Vol. 17 No. 1 (23) (2021)

The article touches upon graffiti discourse as a form of rhetorical speech and tries to analyse it according to the three strategies of persuasion suggested by Aristotle: ethos, pathos and logos. The article reveals how specific the graffiti discourse is in terms of using these strategies and how the latter make the speech more powerful and persuasive. Also, an attempt is made to reveal the role of metaphor in the performance of the strategy of pathos in graffiti discourse.

 This article explores the role of metaphor in the conceptualization of economic crisis in English in terms of the sociohistorical – cognitive – linguistic interface. On the material of economic mass-media discourse of the 19^th century “long depression”, the 20^th century Great Depression and the 21^st century Global Economic Crisis It reveals the concept historical variation and defines the vector of its development. It also develops the methodology of historical cognitive analysis and proves that being а part of human social-cultural practice cognition is of historical nature. I claim that in historical perspective conceptual metaphors vary in their source domains as the result of transformations of the concept structure. The vector of diachronic change of conceptual metaphors of economic crisis corresponds to cladogenesis, which is the process of evolutionary splitting based on branching.

Medicine contributes to every person’s health in terms of diagnosis, treatment or prevention of a disease. Hence, constructing the clinical picture and the diagnosis of a health condition and conveying complex technical information in a comprehensible language is of utmost importance. In this regard, medical professionals rely not only on Greco-Latin terms of Classical times, but also resort to metaphors to illuminate many facets of medical observations and clinical findings. These metaphors stem either from anthropomorphic or zoomorphic areas and act as primary interface between scientific thought and understanding. From this perspective, the present article examines the value of metaphor in medicine and through the employment of descriptive method, explores some of the most widespread zoomorphic metaphors, which denominate certain facial anomalies.

The article considers political discourse as a global unit attaching special significance to its linguistic characteristics that play an essential role in the formulation of political speech. The article reviews the theoretical background of the basic approaches and theories studying political speech and tries to outline their role in the context of the critical analysis of political discourse. The article also touches upon the main components of politics: language, action, conflict and cooperation, etc.

Political discourse carried out with powerful linguistic and extralinguistic means is utterly linked with the usage of antonomasia. In fact, it is the language of politicians used as a tool to manipulate the audience. Political speech is not necessarily a success because of its correctness or truth, rather it may be a matter of persuading valid arguments.

Political discourse as a teaching and persuasive, impressive and effective speech is one of the means to give solutions to the most important problems of constructing optimal speech interchange varying from political negotiations to orations and appeals (including the ones in the mass media). It is a well-known fact that the audience of politicians is very large, and their aim is to make the audience believe or agree with them, accept their viewpoints or at least share their approaches to the solutions of these or those problems. In this regard the role of proper utilization of antonomasia in political discourse becomes of utmost importance as it presupposes the realization of a particular language function in terms of the politician’s intention to send the necessary information to his audience, either readers or listeners.

In the scope of the present article we focus on the study of the functions of antonomasia in political discourse and apply the methods of observation, discourse analysis, as well as the descriptive and explanatory methods.

Hence, in political discourse stylistic devices are frequently used by politicians to carry out this or that particular purpose of utterance and in this connection the usage of antonomasia is not an exception.

The language of advertising is unique and very peculiar in comparison with other elements of media discourse. The effectiveness of speech in advertising media discourse focuses on catching the attention of the target audience. Since the language of advertising is characterized by a distinguished persuasive function, the creators of ads spare no effort to make them catchy, interesting and witty. This is the reason why various linguistic devices are used to facilitate the comprehension and memorization of advertisements. In this regard, wordplay plays a significant role  as the intentional usage of puns ensures the effectiveness of the composed texts.

Abstract

Communication is a social phenomenon based on sharing information, ideas and attitudes. Maturity, experience, personal and social relationships that run more smoothly and become more meaningful, are developed, expanded and advanced through communication. Hence, the purpose of this paper based on case study methodology is to help students understand the principles of communication theory/study and put them into practice in life. The skills and techniques learned in the course are essential to effective communication in intrapersonal, interpersonal, small-group and public speaking and can be applied not only through studying the theoretical material but also through practical exercises, discussions and presentations that will enable to incorporate them into daily life and activity. As a result, students will learn to function in a more productive and assertive way in public and work environments and develop the newfound abilities to speak up effectively in other contexts. 

The aim of this essay is to propose a view of literary translation as “performance”, i.e., as both an art and an activity endowed with specific affinities with those of the actor or the musician. Actors and musicians offer subjective interpretations of the dramatic texts and of the musical scripts that they present on stage and in the concert hall. Likewise, the translator presents her/his interpretation and her/his rendering of a specific text to readers whose mother tongue and culture may either be close or remote from the ones of the original. In other words, a translator of artistic literature is ‘a performer’ and each translation an ‘execution’ i.e., a unique ‘rendering of the script’ (T1), and it is both a recognizable prior text (T1) and yet also a specific variation of it (T2). After some theoretical observations on translation (Part 1 of the essay), my thesis will be developed in connection with an interpretation of the character of Bottom, the weaver-actor in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, because his experience and ‘personality’, seem to bear interesting metaphorical affinities with those of the translator as performer of poetic texts (Part2 of the essay).

First published in 1918, Rebecca West’s debut novel The Return of the Soldier focuses on a common trope in Great War Literature: the traumas of war and the difficulties of returning veterans to fit back in with everyday life. The story of the shell-shocked soldier Chris Baldry, who suddenly finds himself in a world which has aged 15 years beyond his memory, may be read as the unfolding of a multi-layered drama of hospitality, in which the host-guest continuum is constantly renegotiated. Chris’s memory erasure does not only turn him into a foreigner who does not recognize his wife or remember his dead son, but also forces his family members to question the role they have been playing in Chris’s life. His family equilibrium is shattered as his wife suddenly becomes a stranger to him, while his long-lost love, a working-class woman well below Chris’s social standards, become more important to him than anyone else. An analysis of the modernist techniques and stylistic features of the novel will allow me to address the concept of hospitality in relation to trauma and disease. The paper will show that The Return of the Soldier may be read not only as a critique of war, but also as a multi-perspective narrative on the precariousness of host-guest relationships. It will be argued that the “question-of-the-foreigner”, which Derrida addressed in his seminal essay Of Hospitality (2003) acquires new meanings when disease suddenly transforms a loved one into an “other” with whom communication seems to be interrupted. Hospitality may thus be regarded an unstable concept, in which identity and alterity are constantly renegotiated.

The Victorian poet Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) is famous for his uniquely “bizarre” female characters. His contemporary critics as well as many of the researchers who touched upon his work have interpreted his female characters to be “obsessive,” “masochistic,” and in some cases even “sadistic.” Phædra is one of his characters who suffered the most because of this misconception. Rarely referenced at all, she has been regarded as a one-dimensional “masochist” who lacks psychological and emotional depth and whose only driving force is her desire for death. However, a close reading of Swinburne’s short poem reveals Phædra’s innermost anxieties and places her in the narrative of the Swinburnian femme damnée inspired by Les Fleurs du Mal of the French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867). Swinburne’s “Phædra” is remarkable in that it also serves as an exceptional representation of Sappho (c. 630 - c. 570 BC) in Victorian England. This paper highlights Swinburne’s aversion towards the Victorian mock-morality, as well as some of his life-long influences. Furthermore, this paper defines Phædra in a new light by considering the classical originals, Sappho’s and Baudelaire’s works, and even a twentieth-century retelling by the Russian poetess Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941).