Методика преподавания языка | Филологический аспект: Методика преподавания языка и литературы Методика преподавания языка и литературы №02 (25) Март 2024 - Апрель 2024

Решение некоторых проблем в процессе анализа публицистических текстов для студентов специальности «Перевод и переводоведение»

Деревянко Алина Александровна
старший преподаватель кафедры, «Теория и практика перевода и Зарубежная филология», Севастопольский государственный университет, РФ, г. Севастополь, dalixa90@yandex.ru

Аннотация: В данной статье рассматриваются проблемы составления корректного анализа публицистических текстов для студентов третьего и четвёртого курсов специальности «Перевод и переводоведение». В основе предлагаемого варианта анализа лежит когнитивно-дискурсивный подход, позволяющий рассматривать текст с позиции индивидуального авторского сознания и его интерпретации действительности. Автор обобщает практический опыт составления анализов публицистических текстов, приводит пример составления подобного анализа по выработанному в процессе обучения плану.
Ключевые слова: публицистический текст, дискурсивный анализ, структура текста, информативность текста, импликация, авторская стратегия.

Derevyanko Alina Alexandrovna
senior lecturer at the Department of Theory and Practice of Translation and Foreign Philology, Sevastopol State University, Russia, Sevastopol

Abstract: The given article highlights the problems of compiling a correct analysis of publicistic texts for third and fourth year students of the specialty “Translation and Translation Studies”. The proposed version of the analysis is based on a cognitive-discursive approach, which allows us to consider the text from the position of the author’s individual consciousness and interpretation of reality. The author summarizes practical experience in elaborating analyses of publicistic texts and gives an example of this type of analysis according to a plan developed during the educational process.
Keywords: publicistic text, discourse analysis, text structure, text informativity, implication, author's strategy.

The fundamental goal of analyzing a publicistic text is a deeper understanding of the essence of the author’s point of view and the discovery of covert meanings that determine both the implicative components of the text and its pragmatics. In our opinion, this approach is capable of providing not only full-scope communication on the topic outlined in an article under consideration, but also contributes to a more efficient translation process, since a translator who is unaware of the complete range of linguistic characteristics of the text is hardly able to provide a high-quality interpretation of the text material; some of the meanings may remain undisclosed for him.

In the process of teaching students of the specialty “Translation and Translation Studies”, there is inevitably revealed an urgent educational task, i.e. one that deals with training contemporary students to analyze publicistic texts on the examples of newspaper articles from English-language publications. This type refers to the cognitive model of text analyses [1, p. 30] as one of the most popular among linguistic researchers. The set of methods and techniques of the cognitive model of analysis allows us to consider it as a type of applied discourse analysis, through which the difficulties of text interpretation are minimized and the text material is decoded as accurately as possible from the perspective of its various characteristics, including structure, pragmatism, stylistic design, etc. “The use of discourse analysis in teaching a foreign language allows us to get closer to understanding the real functioning of the language, promotes concentration on the form and function of linguistic units, on the characteristics of genres, on social and cultural factors. Discourse analysis is a fundamental tool in understanding how language is used in different contexts” [2, p. 94].

The given type of analysis is utterly demanded by third- and fourth-year students during the academic courses of English language communication as in the process of analyzing an English-language text future translators need to develop not only the skill of primitively transforming the dictionary meanings of one language into the dictionary meanings of another and tracking syntactic, stylistic and other patterns, but also the skill of the comprehension of additional meanings of language units connected into a single text outline as well as the ability to decipher what is hidden between the lines. “Unlike linguistic approaches that focus only on the rules of language use, discourse analysis emphasizes the contextual meaning of language. It focuses on the social aspects of communication and the ways people use language to achieve specific effects (e.g. to build trust, to create doubt, to evoke emotions, or to manage conflict). Instead of focusing on smaller units of language, such as sounds, words or phrases, discourse analysis is used to study larger chunks of language, such as entire conversations, texts, or collections of texts. The selected sources can be analyzed on multiple levels” [5].

Here we are bound to admit the following: while analyzing a publicistic text students are inclined to speculate upon its structural contents (with the emphasis on the logical connection between the paragraphs and the search for the key sentences of the article) overlooking other more essential aspects, such as: the connotative meaning of certain words and word combinations, the semantics of lexical units, the author’s ideological bias predetermining the employment of a certain set of stylistic devices and expressive means, and so on. All that negligence or poor knowledge of the subject may deprive a prospective specialist of the flexible vision of the text material. For example, among the types of connotative meaning, emphatic meaning (as a subtype of information prominence-related meaning [4, p. 24]) represents one of the most significant aspects of precise comprehension of any text as it encompasses a wide range of stylistic devices and expressive means: rhetorical anaphora, metaphor, parallelism, semantic repetition and others [4, p. 24] the use of which may indicate the author’s implicit message (along with the emotional and psychological background: disapproval, criticism, admiration) as well as predetermine the author’s main objective or strategy (for example, to prompt readers to reconsider their views on the urgent issues of divorces or gender reassignment; to encourage readers to start investments in real estate).

 Along with numerous recommendations for compiling an analysis of newspaper articles and various examples of the compilation based on the proposed article analysis templates [3], [5], [6], [7], we have elaborated our own plan for analyzing publicistic texts for third and fourth year students of the specialty “Translation and Translation Studies” with the purpose to instill professional thoughtfulness in scrutinizing the material for translation. This plan includes the following points:

1. the highlighted issue of the article (for example, racial);
2. the structure of the text (the number of its logical parts; the semantic essence of each part of the article);
3. the informativity of the text (factual information; conceptual information);
4. the implication;
5. the pragmatics.

The logical component of the given plan allows students to gradually reveal all the obvious, less obvious and the majority of the implicit aspects of any publicistic text, which, in turn, accentuates the need to be thoughtful when dealing with language units.   

As a noteworthy example of the proposed approach, here is an analysis of the publicistic article “Living with Children: ‘Parenting’ vs. child-rearing” [9] recently evolved for fourth-year students in the process of constructive discussion in small groups (the discipline of Workshop on the Culture of Speech Communication):  

“The text under analysis belongs to the publicistic functional style, the main function of which is to influence readers’ minds in reference to the modern methods of child-nurturing and to make us look at the issue of parenting from a different angle.

The text focuses on the social and educational issues. Its genre can be identified as the critical analysis of some current tendencies in modern society.

The given article was published in the US online edition “The Citizen” in 2022 and is headlined “Living with Children: ‘Parenting’ vs. child-rearing”. Its author is a family psychologist John Rosemond.

The article under consideration is 11 paragraphs long which can be logically divided into four main parts.

In the first part which embraces the first two paragraphs the author introduces the reader to the problem of avoiding negation in the process of communicating with your child proposed by a parent coach: “… You sit down with him and rationally discuss the issues”. The author accentuates the parallel drawn between the conceptual approach to communicating with the boss and communicating with an infant and makes the predetermined conclusion of doubt whether it might be acceptable through the use of the idiomatic unit “a wild card” as an ironical designation of a little child (“someone or something whose behaviour is sometimes unexpected” [8]).

 In the second part, which comprises the next three paragraphs, we are exposed to the author’s underlying assumption that children are malleable creatures and parents should be confident in their intention to introduce the approach of resistance to their offsprings’ whims and fads. The author gives a vivid and convincing example with his three-year-old daughter who “screamed and pushed herself away from the table” unwilling to eat some broccoli.

In the third logical part, that is the next three paragraphs, the author analyzes the origin of the problem under discussion, its history throughout three American generations of parents who “unwittingly cooperated in this social engineering experiment” as a result of which “child mental health has plummeted”.

In the last passage we are exposed to the author’s constructive and practical solution to the issue of the modern upbringing methods – Vitamin N – which may enhance mental preparation of most kids “for the Real World”. The semantic meaning of the metaphor “Vitamin N” is obviously positive as it is understood as an effective remedy for nurturing a mentally wholesome person.

As far as factual information of the article is concerned, it is supported by the reference to the article of the parent coach Dr. Stacy Haynes, to his colleagues’ vision of “dispassionately done social science research” and to the episode with his daughter Amy who fell from the chair while having her meal with broccoli. All these pieces of information make for the valid argumentation and the objective assessment of the current situation in the area of child-nurturing as well as supply some practically based justification of the author’s conclusions.

As far as conceptual information of the text is concerned, it is mainly revealed through the set of words and word combinations with ironical colouring that implies the author’s disapproval of the proposed educational methods in connection with little children who are unable to distinguish the boundaries between their momentary wishes and the laws of the outer world mostly unwilling to fulfill these wishes. This type of information is marked by capitalization of some words (“the fact that a CHILD does not approve of an ADULT’S decision”; “Vitamin N”; “the Real World”; “the Law of Diminishing Returns”) which are aimed not only at accentuating some prevalent ideas of the article but also at highlighting the conflict between the illusions of childhood and the potential sources of resistance to those illusions starting from the space of parental authority and continuing to the space of adulthood with all its toughness and unpredictability.

In this context, we can trace the implication of the author’s antithesis between two concepts – parenting and childrearing: their contradictory nature is revealed in the headline itself and then gains its logical conclusion in the very last paragraph of the article where the antithesis is intensified through the opposition of another two concepts – commonsense and promises. Another example of the antithesis is more apparent as it arises from the contrast between the dictionary-fixed antonyms “up” and “down” (“As the per-capita of mental health professionals goes up, child mental health goes alarming down?”) though its use reinforces the author’s negative attitude to the representatives of the child psychology institution and leads us to the author’s logical decision about ignoring experts’ recommendations.

Moreover, the interjection “Hmmmmm” given at the end of another paragraph imparts doubt and lack of trust in mental health professionals from the author’s side: he appeals to a reasonable slant on the question of how to bring up children and to the sound portion of skepticism collected for all these years after watching the destructive work of the whole mental health community.

Coming to the end of our analysis and speculating on the pragmatics of the article we cannot help assuming that the author's initial task is to prompt the readers (mostly Americans as the target audience of the site) to reorder their priorities and to reverse the pernicious race of various mental experts who impose their unprofessional authority on parents. At the same time, the author tends to undermine public confidence in professionals, most of whom tend to follow the commonly accepted trends in their scientific area, plugging the voice of common sense and logic. This very goal of the author cannot but cause concern of those who seek to maintain a reverent attitude towards higher education and professional expertise.

As for our understanding of all that issue, we are firmly convinced that proper upbringing must include methods of restrictions; otherwise, children are under the risk of turning into so-to-say “stodgy puddings” deprived of the correct vision of life and its fundamental principles”.

 Undoubtedly, this type of analysis allows for variation in complexity depending on the level of the preparation of students and the task set by the university teacher. The presented analysis can be used as a framework for compiling other analysis options to prepare students for the translation of publicistic texts and discussing their peculiarities in a multifaceted approach.

Список литературы
1. Митина О.В., Евдокименко А.С. Методы анализа текста: методологические основания и программная реализация // Вестник ЮУрГУ. – 2010. – № 40. – С. 29-37. – URL: https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/metody-analiza-teksta-metodologicheskie-osnovaniya-i-programmnaya-realizatsiya/viewer (дата обращения: 24.04.2024).
2. Тарнаева Л.П. Дискурс-анализ в обучении переводу в сфере профессионального общения // Вестник ПНИПУ. Проблемы языкознания и педагогики. – 2019. – № 2. – С. 90-105. – URL: https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/diskurs-analiz-v-obuchenii-perevodu-v-sfere-professionalnogo-obscheniya/viewer (дата обращения: 25.04.2024).
3. Complete Guide on Article Analysis (with 1 Analysis Example) // Medium. – 2019. – URL: https://nerdify-medium-com.translate.goog/complete-guide-on-article-analysis-with-1-analysis-example-ddb2e993d3f?_x_tr_sl=en&_x_tr_tl=ru&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=sc (дата обращения: 24.04.2024).
4. Dickins James. Types of connotative meaning, and their significance for translation // University of Leeds. – 2019. – URL: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/140563/3/Chapter%207%20FINAL27.5.18.pdf (дата обращения: 24.04.2024).
5. Luo Amy. Critical Discourse Analysis. Definition, Guide & Examples // Scribbr. – 2019. – URL: https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/discourse-analysis/ (дата обращения: 25.04.2024).
6. Sriwimon Lanchukorn, Zilli Pattamawan Jimarkon. Applying Critical Discourse Analysis as a conceptual framework for investigating gender stereotypes in political media discourse // Kasetsart Journal of Social Sciences. – 2017. – P. 136-142. – URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452315117300929 (дата обращения: 23.04.2024).
7. Syarif Hidayatullah. Discourse Analysis, Its characteristics, Types, and Beyond. 2023. – URL: https://repository.uinjkt.ac.id/dspace/bitstream/123456789/73450/1/Discourse%20 Analysis%2C%20Its%20characteristics%2C%20Types%2C%20and%20Beyond.pdf (дата обращения: 25.04.2024).

Список источников
8. Cambridge Dictionary. – URL: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/wild-card (дата обращения: 23.04.2024).
9. Rosemond John. Living with Children: ‘Parenting’ vs. child-rearing // The Citizen. – 2022. – URL: https://thecitizen.com/2022/01/25/living-with-children-parenting-vs-child-rearing/ (дата обращения: 22.04.2024).