The thesis offers a new theoretical and methodological approach to the studying of the verbalization of Turkey’s image in the ethnic consciousness of modern bilingual authors. The methodological basis was developed for analyzing the image in terms of individual’s ethnicity in the Russian and English languages. The procedure includes the analysis of the language units which contribute to the creation of the image of other culture and correlate with the traditional model of language personality (Yu. Karaulov).
The study proves the relevance of the linguoimagological approach to the analysis of the image of “other” country in the ethnic consciousness of the individual as a variant of traditional perception formed in his native culture.
There was classified the definition of the image of the country, as the subjective reflection of the author’s ideas of a country and its culture, expressed by different linguistic means, accompanied by author’s assessment and having an emotional effect on the addressee.
The authors of the works selected for analysis are immersed in Turkish culture, preserving their ethnic features: Elchin Safarli is a representative of Russian linguoculture and Lisa Morrow is a representative of English linguoculture from Australia, an expat.
The choice of the image of Turkey as the object of study is due to its rich culture, the presence of historical and political contacts with both European and Eastern states, as well as because of the geographical position that makes it a connecting point between cultures of the West and the East.
The image of Turkey was studied by analyzing metaphorical images, culturally biased lexical units (non-equivalent words, precedent phenomena, geographical names), syntactic, stylistic and spelling features involved in constructing the image of the country. The similarities and differences of the image in the consciousness of native speakers of Russian and English were characterized.
There were reconstructed 12 common and individual metaphorical paradigms reflecting the reality in the minds of representatives of English and Russian linguocultures. The dominant groups of referents – MAN and NATURE – were identified and their quantitative indicators were calculated; the complete absence or insignificance of metaphorization of concepts from one of the following conceptual fields in one of the languages was recorded: ‘man as a spiritual being’ (Rus. 72 / Eng. 8), ‘nature’ (Rus. 97 / Eng. 5), and there was discovered the difference in the number of concepts performing the function of referents from the fields: ‘artistic creation’ (Rus. 14 / Eng. 0), ‘military action’ (Rus. 0 / Eng. 7). 7 dominant thematic groups of non-equivalent vocabulary were defined: ‘religion’, ‘public places’, ‘food and drink’, ‘everyday life’, ‘titles’, ‘clothing’ and ‘names of natural phenomena’. There are 4 main ways of semantization of this group of vocabulary: descriptive paraphrase, vocabulary translation, occasional correspondences and hyperonymic renaming. A group of exotic words, which were borrowed by the Russian (21) and the English (18) languages, due to the lack of their semantization in the text of the novels was revealed.
5 groups of precedent phenomena were identified according to the source of their origin: precedent artifacts, precedent symbols, precedent names, precedent rituals / customs and precedent statements. The percentage of national-precedent, socio-precedent, and universal-precedent phenomena (D. B. Gudkov, V. V. Krasnykh, Yu. E. Prokhorov) in each novel was calculated. Within the group of national precedent phenomena, the proportion of units from the author’s native culture was distinguished.
The types of comments used to characterize geographical objects involve the following information: the type of object, the geographical location, the description of the atmosphere, the natural conditions, the population, the author’s or character’s personal impression, historical references and comparison with another object.
There were identified two foreground geographical names with a special status – Istanbul and Bosphorus. The meaning of the word ‘Istanbul’ during the unfolding of the plots of novels is enriched with new semas: ‘water object’, ‘heart of the country’, ‘cradle of history’, ‘home’, ‘Mecca’ , ‘big village’, ‘living creature’, ‘man’, ‘brother’ and ’shelter’; the components of the meaning acquired by the word ‘Bosphorus’ are: ‘brother’, ‘man’, ‘young man’, ‘child’ and ‘demarcation line’.
