SEMANTIC INTERPRETATION OF AUTHORIAL MODALITY AS A COGNITIVE-DISCURSIVE CATEGORY (Case study of Shakespeare’s plays and their Ukrainian retranslations)
The article focuses on the issue of authorial modality as a cognitive-discursive category as addressed in semantics of lexical units, in particular, connotatively loaded ones, which are realised in the texts of time- remote Shakespeare’s plays and their chronologically distant Ukrainian retranslat...
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| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | deu |
| Published: |
Alfred Nobel University
2025-06-01
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| Series: | Alfred Nobel University Journal of Philology |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://phil.duan.edu.ua/images/PDF/2025/1/20.pdf |
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| Summary: | The article focuses on the issue of authorial modality as a cognitive-discursive category as addressed
in semantics of lexical units, in particular, connotatively loaded ones, which are realised in the texts of time-
remote Shakespeare’s plays and their chronologically distant Ukrainian retranslations of the 19th–21st cen-
turies. The objective of the research is the study and semantic interpretation of authorial modality as a cog-
nitive-discursive category, which is carried out by identifying the semantic contents and determining the
scope of information of the entropic connotatively loaded lexical units that embody authorial modality in
time-remote Shakespeare’s plays and chronologically distant Ukrainian retranslations of the 19th–21st cen-
turies.
The research material is taken from two tragedies by William Shakespeare, namely, “Romeo and Ju-
liet” (1594), and “King Lear” (1608), which serve as samples of Early Modern English at the turn of the 16th
and 17th centuries, and their chronologically distant Ukrainian retranslations of the 19th–21st centuries. The
units of analysis are connotatively loaded lexical units in Shakespeare’s plays and their counterparts in
Ukrainian retranslations.
The research methodology incorporates empirical methods, such as analysis and synthesis to estab-
lish the theoretical framework, and also specialized linguistic methods, such as descriptive, semantic, and
stylistic analysis, is used to identify the scope of information conveyed by the connotatively loaded lex-
ical units in both the source texts and their Ukrainian retranslations. Finally, to compare lexical units in
the source texts and retranslations, methods of comparative translation and transformational analysis are
used, which allows identifying changes in the scope of information due to the authorial modality of differ-
ent authors, which distinguishes various Ukrainian retranslations at different chronological periods.
The article argues that the study of modality as one of an individual’s cognitive faculties in linguistic
theories of semantic interpretation is based on the complex mental-speech essence of the category of mo-
dality, which is manifested in the ratio of objective and subjective reality reflected in the human mind, to-
gether with various means of its expression. The authorial modality is considered a cognitive-discursive cat-
egory since it reflects the author’s subjective perception of reality embodied in a literary work under the in-
fluence of his / her linguistic, cultural, and national values, personal language usage, and individual psycho-
logical and aesthetic preferences. The subjectivity of authorial modality in Shakespeare’s plays and their
Ukrainian retranslations affects the way Shakespeare conveys his message (information) in the semantics of connotatively loaded lexical units, which are highly entropic, and the way Ukrainian authors interpret
them. The creative personalities of translators play a key role in overcoming the information entropy of
connotatively loaded lexical units when working with time-remote Shakespeare’s plays. The authorial mo-
dality of Shakespeare’s plays and their chronologically distant Ukrainian retranslations of the 19th–21st cen-
turies is manifested in different scope of information presented by Shakespeare and Ukrainian translators.
Each translator realises his / her own authorial modality as a reflection of the model of reality and its sub-
jective evaluation under the influence of highly entropic connotatively loaded lexical units. |
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| ISSN: | 3041-217X 3041-2188 |