Striuk N. Inscriptions on Clothing in English and Ukrainian Linguocultural Environment: Structure and Semantics

This thesis focuses on comparative study of inscriptions on clothing in English and Ukrainian linguocultures. The relevance of the study is determined by the necessity of thorough linguistic study of inscriptions on clothing and the need for the comprehensive analysis of such linguistic phenomenon. The scientific novelty of the research is predetermined by the fact that it is the first attempt to argumentatively define the status of the phenomenon under study and conduct a comprehensive comparative analysis of the structure and semantics of clothing inscriptions in English and Ukrainian linguocultures. The inscription on clothing is defined as a new genre of presentational discourse, which is realised in a specific text of minimal size – a microtext and is aimed at the fulfillment of the personality’s need for self­presentation. The study outlines the structural peculiarities of inscriptions on clothing in English and Ukrainian linguocultural environment. It proves that text prints on clothing are structurally characterized by multimodality, which is transmitted through three information channels, the main of which is verbal, while visual and prosodic ones serve as auxiliary means of structural organization in the analysed microtexts. It was determined that on the verbal level, inscriptions on clothing in English and Ukrainian linguocultures are structurally represented by units of different levels (word forms, word combinations, sentences, and complex syntactic entities), which are isomorphic for both languages under analysis. The highest productivity is demonstrated by microtexts which have a sentence structure, units represented by word combinations are less numerous, while microtexts expressed by word forms and complex syntactic entities are characterized by the lowest productivity. It was established that at the non­verbal level of clothing inscriptions structural organization, the preference is given to phonetic­rhythmic elements, the most productive of which are alliteration in English microtexts and assonance in Ukrainian prints. Polycoding in text prints on clothing is most often displayed in the use of numbers instead of numerals by representatives of both linguocultures. The conducted analysis proved that the inscriptions on clothing have isomorphic and allomorphic features, moreover, isomorphic structural models and auxiliary means of structural organization prevail. This allows to assert that common structural characteristics form the features of the presentation discourse genre and contribute to the realization of the personality’s need for self­presentation, embodied in high productivity of short, highly informative inscriptions as well as a large number of texts which attract the recipient’s attention to the first person singular – the wearer of the clothing; making mistakes and using polycode elements; the use of phonetic and rhythmic means which contribute to the memorization of the inscription, its expressiveness and ease of perception.