Language Play and Linguistic and Cognitive Modeling of Reality – Real and Imagined (as Exemplified in Carroll L. «Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There»)

Abstract

The problem of linguistic description of a literary text, where the main place is given to play techniques, is relevant and of keen interest. The effect of playing with words, as a special form of linguistic creativity, creates a sense of intellectual obstacle, the overcoming of which gives great pleasure. Language play is not only an opportunity to realize linguistic meanings, but also a form of comprehension and cognition of the world. The study of the linguistic and cognitive mechanism, modeling reality, is promising in terms of the study of linguistic means, determining communicative situations. The aim of the article is to identify and comprehensively analyze the linguistic means involved in modeling real and imagined reality. The material of the research is examples of wordplay of L. Carroll's work fragment. Basic methods of research are analysis, synthesis, method of linguistic description. The methods of observation, contextual and stylistic analysis revealed the types of language play that give a special expressiveness, comic effect, created consciously and paradoxically. Using the system-descriptive method, the method of lexico-semantic analysis, the author identified linguistic means of reality modeling: verbs of orientation in space, verbs of cognition, intellectual activity, modal verbs expressing emotional state; comparative constructions, idioms, containing basic axiomatics of language consciousness, leading to ambiguity with simultaneous realization of literal and figurative meanings. Semantic analysis of phrasal verbs with post-verbs showed the results of their meanings reinterpretation in the context of communicative situations. Within the framework of polysemy a choice of meanings associated with the parameters of a given situation is provided. A special role is played by metaphors, in which the play of words is enclosed. They create new meanings from fragments of subjective experience. In conclusion, it is assumed that when new meanings are generated as a result of semantic anomalies or paradoxes, the identified linguistic means, describing the real and imagined reality, set the parameters of the situation, and can be considered as codes, extracting the underlying meanings and differentiating communicative situations.

Keywords

• language play
• play techniques
• cognition
• reality modeling
• inversion
• semantic anomaly
• reinterpretation of meaning
• metaphor
• communicative situation