The article examines the functions of irony and the specifics of its application in judicial discourse. Due to the nature of the judicial speech, each of its components is maximally utilized by the speaker to achieve the strategic goal setting. Therefore, it is important to analyze the role and functions of irony in judicial discourse, the specifics of its application in court proceedings, and its impact on convincing the audience of the speaker’s position. The purpose of this study is to identify the features of irony functioning in the judicial speech, which is part of judicial discourse. Based on the court speeches of famous Russian prosecutors and defense attorneys of the 19th and 21st centuries, such as A. Koni, V. Zhukovsky, Ya. Kiselev, and A. Kupriyanov, the article argues that irony is an important tool for achieving the speaker’s communicative goals, primarily the main goal of effectively persuading the audience. The use of irony in various functions is influenced by the speaker’s communicative intention, individual style, and the listener’s perception. The effectiveness of ironic techniques depends on the comprehensive consideration of both the speaker’s intentions and the specific circumstances and features of the case at hand. It is also crucial to take into account the characteristics of the audience and anticipate their potential reactions to ironic remarks. As a result of the study, we revealed that irony performs a number of functions in the judicial speech: expressing an opinion about someone or something; expressing the speaker’s attitude towards the object of evaluation; drawing the addressee’s attention to someone or something; informing the addressee; persuading the addressee; exposing deception; weakening or refuting the opponent’s arguments; harmonizing relations with the addressee, creating an atmosphere of mutual understanding and trust. All of these functions are aimed at achieving the key goal of the judicial speech, which is to convince the audience of the speaker’s position.

The ritual riddle is a cultural and linguistic phenomenon of a dialogical nature. The relevance of our research is determined by the importance of studying the early stages of polycode communication in the context of culture. Appealing to the riddle of the mythopoeic age makes it possible to implement the historical and genetic approach and provides a key to understanding the essence of modern phenomena of this kind. The ritual riddle is studied on the basis of the “Rig Veda” hymns, which are a valuable source for exploring this phenomenon. The scientific novelty is determined by the systemic approach to its description. The research uses a set of methods, including discursive, semiotic, linguistic, cognitive, and pragmatic analyses. The purpose of the paper is a holistic description of the ritual riddle, which is studied in the context of the Vedic ritual in three dimensions: culturally semiotic, discursive, and cognitivesemiotic. In the cultural-semiotic aspect, the numerical component of the ritual riddle is considered as additional to the basic (verbal) semiotics. The rules of generating and interpreting meanings within the numerical code of the riddle are revealed in the context of ritual pragmatics. We discuss the semantics of numbers, numerical codes of reality objects, and numerical dynamic models. In the discursive aspect, the riddle is considered as a communicative event, taking into account the pragmatics of the ritual. One of the main strategies of the ritual riddle is its decoding and interpretation management strategy. The numeric code is considered as a means of implementing this strategy. The cognitive-semiotic aspect of the study includes the problem of using the numerical component in the metaphorical understanding of the riddle objects. We also focus on the interaction between various codes within the ritual riddle. The results show that the ritual riddle is a complex integrative cultural and linguistic phenomenon. The meaning of its text is encoded by means of several semiotic systems. The numerical code in a ritual riddle has a number of important functions. To understand them, the integrated approach to its consideration is used, taking into account extralinguistic factors in the context of culture and the general pragmatics of the mythopoeic age ritual discourse.

Through the prism of linguistic analysis, this article examines the gender component based on the authentic names of TV shows on modern Russian television. The novelty of this study is the gender aspect of the specified lexical material analysis, the ways of constructing meanings with a gender aspect, and cultural codes in the names of TV shows. The methods include a linguistic analysis, the study of thematic orientation of various categories, and a stylistic analysis of authentic material. The main purpose of the study is to select the names of TV programmes and shows containing a gender component, their further categorization and analysis. The results obtained allow us to conclude that the parallel categories containing masculinities and feminitives are inconsistent and unequal. In addition, we have identified symmetrical categories with different connotative components depending on gender, and the use of exclusively masculine terms in relation to polygender recipients, which suggests an asymmetry in the use of such lexemes. This research is of interest to linguists, sociologists, cultural scientists and representatives of interdisciplinary sciences dealing with the problem of gender representation in the media space. Sociolinguists, psycholinguists, specialists in gender linguistics, anthropolinguists and others are among potential researchers.

The article examines the linguo-cognitive level of the linguistic personality of Andrei Bely, one of the key poets of Russian Symbolism. The relevance of this work stems from the contemporary linguistics interest in the ways of representing the author’s individual worldview in literary texts. The study identifies the specific verbalizations of key concepts in his poetry collections “Gold in Azure”, “Ashes”, and “Urn”, reflecting the evolution of the poet’s outlook. Our study is based on the poems from these cycles; the methodological basis is conceptual and linguacognitive analyses and Yu. Karaulov’s theoretical propositions on the structure of the linguistic personality. The study traces the dynamics of the poet’s worldview: From the mystical optimism of his early works with the images of gold and azure to the tragic perception of reality in “Ashes” and “Urn”, dominated by motifs of ash, destruction, and existential anxiety. The linguo-cognitive level of Bely’s linguistic personality is characterized by dualism: A striving for the sacred combined with a deep experience of Russia’s historical tragedy, the fate of its people, and his own spiritual crisis. Special attention is paid to the transformation of the key images and concepts, reflecting the poet’s intense philosophical quest. The findings contribute to the study of Andrei Bely’s poetic worldview and to the development of methods for analyzing the linguistic personality within cognitive linguistics.

The paper considers voice onset time (VOT) of voiceless stops as a possible acoustic cue and a salient feature of a foreign accent in the Russian and French accent imitations by English L1 speakers in English cinematography. The studies of pronunciation tendencies in English L2 tend to show evidence of shorter VOT values for voiceless stops in English L2 speakers if their native tongue is a non-aspiration one. Deviations from the native VOT values could be considered by L1 speakers as a marker of a foreign accent. The conducted quantitative acoustic analysis and the results of statistical processing show that a short-lag positive VOT for voiceless stops is a productive means of imitation of the French accent in one-consonant onsets, and less so in the imitated Russian accent. Violations of English native pronunciation habits are less likely in complex consonantal structures, such as s + stop or s + sonorant. The place of articulation of the voiceless plosive remains important for VOT duration even in deliberate accent imitations.

This article introduces a complex analysis of toponymic units in fiction and their translation into Spanish and French. The analysis focuses on preserving not only the linguistic, but also their extralinguistic components, which largely determines the success of the translation. The relevance of the article’s topic lies in the fact that toponyms in fiction carry the cultural code of the work, therefore, the preservation or distortion of the author’s intention depends on the choice of translation methods and strategies. An important aspect is the analysis of the possibilities of translation of culturally marked units and their existence within a different linguistic and cultural space. The purpose of our research is to determine the effectiveness of toponymic units’ translation and their correspondence when conveying the original artistic image through the means of the target language. Our study is based on J. Rowling’s works translated into French and Spanish. The objectives are: 1) to explore the features of translation of toponymic units in a literary work; 2) to analyze how successful the chosen method of translation, based on the examples of specific toponyms’ translation in the French and Spanish versions of the works, is in revealing the artistic image.

The article examines the problem of transferring the pragmatic potential of metaphor when translating a poetic text from the Chuvash language into Russian and English. It considers the issues of the correlation between the text pragmatics and translation pragmatics, as well as the role of metaphor as a key means of realizing the author’s idea and conveying ethno-cultural identity. Metaphorical units, representing the value dominants of the Chuvash culture in L. Filippova’s poem “Tracing Sespel’s Life” and their translations into Russian and English, are subject to a comprehensive comparative analysis. The research examines ways to reproduce the pragmatic meaning of metaphors, including loan translation, concretization, generalization, and lexical additions. The findings show that the Russian translation is focused on preserving the content-related aspect of pragmatics and emotional impact within the framework of a close cultural tradition. The English translation is based on the principles of deep pragmatic adaptation. The pragmatic adequacy of metaphor translation is determined by the cultural distance between languages, while the choice of translation strategy depends on the personality of the translator and his/her goals. The study demonstrates that metaphor translation in Chuvash poetry requires balancing the precision of the image with its accessibility to the target audience. The research opens up prospects for further comparative studies on the translation of national literatures.

The article examines the use of a construction, found in the texts of Feodosiy Pechersky’s Old Russian teachings, which can be defined as syntactic deviation (using a predicate in the form of the 1st person plural of the present/simple future tense instead of the expected imperative of the 2nd person plural). This technique, intentionally used by the narrator (“addresser”), allows not only drawing the listener’s (“addressee’s”) attention to the expression of the text’s communicative task, but also integrating it into the overall syntactic perspective of the unfolding text of the Old Russian teaching, which implements the “we” communicative model. This model is the most common one in the texts of Old Russian teachings, as it allows the narrator to avoid separating themselves from the listeners and emphasize the idea of shared salvation. The repeated use of the construction in the texts of the one narrator’s teachings allows us to recognize it as a feature of his idiosyncrasy and consider it as a special method of conveying the author’s idea. The consolidation of this syntactic construction in the teachings of Feodosiy Pechersky allows us to talk about its status as a speech formula. This is supported by the lexical and grammatical means of organizing the utterance. Thus, we can recognize this construction as an element of the given structure of the Old Russian text.

The article considers the image of a woman in the texts of the pre-national period of the Russian language development as part of the system of ideas about women in the Russian linguistic picture of the world. The material for the study was “Russkaya Pravda”, the business style text from the 11th-12th centuries, and “Domostroy”, the text of the proper literary style of the 16th century. Due to the insufficient study of the written monuments, discussed in the article from the standpoint of gender linguistics and linguoculturology, for a modern person, the image of a woman is narrow and stereotypical– the woman was oppressed by everyday life, subordinated to her husband in everything, she had no rights. However, this is not entirely true, her image and roles in society were wider and more diverse; therefore, the purpose of this work is to identify the features of the linguistic representations of women in the texts of “Russkaya Pravda” and “Domostroy”, reflecting the cultural and everyday realities of Rus'. The analysis of the written monuments shows that in the text of “Russkaya Pravda” only 10 lexemes are used to nominate a woman, and in “Domostroy” we identify 44 lexemes. The linguistic and cultural analysis of the nominations shows that the most frequent incarnations of a woman are the images of a wife and mistress of the house, a mother, which are manifested in connection with a man and her subordination to him. However, in “Domostroy” there are references to women of various types of activities and social status, which indicates the growing importance of women in the life of society by the 16th century.

The present paper is devoted to the issue of a comic effect implementation in multimodal humorous texts at the proposition and surface levels of its semantics. The representative material of the study includes multimodal texts of two types: static (internet-memes) and dynamic (short comic videos). The article considers distinguishing features of multimodal texts per se, their status in modern Internet communication. The paper provides analytical review of the term “proposition”, the main semantic roles of predicate actants that have been studied in contemporary linguistics (agent, patient, experiencer, temporal and others) and outlines the results of the representative material analysis. These results allowed us to establish the fact that the comic effect is implemented at both semantic levels of multimodal texts: the proposition structure at the deep level contains opposing elements involved in creating a contrast, which, in its turn, becomes the basis for creating a comic effect (oppositions, metaphor, pun). The surface level contains elements of different modes that are used for representing proposition meanings and achieving a comic effect. The paper outlines possible directions of further research: exploration of semantic roles, ways of representing them and other means of creating a comic effect in a multimodal text, as well as the study of cognitive mechanisms that constitute the bedrock for producing and perceiving a multimodal text meanings.

The article examines the role of spatio-temporal metaphors in Italian literary texts. The purpose is to demonstrate the text-forming potential of the metaphor, in which temporal concepts are verbalized in the text through vocabulary with spatial semantics. The theoretical framework draws on the tenets of the conceptual metaphor theory and modern text theory. The material is Dino Buzzati’s stories. The continuous sampling method, the method of frame and metaphorical mapping, the component and contextual analysis were employed during the research. The invariants of spatio-temporal metaphors in the short stories are considered as manifestations of the authors’ individual understanding of the world. The obtained results demonstrate that the temporal concept of “life” is verbalized in the short stories through the conceptual domain of “movement in space” in the sagittal and vertical planes. The type of mapping (sagittal or vertical) influences the specifics of the frames. The frame structure of the metaphor shapes the semantic space of the text and determines its stylistic characteristics, while ensuring coherence and cohesion. The explication of the textual space-motion metaphor occurs through the detailing of the cognitive structure “source-path-goal”, while the author’s individuality is manifested in the contamination of temporal and spatial domains, disrupting the stereotypical nature of the events described.

Ethnic stereotypes in culture and the ethnonyms they reflect in language are important components of the cultural and linguistic representation of a nation. Complex political processes and social reforms, occurring in the country throughout the 20th century, have led to historical discontinuities in the formation of ethnic identity and self-awareness among Russians, resulting in the emergence of a wide range of ethnonyms, replacing traditional names.

This article analyzes the results of a series of associative experiments that we conducted among Russian and international students to clarify the students’ understanding of linguistic forms of presenting national identity and to elucidate the dynamics of change in these understandings.

The study shows that the choice of a particular ethnonym and the adequacy of its interpretation is the result of understanding and comprehension of the meanings and associations embedded in it, which directly depends on the socio-cultural and age characteristics of the respondents, the degree of their involvement in the process of individual and collective self-determination in the cultural space.

The choice and function of ethnonyms in society, as well as the formation and verbal production of ethnic stereotypes, their consolidation in the linguistic picture of the world, are impossible without the subjective experience of community solidarity, evaluative judgments, individual and collective selfreflection regarding national identity.

The article deals with discursive expressiveness through literary images, which is a characteristic feature of Ivorian writer Ahmadou Kourouma’s work. The combination of different and often unexpected isotopes creates a peculiar mood when reading his works. The author’s style, which relies heavily on oral language, influences the sharpness and hyperbole of images when characterizing facts, characters, and events. The combination of all these factors ultimately leads to the emergence of an expressive note in literary discourse. Kourоuma’s works can be seen as an invitation to think about the French language in terms of description through a certain expressiveness that convinces the reader of its discursive richness. The study demonstrates that in his literary work, Ahmadou Kourouma actively employs a wide range of linguistic tools that are not characteristic of traditional fiction narrative. Comparison, metaphor, and hyperbole are linguistic techniques that contribute to the enrichment of artistic language in Kourouma’s novels. Each of these rhetorical techniques introduces unique semantic nuances, allowing you to structure a literary work in accordance with a certain communicative intent. The use of these strategies makes it possible to effectively manage the translocative effect, which, in turn, contributes to the achievement of the set communicative goals. Thus, the author constructs a multi-layered language synthesis and modifies the structure of the French language in accordance with the set artistic objectives.

The article analyzes the functions of adjectival forms in the novella “The Steppe” by Anton Chekhov, taking into account their semantic, stylistic, and linguocultural features. We examine the main pathways of semantic transformations of the adjectives, including various types of their metaphorical and metonymic reinterpretations. The aim of this study is to determine the text-forming functions of adjectives and their role in shaping the author’s idiolect (idiostyle). The research employs functional-semantic, contextual, and stylistic methods of analysis. The results reveal the multifaceted functions of the adjectives in Chekhov’s novella “The Steppe”: They perform nominative (denoting features of objects), expressive (conveying emotional states), constructive (participating in the formation of syntactic structures), and stylistic (shaping the artistic style of the author) functions. The adjectives in the novella contribute to the creation of a multilayered artistic whole, conveying atmosphere, mood, and the psychological state of the characters, while enhancing the perception of space, solitude, the dynamics of nature, and the cultural specifics of the region. The use of adjectives in Anton Chekhov’s “The Steppe” plays a decisive role in forming the expressive and artistic quality of the narrative, facilitating the reconstruction of the characters’ emotional depth and the details of the setting. Chekhov’s stylistic use of descriptive linguistic means serves not only to depict the physical characteristics of the steppe, but also to reflect the emotional states of the characters.

Based on journalistic texts of the last decade, the article examines the features of the military metaphor functions in German and French. The relevance of the study is due to the frequent use of military vocabulary to describe political, economic, social and information processes in a modern media course. The purpose of the study is to identify the features characterizing the military metaphor functions in German and French journalistic texts of the last decade. The work analyzes the lexical-semantic features of military metaphors and their pragmatic functions. Metaphors structure information, strengthen the expressiveness of the text, form an evaluative perception of events, and influence public opinion. The comparison of examples from the German and French press made it possible to establish both general patterns and differences in the use of metaphorical means. The scientific novelty of the study is its comprehensive comparative analysis of military metaphors in German and French journalistic texts from the standpoint of cognitive linguistics. The work systematizes semantic models of the military metaphor use. We establish and describe discursive strategies implemented through military metaphors: strategies of confrontation, mobilization, and legitimation. The novelty of the study consists in identifying the national-cultural specifics of the military metaphor use in the German and French media. In the presence of general cognitive models, German journalism is characterized by greater restraint and rationality, while French journalism is characterized by increased expressiveness and emotional saturation. The results obtained expand the idea of the specifics of the military metaphor functions and show that the military metaphor is productive, affecting the perception of events and acts as an instrument for structuring the modern European media resource.

The article studies the evolution of the concept “PURITY” in the modern Russian-language digital space. The relevance of the work is driven by the need to examine the transformation of key cultural concepts under the influence of digitalization, which is essential for the analysis of communicative practices, digital ethics, and cybersecurity. The research is based on data from the Russian National Corpus, specifically the “Social Media” module, as well as a selection of contexts from IT forums, blogs, and social networks, totaling over 500 contexts, using the methods of contextual, semantic, and conceptual analysis. The analysis reveals that the original semantics of physical and moral purity undergo significant expansion. In tech-oriented contexts, stable collocations such as “clean data”, “clean code”, and “clean traffic” emerge, where the concept actualizes the meaning of destructive or risky elements’ elimination. The article shows how archaic meanings (holiness, order) are transformed into metaphors of cyber hygiene and content moderation. Thus, the study concludes that, while adapting to the challenges of the digital age, the concept of “PURITY” retains its connection to the archetypal core, simultaneously becoming a key axiological benchmark that regulates safety, authenticity, and ethical interaction in the virtual environment.

The article introduces the concept of an emergent text, which refers to a set of interconnected elementary texts that are presented on a single page or a series of adjacent pages. These texts form the basis for the expression of media discourse. For readers, the emergent text functions as an initial context that allows individual texts to be isolated. Formally, the coherence of an emergent text is established through the proximity of its constituent parts. Meaningfully, each part contributes to the overall context of the text and the understanding of other parts. From a communicative perspective, editorial boards play a role in determining the composition and structure of emergent texts, as they contribute to the formation of a global topic within media discourse. This topic serves to guide the attention and behaviour of readers through the structuring of emergent texts. An emergent text should not be confused with either media discourse or hypertext. While hypertext may share some similarities with emergent texts in terms of their structure, they differ in their underlying principles and functions. Hypertext allows for greater flexibility and interactivity, while emergent texts are more focused on presenting a coherent narrative. Media discourse is a “pipeline” of texts arranged according to chronological order. Explicit links, which form the basis of hypertext, are minimal and serve as an additional layer. Personalized media discourse tends to exclude the recipient from the global Internet discourse. Emerging texts are the product of linearization and simplification, and they cannot be reduced to paratextual elements. Due to the lack of a central text, it is not possible to distinguish between autographic and allographic components in emerging texts.

Keywords: emergent text; media discourse; media text; hypertext; paratext

This article explores the phenomenon of cyclization in the lyrical poetry of the Leningrad poet Roald Mandelshtam (1932–1961), whose work, long underground, has increasingly attracted the attention of literary scholars in recent decades. The article identifies the genesis and mechanisms of cyclization in the poet’s work, specifically analyzing the minimal lyrical cycles known as “doubles”. A double is defined as two independent poems that are genetically linked, being equivalent versions of each other, and, in their unity, creating an artistic whole. This article examines key features of R. Mandelstam’s poetics, determining his cyclization strategy: a profound connection with painting (the influence of the artists from the “Arefyev society”), the active use of autoquotation as a means of establishing dialogic links between the texts, and the musicality of his lyricism, manifested at the compositional level (strophic repetition, theme variations). Based on the analysis of double poems, particularly the poem “Night of Falling Leaves”, the article demonstrates how two texts, united by a common title or motif, function as an inseparable unity, realizing the dichotomy of the mystical and physiological planes. This study suggests that for R. Mandelstam, cyclization was a conscious artistic strategy, rooted in the integrity and complexity of his creative thinking.

The article examines the professional activities of Pyotr Vasilyev, a prominent Kazan bibliographer, literary critic, and editor of the second half of the 19th century, the one who published little-known works by famous Russian writers. In particular, it focuses on the editions of Ivan Turgenev’s short story “Pegaz” (1873) and the excerpt “Village and Countryside” from Alexander Herzen’s essay “Baptized Property” (1875), which were published in Kazan. Vasilyev’s editorial work on these publications is contextualized within his broader contribution to transforming Kazan into a major center of literary life in Russia and to advancing the region’s book and periodical publishing. This includes his role in launching the journal “Kazanskoe Knizhnoe Delo” (“Kazan Book Business”) and in publishing “The Kazan Calendar”, which featured a strong literary section. The article also raises the issue of preserving the historical and cultural memory of Pyotr Vasilyev, systematizing and promoting his literary, critical, and publishing legacy.

“Blood Meridian” by Cormac McCarthy demythologizes the national myth of the American frontier by revisiting the events of the mid-nineteenth century. This historical distance defines the scope of the study and allows the text to be read as a meditation on later collective traumas in U.S. history. The article approaches “Blood Meridian” in light of the transformations of American historical memory of the Vietnam War as reflected in the novel. The study seeks to relate the novel’s demythologization of the frontier experience to the crisis of national identity triggered by the war and to the subsequent reinterpretation of that experience in the discursive strategies of Ronald Reagan. Methodologically, the analysis draws on trauma theory, which makes it possible to view the frontier not as a completed phase of expansion but as a recurring matrix for the legitimation of violence. The analysis shows that in “Blood Meridian” the image of the frontier emerges as a source of collective trauma embedded within the national myth. The novel establishes a historical continuum between the violence of frontier expansion and the experience of the Vietnam War, highlighting the persistence of moral inversion, the dehumanization of the enemy, and the messianic legitimation of aggression. McCarthy’s text thus challenges the notion of American moral exceptionalism and reveals the traumatic dimension of the frontier image within the structure of national self-consciousness.

The article explores the history of the maktub genre development in the works by Tatar poets Radif Gatash (Radif Kashfulovich Gataullin) and Chulpan Zarif (Chulpan Zaripova-Chetin). The creative dialogue between them has been ongoing for three decades. The study is based on the manuscript collections of poems written by the poets in 1990-1995, the best of which have been published. The aim of the study is to explore the unique features of the poetic messages at the initial stage of the dialogue. The article proves that R. Gatash’s maktubs represent a reconstruction of the genre archetype. By reviving the objective “memory” of the genre at a new stage of the historical and cultural development, these poets have made a huge contribution to the enrichment of this genre in Tatar poetry. Ch. Zarif refers to this genre less often than her mentor. The poets adhere to the canons of Eastern poetry: Their addressee is the beloved one, the text contains the poet’s plea for love, complaints about the coldness on the part of the chosen one, etc. In a number of R. Gatash’s poems, the epigraph (unison, reminiscence) performs a dialogical function. At times, a two-voiced dialogue turns into a single-voiced one where the monologue is structured under the sign of drama.

There are many factors that influence the way readers perceive classic literature, which accounts for the importance of reading classics from the perspective of contemporary cultural concepts. In this article, we analyze Nikolai Gogol’s short story “The Overcoat” and examine the multi-level organization of the text and its layers of meaning from the perspective of a modern reader who is accustomed to a worldview that emphasizes personal responsibility for one’s interactions with the world and their own destiny. At the same time, the idea of the existence of the unconscious, various methods of psychological defense, etc., have become widespread in the mass consciousness being part of the cultural code. In other words, the new context has a significant impact on the reader’s perception of a classic work, which determines the novelty and relevance of the research. As a result of our research, we found that the narrative in Gogol’s work is organized at two levels: the external and the internal. It is easier for a modern reader to reach the internal level than it was for the writer’s contemporaries. We traced the contrast between the reader’s perception of the external events, described in the story (the image of the main character is distinguished by absolute archetypal coherence, it is difficult not to “recognize” a holy righteous man with a bitter fate in Bashmachkin and not to feel pity for this character), and reflection: gradually the reader would discover a number of contradictions in the story of Akaki Akakievich and, solving the author’s riddle, would move from the story of a little man in the best literary traditions (including the traditions of ancient Russian literature, depicting similar images in the genre of hagiography) to a metaphysical and philosophical level.

This article examines Jonathan Coe’s novel “Middle England” (2018) as a significant phenomenon within Brexlit (Brexit literature). The analysis focuses on Chapter 15, which stands in deliberate contrast to the remainder of the novel. This retrospective episode, centered on the televised broadcast of the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony, portrays the final “happy spectacle” of national unity. Drawing on Benedict Anderson’s concept of the “imagined community”, the study analyzes how Danny Boyle’s directorial vision constructs a narrative of national identity grounded in ideals of progress and collective solidarity, while acknowledging diverse social and cultural identities. The article discusses the historicalcultural context, Coe’s preoccupation with media power, and the shared artistic strategies of Boyle and Coe (montage, counterpoint, allusiveness, immersive effects, multi-perspectival narration, and panoramic scope) as expressions of Christopher Hill’s notion of “radical patriotism”. A comparative analysis of Coe’s literary technique with Boyle’s television show and W. P. Frith’s Victorian genre painting reveals the “mirror of society” effect. The research contributes to scholarly debates on the construction of collective identity and highlights Coe’s self-reflexive stance as an author. Ultimately, “Middle England” operates as a satirical “state-of-the-nation” novel that rejects both the traditional Victorian resolution of class conflict and the seductive media illusion of national unity, offering instead a bitterly realistic depiction of the collapse of Britain’s social institutions and the very ideal of national identity.

The article examines the image of the earliest inhabitants of the British Isles in British Gothic short fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The study analyzes the works by Grant Allen, John Buchan, Edward Frederic Benson, Arthur Machen and other authors, in which Picts, Druids, and other archaic figures become embodiments of a sinister antiquity and a hostile prehistoric past. The article employs historical-literary, comparative, and cultural approaches that make it possible to trace the relationship between the Gothic literary tradition and the intellectual context of the Victorian period. The analysis demonstrates that literary representations of ancient Britons were closely connected with nineteenth-century scientific and pseudo-scientific ideas, including anthropological, racial, ethnographic, and evolutionary theories. Particular attention is paid to the interaction between Gothic genre conventions and contemporary archaeological and historical concepts, as well as to the influence of Victorian anthropology on the formation of the image of the archaic “Other”. The paper argues that the ancient inhabitants of Britain function in these texts not only as sources of supernatural horror, but also as reflections of cultural anxieties concerning degeneration, atavism, primitivism, and the figure of the “savage.” The article concludes that this motif gradually lost its significance as scholarly perceptions of the Picts and other early peoples of Britain changed in the twentieth century.

The article reconstructs the biography of the Russian philologist and translator Pyotr Polyakov based on the study of archival sources from the State Archives of the Republic of Tatarstan and the National Museum of the Republic of Tatarstan. The study clarifies the date and place of his birth, systematizes information about his social background, and provides information about his marital status. The surviving documents from his school years provide insight into the character traits of the future scholar. The article consistently proves that P. Polyakov’s interest in the East was formed under the influence of N. Katanov during his years of study at the History and Philology Department of Kazan Imperial University. P. Polyakov was a full member of the Society of Archaeology, History, and Ethnography of Kazan Imperial University. The scientist gained fame as a talented translator, comparatist philologist, and folklorist. P. Polyakov’s research works are still relevant today.

The paper examines the transformation of the concept of the Great American Novel in American literature of the second half of the 20th century in the context of the “death of the novel” and the development of a literary nonfiction tradition. The Great American Novel is examined as a national mythologeme whose meaning has been continuously redefined throughout the history of American literature. We trace the cultural and historical conditions that contributed to the re-evaluation of this concept, and focus on the distinctive character of “the turbulent 1960s”. Particular attention is paid to the tendency to desacralize the idea of a national epic under the conditions of the absurdity and fragmentation of American reality in the 1960s and 1970s. Within this framework, New Journalism is conceptualized as a literary and cultural phenomenon that introduced alternative strategies for representing social reality. The synthesis of a documentary foundation and literary modes of narration enabled New Journalists to overcome the constraints of the conventional novel and to formulate a new model of a national narrative capable of articulating the fragmented and heterogeneous experience of postwar American society. The article concludes that during this period the New Journalists’ experiments with literary nonfiction forms made it possible to create large-scale narratives representing the collective national experience of the United States and to develop new literary strategies for depicting the complex social and cultural reality of postwar America.

This article analyzes the image of Samara and its “Samara” meanings in V. Aksyonov’s novel “The New Sweet Style”. Having visited Samara numerous times in the 1990s and 2000s, the writer was well versed in the city’s history and geography and was able to reflect this knowledge in the novel’s chapter entitled “Samara”, creating the image of a century-old Samara resident who has not only survived two different political systems (she was born in the Russian Empire and lived for a long time in the Soviet Union), but has also retained a relative independence and a sense of humor. The article consistently analyzes the temporal, spatial, and semantic components of this image. Specifically, it demonstrates that the heroine of the “Samara” chapter experiences time in two parts: On the external side of her “self”, she goes with the flow and is part of the temporal flow of her era, but on the other – inner – side of this “self”, she finds a position where she exists outside of time, unrelated to it. The heroine of the “Samara” chapter is similarly structured: She finds herself between her temporary home and the eternal Volga, on a “balcony” that serves as an intermediate place between the fleetingness of time and the leisurely pace of eternity. Finally, it is shown that the “semantic geometry” of the image includes such components as smoking French cigarettes, a passion for aromatic tea, and reading dictionaries and encyclopedias, which together allow the heroine to gain autonomy in relation to the era and find a position close to that of God. In conclusion, we state that V. Aksyonov’s image of the “old woman who outlived time” proved popular in literature of the 2000s and 2010s.

The paper analyses the play of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century English author A. Cherry “Peter the Great, or The Wooden Walls” (1807) in connection with the “Petrine text” of the national drama and in the aspect of the Petrine myth’s We define the constant features of the image of Peter the Great, common for the works of J. Cradock, J. O’Keeffe, and A. Cherry, in relation to the hetero-image of Russia. The analysis reveals the peculiarities of Peter’s characterization in Cherry’s operatic drama, determined by the author’s genre strategies combining elements of comedy, farce, and historical drama. The mixed drama provides a complex representation of the image of Peter the Great. The playwright displays private and public aspects in the protagonist’s character and presents him as a patriot, enlightener and the unifier of the country, the father of the nation, and, at the same time, as a common laborer and a devoted friend. Idealization of Peter I is also conveyed through the portrayal of his love for Catherine, which is determined by his equalitarian concept of love springing from the moral feeling. We highlight the role of the images of nature in the empathic representation of the images of Peter I and Russia, as well as the generalized image of Russian people, generous, patriotic and skilful, which, undoubtedly, runs counter to the traditional reception of Russia in the West in the eighteenth century. In connection with it, it is important to mark the idyllic mood of the play glorifying the czar who leads the country on the road of progress. A. Cherry, as well as his colleagues, contributed to transmitting the Petrine myth, a reduced and simplified image that excluded Peter’s contradictions and the tragic consequences of his reforms. In general, the drama “Peter the Great, or The Wooden Walls” aided valorization of the image of Russia in the artistic consciousness of England.

The article examines the nature and forms of mythologization and demythologization of history in G. Yakhina’s novel “Eisen” (2025). The purpose of the study is to show how these two opposing strategies interact and determine the uniqueness of the novel’s artistic structure. The article concludes that Yakhina’s novel is based on the principle of dual optics. On the one hand, the writer consistently reconstructs various mythological scenarios that underlie the director’s films: heroic, “cultural”, utopian “light”, and national myths, culminating in the universal myth of Power. On the other hand, the genrecompositional and narrative structure of the novel is focused on demythologization of reality. As a result, the novel’s architecture is based on a constant contrasting shift between genre-stylistic registers and the montage of diverse elements. The article argues that the Soviet historical myth becomes the primary object of demythologization in the novel. Using Eisenstein’s techniques of montage, Yakhina brings back to the reader’s field of vision the things that remains outside of the film myths, raises the question of the ethical price and historical limitations of myth-making, shows the main character as both the creator of the Soviet historical myth and its prisoner, and traces the growing internal conflict between Eisen and the state mythology.

Guillaume Mousseau’s 2017 literary work, “Apartment in Paris”, presented in this study, belongs to the era of a new artistic paradigm – metamodernism. The key element of the novel, in terms of its plotforming function, is the myth of the Erl-king, the history of whose origin is explored in detail in this study. Furthermore, we examine the characteristics of a metamodernist work (which do not exclude the aesthetic principles of postmodernism) and demonstrate that, in reconstructing the ancient legend, the French writer relies on symbolic imagery, universal mythologemes, and archetypes, while simultaneously adhering to the concept of “new sincerity”, whose characteristics – neo-romanticism and the presence of affect – imply the complexity and depth of perception. We argue that Mousseau creates his own aesthetic and mythological system, within which he allows his characters to find identity and comprehend metaphysical meaning. Thus, the article analyzes the mythopoetics of Mousseau’s novel, which is distinctive yet remaining within the detective genre. The article concludes that “Apartment in Paris” exemplifies how flexible the new mythology is and how the author reinterprets it in a contemporary context.

The entry of Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Chekhov into world literature, their influence on writers of different countries, international fate of their heritage remains a relevant problem of both domestic and foreign literary studies. The article addresses the problem of creative selectivity of those receiving the literary phenomenon. We analyze the article by the English writer George Moore “Turgenev and Tolstoy in the Light of the Theory of ‘Opposing Currents’”, showing reminiscences from the novels of Turgenev and Tolstoy in “Esther Waters” by George Moore, and raise the question of naturalism and its fruitful adoption based on George Moore’s artistic heritage. The article presents Leo Tolstoy’s assessment of the English naturalist writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is argued that the purpose of a comparative literature study is to establish the genetic and typological essence of the literary process. The study of George Moore’s works in domestic literary studies is continued. George Moore makes a polemical assessment of Tolstoy’s treatise “What Is Art?” But instead of Tolstoy’s concept of art that infects good feelings, George Moore insists that art should primarily infect ideas. Moore agrees that Tolstoy’s work is distinguished by its scale, comparing him to Hugo and considering that both authors make a person stand in the face of history. However, Moore is not satisfied with the contrasting tones of white and black in Tolstoy’s palette, no semitones. He compares Tolstoy’s scenes from the life of secular society with those of minor Dutch artists. The article emphasizes Moore’s special admiration with Turgenev’s amazing skill, grace, and subtlety of execution. We note that English writers of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Moore, sent their books to Tolstoy, but he did not find philosophical depth in them, despite their artistic skill.

The article presents the experience of studying images of cold and snow in Ugra literature in a mythopoetic aspect. The theoretical basis is the concept of the “Yugorsky text”, first introduced in 2019 by D. Larkovich, understood as an integral semiotic space, in which the basic mythologems and value oppositions of traditional culture are realized. Based on the works of Ugra authors (E. Aypin, Yu. Shestalov, Yu. Vella, M. Vagatova et al.), the study reveals the ambivalent semantics of the images of cold and snow, dating back to cosmogonic myths and undergoing a transformation in the literature of the 20th century. We show that snow, unlike cold, retains a predominantly positive connotation, acting as a marker of the sacred space of the taiga. Special attention is paid to the cold heat opposition as a metaphor for life and death. Often, the image of cold in the Yugorsky text is embodied in the images of characters, indicating spiritual emptiness and alienation. The article analyzes the novel by E. Aypin “Waiting for the First Snow” and its central paradox, which is included in the title: Why snow is looked forward to, despite the fact that it semantically contains a negative connotation of cold in traditional culture.

The article examines the concept of “Englishness” as reflected by the Russian poet and journalist of the early 19^th century V. Kozlov in his essays, which were published in the military newspaper “Russky Invalid” in 1816–1817. The article provides a brief description of the English national character, highlighting such qualities as practicality, law-abiding behavior, and tolerance towards others. We explore the origins of Kozlov’s interest in English literature and culture, citing the opinions of Russian literary scholars regarding Kozlov’s contribution to the study of English literature in Russia. For Kozlov, England is a country of freedom and tolerance, although he criticizes the attitude of English Protestants toward Catholics. According to Kozlov, the English possess special talents in the fields of natural sciences and mechanics; they are inclined toward philosophy and philological sciences. Kozlov holds a high opinion of the English people’s achievements in pedagogy, especially those attained by English women. In English fiction, he highlights works in the genre of the novel written by women. Kozlov also discusses the image of Robinson Crusoe as a typical Englishman. The article concludes that England and the English are depicted positively in Kozlov’s articles, although certain shortcomings, such as religious prejudices and drunkenness, are also mentioned.

Based on the material of modern drama in recent years, the article examines the author’s main strategies for working with the Pushkin myth, proving that playwrights use mythologems, images of cultural heroes, and plot situations from the early 19th-century works of the classic as if they were a material containing a code that everyone could understand. Because of this, we note that the authors, not so much update the myth of the poet, as use what already exists and is fixed in the mass consciousness, tending to create an image of a modern person in a situation of self-search. The main mechanism of this search is a dialogue with the other – the poet himself or his characters. The dialogue becomes possible thanks to the authorial strategies of “matching” or “substitution”. As an alternative to Pushkin’s images and the image of the poet himself, a virtual assistant appears in the plays as an achievement of digital civilization. But the modern play shows that a true dialogue and an effective search for answers to questions about oneself are possible only through communication with a real person. Pushkin and his characters, even for the mass consciousness, in which images are often decanonized, are carriers of personal positions that do not become obsolete in modern times as indicated by advertising discourse.

This study examines and interprets the myth about twins as a primary means of organizing the text’s meaning and composition in “Cutting for Stone” (2008) by American writer A. Verghese. The novel is a complex epic narrative that intertwines several key themes to create a complex and profound picture of human existence. This article focuses on the theme of twinship, specifically the story of Marion and Shiva. Based on this analysis, the study determines the extent to which Verghese utilizes mythological motifs. The novel describes the similarities and differences between the twin brothers, explores the nature of their interactions, and identifies the characters’ connections to key aspects of the myth. The novel embodies traditional mythological elements such as dubious parentage, the sacrificial death of one of the twins, the motif of patricide, and rivalry. Verghese imbues the mythological paradigm with contemporary meanings: the motif of “dissection,” the trauma of separation, the search for identity, and the opposition of “us” and “them.” The sacrificial death of one of the twins in the novel’s concluding part leads to a symbolic reunion of the brothers, actualizing the sacred aspect of the myth about twins. Thus, the twin myth in the novel allows for a philosophical understanding of the crisis of both man and the world.

The article is dedicated to the centenary of the Hungarian Russianist Mihály Varga (1926–1997) who made a significant contribution to the study and promotion of Soviet-era Russian literature abroad. Based on archival sources, the article identifies key milestones in the Hungarian literary scholar’s biography. The article systematizes information about M. Varga’s scientific interests and highlights his key literary and methodological works. The Hungarian literary critic’s attention was focused on the period of the 1920s and 1930s. After defending his Ph.D. thesis on the genesis of the socialist realism method, M. Varga devoted his life to returning the literary heritage of this period to the reader. In the 1960s, the literary critic initiated the publication of a series of anthologies on key texts of Soviet literature and criticism. The literary critic focused on poetry, short fiction, and drama. The fate of the two-volume collection of criticism from the 1920s and 1930s was dramatic. The second volume, dedicated to writers’ groups, compiled jointly with bibliographer V. B. Kudryavtsev, remained unpublished. M. Varga carried out his work in close collaboration with academician D. S. Likhachev. In the 1980s, M. Varga initiated the development of a program to teach the history of Russian culture to a foreign-speaking audience. The circle of reviewers of this program allows us to outline the geography of the literary critic’s business contacts. The article proves that the body of educational and methodological literature for Russian as a Foreign Language, developed by M. Varga, is still relevant today.

This paper addresses Don Nigro’s two Chekhovian plays – “Our Home and Garden at the Turn of the Century… (A Russian Play)” (2004) and “Emotion Memory” (2008) – as a metareflective dialogue that demonstrates the core concerns of his entire “Russian Cycle”. Based on the playwright’s own metaphor of the “mirror labyrinth”, the analysis demonstrates how Nigro transforms Chekhov’s subtextual poetics into explicit theatrical imagery. Special attention is paid to Nigro’s inversion of Stanislavsky’s “emotional memory”: Whereas Stanislavsky required actors to draw on their own life experience, Nigro’s Chekhov uses the life of another as raw material for art. This inversion raises the ethical question of artistic appropriation, which Nigro qualifies as a “chain of betrayals” – each act of creation simultaneously reflects and distorts its source. The essay argues that Nigro’s dialogue with Chekhov is neither imitation nor parody in the traditional sense, but para-ode (“a song sung alongside”). The article concludes that in these plays Nigro offers a productive model of intercultural artistic dialogue showing how meaning arises precisely from the interaction between cultures.

This article examines the implementation of multicultural education in the work of teachers in Russia’s multinational society.

Based on a review of the scientific literature, the article identifies key trends in the development of this process in schools: from strengthening the ethnocultural component to creating an educational space aimed at fostering a unified civic identity.

The study notes that in the Republic of Tatarstan, multicultural education is implemented in both multilingual and non-multilingual comprehensive schools. Based on a survey of teachers in non-multilingual schools in Kazan and the districts of the Republic of Tatarstan, the article identifies barriers to implementing the multicultural component in their work, namely, the fragmentation of multicultural knowledge, the sporadic inclusion of multicultural content in the educational process, and insufficient mastery of methodological and diagnostic skills.

The article substantiates the need for targeted professional training for multicultural work at the university level and offers recommendations for improving the content of university courses to overcome the identified difficulties and prepare future teachers for systematic multicultural work.

The study was carried out based on the following methods: an analysis of theoretical sources, questionnaires, quantitative and qualitative analyses of the data obtained.

The article presents the methodological development of a lesson for Chinese undergraduates (B2 level and above). The aim of the lesson is to teach students how to search for expressive means in the works of Russian poets of the 19th and 20th centuries, which anticipates further work related to the literary analysis of the poems. Expressive means are considered to be not so much speech techniques (linguistic phenomena), as artistic techniques (epithet, comparison, hyperbole, litote) in literary criticism. The relevance of the work is determined by the need to find effective ways to develop international undergraduates’ skills of interpreting a literary text and their reading culture in the process of studying Russian literature. The scientific novelty of the article is its detailed description of a practice-oriented model of working with Russian poetic text expressive means in a Chinese audience: An integrated approach is proposed, including not only the identification of expressive means, but also the use of explanatory dictionaries, the analysis of semantic shades of words, the comparison of Russian and Chinese cultural associations, as well as the use of knowledge from related fields – geography, biology, and cultural history. This approach helps students to gain a deeper understanding of the literary text and improve their linguistic and cultural competence.

The article presents the results of a study investigating the potential of socio-perceptual games as a means of developing the personal-intellectual potential of primary school students in the process of learning English. We focus on the use of this tool, which is aimed not only at the formation of language skills, but also at the personal development of learners. A contradiction is highlighted between the personal development goal declared in the Federal State Educational Standard for Primary General Education (FGOS NOO) and the insufficient development of pedagogical technologies that integrate this objective into the process of foreign language education, particularly regarding the development of the structural components of communicative abilities. The purpose of the study is to provide a theoretical foundation and experimental verification of the effectiveness of socio-perceptual games intended for developing the personal-intellectual potential of primary school students in the English language classroom. To achieve this aim, a set of methods was used, including a theoretical analysis of psychological and pedagogical literature, as well as empirical diagnostic methods (questionnaires and A. Mehrabian’s Affiliation Motivation Test). An experimental study was conducted with the participation of 30 students. The diagnostic stage of the experiment revealed an average development level of the cognitive component of communicative abilities and an imbalance in the motivational sphere, with a dominance of the fear of rejection. Based on the data obtained, a set of socio-perceptual games was developed and theoretically substantiated. These games are aimed at the integrated development of the cognitive, motivational, emotional, self-assessment, and communicative-activity components of the personal-intellectual potential through the acquisition of English vocabulary and grammar. The results of the study prove that the English language classroom possesses significant pedagogical potential for the holistic development of a primary school student’s personality. The use of socio-perceptual games transforms the educational process into a personality-developing environment where language acquisition occurs in parallel with the formation of key communicative abilities.

The article highlights the methodological views of Prof. K. Zakiryanov, Doctor of Pedagogy, on teaching native and Russian languages in the context of modern linguo-methodology. The study of scholars’ scientific legacy allows us to summarize invaluable experience and outline the potential for developing methodology in the coming decades. Prof. K. Zakiryanov’s linguistic and methodological concept of teaching native and Russian languages includes the following issues: interdisciplinary integration of teaching native and Russian languages at school; the focus on the specifics of working with bilingual students and undergraduates; implementation of the linguistic and cultural approach; challenges with interference and intercalation as negative phenomena reducing the quality of bilinguals’ speech, etc. The scholar’s scientific views are relevant today due to the active development of bilingual and multilingual education models in Russian regions.