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The Russian language and culture in the work of an American translingual author (based on Ksenia Melnik’s stories “Snow in May”)

Z.G. Proshina
$2.50
UDC 821.161.1-3(73)
 

Proshina Zoya G.,

Doctor of Philology,

Professor of the Foreign Language Teaching Theory Department

Lomonosov Moscow State University

e-mail: proshinazoya@yandex.ru

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0570-2349

 

This article focuses on the search of Russianness in the literary work by an American translingual author of Russian descent. Starting with the analysis of the term that describes literature written not in a writer’s native language but in the functional language, the article selects two terms — translingualism that reveals the use of two or more languages in one and the same work of art, and transculturalism as the writer is oriented towards his/her own culture and a reader’s culture. The research into translingualism of K. Melnik’s stories has revealed that elements of her Russianness appear in pragmatics (in episode of the characters’ specific behavior, their categorical communicative style that is evident in a great number of imperative sentences, terms of address; Russian interjections that stress emotive features of the characters), in semantics (borrowed words and phraseology, shift of word meanings, coining new words), in grammar (use of some Russian noun forms, specific use of tenses, word order, syntactic constructions typical for Russian use). The article concludes that stories by K. Melnik are written in Russian English that manifests the writer’s cultural and translingual identity and helps the reader get acquainted with local specificity of the setting described in the stories.

Keywords: translingualism, transculturalism, cultural identity, Russianness, Russian English, creative work by Kseniya Melnik
 

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