Savina Y. Cognitive Nature of the Comic and its Verbal Realization in J. K. Jerome and O. Henry's Short Stories

The thesis investigates the cognitive nature of the comic and verbal means of its creation in fiction of J. K. Jerome and O. Henry's short stories by applying multiparadigmatic approach to study the phenomenon of the comic in British and American writers' fiction. The phenomenon of the comic, verbalized in J. K. Jerome and O. Henry's short stories, is characterized by a complex cognitive nature, conditioned by a complex interaction of many factors: extralingual, genre, textal, verbal and cognitive. Linguo-cultural difference of the British and American writers greatly affects the verbalization of the comic in the works studied. Linguo-cultural specificity of the phenomenon of the comic is revealed on the verbal level in a significant prevalence in J. K. Jerome's short stories, compared with those of O. Henry's, lexico-semantic tropes that convey intelligence of British humor, as well as the prevalence in O. Henry's short stories, in comparison with those of J. K. Jerome's, figures of expressive syntax that express the openness of American humour. Cultural colouring of the phenomenon of the comic is manifested on the cognitive level in various types of incongruence as the cognitive mechanism of the comic creation in both writers' short stories, as well as the prevalence of logical and conceptual incongruence in J. K. Jerome's short stories, while a leading source of the comic in O. Henry's short stories is evaluative incongruence; ontological incongruence appears a less effective cognitive mechanism of the comic creation in both writers' short stories. Key words: the comic, verbal means, cognitive nature, cognitive basis, cognitive tool, cognitive mechanism, Linguistic and Cognitive analysis, cognitive mapping, cognitive process, mental space, conceptual blend, modeling, incongruence.