Artistic images of animal characters in beast stories studied through the prism of national mentality reveal specific animal-human concepts rooted in the readers’ mindsets. This essay focuses on the hare/rabbit as a popular character in animal tales, with an attempt to enhance intercultural relations in the Ukrainian/English world by explaining the peculiarities of the surrounding reality present in beast stories. The paper discloses similar and distinctive characteristics of animal stories on two levels, that is, by contrasting the author’s literary tale with the folk-tale, and by studying the collective image of hare in Ukrainian folk-tales against the background of Peter Rabbit from Beatrix Potter’s stories. The research does not dwell on the zoological peculiarities of the chosen animals or the Aesop fables, but highlights the psychological characteristics of the animals under study in the context of their “national identities”. The work results in disclosing a deep connection between games and animal tales; since both the storyteller’s and the audience’s mental work is based on the game-like perception of the virtual world of the story. The literary images of the hare/rabbit in Ukrainian and British tales differ radically. Ukrainian animals are presented as meek and subdued creatures relying on outside help and rarely (ranking sixth amongst animal protagonists) becoming the leading characters. In contrast, British bunnies are energetic and boisterous, trying their best to overcome any difficulties. The authors explain this fact by references to differences in the historical development of the two cultures under analysis.
The paper represents a fragment of a multi-year project focused on everyday speech interaction and, particularly, on verbal mechanisms of granting speech efficiency and effectiveness. The introductory statement of the research is more precise thespeaker organizes his/her message verbally, the easier it is understood by the listener. Special attention is paid to the methodological approach to verbal identification of literary characters’ social strata. The paper also elicits how Gestalt analysis can be successfully applied to different practical linguistic tasks. Hence, the article deals with the advantages of Gestalt, used for unmasking the virtual speaker’s social identity and his social status. Besides, a close study of speech situations has revealed some cases when the speaker tries to play a verbal trick on the audience, thus consciously or unconsciously imposing a false image and hiding his/her true identity. The phenomenon of speech imposters, discovered in literary dialogues termed “speech, or verbal mimicry,” while the speakers who use such verbal masks are called “mimics.” In the presented research, two types of mimicry are distinguished: progressive and regressive speech mimicry. Hence, the characters’ speech was analyzed through the prism of his/her actual or imposed social status, which allowed to single out sufficiently reliable syntactic indicators of the speaker’s real social profile.
Most academic circles treat fanfiction as “paraliterature” (Krauss, 1980) created by fans of a certain literary work. Fanfiction (also abbreviated to fan fic, fanfic, or fic) presents a new field of analysis not only for literature, but also for linguistic studies. The current paper aims at combining the research practices of both of them in order to disclose the literary and lingual essence of fanfics within J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter universe. For this purpose, we have made an attempt to apply the cognitive theory of Gestalt (introduced into the research world by the well-known psychologist Max Wertheimer) to the lingual analysis of fanfiction. We shall argue that in the three fanfics studied, the virtual images of Harry Potter, Hermione and Ron are preserved on the level of their individual speech Gestalts. We shall also argue that the fanfic author’s personal sympathies may change at least one of the characters’ profiles within a fanfic, while leaving the rest of them mostly unchanged so as to serve as an easily recognized background for the favorite personage. In other words, the author’s angle of vision structures not only a fanfic’s narrative, but it may also re-build the artistic and speech image(s) of one or more characters, though preserving the others’ images as given in the canon text.
The paper represents a fragment of a multi-year project focused on everyday speech interaction and, particularly, on verbal mechanisms of granting speech efficiency and effectiveness. The introductory statement of the research is more precise thespeaker organizes his/her message verbally, the easier it is understood by the listener. Special attention is paid to the methodological approach to verbal identification of literary characters' social strata. The paper also elicits how Gestalt analysis can be successfully applied to different practical linguistic tasks. Hence, the article deals with the advantages of Gestalt, used for unmasking the virtual speaker's social identity and his social status. Besides, a close study of speech situations has revealed some cases when the speaker tries to play a verbal trick on the audience, thus consciously or unconsciously imposing a false image and hiding his/her true identity. The phenomenon of speech imposters, discovered in literary dialogues termed "speech, or verbal mimicry," while the speakers who use such verbal masks are called "mimics." In the presented research, two types of mimicry are distinguished: progressive and regressive speech mimicry. Hence, the characters' speech was analyzed through the prism of his/her actual or imposed social status, which allowed to single out sufficiently reliable syntactic indicators of the speaker's real social profile.
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