Vol. 14 No. 1-2 (18) (2018)

Text is a broad notion. It may be expressed both in writing and orally in the form of a monologue, dialogue, utterance, etc. This may well be the reason for the persistent interest towards text as such. The great variety of studies on the nature of text and its objectives, however, are all somewhat controversial and lack a unified conceptual approach. Things get even more complicated due to the fact that now into scientific circulation has been introduced the notion of discourse, and evidently of considerable popularity in the current stage of the development of linguistics is the relationship between text and discourse.

The present article focuses on the study of the correlation of text and discourse, views literary text as a unit of specific communication between the writer and the reader, as well as centers the attention on the consecutive stages of literary text perception and understanding.

The main function of parenthetical constructions is to characterize the sentence from the position of the speaker to the listener. In English parenthetical constructions are essential, since they not only connect ideas, sentences, paragraphs making them more cohesive, but also introduce contrast or opposition, emphasis or agreement, purpose, result or conclusion, etc.

We try to demonstrate how parenthetical constructions provide and convey communicative functions in spoken and written discourse. However, one should also note that parenthetical constructions cannot carry out the communicative shifts independently; hence the certain communicative shift is relatively dependent on the context.

Synonymy is one of the most important sources of the wealth of language and is closely related to the problems of stylistics, speech culture, language changes and language improvements. In linguistic literature the term synonymy is increasingly frequently used in relation to different language elements: sounds, word forms, morphemes, syntactic constructions. Recent developments in the studies of grammatical synonymy have led to a renewed interest in syntactic synonymy which is at the heart of our understanding of grammatical synonyms. The purpose of this article is to review the recent research into syntactic synonymy, taking into consideration the attempts of different linguists to define syntactical synonym, determine the criteria of synonymity and examine the synonymous structures in English syntax.

The article is devoted to the revelation of how crucial the multimodal analysis is in the functional interpretation of Alright? as a lecture question, because it is only thanks to the multimodal analysis that the functional interpretation of the question becomes complete and comprehensive. Moreover, we will attempt to answer the question whether Alright? is a true question or not.

The aim of the present research is to reveal different stylistic devices that impart expressiveness as well as emotionality to the literary critical text. Being a historical category, scientific style is first of all based on the development of the scientific thought and is characterized by the state of the national language and by the abilities and skills of the author, as well as that of the reader, for whom the scientific text is meant. Scientific prose requires the use of a specific discourse, sometimes with a certain amount of ambiguity and indefiniteness. In recent years, there has been a significant rise in studies concerning the usage of different stylistic devices in scientific discourse, which is a direct indication of a complex dialectical relationship of the two main functional styles. All these elements of emotionality are necessary elements for the literary critical text. They essentially serve as additional reinforcements for the final clarification of the thought which is expressed in a neutral way. It should be noted that the fictive elements play a significant role in scientific discourse, thus contributing to the clarification of scientific theories and principles.

This article covers the problem of male and female speech differences in political discourse. Male and female politicians use different language tools in order to make the message comprehensible to the listener. Most studies of male and female language reveal women as considerably less influential than men. However, our study shows that women’s role in political activity becomes increasingly important and deserves higher attention. The analysis of the speeches of political leaders gives us the idea that there are several differences which are notable in verbal communication when what we are after is gender. The article aims to identify male and female linguistic features in the speeches of two political leaders: Donald J. Trump and Hillary R. Clinton.

The question of the interaction of language and law is one of the main issues occupying the minds of both the linguists and jurists of our time. The study of the intersection of these scientific fields acquires even more importance nowadays as expansion of economic and cultural cooperation between countries and within countries requires legal regulation, qualified assistance of lawyers and their participation in negotiations, business meetings and in the preparation of documentation. Accordingly, linguistic and translation activities in the sphere of legal relations turn out to be of special significance. Like other functional styles of speech, which are independent systems, the style of official documents has certain communicative goals as well as its own consistent patterns and language characteristics common to the given style. The latter are the subject of the present article.

The aim of the present article is to provide an overview of the main difficulties encountered by legal translators, and work out some practical solutions so that the translator could provide an adequate translation in compliance with the norms of the target legal system. Legal translations raise very complex theoretical and practical problems and, therefore, an interdisciplinary comparative approach to the two legal systems and languages should be manifested by specialized translators. This study demonstrates that despite the common assumption that legal translations are literal, they may be translated differently depending on the context and aim of its translation. When translating a legal document, one is thus faced with the challenge of providing a translation that makes a legal as well as linguistic sense. Consequently, a translator can provide an accurate translation only if he/she has an understanding of the SL and the TL legal systems.

The article highlights one of the most typical features of G.G. Byron’s individual style, particularly, the use of a great variety of phraseological units in his works. The basic layer of Byron’s literary vocabulary includes phraseological units derived from the Bible and Greek mythology.

The present article focuses on the problem of translatability of the so-called “Byronic” phraseological units in his narrative poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.

It is an acknowledged fact that Byron’s works are translated into numerous languages and the Armenian translations have their special place among them. The eminent Armenian writer H.Tumanyan succeeded in finding the best equivalents of “Byronic” phraseological units that not only sound convincing, truthful and colourful, but also very often enrich both the source and the target languages.

This article seeks to explain the nature of visual interpretation which is an inseparable part of visual linguistics. Within the frames of this article we intend to study and illustrate the techniques that are used for making any kind of visual interpretation. To be more practical, illustrations and movie images have been used. The article focuses on the study of the two main characters of Harry Potter novels. The characters have been thoroughly analyzed with the method of triangle analysis.

Although Brothers Grimm collection of fairy tales have somehow the same cliché of plot, setting, and characters, in the fairy tale of Shrek the protagonist doesn’t follow this cliché. Shrek the protagonist is not a classical fairy tale of the handsome prince in quest of a beautiful princess; instead, he is an ogre. Grimm brothers wrote on text that they collected from the words of mouth giving the traditional tales a special structure and characters. However, compared to Grimm Brothers’ tales, Shrek the film, has a completely different structure and characters.

In this paper I try to disclose the fact that Grimm folk tales which reveal the mentality of the 19^th century as well as that of the earlier ages that belong to specific cultures (especially to the European culture and their mentality) are completely different than that of Shrek the film.

Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations pinpoints his Victorian literary heritage. On the other hand, David Lean’s film adaptation of Dickens’ novel conveys it realistically in a period of post War II cinematic modernization.

In the present paper, different points are discussed and presented; First, different critical opinions, by earlier and modern critics, as well as David Lean’s personal opinion about film adaptation are revealed and discussed. Second, Dickens’s eccentric and grotesque Victorian characters that are presented through Lean’s visually and thematically rationalized postwar characters. Third, Dickens’s extraordinary characters are contrasted with Lean’s realistic ones. Moreover, Lean’s modernistic touches to the Dickensian novel which cater the postwar audience’s need (for which reason Lean’s film is a completely intellectual one and not at all Dickensian) are also unveiled.

Thus, trying to put some hope in the hopeless hearts of his audience in the aftermath of the Second World War, Lean’s modernization of the Dickensian era to fit in the world of his contemporary audience is proven.

The paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the US President D. Trump’s statement on the Armenian Genocide. Our research is based on some principles of the discourse analytical theories covering the fields of semantics, pragmatics and political discourse. Critical Discourse Analysis is applied for analyzing political discourse and mostly studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context. As for the event semantics analysis we employ the socalled Event Structure Approach focusing on causative constructions which refer to predicates formed by a combination of a causative event and an underlying predicate. Hence, two types of linguistic theories are applied for enclosing the hidden subtexts of the president’s intentions along with maneuvering strategies.

Raphael Lemkin’s Draft Convention on Genocide and the 1948 UN Convention: A Comparative Discourse Study.
S. Gasparyan, Sh. Paronyan, A. Chubaryan, G. Muradyan.
Yerevan: YSU Press, 2016, 176 pp.