Vol. 11 No. 2 (14) (2015)

The problem of persuasive discourse has been analyzed in this article from the perspectives of literary discourse – to be specifically chosen and introduced – much more as a model of communicative behaviour and pattern of textuality rather than as a sample of artistic perception of life. The survey into the structure of persuasive discourse suggested by María Azucena Penas Ibáñez has served as basis for the paper that tries to cover the major constituents of a relatively overall image of persuasive discourse completed under all the standards of textuality. The paper attempts at introducing a paradigm of factors to be taken into consideration in respective analyses of persuasive discourse.

* The paper is based on María Azucena Penas Ibáñez’s research (Penas Ibáñez 2011:113-134).

The present paper aims at observing the peculiarities of the linguistic representation of the concept loneliness in K. Mansfield’s authorial world picture. The authorial approach to the representation of the mentioned concept is studied in phonetic, lexical and syntactic aspects with the aim of discovering the specificities of interaction at micro and macro-levels of the text. A preliminary overview of the linguistic representation of the concept loneliness provided by the research will enable linking the results of the study with the cognitive stylistic individuality of the author.

The article covers the problem of deprecating humor in English anecdotes. It deals with the issue of using invective lexical units in comic discourse. Women swear considerably less than men. Aggressive anecdotes frequently disparage women. Generalizations about women and men inevitably involve false assumptions as they refuse to acknowledge the diverse identities, aspirations and personalities of individual women and men. Women are the brunt of more jokes than men. In English anecdotes men’s voice dominates. Conceptions of male dominance and patriarchy have also affected the lens through which we view the maternal image in language socialization practices.

The article is an attempt to shed light on one of the most interesting issues on the crossroads of psycholinguistics and pragmatics – the picture of the world and the linguistic picture of the world as a means of shaping the speaking individual’s presupposition base, which allows him/her to communicate effectively in sociocultural ambient. The outcomes of the article allow to make the following statement: the presupposition base of the speaking individual is based on the linguistic picture of the world, which constitutes its linguistic component, as well as on the picture of the world, which constitutes its phenomenological component. The article also clarifies the differences between the notions of linguistic individual and speaking individual, consciousness and linguistic consciousness, picture of the world and linguistic picture of the world since they play a central role in the process of forming the presupposition base.

Writing for science and technology is indubitably proliferating nowadays, which results in scientists being under ever-increasing pressure to write and publish their articles. To fulfill the goal of writing on different scientific domains and publishing, it is of paramount importance to be familiar with the peculiarities of the written style of the language of the discourse community. As far as engineering disciplines are concerned, foremost with electronic engineering in mind, of all various stylistic problems in scientific/technical writing, “nominalization”, as one of the most distinctive linguistic characteristics of academic writing, deserves a lot of attention. Since academic writing is often characterized by high frequency of nominalization, in the hope of providing a new insight into the development of writing for engineering, the present article aims to reveal the importance of the salutary effects of this systemic resource that will put the students and academics on the path of academic excellence.

Text is a unit of language in use. It is a lexico-grammatical unit realized through a phonological system with its own hierarchy of units (Halliday 1977:6-7). Text has been defined as a communicative occurrence which meets seven standards of textuality – cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situationality and intertextuality (Halliday, Hassan 1976:14-18). Application of repetition is also an important characteristic of a text. This particular study gives us a wide diapason to ascertain that repetitions on text level used by O. Wilde imply shades of comical meaning in general and ironical meaning in particular. The methodology underlies in the notion of irony asserted in the study of modality worked out by V. Vinogradov. The linguist suggests that there are two types of modality – objective and subjective. Objective modality mainly presupposes the author’s explicit evaluation of the surrounding world and events, thus revealing shades of humor. In the case of irony the utterance is performed through subjective modality which according to V. Vinogradov is the implicit subjective-evaluative attitude of the speaker/writer (Vinogradov 1950:725-731). Great is the number of studies, where repetition has been discussed on different linguistic levels. We will make an attempt to analyse it text level in Oscar Wilde’s fairy tale “The Devoted Friend” thus trying to prove that textual repetition implies shades of ironic modality in the fairy tale.

The present article focuses on the peculiarities of the usage of colour terminology in advertisements. We live in a colourful world and there are great many colour words to describe it. We also live in a world where advertisement has become an accompanying phenomenon of our everyday life. It is obvious that the language of advertising has its specific features and it seems worth trying to reveal the role and the meaning of the colours used in advertisements. Colour terms are known to be linguistic universals which have certain associations attached to each of them. We may suppose that the colours that are mostly used in the advertisements are the basic colour terms. The spheres where we expect to find wider usage of colour terms should be the ones connected with fashion industry.

The article is devoted to the description of masculine manner of speech in the discourse of female politicians. Being mainly a field of male activity, politics has become the area of strict rules, perseverance, pertinacity and leadership. The main point in politics is struggle and tough competition of interests. In these conditions strict power qualities exacerbate, humanism disappears in actions and behaviour. This exact style is typical of men, and not women, hence if a woman goes into politics, she has to play according to male rules achieving tough and uncompromising manners of speech. Therefore, entering this complex sphere, women need to obtain analytical, logical, direct and unemotional way of thinking both for their activity and speech. These are necessary qualities for being a successful politician and a person, who will obtain fame, respect and love of citizens. The materials chosen for the analysis are the speeches of two famous women politicians of different periods: Margaret Thatcher and Condoleezza Rice. The main method of linguistic analysis is comparison, i.e. we choose certain parts from speeches of both politicians and try to find male characteristic features.

Diminutives are an important means of expressing attitudes and emotions in both English and Armenian. Diminutives as intimacy expressions have been much studied in English, meanwhile this aspect of communication has received less scholarly attention in Armenian. The comparative analysis of English and Armenian diminutives carried out in the present paper demonstrates the linguistic differences between Armenian and English diminutive systems, and comes to prove that the conceptualization of intimacy may vary across cultures.

The article addresses the problem of the rhythmic arrangement of academic discourse and its main units. It is the result of computer-based acoustic investigation of English rhythm (in comparison with Armenian). The contrastive analysis of the rhythmic units helps to reveal the regularities that pass unnoticed in monolingual studies. Basing on the scalar approach to the rhythm, the study defines rhythm as an output of all the gradients participating in its formation with the special accent on grouping and prominence. It is an attempt in modelling the rhythmic organisation of academic prose in English (Armenian) by giving its acoustic profile.

At present the role of independent learning has become more crucial than ever.
The rapid development of close ties between the countries of the world, the requirement of urgent solutions to numerous problems connected with ecology, peace, politics, economy, art, etc. have strengthened the need for an international global language in order to exchange information between different cultures. Today this language is English and, consequently, learning English has become a must.
The effectiveness of learning in general and that of independent learning in particular depends on the level of responsibility of the students. In other words, the student, who in fact is a learner, should have a clear idea of the plan of his/her study. The students should know how much time, effort and money they are going to ‘invest’ into their studies, and, moreover, they should be responsible for their own role in the interactive, student-centered ‘give and take’ process of learning a foreign language.

The present article aims at investigating the nature of interference errors in EFL class. Based on a case study, it analyzes the Armenian speakers’ interference errors in EFL class. In order to give a vivid picture of their nature, these errors have been categorised according to the model of Hierarchy of Difficulty propelled by Stockwell and Prator. The beneficial outcomes of the study may be implemented in further pedagogical research towards finding an optimal model of interference errors correction.

The variety of methodological approaches can contribute to developing the optimal model of teaching writing in higher linguistic universities since implementing only one approach in writing process is unfruitful. However, the priority of this or that approach does not suggest abandoning the other approaches to writing, but puts forward the demand for complementing one another rather than opposing. The content and functional analyses of the product-based, the process-based and the genre-based approaches can lead to paradigm shifts in foreign language teaching/learning methodology, emphasize the importance of the recursive procedure of writing, reveal the main characteristics of writing activities, determine the roles of teachers and students in the process of writing, and develop new strategies teaching writing. Thus a synthesis of the product, the process and the genre approaches to writing will be the best approach to meet the needs of our ESL students.

Until the present millennium, very little creative literary writing in either English or Spanish had been published in the British colonial enclave of Gibraltar. Given the small population size of the autonomous community of some 30,000 people, it was considered unlikely that a “national” literary culture could form. In the course of the past decade, a handful of dedicated writers have published a noticeable amount of fiction, all of which is concerned with establishing a recognized Gibraltarian literary identity. The present article, while not arguing for the permanence of a Gibraltarian national literary culture, attempts to trace some of the ways in which a small, unified, geopolitical territory has attempted to tell its own story.

The article aims to discuss the question of deportations as part of the genocidal process, accomplished in western Armenia by the Turks particularly in 1915. Allegations intentionally pushed forward by the Turkish rulers of the period claiming that Armenians were treacherous separatists served as a “well-grounded” justification for them to administer the wholesale deportation of the Armenian population first from eastern and south-eastern provinces, then the capital city Constantinople and other major cities of the empire. The investigation of documented facts as well as the results of other researches shows that the idea of the deportations was conceived and promulgated in 1915 to mask the pre-planned genocidal actions which had come into full swing long before. The Ottoman authorities were somewhat taken aback after they received the joint declaration issued by Great Britain, Russia and France laying the responsibility of the horrendous actions against humanity and civilization taking place in Turkey to the charge of the members of the Ottoman government. They hoped the Deportation Law could rid them of responsibility.

The present article concerns one of the most painful pages in Annenian history – the Genocide of Armenians in 1915 and its traumatic and tragic outcome – forced migrations and cultural remodelling of ethnic Armenians, those who were able to survive the terrible massacre. The aim of the paper is to discuss how the deported ethnic Western Armenians and their descendants underwent the process of acculturation in the USA, reshaping their ethnic cultural blueprint into Diasporan Armenian cultural tradition. To illustrate cases of cultural remodelling, samples of fictional discourse where the literary heroes present three generations of American Armenians have been examined. The research combines the interpretative frameworks of cross-cultural pragmatics and discourse analysis. The analysis of discourse from cultural perspective allows us to conclude that Diasporan Armenians must have formed a multicultural stratum in the American ethnic patchwork.

Much More than Metaphor
Master Tropes of Artistic Language and Imagination
Elzbieta Chrzanowska-Kluczewska
Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2013, 196 pp.