This research paper is set in the context of growing interest in globalization and its effects on contemporary English-language discourse. The focus on discourse in the United Nations can be explained by the pivotal role of this organization in identifying, shaping and spreading global trends. The underlying assumption is that conceptual, cognitive and semantic analyses of the UN English-language discourse enable a deeper understanding of the western worldview, which expands into other types of discourse with a broad audience (the media, education, etc.). The application of the conceptual metaphor theory allowed us not only to identify a conceptual level of the concepts used, but also to more comprehensively explore the image and value levels of these concepts in order to identify the various cognitive-linguistic tools that are used to construct a model of the world order and assess modern reality. The study showed that language behaviour can be described through the dichotomy of “unification – segmentation.” On the one hand, reality is represented as a “family” field of life (based on the conceptual metaphor THE WORLD IS A FAMILY) with inherent family values and obligations. On the other hand, the world is subject to explicit categorization through the conceptual opposition of FRIEND vs. FOE and the conceptual and metaphorical model of “The fairy tale of the just war.” Mechanisms of linguistic hierarchization of participants’ relations are also revealed with the help of conceptual metaphors RELATIONS AMONG STATES ARE PARENT–CHILD RELATIONS and THE LEADER STATE IS A NURTURANT PARENT. The results of the study may be useful for further research on contemporary English-language discourse in a cognitive-pragmatic way, with the possibility of using the identified conceptual metaphors to detect speech tactics and strategies, as well as for comparative analysis of the constructed English-language world view with language models represented by other official UN languages: Russian, French, Spanish, Chinese and Arabic.

Transl.: Britsyna N. M. 2022. UN English-Language Discourse: Pecularities and Applications in Describing the World Order. Linguistics & Polyglot Studies. 8(3). P. 70–81. DOI: https://doi.org/10.24833/2410-2423-2022-3-32-70-81

This article considers the political discourse of René Lévesque (1922–1987) in the context of his fight for Quebec identity. In our opinion, he was the most brilliant Quebec leader during the second half of the twentieth century. A selection of his public speeches and most notable interviews from the work La voix de René Lévesque (Québec 2002) were used as the source material for analysis. As a media and mass communication researcher, the author does not aspire solely to linguistic analysis. We consider René Lévesque’s political discourse in view of his ability to communicate with different audiences supporting Quebec identity. It was therefore vital to determine who these target audiences were and highlight the principal methods employed by Lévesque to influence them. The speeches of Lévesque the politician reflect his experience as a TV journalist (the habit of presenting information in spoken, rather than in written, form), and this is where some of its “coarseness” – the repetition of individual words and phrases, the use of interjections, the absence of stylistic excesses, etc. – comes from. One of the conclusions made is that all of Lévesque’s public speeches demonstrate, step by step, his consistent programme for preserving Quebec identity in its English environment (the change of self-designation into “Québécois (Quebecers)”; the proclamation of French as the only language of the province; the attempt to secure the support of France, its former metropole; referendum on province independence; declining the federal offer to sign “patriated” Canadian Constitution without recognizing Quebec as “a distinct society” and others). However, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, his federal opponent, considered René Lévesque an ambitious person, who wanted to split united Canada. Unfortunately, La voix de René Lévesque did not include the internal Parti Québécois discussions on the province’s independence, which were the reason he abandoned the Parti Québécois and his post of Prime Minister of Quebec. The author argues that political discourse of René Lévesque was a form of social action, which served as a prerequisite for recognizing the Parti Québécois Nation by the Parliament of Canada in 2006. Today, the Parti Québécois continues to successfully build on and develop René Lévesque’s political legacy, and the issue of Quebec’s independence is still on its agenda. The research shows that further research is needed on the political discourse of the leaders of small nations, people like René Lévesque. The context of the modern world gives us many other similar regional situations.

Transl.: Ovcharenko E. F. 2022. The Features of René Lévesque’s Political Discourse in the Context of the Struggle for Quebec Identity. Linguistics & Polyglot Studies. 8(2). P. 112–125. DOI: https://doi.org/10.24833/2410-2423-2022-2-31-112-125

This paper studies two types of indirect (secondary) nomination: simulative and indicative, taken extracts from English economics textbooks. The similative nomination is actualized through functional transfer, which is interpreted as a separate kind of metaphor termed “actional metaphor”. The analysis of indicative nomination is focused on metonymy and synecdoche (as a closely related device), which is conditioned by the same transfer principle on the basis of an essential attribute. The semantic derivates are considered in sentences representing such a logical form of thought as definition, which reveals the metaphoric and metonymic processes in the field of English economic terminology.

Our analysis reveals the interrelations between models of terms and their functions as designators of target and source domains on the one hand, and types of cognitive metaphor (ontological and conceptual), on the other. The author comes to the conclusion that both types can have either simple or complex structures. Similarly, there are simple and complex metonymies. These are the peculiarities of this type of economic discourse from the point of view of semantic derivation. Another feature of economic discourse is the tendency towards the uniform secondary semiotic code when describing metaphorized terms.

With regard to indicative secondary nomination, the main findings are as follows: the metonymic lexis is organized as a chain of oppositions: terms and nomens – terms – terms and common lexis – common lexis. The mechanism of forming “mixed” kinds of indirect nominations, i.e. metaphtonymy and synecdoche-metonymy, is revealed in the course of the contextual analysis. This leads the author to a hypothetical argument that it is the actional metaphor that underlies these mixed types of semantic derivatives.

Both types of the secondary nomination have a systemic nature: metaphor is described in other system units; metonymies have a field structure and are actualised through specific oppositions. 

Transl.: Anokhina S.P. 2021. Metaphorization and Metonimization as Tools of Semantic Derivation (Based on English Economics Textbooks). Professional Discourse & Communication. 3(3). P. 65–82. DOI: https://doi.org/10.24833/2687-0126-2021-3-3-65-82

This paper is devoted to the study of French colouronyms and their terminologization in different subtypes of scientific discourse. The research is based on colouronyms of mineral origin “(jaune / vert / brun / rouge d’) andalousite” and “quartz (blanc / rose),” as well as those of metallic origin – “jaune d’or” and “jaune / vert de chrome.” The authors carry out an etymological analysis of all the above-mentioned lexical units and consider the main tendencies of the terminologization of words with the semantics of colour in French scientific discourse. The peculiarities of the terminologization of colouronyms of mineral origin are analysed in the chemistry and geology discourse subtypes, whereas trends in the use of colouronyms of mineral origin are presented in the chemistry and physics discourse subtypes.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the evolutionary tendencies of the terminologization of French colouronyms in the subtypes of scientific discourse to describe their common and diverging properties at different levels, i.e. structural-semantic, morphological, and syntactic.

The empirical material for the research comprises written scientific texts on chemistry

(the Annales de chimie et de physique electronic archive of scientific journals), geology (the Planète-Terre electronic archive of scientific journals), and physics (the Futura Sciences electronic archive of scientific journals).

The research methods employed include etymological, component, structural-semantic, morphological, and syntactic analyses.

The terminologization of colouronyms is a long-term continuous evolutionary discursive process that can be observed in French scientific discourse from the nineteenth century until the present day. The authors investigate the evolutionary tendencies of colouronyms as emerging semantics of colour in lexemes that have not had it before, the development of new structural-semantic models, the increasing numbers of morphological categories of colour terms, the acquisition of new syntactic roles, and the gradual process of the semantic transformation of colouronyms. The transition of colouronyms from one subtype of scientific discourse into another while preserving the structural-syntactic forms and morphological and semantic categories indicates the correlation between the discursive subtypes and the convergence of their functional properties at different levels of the language system. Despite this interdiscursive connectedness, each of the subtypes manifests distinct boundaries, which can be revealed through the study of the semantic specificity of colouronyms and their terminologization in scientific discourse.

Transl.: Volkova M.V. 2022. Terminologization of Colouronyms of Metal and Mineral Etymological Origin: The Evolutionary Aspect. Professional Discourse & Communication. 4(2). P. 45–65. DOI: https://doi.org/10.24833/2687-0126-2022-4-2-45-65

This paper deals with the peculiarities of the German-language pedagogical discourse, in particular teachers’ oral speech. Pedagogical discourse as a type of institutional discourse is characterised by a pronounced cultural component related to the differences in educational systems, traditions and modern practices of communicative interaction between teachers and students. The aim of the study is to analyse teachers’ evaluative and facilitative strategies, which are implemented in the speech acts of criticism and praise. The examples under review are borrowed from German-language speech resources that teachers in German schools are recommended to use in class. To thematically differentiate between the objects of praise and criticism of students the article is based on contextual analysis, which helps to describe the speech acts of praise and censure, using the procedure of detecting teachers’ intentions. The analysis of the grammatical and syntactic construction of the utterances makes it possible to determine the linguistic means of implementing praise and criticism in the German-language teacher discourse and to identify the corpus of linguistic means whose main function is to increase or decrease the semantic and emotional significance of the utterance components.

Transl.: Glushak V. M., Mueller J. E., Kovac, M. 2021. Verbalization of Criticism and Praise Intentions in German-Language Pedagogical Discourse. Professional Discourse & Communication. 3(3). P. 52–64. DOI: https://doi.org/10.24833/2687-0126- 2021-3- 3-52-64

The subject of this article is the mystical poetry of Parvin Etesami (1907–1941). In it, we analyse the religious foundations of the poet’s work of the first half of the twentieth century (a turning point in Persian culture), which continue the Persian tradition of searching for God on the paths laid by her predecessors and express her knowledge of God in old poetic forms (monazere, qasida) with a new poetic language. The study of the poetic ontology of Parvin Etesami, that is, of her reflections on God, is based not only on a collection of 60 poems published in Russian (Journey of a Tear, 1984), but primarily on precise translations of Etesami’s poems, published for the first time in the article, which could not be included in the Soviet edition and which were carried out by two of the authors of this article. The article analyses the poet’s ideas about God as the creator of man, about God’s predestination(the establishment of man’s mission on earth as a reflection of divine beauty), and about the Grace of God as the essence of human destiny. In the monologues of the dervishes, ideal personalities in the verses of Parvin, the value of the fruits carried by the mystical consciousness of one who has achieved contemplation of true reality is affirmed. It opposes the ideas of ordinary consciousness, for which the style of behaviour of the mystic is like madness. The love for God and God’s love are shown in Etesami’s poetry as the centre of the heart, so that externally manifested religiosity (the Kaaba as a shrine is the architecturally revealed centre of the world) and the inner comprehension of God (the Kaaba of the heart) are affirmed by Parvin in their complementary wholeness. In this way, it is shown that in the verses of Parvin, fidelity to the thousand-year-old spiritual tradition and individual creativity appear as an organic unity

Transl.: Koshemchuk T. A., Reisner M. L., Yahyapour M. 2022. The Poet’s Knowledge of God: The Work of Parvin Etesami in the Context of the Iranian Spiritual Tradition. Concept: Philosophy, Religion, Culture. 6(2). P. 41–58. DOI: https://doi. org/10.24833/2541-8831-2022-2-22-41-58. (In Russian)