Abstract: The subject of this study is irony and its manifestation in the humorous monologues of foreign stand-up comedians. The object of this study is the speeches of American stand-up comedians. The author examines in detail such aspects as the main components of creating irony, which include the implicit expression of the author's superiority, the author's presupposition, as well as stylistic means of creating irony, such as contrast, epithets, hyperbole. Special attention is paid to such types of irony as verbal, dramatic and situational irony. Post-irony and meta-irony were also considered, as well as the specifics of their formation in comedians' jokes, which include playing with reality, intertextuality, pastiche, the concept of the author's death, the proclamation of criticism of traditional and modernist meta-narratives. The novelty of the research lies in the previously unseen analysis of stand-up performances for the presence and formation of irony, as well as the means of its creation. A special contribution of the author to the research of the topic is the opening of the corpus of texts of stand-up comedians' speeches for further analysis of the material to identify other linguistic phenomena. The topic of irony, post-irony, meta-irony was presented for the first time in this context and is available for further research. In addition to the seemingly goal of expressing ridicule and the author's superiority over the viewer, irony also reveals the positive sides of the object of jokes.

Keywords: transgression, meta-irony, author's death concept, criticism of values, intercontextuality, reality play, post-irony, author's presupposition, self-irony, irony

Abstract: As a research task, the authors attempted to analyze the history of video games and the development of the gaming industry from the point of view of the formation of a number of prerequisites for the emergence of metaverses. Study covers the period from the late 1940s to the late 2010s, that is, until the moment when the term “metaverse” became an essential part of the discursive field. The methodology is based on a historical-genetic approach, which allows us to identify the causal links between the significant stages of the gaming industry development, technological environment and metaverses. The relevance of this research is due to several factors. First, over the past two years there has been a sharp increase in the amount of publications devoted to metaverses. Secondly, there is a lack of scientific research publications in Russian that would consider the phenomenon of metaverses and their genesis in the context of the development of other areas (video games, NFTs, AI, etc.). Thirdly, there is a notable frequent connection between metaverses and video games in the rhetoric of speakers around the world. However, both phenomena still remain independent, but in the future, presumably, will evolve in parallel. Tracing the development of the gaming industry in dynamics, the authors argue for the key role of video games (as a set of software and hardware, communication strategies, content and semantic components, etc.) in the emergence and development of metaverses.

Keywords: Second Life, user experience, cloud gaming, video game, digital avatar, immersive environment, augmented reality, virtual reality, Metaverse, COVID-19

Abstract: The subject of the research is the strategy of transmitting holophrastic structures in the novel by G. Swift “Waterland” in the translation of the novel into Russian, made by V. Mikhailin. Holophrastic constructions are a relatively new phenomenon for both English and Russian; corresponding to the specifics of English grammar, in Russian they represent a phenomenon that arose under the influence of English speech. The analysis of specific ways of translating holophrastic structures and general strategies for dealing with such language units allows for a deeper understanding of the potencies of the Russian language in terms of their transmission, as well as strategies that can be used for this purpose. In the process of research, the method of explanatory description was used in combination with the methods of lexical, syntactic, and stylistic analysis. An analysis of the Russian translation of the novel by G. Swift shows that, in a significant part of the cases, the English holophrastic constructions can be accurately conveyed by means of the Russian language, and such transmission is not always associated with significant transformations of the syntactic structure. The presence of golophrastic structures can be considered as a stylistic property of not a specific sentence, but the whole text. For this reason, for the transmission of the “spirit” of the original, the translation of holophrastic structures through standard syntactic structures can be balanced by the introduction of holophrastic structures in those text fragments where they do not match the original.

Keywords: literary translation, translation, artistic text, adhesion, concretions, multicomponent composites, holophrastic structures, translation solutions, translational equivalence, hyphen

Abstract: The subject of the research is the syntatic tools of suggestive influence in an advertising text. As a special form of communication, advertisement has been widely practised in a modern world and has a direct effect on both human mind and his or her language. Syntactic organisation of an advertising slogan plays an important role in the process of creating the suggestive effect which is one of the main goals of advertisement as it is. In certain cases, this is the structure of an expression that has a crucial meaning for performing a suggestive effect. In the course of this research Rolgaizer has used a complex method that is based on the functional approach to studying language and includes the inductive method as a direct observation of the research object and determination of certain regularities in the language as well as the method of contectual analysis. The scientific novelty of the research is caused by the fact that the author of the article makes an attempt to define and describe syntactic mechanisms of the suggestive influence in the structure of an advertising text. The problem of suggestive influece has been widely studied in the psychological literature, however, it still remains understudied from the point of view of the linguistic elements of the suggestive influence. Thus, linguistic methods that are used in an advertising text in order to influence a consumer's choice, are of special interest. 

Keywords: nonverbal component, verbal component, recipient, persuasion, syntactic tools, suggestion, advertising, slogan, suggestive effect, subliminal mind