 2004). principle: a general scientific theorem or natural law (concise oxford english dictionary 2004). armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 37 reinforcement: act of strengthening, fortification (babylon english dictionary 2009). performance: the manner of reacting to stimuli (webster 2008). capable: having attributes (as physical or mental power) required for performance or accomplishment (webster 2008). stable: firmly established (webster 2008). adjacent: having a common endpoint or border (webster 2008). effective: producing a decided, decisive, or desired effect (webster 2008). as is usually assumed, the basic function of scientific writing is to elaborate on certain points or assumptions; define and explain different phenomena, pass on and sum up information, arrive at certain conclusions. in other words, the process of scientific work is mainly reflected in general scientific vocabulary, which has been singled out in the following conceptual fields (the examples are taken from the sample adduced above): 1) prospect, outlook (attempt, propose, etc.); 2) acquiring knowledge (investigate, study, etc.); 3) organization and systematization (combine, result, etc.); 4) checking up (relocate, test, etc.); 5) making conclusions (conclude, effective, etc.); 6) passing on knowledge (suggest, can be used, etc.). (gasparyan 1998) from the point of view what has been mentioned above, it can be concluded that words belonging to the general scientific vocabulary deal with processes of acquiring and passing on information, making prospects, arriving at certain results, checking them, making conclusions, and so on. as a result, according to akhmanova (1978), the lexical “diapason” (range) of words in scientific writings is naturally narrowed down, which means, they totally acquire special meanings. in other words, general scientific words remain general only in the sense that they appear to be simple and familiar and can easily be considered as functioning in all registers of speech. however, when they are used in a scientific text, a certain transposition of their meaning is bound to occur. the grammatical-morphological study of the vocabulary notes of the passage (frequency analysis) shows that nouns in this passage prevail and it is discernible that the introductory part of the above civil engineering material presents a technical object, namely frp (the effectiveness of frp wraps in controlling the location of a plastic hinge in an ordinary moment resisting frame (omrf)). on the level of word groups (lexical-phraseological word combinations) the use of noun compounds, such as ordinary moment resisting frame; correct join reinforcement; joint core region; brittle failure mechanism, etc. prevails. this is in line with the style of scientific prose for it is believed that the mentioned constructions are used as a means to represent information in a compact and dense form. also as ferguson (2004) illustrates noun compounds can be used as technical terms as well (ordinary moment resisting armenian folia anglistika linguistics 38 frame). in this sense they can be used in the introduction to indicate the first technical concept. in this connection we may continue by considering the interaction of vocabulary and syntax in greater detail. although ultimate syntagmatic sequences are larger than words and mostly include the expression of predication, they are generally applicable, highly reproducible complexes which may be regarded as functionally similar to nominative units, e.g.: … in order to make sure that…, … in this context is defined as …, the method can be used just as effectively for the … to name but a few. we should hasten to add here that the number of attributive word-combinations (significant energy, inelastic region, older code, experimental investigation, etc.) prevails, as well as the so called of-phrases (elastic level of resistance, range of response, the principle of, the effectiveness of) and so on. our analysis on the level of words and word-combination reveals that these groups are mainly non-connotative and devoid of any emotional colouring. as has always been assumed by and large, in intellective communication the speaker or writer whose main aim is to pass on information does not mainly rely on the power of words and utterances, i.e. on their connotative values. with respect to morphological-grammatical analysis the most important oppositions are between the present and the past, active and passive. similar to other scientific writings the use of verbal phrases in the passive is prevalent, such as is implemented, is defined, have been designed, has been investigated, to name but a few. as is frequently mentioned by scholars passive constructions play a very important role, for they serve to express general statements about things without bothering to introduce doers into the statements. needless to say the present tense appears almost throughout the whole passage as informative works are not restricted by time. as regards the present perfect tense, it should be noted that it is the form which helps to establish a direct contact with the interlocutors, being so much more situation-bound. on the level of major syntax, complete (non-elliptical) complex and compound sentences with the secondary clauses of cause, effect and condition which enable the author to express the relations between the parts more precisely (as different from the asyndetic connection typical of colloquial speech) constitute a high percentage. for example: in designing an ordinary moment resisting frame, often the principle of strong-column-weak beam is implemented in order to make sure that plastic hinging occurs in the beams and as such the frame is capable of dissipating significant energy while remaining stable in the inelastic region.; many already existing moment resisting frames do not posses correct joint reinforcement detailing as they have been designed based on older codes. the syntactic semi-composite sentences, i.e. absolute constructions (acs) with two predicative lines, the first being the main clause, the second extending it via incomplete secondary predication are wide usages. the absence of a finite verb in the sentence is considered to be one of the types of secondary predication (karapetyan 2010). in our analysis we come across such cases as in in designing an ordinary moment resisting frame, often the principle of strong-column-weak beam is implemented in order to make sure that plastic hinging occurs in the beams and as such the frame is capable of dissipating significant energy while remaining stable in the inelastic region.; using this armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 39 principle, plastic hinges would develop in the beams adjacent to the joints and usually very close to the column face. as is known, the ever-increasing rhythm of scientific development requires transmission of information in the linguistic frame as compressed as possible, and the absolute constructions (acs) due to their structural incompleteness, which nonetheless does not distort the meaning they transfer, contribute to the beneficial evolution of the discourse, make the speech compact and neat, and give an opportunity to fit more information into a lesser volume. sentence patterns applied are of three types; 1) postulatory, i.e. a hypothesis must be based on facts already known. therefore, every piece of scientific prose will begin with postulatory pronouncements which are taken as self-evident and needing no proof. e.g. in designing an ordinary moment resisting frame, often the principle of strong-column-weak beam is implemented in order to make sure that plastic hinging occurs in the beams and as such the frame is capable of dissipating significant energy while remaining stable in the inelastic region. 2) argumentative, that is, the writer’s own ideas are shaped in formulae, arguments, etc., in other words, in sentences giving reasons for further conclusions. e.g. the problem is that this closeness may allow cracks caused by plastic hinging to propagate into the joint core region and as such initiate a brittle failure mechanism. formulative, that is to say, the definition sentence-pattern which is the sentence which sums up the facts is generally a kind of clincher sentence which is in line with scientific prose writing in general. e.g. the method can be used just as effectively for the repair of earthquake damaged rc exterior joints. as it is widely accepted, a hypothesis, a scientific conjecture or a forecast must be based on facts already known, on facts systematized and defined. therefore; every piece of scientific prose will begin with postulatory pronouncements which are considered as self-evident, needing no proof. a reference to these facts is only preliminary to the exposition of the writer’s viewpoints and is therefore summed up in precisely formulated statements accompanied by references to sources. when speaking about syntax, it is important to elaborate on the functional perspective of paragraphs or the supraphrasal unities which exist as part of a discourse, as elements in a series of intertwined syntactic entities which jointly serve for the expression of wider, overall purports. consequently, the division of a text into paragraphs, i.e. the paragraph as a semiotic device, and the average length of paragraphs could be an important conclusion to make. in the introductory part presented above the average length of paragraphs is 13-14 lines, which in actual fact is not in line with what is recommended in scientific writings. but it goes without saying that what really matters in a piece of scientific writing is its careful edition in terms of division into paragraphs (akhmanove 1978). the general function of the introduction section is to introduce the topic, furnishing the rationale for the study being reported. building on the notion of shared communicative purposes swales (1990) suggests “rhetorical movement” analysis (move and step analysis) as the basis for explaining a genre. when applied to the introductory section armenian folia anglistika linguistics 40 adduced above this mechanism of analysis offered by swales proves to be productive and can be illustrated in the following way: the analysis shows that the first step of move 1 (claiming centrality) is absent here as there is no evidence of the kind to support step 1. on the other hand, the presence of the second step can be specified by the use of lexicalgrammatical vocabulary with often in: often the principle of … is implemented in order to make sure that … which is considered as the statement to elaborate on either knowledge, consensus, practice or description of phenomena. step 3 (reviewing items of previous research) is present in the introductory part adduced above by using already in many already existing moment resisting frames do not possess correct joint reinforcement detailing as they have been designed based on older codes. here, the writer needs to represent what has been found or claimed and possibly, who has found or claimed it. after describing important features of their research territory (move 1), academic writers typically try to claim a “niche” for their research. this move can be done by showing that the previous research or solutions are not complete, or that there are aspects of the research field still needing further investigation (indicating a gap). this is often signaled by words expressing contrast or negative evaluation as in a different method which can upgrade the joints of these frames in an efficient and cost effective way is consequently desirable. finally in move 3 (occupying the niche) the writers reveal their solution to help fill the gap that has been presented in move 2 by describing the aims in terms of what the research sets out to do or accomplish using either human or inanimate agents as the subject as in this paper presents results of an experimental investigation into the effectiveness of frp wraps in controlling the location of a plastic hinge in an ordinary moment resisting frame (omrf). needless to say, here the writer uses an inanimate agent to perform the step (announcing present research). thus, generic patterns commonly intertwined in academic discourse across disciplines (civil engineering research articles, the core in this study) are so complex that a system of linguistic analysis is required to account for the intricacies in order to be handled by the members of specific discourse communities. students will benefit from the findings of the present study if they are made aware of not only rhetorical moves, but also of the linguistic patterns associated with them. as this leads to a degree of standardization which suggests that research papers may share a common basic structure, or employ common units within the scientific genre. notes: 1. move 1 = establishing a territory. step 1 = claiming centrality. step 2 = making topic generalization (s). step 3 = reviewing items of previous research. move 2 = establishing a niche. step 1 = indicating a gap. move 3 = occupying the niche. step 1 = announcing present research (swales 1990: 141, figure 10). armenian folia anglistikalinguistics 41 references: 1. akhmanova, o.a.; idzelis, r.f. (1978) what is the english we use? m.: mup. 2. ferguson, g. (2004) handout: lecture on the grammar in esp: noun compound. uk: university of sheffield. 3. gasparyan, s.k. (1998) esp as an object of learner-oriented teaching. // didaktik und methodik des fremdsprachen unterrichts. heft, iv. köln. 4. kanoksilapatham, b. (2005) rhetorical structure of biochemistry research articles. // english for specific purposes, 24, 3. 5. karapetyan, r. (2010) on the syntactic status of absolute constructions. yerevan: ysu. 6. swales, j. (1990) genre analysis: english in academic and research settings. cambridge: cup. ø³õ׳ñï³ñ³·çï³ï³ý ñá¹í³íç ý»ñ³íáõãûáõýá ¨ ¹ñ³ 黽í³á׳ï³ý í»ñéáõíáõãûáõýá ðá¹í³íáõù ùýý³ñïíáõù »ý ù³ õ³ù³óç³ï³ý ׳ñï³ñ³·çï³ï³ý ùçç³½·³ ûçý ³ùë³·ñáõù ïå³·ñí³í ñá¹í³íý»ñç ý»ñ³í³ï³ý ù³ëç 黽í³á׳ ï³ý ùç ß³ñù ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñ, áñáýù å³ûù³ý³íáñáõù ¨ ³å³ñáíáõù »ý ïíû³é ·çï³ï³ý á×áí ñ³õáñ¹³ïóáõãûáõýá: ü»ñ³íáõãû³ý 黽íç ¨ á×ç ï³ñ¨áñáõùá å³ûù³ý³íáñí³í ¿ ³ûý ñ³ý·³ ù³ýùáí, áñ ³ûý ñ³ïçñ× ý»ñï³û³óýáõù ¿ ³ùμáõç ñá¹í³íç μáí³ý¹³ ïáõãûáõýá` áéáñïáí ñ»ï³ùñùñíáõ ù³ëý³·»ïý»ñçý áõ ·çïý³ï³ý ý»ñçý ³å³ñáí»éáí ·çï³ï³ý ï»õ»ï³ïíáõãû³ùμ ¨ ·çï³ï³ý ·ñ³íáñ ëáë ùç ûáõñ³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñçý ïçñ³å»ï»éáõ ñý³ñ³íáñáõãû³ùμ: armenian folia anglistika linguistics 42 1(2)2016+.pdf on the ludic character of literary allusion the view that literary allusion is closely associated withthe notions of game and playing has long been established, the ludic aspect of alluding being acknowledged by a number of scholars1. indicative of the ludic component enclosed in allusion is the etymology of the word (alludere; lus = play) too. however, the stating of the above is not sufficient unless the nature of such a game is disclosed, in other words, the key concepts by means of which it is defined are presented and the constant characteristics are specified. to start with, central to literary allusion as a textual phenomenon is the so-called hermeneutical dialogue between text and reader, in which the potential of game is realized due to an interaction between the horizons of text and reader, which gadamer calls ‘fusion of horizons’2, and in which the role of reader’s interpretive effort is essential. moreover, literary allusion provides more complex and at times intricate possibilities for interpretive unfolding as it is not confined to one text only and, using schaar’s vivid description, “layers of infracontexts fan out underneath one another”3. being a complex sign of double (and at times of multiple) textual reference and having the power of relating texts4, literary allusion occurs in the centre of another dialogue: intertextual, which makes the role of powerful reader more meaningful, and therefore, the hermeneutical situation richer. in other words, literary allusion is constituted in and through interpretation and acquires hermeneutical value. the latter, as it will be shown below, is decisive in defining the nature of the game in which the reader is involved. it can hardly be argued that the expanse of playing and games is immense: it ranges from children’s games to intellectual contests, etc. on the other hand, despite the vast variety of forms, this sphere of human activity should have general characteristics, which stand through all the possible manifestations inasmuch as the desire to play and the faculty for creating new play-forms are existentially indispensable to human nature. that playing is a necessity and, as such, permeates culture is best illustrated by huizinga, some of whose observations prove helpful in this attempt to define the ludic character of literary allusion. proceeding from the standpoint that the notion of playing is beyond the polarization of such concepts as truth and falsehood, good and evil, etc., as well as seeing no controversy between playing and the serious, huizinga considers playing as a self-sufficing and temporary activity whose aim is playing itself5. on this 18 armenian folia anglistika linguistics gayane girunyan 1(2)2016+.pdf armenian folia anglistika – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english (since 2005) and yerevan state university (since 2015) aims at fostering research of the english language, literature and culture linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 35 from ‘lion face’ to ‘butterfly eruption’: zoomorphic metaphors as messengers of facial anomalies alina petrosyan  yerevan state medical university medicine contributes to every person’s health in terms of diagnosis, treatment or prevention of a disease. hence, constructing the clinical picture and the diagnosis of a health condition and conveying complex technical information in a comprehensible language is of utmost importance. in this regard, medical professionals rely not only on grecolatin terms of classical times, but also resort to metaphors to illuminate many facets of medical observations and clinical findings. these metaphors stem either from anthropomorphic or zoomorphic areas and act as primary interface between scientific thought and understanding. from this perspective, the present article examines the value of metaphor in medicine and through the employment of descriptive method, explores some of the most widespread zoomorphic metaphors, which denominate certain facial anomalies. keywords: metaphor, medicine, diagnosis, zoomorphic metaphor, facial anomaly, deformity, disorder. introduction scholars and researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds have long considered the role and employment of metaphor to the advancement of science and scientific knowledge. drawing from notable publications on usage of metaphor in science, we have established that metaphors are ubiquitous in scientific reasoning, thought and communication (lakoff & johnson, 2003, richards, 1936, gibbs, 1994, bleakley, 2017, van rijn-van tongeren, 1997) rather than mere rhetorical devices or linguistic embellishments (locke, 2007, vickers, 1970). brian arthur, a physicist,  alina.petrosyan@yahoo.com this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 24.12.2020 revised: 15.03.2021 accepted: 20.04.2021 © the author(s) 2021 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2021.17.1.035 mailto:alina.petrosyan@yahoo.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 36 argues that “non-scientists tend to think that science works by deduction. but actually science works mainly by metaphor.” (waldrop, 1992, p. 327). kai niebert from science and sustainability education at the university of zurich, and harald gropengiesser from the institute for science education, at leibniz university hannover, argue that scientists regularly resort to metaphors to make sense of their theoretical observations. to substantiate this claim, the authors cite real-life situations when scientists used metaphorical constructs, such as: “robert hooke was the first to denote the cell using the term “cell” when an image of a piece of cork under his microscope reminded him of the small rooms, or cells, occupied by monks in monasteries. kepler developed his concept of planetary motion by comparison with a clock. huygens used water waves to theorize that light is wavelike. arrhenius described the greenhouse effect by referring to his experience with hot pots.” (niebert & gropengiesser, 2015, p. 2). one of the major claims cementing metaphor-science ‘relationship’ has been made back in 1936 by richards, whose idea posits that it requires much effort to not resort to metaphor “even in the rigid language of the settled sciences …” (richards, 1936, p. 92). richards then evaluates the usage of metaphor from the perspective of scientific reasoning and states that “in the semi-technicalised subjects, in aesthetics, politics, sociology, ethics, psychology, theory of language and so on, our constant chief difficulty is to discover how we are using it and how our supposedly fixed words are shifting their senses.” (richards, 1936, p.92). this statement can safely be projected onto medicine and offer insight into the medical rationality of using metaphors. medicine can surely be regarded a ‘settled science’ with a ‘settled’ term-base built on classical languages. however, the literature review shows that clinicians and doctors do not eschew metaphors; to the contrary they put ‘fixed words’ in dynamic sense interactions, thus ‘catalyzing’ a new character and insight within their field of practice. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 37 in their book titled “the philosophy and practice of medicine and bioethics. a naturalistic-humanistic approach”, barbara maier a physician and a specialist in medical ethics, and warren shibles late philosophy professor, explore the rationale behind the philosophy of medicine making reference to metaphorical thinking as its focal marker (maier & shibles, 2011). metaphors, thus, attempt to accomplish what the conventional language cannot in terms of medical rationale and thought. why is a metaphor necessary? a key issue is to understand why a metaphor is necessary on the clinical roadmap. both doctors and clinicians engage in patient care and a broad spectrum of diagnostic activities. they communicate ideas and transform medical calculations and perceptions into a clinical diagnosis. and for purposes of clarity of clinical picture, the health specialist initiates a process to generate a language unit, which will act as a ‘messenger’ conveying intelligible diagnosis. during this process, the health professional draws from his embodied experiences shaped by the world ‘in vivo’ 1 and eventually bridges rational pattern of an abstract diagnostic notion to a familiar conception for an ‘ad hoc’ language unit. the metaphor “kangaroo care”, for instance, precisely showcases that the obstetrician draws upon life perceptions when coining this metaphor to make sense of a therapeutic technique. this metaphor is used to describe ‘alternative approach to traditional neonatal intensive care … for low-birthweight infants…” (jefferies, 2012). this technique of newborn care is the practice of skin-toskin contact between infant and parent, where the mother holds her infant upright next to her skin and covers the baby with a blanket for warmth as explained in the following excerpts from clinical research: kangaroo care is a method of holding your baby to your chest. this allows for skin-to-skin contact between you and baby. during each session, your baby will be placed (naked except for a diaper and hat) on your chest (also bared to allow skin-to-skin) for up to a few hours. a blanket, shirt, hospital gown or robe can be wrapped around you and over your baby’s back for warmth. this armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 38 wrapping of your infant into your chest looks very much like a mother kangaroo holding her baby in her pouch — which is where the name kangaroo care comes from. (kangaroo care, 2020) kangaroo care (kc) is the practice of skin-to-skin contact between infant and parent. in developing countries, kc for low-birthweight infants has been shown to reduce mortality, severe illness, infection and length of hospital stay. (jefferies, 2012) kangaroo care positioning before and during heel stick is a simple and inexpensive analgesic intervention to ameliorate pain in stable premature infants. (ludingtonhoe, 2005) kangaroo care, skin contact between mother and infant, reduces pain and may reduce crying in response to pain. (kostandy et al., 2008) simulating marsupial care and drawing parallels between the human behaviour and the animal anatomy has apparently paved way for the coinage of the metaphor kangaroo care. mapping onto the cross-domain insights, this metaphor translates the abstract nature of the medical thought into a specific understanding about the clinical phenomenon. clinical diagnosis through zoomorphic metaphors in quest of a formulation of a novel clinical finding or a diagnosis of a disease, the clinician or the diagnostician may employ metaphoric language, which involves the way they see similarities and differences in life systems. in this case a key feature of the diagnostic process is the imaginative leap to recognize the ‘different’ and the ‘similar’, for “the brain instantaneously compares incoming stimuli with its library of stored images (or sounds, smells and so on) and “sees” that it is “like that” and is therefore a “lion” or whatever.” (ophuls, 2011, p. 77) medical professionals blend their linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 39 perceptions of the ‘resemblances’ and ‘contrasts’, their own professional knowledge, evidence-based fragmentary data and the findings of laboratory tests to generate the needed metaphors. these language units come to describe anomalies, disorders or health conditions identified in various parts of human body both internally and externally. newly coined metaphors may describe and denominate pathologies or deformities of chest (funnel chest, barrel chest, cobbler’s chest), abdomen (caput medusa, hourglass stomach), back (kissing spines, dowager hump, butterfly vertebra), lower limbs (elephant leg, tennis leg, athlete’s foot, jumper knee), upper limbs (operaglass hand, obstetrician’s hand, spring finger), head (tower skull, dish face, glue ear, saddle nose, toper’s nose, clown nose, olympian forehead), etc. these metaphors are created and employed in clinical medicine, which has an important role in the diagnosis process (https://www.longdom.org/scholarly/clinical-medicine-journals-articles-ppts-list-1773.html) and across various sub-disciplines of internal medicine, for instance, cardiology, endocrinology, hematology, gastroenterology, infectious diseases, neurology, oncology, pediatrics, rheumatology, pulmonology, etc. (kasper et al., 2015). however, the usage of metaphors is not confined to clinical medicine and internal medicine only; rather, it spans other fields of medicine as well, such as dermatology, diagnostic radiology, ophthalmology, pathology, physical medicine and rehabilitation, psychiatry, surgery, urology, etc. (st. george’s university, 2021). thus, in search of metaphors, we have investigated extensive body of medical reports and case studies within the mentioned spheres focusing on diagnoses of facial anomalies or deformities, which are denominated metaphorically. targeting the face for major research was conditioned by the fact that the face constitutes a special category for human identity and any disfigurement, anomaly or developmental deformity may adversely affect both human’s identity and psyche. even physicians and clinicians make a major claim that “the face provides our identity as an individual human. thus, birth defects scarring, or other alterations resulting from pathology or trauma have marked consequences beyond their physical effects” (moore et al., 2013, p. 842). additionally, we have also narrowed the search to zoomorphic 2 metaphors only, conditioned by the fact that associative links with wildlife armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 40 species and domesticated animals form integral part of human life, and the imaginative leap between and mappings across human and non-human domains are inevitable. we therefore tried and filtered specifically the ones, which are widely employed to formulate diagnoses of facial anomalies, affecting some of external facial structures, i.e., the eyes, the nose, the cheeks and certain mouth muscles. expressions as lion face, frog face, cat eye syndrome, fish eye disease, dog nose, butterfly eruption, carp mouth are some examples of the identified zoomorphic medical metaphors. the logic behind ‘cloaking’ the diagnosis in such metaphors lies in that the human anatomy, (and in certain instances, human behavior, as is the case of ‘kangaroo care’) resembles the anatomy of wildlife species or domesticated animals. more specifically, certain disfigurements, pathologies or deformities observed on human’s face may be interpreted through resemblances to normal, non-pathological facial structure of a particular animal or bird to foster better understanding of the clinical picture. thus, clinicians and physicians, for instance, often diagnose the so-called bird face or bird-face deformity, which is an abnormal shortness or recession of the mandible. its diagnosis and treatment are described in multiple research papers published in surgery journals, from which the following statements have been selected: this paper describes our experience in the treatment of 10 patients with bilateral longstanding temporomandibular joint ankylosis occurring during the active growth period and causing severe bird face deformity. (el-sheikh et al., 1996) bilateral aplasia and hypoplasia of the mandibular condyle lead to the underdevelopment of the mandible, resulting in a lack of symmetrical growth of the mandible, micrognathia characterized by bird face, and a markedly short mandible.”, “the mandible is under-developed, resulting in a retruded chin. these facial features have been described as birdlike or fishlike in morphology. (kaneyama et al., 2008) linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 41 two different ways of correcting micromandibularism inherent in the bird-face deformity have been described. both procedures may be applied to correct the symmetric or the asymmetric types of bird-face deformity. (obwegeser, 1987). moving to the description of other facial conditions, the metaphoric term cow face is encountered. it is the cow-like face of a human characterised by abnormally increased distance between eyes. another facial condition diagnosed in dermatology is the lion face, lion face syndrome or leontiasis ossea, where the affected human displays ‘facial features similar to that of a lion with prominent convexities and furrowed creases.’ (brown et al., 2015). fortuine claims that this parallel was first drawn by the medieval arab physician avicenna (fortuine, 2000, p. 87). later, rudolf ludwig carl virchow (1821-1902) a german pathologist used the term “leontiasis ossea” in 1864 to describe rare and nonfatal enlargement of facial bones (fortuine, 2000, p. 87, capon, 1928, leontiasis ossea, n.d.). according to oxford latin dictionary, “ossea” means “made/consisting of bone, bone-like” (osseus, ossea, osseum, 1982) and “leontiasis” is the declined form of latin “leo” meaning “lion” in english (valpy, 1828, p. 225). the following excerpts from different research papers describe this malady using the metaphor lion face, lion face syndrome or leontiasis ossea: lion face syndrome or leontiasis ossea is a rare complication of severe hyperparathyroidism in end-stage renal disease patients, which has been less commonly reported due to dialysis and medical treatment advances in the last decade. (gameiro et al., 2019) on examination, he had leontiasis ossea (leonine facies due to symmetrical frontal and maxillary bossing). another remarkable feature was the leontiasis ossea involving the entire craniofacial skeleton which has rarely been reported. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 42 although the term 'leontiasis ossea' is widely used for localized swellings of the face including those involving the jaw, it should be restricted to a generalized homogenous swelling that implicates most facial bones. (maramattom, 2006) leontiasis ossea is a rare medical condition, with characteristic overgrowth of the facial and cranial bones. leontiasis ossea, also found in the literature as leontiasis or lion face, is a rare medical condition with characteristic overgrowth of the facial and cranial bones. … leontiasis ossea is not itself a disease, but a condition of other diseases such as paget’s disease, gigantism, fibrous dysplasia, hyperparathyroidism and renal osteodystrophy. it is important to recognize the features of uremic leontiasis ossea as it may result in life-threatening upper airway obstruction and compressive cranial neuropathy. today leonatiasis ossea is a rare medical condition in patients with end-stage renal diseases.(dimkovic et al., 2015) leontiasis ossea, also known as leontiasis or lion face, is a form of severe bone remodeling that prevails in patients with chronic kidney disease … physically, the patient seemed to suffer from malnutrition, lion face/leontiasis (upper mandibular enlargement and deformity)… (purrunsing et al., 2018). another facial deformity is the so-called frog face, which is characterised by gross facial changes and broadening of the nose occurring in certain nasal polyps, as for instance “ethmoidal polyps are allergic in linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 43 nature and their clinical spectrum may extend from a limited disease, which responds to conservative treatment, to a very extensive one, which shows frog faced deformity…” (salaria et al., 2015). when suffering from this health condition, the patient’s face assumes a resemblance to that of a frog. among upper facial anomalies eye diseases are often identified. one of them is called cat eye syndrome, which is considered a rare genetic disease caused by abnormalities of chromosome in human body (cat eye syndrome, n.d.). patients with this syndrome display, in line with other somatic defects, a slit-like iris (coloboma) in one or both eyes, i.e., the pupil is vertically elongated. resembling the appearance of a cat’s eye, this ophthalmological finding has paved way for naming the syndrome “cat eye”. the following excerpts highlight its usage in clinical research: the phenotype observed in cat eye syndrome is highly variable and may be superimposed on the phenotype of the oculo-auriculo-vertebral spectrum. (rosa et al., 2010) cat-eye syndrome is a rare genetic syndrome of chromosomal origin. the three main characteristic clinical symptoms identifying cat-eye syndrome are preauricular anomalies, anorectal malformations, and coloboma of the iris. (jedraszak et al., 2015). fish eye disease is another eye condition diagnosed in ophthalmology. it is an inherited disorder and causes the clear front surface of the eyes to gradually become so cloudy or opaque that resembles the eye of a boiled fish (carlson & philipson, 1979). the term is widely employed throughout medical literature, as employed and explained in the following examples: in this review, we describe … the milder phenotype known as fish-eye disease … (kuivenhoven et al., 1997) this paper describes a novel genetic defect which causes fish-eye disease … armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 44 unlike other mutations causing fish-eye disease,… until now, mutations in the lcat gene have been reported to underlie either classical lcat deficiency or fish-eye disease …. (kuivenhoven et al., 1995) the signs in this case (cloudy cornea, marked decrease in serum …) are typical of fish eye disease. (schmidt et al., 1994) we describe a case of fish-eye disease … where the clinical features and visual function were investigated. bilateral corneal opacity is a hallmark clinical feature of fish-eye disease … (kanai et al., 2018) we have identified the molecular defect in two siblings presenting with classical clinical and biochemical features of fish eye disease… two phenotypically distinct syndromes of lcat deficiency have been reported in the literature: classic lcat deficiency and fish eye disease … (klein et al., 1993) speaking of facial anomalies, the metaphorical construct dog nose shall also be mentioned. the term is used to refer to an endemic in west africa and is characterised by a symmetric swelling produced on each side of the nose reminiscent of a dog nose anatomy (“dog nose”, 2012). lateral to the nose are cheeks and one of the disorders seen in a form of a rash on cheeks is called butterfly eruption, butterfly patch or butterfly rash. this is a facial skin condition present in several disorders and manifests in the form of a scaling lesion on bilateral cheeks and nose, resembling butterfly wings in form (halprin, 1966, dreizen, 1991). there are also anomalies affecting the mouth and two of these disorders are named a carp mouth and a tapir mouth, where the former displays a mouth with a downturn of the corners. the second term tapir mouth describes https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/660790 linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 45 protrusion of the lips due to weakness of a facial muscle, which controls movements of the mouth and lips, and if weakened, may cause difficulty in pursing the lips (mul et al., 2016, orbicularis oris, 2018). for the present, the above list of zoomorphic metaphors is not conclusive and there always exists room for further exploration in search of metaphoric units, which are at play in everyday clinical practice. conclusion the present article and the research conducted therein was an attempt to identify the zoomorphic metaphors, which are most widely used in a clinical setting specifically for purposes of naming certain facial anomalies. in addition, the outcomes of this research illustrate that metaphors are central to scientific reasoning and thought. from medical perspective, metaphors intelligibly involve key features of a novel clinical finding or diagnosis. last, but not least, physician’s or clinician’s imaginative leap stimulates associative perceptions whereby the generated metaphors aid in prompt recognition of clinical signs and facilitate understanding of the clinical picture of a disease, deformity, or disorder. notes 1 cambridge dictionary defines “in vivo” as “happening or existing inside a living body” as opposed to “in vitro”, which is defined as “happening outside the body in artificial conditions, often in a test tube” (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/in-vivo). in our article, “in vivo” symbolises that physician is ‘intertwined’ with the natural environment. he practices medicine inside a ‘natural’ real-life setting, rather than in some remote place confined to himself only. 2 merriam-webster dictionary defines “zoomorphic” as (1) having the form of an animal, (2) of, relating to, or being a deity conceived of in animal form or with animal attributes. the etymology and history section detail that ‘zoo(or zo-) derives from the greek word zōion, meaning "animal," and -morph comes from the greek morphē, meaning "form." the adjective zoomorphic was first used in english to describe something that resembles an animal in 1872 (https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/zoomorphic). armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 46 references bleakley, a.d. 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(2021, january 06). the ultimate list of medical specialties and subspecialties. retrieved from https://www.sgu.edu/blog/medical/ultimate-list-of-medical-specialties/ դիմային անոմալիաների ախտորոշումներ` ձեվակերպված զոոմորֆ փոխաբերություններով ալինա պետրոսյան բժշկագիտությունը առնչվում է յուրաքանչյուրի առողջությանը` մասնավորապես հիվանդությունների ախտորոշման, բուժման և կանխարգելման տեսանկյունից։ հետևաբար, էապես կարևոր է, որ ախտաբանական վիճակների նկարագրությունները և կայացվող ախտորոշումները հնարավորինս ըմբռնելի լեզվականացվեն։ այս առումով բժշկագիտության ոլորտի բառապաշարային ֆոնդը բավականին հագեցած է` ներառելով հունալատինահիմք տերմիններ և անգլերեն փոխաբերություններ։ սույն աշխատանքի շրջանակում փորձ է արվում ուսումնասիրել, թե որոնք են բժշկագիտության ոլորտում փոխաբերություն գործածելու գլխավոր շարժառիթները: միևնույն ժամանակ վերլուծության են ենթարկվում լայն տարածում գտած զոոմորֆ այն փոխաբերությունները, որոնց շնորհիվ բժիշկներն ու կլինիցիստները լեզվաhttps://doi.org/10.1002/jbm4.10038 https://doi.org/10.1002/jbm4.10038 https://doi.org/10.1590/s0104-2302010000400021 https://doi.org/10.1055/s-2008-1058851 https://doi.org/10.1055/s-2008-1058851 https://www.sgu.edu/blog/medical/ultimate-list-of-medical-specialties/ https://www.sgu.edu/blog/medical/ultimate-list-of-medical-specialties/ linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 51 կանացնում են դիմային մի շարք անոմալիաների ախտորոշումներ։ բանալի բառեր. փոխաբերություն, բժշկություն, ախտորոշում, զոոմորֆիկ փոխաբերություն, դիմային անոմալիա, դեֆորմացիա, խանգարում: armenian folia anglistika – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english (since 2005) and yerevan state university (since 2015) aims at fostering research of the english language, literature and culture linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 9 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2021.17.1.009 graffiti as a form of rhetoric yelena yerznkyan  grisha gasparyan  yerevan state university the article touches upon graffiti discourse as a form of rhetorical speech and tries to analyse it according to the three strategies of persuasion suggested by aristotle: ethos, pathos and logos. the article reveals how specific the graffiti discourse is in terms of using these strategies and how the latter make the speech more powerful and persuasive. also, an attempt is made to reveal the role of metaphor in the performance of the strategy of pathos in graffiti discourse. keywords: graffiti, graffiti discourse, rhetoric, logos, ethos, pathos, metaphor. introduction graffiti is generally considered to be a social, cultural, political as well as a textual practice. it is a unique platform, where the speakers are unconstrained to express their ideologies, personal or social problems (abel & buckley, 1977). unlike other platforms, graffiti provides space practically for each member of the society and as a form of communication is being processed by a great number of people (rodriguez & clair, 2009; blanché, 2015; nwoye, 1993). it stands to reason that viewing graffiti as a piece of text on a public surface can be considered as a specific type of rhetorical speech. one can never be fully aware of the reasons behind the creation of a piece of graffiti unless s/he is its creator, but one thing that can logically be concluded is that graffiti texts have a well-defined purpose of persuading the reader to reconsider his opinion or the owned information concerning different issues. that is why in order to fulfill the task of a comprehensive study of graffiti  yerznkyan@ysu.am  grisha.gasparyan96@gmail.com this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 20.01.2021 revised: 28.04.2021 accepted: 22.05.2021 © the author(s) 2021 mailto:yerznkyan@ysu.am mailto:grisha.gasparyan96@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 10 discourse we are analyzing it as a form of rhetorical speech based on the three components suggested by aristotle (also known as the persuasion triad). by taking this angle for the analysis we can reveal many persuasive and communicative functions performed by different figures of speech, most importantly the metaphor, which finds its expression in the visual and textual forms in graffiti discourse. before proceeding with the analysis proper we’ll introduce the definition of the word rhetoric. merriam-webster dictionary defines it both as a “skill in the effective use of speech”, “a type or mode of language or speech”, and as an “insincere or grandiloquent language” (“rhetoric,” n.d.-a). oxford learner’s dictionary also underlines the possible “insincerity” of the rhetorical speech defining it as “speech or writing that is intended to influence people, but that is not completely honest or sincere” (“rhetoric”, n.d.-b). the american heritage dictionary additionally stresses the particularity of the discourse rhetoric is used in: “a style of speaking or writing, especially the language of a particular subject” (“rhetoric”, n.d.-c). we can do no more than to note that the understanding of these definitions is vital if we view graffiti discourse as a form of rhetorical speech. the first characteristic that makes the speech through graffiti different from the others (e.g. political rhetoric) is that of sincerity. graffiti is quite a sincere discourse. here the artists voicing their ideas are honest, truthful and courageous in terms of expressing their thoughts, attitudes and feelings. finally, graffiti is a platform that provides space for those who do not want to be “sincere in front of the public”. aristotle's persuasion triad there are three well-known strategies suggested by aristotle that are being implemented in a speech in order to make it more persuasive for the listeners/readers. these strategies include ethos, pathos and logos (aristotelʹ, 2018). all the facts are in favour of the belief that the implementation of these three strategies in speech is realized through the skilful use of a number of linguistic tools in order to attain the persuasive goals (suciati, ambriani, 2018). ethos is the strategy with the help of which the author proves his credibility and shows how trustworthy his/her words https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mode#h1 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grandiloquence linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 11 are. logos is the strategy in a persuasive speech that is responsible for the logical arrangement of the elements of a speech: whether the speech is convincing in terms of the facts or information presented in it. the third strategy to make the speech more persuasive is pathos. by the appropriate use of this strategy the author may appeal to the audience's emotions and evoke strong feelings. it seems essential to stress out that graffiti is a type of discourse, the aim of which is more than simply to inform the audience, but also to persuade them in the ideologies expressed in it. analysing the linguistic organization of the textual form of graffiti as well as viewing it from multimodal communication perspective, we can surely state that graffiti is a form of persuasive speech. therefore, the three strategies that make the speech more credible, hence persuasive for the audience are subjected to an analysis based on the examples of pieces of graffiti discourse. the starting point we proceed from is the three-element model after which the speech is being created. these are the orator himself, the object he is speaking about and the audience he addresses his speech to (aristotelʹ, 2018, p. 35-36). the speaker the object the audience this model clearly reflects the linear sequence of actors through which the communication takes place. the main tool to realize this process is the language that creates the text and transfers it to the target audience. the performance of the strategies of persuasion in graffiti texts a very important point to be made is that the three strategies of persuasion in graffiti discourse are firstly performed with pure linguistic means, but as graffiti is a multimodal discourse, they can also be performed with a combination of textual-pictorial or textual-contextual resources. the strategy of logos is mainly being manifested in graffiti discourse through the following means: a) conditional sentences, b) repetitions and oppositions, c) text-picture and physical context (reality). consider some pieces of graffiti to clarify these points: “you can kill the protestor, you can’t kill the protest, you can murder the rebel, you can’t murder the rebellion”. (kk pires™ goods, n.d.) armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 12 there is some evidence to suggest that this example can be considered as a combination of conditional sentences, where the conditionality is expressed implicitly ([even if] you can kill the protestor, you can't…, [even if] you can murder the rebel, you can’t...). the logic of the utterance and its persuasive goal are realized through the repetition of structurally similar sentences four times across the utterance. additionally, the words kill and murder though used here to denote one and the same thing – “cause the death of a person or thing” – diversify the vocabulary of the utterance, intensify the statement made and can be viewed as a strategy of persuading the audience by using proper vocabulary and grammar. the use of derivational pairs (protestor-protest, rebel-rebellion) also help to achieve the desired goal. below is another example illustrating how the category of conditionality develops the logic of the utterance: “when you can’t control what is happening, challenge yourself to control the way you respond to what’s happening. that’s where the power is”. (“when you can’t”, n.d.) here we also observe some sequences of “events” conveyed through a repetition of the actions and actors in the first sentence of the text under study (you, can/can’t control, what is happening). the conceptual center of the utterance is the phrase challenge yourself expressed with a verb in the imperative mood, which directs the main message towards the addressee. the strategy of logos is also indicated in the second sentence of the graffiti text. the sentence ‘that’s where the power is’ sums up and completes the main message with the “key word” power, which can be considered as the second conceptual center of the utterance. one more minute detail that helps to realize the strategy of logos is the use of simple and continuous tense forms. the continuous tense form (what’s happening) is used to create a certain situation, while the use of the simple tense form (you respond) is meant to bring more logic to the utterance – implying the way the addressee should change his attitude towards “what is happening”. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 13 as was mentioned above, the strategy of logos finds its expression in graffiti discourse through textualpictorial components, as well as through texts and the physical contexts they appear in (the immediate environment). thus, in the following piece of graffiti (pic. 1) the author tried to express his ideas using not only the text but also the surrounding environment of the graffiti: the text is in “close cooperation” with the surface it is written on. the red door here is not just a surface, it is a part of the narration of the whole graffiti. the “persuasiveness” of the utterance is also conveyed via textual category of integrity. it is expressed with the pronouns we and us (inclusive we). they make the speech more intimate and addressee-friendly. below we'll observe how text integrity can establish another mode of persuasion – the ethos. the use of the textual category of integrity here is slightly different: if the strategy of logos uses the textual category of integrity to make the speech more intimate and friendly, when used to perform the strategy of ethos it is meant to make the speech more credible and impactful. besides the category of integrity, the ethos can be also performed in graffiti discourse through intertextuality with famous narratives and direct citations of famous quotes and sayings. before we go any further with the analysis of the examples, we would like to dwell on a piece of graffiti that shows unveiled sarcasm for the graffitists who are used to citing famous people to make their speech more credible, in other words, to make use of the ethos either intentionally or unintentionally. picture 1 picture 1 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 14 this piece of graffiti (pic. 2) obviously expresses irony. the irony is achieved through negation of what has been said by adding the name of the “author” (plato) at the end of the text. the creator of the graffiti considers it reasonable to use a reputable source as he wants to make his speech more powerful and persuasive. in other words, the persuasiveness of a speech heavily depends on the proper use of the ethos, which in this case is conveyed through the adjective “dead”, that endows the message both with irony and trustworthiness. as we can judge from what is written in the lower righthand corner of the graffiti, it triggers more communication across the context it appeared in and constitutes a logical continuation of the main message. as was mentioned above, the strategy of ethos in graffiti discourse can be established by adequate use of the textual category of integrity, that is seen to perform the strategy implicitly. in order to “obtain” the credibility of the information stated, the author directs his message to the audience involving himself as one of the heroes of the events. this way he authorizes his speech by implying that whatever he says is worth believing in, since it might be based on his personal life experience, on his deeds and misdeeds, his achievements and failures. to make this point more comprehensible consider the following example: “this town is full of losers. you’re one, i’m one, she’s one”. (lucy grace, n.d.) in this case ethos is conveyed through the pronoun i as one of the main heroes of the event. this component of ethos is inserted into the utterance with the sandwich effect: the “elaboration” of the statement (the town is full of losers) begins with the pronoun indicating the addressee (you), while in the middle the author mentions himself not only to weaken the potential intense feelings of the addressee, but also to make his statement more persuasive. picture 2 linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 15 graffiti discourse is a “limited” one – both in terms of time (the creators most of the time must be quick for the sake of anonymity) and in terms of the physical space in which they create their work. that is why the author of the graffiti uses the shortened conjugation forms of the verb “to be”, thus economizing the language of his speech. the key element of the utterance (the word losers) is all capitalized to highlight the aim of the utterance and to make the audience believe the statement made. in graffiti discourse the persuasive strategy of ethos is utilized through allusions based on intertextual relations with famous narratives. generally speaking graffiti discourse contains quotes intertextually bound with many different narratives – ranging from the bible to modern pieces of writing. consider the following example (pic. 3). this piece of graffiti (pig brother is watching you) is rather peculiar in terms of the intertextual narratives it alludes to. to begin with it should be mentioned that here the grafiti creator refers to the two famous novels by george orwell – “animal farm” and “1984”. in other words, the author tries to use orwell and his writings as a tool to make his speech more credible, hence persuasive. the utterance is a hybrid of the two narratives: on the one hand, the graffiti contains the narrative of being supervised by some authorities (watching you), on the other hand, the same authorities are compared with an animal – pig. this rather harsh comparison is being “enriched” and made more “colourful” with the accompanying image of the animal that looks straight at the addressee and is clothed and positioned like a human being, that is to say like a “big brother”. note that the words pig and big are used as puns. consider another example: this piece of graffiti (pic. 4) begins with the name of the book it has intertextual relations with – 1984. obviously, this is done in order to picture 3 picture 4 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 16 intensify the ethical appeal (to convince the audience). the accompanying pictorial material performs two functions:  to make a connection between the present (surveillance with cameras) and the past (the novel by g. orwell “1984”).  to clarify which part of the novel the author intends to point out: the famous lines “big brother is watching you” with whatever sign or symbol it may cover when used as an “instruction manual”. graffiti discourse may also have pieces of rhetorical speech that contain direct citations of famous sayings and quotes with the name of the author mentioned. it is interesting to note that citations in graffiti discourse should be concrete so that the ongoing social and political situations can be figured out and projected on. here are some examples to illustrate what has been discussed above: “never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime”e. hemingway. (emily logan, n.d.) “art is anything you can get away with” – andy warhol. (st christine, n.d.) “one original thought is worth a thousand mindless quotings” – diogenes. (steven pentaris, n.d.) graffiti discourse also realizes the strategy of ethos by tagging the names of the creators (authors) of graffiti. in order to clarify this point, let us adduce some examples: “sometimes being the only one that isn’t desperate to be noticed is what makes them pay attention” – morley. (“sometimes being”, n.d.) “a lot of parents will do anything for their kids, except let them be themselves” – banksy. (jennifer sinclair, n.d.) https://www.pinterest.com/stchristine/ https://www.pinterest.com/stchristine/ linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 17 “if you fear failure, you’re already considering it an option” – wrdsmth. (su ring, n.d.) the quotes from graffiti discourse speak about two main things: 1. the strategy of ethos is being conveyed not only through intertextual narratives, but also by citing some lines of notable, well-known figures in the field, popular celebrities, etc. and referring to sources. 2. the graffiti culture is progressively becoming so widespread that creators want to keep the “copyright” rules and make their sayings more credible and persuasive. the strategy of pathos in graffiti discourse is being utilized through a number of linguo-stylistic devices, metaphor being the most prominent of them. to analyze metaphors in graffiti discourse we are guided by a stepwise procedure suggested by g. stampoulidis and m. bolognesi (2019). according to this procedure the topic of the piece of graffiti should be identified first. next, the authors suggest that the analysis be carried out in three main dimensions, those being expression, conceptualization, communication. the dimension of expression implies that the researcher is supposed to find the verbal/pictorial elements that disharmonize with the topic of the whole graffiti. the dimension of conceptualization presupposes that the researcher finds out what kind of abstract concept the metaphor stands for. the dimension of communication reveals how metaphor fosters the communicative function of the utterance (stampoulidis & bolognesi, 2019). so, on the textual level, pathos is established by the adequate use of metaphors to make the speech more interesting and appealing to the audience by creating an emotional response to what is written in the text, thus eliciting different (positive or negative) feelings among the audience as well as to imply certain messages to avoid expressing them directly and stimulating thought and further actions. below are several examples to illustrate the points mentioned above: “atheism is a non-prophet organization”. (sarahinbrunswick, n.d.) https://www.flickr.com/photos/46961103@n06/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 18 the topic of this piece of graffiti is surely religion. the metaphoric transference of meaning is based on the comparison of atheism as an organization and not a worldview or disbelief. it is presented as an organization firstly to make use of a pun based on the homophonic relation between the expressions non-prophet – non-profit, secondly, to imply the characteristics “atheism” may share with a non-profit organization: they are both free and are made to serve for collective benefit. considering the dimension of communication we can say that the utterance is meant to express sarcasm towards religiousness and promote atheism as an organization everyone can “benefit from”. as is known, metaphors are generally used to imply messages, instead of telling them straightforwardly. graffiti, though is a “sincere” discourse thanks to its anonymity, sometimes comprises pieces of texts using metaphors that are meant to imply messages, rather than to convey them explicitly. consider the following example: “only dead fish swim with the stream”. (kaleidoscopes and polka dots, n.d.) the topic of this graffiti is most probably social. the metaphoric transference is based on the expression dead fish, which stands for the people who don't have their own opinion, do not think critically and rely on the public opinion. the stream here may stand for the dominant public ideologies that can control people and change their way of thinking. in the dimension of conceptualization this piece of graffiti implies some kind of advice for the readers not to follow the masses but to keep analysing the current issues and to shape personal viewpoints. the adverb only being in the initial position intensifies the statement and doubles the impact of the communicative aim of the utterance: to interact with the society, advise its members to think critically and question established “wisdom”. graffiti, being a multimodal discourse, makes use of not only verbal but also semiotic and visual metaphors to sound more impactful and imply certain messages. the following graffiti is a combination of linguistic and semiotic means: linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 19 “if they constantly leave you feeling ‘??????!!!???’ that’s not the one”. (shigeka, n.d.) the topic of this piece of graffiti text most probably is strictly personal. the metaphoric nature of the utterance is largely conditioned by the following punctuation marks: '?' and '!'. we can “decode” the metaphor here, if we correlate these marks with the word “feeling”. the question mark, in fact, stands for the feeling of suspicion, whereas the exclamation mark – to indicate strong feelings and emphasize the statement. the sequence of exclamation marks is being interrupted with question marks again, in this position it indicates instability in terms of feelings. in the process of conceptualization the metaphor works as a tool for building confidence for the main heroes of the event (they), thus fostering the communicative aim of the graffiti – advising the audience. interesting to note that in graffiti discourse metaphors are not only used to imply the communicative aim of the utterance, but also play an essential role in creating oppositions with the transference of meaning. consider the following example: “we worship an invisible god and slaughter a visible nature, without realizing that this nature we slaughter is the invisible god we worship”. (bjornjohansen, 2018) the topic of this piece of graffiti is ecology. the metaphor is constructed here with conceptual oppositions invisible-visible, god-nature, slaughter-worship. the words slaughter and worship constitute the metaphoric center of the utterance and at the same time the ends of the binary opposition that shape the main message of the utterance. the phrase without realizing consitutes the conceptual center of the utterance and combines the two metaphoric centers with the ends of the binary opposition. as for the communicative dimension, this piece of graffiti is first meant to express complaint, secondly, to advise the readers. this aim is achieved implicitly both through metaphor, as well as through the above-mentioned conceptual center of the utterance. the following graffiti (pic. 5) presents a combination of visual and verbal metaphors. the topic of the graffiti is social. the metaphoric armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 20 transference is based on both visual and verbal similarity of the word mouse – as a rodent and as a gadget. taken roughly, this piece of graffiti is more like a fable in a visual form, its “didactic” part is the implication conveyed by the content of the whole graffiti. the graffiti can be projected on various social situations, but most probably it implies a call to the people to “wake up” from the virtual-parallel reality and “to start living in the real world”. the latter constitutes the communicative aim of the whole graffiti and should be considered carefully by the audience. conclusion having described graffiti as a form of rhetorical speech we can conclude that the three strategies of persuasion suggested by aristotle have their unique linguistic manifestation in graffiti discourse, first of all determined by different semantically interconnected modes of communication. the application of these strategies in graffiti discourse manifests itself in a multitude of ways. graffiti creators convey them first and foremost through appropriate use of various linguistic (vocabulary, grammar, style, textual categories, intertextuality etc.), as well as non-linguistic (picture, physical environment etc.) means aiming at convincing and persuading the audience with reason (thus appealing to logic), via the authority and the credibility of the “persuader” (appealing to ethics) and by “hooking” the audience with feelings and emotions, evoking an emotional response (i.e., appealing to emotions). metaphor in graffiti discourse is used to perform the persuasive strategy of pathos, to make the speech more impactful on the emotions of the audience and most importantly to achieve the communicative aim of the utterance implicitly. picture 5 linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 21 references aristotelʹ. (2018). ritorika. [rhetoric]. (perevod s drevnegrecheskogo m. platonovoĭ), moskva, izdatelʹstvo «ė». abel, e., & buckley, b. (1977). the handwriting on the wall: toward a sociology and psychology of graffiti. westport, ct: greenwood. blanché, u. (2015). street art and related terms – discussion and working definition. sauc – journal, 2 (1), 6-18. https://doi.org/10.25765/sauc.v1i1.14. nwoye, o. (1993). social issues on walls: graffiti in university lavatories. discourse and society, 4 (4), 419-442. new delhi: sage. retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/42888781 rodriguez, a., & clair, r., p. (2009). graffiti as communication: exploring the discursive tensions of anonymous texts. southern communication journal, 65 (1), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1080/10417949909373152. stampoulidis, g., & bolognesi, m. (2019). bringing metaphors back to the streets: a corpus-based study for the identification and interpretation of rhetorical figures in street art. visual communication, 0(0), 1-35. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470357219877538. suciati, s., & ambarini, r. a. (2018). rhetorical analysis of selected speeches of indonesian woman politicians: pre-electoral strategies. journal of computational and theoretical nanoscience, 24 (6), 45414545. https://doi.org/10.1166/asl.2018.11650 . dictionaries rhetoric. (n.d.-a) in merriam-webster dictionary. retrieved from merriamwebster.com rhetoric. (n.d-b.) in oxford learner’s dictionary. retrieved from oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com rhetoric. (n.d-c) in american heritage dictionary. retrieved from ahdictionary.com sources of data bjornjohansen. (2018, 25 june). we worship an invisible god and slaughter a visible nature, without realizing that this nature we slaughter is the https://doi.org/10.25765/sauc.v1i1.14 https://doi.org/10.25765/sauc.v1i1.14 https://doi.org/10.1177%2f1470357219877538 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 22 invisible god we worship. retrieved from https://twitter.com/bjornjohansen/status/1011325818700693505 emily logan. (n.d.). graffiti quote!,. retrieved from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/70157706669162582 jennifer sinclair, (n.d.). a lot of parents will do anything for their kids..." banksy [595x407] [oc]. retrieved from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/235594624235974486/ kaleidoscopes and polka dots. (n.d.). never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream – tiny…retrieved from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/629237379159929039/ kk pires™ goods, resist. retrieved from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/93731235983819996 lucy grace.(n.d.) this town is full of losers. you’re one, i’m one, she’s one. retrieved from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/324962929347196816 sarahinbrunswick, (n.d.). atheism. retrieved from: https://www.flickriver.com/search/atheism shigeka. (n.d.). if they constantly leave you feeling ‘??????!!!???’ that’s not the one. retrieved from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/859554278865588355 sometimes being the only one that isn’t desperate to be noticed is what makes them pay attention” – morley. retrieved from https://www.pinterest.nz/pin/734368282958938062/ st christine. ( n.d.). art is anything you can get away with. retrieved from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/2462974786294351 steven pentaris. (n.d.). one original thought is worth a thousand mindless quotings .... diogenes. retrieved from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/83387030571106112 su ring. (n.d.). wrdsmth -vscitizen x. retrieved from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/32651166037957985 when you can't control what is happening, challenge yourself to control the way you respond to what's happening. (n.d.). retrieved from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/260223684706868160 https://www.pinterest.com/pin/70157706669162582 https://www.pinterest.com/pin/70157706669162582 file:///c:/users/user/downloads/sarahinbrunswick linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 23 որմնագրությունը որպես ճարտասանական խոսք ելենա երզնկյան գրիշա գասպարյան սույն հոդվածում որմնագրային խոսույթը դիտարկվում է որպես ճարտասանական խոսք: փորձ է արվում վերլուծել որմնագրային խոսույթը արիստոտելի առաջադրած համոզման (պերսուազիա) երեք հիմնական ռազմավարությունների ներքո՝ լոգոս, էթոս, պաթոս։ վեր են հանվում, թե ինչ առանձնահատկություններ ունի որմնագրային խոսույթը այս մարտավարությունների կիրառման դեպքում, և թե ինչպես են վերջիններս խոսքը ավելի ազդեցիկ և համոզիչ դարձնում։ հոդվածում նաև վերլուծվում է փոխաբերության դերը համոզման գործառույթներից պաթոսի կիրառման ժամանակ։ բանալի բառեր. որմնագրություն, որմնագրային խոսույթ, ճարտասանություն, լոգոս, էթոս, պաթոս, փոխաբերություն: kazm.cdr emphatic constructions in english scientific prose the present article aims to analyse the use of emphaticconstructions (the emphatic “do” in particular) in english scientific prose. scholars are not unanimous in considering the role of expressive means and stylistic devices in scientific prose. the language of science like scientific research itself is characterized as impersonal, objective and rational. therefore, it has been assumed by some linguists that the language means used in this functional style should also tend to be objective, precise, unemotional and devoid of any subjective impact. for example, o. a. krilov states that scientific prose style is characterized by zero emotional and expressive colouring. other linguists like r.a. budagov, n.m. razinkina, s.s. gusev and s.k. gasparyan, ect. assert that different stylistic devices are available in the language of science. we support the latter assertion. having analyzed a number of scientific texts, we have arrived at the conclusion that the language of science is rich in different stylistic devices which bear elements of expressiveness and impact on the reader. it has been stated that the main function of scientific prose is that of delivering intellective information. this is the primary, but not the only function of scientific style, since the specific character of the language of science presupposes the use of a much wider and richer range of linguistic means. very often, along with the objective conceptual content of the scientific text, the author’s individuality can be definitely present. in other words, besides conveying intellective information such texts realize the communicative function and that of impact too. these functions are realized due to different emotional-expressive means and stylistic devices (lexical and syntactical). as has been mentioned above, our article touches upon some problems concerning the use of syntactical stylistic devices (the emphatic “do” in particular) in the language of science. constructions with emphatic “do” are used to emphasize the verb. this emphatic effect is attained by putting the auxiliary “do” before the predicate. according to d.e. rozental’s definition, emphasis in such constructions qualifies speech with tension and is expressed through intonation, repetition, word order and so on.6 in the dictionary of linguistic terms by o.s. akhmanova the emphatic mood is defined as different kinds of lexical-semantic and lexical-morphological means of emphasizing the utterance, very often accompanied by emphatic intonation.7 our study of a large number of scientific texts allows us to state that emphatic constructions are most widely used syntactical stylistic devices in the language of 68 armenian folia anglistika linguistics siranush vardanyan science too. here are some examples: a large part of the translation problem is thereby solved, for the logician can now relate his representations of logical form to these underlying structures, which do bear some consistent relationship to the meaning of the sentences. (j.d. fodor, p. 208) as has already been pointed out, if the message is in the language we do not know we can go no further in the process of decoding although our ears are exposed to the same sound waves as those of a listener who does know the language. (d.b. fry, p. 31) in these examples, the use of the emphatic constructions is more or less restricted to their function of accentuating and emphasizing the verb. thus, in the first example, the author attaches great significance to the consistence of the so called real structure with the meaning of the sentence. in the second example, the use of the emphatic ‘do’ accentuates the meaning of the verb “to know“, as well as the fact that, without knowing the language, we can never understand the message despite hearing the same sound waves. the use of the emphatic constructions in the following examples, besides emphasizing, also distinctly shows the author’s personal attitude towards the utterance. we do not consciously hear all the fine variations in particular pronunciations that a modern phonetician’s machinery can measure. we sometimes ignore what we do hear, reinterpreting it in terms of an expected pattern. such variant pronunciations as ‘empire stape building’ or ‘hybe park’ are common in rapid speech, and are so much part of our language, that they are taught to foreign learners to eliminate the over-precise flavour that a foreigner’s speech often has, but few speakers of english are aware that they make these adjustments technically called assimilation. (g.w. turner, p.11) the author agrees that it is impossible for us, foreigners, to hear all the fine articulational variations of speech. nevertheless, speaking about non-obligatory assimilation, he criticizes the way we ignore what we do hear. in the following example j.d. fodor doubts whether a logician can succeed in characterizing some of the logical properties of a natural language even if he sets about defining it. furthermore, even when a logician does set about characterizing some of the logical properties of a natural language, he may well go only a short way with this and devote most of his time and attention to the philosophical implications of the system he has constructed… (j.d. fodor, p.205) 69 linguistics armenian folia anglistika the use of the emphatic constructions intensifies the emotional and expressive colouring of the author’s speech, thus emphasizing his ideas of the logical and philosophical implications of natural human language. in some cases when the emphatic “do” is used in combination with other stylistic devices and expressive means, reciprocity in influence is observable. words do have a magical effect but not in the way that the magicians supposed and on the objects they were trying to influence. (g.s.lewis, p.38) in this example the metaphor “words have a magical effect” is intensified with the help of the emphatic ‘do’. the two stylistic devices are interlaced and the author’s personality can be distinctly seen from behind this lace. combining the two stylistic devices, the author expresses his personal attitude towards the utterance. he accepts the fact that words have some enchanting effect and at the same time stresses that magical effect in words is not the same as that assumed by magicians. in the following example the effect created due to the emphatic “do” is intensified by the use of the metonymy ‘in mr. pearson’. in this example the meaning would be neither more nor less clear if the brackets were taken out. but in fact the writer does require or imply a kind of parenthesis exemplifying the quality of tellingness in mr. pearson. (g.h. vallins, p. 130) here is another example, where the emphatic “do” is combined with other stylistic devices. the schoolmaster has always been hard on the exclamation mark; and the result is that most of us fight shy of it even when it is not merely desirable but necessary. perhaps, however, his objection implied that though we could exclaim in speech, we should not exclaim in writing – except now and then with a few old trusted friends like hurrah!,oh! and alas! that is why when we do exclaim on paper we are so ashamed of it, that we try to pass off the exclamation as a statement. (g.h. vallins, p.139) besides the emphatic “do” and the metaphors “to exclaim on paper”, “to exclaim in writing”, we come across cases of personification “old trusted friends like hurrah! oh! and alas!”, which, as we know, is less characteristic of the language of science. the accumulation of stylistic devices and, particularly, the use of personification makes the author’s idea more vivid as he does not simply state the fact but expresses his subjective 70 armenian folia anglistika linguistics attitude towards the utterance. in doing so, the author goes even further and urges the reader to accept his viewpoint and agree with him. thus, our analysis of the stylistic functioning of the emphatic “do” in the language of english scientific prose proves the validity of the assertion that different stylistic devices are widely used in the language of science. we can also conclude that the use of the emphatic “do” is not restricted to its emphatic, expressive function. very often the author’s personality comes out quite clearly. the use of emphatic constructions with “do”, not infrequently expresses the author’s personal attitude towards the utterance. in the majority of cases these constructions become an inseparable part of the language of scientific narration and when combined with other stylistic devices and expressive means they realize the function of impact thus making the author’s writing more influential and persuasive. references: 1. êðûëîâ î.à. îñíîâû ôóíêöèîíàëüíîé ñòèëèñòèêè ðóññêîãî ÿçûêà. ì., 1978, ñ.129. 2. áóäàãîâ ð.à. ëèòåðàòóðíûå ÿçûêè è ÿçûêîâûå ñòèëè. ì., âûñø.øê.,1976. 3. ðàçèíêèíà í.ì. ðàçâèòèå ÿçûêà àíãëèéñêîé íàó÷íîé ëèòåðàòóðû (ëèíãâîïîýòè÷åñêèå èññëåäîâàíèÿ). ì., íàóêà, 1968. 4. ãóñåâ ñ.ñ. íàóêà è ìåòàôîðà. ë., 1984. 5. ãàñïàðÿí ñ.ê. ôèãóðà ñðàâíåíèÿ â ôóíêöèîíàëüíîì îñâåùåíèè. åðåâàí, èçäâî åðåâàíñêîãî óíèâåðñèòåòà, 2000. 6. ðîçåíòàëü ä.ý., òåëåíêîâà ì.à. ñëîâàðü ñïðàâî÷íèê ëèíãâèñòè÷åñêèõ òåðìèíîâ. ìîñêâà, 1985, ñòð.394. 7. àõìàíîâà î.ñ. ñëîâàðü ëèíãâèñòè÷åñêèõ òåðìèíîâ. ìîñêâà, 1966, ñòð 250. sources of data: 1. fodor j.d. formal linguistic and formal logic. // new horizons in linguistics. / ed. by j.lyons. england, 1970. 2. fry d.b. speech reception and perception. // new horizons in linguistics. / ed. by j.lyons. england, 1970. 3. lewis g.s. bluspels and flalansferes. // the importance of language. / ed. by m.black. englewood, 1962. 4. turner g.w. stylistics. middlesex, england, 1973. 5. vallins g.h. better english. london, 1963. 71 linguistics armenian folia anglistika þºþîì²ì î²èàôúòüºðæ ¶àðì²ìàôâúàôüà ²ü¶èºðºü ¶æî²î²ü ²ðò²îàôø ðá¹í³íá ý»ñï³û³óýáõù ¿ ·çï³ï³ý 黽íáõù ß³ñ³ñûáõë³ï³ý á׳ï³ý ñý³ñý»ñç û·ï³·áñíù³á í»ñ³μ»ñáõ ñ³ñó»ñ: þ³ñ³ñûáõë³ï³ý á׳ï³ý ñý³ñý»ñç ù»í ãíçó áýïñí³í »ý ß»ßïí³í “do”-áí ý³ë³¹³ëáõãûáõýý»ñá: þ»ßïí³í “do”-áí μ³½ù³ãçí ûñçý³ïý»ñá ³ý·é»ñ»ý ·çï³ï³ý ³ñó³ïáõù, ñ³ëï³ïáõù »ý è.². ´áõ¹³·áíç, ê.ê. ¶áõë¨ç, ü.ø. è³½çýïçý³ûç, ê.ø. ¶³ëå³ñû³ýç åý¹áõùý»ñý ³ûý ù³ëçý, áñ ù»í ù³ý³ïáõãû³ùμ ï³ñμ»ñ á׳ï³ý ñý³ñý»ñ »ý û·ï³·áñííáõù ·çï³ï³ý 黽íáõù: þ»ßïí³í “do”-ý ³ý·é»ñ»ý ·çï³ï³ý ³ñó³ïáõù ãç ë³ñù³ý³÷³ïíáõù ùç³ûý ¿ùý³ïçï, ³ñï³ñ³ûïã³ï³ý ·áñí³éáõûãáí: þ³ï ñ³×³ë ³û¹ ûñçý³ïý»ñáõù μ³í³ï³ý ³ïýñ³ûï »ñ¨áõù ¿ ñ»õçý³ïç ³ýñ³ï³ï³ýáõãûáõýá: ú·ï³·áñí»éáí ß»ßïí³í “do”-áí ï³éáõûóý»ñá ñ»õçý³ïá ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõù ¿ çñ í»ñ³μ»ñùáõýùá ³ëí³íç ýï³ïù³ùμ: ²û¹ ï³éáõûóý»ñá ñ³×³ë ¹³éýáõù »ý ·çï³ï³ý 黽íç ³ýμ³å³ý»éç ù³ë: ð³ù³ïóí³í ³ûé á׳ï³ý ñý³ñý»ñç ¨ ³ñï³ñ³ûïã³ï³ý ùççáóý»ñç ñ»ï` ¹ñ³ýù, çñ³ï³ý³óý»éáí ý»ñ·áñíù³ý ·áñí³éáõûã, û·ýáõù »ý ñ»õçý³ïçý ³½¹»é áýã»ñóáõç íñ³: 72 armenian folia anglistika linguistics hin.qxd egocentricity in the english generic pronouns: semantics and pragmatics a person’s awareness of the world begins with thedelimitation of his or her ego from other people, and the use of the pronoun “i” signifies the starting point of self-perception. according to o.jespersen, “the elder fichte used to celebrate not his son’s birthday but the day on which he first spoke of himself as “i” (jespersen o., 1922:128). within the language system, it is hardly possible to outline, however roughly, the functional spheres of the word “i”. strictly speaking, neither language, nor more so speech, which evidently centres on the “i” of the speaker, is thinkable without the existence of this pronoun. all that is said or written is an act of speech in which the speaker’s/writer’s ego is expressed either explicitly or implicitly. according to j.lyons,” the canonical situation of utterance is egocentric in the sense that the speaker, by virtue of being the speaker, casts himself in the role of ego and relates everything to his viewpoint” (lyons j., 1977:638). besides the general egocentricity of speech organization, every language has lexical units termed “egocentric words” or “egocentric particulars” that are related to the pronoun “i” so intimately that their meaning remains obscure without reference to the speaker. as to the pronominal class, the pronoun “i”, naturally, has an even greater weight in it, not only because it is basic to the speech act itself, but also because the status of a number of pronouns is defined through their relations with the first person pronoun. this is the case with the generic pronouns “one”, “you” and “we”. ö.dahl, for instance, unites the generic and personal pronouns and calls them “egocentric”: “… generic pronouns are semantically quite close to first and second person pronouns. even when generic pronouns are not just a way of talking about oneself without sounding too pretentious they are used to describe the world the way it looks from the participants’ point of view” (dahl ö., 1997:10). our description of the generic pronouns is based on the approach to the concept of pronominal meaning put forward by o.selivyorstova (ñåëèâåðñòîâà o.h., 1988:224). according to her, the lexical meaning of the pronoun consists of two layers: the so-called level of characterization and that of indication. the former characterizes the participant of the situation as either a class, a member of a class or as an individual. the latter contains indication as to where the participant is located or can be found. in the light of this approach we suggest that the meaning of the generic pronouns 51 linguistics armenian folia anglistika marika tonyan should be described as having two basic characteristics: 1) the referent of these words is characterized as a generic person, and 2) the participant of the situation is either the speaker, or any other person whom the speaker presents as one of his/her kind. at first sight, the special emphasis on the inclusion of the speaker into the denotation sphere of these pronouns seems unnecessary, as the concept of generic person should make no exception for anybody. however, the semantic analysis of the pronouns “one”, “you” and “we” shows the validity of recognizing “i-inclusion” as a separate component. 1. let us provide evidence to demonstrate that the referent of the pronouns under consideration is represented as a generic person. apparently, their referent is not a specific one, there being a restriction on combining these words with particular time markers. the sentence “one came yesterday” is anomalous. however, this is not a satisfactory reason for terming these pronouns “indefinite”. as a matter of fact, indefinite lexical units imply that there is no information about their referent or that it is not sufficient. therefore, the speaker can ask the hearer to provide such information and the latter may be supplied. e.g. “somebody’s knocking at the door.” “who is it?” “it’s the man next door.” on the contrary, the information we receive from the generic pronouns is selfsufficient. it is neither lacking, nor vague. normally, we do not put any questions to the agent expressed by “one”, “you” or “we”. for example, “one/you/we lives/live and learns/learn” does not encourage the hearer to put a question for the identification of the subject of the sentence. on the other hand, it is quite natural to ask a “who” question if the agent is expressed by the indefinite pronoun “they”. e.g. “they say john’s going to marry jane.” “who “they”?” or “who says that?” “jane herself, actually.” from these facts it follows that it is justifiable to qualify the pronouns “one”, “you” and “we” as generic. 2. the existence of the second component of meaning, namely that of “i-inclusion”, in the generic pronouns can be proved by a number of linguistic facts. in this paper we shall try to touch upon some of them, eventually trying to characterize the pragmatic and functional impact of the egocentric component. the inclusion of the speaker into the meaning of the generic pronouns is related to another factor: the generic pronouns are usually used in sentences which are put into a context or a speech situation. however, a question may arise about the wide use of generic pronouns in proverbs, aphorisms and the like. true, these generalizations may often be found in isolation; nevertheless, there is a potential context behind them. they tell us something “about you and me”, in other words, the presence of the potential participants in the speaker’s mind is essential. in this connection the interpretation of the so-called empty context is important. ”katz suggests that in order to ascertain whether a linguistic feature is context-dependent or context-independent, we imagine the feature occurring on an anonymous postcard (as an approximation to the empty or null context)” (levinson s., 1983:8). searle, however, argues that “there is no such thing as the zero or null context for the interpretation of sentences…we understand the meaning of such sentences only against a set of 52 armenian folia anglistika linguistics background assumptions about the context in which the sentence could be appropriately uttered” (searle j.r., 1979:117). this is the case with the generic pronouns: even when used in isolation, the sentences containing a generic pronoun imply the participation of the speaker/writer and a hearer or a potential reader in the given situation. let us observe some linguistic data received from our work with native speakers, whose evidence is essential for the verification and confirmation of the hypothesis put forward above. generic reference can also be realized by nouns, e.g. “man is a mammal.” this sentence is relatively independent of the context. more specifically, it can be used against a set of background assumptions about the nature of man; that is to say, the potential context is very wide. two informants were asked to substitute the word “man” for a generic pronoun. they found it impossible to do so without putting the sentence into a specific speech situation. after the transformations (the situation was worked out together with the informants), the result was as follows. let us suppose that a young mother is not allowed to feed her new-born baby, and this makes her unhappy. her interlocutor wonders why she should worry so much and can say: “what’s all this fuss about suckling your baby?” the mother will answer: “well, one is a mammal, isn’t one? one naturally has mammalian instincts and wants to suckle one’s own baby.” besides putting the given sentence into a context, the requirement for the possibility of using “one”, according to the informants, was reference to an actual participant, presumably the speaker or anyone else whom the speaker considered to be one of her like. for the same reason, in some other cases the informants were reluctant to use a generic pronoun. for example, in the sentence “when a man commits a suicide, people do not always know the cause” none of the 5 informants used a generic pronoun. their reaction to “when we/you/one commit/commits a suicide…” was that of psychological aversion. in other words, even though the sentence did not violate grammatical norms, semantically and pragmatically it was unusual and disagreeable: the speaker does not usually include himself/herself in the scope of the potential participants of a morbid situation. likewise, when given an extraordinary situation with a missing subject they were inclined to supply lexical units other than the generic pronouns. for example, “if we/you/one met a martian…” would be less common than “if anyone/ an astronaut met a martian…” in which cases the hypothetical situation required either a hypothetical agent (“anyone”) or an agent more appropriate for the unusual situation (“astronaut”). a question may naturally arise: how generalization can be combined with a focus on something as unique as the personality of the speaker. we suggest the following attitude to the problem. in fact, the generic pronouns characterize their referent as a representative of a group similar to the speaker (“others are like me”); in other words, the use of the generic pronouns presupposes a potential participation of any human being (provided he or she is one of the peer-group centred on the speaker) in 53 linguistics armenian folia anglistika the given situation. the bases for including others in this peer-group vary: they may be the participants’ social status, their common background, level of education, age, sex, etc. an interesting interpretation of the differences between “i” and “one” is found in b.rotman’s article “going parallel”. b.rotman speaks about the age of computers when “human nature is melting” and the result is posthumanity. he writes: “once, not so long ago, little more than a generation in fact, there was a clear and distinct binary, an absolute opposition of self versus non-self. an i/me consciously and securely present to myself, fully defined and ranged against an external, collective other; an autonomous first person, indivisible, privately interior, invariant nucleus of being versus a they, an amorphous shifting collectivity of third persons outside my skin. the variable for such a subject, for a self that could range indifferently and arbitrarily over the social other, was the abstract pronoun one” (rotman b., 2000:60). in this definition we see a clear opposition of “self” against “non-self”. on the one hand, there is the concept of “i” (“an autonomous first person, indivisible, privately interior, invariant nucleus of being”) and on the other, “they” (“an amorphous shifting collectivity of third persons outside my skin”). the pronoun “one” is a variable for the “i”, for a “self that could range indifferently and arbitrarily over the social other”. it is noteworthy that b.rotman qualifies those who are involved in “one”, by expanding the limits of the individual and the individual’s rights: “since the renaissance, a whole social fabric, associated legal code and apparatus of moral responsibility, a system of private ownership and individual rights and duties has been constructed to rest on such a one (rotman b., 2000:61). the egocentric component of meaning which is present in the generic pronouns makes it possible for them to perform the perlocutionary function of linguodemagogy. according to t.nikolaeva, who suggested the term, “linguodemagogy is a perlocutionary phenomenon the essence of which lies in the evaluative influence upon the hearer, which is carried out indirectly” (íèêîëàåâà ò.ì. 1988:155). the chief reason for linguodemagogical influence is intolerance to the feeling of social solitude. whenever such a feeling arises, a person tends to lean against a certain social layer, a communicatively “full” space, for support. even if there is no such stratum in reality, one builds it up by linguistic means. as a result, the speaker makes the hearer believe that what he or she says is shared by a whole social group, and this group is made up of people similar to the speaker (and very often the hearer). thus, the user of a generic pronoun functions as a spokesman who verbalizes the opinion of the group generated by him or her. a similar differentiation between a peer group and all the others, who do not belong to it, is done by paul riqueur, who notes that it is possible to distinguish between two meanings of the concept of “another person”: “there exists another person whom i consider a personality and can look upon him as “you” and others who are like all the rest and whom i do not see as a personality, and i am connected with them institutionally, e.g. with the postman delivering mail” (ðèêåð ï., 1995:108). m.halliday formulates 54 armenian folia anglistika linguistics this in a very simple manner: “you” and “one” often by implication denote any person i would approve of (halliday m.a.k., hasan r., 1978: 39). the semantic peculiarity of the generic pronouns under consideration and the perlocutionary effect they are able to realize accounts for the use of these pronouns in scientific and official registers. in these registers of speech the speaker/writer deliberately avoids putting forward his or her personality. at the same time, the use of the generic pronouns suggests a connection between the speaker and hearer or the writer and reader. in this way the message is directed to a group of supporters, or the social group of those “who are like me”. ö.dahl remarks: “in many kinds of written texts, personal pronouns such as i and you are virtually banned. this is connected with the fact that many written documents – news items, unsigned encyclopedia articles, legal documents of various kinds – are not considered as having a personal “sender” or “receiver” in the sense that a spoken utterance has a speaker and a listener. even in genres where the author can be identified, using a pronoun like i is sometimes considered bad tone. the plural pronoun we often occurs where i does not” (dahl ö, 1997: 48). in consequence, the perlocutionary effect of convincing the addressee and achieving the goal of transmitting the sender’s intention is successfully realized. this is the reason why proverbs, maxims, aphorisms, etc. abound in generic pronouns. being expressions of collective or individual wisdom they generalize a piece of experience and raise it to the status of a norm shared by people belonging to this or that group. the size of the group varies: it can include the whole mankind, a nation, and a much narrower social circle. on the other hand, whenever the purpose of the utterance is to confine the sphere of activity by the speaker, the pronoun “i” is exclusively preferred. thus, the pronoun “i” is deictically marked, while the generic pronouns are not. while the first person pronoun is a member of a distinct opposition (“i” vs. “you”), there is no strict opposition between the generic pronouns and any other linguistic unit. consequently, only the first person pronoun can be used when indication to the speaker or contrast with non-speakers is relevant. at the same time, the pronoun “i” expresses the highest degree of individualization, as in the following questions from the talmud. • if i am not for myself, who will be for me? • if i am for myself only, what am i? • if not now, when? obviously, the pronouns “one”, “you” and “we” might be used in these cases, but the meaning of self-awareness, uniqueness and individuality would be lost. in fact, the quoted wisdom requires emphasis on these particular features. hence, the pronoun “i” cannot be substituted without change of meaning of the whole challenging utterance. in conclusion we can say that the generic pronouns are to be found among egocentric lexical units, and the focus on the speaker/writer predetermines the organization of the speech event in which they occur. 55 linguistics armenian folia anglistika references: 1. íèêîëàåâà ò.ì. ëèíãâèñòè÷åñêàÿ äåìàãîãèÿ. â êí.: ïðàãìàòèêà è ïðîáëåìû èíòåíöèîíàëüíîñòè. ì., 1988. 2. ðèêåð ï. ãåðìåíåâòèêà, ýòèêà, ïîýòèêà. ì.,1995. 3. ñåëèâåðñòîâà î.í. ìåñòîèìåíèÿ â ÿçûêå è ðå÷è. ì.,1988. 4. dahl ö. egocentricity in discourse and syntax. 1997. in: http:www.ling.su.se/staff/oesten/egocentric. 5. halliday m.a.k., hasan r. cohesion in english, london, 1978. 6.. jespersen o. essentials of english grammar, london, 1946. 7. levinson s. pragmatics. cambridge, cambridge university press, 1983. 8. lyons j. semantics, v.2, cambridge, cambridge university press, 1977. 9. rotman b. going parallel. in: subs 21. ohio, jhu press, 2000, http://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/substance/v029/29.1rotman.html 10.searle j.r. expression and meaning. cambridge, cambridge university press, 1979. ²ý·é»ñ»ýç áý¹ñ³ýñ³ï³ý ¹»ñ³ýáõýý»ñç »ë³ï»ýïñáý çù³ëï³ûçý μ³õ³¹ñçãá. çù³ëï³μ³ýáõãûáõý ¨ ·áñí³μ³ýáõãûáõý ðá¹í³íáõù í»ñéáõííáõù ¿ ³ý·é»ñ»ýç áý¹ñ³ýñ³ï³ý ¹»ñ³ýáõýý»ñç »ë³ï»ýïñáý çù³ëï³ûçý μ³õ³¹ñçãá: üßí³í μ³õ³¹ñçãç μýáõûãý áõ μáí³ý¹³ïáõãûáõýá ùýýíáõù ¿ 黽í³ïçñý»ñç ñ»ï ³ýóï³óí³í ñ³ñóáõùý»ñç ñçù³ý íñ³: üï³ñ³·ñíáõ çù³ëïç ý»ñï³ûáõãûáõýá å³ûù³ý³íáñáõù ¿ ³ûë ¹»ñ³ýáõýý»ñçý ñ³ïáõï ·áñí³μ³ý³ï³ý ¨ á׳ï³ý ïçñ³éáõãûáõýý»ñá, ù³ëý³íáñ³å»ë ýñ³ýó ïáõùçó ï³ï³ñíáõ é»½í³¹»ù³·á·çï ·áñí³éáõûãá, áñç ¿áõãûáõýá éëáõç íñ³ ³ýáõõõ³ïç ³½¹»óáõãûáõý ·áñí»éý ¿: 56 armenian folia anglistika linguistics hin.qxd communicative approach to foreign language teaching it is a well-known fact that communicativelanguage teaching began in britain in the 1960s, in part as a replacement for the earlier, highly-structured method of situational language teaching. up to now cl learning/teaching is one of the basic approaches practical teachers or applied linguists try to follow in the language classroom in its pure or modified version to achieve better result. attention has been focused on the importance of using materials of a more authentic nature in the language classroom. this need is interpreted as informal conversational discourse, and in this case a new set of difficulties are likely to arise, most of them relating to the fact that this material can only be inauthentically used in the foreign language classroom. a thorough study of principal propositions and the necessity to survey, synthesize, as well as to examine the relevance of various areas of inquiry will help to define the communicative method as one of the most productive and reliable approaches to language teaching. in the language materials it is very important to trace and to analyze the influence of sociolinguistic factors and then discuss in greater detail some of the more recent developments in the theory of communicative language teaching. more narrowly-focused teacher dominated notional-functional perspectives are contrasted with more broadly-defined discourse-processing viewpoints, in which teaching is constructed around the process competence of the learner. it is suggested that broader perspectives are likely to encounter interpretive difficulty, since they require a radical departure from existing methodologies. employing the broadest perspectives, most commentators who have contributed to the current communicative approach debate, would probably agree that teaching and learning english communicatively involves using the language for particular purposes in tasks and activities which evoke a strong sense of relevance to the learner’s interests (white, 1980). it should be pointed out that our understanding of the term refers not only to principles of syllabus design, but also to the presentation of classroom teaching materials and the methodology that underlies them. this approach differs from those, which limit their interpretations to the principles of syllabus design (white, 1980, wilkins, 1978). similarly, few would disagree, that historically, the main contribution to the theory of communicative language teaching/learning was the impetus afforded by sociolinguistic and sociosemantic factors in the late 60-s and throughout the 70-s. among other contributions the cognitive theories of language teaching/learning should be mentioned. 95 methodology armenian folia anglistika karo karapetyan campbell and wales in 1970 were certainly among the first to argue that chomsky’s definition of competence (1965) was inadequate as it failed to refer to performance phenomena and to the sociocultural factors of appropriateness to the context in which language was used. hymes took up the argument, saying that a child would be likely to be institutionalized. we have then to account for the fact that a common child acquires knowledge of sentences, not only as grammatically correct but also as appropriate. he or she acquires competence as to when to speak , when not, and as to what to talk about with whom, when, where, and in what manner. in other words, a child becomes able to accomplish a repertoire of speech acts, to take part in speech events, and to evaluate the accomplishments of others. this competence, moreover, is integral with attitudes, values and motivations concerning language… (hymes, 1972, pp. 277-278). thus, it has been suggested that there are rules of use without which the rules of grammar would be useless. in addition to commenting on the interaction of grammatical, psycholinguistic, sociocultural and probabilistic aspects of situated language use, hymes also considered (1967) the formulation of rules of language use by analyzing speech events in terms of their constituents or components. these he identified as: participants, setting, scene (psychocultural setting), message form, and message content, purpose, key, channel, code, norms of interaction, norms of interpretation and genre. however, there has been little conclusive research into the way in which these factors systematically interact, hymes himself has pointed out that all of these components may not always be crucial in all speech events – their categorization and clarification thus has been of considerable benefit to language teachers, working on syllabus specifications in terms of providing a framework for the series of questions that need to be asked in identifying parameters of relevance. halliday (1973) discussed the interrelation of language and social context and provided a set of behavioural options which are realized as sets of semantic options, which, in turn, are realized as sets of grammatical options. the influence of other sociolinguists and discourse analysts is more noticeably apparent in their more detailed discussion of discoursal sequencing and rhetorical language use, thus relating to hyme’s more general definition of communication skills, as outlined above. in seeking a pedagogic application of the hallidayan view of factors accounting for communicative competence, some authors (e.g. canal and swain, 1980; munly, 1978) doubt whether grammatical competence can or should be developed from the standpoint of meaning at the very beginning of a second or foreign language learning programme, arguing that it may be more realistic to view the normal process at the beginning of such learning as one, in which what can be said (grammatical options) determines, in some way, what can be meant (semantic options) in the second language. nonetheless, it is quite possible that at later stages of second language learning, grammatical options are more of a direct realization of semantic options rather than the reverse. it is recognized that the communicative use of language from the earliest stage will possibly facilitate this development. fillmore, for instance, in discussing the question of coherent discourse within a theory of conversation and the varied relationship between form and function, provides 96 armenian folia anglistika methodology us with numerous pertinent examples of use as far as the rhetorical rules of language are concerned. in fact we can imagine contexts in which the sequence “thank you you are welcome” is inappropriate. consider a three-line conversation in which a says “ you have lovely eyes”, b says “ thank you “ and a then says “you are welcome “. the sequence can be an interpretation, of course, but we recognize it as bizarre by realizing that the function of “you are welcome” is partly that of expressing acknowledgment. h.widdowson, in his discussion of cohesion seen as linking propositional development and coherence seen as linking illocutionary development, suggests that these relationships are discovered by the reader/listener as a result of practical reasoning in his interpretation of the discourse. textual and discourse processing factors are seen as one important aspect of the reading process in much of the discussion that follows (widdowson, 1978). in this short and summarizing overview, however, our concern is not giving an exhaustive description of the contributions sociolinguistics and sociosemantics have made to communicative language teaching/learning. our main task here is to set down the areas of inquiry, commonly accepted among applied linguists as contributing to the study of discourse and communicative syllabus development. i have so far indicated what i believe to be areas of agreement concerning the background and definition of communicative learning-teaching, but such agreement, as we have found, does not extend to more detailed definitions of the process. using language for particular purposes, strong sense of relevance to the learner’s interests describes communicative language teaching/learning only in the most general terms. if we attempt to focus more clearly and attempt to probe the essential characteristics in some detail, we shall encounter a very broad spectrum of definition. at one end of this spectrum lies the functional \notional definition of communicative teaching/learning as applied to syllabuses primarily concerned with development of oral (mainly production) skills in general english and reflected in a substantial number of course books. h.widdowson’s words remind us of the importance of discourse and of the ability to process discourse in any genuinely communicative approach: “if we are to adapt a communicative approach to teaching which takes as its primary purpose the development of the ability to do things with language, then it is discourse which must be the center of our attention. there are two basic characteristics of discourse which we need to account for. the first is that it is essentially interactive, and involves the negotiation of meanings. the second characteristic is that this interaction creates hierarchical structures whereby the combination of propositions and illocutions builds up to a larger unit of communication”. (widdowson,1977). the task of practical teachers is to translate the theoretical framework of the language into a practical application as communication is a process of relating language forms and language behaviour in the context of social events. it is necessary to stress that the conventions that link forms and behaviour are not fixed for all time, nor certain among different participants in an event or across events they are variable and need to be constantly negotiated and accepted. communication becomes a convention creating rather than a merely convention-following activity. it is a social and interpersonal process. learning to communicate is, as a result, not a 97 methodology armenian folia anglistika matter of digesting a static and predictable body of knowledge, but learning how to interpret, express and negotiate through and about these conventions. references: 1. white r.v. teaching written english. london, allen and unwin, 1980. 2. wilkins d.a. notional syllabuses. oxford, oxford university press, 1978. 3. campbell r., wales r. the study of language acquisition. in: lyons j. new horizons in linguistics. cambridge, cambridge university press, 1970. 4. chomsky n. aspects of the theory of syntax. cambridge, mass., m.i.t. press, 1965. 5. hymes d. on communicative competence. in: sociolinguistics ed.by pride j.b., holmes j. philadelphia, penguin, 1972. 6. halliday m.a.k. explorations in the functions of language. london, edward arnold, 1973. 7. canale m., swain m. theoratical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. in: applied linguistics, 1980, v.1 8. munby j. communicative syllabus design. cambridge, cambridge university press, 1978. 9. fillmore c. a grammarian looks to sociolinguistics. in: sociolinguistic aspect of language learning and teaching ed. by pride j.b. oxford, oxford university press, 1979. 10. widdowson h.g. the communicative approach and its application ed. by widdowson h.g., oxford, oxford university press, 1979. 11. widdowson h.g. exploration in applied linguistics. oxford, oxford university press, 1979. 12. widdowson h.g. teaching language as communication. oxford, oxford university press, 1996. ð³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý ùáï»óáõù ûï³ñ 黽áõý»ñç áõëáõóù³ýá úï³ñ 黽áõý»ñç áõëáõóù³ý ù»ç ñ³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý ùáï»óù³ý áý¹·ñïáõý ïçñ³éù³ý ëý¹çñá 1960-³ï³ý ãí³ï³ýý»ñçó ëïë³í ·ïýí»é ¿ ù»ãá¹³μ³ý³ï³ý ùýý³ñïáõùý»ñç ³é³ýóùáõù: ¸³ ³é³ççý ñ»ñãçý μ³ó³ïñíáõù ¿ ùçç³½·³ûçý ï³ñ³μýáõûã ï³å»ñç (ïýï»ë³ï³ý, ù³õ³ù³ï³ý ·çï³ï³ý ¨ ³ûéý) ³ïïçí ½³ñ·³óù³ùμ: ð»ï³½áïáõãûáõýý»ñá óáõûó »ý ï³éçë, áñ áõëáõóù³ý ñ³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý áõõõí³íáõãûáõýá ï³ñ»éç ¿ ³å³ñáí»é ñ³ýñ³é»½í³μ³ý³ï³ý ·áñíáýý»ñç å³ñï³¹çñ ñ³ßí³éù³ùμ: ðá¹í³íá ý»ñï³û³óýáõù ¿ áõëáõóù³ý ù»ç ñ³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý ù»ãá¹ç ïçñ³éù³ý ï³ñμ»ñ ùáï»óáõùý»ñ: 98 armenian folia anglistika methodology culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 101 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2022.18.1.101 the role of language and culture in the context of coronavirus narine harutyunyan  yerevan state university the article is devoted to the analysis of new words and phrases that come to dominate global discourse and have made their way into language as a result of the pandemic. the aim of the study is to determine the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on the formation of a special layer of the «coronavirus» language of the current moment, the appearance of neologisms included in the event context. the novelty of the research lies in the fact that the analysis of the pandemic realities is carried out by taking into account the famous typology of cultural dimensions developed by geert hofstede. the article also deals with extralinguistic conditions for creating new lexical units and examines the impact of the covid-19 outbreak on linguistic reality. it also highlights the cultural characteristics of the perception of certain peoples of the new reality, notes the differences in response to changes and prohibitions during the ongoing pandemic. the main research methods are the descriptive method, the comparative method, the analysis of lexical definitions. the sources were articles on internet sites, whatsapp, the social network instagram, tweeter. each period of serious breakdown leads to a change in the vocabulary and socio-cultural realities. keywords: coronavocabulary, neologisms, coronaspeak pandemic, cultural dimensions. introduction the coronavirus pandemic is a global phenomenon, an extraordinary event on a global scale that swept over the lives and thoughts of all mankind. the coronavirus pandemic disrupts the usual rhythm of life and sets a new vector for cultural development. there is a transformation of existing forms, systems, traditions, values, behavioral patterns, as well as the emergence of new  narineharutyunyan@ysu.am this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 31.05.2021 revised: 30.07 2021 accepted: 26.09. 2021 © the author(s) 2021 mailto:narineharutyunyan@ysu.am https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 culture studies 102 phenomena that did not exist in the culture before. the coronavirus pandemic is changing the mentality of nations, exposing national and cultural differences and priorities. culture is a collective sense of consciousness that influences and conditions perceptions, a set of values, attitudes, beliefs, norms and behaviors. cultural values shared by the people that shape individual behavior determine the opposite reactions of societies to the coronavirus. in the modern world, we are in the same train carriage, but we all have a separate "cultural compartment". differences in the strategy of responding to the crisis caused by the pandemic are determined by the national and cultural characteristics of countries and peoples, the degree of society's tolerance to uncertainties, the way of responding to unfamiliar situations, etc. indian prime minister narendra modi, to deliver the message about the fact that one should stay at home and maintain social distancing, cited a metaphor from the famous ancient indian epic. in his speech, he noted the "containment line" (called "lakshmana rekha" in indian culture) and asked citizens to adhere to this line. a cultural metaphor that is familiar and understandable to all residents of the country, regardless of ethnic or religious differences, has achieved a result that could not have been achieved by very weighty arguments. it is interesting to consider the context of the pandemic through the prism of geert hofstede's cultural dimensions theory (hofstede, hofstede, & minkov, 2010). individualism collectivism in countries for which individualism is characteristic, the legal aspects of regulating life activity prevail over the moral ones. in individualist societies such as the united states, britain and other english-speaking countries, there are pockets of strong resistance to world health organization recommendations and measures on such things as wearing masks, maintaining social distancing, and temporarily closing businesses. people are free to choose whether to group or split. since the main values of individualist countries are: respect for human rights, the high value of one's own opinion, internal freedom, it is natural to see the resistance of the citizens of these countries to the quarantine rules (demonstrations, clashes with law enforcement agencies, etc.). culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 103 in countries where the emphasis is on group well-being, they tend to stick together under all circumstances. they comply with restrictive public health measures. in a collectivist society with a strict social structure and clear division into social groups, there are mechanisms based on such concepts as shame, dignity of the family or surname, “face preservation”, which can stimulate compliance with control measures, making government actions more effective. for example, in patriarchal china, a country with a collectivist culture, the younger unconditionally obey the elders. the government is the “senior”, and the subjects are the “junior”, therefore, if the government decides that strict quarantine measures are needed, then it should be so (pocepcov, 2020). in china, the government adopts emergency powers and restrictions on personal freedom, which are carried out with great precision because they promise the collective good of the people. there is a tendency of transformation of individualistic societies into collectivist ones and vice versa. in regions where the threat of the infectious disease was higher, societies became more collectivist to counter these threats. the low level of interaction with strangers is more typical of collectivist societies, and the tendency to be more localized and oriented towards close contacts of people from a close circle reduced social confusion, and therefore served as an important protection against infection, slowing the spread of the virus. in contrast, individualistic societies relied less on stable patterns of social interaction, which made the infection more likely. power distance in cultures with a low power distance, there is a strong sense of mutual commitment between all its members (austria, denmark, usa, germany). in these cultures, people are distinguished by a high level of trust in state institutions. citizens are accustomed to performing public duties and are more likely to do as their leaders ask. accordingly, in germany, people follow the instructions carefully, partly because they believe that the state will do everything in the best possible way. so, for example, in dusseldorf, a couple got married in an auto cinema. the guests who remained in the cars watched what was happening on the stage on the radio, and having heard the cherished "yes" from the bride and groom, they began to honk together, thus congratulating the newlyweds without violating the rules of restrictions (vanner, 2020). armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 culture studies 104 in a society with a high power distance, there is no such unwritten social contract. for example, in italy, people are more likely to act according to their own understanding, because they do not really count on the effectiveness of state structures. the authorities often neglect a significant part of their population and suppress them by force. so the president of the philippines ordered to shoot at quarantine violators (prezident filippin, 2020). on masculinity and femininity according to hofstede's (2010) definitions, feminine are considered to be those cultures in which the importance of interpersonal relationships, cooperation, concern for others, and a desire for mutual understanding prevail. in his opinion, in high masculinity societies, work tends to be very important to people, gender roles are clear, a tendency towards an aggressive communicative style and to the use of force and loud words prevails, and work takes priority over other aspects of a person’s life, such as family and leisure. the police can also be aggressive and use physical force. there may be increased vigilance in response to corona discharge. during the time of the coronavirus, people are more likely to accept and support a certain degree of state violence. this will make them feel safer. british prime minister boris johnson posted a muscular message on facebook, noting that the country has to fight with an invisible killer, criminal, robber: if this virus were a physical assailant, an unexpected and invisible mugger, which i can tell you from personal experience it is, then this is the moment when we have begun together to wrestle it to the floor and so it follows that this is the moment of opportunity. (“boris johnson,”2020) “in cultures like france, the united states and the united kingdom, where freedom is considered an inalienable right, governments use the metaphor of war to shape their covid-19 messages that unites all measures. even the british royal family calls world war ii comparable to the coronavirus crisis. in cultures where military incursions are not the norm, perhaps a reference to war may justify restricting personal freedoms whether it is restricting movement, identifying and tracking those infected, or limiting the availability of products and services to only what is needed.” (rol' kul'tury, 2020). culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 105 president of the united states of america donald trump compared the coronavirus pandemic to a war with an invisible enemy: i would like to begin by announcing some important developments in our war against the chinese virus ... we'll be invoking the defense production act, just in case we need it. in other words, i think you all know what it is, and it can do a lot of good things if we need it. (“remarks by president trump”, 2020) i want all americans to understand: we are at war with an invisible enemy, but that enemy is no match for the spirit and resolve of the american people ... it cannot overcome the dedication of our doctors, nurses, and scientists —and it cannot beat the love, patriotism, and determination of our citizens. strong and united, we will prevail! (emphases in original). (wicke & bolognesi, 2021) in feminine societies, the use of force is not considered good. pressure should be gentle and good intentions emphasized. in holland, for example, the government tries not to use the metaphors of "war", to apply fines as the maximum punishment for violating the rules of social distancing. tracking apps are voluntary and are likely to remain so. uncertainty avoidance the uncertainty avoidance index describes how well people can cope with anxiety, expresses the degree to which members of society feel uncomfortable due to uncertainty, unpredictability. the future always remains unknown, although people have tried to predict it for centuries. depending on this parameter, cultures can be divided into two types with high and low levels of uncertainty avoidance. in cultures with a high level of uncertainty avoidance (greece, portugal, france) in a situation of ambiguity, people constantly experience stress and a sense of fear (andreeva & balobanova, 2011). in such cultures, there is a high level of aggressiveness. representatives of cultures with a high degree of uncertainty avoidance are distinguished by low armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 culture studies 106 tolerance for ambiguity and risk taking, rejection of deviations from the norm in behavior, having secured themselves with a set of written instructions, formal rules and laws that give certainty to their lives. in cultures with a low level of uncertainty avoidance (denmark, india, ireland, netherlands, singapore, usa, finland, sweden), people are more inclined to take risks in unfamiliar conditions, because they are characterized by lower levels of stress and fear. with a low level of fear of uncertainty, people are dissatisfied with the excessive organization of life and the excess of rules and regulations. in such societies the belief prevails that there should be as few rules as possible, in everything one should rely only on oneself (hofstede et al, 2010). representatives of these cultures more easily perceive the unpredictability of life, they are not afraid of incomprehensible human actions and the novelty of ideas, they are tolerant of everything new and unusual, they highly value enthusiasm, initiative, and willingness to take risks. uncertainty avoidance is stressful in the face of the unknown. it can be assumed that the sale of detergents, toilet paper, sanitizers is directly related to the avoidance of uncertainty, which is most acutely manifested during the epidemic. in societies that avoid uncertainty, the rituals of separation and purification are much stronger. in societies tolerant of uncertainty, there may be a risk of negligence. in such countries, the state tries not to restrict its citizens too much so that life can go on as usual, thereby allowing the virus to develop. this was the case, for example, in the netherlands, great britain and sweden. in the first two cases the virus quickly forced the country to take more stringent measures. nevertheless, the dutch and english went out in large numbers, and the swedish children went to school as usual. countries such as the united kingdom, the united states and china with a lower uncertainty avoidance index feel comfortable in incomprehensible situations, in contact with people with whom communication is fraught with latent or immediate danger. countries with a higher score, such as france, italy, armenia, russia have a greater need for certainty of the future, so they expect more support from governments to help overcome the growing level of anxiety. so, for example, in armenia, due to the geopolitical and historical specifics, the people are better prepared for restrictions, hardships, crisis, etc. countries that have not experienced serious hardships, wars, restructuring, etc. (usa, australia, canada) have much stronger feelings of panic than, for culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 107 example, post-soviet countries that have survived famine, war, exile, etc. it is common to have supplies for a rainy day. from the first days of the pandemic, australians rush to stock up on essential goods as if the apocalypse is coming tomorrow. mostly purchased with toilet paper. the hashtags #toiletpapergate and #toiletpapercrisis have appeared on the australian twitter segment. the nation's largest supermarket chain costco limited toilet paper sales to one pack per hand, and employees at tamworth big w had to call the police over a customer who attacked them for failing to buy toilet paper (mcphee & bedo, 2020). we are at #costco. it's a madhouse. every cart has like survival essentials and the guy at guest services said every costco in hawaii is completely sold out of toilet paper. one guy is stocking up on margaritas and he’s who i really want to have nearby when #coronavirus hits. (kimberly, 2020) the japanese even started stealing toilet paper from cafes and the owners had to put locks on them. the world is diverse and unique with many people, cultures, styles, smells and colors. global quarantine has captured the whole world in its grip, forcing people to isolate themselves from the outside world and submit to universal measures of protection against the virus, at the same time revealed a certain national specificity of the fight against coronavirus or "pandemic culture" revealing the character of the country and the mentality of the people. if in russia, before the quarantine, local residents stood in line for flour and buckwheat, in holland, queues lined up in local coffee shops. in france, famous for its confectionery, the first thing they did was to buy up sweets, and in conservative britain, tea. as the flower business, which is the hallmark of holland, is suffering huge losses, locals have organized a national movement to support it, buying and sending bouquets to friends, relatives, schools and nursing homes. in countries such as spain and italy, people who are accustomed to close communication with each other in the streets, in cafes and restaurants, make up for it by going out onto the balconies and talking to each other across the street or by arranging balcony discos. in collectivist countries, where the concept of personal space is practically absent (india, greece, armenia), employees of banks, pharmacies and armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 culture studies 108 supermarkets draw squares or numbered circles to maintain a safe distance in line. in east india, west bengal, chief minister mamata banerjee even made an unscheduled visit to a local market to draw circles herself and explain the concept of social distancing to residents. the form of greeting has changed, which also differs from culture to culture. for example, in sweden they greet their elbows, in armenia with fists, in italy with their feet, etc. the language of covid-19 as is well known, one of the main reasons for the emergence of new words or neologisms in a language is the “birth” of new realities and concepts, for which new linguistic units are needed. often the reason for the appearance of neologisms is a certain event of a local or global scale, which had a significant impact on the life of a particular country or countries around the world. the coronavirus pandemic has spawned a huge number of new terms, both serious and not so, in order to describe the difficulties associated with the isolation. the oxford english dictionary team recently conducted a corpus analysis to find out how the covid-19 pandemic affected the language, drawing on english-language sources from around the world. as you might expect, the analysis showed a colossal increase in the frequency of mentions of the words coronavirus and covid over the past few months. it also shows that in march 2020, twenty top keywords were associated with coronavirus, with the top five being covid-19, pandemic, distancing, coronavirus, and self-isolate (mccullough, 2020). a new term has appeared in english coronaspeak, that is, a language associated with the coronavirus epidemic. according to tony thorne, british linguist and lexicographer and consultant at the king's center for contemporary language, coronaspeak is the new pandemic language that can help the public understand the crisis unfolding in the world, but it can also increase stress and confusion if people are unable to deal with it (“#coronaspeak, 2020”). he marks three stages in the development of the language of the era of the coronavirus or coronaspeak. thus, the first stage was marked by the "medicalization of our everyday vocabulary", during the second stage people began to invent their own words to define and describe the new reality in which they found themselves; the third stage was associated with institutional discourse, namely with the language that is used by the culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 109 government and representatives of various public institutions in a pandemic to build strategies for creating a “new world” and verbalizing a new way of life (ibid.). thus, the impact of the pandemic has also been felt on language, since the conceptualization of new phenomena requires new words and expressions: coronadose: overdosing on bad news; panicdemic: the consequences of coronadosing; gen-c: the generation born during the time of covid-19; quarantime: the (slow and unpredictable) passage of time in isolation; coronababies / corona boomers / coronials / quaranteens: generation born after december 2020 and who will become teenagers in 2033-2034; corona chicken/coronahoarder: a person who buys toilet paper, sanitizers, etc.; isobeard: when you're in isolation due to coronavirus and can't be bothered shaving anymore; a coronacrew/quaranteam: people one chooses to live with during the quarantine; armchair virologists: those who have no professional training in medicine but feel confident enough to talk about covid-19 as if they had the expertise; covidiot / corona clown: someone who stockpiles toilet paper and flouts physical distancing rules to sunbathe in the park; alternatively, someone who goes to the park so they can take photos of people in the park and shame them for being in the park; coronacation: cessation of study or work due to the pandemic, viewed as a holiday; corona break: a period of confinement envisaged as a short holiday. another way of conceptualization is the occurrence of new meanings in already existing words. thus, for example, elbow bump n. (at elbow n.): “(a) a blow with or to the elbow; an injury resulting from this; (b) (now) a gesture (usually of greeting or farewell) in which two people lightly tap their elbows together as an alternative to a handshake or embrace, esp. in order to reduce the risk of spreading or catching an infectious disease.”; social isolation, n.: “the state of having little or no contact with other people; (b) (now) esp. a condition in which an individual lacks social connections or has no access…”; self-isolation: (a) dates back to the 19th century when it belonged to the sphere of political studies and economics and meant ‘isolationist nations’. (b) (now) self-isolation came to mean “staying at home” (golds, 2020). becoming a key milestone in the history of mankind in the 21st century, the coronavirus pandemic is already being used as a reference point in time. so in english the abbreviation bc/ac (before christ / after christ), acquired a new meaning: before coronavirus/after coronavirus, therefore the world was divided into before and after and will not be the same. https://oed.com/view/entry/60163#eid1305595900 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 culture studies 110 analogies of a large-scale ongoing pandemic with the biblical armageddon and the apocalypse or the jewish holocaust produce such neologisms as coronageddon, coronapocalypse, coronacaust (borrelli, 2020). having become one of the most talked about concepts in the media, social networks and in private conversations, coronavirus gave rise to the slang name of the virus "miss rona". and for those who have no time to write long messages, new types of pandemic emoticons come to the rescue. folded hands emoji, medical mask emoji, and germ emoji all became more popular during the pandemic. terms related to social distancing have emerged, such as virtual happy hour, covideoparty, quarantine and chill. here are some more examples of coronatermins in english: covidials: babies born in an expected baby boom in late 2020; quarantipple: a drink taken while in quarantine; zoom-bombing: hijacking a zoom meeting; zumping breaking up on zoom; doomscrolling: the act of consuming a large quantity of negative online news at once. life under the corona has meant that it's even harder to peel our eyes away from our phones and computers, constantly refreshing our feeds for the latest news about the pandemic; coronasomnia: is described as the interference of sleep due to the pandemic; zoom mom: is a mother or woman who spends a lot of time using zoom for work, their children's school, or simply to chat with their friends who are also staying at home; quaranteam /coronacrew: a small group of people you agree to socialize with during lockdowns and social distancing; coronacut: questionable style some people end up sporting when they must do their own hair maintenance at home, etc. during the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic, many entrepreneurs applied for trademark registrations with the ubiquitous, super popular pandemic phrases and found the opportunity to produce t-shirts, hoodies and caps with the slogans about the coronavirus: corona virus survivor -2020; i survived covid-19 and all i got was this lousy t-shirt, corona busters; we tested positive; relax, i have antibodies !; hug me i have antibodies; my cough isn't from the virus; hug me i'm vaccinated, proudly vaccinated; social distancing club etc. from the examples above, you can see that most of them have the inspiring character of coronavirus survivor. however, there are also xenophobic inscriptions coronavirus: made in china. culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 111 companies around the world are changing their images and slogans to promote safety and unity during a pandemic. for example, the fast food chain kfc decided to temporarily abandon the slogan "it's so tasty that you lick your fingers", which has been used for more than half a century (10 innovative covid-19 campaigns 2020). mcdonald’s brazil posted an image of its iconic logo on its facebook page, with its iconic golden arches spread apart. the coca cola company placed a billboard in times square showing its trademark with increased letter spacing. the logo is accompanied by the words “staying apart is the best way to stay connected”. the starbucks logo now features a mermaid wearing a face shield and nike's motto is “don’t do it”. conclusion the analysis testifies to the reflection in the language of a global and unprecedented phenomenon, the memory of which, most likely, will remain in history. in general, the names that have arisen or updated during the pandemic of a new coronavirus infection act as socially significant and information-rich nominative units necessary for orienting people, regulating relations between them and adapting to changed life circumstances. the study of such vocabulary allows us to get an idea about the mentality of a modern person, about the specifics of collective psychology, expressed in lexemes that convey the direct perception of the phenomenon by participants in the discourse. references andreeva, i.v., & balobanova, l.a. 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բառերի և արտահայտությունների վերլուծությանը, որոնք այսօր համաշխարհային խոսույթում գերիշխող դիրք են գրավում: հետազոտության նպատակն է ուսումնասիրել covid-19 համաճարակի ազդեցությունը «կորոնավիրուսային» լեզվի հատուկ շերտի՝ «կորոնավիրուսային» նորաբանությունների ձևավորման վրա։ հետազոտությունը նոր է այն առումով, որ համաճարակի լեզվի վերլուծությունն իրականացվում է գիրթ հոֆսթեդի սահմանած մշակութային պարամետրերի հայտնի տիպաբանության հիման վրա։ հոդվածը նաև անդրադառնում է նոր բառային միավորների ստեղծման արտալեզվական պայմաններին, ուսումնասիրում է covid-19-ի բռնկման ազդեցությունը լեզվական իրականության վրա, ինչպես նաև ընդգծում է որոշ ժողովուրդների կողմից այս նոր իրականության ընկալման մշակութային առանձնահատկությունները, նշում փոփոխություններին արձագանքելու տարբերությունները։ հետազոտությունը կատարվել է նկարագրական, համեմատական և բառարանային սահմանումների վերլուծության մեթոդների կիրառմամբ։ ոսումնասիրության աղբյուր են ծառայել՝ համացանցային կայքերը, instagram և tweeter սոցիալական ցանցերը։ բանալի բառեր` «կորոնաբառապաշար», նորաբանություններ, «կորոնախոսույթ», համաճարակ, մշակութային պարամետրեր: https://www.albawaba.com/slideshow/10-innovative-covid-19-campaigns kazm.cdr english syllabics as part of the british-aamerican voiceworks since its emergence some 20 years ago syllabics, as abranch of philology which studies the functionalcommunicative potential of english syllabification, has sought at every level ways to optimize the process of language acquisition. the idea behind is that the english language with its outstanding syllabic capacities and readiness to lend itself to syllabifying processes of different kind is certainly in a class of its own. practically every syllable, irrespective of its inherent characteristics, can be brought out to the utmost or, on the contrary, become phonetically degraded all at the speaker’s own will. it is the syllable (not the sound or phoneme) that is most naturally isolated in the flow of speech.1 these pronouncements, which are no longer new nowadays, seem to acquire special significance in the so-called ‘global english’ phonetic environment. the fact is that the mutual interference of different ‘englishes’, and especially british and american diatopic variants, is becoming more and more interesting and involved at present. moreover, it can even be used as a deliberate ploy to give a more general meaning or purport to the utterance. suffice it to say that bbc newscasters, commentators and announcers whose professional qualifications are practically beyond any doubt, alongside standard pronunciation, have recently started to demonstrate a skilful variability of their speaking stereotypes, adapting their speech to the demands of effective communication on the new, ‘global english’ scale.2 this means that to get a deeper insight into the hidden mechanisms of modern english phonation, comprehensive (cognitive) approach to the dichotomy british english /american english is required. it should be based on a thorough study of english syllables as the basic units of articulation and perception of speech. it should be aimed at the intricacies of the english voice and those aspects of the two variants of english (british and american) which facilitate the process of communication at large. we should learn to process english speech in terms of the speaking-hearing syllable stereotypes of the two principal diatopic variants. very briefly and generally, what we are after in our british-american voiceworks is to become well equipped with the background knowledge of all those phonetic and (more specifically) syllabic particulars, which form the core of effective communication. our final goal is to learn to be more selective so that we could choose and arrange different elements of british-american english consciously both with respect to the situation and the participants of speech intercourse. this may pave the way for the solution of the most intricate and so far unresolved problem of ‘code-switching’ both in 6 armenian folia anglistika linguistics svetlana decheva oral and written forms of speech. british-american voiceworks appear to be indispensable if what we are after is the “cognitive processing” of imaginative writing. by “cognitive processing” we mean the ability to understand, hear and voice a piece of verbal art, in strict accordance with the author’s intention. this can by no means be achieved without special background knowledge of all the cultural-historical particulars of the text in question. moreover, the goal can hardly be attainable unless we are keenly aware of british-american syllable stereotypes and those ‘semiologically relevant’ characteristics of one’s speaking voice in british and american english against which everything that goes over and above the common run of things and makes for the expressive-emotional-evaluative overtones in these two diatopic variants is realized. it should be noted here that reading american fiction, we have so far totally disregarded the most significant starting points of its adequate interpretation. we have not taken into account the ‘semiologically relevant’ characteristics of american speaking voice which, without exaggeration, underlie the prosodic polyphony of imaginative writing at large. in this paper, however, while concentrating on the peculiarities of american speaking voice, we do it against the background of the so-called russianbritish-american trichotomy. in other words, we pay special attention to the principal discrepancies between the basic articulatory units of speech (or syllable stereotypes) of russian (as our source language) and the two diatopic variants of english as our target language. our task is to demonstrate how to reorient our perception and production habits with respect to the principal russian-british-american trichotomy since being russian, we are initially british english-oriented and are accustomed to assess whatever we come across in the english language solely with respect to british english phonetics, which we have studied so far. before we proceed with our discussion, a short metalinguistic digression concerning the phenomenon of british-american ‘syllable stereotype’ is necessary so that we could show how it helps us to read and understand different texts of verbal art reproducing them orally (or in our inner speech) and interpreting them adequately. we proceed from the premise that the syllable is a dynamic concept it is the device for ‘encoding’ and ‘decoding’ linguistic messages.3 by dynamic word and syllable stereotype we mean the process of selection and combination of sounds typical of this or that language and used to compose words and messages. otherwise stated, verbal elements are formed in the shape of syllable and word stereotypes in accordance with which the standards of the language in question have already been established. this makes the process of human communication, i.e. the process of ‘encoding’ and ‘decoding’ messages, possible and operational and presupposes that there are certain tendencies of splitting the words into either checked (closed) or free (open) syllables. hence we observe a completely different distribution of articulatory force in syllables and words, which could be described as ‘intensity index’.4 it results in a peculiar kind of pronunciation, energetic pronunciation being typical of the english syllable on the whole. another point to be made clear here is that in british english the syllables are mostly 7 linguistics armenian folia anglistika checked, i.e. the consonant clings to the preceding vowel and cuts it at the peak of its formation. there are two crests of articulatory force in the british english syllable (at the beginning and at the end), and the syllable appears to be clear-cut and abrupt; it is more free and independent than its russian counterpart. in american english, however, the situation is completely different. there is a general tendency towards losing the second peak, which makes for in an altogether different distribution of articulatory energy between vowels and consonants. otherwise stated, in british english, consonants are the ‘fulcra’ of pronunciation they are intensified and relied upon in the process of speech production, whereas in american english it is the vowel component, that acquires additional weight and is more important for syllable dynamics. the consonants, on the contrary, become weak and vague and may even be swallowed or replaced by glottal stops in the flow of speech.5 there is hardly any need to mention here that the basic principles of the american syllable stereotype have been formed under the influence of long-term muscular adjustments of the speaker’s larynx and supra-laryngeal vocal tract. this is what accounts for the dynamics of american speech as opposed to that of british english, and it is the opposition of strong and weak off-glides and the general increase or decrease in the force of articulatory energy towards the end that really matters here. thus, two different modes of developing articulatory tension within the syllable underlie british and american speech. the whole effect of closed or checked syllables, which is typical of british english is not at all relevant in american english. here the main tendency is to substitute laxity for tension and weakness for strength of articulation insofar as vowels and consonants are concerned. as for the borders of the syllables, they are blurred and indistinct, the general impression being of specific economy of articulatory effort. we set so much store by this detailed analysis because what we are interested in is not ‘voice’ in its purely phonetic or terminological sense. our task is to make clear that the question of british and american speaking voice is inextricably connected with syllables. in other words, what we are after is ‘voice’ in itsmore general sense, when it is used with reference to natural human speech at large. to be more exact, the word ‘voice’, as we use it, covers the most important aspects of speech production.6 the contrastive study of british and american speech proves to be rather illuminating in this respect. our study shows that the most salient features of american english voice can be outlined only against the background of the american syllable stereotype and the russian-british-american trichotomy. let us consider them in greater detail. there is every reason to believe that among all the basic parameters of voice, loudness usually comes first it has an immediate effect on the interlocutor in the process of communication. at the same time loudness is not so easy to pinpoint unless it is measured in decibels and examined with the help of special machinery. therefore, what we are after is not loudness as such, but the general effect of audibility and all those phonetic means which make speech intelligible, coherent and easy to follow. the matter, however, is further complicated by the fact that russian and english are 8 armenian folia anglistika linguistics characterized by different degrees of average loudness. a special research in the field has shown that the difference between russian and british english in this respect is quite considerable.7 when analyzed through the prism of the opposition of the russian language and british-american diatopic variants, american english seems to be in between its russian and british counterparts. acoustically it appears to be more audible than british english and less audible than russian. this (purely impressionistic) view can be accounted for by the general tendency to dwell on the vocal element of the syllable, which provides the necessary conditions for ‘speaking up’ both in russian and american english. it is obvious, therefore, that for the british ear american english, let alone russian, may sound too loud and even piercing sometimes. this does not mean, of course, that the british variant is less intelligible than the american one all the syllables being more clear-cut and the strong syllable in particular being in charge of the clarity and lucidity of exposition, the general effect of audibility is created by completely different means, which are by no means to the detriment of comprehension. next come tempo and rhythm. as has been shown above, the american english syllable, more often than not, is made prominent by means of the quantitative component, which cannot but affect the tempo of american speech at large. since all the syllables are prolonged, the tempo of american speech is slower than that of british english. according to the american school of elocution, the heart of american speech is “syllable length”, one of the basic characteristic features of american rhythm, which deserves special attention. the fact is that when learning to produce american speech, it is the technique of lengthening we should try and master. that is why rhythm in american english can hardly be described as the classical stress-timing of british english; nor is it the classical syllable-timed rhythm which is characteristic of french but it is somewhere in between. it is the ‘borrowing rule’ that makes for the effect of regularity here and one is to make sure that “when a long syllable is followed by a short one, the short one borrows time from it and makes it relatively short.”8 the next parameter is pitch-mmovement is one of the most striking peculiarities of american english. it has been studied by very many linguists both in this country and abroad.9 for this research, however, the most important thing about it is the fact that our knowledge of the peculiarities of british english tones (the way they are realized within the intonational contour of british english) is hardly applicable to american english, where it is practically impossible for the voice either to fall to the bottom or to rise accidentally. the change in pitch is realized in steps, not in glides, which results in the typically ‘american monotone’, or the general ‘levelling out’ of all the syllables: both stressed and unstressed. to be more exact, the stressed syllables are pronounced on one and the same level, whereas unstressed syllables either fall to a lower pitch or are on the same pitch as the preceding stressed syllables. there is very little pitch movement (if any at all): steady pitches prevail against the background of the general evening of stressed and unstressed syllables and a more or less equal distribution of energy throughout the utterance. 9 linguistics armenian folia anglistika otherwise stated, mid level tones are primarily used in the flow of speech. as for the other two basic varieties of tones in the english language, i.e. the rising and the falling tones, their configuration in general american also undergoes considerable changes. in contrast with british english wide melodic curves, the tones of american english are narrowed and truncated. no wonder, typically british english pitches sound explosive and manneristic to americans, who do not see the reason why abrupt changes in the melodic curve in alternating directions should be used so excessively. thus, the ‘serrated’ profile of british english is generally opposed to the ‘levelled out’ pattern of american english.10 last but by no means least comes timbre. we usually concentrate on the basic dichotomy of two timbres timbre i and timbre ii. timbre i (or ‘serious timbre’) is practically devoid of any attitudinal evaluation on the part of the speaker. loudness, tempo, pitch-movement and rhythm are kept within the bounds of intellective communication. there is nothing about them which stands over and above the common run of things or the semiologically relevant (unmarked) properties of the british and american speaking voice. timbre ii (or ‘paradoxical timbre’) is attitudinal throughout. it is the ability to modulate one’s voice in terms of its basic parameters, which comes here to the fore. the thing is that being more a continuum than a divide, the established dichotomy of two timbres must again be analysed with respect to the principles of english syllabics, in which all the slightest prosodic modifications which take place in the flow of speech become quite transparent in the special treatment of separate syllables. to put it in a nutshell, the task of our british-american voiceworks is twofold. on the one hand, what we certainly strive for is optimization of intellective communication in the new global english context. on the other hand, it is philological reading proper, that we are always after. it consists in gaining a much deeper insight into the reading of american fiction through the prism of english syllabics. this presupposes both background knowledge of ‘semiologically relevant’ british-american voice qualities conditioned by the work of the resonators, and ability to apprehend and make special use of those metasemiotically relevant timbral modifications which serve to convey different purports and can be perceived only against the more ‘neutral’ and stylistically unmarked syllable background. this, however, is far from being sufficient, because the basic (or the semiologically relevant) parameters of what is generally described as the “speaking voice” of english acquire their functional value only when they are opposed to the meaningful absence of voice (or cessation of phonation), and the ‘speechological’ category of ‘voice vs. absence of voice’ is revealed fully. it does not require a close examination to see that the cessation of phonation is ineluctably connected with the ‘arresting’ and ‘releasing’ phases of the neighbouring syllable; it is produced and perceived in speech only against the syllabic background.11 as the dynamics of british and american speech presupposes an altogether different mode of developing the articulatory tension within the syllable, the first thing is to concentrate on the peculiar off-glides of separate syllables, which in american english are not so clear-cut and self-contained as in british english. everything depends on the way syllable 10 armenian folia anglistika linguistics sequences are treated, whether the syllabifying processes are made particularly pronounced or, on the contrary, they become blurred and indistinct due to the speaker’s ability to cease (or interrupt) the pulmonic air stream by the accessory articulatory movements. in view of the habitual (typical of british and american speech communities) syllable stereotypes, the transition between the syllables are fast and abrupt in british english and rather slow and smooth in american english. in the former case the syllables are mostly clipped; in the latter they are drawled and lengthened. it follows from what has just been said that when reading a text of verbal art, we can by no means confine ourselves to the semiologically relevant syllable stereotype of british or american english. we have to concentrate on “affective syllables”, which goes far beyond the common run of things.12 the material of affective syllabics, therefore, appears to be extremely interesting and illustrative in this respect. it enables us to acquire the necessary knowledge of how different parameters of voice (that is loudness, tempo, pitch-movement, rhythm and timbre, as well as cessation of phonation or absence of voice) are used by the author to depict his characters and communicate his ideas and emotions more clearly. of special interest in this connection is “syllable-by-syllable” pronunciation, or “syllabic speech”, when syllabifying processes are deliberately played upon by the author to convey his ideas to the readers in a peculiar and vivid way. syllabification in this case has nothing to do with the purely graphical division of english words but it totally depends on the author’s intention to use the graphical substance of the phenomenon in question. for this purpose spacing, italics, bold type, hyphenation, or combinations of some of these may be used. very often, however, syllabic speech is presented by means of hyphenation, whose signifying functions can acquire special values. when applied to syllabic speech, the hyphen can hardly be treated as a simple punctuation mark but is clearly in a class of its own. this is because the hyphen is not easily susceptible of immediate and traightforward prosodic interpretation, the way colons and commas, dashes and brackets are usually read. as academician l. scherba puts it: “the hyphen is hieroglyphic by nature”. it requires special knowledge and proficiency to understand and interpret it adequately, let alone produce it by means of our speaking voice.13 it should be added here that since british-american syllable stereotypes are different, it is only natural that the basic tunes used to describe british english should also undergo considerable changes, when used with respect to american punctuation marks. special research in the field has shown that the prosodic interpretation of the british system of stops against that of american english is far from being totally examined and expounded. very much remains to be done if what we are after is reading them philologically, i.e. with all the phonetic-syllabic antecedents of the phenomenon in question being taken into account.14 in other words, to reproduce the hyphen by means of our speaking voice, we should be aware of the ‘global vertical context’ of the text or the speech event in question. the concept of ‘global vertical context’ is indissolubly connected with linguistic erudition, which is too broad a term to be confined to background knowledge of the 11 linguistics armenian folia anglistika language in question. it also presupposes some special education of cultural-historical, social and geographical type, as well as the reader’s philological intuition, which enables him to render all the author’s emotions and ideas contained in this or that work of verbal art.15 this means that understanding fiction and reading texts philologically is impossible without the permanent and painstaking process of penetrating into the author’s intention, gaining insight into the purport of the text and reading “between the lines”, so to speak. our investigation shows that as distinct from british english, syllabic pronunciation is very widely spread in american speech in general, and american fiction in particular. in texts of verbal art it is not infrequently endowed with special semiotic value, signalling the author’s hidden intention and serving as a sign of his “tongue-in-cheek” attitude to what he is saying. it usually indicates a switch into a peculiar kind of timbre, based on the incongruity of the prosody with the verbal context of the utterance. o’henry’s manner of writing appears to be a goldmine in this respect as the study of syllabic pronunciation provides a clue as to what the more general (‘paradoxical’) timbre of his works is about. it usually presupposes a contradiction between the direct meaning of a word and its prosody. in other words, it implies enantiosemy, or the author’s ironical (mocking) attitude to the events and characters described in the text. this is one of o’henry’s favourite themes, which is based on contrasting appearance with reality and can be traced to l. carrol’s “through the looking glass” way of presenting things. in other words, syllable by syllable pronunciation in o’henry’s texts is subservient to the author’s general artistic design. it would not be an exaggeration to say that it is as a powerful stylistic device, which helps the author to realize his artistic intention to the full. to illustrate the point, let us turn to the following passage from o’henry’s story “hearts and crosses”: the horseman stumbled into the house. two arms fell around his neck, and someone cried out in the voice of woman and queen alike: ‘webb-oh, webb!’ ‘i was a skunk,’ said webb yeager. ‘hush,’ said santa, ‘did you see it?’ ‘i saw it,’ said webb. what they meant god knows; and you shall know, if you rightly read the primer of events. ‘be the cattle-queen,’ said webb; ‘and overlook it if you can. i was a mangy, sheepstealing coyote.’ ‘hush!’ said santa again, laying her fingers upon his mouth. ‘there’s no queen here. do you know who i am? i am santa yeager, first lady of the bedchamber. come here.’ she dragged him from the gallery into the room to the right. there stood a cradle with an infant in it a red, ribald, unintelligible, babbling, beautiful infant, sputtering at life in an unseemly manner. ‘there’s no queen on this ranch,’ said santa again. ‘look at the king. he’s got your eyes, webb. down on your knees and look at his highness.’ 12 armenian folia anglistika linguistics but jingling rowels sounded on the gallery, and bud turner stumbled there again with the same query that he had brought, lacking a few days, a year ago. ‘morning. them beeves is just turned out on the trail. shall i drive ‘em to barber’s, orhe saw webb and stopped, open-mouthed. ‘ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba!’shrieked the king in his cradle, beating the air with his fists. ‘you hear your boss, bud,’ said webb yeager, with a broad grin just as he had said a year ago. the whole passage is characterized by a peculiar blend of at least four voices: mr.yeager, his wife, their baby and the author. this means that the reading and understanding of the piece in question presupposes our ability to feel and interpret its peculiar prosodic polyphony. it totally depends on the interplay of both: the narrator’s and his characters’ voice parameters on the one hand, and the conscious cessation of phonation on the other, which is achieved and made operational only against the background of english syllabification. let us see how the author uses different syllables as the necessary background against which all kind of phonetic-morphological repetitions are realized. this is how î’henry describes the infant: there stood a cradle with an infant in it a red, ribald, unintelligible, babbling, beautiful infant, sputtering at life in an unseemly manner. this is a wonderful example of paronymic attraction, when the words with similar phonetic structures are brought together and played upon in the text for some special purposes, and thus become part of affective syllables. the whole effect is based on the repetition of the strong resonant [r] in “red-ribald”, the weak plosive [b] and the consonant cluster [bl] in “babbling-beautiful” and “ribald-unintelligible”, the strong sibilant [s] in “stood-sputtering” and the fricative [f] in “infant”, “life” and “beautiful”. in all these cases the syllables are characterized either by an abrupt change in the melodic curve or by an increase in duration and intensity of pronunciation, so that they become extra-strong and acquire additional weight. interestingly enough, this description of a baby is based on different phonestemes with certain ‘meaning’ of their own if taken in isolation. in this text, however, they acquire special connotation against the syllabic background. thus, the consonant cluster [sp], if taken out of this context, will usually be associated with something wet, smooth and soft; [b] sounds like a sudden and strong blow; [r] is associated with the idea of constant movement or instability. reading more deeply into the words of the author, however, we realize that what î’henry is after is simply to show that it is the baby who forms the essence of matrimonial relations. it changes peoples’ former attitudes, habits and ways of life and endows them with new significance, new rhythms and sounds typical of an adorable child. 13 linguistics armenian folia anglistika ‘ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba!’ -shrieked the king in his cradle, beating the air with his fists. baby talk is presented in this extract by similar, seemingly insignificant syllables coming one by one in a row and separated from each other by means of hyphens. there is nothing special about the phonetic structure of syllabic speech of this kind it is more or less universal and consists of free (or ‘open’) syllables, with the plosive (or nasal) at the beginning and the front central vowel following it. these first sound sequences, which babies produce when they are learning to talk, are considered to be quite meaningless and in this sense they are not infrequently compared to elementary articulatory drills which people practise and repeat at their phonetic classes, imitating the correct pronunciation of the foreign language they are trying to master. baby talk, however, is very special because being rather unclear in articulatory terms, it usually reproduces the exact rhythmical pattern of ‘adult’ speech. in other words, syllables and rhythm naturally come first in speech acquisition. this psycholinguistic proposition proves very useful for our analysis. it forms part and parcel of the background knowledge of things which cognitive syllabics is after. without it to process this text in syllabic terms would hardly be possible. thus, if we are fully aware of the basic, semiologically relevant properties of american speaking voice, we can easily surmise that the underlying rhythm of the syllable sequence “ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba” must be totally conditioned by the general principles of the “borrowing rule”, which is the groundwork of the way american syllables function in the flow of speech. according to this rule, all the syllables must be extra strong, because each of them is followed by a pause indicated by means of hyphens. otherwise stated, all the syllables are equally prominent, with the vocal or quantitative component being the key to the effect in question. to this we have to add that whenever we use such a sequence, the most important thing is to understand what changes different syllables undergo (if any); what the result of their mutual influence or interdependence is. clearly, in this case we have concurrent monobeats and mutual lengthening throughout. the general impression is that of the syllable by syllable beat, which is very much in the nature of “syllable-timing” or the socalled ‘machine-gun’ kind of rhythm, with all the syllables being evened out and spaced regularly. this rhythmical pattern is prompted both by the graphical substance and our background knowledge of the basic peculiarities of american speaking voice with its own ‘borderline’ kind of rhythm, in a middle position between the classical stress-timing of british english and classical syllable-timing typical of the french language. this, however, is only the first step in our analysis, which can by no means be sufficient if we wish to see what is there behind the conventional graphical representation and what the author is trying to convey. we should always bear in mind that it is the hieroglyphic nature of the hyphen that requires special treatment and consideration on our part. it indicates meaning rather than prosody and signals some special purport that the author is trying to get across. therefore, what we have to concentrate on, first and foremost, is the metasemiotic character of english syllables: 14 armenian folia anglistika linguistics whether the mood which is created in our inner speech when we read the passage corresponds to the mood (or intention) of o’henry, who seems to make rather extensive use of spacing and hyphenation, choosing the latter rather than any other stylistic device to convey his attitude and emotions. ‘syllabic speech’ in o’henry’s story comes at the very end as if the author were playing on the reader’s literary expectations, bringing us to a conclusion for which, apparently, we are totally unprepared. he makes special creative use of the disyllabic word “barber”, which is the name of the main character’s business partner, by completely restructuring it and bringing it together with the seemingly insignificant syllables of the baby talk “ba-ba-ba”. as a result, the latter acquires new significance encoded in the syllables arranged in an onomatopoeic sequence; this is no longer a babble of an innocent child, but the final word in the family quarrel, which almost ends in the main characters’ separation. the author’s instructive and slightly ironical voice is superimposed on the infant’s shriek forming a kind of a new, ‘paradoxical’ timbre for the reader to hear and reproduce adequately.16 taking into account the peculiarities of british and american english syllable stereotypes, rhythm and prosody, the hyphenated syllable sequence should be read in the following way: the overall loudness should be slightly diminished and the tempo slightly decreased so that the duration of all the syllables (or the time-span) should approximate the accentual pattern of the word ‘barber’, with every second syllable in a disyllabic sequence being pronounced a little shorter than the previous syllable. the rhythm should be somewhere in a middle position between the monobeatic, syllable-timed pronunciation and the trochaic (or even dactylic) kind of enunciation, which is more typical of stress-timing. the pauses between the syllables (if at all) are obviously the shortest among all the meaningful manifestations of “cessation of phonation” which can take place in the flow of speech. they totally depend on the peculiar treatment of the releasing and the arresting phases of the hyphenated syllable sequence. thus, the difference between the first and the second interstress intervals will be totally conditioned by the smooth transition in the former and the internal open juncture in the latter, where the vowel at the end of the syllable “ber” and the consonant [b] at the beginning of “ba” appear as the arrest (or coda) of the preceding and the release (or onset) of the following syllable respectively. it follows that it is impossible to read the passage philologically without the “global vertical context” of o’henry’s literary output at large. our task is to learn to read between the lines, so to speak, and decipher the author’s signs incorporated into the text for the careful reader to recognize and interpret appropriately. to conclude: british american voiceworks seem to be crucial for foreign philologists because they considerably broaden and deepen our understanding of the inner mechanisms of english phonation, paving the way to the most intricate problems of human communication both in oral and written forms of speech. 15 linguistics armenian folia anglistika notes and references: 1. here we see eye-to-eye with those scholars who consider syllables to be “the real units of speech” and insist on their ‘janus-faced’ nature and their special place in linguistic hierarchy. see about it in greater detail in: bolinger d. aspects of language. new york, 1975, p.58; lass r. an introduction to basic concepts. cambridge, 1991, p.237; decheva svetlana. cognitive syllabics. // folia anglistica. language structure and variation. moscow, 1997, n 2, p.89-107. 2. see about it, for example, decheva s.v., anikhovskaya t.v. bbc english as part of the target-oriented english language teaching. // language learning. moscow, 2003, n 4, p.4 -22. 3. see about it, for example, akhmanova o.s. phonology, morphonology, morphology. paris, 1971, p.135. 4. see decheva s.v. cognitive syllabics. // folia anglistica. moscow, 1997, n 2. 5. see about it, for example, shakhbagova d.a.. varieties of english pronunciation, moscow, 1982. 6. see decheva s.v. the bases of english philology. moscow, 2000. 7. see, for example, davydov m.v., yakovleva y.v. prosodic images in english speech. moscow, 1999. 8. the rule in question is described in detail in bolinger d. two kinds of vowels. two kinds of rhythm. bloomington. indiana: indiana university linguistics club, 1981, p.17. 9. see, for example, bolinger d. intonation and its parts. california, 1986. 10. hall r.s. jr. elgar and the intonation of british english. // intonation. 1972, p.282-285. 11. see abercrombie d. studies in phonetics and linguistics. london, 1965. 12. the term “affective syllabics” (àôôåêòèâíàÿ ñèëëàáèêà) can be traced back to the concept of “affective phonetics” the third of the three phonetics academician l. scherba clearly distinguished. see ùåðáà ë.â. ôîíåòèêà ôðàíöóçñêîãî ÿçûêà. ìîñêâà, 1957. 13. see ùåðáà ë.â. ßçûêîâàÿ ñèñòåìà è ðå÷åâàÿ äåÿòåëüíîñòü. ë., 1974, ñ. 193-194. 14. see äå÷åâà í.ã. àêòóàëüíûå âîïðîñû ôèëîëîãè÷åñêîãî ÷òåíèÿ àìåðèêàíñêîé ïðîçû. ìãó èì. ì.â. ëîìîíîñîâà. ì., 2005, 26ñ. // èíèîí ðàí n 59351. 15. see akhmanova o.s., zadornova v.y. the present state of shakespeare translation in the ussr. // shakespeare translation. tokyo, 1975. vol. 2, p. 150-160. 16. see äàâûäîâ ì.â. çâóêîâûå ïàðàäîêñû àíãëèéñêîãî ÿçûêà è èõ ôóíêöèîíàëüíàÿ ñïåöèôèêà. ìîñêâà, 1984. 16 armenian folia anglistika linguistics ²ü¶èºðºüæ ì²üî²ð²ð øææàòüºðà ´ðæî²ü²î²ü ºì ²øºðæîú²ü ²ðî²ê²ü²î²ü î²ð´ºð²îüºðàôø ðá¹í³íáõù ùýýíáõù »ý ³ý·é»ñ»ýç í³ýï³ñ³ñ ùççáóý»ñá ¨ í³ýï³ï³å³ïóáõãû³ý ñý³ñ³íáñáõãûáõýý»ñá ·áñí³é³ï³ý ¨ ñ³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý ï»ë³ýïûáõýçó, áý¹ áñáõù ëáëùç ñáëùáõù ï³ñ¨áñíáõù ¿ í³ýïç ¹»ñá ³ë»éçùç ïá¹³íáñù³ý ¨ í»ñí³ýù³ý ·áñíáõù: ðá¹í³íç ñ³ñó³¹ñáõùý»ñá ³é³í»é ³ñ¹ç³ï³ý ñýã»õáõãûáõý »ý ëï³ýáõù §·éáμ³é ³ý·é»ñ»ýç¦ ï³ñ³íù³ý å³ûù³ýý»ñáõù, »ñμ ³éï³ »ý ³ý·é»ñ»ýç μñçï³ý³ï³ý ¨ ³ù»ñçïû³ý ³ñï³ë³ý³ï³ý ï³ñμ»ñ³ïý»ñç ÷áëý»ñã³÷³ýóù³ý ùçïáõùý»ñ: ö³ëï³ï³ý ýûáõãç í»ñéáõíáõãû³ý ñçù³ý íñ³ í»ñ ¿ ñ³ýíáõù μñçï³ý³³ù»ñçïû³ý í³ýï³ñ³ñ ï³ñíñ³ïçå»ñç ¹»ñá ·»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý ñ³õáñ¹ù³ý ù»ïý³μ³ýáõãû³ý ù»ç: 17 linguistics armenian folia anglistika hin.qxd c o n t e n t s launch of aase and velcome speeches .................................................................. 13 articles linguistcs new tendencies in the development of modern english olga alexandrova (russia) .......................................................................................................... 21 on the concept of emphatic rheme yelena mkhitarian (armenia) ....................................................................................................... 27 detached participles in english discourse astghik chubaryan (armenia) ..................................................................................................... 31 aspects of salience in phatic tokens shoushan paronian (armenia) ..................................................................................................... 37 verbal and non-verbal representations of conflict in speech lilit bekaryan (armenia) ............................................................................................................. 44 egocentricity in the english generic pronouns: semantics and pragmatics marika tonyan (armenia) ............................................................................................................ 51 child or grown-up: language universals and language particula rouzanna arakelian (armenia) .................................................................................................... 57 lexical syntagms in publicistic prose gayane muradyan (armenia) ...................................................................................................... 62 the functional value of the participle in a patent text naira gasparyan (armenia) ........................................................................................................ 66 a contrastive study of lexical semantics in english carlos inchaurralde (spain) ....................................................................................................... 72 10 culture studies linguistic aspects of intercultural communication svetlana ter-minasova (russia) .................................................................................................. 80 culture studies: a bridge from native cultural content to learners’ intercultural competence gayane gasparyan (armenia) ..................................................................................................... 87 global english and new sociocultural concepts in armenia nvard yernjakyan (armenia) ....................................................................................................... 90 methodology communicative approach to foreign language teaching karo karapetyan (armenia) ........................................................................................................ 95 from legalized to legal english: the challenge of esp charles hall (usa) ...................................................................................................................... 99 an approach to report writing in the world of work andy keedwell (uk) .................................................................................................................. 104 translation studies shakespeare and the bible sona seferian (armenia) ............................................................................................................ 113 literary translation as semiotic interpretation in the light of philological hermeneutics diana hambardzumyan (armenia) ............................................................................................ 116 literature “what a soul in those soaring shapes”: transcaucasia in xix century british writing stella nuralova (armenia) ......................................................................................................... 119 11 hin.qxd a contrastive study of lexical semantics in english 1. lexical meaning. types of meaning. this paper presents current work about lexical semantics within a research project sponsored by the spanish ministry of education, with the title “contrastive lexical categorization, with special emphasis on english” (ref. bff2002-168). this is a project about lexical denotative meaning, that is, referential meaning, so it is important to clarify from the beginning what we understand by denotation. denotation is something that does not come out of the blue; it is learned. the more exposure one has to different manifestations of the denotative meaning of a word (together with the actual use of that word), the more clearly established the semantic content of that word will be in the end. we could call this acquisition mode ‘cognitive extension’, suggesting that our knowledge of the world is created through sensory interaction with our environment. knowledge structures and the individual concepts that are associated with them are dynamically constructed. a systematic theory of how cognition is grounded in perceptual mechanisms, and how concepts are dynamically created in this way can be seen in the work of barsalou and a team of co-workers (e.g. barsalou 1982, barsalou & sewell 1984, barsalou 1993, barsalou et al. 1993, barsalou & prinz 1997). on the other hand, when we learn new concepts at school, we often only receive concise explanations of the meaning of words. we may well call this type of meaning acquisition ‘cognitive intension’. for decades, there was a perception that, if we wanted to study meaning, or even talk about it, it had to be made manageable (presumably because it was not thought to be). as a result, meaning was usually shrunk to presumably manageable proportions. approaches to meaning were traditionally ‘intensional,’ i.e. based on the dictionary entry model. denotational meaning was usually discussed in terms of (discrete) features or similar categories, articulated in different ways. however, after all the criticism that came from psycholinguistic empirical evidence (cf. rosch 1973a, 1973b, 1975), it became clear that meaning does not consist of discrete features which are sufficient and necessary (cf. geeraerts 1987). rather, denotational meaning has an internal structure that relies on the distinction between prototypical and peripheral categories as well as between different levels of schematicity and specificity. in addition, we must acknowledge that in the centre of any lexical meaning configuration there is always one (or, in some cases several) sense(s) to which all the 72 armenian folia anglistika linguistics carlos inchaurralde others relate. in cognitive linguistics, the concept of a ‘core meaning’ from which different meaning extensions originate has clarified the issue. the theme of this approach is that conceptual categories have a radial structure (lakoff 1987: 436). all members of a category are networked around a single core member. radial structures have not been universally accepted, though. cruse (1986) has pointed out that certain meaning structures do pose problems when conceived of as networks. when there is a connection between meanings along a continuum, normally developed in the course of time by means of metaphorical or metonymical processes, the idea of a ‘sense-spectrum’ may be more accurate. cruse’s own example is that of the mouth of a river, where the relevant meaning of mouth is just one of several along a spectrum (mouth of a person, mouth of a fish, mouth of a sea-squirt, mouth of a bottle, mouth of a cave, mouth of a river). however, the established view remains that different but related meanings do not need to be graded along a continuum. on the contrary, the most common arrangement is a radial network in which the different extensions surround the main meaning. this configuration is geometrically similar to the family resemblance relations observed in prototype theory (rosch 1973a, 1973b, 1975). for each category, there is a central example, and several peripheral instances that share only some characteristics (not necessarily the same throughout). this is the standard view. the ‘extended’ version of prototype theory (on the difference, cf. kleiber 1991) acknowledges the possibility of configurations similar to cruse’s sense-spectra. there are also other types of meaning that merit consideration. another aspect of meaning is what has been referred to as the “connotations” of lexical items. there is a subjective dimension that has to be considered as well, and which, more importantly, can influence ‘objective’ meaning. the pioneering work in this area, and still one of the most salient references, is osgood’s research into what he calls ‘semantic space’. osgood (1976) presented a large number of subjects with a vocabulary sample, to which they had to assign different values on several bipolar scales consisting of qualifying adjectives. a factorial analysis of the data revealed three main dimensions (evaluation, potency and activity), which reflected the connotational configurations of the lexical items involved in the sample. in addition, other types of meaning have been identified from a psycholinguistic perspective. for instance, we have norms about features like ‘familiarity,’ ‘concreteness’ or ‘imagery,’ obtained through extensive sampling among speakers (gilhooly & logie 1980, paivio et al. 1968, toglia & battig 1978; cf. quinlan 1992). last, but not least, we must acknowledge the importance of encyclopaedic information, i.e. information about the world that goes beyond the simple label, the set of features or the referential link that can be provided in a mental ’dictionary’ (cf. inchaurralde 2000, peeters 2000). this is real ‘world knowledge’; it is part of the communicative context and it is there, inside our minds, in the form of semantic memory. its role in language can be seen not only in inference processes, such as presuppositions, implicatures, etc., but also in the understanding of idiomatic expressions and creative metaphors. 73 linguistics armenian folia anglistika 2. procedure. a practical case. taking all these ideas into account, and hoping to discover new ways of classifying and presenting lexical meaning, we started specific work on different lexical units of the english language with the goal of analyzing their semantic structure. the first sub-goal was to identify a group of lexical items that could be of interest for such a piece of research. an important consideration here was that it should be a small set representative of basic english (that is, the most common kind of english) and, at the same time, useful from a pedagogical point of view, because we wanted to use the resulting list as a pedagogical tool. in order to obtain a list with such characteristics, we resorted to a lexical database from which we could create sub-lists. this lexical database was the oxford psycholinguistic database (quinlan 1992), which provides searches of vocabulary according to certain psycholinguistic parameters like the level of concreteness (how ‘concrete’ the referent is), familiarity (how ‘familiar’ the term is) and imagery (how easy it is to create and use ‘images’). in this database it is also possible to select vocabulary according to its ranking in well-known frequency lists, like the lob corpus (hofland and johansson 1982) and the brown corpus (brown 1984). this feature is also useful but it is slightly outdated nowadays, because it is now possible to resort to frequency lists based on corpora of millions of words (e.g. the cobuild corpus or the british national corpus). with the help of the oxford psycholinguistic database (quinlan 1992) we arrived at a list of 1962 words which had high levels of concreteness, familiarity and imagery, as well as a high rank in the available frequency lists. we experimented with different weights in the different parameters and we called the procedure and results “a flexible model”, with which we could get different lists according to different needs. in this case, due to the kind of work that we were going to carry out with the vocabulary, it was extremely important to have high levels of concreteness and imagery. we took as a starting point the assumption that all lexical items have some sort of prototypical or core meaning, which could be identified in one of the senses provided by dictionaries. with this sense as the centre of the semantic structure, our task was then to set up radial networks with all the meanings. in order to do this, we started with the definitions provided by the merriam-webster dictionary (year 2001, electronic edition), but we are also comparing the results with entries in other dictionaries, especially when the configurations are not clear enough. to keep things simple, we also assumed that the processes by means of which different meanings are connected are of four kinds: generalization: from a more specific meaning to a more general meaning. (e.g. money as ‘something which can be exchanged for goods’ is more general than ‘coins and notes’) specification: from a more general meaning to a more specific meaning (e.g. block as ‘the piece of wood on which the neck of a person condemned to be beheaded is laid for execution’ is more specific than ‘a compact solid piece of substantial material’) 74 armenian folia anglistika linguistics metaphorical shift: the new meaning appears thanks to a metaphor. (e.g. brother as ‘a person related to another by common ties or interests’ is a metaphor of ‘a male who has the same parents as, or one parent in common with, another person’; metaphor is based on similarity of meaning) metonymy: the new meaning appears thanks to a metonymy. (e.g. guitar as ‘a certain musical instrument’ leads to ‘the person that plays the musical instrument’, which is a metonymy; metonymy is based on contiguity of meanings) as an example of this kind of work we have the following meanings for bed (taken from the current list in the project), whose semantic structure is reflected in fig. 1: (where s=specification, g=generalization, m=metaphor, n=metonymy) ¹ bed n <a> a piece of furniture on or in which to lie and sleep <aas> a place of sex relations <aaam> marital relationship <abs> a place for sleeping <aban> sleep also: a time for sleeping <took a walk before ~> <acn> mattress filled with soft material <adn> bedstead <aen> the equipment and services needed to care for one hospitalized patient or hotel guest <afm> a flat or level surface <afas> a plot of ground prepared for plants; also: the plants grown in such a plot <afbs> the bottom of a body of water; e sp: an area of sea bottom supporting a heavy growth of a particular organism <an oyster ~> <afcs> a supporting surface or structure: foundation <afds> layer, stratum <afdsas> the place or material in which a block or brick is laid <afdsasan> the lower surface of a brick, slate, or tile <agm> a mass or heap resembling a bed <a ~ of ashes> <served on a ~ of lettuce> 75 linguistics armenian folia anglistika fig. 1 the semantic structure of the lexical item bed fig. 2. a semantic structure without a centre 3. implementation problems. conclusion. as this is an ongoing project, it is still early to have clear results, but we expect to find patterns which will allow us to make generalizations about the semantic structure of english vocabulary. now we can already mention some interesting points, especially concerning certain difficulties that have appeared. some of them (followed by concrete practical answers) are the following: (1) it is not clear whether the core meaning has to be the most prototypical (most 76 armenian folia anglistika linguistics ‘typical’ or characteristic meaning of a category) or the most schematic (more generic meaning). they may coincide or not. when they do not coincide, it is useful to take the prototype. sometimes the most schematic meaning does not appear and we may have several centres (see fig. 2 as compared to fig. 1). (2) in some items it is difficult to see which one is more prototypical. we would need to turn to psycholinguistic evidence, which is not always available. (3) in some cases, it is impossible to know what comes first: the most general or the most specific meaning. our criterion is to trust intuition, which follows the mostreadily accepted meaning (psychological adequacy). but sometimes there are good underlying historical reasons. (4) some entries have several, apparently unrelated, very specific meanings. this poses a problem and, again, we have several centres, but without a unifying schematic meaning. (5) in many cases, several processes take place at the same time. this is what happens, for instance, in metonymy-based metaphors. a practical example is the term closet, for which we have <a> ‘an apartment or small room for privacy’, <acg> ‘a place of retreat or privacy’, and <acn/m> ‘a state or condition of secrecy, privacy or obscurity’. this last meaning can be considered to be a metonymy-based metaphor. it is still early to see whether all these difficulties can help or hinder the drawing of some useful conclusions from this work. in any case, this research project seems interesting for new lexicographic work because it adds a new perspective to what has been done up to now and tries to incorporate ideas from the prototypical approach to categorization and psycholinguistic information. we hope in this way to fill a gap. further work within this project will also be the comparison with configurations found in a basic spanish vocabulary, but this is still to be done. references: 1. barsalou, lawrence w. context-independent and context-dependent information in concepts. in: memory and cognition, 1982, 10, p.82-93. 2. barsalou, lawrence w. flexibility, structure and linguistic vagary in concepts. manifestations of a compositional system of perceptual symbols. in: collins, alan f. theories of memory ed. by gathercole, susan e.; conway, martin a.; morris, peter e. hillsdale, lawrence erlbaum, 1993, p.29-101. 3. barsalou, lawrence w., prinz, jesse j. mundane creativity in perceptual symbol systems. in: creative thought. an investigation of conceptual structures and processes ed. by ward, thomas b.; smith, steven m.; vaid, jyotsna. washington, d.c., american psychological association, 1997, p.267-307. 4. barsalou, lawrence w., sewell, daniel r. constructing representations of categories from different points of view. in: emory cognition project technical report 2. atlanta, emory university, 1984. 77 linguistics armenian folia anglistika 5. barsalou, lawrence w.; yeh, wenchi; luka, barbara j.; olseth, karen l.; mix, kelly s.; wu, ling-ling. concepts and meaning. in: papers from the 29th regional meeting of the chicago linguistic society, vol.2. parasession on conceptual representations ed by beals, katharine; cooke, gina; kathman, david; kita, sotaro; mccullough, karl-erik; testen, david. chicago, university of chicago, 1993, p.23-61. 6. brown, g.d.a. a frequency count of 190000 words in the london-lund corpus of english conversation. in: behavioral research methods instrumentation and computers 1984, 16, p.503-32. 7. peeters, bert (ed.) the lexicon-encyclopedia interface. amsterdam, elsevier, 2000. 8. cruse, d.alan. lexical semantics. cambridge, cambridge university press, 1986. 9. geeraerts, dirk. on necessary and sufficient conditions. in: journal of semantics 1987, 5, p.275-291. 10. gilhooly, kenneth j.; logie, robert h. age of acquisition, imagery, concreteness, familiarity and ambiguity measures for 1944 words. in: behavioral research methods and instrumentation 1980, 12, p.395-427. 11. hofland, k.; johansson, s. word frequencies in british and american english. bergen, navf, 1982. 12. inchaurralde, carlos. lexicopedia. in: the lexicon-encyclopedia interface ed. by peeters, bert. amsterdam, elsevier, 2000, p.97-114. 13. kleiber, georges. prototype et prototypes. encore une affaire de famille. in: sémantique et cognition. catégories, prototypes, typicalité ed.by dubois, danièle. paris, cnrs, 1991. 14. lakoff, george. women, fire and dangerous things. chicago, university of chicago press, 1987. 15. osgood, charles. focus on meaning. in: explorations in semantic space. the hague, mouton, 1976, v.i. 16. paivio, allan; yuille, john c.; madigan, stephen a. concreteness, imagery and meaningfulness values for 925 words. in: journal of experimental psychology. monograph supplement, 1968, 76 (1:2). 17. quinlan, philip t. the oxford psycholinguistic database. oxford, oxford university press, 1992. 18. rosch, eleanor. natural categories. in: cognitive psychology. 1973a., 4, p.328-350. 19. rosch, eleanor. on the internal structure of perceptual and semantic categories. in: cognitive development and the acquisition of language ed. by moore, timothy e. new york, academic press, 1973b, p.111-144. 20. rosch, eleanor. cognitive representations of semantic categories. in: journal of experimental psychology: general. 1975, 104, p.192-233. 21. rosch, eleanor. principles of categorization. in: cognition and categorization ed.by rosch, eleanor; lloyd, b.b. hillsdale, nj, erlbaum, 1978. 78 armenian folia anglistika linguistics 22. toglia, m.p.; battig, w.r. handbook of semantic word norms. new york, lawrence erlbaum, 1978. ´³éç çù³ëï³ûçý áý¹·ñïáõùá ¨ μ³éçù³ëïç ï³éáõóí³íù³ûçý ûñçý³ã³÷áõãûáõýý»ñá ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù ðá¹í³íáõù ý»ñï³û³óí³í »ý çù³ëï³μ³ýáõãû³ý ¨ μ³é³ñ³ý³·çïáõãû³ý áéáñïáõù ï³ï³ñíáõ ñ»ï³½áïáõãû³ý ý³ëý³ï³ý áý¹ñ³ýñ³óáõùý»ñá, áñáýù ñçùýí³í »ý μ³é³ûçý ùç³íáñý»ñç 1962 ãí³ï³ýçý ï³ï³ñí³í ùýýáõãû³ý íñ³: ²ßë³ï³ýùç ³ûë ÷áõéáõù ³éï³ ³ñ¹ûáõýùý»ñç, çýãå»ë ý³¨ ³ñ¹ç ñ᷻黽í³μ³ýáõãû³ý ¨ çù³ó³μ³ý³ï³ý (cognitive) 黽í³μ³ýáõãû³ý áéáñïáõù ùß³ïí³í ã³÷³ýçßý»ñç ñçù³ý íñ³ ñá¹í³íáõù ³é³ç ¿ ù³ßíáõù ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù μ³éçù³ëïç ûñçý³ã³÷ áý¹é³ûýù³ý ¨ ñçùý³ï³ý çù³ëï³ûçý ï³éáõóí³íùç ³éï³ûáõãû³ý ¹ñáõûãá, ýßíáõù »ý ñ»ï³·³ ñ»ï³½áïáõãûáõýý»ñç ñý³ñ³íáñáõãûáõýý»ñá ý³¨ çëå³ý»ñ»ýç μ³é³å³ß³ñç áý¹·ñïù³ùμ: 79 linguistics armenian folia anglistika maket_n_verjin.qxp 202 the war and peace of languages and cultures. the teacher and the student. 21st century russia. to my great teacher – olga sergeevna akhmanova, professor at moscow state university, linguist, lexicographer, philologist. akhmanova o.s. – an epoch, an era, the pivot, theengineer of my heart and soul, the creator of a school of linguistics, a school of elt, a school of life. she was a very strict, sometimes cruel, teacher: no mistake, no slip of the pen, of the tongue, no faux pas was ever pardoned or forgotten. so we practically stopped making them for ever. however, we knew that she was even stricter and crueller to herself. all her life, intellect, behaviour were oriented to giving an example, to being a paragon, showing us how to work, how to think, how to live. interestingly, oddly, paradoxically, it did work. in other – more modern – words, olga sergeevna created her own “akhmanova culture” and we, her disciples, are products of this culture. it is thanks to this that we have managed to successfully go through all the cataclysms, catastrophies, horrors, pains, and sacrifices of re-vo-lu-tions (meaning, of course, both: a complete circular movement and a violent change of a system of government, and also values, thinking, behaviour, language and culture). we are ready for anything. as they used to say in eton college in the 19th century: “we are not afraid of prison, we went through eton”. now – the topic: “the war and peace of languages and cultures. the teacher and the student”. i was bold (or cheeky?) enough to use leo tolstoy’s collocation for two reasons: 1) i tried to avoid “dialogues and conflicts”, now an “in-phrase”, which, consequently, is overused and trite, banal, hackneyed (choose the right word). 2) i meant it as a jocular working title, playing upon the title of the famous novel. however, the metaphor became pivotal for the research, although the war of languages and cultures does not mean that they fight with one another. “the war” in this case is a war of language and culture fought for protecting the nation and its identity. in other words, language and culture are seen not just as barriers separating peoples but as 203 culture studies armenian folia anglistika svetlana ter-minasova shields, or dragons guarding their kingdom from all intruders (including language learners and teachers, interpreters, translators, spies, etc.). the conflict between generations caused by the “generation gap” is traditionally called “the conflict of fathers and sons”. i would like to draw your attention to “the conflict of teachers and students” which is now a most serious educational problem. it is a universal problem but, as usual, it is russia which suffers from it more than others (we like to be ahead of the whole planet, both in the good and in the “not-so-good”) for most objective reasons. the problem in russia is not just a “fathers and sons” conflict, it is not a generation – time – gap, it is a war of different and opposing (!) cultures because russian teachers and russian students were born and have grown up in completely different countries with different ideologies, regimes, cultures, and different variants of the russian language. the teacher was born in the soviet union, the student – in a post-soviet russia, two very different societies, which results in an inevitable conflict of cultures, for many, many years; actually –alas! – for the rest of the teachers’ work or lives. what is the teacher like nowadays? 1. underpaid (if they teach in a state institution) and overloaded (esp. when they teach esp). «â íà÷àëå æèçíè øêîëó ïîìíþ ÿ; òàì íàñ, äåòåé áåñïå÷íûõ, áûëî ìíîãî; íåðîâíàÿ è ðåçâàÿ ñåìüÿ; ñìèðåííàÿ, îäåòàÿ óáîãî, íî âèäîì âåëè÷àâàÿ æåíà íàä øêîëîþ íàäçîð õðàíèëà ñòðîãî. (à.ñ. ïóøêèí. áîëäèíñêèå ïðîèçâåäåíèÿ 1830ã. áîëäèíî; ñàðàíñê, 2007, ñ. 49) just a couple of lines giving detailed information about the status of a teacher in russia in the 19th and 20th century: financially poor but realizing her authority in the society. nowadays, being poor it is difficult to feel authoritative though with older generation of teachers it still works, because in the soviet times the gap between the rich and the poor was almost non-existent. the norm was to be poor while to be rich was shameful and suspicious, so the authority of teachers did not depend on their financial status. 2. the modern teacher is less educated theoretically and much more pragmatic. the financial situation is favourable for teachers of english, but private and/or additional teaching eats up most of their time, talent and efforts. 3. teachers of foreign languages have some, although still scanty – opportunities to visit countries of the languages they teach. however, in elite educational institutions students leave teachers far behind in the sphere. the ever-growing prevalence of paid system in many ways leads to a degradation both of the system of education and of the teacher’s status. as their salary and therefore life depends, to a great extent, on students’ money, 204 armenian folia anglistika culture studies teachers become quite permissive to both lack of knowledge and misbehaviour and live by the principle of the society of consumerism: “the client is always right”. according to the information given by the contemporary russian press, the average age of a russian teacher is 45-50 years. every sixth of them is a working pensioner. they have very many duties and very few (next to none) rights. there are about 1,5 million teachers in the country. their number has decreased by 100 000 people for the last 10 years. the number of students has decreased by 8 million. the peak was in 1997 (22,2 million student and 1,6 million teachers). 86% of teachers are women. (in france women teachers are 57%, in the uk – 53%, in germany – 46%, in japan – 32%). 39,3% work in the country, about one third – work in big cities, almost half of them – work in small towns. 85% graduates from universities, mostly – teacher training ones. the student. what is the student like nowadays? more knowledgeable, or rather better informed, well-equipped with all the treasures of the internet. more confident, much less inhibited than his/her predecessor – the soviet student (now – the teacher). he/she travels freely around the country and the world. modern students see themselves as citizens of the world. they are concerned about problems of globalization and ecology. 69% think that the knowledge of foreign languages is a must, especially for working abroad. they know their rights. it seems that they have more rights than duties. they have a much greater choice. the advantages of the modern student are obvious but, as usual, overcoming one extreme leads invariably to another one. our drawbacks and faults come directly from our merits. as a result of freedom, choice, realization of their rights today’s students complain about their teachers easily and quickly, do not pardon their mistakes, often feel and behave superior to teachers. the students’ feeling of freedom and self-importance often leads to coming to school overdressed or underdressed, as the case may be, to bringing drinks or even food to class, to chewing chewing-gum in class. their attitude to wealth, to money-making contradicts not only their teachers’ one but the traditions of russian culture: their goal of education is making as much money 205 culture studies armenian folia anglistika as possible. the good old question “why did you enter this university?” was answered by two students in a new, honest but unexpected way: “we want to earn a lot of money and buy an island”. i’m afraid, the picture of students’ and teachers’ culture is not very rosy or optimistic. what about the mirror of life and culture, that is the language of the young. their slang is characterized by the same features as general russian, only they are stronger and more vivid: 1) a flood of borrowings from other languages – almost exclusively – english; 2) substandard, low style lexis. interestingly, many borrowings are also substandard. the borrowings come from all language levels: wow, oops, shoozy, etc. in a recent issue of “lingua”, our students’ newspaper, i could hardly understand the following samples, of “the russian language”. …ìîæåò áûòü, òû ìå÷òàåøü î òåïëîì õýøáðàóíå? óäèâèë thefirstmc, íå òîëüêî óâåðåííî çàæèìàþùèé àêêîðäû íà «ôåðíàíäåñå», íî è ÷èòàþùèé ðåï íà èñïàíñêîì. ëàááèíã. ìóçûêà, äðèíêñ, ñíîâà ìóçûêà, ëèöà, ëþäè, äðûãàþùèåñÿ â ïîðûâå åäèíîãî «øîóèíã îôôà». ß ïîðÿäêîì óñòàëà îò âîïðîñîâ íåêîòîðûõ ìîèõ çíàêîìûõ «à ÷÷î? à êòî ïîåò? îïñ? à ñêèíü ìíå! ïî ïî÷òå, íåò… ïî àñüêå!» «sorry» çàòåðÿëàñü ãäå-òî â îãðîìíîì ïëåé-ëèñòå ìîåãî àéïîäà… à ó ìåíÿ ìèäòåðì çàâòðà! borrowings from western culture: patronymics are not used, esp. in the sphere of business. “òû” prevails over “âû” because it is more “democratic”. hasty, unqualified translations of films and books distort both languages but russian suffers more. as a result, communication between “fathers and sons”, teachers and students becomes more and more difficult. to sum up. the teacher is still underpaid and overworked. most of them still treat students in a “totalitarian” way by commands and orders, the main principle being “i am a general, boss, zar, i know all, you are a private, subordinate, slave, you know nothing (you as “òû”). changes in the status of teacher: a loss of authority because of a conflict, a war of cultures and languages, and the habit – or inertion – of the past when the position and authority of the teacher were very high. this comes from a very new situation: a financial dependence on the paid student. the student is still full of young enthusiasm, a strive for innovations, a thirst for knowledge and for exciting sensations. the changes or the new features: the student feels like the citizen of the world, he/she is much more free in his deeds, words, ideas than the teacher (and the former 206 armenian folia anglistika culture studies soviet student, i.e. again the teacher), shatters the norms of language and culture which is natural and – alas! – progressive. the new student is pragmatic, openly ambitious, obsessed with the wish to become rich (= successful). correspondingly, the student does not respect losers (“loozery”) (= underpaid teachers), hence – a loss of the teacher’s prestige, a conflict of cultures. the process goes on in the rest of the world but in russia it is deeper and better seen. now one of the two eternal questions of russian intelligentsia: what is to be done? a difficult question. a clichéed phrase “the young are our future”. let us emphasize: the young are our future. it is our world, students are our children, and it is us, adults, their teachers who have created the world where they grow up, study and learn. we are responsible for this. what is to be done. 1) we must reform ourselves. it is time to realize how much our society has changed. 2) we must learn to respect our students without emphasizing our superiority (often non-existent). we keep talking about “tolerance to other cultures”. let us be tolerant to our children and their culture. our children are growing up in a situation radically different from ours, a situation of “another extreme” when the idea of freedom was ousted by anarchy, when the word “patriotism” turned into a political term with negative connotations, when all previous values and ideals were destroyed and gone surprisingly quickly and easily, and instead there came a flood of cultural and linguistic borrowings – mostly bad things because the evil is much more active than the good. our students, our children are products of the wild chaos of “the transitional period”. (transition where to?). 3) on the other hand, let us keep good things from our past. we should not – once again – give up “the old world”, and “destroy it to the base”. let us teach our students all the wise, good, culturally proper ideas and things that we used to have in our old life, what came to us – through the centuries – from the treasury of the russian culture. let us follow the idea of an english genius, william wordsworth: “what we have loved others will love and we will teach them how”. olga akhmanova used to teach us: a teacher – like a doctor or a priest – cannot refuse the one who asks for help, the person who wants to learn. the young are our future. we, teachers, are responsible for the future of russia. our mission is to overcome the international conflict of cultures, to ensure a friendly atmosphere in class, a contact with the student, to work out a new culture of education, having kept the good from our old system, and accepting the new, caused by the new requirements of new times. mission possible! 207 culture studies armenian folia anglistika 1(2)2016+.pdf the place of english in an expanding europe the boundaries of europe are generally regarded asbeing the atlantic ocean in the west, the arctic ocean to the north, the ural mountains and ural river in the east, the caspian sea, caucasus mountains and black sea in the southeast, and the mediterranean sea to the south. despite these fixed boundaries, europe can be said to be expanding in a number of senses, particularly, since ‘europe’ is increasingly taken to refer to the european union. in 2004, the eu grew to 25 member states, and additional states within the geographical boundaries of europe have made formal applications to join. these include turkey, the majority of which is deemed geographically to be in asia. and those european states in the balkans and the former soviet union which have not yet applied for membership, including armenia, are receiving european funding through crossborder projects. outside the geographical boundaries, economic co-operation is increasing across the mediterranean with the countries of the maghreb (algeria, morocco and tunisia), with which 25 years of cooperation and five years of partnership were celebrated in 2000, while the long-standing arrangements with former colonies under the general system of preferences and acp agreements (africa, caribbean and pacific) have continued and been enhanced. there is growing media speculation that even countries in the middle east, such as syria or lebanon even iraq might one day become, member states. at the same time, the internal political cohesion of the eu is increasing, notably in the area of security, criminal law, human rights and environmental concerns, and through the long process of drafting a constitution bringing together the principles underlying the thousands of treaties, conventions, directives, regulations and ad hoc agreements that have been adopted over nearly fifty years by the eu and its predecessors, the various european communities. languages in europe the linguistic implications of these developments are immense. the number of official languages of the eu is now 22 czech, danish, dutch, english, estonian, finnish, french, german, greek, hungarian, irish, italian, latvian, lithuanian, luxemburgisch, maltese, polish, portuguese, slovak, slovene, spanish and swedish, although two of these, irish and luxemburgisch, are used only for certain formal documents. 82 armenian folia anglistika culture studies peter sutton 1(2)2016+.pdf “metaphoric displacement” a reliable guide in literary translation we have to agree that reading literature, in the realsense of the word, is a very difficult task, for it presupposes the reader’s ability to see more in a text than directly catches the eye. the question of reading and understanding literature can never be divorced from the allimportant problem of literary translation since a translator is first and foremost a reader. moreover, it is through translation that people try to find their way in the enormous sphere of world literature and use it as a key to studying the nature of human experience, familiarizing themselves with other cultures and other world-views, thus identifying the specific features of their own mentality and psychology. in view of all this, it is not surprising at all that translation is as old as recorded history and, admittedly, if it were not for translation, the people of the world would be as helpless as in the time of the tower of babel. the study of the development of translation theory from its earliest steps up to the present time reveals a considerable shift in the evaluation of its role and status transforming it from a kind of stylistic exercise to a philological discipline in its own right. however, one thing is obvious: the main principle of translation has more or less remained unchanged, and that consists in the statement that the most accepted and balanced way of translating, especially when what we deal with is a piece of literature, is the one that not only conveys the literary message in the best way but also tries to keep as close to the formal peculiarities of the literary text as possible. the question concerning the status of translation has been discussed time and again by leading philologists and answered in different ways. some theorists, such as eric jacobson, have put forward the idea that translation is a craft, others, like theodore savory have evaluated it as art, but there are still others, such as horst frenz, who have always believed it to be a scientifically grounded process. john dryden has claimed that translation is really an art, but it is neither creative, nor imitative. its place should be found somewhere in between1. to be able to evaluate this variety of view-points, we have to draw a distinct line between functionally different texts. it has been established that the two main functional styles are the intellective, which is aimed at conveying factological information, and the 106 armenian folia anglistika translation studies seda gasparyan kazm.cdr general tendencies in semiotic research at present many scholars deeply interested in1semiotics are concerned with artistic literature, as it supplies with the necessary material for semiotic observations and theoretical conclusions. there are numerous investigations on the semiotics of literature, accentuating on the point of view that literature is one of the subjects of semiotic studies (see: muka ovsky, 1978; todorov, 1983a, 355-369; todorov, 1983b, 350-354; khrapchenko, 1987, 278310; barthes, 1988, 166-172; nida, 1991). literary semiotics is very much spoken about nowadays, presenting a lot of researches revealing the dubious problems of styling and creating images in literature. the phrases “narrative semiotics”, “literary semiotics”, “semiotics of literature” are widely spread in them, though not yet being vividly defined, as to the scope of their global capacity. the italian writer and scholar umberto eco is a very outstanding specialist in this sphere, whose concepts are considered to be the basis for clarifying the correlation between literary translation and semiotics. alongside with literary semiotics linguistic semiotics has also introduced its concepts of analyzing literary works paying great attention to the meaning of linguistic units, which, in our conscious are the reflection of various phenomena, activities and relationships existing in reality. a linguistic unit becomes a linguistic fact as soon as strong and historically, culturally correlated ties appear in between the linguistic unit as a sign and its referent. e. nida being one of the outstanding theorists in the sphere of linguistic semiotics, has introduced a lot of theoretical analyses concerning linguistics, semiotics, translation studies and literary criticism (see: nida, 1964; nida and taber, 1969; nida, 1991). an artistic creation has always been perceived as the result of man’s imagination and mind. as far as its final goal is concerned, it is its influence on the reader’s selfsame mind and imagination. through centuries writers have been inspired by this or that idea, theme, phenomenon, image, characteristic feature, which have become the basis of a literary work, supplying it with a unique structure. a literary work intends to influence on the reader’s mind, imagination and feelings and all in all on the person’s aesthetic comprehension. everybody forms his/her concept of beauty through some concrete relationship (even through conflict and struggle) with beauty and ugliness, inasmuch as our ability of differentiating the essential from the subordinate, the exact from the bias, the right from the wrong, is realized on our way of searching for the truth. the utmost purpose of literature is the search of the truth, seeking for the beauty, which breeds the reader’s aesthetic requirements. the reader’s aesthetic taste is a many-lateral phenomenon, which a writer takes into consideration consciously or subconsciously, 96 armenian folia anglistika translation stadies diana hambardzumyan since he/she intends both to produce something corresponding to the reader’s taste, as well as to brush up and develop the existing artistic criteria. in this process numerous codes emerge which are used to be called a code system. according to the simplest explanation of codes, which are either unanimously accepted or non-accepted symbols, they are nominative substitutes of this or that phenomenon or concept, subject or essence, material or abstraction. it is striking to observe that the author’s intention schemes the reader’s comprehension. in this case the reader is guided by the system of images and the rich variety of meanings introduced into the artistic text. reading and understanding an artistic creation is not a lineal activity at all. it predicts the reader’s further conduct led by his/her comprehension. as a result of it the reader interprets the work, making numerous logical, analytical, synthetic commentaries, further on finding out and differentiating those implicit and explicit codes which contribute to his/her understanding of the author’s intention and the aesthetic value of the work. the text which is introduced as a super-sign in semiotics, with its coded linguistic units is the only symbolic secret in between the author and the reader. the reader’s purpose is to decode not only the smallest semiotic units, but to interpret the major tendency brought forth by the super-sign. being a good reader is a thing, which the most outstanding writers of the world have declared to be their first consideration (w. faulkner, j.l. borges). so, reading and understanding literary works is, first and foremost, necessary for writers, linguists and literary critics, who, employing their global philological knowledge, may decode the codes of utmost mystery for common readers. language and linguistic units have been observed as sign systems by a number of armenian and foreign scholars, among whom professor ed. atayan with one of his basic linguistic works “the inner representation and outer reference of the linguistic world” has become very prominent in our reality. linguistic sign is known to be a language and speech phenomenon. as it has got its subsigns, it is truly considered to be a microsystem of signs. if so, the super-sign, including various linguistic signs, in this case the literary text, is also examined as a sign system; the analysis of its subsigns and “inner signs” may greatly contribute to revealing the deepest sublayers of the original text. a word, being a stylistic source, breeds a linguistic unit, as well as all the sublayers of a super-sign. on this occasion professor ed. atayan precisely defines the essence of a word as a means of comprising non-verbal objective reality in the man’s socially subjective language world (see: atayan, 1981: 79-80). if a linguistic sign has got a symbolic essence, it coincides with the aesthetic value existing in the sign. the matter is to reveal the non-verbal significance of a linguistic sign. the sign chain is endless: it starts from the linguistic sphere, goes through the real world and returns to language again. with the extension of sign boundaries non-signs are also included into it. supersign or hyperseme is known as a unity of verbal and non-verbal signs. it should be stated that the joint existence of the non-verbal world (the national culture, reality and environment reflected in the national literature, which is investigated by literary semiotics) and the linguistic world (the national language system and 97 translation stadies armenian folia anglistika linguistic mentality, which is investigated by linguistic semiotics) comes to stipulate the progress of national literature. as in case of every communication, the relationship between the artistic literature and its reader can be observed as a specific communication in between a speaker (essence) and a listener (phenomenon). profoundly analyzing this relationship acad. ed. atayan comes to the conclusion that the above mentioned communication is a presentation satiated by stylistic stimules, the overwhelming instances of which, alongside with others, are the inner substance (content: speaker) and the outer form (expression: listener) (ibid. p. 166). we think this “speaker” – “listener” bilateral unity, introduced by ed. atayan, becomes even more complicated when applied to literary translation. in this case the translator combines both the role of a “listener” and a “speaker”. the translator uses his/her language knowledge and the content taken from the previous “speaker” (the author of the original) to insert it into a new outer form for a new verbal activity. this continual chain can be presented in the following diagram. however, this chain can be transferred into another one, observing the same process from the semiotic point of view. in this case “content-1” is both verbal and non-verbal essence, introducing the original, and “content-2” is the verbal and non-verbal essence of the translated product. according to the rules introduced in the extralinguistic system of signs, the most important problem for the investigator dealing with the translated product, is the examination of those extralinguistic phenomena, which have conditioned the global vertical context of the original. the latter is a complex phenomenon. according to gubbenette’s definition, it includes the reader’s pre-knowledge of the listener outer form expression speaker-2 inner substance content-2 speaker-1 inner substance content -1 listener reader translator speaker translator translated product speaker author original 98 armenian folia anglistika translation stadies system of all social orders (the ideas, concepts, estimations, outlooks peculiar to them) enclosed in the author’s works: (see: ãþááåíåò, 1991: 39). katinenee adds the moral and aesthetic values typical of the era, that helps to understand the artistic intention and image system of the work (see: êàòèíåíå, 1983: 16). professor s. zolyan has noticed that “the semiology of the second generation”, which is apt to solve semantic problems, should overcome the shortcoming of the semiotic approach, i.e. it is only one-lateral investigation of the issue (see: çîëÿí, 1991, 94-95). for about two and a half decades ago the semantic approach to language was a leading one in linguistics. professor s. zolyan confirms this fact referring to e. benvenist’s “general linguistics” and observing the scholar’s definition: “the semiotic (the sign) should be recognized, the semantic (the speech) should be understood”, as a complete one, not needing any further interpretation (ibid. p.94). among the contemporary viewpoints t. hawkes’ concept appears to be vividly unique, though controversial (see: hawkes, 1977). he insists on the fact that translation belongs to semiology, as far as the translation process “also includes a series of extralinguistic criteria”. this surely restricts the boundaries of translation process including it into semiology, only giving more inportance to the extralinguistic criteria, ignoring the investigation of numerous linguistic and literary problems determined by the language material. t. nazarova has recently noticed that the semiology directed to the examination of verbal activity, aims to research it typologically, “dealing with narratology, logic, syntax and collocation” (see: íàçàðîâà, 2003: 191). as far as the semiology intending to investigate the structure of literary texts is concerned, it has been initially introduced by v. prope, whose research works since the 50s of the 20th century have become the basis of investigating literary works from the angle of structuralism (ibid. p. 191). today some scholars follow the principles of this investigation, sounding unanimous in dividing an artistic text into several parts and accentuating the existence of an a priori text. references: 1. ²ã³û³ý ¾.è. 軽í³ï³ý ³ßë³ññç ý»ñùçý ï»ñå³íáñáõùá ¨ ³ñï³ùçý í»ñ³μ»ñáõãûáõýá, ºñ¨³ý. ºäð, 1981: 2. ãþááåíåò è.â. îñíîâû ôèëîëîãè÷åñêîé èíòåðïðåòàöèè ëèòåðàòóðíîõóäîæåñòâåííîãî òåêñòà. ì.: ìãó, 1991. 3. çîëÿí ñ.ò. ñåìàíòèêà è ñòðóêòóðà ïîýòè÷åñêîãî òåêñòà. åðåâàí: åãó, 1991. 4. êàòèíåíå í.ô. ãëîáàëüíûé âåðòèêàëüíûé êîíòåêñò ðîìàíîâ ò. ãàðäè, àâòîðåô. … êàíä. ôèë. íàóê, ì., 1983. 5. íàçàðîâà ò.á. ôèëîëîãèÿ è ñåìèîòèêà (ñîâðåìåííûé àíãëèéñêèé ÿçûê). ì.: âûñøàÿ øêîëà, 2003. 6. òîäîðîâ, ö. ïîíÿòèå ëèòåðàòóðû. // ñåìèîòèêà. ì., 1983, ñòð. 355-369, 186. 7. òîäîðîâ, ö. ñåìèîòèêà ëèòåðàòóðû. // ñåìèîòèêà. ì., 1983, ñòð. 350-354. 8. õðàï÷åíêî ì.á. ïðèðîäà ýñòåòè÷åñêîãî çíàêà. // ïîçíàíèå ëèòåðàòóðû è 99 translation stadies armenian folia anglistika 100 èñêóñòâà. ì., 1987, ñòð. 278-310. 9. barthes r. the semiotic challenge. new york, 1988. 10. hawkes t. structuralizm and semiotics. berkeley, 1977. 11. muka ovsky j. structure, sign and function. new haven, 1978. 12. nida e.a. towards a science of translating. leiden, holland, 1964. 13. nida e.a. and taber ch. the theory and practice of translation. leiden, holland, 1969. 14. nida e.a. signs, sense, translation. bible society, capetown, 1991. 15. todorov t. the poetics of prose. ithaca, 1977. üþ²ü²¶æî²î²ü àôêàôøü²êæðàôâúàôüüºðæ àü¸ð²üàôð øæîàôøà ä³ù³ý³ï³ïçó 黽í³μ³ýáõãû³ý ù»ç ýï³ï»éç ¿ ýß³ý³·çï³ï³ý μ³½ù³ãçí ñ»ï³½áïáõãûáõýý»ñç ñáëùá, áñáýù çñ»ýó áõß³¹ñáõãû³ý ï»ýïñáýáõù »ý å³ñáõù ·»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý ëï»õí³·áñíáõãûáõýá ã»° áñå»ë ·ñ³ï³ý³·çï³ï³ý ýß³ý³·çïáõãû³ý, ã»° 黽í³μ³ý³ï³ý ýß³ý³·çïáõãû³ý áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãû³ý ³é³ñï³: ºã» ·ñ³ï³ý³·çï³ï³ý ýß³ý³·çïáõãûáõýá ½μ³õíáõù ¿ ·»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý ëï»õí³·áñíáõãû³ý á׳íáñù³ý ¨ å³ïï»ñ³íáñù³ý íç׳ñ³ñáõûó ëý¹çñý»ñç éáõíù³ùμ, ³å³ 黽í³μ³ý³ï³ý ýß³ý³·çïáõãûáõýá ñ»ï³½áïáõù ¿ ·ñ³ï³ý ëï»õí³·áñíáõãûáõýá` ù»í áõß³¹ñáõãûáõý ¹³ñóý»éáí 黽í³ï³ý ùç³íáñç ýß³ý³ïáõãû³ýá, áñý ³ñï³óáéáõù ¿ çñ³ï³ý »ñ¨áõûãý»ñá, ñ³ñ³μ»ñáõãûáõýý»ñý áõ ·áñíáõáõãûáõýý»ñá` ¹³éý³éáí 黽í³ï³ý ÷³ëï, »ñμ å³ïù³ï³ý, ùß³ïáõã³ûçý ñçùý³íáñáõù áõý»óáõ ï³å ¿ ñ³ëï³ïíáõù 黽í³ï³ý ùç³íáñç` áñå»ë ýß³ýç, ¨ ýñ³ í»ñ³μ»ñû³éç ùçç¨: armenian folia anglistika translation stadies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 culture studies 122 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2022.18.2.122 “new normal” of post-covid and post-modern world in the mirror of language narine harutyunyan yerevan state university today humanity is going through a period of radical transformation of the world, the principles of the existence of society, economy, education, traditional values. we are witnessing giant shifts in the world politics, epic battles between good and evil. it can be assumed that the modern society of the post-covid era is moving in the direction of "new postmodernism" and "post-capitalism". the world elite is trying to “recode” sociocultural reality, human existence and linguistic consciousness. with the help of new cultural concepts and linguistic signs the “new reality” and the “neology” of this reality is created and described. this article is a study of the actual problem of neologization, carried out in the context of the above-mentioned dynamic processes occurring in the post-covid world. it is aimed at identifying and describing the linguistic means that reflect the current trends of the world elite in establishing a "new world order". to implement a "radical transformation" and to impose a "new world order" with new values and traditions, the "newspeak" of the post-pandemic era is used. the object of our research is the new terms and concepts of the actual spheres of social life, which is considered as an important fragment of a new conceptual and linguistic picture of the world. keywords: “social puppet”, neologization, new world order, great reset, gender-neutral language, metamodernism. introduction language continuously reflects every change in human society. the lexical composition is expanding. along with new phenomena and concepts, new lexical units appear, and the old ones change or lose their meanings. according to the global language monitor, the english language is updated with new words every 98 minutes, and is rightfully considered one of the most dynamic  narineharutyunyan@ysu.am this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. rceived: 13.06.2022 revised: 08.07.2022 accepted: 19.07.2022 © the author(s) 2021 mailto:narineharutyunyan@ysu.am https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 123 languages in the world. the appearance of new words almost always falls at the peak of the development of modern technologies, as well as a period of acute political situations, natural phenomena, the emergence of new diseases, and the development of social networks. global events always leave their mark on the language and culture of any society. in the second decade of the 21st century, these events include globalization, migration processes and, of course, coronavirus (covid-19). over the past two years, the world has undergone such radical changes in its consequences that some experts refer to the eras “before the coronavirus” (b.c. covid-19) and “after the coronavirus” (a.c. covid-19). no doubt, we will continue to be amazed at both the transience and the unexpectedness of these changes as they influence each other, they will provoke second, third, fourth order consequences, thereby cascading effects and unintended results. “great reset” according to the founder and executive chairman of the world economic forum in davos, klaus schwab, the world needs a “radical transformation” after the coronavirus pandemic, “the only acceptable response to such a crisis is to pursue a “great reset” of our economies, politics, and societies” (klaus schwab, 2020). schwab, in his book “covid-19: the great reset”, has made it clear that the coronavirus is less of a crisis than a chance to hasten the birth of a “new world order”, which he calls the “fourth industrial revolution”. for the transition to the "new world order”, the world elite decided to apply the so-called "transforming event". an "anthropological transition" was applied, namely the formation of a society consisting of two sociobiological caste layers such as eloi and morlocks from herbert wells' novel “time machine”. on the one hand, “superhumans” living in their enclaves up to 120– 140 years old, on the other hand, “service people” with completely different mental and physical abilities and a lower life expectancy. in essence, this means the transformation-modification of a person, the nullification of old values and the imposition of those that can turn a person into a “social puppet” whom the owners of the new system can easily manage. the emphasis of the tops of the elite on stimulating human diversity, as well as on the rights of various sexual minorities and racial, ethnic, national, cultural, religious, historical identity, family norms, the introduction of "fluid gender", tolerance all this is the means of establishing a new system, a new type of production relations, where a person is alienated in his integrity. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 culture studies 124 in modern conditions, the cultural picture of the world acquires new features. an example of this is the picture of the world of social networks, media space, which represents a special reality, with its spatio-temporal dimension, often transforming the real image of the reality. new world order and since the main means of social construction of reality is language, the “newspeak” of the post-pandemic era is used to impose a "new world order" values and traditions, to implement the “radical transformation”. this very “new reality” is programmed by using a rich choice of lexical means. with the help of the media, the elites influence the mass consciousness of people, since, as you know, one of the most important functions of the language is the ability to influence the formation of public opinion. a new thesaurus is being created to implement the “new world order” project and construct a new social reality. this is expressed in neologization, — the creation of new socioeconomic realias, terms and concepts, new meanings, which will be used in the formation of conceptual and figurative ideas about the surrounding reality of the new world. therefore, it is necessary to follow the language, new concepts and words, which, like the “trojan horse”, carry a hidden danger. in our opinion, we are witnessing the “recoding” of the socio-cultural reality, human existence, linguistic consciousness, the formation of the “neology of a new reality”, when this new reality is created and described with the help of new cultural concepts and linguistic signs. the works of klaus schwab, jacques attali, branko milanovic and others are an important source for the formation of the “new reality” and its language. the language of “new normal” as klaus schwab states in his book “the fourth industrial revolution”: “the fourth industrial revolution, finally, will change not only what we do but also who we are. it will affect our identity and all the issues associated with it: our sense of privacy, our notions of ownership, our consumption patterns, the time we devote to work and leisure, and how we develop our careers, cultivate our skills, meet people, and nurture relationships. …the fourth industrial revolution is reshaping every sphere of human life — from government to culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 125 commerce; from education to healthcare. it is even impacting human values, opportunities, relationships and identities by modifying virtual as well as physical worlds of human beings (klaus schwab, 2017, p. 7). the industrial revolution had an effect on the development of the language “as new words had to be invented or existing ones modified to cope with the rapid changes in technology” (the industrial revolution — impact on english language, 2014). so, the merriam-webster american dictionary recorded more than 500 new words in 2021. the most interesting of them are not just words, but real social phenomena or new sociocultural concepts: digital immigrant, accessism, green-revolution; technocratic discourse, “happytalism” and many other new data. today, many of us are aware that we speak a new language the language of the "new reality": "green economy", "technological order", "information society", "new normal", “great reset”; “post-normal science” ; “boiling frog”; social change; diversity manager, “build back better”; biodiversity; climate-neutrality; augmented reality; new “year zero”; infodemic; resilient post-covid future; turning point of humankind; human augmentation; neurotechnological brain enhancements; genetic editing; new value creation; digital economy; eco-carbon ways; net-zero technologies; technological singularity, etc. it is worth noting that so many changes have recently taken place, and so many new trends have emerged in the world economy and the economy of individual countries that this area has become one of the main sources of neologisms that deserve attention: "inclusive capitalism", inclusive economic growth; “surveillance capitalism”; stakeholder capitalism; digital economy; "sustainable development", high-tech economy, zero emissions economy, etc. i would like to focus on the peculiarities of english neologisms of the conceptual and thematic field of the “new world order” or so called “new normal”. according to schwab’s works, the new world order is constructed as follows: a) the fight against climate change, b) a green economy, c) the struggle for gender equality, e) ensuring the dominance of sexual minorities. for example, a significant number of new units have appeared due to the problem of climate change. in 2019, the oxford dictionary awarded the title of "word of the year" to climate emergency "a situation in which urgent action is required to reduce or halt climate change and avoid potentially irreversible environmental damage resulting from it " (“climate emergency” is the oxford armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 culture studies 126 english dictionary’s word of the year, 2019), and in 2020 the oxford dictionary published new words in the list of which included net zero zero greenhouse gas emissions (only 2020 could bring us words like these, 2020). the shortlist of the oxford english corpus (oxford english corpus, 2022) included the following data: climate action — stepped-up efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-induced impacts, including: climate-related hazards in all countries; integrating climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning etc.; eco-anxiety — the chronic fear of environmental cataclysm that comes from observing the seemingly irrevocable impact of climate change and the associated concern for one's future and that of next generations; ecocide the destruction of the environment as a result of human activity; firenado a phenomenon created when turbulent air rapidly rising from the site of burning, as a forest fire, sucks flaming gases, embers, and other fiery debris up into a twisting column, sometimes hundreds of feet in height; megafire – according to the united states department of agriculture, a megafire is a wildfire that burns over 100,000 acres. the state of california, in particular, has suffered from many megafires over the past several years with a 2020 wildfire burning over 1 million acres for the first time in state history; savannafication climate change coupled with fires set ablaze to clear land for cattle and crops are transforming the world's largest tropical forest into arid expanses of grasslands, etc.; cli-fi — (short for “climate fiction.”) all of the recent books and films related to worlddestroying disasters brought about by climate change. notable examples include “the day after tomorrow”, “2012” and “interstellar”; solastalgia — psychological distress caused by climate change; morbique — the morbid desire to travel to places to experience them before they are irreparably damaged by climate change or other manmade changes. through the efforts of activist greta thunberg, more and more people are ready to lead an “environmental lifestyle”. a lot of neologisms have appeared in some other european languages as well. for example, in swedish: flygskam — shame for flying on an airplane”; tågskryt — boasting that you ride a train”; smygflyga — keep flying on an airplane, but be ashamed of it and hide it; greta-effekt — this term describes the change in consumption, voting participation and travel habits of people who have been influenced by the swedish climate activist greta thunberg and the fridays-for-future demonstrations (see: kak yazyk reagiruet na izmenenie klimata, 2021); in dutch: vliegschaamte the shame of flying on an airplane (similar to the culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 127 swedish flygskam); treintrots literally “train pride,” this concept is related to vliegschaamte, or fly-shaming. treintrots has to do with taking pride in taking the train instead of a plane; laadpaalklever someone who leaves his electric car parked a bit too long in the recharging spot for electric cars, thereby using it as a free parking spot (indirectly linked to climate change.). in italian: gretini — the thousands of teenagers who have taken part in demonstrations for climate change recently. the suffix -ino is used for the diminutive form in italian, and the word can be translated as “greta’s followers.” however, due to the similarity and assonance with the word cretini (meaning “the idiots; the stupid people”), the word has been used (especially by deniers of climate change in the press and in politics) to condescend to protesters (steph koyfman, 2019). as for the point b), referring to “green economy” sphere, the language was replenished with such vocabulary units as: freegan — a person who rejects consumerism and seeks to help the environment by reducing waste, especially by retrieving and using discarded food and other goods; eco-conscious — the mentality to focus on reducing harm to the environment wherever possible; green collar job — a job connected to eco-friendly products and services; ecoterrorism — sabotage intended to hinder activities that are considered damaging to the environment; soy or vegetable-based ink — ink made from soybeans and other vegetable oils instead of petroleum; naked packaging — products that are sold without packaging; green meeting — an event that incorporates eco-friendly practices in order to reduce its impact on the environment (group multi-occupant spaces conference rooms, classrooms and other indoor spaces used as place of congregation for presentations, training sessions, etc.), (glossary of green terms and definitions, 2009; ecofriendly terminology, 2021); köpskam — the shame associated with shopping or consuming (ortega, & moynihan, 2019). the next point in the project of a “new normal” is the elimination or neutralization of gender differences in the words used by modern society. in this regard, the idea of a language that will be neutral in terms of the gender of a person is gaining wide popularity. a new language (newspeak), which involves addressing people without specifying their gender, calling them a neutral word. in linguistics, such a language is called an inclusive language. the university of manchester has released a guide that encourages employees to use gender-neutral terms instead of gender-specific words. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 culture studies 128 there are 26 gender-neutral titles that non-binary parents could go by: baba, dama, mada, maddy, mapa, moddy, pama, pom-pom (gender neutral/non-binary parent titles, 2019). in everyday life, when you are unsure of a person’s gender, you should use “they”. “they” is essentially a replacement for the usual pronouns "she" and "he". that is, in this way they mark people who define themselves differently than “man” or “woman”, or in cases where you are not sure about the gender of this or that individual. for example, we have a new teacher. they will come tomorrow. the canadian senate has approved a bill that would replace the words of the national anthem "true patriot love in all your sons command". with "gender-neutral" ones and now this line sounds: “true patriot love in all of us command”, because the activists were terribly indignant at the fact that only sons are driven by love for the country (canadian national anthem revised with gender-neutral language, 2018). special dictionaries and reference books have already been published, the authors of which recommend avoiding words and expressions in your speech that indicate the gender of a person. the use of inclusive language in the nominations of words such as same-sex marriage, homosexuals, heterosexuals, etc. hides the meaning behind the inclusive name. today, there are 76 other genders besides male and female, such as: gender non-conforming, genderqueer, cisgender, bigender, nonbinary, gender fluid, pangender, gendervoid, graygender, agender, cisnormative, cisprivilege, etc. inclusive language can be considered not only as a way of linguistic expression that involves naming a person regardless of gender, but also as a language norm that does not allow discrimination based on race, health status, appearance, age, marriage and family relationships. in this case, we are talking about communication in a society where one can often hear words and expressions that are unacceptable for the language, which easily offend the interlocutor, there is an infringement of his rights by linguistic tactlessness or straightforwardness of one of the communicants. based on the foregoing, we can state the fact that today humanity is going through a period of cardinal transformation of the world, the principles of the existence of society, the economy, education, and values. we are witnessing gigantic shifts in world politics, epic battles between good and evil. it can be culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 129 assumed that the modern society of the post-covid era is moving towards the “new postmodernism” and post-capitalism. the era of “metamodernism” in the last decade, culturologists, sociologists, philosophers, economists and other specialists offer their own options for describing the era of the fourth industrial revolution: “the era of new sincerity” (eshelman, r.), “capitalist realism” (fisher, m.), “metamodernism” (timotheus, vermeulen, & robin, van den akker), "digimodernism" (kirby, a.), "cosmomodernism" (moraru, s.), "automodernism" (samuels, r.), "post-postmodernism" (nealon, j.) and a number of others (cited in khrushcheva, 2020). the term “metamodernism” seems to be the most successful of the above mentioned variants for us. why? firstly, the prefix meta — means “following something, transition to something else, change of state, transformation”. thus, “metamodernism” is a world with different views on life, the world of opensource, open science, open data and open innovation, etc. “metamodernism” is a global mental paradigm that has replaced postmodernism." the era of the fourth industrial revolution can be considered the external cause of the emergence of metamodern, while the crisis is internal postmodernism. “the internal cause of metamodernism is connected with fatigue from the total irony of postmodernism, from its continuous quoting……. if postmodernism reflects an unprecedented amount of information, then metamodern reflects the unprecedented speed of its distribution: metamodern arises not just in the era of the internet, but in the era of the fast internet, available everywhere (ibid). the era of "metamodernism" or the 4th industrial revolution is the era of the introduction of artificial intelligence, automation, editing of human genes, the narrowing of private space, control by the state and corporations of all aspects of human life through internal and external digitization. conclusion involving militant representatives of racial, ethnic and religious exclusivity in the modern “armageddon”, in order to maintain its “status quo” on the planet, the global ruling class uses the technologies of “controlled chaos”, gender psychosis, coronavirus and vaccine madness, the destruction of traditional cultures and states as such, the deformation of education systems, health care, armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 culture studies 130 total digitalization, transition from a technocratic model of science to a “postnormal science”, allowing this "chosen minority" to take 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(2022). sketch engine. retrieved march 12, 2022. հետկովիդային հետմոդեռնիզմի «նոր նորմալը» լեզվի տիրույթում նարինե հարությունյան այսօր մարդկությունը վերապրում է հասարակության գոյության սկզբունքների, տնտեսության, կրթության, ավանդական արժեքների արմատական վերափոխման շրջան։ մենք համաշխարհային քաղաքականության հսկայական տեղաշարժերի, բարու և չարի միջև տեղի ունեցող էպիկական մարտերի ականատես ենք: կարելի է ենթադրել, որ հետկովիդային դարաշրջանի ժամանակակից հասարակությունը շարժվում է «նոր հետմոդեռնիզմի» և «հետկապիտալիզմի» ուղղությամբ։ համաշխարհային վերնախավը փորձում է «վերակոդավորել» հանրամշակութային իրականությունը, մարդկային գոյությունը, լեզվական գիտակցությունը։ մշակութային նոր հասկացույթների և լեզվական նշանների օգնությամբ՝ ստեղծվում և նկարագրվում է ոչ միայն «նոր իրականություն»ը, այլև այդ իրականության «նեոլոգիան»։ սույն հոդվածը ուսումնասիրում է նորաբանությունների արդիական խնդիրը՝ հետկովիդյան աշխարհում տեղի ունեցող դինամիկ գործընթացների համատեքստում: քննության են առնվում համաշխարհային վերնախավի կողմից «նոր համաշխարհային կարգ» հաստատելու ներկայիս միտումներն արտացոլող լեզվական միջոցները: սույն հետազոտության առարկան հասարակական կյանքի արդիական ոլորտների նոր տերմիններն ու հասկացություններն են՝ որպես աշխարհի նոր հայեցակարգային և լեզվական աշխարհապատկերի կարևոր մաս։ բանալի բառեր՝ «սոցիալական խամաճիկ», «նեոլոգիա», նոր աշխարհակարգ, մեծ վերագործարկ, գենդերային չեզոք լեզու, մետամոդեռնիզմ: https://plus-one.rbc.ru/society/kak-yazyk-reagiruet-na-izmenenie-klimata. https://plus-one.rbc.ru/society/kak-yazyk-reagiruet-na-izmenenie-klimata. https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/climate-change-vocabulary/ https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/climate-change-vocabulary/ https://grist.org/climate/2020-climate-words-of-the-year-doomer-net-zero-anthropause/ https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/2822326 https://www.sketchengine.eu/oxford-english-corpus/ hin.qxd 124 communicating cultures across microsoft word maket 2021-2(24) 2.11.doc armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 culture studies 100 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2021.17.2.100 a cross-cultural study of refusal strategies of american and armenian english speakers gohar hovsepyan yerevan state university several studies have been carried out on refusal strategies that native and nonnative english speakers employ to mitigate potential threat to listener’s face when forming refusals to various speech acts, such as requests, offers, invitations, etc. this study adds the perspective of armenian english speakers in using such mitigation strategies. the objective of the study is to identify similarities and differences in the use of various politeness strategies used in refusal acts by native english speakers (nes) and armenian non-native english speakers (annes) with the aim of establishing the extent of cultural impact on pragmatic competence of annes. language data was collected among 24 armenian english speakers of high level of english proficiency and 15 american english speakers. a modified version of the discourse completion test (dct) developed by beebe, takahashi, and uliss-weltz (beebe et al., 1990) was used to collect data. along with considerable similarities in the use of politeness strategies in refusals between the two groups which indicate the high degree of pragmatic competence of annes, the analysis of the data also revealed some differences which attest to certain impact of the armenian culture on this competence. the differences are mainly observed in frequency of use and in the content of the same strategies used by the two groups. keywords: refusal acts, face threatening acts, politeness strategies, cross cultural studies, efl. introduction cross-cultural communication skills are required whenever people from different cultures and speaking different languages get to communicate with each other. getting invited or being offered or requested are common acts in our everyday life, and often times people feel the need to refuse such acts they  gohar.hovsepyan@ysu.am this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 01.07.2021 revised: 24.08.2021 accepted: 22.09.2021 © the author(s) 2021 culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 101 receive. as human beings, we have the want and expectations to be appreciated and respected. thus, it is important to acquire pragmatic knowledge of the communication style of the cultures with representatives of which one gets into contact, the english speaking culture in our case. one needs to know what refusal form is appropriate in a given situation, i.e. to develop deeper cultural awareness, as well as pragmatic competence in cross cultural communication. refusing should be expressed in a way not to offend the interlocutor and it is practiced by different politeness strategies. several studies have already testified to the existance of pragmatic transfer from native language (l1) to foreign language (l2), thus we do not set a goal to prove that such transfer takes place in non-native english speakers' communication style. the aim of this study is to investigate the extent of such sociocultural impact on the pragmatic competence of armenian foreign language speakers. our objective is to explore the cultural differences or similarities in making refusals between armenian and american cultures, specifically identifying similarities and differences in the use of politeness strategies in forming acts of refusal by u.s. native and armenian non-native english speakers. refusals were chosen for our investigation since they are intrinsically face threatening acts and call for certain mitigation strategies to redress threat to hearer’s face, i.e. the public image of the interlocutor. refusal is, by nature, one of the most offensive speech acts, and, it is apt to damage the interlocutor’s face if not performed politely. therefore, various politeness strategies are employed to cushion its negative impact. each language, however, realizes politeness differently. for example, being direct can be regarded as polite in a certain culture, but it might be considered impolite in another. hence, to avoid breakdowns in communication, it is important to explore how cultural background can affect one’s choice of language means and strategies in forming various speech acts, including acts of refusal and, ultimately, one's pragmatic competence in communicating in l2. this gains special importance today with current technical advancement and social media communication trends that make cross cross-cultural communication an integral part of our life. the material was collected through a total of 39 questionnaires based on a modified dct test, which elicited 72 refusals from armenian and 45 refusals from american english speakers. the questionnaire consisted of three invitations to persons of different social statuses to which the respondents were requested to refuse. thus the pragmatic factor of social status is another focus armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 culture studies 102 of our investigation. the relatively small sampling size allows for only limited generalizations of the results. nonetheless, a number of noteworthy patterns of certain similarities and differences were observed between the two cultures, which testify to the cultural impact on l2 use. refusal acts good communication requires not only linguistic knowledge, but also an understanding of social, cultural and other pragmatic factors in a situation. our choice of language means can make a big difference in maintaining relationships, conveying our intentions and expressing our feelings accurately. according to yule (1996), pragmatics has more to do with the analysis of what people mean by their utterances than what the words or phrases in those utterances might mean by themselves. this perspective then raises the question of what defines the choice of language means to form the speech acts we intend to perform. distance between interlocutors, cultural and social background, status, gender, educational level are only a few of the important pragmatic factors that influence the choice. searle and vanderveken define the speech act of refusal as follows: “the negative counterparts to acceptances are rejections and refusals. just as one can accept offers, applications, and invitations, so each of these can be refused or rejected” (searle, & vanderveken, 1985, p.195). according to merriamwebster dictionary (2005), refusal means expressing oneself as unwilling to accept, to do or comply with, or deny. therefore, refusal is a face threatening act. hence, there is a need to put politeness strategies into action in order to mitigate the threat, i.e. to soften what the hearer might regard as an infringement on him/her. the speech act of refusals represents one type of dispreferred response. refusals are one of the relatively small number of speech acts which can be characterized as a response to another’s act, rather than as an act initiated by the speaker (houck & gass, 1999, p. 2). they occur as negative responses to other acts such as requests, invitations, offers, and suggestions (ibid.). in response to requests, invitations, offers, and suggestions, acceptance or agreement are usually preferred, and refusing or rejecting are not. refusals or rejections can mean disapproval of the interlocutor’s idea and therefore, a threat to the interlocutors face, hence they are often formed indirectly or are accompanied by mitigation or explanation. on the other hand, acceptance or agreement tend to be formed by direct strategies. culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 103 refusals have been one of the most studied topics in pragmatics and are very important because of their communicative role in everyday social interaction. they are considered to be face-threatening acts because they contradict the listener’s expectations. as stated above, they are often realized through indirect strategies, thus they require a high level of pragmatic competence (chen, lei, & yanyin, 1995). they are considered to be a speech act by which “a speaker fails to engage in an action proposed by the interlocutor” (ibid., p. 121). furthermore, what is considered an appropriate refusal behavior may vary across cultures and pragmatic transfer is likely to occur as learners rely on their cultural values “in carrying out complicated and face-threatening speech acts like refusals (beebe et al., 1990, p. 68). therefore, appropriate understanding and production of refusals require a certain amount of culture-specific knowledge. the interlocutors are socially expected to know when to use the appropriate form of refusals in a certain context. depending on ethnicity and cultural-linguistic values, the speaker must know the appropriate form and its function. on the whole, refusals are complicated due to the fact that they are influenced by some social factors, namely, age, gender, level of education, social distance, and power (fraser, 1990; smith, 1998) and because they require sequences of negotiation. in addition, it is even hard to reject requests, suggestions, and offers in a foreign language due to the fact that misunderstandings may arise if one does not use pragmatic knowledge appropriately. more crucially, refusing others’ suggestion, offer and request without hurting their feelings is of great importance since the “inability to say ‘no’ clearly has led many non-native speakers to offend their interlocutors” (ramos, 1991). politeness strategies in refusal acts as discussed above, refusals are commonly believed to be delicate speech acts to perform, since positive responses such as acceptance and agreement are usually preferred. for this reason, refusals often involve various indirect strategies to be polite and avoid a failure in interpersonal relationships, which requires a high level of pragmatic competence (salazar-campillo, 2009). therefore, it is important to examine the concept of politeness in more detail in order to see how it may influence refusals. an important issue to be considered by speakers is to acknowledge and respect interlocutor’s individuality and freedom of choice and their system of values and beliefs. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 culture studies 104 in an early attempt to classify the realization of refusals, rubin (1983) claimed that there were the following 7 ways of refusing across a number of cultures: 1. be silent, hesitate, show a lack of enthusiasm; 2. offer an alternative; 3. postponement; 4. put the blame on a third party or something over which you have no control 5. avoidance; 6. general acceptance with excuses; 7. say what is offered is inappropriate. the most influential and best known study on refusal strategies, though, is beebe, takashaki and uliss-weltz’s pragmatic transfer in esl refusals (1990) with its famous taxonomy of these strategies. the authors examine how japanese learners of english refuse requests, invitations, offers and suggestions by means of a discourse completion test (dct). their classification is divided into semantic formulas, i.e., those expressions used to perform a refusal, and adjuncts, that is, expressions which accompany a refusal but which cannot by themselves be used to perform a refusal. on the basis of an analysis of native speaker refusals, beebe and takashaki were able to show that they are performed by means of fairly limited set of direct and indirect “semantic formulas”. individual refusals are made up of different selections from these formulas in accordance with the status and power relationships holding between speaker and hearer. semantic formulas with both components – main acts and adjuncts developed by beebe and takashaki are illustrated as follows: direct a. performative (e.g., “i refuse.”) b. nonperformative 1. “no” 2. negative willingness/ability (e.g., “i can’t.”; “i don’t think so.”) indirect a. statement of regret (e.g., “i’m sorry. . .”; “i feel terrible. . .”). b. wish (e.g., “i wish i could help you. . .”). c. excuse, reason, explanation (e.g., “my children will be home that night.”; “i have a headache.”). d. statement of alternative (e.g., “i’d rather. . .” ; “i’d prefer. . .”). culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 105 e. set condition for future or past acceptance (e.g., “if you had asked me earlier, i would have.”). f. promise of future acceptance (e.g., “i’ll do it next time”; ”i promise i’ll. . .” or “next time i’ll.” using “will” of promise or “promise”). g. statement of principle (e.g., “i never do business with friends.”). h. statement of philosophy (e.g., “one can’t be too careful.”). i. attempt to dissuade interlocutor (such as threat or statement of negative consequences to the requester e.g., “i won’t be any fun tonight.” to refuse an invitation). j. acceptance that functions as a refusal: 1. unspecific or indefinite reply, 2. lack of enthusiasm. k. avoidance: 1. non-verbal (silence, hesitation, inaction, physical departure), 2. verbal (topic switch, joke, repetition of part of request, etc., postponement (e.g., “i’ll think about it.”). adjuncts to a refusal do not form part of the refusal itself, but they are external modifications of the main refusal. a. statement of positive opinion/feeling or agreement (“that’s a good idea. . .”i’d love to. . .”). b. statement of empathy (e.g., “i realize you are in a difficult situation.”). c. pause fillers (e.g., “uhh”; “well”; “oh”; “uhm”). d. gratitude/appreciation. due to their face-threatening nature, refusals are especially sensitive, and a pragmatic breakdown in this act may easily lead to unintended offence and/or breakdown in communication. refusals by nature are complex; they are often negotiated over several turns and involve some degree of directness and indirectness, usually varying in the degree of directness and indirectness depending on the status and age of the interlocutors and the cultural context. according to houck and gass (1996), when one decides not to accept an initiated act, she/he can generally take three possible refusal approaches:  rejection,  postponement,  proposal of alternative. as houck and gass (1999) state, part of the complexity of refusals lies in the fact that they may involve a long negotiated sequence and, because they function as a second pair part, they preclude extensive planning on the part of armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 culture studies 106 the refuser. due to the complex nature of refusals as dispreferred seconds, refusals were not approached as a speech event involving a long negotiated sequence. cross-cultural study of refusal strategies mitigating threat to face cross-cultural studies on refusals show that different cultures perform refusals differently. their degree of directness in refusals, their sensitivity to social variables, and their performance in terms of the content of strategies might vary. several cross-cultural refusal studies have clearly shown that there are differences between the american and the non-american refusals in terms of the order, frequency, and the content of the semantic formulas and adjuncts. these studies suggest that in general, americans tend to be direct because they see directness as being honest and as an individual right to refuse (e.g., beebe et al.,1990; chang, 2009; chang, 2011; kwon, 2004). differences in clarity and content of reasons and excuses were also shown to exist between the americans and non-americans. reasons and excuses given for the refusal are often inappropriate from an american viewpoint because they are unclear or untrue (beebe et al., 1990; chang, 2009; chang, 2011; kwon, 2004). in american culture, if one lies or makes up a reason, one would lose face, but one does not lose face even if he/she refuses honestly as long as the interlocutor's feelings are taken into account and refusal is mitigated or negotiated for an acceptable alternative. this may be the reason why the excuse or reason for a direct refusal by americans is generally clear and honest. on the other hand, refusals in other cultures are less direct than the americans', as a direct refusal seems to threaten the hearer's face and thus damage relationship (e.g., beebe et al., 1990; chang, 2009; kwon, 2004). therefore, a direct refusal statement is often avoided, and instead a variety of other strategies (indirect and adjunct) are employed to maintain politeness. our findings reiterate these results in regard to the content of reason/excuse for refusals to invitations: americans tend to provide more honest reasons for refusals than armenians: e.g. 1. i would love to have dinner with you. i hope you know how much i enjoy spending time with you and how much i care about you. . .but after the last time with _________(your husband) i’m not sure if it’s a good idea for me to join you for this dinner party. what do you think? . . . how about if i culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 107 don’t join you for the party and instead we meet for a walk and lunch on sunday? (nes to friend) 2. alice, thank you for the invitation. i look forward to working with you once the contracts are signedbut our board of directors and our tax accountants have determined that accepting such individual gifts is inappropriate and possibly a violation of our corporate tax rules. let’s meet for coffee sometime and catch up. (nes to person of lower status) 3. thank you for the invitation. i would come with great pleasure, but my mother is coming from overseas and i need to collect her from the airport. wish you a nice and enjoyable evening. (annes to friend) as for sheer numbers of the use of either specific or general reasons, and the direct strategy of expressing negative ability (i can't, i am afraid i won’t be able to), there are no apparent differences in the two groups of responses. interestingly, though, our findings revealed a difference in the content of direct refusal acts formed by the two groups: if direct refusals expressed by negative ability were similarly used by the two groups, direct refusals expressed by the performative verbs refuse or turn down were observed only with armenian english speaking respondents: e.g. 1. i am really thankful for your invitation. but i am afraid i have to refuse, because i have some problems. i will be glad if you invite me next time. (annes to person of higher status) 2. dear mr. … i am very pleased that you have invited me too. it would be my pleasure to come, but i sincerely apologise to disappoint you. i have an important appointment that day. i will have to refuse this time. (annes to person of higher status) 3. i really appreciate it but i think for now i have to turn you down as i am and will be pressed for time in the near future. as soon as i am free, i will let you know. (annes to person of lower status) research findings also reveal a distinct difference in the use of politeness strategy of offering an alternative in refusal acts by the two groups (nes and armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 culture studies 108 annes): only 6 % of armenians as opposed to 38 % of americans included an offer of alternative in their refusals to invitations: e.g. 1. let’s talk over the possibilities of purchasing your business’s products in the afternoon sometime soon. for example, how about meeting next wednesday or thursday afternoon in my office or at the coffee shop downstairs. i’m free those days between 3:00 and 5:00. (nes to person of lower status) 2. when you have recovered from the party, let’s get together for coffee and catch up. do you think next thursday might work? (nes to a friend) 3. what if we two have lunch during the week at (the restaurant that we two love to attend).(annes to friend) notably, americans used the strategy of offering an alternative only in refusals to friends and persons of lower status but not to persons of higher status. instead of the strategy of offering an alternative, armenian english speakers used other adjuncts or politeness strategies more frequently compared to american speakers, including: a) the strategy of promise or vague promise of future acceptance: e.g. 1. i will be glad if you invite me next time. (annes to person of lower status) 2. maybe we can meet next time. (annes to friend) 3. as soon as i am free, i will let you know. (annes to person of lower status) b) the strategy of set condition for past acceptance: e.g. 1. if i had known it earlier, we would have cancelled all our plans so as to come to your party. (annes to person of higher status) 2. you should have told me earlier as i have already booked a table at a restaurant to celebrate my parent’s 25th wedding anniversary. (annes to person of higher status) c) the use of the adjunct of apology: e.g. culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 109 1. sorry dear, i wish i could make it, but i can’t. (annes to friend) 2. i am so sorry, but i am already invited to the wedding of my cousin. (annes to person of higher status) in order to mitigate the refusal, another common strategy – expressing a positive opinion or feeling is often used in americans' refusals (e.g., beebe et al.,1990; chang, 2009; chang, 2011; kwon, 2004). the analysis of the material of this research supports this finding – specifically 70% of americans versus 53% of armenians used this strategy to soften possible threat to interlocutor’s face caused by refusal to their invitation: e.g. 1. … i’ll have my assistant contact you in the next few weeks to set up a meeting to finalize the contract. thank you again for the invitation. i can tell you are a person of good taste—that is such a fine restaurant. (nes to inferior) 2. thank you! i’m honoured to be among the top executives invited to your home. that is wonderfully spontaneous of you and [wife] to host a party next sunday. i am afraid i cannot be so spontaneous. (nes to superior) 3. that sounds great! oh actually though, i think we got plans already. (nes to friend) despite the slight difference in numbers, there is no apparent difference in the use of form and content of this mitigating strategy in the refusals formed by armenian respondents: e.g. 1. i have guests today, otherwise i would accept your invitation with great plesure. (annes to inferior) 2. thank you very much for the invitation. i am honoured to be invited to the party and am very excited for having the chance to meet your spouse. unfortunately… (annes to superior) 3. that’s a really great idea! … i would love to visit you for sure but… (annes to friend) in regard to the use of the politeness strategy of adding gratitude/appreciation as an adjunct to the refusal act, this research finds almost similar use in percentage of the two groups, with americans using this armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 culture studies 110 strategy a little more frequently (62%) than armenians (44%). however, the distribution of this quantity is different in different situations, depending on social status. if armenians used gratitude in 58 % of refusals made to persons of lower status, 90 % of americans did so. on the other hand, less than 20 % of americans included gratitude in refusal acts made to friends, as opposed to 33 % of the refusals made to friends by armenians. as to the use of gratitude in refusals made to persons of higher status, it was found in 78% of refusals by americans and in 48% of refusals by armenians. thus, according to our results, americans rarely use gratitude as a politeness strategy when refusing friends, but will almost deffinitely include it in refusals made to persons of lower or higher status, whereas armenians tend to have less variation along social line and will typically include gratitude in their refusal as a politeness strategy in almost every second refusal (58%). in terms of americans’ sensitivity to relative social status, the studies show mixed results. beebe et al. (1990) found that americans refused differently based on whether the interlocutor was of equal or unequal status, however, kwon (2004) reported that american participants did not change their approach significantly according to the distance and power of interlocutors. our findings concur with the results produced by the study of beebe et al. (1990). for instance, our discussion above on americans’ use of the strategy of offering an alternative only with inferiors but not with superiors is one evidence supporting the claim of differences in nes’ refusal strategies depending on social status factor. regarding non-american’s sensitivity to relative social status, several patterns were reported. in some cultures, such as japanese and iranian, it appears that different refusal strategies are used depending on whether the social status of the interlocutor is high, equal, or low (beebe et al., 1990). in other cultures such as korean and mexican, it is reported that they are highly sensitive to a higher status person when refusing (félix-brasdefer, 2008; kwon, 2004). armenian respondents proved to be less sensitive to social status in terms of types of politeness strategies they used in refusals. the discussion of the gratitude strategy above is one evidence showing similar percentage of usage of this strategy to refuse people of different social statuses. however, the content of the same strategy often varied depending on that status: for instance, the same strategy of statement of positive opinion was different in content depending on whether the armenian english speaker refused a person of higher or lower status: e.g. culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 111 1. thank you for the invitation, but no need to take the trouble. we can discuss the issue at my office. (annes to person of lower status) 2. dear boss it would be a great honor for me to join your little party with my spouse. unfortunately… (annes to person of higher status) 3. thank you very much for the invitation. i am honoured to be invited to the party, and am very excited for having the chance to meet your spouse. unfortunately… (annes to person of higher status) in another cross-cultural study, nelson et al. (2002) investigated similarities and differences between egyptian arabic and american english refusals. results indicated that both groups use similar strategies with similar frequency in making refusals, counter to al-issa’s (2003) findings where jordanians used more indirect strategies than americans. the findings, however, suggest that although methods such as the dct may be appropriate for collecting pragmalinguistic data, they fail to reveal the sociopragmatic complexities of face-threatening acts (e.g. refusals). the egyptians indicated that they would not make refusals in some of these situations, like refusing an invitation from their boss. notably, in our research, it was an american respondent who refused to make a refusal to the invitation of the boss. thus, the sociopragmatic complexities that indicate the participant’s informed decision not to refuse an invitation from their boss cannot be revealed by using the dct alone. more recently, felix-brasdefer (2008) examined refusals in two sociocultural contexts of mexico and dominican republic, based on the same dct test method. the results showed that although situational variation was the norm between both groups, the mexicans used significantly more refusal strategies in relation to the status of interlocutors. it is, therefore, likely that l2 learners may rely on their language pragmatic knowledge to perform the target language refusals which may result in pragmatic failures. as discussed previously, several studies suggest that english learners' l2 pragmatic competency is clearly affected by their l1 pragmatic strategy use, and they appear to find the characteristics of american refusals problematic; for example, by not giving clear refusal statements and by providing reasons that could be interpreted as dishonest (bardovi-harlig & hartford, 1991; beebe et armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 culture studies 112 al., 1990; chang, 2009; chang, 2011; kwon, 2004). other factors that may affect l2 pragmatics include proficiency level, the length of residency in the target community, and the learner's first language (l1). there is mixed evidence that the higher proficiency-level of english learners will transform to a higher pragmatic competency in the l2 (houck, & gass, 1999). a single study by félix-brasdefer (2004) suggests that the length of residency in the target community affects the development of refusal strategies that are appropriate in the target language. according to félix-brasdefer (2004), learners who spent less than 5 months abroad tended to refuse directly and briefly, while the learners who spent 9 months or more in the target community demonstrated refusal strategies that were similar to the patterns of the native speakers. conclusion analysis of the results of the current research demonstrated many similarities in the use of politeness strategies by american and armenian english speakers in their refusals to invitations, especially in regard to the types of politeness strategies and adjuncts that they used to cushion intrinsic threat to the face of interlocutors by their refusals. however, the findings also revealed certain differences between the use of politeness strategies by the two groups, specifically: 1) in frequency of use of the same types of politeness strategies by representatives of nes and annes. for instance, more americans include the strategy of offering alternative in their refusals than armenians. on the other hand, more armenian respondents use the strategies of offering set condition for past acceptance, promise for future acceptance, and offering apology than american respondents. additionally, americans rarely use gratitude as a politeness strategy when refusing friends, but will almost definitely include it in refusals made to persons of lower or higher status, whereas armenians tend to have less variation along social line and will typically include gratitude in their refusal as a politeness strategy in almost every second refusal (58%); 2) in the content of one and the same strategy. for instance, americans tend to provide more honest reasons for refusals than armenians. besides, if direct refusals expressed by negative ability are similarly used by the two groups, direct refusals expressed by the performative verbs refuse or turn down are observed only with armenian english speaking respondents; culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 113 3) in the use of the same strategies along social line by the two groups. armenian respondents proved to be less sensitive to social status, using the same types of politeness strategies in refusals to persons of different status. however, the content of the same strategy often varied depending on that status, and this indicated commonness of usage by the two groups. to sum up, being a complex task, refusing requires a high level of communicative competence in a foreign culture. the findings of this research demonstrate that, even if not to a high degree, armenian english language learners’ own culture impacts this competence. in order to avoid pragmatic failure, speakers need to understand fully both socio-cultural strategies used by most native speakers and the rules for their appropriate implementation. consequently, learners’ exposure to the way refusals are realized in different contexts is of utmost importance in efl instructional settings. references al-issa, a. 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(1995). refusing in chinese. in gabriele kasper (ed.). pragmatics of chinese as native and target language (pp.119-163). manoa, hi: university of hawai’i press. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 culture studies 114 félix-brasdefer, j. c. (2004). interlanguage refusals: linguistic politeness and length of residence in the target community. language learning, 54, 587-653. félix-brasdefer, j. c. (2008). sociopragmatic variation: dispreferred responses in mexican and dominican spanish. journal of politeness research, 4, 81-110. fraser, b. (1990). perspectives on politeness. journal of pragmatics, 14 (2), 219-236. houck, n., & gass, s.m. (1996). non-native refusals: a methodological perspective. in s. gass, & j. neu (eds.). speech acts across cultures: challenges to communication in a second language. 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(1983). how to tell when someone is saying "no" revisited. in n. wolf son, & e. judd (eds.), sociolinguistics and language acquisition. (pp. 10-17). rowley, ma: newbury house. salazar-campillo, p. (2009). refusal strategies: a proposal from a sociopragmatic approach, revista electrónica de lingüística aplicada 8. retrieved from, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/41583825 searle, j., & van der veken, d. (1985). foundations of illocutionary logic. england: cambridge university press culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 115 smith, c. (1998). can adults “just say no?” how gender, status and social goals affect refusals. unpublished doctoral dissertation, university of south florida. yule, g. (1996). pragmatics. london: oxford university press. ամերիկացի եվ հայ անգլիախոսների մերժման ռազմավարությունների միջմշակութային քննություն գոհար հովսեփյան խնդրանքը, առաջարկը կամ հրավերը մերժելիս բնիկ և ոչ բնիկ անգլերեն խոսողների կողմից լսողի հասարակական վարկին հասցվող հնարավոր սպառնալիքը մեղմելու նպատակով մերժման ռազմավարությունների կիրառման բազմաթիվ ուսումնասիրություններ են կատարվել: սույն հետազոտությունը եղած ուսումնասիրություններին ավելացնում է հայ ոչ բնիկ անգլերեն խոսողների կողմից կիրառվող մեղմացուցիչ ռազմավարությունների համեմատությունը ամերիկացի բնիկ խոսողների կողմից կիրառվող ռազմավարությունների հետ: հետազոտությունը խնդիր է դնում բացահայտել ամերիկացի և հայ անգլերեն խոսողների կողմից մերժման ակտերում տարբեր քաղաքավարական ռազմավարությունների կիրառման միջև նմանություններն ու տարբերությունները՝ հայ անգլիախոսների գործաբանական հմտությունների վրա իրենց մշակույթի ազդեցության աստիճանը պարզելու նպատակով: լեզվական նյութը ձեռք է բերվել անգլերենի խորացված իմացությամբ 24 հայ և 15 ամերիկացի անգիախոսներից, որոնց խոսքի քննությունը դիսկուրսի լրացման թեստի (dct) կիրառմամբ բացահայտել է զգալի նմանություններ և տարբերություններ՝ վեր հանելով մի կողմից հայ անգլիախոսների գործաբանական հմտությունների բարձր աստիճանը և մյուս կողմից հայկական մշակույթի որոշակի ազդեցությունը խոսքում մերժման ռազմավարությունների դրսևորման վրա: ընդ որում՝ տարբերությունները հիմնականում դիտվում են միևնույն ռազմավարությունների կիրառման հաճախության և բովանդակության մեջ: բանալի բառեր. մերժման ակտեր, հասարակական վարկին սպառնացող ակտեր, քաղաքավարական ռազմավարություններ, միջմշակութային հետազոտություններ, անգլերենը որպես օտար լեզու: armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 72 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2022.18.2.072 sarcasm in social and commercial advertising: a pragmalinguistic perspective hayk danielyan yerevan state university modern social and commercial advertising systems devote a huge significance to the choice of the language used in various campaigns with the purpose to achieve maximum effectiveness of impact on the target audience. the current paper aims to uncover the pragmalinguistic peculiarities of language usage in attaining the above-mentioned goal through sarcasm. linguistic and extra-linguistic levels of analysis serve as key components for detecting the sarcastic nature of the language used in social and commercial advertisements as well as their impact on conveying the non-literal meaning of the text. in the discussed samples of advertising discourse, sarcasm is demonstrated as a creative and effective form of communication in terms of delivering the intended message of the campaign. this notion greatly contradicts the traditional view toward the usage of ironic language, particularly sarcasm, since it is believed to provoke bitter and caustic effects. keywords: sarcasm, pragmalinguistic function, social and commercial advertising, linguistic and extra-linguistic components, campaigns, creative language. introduction the study of linguistic and extra-linguistic peculiarities in determining the pragmatic function of sarcasm in social communication is vastly observable in western advertising systems and marketing strategies. the perception of sarcasm in that form of communication is greatly based on the lexical and syntactic levels of analysis which have been of less attention in practical and empirical research of sarcasm by various linguists and scholars (mcdonald, 1999; miron-spektor, efrat-treister, rafaeli, schwarz-cohen, 2011; kovaz, kreuz & riordan, 2013; peters, 2013; huang, gino & galinsky, 2015; thomson & filik, 2016; ghosh, fabbri & muresan, 2018). the current research  hdanielyan@gmail.com this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 27.08.2022 revised: 20.09.2022 accepted: 28.09.2022 © the author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 73 aims to make a reference to a number of examples of advertisements where linguistic and extra-linguistic components of the text are implemented to reach the desired sarcastic effect in social and commercial advertising campaigns. these components serve as pragmalinguistic properties of the language employed since their functions in the text are determined by co-textual and contextual factors and can be viewed as assisting means of perceiving sarcasm in the social spectrum. modern advertising strategies greatly focus on the catchiness of their headlines and body texts so they can make an impact on masses of people and target audiences by capturing their attention and involving them in the thought processing of the advertisement. consumers are all subjected to new advertising content every day, and sometimes it is incomprehensible how far that information can impact their decisions on a daily basis. in this respect, ironic and sarcastic advertisements play a key part in grabbing consumers’ attention for a number of reasons. first of all, it is of great importance to come up with a catchy and attention-grabbing headline that will make the viewer take some time and get to know the body of the advertisement. then, those advertisements usually make social references that need to be understood by the readers after processing the information of the content. this content generates tension in consumers’ minds that should be resolved quickly and helps to grab more attention to the ad and get the readers more involved in the message. consequently, it leads to positive and favorable attitudes towards the advertisement and the brand itself (how to exploit irony in the advertisement world). the model of ironic advertising represented in figure 1 is mostly based on the cognition of the readers and their awareness of the social reference of the text. nevertheless, not in all cases, the purpose of the language employed and the intended meaning of the advertisement can be absolutely cognizable by the target audience. in the current study, the given model will be tested with the help of the upcoming discussion of advertising samples to evaluate its relevance in terms of message delivery through sarcasm in social and commercial advertising. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 74 figure 1 ironic advertising impact model sarcasm as a means to deliver messages in social advertising in a study on irony and sarcasm in advertisements, lagerwerf (2007) discusses the probability of ironic and sarcastic advertising being incorrectly interpreted and publicly criticized (p. 1704). he also argues that sarcasm actually cannot be included in advertising because of its negative connotation (p. 1708), however, this statement is arguable for a number of reasons. firstly, sarcasm does not always rely on the positive meaning of the utterance to convey a negative message. then, advertising campaigns do not necessarily follow the ethics of politeness in terms of language usage. and finally, some advertising choices have proven their effectiveness through the creativity of sarcastic language. in a social advertisement by the national insurance institute of costa rica the speaker is telling the audience with a serious facial expression how to exceed the speed limit while driving a car (https://youtu.be/8godvjyr5g4). the detailed description given by the speaker who appears close-up in the video first arouses a weird sense of interpreting the literal meaning of the utterance. why would a serious person explain how to do something illegal like exceeding the speed limit of a car? however, as we continue watching the linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 75 video, we are represented in a zoomed-out perspective of the speaker where we notice that he misses one of his legs which is apparently caused by a car accident because of exceeding the speed limit. thus, in this example, the speaker absolutely means what he utters because he has already experienced that yet there is a nonliteral hidden meaning in the context where people are indirectly warned about the consequences of exceeding the speed limit while driving a car. now, let us just compare the impact index of a scenario where people are directly warned “do not exceed the speed limit!” and the mentioned social advertising strategy which is sarcastically representing what may happen to anyone if they decide to exceed the speed limit and indirectly warns them not to do so. the answer seems obvious since people usually tend to breach rules that are imperative with no visual explanation of why the rule should be followed. so, lagerwerf’s (2007) statements about the probability of ironic and sarcastic advertising being incorrectly interpreted can be challenged by the above-mentioned example where a creative usage of sarcasm in social advertising proves its effectiveness in delivering the message to the target audience and makes a bigger impact of a result. social advertisements have a great influence on any society’s collective decisions and have proved their effectiveness alongside the development of marketing strategies. the pragmalinguistic significance of the used language in the social advertising system is of notable importance and it is a fundamental part of its impact on public management. the more creative the advertising campaign is, the greater its efficacy in achieving the desired or intended result. in some cases, the creativity of the advertising strategy used is derived by means of verbal irony, that is by meaning the exact opposite of the literal meaning of the utterance. a quite influential example of it is the social advertising campaign by the world health organization devoted to world no armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 76 tobacco day (https://www.deviantart.com/gartier/art/no-tobaccoposter-2012-308867895). the expression “enjoy smoking” does not actually convey a message of wishing people to enjoy this bad habit but, in fact, it proposes a sobering and alerting non-literal message by means of verbal irony. now, the question is whether this example of verbal irony can also be sarcastic. the answer is positive if we consider the bitter and harsh impact of the statement on the reader. the sarcastic intention of this campaign is not to mock or make fun of smokers but it is to make the message of convincing them to give up smoking even stronger and hopefully achieve desirable outcomes. in this example, we also come across a creative usage of sarcastic language for better purposes than sarcasm is generally used and perceived. this strategy has come to prove its effectiveness in delivering simple messages than the one where people are warned about the negative effects of something bad by just an imperative statement. however, in this social advertising campaign, the text and its conveyed idea would not make such an impact on the reader if not for the illustrated x-ray picture of the blackened lungs of a smoker. the implicature of the statement merely is not a sufficient factor for the successfulness of the advertising strategy so in this case, linguistic and extralinguistic components complement each other for achieving the communicative goal of sarcasm. it is of great importance to understand sarcasm on co-textual and contextual levels of analysis by taking into consideration the notion that linguistic and extra-linguistic components of the language come together to serve as a whole text with one complete and united message. the pragmatic function of sarcasm is derived from a combination where different aspects of the text are complementary. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 77 in the following environmental social advertising, we come across another sarcastic statement that sends a strong message regarding the extermination of rhinos. the statement “the fine art of exterminating an entire species” appears sarcastic due to the ironic remark that the exterminating species of rhinos can serve as a special material for making fine art and its caustic effect on the readers as well (campaigns of the world). the sarcastic headline of the advertisement follows the purpose to capture more attention by means of an illogical proposition that readers might also find irrelevant without paying attention to the visual content. in this advertisement, the picture of the rhino is represented in a distorted and designed way aiming to demonstrate how unscrupulous people kill these extinct animals to exploit their horn material for commercial purposes, as a result of which exterminating a whole species of rhinos. the non-literal meaning of this social advertising campaign is “making art does not justify killing rhinos.” and it is delivered through a statement that overtly deems the opposite. the intended meaning of the utterance does contradict its literal proposition and, thus, creates a more captivating structure for viewers’ involvement. so, if we evaluate the analyzed examples of sarcasm in the social advertising campaigns in terms of the ironic advertising model, it is apparent that their headlines are extremely captivating since they state something very unusual and irrelevant to the viewers, e.g., “how to exceed the speed limit?”, “enjoy smoking” and “the fine art of exterminating an armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 78 entire species”, thus they capture more attention. in terms of the content of the advertisements, the viewers naturally try to resolve the issues as they do not sound relevant to them. the more the tension grows, the more attention they will pay to the advertisements, and the involvement in decoding the message will dramatically increase. as a matter of fact, all of these stages may function as they are supposed to, however, not all cases may lead to a favorable attitude considering the negative context of the message. yet, if the context is negative it does not necessarily mean that its effect is less than that of a positive context. in fact, using sarcastic implicature to deliver your message to the target audience indulges a higher probability of achieving the anticipated results of the campaign. sarcasm as a creative strategy in commercial advertising western advertising campaigns usually apply a creative language and quite often they undertake the policy of making an insignificant product presentation into a hilarious advertising idea. there have always been controversies in the discussions of the application of sarcastic language for the creativity of the message. for instance, in their book “the seven principles for making marriage work” gottman and silver (1999) discuss the relevance of sarcastic remarks in healthy relationships and consider them toxic solutions in terms of language choices. meanwhile, in a latest study about the creativity of sarcastic language huang, gino, and galinsky (2015) conducted four experiments to prove how sarcasm impacts the increase of creativity of both parties of conversation. thus, the debate around the purpose of using sarcastic language can be relative to how and when people tend to appear sarcastic in social situations. so, to have a more tangible understanding of whether sarcasm delivers a more caustic and toxic message or it does actually foster effective communication through its creative solutions to language several examples of commercial advertising campaigns are analyzed where sarcasm plays a crucial role in making an impact on the level of involvement of the viewers in understanding the intended meaning of the advertising campaign. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 79 in the following example of the cough medicine advertisement, the sarcastic intention of the statement is revealed by the word “cough” in parenthesis. the expression’s literal meaning is contradicted by its non-literal implicature of the referent not being “just a friend”. the syntactic structure of the sentence is conditioned by the interpretation of its non-literal meaning as well as the explanation of the advertisement at the bottom of the picture (https://www.creative-copywriter.net/blog/copywriting-samples/). the utterance “she’s just a friend” might not be of great importance in this advertisement if we do not consider the general context of the reference. the creativeness of the utterance is accompanied by the intention to pretend a situation where “cough” may imply a specific pragmatic meaning which will lead to an undesirable effect for the speaker. this is where we detect the sarcastic proposition of the utterance since the effect might be reversed which means that the victim of the used sarcastic utterance may be the speaker himself/herself. therefore, it is important to evaluate all contextual elements of the reference including all the lexical components represented in the text to perceive the intended sarcastic meaning. another sarcastic solution to the language used is represented in the following commercial advertising campaign that in fact follows the purpose of increasing the social awareness of global warming. the british ice-cream company wall’s came up with the idea of advertising an empty icecream cup with the statement “we’re sorry” as an alerting message about the global warming issue (http://www.conseilsmarketing.com/actus/les-publicites-les-plus-creatives-surla-canicule). the sarcastic intention of the text is conditioned by the literal meaning of the utterance that does not oppose the non-literal implicature. it is in the company’s interest to be actually sorry for not being able to provide their customers with their favorite ice cream, thus the illocutionary act of apology is sincere, yet in reality, they do not have any issues with producing ice cream. coming from this, we can see that the intention of the advertising campaign is armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 80 not only to spread awareness about climate change but also to increase the company’s reputation by promoting issues that are of global importance. this creative strategy uses a sarcastic main line to provoke the judgment of the readers toward the topic they focus on and increases their involvement in the message. at first sight, it really makes sense to associate the global shortage of ice cream with climate change, but when you give it a second thought you realize that global warming is not necessarily related to the production of ice cream and the freezer industry, so the advertising campaign relies on the associations of the readers of something cold melting because of something hot, and it apparently achieves the desired effect. in this regard, sarcasm plays a fulfilling role in making the statement more relatable to the actual meaning they want to convey and for this reason, it leads to a more favorable and positive attitude toward the advertisement and the company regardless of the above-mentioned comments on the relevance of the topic. commercial advertising strategies do not always use sarcastic remarks to deliver the intended message of the campaign. sometimes, they can also demonstrate a visual representation of the idea that conveys a sarcastic proposition. one of the giant companies in the motor vehicle industry worldwide volkswagen came up with an advertising campaign idea to introduce its new precision parking system where the cars are allegorically replaced by animals, specifically, fish inside plastic bags filled with water and a hedgehog (nova marketing insights). linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 81 it is clearly visible in this picture that the plastic bags filled with water are intact even though they are in close proximity to the hedgehog thorns. this is a metaphor that implies the idea of perfect parking precision where the hedgehog is a volkswagen car and the fish are other brands. the ironic implication of the advertisement is conditioned by the choice of a hedgehog no matter its sharp quills that can easily pierce the plastic bags. however, that choice appears to be sarcastic as well, at least for two reasons. firstly, the parking system is introduced to be so precise that even the hedgehog’s long quills do not touch the easily penetrable bags, and then, the plastic bags filled with water with fish inside allegorize the weakness of their rival companies and mock their parking systems. as a result, the sarcastic intention is revealed by the viewers’ competence in interpreting the pragmatic context of the topic and deducting logical conclusions from the visual content alongside two descriptive lines: “precision parking” and “park assist by volkswagen”. conclusion the analyzed examples of commercial advertising campaigns demonstrate how sarcasm can stimulate the creativity of the language employed in terms of delivering non-literal implications through lexical and syntactic components of the text, the pragmatic characteristics of the utterance, and the interpretation of the visual content as a text. the purpose of using sarcastic language may still be questionable for different reasons, yet its impact on the creativeness of effect in social and commercial advertising strategies is undeniable: • sarcastic headlines succeed in capturing the attention of readers, • sarcastic content generates more tension to resolve seemingly irrelevant propositions, • the process of resolving the issue of the advertisement increases the readers’ involvement in deciphering the hidden message, • decoding the message creates a friendly environment for the perception and approval of the intended meaning of the given advertisement. thus, the given points being tested in the discussed samples of social and commercial adverting discourse come together to represent an upgraded version of the ironic advertising model which is visualized in figure 2 below. the introduced model is based on the pragmalinguistic function of sarcasm within the linguistic and extra-linguistic levels of analysis and opposes the traditional perception of sarcastic language in achieving an effective result among the target audience. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 82 figure 2 sarcastic advertising impact model references ghosh, d., fabbri, a.r., & muresan, s. 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(2013, december). 12 juicy copywriting samples to feast your creative brain on! retrieved june 26, 2022. սարկազմը սոցիալական եվ կոմերցիոն գովազդներում. լեզվագործաբանական մոտեցում հայկ դանիելյան ժամանակակից սոցիալական և կոմերցիոն գովազդային համակարգերը մեծ կարևորություն են տալիս օգտագործվող լեզվական տարրերի ընտրությանը տարբեր գովազդային արշավներում՝ նպատակ ունենաhttps://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/2507 https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/2507 https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/2507 https://campaignsoftheworld.com/print/most-powerful-social-issue-ads-2019/ https://medium.com/nova-marketing-insights/how-to-exploit-irony-in-the-advertisement-world-3a33768c729c. http://www.conseilsmarketing.com/actus/les-publicites-les-plus-creatives-sur-la-canicule http://www.conseilsmarketing.com/actus/les-publicites-les-plus-creatives-sur-la-canicule https://www.deviantart.com/gartier/art/no-tobacco-poster-2012-308867895 https://medium.com/nova-marketing-insights/how-to-exploit-irony-in-the-advertisement-world-3a33768c729c https://medium.com/nova-marketing-insights/how-to-exploit-irony-in-the-advertisement-world-3a33768c729c https://youtu.be/8godvjyr5g4 https://youtu.be/8godvjyr5g4 https://www.creative-copywriter.net/blog/copywriting-samples/ https://www.creative-copywriter.net/blog/copywriting-samples/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 84 լով հասնելու առավելագույն ներգործության արդյունավետության թիրախային լսարանի նկատմամբ։ սույն աշխատանքը նպատակ ունի սարկազմի միջոցով բացահայտել լեզվի գործածության գործաբանական առանձնահատկությունները: վերլուծության լեզվական և արտալեզվական մակարդակները ծառայում են որպես հիմնական բաղադրիչներ սոցիալական և կոմերցիոն գովազդներում օգտագործվող լեզվի սարկաստիկ բնույթը բացահայտելու համար, ինչպես նաև դրանց ազդեցությունը տեքստի ոչ բառացի իմաստը փոխանցելիս: գովազդային խոսույթի քննարկված նմուշներում սարկազմը դրսևորվում է որպես հաղորդակցության ստեղծագործական և արդյունավետ ձև՝ գովազդային արշավի համար նախատեսված ուղերձը տեղ հասցնելու առումով։ այս հասկացությունը մեծապես հակասում է հեգնական խոսքին վերաբերող ավանդական տեսակետին, մասնավորապես՝ սարկազմի օգտագործմանը, քանի որ ենթադրվում է, որ այն ունենում է դառը և խայթող ազդեցություն։ բանալի բառեր․ սարկազմ, լեզվագործաբանական նշանակություն, սոցիալական և կոմերցիոն գովազդներ, լեզվական և արտալեզվական բաղադրիչներ, արշավներ, ստեղծագործ խոսք։ armenian folia anglistika – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english (since 2005) and yerevan state university (since 2015) aims at fostering research of the english language, literature and culture linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 57 gender differences in verbal and nonverbal aggression anna knyazyan  yerevan state university liza marabyan ** european university of armenia gender differences permeate every aspect of human personality and appearance, and dictate how men and women should act, think and behave. gender embodies a pattern of relations that evolves over time to define male and female, masculinity and femininity, concurrently structuring and regulating people’s relation to society. gender decides what is expected, permitted and valued in a woman or a man in a given context. this paper discusses male and female aggression in political debates with a special focus on the recent debate held on 9 th september 2021 in canada. the analyses carried out through the methods of content, discourse and pragmalinguistic analyses, show that aggression is frequently categorized as a social behavior, and thus falls within a set of criteria depending on the roles that people occupy. in the world today, there is an increase in the use of communicative aggression, both verbal and non-verbal in the political arena. aggression is widely applied in political communication where the main purpose is to fight the opponent and get the attention of the audience and voters. male politicians are expected to be verbally and nonverbally more aggressive than women while female politicians perceived as less aggressive and considered to be better performers. however, this assumption remains an area of contention. keywords: communicative aggression, verbal and non-verbal aggression, political debate, political leaders. introduction gender roles and expectations are socially constructed and learned. they are likely to change over time and they differ within and between cultures. some stereotypes about gender differences are common to all cultures such as ideas  annaknyazyan@ysu.am ** marabyanliza@gmail.com this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 25.04.2022 revised: 13.05.2022 accepted: 20.05.2022 © the author(s) 2023 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2023.19.1.057 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 linguistics 58 about aggression and force which are considered as a distinguishing feature of males, and weakness, obedience, and sensuality as characteristic feature of females (knyazyan, 2016). according to west and zimmerman (1987) gender is not something we are born with, and not something we have, but something we do, something we perform (butler, 1990). we are surrounded by gender myth since early childhood. it is present in conversation, humor, and conflict, and it is the key to explain everything from driving styles to food preferences. gender is rooted so deeply in every aspect of society that it seems to us to be completely natural. the world is filled with ideas about gender – and these ideas are so usual that we assume that they are true. gender is central to our understanding and seems natural, and beliefs about gender seem to be evident truths. it goes without saying that gender issues are opposed with the problem of gender stereotypes and clichés in society (knyazyan, 2016). in the world today, there is an increase in the use of communicative aggression, both verbal and non-verbal. this phenomenon often takes place in political communication. the main purpose of this type of communication is to fight the opponent and get the attention of the audience and voters (wasike, 2019). the aim is achieved by painting a positive image of oneself and opponent negatively. verbal aggression agrees with aggressive language and it is important to note that aggressiveness in the language is a type of communication in which leaders express their needs and feelings with little or no regard to the feelings and needs of other people. aggressive language may be polite or rude or somewhere in between (nau & stewart, 2019). aggression from men and women is triggered by different factors. within the political context, it is expected that the political communication of women should be competitive and very assertive so that people can take it seriously but it should also be feminine enough so that it does not violate the stereotypes of the nurturing and cooperative female (grebelsky-lichtman, 2015). on the contrary, it may be more acceptable for men to be verbally aggressive with no stereotypes expected of them. the phenomenon of aggression as a socio-cultural problem the present civilization has become the civilization of violence. violence shows itself in many branches of life: the family environment, schools, work places, various institutions, everyday interpersonal contacts. it seems that it has replaced other forms of usual communication. shouts have replaced the talk. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 59 for many people it seems, that showing aggression will help them in obtaining the purpose. therefore, it is visible in all social circles. aggression is defined by social psychologists as behavior that is meant to harm another person who does not wish to be harmed (baron & richardson, 1994). because it involves the perception of intent, what looks like aggression from one point of view may not look that way from another, and the same harmful behavior may or may not be considered aggressive depending on its intent. intentional harm is, however, perceived as worse than unintentional harm, even when the harms are identical (ames & fiske, 2013). the type or level of intent that underpins violent conduct distinguishes two basic categories of aggression, each of which is driven by quite different psychological processes. emotional or impulsive aggression refers to hostility that is motivated primarily by impulsive emotions and occurs with little deliberation or intent. emotional aggression is the result of the severe negative feelings we are experiencing at the time we aggress, and it is not meant to have any positive consequences. instrumental or cognitive aggression, on the other hand, is deliberate and planned aggressiveness. instrumental aggression is a type of violence that is more cognitive than affective, and it can be absolutely cold and calculated. instrumental aggression is aimed to harm in order to acquire something, such as attention, money, or political influence (bushman & anderson, 2001, p. 29). aggression can be both physical and nonphysical. physical aggressiveness is defined as aggression that involves physically injuring people, such as punching, kicking, stabbing, or shooting them. nonphysical aggression includes verbal aggression (yelling, screaming, swearing, and name calling) and relational or social aggression, which is defined as “intentionally harming another person’s social relationships”, such as gossiping, excluding others from our friendship, or giving others the “silent treatment” (crick & grotpeter, 1995). nonverbal aggression is also designed to cause harm to individuals. verbal and nonverbal aggression in canadian leaders’ debates the political leaders’ debate was held at the canadian museum of history in gatineau, que. in canada, it was the first and sole english-language debate held within the election campaign of 2021 ahead of the elections in the same year (capenter, 2021). the participants in the debate were annamie paul, yves-françois blanchet, justin trudeau, erin o’toole and jagmeet singh (syed, 2021). this was a typical debate displaying an example of the verbal and armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 linguistics 60 non-verbal aggression often seen in political debates where both men and women were involved. the debate featured different political leaders in canada with the green party leader annamie paul being the only woman on stage (capenter, 2021). the debate was one of those national debates held in canada before the 2021 elections to help the electorate hear what the leaders contesting for elections in the country had in store and probably from that, be in a position to make an informed choice on whom to vote in. the debate gave the only woman participating an opportunity to show what it means to be less aggressive and what helps to achieve in such political conversations where emotions tend to be high. at large, the use of verbal and non-verbal aggression is a strategy employed by many politicians in communication when debating with their opponents (dumitrescu, 2016). politicians in canada were not different because the mentioned one referring to the 2021 election campaign in which four men and one woman faced each other was a fierce exchange of words and ideas (syed, 2021). being the only woman, the first person of jewish ancestry and also the first black person on that stage, annami paul was compelled to apply wit in order to shine in a debate where men were the majority and not to forget that all of them were white people. annami paul was described by most analysts as a calm and a straight shooter on the stage. these traits are in line with carli (2001) who states that for female politicians, verbally aggressive behavior is considered gender inappropriate. these qualities can be understood as having been well calculated to present a certain image that would win the hearts of the audience and the electorate. female politicians are deemed to be having more expressive and warmer traits such as cautiousness, compassion, gentleness and sensitivity (nau & stewart, 2019). therefore, annami paul could have been trying to act or present the “normal” behavior for a woman politician. such norms and perceptions tend to constrain the discourse of female politicians. every time she spoke throughout the debate, she called for collaboration, justice and equitable representation. this was not a simple task for her. when speaking on leadership and accountability paul said: i have said before and i'll say again tonight that i do not believe that mr. trudeau is a real feminist. a feminist doesn’t continue to push strong women out his party, when they are just trying to serve. and i will say their names linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 61 tonight and thank them. thank you jane philpott, thank you jody wilson-raybould, thank you celina caesar-chavannes. i'm here tonight thanks to the work that you have done. i am the only woman other than elizabeth may to be on this platform in the past 18 years. the liberal party has never had a woman leader. i think it’s time for the party to examine its priorities. (syed, 2021) this was not the first time paul had spoken out about trudeau's position as a feminist. during a press conference in june, she told reporters that he was no ally and no feminist (boisvert, 2021). in agreement with nau & stewart (2019), grebelsky-lichtman & katz (2020) state that feminine communal features of political leaders principally define four dimensions which include emotional communication, empathy, interpersonal sensitivity and kindness. the psychologically associated nonverbal displays of emotional communication encompass a communicative voice of affection that reveals their emotional condition and creates sentimental communication that inspires listening, exerts influence on perceptions of trustfulness, and increases personal links. trudeau’s respond to paul was: i think ms. paul, you'll perhaps understand that i won't take lessons on caucus management from you. (syed, 2021) to which paul replied with a smirk on her face: i will not take his lessons. perhaps the most iconic moment was when she invited blanchet to get educated about systemic racism. when he interrupted her she put out her right hand and without looking at him said: this is my time, sir. it was a moment akin to now us vice-president kamala harris telling her opponent mike pence in the 2020 debate i’m speaking. blanchet responded to paul’s polite retort: it’s a nice time to insult people. paul responded: that was not an insult. it was an invitation to get educated. in-between these memorable moments, paul introduced herself cold and calculated. although relatively less aggressive, annami paul did not completely rule out aggression from her reactions to questions asked and her responses to them. her nonverbal communication especially her facial expressions and smiles made her male opponents jittery as they felt beaten in their own game. she combined her composure, calmness and well-calculated statements with https://www.narcity.com/canada-major-parties-have-highest-percentage-of-gender-diverse-candidates-ever armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 linguistics 62 gestures and facial expressions that as observed, were not meant to give her opponents comfort. nau & stewart (2019) argue that in politics verbal aggression is considered to be professionally appropriate for men and women politicians. this implies that any politician be it a man or a woman is expected to apply a certain level of aggression in their behavior and communication in order to meet the communication expectations of most people. not all female politicians exercise restraint in their use of aggressive language. the debate in which annami paul took part was a representation of what most political debates featuring men and women look like. men prefer aggression to assert their authority, but women prefer to demonstrate their knowledge by their vocabulary choices (knyazyan, 2016). however, there are many other debates that are different with women refusing to play along with the norms. for example, in a certain study on election coverage in canada, the speech of female politicians was characterized as being more aggressive when compared to the speeches of male politicians (wasike, 2019). reporters used more negative and aggressive communicative verbs such as attack for describing the speech of female politicians. the study from canada is evidence that there is no clear-cut line on who should be aggressive because both female and male politicians can display aggression. this observation lends support to the statement by nau & stewart (2019) that both male and female politicians can use verbal and non-verbal aggression in order to tackle their opponents during debates. for example, in the course of the 2021 elections debate in canada, annami paul asked blanchet to get knowledge about systemic racism. seemingly she needed to sound strong so that her opponents would also respect her and give her space. when blanchet attempted to interrupt her, she stretched out her right hand and while looking away from him said, this is my time, sir (capenter, 2021). this is one of the times in the debate where annami paul seemed to display an element of aggression because it was required to defend her position, statements and beliefs. her statement directed at her male opponent suggested that he was ignorant, and uneducated about issues of racism. this can be termed as negative campaigning based on the definition of lau & pomper (2004) who state that negative campaigning is to talk about the opponent, criticize his or her programs, qualifications and accomplishments with the aim of exposing their lack of capability. if this definition is credible, then both annami and the male debaters were engaged in aggression and negative campaigning. most of the time, annami paul came out as a polite and cautious speaker and many people linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 63 took that for lacking aggression. however, her behavior could be challenged because politeness does not always remain within the realm of etiquette and manners, because beautiful messages used to flatter somebody may also have unrestrained, negative outcomes. this leads us to the conclusion that there are various ways of categorizing aggression. verbal and non-verbal aggression and effectiveness in political debates having examined the pattern of verbal and non-verbal aggression between men and women in politics, it is important to evaluate the benefit that aggression adds to the political debater. as already stated, annami paul debated with four men, all of whom displayed a high level of verbal aggression directed at fellow male debaters as well as the only lady on the stage (syed, 2021). compared to her, the level of verbal and nonverbal aggression displayed by her male opponents was higher than hers. this was expected because in most cases, aggressive behavior is mostly associated with males than females. paul’s rebuke of justin trudeau for not moving faster to address sexual harassment in the canadian armed forces stands out as the most memorable moment of the debate. trudeau argued that his government had no choice but to follow the process. the liberal leader acknowledged that “it’s unsatisfactory to say we’re relying on process in this. we just want to have easy answers but this is not an issue with easy answers. you have to fall back on process”. the result of the debate show that male debaters were rated lower compared to annami paul because their communication was not persuasive and people perceived them to be ineffective in communication. as stated by bandwart (2010), men are perceived to be having instrumental traits that cause them to appear more assertive, tough, aggressive and decisive. this statement was evidently noticeable in the debate because all the male debaters came out as aggressive since they displayed apparent loss of patience, sparred, made use of agitated hand gestures, spoke over each other, displayed frustration through facial expressions, and were evidently in a hurry to speak their minds (carpenter, 2021). ndp leader jagmeet singh said: the only reason to call an election is a selfish one. to gain more power. that was not the right thing to do. (carpenter, 2021) armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 linguistics 64 trudeau, who faced hostile protesters opposed to vaccines during campaign stops in the days leading up to wednesday's debate, stood his ground, arguing as he had since the start of the campaign that canadians deserved a say on how the country could get out of the pandemic. viewers can see how deep the differences are in our positions on how the pandemic should be dealt with, he said. trudeau got in one great zinger on conservative leader erin o’toole near the end: mr. o’toole, who says he wants to get all of canada vaccinated to 90 per cent in the coming two months, can’t even convince his own candidates to get vaccinated to 90 per cent. (carpenter, 2021) when o’toole attacked trudeau for failing to get the two michaels, kovrig and spavor, out of chinese detention, trudeau shot back: if you want to get the michaels home you do not simply lob tomatoes across the pacific. that is what mr. harper tried for a number of years and didn’t get anywhere. (carpenter, 2021) o’toole brought up canada’s failure to get all canadian people and allies out of afghanistan, saying: canadians should never leave behind people who are at risk because they helped us, then turned to trudeau and scorched him: what did mr. trudeau do? you called an election, sir. you put your own political interest ahead of the interest of thousands of people. leadership is about putting others first, not yourself, mr. trudeau. (carpenter, 2021) the behavior and inability of the male politicians to impress the audience with their debating skills find support in the work of jordan-jackson et al., (2008) who state that using verbal aggression hinders one from being effective in persuasion because it is socially inappropriate and potentially destructive and that makes the source of the message to be perceived as lacking credibility. people who are verbally aggressive are considered to lack competence in addressing an issue that is substantive (wasike, 2019). they are also seen to be linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 65 less trustworthy because it is assumed that they have undesirable character traits. although this notion has been disputed, evidence from various debates shows that highly aggressive behavior dents the image of the aggressor in the eyes of the audience. in the canada elections debate, the woman politician (annami paul) was perceived to be a better performer than her male counterparts because she was less aggressive and her communication and self-expression were better. she was more effective because by reducing her aggression, she managed to organize her ideas, maintain focus and clarity of mind and listen keenly to the opponents before responding. as the male politicians bickered about afghanistan, she refused to join them in bickering and helped them to see the bigger picture, something that helped her earn more points in the eyes of the audience (carpenter, 2021). when the men criticized each other’s proposals on climate, annami paul shot them down and dissuaded them from sticking to their approaches but instead required them to collaborate as they did in the first days of the pandemic. conclusion generally speaking, men and women talk differently although there are varying degrees of masculine and feminine speech characteristics in each of us. but men and women speak in particular ways mostly because those ways are associated with their gender. male politicians are verbally and non-verbally more aggressive than women. society expects female politicians to be less aggressive when compared to men. however, this remains an area of contention. although annami paul sounded less aggressive, she still applied verbal and non-verbal aggression, albeit at a lower level. she was rated the best performer due to her composure and little aggression which aided her ability to communicate and express herself. at large, verbal and non-verbal aggression have the effect of reducing the effectiveness of the aggressor when it comes to performance in political debates. thus, it may be concluded that high levels of verbal and non-verbal aggression reduce the effectiveness of the speaker, whereas less aggression increases the debater’s ability to communicate properly. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 linguistics 66 references ames, d. l., & fiske, s.t. (2013). international harms are worse, even when they’re not. psychological science, 24 (9), 1755-1762. anderson, c. a., & bushman, b. j. (2002). human aggression. annual review of psychology, 53, 27–51. baron, r. a., & richardson, d. r. (1994). human aggression. new york: plenum press. bandwart, m. c. (2010). gender and candidate communication: effects of stereotypes in the 2008 election. american behavioral scientist, 54, 265– 283. boussalis, c., coan, t., holman, m., & müller, s. (2021). gender, candidate emotional expression, and voter reactions during televised debates. american political science review, 115 (4), 1242-1257. butler, j. (1990). gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. london: routledge. carli, l. (2001). gender and social influence. journal of social issues, 57, 725–741. crick, n. r., & grotpeter, j. k. (1995). relational aggression, gender, and social-psychological adjustment. child development, 66 (3), 710-722. dumitrescu, d. (2016). nonverbal communication in politics: a review of research developments, 2005–2015. american behavioral scientist, 60 (14), 1656–1675. grebelsky-lichtman, t., & katz, r. (2020). gender effect on political leaders’ nonverbal communicative structure during the covid-19 crisis. international journal of environment research and public health, 17, 7776-7789. grebelsky-lichtman, t. (2015). the role of verbal and nonverbal behavior in televised political debates, journal of political marketing, 15 (4), 362– 387. https://doi.org/10.1080/15377857.2014.959688 grebelsky-lichtman, t. (2010). the relationship of verbal and nonverbal behavior to political stature: the political interviews of israel’s prime minister ariel sharon. journal of political marketing, 9 (4), 229–253. jordan-jackson, f., yang, l., rancer, a., & infante, d. (2008). perceptions of males’ and females’ use of affirming and non-affirming messages in an interpersonal dispute: you’ve come a long way baby?” western journal of communication, 72, 239–258. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 67 knyazyan a, (2016). male and female profanity in english anecdotes. armenian folia anglistika, 12 (2), 27–37. doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2016.12.2.027 lau, r., & pomper, g. (2004). negative campaigning: an analysis of u.s. senate elections. lanham, md: rowman & littlefield. nau, c., & stewart, c. (2018). effects of gender and verbal aggression on perceptions of u.s. political speakers. journal of language aggression and conflict, 6 (1), 127–148. wasike, b. (2019). gender, nonverbal communication, and televised debates: a case study analysis of clinton and trump’s nonverbal language during the 2016 town hall debate. international journal of communication, 13, 251–276. sources of data carpenter, l. (2021). did green party leader annamie paul win last night’s debate? in cult. retrieved january 10, 2022. syed, f. (2021). annamie paul was the unexpected hero of the leaders' debate. in maclean’s. retrieved january 05, 2022. boisvert, n. (2021, jun 16). green leader annamie paul says attempt to force her out driven by racism, sexism. in cbc news. retrieved january 10, 2022. խոսքային եվ ոչ խոսքային ագրեսիա. գենդերային տարբերություններ աննա կնյազյան լիզա մարաբյան գենդերային տարբերությունները թափանցում են մարդու անհատականության և արտաքինի բոլոր ոլորտները և թելադրում, թե ինչպես պետք է գործեն, մտածեն և վարվեն տղամարդիկ և կանայք: գենդերային տարբերությունների մասին որոշ կարծրատիպեր ընդհանուր են բոլոր մշակույթների համար, օրինակ, ագրեսիայի և ուժի մասին պատկերացումները համարվում են տղամարդկանց տարբերակիչ հատկանիշ, իսկ թուլությունը, հնազանդությունը և զգայականությունը՝ կանանց բնորոշ հատկանիշ։ ագրեսիան հաճախ դասակարգվում է որպես սոցիալական վարքագիծ և, հետևաբար, կարևորվում են մի շարք չափանիշներ՝ կախված մարդկանց կատարած դերերից: դժվար է համեhttps://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2016.12.2.027 https://cultmtl.com/2021/09/did-green-party-of-canada-leader-annamie-paul-win-last-nights-debate-justin-trudeau-yves-francois-blanchet https://cultmtl.com/2021/09/did-green-party-of-canada-leader-annamie-paul-win-last-nights-debate-justin-trudeau-yves-francois-blanchet https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/federal-leaders-debate-listening-to-annamie-paul/ https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/annamie-paul-emergency-meeting-reaction-1.6068280 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/annamie-paul-emergency-meeting-reaction-1.6068280 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 linguistics 68 մատել, թե որքան ագրեսիվ կարող է լինել ինչ-որ մեկը, քանի որ յուրաքանչյուր ոք հանդես է գալիս տարբեր միջավայրում և տարբեր հանգամանքներում: սույն հոդվածում քննարկվում է տղամարդկանց և կանանց ագրեսիան քաղաքական բանավեճում՝ ուշադրության կենտրոնում պահելով 2021 թ. սեպտեմբերի 9-ին կանադայում տեղի ունեցած քաղաքական բանավեճը: բանալի բառեր՝ հաղորդակցական ագրեսիա, խոսքային և ոչ խոսքային ագրեսիա, քաղաքական բանավեճ, քաղաքական առաջնորդներ: kazm.cdr acts of persuasion in jane austen’s novels the act of persuasion has been the concern of a vastnumber of psychologists and linguists who have attempted to discover the peculiar features and the necessary conditions for its effectiveness. it is defined as a conscious, intended attempt of an individual to change the attitude, belief or behaviour of another individual or a group of individuals through the transmission of some message1. whenever there is some change in favour of the message, the process of persuasion can be viewed as successful. both attitudes and beliefs are non-observable cognitive states, and we make inferences about an individual’s attitudes and beliefs from the verbal statements or overt behaviour. attitudes and beliefs reflect the psychological processes going on in an individual. on the other hand, behaviour changes, including changes in the nervous system, and verbal statements are easily observable and overt. moreover, getting an individual to admit somebody’s attitude or belief is far easier than making the same individual change his behaviour (scheidel, 1985). the present article is an attempt to give an insight into jane austen’s characters in the light of persuasion in jane austen’s four major novels: “mansfield park”, “emma”, “pride and prejudice” and “persuasion”. once virginia wolf wrote about jane austen “of all great writers, jane austen is the most difficult to catch in the act of her greatness. not to like jane austen is to put ourselves under suspicion of a general personal inadequacy and even – let us face it – of a want of breeding” (trilling, 1965:29). the study of jane austen’s novels can be viewed as a discovery of universal truths about human nature and life, of ‘the supremely civilizing pursuits, the spiritual essence of the social formation’ (modern science and vedic science, 1989:326). indeed, our investigation has shown that the interpretation of the characters’ persuasive communication in jane austen’s novels can not only give us an account of the fact how certain characters in the novels impose persuasion upon the others but also lead us to a broader comprehension of the communicator’s, as well as the recipient’s inner being, his/her essence. as in real life, every character in the novels has his/her unique way of persuading. some of them prefer to be straightforward while speaking and command their wish explicitly, letting the interlocutors obviously realise their communicative intent. in such instances the act of persuasion may be synonymous to such directive acts as informing, 41 linguistics armenian folia anglistika svetlana galstyan siranoush ghaltakhchyan directing, instructing, urging, forcing, etc. the character that resorts vividly to this type of persuasion is mrs. norris in the novel “mansfield park”, a boring woman who is fond of interfering with the personal matters of other people, lady catherine, a proud woman of dictatorial and insolent manners, and mrs. bennet, a middle-class woman of awfully tiresome character in the novel “pride and prejudice”. their speeches abound in persuasive attempts, and it is hardly possible to find any dialogue in which they do not have the intention of influencing their interlocutors. on the other hand, they are hardly liable to any influence themselves as they are convinced of their ‘truthfulness’. in mrs. norris’s case, for instance, the desire to persuade and direct people around her reaches such an extent that mrs. norris goes beyond the limits of politeness and does not avoid uttering the word “persuade”. moreover, she uses the word with great pride, praising herself and magnifying her endeavour. however, explicit persuasion, as a rule, decreases the effectiveness of a persuasive message greatly and the source’s persuasive intent, in this case, often falls flat. it has also been proved that foreknowledge may reduce the chances to succeed in persuasion.2 on the other hand, most of the characters tend to choose the implicit way of convincing, especially when an attempt is made by the source to measure and alter the recipient’s attitude, belief or behaviour, disguising his/her real intention. obviously, it is only in the context of the speech act that implicit forms of persuasive communication are revealed. this kind of persuasion is displayed in the characters of emma woodhouse and mr. knightly in the novel “emma”, mrs. darcy in the novel “pride and prejudice” and lady russell in the novel “persuasion”. they, too, often try to change their interlocutors’ initial attitudes and beliefs, but unlike the first group of characters, they make use of various devices while performing persuasive acts. they pretend to be giving information or recommendation, just praising or complimenting, encouraging or advising. this is a more effective way of persuading, and the source, in this case, generally succeeds in persuading the other party. in the 1940s research was undertaken under the leadership of c. hovland, entitled ‘yale communication and attitude change program’ to answer many questions on the field of persuasive communication (byrne, 1981). one of the most precious findings of this program is that there exist two major elements in the target individual’s evaluation of a communicator. these are the communicator’s credibility and the communicator’s attractiveness to the target individual. credibility is a set of perceptions about the source held by the recipient. a person’s credibility depends on how much expertise the addresser has on the topic under discussion and whether he appears trustworthy and unbiased. hovland and his colleagues find that high-credibility communicators may be more effective in producing attitude change than low-credibility communicators. they also highlight the idea that the higher a person’s evaluation of the communicator (source) is, the more he is likely to be persuaded by the communication. of interest in this respect is also the observation made by the american psychologist kelly shaver: “if someone you evaluate highly is ‘at variance’ with your current attitude, a ‘dissonance’ is set up that can be reduced either 42 armenian folia anglistika linguistics by changing your evaluation of the communicator or by changing your own attitudes” (shaver, 1977). in the novel “persuasion” the protagonist of the novel, anne elliot, a young and witty girl with ‘an elegance of mind’ and ‘sweetness of character’, is persuaded by her friend lady russell to break off her engagement with the man anne is deeply in love with. here we face a dilemma, for it is a well known fact that with a clever addressee the communicator’s chances to achieve success in a persuasive attempt are very rare, for the more intelligent the addressee is, the less submissive he/she will be because of his/her ‘greater critical faculties’ (bettinghaus, 1980). the only reason for lady russell’s success is perhaps the fact that she always treats her like a considerate mother who is always ready to be of help. anne is sure that lady russell is more experienced and clever and always trusts her. thus, anne’s love toward lady russell has blinded her in this sense. besides, lady russell’s persuasive attempts are solely predetermined. she prefers to reach an effect with the so-called ‘sleeper effect’, i.e. she tends to produce attitude change in a longer period of time and not just immediately after the delivery of the persuasive message in order to make persuasion clandestine (shaver, 1977). kelly shaver notes, in this respect, that people will consider you credible if you know what you are talking about and if they think that, you have nothing to gain personally by advocating the position you take (shaver, 1977). she agrees with hovland’s suggested opinion, according to which, a communicator’s credibility will be damaged if it is known that he is attempting to persuade a person or a group of people since they might then be suspicious that the communication is biased and even dishonest. this can be best illustrated if we analyse the dialogue between lady catherine and elizabeth in the novel “pride and prejudice”, where the lady tries to persuade elizabeth, a girl of ‘virtue and wit’ and an independent person who remains true to her principles, not to marry mr. darcy. lady catherine’s speech sounds much more like an order than an attempt of persuasion as it is deprived of endearments of any kind that would soften her tone somehow, and not a single attempt of manipulating with words is made. lady catherine obviously wants to make elizabeth realise that she is being persuaded to reject the proposal of marriage and expects immediate submissiveness on the part of the girl, who is much younger and still much inferior in rank. elizabeth, in her turn, shows reactance3 as she does not like when her personal freedom is violated or limited. this is already a good reason to fail. apart from this, elizabeth is well aware that lady russell has something to gain from this: she wants mr. darcy to marry her own daughter. the other important factor in the recipient’s evaluation of a communicator is the communicator’s attractiveness to the recipient, the degree to which he/she is liked by the target individual. people often seek to identify themselves with or to be like people for whom they care or admire, which leads them to adopt the admired person’s beliefs and attitudes. hence, the better the source’s physical appearance, style of speaking and dressing, gestural and postural systems are, the more persuasive he may be. the character who manipulates with her attractive appearance and good manners in order to 43 linguistics armenian folia anglistika succeed in imposing persuasion upon others is the protagonist of the novel “emma”, a beautiful and clever woman with ‘a comfortable home and happy disposition’. emma is especially eager to have an influence on harriet smith, ‘the most gullible, naive and impressionable girl of no social status and connections’. harriet always underestimates her abilities and finds herself too weak and unsophisticated to solve any problem all by herself. therefore, emma does not lose the good chance and considers it necessary to instruct her how to think and reason in the right way. harriet, in her turn, treats emma as an ideal of beauty and intelligence. she has assured herself that emma is the one who can show her the right way of living and has ‘put’ her life in emma’s hands. in addition to this, harriet completely lacks self-esteem. people with low self-esteem,4 like harriet smith, appear to be less confident, less optimistic, less competent, regard themselves as less capable and are less happy than people with high self-esteem. consequently, such people are, as a rule, more persuadable. harriet always consults emma before making decisions or taking a position on a certain topic, even on very intimate matters, such as marriage. the second vital factor in persuasive communication is message content. plato regarded persuasion as the key to power and message as the key to persuasion. there are certain factors that influence the effectiveness of messages. hovland and his fellow researchers assume that for a message to be persuasive, it must first of all be attended to and comprehended. the style and structure of message may provide good incentives for attitude change if they are chosen carefully and in accordance with the topic. it has been proved that communicators who use powerful style of speaking are likely to be more persuasive (bettionghaus, 1980). moreover, people are more apt to be persuasive if a message is delivered at a normal rate of speed. this is the reason why mrs. bennet in the novel “pride and prejudice” almost always fails in persuasive attempts. she frequently makes use of hesitation markers and hedges, such as ‘well’, ‘hmm’, ‘kind of’, ‘so’, etc. and almost always speaks too fast and with an unconfident tone of voice. it is a well-known fact that alongside the verbal code system, i.e. language, all of us use the non-verbal code system, in other words, body language, i.e. head nodding, shoulder shrugging, smiles, frowns, etc., to accompany our speech. however, when accompanied with linguistic cues, non-verbal cues should correspond to the verbal message being transmitted. otherwise, the recipient may be misled and this may obstruct the proper comprehension of the message. such a phenomenon is observed in the character of mr. collins, a heavy-looking young man, in the novel “pride and prejudice” when he tries to get elizabeth’s acceptance of his proposal of marriage. his speech does not correspond to the demands of the situation. it is performed, however strange as it may sound, in a very formal and even indifferent manner, with a confident tone of voice. besides, he begins to speak about quite unnecessary matters, such as why he should get married, how eager his aunt is to see him married and the like. thus, a ‘discrepancy’ occurs between mr. collins and elizabeth which is named ‘nonverbal leakage’, i.e. the verbal and non-verbal message counteract each other (byrne, 1981). it should be noted here that for successful persuasive communication the source should be able to predict 44 armenian folia anglistika linguistics how the recipient will understand his verbal, as well as non-verbal behaviour and manipulate with them accordingly. the communicator should know how and what to utter in the specific context to get the wanted perlocutionary effect. therefore, mr. collins’s failure in this case is inevitable. in the process of persuasion a special and final role belongs to the recipient. it is more than apparent that not all attempts to achieve persuasion can be successful in human interaction, and not always do recipients yield to the persuasive message. in many cases failure or success in persuasive communication is dependant upon the recipient of the message. a question arises here. are certain people more inclined to persuasion than others? j. w. zanden notes that there are two main kinds of people. “some people are ‘gullible pushovers’, while others stubbornly ‘stick to their guns’ (zanden, 1977). školnick and keslin suggest that individuals high in their “need for social approval”, i.e. the desire to be liked by others, are easier to influence than persons lower in this need (as cited in shaver, 1977). this is, perhaps, the basic reason why miss. crawford in the novel “mansfield park” easily yields to the persuasive attempts made by any members of the bertram family, who are much higher in their social status. miss. crawford has laid her eyes on edmund bertram, the elder son of the family, and does her utmost in order to be loved and admired by him. she has created a picture of a submissive woman and always agrees to whatever he says or pretends as if she judges and reasons the same way as edmund does. to conclude, it is worth noting that persuasive communication appears to be a kind of dishonest act in jane austen’s works, for it violates, to a certain extent, the interlocutor’s freedom of thinking and reasoning, and it is often of a biased nature. this is not merely our subjective observation. as we see, jane austen herself ascribes the act of persuasion to the characters having a lower level of intelligence and a lower state of consciousness. surprisingly, in our real life persuasion is also viewed to be a kind of negative act. people generally do not use the word performatively, in other words, they never say ‘i persuade you to…’, for the form itself is rather impolite and sounds rude. on the contrary, the expression ‘i do not persuade you’ is very often used. notes: 1. see: bettinghaus p. erwin persuasive communication. usa: holt, rinehart & winston, 1980; larson c.u. persuasion: reception and responsibility. wardsworth publishing company, 1988; petty e. richard & cacioppo t. john. attitude and persuasion. classic and contemporary approaches. usa, 1981; zanden w. wander. social psychology. new york, 1977. 2. foreknowledge refers to the prior knowledge of the persuasive intent. on many occasions, when people receive a persuasive message, they know for sure or, at least, predict that it is designed to alter their views. in these cases, people are less likely to be affected by the persuasive message than if they do not possess such 45 linguistics armenian folia anglistika knowledge. besides, forewarning may also give people more time to recall relevant facts and information from memory, facts that may prove useful in rejecting a persuasive message (bettinghaus, 1980). 3. “reactance” means protecting our personal freedom. this term refers to the unpleasant, negative reaction we experience when we feel that someone is trying to limit our personal freedom. this, consequently, results in negative attitude change. moreover, when this threat to our freedom is direct and/or explicit, the resistance increases and reaches the highest degree (zanden, 1977). 4. self-esteem refers to the value, worth or regard one places on oneself. richard e. petty suggests the importance of self-esteem in persuasive communication, which is positively related to intelligence. he highlights the following idea: “what you think of yourself will depend upon the degree to which your actual successes coincide with the goals and aspirations you have set for yourself” (petty, 1981:56). people with low self-esteem are, as a rule, pessimistic and unhappier than people with high self-esteem, who “face the world with good impressions of themselves”. references: 1. bettinghaus p. erwin. persuasive communication. third edition, usa: holt, rinehart & winston, 1980. 2. byrne donn. social psychology: understanding human interaction. third edition, new york, 1981. 3. grice h. p. logic and conversation. vol 3, new york, 1975. 4. houston h. susan. a survey of psycholinguistics. mouton, 1972. 5. larson c.u. persuasion: reception and responsibility. fourth edition, wardsworth publishing company, 1988. 6. modern science and vedic science. an interdisciplinary journal devoted to research on the united field of all the laws of nature, fairfield, iowa: miu, 1989. vol. 1, no. 3. 7. petty e. richard; cacioppo, t. john. attitude and persuasion. classic and contemporary approaches. usa, 1981. 8. shaver g. kelly. principles of social psychology. cambridge, 1977. 9. trilling lionel. beyond culture: essays on literature and learning, new york, 1965. 10. zanden james w. wander. social psychology. new york, 1977. sources of data: 1. austen, jane. mansfield park. london: penguin group, 1992. 2. austen, jane. emma. london: penguin group, 1996. 3. austen, jane. persuasion. london: penguin group, 1994. 4. austen, jane. pride and prejudice. london: penguin group, 1992. 46 armenian folia anglistika linguistics ð²øà¼ø²ü êàêàô²î²ü ²îîà æºúü úêâàüæ ìºäºðàôø êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù ÷áñó ¿ ³ñíáõù μýáõã³·ñ»é æ»ûý úëãáýç ï»ñå³ñý»ñç ý»ñ³ßë³ññá ñ³ùá½ù³ý ëáëáõ³ï³ý ³ïïç ¹çï³ýïûáõýçó: î³ï³ñí³í áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõýá óáõûó ¿ ï³éçë, áñ ³ûý ï»ñå³ñý»ñá, áñáýù, áëï ñ»õçý³ïç ù»ïý³μ³ýáõãûáõýý»ñç, ó³íñ ·çï³ïó³ï³ý ù³ï³ñ¹³ï ¨ μ³ñáû³ï³ý ñ³ïï³ýçßý»ñ áõý»ý, ñ³×³ë »ý ÷áñóáõù ñý³ñ³íáñçýë ñ³ùá½çã ¹³ñóý»é ëáëùá, ýñ³ýù o·ï³·áñíáõù »ý çñ»ýó ³ñï³ùçý ïíû³éý»ñá, ï»ýë³÷áñóá, û·ïíáõù »ý ëáë³ïóçª çñ»ýó ýï³ïù³ùμ áõý»ó³í íëï³ñáõãûáõýçó: ð³×³ë ñ³ùá½ù³ý ³ñ¹ûáõý³í»ïáõãûáõýá ï³ù ó³ëáõáõùá ï³ëí³í ¿ ³ûý μ³ýçó, ã» çýã ã³÷áí ¿ ëáë³ïçóá »ýã³ñïíáõù, ï³ù ¿é áý¹¹çù³ýáõù ëáëáõçý: ´³ñóñ ·çï³ïó³ï³ý ù³ï³ñ¹³ïáí ¨ ³é³ùçýáõãû³ùμ oåïí³í ï»ñå³ñý»ñá ·ñ»ã» »ñμ»ù ã»ý ÷áñóáõù çñ»ýó ï³ñíçùá ã»é³¹ñ»é áõñçßý»ñçý ¨, çýùý³×³ý³ãáõù áõý»ý³éáí, ýñ³ýù ï³ñáõ³ýáõù »ý å³ñå³ý»é çñ»ýó çýùýáõñáõûý ùï³í»é³ï»ñåá ¨ ×çßï ¹³ï»éáõ áõý³ïáõãûáõýá: 47 linguistics armenian folia anglistika linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 59 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2022.18.2.059 a multimodal discourse analysis of sarcasm in english media and news articles astghik chubaryan hayk danielyan ** yerevan state university with the rapid development of information technologies, the implementation of visual content has become a complementary component of social discourse, particularly in the media and news sectors. in this respect, it is increasingly important to pay huge attention to media literacy and relevant information processing. sarcasm, one of the most widely used language choices in social discourse, can easily be a part of any media or news article. sarcastic remarks are used for numerous reasons, namely, to indirectly express contempt, pretend an attitude, mock a situation or a person, or perhaps, they are more creative solutions to anger-provoking situations. the aim of the present research is to detect sarcastic messages in media and news articles through the multimodal markers of the discourse. the dataset analyzed to achieve the above-mentioned goal is derived from american and british media and news platforms politico, the guardian, and the sun. keywords: sarcasm, multimodality, social discourse, media and news articles, multimodal discourse analysis. introduction multimodal features of media and news articles may serve as key components in entailing sarcastic propositions and are widely evidenced in numerous publications. multimodal discourse analysis is theoretically based on the systemic functional linguistics devised by halliday (1961, 1992, 1994). according to liu (2019, p. 1523), various linguists and scholars have focused on research activity around multimodal discourse analysis (kress & van leeuwen, 1996, 2001; lemke, 1998; royce, 1998; o’halloran, 1999; baldry, 2004). the essence of the interest is in how textual meaning is derived through  astghik.chubaryan@ysu.am ** hdanielyan@gmail.com this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 27.08.2022 revised: 20.09.2022 accepted: 28.09.2022 © the author(s) 2022 mailto:astghik.chubaryan@ysu.am mailto:hdanielyan@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 60 a combination of linguistic and extra-linguistic elements to employ a specific connotation. as a matter of fact, language has different modes and the concept of multimodality is contrasted with the traditional view of so-called monomodality for interpreting a text within textual markers only (kress, & van leeuwen, 2001). image, voice, colors, and other extra-linguistic elements are in line together to express the multiple modes of discourse analysis and we intend to highlight those multimodal markers of the discourse to elicit sarcastic messages in media and news articles. discourse markers for multimodal method of analysis according to olivier (2021), there are four levels of multimodality within multimodal learning: • mode of delivery > institutional multimodality • mode of cognition > individual multimodality • mode of communication > interactional multimodality • mode of the environment > instructional multimodality figure 1 levels of multimodality within multimodal learning each of these levels represented in figure 1 incorporates specific markers of multimodal perception of the given context. this concept is designed to be implemented within a multimodal learning system. however, it gives us valuable insights into which levels of various resources sarcasm can be linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 61 expressed. we are also inclined to utilize the given model in uncovering the multimodal nature of sarcastic communication in media and news articles. multimodal communication consists of numerous modes which cooperate together to communicate a message to the audience. according to arola, sheppard and ball (2014), there are five modes of multimodal communication: figure 2 the five modes of multimodal communication. modes. (web services, 2015) • linguistic • visual • aural • gestural • spatial the focus of the multimodal discourse analysis of sarcastic media and news articles is mainly on the linguistic and visual modes of communication in view to underline their cooperation in conveying a comprehensive meaning of the text. they are mostly the constituent parts of interactional multimodality which contains verbal semiotic resources (spoken and written) or nonverbal semiotic resources (pictures, emojis, sounds, animations, gestures) (olivier, 2021). multimodality in interpreting sarcastic messages in the following political news caricature from an american media platform politico, sarcasm is demonstrated through an act of pretense. the caricature is headlined the six stages of grief after losing an election and sarcastically alludes to the former us president donald trump. all the mentioned six stages are so-called “recommendations” visually assisted by aggressive cartoon images of the ex-president. from the point of view of multimodal analysis, we need to take into consideration the interactional level of multimodality in terms of verbal and nonverbal components. verbal elements include written communication and nonverbal ones represent animated images, symbolic colors, and sarcastic references pertaining to the appearance of the former president. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 62 figure 3 the six stages of grief after losing an election (wuerker, 2022) the first stage of the caricature suggests: (1) falsely claim the election was stolen and use the big lie to raise money! this suggestion pretends an attitude resemblance to the ex-president and overtly hints at an implication that trump, as a matter of fact, did so after losing the elections to his opponent. the visual text cooperates with the verbal text i won! to construct the sarcastic suggestion of the claim. if we pay close attention to trump’s right hand in the first picture, we will notice that his fingers are crossed which is a common gesture indicating that the person is lying. his right hand is higher showing a fist that symbolizes his power and ambitions. his tie is red and touches the ground, which is also a sarcastic remark since trump is quite tall. it might also indicate his lying attitude referring to the length of the tie, for instance, the longer it is, the more he lies. thus, the sarcastic message of the first stage is carried out through threedimensional multimodal communication including linguistic, visual, and linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 63 gestural modes. the linguistic mode alone would not be a sufficient ground for making the message sarcastic and here is why multimodality plays an important role in constructing the comprehensive sarcastic meaning of the text. the second stage of dealing with “grief” is represented as follows: (2) keep lying and pressure people to change the vote tally … and raise money! here the linguistic mode is slightly different compared to the first suggestion. the utterance includes ellipses after which we can see an echoed phrase raise money. in the visual mode, we see a wired red telephone in trump’s hand which signifies that even if he lost the elections, he is still in his office and he is trying to apply an abuse of power to reach his goal. we can only see a zoomed-in perspective where the length of the tie as well as the left hand is not visible. on the interactional level, there are both verbal and nonverbal components, namely, linguistic and visual modes that allow us to interpret the non-literal message. the third stage goes like this: (3) keep lying and try to seat your own electors … and raise money! we come back to a zoomed-out perspective where we do see the red tie again touching the ground with the text suggesting to continue lying. in this image, he is even angrier since he realizes the plan is not working and his rage is demonstrated through the steam coming out of his ears. the key phrase raise money is echoed again aiming to increase its impact on the viewer and giving the expression a pragmatic significance for applying an illocutionary act of commanding. the fourth stage suggests as follows: (4) keep lying and mount a violent coup to stop the peaceful transfer of power … and raise money! the contextualization of the visual text of this suggestion is correlated with the verbal text fight like hell!. the image visually and verbally communicates a message that trump is dissatisfied with the development of actions and expresses an emotional command. in the linguistic mode, there is a sarcastic proposition to stop the peaceful transfer of power through violent acts, which deliberately pretends or mocks an attitude. in the visual mode, the rage of the former president is represented through different components. first, his eyes are disguised as he is yelling, the right hand is higher holding a distorted document (presumably the election results), and the left hand is pointing to his armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 64 left side while he is commanding to fight like hell. since trump was a republican right-wing politician, the choice of pointing in the left direction might be a symbolic one connoting the country's left-wing political system, which was his opposition at the time. then, looking closely at his image it can be noticed that this is the only case where the red tie is not touching the ground and this is the only image where his knees are bent. this elaborate detail reveals the sarcastic intention in terms of nonverbal text interpretation. so, connecting this to a previous assumption that the length of the tie is relevant to the plentiful lying, we might deem this as a non-literal message that his lies are not having any effect. the fifth stage recommends the following: (5) keep lying and keep raising money the verbal message of this statement implies similar ideas to previous suggestions with a different structure. instead of raise money! this stage offers to keep raising money without an exclamation mark at the end, unlike all previous similar assertions. this makes a lot more sense when we combine the visual text of the image with the verbal one. in the visual mode, the meaning of the image implies that trump is losing control of the situation and he is not that existed about his statement of keep lying anymore. he is holding money in both of his hands and cries without tears which is an indication of an early stage of his frustration, and the tie is back to its original position touching the ground but this time it looks worn out since there are sketchy lines on it. this may suppose, that no matter that lies are continuing, they have already lost their effectiveness of impact because of being repeated too many times. the final stage proposes: (6) ignore overwhelming evidence that it’s a big lie … and keep raising money the verbal text of the image states i need more money! this statement does not have an illocutionary force anymore and it does not sound assertive since in the visual mode we can see trump’s total frustration. his head is leaned backward and this time he is crying with tears. the tie is worn out and touching the ground again. in this stage as well, there is no exclamation mark at the end of the statement of the stage description. this signifies that the intended plan is not working anymore and the suggestion is just a desperate attempt in achieving the desired outcome. significantly, the sarcastic intention of this statement is already achieved on the linguistic level by the stylistic linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 65 choice of the language such as the understatement ignore overwhelming evidence that it’s a big lie. the guardian’s completely new series of media and news publishing first dog on the moon has introduced an innovative format where only the combination of multimodal communication delivers the news to the audience. the goal of the media and news publishing series is to assemble attention to challenging issues of the world with the help of sarcastic remarks throughout all articles. the headlines demonstrated in figure 4 are the following: (1) climate change is great for termites! wait what is this? (2) abolish the monarchy and replace the whole sordid crew with a marsupial! (3) woohoo! australia is punching above its weight in *checks notes* inequality! figure 4 first dog on the moon (the guardian) the multimodal communication in these alternative news articles is conditioned by linguistic and visual modes of text interpretation. although the linguistic level alone already provides grounds for the detection of sarcastic intent in terms of information processing, the publishing series focuses on the cooperation of linguistic and visual modes, namely, the interdependence of verbal and non-verbal markers of the discourse. in terms of the linguistic mode analysis, absolutely all headlines come with either an exclamation or an interrogative mark, or sometimes, with both. some headlines may even have a couple of interrogative marks and an exclamation mark like in the following headline: was it wrong to mock the perky boffins attempting to deextinct the thylacine??! (first dog on the moon) armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 66 as seen in the examples in figure 4, the articles are illustrated with a thematic choice of animals along with the main hero dog allegorizing the events of the topic concerned. the animated illustrations represent verbal texts as well such as: (7) termites – we thought they were our friends (8) how to abolish the monarchy (9) rampant inequality? not if you ask all our millionaires not all verbal texts on these illustrations have punctuation marks but all of them are capitalized. the capitalization of all headlines represented in the animated illustrations follows the purpose to gather attention to the topic of the article with short and catchy sarcastic statements or questions. however, the strategy of bringing about as many viewers as you can is more effective when considering the multimodal integrity in communicating hard-to-deliver messages. that is why just one article of this format offers four different aspects of information processing: sarcastic headline, short and catchy verbal text, non-verbal (visual) text and allegoric integration to support the linguistic mode. all these aspects are combined to deliver a comprehensive message which determines the creativity of the strategy employed through sarcastic text interpretation. this statement can be validated with the help of the statistics of viewer interaction with articles (viewing, commenting, sharing). as can be noticed in figure 4, there are hundreds of comments under the articles of the series within just a couple of days after their publication which obviously does not compete with the numbers of regular news, however, it accumulates a significant amount of activity and interest around the articles that represent challenging topics. the content of the articles is demonstrated within interactional multimodal communication as well. in most cases, the body of the article does not include monomodal textual information, instead, there are animated scenarios with verbal and nonverbal texts and allegorized events of the news, like in the following article: linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 67 figure 5 a first dog on the moon article woohoo! australia is punching above its weight in *checks notes* inequality! (the guardian) the body of the article is a combination of verbal and nonverbal texts. on the verbal level, there are multiple usages of interjections and emotionally colored words such as: woohoo! yeah! hooray! some interjections are introduced along with facial expressions of animated characters assisting to express contextual sarcastic meanings. in contrast with only verbal interjections, they are all capitalized and without punctuation marks like: aggh; help; nooo; erk. it might seem that these utterances are irrelevant to the context, however, their purpose is to complement the expressed sarcastic verbal texts with multimodal integrity and convey a more comprehensive message. the headline of the article is an example of an overstatement of the discussed fact by capitalizing on the overstated utterance: (10) a new report claims australians are the richest people in the world! yeah! meanwhile, the body of the article provides explanations and descriptions with oversimplified statements and irrelevant chart data like it’s not that all of us are the richest person the world… (sic.) one of the paragraphs of the body represents a suggestion by “economists” with their visual images and a verbal text “economists” under the passage pointing to them. in this case, the correlation of verbal and nonverbal texts arrives at a sarcastic proposition, however, the verbal description alone would not provide necessary grounds for interpreting the text as sarcastic. multimodal discourse markers in constructing sarcastic text interpretation are highly observable in regular news articles as well. one of the newest examples where the article delivers a sarcastic message through multimodal markers of text interpretation is demonstrated in figure 6. the article is about prince william and princess kate of wales meeting with the volunteers and armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 68 operation staff who were involved in the funeral service after the death of queen elizabeth ii. the reporter of the article indirectly criticizes the prince and princess for being cheerful in their interactions with the public and staff members. the represented image for this news article includes verbal text with two different font sizes and nonverbal text in the background of the prince and princess of wales. the main and secondary lines of the verbal text are as follows respectively: wills’ grief; prince william reveals moments of sadness ‘catch him out’ as he grieves the queen with princess kate. figure 6 will’s grief (the sun) it must be noted that the placement of the apostrophe mark in the utterance wills’ grief is not a typographic error but the reporter’s choice to contract the prince’s name to wills instead of will. this can be discovered in the body of the article where the prince is referred as wills which expresses a deliberate sarcastic attitude toward prince william. the reason for this attitude is the prince and princess’ inappropriate cheerfulness with their public interaction during the days of grief. the article leaks a video footage where the viewers can see the sheer happiness of the prince and princess when meeting people. however, the commentator of the video directly criticizes their actions uttering: (11) the royal family has said they won’t undertake official engagements this week because they will have a week of private mourning… it wasn’t something on their calendar or diary. this strategy directly criticizes the actions of the royal family members with no hidden sarcastic meaning. even though this attitude is only in the commentary of the video and it does not correspond with that of the reporter, it does actually complement the multimodal combination of verbal and nonverbal linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 69 components for expressing the general sarcastic attitude of the article. the sarcastic intention of the text is revealed by combining the happy and smiley images of the prince and princess with the capitalized verbal text wills’ grief implying that he might not actually be mourning. the utterance catch him out is also a part of this combination since it refers to prince william’s explanations of the occurrence and is cited in the body of the article by the reporter: wills admitted “certain moments catch you out”. conclusion multimodal discourse analysis has a significant role in interpreting sarcastic messages in modern english social discourse, particularly, in american and british media and news articles. the mode of communication preferred for this kind of interpretation is interactional multimodality which incorporates verbal and nonverbal discourse markers. the five modes of multimodal communication, namely, linguistic, visual, aural, gestural, and spatial, collaborate together in the construction of a comprehensive sarcastic meaning of the context. in this respect, the most cooperative communication is the combination of linguistic and visual modes. the impact of multimodal communication on sarcasm as a creative and innovative strategy for communicating challenging messages is of major value for the following reasons: • the combination of multimodal discourse markers assists in the construction of conveying a holistic sarcastic meaning; 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(2021). self-directed multimodal learning within a context of transformative open education. in j. olivier, (ed.). self-directed multimodal learning in higher education (pp. 1-49). royce, t. (1998). synergy on page: exploring inter-semiotic complementarity in page-based multimodal text. in jasfl occasional papers (no.1). tokyo: japan association of systemic functional linguistics. sources of data first dog on the moon. (2022, september). the guardian. retrieved september 26, 2022. levels of multimodality within multimodal learning. (2021, january). researchgate. retrieved september 23, 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/profile/first-dog-on-the-moon https://www.researchgate.net/figure/levels-of-multimodality-within-multimodal-learning_fig1_348461360 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/levels-of-multimodality-within-multimodal-learning_fig1_348461360 linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 71 was it wrong to mock the perky boffins attempting to de-extinct the thylacine??! (2022, september 2). the guardian. retrieved september 26, 2022. wills' grief.prince william reveals moments of sadness ‘catch him out’ as he grieves the queen with princess kate. (2022, september 22). the sun. retrieved september 22, 2022. woohoo! australia is punching above its weight in *checks notes* inequality! (2022, september 21). the guardian. retrieved september 26, 2022. wuerker, m. (2022, september 2). the six stages of grief after losing an election. politico. retrieved september 22, 2022. սարկազմի բազմաեղանակային խոսույթային հետազոտություն անգլերեն մեդիա եվ լրատվական հոդվածներում աստղիկ չուբարյան հայկ դանիելյան տեղեկատվական տեխնոլոգիաների արագ զարգացմանը զուգընթաց պատկերային բովանդակության կիրառումը դարձել է հանրային խոսույթը լրացնող բաղադրիչ, մասնավորապես մեդիա և լրատվական ոլորտներում։ այս համատեքստում, ավելի ու ավելի է կարևորվում մեդիագրագիտության և համապատասխան տեղեկատվության մշակման խնդիրը։ սարկազմը՝ որպես հանրային խոսույթի մեջ լայնորեն տարածված լեզվական նախընտրություն, հեշտությամբ կարող է լինել ցանկացած մեդիա և լրատվական հոդվածի հիմքում։ սարկաստիկ ասույթները կարող են օգտագործվել բազմաթիվ նպատակներով, այն է՝ անուղղակիորեն արտահայտել արհամարhանք, ձևացնել վերաբերմունք, ծաղրել իրավիճակը կամ անձին, կամ դրանք առավել ստեղծագործ լուծումներ են զայրույթ առաջացնող իրավիճակներում։ սույն հետազոտության նպատակն է բացահայտել սարկաստիկ հաղորդագրությունները բազմաեղանակային խոսույթի տարրերի միջոցով։ վերոնշյալ նպատակին հասնելու համար օգտվել ենք ամերիկյան և բրիտանական մեդիա և լրատվական այնպիսի հարթակներից, ինչպիսիք են politico-ն, the guardian-ը և the sun-ը: բանալի բառեր՝ սարկազմ, բազմամոդալություն, հանրային խոսույթ, մեդիա և լրատվական հոդվածներ, բազմամոդալ խոսույթի հետազոտություն։ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/02/was-it-wrong-to-mock-the-perky-scientists-attempting-to-de-extinct-the-thylacine https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/02/was-it-wrong-to-mock-the-perky-scientists-attempting-to-de-extinct-the-thylacine https://www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/19886520/kate-william-thank-volunteers-queen-funeral https://www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/19886520/kate-william-thank-volunteers-queen-funeral https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/21/woohoo-australia-is-punching-above-its-weight-in-checks-notes-inequality https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/21/woohoo-australia-is-punching-above-its-weight-in-checks-notes-inequality https://www.politico.com/cartoons/2022/09/02/matt-wuerker-cartoons-september-2022-00054673?slide=0 https://www.politico.com/cartoons/2022/09/02/matt-wuerker-cartoons-september-2022-00054673?slide=0 hin.qxd detached participles in english discourse the focus of the present paper is the function ofpresent participial absolute clauses in english discourse. these clauses are in fact the only -ing constructions in english that are “detached”, i.e. they are set off by pauses, exhibit a clause-final falling intonation contour characteristic of independent clauses, or are preceded by a clause ending with a clause-final falling contour. these intonational signals of detachment are virtually without exception marked by commas in writing. taking all these features into consideration and following the tradition of russian grammar, we shall refer to the present participial absolute clauses as “detached participles”. excluded from consideration here are participial forms in clauses beginning with the subordinators after, before, by, with, without, while, and in. thus the detached participle can be characterized in the following way: 1. it serves as a device that allows the speaker/writer to present certain material as background against which certain other material can be put forth as “figure” in the gestalt sense. that is, the detached participle is not just a background, but it is a background specifically for the main clause with which it is associated. by “background” we mean material that serves to further explicate, amplify, or elaborate what is in the main clause, or that represents an event occurring simultaneously with or providing a comment on or motivation for the event in the main clause. in the example, the detached participle hacking at the logs with axes provides a detail that functions to amplify and elaborate the report that the infantry hurled themselves against the palisades. the spanish infantry desperately hurled themselves against the palisades, hacking at the logs with axes. a clause so backgrounded refuses, as it were, to allow the exposition to advance while some ancillary material is presented. the fact that the detached participle provides background of a very local sort, predicts a certain set of grammatical properties. 2. this background material is furthermore presented as “pure” background, with no explicit relationship being designated to hold between it and the material that forms the figure. the fact that the detached participle does not explicitly express any logical or temporal relationship with the material for which it is the background, predicts the detached participle’s distribution in discourse. 31 linguistics armenian folia anglistika astghik chubaryan the first point to make about the occurrence of the detached participle in discourse is that, as is intuitively obvious to anyone who knows english, and as is noted by jespersen, it is found much more commonly in formal written than in informal spoken english. the analysis has shown that the detached participle is most compatible with a discourse whose purpose is to describe events rather than to state temporal or logical relationships among them. actually, we found that the descriptive discourse has a high frequency of detached participles, whereas the discourse whose primary function is nondescriptive exposition contains relatively few instances. in fact, the type of discourse in which detached participles abound can be characterized with even greater precision: it is a discourse that attempts to describe by creating an image. to this function the detached participle is well suited, precisely because of its unspecified relationship with the main clause. the type of discourse whose purport is to evoke an image can be termed depictive. to illustrate the contrast between depictive and non-depictive discourse, we compared texts taken from various types of discourse for an average number of detached participles per 10,000 words. as can be seen from the table below, the differences are dramatic. detached participles per 10,000 words depictive severin t. explorers of the mississippi 74 delillo d. underworld, novel 60 salter j. burning the days, memoir, travel narrative 49 non-depictive kazin a. god and the american writer, literary criticism 18.9 tannahill r. food in history 14.7 david j. electrodynamics 8.5 goth a. medical pharmacology: principles and concepts 5.0 one of the richest of the texts examined was severin’s explorers of the mississippi. this text is a detailed historical account of the early explorations of the mississippi river. here is a typical paragraph, which gives the flavour of the depictive style – note that there are three detached participles in this paragraph alone: de soto’s life was saved but his negligence was still to prove the ruin of his expedition. during the skirmish in the town, the indians in the baggage train had seized their opportunity to escape. they broke ranks and streamed into mobila, taking with them all the spanish supplies including the spare weapons, sacraments, tents, pearls, and gunpowder. by the time the main body of the spanish army arrived, the situation was desperate. they had only their weapons, while on the other side of mobila’s palisades lay all the 32 armenian folia anglistika linguistics equipment they needed to survive the march down the coast. already the ramparts were lined with newly-liberated slaves, jeering and holding up their booty to mock the white men. in explorers of the mississippi there is an average of 74 detached participles per 10,000 words. at the opposite end of the scale is medical pharmacology, in which 10,000 words yield only 5 detached participles. the striking difference between these two texts in frequency of detached participles is an accurate illustration of the tendency for these clauses to occur in depictive genres. some other examples of depictive writing are travel narratives and novels, where the authors attempt to portray the images, sights and sounds so vividly as to conjure up in the reader’s imagination what actually experiencing them would be like. writing that intends to spark the visual imagination, then, tends to abound in detached participles. herein lies one clue to explaining the very low frequency of detached participles in ordinary conversational english: conversation simply offers relatively few opportunities for the sort of planning that produces effective and evocative depictions of scenes. what are the characteristics of non-depictive writing, where detached participles are rare? the only essential property shared by the wide range of discourse styles that can be called non-depictive is obviously the following: their communicative goals are not conducive to the leisurely scene-painting for which the highly durative, temporally non-committal detached participle is so well suited. news analysis and commentary, for example, are typically devoid of detached participles. the backgrounding in this type of writing is generally aimed at characterizing participants rather than describing them (hence a large number of full and truncated relative clauses), and at providing motivation, concessive or sequentially relevant facts and hypothetical conditions, rather than depictions of scenes. writing in the sciences and social sciences does not appear to be fertile ground for detached participles either. here are two examples taken from david’s electrodynamics and goth’s pharmacology textbook to give the flavour of their function in this kind of writing: our intention will be correct provided the set of orthonormal functions is complete, the completeness being defined by the requirement that there exists a finite number. (p.68) the binding of bilirubin to albumin may be inhibited by a variety of drugs such as sulfisoxazole or salicycates, the freed bilirubin thereby becoming ultrafiltrable. (p.20) tannahill’s food in history registers slightly higher at 14.7 detached participles per 10,000 words; this higher incidence is correlated with the fact that there are occasional depictive passages interspersed in the purely informative historical exposition. alfred kazin’s god and the american writer is a sample of literary criticism, which 33 linguistics armenian folia anglistika as essentially non-depictive writing is low in detached participles, but not as low as scientific writing, since some images are evoked. although the comparison between the depictive and non-depictive texts clearly reveals the skewing in the distribution of detached participles, it is only when we examine the detached participles themselves that we find the key to the explanation for this distribution. the detached participles that do occur in non-depictive writing share one interesting property: they tend to be stylistic alternatives to other coordinate and subordinate clauses in a way in which the detached participles in depictive writing are not. as an illustration, consider an example taken from the pharmacology textbook: even the pharmacist has very little to do with the preparation of drugs, most of them being manufactured by large companies. (p.l) the detached participle in this example could very easily be replaced by a subordinate clause with as, with virtually no violation of the intended message: ... as most of them are manufactured by large companies. similarly in the following example from food in history, the detached participle is extremely close in expressive content to the non-restrictive relative clause: of these seven magical oceans, representing the staple needs of mankind in india (other than grain), no less than three were of dairy products. …, which represent the staple needs of mankind in india ... strikingly enough, however, this type of paraphrasability is much less characteristic of the detached participles in highly depictive passages. no obvious paraphrase comes to mind for these three examples, for instance: she listened, marveling at the discernment in each name for the complex illness of malaria... (underworld, p. 87) the indians stayed out of their way, leaving mute offerings of food, deerskins, and feathered cloaks in the path of the ferocious invaders. (explorers of the mississippi, p.36) shopkeepers, dressed in white shirts and sarong-like skirts, with embroidered skull caps over their sharp arabian faces, sat on string beds, outside their cavernous shops, talking slowly and smoking tall water-pipes. (burning the days, p. 26) 34 armenian folia anglistika linguistics the unavailability of apt paraphrases for the detached participle in the depictive texts is related, of course, to their high frequency: there are no other options at hand for conveying what they convey, and their functional load is thereby increased. but why are they difficult to paraphrase? the answer might lie precisely in the non-committal relationship they bear to the main clause, which makes them so well suited to scene depiction. the point of depictive writing is to create scenes, and background material in depictive discourse contributes to scene creation in an additive way, temporal and logical relationships being essentially irrelevant. the point of non-depictive writing, on the other hand, is to analyse situations, propose and support claims, and enhance understanding by relating pieces of information. background clauses are called upon to participate in this endeavour and must, to a much greater extent, bear explicitly labelled relationships with the main clause. as suggested earlier in non-depictive writing there is simply less opportunity for the luxury of detached participles, whose relationship with the main clause is so unspecified. those that do occur are paraphrasable as certain other types of clauses because the nondepictive context imposes interpretations on them of precisely the logical and temporal relationships explicitly expressed by those other types of clauses. thus, the examination of the distribution of detached participles among various types of written english has revealed a striking contrast between depictive and non-depictive writing in the frequency with which these clauses occur. it has been claimed that the explanation for this contrast lies in the suitability of the detached participle – given its indeterminate relationship with the main clause – for discourse whose purpose is to evoke images, and its concomitant unsuitability for discourse whose background information must be much more explicitly related to the figure material. to sum up, the present analysis once again demonstrates the heavy reliance of grammar on the goals of the communicative event. that is, understanding grammar is inseparable from understanding the principles by which language users decide how to package an entire discourse. references: 1. chafe w. how do people use adverbial clauses. in: brugman c., macaulay m. proceedings of the tenth annual meeting of the berkeley linguistic society. berkeley, berkeley linguistic society, 1984, p.437-449. 2. greenbaum s. adverbial –ing participle constructions in english. anglia, 1973, p. 91: 1-10. 3. jespersen o. a modern english grammar. part v, syntax, vol.4, copenhagen, munksgaard, 1940. 4. kortmann b. free adjuncts and absolutes in english: problems of control and interpretation. london and new york, routledge, 1991. 5. thompson s. ‘subordination’ in formal and informal discourse. in: schiffrin d. meaning, form and use in context. washington dc, georgetown university press, 1984. 35 linguistics armenian folia anglistika sources of data: 6. david j. electrodynamics. new york, john wiley and sons, 1999. 7. delillo d. underworld. new york, scribner, 1997. 8. goth a. medical pharmacology: principles and concepts. st. louis, c.v. mosby co, 1974. 9. severin t. explorers of the mississippi. london, routledge and kegan paul, 1967. 10. kazin a. god and the american writer. new york, random house, 1997. 11. salter j. burning the days. new york, random house, 1997. 12. tannahill r. food in history. new york, stein and day, 1974. ²ýï³ë ¹»ñμ³û³ï³ý ¹³ñóí³íý»ñá å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù ðá¹í³íç ëý¹ñá ³é³ñï³ý ³ýï³ë ¹»ñμ³û³ï³ý ¹³ñóí³íý»ñç ·áñí³éáõûãç áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõýý ¿ ¹çëïáõñëç ï³½ù³íáñù³ý ï»ë³ýïûáõýçó å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó ³ý·é»ñ»ýáõù: öáñó ¿ ï³ï³ñíáõù μýáõã³·ñ»é í»ñáñçßû³é ï³éáõûóý»ñç ·áñí³éáõãûáõýá ëáëùáõù, óáõûó ï³é, ã» áñù³ýáí ¿ ³ûý å³ûù³ý³íáñáõù ³ýï³ë ¹»ñμ³û³ï³ý ¹³ñóí³íý»ñç ï»õ³μ³ßëáõùá ¹çëïáõñëç ï³ñμ»ñ ïçå»ñáõù, çýãå»ë ý³¨ í»ñ ñ³ý»é ïíû³é ï³éáõûóý»ñç áñáß³ïç ù»ñ³ï³ý³ï³ý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñá: ðá¹í³íáõù ïñïçý ³ý·³ù áý¹·ííáõù ¿, áñ ù»ñ³ï³ý³ï³ý ³ûë ï³ù ³ûý ï³éáõûóç ïçñ³éáõùá ëáëùáõù å³ûù³ý³íáñí³í ¿ ñ³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý çñ³¹ñáõãû³ý ýå³ï³ïáí: ²û¹ ¿ å³ï׳éá, áñ ù»ñ³ï³ýáõãû³ý áýï³éù³ý ·áñíáýã³óý ³ýμ³å³ý»éç ¿ ³ûý ëï½μáõýùý»ñçó, áñáýóáí ïíû³é 黽íáí ëáëáõý»ñá ï³½ù³íáñáõù »ý çñ»ýó ëáëùá áñå»ë ù»ï ³ùμáõçáõãûáõý: 36 armenian folia anglistika linguistics kazm.cdr shakespeare’s bawdy language shakespeare is renowned around the world as the greatdramatic poet and playwright whose thirty-six plays are now deservedly translated into more than forty languages. “no household in the english-speaking world is properly furnished unless it contains copies of the holy bible and of the works of william shakespeare” (harrison, 1991: 11). at the time shakespeare wrote, most of the grammatical changes from old to modern english had taken place. rigid notions about standards and standardized positions had not yet been established in grammars. however, the flexible idiom of elizabethan english offered abundant opportunities for shakespeare’s linguistic inventiveness. in the power of the word shakespeare evidently felt exuberant to experiment with the language. surely, shakespeare took full advantage of the unparalleled linguistic freedom to invent, to experiment and to indulge lavishly. in 1818, thomas bowdler, an english editor, published an edition of shakespeare’s works in which bawdy words and expressions were omitted because shakespeare’s works could not “with propriety be read in a family” (hulme, 1962: 97). since this work of bowdler’s was introduced, the term ‘bowdlerism’ has been a part of the english vocabulary. here is an example of ‘bowdlerism’ from “ othello”. yago: your daughter and moor are now making the beast with two backs. (1.1) bowdler’s attempt at ‘improvement’ results in the following: your daughter and moor are now together. michael macrone states that the dramatist lived in a “naughty time and worked in a naughty business. as he began his career in london, sometime in the late 1580s, civic leaders and religious authorities considered the theatre extremely disreputable and even dangerous. in 1594, lord mayor of london pleaded with queen elizabeth’s council to tear down all the theatres, for they were places of meeting for all vagrant persons and masterless men that hang about the city, thieves, horse-stealers, whoremongers, cheaters, cony-catching persons, practisers of treason, and other such like ” (macrone, 1983: 134). here are some examples from shakespeare’s lewd lexicon: assail, assault, verb and noun, respectively for laying siege to a lady’s chastity. front her, board her, woo her, assail her, sir toby urges. (twelfth night, 1.3) praising the chaste imogen as goddess-llike, pissanio notes that she resists such assaults/as would take in some virtue (cymbeline, 3.2) bawdy language is also used by shakespeare in his sonnets: beauteous thou art, the 125 literature armenian folia anglistika lala charchoghlyan bard writes to his young man, therefore to be assailed. (41, 6) some readers may feel it is distasteful to investigate the bawdy aspect of the sonnets, for their central theme and greatest beauty are love and friendship in the fullest meaning of these experiences. but the fullest and healthiest and richest fraternity is erotic fraternity. so am i as the rich whose blessed key can bring him to his sweet up-locked trreasurre, the which he will not every hour survey for blunting the fine point of seldom pleasurre. therefore are feasts so seldom and so rare. (sonnet 52) “treasure” and “pleasure” are erotic puns in renaissance diction connoting sexual innuendo and at least sexual foreplay. bawd, bawdry, bawdy, bawdy-hhouse the old form baude of the adjective bawdy, which is nowadays a synonym for lewd, originally meant joyous, gay. the noun baudery meaning jollity was more frequently used. baude was loaned from old french baud. having been transferred from french to english, bawd was also used in the meaning of pander. it also meant cat, pussy or rabbit and was also used in slang. shakespeare himself still used the word in both senses. in romeo and juliet mercutio cries out “ a bawd, a bawd, a bawd! so ho!” (2.4). “bawd” means “prostitute” and is also hunter’s slang for “hare.” “so ho” is a hunter’s cry upon spotting the quarry. romeo asks him what he has spotted, and mercutio answers with a string of double-entendres: “no hare, sir; unless a hare, sir, in a lenten pie, that is something stale and hoar ere it be spent” (2.4). a “lenten pie” is one to be eaten during lent, when you aren’t supposed to eat meat; “hare” is slang for “prostitute”; “hoar” sounds the same as “whore” and means “a female prostitute”; “stale” is another slang word for “prostitute”. the non-bawdy meaning of what mercutio has just said is “no hare unless it is the kind of hare that someone might fill lenten pie with, in which case it would be ‘stale and moldy’ before it was eaten.” the bawdy meaning is “no hare, unless it is the kind of whore who is only good enough when you cannot get someone better.” another example is from henry iv, when in a nostalgic mood, falstaff asks bardolf to sing him a bawdy song. meanwhile he reminisces about his youth when he went to a bawdy-house ‘not above once in a quarter of an hour’. (3.2) the word blood is also used with reference to sexuality. instances may be observed in othello: “merely a lust of the blood” (1.3) and in the comedy of errors: “my blood is mingled with the crime of lust”. (2.2) very often ‘blood’ is associated with sexual passion especially in combination with the notion of ‘heat’. in early medical theories the ‘blood temperature’ was related to liveliness and sexual condition (webb, 1989: 12), which finds its manifestation in the word hot-bblooded. in contrast, calm and cold blood symbolizes absence of passion. “you cannot call 126 armenian folia anglistika literature it love; for at your age /the heyday in the blood is tame” hamlet concludes when the duchess of gloucester asks (hamlet, 3.4); “hath love in thy old blood no living fire?” (king richard, 2.1) sexual excitement and passion are associated with the image of ‘riding a horse’ in sonnets 50 and 51. eric partridge in his shakespeare’s bawdy highlights more than a hundred erotic horse-metaphors in the plays which seem to be summed up in cleopatra’s cry: “o happy horse, to bear the weight of antony!” in venus and adonis a dozen stanzas develop a miniature erotic allegory between two horses representing venus and adonis, adonis being unable to deal properly with his horse: “he will not manage her, although he mount her.” in thinking about shakespeare’s audience, two factors are of paramount importance. first, despite the mix of class and caste, the group was predominantly uneducated, and secondly, it is grossly inaccurate to assume that shakespeare’s largest, most appreciative audience was drawn from the aristocrats and the educated. “it was with the common people that he achieved resounding success. for his livelihood and for the survival of theatre as he knew it, shakespeare, the consummate artist, played to them all” (lipson, 1985). therefore shakespeare’s allegorical sexual references are accessible for a rude and unpolished stratum of society and are generally put into the mouths of low and ignorant people. hie you to church; i must another way, to fetch a ladder, by the which you love must climb a birrd’s nnest soon when it is dark. i am the drudge and toil in your delight, but you shall bearr thhe burrdenn soon at night. (romeo and juliet,2.5) here, in her bawdy and comic manner, the nurse instructs juliet to get married promising to handle the details that will enable romeo and juliet to consummate their marriage. she says that she will get a ladder and romeo will be able to climb up to juliet’s room to visit her “bird’s nest” a sexual allusion. she also says that she needs to do all this work for juliet’s delight, but refers to the sexual act as juliet’s “burden” to bear at night. another example is when juliet had fallen and bruised her forehead, and the nurse’s husband had picked her up and made a joke, which three-year-old juliet made even better: “yea,” quoth he, “dost thou fall upon thy face? thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit; wilt thou not, jule?” and by my holidame, the pretty wretch left crying and said “ay.” to see, now, how a jest shall come about! i warrant, an i should live a thousand years, 127 literature armenian folia anglistika i never should forget it: “wilt thou not, jule?” quoth he; and, pretty fool, it stinted and said “ay.” (1.3) for a woman to “fall backward” means to have sex. the nurse thinks the story is so funny she tells it twice, laughing and probably imitating the cute, innocent way the child said “ay.” before criticizing shakespeare for using bawdy language, one must first take into consideration the needs of the elizabethan stage. the growth of permanent theatres offered a benevolent environment not concerned with perfection. what theatre wanted was vigour and movement, barbarous shapelessness and irregularity, and these can be found in shakespeare’s plays, which were the product of untutored instinct, not of formal rule. there are many, however, who would think it best not to give too much attention to this particular area of artistic language. v.k. whitaker states that “no writer is more moral than shakespeare in fundamentals. his jests are often as bawdy as any, and he can hunt with a perverse pertinacity for off-color implications in familiar language. but these are on the surface of the man and of his theatre” (whitaker, 1953: 41). in the context of the above, it is worthwhile to notice that shakespeare’s bawdy language can ‘arouse’ difficulties for translators too. in other words an unsolvable problem springs up: how to transfer shakespeare’s bawdy imagery to the possession of another language, another culture? the armenian translators believed it was necessary to remove matter that was considered indelicate or otherwise objectionable by cleansing morally harmful, offensive or erroneous language. consequently, in many respects, the imagery or dramatic irony and the figurative, rich language that shakespeare is so noted for have been lost. so have the fundamental writing principles of contrasting characters. and all these have been sacrificed for the sake of innocence. the translators saved the bard from himself not allowing the armenian reader to see, feel or know the intensely rich meaning or purpose shakespeare wanted his works to have. references: 1. bennett william. book of virtues. london: abingdon press, 1971. 2. harrison g. b. introducing shakespeare. new york: hamondsworth, penguin, 1991. 3. hulme hilda m. explorations in shakespeare’s language. new york: barnes and noble, 1962. 4. lipson greta b; lipson susan s. romeo and juliet, plainspoken. illinois: good apple, 1985. 5. macrone m. naughty shakespeare. london: andrews meneel, 1983. 6. muir k. a new companion to shakespeare’s studies. new haven: yale university press, 1974. 7. partridge eric. shakespeare’s bawdy. new york: routledge, 1968. 128 armenian folia anglistika literature 8. webb j. barry. shakespeare’s erotic word usage. hastings: corn wallis press, 1989. 9. whitaker v. k. shakespeare’s use of learning. san marino, ca: huntington library, 1953. þºøêäæðú²ü ¶èºðî²´²üàôâúàôüüºð æ ï³ñμ»ñáõãûáõý ·ñ³ï³ý 黽íç ·áñí³é³ï³ý ¹ñë¨áñáõùý»ñç, áñáýù ¹áõñë ã»ý ·³éçë ·ñ³ï³ý 黽íç ýáñùç ë³ñù³ýý»ñçó, ·»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý 黽áõý çñ çýùý³ïçåáõãûáõýý ³å³ñáíáõù ¿ ïíû³é ·ñáõç ³ýñ³ï³ï³ý á×çý μýáñáß ï³ñ³ùçïáõùý»ñáí, ïíû³é ¹»åùáõùª ·é»ñï³μ³ýáõãûáõýý»ñç û·ï³·áñíù³ùμ: ê³ï³ûý, ·»õ³ñí»ëï³ï³ý ëáëùçý í»ñ³å³ñíáõ ³ûë ³½³ïáõãûáõýá, áñçó ¿é û·ïíáõù ¿ þ»ùëåçñá çñ ëï»õí³·áñíáõãûáõýý»ñáõù, μ³ó³ñó³ï ¨ çýùý³ýå³ï³ï ã¿: îíû³é ¹³ñ³ßñç³ýáõù ³ýå³ñï»ßï ¨ ·é»ñçï ñ³ù³ñíáõ μ³é»ñç áõ ³ñï³ñ³ûïáõãûáõýý»ñç ³é³ï ïçñ³éáõùá å³ûù³ý³íáñí³í ¿ ý³¨ ³ý·é»ñ»ýç ûáõñ³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñáí, 黽í³ïçñý»ñç ³½·³ûçý-·»õ³·çï³ï³ý ùï³íáõáõãû³ùμ ¨ å³ïù³ùß³ïáõã³ûçý ½³ñ·³óù³ý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñáí: úáõñ³ù³ýãûáõñ ï»ñå³ñ ëáëáõù ¿ çñ 黽í³ùï³íáõáõãû³ýá, çñ ³ßë³ññ³û³óùçý, ñ³ë³ñ³ï³ï³ý ¹çñùçý áõ ùçç³í³ûñçý μýáñáß é»½íáí: ¸ñ³ýáí ¿é þ»ùëåçñç ·ñ³ï³ý ñ»ñáëý»ñá ï»ý¹³ýáõãûáõý »ý ëï³ýáõù, ¹³éýáõù í³é ³ýñ³ï³ï³ýáõãûáõý: 129 literature armenian folia anglistika maket_n_verjin.qxp an important source of information about islamized armenians for centuries the history of the armenians has beenaccompanied by struggles against foreign yoke, massacre, attempts of forced islamization. the islamized hamshen-armenians (hamshenis) are of particular interest. as far back as in the 19th century several armenian and foreign scholars such as ghukas inchichean (1806:396-397), minas bzhshkean (1819:92-93,97), german scholar karl koch (1846), sargis haikuni (1895:239-243; 1903:702-709), p. toumayeants (1899:174-177) and others mentioned these armenians. the listing, however, should start with a member of the mekhitarist congregation poghos meherean. the latter was in the village of khevak of hamshen (also known as hamshin, hemshin) as far back as in 1776 and provides us with highly important information in his reminiscences “the life story ….”1. poghos meherean was born in 1729 in the village of arinch in mush and became a clergyman in 1767 (mkhitarean yobelean... 1901:218). he obtained valuable manuscripts for the matenadaran (depository of ancient manuscripts) of the mekhitarist congregation (sargissean, sargsean 1966:1-49; tchemtchemean 1993:19)2. he visited a number of countries in europe (hungary, germany, holland, italy, etc.) and in the east (turkey, egypt, syria, etc.). he even reached india and in 1811 wrote about all these visits with a lively style in his reminiscences which are of exceptional value. p. meherean died in 1814, february 26 on the island of st. lazarus, venice at the age of 85. (mkhitarean yobelean 1901:218) though ghukas inchichean published the first volume of his “the geography of the four parts of the world” in 1806, i.e. before meherean wrote his memoirs, while comparing his articles about the village of khevak, hamshen with those given by inchichean, one may assume that the source of information (maybe oral) is poghos meherean. in one of the chapters of his book called “hemshyre or hamshen” ghukas inchichean writes: “khevak is a village at an 8-hour walk from hamshen and a three-hour walk from khotorjur in the southern part, built on a slope of a high mountain; the population is mostly made up of turks, 200 families of which used to be armenians; 5 or 6 families still remained armenians; the village is known for its high-quality honey; the pejanket tributary crosses khevak and flows into the tchorokh)”. (inchichean 1806:397) in 1843-1844, i.e. 70 years after poghos meherean, karl koch, a professor of the university of berlin and yena, and a famous scholar, was in bardzr hayq and the 251 armenological studies armenian folia anglistika sergey vardanyan tchorokh basin. according to him, khevak which was included in the province of berdagrak, “is made up of 5 districts (or parts) and has 200 houses with a population ranging from 1000 to 1200”. (tashean 1980:218) koch also mentions greek and armenian christians along with the muslims who formed the majority of the population in khevak: “today only 2 villages (karmirk and khotorjur) are the only habitats of armenian christians while in the 4 other villages (kutrashen, nikhagh, mokhrkut and khevak) greek and armenian christians live side by side with muslims”. (ibid.:281) hakobos tashean, who was quite familiar with bardzr hayq and the tchorokh basin writes: “... there were already armenians with georgian ritual traditions in berdagrak and in tortum. armenians belonging to the georgian church, native georgians and christian lazes could also be found among them. most probably the descendants of these lazes came to live side by side with the so-called “greeks” who were mentioned here and there at the beginning of the early 19th century. they, being of a smaller number than the native greeks, have disappeared. nevertheless, it is possible that families of native greeks could have also settled here and could have been registered on this or that occasion”. (ibid.: 214-215) meherean also mentions a georgian monk who was a pastor “in the villages near khevak that professed the religion of greeks”. (meherean, manuscript 560:168-169) there are also similarities between meherean’s and koch’s extended descriptions of the severe climate in the nearby mountains. meherean was in khevak in september and writes that “no one could pass” those mountains already covered with thick snow in october. koch visited the same places in august and very expressively portrays the freezing panorama not typical of a summer: “an icy wind was blowing bitterly when, at last, for the second time we reached the peak of the pontic mountain chain. the mount in khevak which we passed yesterday, lay below. only a dark-brown pile of rocks made up of ruins and enormous massive peaks covered with eternal ice and snow that resembled the peaks of helueti, rose above us. about 100 feet above a water circle could be seen that had turned into ice in the course of many centuries and no sun ray could bring it back to its former state. though my body shivered with cold from time to time, i managed to climb up another height and suddenly the sparse flora vanished. on my left i could see kajkar, the peak of which i was unable to see because it was too close to me. a lower mountain was leaning on this immense mountain rising between the black sea and the tchorokh river. only several peaks pierced into the clouds. so, i was not lucky enough to see the sea which could be reached 8 hours later if we took the straight road”. (koch 1846:100-101; tashean 1880:89-90; houlunean, hatchean 1964: 96-98) ghevond alishan also writes about the village of khevak in his “teghagir hayots metsats” (topography of great armenians). noting, mistakenly, that hamshen belonged to the “state of erzrum” (alishan 1855:36-39), he writes that hamshen is rich in honey and that “in the middle of the previous century its armenian population was converted into muslims, but they still preserve their armenian names and traditions. among the most famous villages of hamshen is khevak, a spot of khachekars”. (ibid.:39) though alishan made no references to his work called “sisuan” we infer that he had already read meherean’s manuscript. while speaking about peylan alishan writes: “one of our 252 armenian folia anglistika armenological studies fathers [mekhitarists] stayed here in 1773”. and then he presents an extract from mehrean’s reminiscences and mentions in the footnote “poghos meherean of the village of arinch in mush” without any reference as to when meherean lived and what handwritten or printed source he had taken that large passage from. this, probably, is the first indication of p. meherean’s name in printed sources. (alishan 1885:420, 421) in 1907, a century after gh. inchichean, s. eprikean, another mekhitarist member, in the second volume of his “patkerazard...” (dictionary of illustrated homeland) making abundant use of gh. inchichean’s and partly alishan’s works, writes about “khevak – a village in hamshen about 3-hours’ walk from khotorjur and 8-hours’ walk from hamshen, built on the slope of a high mountain. in the mid 18th century 200 armenian families were islamized. there is also a small number of catholic armenians. the honey of the village is perfect”. (epikean 1907:167)3 it is not difficult to see that the only novelty is the indication of catholic armenians in khevak. barsegh sargissean was the first to attach special importance to the handwritten reminiscences of poghos meherean. in his “usumnasirutiwn...” (a study of messalian-pavlikian tondrakiys’ sect and the letter of g. narekatsy), retelling about the sectarian armenians meherean had met on his way from aleppo to karin in 1773 (the tonraketsi4, the keskes5 or the arevordi6”) and the stories of false bishop hovhannes from burchimasur, he writes that meherean “recalled the 200 islamized armenian families in khevak” and adds in the footnote: “this unpublished work, that is now in our matenadaran is a very relevant material about the contemporary history and state of the armenian people of the given period”. (sargissean 1893:102-104) b. sargissean refers to meherean’s reminiscences later, too. in his article “vichakagrakan nor...” (a new statistical theory for the benefit of independent armenia) published in “bazmavep” he tells the story of meherean’s meeting with the islamized people in the village of khevak. “and poghos vardapet meherean who 30 years after inchichean, i.e. in 1776, travelled to hamshen, describes in vivid colours the unusual reception by his own kins who had been converted to turks in the village of khevak and in the surrounding villages and presents a really pathetic scene. hearing that he was a clergyman, people crowded around, kneeled and kissed his hand and stared at his companion standing on the table that served as a church stage. thus, he guessed that they had ceased being christian armenians but they had not forgotten it. he looked for the church and found it, which, like a reasonable widow who had been left alone by its apostate sons, was still pure and blameless though closed. he made them open the church, cleaned it and after celebrating the holiday of st. cross with the help of the four newly-ordained clergymen accompanying him, he also officiated a liturgy . the voice of the mysterious song aroused the remorse of the apostates. they began to recollect the faith of their grandparents and mothers and tried to rush in. he tried to block their way but in vain. he commented on “the testament” to the people from the neighboring villages in arabic reminding them about the faith of the ancestors of theirs. and being extremely excited he left the village, for in those days of persecution he could be arrested as a prang [ed.catholic]” (sargissean 1919:284-285)7. 253 armenological studies armenian folia anglistika drawing a comparison between the version told by b. sargissean and the original by p. meherean, it is not difficult to notice that he presents the aforementioned passage with a style and comparisons typical of fiction. sometimes he gets off the point and makes unnecessary complements writing that poghos commented on the testament in arabic (nor bargirq haykazean lezoui 1837:2; zhamanakakits hayots lezvi batsatrakan bararan 1974:250). this can give rise to groundless conclusions about the people of khevak and those of the surrounding villages being speakers of arabic. he writes that poghos left khevak hastily as he was afraid to be arrested as a “prang” while this haste can be explained not only by his fear of being accused as a catholic but by the truly dangerous reality. as it is known, the reconversion of muslims to christians, i.e. “making them armenians again” by a clergyman was a capital crime in the ottoman turkey. in his book “hay bnakchutyuny sev tsoven...” (the armenian population from the black sea to karin) (tashean 1921:81) and in the first and, particularly, the second volumes of his three-volume “tayq, neighbors and khotorjour” hakobos tashean mentions khevak several times. (1973-1981) unfortunately, he is unaware of meherean’s reminiscences, though, as we have already stated, b. sargissean mentions the name of meherean and the village of khevak found in meherean’s reminiscences, in his abovementiond book and in his article entitled “a new statistical theory...”. thus, hakobos tashean would have been able to answer a number of questions with meherean’s assistance. in one of the chapters of his research entitled “the islamization of khevak” h. tashean writes: “unfortunately, we do not have detailed information, about the islamization of this province. at least it is not known to us. the essential information is provided by inchichean. various information is given by koch, too. but it is only this much” (tashean 1921:216). about two centuries after the conversion, we find relevant evidence about the people of khevak being armenian speakers in the works by h. tashean. in 1910-1911 (ibid.:6) travelling from the black sea to karin, he writes: “during our trip we questioned the people we met about this or that armenian word that was used by them, asking for interpretation deliberately, as if we did not know the answer, and we saw that the turkish equivalents of many of these were unknown to them. ‘they call it this way in our village’, this was the only explanation. more and more often we came across cases when the early islamized (e.g. the people of khevak) pretended as if they could not speak any other language except turkish but they understood armenian fully.” (tashean 1973-1981:150) “ even today the people of khevak, at least most of them, either know armenian or understand it though they (particularly the men) speak turkish to foreigners. the islamized have preserved armenian proper surnames (keshish-oghlu; makar-oghlu; minas-oghlu, etc).” (ibid.:219) “these forcibly islamized people still remember their kinships and in-law relations with the christian relatives who had left the country and emigrated to other countries mainly to escape religious violence. the writer of these lines had a chance to get acquainted with the islamized inhabitants of khevak in karin who used to come here to pay visits to their relatives and who knew armenian.” (tashean 1921:81) 254 armenian folia anglistika armenological studies from the book by f. hakob qosean “bardzr hayq. karin qaghaqy...” (1925) we learn that in 2 records out of 3 belonging to the people of khevak in karin, the village is mentioned as khevek. e.g. in the “list of liturgies” engraved in the marble of the left wall of the armenian st. astvatsatsin church (built in 1842), one can read: “master sargis grigorean from khevek”. gravestones were found in the armenian cemetery engraved “zorapean grigor from khevak” (in 1871) and “pnavetis arakelean from khevek” (in 1872) (ibid.: 460, 464, 479, 480). not all the gravestones bear the indication of the birthplace, so it is quite possible that there were other tombs belonging to the people of khevak, as well. “haykakan sovetakan hanragitaran” (the armenian soviet encyclopedia) refers to the village of khevak, too. t. gevorgyan, the author of the material on khevak in the encyclopedia, for unknown reasons, ascribes the islamization of the armenian families to the first half of the 19th century while meherean and other sources point at the first half of the 18th century. “khevak an armenian-speaking muslim village in western armenia, situated in the province of kiskim, in erzrum on the eastern slope of kaj(k)ar mountain to the north of kiskim was mostly engaged in apiary (the village was famous for its high quality honey), cattle-breeding, farming. the christian armenians of khevak (nearly 200 houses) were forced to convert to islam in the mid 19th century. some escaped and found shelter in khotorjur and karin. at the beginning of the 20th century only ten armenian houses adopted muslim during the armenian genocide in 1915. the armenian church in khevak that has now been turned into a mosque, is still preserved” (haykakan sovetakan hanragitaran 1979:47). unfortunately, being familiar with other sources, the authors of “hayastani ev harakits shrjanneri teghanunneri bararan” (dictionary of the place names in armenia and surrounding areas) quote t. gevorgyan, hence, repeating his mistake: “khevak, kheva, khevi – a village in western armenia, in the province of erzrum, in the small province of kiskim, to the left of the tchorokh river, near the mouth of its left tributary kobaksu, on the eastern side of kajkar (khachekar) mountain. the bejanget river that passes through the village is also known as the khevak. at the beginning of the 19th century nearly 200 armenian families and churches were engaged in apiary, cattle-breeding, farming: the majority of the armenian population was forced to adopt islam in the first half of the 19th century. the rest left the village. in the early 20th century only 10 armenian families remained in the village”. (hayastani ev harakits shrjanneri teghanunneri bararan 1988:720) if there were really 10 armenian christian families left in the early 20th century, then it is not clear why a-do, who, while travelling about the state of erzrum in 1909 and collecting information about the armenian population of kiskim in his work “vani, bitlisi ev erzroumi vilayetnery” (1912:5) singles out only 6 villages out of the 68 as having armenian inhabitants. the 6 villages were: khotorjur (with its seven villages or districts), karmrak, gasapa, prtikner, nikhakh, kutrashen. khevak is not mentioned, whereas gasapa with only 15 houses and nikhakh, made up of only 7 houses are indicated (199). in the “patkerazard...” (illustrated dictionary of homeland) by s. eprikean, 255 armenological studies armenian folia anglistika published in 1907, listing the 278 villages of karin that were inhabited by armenians, turks and were known to have a mixed population, the author does not mention khevak. (eprikean 1907:51,300-301) thus it follows that the sources as to where khevak belongs to are diverse. p. meherean, gh. inchichean, gh. alishan, s. eprikean, b. sargissean as well as b. torlaqyan consider it to be one of the villages of hamshen. k. koch, t . gevorgyan and the authors of “hayastani ev harakits shrjanneri teghanunneri bararan” (dictionary of the place names of armenia and surrounding areas) place it in the small province kiskim (berdagrak) of erzrum villayet. tashean, placing khevak in kiskim, thinks it possible that the border of hamshen once reached the southern slopes of the pontic mountain chain including khevak, too: “thus, inchichean places khevak in hamshen as a separate village. due to its position it could be seen easily, though being separated from hamshen by such a mountain chain covered with eternal snow, the impassability of which is so nicely described by koch”. “it can be seen, however, that hamshen once used to stretch to the southern slope of the pontic mountain chain.” (tashean 19731981:197) further research is required to show how convincing h. tashean’s assumptions are. with the desire to put it in action in the scientific circles, we present to your attention extracts scattered on different pages of p. meherean’s reminiscences which are of exceptional importance for the study of the history of converted armenians8. the publication also comprises evidence about the clergymen in khotorjur in the 18th century. it should be noted that the adoption of catholicism started in the second half of the 17th century (houlunean, hatchean 1964:165) and already in 1748, according to a report sent to vatican from constantinople, in all the villages of khotorjur there were catholic armenians with one or two vicars also armenians by origin. (hofmann 1935:128-129) extracts adduced below introduce meherean’s interpretation of the events. * * * “…they brought two psalm-readers from the village of karmirg and another one from the village of mokhrakuit and one named serobe from the village of khevak, hamamashen province. the people of karmirg the vicar and the inhabitants and those of mokhrakuit approved of their readers. as to serobe from khevak, he had no one from his village to speak for him. hence, the elderly vicars of khotorjur told the following story, “when the people of khevak were converted to turks there remained only five or six christian families for which the vicars of khotorjur served as religious leaders. there lived an old man, the father of this psalm-reader serobe. when he was down with illness he called his christian brothers of khevak and said to them, “my dear brothers, you know that 200 homes among our villagers have become turks and only our sacred faith in god spared us. so, now we do not have a vicar and i fear that our and your sons will lose their true way without a vicar. then they asked him, “ter, what shall we do?”. the old man said to them; “look, my son serobe is 9 years old. i will give you 2000 dahekans to send 256 armenian folia anglistika armenological studies my son to khotorjur, to their metsavor ter hakob. let him stay there and learn and when time comes, bring him back and ordain him not to let our sons get lost, as it happened to our villagers”. ter hovsep from khotorjur, ter margar from chichapagh, ter alexan and karapet from the village of syuni, ter poghos from kaghmkhut, ter hovhannes from khantadzor and many others confirmed all this. (p. 161-162) * * * and as to these two psalm-readers from karmirk, one from mokhrakuit and serobe from khevak, they were ordained taking into consideration the wish of the people and the priests (p. 164) . * * * several days after the celebration of virgin maria in khotorjur, i took the newlyordained vicars – ter avetis from the village of mokhrakuit, ter serobe from khevak, ter petros from chichapagh and left for mokhrakuit where ter avetis served a grand liturgy. then i took the officiating priest home in his liturgy clothes with cymbals and singing church psalms on our way, in accordance with the armenian ritual. …several days later, i took ter petros, the newly-ordained ter avetis and ter serobe from hamshen with me and set out for the village of khevak in hamamashen but it was bitterly cold and stormy on the way, and we all lost the slightest hope to survive. i made an attempt to make them eat but the meat was terribly frozen. halve9 had especially hardened into stone and they were unable to eat it. then, it was september and they said it was impossible for anyone to pass those places in october that’s why people went to khevak along the river tchorokh. coming down the mountain we went to khevak and when we entered the village the men and women of the village who had become turks gathered around me and were kissing my hand. here we stayed in the house of the newlyordained ter serobe, who had uncles here who were quite well-off. first, we put a table and together with ter petros and ter avetis i served the liturgy and the people who had become turks came to the house to see the liturgy. i asked them if there was a church there and they said, “yes, but it is ruined”. and when i saw that it was quite easy to repair it i did so at once, cleaned it with the help of five or six other people. then i washed the hard stone with water and wine as the door had been closed and no one had come in or out, i sanctified it and we – the three vicars, served a liturgy. and the converted filled the church in the course of the mass and i could not drive them away with my crosier. i feared they might inform on me to other people saying that the preacher had come to turn the people of khevak back into armenians. and in the month of september we all gloriously celebrated the holiday of the great cross. one georgian priest, named ter israyel, who used to preach in one of the nearby villages in khevak in the greek tradition, following our ceremonial tradition, tried to bring them back to the right faith. without giving thougth to it he intended to change his ritual bringing it close to ours, especially as far as the consecrated bread was concerned. i forbade him presenting many examples and 257 armenological studies armenian folia anglistika persuading him against doing it. ‘if you bring your villagers closer to the church of christ and change your greek rituals, you will not be able to control your people’. after this, i promised him a gown for liturgy according to the greek ritual. then, as i had promised, i sent him all the necessary clothes together with their ornaments from gimishhana. and after the liturgy, according to my nation’s traditions, we left the church with a chasuble and a cross and set out to bless the graves of the perished christians. the converted gathered around us, put food on the tombs of their fathers and each of them begged and implored me to come and consecrate the graves of their ancestors as they had been christians. others felt guilty of being faithless and asked me, especially the elderly, to listen to their confessions. however, there were some women who had remained faithful to their religion and i taught them the basic elements necessary for the faith. i absolved their sins and assigned the newly-ordained ter serobe to take care of them. i left ter petros of khotorjur in khevak, and took ter serobe and went to their home town that was only an hour’s way from khevak. it lay between thick big trees and several farms where one could find sheep, cows, bees and a small hut belonging to ter serobe. here we spent the night and in the following morning we performed a mass after which i was asked to bless the farm, the sheep and the oxen. then we had dinner. later they gave us food to take with us to eat it on our way. they put some snow-white and delicious honey, tasty butter, excellent cheese, etc. in our bags. from here we went down to the gorge to the bank of the river tchorokh. and we were walking along the bank of the river, decorated with vineyards, gardens of olive-trees and with marvelous fruit-trees. i walked around but i could not see good fruit anywhere. the fruit was lying right on the road, squeezed under the feet of passers-by. the soil was drenched with the fruit pulp. there were very big pomegranatetrees, the branches of which were intertwined. i was moving under the trees on horseback. big and blown-up pomegranates could be seen hanging on the trees or lying along the road. i picked them up and ate them with great pleasure. and to my question why they let such good fruit get spoilt they said. “what shall we do, then? there is no one to buy them”. and when i offered them money for fruit they answered, “go to the garden and take any fruit you wish, eat it, take it with you and please, pray to the god for the souls of those who have planted these trees and for the souls of our ancestors who were christians”. though their ancestors had changed their religion they were quite gentle, polite and hospitable. they kissed my hand, took me to their place to read the testament for their sick relatives as they really believed in the power of the testament. it took us three days to go to ardvin from khevak. on october 5,1776, i stayed at ter hovsep’s place who received us with pleasure. so did the citizens”. (p. 167-170) notes: 1. see the detailes in: patmutiwn varouts tearn h. poghos vardapeti meherean // sharagreal yiwrme in 1811 in venetik, i vans srboyn ghazaru. the matenadaran of the mekhitarist congregation of venice, manuscript 560. 258 armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 2. in 1775 f. poghos assigned a psalm-reader and peddler to find manuscripts in provinces. in hamshen the psalm-reader stayed in the house of an armenian, forcibly islamized 60 years before. here, he was told that every saturday evening, the host lit a candle in honour of the testament (in reality it was a mashtots). the psalm-reader was able to buy this most valuable book after many pleas. f. poghos later sent it to venice. the manuscript which dates back to the 9th-10th centuries is still believed to be the oldest mashtots ever found. (sargissean, b.; sargsean, g. 1966 p.4-5; tchemtchemean, s. mayr tsutsak.... p. 19; h. gr. a mashtots // bazmavep // 1949, n5-6, p 114-115). 3. in the explanation of the word kheva that precedes that of khevak, s. epikean indicates “a village in the province of artanouch, one family of armenians and 23 turkish ones. there are 2 other villages with this name in the province of artahan”. barunak torlaqyan, one of the best experts of the ethnography of the people of hamshen, most probably got the data on khevak from s. eprikean. in one of the parts of his study entitled “the region of hamshen” he writes: “ khevak 8-hours’ drive from hamshen to khotorjur, located on a high mountain, a village populated by islamized armenians. the village is noted for its high quality honey.” (see b. torlaqyan. hay azgagrutyun ev banahyusutyun. // nyuter ev usumnasirutyunner. n 13, hamshenahayeri azgagrutyuny. yerevan, 1981, n 13, p. 29) in his book the village of khevak is marked in the territory of the province of hamshen, on the slopes of the parkhar mountain range. (the approximate schematic map of the settlements as of 1915 is known as “hamshenahayer ev pontahayer”) the source is not given. the village of khevak is named khevi on russian maps. according to the dictionary, there used to be a village called kheva in the region of artanouch of the district of ardvin in batumi and two others in the district of ardahan in the region of kars. (t. hakobyan, s. melik-bakhshyan, h. barseghyan. hayastani ev harakits shrjanneri teghanunneri bararan. yerevan, 1988. p. 720. vol. 2) 4. tondraketsi – a sectarian social movement in armenia in the 9th -11th centuries. the movement was initially launched in the small town of tondrak, hence the name of the movement. 5. keskes – half-christians and half-muslims. 6. arevordi – descendants of the christian sectarian movement in the 11th-12th centuries in cilicia and armenia. armenians and probably assyrians by origin. worshiped the sun, the poplar and lilies. 7. in 1992 the historian s. poghossyan came up with a more concise exposition of what barsegh vardapet sargissean told. see s. poghossyan. sev tsovits vana tsov, hing amis hing or. yerevan, 1992, p. 22. 8. a small extract was published from “hamshentsi musulman hayeri usumnasirutyan patmutyunits” by s. vardanyan // iran-name. 1998, p.2, n 1-2-3; see also: s. vartanian. des armeniens oublies // azad magazine. grenoble, 1999, p.16, n3. 259 armenological studies armenian folia anglistika 9. the word derives form an arabic root and is used to describe many distinct types of sweet confection, across the middle east, central asia, and south asia. it is made from a variety of ingredients, including sunflower seeds various nuts, beans, lentils, and vegetables, such as carrots, pumpkins, yams, and squashes . references: 1. a-do. (1912) vani, bitlisi ev erzroumi vilayetnery. yerevan. 2. alishan, gh. (1855) teghagir hayots metsats. venice: st. lazarus. 3. alishan, gh. (1885) sisuan. venice: st. lazarus. 4. bzhshkean, m. (1819) patmutiwn pontosi, vor e seaw tsov. venice: st. lazarus. 5. conybeare, fred. c. (1898) the key of truth, a manual of the paulician church of armenia. oxford. 6. eprikean, s. (1907) patkerazard bnashkarhik bararan, venice: st. lazarus. vol. 2. 7. ghazaryan, a.; levonyan r.n. (1999) hayastanyayts avetaranakan yekeghetsi (hayastan-kovkas). yerevan: haykakan hanragitaran press. 8. grigoryan, v. (1960) nor teghekutyunner “banali tchshmartutyan” yerki heghinak hovhannes yeretsi masin. // banber matenadarani, n5. 9. hakobyan, t; melik-bakhshyan, s.; barseghyan, h. (1988) hayastani ev harakits shrjanneri teghanunneri bararan, yerevan: yerevani hamals. hrat. vol. 2. 10. (1979) haykakan sovetakan hanragitaran. yerevan: yerevani hamals. hrat. vol. 5. 11. haykuni, s. (1895) nshkharner. korats u moratsuats hayer (trapizoni haymahmetakan giwghern u nrants avandutiwnnery) // ararat. vagharshapat: sourb ator. n7, n8. 12. haykuni, s. (1903) ter karapet qahanay toroslitsi // manandean y.; atcharean h. hayots nor vkanery (1155-1843). vagharshapat: sourb ator. 13. haykuni, s. (1905) yuseptsi azgatohm ew tarorinak awazak abrieom trapizoni aay aiwgheru mej (1795-1840). vagharshapat: sourb ator. 14. houlunean, y.; hatchean m. (1964) hushamatean khotorjuri. vienna: mekhitarist press. 15. inchichean, gh. (1806) ashkharhagrutiwn chorits masants ashkharhi. venice: st. lazarus. vol. 1. 16. karnetsi, ghukas (2003) divan hayots patmutyan. book 1. yerevan: nas, gitutyun. vol. 2. 17. koch, k. (1846) wanderungen im oriente während der jahre 1843 und 1844, ii, reise im pontischen gebirge und türkischen armenien. waimar. landes industrie comptoirs. 18. meherean, p. patmutiwn varouts tearn h. poghos vardapeti meherean, sharagreal yiwrme 1811 venetik, i vans srboyn ghazaru. // the matenadaran of the mekhitarist congregation of venice, manuscript 560. 19. (1901) mkhitarean yobelean 1701-1901. venice: st. lazarus. 20. (1837) nor bargirq haykazean lezoui. venice: st. lazarus. vol. 2. 260 armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 21. qosean, h. (1925) bardzr hayq. karin qaghaqy (teghagrutiwn, patmutiwn ew sovorutiwnner.) vienna, mekhitarist press. vol. 1. 22. sargissean, b. (1893) usumnasirutiwn maniqea-pawghikean tonraketsineru aghandin ew gr. narekatsvoy tughty. venice: st. lazarus. 23. sargissean, b. sargsean, g. (1996) mayr tsutsak hayeren dzeragrats matenadaranin mkhitareants i venetik. venice. vol. 3. 24. sargissean, b. (1919) vitchakagrakan nor tesutiwn my i npast ankakh hayastani. // bazmavep, venice: st. lazarus. n9. 25. tashean, h.y. (1980) tayq, dratsiq ew khotorjour (patmakan-teghagrakan usumnasirutiwn). vienna: mekhitarist press. vol. 2. 26. tashean, y. (1921) hay bnakchutiwny sev tsoven minchew karin (patmakanazgagrakan harewantsi aknark my). vienna: mekhitarist press. 27. tchemtchemean, s. (1993) mayr tsutsak hayeren dzeragrats matenadaranin mkhitareants i venetik. venice: st. lazarus. vol. 4. 28. ter-mkrtchean, k. (1990) pawghikeants ew tondraketswots aghandnery ardi knnadatuteamb. // ararat. mekhitarist press. n7 (july). 29. toumayeants, p. (1899) pontosi hayery. ashkharhagrakan ew qaghaqakan vitchak trapizoni. tpkhis, lumay, july. (1974) zhamanakakits hayots lezvi batsatrakan bararan. yerevan: nas, gitutyun. vol. 3. 261 armenological studies armenian folia anglistika microsoft word maket 2021-2(24) 2.11.doc linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 11 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2021.17.2.011 manipulative speech: a theoretical overview seda gasparyan rafayel harutyunyan** yerevan state university manipulation is one of the concepts that needs a more in-depth theoretical and practical examination. it is employed in many areas of life, including personal and social matters, intellectual and professional pursuits, and, of course, politics. this paper is an approach, the purpose of which is to study through comparativecontrastive, inductive, deductive and observation methods the concept of manipulation as a psychological and linguistic phenomenon where the central emphasis is on the manipulative techniques and tactics that are utilized for various reasons such as illegitimate domination and social abuse. at this level of investigation we find it essential to illustrate different approaches to the study of this phenomenon as well as certain dictionary definitions to be able to fully perceive and comprehend the properties of manipulation. keywords: manipulation, linguistic and psychological manipulation, social abuse, manipulative strategies, propaganda, political discourse. introduction the objective of the present research being the study of different approaches to manipulation in speech, in this paper we compare the manipulative strategies and techniques elaborated by different scholars in the literature of the question. to achieve the goal of determining the differences and similarities between various approaches, at the present stage of investigation the following methods of analysis are used: the method of observation, as well as comparativecontrastive, inductive, deductive analyses. manipulation is one of the phenomena that are highly affected by propaganda and closely related to media and political discourses. the term manipulation derives from the latin word manipulus meaning handful, bundle, which in its turn comes from the words manus (hand) and pleo (to fill). the  sedagasparyan@ysu.am ** rafayel.harutyunyan22@gmail.com this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 25.08.2021 revised: 01.10.2021 accepted: 08.10.2021 © the author(s) 2021 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 12 explanations of the concept of manipulation are formulated differently in different dictionaries, and they stress out different aspects of the notion1, however, all of them are based on the essential idea of managing and controlling people’s thoughts and behaviours by using unfair and abusive tactics. the concept of manipulation has been developed by many researchers, and in all the existing investigations the common thread of the social nature of manipulation the accomplishment of which violates social norms, runs through different theories. according to joseph raz, (1986, pp. 377-379) “manipulation, unlike coercion, does not interfere with a person’s alternatives”. instead, it perverts how a person makes judgments, establishes preferences, or sets goals. anne barnhill (2014) as well as cass r. sunstein (2015, p. 12) believe, that manipulation is “directly influencing someone’s beliefs, desires, or feelings, so that she falls short of ideals for belief, desire, or emotion in ways that are generally not in her self-interest or are likely not in her self-interest in the present context.” in wilkinson’s words (2013, p. 341), “being controlled might be regarded informally as being made someone’s puppet on a string”. in their attempt to understand the peculiar features of manipulation ruth faden and tom beauchamp (1986, p. 354-368) have come to the conclusion that of particular interest is psychological manipulation which is done through “any purposeful act that successfully affects a person to believe or action by inducing changes in mental processes other than those involved in understanding”. all these definitions give rise to the assumption that manipulation is not only a strategy for achieving one’s own objectives by fooling others and convincing them of things that are not necessarily true, but are also used to gain people’s trust by concealing some facts about reality, i.e. misrepresenting the truth. against the background of what has been said above, we can take into account that manipulation as a strategy is a persuasion tactic frequently used to convey a specific message whose major goal is to influence the audience and persuade them to support the manipulator’s views or actions. it follows logically that manipulation, on the other hand, is a psycholinguistic process. hence, it is impossible to come to any definite conclusion on this point without integrating the results of psychological and linguistic research. manipulation and manipulators are largely conditioned by each other. it seems essential to emphasize that manipulators are aware of their targets’ weak linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 13 points and utilize those vulnerabilities as their primary tool to play with the strings of the person’s emotions and sentiments. they are rather clever, and having mastered the psychology of human behavior, as well as the art of rhetorical persuasion, they are capable of persuading huge crowds for their own good (gasparyan et al., 2019, p. 45). these individuals are naturally dominating, and they are typically in charge of everything in partnerships. manipulators are more powerful and often hold positions of control. their primary objective is to influence others’ behaviour, emotions, and analytical thinking without considering that their wish may not coincide to the desire of the manipulated. they trick the manipulated into believing that the latter, the dubbed victims, lack the ability to consider and weigh things for themselves. we can see that each of the above interpretations is similar to the other, with the motive for manipulating being nearly always the same in every case – to make people do what you want by influencing their ideas and mind while still giving choices for them to select from. the manipulator achieves this impact by employing a variety of methods, including distraction, seduction, misdirection, and reasonable reasoning, to mention a few (handelman, 2009, p. 11). the manipulator diverts the target’s attention away from the main issue by making false statements or providing blurry and ambiguous information. thus, the core information conveyed by the manipulator is presented through seemingly rational arguments, which, in other circumstances would not be approved by the target, especially if the manipulator were much fairer and provided all the facts as they are. techniques and tactics for making manipulative intentions come to life in his work how to successfully handle manipulative people preston ni (2014) characterizes psychological manipulation as the use of undue influence, such as mental distortion and emotional exploitation, to acquire power, control, rewards, and/or privileges at the expense of the victim. the author also makes a further point about the distinction of social influence from psychological manipulation. it is stated that normally, most people experience healthy social influence in positive interactions, meanwhile many individuals are used for the benefit of others through psychological manipulation. in addition, the author mentions one of the important components of successful psychological manipulation when the manipulator purposefully establishes a power imbalance and uses the victim to further his/her agenda. the author draws attention to the significance of the four common characteristics a manipulative individual can armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 14 have. for him, it is so important to be aware of the fact that a manipulator usually knows how to detect his target’s weaknesses, and the moment they are found, they are undoubtedly used against the latter. another characteristic feature of an individual with manipulative intentions is the ability to convince the target through shrewd machinations to give up something of himself/herself and serve the self-centered interests of the manipulator, and when the latter succeeds in taking advantage of the target, s/he will likely repeat the violation, until the target becomes aware of the exploitation and puts a stop to it. these traits are often flexibly switched up to fit the needs of the manipulator. consequently, ni claims it more suitable to highlight the following categories of psychological manipulation: negative manipulation which is designed to make the victim feel inferior, inadequate, insecure, and/or self-doubting, and this gives the manipulator a chance to obtain superiority; positive manipulation, intended to emotionally entice the victim in exchange for favours, concessions, sacrifices, or promises; deception and intrigue that are usually meant to enchant, awaken the curiosity or attention of the victim and alter his/her perception in order to gain more power; display of strategic helplessness, aimed at taking advantage of the victim's good will, guilty conscience, sense of responsibility, obligation and inclination to protect and nurture (ni, 2014, pp. 5-6). proceeding from these classifications and considering the fact of frequent employment of coercion by manipulators to force others into a disadvantageous situation, ni proposes fourteen tactics: 1. home court advantage is a tactic which provides a manipulator more comfort in exerting greater power and control over the manipulated. the manipulator insists on meeting and talking with the target in a physical location that is preferable for him/her (that may be the manipulator’s office, house, car, or any other place where s/he may exert greater power and control as he feels more protected and confident, whereas the target does not). 2. the manipulator may let the target speak first to establish the baseline of his/her talk and look for weakness. this technique is often applied by salespeople by asking the target general and probing questions and establishing a baseline about his/her thinking and behaviour. this gives the manipulator a chance to analyse the strengths of the target and the limits of his/her possible actions. this type of inquiry with a concealed goal may occur in both commercial and personal interactions. 3. manipulation of facts presupposes lying, excuse-making, being hypocritical, making the victims feel responsible for their own victimization, linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 15 and distorting the truth through disclosing or withholding the key information. in the employment of this tactic, exaggeration and understatement are often applied as strategic components. 4. overwhelming the target with facts and statistics which s/he may not be aware of is practiced by people who pretend to be the most knowledgeable and talented and enjoy “intellectual bullying”. this may happen in sales and financial circumstances, as well as professional talks and negotiations, social and relationship disputes when by exerting expert control over the target, the manipulator, hoping to have established his/her intellectual superiority, tries to persuade the target to embrace the manipulator’s purpose. 5. overwhelming the target with procedures and red tape is a technique used to defer fact-finding and truth-seeking, hide faults and vulnerabilities, and thus escape scrutiny. this is accomplished through utilizing bureaucracy, processes, regulations and bylaws, committees, and other hurdles to maintain the manipulator’s power and position while making the life of the target more difficult. 6. during arguments, some individuals raise their voices and display unpleasant feelings. to increase effect, they project their voice loudly enough and accompany their anger by powerful body language, such as standing or passionate motions. if they do it on purpose making the target cave into their pressure and give them what they want, they in fact accomplish a kind of aggressive manipulation which ni describes as raising their voice and displaying negative emotions. 7. negative surprise is also a manipulative tactic implemented in speech for throwing the target off and gaining a psychological edge. this might range from lowballing in a negotiation to declaring outright that the target will be unable to follow through and deliver in some way. the unexpected unfavorable information usually comes without warning, giving him/her little time to prepare and respond. 8. giving no time or little time to decide is a technique often employed in classic sales and negotiation in which the manipulator forces the manipulated to make a decision before they are ready. it is thought that by exerting tension and control to the manipulated, the latter will crack and give in to the aggressor's demands. 9. negative humor designed to poke at the targets weaknesses is sure to disempower him/her. manipulators sometimes veil their critical comments as comedy or sarcasm in order to give rise to inferiority and insecurity in the armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 16 target. comments on the target’s appearance, the older model of his/her smartphone, the background and credentials, or the fact that the latter arrived two minutes late and out of breath are all possible examples. 10. consistently judging and criticizing the target to make him/her feel inadequate is a tool in the hands of the manipulator to behave explicitly. keeping the target off-balance, the manipulator maintains supremacy by constantly marginalizing, insulting, and rejecting him/her. avoiding true and constructive answers or significant methods to assist the target, the manipulator intentionally creates the idea that there is always something wrong with him/her and the latter is never good enough. 11. when the manipulator purposefully does not respond to the legitimate calls, text messages, emails, or other questions of the target, this silent treatment becomes a powerful psychological technique of manipulation which instills doubt and confusion in the mind of the target, thus increasing the influence of the manipulator on the target. 12. another interesting manipulative trick on the list of ni’s manipulative tactics is the so-called pretended ignorance which is a typical example of acting stupid when the manipulator pretends s/he does not comprehend what is wanted him/her to do. this trick is the kids’ favorite and they constantly try to make use of it in their relations with adults. 13. as already mentioned above, the recipient’s weak areas are constantly being targeted by a manipulator who often tries to hold someone else accountable for his/her pleasure, success, or failings. the manipulator coerces the target into granting unreasonable requests and demands by using the emotional vulnerabilities and susceptibility of the latter through guilt baiting which the manipulator believes to be more rational and effective than straightforward blaming. 14. intentional exaggeration or fabrication of personal difficulties or weaknesses, playing a helpless victim in order to garner compassion and favour is also considered a manipulative tactic described by ni as victimhood. this is practiced to take advantage of the victim's goodness, guilty conscience, feeling of responsibility and obligation, or protective and nurturing instincts in order to extract disproportionate advantages and concessions (ni, 2015). another important investigation of the notion of manipulation and its realization in speech is presented in the book dealing with manipulative people by george k. simon (2020, p. 125) where the author holds the interest of the reader by suggesting some “tips for avoiding the traps of a manipulator”. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 17 according to simon, it is important to be aware of the telltale signs of character disturbance and the manipulative tactics, for this will be a good defense against manipulators who are ready to mislead, exploit, con, or otherwise hoodwink. the author singles out the following three tips: knowing the kind of persons one is dealing with; educating oneself about manipulative tactics; divesting oneself of harmful misconceptions. these tips let us understand that for getting a sense of someone’s core nature one needs to keep an eye out for some personality traits, for knowing the difference between someone’s basic personality or style of relating, i.e., their distinctive manner of perceiving and interacting with the world is of very good help. it seems of utmost necessity to mention that skilled manipulators can use just about any behavior to con and deceive, and therefore it will be useful to draw a clear line between the manipulative tactics the author neatly presents: 1. evasion and diversion which manipulators use by answering the questions for short, i.e., giving answers that are not complete. the target needs to think about it for a while to understand that if someone appears to be sidestepping or bypassing a problem in some way, avoiding a topic, or refusing full transparency it does not mean they merely are nervous or justifiably cautious or guarded. they might be purposefully evasive in order to manipulate, particularly that manipulators are very skilled at shifting the target’s attention to something unexpected, and diverting the focus of interest. 2. distortions, inconsistencies, and calculation of domissions, which are most successful when subtle and hidden, and are effective methods for someone to lie. hence, manipulate in this case is to repeat a number of totally factual, verifiable facts while purposefully leaving out a critical piece of information that would cast an altogether different light on things. 3. rationalizations and excuses is a tactic which is employed by some individuals who appear to have an answer for everything, but all of a sudden, their explanations no longer make sense. thus, it is very important to be cautious when someone explains events or gives justifications for doing particular things, and not to take everything at their face value. otherwise stated, when things do not appear to add together, one needs to trust his/her intuition. there is no need to be scared of asking clarifying questions. however, creative excuse making may also be a totally intentional and deliberate technique to make one believe a person does not do anything wrong or has a just cause to do something that appears wrong, or has too many answers for actions that one finds disturbing in any manner. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 18 4. minimization and magnifying is a tactic that is normally used to minimize or magnify the effect of information, dependent on the purpose of the manipulator. this strategy is more widely used in business performances. 5. aiming to gain the target’s trust manipulators skillfully turn on their charm to achieve their goal, for they know very well that seduction is one of the reliable tactics in the pursuit of their objective. the more cunning a manipulator is, and the keener he/she is on taking advantage of the target through deceiving them, the more cautious they are about currying their favour. at times, of course, the manipulator may look extremely real, however an experienced observer can see right through the deception. 6. conscientious people desire to do things right, and if someone invites them to feel guilty about doing or failing to do something, or humiliated about what they have done, they are more likely to be driven to put things right. when the intended target of manipulation has a well-developed conscience founded on empathy for others, shaming and blaming as manipulation tactics can be practiced rather successfully through pressing their guilt and shame buttons, and this can take the manipulator very far (simon, 2020, pp. 126-128). it is considered to be essential to single out the classification of manipulative tactics suggested by george k. simon (2020, p. 133), which are closely connected with covert-aggression. according to the author there are a number of covertly aggressive (manipulative) actions, and some are more common in professional contexts than others. simon believes that covert intimidation is accomplished through the application of several methods which are very helpful in subtly intimidating others. quite effective are the following methods: singling the target out for special treatment (i.e. selective treatment); leaving the target to feel abandoned and alone if s/he does not play ball in the manner the manipulator wants (i.e. systematic exclusion or ostracizing); or subtly providing for pleasant rewards to come a person’s way for compliance while stealthily imposing negative consequences for non-compliance (i.e. covert rewards and victimizing are methods of manipulation, very successfully practiced in different situations of life and political speech in particular). one thing is beyond suspicion for simon: overt intimidation is not usually the manipulator’s game (ibid., p. 134). another very effective manipulative tactic, according to simon, is lying. manipulators will not only lie to you, but also about you. they will also discreetly urge people to disseminate falsehoods about you in order to lower your status or gain an edge over you. lying is one of the most obvious linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 19 indicators of a personality disorder. and the degree of a flaw in a person’s character is frequently most visible in how and why they lie. the most seriously disturbed personalities (e.g., psychopaths, sociopaths) are especially pathological in their lying in that they lie lavishly and without remorse, and without any apparent necessity or justification, i.e., when the truth would easily suffice or would seem of more practical benefit (ibid., p. 134). denial which the author refers to is aimed at impression management, and control. many people misapprehend it for the ego-defense technique of denial. the manipulation and responsibility-evasion tactic of denial is of a literally unusual kind. denial can be used to gain an advantage rather than to protect oneself. when provoked, some of the most fervent aggressors may push forward the most violent denials. when someone denies something, the amount of superficial conviction might cause doubt. and, when combined with the strategies of feigning confusion/ignorance and innocence, or playing the role of a victim, denial is frequently much more successful as a strategy. the thing is that when confronted with anything they have done to hurt you, characterimpaired people may claim they have no idea what you are talking about, appear confused, or otherwise indicate that their hands are clean. and if they are persuasive enough about this, given your own degree of vigilance, you could wind up feeling like the bad guy for suspecting them in the first place. that is why this strategy works so well. it is always a good idea to have your facts clear and your supporting documents close at hand. even yet, a tenacious manipulator may cling to a narrative. when a manipulator initiates to play the role of a victim, sensitive and conscientious individuals cannot bear seeing anyone in pain or in a disadvantageous situation. and the most effective method to exploit someone’s compassion and so influence them into doing something they would not otherwise do is to skillfully portray yourself as a victim of some tragic event or someone else’s actions. this is a particularly effective trump card for manipulators to use when someone is aware of their schemes and suspects them of being the victim. after familiarizing with different approaches to the study of manipulation, it will be useful to consider the following view by shostrom. according to him, modern man is a manipulator and s/he learns the act of manipulation as a result of living in a market society. manipulation is not unique to contemporary man, however, as western culture has become more structured, as mass media has expanded, and as sophisticated means of promotion, persuasion, and marketing have emerged, the opportunities for manipulation have undoubtedly multiplied. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 20 and the author accepts the approach that the urge to control and be controlled is a key aspect of the manipulator’s nature (shostrom, 1967). it is simple to note that some formulations stress the hidden non-violent character of manipulation, while others emphasize the manipulator’s supremacy, and yet others emphasize the disparity between the initial and indoctrinated wants and intents. this is the result of insufficient research on the concept of manipulation. in this regard, researchers (linguists, psychologists and so on) are still faced with the challenge of selecting required and sufficient criteria for the definition of manipulation. in his work discourse and manipulation van dijk considers the researcher to be the one who can detect any sort of manipulation. it is mostly his responsibility because the manipulator himself will never admit that his influence on people is intentional and purposeful. manipulative tactics, on the other hand, can be utilized unknowingly in some circumstances. this might occur when the speaker is attempting to solve his/her immediate communicative goal. in fact, a number of concepts may occur in speech that deserve special attention as they potentially suggest the violation of discursive authority and can be revealed through critical discourse analysis (cda). the concept of manipulation is frequently employed in a more impressionistic manner, and there is hardly any formal explanation of the structures and processes involved in manipulation. most cases of manipulation, as we perceive it, occur through text and speaking, hence a discourse analytical approach is of great help. on the other hand, those being controlled are human beings, and this is generally done by manipulating their minds, thus, a cognitive account can also provide insight on the processes. however, a social approach is necessary too, as manipulation is a type of interactional discourse, and it involves power and power abuse (van dijk, 2006, pp. 359-360). according to dr. richard paul and dr. linda elder (2004, p. 20), manipulators can also use a variety of other tricks to attain their evil goals. one of these tricks is frequently referred to as pointing to another wrong. this is the case when the manipulator accuses the opponent of what s/he is accused of. it particularly occurs in a situation when the manipulators are scolded and, having difficulty to find a way out, they flip the assault and use it to their advantage, making greater allegations against their opponents in order to compel them to defend themselves. another trick is the unfounded alarm about a domino effect of undesirable things that will result in something horrible in the end. in other words, this trick is described as accusing the target of sliding a slippery slope: linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 21 although action a of which the target is accused is not so awful, it may lead to action b, which in its turn may possibly lead to c which is terrible. most individuals are awestruck by persons in positions of authority, prominence, or grandeur in general. furthermore, many holy symbols (flags, religious imagery, sacred phrases, etc.) elicit strong connection and allegiance from individuals. despite the fact that power, rank, and stature have little to do with wisdom and insight, people are captivated by individuals who hold such positions. demagogues who effectively mislead people understand that the majority of people are easily duped in this manner. as a result, they wrap themselves in the flag and identify with authority, celebrity, or prestige (in any way they can). this includes hunting for experts and other knowledgeable people to back up their claims. this trick is defined by dr. richard paul and dr. linda elder (2004) as appealing to authority. buss et al. (1987, p. 1222) identify six types of manipulative methods used by manipulators to get things done the way they want: 1. charm tactic. manipulators employ charm techniques to obtain what they want by praising or charming their target in such a way that the latter does not suspect the manipulator of any wrongdoing. they are flattered, and this appeals to them, so they blindly follow the manipulator's instructions. this is a common strategy in which individuals act in this manner anytime they require or desire anything from the other. 2. silent treatment. when manipulators ask/tell someone to do something but they are rejected, they employ the silent treatment method to force the individual to do what they are told or else they would be ignored. this can also be considered a kind of blackmail (if you don’t do this, i won’t talk to you). 3. coercion tactic. coercion method is employed when manipulators fail to get things done as intended because their target has rejected them. thus, the manipulator must take efforts to attain his aim by demanding, yelling, shouting, and even verbally assaulting the victim as many times as necessary until their demands are satisfied and their goals are achieved. this may also be viewed as a type of psychological manipulation. 4. reason tactic. when one needs others to follow, believe, or do what s/he says, reason tactic comes to help. the manipulator gives reasons why the target should do what s/he is told to. as a result, he or she offers a very meaningful rationale to others while concealing the known facts from the listeners. clearly, if s/he tells the full truth, many others would realize that this person is untrustworthy and that it would be foolish to follow in his/her armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 22 footsteps. thus, manipulators provide arguments that are enticing to others but are not fully true. 5. regression tactic. manipulators employ this type of strategy when they are first denied. if none of the other techniques succeeds, they will turn to this one. they make a funny expression and bother the target until he or she cannot take it any longer and has to perform what is asked to. 6. debasement tactic. this tactic is employed when the manipulator has to degrade himself or behave in a very modest manner in order to get affection from the target and have him/her accomplish what he or she has requested them to do. linguistic manipulation from a political standpoint, i.e., the use of language to transmit a manipulative attitude in legal and political objectives that are not near to reality and truth, has a significant influence on people’s political conscience. manipulation in political speech conveys not just language components, but also historical, cultural, and psychological characteristics inherent in politics. politicians construct and sustain the public’s image of a savior, but in fact, they frequently lack a strong and realistic strategy for the country. they can only convince, influence, and impress the audience with their rhetorical speech and authoritative and strong phrases, which are in fact hollow. the audience is so desperate that the majority of them do not question the politician’s ideas or plans; instead, they go with the flow to see what happens since they are so enthralled by the politician's speech (handelman, 2009, p. 84). political discourse analysis, according to van dijk (1997) and dunmire (2012, p. 736), can either contain the text and the speech of politicians in openly political situations, or refer to a political vision of the discourse. van dijk divides political manipulative techniques into two categories: positive selfpresentation strategies and negative other-presentation strategies (dijk, 2006, p. 373). positive self-presentation is a strategy used by speakers to talk well about oneself, frequently using positive phrases and overall elevating themselves in the eyes of the audience. a speaker's use of negative otherpresentation is a strategy in which they seek to denigrate and tear down an opposing speaker. the initiator of such methods, which are sometimes regarded as underhanded or diversionary, often aims to lower the opposition’s status in the eyes of the audience. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 23 conclusion manipulation has become an indispensable part of our life, particularly in politics. depending on the moment and context, politicians take use of their platform to appeal to public and gain their trust as leaders. however, they often to play to their audience, trying to charm them and through the employment of a variety of strategies and techniques influence them and seize control of the situation. considering different approaches to the study of manipulative strategies as a complex psycholinguistic concept we can assume that those tactics are generally implemented depending on the moment (situation) and context. however, all of these tactics and strategies are applied both directly and indirectly, and our understanding and interpretation of them depend on our feelings and interaction with people. on the one hand, there is no need for an individual to seek hidden meanings in words and ideas conveyed through speech in order to properly comprehend them if the meaning is supplied immediately and expressed directly, on the other hand, when communicating thoughts indirectly, using some strategies and delivering ambiguous signals, the interlocutor must be sensible enough to notice the hidden subtleties that are missing from the transmitted words. it stands to reason that these manipulative strategies can be used in different registers including media, politics, social relations, etc. however, politics is assumed to have this high potential to unfold all those tricks that are platforms to appeal to voters in an election campaign, to demonstrate their power and presence during a crisis and so on. as far as media is concerned, we should note that we live with the overflow of media representations and the fact that media can take a variety of measures, employing many techniques and strategies to influence the audience in order to gain click bates and seize control of the situation is of utmost importance. as a result, we came to the conclusion that manipulative strategies and tactics are defined in different works of theorists which in some of the cases go hand in hand to convey similar contextual interpretations. in the meantime, there are a number of semantic differences in terms of defining manipulation, and this will later allow us to conduct an analysis of concrete linguistic material to expose the manipulative nature of media-political discourse. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 24 notes in oxford learner’s dictionary (retrieved from www.oxfordlearnersdiction aries.com/) manipulation is defined as “behaviour that controls or influences somebody/something, often in a dishonest way so that they do not realize it.” a similar definition can be found in cambridge dictionary (retrieved from https://dictionary.cambridge.org) which explains the term as “controlling someone or something to one’s own advantage, often unfairly or dishonestly.” according to mirriam webster dictionary (retrieved from https://merriamwebster.com), manipulation is interpreted as “treating or operating with or as if with the hands or by mechanical means especially in a skillful manner; managing or utilizing skillfully; controlling or playing upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one’s own advantage.” references barnhille, a. (2014). what is manipulation? in chr.coons, & m. weber (eds.), manipulation: theory and practice. oxford scholarship online. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199338207.003.0003 buss, d. m., gomes, m., higgins, d.s., & lauterbach, k. (1987). tactics of manipulation. journal of personality and social psychology, 52 (6), 1219-1229. retrieved september 3, 2021 from https://cdn.la.utexas.edu/buss/files/2015/09/tactics_of_manipulation_1987_jpsp.pdf dunmire, p. l. (2012). political discourse analysis: exploring the language of politics and the politics of language. language and linguistic compass, 6 (11), 735-751. retrieved june 10, 2021 from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263601538_political_discourse_analysis_ex plo ring_the_language_of_politics_and_the_politics_of_language faden, r., & beauchamp, t. (1986). a history and theory of informed consent. new york: oxford university press. gasparyan, s., paronyan, sh., & muradian g. (2019). the use and abuse of language in the legal domain. montreal: arod books. handelman, s. (2009). thought manipulation. the use and abuse of psychological trickery. greenwood publishing group, praeger, retrieved august 2, 2021 from http://www.psicopolis.com/psicopedia/thoughtmanip.pdf ni, p. (2014). how to successfully handle manipulative people. retrieved from http://www.nipreston.com/publications/excerpts/manipulativeexcerpt.pdf linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 25 ni, p. (2015). 14 signs of psychological and emotional manipulation. psychology today. retrieved september 10, 2021 from https://www.scribd.com/document/288236905/14-signs-ofpsychological-and-emotional-manipulation-psychology-today raz, j. (1986). the morality of freedom. oxford: oxford university press. richard, p., & elder, l. (2004). the thinker’s guide to fallacies: the art of mental trickery and manipulation. foundation for critical thinking. retrieved september 10, 2021 from http://www.brahmakumaris.info/download/cult%20related/fallacies.pdf shostrom, e.l. (1967). man, the manipulator: the inner journey from manipulation to actualization. canadian journal of counselling and psychotherapy, 2(2), 128-129. retrieved august 29, 2021from https://cjc-rcc.ucalgary.ca/ article/view/60576 simon, g. k. (2020). dealing with manipulative people. in m.shoja et al., (eds.). a guide to the scientific career: virtues, communication, research, and academic writing (pp.113-121), 123-137. sunstein, c. r. (2015). fifty shades of manipulation. harvard library. dash harvard.edu. retrieved august 12, 2021 from https://dash.harvard.edu/ bitstream/handle/1/161499 47/ manipulation2_18.pdf van dijk, t. (1997). what is political discourse analysis? belgian journal of linguistics, 11 (1), 11-52. https://doi.org/10.1075/ bjl.11.03dij van dijk, t. (2006). discourse and manipulation, discourse and society, 17(2), 359-383. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926506060250 wilkinson, t. m. (2013). nudging and manipulation. political studies, 61(2), 341-355. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2012.00974.x մտաշահարկային խոսք: տեսական ակնարկ սեդա գասպարյան ռաֆայել հարությունյան մտաշահարկումը այն հասկացություններից է, որի համակողմանի տեսական ու գործնական քննությունը այսօրվա հրամայականն է, քանզի այն օգտագործվում է ժամանակակից կյանքի բազմաթիվ ոլորտներում, այդ թվում անձնական ու հանրային, մտավոր ու մասնագիտական և, իհարկե, առավելապես՝ քաղաքական: սույն հոդվածում նպատակ է դրվում ուսումնասիրելու մտաշահարկում հասկացության՝ որպես հոգեբանական ու լեզվական երևույթի տեսական մեկնաբանություններն armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 26 ու արժևորումները՝ մտաշահարկային մարտավարությունների և դրանց դրանց իրականացման մեխանիզմների առանձնակի շեշտադրմամբ: հետազոտության այս փուլում էապես կարևորվում է քննության առնել տարբեր նպատակներով և տարբեր ոլորտներում կիրառվող մարտավարական մեխանիզմների ուսումնասիրության դաշտում առկա տեսական մոտեցումներ, բառարանային մեկնաբանություններ, որոնք կամբողջացնեն մեր պատկերացումները խոսքում մտաշահարկային ռազմավարության ներդրման յուրահատկությունների մասին: բանալի բառեր. մտաշահարկում, լեզվական և հոգեբանական մտաշահարկում, սոցիալական չարաշահում, մտաշահարկային ռազմավարություն, քարոզչություն, քաղաքական դիսկուրս: armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 143 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2022.18.1.143 linguistic consciousness and historicity. ghevond alishan՚s composition “under the fir tree: reflections in the bosom of deserted nature” naira hambardzumyan institute of literature nas ra the present article aims at studying the problems of historicity, linguistic consciousness, and philosophy of life as a constantly transforming chain that includes and circulates geopolitical and cultural processes. the primary aim of the study is to observe the author – world relations in the domain of language, consciousness and historicity, through which the essential inner features of the author's meditations and philosophical thoughts are revealed, and historicity becomes a tool for regulating experience. linguistic consciousness presupposes an open image of the world, in which geopolitical events, actions, and situations are summarized. historicity, as a process of restoring information flows, is full of events and ensures the time and vitality of the geopolitical processes. at the same time, as a regulating depository of language+consciousness, it provides the ability of identifying the attitude towards most important historical events in alishan's experience. i have applied the phenomenological and historicalcomparative methods focusing on semantic-typological procedures, the methodology of understanding. father ghevond alishan's composition “under the fir tree: reflections in the bosom of deserted nature” which is a unique combination of world historiography, christianity, and historical-philosophical thought, has so far not received all the attention it deserves. keywords: ghevond alishan, ontology, phenomenology, linguistic consciousness, historicity. introduction father ghevond alishan (kerovbe petros-margar alishanean) is an armenian philosopher, historian, geographer, philologist, poet, translator, member of the mekhitarist congregation in venice since 1838. he was born on july 6, 1820 in  nairahambardzumyan@yahoo.com this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 05.03.2022 revised: 30.04.2022 accepted: 08.05.2022 © the author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 armenological studies 144 constantinople. he published his works under the pseudonym “nahapet”. among his many studies, important works and collected poems are “nuagq” (tunes), vol. a-e, venice, 1857-1858; “sisuan and levon the great”, venice, 1885; “sisakan” (topography of the land of syunik), venice, 1893; “haybusak or armenian botanical terms”, venice, 1895; “shirak”, venice, 1881; “ayrarat”, venice, 1890; “hayapatum”, venice, vol. a-g, 1901; “shnorhali yev paraga iur” (shnorhali and his factor), venice, 1873 and other works. alishan is a philosopher with the depth and comprehensiveness of his worldview and contemplations, with logical-philosophical denouements and interpretations of judgements. his insight into the aforementioned spheres allowed father ghevond alishan to find a place next to pythagoras, plato, cicero, yeznik koghbatsi (yeznik of kolb), anania shirakatsi, hovhannes sarkavag, david the invincible, nerses shnorhali (the gracious), and others. alishan’s philosophy is multipolar and introspective. his philosophical worldview was shaped in the spiritual atmosphere of the mekhitarist congregation as well as under the influence of the ancient and medieval armenian philosophical thought, european and national socio-political events. when commenting upon the issues of space, nature, man, life and death, soul and immortality, truth and freedom, alishan is a philosopher of religion and a theologian. however, when examining social-educational and national issues, alishan's philosophy is based on scientific worldview and opposed to his own theological understandings. academician arsen terteryan notes that alishan's philosophy, formed in the above-mentioned spiritual environment, is oriented towards religious philosophy because: “the cell of a monastery is not just a physical, geographical concept, but also a certain mentality, a certain literary direction, a well-known style, and at the same time, an attitude towards life” (terteryan, 1974). this standpoint towards life and vitality takes alishan out of the monastery cell making him a philosopher, a writer and a historian. therefore, as a theologian-philosopher, alishan defends the theory of the creation of the universe, nature, and man: “you, as well as nature, are created by god”, just as “man is a particle in nature” (alishan, 1971), but it is the dominant particle of it. alishan is also a philosopher with his education and essence, with his introspective wisdom and inner ability to master the laws of metaphysics as evidenced by his philosophical research1 including the composition of his philosophical self-contemplation “under the fir tree…” written by the author armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 145 in the old armenian language (grabar) in 1874. there are few references to this composition by ghevond alishan, as well as to his philosophical views2 which is explained by some literary critics by the scarcity of philosophical works in the armenian reality of the 19th century. due to his diligence, alishan gradually gained european-wide recognition. in 1886 he was awarded the order of the legion of honor by the french academy. in 1887 he became a member of the moscow archaeological society. in 1896, the st. petersburg archaeological society elected alishan as one of its honorary members, and in 1897 he was elected a member of the jena academy of philosophy. he was also a member of italian and russian scientific societies. he died on november 9, 1901, at the age of eighty, and was buried in the mekhitarist fathers’ cemetery of st. lazarus island (italy). in 1930 vahan hovhannisyan translated the reflective-philosophical composition “under the fir tree...” by father ghevond alishan into modern armenian and published it under the title “under the fir tree”. reflections in the bosom of deserted nature”3 in venice (st. lazarus). v. hovhannisyan also wrote the preface to the book, entitled “a preface to the translator”, in which he particularly mentioned: “many have heard of but few have tasted alishan's small but golden masterpiece. a warm, anxious conversation between the nature and the poet, where the agitated inner world of the patriarch is revealed with all its longings and complexities... “under the fir tree...” has the depth of the sky and the cry of the soul. it is the novel of truth written in nature” (alishan, 1874). the composition “under the fir tree...” is written according to the principles of medieval philosophy of writing, as a philosophical monologue, as an unparalleled chain of the highest expression of self-purification, remorse, overcoming sombre passions, moral-psychological values and selfimprovement, search for the truth and light, and sending this unparalleled chain through the domain of memory. it is also encountered in the treatises and works of origen, plotinus, augustine, boethius, anselm, abelard, narekatsi, shnorhali, and other thinkers. in the composition “under the fir tree...”, alishan meditates on the binary conceptions of nature: life and death, evil and good, love and hatred as well as man and society, soul and truth, will and freedom, homeland and patriotism, nations and nationalism, eternity and immortality, cosmic creation, and other issues on existence of life, which have a strongly emphasized ethical nature. alishan does not deny the possibility of armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 armenological studies 146 scientific cognition, but disputes the moral and ontological values of scientific truths, just like rousseau who once criticized science and the arts. the phenomenological method has been chosen for the analysis of the paper “linguistic consciousness and historicity”, which aims at revealing the author's spiritual-cultural experience and its psychological significance, as well as the consciousness-related acts ensuring artistic perception, such as imagination, memory, author-world perceptions and manifestations of identity consciousness, ideas, reasons, religious and non-religious goals. as a criterion for analysis, in the study we meant the language + consciousness interrelationship (nature) in the work, to which (within the framework of phenomenological critique) the formation of a literary work is related. we have considered father ghevond alishan’s work in the framework of phenomenological paradigm as an enclosed text, deriving the analysis from the general ideological features of structuralism, which, according to literary critic zhenya khalantaryan, “creates an artistic effect, regardless of the author and the reader, which can be reached through structural analysis” (khalantaryan, 2017). khalantaryan considers this method in the light of the phenomenological paradigm, “(criticism of consciousness, existentialist literature, american, german schools of receptive aesthetics, phenomenological hermeneutics, etc.), which is based on the discovery of the role of consciousness in text creation.” (khalantaryan, 2017). as a special method of literary study with a typological procedure4, from the point of view of general and objective regularities in the development of poetics and language in particular, we also employed the historical-comparative method, relating it to the historical functionality of the work, performing an ontological analysis, deeply revealing the idea and aesthetic peculiarities of the work “under the fir tree…”, the author's worldview and depth of perception, the psychological and emotional impact on the reader, as well as the actuality of the work. linguistic consciousness and historicity the world order, which is given meaning by man, is regulated by the internal laws of the author's thinking, historical perceptions, consciousness of identity, psychology, and textological features characteristic of the fictional text in father ghevond alishan's composition “under the fir tree...” (alishan, 1874). alishan – world relations are observable in the domain of language and armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 147 consciousness. as a concept of scientific-fictional thought, they initially reflect the essential and philosophical – the inner features and the dynamism of the author’s thought. historicity, as a philosophical principle, considers a phenomenon in its origin, development, and transformation, becoming the regulating screw of its experience. it conditions the spatial-temporal domain of the composition “under the fir tree...”, which is at the same time the domain of life existence and philosophy of life that shapes the author's philosophical views and the provisions derived from them. historicity views the systemic nature of a phenomenon (subject) in its multidimensional development, accepting geopolitical changes as realities manifested in spacial-temporal domains, and the author's philosophy and linguistic consciousness as a chain that includes, transforms, and circulats historical, culturological, and geopolitical processes: “i have not come to perturb anyone, but to find peace for myself” (alishan, 1874). this chain is formed by the laws of the philosophical text with aesthetic features and fictional tendency: “only virtue is the angel that passes from this place to the infinite heaven. oh, glorious hellas, latium, and others like you, when i hear and see the statues of your patriotic heroes, my heart trembles and beats… but it immediately stops.” (1874). or: “there is something in every color that makes it fade; there is something in every beauty that makes it turn ugly; there is something in every construction that makes it spoil” (1874). linguistic consciousness is multi-layered; therefore, one of its verticals, as a system, is the text, which, as a cogitative reality, is realized in a certain chronotope of the author's writing. linguistic consciousness as philosophical introspection according to the principles of modern literary criticism, the text is the core of the author's language system, so the reality of writing can include any material or abstract reality, any existing or imaginary phenomenon that forms in the domain of consciousness or outside it (not outside its borders, but outside it) and is perceived by the senses. therefore, the universe of the text, which is perceived as a chain of recognizable and unrecognizable realities and is indifferent to the process of cognition, is not related to consciousness. however, it may include the still unrecognizable word. the reality related to the process of cognition is definite beyond consciousness and is given to the author through images born of introspection. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 armenological studies 148 linguistic consciousness is at the same time a form of cognitive consciousness, which, in this case, is manifested through the author's creative thought and experience. language is a behavior. in her study “alishan’s old armenian poetic art” literary scholar lusine avetisyan writes, “alishan not only paved the way for novel adoration5…. in armenian literature, which is called romanticism in the language of others, but also he himself became the ideological and enviable unmatched character of the novel he wrote with his own life and work and set a true example of a teacher, historian, armenologist, explorer, which enabled to expand the horizons6 (yezert) of the people's selfrecognition” (avetisyan, 2021). by developing philosophical thought and reflective-philosophy in the composition “under the fir tree...”, ghevond alishan creates an interest towards world philosophy and culture, which are considered a possible rebirth of man's worldview in the core of which is not directly a human (homo sapiens), but a person-individual who has consciousness and a complex inner world. historicity and the author's linguistic consciousness interact in the domain of language autonomy, conscious and subconscious images, and historical integrity, forming in the domains of free movement of language + text + consciousness and event + history. here, the main thing is the realization of an event (phenomenon) in the domain of historicity of a certain process of its origin and development. in this context, the phenomenon of linguistic consciousness substantiates the interstice correlations between language (domain of linguistics) + consciousness (domain of psychology) + event (domain of history). reflections on self-recognition, search for identity, problems of selfdetermination, expression of the author's self are also visible in the work. these contribute to the discovery of biographical data and survival. the human spiritual-cultural life experience, encrypted in the depths of memory (hambardzumyan, 2021), many subconscious layers and knowledge take the author to the depths of individual unconsciousness, to the beginnings, where the collective unconscious is formed, which is the hidden repository of human memories and contains archetypes, the powerful primary psychological images, the author has inherited. they are the symbols whose deep roots go back to ancient cultures (hambardzumyan, 2021), and the archetypal thinking, the penetrating archetype in general, is the culturally inherited genome (hambardzumyan, armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 149 2021). on this occasion carl gustav jung writes, “of course, the superficial layer of the unconscious is clearly personal (jung, 2013). we call it the personal unconscious. however, this layer rests on another layer leading to a depth that no longer derives from personal experience. that innate deeper layer is the so-called collective unconscious. i chose the term ‘collective’ because it refers to the unconscious, which is not individual but rather universal in nature”. the psychological penetrations of the author's work of art in the realm of the collective unconscious differ from the individual unconscious, defining it as a certain set of psychological processes. in this case linguistic consciousness (as a phenomenon) presupposes an open image of the world and summarizes geopolitical, historical-political, public-social, and culturological movements and events, statistics, and experience relating nations and peoples: “volumes full of wisdom more than all the books in the world, each line of which begins with an abc7 and always ends with an o” (alishan, 1874). historicity is the depository of knowledge and the regulating force of these movements and experiences. its possibility of revealing and broadcasting, its attitude and reference to the most important historical events follow the trajectory of the author's initial (historical) experience. there were cultures that were consumed and destroyed. they were enclosed and self-contained and had common features of origin, development, decay and extinction. their external similarities and commonalities of mutual penetration are also exhausted: “the marvelous wonders of the ethiopian and egyptian peoples, whose fame echoed everywhere, are scarcely, slowly rising, scattering the dust of the centuries. three-thousand-year-old mummies come to light; they are not alive. thus, they are the witnesses of death, from the clutches of which they could not escape with all the subtleties of their art, and also the witnesses of immortality that was barely, dimly understood in the ancient times” (alishan, 1874). the primary message of the composition is regulated through alishan’s observations of linguo-psychological and linguօ-conscious ranges, and the identifications derived from them: “three-thousand-year-old mummies” – witnesses of “death and immortality”. this literary message is accompanied by memory: “the marvelous wonders created by the ethiopian and egyptian peoples are slowly rising, shaking off the sand and the dust of centuries”. according to this, the powerful inner energy of the work is realized, thanks to armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 armenological studies 150 the creative and eternal engine of all times, the soul. in this context, linguistic consciousness is the ensemble of cultorological-systemic knowledge characterizing the material world which unites not only the author's sensory but also material knowledge in a single semantic spiral; although, its (spiral) structure does not emphasize the use of linguistic signs. this is not conditioned by the ethnic, historical-political, and social-psychological features of the author's personality and consciousness, which are related to the armenian national gene pool and linguistic peculiarities. this is the strong point of ghevond alishan's composition, though, giving meaning to the abstract phenomena in the composition it tends to the integration of the internal text features, as it has no permanent material coincidences. in alishan's composition, language is not in the domain of external psychological impulses, but in the context of intratextual coded content. it includes the subtext of the creative idea, which is more expedient in interpreting the semantic meanings and images of intralingual units, when all the poles are provided by linguistic consciousness. the genre forms of the classical writing are bypassed (travel notes, letters, notes). alishan constructs his work in the format of contemplation (thought), which, on the one hand, limits the reader's attitude, forcing him to obey the laws of meditation, and on the other hand, regulates the chaos by ensuring all the laws of reading. consequently, the uncertainty over the future emanating from the text becomes predictable in the domain of movement. it is identified with the fragmentation and inexplicability of the world, while the search for symbols in it is identified with the core of a decaying and fragmenting world. in this way, the intratextual system of the work is substantiated in the reader's consciousness, as he/she knows many other texts with well-known traditions. our considerations of consciousness draw attention to the author's linguomental processes which ensure the ideological domain of the composition. the author's thoughts materialized through language, reflect his life experience which shapes his consciousness, while the ideology of the work is predictable through its suppositional background which also allows to come to certain conclusions. in this context, the result of alishan's linguistic consciousness is also the content of the composition “under the fir tree…”, which is the interconnection of consciousness and language which carries the author's experience in its sign system. consequently, historicity as a meaning and writing as a system, directly reflect the content of the author's consciousness. in other words, the material expression of thought – the text, is greatly influenced armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 151 by the author's consciousness which in fact is the accumulation of his previous experience and knowledge. in this case, language which is a general communicative-semantic system, finds its unique authorial manifestation in the original, while linguistic consciousness is reflected in the world picture of the author's perception. historicity as a cycle of civilizational events historicity characterizes the work as a whole, when the author's narratory abilities go hand in hand with his profound understandings and interpretations of important historical and civilizational events and facts. in the composition “under the fir tree...”, historicity as a philosophical principle and phenomenon, is observed in its origin, development, and transformation. it stems from the integrity of the culturological, social, and historical-political views of the author's understanding of the world, the axis of which is his work under analysis. this is also noteworthy from the viewpoint of the structure and the topic as well as of the currant interpenetrated interpretations, for when considering the historicity of alishan’s composition against the background of great geopolitical shifts (course and results of events), the language and interpretive tricks of the original seem to require even more importance, while in the domain of linguistic consciousness, public, social and cultural realities are believed to deserve utmost attention. in connection with this bakhtin writes: “every action, every phenomenon and process in the domain of artistic historicity is eventual. therefore, it is necessary to specify additional equivalent signs that characterize events in the domain of fictional historicity” (bakhtin, 1975). consequently, when all the elements of the text relate to the individual (acting person or narrator), the text includes the author's creative energy directed towards the reader. this textual use of the concept of historicity in this very sense can be accounted for by the fact that the metasocial factors enhancing the interpretation of social facts on non-social principles are excluded from the the multi-layered content of this concept. ghevond alishan as a literary-historical individual uses this operational concept in the text as a starting point which derives from his concept of trust. from a structural point of view, the writing is viewed as an integrity and tendency of interconnected and mutually penetrating systems, in which, according to roland barthes, the process of meaning formation is depicted as a very difficult process because: “insignificant elements of the text are important armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 armenological studies 152 in insignificant details and passages that do not condition the course of actions” (barthes, 1994). therefore, the marking of historicity in the text, which has emphasized boundaries, is later considered a written event. historicity and historical memory historicity involves historical memory, which is not stable, but, on the contrary, is an ever-changing process of the analysis of the past, selection, and restoration of information flows. historical memory is an important component that shapes language and consciousness. by its internal combustion and behavior (often unconscious), it pushes the nation, ethnos, society, and the individual for a certain adjustment, but often transforms, splitting space and time by itself. in this sense, historical memory is based on people's real or imaginary, complete or episodic knowledge and attitude towards the historical past, as well as on cognitive processes. alishan's return to the historical past makes it possible to concentrate all the cycles of civilization in the domain of judgment, also, to interpret reality as truth, ensuring their viability in the text, while clearing it of information redundancies. alishan includes and presents the stories of civilizations in a logical chain, with the enclosed continuity of the decline of irrevocably lost nations and peoples. it is based on the similarities of the main stages of origin and destruction, christian ideas, prophecies; for, having ethnic, cultural, and religious self-identification, nations face more pressing problems that constitute the core value system and ideology of their national identity, through which the state becomes legitimate. this circular chain system, which defines the history of civilizations and the historicity of the composition, develops in the ten chapters of the author's reflection [a↔zh]8. according to it, civilizations are formed and evolve, developing a unified process, which is supposed to be at the basis of the pattern of universal progress. it is a fact that there were enclosed cultures and civilizations that were consumed and destroyed. their commonality was in biology, in external similarities and interactions: “for two thousand years, one tyrant forcibly seized the sovereign's wand from another tyrant, by irrevocable order changing only the place of the royal throne: sometimes calneh, sometimes nineveh, sometimes babylon or ecbatana, sometimes shosh. capitals of cosmic luxury, where all the wealth and splendor of the world flowed as if from a golden pipe, piled up, spreading its enchantment in hundreds of provinces of conquered nations and tribes” (alishan, 1874). according to the english historian, culturologist and armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 153 philosopher arnold toynbee, “the term historicity was borrowed from historiography. as a historical fact, it functions and is viewed not in the context of legal historical processes, but in the context of events and their interpretations” (toynbee, 1978). toynbee views civilization in the domain of freedom and the creative potential of man, which is inexhaustible as a spiritual task, but is not an ultimately achievable result. real historical processes and a true depiction of the past, present, and future transitions condition the interpretation of civilizations in alishan’s world-cognitive and aesthetic systems. his separate judgmental thoughts and a series of reflections on the progress and development of a society are parallelly aimed at the facts of the destruction of civilizations and sum up the gloomy predictions of their disappearance. alishan's task is not to obey the known passively, but to direct the preinitial inversion of cognition to the unknown, to the truth, which is active cognition, to creation, and therefore to the world, because the result of the artist's cosmic communication is first and foremost the creation of a certain world. in alishan's composition, it is expressed by the combination of unity of cosmic-systematized ontology, personality, and process. the hourglass flow or “and the word of god lives forever” alishan observes the course of the historical development of mankind, the destinies of nations, and attempts to reinterpret them in the domain of specified vanity: “let the tired and tiring terrible wind go away”. “come to the north, and come to the south!” “shut up, you, too, the voice of the desert that dries up hearts, you, that cried out, ‘flesh is grass’. all the mankind is like wild grass that is trampled underfeet, and like a flower cries out that everything will pass, “and the word of god lives forever”. go numb and keep silent” (alishan, 1874). history does not presuppose the rise of interconnected activities, but an emerging, evolving, decaying, and declining chain of (isolated or extinct) civilizations. each civilization repeats the same stages of the previous one: “ninus and nebuchadnezzar, alexander and tamerlane, who used to be the horrors of the world, scare nobody nowdays. be it great or small, all are toys in the hands of death, even if they differ from each other by destiny” (alishan, 1874). the fall of a civilization is the end of one cycle and the beginning of a new one, that is, a return to a new beginning. this is one of the basic theses of the armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 armenological studies 154 nietzschean philosophy, the principle of eternal recurrence (return), which he calls the cosmic law. according to it, all the cycles, forms, and systems that existed in the past and could be in the future as well, recur at different stages of cosmic development. nietzsche compares the melancholic man to the hourglass as the constant cycle of a continuous and eternally recurring life, because, according to him, the ultimate goal of humanity is not the best social or biological levels, but the greatest individuals, superhumans in them. this idea of eternal recurrence (return) is in the domain of alishan's highest spiritual condition, the christian light, the formula of love, the destinies of civilizetions that can only be achieved through philosophy, because the will to power is the will to the will that always recurs. the eternal recurrence is in the domain of the author's experience and metaphysics, so whatever returns is in the eternal recurrence and is the recurrence [itself] as the ontological possibility of the other. and since every civilization is unique in its own way, the interactions of different civilizations essentially exclude each other; therefore, the historicalpolitical and geopolitical progressive processes of the development of societies, their interconnection, and sequence in the domain of history are predictable: “nevertheless they also passed by, and could not be steadfast, neither the high statues, nor the proud hearts that erected them though they were cast in gold, silver, iron, and copper. because, according to the prophet9, they stood on clay legs and feet that could not bear the weight of that huge giant for a long time. so a small stone sprang from a hill, as it appeared to him (the prophet), rolled over and crashed into the ugly giant. the ground rumbled. the eyewitnesses trembled. and the fear and terror spread by the mighty tyrant were immediately crushed like the shadow that disappears when the oak falls from the blows of the axes. like brave young men and fierce enemies, the tyranny of assyria and babylon, chaldea and media, persia and parthia, hellas and rome fought against one another and trampled and well-trodden by centuries and miserable nations disappeared on by one” (alishan, 1874). summarizing this historiographical-philosophical concept with the last cycle of human history, alishan prophesies, pointing the arrows of civilization at the search for the truth. this is the eternal engine of the historicity of ghevond alishan's composition “under the fir tree...”, which alishan examines and affirms in the domain of his supreme attitude towards life, understanding it through the mutual penetrations of the histories and cultures of civilizations. he proposses his own proposition of the two forces in history in the aesthetic system: a creative [minority] society and nations subject to it, armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 155 which are not characterized by the facts of creation. and as long as there is a certain socio-public and historical-political harmony between them, all peoples tolerate the authority of the rulers. but when one civilization breaks that harmony and ceases to communicate with the other, the commonality of the laws and histories of nations and peoples, historicity, is destroyed: “you, cities of waves and mermaids, tyre and sidon, and you, mighty powerful chalcedon, that dared to rise up against rome and alexander of macedonia, that put taxes on the seas and on the territories, are now ruins sunken in the sea and land, buried under the sand like broken jars, as a memorial to the sand and a shelter for the poor” (alishan, 1874). trying to understand the driving forces of history, civilization, or culture, alishan also criticizes eurocentrism, arguing that the ancient historiography based on it is inaccurate, as the progressive west is the center of world civilization and its main axis: “the wind blowing from the west storms into the raging south, filling the void of heaven and earth. the scene gets confused, everything starts to speak. plants sway, grass and branches moan and are aimlessly driven by the wind” (alishan, 1874). however, things happening and recorded in real life, can't be called an event yet: “in contrast to a phenomenon or process, it is always localized in a certain ontological (single or multiple) domain, which clarifies the system of relations in which it is involved, is carried out for a certain period of time, and has its place in real space” (arutyunova, 1999). progress is the law of the development of societies. that universal law draws huge zigzags and curves in different ages and times, in different nations and peoples, completing, complicating, or destroying the universal process. history is rich and meaningful, but more tricky, multipolar, and composite than it can be seen in theoretical systems, structures, and programs: “on the facades of the huge, majestic stone structures of their pyramids and sphinxes, their pagan temples and palaces, and on their pillars and stone monuments, there are signs of a poor superstitious mind: pictures of a cat, ibis, reptiles, dung beetles, all on the tombs of their almighty pharaohs” (alishan, 1874). such an observation of the history of civilizations and of the historicity of the composition “under the fir tree...” deeply and truely reveals the philosophical inclusion of alishan's worldview, which preserves linguistic consciousness and deep scientific nature in its inner domain. according to this, the development of civilizations is ensured when [creative] and [non-creative] societies find themselves in the domains of harmony and unity of social, political, economic, and cultural development, and when the same societies tolerate reciprocal fluctuations of political and economic balance. thus, there is armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 armenological studies 156 a breakthrough in the harmony; the end of the old cycle and the beginning of the new one are announced. and since every civilization is unique and contradictory in its own way, the internal influences cease to function because the historical process, its interconnections and relations, and the ways of development of societies are not outlined. the philosophy of the composition “under the fir tree...” covers all the cycles of the history of civilizations and the history of mankind, in general. alishan prophesies, foretelling the impending danger to civilization. according to him, when another cycle breaks down, and harmonious relations are exhausted, when violence, wars, and revolutions undermine the foundations of civilization, the stages of recurrence predetermine the return to the starting point, which may become a precondition for the social pessimism of the abovementioned vanity: “what is this perturbation of yours about, you lovers of licentious lifestyle, you connected with the material world? what is this desparate mourning of yours about? why do you think highly of yourself, you “vain philosophers?” what is your hard work, you insatiables, you slaves of comfort? why do you rob, you tyrants and rulers? why are you trembling with fear, you cowards?” (alishan, 1874). and since society is usually incapable of breaking away from pessimism, the idea of progress is incompatible with their views on the rebirth of the consumed and consuming regime and the return to the past. conclusion alishan's approach to the historicity of writing and to the cyclic developments and destructions of civilizations marks that the civilizational thought is always in deep crisis, as it is powerless to explain the progress of human history, its contemporaneity, its past, and its future. beyond the boundaries of historicity, the text relates to new facts, merges into a single context, becoming one circle, one texture, one frame, as meaning implies not volumetric boundaries, but moving baselines that lead to a certain destination. in this context, we have considered alishan – world relationships in the realm of the concepts of language and consciousness, therefore, as a concept of scientific and artistic thought, so, at the outset they reflect the innate philosophical and ontological features and shifts of the author's thought. one of the bases of linguistic consciousness as a system is the original text, which, as a speculative reality and a certain form of cognitive perception, is armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 157 realized in a certain space and time, and is manifested through the author's creative thought, experience, in which layers of the collective unconscious are visible. it is noteworthy that historicity and the author's linguistic consciousness permeate each other in a common domain of language autonomy, conscious and subconscious images and historical integrity, being formed in the domains of free movement language + text + consciousness and event + history, in which the main thing is the acknowledgement of the event (phenomenon) within a certain process of its origin and development, its historicity. in this context, the phenomenon of linguistic consciousness is substantiated in the domain of intermediate interactions of language (domain of linguistics) + consciousness (domain of psychology) + event (domain of history). the historicity of the text derives from the author's mental system and the structure of thought, because historical period and its duration are indivisible. therefore, the theory of bakhtin’s great time counteracts the progress of the text, as it does not live in the future; and does not preserve the breath of the previous (civilizations) in its inner domain. in this regard alishan is not at all faust (the scientist and historian of the past) who dug into the storehouse of civilizations to prove that humanity is not progressing and that people are initially only unsuccessfully tottering within the same closed circle. alishan looks for a way out in the philosophical domains of the christian idea: soul and freedom, as the true path of the truth. with the acquisition of new meanings, updates, and reinterpretations, the great time changes and moves away from itself in a certain historical and cultural domain, like a river that separates from its own outfall. alishan's philosophical concept substantiates the true picture of the past based on an objective analysis of real historical and geopolitical processes, which the author directs to the light of christianity. the composition “under the fir tree...” is a universal combination of world historiography and history of philosophical perception, in general. notes 1. after alishan's death in 1909, the mekhitarist fathers published the author’s unpublished philosophical and moral reflections “temporary thoughts” in “bazmavep”. according to yeremyan s., they make up about “100 small print writings”; they also have another title – “temporary diary, armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 armenological studies 158 influenced by mind and heart”. meditations began in 1841 and, with some interruptions, continued until 1855 (bazmavep, 1909, p 109). 2. among the literary references of alishan's writings, the works of academician arsen terteryan and suren shtikyan are remarkable (see terteryan, 1944; shtikyan, 1967). 3. later, this translation was included in the volume “ghevond alishan. compositions” compiled by suren shtikyan (alishan, 1981). alishan's “know yourself”, “memories of armenian homeland”, “instruction, walk, and public consolation”, “national advantages and disadvantages”, “special national education”, the extensive “preface” and “epilogue” of the work “patriotism”, “a lecture on armenia”, the famous “speech”, and other articles and works are also philosophical in their nature. 4. the similarities existing in the works of the authors of different literatures, which derive from the regularities of public life and art, are based on the study of the common features, similarities and mutual connections of the literatures of different eras (sarinyan, 2017). 5. novel adoration is also called novel worship (avetisyan, 2021). 6. ezert otherwise called the horizon (avetisyan, 2021). 7. corresponds to the old armenian ayb ben gim [ajb, bεn, gim]. 8. the system of armenian numerals is a historic numeral system using the majuscules (uppercase letters) of the armenian alphabet. so, a↔zh corresponds to 1-10. 9. the prophet daniel. references alishan, f.g. (1874). y'nd yeghevneav: hamayut'ean bacavayri khorhrdac'ut'iun. [under the fir tree: reflections in the bosom of deserted nature]. venice: st. lazarus. (in armenian) alishan, f.g. (1981). yerker. [compositions]. yerevan: sovetakan grogh. (in armenian) arutyunova, n. (1999). jazyk i mir cheloveka. (2nd ed.) [language and the world of man]. moscow: yazyki russkoj kultury. i-xv. (in russian) avetisyan, l. (2021). aruest grabar qert'ut'ean alishani. [alishan’s old armenian poetic art], bazmavep, 1-2 (2021), 87-109 (in armenian) bakhtin, m. (1975). formy vremeni i khronotopa v romane. ocherki po istoricheskoj poetike. [forms of time and of the chronotope in the novel. armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 159 essays on historical poetics.] moscow: khudozhestvennaya literatura. (in russian) bakhtin, m. (1975). voprosy literatury i estetiki. [questions of literature and aesthetics]. st. petersburg-moscow: khudozhestvennaya literatura. (in russian) barthes, r. (1994). izbrannye raboty. semiotika. poetika. [selected works. semiotics. poetics]. moscow: progress. (in russian) hambardzumyan, n. (2021). mshakut'abanakan hishoghut'yan yev jhamanaki fenomennery ghevond alishani y'nd yeghevneav: hamayut'ean bacavayri khorhrdac'ut'iun yerkum. [the phenomena of cultural memory and time in the essay of ghevond alishan “under the fir tree: reflections in the bosom of deserted nature”]. lraber hasarakakan gitutyunneri [herald of the social sciences]. 3 (663), 165-179. https://doi.org/10.53548/03208117-2021.3-165 (in armenian) hambardzumyan, n. (2020). ghewond alishani y'nd yeghevneav… yerki nerteqstabanakan yev haghordakcakan gorc'aruyt'nery'. nshanxorhrdanish-alyuzia-teqst. [the intertextual and communicative functions of ghevond alishan's work under the fir tree…: sign-symbol-allusiontext]. in ghevond alishan-200 (collected materials of the jubilee conference) (pp. 224-238), yerevan: science publishing house of nas ra. (in armenian) jung, k., & fuko, m. (2013). matritsa bezumija. [matrix of madness]. mօscow: algorithm. (in russian) kalantaryan, zh. (2017). qnnadatut'yunn ibrev gorc'nakan grakanagitut'yun. [criticism as practical literary studies]. yerevan, ysu press. (in armenian) toynbee, a. (1978). mankind and mother earth: a narrative history of the world. england: oxford university press, new edition. terteryan, a. (1944). alishany' yev hayrenasirut'yuny'. [alishan and patriotism] (armenian classics). yerevan. (in armenian) terteryan, a. (1974). husher yev nisher h. alishani. [memories and characters of f. alishan]. yerevan. (in armenian) sarinyan, s. (2017). grakanagitakan met'odner. [literary methods], vem, t (zh e), 1(57), 9-27 (in armenian) shtikyan, s. (1967). alishani gegharvestakan steghc'agorc'ut'yuny. [alishan's fictional composition]. yerevan (in armenian) armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 armenological studies 160 լեզվագիտակցություն եվ պատմականություն հայր ղեվոնդ ալիշանի «ընդ եղեւնեաւ յամայութեան բացավայրի. խորհրդածութիւն» երկը նաիրա համբարձումյան հոդվածում ուսումնասիրված են պատմականության, լեզվագիտակցության ու կենսափիլիսոփայության հիմնախնդիրները՝ որպես աշխարհաքաղաքական ու մշակութաբանական գործընթացները ներառող, շրջանառող ու անընդհատ փոխակերպվող շղթա: ուսումնասիրության նպատակն է՝ լեզու+գիտակցություն և պատմականություն տիրույթում հեղինակ – աշխարհ փոխհարաբերությունները դիտարկելը, որի միջոցով բացահայտվում են հեղինակի մտածումների և իմաստասիրական խոհերի ներքին էութաբանական հատկանիշները, իսկ պատմականությունը դառնում է այդ փորձառության կարգավորման գործիքը: լեզվագիտակցությունը ենթադրում է աշխարհի բաց պատկերը, որում ամփոփվում են աշխարհաքաղաքական իրադարձությունները, գործողություններն ու իրավիճակները, իսկ պատմականությունը՝ որպես տեղեկատվական հոսքերի վերականգնման գործընթաց, իրադարձական է և ապահովում է աշխարհաքաղաքական գործընթացների ժամանակն ու կենսունակությունը: միևնույն ժամանակ՝ որպես լեզու+գիտակցություն իմացությունների կարգավորման շտեմարան, պատմականությունն ապահովում է դրանց բացահայտման հնարավորությունը և վերաբերմունքը ալիշանի փորձառության տիրույթում առկա պատմական կարևորագույն իրադարձությունների հանդեպ: կիրառել ենք ֆենոմենոլոգիական և պատմահամեմատական մեթոդները՝ հետազոտական տեսադաշտում պահելով տեքստի վերլուծության իմաստաբանական և տիպաբանական ընթացակարգերը, հասկացման մեթոդաբանությունը: հայր ղևոնդ ալիշանի «ընդ եղեւնեաւ յամայութեան բացավայրի. խորհրդածութիւն» երկը համաշխարհային պատմագիտության, քրիստոնեության և ընդհանրապես, պատմափիլիսոփայական մտքի յուրօրինակ համադրություն է, որը հանգամանալից քննության դեռևս չի ենթարկվել: բանալի բառեր` ղևոնդ ալիշան, գոյաբանություն, կենսափիլիսոփայություն, լեզվագիտակցություն, պատմականություն: armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 culture studies 108 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2022.18.2.108 british identity manifestations in the postmodern literary frame seda gasparyan  nvard yernjakyan** yerevan sate university “short stories are nearer poetry than anything. they are like a conversation, a dialogue. and besides, some of them are quite long.” jane gardam national identity can be traced in almost all the spheres of human habitat – cultural, institutional, political, literary, pshychological, daily routine and many others, that is both in the verbal and non verbal activities of all and each person, respectively. in this research we look upon the british identity manifestations in the post-modern multifaceted literary frame based on the english short story contexts. given the popular approach of the marked british conventionalism, concepts and cultural artefacts, as it were, we elucidate the stories of three contemporary women writers — a.s. byatt; j.gardam and d. moggach, as a field to reveal literary reproductions of identity paradigm and its social-cultural component in view of the city of london and certain niches of its subcultures. the analysis produces challenging ideas when considering social and spatial distinctions of london’s image according to the writers’ subjective attitudes, as well as the moral of the past and present, which are portrayed by three main topics: intellectuality and erudition (the london library); arts and theatre (the national theatre and shakespeare); post-colonial reality (pakistani shopkeeper’s british dream-home), all of them as inseparable components of british national identity. keywords: postmodernism, british national identity, a. byatt, jane gardam, debora moggach.  sedagasparyan@ysu.am ** nvard.yernjakyan@ysu.am this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 28.07.2022 revised: 14.08.2022 accepted: 04.09.2022 © the author(s) 2021 mailto:sedagasparyan@ysu.am mailto:nvard.yernjakyan@ysu.am https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 109 introduction it is worth mentioning from the very start that byatt’s and gardam’s stories can be considered as having more emphasized postmodern features such as mystic phenomena, strangers, suspicion, discrete talks and monologues as typical of postmodern plots, somehow missing or deemphasized in moggach’s story. however, national artefacts, love for gardening and theatre, generation gap, etc. along with memories and values, are there to distinguish the characters’ conscientious self-identity and its manifestations in their daily practices and roles in the family and at work. among the current functional varieties of discourse, the special significance of fiction can never be overestimated, and this, first and foremost, is due to its ability to express, shape and manifest a wide spectrum of identities. any fictional text, as it were, is rich in cultural, aesthetic and factological concepts as well as allotted an indisputable ability to influence public thought and reflect the hidden shades of social strata mentality, hence, identities. it is assumed that identity is a mosaic of historical, linguistic, pshycological, anthropological and many more facets, so, when discussing the british identity, it should be mentioned that extant in the flow of everyday life, it is vividly portrayed in material and non-material, institutional, political, cultural, religious and many more reproductions as a working paradigm not only summed up in popular consciousness and mentality but also evidenced by literary depictions. particularly, in the given case of the british short story genre, identity discussion seems relevant when the plots and genre preferences, choices of style and means of its actualization, content intricacies, protagonists, time and space peculiarities are considered, and the subculture and milieu of the society are also given thought to. it is no surprise, then, that both the identity and behaviour of human beings have been seen as very much defined by their particular sociocultural positionality (sell, 2004, pp. 30 31). given all these considerations on the behavioural models and status, culture and society values, individuals’ tendencies and practices available, the stories contribute to defining and producing this or that image in a broad palette of post-colonial reality, immigration, globalities and origins to spread light on identity discussion in post-modern contexts (castles, & davidson, 2000, pp.45 63; kumar, 2005, pp.3-28). armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 culture studies 110 british identity in a postmodern context in the present research british identity is substantially viewed in the context of the story genre, as evidenced by the works of british postmodernist authors, whose stories explicitly reflect identity, especially marked with its both social and cultural characteristics. and since in every postmodern fictional text there are many implications of archetypes, allusions, references, quotations, fantasy, events and episodes, often ambiguous connotations and mystic occurrences as well as fairy tale and mythical plots, it can be presumably mentioned that the reader should be familiar with the reality manifested, otherwise it would be impossible to fully comprehend the text in its full capacity of semantic, emotional, ideological and moral integrity (byatt, 1994, p.71). thus, it seems advantageous to distinguish between linguistic and non-linguistic manifestations of identities in the stories presented. an insight into familiar pervasive paradigms inherent in british reality is needed to perceive the cultural evaluation of postmodernism and globalization issues and processes, attributed to the concepts of the british heritage or tradition in the given literary contexts (byatt, 2000). interestingly, one of the typically historical, artistic and cultural features of the postmodern epoch is the disappearance or rather conscientious ignorance of the traditional links of the past and the present, or their estrangement from everyday life (walker, 2006, p.323; pp.325-26), whereas memory, both individual and collective, plays an indispensable role in the restoration of the historical past (halbwachs, 1992, pp.40-45; p.135; boyer, 1994). there is no doubt that printing played a major role in the development of the country’s cultural identity, for it contributed to the preservation of public memory for future generations to understand the historical bases of the formation of national identity. of paramount importance in this respect, are also the autobiographical works, another literary tendency which helps presenting family stories, turning to traditional artifacts, background events and historically valuable facts in order to preserve and adhere to one’s national customs and national identity (feldman, 2001, pp.32-33, p.226). one thing is, however, obvious. both individuals and public groups reproduce any complexes of national ritual and practices in their own way, creatively. historical memory presumably opens up great possibilities of discussing the readers’ and fictional characters’ relationships, when recollecting and reenacting the socially established roles, habits and customs (berensmeyer, 2006). culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 111 thus, it is obvious that historical past and notable events have an important role in identity formation; they create frames and design unforgettable and lasting patterns of national portrayal, providing a background for understanding and interpreting the current cultural values and attitudes encapsulated in national identity. emphasizing the historicity and authenticity, peculiar to individual and collective memory in this process, however, it should be admitted that the analysis of the contemporary british stories turns out to be rather promising in the manifestation of identity in fictional texts (walker, 2006). nowadays, british identity is associated with multicultural reality, a phenomenon which is conditioned by a number of factors: emigration movements, political and language-based strategies, general education system propagation, large-scale processes related to the idea of citizenship, civic society, immigration, human rights, oblivion and memory, exile and intermarriages (aboulela, 2004, p. 76). the artistic value of the stories discussed is manifold, and the consideration of the linguostylistic and lexical peculiarities, prove important and effective in respect of the revelation of the identity paradigm nuances. the stories chosen as an object of research, in fact, cover the post-colonial mosaic of the united kingdom, in respect of its ethnocultural, linguistic and political practices and diversity. our choice of antonia byatt’s, jane gardam’s and debora moggach’s stories can be grounded for by the fact that they quite allusively as well as symbolically and metaphorically reflect london’s political and daily routine, subjective perceptions, attitudes, moral and psychological peculiarities as characteristic of different segments and subcultures of the society, acting as components of national identity manifestations. valuable is also the fact that each of the chosen writers has her own narrative and literary style, her unique significance and mission in terms of the artistic epitome of the british identity in postmodern contexts. a.s. byatt’s artistic interpretation of british identity a.s. byatt’s story “on the day e.m. forster died” evolves around an intellectual woman’s daily visits to the london library, the intricate, unreal, moreover, fantastic visions she experiences, the people she meets in and beyond the library, encounters which are specified by the space she acts in. the author skillfully applies interesting stylistic solutions when creating the armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 culture studies 112 images of the intellectuals who highly appreciate certain spiritual values and lifestyle and consider them prior to the very subculture they belong to, as well as their perceptions and materialized manifestations of public and cultural space, activities and interests. all this is presented from the point of view of an intellectual woman, whose image in fact fills in london’s urban subculture. it should be noted that being an intellectual writer, mrs. smith, the protagonist, regards her self-perceptions, her feelings and her self in general as objects of her own reflections, meditations and authentic reenactment, as a core idea and gist of all her works. in the story the protagonist is the mediator between the reader and the narrative, and it is interesting to note that the author's own self-consciousness, realized through the narrative of the storyteller, by no means underestimates the value of the novel as an artistic expression of identity, on the contrary, it underscores byatt’s insight as a storytelling tool. byatt’s story is somehow different as compared to classical short story genre. nonetheless, the artistic representation of the rhetoric of an erudite writer is quite unique, as the author being guided by the principle of historicity, is research-oriented and digs out and depicts both historical issues and national symbols in her work. she can definitely be considered an identity and cultural legacy preserver, delicately recycling her own understanding and model of britishness (byatt, 2000, pp. 91-92; p.196). throughout the story, the use of different place-names such as piccadilly, regent street, jermyn street, etc. which can be considered cultural markers of the city of london, english culture and britishness at large, vividly show mrs. smith’s devotion to and love of the city of london of which she is an indivisible part (byatt, 1994, p.71). the heroine herself, who is the quintessential focus and realizer of the author's ideas and worldviews, is presented to the reader as someone who, in fact, is an attribute of london's daily life and has a certain mission, a woman who finds her satisfaction and harmony in the intellectual spheres (for example, in her regular daily self-forgetful visits to the london library). the london library, being a publicly intellectual and cultural space and milieu, is one of the hallmarks of british identity in several ways: a tourist destination, a living repository of history, which makes the “export” of british tradition possible. thus, the meditations and thoughts of the protagonist and her writing career in the library harmonize with byatt’s perception of the library as a symbol of intellectual identity. the consistent visits of mrs. smith to the london library culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 113 generalizes the image and self-identity of those women who prefer mental activities, working career to family routine and worries. the study of the biographical, creative activity, and genre preferences of great writers motivates and inspires byatt’s thoughts, her creative impulse, literary taste. thus, it is not surprising that her heroine's observations are also interesting and challenging in respect of the latter’s appreciation of the detailed consideration of the world-famous writers, biographies and works. adhering to genuine, authentic and unchangeable, often surrealistic phenomena, yet, loyal to her own self-identity, the heroine is quite aware of the importance of literature, art in general, as exceptional values in her understanding of life. however, she is full of skepticism as she is far from being sure that life can stimulate the development of art, or that with the help of art it will be credible to protect the world from possible dangers. presumably, this contradiction can be explained by the split and duplicity in the heroine’s ego. in the context of the urban subculture, the idea of a cultural space is clearly predominant, and the image of london comes forth in this context; it is modelled by a combination of the author's apt remarks and observations of cultural values and the complex of urban attributes. the description of london's richest and most prestigious districts, introduces the reader to the realia, which, in fact, shapes the multifaceted british identity (pevsner, 1921, p.75, p.125; kumar, 2003; 2015). in this story, the social bases of the territorial division and cultural background of spatial hallmarks of london are clearly and scrupulously described owing to byatt’s sophisticated use of accurately chosen linguistic elements as well. for example, in her description of the west end in london, through the use of elements like jermyn street, piccadilly, fortnum, mason’s and other place names the author emphasizes the rich and dazzling splendor of the west end in the literary context of her narrative, where she develops the depiction of cultural details concerning the psychological tendencies, characteristic of the rich for whom their wealth is a key precondition for securing a prestigious position and status in the society (boyer, 1994). one of the interesting characteristics of the story is the consideration of the mother tongue which reveals some details of social strata identities, and, as if, once again realizes the artistic potential of the native dialect as a means of expressing the idea of britishness. in this way, byatt underscores the importance of the mother tongue in view of the british national selfestablishment. according to the author, the 70s are characterized by the whole set of those very values (byatt, 1994, p.67). armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 culture studies 114 london theatrical life as a component of british identity successful artistic representations of london’s daily life can also be found in jane gardam's story groundlings, which is especially remarkable for the original reproduction of the london theatrical life and theatre attendance. the huge theatrical community endowed with common and distinctive features deserves attention. by these characterizing features and the descriptions of people’s appearance and their behavioural peculiarities, the etiquette of communication can be outlined which revolves around shakespeare's multifaceted phenomenon. many of shakespeare's quotes, allusions and references are directly related to the spiritual and intellectual values typical for the given period of the society and for those who embody them. following the plot line of shakespeare's dramas and comedies, gardam presents her time and concerns. and indeed, for the british reality (in fact, the whole world), shakespeare is one of the inherited values and everlasting identities. he is as up-to-date nowadays as ever, so he does not come down from the stage all over the world. the british reality is filled with shakespeare. the phenomenon of shakespeare, as it were, is inserted in everyday life and has become one of the most important components of the british identity paradigm. the author reproduces the theatrical atmosphere of the 20th-century london, reconsidering her memories accumulated over forty years; in particular, she speaks of the 60s and 70s, the peak of the cultural ascent everywhere in the world, and the utmost fascination and worship of shakespeare's creations and their popularity which almost every layer of the society was enchanted by. and this is done by gardam through the use of successfully coined linguistic elements and stylistic means. in her depiction of the british reality impregnated with the phenomenon of shakespeare the author proceeds from the contrasting ideas of theatrical and non-theatrical. this is reflected in the passage below: it is the procession that floods across waterloo bridge from the station, across the river to work. … it is an army of silently trumping, non-conversing, face-forward, jerking, walking, trotting, running ants, heads held tense, hands hard-gripping on cases, umbrellas, newspapers, the coming day. it continues, a steady flow, for the best part of two hours, dwindling off at just after ten o’clock. it is the march of the disciplined, the bread-winners, the money-grubbers, culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 115 often the dead. over the bridge they tramp, south to north, in to the stomach of london. … they don’t look over their shoulders and down or they would see us, their opposites, as in a mediaeval diptych of heaven and hell – or hell and heaven: the motley bundles of the theatre queuers looking upwards and over at them as we blink with sleep. us, the pleasure-seekers, the unrepentant from across the wide world, the creatures of high holidays. it can be assumed that this contrast (between the disciplined breadwinners, money-grubbers, those with hands hard-gripping on ….. the coming day and their opposites – the theatre queuers, the pleasure-seekers, the unrepentant from across the wide world, the creatures of high holidays) can be metaphorically reflected in the symbolic pattern shakespeare vs profane to be viewed as an indispensable constituent of british identity. therefore, the descriptions of the characteristic features of the regular visitors of the national theater are of particular interest in gardam’s story. when you read the story, a vast panorama opens before you – a panorama of rather strange personalities who do not resemble the images of the usual theatre goers, you realize they can spend days and nights in the queues at the box office. moreover, some of them in fact become permanent “dwellers” of that place, eating, sleeping, getting closer to each other, and, as it is shown at the end of the story, even dying there. and although they are very different from each other in their unfamiliar looks and behaviour, in their communicative culture, and verbal or non-verbal etiquette, however, at the same time they seem to be very closely united for their love of shakespeare, and the aim they pursue is the same – to enjoy the charm of shakespeare's plays. the depiction of these extraordinary people filled with fanaticism reminds of umberto eco’s quote, “it is not theatre that imitates life; it is social life that is designed as a continuous performance, and because of this there is a link between theatre and life” (eco, 1994, p.107; p.117). it can be assumed that the fragmentation in the presentation of the content details, the temporal disorder, the somewhat blending of the historical tradition and the fantastic perception of reality add to the postmodern playfulness of the text of the story. quite symbolic is the title of the story groundlings which presents the condensed picture of the elizabethan theatre with people sitting around the stage in galleries, and tolerance towards any happennings and incidents that armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 culture studies 116 used to occur among the huge diversity of people gathering in the theatre. this title particularly underscores the hierarchy, so obviously present in the society and social life, which is testified by the fact that the common people who were on the lowest rank of the social ladder, hardly managed to get even the cheapest tickets to the theatre and had to follow the performance standing in the galleries and particularly in front of the stage (hence ground+ling+s – those standing on the ground). by introducing the sociolinguistically and linguoculturally marked word groundlings into her story, the author tries to highlight the commonalities between the atmosphere (berensmeyer, 2006,) in elizabethan theatre and the one of the theatre realities of the post-war period of the 20th century 60s and 70s that was still alive in her memories. and gardam does this through placing the phenomenon of shakespeare as a national value of eternal worship and identity marker into the core of her perceptions and interpretations. aggi batt, the central character of the story, who reminds of the groundlings and can be justly identified as part of the london theatre scene, stands out with her pronounced unequivocal, unnatural fanaticism. in the descriptions of her extraordinary appearance and no less unusual behaviour some typical features peculiar to postmodern writing can be traced. to understand the message and quintessence of j. gardam’s story it is particularly important to go deep into the allegory of the quote uttered by the heroine of the story, who, when asked which is her favourite play, answers “winter’s tale, but it’s getting late for it now” (gardam, 1994, p. 93). post-colonial tendencies in deconstructing national identity rather interesting reproductions of british identity are also available in d. moggach's “empire building”. this story presents immigration and adaptation practices, as different from the ones discussed above, cultural and spatial geography in london's daily life having become an integral part of the london subculture. the writer’s intention to create a metaphoric title of the story, associates with the british empire and immigration practices, its material and non-material values both imported into and exported from the colonial countries (kumar, 2015). it is well known that the colonial countries were not just territories, but a solid, monolithic structure, endowed with the british artefacts, realia and spirit. in contrast to the initially conquering tendencies of the colonial policy, it later took on unique nuances of harmonizing with the britishness, patriotism, self-confidence, and, which is even more important, missionary, cherishing the ideas of their superiority, conscientious sacrifice and culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 117 help to civilize and educate the colonized peoples in the spirit of britishness (castles, & davidson, 2000, p.85; pp.176-177)1. thus, the other aspect is the import and adoption of britishness, and the great desire just to be british in all walks of life, as it were. the portrait of the empire emerges rich in figurative blocks of the expression from the point of view of the protagonist of the story, his impressions of the foreign culture he was so eager to adopt, londoners’ behavioural etiquette and so on, though all this seemed immoral and illmannered to hamid, a pakistani shopkeeper living in london. he looked at the representatives of the former colonial society, who, once wouldn’t even touch his hand, but now touched the windows of his shop, with a kind of sarcastic malice and hostility. they seemed physically weak, immoral, helpless, to his mind, in fact lost people as compared to such a purposeful and goal-oriented person as he was, full of aspirations and dreams (kumar, 2015, pp.100-105). hamid, with a natural ingenuity and wisdom of a successful merchant, acquired his own department store, a shop, giving it a symbolic name ‘empire stores’. this fact, he thought, demonstrated and embodied in its own way the full-fledged londoners' pursuit of wealth, family well-being, as well as the dream-fate of many other expatriates. although his shop was located in a district with poor dormitories for the irish expatriates and other commercial establishments, hamid believed that by organizing and promoting the ‘empire stores’ shopping properly, he would be able to meet the needs of the residents to the full. as hamid was in touch with various members of the society, he also observed both the locals and different national minorities. his contacts and clashes with foreign culture took place in the department store, in the broader context of urban culture. in this stream of london's daily life, he often encountered verbal insults of national discrimination, unfair conduct on behalf of the visitors to his shop, and violence, i.e. overtones that underscored the seemingly illusive harmony and integrity of the imperial structure. hamid's desire to be safe, invulnerable and perfectly happy, to safeguard his family’s prosperous life in his new homeland turned out to be just an illusion (hussain, & paul, pp. 407–425). in the case of moggach’s story, the title metaphorically illustrates émigré practices – hamid’s cold-hearted, unemotional response and self-control, acquired primarily due to his own culture, his specific behavioural etiquette, that can be interpreted through his desire to be wealthy in a new homeland, to have a successful work, a well-to-do family, and, in particular, a well-educated son with a promising future. the culmination of the symbolic setting and armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 culture studies 118 message of the story is the fact that hamid, buying a house in one of the richest districts of london, turned hopeful that the house with a garden would completely change his and his family’s life, become a guaranteed sign of britishness and security for his family and especially his business, make him a full member of london’s society. but he soon realized that the idea of the british house and garden being an integral part of the british cultural values, as the embodiment of the british mindset and spirit, was not familiar to him. this became obvious when he, ignorant of either the art of furnishing the house or taking care of the garden, demonstrated them to his so-called english friends who started ironizing his undertaking. their mild satire concerning hamid’s design of the british house can be heard in the story both verbally and nonverbally, and this turns out to be a psychological stress for the hero. but the most frustrating feelings occurred when he realized that his efforts to make his son a real british had been in vain, for his desires proved to be incompatible with reality. his son who, when a child, made father happy reciting wordsword’s daffodils, now turned out to be interested only in drinking and reading cheap low-quality pornomagazines (moggach, 1994, p.146). hamid’s creed is the philosophy of tolerance, typical of cultures of national minorities who have left their homelands and are trying to adapt to the new environment, lest his children, the son particularly, are not subjected to humiliations he himself has experienced․ in the story, hamid's evaluation of cultural stereotypes is shaped according to his national differences as those of permissible-impermissible standards of morality, and also his subjective observations and self-perceptions whose sophisticated assessment is reproduced and presented owing to the author’s talent and intention via intricate, uncomplicated and straightforward linguistic means, to discover new identities comparing and synthesizing social hierarchy when considering london’s multiracial mosaic, delicately interwoven with the literary context. it can be stated that mogghach's “empire building” displays a certain subculture, a part of london’s daily life in the 1970s, reflecting the complex and controversial process of britishization of a foreigner in london, his efforts to adopt the cultural lore of customs and lifestyle. conclusion our examination shows that each of the stories addresses different clusters of values embedded in the complex structure of british identity. and, it can be claimed that all of them finally unite in the context of london’s everyday life culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 119 manifestations; almost all the reproductions of identity paradigm are full of different word units expressing emotions and often characterized by the use of phrases to complete the image. in addition to presenting multiple identities available in british national identity, these stories have a number of other commonalities and features. the images of women are somewhat outlined (especially in the stories of byatt and gardam), and émigré adaptation practices are artistically presented (moggach) with their time and space-based specific characteristics and activities: work, family, friends, intertwined with self-identity, with the intellectual potential of the mother tongue and assessments of national values. and they bring up daily life episodes, micro and macro stories, which represent the unique mosaic of the city of london acting as features of the value systems of subcultures and their representatives as well as individualized identities. conclusively, it can be stated that literary and textual representations of the stories, reenactment and memory, national characters, historical events and their sequential descriptions testify to the accepted and recognized, lasting british identity paradigm markers of national belonging ever and today. encapsulated in theoretical approaches and literary rhetoric of the post-modern and globalization omnipotent and ubiquitous frames, the stories ensure insight and perspective to develop more on the linguocultural scope of the british national identity. notes 1. in respect of colonial spirit and policies on behalf of the uk in the 19th century, it is of interest to mention that r. kipling was concerned with the white man’s mission to educate and civilize the savage. he positively represented the moral burden of the white race, who were divinely destined to ‘civilize the non-white other.’ kipling, r. “the white man’s burden” in wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. retrieved july 8, 2022 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/r.kipling references aboulela, l. (2004). moving away from accuracy. the european english messenger, 13(1), 72-77. byatt, a.s. (2000). on histories and stories: selected essays. cambridge, mass.: harvard university press. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 culture studies 120 berensmeyer, i. (2006). the act of oblivion: politics of remembering and forgetting in restoration england. european journal of english studies, 10(01), 81-86. boyer, m.ch. (1994). the city of collective memory: its historical imagery and architectural entertainments. cambridge, mass., london, england: mit press. castles, s., & davidson, a. (2000) citizenship and migration: globalization and the politics of belonging. basingstoke: macmillan. eco, u. (1977). semiotics of theatrical performance. the drama review: tdr, vol.21, no. (1), 107-117. feldman, c.f. (2001). narratives of national identity as group narratives: patterns of interpretive cognition. in j. brockmeier, & d. carbaugh (eds.). narrative and identity: studies in autobiography, self and culture. amsterdam, philadelphia, john benjamine publ. company. halbwachs, m. (1992). on collective memory; edited, translated, and with an introduction by lewis a. coser. chicago: university of chicago press. hussain, y., & bagguley, p. (2005). citizenship, ethnicity and identity: british pakistanis after the 2001‘riots’. sociology, 39(3), 407–25. kumar, k. (2003). the making of english national identity. cambridge: cambridge university press. kumar, k. (2005). from postindusrial to post-modern society: new theories of the contemporary world. 2nd edition. malden: ma. blackwell. sell, j.p.a. (2004). international allusion in transcultural identity narratives. language and intercultural communication, vol. 4, no 1/2, 29-38. steveker, l. (2009). identity and cultural memory in the fiction of a.s. byatt, palgrave macmillan. walker, j. (2006). an interview with a. s. byatt and lawrence norfolk conducted by jonathan walker. contemporary literature, vol. 47, no 3, 319-342. sources of data danuta, k. (2015, september 27). jane gardam: 'short stories are nearer poetry than anything they are like a conversation, a dialogue'. an afternoon with ghosts for company. the independent. retrieved 20 march 2022. hewitt, k. (ed.). (1994). contemporary british stories. (1994). oxford: perspective publications ltd https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/jane-gardam-short-stories-are-nearer-poetry-than-anything-they-are-like-a-conversation-a-dialogue-a6669141.html https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/jane-gardam-short-stories-are-nearer-poetry-than-anything-they-are-like-a-conversation-a-dialogue-a6669141.html https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/jane-gardam-short-stories-are-nearer-poetry-than-anything-they-are-like-a-conversation-a-dialogue-a6669141.html culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 121 բրիտանական ինքնության դրսեվորումները պոստմոդեռնի գրական շրջանակում սեդա գասպարյան նվարդ երնջակյան ազգային ինքնության հետագիծը նկատելի է կենսամիջավայրի գրեթե բոլոր ոլորտներում՝ մշակութային, ինստիտուցիոնալ, քաղաքական, գրական, հոգեբանական, առօրյա և այլն. համապատասխանաբար բոլորի և յուրաքանչյուր մարդու խոսքային և ոչ խոսքային գործունեության մեջ: այս հետազոտության մեջ դիտարկում ենք բրիտանական ինքնության դրսևորումները անգլիական պատմվածքի համատեքստում հետմոդեռնիստական արժևորումների դիտանկյունից: հաշվի առնելով հասկացությունների և մշակութային արտեֆակտերի գրական երևույթը արժևորելու ընդունված մոտեցումը ըստ բրիտանական պայմանականության, փորձ է արվում պարզաբանելու երեք ժամանակակից կին գրողների՝ ա.ս. բայաթի; ջ. գարդամի և դ. մոգաչի պատմվածքները՝ որպես ինքնության և դրա սոցիալ-մշակութային բաղադրիչի գրական վերարտադրությունները բացահայտելու դաշտ: դիտարկվում են լոնդոնի կերպարի սոցիալական և տարածական տարբերությունները՝ ըստ գրողների սուբյեկտիվ վերաբերմունքի, ինչպես նաև անցյալի ու ներկայի բարոյականության: դրանք պատկերվում են երեք հիմնական թեմաներով՝ ինտելեկտուալություն և էրուդիցիա (լոնդոնի գրադարան), արվեստ և թատրոն (ազգային թատրոն և շեքսպիր), հետգաղութային իրականություն (պակիստանի խանութպանի բրիտանական երազանքի տունը), որոնք բոլորն էլ բրիտանական ազգային ինքնության անբաժանելի բաղադրիչներ են: բանալի բառեր՝ պոստմոդեռնիզմ, բրիտանական ազգային ինքնություն, ա.բայաթ, ջեյն գարդամ, դեբորա մոգաչ: hin.qxd child or grown-up: language universals and language particula l anguage is a unique defining property of ourhumanity. the ability to acquire language has become a very interesting, yet controversial field of study. how children and adults master not only their first, but also a second language is the subject of ongoing research. although every child, regardless of intellectual level, is equally gifted at acquiring the native language, it does not seem to be the case with adults. some adults can learn a second language with something close to native fluency; others will retain a distinct foreign accent even after decades of practice. the age at which individuals should be exposed to a second language has also been a long standing topic of discussion among researchers, educators and learners. the cause for this interest is manifold, relating also to theoretical issues, such as whether an innate language faculty continues to function beyond a particular point of maturation. the age and maturation of the individual seem to be the crucial factors in any language acquisition, as before puberty a person acquires language naturally, while the same person before puberty acquires it with great effort that yields less than perfect results. the reason why the sharp disparity between the so-called “unexceptional success” of normal children and the general lack of success of adults may strike us as paradoxical at first may have something to do with our common sense. it is easy to see that every child is a wonderfully unique and special individual, different in many ways from other children living and that at least some of the differences are environmental. but it is no less true that, in a deeper sense, every child is like every other child, and that they all go through the same highly predictable stages. it is really not hard to see that children develop in a patterned way, so the following four basic stages can be mapped in the childhood path. the first goes from birth to about two years of age and one of its defining features appears to be ‘out of sight, out of mind’. in the second stage, from two to seven years, children are quite sophisticated talkers, even emerging readers, as language is already in its essential place. in the third stage, roughly from seven to twelve years, ‘the age of reason’, numbers and logic are no longer arcane. finally, in the fourth stage, which starts after the age of twelve or so, abstract reasoning, including the possibility of investigating all aspects of a problem systematically is well within reach.1 the idea that non-native language acquisition is in some important respect not unlike 57 linguistics armenian folia anglistika rouzanna arakelyan first language acquisition does not lack antecedents in the research area. some of the best investigations in language acquisition after puberty, more precisely after the maturational stage associated with the development of a first language, have concluded that adults, as a rule, fail to achieve native-speaker competence in a new language, whereas children seem to be generally able to develop full command of either a first or a second language as a product of maturation. this inability of the postpubescent adult to attain the kind of achievement invariably attained by children comes as no surprise to those who take the critical period hypothesis seriously, assuming essential differences in the capacity for language of child and adult because of genetically determined changes in the maturing organism. in the critical period hypothesis /cph/, there is a neurologically based period ending around the age of twelve, beyond which complete mastery of a second language acquisition is no longer possible. during this period, the dominant hemispheric is more specialized for language. this process of interhemispheric specialization is responsible for acquiring the language and not having a foreign accent. in addition, there is a process of further specification of a particular language function in specific areas of the dominant hemispheric that is more specialized for language. this process of interhemispheric specialization, which leads to the loss of cerebral plasticity remains for those functions not yet localized. it may suggest that there is not one but many critical periods, lasting probably through one’s lifetime, each closing off different acquisition abilities. these are determined by the differential recovery patterns from right and left hemisphere lesions at different ages. lennenberg, the founder of the critical period hypothesis, states that while acquisition of a behaviour outside the period in which it normally occurs is not impossible, it will proceed by a different route and will generally be less successful and natural.2 taking into account these facts, one could suppose that the diminution of child-like language acquisition skills and the phenomena of onset of adult sexual characteristics are interdependent, as it is believed that some change in the structure of the brain that occurs at puberty does reduce language learning ability. this is actually “the consequence of an evolutionary adaptation”, as the brain is a “greedy” organ and is using much energy. thus, it can be assumed, that a larger portion of the neural capacity in a child’s brain is aimed to take a part in the acquisition of languages. initially, the notion of a critical period was connected only to first language acquisition. today, the “classic” argument is that a critical point for second language acquisition occurs around puberty, beyond which people seem to be “over the hill”, when it comes to the possibility of a nativelike accent of the second language. proponents of the cph are inclined to think that children before puberty are good phoneticians, whereas adolescents and adults are often good grammarians and semanticians. in order to examine all these issues related to the psycholinguistic aspects of language acquisition more closely, we should look at neurological and psychomotor, cognitive and linguistic considerations more carefully. as for the neurological evidence, research suggests that as the human brain matures, certain functions are assigned or 58 armenian folia anglistika linguistics “lateralized”. thus, intellectual, logical, analytical and language functions appear to be largely located in the left hemisphere, whereas the right hemisphere controls functions related to emotional and social needs. while questions about how language is lateralized in the brain are interesting indeed, a more crucial question for second language researchers has centered on when lateralization takes place, and how it affects language acquisition. lateralization is a slow process that begins around the age of 2 and is completed around puberty. during this time, the child neurologically assigns functions to either one side of the brain or the other. cognitive considerations suggest that human cognition developes rapidly throughout the first 16 years of life and less rapidly after adulthood. some of these changes are critical, others are more gradual and difficult to detect. it should be stated that the lateralization hypothesis may provide another key to cognitive differences between child and adult language acquisition. as the child matures into adulthood, the left hemisphere (which controls the analytical and intellectual functions) becomes more dominant than the right hemisphere (which controls the emotional functions). in examining the cognitive domain of language acquisition the piagetian notion of equilibration3, should also be considered. equilibration is related to the concept that cognition develops as a process of moving from the states of doubt and uncertainty (disequilibrium) to the stages of resolution and certainty (equilibrium) and then back to further doubt that is, in time, also resolved. and so the cycle continues. it is conceivable that disequilibrium may provide the key motivation for language acquisition, that is language interacts with cognition to achieve equilibrium. children learning two languages simultaneously acquire them by the use of similar strategies. they are, in essence, learning two languages, and the key to success is in distinguishing separate contexts for two languages. for the most part, research confirms that the linguistic and cognitive processes of second language learning in children are generally similar to first language processes. adults, more cognitively secure, appear to operate from the solid foundation of the first language and, thus, manifest more interference. views such as these are rather consistent with more recent experimental work that has got some theoretical implications. for instance, in their discussion of critical period effects in learning a second language, johnson and newport conclude that the decline in that process begins far beyond puberty, even before the threshold of fifteen years of age, as the other researcher patkowsky found out later.4 in response to these and many other empirical studies, long, reviewing the second language research on agerelated differences, has drawn conclusions that are relevant to this topic: a) both the initial rate of acquisition and the ultimate level of attainment depend in part on the age at which learning begins; b) there are sensitive periods governing both first and second language development, during which the acquisition of different linguistic domains is successful and after which it is incomplete.5 this analysis is actually an attempt to show that there is no reason to doubt the validity of the above mentioned position. the biological fact of adulthood appears to be enough to establish an insurmountable obstacle to nativeness in a new language, which is assumed to have physiological and cognitive bases. this does not mean, of course, 59 linguistics armenian folia anglistika that no language acquisition is possible after a certain age or that other factors, such as methods of instruction or affective elements like attitude and motivation, cannot contribute to determining varying degrees of proficiency in one or more foreign languages. it does not mean either that there is no point in taking into account the knowledge of universal principles of grammar that constrain language development in the maturing child as a necessary framework for the investigation of foreign language acquisition. if the burden of explanation is placed on the environment, there is every reason to expect adults to do even better than children. in contrast to this, today it is widely understood that part of the explanation can only be provided by the conception that a language exists only in the brain of an individual and should be studied in an individual psychology setting. the conclusion that a foreign language can be acquired only through persistent study, and that a teaching program can only provide valuable, but never sufficient help, is neither negative, nor pessimistic. a high level of success on the part of the student, after a considerable amount of effort, is in some way a greater individual achievement than becoming a native speaker in childhood. the challenge posed by a relative mastery of a foreign language, involving will and deliberate choice, is met with a high degree of success only by those with determination to attain it. moreover, to come to know a foreign language is an extraordinary intellectual achievement for a brain not specifically designed to acquire a language after puberty. this is when a child needs specific training and negative evidence /correction/. still, relative mastery of a foreign language appears to go even a step further than relative mastery of, say, mathematics or physics through conscious effort. in the case of a foreign language, conscious language is at most a first step, since there is little reason to believe that a person could consciously master grammar as a guide to verbal behaviour. the thesis that only some invariant principles of the language organ remain active after the critical period appears to be a highly reasonable one, with strong empirical research to support it. it seems a fair guess that stronger evidence is obtainable and will perhaps be made available in the non-distant future. the sharp contrast between the child and the adult on this score also suggests that the data from language acquisition after puberty will provide a new kind of evidence for the study of language in general. references: 1. ïèàæå æ. ðå÷ü è ìûøëåíèå ðåáåíêà. 1994, ìîñêâà, ñòð. 24 2. lennenberg, e. “biological foundations of language. new york: john wiley and sons. 1981, pp.59-63 3. rod ellis “sla research and teaching”. 1997, oxford university press, p.11 4. johnson j.s. and newport e. “critical period effects on universal properties of languages: the status of subjacency in the acquisition of a second language”, mass., 1989, p.58 60 armenian folia anglistika linguistics 5. long, m. “maturational constraints on language learning”. studies in second language acquisition. mass., 1990, p.251 軽íç ûáõñ³óù³ý ñ³ùáý¹ñ³ýáõñ ¨ ³ýñ³ï³ï³ý ñ³ïï³ýçßý»ñá 軽áõý ³ýåëï»éçáñ»ý ù³ñ¹áõ ׳ý³ãáõ³ï³ý ·áñíáõý»áõãû³ý ùççáóý»ñçó ¿£ úáõñ³ù³ýãûáõñ 黽íç ¨« ù³ëý³íáñ³å»ë« ûï³ñ 黽íç ûáõñ³óù³ý μý³ï³ýáý áýã³óùç çù³óáõãûáõýá ëçëï ³ýññ³å»ßï ¿ 黽íç áõëáõóù³ý áýã³óùáõù£ ²ûë ³éáõùáí« ñ³ïáõï ï³ñ¨áñáõãûáõý ¿ ó»éù μ»ñáõù ù³ýï³ï³ý ëáëùç ó¨³íáñù³ý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñç ñ³ßí³éáõùᣠî³ñí»ë ³ïýñ³ûï ¿« áñ »ñ»ë³ý»ñçó ûáõñ³ù³ýãûáõñý ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïáõï ¿ ûáõñáíç£ ²ûýáõ³ù»ý³ûýçí« ýñ³ýó ù³ûñ»ýç ¨ ûï³ñ 黽í³ï³ý ½³ñ·³óù³ý ÷áõé³ûçý ñ³çáñ¹³ï³ýáõãûáõýá ·ñ»ã» ùçûñçý³ï áõ ï³ýë³ï»ë»éç ¿« ùçýã¹»é ã³÷³ñ³ëý»ñç ïáõùçó ûï³ñ 黽íç ûáõñ³óù³ý ñ᷻黽í³μ³ý³ï³ý áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõýá íï³ûáõù ¿ ¹ñ³ ³ïýñ³ûï ï³ñμ»ñáõãûáõýý»ñç ù³ëçý£ úï³ñ 黽íç ûáõñ³óáõùá ï³ñμ»ñíáõù ¿ á°ã ùç³ûý ûáõñ³óíáõ ýûáõãç μáí³ý¹³ïáõãû³ùμ« ³ûé¨ ·çï»éçùç ñ³ù³ï³ñ·ù³ý 黽í³ï³ý ýáñ μýáõûãáí£ 61 linguistics armenian folia anglistika kazm.cdr the place of academic english in scientific discourse the term ‘discourse’ has a number of uses. it refers tothe system of rules for language use that evolve in a community, whether by conscious choice or under the influence of cultural and other factors. ‘discourse’ also refers to the patterns of language that can be identified as bound to a particular community and context.1 proceeding from the above-mentioned, we can also speak of ‘scientific discourse’ which, is actually, associated with language patterns used among scientists for academic purposes. english has undoubtedly become a means of international communication and, naturally, the ‘general language of science’ english used for academic purposes is bound to become international. the present article aims at discussing some problems concerning international scientific discourse. it is a well-known fact that a language is rule-governed. that is, when we speak or write, we must follow rules guiding pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary as well as more specialized rules for communicating in a specialized sphere. such kind of specialized sphere, for example, is science, where rules or conventions evolve over time, in response to new pressures and needs. sometimes writers make conscious decisions to change or add new rules for written communication that will ensure greater efficiency and clarity. these linguistic or discursive rules develop over time as a result of cultural norms and internal/external pressures. for example, the experimental article, as c. reeves states, has shortened and become more technical, losing the narrative or ‘storytelling’ voice of its earliest forms.2 thus, today’s ‘scientific discourse’ which is the result of some objective influences differs in quality from that of the earliest times. for example, judging by the analyses of the linguistic characteristics of some texts from the scientific papers of the xvii century, it can be stated that in earlier texts of ‘scientific discourse’ the first-person pronoun ‘i’ was used very often, but at present such cases are replaced by the plural first-person pronoun ‘we’ to avoid more personal and subjective tone in the text. the use of the plural first-person pronoun ‘we’ in scientific texts signals collaboration which may be effective if communication among scholars is realized with the help of international scientific discourse. with respect to pronoun ‘we’, it can be concluded that besides creating a more polite and restrained tone in texts of ‘scientific discourse’, this pronoun also acquires an ability to unite co-thinkers psychologically. thus, changes of psycholinguistic nature can bring about some debatable issues concerning ‘scientific discourse’. 73 linguistics armenian folia anglistika ofelya poghosyan at present the political, economic, cultural and scientific contacts between different countries are increasing faster than ever. today the world needs a ‘global’ international language that can serve not only as a means of communication ‘in general’ to realize everyday communication but, also as a ‘tool of their trade’ for the specialists of different spheres of science and technology.3 in fact, it is a professionally-oriented international scientific language, in other words, a language for specific purposes. it is obvious that today the leading candidate to hold the position of an international language is english. in 1977 it was calculated that the 4/5 of the world’s publications written in the language of science were in english.4 it is also an acknowledged fact that the role of international english at present is of paramount importance because it is mainly due to international communication that the countries of the world may succeed in deepening their contacts to pave a path for democracy, technological progress, integration into different activities for the sake of mutual understanding, assistance and coexistence. consequently, the question of teaching/learning english as an international language becomes more essential, especially nowadays, because most of the newlyindependent, developing countries that are trying to build a stable, successful and healthy society have to communicate mainly in english. with the incredible progress we have in science and technology today, learning a language for specific purposes comes to the fore. if the command of english of modern specialists is confined only to the knowledge of ‘general language’, they will have great difficulties in their professional communication. to use a foreign language as a means of effective international professional communication, one must necessarily get acquainted with the basic language of his/her profession as well, in other words, with the variety of the language that this or that specialist can use for specific purposes. in fact, such language can be very helpful for the specialists of all the countries to walk side by side in the world of science, share thoughts on their professional experience and find the wisest solutions to the global problems of today and tomorrow. thus, it is necessary that the specialists become proficient in this register of english as it will help them avoid any misunderstanding when discussing professional topics at international conferences, disputes, round-tables or seminars. the specialists will be able to exchange their professional experience with colleagues from other countries, write articles on the latest achievements in science, do research work (possibly a joint one as well), get information or just follow the progress in their field of science. teaching and learning academic english as a means of international scientific communication presupposes not only a thorough investigation of the linguistic peculiarities of natural human language, but also a good choice of lexical and grammatical means of language. such a register (a variety related to a particular use of the language, a particular subject or occupation)5 will serve as a kind of language 74 armenian folia anglistika linguistics appropriate for ‘specific’ use.6 it follows logically from what has been said that this special register (or functional style) can be recommended as highly effective in terms of lsp teaching/learning, as the elaboration of ‘this special register’ will provide the learner with proper linguistic experience to realize both the purposes of everyday and professionally-oriented communication.7 to master such a register, it is necessary that a sufficient amount of pragmatically-oriented material be worked out which, in its turn, has to be combined with the learner’s knowledge of english ‘in general’. thus, on the basis of these two factors a special register, that of academic english, can be formed which will serve as a universal or international scientific language – a means of communication for educated people. in this respect some linguists state that such register of academic english becomes something like a ‘shared code’ between the members of both written and oral communication, in other words a ‘shared code’ between the writer and the reader or the speaker and the listener.8 finally, it can be concluded from what has been said above that, as a kind of lsp, academic english can serve as a special type of scientific language or as a means of communication among the scientists of the 21st century. in fact, it can serve as an international language of science in ‘scientific discourse’. in this respect it should also be stated that the thorough investigation of the correlation of the linguistic units of the system of language and speech acquires a role of crucial importance because such kind of special language can serve as a ‘shared code’ for the members of international communication. references: 1. reeves carol. the language of science. london and new-york, 2005. 2. ibid. 3. ìèõàéëîâñêàÿ í.ã. î òåîðåòè÷åñêèõ è ïðàêòè÷åñêèõ çàäà÷àõ èçó÷åíèÿ ðóññêîãî ÿçûêà êàê ñðåäñòâà ìåæíàöèîíàëüíîãî îáùåíèÿ. // âîïðîñû ÿçûêîçíàíèÿ 1983, no 5; gvishiani natalya. terminology in english language teaching. mîñêâà, 1993; crystal david. english as a global language. cambridge, 2003. 4. ðîæäåñòâåíñêèé þ.â. ïîñëåñëîâèå. // òåêñòîëîãèÿ àíãëèéñêîé íàó÷íîé ðå÷è. / ïîä ðåä. ì.ì. ãëóøêî, þ.à. êàðóëèíà. m., 1978; fishman joshua a., cooper robert l., conrad andrew w. the spread of english. london, 1977. 5. strevens peter. new orientations in teaching of english. oxford, 1978. 6. halliday m. a. k. mcintosh a. and strevens p. the linguistic sciences and language teaching. london, 1966. 75 linguistics armenian folia anglistika 7. gvishiani n. terminology in english language teaching. m., 1993. 8. magidova i. the pragmalinguistic register of english: the theory and practice. doctoral thesis, mgu, 1989; gasparyan s.k. esp as an object of learneroriented teaching. // didaktik und methodik des fremdsprachenunterrichts. bonn, heft-4, july, 1998. ²î²¸ºøæ²î²ü ²ü¶èºðºüæ îºôà ¶æî²î²ü êàêàôúâàôø êáõûý ñá¹í³íç ßñç³ý³ïý»ñáõù ÷áñó ¿ ³ñíáõù å³ñ½³μ³ý»é, ã» çýã ¿ çñ»ýçó ý»ñï³û³óýáõù ·çï³ï³ý ëáëáõûãá ¨ ³ûý, ã» ³ý·é»ñ»ý 黽íç áñ ï³ñμ»ñ³ïá ï³ñáõ ¿ í³é³û»é áñå»ë ùçç³½·³ûçý ·çï³ï³ý ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý ùççáó£ 76 armenian folia anglistika linguistics hin.qxd from legalized to legal english: the challenge of esp 1. introduction: the problem of authentic materials. one of the recurring challenges that the esp instructor faces is introducing authentic materials to students. authentic materials provide students with realistic rhetoric models and accurate constructions; however, unless we carefully prepare our students, the linguistic complexity and lexical diversity of authentic material may discourage learners or may even quite literally be beyond the learners’ ability. in this article we discuss a four-step process (based on a similar approach by lee 2004) that takes us from schema activation to full cases and allows our students to gradually face the demands of authentic materials. as an example of the process, we may wish to discuss search warrants in the american legal system. if we began our lesson by simply giving our students the following authentic quote from a relevant case from the u.s. supreme court, we might quickly lose the students in the complexity of legal english: …at the same time, we recognized that the “flexible requirement of reasonableness should not be read to mandate a rigid rule of announcement that ignores countervailing law enforcement interests,” id., at 934, and left “to the lower courts the task of determining the circumstances under which an unannounced entry is reasonable under the fourth amendment.” id., 936 richards v. wisconsin,–u.s.–, 117, s. ct. 1416, 137 l.ed.2d 615 (1997). our job is not to throw our students headlong into that genre; rather, we must guide our students through introductory steps that will ease their task. unfortunately, there is an added complication that makes teaching legal english more challenging than other areas of esp. in most fields of esp, such as engineering or genetics, the content of the “specific purposes” is basically the same in both target and source. speaking about bridges in armenian, georgian or english is basically the same. however, in the case of legal english, this problem of authentic materials is exacerbated because the content of the target “specific purpose” [law] differs considerably from the content of the source specific purpose. for example, the nature of contracts in german law is quite different from that of american law. debra lee and i use the term non-equivalent sps [specific purposes] to describe these situations when the content is different (2000). of course, the other fields in which the content is basically the same may then be described as equivalent sps. as lee (2004) pointed out, we can make a good start at dealing with this issue by first introducing authentic legalized english texts to students rather than full-fledged 99 methodology armenian folia anglistika charles hall legal texts. by legalized english we mean a text written for general audiences about a legal issue. lee goes on to propose a three-step process: 1. find a good legalized source about the case to be read, 2. provide the students with an excerpt from the case, then 3. provide the students with the complete case. although lee’s approach is effective, even before we begin with the legalized texts, we must do schema-activating activities that allow us to go into the subject. this “threestep plus one” approach seems simple, but it rests on using several tools which are crucial to modern esp methodology. 2. esp methodological tools genre analysis, content-based instruction [cbi], and corpus linguistics have given the esp instructor strong tools to create exercises, materials, and courses that help the learner. a. john swales (1994) has provided us with a definition of genre [also called register or sub-registers by other researchers] which helps us investigate language and prepare appropriate materials. he writes that a genre is: • a class of communicative events which has • a shared set of communicative purposes and exhibits a certain • prototypicality. thus, when we read the words “once upon a time…” we instantly know we are dealing with the fairy tale genre. likewise, the prototypical structure of the phrase “court overturns conviction” allows us to predict that this phrase is a headline for a newspaper article. by looking at types of legal english (such as court testimony, international contracts, or municipal statutes), we can use the advances of genre analysis to pull out the salient features, both structurally and functionally, that we can share effectively with our students. for example, when reading a case, the student can be taught the prototypical moves [organizational structures] and collocations of an american case. b. content-based instruction [cbi] is now a widely accepted way to work with both content and language at the same time (brinton, snow, and wesche 2003). cbi is especially important in non-equivalent esps since any work with comprehensible input that the students can have with the new content will aid them. by using authentic legalized english texts, we can increase the comprehensible content input. these texts, written for non-specialists in the target language, usually contain appropriate and accessible contextual clues, explanations, paraphrases, and direct instruction about the legal points discussed. the standard three-fold approach to cbi of “into, through, and beyond” is especially useful for bringing the law student into the discourse community of expert legal readers. we will discuss this in more depth later. c. corpus linguistics allows us to use the speed and power of modern computers to explore subliminal patterns in millions of words of texts (bowker and pearson 2002). corpus linguistics allows us to ‘bypass’ notoriously unreliable native-speaker intuition and use hard data to determine not what we think is said, but is actually said. 100 armenian folia anglistika methodology by first using genre analysis to prepare corpora [a collection of texts] of specific genres or sub-genres (for example, rental agreements or letters to clients), we can examine the specialized corpora for lexical features, (such as collocations), syntactic features (preferred sentence structure), or sociolinguistic features ( “do women actually use tag questions more than men?”). given the ease with which these analyses can be carried out on common personal computers, we can even ask our students to discover the linguistic patterns themselves! let’s now turn to the four steps we can use to gradually bring authentic legal materials into the classroom. 3. “into” schema activation if we continue using the example of search warrants, we could begin with an activity that encourages our students to do a social analysis of search warrants. we would start by asking our students if a police officer can simply walk into a house and start looking for illegal objects such as drugs or weapons. in many countries, the students would reply that the officer would need a “paper” or “order” allowing them to enter the house. some may even know the term “search warrant” [most likely from television!]. then using the information they’ve gained from films and television, ask them what the police have to do [generally!] before they enter a house even if they have a search warrant: they must knock on the door and announce themselves. (in films and television this is often heard as the stereotypical “open up, it’s the police!”). using an activity from calleros (1999) we would show them two pictures which represent nice, clear facts: generally, we need a search warrant to search a house but not for a car. we would ask them in pairs or groups to give a social reason [not legal!] why a car would be different from a house. eventually, we would lead them to the legal phrase “expectation of privacy.” we have “expectation of privacy” in a house (think of the english idiom “a man’s house is his castle”) but not in a car. of course, there is no correct answer; rather we are looking for quality of argumentation. next we introduce the following two “what if’s”: a. would the police need a warrant for a “house on wheels” such as an rv [recreational vehicle] in which people live for months at a time while driving from place to place? is there an expectation of privacy? again, there is no correct answer; argumentation is most important. b. would it be different if a house were being moved on a trailer from one part of a city to another? [remember houses in the u.s. are often made of wood and quite “light” in comparison to the stone houses found in many parts of the world.] after the students discuss this for a while, remind them that the house is “empty”, no one is living in it while it’s being moved. is there an expectation of privacy in an empty house being driven down the street? this example is from a real case that went through several appeals with each side winning at times. now, the schema of search warrants is clearly activated. we can now turn to the three steps lee suggests and modify them slightly. 101 methodology armenian folia anglistika 4. “through” legalized texts and excerpts a. from the introductory exercise, the students have the basic concepts and a few legal terms necessary to understand a legalized text. using a search engine on the internet, it would be simple to find an article on search warrants from a newspaper or news agency such as cnn. in fact, you could even use a television program [such as “law and order”] or documentary which deals with search warrants. of course, you would wish to prepare the text by introducing key terms, structures and collocations before you give the students the legalized texts. b. then you would give them a section of the full case that they will finally be reading. of course, you will need to ‘rehearse’ the facts of the case before you present the extract. let’s return to the case we mentioned at the beginning of the article in which the police did not “knock and announce” before they entered the house. we can give the students this extract of legal english now and ask them to analyze it. this is from the wisconsin supreme court decision [which was appealed to the u.s. supreme court]: state v. richards, 201 wis.2d 845, 549 n.w.2d 218 (1996). …richards argues that because the police failed to ‘knock and announce’ prior to entering his motel room to execute a search warrant, any evidence must be suppressed. this issue is simply stated: whether the fourth amendment allows a blanket exception to the general requirement of ‘knock and announce’ (the rule of announcement) for entries into premises pursuant to a search warrant for evidence of felonious drug delivery. we conclude that exigent circumstances are always present in the execution of search warrants involving felonious drug delivery, [such as] an extremely high risk of serious if not deadly injury to the police as well as the potential for the disposal of drugs by the occupants prior to the entry by the police. the public interests inherent in these circumstances far outweigh the minimal privacy interests of the occupants of the dwelling for which a search warrant has already been issued. once that ‘prototypical’ language of the decision and the key terms and collocations (‘execute a search warrant’ or ‘felonious drug delivery’) are explored through the tools of corpus linguistics, we can go in the final stage of cbi beyond. 5. “beyond” the full case and revisiting the social analysis next, we can present the full case to the students. u.s. supreme court decisions are easily available on the internet (http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/) and usually deal with a topic of high social interest, so they are a good choice. if you have access to a computer lab, you can take your students there, have them download the case so that they can work with it in a concordancer or just in a word processing program. finally, after the case has been read, you might wish to ask your students to go ‘beyond’ the case and write a response paper based on a question involving social analysis. for example, you might wish to ask “is it really in the public interest to require search warrants when felonious drug delivery is suspected?” likewise, you may wish to stage a debate in which you assign the side that students must represent, remembering that a successful lawyer must be able to argue both sides of an issue with equal facility. 102 armenian folia anglistika methodology 6. conclusion authentic materials are essential in the esp class, but those materials can be daunting to the beginning reader or student. by using the tools of cbi, corpus linguistics, and genre analysis, we can develop a four-step approach which allows us to activate appropriate schemata, introduce legalized texts, read full cases, and go beyond the reading to higher level analyses. references: 1. bowker l., pearson j. using specialized corpora. london: routledge, 2002. 2. brinton d. snow m., wesche m. content-based second language instruction. ann arbor, university of michigan press, 2003. 3. calleros c. reading, writing, and rhythm: a whimsical, musical way of thinking about teaching legal method and writing. in: the journal of the legal writing institute, 1999, 5, p.2-22. 4. hall ch., lee d. current trends in legal english. (paper presented at international tesol), canada, vancouver, 2000. 5. hunston s., gill f. a corpus-driven approach to the lexical grammar of english. amsterdam, benjamins, 2000. 6. lee d. making the leap from general to legal english. in: the essential teacher: compleat links. tesol, 2004, [http://www.tesol.org/pubs/magz/et/compleat/v01/03-04.html]. 7. lee d., hall ch., hurley m. american legal english. ann arbor, university of michigan press, 1999. 8. lewis m. the lexical approach. uk, hove, language teaching publishers, 1993. 9. swales j. genre analysis. london, cambridge university press, 1994. àã ù³ëý³·»ï áýã»ñóáõçó ùçý㨠÷áñó³·»ï áýã»ñóáõ çñ³í³μ³ý³ï³ý ³ý·é»ñ»ýç áéáñïáõù æñ³í³μ³ýáõãû³ý ù»ç ù³ëý³·çï³óáõ áõë³ýáõý»ñç ³ý·é»ñ»ýç áõëáõóáõùá ³é³í»é ³ñ¹ûáõý³í»ï ¿ ëïë»é áã ù³ëý³·»ï áýã»ñóáõç ñ³ù³ñ ý³ë³ï»ëí³í çñ³í³μ³ý³ï³ý ï»ùëï»ñáí, áñáýù ñý³ñ³íáñáõãûáõý ïï³ý áõë³ýáõçý ý³ë³å³ïñ³ëï»éáõ μý³·çñ çñ³í³μ³ý³ï³ý ï»ùëï»ñáõù ³éï³ é»½í³ï³ý μ³ñ¹áõãûáõýý»ñá ñ»ï³·³ûáõù ³é³í»é ñ»ßïáõãû³ùμ ñ³õã³ñ³ñ»éáõ ¨ ³í»éç μ³ñóñ ù³ï³ñ¹³ïç í»ñéáõíáõãûáõýý»ñ ³ý»éáõ: 103 methodology armenian folia anglistika armenian folia anglistika – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english (since 2005) and yerevan state university (since 2015) aims at fostering research of the english language, literature and culture linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 63 on the functions of antonomasia in political discourse ofelya poghosyan  varduhi ghumashyan  yerevan state university political discourse as a variety of persuasive, impressive and effective speech is one of the ways of constructing optimal speech interchange varying from political negotiations to orations and appeals (including the ones in mass media). it is a well-known fact that the audience of politicians is very large, and their aim is to influence the audience by making accept their viewpoints or at least share their approaches to most urgent problems. in this respect the issue of a proper utilization of language means in political discourse gains particular significance. in this paper, we emphasize the role of antonomasia. specifically, we argue that antonomasia is often found in political speeches to achieve a particular effect by supporting the politician’s intention to send the desired message, orally or in written form, to his audience. thus, in the frames of the present article, by the application of the methods of observation, description and the elements of discourse analysis, we will study the range of functions performed by antonomasia in political discourse. keywords: political discourse, extra-linguistic means, antonomasia, stylistic devices, persuasive function, manipulative function, cognitive function. introduction the aim of the present article is to provide an overview of the main characteristics of antonomasia and reveal the functions of antonomasia as manifested in political discourse. the analysis of stylistic devices in general, and that of antonomasia in particular, as well as the study of their functions are essential to any kind of discourse. as far as the political discourse (van  ofelyapoghosyan54@mail.ru  vghumashyan@mail.ru this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 20.01.2021 revised: 21.04.2021 accepted: 20.05.2021 © the author(s) 2021 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2021.17.1.063 mailto:ofelyapoghosyan54@mail.ru mailto:vghumashyan@mail.ru https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 64 dijk, 1985; shapiro, 1981) is concerned, it is actively used in the social, political and cultural spheres of the global community for the purpose of exchanging ideas on a range of topical issues. as a substyle or a genre of publicistic functional style political discourse is based on an ontological juxtaposition of fact and fiction which is fundamental for the choice of language units and stylistic devices (muradian, 2003). antonomasia in publicistic style in general and in political discourse, in particular, is based on different cases of transposition of logical and nominative meanings. the interplay between the logical and nominal meanings of a word is often intentionally used to express the speaker’s emotions and attitudes to the object of discussion (in the case of antonomasia it is usually a human being). it is also viewed as a shift from one nominal category to another or a controversy between the traditional and situational reference purely on the level of style (galperin, 1981). antonomasia conveys a wide spectrum of qualitative characteristics which can be understood in different subjective ways; this in its turn gives an opportunity to the speaker to play and manipulate with the words as he or she likes by enriching the words with new meanings which usually cannot be perceived by ordinary people unfamiliar with the topic of the speech and with no idea of the politician’s intentions and aims (burnside, 2004; jackson&amvela, 2000). it is this quality that has brought our attention to the mentioned device and has urged us to discuss in what ways antonomasia may work in the hands of a political speaker. the study of the definition of the term antonomasia in the works of galperin (1981), crystal & derek(1971), kukharenko & soshalskaya (1964) displays a variety of interpretations, which however, do not vary in their core content. in most general terms, antonomasia is defined as a device in which one person’s name is exchanged or substituted by another person’s name or by an epithet (galperin, 1981). antonomasia is based on the interaction of the logical and nominative meanings of the same word. one of the interacting meanings is independent of the context, while the other is born within the context. depending on the character of the contextual meaning, a distinction between two types of antonomasia can be drawn: a) a name change based on the interaction between the nominative and contextual logical meanings; linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 65 b) if the interacting meaning of the word is independent of the context, it is its nominative meaning that is dealt with, and if it arises in the context, it is the logical meaning of the word that comes into being (kukharenko & soshalskaya, 1964). with the account of this distinction, in the following part of the paper we will demonstrate the range of language means through which antonomasia functionally gets manifested in political discourse. key functions of antonomasia antonomasia comprises cases in which a proper noun is used for a common noun, for example, a title is used instead of the words king, ambassador, pope or their names. the language unit used with a new meaning is written in capitalized letters, and this proper noun stands for a quality which becomes almost inseparable from the named character. when a title is used instead of a name, we deal with an antonomastic comparison (kukharenko, 1964). a title or a formal description such as your highness is used for a king or his proper name, or your excellency is used for an ambassador or his proper name, or the official address for a pope is your holiness. these are examples of antonomasia, in other words, antonomastic comparison. this type of antonomasia performs an informative function; the audience can immediately understand that the speaker’s words refer to a person who has a high position, title or rank in the society. we may also observe cases when antonomasia performs a function of vocabulary enrichment. for instance, instead of saying ‘a political leader with tyrannical, cruel and arbitrary exercise of power’ a politician may employ the word ‘dictator’ for a person who dictates his own will to other people, or instead of the noun racist the word furher borrowed from german came to be used in english political discourse not only as a common noun, but also as a substitution for a proper name. the observation of the phenomenon of antonomastic comparison brings us to the conclusion that practically any proper noun can be used as a common name. there are situations when a proper name stands for some general idea, either to refer to somebody or something with associated characteristics, or to designate a member of a group or class, for example, a traitor among politicians is called arnold. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 66 on the basis of the analysis of antonomasia in political discourse it can be assumed that the usage of an epithet instead of a proper name may be considered a case of antonomasia as well, for example, his majesty for king, or racist/fuhrer for hitler. conversely, a proper name can be used as an appellative (common noun), for instance, a wise man is called solomon, an eminent orator – cicero; a betrayer is referred to as judas or a political leader who possesses absolute power – a dictator. in political discourse, this type of usage of proper names often takes place for manipulative purposes. hence the manipulative function of antonomasia can be highlighted. it goes without saying that when someone is referred to as judas (“judas,” n.d.), we immediately realize that it refers to betrayal. although we do not turn to history in these situations and use antonomasia automatically and subconsciously, we do understand that this phenomenon is directly linked to our background knowledge. hence, it can be concluded that antonomasia performs an intellective function as well. on the basis of the analysis of the cases of antonomasia in political discourse we observe that the use of antonomasia concretizes political notions, by underlining or highlighting the characteristic features of the people mentioned, or the events going on; the awareness of the source helps understand the intentions of the speaker adequately (consciously referring to the information about a specific person or phenomenon). in fact, in political speeches and political texts in general, we can find examples of an exact and definite estimation of the existing realities with the help of stylistic devices. the comparison with antonomastic characters actually performs a cognitive function, revealing the speaker’s attitude towards the person or the object referred to. in all these instances it is quite obvious that the speaker is willing to violate the stern political speech (beard, 2000) by playing with the words, as well as to show his or her awareness and erudition by presenting the given political question in a playful, jolly manner. for example: i say this to our american friends. mr. facing-both-ways does not get very far in this world. i suspect that the noes and don’t knows would far outnumber the yesses. (“interaction of logical”, 2018) linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 67 it is important to mention that listeners or readers of political speeches should have enough background knowledge of the question under discussion, otherwise they will not be able to perceive the politician’s message, and consequently the latter will succeed in manipulating the audience. on the ornamental function of antonomasia figures of speech are used to add emphasis to what we say or write (gasparyan, 2000; gasparyan & matevosyan, 2008). we assume that even political speech can obtain vivid expressiveness when it is ornamented with different stylistic devices. hence, the use of antonomasia in some situations performs not only an informative but also an ornamental function, for example: the iron butterfly for the former philippine first lady imelda marcos; or iron rita for the former dutch immigrant, minister rita verdonk; titanium lady for the former state secretary of the united states madeleine albright, iron lady for margaret thatcher. the ornamental function of antonomasia can be observed in the abstract from ronald reagan's speech on "the space shuttle 'challenger' tragedy address" delivered in january 28, 1986: we mourn the loss as a nation together. for the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. but we feel the loss, and we are thinking about you so very much. our loved doves (the members of shuttle christa mcauliffe, dick scobee, mike smith, ron mcnair, judy resnik, ellisson onizuka and gregory jarvis) where daring and brave and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, "give me a challenge, and i'll meet it with joy. (“address to the nation”, 1986). the word combination ‘our loved doves’ stands for the names of the members of the space shuttle challenge to express the incredibly strong sense of pity and sorrow, and in this context we may conclude on the ornamental function of antonomasia. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 68 on the declarative and informative, persuasive and manipulative functions of antonomasia so far it has been revealed that antonomasia performs several functions, including declarative and informative functions, as well a function of persuasion (or a persuasive function), which is closely interrelated with the manipulative function. we consider that if saddam hussein had not started war against kuwait the us president george h. w. bush would not have named him ‘the dictator’ during one of his famous speeches in 1991. here we have a vivid example of antonomasia: the speech of us president george w. bush at the time of decision to go to war with iraq in 1991 is as follows: just two hours ago, allied air forces began an attack on military targets in iraq and kuwait. these attacks continue as i speak. ground forces are not engaged. this conflict started aug. 2, when the dictator (saddam hussein) of iraq invaded a small and helpless neighbor kuwait; a member of the arab league and a member of the united nations, was crushed, its people brutalized. five months ago, saddam hussein started this cruel war against kuwait; tonight, the battle has joined. (“george h. w. bush speech”, 1986) bush begins by emphasizing the fact that the attack has already begun and that it is still going on. his speech is strikingly declarative and informative. he implies that there was no other choice but to begin the war and that america had no desire to play a role of an aggressor. indeed, bush stresses the idea of the ‘dictator of iraq’, saddam hussein, having ‘invaded a small and helpless neighbor’. the extract with the usage of the word dictator persuades the reader to agree with the speaker, consequently, performing a persuasive function. another interesting example of the persuasive function of antonomasia is found in the text on barack obama’s electoral campaign. african-americans arrived at the polls today in large numbers to support barrack obama – but on election linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 69 day 2012, it’s less about the historic jubilation of 2008 than ensuring that job growth, health care and education reform keep on track. ….“barack obama is not a martin luther king jr. – people recognize that,”argued the rev. calvin o. butts iii, who has led the historic abyssinian church in harlem for 40 years. “there is a greater sense of reality. he is a man not a savior”. (donaldson, 2012) by presenting specific details connected with the given phenomenon, the author evokes a concrete and life-like image and expresses certain feelings of his own, plays with words intentionally and, in fact, persuades the listeners or readers to believe him. antonomasia enables listeners or readers to grasp the main contextual essence by evoking great interest towards the text at the same time performing motivational function as well, besides its persuasive function. political speeches are often made in the wake of political scandals where the motivation of the speaker is to persuade the listeners. thus, it can be stated that some of the functions of antonomasia in one and the same context are interconnected and interdependent. conclusion language is the principal tool of politicians to achieve their goals in the course of their communicative discourse with the audience either in written or in oral form. language is a powerful and emotive stimulant, dangerous in the hands of a skilled orator. thus, antonomasia, as a rhetoric device, is frequently used by politicians to impose their views on their listeners or readers and send their messages either directly or indirectly to the addressees. politics is viewed as a struggle for power, between those who seek to assert their power and those who seek to resist it. accordingly, politicians constantly aim at making their speeches irresistible, which often becomes possible due to the utilization of various lexical means and stylistic devices. the aim of a particular rhetoric device (for example, antonomasia) in any kind of discourse in general, and in political discourse in particular, is to carry out a certain function. moreover, depending on the politician’s armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 70 intention in a particular context, the usage of antonomasia often aims at realizing more than one function in one and the same extract of the discourse, in other words, different functions may be interdependent, interconnected and intertwined within the same frame of the subject. thus, the role of antonomasia in political discourse is significant and deserves attention due to the following functions it may perform: 1. informative and declarative; 2. intellective; 3. motivational; 4. ornamental; 5. cognitive ; 6. manipulative; 7. persuasive ; 8. the function of vocabulary enrichment. references beard, a. (2000). the language of politics. london, england: routledge. burnside, j. (2004). word watching. washington, usa: thunder’s mouth press. cook, g. (1989). discourse. oxford, england: london print. crystal, d. & derek, d. (1971). investigating english style. new york, usa: longman. dijk, t. (1985). handbook of discourse analysis. discourse and dialogue. london, england: academic press. galperin, i. (1981). lexical and lexico-phraseological expressive means. moscow, urss: nauka. gasparyan, s. (2000). figura sravneniya v funkcionalnom osveschenii. [simile from the functional-communicative perspective]. yerevan, armenia: lusakn. gasparyan, s., & matevosyan, a. (2008). english style in action. yerevan, armenia: lusakn. jackson, h., & amvela, e. (2000). words, meaning and vocabulary: an introduction to modern english lexicology. london, england: continuum. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 71 kukharenko, v., & soshalskaya, y. (1964). konspekt lektsiy po stilistike angliyskogo yazyka. [notes of the lectures on stylistics of the english language]. odessa, ussr: odesskiy gosudarstvenniy universitet. muradian, g. (2003). hraparakakhosakan ardzaky vorpes gortsarakan votcheri hakadramiasnutyun [the juxtaposition of fact and fiction in public discourse]. synopsis of phd dissertation, yerevan state university, yerevan, armenia. shapiro, m. (1981). a comparative and political analysis. chicago, usa: university of chicago press. sources of data address to the nation by president ronald w. reagan. (1986, january 28). retrieved from https://history.nasa.gov/reagan12886.html donaldson s.j. (2012, november 6). african-american vote: obama is a ‘man not a savior’. retrieved from https://abcnews.go.com/amp/politics/otus/african-americans-voting-jubilance%20loyalty-election2012/story?id=17655594 george h. w. bush speech, attack on iraq 1991 (excerpts). (2018, march 17). retrieved from georgehwbushattackoniraq1991excerpts.pdf interaction of logical and nominal meanings antonomasia. (2018, december 2). retrieved from https://studfile.net/preview/7322038/page:29/ judas. (n.d.). in your dictionary. retrieved from https://www.yourdictionary.com/judas քաղաքական խոսույթում բանադարձման գործառույթների շուրջ օֆելյա պողոսյան վարդուհի ղումաշյան սույն հոդվածում դիտարկվում են քաղաքական խոսույթում բանադարձման մի շարք գործառույթներ, որոնց կիրառումը քաղաքագետի կողմից նպատակային է և հաճախ նույնիսկ միտումնավոր՝ ունկնդրին կամ ընթերցողին ուղղորդելու ընդունել իր տեhttps://history.nasa.gov/reagan12886.html https://abcnews.go.com/amp/politics/otus/african-americans-voting-jubilance%20loyalty-election-2012/story?id=17655594 https://abcnews.go.com/amp/politics/otus/african-americans-voting-jubilance%20loyalty-election-2012/story?id=17655594 https://abcnews.go.com/amp/politics/otus/african-americans-voting-jubilance%20loyalty-election-2012/story?id=17655594 https://studfile.net/preview/7322038/page:29/ https://studfile.net/preview/7322038/page:29/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 72 սակետը, պնդումները և այլն: քաղաքագետը հաճախ դիմում է զանազան ոճական հնարների իր խոսքը լսարանին ավելի ներգործուն դարձնելու համար, և այս առումով բանադարձումը բացառություն չէ: տվյալ ոճական հնարն այսօր էլ խորապես ուսումնասիրված չէ, իսկ ներկայումս առավել քան երբևէ քաղաքական բազմաբովանդակ հարաբերություններում համոզիչ խոսքի կառուցումն էլ ավելի մեծ կարևորություն է ձեռք բերել: այս առումով, քաղաքական խոսույթում բանադարձման այս կամ այն գործառույթի վերհանմանը նվիրված աշխատանքները կարող են իրենց նպաստը բերել լեզվի գործառույթների և գործառական ոճերի կիրառական խնդիրների ուսումնասիրությանը: բանալի բառեր. քաղաքական դիսկուրս, արտալեզվական միջոցներ, բանադարձում, ոճական հնարներ, համոզման գործառույթ, մտաշահարկման գործառույթ, ճանաչողական գործառույթ: hin.qxd linguistic aspects of intercultural communication the problems of communication in general andintercultural communion in particular have become especially urgent nowadays for very obvious social, political, economic and other reasons. it has become crystal-clear that the future of mankind depends on the so-called “human factor”, i.e. on whether people of different nations, ethnic groups representing different cultures will manage to find a common language. that is why, the linguistic aspects of intercultural communication, no matter how obvious and widelyknown they might seem to be, have acquired paramount importance in modern linguistics. it should be noted that the term “intercultural communication”, which was practically unknown in russia some fifteen years ago, has become extremely popular nowadays. the thing is that “the human factor” i have just mentioned implies two barriers on the way of human communication: language and culture. the language barrier is known from the time of the tower of babel. the cultural barrier is unseen until a clash between your own indigenous culture and an alien one takes place. at best these clashes are surprising, but usually they are simply off-putting or shocking (hence the term culture shock). thus, the cultural barrier is far more dangerous than the language barrier. it is made, as it were, of absolutely transparent glass and is imperceptible until one ends up with a black eye, having bumped into it. it is dangerous too in that cultural mistakes are usually taken much more to heart than are language mistakes, and this occurs despite the fact that the former are far more excusable: there are no general rules – no grammars of culture, nor dictionaries of culture – to help one avoid cultural mistakes as there are in the case of languages. we all know from our own experience that native speakers are usually very good-natured about the mistakes we make when speaking their language. but cultural mistakes, as a rule, are not forgiven so easily and leave a very negative impression. this leads to a conclusion: all the intricacies and depth of the problems inherent in inter-linguistic and cross-cultural communication are shown up particularly clearly, and sometimes even acknowledged, in comparison of foreign languages with one’s own mother tongue, of foreign cultures with one’s own culture. 80 armenian folia anglistika culture studies svetlana ter-minasova indeed, only knowledge of at least two languages and two cultures reveals – as distant horizons are revealed from mountain tops – certain concealed characteristics and, accordingly, concealed difficulties not visible from the level of one language. from this an important practical conclusion may be drawn: native speakers who teach their mother tongue as a foreign language and who do not know the mother tongue of their students see neither the concealed characteristics, nor the concealed difficulties. however, as the subject of my talk is “linguistic aspects of intercultural communication”, it is necessary to state the interrelation between language and culture. they are inseparable. language is part of culture and culture is part of language. what are the main linguistic difficulties hampering international and intercultural communication? the interrelation of language and culture is traditionally expressed through widelyused metaphors: language is a mirror of culture, it reflects the world around us and the world inside us. moreover, it also reflects a people’s collective self-consciousness, its mentality, national character, way of life, customs and traditions, moral standards and values, and world outlook. a language is a treasure-house, repository of culture. cultural values are stored in all its forms – lexis, grammar, idioms, proverbs, sayings, folklore, fiction and non-fiction, oral and written discourse. language is a transmitter, a carrier of culture; it passes on the treasures of national culture that are preserved in it, from generation to generation. in mastering their native language, children also assimilate the generalized cultural experience of preceding generations. language is an instrument of culture. it forms the identity of a native speaker by forcing upon him or her the world-view, mentality, attitude to people, etc., inherent in it – in other words, the culture of a people who use this language to commmunicate with one another. as a mirror, language reflects not culture merely but the whole world surrounding us. it creates, as we all know very well, a language picture of the world. this picture is nation-specific and is imposed on native speakers of the language. developing this metaphor with a picture, we assume that language can be presented as a mosaic which is made of small pieces – words and other language units functionally equivalent to words. thus, learning a language in general and a foreign language in particular, begins with learning a word – first the sound (oral form) or the look of it (written form) – and then the meaning. the forms of words of different languages are obviously different but their meanings must be same. you are learning a foreign language in order to be able to communicate, but communication is possible only on the basis of a shared code.to share a code you must know the meanings of foreign words and the meanings must be the same in both languages, for if they are different, the code is not shared. however, words of different languages denoting the same things may be different in many ways. 81 culture studies armenian folia anglistika 1. the volume of semantics (the sizes of corresponding pieces of the two mosaics). the russian dom has a broader meaning than the english house: it includes home, building, block of flats, condominium, mansion. 2. occurence in speech (dom – in a russian address: downing street dom 10; in english it is 10 downing street). 3. stylistic connotations: bagrovy and crimson coincide semantically but bagrovy has negative connotations, while crimson has positive connotations. (pieces of the two mosaics differ in colour (or shades of colour)). these are obvious difficulties. anyhow, the collocational, or lexico-phraseological constraints that govern the use of language are more cocealed and obscured. this means that the compatibility of words in different languages is nation-specific. why does the english verb to pay (give somebody money for goods, services, etc.,) collocate with such incompatible – from the russian point of view – nouns as attention, visit, compliments? why are the russian word combinations âûñîêàÿ òðàâà (lit., high grass), êðåïêèé ÷àé (lit., firm tea), ñèëüíûé äîæäü (lit., strong, powerful rain) translated into english as long grass, strong tea and heavy rain? there is only one answer to this: each word has its own collocation or valency. and collocation or valency is nation-specific (not universal) in the sense that it is characteristic only of a given word in a given language. the specific character of collocation becomes evident only in juxtaposition to other languages much as one becomes aware of one’s own culture through coming into contact (clashing) with an alien culture. thus, native speakers of a particular language do not see the problem, it never occurs to them that in a certain language tea can be strong and compliments paid. 4. lexical collocation undermines the foundations of translation and interpretation. bilingual dictionaries are a case in point. the translation of words with the help of a dictionary that gives “equivalents” of their meanings in another language can lead students astray and encourage them to use foreign words in contexts typical of their own language. let us take, for example the very simple (in terms of its commonness) word êíèãà and its english equivalent book. english-russian dictionaries give this word in its most frequently occurring collocations: a book on/ about birds – êíèãà î æèçíè ïòèö a reference book ñïðàâî÷íèê a cheque book ÷åêîâàÿ êíèæêà a ration book êàðòî÷êè to do the books âåñòè ñ÷åòà our order books are full ìû áîëüøå íå ïðèíèìàåì çàêàçîâ to be in smb’s good/bad books áûòü íà õîðîøåì, ïëîõîì ñ÷åòó i can read her like a book ÿ âèæó åå íà ñêâîçü we must stick to/ go by the book íàäî äåéñòâîâàòü ïî ïðàâèëàì i’ll take a leaf out of your book ÿ ïîñëåäóþ òâîåìó ïðèìåðó he was brought to book for that çà ýòî åãî ïðèâëåêëè ê îòâåòó. 82 armenian folia anglistika culture studies only one of these is translated into russian as êíèãà. these differences are even more striking in word combinations. one can shock an audience by stating that native speakers of english, as is indicated by the language, do not wash their heads. and, indeed, in the direct sense – with soap and water – they do not. they wash their hair, the equivalent to the russian word combination ìûòü ãîëîâó (lit., to wash one’s head). interestingly enough, the bald also have to say to wash one’s hair in english although it would come more naturally to them to say, as in russian, to wash one’s head. the english expression, to wash one’s head, is used figuratively and here its meaning is close to the russian – also figurative – expression íàìûëèòü êîìó-íèáóäü ãîëîâó/øåþ (lit., to soap smb.’s head, neck, fig. to reproach smb. severely). thus, the “equivalence” of words of different languages seems to be more and more unrealistic, or, rather, less and less probable. but even in those rare cases when all these purely linguistic moments actually correspond in different languages of the full equivalency of these words, one should not forget about extra-linguistic differences, i.e. the fact that both the things and the concepts thereof can differ. 5. sociocultural connotations. at this point the equivalence of meanings turns into a real problem. the problem is that the so-called “meaning” of the word (i.e. a reference of a certain complex of sounds or letters to a thing or phenomenon in the real world) is actually a thread connecting the world of speech with the world of reality. or, rather, it is a path leading from the world of speech to the real world. then every word of every speech community leads to the world where the language users live. talking about words and what lies beyond them, we deal with the following three levels: 1. the level of reality where objects and phenomena live and function. 2. the level of thinking where there are concepts and ideas about real objects and phenomena. the concepts and ideas are determined by culture, ideology, mentality, etc. 3. the level of speech where words live, collocate, function. at the level of thinking the concepts denoted by “the same” words may differ greatly because they are determined by different cultures, histories, geographies of different peoples. in other words, even more concealed than the mysteries and unpredictability of lexical collocation, is the conflict between the cultural ideas held by different nations about those things and phenomena in the external world which are designated by “equivalent” words in these languages. these cultural ideas are usually responsible for words in different languages developing various stylistic and cultural connotations. thus, even the lexical designation of such a universal notion as the color green arouses great doubt at the level of its absolute lexical equivalence and undoubtedly varies from language to language in view of the word’s differing metaphoric and stylistic connotations. the combination çåëåíûå ãëàçà (green eyes) has a poetic, romantic overtone in russian and suggests an image of bewitching, magical or mermaid’s eyes. in english, however, the word combination green eyes is a metaphor for envy and 83 culture studies armenian folia anglistika contains explicit negative connotations. these negative associations were “introduced” by shakespeare who, in “othello”, referred to jealousy as a green-eyed monster. and another example: the russian word combination ÷åðíàÿ êîøêà, just like its english equivalent, black cat, denotes a pet, a cat of black colour. but in russian culture, according to tradition, a black cat brings bad luck and therefore the word combination causes strong negative associations. the words in the given examples are equivalent in meaning but different in stylistic and cultural connotations. the socio-cultural factor, i.e. those socio-cultural structures underlying language structures, totally undermine the idea of “equivalency” of words in different languages having the same meaning, i.e. relating to the same things and phenomena in the external world. all this becomes especially clear in case of people who are bilingual but monocultural. of exceptional value in this regard is the information contained in andrei makine’s book, le testament francais. andrei makine, a russian, was born in 1957 in krasnoyarsk, siberia, studied at moscow state university, and emigrated to france in 1987, where he began writing novels. his fourth book, le testament francais, published in 1995, was the first novel in the history of french literature to win two prizes simultaneously: the most prestigious french literary award, the goncourt prize, and the medici prize. all makine’s novels are written in french. since childhood he has been bilingual (russian and french) (he learnt french from his french grandmother). the conflict between the reality of life in the russian world and the french language becomes evident from the following excerpts from this outstanding work. speaking about her birthplace, neuilly-sur-seine, makine’s grandmother, charlotte, refers to it as a “village”. she had said it in french but we only knew russian villages. and a village in russia is inevitably a ring of izbas, indeed the very word in russian, derevnya, comes from derevo – a tree, wood. the confusion persisted, despite the clarifications which charlotte’s stories would later bring. at the name of “neuilly” we had immediate visions of the village with its wooden houses, its herd and its cockerel. and when, the following summer, charlotte spoke to us for the first time about the certain marcel proust: “by the way, we used to see him playing tennis at neuilly, on the boulevard bineau”, we pictured the dandy with big languorous eyes (she had shown us his photo) – there among the izbas! beneath the fragile patina of our french words russian reality often showed through. the president of the republic was bound to have something stalinesque about him in the portrait sketched by our imagination. neuilly was peopled with kolkhoznics. 84 armenian folia anglistika culture studies with the passage of time, this double vision of the world, the ensuing personality split and the on-going conflict of two languages within a single culture, causes more and more inconvenience for the main character. thus, the use of the two words: the russian word öàðü and the french loan word tsar results in a clash of two images in the boy’s mind. languagewise, the words are full equivalents, but the russian word öàðü stands for the bloodthirsty tyrant nicholas ii of soviet history book frame, whereas the french word tsar evokes associations of the elegant young tsar nicholas ii and his beautiful wife, who had come to paris to attend the ceremony for the laying of the foundation stone of the alexander iii bridge and of the festive atmosphere of balls and banquets given in honour of the royal couple, i.e. it ties in with the image created in the stories told by the boy’s french grandmother. thus, language is a mirror of both the external and cultural-conceptual world (the world of culturally dependent concepts), it reflects both of them. this mirror may be said to be distorted because, rather than an objective, impartial view of the world, it provides a subjective, nation-specific view filtered through the prism of a nation’s spirit and mind. it would be more correct, therefore, to speak of language as a creative, even magic, rather than a distorting, mirror. thus, the negative connotations of the word “distorting” can be avoided and the creative, formative role of language in reference to man – underscored. after all, language does more than passively reflect everything that man obtains through his sensual, creative and cultural experience. it (the language) simultaneously forms (i.e. in continuous interaction with mind and culture) the native speaker as a member of the given socio-cultural community by instilling and developing in him\her a system of values, morals, attitudes and behavioral patterns. using the widely-spread metaphor about language (or culture) as a picture of the world, one can say that each nation has its own cultural vision of the world as do art movements. one and the same hay stack would be seen quite differently by a realist, impressionist, cubist, or abstract artist and, therefore, look quite different in their reproduction of it. language can be compared to an artist who paints from life and creates a model of it, real-life objects having been transformed by his creative imagination. the reflection of the world in language is the collective artistic effort of the nation speaking that language. along with their mother tongue, each new generation is presented with a complete cultural set which is inherently composed of national character traits, world-view, i.e. vision of the world, systems of values and so on. thus, linguistic difficulties – both open and hidden – are the problems that we, teachers of modern languages, have to solve. to avoid the hidden trap of lexical-phraseological collocability, the student of a foreign language should learn not individual words and their meanings but common and more or less fixed collocations in which these words occur in a language. in order to let students understand socio-cultural connotations, a new subject has been introduced, which we call “the world of a language under study”. this subject is delivered as two parallel courses – one by a native speaker and the other by a representative of the student’s indigenous culture. 85 culture studies armenian folia anglistika to sum up, it is difficult to find a common language, but this task can be solved if we are fully aware of pitfalls on the road to peace and cooperation. linguists of the world, teachers of languages, unite in order to shatter barriers – linguistic and non-linguistic – that separate people. 軽áõ, ùß³ïáõûã, ùççùß³ïáõã³ûçý ñ³õáñ¹³ïóáõù ðá¹í³íáõù ùýý³ñïíáõù »ý ùççùß³ïáõã³ûçý ñ³õáñ¹³ïóù³ý ï³ñ¨áñáõãû³ýý áõ ¹åí³ñáõãûáõýý»ñçý ³éýãíáõ ëý¹çñý»ñ: øýýáõãû³ý ³é³ñï³ »ý ¹³éýáõù 黽í³ï³ý ³ûý »ñ¨áõûãý»ñá, áñáýù ï³ñáõ »ý éñçáñ»ý ëáãáý¹áï»é ùççùß³ïáõã³ûçý ñ³õáñ¹³ïóáõùá: ²é³ýóý³ñ³ïáõï áõß³¹ñáõãûáõý ¿ ññ³íçñíáõù ³ûë ï³ù ³ûý 黽íçý μýáñáß μ³é³ûçý áõ ¹³ñóí³í³μ³ý³ï³ý ï³å³ïó»éçáõãû³ý ûáõñ³ñ³ïïáõãûáõýý»ñçý, 黽í³ï³ý ùç³íáñý»ñç çù³ëï³á׳ï³ý áõñáõûý ¹ñë¨áñáõùý»ñçý, çýãå»ë ý³¨ ³ßë³ññáýï³éù³ý ³½·³ûçý çýùý³ïçåáõãû³ýá, áñáýù ñçùù »ý ¹³éýáõù ³ßë³ññç 黽í³ï³ý ï»ñå³íáñù³ý ñ³ù³ñ: 86 armenian folia anglistika culture studies microsoft word maket 2021-2(24) 2.11.doc methodology armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 85 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2021.17.2.085 myenglishlab as one of the groundbreaking blended learning tools marianna ohanyan yerevan state university online learning is one of the most rapidly growing trends in educational use of digital technologies. the article touches upon the importance of myenglishlab as one of the newest tools for blended english language learning. due to the pandemics of the 2020 many learners began to implement different tools of digital technology to an increasing extent. an effective and appropriate tool for learning english aimed at developing communication skills allows to increase individualization of educational activity, to optimize mastering language structures and grammatical rules, and also to overcome some obstacles of both oral and written competences of the students. an interactive platform is one of the newest blended learning tools that combines different english language learning activities in a variety of formats. it is a web-based system providing learners 24 hours a day, 7 days a week online access to the teacher-managed course content, supports different learning styles, provides students with a large number of supervised practices. the platform myenglishlab contains lexical and grammatical tasks, audio materials listening and reading as well as watching videos. tasks are performed in three stages: the formation of lexical and grammatical skills; improvement of language skills and using those phrases and sentences that were consolidated in the first stage in the dialogue with a computer; development of skills to use lexical and grammatical knowledge acquired during the previous two stages. the platform has options for choosing the number of attempts to perform both test exercises and training. in this article we present a research carried out among the freshmen of yerevan state university faculty of european languages and communication. keywords: online teaching and learning, language learning, blended learning, social interaction, the english language, interactive platform, myenglishlab.  ohanyan.m@ysu.am this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 05.06.2021 revised: 20.08.2021 accepted: 28.09.2021 © the author(s) 2021 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 methodology 86 introduction the english language undergoes significant changes in the last few years, and there is a need to solve a number of didactic problems for students of philology: to develop writing and reading skills by using materials of different levels of complexity, enhance effective listening skills based on authentic audio texts; improve writing skills through replenishing the vocabulary (both active and passive) of modern foreign language with special attention to cross-cultural communication which reflects a certain stage of development, to enrich the knowledge of the students with cultural knowledge, which includes speech etiquette, features of culture and traditions of the country, whose language is being studied, improve knowledge of grammar by performing tests, to form a stable motivation of cognitive activity, to form skills of global thinking, instill the need of using english for the purpose of real communication through the implementation of the latest techniques and technologies. the most effective way of learning english is first of all solving didactic goals which can be achieved through the use of blended learning. however, the problem of using the latest multimedia technologies that allow to combine all types of materials in a single resource for effective training of students under the guidance of a teacher, remains insufficiently studied. it determines the relevance of the chosen topic. we should hasten to add that the effective platform myenglishlab can be integrated with the moodle system which finally enabled to distribute the study materials to students in the experimental group within one system. the purpose of our study is to analyze the role and importance of the interactive platform myenglishlab in the process of mixed learning of english by students of philology. the objectives of the present study are to provide the students with available material and information. there are different approaches to defining the essence of the concept of "blended learning". kurkan offers the combination of traditional formal learning tools – working in classrooms, studying theoretical material – with informal ones, for example, with discussions via e-mail and internet conferences (kurkan, 2015, p.489). purnima uses the term "blended learning" to describe solutions in which she considers important to combine different ways of presenting training content, such as courses based on web technologies, epss (educator performance and support system) and knowledge management techniques. she also uses it to describe learning that combines different types of training activities, including face-to-face training, online e-learning and self-learning in the workplace methodology armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 87 (purnima, 2002). a blend is an integrated strategy for delivering on promises about learning and performance. blending involves a planned combination of approaches such as coaching by a supervisor, participation in an online class, breakfast with colleagues, competency descriptions, reading on the beach, reference to a manual, collegial relationships, and participation in seminars, workshops, and online communities (rossett, douglis & frazee, 2003). roger schank – one of the most highly respected thinkers, writers and speakers in the training, learning, and e-learning community, demonstrates steps and strategies proven to excite employees, make them want to learn, and decrease training costs while increasing productivity. schank’s approach also involves learning from failure. he defines blended learning as the use of e-learning and classroom learning (schank, 2002). moebs and weibels define blended learning as a "combination of distance and traditional communication in integrated learning activities"(moebs & weibezahl, 2006). blended learning provides the possibility of using different methods of presenting the material for work in a traditional classroom, combined with distance learning to achieve the objectives of the course. at the same time graham defines blended learning as an approach that integrates traditional learning and computer-mediated learning in a pedagogical environment (graham, 2005). the model of blended learning in the modern educational environment can be divided into three main components that function in a constant relationship: 1. full-time training (faceto-face) which presupposes the traditional format of classroom (teacher – student); 2. self-study learning which is the independent work of the students; 3. online learning (online collaborative learning) with the work of students and teachers online which is one of the modern tools for blended learning all over the world today. on some effective methods of blended learning the object of research is the use of the interactive platform myenglishlab in english classes as the main element of blended learning. descriptive, comparative and generalizing methods are used while carrying out the following research. analysis of lexicographic definitions with elements of componential analysis is used to determine the meaning of the concept “mixed teaching”. myenglishlab – an innovative online platform providing thousands of different activities with learning english in various formats, provides individual feedback; allows to perform tasks 24/7; supports different learning styles; armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 methodology 88 provides students with a huge number of controlled computer-based practices anywhere and any time. the platform contains the following aspects: lexical, aimed at the formation of lexical competence through learning a certain stock of lexical units, idioms and proverbs and using them in their own speech. lexical competence combined with socio-cultural and sociolinguistic awareness of the students is a reliable basis for the implementation of speech. grammatical, the goal of which is completing different sentences with the correct tense forms of the verbs in brackets and finding the grammatical mistakes, etc. writing, when the learners are expected to write some symbols characterizing the armenians and the british (e.g. golden eagle as the national animal of armenia, lion as the national animal of england, etc.). as a result of regular training in written expression, students gain experience in choosing the necessary words and phrases. it is well known that oral communication can be developed through prepared speech, for written speech is often a prerequisite for the development of internal speech. listening to a passage and trying to write the plot of the text is a very effective exercise for not only developing the learners’ listening competences but also memorizing the key words and syntactic constructions of the audiotext. on the other hand the effectiveness of listening is related to mandatory performance of auditory skills, which helps to achieve the understanding of the audiotext as a whole. reading which presupposes the reading of a passage, answering the questions and choosing the correct answer, selecting the best summary and completing the sentences with the words or phrases in the text. reading is one of the most important types of communicative and cognitive activities. watching the video materials which increases the level of motivation to learn a foreign language (in our case english), gives an opportunity to work with authentic samples in english. implementation of tasks on the interactive platform myenglishlab is a three-stage process: stage 1 is the formation of lexical and grammatical skills on the basis of topical texts. at this stage, students learn new vocabulary and grammar, improve language skills of listening and repeating phrases and sentences. stage 2 is the improvement of language skills through using the phrases and sentences assimilated by students at the first stage of learning. students methodology armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 89 perform tasks aimed at a kind of computer verification of options with the correct answer. stage 3 is the development of skills for using lexical and grammatical knowledge acquired at the previous two stages. students are offered assignments using authentic audio and video materials. in addition to exercises, the teacher can also assign a test based on the material already covered. this gives an opportunity to check the quality of the knowledge of a significant number of students for a very limited time; assessment in this case is more objective and at a pre-planned level. the teacher can see the results of the tasks on the personal page of each student, which contains information on the number of completed tasks, the percentage of the correct answers, and finalize his/her assessment. all grades can be exported, giving a chance for archiving the results and student involvement in the performance of the tasks. working with a computer not only increases the students' motivation to learn, but also avails the teacher of an opportunity to obtain additional information about the work of each student: how much time he spent on each task, the number of attempts, etc. every time a student makes a mistake, myenglishlab responds with feedback and encourages students to learn from their mistakes and try again. it is important to note that such work can significantly reduce the time for inspection tasks, track every individual student and adjust the degree of complexity of the tasks. in addition, the computer allows to completely eliminate one of the most important reasons for a negative attitude to learning – learning failure due to misunderstanding of the material or "gaps" in knowledge. myenglishlab is based on the principles of individualization and differentiation (the teacher can choose and offer tasks of a certain complexity). among the main didactic functions implemented by myenglishlab is cognitive, developmental (promotes development of such necessary cognitive processes as perception, logical thinking, memory, imagination), training (possibility to train independently and test your level of knowledge and skills with certain topics, refine them and complete the proposed tasks), diagnostic (the teacher is able to quickly control and find out the level of mastering the topic by students), communicative (stimulating the use of oral speech with students which helps them overcome the fear of failing). conclusion the main task of higher education today is providing effective and high-quality training of students which is impossible to accomplish in the modern world armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 methodology 90 without the use of modern approaches to learning, for they make classes productive and interesting not only for students who are free to use modern electronic devices but also for teachers who try to optimize the learning process management. as our research study has shown, students of philology using myenglishlab in their english courses reached better results in grammar, vocabulary, reading and listening skills through modern and efficient learning digital environment in comparison with students using conventional paperbased materials. we can consider it not only a question of acquiring certain skills, but also of reformulating the relationship between knowledge, practice and sustainability experience. one of the modern methods of teaching foreign languages to philologists with the active use of information technologies is blended learning with an efficient use of the interactive platform myenglishlab. the latter is an effective and appropriate tool for blended learning of a foreign language (in our case english) aimed at developing communicative abilities, which allows to increase the individualization of educational activities, to optimize the acquisition of language structures and grammatical rules, as well as to overcome the monotony of the lesson. using the interactive platform myenglishlab helps to fulfil a range of methodological, didactic, pedagogical and psychological tasks and increases the efficiency of the teaching process, develops different types of language activities, serving as a kind of steady and safe motivation for foreign language students of philology. references graham, c. r. (2005). handbook of blended learning: global perspectives, local designs. san francisco, ca: pfeiffer publishing. kurkan, n. v. (2015). effektivnost’ smeshannogo obucheniya pri obuchenii inostrannomu yazyiku v usloviyah sovremennogo obrazovaniya [efficiency of blended learning in teaching a foreign language in conditions of modern education]. young scientist, 5, 488– 491. moebs, s., & weibelzahl, s. (2006). towards a good mix in blended learning for small and medium sized enterprises. outline of a delphi study. proceedings of the workshop on blended learning and smes held in conjunction with the 1st european conference on technology enhancing learning, (pp.1–6). purnima, v. (2002). blended learning models. learning circuits. astd’s source for e-learning. retrieved from http://www.purnimamethodology armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 91 valiathan.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/blended-learning-models2002-astd.pdf. rossett, a., douglis f., & frazee v. r. (2003). strategies for building blended learning. retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228550955_strategies_for_building_blended_learning schank, c. r. (2002). designing world-class e-learning: how ibm, ge, harvard business school, and columbia university are succeeding at elearning. centers for teaching excellence – book library.190. retrieved from https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/ct2-library/190 myenglishlab-ը որպես խառը ուսուցման առաջատար միջոց մարիաննա օհանյան սույն հոդվածն անդրադառնում է առցանց ուսուցման աննախադեպ աճին և նորագույն հարթակների կիրառմանը կրթական համակարգում: myenglishlab-ը համարվում է անգլերեն լեզվի խառը ուսուցման նորագույն գործիքներից, որը կիրառվել է եպհ միջմշակութային հաղորդակցության անգլերեն լեզվի ամբիոնի առաջին կուրսի ուսանողների ուսուցման գործընթացում: ուսուցման այս ժամանակակից հարթակը միտված է հաղորդակցական հմտությունների զարգացմանը, կրթական գործունեության անհատականացմանը, ինչպես նաև նպաստում է բանավոր և գրավոր հմտությունների որոշակի խոչընդոտների հաղթահարմանը: այս հարթակի ակտիվ կիրառությունը հնարավորություն է տալիս տրամադրելու ուսուցման տարբեր ձևեր, այդ թվում՝ ուսուցման գործընթացը վերահսկող պրակտիկա: բանալի բառեր. առցանց ուսուցում, լեզվի ուսուցում, խառը ուսուցում, սոցիալական փոխազդեցություն, անգլերեն լեզու, ինտերակտիվ հարթակ, myenglishlab: kazm.cdr frederic conybeare’s translation of hovhannes yerets khnusetsi’s the key of truth the classical armenian and english versions of the18th century ecclesiastic hovhannes yerets khnusetsi’s work the key of truth are devoted to the worship and ritual order of the paulikians, a religious-heretical movement in armenia. the editor and translator of the original text was frederic conybeare(1898). the key of truth was written in 1782 in the province of taron. not only the book, but the introduction and the chronicle attached to it are of great interest. conybeare’s version is based on a manuscript with some parts either missing or erased. what conybeare did was publishing the key of truth in grabar (classical armenian), adding his own corrections and comments to the original. the paulikian religious heresy is rather old. like the tondrakiyts sect it was widely spread in armenia. but the doctrine of the paulikians was closer to the ideology of the official church, and it was for this reason that it survived for rather a long period among armenian clergymen. it is notable that the leaders of the tondrakiyts doctrine had once belonged to the high clergy. aristakes lastivertsi’s history gives the most detailed evidence about the tondrakiyts; the two chapters of this work are entirely devoted to the criticism of the mentioned sect (chapter 22, on the tondrakiyts’ evil sect which appeared in the province of harq and deluded great many people; chapter 23, how the fire of this delusion spread in mananaghi).1 portraying one of the leaders of the tondrakiyts’ leaders, bishop hakobos, aristakes lastivertsi comments: “a certain bishop, named hakobos, who was the overseer of the churches in the province of harq, pretended to be a righteous man; he wore rags, fasted and would walk bare-footed, he chose priests, who would follow him dressed in plain clothes, refused to partake of delicious food and sang psalms. …but all this was false and not true... even our lord, speaking about them, warned in his preaching: “take care not to be misled by false prophets who will approach you in sheep’s hide, but are wolves inside.”2 this very hakobos then began preaching against christ. frederic conybeare translated the key of truth in order to acquaint the european theologians with the teaching of the paulikians. the manuscript was discovered under the following circumstances. in 1891, during his stay in russian armenia, conybeare was working in echmiadzin library. he was looking for the armenian translation of 152 armenian folia anglistika armenological studies paruyr sahakyan enoch’s book3 but accidentally came across a writing concerning the sect of the paulikians. conybeare knew quite well the importance of his discovery. in 1893, owing to g. ter-mkrtchian, connybeare got a copy of the manuscript he had ordered and in 1898 he published the key of truth as a book. the opening parts of this volume touch upon questions of heresy, pages 1-65 include the original text in armenian, pages 69-124 contain the english translation of the original, and pages 125178 present anti-heretical writings by grigor narekatsi (st. gregory of narek), grigor magistros, hovhan odznetsi and nerses shnorhali. in his work unknown armenian sects in 16-17th centuries, tadevos avdalbekian mentions the key of truth. he was familiar with conybeare’s translation and quotes from it.4 he writes: “the faith root of the new tondrakiyts, the key of truth openly calls jesus the new adam, jesus the man, jesus the new man, a new creature and not a creator, whereas mary, the blessed virgin is called merely a woman.”5 tadevos avdalbekian notes that the early tondrakiyts rejected baptism and the eucharist. this cannot be said of the late tondrakiyts, who accepted both sacramentst: “four are they which save man, first, repentance, second right faith, third holy baptism, and fourth the holy precious body and blood of our lord jesus christ”:6 accepting the mentioned sacraments of the armenian apostolic church, the late paulikians rejected confirmation, holy orders, anointing of the sick and matrimony, and suggested they “are not salvation of our souls, but are unnecessary and not obligatory.”7 the aim of the key of truth is clarified in the section of the book entitled a word to the beloved reader. here the author confesses the difficulties he has experienced while compiling such a responsible work: “although the throng of distractions and the temptations and storms of the world, and the manifold hindrances, strong to disturb our transitory life in various ways,although these have sorely beset us and suffered us not to undertake this necessary work”. however, inspired by heavenly thoughts, urged by the interests of the armenian church and in order to make the communal life of his people healthier, he fulfills the commands of christ. every christian and every christian family must live and survive according to the commandments of our lord’s son and never swerve from them. we must believe in jesus christ, be christened according to his orders and deserve eternal life for “he who shall not believe, shall be judged”8 a reader inexperienced in theology can hardly notice sectarian layer in the key of truth. the ideas of the gospel writers are constantly repeated here. the author completely agrees with them and only in a few cases seems to deviate from them. in the introduction of the work hovhannes yerets confesses that while narrating the work he had the inspiration of his heavenly father but wrote “in a brief and discreet manner.” in the chronicle f. conybeare expresses his disappointment concerning the missing and erased parts of the manuscript. in some cases he skillfully restores the missing fragments, as, for example in the conclusion of the metrical parts attached to the introduction: this brief descourse shall ye search and deeply o’er it meditate. if it please you, then revere it, as it were a voice of thunder.9 conybeare rightly mentions that the text of the chronicle is incomplete too. in the 153 armenological studies armenian folia anglistika corresponding part of the chronicle, in the postscript he adds: “one or more pages of ms. are here lost.”10 the chronicle itself is of great value. in the first place it shows the condition of armenian manuscript writing in the last quarter of the 18th century, when armenians had their printing houses in different parts of the world. second, the art of manuscript writing went on to develop on paper and the scripts were worrying about the fate of their works in case they were copied by hand. the mentioned fact was especially important in case of hovhannes yerets’ manuscript for, as he mentions in the introduction of the work, it was addressed to the whole nation, including armenia proper and numerous armenian colonies in countries of europe and asia. faithful to the mindset of medieval manuscript writing, he mentions in the preserved part of the chronicle that there can be some shortcomings in his narrative: “moreover, i humbly entreat you with warm love and faith to forgive the shortcomings, the insufficiences, and the faults of composition or of grammar. and also as touching the syllables, or writing, or verbs or nouns or eight parts of the art”11: conybeare suggests that the shortcomings might have appeared through the carelessness of the unskilled copiers: “if in regard to them ye find any errors or shortcomings, they are not due to ourselves, but have found their way into it as being of unpractised copyists”12: in the grabar (classical armenian) text the scholar points to the missing fragments, sometimes correcting errors of the copyists or adding versions he thinks to be more correct. judging from the chronicle, we can say that there have been some metrical parts in the original version, which the author had written drawing inspiration from the relevant parts of the gospel. chapter 19 speaks of the importance of the baptismal rite. it recounts of christ’s followers, the disciples peter and paul, mary magdalene, simon’s mother-in-law and others. “for they with great contrition recieved glory and honour from jesus christ our saviour, as is clear in the holy gospel, and in the acts of the holy apostles, and elsewhere”13: according to conybeare, the fragment is incomplete and a metrical part should have been attached to it. in his commentaries he writes: “here, two leaves lost, in ms, four pages, 74-77, torn out.”14 the preserved part of the fragment reads as follows: come my children of the new zion, take on you the crown of the lord jesus. cherish in yourselves each word spoken take your places in the ranks on the right hand if ye listen into the church the infinite god shall save you.15 in the margins of the key of truth there are matching commentaries explaining what writings, considered sacred in terms of christian religion, the author has made use of in order to narrate the given fragment. the list includes excerpts from the gospels of 154 armenian folia anglistika armenological studies matthew, mark and john, genesis and exodus parts of the old testament, the letters of apostle paul to hebrews and the philippians. in the margins one can find explanations of some christian symbols as well. the discussed writing by hovhannes yerets reveals the scholar’s desire to make the faithful of the armenian church the followers of the key of truth. this was a serious threat for the official church. the dangerous fact of joining a heresy was especially perilous because of the absence of armenian statehood, and the church saw itself entirely responsible for the national unity. the devoted and patriotic fathers of the church were those who would realize this difficult mission. connybeare was skilled in armenian ecclesiastical literature, especially writings which struggled against heretical doctrines, contrary to or incompatible with the ideology of the official church. the middle ages have known numerous fighters for the purity of faith against heretical doctrines. connybeare appended to the english translation of the key of truth some anti-heretical works and papers of grigor narekatsi (st. gregori of narek), hovhannes odznetsi, grigor magistros and nerses shnorhali. the contents of the annotation to these writings disclose the anxiety of the aforementioned scholars. chapter 2i of the key of truth is entitled: “about our lord jesus christ, that as he laid down canons and precepts, so do we proceed with god’s help.” hovhannes yerets points to the place16 in luke’s gospel which describes the baptism of christ. “during a general baptism of the people, when jesus too had been baptized and was praying, heaven opened and the holy spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove, and there came a voice from heaven, you are my beloved son. in you i delight.” the works criticizing heresies show clearly that heretical doctrines disavowed many rites of the christian church, baptism in the first place. hovhannes odznetsi, the catholikos of armenians in 717-728, wrote a document entitled against the paulikians17. warnings against the paulikians are found in the canons18 of the same author. hovhannes odznetsi calls the paulikians impious heretics who should be avoided. they should not be given shelter nor should anyone talk to them, as they are the descendants of the evil one, who have forgotten about their love towards our lord. the one who joins them or is gracious towards them should be tortured and severely punished. grigor magistors in his letter 67 writes that the paulikians know the holy gospel and the books of the apostles perfectly well but reject baptism and call it a death19. another work directed against heresies, tondrakiyts in particular, is grigor narekatsi’s letter. poghos khachatryan has rightly mentioned that the paper is the exprsssion of narekatsi’s true resentment: “the reading of the letter reveals narekatsi’s wrath towards smbat zarehavantsi and his followers. his feelings are so earnest that it would be an error to think he is concealing his true vision of the question.” 20 in the letter g. narekatsi strictly condemns zarehavantsi sending curses and imprecations on him. many interpretative works have been written to deepen the true christian faith among armenians and to make the old and new testaments understandable for them. what is more, analogous works have been written in non-christian surroundings, for 155 armenological studies armenian folia anglistika christians living among muslims. a noteworthy example is kahlil gibran ’s prophet, a work which is recognized internationally.21 hovhannes yerets’ the key of truth includes 22 chapters.22 further the chapters are not enumerated and interrogative marks stand instead of chapter numbers. certain chapters include ritual instructions. thus for instance: “and after the reading of paul, tis meet for the elect one to ask the name of the catechumen: ‘by what name do ye disire to call this catechumen according to law and not with a fabulous name?’ and then he readeth the holy gospel, luke ii 21.” 23 in the corresponding part of the gospel according to luke it is said that “eight days later the time came to circumcise him, and he was given the name jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived” luke 1, 2, 21. the key of truth is rich in poetic devices characteristic of medieval literature. its poetics is closely connected to the poetics of the bible. a good example is the device of question and answer. below we quote the following two passages: concerning the christian doctrine question. art thou a christian? answer. yes, i am a christian by the grace of christ. q. how are we to difine a christian? a. thus-one who knows our lord jesus christ, what he is and keeps his commandments. q. what is the command and precept of our lord jesus christ, which we keep? a. that which our lord prescribed to his disciples and his faithful, saying: “if ye love me, ye will keep my commandments. as i also have kept the commandments of my father”. q. how many are the commandments of our lord jesus christ? a. these. first, hope, second, repentance, third, faith, fourth, baptism, fifth, communion, sixth, love, which is chief of all. q. what is christ, and as what must we know him and belive him to be? a. even as the universal and apostolic holy church believed, so must we also believe. q. how did the blessed apostles believe? teach us. a. as st. john the evangelist showeth, saying: “we have believed and know that thou art christ, the son of god who wast to come into the world”. q. so then, as touching those who baptize catechumens, is their baptism true or vain? a. it is vain and a fraud. for catechumens have not repentance, have not hope, neither have they the holy faith. wherefore their baptism is not true and is not salvation. q. then whose baptism and communion is valid? a. their holy baptism and communion only is valid who have original and operative sin24: similar questions and answers can be found in the concluding parts of the key of truth, in the chapter entitled: “concerning the judgement that is one and not two.” 156 armenian folia anglistika armenological studies question. how many judgements of god are there as touching the dead and the living? answer. there is but one judgement and not two. q. then, if there is one judgement of god which he holdeth through christ; why do some gainsayers say that there are two judgements and not one the one, they say, private and apart, and the other universal. a. they thus speak lies merely because their father is satan. even as our lord says, that which he speaketh false he speaketh out of his own, and his father is satan. q. i pray thee, venerable father, to give us instruction as touching how many judgements there be. a. i tell thee that the universal and apostolic church confesses one only, saying that man dies once and after that is judgement. this is the meaning of the holy church, that as for man death comes once, so also will his resurrection and judgement be one and not two. q. then did christ, our lord and intercessor, truly know the wickedness of their minds, who have established false and monstrous laws, or did he not ? a. yes, venerable father, he truly knew, and therefore said: “beware of evil workers,” and “by their fruits ye shall know them” who are disciples of lies and deceit, and not of my truth. as the holy church expressly declareth. q. did our lord jesus christ really know the day of judgement or no? a. since the heavenly father, true god, did not reveal that day to his beloved son; as he saith concerning the end of the world: “no man knoweth it, not the angels in heaven, nor the son; but the father alone”. further he saith: “out of my own self i speak nothing; but whatsoever command my father gave me, that i speak.” behold, my reverent one, how christ, the son of god, of his own self could not say aught, unless his father revealed it to him. q. but forasmuch as our lord jesus christ could not by himself without the ordinance of god know the day of judgement, how do some gainsayers declare, in opposition to the truth of the son of god, that there is a separate judgement and place of expiation for sinners? a. because, as i at the first told thee, they are the heritors of their father’s deceit; and through the spirit of that same evil one they ever and always ordain false laws and false precepts. behold, my loved one, their teacher, who has disguised himself in the form of a monk and preached unto them the torments of hell, in order to ensnare their souls.” 25 conybeare’s bilingual edition of the key of truth is an important philological contribution to armeniology, it is a significant scholarly attempt to make armenian spiritual literature better-known to the international reader. nevertheless, the work has not yet been subjected to philological examination. intersetingly, conybeare’s the key of truth is considered in terms of marxismleninism in h.gabrielian’s history of armenian philosophy. the armenian part of the key of truth ends in conybeare’s chronicle written in classical armenian, a fact which shows the scholar’s great love towards armenia and armenian manuscript-writing: “i, frederic conybeare, the humblest of oxford teachers, 157 armenological studies armenian folia anglistika an armenist and an admirer of armenia, after having found a copy of the manuscript called the key of truth, translated it into my native english and printed it through the order and expense of oxford university vardapets, wise and noble people in their printing house in 1895 anno domini. i was down-hearted for numerous pages of the manuscript were lost because of the carelessness of certain people. i was never able to restore them and, hence, could not print the complete manuscript including the church rites, of which the scribe informs us in the chronicle. for this reason, i implore those who will find a complete copy of the manuscript to send it to me in order that i will be able to print its missing parts.” notes and references: 1. lastivertsi aristakes. patmutyun. yerevan, 1971, pp. 86-98. 2. ibid, p. 87. 3. desendant of adam (7th generation). enoch is also one of the three people in the bible taken to heaven while still alive. the book of enoch is a pseudepigraphal work attributed to enoch and as the bible says “and enoch walked with god, and he was not; for god took him.” (genesis 5:24; see also heb. 11:5). the book of enoch does not form part of the canon of scripture. the hebrew and arab writers considered enoch a scientist and ascribed to him the invention of figures and astrology (see bibleyskaya entsiklopediya, trud y izdanie arkhimanderita nikifora, moskva, 1891, p. 239). 4. in the footnotes the year of the publication of conybeare’s work is not correct (see tadevos avdalbekian. hayagitakan hetazotutyunner. yerevan, 1969, p. 208): 5. ibid, p. 208. 6. the key of truth. a manual of the paulicain church of armenia. the armenian text, edited and translated with illustrative documents and introduction by f.c. conybeare, oxford, 1898, p. 119. 7. ibid. 8. ibid, p.73. 9. ibid, p. 72. 10. ibid, p. 124. 11. ibid. 12. ibid. 13. ibid p. 92: 14. ibid. 15. ibid, p. 93. 16. luke 3, 21, 22. 17. see odznetsi hovhannes: matenagrutyun, venetik, 1833. 18. ibid, pp. 24 -33. 19. magistros grigor. girq tghtots. alexandropol, 1910, tught 67. 20. khachatrian p. grigor narekatsin yev hay mijnadary. girq arajin, st. ejmiatsin, 1966, p.99. 158 armenian folia anglistika armenological studies 21. gibran kahlil. margaren. hajatsuts garegin arqeps. gazantcyan, istanpul, 1992. 22. yev yaghages khratoj dzernadrutyan, glukh 22 (see the armenian text, p. 38). 23. ibid. 24. ibid, pp. 117-118. 25. ibid, pp. 121-122. ðàìð²üüºê ºðºò êüàôêºòàô §´²ü²èæ öþø²ðîàô⺲ü¦ ºðîæ îàüæ´ºðú²ü â²ð¶ø²üàôâúàôüà ð³ûáó »ï»õ»óáõ å³íéçïû³ý ³õ³ý¹ç å³ßï³ùáõýù³ûçý ¨ íçë³ï³ý ï³ñ·çý ¿ ýíçñí³í 18-ñ¹ ¹³ñç ñ³û ñá·¨áñ³ï³ý ðáíñ³ýý»ë ºñ»ó êýáõë»óáõ §´³ý³éç ×ßù³ñïáõ㻳ý¦ ³ñå»ù³íáñ »ñïá` ·ñí³í 1782ã. î³ñáý ·³í³éáõù: ´ý³·ñç ã³ñ·ù³ýçãý áõ ññ³ï³ñ³ïçãá üñ»¹»ñçï îáýçμ»ñý ¿, áñá, 1891ã-çý ³ßë³ï»éáí ¾çùç³íýç ê. êçýá¹ç ·ñ³¹³ñ³ýáõù, ³éçã ¿ áõý»ýáõù í³ýáã³ý³éáõ ³ûë ³ßë³ïáõãû³ýá, ïé³ñ»éáõ ýñ³ ï³ñ¨áñáõãûáõýá ¨ ññ³ï³ñ³ï»éáõ áã ùç³ûý çñ ïáõùçó ×ß·ñïí³í áõ é³ûýáñ»ý í³ýáã³·ñí³í μý³·çñá ·ñ³μ³ñáí, ³ûé¨ ³û¹ μý³·ñç ³ý·é»ñ»ý ã³ñ·ù³ýáõãûáõýá: ²û¹ ã³ñ·ù³ýáõãû³ùμ ¿é »íñáå³ï³ý ³ëïí³í³μ³ýáõãû³ýá ñ³ûïýç ¿ ¹³éýáõù å³íéçïû³ý ³õ³ý¹ç í³ñ¹³å»ïáõãûáõýá: 159 armenological studies armenian folia anglistika -83.pdf -83.pdf kazm.pdf kazm2.pdf 1-83_.pdf 1-17.pdf 18-27.pdf 28-83.pdf 42-83.pdf 84-91.pdf 92-159.pdf << /ascii85encodepages false /allowtransparency false /autopositionepsfiles true /autorotatepages /all /binding /left /calgrayprofile (dot gain 20%) /calrgbprofile (srgb iec61966-2.1) /calcmykprofile (u.s. web coated 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<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> /enu (use these settings to create adobe pdf documents for quality printing on desktop printers and proofers. created pdf documents can be opened with acrobat and adobe reader 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/untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /leaveuntagged /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2400 2400] /pagesize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice << /ascii85encodepages false /allowtransparency false /autopositionepsfiles true /autorotatepages /all /binding /left /calgrayprofile (dot gain 20%) /calrgbprofile (srgb iec61966-2.1) /calcmykprofile (u.s. web coated \050swop\051 v2) /srgbprofile (srgb iec61966-2.1) /cannotembedfontpolicy /warning /compatibilitylevel 1.4 /compressobjects /tags /compresspages true /convertimagestoindexed true /passthroughjpegimages true /createjdffile false /createjobticket false /defaultrenderingintent /default /detectblends true /detectcurves 0.0000 /colorconversionstrategy /leavecolorunchanged /dothumbnails false /embedallfonts true /embedopentype false /parseiccprofilesincomments true /embedjoboptions true /dscreportinglevel 0 /emitdscwarnings false /endpage -1 /imagememory 1048576 /lockdistillerparams 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<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> /enu (use these settings to create adobe pdf documents for quality printing on desktop printers and proofers. created pdf documents can be opened with acrobat and adobe reader 5.0 and later.) /rus () >> /namespace [ (adobe) (common) (1.0) ] /othernamespaces [ << /asreaderspreads false /cropimagestoframes true /errorcontrol /warnandcontinue /flattenerignorespreadoverrides false /includeguidesgrids false /includenonprinting false /includeslug false /namespace [ (adobe) (indesign) (4.0) ] /omitplacedbitmaps false /omitplacedeps false /omitplacedpdf false /simulateoverprint /legacy >> << /addbleedmarks false /addcolorbars false /addcropmarks false /addpageinfo false /addregmarks false /convertcolors /noconversion /destinationprofilename () /destinationprofileselector /na /downsample16bitimages true /flattenerpreset << /presetselector /mediumresolution >> /formelements false /generatestructure true /includebookmarks false /includehyperlinks false /includeinteractive false /includelayers false /includeprofiles true /multimediahandling /useobjectsettings /namespace [ (adobe) (creativesuite) (2.0) ] /pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /na /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /leaveuntagged /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2400 2400] /pagesize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice << /ascii85encodepages false /allowtransparency false /autopositionepsfiles true /autorotatepages /all /binding /left /calgrayprofile (dot gain 20%) /calrgbprofile (srgb iec61966-2.1) /calcmykprofile (u.s. web coated \050swop\051 v2) /srgbprofile (srgb iec61966-2.1) /cannotembedfontpolicy /warning /compatibilitylevel 1.4 /compressobjects /tags /compresspages true /convertimagestoindexed true /passthroughjpegimages true /createjdffile false /createjobticket false /defaultrenderingintent /default /detectblends true /detectcurves 0.0000 /colorconversionstrategy /leavecolorunchanged /dothumbnails false /embedallfonts true /embedopentype false /parseiccprofilesincomments true /embedjoboptions true /dscreportinglevel 0 /emitdscwarnings false /endpage -1 /imagememory 1048576 /lockdistillerparams false /maxsubsetpct 100 /optimize true /opm 1 /parsedsccomments true /parsedsccommentsfordocinfo true /preservecopypage true /preservedicmykvalues true /preserveepsinfo true /preserveflatness true /preservehalftoneinfo false /preserveopicomments false /preserveoverprintsettings true /startpage 1 /subsetfonts true /transferfunctioninfo /apply /ucrandbginfo /preserve /useprologue false /colorsettingsfile () /alwaysembed [ true ] /neverembed [ true ] /antialiascolorimages false /cropcolorimages true /colorimageminresolution 300 /colorimageminresolutionpolicy /ok /downsamplecolorimages false /colorimagedownsampletype /bicubic /colorimageresolution 300 /colorimagedepth -1 /colorimagemindownsampledepth 1 /colorimagedownsamplethreshold 1.50000 /encodecolorimages false /colorimagefilter /dctencode /autofiltercolorimages true /colorimageautofilterstrategy /jpeg /coloracsimagedict << /qfactor 0.15 /hsamples [1 1 1 1] /vsamples [1 1 1 1] >> /colorimagedict << /qfactor 0.15 /hsamples [1 1 1 1] 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5.0 and later.) /rus () >> /namespace [ (adobe) (common) (1.0) ] /othernamespaces [ << /asreaderspreads false /cropimagestoframes true /errorcontrol /warnandcontinue /flattenerignorespreadoverrides false /includeguidesgrids false /includenonprinting false /includeslug false /namespace [ (adobe) (indesign) (4.0) ] /omitplacedbitmaps false /omitplacedeps false /omitplacedpdf false /simulateoverprint /legacy >> << /addbleedmarks false /addcolorbars false /addcropmarks false /addpageinfo false /addregmarks false /convertcolors /noconversion /destinationprofilename () /destinationprofileselector /na /downsample16bitimages true /flattenerpreset << /presetselector /mediumresolution >> /formelements false /generatestructure true /includebookmarks false /includehyperlinks false /includeinteractive false /includelayers false /includeprofiles true /multimediahandling /useobjectsettings /namespace [ (adobe) (creativesuite) (2.0) ] /pdfxoutputintentprofileselector /na /preserveediting true /untaggedcmykhandling /leaveuntagged /untaggedrgbhandling /leaveuntagged /usedocumentbleed false >> ] >> setdistillerparams << /hwresolution [2400 2400] /pagesize [612.000 792.000] >> setpagedevice microsoft word contens verjin linguistics armenian folia anglistika 63 words left unspoken in the lives of the black vicky chaparyan lebanese university abstract toni morrison’s fifth novel, beloved, represents a postmodern traumatic story the characters of which deal with black history and the scars it has left on the african american community. as rafael perez-torres claims, “the story of slavery invoked by beloved is built on the absence of power, the absence of selfdetermination, the absence of homeland, the absence of a language” (perez-torres 1993:131). throughout the story t. morrison gives a voice to a ghost to speak up, but she takes away the voice of the ghost’s mother who does not have the power to tell her story about her infanticide and so, has a troubled relationship with language. later, beloved’s sister, denver, who becomes dumb and deaf after learning the story about her mother’s infanticide, gets back her senses when she goes to the community to ask for help to nurture her suffering mother. although t. morrison treats different themes, the following paper is an attempt to study the importance of language in beloved, through comparing the maternity symbolic order in morrison to the paternity symbolic order in jacque lacan’s the psychoses (1955-1956). key words: beloved, slavery, maternity symbolic order, paternity symbolic order, j. lacan, unspeakable thoughts, language, ghost, story of trauma. introduction root, identity, and community have always been the underlying themes of toni morrison’s works. through her novels, toni morrison shows several ways in which slavery, which was the most oppressive period in the black history, has affected the identity of african americans (chaningkhombee 2012). morrison’s beloved represents all the loved ones of the black africans who died on the slave ship. throughout the novel, she always returns to the theme of the sufferings of the black along with their marginalization and alienation in the societies of the white (chaningkhombee 2012). although african american literature traces its beginnings to the latter half of the 18th century when the african american population was still enslaved (gates; mckay 2004:3), tony morrison’s armenian folia anglistika linguistics 64 beloved written in the new era of the lives of the black people in the usa represents the sufferings caused by slavery that continue to live in the souls of the black population. the heavy presence of the ghost of beloved is not but a symbol for all the victims of slavery. reading the first few pages of beloved, the reader can easily realize how morrison reveals that the black race was treated “like an animal” during the time that the events of the story in her novel take place. for morrison, each act of writing a novel is not but “an act of discovering deep within herself some relationship to a collective memory” (rushdy 1992:149) for her, “writing is an instrument that can be traced back to an african heritage” (rushdy 1992:149). she has written beloved to reveal the story of her own race and their sufferings; a story which has long been forbidden to be told since “matters of race, silence and evasion have historically ruled literary discourse” (morrison 1992:926). however, things have changed, “evasion has fostered another, substitute language in which the issues are encoded, foreclosing open debate” (morrison 1992:926). t. morrison, a black writer, has encoded the evasion through which the stories of the black were forbidden to be told. through the creation of a ghost, she gives life to the historical truths uncovering the inhumanity committed against her race. she takes away the voices of the mother and daughter, yet gives them back their voices to live and pass on the story that should never die. morison’s maternity symbolic order versus lacan’s paternity symbolic order in beloved beloved, the story of the dead incarnated, is as if a book of black history which is revealed through the memories of both people and ghosts which makes it a fantasy rather than a realistic novel. the core of beloved’s story of trauma consists of “the oscillation between a crisis of death and the correlative crisis of life: the between story of the unbearable nature of an event and the story of the unbearable nature of its survival” (caruth 1996:3). thus, morrison is trying to tell a true story from black history using the device of a ghost, thus making it a fantasy because, although the slave narrative was by far the most common form of african american literature, fiction was also important (gates; mckay 2004:2). the date of the story in the beginning of the novel goes back to 1873, which marks the aftermath of slavery and the civil war. it encompasses levels of past from the slave ship called middle passage of “sixty million and more” slaves on the pacific ocean and their sufferings. it reveals the traumatic story of the black where morrison depicts different means of suffering especially raping “as a process by linguistics armenian folia anglistika 65 which white men keep some black women and even some black men in a state of fear” (barnett 1997:425). the novel rotates around the true story of margaret garner who is the victim of racist ideology of the whites during slavery and decides to kill her children, so that no white man with “mossy teeth” will ever hold her child down and suck the milk out of her breasts (morrison 2005:70). the whole story is interwoven around the main character, sethe, who is just thirteen years old when she arrives at sweet home as a slave girl. much of the information that weaves the story together does not follow a timeline. it moves from past to present back and forth. it is written in fragments of memories and is told in third person narration through the memories of sethe, denver, paul d, and baby suggs. the language used is typical of the language of the black americans and it is lost over and over again throughout the novel with sethe, the protagonist of the novel, as well as her daughter denver. both characters lose their speech abilities because of the murder committed by sethe. it is through the device of the ghost story that morrison “gives a voice to an infant killed by her own mother who is desperate to save her child from slavery” (wyatt 1993:474). the dead baby comes back in the body of a nineteen year old girl and tortures the mother with a sadistic desire to make her suffer. sethe and beloved are inseparable because, as boyd claims, “mothers and daughters identify with each other” (boyd 2008:292). thus, the ghost of beloved has come back to identify herself with her mother. she wants to take revenge and sethe becomes her slave serving her willingly. however, beloved is not only sethe’s daughter, but a symbol of all the victims of slavery, that presents a vision about slaves, whether men or women, awakening past memories (wyatt 1993:475). moreover, although morrison reveals beloved as a female, yet she does not represent the female gender. she, who is both the rapist and the victimizer, represents black people (male and female) who suffered all types of sufferings, because the white did not care whether the slaves were male or female to abuse them. the narrator refers to two “mossy teethed” boys sucking sethe’s milk from her breasts (morrison 2005:228) and paul d working on a chain gang where prisoners were forced to fellate white guards every morning, (morrison 2005:107). as a result of the suffering, all the houses of the black people were haunted by ghosts. sethe’s mother-in-law, baby suggs says, “not a hause in the country ain’t packed to its rafters with some dead negro’s grief. we lucky this ghost is a baby” (morison 2005:6). all the characters in the book deal with black history and the wound it has caused to them. all are haunted by traumas of slavery and racism, armenian folia anglistika linguistics 66 with the scar of the past returning to them over and over again. sethe’s horrific explanation of the abuse of the white is “whites do not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you. they dirty you so bad that you cannot like yourself anymore” (morrison 2005:251). this explains why sethe prefers killing her daughter with her own hands instead of letting her suffer the way she herself did. jean wyatt says, “when sethe tries to attempt to kill herself and her children to prevent their re-enslavement, she finds her speech blocked” (wyatt 1993:476). moreover, wyatt adds that “sethe’s maternal subjectivity is so embedded in her children that it both allows her to take the life of one of them and precludes putting the act into words” (wyatt 1993:476). sethe cannot tell the story of her infanticide in words. she has trouble with language. although she finds the strength to kill her child, yet she cannot tell the story of murdering to the other women in her community. throughout the novel, t. morrison shows that all the characters are haunted with the traumas of the past, that is why they all have to deal with their history, with their wounds, and their painful past to be able to be healed. sethe cannot find language to tell about her infanticide, and denver becomes deaf and dumb after learning about the murder her mother has committed. however, towards the end of the novel, t. morisson shows that sethe is not able to search her identity without the help of her community because while sethe operates within her own sense of maternity, it is denver who, at the end, finds a replacement for lacan’s paternal symbolic order, as well as “a social order that merges oral and verbal pleasures, nurtures her with words and teaches her that caring is what language was made for” (wyatt 1993:475). thus, sethe’s daughter denver goes out to her community to ask for help, to nurture her mother who was suffering and to gain back the senses that she has lost. for wyatt “morrison’s story holds an opposition between a maternal order of nurturing and a paternal order of abstract signification” (wyatt 1993:482). thus, accordingly, the state of sethe presenting the maternal values contradicts lacan’s theory of paternity which in turn “enables morrisson to contrast a new narrative form that features childbirth as high adventure.” sethe “occupies a contradictory position in discourse” (wyatt 1993:475). she embodies the figures of both the mother and the father for beloved. morrison “elaborates the heroic slave mother in such a way that she replaces the figure of the heroic male” (wyatt 1993:475), because the central heroic achievement of sethe’s journey is part of her suffering while giving birth on a sinking boat. although she is eager to give up and die, she, however, keeps on fighting to survive for the sake of the baby in her womb. thus, linguistics armenian folia anglistika 67 lacan’s theory of paternity turns to be called the symbol of maternity with morrison’s beloved in general and with the black race in particular. m. sharpe, comparing the concept of a child’s entry into language in morison’s story (where the daughter suffers of a trauma) to lacan’s concept, deduces that for lacan, “it is only when the child accedes to castration and the law of the father, that he becomes fully competent as a language-speaker within his given social collective. by contrast, individuals suffering from psychosis, are prone to characteristic linguistic dysfunctions and inabilities” (sharpe 2004: web). thus, lacan sums up the psychological requirements for belonging to a patriarchal symbolic order. however, according to jean wyatt, morrison’s deviations from dominant language practices can be called “maternal symbolic order incorporating not only maternal and material values but also a system that, like lacan’s symbolic order, “locates subjects in relation to other subjects” (wyatt 1993:475). the narrative of the beloved focuses on either the maternal body or the haunted house, and there are different metaphors that control the symbolic dimension of things to adhere to their literal meaning. sethe has a troubled relation with respect to language and special metaphors reflect materialization of things. an example is a figure of speech where weight which also means “responsibility” turns out to describe only the physical weight of sethe’s breasts. another example is the word moved in “she moved him.” this use of the word does not indicate that beloved stirred paul d’s emotions but that she physically moved him from one location to another (wyatt 1993:475). sethe’s physical connection with her baby resembles the infant’s initial radical dependency on the mother’s body. however, according to wyatt, in its drive toward unity, the mother – daughter dialogue wipes out all the positions of separation necessary for language, and it is in this sense “unspeakable” (wyatt 1993:479). the conversation of sethe and her two daughters, denver and beloved, is “unspeakable thoughts” because the sufferings of the black are so harsh and inhumane that they exceed the level of ordinary discourse. moreover, beloved herself “ends up outside social discourse. her position in the epilogue is symmetrical with that of the sixty million and more… the souls that never made it into any text” (wyatt 1993:479), for no one wrote about those sufferings. they were forgotten and passed on. morrison writes, “everybody knew what she was called, but nobody anywhere knew her name. disremembered and unaccounted for, she cannot be lost because no one is looking for her, and even if they were, how can they call her if they don't know her name? although she has claim, she is not armenian folia anglistika linguistics 68 claimed” (morrison 2005:274). he adds, “this is not a story to pass on” the sufferings of the black were so great that they were not supposed to pass on from one generation to the other. they are supposed to be forgotten “like a bad dream” (morrison 2005:324). at the end of t. morrisson’s story, it is denver, sethe’s surviving daughter who finds a replacement for lacan’s paternal symbolic order – a social order that merges oral and verbal pleasures, nurtures her with words, and teaches her that caring is “what language was made for” (wyatt 1993:475). as she comes to know about her mother’s infanticide, denver cannot find language to speak with. she becomes deaf and dumb for two years, “cut off by an answer that she could not hear, cut on by the sound of her dead sister trying to climb the stairs” (morrison 2005: 122). however, with the urge of getting food for her starving mother she goes to the community where she learns that she is not alone, and that she’s a child of the community. she learns how important it is “to belong to the community of other free negroes, to love and be loved by them, feed and be fed” (morrison 2005:177). moreover, “ it is the speech act itself, the voice of the grandmother, putting the past where it belonged, into oral history that frees denver to enter the present” (wyatt 1993:483). otherwise stated, it is the idea of belonging to the community of other negros that helps denver “enter the nurturing reciprocity” (wyatt 1993:483). denver lives in the free state of ohio and belongs to “the first unenslaved generation”, thus representing possibilities for the future (carden 2007:2). at the end of the story, the author makes denver get back his senses through the help of the community and sethe establishes a new bond with paul d and coming together with him makes a happy family, thus carrying the potential for repair and rejuvenation, that produces normative families, communities, cultures (carden 2007:4). thus, denver and sethe are both cured and get back their speech which they had lost because of infanticide, due to finding social and romantic links with the society they live in. according to wyatt, the hope at the end of the novel is that sethe will invent a language that transfers the desperation of the slave mother who committed infanticide. moreover, as a victim of slavery and as a preverbal infant who has not made her way into the symbolic order, beloved remains outside language and therefore outside narrative memory… beloved’s story too, terrible to find a resolution in the logic of narrative, cannot be passed on from teller to teller, but it also cannot die (wyatt 1993:484) linguistics armenian folia anglistika 69 thus, accordingly, if black history survives, then black people have to remember their history and pass it on from one generation to another, for a black child has to know that in the past his ancestors were used to be beaten, whether they were right or wrong. “the schoolteacher beat him anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers – not to the defined” (morrison 2005:225). they have to know that they were sold and lost all around the pacific and the americas, and that “the sold one never returned, the lost one was never found” (morrison 2005:147). however, mourning on the past would not help; but telling the story will do. telling the story of the injustice committed against the black americans will let the memory of the dead live forever. all the characters in the novel have to remember the past in order to forget it later. thus, managing to turn infanticide and the cry of slavery around, the society succeeds in building a further case for abolishing slavery. the appearance of beloved in the story symbolizes the past which has tortured the black people, and the scar left by her is an appeal and exhortation for the coming generations never to forget the past and the sufferings of the black people, for it is true that “the ancestor lives as long as there are those who remember” (rushdy 1992:149). conclusion through the story of the ghost, t. morrison presents the power of language which is blocked in the black mother who committed infanticide with the hope of preventing the enslavement of her daughter. beloved represents all the black africans who suffered and died on their way in the pacific to america to find food and shelter there. she reveals how they were abused by the white race and how they were forbidden from any feeling of body pleasures like love, sex, and baby feeding. moreover, throughout her novel, t. morrison proves that the ghost of slavery haunts the black people of african origin. the effect of the ghost is so powerful that it blocks the speeches of both beloved and her mother. but the community helps her for it is only due to the community that denver gets back her speech and helps her mother who finds the possibility of making the unspeakable spoken through establishing a romantic bond with paul d and a social one with her community thus, morrison reveals that it is only through talking about the wound of slavery and showing care and love to one another that the blocked speech can be unblocked again, and the wound of slavery left over the generations of the black africans can be healed. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 70 notes: 1. j. lacan uses freud’s concept of the mythical father as a strategic move in his opposition to the relationship of the individual and his/her mother as a dual pair. he emphasizes the importance of the third party in the oedipus complex, i.e., in his terms, the place that the mother reserves for the name-of-the father in the promulgation of the law. he considers this a vital element in helping each new member of the human race to move from an exclusive, primary relation to the mother to a wider engagement with the outside, cultural world – the symbolic order. he believes that the symbolic function of a father has been identified with the figure of the law since the dawn of history (lacan 1955-1956). references: 1. barnett, p.e. (1997) figurations of rape and the supernatural in beloved. // pmla, vol. 112, n. 3. modern language association. available at: <http://www.jstor.org/stable/462950> jstor database [accessed june 2016]. 2. boyd, c. (2008) contemporary fiction: an anthology of female writers. new delhi, india: saroup and sons. 3. chaningkhombee, s. (2012) reconstruction of black identity and community in toni morrison’s beloved and the bluest eye. available at: <www.academia.edu> [accessed may 2016]. 4. carden, p. (2007) models of memory and romance: the dual endings of toni morrison’s beloved. available at: <www.oocities.org/tarbaby2007/beloved11.htm> [accessed june 2016]. 5. caruth, c. (1996) unclaimed experience: trauma, narrative, and history. baltimore: johns hopkins up. 6. gates, h.l.jr. and mckay, n.y. (2004) the norton anthology of africanamerican literature. new york: w.w. norton & company. 7. lacan, j. (1955-1956) psychoses (seminars). available at: <wikiprdia.org/wiki/ the_name_of_the_father> [accessed june 2016]. 8. morrison, t. (2005) beloved. london: vintage. 9. morrison, t. (1992) ethnic studies, post coloniality, and international studies; playing in the dark: whiteness and the literary imagination. available at: <http://www.jstor.org> jstor database [accessed may 2016]. linguistics armenian folia anglistika 71 10. perez-torres, r (1993) knitting and knotting the narrative thread – beloved as post modern novel. // mfs: modern fiction studies 39, n 3-4. retrieved on may 29, 2016 from jstor database. 11. rushdy, a.h.a. (1992) daughters signifying history: the example of tony morrison’s beloved. // american literature 64/3. available at: <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2927752> jstor database [accessed may 2016] 12. sharpe, m. (2004) internet encyclopedia of philosophy. university of melbourne, australia. available at: <http://www.iep.utm.edu/lacweb> jstor database [accessed may 2016]. 13. wyatte, j. (1993) the maternal symbolic in tony morrison’s beloved. // pmla, vol. 108, n. 3. modern language association. available at: <http://www.jstor.org> jstor database [accessed may 2016] ꨳùáñãý»ñç ã³ñï³ »ñí³í ³é»ñá âáñç øáñçëáýç ñçý·»ñáñ¹ §´çé³í繦 í»åá, ùç å³ïùáõãûáõý ¿ 먳ùáñãý»ñç ¹åí³ñçý ïû³ýùç ¨ ³ýñá³ù»ñçïû³ý ñ³ù³ûýùç íñ³ ëïñï³ïçñáõãû³ý ãáõ³í ñ»ï ù »ñç ù³ëçý, ùç å³ù³ý³ï³ßñç³ý, áñá ýáõã³·ñíáõù ¿ çßë³ýáõãû³ý, ñ³ûñ»ýçùç, çýùýáñáßù³ý ¨ 黽íç ³ó³ï³ûáõãû³ù àõç å³ïùáõãû³ý áýã³óùáõù øáñçëáýá ëáëùç çñ³íáõýù ¿ ï³éçë ùç áõñí³ï³ýç, ³ûó éé»óýáõù ¿ áõñí³ï³ýç ùáñ ó³ûýá, áí çñ³íáõýù ãáõýç å³ïù»éáõ çñ ù³ýï³ëå³ýáõãû³ý ù³ëçý ²í»éç áõß, ´çé³íç¹ç ùáõûñá ¸»ýí»ñá, çù³ý³éáí ùáñ ù³ýï³ëå³ýáõãû³ý å³ïùáõãû³ý ù³ëçý, ëáõé áõ ñ³ùñ ¿ ¹³éýáõù, çëï ñ»ï³·³ûáõù, ·çï³ïóáõãû³ý ·³éáí, û·ýáõãûáõý ¿ ëý¹ñáõù ñ³ù³ûýùçó ëý³ù»éáõ ï³é³å³í ùáñá: âý³û³í ³ûý ñ³ý·³ù³ýùçý, áñ øáñçëáýá í»åáõù ï³ñ »ñ ã»ù³ý»ñ ¿ ³ñí³ñíáõù, ëáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù ÷áñó ¿ ³ñíáõù áõëáõùý³ëçñ»é 黽íç ï³ñ¨áñáõãûáõýá ñ³ù»ù³ï»éáí øáñçëáýç ù³ûñçßë³ýáõãû³ý ëáñññ¹³ýß³ï³ý ï³ñ·»ñá ä³ï è³ï³ýç äëçëá½-áõù ýï³ñ³·ñí³í ñ³ûñçßë³ýáõãû³ý ëáñññ¹³ýß³ï³ý ï³ñ·»ñç ñ»ï armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 38 doi:https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2022.18.1.038 award acceptance speeches: linguostylistic features kristine harutyunyan  yerevan state university the present paper investigates linguostylistic features peculiar to celebrities’ award receiving speeches a public discourse variety of modern english which is popular not only for its social importance but also for its linguistic and stylistic significance. the results of the analyses carried out on the basis of linguostylistic and case study methodology show that emotional colouring and expressiveness are the most typical characteristics of award acceptance speeches. the impact on the listener or reader is achieved through the usage of different literary-stylistic devices. the award receiving speeches also make a strong emotional impact on the listener during celebrations and through them, while the length (conciseness or wordiness) does not minimize the strong influence on the audience. key words: public discourse, award acceptance speeches of celebrities, literarystylistic devices, emotional impact. introduction it is an accepted truth that there are different ways of demonstrating someone’s viewpoints referring to others. stylistically, we deal with numerous alternatives of linguistic expression through stylistic devices and expressive means. a stylistic device may be defined as a pattern according to which the peculiarities of language are materialized (simpson, 2004, p.5). hence, stylistic devices have a principal part in the examination of any kind of text. they reproduce the author’s thoughts and feelings and make the reader think and feel what the author wants us to think and feel. this is especially important in award acceptance speeches of celebrities and is achieved through a masterful choice of words and devices in which the words appear. at large, the mentioned  kristineharutyunyan@ysu.am this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 30.05.2021 revised: 29.06.2021 accepted: 12.07.2021 © the author(s) 2022 mailto:kristineharutyunyan@ysu.am https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 39 speeches are dramatic, emotional and inspirational at the same time as they aim at penetrating into the minds, hearts and souls of the audience, of every person who hears them. hence, the abundant use of stylistic devices that make a strong impact on the listeners in such a speech is not by chance. we consider that the analysis of the material – the award receiving speeches and the definition of stylistic devices used in them – will contribute to our comprehension and interpretation of a piece of verbal expression. stylistic devices in celebrities’ speeches the public register of language, differing from other discourses has two oral variations, specifically the oratorical and the radio and tv commentary. other typical sub-styles are the essay, journalistic articles, travel writing, autobiographies and diaries. the proliferation of english public discourse today and the emergence of new popular genres in it are the result of the present socio-political developments in the world in general, and extra-linguistic modifications of speech in particular. although public discourse may be highly imaginative and fictitious (like in award acceptance speeches) its specific function also demands selection of elements belonging to informative and factitious realms. functional stability is achieved both through factitiousness (a high frequency usage of certain speech situations, linguistic structures, terms) and fictitiousness (expressiveness of linguistic units, various shades of connotative meanings, rhetorical devices). the given discourse at large is identified by rational and objective syntactical structure with an enlarged order of connectives and cautious paragraphing. its sensitive attraction is realized by the utilization of linguistic units with expressive meanings. when the aim of the speaker is to gain support and trust, s/he has to use rhetorical devices to gain desired results (salkie, 1995, p.35). public discourse also has features such as terseness of expression. in its spoken variant, straight connection with the auditors allows a blend of lexical, phonetic and syntactical features which may also characterize the written variety. in straight addresses to the public the utilization of shrinking and nonliterary words may prevail. as the listeners rely solely on memory, the prolocutor frequently turns to repetitions to let the audience go after the speaker and hold on to the main spots of the talk (galperin, 1977, p.140). as already mentioned, the fictitious, emotional aspect is an important feature in public discourse, including celebrity speeches. it is doubtless that celebrities usually present their public speeches while being excited and armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 40 overwhelmed with emotions. it seems natural that such emotional speeches are full of expressive means and stylistic devices. as o. akmanova states figures of speech are those unusual arrangements of words, those syntactic constructions which are aimed at enhancing the expressiveness of the utterance (akhmanova, 1997, p.15). there exists an extensive and, perhaps, subconscious use of stylistic devises in award acceptance speeches. such stylistic devices as climax, repetition, hyperbole, simile, metonymy and personification are widely used in celebrities’ public speeches. for example, in a popular best pop performance award-talk lady gaga addressing the audience, tells them why she was touched to participate in the film a star is born, said: i’m so proud to be a part of a movie that addresses mental health issues. they’re so important. a lot of artists deal with that, and we’ve got to take care of each other. (recording academy/grammys, 2019a) here we see an example of a metonymy. the main function of metonymy is to provide mental, cognitive access to a target entity that is less readily or easily available: typically a more concrete or salient vehicle entity is used to give or gain access to a more abstract or less salient target entity within the same domain (kovecses, 2002, p. 148). in the above example lady gaga is not a part of a movie and physically cannot be as she is just one of the actors who feature in the film. by the assertion that she is a part of a movie the actress expresses her pride and happiness – she is featuring in the film and the film has an important mission to carry out by addressing mental health issues and trying to support mentally challenged people. actually, stephanie joanna angelina germanotta known as lady gaga created a character that came to shock the public with her unique style and performance. the role in the film a star is born was her first lead role, and she also co-wrote most of the songs of the movie. we may conclude that she really felt being a part of the movie and perhaps subconsciously she used a metonymy to express her emotion of pride at this. in the following example ed sheeran uses a metonymy in his speech at the american institute for stuttering benefit gala 2015 to express his fascination with music which started at an early age when he first received linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 41 the record album of the famous american rapper eminem. actually , eminem is not an album but a rapper, record producer and actor who had created the album and who is considered one of the most controversial and best-selling artists of the early 21st century. while reminiscing his past, ed uses another metonymy in which eminem is presented as the next bob dylan – the american folksinger who moved from folk to rock music infusing the lyrics of rock and roll. but i got heavily into music at a young age, and got very, very into rap music eminem was the first album that my dad bought me. i remember my uncle jim told my dad that eminem was the next bob dylan when i was—say what you want, it's pretty similar, but it's all just story-telling. so my dad bought me the marshall mathers lp when i was nine years old, not knowing what was on it. and he let me listen to it, and i learned every word of it back to front by the age i was ten, and he raps very fast and very melodically, and very percussively, and it helped me get rid of the stutter. and then from there, i just carried on and did some music, but it's i think the one thing i actually wanted to convey in my speech today for not so much the adults here because i feel like the adults are fine—you’re solid, everybody’s got a lot of money and everyone’s chillin’. (american institute of sluttering, 2015) the speech ends up with a climax which is a figure of speech in which words, phrases, clauses are arranged in order of increasing importance (smyth, 1920, p. 677). by be yourself, embrace yourself, embrace your quirks, and embrace your weirdness the artist persuades the audience to be true to themselves focusing on the positive aspects of this characteristics. and just be yourself, embrace your quirks—being weird is a wonderful thing. but i think, you know, i’m not very good at speeches, i don’t really do a lot of speeches but i think the one thing i want to say is be yourself, embrace yourself, embrace your quirks, and embrace your weirdness. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 42 in the given speech we may also see the use of a hyperbole, a rhetorical device which includes exaggerated statements or claims not to be taken literally: if you'd have told my 11-year-old, five-year-old self or any age that i would have received an award from stevie wonder, then i'd be chuffed. joaquin phoenix in his oscar winning speech 2020 intentionally uses within close proximity climatic repetitions (queer rights or indigenous rights or animal rights; one nation one people, one race, one gender, one species; when we educate each other, when we guide each other) to stress the tension, add emphasis to the speech and to make a stronger emotive impact on the audience. i think at times we feel or are made to feel that we champion different causes. but for me, i see commonality. i think, whether we’re talking about gender inequality or racism, queer rights or indigenous rights or animal rights, we’re talking about the fight against injustice. we’re talking about the fight against the belief that one nation, one people, one race, one gender, one species, has the right to dominate, use and control another with impunity. i have been a scoundrel all my life, i’ve been selfish. i’ve been cruel at times, hard to work with, and i’m grateful that so many of you in this room have given me a second chance. i think that’s when we’re at our best: when we support each other. not when we cancel each other out for our past mistakes, but when we help each other to grow. when we educate each other, when we guide each other to redemption. (oscars, 2020b) at the 2017 golden globe meryl streep refers to bullies: disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence. and when the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose. (mariivicky, 2017) linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 43 she uses personification, i.e. an inanimate object (disrespect; violence) is presented as one which has animate features and can invite or incite. personification is connected to allegory as where personification is used allegories come into being (bloomfiled, 1963, p. 161-171). allegoric associations are found not only in fiction but also in cinematography. this is perhaps the reason why we can come across personifications used by the actors rather frequently. meryl streep has a reputation of a brilliant technical actress, and her name is typically associated with serious films. she has also received a number of honorable awards and she holds the record of 32 golden globe nominations and 21 academy awards nominations. she is quite often cited in different social platforms, and in the given example of her speech she makes it more influencial making the public be more attentive to avoid disrespect and violence. mike lee when getting his oscar (2019) for parasite, presents the following personification: hi everybody. i really like to thank director bong. thank you for being you. and i like everything about him: his smile, his crazy hair, the way he talks, the way he walks, and especially the way he directs. and what i really like about him is his sense of humor. and the fact is he can be really making fun of himself and he never takes himself seriously. thank you, thank you very much. and i'd like to thank everybody who's been supporting "parasite," and who's been working with "parasite," and who's been loving "parasite." and i'd like to thank my brother who's been always supporting our building our dreams, even when it looked impossible dream. thank you, jay. i want to thank my brother jay. and especially, i really, really, really want to thank our korean film audience, our moviegoers, who's been really supporting all our movies and never hesitated to give us straightforward opinion on what they feel like their movies. and that made us really never be able to be complacent and keep pushing the directors, the creators, keep pushing the envelopes. and without you, our korean film audience, we are not here. thank you very much. thank you! (swain hwang, 2020). armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 44 in mike lee’s speech, though parasite is the title of the film, the parallel to the primary meaning of the word which denotes an animate being, is quite evident. if we try to find the connection between the given speech and the plot of the film, we’ll see that by parasite the authors mean the people who have done their best to create the film. selena gomez won the award for favorite female artist, and in the last part of her speech she repeats the word love twice in one sentence to stress her gratitude to people loved by her for the opportunity to share with them what she loved. i am so grateful that i have the opportunity to be able to share what i love every single day with people that i love. (dailymotion, 2016) billie eilish, accepting an award in american music awards, also uses repetition in her speech aiming at attracting attention, impressing people and presenting herself as part of the whole, as part of the same society which has exactly the same feelings as everybody else: my parents are here tonight, and they would listen to 'tapestry' and all your other records in high school and then they took those records with them, packed them up in boxes and took them to college with them. then when they met and they got their own house, they took those records with them there. and then when they had my brother and i, they played those records for us. this industry is really weird where sometimes people who do what we do feel like and i’m sure as some of you feel like this too with your lives, like you feel like your stock is either up or down and people either like you or they don’t or you’re feeling bad about yourself but the people who hang in there for you are the ones that you will never forget. (abc, 2019) taylor swift, selena gomez and billie eilish are idols for a great number of youngsters all over the world. every step taken by them, every speech and every appearance both in real and in virtual life becomes a subject of discussion for millions of fans. it’s difficult to say whether the use of the stylistic devices linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 45 is planned and thought over or whether they simply express their emotions. yet, they influence the audience greatly. another example of repetition can be seen in olivia colman’s speech at the oscar when she won the best actress award in 2007. by the repetition of thank you, she renders her profound gratitude to people (her husband, the cast and the crew) who have been with her and supported her in the creation process of the film. my husband, ed, my best friend, i love you so much. 25 years and you’ve been my best supporter. he’s gonna cry! i’m not. thank you so much – fox, everybody, the cast and crew. thank you. argh, thank you so much. lady gaga! and melissa! thank you. (oscars, 2019) this extensive use of repetitions during award acceptance ceremonies can be well explained with the help of a definition given by j. vandres: “repetition is also one of the figures having its origin in the emotive language. repetition when applied to the logical language becomes simply an instrument of grammar. its origin is to be seen in the excitement accompanying the expression of a feeling being brought to its highest tension.” (vandries, 1937, p. 147). dua lipa at the grammy 2019 won best new artist, and she used climax in her speech emphasizing the fact that although she is overexcited and nervous she does not stop being thankful to everybody for appreciating her work so highly: oh my goodness. thank you so much. i guess, oh my god i don’t even know where to begin. i guess where i want to begin is by saying how honoured i am to be nominated alongside so many incredible female artists this year because i guess this year we’ve really stepped up. i want to say a really big thank you to my fans who have allowed me to be the best version of myself, i love you guys very much. i want to say thank you to my team who have been by my side. i want to say thank you to my family who’s here with me tonight and oh my god i’m so nervous and i’m so excited and so grateful. (recording academy/grammys, 2019b) armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 46 billie eilish wins song of the year (2020 grammy), and we may see a lot of interjections in her speech demonstrating her feelings to people and especially to her parents, her team and her best friends, getting the attention of the audience and making an emotional impact on them. why? wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow! oh my god. so many other songs deserve this. i’m sorry. thank you so much. this is my first grammy’s. i never thought this would ever happen in my whole life. i grew up watching them and this is my brother, finneas, and he’s my best friend. i feel like i joke around a lot and i never take anything seriously at these kinds of things, but i genuinely want to say i’m so grateful and i only want to say that i’m grateful and that i’m so honored to be here amongst all of you. i love you to my core. i grew up watching all of y ou. thank you to my mom, my dad, my team, my best friends! drew and zooey for keeping me alive to this day, justin, danny, brandon, michelle, chelsea, spencer, you say some please. (recording academy/grammys, 2020) renée zellweger won the oscar for the film judy. climax (her legacy, her music, her books, her interviews, her television show) is used in her speech to attract attention, impress the audience and to express admiration. i loved you in judy. i have to say that it's, i mean, absolutely amazing performance and amazing film. so, basically, you became an extension of judy in the film. it's almost like she transcended with you in the film. and what i want to know is, how did you connect? what was it about judy that connected you so closely by so in heart that you basically became her? i know you've done a lot of research, but was there anything else that you felt very close to with her that you were able to deliver such an incredible performance and become her, essentially? […] we just appreciate the importance of her legacy, and who she was as a person and we all wanted to celebrate her. and every day we came to linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 47 work and we just tried things, we just kept trying things. and the director, rupert goold, called it "mining for treasure." we were all digging around in sort of the materials of her legacy, her music, her books, her interviews, her television show. you know, just everything that we could find that seemed essential in conjuring her essence to tell the story. and that was everybody's work, you know. and it was, you know, the partnership with every single department throughout. and it really was a celebration. we just came to work every day. you could feel the love, the love for ms. garland, and that was what we had hoped, so -and i thank you for your question. (oscars, 2020b) elton john and bernie taupin won the oscar for the song i'm gonna love me again from rocketman. they use such rhetorical devices as parallel construction, climax, alliteration and repetition. elton: this is for him. this is for my partner of 53 years. without him, i wouldn't be here. he starts the process. he gives me the lyrics, and then i go ahead. without the lyrics, i'm nobody. this is the man who started the journey, and we are still together after 53 years. i have one of these already, but i so wanted to get one for everybody involved in the film. i just face timed them. they're in australia, and i'll be face timing in the car when i leave. they're so happy. i love them so much. they love their daddy. they were so excited about the golden globes, but this one is -you know, an award is an award. but as i say, it's the thing that matters most in my life is i have a wonderful husband and great children and great family and great friends and great health. that is the most important thing. but when you work on something for 12 years as a team and you work really hard and you really it comes out the way you want to want it to, it's this is a nice affirmation. bernie, please, what does this mean to you, 53 years working with this guy through, as we saw in the film, the good times and the tough, what's this like for you tonight? armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 48 bernie: well, what you see in the film is what you get. i mean, the basic whole underlying storyline in that movie is the real thing. you know, even though there are fantasy elements to it. the basic theme of the whole movie is love and trust and believing in the person you are working with. i mean, it's like a marriage, you know? it really is. and one of the things that makes it work is being different, having different lives, leading different lives, and – but we always come back together for the music, and the music is the thing that has run through the bloodline of our veins ever since we first met. thank you. (et canada, 2020) as already mentioned, climax is an arrangement of sentences (or of the homogeneous parts of one sentence) which secures a gradual increase in significance, importance, or emotional tension in the utterance. a gradual increase in significance may be maintained in three ways: logical, emotional and quantitative. as we can guess, and that can be proved by the examples, the emotional variant is prevailing in celebrities' speeches. the use of climax is undoubtedly connected to the speaker’s wish to increase the emotional influence on the audience by building excitement and anticipation. taylor swift just giving one of the biggest speeches of her career at the american music awards while accepting the artist of the decade award uses climax and repetition. guys, we've had fun, incredible, exhilarating, extraordinary times together, and may it continue. thank you for being the reason why i am on this stage, from the very first day of my career until tonight. i love you with all of my heart. thank you for everything. thank you, amas. thank you, just thank you, i'm so lucky to get to do this. thank you. (4music, 2016) it should be noted that actors and singers are masters of exaggeration. hence the use of hyperbole, either conscious or subconscious, can be seen in many public speeches. the desire to make an impact on the public is realized through exaggeration of most possible notions. for example, taika waititi, linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 49 getting oscar for jojo rabbit, presented a speech which among other devices such as climax, simile, metonymy, included hyperbole as well. and especially as the computers as the laptops get newer and newer, here's the latest, the latest one, the latest new imac, the keyboards are worse. and i've got very i've got some shoulder problems, i've got, like a sort of loose -i don't know what you call it over here, this thing here, which is that tendon that goes from, like the forearm down into the thumb. you know what i'm talking about, you guys who are writing. and what happens is you open the laptop and you're like this. […] i have lived in a little bubble for six weeks to where any spare moment i would curl up under a table and go to sleep. i understand that the movie was just adopted as an educational tool by the usc shoah foundation. apple needs to fix those keyboards. (bafta, 2020) hyperbole also occurs in the acceptance speech delivered by tom hanks when taking best actor for philadelphia. it should be added that the war-comedy jojo rabbit itself can be perceived as an exaggeration and the use of hyperbole in waititi's speech is expectable and even logical. the streets of heaven are too crowded with angels. we know their names. they number thousand for each of the red ribbons we wear here tonight. (bafta, 2020) summing up the results of the examination of award acceptance speeches by celebrities, we may present the following chart: armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 50 28% 22% 17% 17% 11% 5% percentage of identified stylistic devices in awards acceptance speeches climax repetition hyperbole conclusion as a result of the examination of stylistic devices in award acceptance speeches by celebrities, we can state that the general characteristics of award receiving speeches, is the highly emotional colouring and expressiveness. the length of the award receiving speech does not affect its influence on the audience. the most frequently used stylistic devices proved to be climax (28%), repetition (22%), hyperbole (17%), simile (17%), metonymy (11%) and personification (5%). such an abundant use of stylistic devices is quite common, as the winners are in a state of excitement when they receive the award. structurally, there are five steps for composing a great thank you speech: starting with an expression of gratitude; talking about the esteem for the people honoring the winner; telling a funny story or poignant story; mentioning the names of people who helped and ending the speech on a high note. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 51 references akhmanova, o. (1972). linguostylistics: theory and method. moscow: moscow state university. bloomfield, m. (1963). a grammatical approach to personification. allegory. modern philology, cambridge. galperin, i. (1977). stylistics. moscow: higher school. kovecses, z. (2002). metaphor: a practical introduction. oxford: oxford university press. salkie, r. (1995). text and discourse analysis. london: routledge. simpson, p. (2004). stylistics. london: routledge. smyth, h. w. (1920). greek grammar. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. vandries, zh. (1937). jazyk. lingvisticheskoe vvedenie v istoriju [language. linguistic introduction to history]. moscow: state socio-economic publishing house. ։sources of data abc. (2019, november 25). billie eilish wins new artist of the year at the 2019 amas the american music awards [video file]. retrieved april 2, 2021. american institute of sluttering. [2015, june 8]. ed sheeran speaks at the 2015 american institute for sluttering gala [video file]. retrieved april 12, 2021. bafta. (2020, february 3). taika waititi’s hilarious acceptance speech for jojorabbit’s [video file]. retrieved june 17, 2021. dailymotion. (2016). selena gomez wins “favorite female artist”pop/rock [video file]. retrieved may 17, 2021. et canada. (2020, february 10). elton john talks “rocketman” oscar win for best original song [video file]. retrieved april 5, 2021. mariivicky. (2017). meryl streep powerful speech at the golden globes [video file]. retrieved may 19, 2021. 4music. (2016, february 16). taylor swift acceptance speech – best album/grammys [video files]. retrieved may 18, 2021. oscars. (2019, march 26). olivia colman wins best actress [video file]. retrieved april 17, 2021. oscars. (2020a, march 11). renee zellweger wins best actress [video file]. retrieved june 17, 2021. oscars. (2020b, march 11). joaquin phoenix wins best actor [video file]. retrieved may 19, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijrywuu9tc8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijrywuu9tc8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_3r3solyds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_3r3solyds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ochyf-kweke https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ochyf-kweke https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x53i27z https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x53i27z https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p08umfzeve https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p08umfzeve https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev8tsnrfuzw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev8tsnrfuzw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yogqoncyone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yogqoncyone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuytvag_he4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz8ne2hhtiw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiiwdtz_mnc armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 52 recording academy/grammys. (2019a, february 11). lady gaga wins best pop duo or group performance [video file]. retrieved may 23, 2021. recording academy/grammys. (2019b, february 11). dua lipa wins best new artist | 2019 grammys acceptance speech [video file]. retrieved may 23, 2021. recording academy/grammys. (2020, january 27). billie eilish wins song of the year / 2020 grammys [video file]. retrieved march 16, 2021. swain hwang. (2020, february 11 ) [oscar 2020: best picture] miky lee brings up the mike again [video file]. retrieved march 28, 2021. մրցանակաբաշխության ելույթների լեզվաոճական առանձնահատկությունները քրիստինե հարությունյան սույն հոդվածում աստղերի մրցանակաբաշխության ելույթների քննության միջոցով ուսումնասիրվում են այն լեզվաոճական առանձնահատկությունները, որոնք բնորոշ են հրապարակախոսական դիսկուրսին: արդյունքները վկայում են, որ մրցանակաբաշխության ելույթները ընդհանուր առմամբ բնութագրվում են բարձր զգայական գունավորմամբ և հուզարտահայտչականությամբ, ինչն էլ խոսքում դրսևորվում է ոճական հնարների կիրառությամբ: այս ելույթները մեծ հուզական ազդեցություն են գործում ունկնդիրների վրա: բանալի բառեր՝ հանրային դիսկուրս, հանրահայտ մարդկանց մրցանակաբաշխանության ելույթներ, ոճական հնարներ, ներազդում։ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytfpzdhvamq https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytfpzdhvamq https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3ja5womr6k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3ja5womr6k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f20gixspfo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f20gixspfo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmijj7qnirq https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmijj7qnirq https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmijj7qnirq kazm.cdr metafiguration in one of my previous articles on the subject, titled“microtropes, macrotropes, metatropes” (2004), i proposed a triple subdivision of semantic stylistic devices according to the level of language at which they operate and according to their functional scope (the range of the text which is their domain in the logical sense). thus microtropes (small figures), the semantic figures of traditional poetics and rhetoric, operate within phrases or, at most, sentences. macrotropes (big figures), in turn, organize sequences of sentences, usually fragments of larger texts or even entire shorter texts (e.g. lyric poems). their prototypical instances are extended (homeric) similes and extended metaphors. the concept of macrotropes originates in the distinction drawn by roman jakobson (1956) between the metaphoric and metonymic modes that structure various discourses. at the third level of description, metatropes (large figures) are perceived as those which structure and construe entire discourses as if from the outside. the idea goes back to hayden white’s (1973, 1978) tropological tetrad consisting of metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and irony. however, in the light of the suggestions scattered across postmodernist literary criticism (roland barthes, paul de man, geoffrey hartman, james hillis miller), i have proposed to extend this list. in the discussion which follows below it is worth remembering that metatropes are figures of the second order, active within the discourse whose subject is another discourse and that they are not overtly present in the text, like their more limited relatives – microand macrotropes. the idea of applying stylistic figures to the holistic analysis of discourse is traceable, in contemporary poetics, to jakobson’s influential article “two aspects of language and two types of linguistic disturbances” (1956). the two dominant dimensions of language, according to the author, are the metaphoric mode (based on similarity and choice) and the metonymic mode (based on contiguity and actual presence). metaphor and metonymy were thus promoted to the rank of super-devices useful in structuring various, very broadly understood discourses, not only on the linguistic but also on the artistic level (to mention only painting or cinematographic art). the jakobsonian distinction between two opposing aspects of thought and of linguistic expression (metaphoric and metonymic) was very aptly applied by david lodge to the analysis of modernist literature in his well-known study the modes of modern writing (1977). of real import are lodge’s observations that prose whose general macrostructure turns out to be, e. g., metonymic may contain a considerable number of metaphors at the level of the stylistic microstructure (and vice versa), which corroborates my belief that the distinction between the microand macrostylistic levels (overt) on the one hand and the metastylistic level (covert) on the other, is fully justified. lodge demonstrates, importantly, that a macrometaphoric or macrometonymic text does not have to be literary at all and that it may contain no microfigures whatsoever, thus 101 literature armenian folia anglistika el bieta chrzanowska-kluczewska being simply non-figurative at the lowest level. it should be stressed that what jakobson and lodge describe in terms of macrofiguration, already bears in itself the potential for metafiguration, for a hidden text-forming stylistic and rhetorical dimension. in what concerns the scope of stylistic figures, sometimes referred to as the tropological space (foucault, 1966; white, 1978), the suggestions have been voiced to the effect that a given metafigure may impose its organization on: 1) a whole literary work, including longer narrative forms, 2) the entire genre (prose, lyric poetry or drama), 3) the whole style of the epoch (classicism vs. romanticism, romanticism vs. realism, naturalism vs. modernism, etc.). lodge (1977: 109) projects this distinction onto an even wider area: in his view the poetic/literary is homologous with the metaphoric mode, while the non-literary is an analogue of metonymy. a metatrope, in accordance with its etymology, should be understood as a ‘selfaware’ and ‘reflexive’ figure, viz. a figure that distances itself in relation to a particular text, a figure capable of ‘talking about itself’, about the figures in the lower domains, about the language whose part it is but which it can transcend in its own way. white (1973, 1978), the meritorious creator of tropics for historical and historiographic discourse, maintains that tropes may in fact cease to be figures proper and change into large textual models, reaching in substance the status of rhetorical modalities. the tropological duet of jakobson’s and lodge’s seems, however, to be too modest. as a result, white has extended the list to include four basic tropes (master-ttropes according to kenneth burke’s terminology), which – in the light of our taxonomy – are nothing else but four chief metatropes. these are: 1) metaphor – the trope of similarity; the iconic trope 2) metonymy – the trope of the objective though accidental contiguity; the indexical trope 3) synecdoche – the trope of essentiality, salience, of particularity or of generality 4) irony – the trope of exchanging truth for falsehood; according to white, the opposite of metaphor and the figure superordinate in relation to the remaining master tropes. for white irony is the figure of distance, displayed not only by the speaker in relation to himself/herself or in relation to reality, but the figure in which discourse distances itself from itself (thus a metatrope par excellence). the idea of these four leading tropes originates (as admitted by white) not only from contemporary poetics (k. burke, n. frye, r. jakobson). the intertextual roots of white’s tropics reach back to giambattista vico’s la scienza nuova (1725, 1730). both burke and vico drew, in turn, from classical tropics, thus the distant source of the concept of metafiguration can be perceived in aristotle’s poetics. is white’s great foursome exhaustive as the list of models that underlie all discourses? the answer seems to be negative and the suggestions as to a possible broadening of the set of what i dub metatropes (metafigures)* appear in the vast modern criticism of the poststructuralist and deconstructionist current. and though much could be said against deconstruction as the derridian philosophical (or rather philosophical-literary) system, researchers in the fields of literary semantics, stylistics or poetics cannot afford to pass 102 armenian folia anglistika literature by those writings indifferently, recognizing that their focus is rhetoric and a profoundly understood tropics of natural language. let us then give below a cursory overview of other candidates for metatropes. 5) antithesis, the game of oppositeness and antinomy, in barthes’s opinion (1970/1999: 52) is the “best known among rhetorical figures”. an exemplary model of antitheticality is one of the so-called “lucy poems” by william wordsworth: a slumber did my spirit seal; i had no human fears. she seemed a thing that could not feel the touch of earthy years. no motion has she now, no force; she neither hears nor sees; rolled round in earth’s diurnal course, with rocks and stones, and trees. the pivot of the semantic construction is here a representation of the opposition between life and death. what is of particular interest, however, is the fact that this oppositeness is not explicitly signalled at either the microor the macrostylistic level, which lack antonymous pairs of lexemes. hence, it is an excellent instance of the stylistic device functioning at a higher, implicit level, namely at the level of metatropes. the metatropological opposites, which are not overtly given in the text, but remain hidden at a higher level of interpretation, require an obvious effort on the part of the reader and invite him/her to participate in the game in which multiple senses can be generated freely, though not endlessly. hillis miller (1986) mentions over twenty such concealed opposites (apart from the basic contrast between the living and the dead girl) which lie covertly at what i propose to call the metatropological, second-order level of interpretation. 6) inversion is another large figure invoked by barthes and claimed to be ubiquitous in, e. g., marcel proust’s prose. barthes defines inversion as a technique by which we unite two contrasting states in the same object and, consequently, transform the appearance into its opposite. hence this form of discourse is founded on equivocation, whose essence has been epitomized in the shakespearian “fair is foul and foul is fair” (macbeth). 7) chiasmus (which should not be confused here with a classical figure of syntactic inversion) is a broadly understood ‘reversal’. following de man (1979a) and hillis miller (1986), we can claim that it is grounded on the transformation of concepts into their own contraries, that is on the transposition of particular elements, as a result of which meanings of words change into sets of contradictory senses. the discriminating reader will have noticed that both inversion and chiasmus are akin to antithesis, though the arrangement of antinomies/contradictions is different within each of the figures mentioned. 103 literature armenian folia anglistika 8) catachresis (abusio), a semantic abuse/misuse (in traditional stylistics a metaphor based on a shocking association), in white’s opinion is a foundation of a peculiar rhetoric present in michel foucault’s writings, who was much in its favour. white maintains that this unusually capacious metatrope sanctions the whole bundle of figures based on various kinds of logical and semantic transgression, such as: paradox, oxymoron, hysteron-proteron, metalepsis, prolepsis, antonomasia, etc. 9) paronomasia, in a metafigurative sense (suggested by de man, 1982) of inexact imitation, not solely in the basic phonetic sense of partial homophony, is in effect the metatrope of incomplete, unsuccessful mimesis, an abortive or straightforwardly impossible imitation of reality. 10) euphemism, in the metafigurative sense called also euphemia (hartman, 1985), can be defined as the large figure of toning down, lessening and mitigating. it is present, for instance, in the above-quoted “slumber” by wordsworth, who – through the mouth of the poetic persona assumes such a euphemic distance in relation to the subject of the demise of the beloved. in my opinion a natural relative of euphemia is the general discourse strategy discussed in 11). 11) suppression, passing over (aposiopesis, paralepsis), insinuation belongs, undoubtedly, to principal rhetorical figures. indeed, it far exceeds the frames of particular literary creations, being – in fact – one of fundamental dimensions of discourse, not necessarily limited to literature. it is indissolubly connected not only with the pragmatic category of politeness, but also with one of the defining features of human language: prevarication, running along the scale from patent falsehood through half-truths to truth concealed. 12) exaggeration, something like meta-hhyperbole, was taken by maxim gorky to function as a fundamental law of artistic creation in general. exaggeration is clearly present in visual arts and in music, hence it can be claimed to act as a cultural, not only linguistic metatrope. 13) anomaly is understood here not in the narrow sense of the conflict of semantic features between particular lexemes but rather as a very broadly conceived strangeness. according to hillis miller (1986), it is an “inexhaustible” property of any literary text, due to the fact that our “western” languages oscillate between being concurrently logical and illogical, or even outright anti-logical. anomaly defined in this way displays strong connections with the category of defamiliarization, deautomatization or estrangement (cf. shklovsky’s ostranienije). although the device named ‘estrangement’, a metatrope that tries to counteract boredom lurking around us, is a spiritus movens of linguistic creations and of the entire culture, on the other pole of linguistic practice it is counterbalanced (as pointed out by white) by the contrary technique in which we apply figuration in order to ‘familiarize’, ‘domesticate’ or ‘render normal’ the strangeness present in the surrounding extralinguistic reality. 14) allegory in traditional stylistics consists in creating a more fully elaborated image or symbolic narration whose implication is either moralizing or referring in a general way to la condition humaine. in de man’s and hillis miller’s considerations it obtains, 104 armenian folia anglistika literature however, the rank of second-order narration, thus of a metatrope which is a narration about another discourse and stylistic figures couched in it. already the title itself of a well-known study by de man allegories of reading (1979b) implies that for him allegory constituted the basic way of signification and of interpretation at the same time. it appears, then, that this deconstructionist allegory is an instance of the secondorder symbolization, the symbol of lesser symbols, in a word: a metasymbol. the enumeration of large figures of discourse has, for the time being, been exhausted. yet the list of metatropes is evidently an open one, contrary to the set of small figures of traditional stylistics and rhetoric, which – albeit running in hundreds – is already closed. further investigations of language, literature and non-literary discourse (in its most comprehensive, cultural aspect) will certainly add to it new ideas or reassess old conceptions and the taxonomy postulated above. in all probability, at least an important figure of simile should find its place among serious candidates for metatropes. and although simile has been eclipsed by the allpowerful metaphor, of which it is a foundation, its importance and independent status in structuring several artistic and non-artistic texts cannot be denied. seda gasparyan’s (2000) comprehensive treatment of this unduly neglected trope speaks strongly in favour of its role in metafiguration. an important query raised in this connection concerns the number of metatropes. i strongly believe that their set, though open at the present stage of research, is not infinite. what is more, it should be kept within reasonable limits and include only important figures. in chrzanowska-kluczewska (2004) i point to the fact that a number of poetic and prose works (be it in the english or any other literature) are constructed around figures that are not necessarily semantic ones, in other words, not genuine tropes (to mention only phonetic, morphological or structural stylistic devices). but even if we allow the level of macrofiguration to be enlarged to accommodate those other poetic techniques, we should be very careful about extrapolating them onto the metafigurative level. if we want metatropes to possess a truly explanatory power, their list – for methodological reasons – should not be unduly extended. metatropes seem to be an inherent feature of human language, possibly universal. yet, it is worth realizing that they are primarily the figures of thought, originally cognitive and conceptual and only derivatively linguistic. this claim is a reflection of my personal belief that there is nothing in the human language that has not existed prior to it in the human mind. white and derrida (1977) went even further in their opinion that metatropes, by their very nature, are pre-cognitive and pre-conceptual, which boils down to saying that figurativeness (not necessarily reduced to metaphor) lies at the core of language and cognition and that it is archetypal and primary. notes: * i do not draw here a traditional distinction between figures and tropes but use the terms metafigure and metatrope interchangeably (in fact, the concept of figure is more encompassing than that of trope, since stylistic figures can be subdivided into 105 literature armenian folia anglistika phonetic, morphological, syntactic, graphic and semantic ones, with only the last group qualifying as genuine tropes). references: 1. barthes r. s / z. warszawa, wydawnictwo kr, 1970/1999. 2. chrzanowska-kluczewska e. microtropes, macrotropes, metatropes. // arbeiten aus anglistik und amerikanistik. band 29. 2004, 65-80. 3. derrida j. of grammatology. baltimore: the john hopkins university press, 1977. 4. foucault m. les mots et les choses: une archéologie des sciences humaines. paris: gallimard, 1966. 5. gasparyan s. k. figura sravnienija w funkcjonalnom osviestchenii. yerevan: izdatielstvo yerevanskogo universiteta, 2000. 6. hartman g. easy pieces. new york: columbia university press, 1985. 7. hillis miller j. on edge: the crossways of contemporary criticism. m. eaves and m. fischer (eds.). romanticism and contemporary criticism. ithaca and new york: cornell university press, 1986. 8. jakobson r. two aspects of language and two types of linguistic disturbances. // r. jakobson and m. halle (eds.). fundamentals of language. the hague: mouton, 1956. 9. lodge d. the modes of modern writing. metaphor, metonymy, and the typology of modern literature. london: edward arnold, 1977. 10. de man p. autobiography as defacement. // modern language notes 94, 1979a, 919-930. 11. de man p. allegories of reading: figural language in rousseau, nietzsche, rilke, and proust. new haven: yale university press, 1979b. 12. de man p. the resistance to theory. yale french studies 63 (1982). 13. vico g. la scienza nuova. milan: mondadori, 1725, 1730/1967. 14. white h. metahistory. the historical imagination in nineteenth-century europe. baltimore and london: the john hopkins university press, 1973. 15. white h. tropics of discourse. essays in cultural criticism. baltimore and london: the john hopkins university press, 1978. øºî²üæ¶àôð²òæ² ð»õçý³ïç ñ³ùá½ù³ùμ 黽í³á׳ï³ý »ñïáõ ï³ñ¨áñ³·áõûý ñ³ëï³óáõãûáõýý»ñ᪠÷áë³μ»ñáõãûáõýý áõ ÷áë³ýáõýáõãûáõýá ³ûýåçëç á׳ï³ý ·»ññý³ñý»ñ »ý, áñáýù ïçñ³é»éç »ý μ³½ù³½³ý ¨ μ³½ù³μýáõûã ëáëáõûãý»ñáõù: àý¹ áñáõù ³ûë ï³ñ¨áñáõãûáõýá ³ñï³ñ³ûïíáõù ¿ áã ùç³ûý ëáëù³ñí»ëïáõù, ³ûé¨ ïçñ³é³ï³ý ³ñí»ëïç ³ûýåçëç ó¨»ñáõù, çýãåçëçù »ý ïçýáý ¨ ã³ïñáýá: ü»ññ³ïáõï éçý»éáí ù³ñ¹ï³ûçý 黽íçý áý¹ñ³ýñ³å»ëª ÷áë³μ»ñáõãûáõýá, ³é³ççý ñ»ñãçý, ù³ñ¹ï³ûçý ùïùç ³ñ·³ëçùý ¿ ¨, ñ»ï¨³μ³ñ, ëáëùç ÷áë³μ»ñ³ï³ýáõãûáõýá áýï³í ¿ 黽íç ¨ ׳ý³ãáõáõãû³ý ñçùùáõù: 106 armenian folia anglistika literature armenian folia anglistika – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english (since 2005) and yerevan state university (since 2015) aims at fostering research of the english language, literature and culture translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 105 the essence of metaphor and its interlingual translation nelli sargsyan  yerevan state university the present article is aimed at the investigation of the essence of metaphor, exploration of its conceptual aspect and its translation from a source language to a target language. the specific way metaphor is expressed in a work of verbal art, the manner of its use by the author have always attracted the attention of not only philologists specialized in literary studies but also translators. having a multilayered semantic structure and being almost ubiquitously expressed in everyday life metaphors prove to be of certain value not only for linguistics but also the domains of psychology, philosophy, cognitive sciences, translation studies and many others. their significance is paramount particularly for translation studies and translators. the objective of the present article consists in revealing the cognitive aspect of metaphor translation and the optimal methodology of accomplishing an accurate translation of metaphors from a source to a target language. keywords: metaphor, cognition, conceptualization, hermeneutics, source language, target language, translation. introduction the language of literary works is marked with idiosyncratic authorial writing style, distinguished ingenuity of the expression of thought, synthesis of linguistic figurative elements. enriched with a range of various figures and tropes, the literary language of a writer has the power of creating a peculiar aesthetic impact on the reader who develops unique comprehension of the world represented in the literary work. it has long been established that one of the elements of figurative language of literature is metaphor, which was traditionally considered to belong to and function strictly within the domain of verbal creativity.  nelly.sargsyan@ysu.am this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 23.12.2022 revised: 14.01.2022 accepted: 23.01.2022 © the author(s) 2023 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2023.19.1.105 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 translation studies 106 the present research is carried out on the basis of the observations in the sphere of the development of studies related to metaphor creation and their use in works of literature. theories related to the classification of metaphors according to their use and novelty (m. dagut) and the ones highlighting the associative-mental mechanisms elaborated in the process of metaphor creation (g. lakoff, m. johnson, g. fauconnier, m. turner) as well as their translation into another language (n. mandelblit) are in the focus of the present article. the main findings of the research are achieved through the consideration and linguistic analysis of the novel martin eden by j. london (1916) and its translation into armenian carried out by i. barsamyan (2018). translation of metaphors of a work of verbal art from a source text into a target text is a complex creative procedure requiring a multi-step investigation of the original conceptual essence of the metaphors, hermeneutic analysis of their contextual meaning and validation of their veritable equivalents in the target text. the present article has been accomplished on the basis of the methods of synthesis of the collected theoretical data on the main issue as well as analysis of the research component elaborated by means of the principle of concpetual metaphor theory, hermeneutic analysis of the texts of source (in english) and target (in armenian) languages, their comparison and generalisation of the gained results. explorations on the essence of metaphor and its interlingual translation the phenomenon of metaphor or metaphoric expression has always been in the focus of investigation in a number of contemporary issues of language. the nature of the study of metaphors is defined by examining the subject of metaphor not solely within the confines of language but also beyond them. according to traditional approaches to metaphors, the latter are classified into conventional/dead and original/novel types, which are treated as the extreme poles of the classification, and the ones which are borderline cases. this classification has long served as a basis for clarifying the structure of metaphors in texts for carrying out not only their stylistic-interpretative analysis but also their accurate translation. the idea of transfer of the interplay between the content of metaphor and the way it concentrates conventional experience and semantic association underlies the core of metaphor translation methodology and their general translatability (dagut, 1976, pp. 22-31). translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 107 at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s a new branch of linguistics, namely, cognitive linguistics, which examines language as a medium for organisation, cultivation and communication of information, started to develop. cognitive linguistics has defined language as a separate cognitive capacity (geeraerts, & cuyckens, 2007, p. 3). for comprehending the essence of human mentality, its functioning and peculiarities of the formation of perception, human associative mentality is prioritized, more precisely, its ability of constructing metaphors which is often referred to as “metaphorisation”. in this regard, conceptual metaphor theory (cmt) developed by g. lakoff and m. johnson, who brought forward the idea that the system of concepts underlying the mind outline everyday realities, plays a crucial role in the identification of the nature and structure of metaphors. in addition, cmt also suggests that the entire human conceptual system is profoundly metaphoric in its nature (lakoff & johnson, 1980, p. 3-4). the idea that metaphorisation is typical of human conceptual system leads to the assumption that the issue of metaphor translation, in its turn, may not be confined within the area of essentially translatological investigation but expand beyond its limits, encompassing not only basic language structure but also the sphere of conceptualisation mechanism operating in mind. among the central ideas of cmt is the picturing of the formation of metaphors and concepts through conceptual metaphor mapping due to which the scheme of concept domains is delineated. thus, metaphor translation requires a deep penetration into the processes of concept-formation and its reflection in the conceptual system. according to n. mandelblit, translation demands “awakening” of an established mapping in the conceptual system. hence, given the fact that metaphors belong to the domain of mind, their translation implies not only a shift from one language to another but also a shift from one way of world conceptualisation into another (mandelblit, 1995, p. 486). as a complex mental procedure, translation is regarded as activation of intellective operations directed at optimal decision-taking in the pursuit of genuine target-language equivalents. as i. remkhe describes, the cognitive essence of the translation process is triggered by the mental structures of a translator who defines both the course of the process and the result of reaching a solution, and the subjectivity found in the way of problem-solving is interpreted by the euristic character of the combination of actions ranging from attaining knowledge through experience to the application of a necessary armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 translation studies 108 strategy for accomplishing a felicitous translation (remkhe, 2015, p. 11). the representation of translation as a continuum of problem-solving activities being undertaken in the translator's mind is grounded by the fact that translation as such carries a communicative function in its core, which in turn is realized through a number of choices and decisions ongoing in mind. human intellect capable of collecting and categorizing information turns out to show not only ingenuity in forming systematized and classified knowledge, but also creative and imaginative thinking peculiar to an individual. the uniqueness of thought-creativity found among authors of various artworks only proves that human mind operates in complex modes with the help of which, in certain cases, creative thought expression tends to demonstrate systematicity, i.e. can be categorized and observed as a rule-governed mechanism, and in other cases, namely in the process of creation of aesthetically coloured patterns of elements of figurative language, it is generated in an extemporaneous and at the same time irregular nature. one of the pecularities of human mentality is its ability to form models for enabling the mind to perceive the outer world the way it is. the ability of mind to model the outer world helps to organize everything that is implicit and complicated, find the explanation of unknown elements, reveal structural regularities of cognition, logics and construction of knowledge-frames (remkhe, 2015, p. 28). in the study of cognitive linguistics the ability of modeling is of no less importance 1 . the essence of metaphor-model consists in the fact that it expresses similarities, which bring about analogies between objects, phenomena and concepts. however, such sort of similarities do not claim to be of orderly, consecutive and predictable character so that they could be defined as a matter of logical, rule-governed phenomena, allowing to utterly determine the genuine human capacity of metaphor creation. in this regard an interesting observation has been made by b. bowdle and d. gentner, accoding to whom the model of metaphor, as compared to the idea of feature-matching, does depend on the “salience” of the properties/characteristics common between the phenomena having mutual metaphoric associations 2 and at the same time demonstrating ability of establishing connections between non-identical and domain-specific qualities (bowdle & gentner, 2005, p. 193-214). hence, the focus of metaphoric associations does not simply consist in the idea of properties shared between the phenomena at issue but the distinction of the properties which claim to be central and explicit and due to which the resultant metaphoric association gets established. translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 109 the mechanism of concept-construction is one of the most complex issues examined not only in the domain of language but also in human cognition. the notion of “concept” is defined in various approaches, and is basically described as a compositional component of thought (gifford, 2016, p. 8). according to the representational theory, concepts are understood as mental representations underlying the process of thinking. prototype theory treats concepts as phenomena defined and identified by their typical properties. based on the approaches demonstrated above it can be inferred that concepts, functioning as immanent components of human thought play a vital role both in meaning construction and perception of information. in the study of the multi-component structure of human perception g. fauconnier and m. turner’s conceptual blending theory deserves particular attention. due to the mentioned theory, the procedures involved in the highly complicated concept-apprehension process of human mind were first interpreted and illustrated (fauconnier, & turner, 2002, pp. 40-48). accordingly, human perception is generally understood as an operation which involves application of apprehension-forming mental spaces and frames the integration and interaction of which leads to the ultimate concept-perception. the integration of mental spaces leads to the elaboration of generic and blended spaces with the help of which the dynamics of concept-perception is outlined. by means of mental spaces and integration-interaction, framing and reframing processes undergoing between them, human mind carries out concept and thought categorisation. the process of translation of metaphors supposes understanding of the structure of concepts in the source language and their consistent representation into the target language. given this, it is of primary importance for a translator to adequately perceive the essence of the source text items, such as metaphors, and then carry out the search for the most appropriate equivalent in the target language. the process of seeking for the right equivalent in the target language presupposes the translator’s full grasp of both the source text and utter knowledge of the target language together with its national, socio-cultural constituents. in this connection the latter requirement is of particular importance for carrying out translation of literary works, which supposes the translator’s specific ability to inventively transfer the original sense of the source text elements into the target text. hence, it is of no surprise that often translation is viewed as recreating of the source text in the target language. in this regard, of particular importance is the hypothesis brought forward by s. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 translation studies 110 gasparyan, according to whom literary translation is interpreted as a metaphoric displacement. as s. gasparyan mentions, “a translator faces the problem of finding similar units which transfer the necessary shades of meaning in the original use of the word to the target language, particularly if the features specific to the national mentality are taken into consideration, and thus the translator has no other option than to be guided by the principle of metaphoric displacement, giving thought to the internal correlation between the peculiarities of the source and target language units” (gasparyan, 2021, p. 37). with this in mind, it is once again demonstrated that translation and especially the one of literary works supposes execution of complex mental operations the ultimate goal of which consists in finding the genuine target-language equivalent appropriate at the levels of both general sense transmission and the representation of nation-, societyand culture-specific elements in the target language. in this regard the issue of metaphor translation still remains in the focus of attention. main observations and resultant findings of cognitive-conceptual method of interlingual translation of metaphor considering all the approaches mentioned above we face the fact that translation of metaphors in literary works is of vital importance as with the help of them the translator transfers all the emotional, national, socio-cultural and other extraand intralinguistic specificities characteristic of the source-text. consequently, it becomes imperative for a translator to have a particular strategy or methodology for accomplishing appropriate translation of metaphors in the target texts. with the regard of all the theories and approaches mentioned in the present article we suggest a linguo-cognitively oriented methodology for metaphor translation which supposses the following stages: 1. targetting and clear understanding of the profound sense of the metaphor in the source-text, 2. examination of the conceptual interaction/integration mechanisms of the meaning expressed by the metaphor at issue (exploration of the conceptual domains – source and target), 3. finding out the target-text equivalent for the source-text metaphor, focusing on the preservation of the functional and aesthetic equivalence between the targetand source-texts, translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 111 4. outlining and refining the translated metaphor-equivalent keeping in the focus the uttermost transmission of the aesthetic impact of the original source-text. in order to test the efficiency of the abovementioned principles it is convenient to refer to works of literary fiction. in this regard the metaphors of some extracts from the novel martin eden by j. london and their corresponding translation into armenian carried out by i. barsamyan have been chosen to be examined in accordance with the principles listed above. one of the examples of metaphor manifestations is illustrated in the following extract: the wide rooms seemed too narrow for his rolling gait, and to himself he was in terror lest his broad shoulders should collide with the doorways or sweep the bric-a-brac from the low mantel. (london, 1916, p. 1) թվում էր, թե հսկայական սենյակները նեղվածք էին նրա լայնաթափ քայլվածքի համար. նա շարունակ վախենում էր ուսով դիպչել դռանը կամ որևէ առարկա ցած գցել բուխարուց: (լոնդոն, 2018, p. 5) in the armenian translation the component “լայն” of the compounded adjective լայնաթափ is added in the meaning of “expanded”, “wide”. in this particular perception of the translator, based on the principles of wordcompatibility the manner of the character’s walking is understood as rolling but at the same time paralleled with wide and free movements. from another perspective the word gait is interpreted not only as a person’s manner of walking but also “a sequence of foot movements by which a dog or a horse move forward”. here we observe the ascription of the meaning of an animal’s moving manner to a person. in such a way the picture of a little free and relaxed, nonchalant and careless at the same time wide, natural and sloppy walking is created. in this context we observe the transmission of concepts of “horse walk”, “dog walk”, “relaxed walking”, “nonchalant walking”, “the manner of making wide steps”, etc. into the mental space of the translator’s concept sphere as a result of the elaboration of the latter, and the following armenian equivalent is discovered by the translator: “լայնաթափ քայլվածք”. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 translation studies 112 here one-to-one correspondence of concepts functioning in the sourceand targetmental spaces is found. the concept of “walk” is also indicated in the following example: “hold on, arthur, my boy,” he said, attempting to mask his anxiety with facetious utterance. (london, 1916, p. 2) «արթո՛ւր, բարեկամս, մի քիչ շունչ առնենք», ասաց նա կատակի ձևով՝ փորձելով վարագուրել իր շփոթությունը: (լոնդոն, 2018, p. 6) in the given example the metaphor of “mask” referring to the concept of “hide” is presented, which is translated through the armenian metaphor վարագուրել which in fact covers the concept of “թաքցնել”. as can be inferred, the original concept of “hide” reflected in the metaphor of mask is not mirrored in the armenian target text. here a discrepancy is observed between the mental spaces of mask and վարագուրել (meaning to cover with a curtain). the perception of the armenian translator differs from the one of the original writer, and in this way the subjectivity and non-regularity of mental perceptions of individuals come forward. the given example proves that for the translation of metaphors not only the exact trasmission of the conceptual connections existing between the metaphors and the concepts to which they refer functions but also the translator/interpretor’s peculiar nation-culture specific, individual perception of the literary text does play a crucial role in transferring both the genuine authorial intention and the aesthetic impact enclosed in the work. this is too much all at once for yours truly. give me a chance to get my nerve. you know i didn't want to come, an' i guess your fam'ly ain't hankerin' to see me neither. (london, 1916, p. 2) առաջին անգամվա համար չափազանց շատ է այս ամենը: թույլ տվեք մի քիչ սրտապնդվել: ախր դուք գիտեք, որ ես չէի ցանկանում գալ, իսկ ձերոնք էլ, բնակաբար, ինձ անհամբեր չեն սպասում: (լոնդոն, 2018, p. 6) translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 113 trite metaphors սրտապնդվել and get my nerve are brought forward in the given example. the literal translation of the armenian սրտապնդվել is “to make one’s heart harden” whereas the original english metaphor to get a nerve, which is rephrased from the original expression “to have a nerve”, means “to have audacity, to show effrontery”. the corresponding metaphoric connections are reflected in armenian as “to harden one’s heart” meaning “to be courageous” and the english variant focusing on the metaphor to get one’s nerve. in this special case the subjective perception component of nationalcultural level comes to the fore. consequently, the translation of metaphors is relied upon the phraseological equivalents which are clichéd in both the source and target languages. he cursed himself for having come, and at the same time resolved that, happen what would, having come, he would carry it through. the lines of his face hardened, and into his eyes came a fighting light. (london, 1916, p. 2) նա կշտամբում էր իրեն այն բանի համար, որ եկավ այստեղ, բայց իսկույն ևեթ որոշեց՝ եկել է, ուրեմն պիտի տոկա մինչև վերջ: նրա դեմքը ստացավ խիստ արտահայտություն, և աչքերի մեջ փայլատակեց զայրալից մի հուր: (լոնդոն, 2018, p. 7) in this context the phrase fighting light represents particular interest as it encapsulates a metaphoric meaning. by its nature the mentioned word sequence is an occasionalism, which means that its meaning is relevant only for the specific context of the extract mentioned above. the presence of the words and phrases such as cursed, the lines of his face hardened disclose the meaning of “irritation” underlying the phrase fighting light. the armenian equivalent of the abovementioned phrase under discussion is զայրալից հուր. a question arises: why is the original english variant fighting reflected in the armenian translation through the equivalent զայրալից which means “irritated, furious”? the link between the original english fighting and the armenian translation զայրալից (furious) is explained by the fact that the translator carried out an interpretative-hermeneutic analysis of this particular piece of text. as can be observed such words and phrases as cursed, carry it armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 translation studies 114 through, the lines of his face hardened as well as fighting light drive a reader and comprehensibly translator to make inference about the emotional state of the main character which, after the generalization of the given phrases and words is approximated to “dissatisfaction with the situation, irritation”. in this particular instance the translator has objected his interpretation to the principle of hermeneutic circle – from words and phrases to the generalization of the paragraph and backwards – which resulted in the bringing about the armenian equivalent զայրալից for the english source fighting. given this, it can be assumed that the translator, considering the overall perception of the character’s emotional state expressed in the highlighted words and phrases in the abovementioned citation, discovered the appropriate armenian equivalent զայրալից. hence, the metaphor fighting light is translated into armenian as զայրալից հուր. his eyes were wide apart; nothing in their field of vision escaped; and as they drank in the beauty before them the fighting light died out and a warm glow took its place. he was responsive to beauty, and here was cause to respond. (london, 1916, p. 2) նրա լայն բացված աչքերից ոչինչ չվրիպեց, և քանի նայում էր սիրուն առարկաներին, այնքան նրա աչքերի ցասկոտ հուրը հանգչում էր, և դրա փոխարեն ջերմ փայլն էր շողում. գեղեցիկը միշտ ջերմ ընդունելություն էր գտնում նրա հոգում, իսկ այստեղ հիացմունքի արժանի իրեր շատ կային: (լոնդոն, 2018, p. 7) in this extract we observe that the metaphor fighting light in the course of the narration gets replaced with the phrase warm glow which is literally translated into armenian ջերմ փայլ. here we observe the way the author of the original text plays upon the idea of energy/feeling evoked within the character, and the coneptual metaphor “light/glow – emotion” is literally translated into armenian հուր/փայլ. hence, it can be inferred that the concepts “furious, fighting light” are interpreted as negative emotions of wrath and anger, which get softened and transformed into the entirely opposite emotions of “admiration, peace and warmth”. translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 115 conclusion the investigation of the cognitive aspect of metaphors, their emergence in mind and their reflection in imaginative writing plays a crucial role in the process of interpretation of works of literature. from another perspective, cognitivelinguistic approach to metaphor structure and formation functions as a clue to the translator’s understanding of the specificity of the author’s imaginative and metaphorical thinking, the aim of the translator, which consists in the transfer of both the exact original aesthetic impact and genuine sense of the original text into the target text. the findings of the present investigation of metaphors expressed in a work of literature, namely, j. london’s martin eden and their corresponding translation into armenian carried out by i. barsamyan demonstrate that for the effective translation of the metaphors found in the original text application of not only the competent knowledge of the source and target languages is required but also implementation of textual analysis, interpretation of metaphors in the context at issue and afterwards realisation of the search for the ultimate and felicitous equiavalents in the target language are considered as other essential procedures necessitated in the process of translation. the methodology of revealing the cognitive aspect of metaphor creation and translation demonstrated in the present article and relating to the spheres of cognitive linguistics, literary studies and translatology will be of use for linguists, literature interpretors, reviewers and translators. notes 1. according to g. lakoff’s theory on idealized cognitive models, four types of cognitive models are distinguished in language: frame models (predicativeargumentative relations), image-schemes, metaphors, metonymy (lakoff, 1987, p. 68). 2. according to a. ortony, metaphoric feature-matching is limited by salience imbalance. the properties which are essential, “salient” for the base concept rather than target concept are important for the meaning of the given metaphor. e.g. dew is a veil implies the general notion of “covering” but not the common property “silent” because the first is of high salience for the base and of low salience for the target, whereas the second is of low salience for both items (ortony, 1979, p. 180). armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 translation studies 116 references bowdley, b. f., & gentner, d. (2005). the career of metaphor. psychological review, 112(1), 193-216. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295x.112.1.193 dagut, m., & menachem, b. (1976). can “metaphor” be translated?, babel, 22(1), 21-33. https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.22.1.05dag fauconnier, g., & turner, m. (2002). the way we think: conceptual blending and the mind's hidden complexities. new york, usa: basic books. gasparyan, s. (2021). translation as interpretation. cultural and religious studies, 9 (1), 32-46. https://doi: 10.17265/2328-2177/2021.01.004 geeraerts, d., & cuyckens, h. (2007). the oxford handbook of cognitive linguistics. oxford, england, uk: oxford university press. gifford, j. (2016). in search of the best available evidence. london, uk: chartered institute of personnel and development. lakoff, g. (1987). women, fire and dangerous things: what categories reveal about the mind. chicago, usa: the university of chicago press. lakoff, g., & johnson m. (1981). metaphors we live by. chicago and london: the university of chicago press. mandelblit, n. (1995). the cognitive view of metaphor and its implications for translation theory. translation and meaning, part 3, maastricht, the netherlands: maastricht university press. ortony, a. (1979). beyond literal similarity. psychological review, 86(3), 161180. remkhe, i. (2011). yazykovaja lichnost’ perevod`ika i kognitivnyie osobennosti perevodcheskogo processa [language personality of a translator and cognitive peculiarities of translation process]. vestnik cheliabynskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, 24(239), 262-264. (in russian). sources of data london, j. (1916). martin eden. london, uk: macmillan & co. ltd. london, j. (2018). martin eden [i. barsamyan, trans.]. yerevan, armenia: antares. (in armenian) https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295x.112.1.193 https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.22.1.05dag https://doi:%2010.17265/2328-2177/2021.01.004 translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 117 փոխաբերության էությունը եվ միջլեզվական թարգմանությունը նելլի սարգսյան տվյալ հոդվածը միտված է ուսումնասիրելու փոխաբերության էությունը, դրա հասկացութային բնագավառը և թարգմանությունը բնագրից թիրախ լեզու: գեղարվեստական տեքստում փոխաբերությունների յուրօրինակ արտահայտման եղանակները, հեղինակի կիրառած ձևերը միշտ գրավել են ոչ միայն գրական ստեղծագործությունների ուսումնասիրություններում ներգրավված բանասերների, այլև թարգմանիչների ուշադրությունը: ունենալով բազմաշերտ իմաստային կառուցվածք և լինելով առօրեական իրականության մեջ համասփյուռ՝ փոխաբերությունները իրավամբ հատուկ նշանակություն ունեն ոչ միայն լեզվաբանության այլև հոգեբանության, փիլիսոփայության, ճանաչողաբանական գիտությունների, թարգմանաբանության և այլ գիտությունների ոլորտներում: սույն հոդվածը նպատակաուղղված է բացահայտելու փոխաբերությունների՝ բնագրից թիրախ լեզու թարգմանության ճանաչողական բնագավառը, ինչպես նաև սահմանելու փոխաբերությունների հնարավորինս համապատասխան թարգմանության համապատշաճ մեթոդաբանությունը: բանալի բառեր՝ փոխաբերություն, ճանաչողություն, հասկացութայնացում, հերմենևտիկա, բնագիր, թիրախ լեզու, թարգմանություն: kazm.cdr armenian folia anglistika linguistics 18 some remarks on a usage dictionary of anglicisms in sixteen european languages it is a well-known fact that only 3% of old english lexis was of foreign origin. however, the situation was drastically changed by the end of a 1500 when 60% of vocabulary consisted either of latin or of french-derived words (görlach 1994: 224). it only indicates that then english could be characterised by a vast reception of foreign lexical items. also at that time english exerted no impact on other languages. therefore the famous observation of an english writer expressed in the 16th century was of no surprise: the english tongue is of small reach stretching no further than this island of ours, nay not there over all (after jespersen 1948: 227). we can only wonder why samuel johnson in the introduction to his dictionary (1852) complained: our language, for almost a century, has, by the concurrence of many causes, been gradually departing from its original teutonick character, and deviating towards a gallick structure and phraseology, from which it ought to be our endeavour to recall it. however, it was quite clear that a return to an exclusively or predominantly germanic vocabulary was impossible at that period of time. the position of english was to be changed only in the course of the 19th century and later (especially after world war ii) when it became a donor language to a number of european tongues. this was due to the growth of the british empire, the industrial revolution which took place in england as well as the subsequent economic development and success of the united states of america. these are the reasons why england is often referred to by some linguists as the word bank of english. the influence of english on all the major languages used mainly in europe led the great dutch linguist r.w. zandvoort in his article entitled english linguistic infiltration in europe (1970) to appeal to scholars to write a comparative dictionary of anglicisms. however, neither he nor any of his contemporaries took the challenge. r. filipovic° was the only one who partly responded to the appeal by publishing the book the english element in european languages (1982). it consists of a number of articles devoted to the influence of english on some european languages. they are: albanian, czech, danish, dutch, finnish, lithuanian, norwegian, romanian, serbo-croatian, slovak and turkish. however, nobody undertook the task of compiling a comparative elżbieta mańczak-wohlfeld armenian folia anglistika linguistics 19 lexicon of anglicisms. this project was only realised by manfred görlach and fifteen other linguists (including the author of this paper) coming from sixteen european countries, which meant a description of the influence of english on sixteen european languages. the european tongues were chosen not only because of zandvoort’s appeal but also due to a certain degree of similarity holding between them. it remains undoubtful that the situation, for instance, in canada is socioliguistically different from europe. the project was supported by oxford university press and as a result it was published there in 2001 and in 2005 (a paperback edition). thus, the following languages were taken into consideration: three indo-european languages, namely germanic (german – ge, dutch – du, norwegian – nw, icelandic – ic), romance (french – fr, spanish – sp, italian – it, romanian – rm) and slavonic (russian – rs, polish – po, croation – cr, bulgarian – bg) and two other languages, that is albanian (al), greek (gr) as well as two finno-ugric languages: finnish (fi) and hungarian (hu), which is graphically presented by the following ‘grid’. according to görlach (1998: 211), the ‘grid’ is “beautiffuly iconic of the geography of europe.” ic nw po rs du ge cr bg fr it fi hu sp rm al gr the selection of the languages was dictated by the availability of the linguists willing to collaborate. despite this random choice, the selection of languages allows to draw conclusions on the influence of english on different language families, western vs. eastern countries, regional comparisons (e.g. the balkans), puristic vs. open speech communities. as can be easily noticed, languages which are in close contact with english, that is some celtic languages or maltese, have been excluded since it has been assumed that the linguistic situation there is different. the collection of the data was ended in 1995. although earlier anglicisms were included, the main stress was put on the lexis that entered the sixteen european languages after world war ii. the english loans were basically collected from recent national dictionaries, although we were aware of the importance of text corpora, however, not all the languages in question had them, and as it is known there are always some doubts connected with the representativeness of corpora even while compiling national lexicons not to mention a cross-linguistic analysis. therefore every scholar involved in the project had to rely on the data available to him (dictionaries of anglicisms if published in his/her country, national lexicons, dictionaries of foreign words, current press, etc. and his/her linguistic intuition). armenian folia anglistika linguistics 20 it has to be explained what is meant by the term anglicisms in the discussed dictionary. they are words characterised by english phonetics and morphology that enter at least one of the sixteen selected languages. we exclude internationalisms (e.g. telephone), proper names (like greenpeace), words of the so-called exotic origin enriching the european languages via english (e.g. avocado) as well as lexical items that are of restricted usage like hundreds of special terms related to computer technology. only these words that are connected e.g. with computer science and are understood by an educated language-conscious native speaker are included in the dictionary. let me now describe the scope of each entry. the headword consists of an english etymon followed by the specification of the part of speech it belongs to and all the meanings attested in the analysed languages. if they correspond to the senses found in english (the concise oxford dictionary of current english from 1995 is used as a reference), they are enumerated with respective numerals found in the british dictionary. if, however, there is/are some extra meaning/s used in any of the languages considered, it/they is/are added and accompanied by the following numeral or letter, e.g. comfort n. 2a ‘physical well-being’, + 2c ‘mental well-being’, +6 ‘luxury’ concise n. + 2 ‘a dental filling’ escort n. 1. ‘one or more persons accompanying a person’, 2 ‘a person accompanying a person of the opposite sex socially’, +2a ‘an act of accompanying a person socially’ essay n. 1. ‘a composition, usu. short and in prose, on any subject’, +1a ‘a student paper’. it is worth explaining that both derivatives and homonyms are treated as separate entries. what follows is a general piece of information on the word’s history and its spread in europe. however, it only concerns more important items, e.g. aerobics though the word was coined in american english as a term used in astronaut training in the 1960s, the activity was popular in the late 1970s and became a craze in the early 1980s. during the 1990s the frequency of this word seems to have decreased in the media and in conversation. aftershave the spread of this term is noteworthy since perfectly adequate terms exist in all the languages under consideration. this word has been adopted as a more fashionable synonym. existing native equivalents were therefore not prompted by english. the word became strikingly frequent after the 1950s and is now current in nearly all the european languages. no calques have been formed, except when prompted by restrictive policies, as in french. the currency of the word is remarkable as the two parts of the compound are otherwise infrequent. football this word for soccer was almost universally adopted into continental languages from the late nineteenth century onwards, but was later replaced by calques in some. with armenian folia anglistika linguistics 21 the advent of the american game the distinction was made by accepting the loanword for the latter, or by using the related term ↑rugby, or adding ‘american’ (cf. ↑ american football). out of context, ambiguities remain, soccer (the normal unambiguous term used in britain for the national variant) not having been adopted. the sign ↑ indicates that the word constitutes a separate entry in the dictionary. forsythia the shrub was named after william forsyth (1737–1804), botanist in charge of the royal gardens at st. james’s and kensington. the loanword was apparently transmitted through botanical literature; the fact and the word’s neo-latin form have allowed its pronunciation to be influenced by the phonetics of the individual receiver languages. the word has remained exotic, but has lost its english character. as far as the description of anglicisms found in individual languages is concerned, it is worth pointing to the organization of the entry: 1. the spelling of a particular english borrowing if different from the english etymon is indicated; if both graphic forms are accepted, this is shown by <= e>; if only english spelling is used, the english form is skipped. 2. the pronunciation of a particular borrowing if different from the model is marked; if both pronunciations are possible, this is shown by [= e]; if english phonetics is more or less followed, this piece of information is omitted. 3. the morphological remarks – since a great majority of words constitute nouns,1 therefore the most frequent type of information concerns the gender, countability, pluralization, etc. of nouns but e.g. in the case of adjectives it is indicated whether it is declined (at least in some language). 4. the approximate time of adoption of a given item – the date is suggested in a very general way: beginning (beg), middle (mid), end (end) of the century unless we are confronted with very recent loans whose time of introduction to respective languages is easily identified as is the case of the loanword aids (1980s). 5. this is an optional piece of information as it concerns mediating languages, e.g. the loan chuligan < e hooligan entered polish via russian, which is shown in such a way: via rs. 6. the degree of assimilation is suggested by the following abbreviations: – – the loan is not present in the language described o – the lexical item is a quote and thus it is used only by bilingual speakers ø – the word is a foreignism, which means that it refers to british and american contexts 1 – the borrowing is characterised by restricted usage 2 – the item is fully accepted and thus characterised by wide distribution, however, it is felt to be a borrowing 3 – the loanword is so well assimilated that it is not recognised to be of english origin 4 – the word has got the status of a semantic borrowing 5 – the loan is not of english origin in the individual language, e.g. 5 la indicates that it is a latin borrowing. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 22 all this is schematically marked by means of diagrams which, however, include a more simplified version of degrees of assimilation, namely: a white square stands for fully assimilated loans, slashes in the square suggest restricted usage, a black square indicates that the english word is not used in the individual language. again, let’s have a couple of examples (cf. the ‘grid’ above, which shows the distribution of languages): pantry ic nw po rs du ge cr bg fr it fi hu sp rm al gr paperback ic nw po rs du ge cr bg fr it fi hu sp rm al gr song ic nw po rs du ge cr bg fr it fi hu sp rm al gr sorry ic nw po rs du ge cr bg fr it fi hu sp rm al gr armenian folia anglistika linguistics 23 7. the usage restrictions concern: field: hist = historical (obsolete concepts or objects) lit = literacy tech = technical (denoting specialist vocabulary like computer technology) medium: writ = written (the word is used only in the written version of the individual language) region: reg = regional (the word’s usage is restricted to regional varieties of the standard language) register: coll = colloquial jour = journalese sla = slang you = youth (the usage is restricted to the younger generation) derog = derogatory euph = euphemistic fac = facetions pej = pejorative status: ban = banned (the usage is restricted by legislation) mod = modern obs = obsolescent rare = infrequently used it should be explained that borderline cases are represented by e.g. 0 > 1 mod, uncertainty by a question mark, as in 2 tech?, restrictions may be combined, for instance 1 you obs. 8. optionally, a native equivalent is given with the information of its frequency: < = the non-english word is more acceptable > = the english borrowing is more frequent = = the two words are equally often used. if, however, the word is calqued on english, it is preceded by one of the following: trans (translation), rend (rendition), creat (creation). if only the meaning is borrowed from english, it is indicated by the label ‘mean’ (meaning). 9. optionally, derivatives formed on the ground of the individual language are mentioned. they are preceded by an arrow (→) accompanied by the information concerning the part of speech they belong to. having provided a detailed description of the entry, let’s quote some exemples: folklore n. 1 ‘the traditional beliefs and stories of a people; the study of these’, +2 ‘traditional songs and music’ a loanword accepted into practically all european languages in the late nineteenth century/early twentieth century. the term was coined in 1846, obviously calqued on the german volkskunde (cf. ↑folksong), in the puristic tradition of nineteenth-century english. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 24 ge [folklo:rə] f [u] end i9c, +2(3) → -istisch adj. du [f�lklo:rə] c [u] i9c, +2(3) → istisch adj.; -ist n. nw [f�lkl�:re/-lu:re] m [u] beg2oc (i) < folkeminne → folklorisk adj.; folklorist m ic fólklor [fou�klor:r] n [u] mid2oc, i(i coll) < rend þjóðfr��i fr [f�lkl�r] m [u] end i9c, i, +2(2) → folklorique adj.; folkloriste m; folkloriser v.; folklorisation n. sp < = e >/folclore m, i88os (2>3) → folklórico/folclorico adj.; folclorista n. it < = e >/folclore [f�lkl�re] m [u] end i9c (3) → folclorico/folcloristico adj. rm folclor n [u] end i9c, via fr (3) rs fol’klor m [u] beg2oc, +2(2) → -ist m, istika f; -nyĭ adj. po folklor [folklor] m [u] beg2oc (3) → -ysta m; -ystka f; -ystyka f; ystyczny adj. cr folklor m [u] beg2oc, +2(2) → -ist m; -an adj. bg folklor m [u] beg2oc, via rs, +2(3) → -en adj., -ist m; -istka f; -ristika f fi [f�lkl�:r] 2oc (2) → folkloristiikka n. hu folklór [folklo:r] [u] end i9/beg2oc (3) = néprajz → -ista n.; iszitikus adj. al folklor [folklor] m [u] beg2o (3) gr folklor n [u] beg2oc, via fr (2) → -ikos adj., -ismos m globe-trotter n. ‘a person travelling widely’ this word was widely accepted in early twentieth-century europe, and is fully integrated (cf. the german pronunciation and slavic derivatives) but also has many calques coexisting with it. ic nw po rs du ge cr bg fr it fi hu sp rm al gr ge [glo:bətrota] m, pl. ø, beg2oc (2) = trsl weltenbummler → v. du [�lo:bətr�tər] c, beg2oc (2) = wereldreiziger nw [ = e, glu:-b(e)tr�ter] m, pl. -e, beg2oc (i tech) → globetrotterisk adj. ic < heimshornaflakkari fr globetrotter [gl�bt��t��/t��t��] m/f, end i9c (i obs) sp < trsl trotamundos it [globtr�tter] m/f, pl. ø/-s, i90os (i) < rend giramondo rm [ = e] m, mid2oc? (0>i) rs globtrotter m, pl. -y, i99os (i jour) po globtroter [gloptroter] m, beg2oc (2) → -ka f; -stwo n [u]; -ski adj. cr globtroter m, pl. -i, beg2oc (2) → -ka f; -ski adj. hu [glo:btrotter] pl. -ek, beg2oc (i arch) < világjáró gr < trsl kosmoghyristisl-ismenos goal n. 2a,b ‘the place where the ball has to be sent to score’ (ballgames), 2d ‘a point won’ this word became well-established in early football terminology, and though competing with native equivalents in some languages, has survived very well – as have, in a more restricted way, the compounds ↑goalgetter* and ↑goalkeeper. ge [go:l] n, pl. -s, mid2oc (r reg/obs) < tor du [go:l] c, beg2oc (2) nw [ = e] m, pl. -er, beg2oc (2) < mål n → gålle v. ic < rend mark fr [gol] m, end i9c (i ban, obs) < armenian folia anglistika linguistics 25 but sp gol, m, pl. -es, beg2oc (3 tech) < 2a,b: metallportería → golear v; goleador n. it < = e >/gol [g�l] m, pl. ø, i90os (3) = rete f rm gol [gol] n, beg2oc, 2a,b,d(3) rs gol m, pl. -y, beg2oc (3) po gol [gol] m, beg2oc, 2a,b,d(3) cr gol m, pl. -ovi, beg2oc (3) bg gol m, pl. -al-ove, beg2oc, 2d(2) → -ov adj. hu gól [go:l] pl. -ok, end i9/beg2oc (3) al gol [gol] m, pl. -a, beg2oc (i tech) gr gol n, beg2oc (2) → goltzis m pack ice n. ‘an area of large crowded pieces of floating ice in the sea’ the distribution is characterized by the native look of the word in germanic languages (which makes its status as an anglicism difficult or impossible to determine) and widespread clipping, which was at least partly mediated through french (cf. ↑pack). ge < trsl packeis du pakijs (5) nw (o) < pakkis (4) ic < íshella fr pack m, i9c (i tech) it pack [pak] m, pl. ø, end i9c (i tech) rm pack [ = e] n, pl. -uri, i96os, via fr (2 tech) rs pak m [u] end i9c (i tech) < trsl pakovyĭ lëd po pak/pakajs [pak/pakais] m, beg2oc (i tech) bg < trsl pakov led it goes without saying that english loans have got different distribution. for instance, the word aids is found in eleven languages and in five tongues it is calqued. on the other hand, the item down is present only in seven languages whereas it is absent from nine. the loans do not only differ in distribution but also in the degree of assimilation. generally, we can state that older loans are better adapted on the phonetic and graphic levels whereas more recent borrowings follow their english models. the assimilation on the morphological plane is different in different languages. for example, the attribution of grammatical gender in german is quite complicated whereas it causes no difficulty in polish (cf. carstensen’s research from 1980 and maczak-wohlfeld’s, forthcoming). the formation of plural usually is an easy task, however, the phenomenon of double plural is present in most languages, similarly to the occurrence of the socalled continental anglicisms or pseudo-anglicisms like dancing < e dancing hall or smoking < e smoking jacket. relatively infrequently english morphemes are used to form new words: the morpheme -gate (‘an affair’, after watergate) being the best illustration of it. in most cases fewer meanings of english words are attested in the borrowing languages although occasionally a new interpretation is given, e.g. the english word pony refers to fringe in german. apart from the qualitative analysis, which has been very briefly presented above, the quantitative influence should be discussed. in order to conduct it, one letter, that is n, has been chosen. it contains 51 headwords out of about 4000 attested in a usage dictionary of anglicisms in sixteen european languages. it is interesting to note that there are only seven headwords present in all the selected languages, like nylon, nonsense. on the contrary, only six headwords are attested in one language, e.g. nap in norwegian or night life in german. in most cases it is difficult, if not impossible, to account for this fact. only some examples are evident, e.g. names of units like newton or words denoting certain phenomena as is the case of negro spirituals that are found in all the sixteen languages. but why is the borrowing night life used in german only armenian folia anglistika linguistics 26 whereas the loan night club is attested in nine languages? similarly, why is the word notebook found in nine tongues and the lexical item notepad in five languages? do their semantics play a role? or why is the item nylon present in twelve languages but the loanword nylons in four tongues? is it due to the fact that the former is shorter than the latter? in conclusion, it should be claimed that on the whole the influence of english on the european languages, although it is evident, in fact it is not as great as it is often suggested. if we realise that about 4000 anglicisms have been collected in the analysed languages versus their total vocabulary, it is clear that they constitute only a minute fraction of the lexis. therefore we should not be worried about the “immense” impact of english on the european languages as it is often maintained. also we should not be worried by the claim put forward by some linguists who suggest that english is a threat to ethnic languages and as such it will replace them. notes: 1. as haugen (1950) claims it was already in 1881 when the well-known american linguist whitney concluded that nouns are most often borrowed words. verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and interjections (in that order) are less frequently taken over from one language into the other. references: 1. carstensen b. gender in english loanwords in german. // studia anglica poznaniensia. 1980, 12: 3–25. 2. the concise oxford dictionary of current english. oxford: oxford university press, 1995, 9th edition. 3. filipović r. the english element in european languages. vol. ii, zagreb: institute of linguistics, university of zagreb, 1982. 4. görlach m. the usage dictionary of anglicisms in selected european languages. // international journal of lexicography, 1994. 7.3: 223–246. 5. görlach m. the usage dictionary of anglicisms in selected european languages, a report on progress, problems and prospects. // links and letters, 1998. 5: 209– 222. 6. görlach m. (ed.) a dictionary of european anglicisms. a usage dictionary of anglicisms in sixteen european languages. oxford: oxford university press, 2001, 2005. 7. haugen e. the analysis of linguistic borrowing. // language, 1950. 26: 210–231. 8. jespersen o. growth and structure of the english language. oxford: basil blackwell, 1948, 9th edition revised. armenian folia anglistika linguistics 27 9. johnson s. a dictionary of the english language. london: henry g. bohn, 1852, 2nd edition. 10. mańczak-wohlfeld e. rodzaj gramatyczny zapożyczeń angielskich w polszczyźnie. (forthcoming). 11. zandvoort r.w. english linguistic infiltration in europe. // collected papers. groningen: wolters-noordhoff, 1970, ii: 165–171. ¸æî²ðîàôøüºð §a usage dictionary of anglicisms in sixteen languages¦ ´²è²ð²üæ ø²êæü ðá¹í³í³·çñá μ³é³ñ³ýç áýó»é³í ýûáõãç ñçù³ý íñ³ ÷áñóáõù ¿ å³ñ½»é, ã» çýãù³ý ¿ ³ý·é»ñ»ýç ³½¹»óáõãû³ý ã³÷á å³ù³ý³ï³ïçó 16 »íñáå³ï³ý 黽áõý»ñç μ³é³ûçý ï³½ùç ÷á÷áëáõãû³ý íñ³: èçý»éáí »íñáå³ï³ý 黽áõý»ñáõù ïçñ³éáõãûáõý ·ï³í ³ý·éç³μ³ýáõãûáõýý»ñç μ³é³ñ³ýç ñ³ù³ñ»õçý³ïý»ñçó ù»ï᪠ý³ ýßáõù ¿, áñ ³ûý 4000 ³ý·éç³μ³ýáõãûáõýý»ñá, áñáýù ï»õ »ý ·ï»é μ³é³ñ³ýáõù, ù»í ãçí ã»ý ï³½ùáõù ïíû³é 黽áõý»ñç μ³é³å³ß³ñáõù: ð»õçý³ïá »½ñ³ï³óýáõù ¿, áñ ³ý·é»ñ»ýç ³½¹»óáõãûáõýá ³ûýù³ý ¿é ù»í ã¿, çýãå»ë ï³ñíáõù »ý áñáß é»½í³μ³ýý»ñ, ¨, ñ»ï¨³μ³ñ, ³ýñ³ý·ëï³ý³éáõ ñ³ñï ãï³: kazm.cdr on the problem of implicitness in metaphoric similes language, which is the instrument of logic anddiscourse standing between man and expression, influences and determines the way its speakers understand the world around them. linguistic communication is easily accomplished, but not so easily explained. its serious investigation is an exciting, enjoyable experience leading to a better understanding of ourselves as well as the world as a whole. the correlation ‘speaker sign’ has aroused considerable interest recently. this is conditioned by the fact that the role of man is regarded as central in the process of communication. when we focus on the function of language, we focus on what a person is doing with words in particular speech situations. namely, we focus on the speaker’s intentions, purposes, beliefs, etc. therefore, the speaker’s communicative intention is an inseparable part of the message communicated. it has generally been acknowledged that the meaning of a particular linguistic expression is governed by rules of syntax, semantics, phonology and style, but the choice of that particular type is strongly affected by the pragmatic purpose of the utterance. pragmalinguistic analysis has proved to be very effective when applied to implicit aspects of language use. it is of special interest when both the speaker (author) and the listener (reader) go beyond what is conveyed by the language form itself or what is literally said. metaphoric similes viewed from this point of view are of particular interest. the linguistic phenomenon of simile and its relation to other classical tropes and figures of speech has certainly been the focus of much thought. this article is to show the need for a pragmatic approach to similes and to sketch the directions in which such a pragmatic account might contribute to the study of them. the choice of the subject matter of the present investigation is conditioned by the fact that metaphoric similes are characterized by a higher degree of implicitness in which case the associations leading to assimilation may seem complicated and rather incomprehensible at first sight. the complex correlation between a word, the thing it denotes and the image created entails a complete scale of subtle shades of meaning. this gives rise to various implicatures and makes the listener draw more complex inferences. e.g. she seemed to him to teach the lamps to burn more brightly, and her beauty showed by night like a rich jewel worn by a black man. (shakespeare, romeo and juliet) at first sight it may seem difficult to find a point of resemblance between the concepts of “beauty” and “jewel” an abstract notion and a concrete thing. thus, the gap between what is on the surface and what is conveyed is so substantial that a semantic 48 armenian folia anglistika linguistics gohar haroutunian theory cannot go beyond interpretation of literal meaning. meanwhile, pragmatics, which relies on elements of context, provides metaphorical interpretation of wordmeaning. in the given example the comparison is made on the basis that the beauty of the heroine is as vivid at night as a rich jewel worn by a black man. how does the hearer (reader) recognize the speaker’s (writer’s) communicative intention when the implicit aspects of language are in use, when we mean more than what we say? in other words, very often the speaker-meaning (what we mean to communicate) is not compatible with the sentence-meaning (what our expression literally means) but is dependent on it (grice, 1975:53-59). common cases of this are metaphors, similes, ironies and other implicit means of language use. e.g. “rumours are like infections.” (d. du mourier, rebecca) this utterance cannot be taken literally (or to put it in another way, it is literally false). when analyzed on the semantic level (where the nominative meanings of linguistic units are defined), the words “rumour” and “infection” have nothing in common. “rumour” means “general talk, gossip, statement which cannot be verified and is of doubtful accuracy”. “infection” has the meaning of “disease which can be spread from person to person, especially through the air”. thus, the interpretation of so-called literal meaning is far from what the speaker intends to convey. the comparison is carried out and adequately comprehended because of the consideration that both rumour and infection are dangerous and spread rapidly. thus, the common features mentioned here are implicit. the whole utterance may be paraphrased as follows: “rumours like infections, spread at a fantastic speed and are dangerous, so one should avoid them.” according to grice’s theory of conversational implicature, implicit utterances are cases of maxim exploitation (grice, 1968:64). grice singles out different cases of breaking the maxims. for example, if the speaker breaks the maxims secretly by telling a lie, he is “violating the maxim”. accordingly, if he breaks them deliberately, he is “flouting the maxim”. from the linguistic point of view, the cases of flouting are more interesting as they give rise to various implicatures depending on the context and the speaker’s communicative intention. metaphoric similes are viewed as cases of flouting the maxim of quality (the need to be truthful). however, it should be mentioned that the flouting is to be observed only on the surface level. if the listener interprets the utterance as literally untrue, or nonsensical, the cooperative principle and the maxims may lead him to search for a further deeper level of meaning, i.e. figurative meaning which to some extent preserves the maxim of quality. e.g. her whole mind was a chaos, darkness breaking in upon it, and herself struggling to gain control with her will, as a swimmer struggles with the swirling water. (d.h. lawrence, women in love) in this example there is no relation of explicit similarity between the notions “mind” and “chaos”. how does the listener (reader) understand that the speaker (author) implies somewhat different from what is actually said. the inference strategy involved 49 linguistics armenian folia anglistika in working out the speaker’s message can be formulated in the form of the following steps: 1. in saying that “her whole mind was a chaos” the speaker seems to observe the maxims (i.e. we assume that what he says is true and relevant), at least at first glance. 2. but the speaker’s utterance is, nevertheless, inadequate and it does not seem to be true (“mind” and “chaos” have nothing in common). 3. this means that the speaker’s utterance has some hidden, implicit illocutionary point or aim. 4. in such a situation we look for a meaning that seems to be more relevant. in general, “chaos” symbolizes disorder, mess, disharmony and darkness. therefore, we conclude that the heroine’s mind being compared to chaos expresses her disorganized state of mind being at a loss, not knowing what to do, or how to act. everything inside her is mixed up and she tries hard to overcome this attack of emotions. 5. hence, the encoder aims at making his/her utterance more expressive and draws a similarity between “mind” and “chaos”. it should be pointed out that no one will consciously go through this process of inference to understand what the speaker intends to convey. people are generally not aware of doing it either as encoders or decoders. it is here that the general principles of conversation together with mutually shared background knowledge, global vertical context come to help. these factors play an important role in the speaker’s creating of implicature and in the listener’s interpretation of it. only in this case the implicature that is conveyed and the one that is inferred will be essentially the same. undoubtedly, context plays a great role in determining the indirect force of the utterance. for instance, it is held that the word “dog” may evoke various associations, namely: being dirty, sleepy, as well as prudent, devoted, etc. often in actual speech situations context makes it clear what the utterance implies. however, the following questions are bound to arise: what facts determine indirect ways of expression? why does the author express himself implicitly? why is it preferable for him to say “he was no gentle lamb” instead of saying “he was obstinate, bold, shrewd, etc.”, which would be more easy to perceive. the main reason is that the speaker (author) aims at making his speech more expressive, emotional in order to achieve certain aesthetic impact on the listener (reader). his intention is assumed to be fulfilled if he succeeds in getting the hearer to understand and interpret the utterance non-literally. in the process of communication we often come across cases when the listener fails to perceive the intention of the speaker’s utterance, and this gives rise to curious situations. e.g. do you know what time it is? “yes”. (without any further action) here the speaker’s intention is not achieved as the listener has failed to perceive the indirect meaning of the speaker’s utterance and his answer “yes” refers only to its literal 50 armenian folia anglistika linguistics meaning. thus, the listener’s recognition of the speaker’s communicative intention (which j. austin terms “illocutionary uptake”) is very important for any communication to be successful. in the case of metaphoric similes the listener (reader) is more free in his/her interpretation. e.g. she had eyes like forest pools. (s. maugham, salvatore) in this example the heroine’s eyes are compared to forest pools and create an image of dark eyes with a shining surface sparkling like pools and reflecting everything around like a mirror. they are framed by long eyelashes as forest trees frame forest pools. this utterance is not easily perceived and interpreted as it may create different images depending on the listener’s power of imagination and ability to employ analogy. and we may assume that irrespective of the way utterances of this type are perceived and interpreted, if they arouse emotions in the listener (reader), creating certain images in the latter’s mind, then the speaker’s (author’s) intention may be considered to be achieved i.e. he succeeds in bringing about the perlocutionary effect of aesthetic impact on the listener. our analysis proves once again that the meanings of words are vague in general and they may acquire some additional expressive-emotional-aesthetic overtones due to collocational environments. on the pragmatic level our task is to reveal those implicit meanings (or various connotations) that words may acquire when used in combination with other words and to explain the inferential mechanisms involved in understanding them, including their aesthetic evaluation. metaphoric similes, due to their power of effecting energy in communication, play a significant role in the creation of a piece of verbal art. its multifunctional character is accounted for by the fact that we, humans, like to play with words. we take ideas, give them wings and they fly like brightly coloured birds making the world around us seem more exciting and magic. references: 1. austin j.l. how to do things with words. oxford: clarendon press, 1962, p.6-29. 2. grice h.p. utterer’s meaning, sentence-meaning, and word-meaning. // foundations of language, 1968. 3. grice h.p. logic and conversation. // syntax and semantics. vol. 3, ed. by p. cole and j.l. morgan. n.y.: academic press, 1975, p. 45-134. 4. leech g.n. principles of pragmatics. london n.y.: longman, 1983. 5. levinson s.c. pragmatics. cambridge: cambridge university press, 1983. 6. verschueren j. understanding pragmatics. n.y.: oxford university press, 1999. 7. uitti k.d. linguistics and literary theory. n.y., 1969. 8. àðóòþíîâà í.ä., ïàäó÷åâà å.â. èñòîêè, ïðîáëåìû è êàòåãîðèè ïðàãìàòèêè. // íîâîå â çàðóáåæíîé ëèíãâèñòèêå, âûï.16. ëèíãâèñòè÷åñêàÿ ïðàãìàòèêà. ì.: ïðîãðåññ, 1985. 51 linguistics armenian folia anglistika 9. àðóòþíîâà í.ä. ïðåäëîæåíèå è åãî ñìûñë. ìîñêâà, 1976. 10. ãàñïàðÿí ñ.ê. ôèãóðà ñðàâíåíèÿ â ôóíêöèîíàëüíîì îñâåùåíèè. åðåâàí: èçä. åðåâàíñêîãî óíèâåðñèòåòà, 2000. 11. ëåâèí ñ. ïðàãìàòè÷åñêîå îòêëîíåíèå âûñêàçûâàíèÿ. // òåîðèÿ ìåòàôîðû. / ïîä ðåä. í.ä. àðóòþíîâîé, ì.à. æóðèíñêîé. ì.: ïðîãðåññ, 1990. 12. ñåðëü äæ.ð. ìåòàôîðà. // òåîðèÿ ìåòàôîðû. / ïîä ðåä. í.ä. àðóòþíîâîé, ì.à. æóðèíñêîé. ì.: ïðîãðåññ, 1990. üºð²î²úàôâú²ü êü¸æðà ä²îîºð²ìàð ð²øºø²îàôâúàôüüºðàôø ºéý»éáí ñ³ù³ï»ùëïç áý¹ñ³ýáõñ ·³õ³÷³ñ³ï³ý μáí³ý¹³ïáõãûáõýçó ¨ ëáëáõç ùï³¹ñáõãûáõýçóª ýß³ý³ûçý ï³ññ»ñá ï³ñáõ »ý éñ³óáõóçã ñ³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý ·áñí³éáõûã ó»éù μ»ñ»é: üñ³ýó ý»ñ³ï³ çù³ëï³ûçý ïçñ³éáõùý»ñá ñý³ñ³íáñ ¿ ù»ïý³μ³ý»é ùç³ûý í»ñçù³ëï³ûçý ù³ï³ñ¹³ïáõù: ä³ïï»ñ³íáñ ³ñï³ñ³ûïã³ùççáóý»ñá ³é³ýóý³ñ³ïáõï ñ»ï³ùñùñáõãûáõý »ý ý»ñï³û³óýáõù ·áñí³μ³ý³ï³ý í»ñéáõíáõãû³ý ï»ë³ýïûáõýçó, çýãý ¿é ñý³ñ³íáñáõãûáõý ¿ ï³éçë ã³÷³ýó»é ñ»õçý³ïç ëï»õí³í å³ïï»ñý»ñç ³ßë³ññá ¨ ¹ñ³ý ñ³ù³å³ï³ëë³ýª áùμéý»é ëáëùç ÷áë³μ»ñ³ï³ý çù³ëïá: ðá¹í³íáõù ÷áñó ¿ ³ñíáõù μ³ó³ñ³ûï»é ëáëù³ûçý ýß³ýý»ñç ³ýëáíáñ ½áõ·áñ¹ù³ùμ ³ñï³ñ³ûïí³í ý»ñ³ï³ çù³ëï³ûçý »ñ³ý·ý»ñá ¨ áõëáõùý³ëçñ»é ³ûý ù»ë³ýç½ùý»ñý áõ ëï½μáõýùý»ñá, áñáýù ýå³ëïáõù »ý ¹ñ³ýó å³ïï»ñ³íáñáõãû³ý áýï³éù³ýý áõ ù»ïý³μ³ýù³ýá: 52 armenian folia anglistika linguistics armenian folia anglistika – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english (since 2005) and yerevan state university (since 2015) aims at fostering research of the english language, literature and culture armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 24 conceptual metaphors of ‘economic crisis’ in english: a historical cognitive perspective iryna shevchenko  v.n. karazin kharkiv national university this article explores the role of metaphor in the conceptualization of economic crisis in english in terms of the sociohistorical – cognitive – linguistic interface. on the material of economic mass-media discourse of the 19 th century “long depression”, the 20 th century great depression and the 21 st century global economic crisis it reveals the concept historical variation and defines the vector of its development. it also develops the methodology of historical cognitive analysis and proves that being а part of human social-cultural practice cognition is of historical nature. i claim that in historical perspective conceptual metaphors vary in their source domains as the result of transformations of the concept structure. the vector of diachronic change of conceptual metaphors of economic crisis corresponds to cladogenesis, which is the process of evolutionary splitting based on branching. keywords: concept, diachronic change, historical cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor, cladogenesis. introduction in this paper, i would like to present the historical vector of cognitive linguistics, and to illustrate this paradigm i chose the historical variation of conceptual metaphors of economic crisis from the 19 th to the 21 st centuries. more specifically, i aim to study linguistic means representing this concept in the economic and political mass-media discourse of two historical periods: 1929–33 and 2007–10 with a brief mention of the 1873– 1896 “long depression” to reveal their synchronic and diachronic distinctions and define the vector of their variation.  iryna.shevchenko@karazin.ua this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 14.12.2020 revised: 20.02.2021 accepted: 06.04.2021 © the author(s) 2021 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2021.17.1.024 mailto:iryna.shevchenko@karazin.ua https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 25 in modern societies, crisis has become a characteristic feature and a focus of social, political, and economic researches within the theory of crisis. in economic and political studies, crisis is treated as an integral part of the classical model of economic cycle comprising 4 stages: rise/expansion – decline/crisis – recession – recovery (haberler, 2001). until recently, the linguistic analysis of the metaphoric conceptualization of economic crisis in various languages (browse, 2013) has mostly been synchronous. it has revealed that among related conceptual metaphors in english, serbian and romanian, the most productive are economics is a living being, economics is a house, etc. (silaški et al. 2012). metaphors of economic crisis have also been described through ontological opposition dream::nightmare, justice::chaos, etc. (stronach et al., 2014). in this study, i apply a historical-cognitive framework to the study of conceptual metaphors of economic crisis in english. as geeraerts, kristiansen, and peirsman (2010) put it, the basic architecture of language involves socioculturally situated or embedded cognition. such cognition changes with the historical transformation of culture and society. i aim to prove that metaphors of economic crisis reveal historical variation together with the varied socio-cultural parameters and language development. for this aim, i will begin with the analysis of a methodological basis, the algorithm and material of study, then describe the data from each stage of research and the preliminary results, and finally formulate some conclusions and draw the perspectives for analysis. methodology and material the methodology of this analysis of conceptual metaphors of economic crisis in the english mass-media discourse of the last few centuries is a complex of conceptual metaphor theorizing and historical cognitive perspective. there are many theories of conceptual metaphor: lakoff and johnson’s views (1980/2003), kövecses’ levels of metaphor (2017), which interpret target concepts in terms of source concepts. the theory of conceptual integration or blending (fauconnier &turner, 2003) and embodiment armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 26 hypothesis suggest that people comprehend abstract concepts via concrete ones. as fauconnier (2006, p. 10) puts it, “cognitive linguistics goes beyond the visible structure of language and investigates the considerably more complex backstage operations of cognition that create grammar, conceptualization, discourse, and thought itself”. conceptual metaphor is understood as a result of cross-mapping of elements from a source domain to a target domain with a set of ontological correspondences (fauconnier, 2006, p.7). this theory of conceptual mapping adds to the standard source and target domains and explains domain cross-mapping as the process of “input spaces1,2” being cross-mapped into “generic” space possessing elements common to both input spaces, and finally into a “blended” space, which unites elements from both input spaces into a new conceptual structure of its own. proceeding from this theoretical background, i take an evolutionary viewpoint on metaphoric conceptualization, which treats intellect as the product of creative evolution (bergson, 1911/2008). recently, historical vector is becoming more and more popular in cognitive linguistics. in figurative language, barcelona (2006, p. 21-39) claims that metonymy motivates the semantic evolution of lexical units. in grammar and semantics, guarddon-anelo (2006) develops a cognitive approach to the diachronic study of spatial prepositions. in lexical semantics, robinson (2010, p. 85-109) makes insights into historical cognitive semantic variation; while oncins-martínez (2006, p. 205-224) analyses the role of conceptual metaphor in the categorization of sexual matters as one of the most metaphorized and taboo target domains in old english. in crosscultural perspective, pérez (2006, p.181-193) makes a diachronic cognitive cross-linguistic study of body metaphors in germanic and romance languages, which supports the idea of embodiment claimed by the cognitive linguistics. i focus on historical transformations of conceptual metaphors of economic crisis in terms of the sociocultural – cognitive – linguistic interface. i argue that “being а part of human social and cultural practice, cognition is of historical nature” (shevchenko, 2015, p. 64) since culture is a historically changing system. in this regard a cognitive linguistic research requires diachronic approach as both language and culture can manifest their dynamics and variability through time only in socio-historical facts linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 27 (shevchenko, 2015; winters, 2010). this paper is part of an ongoing project that aims to elaborate the tendencies of historical development of different concepts of culture, economics, and politics. the data for this study are 900 examples of conceptual metaphors of economic crisis drawn from the english economic mass-media discourse and the bnc of the two historical periods corresponding to the great depression of 1929-30es and the great recession of 2007-2010, mainly the economist, the financial times, the new york times (1929–1933 and 2007–2010). the 19 th century material is restricted to lexicographic data due to the difficulties of on-line accessing the media of this period. as an algorithm, i suggest a four-stage analysis meant to define: 1) the semantic space of the concept in different periods; 2) the concept diachronically stable and variable lexical-semantic properties; 3) the range of conceptual metaphors of economic crisis in the 20 th – 21 st centuries; 4) the type of the concept evolution. concepts are meaningful units. the semantic properties of economic crisis are singled out, first of all, as a result of analysis of lexical meanings. as langacker (1987, p. 98) points out, “there should not be any difference in kind between conceptual structure and semantic structure; there is only a terminological distinction, the former being general the latter specifically linguistic”. to reveal the relation between semantic and conceptual properties i built up a model of the concept in terms of fillmore’s frame semantics and use the elaboration of this theory in the “semantics of lingual networks” methodology developed by zhabotynska (2010). metaphors of economic crisis in the 19 th and 21 st centuries: data and preliminary results the structure of the concept is much more complicated and more varied than the lexical meaning of words – its nominations. according to the business dictionary definition, economic crisis is “a situation in which the economy of a country experiences a sudden downturn brought on by a financial crisis”. so the name of the concept is terminological by nature. its armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 28 content is shaped by the meanings of the key lexeme “crisis” and a modifying adjective “economic”. according to dictionaries, “crisis” is a word with 12 lexical meanings which can be organized into the conceptual model of polysemy by a limited set of propositional schemas (classification, causation, likeness). zhabotynska (2010, p. 75) argues that “such conceptual models, defined as ontologies, are multidimensional ‘networks-in-the-networks’ structures. at each dimension, the respective conceptual network is structured by a limited set of iterative propositions (propositional schemas) that belong to the five basic frames – the thing, action, possession, identification, and comparison frames”. these schemas organize the structure of economic crisis through related concepts profiled within three overlapping domains and their subdomains which vary historically. in the 19 th century, the model comprised two domains: economic decline (diminish, limit) and unstable situation (with two subdomains: shortage – debt, deficit, and anxiety – panic, trouble). this is the period when crises are mainly local and short, the longest of them, 1873–1896 “long depression”, does not exceed two decades and its actual scope is questioned by scholars. in the 20 th century, when the great depression of the 1930-es covered the bigger part of america, europe, and asia, the conceptual space of economic crisis expanded. the concept structure included two domains: economic decline (divided into two subdomains: change – recession, depression, decline, culmination – dramatic, extreme, peak), and unstable situation (already existing subdomains shortage and anxiety were supplemented by malfunction – collapse, crash, disaster, distress, failure, hardship – dilemma, difficulty, and danger – threat, menace, risk, jeopardy). in the period of the 21 st century global financial crisis, the concept of economic crisis suffers further transforms: the domain unstable situation adds one more subdomain disorder (mess, turmoil); a new domain appears – turning point (subdomains landmark – the rubicon, milestone, crunch time, and accident – calamity, mischance, catastrophe). thus, the concept economic crisis becomes a three domain conceptual structure as a result from the operation of prominence. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 29 theorists question the ambivalent nature and semantic ambiguity of crisis: is it an event or a process? within the former approach, crisis is a break of the course of events, within the latter, it is further subdivided into stages from a prodromal one to resolution (fink, 2002; haberler, 2001). this reveals the hybrid semantics of crisis as an event possessing signs of development. economic crisis is metaphorically conceptualized by a wide range of orientation, ontological and structural metaphors (olijnyk, shevchenko, 2016, p. 78 81). the hybrid event-and-process nature of the concept partially explains why metaphors of oriented movement represented by the conceptual metaphor economic crisis is movement down (severe declines in prices, loans moved downward, etc.) dominate in both periods and have the highest metaphorical potential. such metaphors have varieties: economic crisis is lack of movement (stagnation), economic crisis is movement up, e.g., the credit expansion brought to a halt, the prices highrocketed. among other historically stable metaphors, which are typical for the 20 th and 21 st mass-media discourse, the most frequent ones include source domains container, emergency (storm, earthquake, drought, shipwreck), medicine, war, living being (person, animal):  economic crisis is a container (to be mires in economic crisis);  economic crisis is an emergency (financial postwar blizzard, key market dried up, recession of some magnitude, the good ship euro struck a reef);  economic crisis is an illness / mental disorder (speculative fever, the global imbalances plagued the world, financial panic);  economic crisis is a battle / an explosion (economic hostilities, the bubble burst, the firm was the victim, financial bomb);  economic crisis is a person / an animal (in the face of the crisis, birth pangs of the great depression, bear market, the credit crunch bites). in the 21 st century, mass-media use new historically variable metaphors of economic crisis, which appear as a result of cross-mapping between the target domain and source domains technology and terrorism. they are armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 30 specific for this epoch when man-made disasters are connected with nuclear energy or ecological threat, plane crashes, terrorist attacks, etc.:  economic crisis is an npp / ecological accident (a credit meltdown, global chain reaction, the toxicity of mortgage market);  economic crisis is a car / plane crash (the crash in the financial sector, hard landing, the toxicity from the mortgage market). in the last few years, the source domain medicine of economic crisis conceptual metaphors replenished with a new extension epidemic / pandemic:  economic crisis is an epidemic (an epidemic of capital destruction). to sum up this section, in terms of historical cognitive linguistics, concepts undergo transformations of the three main types: evolution, i.e. complication of the concept structure; involution or simplification of schematic presentation of the concept structure; and a mixed type development. in natural sciences, the gradual evolution of species is subdivided into cladogenesis and anagenesis. borrowing these terms to linguistics, i use them to name the processes of historical complication of the concept structure with diachronic branching / splitting, which leads to forming new separate concepts (cladogenesis) and diachronic development without extinction (anagenesis). as the findings above demonstrate, the historical development of economic crisis and its conceptual metaphors corresponds to the type of cladogenesis. conclusion this paper views metaphoric conceptualization of economic crisis in the 19 th – 21 st centuries english mass-media discourse in terms of historical cognitive linguistics. it has revealed the diachronic transformation of the concept structure, which consists of historical constants – domains economic decline, unstable economic situation, and variables – domain turning point and subdomains disorder, landmark, accident. conceptual metaphors of economic crisis result from cross-mapping of the source domains onto the target domain. the former comprise a historically constant and dominant in frequency source domain movement (economic crisis is movement down) and variable source domains typical for the 21 st linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 31 century: man-made disaster, technological crash, epidemic, terrorism (economic crisis is nuclear winter / plane crash / epidemic/ terrorist attack). the paper has furthermore suggested a notion of evolutionary development borrowed from natural sciences to linguistics and defined the historical transformations of economic crisis as cladogenesis, i.e. a complication of the concept structure and its splitting based on branching, which leads to forming separate concepts. finally, i firmly believe that historical cognitive linguistics will enrich our understanding of the intricate relationship between language, cognition and society. this new theoretical framework will open perspectives to further studies of concepts and categories in english and other languages. references barcelona, a. 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(2010). principles of building conceptual models for thesaurus dictionaries. cognition, communication, discourse, 1, 75-92. retrieved from https://sites.google.com/site/cognitiondiscourse/vypuskno12010/zabotinskaa-s-a «տնտեսական ճգնաժամ»-ի հայեցակարգային փոխաբերություններն անգլերենում. պատմաճանաչողական մոտեցում իրինա շևչենկո հոդվածը քննարկում է անգլերենում տնտեսական ճգնաժամի փոխաբերական հայեցակարգման խնդիրը՝ սոցիալ-պատմական-ճանաչողական-լեզվաբանական դրվածքով: 19-րդ դարի երկարատև ճգնաժամի, 20-րդ դարի մեծ ճգնաժամի և 2021 դարի համաշխարհային տնտեսական ճգնաժամի շուրջ ծավալված զանգվածային դիսկուրսի ուսումնասիրության հիման վրա հոդվածում բացահայտվում է «տնտեսական ճգնաժամ» հասկացույթի փոփոխությունները ժամանակի ընթացքում և սահմանվում է դրա զարգացման վեկտորը: հոդվածում զարգացվում է նաև պատմաճանաչողական վերլուծության մեթոդը և փաստարկներ է բերվում առ այն, որ, լինելով սոցիալ-մշակութային գործունեության մաս, ճանաչողությունը պատմական երևույթ է: հեղինակը բերում է փաստարկներ առ այն, որ պատմական զարգացման դիտանկյունից փոխաբերությունը ժամանակի ընթացքում ունեցել է տարբեր «աղբյուր» տիրույթներ, ինչը պայմանավորված է փոխաբերության կառուցվածքի փոփոխությամբ: «տնտեսական armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 34 ճգնաժամ»-ի հայեցակարգային փոխաբերությունների զարգացումն արտացոլող փոխաբերությունների պատմական փոփոխությունը համապատասխանում է կլադոգենեզի՝ տեսակի էվոլյուցիոն ճյուղավորման հետ: բանալի բառեր. հասկացույթ, դիաքրոնիկ փոփոխություն, պատմաճանաչողական լեզվաբանություն, հայեցակարգային փոխաբերություն, կլադոգենեզ: armenian folia anglistika – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english (since 2005) and yerevan state university (since 2015) aims at fostering research of the english language, literature and culture armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 literature studies 108 a guest + a host = a ghost. dramas of hospitality in rebecca west’s the return of the soldier eleonora natalia ravizza  university of bergamo rebecca west’s novel the return of the soldier (1918) focuses on a common trope in great war literature: the traumas of war and the difficulties of returning veterans to fit back in with everyday life. the story of the shell-shocked soldier chris baldry, who suddenly finds himself in a world which has aged 15 years beyond his memory, may be read as the unfolding of a multi-layered drama of hospitality: chris’s memory erasure does not only turn him into a foreigner who does not recognize his wife or remember his dead son, but also forces his family members to question the role they have been playing in his life. an analysis of the novel’s modernist techniques and stylistic features introduces a redefinition of the concept of hospitality in relation to trauma and disease. the return of the soldier may be read not only as a critique of war, but also as a multi-perspective narrative on the precariousness of host-guest relationships. the “question-of-the-foreigner” (derrida, 2000) acquires new meanings when disease transforms a loved one into an “other” with whom communication seems to be interrupted. hospitality may thus be regarded as an unstable concept, in which identity and alterity are constantly renegotiated. keywords: hospitality, alterity, literature ethics, war narrative, trauma. introduction in his monumental project of tracing the conceptual genealogies and structures of signification of some of the key indo-european behaviours and institutions, émile benveniste identifies two main roots to which the interconnected concepts of “hospitality” and “hostility” are etymologically  eleonora.n.ravizza@gmail.com this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 04.02.2021 revised: 20.04.2021 accepted: 19.05.2021 © the author(s) 2021 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2021.17.1.108 mailto:eleonora.n.ravizza@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 109 and semantically related. as the french linguist argues, both words derive from the indo-european compound ˂*hosti-pet (etymon of the latin words hospes and hostis, signifying respectively “host”/”guest” and “foreigner/enemy”). while the stem pet (also present in words like despotes, or dominum) refers to “the person who personified the family group par excellence” (benveniste, 2016, p. 61), and hints at the very concept of personal identity, the stem hosti conveys the idea of “equality by compensation: a hostis is one who repays my gift with a counter-gift”. identity and reciprocity are indeed central semantic traits in the way we, even nowadays, understand the notion of “hospitality”, and yet, when hospitality translates into concrete acts, they are also what is mostly put at stake. the complex etymological history of the word “hospitality” (and of its link to “hostility”) mirrors the ambiguity and paradoxicality of a concept which entails simultaneously fundamental bonds and duties of solidarity, exchange and brotherhood, and the fear that those who are “foreign” or “other” may take over. the guest is the one who, as jacques derrida puts it, asks “the foreigner’s question” (2000, p. 3): by insinuating him/herself inside the protected space of the host’s home, s/he may reveal the very fragility, permeability and porosity of the host’s self and undermine the very foundation of the latter’s identity. in the socratic dialogues, as the french philosopher reminds us, it is usually a foreigner who challenges the doxa, contests authority, and threatens the dogmatism of the law. also, hospitality is a complex process of mediation which, more often than not, is inscribed in a dimension of power asymmetry, inequality, and difference, and in which tensions between host and guest, self and other, are never fully resolved. even in the most cordial of invitations, “do as if you were at home”, the “as if” signals precisely that there is an insurmountable discrepancy between having the formal rights of inhabiting a space and being (however warmly) accepted into it because of the gracious concession of someone else. host/ guest power dynamics have recently emerged as a particularly urgent cross-disciplinary preoccupation in light of the unprecedented crises that have marked the beginning of the new millennium. current studies on hospitality especially draw on the reflections of jacques derrida (1999, 2000, 2000a, 2001), who engaged with the work of émile benveniste, emmanuel lévinas, and immanuel kant in order to address how the late armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 literature studies 110 twentieth-century social contexts of increased shortor long-term migration would bring along a renegotiation of national identities and boundaries. derrida focused on the gradient of hostility in every act of hospitality, coining the word “hostipitality” from the above-mentioned indo-european compound ˂*hosti-pet, to highlight how the concept of hospitality “is internally cannibalized by its opposite, ‘hostility’” (2000a, p. 3). “hostipitality” appears as particularly relevant in a world shaped by the anxieties that 9/11 left in its wake (still, 2010), as well as by intermittent refugee and migrant crises (worth, 2006; baker, 2009; stronks, 2012; de haene & rober, 2016, franceschelli & galipò, 2020), climate disasters (kelman, 2020), economic recessions (czajka & isyar 2014), and global pandemics (worth, 2006). also, as the so-called age of digitization is bringing about a mobilization and fast-pacing of interpersonal and social relations, hospitality is also emerging as a creative process in which connections are produced, performed, sensed and consumed within a multiplicity of societies which, as zygmunt bauman phrased it (2000) are becoming ever more liquid (whitlock, 2015; germann molz & gibson, 2007). in the field of cultural and literary studies, the current interest in hospitality, hostility and the pleasures and hazards of intimacy is to be read through the lens of the so-called “ethical turn” – the recent resurgence of ethical approaches to literary texts, which are regarded as “a field of demonstration and testing ground for responsible and rewarding human behavior” (grabes, 2008, p. 1). as a theme, hospitality traverses a multitude of literary texts from a variety of epochs and geographical contexts. in his comprehensive study on hospitality and treachery in western literature, james heffernan (2014) analyzes examples from the homeric poems, the bible, anglo-saxon and medieval poetry, renaissance literature (shakespeare), romantic poetry (wordsworth and coleridge), eighteenth and nineteenth century french literature (rousseau, stendhal), late victorian and modernist literature (james, proust, joyce, woolf). the fact that welcoming the other exposes the self also to the risk of the other – an ‘other’ whose proximity may show how dangerously pervious the domestic space is, challenge the status quo, and reveal the vulnerability of our sense of self – reverberates in the literary text not simply as a theme, but mostly as textual dynamics. for example, rachel hollander’s definition of “narrative literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 111 hospitality” as an ethical paradigm “in which respecting the limits of knowledge and welcoming the stranger define fiction’s relationship to both reader and the world” (2013, p.1), has prompted research on how fictions of hospitality, through creative manipulation of their narratological, semiotic and linguistic structures, contribute to the construction of new epistemological patterns to get to know and respect the other (melville, 2007; marais, 2009; ridge, 2016; ravizza, 2020). narrative hospitality, as a matter of fact, differentiates itself from sympathy because, while the latter requires, to some extent, an assimilation of the other to the self, the former is based in the acknowledgement and acceptance of difference. also, by focusing on the pragmatics and the reception of literary texts, hollander uses levinasian and derridean reflections on alterity and hospitality as starting points to rethink literary ethics in terms of responsibility for the other, and to account for how the dynamics of textual production/ reception involve the reader as an active participant in the construction of new ethical and cognitive approaches to particularly urgent changes and demands (in the case of the late victorian context she addresses, the woman question, workers’ rights, colonial interactions). it is precisely literature’s capacity to creatively work through the semiotics of hospitality that has inspired the main research questions of this essay: what happens when the already precarious structure of hospitality is troubled by other elements, such as trauma and disease? how do literary texts allow us to appreciate the intricacies of host/guest relations when they are suddenly shaken by mental and/or physical diseases which contribute to undermining our deep sense of self, belonging and control? what happens when a loved one is suddenly turned into a foreigner? first published in 1918, rebecca west’s debut novel the return of the soldier focuses precisely on how the return home of a shell-shocked soldier produces a multiplicity of what could be called “dramas of hospitality”, in which the status of the soldier himself, his family and old acquaintances is constantly destabilized and renegotiated. west’s novel deals with a common trope in great war literature: the traumas of war and the difficulties of returning veterans to fit back in with everyday life. as captain chris baldry, an upper-class 35-year-old gentleman injured in france (most plausibly during the somme offensive), is affected by a form of selective amnesia (he has forgotten the past fifteen years of his life, including his wife armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 literature studies 112 and his deceased one-year-old son), the legitimacy of his position as master of the house, his wedding, and the role that his family members play in his life are suddenly called into question. his memory erasure does not only turn him into a foreigner who does not recognize his wife or remember his dead son, but also shatters his family equilibrium. his wife suddenly becomes a stranger to him, while his long-lost love, a working-class woman well below his social standards who is initially introduced in the narrative as a stranger and a temporary visitor, becomes more important to him than anyone else. in the following sections, i argue that west’s adoption of early modernist techniques, such as the limited focalization of the first-person intradiegetic narrator jenny (chris baldry’s cousin) and non-linear event reconstruction allow the conflicts and clashes within coexisting narratives of hospitality, in which characters may simultaneously be foreign and familiar, hosts and guests, to take shape. jenny’s own conflicts of loyalty (her sincere affection towards chris, bordering romantic love, versus her awareness of social duties and responsibilities) form the basis of a complex representation of mental disorder which takes into consideration not only the sufferer, but also the interpersonal relations of familiarity and estrangement that disease constantly deconstructs and reconstructs. a guest plus a host equals a ghost. chris baldry and interpellation whenever we think of host-guest relationship, we imagine two distinctive, well defined positions which, certainly, in due course, may be exchanged, but which do not usually overlap, or form a continuum. when hospitality is agreed, as a matter of fact, the two contracting parties’ identities need to be well established. a guest cannot simultaneously be his/her host’s host – unless, of course, s/he becomes a usurper, and breaks the very pact of hospitality – and we expect a host to become his/her guest’s guest only at some future time. in the return of the soldier this assumption is challenged when the memory loss which affects chris baldry undermines his status as master of the house, and produces two conflicting narratives of identity. in one, chris is the happy landlord of a wealthy english household, obediently serving his country in france during the great war but firmly tied to his land by duty (as his wife kitty, engaged in the charitable tasks of making clothes for the poor reminds him, “‘we – we’ve a lot of responsibilities, literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 113 you and i. with all the land you’ve bought there’s ever so many people to look after….’”, west, 2018, p.42). in the other, chris, who believes he is still the carefree twenty-year-old son of a well-to-do landowner, forgets about his current family ties, and his only priority is the unconditional love he still bears for his first love, margaret grey (née allington), a worn out, lower class woman now married to another man. the first narrative also sustains the fictions of identity of those who live with him: of chris’ wife in the first place, whose position in life is determined by her being married to him and presiding over their household, but also of his (secretly enamoured) cousin jenny, who lives with the couple and relies on the certainty that chris belongs in baldry court (she expresses her confidence at the beginning of the novel: “this house, this life with us, was the core of his heart”, west, 2018, 9). the second narrative, instead, by allowing chris’ subconscious to emerge (i.e. his obsessions, his repressed love and sexual desire for margaret, the fact that he does not love, or even like, his wife) exposes the frailty of the first and endangers the position of all the other characters. if captain baldry has not become accustomed with the idea of being the head of a new family yet, and has become an unrecognizable, romantic stranger who disowns his wife, does not remember his son and cannot be burdened with responsibilities, does he re-enter his house as a host, or rather as a guest? is the sick, traumatized chris baldry the same person as the one who left to fight in the war? and what about kitty, who responds to her husband’s sickness with profound hostility, and who is dispossessed of her role as chris’ companion by a stranger, someone who enters her house as an unwelcome guest? in the title of this essay, i borrowed a pun written by marcel duchamp on the wrappers of some candies distributed during bill copley's 1953 parisian show (gould, 2000). “a guest + a host = ghost” humorously suggests that the blending of two opposite words (“guest” and “host”) leads to their annihilation (a ghost). in the return of the soldier, as chris’ position within the hospitality spectrum is oscillating between two opposite poles, chris emerges as an ever more phantasmatic figure. haunted by two traumatic experiences, his child’s death and the horrors of war, chris escapes his reality and finds shelter in the memory of his first love, something which is now foreclosed to him. the specter of his repressed, romantic self, which has suddenly resurfaced after a wound in the head, armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 literature studies 114 precipitates his family into the dimension of the freudian unheimlich: the familiar that uncannily becomes something else. we could also say that his persona is split into two. on the one hand, we have chris as the signifier of masculinity, order and stability, and on the other, we have the sick, “phantasmatic” chris, who refuses to be identified with those concepts, and exposes the insurmountable discrepancy between the signifier and the (latent) signified. that chris may be considered as a ghost is also reflected in the fact that he is introduced in the story as an absence, and that his narrative circle is completed, as we shall see in the next section, when he leaves his home again, returning to war and to a most probable death on the battlefield. the first chapter shows that his family continue to project their expectations onto the absent chris, and that they perform their roles as if he were still there, a figure of authority and a simulacrum of masculinity presiding over the ordinary course of things. the idea of performance recurs in the novel with particular reference to the façade of beauty, amiability and grace that kitty puts on as she tends to her wifely duties and behaves like the perfect landlady. her almost military efficiency and despotism towards the other inhabitants of the house (jenny included), which, as melissa edmundson notes (2008, pp. 492-493), are even more accentuated in the early editions of the novel, certainly allow the reader to see her as “the home front equivalent to british militarism during the first world war and the unforgiving, masculinist mindset that led england into war” (edmundson, 2008, p. 493). the very incipit of the novel stresses her need to show selfcontrol and propriety: “‘ah, don’t begin to fuss!’ wailed kitty. ‘if a woman began to worry in these days because her husband hadn’t written to her for a fortnight–!’” (west, 2018, p. 3). although the reporting verb in this short passage (i.e., “wailed”) betrays an emotionally intense moment – after all, jenny, the addressee of kitty’s outburst, has just found her pining over the bed of hers and chris’ dead son – kitty clings to the idea that life should carry on according to pre-established social patterns of behaviour, to which she attends as her status prescribes. the idea of performance traverses the first encounter between kitty, acting as the perfect hostess, and margaret, in the role of the unexpected and not particularly distinguished guest. the contrast between the two women is striking: the more elegant, assuming, and beautiful the one, the more literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 115 frumpy, unsophisticated, and unattractive the other. hospitality is one of those duties which kitty carries out with particular zeal as she deputizes for her absent husband, but playing the perfect hostess is not synonymous with being a warm-hearted one. wishing to remark margaret’s insignificance, she announces to jenny that she is not going to put too much effort in receiving such a humble guest (“as the girl went, she took up the amber hairpins from her lap and began swathing her hair about her head. ‘last year’s fashion’ she commented, ‘but i fancy it will do for a person with that sort of address.’”, west, 2018, p. 12). if kitty does not expect reciprocity and friendship from margaret, nevertheless she expects that her hospitality is repaid with her being recognised as a good wife and, although her expression is marked with an ironic undertone, as a good christian (kitty says: “‘i am seeing her because she may need something, and i specially want to be kind to people while chris is away. one wants to deserve well of heaven’”, west, 2018, p. 12). yet, margaret is not there to beg for money or help; on the contrary, she is offering valuable information regarding chris, slightly tilting the power balance to her side. so, as margaret does not play by the rule set by her hostess, and the performance starts to become more dramatic than expected, she is openly accused of being a swindler trying to exploit chris’ family’s vulnerability to extort some money. kitty and margaret’s verbal exchange may be described as a game of interpellation (althusser, 1971) in which chris is produced as a different type of subject according to the linguistic structure though which he is evoked during the conversation. what is put at stake, in other words, is both chris’ identity and the three women’s relationship to him (jenny also participates in the scene as kitty’s chaperone). at first, when margaret claims that she knows something about the soldier that his wife does not, she timidly and apologetically refers to him as “mr baldry” (“forgive me, i don’t know his rank”, west, 2018, p. 14). kitty intervenes immediately and supplies the correct title (“captain baldry”, west, 2018, p. 14), one which should definitely establish the proper, formal distance between her husband and the shabby lady sitting in front of her. as margaret informs kitty and jenny that chris is wounded, and the two women refuse to believe her or take action, she shouts “but chris is ill!” (west, 2018, p. 18). the use of the soldier’s first name, to which only intimates are entitled, is perceived as a direct accusation to his family members, as jenny words’ show: armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 literature studies 116 it took a second for the compact insolence of the moment to penetrate: the amazing impertinence of the use of his name, the accusation of callousness she brought against us, whose passion for chris was our point of honour, because we would not shriek at her falseness, the impudently bright indignant gaze she flung at us, the lift of her voice that pretended she could not understand our coolness and irrelevance. (west, 2018, p. 18) margaret’s intimacy with the person she dares to call “chris” calls into being a new scenario, one which sabotages jenny and kitty’s definition of their own selves (“us, whose passion for chris was our point of honour”), and directly accuses them of being callous. what jenny resents is the fact that margaret is abusing her privilege as a guest (an attitude which, in the passage, is referred to as “impertinence”). nevertheless, her story is supported with the tangible proof of a telegram written to margaret by chris himself – a manifestation of the absentee (i.e. the ghost) which shows that he cares more for a stranger than for his family. the first chapter finishes with kitty’s observation that “if he could send that telegram he isn’t ours any longer” (west, 2018, p. 23), signaling, on the one hand, the refusal of the story line called into existence by margaret’s “but chris is ill” (west, 2018, p. 14) and, on the other, a new interrogative regarding chris: if he is not ours anymore, does he belong to this unkempt lady who has crossed the threshold of our cherished home? where does this leave us? jenny’s limited point of view is nevertheless a mobile one. while the first chapter shows her adherence to kitty’s perspective and her firm belief in the narrative according to which “there never was so visibly contented a man” as chris (west, 2018, 8), throughout the next five chapters she starts to become more open and hospitable towards chris’ sickness and, by reflection, towards margaret. despite her repulsion towards chris’ first love, who “was not so much a person as an implication of poverty” (west, 2018, p. 104), jenny starts to appreciate a foreign point of view – that of the sick chris, who loves margaret despite her status or appearance (he says to jenny: “if you had seen the way she rested her cheek against the glass and looked into the little room, you’d understand that i can’t say, ‘yes, kitty’s my wife, and margaret somehow just nothing at all’”, west, 2018, p. 62). it literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 117 is by gradually starting to see things through chris’ eyes that jenny progressively becomes able to acknowledge margaret as a generous woman, willing to overcome her own ghosts (such as the tragedy of her son’s death), in order to help chris to come back to his “sane” self. as this perspective, at the beginning of the novel, is presented as completely extraneous to jenny’s understanding of herself, chris, and baldry house, chris’s cousin needs to elaborate some new strategies to understand the situation: i could not think clearly about it. i suppose that the subject of our tragedy, written in spiritual terms, was that in kitty he had turned from the type of woman that makes the body conqueror of the soul and in me from the type that mediates between the soul and the body and makes them run even and unhasty like a well-matched pair of carriage horses, and had given himself to a woman whose bleak habit it was to champion the soul against the body. but i saw it just as a fantastic act of cruelty that i could only think of as a conjunction of calamitous images. (west, 2018, p. 100) the passage shows that jenny is struggling to find a way to include ‘the foreign’ into her own way of seeing – she is, differently put, elaborating linguistic strategies to allow a new form of narrative hospitality to emerge, in which chris’ sickness and obsession with a woman like margaret may begin to be understood as acceptable. the conflict of sense and meaning that are traversing jenny’s mind emerge through the fact that her description of the family “tragedy” seems to undermine itself. the dichotomy she drafts – kitty as the woman who prioritizes appearances over substance, margaret as the one who values empathy and emotions over formality (“to lovers innumerable things do not matter”, west, 2018, p. 89), and jenny as a sort of go-between – shows that, in a way, jenny is willing to accept margaret, but not fully. the commonly accepted superiority of the soul over the body is transformed into something uncanny – the “conjunction of calamitous images” that jenny evokes suggests she is afraid of margaret’s alterity, an alterity which has also forced her to see chris’ alienation for the first time. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 literature studies 118 healing chris: the end of narrative hospitality? in the previous section i have shown that chris’ post-traumatic stress disorder makes him oscillate between being a host (the owner of baldry court and kitty’s husband) and a guest (a sick ‘other’, the haunting reemergence of a repressed self). what seems to trouble kitty the most is the fact that within chris’ persona, the signifier of what he stood for (an adult, a husband, a landowner) does not match with the new signified. chris, as jenny puts it in the extract quoted above, turns from his corporeal and material dimension, to embrace a spiritual one in which he can appreciate “margaret as she existed in eternity” rather than “margaret as she existed in time” (west, 2018, p. 73). kitty’s confidence in the correspondence between signifier and signified allows her to cope with chris’ physical absence. paradoxically, when chris is at home, his bodily presence does not correspond to a spiritual one: the ghost of his young romantic self haunts the identity and serenity of his family. so, in kitty’s mindset, it is preferrable that chris is away, at war, but reconciled with his adult self, rather than a stranger at home. in her perspective, the novel has a happy ending, in spite of the fact that chris will have to leave soon. the game of interpellation which began in the first chapter finally draws to an end when chris begins to accept the words of his psychiatrist, dr. anderson, “[y]ou […] are the patient” (west, 2018, p. 114) and undergoes a healing process in which margaret plays a key role. the novel ends with kitty and jenny observing chris suddenly regain his military gait and attitude, and kitty commenting “every inch a soldier” (west, 2018, p. 138). kitty is in fact the one who pronounces (twice) the novel’s explicit: “he is cured” (west, 2018, p. 138). the ending shows the expulsion of the sick, alien chris (certainly soon to be followed by the unwelcome margaret), and the return of the sane chris (who will soon set off to the front). yet, the circle is not fully closed. although the novel’s ending has been described as an example of “extreme sanism” (linnett, 2013, n.p.) because it seems to imply that a return to a socalled normality is a necessity and not a choice, the idea of sanity is deconstructed through the hospitable approach which jenny develops throughout her narration. being hospitable, as rachel hollander shows in her analysis of late victorian novel (2013), does not simply mean to identify and sympathize with the other. narrative hospitality, as a matter of fact, literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 119 should be understood as an effort to portray and enact ways to harbour ‘otherness’ in terms of both relationality and conflict. the fact that ‘self’ and ‘other’ are never fully conflated in jenny’s narrative is particularly evident when she describes chris’ cure. her narration, as a matter of fact, continually oscillates between an attitude of refusal – equally towards margaret and chris’ sick self – and one of acceptance. for example, when margaret is about to meet dr. anderson, she is irritated by the woman’s “awful clothes”, and she addresses the latter in a way that makes her conscious of her inferiority: “i turned to margert an expression which conveyed that this was an act of hospitality, the refusal of which we would find wounding, and to that she yielded and i knew she would” (west, 2018, p. 117; interestingly, in the passage, the word “hospitality” is used to signal distance and asymmetry of power). yet, jenny’s irritation at seeing margaret inside the sancta sanctorum of chris’s son room is counterbalanced by her effort to understand her guest, and even by timid attempts at liking her (for example when she says that “margaret reassumed her majesty”, west, 2018, p.121, or when she suddenly realizes that she must have been a mother). the last part of the novel depicts a dramatic dialectics between two different perspectives on what sanity actually means. margaret astonishes her hostesses by objecting to the doctor’s approach by saying: “‘you can’t cure him. […] make him happy, i mean. all you can do is to make him ordinary” (west, 2018, p. 125). the cure, as a matter of fact, has to be terrible: with the help of margaret, who has also experienced loss and tragedy in her life, chris will need to confront the traumas of his past. jenny is torn between the realization that “that is the kind of things one has to do in his life” (west, 2018, p. 127), and that what is going to happen is not going to be completely fair to chris: “it became plain that if madness means a liability to wild error about the world, chris was not mad. it was our peculiar shame that he had rejected us when he had attained to something saner than sanity. his very loss of memory was a triumph over the limitations of language which prevent the mass of men from making explicit statements about their spiritual relationships” (west, 2018, p. 99). alterity, differently put, has enacted a deconstructive game, in which jenny begins to question all certitudes about herself and her vision of the world. kitty’s final, victorious proclaim “he is cured” does not signal that signifier and armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 literature studies 120 signified are finally united, but rather that the true meaning of sanity, as well as of chris, is forever foreclosed. conclusion in this essay i have dealt with how the derridean concept of hospitality may productively allow us to understand the way trauma and disease are not just an individual tragedy but are inscribed within a network of relationships. being sick calls into questions not just one’s identity, but also the nets of relationships that bind the individual to his/her family, close friends, and even society. jenny’s imperfect account shows how literature may be regarded as a testing ground to find complex ways to simultaneously express a desire to welcome the ‘other’ (her dearest chris, but also his mental disease and, to a certain extent, margaret) and the discomfort of the encounter with a resistant ‘otherness,’ one which demands an ethical response to an unpredictable, and possibly disruptive request for acknowledgement. as jacques derrida reminds us, hospitality (or rather “hostitpitality”) is a complex process of mediation in which tensions are never fully resolved, but rather become part of a dynamic and dialogic relationship in which ‘self’ and ‘other’ never conflate. chris baldry’s story acquires significance not only in relation to his private, familial context, but more generally, within a context of a critique to military values, patriarchalism, and class-bound behavioural norms. as jenny progressively understands that another narrative (beside the one to which she and kitty clang at the beginning of the novel) is possible she also begins to deconstruct the very values which supported her previous worldview. literature emerges thus as a precious tool to elaborate the complexity of life and change the semiotics according to which we make sense of the world. references althusser, l. 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(2015). the hospitality of cyberspace: mobilizing asylum seeker testimony online. biography (honolulu), 38(2), 245-266. worth, h. (2006). unconditional hospitality: hiv, ethics and the refugee problem. bioethics 20(5), 223–232. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1744552311000449 literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 123 a guest + a host = a ghost. ռեբեկա ուեսթի «զինվորի վերադարձը» վեպը՝ որպես հյուրընկալության դրամա էլեոնորա նատալիա ռավիցա ռեբեկա ուեսթի «զինվորի վերադարձը» (1918) վեպը հյուսված է մեծ պատերազմի գրականության համար սովորական համարվող պատերազմի հետևանքների և վերադարձից հետո վետերանների՝ առօրյա կյանքին հարմարվելու դժվարությունների թեմայի շուրջ: գլխուղեղի ցնցում ստացած զինվոր քրիս բոլդրիի պատմությունը, որի հիշողությունը ընդհատվել է 15 տարի առաջ, կարելի է ընթերցել որպես հյուրընկալության բազմաշերտ դրամա. քրիսի հիշողության կորուստը նրան դարձնում է ոչ միայն օտարական, որը չի ճանաչում իր կնորջը և չի հիշում իր մահացած որդուն, բայց նաև ստիպում է ընտանիքի անդամներին կասկածի տակ դնել նրա կյանքում իրենց ունեցած դերը: վեպի մոդեռնիստական տեխնիկայի և ոճական առանձնահատկությունների վերլուծությունը թույլ է տալիս վերասահմանել հյուրընկալության հայեցակարգը՝ տրավմա և հիվանդություն հասկացությունների համատեքստում: «զինվորի վերադարձը» կարելի է ընկալել ոչ միայն որպես պատերազմի քննադատություն, այլ նաև որպես հյուրընկալող-հյուր անորոշ հարաբերությունների բազմածիր պատմություն: դերիդայի կողմից առաջ քաշված «օտարականի հարցը» թեզը նոր իմաստներով է համալրվում, երբ հիվանդությունը սիրելիին վերածում է «ուրիշի», ում հետ շփումը կարծես թե ընդհատված է: այսպիսով, հյուրընկալությունը կարող է համարվել ոչ կայուն հասկացություն և այս համատեքստում ինքնության և փոփոխականության հարցերը մշտապես քննարկման առարկա են դառնում: բանալի բառեր. հյուրընկալություն, փոփոխականություն, գրական էթիկա, պատերազմի նարատիվ, տրավմա: linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 97 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2022.18.2.097 the linguopoetics of epithet in o. henry’s short stories sona haroutyunian ca’foscari university of venice amalia haroutyunian** yerevan state university it is common knowledge that reading literature in the proper sense of the word is rather difficult as it presupposes the ability of the reader not to confine one’s perception to what can be seen on the surface of the text only. the reader’s ability to go deep into the text and reveal the intention of the writer is of prime importance. many prominent philologists in different countries have referred to this question, and their investigations have established that the real understanding of a piece of verbal creativity is a step by step process and can be achieved only gradually. this, in fact, is the underlying methodological basis of the present research which aims at studying the use of epithets in o. henry’s short stories and their role in the linguopoetic organization of the stories. of particular investigative interest have turned out to be the last leaf and the gift of magi. keywords: verbal creativity, o. henry’s short stories, epithet, the linguostylistic method of analysis, the linguopoetic view of epithet. introduction investigations have shown that a work of verbal creativity is first of all an ordinary piece of speech based on the dialectical correlation of language and speech which can be revealed through the application of the linguostylistic method of analysis (gasparyan, 1980; 2004; 2008; 2013). as stated by v. zadornova, linguostylistics deals not only with tropes and figures of speech, or stylistic devices proper, but also concerns itself with the study of the ultimate units of language from the point of view of connotations, that is those  sona.haroutyunian@gmail.com ** a.harutyunyan@ysu.am this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 14.06.2022 revised: 10.07.2022 accepted: 28.07.2022 © the author(s) 2021 mailto:sona.haroutyunian@gmail.com mailto:a.harutyunyan@ysu.am https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 98 additional properties of linguistic units which are superimposed on the linguistic meaning proper. the study of connotations is based on a thorough investigation of the semantic structure of words. we are able to explain how this or that particular connotation is acquired by a word only if we understand its meaning on the ‘emic’ level (zadornova, 1984, 1986; a manual of english, 1989). the understanding of a work of verbal art is a step-by-step process which is borne out by the well-known principle of the theory of cognition insisting on the process of cognition being a gradual one (gasparyan, 2019). therefore, the first step in the process of understanding of a work of verbal art is taken on the semantic level where linguistic units are regarded as such, i.e. as parts of the emic system of language. our attempt to understand the general linguistic content, or direct, nominative meanings of the linguistic units of the text paves a path to the metasemiotic level which is the level of speech, i.e. the level of style with all the additional expressive-emotional-evaluative overtones implemented into the text. thus, when we are quite certain that we understand everything on the semantic level, we take the next step and analyze the ways linguistic units are used in the context, where they acquire additional, or ‘meta’-content. as has been shown in different investigations, this ‘meta’content has no form of its own: the unity of the expression and the content of a linguistic unit as it appears on the semantic level becomes expression for the new connotative or metaphoric content. thus, the universal method of the linguostylistic analysis including the semantic and the metasemiotic levels is aimed at revealing the dialectical unity of language and speech which any speech event is based on, irrespective of the register (akhmanova, 1972). when analyzing a text linguostylistically it is natural to begin with words, the basic building material of a work of literature. however we should be aware of the fact that it covers all the aspects of language: collocations, grammatical forms, patterns of major syntax, etc. there is not a single sound, word or wordcombination in a natural human language which would be unable to undergo a metasemiotic transformation. otherwise stated, the main linguostylistic category, i.e. the category of variation, which can be realized as either a paradigmatic phenomenon or a syntagmatic one, is capable of manifesting itself on all possible levels of language. it should be added however that, when what we deal with is a piece of verbal art, our understanding can by no means be confined to the employment of the linguostylistic method of analysis, for imaginative writing is endowed by linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 99 some aesthetic value which can be perceived and estimated with the help of the method of linguopoetic analysis, the ultimate aim of which consists in showing how the use of different linguistic means (sounds, words, word-combinations, units of major syntax, etc.) results in a particular aesthetic or artistic effect. it is through the application of this very method that it becomes possible to appreciate the way a text is organized and shaped as a global whole, a global work of art. otherwise stated, the linguopoetic approach avails the researcher of the possibility of studying the creative use of the language due to which the writer’s intention is realized and the metameta-content or the global purport of the work of verbal art is created. it is generally assumed that there is something in a work of fiction, which has variously been described as ‘theme’, ‘(literary) message’, ‘(global) purport’, ‘metametacontent’, etc., i.e. what the writer wants to convey to his readers. obviously nothing can be achieved unless we understand the global purport of the text. but if a text is a piece of imaginative writing, a philologist should be interested in not only what the writer conveys to his readers, but also how he speaks about what he has chosen to convey. thus, the linguopoetic analysis is aimed at appreciating the way a piece of belles-letters is organized as a global work of art. the linguopoetic interpretation of the text depends on our ability to appreciate the unity of the written and oral forms of verbal art. it has been experimentally established that when a writer is creating a text, he arranges the words and chooses the syntactic constructions in accordance with a certain ‘melody’ which conditions the lexical, syntactic and stylistic organization of the text. prosody is not only an indispensable characteristic feature of oral speech but also an inherent quality of the written text (shcherba, 1957). the linguopoetic analysis depends to a great extent on the ability of a competent reader to ‘hear’ the prosody of the text in his ‘inner’ speech even when reading silently (gasparyan, 2013). the relationship between the two kinds of analysis (the linguostylistic and the linguopoetic ones) is again dialectical. we cannot approach a work of fiction linguopoetically unless we first and foremost understand it as a piece of ordinary text, unless we are aware of all the stylistic devices and the ways the words are brought together. but if we stop at the linguostylistic level it will be a formal approach to literature, and the understanding and appreciation of its aesthetic value will be neglected (gasparyan, 1980; 2008). armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 100 o. henry and his short stories in the present article the above-mentioned linguostylistic and linguopoetic methods of analysis have been applied to the use of epithets in o. henry’s short stories. like other authors, o. henry also tries to embellish the narration with different stylistic devices endowing them with a variety of expressiveemotional-evaluative overtones which enrich his stories with additional shades of meaning and support the realization of his literary-aesthetic and ideological intentions. o. henry (1863-1910) was a prolific american short-story writer9, a master of surprise endings, who wrote about the life of ordinary people in new york city. a twist of plot, which turns on an ironic or coincidental circumstance, is typical of o. henry’s stories. o. henry’s short stories are roughly organized into a framework chronicling a human life; the main idea of them begins with younger protagonists, and then moves forward into stories with increasingly aged men and women. although this is a broad generalization, the stories also tend to increase in complexity. the use of stylistic devices in his short stories, like in any other piece of work of belles-lettres style, is justified by the author’s intention of making his speech more vivid, imaginative and colorful. as the use of the stylistic devices is closely connected with the aesthetic taste of the author, we see our task in trying to understand these devices and epithetic expressions in particular to reveal those feelings, thoughts and emotions, which have brought about the creation of the given piece of work. o. henry shows considerable talent in his short stories when he speaks about the truth of life. almost in all his short stories the need reigns and it is reflected in the daily life (the gift of magi, a service of love, etc.). the prevailing notions in many of his short stories are that the two loving hearts sacrifice the most valuable things of their life for each other. and at the same time they keep their feelings in the highest peak of the human morality though in contrast with this there are cases when he makes hints about the cruelty of the world where it is very difficult to have sincere feelings and devotions to each other (see, for instance an unfinished story), problems of moral decline and upbringing (e.g. the guilty party). however, the central line in his short stories is the attitude of his heroes towards life, expressed in obviously sad tones. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 101 the linguopoetic value of epithets in o. henry’s short stories the above-mentioned sad overtones are evidently displayed in o. henry’s the last leaf where the psychological state of the heroes, their feelings and desires to struggle for life are revealed. two unfortunate artists with different understandings of life are victims of failure. johnsy is a sick girl, who has a hope to be cured but she doesn’t struggle for her life. the falling leaves of the trees and the last leaf which is vividly represented in the title of the story symbolize her death. the other painter-behrman, dreams about having a masterpiece, but considering himself an unsuccessful man who does not have an opportunity to carry out his dream, he sacrifices his life for the girl’s, painting the last perpetual leaf on the wall opposite johnsy’s window to make her believe that her life will still go on, and his visual trick becomes an unexpected masterpiece. to have a thorough understanding of the use of epithets in the last leaf we prefer to analyze some of them within the context and reveal the author’s intentions. that was in may. in november a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. over on the east side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown “places”. mr. pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. a mite of a little woman with blood thinned by california zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, shortbreathed old duffer. but johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead, looking through the small dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick house. (the last leaf, p. 81) pneumonia, an abstract notion from the sphere of medicine, in fact a severe infectious disease, being endowed by the author with human features in the context of the story, hence, personified (mr. pneumonia) becomes a kind of negative personage (unseen stranger, old gentleman, icy fingers, ravager, etc.) ravaging the health of his victims in the story․ this helps the writer strengthen the idea of the coming danger. the epithetic word-combination red-fisted, shortbreathed old duffer is the embodiment of the disease which doesn’t spare armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 102 anybody on its way. the adjective red which is an ordinary color term, acquires negative connotations in the context of the story and is meant to symbolize cruelty, blood, death. its use shows the girl’s state of a victim who was jaded by mr. pneumonia and could hardly move in her painted iron bedstead. the mournful atmosphere is intensified by the use of the epithet the blank side of the next brick house. the girl’s unhappy and sad feelings make the walls of the house look blank, and the place where the girl lies – a painted iron bedstead. the lack of any sign of vitality in the room seems obvious. the use of the adjectives cold, unseen, old, icy, with the nouns ravager and gentleman strengthen the negative image of mr. pneumonia. it is notable that the nonverbality of the above-mentioned epithets is realized within contexts where their use is unpredictable for the reader. out of the context they may lose the expressiveness. special interest arises when, through the use of stylistic devices and expressive means, the author tries to convey the hero's feelings, thoughts and emotions. the use of the epithets is so natural and vivid that they help the reader understand and evaluate the atmosphere of the story, the miserable feelings of the female characters and johnsy in particular. sue looked solicitously out of the window. what was there to count? there was only a bare, dreary yard to be seen and the blank side of the brick house twenty feet away. an old, old ivy vine, gnarled and decayed at the roots, climbed half way up the brick wall. the cold breath of autumn had stricken its leaves from the vine until its skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the crumbling bricks. (the last leaf, p.82) o. henry is a real master of creating characters. he describes johnsy’s last temptations towards life. even in agony she notices the decline and death of the nature. everything for her comes to an end. “her eyes can only see a bare, dreary yard, which is waiting for its decay as the cold breath of autumn has already stricken the leaves, and there are only skeleton branches clung. by using the epithet bare, dreary yard the author does not tend to present the description of the yard but rather the emotional state of the sick girl who in fact seems to be a victim of the fate. for johnsy her life is so gloomy and uninteresting that she is psychologically prepared to abandon it little by little with every leaf falling off the branches. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 103 in the following passage we deal with adherent connotations, which are hidden behind the lines and become apparent and tangible only when being thoroughly studied within the context. “tell me as soon as you have finished”, said johnsy, she closed her eyes, and lay white and still as a fallen statue, “because i want to see the last one fall. i have done enough waiting. i’m tired of waiting. i’m tired of thinking. i want to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor tired leaves”. (the last leaf, p.83) the orientation of the passage towards the girl’s psychological world is obvious here. the author reveals the inner feelings of the heroine. the thoughts of imprisonment, powerlessness and resentment are all intertwined. a talented girl, whom the future could possibly confer a title of a painter, turns out to be a helpless and poor creature. this becomes apparent from the very beginning of the story. she endures humiliation in the end lying in her iron bedstead, and this comes to prove that a person, living in such conditions, can never have a cheerful expression of a face, and that is why the author tends to enrich the description, choosing a proper expression like a fallen statue. the genius of the author has penetrated into the inner world of the girl and can see that she is completely with no vitality. it is so symbolic to draw a parallel between the character and a fallen statue. the inconsolable state of the character is so obvious that the author himself is sure she will never be able to outlive the grave situation. her best friend, who is always next to her, encourages johnsy never to lose her last hope, but she herself cannot be sure if it is realistic to anticipate even a weak ray of sun to appear in the gloom of their life. the use of the epithet poor tired leaves conveys the depressive state of the sick girl to whom the world seems completely dark and unhappy. the epithetic properties of the word-combination poor tired leaves, interwoven with personification enhance the description of the situation. autumn leaves usually qualified with such adjectives as yellow, wet, dry, but never poor and tired, are turned in the context of the story into living beings whose behavior is perceived as decisive for the sick girl. the adjective poor is first and foremost associated with a human being, for, as confirmed by oxford advanced learners dictionary (p. 1169), it expresses the quality of not having enough money for basic needs. it is obvious that this intertwinement of the epithet with personification is by no armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 104 means accidental. this condensation of devices is meant to create the image of poverty reigning in the life of the young girls, sue and johnsy, who were deprived of the possibility of realizing their professional dreams because of the social circumstances they were in. thus, the choice of the given epithetpersonification in making the speech more emphatic provides success in the realization of the author’s intention of depicting the image of the social discrimination the young girls have encountered. the image of the heroine is not depicted “directly” by the author. it is done through the decline of the nature. the description of johnsy’s unearthly condition is highly “poetic”. it abounds in metaphors and similes which call for “lyrical” timbre; tempo is slowed down, loudness – diminished, the voice acquires the quality of breathiness. the lexical repetitions and the regulated alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables, (bare dreary yard; blank brick; old ivy vine gnarled decayed; cold breath; clung bare crumbling bricks ) in the passage creates a well-organized rhythmical pattern which adds to the linguopoetic impact of the story. another remarkable case is the story the gift of magi. the theme revolves around the main problems of the society – poverty, class differences, rank, morality. however, the story reveals the beauty and devotion of the sacrifice of a married couple. della sells her hair to buy a golden chain for her husband. she sacrifices her personal “beauty” for love, and it is especially manifested in the description of della’s hair: had the queen of sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, della would have lit her hair hang out the window to dry just to depreciate her majesty’s jewels and gifts. della’s hair overweighs all jewels of the world, and by selling it for merely twenty dollars she overtly shows the sincere devotion and love she feels towards her husband. the use of epithets reinforces the beauty of her devotion with great accuracy. so now della’s beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. (the gift of the magi, p. 33) the epithet brown waters acquires expressive-emotional-evaluative overtones when used with the simile rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. the expression makes the reader immediately imagine the charm of della’s hair which is like a brown waterfall. it should be taken for granted that the intonation here is of paramount importance. the expression rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters is uttered in a slow and melancholic linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 105 tempo, temporally having pauses to make it more vivid. the author makes the meaning of the epithet brown waters stronger changing it into brown cascade. on the metasemiotic level the epithet acquires positive adherent connotations, thus helping the reader to imagine the beauty of della’s hair: down rippled the brown cascade. she held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. the dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit. (the gift of the magi) though jim lost his watch, he was convinced that he had another gift, and that was the love of della. the use of the non-verbal epithet bright and ardent spirit reinforces the atmosphere showing that the flash of precious metal is nothing as compared to della’s bright and ardent spirit. the figurative use of the adjectives bright and ardent in the context endows them with additional expressive-emotional overtones changing them from ordinary attributive to epithetic use to reflect the pure and intimate sensations of the heroes, their mutual love and sincere devotion. devoted love overwhelms over poverty and sickness. conclusion thus, o. henry shows the reader a piece of his heroes’ life, their relations and emotions. he scrutinizes his attention on minute things and conveys his intention of showing the subtleties of life which sometimes turn out to play rather a decisive role in one’s destiny. epithets in o. henry’s short stories are prevailingly transferred, based on the use of metaphoric adjectives and tend to endow the object with additional imaginative characteristics. in o. henry’s epithets the subjectively emotive meaning introduced into the text obviously suppresses the denotational meaning of the words, creates aesthetically valuable images which help the writer realize his intention through revealing the problematic aspects of the social life: poverty, class differences, isolation and defeat. references akhmanova, o. 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(1977). selected stories. moscow: progress publishers. մակդիրը որպես լեզվաբանաստեղծական հնար օ. հենրիի պատմվածքներում սոնա հարությունյան ամալյա հարությունյան հայտնի է, որ կարդալ ու հասկանալ գեղարվեստական գրականություն բառի իսկական իմաստով, հեշտ չէ, քանի որ բավարար չէ սեփական ընկալումը տեքստի «մակերեսով» սահմանափակելը: ընթերցողի՝ տեքստի խորքերը թափանցելու և գրողի բուն մտադրությունը բացահայտելու կարողությունն այս դեպքում առաջնային նշանակություն https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2019.15.1.009 https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2019.15.1.009 linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 107 ունեն: հարցին անդրադարձել են բազմաթիվ ականավոր բանասերներ, և նրանց ուսումնասիրություններով հաստատվել է, որ գեղարվեստական ստեղծագործության ընկալումն ու հասկացումը աստիճանական գործընթաց է, և դրան հնարավոր է հասնել քայլ առ քայլ: սույն հոդվածում մեթոդաբանական այս ելակետից էլ ուսումնասիրվում են մակդիրի կիրառությունները օ. հենրիի պատմվածքներում և դրանց դերը պատմվածքների լեզվաբանաստեղծական արժեքի ձևավորման մեջ: հետազոտական առումով՝ մասնավոր հետաքրքրություն են առաջացրել «վերջին տերևը» և «մոգերի նվերը» պատմվածքները: բանալի բառեր` գեղարվեստական ստեղծագործություն, օ. հենրիի պատմվածքները, մակդիր, լեզվաոճաբանական վերլուծության մեթոդ, մակդիրի ընկալում լեզվաբանաստեղծականի լույսի ներքո։ microsoft word maket 2021-2(24) 2.11.doc armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 translation studies 116 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2021.17.2.116 orwellian identity in style (pragma-stylistic approach to the translations of g. orwell’s animal farm) gayane gasparyan hasmik karapetyan** yerevan brusov state university the article focuses on transformations which occur in russian and armenian translations of g. orwell’s allegorical novella animal farm with special reference to pragma-stylistic analysis of both the source and the target texts. the aim of the analysis is to reveal the so-called orwellian identity in style and to determine the means of its manifestation in both translations. viewed from the perspective of pragmatic analysis of the original and the target texts, the russian translation can be characterized by unnecessary additions to the plain text and tends to be pompous in some cases while the armenian translation is closer to the style of the source text and tends to remain faithful to its intent. at large, both the armenian and russian versions of the fable have retained the chief pragmatic orientation and have almost the same impact on the target reader as the original one: persuasive message, rhetorical narration, manipulative nature. keywords: orwellian, pragma-stylistic analysis, transformation, persuasive message, rhetoric narration, manipulative nature. introduction the term orwellian is widely used in different contexts and is differently defined depending on the situation it comes to determine. in general, it is described as an adjective relating to the work of the british novelist george orwell, especially the totalitarian state depicted in nineteen eighty-four (english terms dictionary, 2015). it is also defined as an adjective relating to a political system in which the government controls or interferes in nearly every aspect of personal life (usage of the words and phrases in modern english,  gasparyan.gayane@yandex.com ** has.kar.tar.29@gmail.com this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 06.07.2021 revised: 27.08.2021 accepted: 22.09.2021 © the author(s) 2021 translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 117 2013). a rather full and extended definition of the term is suggested by wikipedia (orwellian, 2021) according to which orwellian is an adjective describing a situation, idea, or societal condition that george orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free and open society. it denotes an attitude and a brutal policy of draconian control by propaganda, surveillance, disinformation, denial of truth (doublethink), and manipulation of the past, including the unperson – a person whose past existence is expunged from the public record and memory, practiced by modern repressive governments. very often the term orwellian is used in situations describing g. orwell’s language or style of writing, though the term orwellian language has lately acquired a different connotation. it is mostly used to specify the language chosen to hide or to invert the truth. in any case, while speaking about g. orwell’s identity in language, the term orwellian style is more than relevant to determine his uniqueness in dystopian literature for its straightforwardness and the unusual manner of allegorical significance. the allegorical sense of orwell’s books does not hinder the language, on the contrary, his books are simple in manner and in the choice of linguistic means. in his famous essay why i write? g. orwell suggests a number of rules he has followed throughout his writer’s career:  never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. g. orwell appreciates individuality and unique approach to every type of a literary problem, that is why he considers imitation dangerous and lamentable for the language because the phrase or any kind of linguistic unit loses its real meaning and value.  never use a long word where a short one will do. g. orwell values simplicity in literature. if you could convey your message to the reader in a straightforward manner without using confusing structures and manipulative figures of speech, that is something deserving appreciation.  if it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. this rule derives from the former one. proofreading is the very phase determining whether there are extra words in the literary piece, they serve a particular purpose or not, if not they can be removed. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 translation studies 118  never use the passive where you can use the active. g. orwell believes that, for the most part, the passive voice as a grammatical category adds unnecessary confusion to the writing, though it has become a characteristics of the english language.  never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday english equivalent. for most of his career as an author, g. orwell has written for the common, ordinary people. he believes that an author should do his/her best to appeal to the reader and make the work as easy to understand as possible.  break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous (orwell, 1946). as a conclusion he declares that these rules are by no means fixed, even admitting that he does not always obey these rules. he writes that for certain he has again and again committed the very faults he has been protesting against (ibid.). g. orwell is fascinated by the relationship between morality and language. the so-called orwellian style of simplicity in manner and choice of language means is rather vividly depicted in the allegorical novel animal farm, where the author uses animals on an english farm to describe communist regime in the soviet union. some animals are directly associated with the leaders of the communist party: the pigs napoleon and snowball, for instance, are images of joseph stalin and leon trotsky, respectively. g. orwell uses the fable form for a variety of aesthetic/literary and political reasons. in order to better understand this, it is useful to know at least the basics of soviet history under the rule of the communist party, starting with the october revolution of 1917. napoleon expels snowball from the farm and, after the windmill collapses, uses snowball in his purges just as stalin used trotsky. similarly, napoleon becomes a dictator, while no one ever hears from snowball again. g. orwell was inspired to write animal farm by his experiences in a trotskyist group during the spanish civil war, and snowball has a more responsive portrayal than napoleon. though animal farm was written as an attack on a specific government, namely the soviet union, its general themes of harassment, oppression, suffering and injustice encircle even a wider range; it is relevant for any time and epoch. modern readers also can see g. orwell’s book as a translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 119 powerful tool for fighting against and knowing the nature of any political, military or rhetorical power that tends to control human beings unjustly right the way stalin did once consolidating his power with brutal intensity, killing or imprisoning his perceived political enemies and running the purge of about twenty million soviet citizens. it is also important to focus on the transformations, which occur in russian and armenian translations of g. orwell’s animal farm with special reference to pragma-stylistic analysis of both the source and the target texts, and this is specifically done in this article. the aim of the analysis is to reveal the socalled orwellian identity in style in the mentioned allegorical novella and to determine the means of its manifestation in both translations. why pragma-stylistic approach to translation transformations? according to e. nida, “translation consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of style” (nida, 1984, p. 40). to k. reiss’s firm belief, translations should respect the function of the source text type, for translation of informative texts should completely transfer the information content of the source text, whereas in the case of expressive texts the focus of translation should be the artistic aspects of the source text. operative text translation should achieve the same psychological effect on target readers’ behavior as the source text has on its readers (reiss, 2014, p. 2447). emotive text translation requires proper initial stylistic analysis. i. arnold suggests the following approach: “stylistic analysis can be carried out by focusing either on the driving forces of the writer’s creative process, that is, from the author, or on the reader’s perception of the text itself. the first approach coincides with literary stylistics, whereas the second one – with the style of decoding” (arnold, 2002, p. 13). the difference between the tasks of the author’s stylistics and the stylistics of perception lies in the fact that the former is more interested in the author than in his/her work, considering the work as a kind of consequence, the reasons for which must be sought. the stylistics of perception and, therefore, the stylistics of decoding, consider the literary work as a source of impressions for the reader. the vocabulary, the linguo-stylistic means which carry the emotive charge of the text, have the utmost impact on the reader and function within the particular genre chosen by the author as the most suitable form for transferring his/her ideas. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 translation studies 120 writer’s style is identified with two more categories as well: the categories of implicitness and explicitness. the translation process which consists of various phases of transfer, is largely dependent on these categories. implicitness and explicitness as textual specificities are the result of the author’s choice, his/her preference, subsequently, his/her individual style. generally speaking, it is the author who decides to provide his/her message in a more or less implicit manner. however, no matter how original the author’s style is, the very topic and the matter under consideration require anyhow the type of writing, its textual categories and its accessibility for perception, thus identifying the particular audience to whom the writing is addressed. the interpretation and translation of the original text starts with revealing and understanding the cause-and-effect relationships between the events, the importance of the problems raised, the author’s attitude, etc. presented with a specific bunch of lexical units, syntactic structures and stylistic tricks. the categories of implicitness and explicitness sometimes can lead to ambiguity or misinterpretation so inadmissible for a proper translation. but the analytical aspect is more specific to this part. what type of analysis of the source text is needed to achieve an accurate and basically exact transformation of the author’s cognition and the manner of its representation in the target text? to answer the question, one should keep in mind that the socio-cultural context around the source text is materialized in it by means of language media used by the author and determines his approach towards the situation described – the utterance itself and the target recipient consequently. hence, the discourse analysis of the socio-cultural situation together with language media used by the author and the certain impact on the recipient based on its pragmatic value are of great importance for any type of translation. moreover, the discourse and pragmatic analyses of the source text bring forth another type of analysis considerably valuable for an emotive text translation – stylistic analysis of the language media, which comes to combine the previous two (discourse and pragmatics) to specify the aesthetic value and the definite effect the text generates in a certain situation for a certain recipient. a pragma-stylistic approach to target text analysis of g. orwell’s “animal farm” to characterize orwellian manner in the allegorical fable animal farm from the pragma-stylistic perspective one can definitely indicate that it combines caustic reporting with a tone of generous anger that determines g. orwell’s translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 121 subsequent writing. the language used in it as well as its form and structure are very important for storytelling. g. orwell uses persuasive language, circular narrative and allegory, which are particularly significant. the novella is written in ten chapters, but thematically it can be divided into three parts: the dream, the rebellion and the napoleon regime. the notion of the narration being circular can be explained relying on the fact that napoleon’s regime represents the same dictatorship as mr. jones’s. since the requirements for the article format are rather limited, one example will be illustrated hereinafter to specify the main tips of orwellian style, to compare its armenian and russian translations by a. emin and i. polotsk respectively, and to analyze the consistency, value and interchangeability with the source text in the target cultures. now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? let us face it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short. we are born, we are given just so much food as will keep the breath in our bodies, and those of us who are capable of it are forced to work to the last atom of our strength; and the very instant that our usefulness has come to an end we are slaughtered with hideous cruelty. no animal in england knows the meaning of happiness or leisure after he is a year old. no animal in england is free. the life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth. (chapter 1, p. 3). compared with the speeches of other animals living on the farm, this pig’s speech and manners are more elaborate and sophisticated, and this derives from its intricate intentions. in this very extract the beginning is set with a rhetorical question. this device is meant to make other animals question their position on the farm. old major, the pig, represents the image of a good politician, he questions the feelings of the audience, shakes their views upon the existing setting and then provides the answer immediately. this rhetorical device is used to encourage and make the animals rebel. old major asks the question and gives the answer he wishes, persuading them that he is right. almost every animal on the farm is illiterate, and the leader pigs take advantage of this and use words and expressions the illiterate animals do not understand: miserable, laborious, slavery, hideous cruelty, atom of our strength, keep the breath in our bodies. the style of the speech is rhetorical. instead of saying our life, this life of ours is used. the pig emphasizes that they are a community using the armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 translation studies 122 pronouns we, us, our, ours to generalize the issue, to make everybody feel part of the existing regime. in the same extract g. orwell uses anaphora repeating in two sentences the negative clause no animal in england. this stylistic device is widely used in oratory, it makes speech more persuasive and powerful. repetition stamps the idea into the head of each representative of the audience. besides, negation makes the device even stronger and to the point. the armenian translation of the same extract sounds as follows: ուրեմն, ընկերներ, ի՞նչ է իրենից ներկայացնում մեր կյանքը։ եկեք ծուռ նստենք, բայց շիտակ խոսենք. մեր կյանքը ողորմելի է, տքնաջան և կարճատև։ մենք ծնվում ենք, մեզ մի բուռ լափ են տալիս՝ ինչ է, թե շունչներս չփչենք, նրանց, ովքեր ընդունակ են, անխնա բանեցնում են, քամելով ուժերի վերջին կաթիլը, և այն նույն պահին, երբ մեր պիտանիությունը սպառվում է, մեզ հրեշավոր անգթությամբ մորթում են։ մեկ տարին բոլորած և ոչ մի կենդանի անգլիայում չգիտե, թե ինչ է երջանկությունը կամ հանգիստը։ անգլիայում և ոչ մի կենդանի ազատ չէ։ կենդանու կյանքն անցնում է թշվառության և ստրկության մեջ՝ ահա զուտ եղելությունը: the rhetorical question will be analyzed first: the armenian structure in this very interrogation sounds plain, but it was meant to sound powerful in the original. it would be better to keep the component nature – բնույթ in the target text to sound closer to the mood and spirit of the propaganda setting. the following variant may be suggested: ո՞րն է բնույթը մեր այս կյանքի. a direct translation from the source text is provided, it both sounds better in accordance with armenian grammar and stylistics and conveys the style of the original writing. the verb to face in the source text, which is an indicator of the simplicity of orwellian writing style is transferred into the target text with the phraseological unit ծուռ նստել, շիտակ խոսել which is too specific to the armenian linguo-cultural reality. that is why it is inconsistent with english reality of the original and orwellian simple style. it would be better to keep the simplicity of the linguistic unit: let us face it – եկեք հասկանանք/եկեք translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 123 տեսնենք. besides, the expression իրենից ներկայացնել has penetrated into armenian as a result of the russian influence (in russian: являть собой, являться). the modifiers given to the word life are well transferred into armenian: miserable – ողորմելի, laborious – տքնաջան, short – կարճատև. the word food of the original is translated into armenian as լափ by means of specification. it is fair to mention that the word լափ is the watery food for dogs, and in its figurative usage the word may mean food of low quality. but not every animal is given a watery smash, let alone the herbivorous ones which can be given smashed potatoes with whey, but not always. if orwell wanted to mention the quality of the food, he would use a more specific word, but in this particular case it is unnecessary. the most important thing in the sentence is the quantity of the food given, but not the quality. in the armenian variant the original figurative expression to keep the breath in one’s body is adequately transferred through the phraseological unit շունչը փչել in the antonymic structure ինչ է, թե շունչներս չփչենք. the same structure is used in the russian translation. the figurative expression to the last atom of one’s strength is appropriately translated into armenian with the participial phrase քամելով ուժերի վերջին կաթիլը, which conveys the exact meaning of the original expression, and the word քամել – squeeze intensifies the hyperbolic setting. for the expression hideous cruelty a. emin came up with the expression հրեշավոր անգթություն which, as well as its russian variant, is a proper choice. the stylistic device of anaphora is lost in the target text, while the repetition is preserved with the phrase անգլիայում և ոչ մի կենդանի. the loss of the stylistic device is a violation of the source style, the preservation of which would make old major’s speech sound more logical and well-founded in the translation. the russian translation of the same extract sounds as follows: итак, друзья, в чем смысл нашего с вами бытия? давайте посмотрим правде в лицо: краткие дни нашей жизни проходят в унижении и тяжком труде. с той минуты, как мы появляемся на свет, нам дают есть ровно столько, чтобы в нас не угасла жизнь, и те, кто armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 translation studies 124 обладает достаточной силой, вынуждены работать до последнего вздоха; и, как обычно, когда мы становимся никому не нужны, нас с чудовищной жестокостью отправляют на бойню. ни одно животное в англии после того, как ему минет год, не знает, что такое счастье или хотя бы заслуженный отдых. ни одно животное в англии не знает, что такое свобода. жизнь наша – нищета и рабство. такова истина. the russian translation tends to be high in style. it uses structures such as нашего с вами, which makes the speech more poetic and emphasizes the idea of community. the translator uses a word wider in the meaning, бытие (в чем смысл нашего с вами бытия?), which is praiseworthy, because it strengthens the question and forces every animal to think over their well-being not only at present, not only in the past, but in the future as well. the verb to face in the source text, is used for starting the explanation and giving the answer to the rhetorical question. in the target text the phraseological unit посмотреть правде в лицо definitely contains the equivalent component face (лицо, which is a noun), but it changes the meaning and the intent of the unit. old major has not started talking about unfair things yet, he is just breaking down the situation into questions. the russian version cuts the pace and immediately submits that something is wrong. the verb face is used to mean to recognize and deal with straightforwardly, and the pragmatic value of the verb to face is completely presented in the source text. the speech tends to represent a clear picture of the existing situation, whereas the russian phrase посмотреть правде в лицо, meaning to soberly assess the situation and recognize the actual state of affairs, gives the impression that the animals are aware of their delusion, though, in fact, they are not. it would be better to use a more neutral expression instead, such as обратить внимание. in the second line of the source extract one can view several attributives to the word life, namely miserable, laborious, short. orwell provides direct modifiers in a simple sentence. the russian translation is more poetic and pathetic, the translator uses an addition to make the speech more elaborate instead of writing наша жизнь несчастна, утомительна и коротка (which is a direct translation from english). i. polotsk prefers to add дни нашей жизни (days of our life) to replenish the gap which exists in russian related to the plural form of the word жизнь – life with the component days (дни нашей translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 125 жизни – days of our life) gives the effect of considering life as a whole and feeling oneself as part of the community. the russian variant (унижение) which is a unit of another part of speech (a noun) deviates in its meaning from the source text,. the word misery indicating a state of suffering and want is translated into russian as унижение which implies interference from a superior side. the modifier miserable is better to be replaced by мизерный or ничтожный. for the english word laborious there is тяжкий труд, which can be viewed as a good choice of the word for it contains the component of labor as well. the figurative expression to keep the breath in one’s body, is replaced by an antonymic expression в нас не угасла жизнь. this is a figurative combination of compatible words (we are used to saying жизнь угасает – life fades away in russian) and well suits the context in the present extract both stylistically and semantically. old major’s speech, though delivered to a simple audience, tends to be as figurative and colorful as possible. orwell uses the expression to the last atom of one’s strength hyperbolically intensifying the meaning behind the unit. it is translated into the russian set expression до последнего вздоха which means to death. but the english unit is more about losing one’s strength which is not so intensive as the russian one that implies the end of somebody or something. the use of the russian expression до последних сил could be considered a better choice, closer to the original in the meaning and indicating the notion of strength – сила. the russian translation чудовищная жестокость of the metaphorical expression hideous cruelty adequately conveys the idea of the fears of animals towards humans who usually try to hide their terrible deeds. inconsistency is observed in the translation of the word leisure which is presented in russian through заслуженный отдых (a well-earned rest) as the latter is wider in sense. the addition of заслуженный is not appropriate as the english word leisure is not associated with the idea of deserved or well-earned. the stylistic device of anaphora, which is characteristic of oratory is preserved in the target text with the same negation structure: ни одно животное… ни одно животное... moreover, the translator uses complex sentences with subordinate clauses in the target text, repeating even the verb to know – знать, which rather intensifies the repetition, and makes the russian speech sound persuasive. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 translation studies 126 in contrast to the russian variant the armenian translation provides a more proper equivalent (հանգիստ) for the word leisure. the source text is not abundant with synonyms, and cognates such as misery and miserable can be observed here. but both the armenian and the russian texts violate orwellian simplicity: in russian унижение is used, which is given proper consideration above, and нищета at the end of the extract, in armenian – ողորմելի and թշվառություն accordingly. in the last sentence of the source extract the collocation the plain truth is translated into russian as такова истина, which is suitable and sounds simpler like the armenian collocation զուտ եղելություն: the word եղելություն is not only an event that has already happened but also expresses one action, one setting and also the existing situation. old major speaks about a situation which has had a long duration and is still true. conclusion the language that george orwell used in his allegorical fable animal farm is simple, clear and perceivable. descriptions and dialogues are led to a minimum. g. orwell avoids sentimentality, and even the heart-breaking and emotionally stressed parts of the text are straightforward in style. the author focuses on telling the story, providing a clear view upon the matter under consideration, thus making the lesson to be taught to the society even more comprehensible. through the image of the pigs in the fable, george orwell shows the power of political manipulation. the pragma-stylistic analysis of source and target texts has been used, i.e. a lot of language means, speech units and devices as well as various expressive means used by george orwell in the fable have been considered from both pragmatic and stylistic perspectives. the russian translation can be characterized by unnecessary additions to the plain text, tending to be even pompous in some cases. the armenian translation is closer to the style of the source text and faithful to its intent. at large, both the armenian and the russian versions of the novella have retained the chief pragmatic orientation of the original and provide almost the same impact on the target reader: persuasive message, rhetorical narration, manipulative nature. translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 references arnold, i. v. (2002). stilistika sovremennogo angliyskogo yazika [stylistics of modern english]. moscow, flinta: nauka. english terms dictionary. (2015). retrieved from https://etymology.enacademic.com/2829/orwellian nida, e. (1984). on translation. beijing: translation publishing corp. orwell, g. (1946). why i write. retrieved from https://ab3orwell.weebly.com/writing-style.html orwellian. (2021). in wikipedia. the free encyclopedia. retrieved august 9, 2021 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/orwellian reiss, k. (2014). translation criticism: the potentials and limitations. categories and criteria for translation quality assessment. london and new york: routledge. usage of the words and phrases in modern english. (2013). retrieved from https://etymology.en-academic.com/2829/orwellian sources of data orwell, g., (2015). animal farm. london: penguin. orwell, g., (2013). anasnaferma [animal farm]. (a. emin, trans). yerevan:antares. orwell, g., (1988). skotnyj dvor [animal farm]. (i.polotsk, trans.). riga: journal rodnik, №№ 3-6. օրուելյան ոճական ինքնությունը (զ. օրուելի «անասնաֆերմա» վիպակի թարգմանությունների ոճագործաբանական քննություն) գայանե գասպարյան հասմիկ կարապետյան հոդվածում ուսումնասիրության առարկա են դարձել զ. օրուելի «անասնաֆերմա» այլաբանական վիպակի հայերեն և ռուսերեն թարգմանություններում տեղ գտած փոխակերպումները, որոնց ոճագործաբանական վերլուծությամբ հեղինակներին հաջողվում է վեր հանել և սահմանել այսպես կոչված, օրուելյան ոճական ինքնությունը և որոշել դրա դրսևորման միջոցները հայերեն ու ռուսերեն թարգմանվածքներում: բնօրինակ և թիրախ տեքստերի գործաբանական վերլուծության տեսանկյունից, հայերեն և ռուսերեն տարբերակները պահպանել են 127 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 translation studies 128 հիմնական գործաբանական արժեքը և գրեթե նույն ազդեցությունն են ունենում թիրախ ընթերցողի վրա` պերսուազիվ ուղերձ, ճարտասանական շարադրանք, մտաշահարկային բնույթ: բանալի բառեր. օրուելյան, ոճագործաբանական վերլուծություն, փոխակերպում, պերսուազիվ ուղերձ, ճարտասանական շարադրանք, մտաշահարկային բնույթ: hin.qxd lexical syntagms in publicistic prose under the functional-stylistic system of speech, thesame morphological and syntactical categories and forms are represented differently in different styles. a type of syntagmatic sequence can characterize a functional style and conversely a functional style can be differentiated on the basis of types of syntagms. certain syntagmatic categories are either fully expressed or only partially realized in a particular functional style, and sometimes are even completely excluded, thus becoming stylistically unmarked for that particular variety of speech. such correlation, particularly between types (categories) of lexical syntagms and functional motivation, is specifically expressed in the functional style of publicistic prose, which represents an ontological juxtaposition of the scientific (intellective, informative) and the fictional, of fact and fiction, of message and emotive impact. the formation of new words through stylistic connotations (a frequent observation in the categorial forms) seems non-typical of the publicistic variety of speech. it is determined by a certain prevalence of the informative function, whose aim is not only to give a fully precise and objective description of historical, social, cultural, political events, developments and processes taking place in the society (fact), but also to analyse and evaluate them (fiction). correspondingly, the specific speech organization has its own norms in the choice of language means at both semantic and metasemiotic levels to meet the needs of communication in this sphere. however, certain syntagms of different lexico-morphological categories are an obvious means of expressing functional motivation in publicistic prose as they represent not only lexico-morphological, but syntactic relations as well.1 the lexico-morphological categories are productive, thus expressing different connotative meanings and realizing the function of emotive impact. at first sight, this quality seems to contradict the informative bias of publicistic style but, in fact, the selection of categorial forms is carried out so carefully that in any publicistic context the juxtaposition of fact and fiction becomes quite obvious in all these forms. in order to illustrate this, we will discuss two contexts, from fictional and publicistic sources respectively. the light faded; the hills died away into featureless flat shapes against the sky. under the chestnut trees what utter darkness! john still waited, but his wife did not come. “all right then,” he said to 62 armenian folia anglistika linguistics gayane muradyan himself, with a spiteful little anger that disguised itself as a godlike and impersonal serenity of justice; “let her sulk if she wants to. she only punishes herself.” next morning he left for rome and the cytological congress without saying good bye; that would teach her. but “thank goodness!” was moira’s first reflection when she heard that he had gone. and then, suddenly, she felt rather sorry for him. poor john! he was pathetic really. she was so rich in happiness that she could afford to be sorry for him. and in a way she was even grateful to him. if he hadn’t come, if he hadn’t behaved so unforgivably, nothing would have happened between tonino and herself. poor john! but all the same he was hopeless. her life was turbulent now, there were depths and darknesses. and love was no longer a game; it was violent, allabsorbing, even rather terrible. she wanted to be with him, to feel his nearness, to touch him. her solitudes were endless meditations on the theme of him. sometimes the longing for his tangible presence was too achingly painful to be borne. coming like this in the middle of the night! it was madness, it was scandalous. (aldous huxley. “brief candles” p. 74) as a general rule, the market is divided into rows of covered stalls, ranging from perishable foods to household electric appliances. nearly everything is available, either wholesale or retail. diversity refers not only to the wide range of goods and services available but also to the size, relative importance and modernness of the market compared to others in the area. the diversity of the nigerian culture is one of its hallmarks. the country is comparable in size to texas and new mexico combined and has 300 ethnic and subethnic groups with as many distinct languages and dialects. often a dialect is clearly understandable only to the inhabitants of a town and its immediate environs. collectivism and uncertainty avoidance are more evenly applicable to the bulk of nigerian society regardless of tribal affiliation. these qualities are readily observable at the market place, which bustles with activity. the smart shopper must come to the market fully armed with a knowledge of the latest fair prices for the commodities of interest. the typical seller, in turn, has perfected the art of keeping a poker face in order to extract as much profit from the sale as possible without antagonizing the customer, with the minimum of negotiating necessary to arrive at a mutually acceptable price�. bystanders eagerly offer their own loud opinions about the ongoing bargain. (martin j.gannon. “understanding global cultures” p.235) 63 linguistics armenian folia anglistika each of these contexts represents a different functional-stylistic variety of speech, even though the category units used in both of them are structurally the same. the stylistically highly charged categorial forms in the first context (featureless, darkness, spiteful, god-like, happiness, hopeless, darknesses, nearness, endless, painful) have created a distinct aesthetic atmosphere by describing human emotions. similar structures which describe the diversity of nigerian society in the second context (perishable, available, modernness, comparable, understandable, applicable, regardless, observable, shopper, seller, customer, bystanders, acceptable) aim at giving certain information through connotations imposed on them by the lexico-morphological categorial forms, so that their publicistic function (emotive + informative) is fully realized. as has already been observed, each style makes use of certain categorial forms according to its function. the study of the words on the basis of the five lexicomorphological categories [the category of action agent (-er), the category of quality (-ness, -ful), the category of caritivity (-less), the category of possibility of an action (-able), the category of simulation (-like)],2 reveals the stylistically marked elements of the category of possibility of an action (-able) to be the most common choice of contemporary english publicistic prose. the adjectives with the suffix -able in this style are prevalent and numerous as compared with scientific and fictional styles of writing. a certain limited number of informative terms such as amendable, applicable, adaptable, dutiable, heritable, (un)impeachable, transferable, ratable, manoeuvrable, (un)alterable, (in)violable are also relevant in publicistic prose writing. there is a noticeable decrease in stylistically marked units of other categories in this style as opposed to fictional style. however, the derivative adjectives of the category of possibility of action are quite common occurrences and are indeed most widely used, especially the forms with negative prefixes in-, im-, dis-, un-, ir(appreciable, collapsible, considerable, deplorable, inexorable, objectionable, presentable, regrettable, surmountable, supplantable, vulnerable, comeatable, getatable, (in)consolable, (in)dubitable, (in)alienable, (in)eradicable, (in)excusable, (in)disputable, (im)measurable, (im)perishable, (im)practicable, (im)probable, (dis)reputable, (dis)soluble, (un)matchable, (un)endurable, (un)exceptionable, (ir)replaceable, (ir)refutable, (ir)reparable). of particular interest is the fact that this choice is so important that most of the syntagms with the suffix -able, are perceived as “publicistic” due to a high degree of occurrence and wide variety, thus becoming stylistically marked. the reason for the acquisition of this new quality probably lies in the semantic peculiarity of the above syntagms, none of which realizes completion of action. the consideration of a number of extra-linguistic factors makes it clear that possible actions cannot actually be meant to be realized. such a realization is always relative. social, public and historical phenomena are never generally accepted rules or truths either. this quality of social relativity corresponds to the same quality of the adjectives realizing the category of possibility of action, thus making them appropriate to the general stylistic characteristics of the above speech variety. 64 armenian folia anglistika linguistics it should be noted that the functionally and stylistically meaningful or style-forming characteristics of the adjectives functioning in the category of possibility of an action are acceptable in contemporary english publicistic style not only due to their dynamic nature and semantic capacity but also to their condensed form. this style on the whole tends to syntagmatic condensation, of course, not to such an extent as the scientific and newspaper styles. the above observations allow us to conclude that the style-forming property of the adjectives with the suffix -able is fully actualized and finds its realization in the functional style of publicistic prose, where it becomes stylistically marked. the functional meaning is so definite and expresses the core of the style with such peculiarity that on the basis of this feature this style could possibly be regarded not as a juxtaposition of the two basic styles of speech, fictional and scientific speech varieties, but as a third style, enjoying the same independence as the above mentioned major functional styles. references: 1. æ³ñáõïû³ý ¶.´. þ³ñ³ñûáõë³ï³ý áõëáõùý³ëçñáõãûáõýý»ñ, ºñ¨³ý, 2003; òåð-ìèíàñîâà ñ.ã. ñèíòàãìàòèêà ôóíêöèîíàëüíûõ ñòèëåé. ì., 1986. 2. alexandrova o.v., ter-minasova s.g. english syntax. collocation, colligation and discourse. m., 1987. ´³é³ûçý ß³ñáõûãý»ñá ññ³å³ñ³ï³ëáë³ï³ý ³ñó³ïáõù ´³é³ûçý ß³ñáõûãý»ñç ¨ ·áñí³é³ï³ý-á׳ï³ý ýå³ï³ï³áõõõí³-íáõãû³ý ï³åá ññ³å³ñ³ï³ëáë³ï³ý ³ñó³ïáõù ³é³í»é ³ïýñ³ûï »ý ³ñï³óáéáõù –able í»ñç³í³ýóáí ³í³ï³ýý»ñá, áñáýù, áëï ¿áõãû³ý, çñ³óýáõù »ý ·áñíáõáõãû³ý ï³ï³ñù³ý ñý³ñ³íáñáõãû³ý ï³ñ·á: ðñ³å³ñ³ï³ëáë³ï³ý ³ñó³ïáõù ³ûë μ³é³ûçý ß³ñáõûãý»ñç é³ûý ·áñí³íáõãûáõýá μ»ñáõù ¿ á׳ï³ý ýßáõûã³íáñù³ý ¨ ûåïáõù ³û¹ ùç³íáñý»ñá á׳ï³ñμ»ñ³ïçã ñ³ïï³ýçßáí: 65 linguistics armenian folia anglistika armenian folia anglistika – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english (since 2005) and yerevan state university (since 2015) aims at fostering research of the english language, literature and culture armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 literature studies 118 manifestations of postmodernism in hermann hesse's novel “the glass bead game” ara arakelyan  yerevan state university the paper attempts to consider the connections between postmodernism, aesthetics and herman hesse’s novel the glass bead game referring to the history of the last most influential manifestation of the theoretical and aesthetic thought of the west – postmodernism, also characterized by paradoxes. based on a number of fundamental principles of the aesthetics of postmodernism and data on the work of hermann hesse, the specific relations that connect hesse’s work with postmodernism, are considered. this refers first to the ideas of the world as chaos, then aesthetic eclecticism, multiculturalism and finally game. within the framework of the idea the world as chaos, the wide use of the concept of simulacrum in both hesse’s and postmodernist works is considered. aesthetic eclecticism, which is “the dominant sign of the culture of the postmodern era” (j.f. lyotard, i. ilyin), is also found in hesse’s novel in various manifestations. multiculturalism, both as a social utopia and as an aesthetic principle, is also widespread among postmodernist aesthetes (especially l. fiedler) and in hesse’s novel. in the novel the east-west political and cultural dialogue also deepens. finally, the game, being one of the stable european cultural codes, is rediscovered both in hesse’s novel and in postmodernist aesthetics (u. eco). keywords: high modernism, postmodernism, postmodern relativism, deconstruction, text, chaos, simulacrum, eclecticism, pluralism, game. introduction for more than five decades, the aesthetic and philosophical thought of the west has been massively talking about postmodernism as the dominant movement of political, social, scientific and artistic culture of the late 20 th and the 21 st centuries: scientific and fictional texts, interpretations have been and are still being created, conferences are being held, scientific theses are being written. however, there is a paradox: until today there is still no clarity in the perceptions  arakelyan.ara@ysu.am this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 07.09.2022 revised: 01.10.2022 accepted: 12.11.2022 © the author(s) 2023 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2023.19.1.118 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 119 of the term and concept of postmodernism. various encyclopedia definitions and those given by some literary scholars, repeating each other, often contrasting, create an extremely multi-layered contradictory picture of postmodernism from a system of philosophical, epistemological, scientific-realistic and sensual concepts, aesthetic pluralism, a special literary methodology to spiritual existence, the spirit of the time, and similar concepts. as described by umberto eco “postmodernism is not a movement enclosed by certain chronological frames, but a spiritual concept or, more precisely, kunstwollen (will towards art), a practice” (eco, 2014, p. 113). eco, undoubtedly one of the most authoritative postmodern theorists, believes that the era of each modernism is necessarily followed by postmodernism, and according to this logic, he considers rabelais and sterne postmodernists. françois lyotard speaks of a “postmodern situation”. more opinions of this kind can be mentioned. they, of course, affirm that postmodernism, like modernism, is more than just a literary movement. it would be correct to describe it as an aesthetic state that predetermines the consciousness of a writer and an artist. it is noteworthy that the aesthetictheoretical thought manages to give a complete historical, but not theoretical portrait. it should be noted that the history of this literary movement is rich in other paradoxes as well, one of which has already been mentioned. for example, the emergence of postmodernism is paradoxical. the thing is that literary movements usually make a name long after their formation, while postmodernism appeared earlier than the literary texts representing it. as is known, it’s related to robert pannwitz’s work the crisis of european culture published in 1917, when there was nothing postmodern in the publication. there are paradoxical, contradictory lines in relations between modernism and postmodernism. although the formation of postmodernism is, to some extent, related to overcoming the crisis typical of modernism, not only do they fail to overcome, but they also deepen to the extreme. however, the aesthetic features of these literary movements are best seen when their ideological paradigms are combined. for example, if modernism highlights the symbol, the pattern, the entirety, the purpose, the genre, the skill, the metaphor and the choice, then postmodernism fundamentally changes everything giving importance to absurdity, antithesis, deconstruction, game, text, weariness, metonymy, combination. it should also be noted that modern literature begins to speak quite widely not only about the connections of postmodernism with modernism, but also with other literary armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 literature studies 120 movements romanticism, especially baroque. there are also manifestations of paradox in the formation and development of postmodernism in germanspeaking countries. while in germany this literary movement does not stand out at all with significant success, there are postmodern giants in austria and switzerland, in the person of peter handke and max frisch. though there is an opinion that postmodernism has no homeland, the spanish-american countries are pointed out as a geographical environment of its origin. formation of postmodernism as is known, the history of literature traces the roots of postmodernity to the end of the 19 th century, that is, to the literature of decadence and the philosophy of friedrich nietzsche. in this regard richard tarnas writes: “according to all signs, nietzsche was the chief prophet of postmodern thought, with his radical inquisitive consciousness, his powerful and poisonous sense of smell, which allowed him to anticipate the nihilism originating in the western thought” (tarnas, 1995, p․ 335). and the representatives of high modernism joyce, faulkner, kafka, muzil, t. mann become the direct preparers of postmodernism, undoubtedly, among them hermann hesse. moreover, without underestimating the contribution of the listed writers to establishing postmodernism, we find that through his prose and poetry hesse makes it possible to speak more thoroughly about relationships. let us try to argue this hypothesis. when talking about hesse as one of the bearers of western thought and culture, in addition to the many features of his work, due to which hesse is a world-famous figure in literature today, i would like to highlight one of them in particular universalism. it is a unique feature characteristic of only chosen ones, by which they connect times and ideas. it has probably been noticed that this feature is not only characteristic of hesse, but of other writers of high modernism as well. and, of course, kafka’s the trial, faulkner’s the sound and the fury or joyce’s ulysses (though umberto eco especially highlights the novel finnegans wake) could have become a subject of research in terms of relations with postmodernism with no less scientific interest. however, each of these writers is universal in their own way. high modernism and “hyper reality” how are hermann hesse and postmodernism related? what are the points of contact where hesse and postmodernism become comparable and allow us to talk about the relations between them? literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 121 1. first and foremost, it is the idea of “the world as chaos” that was spoken about by modernists as well. but there is a significant difference in their perception of chaos. if in the literature of modernism a certain effort to overcome chaos, to achieve the unity of existence and consciousness is still preserved, postmodernism consistently destroys any social, cultural or spiritual structure. as is known, postmodernism is formed as a reflection of a new historical situation. the two world wars, and the ensuing scientific and technological revolution, along with the deep disillusionment with humanistic values, lead to the entrenchment of consumer psychology and its corresponding morals. we must add to them the spread of mass culture, the sharp outbreak of philosophical, literary-theoretical, linguistic-philosophical schools and currents. postmodernity is born from these realities, which bring uncertainty to literature and art, lack of civic-political ideals, cultural weariness and entropy indifference to the state, man, god, intelligence and to other fundamental values, which deepens the idea of chaos. but in fact, the beginning of the consciousness of chaos is initiated by f. nietzsche with his famous judgment, “god is dead”. the idea of chaos develops uniquely by the aestheticians of postmodernism, m. foucault, r. bart, j. derrida and others. the death of god is followed by the ideas of the death of the author, then of the individual (reader), and finally of the style (r. barthes). g. deleuze and f. guattari introduced the term chaos (quoted by j. joyce, finnegans wake). as a sign of chaos, they speak of “endless changes”, “endless speeds”, “moments” that are either too short or too long to turn into time (deleuze, & guattari, 1998, p. 256). the idea of chaos is interpreted in an interesting way in hermann hesse’s novel the glass bead game as well. as is well known, the events in the novel “the glass bead game” take place in a utopian environment, in the 22 nd or 23 rd centuries. in retrospect, he refers to the serious political, economic, and spiritual catastrophes of the early 19 th and late 20 th centuries. hesse calls those times “feuilleton”. speaking of those times of economic and political upheaval, of endless wars and spiritual impoverishment, among the “examples of the intellect’s debasement, venality, and self-betrayal” (hesse, 2016, p. 14). hesse highlights especially fake spiritual values, mass leisure activities, primitive, simplistic reports, articles and speeches (or feuilletons), with the help of which the society was fed and a false intellectual environment was formed. they were written on a variety of topics, such as goethe, arabic culture, friedrich nietzsche 1870’s women’s fashion, composer armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 literature studies 122 rossini’s favourite dishes, the importance of house dogs to great courtesans, “in all of them a number of fashionable phrases were shaken up like dice in a cup and everyone was delighted if he dimly recognized one or two catchwords” (hesse, 2016, p. 18). but what hesse is talking about is nothing but the concept of simulacrum (from the latin word simulacrum, meaning image, likeness, semblance) proclaimed by postmodern aesthetics (g. bataille, j. baudrillard). the simulacrum or false image, known since ancient times (epicurus, lucretius), has become one of the most important concepts of postmodernism, reflecting the catastrophic rupture between reality and language. according to baudrillard, simulation creates a “hyper-reality” that has nothing to do with reality. according to this philosopher, modernism is a total simulation, which affects all the social and cultural cells (cited in tsurganova, 2004). g. deleuze interprets language as “the highest of the simulacra” (deleuze, 1998, p. 371). it is noteworthy that in the novel “steppenwolf”, that is, 15 years before the novel the glass bead game, hesse speaks about the simulacrum or false truths the society is fed with. in the episodes of mozart and goethe, hesse very subtly presents the whole tragicomic situation of the civic environment based on false taste. “and in fact, to my indescribable astonishment and horror, the devilish tin trumpet spat out, without more ado, a mixture of bronchial slime and chewed rubber; the noise that owners of gramophones and radio specialists call music. and now you hear not only a handel who, disfigured by radio, is, all the same, in this most ghastly of disguises still divine; you hear as well and you observe, most worthy sir, a most admirable symbol of all life. just so does life, the so-called reality, deal with the sublime picture-play of the world and make a hurley-burley of it” (hesse, 2013, pp. 244-245). harry, the protagonist of the novel, experiences the same pain when he sees goethe’s picture in the house of a familiar professor, but done in a bad taste, as a result of which the great german poet, deprived of his naturalness, presents himself in a “sweet, snobbish, salon” image. 2. eclecticism is the second idea. according to j.-f. lyotard, “eclecticism is the dominant sign of the culture of the postmodern era.” (cited in tsurganova, 2004, p. 327). it is somewhat present in hesse’s novel, it is true that hesse’s and postmodernists’ perceptions of this concept are slightly different. first of all, the glass bead game itself is an example of eclecticism. moreover, here, we see such a synthesis and variety of literary genres, styles, literary techniques that is rarely found in great literature. here, prose, poetry, philosophical essay, political literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 123 pamphlet, legend, chronology follow each other. if closely observed, it is possible to point out just three or four types of novels, for example, biographical, psychological, historical, educational, and social. as for essay and essayism, lyotard himself writes, “the postmodern writer or artist is in the state of a philosopher” (cited in tsurganova, 2004, p. 327). this genre, which is the result of the unification of philosophy and literature and not a novelty at all in the history of prose, gets a new life thanks to the postmodern philosophers and writers (m. kundera, u. eco, j. derrida, m. blanchot, m. heidegger, r. barthes). speaking about the philosophical language of the prominent postmodern theorist jacques derrida, i. ilyin emphasizes that what is important in his work is not only the ideas, but also the manner of their presentation, due to which the philosopher’s speech acquires the features of “intellectual aesthetism”, “artistry”, which indicate that philosophy in terms of language has long since departed from the classical german gloom and approached the french mental joy (ilyin, 1998, p. 40). we shouldn’t forget that nietzsche is one of the founders of that tradition with his the gay science. 3. cultural pluralism or multiculturalism which is one of the most complex concepts of postmodernism and more typical of american postmodernism, is excessively characteristic of hesse’s prose and it is an essential compositional element in the novel the glass bead game, which is here presented from two perspectives. first of all, the image of european culture is given in detail with all its fundamental types: spiritual, scientific and artistic. then, what is very important, cultural codes of the west and the east, the chinese in particular, are compared. without mastering the daoist philosophy, joseph knecht can’t reach the level of perfection required to become a master of the game. it is noteworthy that postmodern theorists associate multiculturalism with marginalism. “in a sense, poststructuralism and postmodernism can be described as expressions of the phenomenon of marginalism”, writes i. ilyin (cited in tsurganova, 2004, p. 266). in other words, the very opposite idea of multiculturalism is presented, when a foreign culture is considered unacceptable. hermann hesse’s novel provides many examples to speak about this phenomenon as well. after all, it is completely based on the marginal principle of two opposite worlds. at the same time, this type of worldview is typical of almost all of hesse's works, with types of contrasts of instinct and intelligence, art and reality, philosophy and poetry. in the glass bead game castalia and the rest of the world are irreconcilable oppositions. the game separates those two worlds. one is the ordinary world, armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 literature studies 124 with its ordinary daily life and lifestyle, the other is the world of elite people, castalia, where the chosen ones live and only men, who, serving the spirit, try to save the cultural heritage created by mankind. castalia, on the one hand, symbolizes hesse’s connection with this important place name of greek mythology and apollo, on the other hand, the relations with two giants of german literature goethe (wilhelm meister; pedagogical province) and schiller (aesthetic state). the men in castalia believe that there is no need to create a new culture, it is just necessary to appropriately preserve what has already been created, which also contains some elements of marginalism. there are also marginalist elements in the mysterious suicide of joseph knekht, with which he tries to reconcile the two worlds. it is interesting that in this respect one can find an ideological similarity with hesse’s novel in jenks’ judgement that postmodern art is gifted with “dual coding” and it is addressed not only to the elite but also to larger masses (dickens, 1985, p. 136). 4. it is necessary to consider one more issue, which is connected with the judgement that postmodernism has no homeland (hag d. silverman). maybe there is some truth in that, if we mean that it is so widespread around the world, though in reality such a thing does not usually happen, literary movements and directions always originate from somewhere. in this case, the spanish-american cultural environment is more often circulated (anderson, 2011, p. 11). but the idea of not having a homeland becomes much more meaningful when we spread it over postmodern heroes. really, they have no homeland. if the literature of romanticism and modernism raises the idea of “transcendental homelessness” (obdachlosigkeit) as an element of a human tragic condition (lukasc, 1962, p. 32), then the postmodernity, bent on a cosmic scale, loses the meaning of the concept of homeland because they have lost the identity. they live in perfect conditional environments, that is, they live everywhere and nowhere. the musician pablo, the protagonist of hermann hesse’s novel steppenwolf, is an example of such a hero, we very often come across in the glass bead game. 5. another circumstance worthy of note is the following: in the novel hesse speaks about the fact that nothing new is created in castalia, but the old is carefully preserved, and, for the sake of their freedom, they reproduce it in sign language in the glass bead game. this idea is important in terms of the fact that features of postmodernism, which seem to replicate hesse’s idea to some extent, obviously manifest themselves in it. postmodernists are also skeptical of the idea of creating a new culture, a new literature and attribute everything to text and literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 125 intertextuality. one of the most famous writers of postmodernism, luis borges from argentina, who presents the universe as a huge labyrinth, writes in the famous story-essay the library of babel: “the certainty that everything has already been written cancels us, or renders us phantasmal” (borges, 1992, p. 55). 6. finally, the concept of game, which, in essence, combines all of the above ideas, becomes fundamental to both hesse's novel and postmodern aesthetics. v. bychkov’s formulation is noteworthy in this case. “postmodernism,” he writes, “is first of all, the sense and consciousness of existence, culture, reasoning as a game” (bychkov, 2004, p. 453). the connection between hesse’s the glass bead game and postmodernism is so famous that another literary scholar has such an expression: “the postmodern writer is a glass bead gameplayer, who solves problems posed or conceived” (kuritsyn, 1992, p. 226). as is known, the idea of the game as a cultural phenomenon has been known since the time of plato and has gone through stages of development until schiller and huizinga. neschen, spengler, wittgenstein (with his concept of language games) also make a certain contribution to this path. the idea of the game became fundamental for postmodern theorists as well. we think that the influence of hesse’s the glass bead game is extremely great in the refinement of its perception. the idea of the game, as hesse presents, is born first in the environment of talented musicians and mathematicians, followed by philologists, historians, artists, theologians, philosophers intellectuals who voluntarily want to serve the spirit and save culture. hence, the name of the hero, joseph knekht, literally meaning servant, not in hegelian, but in christian terms. hesse presents the already formed and continuously improving game as a mysterious and esoteric concept, which contains the general content and values of culture. hesse writes: “all the insights, noble thoughts, and works of art that the human race has produced in its creative eras, all that subsequent periods of scholarly study have reduced to concepts and converted into intellectual property on all this immense body of intellectual values the glass bead game player plays like the organplayer playing the organ” (hesse, 2016, p. 14). conclusion until today, there is no clear idea of what the glass bead game represents. as is known, in contrast to j. huizinga’s empiricism, hesse uses transcendental dimensions of the game in the novel, which radically change its character and, especially, make it more complicated. while not having a clear meaning, it can have many parallels in real life. hesse lays the groundwork for this uncertainty armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 literature studies 126 first by giving more than one description: magic theatre, game play, lingua sacra, sui generis art, etc. many experts have tried to interpret the word, but in vain. the prototypes of a number of basic ideas of postmodernism can be found in the concept of the game. for example, the idea of the world as a text. castilian elite culture and the glass bead game itself are a written culture, a text, josef knecht is the embodiment of that culture as a perfect hero, or “culture as a system of signs”. from the point of view of language, we see that the game has a special language, which combines a number of linguistic means, such as the languages of mathematics, philosophy, music as signs, as a result of which the whole previous culture is presented as a system of signs. as a result of the masterful combination of these signs, which is also an example of eclecticism, “any game must be possible, even a plant to speak latin with mr. carl linnaeus”. examples like these can be found with regard to other ideas of destruction, intertextuality and postmodernism. of course, there are also many differences between the novel the glass bead game and postmodernism. let us focus on, perhaps, the most important one. while hesse, with the diversity of his aesthetic and philosophical views, nevertheless remains complete and loyal to humanistic values, postmodern literature is mainly inclined to destroy, make any integrity meaningless, tends to the belief that any attempt to model the world is meaningless and impossible, that is, everything leads to the unknown and the uncertain. at the end of the 20 th century r. tarnas considered this postmodern uncertainty and metaphysical emptiness to be the ultimate problem of our time. “will it last infinitely, probably taking more tolerable or tougher forms over the years or decades?”, he writes, “does it act as a special entropic prelude of the apocalyptic resolution of history or does it represent itself an epochal transition to quite a new era, which is the bearer of the new model of civilization and the new worldview, whose ideals and principles are radically different from the ideals and principles that previously pushed the modern world into moving in its dramatic trajectory?” (tarnas, 1995, p. 348). references anderson, p. (2011). istoki postmoderna [the origins of postmodern]. moscow: “teritoriya budushchego”. (in russian) bychkov, v. (2004). estetika [aesthetics]. moscow: gardariki. (in russian) literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 127 deleuze, zh., & guattari, f. (1998). chto takoye filosofiya? [what is philosophy?]. st. petersburg: “aleteya”. (in russian) eko, u. (2014). grarumner “vardi anvan” ejerin [notes on the pages of “the name of the rose”]. yerevan: antares. (in armenian) ilyin, i. (1996). poststructuralism. dekonstructivism. [poststructuralism. deconstructivism]. мoscow: intrada. (in russian) jenks, ch. (1985). yazik arkhitektury postmoderna [the language of postmodern architecture]. moscow: stroyizdat. (in russian) kuritsyn, v. (1992). postmodernism: novaya pervobytnaya kul’tura [postmodernism: new primitive culture]. noviy mir, 2, 225-232 (in russian). lukasc, g. (1962). die theorie des romans [the theory of the novel]. munich: dtv. tsurganova, y. a. (2004) zapadnoye literaturovedeniye [20 th century western literature studies]. мoscow: intrada. (in russian) tarnas, r. (1995). istoriya zapadnogo myshleniya [history of the western thought]. moscow: kron-press. (in russian) sources of data hesse, h. (2016). hulunqakhagh [the glass bead game]. yerevan: antares. (in armenian) borges, l. (1992). yerku arqanery yev yerku labirintosnery [the two kings and the two labyrinths]. (h. bodukyan trans.). yerevan: apolon. (in armenian) պոստմոդեռնիզմի դրսեվորումները հերման հեսսեի «հուլունքախաղ» վեպում արա առաքելյան հոդվածում փորձ է արվում դիտարկել այն աղերսները, որոնք առկա են պոստմոդեռնիզմի գեղագիտության և հերման հեսսեի «հուլունքախաղ» վեպի միջև: անդրադարձ է կատարվում պոստմոդեռնիզմի պատմությանը, արևմուտքի տեսական-գեղագիտական մտքի վերջին ամենաազդեցիկ դրսևորմանը, որին բնորոշ են նաև պարադոքսները: ելնելով պոստմոդեռնիզմի գեղագիտության մի շարք հիմնարար սկզբունքներից և հերման հեսսեի ստեղծագործության մասին առկա տվյալներից՝ դիտարկում ենք կոնկրետ այն աղերսները, որոնք հեսսեի ստեղծագործությունը կապում են պոստմոդեռնիզմի հետ: խոսքը վերաբերում է նախ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 literature studies 128 «աշխարհն իբրև քաոս», ապա «գեղագիտական էկլեկտիզմ», «բազմամշակութայնություն» և վերջապես «խաղ» գաղափարներին: «աշխարհն իբրև քաոս» գաղափարի շրջանակներում դիտարկվում է նաև սիմուլյակր հասկացության լայն գործածությունը ինչպես հեսսեի, այնպես էլ պոստմոդեռնիստական երկերում: գեղագիտական էկլեկտիզմը, որը «պոստմոդեռնիստական դարաշրջանի մշակույթի տիրապետող նշանն է» (ժ.-ֆ. լիոտար, ի. իլյին), ամենատարբեր դրսևորումներով հանդիպում է նաև հեսսեի վեպում: բազմամշակութայնությունը թե՛ իբրև սոցիալական ուտոպիա, թե՛ իբրև գեղագիտական սկզբունք, նույնպես լայն տարածում է ստանում պոստմոդեռնիզմի գեղագետների (հատկապես լ. ֆիդլեր) շրջանում և հեսսեի վեպում: վեպում խորացվում է նաև արևելք-արևմուտք քաղաքական և մշակութային երկխոսությունը: վերջապես՝ խաղը, եվրոպական մշակութային կայուն կոդերից մեկը լինելով, նորովի հայտնաբերվում է և՛ հեսսեի վեպում, և՛ պոստմոդեռնիստական գեղագիտության մեջ (ու. էկո): բանալի բառեր` բարձր մոդեռնիզմ, պոստմոդեռնիզմ, պոստմոդեռնիստական իրադրություն, կազմաքանդում, տեքստ, քաոս, սիմուլյակր, էկլեկտիզմ, պլյուրալիզմ, խաղ։ hin.qxd culture studies: a bridge from native cultural content to learners’ intercultural competence concentration on the communicative methods offoreign language teaching in recent decades has brought about a remarkable shift of focus towards sociocultural content and, in a further development, towards the intercultural approach. as a result, new concepts have been introduced into foreign language didactics and methodology, where the communicative approach and its intercultural background now predominate. in the 19th and 20th centuries the prevailing method of foreign language teaching was the grammar-translation method, concentrating on the presentation and analysis of the correct linguistic form, accurate translation and the reading of literature. with respect to socio-cultural context, it was merely concerned with the selection and presentation of socio-cultural achievements, such as arts and literature, personified by great people and events in the history of the target country. in its more modern version, it also comprised “facts and figures” (realia) and “life and institutions” of the target country. the communicative approach developed from the late 1970s, concentrating on speech acts characteristic of everyday communication and emphasising the use of authentic texts. since the 1980s, the intercultural approach has developed, concentrating on language awareness, the discussion of cross-cultural experiences, the consideration of stereotypes, the negotiation of meaning, etc. this has led to a perspective of teaching that concentrates on socio-cultural content, i.e. the presentation of information according to a preconceived view of the world of the target language. on the one hand, documents like syllabuses and textbooks present a variety of methods and approaches to foreign language teaching. on the other, however, as is mentioned in gerhard neuner’s article on socio-cultural interim worlds in foreign language teaching and learning, the perception of the foreign world by the learners and its representation in the learners’ imagination, which may vary considerably, also plays a part. students quite often do not learn what they are supposed to learn, they do not simply adopt the pre-formed and “prescribed” view of the target world presented in their 87 culture studies armenian folia anglistika gayane gasparyan textbooks, but in their minds they create (or have already created) their own images and fantasies about the foreign world which are unstable and may in the process of learning the target language undergo remarkable changes1. thus, the traditional grammar-translation method with its linguistic limitations has developed into a broader methodology of foreign language teaching based on the “language within culture”/“culture within language” model, where the social environment of the target language with its cultural background, norms and values predominates. the creation of the “new world” in the learner’s mind makes the latter feel more comfortable in different, mutually complementary cultural contexts and allows him/her to share and deal with new cultural values. hence, what a foreign language teacher is supposed to do is to create a correct and stable “foreign world” in the learner’s mind and to make learning of the target language a process of acquiring its cultural content and socio-cultural background. moreover, the learner’s cultural awareness should be supplemented by special courses, providing extralinguistic, general information concerning the country and its native realia. one such course is known as cultural studies. in different countries this subject has come to have different names for what it provides. it is area studies in the united states, civilization in france, ñ ò ð à í î â å ä å í è å in russia, ºñïñ³·çïáõãûáõý in armenia, and cultural studies in britain. the most appropriate term for the development of cultural awareness is cultural studies, since it covers all those spheres of native realia which are necessary to create the socio-cultural content of the language being studied. an academic course in cultural studies helps university students to perceive deeper meaning within the foreign language media in the extralinguistic context of the “new world”, emphasising competences related to the intercultural dimension. for a very long time the course in cultural studies delivered in our country for students of foreign languages has been a lecture course. it has covered different aspects – history, geography, social life, economic and political activities, customs, traditions and everyday life – thus giving broad information about different spheres of nativespeakers’ lives. but while this course is theoretical, it must also have a practical goal. the process of teaching foreign languages is not a process of making students familiar with new ways of expressing a different language code. it should be a natural process of involvement in a different national culture, new ways of thinking and national psychology. the course in cultural studies should therefore support the process of teaching language as a code. the process of teaching a foreign language must be exactly based on the national cultural psychology of the native speakers of the language. the language means (pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and structures) must be exposed from the point of view of their cultural and psychological background. thus, the use of extralinguistic and cultural potential within the process of teaching a foreign language, which has been gaining momentum in the past twenty years, has become one of the chief goals of communicative linguistics. it deals with one of the main aspects of general linguistics – the correlation of language and speech, and language and 88 armenian folia anglistika culture studies thought. it will help to develop new methods and ways of teaching english as a foreign language, based on the psychological factors of a language mechanism. the course in cultural studies must become the so-called bridge between nativespeakers’ cultural context and learners’ cultural awareness, providing the necessary information for creating the “new world” in the learner’s mind. the learner in this case will be prepared to embrace the cultural context of the language which he/she is studying, to perceive the full value of language realia, and to acquire competence for intercultural communication. references: 1. byram m. (ed.) “intercultural competence”. council of europe, july 2003, p.18. ºñïñ³·çïáõãûáõýá áñå»ë ï³ùáõñç 黽í³ïçñý»ñç ùß³ïáõã³ûçý çñ³½»ïáõãûáõýçó ¹»åç áõëáõùý³ëçñáõý»ñç ùççùß³ïáõã³ûçý ·çï»éçùý»ñç ó¨³íáñáõù ì»ñççý ï³ëý³ùû³ïý»ñáõù ûï³ñ 黽íç áõëáõóù³ý ñ³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý ù»ãá¹ý»ñç ïçñ³éáõùá ßáß³÷»éç ÷á÷áëáõãûáõý ¿ ³é³ç³óñ»é ¨ áõëáõóáõùá ³é³í»é ï»ýïñáý³óñ»é ñ³ýñ³ùß³ïáõã³ûçý μáí³ý¹³ïáõãû³ý ¨ ¹ñ³ ùççùß³ïáõã³ûçý ùáï»óù³ý ñ»ï³·³ ½³ñ·³óù³ý íñ³: ²í³ý¹³ï³ý ù»ñ³ï³ý³ï³ý-ã³ñ·ù³ý³ï³ý ù»ãá¹ý çñ 黽í³ï³ý ë³ñù³ý³÷³ïáõùý»ñáí í»ñ³×»é ¿ ûï³ñ 黽íç áõëáõóù³ý ³é³í»é é³ûý ù»ãá¹³μ³ýáõãû³ý` ñçùýí³í §é»½áõý ùß³ïáõûãç ùççáóáí¦/§ùß³ïáõûãá 黽íç ùççáóáí¦ ùá¹»éç íñ³: ²ûë ùá¹»éç ïçñ³éáõùá ³é³çýáõãûáõý ¿ ï³éçë ïíû³é 黽íç ëáóç³é³ï³ý ùçç³í³ûñçý çñ ùß³ïáõã³ûçý å³ïùáõãû³ý, ýáñù»ñç ¨ ³ñå»ùý»ñç ñ³ù³ï»ùëïáõù: §üáñ ²ßë³ññç¦ ëï»õíù³ý ·³õ³÷³ñá ëáíáñáõçý ëïçåáõù ¿ ³í»éç íëï³ñ ½·³é ÷áëéñ³óýáõ ùß³ïáõã³ûçý ï³ñμ»ñ ùçç³í³ûñ»ñáõù ¨ ñ³õáñ¹³ïçó ¹³éý³é ýáñ ùß³ïáõã³ûçý ³ñå»ùý»ñçý: ºñïñ³·çïáõãûáõý ñ³ù³éë³ñ³ý³ï³ý áõëáõùý³ï³ý ¹³ëáýã³óá ëã³ýáõù ¿ ³ûëå»ë ïáãí³í §ùß³ïáõã³ûçý çñ³½»ïáõãûáõýᦠ¨ ûï³ñ 黽íç áýï³éáõùá §ýáñ ³ßë³ññç¦ ³ñï³é»½í³ï³ý çù³ëïáí` ï³ñ¨áñ»éáí ùççùß³ïáõã³ûçý ·çï»éçùý»ñç ó¨³íáñáõùá: 89 culture studies armenian folia anglistika hin.qxd aspects of salience in phatic tokens t he pragmatic perspective requires the study oflinguistic phenomena from the point of view of their usage. pragmalinguists define language use as “the making of linguistic choices, taking into account the mediating role of both the utterer’s and the interpreter’s m i n d s” (verschueren, 1999:187). pragmalinguistic analysis assigns an essential role to consciousness in language use, trying to reveal different levels of linguistic knowledge – conscious, subliminal or automatic (i.e. unconscious) – in the process of production and interpretation of speech. acknowledging the role of cognition in the process of verbal interaction, we agree with j.verschueren who states that “not everything that happens in linguistic behaviour occupies the same place in consciousness” (verschueren, 1999:173 ). it is, therefore, not surprising that verbal interaction can be associated with different points of consciousness. thus, in certain stereotypical situations and previously planned speech events ready-made conversational formulae and practiced structures are put to use with no conscious effort: the speaker automatically reproduces these speech tokens or he just repeats the stored knowledge, adapting it to the actual needs of communication with the help of spontaneous recognition. accordingly, in non-stereotypical situations creativity and conscious outwork cognizant usage of linguistic structures and forms are necessary to make the linguistic choices. in this case the speaker necessarily exercises quite a different mental action which, according to cognitive psychologists, requires more conscious operations than spontaneous recognition active recall. in the present article i shall be concerned with the problem of actual choice of linguistic units – the relation between generation of meaning and language use. i will try to show how different degrees of salience – conscious choice of words for various communicative needs – operate in the process of verbal interaction, enabling the speakers to repeat ready-made phrases retrieved from memory or to create new ones. the analysis is based on the assumption that speech is a kind of social action governed by linguistic norms and stereotypes – ideas based on certain kinds of experiences which symbolize some kind of general behaviour. speaking about language as a kind of social action, some analysts suppose that most interlocutors share a certain amount of background knowledge about ‘proper’ behaviour and the ‘right’ way to do things. j.cutting, for example, assumes that there are numerous stereotypes – ideas that we have about the “typical” behaviour and characteristics of 37 linguistics armenian folia anglistika shoushan paronian people or objects (cutting j., 2002). expanding on the problem of processing (production of speech and understanding), g.brown and g.yule state that the latter depends on activating a small part of background knowledge at a time (brown, yule, 1983). it follows that there must be some way in which knowledge is organized and stored to allow easy access. this idea brings us close to the role of knowledge in speech. trying to understand how knowledge of the world and language interact, discourse analysts resort to certain findings in the field of artificial intelligence, namely to the concept of knowledge schemata – mental representations that try to modelize human language competence and human knowledge. in principle, schemata are data structures representing stereotypical patterns which we retrieve from our mental storage memory and employ in our understanding of discourse. research work carried out in the field of cognitive linguistics shows that the knowledge the speakers possess concerning social interaction via language is just one part of their general socio-cultural knowledge. people create mental models based upon dicourse, the situation and the purposes they have to serve: schemas, scripts, scenarios, frames, mental models. these models refer to certain mental activities involved in language use: perception (reading or interpretation), representation (production of discourse), as well as planning (clark h., 2002; verschueren j., 1999; ïàðîíÿí ø., 2003). all these activities, as we see, have to do with a single mental operation – processing of information in memory. the most important conclusion we can draw from all this is that the search for proper strategies to speak enables the addressee to make use of scripts, i.e. mental representations of activity or event types, stored in his memory in the form of background knowledge. as i have already stated, my report deals with the problem of salience of linguistic choices. i shall try to show the role of mental models in the process of communication on the example of phatic tokens. first of all, it is necessary to clarify what we understand by saying ‘phatic tokens’. it goes without saying that one way of analyzing language is looking at language in terms of social functions it serves. in this case language can be seen as ‘social semiotic’ – a system of signs which serves the social organization and communicative requirements of the human society. such being the case, the terms “phatic communication” and “phatic function”, introduced by b.malinovsky and r.jakobson, can be treated as linguistic notions that deal with cultural and communal needs of language users (malinovsky b., 1936; jakobson r., 1975). it should be noted that the linguists are unanimous in their evaluation of the phatic function of language. the latter is defined as the process of “opening and closing the channel, checking that it is working for practical or social reasons” (cook g., 2002:25). things are different with the interpretation of phatic communication. on the one hand, it is customary to treat phatic communication as the conventional use of language to open and close talk exchanges. thus, some linguists assume that phatic communication is information which the interlocutors exchange for the sake of politeness. it is made up of statements that are aimed at the establishment, maintenance and termination of verbal contact (ïî÷åïöîâ ã., 1981). it has also been proposed to 38 armenian folia anglistika linguistics limit phatic tokens to instances of communicative initiation (greetings) that mark the beginning of the conversation. on the other hand, starting from a different theoretical basis, sociolinguists and conversation analysts have pointed out some more profound qualities of phatic communication which enable them to serve the social needs of communication. on account of this, phatic tokens have been treated as speech units that establish agreement, unification and harmony in the process of communication. as we see, the first approach focuses on the conversational-regulating aspect of phatic communication: phatic tokens are treated as conventional linguistic signs, fixed for certain procedural needs of communication. for example, good morning; good evening; hello; bye, etc. the second approach comes to prove that phatic communication can also perform a social-regulating function: it serves the social needs of communication, establishing and maintaining social relationships through language use. the idea about the social function of phatic tokens has been introduced within the frames of linguistic analyses. thus, according to b.malinovsky, “phatic communication is a kind of speech in which the ties of agreement, unification are formed with the simple exchange of words” (malinovsky b., 1936:515). m.halliday has also noted the social aspect of phatic communication in his ideational function of language – the function the language serves to establish as basis for cooperative action and social relations (halliday, 1975). stressing the social facet of phatic communication, a.capone proposes a classification of phatic tokens which is based on the social factor. thus, he supposes that phatic tokens are ways of showing status by orienting comments to oneself, the other or to the general or prevailing situation. accordingly, he distinguishes between three types of phatic tokens: 1.self-oriented: phatic tokens that are personal to the speaker (for example, asides like i’m not up to this or my feet are killing me); 2.other-oriented: phatic tokens that are related to the hearer (for example, do you work here?; you seem to know what you’re doing); 3.neutral: tokens that refer to the context or general state of affairs (cold, isn’t it?; lovely flowers) (capone a., 2003). it should be noted that discourse analysts point out the importance of establishing common ground and agreeing points of view in the process of communication. such being the case, it is currently accepted to distinguish between two functions of speech – transactional and interactional. g.brown and g.yule, for example, include phatic communication within the sphere of the interactional function whose aim is to establish common ground between the interlocutors, to show solidarity and maintain social cohesion, lacking cohesion of meaning. thus, it is not far from likely that phatic communication can be treated as language with no information content as it is noninformative. nevertheless, phatic tokens are undoubtedly important strategic means in the process of communication since they do not simply function to keep the channel of communication open: with the help of these strategic means the speakers maintain agreement, harmony which is absolutely necessary for the successful management of communication. with this view in mind, it is quite possible to treat phatic 39 linguistics armenian folia anglistika communication as a special kind of face-saving act arising out of needs of the interlocutors. as we know, one of the aims of discourse analysis is to establish tied and meaningful component units within a linked and co-ordinated whole – discourse. for this purpose different types of tied sequences exchanges, transactions, adjacency pairs have been submitted to pragmalinguistic analysis. the analysis of phatic communication has revealed a special unit of tied utterances phatic discourse. on this account, it is customary to distinguish phatic discourse as a type of adjacency pairing that includes routine greetings and partings, attempts to establish or check contact in face-to-face interactions, on the phone or on a computer. phatic discourse is said to be used either for social reasons or for practical ones. if we treat verbal interaction as a special kind of goal-oriented social action, we shall see that phatic communication is aimed at the realization of situational goals (unlike other types of exchanges that are aimed at the realization of certain communicative goals). thus, one of the aims of phatic discourse is to maintain and terminate verbal interaction. let us consider the following adjacency pairs which contain almost automatic patterns of greetings, goodbyes: a: good morning. b: good morning. a: see ya! b: bye. a: hello. b: hi. a: how are you? b: fine. these habitual, spontaneous adjacency pairs present sequences in which the utterance of a first part immediately creates an expectation of the utterance of the second part of the same pair. this implies that the exchange of remarks is carried out unintentionally, mechanically, with no conscious effort. it should be strange to think that speakers doubt, hesitate or even think how to answer a greeting or parting. these phatic responses come out through spontaneous recognition of typical speech situations and automatic production of necessary phatic tokens and, moreover, no conscious outwork is required for the process of communication. automatic verbal action, or, to be more exact, verbal action carried out on the subliminal level of consciousness, can also be carried out for practical reasons. for example, a: thank you. b: thank you. a: thanks. b: you’re welcome. a: could you help me with this? b: sure. a: yeah. b: okay. speaking about ease of processing, cognitive psychologists mention that the terms that are automatically retrieved from memory possess a high degree of salience. hence, it would be reasonable for us to assume that the above mentioned samples of phatic discourse including automatic patterns of greetings, goodbyes can obtain a high degree of salience in the process of interaction. certain adjacency pairs allow for variations in the forms which are used to fill in the slots of the automatic communicative patterns. in this type of phatic discourse the retrieval of the ready-made formulae from memory depends on a certain amount of conscious outwork, taking into consideration certain linguistic and extralinguistic factors of communication (sex, age, familiarity, mood etc.). on account of this, as we see, the degree of salience is naturally reduced. for example, a: how are things? b: the usual. a: how are things going? b: so so. a: how are you doing? b: not bad, thanks. therefore, foreign language teaching necessarily includes not only practising these ready-made formulae but also indicating their appropriateness in different communicative situations. 40 armenian folia anglistika linguistics it has been stated that phatic discourse can also be aimed at the establishment of social relationships and agreement between the interlocutors (ïàðîíÿí ø., 2003). the latter do not pursue any communicative aims, they simply keep in contact in order to enhance tuneability, concord and to create an atmosphere of social harmony. this type of phatic discourse is usually carried on at the beginning of the conversation when the interlocutors need some “communicative” time to adjust to each other before entering into a more serious discussion. for example, in the following exchange the “phatic” discussion of the gift helps the interlocutors to establish agreement and enter into a conversation, having established certain positive interpersonal disposition. betty (opens the gift): oh, it’s beautiful. max: it’s a benrus – that’s the top make. betty: it’s so stylish. max: look at that band – that’s fourteenkarat – not junk . betty: it’s expensive. (w.hanly, the light bulb: 12). there exists a set of topics for conducting this type of phatic discourse: weather, leisure, health. as we see, these topics are mainly associated with common knowledge – i.e. what everyone knows. they are culture-loaded, which means that they present specific national culture. they also vary from group to group, which means that they present the socio-psychological preferences of the speech community. talk on weather, for example, in british community is used for conducting phatic communication. for example: sean: a fine night. the young man: it is. sean: it must be up to at least fifty degrees on the damn thermometer. the young man: all of that. sean: warm for this time of the year. the young man: i always said dublin is the riviera of ireland. (s. shepard, the first night:43) as we see, in this case the intentions of the interlocutors do not interact to create a meaningful unit. in fact, there is no cohesion of meaning. this is just a casual conversation which is carried on in order to maintain social cohesion. conducting this kind of phatic communication requires a different degree of salience. the speaker’s mind carries out conscious recall – recognition of certain formulae or constructions to realize the choice of verbal tokens in each case. the degree of salience in case of the above mentioned phatic discourse is reduced to a great extent, since the recognition of scripts of standard conversational settings as well as recall of stereotypical speech formulae concerning weather, leisure, health does not by all means require retrieval of ready-made and practiced conversational clichés. it includes a great deal of conscious outwork on the speaker’s part. undoubtedly, the social factor becomes focal in this type of phatic discourse. phatic communication becomes a strategic means for the successful realization of face-saving 41 linguistics armenian folia anglistika acts. phatic discourse in which the social factor is predominant requires active conscious outwork on the speaker’s part. hence, it should be reasonable to suppose that it has a fairly low degree of salience – if any at all. in summary, we can state that, the making of linguistic choices in the process of phatic communication comprises various degrees of salience – from repetition of readymade speech formulae through spontaneous recognition of the corresponding script to creation of new tokens through active recall. as we see, the salience of linguistic choices is related to mental processes in memory – mind in society. thus, socialization and enculturation of speech has established certain behavioral norms and expectations – linguistic as well as non-linguistic – prevalent in the community. as a matter of fact, it should be mentioned that it is impossible to determine degrees of salience for all types of linguistic choice-making. our research carried out on the example of standardized speech models was just an attempt of conscious insight into the infinite sphere of the subconscious, an attempt to see the unseen. as a final indication, i would like to express my agreement with the idea that much of what is involved in the process of actual linguistic choice-making takes place at a subliminal level and is beyond the sphere of conscious linguistic or psychological investigation. references: 1. brown g., yule g. discourse analysis. cambridge, 1983. 2. capone a. pragmatics for exam students, 2003. in: http.www.adobe.com. 3. cook g. discourse, oxford, 2002. 4. clark h., van der wege m. imagination in discourse. in: the handbook of discourse analysis ed. by schiffrin d., tannen d., hamilton h., cambridge, 2003. 5. cutting j. pragmatics and discourse. london, 2002. 6. halliday m.a.k. explorations in the functions of language. london, 1975. 7. jakobson r. linguistics and poetics. in: style in language ed. by sebeok th., cambridge, 1975. 8. malinovski b. the problem of meaning in primitive languages. in: the meaning of meaning ed. by ogden c.k., richards i.a., london, 1936. 9. verschueren j. understanding pragmatics, new-york, 1999. 10.ïàðîíÿí ø. åäèíèöû ðå÷åâîãî îáùåíèÿ â ñâåòå òåîðèè âçàèìîäåéñòâèÿ, åðåâàí, 2003. 11.ïî÷åïöîâ ã. ôàòè÷åñêàÿ ìåòàêîììóíèêàöèÿ â êí.: ñåìàíòèêà è ïðàãìàòèêà ñèíòàêñè÷åñêèõ åäèíñòâ ïîä ðåä. ñóñîâà è., êàëèíèí, 1981. 42 armenian folia anglistika linguistics sources of data: 12. hanley w. the light bulb. in mrs dally has a lover and other plays, new york, 1963. 13. shepard s. the first night. in seven plays, london, 1985. ð³õáñ¹³ïó³ï³ý ß÷áõù ñ³ëï³ïáõ ëáëù³ûçý ùç³íáñý»ñç ·çï³ïóí³í ïçñ³éáõãû³ýý ³éýãíáõ ñ³ñó»ñ êáõûý ñá¹í³íáõù ùýýáõãû³ý ¿ ³éýíáõù ·çï³ïóí³íáõãû³ý ¹»ñá ëáëù³ûçý ·áñíáõý»áõãû³ý áýã³óùáõù: î³ñμ»ñ ëáëù³ûçý çñ³¹ñáõãûáõýý»ñáõù 黽íç ïçñ³éù³ý ñ³ù³ñ ³ýññ³å»ßï³μ³ñ ï³ï³ñíáõù »ý ï³ñμ»ñ ï³ñ·çª ³ý·çï³ïó³ï³ýçó ùçý㨠·çï³ïóí³í ùï³ûçý ·áñíáõáõãûáõýý»ñ: ²ûëå»ë, áñáß ëï»ñ»áïçå³ûçý ëáëù³ûçý çñ³¹ñáõãûáõýý»ñáõù ëáëáõý»ñá çýùý³μ»ñ³μ³ñ û·ï³·áñíáõù »ý å³ïñ³ëïç ëáëù³ûçý ï³õ³å³ñý»ñ: ²é³ýó ·çï³ïó³ï³ý ×ç· ·áñí³¹ñ»éáõ ýñ³ýù å³ñ½³å»ë áýïñáõù »ý ïíû³é çñ³¹ñáõãû³ý ñ³ù³å³ï³ëë³ý 黽í³ï³ý ýß³ýý»ñç ï³å³ïóáõãûáõý: ê³ï³ûý ï³ý ý³¨ ëáëù³ûçý çñ³¹ñáõãûáõýý»ñ, áñáýù ëáëáõçó å³ñ³ýçáõù »ý ëï»õí³·áñí³ï³ý ùáï»óáõù ¨ ùï³ûçý ç³ýùª 黽í³ï³ý ³ýññ³å»ßï ùççáóý»ñ áýïñ»éáõ: ü³ïçï ëáëù³ûçý ùç³íáñý»ñç í»ñéáõíáõãûáõýá ãáõûé ¿ ï³éçë »ýã³¹ñ»é, áñ í»ñççýý»ñçë ïçñ³éáõãû³ý ¹»åùáõù ³ýññ³å»ßï ¿ çýãå»ë å³ïñ³ëïç ëáëù³ûçý μ³ý³ó¨»ñç û·ï³·áñíáõù, ³ûýå»ë ¿é 黽í³ï³ý ùççáóý»ñç áýïñáõãû³ý »ýã³·çï³ïó³ï³ý ùï³ûçý ·áñíáõý»áõãûáõý: 43 linguistics armenian folia anglistika linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 9 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2022.18.1.009 the manipulative nature of media-political discourse seda gasparyan  rafayel harutyunyan** yerevan state university at the present moment, media saturation provides us with a reasonably objective criterion available for examination. in a loose sense, the internet has become a parallel reality where people live to pursue constantly updated news at the repeated click of a button, which maintains the reader's immediate interest in every sense of the word. in perusing news articles, placing a particular emphasis on their manipulative nature, we can plunge deeply into such language layers as that of the lexical, grammatical, stylistic, etc. in this paper we place our central interest on the lexical aspect of language manipulation because words are the foundation of meaning in speech. a functional-communicative view of the lexical material of the discourse of news articles reveals the effect of a journalist's choice and arrangement of words on the reported news and how the manipulative potential of language unfolds. keywords: manipulation, media discourse, political discourse, lexical level of the language, news, information bias. introduction the study of media communication in all of its forms is undeniably vital: television, newspapers, and social media all play an important role in mediating society itself. newspaper articles are a typical form of written communication. newspapers are one of the most commonly read sorts of printed texts, their advantage existent in their public character of availability to a vast number of individuals. the broad application of newspapers is defined by the fact that many individuals read newspapers as part of their daily routine. on the basis of  sedagasparyan@ysu.am ** rafayel.harutyunyan22@gmail.com this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 29.04.2022 revised: 02.05.2022 accepted: 06.05.2022 © the author(s) 2022 mailto:sedagasparyan@ysu.am mailto:rafayel.harutyunyan22@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 10 this, we must confirm that newspaper articles can combat the tendency to be considered their own discourse. it should be mentioned, at the outset, that online newspapers are another extremely important form of newspapers; it is essential to emphasize that online newspapers and printed newspapers are two forms of newspapers that retain significantly distinct characteristics. with the use of several allusions to media and its power, we can state on the largest scale that this decades-new digital technology, for many powerful reasons, is a tool that holds a vast potential to regulate society, even before the period of coronavirus pandemics and global lockdowns. it is an understatement to say that social media platforms and their networks will continue to restructure the world not only with the goal of linking people to a global and borderless social environment but also as another fresh means of controlling people in modes of communication. however difficult it may be to accept, with the majority of the world's population stranded at home, there has been an increased use and manipulation of social networks – the active access to and disclosure of information, deception, false news, fake stories, etc. – that have become an indivisible part of how most people define their lives. it is unfortunate that technological, social, and political triads achieve this confluence heretofore unseen, prompting an unheralded generation of individual interests, with social networks employing new technologies to dictate social will and public policy. it may be obvious to admit that because of its widespread necessity during the lockdowns, social media magnified its role as a critical platform for political activism. in the midst of the uncertainties and public unhappinesses inherent to problematic current realities, we face challenges which can be manipulated. it leaves no doubt that more and more individuals largely employ social media not only as their primary mode of communication, but also as a source of political information. it is evident, from the simplest of local campaigns to the most complex of global organizations, that the use of social media to communicate and generate political will for all forms of movement and referendum is manifest. as manipulation is no stranger to politics, the unparalleled technical potential for propaganda and manipulation via social networks cannot be underestimated. lexical means of manipulation in english media discourse the analysis of manipulation is a complex phenomenon. it must be admitted that language and politics are inextricably linked, therefore we cannot rule out the possibility of linguistic manipulation in this context, particularly in media linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 11 illustrations. it should be noted that the flow of information has reached unparalleled levels, a fact that strongly suggests that lies, concept substitution, intimidation, emotional appeal, plagiarism, inconsistency between the main text and the accompanying photos and videos, lack of source references, quotes taken out of context, sophisticated tricks, crude generalizations, unsupported conclusions, lack of an alternative point of view, and baseless insults, all can lead to manipulative language in use. manipulation can be carried out in different layers of the language; however, in this paper, our object of investigation is the lexical aspect, since we strongly believe that the readability of a news article is largely conditioned by the choice of its lexical components. in media a special significance is attached to how the news is structured. consideration of van dijk’s methodology of examining the structure of news articles makes it essential to single out the rule-based news schema comprised of hierarchically ordered sets of categories and according to the author different schematic categories can be used to classify the basic pieces of a news item that are listed in order of importance (van dijk, 1988a, p. 55; pajunen, 2008, p.3). subjecting it to analysis, let us consider the first example taken from the third presidential debate in the united states in 2016. it is interesting to follow the structure of the inverted pyramid1, attaching special significance to the headline of the video which is “presidential debate: hilary clinton calls donald trump ‘a puppet’ for vladimir putin.”(global news, 2016). from the first glance, the word “puppet” attracts everybody’s attention since it contains an incredibly offensive and ironic instance of verbal aggression. familiarizing ourselves with the description of the video, which is, “u.s. democratic presidential candidate hillary clinton called republican candidate donald trump a “puppet” for russian president vladimir putin during the third presidential debate wednesday night”, we can see how the choice and arrangement of the words brings to the fore the information bias and manipulative overtones of the piece reported by the global news. placing emphasis on the headline, which is a direct quote, captures the eye right away with the help of the subject of the clause “hillary clinton…” and so the reader reflexively concentrates on her. next we are drawn to the object of the sentence “donald trump….”, until finally the choice of the word “puppet” intensifies the aggressive behavior of hillary clinton, placing all the guiltbaiting on her, leaving donald trump in the state of victimhood from which we can allude a sign of psychological manipulation. here we can see an evident example of media manipulation and information bias in favor of donald armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 12 trump, for the video shows that donald trump was the first one to offend hillary clinton, saying that she was “playing chicken” and that he (donald trump) had “no respect for this person”. reconsidering the description and the reported video we draw an analogy between the words and phrases “democratic candidate hillary clinton”, “republican candidate donald trump” and “russian president vladimir putin” to notice that the description corresponds to the fundamentals of impact, conflict, provoking interest, prominence, etc. the conflict here is that two famous candidates from two famous opposing political parties are in a clash, intensified by the integration of “russian president vladimir putin”, indirectly referencing american-russian relations. turning back to the word “puppet” it seems essential to know that the word not only has the meaning of a “toy” but, according to oxford learners dictionary, also “a person or group whose actions are controlled by another” thus perhaps it is most reasonable to conclude that polysemantic words can lead to a manipulative language in use since it is hardly recognizable but presumable whether hillary clinton meant “toy” or “a person” likely to be controlled by vladimir putin. (“puppet”, n.d.a). added to this, “puppet” is a standard colloquial word which from the first glance has no offensive meaning in general; however, depending on the micro and macro settings, as well as the adresser and the addressee, the term can acquire negative and hostile implications. it is abundantly clear from this example that there is an obvious case of incompatibility between the main text and the title, realized by the linguistic trick to use a direct quote, reported speech and the journalistic trick to manipulate through guilt-baiting, victimizing someone, comparison, etc. these kinds of tricks have many purposes such as to shape public opinion, humiliate someone in favor of another and obviously, to engage more people to click on the link and watch the video (global news, 2016). of special interest is the following example: donald trump speech transcript: kabul bombing “would not have happened if i were your president” (trump, 2021). it is considered essential to single out the headline again, which is a direct quote that catches attention instantly following the bottom-up pyramid tactic. a more profound examination of the materials shows that for another essential component, the article should involve either sex or violence or both to awaken interest. the word “bombing” in the headline serves as a trigger for violence. during his speech, trump regularly used “pathos” – a lyrical tactic to refer to linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 13 the readers’/listeners’ emotions. comprising basically 80% of his speech, the other 20% is “ethos” – he is referring to an ethical code and trying to highlight the “immoral and violent” actions of afghanistan. the speech itself is manipulative with flowery language to overwhelm and intentionally exaggerate in order to gain compassion and favor. it is too dramatic and theatrical for the masses, especially the vocabulary he used “brilliant, barbaric, savages”, etc. if we look closely at the speech structure it is very predictable, however the majority will not notice it at first sight and maybe even from a second glance, due to its emotional state; nevertheless, the speech has too many adjectives to make us “understand” how “evil” afghanistan is and how “brave and heroic” the us military is. even though the speech is about a real event, we witness the lack of evidence regarding trump’s “would not have happened if i were your president” claim, the lack of “logos” – logic and facts that would prove his statement to be valid. the article follows the “vertical” structure – a person who holds power says something, and the direct quote reaches the masses. there are analytical, personal, subjective additional sentences added to the article by the journalist, however it still manages to make trump’s words seem ridiculous and that they serve only as a propaganda tool. nowadays, the russian-ukrainian conflict is at the center of almost all media illustrations. despite the fact that the conflict has a historic background, in media illustrations it is very difficult to understand which side should bear the responsibility. turning to a more detailed examination of the cases of media manipulation on this specific topic, we find it essential to mention that the topic itself is very intriguing: full of verbal and physical abuse and actions, though what we are mainly concerned with is the analysis of the examples purely from the point of view of linguistics, where the central emphasis is put on the use of the language. the articles referring to the conflict are primarily targeting the russian president, accusing and blaming him for the present situation. to make several allusions about the manipulative nature of the conflict, let us consider the following example, published in “the sun” on 15 february 2022, authored by tom tugendhat. here, following again the structure of the inverted pyramid, we can consider the headline as our primary focus: “bad vlad inside the paranoid mind of vladimir putin, the trigger-happy kgb bully who acts like an ‘aging gangster from sopranos’” (tugendhat, 2022) armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 14 in political discourse, it is acceptable to refer to a politician by his/her full name; however, we may come across such examples where the opponent or the journalist purposefully refers to the politician by his/her first name in order to convey disrespect, feign ignorance, exhibit a negative attitude and humiliation in front of the public or as a sign of a close relationship. this kind of observation can be seen in the following example, where the name of the russian president vladimir putin has been degraded to the level of the headline as “bad vlad”, which leaves the contempt of the journalist towards the president beyond doubt. it is valid to note that the name “vladimir” has been trimmed to “vlad”, referencing colloquial language to refer to people in a totally different level in society, often an implicitly inferior one. considering the position the russian president holds, combined with the aggressive attempt of the journalist to refer to the politician by the first name, modified by the adjective “bad”, this shows the dishonest and disrespectful behavior of the journalist. comparing the choice of the words in the headline such as “paranoid”, “trigger-happy”, “bully”, “aging gangster”, we can see that the negative humor designed to humiliate and create a shared public viewpoint against the russian president, unfolds the manipulative intention of the author. “bad vlad” can lead to different connotations – humiliation, contempt, sarcasm, irony – and also infer some reference to expressions such as “bad boy”, “rule breaker” “a person of unconventional and slightly strange views or behavior”. one of the offensive words that has been used is “paranoid” which literally means “suffering from a mental illness in which you believe that other people are trying to harm you” according to cambridge dictionary (“paranoid”, n.d.). the choice of the word itself is very unseemly, since it connotes an attempt to consistently judge and criticize the subject to make the public feel inadequately and wary about him, claiming that he suffers from some mental illness. another vulgar and verbally aggressive choice of phrase is “aging gangster” which is being used because the president has been ruling over russia for many years. the word “gangster” can refer to criminals or hooligans; at the same time it means dishonest. as a case of polysemy, if we consider which of the meanings was the journalist’s intention, we can come to the conclusion that polysemantic words have the potential to cause confusion and mislead the audience. also, in analyzing the phrase “trigger-happy”, we can see from meriam webster dictionary that it means “irresponsible in the use of firearms” or “inclined to be irresponsible in matters that might precipitate linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 15 war” (“trigger-happy”, n.d.). the journalist obviously intends to create a negative concept and opinion in the audience, to prompt criticism of the russian president for triggering wars against countries. at the same time, the journalist compares the president with the american drama series “the sopranos” which is about a fictitious mafia. all these negative connotations can lead the public to feel sourly towards vladimir putin and contempt towards russia. such manipulation is carried out to mislead the audience into believing whatever the writer desires them to believe or act upon and in what manner they want the idea to be transferred to the audience. the manipulative intention of the author is comprehensively realized through the ironic picture accompanying the news article: observing other examples in regard to the same topic, we can see another case of manipulation found in the following article: “high alert russia set to invade ukraine at any time with massive missile blitz and 200,000 troops, us intelligence claims” (parker & starkey, 2022). as there is political unrest in the process between russia and ukraine, highlighted in almost every media platform every day, people are anxiously waiting for the latest news updates regarding the topic. here, the expression “high alert” is an attention-grabbing phrase employed by the journalist to garner more public attention. the conflict's level of intensity is such that, besides russia and ukraine, other influential countries are also reported by media to be involved such as the usa, the uk, etc. this direct quote attempts to make the headline much more reliable by including the following phrase: armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 16 “us intelligence claims”. being a quote, the headline is smartly chosen for the following reasons: • the conflict is between russia and ukraine; however, the usa is a powerful ally of the latter. the journalists, on behalf of us intelligence, give information about a russian invasion, providing exact facts of the numbers of the troops, automatically involving the country in the conflict. regardless of how verifiable the information might be, originating from one of the most influential countries in the world, it influences the transmitted information to sound valid and correct for the public, specifically for those who are unaware of the situation. • the authors try to keep their biased opinion as neutral as possible by putting the responsibility for the given information on us intelligence, which is rather relative. it is generally acknowledged that articles containing violence have more potential to receive more attention and click-baits unlike those that illustrate casual life events. in this case, violence is realized through the use of such a military term as “missile blitz”, which is usually applied during wars. additionally, the journalist used the verb “invade” to describe the action of russia, fostering an impression among the public that russia is set to start a war against ukraine. the choice of the adjective “massive” is not accidental, as it is used to describe events that are very fierce, violent, or of utmost importance in comparison. the importance of the headline cannot be overemphasized, as a reader chooses which article to read based on its eyecatching dynamics. the second step will be to read the article in search of the conviction that the headline and the article are related. generally, the article highlights the russian-ukrainian conflict, where the whole guilt-baiting and responsibility is upon russia. reading it, we can see the absurdity of the chosen title, since the authors mention, “us intelligence sources suspected a russian attack came and went without incident”, which proves that the headline has been edited, but the quote presupposes to be mirrored in the article verbatim. this proves the manipulative intention of the authors, since they emphasized the word “claim” in the headline. however, in the article, it is mentioned that the us intelligence only “suspects”. this is vital, because such words can lead to dangerous conclusions, firstly that the ukrainians are in danger of an attack; these kinds of illustrations are a psychological abuse, as they can keep people in stress and tension. the authors’ manipulative intentions are also realized by involving another powerful and influential country – the uk: “it comes as linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 17 britain warned a russian invasion of ukraine is highly likely, could be imminent and could become the biggest threat to security in europe since world war ii” (parker&starkey, 2022). here, they referenced a link (https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/putin-russia-invade-ukraine-without-warning/), where they supposedly got the information from, however, such a link does not exist. given this possibility that the authors do not maintain neutrality, we can also criticize contextually the words and word-combinations such as: “attack”, “threat”, “invasion”, “escalating tensions”, “baseless hysteria”, “unspecified military technical actions”, the purpose of which is to spread negativity and chaos, as there is much information regarding the conflict and people have been rendered unable to differentiate the fake from the truth. in some media articles we can meet cases of doublespeak, which according to merriam-webster dictionary means “language used to deceive usually through concealment or misrepresentation of truth”, through purposefully disguising, distorting, or reversing the meanings of words. (“double speak”, n.d.). doublespeak can be realized through euphemisms, mitigation, etc. let us consider the following example taken from turkish hüriet daily news regarding the armenian genocide: “armenian ethnic cleansing as ‘de-islamization’”, where the author speaks about the armenian genocide in falsifying disregard for history and facts (akyol, 2012). first of all, paying attention to the headline, we can notice that the historic tragedy and massacre has been reduced to “ethnic cleansing” instead of “genocide”, which, from the point of view of the language, is a euphemism, aimed at describing an event in a softer manner than it is in reality. secondly, we should consider the fact that genocide itself is of a criminal nature, an admission of which would lead turkey to facing criminal prosecution and judicial execution, whereas, by contrast, ethnic cleansing is not considered to be as serious and horrible an action as genocide, since it is not carried out only through massive killings. we should mention that in the core nature of genocide, the main aim is not cleansing the race, but to destroy and exterminate the entire nation. thirdly, the word “de-islamization” exonerates those who were responsible for the genocide, by justifying the horrible historic event, by attempting to relate it only to religion. finally, let us consider the following paragraph taken from the article: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/putin-russia-invade-ukraine-without-war%1fning/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 18 yesterday was the 97th anniversary of what armenians call the “great catastrophe,” or the ethnic cleansing of ottoman armenians from anatolia, their historical homeland, in 1915. those who commemorated the tragedy included some turks, such as the group that gathered in istanbul’s taksim square. it seems essential to underscore that armenia has never claimed the historic tragedy as the “great catastrophe”, since the word “catastrophe” presupposes a sudden event whereas the genocide was planned in advance, with great caution and clear intent. this means that the given central information is falsified and misleads the audience, making them believe that even for armenians the genocide was considered a “great catastrophe”. genocide is an undeniable fact, because armenia lost not only its people but also its territories. another linguistic strategy and trick can be found in the use of oxymoron in a headline, with the intent to overwhelm and create a more serious environment through flowery language, unnecessary words, thus misrepresenting the information. in the article “theresa may’s passiveaggressive parting gift for trump” (cooper, 2019) we can see an example of oxymoron in the phrase “passive-aggressive” where the word “aggression” is used to create provocation and inflict damage, whereas the word “passive” is used to soften the action. passive-aggressive behavior is a way of expressing negative feelings indirectly without violence. this headline includes manipulation since the journalist keeps it as simple and comprehensible as possible, while at the same time using a provocative phrase and figurative language to grab more attention. another example of oxymoron is in the headline “being deeply superficial: warhol, charlie brown, and the balkanization of politics and economy” (miller, 2016), where “deeply superficial” is the oxymoron. the words in this headline are total antonyms used together to convey a meaning. at the same time the headline is very complicated and this complexity lends itself to misunderstanding. if one does not have enough knowledge and background information about the following terms and words such as: “warhol”, “charlie brown”, “the balkanization of politics and economy” as used by the author, they may not be able to understand the essence of the article. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 19 conclusion if people are sometimes suspicious of the manipulation of images as a multimodal means of communication, the manipulation of words is more intentional and occasionally unintentional. indeed, when reading a news article, our immediate reaction is never to analyze the terms, the conjugation, or the form of the sentences used by the journalist. such elements can strongly influence and even manipulate our understanding and thinking. the power of words can consciously be chosen as instruments of manipulation and influence, depending on the intended target audience (marketing materials, political propaganda), whereas in other circumstances this usage can at least partially be involuntary. the semantic meaning of the lexical components of the language can easily be manipulated when journalists purposefully choose words and arrangements that can sound more severe and impactful in a specific context, e.g. over very magnetic and controversial topics, in order to reach their goal of persuasion. this semantic confusion can be noticed in the use of polysemantic words, oxymorons, doublespeak, etc., as the examples contained within this article display. notes 1. for news writing, the inverted pyramid is the most widely utilized structure. on the first level of the pyramid there is the lead, which is followed by the secondary information, background information and additional information. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 20 the lead, or the first paragraph, of a news item is very important. media illustrates everything with so much information and sources that it practically becomes impossible to read the whole story so readers often go past the first paragraph or even the first line of the story unless it provokes their interest. in a well arranged lead journalists are guided by the following tips: the less vital details are not presupposed whereas the answers of the five possible wand h questions (what, when, where, why, who, how) should be covered; conflicts are essential in good leads; specific information in leads should be as precisely and briefly summarized as possible; brevity and simplicity is a crucial characteristic feature for a journalist (from 2 to 5 sentences are supposed to be enough to communicate the major information); a lead can be more vibrant and interesting when the use of the active voice is preferred, as passive constructions are potentially meant to leave out some information; consideration of the audience and the context is also important in today’s media society which is in a constant search for breaking news; the credibility of one’s news writing is conditioned by the honesty of the information (how to write a lead, 2021). references how to write a lead. (2021) purdue university online writing lab. retrieved february 5, 2022. news writing fundamentals. (2014). george mason university writing center. retrieved february 2, 2022. pajunen, j. (2008). linguistic analysis of newspaper discourse in theory and practice, (graduation thesis, university of tampere, finland) retrieved february 10, 2022. van dijk, t. (1988 a). news as discourse. hillsdale, new jersey: laurence erlbaum associates. sources of data akyol, m. (2012, april 25). armenian ethnic cleansing as ‘de-islamization’. hürriyet daily news. retrieved february 18, 2022. cooper, c. (2019, june 3). theresa may’s passive-aggressive parting gift for trump politico. retrieved february 10, 2022. global new. (2016, october 20). presidential debate: hillary clinton calls donald trump 'a puppet' for vladimir putin [video file]. retrieved february 10, 2022. https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/journalism_and_journalistic_writing/writing_leads.html https://writingcenter.gmu.edu/guides/news-writing-fundamentals https://silo.tips/download/linguistic-analysis-of-newspaper-discourse-in-theory-and-practice https://silo.tips/download/linguistic-analysis-of-newspaper-discourse-in-theory-and-practice https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/opinion/mustafa-akyol/armenian-ethnic-cleansing-as-de-islamization-19180 https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/opinion/mustafa-akyol/armenian-ethnic-cleansing-as-de-islamization-19180 https://www.politico.eu/article/theresa-may-passive-aggressive-parting-gift-donald-trump-uk-state-visit-brexit/ https://www.politico.eu/article/theresa-may-passive-aggressive-parting-gift-donald-trump-uk-state-visit-brexit/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qin1-z_jqq https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qin1-z_jqq linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 21 miller, j. (2016, december 28). being deeply superficial: warhol, charlie brown, and the balkanization of politics and the economy. seeking alpha. retrieved february12, 2022. parker n., & starkey j. (2022, februrary 15). high alert russia set to invade ukraine at any time with massive missile blitz and 200,000 troops, us intelligence claims. the sun. retrieved february 19, 2022. trump, d. (2021, august 26). donald trump speech transcript: kabul bombing “would not have happened if i were your president”. rev. retrieved february 15, 2022. tugendhat, t. (2022, february 15). bad vlad inside the paranoid mind of vladimir putin, the trigger-happy kgb bully who acts like an ‘ageing gangster from sopranos’. the sun. retrieved february 17, 2022. dictionaries and encyclopedias double speak. (n.d.). in merriam webster dictionary. retrieved february 1, 2022 from https://merriam-webster.com paranoid. (n.d.). in cambridge dictionary. retrieved february 3, 2022 from https://dictionary.cambridge.org puppet. (n.d.). in oxford learner’s dictionary. retrieved january 30, 2022 from www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/ trigger-happy. (n.d.). in merriam webster dictionary. retrieved february 1, 2022 from https://merriam-webster.com զանգվածային լրատվության դիսկուրսի մտաշահարկային բնույթը սեդա գասպարյան ռաֆայել հարությունյան զանգվածային լրատվամիջոցների համատարած շրջանառությունը ժամանակակից աշխարհում դրդում է օբյեկտիվ չափանիշներ գտնելու դրանցում ներկայացված տարաբնույթ լրատվությունը ուսումնասիրելու և արժևորելու համար: լայն իմաստով՝ համացանցը վեր է ածվել մի այլ իրականության, որտեղ մարդիկ ապրում են մշտապես թարմացվող տեղեկատվություն ստանալու իրենց հագուրդը հագեցնելու համար, և այդ ամենը կոճակի մի հպումով, որը ընթերցողի հետաքրքրությունը կարողանում է անմիջապես բավարարել: լրատվական հոդվածhttps://seekingalpha.com/article/4033012-being-deeply-superficial-warhol-charlie-brown-and-balkanization-of-politics-and-economy https://seekingalpha.com/article/4033012-being-deeply-superficial-warhol-charlie-brown-and-balkanization-of-politics-and-economy https://seekingalpha.com/article/4033012-being-deeply-superficial-warhol-charlie-brown-and-balkanization-of-politics-and-economy https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/17655287/russia-set-invade-ukraine/ https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/17655287/russia-set-invade-ukraine/ https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/17655287/russia-set-invade-ukraine/ https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-speech-transcript-kabul-bombing-would-not-have-happened-if-i-were-your-president?fbclid=iwar061ujamri2c8blh-ge0hddzr4ez0jczyommno0pudifzrxif2raozd7q https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-speech-transcript-kabul-bombing-would-not-have-happened-if-i-were-your-president?fbclid=iwar061ujamri2c8blh-ge0hddzr4ez0jczyommno0pudifzrxif2raozd7q https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/17662965/vladimir-putin-kgb-russia-ukraine/ https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/17662965/vladimir-putin-kgb-russia-ukraine/ https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/17662965/vladimir-putin-kgb-russia-ukraine/ https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/doublespeak https://dictionary.cambridge.org/ru/%d1%81%d0%bb%d0%be%d0%b2%d0%b0%d1%80%d1%8c/%d0%b0%d0%bd%d0%b3%d0%bb%d0%b8%d0%b9%d1%81%d0%ba%d0%b8%d0%b9/paranoid https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/puppet https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/trigger-happy armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 22 ներում մասնավորապես հետաքրքրված լինելով մտաշահարկման խնդիրների քննությամբ՝ նկատում ենք, որ այդ ռազմավարությունն իրականացնելիս հեղինակները դիմում են ամենատարաբնույթ լեզվական տարրերի օգնությանը՝ բառապաշար, ձևաբանական ու շարահյուսական միավորներ, ոճավորման միջոցներ և այլն: սույն հոդվածում առաջնային ենք համարել լեզվի բառային միավորների մտաշահարկման քննությունը՝ նկատի ունենալով այն կարևոր հանգամանքը, որ հենց դրանցով է խոսքում իմաստ ձևավորվում: տեղեկատվական հոդվածներում կիրառվող բառապաշարի քննությունը գործառականհաղորդակցական լույսի ներքո հնարավորություն է տալիս բացահայտելու նախ լեզվական միավորների մտաշահարկային կարողականությունը լայն իմաստով և ապա՝ բառամիավորների հեղինակային նախընտրության ու կապակցման ազդեցությունը փոխանցվող տեղեկատվության վրա: բանալի բառեր՝ մտաշահարկում, զանգվածային լրատվության դիսկուրս, քաղաքական դիսկուրս, լեզվի բառային մակարդակ, լուրեր, տեղեկատվական կողմնակալություն: armenian folia anglistika – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english (since 2005) and yerevan state university (since 2015) aims at fostering research of the english language, literature and culture linguistics armenian folia anglistika 1 armenian folia anglistika – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english (since 2005) and yerevan state university (since 2015) aims at fostering research of the english language, literature and culture in armenia and elsewhere and facilitate intellectual cooperation between high school teachers and scholars. armenian folia anglistika is intended to be published twice a year. articles of interest to university-level teachers and scholars in english studies are warmly welcomed by the multi-national editorial board of the journal. articles should be directed to the editor-in-chief. in 2007 the editorial board of armenian folia anglistika announced the opening of a new section in the journal – armenological studies, which invites valuable and innovative contributions from such fields as armenian linguistics, literary criticism, ethnic studies, cultural history, gender studies and a wide range of adjacent disciplines. հիմնադիր և գլխավոր խմբագիր` սեդա գասպարյան համարի թողարկման պատասխանատու` լիլի կարապետյան լրատվական գործունեություն իրականացնող «անգլերենի ուսումնասիրության հայկական ասոցիացիա» հկ http:www.aase.ysu.am վկայական` 03ա 065183 տրված` 28.06.2004 թ. yerevan state university press armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021, yerevan linguistics 2 editor-in-chief seda k. gasparyan dr. of sciences (philology), professor, corresponding member of ra nas, honoured scientist of ra, holder of “best scientific work” award of ra nas (2010), holder of “prolific researcher” award of ra state committee of science (2013, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020), head of yerevan state university english philology department, president of armenian association for the study of english. e-mail: sedagasparyan@yandex.ru;sedagasparyan@ysu.am url: http://ysu.am/science/en/seda-gasparyan orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 phone: (+374 99) 255 060 editorial team lili h. karapetyan managing editor assistant professor at english philology department, yerevan state university, armenia. e-mail: starlet@ysu.am url: http://ysu.am/science/en/lili-karapetan olga v. aleksandrova doctor of sciences (philology), professor, head of the department of english linguistics at lomonosov moscow state university, holder of lomonosov award (2001), award of the international federation of modern language teachers' associations at fiplv (2005). e-mail: ovaleksandrova@gmail.com url: https://www.philol.msu.ru/~engdep/.../aleksandrova-olga/ gevorg r. barseghyan phd in philology, associate professor at english philology department, dean of faculty of european languages and communication, yerevan state university, armenia. e-mail: barseghyan.gevorg@ysu.am url: http://www.ysu.am/science/en/gevorg-barseghyan isabella r. buniyatova dr. of philology, professor, head of the department of germanic and romance philology, boris grinchenko kyiv university, ukraine. e-mail: i.buniiatova@kubg.edu.ua url: https://if.kubg.edu.ua/struktura/.../615-.html elżbieta chrzanowska-kluczewska dr hab., professor, linguist, member of the department of english linguistics at the institute for english studies, jagiellonian university in kraków, poland. e-mail: elzbieta.chrzanowska-kluczewska@uj.edu.pl url: https://ifa.filg.uj.edu.pl/elzbieta-chrzanowska-kluczewska mailto:sedagasparyan@yandex.ru mailto:sedagasparyan@ysu.am http://ysu.am/science/en/seda-gasparyan https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 mailto:starlet@ysu.am http://ysu.am/science/en/lili-karapetan mailto:ovaleksandrova@gmail.com https://www.philol.msu.ru/~engdep/department/staff/aleksandrova-olga/ mailto:barseghyan.gevorg@ysu.am http://www.ysu.am/science/en/gevorg-barseghyan mailto:i.buniiatova@kubg.edu.ua https://if.kubg.edu.ua/struktura/2011-06-23-12-44-46/kafedra-hermanskoi-ta-romanskoi-filolohii/sklad-kafedry-308/615-.html mailto:elzbieta.chrzanowska-kluczewska@uj.edu.pl https://ifa.filg.uj.edu.pl/en_gb/elzbieta-chrzanowska-kluczewska https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 linguistics armenian folia anglistika 3 astghik e. chubaryan phd in philology, associate professor at english philology department, yerevan state university, armenia. e-mail: astghik.chubaryan@ysu.am url: http://www.ysu.am/science/en/astghik-chubaryan marta dąbrowska dr hab., assistant professor with habilitation at the institute for english studies, jagiellonian university in kraków, poland. e-mail: marta.b.dabrowska@uj.edu.pl url: https://ifa.filg.uj.edu.pl/marta-dabrowska alessandra giorgi phd in philology, full professor at the department of linguistics and comparative cultural studies, ca'foscari university of venice, italy. e-mail: giorgi@unive.it url: https://www.unive.it/persone/giorgi sona haroutyunian doctor of linguistics, professor at the department of asian and north african studies, ca'foscari university of venice, italy. e-mail: sona.haroutyunian@unive.it url: https://www.unive.it/persone/sona.haroutyunian angela locatelli full professor of english literature at the university of bergamo, italy. member of the board of the phd school (scuola di alta formazione dottorale) of the university of bergamo. one of the founders and faculty member of the international phd network in "literary and cultural studies". e-mail: angela.locatelli@unibg.it url: http://www00.unibg.it/struttura/strutturasmst.asp?rub... gohar g. madoyan assistant editor phd in philology, associate professor at english philology department, yerevan state university, armenia. e-mail: goharmadoyan@mail.ru url: http://ysu.am/science/en/gohar-madoyan elżbieta mańczak-wohlfeld dr hab., professor ordinarius at the institute for english studies, head of the department of english linguistics, jagiellonian university in kraków, poland. e-mail: manczak@uj.edu.pl url: https://ifa.filg.uj.edu.pl/elzbieta-manczak-wohfeld mailto:astghik.chubaryan@ysu.am http://www.ysu.am/science/en/astghik-chubaryan mailto:marta.b.dabrowska@uj.edu.pl https://ifa.filg.uj.edu.pl/marta-dabrowska mailto:giorgi@unive.it https://www.unive.it/persone/giorgi mailto:sona.haroutyunian@unive.it https://www.unive.it/persone/sona.haroutyunian mailto:angela.locatelli@unibg.it http://www00.unibg.it/struttura/strutturasmst.asp?rubrica=1&persona=396 mailto:goharmadoyan@mail.ru http://ysu.am/science/en/gohar-madoyan mailto:manczak@uj.edu.pl https://ifa.filg.uj.edu.pl/elzbieta-manczak-wohfeld armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021, yerevan linguistics 4 gaiane h. muradian dr. of sciences (philology), associate professor at english philology department, yerevan state university, armenia. e-mail: g.murad@ysu.am url: http://ysu.am/science/en/gayane-muradyan shushanik h. paronyan dr. of sciences (philology), professor, head of the department of english for crosscultural communication, yerevan state university, armenia. e-mail: shushanik.paronyan@ysu.am url: http://ysu.am/science/en/shushanik-paronyan ewa sałkiewicz-munnerlyn ph.d. in international law, jagiellonian university in kraków, poland. lecturer at akademia krakowska, mfa, andrzej frycz modrzewski kraków academy, poland. e-mail: ewasalkiewiczmunnerlyn@gmail.com mariana s. sargsyan phd in philology, associate professor at english philology department, yerevan state university, head of the department for international cooperation, mescs science committee, armenia. e-mail: marianasargsyan@ysu.am url: http://ysu.am/science/en/mariana-sargsyan orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3054-1871 john a. stotesbury adjunct professor, school of humanities, university of eastern finland, joensuu, finland; and adjunct professor, department of english, university of oulu, finland. e-mail: john.stotesbury@gmail.com iryna s. shevchenko doctor of philology, full professor, academician of the academy of sciences of higher school of ukraine. head of the department of business foreign language and translation of v.n. karazin kharkiv national university. head of the thesis committee for defense of phd theses in the speciality 10.02.04 — germanic languages. e-mail: iryna.shevchenko@karazin.ua url: http://foreign-languages.karazin.ua/en/shevchenko peter sutton freelance translator and playwright, united kingdom. e-mail: peterjsutton@talktalk.net url: https://www.petersutton.uk/#about svetlana g. ter-minasova dr. of sciences (philology), professor emeritus at lomonosov moscow state university, president of the faculty of foreign languages and area studies at lomonosov moscow mailto:g.murad@ysu.am http://ysu.am/science/en/gayane-muradyan mailto:shushanik.paronyan@ysu.am http://ysu.am/science/en/shushanik-paronyan mailto:ewasalkiewiczmunnerlyn@gmail.com mailto:marianasargsyan@ysu.am http://ysu.am/science/en/mariana-sargsyan https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3054-1871 mailto:john.stotesbury@gmail.com mailto:iryna.shevchenko@karazin.ua http://foreign-languages.karazin.ua/en/shevchenko mailto:peterjsutton@talktalk.net https://www.petersutton.uk/#about https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3054-1871 linguistics armenian folia anglistika 5 state university, russia, chairperson of the flt council (ministry of education, russia) since 1987, founding president of both national association of applied linguistics (naal, russia), an affiliate of the international association of applied linguistics (aila) since 1989 and the founding president of national association of teachers of english (nate, russia), a collective member of the international associations tesol (the usa) and iatefl (the uk) and the chairperson of the flt council (ministry of education and science, russia) since 1995. she holds the lomonosov award, fulbright's 50th anniversary award, and was named doctor honoris causa by the university of birmingham (uk), the state university of new york (usa), the russian-armenian university (armenia), yerevan state university (armenia), visiting professor by the national research tomsk state university, yerevan state university. e-mail: sgtermin@mail.ru url: http://ffl.msu.ru/en/about/president/ mailto:sgtermin@mail.ru http://ffl.msu.ru/en/about/president/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021, yerevan linguistics 6 երևանի պետական համալսարան անգլերենի ուսումնասիրության հայկական ասոցիացիա (անգլերենի ուսումնասիրության եվրոպական ֆեդերացիայի անդամ) անգլիագիտական հետազոտությունների հայկական հանդես միջազգային գրախոսվող ամսագիր համագործակցությամբ՝ երևանի վալերի բրյուսովի անվան պետական համալսարանի (հայաստան) մոսկվայի մ. լոմոնոսովի անվ. պետական համալսարանի (ռուսաստան) կրակովի յագիելոնյան համալսարանի (լեհաստան) բերգամոյի համալսարանի (իտալիա) մոնտենեգրոյի համալսարանի (մոնտենեգրո) երեվան – 2021 linguistics armenian folia anglistika 7 yerevan state university armenian association for the study of english (member association of the european society for the study of english) armenian folia anglistika peer-reviewed international journal in cooperation with: yerevan brusov state university (armenia) lomonosov moscow state university (russia) jagiellonian university, cracow (poland) bergamo university (italy) university of montenegro (montenegro) yerevan – 2021 hin.qxd an approach to report writing in the world of work my experience has been very much that of trainingenglish language learners in the world of work the field which is commonly called eop english for occupational purposes. to provide some examples, this experience has included developing english language skills with cambodian ngo workers, working for the international labour organisation whose job it is to obtain information on likely locations for investment, sudanese experts from the ministry of justice who are carrying out an in-depth inspection of their country’s prisons, russian engineers, working on an offshore oil platform who are concerned about the installation of fire safety systems, and armenian junior diplomats based in minsk who are reporting back on economic developments in the country. these rather varied examples have been chosen as in each case, once outside the classroom or training room, students were expected to detail their findings, research and recommendations in the form of a report. here, i will suggest that the writing skills and especially the report writing skills we aim to develop in the world of eop are significantly similar to those which university lecturers aim to develop in the field of eap english for academic purposes. both sides, i feel, have a great deal to learn from each other and i hope that the approach to report writing outlined here is of help both to eop and eap practitioners. an ability to construct clear, concise and readable reports is of the utmost value to a huge range of english language learners, working in a breathtaking range of work situations. worldwide, international organisations are keen to develop the skills of ‘national’ employees and national organisations are keen to develop links with the wider world. these organisations might include large multi-national companies an oil company for example where many different disciplines demand report writing skills. an ability to write reports for a non-native speaking member of a company such as this opens doors! it might include a small struggling non-governmental organisation which has made measurable progress in remote rural areas and needs to document its progress. it might also include an institution such as british council itself where, in an armenian context, report writing is a major activity for each of the project managers, working here, each in a different sphere. thus to some extent, then, an ability to produce reports leads to sustainability and in its own way plays a part in empowerment. as in all aspects of english language learning, it is perhaps never too soon to start i suggest here that these report writing skills can be developed before entry into the workplace, at university, as well as an important part of university based activities such as research. 104 armenian folia anglistika methodology andy keedwell it is attractive to view the development of report writing skills as figuring more at the training end of the spectrum than at the educational end, as proposed by h.g.widdowson (1983, p.6). it is a type of training that leads to what the linguist has called restricted competence. by its nature, report writing produces what a.mountford has called predictable and prescribable language (1988, p.78). a good report is produced according to accepted norms and standards and these norms and standards in english can be taught, regardless of the extent to which report writing formats vary from one language to another. a.m.johns (1990, p.32) talks of rules of discourse, which are standards by which a native speaker will produce a discourse such as a report, bearing in mind accepted standards of clarity, acceptability and appropriacy which meet the reader’s expectations. report writing is a routine, and these routines can be learnt. in order to support learners in writing a report, we need to first of all determine the features of a report and, in particular, those features which might prove problematical to our learners. clearly, a report is goal based it aims to get something done. it is purposeful and sets out to be a basis for action, whether that action is the correct siting of a new fire escape, the launch of a new product on the market or the implementation of funding for a teacher training programme. a report may be both informational and persuasive (britton j., 1975, p.99). it often aims both to provide information and to persuade the reader to follow a particular course of action through recommendations. it may be useful as a rule of thumb to categorise reports into the following groups, although obviously there may be overlap between categories. • an investigation which has found something out. • a survey which has found out what people think. • an evaluation or review which has found out how well something or somebody is working. • a feasibility study which has decided how well something will work in the future. • a plan which gives details of what an organisation will do in the future. regardless of detailed content or context, the majority of reports would appear to share the significant characteristics of one of these types or another. when for example, engineers from armenia airways are giving information on whether a new kind of plane should be used by the company, they are working on a type of feasibility study. an organisation describing if a new way of interviewing new staff has been successful are fundamentally evaluating. familiarity with these report types will enable writers to adjust their language to the appropriate format. a second view of report-writing which has been found to be of use to students is to see the report writer as a lawyer arguing for or against a case. both lawyer and report writer have to: • organise language to present ideas; • give information clearly; • include all-important information while excluding information which is not important; 105 methodology armenian folia anglistika • make recommendations with clear reasons, and persuade; • show why opposing recommendations should not be followed. before embarking on the design of a report writing course, we need to have undertaken a thorough needs analysis, which in most cases will take one or more of three forms: a genre analysis, a deductive needs analysis or an inductive needs analysis. any designer of a report writing course will find an extensive investigation of the genre of the particular report type his or her students are or will be expected to write enormously rewarding. definitions of a genre hinge on the fact that exponents of a genre share a communicative purpose and share some or all characteristics of structure, style, content and intended audience. (swales j., 1990, p.45). a report is an example of a distinct genre, and has distinctive linguistic features which characterise it as one. a genre will be characterised by: a micro-structure: for example, the structural characteristics of a research paper as investigated by swales included: • abstract • introduction • method • results and discussion. a range of micro-functions: trimble and the washington school identified a range of rhetorical functions and techniques which may include, in the case of a report: • classifying • comparing and ordering • exemplifying • making relations between text and illustration. in undertaking a genre analysis, we need to ask focused questions. these might include: • how is a report usually organised? • how are aims usually expressed? • how does the writer commit to a certain idea are there any degrees of commitment? • how frequently do writers use the passive in a typical report? • how does the writer usually express recommendations? to support the design of a report writing course, i examined a wide range of reports from the workplace, primarily reports which could be described as looking backward. 106 armenian folia anglistika methodology findings show that these reports are usually composed of sections, on a similar basis to swales’ research articles. these sections might have different names, depending on the type of report, but almost always include: • an introduction which sets out the aim. • a method section which describes how an investigation was undertaken usually sequentially. • a results section which presents data, with or without discussion of the data. • a recommendation section in which proposals of some kind are made. a typical introduction will outline the aim of a report, often either focusing on the aim or on the report itself as subject: it is very atypical in english to express an aim as ‘this report aims to……..’ as it implies that an attempt will be made which may or may not be successful. a range of verbs in the infinitive clause are used. thus, for example, to identify to recommend to examine to analyse to classify to outline to evaluate to assess to propose to determine to review introductions often follow a problem/solution pattern (hoey, 1983) or more precisely, a problem, purpose and scope pattern. • the problem outlines the situation which led to the production of the report. • the purpose explains what the report is setting out to do. • the scope includes what will and will not be included, and, frequently, where further information can be found. in the method section, the writer almost always highlights steps: through sequences, and through staging. but surprisingly, the active is used almost as frequently as the passive so an engineer writing a technical report might say: the oil stream is directed through the main oil pump of a centrifuge. or a centrifuge directs the oil stream through the main oil pump. 107 methodology armenian folia anglistika results: in the results section, the writer uses an impersonal style and thematises results: many writers need to classify and to compare. classification can be complex as shown by the example below from an international labour organisation report: the writer may often hedge, because not all facts are clear: it is also difficult to obtain data on... in the absence of reliable information on age conditions, it is not feasible to... it has not proved possible to discover the real incomes of... recommendations: in a typical sample these results have been found. not surprisingly, recommendations use modal verbs. 108 armenian folia anglistika methodology recommendations also often use an impersonal it to express suggestions, e.g.: a ‘quick and dirty’ genre analysis of this kind can: • show us how a typical writer in this genre will express purpose; • show us typical forms of organization which learners need to be àble to manipulate; • give us information on appropriate registers: formality and informality of typical texts; • provide information on particular grammatical structures which learners will need to be able to use; • provide us with examples of lexical choices, commonly made by writers in the particular genre. needs analysis: it is helpful to think about needs analysis in terms of needs, lack and wants. (hutchinson t., waters a., 1987, p.56) deductive analysis (berwick m., 1989, p.58) the eop needs analyst depends very much on the use of questionnaires, which need to target: • target level performance of the learner (munby j.l., 1978, p.12); • when english is used by the target learners and in which types of situations; • the frequency with which language is used; • how english is used for which skills and in which genres of writing; • what tasks in english the learner is expected to perform now and what tasks they are expected to perform after the course, after promotion, for example; • the learners’ own assessment of the language skills; • if learners have previous experience of classroom lessons, forms of self-access learning, esp, etc. it is not only the learner whom we need to target by needs analysis but also the sponsors of the course, the learner’s employers and other agencies. • what is their assessment of the learner’s skills? • which language skills do they think are essential or desirable for the learner? • which language tasks do they expect their learners to be able to perform and to what degree? 109 methodology armenian folia anglistika inductive methods of needs analysis: an inductive needs analysis involves watching the learner on the job. this might be limited by time, feasibility, confidentiality and logistics. in designing a report writing course for oil engineers, i was lucky enough to spend three months living on an off-shore oil platform but this was the exception rather than the rule! report writing meeting the students’ needs: in my opinion, errors in learners’ writing at upper intermediate level and above involve far more than just accuracy in grammar and vocabulary and a traditional approach to ‘mistakes’. m. hoey (1983) emphasises that reading is a dialogue between reader and writer. non-native report writers often make demands which are too heavy on native speakers because they violate one or more rules of discourse. and good reports are written to be read in a hurry. the report writer needs to be aware that he or she is only writing to meet the readers’ needs and to answer a series of questions which the reader has. the writer needs to answer each of these questions about the reader at the planning stage: 1. what information does the reader need to find out? 2. is the reader interested in your recommendations? 3. what facts and figures do they need? 4. how much does the reader know about this topic already? 5. is the reader a general reader or a specialist? will the reader understand specialist terms and expressions? 6. what will the reader do after he or she has read the report? what change will it result in? a number of exercises can be developed by the course designer in order to draw students’ attention to questions the report reader is likely to formulate and how the report writer may answer them. in my experience, students have also found four basic principles of report writing very useful. a useful acronym is cope because these four principles will assist the student to cope with report writing. the four principles are: • clarity helping the reader by being clear; • organisation ordering and structuring your report so it is easy to follow; • precision using language that has an exact meaning; • economy not using more words than necessary to communicate your meaning. a report writing trainer needs the flexibility and initiative to refer back to these four principles at each and every opportunity. if we take cope as set of principles, we can see that an effective writing course needs to include all of these areas. 110 armenian folia anglistika methodology organising a report: • focus on the structure of a typical report; • enabling students to identify the purpose of particular paragraphs of a report (authentic or adapted); • enabling students to identify the purpose of particular sections of a report (authentic or adapted); • familiarising learners with the problem, purpose and scope in introductions. organising internal coherence and cohesion: topic sentence activities matching topic sentences and producing topic sentences for supplied paragraphs. being precise: • expressing clearly which sections of the report are fact and which are opinion; • using language precisely to describe an existing situation; • using language precisely to describe change; • developing an ability to write formally and informal as appropriate activities which include converting informal language into formal language and vice versa; • using technical vocabulary efficiently, but more importantly, using sub-technical vocabulary effectively. economy: • stating exactly what is needed no more and no less; • developing an ability to distinguish what implies ‘hot air’ in a text – breaking away from ‘soviet’ traditions of using many words to say nothing; • manipulating micro-functions of sequencing, referring to diagrams, comparing. classifying etc. effectively, often through converting verbal data to non verbal data and vice versa (nuttall c., 1982, p.52). above all, we need to focus on developing the skills of a learner as a mechanic of language and throughout guaranteeing clarity. references: 1. berwick, m. needs assessment in language programmes, from theory to practice. in: the second language curriculum ed.by johnson, r.k. cambridge, cambridge university press, 1989. 111 methodology armenian folia anglistika 2. britton, j. the development of writing abilities. london, macmillan, 1975. 3. hoey, m. on the surface of discourse. london, allen and unwin, 1983. 4. hutchinson, t.; waters, a. english for specific purposes: a language centered approach. cambridge, cambridge university press, 1987. 5. johns, a.m. composition theories. in: knoll, b. second language writing: research insights for the classroom. cambridge, cambridge university press, 1990. 6. mountford, a. factors influencing esp materials production and use. in: chamberlain, d.; baumgardner, r.j. esp in the classroom. elt documents 128, london, ìåð, 1988. 7. munby, j.l. communicative syllabus design. cambridge, cambridge university press, 1978. 8. nuttall, n. teaching reading skills in a foreign language. cambridge, cambridge university press, 1982. 9. swales, j. genre analysis: english in academic and research settings. cambridge, cambridge university press, 1990. 10. trimble, l. english for science and technology: a discourse approach. cambridge, cambridge university press, 1982, 11. widdowson. h.g. learning purpose and language use. oxford, oxford university press, 1983. ð³ßí»ïíáõãûáõý ·ñ»éáõ 黽í³ï³ý ñùïáõãûáõýý»ñç ½³ñ·³óù³ý ßáõñç ð³û³ëï³ýáõù ´ñçï³ý³ï³ý ëáññáõñ¹á ùß³ï»é ¿ ùç ß³ñù ýûáõã»ñ, áñáýù ùçïí³í »ý ½³ñ·³óý»éáõ ³ý·é»ñ»ýç ïçñ³å»ïù³ý ùçççý ù³ï³ñ¹³ïý ³ñ¹»ý ñ³õã³ñ³ñ³í áõë³ýáõý»ñç ·ñ³íáñ ëáëùç ñùïáõãûáõýý»ñá, ù³ëý³íáñ³å»ë ñ³ßí»ïíáõãûáõý ·ñ»éáõ áéáñïáõù: êáõûý ñá¹í³íá ý»ñï³û³óýáõù ¿ í»ñáñçßû³é ýûáõã»ñç ïçñ³ñïù³ý áýã³óùá ñ³û ïñïë»ñ ¹çí³ý³·»ïý»ñç ¨ ³ûé μý³·³í³éý»ñáõù ³ßë³ïáõ ³ýó³ýó ëùμ»ñáõù, ý³¨ ùýý³ñïáõù ³ûý ù»ãá¹ý»ñá, áñáýù ïû·ý»ý ñ³ßí»ïíáõãûáõý ·ñ»éáõ áýã³óùáõù í³·áõ 黽í³ï³ý ¹åí³ñáõãûáõýý»ñá ñ³õã³ñ³ñ»éáõý: 112 armenian folia anglistika methodology armenian folia anglistika – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english (since 2005) and yerevan state university (since 2015) aims at fostering research of the english language, literature and culture methodology armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 85 teaching communication theory and practice in higher education gaiane muradian  yerevan state university communication is a social phenomenon based on sharing information, ideas and attitudes. maturity, experience, personal and social relationships that run more smoothly and become more meaningful, are developed, expanded and advanced through communication. hence, the purpose of this paper based on case study methodology is to help students understand the principles of communication theory/study and put them into practice in life. the skills and techniques learned in the course are essential to effective communication in intrapersonal, interpersonal, small-group and public speaking and can be applied not only through studying the theoretical material but also through practical exercises, discussions and presentations that will enable to incorporate them into daily life and activity. as a result, students will learn to function in a more productive and assertive way in public and work environments and develop the newfound abilities to speak up effectively in other contexts. keywords: communication theory and practice, higher education, teaching communication skills and techniques, visuals, videos, powerpoint presentation. introduction communication has existed since the appearance of human beings. in the classical period (300 bc) it was already a topic of great interest (aristotle, 1908) but was not defined until the 20 th century when people began to study the process of communication. interest in the academic study of communication intensified after world war i as advances in technology and literacy made communication a topic of concern (littlejohn, 2008). after mid-20 th century when communication was defined as a discipline by s. f.  g.murad@ysu.am this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 10.01.2021 revised: 17.04.2021 accepted: 24.05.2021 © the author(s) 2021 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2021.17.1.085 mailto:g.murad@ysu.am https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 methodology 86 scudder (1980), communication theory/study started focusing on communication as central to human interaction and experience, and involved an understanding of how human beings/entities behave in creating, exchanging, and interpreting messages in their quest for survival (glory & akpan, 2017). thus, the course of communication theory focuses on human communication, on communication that realizes its functions in human society. today it plays an important role in information technology (it) and telecommunications as well, strengthening and giving way to less personal and more social interactions in every sphere of human activity. the course must be based on both theoretical and practical approaches as the students need firstly to understand the principles of communication theory, and secondly put the acquired knowledge into practice by improving their own communication skills through exercising, discussing, presenting. as a result, they will learn to function assertively and in more productive ways in public and work environments and develop the newfound abilities to speak up effectively in a variety of other contexts. teaching communication theory the course of communication theory fulfills the general education requirement for studying an academic discipline and acquiring core competencies of oral communication. at large, the focus of the course is on teaching what communication is (1) and on practicing skills needed to improve the quality of interpersonal communication in a variety of contexts (2). the core issues to be investigated in the classroom include such topics/themes as the origin and academics of communication, definition of communication, the importance of studying the nature and role of messages in life and society, the communication theory framework, its spheres of investigation, the communication process, barriers to communication and ways to overcome them, cross-cultural communication, speech act theory, characteristics, components, models, types, forms, registers, styles, gender and rhetoric of communication, etc. at the very beginning of the course students need to be explained that when we communicate, we are trying to establish commonness with someone, that is, we are trying to share information, an idea or an attitude. students should learn and know that being one of the key concepts in methodology armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 87 linguistics, the term communication has promoted several definitions by linguists, and the idea of sharing the information is the principal one in most definitions. in the broad sense communication refers to “every kind of mutual transmission of information using signs or symbols between living beings (humans, animals), as well as between people and data-processing machines” (bussman, 1996, p. 83). in the narrow sense communication includes only human beings, and according to c. hovland (1953), a wellknown psychologist, is the process by which a human individual (the communicator) transmits stimuli (usually verbal symbols) to modify the behavior of other individuals. encyclopedia britannica (2020) defines communication as the exchange of information between individuals through a common system of verbal symbols, and, as d. crystal (1999, p. 62) states, it is “the transmission and reception of information between a signaller and a receiver.” if we look at other perceptions of communication defined by communication theorists, we can come across characterizations such as “communication is the generation of meaning” or “communication is a ubiquitous and powerful source in society” (bowers&bradac, 1984, p. 872). i would add here that communication is a social multimodal, multidimensional semiotic system; that is, communication is a resource for meaning across the constantly changing verbal and non-verbal contexts of human interaction, an all-pervading powerful source in society which, along with traditional oral and written discourse modes, today is also realized through numerous other media such as live-streaming and online text messaging, pictures, images, symbols, graphic design, cartoons, colours, music, clothing, theatre-like scenes/actions and other artistic expressions that convey messages (muradian, 2019). after the disclosure of the essence of communication, the discussions should evolve through analyses and conversations on the above-mentioned topics included in the course. for example, the students will be explained that to communicate effectively we need to be familiar with the factors involved in the communication process which is usually described along such major dimensions as content what type of things are communicated, source by whom, form in which form, channel through which medium, destination/receiver to whom, and purpose with what kind of results (berio, 1960; berko, 2010). being aware of these factors will help us plan armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 methodology 88 and analyze situations, solve problems, and in general, do better no matter what our job might be. theoretical explanations and discussions will be accompanied by information listed in bullets, visuals (tables, charts, figures, concept maps, flowcharts, diagrams, infographics) and video materials as they have a far more significant impact on human long-term memory than other communication methods, and engage students more quickly, simplify complex theoretical topics, help them to better process and comprehend the material and finally facilitate communication. hence, courses which incorporate suitable visuals gain a higher preference over text-only ones. below are visuals used when discussing basic communication models: figure 1. kobir’s communication model source encoder message channel decoder receiver figure 2. shannon-weaver model of communication figure 3. schramm's communication model • sender• receiver • receiver• sender sender receiver sender receiver methodology armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 89 figure 4. katz-lazersfeld communication model c. heffner’s (2012) communication styles and aristotle’s (1954) triad/rhetorical triangle could be presented by the following infographics: passive assertive aggressive infographic 1. heffner’s communication styles opinion leaders people people people people armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 methodology 90 infographic 2. aristotle’s triad /rhetorical triangle today the exponential rise in technology has created many new modes of presenting complex theoretical materials (in our case it is the theory of communication) through new multimodal tools/ mediums and the teacher can choose the most creative ones to make a strong impact on learners and facilitate learning. in other words, visuals are an important aspect of learning a theoretical course that communicate the key concepts and engage learners throughout the course. it should also be noted that the printed theoretical materials and visuals are appropriate both for offline/classroom and online/e-learning courses. ethos author competence credibility character knowledge credentials charisma pathos audience figurative language connotative words vivid descriptions emotional tone ethos demonstrates respect for audience's ideas and values. pathos appeals to the audience's emotions. logos reveals the author's logic and reason. logos message argument reasoning evidence statistics facts methodology armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 91 putting communication theory into practice in any theoretical course, students are expected to practice comprehension in class. at large, the focus of the course of communication theory is not only on learning but also practicing oral skills needed to improve the quality of interpersonal communication in a variety of contexts, such as in relationships, groups, organizations, public settings, and diverse cultures. a good practical tool to be used to check the acquired knowledge is the self-check questions to be done in the classroom. for example, after investigating the types of communication, students could discuss selfcheck questions on verbal, nonverbal, written communication, body language and gesture, paralanguage and electronic culture for literacy and educational reasons. a short youtube video on the four types of communication (the link given in the self-check questions) will be watched while doing the selfcheck questions. at another lesson the video material will be on types of communication personalities or on testing one’s own personality type online. the videos will enable ongoing communication. other multimodal means include such communication and teaching methodological tools as discussion boards, prezi or powerpoint presentations, screencast-o-matic video and podcasts. social media options can also be used to deliver the theoretical content creatively and meaningfully. discussions, disputes, presentations should be encouraged during the whole process of teaching the course. diverse audio and video tools support students in learning best by hearing. for different assignments visuals and videos that generate conversation are good tools. mind maps can provide the structure for a productive brainstorming session. for example, after investigating crosscultural norms of communication, independent/interdependent cultures in which language plays a great role (kiuchi 2006) and high-context/lowcontext cultures (hall, 1973; ramos, 2014; bai, 2016), it is a good idea to put down the topic of highand low-context cultures in the middle of the map and ask the students to identify their own culture’s place in it and discuss their ideas related to this issue. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 methodology 92 figure 5. high and low context culture map generation of an active discussion among the students on topics like the one on high and low cultures will help students memorize the theoretical material and get involved in active conversation developing their oral communication skills. another practical communication tool to be used in lectures (both by teachers and students) is the microsoft powerpoint probably the bestknown presentation graphics program available. the presentations made by students help animate the ideas they have trouble understanding and allow ample time for questioning and discussing. students usually use advanced designs/communication skills and demonstrate superb research presentations based on the given lecture. the presentation topics (in our case culture influence on interpersonal communication; relational communication; interpersonal communication in virtual reality; communication in social conflict; artifacts in intercultural information exchange; leadership communication style, etc.) are assigned by the teacher. such presentations are usually interactive, contain text, art, animation and audio and video elements. they present graphically enhanced information and instruction to the whole class, keep the students interested in the topic and encourage an active discussion thus contributing to the comprehension and absorption of the academic material and development of communication skills. conclusion today new technologies are introducing many changes to mass communication and communication theories which must be developed or revised to keep up with the changes in virtual/electronic or computer methodology armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 93 mediated communication. this means communication theorists will have to shift to models and theories that recognize the interactivity of the 21 st century media. academic lectures based on the convergence of the course of communication theory and technology tend to encourage both the comprehension of the discipline and development of communication skills. captivating visuals, engaging videos, attractive infographics motivate learners to do better; help them grasp concepts easily by stimulating imagination and affecting their cognitive capabilities (they have the potential “to stretch” the human mind and memory when absorbing, comprehending, analyzing, discussing, presenting). the mentioned tools add value to the theoretical course material and should meet the requirements of simplifying the not-easy-to-understand material, encouraging interactive communication, helping learners connect the familiar materials with the unfamiliar. hence, the key is to use visuals and videos effectively to add value to an academic course and draw learners to both offline and online education platforms. summing up, it should be mentioned that each of us has our own experiences and perspectives to draw upon from the communication theory course, thus creating an ongoing application of human communication in general. every student is encouraged to actively join and contribute to this dialogue as we explore the fascinating field of communication. references aristotle. (1908). interpretation. the works of aristotle. in w. d. ross & j.a. smith (eds.). historia animalium. oxford: claredon. aristotle. (1954). rhetoric and poetics. new york: random house. bai, h. a. (2016). cross-cultural analysis of advertisements from highcontext cultures to low-context cultures. english language teaching, 9 (8), 21-30. doi:10.5539/elt.v9n8p21 berio, d. (1960). the process of communication. new york: holt, rinehart, and winston. berko, r. (2010). communicating. boston, ma: pearson education. bowers, j. w., & bradac, j. (1984). contemporary problems in human communication theory. boston: allyn and bacon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/doi_(identifier) https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v9n8p21 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 methodology 94 bussman, h. (1996). routledge dictionary of language and linguistics. london, ny: routledge. crystal, d. (1999). the penguin dictionary of language. london: penguin books. encyclopedia britannica. in britannica online (2020). retrieved from https://britannica.com.au/britannica-online glory, a. & akpan, k. (2017). influence of student-teacher communication on students’ academic achievement for effective teaching and learning. american journal of educational research, 5(10), 11021107. doi: 10.12691/education-5-10-12 heffner, c. l. (2012). communication styles. retrieved from http://facultyevaluation.org/meta/communication_styles.htm. hall, e. t. (1973). the silent language. new york: anchor. hovland, c., janis, i. l., & kelley, h. h. (1953) communication and persuasion: psychological studies of opinion change. new haven: yale up. kiuchi, a. (2006). independent and interdependent self‐construals: ramifications for a multicultural society. japanese psychological research, 48/1, 1-16. kobir, l. (2019). the nine components of communication process. retrieved from https://newsmoor.com/the-nine-components-of-communication-process/ littlejohn, s. w., & foss, k. a. (2008). theories of human communication. belmont, ca: thomson wadsworth. scudder, s. f. (1980). communication theory as a universal law. retrieved from https://en.mwikibooks.org muradian, g. (2019). breaking communication stereotypes: the discourse of armenian velvet revolution. british journal of education, society and behavioural science, 30 (2), 1-7. doi:10.9734/jesbs/2019/v30i230123 ramos, c. (2014). high context. low context. encyclopedia of diversity and social justice. rowman & littlefield publishers. https://britannica.com.au/britannica-online http://facultyevaluation.org/meta/communication_styles.htm http://facultyevaluation.org/meta/communication_styles.htm https://newsmoor.com/the-nine-components-of-communication-process/ https://newsmoor.com/the-nine-components-of-communication-process/ https://en.mwikibooks.org/ methodology armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 95 հաղորդակցության տեսության եվ պրակտիկայի ուսուցումը բարձրագույն ուսումնական հաստատություններում գայանե մուրադյան հաղորդակցությունը սոցիալական երևույթ է՝ հիմնված մտքերի, գաղափարների, տեղեկատվության փոխանակման վրա: խոսքային հմտությունները, անձնական և սոցիալական հարաբերությունները զարգանում են հաղորդակցության միջոցով: հետևաբար, հաղորդակցության տեսության դասընթացի նպատակն է՝ օգնել ուսանողներին հասկանալ ոչ միայն հաղորդակցության տեսության սկզբունքները, այլև դրանք արդյունավետորեն կիրառել կյանքում: տեսական նյութի ուսումնասիրությունը, ինչպես նաև գործնական վարժությունները, քննարկումներն ու ցուցադրությունները ուսանողներին հնարավորություն են տալիս ձեռք բերել հաղորդակցական այնպիսի հմտություններ, որոնք կկիրառվեն հաղորդակցական բազմաթիվ իրադրություններում: բանալի բառեր. հաղորդակցության տեսություն և պրակտիկա, բարձրագույն կրթություն, հաղորդակցական հմտությունների ուսուցանում, տեսողական միջոցներ, տեսաձայնագրություններ, powerpoint ներկայացում: armenian folia anglistika – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english (since 2005) and yerevan state university (since 2015) aims at fostering research of the english language, literature and culture linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 69 “all truth is relative” or how to not be fooled in the post-truth age? mariana sargsyan  yerevan state university the term “fake news” is not a new phenomenon. before the advent of the internet, people read news from reliable sources which were required to adhere to strict standards of professional ethics. however, due to the ease of access to the internet and social media there have emerged new ways of publishing, sharing and consuming news and information, in the meanwhile, the control over the quality and editorial norms have declined significantly. this has changed the way fake news is created and distributed. people now prefer to read the information on social media and other online sources. however, it is not always easy to determine which content is true and which is not. the paper argues that fake news employs specific language and graphic patterns which are meant to generate an emotional response. knowing the language features of fake news may help readers become less susceptible to fake content. the study is built on the hypothesis that a critical analysis of how the information is represented activates a process of reasoning that helps spot fake content. keywords: post-truth; fake news; language and graphic patters; critical approach, emotion; cognitive aspect. introduction pluralism and relativism in dealing with such fundamental concepts as truth and knowledge have resulted in the emergence of competing perspectives on reality and entailed paradigmatic changes, particularly in the media culture. misinformation, malinformation, disinformation and fake news have become usual terms describing the qualitative changes in the current media landscape. in recent years, among the mentioned terms “fake news” has become most popular designating not only false and misleading information, disseminated as news. it has become a highly emotional term that questions the news objectivity  marianasargsyan@ysu.am this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 11.10.2022 revised: 09.12.2022 accepted: 17.01.2023 © the author(s) 2023 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2023.19.1.069 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 linguistics 70 and aims at exerting pressure over people’s attitudes and beliefs. fake news is directly related to the information war, the purpose of which is to distort facts for political propaganda and manipulation of mass consciousness, as well as to create the image of the enemy. the spread of false information has become rampant and popular in the post-truth age, when, according to the definition given in the oxford learner’s dictionary, “the emotional perception of information and personal beliefs are much more important in shaping public opinion than objective facts” (“post truth”, n.d.). in this case, we can even speak of the synonymic relations between “fake news” and “post-truth” as they both designate falsehood and disinformation or truth which has become irrelevant. as far as the english terminology is concerned, we note that the word “fake” in the combination “fake news” is not the first and only word to mean false information. the word “hoax” (a widely publicized falsehood, as defined by the encyclopedia of world problems and human potential, n.d.) has also been in circulation long before it was overtaken by the word “fake”. one of the earliest evidences of this is the great moon hoax of 1836, a series of six articles published in 1835 in the sun, a new york newspaper, about the supposed discovery of life and even civilization on the moon (“the great moon hoax”, 2020). 1 misinformation in the media is not new. history abounds in examples of falsification and twisting of the truth for material gain 2 . the phenomenon has been around since the development of the earliest writing systems (marcus, 1993). a classic example of widespread misinformation dates back to 1938, when the broadcast of a radio adaptation of h.g. well’s drama the war of the worlds frightened over one million people (cantril, 2005). radio drama director orson welles adopted an innovative radio news format and engaged actors playing the roles of reporters, residents, experts, and government officials to narrate the story of martian invasion. while his intention was to entertain listeners, the radio drama was performed in the form of a live news report, in a period when radio was the main source of information in the united states. while the radio adaptation was meant for entertainment listeners interpreted it as factual news (cantril, 2005). now that online platforms, particularly social media, are becoming the main sources of news for a growing number of individuals, misinformation seems to have found new channels (molina, sundar, le & lee, 2021). linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 71 the linguistic nature of truth assuming that news is an operational information message about events that have occurred recently or are taking place in the current period, representing a political, economic or public interest for the audience, then “fake” is not just a false fact, it is a strategy for creating false content. fake news can be regarded as a specially created manipulative construction, which is implemented in the form of text, audio fake, video, a photo. it is common knowledge that when publishing any news, a journalist considers the rule of multiple (at least three) sources and the so-called factchecking. the news is considered reliable if it has been verified in three publications; editorial review is a necessary condition for the existence of a quality content. researchers attribute different meanings to fact-checking. a widely acknowledged view is that fact-checking is a procedure for verifying the reliability of the facts received in the media. as a rule, this involves searching for the necessary information on the web, the ability to work with primary and secondary sources of information, a deep analysis of the level of literacy of writing a text, and so on. more specifically, specialists now put more emphasis on a “wider consideration of human nature, interaction, and our interrelatedness”, which turns fact-checking into a form of critical, investigative inquiry. it includes a wide range of approaches and practices (leonard, meban, & young, 2020). communication without truth is simply impossible, therefore truth is a problem of linguistic nature. the desire to attract readers leads journalists and content creators to manipulate information, which facilitates the emergence of the so-called fake news. if some time ago it was considered that low quality newspapers, or social websites alone are proliferating on faking news, nowadays the picture has changed dramatically. more and more mainstream papers are getting involved in spreading unverified information and this happens very often. it takes a couple of hours or even days when the fake content is deleted and newspapers extend apologies for the unverified pieces of information. but the fake has already been spread, and it has served its purpose to monger panic, concerns or to simply fool people. on the other hand, politicians and public figures do spread fake news via their private accounts to win popularity or whatever the purpose might be. fake news is disguised as reliable information and requires careful language analysis. social media ensures that fake news is spread faster than ever and has a continually increasing impact on mass consciousness. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 linguistics 72 first of all, the text format of such phenomena deserves special attention. to fake content we attribute online text messages published on websites that do not carry reliable information, as well as blogs with unknown authors or fake authors. also, fake news exists in the form of video and audio messages, distributed via instant messengers whatsapp, telegram, instagram, facebook etc., hence we can speak of multimodal features employed to make the content as truthful as possible (singh, ghosh & sonagara, 2019). the characteristic features of fake news can be studied based on their sources, titles, the body text, the volume, the visual content, and the social engagement of the authors. from linguistic and psycholinguistic perspectives, words and syntax, style and graphic means are most prominent. words in the media and in political discourse have significant power in shaping people's opinions and beliefs. often their veracity is compromised in order to maximize the impact on the reader. the discovery of fake news becomes an important task for professionals working with news content, and for an average reader, too. due to this, it seems important to find objective linguistic markers that indicate the unreliability of information and analyze their features. psychologists and neurolinguists mention that the cognitive aspect of news consumption and interpretation deserves attention. martel, c., pennycook, g. & rand, d. (2020) suggest that people “who engage in more reasoning are less likely to fall for fake news, while reliance on emotions promotes belief in fake news”. there emerges the following question: what is there so special in the fake news in terms of its affective properties? by “affect” here we mean psychological/emotional “impact” which refers to a special kind of influence linked to our body. cognitivists largely agree on that all our cognition is embodied, emotionally and experientially grounded. thus, affects are believed to influence the cognitive scope and this is backed up by considerable empirical data. initially, it was thought that positive affects broaden, whereas negative affects narrow cognitive scope (fox, 2008), however, this idea has later been challenged. having in mind the abovementioned considerations, the present study employs the hypothesis that special language and graphic patterns used in fake content evoke emotions which increase susceptibility to fake news. the paper argues that a critical approach to news stories and the knowledge of the frequently repeated language and graphic patterns can activate the process of reasoning and help spot fake news. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 73 spotting fake news with the help of language and graphic means this chapter deals with the linguistic and graphic peculiarities of fake news. one hundred online headlines and tweets have been studied covering topics on the us elections in 2020 and covid-19 headlines (2020-2021), as well as examples covering random topics. the material was taken from social media and various websites known for being involved in disseminating fake news. whenever possible, the content has been checked on reuters factcheck or other resources. speaking about the linguistic features of fake news, researchers note the widespread use of emotionally charged words, labeling, use of words and expressions inappropriate with the style of the verified news. as a demonstration of this, it is appropriate to mention the word “miracle” (and its derivatives) circulating in fake headlines promising cure from the covid pandemic (“us has developed “miracle” drug remedesivir against covid19”, “madagascar president announced that who tried to bribe him to poison his “miracelous” (sic) treatment for covid 19”, “chlorine dioxide, or miracle mineral solution (mms) can cure covid-19”, etc.), a word hardly ever referred to in mainstream sources. hereunder we will consider some examples of fake news as an illustration of the above stated features. a large amount of fake news is associated with the us president donald trump (allcott & gentzkow, 2017). many researchers believe that the explanation for its popularity is his speech. his tweets make it possible to understand that his statements are quite emotional. according to the washington post, as of november 2017, the president has made 1,628 false or misleading statements since taking office, this on average makes more than five false claims per day (kessler, kelly & lewis, 2017). he, like a real speaker, resorts to various communicative strategies; his speech patterns are variable, the discourse is emotional and dynamic, which is largely achieved through the use of rhetorical techniques. during the analysis of the material, it was revealed that the popularity of donald trump increased due to fake news created and distributed in order to achieve political advantages by discrediting his political opponent (including during the election campaign for the us presidential election in 2020). let us consider the following headline which went viral across media during the presidential campaign of 2020: armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 linguistics 74 joe biden's son hunter was dishonorably discharged from the navy for cocaine use. in the example we note the repetition of dis-, a prefix with negative connotative value, which instantly catches readers’ attention. later reuters’ fact check published the following title: hunter biden's military discharge was administrative, not dishonorable. (reuters staff, 2020) based on this, we note that the information is presented selectively, i.e. it is true, but only partially. the fake content is exaggerated as hunter received an administrative penalty but was not ignominiously expelled from the navy. the exaggeration is created due to the repetition of the prefix diswith a negative value in units dishonorably (shameful, shameful), discharged (excluded, fired), which instantly attracts the reader's attention and generates emotional response (shock, resentment) leaving no time to question the truth of the statement. was the person really discharged? or was it really a dishonorable act? as far as exaggeration as a strategy to create misleading information is concerned, one of the most frequently used language units to create exaggeration and spread panic is the pronoun everyone: the democrats are pushing for an implanted microchip in humans, and everyone to be vaccinated. (“the democrats are pushing”, 2020) bill gates personally will profit from a covid-19 vaccine and he owns a company that plans to implant microchips in everyone. (“bill gates personally will profit”, 2020) the coronavirus is a “virus weapon” as lethal as ebola. everyone who is infected dies. (“the coronavirus is a “virus weapon”, 2020) the statements illustrated above cover the period of the upsurge of the covid-19 pandemic when very little was known about the virus and the methods of its treatment. this gave way to many conspiracy theories. the linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 75 statements presented above can easily bring forth negative expectations and mislead people to negative expectations. this effect is due to the use of the pronoun everyone, which, from the point of psychological impact, creates participation effect. the reader feels himself/herself immediately engaged in the story or more precisely a part of it and what is more dangerous an immediate recipient of the consequences that the new vaccine or the virus will entail. the psychological impact of these statements involving everyone is greater than compared with examples when a definite number of people or regions are mentioned. hence the probability that readers will take this news as true is high. direct quotations deserve special attention in the study of fake news. usually, to increase the authenticity of their message, the authors of fake content take the words out of the real context and use it in another context. this was a widely used strategy during the upsurge of the pandemic. the cases when the authors of fake content refer to words of competent authorities or refer to such authorities by introducing totally false content are numerous. this is the case in the following statement, which was published on 15 june 2020, on www.hotnews.ge, under the title “shocking admission of who’s epidemiologist – epidemic does not exist!” according to a statement appearing to be coming from who “there is no pandemic. the epidemic does not exist. no vaccine is needed. healthy people do not need gloves, face masks and other protective equipment. there was no need for a lockdown and a curfew as well as the so-called contact tracing. the virus cannot survive on surfaces – such an isolation was only the demand of governments. each and every organisation, fitness clubs, theatres, restaurants, cafes and bars can work at full capacity.” according to factcheck (“who’s fabricated statement”, 2020), though the article was removed later, it was nonetheless widely circulated throughout facebook and amassed over 5,000 interactions (over 2,000 reacts, over 2,000 comments and 1,360 shares). the strategy of removing the words out of a real context was widely used during the presidential campaign in the usa. it was one of the effective ways armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 linguistics 76 of discrediting the opponent and shaping public opinion. let us consider the following example: in a september 2018 speech, joe biden called donald trump's supporters “the dregs of society” the news is unreliable, as biden’s words were taken out of context and misrepresented. in his speech, biden referring to an unnamed subset of individuals, called them as the “dregs of society”. according to reuters fact check, the remark came in a speech that biden gave on 15 september 2018 at an annual dinner for the human rights campaign (caldera, 2020). thus, the combination the dregs of society, which certainly has the power of generating negative emotional response, was taken from another context and was not aimed at trump supporters. however, the headline served its purpose to discredit the political opponent by showing his “attitude” toward the part of american people who supported republicans. this undoubtedly led more and more americans to support the republican candidate, though initially they had not been favoring trump’s campaign. the topic of the us fight against coronavirus has been widely used to create false content. here are some examples of fake statements: u.s. president donald trump touted the “antibody cocktail” as a covid-19 “cure” that he intended to make available to the american public. (smith, 2020) president donald trump to treat covid-19, involved the use of human fetal tissues and embryonic stem cells. (fauzia, 2020) what connects these two statements is the absence of the indication of time and place, i.e. the statements lack specific configurations of time and space. the first statement is presented in the past indefinite tense, the second statement involves an infinitive construction denoting a future action, but the two statements lack any specific time or place configurations. there are empirical studies suggesting that the absence of specific time and place disorient people, generate anxiety and uncertainty, that is to say when news consumers are aware of when and where the event has taken place, they feel more comfortable as this is a safe way to distance themselves from the linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 77 unpleasant events. in the two headlines presented above, there is no time indication which augments people’s worries about being forced into vaccine trials. on the other hand, the units touted, available, cure, treat point to donald trump's successful fight against the virus, thereby increasing his rating in the election campaign. depending on the ratio of reliable and false information fake news may represent a lie from the start to end. below we present a sensational headline built on a complete lie: my blood is the vaccine. (binkowski, 2020) units blood (blood), vaccine (vaccine), capital letters is act as triggers, provoking readers’ interest in the content. this eccentric headline appeared in the period of the upsurge of the pandemic and had an adverse psychological impact. this news was posted on a fake twitter account and went viral immediately. it is known that news pieces incorporating visual components capturing the attention of viewers are mainly published on social platforms. as far as visual components are concerned, capitalization and the use of other graphic means deserve special attention. these are the most frequent means used in fake content. a statement written in capital letters or other graphic elements should be treated carefully. both techniques trigger visual consumption of the news. this happens immediately, as the visual units arouse emotional response before the reader embarks on factual analysis. boom! wikileaks confirms hillary sold weapons to isis? (@reca, 2016) changes in pharmacies! don’t expect the prescription>>> here’s what you’ll get! in the first headline, the capitalized word boom with the interjection mark attracts attention as it hints that something sensation will follow. boom is associated with the effect of an exploding bomb, which appeals to senses, engaging more emotions. in the second example, we see capitalization and combination of several graphic signs (exclamation mark, three arrows), the necessity of which is not supported by the context. they are meaningless, but they produce click-catching and eye-catching effect. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 linguistics 78 misspelling is another technique of drawing people’s attention to the fake content and increasing the readership. on 31 may, 2017, the us president donald trump posted the following extraordinary tweet which was later removed: despite the constant negative press covfefe. the word, covfefe is not registered in english dictionaries. as evident from the context, d. trump intended to write coverage, referring to the reports publishing defaming reports about his presidency. whether this was a typo or a strategy, the tweet went viral and became one of the most discussed tweets. the extravagant tweet was discussed even one year after its first appearance and continued to intrigue the minds of readers as to what it could have meant (estepa, 2018). in fake news, grammatical and spelling mistakes may occur because the websites and private accounts do not have proofreaders or editors (which is a usual practice for quality news sites) responsible for technical issues. the following tweet on the return of woolworths to high street went viral in october 2020: our trial stores will open in 2021. very own the online woolsworths, so we will be retail only. before we launch, we have a few legal contracts to sign, but we’re super excited! this will be your woolsworths ♡ (@ukwoolworths) according to the guardian (waterson, 2020), dozens of mainstream news sites (including the daily mirror and mail online) “ran prominent articles” on the reopening of a once popular brand, but the news was based on “nothing more than a typo-strewn twitter account with fewer than 1000 followers”. as it turned out, the author of the fake content was only a six grader (which explains the spelling errors (woolsworths instead of woolworths) and the poor text) and as he confessed later, he did it to practice his marketing skills and was far from the intention to dupe people. mistakes may as well be made deliberately to trick the reader into opening and reading the content. in this case we are not dealing with occasional errors, but rather with deliberate ones. for instance, during our search we noted that the word scam (a deceptive scheme or trick used to cheat someone out of linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 79 something, especially money), a word with obvious negative connotation, in several fake headlines was misspelled as ccam. by misspelling it, the authors deliberately neutralize the initial negative content and the expected negative impact on readers, in this way arousing interest and tricking them into clicking on the headline. conclusion the results of the analysis enable us to draw at several conclusions. first, we can state that the study of fake news, as a product of the post-truth age, is important for understanding the mechanisms of the formation of current media content. fake news, particularly those in english, become rampant especially in the periods of political or social instabilities and uncertainties of both local and global character. the strategy of bending of the truth has become a tool of waging information war for the purpose of influencing public opinion and producing desired emotions. the study of the fake news is of interest from linguistic perspective, due to the linguistic nature of communication. we may conclude that in fake news visual component and the form of expression are more important than the content itself. among specific features widely used in fake content we may underline the following means: lexical markers, the use of stylistically marked vocabulary, generalization, quotation, deliberate omission of time and space configurations, capitalization, graphic signs, deliberating misspelling. this, however, is not an exhaustive list. the mentioned features trigger emotional response and increase the susceptibility of readers to fake content. a critical approach to the content may be of help to readers to be more cautious of what they consume as news. notes 1. yet another synonym for the “fake news’, is the noun “bombshell’ which, according to oxford learners’ dictionaries, is defined as “an event or a piece of news which is unexpected and usually unpleasant” (oxford learner’s dictionaries, n.d.). 2. nicola watts in his article entitled “5 types of 'fake news' and why they matter” (2018) draws comparisons between the us elections held in 2017 and the use of fake news by octavian against marc anthony which started the final war of the roman republic (32 bc to 30 bc). instead of twitter, octavian used coins on one side of which was him, on the other marc anthony backed https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/bombshell https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/bombshell armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 linguistics 80 by cleopatra! there were short slogans written on coins that denigrated anthony for being a puppet of egypt, disloyal to rome, a philanderer and a drunk. the vicious propaganda concluded with anthony being declared a traitor (https://www.ogilvy.com/ideas/5-types-fake-news-why-they-matter). references allcott, h., & gentzkow, m. (2017). social media and fake news in the 2016 election. journal of economic perspectives, 31 (2), 211-36. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.31.2.211 bill gates personally will profit from a covid-19 vaccine and he owns a company that plans to implant microchips in everyone (2020, september 4). poynter. retrieved october 5, 2022. binkowski, b. (2020, october 9). ‘my blood is the vaccine’ tweet. truthorfiction? retrieved october 8, 2022. caldera, c. (2020, october 15). fact check: joe biden called 'forces of intolerance,' not trump supporters, the 'dregs of society'. usa today. retrieved october 05, 2022. cantril, h. (2005). the invasion from mars. a study in the psychology of panic. 1st edition. new york: routledge. estepa, j. (2018, may 31). covfefe, one year later: how a late-night trump tweet turned into a phenomenon. usa today. retrieved october 10, 2022. fauzia, m. (2020, october 8). fact check: trump's antibody therapy not made from fetal stem cells but fetal-derived cells used during testing. usa today. retrieved october 5, 2022. fox, e. (2008). emotion science: cognitive and neuroscientific approaches to understanding human emotions. new york: palgrave macmillan. hoax. (n.d.). in the encyclopedia of world problems and human potential. retrieved october 10, 2022. kessler, g., kelly, m., & lewis, n. (2017, november 14). president trump has made 1,628 false or misleading claims over 298 days. the washington post. retrieved october 5, 2022. leonard a., meban a., & young o. (2020). what is fact-checking and why is it important? co-inform. retrieved october 5, 2022. marcus, j. (1993). mesoamerican writing systems: propaganda, myth, and history in four ancient civilizations. princeton, nj: princeton university press. https://www.ogilvy.com/ideas/5-types-fake-news-why-they-matter https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.31.2.211 https://www.poynter.org/?ifcn_misinformation=bill-gates-personally-will-profit-from-a-covid-19-vaccine-and-he-owns-a-company-that-plans-to-implant-microchips-in-everyone https://www.poynter.org/?ifcn_misinformation=bill-gates-personally-will-profit-from-a-covid-19-vaccine-and-he-owns-a-company-that-plans-to-implant-microchips-in-everyone https://www.poynter.org/?ifcn_misinformation=bill-gates-personally-will-profit-from-a-covid-19-vaccine-and-he-owns-a-company-that-plans-to-implant-microchips-in-everyone https://www.truthorfiction.com/my-blood-is-the-vaccine-tweet/ https://www.truthorfiction.com/my-blood-is-the-vaccine-tweet/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/10/15/fact-check-biden-never-called-trump-supporters-dregs-society/5966195002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/10/15/fact-check-biden-never-called-trump-supporters-dregs-society/5966195002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/05/31/covfefe-one-year-anniverary-donald-trumps-confusing-tweet/659414002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/05/31/covfefe-one-year-anniverary-donald-trumps-confusing-tweet/659414002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/10/08/fact-check-trumps-antibody-therapy-not-made-fetal-stem-cells/5901542002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/10/08/fact-check-trumps-antibody-therapy-not-made-fetal-stem-cells/5901542002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/10/08/fact-check-trumps-antibody-therapy-not-made-fetal-stem-cells/5901542002/ http://encyclopedia.uia.org/en/problem/hoaxes https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/11/14/president-trump-has-made-1628-false-or-misleading-claims-over-298-days/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/11/14/president-trump-has-made-1628-false-or-misleading-claims-over-298-days/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/11/14/president-trump-has-made-1628-false-or-misleading-claims-over-298-days/ https://coinform.eu/what-is-fact-checking-and-why-is-it-important/ https://coinform.eu/what-is-fact-checking-and-why-is-it-important/ linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 81 martel, c., pennycook, g., & rand, d.g. (2020). reliance on emotion promotes belief in fake news. cogn. research 5 (47). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-020-00252-3 molina, m. d., sundar, s. s., le, t., & lee, d. (2021). “fake news” is not simply false information: a concept explication and taxonomy of online content. american behavioral scientist, 65(2), 180–212. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764219878224 reuters staff. (2020, october 6). fact check: hunter biden's military discharge was administrative, not dishonorable. retrieved september 30, 2022. the coronavirus is a “virus weapon” as lethal as ebola. everyone who is infected dies. (2020,january 31). poynter. retrieved september 30, 2022. the democrats are pushing for an implanted microchip in humans, and everyone to be vaccinated. (2020, october 4). poynter. retrieved september 30, 2022. @reca. (2016, august 10). boom! wikileaks confirms hillary sold weapons to isis. “seen this”. retrieved september 30, 2022. post-truth. (n.d.) in oxford learner’s dictionaries. retrieved september 29, 2022. singh, v., ghosh, i., & sonagara, d. (2021). detecting fake news stories via multimodal analysis. journal of the association for information science and technology, 72(1), 3-17. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24359. smith, k. (2020, october 9). covid treatment trump touted as a “cure” was developed using cells derived from aborted fetal tissue. cbs news. retrieved september 29, 2022. “who’s fabricated statement is being circulated through georgian facebook.” (2020, june 16). factcheck. retrieved october 4, 2022. waterson, j. (2020, october 28). six-form student revealed to be behind ‘woolworths reopening’ fake news. the guardian. retrieved october 8, 2022. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-fact-check-hunter-biden-not-dishonora-iduskbn26m6qi https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-fact-check-hunter-biden-not-dishonora-iduskbn26m6qi https://www.poynter.org/?ifcn_misinformation=the-coronavirus-is-a-virus-weapon-as-lethal-as-ebola-everyone-who-is-infected-dies https://www.poynter.org/?ifcn_misinformation=the-coronavirus-is-a-virus-weapon-as-lethal-as-ebola-everyone-who-is-infected-dies https://www.poynter.org/?ifcn_misinformation=the-democrats-are-pushing-for-an-implanted-microchip-in-humans-and-everyone-to-be-vaccinated-2 https://www.poynter.org/?ifcn_misinformation=the-democrats-are-pushing-for-an-implanted-microchip-in-humans-and-everyone-to-be-vaccinated-2 https://seenthis.net/messages/515029 https://seenthis.net/messages/515029 https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/post-truth https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24359. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/regeneron-trump-covid-aborted-fetal-tissue/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/regeneron-trump-covid-aborted-fetal-tissue/ https://factcheck.ge/en/story/38497-who-s-fabricated-statement-is-being-circulated-through-georgian-facebook https://factcheck.ge/en/story/38497-who-s-fabricated-statement-is-being-circulated-through-georgian-facebook https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/oct/28/sixth-form-student-revealed-behind-woolworths-reopening-fake-news https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/oct/28/sixth-form-student-revealed-behind-woolworths-reopening-fake-news armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 linguistics 82 «ճշմարտությունը հարաբերական է» կամ ինչպես չխաբվել պոստճշմարտության դարաշրջանում մարիանա սարգսյան «ֆեյք լուր» եզրույթը նոր երևույթ չէ: մինչ համացանցի հայտնվելը, լուրեր ստանալու միակ միջոցը վստահելի աղբյուրներն էին, որոնք պարտավորված էին պահպանել մասնագիտական էթիկայի խիստ չափանիշներ: սակայն, համացանցի և սոցիալական հարթակների հասանելիությունն հանգեցրեց նորություններ և տեղեկատվություն հրապարակելու, տարածելու և սպառելու նոր եղանակների ի հայտ գալուն, որն ուղեկցվեց դրանց բովանդակության և խմբագրական նորմերի նկատմամբ վերահսկողության զգալի նվազմամբ։ վերջինս էլ առաջ բերեց ֆեյքերի ստեղծման և տարածման նոր ձևեր: ներկայում մարդիկ նախընտրում են նորությունները ստանալ սոցիալական ցանցերից և տեղեկատվական կայքերից: տեղեկատվական հոսքի և կայքերի բազմազանության պարագայում անհրաժեշտություն է ծագել բացահայտելու որոշ օրինաչափություններ, որոնք թույլ կտան զանազանել ճշգրիտ տեղեկատվությունը ֆեյքից: սույն հոդվածը միտված է քննելու ֆեյք լուրերի յուրահատուկ լեզվական ու գրաֆիկական օրինաչափություններ, որոնք միտված են առաջ բերելու հուզական վիճակներ, ինչը մեծացնում է ֆեյքերի նկատմամբ զգայունությունը: վերլուծությունը հիմնված է այն վարկածի վրա, որ սպառվող նյութի նկատմամբ քննադատական մոտեցումը և օրինաչափությունների իմացությունն ակտիվացնում է տրամաբանական գործընթացը` օգնելով հայտնաբերել կեղծ բովանդակությունը: բանալի բառեր՝ պոստճշմարտություն, ֆեյք լուր, լեզվական և գրաֆիկական կաղապարներ, հույզեր, ճանաչողություն, քննադատական մոտեցում: kazm.cdr women’s writing of the first world war pierrot goes to war in a sheltered garden, pale beneath the moon, (drenched with swaying fragrance, redolent of june!) there, among the shadows, some one lingers yetpierrot, the lover, parts from pierrette. bugles, bugles, bugles, blaring down the wind, sound the flaming challenge – leave your dreams behind! come away from shadows, turn your back on june – pierrot, go forward to face the golden noon! in the muddy trenches, black and torn and still, (how the charge swept over, to break against the hill!) huddled in the shadows, boyish figures lie – they whom death, saluting, called upon to die. bugles, ghostly bugles, whispering down the wing – dreams too soon are over, gardens left behind. only shadows linger, for love does not forget – pierrot goes forward – but what of pierrette? (gabrielle elliot) in her introduction to scars upon my heart1, an anthology of women’s poetry andverse of the first world war, catherine reilly notes that she “succeeded in identifying no fewer than 2225 british individuals ..., servicemen and civilians, who had written verse on the theme of this most terrible war” (1981, xxxiii). although, as she hastens to add, over five hundred of these (532 to be exact) were women, their works unlike those of soldier poets’ could rarely be found in the mainstream war anthologies of the last century. after a somewhat grudging admittance into the collections of war poems of the 1960s, reserved at first to the chosen few: charlotte mew2, fredegond shove and later to alice maynell, the remaining voices had to wait longer still to be finally rescued from oblivion. even nowadays, despite the fact that “a more representative showing is made by women war poets”,3 and that their works found way to such important collections of the last decades as (hibberd d. and onions j. poetry of the first world war. basingstoke and london: macmillan, 1986; stephen’s m. never such innocence gain: a new anthology of great war verse. london: j m dent, 1993; roberts’ d. minds at war. sussex: saxon books, 1996) there still, as michele fry claims, “remains a great deal to be done if women war poets are to be accorded the place that many critics feel they deserve in the canon of english poetry of the first world war”.4 130 armenian folia anglistika literature aleksandra kedzierska although unlike their men, the women poets of 1914-18 were usually confined to the home front, they too, and in more ways than one, were exposed to the harsh reality of the war in which they could hardly afford to remain uninvolved in the struggle against the common enemy. some, after all, made it to the front; others did what they could in order to be of some help to their heroes in the trenches. who knows, perhaps in comparison with too familiar to all of us bosch, the women’s enemy was even worse, for in addition to their everyday cares they had to confront an overwhelming sense of loss of all those not destined to return home. or even more tragically, the alienation of the survivors those who did come back but only as mutilated wrecks, or mental cases and who then, like perhaps never before, relied and depended on their women for love. england honoured her sons with numerous memorials, the remembrance day, and with the cult of the trench poems which, published and republished, were also being extensively discussed. however, the sacrifice of her daughters has remained largely unrecognized, regardless of the extent of their involvement in the home front activities. thus, pierrette, the woman who in the unique poem by gabrielle elliot epitomized all others left behind when their pierrots went to war and, over the top, was once again betrayed and pushed back into the tradition-sanctified insignificance. hence, drawing on the works compiled in reilly’s seminal anthology, this essay will concern itself with the fate of the great war pierrettes, demonstrating that, like the soldier poets elsewhere, “the war girls” on the home front were also fighting for the truth of war, revealing its pity, its horror and its glory in the places only rarely described by men: in the family home, hospital wards or the country’s numerous factories. being but a fragment of a greater whole, this presentation will concentrate on that aspect of the home front reality which, covered by the poetry and fiction inspired by the years 1914-18, best characterizes the women as fighters the soldiers of the new they turned into by embracing their chance of employment in factories which were springing up round england to satisfy the demands of the war. “the departure of many thousands of men from their traditional roles, and their replacement by women, added to the general psychology of confusion which the war introduced to society. nothing was permanent any more, nothing predictable. many of the rules of gender around which the society had been constructed were being bent and broken. women chose, or were forced, in many instances for the first time, to leave their homes and enter the world of men, and it was bound to offer them a very different taste of life” (smith 4). however, when, especially “[a]fter the introduction of conscription in march 1916, the government encouraged women to take the place of the male employees who have been released from their normal occupations to serve at the front”,5 thousands of them responded with the enthusiasm comparable to that with which their men had been waiting to enlist, grateful, almost like the soldiers in the celebrated sonnet by r. brooke (“peace”), that god “matched them with this hour”. now they too were getting ready to plunge into the promise of new life, which meant an uprooting and a collapse in the case of domestic service of traditional women’s employment6, and though the offer was most heartily welcome by working class women, through them the life of middle and upper class homes was affected. even archie, a little boy from nina 131 literature armenian folia anglistika macdonald’s poem, “sing a song of war-time”, notices that mummy does the house-work, can’t get any maid, gone to make munitions, ‘cause they’re better paid, nurse is always busy, never time to play, sewing shirts for soldiers, nearly ev’ry day. (smh 69) after a solemn afternoon spent “waving good bye” to the soldiers sent off to the front, the boy resignedly accepts his “tea” which consists of only bread and margarine. miserable, he recites the catalogue of his woes, those most acutely felt, including lack of money for toys and no decent dessert (“cake or any sort of jam”) that would make up for his loneliness. when the big boys were losing their battles overseas, little ones like archie, no longer the center of the women’s world, seemed to be losing theirs at home, where left to themselves they soon learned their lessons in “war economy”: ev’ry body’s doing something for the war, girls are doing things they’ve never done before, go as ‘bus conductors. drive a car or van, all the world is topsy-turvy since the war began. (smh 69) the image of the world gone “topsy-turvy” well renders the revolutionary character of changes in women’s employment and the extent of their effort in support of the war. this effort is further documented by one of the most famous and controversial poets of the great war, jessie pope7 whose “war girls” seems to both chronicle and celebrate the female exodus out of the confinement of tradition. like brooke’s warriors, finally “awakened from sleeping,” with “hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,” they were to welcome that road to independence, financial and otherwise, which would so often lead even in the case of the middle class women through employment. there’s the girl who clips your ticket for the train, and the girl who speeds the lift from floor to floor, there’s the girl who does a milk-round in the rain, and the girl who calls orders at your door. strong, sensible, and fit, they are out to show their grit, 132 armenian folia anglistika literature and tackle jobs with energy and knack. no longer caged and penned up, they’re going to keep their end up till the khaki soldier boys come marching back. there’s the motor girl who drives a heavy van, there’s the butcher girl who brings your joint of meat, there’s the girl who cries ‘all fares, please!’, like a man, and the girl who whistles taxis up the street. beneath each uniform beats a heart that’s soft and warm, though of canny mother-wit they show no lack; but a solemn statement this is, they’ve no time for love and kisses till the khaki soldier boys come marching back. (smh 90) this time an adult speaker registers an explosion of energy translating itself into a variety of activities, all of which done by the women who, “no longer caged and penned up”, are now “out to show their grit” and “tackle jobs with energy and knack”, determined to succeed and to “keep the end up / till the khaki soldier boys come marching back”. strength becomes a visible attribute of the war girls, this air of authority enhanced by the uniforms they wear as well as by the ease with which they perform what only a short time ago used to be exclusively male roles. interestingly, some have adopted much more than just men’s garb whistling taxis up the street or crying “all fares, please!”they have already started behaving like men. the speaker, however, refuses to be taken in by this somewhat masculinized image of working girl, explaining that this display of toughness, which by no means stifles her femininity, will end as soon as “the soldier khaki boys come marching back”. one has but to penetrate the façade of the uniform to find that beneath each there beats a soft and warm woman’s heart, generous enough when the nation needs it to sacrifice her “love and kisses”. constituting the borderline between their private and public selves, the uniform highly desirable and proudly worn becomes a sartorial symbol of the expansion of space women successfully appropriated having left nurseries and kitchens. from among the many jobs opening up to satisfy the demands of war, women would frequently choose work in munitions, their experiences there finding way into such poems as, for instance, madeline ida bedford’s “munition wages” and mary gabrielle collins’s “women at munition making”. given the specificity of the job, not only most directly connected with the front experience but resembling it in the organization and harshness of work (shift system) as well as women’s constant exposure to injury and death, work in munitions was believed to be patriotic if only because it “provided a further bond with men serving at the front”.8 however, the true reason for the job’s popularity with “tommy’s sisters”, as munitionettes were also called, was the possibility to earn even as much as “fifty bob a week”, which on average was five times more than a woman would get as her pre-war pay. and then, as m. rushton claims, apart 133 literature armenian folia anglistika from this financial incentive, there were also other attractions, for instance “a six-bed hospital and a dentist on site and a canteen for meal breaks offering a two-course meal for 10 d. a day, [and] shopping facilities that saved precious time otherwise spent in a queue”.9 in spite of such obvious “perks”, working in munitions was “a touch and go biz”, where one had to be always on alert to zeppelin attacks and to the danger of explosion while handling tnt. bad ventilation, ill fitting and scarce protective gear, yet above all women’s direct exposure to chemical substances and explosives could not but affect their health. soon “war wenches” would complain of irritant chest pains, nausea, and eating or/and menstruation disorders which would eventually lead even to infertility. however, the most noticeable health problem came from tnt poisoning which turned the women’s hair green and their skin yellow: this peculiar colouring earned munitionettes the name of the “canary girls”. many (around 400)10 died from overexposure to tnt or from other kinds of chemical substance poisoning; many lost their lives in explosions, the biggest of them “britain’s worst ever disaster” (134 workers killed and 250 injured) which took place in chilwell, nottingham in july 1918.11 and then there was depression, often caused by the drudgery of work accompanied by prison-like discipline. “work shifts of 10-12 hours were not uncommon,” goldstein writes, adding that “conditions in factories were, for women, an ‘alien environment’ of deafening noise and depressing grime, encased by blacked-out windows”.12 in her novel, we that were young (1932), irene rathbone describes the condition of staple and studd’s munition works at willesden: “two hundred and fifty girls divided into sections according to the different jobs they were doing; three hundred men in other parts of the same vast shed. from eight to five, with an hour’s break for lunch, they work unceasingly” (qtd. from smith 308). some sat at the drilling machines, surrounded by broad leather belts which, suspended from the ceiling, would incessantly flap and whirr. “the noise made by all the belts together was like a flock of nightmare birds. added to it was the noise of the drilling of the plates; and from all parts of the shop came a mixed din of rasping, filing, cutting, hammering. clang, clang, zzz, whrr. clang, clang, zzz, whrr. clang, clang, zzz, whrr. deafening, stupefying, brain-shattering” (qtd. from smith 308-9). interestingly, regardless of all these dangers and discomforts, “the factory was advertised as a ‘gay’ workplace (in the old sense of the word) for workers”,13 and many women claimed they did enjoy their work there. and yet, apart from the money earned and it must be noted that “the women received nowhere near fortunes they had been led to expect when deciding to take war work” most often “the woman war worker had little in her life now except work and sleep”.14 hence, the uniqueness of bedford’s poem “munition wages”, glorifying the new life style of one of “tommy’s sisters”. her monologue communicates the working class woman’s delight in getting “five quid a week”, and in her thus earned independence allowing her to taste the pleasures she could barely dream about before. she takes time to provide many details of her improved status which, by creating an optimistic version of the home front (not just its employment), seems to suggest her acceptance of the war 134 armenian folia anglistika literature if only for its contribution into producing this species nova: a working class girl who can act like a lady and who for once “ain’t living bad”. boasting to her male interlocutor that she, “a woman, too”, can have “high wages”, she basks in the sense of equality between them generated by employment, proud of her new life. the munitionette’s main satisfaction is earning money and spending “the whole racket” to the last penny. saving, she makes clear, does not suit her hedonistic pursuits. years back, the woman recalls, she wore “tatters”, now “silk stockings”. to her “war economy” is a miracle which has brought not only liberation but also many material possessions: i’ve bracelets and jewelry, rings envied by friends; a sergeant to swank with, and something to lend. i drive out in taxis, do theatres in style. and this is mi verdict it is jolly worth while. (smh 7) although the girl neither mentions the drudgery of work nor criticizes the working conditions, her optimism is not completely ‘fear-proof’. every now and then, as if momentarily forgetting her bravado, she shows her awareness of the darker side of this “dim sweet” war paradise. “see ‘ere”, she explains to her companion: it’s ... a touch-and-go biz. we’re all here today, mate, tomorrow perhaps dead, if fate tumbles upon us and blows up our shed. (smh 7) and yet, as she goes on to add, she is by no means afraid, not with “money to spend!” no wonder that exuding a sense of power and strength, protected by her money and a “sergeant to swank with”, the munitionette is concerned with her own death mainly in economic terms. “if [tomorrow] i’m blown to the sky”, she says, “i’ll have repaid my wages/ in death and pass by” (smh 8). even jessie pope would find it difficult to locate a soft, patriotic heart in this war girl, which seems to merely confirm goldstein’s observation that “contrary to popular belief (...) the main motivation [of munitions workers] was [not] patriotic”.15 the myth of ‘gay work’ is further undermined by mary gabrielle collins’s depiction of “women at munition making”. there, a better educated and obviously middle-class speaker, capable of seeing through the economic euphoria of high wages, reveals the work’s devastating impact upon the girls’ humanity. juxtaposing 135 literature armenian folia anglistika the traditional image of woman in peace time with that of war wenches, the poem laments the erosion of many essential attributes of their femininity. the munitionettes hardly resemble “angels of the house” characterized by softness, tenderness, and patience. irrevocably gone is also the thrill of motherhood with its symbol of “rosy teat swelling with milk”. instead, the hands that used to and should “minister unto the flame of life” are now busy assembling gun components or filling shells and cartridges, “taking part in defacing and destroying the natural body” which, they understand, “[i]s the shrine of the spirit”. this transformation into the priestesses of death brings about the women’s physical degradation visible in the coarsening of their hands and fingers. still worse, however, is the impact the work has upon munitionettes’ psyche. though created to dwell “among the sweetest mind flowers”, the women’s thoughts now “bruised against the law” find their only nourishment in the imperative of “kill, kill,” the word repeated twice as if to erase even the vaguest memory of the fifth commandment (thou shalt not kill). thus their employment, often indicative of their preference of career over family, keeps turning against them also through shattering their god-given vocation and the ideals it used to define. besides, burdening them with a greater sense of responsibility and guilt, it merely adds to a woman’s negative image of herself. emerging towards the close of the poem, this image reveals that, by supporting man in his war effort and becoming an accomplice in his crimes, the woman has acquired his worst characteristics. and yet, by attacking god himself, her involvement carries the men’s “canceling” of each other and their” annihilation of god’s work one step further. stressing the desecrating character of the women’s work in munitions, the speaker realizes that it taints the fountain head, mounts like a poison to the creator’s very heart. o god! must it anew be sacrificed on earth? (smh 24) having stopped marveling at how things happened, and taken to co-creating them, women who “taint” the most sacred “fountain head” of life can no longer be viewed as its symbol; the only fruit they now seem capable of bearing is a new cross they fashion while making munitions. paradoxically, these modern crucifiers are themselves victimized, becoming helpless witnesses of their own disintegration, bewildered that the hand, the fingers to which they have been reduced (see 11. 1-2) can eagerly launch their attack against “god’s very heart”, the challenge whose sense evades their understanding. though filtered through time, the importance of munitionettes’ experience as part of the truth of the great war is also reflected in pat barker’s regeneration (trilogy, 199395) which completes the portrayal of bedford’s and collins’s war girls by depicting the one finally capable of offering the reader a far more profound and hence invaluable insight into the harsh reality of munitions. sarah lumb is one of the “canary girls” from scarborough, a typical working class woman who, having left domestic service, has found a much more reliable and better paid job in munitions, and who can really enjoy 136 armenian folia anglistika literature the work which allows her to feel more distinguished and brings her both substantial income and the independence she desires. yet, even though she candidly speaks to her soldier boyfriend of her earnings, she realizes that this chance of regeneration has indeed been bought for a high price. she herself is a living proof that the work literally “gets under her skin”, affecting her physiology and her appearance, her yellowed complexion automatically betraying her as a sufferer from tnt ailment. besides, even sarah, figuratively speaking, is not immune against the depressing monotony of the job, whose specific, apparently meaningless tasks have to be repeated again and again during twelve-hour shifts, six days a week, the drudgery of detonators production made still worse by the women having to work in silence, each sitting by her small worktable, separated from others by a dim circle of light. during the day, with guards and controls everywhere, the munitions resemble some huge top security prison, yet one’s sense of entrapment is even more overpowering at night when the red flames raging in the factory furnaces give the place a hellish look. sometimes, when working the night shifts, especially when the familiar faces and figures disappear beneath the shapeless overalls and unbecoming caps and masks the workers have to wear, sara experiences a strange sense of unreality and seeing herself reflected in other women, she concludes: ‘we do not resemble human beings (...) we look like machines producing other machines”. 16 sara’s boyfriend went to war and he did not even have to go over the top; he was killed by mistake by the british troops. just as for many other pierrettes left behind, work in munitions meant a new start in life, a chance to do something with and for herself; also for others for whom they often risked their health and life. today we know that this work, precious as it then seemed to be, was hardly what the canaan women had hoped to get. already in 1918, when the ‘khaki boys’ returned from the trenches, they wanted their jobs back and their women at home. and many quickly forgot how much, involved in the home front and overseas activities, women had done for their country. hence vera brittain’s “lament for the demobilized”: “four years’, some say consolingly. ‘oh well, what’s that? you’re young. and then it must have been a very fine experience for you!’ and they forget how others stayed behind and just got on got on the better since we were away. and we came home and found they had achieved, and men revered their names, but never mentioned ours; and no one talked heroics now, and we must just go back and start again once more. ‘you threw four years into the melting-pot did you indeed!’ these others cry. ‘oh well, the more fool you!’ and we’re beginning to agree with them. (smh 14) 137 literature armenian folia anglistika it is such voices that are still hoping to be heard, for then perhaps somebody will say ‘thank you’. by presenting this mixture of fiction and verse, it has become possible to “reclaim the great war as an arena of female experience, and to rediscover some of the written material which articulates that experience” (smith 1) thus proving that although “history has gendered the war as male”, there still exists an equally fascinating and for some even a more “representative impression of the great war as it was lived, worked, and fought by women, who are so often excluded from official versions” (smith 9). notes and references: 1. scars upon my heart. women‘s poetry and verse of the first world war. / (ed.) catherine reilly. with a preface by judith kazantzis. london: virago press ltd., 1981. all quotations of poetry come from this edition (abbreviated in the text as smh), with page number specified in brackets. reilly makes clear that at least 417 men and women served in the armed forces or other uniformed organizations such as the red cross, the ‘special constabulary, and the voluntary aid detachment. 2. see maurice hussey (ed.). poetry of the first world war. an anthology. london: longmans, green and co. ltd., 1967. hussey publishes poems by alice meynell; two works by charlotte mew and fredegond shove were placed in: ian parsons (ed.). men who march away. london : chatto and windus, 1965. 3. fry michele. counter-attack: defining the canon of english poetry of the first world war. www. sassoonerv. demon. co. uk/vvw1 canon. htm#top. 5.01.2005. 4. fry michele. counter-attack: defining the canon of english poetry of the first world war. www.sassoonerv.demon.co.uk/ww1canon.htm#top. 5.01.2005. 5. bourke joanna. women and employment on the home front during world war one. www.bbc.co.uk/historv/war/wwone/women_emplovment_01.sthml. 22 01 2005. see also bourke’s “women and the military during world war one”. http ://www.bbc.co.uk/historv/war/wwone/womencombatants01.sthml. 22 01 2005. 6. smith a.k. writes. “for many middle class women the war provided the opportunity to become involved in a completely different world as they took on a variety of jobs, all voluntary and unpaid which were deemed appropriate for respectable young ladies. the reality was often a far cry from appropriate, and they... came face to face with horrors of the battlefield as voluntary aid detachment (vad) nurses in hospitals and as ambulance drivers in the first aid nursing yeomanry (fany). (34). “for working class women”, smith continues, “the common course of action was to take over from their husbands when they enlisted. others filled vacancies left by men in public service, industries, on trams and buses, or working on the land” (4). besides, there were numerous other possibilities of war jobs for women who could find work assembling and sandpapering gun components, operating drilling equipment, excavating, plumbing; they worked as air mechanics, in forestry and in glass factories, and breweries, as cooks in infantry camps, in naval ship building, commerce, clerical jobs, organizing war support, providing food and other supplies 138 armenian folia anglistika literature to the military, telephone operators (hallo girls), entertainers (singers, dancers, companions, poetry readers, lecturers) messengers, porters, lift operators, bus conductors, bank clerks, shop attendants, bookkeepers, etc. 7. pope jessie was one of the most popular and patriotic women poets of the great war, whose works are often taught in opposition to “the ideas of the major war poets such as owen or sassoon”. see maccallum e. jessie pope. http://www.whatalovelywar.co.uk/jessiehtm. 17.01.2005. according to smh, jessie pope “contributed some 200 poems and articles to punch, wrote humorous fiction, verse and articles for leading popular magazines and newspapers. (smh, 136). 8. caddick-adams peter. the home front, bbchistory trailwars and conflict. http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/historv/renderplain.pl?file=/history/. p.4, 22 01 2005. 9. rushton maureen. the canary girls of chilwell. http://www.nottsfhs.org.uk/society/joumals/apr01.htm. p.2, 5 02 2005. 10. caddick-adams peter. the home front, bbc history trail wars and conflict. http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/history/renderpiain.pl?file=/history/. p.4,22 01 2005. 11. rushton maureen. bbc inside out chilwell blast tragedy. http://www.bbc.co.uk./insideout/eastmidlands/series2/blastchilweh.htm, p.2,22 01 05 12. goldstein joshua s. the women of world war i. http://www.wargender.com/wgwomwwi.htm. p.8, 02 28 2005. 13. rushton maureen. the canary girls of chilwell. http://www.nottsfhs.org.uk/society/journals/apr01.htm. p.4, 02 01 2005. 14. goldstein joshua s. the women of world war i. http://www.wargender.com/wgwomwwi.htm. p.8, 02 28 2005. 15. ibid. 16. this quotation from p. barker’s regeneration comes from an article by karin westman: pat barker’s regeneration critical contexts munitionettes. http://www.ksu.edu/english/westmank/regeneration/munitionettes.harris.html 25.01.05. works cited: 1. bourke joanna. women and the military during world war one. http://www.bbc.co.uk/historv/war/wwone/women_combatants_01.sthml, 22 01 2005. 2. bourke joanna. women and employment on the home front during world war one. www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/wwone/women_employment_01.sthml, 22 01 2005. 3. caddick-adams peter. the home front, bbc history trail wars and conflict. http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/history/renderplain.pl?file=/history/, 22 01 2005. 4. fry michele. counter-attack: defining the canon of english poetry of the first world war. www.sassoonery.demon.co.uk/ww1canon.htm#top, 5.01.2005. 5. goldstein joshua s. the women of world war i. 139 literature armenian folia anglistika http://www.wargender.eom/wgwomwwi.htm, p. 8, 02 28 2005. 6. hussey maurice (ed.). poetry of the first world war. an anthology, london, longmans, green and co. ltd, 1967. 7. parsons ian (ed.). men who march away, chatto and windus. london, 1965. 8. scars upon my heart. women’s poetry and verse of the first world war. catherine reilly (ed.). with a preface by judith kazantzis. london: virago press ltd., 1981. 9. rushton maureen. the canary girls of chilwell. http://www.nottsfhs.org.uk/society/journals/apr01.htm, p. 2, 22 01 05. 10. rushton maureen. bbc inside out chilwell blast tragedy. http://www.bbc.co.uk./insideout/eastmidlands/series2/blast_chilwell.htm. p.2, 220105 11. smith angela k. (ed.). women’s writing of the first world war. manchester and new york: manchester university press, 2000. 12. westman karin. pat barker’s regeneration critical contexts munitionettes. http://www.ksu.edu/english/westmank/regeneration/munitionettes.harris.html, 25.01.2005. ²è²ææü ð²ø²þê²ðð²úæü ä²îºð²¼øæ îæü ¶ðàôüºðà §²é³ççý ñ³ù³ßë³ññ³ûçý å³ï»ñ³½ùç ïçý ·ñáõý»ñᦠí»ñý³·ñáí ³ûë ñá¹í³íá ýå³ï³ï áõýç »ñï³ñ ï³ñçý»ñç ùáé³óáõãûáõýçó áõ ³ýï³ñμ»ñáõãûáõýçó ¹áõñë ñ³ý»é ³ûý ïçý ·ñáõý»ñç ëï»õí³·áñíáõãûáõýý»ñá, áñáýóáõù ý»ñï³û³óíáõù »ý å³ï»ñ³½ùç ¹³éá ñ»ï¨³ýùý»ñý áõ ¹ñ³ýó ³½¹»óáõãûáõýá ï³ý³ýó íñ³: ðá¹í³íáõù ½áõ·³ñ»éý»ñ »ý ³ýóï³óíáõù å³ï»ñ³½ùç áýã³óùáõù ·áñí³ñ³ýý»ñáõù ³ßë³ïáõ ï³ý³ýó ýíçñáõùç, ë»÷³ï³ý ³éáõçáõãûáõýá í»ñ ·áñíçý ½áñ³μ»ñ»éáõ ¨ å³ï»ñ³½ùç ¹³ßïáõù ïéíáõ ½çýíáñý»ñç ñ»ñáëáõãû³ý ùçç¨: ðçßû³é ³ßë³ï³ýùáõù ý³¨ ï»õ »ý ·ï»é ïçý ·ñáõý»ñç ùç ù³ýç ëï»õí³·áñíáõãûáõýý»ñ ¨ ýñ³ýó ù»ïý³μ³ýáõãûáõýý»ñá, áñáýù ù»ï ³ý·³ù ¨ë áý¹·íáõù »ý í»ñççýý»ñçë ëï»õí³·áñí³ï³ý áõý³ïáõãûáõýý»ñá: 140 armenian folia anglistika literature linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 23 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2022.18.1.023 realization of implicit warning in political interview shushanik paronyan  yerevan state university the topic of the present article concerns the ways of expressing the speaker's communicative intent and highlighting the perlocutionary effect of the discursive move in political discourse. the aim of the research is to study the ways of making an impact on the audience in the communicative context of mass media communication. for the purpose of analysis the transcript of a political interview published on the website of the news program democracy now is taken. the language material is analysed with the application of contextual-semantic and pragmatic methods of analysis. the study of the dialogic moves of the partners in the question-answer sequences provides ample grounds to suggest that the conversational unit under analysis can be interpreted as a case of macro-warning which creates the perlocutionary effect of alarming. furthermore, both participants contribute to creating the integrative communicative intent of the interview. key words: pragmatics, illocutionary and perlocutionary force, direct and indirect speech acts, mass media communication. introduction wars are destructive and calamitous military activities between countries and groups of people. they are usually planned to achieve political, geopolitical, economic and other goals that may be long or short term, transparent and predictable, or vague and dubious. wars deprive people of lives, they create chaos, agony and distress but, unfortunately, they are still initiated to solve problems. the 44-day war between azerbaijan and armenia in 2020 in artsakh republic, an unrecognized armenian state in the transcaucasian region, caused great sufferings and devastation in the area. the active involvement of the  shushanik.paronyan@ysu.am this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 28.09.2021 revised: 26.10.2021 accepted: 06.05.2022 © the author(s) 2022 mailto:shushanik.paronyan@ysu.am https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 24 hostile and aggressively predisposed regional power, turkey, on azerbaijan's side was not at all surprising, judging by the past genocidal policy of turkey against the armenian nation. in the course of 1915-1924 the turkish government committed one of the most atrocious crimes against humanity and put about 1,5 million armenians to death. having organized bloody massacres and having escaped any punishment, the turks go on with their denial policy. the present article studies the ways of making an impact on the audience in the communicative context of mass media communication. the genre of political interview has been selected as the object of the analysis. the aim of the study is to reveal how the comprehensive communicative goal of the political discourse can be achieved through actualizing the contextual elements of the communicative situation. the analysis is carried out on the material of the transcript of amy goodman’s interview with anna ohanyan professor of political science and international relations at stonehill college on october 9, 2020, published on the website of the famous news program democracy now (goodman, 2020). the pragmalinguistic study of the text intends to manifest how the question-answer sequence of the interview, which is directed at the intermediary addressee – viewers, listeners or readers, accomplishes the macro-act of warning and effectuates the perlocutionary effect of persuasion. in order to conduct the linguistic research on the text level, the discourse analysis approach is adopted. the language material is analysed with the application of contextual-semantic and pragmatic methods of analysis. pragmalinguistic analysis is used to make qualitative inferences about the language resources – words, expressions, constructions and utterances that are used to express warning. the interview as a genre of mass media communication it is well known that communication is a form of social practice which enables people to create and share ideas, views, feelings and reach a common understanding. the idea that communication is the exchange of information through written or spoken modes, symbols or actions leads us to admit that this is a dual process which necessarily has two sides – the sender of the message who encodes the information, and the receiver(s) who decode(s) it. for communication to be effective, the message must be understood both by the sender and the receiver(s) in the same way. no doubt, the process of encoding and decoding communication, that is creating and recreating meaning is linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 25 extremely complicated and depends on many contextual and co-textual factors such as sender, receiver, feedback, coherence and cohesion. in the present paper we will focus on one of them the channel of communication. thus, face-to-face and computer-mediated communications, texting, writing, phone calls – all these channels of communication present different forms of socialization and require a specific choice of verbal and non-verbal clues. moreover, the speech genre and register may also be determined by the channel of communication as the latter may help the speaker/writer anticipate the needs of the audience. stating that language is realized in the form of utterances (oral and written) by participants in various areas of human activity, bakhtin observes how the use of certain fixed types of utterances that vary in content and linguistic style form the compositional structure, i.e. the genre of communication. the utterances serve the particular conditions and objectives of these diverse areas: ''each separate utterance is individual, of course, but each sphere in which language is used develops its own relatively stable types of these utterances. these we may call speech genres.'' (bakhtin, 1986, p. 60) since in the present article the linguistic analysis is carried out on the material of a mass media interview, it is necessary to outline the general communicative chararacteristics of this compositional structure. interview is considered to be one of the genres comprising the style of mass media communications (witosh, 2005), or one of the types of media discourse (o'keeffe, 2006). the current linguistic and journalistic researches show that this genre is specific for its dual characteristic features and unstable borders. thus, on the one hand, the interview displays the features of journalistic activity and has the characteristic features of media discourse. at the same time, the interview is characterized clearly with certain phenomena that draw it close to the systemically informative and publicist genre varieties (ilchenko, 2002). anyhow, the following communicative-structural features have enabled i. kovtunenko and s. bylkova to identify the interview as an interspecific genre in new mass media that makes an autonomous communicative group: thematic/rhematic modeling; author’s and addressee’s speech relationship peculiarities; specific linguistic and pragmatic features of mass media communication; diversified discourse influence ways (kovtunenko, bylkova, & borisenko, 2018, p. 96). from the communicative-pragmatic perspective, the generic essence of the interview as a language practice lies in its dialogic modeling – the system of joint participation of two interlocutors who have specific communicative roles, armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 26 those of the interviewer and the interviewee. r. verderber states that an interview is a structured dialogue in which one person asks questions and the other answers (verdeber, 1988). in the question answer dynamics of the communicative situation, the interviewer undoubtedly has a leading role in creating sequential meaning since the dialogic texture of the interview is formed according to the pre-planned or prepared interactional thematic scenario of the latter. anyhow, the interviewee's communicative role does not seem to be a spontaneous feedback which is merely aimed to ''fill in the gaps'' of the informative lacuna. hence, the interviewees are often familiar with the list of the questions to be answered and they do not only reproduce meaning that is relevant to the topic of discussion, but also try to present it in the light that is beneficial for the face needs. thus the interviews can be structured, that is, prearranged by the participants, or unstructured, that is, independent, when there is no pre-arranged plan with questions, and the conversation evolves spontaneously (kvale & brinkmann, 2008). traditionally, interviews have a two-person format and take place inperson and face-to-face. recently modern communication technologies like the internet, zoom, skype and telephone network have allowed conversations to happen, in which parties are divided geographically. applications for videoconferencing create a virtual space for effective communication, and telephone interviews allow for interaction without visual contact. the interviews that are conducted online are oral, and the spoken variant of manifestation is often transcribed and presented in the written form on a paper or on a computer display. in both cases the information is transmitted to other audiences, whether in real time or later. this means that the participants of the interview should create meaning that is relevant for the intermediary addressee – viewers, listeners or readers. in this connection, i cannot but agree with the idea that the involvement of the third participant, the audience, often slightly modifies the communicative roles of the participants (interviewer and interviewee) and changes the pragmatic vector of communication (kovtunenko, bylkova, & borisenko, 2018). hence besides transferring relevant information on a particular topic or area of interest (politics, economy, ecology, art, music and so on), the meaning created by the joint participants during their interaction may have a distinct effectual and influence making function in that it may sound persuasive, convincing, impressive or motivating. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 27 creating meaning via communication communication is a form of social practice which enables people to create and share ideas, views, feelings, and reach a common understanding. communication is not just an act of transferring information from one place, one person or group to another, it is a complex process of creating and recreating meaning which is performed by sending and receiving, encoding and decoding information. (simon, grimes, & roche, 2018) the pragmatic perspective focuses on the diverse forms of language behaviour, the large variety of language user roles such as the speaker, receiver, listener, reader, writer, interpreter, viewer, eavesdropper and so on. pragmatic analysis also takes into consideration the context of the given situation or the social setting in which the process of communication takes place (levinson, 1983; verschueren, 1999; paronyan, 2012). the conveyance of meaning is performed both through linguistic and extralinguistic channels of communication. according to the needs of the particular context of situation, the use of the language means as well as the communicative strategies varies. according to n. fairclough, most of this linguistic variation is highly systematic. speakers of a language make choices in pronunciation, morphology, word stock and grammar, based on a number of non-linguistic factors (fairclough, 1996). relying on the general results of the communicatively based linguistic research, i suggest identifying the following key factors by which the variability of language is conditioned: ✓ certain socio-cultural factors of the interlocutors (e.g. age, gender, status, intimacy, cultural dimension); ✓ the ultimate communicative purport of the interaction (e.g. to inform, to persuade, to create an emotive impact, to advertise, to induce to action); ✓ certain cultural-cognitive factors (e.g. background knowledge, mutual knowledge, cultural awareness); ✓ the mode of communication (e.g. oral, written, face-to-face, online, mediated); ✓ the style of communication (e.g. synchronous, asynchronous). the studies carried out within the pragmatic framework revealed that communication is performed via verbal actions, speech acts, which express the content of the speaker's message, its communicative intent and bring about a certain effect on the participants/audience of the communicative event. therefore, communicative success highly depends on the speakers' ability to choose their words in such a way that the hearers will, under the circumstances armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 28 of performance, recognize the communicative purpose of the speech act. in other words, communicative success is conditioned by successful encoding and decoding of the illocutionary force (searle, 1969). however, it appears that creating meaning via encoding and decoding speech acts is not that simple. one of the basic theoretical assumptions in pragmatics is the claim that what is said and what is communicated present different dimensions of meaning. hence, by saying something (e.g. p), the language user can mean something else (e.g. p), something more (e.g. p + h) as well as something different (e.g. g). this transfer of meaning is performed by employing certain conversational rules and maxims with the help of which implicature and presupposition are deduced (grice, 1975). meaning can be expressed both literally, with the help of direct speech acts and metaphorically, with the help of indirect speech acts. furthermore, meaning can be negotiated (when the content of the message is expressed ambiguosly to allow for different variants of interpretation), twisted (when ironic expressions like sarcasm are used) and manipulated (when the content of the message is conveyed in a sneaky fashion to play on emotions and manage a situation) (bach & harnish, 1979; gasparyan, paronyan, & muradian, 2019; paronyan, 2020). in the present paper we will study the text of the interview from the pragmatic perspective. we will view the question-answer sequence of the interview text as a case of macro-warning which predicts that the ongoing conflict may escalate and result in destructive outcome if not solved successfully. political interview as a form of influencing the audience political interview is the dialogic sequence of question-answer on a political, geopolitical topic, or a socio-economic topic that comes from a deep geopolitical background. the interviewee in a political interview is usually a political leader, a political observer or a researcher who is an expert analyst in the current topic. one of the characteristic features of political interviews is the multifunctional pragmatic vector of the interaction which usually pursues the following objectives: ✓ to analyse, verify or disseminate information, ✓ to persuade/dissuade the interviewer/audience about the rightness, reliability, legitimacy or lawfulness of some facts or data; ✓ to convince the interviewer/audience to adopt the perspective of the interviewee; linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 29 ✓ to maintain face and avoid face-threatening communicative moves. thus, the political interview can have three communicative goals: informing, influencing and face-saving. they are achieved through logical reasoning, emotional influence, and rely on applying politeness strategies. the political interview, in other words, does not conform to the traditional dialogue pattern and the participants do not only exchange with the communicative roles of the addresser and the recipient of the message, but also create a certain interactional content judgement, viewpoint or outlook concerning certain local and global political issues or geopolitical problems. furthermore, the processes of speaking and listening in the one-to-one structured speech situation result in projecting the public self-image of the interviewee and, in doing so, increase the persuasive power of interaction. looking at the interview text as a rhetorical tool of communication, i. kovtunenko and s. bylkova observe that ''the interview itself is determined by the goals of the interlocutors and is therefore rhetorical in nature: the purposes of the communicative events form the contexts of communication, which contribute to the formation of the text samples relevant to the definite discourse communities'' (kovtunenko, bylkova, & borisenko 2018, p. 100). the speech of the interviewee has impacts on both the interviewer and the audience. the discursive activity of the participants is the sequence of choosing the semantic and pragmatic means of impact. the verbal expressions of the participants may be characterised by implicit spontaneous expression of their intentions, i.e. the contextual use of language means which express their illocutionary point and aim at influencing the audience. persuasion is an act of presenting arguments to move, motivate, or change the audience. persuasion is the process, and motivation is the compelling stimulus that encourages the audience to change their beliefs or behavior, to adopt the speaker's position, or to consider the speaker's arguments. according to o’keefe, persuasion occurs when the following features of persuasion are observed: the successful attempt to influence is embedded, the goal and the intent to reach that goal exists, the persuadee has freedom to react, persuasion is achieved through one communication with another and persuasion involves a change in the decision making of the persuadee (o’keefe, 2002). the pragmatic investigations of the discursive and communicative models are directed at revealing the extra-linguistic basis of selecting the means of impact on the respondent, allowing the senders to accomplish the armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 30 perlocutionary aims of their verbal actions (paronyan & bekaryan, 2001; madoyan, 2013, p. 19; paronyan & ghaltakhchyan, 2013). as has already been stated, the question-answer sequence of the political interview studied in the present article is viewed as a case of macro-warning, which is the communicative purpose of the interaction. the perlocutionary effect can be formulated as alarming. i will try to reveal the language means and communicative tactics employed by the speakers which effectuate the illocutionary force of warning and the perlocutionary effect of alarming. realization of the perlocutionary effect of alarming via the speech act of warning in amy goodman's interview the transcript of amy goodman’s interview with anna ohanyan, like most news stories on social media, begins with a headline which introduces the topic of the interview and specifies its newsworthiness: 'armenia-azerbaijan conflict: why turkey’s intervention could turn it into a “proxy war”'. the headline is formulated with the combination of two sentences. the first one is a nominative phrase sentence, which names two countries and specifies the type of relationship they are involved in: armenia-azerbaijan conflict: the colon at the end of the phrase indicates that some more important message is coming. structurally, the second sentence, 'why turkey’s intervention could turn it into a “proxy war”', is a reported wh-question. the communicativesemantic purport of this utterance is to draw attention to some proposition concerning the negative outcome of the conflict named in the previous part of the headline. by assigning turkey the shady role of an intervenor, a third party that interferes in another state's affairs, the headline implies that those actions have a negative outcome. pragmatically, the headline functions as indirect warning which makes the readers aware of the impending danger, a war instigated by turkey, without becoming directly involved in it. the illocutionary force of warning in the headline of a political interview produces the perlocutionary effect of alarm. no doubt, the information about the possible dangerous outcomes of a certain military clash which is happening far from the usa but which may affect seriously the political situation in the whole world upsets the readers. the modal verb 'could' used in the act of warning is a hesitation marker which indicates probability and softens the perlocutionary force of alarming the readers. the text of the mass media interview consists of two parts a brief summary of the interview and the transcript of the interview itself. the linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 31 summary presents the interviewer's interpretation concerning the issue under question. firstly, it introduces the readers to the discussion topic, the armed conflict between two countries in the transcaucasian region, armenia and azerbaijan. the conflict acquires marked media attention on account of the involvement of two regional powers – russia and turkey, whose leading role in the current geopolitical events in the world and global policy is undeniable. hence, from the very start, the topic appears to be of high importance for the political circles in the usa who have their own interests in the transcaucasian region. secondly, the summary explicitly lays a blame on turkey for inflaming the disturbing territorial conflict: 'at least 300 people have already died in what could turn into a wider regional conflagration, with turkey openly supporting azerbaijan and russia backing armenia.' the expression 'wider regional conflagration' conveys a highly negative connotative meaning, implying the possible dangerous outcomes of the smallscale and seemingly unimportant local conflict. interestingly enough, according to merriam-webster dictionary, the term 'conflagration', which is used to nominate the violent situation in artsakh, is synonymous with the terms 'conflict, war' as well as with the shameful term 'holocaust', which denotes destruction or mass slaughter of people (“conflagration,” n.d.). acknowledging the fact that the appalling and tragic experience of the armenians during the genocide organized by turkey in western armenia in 1915 is still remembered, the association of the current conflict with large-scale killings sounds very disturbing. the harmful and vicious role of turkey in the current situation is further foregrounded with a quote from anna ohanyan's speech which, as we will see, conceives the main communicative purport of the interviewee – warning against disastrous consequences: 'turkey’s intervention on the side of azerbaijan is very destabilizing. it creates the conditions of transforming this conflict into a proxy war.' by describing turkey's actions as 'destabilizing intervention', an unfavourable image of a country that becomes annoyingly involved in disruptive activities is created. interestingly enough, amy goodman tries to armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 32 reinforce the persuasive effect of this assumption, but at the same time, as a journalist, she tries to be objective, without supporting any of the sides of the conflict. she is very cautious when selecting the words, thus she restates the information from the guardian and amnesty international which prove the direct involvement of turkey in the conflict, the participation of 'syrian rebel fighters' as well as the use of 'banned cluster bombs in civilian areas'. she alludes to these sources of information in order to distance herself from giving direct information and to hedge the illocutionary force of warning. thus, the summary 'sets an alert' from the beginning, and predisposes the readers to a viewpoint that condemns turkey's policy in the transcaucasian region. in the second part of the text, the interview itself, the question-answer sequence carries on to support the idea that being a side actor in the conflict between armenia and azerbaijan, turkey instigates violence that is prone to expand enormously in scale and become a large-scale war between the two powerful countries (i. e. russia and turkey) that have political interests in the south caucasian region. after a short introduction, the interviewer presents the topic of the conversation and describes the dangerous and complicated situation that arose as a result of the 'ongoing fighting between armenia and azerbaijan'. the speaker clarifies that historically the present conflict between two relatively small and uninfluential countries for a tiny but 'disputed territory', nagornokarabakh, can be traced back to the problematic issues of the soviet regime, when 'it was the site of a bloody conflict in the wake of the collapse of the soviet union'. what aggravates the conflict and may escalate it, is the involvement of two influential countries, turkey and russia, backing the opposite sides. this fact increases the effect of alarm and confirms the assumption that the small-scale war is prone to become a huge conflict, proxy war: it presents clashes of geopolitical interest and policy. after this short introductory speech, amy goodman introduces anna ohanyan mentioning some of her works. in doing so, she convinces the viewers/readers that they are going to hear/read a highly professional viewpoint. then she begins the question-answer sequence by asking the interviewee to give a general overview of the current situation and comment on the political motives of the conflict. beginning the first question-answer sequence, the interviewer states the need for information about the war, explaining that 'this is an area of the world that i believe most people in the united states are not paying much attention to'. then she uses an open-ended linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 33 question which needs a detailed answer: 'why has this conflagration grown?'. it is noteworthy that the word 'conflagration' which, as we have already stated, is synonymous to 'holocaust' is repeated in the text of the interview. anna ohanyan is resolute and clear in her response. she openly accuses turkey for getting involved in the conflict and contributing to its escalation. the expressions 'openly supporting azerbaijan', doing 'distabilizing intervention', contibuting to the transformation of a local 'conflict'' into ''a proxy war'' ' present negative interpretation of turkey's policy. the responding move of the interviewee is obviously biased, it contains words with negative connotation to describe the ongoing war and turkey's role in it: 'violence... ongoing', 'offensive', 'intervention', 'destabilizing'. she makes a speech act of accusing and blames turkey not only for diplomatic and military support, but also for military interference which she calls harshly with the political term 'intervention': 'turkey’s intervention on the side of azerbaijan, is very destabilizing in terms of the support with the mercenaries, as well as drone technology. it creates the conditions of transforming this conflict into a proxy war.' describing turkey's direct involvement in the military conflict by using professional soldiers hired to serve in a foreign army, and drone technology, anna ohanyan formulates an indirect warning. she anticipates confidently that this conflict might turn into a proxy war. let us note that uses a milder term, 'mercenary', for 'syrian rebel fighters'. going further in her 'two-dimensional' geopolitical analysis, anna ohanyan states certain facts that support her viewpoint about the disruptive outcome in the armenia-azerbaijan conflict, caused by turkish intervention. she explains this conflict 'as a resurgence of turkey trying to enter the south caucasus as a regional power broker' on the one hand, and confrontation between russia and turkey, on the other hand. she further explains that the velvet revolution in armenia established a firm ground for forming 'a democratic dyad with neighboring georgia', which 'creates pressure on the authoritarian pole', that is azerbaijan. the conflict for retaining the authoritarian pole in the transcaucasian region is mitigated by the conflict between armenia and azerbaijan. according to the analysis presented by the professor of political science and international relations at stonehill college, armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 34 azerbaijan 'pulled in turkey', resorting to 'authoritarian coordination between azerbaijan and turkey'. by elucidating the roots of the conflict, she makes another warning that 'turkey’s change of the structure of this conflict, is very destabilizing for the region'. as we can see, in this dialogic move the communicative goal of the interviewee is to anticipate certain negative events which may be caused by the 'backstage' partner of azerbaijan. the illocutionary force of the warning is aggravated through logical reasoning and emotional impact which, undoubtedly, reinforces the perlocutionary effect of alarming. in doing so, the interviewee implicitly leads the intermediary addresees, that is, the readers (and listeners, too) to construct an image of the situation that is on her side. in the next question-answer sequence, the interviewer wants the interviewee to appreciate the role of the second 'backstage' partner, moscow, in the conflict: 'but why moscow? and what do you think will come of this?' giving feedback to this question, anna ohanyan opposes the roles of the two side participants, russia and turkey. she again accuses turkey of 'pushing for a militarized solution', and confirms that russia is playing an 'institutional role'. anyhow, despite the seemingly favourable interpretation of russia's role in the conflict, she is not sure whether russia 'will have enough leverage to pressure both sides' as turkey 'is the big factor'. the speech act of doubt 'so, right now but i’m, again, not sure how turkish factor will be handled' creates a firm background for anticipating future negative events and, in a way, confirms the actuality of the warning stated in the previous part of the interview. and finally, in the last question-answer sequence anna ohanyan makes a conclusive remark by which she confirms her opinion about the hidden dangers in the current situation and its development: 'yeah, this authoritarianism, this militarism has not been challenged, and we see this playing out in nagornokarabakh.' in fact this speech act presents indirect warning since it proves the probability of a flair of a wide conflict between the regional powers backing opposite sides. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 35 conclusion the pragmatic analysis of the political interview text enables us to conclude that both participants, the interviewer and the interviewee, contribute to creating an integrative communicative intent. the study of the dialogic moves of the partners in the question-answer sequences evidences that this conversational unit can be interpreted as a case of macro-warning. the communicative-semantic purport of the interview is to predict certain destructive outcomes of the seemingly small-scale local armed conflict indicating that it might turn into a proxy war, a large-scale war between two regional powers, russia and turkey, that have their own private interests in those dramatic developments. the peculiarity of the perlocutionary effect of the interview is the fact that it is directed towards the intermediary addresees of the communicative situation – the listeners or readers. hence the study of the communicative effect of the act of warning also reveals the integrative perlocutionary effect of the political interview. it can be interpreted as alarming. the assumption that the small-scale war is prone to develop into a huge conflict, a proxy war, expressed by the participants of the interview, has a strong persuasive power and results in creating the perlocutionary effect of alarm. the pragmatic analysis of the transcript of the computer-mediated political interview indicates the urgency and significance of the geopolitical problem raised by the speakers. notes 1. the fact that russia is absolutely on armenia's side is disputed by many armenian polititians who accuse russia of selling arms to azerbaijan and turkey, for siding azerbaijan in collective security treaty organization, for supporting turkey's aggressive policy and so on. references bach, k., & harnish, r.m., (1979). linguistic 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(1983). pragmatics. cambridge: cup. madoyan, a. (2013). asuiti perlokutiv imasti enkalman ev meknabanutian hartseri shurj. [on the problem of perceiving and interpreting the perlocutionary effect of the speech act]. kantegh 2(5), 87-93. o’keefe, d.j. (2002). persuasion: theory and research. (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. o'keeffe, a. (2006). investigating media discourse. london and new york: routledge. paronyan, sh. (2012). pragmatics. yerevan: ysu press. paronyan, sh., & bekaryan, l. (2001). the actualization of prescriptions in directive communicative situations. kantegh, 5, 106-116. paronyan, sh., & ghaltakhchyan s. (2013). hamozman gortsaruiti iragorcume artsants elektronayin khntragri vernagrum. [realization of the function of persuasion in the headlines of online petitions]. otar lezunere bartsraguin dprotsum. 14, 163-175. paronyan, sh. (2020). the use of manipulative tactics in hate speech. armenian folia anglistika, 2 (22), 143-161. https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2020.16.2.143 searle, j. r. (1969). speech acts. london: cambridge university press. simon d., grimes m., & roche sh. (2018). communication for business professionals. ontario: ecampusontario. retrieved september 23, 2021. verderber, r. f. (1988). speech for effective communication. usa: harcourt brace jovanovich. verschueren, j.(1999). understanding pragmatics. london, new york: arnold. witosh, b. (2005). linguistic study of genres. problematic aspects. katowice: university of silesia. http://solr.bccampus.ca:8001/bcc/file/d3b69c53-2cff-4863-b51b-abe9c6fc5d06/1/communication-for-business-professionals.html http://solr.bccampus.ca:8001/bcc/file/d3b69c53-2cff-4863-b51b-abe9c6fc5d06/1/communication-for-business-professionals.html linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 37 sources of data conflagration. (n.d.). in merriam webster dictionary. retrieved may 20, 2021. goodman, a. (2020, october 9). armenia-azerbaijan conflict: why turkey’s intervention could turn it into a “proxy war”. democracy now. retrieved march 23, 2022. քաղաքական հարցազրույցում ներակայվող նախազգուշացման քննություն շուշանիկ պարոնյան հոդվածը նվիրված է խոսողի հաղորդակցական նպատակն ու պերլոկուտիվ ազդեցությունն արտահայտող լեզվական միջոցների քննությանը քաղաքական հարցազրույցում: հետազոտության նպատակն է ուսումնասիրել, թե ինչ լեզվական միջոցներով է ունկնդիրների/ընթերցողների նկատմամբ ներգործություն իրականացվում մասսայական լրատվամիջոցներում: լեզվաբանական քննության նյութ է ծառայել «democracy now» լրատվական ծրագրի կայքում տեղադրված քաղաքական հարցազրույցներից մեկի սղագրությունը: հետազոտությունն իրականացվել է դիսկուրսի վերլուծության հայեցակերպով՝ կիրառելով լեզվաբանական քննության համատեքստային-իմաստային և գործաբանական մեթոդները: հեղինակը հանգում է այն համոզման, որ քննության առնված քաղաքական հարցազրույցի մասնակիցների հարցուպատասխանների շարքն իրականացնում է ընդհանրական` նախազգուշացման գործաբանական գործառույթ և ահազանգման պերլոկուտիվ ազդեցություն է գործում ընթերցողի վրա: բանալի բառեր` գործաբանություն, իլլոկուտիվ և պերլոկուտիվ իմաստ, ուղիղ և անուղղակի խոսքային ակտեր, հաղորդակցություն զանգվածային լրատվամիջոցներով: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conflagration https://www.democracynow.org/2020/10/9/anna_ohanyan_armenia_azerbaijan https://www.democracynow.org/2020/10/9/anna_ohanyan_armenia_azerbaijan armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 163 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2022.18.2.163 typology of female characters in the novels of western armenian female authors naira hambardzumyan siranush parsadanyan** institute of literature after manuk abeghian, nas ra the aim of the research is to explore the typology of female characters in the works of female writers srbuhi tyusab, sipil and zapel yesayan in the context of social transformations in the ottoman empire of the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. a comparative analysis of female characters in the novels mayta (1883), siranush (1884), araksia or the governess (1887) by tyusab, a girl’s heart (1891) by sipil, and gardens of silihtar (1935) by zapel yesayan has been attempted from the perspectives of literary and sociological studies. the data are analysed with the application of the graph-based semantic representation method. the actuality of the research lies in its interdisciplinarity, according to which mutual connections are created between literary studies, sociology and computer science. the selection of these works as research data is accounted for by their volume, variety of characters, simplicity of plots and little branching. all the main characters in all the novels are females. all the novels were written around the same time period (the 1880s1900s) and bear characteristics of a romantic novel, except zapel yesayan’s autobiographical novel gardens of silihtar written in 1935. despite the year the novel was written, in it yesayan describes the same period (the end of the 19th century) reflected in tyusab’s and sipil’s novels. keywords: srbuhi tyusab, sipil, zapel yesayan, graph-based semantic modeling, typological analysis, female characters, sociology. introduction in the context of the tanzimat1 reforms and awakening movement taking place in the ottoman empire, the deprivation2 of women was relatively alleviated, contributing greatly to the rise of their consciousness, the practical manifestations of which were seen in the form of feminist movements in the  nairahambardzumyan@yahoo.com ** siranush.parsadanyan.2014@mail.ru this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 10.08.2022 revised: 19.08.2022 accepted: 28.08.2022 © the author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 armenological studies 164 second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, and, served as a mechanism to activate the collective inner potential of women. western armenian female authors investigated women’s issues: sociopolitical, economic and psychological dependence on the husband, father, brother, mutually benefitial forced marriages, lack of right to speech and expression, job-related issues, experience, forced pregnancies, gender-related frustrations, etc., which were realized in the paradigm of women’s collective roles and problems. the present research has been carried out through the application of the graph-based semantic representation method (ericson, 2016; koller, oepen, & sun, 2019, pp. 6-11; vu, knoblock, & pujara, 2019, pp. 1944-1953), with the help of which the semantic domain of female characters has been modelled. due to this method, the text comprehension process3 (decomposing, assembling) becomes most effective, each component having a hierarchical and local-topographical definiteness compared to various components of the text as a complete system. at the same time, this problem is a trend towards the structural context of the text, which, in turn, provides an opportunity to analyze any component of the text as a system. of the mentioned 5 novels 119 contexts reflecting the typological characteristics of female characters and, in turn, containing 204 semantic components have been singled out in the study. in general, the research material has been divided into 3 semantic areas conventionally called domains. then, the graph-based semantic domains of representation characterizing female characters have been created, which, later, are interpreted on the basis of the outcomes and lead to certain conclusions. thus, the main typological features of female characters are expressed through action and portrait characteristics. the characters’ actions, deeds, as well as their behavior are essential in revealing images, because it is important not only what a person does, but also how s/he behaves during any action or deed. the main characters (mayta, siranush, araksia, bubul, lusik) created by female authors in the novels mayta, siranush, araksia or the governess by tyusab, a girl’s heart by sipil and gardens of silihtar by zapel yesayan are manifested through clearly expressed actions. this is evidenced by the highlighted action characteristics domain, which, as the outcomes proved, turned out to be the largest by its specific weight. armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 165 the sociology of female characters portrait characteristics: the semantic range of components completing women’s portraits: features, body parts, movements, gestures, clothes or parts of them, age, position in the family and marital status have a special significance in the novels of armenian female authors. the domain through which this semantic space is completed is present in literary texts, because the stereotype of a woman created to please a man worked and still works in the space-time chronotope of the ottoman empire of the second half of the 19th century. all the three female authors mentioned above paid special attention to the appearance of their characters. the vocabulary they use enables us to decipher the women’s appearance and to reveal the ottoman patriarchal traditions. all the female characters (both happy and unhappy ones) are endowed with positive features and colors to which modesty, plainness, beauty of soul, kindness, honesty, intelligence are added. this first of all is related to the bearing of the armenian national tradition and value system. such are the female characters of tyusab’s novels: mayta, her daughter huliane and mrs. sira in mayta, siranush and zaruhi in siranush, araksia in araksia or the governess; bubul, the main character of sipil’s novel a girl’s heart; sofi, zapel’s grandmother lusik (tutu), zapel’s mother, her two aunts, a friend of hers, etc. in zapel yesayan’s novel gardens of silihtar. in these novels female characters of other nationalities are opposed to the main female characters: the french women herriga (mayta) and janette (siranush), who are depicted as being endowed with uncontrollable social behavior, apparent malice, silliness and envy. in the internal domain of the analysis of the semantic features of tyusab’s novel siranush we see that not only siranush and her father, mr. haynur are contrasted, but also siranush and darehyan, siranush and the french woman, even siranush and her mother mrs. haynur, who is completely under the influence of her husband, deprived of the right to speak and unable to prevent her daughter’s misfortune. she dies of severe mental depression and pain. in the novel siranush is contrasted to her friend zaruhi, who is in a happy marriage with her beloved. the plot and the sequence of events of the novel mayta (epistolary novel) are developed by tyusab through the genre of letters. this genre was extremely popular in the 19th century europe4. in the novel, letter writing takes place mainly between two mature women, mrs. sira and mayta, and from their letters armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 armenological studies 166 we learn about mayta being an extremely attractive woman, her progressivecritical views, experience, the divine beauty of mayta’s daughter, mrs. sira’s thoughtfulness, her philosophical thought born out of life experience and other features. through these portraits, the reader visualizes the author’s contemplation and understands the idea of the work (hambardzumyan, 2013). in tyusab’s novel mayta men characters are also worthy of note, those of tigran and the count, whose attitude towards mayta enables the reader to get a clue of mayta’s attractiveness. like every man seeing a woman, they first of all are attracted to mayta’s appearance. the author creates the romantic, noble pathos of the novel, among other components, due to the semantic elements of the domain portrait characteristics. noteworthy are also the events of the novel mayta, narrated by mayta. they are presented in gloomy colors, full of despair, disappointment, brutality (see the assasination attempt by heriga and heriga’s assasination by tigran), depression. the color of the novel mayta is black, and the mood is melancholic. the domain of portrait characteristics is even smaller in its specific weight in sipil’s novel a girl’s heart where the author develops the narration, emphasizing the phenomenon and not the individual. external characteristics of female characters are also not limited in sipil’s novel. moreover, there are characteristics alien to armenian linguistic thinking. the sociology of reflection of emotions and feelings in general, the philosophy of feminism relates the domain of women’s emotions and feelings and its sociology to the concepts of female subject and subjectivity of women, bringing forth the issues defining them at two levels: a. essentialistic, through which a woman’s subjectivity and experience are considered as a whole and are analyzed in one single discourse, b. antiessentialistic, according to which a woman’s identity is viewed in the realm of multiplicity and experience in that of contradiction and decentralization. in this connection, in his book the second sex (beauvoir, 1956) the french philosopher simone de beauvoir introduces the phenomena of woman’s thinking, subjectivity, experience and writing. in anthropological philosophy simone de beauvoir’s artistic legacy was the first to be considered as a conscious attempt at exposing women. it should be noted that in this context both women and men are equally emotional by nature, but it is known that women are prone to display their emotions more than men. in this respect, we’ve also singled out the domain of armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 167 reflection of emotions and feelings from all the novels studied by us, which is manifested on the largest scale in srbuhi tyusab’s and sipil’s novels and is mainly marked by the pathos of tragedy. the phenomenon is also present in yesayan’s gardens of silihtar, but in this case the author’s neutrality and selfcontrol are obvious. the emotional state of sipil’s character bubul in the novel a girl’s heart is mainly caused by her decline in the social status and alienation from the society. this phenomenon helps to get a better understanding of the fear and tragedy created by desperate social and economic conditions existing in the 19th century ottoman empire, in which christian national minorities, especially their female representatives, lived. the image of a strong and determined, educated and well-brought up woman is depicted only in tyusab’s novel araksia or the governess. in the domain of the reflection of emotions and feelings the lexical base or language, through which the authors create domains of their characters saturated with psychological and semantic characteristics is also notable. in this sense, zapel yesayan’s grandmother’s character in gardens of silihtar deserves attention – always dressed in black, with sad black eyes twinkling on the white like a relic and wrinkled face with common sense typical of a sophisticated and knowledgeable woman; contempt would make her unsmiling and taciturn; tutu was very unhappy in marriage; tutu would tolerate only the scent of a rose; she would wear eternal sadness on her delicate face; her hair was as white as a relic and she was wrinkled (yesayan, 2018). this situation allows for better visualization of the authors’ marked sympathy towards the female characters. tyusab’s character siranush (siranush) dies in the house of her cynical, dissolute and rakish husband darehyan, preferring never to share the bed with him, not to be humiliated and not to become an instrument in his hand, especially against the background of his infidelities with the french woman janette – siranush would go red seeing women’s humiliated and pitiful position in society; they would not dare to express their opinion freely, nor would they think of defending their natural legal rights as individuals and have the courage to get out of the path of prejudices; they would cry out against prejudice, and unite their concern and contempt against falsification (tyusab, 1884). sipil’s character bubul (a girl’s heart) dies because garnik rejects her love, realizing that bubul was poor and he would have to support her. thus, garnik marries artin agha’s daughter meline. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 armenological studies 168 in the domain of reflection of emotions and feelings, the next character, sophie, created by sipil, (a girl’s heart), also deserves attention. the semantic components of this character’s description arouse sympathy and pity towards her. she tries to earn her living as a teacher, thereby helping her young brother whom bubul loved. a relatively small part of this domain illustrates the transition of descriptive emphasis of female characters to other essential features. through the semantic components we also discover that tyusab’s characters (except for mayta, whose husband was dead), sipil and yesayan are mostly unmarried or newlywed women, therefore, the social problems that the authors put forward are most sharply emphasized, especially at that stage of women’s lives. the semantic range of emotions and feelings is reflected in tyusab’s siranush and sipil’s a girl’s heart especially by hypersemes (zherebilo, 2010) melancholy and cry which can also be called genetically transmitted sensory characteristics. both siranush and bubul experience unfulfilled love, have an unestablished family, no children, and their youth is wasted: the wedding ceremony must turn into a funeral. father, let me live, give up your decision, begged siranush. i don’t know what it means to have mercy, i tell you this as a subject, shouted the angry father (tyusab, 1884). from the perspective of the analysis of the balance of power and the tactics of resisting patriarchy, the concept of the patriarchal transaction (kandiyoti, 1988) proposed by denise kandiyoti, a researcher at richmond college in england, is noteworthy. according to him, the superiority-inferiority relationship between man and woman is mutually benefitial because the inferior benefit by mobilizing the resources is available. in general, older men are responsible for organizing community life. socialization issues: in tyusab’s, sipil’s and yesayan’s novels relationships with people are also essential in revealing and highlighting the important features of characterisation. this domain has the greatest specific weight in all the novels, and it is not accidental as the eternal theme of love makes up the axis of the works under analysis, and love, as we know, is manifested through mutual human relationships. thus, in tyusab’s novel siranush the etymological characteristics of the main character siranush are revealed in two ways: firstly, through the relationship between siranush’s father and yervand who siranush falls in love with and whom siranush’s father sends abroad to get higher education, and secondly, through the relationship between siranush’s father and darehyan, a dilettante considered an enviable armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 169 husband in town, whom her father likes and forces his daughter to marry. opposing her father, however, siranush doesn’t have her own voice and decision-making power and is unable to stop her personal tragedy, which begins with that marriage and which constitutes the novel’s conflict. tyusab pushes the reader to the idea of the destructive power of love, which, in this case, is inevitable, and to which the young and inexperienced girl succumbs. in this case personal experience is of collective, intersubjective and political nature. the latent collective self-awareness is awakened in those very collective decisions. in the context of the characteristics of socialization issues, in sipil’s novel the relationships between the main character bubul and people surrounding him (bubul-tigran5, bubul-garnik, bubul-mr. geghamof, bubul-father6, bubulsociety7) are especially noteworthy, which, as it turns out, is a huge well of patriarchal dogmas, taboos and don’ts inside which the water is old and rotten. these circumstances cannot be called otherwise than social violence against an individual. zapel yesayan describes a similar environment suffocated by patriarchal morals in her autobiographical novel gardens of silihtar” when creating her grandmother lusik’s character. if tyusab’s characters (mayta, siranush, araksia) are more or less educated, have names, to some extent the right to speak and suffer from the inability to change anything, realizing, seeing the phenomenon, calling it a woman is a victim of prejudice and friendship (tyusab, 1981, p. 19), and representing the status of women living in the ottoman empire in the second half of the 19th century, then yesayan’s grandmother represents an earlier period, the first half of 19th century, she is not educated, and like thousands of girls of her age (9-14), is married off to men of age with the intervention of a mediator, without asking her opinion. in this case, we can observe the phenomenon of absence of love, which is specific to all the main characters of almost all the novels, as it lies at the base of the conflicts. when her husband was alive, yesayan’s tutu also had no voice in the family, no name, as we see throughout the reading of the novel. the husband, a minstrel wandering from village to village, would go away returning once a year, would sleep with his wife, would impragnate her and would disappear again. thus, tutu was always pregnant, had 13 children, 4 of whom died, and 9 remained alive, and her husband, shirin oglu hakob, was unaware of their birth, death, upbringing, or social status (yesayan, 2018). armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 armenological studies 170 in tyusab’s, as well as sipil’s and yesayan’s novels, we see the direct impact of the policy pursued by the ottoman empire on the christian subject peoples living there, who had to bear the direct impact and consequences of the unwritten laws of the sultanate dictatorship. on this occasion, the scene of the kidnapping attempt of lusik, still a child (14 years old) in the church yard by turkish farrashes in the novel gardens of silihtar also deserves attention. in general, while asserting their inferior status and following gender role prescriptions, women in muslim societies employ a variety of strategies maximizing their security and optimizing life opportunities. however, this was not the case. even the preventive measures8 taken by the two elderly women accompanying her to the church did not save tutu. from the moment one of the farrashes managed to remove the veil covering her face, her life turned upside down: she was considered “defiled” whom no one would marry. this real-life situation is a result of the direct impact of the islamist-muslim religion, which is an inevitable social violence undergone and suffered by armenian women and armenian families in general living in the ottoman patriarchal empire as the smallest cells of the ethnic christian society. this is not only social, but also existential-ontological violence, which threatened armenian women throughout their lives. violence in this case is perceived as the symbol of the policy pursued by the ottoman empire. according to kandeyoki (1988), elderly women in muslim countries or muslim societies control relationships. here girls are married off by their parents and are inferior not only to their husbands but also to older relatives, elderly women controlling relationships in extended multigenerational families, their resources being the maternal and marital influence they exercise over sons and husbands. janette, the french woman in the novel siranush, is a stable combination of negative features (deceit, immorality, imprudence, greed and intrigue) in relationships with the society. for her the obsession with making everything serve her purpose recognizes no barriers. she appears in the second part of the novel only when darehyan and siranush get married. through this woman’s character tyusab also reveals darehyan’s character and his socially irresponsible behavior, which is his lifestyle and there is no way of retreating from it. the phenomenon of absence of love has also made tyusab’s mayta and siranush, sipil’s bubul and her friend sophie unhappy. tyusab’s araksia and armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 171 mayta’s daughter are happy due to the presence of love (for a short time). yesayan’s self-portrait in the novel gardens of silihtar in this sense is neutral. the sociology of physical characteristics physical characteristics and condition: almost all the female characters in all the novels are described by the authors in the domain of physical characteristics and condition. the natural description of the female characters, on the one hand, allows us to see the gradual fading of some characters, their passing away from life, to emphasize not only the physical weakness but also the spiritual one (mrs. haynur in siranush). in the case of the french woman janette, her aimless existence, her spiritual emptiness is contrasted with siranush’s physical weakness, the depth and fullness of her spiritual peace. thus, in the novels of all the three authors, the focus of attention is firstly on the external characteristics of the female characters, and then on the social relationships. in this sense, all the three authors tend towards developing the aesthetic and artistic awareness of the reader through the characters’ psychological manifestations, because in the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the orientation of the reproduction of a person’s inner world was mainly in the realm of rationality. tyusab’s characters, for example, are not only related to historicity, but also reveal the internal semantic and ontological issues of the eternal themes of love, life, and death. encrypted historicity is present in her novels in general. in the novels of all of the three authors there are basic, timeless and essential features in which emotions prevail: the desire to please and be loved, naturalness, naivety, patience, suffering, which are accurate psychological findings. if we are to consider the characters created by tyusab, sipil and yesayan in the realms of sanctification and desanctification, then as a combination of the eternal struggle of the binary beginnings of light and darkness, only mayta’s character is complete, as a bearer of all of them. in other characters, in one way or another, the hidden inner characteristics of a person are not etiologically revealed. and the french woman’s nature is beyond armenian women’s characteristics and the range of their perceptions in general. women like this can only destort the society or shatter the destinies of the surrounding people. tyusab and sibil reveal that femininity is superior to a woman in their protagonists the french woman janette and mrs. abgarian (tyusab, araksia armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 armenological studies 172 or the governess), as well as mrs bempeh and her daughter lusik (sipil, a girl’s heart). the sociology of typological characteristics the most common characteristics of female characters in literature from the beginning of the 19th century to the first decade of the 20th century are: suffering, patience, reconciliation, humbleness, obedience, sacrification, wisdom, closeness to nature. the characters in all the five novels relate in one way or another to certain essential and important features and types. figure 1. the graph-based semantic representation model of semantic domains among the female characters attractive to men, mayta and araksia should be mentioned as main characters, and mrs. sira and garnik’s second fiancée, meline, as secondary characters who attract men with their femininity. such female characters can be found at all times, in real life as well, and can be called the ideal of femininity, they are women-muses who can inspire men. bubul and sophie are rejected by the society for daring to break the traditional unwritten laws. they are condemned to live without rights and laws. they are female victims ruined by patriarchal societies at all times to secure and maintain power. the present research also allows classifying the female characters in these works in the context of universal human qualities conditioned by the specific armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 173 features typical of the society. here the female characters are represented on four typological levels: a. daughter-in-law, wife, mother characterized by the following features: naivity, patience, suffering, deceit – (bubul, sofi, siranush, lusik (yesayan’s grandmother), mrs. haynur (siranush’s mother), mrs. varsamyan (araksia’s mother); b. an ideal of eternal femininity, with three transformable types: womanmuse and divine woman that inspire men and are capable of playing a fatal role in their lives – mayta, janette, mrs. abgarian; c. a strong and rational type of woman contrasted with man in work and rationality – araksia, yesayan’s self-portrait). d. a weak and submissive type of woman who obeys patriarchal dogmas and is manageable by men – siranush, yesayan’s tutu at a young age. figure 2. typology of women conditioned by social manifestations of universal human qualities if we consider the female characters in the works of tyusab, sipil and yesayan in the context of historicity, then we can say they are sacrifices, who reflect the prevailing socio-historical and socio-political morals with their armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 armenological studies 174 individual tragedies and are directly affected by desperate social conditions. this is the reason why they are portrayed in the realm of contradictions as weak, emotional, strong, rational, hypocritical and scheming women – herriga, janette, siranush’s maid mariam, mrs. abgarian, etc. conclusion the analyzed material and the graph-based semantic representation models for depicting female characters lead us to the conclusion that the mentioned authors express important female character traits through character-specific semantic domains such as actions, portrait components, reflections of emotions and feelings, relationship with others which constitute the semantic space of female characters in the works of western armenian female authors. thus, in “gardens of silihtar” zapel yesayan emphasizes not only the inner sensual manifestations of female characters, but also the intellectual ones. the feature range of interaction with society is emphasized in all the mentioned works. the theme of love with its various manifestations is also present in them. in this regard, especially noteworthy is the novel a girl’s heart in which sipil reveals the inner world of the main female character bubul. in western armenian literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and before that, female characters are portrayed according to traditional approaches. they stand out with their various social roles and inner worlds, and their appearances are conditioned by the time-specific social perceptions. thus, the present article is an attempt to draw parallels and compare the female characters in western literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. acknowledgements the work was supported by the science committee of ra, within the framework of research project № 2it-6b118. notes 1. tanzimat in the ottoman language, code of reforms, the basic principles of which were set out and published in decrees gulhan, e hatt-i serif in 1839 and hatt-ı hümayun in 1856 which envisaged reforms that were not implemented. tanzimat was admitted to the ottoman empire in 1839-1876, at the same time the first constitution of the empire was adopted. armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 175 2. here, a mental deficiency related to self-realization and establishment in social life. 3. the application of the graph-based semantic method with the text comprehension procedure is similar to the hermeneutic method. 4. epistolary novel a type of novel that is written as a series of letters. 5. due to disobedience, tigran deprived bubul of the dowry she claimed. 6. due to poverty, the father gave the girl to his wife’s relatives for guardianship. 7. she was rejected by the society for opposing traditions. 8. out of fear, she was dressed in turkish feraji․ references beauvoir, s.de. (1956). the second sex. (h.m. parshley trans. and ed.). london: jonatan cape: 701. ericson, p. (2016). investigating different graph representations of semantics, sixth swedish language technology conference (sltc), umeå university (17-18 november). retrieved august 05, 2022. zherebilo, t.v. (2010). slovar' lingvisticheskih terminov [dictionary of linguistics terms]. fifth revised edition. nazran: piligrim llc, 486. kandiyoti, d. (1988). bargaining with patriarchy: gender & society. 2 (3): 274-290. koller, a., oepen, s. & sun, w. (2019). graph-based meaning representations: design and processing. proceedings of the 57th annual meeting of the association for computational linguistics: tutorial abstracts, 6-11. retrieved august 05, 2022. hambardzumyan n. (2013). text ev meknutyun [text and interpretation]. yerevan. tir. 177 p. vu, b.; knoblock, & c.a., pujara, j. (2019) learning semantic models of data sources: using probabilistic graphical models. www’19 (may 13–17). usa, san francisco: 1944-1953. sources of data tyusab, s. (1981). yerker: mayta. [compositions: mayta]. yerevan: sovetakan grogh publishing house: 552. (in armenian) tyusab, s. (1884). siranush. [siranush]. constantinople: nshan k perperean publishing house: 408. (in armenian) tyusab, s. (1925). araksia kam varzhuhin. [araksia or the governess]. constantinople: arev publishing house: 287. (in armenian) https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1095705/fulltext01.pdf https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1095705/fulltext01.pdf https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1095705/fulltext01.pdf https://github.com/cfmrp/tutorial. https://github.com/cfmrp/tutorial. https://github.com/cfmrp/tutorial. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 armenological studies 176 sipil. (1891) aghjkan my sirty. [a girl’s heart]. constantinople: tchivelekean publishing house: 246. (in armenian) yesayan, z. (2018). silihtari partezner. [gardens of silihtar]. yerevan: antares publishing house: 200. (in armenian) կանանց կերպարների տիպաբանությունը արեվմտահայ կին հեղինակների վեպերում նաիրա համբարձումյան սիրանուշ փարսադանյան հետազոտության նպատակն է՝ բացահայտել 19-րդ դարի երկրորդ կեսի օսմանյան կայսրության սոցիալ-հասարակական փոխակերպությունների համատեքստում կին գրողների՝ սրբուհի տյուսաբի, սիպիլի և զապել եսայանի երկերում կանանց կերպարների տիպաբանությունը: հետազոտության խնդիրն է՝ ս. տյուսաբի «մայտա» (1883), «սիրանուշ» (1884), «արաքսիա կամ վարժուհին (1887), սիպիլի «աղջկան մը սիրտը» (1891), զապել եսայանի «սիլիհտարի պարտեզներ» (1935) վեպերը վերլուծել կանանց կերպարների գրականագիտական-սոցիոլոգիական հատկանիշների համադրության, գրաֆիկական-իմաստաբանական պատկերավորման մոդելների ընդհանրությունների և իմաստաբանական քննության տեսանկյուններից: հետազոտության արդիականությունը պայմանավորված է միջգիտակարգային ուսումնասիրությամբ, ըստ որի նյութը վերլուծվել է գրականագիտության, սոցիոլոգիայի և համակարգչային գիտությունների (արհեստական բանականության) միջև փոխադարձ կապերի և առնչությունների համատեքստում՝ գրաֆիկական-իմաստաբանական պատկերավորման մեթոդի կիրառմամբ: այս երկերի ընտրությունը որպես հետազոտական նյութ պայմանավորված է նրանց ծավալով, տարաբնույթ կերպարներով, սյուժեների պարզությամբ և քիչ ճյուղավորվածությամբ։ բոլոր վեպերի գլխավոր հերոսները կանայք են։ բոլոր վեպերը գրվել են, մոտավորապես, միևնույն ժամանակաշրջանում՝ 1880-1900-ական թվականներին, և ունեն ռոմանտիկական վեպի հատկանիշներ, բացի զապել եսայանի «սիլիհտարի պարտեզներ» ինքնակենսագրական վեպից, որը գրվել է 1935 թվականին: չնայած գրության թվականին, եսայանը իր վեպում նկարագրում է միևնույն ժամանակաշրջանը (19-րդ դարավերջ), որն արտացոլված է տյուսաբի և սիպիլի վեպերում: բանալի բառեր: սրբուհի տյուսաբ, սիպիլ, զապել եսայան, գրաֆիկական-իմաստաբանական մոդելավորում, տիպաբանական վերլուծություն, կանանց կերպարներ, սոցիոլոգիա: armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 translation studies 114 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2022.18.1.114 translation as a mode of interpretation and misinterpretation of literary discourse gayane gasparyan yerevan brusov state university the article focuses on the so-called nadsat, an argot invented by a. burgess in his well-known novel a clockwork orange. nadsat identifies the teenagers’ speech that causes plenty of confusion among readers. the confusion becomes visible even in the translations of the argot both into russian and into armenian that very often leads to the target readers’ misunderstanding. the aim of the article is to distinguish a number of linguistic peculiarities of nadsat in a. burgess’ a clockwork orange and to specify the translation distinctions in the target texts, which are definitely caused by certain misinterpretation of the st cognitive code. translation itself may be identified as a transaction operation, when the language media specific of one cultural community is transferred into another with definite configurations specific to the other cultural community to meet the target recipients’ expectations with their cultural background, mentality, genetic knowledge and experience. key words: dystopian, nadsat, transformation, modification, misinterpretation, st cognitive code. introduction any literary text is a result of a writer’s creative activities based on his/her personal experience, personal views, personal world vision. this is whatever respectively designs the so-called author’s individual manner. this is whatever distinguishes one author from another. this is whatever shapes the language, structure and composition characteristics of any literary style and leads to the individual manner diversity. however, it should be noted that all the mentioned indicators are determined by the influence of the literary tendencies and specific genre features of these tendencies, the historical development and  gasparyan.gayane@yandex.com this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 06.03.2022 revised: 09.04.2022 accepted: 19.04.2022 © the author(s) 2021 mailto:gasparyan.gayane@yandex.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 115 period of time, respectively the political and social environment the piece of literature is created in. a. burgess is ranked among the outstanding british dystopian writers. dystopian literature is usually defined as a negative reaction to the social and political disorder in a totalitarian society, the chaos and destruction dominating in this world. different internet sources suggest five characteristics of dystopian fiction, which may be taken into consideration for any research of this literary trend: government control, environmental destruction, technological control, survival, loss of individualism (what is dystopian fiction? 2021; “dystopia”, 2022). a rather interesting approach towards dystopia and critical dystopias is provided by a young researcher jordi serrano-muñoz. in his article “closure in dystopia: projecting memories of the end of crises in speculative fiction” he writes: “the main trait of critical dystopias is their desire to engage with ongoing conflicts by imagining a parallel present or a potential future where the consequences of today’s ills provoke an undesired outcome for society. … dystopias offer us a world that, in its spoiled state, exposes imperfection and, therefore, room for change and improvement” (serrano-muñoz, 2021, p. 3). dystopia as a reaction to utopia, is characterized by a lack of mercy, a totalitarian governing system and environmental catastrophes, associated with the decline of society. but a. burgess’ dystopia is rather individual and differs, if compared with other dystopian classics. he does not basically suggest his own solution of the problems the represented society faces; he involves his target reader into the process of revealing the conflict in between the state and the individual and coming to a certain solution of the defects and the harm such a society generates. his dystopia gets new characteristics which deviate from the genre norms and lead to a new comprehension and reproduction of its artistic manifestation. his novel a clockwork orange is identified as a dystopian satirical black comedy characterized by such genre specific features as near-future society with its chaos, disorder, catastrophes, disintegration and destruction. the most vivid and colorful specificity of the novel is the teenagers’ argot, which determines its linguistic spectrum and creates a definite stylistic value, so unique and distinctive. the so-called nadsat in a clockwork orange is a specific argot created by the author to identify a certain group of teenagers due to their worldview, intellect, range of interests and troubles. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 translation studies 116 the aim of the present article is to distinguish a number of linguistic peculiarities of nadsat in a. burgess’ a clockwork orange and to specify the translation distinctions in the target texts, which are definitely caused by certain misinterpretation of the st cognitive code. nadsat as a specific means of subculture identification to reflect the specific properties of the fictional youth subculture with its relevant language arsenal developed in the novel, a. burgess invented a special argot, the so-called nadsat, which identifies the teenagers’ speech that causes plenty of confusion among readers. the confusion becomes visible even in the translations of the argot both into russian and into armenian that very often leads to the target readers’ misunderstanding. nadsat is characterized by different features. the most significant among them is the use of russian origin words, which are transmitted into english, such as bitva, carman, nozh. another peculiarity specifying the argot in the novel is the use of english endings and affixes together with russian origin words, thus applying english grammatical elements to the russian forms like razrezzed, interresovatted, slooshying, underveshches, or blending of russian and english words as in glazlids (russian глаз + english lids). all the nadsat elements are transmitted in latin letters, though rather often the author combines the methods of transcription and transliteration and applies phonemic and graphical rules peculiar to the english language as double e (ee) for russian и (scoteena, cheest), double o (oo) for russian у (minoota, pooshka, bezoomny, zoob), ew for russian ю (lewdies), double s (ss) for russian с (goloss), k for russian х (brooko, ooko) and so on. though, it should be noted that the author is not always consistent in keeping the rules established by himself for the nadsat. thus, in the adjective bolshy (big) a. burgess does not keep the digraph oy as an ending like in bolnoy (sick), dorogoy (dear) peculiar to russian masculine adjectives (-ой большой, дорогой, больной, молодой) and the version bolshy does not correspond to russian bolshoy as bolnoy, molodoy and dorogoy do. in case with goober the author adds ending -er whereas in russian it is губа/губы and sounds as gooba/gooby. the digraph oo is used for russian y, but a. burgess does not do the same with the russian sounds а or ы, instead, he adds an unknown ending -er for russian губа/губы. once he uses double t (tt) for russian т (govorett – speak or talk), in some other ones he does not keep it (interesovat – to interest, kopat – to dig). if follow the rules set by a. burgess, translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 117 there should be scoteena instead of scotenna (cow) as in shoom (noise), shoot (fool). anyhow, even the deviations from the certain phonemic or graphical rules established by the author himself for the newly invented argot, should have been considered by a translator and the tt should include all the specific language features of the st in order to keep nadsat as it was created in the original. transformation modifications of nadsat in russian and armenian translations viewed from the perspective of cultural translation nadsat may be determined as the tool of representing a definite subculture mode of thinking, lifestyle, behavior, relationship. translation as a means of converting one code into another respectively presupposes such a transaction operation, when the language media specific of one cultural community is transferred into another with definite configurations specific to the other cultural community to meet the target recipients’ expectations with their cultural background, mentality, genetic knowledge and experience. translation itself is a process of reinterpretation of a certain code created by someone in a definite situation, at a definite period of time, with definite intention and for a definite readership. unfortunately, sometimes translation becomes unintentionally or even intentionally a tool of misinterpretation of the st, which is mostly peculiar to the historical and political discourse and leads to distortion of facts. although, in certain situations it occurs in a literary text translation because of misunderstanding of the st cognitive code or the author’s intention. there exist a great deal of researches of nadsat and its translation into different languages (benet, 2020; eremeeva & ostapenko, 2021; ginter, 2003; koval, 2018; etc.). this article focuses basically on the comparative analysis of e. sinelshchikov’s and v. boshnjak’s translations of nadsat into russian and z. boyadgyan’s translation into armenian to identify which of them may be really considered a tl nadsat. the examination of nadsat in the armenian and one of the russian translations (e. sinelshchikov’s translation) reveals a lot of misinterpretation of the argot in both versions. it is hard to declare whether the misinterpretation is a result of misunderstanding of the st elements, or it is done intentionally. nonetheless, the fact is that nadsat has undergone certain modifications and as a result it has been damaged and is not retained as such in the translated armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 translation studies 118 versions. when the two russian translations are compared, one can easily see that v. boshnjak’s translation is much more successful than the other one. that is because a definite approach towards nadsat has been adopted by him due to his specific vision of the st author’s systemic implementation of the linguistic elements peculiar to the speech of the teenagers’ group described in the novel. in this version a definite scope of language use is created by the translator similar to the st and its adequacy is achieved by transmitting the majority of russian origin words in latin letters, and if a. burgess configurated them with english endings and affixes, v. boshnjak did the same with russian auxiliary elements peculiar to the tl, such as тут же melkuju kisu отпустили, с плачущей devotshkoi, zasekli их, ш-ш-ш-асть его tseppju по glazzjam and so on. thus, v. boshnjak’s translation keeps the linguistic features specific to the st and the author’s individual manner of implementing the fictional argot “nadsat”. e. sinelshchikov’s translation is not so effective. the use of american slang elements and a rather rude vocabulary peculiar to russian non-standard norms leads to misinterpretation and deformation of nadsat. the same mix of different approaches towards the transformation of the st elements into the tt occurs in the armenian translation. the analysis will focus basically on the comparison of e. sinelshchikov’s and v. boshnjak’s translations of nadsat into russian and z. boyadgyan’s translation into armenian. as it was mentioned above, one of the striking features of the target texts is the difference in approaches towards the transformation of the st elements into the target texts. it is rather well illustrated in the example below. there was me, that is alex, and my three droogs, that is pete, georgie, and dim. dim being really dim, and we sat in the korova milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. the korova milkbar was a milk-plus mesto, and you may, o my brothers, have forgotten what these mestos were like, things changing so skorry these days and everybody very quick to forget, newspapers not being read much neither. well, what they sold there was milk plus something else. they had no license for selling liquor, but there was no law yet against prodding some of the new veshches which they used to put into the old moloko, so you could peet it with vellocet or translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 119 synthemesc or drencrom or one or two other veshches which would give you a nice quiet horrorshow fifteen minutes admiring bog and all his holy angels and saints in your left shoe with lights bursting all over your mozg. or you could peet milk with knives in it, as we used to say, and this would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of dirty twentyto-one, and that was what we were peeting this evening i'm starting off the story with. (burgess, 2016, pp.16-17) first it should be noted that all the rules invented by the st author are accurately retained and no deviation can be registered in this particular extract. the russian origin words droog, korova (корова), rassoodock (рассудок), mesto (место), skorry (скорый), veshch (вещь), moloko (молоко), peet (пить), horrorshow (хорошо), bog (бог), mozg (мозг) are transmitted by latin letters. besides, the english suffixes -s of plural and -ing of continuous forms remain unchanged when adopted by the author for the newly invented argot: droogs, rassoodocks, mestos, veshches, peeting. one can easily notice that v. boshnjak’s translation stands rather close to the st. компания такая: я, то есть алекс, и три моих druga, то есть пит, джорджик и тём, причем тём был и в самом деле парень тёмный, в смысле glupyi, а сидели мы в молочном баре «korova», шевеля mozgoi насчет того, куда бы убить вечер – подлый такой, холодный и сумрачный зимний вечер, хотя и сухой. молочный бар «korova» – это было zavedenije, где давали «молокоплюс», хотя вы-то, бллин, небось, уже и запамятовали, что это были за zavedenija: конечно, нынче ведь все так скоро меняется, забывается прямо на глазах, всем plevatt, даже газет нынче толком никто не читает. в общем, подавали там «молоко-плюс» – то есть молоко плюс кое-какая добавка. разрешения на торговлю спиртным у них не было, но против того, чтобы подмешивать кое-что из новых shtutshek в доброе старое молоко, закона еще не было, и можно было pitt его с велосетом, дренкромом, а то и еще кое с чем из armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 translation studies 120 shtutshek, от которых идет тихий baldiozh, и ты минут пятнадцать чувствуешь, что сам господь бог со всем его святым воинством сидит у тебя в левом ботинке, а сквозь mozg проскакивают искры и фейерверки. еще можно было pitt «молоко с ножами», как это у нас называлось, от него шел tortsh, и хотелось dratsing, хотелось gasitt кого-нибудь по полной программе, одного всей kodloi, а в тот вечер, с которого я начал свой рассказ, мы как раз это самое и пили. (burgess, 2011) as the author of the st, the translator has created his own scope of nadsat. concerning the vocabulary, he has transmitted several russian origin words in latin letters like drug, korova, pitt, etc. besides, he used some semantic synonyms again in latin letters instead of the sl elements, as mozgoi instead of sl rassoodocks, zavedenije instead of sl mesto, shtutshka instead of sl veshch, baldiozh instead of sl horrorshow. furthermore, the translator invented several new words again in latin letters, which are missing in the st: glupyi, plevatt, tortsh, dratsing, kodla. the other feature of russian nadsat refers the grammar rules applied to the elements used in latin letters. as the author of the st configurated the russian origin words with english endings and affixes, the translator did the same with russian auxiliary elements peculiar to the tl: kodloi, zavedenija, shtutshek. in the extract above only one word falls out of the principles established by the translator. this is dratsing, where the root is of russian origin драться plus an english suffix -ing as it is in the st. the analysis of the extract proves that due to the translation by v. boshnjak the st has undergone a number of modifications, but the transformations of nadsat elements do not lead to misinterpretation of the st cognitive code. the author’s intention is well-mirrored in the tt and the method of addition does not absolutely influence upon the adequate comprehension of the st author’s conceptual vision of the fictional subculture and the argot used by its representatives. unfortunately, the vision of the fictional subculture and the argot used by its representatives undergoes a great deal of modifications in e. sinelshchikov’s version and does not correspond to the original. the same may be registered in the armenian translation. thus, the extract above is translated by e. sinelshchikov the following way: translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 121 это – я, алекс, а вон те три ублюдка — мои фрэнды: пит, джорджи (он же джоша) и кир (кирилла-дебила). мы сидим в молочном баре «коровяка», дринкинг, и токинг, и тин-кинг, что бы такое отмочить, чтобы этот прекрасный морозный вечер не пропал даром. «коровяка» — место обычной нашей тусовки — плейс как плейс, не хуже и не лучше любого другого. как и везде, здесь серв обалденное синтетическое молоко, насыщенное незаметным белым порошком, который менты и разные там умники из контрольно-инспекционных комиссий никогда не распознают как дурик, если только сами не попробуют. но они предпочитают вискарь-водяру под одеялом… фирменный коровий напиток поистине хорош. после каждой дозы минут пятнадцать видишь небо в алмазах, на котором трахается бог со своими ангелами, а святые дерутся, решая, кто из них сегодня будет девой марией… я и мои фрэнды как раз заканчиваем по четвертой поршн. покеты у нас полны мани, так что отпадает наш обычный эмьюзмент трахнуть по хэду или подрезать какого-нибудь папика и уотч, как он будет свимать в луже собственной блад и юрин, пока мы чистим его карманы. не надо также пэй визит какой-нибудь старухе еврейке в ее шопе и сажать ее верхом на кассу, выгребая у нее на глазах дневную выручку. но! как говорится, мани не главное. хочется чего-нибудь для души. (burgess, 1991) one can easily see that a method of addition is rather often used by the translator. he implements a number of devices, which do not exist in the st: дринкинг, токинг, плейс как плейс, серв, покеты, мани, эмьюзмент, хэд, уотч, свимать, блад, юрин, пэй визит. these elements are missing in the st. besides, if v. boshnjak’s translation is characterized by the use of the russian origin words in the similar way the st author does, transmitting them in latin letters, e. sinelshchikov changes them into english words in russian letters with russian endings and affixation. moreover, as it is mentioned in the article by a. eremeeva and s. ostapenko, the use of reduced and coarse vocabulary armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 translation studies 122 led to the fact that the content of the text is misrepresented (eremeeva & ostapenko, 2021). it may be well illustrated by the following examples: … три ублюдка, кирилла-дебила, что бы такое отмочить, обалденное синтетическое молоко, на котором трахается бог со своими ангелами, подрезать какогонибудь папика, пока мы чистим его карманы, он будет свимать в луже собственной блад и юрин, дурик, трахнуть по хэду, сажать ее верхом на кассу. (burgess, 1991) the difference is seen even in the name of one of alex’s friends. in the original it sounds dim and it is the st author’s idea to name him this way, as the adjective dim is often used to denote something indistinct, vague. the character is like this: dim being really dim. this is how the st author identifies dim. in v. boshnjak’s translation the name is respectively changed into тём, with its corresponding explanation within the text причем тём был и в самом деле парень тёмный, в смысле glupyi, where the method of addition in case of glupy is quite motivated, to show the st author’s reason to name the character this particular way. in e. sinelshchikov’s translation dim is renamed кир with an explanation in brackets кирилла-дебила. the translator has likely used this version to rhyme the name with дебил – idiot (кирил – дебил), which may be reasonable but not adequate if compared with the st as here it does not sound so coarse. in the armenian version the name becomes դում with its corresponding explanation դումն էլ ճիշտ որ դդում էր` դում-դում, which likewise in e. sinelshchikov’s translation provides a sort of addition, but does not adequately transfer the st author’s intention and the stylistic quality of the device. ես էի` ալեքսը, էլի հետո` երեք դռուգ` փիթը, զորջիկն ու դումը, էլի. դե, դումն էլ ճիշտ որ դդում էր` դումդում: “կառովիկ” կաթնատանը լռված` մոզգներիս էինք զոռ տվել, թե իրիկունն ինչ անենք, ձմեռվա մի ցնդո, մութ, ու ցուրտ, անտեր իրիկուն, ինչքան էլ որ չորոտ էր, խոնավ չէր: “կառովիկ” կաթնատանը կաթին բան ավելացնող մեստ էր, իսկ դուք, ո՛վ ախպերներ իմ, երևի արդեն մոռացել եք էդ կարգի մեստերը. translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 123 բա մեր օրերում ամեն ինչ էնքան սկոռուվռազ է փոխվում, որ բոլորը հավի հիշողություն ունեն, ոչ էլ թերթ կարդացող կա մի կարգին: հա, ուրեմն, կաթը ծախում էին բան ավելացրած: խմիչք ծախելու թույլտվություն չունեին, բայց ավանդական կաթին խառնած որոշ նոր շտուկներով ոգևորելելն արգելող օրենք դեռ չկար, ու կաթը կարելի էր խմել վելոսեթի, սինթեմեսկի, դրենքրոմի կամ էլ մեկ-երկու ուրիշ շտուկի հետ, որ ձախ կոշիկիդ մեջ բոգ երկնավորին իր բոլոր հրեշտակների ու սրբերի հետ հրճվանքով զգալու մի երանիկ, հորորշոու տասնհինգ րոպե էր նվիրում, մոզգդ էլ տակուգլուխ պեծկլտում էր լույսերից: կամ մեր լեզվով ասած` ասեղնավոր կաթ էին տկում, իսկ սա ծածկում, սրում էր քեզ, նախապատրաստում “քսանով մեկին” մի թեթև վրա տալու կեղտոտ զվարճանքին, ու հենց էդ կաթն էլ տկելու գործին էինք պատմությունս սկսելու իրիկունը: (byorjess, 2018, p.15) the armenian translation seems a mix of the nadsat features adopted by v. boshnjak and e. sinelshchikov. the translator does not use any latinlettered transformations of russian origin elements as e. sinelshchikov does. they all are transmitted in armenian. like v. boshnjak he keeps the st devices with armenian affixes and endings: կառովիկ, դռուգ, մոզգներիս, մեստերը, սկոռուվռազ, շտուկներով, շտուկի, բոգ, etc. but in case of կառովիկ the translator adds a diminutive suffix of armenian origin -իկ like in several other examples (դևուշիկ, բաբուշիկ, դոբրիկ, չուդեսիկ, կլուչիկ) and in սկոռուվռազ a compound adjective is created, where the first part is of russian origin and the second one of armenian origin սկոռ + վռազ. what for? maybe to create armenian nadsat? rather hard to answer. the st rassoodocks is transferred into մոզգ, bog – into բոգ երկնավոր like in v. boshnjak’s translation (mozg, господь бог). but in case with milk with knives v. boshnjak keeps the original expression translated into russian молоко с ножами whereas in the armenian version it is transferred as ասեղնավոր armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 translation studies 124 կաթ (needle-punched milk) with explanatory addition կամ մեր լեզվով ասած (as we say in our language), which is missing both in the st and the russian tt and leads to misinterpretation of the original device. it is surely not so easy to illustrate all the misinterpretations within the frames of a single example. nonetheless, a few more inefficient devices of the armenian version may be proposed: lomtics of black toast – սև հլեբի լոմտիկներ, dedoochka – դեդուշ, choodessny – չուդեսիկ, merzky – մերզոտ, poogly – պուգլիվ, mallshiki – պառնիշներ etc., whereas there exists the letter խ in the armenian language and instead of հլեբ the translator could have used խլեբ, and the cases with դեդուշ, մերզոտ and պուգլիվ will lead to the armenian readership misunderstanding. conclusion thus, the so-called nadsat invented by a. burgess in a clockwork orange is a specific argot created by the author to identify basically a certain group of teenagers due to their worldview, intellect, range of interests and troubles. this is the most vivid and colorful specificity of the novel, which determines its linguistic spectrum and creates a definite stylistic value so unique and distinctive. viewed from the perspective of cultural translation nadsat may be determined as the tool of representing a definite subculture mode of thinking, lifestyle, behavior, relationship. unfortunately, translation, as it has been mentioned above, sometimes becomes unintentionally or even intentionally a tool of misinterpretation of the st, because of misunderstanding of the st cognitive code or the author’s intention. the comparative analysis of two russian versions and the armenian translation of nadsat reveals the fact that the latter has undergone certain modifications, and as a result it has been damaged and is not retained as such in the translated versions, though v. boshnjak’s translation is much more successful than the other two. that is because a definite approach towards nadsat has been adopted by him due to his specific vision of the st author’s systemic implementation of the linguistic elements peculiar to the speech of the teenagers’ group described in the novel. in this version a definite scope of language use is created by the translator similar to the st and its adequacy is achieved by transmitting the majority of russian origin words in latin letters, and if a. burgess configurated them with english endings and affixes, v. boshnjak did the same with russian auxiliary elements peculiar to the tl. translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 125 though in v. boshnjak’s translation the st has undergone a number of modifications, the transformations of nadsat elements do not lead to misinterpretation of the st cognitive code. the author’s intention is wellmirrored in the tt and the method of addition does not absolutely influence upon the adequate comprehension of the st author’s conceptual vision of the fictional subculture and the argot used by its representatives. unfortunately, the vision of the fictional subculture and the argot used by its representatives undergoes a great deal of modifications in e. sinelshchikov’s version and does not correspond to the original. the same may be registered in the armenian translation. e. sinelshchikov’s translation is not so effective because of the use of american slang elements and a rather rude vocabulary peculiar to russian non-standard norms, which lead to misinterpretation and deformation of nadsat. the same mix of different approaches towards the transformation of the st elements into the tt occurs in the armenian translation. besides, it seems a mix of e. sinelshchikov’s and v. boshnjak’s approaches towards nadsat. like e. sinelshchikov the translator does not use any latin-lettered transformations of russian origin elements. they all are transmitted in armenian. like v. boshnjak he keeps the st devices with armenian affixes and endings. the translation techniques more often used by all the three translators are primarily transcription, transliteration, calque and addition. one can definitely conclude that among the three versions analyzed in the article, v. boshnjak’s translation is the best, it is rather accurately done and transmits properly the st author’s fictional code, linguistic indicators, intention and the communicative functional properties of the st. this is the version which can be exactly termed as “russian nadsat”. references benet, v. & clark j. (2020). nadsat in translation: a clockwork orange and l’orange mécanique. erudite, 65 (3), 543-783. https://doi.org/10.7202/ 1077407ar dystopia. (2022). in literary devices. retrieved february 23, 2022. eremeeva a.a., & ostapenko s.s. 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(2021). in masterclass. retrieved january 20, 2021 from https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-dystopian-fiction-learnabout-the-5-characteristics-of-dystopian-fiction-with-examples. sources of data burgess a., (2016). a clockwork orange. saint petersburg: antologia, my favourite fiction. burgess a. zavodnoi apelsin [a clockwork orange]. (v. boshnjak, trans.), (in russian). february 26, 2022. burgess a. zavodnoi apelsin [a clockwork orange]. (e. sinelshchikov, trans.). retrieved march 11, 2022. byorjess a. (2018). larovi narinj [a clockwork orange]. (z. boyadgyan, trans.). yerevan: antares. (in armenian) թարգմանվածքը որպես գեղարվեստական խոսույթի մեկնության եվ տարընթերցման եղանակ գայանե գասպարյան հոդվածում ուսումնասիրության առարկա են դարձել ա. բյորջեսի «լարովի նարինջ» վեպի դեռահասների ժարգոն նադսատը բնութագրող հատկանիշները և դրանց թարգմանական առաննձնահատկությունները: վեպում նադսատն է, որ հատկորոշում է սոցիալական որոշակի խմբի աշխարհընկալումը, մտածելակերպը, հետաքրքրուhttps://www.alba-translating.ru/ru/ru/articles/2021/sopostavitelnyj-analiz-perevodov-romana-antiutopii-entoni-bjordzhessa-zavodnoj-apelsin-vypolnennykh-v-b-boshnyakom-i-e-g-sinelshchikovym.html https://www.researchgate.net/profile/anna_ginter/publication/262910906_slang_as_the_third_language_in_the_process_of_translation_a_clockwork_orange_in_polish_and_russian/links/0deec539213ec858d1000000/slang-as-the-third-language-in-the-process-of-translati https://www.researchgate.net/profile/anna_ginter/publication/262910906_slang_as_the_third_language_in_the_process_of_translation_a_clockwork_orange_in_polish_and_russian/links/0deec539213ec858d1000000/slang-as-the-third-language-in-the-process-of-translati https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-dystopian-fiction-learn-about-the-5-characteristics-of-dystopian-fiction-with-examples https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-dystopian-fiction-learn-about-the-5-characteristics-of-dystopian-fiction-with-examples https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-dystopian-fiction-learn-about-the-5-characteristics-of-dystopian-fiction-with-examples https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-dystopian-fiction-learn-about-the-5-characteristics-of-dystopian-fiction-with-examples https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-dystopian-fiction-learn-about-the-5-characteristics-of-dystopian-fiction-with-examples http://lib.ru/inproz/berdzhes/apelsin.txt http://lib.ru/inproz/berdzhes/apelsin_j.txt translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 127 թյունները, խնդիրներն ու տագնապները: այս ամենը վերարտադրելու նպատակով բնագրի հեղինակը ձևավորել է համապասխան լեզվական զինանոց, որի ոճական արժեքն ու նշանակությունը անտարակուսելի են: նադսատի երեք ներկայացված թարգմանվածքներից առավել հաջողվածը կարելի է համարել վ. բոշնյակի տարբերակը, որն ըստ էության ամենաճշգրիտ կերպով փոխանցել է հեղինակի գեղարվեստական կոդը, լեզվական ցուցիչների համարժեք փոխակերպումը, մտադրությունը և հաղորդակցական գործառական հատկությունները: հենց այս տարբերակը կարելի է վստահորեն անվանել ռուսական նադսատ: բանալի բառեր` դիստոպիա, նադսատ, փոխակերպում, ձևափոխում, տարընթերցում, բնագիր տեքստի ճանաչողական կոդ: armenian folia anglistika – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english (since 2005) and yerevan state university (since 2015) aims at fostering research of the english language, literature and culture armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021, yerevan linguistics 8 contents linguistics yelena yerznkyan, grisha gasparyan graffiti as a form of rhetoric ................................................................................... 9 iryna shevchenko conceptual metaphors of ‘economic crisis’ in english: a historical cognitive perspective ......................................................................... 24 alina petrosyan from ‘lion face’ to ‘butterfly eruption’: zoomorphic metaphors as messengers of facial anomalies .................................. 35 rafayel harutyunyan approaches and theories to the study of political speech ................................................................................................... 52 ofelya poghosyan, varduhi ghumashyan on the functions of antonomasia in political discourse ........................................ 63 hamlet arakelyan the pun-group of linguistic devices in advertising media discourse ................ 73 methodology gaiane muradian teaching communication theory and practice in higher education ................................................................................................. 85 translation studies angela locatelli literary translation as performance. theoretical questions and a literary analogy ..................................................................................................... 96 literature studies eleonora natalia ravizza a guest + a host = a ghost. dramas of hospitality in rebecca west’s the return of the soldier ....................................................................................... 108 lilith ayvazyan “burnt to the bone” with love, damnation, and sin: phaedra as the swinburnian femme damnée ........................................................ 124 microsoft word maket 2021-2(24) 2.11.doc linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 27 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2021.17.2.027 on several recurrent themes and concepts in scottish ballads arpineh madoyan* yerevaan state university the present article seeks to study the concepts of “love” and “homeland” from linguistic and cultural perspectives. within the frames of the article an attempt is made to elucidate these concepts in scottish ballads and media. the article also dwells upon the inherent nature of the aforementioned concepts as underlying units of scottish culture since concepts as such reflect the mental activities of language speakers. the concepts of “love” and “homeland” embody crucial values and images common to any linguo-culture. the linguo-cultural analysis of factual data taken from folk texts (scottish ballads) and media discourse (articles) sheds light upon not only the lexical actualization but also modern perception of the given concepts. the choice of the material is conditioned by the necessity to highlight their diachronic evolution and their importance in contemporary research. a special reference is made to the media coverage of the scottish independence referendum, which illustrates scots’ attitude towards their ethnic identity and their country as a whole. keywords: scottish ballads, scottish independence referendum, concepts, love, homeland, linguo-culture. introduction ballads, being the linguo-cultural reflection of a nation’s oral traditions are handed down from generation to generation. it is hard to overestimate the significance of ballads in the study of the language picture of the world of a nation concerned. ballads are seen as a means to uncover the inherent nature of identity of people for their plot usually develops around such fundamental concepts as homeland, freedom, honour, friendship, love, happiness and others. these concepts account for the formation of national cultural values and reflect the culture-bound attitudes toward them. this is particularly important for the *  arpinehmadoyan@ysu.am this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 14.06.2021 revised: 13.08.2021 accepted: 15.09.2021 © the author(s) 2021 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 28 interpretation of the fundamental linguo-cultural and national concepts and drawing parallels across cultures. it is widely argued that the fundamental concepts embody the typical features of national mentality (sternin, 1984; maslova, 2004; karasik, 2004; popova &sternin, 2007 and others). the last decades have seen a certain degree of decline of interest in reading ballads, which could be explained by the complexity of the genre. however, the genre has not lost its relevance as an object of multilayered research from literary, cultural, historical and ideological perspectives. being a combination of lyrical, epic and dramatic dimensions, ballads remain a reliable source for investigating the history and culture of a nation along with the experiences of people and their emotional development. this aspect makes ballads a valuable source contributing to the increase of the cultural knowledge and promoting intercultural communication. the present paper aims at studying of several central themes in scottish ballads and suggests looking at the concepts love, homeland and freedom as the most pronounced and recurrent ones. the methodological framework is built on contextual and conceptual methods of analysis. while the contextual method is used to discuss the figurative use of language units, the conceptual method aims to describe the concepts under study and trace their culture-bound interpretations. the choice of the mentioned concepts, specifically the concepts homeland and freedom, is not by chance. as will be shown in the final part of the paper, the concepts remain valid for investigating their influence on the current social, cultural and political developments. ballads as a special genre of folk literature ballads are oral transmission of songs and stories that are subjected to modifications conditioned by the storyteller’s intentions, regional peculiarities and historical context. as g. gerould terms it: “defined in simplest terms the ballad is a folk song that tells a story” (gerould, 1957, p. 3). in his studies gerould emphasizes that ballads are universal cultural entities that are found in almost every nations’ oral tradition. he emphasizes that all ballads are of situational nature in which the action unfolds in a single episode: “their structure is as fundamentally different as is their style; the compressed and centralized episode is their unit (ibid., 1957, p. 6)”. dwelling upon the peculiarities of a ballad as a genre in literature, it should be stressed that the narrative of the latter is endowed with certain dramatic undertones. the aforementioned dramatic feature of ballads is accounted for by the fact that linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 29 actions and situations here are introduced in a dramatic way. another peculiarity of ballads consists in the storyteller’s impersonal attitude to the events of the narrative, as the narrator’s opinions and beliefs are mainly of secondary importance. even if the formulaic use of “i” is encountered, this may owe to the fact that the narrator wants to make his narrative closer to the audience. the impersonality, however, does not imply neutral or even emotionless attitude on part of the storyteller and his/her audience. quite the contrary, both parties involved do sympathize with the heroes’ misfortunes, lost love and homeland. as g. gerould contends “objectivity of approach to ballad themes is certainly one factor helpful to a definition of the genre” (gerould, 1957, p.10). summing up the inherent peculiarities of ballads, it can be stated that they are merely folksongs, focusing on an important situation; the unfolding narrative that describes the events is impartial and unbiased, with almost no comment. the in-depth study of ballads as pieces of folklore may allow us to surmise that they are immensely valuable as they reflect the racial memory as well as customs and beliefs of any nation. the aesthetic and antiquarian value of ballads at the end of the 18th and during the 19thcenturies, the scholars came to appreciate the aesthetic and antiquarian value of ballads as constituents of folkpoetry. in this connection, we cannot but mention victorian francis j.chide’s efforts to collect every possible variant of every popular ballad as well as english collector th. percy’s collection that mainly comprised scottish ballads. the poetic features of ballads fascinated t. percy as in his view the latter were true remnants of ancient british poetry. through centuries antiquarians started to find a connection between ballads and culturally national narrative. t. percy opposed this tendency, arguing that ballads were relics of ancient british poetry which had equal standing with the classics. however, the culturally nationalistic scottish collectors had other thoughts concerning the matter. james hogg, david herd, robert burns, walter scott, robert jamieson described percy’s ballads as gems of scotland. w. scott’s collection “minstrelsy of the scottish border” consisted of the same ballads as found in percy’s collection. nevertheless, w. scott included other variants of one and the same ballad, introducing their geographical, historical and cultural origins. j. hogg, another 19th century collector, emphasized that ballads were living entities as many real people were singing them. in his view, the ballad must be armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 30 sung for it to be authentic as printed ballads are devoid of the same aesthetic value as the ones sung by people. in terms of their aesthetic value, ballads cannot be defined as a form of simple poetry as they embody oral art of people who, driven by their imagination, unconsciously created truly precious pieces characterized by spontaneous ingenuity. in this connection, it should be noted that ballads are not to be seen as individual specimens, but rather international phenomena typical of european folk in general (gerould, 1957). in terms of their thematic peculiarities, ballads consist of romantic and heroic narratives which are identified by intense dramatic situations where certain rhetorical devices like parallelism, hyperbole and refrains can be identified. their use endows the verse with more intense emotive charge (ibid.). one of the recurrent concepts in scottish ballads is the concept love. the concept is a multifaceted phenomenon and, as such, it is studied from various perspectives. v. kolesov sees the concept as an integral part of national mentality and has got both linguistic and cultural values (kolesov & pimenova, 2012), while a. wierzbicka adheres to the metalinguistic approach to the study of love as a concept (wierzbicka, 1992). in s. g. vorakachev’s view, love is a “teleonomical (brought about through human or divine intention) concept” and is the essence of an individual’s life, it transcends the possible limits of existence in pursuit of unity with the absolute goodness (vorkachev, 2003, p. 27). in this research, we adhere to the premise that love is a linguo-cultural entity which reflects the specifics of national mentality. thus, the analysis of the aforementioned concept in ballads will enable us to gain some insight in the scottish perception of “love” as a linguo-cultural concept. the ballad “the douglas tragedy” tells the tragic love story of lord douglas and lady margaret. sir douglas carries lady margaret away against her family’s will while her father and seven brothers pursue them to save the honor of the family. douglas mounted her on “a milk-white steed”. the innocence of the lady is lexically actualized via the phrase milk white steed, while in contrast douglas’ horse is grey. it is noteworthy, that as the narrative unfolds, the color of douglas’ horse changes, while margaret still rides the same white steed. meanwhile margaret’s father and brothers reach them and fight ensues between douglas and margaret’s family. the outcome of the fight is indeed tragic as douglas kills her seven brothers “and there she saw her seven brethren slain and her father still fechting sae dear” (chambers, 1829, p.112). in her attempt to save her father’s life lady margaret begs for douglas’ mercy, “o hald your linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 31 hand sweet william! for your strokes they are wondrous sair; true lovers i may mony a ane, but a father i can never get mair” (ibid., p.112). here we witness the heroine’s limitless love for her father as she rightly thinks that no lover can replace her father. their journey is a sorrowful one, as is illustrated in the passage “and they baith went weeping along” (ibid., p.112). thus it becomes clear that the concept love borders on the concept of sorrow, i.e. love is pain you have to make a sacrifice to attain it. the hardships of finding love are highlighted in the final part of the ballad, when sir douglas dies from his wounds and lady margaret follows him, lord william was buriet in st mairie’s kirk, lady maragaret in st mairies’ quier: out o’ the lady’s grave grew a bonnie red rose and out o’ the knicht’s a brier. and they twa met and they twa plett and fain they wad be near. (chambers, 1829, p.114) on the lexical level, the tragic nature of love is expressed via the brier, symbolizing the thorny path that one has to take to find love, and rose which is the token of such a sweet and irrational feeling as love. the ballad “sweet willie and fair annie” narrates another tragic love story. willie and annie love each other, but willie’s mother does not give her consent to their marriage, as she wants her son to marry a wealthier girl and leave annie: “there are twa maidens in the bouir which of them shall i bring? the nut-brown maid has sheep and kye, and fair annie has nane”(chambers, 1829, p. 270). with pain in his heart, willie abides by his mother’s will: “o i sall wed the nut-brown maid, and i sall bring her hame; though peace suld ne’er be us between, till death sinder’s again”. thence, fair annie attends willie’s wedding. and when she cam to marie’s kirk in the deas, the licht that cam frae fair annie enlichtent a’ the place. the cleiding that fair annie had on was sae wi’ pearls ower-dune, that whan she cam into the kirk she shimmered like the sun. (chambers, 1829, p. 273) through the analysis of the lexical units of the ballad, it becomes apparent that annie’s love for willie is magical, she radiates licht (light) and the whole place is enlichtent (enlightened). the simile expressed in shimmered like the sun intensifies the unearthly qualities which annie is endowed with. in other words, through mapping we can state that love is light; love is sun, love is armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 32 something superhuman. noteworthy is the fact that, like in the previous ballad, here too “rose” symbolizes love and affection: “willie had a rose into his hand; he gave it kisses three; and, reaching by the nut-brown bride, laid it on annie’s knee” (chambers, 1829, p. 274). annie rejects the flower, emphasizing the ephemeral nature of love and the pain she has to suffer for the sake of love: “tak back and weir your rose willie as lang as it will last; for like your love, its sweetness will sune (soon) be gane and past. weir ye the rose of love willie and i the thorn o’ care”(chambers, 1829, p. 276). in the mentioned excerpt, we can see that the concept love is associated with the concept bitterness (thorn is its overt lexical expression). annie’s sadness drives her to death, willie learns about it in his dream and, being unable to cope with the sorrow, he also dies. finally, the two lovers are unified in the afterlife. the tane was buriet in marie’s kirk, the tother in marie’s quier; and o’ the tane there grew a birk and out o’ the tother a brier. and aye they grew and they drew, as they wald faine be near, and every ane that passed them by said “thae’s been lovers deir! (chambers, 1829, p. 276) the final repetition heightens the emotive impact of the message. concept homeland and its materialization in ballads from a linguo-cultural perspective, “homeland” or as vorkachov states “this country” may have different expressions on the lexical level and be associated with diverse adjacent concepts. in vorkachov’s opinion, “homeland” as a linguo-cultural concept is essentially an ideological entity since it reflects the people’s expectations from the society they live in and their aspirations for creating the ideal social structure. in other words, the concept “homeland” not only represents the self-perception of the ethnos as a bearer of a distinct culture, but also expresses the evaluation of “national characteristics” (vorkachev et al., 2007, p. 40). in his study, vorkachov comes to evidence that the british linguocultural specifics seem to be somewhat “void of the concept homeland, country”. in his research, he highlights that unlike russian linguo-culture, where “happiness” is frequently used with “country, homeland”, the british seem to be reluctant to find its verbalizations on the lexical level (ibid., 2007). mccrone, discussing such issues as scottish identity and society, claims that scotland is more appropriate to be referred to as “country” since it bears a wide range of connotations. according to mccrone, “country” embodies all the linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 33 crucial values and images, and is the “fusion of land and nation” (mccrone, 2005, p. 38). the study of the scottish ballads enables us to claim that the scots’ century-long struggle for the “dream” of defeating the rivaling country (england) or shaping their identity is certainly reflected in the scottish folk tradition. given the historical context, the border disputes and fights between england and scotland were of constant nature. the ballad “the battle of otterbourne” is based on real historical events when scottish noblemen invaded england. earl of douglas, one of the most distinguished warriors, led the scottish army. when the scots reached newcastle, percy, earl of northumberland tried to stop the scottish advance. eventually, scots won the battle despite the fact that sir douglas died. the battle at otterbourne turned out to be catastrophic for both douglas and percy as the former fell in the battle and sir hugh montgomery held percy captive. as the narrative evolves, earl douglas managed to win the fight with percy. the duel between percy and douglas may be interpreted as an ongoing english-scottish hostility, when one party tries to subdue the other: “he took a lang speir in his hand shod with the metal free; and for to meet the douglas there, he rode richt furiouslie” (chambers, 1829, p. 16). in other words, through metonymy the concept of warring countries is expressed. none of the parties is willing to give in for the sake of their country’s honor, and one (in this case douglas) has to die for the cause. hence, we can infer that the concept homeland is related to the concept “self-sacrifice”. another historical ballad, “sir patrick spence”, narrates the tragic story of patrick spence who died, sailing back home. as far as the historical background is concerned, in 1251, by the order of the scottish king alexander iii, patrick spence along with other scottish noblemen accompanied the king’s daughter margaret to norway who was married to a norwegian king. sir patrick spence and all the noblemen drowned on their way back home. the narration of the ballad starts with sir patrick’s lament over the king’s letter in which he ordered sir patrick to sail to norway to accompany margaret: “o wha is this has done this deed, and tauld the king o’ me? to send us out at this time o’ year to sail upon the sea!”(chambers, 1829, p. 4). the given passage depicts the crew’s attempt to return to homeland: “sir patrick he is on the sea, and far out ower the faem wi’ five-and fifty lords’ sons that longed to be at  it should be mentioned that due to the faulty system of navigation it was highly dangerous to sail in the wintertime. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 34 hame” (chambers, 1829, p. 6). the noblemen’s yearning for their homeland, homesickness is exemplified by the phrase “that longed to be at hame”. as any piece of folklore, ballads also have some supernatural elements; one may encounter good omens or more commonly bad ones. moreover, the characters’ premonitions are materialized in their dreams. in the ballad about sir percy a mermaid is the supernatural force that comes to reassure patrick, notifying about his return to scotland: “upstartit the mermaid by the ship wi’ a glass and a kame in her hand; says, reek about, my merry-men ye are nae far frae land.” to which sir patrick responds: “ye lie, ye lie, my bonnie mermaid, sae loud as i hear ye lie; for sin’ i hae seen your face this nicht, the land i will never see (chambers, 1829, p. 6). the mermaid is the harbinger of the crew’s imminent doom, as they will never see land (scotland) again. in the passage above, the aesthetic impact of the narrative is heightened by the repetition “ye lie, ye lie”. thus, from the analysis of the contextual and co-textual cues, it can be inferred that unlike the death that awaits the scottish noblemen, land-homeland is the impossible destination to reach. a discourse on freedom: from oral tradition to modern times scots have long been searching for their freedom and cherishing the hope for the establishment of a sovereign state. studies in any aspects of the scottish culture and history could hardly be complete without considering the phenomenon of identity. in the late 20th and at the beginning of the 21st centuries, the perception of identity underwent global changes. in this connection, the sociologist zygmunt bauman has noted: “if the modern problem of identity was how to construct an identity and keep it solid and stable, the postmodern “problem of identity” is primarily how to avoid fixation and keep options open. in the case of identity, the catchword of modern was creation; the catchword of post-modernity is recycling (bauman, as cited in mccrone, 2005, p. 150). to put it otherwise, people are in an ongoing quest for their identity in the modern world. in regard to defining scottish identity, mccrone claims that “being scottish is simply a device for not being english” (mccrone, 2005, p. 149). historically, the monarchy, along with geographic specifics in scotland, shaped a sense of belonging between highlanders and lowlanders. their loyalty to the scottish linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 35 king and unwillingness to be subjected by the english were the foundations of scottish identity. the english state’s policy and the border wars between scotland and england were the underlying basis to mould the scottish as a nation. the awareness of national identity consisted in “scots” against the eternal “foe”. historically established circumstances have resulted in the development of a discourse on freedom and on the love of freedom which has enriched the concept with a specific content and attitudes. the latter can be observed in the historical-cultural context by drawing parallels between texts of various genres and created in historically distant periods. the ballad “young douglas” focuses on douglas’ love for his homeland (a ballad, n.d.). douglas is not reconciled to scotland’s fate and wants it to regain its sovereignty. for his “rebellious” thoughts he is unfairly imprisoned:“douglas young they’ve piiten by in saughton jail is he. he bide by thae that rob and rape that stude for scot land free”. the analysis of the contextual cues enables us to state that young douglas is willing to undergo any hardships and experience any sufferings for his country’s sake. as the narrative unfolds, douglas persists with the idea to see scotland free from the english rule and is incarcerated again: “their talk o’ freedom’s jist a say. as douglas kens owre weel. he talked o’ scottish libertie. sae douglas bides in jail. his crime was that he spak the truth. anent oor trauchled land. he caad for justice – he’d a hope. frae english-monied hands.” the study of the lexical units makes it possible to observe the close connection between the concepts love and freedom as douglas loses his freedom for scotland to gain its own. the multiple uses of the lexical units, representing the concept (freedom, liberty) testifies to this. moreover, douglas’ love is expressed in his proclivity to tell the truth (that scotland should get rid of the english grip-monied hands), thus, love, hope and truthfulness can be seen as constituents of the concept freedom: “when douglas tellt them historie’s truth. nae answer could they gie. they pit him by for a twal month i’ the war for libertie!” the discourse on freedom plays a strong and important role in the context of current societal and political developments. in the last decades of the 20th century scots asserted their “scottishness” simultaneously, priding themselves on being british. the rise of scottishness has led to questioning scotland’s membership to great britain. the concepts freedom and also independence were widely circulated in press during the 2014 independence referendum, a historical event, as the “yes” or “no” vote would bring about serious implications for scotland and its people. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 36 mitchell states that print media helped shaping a sense of scottishness in everyday life, as scots became more aware of the english (mitchell, 2014, p, 36 as cited in engstrom, 2019, p. 32). the analysis of the media coverage of the referendum shows that the print media greatly supported pro-union (dekavalla, 2016 as cited in engstrom, 2014, p. 32), whereas the online activity was primarily in favor of independence. it should be noted that the given research mainly focuses on how the concepts freedom and independence were expressed in the headlines on the scottish independence referendum. the sunday herald’s “scotland’s day of reckoning” features the implicit question: what do scots really want? from a conceptual perspective, scotland and scots are one and the same entity. here the use of personification testifies to the fact that every scot is scotland and it is their duty to vote conscientiously as the verb “reckon” is used to imply it. in the headline, “day” metaphorically stands for both past and future, i.e. scots had long been waiting for this day and, whatever the result might be, their life ahead would not be the same. interestingly, the graphic image under the headline may also give us a clue about the paper’s view on the referendum. the image of a solitary man standing on the top of the mountain can be interpreted in the following way: scotland is personified by the solitary manand mountain top represents the sublime goal – the independence. another headline, “day of destiny”, along with the image of the scottish symbol thistle, circulated on the front page of the newspaper scotsman. once again the use of “day”testifies to the far-reaching implications of the referendum outcome. “day” is associated with the historical “past” and the future of scots as a nation. through the alliteration (day of destiny), the impact of the forthcoming decision is heightened. moreover, destiny covertly suggests that scots have earned a right to decide on their own “fate” (fate and destiny belong to the same semantic field) shape their political, cultural, and even existential future. the image of thistle stands for resilience and the will to endure till the victorious end. however, it is worth mentioning that there exists a gap in the perceptions of the concepts freedom and independence, with the modernized content of the concepts opposed to their idealized perceptions found in the oral lore. the differences between the perceptions can be traced in the division between yes and no votes during the referendum of 2014. the uncertainty about the future of the country, on the one hand, and the issue of the economic impacts of the independence, on the other, have been the key points of argument of the no vote. the scottish sun launched the following headline “yes or no. today linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 37 scotland starts with a blank page” on september 18, 2014. the “yes or no” dilemma suggests whether scots want to cast aside their britishness and stick to their scottish identity only. on the lexical level, the concept of new scotland is expressed with the help of the metaphorical phrase “blank page”, which can be interpreted as a fresh start for scots irrespective of the result. the scottish daily record cited a passage from robert burns’ poem followed by the headline “choose well scotland”. as was the case in previous headlines, scotland is personified, thus scotland as a location and scots as a nation are inseparable concepts. scots’ right to “choose” their own destiny is also obvious. on the lexical level, the adverb “well” may have a dual interpretation: according to the first interpretation, “well” suggests that scots should vote both consciously and conscientiously, while the second interpretation is a subtle and implicit prompt to vote for the union with great britain. “well”here may imply as well the generalized common good of britain and scotland. the scottish daily express resorts to the reformulation of a popular phrase “the sun never sets on the british empire”, which is modified as “don’t let the sun set on our union.” the phrase implicitly states that the union between the two countries dates back to the era of the british empire and that the two countries have had common history, experience. furthermore, if “the sun sets on the union” darker times are predicted for both countries that are destined to live side by side. conclusion the paper demonstrates the relevance of ballads for a study of key cultural and national concepts. the universal concepts love, homeland and freedom are those among the central concepts reflected in scottish ballads. the analysis of the content of the discussed ballads, as well as the specific means of their materialization made it possible to reveal the cultural features of attitudes toward and interpretations of the concepts and identify the national value system based on them. the paper also attempted to discuss the relevance of the concept freedom from the historical-cultural perspective. the study of the concept freedom demonstrates that the concept has not lost its significance, however the idealized perception of the freedom has been replaced by a more pragmatic content. the parallel study of the concept freedom in different types of texts created in historically distant period helped track the specific interpretations of the concept, and put the study of the mentioned concepts in a historical-cultural armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 38 context. this issue can be developed further and become an object of a separate study. references bauman, z. (2011). from pilgrim to tourist – or a short history of identity. in s. hall, & p. du gay (eds.), questions of cultural identity (pp. 18-36). sage publications ltd, https://www.doi.org/10.4135/9781446221907.n2 dekavalla, m. (2016). the scottish press account: narratives of the independence referendum and its aftermath. in n. blain, d. hutchinson, & g. hassan (eds.), scotland’s referendum and the media: national and international perspectives (pp. 46-58). edinburgh: edinburgh university press, https://www.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748696581.003.0005 engstrom, r. (2019). the 2014 scottish independence referendum in text image and thought. linnaeus university press: holmbergs. gerould, g. (1957). the ballad of tradition.new york: oxford university press. karasik, v.i. (2004). jazykovoy krug: lichnost', koncepty, diskurs [language circle: identity, concept, discourse]. moscow: gnozis. kolesov, v., & pimenova, m. (2012). konceptologia. [conceptology]. kemerovo: kemerovskiy gosudarstveniy universitet. maslova, v.a. (2004). vvedenie v kognitivnuyu lingvistiku [introduction to cognitive linguistics]. moscow: nauka. mccrone, d. (2005). understanding scotland: the sociology of a nation. new york: taylor & francis. mitchell, j. (2014). the scottish question. oxford: oxford university press popova, z.d., & sternin, i.a. (2007). kognitivnaya lingvistika [cognitive linguistics]. moscow: act: vostok-zapad. sternin, i.a. (1984). o viyavlenii nacional'no-kul'turnoy specifiki semantiki slova [on the influence of the national-cultural specifics of a word semantics] in nacional'noe i internacional'noe v razvitii yazykov (pp. 310). ivanovo: izd-vo ighti. vorkachev, s. (2003). sopostavitelnaya etnosemantica teleonomnykh konceptov “lyubov” i “schastye” (russko-angliyskie paralleli) [comparative ethnosemantics of teleonomic concepts "love" and "happiness"]. volgograd: peremena. vorkachev, s., kuznetsova, l., kusov, g., polinichenko, yu., & khizova, m. (2007). lingvokulturniy koncept: tipologiya i oblasti bytovaniya [linguolinguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 39 cultural concept: typology and spheres of existence].volgograd: volgogradskiy gosudarstvenniy unuversitet. wierzbicka, a. (1992). semantics, culture, and cognition: universal human concepts in culture-specific configurations. new york: oxford university press. sources of data a ballad for douglas young. (n.d.). retrieved february 13, 2021, from https://electricscotland.com/culture/features/scots/douglas_young.htm chambers, r. (1829). the scottish songs: collected and illustrated by robert chambers. retrieved february 13, 2021, from https://archive.org/details/scottishsongscol01chamuoft duffy, e. (2020, september 18). scottish independence: front pages of newspaper on 2014 results day. the herald. retrieved january 12, 2021, from http://www.heraldscotland.com հաճախ հանդիպող թեմաներն ու հասկացույթները շոտլանդական բալլադներում արփինե մադոյան սույն հոդվածի խնդրո առարկան «սեր», «հայրենիք» հասկացույթների լեզվամշակութային քննությունն է։ վերոնշյալ հասկացույթների լուսաբանման համար որպես փաստական նյութ են ընտրվել շոտլանդական բալլլադները և ժամանկակից լրատվամիջոցները, ինչի արդյուքնում հնարավոր է դարձել վեր հանել այդ հասկացույթների զարգացումը տարաժամանակյա կտրվածքով: «սեր» և «հայրենիք հասկացույթների ուսումնասիրության շնորհիվ բացահայտվում են լեզվակիրների աշխարհայացքի յուրահատկությունները։ շոտլանդիայի անկախության հանրաքվեն լուսաբանող հոդվածների քննությունը ի հայտ է բերում շոտլանդացիների էթնիկ ինքնության առանձնահատկությունները։ բանալի բառեր. շոտլանդական բալլլադներ, շոտլանդիայի անկախության հանրաքվե, «սեր», «հայրենիք» հասկացույթներ, լեզվամշակույթ: microsoft word maket 2021-2(24) 2.11.doc linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 77 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2021.17.2.077 interpretation of omitted words or the unsaid information in emily dickinson’s poetry marina yaghubyan yerevan state university the use of omissions by emily dickinson is one of the major characteristics of her poetry. she tried to reach maximum ellipsis and achieve the tightest structural compression. the unique feature in her use of omission is that most of the unsaid information in her poems is portrayed with the help of dashes. they indicate a missing word, phrase, emphasize a break, or they depict a sudden change in thought. throughout the author's writing, the imagery and metaphors are drawn from her observations of nature and imagination. emily’s use of specific words resulted in one inability of comprehending her poetry with just one reading. the present article focuses on the examination of the omitted words in emily dickinson’s poetry. the analysis shows that she refined and removed inessential language and punctuation from her poetry. in many of her poems, abstract concepts and material things are used to describe one another, but the relationship between them remains elusive and uncertain. keywords: ellipsis, compression, omitted information, punctuation marks, poetry, ambiguity. introduction as a keen observer, emily dickinson used images from nature, religion, music and everyday activities to explore universal concepts such as love, death, wonders of nature, immortality and self-identity. one of dickinson’s unique skills as a poet was her ability to express abstract ideas through concrete images. she created familiar, ordinary contexts in her poems and then drew great significance from them. she expressed her ideas through a variety of personas and ideas, thus showing various aspects of belonging such as connection, commitment, alienation and recognition. emily dickinson’s poetry is well-distinguished by the lack of rhyme and regular meter, the use of omitted  yaghubyan.marina@ysu.am this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 27.07.2021 revised: 19.08.2021 accepted: 26.09.2021 © the author(s) 2021 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 78 words and compression. although her poetry is considered to be incomprehensible and unintelligible by some people, many think of her irregular poetic forms as original attempts at liberating american poetry from its heritage. her poetry was the precursor to the spirit of modernity with transcendentalist influence. her simple language derives rich meanings from common words. dickinson's poetry definitely represents her personal individualism and her views about conformity. despite her poems being short, they are considered quite intense as she says too much in very few words. she is often obscure, making her poems inexplicable and sometimes enigmatic. emily dickinson's quest for the essence of experience affected her style. she left out linking words, dropped verb and noun endings. very often she punctuated her poems with dashes, rather than with the array of periods, commas, and other punctuation marks that were more expected. at her best, by compressing the language, she produced breathtaking results. one explanation why the critics of the twentieth century found her so fascinating was her indifference towards the rules of grammar and sentence structure (halliday, & hasan, 2001). in this article we are going to examine her use of omitted words, vocabulary, style, rhythm and punctuation marks which are as special as her lifestyle. the language and style in emily dickinson’s poetry while experimenting with words, dickinson tried to eliminate as many of them as possible. she was an economizer. she sought maximum omission, the tightest structural compression her language could achieve. one need not be a chamber — to be haunted — one need not be a house — the brain has corridors — surpassing material place — far safer, of a midnight meeting external ghost than its interior confronting — that cooler host. far safer, through an abbey gallop, the stones a'chase — than unarmed, one's a'self encounter — in lonesome place — (dickinson, 1960, p. 333) linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 79 dickinson either writes in short, simple, subject-verb-object sentences or in highly complex ones. the first one is typical of most of her poems. successive short sentences allow a particularly quick switch from metaphor to metaphor, from an event to conclusion, etc. for instance, in my life has stood a loaded gun the rapid sentence and stanza movement draws attention to the shifts from line to line and provides the reader little syntactic breathing space in which to consider the implications of the shifts. the poem is so dazzling and baffling as each stanza provokes its own interpretation as well as the need to link its direction with that of the proceeding line or lines. my life had stood – a loaded gun – in corners – till a day the owner passed – identified – and carried me away – and now we roam in sovereign woods – and now we hunt the doe – and every time i speak for him the mountains straight reply – and do i smile, such cordial light upon the valley glow – it is as a vesuvian face had let its pleasure through – (dickinson, 1960, p. 369) dickinson was fascinated by language. she loved reading dictionaries and enjoyed the words and their definitions. this interest provided a number of her poems their form, which actually are definitions of words, for example, pain has an element of blank, renunciation is a piercing virtue, or hope is the thing with feathers. she uses the dash to mark or point out a missing word or words, or to replace a comma or period. quite often she changes the function of the part of speech: for instance, adjectives and verbs are used as nouns as in we talk in careless – and in loss, where careless is an adjective used as a noun. she prefers capitalizing interior nouns, not just words at the beginning of a line. her reasons for that are not quite clear. coming to the dashes, it can be said that while dickinson was far from being the only person to use them, she might have been one of the few poets to armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 80 depend upon it. dashes were used to indicate a missing word or phrases, as in the poem my reward for being, was this. my reward for being, was this— my premium—my bliss— an admiralty, less— a sceptre—penniless— and realms—just dross— (dickinson, 1960, p. 163) dashes were also used to replace a comma and emphasize a break as in the poem i never saw a moor —i never saw the sea— i never saw a moor — i never saw the sea — yet know i how the heather looks and what a billow be — i never spoke with god nor visited in heaven — yet certain am i of the spot as if the checks were given (dickinson, 1960, p. 480). in the poem my period has come for prayer —no other art— would do, the dashes express a sudden change of thought: my period had come for prayer— no other art—would do— my tactics missed a rudiment— creator—was it you? god grows above—so those who pray horizons—must ascend— and so i stepped upon the north to see this curious friend— (dickinson, 1960, p. 274) this type of writing was definitely against the accepted writing style of her period. while analyzing the use of the dash in emily's poetry, it is important to visualize the works exactly as emily wrote them in order to understand the functioning of the dash in its original context. for instance, in the poem the linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 81 soul that hath a guest, addressed to her friend susan, there are several dashes to view: the soul that hath a guest doth seldom go abroad — diviner crowd at home – obliterate the need – and courtesy forbids the host's departure – when upon himself – be visiting the emperor of men — (dickinson, 1960, p. 335) when analyzing the use of punctuation throughout this poem, it is easy to notice the different lengths of the dashes at the end of the lines. the longer dashes or the dashes that appear to convey more emotions and are placed after the second and the ending line. the dash in the line doth seldom go abroad— can mean that emily’s heart will not wander or leave susan because it is already full of love. it may also be considered a subconscious act on emily's behalf to express her emotions associated with susan. the dashes can undergo changes when they impart strong emotions. the final dash of the poem more than likely symbolizes the completion of a thought. so while the first dash is used due to the emotional excess, the last one occurs for the completion of a thought. as for the dashes in the middle, they express no real sign of having any emotions behind them. these dashes are mainly used to separate a continuing line of thought, such as the modern day use of "..." in text messages (wylder, 2004). compression in emily dickinson’s poetry as samuel levin claims, one of the main features differentiating poetic language from ordinary language is the use of compression (ross. 2002). using the verses of dickinson as his test model, he argues that the omission of a part (or parts) is often non-recoverable in poetry; the omitted part cannot be recovered from the deep structure of the sentence. ordinary speech, on the contrary, allows only recoverable omissions. compression characterizes not only dickinson’s syntax but also the structure of her poems. her stanzas and the poems themselves are shorter than those of her contemporaries. while language compression by dickinson takes armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 82 all kinds of form, it tends to function in three complementary ways. first, compression enhances the poem’s ambiguity and a number of meanings; it helps the poet to express more than one thought at a time or to disguise one thought behind another. in other words, it allows dickinson to present what may be considered unpopular or dangerous thoughts and to express complex feelings. second, compression may convey a sense of withheld power, that is to say the poet may conceal her strength. not to show one’s power may make it seem greater. third, compression may indicate untold wisdom. obscure revelation seems to hold deep meaning (miller, 1988, p. 24) much of the compression of dickinson’s poetry can be recovered under the rules of ordinary language use. this kind of omission is similar to ellipsis in meter: the poet might omit syllables, as doing so makes the use of some metrical effects possible (mostly keeping the proper pattern and number of syllables in a line) without affecting the clarity or meaning. the poet omits some syllables which makes it possible to use certain metrical effects. hence the proper pattern and number of syllables in a line is kept, without affecting the clarity or meaning. very often dickinson removes an auxiliary verb, a repeated subject, a verb, or a pronoun to maintain the rhythm of the line, to emphasize its meaning, or avoid redundancy. for instance, in the last stanza of the poem my life has stood much of the omitted language is easily recoverable. though i may live longer than he [may live] he must [live] longer than i [live] for i have but the power to kill, without [having] the power to die (dickinson, 1960, p. 369). like recoverable omission, non-recoverable deletion may serve to increase the density of a poem. it may also affect a poem’s meaning by creating syntactic or logical ambiguity. in this was a poet there are several ways to recover the omitted information of the first line. one possible way is the following: this was a poet – it is [the fact] that [this was a poet who] distills amazing sense from ordinary meanings and [distills an] attar [that is] so immense… (dickinson, 1960, p. 215) linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 83 another possible version of recovery could be this was a poet it is that [the poet which]. the recovery of the omitted information here is inseparable from the interpretation of the poem. in non-recoverable omissions, this is always the case. dickinson’s most characteristic type of non-recoverable omission is phrase omission providing logical links between the statements or stanzas. in he fumbles at your soul there is no explanation of how the couplet when winds take forests in the paws—/the universe—is still— concludes or summarizes the preceding lines. it can be said that what is omitted between the sentences or phrases in dickinson's work is most frequently non-recoverable or multiply recoverable depending on the reader’s interpretation of the poem. conclusion we can conclude that in the interpretation of poetry, the reader’s state of mind is definitely an essential aspect in the process of literary communication. a writer may create a work of literature that depicts the dynamics of life as expressed in nature and society, yet the reader may not understand or respond to them as fully as the writer would expect. thus it can be said that interpreting poetry is a complex process with all the interrelated aspects and characteristics of the given poem and, of course, the consciousness of the reader. analyzing emily dickinson’s poetry is firmly linked to the consciousness of every reader. the possible explanation to her uses of dashes of different lengths is that they convey emotions of different intensity. it can be said that emily dickinson's poetry is challenging as it is radical and original in its rejection of most traditional nineteenth-century themes and techniques. her poems require active engagement from the reader because she seems to leave out so much with her elliptical style and remarkable contrasting metaphors. these gaps are filled with meaning if the readers are sensitive to her use of expressive means such as personification, allusion, symbolism, and startling syntax and grammar. references halliday, m., & hasan, r. (2001). cohesion in english. london: longman. miller, c. (1988). emily dickinson: a poet's grammar. cambridge: harvard university press. ross, ch. (2002). logic, rhetoric, and discourse in the literary texts of nineteenth-century women. rhetoric society quarterly, 32(2), 85-109. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 84 wylder, d. e. (2004). emily dickinson's punctuation: the controversy revisited. american literary realism, 36 (3), 206-224. sources of data dickinson, e. (1960) the complete poems of emily dickinson. toronto: little, brown and company. բաց թողնված բառերի կամ չասված տեղեկատվության մեկնաբանությունը էմիլի դիքինսոնի պոեզիայում մարինա յաղուբյան բաց թողնված բառերի օգտագործումն էմիլի դիքինսոնի պոեզիայի հիմնական հատկանիշներից է: չասված տեղեկատվության մեծ մասն արտացոլված է կետադրական նշանների միջոցով, հատկապես՝ գծիկներով: ըստ այդմ, սույն հոդվածը նվիրված է դիքինսոնի բանաստեղծություններում բաց թողնված բառերի ուսումնասիրությանն ու մեկնաբանությանը: դրանք նշում են բացակայող բառը, արտահայտությունը, շեշտադրում են դադարը կամ՝ պատկերում իմաստի հանկարծակի փոփոխությունը: վերլուծությունը ցույց է տալիս, որ երբեմն դժվար է անմիջապես հասկանալ բաց թողնված բառերի իմաստը համատեքստից: թեև վերացական հասկացությունները բանաստեղծություններում օգտագործվում են մեկը մյուսին նկարագրելու համար, բայցևայնպես, նրանց միջև կապը մնում է անորոշ: բանալի բառեր. բաց թողնված բառեր, սեղմում, չասված տեղեկատվություն, կետադրական նշաններ, պոեզիա, երկիմաստություն: armenian folia anglistika – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english (since 2005) and yerevan state university (since 2015) aims at fostering research of the english language, literature and culture literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 137 loss of the self in postmodern discourse. deconstructing and reconstructing identity amalya soghomonyan  yerevan state university everyone is the other and no one is himself. heidegger the topic of the present article concerns the problem of deconstructing and reconstructing identity. in modernism we come across two contrary desires: the desire for a fixed identity and the desire to go beyond it. under the concepts ‘the self’, ‘space’, ‘time’, ‘rationality’, ‘causality’, ‘society’, ‘history’ we not only mean the world, but also ourselves. the aim of the research is to study the alienated, absurd, existentialist anti-heroes which are all in the same position, failing to find the clear meaning of a personal, identifiable form of existence. in the postmodern age, the notion of a unique identity that used to command an aura has been lost due to the human ability to create exact reproductions. no one exactly knows what is meant by the term ‘postmodernism’. all that one knows is that it is some kind of a reaction against or an extension of modernism which ultimately turns on itself. keywords: postmodernism, loss, reconstruction, deconstruction, modernism, antihero, existentialism, transformation, absurd, outsider, identity, isolation. introduction of all the crises postmodernity continues or itself generates, the identity crisis tends to be considered symptomatic. the search for identity was an imperative in modernism, culminating in the literature of existentialist influence. in postmodernism, the individual’s cutting off from transcendence, the loss of essence and meaning of existence itself are no longer considered a tragedy. the person turns towards the past in an ontological need for spiritual regeneration.  a.soghomonyan@ysu.am this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 11.09.2022 revised: 14.12.2022 accepted: 10.04.2023 © the author(s) 2023 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2023.19.1.137 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 literature studies 138 the phrase identity crisis, recurrent in discussions about postmodernity, can be used in different ways. we might, for example, talk about the self-identity of the text from a deconstructive perspective in terms of derrida’s so much debated on “il n’y a pas dehors” texte. quite understandably, we limit ourselves to the beginnings of postmodernist literature, where the influence of existentialist philosophy is mostly seen. the post-war american novel, as well as the european one, presented in detail the show of the imminent loss of the self (understood as interior being, essential and assumed, that which jung called “the personal core”, and william james, “the real nucleus of our personal identity”) and described the battles and confusions that it triggered; hence, manfred putz’s coinage “identity fable”, which reveals the relationship between the allegorical projection specific by definition to a fable and the self-identity of an individual faced with a disconcerting universe in which he can no longer find the certainty anchors he used to know. in the contemporary world of rapid transformation, the problem of belonging remains imperative. we are all a part of nation, community, society, but one day we cut off ourselves from our history, roots and become exiled. what happens to our identity, personality or psychological self-image? can the words otherness and exile describe the process of deconstructing and reconstructing identity? here we have several options – to re-create the elements of our former self, to create a new identity, to feel like a stranger, or to live simultaneously inside and outside. deconstructing or reconstructing identity tells about losses, changes, conflicts, powerlessness and infinite sadness that severely test our emotional resole and re-establishing our new identity becomes a kind of consolation. sometimes the change of identity is symbolized in the change of name. sometimes we do not want to be noticed. sometimes we even want to change our religious and ethnic identity and for that we must undergo some transformations. both cultural and social adaptation can be a long process during which you lose your hope and start to go back to the memories of past and the reason we suffer is memory. here we have two solutions: either to delete the memories or to live with them during the whole life. changing identity means a different thing to different people. it means to change your country, father’s house, mother tongue, family, friends, national and personal habits, familiar things, gestures, ways of walking and talking – briefly your life. it is not easy to re-evaluate what you had before. literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 139 the term identity, carrying the meaning of uniqueness or unity of something with its own self, is a key-concept in the thinking and creation of all times. in postmodernism, though, the loss of essence and meaning of existence are no longer considered a tragedy. loss of the self in postmodern discourse in the study “loss of the self in modern literature and art” wylie sypler demonstrates that western literature and art have been forced to change the notion of identity and search for a new identity in hope of discovering the minute details that were hidden for a long time. the post-war american novel presented in detail the show of the imminent loss of the self which yung called the personal core and william james the real nucleus of our personal identity. all exiled, absurd, alienated, existentialist anti-heroes were trying to find the clear meaning of existence. all heroes suffer from an interior conflict, a sharp feeling of failure, lack of orientation, even loss of identity and when they accept the role society gives to them this is made at the cost of losing their dream of freedom. for the hero of post-war fiction dream and the fear of isolation are counter-balanced. we must admit that entering postmodernity is a long and painful process for an intellectual writer or any other person because the new society is no longer certain, your freedom is limited, all theories seem to disappear, all fundamental bases are destroyed. existentialists like camus or sartre also imprinted postmodern literature, though their focus was on the individual’s freedom. in post-modern discourse we are all outsiders who are wearing masks. we must understand that we are what we are and we do not need to change ourselves. of course, sometimes self-isolation helps us but we must undergo all metamorphosis to find out our cultural space. awakening and knowing one’s self are the first steps to self-development. when we interact with other cultures and value systems, we become more objective. anyone who wants to find true identity must stand between tradition, culture and even the paradox of identification (hatfield, 1986, p. 8). migration and exile sometimes we must migrate to find our identity. migration can be both inner and outer. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 literature studies 140 migration and exile have been seen as metahistorical dangers for years, but the twentieth century has become one (if not the most) defining feature of literary history due to the rise of migration. the issue that is most spoken about in the context of migrant literature is related to personal, national, cultural and religious identity. the individual, appearing in a foreign culture, faces the problem of redefining the identity and acquires a hybrid identity. people who live next to migrants also face the problem of identity. in their own homeland, they look at their country through the eyes of a foreign and unfamiliar migrant writer. the explanation of the latter is very simple we all live in an age of migration where we are all potential migrants. the british writer, figure of the jewish movement, author of the well-known definition of “national crucible” israel zangvil tells about a russian-jewish refugee who migrates to the usa to escape ethnic cleansing in his homeland. here he finds love and becomes a full member of the society as ethnic differences disappear as a result of cultural exchange. the idea of a “national melting pot” was embraced and became a central part of the us cultural identity. today, immigration to the us has become significantly more complicated, but the philosophy is still the same. america welcomes people from all over the world and helps them to become a part of american society. migrants come to this country thinking that they can become americans, regardless of their background. this is an important part of the american national identity and the reason why the us has become the most attractive country in the world for migrants and refugees. at the heart of the “national crucible” is the idea that in the united states all cultural differences are mixed together like metals and melted to become a stronger alloy. in canada, as well as in many other countries, multiculturalism is accepted, while the united states encourages the assimilation of different cultures. migrants from all over the world come to the united states, bringing with them their own culture, which over the years becomes part of american culture. before the first world war, the slogan addressed to the migrant who wanted to enter the american society can be formulated as follows: “although you may call yourself an american and try to act and think like an american, you have been and will remain a foreigner.” we can call this formulation anglo-exceptionalism, although angloamericans did not have any ethnic identification until recently. they were literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 141 americans. attitudes toward migrants changed dramatically in 1914, when the threat of war caused many americans to question the loyalty of the europeans taking refuge in their country. the four years of war had a profound effect on public opinion and led to a new response. “if you want to stay here, you have to forget who you were and become like us.” the first answer is a challenge to the migrant's dream, the second a threat to the migrant’s identity. it should also be noted that americanization often has extreme manifestations. migrants do not come to the us with the conscious intention of preserving their national or ethnic identity, but rather the need to create distinctive boundaries over time. carl frederick wittke states that america was born out of the painstaking efforts of our forefathers to create a society based on freedom, equality, opportunity and tolerance for individual differences. one of the paradoxes of migration is that people often end up in the us whose identity is threatened in their own country. they come to a safe country, where, however, their identity and ethnic memory are again threatened. the latter is the totality of experience, beliefs and common memories passed from one generation of humanity or nation to another, it is also called the memory of generations. migrants first of all create religious, educational and cultural centers in the foreign land to preserve their identity. however, it should also be noted that the difficulties of emigration are experienced more by the first generation of immigrants. the problem of future generations is slightly different. they must preserve what their parents have created and pass it to the next generation. there are different ways to combat alienation, one of which is to present your own story. writers turn to ethno-biography, while others continuously tell the history of their family, lineage, so that the consciousness of preserving identity is not erased from the ethnic memory of the next generations. next to the preservation of identity always appears the theme of eternal return, which, according to nietzsche, is identical with love we always come back if we love. conclusion in migrant literature, the clash of identity and cultural tradition becomes the imperative of the time and forces all migrants to make an existential choice between preserving their own identity and alienating it. anti-entropic battle of many contemporary heroes against total chaos denying distinction, differentiation and form, proves their desire and need for order. this engenders armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 literature studies 142 the danger of boring uniqueness and homogeneity imposed by a rigid society in all domains of existence. the pattern, or better said, the logical patterns that the human being seeks – through myth, religion, history, imagination – are considered arbitrary constructs of the human mind. neither the absurd, nor the existential incoherence, are accepted as final formulas. there are many versions of sisyphus in the american prose, maybe of camusian origin, victim-characters, but also rebels in search for solutions presupposing failure but also initiation, sufferance but also illumination, negation but also affirmation. alienation, this cliché of cultural criticism, a result of personal identity issues and simultaneous search for a principle to reconcile the self with the world and individual existence with society, starts to make room for acceptation and adaptation, that state of the spirit emerging when the revolt is exhausted, when, all of a sudden, the manner in which the individual – intellectual, writer, or any other person – confronted society is no longer certain, when there are no conventionalisms meant to limit freedom, when all theories seem to disappear. references hoffmann, g. (2005). from modernism to postmodernism: concepts and strategies of postmodern american fiction. amsterdam, new york: rodopi editions bv. hatfield, j. (1986). identity as theory and method for ethnic studies. explorations in ethnic studies, 9(1) 8. university of california press. pütz, m. (1987). the story of identity: american fiction of the sixties. munchen: w. fink sypher, w. (1962). loss of the self in modern literature and art. new york: random house. «ես»-ի կորուստը պոստմոդեռն խոսույթում. ինքնության ապակառուցում եվ վերակառուցում ամալյա սողոմոնյան սույն հոդվածում քննության է առնվում ինքնության ապակառուցման և վերակառուցման թեման։ մոդեռնիզմում մենք բախվում ենք երկու իրարամերժ ցանկությունների՝ ֆիքսված ինքնության ձգտման և այն գերազանցելու ցանկության: սահմանելով այնպիսի հասկացություններ ինչպիսիք են «ես»-ը, «տարածությունը», «ժամանակը», «ռացիոնալություliterature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 143 նը», «պատճառականությունը», «հասարակությունը», «պատմությունը», մենք ոչ միայն ճանաչում ենք աշխարհը, այլև ինքներս մեզ: հոդվածի նպատակն է ուսումնասիրել օտարված, կյանքի իմաստը կորցրած էկզիստենցիալիստական հակահերոսներին, որոնք բոլորն էլ նման են իրար: նրանք չեն կարողանում գտնել սեփական գոյությունն ու սահմանել իրենց գոյության իմաստը: պոստմոդեռն դարաշրջանում ինքնության գաղափարը եզակի է: ոչ ոք հստակ չգիտի, թե ինչ է նշանակում «պոստմոդեռնիզմ» տերմինը: միայն գիտենք, որ այն մոդեռնիզմի ինչ-որ արձագանք է, կամ դրա ընդլայնումը: բանալի բառեր՝ պոստմոդեռնիզմ, կորուստ, վերակառուցում, ապակառուցում, մոդեռնիզմ, հակահերոս, էկզիստենցիալիզմ, փոխակերպում, աբսուրդ, օտարական, ինքնություն, մեկուսացում: microsoft word maket 2021-2(24) 2.11.doc armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 8 contents linguistics seda gasparyan, rafayel harutyunyan manipulative speech: a theoretical overview ...................................................... 11 arpineh madoyan on several recurrent themes and concepts in scottish ballads ........................... 27 zaruhi antonyan irony in fan fiction ................................................................................................. 40 hayk danielyan sarcasm as a breach of linguistic politeness: some theoretical assumptions ............................................................................... 53 ani simonyan multimodality in contemporary communication ................................................... 63 marina yaghubyan interpretation of omitted words or the unsaid information in emily dickinson’s poetry ........................................................................................ 77 methodology marianna ohanyan myenglishlab as one of the groundbreaking blended learning tools ................ 85 culture studies gaiane muradian communicating morality to audiences: symbolic interaction in films (with reference to g. martin’s a game оf thrones) ................................................ 92 gohar hovsepyan a cross-cultural study of refusal strategies of american and armenian english speakers ................................................................................. 100 translation studies gayane gasparyan, hasmik karapetyan orwellian identity in style (a pragma-stylistic approach to the translations of g. orwell’s animal farm) ..................................................................................... 116 linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 9 literature studies vicky tchaparian the eastern philosopher and the westernized prophet ........................................ 129 armenological studies ewa sałkiewicz-munnerlyn r. lemkin's contribution to the development of modern international law and international criminal law ............................................................................. 141 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 10 microsoft word maket 2021-2(24) 2.11.doc literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 129 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2021.17.2.129 the eastern philosopher and the westernized prophet vicky tchaparian lebanese university gibran khalil gibran is one of the few lebanese authors who has bridged the east and the west and is justifiably considered a citizen of the world. his book of highly estimated prose poems, the prophet is one of the most widely read books of the 20th century. it reveals gibran’s philosophy about different aspects of life, mainly the precept in the gospel of matthew about the importance of the human sense of mutuality which summarizes a christian’s duty towards his/her neighbor and states a fundamental ethical principle. in addition to this golden rule, the prophet reflects gibran’s beliefs in christianity. being a true mirror of the sufi mysticism of islam, it also shows his idealistic opinion on pantheism. from this perspective, the research will focus on the combination of his beliefs in christianity, islam, and pantheism in the prophet, as well as his firm conviction in creating the united and unique structure of a christian-muslim synthesis which he deeply adhered to. keywords: christianity, the gospel, sufi, islam, the quran, pantheism, prophet almustafa, east and west. introduction gibran khalil gibran, a pioneer in the world of literature and philosophy, born in bsharri, north lebanon towards the end of the 19th century, was of poor parentage, and suffered chaos and struggles throughout his life. he migrated to the states at an early age, and on a turning point in his life, when he was twenty-one. in boston, at a friend’s studio, he encountered a benevolent called mary elizabeth haskell who changed his life forever. mrs. haskell, a philanthropist and patron of arts, was so impressed with gibran’s skill in arts that she sent him to paris to study painting, paying his full scholarship. later,  vicky.tchaparian@hotmail.com this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 07.03.2021 revised: 28.03.2021 accepted: 02.04.2021 © the author(s) 2021 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 literature studies 130 she edited and published all his books encouraging him to dive deeper not only in painting but also in literature and philosophy. later in his writing career, kahlil gibran not only made mary haskell’s wish come true, but also became one of the most commercially successful poets of the 20th century. his works are read internationally, especially his masterpiece, the prophet, which has been translated into more than 100 different languages and dialects, making it one of the top translated books of all time. gibran was a lebanese arab, so his mother tongue was the arabic language. however, living in the united states, he also wrote in english, thus becoming a bilingual writer. some of his works are written in english and some others in arabic, but all his works have been translated to both languages. by the time he wrote the prophet, gibran had become a prolific writer in both arabic and english. he was an accomplished illustrator and artist, and the president of the new york based arab émigré writers group. he was also one of the four members of the pen league (a group of writers who helped preserve the heritage of early immigrant poets such as mikhael naimy, nasib arida, abd al-masih haddad, jaoudat haidar, and elia abu madi). the prophet occupies a unique place in world literature. it is a work of remarkable compassion, insight, hope, and inspiration. it has a timeless message that combines the dignity of christianity and the wisdom of sufism (oxford islamic studies online, 2021). receiving a copy of the prophet, in october 1923, mary haskell prophesized its success saying “this book will be held as one of the treasures of english literature. and in our darkness we will open it to find ourselves again, and the heaven and earth within ourselves. generations will not exhaust it, but instead, generation after generation will find in the book what they would like to find – and it will be better loved as we grow riper and riper” (hilu, 1972, pp. 416417). the book consists of twenty-six poems recited by almustafa, a prophet in the city of orphalese. the short poems refer to different themes such as love, marriage, children, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death. nearly in one hundred years the prophet was sold in millions of copies worldwide, and never went out of print (sammons, 2014). literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 131 although the prophet was not effectively completed until 1922, when gibran was plagued with ill health, his first thought of writing the prophet had been in his teens. in a letter to may ziadeh, his lebanese pen pal, whom he had never met, yet dearly loved, khalil gibran had confessed: as for the prophet, this is a book which i thought of writing a thousand years ago, but i did not get any of its chapters down on paper until the end of last year. what can i tell you about this prophet? he is my rebirth and my first baptism, the only thought in me that will make me worthy to stand in the light of the sun. for this prophet had already written me before i attempted to write him, had created me before i created him, and had silently set me on a course to follow him for seven thousand leagues before he appeared in front of me to dictate his wishes and inclinations (cited in bushrui & al-kuzbari,1995, p. 23). this book is only a small part of what i have seen and of what i see every day, a small part only of the many things yearning for expression in the silent hearts of men and in their souls (ibid., p. 73). the questions which may now be raised to discuss gibran’s work are: does the prophet reveal gibran’s adherence to the west where he lived or his adherence to his eastern origin? does the prophet disclose gibran’s pantheism? is the prophet almustafa a christian messiah or a sufi muslim? these questions will be answered by exploring gibran’s idealism (related to his cultural identity torn between the east and the west), his christian and muslim perceptions, and his pantheism. gibran’s cultural identity torn between the east and the west throughout his masterpiece, the prophet, gibran bridges the east and the west. in the east, in the arabic-speaking world, he is considered the genius of his age, while in the west gibran’s works have been compared to those of blake, dante, tagore, nietzsche, michelangelo, and rodin (bushrui, 2015). gibran’s popularity as an oriental writer is unprecedented, and along with the works of t. s. eliot and w. b. yeats, the prophet is today the most highly regarded poem of the twentieth century (ibid.). armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 literature studies 132 being a lebanese maronite christian, the bible (king james version (kjv), 1994) has been gibran’s inexhaustible source of influence (bushrui & jenkins, 1998). however, gibran, as an arab, was also influenced by sufism which is a form of mysticism in islam and is often referred to as the internalization and intensification of islamic faith and practice. sufis strive to constantly be aware of god’s presence, stressing contemplation over action, spiritual development over legalism, and cultivation of the soul over social interaction (oxford islamic studies online, 2021). it was gibran’s knowledge of lebanon’s bloody history with its destructive sectarian struggles between the christians and the muslims that formed his belief in the fundamental unity of religions (jason, 2003) creating in him a new character – the christian sufi. in a city that lay between the sea and the plains, a prophet called almustafa wandered in the fields and among the people. he was a poet, a seer, and someone who loved all the people in the city and whom they all loved, old and young. as he moved around, young women got obsessed by him, yet no woman dared to fall in love with him. the priests and priestesses said: “much have we loved you. but speechless was our love, and with veils has it been veiled” (gibran, 1923, p.13). though people considered him a part of the city, yet they all had the consciousness that his existence among them was temporary and the day of his departure was soon to arrive. every day the prophet waited for the distant ship, but the ship did not appear. “almustafa, the chosen and the beloved, who was a dawn unto his own day, had waited twelve years in the city of orphalese for his ship that was to return and bear him back to the isle of his birth” (ibid., p.7). he longed for his home, and waited for twelve years to leave orphalese. on the day of the prophet’s departure the seeress almitra told him: “deep is your longing for the land of your memories and the dwelling place of your greater desires; and our love would not bind you nor our needs hold you” (ibid., p. 14). so, when out of the blue horizon, the ship came towards the city, everyone knew that the ship was for the hermit. prophet almustafa’s longing for the ship to take him away, can be compared to gibran’s longing for the east during his life in the west. in fact, due to their circumstances as exiles, most of the mahjar poets wrote about their feelings of homesickness, their awareness of being outsiders, and their dual cultural experience (badawi, 1975, p.184). gibran loved the west which had raised him from his poverty and had given him a new life with new promises but, as he stated, the west was not higher than the east, nor was the west lower literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 133 than the east (gibran, 2015). thus, he asserted his adherence to the east without denying his admiration for the west. his yearning for the east (especially for lebanon) and his lebanese heritage made him declare that if lebanon had not been his homeland, he would have chosen that country for a homeland. yet the lebanon that gibran created in his mindset, was completely different from the real lebanon. thus, he wrote in his poem: you have your lebanon and its dilemma. i have my lebanon and its beauty. your lebanon is an arena for men from the west and men from the east… let me tell you who are the children of my lebanon. they are farmers who would turn the fallow field into garden and grove. they are the shepherds who lead their flocks through the valleys to be fattened for your table meat and your woolens. they are the vine-pressers who press the grape to wine and boil it to syrup… they are the ones who are steadily moving toward perfection, beauty, and truth.(gibran, 1920) therefore, with all his love that was torn between the east and the west, gibran always remained an easterner in manners and a lebanese in his feelings with a unique “lebanon” belonging to him and dwelling in his mind and in his heart. is gibran’s prophet almustafa – a christian messiah or a sufi muslim? bushrui and jenkins (1998) consider the prophet, a work of remarkable compassion, insight, hope, and inspiration, with a timeless message that combines the dignity of the christian bible with the wisdom of the sufism of islam, a creation phrased with simplicity and rhythmical quality that renders it accessible to a wide readership, making it a masterpiece of all times. the book owes its broad appeal partly to the universality and timelessness of its message and partly to the power of its poetry representing an appeal for a return to, and a reconciliation with nature, emphasizing the relationship that binds individuals to their environment and fellow creatures. gibran makes them all become the inhabitants of the one and only world bound together by life and death. accordingly, armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 literature studies 134 those who err are not alone, and those who reach the sublime heights share it with all; our destiny lies in the way we act toward one another, and the salvation of the individual is the salvation of the society. thus almustafa sets out his own version of the golden rule common to all great religions: that we must do as we would be done by.(ibid.) it is clear that prophet almustafa emphasized the golden rule (to do others what you would like them do to you) as common in most of the great religions. it is a fact that prophet almustafa himself was a combination of christianity and islam mingled together in an artistic form. to prove this right, i will mention different verses from both the christian holy gospel as well as the islamic holy quran that reveal the golden rule in which gibran’s almustafa believed. for example, the gospel of mathew says: “judge not, that ye be not judged. for with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again” (mathew, 7:1-3, kjv). another verse from the same gospel says, “therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets” (mathew, 7:12, kjv). moreover, the gospel of luke says: “and as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise (luke, 6:31, kjv). it also says: “judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven” (luke, 6:37, kjv). all these verses from the gospel reveal the same golden rule which gibran’s almustafa believed in. in the holy quran this golden rule is revealed in many occasions and in different suras (chapters). for example, the sura of the imrans says: “the day will surely come when each soul will be confronted with whatever good it has done. as for its evil deeds” (the imrans, 3:30). the sura of the earthquake says: “on the day mankind will come in broken bands to be shown their labors. whoever does an atom’s weight of good shall see it, and whoever does an atom’s weight of evil shall see it also” (the earthquake, 8:7). the sura of the cow says: “attend to your prayer and pay the alms-tax. whatever good you do shall be rewarded by allah. he is watching over all your actions” (the cow, 2: 110). the sura of the clear proof says: “but those that embrace the faith and do good works are the noblest of all creatures. allah will reward them with the gardens of eden, gardens watered by running streams, where they shall dwell literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 135 forever. allah is well pleased with them and they with him. thus shall the god-fearing be rewarded” (the clear proof, 98:8). thus, it is clear that both the gospel and the quran have included the golden rule of doing to others as you would like to be done to. other forms of this rule include doing good and getting rewarded, doing bad and being punished. it is also clear that gibran’s almustafa is both a christian messiah and a sufi muslim. as gibran once declared, he himself kept jesus in one half of his bosom and muhammad in the other (cited in sammons, 2014). apparently, prophet almustafa (one of the names also given to prophet muhammad), symbolizes a union of christianity (which is gibran’s religion at birth) and islam (to which gibran was so closely related). the prophet and gibran’s pantheism for gibran, the east and the west, the pagan and the believer in god, the ancient and the modern, the past and the present come together to reaffirm his faith in the unity of being. thus, along with his christian and islamic beliefs, the prophet reveals some of his beliefs in pantheism, which is the keynote of the prophet, as is in much of the works of the romantic poets. like all great writers, gibran endeavors to show how opposites can be reconciled (bushrui & jenkins, 1998). thus, prophet almustafa speaks of different opposites such as the good and the evil, joy and sorrow, life and death, past and present, and eve and dawn. speaking of the good and the evil, for example, prophet almustafa says: you are good when you are one with yourself. yet when you are not one with yourself you are not evil. for a divided house is not a den of thieves; it is only a divided house. and a ship without rudder may wander aimlessly among perilous isles yet sink not to the bottom. you are good when you strive to give of yourself. yet you are not evil when you seek gain for yourself. yet when you are not one with yourself you are not evil. (gibran, 1923, p.73) moreover, gibran believes that joy and sorrow are not only opposites, but they also feed on each other, hence, almustafa says: armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 literature studies 136 your joy is your sorrow unmasked… when you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. when you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. (ibid., pp. 3536) for gibran, life and death are sources of one another. thus the prophet says: you would know the secret of death. but how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life? the owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light. if you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life. for life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.(ibid., p. 90) furthermore, for gibran, the ancient and the modern, as well as the past and the present come together to reaffirm his faith in the unity of being. thus speaking of time, almustafa says: you would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable. you would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons. of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing. yet the timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness, and knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.(ibid., p.70) likewise, he says of parting and gathering, as well as of eve and dawn: “shall the day of parting be the day of gathering? and shall it be said that my eve was in truth my dawn?” (ibid., p. 10). he believes in oneness of the whole literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 137 world. the poet who is speaking in the voice of the hermit almustafa is himself the representative of the reconciliation of all these opposites at all levels. moreover, like the romantic poets, gibran also believes in the idea of transcendentalism. for him, every man is a longing – the longing of the divine. every man bears within him the longing and the fulfillment which is god, and the road leading to this fulfillment. as gibran tells his soulmate, mary haskell, “the whole prophet is saying just one thing: you are far greater than you know, and all is well” (gibran, 2020). along with his belief in transcendentalism, the keynote of the prophet, as mentioned above, is pantheism (bushrui, 2012). pantheism has the view that everything is part of an all-encompassing, immanent god. it is the belief of reality identical with divinity, the belief in god. moreover, the central belief in pantheism is that god is latent within everyone as a greater self, and that this is attained through aspiration, or yearning, which is comparable to prayer in religion, and through successive reincarnations. life is a journey, and god is both the starting point and the destination (ibid.). this idea is revealed when hermit almustafa is asked about crime and punishment and he tells the people of orphalese: “…as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree, so the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all. like a procession you walk together towards your god-self” (gibran, 1923, p. 49). it is worth mentioning that the gospel of psalm gives almost the same meaning when it says, “the earth is the lord’s, and the fullness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein” (psalm, 24:1, kjv). thus, according to the gospel, god is the creator of the earth and all that dwells in it. whilst, in the sura of divorce, the quran says: “it is allah who has created seven heavens and earths as many. his commandment descends through them, so that you may know that allah has power over all things and that he has knowledge of all things” (divorce, 65:12). like in the gospel, the quran says that god is the sovereignty and supremacy of the heavens and the earth and all that is between them, and unto him is the journeying. the journeying represents the condition of full awareness when the soul has embarked on the path leading to its desired union with god, and the enlightened wayfarer almustafa offers directions for anyone who would undertake such a journey (bushrui, 2012). thus, a man’s journey in life represents the embankment and escalation on the path leading towards the unity of the soul with god almighty, creator of heaven and earth. implicit here is ibn al-arabi’s sufistic theory of journeying armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 literature studies 138 towards god almighty and the unity of religions. to him revelation is universal and every prophet has transmitted an aspect of god’s will to humankind. therefore, if we examine the inner contents of all religions by journeying inwardly from the external forms towards the inner one, we will find a transcendent unity that they all emanate from the same supreme center (ibid.). it can be concluded that the prophet reveals gibran’s solitude in pantheism to which the gospel, the quran, and ibn al arabi’s sufistic theory all point. conclusion thus, it can be deduced that gibran’s torn cultural identity which is a mixture of the maronite christian and the sufi arab, helps him create prophet almustafa who is a manifestation of gibran himself, a combination of the east and the west, an arab in origin and an american in nationality. it can also be inferred that the prophet summarizes gibran’s philosophy of life along with his mature ideas related to christianity and islam which create a christianmuslim synthesis. throughout the prophet gibran reveals a unique being who is both a christian messiah and a sufi muslim with an eastern identity armed with the doctrine of pantheism. accordingly, through his curio, gibran proves himself to be the christian poet as well as the sufi prophet lost in the dilemma of his eastern solitude producing a masterpiece that has so far occupied an unparalleled and unique place in world literature. references badawi, m. (1975). a critical introduction to modern arabic poetry. cambridge: cambridge university press. bushrui, s., & al-kuzbari, s. h. (1995). love letters. england: oneworld publications. bushrui, s., & jenkins, j. (1998). kahlil gibran, man and poet: a new biography. england: oneworld publications. bushrui, s. b. (2012). gibran khalil. the prophet: a new annotated edition. england: oneworld publications,. bushrui, s. (2015). man & poet. the khalil gibran collective. retrieved february 16, 2021 from https://www.kahlilgibran.com/digital-archive.html?limit=20&limitstart=500 www.khalilgibran.com. literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 139 gibran, kh. (2015). secrets of the heart: selected works by khalil gibran. (a.r. ferris, trans.). new york: taico publishing house. gibran, kh. (1920). you have your lebanon and i have my lebanon. m. l. wolf, a. r. ferris, & a. d. sherfan (eds. and trans.). retrieved december 18, 2020, from http://4umi.com/gibran/lebanon/ hilu, v.(ed). (1972). beloved prophet: the love letters of kahlil gibran and mary haskell, and her private journal, new york: knopf, 416-417; jason, ph. (2003). critical survey of poetry. v. 3., pasadena: salem press. oxford islamic studies online. (2021). retrieved from http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/public/home.html?url=%2fapp%3fservice%3dexter nalpagemethod%26method%3dview%26page%3dhome&failreason= sammons, j.t. (2014). the enduring legacy of kahlil gibran. usa: university of maryland. the holy bible. 21st century king james version (kj21). (1994). 21st century king james bible publishers. the holy quran. (1980). beirut: dar alchoura. sources of data gibran, kh. (1923). the prophet. new york: knopf. արեվելյան փիլիսոփան եվ արեվմտական դարձած մարգարեն վիքի չափարեան ջիբրան խալիլ ջիբրանը լիբանանցի այն սակավաթիվ հեղինակներից է, որին հաջողվել է կամրջել արևելքն ու արևմուտքը, և արդարացիորեն կարող է իրեն աշխարհի քաղաքացի համարել: նրա արձակ բանաստեղծությունների գիրքը՝ մարգարեն, բացահայտում է ջիբրանի՝ կյանքի տարբեր կողմերի վերաբերող փիլիսոփայությունը, որը հիմնված է մատթեոսի ավետարանի պատվիրանի վրա. «ուրիշներին արա այն, ինչ կցանկանաս, որ քեզ անեն»: պատվիրանն ամփոփում է քրիստոնյայի պարտքը հարևանի նկատմամբ և համարվում է էթիկական հիմնարար սկզբունք: մարգարեն նաև բացահայտում է ջիբրանի քրիստոնեական հավատքը՝ որպես իսլամի սուֆիական միստիկայի արտացոլանք, ինչպես նաև պանթեիզմին վերաբերող նրա մոտեցումները: մարգարեն, այսպիսով, քրիստոնեության, իսլամի և պանթեիզմի համադրություն է, armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 literature studies 140 քրիստոնյա-մահմեդական միասնություն, որին խորապես հավատում է ջիբրանը: բանալի բառեր. քրիստոնեություն, ավետարան, սուֆի, իսլամ, ղուրան, բնապաշտություն, մարգարե ալմուստաֆա, արևելք և արևմուտք: linguistics armenian folia anglistika 1 armenian folia anglistika – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english (since 2005) and yerevan state university (since 2015) aims at fostering research of the english language, literature and culture in armenia and elsewhere and facilitate intellectual cooperation between high school teachers and scholars. armenian folia anglistika is intended to be published twice a year. articles of interest to university-level teachers and scholars in english studies are warmly welcomed by the multi-national editorial board of the journal. articles should be directed to the editor-in-chief. in 2007 the editorial board of armenian folia anglistika announced the opening of a new section in the journal – armenological studies, which invites valuable and innovative contributions from such fields as armenian linguistics, literary criticism, ethnic studies, cultural history, gender studies and a wide range of adjacent disciplines. հիմնադիր և գլխավոր խմբագիր` սեդա գասպարյան համարի թողարկման պատասխանատու` լիլի կարապետյան լրատվական գործունեություն իրականացնող «անգլերենի ուսումնասիրության հայկական ասոցիացիա» հկ http:www.aase.ysu.am վկայական` 03ա 065183 տրված` 28.06.2004 թ. yerevan state university press armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 2 editor-in-chief seda k. gasparyan dr. of sciences (philology), professor, corresponding member of ra nas, honoured scientist of ra; holder of “best scientific work” award of ra nas (2010); holder of “prolific researcher” award of ra state committee of science (2013, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020); head of yerevan state university english philology department; president of armenian association for the study of english. e-mail: sedagasparyan@yandex.ru;sedagasparyan@ysu.am url: http://ysu.am/science/en/seda-gasparyan orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 phone: (+374 99) 255 060 editorial team lili h. karapetyan managing editor assistant professor at english philology department, yerevan state university, armenia. e-mail: starlet@ysu.am url: http://ysu.am/science/en/lili-karapetan orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2899-6239 olga v. aleksandrova doctor of sciences (philology), professor, head of the department of english linguistics at lomonosov moscow state university; holder of lomonosov award (2001); award of the international federation of modern language teachers' associations at fiplv (2005). e-mail: ovaleksandrova@gmail.com url: https://www.philol.msu.ru/~engdep/.../aleksandrova-olga/ orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8281-9164 isabella r. buniyatova dr. of philology, professor, head of the department of germanic and romance philology, boris grinchenko kyiv university, ukraine. e-mail: i.buniiatova@kubg.edu.ua url: https://if.kubg.edu.ua/struktura/.../615-.html orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4286-6705 elżbieta chrzanowska-kluczewska dr hab., professor, linguist, member of the department of english linguistics at the institute for english studies, jagiellonian university in kraków, poland. e-mail: elzbieta.chrzanowska-kluczewska@uj.edu.pl url: https://ifa.filg.uj.edu.pl/elzbieta-chrzanowska-kluczewska orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0908-1711 mailto:sedagasparyan@yandex.ru mailto:sedagasparyan@ysu.am http://ysu.am/science/en/seda-gasparyan https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 mailto:starlet@ysu.am http://ysu.am/science/en/lili-karapetan https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 mailto:ovaleksandrova@gmail.com https://www.philol.msu.ru/~engdep/department/staff/aleksandrova-olga/ https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 mailto:i.buniiatova@kubg.edu.ua https://if.kubg.edu.ua/struktura/2011-06-23-12-44-46/kafedra-hermanskoi-ta-romanskoi-filolohii/sklad-kafedry-308/615-.html https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 mailto:elzbieta.chrzanowska-kluczewska@uj.edu.pl https://ifa.filg.uj.edu.pl/en_gb/elzbieta-chrzanowska-kluczewska https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 linguistics armenian folia anglistika 3 astghik e. chubaryan phd in philology, professor at english philology department, yerevan state university, armenia. e-mail: astghik.chubaryan@ysu.am url: http://www.ysu.am/science/en/astghik-chubaryan orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4413-6044 marta dąbrowska dr hab., assistant professor with habilitation at the institute for english studies, jagiellonian university in kraków, poland. e-mail: marta.b.dabrowska@uj.edu.pl url: https://ifa.filg.uj.edu.pl/marta-dabrowska orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0151-3049 alessandra giorgi phd in philology, full professor at the department of linguistics and comparative cultural studies, ca'foscari university of venice, italy. e-mail: giorgi@unive.it url: https://www.unive.it/persone/giorgi orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6382-7510 angela locatelli professor emerita of english literature at the university of bergamo, italy; member of the board of the phd school (scuola di alta formazione dottorale) of the university of bergamo; one of the founders and faculty member of the international phd network in "literary and cultural studies". e-mail: angela.locatelli@unibg.it url: http://www00.unibg.it/struttura/strutturasmst.asp?rub... orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4210-8397 gohar g. madoyan assistant editor phd in philology, associate professor at english philology department, yerevan state university, armenia. e-mail: goharmadoyan@mail.ru url: http://ysu.am/science/en/gohar-madoyan orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6525-9230 elżbieta mańczak-wohlfeld dr hab., professor ordinarius at the institute for english studies; head of the department of english linguistics, jagiellonian university in kraków, poland. e-mail: manczak@uj.edu.pl url: https://ifa.filg.uj.edu.pl/elzbieta-manczak-wohfeld orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7839-4957 mailto:astghik.chubaryan@ysu.am http://www.ysu.am/science/en/astghik-chubaryan https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 mailto:marta.b.dabrowska@uj.edu.pl https://ifa.filg.uj.edu.pl/marta-dabrowska https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 mailto:giorgi@unive.it https://www.unive.it/persone/giorgi https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 mailto:angela.locatelli@unibg.it http://www00.unibg.it/struttura/strutturasmst.asp?rubrica=1&persona=396 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4210-8397 mailto:goharmadoyan@mail.ru http://ysu.am/science/en/gohar-madoyan https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4210-8397 mailto:manczak@uj.edu.pl https://ifa.filg.uj.edu.pl/elzbieta-manczak-wohfeld https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4210-8397 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 4 gaiane h. muradian dr of sciences (philology), professor at english philology department, yerevan state university, armenia. e-mail: g.murad@ysu.am url: http://ysu.am/science/en/gayane-muradyan orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7588-5849 shushanik h. paronyan dr of sciences (philology), professor, head of the department of english for crosscultural communication, yerevan state university, armenia. e-mail: shushanik.paronyan@ysu.am url: http://ysu.am/science/en/shushanik-paronyan orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6997-731x mariana s. sargsyan phd in philology, associate professor at english philology department, yerevan state university; head of the department for international cooperation, mescs science committee, armenia. e-mail: marianasargsyan@ysu.am url: http://ysu.am/science/en/mariana-sargsyan orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3054-1871 john a. stotesbury adjunct professor, school of humanities, university of eastern finland, joensuu, finland; adjunct professor, department of english, university of oulu, finland. e-mail: john.stotesbury@gmail.com orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2712-2211 iryna s. shevchenko doctor of philology, full professor, academician of the academy of sciences of higher school of ukraine; head of the department of business foreign language and translation of v.n. karazin kharkiv national university; head of the thesis committee for defense of phd theses in the speciality 10.02.04 — germanic languages. e-mail: iryna.shevchenko@karazin.ua url: http://foreign-languages.karazin.ua/en/shevchenko orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2552-5623 mailto:g.murad@ysu.am http://ysu.am/science/en/gayane-muradyan https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4210-8397 mailto:shushanik.paronyan@ysu.am http://ysu.am/science/en/shushanik-paronyan https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4210-8397 mailto:marianasargsyan@ysu.am http://ysu.am/science/en/mariana-sargsyan mailto:john.stotesbury@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2712-2211 mailto:iryna.shevchenko@karazin.ua http://foreign-languages.karazin.ua/en/shevchenko https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2712-2211 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3054-1871 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3054-1871 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3054-1871 linguistics armenian folia anglistika 5 svetlana g. ter-minasova dr of sciences (philology), professor emeritus at lomonosov moscow state university; president of the faculty of foreign languages and area studies at lomonosov moscow state university, russia; chairperson of the flt council (ministry of education, russia) since 1987; founding president of national association of applied linguistics (naal, russia), an affiliate of the international association of applied linguistics (aila) since 1989 and the founding president of national association of teachers of english (nate, russia), a collective member of the international associations tesol (the usa) and iatefl (the uk); chairperson of the flt council (ministry of education and science, russia) since 1995; holder of lomonosov award, fulbright's 50th anniversary award; named doctor honoris causa by the university of birmingham (uk), the state university of new york (usa). e-mail: sgtermin@mail.ru url: http://ffl.msu.ru/en/about/president/ orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4274-6674 mailto:sgtermin@mail.ru http://ffl.msu.ru/en/about/president/ https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2712-2211 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3054-1871 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 6 երևանի պետական համալսարան անգլերենի ուսումնասիրության հայկական ասոցիացիա (անգլերենի ուսումնասիրության եվրոպական ֆեդերացիայի անդամ) անգլիագիտական հետազոտությունների հայկական հանդես գիտական գրախոսվող ամսագիր համագործակցությամբ՝ երևանի վալերի բրյուսովի անվան պետական համալսարանի (հայաստան) մոսկվայի մ. լոմոնոսովի անվ. պետական համալսարանի (ռուսաստան) կրակովի յագիելոնյան համալսարանի (լեհաստան) բերգամոյի համալսարանի (իտալիա) մոնտենեգրոյի համալսարանի (մոնտենեգրո) երեվան – 2022 linguistics armenian folia anglistika 7 yerevan state university armenian association for the study of english (member association of the european society for the study of english) armenian folia anglistika peer-reviewed scientific journal in cooperation with: yerevan brusov state university (armenia) lomonosov moscow state university (russia) jagiellonian university, cracow (poland) bergamo university (italy) university of montenegro (montenegro) yerevan – 2022 linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 85 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2022.18.2.085 effectiveness of the language of fast food advertisements marine yaghubyan yerevan state university one of the dominant fields in the scope of advertising is fast food promotion. junk food advertisements are viral on the internet, television, billboards and among other types of advertisements. this has led to many people preferring it to other types of food. several studies have also investigated the effects of junk food advertisements on people’s attitudes and preferences. firstly, it creates some expectations which raise the desire to buy. secondly, it associates purchase of these foods with some positive feelings such as satisfaction and happiness. thirdly, it uses a certain entertaining dimension, thus, implying that purchase will boost a pleasant mood. finally, people are not always conscious about the persuasive nature of advertising. in this connection, the present article aims to study how some linguistic techniques and devices in fast food advertisements call people for certain actions (purchase) and make these advertisements effective. the linguistic analysis of all advertisements carried out in the research mainly focused on defining and characterizing the linguostylistic devices used in fast food advertising, taking into consideration specific language levels such as lexicon, phonology, stylistics and grammar. the analysis demonstrates that nearly every advertisement uses rhetorical figures not depending on the thematic domain they come from. keywords: postmodernism, fast food advertisement, language levels, lexicon, phonology, stylistics, grammar. introduction nowadays people are living in a postmodern society. one of the factors that makes a society feel more comfortable in living in a hyper-real world is because of the existence of advertisements. advertising is one of the major sources of communication that takes place between the advertisers and the consumers and customers. people advertise everything (from the most trivial to  yaghubyan.marina@ysu.am this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 21.07.2022 revised: 30.07.2021 accepted: 01.10.2022 © the author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 86 mega things). advertising is allied to visual media and its ability to provide the viewer with a world of glittering media surfaces. these advertisements are omnipresent in people’s lives and they use various persuasive techniques to lure common people into consumption. advertisements are interesting to study by the postmodern society, because the readers and consumers feel they receive happiness and satisfaction in life from advertisements that deliver a hyper-realistic world, which offers a pretentious happiness. nigel watson further explains that consumers do not really become interested in the use of the products advertised, but they are interested in the symbolization it carries or the image and the way it appears to others (watson, 2001, p. 57). of similar belief, jack solomon regards postmodern consumers to live on advertisements for the symbolic status it brings into mankind's lives (solomon, 1998, p. 48). in this article we are going to examine some linguistic techniques and devices in fast food advertisements. it is not a surprising fact that language is considered to be one of the most important and characteristic forms of human behaviour. it can be seen as a type of human activity as well as a system interacting with personality and society. to a large extent, advertisements rely on the use of language. advertisers employ various linguistic devices and techniques in their messages to make people perform the desired action. the language of advertising is not neutral and has a powerful influence on both people and their behaviour. thus, advertisers choose their diction very carefully so that they can convey their messages with the intention to influence people. it is the very language that helps people to distinguish a product and remember it. advertisers manipulate language in order to achieve their goals. it has been argued that they use exaggerations, conversational implicatures and figurative speech. they communicate their messages via stylistic devices such as: verse paragraphing, rhythm and rhyme created through repetition and syntactic parallelism. due to these devices, messages which are memorable, musical, and appealing are created. the advertisers claim that each word, phrase or sentence that they use evokes the desired effects on the target audience. the language of advertising is also unique. it is emotive and arouses feelings. it is also connective as it influences the behaviour of the receiver. advertising must include a restricted range of vocabulary. it should use common words with some emotional and connotative value. verbs are also used in a peculiar way. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 87 thus, advertising is a rich and complex system which draws on many other discourses. the first function of advertising is to sell a product or a service. hence, these products and services must be as desirable as possible to the potential buyer. this desirability is achieved through the use of language and images among other strategies. similarly, the intentions of fast food companies is to sell as many products as possible, and not to make a better world. every company strives to be the best, the wealthiest and the most favourite one in the world. however, if it does not have any advertising, no one will know about its existence and no one will buy it. that is the job of advertisers. an interesting and engaging advertising needs to be very creative and thoughtful. there are several areas of investigation in this respect. in our research we focus mainly on phonetic, lexical, grammatical and stylistic levels. all areas include detailed description of observed devices and summary of the main factors. phonetic level different advertisers always choose particular personalities to promote their goods: famous faces are widely known as a kind of prestige to the products they advertise. however, the selection of appealing voices is of utmost importance as well. the tone of the voice can be a key factor here: for example, voices may be perceived as smooth, seductive, friendly, honest, cheerful or authoritative. these plays on sound are not limited to only spoken advertising: written forms also make use of phonetic strategies to grab our attention and make messages memorable. thus, an advertiser should always consider the way his/her advertisement is going to be read or pronounced by a reader, even though the printed advertising is not spoken. in this respect, there are several devices that can be used to impress a customer. these devices are as follows: onomatopoeic words, alliteration, consonance, assonance, elision and rhyme. onomatopoeia refers to the phenomenon when words phonetically resemble some sounds of the things they describe. these words represent nonlinguistic noise with ordinary speech. in this advertisement onomatopoeia is used to resemble sound, such as growling: burrrgerrr king (activitat 5) armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 88 the next example is alliterative as the same first consonants of words occur close together and produce alliteration in these sentences. this device represents the repetition of consonant sounds across a sequence of words, especially in initial position: buffalo toasted twister (kfcbuffalo toasted twister) consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds especially at the ending words which often takes place in quick succession. for example, the words chuckle, fickle, and kick have consonance with one another, due to the existence of common interior consonant sounds (/ck/) (samuelsen & pultz, 2013). the device of consonance is inherently different from that of assonance which involves the repetition of similar vowel sounds within a word, phrase or sentence. when it comes to the device of rhyme, consonant sounds can be found at the beginning, middle or end of several successive words rather than mainly at the end of words. moreover, the device of consonance should not be confused with alliteration which is the use of the same consonant sound at the beginning of the words: new york classic (mcdonald’s new york classic) assonance takes place when two or more words, close to one another repeat the same vowel sound but start with different consonant sounds. unlike alliteration, which involves the repetition of the same consonant sounds, these words share the same vowel sounds but start with different consonant sounds. the following example of assonance has been found in fast food advertising: fish in wrap – sarap! (2011 summer offerings from kfc) elision is a device which represents the removal or the omission of an unstressed syllable, consonants or letters from a word with the purpose of decreasing the number of letters or syllables of words or phrases. the missing letter is replaced by an apostrophe. generally, the middle or final letter or syllable is eliminated, or sometimes two words are blended, and an apostrophe is inserted. however, elision should be distinguished from contraction. there is a slight difference between them. contraction is considered to be a more general term referring to the combination of two words to form a shorter word. for linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 89 example, can’t is a contraction of can + not and presents a combination of two words. on the other hand, elision is a more specific term. it is encountered when some sounds, syllables or phrases are eliminated and replaced with an apostrophe. for example, gonna is an elided form of the phrase going to. however, there is one example in mcdonald’s advertising known all over the world in which we can spot an omitting unstressed syllable: i’m lovin’ it. (amazon) rhyme is another device that associates words in our mind and makes the messages they convey more memorable. advertisers are fond of employing rhyme, particularly in the construction of slogans. rhyme and rhythm are very frequent features of advertisement, because a buyer can effortlessly remember the content of the text: wholesome and then some... (whole ~and then~ some) thus, it can be stated that fast food advertisers widely use a number of phonetic devices to make their advertising attractive, memorable and interesting. lexical level it is not a secret that advertisers continually create and use novel words to promote their products. the problem of all advertisers is the fact that advertisements become humdrum over time. therefore, they often create new words or forms of words to promote their products. advertisers especially like to play on words and lexical devices which are used to enhance effectiveness of fast food advertising. these are compounds, derivations, neologisms, collocations and phrases, lexical repetition, nouns and adjectives. compounds are created from two or more words or stems to make a longer word. for example, there is a new flavour in kfc which consists of chilli and lime. thus, kfc has created a compound, such as: chililime chicken (facebook) neologism is a newly-created word used in both writing and speaking. however, not all neologisms are entirely new. there are some that are built from new uses of old words, while others are just combinations of new and old words (woods, 2006). mcdonald’s has created a verb which symbolizes its brand: armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 90 mac your day (mcdonald's) it excellently presents mcdonald’s strategy to transfer their vocabulary into common vocabulary. derivation is defined as the process of creating a new word from another word, usually by adding a prefix or a suffix. derivatives are another way to create neologisms. as previously mentioned, there are several examples of mcdonald’s creativity in terms of its vocabulary. in the following examples the use of derivative mccan be clearly seen: sausage mcmuffin (sausage mcmuffin) mcfloat (mcfloat) other aspects that copywriters consider when creating an advertisement are phrases and collocations which are series of words that co-occur very frequently. there is a culture specific phrase: ramadan kareem, a typical phrase for muslims used during the month of ramadan. repetition is a device that is used to repeat the same word or phrase several times to make our idea more memorable, clearer and attractive. thus, due to repetition people remember any information in an advertisement. not surprisingly fast food advertising uses this device quite often: the spicy range. spice it up. 4 spicy delights to try (fast food restaurants) besides the above-mentioned devices fast food advertisers use other lexical items as well to make their message more attractive and to grab their audience's attention. in terms of lexical units, it is worth mentioning that there is an abundance of specific nouns and adjectives used in fast food advertising where nouns usually name places, products, ingredients, food and indicate positive attitude in connection with food and eating, such as flavour, delights, passion. common names of places, products and ingredients used in fast food advertisements are as follows: • place: california, america, new york, chicago, vegas, texas, new orleans, miami, arizona, louisiana. • name of the product: twister, mcoz, mcmuffin, whopper, oreo, chicken royale. • ingredients or food: bacon, chicken, cheese, nacho, burger, chilli, beef, etc... linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 91 adjectives name attribute features or qualities to those nouns. the use of a wide range of adjectives can be noticed in fast food advertisements. moreover, these adjectives are generally characterized as hyperboles as they exaggerate characteristic features of fast food: refreshing bite (refreshing bites) new orleans deluxe (new orleans deluxe) thus, it becomes evident that fast food advertising involves a huge number of lexical devices which are used to grab attention, to make the message more attractive, clearer and memorable for the target audience. stylistic level when it comes to figurative language it should be stated that there are several devices which improve the style of the texts making it appear more interesting and entertaining. the following stylistic devices are used in fast food advertising: personification, personalization, presupposition, three-part constructions, synecdoche and ellipsis. the use of the literary device of allusion which is a reference to something popular (for example, person or historical event) is also rather widely practiced to arouse particular feelings in the target audience. mcozzie, ozzie, ozzie as an allusion to australian chants aussie aussie aussie oi, oi, oi (flickr) probably means that mcdonald’s wants to show its enthusiasm for australian sport teams. personification refers to the process of attributing animate or human characteristics to an inanimate object or an abstract entity. these characteristics may include emotions, sensations, physical gestures, desires and even the power of speech. the following example presents the use of personification: delicious starts right here (mc donald's parung) in advertising, a primary aim is to reach a large number of people and then to persuade these readers or listeners to buy a product or a service. however, people are more likely to be persuaded and manipulated if they feel that they are being spoken to personally. a very powerful strategy for the advertiser to create an illusion of personalization is through the use of the pronoun “you’’: armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 92 how long can you handle the seduction of a juicy, flamebroiled burger? the longer you lust, the more whopper sandwiches you get. (flickr) many messages in an advertisement make the listener infer facts and propositions that are not explicitly mentioned in that utterance itself. the deep and hidden nature of a message is extremely important for the advertiser. consider the following example: the thing you want when you order salad (the thing) this is an advertisement by mcdonald’s where the presupposition is used to manipulate people that as they order salad they must want to eat a burger as well (people think so as the sentence is written on a background image of a burger). in this connection it is worth mentioning device of the so-called three-part construction the essence of which resides in the fact that when a text is constructed in three parts it seems to have an air of completeness: just as people expect a story to have a beginning, a middle and an end, so they tend to expect a list to be constructed in three parts. the examples of fast food advertising with this stylistic device are as follows: 5 weeks, 5 destinations, 5 tastes (word press.com) a synecdoche is a device which is used when a word or a phrase that refers to a part of something is replaced or substituted to refer to the whole, or vice versa. for example, assue lamb (fast food items) represents the whole burger. ellipsis is the omission of a word or a phrase from a speech or writing because the omitted word is superfluous or easy to be understood from the context. wide use of this device in the fast food advertisements is logical, as it is important to be concise, brief and to the point. here are several examples of fast food advertisements with the use of respective grammatical/cohesive device: (this is the) kfc fish twister. (there is) fish in a wrap – (it is) sarap! (kfcbuffalo toasted twister) linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 93 (the campaign lasts) five weeks. (and it offers) five different tastes (mcdonald's unleashes americathemed menu in the uk) from the examples mentioned above it can be clearly seen that fast food advertisers make an abundant use of stylistic devices to make their message more beautifully structured, distinctive and persuasive. grammatical level this level deals with the analysis of grammatical units and aspects in advertisements such as pronouns, conjunctions, tense, voice, mood and reference. pronouns are considered to be the oldest word class which represent a huge group of words with one feature in common – they substitute a noun or a phrase: it’s kfc chicken, cheese and bacon in a wrap! (personal pronoun) (must try: kfc cheesy bacon twister) do not eat this wall post (demonstrative pronoun) (nacho stacker box meal review) how long can you handle (...)? (interrogative pronoun) the most commonly used conjunction found in fast food advertising is that of “and” in its different forms of expression (“&”, “‘n”). it’s kfc chicken, cheese and bacon in a wrap! (must try: kfc cheesy bacon twister) fruit ‘n yogurt parfait (...) fruit & maple oatmeal. (flickr) when it comes to tense and voice, it can clearly be observed that all the advertisements use present tense forms (no past or future) and only active voice. this makes the sentences more dynamic and easier to utter and remember. the most widely used types of mood in the observed fast food advertisements are indicative and imperative moods: delicious starts right here (indicative mood) (mc donald's parung) armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 94 have it your way (imperative mood) (burger king suriname) reference presents the relation that exists between a linguistic expression and what it stands for in the world on a particular occasion of utterance. there are situational and textual references. textual reference is secondary or derived from a reference in situational context. there are specific terms for situational and textual reference. situational reference is called exophora or exophoric, whereas textual reference is endophora. endophoric relations are of two types, those which look back in the text for their interpretation (anaphoric relations) and those which look forward to the text for their interpretation (cataphoric relations) (yule, 1996). the following examples of fast food advertising have been analyzed in terms of exophoric and endophoric references: pride of the nation (exophoric reference) (flickr) this example indicates already known product. california maki twister...it’s california maki in a wrap! (anaphoric reference) (everything that's happening in the great metro of manila). the spicy range (cataphoric reference) (fast food restaurants) in the above-mentioned examples, the “it” is an endophoric reference of california maki which has an anaphoric position (it refers to earlier mentioned image and name of the twister). it becomes evident that fast food advertising is teeming with a range of various grammatical devices. these devices make the utterances more attractive, effective and call people for certain actions. conclusion the linguistic analysis of all advertisements carried out in the research mainly focused on defining and characterizing the linguostylistic devices used in fast food advertising, taking into consideration specific language levels such as lexicon, phonology, stylistics and grammar. the analysis demonstrates that nearly every advertisement uses rhetorical figures not depending on the thematic domain they come from. finally, it can be claimed that fast food advertising uses all linguistic devices and impresses customers in many ways. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 95 references samuelsen, a., & pultz, t. (2013). a cross cultural analysis of ethos, pathos and logos in advertising. denmark: roskilde university press. solomon, j. (1998). masters of desire in common culture: reading and writing about american popular culture. usa: prentice-hall, inc. watson, n. (2001). postmodernism and lifestyles (or: you are what you buy). in s. sim (ed.) the routledge companion to postmodernism. london and new york: routledge. woods, n. (2014). describing discourse: practical guide to discourse analysis. london: routledge publishing. yule, g. (1996). the study of language. cambridge: cambridge university press. sources of data activitat 5 burrrgerrr king. retrieved july 19, 2022. amazon i’m lovin’ it. retrieved july 19, 2022. burger king suriname have it your way. retrieved may 3, 2022. everything that's happening in the great metro of manila california maki twister...it’s california maki in a wrap! retrieved june 5, 2022. facebook chililime chicken. retrieved april 20, 2022. fast food items assue lamb. retrieved june 9, 2022. fast food restaurants the spicy range. spice it up. 4 spicy delights to try. retrieved july 19, 2022. kfcbuffalo toasted twister. retrieved july 18, 2022. flickr fruit ‘n yogurt parfait (...) fruit & maple oatmeal. retrieved july 19, 2022. flickr how long can you handle the seduction of a juicy, flame-broiled burger? the longer you lust, the more whopper sandwiches you get. retrieved may 3, 2022. flickr mcoziie, ozzie, ozzie. retrieved july 19, 2022. flickr pride of the nation. retrieved may 3, 2022. mcdonald's mac your day. retrieved june 9, 2022. mcdonald’s new york classic new york classic. retrieved july 19, 2022. mc donald’s parung delicious starts right here. retrieved july 2, 2022. mcdonald's unleashes america-themed menu in the uk five weeks. five different tastes. retrieved june 9, 2022. mcfloat mcfloat. retrieved june 9, 2022. https://imagetheoryblog.wordpress.com/2016/05/23/activitat-5-comparacio-productes-analisi-semiotica/ https://www.amazon.com/im-lovin-it-explicit/dp/b07ydblmbn https://www.facebook.com/bksuriname/photos/a.191567591205966/1386826718346708/?type=3 http://manila-life.blogspot.com/2010/08/kfc-turns-japanese-with-california-maki.html http://manila-life.blogspot.com/2010/08/kfc-turns-japanese-with-california-maki.html https://m.facebook.com/kfc.suriname/photos/a.3441219095902304/4540659345958268/?type=3 https://www.pinterest.com/pin/international-burgers-mcdonalds-aussie-brekkie-roll-australia-funktastic-fast-foods-late-night-snacks-money-train--44050902582464719/ http://imnusbmfastfoodrestaurants.blogspot.com/2011/11/integrated-marketing-communications-for.html http://kentuckyfriedbloggin.blogspot.com/2009/10/kfc-buffalo-toasted-twister-tlo.html https://www.flickr.com/photos/aboutmcdonalds/7980191912 https://www.flickr.com/photos/inagorillacostume/5844700183 https://www.flickr.com/photos/inagorillacostume/5844700183 https://www.flickr.com/photos/hytam/8415422009 https://www.flickr.com/photos/hytam/8415422009 https://www.retrojunk.com/c/caxtkjdsff/mcdonalds-mac-your-day-australia https://burgerlad.com/mcdonalds-new-york-classic/ https://www.facebook.com/mcdonalds.parung/photos/a.261808390634081/532371040244480 https://www.eater.com/2013/5/7/6437845/mcdonalds-unleashes-america-themed-menu-in-the-uk https://www.eater.com/2013/5/7/6437845/mcdonalds-unleashes-america-themed-menu-in-the-uk https://www.mcdonalds.com/qa/en-qa/product/mc-float.html armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 96 must try: kfc cheesy bacon twister it’s kfc chicken, cheese and baconc in a wrap! retrieved july 19, 2022. nacho stacker box meal review do not eat this wall post. retrieved may 3, 2022. new orleans deluxe new orleans deluxe. retrieved june 9, 2022. refreshing bites refreshing bite. retrieved july 16, 2022. sausage mcmuffin sausage mcmuffin. retrieved july 16, 2022. the thing the thing you want when you order salad. retrieved july 19, 2022. whole ~and then~ some wholesome and then some... retrieved may 3, 2022. word press.com 5 weeks, 5 destinations, 5 tastes. retrieved july 19, 2022. 2011 summer offerings from kfc fish in wrap – sarap! retrieved june 9, 2022. արագ սննդի գովազդների լեզուն մարինե յաղուբյան գովազդը հասարակության անբաժանելի մասն է, հաղորդակցման այն ձևը, որը ներգործում և ազդում է առանձին անհատների որոշումների և հասարակության բարոյական արժեհամակարգի վրա: այն ապրանքի գովազդման հիմնական տարրերից է: սույն հոդվածի նպատակն է ցույց տալ, թե ինչպիսի լեզվաոճական հնարներ կարող են օգտագործվել արագ սննդի գովազդներում և կարգախոսներում` հաշվի առնելով լեզվական որոշակի մակարդակներ, ինչպիսիք են բառապաշարը, հնչյունաբանությունը, ոճաբանությունը և քերականությունը: վերլուծությունը ցույց է տալիս, որ շատ հաճախ նմանօրինակ առանձնահատկություններով կառուցված գովազդը դրդում է սպառողին հավատալ արտադրողին՝ մղելով նրան գնել այս կամ այն ապրանքը: հետևաբար, կարող ենք հանգել այն եզրակացության, որ արագ սննդի ոլորտում նույնպես, գովազդը, լինելով հաղորդակցության ամբողջական մաս, իր լեզվաոճական առանձնահատկություններով նպաստում է գովազդվող արտադրանքի պահանջարկի բարձրացմանը: բանալի բառեր` արագ սննդի գովազդ, լեզվի մակարդակներ, բառապաշար, հնչյունաբանություն, ոճաբանություն, քերականություն։ http://sugarspiceeverythingnicebyem.blogspot.com/2011/02/must-try-kfc-cheesy-bacon-twister.html http://sugarspiceeverythingnicebyem.blogspot.com/2011/02/must-try-kfc-cheesy-bacon-twister.html http://kentuckyfriedbloggin.blogspot.com/2012/ https://www.pizzahut.com.kh/order/pizzas/new_orleans_deluxe https://www.yummly.com/recipe/refreshing-bites-2046324 https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/sausage-mcmuffin.html https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/sausage-mcmuffin.html https://www.adsoftheworld.com/campaigns/the-thing-cf7aec83-f6b7-4685-a4b9-7138f9b725fd https://wholeandthensome.weebly.com/home/first-post https://mcmunchings.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/12631674.jpg https://www.dencio.com/2011/03/2011-summer-offerings-from-kfc.html armenian folia anglistika – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english (since 2005) and yerevan state university (since 2015) aims at fostering research of the english language, literature and culture armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 armenological studies 178 linguo-stylistic stratification as identification of femininity in the novels “siranush” by srbuhi tyusab and “a girl’s heart” by sipil naira hambardzumyan  siranush parsadanyan  institute of literature after manuk abeghyan, nas ra the paper investigates the linguo-stylistic stratifications in the novels of western armenian women authors of the second half of the 19 th century, in particular, srbuhi tyusab’s siranush (1884) and sipil’s a girl’s heart (1891), as well as their characteristic features and interpenetrations. the study aims to pinpoint those stratifications as a technique of female writing through the study of the linguistic features of the novels under analysis. the problem of the research is to interpret the literary techniques and devices (comparison, metaphor, oxymoron, ellipses, morphological and syntactic means) used in the mentioned works from a new perspective, clearly highlighting the male-female worldviews and worldimages in the fictional works of the female authors. the illustrative material was analyzed with an application of linguistic, literary and comparative methods observing the linguo-styistic stratifications as identification of femininity in a single domain. the mentioned novels have so far not been analysed in terms of linguo-stylistic stratification. the study is important and relevant not only from the point of view of interdisciplinarity, but also that of the analysis of women’s issues in armenological studies. keywords: srbuhi tyusab, sipil, female discourse, intertext, trope, ellipsis, oxymoron. introduction the study of male-female relationships and gender-specific behaviors is an important area of research in all the scientific disciplines studying social factors and processes. in this respect, such studies focus on the societal stereotypes about the personal qualities of men and women. in the humanities suchlike studies are carried out taking into account the criteria of interactions with social  nairahambardzumyan@yahoo.com ** siranushparsadanyan@litinst.sci.am this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 27.01.2023 revised: 19.08.2022 accepted: 16.02.2023 © the author(s) 2023 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2023.19.1.178 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 179 life and culture, rather than biological ones. this state of affairs shapes the domain of male-female relationships in science, which finds its expression in some humanities disciplines, such as linguistics, literary studies, philosophy, anthropology, culture studies, sociology and hermeneutics. in general, when used in social sciences, the concept of gender reflects not only a person’s biological sex, but also his/her social and cultural characteristics. gender is a social construct (system) encompassing the characteristics of behavior and social strategies. in society, it is a result equal to a person’s socialization because it is perceived as a conventional subject, which marks its main difference from sex (gender) 1 perceived as a biological order. therefore, the social nature of the man-woman relationship plays a significant role in the development of society. it should be emphasized that a society’s world image shapes gender behavior, standards and stereotypes, traditions, law and morality. the differences between the two genders in the domain of language functionality is heterogeneous, as not only general linguistic, but also sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, neurolinguistic, linguocultural issues are studied. from the perspectives of linguistic manifestations of the dialogue between men and women, the prose of western armenian female authors srbuhi tyusab and sipil (zapel khanjian) requires serious study. linguistic stratification in the prose of female authors is the realization of the distinctions between the two genders in the literary text through writing. in general, differences in human verbal behavior are determined by the gender factor and are expressed through language. linguo-stylistic stratification as a writing technique a literary text is equivalent to the identification of certain situations in life and their implementation (implementation of speech), since each literary text is based not only on a judgment about reality, but also a certain communicative purpose, which is determined by communication and the problems that the authors put before themselves. female authors (tyusab and sipil) use not only the subject of communication, but also some tools of the technique implemented through language to solve the aesthetic problems of the proposed topic within the framework of a certain communicative intention. the essence of a work of art is aesthetic in nature; therefore, it is expressed through the author’s (in general) evaluation. the representation of the world and the presence of man in the domain of fine art, especially in fiction, are carried out through aesthetic references. in this respect, literature is a certain cultural armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 armenological studies 180 domain, in which western armenian female authors also get the opportunity to discover women’s inner world, thereby expressing their own attitude to life. the aesthetics of srbuhi tyusab’s “siranush” (1884) and sipil’s “a girl’s heart” (1891) are, first of all, the content of the old and new double-gender image of the world, in which the unipolarity of men and women characters has a special significance and role, which lies within the inner spheres of love relationships, family life, work, occupation, and other circumstances between the two sexes. in this context, two aspects of artistic depiction of male-female issues are of importance: a. ensuring the gender primacy of women’s inner world by female authors portraying, highlighting and implementing women’s psychology through the predominance of aesthetics and behaviour of the sensual sphere of the main character, b. the portrayal of male characters, their mental/spiritual world and behaviour from a woman’s perspective. for the analysis of male-female strategies, it is essential to study the language of women’s prose: novels, short stories, essays, in which, due to linguistic factors, there exist communicative differences at various levels. in the western armenian linguistic culture, the peculiarities of their manifestation, studies of the purposeful selection of grammatical, lexical and stylistic variants of gender-dependent linguistic units are important, in which gender is understood as a result of culture and social relations, realized through language. the analysis of the linguistic features of srbuhi tyusab’s and sipil’s works, prose in particular, reveals that the manifestations of gender-related feminism in language indirectly actualize their practicality and meaning, although the authors used different means: comparison, epithet, metaphor, everyday vocabulary, intertext, metatext, etc. only in the structures explicitely highlighting female logic. at the syntactic level, the choice of complex means of linguistic arrangement in tyusab’s and sipil’s novels is due to the authors’ desire to convey in detail the inner mental abilities and capabilities of female characters, as well as the nuances of men-women relationships, the real shifts, multipolarity and complexity of thoughts, which pass from the language of thought to the language of words. the novels “siranush” by srbuhi tyusab and “a girl’s heart” by sipil are distinguished by the subdomains of directness, sensuality, sacrification, naivety, and are marked by high levels of rationality and intrigue, which are expressed through various syntactic and grammatical armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 181 means. thus, modal words and modal adverbs are actively used both in conversations between women, and those between men and women, where they express: a. logical evaluation, truthfulness and certainty of the communicated message (text), through the words like undoubtedly, fairly, obviously, of course, for sure, b. probability, possible existence of the communicated message (text), as well as supposition or doubt about its unreliability, through words like maybe, probably, possibly, apparently. let’s compare: կարծէս թէ մայիսի զուարթ օր մ'էր, անոր մեղեդիքներով, զարդերով, ժպիտով, ու բոյրով [it seems like it was a fun day in may, with its melodies, ornaments, smile, and smell]. (tyusab, 1884, p. 34) արդարեւ, բուբուլ էր կազմել արուեստագէտ օրիորդաց ընկերութիւնը, հայ օրիորդաց մէջ գեղարուեստից ճաշակը տարածելու, և անոնց առ այդ ձգտումները մշակելու նպատակաւ [indeed, bubul established the artistic maidens’ society with an aim to develop a taste for art among armenian girls and guide them towards these aspirations]. (sipil, 1891, p. 6) the wide use of modal verbs, adverbs and conjunctions (asatryan, 2004) in women’s speech, in general, can be explained by the lack of confidence, uncertainty and indecisiveness of their speech, and also by their intention to emphasize the truthfulness and uncertainty of the message. in tyusab’s and sipil’s novels we frequently come across words and remarks expressing the attitude of the authors towards their own or others’ opinion. they are expressions through which women-authors show their emotionality or attitude towards certain facts. it is through them, that the internal semantic relationships of female and male characters in the novels “siranush” and “a girl’s heart” are revealed, and these relationships are especially marked by words indicating order, form and reason of presentation, such as finally, on the contrary, but, yet, and, as , so, therefore, if, because, and. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 armenological studies 182 իբրև զարդ՝ սենեակներն ունէին քանի մի պարկեշտ հայելիներ, ու սակաւաթիւ գեղեցիկ իւղաներկ փոքրիկ տեսարաններ [as an ornament, the rooms had a few decent mirrors, and a few beautiful little oil-painted scenes]. (tyusab, 1884, p. 42) գումարեան զարմացման ակամայ շարժում մը չկրցավ զսպել, և փոփոխակի դարձնելով նշմայրը այն պատկերին, զոր դիտեր էր պահ մ'առաջ, և անոր տիպարին, որ բուբուլ է, թեթեւակի կարմրեցավ [gumarean couldn’t suppress an involuntary movement of surprise, and changing his gaze to bubul’s image, he was looking at a moment ago, he blushed slightly]. (sipil, 1891, p. 13) the use of adjectives and connectives are also characteristic of the language of tyusab’s and sipil’s works. the functionality of the language and style is expressed by the wide use of inordinary coinages in the context of which, as a complex functional part, we singled out the verb, which in tyusab’s and sipil’s novels acquired a huge potential, for it gave the authors the opportunity to describe life in its motion and development: սիրոյ գոհունակութեամբ հոգին կը սնանի, կաճի, կը ծաղկի, փառամոլ տենչերով կը վատթարի, կը տկարանայ, կը հիւծի, և ընտանեկան յարկին երանութեան ճառագայթը կը նսեմանայ, դժգոհութեան գիշերը կը տարածուի [the soul develops, grows, flourishes with the satisfaction of love; deteriorates, weakens, wears out with ambitious desires and the ray of happiness under the family roof diminishes, the night of dissatisfaction spreads]. (tyusab, 1884, p. 50) մեծաքայլ կը ծաւալէր նաեւ բուբուլի տաղանդը, աշխատելը յոգնել չէր անոր համար, այլ պէտք մը armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 183 [bubul’s talent also grew in large paces, work was not tiring for him, but a necessity]. (sipil, 1891, p. 23) in the academic edition of “modern armenian language” the most active, viable and vital layer of the vocabulary without additional description is called the basic word stock (the modern armenian language, 1979, p. 220-221), accordingly, the basic word stock is the vitally necessary layer of the vocabulary, the basis of the vocabulary of the armenian language, which undergoes changes slowly (the modern armenian language, 1979, p. 220221). this definition refers first to the common armenian words used in all periods of the historical development of the language, and then to the vocabulary that underwent certain changes in the given period. thus, in the novels of western armenian female authors, the emotional and psychological states of women are fundamentally expressed through verbs. simple and compound adjectives, pronouns, adverbs also predominate in tyusab’s novel “siranush” and sipil’s “a girl’s heart”, which reflect the mood, emotional and psychological state, and feelings of the characters: մանկամարդ կինն այնչափ աղերսեց, արտասուեց համոզիչ փաստեր յառաջ բերելով, որ վերջապէս ամուսինն սկսաւ զիջանող ձեւ մ'առնուլ [the young wife begged and cried so much, bringing forth convincing facts, that finally her husband began to act in a condescending manner]. (tyusab, 1884, p. 51) նորափթիթ օրիորդին նշանուիլը քիչ երկիւղ ազդեր էր վարժուհւոյն, անոր մտաց և սրտին վրայ նոր տպաւորութիւններու ծագումը տեսնելու կասկածանոք… [the young girl’s engagement scared the governess a little, she was suspicious of arousing new impressions on her mind and heart...]. (sipil, 1891, p. 23) noteworthy is f. khlghatyan’s reference to the functional layer of the vocabulary of the armenian language, which he considers the active vocabulary, he identifies a word layer as having functional activity referring to armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 armenological studies 184 it as basic word stock, and he considers the vocabulary involved in it to be either co-functional or neutral due to a lack of area limitations. the use of diminutives, expressions of affection and warmth, viewpoints and behavioral expressions in dialogues taking place between women, also reveal the attitude of female authors towards a certain man or woman character (husband, friends, father, mother, etc.), reflecting sympathy, dislike, dismissal, sarcasm, dispraise and other emotional shades and expressions in speech. in tyusab’s and sipil’s novels, viewpoints, behavioral manifestations, attitudes towards them and their applications are expressed clearly, without endearing particles and expressions. therefore, despite the tendency to use romantic vocabulary, in these works the dialogues unfold mainly in the domains of prudence, wisdom, intelligence and judgment born from life experience, and sometimes in the ranges of cold calculations: պարզ է նպատակս, գիտես, որ բաւական լաւ երաժիշտ մ'եմ ու բաւական ալ ուսում առած եմ, քանի մ'աշակերտուհիներ տանս մէջ ընդունելով անոնց հարկ եղած դաստիարակութիւնը տալու համար: կրնամ յատկացնել անոնց շաբթուան չորս օրերը, և ի պահանջել հարկին նոյն իսկ ամեն օր երեք կամ չորս որոշեալ ժամեր նուիրելով անոնց դաստուութեան համար [i have a clear purpose, you know that i am a good enough musician and i am educated enough and have accepted several female students in my house to give them the education they need. i will be able to devote four days a week to them, and, getting them together under one roof, devote three or four fixed hours to their education every day]. (tyusab, 1884, p. 54) այլ ցաւագին իրականութիւնը ամեն յոյս, ամեն ակնկալութիւն կը բառնա՞ր իրմէ: բուբուլ ազատ չէր [did the painful reality take away every hope, every expectation from him? bubul was not free]. (sipil, 1891, p. 48) armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 185 intertextual manifestations as a writing tool the linguistic means of using intertextuality in the works of western armenian women authors are diverse: allusions, quotations, citations, aphorisms, stylistic devices. these approaches perform certain functions in novels, ranging from situational descriptions of events, metaphorical expressions of characters’ speech to any historical reality, stylistic colouring of the allusion, polishing of the text and other circumstances. roland barthes defines intertextuality as follows: “the basis of a text is not its internal, closed structure that is subject to exhaustive study, but its entering other texts, codes or signs. a text exists only through intertextual relations, by force of intertextuality” (bart, 1994, p. 424). in the field of armenian literary studies the term intertextuality is also used by literary critic zhenya kalantaryan to characterize suchlike manifestations, drawing parallels between the concepts intertextuality and intertext (kalantaryan, 2016, p. 136). in the novels “siranush” by srbuhi tyusab and “a girl’s heart” by sipil, intertextual manifestations are also noteworthy. they require creation of textual insertions and summarize in their internal domains quoted allusion-based intertexts or individual allusions acting as an intertext: յիշեցի, թէ հո՛ս պարկեշտ լուքրեցեան սուրն ի սիրտ մխեց, և թէ իւր անարատ արեան կաթիլքներէն անթիւ վրէժխնդիրք ծնան… [i remember noble lucrecia plunging the sword into her heart, and from the drops of her innocent blood countless revenges were born...]. (tyusab, 1884, p. 84) թէ անարատ վիրճինիայի կուսական արիւնը ժայթքած էր ձեռամբն հօրը՝ որ պատիւը վեր դասած էր քան զկեանս [virginia’s pure virgin blood was spurted by the hand of her father, who had put honor above life]. (tyusab, 1884, p. 83) the presence of a text in another one has been examined by western theoreticians from linguistic, communicative, literary and other perspectives, defining the interaction of texts as intertextuality (landow, 1992, p. 8-10). armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 armenological studies 186 …պատմական էջ մը աւելի ազդու է պատկերհանին կտաւին վրայ, քան գետերու և սաղարթներու անհուն ներդաշնակութիւն մը, և թէ այդ պատճառաւ է որ մեր արուեստագէտք հերոդոտոսէն սկսեալ մինչեւ մեր օրերու պատմագիրներուն բազմածալ հատորներուն վրայ տժգունելեն ետքը՝ հոմերոսէն կսկսին մինչեւ ռօլինայի տաղերը թղթատել և զօլայի ու տօտէի վէպերը վերծանել… [a historical event is more impressive on the artist’s canvas than the bottomless harmony of rivers and trees, and it is especially for this reason that our artists, after toiling over the voluminous books of historians from herodotus to the present day, have started to study homer to rolina’s cantos and analyze zola’s and dode’s novels]. (sipil, 1891, p. 34) մարդկային ցեղի հին պատմութիւնը ներկային մէջ ազգ կամ կուսակից չունի: աքիլլէս դիւցազուն մ'է ամէն ազգի համար, եւ վերգիլիոս նշանաւոր հանճար մը [the ancient history of the human race has no nation or supporter in the present. achilles is a hero for every nation, and virgil is a famous genius]. (sipil, 1891, p. 36) the theme of a literary work emerges and becomes a system of signs, that is, the female language recreates its verbal image not by the visibility of the object, but by the semantic and emotional-sensual connections with it. the materialization of tyusab’s novel “siranush” and sipil’s “a girl’s heart” is ensured by various textual elements and means. they give aesthetic integrity and meaning to the artistic image. suchlike features are vital for the depiction of characters and plots existing in reality. trope: the utilization of literary devices such as tropes 2 (dictionary of literary terms: trope, 1974, p. 427) and other artistic means of linguistic expression play a vital role in realizing the full potential of tyusab’s prose. these techniques enhance the expressiveness of the fiction and make it more impactful. in literary works, these techniques are highly autonomous and are driven by the functional reasoning of universal aesthetic means, individual armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 187 elements, stylistic layers, meanings, and imagery. they are fundamental in determining the literary value of a work and contributing to the depth and complexity of the story. characterizing the linguistic domain of expressiveness, tropes constantly interact with form and content, embodying it. the illustrative material allows us to claim that tyusab’s and sipil’s novels also include the system of tropes. let’s look at some of them: զարուհին ներկայն էր, որ խինդ ու շող կը սփռէր շուրջը, իսկ սիրանոյշ՝ անորոշ ապագան, որուն մէջ զերուանդ կ'ընդնշմարէր յուսով և երկիւղիւ [zaruhi was the present, that spread joy and light around her, and siranush was the vague future, with yervand seen as hope and fear]. (tyusab, 1884, p. 58) աչքերը խոնավացան, կաթիլ մ'արտասուք անկաւ իւր դէմքին վրայ, կաթիլ մի, որ հոգւոյն բոլոր դառնութիւնը կը պարունակէր [her eyes filled with tears, a drop containing all the bitterness of her soul fell on her face]. (tyusab, 1884, p. 59) բանաստեղծութիւնը զգացմանց արժանաւոր լեզուն է, իսկ նկարչութիւնը տեսարանաց լեզուն [poetry is the worthy language of feelings, and painting is the language of scenes]. (sipil, 1891, p. 38) կանացի դիւցազնութիւն մը և ողբերգութիւն մը կրնար համարուիլ արեւելեան բոցաթռիչ երեւակայութեամբ երկնուած և արեւմտեան նուրբ ու կոկիկ ոճով գրուած [it could be considered female heroism and tragedy, caused by the fiery eastern imagination and written in the refined and neat western style]. (sipil, 1891, p. 42) among the significant literary devices frequently used in the prose of the mentioned female authors are epithets, metaphors and comparisons, which armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 armenological studies 188 convey to the reader the characters’ or the author-narrator’s inner sensory and emotional impulses, creating a clear attitude towards any character, object or phenomenon. these devices are also important in women’s discourse. ի զուր օգոստոսներ, վէսպասիանոսներ, տրայանոսներ, մարկոս-աւրեղիանոսներ, թէօթոսներ և կոստանդիանոսներ փառաց պսակ կը բոլորէին հռովմայ մեռելատիպ ճակատին [it was in vain that augustuses, vespasianuses, trajanoses, markus-auregianoses, theotokoses and constantianoses all crowned the roman death-type forehead with a crown of glory]. (tyusab, 1884, p. 85) ինքն էր մրցանակն, որուն կը ձգտեր երուանդ: իւր փափուկ հոգին անմեղ հպարտութեամբ կը փքանար… [she was the prize that yervand was striving for. her soft soul swelled with innocent pride...]. (tyusab, 1884, p. 86) ոչինչ այնչափ զարհուրելի է որչափ կեղծ ժպիտն որ արիւնաթաթաւ հոգւոյ մի սոսկալի հեգնութիւնն է [nothing is so horrible as a fake smile, which is a terrible irony of a blood-stained soul]. (tyusab, 1884, p. 91) այդ անցեալ ամիսները զարուհւոյն թուեցան կարճատեւ ու անոյշ՝ իբր վաղանցուկ ազդեցութիւնն սոխակին սրտագին մէկ վանկին որ զլուսին կ'ողջունէ, երբ սա երկնից բեւեռած՝ մելամաղձոտ ակնարկ մի կը նետէ շուրջ [those past months seemed short-lasting and sweet to zaruhi as the fleeting influence of a nightingale’s sweet song that greets the moon, when it spreads a melancholy hint around from the sky]. (tyusab, 1884, p. 58) աւա՛ղ, այս դառն փորձառութիւնը վայրկեան մը կիշխէ հաւատալ տալու մեզի թէ ոխերիմ զօրութիւն armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 189 մը կայ տիեզերքի մէջ, որ մեր ցաւոց տեսարանովը կը հրճուի [alas, this bitter experience will make us believe for a moment that there is a hostile power in the universe that delights in the sight of our pain]. (sipil, 1891, p. 60) բուբուլի սիրտը ալեկոծ ովկէանու նման կը փրփրար, մերթ ընդ մերթ լանջը կուռէր անհունապէս, և շրթներէն թառանչ մը դուրս կը թռչէր, կը կարծեր, թե այդ հառաչանքն էր զինքը չարչարողը… [bubul’s heart bubbled like a wavy ocean, every now and then her breast swelled greatly, and a sigh flew out of her lips, she thought it was the sigh that tortured her...]. (sipil, 1891, p. 89) oxymoron: in tyusab’s and sipil’s works oxymoron is considered as a means of a language game full of unexpected elements: զուարճութեանց մէջ ձանձրոյթ կը գտնար, աղմուկին մէջ՝ սրտնեղութիւն, քունը աչերէն խոյս կուտար, անշարժ գաղափար մի գրաւած էր զինքը [she found boredom in fun, heartache in noise, sleep would escape her eyes, a still idea captured her]. (tyusab, 1884, p. 98) եթե փառքն ու պատիւը երջանկութիւնը չեն կազմեր, ուրեմն աղքատ յարկերուն մէջ կը բնակի երջանկութիւնը, և սակայն ոչ ոք աղքատաց բաղդին կը նախանձի [if glory and honor do not constitute happiness, then happiness resides in the poor, and yet no one envies the poor]. (tyusab, 1884, p. 98) in some cases, as a result of the realization of oxymoron (dictionary of literary terms: oxymoron, 1974, p. 252), a new meaning is also created, which can be metaphorical and which is important for the realization of the plots of women’s novels: armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 armenological studies 190 պսակի խորհուրդը մահվան խորհուրդն ալ պիտի ըլլայ միանգամայն [the mystery of the crown must also be the mystery of death]. (tyusab, 1884, p. 87) ինչպե՞ս կրնամ այդ շքեղութիւնը, այդ պերճանքը վայելել, երբ սիրտս իբր ողջակէզ մատուցանելու եմ նոյն խորանին առջեւ, ուր բաղդս օտարի մը ձեռաց պիտի յանձնեմ: երբ սիրտս մեռած է, յիս ինչո՞վ կրնամ այդ փայլուն վիճակը վայելել [how can i enjoy that luxury, that pleasure, when i will offer my heart like a burnt one in front of the same altar, where i will hand over my fortune to a stranger? when my heart is dead, how can i enjoy that brilliant state?”]. (tyusab, 1884, p. 91) կը ժպտէր անոր, երբ իւր սիրտը դառնապէս կուլար [he would smile at him when his heart cried bitterly?]. (tyusab, 1884, p. 95) դեռափթիթ աղջիկը, որ կենաց և մահու մէջ կը ծփար, խեռ երիվարին անսանձ հաճոյիցը մատնուած, վտնգի մէջ տեսնելով գառնիկը, գոչեց սարսափահար [given to the unbridled pleasure of a wild horse, the young maiden, on the brink of death, cried out in terror seeing garnik in danger]. (sipil, 1891, p. 94) antithesis: this literary technique is also found in western armenian female authors’ works. it enhances the emotional coloring of the speech, emphasizes the thought conveyed through it, and is used as one of the types of language game: ժպիտն ու խինդը պիտի արտաքսէր, հառաչն ու արտասուքը որդեգրելու համար, կեանքէն խոյս կուտար՝ մահուամբ ապրելու համար, ինքը սիրո մարտիրոսն էր որդիական սիրոյ ծաղկներով զարդարեալ [she would banish laughter and sorrow, to adopt sighs and tears, armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 191 she avoided life to live with death, she was the martyr of love decorated with flowers of filial love]. (tyusab, 1884, p. 101) ճշմարիտ արտեմիսն էր սօֆի սեւ վարսերովը և լուսնկային վճիտ կամքովը, իսկ օր. գեղամօֆի ճապուկ հասակը, թեթեւ ու փափուկ շարժումները ապողոնի քրոջը նախանձը շարժելու չափ վայելուչ էին և շնորհալի [sofi was truly artemis with her black hair and pure moon-like will, miss geghamoff’s short height, light and soft movements were so graceful and skillful as to make apollo’s sister jealous]. (sipil, 1891, p. 92) the function of anthithesis in the two novels under study is to give additional emotional coloring to the characters’ behavior. the use of exclamatory, imperative and interrogative sentences is also characteristic of tyusab’s and sipil’s prose. in both works, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory sentences, direct address, direct speech were used to enhance the emotional impact of the authors’ messages: -հա՛յր, գոչեց, նուաղեալ ձայնիւ, հէգ աղջիկն, ողորմէ՛ ինձ: -ողորմիլ չգիտե՛մ ես, հպատակէ՛, կ'ըսեմ քեզ, գոռաց սրտմտեալ հայրը [father, have mercy on me”, cried the girl in a low voice. i don’t know what having mercy is, obey, i tell you,” shouted the heartbroken father]. (tyusab, 1884, p. 92) -խեղճ մայրի՛կ, կ'ըսէր, ինձ համար նահատակուեցար, և ո՞ գիտէ տակաւին որչա՛փ պիտի նահատակուիս [she would say: my poor mother, you were a martyr for me, and who knows how much more you will be martyred for?]. (tyusab, 1884, p. 92) «օգնութի՜ւն»,կաղաղակէր չուառ աղջիկը, զգալով թէ իր դառնակսկիծ զգացմանցը անձնատուր ըլլալու ժամանակը չէր, և «օգնութի՜ւն» կը կրկնէին մերձակայ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 armenological studies 192 լեռները երկարելով իրենց մահագուշակ արձագանգը օդուն մէջ [“help!” cried the poor girl, feeling that it was not time to indulge her bitter feelings, and the nearby mountains would repeat “help!”, extending their ominous echo into the air]. (sipil, 1891, p. 95) western armenian female authors’ novels are distinguished by the use of expressive and functional syntactic structures. a significant example of this is the use of rhetorical questions in linguistics which are used as a stylistic device to draw the reader’s or listener’s attention to a particular phenomenon without expecting an answer, as an encrypted affirmation or denial, characterized by different emotional-expressive shades. this stylistic characterization adds to the literary value of the work and makes it more engaging for the reader. the emotional-expressive potential of rhetorical questions, as well as their ability to highlight the main idea of the message, is evident in the versions of the dialogues analyzed in tyusab’s prose. these questions are widely used and are often employed to bring into prominence the conclusive part of the speech. the vividness of the questions is heightened by the answers they imply, making the literary work more engaging and thought-provoking. in such cases, they become a quick solution to an action or any question: սակայն ի՞նչ է մարմնոյն ցաւը բարոյական վշտին բաղդատութեամբ: մին, մարմնոյն, այսինքն նիւթին ախտն է, միւսը՝ հոգւոյն, այսինքն այն ամեն մասունքներու, որ կ'զգան, կը խորհին, կը սիրեն, կը տառապին ու կը հիւծին: ո՜հ, ինչո՞ւ ես նախասահմանեալ ըլլամ ծնողացս այսչափ մտատանջութիւն ու ցաւ պատճառելու, երբ զիրենք այսչափ կը սիրեմ [but what is bodily pain compared to moral grief? one is the disease of the body, that is, the matter, the other – that of the soul, that is, of all the relics that they feel, think about, love, suffer and languish. oh, why am i predestined to cause my parents so much worry and pain when i love them so much?]. (tyusab, 1884, p. 91) armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 193 այսպէս չէ՞ միթէ ճշմարիտ սէրը կոյս սրտերու համար, և նոյնիսկ միատեղ մեռնելու գաղափարը երանութիւն մը չէ՞ անոնց համար: մահվան սարսափը բաժանման մտածումէն կարտադրի, երբ վերնայ այդ երկիւղը, ինչո՞ւ վախնայ մահէն [isn’t this how true love is for virgin hearts, and isn’t even the idea of dying together a bliss for them? the fear of death will result from the thought of separation, when that fear arises, why fear death?]. (sipil, 1891, p. 99) in their novels the narrator’s role is highlighted through the use of syntactic structures. the use of linguo-stylistic stratifications of narrative structures enables identifying the phenomenon of femininity and the depiction of female characters and their nature, describing them as strong, determined, and resolute, on the one hand, and as weak, submissive, and hesitant, on the other hand. ellipsis: this literary device is one of the main means of expressing the emotional state (excitement, joy, surprise, delight, sadness, melancholy, etc.) of the characters in the prose of western armenian female authors. in this case, the structural completion is manifested by the loss of semantic and morphological structural units of the text, for instance, the auxiliary verb. (dictionary of literary terms: ellipsis, 1974, pp. 465-466) հիւանդն էր տիկին հայնուռ, իսկ երկու խնամակալուհիք՝ սիրանոյշ և զարուհի [the sick woman was mrs. haynur, and the two nurses siranush and zaruhi]. (tyusab, 1884, p. 91) such a process of manifestations of ellipsis can affect the value components of the entire vocabulary of the text, such as verbs of motion. from psycholinguistic perspective, ellipsis (merchant, 2012, p. 43) is seen as an indirect expression of emotions: իսկ հիւանդին սենեկին մէջ ամեն ինչ տխուր էր, մութ ու լռութիւն [and in the sick room everything was sad, dark and silent]. (tyusab, 1884, p. 93) armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 armenological studies 194 սակայն փոթորիկը կը մօտենար և բուբուլ չէր տեսներ [but the storm was approaching and bubul couldn’t see (it)]. (sipil, 1891, p. 106) the range of elliptical expressions is wider, as they include phrases and single words that emphasize speech shifts. ellipsis is also the discrepancy between semantic and phonetic realizations. therefore, despite the actual absence of a sentence or corresponding lexical unit, elliptical structures have a clear interpretation and are often strictly defined. in this regard, there are discussions concerning the proposed syntactic structure instead of the missing (reduced) unit (williams, 1995, p. 572). this is also a way to achieve the goals set during the study through linguistic stratification of the vocabulary. in the novels of both female authors, elliptical sentences are used as purposeful phrases and formulations to add depth and complexity to the romantic elements of the story. these incomplete phrases are accompanied by clarifying explanations to enhance their expressiveness and impact. the effective use of these linguistic techniques is based on the logical choice of certain particles and the factual accuracy of the facts presented. the examples considered in the novels demonstrate how the phenomenon of femininity can be examined through the linguistic stratification of the novels, revealing the various levels and aspects of its features. conclusion the differences that highlight the two genders in the works of srbuhi tyusab and sipil also include dominant concepts that are unique to each author or typical of women’s prose in general. this form of study focuses on the extralinguistic standards of western armenian women’s prose. there are certain sets of dominant thematic concepts in the prose of western armenian women authors: love, family, happiness, work, female destiny, etc., which significantly differ in their cultural background. these themes are culturally based and, therefore, the study of western armenian women’s prose, including their understanding, identification, as well as linguistic, paralinguistic and extralinguistic factors that influence their vocabulary choice, is extremely important and relevant in terms of reflecting their perceptions of the world-image. armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 195 acknowledgments the work was supported by the science committee of ra, within the framework of research project no 2it-6b118. notes 1. in this context, the concept of gender encompasses a wide range of ambiguous relationships and interactions through which a fundamental component of social interaction is realized. 2. in modern linguistics tropes include metaphor, metonymy, simile, adverb, irony, hyperbole, synecdoche, oxymoron, litota. poetic tropes also include personification, symbol and allegory, alliteration, paronomasia, paraphrase, etc. references asatryan, m. (2004). zhamanakakic hayoc lezu [the modern armenian language: morphology], yerevan. ysu publishing hous. (in armenian) bart, r. (1994). izbrannie raboti: semiotika: poetika [selected works. semiotics. poetics]: moscow: publishing house: progress. (in russian) kalantaryan, zh. (2016). grakanutyan tesutyan ardi khndirner [contemporary issues of literary theory. intertextuality]: yerevan: ysu publishing house: 330. (in armenian) khlghatyan, f. (2009). zhamanakakic hayoc lezu. part a [the modern armenian language]. yerevan, publishing house: zangak-97. (in armenian) landow, g.p. (1992). other convergences: intertextuality, multivocality, and de-centeredness. the johns hopkins university press. merchant, j. (2012). ellipsis. syntax: an international handbook of contemporary syntactic research, (eds.) by tibor kiss and artemis alexiadou. berlin: walter de gruyter, 1-43. sipil. (1891) aghjkan my sirty. [a girl’s heart]. constantinople: tchivelekean publishing house. (in armenian) trop [trope]. (1974). slovar’ literaturovedcheskix terminov [dictionary of literary terms]. in l. i. timofeev & s. v. turayev (eds.). moscow: “prosveshcheniye”. (in russian) tyusab, s. (1884). siranush. [siranush]. constantinople: nshan k perperean publishing house. (in armenian) williams, e., robert, f., & robert m. (1995). indices and identity: language. 3 (71). armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 armenological studies 196 arakelyan, v.d., khachatryan a.h., & eloyan, s.a. zhamanakakic hayoc lezu. [modern armenian], vol. 1, (1979). yerevan, nas ra publishing house. (in armenian) լեզվաոճային շերտավորումները որպես կանացիություն ֆենոմենի նույնականացում սրբուհի տյուսաբի «սիրանոյշ» եվ սիպիլի «աղջկան մը սիրտը» վեպերում նաիրա համբարձումյան սիրանուշ փարսադանյան ուսումնասիրության մեջ քննել ենք արևմտահայ կին գրողներ սրբուհի տյուսաբի «սիրանոյշ» և սիպիլի «աղջկան մը սիրտը» վեպերում առկա լեզվաոճային շերտավորումները, դրանց առանձնահատկությունները և փոխներթափանցումները։ ուսումնասիրության նպատակն է՝ 19-րդ դարի երկրորդ կեսի արևմտահայ կին հեղինակների արձակի լեզվական առանձնահատկությունների ուսումնասիրության միջոցով բացահայտել լեզվաոճային շերտավորումները նշված վեպերում՝ որպես կանացի գրի տեխնիկա: ուսումնասիրության խնդիրն է՝ նորովի մեկնաբանել 19-րդ դարի երկրորդ կեսի արևմտահայ կին հեղինակների գեղարվեստական երկերում կիրառված գրական տեխնիկան և գործիքակազմը (համեմատություններ, փոխաբերություններ, օքսիմորոն, էլիպսիս, ձևաբանական և շարահյուսական հնարներ, ևն): 19-րդ դարի երկրորդ կեսի արևմտահայ կին հեղինակների գեղարվեստական երկերում հստակորեն ընդգծված են կին-տղամարդ աշխարհայեցողությունը և աշխարհ-պատկերները։ ուսումնասիրությունը միջգիտակարգային է: նյութը վերլուծվել է լեզվաբանության և գրականագիտության միջև փոխադարձ կապերի և առնչությունների համատեքստում: կիրառել ենք լեզվաբանական, գրականագիտական և համեմատական մեթոդները՝ սրբուհի տյուսաբի և սիպիլի վեպերում առկա լեզվաոճային շերտավորումները դիտարկելով մեկ շառավղում՝ որպես կանացիության նույնականացում: այսօրինակ ուսումնասիրություն կատարվում է առաջին անգամ: այն կարևոր է և արդիական ոչ միայն միջգիտակարգայնության, այլև հայագիտության մեջ կանանց հիմնախնդիրների վերլուծության տեսանկյունից։ բանալի բառեր՝ սրբուհի տյուսաբ, սիպիլ, կանացի խոսույթ, ինտերտեքստ, տրոպ, էլիպսիս, օքսիմորոն։ armenian folia anglistika – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english (since 2005) and yerevan state university (since 2015) aims at fostering research of the english language, literature and culture linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 73 the pun-group of linguistic devices in advertising media discourse hamlet arakelyan  yerevan state university the language of advertising is unique and very peculiar in comparison with other properties of media discourse. the effectiveness of speech in advertising media discourse focuses on attracting the target audience. since the language of advertising is characterized by distinguished persuasive function, the creators of ads spare no effort to make them catchy, interesting and witty. this is the reason why various linguistic devices are used to facilitate the comprehension and memorization of advertisements. in this regard, a significant role is performed by wordplay, as the intentional usage of puns ensures the effectiveness of the composed texts. keywords: advertising media discourse, linguistic devices, speech impact, wordplay, punnical devices. introduction the aim of the present article is to study the pun-devices used in english advertisments which is accomplished through the application of the methods of observation, description and investigation of the linguostylistic features of linguistic elements. the effectiveness of advertising discourse relies heavily on the content and arrangement of the linguistic means appearing in ads. it is for this very reason that advertising media discourse actively “indulges in code play” (cook, 1992, p. 277). it should be acknowledged that pun and humour influence the target audience positively by creating favourable associations about the advertised product. research has shown that humour found in ads captures the attention of consumers, creates interest, which in its turn influences the  hamlet.araqelyan@gmail.com this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 21.01.2021 revised: 14.04.2021 accepted: 21.05.2021 © the author(s) 2021 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2021.17.1.073 mailto:hamlet.araqelyan@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 74 positive choices regarding the advertised service (gibson, 2019). humour also facilitates understanding of an advertisement, and grasp always creates positive emotions (weinberger, gulas, 1992). it should be noted that the part of our consciousness which focuses the attention on this or that object has a very complex neuropsychological structure but it is almost always conditioned by the past experiences of a person. it mostly functions with the help of emotional and instinctive responses (du plessis, 2005). as the main aim of an advertisement is to attract attention, it “has to be designed to attract an emotional response from us” (du plessis, 2005, p. 107). the pun-group of linguistic devices in advertisements the pun-group of linguistic devices used in advertising media discourse is regarded as very effective in the light of the impact achieved in speech. this does not come as a surprise, as wordplay influences the target audience with various means of verbal wit. nowadays puns are so extensively used in advertising texts that almost every ad has at least a touch of wordplay in it. being a witty play of polysemic words’ shades of meanings, a pun catches the attention of the buyer by creating comical and funny contexts. wordplay transforms a banal advertisement into an attractive and humourous text which in its turn awakens the associative memory of the buyers and affects their behavioural choices (goddard 1998; leech 1966). here are some examples of pun in ads: what to expect when you’re expecting. (adoptuskids, 2019) we get rid of 99% of dirt, but not of your dirty ex boyfriend. (dk12 soap, 2019) plastic tock tick tock. (iceland, 2018) the last of the adduced examples underlines the importance of plastic disposal which appears as a choice of the current product, but it also prompts the buyer to do the same. by means of the wordplay the marketers give the potential buyers a hint that the time of plastic is slowly expiring. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 75 the use of puns in ads is motivated by the idea of making the verbal presentation of the product interesting by means of non-standard expressions which are more effective when it comes to attracting the attention of the potential consumers. however, it is important to mention that the degree of effectiveness of the ad is reliant on the language fluency level of the target audience. for consumers with a lower level of language fluency advertisements including puns are not effectual as the comprehension of the latter demands proficient skills of communication and understanding. on the other hand, to fully understand a wordplay, and fix its meaning in mind, the consumer has to make a huge mental effort. the latter is also conditioned by the fact that a potential buyer starts to analyze the polysemy of the pun which can be used for the purpose of creating interest or humour (dyer, 1988). it should be acknowledged that it is thanks to linguistic puns used in advertisements that unique neologisms emerge. this enhances not only the development of advertising discourse but also the vocabulary of a certain language. thus, it does not come as a surprise that a paradoxical, semasiologically non-normative lexical unit like smileage appears in an ad: our trucks get more smileage. help us feed nyc. (cityharvest, 2018) the mentioned neologism is formed of the words smile and mileage. the idea is that the drivers of the company pass hundreds of kilometers every day to collect food from philanthropists in order to distribute it to the people in need. accordingly, their miles give people smiles; hence the word smileage. the neologism bluetiful is created by the same logic. the words blueberry and beautiful are partially combined by the authors of the ad to create associations connected with the company name and objectives which revolve around blueberries: positively healthy. positively delicious. positively bluetiful. (u.s. highbush blueberry, 2019) armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 76 according to l.v. zhilina’s research, the ads selling health and beauty products and food “have the biggest tendency to utilize neologisms” (zhilina, 2016, p. 34). neologisms, including puns, appear in advertising to name the novelties created by modern entrepreneurs. the appearance of electric cars on the international market caused the emergence of various neologisms and advertising agencies spared no effort to create new catchy linguistic expressions for novel extra-linguistic objects. most of these linguistic units are formed by wordplay: wattcar? got questions about owning an electric car? get the answers at goultralow.com. (goultralow, 2018) in the example mentioned above, the neologism wattcar has been used to name the electric car. apparently, the use of the question mark creates a unique wordplay as the words watt and what are homophones in the english language. the question mark following the neologism proves that the wordplay has been used on purpose. back in 2018, not a lot of information could be found about electromobiles. this is why the neologism wattcar? which is based on the homophonic features of watt and what and involves a play upon these elements, could be rephrased to ‘what car? (wattcar)’. the following neologism presents another case formed by a wordplay based on one of the elements in the expression: there’s a feeling you get when you talk face-to-face, not face-to-website. (mutual of america, 2019) face-to-website depicts the digital culture which has become an integral part of the modern-day society. digital communication performs the role of a substitute for the natural, human contact. the ad adduced above underlines the importance of face-to-face communication and a personal approach against the new conventional ways of conducting all the activities online. to summarize, the frequent use of pun-neologisms in english advertising media discourse is due to the fact that a rich content is supposed to be expressed through a concise structure, and pun is the wittiest among the linguistic devices that facilitate memorization, though the comprehension of a pun requires an extra effort from the consumers. the same can be ascribed to linguistic paradox, which appears when two linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 77 opposite notions are brought together to create a new meaning. if an advertising text involves a linguistic paradox, it usually contradicts itself, thus catching the attention of the target audience. it is both true and false at the same time, and that is illustrated in the following example: the world’s best radiologist isn’t a radiologist yet. the qure.ai solution detects abnormalities in head ct scans in seconds and brings the most critical cases to the immediate attention of a radiologist. (fractal, 2019) the first line of the ad immediately gives food for thought with the help of a linguistic paradox. the rest of the text which is the actual advertisement has nothing to do with the first line. this comes to prove that advertisers frequently utilize linguistic devices to influence consumers and to make sure they ‘continue reading’ to get to the core ad message. here’s another example of an ad with a linguistic paradox that illustrates this point: the only downside to three more flavors of left twix is three more flavors of right twix. (twix, 2019) anyone who has ever tried twix knows that both bars of the chocolate have the same taste, but this ad contradicts itself by showing it as a ‘downside’ in the beginning. when the potential buyers read the first part of the ad, they don’t know that a linguistic paradox is waiting on the other side, so they read on in order to understand what is bad about three more flavours. the unexpected appearance of the paradox makes them think, and if they are fast to comprehend, they enjoy the wittiness of the text which enhances the verbal impact. the ads below created by loan agencies are perfect examples of attention grabbers by means of negative connotations that make the target audience read on: the neighbour’s dog. it barks. day and night. it barks when you walk into your house. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 78 when you leave your house. it barks at the wind. it barks at the rain. bark. bark. bark. never stops. the solution? learn to speak dog. let him know how you feel. that’s the only option. isn’t it? or you could talk us about a home mover mortgage instead. (yorkshire building society, 2018) so your neighbour loves to party 24/7. with lots of friends. he loves life. a lot. what should you do about it? embrace it. stop being such a stick in the mud. you’re only middle-aged once. live a little. or don’t. and talk to us about a home mover mortgage instead. (yorkshire building society, 2018) these creative ads remind of unique examples of japanese hokus, where parts of a text usually have nothing to do with each other, but create a common meaning on the whole. among the pun devices there are such uses of lexical oppositions in which an advertised object appears in a positive context in contrast to an antonym. for example, in the coca-cola ad presented below, the popular drink appears in contrast with a man’s tiredness by using the antonymous pair on and off. this ad is targeted at the youth to make them drink coke when they feel tired or dizzy: linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 79 when you’re off, a coca-cola is right on. (coca-cola, 2019) the ads below have also been created by linguistic opposition: more science. less fear. (msk cancer center, 2018) januvia works when my blood sugar is high, and works less when my blood sugar is low. for adults with type 2 diabetes. (merck, 2018) one big mac. two new sizes. (mcdonalds, 2018) the english advertising media discourse is full of diverse uses of antithesis. the latter is a literary device in which an opposition or contrast of ideas is expressed. it mostly relies on contextual opposition as in the following example: i am spiritually awake. but i’d like to be physically asleep. (yogi, 2018) other effective means of phrasing advertisements irony is another pun-device in which the way of phrasing the ad is meant to convey the opposite meaning of what is expressed, thus making advertising texts humorous and witty. a unique example of irony use is the ad of the online ma course of the university of liverpool: set an example to the kids. spend more time online. get a master’s degree online from a russell group university. (university of liverpool, 2018) usually it is the adults who set an example for the kids by spending less time online and by reducing their screen time as much as possible. the first part of the ad makes one read on to understand how spending more time armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 80 online can be beneficial for kids. the use of irony in this case makes the ad memorable and more effective. irony can also come along with the help of a rhetorical question which entails no answer. in the examples below, for instance, the potential answer is supposed to be ironic too: do you wanna be famous... by wasting food? 1.3 tons of food goes to trash every year. avoid waste. do you wanna be famous... by wasting paper? each person consumes the equivalent to one eucalyptus tree per year in paper manufacturing industry. avoid waste. do you wanna be famous... by polluting with kitchen oil? the frying oil can pollute up to 25 thousand liters of water. do properly dispose. do you wanna be famous... by wasting water? it’s recommended the consumption of until 100 liters of water per person per day. avoid waste. (avenida shopping center, 2019) the first question (do you wanna be famous) appears in the media text in big and bold letters, while the second part which contains irony is typed in small and almost invisible font size. it is interesting to notice that these commercial ads cover vast social considerations. there is a tendency to use social ads which usually carry important messages as means of attracting attention and creating positive associations about a commercial product. it should be mentioned that if the target audience is familiar with the metaphors or cliches used in a given advertisement, the effectiveness of the latter is higher as the utilization of familiar expressions facilitates comprehension and memorization. what is more, it creates positive associations with the product, of course if the chosen linguistic devices lack negative connotation. people also tend to remember and reiterate advertising linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 81 texts with well-known expressions more frequently. this is why the use of popular expressions, idioms or famous quotes is really beneficial when it comes to verbal impact. these quotations may appear in advertisements both partially and wholly. sometimes advertisers might rephrase parts of a famous expression to deliver their message accordingly. in these cases we deal with contextual and partial quotations which usually have the characteristic features of a pun as in the following examples: finding the happy in every ending. a netflix original series. unbreakable kimmy schmidt. (netflix, 2019) yes, the sun will rise in the morning. here’s something equally certain. with our high-yield savings promotion, hsbc offers certainty on the horizon. earn 1.30% apy. (hsbc, 2018) if life is but a dream, this is living. (kiawah island real estate, 2018) in gold we trust. (gold eagle, 2018) in the last example, there is a hidden quotation instead of a direct citation. the authors of the advertisement have very successfully used the famous expression ‘in god we trust’ and changed it with wordplay. in this case, gold substitutes god to meet the needs of the commercial campaign. fast. not furious. (virgin media, 2018) the quotation in this ad directly relates to the title of the popular movie ‘fast and furious’. with a bit of a wordplay, it creates the expected associations. another interesting example of pun-quotations is the following ad: bff: bottomless fries forever. (red robin, 2019) this fast food company has used the famous abbreviation bff (best friends forever) and changed its meaning in favour of the advertisement. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 82 with the help of an indirect impact achieved by this use of the abbreviation, advertisers make the potential buyers associate the fries that are sold with the concept of best friends, which in its turn brings about positive and pleasant emotions. another instance of a pun-quotation is the following example where the famous expression ‘until death do us apart’ is used to illustrate the longevity of the advertised furniture which outlives its owner: until death do us apart. (vepsäläinen furniture, 2019) conclusion the investigation allows to conclude that the linguistic devices used in advertising discourse as means of verbal impact, not only shape and make the ads comprehensive, but also facilitate the impact with the help of a distinctive content, structure and frequency of use. particularly for this reason the pun-devices used in english media discourse are of utmost importance as they create positive associations regarding the advertised product and make ads memorable, thus enhancing their effectiveness in terms of verbal impact. references cook, g. (1992). the discourse of advertising. london: routledge and kegan paul. du plessis, e. (2005). the advertised mind: ground-breaking insights into how our brains respond to advertising. london & sterling, va: millward brown & kogan page. dyer, g. (1988). advertising as communication. london & new york: routledge. gibson, j.m. (2019). an introduction to the psychology of humor. abingdon & new york: routledge. goddard, a. (1998). the language of advertising. london & new york: routledge. leech, g.n. (1966). english in advertising: a linguistic study of advertising in great britain. london: longman. https://www.adsoftheworld.com/taxonomy/brand/vepsalainen linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 83 weinberger, m.g., & gulas, c.s. (1992). the impact of humor in advertising: a review. journal of advertising, 21 (4), 35–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.1992.10673384 zhilina, l.v. (2016). advertising as a neologism-oriented discourse: a study of advertising english and german languages. kultura mira, 6. retrieved from http://etnosocium.ru/zhurnal-kultura-mira-%e2%84%966-2016). sources of data avenida shopping center. (2019). retrieved 13.11.19 from https://www.adsoftheworld. com/media/print/avenida_center_famous coca-cola. (2019). retrieved 09.06.19 from https://www.bestadsontv.com/ad/105261/ coca-cola-first-date dk12 soap. (2019). retrieved 13.11.19 from https://www.adsoftheworld.com/media/print/dk12_the_most_realistic_soap_on_the_market red robin. (2019). retrieved 21.07.19 from https://www.adsoftheworld.com/media/ integrated/red_robin_all_the_fulls vepsäläinen furniture. (2019). retrieved 13.11.19 from https://www.adsoftheworld.com/media/print/vepsalainen_until_death_do_us_part) other sources of data adoptuskids. (2019, january 14). bloomberg businessweek. city harvest. (2018, january 13). the wall street journal. fractal. (2019, may 4-10). the economist. goultralow. (2018, february 04). the observer. gold eagle. (2018, january 09). the wall street journal. gold eagle. (2018, july 13). the wall street journal. hsbs. (2018, january 19). the wall street journal. iceland.(2018, january 20). the daily mirror. mcdonalds. (2018, march 01). the daily mirror. msk cancer center. (2018, december 10). the new yorker. merck. (2018, december 24&31). the new yorker. mutual of america (2019, may 27). bloomberg businessweek. netflix. (2019, january 28). the new yorker. twix. (2019, may 28). good housekeeping. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.1992.10673384 https://www.bestadsontv.com/ad/%20105261/%20coca-cola-first-date https://www.bestadsontv.com/ad/%20105261/%20coca-cola-first-date https://www.adsoftheworld.com/media/print/dk12_the_most_realistic_soap_on_the_market https://www.adsoftheworld.com/media/print/dk12_the_most_realistic_soap_on_the_market https://www.adsoftheworld.com/media/%20integrated/red_robin_all_the_fulls https://www.adsoftheworld.com/media/%20integrated/red_robin_all_the_fulls https://www.adsoftheworld.com/taxonomy/brand/vepsalainen https://www.adsoftheworld.com/media/print/vepsalainen_ https://www.adsoftheworld.com/media/print/vepsalainen_ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 linguistics 84 u.s. highbush blueberry. (2019, june 17). bloomberg businessweek. university of liverpool. (2018, march 11). the observer. virgin media. (2018, march 12). the daily mirror. yorkshire building society. (2018, may 13). the observer. yorkshire building society. (2018, june 24). the observer. լեզվական հնարների բառախաղային խումբը գովազդային մեդիադիսկուրսում համլետ առաքելյան գովազդներն այսօր հասարակության լայն շերտերի ուշադրության կենտրոնում են, և ակնհայտ է, որ գովազդային խոսքի արդյունավետությունը պայմանավորված է որոշակի գործառույթների կատարմամբ: գովազդային արդյունավետ ներգործումը հասանելի է դառնումէ լեզվական և հոգեբանական համապատասխան հնարների ընտրությամբ: անշուշտ, գովազդային հաղորդումը ենթադրում է որոշակի լսարան և գովազդվող ապրանքի կամ ծառայության հանդեպ ընդգծված հետաքրքրության գոյացում: միևնույն ժամանակ մրցակցային դաշտում հավակնություններ ունենալու համար կարևոր է գրավիչ, բայց և ամբողջական ներկայացնել տեղեկատվությունը: սույն հոդվածում ուսումնասիրվում է անգլերեն գովազդային մեդիադիսկուրսում կիրառվող լեզվական հնարների բառախաղային խումբը։ քննությամբ պարզվում է, որ գովազդային խոսքում համոզման գործառույթի իրացման անխուսափելիությունը պարտադրում է գովազդային հաղորդումների հեղինակներին առավելագույն ջանքեր գործադրել համապատասխան գովազդային տեքստերը ավելի հետաքրքիր ու սրամիտ դարձնելու համար: այս առումով չափազանց կարևոր դեր ունի անգլերեն գովազդային մեդիադիսկուրսում կիրառվող բառախաղը, որի հասկացումը մեծապես խթանում է ներգործման իրացումը՝ նպաստելով գովազդային հաղորդման մտապահմանը և գովազդվող ապրանքի կամ ծառայության հանդեպ դրական մտազուգորդումների ձևավորմանը։ բանալի բառեր. գովազդային մեդիա դիսկուրս, լեզվական միջոցներ, խոսքային ներազդեցություն, բառախաղ, բառախաղային խմբի հնարներ: armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 translation studies 132 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2022.18.2.132 metaphoric covid neologisms and their translation peculiarities naira gasparyan marianna ohanyan** yerevan state university the present paper examines the translatability of english metaphoric neologisms into armenian in covid discourse and investigates certain translation strategies used to deal with the problem, which, if not solved, will result in unexpressive translations leading to inefficient communication. the research focuses on the translation peculiarities of the new concepts (often expressed metaphorically) which form a new layer of medical disease terminology of the global vocabulary. words used in covid discourse need to be treated with care and responsibility since the usage of covid neologisms fuels tension and creates distortion in public mind and, thus, causes panic and improper conduct. the results achieved through the application of the methods of induction and deduction prove that the translation of such terms serves to better understand the sender’s message (although there are cases of ambiguity due to some hidden extra-linguistic basis) and discloses the fact that in the postmodern covid period metaphor and metaphoric neologisms in healthcare, business and global media communication are coined quickly as a result of radical social changes, an unprecedented amount of “polluted” information, negative attitudes towards vaccination campaigns and false conspiracy narratives. both english and armenian metaphoric neologisms highlight the various aspects of the mentioned social response. keywords: covid discourse, translation of metaphoric neologisms, global vocabulary, efficient communication and impact. introduction medicine is one of the specialized domains in which neologisms are constantly generated due to the continuous scientific and technical advances in the field, as well as the appearance of new diseases and unknown phenomena. in this  naira.gasparyan@ysu.am ** ohanyan.m@ysu.am this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 05.05.2022 revised: 03.06.2022 accepted: 22.06.2022 © the author(s) 2021 mailto:ohanyan.m@ysu.am https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 133 context, neologisms are usually inserted in a language to fill a terminological gap which is usually accompanied by a conceptual gap. medical terminology is a system of concepts that refers to conditions and processes occurring in the human body. this refers to all diseases and their symptoms, medical equipment and medicines, as well as methods for the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of various diseases. medical translation is characterized as a separate type of technical and scientific translation, since medicine with its related fields deals with public health issues. the main feature of translating medical texts is terminology. besides, it shows the difficulties the translators of the social media neologisms encounter in the process of translating them from english into armenian. the core problem of the research is to examine and establish the translatability of covid neologisms with the account of the extra-linguistic reality within global and armenian contexts. the theoretical study of the problem indicates that it is not easy to assume when a neologism ceases to be a neologism and begins to act as a metaphor. anyhow, we have set it our task to study the role of covid neologisms in the creation of metaphor in pandemic discourse. the present investigation is carried out in two directions simultaneously: the theory of translation of conceptual metaphors/neologisms and the translatability of covid neologisms. the vitality of the problem is conditioned by the present day spread and developments of the virus and its direct impact on the quality of human life over the globe. to reach this goal we intend to present analysis of carefully sampled examples from various social spheres of postmodern covid period. it is common knowledge that there are established strategies towards the translation of medical metaphors and neologisms. we intend to show that 1. not all metaphoric neologisms in english covid discourse are translatable; 2. sometimes they need to be interpreted; 3. the target language users do not commonly use the already created armenian conceptual equivalents; 4. there are cases when the international terms are used without translation; 5. covid translation is marked by its creativity principle, especially due to technological advances and their influence on human behaviour. a set of translation approaches together with the methods of induction and deduction have been applied to the linguistic material from healthcare, media and other spheres in the course of our research. covid-19 is no longer a medical concern: it has even designated its fashion (mask and sportswear variety) and dictates its lifestyle. in this emerging armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 translation studies 134 scenario the quality of life has become even dependent on medical knowledge, terminological accuracy. various restrictions with their continuous impact on interpersonal and attitudinal relations, human emotion and empathy, have even been reported to affect the health of patients. by 2020 covid metaphors have already been part of the global glossary and can be found in stable lexical networks. the study shows that covid metaphoric neologisms based on the conceptualization processes in healthcare, appear in media as part of popular discourse. so, the present study investigates the translation strategies used to deal with the source language (english) new medical covid metaphoric neologisms to transfer them into the target language (armenian). the theoretical material on the problem is supported by examples from various social spheres, the popular discourse including. translation problems in new normal the period of 20192020 was the beginning of formation of a new layer of medical terminology, which is connected with the reality people face today. translating newly coined words – neologisms – from english into armenian is a most hectic job since before neologisms are created, they go through a systematic linguistic process in which each word has its own way of formation and its linguistic specificity. in addition, the newly termed expressions are often used to grasp and hold attention, so they are shaped in an attractive way which is effort and time consuming. the word is usually an indicator of the innovation itself and the way it works. accordingly, translators have to be aware of these facts and try to produce a translation that is as purposeful and attractive as the original english element. the problem of the research is the lack of translations that are provided for english covid metaphors in armenian dictionaries though many of the required concepts already have their expressions and are conducted by armenian healthcare specialists who often prefer to use the english terms due to certain reasons like the dominance of global english over other languages in general and armenian language in particular. the year 2020 was the beginning of the formation of a new layer of medical terminology with a social bias when computer technology plays a major role in this new area of medicine. this is another point to pay special attention to the extra-linguistics of the problem. hence, the most popular medical term since 2020 has been telemedicine. it does not have its direct armenian translation but instead the explanation of the concept (առցանց translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 135 բժշկական խորհրդատվություն) is used by almost all armenian medical centers to fill the gap. during the pandemic to reduce contact with people the concept telemedicine, formed by combining the two words “telephone” and “medicine”, came into wide use. although super-spreaders is another frequent covid term today, it does not have its corresponding conceptual armenian equivalent. this term refers to a person who is responsible for infecting a large number of people. media informs that “…most new transmissions were from a few super-spreaders: about 10% of the people caused 60% of new infection… actually this term is highly charged with emotive-evaluative overtones due to its first component super. the lack of its translation and its use have extralinguistic implications – armenia is a small country and a vast number of its population actually got infected very fast, and there was no social demand to create a specific neologism or concept. another term is infodemic, which refers to an overload of true or false information during a pandemic. coined from information and epidemic, it is used to offer a range of recommendations for governments and global media platforms on how to fight the covid-19 false infodemic. in addition to serious terms, the daily vocabulary includes metaphoric neologisms such as coronadivorce (a large number of divorces during the pandemic), coronababies (a real boom in the birth rate due to forced quarantine) and corona bud (the only friend with whom you spend time during quarantine). these english terms were created by telescoping two words are brought together to create a new word which combines their meanings. couples whose marriages are fraying under the pressures of self-isolation could be heading for a coronadivorce. the phenomenon was not observed in armenia. moreover, self-isolation strengthened family ties which may be explained by armenian family cultural specificity. so, the mentioned terms, perhaps, have not found their translation or equivalent concepts in armenian since armenian family members always show willingness and high morality to help their close people. they stick together to help each other to overcome the difficulties caused by the virus. the best recommendation for culture-based translation will be simple interpretation with the account of the context. now we intend to discuss the new names for lockdown dressing: hatewear and sadwear are lockdown fashion terms coined by nyt and esquire for the ways people are expressing frustration through clothes. the media-coined terms confirm that “the pandemic has changed shopping for ever. practical, comfortable items suitable for a lifestyle of working from home and occasional trips outside – such as ugg (you go girl) boots, crocs and trousers with armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 translation studies 136 elasticated waistbands – have seen rising sales”. people wear these clothes to feel a bit relaxed when in front of their computers. nyt mentions that a sweater with holes in, jogging bottoms in the wrong size and a jumper worn so regularly “suddenly became a symbol of stress and sadness”. the list of “comfort-blanket” clothing included pajamas and hoodies, as well. although the sadwear can be seen all over the world, armenia including, armenian media never mentioned this fact. moreover armenian youth seem to be quite happy about the new fashion giving no specific name to the fashion. we offer to list the mentioned items under the name տխրության խորհրդանիշ նորաձևություն կամ պարզապես թագաժահրի/թագավարակի ոճ․ below are presented a couple of the most frequent clichés that one may come across in armenian media to talk about covid-19: ծանր սուր շնչառական համախտանիշը sars-cov, առաջարկում ենք պայքարել ու հաղթել կորոնավիրուսին, պայքարել քովիդ—19 ի դեմ, (unicef), ի՞նչ է կորոնավիրուսը, ինչպե՞ս պաշտպանվել դրանից, այսօր ամբողջ աշխարհը մեծ ճակատամարտի մեջ է և պայքարում է կորոնավիրուսի դեմ: anyhow, there are internationally recognized terms like patient, covid, zoom+bie, covidiot, lockdown, covideo party, quarantine that are used in armenian without translation. terms like self-isolation, social-distancing have found their direct translations. the next part of the present paper deals with various approaches and strategies of translation and interpretation that are used as proper tools to successfully handle the problem of our interest. a review of translation strategies and approaches global english is expanding within the new normal context to enrich the global medical glossary with new concepts according to the unprecedented developments. in 2019 covid penetrated into daily life. the phrases and expressions like bremain (britain to remain in the eu), bregret (britain+regret), brexit (britain+exit), euro-fudge (to cheat about something slightly, esp. by translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 137 not reporting facts accurately or not telling the exact truth), brexhausted (britain+exhausted) coined at the referendum not long ago, lost their vitality (bbc) and disappeared from media as soon as corona terms appeared. actually the world is witnessing what wittgenstein (lyotard, 1979) called language games. what he meant by this term is that each of the various categories of utterance can be defined in terms of rules specifying their properties and the uses to which they can be put. according to some postmodern linguists with the advent of postmodernism a privileged position for the science of linguistics was created due to • a shift from truth to fiction and narrative, by a change from the world of experience to that of language, • the demise of the three great metanarratives of science, religion and politics with their replacement by wittgenstein’s local language-games (lyotard, 1979; lecercle, 1990). perceiving the modern images and unbelievable demeanor of the postmodern society as normal, we proceed from the assumption that in the global context linguistic investigations can be carried out with the account of the extra-linguistic reality, the novel global spread of covid being that extralinguistic basis. social changes initiate the appearance of new concepts and new words (neologisms) to answer communicative needs in a certain communicative community, to make communication easy and efficient, to influence the audience, to transmit certain social messages. neologisms are formed at a certain stage of language development, spread and become accepted as a language norm, and at this stage of the language development most language users perceive it as new (herberg, 1988, p. 110). neologisms, perhaps the professional translator's biggest problem, are new words, word-combinations or fixed phrases that appear in the language due to the development of social life, culture, science and engineering. new meanings of existing words are also accepted as neologisms. a problem of translation of new words ranks high on the list of challenges translators face because such words are not readily found in ordinary dictionaries and even in the newest specialized dictionaries. neologisms pass through three stages to cease to be neologisms to become metaphors: creation, trial and establishment in other words, the neologism is created by a limited audience (still unstable and referred to as protologism (from greek protos and logos) by analogy with prototype and neologism. then, it is spread and tried by a large number of people (not widely accepted yet), and finally established (having gained widearmenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 translation studies 138 spread approval it becomes stabilized and identified). the establishment, although a time consuming process, is reflected in glossaries and dictionaries (parianou & kelandrias, 2002, p. 756). translation theorists propose a range of strategies when discussing translatability issues. dealing with the translatability problem, h. nikska introduces the concept of “translational creativity” presenting interpreting strategies and the following translation strategies: • omission (the term is simply omitted, not translated, but may be translated at a later stage); • use of “approximate” or “provisional” equivalent; • explanation of concept (hypothesis: more usual in consecutive than simultaneous interpreting); • neologism: a) loan translation (“literal” translation of a source language term); b) direct loans /transfer (source language term is used as it is or with some modification to make it fit into the target language phonology/morphology; c) coining of a new word (hypothesis: unusual in interpreting; more usual in written translation) (nikska, 1998). newmark proposed 12 types of neologisms: new coinages, derived words, abbreviations, collocations, eponyms, phrasal words, transferred words, acronyms, pseudo-neologisms, and internationalism (nikska, 1987; 1988, p. 143). generally, translators of medical texts either leave a given term in the original language (which is usually english) or resort to using foreign words solely because they are unable to find a better solution. in the worst case they assume and hope that the professional who reads the translation will be familiar with the english words. certainly, language professionals do have the option of explaining the term through a definition or explanation, but this is often not appropriate because, in many cases, this would make the translation too wordy, particularly in documents where specific terms are repeated over and over. the study shows that a considerable amount of covid neologisms in english do not have recognized translated variants in armenian because of the lack of demand. moreover, misinterpretation is the major problem since it fails to provide successful communication. generally, translators of metaphors/ neologisms are known to keep to certain rules. it has been argued that metaphors can become a translation problem, since transferring them from one translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 139 language and culture to another may be hampered by linguistic and cultural differences. a number of translation procedures for dealing with this problem have been suggested, e.g., substitution (metaphor into different metaphor), paraphrase (metaphor into sense), or deletion. such procedures have been commented on both in normative models of translation (how to translate metaphors) and in descriptive models (how metaphors have been dealt with in actual translations) (schaeffner, 2004a). so, for carrying out the job to its best, the translation is suggested being done with the account of the cultural background and the cognitive approach. as it is mentioned “[…] instead of identifying how source metaphors are rendered in target texts at the linguistic level, scholars are more concerned with metaphor-elicited conceptual shift, that is, how different conceptual worlds can be bridged via translation” (schaeffner, 2004a). investigating metaphors in politics, schaeffner claims that “all translations are ideological since the choice of a source text and the use to which the subsequent target text is put are determined by the interests, aims and objectives of the social agents.” schaeffner (2004b) emphasizes the significance of vocabulary in the process of practicing power (schaeffner, 2004b). the points put forward by schaeffner can be clearly detected in covid discourse as a major extra-linguistic reality: the addressers practise power and serve the interests, aims and objectives of health organizations and their subdivisions as well as those of governments. as we have already mentioned in our previous publication (oganyan & gasparyan, 2022), the newly coined socially accepted concepts presenting war and non-war domains like covid-19, lockdowns, omicron, working from home (wfh), social-distancing, zoombie, zoombombing, quarantines, covidiot, covideo party, ventilator, quarantine, self-isolation, etc., abundantly appear in healthcare, business, media to effectively communicate and influence the audience. referring to the field of communication in the context of the new coronavirus reality (job losses, zoom classes, testing inconveniences, vaccination fear and problem), they make the extra-linguistic basis for the linguistic expression of the new normal. so, if we apply schaeffner’s (2004a) approach onto the translation of the glossary of metaphoric neologisms in use today, we shall see that the same conceptual shift for political translation does successfully work for covid discourse metaphoric neologisms on the ideological persuasion-impact level. hence, the translation strategies are supposed to proceed with the account of the mentioned extra-linguistics. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/christina-schaeffner armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 translation studies 140 it is believed that the first thing to do is to establish and define the function of the neologism, its motivation for being in that particular place, the extralinguistic reality. ignoring this will cause confusion for the target readers. ignoring each of them means misunderstanding the context in which the text is produced. translators have to find out the meaning of new neologisms mainly based on the context. in this respect let us adduce examples from the two big domains of covid-19 vocabulary to highlight the significance of function, context and the extra-linguistic basis. a) non-war: the domain which may include sports, storms, monsters, natural disasters, crime etc., as in the examples below: • to slow the rate at which people get infected – դանդաղեցնել վարակի տարածման ընթացքը; • turn to/move to mitigation (to mitigate the risk to those who are most at risk: the elderly and those with chronic underlying conditions) մեղմացնել չափավորել, կառավարելի դարձնել վարակի ռիսկերը; • the coronavirus blizzard (a severe snowstorm with high winds) -թագավարակի անսպասելի և անկառավարելի հարձակում; • track down (to find someone or something after a long, thorough or difficult search); • virus as beast or crime; -թագաժահրը վրա է տալիս գազանի ու հանցագործության նման; • epicenter վարակի էպիկենտրոն; • coronaspeak կորոնասլենգ indicates the set of corona slang neologisms like sanny ձեռքի գործիքներով վարակի ախտահանում for hand sanitizer; • covidiot (կորոնատխմար we suggest using it without translation and interpretation) can mean both people who fail to follow the covid rules of behavior, fail in social-distancing տապալել սոցիալական հեռավորության պահպանման պահանջը and self-isolation ինքնամեկուսացում, and the opposite group those who neglect covid rules and are obedient followers of those rules, are meant as well; https://www.npr.org/2020/03/12/814824074/to-slow-the-spread-of-coronavirus-experts-turn-to-mitigation?t=1587998408210 https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/04/06/the-coronavirus-blizzard/#slide-1 https://publicinterest.org.uk/part-5-virus-beast-or-crime/ https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-pandemic-is-not-a-natural-disaster translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 141 • crime is a wild beast preying on (virus infecting) the city of addison հանցագործ վարակը կատաղի գազանի նման զոհեր է փնտրում. • the crime rate հանցագործ վարակը գործում է ահագնացող արագությամբ in the once peaceful city has steadily increased over the past 3 years. in fact, these days it seems that crime is lurking in վարակը ժանտախտի արագությամբ մուտք է գործում ամեն բակ ու տուն (plaguing) every neighborhood. • vaccine names (may include either proper nouns in the name, or their first syllable may include the stem vac+cine, and often may include numerals) are patterned in the nonwar domain. as a matter of fact, vaccine names show zero translatability although the hidden extra-linguistics sometimes contains a message, as for instance, sputnik light, giving a hint about the country of production – russia, the mild or light impact; with -vac – vaxin indicating the presence of the vaccinating agent; -shield emphasizing that in case to take this one it will defend you: astrazeneka, jenssen, sputnik light (rad26), coronavac, sinovac, sinopharm, moderna, pfizer, novavax, covovax, spikevax, covaxin, covishield, ad26.cov2.s; sputnik –v (gum covid vac, etc. b) war terms which often indicate the severe struggle/defence against the virus, may seem to exhibit obvious “aggression”. we all know that in this present new normal the struggle or even the fight is the only option for survival as in nation's battle against the coronavirus; ‘defend the city’ against coronavirus; coronavirus has invaded the world; when crime is described as a beast, we are more likely to want increased police forces. a vivid example of this is the sentence uttered by boris johnson not long ago (2022). he stated in a briefing that “this enemy can be deadly, but it is also beatable”. talking about war, cold war should not be neglected. for example, the noun containment which is generally used in combination with disease as in disease containment, or in containment to mitigation, although initially it was meant to define a policy of controlling an unfriendly country’s power or influence (some sources even mention the communists). https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/17/enemy-deadly-boris-johnson-invokes-wartime-language-coronavirus https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/control_2 https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/unfriendly https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/country https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/power_1 https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/influence_1 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 translation studies 142 the above-mentioned linguistic units, neologisms, cannot and should not be translated unless their function and communication aims are established, their contextual meanings are identified. our study reveals that these neologisms appear in social spheres and media not just to inform. they have clear-cut intentions to inform causing a huge impact on the community’s consciousness to inseminate fear (without vaccination they are going to suffer and die), commercial dependence (to buy corona items and stay-at-home clothes), obedience (to make people admit the unlimited power of the authorities who are very much concerned with the state of health of the inhabitants). thus, a careful observation of the covid discourse with metaphoric neologisms reveals that 1. covid discourse has become an inseparable part of the popular discourse, 2. covid discourse tends to display new functional-generic features tending towards a) the genre of official language (instructions, orders) and b) the language of advertising except one point community members hurry to buy the “advertised” items and services not to enjoy but out of panic and deep fear of the perspective of facing considerable fines or/and unhappy ending. the audience, in perennial fear of the upcoming deadly new set of viruses, follows the covid rules of behavior not risking to mix with other people because they may catch the disease or transmit the infection to their relatives with poor health, etc. so, the main function of covid discourse, to inform, is not purely realized without an impact on the audience’s, medical practitioners’ and patients’ minds and emotions. the influence is realized with the interplay of the language/speech functions expressiveness, persuasion, impact and interpretation (buying masks, expensive medicine and medical care), for directive purposes (to hastily vaccinate and get vaccinated because nobody wants to die). the hidden extra-linguistic message with its deep psychological peculiarities is responsible for the coinage of the covid neologisms which are the carriers of the message, thus shaping not only the structural peculiarities of the discourse, but also the translation and interpretation ones. finally, the discourse obtains a new psychologicalmanipulative role for commercial purposes in which neologisms prove to be text-building and style-forming elements. translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 143 conclusion 1. the postmodern linguistics can be identified as an expression of wittgenstein’s local language-games; 2. strategies and approaches have been established to help to describe, translate, interpret, conceptualize covid-19 issues. 3. not all metaphoric neologisms in english covid discourse can show the same level of translatability. 4. sometimes covid neologisms need to be interpreted and not translated. 5. the target language users do not commonly use the already created armenian conceptual equivalents. 6. there are cases when the international terms are used and not the armenian equivalent. 7. covid translation is marked by its creativity principle, especially due to technological advances and their influence on human behaviour. 8. the covid discourse influence is realized with the interplay of the language/speech functions expressiveness, persuasion, impact and interpretation (buying masks, expensive medicine and medical care), for directive purposes (to hastily vaccinate and get vaccinated because nobody wants to die). 9. the hidden extra-linguistic message with its deep psychological peculiarities is responsible for the coinage of the covid neologisms which are the carriers of the message, thus shaping not only the structural peculiarities of the discourse, but also the translation and interpretation ones. 10. the covid discourse obtains a new psychological-manipulative role for commercial purposes in which neologisms prove to be text-building and style-forming elements. 11. neologisms appear in social spheres and media not just to inform. they have clear-cut intentions to inform causing a huge impact on the community’s consciousness to inseminate fear (without vaccination they are going to suffer and die), commercial dependence (to buy corona items and stayat-home clothes, obedience (to make people admit the unlimited power of the authorities who are very much concerned with the state of health of the inhabitants). 12. a careful observation of the covid discourse with metaphoric neologisms reveals that armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 translation studies 144 • covid discourse has become an inseparable part of the popular discourse; • it tends to display new functional-generic features tending towards a) the genre of official language (instructions, orders, military) and b) mostly to the language of advertising except for one point community members hurry to buy the “advertised” items and services not to enjoy but out of panic and deep fear of facing considerable fines or unhappy ending. references baudrillard, j. 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(2022). znachenie metaforicheskogo neologizma v diskurse [the meaning of metaphoric neologism in https://guilsboroughschoolmedia.wordpress.com/2019/06/12/jean-baudrillard-postmodernism/ https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2021/jan/17/hate-wear-and-sadwear-fashion-new-names-for-covid-lockdown-dressing https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/lyotard.htm https://www.oocities.org/~tolk/lic/kreeng2.htmí https://www.oocities.org/~tolk/lic/kreeng2.htmí https://www.oocities.org/~tolk/lic/kreeng2.htmí translation studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 145 discourse]. in i.i klimov, m.e. konurbaev, & n.a. kozlovtsev (eds) pandemija-22: prepodavanie, analiz, diskurs v estestvennom mnogoobrazii inostrannyh jazykov (127-137pp.) moscow: ru science parianou, a., & kelandrias, p. (2002). special terms: conditions and requirements for their creation and development. proceedings of the international conference translating in the 21st century. aristotelio of thessaloniki, faculty of arts, 27-29 september. stein, r.a., (2011). super-spreaders in infectious diseases. international journal of infectious diseases, 15 (8), 510-513. https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.ijid.2010.06.020. փոխաբերական հիմքով covid նորաբանությունները եվ դրանց թարգմանության առանձնահատկությունները նաիրա գասպարյան մարիաննա օհանյան բժշկությունն այն մասնագիտացված ոլորտներից է, որտեղ մշտապես առաջանում են նորաբանություններ՝ կապված ոլորտում գիտական և տեխնիկական առաջընթացի, ինչպես նաև նոր հիվանդությունների և անծանոթ երևույթների ի հայտ գալու հետ: հայտնի է, որ բժշկագիտական թարգմանությունը բնութագրվում է որպես տեխնիկական և գիտական թարգմանության առանձին տեսակ, քանի որ բժշկությունն իր հարակից ոլորտներով զբաղվում է հանրային առողջության խնդիրներով: սույն աշխատանքն ուսումնասիրում է գլոբալ անգլերենի փոխաբերական հիմքով ստեղծված նորաբանությունների հայերեն վերարտադրության և թարգմանելիության խնդիրները covid խոսույթում: հետազոտությունը կենտրոնանում է նոր նորմալ իրականության շրջանում ստեղծված փոխաբերական նորաբանությունների և նրանց թարգմանական առանձնահատկությունների վրա, քանի որ փոխաբերական նորաբանությունները բժշկագիտական եզրույթների նոր շերտ են և կարող են հայտնվել գրավոր ու բանավոր խոսքում՝ լրատվության մեջ, պետական և հասարակական անձանց ելույթներում: բանալի բառեր՝ covid խոսույթ, փոխաբերական հիմքով նորաբանությունների թարգմանություն, գլոբալ բառապաշար, արդյունավետ հաղորդակցում և ներգործում: https://doi.org/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 8 contents linguistics anahit galstyan the language of power in political conflicts ............................................. 11 rafayel harutyunyan media-political discourse from a textological viewpoint ......................... 25 rafayel harutyunyan a qualitative-quantitative study of media political discourse from the perspective of manipulation ........................................................................ 42 astghik chubaryan, hayk danielyan a multimodal discourse analysis of sarcasm in english media and news articles ................................................................ 59 hayk danielyan sarcasm in social and commercial advertising: a pragmalinguistic perspective ................................................................................................... 72 marine yaghubyan effectiveness of the language of fast food advertisements ...................... 85 sona haroutyunian, amalia haroutyunian the linguopoetics of epithet in o. henry’s short stories .......................... 97 culture studies seda gasparyan, nvard yernjakyan british identity manifestations in the postmodern literary frame ........... 108 narine harutyunyan “new normal” of post-covid and post-modern world in the mirror of language .................................................................................... 122 translation studies naira gasparyan, marianna ohanyan metaphoric covid neologisms and their translation peculiarities .......... 132 linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 9 literature studies john a stotesbury the otherness of trees: factness and fiction in recent narratives of arboreal survival ....................................................................................... 146 armenological studies naira hambardzumyan, siranush parsadanyan typology of female characters in the novels of western armenian female authors ........................................................... 163 linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 11 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2022.18.2.011 the language of power in political conflicts anahit galstyan yerevan state university the language of power is well demonstrated in conflicting situations, especially when there is a conflict between different nations. conflict management is not always easy: sometimes conflicts are easily resolved, sometimes the two conflicting sides want different things demonstrating their power. power is a process of social interaction, and the relationship between the conflict participants affects the way they perceive and react to a conflict. are the participants in a hierarchical or equal relationship? does one tend to dominate the other? what role does power have in the discourse? this paper seeks to find answers to these questions and analyze the manifestation of power through language by examining media debates, political articles, interviews and speeches of political figures on armenian – azerbaijani and russian – ukrainian conflicts. keywords: armenian – azerbaijani conflict; russian – ukrainian conflict; power in language, political discourse. introduction much has been written regarding power in language. power is often manifested by words: a mighty instrument which can either do good or harm. “the wide range of language functions and its versatility combine to make language powerful. even so, this is only one part of what is in fact a dynamic relationship between language and power. the other part is that there is preexisting power behind language which it reveals and reflects, thereby transferring extra linguistic power to the communication context” (sh ng & deng, 2017). powerful individuals use language as a means to construct their power. this is especially obvious in conflicting situations. this paper aims at exploring the  anahit.galstyan@ysu.am this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 22.03.2022 revised: 18.04.2022 accepted: 30.04.2022 © the author(s) 2022 mailto:anahit.galstyan@ysu.am https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 12 language of different political figures, at revealing different language means used by them to demonstrate their power over others. the objectives of the research are: • to analyse the causes and consequences of political conflicts, the processes of their relationship, i.e. whether the conflicting participants are in an equal relationship or one side tends to dominate the other one, • to explore how national identities are linked to language and communication, and how the power and prestige of the conflicting sides in the world is manifested in the political discourse, • to study the language means used to create influence and demonstrate the power of the conflicting sides. the material for the research was collected from media: different articles, political speeches, debates were studied and analysed. the research was carried out from a sociolinguistic point to reveal the social, political and historical causes of manifestation of power, dominance and inequality in the political discourse of conflicting sides. language as a weapon in conflicts there is a great deal of pain and suffering in the world and many conflicts between groups, so language is considered to be a tool of conflict resolution. however, to most postmodernists language is primarily a “weapon” (hicks, 2013). language is not about being aware of the world, or about distinguishing the true from the false, or even about argument in the traditional sense of validity, soundness, and probability. accordingly, postmodernism recasts the nature of rhetoric: rhetoric is persuasion in the absence of cognition. this explains the harsh nature of much postmodern rhetoric. the regular attempts to silence opposing voices are all logical consequences of the postmodern epistemology of language (hicks, 2013). language thus conceived is a model of organization that is both powerful and finite (deeds, 1998). according to ruth wodak “in all available genres, the use of language and communication as a ‘social practice’ enables dialogues, negotiations, argument and discussion, learning and remembering, and other functions (wodak, 2012: 216-217). sik hung ng and fei dng in their article “language and power” have grouped the five language–power relationships into five boxes. however, they admit that the boundary between any two boxes is not meant “to be rigid but https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/postmodernism/v-1/sections/the-role-of-language https://tinyurl.com/bdz65jn5 linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 13 permeable.” for example, by revealing the power behind a message (box 1), a message can create influence (box 5). figure 1 power behind language and power of language in the first two boxes language is viewed as having no power of its own and yet can produce influence and control by revealing the power behind the speaker. language also reflects the collective/historical power of the language community that uses it. in the case of the power of language, it is believed that language has power of its own. this power allows a language to maintain the power behind it, unite or divide a nation, and create influence. “a charismatic speaker, for example, may, by the sheer force of oratory, buoy up people’s hopes, convert their hearts from hatred to forgiveness, or embolden them to take up arms for a cause”. hence, this research explores the power of language; i.e. the language means used by different political figures and communities to demonstrate their might and dominion over others. we have observed two recent conflicts between armenia and azerbaijan as well as between russia and ukraine. the first turned into a war on september 27, 2020; the other war started on the 24th of february in 2022. armenian – azerbaijani conflict started in 1988, when ethnic armenians living in their ancient homeland artsakh (nagorno-karabakh) demanded the transfer of what was then the nagorno-karabakh autonomous oblast (nkao) https://tinyurl.com/bp4udavv armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 14 from soviet azerbaijan to armenia. as the soviet union collapsed, tensions grew into an outright war. the first war ended in 1994 with the victory of armenians, whereas the second war started in 2020. armenian – azerbaijani conflict during the 44-day war azerbaijan conquered most lands of karabakh (artsakh). president ilham aliyev believes that he has settled the karabakh conflict by force, which is contrary to the principles of the organization for security and cooperation in europe (osce) minsk group, tasked with arriving at a permanent peace. the co-chairs of the minsk group — russia, france and the us — maintain that the issue of the status of karabakh has not been settled and further negotiations must take place. however, azerbaijanis think otherwise. before the second war started, the prime minister of armenia nikol pashinyan claimed that “artsakh is armenia, and that’s it.” to this the president of the republic of azerbaijan ilham aliyev responded on october 3, 2019 when he delivered a speech at the annual plenary session of the valdai international discussion club, sochi, russia: “well, firstly, it is, to put it mildly, a lie. karabakh by the whole world [with its] plains, uplands, is recognized as an integral part of azerbaijan. armenia itself does not recognize this illegal formation. karabakh is a historical, original azerbaijani land. so karabakh is azerbaijan and exclamation mark” (caspian news, 05/10/2019). as seen in his speech the president of azerbaijan seeks to be less aggressive and tries to be even polite by using the expression: “to put it mildly.” the things have changed since the seven-week war in 2020. president aliev claims that azerbaijan’s use of force has changed the facts on the ground and there is no territorial unit called nagorno-karabakh on the territory of azerbaijan. azerbaijan resolved this conflict alone, both on the battlefield and at the negotiating table. victory on the battlefield forced the enemy to raise the white flag and surrender, to sign the act of surrender. the document signed on november 10 is the act of armenia’s surrender. (the azeri times, 13/05/2021) linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 15 however, the armenian side states that the conflict has not been solved yet. the minsk group (usa, rf and france), the activities of which have become known as the minsk process, spearheads the osce's efforts to find a peaceful solution to the nagorno-karabakh conflict. the conflict has been resolved, and i believe that it is pointless to return to this issue. anyway, we have demonstrated this in the post-war period. firstly, if anyone believes that the nagorno-karabakh conflict is still not resolved, that’s their problem. secondly, this is a very dangerous position. if the conflict is not resolved, what should be the solution? does this mean that the november 10 agreement is no longer valid? this is how i understand it. in fact, on november 10, a document was signed to resolve the problem. if the conflict is not resolved, how can we talk about the opening of communications? if the conflict is not resolved, why do the deputy prime ministers of azerbaijan, armenia, and russia meet and agree? (the azeri times, 13/05/2021) actually rhetorical questions and repetitions are abundant in this speech, i.e. repetition of “if the conflict is not resolved” reinforces his idea on the issue. rhetorical questions are used to prove the truth of his words as well as to ensure the audience that the conflict has been resolved. in another excerpt the president’s speech is more aggressive: as for what some politicians say about the status of nagorno-karabakh – a non-existent entity. i spoke about this too, if someone wants to give status to the armenians living in our territory, i do not mind, let them choose a good place for them in their country. those places have long been captured by the armenian diaspora, so they should give them autonomy or independence there. but not in azerbaijan. this will not happen in azerbaijan, regardless of what anyone says. (the azeri times, 13/05/2021) in this excerpt the speechmaker uses the pronoun of the first person “i” to present his “self” and his own point of view, while emphasizing the “power” of https://azeritimes.com/2021/05/13/go-look-at-yourselves-in-the-mirror-president-aliyev-on-controversy-around-baku-war-trophy-park/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 16 what he says. according to conflict theorists, the power illustrated here is the ‘power over’, which corrupts and is a source of social conflict rather than integration (lenski, 1966; sassenberg et al., 2014). the president wants to express his power over armenians and he goes on speaking about them without mentioning the nation’s or the country’s name: just referring to them as ‘they’. his speech becomes more and more aggressive and he wants to see karabakh without armenians. therefore, i advise, in order not to anger us and not strain our relationship, not to make any statements either about the status of nagorno-karabakh or about the conflict. if they carry on making them, they will receive an answer”, said ilham aliyev. “they should not play with fire”. (the azeri times, 13/05/2021) in the same interview the president of azerbaijan declares: “both armenian opposition and those in power make statements about the return of shusha and hadrut.” his reaction to this statement is another illustration of azerbaijani military power over armenians: we are showing endurance so far. but they should not play with fire. they saw our fist and it is still clenched. no one can stand before us. if we notice the slightest danger, even the slightest, we will immediately destroy it. directly and locally. they know it. we have both strength, will, and determination. the fist is in its place. (the azeri times, 13/05/2021) the use of “we” and “us” instead of “i” and “my” is aimed at representing himself and the nation the azerbaijani leader belongs to. here the politician wants to express his solidarity with his nation, to act on their behalf and to protect their national interests. ilham aliyev’s speeches are full of threatening expressions, illustrating their military power over armenians: if we notice the slightest danger, even the slightest, we will immediately destroy it. directly and locally; the fist is in its place; they saw our fist and it is still clenched; no one can stand before us. (the azeri times, 13/05/2021) https://oxfordre.com/communication/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228613-e-436#acrefore-9780190228613-e-436-bibitem-0044 https://oxfordre.com/communication/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228613-e-436#acrefore-9780190228613-e-436-bibitem-0071 https://azeritimes.com/2021/05/13/go-look-at-yourselves-in-the-mirror-president-aliyev-on-controversy-around-baku-war-trophy-park/ linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 17 azerbaijan announces plans to build a transmission line through armenia. they want to connect nakhijevan to the rest of azerbaijan through the southern armenian province of syunik, which azerbaijanis call zangezur. the armenian side, however, has repeatedly denied being involved in negotiations for the provision of a corridor to azerbaijan, stressing that they have only agreed to unblock transport communications in the region. the president of azerbaijan says: “the zangezur corridor” is not only a railway, but a road and an air route.” “we will fulfill the task of implementing the zangezur corridor, whether armenia wants it or not. if armenia wants, it can be solved simply, if it does not want, we will solve it by force. i said before the war and during the war that they must leave our land of their own free will, or we will throw them out. and so it happened. the same will happen with the zangezur corridor. the azerbaijani people will return to the captured zangezur after 101 years,” aliyev said. “zangezur corridor should be opened and will be opened”, he added. (the azeri times, 13/05/2021) armenophobia and a policy of hatred is obvious in aliyev’s speeches. in the above excerpt the speaker uses the modal verbs must (must leave) and should (should be opened) to show that it is necessary and very important for them to fulfill their plans in the nearest future. the use of the future tense form with “will” such as: we will solve it, we will throw them out, the same will happen, will return, will be opened, expresses the politician’s intentions to capture ancient armenian province syunik (which together with sevan and yerevan were declared as azerbaijanis lands by their leader). he is certain to take the lands by force and has already planned his actions. aliyev`s statement on the zangezur corridor and threats against the armenian population prove azerbaijanis genocidal policy towards armenians. russian – ukrainian conflict another ongoing and protracted conflict between russia and ukraine had started in february 2014 and turned into a disastrous war on february 24, 2022. relations between the two countries have been hostile since 2014 following the ukrainian revolution of dignity. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/necessary https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/important https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/future https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/revolution_of_dignity armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 18 in 2014 ukraine's elected president viktor yanukovych and his supporters were removed from power in response to his refusal to sign a political association and free-trade agreement with the eu that enjoyed majority support in ukraine's parliament. ukraine's post-revolutionary government wished to join both the eu and nato in nearest future, rather than continue to play the delicate diplomatic game of balancing its own economic and security interests with those of russia, the eu, and nato member states. ukraine's becoming a member of nato could restrict russia's access to the black sea. these two states were finally made enemies after russia's annexation of crimea and the creation of the donetsk people's republic and the luhansk people's republic in areas of eastern ukraine where there is an ethnic russian majority. in 2019, amendments were made to the constitution of ukraine, which enshrined the irreversibility of the country's strategic course towards eu and nato membership. throughout 2021 and 2022, a russian military buildup on the border of ukraine escalated tensions between the two countries and strained their bilateral relations bringing to a war. the analysis of the research material reveals that, in fact, the conflict is mainly between two main forces: the reality is that the world's two top nuclear powers are dueling out their most tense test of wills since the fall of the soviet union. a russian invasion of ukraine could trigger the biggest clash of regular conventional armies in europe since world war ii. at stake for americans are the credibility of the west, perceptions of us global power and the possibility of secondary consequences that hit hard at home, for instance, a crisis-fueled spike in energy prices. (cnnpolitics, 21/01/2022) another media source, “independent”, interprets this conflict as follows: president joe biden, backed by the full symbolic power of the western alliance, is locked in a showdown with russian president vladimir putin, who is using ukraine as a hostage to try to force the us to renegotiate the settled outcome of the cold war. neither man is blinking. to do so https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/viktor_yanukovych https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/black_sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/donetsk_people%27s_republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/luhansk_people%27s_republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/luhansk_people%27s_republic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/russians_in_ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/russians_in_ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/constitution_of_ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021%e2%80%932022_russo-ukrainian_crisis https://tinyurl.com/yckvzfdd https://www.cnn.com/specials/europe/ukraine https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/21/politics/joe-biden-vladimir-putin-us-russia-ukraine/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/20/politics/biden-russia-putin-ukraine-incursion/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/20/europe/ukraine-russia-tensions-explainer-cmd-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/20/europe/ukraine-russia-tensions-explainer-cmd-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/06/opinions/vladimir-putin-russia-ukraine-signals-ghitis/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/06/opinions/vladimir-putin-russia-ukraine-signals-ghitis/index.html linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 19 may be unfeasible, given the huge political stakes both have wagered. (independent, 11/03/2022) they accuse each other of using ukraine to fulfill their political demands. in the excerpt above american authors of the article claim that “russian president vladimir putin is using ukraine as a hostage“, whereas in another article vladimir putin warns that “the west is using ukraine as “a theater of potential warfare” against russia” (the washington post, 22/02/2022). the president of russia uses these metaphorical expressions to describe ukraine as “a puppet state of the west” and warns that the country can develop its own nuclear weapons, calling this a “real threat” that the west might help kyiv to achieve. “ukraine”, he said, was “a colony with puppets at its helm,” where russian speakers were oppressed” (the washington post, 22/02/2022). it is worth mentioning here that theatricality is one of the main features of political discourse. theatricality of a political discourse is connected with the fact that one of the parties of communication the people carries out not a role of the direct addressee, but the observer addressee who perceives the current political events as the certain performance played for them with a fascinating plot and the unpredictable end (kenzhekanova, 2015). having this definition in mind, we can claim that vladimir putin’s qualifications “a theater of potential warfare”, “a colony with puppets at its helm,” come to prove his firm belief that the ukrainians and their authorities are participating in a play staged by the us against the russians. as the development of events is not in favor of russians, their vocabulary becomes more and more aggressive day by day. different points of view of the west and russia on the issue deepen the conflict. western countries considered unacceptable a number of moscow's demands; mainly the refusal of the nato defense alliance to admit ukraine as a member, and the reduction of their military presence in eastern europe. russians feel that the level of threat for their country is becoming “greater and greater” as putin states. he warns: russia has every right to take countermeasures to enhance our security, and that’s how we plan to act. (the washington post, 22/02/2022) “you want decommunization? that completely works for us. we are prepared to show what real decommunization means for ukraine”, vladimir putin said, appearing to suggest that he might seek to dismantle the country. https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/20/europe/ukraine-russia-tensions-explainer-cmd-intl/index.html armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 20 “nato completely ignores our protests,” he added, alluding to his demand for a guarantee that ukraine never be allowed to join the transatlantic alliance. “they spit on them and do whatever they want” (the washington post, 22/02/2022). in this excerpt putin’s harsh words are also a kind of manifestation of his power. the latter is recognized by the other conflicting side and this is the reason that they want to prove russia’s being a threat to humanity. “we face a blatant attempt to overwrite the rules of the international order,” the president of the european commission von der leyen said. “this is what the kremlin policies mean in practice. kremlin policy is to ‘install fear’”. the speaker wants to illustrate the evilness and aggression of the opposing side by using the attribute blatant (attempt) which shows that everything is done or said openly and unashamedly by putin and his representatives and assures the audience that russians ‘install fear’. in another article, the author anthony faiola uses the expression ‘killer frost’: on the fertile plains of ukraine, the resurgent echoes of a cold war with russia is in danger of becoming a ‘killer frost’. (the washington post, 07/01/2022) killer frost is a name used by several female supervillains and superheroes appearing in comic books published by dc comics: crystal frost, louise lincoln, and caitlin snow. each different individual in the dc universe assuming the killer frost persona usually has some connection to the superhero firestorm. however, the important point to mention is the fact that according to the tale (first appearing in firestorm #3, june 1978), the heroine began her murderous crusade against men and clashed with firestorm on many occasions. killer frost eventually died after she absorbed too much energy from firestorm. perhaps, the author wants to present the horrible scenario of the conflict with this metaphorical expression. another politician, stoltenberg notices: “moscow is attempting to roll back history and recreate its spheres of influence”, and he calls on russia to ‘step back from the brink’ warning that a new dangerous situation is about to begin. “it is not too late for russia to change course, to step back from the brink, stop preparing for war and to start working for a peaceful resolution”, stoltenberg said. https://tinyurl.com/35y7zmss https://www.msn.com/en-xl/europe/europe-top-stories/what-putin-wants-in-ukraine/ar-aaswv0p https://tinyurl.com/yckavv2s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/firestorm_(comics) https://tinyurl.com/35y7zmss linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 21 the use of the infinitive in this context can be considered as a kind of warning for russians to avoid a devastating conflict in ukraine. however, the political figure does not use modal words like would, should, must, etc. and seeks to be polite so as not to complicate the situation. as already mentioned, the use of modal verbs and modal expressions by politicians has the intention of coercion and command. their application makes the speech of politicians more demanding and aggressive: european commission president ursula von der leyen vօwed that europe and its partners will express their solidarity with ukraine: “we can impose high costs and severe consequences on moscow's economic interests. the kremlin's strange thinking that comes straight out of a dark past may cost russia a prosperous future”. calling an invasion “tragic and futile”, the uk prime minister said of vladimir putin: “can we allow him to believe that he would be able to take some smaller slice of ukraine?” (independent, 25/01/2022). another linguistic strategy which politicians often use in an argument is the employment of conditionals. our survey reveals that the conflicting sides mainly use type 1 conditionals, when both a possible condition and its probable result are mentioned. so if the kremlin aims to have less nato on its borders, it will only get more nato in case of a war in ukraine,said the nato chief. (oelofse, 19/02/2022) in this statement the nato chief jens stoltenberg is trying to signal to russia that they are not going to meet putin’s demands. moreover, they will send more forces to ukraine and its bordering countries. the use of the simple present tense in the conditional clause and simple future tense in the main clause represents possible future occurrences of confrontation between the nato countries and russia. the conditional sentence is also used to express the speaker’s firm and frustrated tone and illustrate the nato’s consistent and unwavering policy towards kremlin. in addition, the metonymic use of kremlin instead of russia and russian government is also a device to intensify his intentions towards the other conflicting side, to prove that the main player on the political stage is putin and his surrounding, whose seat is in kremlin. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 22 conclusion our survey of different articles, political speeches, debates collected from mass media enabled us to understand the main causes and consequences of political conflicts which in both cases (armenian – azerbaijani; russian – ukrainian) refer to national interest and national identities of all conflicting sides as well as their future development and security. we noticed the manifestation of power by words and deeds from all conflicting sides. azerbaijani leader’s discourse was aimed at illustrating his power over armenians. in aforementioned excerpts he revealed his genocidal policy towards armenians. in russian – ukrainian conflict the most powerful leaders of the world were involved. the analyses of their speeches led us to the conclusion that conflicting sides were trying to illustrate their power over each other. the study of the language of conflicting politicians from different linguistic perspectives revealed several linguistic strategies which were used by them to illustrate their power over the others. the latter was first of all expressed by the use of aggressive vocabulary in their speeches. the analysis also exposed an emphasis on strategic use of metaphors, metonymies. the choice of the pronouns and the use of conditional sentences gave extra strength to the words of politicians. references hicks, s. 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(2021, april 21). armenia-today. retrieved january 5, 2022. russia–ukraine relations. in wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. retrieved march 19, 2022. ukraine conflict: what is nato and how has it responded to russia's invasion? bbc. retrieved march 1, 2022, ուժի լեզուն քաղաքական հակամարտություններում անահիտ գալստյան լեզվի ուժը դրսևորվում է, հատկապես, տարբեր ազգերի միջև եղած հակամարտությունների ընթացքում։ երբեմն դրանք կառավարելի են, երբեմն էլ այդ հակամարտություններն անլուծելի են թվում, քանզի յուրաքանչյուր հակամարտող կողմ առաջ է քաշում իր տեսակետը՝ խոսելով ուժի դիրքերից։ արդյո՞ք հակամարտող կողմերից մեկը հակված է դրսևորել իր գերակայությունը մյուսի նկատմամբ։ ինչպե՞ս է քաղաքական դիսկուրսում արտահայտվում մի հակամարտող կողմի ռազմաքաղաքական առավելությունը մյուսի նկատմամբ։ հոդվածում փորձ է արվում պատասխանել վերը նշված, ինչպես նաև մի շարք այլ հարցերի։ ուսումնասիրության լեզվական նյութը հայադրբեջանական և ռուս-ուկրաինական հակամարտությունների վերաբերյալ քաղաքական գործիչների բանավեճերն են, հարցազրույցները, ելույթները, քաղաքական հոդվածները։ քաղաքական դիսկուրսում կիրառվող լեզվական միջոցների ուսումնասիրությունը լեզվաբանական տարբեր տեսանկյուններից բացահայտում է մի քանի ռազմավարություն՝ ագրեսիվ բառապաշարը, դերանունների ընտրությունը, պայմանական նախադասությունների, ինչպես նաև փոխաբերությունների, փոխանունների և այլ ոճաբանական հնարների լայն կիրառությունը։ բանալի բառեր` հայ-ադրբեջանական հակամարտություն, ռուսուկրաինական հակամարտություն, ռազմաքաղաքական ուժի դրսևորումը լեզվում, քաղաքական դիսկուրս: from%20https:/www.msn.com/en-xl/europe/top-stories/uk-troops-will-be-sent-to-protect-eastern-europe-if-russia-invades-ukraine-boris-johnson-says/ar-aat7zi1?ocid=msedgntp from%20https:/www.msn.com/en-xl/europe/top-stories/uk-troops-will-be-sent-to-protect-eastern-europe-if-russia-invades-ukraine-boris-johnson-says/ar-aat7zi1?ocid=msedgntp https://www.msn.com/en-xl/europe/top-stories/nato-s-jens-stoltenberg-urges-russia-to-step-back-from-the-brink/ar-aau43xa?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=u531 https://www.msn.com/en-xl/europe/top-stories/nato-s-jens-stoltenberg-urges-russia-to-step-back-from-the-brink/ar-aau43xa?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=u531 https://armenia-today.com/8274-ra-ombudsman-aliyev-s-statement-on-the-zangezur-corridor-and-threats-against-the-armenian-population-prove-baku-s-genocidal-policy-towards-armenians.html https://armenia-today.com/8274-ra-ombudsman-aliyev-s-statement-on-the-zangezur-corridor-and-threats-against-the-armenian-population-prove-baku-s-genocidal-policy-towards-armenians.html https://armenia-today.com/8274-ra-ombudsman-aliyev-s-statement-on-the-zangezur-corridor-and-threats-against-the-armenian-population-prove-baku-s-genocidal-policy-towards-armenians.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/russia%e2%80%93ukraine_relations https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-18023383 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-18023383 armenian folia anglistika – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english (since 2005) and yerevan state university (since 2015) aims at fostering research of the english language, literature and culture linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 43 on modelling of the concept “crime” via autointertextuality (based on r. dahl’s writing style) anahit makaryan  shogher harutyunyan ** yerevan brusov state university the present article engages with multidimensional analysis of autointertextuality, putting forward a cognitive approach based on v. evans’ cognitive model and lexical concepts (lccm) theory. taking into consideration a variety of viewpoints introduced in the current article, reference is made to traditional and most recent approaches provided by both russian and european scholars for the purpose of analyzing intertextuality from the cognitive point of view, putting the imperative on the mental processes occurring in the literary text. the current article explores roald dahl’s perception of the concept of “crime” through the prism of cognitive intertextuality. the subject matter of the article is the comprehensive analysis of the techniques employed in the literary text which can serve as prerequisites for the study of autointertextual relations. the topicality is determined by the current tendency of cognitive linguistics to interpret the literary text through the lens of semantic intertextual frames. eventually, our research is devoted to the study of the concept of “crime” in r. dahl’s stories in the view of intertextual domain with reference to autointertextuality. keywords: cognitive intertextuality, autointertextuality, semantic intertextual frame, concept of “crime”, cognitive models, author’s world picture. introduction the aim of the current article is to study the author’s individual worldview and its linguo-stylistic means of representation in autointertextual domain with a view to revealing r. dahl’s individual perception and verbal representation of the concept of “crime” via semantic intertextual frames and their role in the formation of intertextual links. the focus of our interest is also the means of  makaryananahit@mail.ru ** shogher84@yahoo.com this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 18.08.2022 revised: 02.09.2022 accepted: 09.09.2022 © the author(s) 2023 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2023.19.1.043 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 linguistics 44 disclosing the author’s perception of “crime” through linguo-stylistic and linguopoetic methods of analysis. it stands to reason that intertextuality is a notion that was first encountered in julia kristeva’s writings in the 1960s and remains significant in linguistics. kristeva claims that any text is actually a “permutation of texts” in which “several utterances, taken from other texts, intersect and neutralize one another” (kristeva, 1980, p. 36). accordingly, allen states that “meaning becomes something that exists between the text and all the other texts to which it refers, moving out from the independent text into a network of textual relations” (allen, 2000, p. 16). regarding intertextuality from the cognitive point of view, m. panagiotidou proposes that “the phenomenon of intertextuality arises from the construction of intertextual frames, on online processing construction containing two types of information, intertextual knowledge and textual information” (panagiotidou, 2010, p. 2). the term “intertextual frame” was first used by u. eco in order to describe potential literary 'topoi' or narrative schemes that readers pick up from the storage of their intertextual competence bringing to mind the notion of schema. eco defines frames as “cognitive knowledge representations about the “world”, which enable us to perform such basic cognitive acts as perception, language comprehension and actions (eco, 1979, p. 21). hence, the knowledge encoded in a literary text is represented by means of intertextual frames which help the reader decode and interpret the text. according to panagiotidou, intertextual frames are created while readers go through a text and come across lexical items or structures that cue up intertextual knowledge. the semantic intertextual frame is modelled when an individual reader encompasses the knowledge about the occurrences of the same lexical items or cognitive models in different literary texts (panagiotidou, 2010, p.5). m. panagiotidou’s approach to the semantic intertextual frames is closely related to v. evans’ lccm theory, according to which meaning construction is based on two theoretical constructs: lexical concepts and cognitive models (evans, 2006). cognitive models refer to a coherent body of knowledge of any kind (either things or events) and to the potential for simulations which may arise from specific bodies of knowledge. these coherent bodies of knowledge consist of individual frames or related frames. their crucial characteristic is that linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 45 they can be structured into primary and secondary cognitive models. primary cognitive models are those which can be accessed directly via a lexical concept. on the other hand, secondary cognitive models are accessed directly via primary cognitive models and thus, indirectly via lexical concepts (evans, as cited in panagiotidou, 2009). moreover, m. panagiotidou insists that once the cognitive model is accessed, the intertextual link between the two texts is created and the semantic intertextual frame is formed (panagiotidou, 2010, p. 5). consequently, taking into account these theories, our research is based on the study of r. dahl’s short stories through the lens of the intertextual domain with reference to autointertextuality. according to recent approaches in linguistics, intertextual relations found in different texts, generated by the same author are described as autointertextuality (philipova, 2013). a. philipova assumes that autointertextuality carries out the function of meaning-making and is outlined as a pragmatically actualized instrument of revealing author’s individual style (philipova, 2013, p. 6). our concern in this article is to disclose roald dahl’s individual style, who, being a famous british writer, depicts women as more independent, prudent and decisive in times of trouble. in dahl’s short stories men are not portrayed as positively as women and thus lead to the deduction that there is an issue of feminism imbued in the structure and the choice of words in dahl’s stories (tanusy, 2018, p. 159). dahl assumes that throughout the years, women have been overpowered, oppressed and silenced. the act of “angel of the house” was the person that women adopted while, behind closed doors, they endured unjust and cruel treatments (abdallah, 2021). thus, r. dahl is known for his feminist approach, raising the problem of women’s oppression in the society because of their lack of rights, freedom and power. the authorial portrayal of the concept of “crime” via semantic intertextual frames the focus of our interest in this article is the investigation of autointertextual techniques applied by dahl in the short stories “lamb to the slaughter” and “the way up to heaven”. it is worth mentioning that dahl resorts to armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 linguistics 46 autointertextual techniques through utilizing the same literary devices in depicting the characters as well as applying the mechanisms of transformation in the plot development. to illustrate the above-mentioned, we find it important to start with the interpretation of the titles of the stories in question and disclose the implied meanings of biblical allusions employed by the author. the title “lamb to the slaughter” is a biblical allusion which refers to a person who goes innocently and helplessly into a life-threatening or dangerous situation (“the american heritage idioms dictionary”, 2002). however, in the short story “lamb to the slaughter”, the title conveys multiple layers of meaning. on the one hand, the leg of lamb serves mary as a weapon for slaughtering her husband, on the other hand, mary can be interpreted as a victim of psychological abuse due to the betrayal and cruel treatment on the part of her husband patrick who, in turn, can be interpreted as a victim of circumstance. it is interesting to note that the title of dahl’s short story “the way up to heaven” is also related to the bible. by employing the word “heaven” in the title, the author implies two contrasting meanings: for mrs. foster, the way up to heaven is heading for paris and living with her daughter and grandchildren, thus gaining the opportunity to get freedom, while, for mr. foster, the way up to heaven signifies his death, implying punishment for his cruel treatment. figure 1 by applying lccm theory, we observe that lexical items “lamb” and “heaven” afford access to the above-mentioned cognitive models (victim of psychological abuse vs victim of circumstance and weapon of death, freedom vs death). evidently, in the titles of both stories, the concept of crime is linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 47 represented indirectly through the prism of the stylistic device of irony. the latter makes it possible for the reader to probe deeper into the literary texts and decode the author’s individual perception of the concepts of “crime and punishment”. according to panagiotidou, a direct access route to cognitive models that foster intertextual meaning can be provided by literary figures (panagiotidou, 2010, p. 5). an autointertextual link between dahl’s two stories is established by the incorporation of two female characters (mary malone and mrs. foster) and their husbands (patrick and mr. foster). with the intention of creating the image of loyal, loving and modest wives, in both stories dahl employs stylistic devices such as epithets “smiling air, curiously tranquil, translucent quality, soft mouth, placid look”, metaphor and simile “she loved to luxuriate in the presence of this man, and to feel almost as a sunbather feels the sun” in “lamb to the slaughter”. the epithets “loving wife, modest, loyal woman” in “the way up to heaven” are of paramount importance for the further two-dimensional portrayal of the females’ personalities. mary’s portrayal there was a slow smiling air about her, and about everything she did. the drop of a head as she bent over her sewing was curiously tranquil. her skin – for this was her sixth month with the child – had acquired a wonderful translucent quality, the mouth was soft, and the eyes, with their new placid look, seemed larger and darker than before…. she loved to luxuriate in the presence of this man, and to feel almost as a sunbather feels the sun – that warm male glow that came out of him to her when they were alone together. (lamb to the slaughter, p. 1) mrs. foster’s portrayal mrs. foster was and always had been a good and loving wife. for over thirty years, she had served him loyally and well … even she, a very modest woman, was aware of it …(the way up to heaven, p. 1) armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 linguistics 48 to highlight the sharp contrast between the wives’ warm attitudes to their husbands and the husbands’ cold and commanding tones, dahl employs the stylistic device of antithesis. applying a feminist approach to the utterance, dahl provides some detailed evidence of patrick’s and mr. foster’s brutality, cruelty, pressure and deliberate torture in treating their wives. patrick’s commanding attitude this is going to be a bit of a shock to you … i know it’s kind of a bad time to be telling you… but there needn’t really be any fuss… it wouldn’t be very good for my job. (lamb to the slaughter, p. 2, 3) mr. foster’s cruel, despotic nature … it was hard to believe he wasn’t purposely inflicting a nasty private little torture of his own on the unhappy lady. … she would never dare to call out and tell him to hurry. he had disciplined her too well for that. … he could drive her nearly into hysterics. … it seemed almost as though he had wanted to miss the train simply in order to intensify the poor woman’s suffering. (the way up to heaven, p. 1) in the above-given passage, the author demonstrates the husband’s spiritual oppression on mary who is in her sixth month of pregnancy. patrick’s selfishness and inhuman attitude towards his wife are illustrated in the story by his egocentric attitude, rigid and self-obsessed manners as well as his infidelity. with the purpose of revealing mr. foster’s despotic nature, dahl employs such emotively charged words as “torment” and “torture”. meanwhile, mrs. foster’s lack of authority and absence of any rights are verbalized by the modal verb “dare” and the expressions “he had disciplined her well”, “he could drive her nearly into hysterics”, “to intensify the poor woman’s suffering”. actually, the use of the epithets “unhappy lady, poor woman” discloses the author’s feminist biased attitude to the woman, who is devoid of freedom, making it possible for the reader to sympathize with the tragedy of the woman. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 49 figure 2 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 linguistics 50 as can be seen from figure 2, the semantic autointertextual link between dahl’s two stories is firmly established and can be illustrated in the following way. mary malone/mrs. foster and patrick/mr. foster are literary figures who provide access to the primary cognitive model wife/husband, engendering access to such secondary cognitive models as tenderness/devotion/loyalty for female characters and cruelty/brutality/deliberate torture for male characters. moreover, of special interest in both stories is the climax which is realized through the plot twist and character transformation. it is due to the vicious treatment of their husbands that both female characters undergo metamorphosis and transfer from humble, respectful and submissive women to individuals with a tone of authority capable of making sound judgments, demonstrating strong will and prudence. figure 3 it is worth mentioning that the author, sticking to the feminist approach, introduces into the narration the notion of temporary insanity which contributes to underscoring the fact that both mary malone and mrs. foster performed spontaneous and mechanical actions, being in the state of trance and losing the link with the reality. thus, zooming deeper into the concept of “crime”, dahl poses the problem of unforeseen, exceptional circumstances which cloud people’s judgments and provoke them into committing ungovernable actions due to the harsh reality too hard for them to tolerate. in his two stories, dahl invents different life situations with mitigating circumstances, extenuating guilt with the help of which the author succeeds in generating dislike for patrick and mr. foster and empathy for mary and mrs. foster to achieve his aim, dahl utilizes the syntactical stylistic device of asyndeton to highlight mary’s and mrs. foster’s subconscious, impulsive and automatic actions. everything was automatic now – down the steps to the cellar, the light switch, the deep freeze, the hand now it was right up against the door, and for still another few seconds she remained in that position, head up, humble, respectful, submissive women self-confident, prudent, authoritative linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 51 inside the cabinet taking hold of the first object it met. a leg of lamb. (lamb to the slaughter, p. 3) ear to the door, hand on key …(the way up to heaven, p. 7) to emphasize his attitude toward the current situation that resulted in mary’s subconscious aggressive behavior, the author employs the metaphorical epithet “dazed horror”, implying the pain that was too strong for a loving wife to bear. and he told her. it didn’t take long, four or five minutes at most, and she was very still through it all, watching him with a kind of dazed horror as he went further and further away from her with each word (lamb to the slaughter, p. 3). furthermore, to make his feminist approach more convincing, dahl goes on with the hypothesis of temporary insanity, underscoring the fact that mary’s and mrs. foster’s actions cannot be considered a premeditated crime. she sat down before the mirror, tidied her hair, touched up her lips and face. she tried a smile. it came out rather peculiar. she tried again. (lamb to the slaughter, p. 3) the way she was standing there, with her head in the air and the body so tense, it seemed as though she were listening for the repetition of some sound that she had heard a moment before from a place far away inside the house. yes – quite obviously she was listening. her whole attitude was a listening one… so it seemed, to hear and to analyze these sounds that were coming faintly from this place deep within the house. (the way up to heaven, p. 7) of considerable significance is the fact that dahl resorts to the stylistic device of metonymy to allow the reader to take a closer look at mary’s shocked emotional state. the author wants to emphasize the transformation the character underwent, depicting the scene after the murder in the state of temporary insanity as if mary were going to play a new role, rehearsing the scenario she invented herself. “she touched her lips” signifies her attempts to reproduce the armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 linguistics 52 story created in her mind and “her face” implies her attempts to wear a mourning expression she had to express to display the reality in the way she wanted to. consequently, she disguises her genuine emotions for the sake of realizing her authentic intentions to take up a decisive posture so that she could support her child. in “the way up to heaven”, the use of the stylistic device of metonymy “the repetition of some sound”, “to hear and to analyze these sounds” is employed by the author, implying the events that were going on inside the house. the old man was stuck in the elevator and there was no one in the house to help him. in fact, the old woman was facing the dilemma – to provide freedom for her future life with her daughter and grandchildren by letting her husband die in the elevator or go on leading a depressing life with her dominant, despotic husband. the violence of the crash, the noise, the small table overturning, helped bring her out of the shock …. it was extraordinary, now, how clear her mind became all of a sudden (lamb to the slaughter, p. 3). then, all at once, she (mrs. foster) sprang to life again. the chauffeur, had he been watching her closely, might have noticed that her face had turned absolutely white and that the whole expression had suddenly altered. there was no longer that rather soft and silly look. a peculiar hardness had settled itself upon the features. the littlemouth, usually so flabby, was now tight and thin, the eyes were bright, and the voice, when she spoke, carried a new note of authority (the way up to heaven, p. 8). the expressions “bring her out of the shock”, “her mind became clear all of a sudden” “then, all at once, she (mrs. foster) sprang to life again” are utilized by the author with a view to having a strong impact on the reader, thus indicating the transition of women’s actions from instinctive, automatic to fully realized ones, conscious and well-thought-out. mrs. foster finally gains authority, shifts into a more determined, sensible woman capable of providing enough alibi for herself. the use of the stylistic device of metaphor “a peculiar linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 53 hardness had settled itself upon the features”, “the voice carried a new note of authority” along with the contrasting epithets “soft and silly look”, “the little mouth, usually so flabby, was now tight and thin, the eyes were bright” contribute to testifying her transfer. figure 4 interestingly enough, the women’s complete lack of emotions transforms into a rational state of mind capable of analyzing the situation and finding sensible solutions. “please,” she begged. “please eat it (lamb) …. it’d be a favor to me if you’d eat it up. then you can go on with your work again afterwards” (lamb to the slaughter, p. 7). and in the other room, mary maloney began to giggle (lamb to the slaughter, p. 8). she walked quickly across the hall and disappeared for a moment around the corner to the left, at the back. there was something deliberate and purposeful about this action; she had the air of a woman who is off to investigate a rumor or to confirm a suspicion. and when she returned a few seconds later, there was a little glimmer of satisfaction on her face (the way up to heaven, p. 9). the closing lines in “lamb to the slaughter” are indicative of mary’s acute senses and decisionmaking ability. the author introduces into the narration the stylistic device of irony with the purpose of making the situation ridiculous by begging the sergeants to eat up the lamb which was the weapon of murder they were looking for. in addition, irony is expressed by using the verb “to giggle”. the latter possesses the connotation of triumph over the professional officers who regarded the leg of lamb not as a weapon of murder but just as a tasty dish and enhances the humorous effect of irony. like in “lamb to the slaughter”, in “the way up to heaven” dahl employs the stylistic device of irony which is actualized by the exaggerated use soft and silly look flabby mouth the eyes were bright tight and thin mouth armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 linguistics 54 of legal terms regarding such expressions as “to investigate a rumor”, “to confirm a suspicion”. to highlight the effect of irony, the author uses the stylistic device of verbal gradation “a little glimmer of satisfaction”. conclusion summing up our investigation, we come to the conclusion that roald dahl demonstrates a critical attitude toward the power of men who display tyranny towards women. being an advocate of women, he highlights the power of women who can display determination, common sense, sound judgments and strong will. any act of violence on the part of the characters (patrick, mr. foster) recoils on them and they become victims of their own actions. thus, dahl does not remain impartial toward the characters who are unable to bear the cruelty and injustice of reality. their reaction is reflected in their defensive posture against the brutality of their husbands which is too hard for them to bear. their emotional state of mind results in falling into a state of trance and committing unconscious, automatic actions leading to the death of their husbands. according to the issues of morality and its relatedness to law, there are some codes of law according to which unconsciousness or automatism can be a defense. almost all crimes require both “guilty mind” and “guilty act”. without either, there is typically no offense. that is why many courts recognize unconsciousness as a defense to criminal charges (schwartzbach, 2016). it can be inferred from the above-mentioned that “guilty mind” and “guilty act” are obligatory prerequisites of criteria by which the notion of crime is determined. the analysis reveals that none of them is evident in the stories in question. finally, our investigation made it possible to yield to the conclusion that autointertextual chaining functions in two different levels: the first one is referring to the linking of ideas between two literary texts, and the second one is relating to the stylistic devices which serve as triggers for the reader in creating associations. references abdallah, e. (2021) from feminine to fatal: a feminist approach to roald dahl’s “lamb to the slaughter”. retrieved june 15, 2022. allen, g. (2000) intertextuality. london: routledge. https://www.byarcadia.org/post/from-feminine-to-fatal-a-feminist-approach-to-roald-dahl-s-lamb-to-the-slaughter https://www.byarcadia.org/post/from-feminine-to-fatal-a-feminist-approach-to-roald-dahl-s-lamb-to-the-slaughter linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 55 eco, u. (1979). the role of the reader: explorations in the semiotics of texts. bloomington: indiana university press. evans, v. (2006). lexical concepts, cognitive models and meaningconstruction. cognitive linguistics 17(4), 491-534. https://doi.org/10.1515/cog.2006.016 evans, v. (2009). how words mean: lexical concepts, cognitive models and meaning construction. new york: oxford university press. filippova, a. k. (2013). avtointertekstualnost kak sostavljajushaja kontseptualno-jazikovoj kartini mira pisatelja (na materiale fiktsianalnikh i nefiktsianalnikh tekstov tomasa manna) [autointertextuality as a component of the writer's conceptual and linguistic picture of the world: based on the fictional and non-fictional texts of thomas mann] (thesis abstract) (in russian) retrieved april 09, 2022. kristeva, j. (1980). desire in language: a semiotic approach to literature and art (t. gora, a. & a. jardine trans.). new york: columbia university press, retrieved march 12, 2022. panagiotidou, m. e. (2010). mapping intertextuality: towards a cognitive model. in pala ed. international conference: the language of landscapes. university of genoa. poetics and linguistics association, retrieved march 29, 2022. schwartzbach, m. (2016). unconsciousness as a defense to criminal charges. retrieved june 02, 2022. tanusy, j. (2018). feminism in roald dahl’s ‘lamb to the slaughter’: a semiotic analysis. advances in social science, education and humanities research, 166, 159-163. whitaker, r. (2019). what and where is heaven? the answers are at the heart of the easter story. in the conversation () retrieved march 12, 2022. sources of data dahl, r. lamb to the slaughter. retrieved february 18, 2022. dahl, r. the way up to heaven. retrieved february 18, 2022. dictionaries and encyclopedias lamb to the slaughter. (n.d.) in american heritage idioms dictionary. retrieved february 05, 2022. https://www.dissercat.com/content/avtointertekstualnost-kak-sostavlyayushchaya-kontseptualno-yazykovoi-kartiny-mira-pisatelya https://www.dissercat.com/content/avtointertekstualnost-kak-sostavlyayushchaya-kontseptualno-yazykovoi-kartiny-mira-pisatelya https://www.dissercat.com/content/avtointertekstualnost-kak-sostavlyayushchaya-kontseptualno-yazykovoi-kartiny-mira-pisatelya https://www.dissercat.com/content/avtointertekstualnost-kak-sostavlyayushchaya-kontseptualno-yazykovoi-kartiny-mira-pisatelya https://www.dissercat.com/content/avtointertekstualnost-kak-sostavlyayushchaya-kontseptualno-yazykovoi-kartiny-mira-pisatelya https://www.dissercat.com/content/avtointertekstualnost-kak-sostavlyayushchaya-kontseptualno-yazykovoi-kartiny-mira-pisatelya https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1046.5069&rep=rep1&type=pdf https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1046.5069&rep=rep1&type=pdf https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1046.5069&rep=rep1&type=pdf https://sfcriminallawspecialist.com/blog/unconsciousness-as-a-defense-to-criminal-charges https://vox.divinity.edu.au/opinion/what-and-where-is-heaven-the-answers-are-at-the-heart-of-the-easter-story/ https://vox.divinity.edu.au/opinion/what-and-where-is-heaven-the-answers-are-at-the-heart-of-the-easter-story/ https://www.rsf.gsacrd.ab.ca/eteacher_download/1119/35642%5d http://storage.cloversites.com/christianlifecollege/documents/the%20way%20up%20to%20heaven.pdf https://www.dictionary.com/browse/¬like-a-lamb-to-the-slaughter armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 linguistics 56 «հանցանք» հասկացույթի կաղապարումը ինքնամիջտեքստայնության միջոցով (ռոալդ դալի կարճ պատմվածքների հիման վրա) անահիտ մակարյան շողեր հարությունյան սույն հոդվածի նպատակն է դիտարկել ինքնամիջտեքստայնությունը որպես հեղինակի անհատական ոճի ձևավորման միջոց՝ հիմք ընդունելով ռուս և արևմտյան գիտնականների առաջ քաշած վերջին մոտեցումներն ու դրույթները ճանաչողական միջտեքստայնության տիրույթում: հոդվածի ուսումնասիրության առարկան «հանցանք» հասկացույթի համակողմանի վերլուծությունն է, որի համատեքստում ներկայացվում են հեղինակի անհատական ոճը և աշխարհի պատկերի հեղինակային ընկալումը: ուսումնասիրելով ռոալդ դալի կարճ պատմվածքներում առկա ինքնամիջտեքստային հարաբերությունները՝ վեր են հանվում դալի անհատական ոճի յուրահատկություններն ու աշխարհընկալումը: երկու գրական երկերի լեզվաոճական, լեզվաբանաստեղծական և միջտեքստային քննությունները թույլ են տալիս եզրակացնել, որ դալն իր ստեղծագործություններում ֆեմինիստական մոտեցում է ցուցաբերում կանանց նկատմամբ՝ բարձրացնելով նրանց իրավունքների և ազատության բացակայության խնդիրը: հոդվածի արդիականությունը պայմանավորված է «հանցանք» հասկացույթի առկայացման ուսումնասիրությամբ միջտեքստային տիրույթում, մասնավորապես՝ ինքնամիջտեքստային տարրերի քննության արդյունքում: բանալի բառեր՝ ճանաչողական միջտեքստայնություն, ինքնամիջտեքստայնություն, միջտեքստային կաղապար, «հանցանք» հասկացույթ, ճանաչողական կաղապարներ, հեղինակային աշխարհընկալում: microsoft word maket 2021-2(24) 2.11.doc armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 40 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2021.17.2.040 irony in fan fiction zaruhi antonyan yerevan state university irony is a broad concept with many cultural and artistic manifestations of criticism, sarcasm, humor, parody, and even tragedy. it can represent various intellectual and emotional states, such as criticism, self-criticism, curiosity, entertainment, disappointment, anger, boasting, etc. the tone, intensity and frequency of sound are sufficient to convey irony in speech. however, in writing authors use a number of linguistic and stylistic means to be able to convey irony to the reader. this also refers to fanfic (fan fiction) – a work of art/fiction written by book fans, tv series, films, etc. – which is based on an original creation and uses irony widely. the language we perceive when reading fan fiction influences our language and our own production of speech. hence, the present case study aims at revealing ways and means as well as reasons of expressing irony in fan fiction – a discourse variety that has attracted great interest in the modern world especially among the younger generation. keywords: fan fiction, fandom, fan, verbal irony, situational irony, dramatic irony, sarcasm. introduction it is a well-known fact that emotions serve as a kind of moderator between the world and its reproduction in the language of people. emotions enclosed in words reproduce the emotional attitude of the person towards the world. otherwise stated, emotions are always present in words, and when necessary, expressed through them. irony is a way of expressing emotions. emotions often accompany irony in different types of communication, increasing enjoyment, anger, sorrow, hopelessness and other feelings. irony is very common in speech, plays, novels, poetry, media texts and other discourse types. it is a literary/stylistic/rhetorical device the main essence of which is saying one thing  zaraantonyan@ysu.am this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 21.06.2021 revised: 16.08.2021 accepted: 22.09.2021 © the author(s) 2021 linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 41 but meaning the opposite. it may also have additional social and emotional functions like expressing certain contrary emotions. irony is widely used in fan fiction/fanfiction (also abbreviated to fan fic, fanfic, fic or ff). fan fiction is a type of fictional text written by fans of any work of fiction, comic books, tv series, films, etc., where the author uses established characters, settings, or other intellectual properties from an original creator as a basis for his/her writing. fan fiction ranges from a couple of sentences to an entire novel, and fans can both keep the original creator's characters and settings or add their own. since fan fiction has become popular relatively recently, people from all over the world can submit their works on social networks, availing the readers of an opportunity to study irony in more modern works of fiction. irony: definition and types most people have a general understanding of irony but there are also a lot of misconceptions about it. henry watson fowler states that irony might have hundreds of definitions and very few of them would be accepted but what the definitions must necessarily include is that the surface meaning and the underlying meaning of what is said cannot be the same (fowler, 2003). he believes that irony as an utterance postulates a double audience – a party that hears and does not understand and another party that hears and understands more than is meant (fowler, 2015). eric partridge (1999) claims that irony states the contrary of what is meant. considering the mentioned definitions, we would add that irony is a literary device in contrast or inappropriate between anticipations for a situation and reality. this can be a difference between the apparent meaning of something that is said and the underlying meaning. it can also be a difference between what might be predictable to happen and what actually ensues. the term irony has its roots in the greek comic character eiron, a clever underdog who by his wit repeatedly triumphs over the boastful character alazon (irony, 2021). the socratic irony of the platonic dialogues derives from this comic origin. the word irony came into english to denote a figure of speech in the 16th century as similar to the french ironie. it derives from the latin ironia and ultimately from the greek εἰρωνεία eirōneía, meaning dishonesty, deliberately exaggerated ignorance (eiron, 2021). there exist three different types of irony: verbal, situational, and dramatic (three different types of irony, 2021). each has a different definition and armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 42 function in fiction. verbal irony arises when what is said is different from what is meant. its intentional character gives the speaker a chance to hope that the audience will recognize the presence of irony. it should be noted that verbal irony is not lying. a lie is a falsehood meant to deceive. this type of irony is much less wicked. sarcasm is perhaps the most distinguished sub-type of verbal irony. it is an ironic statement meant to mock or ridicule another person. sarcasm is “designed to cut or give pain” (sarcasm, 2011). situational irony occurs when what happens is the opposite of what we expect to happen. it can be as simple as holding an umbrella outside only to find the sun shining. it can even be as dramatic as revealing the killer to be the least likely suspect. dramatic irony occurs when the audience, having been given more information, understands a situation more clearly than the characters do. this understanding often leads to an element of suspense because we know the character will learn the truth eventually but we don't know when or how. in the following part an attempt will be made to reveal how irony is expressed in fan fiction. what is fan fiction? fan fiction is usually described as a derivative of a certain media artifact. this means that there ought to be a source-text which creates a response – fan fiction. this is nothing new and has been happening since mankind began creating artifacts. not all stories repeatedly recreated by various authors are considered a form of fan fiction, because if this were the case then all re-written variants could be considered a form of fanfic. re-imaginations might be born out of fandom, out of an intense appreciation of the original artifact. however, there is a difference in the goals set by authors. in that sense, fan fiction is just written for fans, and not for a market of consumers. of course, reinterpretations might be promoted as treats for the fans, but actually they are meant to attract an audience as big as possible. the difference is clear: reinterpretations are aimed at a market with a wide audience, fan fiction is aimed at a fandom and its fans. but what is fan fiction, if it is not a reinterpretation? abigail derecho (2006) offers an interesting way of approaching fan fiction. she calls the type of writing associated with fan fiction archontic. the word archontic is based on the idea of texts being archives. it is taken from jacques derrida's work archive fever (1995) in which the author claims that incorporating the knowledge deployed in reference to it, the archive augments, engrosses and gains in linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 43 auctoritas. but it also loses some absolute and meta-textual authority it has. thus, archontic is the most accurate description of what fan fiction means in relation to the original artifact. if we see the original work as an archive, we can approach fan fiction as an entry to this archive. hence, fan fiction is often described as a derivative. this description has several connotations that go along with it. the connotations, whether negative or positive, present a nonneutral starting point in a debate about fan fiction. saying that something is a derivative implies that in the process of coming into existence it has lost something of the original work it is based on, thus becoming somewhat inferior to the original. by describing texts as archives, we do not have to deal with these connotations but instead see the text as an entry to an open archive with the original artifact as the basis for the same archive. thus, fan fiction is done by the fan for the greater good of his or her fandom, as opposed to other inter-textual reinterpretations which are done by professionals for a general audience. it is archontic literature, which means that a work of fan fiction contributes to the archive established by the original work or artifact on which the fiction is based. but how is fan fiction created, what rules and habits constitute an overall work of fan fiction? this poses a problem because we cannot talk about fan fiction, draw conclusions on it by establishing it as archontic literature without giving concrete examples about what it actually is. to show what typical fan fiction is, i will represent a small sample – a piece of fanfic based on george orwell’s 1984 (2003) called an alternet ending, written by james masters (2012), a member of fanfiction net, one of the biggest on-line communities dedicated to fan fiction. the story itself is pretty short, that is why i have chosen to bring it here in full instead of adding it as an appendix. winston's body was racked with pain from the previous beating but his mind was still resisting. he knew in his heart that this was wrong and so his anger turned to his strength to push on and instead of taking the beating the following day he would strike back at them with full force. threw his anger he ignored the pain and the betrayal. his eyes hardened to a light stone like blue and he was going to fight. when the thought officers came to get him in his cell he just smiled at them when one tried to wipe that smirk off of his face. the only thought going threw his mind was 'either now or never.' armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 44 he caught the hand as it sailed towards his face and struck back with vengeance at his tormentors left temple. a sickening crunch reverberated around the cell as the officer fell over dead. winston's eyes got dark as the second officer tried to pull out his taster to stop him dead in his tracks but he was too slow and before the officer knew it he was on the ground getting the shit beat out of him. with one officer dead and the other knocked out winston took their clothing and went incognito out of the ministry of secrets. numerous officers tried to stop them but they meant the same fate as all of the others stopped dead with a bullet in the head. a single thought was going threw his mind 'when the people are afraid of the government that is tyranny and this is tyranny.' many other people saw what he was doing and some decided to join him as they fought to the officials palaces ransacking and killing all that big brother was. finally they made it to the center of the city and stormed the main buricratic building. the cowered that was big brother was under his desk whimpering like a little baby for all of this to stop. winston just said to him "you disgust me." everyone that was there agrees that winston was the hero now that big brother and all of his corrupt government were finally over. it has been twenty years since the rebellion and the people have not been happier, light seems to have returned to the streets and i am happy that winston made that difference. things would be a lot different if he did not stand up and fight to become the first president of a new order on that the government is afraid of the people. a government can only go so far before the people decide enough is enough and revolt against the government. for we hold these truths to be self-evident. the first thing we notice when we read the story is a certain freedom with the source material. what is presented here is an alternative ending to george orwell’s novel. in the original story, the protagonist winston smith is resisting the party doctrine of super-state oceania through his journals, something that is highly offensive and will be answered with death penalty. he starts a love affair with julia, thinking the thought police oceania’s intelligence on people who linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 45 might challenge authority is not aware of his rebellion and his affair. when winston and julia get caught, winston is severely beaten and tortured after which he is to be rehabilitated for reintegration into oceania’s society. the story above takes place during the torture-sessions winston had to endure. instead of taking the beatings, winston stands up and defends himself from the beatings the thought officers would give him. he strikes them down, and rampages out of the ministry of secrets to establish a new order where the government is afraid of the people. first of all, it is not clear if banker has read the original story correct. for example, there is no ministry of secrets. the ministry where winston is held in the original story is thought to be the ministry of love, one of the four ministries in oceania. also, it would be almost impossible for winston to escape the ministry for several reasons: he was not aware of how the ministry was structured and therefore could not possibly coordinate a successful escape telescreens would be able to see him trying to dress up incognito and see through his ruse. however, in fan fiction, what is and what is not possible does not matter. this is fanfic describing something that does not happen in the original story. james masters (2012) explains his motivation for writing this alternative ending at the beginning of his fanfic: hey guys i have posted a little story to keep you busy, i just finished reading 1984, and good book in itself but the ending was something to be desired for. i honestly hope you can read 1984 by george orwell. well you know the drill i do not own anything of george orwell except for the printed copies of animal farm and 1984. it should be noted that the author of this piece turns to the knowledge of his audience when disclaiming the copyrights of orwell’s heritage. this is an example of how fan fiction is mostly written by fans for fans. in addition, the lack of professionalism (without judging its value) shows in the writing. spelling mistakes are common throughout the text and there are several other mistakes that show the story is written by a fan, more than a professional. in the following part of the paper some works of fan fiction accompanied by irony are represented and certain extracts taken from these works come under study. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 46 irony in fan fiction the famous scene from the cartoon the lion king called what ghost mufasa should have said to simba (2013) by super fanfic entertainment depicts how rafiki leads simba to a pool of water and asks him to look into it. at first, simba sees nothing, but then he sees the image of his father. mufasa’s ghost rises and addresses his son from the sky, telling simba that he is the one true king. and that is all mufasa’s ghost says in the cartoon. we propose to pay attention to the title of the fan fiction, it says: what ghost mufasa should have said to simba. that is, according to the author, in the cartoon, the ghost of mufasa left something unfinished in his speech. mufasa then reappeared again quickly. “oh….and one more thing you should probably know. scar was the one who killed me. he threw me back into the stampede.” simba then made an angry face. “scar!?he….he what!?” the author clearly speaks ironically about the creators of the cartoon who, in his opinion, have missed an important detail. but if analyzed without relying on the author’s own thoughts, the whole situation is ironic for scar who kills mufasa since simba wants to take revenge. this leads us to poetic irony. there is another example, this time of structural irony. we already realize: simba was convinced that it was he who was to blame for the death of his father and not scar. and mufasa’s words oh….and one more thing you should probably know hint at simba’s lack of intelligence, who was obviously surprised to hear this. “why didn't you tell me scar murdered you sooner!?" simba said angrily. "well for starters, you were just a cub, you didn't have the strength to take him on." simba looked at the ground. "huh….oh yeah.” this is of course an ordinary dialogue and an ordinary question if we surely do not forget the fact that mufasa died when simba was still small, which once again leads to simba’s lack of intelligence, but not only simba’s. in the cartoon when rafiki asks simba to look at his reflection in the water and says that mufasa lives in him, it means that what the alleged ghost of mufasa says are in fact simba’s forgotten thoughts. let us pay attention to the punctuation of the sentence why didn’t you tell me scar murdered you sooner linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 47 (!?). this punctuation is actually for readers pointing to the obviousness of the answer (again for readers). so, it is not only structural irony but also sarcasm. during the reign of scar in the cartoon, stocks of food and water were empty, hyenas swarmed in the kingdom. and at the same time, while mufasa was alive he kept telling simba that he was the future king. but here mufasa admits that the one who killed him and tried to kill his son was not a bad king at first but he gradually spoiled everything and that is why he decided to appear and tell simba that scar had killed him and the real king was simba. we must also pay attention to the fact that mufasa speaks casually using slang (screw things up) that is not characteristic of his character in the cartoon. here we deal with verbal irony. plus you seemed really happy with your new life with timon and pumba. i figured i'd let you know when scar completely screw things up, which he did. believe it or not, he wasn't a bad king at first. but the problems slowly increased. “sorry father. just one last question. what's death like?” “painful…and a little stupid.” “stupid?” simba said puzzled. “how come zazu can survive being sat on by a heavy rhino, but i die in a stampede?” simba shrugged. “cartoon logic.” zazu is an uptight, red-billed hornbill that served as king mufasa’s majordomo, and the begrudged caretaker of simba. when simba and nala (lioness cub) escaped among the animals to the elephant cemetery, zazu was supposed to watch over them but lost them of his sight and began to move around animals that were ten times larger in size. but when mufasa (the lion) got in a stampede, he was injured and died. in example 6 the author of the fanfic teases the cartoon logic which has become a fairly common statement on the internet. now let us discuss another example from fanfiction net – fairy tale stereotypes by foosemittee (2013). “i am tired,” the innkeeper's daughter growled, “of these unrealistic tales. tell them to your children, but don't tell them here!” the group of travelers turned towards her. “what's the problem with fairy tales?” a young, haughty lad asked. the innkeeper's daughter smirked. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 48 “you must know little of the ways of men,” she replied. “or the ways of princes.” “enlighten us,” he replied. “well, princes and peasants don't kiss, for one,” the girl announced, rearranging her skirts daintily. “and if, perchance, a prince were to want to 'kiss' a peasant, well…he wouldn't be considering marriage, exactly.” “probably'd have other things on his mind,” another woman agreed. there was quite a bit of laughter at this. "and a prince can marry who he chooses," a hooded stranger added. the happy group looked up. “true,” the innkeeper's daughter agreed, though she would have admitted that she knew nothing of princes if she had been asked. “…what they do, you see, is they choose the most beautiful maiden, and then they claim she has a title so that other commoners won't be lining up to try to seduce them,” the stranger said quietly. “and that, ladies and gentlemen,” the innkeeper's daughter announced, “is why you should never trust a prince! honestly, that can't be true, can it?” she asked the stranger. he stood, drawing back his hood and revealing his golden grown. “you'd best start believing in fairy tales, girl,” he growled. “you're in one.” suddenly the moonlight shone into the room, lighting on everyone present. the innkeepers daughter reeled in shock, and then the whole room turned into pirates i mean, fairies! in the sleeping beauty, the one who awakens aurora from her wretched curse and saves the day is prince philip. in the little mermaid the one who provides ariel with refuge and a future life of luxury is prince eric. in cinderella the one who gets her out of the mud and into wealth is prince charming. surely, there exists a common trend. fairy tales are a world of imagination and pleasure of a child, but they also serve as a source of inspiration and role model. morality lies in the fact that the good always wins at the end, the prince comes and saves the heroine. but of course, morality lies not only in that, but also in being kind to everyone, being able to forgive, not linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 49 letting the bad ruin your heart. surely, not every child understands the essence of fairy tales if we do not bring it to them. mostly, they get inspired by what they see or by what they are told. “i am tired,” the innkeeper’s daughter growled, “of these unrealistic tales. tell them to your children, but don't tell them here!” the group of travelers turned towards her. let us pay attention to the phrase unrealistic tales from the above passage by foosemittee (2013). what is the meaning of the word tale in general? it can be explained as an imaginative narrative of an event – a story or an intentionally untrue report (tale, 2011). surely, it depicts something unrealistic. the author uses the phrase that contradicts itself. so, we have contradiction and verbal irony. tell them to your children, but don't tell them here! is sarcasm as the innkeeper’s daughter thinks that children believe in unrealistic tales. let us also consider the following examples: “what's the problem with fairy tales?" a young, haughty lad asked. the innkeeper's daughter smirked. “well, princes and peasants don't kiss, for one,” the girl announced, rearranging her skirts daintily. “and if, perchance, a prince were to want to 'kiss' a peasant, well…he wouldn't be considering marriage, exactly.” “probably'd have other things on his mind,” another woman agreed. there was quite a bit of laughter at this. “and a prince can marry who he chooses,” a hooded stranger added. the happy group looked up. “true,” the innkeeper's daughter agreed, though she would have admitted that she knew nothing of princes if she had been asked. a young, haughty lad – that is why the innkeeper’s daughter smirked. haughty lad is a jargonic way to say an arrogant guy. here we witness verbal irony. the utterance well, princes and peasants don't kiss, for one points to the obscene thoughts of the innkeeper’s daughter about princes, then she says that a prince can kiss the peasant but that does not mean that he is going to marry her (situational irony). the words of the other woman probably’d have other things on his mind show the indecency and the lack of intelligence and manners of the armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 50 women in the story, not only the princes they are talking about. in the last two examples we see structural irony as the characters are obviously not aware of what they are talking about, and this is proved in the last example. the happy group is the group that was laughing at what the other woman had said earlier. the happy group is an example of sarcasm pointing to the ignorance of the people in the room. what is said by the innkeeper’s daughter is her own fantasies and she is not the expert on princes. so she lightly agrees with a stranger who says that princes can marry anyone. her remarks show that princes could not marry commoners. in the following example the stranger (the future prince) uses verbal irony. he admits that the princes choose the most beautiful girls, and if they do not get a title, then the commoners, as he puts it, may seduce them. that is, for him the title is still important and at the same time he admits what the innkeeper’s daughter and the other woman had said before. “…what they do, you see, is they choose the most beautiful maiden, and then they claim she has a title so that other commoners won't be lining up to try to seduce them,” the stranger said quietly. in the next example another case of verbal irony is observed as the innkeeper’s daughter is still not sure which side she is on. “and that, ladies and gentlemen,” the innkeeper’s daughter announced, “is why you should never trust a prince! honestly, that can't be true, can it?" she asked the stranger. he stood, drawing back his hood and revealing his golden grown. the example below is a vivid case of sarcasm. the author of the fanfic mocks all happy endings in tales and claims that all fairy tales roughly end the same way. the author hints that people in the room instead of fairies could become pirates, but since this is a fairy tale, of course, they should turn into fairies. “you'd best start believing in fairy tales, girl,” he growled. “you're in one.” suddenly the moonlight shone into the room, lighting on everyone present. the innkeeper’s daughter reeled in shock, and then the whole room turned into pirates i mean, fairies! linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 51 conclusion the thorough study of fanfic literature, its specific peculiarities, aims and goals, as well as ways and aims of expressing irony namely in fanfic, has brought us to the conclusion that irony is a broad concept with numerous cultural and artistic manifestations such as criticism, sarcasm, humor and may represent various intellectual and emotional states such as criticality, self-criticality, inquisitiveness, amusement, resentment, anger, boastfulness, etc. fan fiction is closely related to fandom and is usually described as a derivative of a certain media artifact. this means that there ought to be a source-text (if we see every artifact as text, be it literature, tv-shows, videogames, etc.) which creates a response – fan fiction. irony widely used in fanfic is understood by readers who are familiar with the original work. since it is difficult to express emotions, namely irony, in the written language, fanfic writers may give hints in the form of intonation, context, etc. nearly all types and sub-types of irony can be found in fanfic: dramatic irony, sarcasm, poetic irony, structural irony, etc. references derecho, a. (2006). archontic literature, a definition, a history, and several theories of fan fiction. in k. hellekson, & k. busse (eds.). fan fiction and fan communities in the age of the internet: new essays.(pp. 61-70). jefferson: mcfarland and co. derrida, j. (1995/1996). archive fever. a freudian impression. new york, columbia university press. eiron. (2021). in encyclopedia britannica. retrieved may 12, 2021, from https://www.britannica. com/topic/eiron fowler, h. w. (2003). the king's english. oxford: oxford university press. fowler, h. (2015). a dictionary of modern english usage. oxford: oxford university press. irony. (2021). in wikipedia. the free encyclopedia. retrieved may 19, 2021, from https://en.m. wikipedia.org/wiki/irony partridge, e. (1999). usage and abusage. uk: penguin. sarcasm. (2021). in merriam-webster online dictionary. retrieved april 25, 2021, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tale tale. (2021). in merriam-webster online dictionary. retrieved april 25, 2011, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tale armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 linguistics 52 three different types of irony. (2021). in studiobinder. retrieved may 1, 2021, from https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/3-different-types-of-irony/ sources of data foosemittee. (2013). fairy tale stereotypes. retrieved from https://m.fanfiction.net/s/ 8899841/1/fairy-tale-stereotypes. masters, j. (2012). an alternet ending. retrieved from https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6377703/1/an_balternet_b_ending orwell, g. (2003). animal farm and 1984 by george orwell and a. m. heath. boston: houghton mifflin. what ghost mufasa should have said to simba. (2011). in fan fiction. retrieved april 25, 2021, from https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9326095/1/what-ghost-mufasa-should-have-said-to-simba հեգնանքը ֆանֆիքում զարուհի անտոնյան ֆանֆիք գրականությունը ներկայումս մեծ հետաքրքրություն է առաջացրել ժամանակակից աշխարհում՝ հատկապես երիտասարդության շրջանում: ֆանֆիքը ստեղծագործության տեսակ է, որը գրվում է գրքերի, սերիալների, կինոնկարների երկրպագուների կողմից: ինչպես ցույց են տալիս մեր դիտարկումները հեգնանքի կիրառությունը չափազանց բնութագրական է այս նորաստեղծ ժանրին: հեգնանքը լայն հասկացություն է, որն ունի բազմաթիվ մշակութային և գեղարվեստական դրսևորումներ՝ քննադատություն, հեգնանք, հումոր, ծաղրերգություն և նույնիսկ ողբերգություն: այն կարող է ներկայացնել մտավոր և հուզական տարբեր վիճակներ, ինչպիսիք են քննադատությունը, ինքնաքննադատությունը, հետաքրքրասիրությունը, զվարճանքը, հիասթափությունը, զայրույթը, պարծենկոտությունը և այլն: առանձնակի ուշադրության է արժանի այն փաստը, որ այս ժանրի ստեղծագործությունների լեզուն և ոճը, այդ թվում՝ հեգնանքի լեզվական դրսևորումները ընդգծված ազդեցություն են գործում ընթերցողի խոսքի վերարտադրության վրա: սույն ուսումնասիրությունը մասնավորապես բացահայտում է ֆանֆիկում հեգնանքի արտահայտման ինչպես եղանակներն ու միջոցները, այնպես էլ պատճառները: բանալի բառեր. ֆանֆիք գրականություն, ֆանտաստիկայի երկրպագություն, խոսքային հեգնանք, իրադրային հեգնանք, դրամատիկ հեգնանք, սարկազմ: linguistics armenian folia anglistika 1 armenian folia anglistika – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english (since 2005) and yerevan state university (since 2015) aims at fostering research of the english language, literature and culture in armenia and elsewhere and facilitate intellectual cooperation between high school teachers and scholars. armenian folia anglistika is intended to be published twice a year. articles of interest to university-level teachers and scholars in english studies are warmly welcomed by the multi-national editorial board of the journal. articles should be directed to the editor-in-chief. in 2007 the editorial board of armenian folia anglistika announced the opening of a new section in the journal – armenological studies, which invites valuable and innovative contributions from such fields as armenian linguistics, literary criticism, ethnic studies, cultural history, gender studies and a wide range of adjacent disciplines. հիմնադիր և գլխավոր խմբագիր` սեդա գասպարյան համարի թողարկման պատասխանատու` լիլի կարապետյան լրատվական գործունեություն իրականացնող «անգլերենի ուսումնասիրության հայկական ասոցիացիա» հկ http:www.aase.ysu.am վկայական` 03ա 065183 տրված` 28.06.2004 թ. yerevan state university press armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 2 editor-in-chief seda k. gasparyan dr. of sciences (philology), professor, corresponding member of ra nas, honoured scientist of ra; holder of “best scientific work” award of ra nas (2010); holder of “prolific researcher” award of ra state committee of science (2013, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020); head of yerevan state university english philology department; president of armenian association for the study of english. e-mail: sedagasparyan@yandex.ru;sedagasparyan@ysu.am url: http://ysu.am/science/en/seda-gasparyan orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 phone: (+374 99) 255 060 editorial team lili h. karapetyan managing editor assistant professor at english philology department, yerevan state university, armenia. e-mail: starlet@ysu.am url: http://ysu.am/science/en/lili-karapetan orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2899-6239 olga v. aleksandrova doctor of sciences (philology), professor, head of the department of english linguistics at lomonosov moscow state university; holder of lomonosov award (2001); award of the international federation of modern language teachers' associations at fiplv (2005). e-mail: ovaleksandrova@gmail.com url: https://www.philol.msu.ru/~engdep/.../aleksandrova-olga/ orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8281-9164 gevorg r. barseghyan phd in philology, associate professor at english philology department; dean of faculty of european languages and communication, yerevan state university, armenia. e-mail: barseghyan.gevorg@ysu.am url: http://www.ysu.am/science/en/gevorg-barseghyan isabella r. buniyatova dr. of philology, professor, head of the department of germanic and romance philology, boris grinchenko kyiv university, ukraine. e-mail: i.buniiatova@kubg.edu.ua url: https://if.kubg.edu.ua/struktura/.../615-.html orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4286-6705 mailto:sedagasparyan@yandex.ru mailto:sedagasparyan@ysu.am http://ysu.am/science/en/seda-gasparyan https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 mailto:starlet@ysu.am http://ysu.am/science/en/lili-karapetan https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 mailto:ovaleksandrova@gmail.com https://www.philol.msu.ru/~engdep/department/staff/aleksandrova-olga/ https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 mailto:barseghyan.gevorg@ysu.am http://www.ysu.am/science/en/gevorg-barseghyan mailto:i.buniiatova@kubg.edu.ua https://if.kubg.edu.ua/struktura/2011-06-23-12-44-46/kafedra-hermanskoi-ta-romanskoi-filolohii/sklad-kafedry-308/615-.html https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 linguistics armenian folia anglistika 3 elżbieta chrzanowska-kluczewska dr hab., professor, linguist, member of the department of english linguistics at the institute for english studies, jagiellonian university in kraków, poland. e-mail: elzbieta.chrzanowska-kluczewska@uj.edu.pl url: https://ifa.filg.uj.edu.pl/elzbieta-chrzanowska-kluczewska orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0908-1711 astghik e. chubaryan phd in philology, professor at english philology department, yerevan state university, armenia. e-mail: astghik.chubaryan@ysu.am url: http://www.ysu.am/science/en/astghik-chubaryan orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4413-6044 marta dąbrowska dr hab., assistant professor with habilitation at the institute for english studies, jagiellonian university in kraków, poland. e-mail: marta.b.dabrowska@uj.edu.pl url: https://ifa.filg.uj.edu.pl/marta-dabrowska orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0151-3049 alessandra giorgi phd in philology, full professor at the department of linguistics and comparative cultural studies, ca'foscari university of venice, italy. e-mail: giorgi@unive.it url: https://www.unive.it/persone/giorgi orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6382-7510 sona haroutyunian doctor of linguistics, professor at the department of asian and north african studies, ca'foscari university of venice, italy. e-mail: sona.haroutyunian@unive.it url: https://www.unive.it/persone/sona.haroutyunian orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2740-983x angela locatelli professor emerita of english literature at the university of bergamo, italy; member of the board of the phd school (scuola di alta formazione dottorale) of the university of bergamo; one of the founders and faculty member of the international phd network in "literary and cultural studies". e-mail: angela.locatelli@unibg.it url: http://www00.unibg.it/struttura/strutturasmst.asp?rub... orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4210-8397 mailto:elzbieta.chrzanowska-kluczewska@uj.edu.pl https://ifa.filg.uj.edu.pl/en_gb/elzbieta-chrzanowska-kluczewska https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 mailto:astghik.chubaryan@ysu.am http://www.ysu.am/science/en/astghik-chubaryan https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 mailto:marta.b.dabrowska@uj.edu.pl https://ifa.filg.uj.edu.pl/marta-dabrowska https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 mailto:giorgi@unive.it https://www.unive.it/persone/giorgi https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 mailto:sona.haroutyunian@unive.it https://www.unive.it/persone/sona.haroutyunian https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 mailto:angela.locatelli@unibg.it http://www00.unibg.it/struttura/strutturasmst.asp?rubrica=1&persona=396 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4210-8397 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 4 gohar g. madoyan assistant editor phd in philology, associate professor at english philology department, yerevan state university, armenia. e-mail: goharmadoyan@mail.ru url: http://ysu.am/science/en/gohar-madoyan orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6525-9230 elżbieta mańczak-wohlfeld dr hab., professor ordinarius at the institute for english studies; head of the department of english linguistics, jagiellonian university in kraków, poland. e-mail: manczak@uj.edu.pl url: https://ifa.filg.uj.edu.pl/elzbieta-manczak-wohfeld orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7839-4957 gaiane h. muradian dr of sciences (philology), professor at english philology department, yerevan state university, armenia. e-mail: g.murad@ysu.am url: http://ysu.am/science/en/gayane-muradyan orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7588-5849 shushanik h. paronyan dr of sciences (philology), professor, head of the department of english for crosscultural communication, yerevan state university, armenia. e-mail: shushanik.paronyan@ysu.am url: http://ysu.am/science/en/shushanik-paronyan orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6997-731x ewa sałkiewicz-munnerlyn phd. in international law, jagiellonian university in kraków, poland; lecturer at akademia krakowska, mfa, andrzej frycz modrzewski kraków academy, poland. e-mail: ewasalkiewiczmunnerlyn@gmail.com orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2617-2017 mariana s. sargsyan phd in philology, associate professor at english philology department, yerevan state university; head of the department for international cooperation, mescs science committee, armenia. e-mail: marianasargsyan@ysu.am url: http://ysu.am/science/en/mariana-sargsyan orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3054-1871 mailto:goharmadoyan@mail.ru http://ysu.am/science/en/gohar-madoyan https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4210-8397 mailto:manczak@uj.edu.pl https://ifa.filg.uj.edu.pl/elzbieta-manczak-wohfeld https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4210-8397 mailto:g.murad@ysu.am http://ysu.am/science/en/gayane-muradyan https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4210-8397 mailto:shushanik.paronyan@ysu.am http://ysu.am/science/en/shushanik-paronyan https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4210-8397 mailto:ewasalkiewiczmunnerlyn@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1170-4989 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4210-8397 mailto:marianasargsyan@ysu.am http://ysu.am/science/en/mariana-sargsyan https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3054-1871 linguistics armenian folia anglistika 5 john a. stotesbury adjunct professor, school of humanities, university of eastern finland, joensuu, finland; adjunct professor, department of english, university of oulu, finland. e-mail: john.stotesbury@gmail.com orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2712-2211 iryna s. shevchenko doctor of philology, full professor, academician of the academy of sciences of higher school of ukraine; head of the department of business foreign language and translation of v.n. karazin kharkiv national university; head of the thesis committee for defense of phd theses in the speciality 10.02.04 — germanic languages. e-mail: iryna.shevchenko@karazin.ua url: http://foreign-languages.karazin.ua/en/shevchenko orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2552-5623 peter sutton freelance translator and playwright, united kingdom. e-mail: peterjsutton@talktalk.net url: https://www.petersutton.uk/#about svetlana g. ter-minasova dr of sciences (philology), professor emeritus at lomonosov moscow state university; president of the faculty of foreign languages and area studies at lomonosov moscow state university, russia; chairperson of the flt council (ministry of education, russia) since 1987; founding president of national association of applied linguistics (naal, russia), an affiliate of the international association of applied linguistics (aila) since 1989 and the founding president of national association of teachers of english (nate, russia), a collective member of the international associations tesol (the usa) and iatefl (the uk); chairperson of the flt council (ministry of education and science, russia) since 1995; holder of lomonosov award, fulbright's 50th anniversary award; named doctor honoris causa by the university of birmingham (uk), the state university of new york (usa), the russian-armenian university (armenia), yerevan state university (armenia); visiting professor of the national research tomsk state university, yerevan state university. e-mail: sgtermin@mail.ru url: http://ffl.msu.ru/en/about/president/ orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4274-6674 mailto:john.stotesbury@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3054-1871 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2712-2211 mailto:iryna.shevchenko@karazin.ua http://foreign-languages.karazin.ua/en/shevchenko https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3054-1871 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2712-2211 mailto:peterjsutton@talktalk.net https://www.petersutton.uk/#about mailto:sgtermin@mail.ru http://ffl.msu.ru/en/about/president/ https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3054-1871 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2712-2211 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 6 երևանի պետական համալսարան անգլերենի ուսումնասիրության հայկական ասոցիացիա (անգլերենի ուսումնասիրության եվրոպական ֆեդերացիայի անդամ) անգլիագիտական հետազոտությունների հայկական հանդես միջազգային գրախոսվող ամսագիր համագործակցությամբ՝ երևանի վալերի բրյուսովի անվան պետական համալսարանի (հայաստան) մոսկվայի մ. լոմոնոսովի անվ. պետական համալսարանի (ռուսաստան) կրակովի յագիելոնյան համալսարանի (լեհաստան) բերգամոյի համալսարանի (իտալիա) մոնտենեգրոյի համալսարանի (մոնտենեգրո) երեվան – 2022 linguistics armenian folia anglistika 7 yerevan state university armenian association for the study of english (member association of the european society for the study of english) armenian folia anglistika peer-reviewed international journal in cooperation with: yerevan brusov state university (armenia) lomonosov moscow state university (russia) jagiellonian university, cracow (poland) bergamo university (italy) university of montenegro (montenegro) yerevan – 2022 microsoft word maket 2021-2(24) 2.11.doc armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 141 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2021.17.2.141 r. lemkin's contribution to the development of modern international law and international criminal law ewa sałkiewicz-munnerlyn calisia academy in kalisz this article presents the significance and impact of lemkin's concept of genocide on the development of international law. we will randomly present the jurisprudence of international courts such as the icj, the icc, the icty and the ictr, which analyzed the concepts of genocide, including cultural heritage crimes. residual functions of the icty, including oversight of sentences and consideration of any appeal proceedings initiated since 1 july 2013, are under the jurisdiction of a successor body, the international residual mechanism for criminal tribunals (irmct). the article also invites attention to the impact on r2p and the human rights, as well as international state responsibility and the individual responsibility. keywords: cultural genocide, icc, icty, ictr, icj, r2p, katyn massacre. introduction the article deals with raphael lemkin’s contribution to the development of modern international law and international criminal law. the principal aim of this research consists in showing why the lacking part of the genocide convention, i.e. the cultural genocide is important nowadays. we explain the reasons why this part was omitted during the preparatory work for the drafting of the text of the convention on the prevention of genocide. we present the application of the genocide convention in proceedings before the international criminal court (icc), the international criminal tribunal for rwanda (ictr) and the international criminal tribunal for  ewasalkiewiczmunnerlyn@gmail.com this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 19.08.2021 revised: 13.09.2021 accepted: 01.10.2021 © the author(s) 2021 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 armenological studies 142 yugoslavia (icty) as well as the application of the genocide convention in a procedure before the international court of justice (icj) in the hague. i have applied the method of observation, including textual observations of lemkin's texts where he speaks about the importance of the concept of cultural genocide to be included in the convention on the prevention of genocide which unfortunately didn't happen. i also implement the method of analysis in the study of different cases of cultural genocide. the method of deduction helps me reveal how important it is for the international criminal court to prevent further cases of cultural genocide through strict decisions. preparatory work for the drafting of the text of the convention on the prevention of genocide raphael lemkin first used the new term "genocide" in 1943, and introduced his concept in his 1944 book "axis governments in occupied europe". the un general assembly unanimously adopted resolution 96/i on genocide crime in lake success, ny, 11.12.1946, proposed by r. lemkin. the first sentence of the resolution, written by lemkin, says: genocide is a denial of the right to exist for entire human groups, just as murder is a denial of the right to life of an individual human being. such a denial of the right to exist shakes the conscience of man, causes a great loss to humanity in matters of cultural and other contributions represented by these human groups, and is also contrary to moral law and to the spirit and purposes of the united nations. (lemkin, 1946, pp. 188-189) this resolution became a fundamental starting point for the two-year travaux préparatoires, which eventually led to the adoption of the "revolutionary" convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide of december 9, 1948. all the time, lemkin lobbied for the adoption of the convention. to this end, before its adoption, in paris he met with the papal nuncio, cardinal angelo roncalli, later pope john xxiii. he noted: the human life and religion are sacred things that cannot be the subject of political haggling.... i enclose the report of the special committee on the crime of genocide. unfortunately, armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 143 article 3, which represents the soul (l'âme) of the entire convention, was rejected at first reading. let us hope that through your initiative it will be restored and even changed so that the united nations can declare that man lives not only with bread, but also in need of spiritual nourishing (raphael lemkin collection, box 6, folder 2, p.154). cardinal roncalli writes in his memoirs: “on october 27, 1948 in the afternoon, i spoke for an hour with prof. r. lemkin, who informed me about the genocide and it interested me very much.” (roncalli, 2006, p. 563). unfortunately, we do not know whether there has been any initiative on the part of the nuncio to restore article 3 to the convention. the issue of cultural genocide documents from the preparatory work for the convention testify to lemkin's long struggle in upholding the concept of cultural genocide, and lemkin himself wrote in the memorandum of the convention: “cultural genocide is the most important part of the convention.” (korey, 2001, pp. 41-43). in his words: world culture is only as strong and vital as the spiritual forces which are brought to it by various contributing peoples. if these peoples are annihilated, their cultural heritage is also destroyed. the destruction of a people by genocide results in an immediate, irretrievable loss to world culture’. (lemkin, 1946, p. 364) as balakian rightly points out (balakian, 2013, pp. 59-70), in 1948 lemkin continued to conceptualize his notion of genocide as encompassing three primary domains: physical existence, biological continuity (through procreation) and spiritual or cultural expression. lemkin himself said about the cultural genocide: cultural genocide can be accomplished predominately in the religious and cultural fields by destroying institutions and objects through which the spiritual life of a human group finds its expression, such as houses of worship, objects of religious cult, schools, treasures of art and culture. by armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 armenological studies 144 destroying spiritual leadership and institutions, forces of spiritual cohesion within a group are removed and the group starts to disintegrate. this is especially significant for the existence of religious groups. religion can be destroyed within a group even if the members continue to subsist physically. (raphael lemkin collection, box 6, folder 2, p154) as is well known, there were two versions of the draft convention, the first of may 1947 prepared by the secretariat and the second version of april 1948 ad hoc committee of the ecosoc draft (morsink, 1999, p. 1021; schreiber, 2013, pp. 252-275). the concept of cultural genocide was covered in the first version in article i, 3, and in the second version in article iii. in the final version, adopted on december 9, 1948, the definition of genocide was severely stripped down and cultural genocide disappeared from the draft convention. why did this happen? the united states and france were opposed from the outset, while only poland, the soviet union, venezuela, siam, china and lebanon supported it, suggesting that this issue be discussed in the debate on human rights and the protection of minorities. another proposal was that instead of the convention, cultural genocide should be included in the text of the universal declaration of human rights, which was to be adopted a day later, on december 10, 1948, but that didn't happen either. as already mentioned, lemkin was very keen on article 3 (cultural genocide) to be included in the convention, as he also wrote to cardinal roncalli in paris on october 30, 1948: cultural genocide is based on acts of violence directed against persons of religion or culture, such as clergy and intellectuals, and against objects of worship, religious buildings and cultural objects. this concept can be formulated legally with almost the same accuracy as it was for the enemies of religion and culture. however, the line of defense in this case is less strong and favorable than the attack line. i am sure, your excellency, that you will be able to strengthen the spirit of state leaders who in most cases have good will but who are awaiting an initiative and spiritual direction. (lemkin, op.cit. box 6, folder 5, p. 154) (transl.: ewa sałkiewicz-munnerlyn) armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 145 the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide was adopted unanimously on december 9, 1948, without abstentions, by the 3rd un general assembly at its session in paris, the day before the universal declaration of the adoption of human rights occurred (głogowskabalczerzak, 2013, pp. 79-97; gasparyan et al, 2016; luck, 2018, pp.1-38). the issue of cultural genocide was referred to again in 1984, when the possibility to amend the convention was discussed in the subcommittee on the prevention of discrimination and the protection of minorities. the un special rapporteur b. whitaker proposed the adoption of an optional protocol to address cultural genocide, but this proposal was not accepted. as is well known, the universal declaration of human rights does not regulate the cultural dimension of genocide, but contains only a general right to free participation in the cultural life of a society. it was only adopted in 1966 when a provision (article 27) concerning the cultural rights of ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities was introduced in the international covenant on civil and political rights. unfortunately, the concept of cultural genocide does not function in instruments of international law, either binding (e.g. agreements) or soft law (e.g. declaration). there are voices in the doctrine about the need to create a document that obliges states to criminalise cultural genocide. this document would be part of the international criminal law, with all the consequences, while the guarantees on national minorities contained in the human rights instruments created other protection mechanisms (nersessian, 2005, pp.7-8)1. it should be noted that recently national courts have been dealing with the issue of cultural genocide, even though, as highlighted above, there is no legal regulation in the convention on the prevention of the crime of genocide. in a 2015 report, the truth and reconciliation commission in canada found that the policy adopted from 1883 to 1998 against the children of indigenous canadian (aboriginal) people was a cultural genocide (honouring the truth, 2015). the guatemalan court, judging jose rios montt for his genocidal actions, also emphasized the importance of cultural genocide (the trial of efrain rios montt, 2018). hallmarks of cultural genocide are borne in the systematic annihilation of the mayan ixil ethnic group and the destruction of their culture, particularly when women, and especially those who were pregnant, were deprived of their lives as well as the possibility of passing on knowledge of culture and history to their future generations. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 armenological studies 146 the international criminal court which deals with cases of individuals accused of genocide, not states, in 2010 issued an arrest warrant against the sudanese president omar al-bashir, accused of committing a crime of genocide (second decision, 2019). although the concept of cultural genocide was rejected in the course of the work on the convention, international tribunals in the process of applying and interpreting the existing definition of genocide highlighted the important role of cultural considerations. thus, for example, the international criminal tribunal for rwanda (ictr)2 held that the intention constituting a subjective element of genocide (mens rea) could be revealed by a certain pattern of action taken by the perpetrators (wierczyńska, 2015; heidrich, 2013, pp. 159-182; szpak, 2012). such a pattern is the repeated actions aimed at destroying the cultural heritage of particular ethnic, religious, national or racial groups, which may indicate a particular intention and constitute an integral part of the fact that these acts constitute genocide. similarly, in the case krstic3 the international criminal tribunal for former yugoslavia (icty) took as evidence the specific intention of the individual responsible for the crimes of genocide, attacks on cultural and religious objects and symbols, and in this particular case considered as evidence of the intention to destroy the group, the deliberate destruction of mosques and houses belonging to its members. in the same case, the icty noted, however, that despite the development of customary law, the definition of genocide remains invariably limited to activities aimed at the physical or biological destruction of a protected group (wierczyńska, 2006-2008, pp. 83-93; wierczyńska & jakubowski, 2016, pp. 39-60). thus, it becomes obvious that the concept of cultural genocide still remaining unregulated by the convention, leaves room for the further realization of genocidal intentions and the perpetration of other genocidal crimes against humanity. application of the convention in a procedure before the international court of justice (icj) in the hague the international court of justice, in its judgment from february 26, 2007 in the application of the convention and punishment of the crime of genocide (bosnia and herzegovina v. serbia and montenegro) (case concerning application of, 2007, p. 43), destruction of historical, religious and cultural armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 147 property (paragraphs 335-344), quoted the view of the icty concerning the actions of the perpetrators and determined that some of the crimes committed during the war in yugoslavia were something more than crimes against humanity or war crimes. with regard to the prevention of genocide in the context of responsibility for protection, it is necessary to recall the order of the international court of justice in the case of bosnia and herzegovina v. serbia, in which the court ordered serbia to "take all measures within its means to prevent the commission of the crime of genocide” (order on interim measures, 1993 p. 52; sałkiewicz-munnerlyn, 2009). in one of its reports, the international campaign for tibet in the context of china's cultural genocide in tibet, stressed that actions known as cultural genocide could be the first step to committing the most serious crimes, citing the doctrine of responsibility for protection (r2p). one has to agree with schabas' view, that the principle of responsibility for protection is an excellent complement to the obligation to prevent the crime of genocide contained in article i of the convention (schabas, 2006). it should be stressed out that the definition of genocide has not changed to this day. both article 4 of the icty, article 2 of the ictr and article 6 of the icc have adopted the definition of genocide from the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. this means that the statutory definition does not refer to cultural groups as protected groups and cultural genocide is not sanctioned by the statutes of those tribunals. this definition is widely recognised by the international community and is a rule of customary law. this was underlined by the icj in case concerning armed activities in the territory of the congo (case concerning armed activities, 2006, pp. 1-54), jurisdiction of the court and admissibility of the application, judgment of 3 february, 2006, paragraphs 58 and 60, ruling that the prohibition of genocide is the norm of jus cogens and that the provisions contained in the convention impose erga omnes obligations on states (application of the convention, 2007, p. 6). international law prohibits the deliberate destruction and looting of cultural goods during armed conflicts. this prohibition is based on treaty law and international customary law (icl) rules. since the end of world war ii, such acts committed by individuals during armed conflicts (both international and non-international) can be considered war crimes or crimes against humanity that correspond to international criminal responsibility. in particular, this is armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 armenological studies 148 apparent from the 1954 hague convention on the protection of cultural goods in the event of armed conflict (article 28) and additional protocols to the geneva conventions of august 12, 1949, concerning the protection of victims of armed conflict and protocol ii to the 1954 hague convention adopted in 1999, also applicable to non-international armed conflicts (article 24)4. a vivid example of cultural genocide is the genocide of the armenian culture – the culture of the oldest christian country in the world where christianity spread as early as ad 40. the genocidal actions were committed by turquie in the form of the destruction of religious shrines in ani, the mediaeval armenian capital, particularly in the 11th-century church of ani, as well as in the monastery complexes of van – region of aghbak, st. bartholomew the apostle monastery – an armenian monastery built in the 13th century ad and today located near the town of başkale in van province, turkey. one can state with no doubt that the destruction of all those monuments was a terrible and irreparable damage caused to the valuable world heritage of mankind. moreover, during the armenian genocide in 1915-1917, more than 2,300 christian monuments, including the early 4–5th centuries, were looted, burned and destroyed by the turks. recently there has been cultural genocide in nagorno-karabakh, during the conflict between armenia and azerbaijan. as a result of the 44-day war, launched by azerbaijan with the direct involvement of turkey and foreign terrorist fighters against artsakh (nagorno-karabakh) on september 27, 2020, the armenian cultural and religious heritage appeared to be under an imminent threat of destruction and/or appropriation. as it was shown in a position paper on crimes against cultural property, submitted by the delegation of the republic of armenia at the 14th united nations congress on crime prevention in 2021, throughout the war, the armenian cultural and religious monuments, including the holy saviour ghazanchetsots cathedral of shushi, artsakh, and hellenistic and armenian archaeological site of tigranakert, an ancient city founded by armenian king tigranes the great in 95-55 bc, were deliberately targeted and partially destroyed. these attacks are a blatant violation of the 1954 hague convention and its protocols and the international humanitarian law. but this was not anything new for the azerbaijani side for the most notorious act of cultural genocide conducted by azerbaijan has been the destruction of several thousand engraved cross-stones (khachkars) and tombstones of the medieval armenian cemetery of old jougha (julfa) in nakhijevan during 1997-2006 (maghakian & pickman, 2019). in fact, this was the largest number of armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 149 khachkars formerly located at the armenian cemetery in jougha which contained approximately 10,000 khachkars in 1648, whereas in 1998 only 2,700 khachkars remained. between 1998 and 2006, azerbaijan destroyed the entire medieval necropolis. it is not by chance that the expert group of the switzerland-armenia association (saa) defined the crime committed in jougha as ethnocide (accountability for destruction, 2012; sawa, 2019). another obvious fact of destruction can be mentioned in connection with the turkish invasion of cyprus in 1975, where more than 500 churches and monasteries were looted and destroyed: more than 15,000 icons of saints, innumerable sacred liturgical vessels, gospels and other objects of great value have literally vanished. a few churches have been turned into mosques, museums, places of entertainment or even hotels, like the church of ayia anastasia in lapithos. at least three monasteries have been turned into barracks for the turkish army (ayios chrysostomos in the pentadactylos mountains, acheropoiitos in karavas and ayios panteleimonas in myrtou). many genocide trials have not been concluded with a final judgment, such as the katyn massacre, before the european court of human rights (case of janowiec, 2013). concepts such as r2p (responsibility to protect) were created as a continuation of protection against the crime of genocide, in the event of mass violations of human rights (kułaga, 2014, pp. 102-124). the importance of the responsibility to protect in the context of the crime of genocide is confirmed by the fact that the issue in the un system has been placed in the competence of the un secretary-general's special adviser on the crime of genocide. the commission on intervention and sovereignty of states, the author of the concept, stated in its report that r2p has multiple international legal sources (the responsibility to protect, 2001, pp.47-57). they can be found in the norms of sovereignty, in the charter of the united nations, and in international treaties on humanitarian law and human rights. the latter group includes the convention for the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide of 1948, the geneva conventions of 1949, together with the two additional protocols of 1977, the covenant on civil and political rights and the 1966 covenant on economic, social and cultural rights, the statute of the international criminal court. this understanding of r2p is equally confirmed by the special adviser to the secretary-general for genocide, pointing to article 1 of the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide as a source of state responsibility for the protection of its own armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 armenological studies 150 people4. similarly, the united nations secretary-general confirms in a 2009 report that r2p is the result of the existing international law (report of the secretary-general, 2009)5. conclusion the influence made by raphael lemkin on the development of modern international law and international criminal law is enormous. although article iii (cultural genocide) was not included in the convention, the interest in this issue did not disappear. it led in the 1970s and 1980s to a new discussion and to the establishment by the united nations in 1982, of the working group on indigenous populations as a subsidiary organ of the sub-commission on the promotion and protection of human rights (study of the problem, 1982). it should be emphasized that the return of cultural genocide to the international debate took place in the framework of human rights, not the genocide convention, as demanded in 1948. in 1993, the working group produced the draft declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples (e/cn.4/sub.2/1993/26). according to article 7, “indigenous peoples have the collective and individual right not to be subjected to ethnocide and cultural genocide”. it then called for the “prevention of and redress for” a number of acts, beginning with “any action which has the aim or effect of depriving them of their integrity as distinct peoples, or of their cultural values or ethnic identities” (unchror, 45th sess., annex 1) the draft declaration was debated and amended several times and finally the reference to cultural genocide was deleted. the general assembly adopted the declaration in 2007 by a vote of 143 to 4 (with 11 abstentions). the four against were the same countries that had opposed article iii almost sixty years earlier (australia, canada, new zealand, and the united states) (the united nations declaration, 2007)5. later, these countries decided to support the declaration (desadepartment of economic and social affairs indigenous peoples) which does not refer explicitly to cultural genocide, but refers to the protection of the world’s cultural heritage. according to article 7(2) of the declaration, “indigenous peoples have the collective right to live in freedom, peace and security as distinct peoples and shall not be subjected to any act of genocide or any other act of violence, including forcibly removing children of the group to another group” (the united nations declaration, 2007). this armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 151 aspect of cultural genocide was retained in the genocide convention. in the past, in countries like australia and canada, the indigenous children had been removed from their families and communities for reeducation and cultural assimilation, and it had resulted in charges of cultural genocide (akhavan, 2016; moses, 2010; morsink, 1999, pp. 1009–1060; mako, 2012, pp. 175–94; francioni, 2004, pp. 1209–1228; short, 2010, pp. 831–846). we can also find examples that some of the armed groups destroying the world cultural heritage have been engaged in the abduction of children in an attempt to separate them from cultural and religious ties. the convention does not set out the nature and extent of the prevention obligation. article iv of the convention says: “persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article iii shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals”. it is up to states to establish domestic law that would allow them to be found guilty of genocide, regardless of whether they are constitutionally responsible members of the government, public officials, or private individuals (bennaftali, 2009, pp. 36-44). after the massacres in the balkans, somalia, or rwanda and srebrenica in 1995 (bieńczyk-missala, 2019), the un secretary-general kofi annan argued, that the twenty-first century must be the century of prevention (annan, 1998), and proclaimed the need to adopt a “culture of prevention” and to look through a “prevention lens” when undertaking development activities (prevention of armed conflict, 2001). the legacy of r. lemkin can also be seen in the concept of the responsibility to protect (r2p), presented in the report of the international commission on intervention and state sovereignty of 2001 (the responsibility to protect, 2001). the issue of state sovereignty and the obligation to prevent the situations of mass suffering has been given a new approach. this idea of the international community concerning the responsibility of states for protection of civilians, has been adopted by the un general assembly in the final document, during the united nations world summit in 2005. the preventive support to states for civil protection has been announced and the necessity to develop early-warning capabilities and un prevention instruments has been recognized. it is worth recalling, that these provisions have been adopted by consensus by all member countries of the un (the 2005 world summit outcome, 2005). during the international conference of the great lakes region in 2006, armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 armenological studies 152 the protocol on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity and all forms of discrimination were adopted (bieńczyk-missala, 2018, pp. 70-78). also, the international court of justice, in the case application of the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide (bosnia and herzegovina v. serbia and montenegro), indicated the interim measures of protection for bosnia and herzegovina against former yugoslavia (now serbia) (sałkiewicz-munnerlyn, e, 2009). later, in the same case in 2007, the icj confirmed the obligation of the fry to prevent the genocide in srebrenica in june 1995 and ruled that fry had not complied with its obligation to prevent genocide and had not imposed a penalty on perpetrators as provided for in article i of the convention. the icj noted that the prevention obligation applies to all parties. it is not territorially limited, and refers to an immediate and effective action using all necessary funds (application of the convention, 2007, p. 43). r. lemkin's works also influenced the concept of state sovereignty and its limitation in case of a humanitarian intervention, especially for humanitarian reasons. it was one of the most controversial issues, since the interventions in somalia in 1993, kosovo in 1999, and libya in 2011. he believed that in case of genocide, the crime of crimes, the international community must provide assistance to victims. it needs to intervene, if the state itself, cannot or does not want to help and intervene. we can say, he was in favour of humanitarian intervention to protect lives (jacobs, 2010, p. 153-164). notes 1. david nersessian in his “rethinking cultural genocide under international law, human rights dialogue: cultural rights” mentions that it is necessary to refer to the issue of cultural genocide once again: “it is hardly a satisfactory situation and it is time to revisit the issue put aside by the convention’s drafters through a new treaty dealing specifically with cultural genocide. these efforts should be preceded by a comprehensive analysis of state practice and the opinion juris to ascertain the current status of cultural genocide under customary international law. the need is patent. cultural genocide is a unique wrong that should be recognized independently, and that rises to the level of meriting individual criminal responsibility. after all, if indeed the highest values of a society are expressed through its criminal laws, what message is being conveyed by not labeling acts of cultural genocide as armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 153 criminal? perhaps a message better left unsent” (cf. "cultural rights", spring 2005, series 2, no 12, p. 7-8). 2. in the international criminal tribunal for rwanda (ictr) the prosecutors were climent kayishema and obed ruzindana. cf. case no ictr-95-1-t, par. 89. retrieved 04.05.2021 from https://unictr.irmct.org/sites/unictr.org/files/case-documents/ ictr-95-1/appeals-chamber-judgements/en/010601.pdf 3. the prosecutor at the international criminal tribunal for former yugoslavia (icty) was radislav krstic. cf. case no it-98-33-t, par. 580. retrieved 04.05.2021 from https://www.icty.org/x/cases/krstic/tjug/en/krstj010802e.pdf 4. the discussion of the question of the responsibility of any contracting country referred to the convention of genocide itself: “the contracting parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish”. cf. convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. retrieved from https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crimeofgenocide.aspx the draft declaration is included as annex i of the report of the working group on indigenous populations on its eleventh session, 23 august 1993, un commission on human rights, 45th session, agenda item 14. e/cn.4/sub.2/1993/26, 8 june 199. for the votes, see a/61/pv.107, 13 september 2007. the russian federation, ukraine, georgia, and eight developing countries abstained. cases with da’esh in iraq and boko haram in nigeria, both groups were engaged in the abduction of children, targeted by religion. cf. white house, office of the press secretary, statement by the president, august 7, 2014; and u.s. department of state, statement of secretary of state john kerry, march 17, 2016. 5. in his report of january 12, 2009, the secretary-general indicates that “under conventional and customary international law, states have obligations to prevent and punish genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. ethnic cleansing is not a crime in its own right under international law, but acts of ethnic cleansing may constitute one of the other three crimes. the summit's enunciation of the responsibility to protect was not intended to detract in any way from the much broader range of obligations existing under international humanitarian law, international human rights law, refugee law and international armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 armenological studies 154 criminal law and implementing the responsibility to protect” (cf. report of the secretary-general, 12 january 2009, a/63/677, points 2 to 3). references accountability for destruction of cultural heritage: the case of jugha. 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(2016). crimes against cultural heritage before the international court of justice: critical analysis. pan inp studia prawnicze, 1 (205), 39-60. unchror, 45th sess., annex 1, agenda item 14, un doc e/cn.4/sub.2/1993/29 (1993) [draft declaration]. ռ. լեմկինի ներդրումը ժամանակակից միջազգային իրավունքի եվ միջազգային քրեական իրավունքի զարգացման մեջ էվա սալկիևիչ-մյուններլին հոդվածում քննության են առնվում ցեղասպանություն հասկացության լեմկինյան մեկնաբանության նշանակությունն ու ազդեցությունը միջազգային իրավունքի զարգացման վրա: ներկայացվում է միջազգային այնպիսի դատարանների գործունեությունը, ինչպիսիք են արդարադատության միջազգային դատարանը, միջազգային քրեական դատարանը, նախկին հարավսլավիայի միջազգային քրեական տրիբունալը, ռուանդայի միջազգային քրեական տրիբունալը, որոնք հանգամանորեն վերլուծել են ցեղասպանությանը առնչվող հասկացություններն ու երևույթները, այդ թվում` մշակութային ժառանգության նկատմամբ տեղ գտած հանցագործությունները: հարավսլավիայի հարցերով միջազգային քրեական տրիբունալի մնացյալ գործառույթները, ներառյալ պատիժների վերահսկողությունը և 2013 թվականի հուլիսի 1-ից սկսած armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 2 (24), 2021 159 ցանկացած բողոքարկման վարույթի քննարկումը գտնվում են իրավահաջորդ մարմնի` քրեական տրիբունալների միջազգային մնացորդային մեխանիզմների իրավասության ներքո: հոդվածում անդրադարձ է արվում նաև պաշտպանության պատասխանատվության և մարդու իրավունքների ազդեցության, ինչպես նաև միջազգային պետական պատասխանատվության և անհատական պատասխանատվության խնդիրներին: բանալի բառեր. մշակութային ցեղասպանություն, միջազգային քրեական դատարան, նախկին հարավսլավիայի միջազգային քրեական տրիբունալ, ռուանդայի միջազգային քրեական տրիբունալ, արդարադատության միջազգային դատարան, պաշտպանության պատասխանատվություն, կատինի ջարդը: armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 literature studies 146 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2022.18.2.146 the otherness of trees: factness and fiction in recent narratives of arboreal survival john a stotesbury university of eastern finland, joensuu the primary intention of this article is to explore some of the ways in which present-day readers, living in an age of increasing awareness of ecological change, interact with the concept of the “tree” as it appears in a variety of discourses: children’s fiction, tv documentary, scholarly writing, popularising ecological discourse, and recent mainstream anglophone fiction, most notably that of the turkish-british novelist elif shafak, whose the island of missing trees (2021) features a sentient tree as a prominent narrator. the primary concern of this article is then to discuss some of the ways in which fictional texts have been augmented by popularising, fact-based discourses, most notably by the use of anthropomorphism, which supposedly permits the reader to “imagine” the existence of the arboreal other. inevitably, given the range of discursive sources, the findings are in part conflictual, although all can be seen to contribute in different ways to the current human-centred re-imagination of the perceived fraught relationship that exists between the natural world and the human being. keywords: arboreal, human, tree, sentient, silverstein, holocaust, forest, wohlleben, shafak, cypriot conflict, narrative voice, anthropomorphism, magic realism. introduction my original intention in this brief study was to describe and define the extent to which elif shafak’s most recent novel, the island of missing trees (2021), manages to create an adequately decentred “post-human” narrative solution to the decidedly common “human” dilemma of thwarted care and love on an intercommunal no less than a personal level. i hoped to articulate my perception – and that of many of the novel’s other readers – that shafak’s narrative stratagem provides a challenging alternative to the usual novelist’s  john.stotesbury@gmail.com this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 15.08.2022 revised: 01.09.2022 accepted: 29.09.2022 © the author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 147 problem of engaging and sustaining the reader’s attention. however, as will become apparent in the following sections, my eclectic critical approach, based largely on secondary texts focusing on trees, rather than relying on certifiably “scholarly” literary theorisation and analysis, has meant that my range of reference has taken a number of unexpected turns. in essence, this concern with the “factness” of trees – their identity as entities that can be described and admired, but also used and abused, and ultimately destroyed – has resulted in an array of narratives, both factual and fictive, that deserves closer attention to its overlapping and divergent characteristics. my eventual argument will then consist of the perception that in approaching an imaginative narrative such as shafak’s, our reading will inevitably be informed by an array of sometimes conflicting knowledge concerning as familiar a concept as the tree. talking (about) trees the following four sections present concise descriptions of a few of the ways in which different types of discourse have presented the tree as central to their essence as narratives. the selection is clearly by no means exhaustive, but it will hopefully illustrate not only their diversity but also some of the ways in which they coincide. this discussion will then be succeeded in the subsequent main section by consideration of a key aspect of shafak’s current fiction: an anthropomorphised fig tree. shel silverstein, the giving tree (1964) the giving tree, written and also illustrated with line drawings by its american author shel silverstein (1930-1999), was created for children, and to the present remains a controversial and even “divisive” text. the narrative presents the relationship between a tree and a boy. neither is named: the boy remains “the boy” throughout his life, while the tree remains “the tree”, evidently an apple tree, although the balance of the relationship is increasingly diminished as the boy repeatedly uses the tree to support various crucial stages of his life, moving on from the playfulness of childhood, when “the boy loved the tree very much”, and on to the boy’s adolescence and young maturity, when the tree willingly provides him with the wealth supplied by the sale of its apples and with the strength of its branches to provide him with a home. the arboreal and human relationship starts to sour, however, when the boy removes all of the armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 literature studies 148 tree’s branches to build a boat “that will take me far away from here”. “the tree was happy”, the reader is told, “… but [unsurprisingly, at this late stage] not really.” reduced to a mere stump, the tree endures until the final return of the “boy” in his extreme old age, seeking the stump of the tree to sit on and rest, and the story closes with the no doubt intentionally perplexing narrative comment: “and the tree was happy”. the thoroughly-documented wikipedia article devoted to the giving tree (n.d.) is comprehensive in its summary of the “divisive” controversy raised by the book’s publication, citing even the numerous references by commentators to the back-cover photograph of the author, which has struck many as “menacing,” “evil,” and even “satanist” in its visual impact, especially its impact on child readers. inevitably, the extent to which critics have interpreted the magic realism of the story itself, represented through the anthropomorphic relationship between the boy and the tree, in terms of an ideologized vision of the world has varied considerably, and my only contribution to the debate is to indicate that the relationship between the boy and the tree is constructed in terms of gender – the boy is clearly a boy, while the tree is clearly and repeatedly referred to as “she”. gender, it would seem, in silverstein’s creation of his story, is key. surviving the holocaust: uncovering secret hideouts (dw tv, 2022) in early 2022 the dw television channel, which is broadcast in english throughout europe, featured a documentary programme compiled and presented by the polish researcher natalia romik. romik’s focus in the programme is on some of the hiding-places used by persecuted jewish individuals in the course of the second world war: in the concealed basements of private homes, in the sewers of kyiv, inside tombs located in the jewish cemetery in warsaw. strikingly, in the programme romik also visits a renowned and ancient oak tree nicknamed “józef”, growing in the grounds of a palace in the southeast polish region of wiśniowa. the tree, some 650 years old and now 30 metres in height, was used for an extended period by two polish jewish brothers to evade capture, the filming revealing the continuing existence of five shelves built into the hollow tree-trunk that permitted the two young men to keep watch and survive. as romik comments in the programme, “the tree is living and constantly changing. […] living inside a tree was a desperate measure necessitated by a desperate situation”. clearly, as romik concludes, literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 149 “the psychology of living inside a tree is outside our imagination” (my emphasis). (see also “pedunculate oak”, n.d.) tuulikki halla, reetta karhunkorva, jaana laine, and leena paaskoski, human forest relationship in finland (2018/2021) as an example of scholarly discourse, “human forest relationship in finland” may be considered significant for its emphasis on the ongoing shift in people’s attitudes to forest. for the majority of finns, inhabiting a country that as part of the managed “boreal” (i.e., northern) forest belt remains massively forested, forests “are still important […] but mainly as spaces for recreational rather than traditional economic spaces. […] citizens gain health benefits from forests, including stress relief. in addition, spirituality and the desire to protect nature are important to finns. [… the] every man’s right tradition acknowledges that the forest benefits all society and the finns are entitled to enter and use forested areas even though most forests are privately owned” (pp. 169-70). an interesting crossover, mentioned later in the article, between ownership and the “right to roam” or “everyman’s right of access” is reflected, for example, in the common citizen’s pastime of (non-commercial) berryand mushroom-picking (which, of course, also occurs on a commercial level and is tax-free), and in the regulated “sport” hunting of animals such as moose, deer, and bears (p. 176). further evidence of a shift in the significance of forests is attested, in part, by the emergence of a form of “selfie” photography sometimes referred to as “woodsies” (p. 172) and also by the increase in media programmes and publications “where nature and trees are represented as communicative and even emotional creatures" (p. 170). in sum, the human-forest relationship (hfr) within finland (and no doubt elsewhere) is in flux, “and this relationship is based on commonly shared values and experiences as well as ecological, cultural, social and economic aspects of our societies” (p. 172). the remainder of this particular article by halla et al. (2021) centres on the broadly social implications of the human response to forests rather than to “trees” per se – the passing use of the word “trees” on page 170 of the article is its only occurrence in thirteen pages, including no reference at all to the most common tree species in the finnish forests, despite their evident significance. the relatively limited scope of the article is perhaps also reflected in its unspoken assumption that the dominant element in the human forest relationship is the human rather than the arboreal, armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 literature studies 150 and there is no further development in the article of the innovatory notion that trees may be “communicative and even emotional creatures” (p. 170). peter wohlleben, the hidden life of trees (2015, 2016) the rise in popular eco-politics has also given rise to a related popular literature that focuses on the familiar natural world of europe and north america. thus, when peter wohlleben’s das geheime leben der bäume (2015) was translated into english in 2016, the german “geheim” in its title had to be rendered as “hidden” rather than “secret”, since an earlier work, the secret life of trees, by colin tudge, had already appeared in 2005, when eco-catastrophe had not yet appeared to be quite as imminent as it does now. in review (as in a contemporaneous guardian review by adam thorpe (2005), tudge’s study appears to be fact-based, relatively balanced, and globally wide-ranging, whilst simultaneously campaigning passionately for a new awareness of the need for a fundamental change in attitudes and action. in turn, wohlleben’s study would seem to appeal to a similar popular readership, but with respect to its publication and publicity it has achieved a far greater impact internationally, selling more than a million copies in german and well over 3 million in english translation and in other languages (wikipedia), with a popular documentary film adaptation appearing as recently as a year ago, in 2021 (internet). despite the widespread commercial success of wohlleben’s book, also apparent is the extent to which informed reviewers have expressed their dismay at his stylistic strategy, which depends to a major extent on anthropomorphism. a mere glance at the table of contents (v-vi) reveals the flavour of this in these randomly selected chapter headings: “friendships”, “social security”, “love”, “forest etiquette”, “slowly does it”, “united we stand, divided we fall”, “mother ships of biodiversity”, “a question of character”, “street kids”, “burnout”, “tough customers”, “immigrants” – all, as the narrative reveals, explicitly in reference to trees. such chapter titles do not belie the style of their narratives; to cite a few at random: thirst is harder for trees to endure than hunger, because they can satisfy their hunger whenever they want. like a baker who always has enough bread, a tree can satisfy a rumbling stomach right away using photosynthesis. but even the best baker cannot bake without water, and the same goes for a tree: without water, food production stops. (ch. 8, “tree school”, p. 43) literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 151 when i walk through the forest i manage, i often see oaks in distress. and sometimes they are very distressed indeed. anxious suckers sprouting at the base of the trunk are a dead giveaway. […] they indicate that the tree is engaged in an extended fight to the death, and it is panicking. (ch. 12, “mighty oak or mighty wimp?”, p. 68) in the forest, there are unwritten guidelines for tree etiquette. these guidelines lay down the proper appearance for upright members of ancient forests and acceptable forms of behaviour. this is what a mature, well-behaved deciduous tree looks like. it has a ramrod straight trunk with a regular, orderly arrangement of wood fibers. […]. (chapter 7, “forest etiquette”, p. 37) in the last of these, the analogy with the conservative social order of an established human family of distinction is perceptible. the narrative stratagem of such anthropomorphism is present through the text, and has evidently appealed immensely to wohlleben’s popular readership. as tim lusher (2016) notes in an early guardian review of the english translation, “a book called the hidden life of trees is not an obvious bestseller but it’s easy to see the popular appeal of german forester peter wohlleben’s claims – they are so anthropomorphic”. lusher goes on to cite, for example, wohlleben’s coining of the term “wood wide web” to convey the way in which he wishes his popular readership to understand how “trees message their distress in electrical signals via their roots and across fungi networks (‘like our nerve system’)” (my emphasis). writing some five years later, in 2021, michael bell is also prepared to suggest that wohleben [sic], while also challenging conventional understanding of trees, offers firmly scientific justification. the initially outrageous claims that the tree feels pain, has lungs, or goes to sleep, are all given a scientific explanation. so, for example, the underground network of funghi [sic] by which trees are now known to “communicate” with each other is revealed by botanical enquiry not by poetic intuition. no doubt the expression of these claims remains in some sense metaphorical but it is with the nietzschean proviso that all language is ultimately metaphorical. in short, wohleben’s book is a soberly scientific exposition of information, observation and experience leading the reader to enter a new relation with the tree (bell, 2021; my emphases). armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 literature studies 152 in contradiction to the evident popularity of wohlleben’s combination of scientific data with an anthropomorphic narrative, the german wikipedia entry refers to a critical study of wohlleben’s writing, das wahre leben der bäume (the true life of trees), by the german biologist torben halbe, in which halbe condemns wohlleben’s popularisation as detrimental to the environment, since wohlleben appears to demand a reduction in scientific forestry, going so far as to manipulate his readers: wesentliche thesen und argumente wohllebens versucht halbe zu widerlegen. wohlleben zeichne keinen realen, sondern einen fiktiven, „perfekten“ „bambi-wald“, womit er sachliche diskussionen verhindere. in den medien würde wohlleben und seinen büchern unkritisch viel platz eingeräumt. der „meinungsjournalismus“ verhindere dabei einen wissenschaftlichen diskurs. (halbe tries to refute some of wohlleben's main theses and arguments. rather than a real forest, wohlleben creates a fictional, “perfect” “bambi forest”, and in the process hinders objective discussion. the media have uncritically devoted excessive space to wohlleben and his books, and in the process “advocacy journalism” of this kind has prevented the establishment of a scientific discourse. [my translation]) more recently, halbe has repeated his criticism of wohlleben’s discursive method in an interview with janne kieselbach conducted in january 2020 for der spiegel (kieselbach, 2020). when asked why wohlleben appeals to his popular readership in a way that scientists cannot emulate, halbe replies: herr wohlleben vermittelt kein wissen, sonder betreibt unterhaltung. er sagt den menschen, dass man sich selbst auf den wald projizieren kann und ihn dann schon verstanden hat. (mr wohlleben does not convey knowledge but indulges in entertainment. he tells people that they can project themselves onto the forest and that in doing so they’ve understood it. [my translation]) literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 153 halbe’s criticisms have been spelt out in greater detail in a variety of reviews of the english version of the book, such as: wohlleben’s anecdotes are engaging, but sadly his book contains only a few. for the most part, it jumps around a tree’s life, using anthropomorphic language to explain various aspects. this may help laypeople relate to trees, but when he hints that humans might be able to communicate with plants given that seedlings respond to sound, we have strayed into oversimplification. (ceurstemont, 2016. my emphases.) another (anonymous) review entitled “pitfalls of anthropomorphism: the hidden life of trees”, published online in 2019 on the odd website, expresses similar reservations at greater length, while in a 2021 review of wohlleben’s most recent writing robert moor (2021) suggests that “the purpose of this verbal sleight of hand is to humanize trees and thereby impel the reader to extend greater care to them”, going on to illustrate yet another of the numerous moments of narrative anthropomorphism at which (in moor’s opinion) wohlleben “overreaches”. similarly, for sharon kingsland (2018), a scholar working in the department of the history of science and technology at johns hopkins university, the fundamental fault in wohlleben’s writing is that, by restricting the scope of his sources and by creating a relentlessly anthropomorphic narrative style, he “obscures and trivializes the amount of effort and the level of long-term support from society that is required to advance scientific fields”. elif shafak, the island of missing trees (2021) from this handful of examples, it can be seen just how discursively controversial trees can be. the scientific reading of trees as “forest” in halla et al. underlines the keen awareness in many societies of the significance of the changing relationship between human beings and their arboreal surroundings, while my brief reference to the documentary programme that bore witness to the profound, but entirely contingent, relationship in second world war poland between a tree and those seeking protection from nazi persecution sheds renewed light on the innovative use that human beings can make of a somewhat exceptional tree to preserve their own lives. as the commentator, natalia armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 literature studies 154 romik, suggests, it is an experience that would normally lie “outside our imagination”. where the children’s story in the giving tree (a telling title chosen by silverstein) coincides with wohlleben’s extensive presentation of the existence of trees and threats to their ultimate survival is obviously in their narrative dependence on anthropomorphism – which in wohlleben’s case has proven enormously popular on a readerly level but has received extensive criticism from its readership within the scientific world. some of his critics even appear to think that, in his attempt to state the trees’ case for proper treatment, by using the narrative strategies that he does he has veered away from scientific presentation and into the realm of fiction. shafak, in turn, may be considered an interesting contemporary novelist, and not only for her bilinguality – she produced her earliest fiction in her native turkish, which was then translated by herself and others into english, while her more recent works have undergone a radical process of writing and rewriting, with english as her starting-point. as a writer, she is also notable for her recent attempts to experiment with radically different forms of narrative voice. for example, in her exploration of the outcomes of the armenian genocide in her second novel in english, the bastard of istanbul (2006), she sifts through the consciousness of a character whose armenian roots have long been concealed. in contrast, her more recent novel, 10 minutes 38 seconds in this strange world (2019), contains three parts, the first of which, making up rather more than half of the whole novel, consists of the thoughts and memories of a murdered woman whose corpse has been discarded on an istanbul garbage dump. the reader is required to assume the scientificity of the notion that, even after death, the mind of the deceased may possibly take some time to cease functioning altogether – hence the notable foregrounding of the 10 minutes and 38 seconds in the novel’s title. while this radical narrative mode cannot be maintained as far as the final resolution of the novel, shafak’s experiment is strikingly memorable, an experimentation with perspective that has been carried forward into the island of missing trees. thus, at the centre of this her most recent english-language novel, there lies a conundrum that, as i will argue, cannot be easily solved by simply granting shafak the right to “poetic licence” or postmodern experimentation with the (innovatory) forms of contemporary prose fiction. the novel consists of a mixing of narrative voices and perspectives that focus on the recent conflictual experience of the community/communities inhabiting the island and literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 155 political nation of cyprus in the latter part of the 20th century and the first two decades of the new millennium (this is not to ignore the smaller “minorities” that have long played a role in the island, such as the british imperial and colonial forces and their families, and others such as the local descendants of the post-1915 armenian diaspora). where shafak’s somewhat over-familiar deployment of the “traditional”, i.e., intertextual, ingredients of human love and historical and contemporary intercommunal violence diverges from the general run of post-colonial narratives is in her reliance on the anthropomorphic strategy of a sentient fig tree of considerable antiquity (this is not, however, a unique instance – in 2018, for instance, the us author richard powers (2018) published a tree-centred novel, the overstory, although with a radically different intention). for the bulk of shafak’s story, the tree inhabits a space at the heart of the cypriot conflict, a space occupied by an amalgam of turkish, greek and cosmopolitan cultures. it has, however, grown to maturity not in predictable surroundings but enclosed as an integral part of the structure of a nicosia building, a tavern named the happy fig (i have personally seen a similar phenomenon in the environs of moscow, though the tree was not a ficus and the building was a dacha rather than a tavern). the fig tree barely survives the intercommunal cypriot conflict of the 1970s but is eventually evacuated to where she can live – and can continue her narration – in a very ordinary post-imperial london garden, in a novel form of arboreal exile. notably, while a major portion of the narrative in this novel appears in a fairly standard, “omniscient”, third-person mode, it becomes immediately apparent that this conventional narrative is interspersed with a total of 27 chapters – comprising rather more than a quarter of the complete novel – that are narrated in the first-person voice of the fig tree. the tree initially remains unnamed until its principal human protector, the greek cypriot kostas kazantzakis addresses her lovingly as “darling ficus” (p. 36), and later, in professionally scientific terms, explains to his daughter ada that “our ficus carica is female, and she’s a parthenocarpic variety – that means that she can make fruit on her own, without needing a male tree nearby” (p. 40). my reading here is restricted primarily to the narrative identity of the fig tree rather than to a general interpretation of the novel as a whole. the 27 chapters given to the tree must obviously be read in terms of the anthropomorphism that shafak has chosen to attribute to the tree itself. the voice of the tree is cast in an overwhelmingly didactic mode. not only does she armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 literature studies 156 (the tree) inform us, her readers, about her identity as an individual tree, but she places that identity within history, both genealogically and within a broader, conventional frame. thus, we are informed: i am a ficus carica, known as the edible common fig, though i can assure you that there’s nothing common about me. i am a member of the great mulberry family of moraceae from the kingdom of plantae. originating in asia minor, i can be found across a vast geography from california to portugal and lebanon, from the shores of the black sea to the hills of afghanistan and the valleys of india. (p. 23) more precisely, she adds later: i came into this world in 1878, the year that sultan abdul hamid ii, sitting on his gilded throne in istanbul, made a secret agreement with queen victoria, sitting on her gilded throne in london. the ottoman empire agreed to cede the administration of our island to the british empire in exchange for protection against russian aggression. the same year the british prime minister, benjamin disraeli, called my motherland “the key to western asia”, and added, “in taking it the move is not mediterranean, but indian”. (p. 84) the rest of the same short chapter is devoted to her bringing the reader up to speed with the “decimation” of the cypriot forests, the “neglect” of each successive administration, and the wars “throughout the centuries” that culminated in intercommunal and anti-colonial conflict after the second world war (p. 85): “and we trees watched, waited and witnessed” (p. 86). the tone of this anthropomorphised narration, intended for an informed, adult readership rather than for the youthful readers of stories such as silverstein’s, is in a sense absurd. it is obvious to us that a tree cannot be observant and informed in this manner. but, like children, we can, as readers, be seduced by the tree’s narration into the “magic” of her perspective on the world. this is especially so in the story told by the tree of her near-death in the nicosia tavern, which in 1974 is virtually destroyed by bombing and fire and eventual abandonment when its owners, the greek cypriot yiorgos and the turkish cypriot yusuf, a gay couple, are killed and their bodies, chained together, are thrown into a well. the sickly, dying fig tree is eventually rediscovered and rescued from arboreal death by kostas, in the meantime literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 157 having rather propitiously become a recognised professional tree botanist, who returns in the early 2000s from exile in london to the location where more than a quarter-century earlier his first – highly dangerous – wooing of a turkish cypriot girl, defne, has been witnessed in remarkable detail by the tree. he saves the tree by smuggling a healthy branch cut from its dying trunk back to london, and while doing so rescues his teenage love for defne by taking her back to the heart of empire, where their child, conceived in cyprus, is born and named ada, the turkish for “island”. in london defne dies early, when ada is only 16 years of age, and this rather mawkish and conventional love-story takes an even more curious turn. to quote from the tree’s narration: this year [in the “late 2010s”, the present time of the narrative], love, not unlike the unusual winter, has crept up on me, so gradual and subtle in its intensity that by the time i realized what was happening it was already too late to guard myself. i was stupidly, pointlessly besotted with a man [kostas] who would never think of me in an intimate way. it embarrassed me, this sudden neediness that had come over me, this deep yearning for what i could not have. […] i know what you are thinking. how could i, an ordinary ficus carica, possibly be in love with a homo sapiens? (p. 30) despite her elaborate and exotic genealogy, as detailed above, “none of that makes me entitled to love a human being and hope to be loved back” (p.32). shafak, of course, is fully aware of the narrative strategy that she has chosen to use. after all, three-quarters of the novel is a somewhat conventional, if gripping, tale of romantic love in a society riven by an ethnic and religious conflict that many of its adult readers will still remember. the story details the high and low points in the lives of its characters: some, like yiorgos and yusuf, come to make decisions that eventually result in their violent deaths, while others, like defne and kostas, do finally find personal fulfilment, although it has to be in exile from their familiar home context. and some, like the ficus carica, are obliged to suffer near-death and an unpredicted and precarious rebirth. these all, i would suggest, comprise what i have termed “seductive” life-stories of a kind that may well appeal to the reader, so much so that the “childish” anthropomorphic narrative mode of the fig tree’s part in the storytelling can be absorbed and, eventually, taken for granted. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 literature studies 158 as my examples also show, however, shafak’s use of anthropomorphism is a major exaggeration of the kind deployed by wohlleben in his “factual” study. a tree that has a detailed, rational awareness of human and botanical history and a desire for the reciprocation of love with a human being is undoubtedly an absurdity! it could also be suggested that, as in the case of her previous novel, 10 minutes 38 seconds in this strange world, shafak is again experimenting with the degree to which a fictional narrative can convey a consciousness that (to quote again natalia romik’s comment on the polish oak tree) would otherwise be “outside our imagination”. the absurdity of such a strategy in 10 minutes 38 seconds also verges on the grotesque: it is gothic fantasy rather than magic realism. the almost-extinguished brain of the dead woman may indeed still be functioning and enabling “her” to recall past episodes in her troubled life but – as in the case of the fig tree transplanted into a london garden – there is no hope or possibility of either of these protagonists ever communicating their thoughts, memories or sentiments to another human being. in this, i would suggest, they are in a very real sense analogous to the victims of “locked-in syndrome” or pseudocoma, their secret internal narratives accessible to others only through a creative act of imagination on the part of the reader (or, in the case of romik’s oak tree, the viewer or listener). this is, of course, the case with all creative narratives: we recreate potentially credible narratives through our readerly interpretation of the complex narrative strategies deployed by the writer. however, shafak’s exploitation of such “locked-in” consciousness, in her re-creation of the final mental processes of the already-dead, and especially in her playful exaggeration of the kind of anthropomorphised arboreal identity developed and marketed earlier by wohlleben et al., is arguably of another order. in the island of missing trees this comes to the fore in the case of ada, the “island”, who, although conceived on cyprus, has been brought up in london by her cypriot parents (and latterly by her widowed father) largely in ignorance of her parents’ respective languages and past lives. in consequence, as a teenager she has become silent, withdrawn and shy, largely unconnected with the lives of her fellow students. it is then unsurprising that, near the start of the novel, she feels compelled to utter a long and uncontrollable “primal” scream in the course of a school history lesson. she has become “locked in” by her ignorance of her family’s cypriot past, and her release of this uncontrolled scream acts as a form of therapy, an act of freeing that is unavailable to the fig tree or, indeed, the dead literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 159 woman of shafak’s previous novel. in this process, the complexities of her parents’ island and of her familial past start to become accessible to ada – and the reader is able to understand this process through drawing analogies with the narration of the anthropomorphised fig tree. hence, our previous perceptions of the absurdity and grotesquery of this anthropomorphised narrative are allayed by the resolution typified especially by the potentially “locked-in” child who rediscovers the connections between her own voice and the narrative of her personal and political-historical origins in cyprus. it is, then, with some degree of astonishment that we may read the final chapter, again narrated by the fig tree, for suddenly the narration reveals the hybrid narrative identity of the anthropomorphised fig tree: after i [i.e., defne] died and emptiness swallowed me whole like a huge yawning mouth, i floated about aimlessly for a while. i saw myself lying on the hospital bed where i had remained in a coma, and i knew it was sad but i could not feel what i knew. […] i wanted to continue to be anchored in love, the only thing that humans have yet to destroy. but where could i possibly reside now that i was no longer alive and lacked a body, a shell, a form? and then i knew. the old fig tree! where else to seek refuge but in its arboreal embrace? following the funeral, […] i drifted above and danced in circles around our ficus carica. i seeped into her vascular tissues, absorbed water from her leaves and breathed life again through her pores. (pp. 342-343) thus, the inexplicable grotesqueness and absurdity of death, represented by that of the turkish cypriot mother defne, has been transformed by the fig tree’s anthropomorphic narrative into something entirely unexpected. it has moved on from the silence of the dead, discarded woman of 10 minutes 38 seconds in this strange world, whose post-mortem silence is broken only by the memories of her friends. that silence is replaced in the island of missing trees by a narrative “voice” that links the arboreal with the human and with their respective histories. afterword as informed readers, we are to a greater or lesser extent aware of the range of threats to the continued existence of trees – and indeed to ourselves – in a world armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 literature studies 160 confronting ecological catastrophe. in addition to their felling to provide land for housing and feeding an expanding population, trees burn in barely containable fires, they die of thirst in newly drought-stricken regions, and they drown in rising waters. in these senses, they are indeed “like us”. in addition, however, the otherness of trees is visible in the way that they are subjected to extensive human narrativisation of all kinds, be it scientific or literary. thus, the island of missing trees can undoubtedly be considered entirely sentimental in its narrativisation of the human dilemmas involved in dealing with the past – indeed, like that of many critics, olivia ho’s (2021) assessment (in the straits times) of the fig tree is that it is “a narrator prone to rambling exposition, gossip and maudlin outbursts. though it harps on the incompatibility of arboreal time and human time, it is sentimentally anthropomorphic in its outlook”. in apparent contrast, ron charles’s (2021) review assessment in the washington post suggests that “the island of missing trees isn’t just a cleverly constructed novel; it’s explicitly about the way stories are constructed, the way meaning is created, and the way devotion persists”. finally, then, it is perhaps in the latter reading that an insight into the partial decentring of the human perspective in shafak’s novel can be perceived, although, indirectly, it also suggests that our readings of arboreal narratives of all kinds should feed into each other for a fuller understanding of the dilemma. references bell, m. 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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/nov/26/featuresreviews.guardianreview3 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/nov/26/featuresreviews.guardianreview3 armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 literature studies 162 ծառերի այլությունը. փաստականը եվ գեղարվեստականը ծառի գոյատեվման պատումներում ջոն սթոթսբերի սույն հոդվածի հիմնական նպատակն է ուսումնասիրել էկոլոգիական փոփոխությունների մասին իրազեկվածության դարաշրջանում «ծառ» հասկացույթի հետ ժամանակակից ընթերցողի առնչման որոշ ձևերը տարբեր դիսկուրսներում՝ մանկական գրականություն, հեռուստատեսային վավերագրական ֆիլմեր, գիտական գրականություն, հանրամատչելի էկոլոգիական դիսկուրս և վերջին շրջանի անգլալեզու գեղարվեստական գրականություն, մասնավորապես, ազգությամբ թուրք բրիտանացի գրող էլիֆ շաֆաքի «կորած ծառերի կղզին» (2021) ստեղծագործությունում, որտեղ զգայուն ծառը հանդես է գալիս որպես պատմող: հոդվածում առաջնային խնդիր է՝ քննարկել գեղարվեստական տեքստերի ընդլայնումը հանրամատչելի և փաստերի վրա հիմնված դիսկուրսների միջոցով, առավելապես մարդակերպության սկզբունքի շրջանակում, որը ենթադրաբար թույլ է տալիս ընթերցողին «պատկերացնել» ծառի գոյության այլությունը: ընդգրկված դիսկուրսիվ աղբյուրների շրջանակը փոքր չէ, ու թեև մեր եզրահանգումները մասամբ հակասական են, դրանք բոլորն էլ կարող են նպաստել բնություն – մարդ վտանգված հարաբերությունների ներկայիս մարդակենտրոն վերապատկերացումների տարբեր ձևերի հասկացմանը: բանալի բառեր՝ ծառային, մարդ, ծառ, զգայուն, սիլվերսթայն, հոլոքոստ, անտառ, վոհլեբեն, շաֆակ, կիպրական հակամարտություն, պատմողական ձայն, մարդակերպություն, մոգական ռեալիզմ: armenian folia anglistika – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english (since 2005) and yerevan state university (since 2015) aims at fostering research of the english language, literature and culture armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 167 the scientific and political significance of textbooks on history (objective history vs falsification) ashot melkonyan  institute of history, nas ra this article presents the process of creating new school textbooks on armenian history in the post-soviet years. the author emphasizes the necessity to revise a number of issues in armenian historiography related to the ideological attitudes of the soviet epoch. the revision of many issues by armenian historians during the years of independence, such as periodization, the first state formations on the territory of the armenian highlands, the armenian political parties, the first republic of 1918-1920, sovietization, etc., is reflected in the new history textbooks. the article provides examples of the distortion of armenian and russian history in various textbooks and emphasizes the importance of presenting the objective history in school textbooks for educating the younger generation. keywords: school textbooks, periodization, history of armenia, sovietization, distortion of history, objective history. introduction following the collapse of the ussr and the declaration of independence in all post-soviet countries, the newly formed states launched the process of creating new textbooks for school and higher educational institutions (hei), including the ones covering the history of those countries. in armenia too, the prominent historians embarked on creating school textbooks on armenian history at the start of the 1990s. prior to that, armenian history was taught once a week in classes 8 to 10 with the implementation of textbooks compiled back in the 1950s which, in fact, were rather modest in scope. it goes without saying that in the last four years of studies at school, students were mostly taught the history of the ussr.  ashamelk@yahoo.com this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 29.01.2023 revised: 09.02.2023 accepted: 20.02.2023 © the author(s) 2023 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2023.19.1.167 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 armenological studies 168 problems encountered by the authors of new textbooks on the history of armenia the authors of the new textbooks faced a real challenge. in the first place it was necessary to come up with a new and objective concept of the history of armenia, while in the soviet times numerous issues had either been subject to falsification or simply overlooked because of political stereotypes. albeit similar problems could be observed in all periods of the history of armenia, they mostly embraced the epoch of the new and modern history owing to political considerations. as is known, the history of the ussr countries was taught in the framework of the history of russia. in particular, it started from the period when the historical territories of these countries were incorporated into the russian empire. under these conditions, the histories of the countries were adjusted to that of russia thereby refusing the principles adopted by the world history. for instance, the issue of periodization of the history of armenia, as well as that of other nations of the ussr, were presented in the same system, whereas part of the nations were radically different from each other especially with reference to the ancient times (melkonyan, 2017, pp. 199-203; melkonyan, 2022, pp. 35-48). oftentimes, one could come across nonsensical approaches towards certain issues of modern history, as well. as is known, many historians believe that the new epoch of the world history started in the middle of the 17 th century – the period of the english revolution (1640 1660). however, the new epoch in the history of armenia is believed to have started in 1801 when the northern regions of armenia – lory, tavoush, pambak, together with the kingdom of kartli-kakheti became part of russia and the process of the annexation of eastern armenia to the russian empire was launched (history of the armenian people, 1974, p.7, p. 13) . quite naturally, at that point the actions of another country in relation to the caucasus could not become a deciding factor for the transition into a modern period. currently, similar to the world historiographical traditions, the armenian historiography regards the mid-17 th century as the start of the modern epoch of armenia, since this period is characterized by the birth of the national-liberation movement (history of armenia, 2010, pp. 3-4). since the issue of the expansion of the territory of the russian empire at the expense of the neighboring countries was mentioned, we feel obligated to evaluate this process. it is common knowledge, that currently the active foreign armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 169 policy of russia with regard to neighboring countries is labelled as expansionist. the words conquest and invasion are used instead of the terms reunion or reunification, etc. armenian historiography both in the soviet and post-soviet times gave preference to the terms joining, reunification or the word combination the establishment of the russian dominance (grigoryan, 1978, pp.185-213; history of armenia, 2010, pp.33-35). before the first three decades of the 19 th century, armenia was under the brutal yoke of the ottoman empire and persia and the entry of eastern armenia in the territory of russia, certainly, played a progressive role for the armenian society. of course, in this context we do dispute the different approaches of our colleagues to the question under discussion with special reference to the colonial policy of tsarism, as well. the new school textbooks of the history of armenia do not cast doubt on the character of the soviet-german war in 1941-1945. this war was and still is patriotic for armenians. it is no news that the turkish authorities, in a secret alliance with the fascist germany, were looking forward to the fall of moscow or stalingrad to invade the caucasus with their army made up of a million soldiers. this turn of events would end in yet another genocide for the population of the region in general and for armenians, in particular. it was not surprising then, that in the very first days of the war, the pravda wrote, “throughout its history the armenian nation has repeatedly been subject to foreign invasions. armenians are quite familiar with massacres, pogroms, hunger and violence. the armenian nation still remembers the physical annihilation of armenians masterminded by the descendent of hitler – kaiser wilhelm in the years of the world war i. therefore, at the outbreak of the bloody war launched by the cannibal hitler against the soviet nation, the whole armenian nation stood up as one in defense of the homeland (pravda, 1941). it is noteworthy that over 600.000 armenians took part in the military actions. 109 soldiers were awarded the highest title of the hero of the soviet union. five out of thousands of military commanders became marshals, 69 – generals (arutyunyan, 2004). one of the problematic issues is the national-administrative status of soviet armenia in the composition of the ussr. in some post-soviet countries the existence of any national-state status of the union republic is questioned. what is more, the baltic states and georgia regard the soviet years mostly as a period of an occupation regime. many armenian historians, including the authors of school textbooks, believe that bolsheviks who were compelled to armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 armenological studies 170 create a federal state were able to avoid dissatisfaction and create a common state based on the new, so-called socialist ideology by offering the countries the status of a union republic, especially to the nations which used to have their own state prior to sovietization. the status of the union republic, which was the highest status in the union state, anyway, offered a number of opportunities for the social-economic and cultural development of the given republic and shared certain attributes of statehood such as borders, constitution, government bodies, state symbols – the flag, the hymn, national schools, etc. in some republics, namely in the georgian ssr, all the constitutions throughout the soviet period (1922, 1938, 1978) declared georgian as the state language. chapter two of the constitution of 1922 also underscored the importance of the sovereignty of the republic: “soviet socialist republic of georgia is a sovereign state which does not allow equitable control of its territory by another country and does not aspire to expand its rights beyond its territory” (constitution /basic law/ of the soviet socialist republic of georgia, 1922). the aforementioned wording was non-existent in the constitutions of many republics. it found its reflection in the constitutions of a number of countries much later in 1978. the armenian language was announced a state language only in the third constitution of soviet armenia (article 72, 1978) (constitution /basic law/ of the armenian soviet socialist republic, 1978). it is no secret that the republics were deprived of the key attributes of statehood, such as their own armed forces, diplomatic representations abroad, etc. and were under the constant control of the central authorities. however, owing to the fact that the status of the union republic was the result of the existence of independence before sovietization, it could be regarded as a unique expression of statehood. at least, based on the armenian experience we can say that the majority of the armenian historians agree to this statement (melkonyan, 2018, pp. 44-73). it is no accident, that in 1991 all the union republics left the ussr by the decrees of their own legislative bodies – supreme councils, and within the borders of the former republics. considering the ideas highlighted above, the armenian historians put forward the concept of the history of the armenian statehood in modern times. the start of this period is believed to be may 28, 1918 – the declaration of the first republic. its legal predecessor was soviet armenia (1920 1991) on the basis of which the current – third republic was established in 1991. armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 171 at the start of the 1990s many authors engaged in the creation of textbooks and at the same time as members of the staff working on the new academic multivolume “history of armenia”, had already overcome a series of problems related to the ancient period and the middle ages. the results of their work also found their place in school textbooks. among the problematic issues one can single out the ethnogenesis of the armenian people as part of indo-european peoples, the emergence of the first state formations on the territory of the armenian highlands, the adoption of christianity in armenia as a state religion, the character of the warriors of the 5 th century, etc. (history of armenia, 10 th class, 2009, pp. 20-32; history of armenia, 2018, pp. 15-32, pp. 204-208). a novel scientific approach was applied to the activities of the armenian political parties of the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries as well. in the soviet times, aiming to discredit the national parties, they were introduced as supporters of the interests of the upper bourgeoisie and bearers of nationalist ideology. all this happened in the time when the armenian society practically lacked upper bourgeoisie (katvalyan et al, 2014, pp. 324-343). the history of the republic of armenia was written anew (1918-1920). a separate big chapter was dedicated to the bolshevik-kemalist union, as a result of which armenia was sovietized, was deprived of its state independence, and a series of historical armenian territories went to azerbaijan and turkey (national archive of armenia, f. 114, op. 2, d. 79, etc.) 1 . here was the general outline of a number of problems identified by armenian historians in the years of independence. the results of the research are reflected in monographs, joint works and textbooks. in this regard, it is interesting to have a look at the works of armenian historians from other countries and russian historians who have provided us with a rare opportunity of studying certain notions. based on the decree of the president of the russian federation, issued on april 14, 2008, historians studied how russian history was presented in 200 school textbooks and scientific journals in 12 post-soviet states. falsification of the history of armenia and russia in textbooks on the history of azerbaijan proceeding from the material, the group of scholars under the supervision of a. a. danilov and a.v. philippov produced a comprehensive report which was published as a collective monograph in moscow in 2009 (bondarenko et al, armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 armenological studies 172 2009). the authors of the investigation came to the conclusion that “except for belarus and armenia (to a lesser degree), all the other countries had chosen nationalist narratives to teach the younger generation. these narratives were based on the myths and legends about the ancient roots of their nation, about the high cultural mission of their ancestors and the “sworn enemy” (ibid., p. 5). as a proof of such interpretation, the russian scholars present certain extracts from various textbooks. thus, for instance, in the school textbook of the 6th class “history of azerbaijan”, the ancestors of the azerbeijanis are introduced as the contemporaries of sumerians. “the first written evidence of the tribes of the ancient azerbaijan was recorded in the sumerian epics and cuneiform writings” (ibid, p. 6). according to the authors of this textbook, the sumerians themselves were of turkic origin (aliev et al, 2013, pp. 52-55) . such interpretation is by no means accidental. russian researchers noted that the proclamation of ancient azeris as contemporaries of sumerians aims to provide grounds for the following thesis: “modern armenia was established on the territory of the ancient western azerbaijan” (bondarenko et al, 2009, p. 6). according to azerbaijani authors, it follows that armenia never existed on historical maps (cf. national atlas of armenia, 2017, pp. 215-218) 2 and that this country was created by russian invaders on the occupied territories. “the establishment of the armenian state on the territory of azerbaijan”, as “history of azerbaijan” (7 th class textbook) reads, “had been a long-time plan of russia […] shortly after the death of […] peter i, a decree was signed allowing the settlement of armenians on the territories seized by russians. this policy of the russian emperor was carried on by his descendants during the centuries that followed” (ibid, p. 287). it is noteworthy that the authors of such textbooks raise serious claims against russia, as well. the azerbaijani textbooks view the ussr and russian policy as genocidal. to prove the idea stated, the russian historians produce a series of quotes from these textbooks: “in the course of the raid in 914, the slavic warriors kept looting and destroying the human settlements on the azerbaijani shores of the caspian sea. they massacred the civilians, captured women and children. on the way back, the slavic army, as agreed, sent half of the rich loot to the khazar kagan (ibid. p. 285). a little below we read the following sentence: “30 years later, in 944, the slavic army reappeared on the coasts of the caspian sea. this time they had arrived to seize barda – the largest city in the caucasus, the main city of aran, and to settle in azerbaijan forever. the warriors of prince igor of kiev (912armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 173 945) and the professional army of the slavic people […] headed for barda […] which was soon captured by them. the population was slaughtered, the city was mercilessly looted […]. a new stage of massacre started in the city. women and children were captured. according to historians, up to 20.000 people were killed in barda at that time” (ibid. p. 285). “in 1032-1033 shirvan suffered a disastrous raid. al-lans, sarirs, and russians who had allied with them seized the capital city of shamakhi of shirvanshahs and within the next ten days destroyed it. during the raid around 10.000 people were killed in shirvan” (ibid, p. 285). the years of the russian dominance, as well as the soviet years, are presented in an absolutely gloomy light. the textbooks claim categorically, that “azerbaijan had turned to a colony of soviet russia which had embarked on taking social and economic, as well as political measures that fitted its colonial interests best” (ibid, p. 104). it is no accident that the authors of these textbooks approve of the collaborationism in the years of world war ii. the textbooks of the higher classes describe the process of the creation of national military formations in the composition of the fascist armed forces of germany: “on december 22, 1941 hitler set out to create a separate military unit made up of the muslims of the caucasus. there was a separate unit composed of azerbaijani muslims, as well. the political emigrants actively worked to liberate the azerbeijanis from captivity and to include them in the national military sections. the work by m. e. rasulzade about the three-color flag went from hand to hand in these units […]. the military unit made up of the caucasian muslims took an active part in the seizure of the strategic heights of mozdok, kazbek and elbrus. germans highly appreciated the fighting skills of the muslims and awarded many of them with medals” (ibid., pp. 149-150). more cases of collaborationism can be traced in the following sentences: “in 1943 a free turkic division was created which included an azerbaijani legion, as well […]. the azerbaijani national legion together with germans took part in fights against the allied forces in the south of france […]. in the aftermath of the war, parts of this legion were moved to the territory of neutral countries and were dissolved […]. most of them settled in turkey” (ibid, p. 302). armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 armenological studies 174 russian historians’ opinion concerning the new textbooks on the history of armenia we believe, the presentation of the russian colleagues’ assessment concerning the same problems with regard to the history of armenia, will not be out of place. the authors are convinced that “in the armenian textbooks the authors seek to produce balanced and multi-sided evaluations. the negative role of the iranian and turkish dominance and the positive role of russia on the economic and cultural development of eastern armenia can easily be identified” (ibid. p. 86). they point out to the following quote: “the years of turkish and iranian yoke negatively affected the economy of armenia. after joining russia, more or less favorable conditions were created for development in eastern armenia […]. apart from agriculture, other spheres like fishing industry, blacksmithing and jewel crafting had a chance to develop, as well. the reunification with russia also contributed to the development of trade with eastern armenia […]” (ibid, pp. 86-87, history of armenia /modern period/, 2013, p. 112). armenian textbooks emphasize that armenians, like other national minorities, connected their future with the democratization of russia. that is why they actively participated in revolutionary movements (bondarenko et al, 2009, p. 87; stepanyan et al, 2003, p. 110). the authors of the textbooks on the history of armenia believe that the armenian liberation movement in russia did not have an anti-russian and separatist character. it was not by chance, that during the hearings of the “dashnaks’ case” – the lawsuit against 159 members of the armenian liberation movement party (dashnaktsutyn) in 1912, “the free press of russia strongly condemned the whole lawsuit”, and it was due to the reaction of the russian community that 94 of the defendants were found innocent and others received minor penalties (bondarenko et al, 2009, p. 88; history of armenia /modern period/. textbook for the 8 th class, 2013, p. 116). many prominent russian politicians, lawyers and writers spoke in defense of the armenian figures. not once did the governor of the caucasus i.i. vorontsov-dashkov highlight the devotion of the armenian people to the russian state in his reports to nikolai ii and advised the tsar to stop the lawsuit against the armenian liberation movement party arefp). in the section dedicated to world war i, it is stated that unlike the european area of the military activities, where the russian forces sustained huge losses and were forced to retreat in 1915, those on the transcaucasian armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 175 front worked well for russia. the russian army together with the units of armenian volunteers occupied the most part of western armenia [...] (bondarenko et al, 2009, p. 88; stepanyan et al, p. 141). conclusion in the course of creating new school textbooks on the history of armenia in the post-soviet years, it became a necessity to revise a number of issues in armenian historiography related to the ideological attitudes of the soviet epoch. in the process of revision of many issues by historians during the years of independence, such as periodization, the first state formations on the territory of the armenian highlands, the armenian political parties, the first republic of 1918-1920, sovietization, etc., a lot of distortions of historical facts were revealed. to sum up, it is worth noting the importance of creating objective textbooks and guidelines with the view of teaching the younger generation in order to avoid the inter-ethnic hatred. the joint efforts of various international historical communities and institutions become especially significant in this regard. notes 1. it was only after the declaration of independence and thanks to the declassification of many archival funds of armenia relating to the history of the first republic of 1918-1920 as well as sovietization that the presentation of an objective picture of the history of the period became possible (cf. national archive of armenia, f. 114, op. 2, d. 79, etc.). 2. as to the existence of armenia on historical maps, the authors of these lines had better get acquainted with the first stone map of the world (dating back to the 6 th century bc) where the homeland of armenians is mentioned next to babylon and assyria. moreover, it is quite easy to find the name armenia on ancient world maps (cf. national atlas of armenia, 2017). this sort of falsification of history, especially in school textbooks for the younger generation, is not accidental. in our days one can frequently hear calls made by high ranking officials of azerbaijan to capture the territory of armenia and get back the so-called azerbaijani “historical lands” such as zangezur, sevan and even yerevan. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 armenological studies 176 references aliev v., babaev i., jafarov i., & mamedova a. (2013). history of azerbaijan. 6 th class. baku: takhsil. arutyunyan, k.a. (2004). the participation of the armenian people in the great patriotic war of the soviet people (1941-1945). yerevan: gitutyun. barkhudaryan, v. (ed.). (2013). history of armenia (modern period). 8 th class. yerevan: manmar publish. bondarenko, d. ya., vdovin, a. i., et al. (2009). the coverage of the common history and nations of post-soviet countries in school textbooks of newly independent states. moscow: national lab. of foreign policy. constitution (basic law) of the socialist soviet republic of georgia. (1922). retrieved november 16, 2022. constitution (basic law) of the armenian soviet socialist republic. (1978). retrieved november 16, 2022. grigoryan, z.t. (1978). the unification of eastern armenia with russia and its historical significance. yerevan: hayastan. history of the armenian people. 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(2009). history of armenia. 10 th class. yerevan: zangak press. melkonyan, a., & simonyan, a. (eds.). (2010). history of armenia. 11 th class. yerevan: zangak press. national atlas of armenia. (2017). yerevan: centre of geodesy and cartography snco. https://www.allgeo.org/index.php/ru/931-1922-1937 https://nodussr.ru/konstituciya-armyanskoj-ssr armenological studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 177 pravda, 1941, august 25. stepanyan, a., safrastyan, r., & nazaryan, a. (2003). world history. new centuries. 8th class. yerevan: zangak press. the archive of the foreign policy of the russian empire (afpre). political archive 1912. d. 3727. l, 16-17. պատմության դասագրքերի գիտական եվ քաղաքական նշանակությունը (օբյեկտիվ պատմություն ընդդեմ կեղծարարության) աշոտ մելքոնյան հոդվածում ներկայացվում է հետխորհրդային տարիներին հայոց պատմության նոր դպրոցական դասագրքերի ստեղծման գործընթացը և ընդգծվում հայ պատմագրության մի շարք հարցերի վերանայման անհրաժեշտությունը։ տարբեր դասագրքերում հայ և ռուս պատմության խեղաթյուրման օրինակների վերլուծությունը ցույց է տալիս, որ դպրոցական դասագրքերում օբյեկտիվ պատմության ներկայացումը չափազանց կարևոր է ոչ միայն պատմության ճիշտ ընկալման և արժևորման, այլև մատաղ սերնդի դաստիարակության համար։ բանալի բառեր՝ դպրոցական դասագրքերի պարբերականացում, հայոց պատմություն, խորհրդայնացում, պատմության աղավաղում, օբյեկտիվ պատմություն։ linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 53 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2022.18.1.053 space and time transference of main characters in british and armenian fairy tales yelena mkhitaryan lusine madatyan** armenian state pedagogical university the paper presents a comparative study of space and time transference of main characters in british and armenian fairy tales, pointing out convergent and divergent features of expressing these notions in a folkloristic text. the analysis shows that similarities prevail over differences. in both british and armenian fairy tales spatial transference takes priority over the temporal one, when the main characters’ adventures or heroic deeds are presented; temporal transference is more common when evil deeds are described, especially the ones that happen at night. besides, tragic and evil events are likely to take place more often in enclosed areas than in open places. the numbers three and seven occurring in british and armenian fairy tales have the same symbolic meanings. the differences concern the numerical indication of time points usually observed in british fairy tales and the presentation of the narrative space, which is somewhat different in view of the diverse country landscape of england and armenia. while the opening formulas are almost identical, the closing formulas in armenian tales reveal some differences, ending with a reward for the listener and teller of the fairy tale as well as with blessings and behests directed to the listener. keywords: fairy tale, main character, space transference, time transference, narrative space, folkloristic text. introduction events usually take place in space and time, each having its specific role in reflecting the objective reality. each event requires three space dimensions and a time for its description, so “time and space taken together form the space-time continuum” (tenbrink, 2007, p. 25). it is difficult to describe an event without  helenmkitaryan@yahoo.com ** madatyanlusine@yandex.com this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 17.02.2022 revised: 18.03.2022 accepted: 14.04.2022 © the author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 54 mentioning the time and place of its occurrence; even if one is absent, the other is likely to presuppose it. “all orientation in time presupposes an orientation in space and vice versa” (hoffmann, 2005, p. 269). in physics too, space-time is regarded as a single concept that recognizes the union of space and time, first proposed by the mathematician hermann minkowski in 1908 as a “way to reformulate albert einstein's special theory of relativity” (“space-time,” n.d.). time and space are the most fundamental categories of human cognition, and they find their indication in all human languages, often functioning as analogous concepts. though space and time constitute a whole, they differ in some aspect. according to the adherents of classical philosophy, one of the most essential differences between space and time is that space is reversible, whereas time is not. “someone always marching straight ahead into the universe could end up back where s/he started” (stachel, 2005, p. 46). that time is irreversible is illustrated by the metaphorical comparison made by kitching (2016): “it’s like cracking an egg to make an omelette – once it spreads out and fills the frying pan, it will never go back to being egg-shaped”. but the sciences prove that there is nothing absolute or frozen in nature and that time too can be seen as moving backwards. “the entire history of the universe would repeat itself after a finite time had elapsed”, says stachel (2005, p. 48). kitching (2016) notes that “while we take for granted that time has a given direction, physicists don’t: most natural laws are 'time reversible,' which means they would work just as well if time was defined as running backwards”. in this sense, we cannot but agree with kujundzic (2020), who argues that “there is no dominant notion of space and time in our society at present”. moreover, scientists claim that “the space-time structures no longer form a fixed stage, on which the drama of matter and fields are enacted; space and time have become actors in the drama” (stachel, 2005, p. 45). indeed, the notions of space and time are frequently used symbolically to indicate various events and happenings of the world scope. let us recall the following events: the year 1066 (the battle of hastings), the year 1929 (the wall street crash, usa), hiroshima and nagasaki (bombing, 1945), the year 1914 (the beginning of the wwi), sochi 2004 (winter olympics). here, the dates and names of places represent events of great significance and importance (given in brackets). thus, we see that space and time serve not only as mere settings or prerequisites for events to take place but constitute the concrete, tangible elements of their description. that space and time are close in meaning is evident in the following expressions in which these terms function as analogous words: he fell asleep in https://www.researchgate.net/publication/252881590_development_of_the_concepts_of_space_time_and_space-time_from_newton_to_einsteined.%20kitching https://www.researchgate.net/publication/252881590_development_of_the_concepts_of_space_time_and_space-time_from_newton_to_einsteined.%20kitching linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 55 the space of a few minutes; several tragic events happened in the space of ten days; the job holder will be on probation for the space of six months (“space”, 2005). space and time in fairy tales a fairy tale is a manifestation of the spiritual, cultural and esthetic inheritance of the nation that created it, and as such reflects its mentality, national identity and culture. a fairy tale is a combination of fantasy and reality presented in a most amazing fashion. the armenian folklorist a. jivanyan defines a fairy tale as an archetext, which is characterized by a number of overriding qualities. most importantly, it exhibits a specific possible world, which is presented with distinct spatial and temporal features (jivanyan, 2007, p. 6). indeed, spatial and temporal vagueness is viewed as one of the most recognizable and peculiar features of the fairy tales. the well-known russian literary critic m. bakhtin holds that the basic elements of any folkloristic text are space and time, and he uses the term chronotope, defining it as “the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature” (1981 p. 84). he emphasizes that the study of chronotopes in fairy tales is an indispensable prerequisite of profound comprehension of the content of a folkloristic text (bakhtin, 2011, p. 84). it is worth mentioning that the linguist focuses his attention on time regarding it more dominant in fairy tales than space. he notes that time depicted in fairy tales makes space more measurable and comprehensible, and therefore it should be an object of most extensive and intent examination (ibid.). the same approach is maintained by nicolaisen (1980, p. 14; 1988, p. 360) who also claims that “the narrative gives priority to time”. generalizing his ideas, nicolaisen (1991, p. 6) notes that the time and the space of the narrative in the fairy tale mainly serve the function of creating a distance, by which the characters and plots are separated from the reality surrounding us. this viewpoint is coherent with kujundžić’s approach (2020, p. 26), who claims that the significance of time to the fairy tale lies primarily in its function as an organizing principle. it is an evident means of dividing the plot into distinct episodes and connecting individual episodes via spatial transference. a different opinion is expressed by the swiss folklorist max lüthi, (1982, pp. 19-21) who states that the indifference and the insignificance of the passage of time is an essential characteristic of the folktale. he also claims that “time is a function of psychological experience and the characters of the folktale are only figures who carry forward the plot and have no inner life; armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 56 folktales must lack the experience of time”. in this respect it is important to mention the russian folklorist vladimir propp, whose work “morphology of the folktale” had a substantial impact on other folklore researches. according to propp, the basic structural element of a fairy tale is space, where all the events take place, while time as a form of recognition is almost absent (lebedeva, 2020). it is evident that for these folklorists, time in fairy tales takes a secondary place; events and result are considered to be more important than time. however, time and space cannot function as real categories in fairy tales. they are relevant while the characters of fairy tales exist and their adventures or deeds are in progress. when the fairy tale ends, the characters cease existing, so do their deeds. bakhtin notes that the plot of a fairy tale includes the transference of the hero/heroine in space as an indispensable feature of a folk text (1981, pp. 98101). bettelheim also recognizes “the importance of space and spatial transference in fairy tales by identifying the protagonist’s departure from home as the first step in the symbolic journey of self-discovery and growth” (kujundžić, 2020, p. 30). it is worth mentioning that transference is one of the six stages that propp’s thirty-one tale functions fall into alongside with preparation, complication, struggle, return and recognition (propp, 2009, p. 111). we think it is ontologically grounded: a prehistoric man had to struggle against natural elements to support his life he had to be active and move from place to place in search of food and shelter. as far as fairy tales are concerned, we observe that the main characters move on a space/time axis from one point to another to accomplish the tasks they set before themselves. the spatial and temporal transference of folk characters is the object of our study. the main aim of our investigation is to examine how the notions of space and time transference of main characters are actualized in british and armenian folk texts, with pointing out convergent and divergent features of expressing them. the task is of paramount importance since the problem of the comparative research of british and armenian fairy tales has not been attempted yet (briggs, 1967; swann, 1995; rahman, 2012; tolkien, 2013; liabenov 2014; lebedeva, 2015; likhachev, 2016). in this respect n. kujundzic’s dissertation (2020) entitled “narrative space and spatial transference in jacob and wilhelm grimm´s fairy tales” can be mentioned. as is seen from the title, the author has chosen the german fairy tales as an object of her study and focuses only on spatial transference. our paper deals https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/r.-rahman/6263443 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/j.r.r._tolkien linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 57 with space and time transference of the main characters, focusing on the similarities and differences of their expression in british and armenian fairy tales. the study design includes ten english and eight armenian fairy tales from the nineteenth and twentieth century. spatial transference of main characters in british and armenian fairy tales events in a fairy tale generally develop in two directions: one direction shows the life of the main characters from the outset and continues through their heroic deeds during which they pass a great distance to achieve their aims, overcoming plenty of misfortune and deprivations and, finally, after defeating the villain, return home, usually happy and victorious. the second direction is that of other characters of a fairy tale, who can be kind or evil, and they also participate in all kinds of events helping the main characters or, conversely, fighting against them, preventing them from accomplishing their aims. in both cases the main characters operate according to the same scheme. the traditional model of main characters’ transference in a fairy tale looks like: the main character’s home the outer world his home. this can be presented by the following scheme, where s is the home of the main character and small s is the space object that the folk character has to overcome during their transference. s {outer world (ow)} s according to the scheme, the main characters are supposed to reach a certain space point during their deeds or adventures, after which they return to the same space point. this is congruent with the philosophical thesis that space is reversible: s = s. this model can be said to be universal: fairy tales of many nations, including british and armenian tales, practically follow this pattern in which individual parts of space are combined to create the spatial complex (zoran, 1984, pp. 322-323). the description of the outer world (ow) depends largely on the size of a fairy tale: the longer the fairy tale is, the vaster the outer world is. the beginning and the end of main characters’ transference are usually preserved; the difference affects the outer world, which can be presented by various space units that the main characters have to pass through to accomplish their tasks. let us consider the english fairy tale “the brown bear of the green glen”. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 58 a king was losing his sight and his young son set out to look for water to cure his father. on his way to the intended place, he saw his two elder brothers in the town. continuing his way, he came to the forest. he saw a bear in the green glen. he wrestled with a giant. he came to the green island to find the water for his father. he came back to the town where his brothers tried to steal the water from him. he returned home with the water and his father recovered. we can illustrate the young son’s space transference by the following model: his home town forest glen the green island town his home graphically it can be designated by the following scheme: s {s1 s2 s3 s4} s1 s in the given scheme, ow includes s1, s2, s3, s4 indicating each space unit the main character passes through during his journey. the sign designates the hero’s way back to his home. it is worth mentioning that the narrator does not repeat all the space objects that the hero passes on his way back home, singling out only those ones that the hero’s actions call for (s1). as we see, the outer world of the hero is full of dangerous deeds and he has to fight his foes, and complete the tasks set before him, and ultimately, comes home as a winner. we also note that all events take place in the open area, which is a proper place for various deeds and combats. as has been mentioned earlier, events in a fairy tale develop in two directions: one is the direction of actions taken by the hero/heroine and the second by other, often negative characters of a tale. now we will discuss the armenian fairy tale “the handless girl”. the brother had a sister, whom he loved dearly, but his wife was envious of her beauty and treated her most cruelly, accusing her of all kinds of crime the poor girl had not committed. ultimately, the sister was punished, had her hands cut off and sent to a forest. she had to pass across valleys, canyons, a forest where she found a hollow in a tree and thus was saved. once the passing prince saw her, fell in love with her and took her to the castle and married her. she gave birth to a wonderful golden-haired son. her happiness did not last long. soon she again found herself under assault from her wicked sister-in-law. the woman’s suffering started again with a more dreadful and destructive vigor. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 59 now she had to suffer with her child, passing through a dark forest, deep canyons and uninhabited valley and finally, the well. bending over the well, she dropped her child accidentally into the well. an old man passing by advised her to take her child out of the well, which she did and she got her hands back. meanwhile the prince was looking for her everywhere and at last found her at a caravan site and brought her and their child to his home. the space transference of the heroine can be drawn this way: her brother’s home forest valleys mountains canyons the tree hollow the castle forest canyons mountain uninhabited valleys well caravan site the castle graphically it looks like: s {s1 s2 s3 s4 s5 s6 s5 s4 s3 s2 s5 s7} s6 from the scheme we see that on her way back ( ) from the castle (s6) she repeats her route and finds a new space object: the caravan site (s7); she does not return to s (her brother’s home), but stays at the castle (s6). the other plot line is related to her brother’s wife. this wicked woman stays home, only once changing the place of her residence (s) for a caravan site (s7). she does all her evil actions against her husband’s sister in a closed area. she pursues her sister-in-law, inflicting all kinds of cruelties and misfortune on the wretched woman. now she lives in the caravan site belonging to the prince. the wicked woman traces the poor woman with her child everywhere. it so happens that the prince’s parents sent a congratulatory letter to their son in connection with his son’s birth. the wicked woman changes the content of the letter informing the prince of a birth of a dog-like child. she also changes the prince’s answer in which the prince “demands” that the woman with her son immediately leave the castle, which his parents promptly, though unwillingly, do. thus, we see that the wicked woman committed all her crimes within two enclosed areas: her home (s) and the caravan site (s7). the space transference is shown graphically by the scheme: s (s7) armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 60 we might conclude that tragic events take place in enclosed areas more frequently than in open areas. open areas are more likely to be arenas for adventures and brave deeds. the same pattern of spatial transference can be seen in the armenian fairy tale “zangi-zrangi”, the english tales “the young king of easaidh ruadh”, “conall cra bhuidhe” and others. space may be relational. the main characters can transfer in another world different from the world they live in. for example, in “the recovered bride” the hero sees a dream in which he is instructed to follow a certain plan, which would help overcome certain difficulties and thus change the situation in his favour. the hero acts as he is advised and wins the battle. it is worth mentioning that not all fairy tales have a happy end. for example, in “the fairy’s midwife” the midwife who was summoned to attend at the birth of a fairy mother was punished by the wife’s wicked husband whom the midwife accused of stealing the ointment. the same unhappy end is recorded in the armenian fairy tale “barikendany” [shrove tuesday]. the foolish and ingenuous wife and husband who used to quarrel with each other lost their butter and rice because of being cheated by a stranger. interestingly, in both fairy tales the space narrative is limited by the enclosed area as the actions of the main characters do not need vast land or distance. when comparing the models of spatial transference of the folk characters in british and armenian fairy tales we see that similarities prevail over differences. thus, we see that propp was right when stating that “it doesn't matter if stories vary in different times and different places due to cultural differences, since it is still the same story structurally” (2009, p. 23). in both british and armenian fairy tales spatial transference takes priority over the temporal one, when the main characters’ adventures or good deeds are presented; besides, tragic and evil events take place more in enclosed areas than in open places. similar are also the stretches of space that the characters have to pass to achieve their aims. differences are as follows: when the space objects are enumerated forests, valleys, gorges, mountains, hills the latter is not mentioned in armenian fairy tales as the space narrative in them does not contain the hill as a characteristic relief of the country of armenian which is geographically true in view of its highmountainous character. the spatial objects serving as means of salvation are different: in english fairy tales it is the top of the tree (“the brown bear of the green glen”), while in armenian fairy tale it is the hollow of the tree (“the handless girl”). linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 61 the general model of temporal transference folk characters change their position not only in space but in time as well. the temporal transference of main characters in a fairy tale has its specific features. propp (2009), meletinsky (1958) distinguish two aspects in the temporal structure of a fairy tale: dynamic and static. it should be noted that the aforementioned folklorists refer this classification to the spatial organization of a fairy tale, but we think it may be applicable to temporal transference as well. dynamic episodes are characterized by the constant intensive development of the plot. the static aspect is reflected in indefiniteness, absence of concrete time and events. likhachev (2016) claims that time in a fairy tale moves only in one direction and never goes back. bakhtin (1981) opposes to this, saying that time is always found to run forward or backward. indeed, the basis of the plot development of a fairy tale is the succession of events that takes its start from the indefinite time or eternity, moves towards relatively definite time points and then returns to indefiniteness, eternity (lebedeva, 2015). to accomplish their aims the main characters have to go through a series of various adventures or brave deeds that take place at certain time stretches. this temporal transference of a hero/ heroine may be illustrated by the following formula: t {time stretches} t, in which t designates the beginning of the fairy tale. the end of a fairy tale is marked by the return of t t. the different time stretches that the fairy-tale characters act at, performing their deeds or undertaking various adventures are indicated by t 1, t2, t3, t 4 ... . this is shown by the following scheme: t {t 1, t2, t3, t4…} t we see that the philosophical thesis that time, unlike space, is irreversible becomes irrelevant in fairy tales. the characters start their deeds at t (unreal time) and end at t (unreal time). beginning of a fairy tale. the unreal, indefinite time in fairy tales is expressed by the traditional opening and closing formulas that show the time points at which the events take place or come to an end. opening formulas are almost identical in british and armenian fairy tales (nicolaisen, 1988; balayan, 2010; khemchyan, 2010): once upon a time; there was … once; many-many years ago; long-long time ago there was/lived; in times gone by (british), and լինում է, չի լինում [there was or was not]; եղել է, չի եղել [there lived or did not live]; ժամանակով [in times gone by] (armenian). armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 62 once upon a time there was, in this celebrated town, a dame somebody. (hartland, 2018, p. 68) ժամանակով լինում են, չեն լինում՝ մի քույր ու մի ախպեր են լինում։ (tumanyan, 1904, p. 185) (in times gone by there was or there was not a brother and a sister.) the time required for the achievement of the aim is expressed by different time units. every new event or adventure starts with a new time stretch (t1): british one day, on a day of days, once; armenian –մեկ օր (one day), մի անգամ (once). one day, it being observed that william was absorbed in deep thought, his courtiers ventured to inquire the cause of such profound abstraction. (hartland, 2018, p. 41) մեկ անգամ զբոսնելու էին դուրս եկել գետափը։ (aghayan, 1956, p. 204) (once they went for a walk to the bank of the river.) in some cases, the time stretch may become definite when supplemented by the indication of the numerical time point. but even so the time point lacks the absolute exactness, which is denoted by the presence of the approximator (about). it is worth mentioning that this is generally observed in british tales. one night about twelve o’clock in the morning. (hartland, 2018) the second day of the event (t2) is expressed by: british the following day; the next day; a short time after this; soon after; morrow (next day); armenian –հաջորդ օրը (the following day), մյուս օրը (the next day). on the next morning he went on further with them. (campbell, 1890) linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 63 մյուս օրը հայրը թաթուխին պատվեր տվավ և ասաց. (aghayan, 1956, p. 331) (the next day tatukg’s father ordered him, saying…) the middle of the fairy tale. when the hero/heroine’s succeeding deeds or adventures are described, time indicators (t3, t4, t5…) denote not only time points, but also a longer period of time, i.e. time intervals, which may be definite, indefinite or cyclic. 1) time point (tp) the gentleman came well early in the morning. (campbell, 1890) շատ լավ, ես հենց վաղը կարող եմ ճանապարհ ըկնել։ (aghayan, 1956,) (all right, i can set off just tomorrow.) as mentioned above, events take place in two directions: one is the hero’s adventures, the other is the negative characters’ behavior. it is worth mentioning that when the wicked characters’ actions take place, time indication prevails over space transference, and it is basically specified by tp. on the contrary, in case of the hero’s deeds space transference becomes dominant. bad deeds in fairy tales often take place at night. no surprise, all the evil deeds that the wicked woman commits (“the handless girl”) take place at the dark time of the day. the formula of the woman’s temporal transference is illustrated by the following formula: once next time at night at the sunset at night in the evening in the middle of the night at night at this time of night. the time transference of the female character is designated in the following way: t {tp1 tp2 tp3 tp4 tp5 . tp6 tp7 tp8} we see that the word night is repeated seven times. the same picture can be observed in “the sea-laden”, when the hero’s fighting against the giants can be presented by the following time scheme: at the mouth of night this night one night on the morrow when the time was nearing one night, on the morrow about the mouth of night armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 64 2) time interval (tint) a) definite tint so a year passed, and halloween came round again. (yeats, 1888) գնում են են մի տարի, երկու տարի, երեք տարի, ո՝չ տեղն են իմանում, ո՝չ տեղեկությունը։ (tumanyan, 1904, p. 190) (they had been walking one year, two years, three years, they knew neither the place nor got any information). b) indefinite tint she wrote, but weeks passed, and she received no answer. (yeats, 1888) սրա վրա անցավ տասը տարի կամ մի քիչ ավելի կամ պակաս, այդ աստված գիտե։ (aghayan, 1956,) (after these ten years or so passed, god knows how long.) c) cyclic time … the hunting and fishing went on afterwards, and there were feasts of venison, and wild boar, and drinking of wine and mead in the evenings … (ashliman, 2013-2022) այսպիսով տարեցտարի շատանում էր վրանների թիվը։ (aghayan, 1956, p. 197) (thus, the number of tents increased year by year.) the ending of fairy tales. the end of fairy tales is expressed by the traditional closing formulas which to some extent are different in british and armenian fairy tales. the most popular closing formulas in british fairy tales are as follows: they were happy ever since; they lived happily ever after; they were lucky and well pleased after that, etc. very often the end of the fairy tale is crowned with marriage or accomplishment of the aims. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 65 and they lived happily ever afterwards. (jacobs, 1890) in armenian fairy tales the end is also marked by the hero’s marriage or accomplishment of certain aims. as different from the british tales, the listener of an armenian fairy tale is usually rewarded, thus becoming an active participant of folk telling-listening process. the reward may be in the form of some object (for example, an apple) or blessing. the end of the tale may also include behests addressed to the listener. a) an apple այս հարսանիքումը, ինչպես ամեն հեքիաթի հարսանիքում, նույնպես երեք խնձոր վայր ընկան ուղղակի երկնքից, միայն այս անգամ խնձորները ասողի և լսողի համար չէին: (aghayan, 1956, p. 354) (during this marriage as in every fairy-tale marriage three apples dropped from the haven, but this time the apples were not meant for the teller and the listener.) b) blessing նրանք հասան իրանց մուրազին, դուք էլ հասնեք ձեր մուրազին։ (aghayan, 1956, p. 337) (their dreams came true. so may your dreams come true.) c) behests լավություն արա ու թեկուզ ջուրը գցի՝ չի կորչի։ (tumanyan, 1904, p. 184) (do the good and throw it into the water, it will come back to you.) numbers three and seven in fairy tales as is known, some numbers in fairy tales are ritually related to religious concepts and are found in many european and eurasian fairy tales. let us take the numbers three and seven, which we often come across in british and armenian fairy tales. people attribute the number three (tint) to many ideas of religious nature. s. buvala says that the number three is related to the central tenet of christianity, i.e. the concept of the trinity: the father, the son and the holy spirit. but he also produces another explanation, which includes “jesus being visited by three kings at his birth and his three days in the tomb before armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 66 his resurrection” (buvala, 2017, p. 2). we think both the explanations are reliable and acknowledged by many folklorists. below are examples with the number three in british and armenian fairy tales. as soon as three years have passed, i will come to you that very night and ask you a question. (campbell, 1890) երեք ամիս չանցած՝ արսենի վրա ոչ մի վայրենության նշան չմնաց, այլև երևաց, որ նա շատ շնորհալի է և իմաստուն։ (aghayan, 1956, p. 345) (scarcely had three years passed when arsen got rid of any sign of wildness and became very gifted and wise.) number seven (tint) symbolizes seven days of the week, seven sacraments, seven days of creation, seventh day adventism (liabenov, 2014). in the hebrew/jewish tradition seven is very powerful, as in the days of creating, and god resting on the seventh day (mellor, 2019). ancient greeks regarded the number seven sacred and perceived it as a symbol of absolute perfection (harutyunyan, 2014, p. 75). they made a great rich wedding that lasted seven days and seven years. (campbell, 1890) հետո օձամանուկին ու արևահատին յոթն օր, յոթը գիշեր հարսանիք են անում։ (aghayan, 1956, p. 227) (afterwards a wedding was arranged for odzamanuk and arevahat which lasted seven days and seven nights). interestingly, the number seven refers to the same occasion (marriage) in british and armenian fairy tales, which testifies to the fact that some aspects of culture may be of universal character. however, while the number seven is recorded in almost all armenian fairy tales, describing the wedding, this is not the case with british fairy tales, in which even the number twenty may come along. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 67 and a wedding of twenty days and twenty nights was made for the young couple. (campbell, 1890) indirect temporal indication temporal information may be obtained indirectly through spatial indication, which once again emphasizes the functional connection between the notions of space and time. consider the following extract from “jamie freel and the young lady”. jamie mounted, and his steed rose with him into the air. he was presently flying over his mother’s cottage, surrounded by the elfin troop, and on and on they went over bold mountains, over little hills, over the deep lough swilley, over towns and cottages. it seemed to jamie that they flew all round ireland before they got to dublin. (ashliman, 19962022) we see that the time duration can be measured by the enumeration of space objects that the hero (jamie) has to pass through to achieve his aim (reaching dublin). this example testifies to another fact too: when the hero’s deeds take place in the open area temporal information concedes to spatial representation. her man was mournful, tearful, wandering down and up about the banks of the loch. (yeats, 1888) the transformation of time triggered by the spatial transference of the folk main character (wandering up and down about the banks of the loch) takes a good deal of time. similar transformation is observed in the armenian fairy tales as well. consider the following extract from “the handless girl”: էսպես, կռնատը, մեն-մենակ թափառում է լուսիկը անբնակ անտառներում։ շատ թափառելուց թփերն ու փշերը հագի շորերը տանում են, մնում է տկլոր (tumanyan, 1904, p. 187) (so the handless girl was roaming in the forest. her clothes were torn by bushes and thorns, and she was naked now.) armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 68 there is no exact time indication in this example, but the mention of the heroine’s clothes being torn by bushes and thorns and, as a result, her becoming naked testify to a long period of her misery and deprivation. conclusion the comparative analysis of spatial and temporal transference of main characters in british and armenian fairy tales shows that similarities prevail over differences. in both british and armenian fairy tales spatial transference takes priority over the temporal one, when the main characters’ adventures or their deeds are presented; temporal transference is more common when the evil deeds are described, especially the ones that happen at night. besides, tragic and evil events take place in enclosed areas rather than in open places. open areas are more likely to serve as arenas for brave deeds and adventures. in some cases, temporal information is obtained through space indication. the numbers three and seven are both used in british and armenian fairy tales, having the same ritual meanings. the following differences are recorded: while the opening formulas are almost identical, the closing formulas in armenian tales are different to some extent. they include the listener as an active participant of the story telling-listening process who is often rewarded with some object or given blessings and behests. many armenian fairy tales end not only by extolling the main character’s deeds but also by punishing the evil. besides, when the space objects are enumerated forests, valleys, gorges, mountains, hills the latter is not mentioned in armenian fairy tales as the space narrative does not contain the hill as a characteristic relief of the armenian country, which is geographically true in view of its high-mountainous character. according to the temporal information, the fact that the fairy tales convey the numerical indication of time is more typical of british fairy tales. the spatial objects serving as means of salvation can sometimes be different: in british fairy tales it is the top of the tree, whereas in armenian fairy tales it may be the hollow of the tree. references bakhtin, m. 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(1888). fairy and folk tales of the irish peasantry. retrieved november 10, 2021. գլխավոր հերոսների տարածական եվ ժամանակային տեղափոխությունը բրիտանական եվ հայկական հեքիաթներում ելենա մխիթարյան լուսինե մադաթյան սույն հետազոտության մեջ քննության է ենթարկվում բրիտանական և հայկական հեքիաթների գլխավոր հերոսների տարածական և ժամանակային տեղափոխության խնդիրը։ համեմատական ուսումնասիրության միջոցով վերհանվում են վերոնշյալ հասկացության ընդհանրություններն ու տարբերությունները բրիտանական և հայկական հեքիաթներում: վերլուծությունը ցույց է տալիս, որ նմանությունները գերակշռում են։ թե՛ բրիտանական, թե՛ հայկական հեքիաթներում գլխավոր հերոսների արկածները կամ հերոսական արարքները պատկերող դրվագներում տարածական տեղափոխությունն առաջնային է ժամանակայինի համեմատ։ ժամանակային տեղափոխությունն ավելի տարածված է չար արարքները պատկերող դրվագներում, եթե վերջիններս տեղի են ունենում հատկապես գիշերը: բացի այդ, ողբերգական ու չար իրադարձություններն ամենայն հավանականությամբ ավելի շատ տեղի են ունենում փակ տարածքներում, քան բաց վայրերում։ բրիտանական և հայկական հեքիաթներում հանդիպող «երեք» և «յոթ» թվերն ունեն նույն խորհրդանշական իմաստը։ հիմնական տարբերությունն այն է, որ սովորաբար բրիտանական հեքիաթներում է նկատվում ժամանակային կետերի թվային կիրառություն։ բրիտանական և հայկական հեքիաթներում տարածական նկարագրությունը փոքր-ինչ տարբերվում է։ դա պայմանավորված է բնապատկերների տարբերությամբ։ թեև բացող բանաձևերը գրեթե նույնական են, սակայն հայկական հեքիաթների փակող բանաձևերն ունեն որոշակի տարբերություններ։ հեքիաթն ավարտվում է ունկնդրին և ասացողին վարձաhttps://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/yeats/fip/index.htm armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 linguistics 72 տրելով, ինչպես նաև ունկնդրին ուղղված օրհնություններով ու պատգամներով։ բանալի բառեր՝ հեքիաթ, գլխավոր հերոս, տարածական տեղափոխություն, ժամանակային տեղափոխություն, պատմողական տարածություն, բանահյուսական տեքստ:լ linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 25 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2022.18.2.025 media-political discourse from a textological viewpoint rafayel harutyunyan yerevan state university there are different research methods, techniques and strategies that are used to study the text. one of such methods is the method of textual analysis, a variety of study approaches used to analyze and comprehend a piece of writing. understanding media-political texts and avoiding manipulation and information bias requires not only linguistic and extra-linguistic competence, but also awareness of different strategies. in the present paper, we are aimed to provide an overview of textual analysis as a research tool for studying incidents of manipulation in media news broadcasts from a textological perspective. keywords: manipulation, media discourse, political discourse, textual analysis, manipulative strategies and techniques, linguistic and extra-linguistic means. introduction nowadays, media produces complicated messages, abundant with colloquial phrases, vulgar words, figurative language, images, font designs and layouts that give an additional emotional and expressive coloring to the text. in this environment, the problem consists in the difficulty of reading, understanding and analyzing media articles, which requires essential skills and knowledge. in spite of the best advantage of the social media as the main source of information with diverse availabilities, being in agreement with the decision, we should note that media contents are sometimes designed to trigger our emotions, arouse feelings, affect, propagate, manipulate, etc. this is borne out by the fact that all media content makes use of rhetorical devices to convince readers of its ‘truthfulness’, and against the background of this, skilled communicators, in this case journalists, draw on a ‘toolkit’ of such devices  rafayel.harutyunyan22@gmail.com this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 22.03.2022 revised: 18.04.2022 accepted: 30.04.2022 © the author(s) 2021 mailto:rafayel.harutyunyan22@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 26 consisting of four basic kinds of tools: style, lexical and grammatical choices, tropes and figurative language, meta-discursive choices (jones et al., 2020, p. 115). there are particular reasons why multimodal persuasion of social media is of paramount importance, as it occasionally employs several modes, including pictures, voice, music, videos and so on, and interestingly enough, images have the potential to convince people successfully, since they communicate in a more direct and immediate way, as we look first, then read, interpret, etc. (p. 119). it may be suggested, that while reading social media articles, we believe the transmitted information to be true if the language is persuasive. in this regard, it is strongly suggested to consider certain meta-discursive devices such as agenda setting, framing and intertextuality. turning into a brief consideration of the mentioned meta-discursive devices, we should by all means start with the agenda setting, which refers to the power of media to influence public opinion via the selection of the topics. the process, through which media producers contextualize their messages is known as framing. it is usually assumed that in social media, intertextuality, or borrowing other people’s words, linguistic patterns, copying general structures or styles are frequently employed to make the speech as persuasive as possible (jones et al., 2020, pp. 118-119). if we want to peruse the best the manipulative nature of media-political articles from a textological standpoint, the advantage of the method of textual analysis cannot be overestimated. as a rule, textual analysis is not confined to defining the structure of the work only, but also reveals possible interpretations a text may have. according to mckee, “whenever an interpretation of something’s meaning a book, television program, film, magazine, etc. is produced, we treat it as a text”. a text is something that we make meaning from (mckee, 2003, p. 4). it is worth mentioning, that textual analysis can be carried out differently, according to mckee, because of the differences that may impact the sense-making, such as differences in cultures, value judgments, the existence of the obstruct things, relationships between things, and after all, differences in reason and thinking. the author claims that textual analysis is an attempt to obtain knowledge and information about sense-making practices, not just only in cultures and nations totally different from our own, but also within the scope of our own culture (mckee, 2003, p. 14). linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 27 we have now to trace on another scholar’s, belsey’s, approach, who claims there is nothing like ‘pure’ reading, for interpretation is impossible without the involvement of extra-textual knowledge, generally of cultural nature (belsey, 2013, p. 160). among other approaches to the study of textual analysis, the consideration of other scholars, such as frey et al, may serve as a good example, stemming from the fact, that this type of analysis presupposes the employment by communication researchers of a technique aimed at characterizing and understanding the basic features of a recorded or visual message. a special significance is attached to the purpose of textual analysis, which is to describe the content, structure, and functions of the textual communications. it also requires crucial considerations such as identifying the categories of texts meant to be studied, collecting relevant texts, and the preference of the technique to be used in evaluating them (frey et al., 1999). observation of different theories and approaches to the study of the concept of textual analysis enables us to primarily conclude that the ascertained facts are in favor of giving rise to thought, and that the method of textual analysis will ensure reliable results in our study of media-political manipulation on the textological level. it will help us find out all those linguistic means and strategies, as well as extra-linguistic factors that are used in the media to bring upon alternative meanings and interpretations, thus manipulating the reader. textual analysis of media-political news articles on november 20, 2015 an article was published anonymously in azerbaijani online news platform “azvision.az”, having the headline “armenian so-called genocide” (azvison.az, 2015). taking into consideration certain extra-linguistic factors such as who the author is, where it is published and what the purpose of the publication is, we cannot rule out evident cases of manipulation. in the above-mentioned headline, for example, the author’s initiative of demonstrating and proving that the armenian genocide is “so-called” is quite visible. hence, the choice of placing this adjective in the headline is not accidental, as it highlights the meaning “you do not think that the word or phrase that is being used to describe someone or something is appropriate” (“so-called”, n.d.). as of now, the anonymous author’s intention to persuade the readers that armenians have been misleading and deceiving people worldwide, blaming and denouncing turks for such a crime, is obvious. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 28 the article is full of signs of psychological and linguistic manipulation. to clarify the point, let us observe the following passage: when armenian organizations instigated armenians to revolt during world war i (1914-1918) against the ottoman government, their intention was to exterminate the turks and to create an independent armenian state in eastern anatolia where armenians were only about 15% of the total population. in the given passage, the manipulative strategies of manipulation of facts1 and overwhelming the target with facts and statistics 2 are obvious, since according to the historical records, armenians have been living in their homeland, i.e., western armenia (morgenthau, 1974; zulalyan, 1995; melkonyan, 2001, etc.). paying attention to the occurrences of the lowercase for the words and expressions such as “armenia”, “armenians”, “independent armenian state”, which are actual mistakes according to the english grammar rules for the proper nouns, on the contrary, considering other usages of proper nous, such as “world war i”, “ottoman government”, “turks” which, as in reason, are capitalized, is an absolute proof, that this kind of approach is a deliberate misspelling, apparently to display contempt, disgrace towards armenians, rather than a technical and grammatical mistake (see about it also in gasparyan & hayrapetyan, 2020). it is abundantly clear, that the author’s biased and hostile attitude is unquestionable, since the article comprises the list of manipulative techniques and tactics such as denial, lying, falsifying the facts, the purpose of which is the negative-other presentation3 (armenians) and positive-self presentation4 (turks). to verify, let us observe the next passage: entire population of the region was subjected to violence beyond belief violence which was planned to exterminate the whole turkish people of the region to the last man, woman and child. armenian revolters tortured and massacred large numbers of defenseless civilians. to assemble innocent civilians in the mosques and burn them in the building was one of their methods. even today the traveler in that region is seldom free from the evidence of these armenian crimes. it must be pointed out that there is no historic position foilikening the annihilation of minority linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 29 groups under hitler and the third reich to the revolt of the armenians against the ottoman government in 1915. it is worth noting that there is an obvious case of exaggeration (overstatement) throughout the passage, as expressed by words and phrases such as “exterminate” meaning “to destroy or kill completely” according to the britannica dictionary (“exterminate”, n.d.), “beyond belief”, “subjected to violence”, “burn in the buildings” etc., meanwhile, in the opening statement of the article, regarding “armenian organizations instigating revolt against ottoman government”, armenians account for barely 15% of the overall population, and for various reasons, we can see inconsistency and contradiction of the facts and ideas expressed in the text, since with that little amount it would practically be impossible to totally destroy all the people of a nation like the ottoman empire . of special interest is the following sentence “entire population of the region was subjected to violence beyond belief violence which was planned to exterminate the whole turkish people of the region to the last man, woman and child” where we can observe enumeration, a stylistic device, where people are named one by one to form a chain, (galperin, 1977, p. 216), the purpose of which is to propagate that “armenians were ready to kill everyone with no exception”. in the same sentence, one may also notice the use of anadiplosis, another literary device in the subsequent part “entire population of the region was subjected to violence beyond belief violence which was planned to exterminate…” where the author, repeating the last word of one phrase at the beginning of the next clause, tries to achieve a special impact, (gasparyan & matevosyan, 2011: 140), in this case to emphasize “the bad nature of armenians”. constantly and dishonestly blaming armenians for the genocide of turks, the author suggests the following arguments: • first of all, the armenians were in armed revolt against the ottoman government. the jews, wenns and others of hitler’s germany were not. • secondly, the allies actually promised the armenians nothing for their revolt, except some amorphic phrases from the british [...]. • thirdly, that anyone has to die is regrettable, but history is unfortunately full of examples of similar events, and it is armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 30 obvious that the responsibles of the innocent turkish, and armenian victims of the armenian revolts are the leaders of the armenian revolutionary organizations who incited, armenians to revolt against legal ottoman government. in the passages mentioned above the author seems to be guided by the structure of writing an essay, where using the words “first of all”, “secondly”, “thirdly” he/she tries to show the readers reasonable argumentations to make his/her statements verifiable. in the first example, the author mentions that “the armenians were in armed revolt against the ottoman government”, while “the jews, wenns and others of hitler’s germany were not”. through an implied comparison, expressed by a compound sentence, the author applies the manipulative strategy of guilt baiting 5, where we can observe a case of hidden conditionality, hypothetically alluding that “if you were not armed you would not be … like the jews, wenns, etc., and the phrase “others of hitler’s germany”. considering the next sentence “that anyone has to die is regrettable, but history is unfortunately full of examples of similar events…” the author uses an ethical code to inhance an emotional state, and fact that the vocabulary used in the whole article, more specifically the adjectives, such as “so-called”, “armed”, “seldom-free”, nouns and phrases “violence”, “beyond belief”, “torture and massacre”, “armenian crimes”, “responsibility” etc., used to describe armenians, makes the speech too dramatic, meanwhile such choice of words and phrases as “innocent turks”, “defenseless civilians”, “legal ottoman government”, “internecine battle with invaders”, etc. used to describe turks is to make the audience, unaware of the history and the genocide “believe” and “understand” how “evil” and “bad” armenians are, and how “brave” and “heroic” turks are. the cases of manipulation and manipulative intention of the anonymous author can be noticed in the given paragraph too: the armenian historians and instigators exciting young people’s minds publish much on the genocide. and with every decade a number of “the murdered” increases in the geometric progression. manipulation of figures, rough misrepresentation of historical facts – it is a principal weapon of the armenian falsificators whom as long ago as the beginning of the century unmasked above-mentioned ilya linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 31 chavchavadze in his book “the armenian scientists and screaming stones”. our consideration of the paragraph, aimed to inform people about “truth”, reveals the necessity of logic, facts and verifiable sources, whereas the author uses figurative language instead, (e.g., metaphoric conceptualizations such as “a number of ‘the murdered’ increases in the geometric progression”, “manipulation of figures, rough misrepresentation of historical facts – it is a principal weapon of the armenian falsificators…”) trying to divert the attention of the readers from the actual truth and forcing the majority of them into an emotional state to condemn armenians for the “unpardonable actions of the latter”. the fact, that the author’s claims about the genocide are illogical, is realized in every paragraph of the article. even though, the article might seem to sound realistic for the masses of people who do not have enough or any information about the historical tragedy, however we encounter lack of valid evidence and logic (logos) regarding “the armenian historians and instigators”, whose numbers are increasing, as the author mentions, in “geometric progression”. it may be as well to say, at the outset, that not only the language of the article is of manipulative nature, but also some design features, such as image, layout, font size, etc., contribute to the achievement of the psychological pressure and affect people. the point mentioned above can be illustrated by the following image, taken from the article: to make several allusions on the textual components of the image, we can object to analysis the following two sentences “protest armenian lies” and “armenian genocide is an imperialist lie!” visually, the first sentence is uppercase, while the second one is capitalize each word. thus, we can assume that the author’s primary focus and purpose is the word “protest”, “strong complaint expressing disagreement, disapproval, or opposition” (“protest”, n.d.). proceeding with the analysis, we can also notice that the words “lie” and “armenian” are repeated twice in the picture, and the turkish flag appears as well. briefly accounting for those elements, we can say that the armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 32 author of the article anonymously makes an allegation without evidence and facts, and the use of the syntactic stylistic device of repetition, is a manipulative strategy, in the sense, that the readers unaware of the history and the truth subconsciously can accept all those subsequent texts and allegations attributed to armenians as reality. taking into account that the author is from azerbaijan and considering the inclusion of the turkish flag only, we can indicate the author’s biased and prejudiced attitude. another element that holds the interest of the reader in the image is the aggression accentuated by red and black colors. a detail emphasizing the aggression is the line under the eye typical of the leopard and other predators. normally, the persona fighting against lies does not look like this. the hairstyle of the character, which is more emphasized due to red spots is typical of french women, and perhaps the character is a reference to a famous joan of arc, who symbolizes the fight for justice, and in this sense, readers may trust the character. finally, paying attention to the turkish flag, which is tilted to the right, shows that turkey is represented here as the victim. but even if we follow the logic and disregard historical past, it is an obvious case that turkey cannot be a victim of a state whose not only present area is many times smaller than its own, but also population, army, economy, etc. another news article for a clear understanding of the manipulative nature of media-political news articles from a textual point of view is the following, headlined “if donald trump isn’t sh--ting his pants over today’s january 6 hearing, he probably should be” (levin, 2022). one of the interesting features in the headline of the news report is the use of the idiom “shit one’s pants” meaning “to become so afraid, surprised, worried, etc., that one defecates” according to merriam webster. the next point to be made is that the expression has informal usages and is offensive (“shit one’s pants”, n.d.). we must make a further point about the choice of the journalist regarding the spelling of the word “sh--ting”, so what we are mainly concerned with what is the purpose of writing “sh--t”, if everyone knows the actual meaning of the word. but however reasonable it may be to say that though the journalist is unrestricted enough to use an expletive, and she feels uncomfortable using the word in its full term, nevertheless, we are inclined to think that this is an attention-grabbing approach considering several linguistic and extra-linguistic factors, e.g., who the article is about, if-clause in the headline, etc. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 33 considering the syntactic aspect of the headline we may note a conditional sentence expressed by an if-clause + present continuous (isn’t sh--ing), and a modal verb in the main clause (should be). notably, sentences of this structure are used to make suggestions and give advice (collins, n.d.). however, it seems essential to emphasize, that the headline is incomplete in form. it would have been grammatically more correct to have: “if donald" trump isn’t sh--ting his pants over today’s january 6 hearing, he probably should” rather than “should be” since the latter presupposes continuation. considering the grammatical meaning of the conditional sentence in the headline and its connotational meaning we can state that it is not a piece of advice, but an ironic or even a sarcastic remark. the manipulative intention of the author can also be observed in the image attached to the news report. when looking at the picture, the first thing one may notice is uncertainty, ambiguity, etc., and it seems that there is no trust and confidence on the face of the character (donald trump) in the picture. the impression is that donald trump is in such a situation that he does not know what to do, and he is in such a place that he would not prefer to be. we are inclined to believe, that by this choice, the journalist appears to be attempting to bring her chosen headline to life, though this kind of facial expression is likely to appear on a person’s face during different types of interactions. this does not mean at all a person is scared. the chosen picture is taken in such a way, as to devaluate the person in the eyes of the reader. it is worth mentioning, that the picture was taken during another event: (washington, dc november 13: u.s. president donald trump speaks about operation warp speed in the rose garden at the white house on november 13, 2020 in washington, dc. this is the first time president trump has spoken since the election night last week, as covid-19 infections surge in the united states. (photo by tasos katopodis/getty images)). to get a new angle on something, we are to note that donald trump is more inclined to be disliked and hated by the americans not only for his political viewpoints, but also because of his personality and character, for being armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 34 arrogant, bad tempered, disrespectful, verbally aggressive, etc. and for being so, he has gained a lot more hatred and rumors around his personality, that is why, appearing in the center of media articles, brings more public reaches and click-baits to the journalists, who, most often use this opportunity for propaganda. of such nature is the news article, headlined “trump hates you … even if you love him” (cohen, 2020), where david cohen, the journalist, is in interaction with donald trump’s supporters, and this is realized by the use of second person singular/plural personal pronoun “you” that refers to any supporter in general, based on the context of the article. if we put our central emphasis on the headline, we can notice the use of a conditional sentence with the main clause “trump hates you” and a subordinate clause “even if you love him”. it should be added in this connection that the syntax of conditional sentences presupposes no punctuation mark, if the main clause is before the subordinate clause. interestingly enough, the journalist seems to have separated the constituent parts of the headline by the punctuation mark “ellipsis”, made up to indicate a pause. the purpose of the pause is not only to stress the word “hate” expressing the feeling, which, according to the author, donald trump has towards people, but also emphasize the unreal situation, the speculation that “no matter how much you love him, still, he hates you”. added to this, the headline is capitalize each word, aimed to express emphasis through each word. those capitalized words, not only convey original message, but also make the readers believe that the alerted information is something of great importance. of special interest is the subject – predicate correlation in “trump hates” and “you love”, which both expresses a hypothetical situation with a consequence in a conditional sentence, and has a stylistic and emotive signification expressed through an oxymoron, a figure of speech that juxtaposes concepts with opposite meanings. the fact that the purpose of the journalist is propaganda is obvious, since he uses a language to persuade and manipulate on the emotional level, rather than rational. to make our claims more justified, let us observe the following passage, which is the opening statement of the news article: a simple message to president trump’s supporters: he doesn’t like you. in fact, you disgust him. well, not all of you. the rich and powerful, he likes. if you’re on tv on a regular basis, your net worth is at least eight figures, or you live in a glitzy zip code, he likes you. he fawns over those supporters and wants to be their friend. linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 35 the rest of you though, especially those who live in rural areas or have no college degree — let’s face it, he hates you. the first thing we notice is that the author has used entrusted narrative 6 to make his statements more credible and convincing to the reader. the repetition of the synonymic sentences of the same semantic field such as “he doesn’t like you”, “you disgust him”, “he hates you” is not only a syntactic stylistic device that secures a special emphasis, but also manifests a gradual increase in the semantic significance or emotional tension, which as a figure of speech is climax. for various reasons we can conclude, that the author has a manipulative intention to portray donald trump disgracefully and devalue him in his supporters’ sight. this is the reason why he attempts to influence morally which is displayed in the following sentence “the rich and powerful, he likes”. grammatically, the sentence does not follow the canonical order of the typical english sentence (subject, predicate, etc.). by linguistic inversion the journalist has structured the way that direct object “the rich and powerful” has come to the fore to make an additional emphasis and give a special effect, dramatic purpose or formality. added to this, using a lyrical tactic-pathos, the author refers to the readers emotions through such an argumentation that donald trump loves those who “live in a glitzy zip code”, “have net worth at least eight figures”, etc. the choice of the phrasal verb “fawns over” meaning “to praise someone too much and give him/her a lot of attention that is not sincere, in order to get a positive reaction” (“fawn over”, n.d.) is to verify whatever the author has transmitted to be true. finally, the expression “simple message” in the passage adduced above is not simple at all, but rather complicated and serious, moreover it contains instances of irony. turning to the consideration of the next example, headlined “where’s boris? johnson missing in action at biden’s climate summit” (mathiesen, webber, 2022), it becomes apparent that the headline consists of two types of sentences: interrogative “where’s boris?”, and declarative “johnson missing in action at biden’s climate summit”. the consideration of the constituent parts of the headline makes it visible the use of the linguistic economy principle, expressed by the contracted form of the conjunction “where” and the present tense form “is” of the auxiliary verb to be in the first sentence “where’s boris”, as well as the omission of the auxiliary verb to be in the second sentence “johnson missing”. interestingly enough, we may notice that the prime minister of the uk has been referred to by his first name “boris”, in the first sentence, and last name “johnson”, in the second one, which, to our firm armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 36 belief, is not accidental, since the journalists also mention about the president of the usa “biden’s climate summit”. in this kind of organization of the headline, mockery can be observed for it is not ordinary to address the prime minister of the uk by his first name (where’s boris), particularly, that the president of the usa has been addressed by his last name in the same headline. however, the journalists have succeeded in vailing the direct mockery by starting the next sentence in the headline with the second name of the prime minister (johnson missing in action […]). thus, one thing is clear, the journalists have disguised their manipulative intention trying not to disclose their biased attitude. from the first glance,” where’s boris” in the headline seems to be a simple question, but it seems essential to emphasize that contracted forms are used in casual writings, which in spite of being common in news writing, are largely conditioned by how formal the writing and the audience are. as far as the text of the article is concerned, it is rather formal than casual, which becomes clear from the sentences, adduced below: the u.k. prime minister will not be attending a high-level meeting of world leaders convened by u.s. president joe biden on friday to discuss the climate crisis, despite british claims to be leading global efforts. according to an agenda seen by politico, the attendance list for the online meeting includes 17 heads of state and government. the white house said in a statement the major economies forum would advance biden’s “efforts to use all levers to tackle the global climate crisis, urgently address rising costs around the world exacerbated by russia’s war on ukraine, and put the u.s. and allies on a path to long-term energy and food security. (mathiesen, webber 2022) hand in hand with some other manipulation related elements in the news article, we can proceed with the analysis of the following sentence “boris johnson finally found a party he won’t attend”, as well as the image attached to the article. it would be true however to suppose, that the sentence has sarcastically been used with the intention to indirectly mock boris johnson, as the article is linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 37 not about a party, but an online meeting of the world leaders organized by joe biden: the u.k. prime minister will not be attending a high-level meeting of world leaders convened by u.s. president joe biden on friday to discuss the climate crisis, despite british claims to be leading global efforts… according to an agenda seen by politico, the attendance list for the online meeting includes 17 heads of state and government. (mathiesen, webber 2022) applying the research method of the textual analysis to the perception of the image as a text, we can notice that the beer is the first item standing out in the picture. when compared to the character’s job clothing, it may appear that he is simply having fun in a bar rather than working. if his tie, shirt buttons, and sleeves were undone, the impression would be typical, that the man had finished the work and went to rest, which is not unusual, but we see the opposite picture. as noticed in the picture, the cup is raised which is an indication to someone else’s toast. among other things, there is also a faint blush on his face, perhaps not from the first glass, for the cup in his hand is full, and it shows he has not sipped yet. the blush on his face is probably because of nervousness and anxiety, or any other sensations that could have brought him to the situation conditioned by the latter political events in the uk leading him to resign. added to this, if someone sees the picture of this man for the first time, he/she could probably think that he was so drunk that he did not even look at his hairstyle, despite the fact, that boris johnson is typically seen with a similar hairstyle. concentrating on the choice and arrangements of the words in the headline, and the intention of the journalist to choose such an image for the news article we can state that a direct mockery is expressed in the sentence “where’s boris”, which becomes clearer after reading the news item. we also detect another literary device – satire in the headline, with the help of which readers are affected by the criticism. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 38 conclusion putting the knowledge of the textual analysis to use, we conclude that one of the advantages of this method consists in its applicability to good use when analyzing media-political articles with the perspective of detecting the cases of manipulation quite easily. on the basis of the textual analysis of the chosen sources of data we come to the conclusion that the method of this kind is very useful as a model of text analysis since its accurate usage avails of the possibility of showing evident cases of linguistic manipulation in different layers of the language, such as grammar and vocabulary. we may come to the conclusion that the study of media-political discourse from a textological viewpoint enables us to support the idea that manipulation is largely conditioned by the semiotic aspect of the language too, since whatever cannot be expressed directly through the texts, can be unfolded in other manipulation related elements, such as pictures, style of the headlines, sounds, etc., which can easily manipulate the audience on the visual level, thus affecting the psychology of people, making them read and believe the message. notes 1. manipulation of facts is a tactic, that is widely used in media-political language. it includes lying, excuse-making, being two-faced, blaming the victim for causing their own victimization, etc. (ni, 2015, see about it also in gasparyan & harutyunyan, 2021). 2. overwhelming the target with facts and statistics also known as “intellectual bullying” happens in many areas of life. by imposing alleged facts, statistics, and other data manipulators try to presume power over others, the latter, being unaware of the situation (ni, 2015, see about it also in gasparyan & harutyunyan, 2021). 3. negative other-presentation is a manipulative strategy used by people to talk to others trying to humiliate and undermine them (dijk 2006: 373). 4. positive self-presentation is a strategy used by people to talk about themselves using a positive language to gain the compassion of the audience (dijk 2006: 373). 5. guilt-baiting is a strategy often used to hold someone else accountable for his/her pleasure, success, or failings. the manipulator coerces the target into granting unreasonable requests and demands by using the emotional vulnerabilities and susceptibility of the latter through guilt baiting which the https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/bullying linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 39 manipulator believes to be more rational and effective than straightforward blaming (ni, 2015, see about it also in gasparyan & harutyunyan, 2021). 6. entrusted narratives are can be used when the authors want to make their writing more plausible, and impressive, more impactful to the reader using the effect of authenticity of the described events. the narrator is not overtly claim responsible for the views and evaluation but the manner of presentation, the angle of description very strongly suggest that the story is told not by the author himself but by some of his factotums (gasparian, matevosian 2011: 144-145). references belsey, c. (2013). textual analysis as a research method. in g. griffin (ed.), research methods for english studies. ned-new edition, 2, (pp. 160– 178). edinburgh university press. dijk v. t.a. (2006). discourse and manipulation. discourse and society, 17 (3). london: sage publications. frey, l., botan, c., & kreps, g. (1999). investigating communication: an introduction to research methods. 2nd edition. boston: allyn & bacon publication. galperin, i.r. (1977). sylistics. second edition. moscow: higher school. gasparian, s., & matevosian, a. (2011). english style in action. yerevan: yerevan state university press. gasparyan, s., & harutyunyan, r. (2021). manipulative speech: a theoretical overview. armenian folia anglistika, 2 (24), https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2021.17.2.011 gasparyan, s.k., & hayrapetyan, z.s. (2020). manipulative tactics employed by azerbaijani authors in online media resources. cognition, communication, discourse, 21, 25-35. https://doi.org/10.26565/22182926-2020-21-02 jones, r.h., jaworska, s., & aslan, e. (2020). language and media. new york: routledge. mckee, a. (2003). textual analysis: a beginner’s guide. sage publication, university of queensland, australia. melkonian, a.a. (2001). yegherni kaghakakanutyan dzevavorman akunknery: xv dari verj–1915 tvakan (patmazhoghovrdagrakan aknark erzrumi nahangi orinakov) [the origins of the formation of the genocide policy: end of 15th c. to 1915 (a historical-chronological review based on the armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 40 example of erzurum)]. in p. hovhannisian, l. khurshudian, l. mkrtchian, et al. (eds.) hayots tseghaspanutyuny (usumnasirutyunner). yerevan: hrazdan publishers. morgenthau, h. (1974). the murder of a nation. new york: armenian general benevolent union of america, inc publishers. ni, p. (2015). 14 signs of psychological and emotional manipulation. psychology today. retrieved june 10, 2021. zulalian, m. (1995). hayots patmutyan kheghatyurumy ardi turk patmagrutyan mej (hin yev mijin darer) [distortions of armenian history in modern turkish historiography (ancient and middle ages)]. yerevan: ran as press. sources of data armenian so-called genocide. (2015). azvison.az. retrieved june 22, 2022. cohen, d. (2020). trump hates you … even if you love him. rollingstone. retrieved june 18, 2022 levin, b. (2022). report: if donald trump isn’t sh--ting his pants over today’s january 6 hearing, he probably should be. vanityfair. retrieved june 29, 2022. mathiesen, k., webber, e. (2022). where’s boris? johnson missing in action at biden’s climate summit. politico. retrieved june 19, 2022. what are conditional clauses in english? easy learning grammar. collins. retrieved june 29, 2022. dictionaries and encyclopedias exterminate (n.d.). in the britannica dictionary. retrieved june 22, 2022. fawn over. (n.d.) in cambridge dictionary. retrieved june 20, 2022. protest (n.d.). in cambridge dictionary. retrieved june 29, 2022. shit one’s pants. (n.d.). in merriam webster dictionary. retrieved june 25, 2022. so-called (n.d.). in oxford learner’s dictionary. retrieved june 22, 2022. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/communication-success/201510/14-signs-psychological-and-emotional-manipulation https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/communication-success/201510/14-signs-psychological-and-emotional-manipulation https://en.azvision.az/news/23336/armenian-so-called-genocide--v-deos.html https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-hates-you-even-if-you-love-him-1064847/?fbclid=iwar1a3hm4xtxf4qkpezbjyluvqnh_--gsgkhigbnpshdcdxb_k5asbq_qzsw https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/06/january-6-hearing-cassidy-hutchinson-donald-trump https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/06/january-6-hearing-cassidy-hutchinson-donald-trump https://www.politico.eu/article/where-boris-johnson-missing-action-biden-climate-summit/ https://www.politico.eu/article/where-boris-johnson-missing-action-biden-climate-summit/ https://grammar.collinsdictionary.com/easy-learning/what-are-conditional-clauses-in-english#:~:text=the%20if%2dclause%20uses%20the%20present%20continuous%20or%20present%20simple,make%20suggestions%20and%20give%20advice https://www.britannica.com/dictionary https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fawn-over-on https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/protest https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shit%20one%27s%20pants https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/so-called?q=so+called linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 41 մեդիա-քաղաքական դիսկուրսը տեքստաբանական մոտեցմամբ ռաֆայել հարությունյան կան տարբեր հետազոտական մեթոդներ, տեխնիկաներ և ռազմավարություններ, որոնք օգտագործվում են տեքստի ուսումնասիրության համար: նման մեթոդներից մեկը տեքստային վերլուծության մեթոդն է, ուսումնասիրության այն բազմազան մոտեցումներից մեկը, որոնք օգտագործվում են տեքստի վերլուծության և ընկալման համար: մեդիաքաղաքական տեքստերը հասկանալը և մանիպուլյացիաներից ու տեղեկատվական կողմնակալությունից խուսափելը պահանջում է ոչ միայն լեզվական և արտալեզվական հմտություններ, այլև տարբեր ռազմավարությունների իրազեկվածություն: սույն հոդվածում մենք նպատակ ունենք անդրադառնալ տեքստային վերլուծության առանձնահատկություններին՝ որպես հետազոտական գործիք՝ տեքստաբանական տեսանկյունից մեդիա լրատվական հեռարձակումներում մանիպուլյացիայի դեպքերը ուսումնասիրելու համար: բանալի բառեր՝ մեդիա դիսկուրս, քաղաքական դիսկուրս, տեքստային վերլուծություն, մանիպուլյատիվ ռազմավարություններ և տեխնիկաներ, լեզվական և արտալեզվական միջոցներ: armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 culture studies 90 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2022.18.1.090 postmodern intercultural communication: beyond national and ethnic identities claude chastagner montpelier 3 paul valerie university new modes of communication gradually emerged at the end of the 20th century, shifting the focus of attention from national and ethnic criteria to the more complex and multifarious ones suggested by the intercultural paradigm. this shift parallels the global tendency to move away from univocal, modernist perspectives to the more complex, and ambiguous postmodern ones. downplaying the role of fixed national or ethnic identities in the communication process, and refusing simplifications and generalizations to emphasize instead fluidity and complexity, this new paradigm has had consequences on the lives of sub-groups and minorities, and on the communication process as a whole. keywords: modernism, postmodernism, communication, interculturality, multiculturalism, identity, ethnicity. introduction charles jencks, an architect, landscape designer, and architectural historian, and one of the promoters of postmodernism, claims that modernist architecture, posing as an avant-garde,focuses on univocal forms, such as right angles and rectangular shapes, and resorts to a limited set of cold materials, steel, glass, and concrete. he adds that, conversely, postmodern architecture favors forms derived from the mind, the body, and nature. borrowing from history, it incorporates curves, and wood, and bricks. it uses color and décor to produce a complex hybrid of neo-classicism and modernism, a hybrid that is precisely the point of postmodernism: a critical reaction to modernism which comes from within modernism itself, and as such, refuses the “scorched earth” policy of modernism. clude.chastagner@univ-montp3.fr this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 19.04.2022 revised: 23.04.2022 accepted: 30.04.2022 © the author(s) 2021 mailto:ohanyan.m@ysu.am https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 91 outside the realm of architecture, postmodernism also deconstructs the modernist trust in grand, metanarratives, from marxism to christianity, and displays an increasing skepticism toward their totalizing nature. what is required, it stresses, are smaller-scaled, multiple viewpoints and truths to interpret a complex, heterogeneous human existence marked by fragmentation, ambiguity, and uncertainty. my claim in this paper, is that the emergence of the intercultural concept in communication theories and processes lies parallel to, and is an offshoot of, postmodernism. rejecting pure, univocal conceptions that unequivocally assimilated culture to national or ethnic belonging, interculturality, as all postmodern endeavors, complexifies, and to a certain extent muddles, but also ultimately enriches the scope of communication. after highlighting the main differences between multiculturalism and interculturality, and tracing the progressive development of the intercultural paradigm in communication processes, i will focus on recent evolutions in the field and their parallel with postmodernism. multiculturalism vs interculturality the term “intercultural” is currently being used with a variety of meanings. for some, it is a full-fledged concept, with an impact on research in various fields. for others, it is a mere method to improve negotiation or educational strategies. some use it in linguistics or communication theory, others, much more pragmatically, to describe a set of policies designed to improve the wellbeing of expatriate employees or immigrant populations, and ultimately restore the social fabric. interculturality is often opposed to (but sometimes also confused with) multiculturalism. multiculturalism describes a way for individuals of diverse origins of living together in a given space with a limited degree of influence and interaction between them. in a multicultural environment, co-existing groups remain distinct. multiculturalism implies considering individuals on the basis of the communities they live in and belong to. such communities can comprise disadvantaged groups, like lgbt, ethnic, or religious minorities, or even the disabled. proponents of multiculturalism insist on the need to preserve the “cultural” difference of these communities. but the asymmetry of power relations between the groups, and their conflicting practices make it difficult to maintain this position. consequently, multiculturalism has been analyzed diversely. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 culture studies 92 some consider it evolved into a form of withdrawal, each group or community closing in around practices and values they consider fundamental to their sustainability, often at the expense of their neighbors’. they accuse it of leading to communitarianism, a state described by its opponents, according to pierreandré taguieff, as “a project aiming at subjecting the members of a defined group to the norms supposedly proper to this group, to this community, in short to control the opinions, the beliefs, the behaviors of those who belong in principle to this community” (halpern, 2004, p. 4). communitarianism would have eroded the distinctive, single, national identities promoted by the emergence of nation-states from the 18th century onward. in the french context, the term is used in a pejorative and generally ideological way to describe a threat to the unity of the nation, a threat to republicanism, secularism, nationalism, and human rights. others, like c. james trotman, argue on the contrary that “by closing gaps, by raising consciousness about the past, multiculturalism tries to restore a sense of wholeness in the postmodern era that fragments human life and thought” (trotman, 2002, p. 9). as such, paradoxically, multiculturalism would indeed be the offspring of modernism’s totalizing nature. in contrast to the multicultural model, and in response to its critics, the intercultural approach, developing from postmodern perspectives, values individual exchanges, interactions, dialogue, and negotiations, both at the intra and inter-group level. it calls for paying attention to others, integrating and accepting the risk of conflict. besides, interculturality insists on multiple identifications rather than static, univocal identities, and rejects the claims of identity politics that you can understand the perspective of a given group only if you belong to it. the intercultural approach is particularly prevalent in the field of communication. intercultural communication seeks to understand how people from different countries and cultures interact, and communicate on equal terms, respecting the identities of individuals from different religious, social, ethnic, and educational backgrounds. intercultural communication promotes the development of cultural competency and empathic understanding across different cultures. classic intercultural communication interculturality rests on an array of interdisciplinary theoretical backgrounds, from the theory of evolution to that of the unconscious, through marxist analysis. sociology and anthropology also play an important role, in particular culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 93 georg simmel’s research on the foreigner (simmel, 1971) and graham sumner’s critiques of ethnocentrism (sumner, 1906). the work of the leading american anthropologists of the 1930s and 1940s, margaret mead, ruth benedict, and gregory bateson, also played a major part in the early development of intercultural thinking, as well as what is known as the sapir-whorf hypothesis (though not originally created by edward sapir and benjamin lee whorf) that the different ways in which language encodes cultural and cognitive categories have an impact on the way people perceive and interpret the world. on the basis of their research, the american government hired linguists, anthropologists, and sociologists to train embassy staff and expatriate businessmen so that they would interact and “function” better in their host countries. the aim was to give concrete advice to anyone in an “intercultural” situation, i.e., having to interact with individuals from other national culture. in this context, anthropologist edward t. hall developed his two main concepts, highlighting the importance of high and low contexts and non-verbal communication (hall, 1959, 1966, 1976). regarding non-verbal communication, hall defined several categories: proxemics, the study of relationships to personal and territorial space; haptics, the study of physical contact between individuals (including with oneself); kinesics, the study of gestures and facial expressions; chronemics, the study of the relationship to time, which he formalized into the monochronic/polychromic concept. hall also paid attention to the importance of the “contexts”, defined as “high” or “low” for communication processes. high and low contexts inform how information is communicated and disseminated, either by the context (i.e., indirect communication: oral traditions, custom, elders, experience, habits, the non-verbal) or by written documents, texts, regulations, what is explicitly and clearly expressed, readily available and understandable by all, without ambiguity and without the context playing a significant role (i.e., direct communication) (hall, 1959). the intercultural approach was still at this point a utilitarian one, with an essentialist perspective. the basic category was the national culture (or the ethnic group), which was applied to the whole population of a given territory. as said earlier, this approach aims at giving concrete advice to those who are in an “intercultural” situation, i.e., they have to interact with individuals from other national cultures. it is on this basis that the first courses on interculturality were created in american universities in the 1970s, usually in communication armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 culture studies 94 departments. japan was the second country where intercultural research developed, due to its numerous academic exchanges with the usa. in both countries, the foundations and the goals of these courses were identical. unsurprisingly, the first researchers explored the relationship between asia and the west, with a focus on the opposition between individualism and collectivism, categories erroneously supposed to constitute the respective essences of the west and the east. starting in the 1980s, american intercultural research abandoned anthropology and linguistics in favor of social psychology; the result was an even more functionalist conception of interculturality, nourished by the positivism of auguste comte and emile durkheim, especially the application of natural sciences to the study of human behavior. in europe, a significant number of researchers still favor this approach. two consultants have become particularly famous, geert hofstede (hofstede, 1997, 2003) and fons trompenaars (trompenaars, 2004). they have in common a conception of interactions between individuals based on their national or ethnic origins, which are supposed to imply a common culture. they nevertheless underline their awareness of the risk of essentialism, which, they insist, has been taken into account and managed. this research has gained international recognition both in the socio-economic sector and in universities, in management, economics, communication, and linguistic departments, but also in history, anthropology and in training courses on international relations and diplomacy, to the extent that for many, the very concept of interculturality is limited to this approach. hofstede has definitely become the most famous name in the field. he has defined a number of dimensions based on surveys of employees in multinational corporation, that have since become keywords in intercultural studies: power distance, the degree of acceptance or questioning of hierarchy and difference; individualism/collectivism, the respective importance of the group (family, clan, village, region, friends, congregation, etc.) in relation to the individual; masculinity/femininity, the relative importance of the so-called “masculine” (ambition, materialism, self-assertion) or “feminine” qualities (modesty, concern for others, quality of life, etc.); uncertainty avoidance, the taste or dislike for risk-taking, innovation, the unknown and ambiguity, and therefore a different relationship to truth; long term/short term orientation, the fact of giving more or less consideration to the past, traditions or on the contrary, to the future, innovation, adaptability; and indulgence/restraint, the culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 95 tendency to enjoy life, to have fun, to seek happiness and gratification, or on the contrary to impose laws and rules of social control. this approach has been very successful because it offers simple answers to complex questions, answers easy to implement even in the periods of intense tensions we are currently experiencing. such conceptions have led some scholars to oppose countries, even civilizations, on the basis of their “cultures” (huntington, 1996)1. these views have spread to the world of economics and business, and even politics. in a recent speech given in denmark, for instance, french president emmanuel macron described the typical french person as “a [male] gaul resisting change” (“le gaulois réfractaire au changement”), thus at the expense of their plurality and diversity. even if it was said in jest, it underlines the extent to which this type of simplification has pervaded contemporary thought at the highest level, even as the claim is to promote an inclusive, intercultural society. a new paradigm in intercultural communication however, recently, particularly in europe, intercultural communication is developing on an utterly different base in large part, as claire kramsch argues, because the primary motivation is not, as in the united states, to facilitate diplomatic, political, and economic integration, but to welcome immigrant populations from former colonies (kramsch, 1993). as a result, there is a growing emphasis on thinking about language and the learning and teaching of languages, which launched what could be called “the linguistic turn” of intercultural communication. more importantly, new european scholars are moving towards an interpretative paradigm, much less prescriptive and more cautious than the functionalist paradigm. the idea is to move away from the analysis of a given group or individuals according to their national or ethnic origin, which leads to reductive and homogenizing presuppositions, but rather to take into consideration numerous other criteria and prioritize them according to the context or the situation, from professional status, to social class, political affiliation, geographic location (urban/rural, or regional2), family history, age, gender, sexual preferences, education, religion, life style (leisure, travels, personal interests), etc. in other words, moving away from a univocal, utilitarian, minimalist approach, similar to what modernist architecture advocated, and adopting a postmodern approach based on multiple, ambiguous, proliferating, and complex factors. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 culture studies 96 thus, the writer of this article will not foreground the same components of what makes him a specific individual (french, male, white, elderly, dad, educated, professor, etc.) depending on whether is giving a paper at an international conference in armenia, or if he is having breakfast the next morning with some of the young, local participants. which is exactly what the poster below, photographed in new york, implies. of course, even paying consideration to other elements than the nationality or ethnic belonging will not protect from the risk of essentialism and simplification, but at least there is an admission, an awareness of the risk, and an obvious rejection of binary positions. additionally, one should not underestimate the impact of education, be it in the classroom, in the media, or even in the street, with the same poster. and if politicians, from right to left, stopped turning their constituencies into “le gaulois”, this more complex, but also more credible way of communicating could allow us to acknowledge all our big or minute differences, and negotiate the differences to establish more peaceful and harmonious communication processes. the goal is indeed to understand and interpret the world as it is constructed, in its complexity and diversity, and with the tensions that ensue, to accept dissensus, and analyze cultural practices and processes of communication, interaction and exchange, without drawing prescriptive conclusions. this interpretative paradigm is based on the now familiar perspectives developed by decolonial studies (particularly the concepts of diaspora, hybridization, métissage, or creolization, implying that everything, and everyone, is “impure”, and that clear-cut, unambiguous origins, boundaries, and distinctions no longer hold) and recent developments in anthropology, culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 97 according to which culture is not an essence or a state, but an evolving, unstable and fluid construct, or even, as zygmunt bauman put it, a “liquid” entity (bauman, 2000; 2004; 2006). as a result, the relationship between culture and communication is no longer seen as a univocal cause-to-effect relationship, with one type of national culture systematically leading to a specific form of communication, but rather, as a series of exchanges and interactions between the two. using the intercultural paradigm in communication implies developing strategies (in the classroom, in the workplace, in the public space, in the media) that take into account the fluidity and liquidity of behaviors and practices, the fact that we have multiple identities, (what fred dervin calls “diverse diversities”), and taking extra care to avoid globalizing and simplifying interpretations. that is, the same emphasis on fluidity, and the same suspicion of straight lines, cold materials, and totalizing perspectives that is at the heart of postmodernism. reflection on the limits and dangers of the concept of “national culture” is at the core of this new approach to communication. thus, in de la guerre à la communauté universelle (from war to a universal community) international law-maker monique chemillier-gendreau criticizes the sovereignty of the state, which she accuses of being at the origin of violent forms of rejection of the other, via a reification of the nation. she states: “the reification of national identities created and endorsed by nation-states is dangerous because it is done by identification around the figure of a leader” (chemillier-gendreau, 2013, p. 283). she proposes new forms of solidarity that would encompass the plurality and complexity of individual identities and replace dominant/dominated relations with a form of negotiated freedom, that would respect heterogeneity, otherness and dissensus, and which would not only accept conflictual communication, but would create favorable and controlled circumstances for its development. conclusion to conclude, i would like to stress one more impact of postmodernism on the field of communication. intercultural researchers are particularly concerned with the power relations that shape communication processes, relations that are established through ideological superstructures and material living conditions. they clearly affirm that cultural practices and products are places of struggle. by insisting on the constructed dimension of identity, rather than its automatic armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 culture studies 98 connection to national and ethnic belonging, they try to give autonomy and freedom to individuals. as such, there is a strong interest in intercultural research in the interactions between large and “small” cultures, for example between a nation-state, or a transnational corporation on the one hand, and a village, a classroom, or, say, the regular of a pub on the other. the same focus on power relations can be seen in the insistence of non-western (japanese, chinese, or indians) researchers in intercultural communication on the dangers of a us-centric or euro-centric bias, which leads to question the very “western” concepts, modernity, or progress, that postmodernism challenged. the emergence of the postmodern paradigm in communication studies has definitely given a new twist to the field and opened it to a fascinating, though demanding array of new possibilities. notes 1. the intercultural approach offers however a new interpretation of global history which undermines notions of “a clash of civilizations” by showing, for instance, that the conceps of tolerance should not be restricted to the west, but is rather a eurasian achievement. 2. the regional dimension has taken an increased importance with the claims for autonomy or even independence in places such as catalonia, in spain, scotland, in the united kingdom, corsica, and even more recently (april 2022) britany, in france. references bauman, z. (2000). liquid modernity. london. polity press. bauman, z. (2004). identity. london. polity press. bauman, z. (2006). liquid times: living in an age of uncertainty. london. polity press. chemillier-gendreau, m. (2013). de la guerre à la communauté universelle. paris. fayard. dervin, f. (2011). impostures interculturelles. paris. l’harmattan. hall, e.t. (1959). the silent language. new york. anchor books. hall, e.t. (1966). the hidden dimension. new york. anchor books. hall, e.t. (1976). beyond culture. new york. anchor books. halpern, c. (2004). communautarisme, une notion équivoque. sciences humaines, 148, 4. hofstede, g. (2003). culture’s consequences: comparing values, behaviors, institutions and organizations across nations. london: sage. culture studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 99 hofstede, g. (1997). cultures and organizations: sof the mind. intercultural cooperation and its importance for survival. london: mcgraw-hill. holliday, a., hyde m., & kullman j. (eds.) (2010). intercultural communication: an advanced resource book. london: routledge. huntington, s. (1996). the clash of civilizations and the remaking of the world order. new york: simon and schuster. kramsch, c. (1993). context and culture in language teaching. oxford: oxford university press. laplantine, f. (1999). je, nous et les autres. paris: le pommier. mcsweeney, b. (2002). hofstede’s model of national cultural differences and their consequences: a triumph of faith – a failure of analysis, human relations, 55(1), 89-118. nakayama, thomas k., & rona tamiko, h. (eds). (2010). the handbook of critical intercultural communication. hoboken, nj: wiley-blackwell. simmel, g. (1908). the stranger. georg simmel: on individuality and social forms. chicago: university of chicago press. sumner, w.g. (2007). folkways: a study of the sociological importance of usages, manners, customs, mores, and morals [1906]. new york. cosimo classics. trompenaars, f., & woolliams, p. (2004) business across cultures. chicago: capstone publishers. trotman, j. (2002). multiculturalism: roots and realities. bloomington: in. indiana university press. միջմշակութային հաղորդակցությունը պոստմոդեռնիզմի դարաշրջանում. ազգային եվ էթնիկական ինքնության սահմաններից այն կողմ կլոդ շաստանյե 20-րդ դարի վերջում ի հայտ եկան հաղորդակցության նոր միջոցներ, որոնք՝ միջմշակութային հարացույցով պայմանավորված, ուշադրության կենտրոնացումը ազգայինից ու էթնիկականից տեղափոխեցին ավելի բարդ ու բազմաբնույթ չափանիշների վրա: այս տեղաշարժը միանգամայն համահունչ է միակողմանի, մոդեռնիստական մոտեցումները մերժելու և դեպի ավելի բարդ ու ոչ միանաշանակ պոստմոդեռնիստական հայացքներ որդեգրելու գլոբալ միտումներին: հաղորդակցության գործընթացում նվազեցնելով արդեն ամրակայված ազգային կամ էթնիկական ինքնությունների դերը և հրաժարվելով պարզեցումներից ու ընդհանրացումներից՝ պոստմոդեռնիզմի ջատագովները armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 1 (25), 2022 culture studies 100 սկսեցին շեշտադրել անկայունությունն ու բարդությունը, որով էլ աստիճանաբար ապահովվեց նոր հարացույցի ազդեցությունը ինչպես ենթախմբերի ու փոքրամասնությունների կյանքի, այնպես էլ հաղորդակցման գործընթացի վրա: բանալի բառեր՝ մոդեռնիզմ, պոստմոդեռնիզմ, միջմշակութայնություն, բազմամշակութայնություն, ինքնություն, էթնիկական պատկանելություն: armenian folia anglistika – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english (since 2005) and yerevan state university (since 2015) aims at fostering research of the english language, literature and culture armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 literature studies 124 “burnt to the bone” with love, damnation, and sin: phaedra as the swinburnian femme damnée 1 lilith ayvazyan  keio university the victorian poet algernon charles swinburne (1837-1909) is famous for his uniquely “bizarre” female characters. his contemporary critics as well as many of the researchers who touched upon his work have interpreted his female characters to be “obsessive,” “masochistic,” and in some cases even “sadistic.” phædra is one of his characters who suffered the most because of this misconception. rarely referenced at all, she has been regarded as a one-dimensional “masochist” who lacks psychological and emotional depth and whose only driving force is her desire for death. however, a close reading of swinburne’s short poem reveals phædra’s innermost anxieties and places her in the narrative of the swinburnian femme damnée inspired by les fleurs du mal of the french poet charles baudelaire (1821-1867). swinburne’s “phædra” is remarkable in that it also serves as an exceptional representation of sappho (c. 630 c. 570 bc) in victorian england. this paper highlights swinburne’s aversion towards the victorian mock-morality, as well as some of his life-long influences. furthermore, this paper defines phædra in a new light by considering the classical originals, sappho’s and baudelaire’s works, and even a twentieth-century retelling by the russian poetess marina tsvetaeva (1892-1941). keywords: algernon charles swinburne, victorian poetry, sappho, greek tragedy, baudelaire, pre-raphaelitism, dante gabriel rossetti, victorian mock-morality. introduction when in 1866 a controversial collection of poems titled poems and ballads was published by moxon and almost instantly withdrawn from circulation, the redheaded eccentric poet who had authored the book became the target  lilithayvazyan@keio.jp this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 10.02.2021 revised: 30.04.2021 accepted: 23.05.2021 © the author(s) 2021 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2021.17.1.124 mailto:lilithayvazyan93@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 125 of contemporary critics. none of those who denounced the collection— anonymously or with a name—could have predicted that the collection composed of sixty-two poems would become the young poet’s most referenced, researched, and timeless work. while many of the controversial and provocative poems in the collection—“laus veneris,” “anactoria,” “dolores,” and “sapphics”—have been in the centre of critics and researcher’s attention, a short poem titled “phædra,” incidentally the first retelling of the greek myth in the nineteenth century after nearly two centuries of neglect, does not seem to have been referenced or studied extensively. to say that the oversight of the poem is regretful would be an understatement; the poem of roughly 190 lines displays several of the major influences and interests which would accompany its author, algernon charles swinburne (1837-1909), for the rest of his life. despite the reputation and fame of the classical myth, and unlike the versions written by swinburne’s predecessors—euripides, seneca, ovid, and racine—his “phædra” has not undergone meticulous research up to this day. though we come across several brief remarks on this short poem, by specialists of euripides and seneca, unfortunately and predictably, their observations suffer from limitations; they view swinburne’s retelling solely as aggressive and masochistic. in his romantic agony, mario praz (1951) refers to phædra as one of swinburne’s “sinister creatures” and one of the “direct forebears of … [the] harlot of universal experience” (p. 250, p. 263). critics of swinburne also tend to disregard phædra’s multidimensional character and cannot see past the initial veil of masochistic desire. she is portrayed as a strong and independent woman, empowered with her willingness to give up her life instead of continuing her existence in the unbearable reality of her unrequited love and family curse. phædra’s passion while acting as her driving force is also the root of her damnation. phædra, alongside with other female characters that appear in poems and ballads, has been “branded” as shameless, indecent, masochistic, and obsessive. it should not be denied that these characteristics are present in swinburne’s verse, but merely on a superficial level. these analyses tend to present the poet’s protagonists as one-dimensional characters lacking emotional and psychological depth. to fully comprehend swinburne’s phædra, the short poem should be observed not only from the point of view of pre-raphaelitism, but also in associations with sappho and baudelaire; armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 literature studies 126 sappho acts as swinburne’s inspiration for female empowerment, while baudelaire’s les fleurs du mal (1857) serves as the origin of the unique archetype of femme damnée, that can often be observed in swinburne’s poetry of the 1860s. parallels are also drawn with racine’s phèdre (1677) and marina tsvetaeva’s fedra (1927)—the first remaking of the myth by a female author. the aim of this paper is to shed a new light on the character of phædra by comparing swinburne’s delineation of phædra with how she is portrayed in the classical originals, and then examine how he adapted her in the society of nineteenth-century england. like his pre-raphaelite friends and many of the victorian poets and artists, swinburne’s work, especially early poems and plays, display the author’s revolt and aversion towards the victorian “false” morality. phædra, amongst others of the poet’s female characters, is not afraid to voice her desire, nor make any attempts to hide her sexuality. this task is accomplished by applying the comparative method to phædra’s character and observing the changes she underwent in the hands of different authors. preceding research traditionally, researchers have analysed swinburne’s works under the pretext of pre-raphaelitism. however, such expositions are unsatisfactory because they treat swinburne solely as a pre-raphaelite poet. while it is an undeniable fact that swinburne was influenced by dante gabriel rossetti, william morris, edward burne-jones, and other pre-raphaelite painters, it should also be noted that during the 1860s swinburne’s interests and writing styles underwent a change which distanced him from the techniques and themes often exploited by rossetti and other pre-raphaelite poets. the poet himself notices this shift: before 1861 my early work had no doubt a savour of the same influences as the earlier works of morris and rossetti, — but from the date of “chastelard” and “atalanta” onward, i cannot trace in any part of my work … a trace of any quality that could correctly or even literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 127 plausibly be labelled “pre-raphaelite” either for praise or for blame. (lang, letter no. 727) these differences are quite vivid even in swinburne’s early, preraphaelite influenced poems such as “queen yseult.” maxwell writes: one of the keynotes of the romantic medievalism that swinburne took from the poetry and painting of morris and rossetti was female grace and beauty, typified by damsels notable for luxuriant—usually golden—hair, pale skin, curved or parted lips, and absorbed or absorbing gaze, a gaze sometimes tantalizing by shut or half-closed eyelids. … iseult’s “golden corn-ripe hair” … clearly owes a debt to rossetti’s “blessed damozel” and many of morris’s fair ladies; yet the obsessive note is swinburne’s own, as are other identifiable motifs such as the sexual submission of the male to female power… . (2012, p. 241) in contrast to the treatment of “fallen women” we find in morris and rossetti, swinburne’s sexually assured heroines evince no guilt themselves nor rouse it in their male admirers. (2012, p. 243) the women swinburne portrayed throughout his career are drastically different from the “damsel in distress” archetype the reader meets in other pre-raphaelite poems and paintings. swinburnian women borrow their appearances from the paintings of the pre-raphaelites, but the poet takes a step further, and bestows a pinch of aggression and defiance to his heroines. researchers have not studied swinburne’s “phædra” in much detail, though several studies have carried out investigations of the short poem to varying degrees. before moving forward, it is important to discuss the analysis presented in these sources. in brill’s companion to the reception of euripides, rosanna lauriola, argues, “this phædra has no sense of shame and, in her masochistic desire for self-annihilation, death appears to her as the fulfilment of love” (2015, p. 462). in brill’s companion to the reception of senecan tragedy, francesco armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 literature studies 128 citti, gives a more detailed analysis of the swinburnian poem. he ascribes puritanist values and ideals to swinburne’s “phædra.” citti comes to the same conclusion as lauriola: for phædra, “passion becomes a destructive impulse, a desire for death viewed as synonymous with eros.” (2016, p. 265). roland mayer’s analysis attempts to identify the influences that swinburne bore when writing his “phædra”, and finds them not in euripides, but rather in seneca and racine, since “only in seneca and racine did phaedra confront hippolytus directly … and only in them does the woman embrace the prospect of death at the hands of the man she loves” (2002, p. 84). nevertheless, while mayer manages to identify some of the influences and similarities that swinburne’s poem bares with seneca and racine, he too fails to discuss the poem from the perspective of a victorian poet. in his “swinburnian woman,” antony h. harrison shows three main types of women the reader can come across throughout the poet’s works: the “passionate,” the “mythical,” and the “matriarchal.” phædra is assigned to the category of “passionate” women who “are all high individualized, and, rather than treating their victims with the indifference of the lucretian gods, they deeply love the men they kill or threaten. they are helpless thralls of passion which often conflict with their own or their lovers’ worldly desires. such conflicts make these women appear capricious or inconsistent, themselves mere subjects of a presiding and sinister fate” (1979, p. 90). there are, however, other possible analyses of swinburne’s “phædra.” while these studies are conducted by different researchers, they all seem to agree on one thing: phædra is seen as a masochistic woman who is obsessed with the subject of her love. this can also be linked to the fact that swinburne was widely renowned for his masochism, particularly keen interest in self-flagellation. it can be concluded that these studies, despite containing a kernel of truth, have limited views and leave space for further analysis. phædra prior to swinburne when discussing the swinburnian femme damnée, our interest first and foremost lies with phædra as she is the perfect example of a condemned literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 129 woman that has been passed down to us from the time of ancient greek and romans. phædra’s story closely resembles that of zuleikha and joseph (king james version, genesis 39:5-20). through the ages, much like phædra, zuleikha has also been accused of being a cold-hearted sinner. in a similar manner, phædra is usually interpreted as a sinner, but some retellings centre on her feelings and great love: russian poetess marina tsvetaeva, however, takes a step further and portrays phædra as a naïve and pure young woman, and all of the blame is put on the nurse. in swinburne’s short poem we do not see the nurse, nor encounter the false accusations of rape, but rather experience phædra’s dramatic monologue and get to know her character and desires. in this poem there is no indication of hippolytus’s further actions or death. swinburne starts his poem half-way into the myth of phædra. at this point some major events have unravelled and it is obvious from the narrative that phædra has confessed her love and has been rejected by hippolytus. by doing so, swinburne directs his readers’ attention and focus to phædra and her feelings. with the implementation of this technique, he avoids themes that might draw away the readers’ concentration, such as the aforementioned false accusations of rape, the news of theseus’s death, as well as phædra’s contemplations on letting hippolytus know about her feelings. phædra’s tragedy can be considered a favourite of classical times. phædra is first mentioned in homer’s odyssey, followed by two dramas written by euripides, hippolytus kalyptomenos (lit. “hippolytus veiled”) and hippolytus stephanephoros (lit. “hippolytus crowned”), the first of which is now lost. modern scholars are inclined to agree that sophocles also wrote a now-lost drama called phaidra in between euripides’s two plays: “the play seems (as the title suggests) to have been concerned primarily with the character and fate not of hippolytos but of phaidra: if so we may assume that she had the virtue necessary for tragic stature” (barrett, 1964, p. 12). euripides’s phædra is mainly concerned with her reputation and ability to preserve her image of a good and righteous woman. this is what eventually leads to the false accusations of rape. this version of phædra is unable to confess her own feelings, and hippolytus discovers the passions his stepmother harbours towards him through phædra’s nurse. in addition to greek poets, roman poets and dramatists also showed interest in the myth of this tragic love. the next author to take up phædra’s armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 literature studies 130 story was the roman poet ovid in heroides, where he presents the story to his readers through epistolary. ovid’s phædra is more open about her feelings than that of euripides’s. she is able to confess her feelings to hippolytus, albeit through a written letter. while the contemporary social standards and expectations might not have allowed phædra to be able to speak her feelings aloud, they did not stop her from writing them down. the final piece on phædra written during the classical times, and incidentally the most famous one, is phaedra by seneca the younger. the greatest contrast that can be seen in seneca’s phaedra and the greek original is the disposition of the young woman’s feelings towards her stepson hippolytus. while euripides’s phædra is a woman who cannot speak up out of shame and must convey her feelings to her beloved by the means of her nurse, seneca’s phædra is a self-aware and confident woman, who does not hide her feelings towards hippolytus. seneca goes beyond from ovid’s version, and his phædra is the first to approach hippolytus directly with her feelings. although phædra’s tragedy has been referenced and performed during the middle ages, the next notable retelling is by jean racine in the seventeenth century. racine’s phèdre is greatly influenced by both euripides’s hippolytus and seneca’s phædra. however, several innovations are made and none of the characters appear to be fundamentally good or evil: phædra does not make false accusations of rape here, since she is now a queen who is above such petty lies. meanwhile, hippolytus is no longer presented as a chaste and innocent martyr. he also has human characteristics and even falls in love. in this play, just as in seneca’s, phædra feels guilty because of her feelings, and considers herself a monstrosity. in the end, phædra commits suicide. in classical versions, the gods are omnipresent; they punish the men and women who do not follow their rules and commandments (e.g. aphrodite makes phædra fall in love with her stepson in order to punish hippolytus, since he worships artemis, is chaste, and does not want to have any associations with the goddess of love). one of the major and most important improvements implemented by racine was distancing the gods from the main plot of the story; their shadows may be lurking around, but they do not play a deciding role in the development of the events. literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 131 swinburne’s “phædra”: a femme damnée given the language used in the poem, it is not difficult to determine why swinburne’s phædra has been interpreted as a masochistic and obsessive character, who hopes to find fulfilment in death. swinburne writes: yea, if mine own blood ran upon my mouth, i would drink that. nay, but be swift with me; set thy sword here between the girdle and breast, for i shall grow a poison if i live. 2 however, for phædra simply dying is not satisfactory. it is apparent from her words that death from being pierced by hippolytus’s sword, which acts as a phallic symbol, would not only fulfil her unrequited love, but bring sexual satisfaction: […] come, take thy sword and slay; let me not starve between desire and death, but send me on my way with glad wet lips; (p. 32) nonetheless, it appears that the critics of swinburne neglect the fact that phædra is a woman madly in love with her stepson. receiving death at the tip of hippolytus’s sword is in a sense a fulfilment of her unrequited love. this can be observed not only in swinburne’s wording but also prosody: x x / x x / x x / x / x / i am burnt to the bone with love, thou shalt not go, x x / x x / x / x x / x x / i am heartsick, and mine eyelids prick mine eyes, / x x / x / x / x / thou shalt not sleep nor eat nor say a word x / x / x x / x / x / till thou hast slain me. i am not good to live. (p. 34) swinburne stresses words such as “burnt,” “heartsick,” “prick,” “slain,” and “live.” by reading the fraction of the poem in such a manner, phædra’s armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 literature studies 132 desire for death becomes clearly articulated through her diction. it should, however, be mentioned, that death is not simply a realisation of phædra’s unrequited love: it is a new beginning for her soul. this is a pattern which can be seen in many of swinburne’s poems. one of particular interest is “faustine,” also published in poems and ballads: she loved the games men played with death, where death must win; as though the slain man’s blood and breath revived faustine. (1866, p. 125) these lines make it apparent that for swinburne “death” is often equivalent to revival, thus meaning that by dying from a blow by hippolytus’s sword, phædra’s soul will be revived. it can be concluded from phædra’s monologue that her life in a world where she is not loved by hippolytus is no different from death; it is a torture similar to that of a man who is dying of poison: “are not my cheeks as grass my body pale, / and my breath like a dying poisoned man’s?” (p. 32). swinburne refers to love as a form of torture not only in “phædra,” but also in the aforementioned “faustine,” a poem which allows many parallels with “phædra”: the shameless nameless love that makes hell’s iron grin shut on you like a trap that breaks the soul, faustine. (1866, p. 127) in both poems love and death are inter-changeable; death is equivalent to rebirth, but the neglect and dismissal of love gives way to strong sensations of pain and torture. this theme can often be observed in swinburne’s poetry of early 1860s: if you will slay me be not over quick, kill me with some slow heavy kiss that plucks the heart out at the lips. (swinburne, 1926a, p. 29) literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 133 in chastelard, the protagonist finds joy in being executed by mary stuart and prefers death over a life where he cannot be united with the scottish queen. the french paramour of queen mary also “burns to the bone” with love and it is through death that he wants to unite with his lover. by making phædra and her passion the central theme of his poem, swinburne displays his rejection of euripides; his disdain and disregard towards the greek playwright was no secret. swinburne’s critique of euripides’s hippolytus in his essay contemporaries of shakespeare, originally published in 1875, is of particular interest. he writes: “phèdre of racine is poetically inferior to the hippolytus of euripides; … the french playwright's heroine is more credible and more interesting than the unimaginable atrocity—the murderous mendacity in suicide—of the greek’s” (1919, p. 201). nevertheless, the presence of the chorus of trœzenian women can be considered homage to the greek playwright. while swinburne’s short poem is written in blank verse, all of the sections that feature the chorus are written in iambic pentameter with rhythmic variations: x / x / x / x / x / this is an evil born with all its teeth, x / x / / x x / x / when love is cast out of the bound of love. (p. 34) considering swinburne’s fascination with ancient greece, the short poem can be read as a tribute to greek tragedy; kenneth haynes, in his edition of poems and ballads, has noted that it is “an imitation of … the use of stichomythia (oneor two-line exchanges between characters) and the oblique naming of a divinity are characteristic of greek tragedy” (swinburne, 2000, pp. 328-29). for euripides’s phædra shame is the greatest accelerating power. shame is what does not allow the greek playwright’s heroine to confess her feelings to hippolytus. shame is what forces her to produce the false accusations of rape in order to protect her image of a “good woman.” unlike this phædra, swinburne’s heroine is not bound by social standards and the prospect of shame. both hippolytus and the chorus accuse her of armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 literature studies 134 shamelessness, but phædra defends herself by pointing out her relations to the gods and her hybrid nature: chorus. lady, this speech and majesty are twain; pure shame is of one counsel with the gods. hippolytus. man is as beast when shame stands off from him. phædra. man, what have i to do with shame or thee? i am not of one counsel with the gods. i am their kin, i have strange blood in me, i am not of their likeness nor of thine. (p. 33) this scene subtly, yet persistently, echoes ovid’s own phædra, who “not only turns the ‘unspeakable’ into ‘writable,’ but she also converts the nefas (“illicit”) into fas (“licit”), thus championing a new, updated morality” (lauriola, 2015, p. 452). this phædra also refers to the gods in order to justify her feelings, as well as to present the shameful and incestuous relationship she has in mind as “legitimate.” while in swinburne’s poem there is no great stress on the incestuous nature of the relationship, the idea is introduced through phædra’s voice, “thou art my son, i am thy father’s wife, / i ache toward thee with a bridal blood” (p. 34). this very subtle, almost unnoticeable reference to incest in swinburne’s poem displays the poet’s desire to distance the already well-known themes of phædra’s story. by doing so, he manages to recentre the readers’ attention on the feelings of the characters rather than on their background. in the 1860s, when young swinburne published some of his most controversial verse, he was greatly influenced by charles baudelaire. anne walder attempts to identify the french poet’s substantial influences on swinburne’s poems and ballads and concludes that the short poem “phædra” does “not show any similarities with les fleurs du mal” (1976, p. 69). the second reason for leaving out “phædra” from her analysis seems to be the greek origins of the myth. walder’s claim can be dismissed with a close reading of the poem; swinburne’s phædra pertains to the baudelairean femme damnée. in les fleur du mal, a certain poem titled “femme literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 135 damnées: delphine et hippolyte” stands out. the poem portrays hippolyte as a lesbian, with a connection to the island lesbos, the homeland to sappho. according to jonathan culler, “baudelaire imagines lesbians as the most compelling embodiments of lust and desire … provoked by something intangible and intensified by the very impossibility of fulfilment” (baudelaire, 2008, p. xv). the archetype of femme damnée can be further explored through reading the poem; the last stanzas seem to perfectly convey the damnation of the women who fall under this category: jamais un rayon frais n’éclaira vos cavernes; par les fentes des murs des miasmes fiévreux filtrent en s'enflammant ainsi que des lanternes et pénètrent vos corps de leurs parfums affreux. l’âpre stérilité de votre jouissance altère votre soif et roidit votre peau, et le vent furibond de la concupiscence fait claquer votre chair ainsi qu'un vieux drapeau. (baudelaire, 2008, pp. 244) 3 culler explains that the baudelairean condemned women “suffer[s] the condemnation of men and god and, more than that, the lacerations of passion itself. their island, lesbos, is a land of exotic, often masochistic sensuality … they refuse to accept what is permitted but seek the unknown, … are imagined as ineluctably damned” (baudelaire, 2008, p. xiv). swinburne’s phædra fully realises and does not hesitate to voice her damnation. “phædra is tainted by her family blood and would appear to revel in her family misfortune which drives her towards a violent and untimely death,” writes lene østermark-johansen (2014, p. 50). in swinburne’s verse, the heroine indeed refers to her cursed bloodline in her monologue referencing pasiphae’s perverse relationship with the bull: for like my mother am i stung and slain, and round my cheeks have such red malady and on my lips such fire and foam as hers. … armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 literature studies 136 she hath sown pain and plague in all our house, love loathed of love, and mates unmatchable, wild wedlock, and the lusts that bleat or low, and marriage-fodder snuffed about of kine. (pp. 37-38) pasiphae’s sexual desire for the bull, its manifestation as a family curse, is often mentioned by different writers. as simon critchley (2004) has correctly observed, in racine’s tragedy the central issue is “the naming of the monstrous, monstrous desire that produced the minotaur, the monster that theseus killed, the desire for his virginal son that now courses through phædra’s body” (p. 19). 4 curious as it may be, we see the influences of baudelaire’s aforementioned poem in swinburne’s “phædra.” swinburne subtly echoes baudelaire by making the amazon hippolyta hippolytus’s mother, and not antiope, like in racine’s version. 5 his heroine does not simply reference the mother of the man she loves, but also expresses her sexual desire towards hippolyta; the amazon queen is likened to the “sword,” which in swinburne’s verse often manifests itself as a phallic symbol: a sword was nurse of thine; hippolyta, that had the spear to father, and the axe to bridesman, and wet blood of sword-slain men for wedding-water out of noble well, even she did bear thee, thinking of a sword, and thou wast made a man mistakenly. (pp. 33-34) it is because of the desire to be killed by hippolytus that swinburne’s phædra is regarded as a masochistic woman by his critics—a simplification of the emotions the heroine experiences. it is worth noting that swinburne’s inspiration for such a turn of events is most likely seneca, and possibly racine, despite the english poet’s evident contempt for the french playwright. mayor elaborates: only in seneca and racine did phaedra confront hippolytus directly (and swinburne was well acquainted with both classical and french literature), and only in literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 137 them does the woman embrace the prospect of death at the hands of the man she loves. it was that which appealed to the deliquescent eroticism of swinburne, who spins out phaedra’s plea for some pages … swinburne’s heroine insists that [hippolytus] draw his sword to kill her (racine’s revision of seneca). he refuses and flees, leaving phaedra to her own thoughts. she is depicted in senecan colours. (2002, p. 84) phaedra’s confrontation is a crucial change that had been introduced to the story by seneca. it shows the greatness of the woman’s love for her stepson, displays her willingness to defy the norms of her time, and her ability to transcend shame which is central and crucial to euripides’s story. in harrison’s analysis we see swinburne’s heroine categorised into the archetype of femme fatale, (1979, p. 90) which can be explained by examining racine’s phædra, a traditional and perfectly executed fatal woman. the french playwright’s phædra’s passion turns her into a powerful force of nature which eventually destroys both her and her beloved. the model of the fatal woman can often be observed in d. g. rossetti’s poetry and painting. his lady lilith, its accompanying sonnet “body’s beauty” (incidentally, first published in swinburne’s pamphlet-review “notes on the royal academy exhibition” in 1868), and goethe’s passage on the character, which in rossetti’s translation is often used as an epigraph for the painting, are the epitome of the pre-raphaelite femme fatale: lo! as that youth’s eyes burned at thine, so went thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent and round his heart one strangling golden hair. (2003, p. 162) hold thou thy heart against her shining hair, if, by thy fate, she spread it once for thee; for, when she nets a young man in that snare, so twines she him he never may be free. (2003, p. 304) rossetti’s lilith is powerful. in her fantasies of femininity: reframing the boundaries of sex, ussher writes: armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 literature studies 138 lady lilith stands as a classic example of the artistic representation of this passionate, fearful woman. ... she is sexual, dangerously seductive, and does not give the appearance of an acquiescent femininity which will be easily satisfied. ... fear of and desire for “woman” is incarnated in one painting. she is both sexual and selfish, gazing upon herself with satisfaction, symbolising her rejection of “man.” (1997, p. 96) praz argues that the typical pre-raphaelite femme fatale bears many similarities to the keatsian la belle dame sans merci (praz, 1951, p. 201). indeed, such influences can be observed in swinburne’s verse, e.g. “laus veneris,” but not in “phædra.” phædra yearns for self-destruction; her desire for death acts as a fuel for her love, while lilith, as can be seen from both of the passages quoted above, preys and thrives on men, who are merely puppets for her to toy with. the theme of the family curse is also present in russian poetess marina tsvetaeva’s fedra. however, unlike racine and swinburne, the one who speaks of the relationship between pasiphae and the bull is not phædra, but her nurse: издали, издавна поведу: горькие женщины в вашем роду, — так и слава вам будет в будущем! пасифая любила чудище. разонравился царь, мил зверь. дщерь ты ей иль не дщерь? материнская зла кровиночка! (1994, pp. 647) 6 the similarities regarding phædra’s origins which are observed in racine, swinburne and tsvetaeva do not end here. helios, the god of sun and phædra’s grandfather, is an omnipresent entity in racine’s play. phædra fears him, she feels his constant presence; she also often turns to him in her monologues. swinburne and tsvetaeva do not put a great stress on his presence, but they both reference him in their works, incidentally, by making the connection with phædra’s name: literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 139 je respire à la fois l'inceste et l'imposture. mes homicides mains promptes à me venger, dans le sang innocent brûlent de se plonger. misérable ! et je vis ? et je soutiens la vue de ce sacré soleil dont je suis descendue ? j'ai pour aïeul le père et le maître des dieux. le ciel, tout l'univers est plein de mes aïeux. où me cacher ? fuyons dans la nuit infernale. (racine, 1950, ll. 1270-1277) 7 see thou spare not for greatness of my blood, nor for the shining letters of my name. … for the bright writing of my name is black, and i am sick with hating the sweet sun. (swinburne, pp. 32-33, emphasis mine) вижу ль? веки — зноем… федрой — звали… (tsvetaeva, 1994, pp. 660) 8 mentioning pasiphae and helios allows the readers to make connections with the well-known fragments of the myth for a better understanding and interpretation of phædra’s inner thoughts and fears. swinburne and tsvetaeva’s heroines have many similarities, but the most important one is their yearning to be loved. phædra, in the works of these two authors, unlike their predecessors, has no desire to slander, has no motives to yearn for power. in these works, she does not need to clear her name and fight the shame of loving her stepson. these two authors have captured solely her thirst for love, and in their works phædra does not die because she has been tarnished, but because her love has been rejected. in both of these works, phædra implies that she will commit suicide, but in both of them we do not get to see her in action (in tsvetaeva’s version the reader does get to see the aftermath of phædra’s death, while swinburne’s poem ends abruptly): armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 literature studies 140 i set my curse against him as sword; yea, and the severed half thereof i leave pittheus, because he slew not (when that face was tender, and the life still soft in it) the small swathed child, but bred him for my fate. i would i had been the first that took her death out from between wet hoofs and reddened teeth, splashed horns, fierce fetlocks of the brother bull! for now shall i take death a deadlier way, gathering it up between the feet of love or off the knees of murder reaching it. (swinburne, pp. 38-39) о другом, о непробудном сне — уж постлано, где лечь нам — грежу, не ночном, а вечном, нескончаемом, — пусть плачут! — где ни пасынков, ни мачех, ни грехов, живущих в детях, ни мужей седых, ни третьих жен… (tsvetaeva, 1994, p. 671) 9 as can be observed in tsveateva’s poem, her phædra will not simply be satisfied with suicide, but she demands of hippolytus to commit a double suicide to start a new life. the concept of afterlife is not new at this point though, it has been heavily hinted on in racine’s play, as well as suggested in swinburne’s poem as already discussed above. afterthoughts swinburne was not the only victorian to make omissions to his poems for the sake of re-centring the focus of his readers. this technique can also be observed in the poems of the brownings. robert browning was famous for his dramatic monologues. his “my last duchess” (1842) tells the story of the duke who killed his wife out of jealousy. the poem starts long after the death of the duchess, and the events are from the duke’s perspective. elizabeth barrett browning’s “a musical instrument” (1862), one of the literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 141 last poems published during her lifetime, while not a dramatic monologue, tells the story of the god pan and how he turns a reed into a flute. however, she too, omitted the first half of the story—pan’s pursuit of the nymph who refused his love and was eventually turned into a reed. thus, barrett browning centres the reader’s focus on the destructions that pan brings forth in his attempts to create the flute. alfred tennyson’s “ulysses” (1842), another highly regarded dramatic monologue from the victorian era, also neglects the former adventures and glorious days of young ulysses. instead it tells the story of the mythical hero in his later years, who has already returned to ithaca and grown old with his wife and raised a son. the last example of the exploitation of this technique is william morris’s “defence of guenevere” (1858). the story omits the details of the adulterous relationship between guenevere and lancelot, and instead is centred on her trial, where the proud queen makes a speech in her defence. an epic/heroic setting is chosen for these poems, but all of them centre on the characters’ contemplations of their feelings and inner thoughts. the significance of the historical/mythical setting of the poems withdraws to a secondary position. nevertheless, the setting is there to provide background information, and motives for the characters’ actions. epic/heroic stories had a certain form that is distinguished from lyrical poetry—iambic pentameter its universally accepted metric feet. in the nineteenth century, a change can be observed in general writing style of poetry; while lyric verse was the prevalent form used by female poetesses, it starts being utilised by male authors as well. the storytelling in itself, particularly in the hands of the brownings, underwent alterations that led to the lyricisation of the narrative. traditionally epic and lyric poetry have been considered masculine and feminine respectively, their origins attributed to homer and sappho. it is not surprising to see such drastic contrast between these two genres of poetry: the authors of these genres have been heavily divided into males and females respectively, until about mid-nineteenth century. topics which were quite unacceptable for their times are at the core of the poems that disrupted the tranquillity of nineteenth-century literary scene, and the poets were frequently criticised: murder, incest, betrayal, adultery, fixation, and struggle are often portrayed, and for many victorians such open discussion of the taboo subjects usually came as shock. when robert browning’s pauline: a fragment of confession first came to print in 1833 it armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 literature studies 142 caused quite an uproar in the readership, and while there were also some positive responses, many critics considered the author of this piece to be a “madman” (adams, 2009, p. 45). in a similar manner, swinburne was also criticised for his poetry throughout his life. in his notes on poems and reviews (1866) in defence of his poems and ballads he writes: it is by no wish of my own that i accept the task now proposed to me. to vindicate or defend myself from the assault or the charge of men whom, but for their attacks, i might never have heard of, is an office which i, or any writer who respects his work, cannot without reluctance stoop to undertake … certain poems of mine, it appears, have been impugned by judges, with or without a name, as indecent or as blasphemous. (1926b, notes, pp. 354-5) swinburne goes on to discuss his adoration of sappho and her great influences on his poetry: “i have striven to cast my spirit into the mould of hers, to express and represent not the poem but the poet … i have rendered into english the very words of sappho.” such remarks lie at the bottom of the fusion of lyric and epic poetry, since swinburne, a male author, admits to imitating sappho’s poetry. swinburne continues, “a writer as impure as my critics might of course have written, on this or on any subject, an impure poem; i have not. and if to translate or paraphrase sappho be an offence, indict the heavier offenders who have handled and rehandled this matter in their wretched versions of the ode” (swinburne, 1926, notes, p. 359, p. 360). the short poem written by the english poet does not only bear semblances to sappho’s language and style, but also displays an interesting pattern common to the times of the greek poetess: according to rayor “ancient greece was a segregated society, in which women publicly worshipped the female gods in particular. they were encouraged to see their own lives reflected in these deities’ different manifestations: a greek woman’s life could be described as a transition from the state of artemis (parthenos, or girl) to aphrodite (numphê, or marriageable young woman) to hera (gunê, or wife) and demeter (mêtêr, or mother). sappho composed literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 143 songs for performances at festivals of all these goddesses” (rayor & lardinois, 2014, p. 9). swinburne’s phædra, though not in the exact order as seen above, goes through all of these transformations: when talking of herself, she first introduces the girl/daughter: “for i am cretan of my birth: … / i am born daughter to pasiphae” (p. 32). then in a span of three lines we see her jump from one of these states to another: “thou art my son, i am thy father’s wife. / i ache toward thee with a bridal blood, / the pulse is heavy in all my married veins” (p. 34). the order of the progression of a greek woman is twisted in swinburne’s verse, but he reveals phædra the mother, the wife and the marriageable young woman. after the escalation of this intense transformation, phædra reverts to the girl yet again: “i pray thee by thy cold green holy crown / and by the fillet-leaves of artemis” (p. 35). though we get to see all four forms of a woman manifest themselves in phædra, numphê — aphrodite — is the one who prevails throughout the poem. the goddess of love is the very cause of phædra’s malaise, her curse flowing through phædra’s veins mixed with that of her family, making her “ache” and “burn to the [very] bone” with love towards hippolytus. the victorians saw swinburne as the best representor of sappho. as an anonymous reviewer wrote in athenaeum of 1889, “no bard of the present age has a genius more akin to hers, more passionate and fiery than mr. swinburne” (“review of long ago, michael field,” p. 56). however, it was also because of his semblances to sappho, that swinburne was often “torn apart” by the critics of the time. one of the avid critics of swinburne and the pre-raphaelites, robert buchanan calls swinburne a “sexless maniac” (hyder, 1870, p. 30) and even goes on to write that the poet is “an intellectual hermaphrodite” (buchanan, 1871, p. 335). according to yopie prins, “the victorian critical establishment … interprets swinburne’s transgressive language as a transgression of gender” (prins, 1999, p. 158). lesbianism, damnation, sappho, and the island of lesbos are very common themes in swinburne’s poetry; their presence not only displays swinburne’s fascination with both sappho and baudelaire, but also the inspirations he found in their works. it should not be surprising to see swinburne talk of baudelaire with words that would be assigned to the english poet in the near future: armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 literature studies 144 … [i]t seems merely natural to him always to use the right word and the right rhyme. how supremely musical and flexible a perfect artist in writing can make the french language, any chance page of the book is enough to prove; every description, the slightest and shortest even, has a special mark on it of the writer’s keen and peculiar power. the style is sensuous and weighty; the sights seen are steeped most often in sad light and sullen colour. (swinburne, 1862, p. 999) while the story of phædra is essentially the same in the works of all the authors mentioned in this paper, swinburne is the first one to not make the central theme of his poem sin. swinburne (and later also tsvetaeva) centres on the woman and her feelings. he writes of passion and a woman’s freedom to express it. his verse was often considered as immoral since it did not fit the victorian standards of false morality; he did not simply write of feelings and sensations that his women characters experienced but enabled them with the ability to understand and voice their sexuality: a female character like this was a direct offensive against the publicly revered archetype of the angel in the house. phædra’s pain and suffering are selfinflicted but bear an emotional nature rather than physical. her plea is sensual and passionate, direct, and powerful. while in swinburne’s version hippolytus is weak, indecisive, and prone to escaping, phædra is strong, resolute, and almost stubborn in her desire to be slain by hippolytus. the victorians’ shock at such reversal of gender roles is not surprising. a woman’s capacity to feel and express her sexuality was atrocious since it challenged the long-established masculine authority. victorian england was not a forgiving society for those who ventured to disturb its “tranquillity,” and swinburne created with this exact intent in mind. notes 1 for the sake of consistency, with the exception of titles and quotations, swinburne’s spelling of “phædra” is used throughout the paper. accordingly, all of the other character names are also spelled as seen in swinburne’s poem. literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 145 2 algernon charles swinburne, “phædra” in poems and ballads, first series. all quotations of “phædra” are taken from poems and ballads (moxon, 1866). hereafter all citations are to this edition and will appear in text by page number. the present quotation is found on p. 32. 3 never a freshening ray will shine within your caves; through cracks along the wall will filter deadly mists that cast a lantern’s glow of pale and dismal flame and penetrate your bodies with perfumes of death. the harsh sterility of all your acts of lust will bring a dreadful thirst and stiffen out your skin, and your concupiscence become a furious wind to snap your feeble flesh like an old, weathered flag. (baudelaire 245) 4 see critchley’s essay for a detailed and vivid analysis of jean racine’s phèdre and its influences. 5 while there is no explicit reference to the amazons in baudelaire’s poem, it is a twisted representation of amazon hippolyta and her son hippolyte. pierre laforgue writes: “le lieu de cette problématisation est la personne d’hippolyte, et plus exactement le nom d’hippolyte. «hippolyte» en fait, car c’est tout à la fois en tant que signifiant et en tant que référent qu’est à appréhender hippolyte dans le texte de baudelaire. dans la personne et dans le nom d’hippolyte, en effet, se rencontrent, sans qu’une résolution leur soit trouvée, toutes sortes de tensions, principalement entre masculin et féminin, et secondairement entre virilité et féminité, et, enfin, plus secrètement, entre virilité et masculinité. hippolyte avec des guillemets, «hippolyte», renvoie à un double référent: fils de thésée et fils de l’amazone, d’une part; reine des amazones elle-même, d’autre part” (275). 6 i’ll tell of faraway long-ago: hapless women of your family’s line – this will be said of you in the future! pasiphaë desired a monster, turned from king, loved a wild beast. are you her daughter, or are you not? bad, the blood of your dear mother! (tsvetaeva, 2012, p. 50) 7 wretch! and i live and can endure the gaze of the most sacred sun from which i spring. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 literature studies 146 my grandsire is the lord of all the gods; my forebears fill the sky, the universe. where can i hide? in dark infernal night? (racine, 1958, ll. 1273-1277) 8 but do i see him? sultry eyelids. my name means ‘shining’. (tsvetaeva, 2012, p. 65) 9 no, i’m dreaming of different sleep – of one we’ll never wake from – the bed is spread for us already – not a night’s sleep – sleep eternal, where no stepsons are, no stepmothers, where no sins live on in children, no grey-bearded husbands, no third wives… (tsvetaeva, 2012, p. 78) references adams, j. e. (2009). a history of victorian literature. oxford: wileyblackwell. barrett, w.s. (1964). euripides: hippolytos. oxford: clarendon press. baudelaire, ch. (2008). the flowers of evil. translated with notes by james mcgowan. introduction by jonathan culler. oxford up. buchanan, r. (1871). the fleshly school of poetry: mr. d. g. rossetti. the contemporary review, 18, 334-350. citti, f. (2016). nineteenthand early twentieth-century receptions of seneca tragicus. brill’s companion to the reception of senecan tragedy: scholarly, theatrical and literary receptions. brill, 255-281. critchley, s. (2004). i want to die, i hate my life – phaedra’s malaise. new literary history, 35 (1), 17-40. euripides. (1953). three plays: hippolytus, iphigenia in tauris, alcestis. (p. vellacot, trans.). penguin classics. harrison, a. h. (1979). the swinburnian woman. philological quarterly, 58, 90-102. hyder, c. k. (1870). swinburne: the critical heritage. barnes and noble. king james bible. (2008). oxford up. lang, c. y. (1959). the swinburne letters, vol. 3. yale up. literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 147 lauriola, r. (2015). hippolytus. brill’s companion to the reception of euripides (pp. 443-503). brill. maxwell, c. (2012). algernon charles swinburne (1837-1909). the cambridge companion to the pre-raphaelites (pp. 236-249). cambridge up. mayer, r. (2002). seneca: phaedra. london: duckworth. murgatroyd, p., reeves, b., & parker, s. (eds.). (2017). ovid’s heroids: a new translation and critical essays. london: routledge. østermark-johansen, l. (2014). walter pater: imaginary portraits. modern humanities research association. praz, m. (1951). the romantic agony. second edition. (a. davidson, trans.). oxford up. prins, y. (1999). victorian sappho. princeton up. racine, j. (1958). phèdre [phaedra]. (j. cairncross & e. droz, trans.). racine, j. (1950). phèdre. r. picard (ed.). gallimard. rayor, d. j., & lardinois, a. (2014). sappho: a new translation of the complete works. cambridge up. review of long ago, michael field. (june 13, 1891). the athenaeum, 3320, 56-57. rossetti, d. g. (2003). collected poetry and prose. j. mcgann (ed.). yale up. seneca. (1990). phaedra. cambridge up. seneca. (2011). phaedra and other plays. (r. s. smith, trans.). penguin classics. swinburne, a. c. (september 1862). charles baudelaire: les fleurs du mal. the spectator, 1784 (6), 998-1000. swinburne, a. c. (1866). poems and ballads. london: moxon. swinburne, a. c. (1919). philip massinger. contemporaries of shakespeare. (pp. 201-202) william heinemann, 1919). swinburne, a. c. (1926a). chastelard. the complete works of algernon charles swinburne. bonchurch edition, vol. 8 (pp. 1-133). in e. gosse and th. j. wise (eds.). william heineman. swinburne, a. c. (1926b). notes on poems and ballads. in e. gosse and th. j. wise (eds.). the complete works of algernon charles swinburne. bonchurch edition, vol. 16. (pp. 353-373). william heineman. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 literature studies 148 swinburne, a. c. (2000). poems and ballads & atalanta in calydon. k. haynes (ed.). penguin. tsvetaeva, m. (1994). fedra. [phaedra]. sobranie sochinenij v semi tomah [collected works in seven volumes]. ellis lak. 633-686 tsvetaeva, m. (2012). phaedra with new year’s letter and other long poems. (a. livingstone, trans.). angel books. ussher, j. (1997). fantasies of femininity: reframing the boundaries of sex. penguin. walder, a. (1976). swinburne’s flowers of evil: baudelaire’s influences on poems and ballads, first series. uppsala: acta universitatis upsaliensis. «մինչեվ ոսկորը այրված» սիրով, մեղքով եվ դատապարտվածությամբ. սվինբերնյան ֆեդրան որպես դատապարտված կին լիլիթ այվազյան գրեթե երկու դար հին հունական դիցաբանական ֆեդրայի կերպարի պատումը դուրս էր մնացել գրական ստեղծագործություններից, և միայն ալջերնոն չարլզ սվինբերնն էր, որ xix դարի իր պոեմում նրա կերպարին նոր շունչ հաղորդեց։ պոեմը հրատարակվել է 1866 թ. սվինբերնի «poems and ballads» պոեմների ժողովածուում։ ֆեդրային, ինչպես նաև պոետի այլ կին կերապրներին, վերլուծաբաններն ու քննադատները բնութագրել են անամոթ, անբարո, մազոխիստ և մոլուցքային հատկանիշներով։ նախորդ ուսումնասիրությունները սվինբերնյան ֆեդրայի կերպարը դիտարկում են միայն մեկ տեսանկյունից` նա համարվում է զգացմունքային և հոգեբանական խորություն չունեցող կին։ սակայն այս կերպարը համակողմանիորեն բացահայտելու համար անհրաժեշտ է հաշվի առնել ինչպես սվինբերնի կապերը նախառաֆայելականների հետ, այնպես էլ`սաֆոյի և բոդլերի ազդեցությունները նրա գրական ստեղծագործություններում։ սույն ուսումնասիրության նպատակն է նոր լույսի ներքո վերլուծել սվինբերնյան ֆեդրային, վեր հանել նրա կերպարի կերտման տարբերությունները դասական շրջանի գործերից և ցույց literature studies armenian folia anglistika, vol. 17, issue 1 (23), 2021 149 տալ է, թե այս կերպարը ինչպես է հարմարեցվել ու մատուցվել վիկտորիանական բրիտանիայի ընթերցողին։ բանալի բառեր. ալջերնոն չարլզ սվինբերն, վիկտորիանական պոեզիա, սաֆո, հունական ողբերգություն, բոդլեր, դանթե գաբրիել ռոսետի, վիկտորիանական կեղծ բարեպաշտություն: armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 42 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2022.18.2.042 a qualitative-quantitative study of media political discourse from the perspective of manipulation rafayel harutyunyan yerevan state university a survey-based qualitative-quantitative study of manipulation as a psycholinguistic phenomenon provides a good overview of statistical significance and knowledge. the use of qualitative-quantitative research methods in the current study can help us gain a more profound understanding of how people are able to perceive and detect cases of language manipulation. it appears necessary to emphasize that using the methods of qualitative-quantitative research, we can not only assess the respondents’ opinions about "manipulation”, its linguistic and extra-linguistic expression, but also accurately determine and accumulate the obtained knowledge and data about the phenomenon. the paper summarizes and concludes the results of the selected questions in the online questionary which can assist individuals in acquiring information for researches in the same or related fields. keywords: manipulation, media political discourse, qualitative-quantitative study, online survey software, questionary, manipulative language, data. introduction a good understanding of media-political discourse from the perspective of its manipulative potential expressed by certain linguistic and extra-linguistic properties provides another practical solution with certain suggestive points emerged in a survey that allow us to have a clear idea of how people understand the concept of manipulation and its implementation while reading mediapolitical news articles. in this connection, we have decided to conduct our research with the help of two widely utilized methods of researches – qualitative and quantitative. “qualitative research is called exploratory and is used to discover patterns in ideas and views, whereas quantitative research is  rafayel.harutyunyan22@gmail.com this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 23.08.2022 revised: 24. 09.2022 accepted: 26.09..2022 © the author(s) 2021 mailto:rafayel.harutyunyan22@gmail.com https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 43 used to measure the issue through producing numerical data or data that can be translated into usable statistics” (enas et al, 2021). another approach is that qualitative study provides insights and understanding of the problem setting through the exploratory and descriptive method that studies highly complex phenomena that quantitative research cannot explain. it also develops a more profound understanding of the human experience, behaviours, intentions, and motivations referring to a category of study in which the investigator gives a greater importance to the participants’ opinions and experiences. on the contrary, quantitative research is regarded to be a type of research that employs natural science methods, such as mathematical, computational, and statistical methods to establish a cause-and-effect relationship and generate numerical data and facts. because the research can be accurately and precisely measured, it is also known as empirical research. the information gathered by this method gives the researcher a possibility to classify, rank, or measure the data as well as create raw data graphs and tables making it easier to analyze the results (sharique et al., p. 2829, 2019). figure 1 completion/dropout viewed 746 started 325 completed 122 completion rate 37.54% drop outs (after starting) 203 average time to complete survey 3 minutes armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 44 within the context of this study, we have decided to conduct the following survey to learn how people with different language abilities grasp and understand the concept of manipulation, as a psycho-linguistic phenomenon, as well as what factors influence their decision when selecting certain mediapolitical news items to read. setting off the methodology of the current survey we are aimed at identifying what are the main linguistic and extra-linguistic components that people are likely to find attention grabbing, propagating and manipulative while reading news reports. this is supported by the fact that surveys of this kind are important and useful as models of comprehension of the manipulative nature of the language since outlining the details, specifics and observations provided by the public allows for logical and reasonable conclusions to be reached. the following survey “media-political manipulation” was conducted via online survey software “questionpro” (https://www.questionpro.com/v18/) and the results are based on the answers provided by a reasonable number of participants, as evidenced in the figures presented below. figure 1 shows the number of respondents (325) who have answered the offered questions completely or partially. against the background of this, it seems essential to emphasize that the respondents were requested to choose their language proficiency, since we strongly believe that in the realization of manipulation, one requires receptive and expressive language skills in the aspects of syntax, vocabulary, semantics, etc. where language knowledge can be demonstrated. dependent on the mentioned skills and abilities of the readers, the interpretations and comprehension can vary greatly thus, giving the writer a chance to implement manipulation. this approach aims at identifying whether people’s cognitive control can be similar irrespective of their being native speakers or foreign users. the survey reveals the participation of different respondents from different parts of the world: (see figures 2, 3) linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 45 figure 2 your english proficiency figure 3 distribution/countries of special interest is the fact, that people experience heavy social media use in their daily lives where they encounter an uncontrollable information flow. the factor of age as one of the questions in the current survey will help us identify different age groups, interested and following news articles that have special reference to politics. finding out which media platforms are used as their main source of informationenables us to come to preliminary conclusions. added to this, it seems essential to emphasize that the 71% of the participants are aged 18-25 (see figure 4) and 59% of them (see figure 5) are using social media (facebook, instagram, etc.) as their primary source of information. 22.00% 78.00% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% native speaker english as a foreign user armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 46 thus, the results of the survey make our statement mentioned above logical and rational. figure 4 age distribution chart figure 5 media platform distribution chart the term manipulation has been defined differently by researchers in their approaches to the study of the concept (see also about it in gasparyan, harutyunyan, 2021). it was also interesting to observe how manipulation is viewed in the eye of the reader. interestingly enough, to the question “how do you understand the ‘concept of manipulation’?”, the participants (27.72%) 1.00% 71.00% 13.00% 16.00% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% under 18 18-25 26-40 40 and above under 18 18-25 26-40 40 and above 12.00% 59.00% 27.00% 3.00% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% daily newspapers (the new york times , etc.) social media (facebook, instagram, twitter, linkedin, etc.) news channels (bbc, cnn, , etc.) other linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 47 answered “influence on someone”, while 25.74 % chose “control over people”. for the 18.81% of the respondents, manipulation is “propaganda”, others (13.86%) think it is “fake information” and persuasion” (see figure 6). figure 6 response distribution chart experience shows that people, willingly or not, “love words”, not only because the latter make any written text more interesting, but also because we generally give meaning to and get meaning from them. media-political news articles are not exceptions, since the journalists love to play with words changing their denotational, connotational and pragmatic aspects, so that their news reports are attention grabbing and make an intense impact. the study of the lexical aspect of the media-political news articles has brought us to the conclusion that purposefully picking words that might seem harsh and powerful in a given context, the journalist has the intention to manipulate. we are also inclined to think that extremely compelling and contentious themes can also have influence on the semantic meaning of the lexical components and mislead the reader (see also about it in gasparyan & harutyunyan, 2022). to be able to elucidate the above point we have decided to turn to a brief consideration of the example in the survey to see how respondents analyze and differentiate between the constituent parts of the lexical components. for this, control over people, 0.26, 25.74% influence on someone, 0.28, 27.72% persuasion, 0.14, 13.86% propaganda, 0.19, 18.81% fake information, 0.14, 13.86% control over people influence on someone persuasion propaganda fake information armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 48 the participants were requested to respond to the question: which of the lexical components (words and phrases) do you find attention grabbing in the headline “high alert russia set to invade ukraine at any time with massive missile blitz and 200,000 troops, us intelligence claims?” by using the slider to scale from 1 to 10. the survey shows that the expression “high alert” is an attention grabbing phrase and can be manipulative in the context of the article. on the other hand, it may be suggested that the proper nouns “russia”, “ukraine”, “us intelligence” as well as military vocabulary “invade”, “massive blitz”, “troops” also have a manipulative potential, which to our firm belief, is largely conditioned and determined by some extra-linguistic, historical, political, etc., properties (see about it in figure 7). figure 7 response distribution chart the analysis of the news article “if donald trump isn’t sh--ting his pants over today’s january 6 hearing, he probably should be has led us to observe several lexical, morphological, syntactic and stylistic components of the language that have been used to convey the manipulative intention of the journalist. (see picture 1) 7.48 5.09 5.59 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1. high alert 2. russia, ukraine, us intelligence 3. invade, massive missile blitz, troops linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 49 picture 1 (taken from levin, 2022) on that premise, we chose to assess how these manipulation related factors impact the associations and connections that people form after reading the headline and viewing the image attached to the news story. in the light of these data, we can come to the conclusion that the journalist’s intention to bring a lively headline into life has been succeeded by the choice of the image which has incompatibility to the news story. the inclusion of the question in the survey brought to the opinion that the majority of the respondents think “donald trump is worried, scared, frightened, concerned, thoughtful, etc.” (see figures 8, 9,10,11). figure 8 response id response 80798248 donald trump is scared 80683198 trump is thinking that social media talks nonsense 80665819 a president 80665384 trump looks worried in the image and the headline feels threatening. 80663183 donald trump should be worried 80638728 trump is frightened/worried 80576486 superficial 80556481 there is something going on he should be worried about. armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 50 80528492 donald t is concerned, thinking of a way-out rapid solution, knows he failed… 80507091 a non-professional media outlet, 80501542 donald trump seems to be concerned 80467820 donald is worried 80460475 it is an opinion piece and as such i will have to be wary of its content 80457601 gosh another donald trump issue? 80453889 image doesn’t match the headline. false info, manipulation, missinformation. 80450437 he has doubts about something 80437952 manipulation 80421537 trump should be worried 80416773 donald trump should be worried about january 6 hearing 80414021 trump is a good leader. figure 9 response id response 80501542 donald trump seems to be concerned 80467820 donald is worried 80460475 it is an opinion piece and as such i will have to be wary of its content 80457601 gosh another donald trump issue? 80453889 image doesn’t match the headline. false info, manipulation, missinformation. 80450437 he has doubts about something 80437952 manipulation 80421537 trump should be worried 80416773 donald trump should be worried about january 6 hearing 80414021 trump is a good leader. figure 10 response id response 80193161 i don't know he looks kind of thoughtless 80193133 looks like he doesn't want to accept something 80191159 donald trump is worried about 80192995 donald tramp is afraid of something 80192766 scared, fearful, defeated 80192762 donald trump is avoiding something 80192755 donald trump doesn't even care 80192695 fear, at loss, nervousness linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 51 figure 11 response id response 80210410 misleading title 80210316 donald trump should be worried about getting into trouble. 80210156 donald trump should be worried, but isn't 80209189 usually, i don't pay attention for news of this type, because they make me nervous. 80209036 instinctive antipathy for trump. rejection of language used (too informal, inappropriate, partisan). would not click. 80208988 donald trump should be scared about something 80208586 d. trump is thinking media reports are texts created for a specific purpose. like other pieces of writing, they contain aesthetically colored words and expressive means, figurative meanings that increase the probability of language manipulation. in the given example “entire population of the region was subjected to violence beyond belief, violence which was planned to exterminate the whole turkish people of the region to the last man, woman and child” we have detected cases of exaggeration, enumeration, anadiplosis, etc. that are used for special impact and propaganda, to provoke prejudice, mislead, change the contextual meaning, etc. to be able to clarify the point we have included this sentence in the survey for critical analysis and as a result with a brief account we can state that the anonymous journalist has reached to his/her goal, i.e., manipulation. the classification of the data is as follows (see figures12, 13, 14, 15) figure 12 response id response 80412628 curiosity, anger, frustration. 80406091 despair 80405647 pain, fear 80395802 “violence beyond belief” is manipulative. the violence should be described using precise examples. attribution should be given that the entire population was to be exterminated. 80389061 horror 80388532 fear, horrified 80384134 anger, sadness, fear, confusion 80377764 outrage 80371887 anger, despair armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 52 figure 13 response id response 80501542 that’s ridiculous because there are historical facts proving the organization of genocides organized by turkish government themselves. 80467820 anger 80460475 sadness, despair, hopelessness 80453889 lie, exaggeration, false information. 80437952 no emotions 80421537 anger 80416773 anger 80414021 we live in difficult times. figure 14 response id response 80798248 pain and inflammation 80683198 turkey is faking history, because as a matter of fact is one of the countries that organized 2 genocides at the same time. 80665819 ache 80665384 if i was asked this question a few years ago, i’d say: “i feel relief”. but as for now, being a descendant of a nation that overcame the genocide, and even more importantly, having felt the pain of a war, having lost a lot of innocent people, i’d feel anger after reading the sentence above, because i think i’d never wish any other nation walk in our shoes (even though they’re our so-called enemies). and what is more important, from my pov, innocent people shouldn’t suffer because of some idiotic “political games” 80663183 empathy, despair, anger 80638728 anger 80576486 would want facts. curious 80556481 pity 80528492 curiosity, compassion, alert 80507091 sadness, curiosity figure 15 response id response 80366218 fear, hopelessness 80363646 despair. it happens over and over again all over the world. i did notice it said turkish, when my armenian heritage goes to the genocide so it peaks my interest to see what else is said in the article. 80356514 sadness, fear, hysteria 80350146 curiosity, shock, disbelief linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 53 80342389 despair, sadness, disbelief, curiosity, anger (a little) 80339796 anger 80339779 curiosity, suspicion as generally accepted, active and passive voices are one of the strategies of language manipulation on the syntactic level. we are inclined to think that the grammatical voice can greatly influence the strength of the effect (see about it also in nordlund, 2003, gasparyan & harutyunyan, 2022). the inclusion of the sentence in the active voice is also listed in the survey in order of importance, as it can help us verify the statement that in subjectpredicate sentences subjects are responsible for the results of the action, most of the time bearing all the responsibility and guilt in the eye of the reader. to the question “who do you think should bear the responsibility and guilt according to the sentence? – “trump calls some unauthorized immigrants ‘animals’ in rant””, the 56% of the participants, whether subconsciously or not, have chosen donald trump, and only 12% of them choose immigrants. it is interesting to note, that only 21% of the respondents consider both sides to be responsible, and to our surprise those answers are mostly among native speakers who are not only aware of the political situation in the country, but also show determination to read between the lines and give feedback (see figure 16). figure 16 response distribution chart concentrating on other results of the survey, it seems essential to highlight the results of the following question “what is the central message of the given sentence? – “trump hates you, even if you love him””. our analysis has shown that the journalist’s goal is to utilize such language components as conditional 56.00% 12.00% 21.00% 10.00% trump immigrants both no idea armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 54 sentence, ellipsis, oxymoron to convince and influence on the emotional level rather than rational. to support our views, we have decided to bound our observations up with the survey to have a clear understanding about public opinion. as a result, 48% of the respondents think, that the central message of the sentence is persuasion on the emotional level, 28% think it is propaganda, while the other 26% of the respondents are intended to think it is devaluation (see figure 17). figure 17 response distribution chart in the framework of this study, we have also tried to understand whether people reading a media-political news article pay attention to its contextual or visual components, or both. to reach our aim, we asked the respondents to pick one of the two given news reports they might prefer to read (see figure 18). figure 18 46.00% 28.00% 26.00% persuasion on emotional level propaganda devaluation linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 55 it is interesting to note that 71% of the respondents have chosen the second news article “armenian so-called genocide” (see figure 19). according to the results, 80% of their choice was conditioned by the headline and the textual components, while the choice of the 20% of participants was determined by the image, design and colors. figure 19 response distribution chart people, who have chosen the second article based on the textual components, consider the whole headline attention grabbing (54%). added to this, it is of paramount importance to note that the word “genocide” itself is provocative, since the 20% of the people’s choice was determined by that word only. interestingly enough, we can see that in our classification of the options the word “genocide” has been applied twice, which allows us to come to the preliminary conclusion that the word is attention grabbing and propagating (74% of the total responses) (see figure 20). 29.00% 71.00% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% “where’s boris? johnson missing in action at biden’s climate summit” armenian so-called genocide armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 56 figure 20 response distribution chart as far as the other news article is concerned, (“where’s boris? johnson missing in action at biden’s climate summit”), 29% of the participants found it interesting to read. thus, we have the following results: (see figures 21, 22) figure 21 response distribution chart 20.00% 26.00% 54.00% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% the word"genocide" the adjective "so-called" the whole phrase "armenian so-called genocide" 36.00% 64.00% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% the interrogative sentence ( where's boris?) the declarative sentence (johnson missing in action at biden’s climate summit”) linguistics armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 57 figure 22 response distribution chart conclusion the observation of the online survey results makes it possible to come to a definite conclusion that people can easily be manipulated if they don’t have a critical approach to the texts they are reading. in the broadest sense of the word manipulators who target various groups of individuals have different purposes, such as changing their perspectives, forming/building public opinion, devaluing, gaining more clicks, earning money, distorting the facts, advertising, and so on. it may well be concluded that most of the time, individuals read news that provides information on political events, investigations, crimes, wars, and electoral campaigns, and one way or another, they create their opinions subconsciously. an obvious case is that the internet provides us with access to neverending journalism, and we cannot help noting that it is difficult to resist being deceived, because it is not every journalist’s duty and sole responsibility to be unbiased enough to reflect correct stories and real facts while still pursuing personal profit. the survey results help us come to the conclusion that the targeted audience can easily be manipulated on the visual level, because most of the time people choose the articles based on the images and design features. in this regard, it is important to note that the vast majority of people who are sufficiently informed pay attention to language components such as words, grammar and other details. however, depending on the number of the viewers, a lot more people simply click the news because they find the pictures, headline design, font and colors appealing, and in this sense, one of the manipulator’s intentions, which is to gain numbers and earn money is realized. 44.00% 56.00% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% boris johnson and his appearance beer armenian folia anglistika, vol. 18, issue 2 (26), 2022 linguistics 58 references ahmad, sh., wasim, s., irfan, s., gogoi, s., srivastava, a., & farheen, z. (2019). qualitative v/s quantitative research. journal of evidence based medicine and healthcare 6 (43). enas, a., islam, i., & tahani, b. (2021). understanding quantitative and qualitative research methods: a theoretical perspective for young researchers. international journal of research 8 (2), 71-87. https://doi.org/10.2501/ijmr-201-5-070 gasparyan, s., & harutyunyan, r. (2021). manipulative speech: a theoretical overview. armenian folia anglistika, 2 (24), https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2021.17.2.011, https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2022.18.1.009 gasparyan, s., & harutyunyan, r. (2022b). the morpho-syntactic aspect of media-political discourse. foreign languages in higher education vol.26 issue 1(32), 27-38. https://doi.org/10.46991/flhe/ 2022.26.1.027 nordlund, m. (2003). linguistic manipulation: an analysis of how attitudes are displayed in news reporting. d extended essay english, 27. lulea university of technology. մեդիա քաղաքական դիսկուրսի որակական-քանակական ուսումնասիրությունը մտաշահարկման տեսանկյունից ռաֆայել հարությունյան մտաշահարկման որակական-քանակական ուսումնասիրությամբ վիճակագրական նշանակության և գիտելիքների մասին լավ պատկերացում կարելի է ստանալ տարբեր առցանց հարցումների միջոցով: այս ուսումնասիրության մեջ որակական-քանակական հետազոտության մեթոդների օգտագործումը կարող է օգնել մեզ ավելի խոր պատկերացում կազմել այն մասին, թե ինչպես են մարդիկ կարողանում ընկալել և բացահայտել լեզվական մտաշահարկման դեպքերը մեդիաքաղաքական լուրեր ընթերցելիս: հարկ է նշել, որ որակական-քանակական հետազոտության մեթոդների կիրառմամբ մենք կարող ենք ոչ միայն գնահատել հարցվողների կարծիքը «մտաշահարկում» երևույթի, դրա լեզվական և արտալեզվական արտահայտման միջոցների և առանձնահատությունների վերաբերյալ, այլև հնարավորինս ճշգրտորեն դասակարգել և կիրառել ստացված գիտելիքներն ու տվյալները։ բանալի բառեր` մտաշահարկում, մեդիա-քաղաքական դիսկուրս, որակական-քանակական ուսումնասիրություն, առցանց հարցման ծրագիր, հարցադրում, մտաշահարկման լեզու, տվյալներ: https://doi.org/10.2501/ijmr-201-5-070 armenian folia anglistika – the official peer-reviewed academic journal of the armenian association for the study of english (since 2005) and yerevan state university (since 2015) aims at fostering research of the english language, literature and culture methodology armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 95 lexical errors in second language academic writing astghik chubaryan  yerevan state university mariam vardanyan ** russian-armenian university the main focus of error analysis, a branch of applied linguistics, is investigating and studying errors that are made by second language (l2) learners. the present study is based on quantitative and qualitative analysis as well as corpus-aided analysis of lexical errors in academic vocabulary. the study aims to assist educators and teachers to develop, organize lessons or courses, which will enhance the effectiveness of academic vocabulary learning on the part of the students. based on the results of the given research, teachers can refer to the errors in academic vocabulary, which will help them notice the gap in academic word list (awl), by raising their awareness and emphasizing on certain areas of academic vocabulary. the instruments of the study were 39 essay scripts written by the aua (american university of armenia) first-year students majoring in english and communications. keywords: lexical error, error analysis, academic word list, academic vocabulary. introduction making errors in writing is inevitable, and errors are signs and evidence of students’ learning and mind processing (agustin-llach, 2017). the current corpus-based study focuses on lexical errors in academic vocabulary. the notion of lexical errors in academic vocabulary is closely related to lexical competence. knowing a word implies not only semantic knowledge of a word but also its morphology, syntax and pragmatics. moreover, lexical competence  astghik.chubaryan@ysu.am ** mariam_vardanyan19@alumni.aua.am this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial 4.0 international license. received: 06.02.2023 revised: 17.03.2022 accepted: 10.04.2023 © the author(s) 2023 doi: https://doi.org/10.46991/afa/2023.19.1.095 mailto:astghik.chubaryan@ysu.am mailto:mariam_vardanyan19@alumni.aua.am https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 methodology 96 entails knowing how to use a particular word in combination with other words in context, in communicative situations or texts (agutsin-llach, 2011). hence, a lexical error is a semantic, orthographic, phonological, syntactic deviation of a word in target language. concerning academic vocabulary, one should emphasize academic word list (awl), 570 academic word families, which cover most academic texts. the misuse of academic vocabulary or lexical errors in awl may lead to misunderstanding of the conveyed message, hamper successful completion of academic tasks of both native and non-native speakers of english, may impact negatively on reading comprehension of academic texts and disturb their academic writing (gardner & davies, 2013; hemchua & shmitt, 2006; saud, 2018). concerning the research on misuse of academic vocabulary in its productive form (writing), few studies focus on lexical error analysis in academic vocabulary. there is limited research available that considers the misuse of awl in writing (dodigovic & wang, 2015). one such study referring to lexical error analysis is harutyunyan’s (2018) research on efl students’ lexical errors in writing. however, at large, little is known about lexical errors in academic vocabulary of armenian students. in fact, no study has been carried out so far to reveal the misuse of academic word list by efl armenian learners. hence, the current study seeks to identify two types of errors context and spelling errors in awl and elicit possible causes of those errors. to gain results and complement information in different parts of data in the following corpus-based analysis, we have applied to elements and aspects of both qualitative and quantitative methods. in the interest of obtaining reliable and useful data, the descriptive analysis that allows to explore, study data, analyze the findings, count frequencies of errors and interpret them has been applied (paltridge & phakiti, 2015, p.36). as far as error analysis is concerned, gass & selinker’s (2008) technique of analyzing the errors is adopted and implemented. thus, the methodology used is based on the mixed method research (mmr). data collection and data analysis before moving to the procedure and data collection, some relevant aspects of the present study should be highlighted. to conduct the corpus-based analysis, a data source was required which is a compilation of the small learner corpus containing 39 essays, written by aua undergraduates, who are native speakers methodology armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 97 of armenian, majoring in english and communications. the essays, which the students wrote as an obligatory task, are on different topics: social media in our lives, harassment, the educational system in armenia, reflections on academic writing techniques. the data analysis was conducted in the following way. to analyze the learner corpus containing academic written essays, corpus builder software was used, which is found on the website lextutor.ca. to identify awl, the vocabprofile tool was implemented, with vp-classic element found on the same site. the vocabprofile tool highlights all academic words and word families, which is coxhead’s (2000) academic word list. to check and eliciti the errors in awl, lextutor collocation tool was used with british academic written corpus of 8 million words. in the current study, the above mentioned thirty-nine essays were collected from the database of the students’ writings. both the instructor and the students were informed that the essays would be analyzed for the current study. before integrating the students’ writing into a corpus, all the data that may violate the confidentiality of the students were excluded (students’ names, surnames, supervisor’s name, citations). lexical error taxonomy, which is based on word knowledge depth, is presented and described with examples of errors. the present study has five steps in analyzing the data and in table 1 the steps of error analysis are presented: table 1: lexical error analysis steps in awl number of steps steps steps definition examples 1 compile and collect learner corpus collecting essays (word documents) 39 essays from undergraduate aua students majoring in english and communications 2 error identification and classification lexical errors in awl wrong word in context, wrong spelling 3 quantifying errors in awl overall number of errors in awl number of errors caused because of l1 and l2 number of lexical errors in awl in each group (context and spelling ). the amount of l1 and l2 errors in awl armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 methodology 98 4 analysis of errors in awl possible causes and reasons for errors intralingual or interlingual errors in awl note: the table is taken and adapted from gass & selinker (2008). in error analysis, the identification and classification of errors is taken and adapted from dodigovic et al. (2014) lexical error taxonomy, which is based on word knowledge depth. besides the identification and classification of errors, underlying reasons for those errors have been highlighted, whether there are interlingual or intraligual errors. to reveal whether the given error is interlingual or intralingual online nayiri armenian dictionary was also implemented to check the translation of words and to find out whether the error is caused because of direct translation or not. in table 2, the classification of errors examples of error occurrences are presented: table 2: lexical error taxonomy with examples criteria explanation example correction context wrong word choice (e.g. improve instead of ameliorate) people start to underestimate their individualities by becoming fake options of rihannas or beyonces. options-versions spelling incorrect/correct while a tax paying legal citizen of a country generally doesn’t need to be afraid of mass surveillance, corrupt officials, military criminals, and all other sorts of illegal activates military-military note: the table is taken and adapted from dodigovic et al. (2014) the results of the current study demonstrate two types of errors found in awl. most frequent types of errors are also identified referring to lexical error taxonomy. most frequent lexical errors in awl are also highlighted referring to the sources of those errors. the reasons and causes of all the errors in academic vocabulary are detected, whether the errors are interlingual (l1) or intralingual (l2). methodology armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 99 lexical errors in awl table 3: descriptive statistics of lexical errors in awl based on their categories error category ƒ % context 28 84.84 spelling 5 15.15 tnt in awl tnt 2111 28.065 total number of errors in awl 33 note: ƒ =frequency, awl=academic word list, tnt=total number of tokens, %=percentage table 3 shows lexical error types in awl subdivided into two categories: the total number of tokens in both awl (2111), and learner corpus (28.065) with the total number of errors in awl (33). notable result worthwhile to be highlighted is that in the category of context which incorporates wrong word choice and meaning, confusion of synonyms, opposite meaning, the highest frequency of errors in academic vocabulary is detected, which is 84.84% with total 28 errors. there are 5 lexical errors in the category of spelling (15.15%), with least frequent errors in awl. moreover, in the category of spelling, most of the errors could be due to unnecessary capitalized words. for example, the words illegal, military, globalization. figure 1: most frequently misused words the bar chart (figure 1) shows words that are most frequently misused, based on the number of occurrences. the figure demonstrates new findings on the most misused academic vocabulary in the learner corpus. as shown in 0 2 4 6 8 distribute communicate affect promote armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 methodology 100 figure 1, the most misused word is the word promote (6 times). the next most frequently misused words are affect, communicate (5 times each), and distribute (3 times). in all the sentences, the following misused words constitute both nouns and verbs. for instance, the word communicate is presented as the base form of content word communication, which is a noun and is misused in the writings. the word distribute, is used only as a verb. overall, students made errors more often in verbs than in nouns and other parts of speech. table 4: number of lexical errors in awl according to the source of their cause criteria ƒ of interlingual errors ƒ of intralingual errors context 22 6 spelling 0 5 note: ƒ =frequency table 4 shows the total number of lexical errors in awl, based on categories and error source. as it is depicted in the table, context constitutes the highest number of interlingual errors in awl (21). context errors and its l1 source can be the result of literal or direct translation of the armenian students’ writings from l1 into l2. another prominent result shown is that spelling errors belong only to intralingual ones, they cannot be caused because of l1, as armenian and english have different spelling systems. errors in context under the term context confusion of synonyms, sense relation, incorrect word choice, and word meaning are included. the following category encompasses the largest portion of lexical errors in awl in the learner corpus, which is in line with harutyunyan’s (2018) results, where the largest portion of lexical errors in writing accounts for the category of context and the following result is also in line with saud’s (2018) study, where most errors are detected in the confusion of sense relations. all the errors that the students made in their writing are because of direct translation from l1 to l2 translation. it is revealed that 28 errors occurred in awl – 22 interlingual errors that is influenced by l1 and 6 intralingual developmental errors and as was mentioned in james (1998), developmental errors occur irrespective of l1. in the current learner corpus that consists of armenian students’ essays, errors in awl in the category of context with prevailing l1 errors could be the result of direct translation from armenian. the same situation was revealed by methodology armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 101 shalaby et al. (2009) in saudi college students’ writings. another source of errors is revealed to be the existence of polysemantic words in armenian. this finding is in line with dodigovic et al. (2017). for example, the word distribute can be used in armenian to show different meanings in different contexts. for instance, distribute rebellion – ապստամբություն տարածել (apstambutyun taratsel), distribute responsibilities – բաշխել պարտականությունները (bashkhel partakanutyunnere). the above mentioned factors could be the reason why the learners misuse academic vocabulary. some examples are provided below: syria, the united arab emirates and iran, consider it as a large vehicle for distributing political riot (instigate). the webpage is used to conduct the websites traffic jams in large scales and counted the number of illiterate (manage). now teachers are merely instructing students and without further explanation transmit their opinions (convey). as for the errors caused by l2, the possible reason can be sought in the fact that the students, whose writings comprised the corpus of the present study, want to appear more advanced in terms of language proficiency and have more refined writing. the following examples show some of the error occurrences in awl based on the mentioned factor: by the way of conclusion, education is one of the most important aspects of the life (in conclusion). the website gives the opportunity to get educated in what sphere you prefer by involving every type of newspapers (including). we hope that the question-and-answer sheet will help you to understand how problematic and distracting is the sexual harassment, which will make you aware and ready for it or will prevent you from conducting it (engaging in). there are also cases when students misused academic vocabulary merely due to lack of knowledge in awl: it is the main communicator between different cultures (means of communication). terrorist groups can quickly circulate some motivating ideas for civilians (disruptive). armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 methodology 102 errors in spelling last but not least, lexical awl errors in the category of spelling have been detected. this is the only category where no l2 error has been found. according to agustin-llach (2017), the absence of l1 seems predictable, as there is no similarity and coherence in spelling between armenian and english. in the following learner corpus, spelling errors in awl are mainly capitalized, and this could happen because of lack of typographic skills and it is important to highlight that the writings of the learners are word documents, hence in word docs the spelling errors are automatically checked and corrected. nevertheless, according to james (1998) these are slips of the pen rather than errors. the examples are provided below: society has been made aware of the fact that social media cites (sites) sell their daily information to governments propaganda of globalization (globalization) most frequently misused words besides lexical errors in awl, the most frequent words that were misused in awl are also elicited and analyzed. the most frequently misused word is the word promote (6 times). the word affect (3 times) is misused as a verb, once as an adjective and once as a noun. the word communication (3 times) is misused once as a noun, once as a verb and once as an adjective. and last but not least, the word distribute (3 times) is misused as a verb. hence, 13 misused verbs, 2 misused nouns and 2 adjectives. the results indicate that the verbs in awl should receive much more attention. thus, the results of the present research show that both learners and educators should lay more emphasis on errors in productive use of academic vocabulary and on depth of vocabulary, rather than on grammar (bardakci, 2016; hasan & shabdin, 2016). conclusion taking into account the educational background and exposure to the english language that students have at english medium university, the causes of errors have been subdivided into interlingual (l1) and intralingual (l2) causes of errors in academic vocabulary. the corpus analysis unveiled that l1 errors dominate l2 errors in these two categories. as it is seen, students face methodology armenian folia anglistika, vol. 19, issue 1 (27), 2023 103 difficulties and have problems in academic vocabulary and an emphasis should be put on all the above-mentioned factors, as learners frequently make errors because of wrong affiliation and direct translation from l1 academic words. the current corpus aided analysis described the areas of awl in which the students experience difficulties. error analysis also helped to determine the causes of errors and perceive that besides interlingual cause of errors, intralingual ones also play a significant role in making and triggering errors in awl. in addition, the given study may serve for educators and teachers as a base for designing lessons, curriculum, activities in order to help armenian students to evade and eradicate lexical errors in awl. besides, this research may also assist teachers to create an authentic context for mastery of academic english vocabulary. references agustin-llach, m. p. 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(2018). lexical errors of third year undergraduate students. english language teaching, 11(11), 161-168. shalaby, n. a., yahya, n., & el-komi, m. (2009). analysis of lexical errors in saudi college students’ compositions. journal of the saudi association of languages and translation, 2(3), 65-93. բառային սխալների վերլուծության կարեվորությունը գրավոր գիտական խոսքում աստղիկ չուբարյան մարիամ վարդանյան սխալների վերլուծությունը կիրառական լեզվաբանության կարևոր բնագավառ է, որի նպատակն է սխալների քննության միջոցով առավել արդյունավետ դարձնել օտար լեզվի մատուցումն ու դասավանդումը։ հոդվածում դիտարկվում է օտար լեզվի, մասնավորապես գրավոր գիտական խոսքի յուրացման գործընթացում բառային սխալների վերլուծության դերը։ հետազոտության փաստական նյութը հայաստանի ամերիկյան համալսարանի անգլերեն և հաղորդակցություն մասնագիտության առաջին կուրսի հայ ուսանողների անգլերեն գրված 39 էսսեներն են։ նյութի քննությունն իրականացվել է գիտական բառապաշարի բառային սխալների քանակական և որակական, ինչպես նաև կորպուսային վերլուծության մեթոդների կիրառմամբ` նպատակ ունենալով օգնել դասավանդողներին կազմակերպելու և մշակելու դասընթացներ, որոնք կնպաստեն անգլերենը` որպես երկրորդ լեզու սովորողների գիտական բառապաշարի զարգացմանը: բանալի բառեր՝ բառային սխալ, սխալների վերլուծություն, ակադեմիական բառացանկ, գիտական բառապաշար: