Mythological signs in the analysis of the language in the English fantasy texts and their differences from occasionalisms and proper nouns

Fedorova Natalia Vladimirovna ORCID: 0000-0002-2808-9399 PhD in History Associate Professor of the Department of Foreign Language for Humanities and Social Sciences, Don State Technical University 1 Gagarin Square, Rostov-on-Don, 344000, Russia fnavl@mail.ru Other publications by this author     Shvedova Karina Vasilevna ORCID: 0000-0002-9043-5782 PhD in Philosophy Associate Professor of the Department of Foreign Language for Humanities and Social Sciences, Don State Technical University 1 Gagarin Square, Rostov-on-Don, 344000, Russia 79286228854@yandex.ru Zimina Vera Pavlovna ORCID: 0000-0003-3009-5533 Senior Instructor of the Department of Foreign Language for Technical Sciences and Technologies, Don State Technical University 344000, Russia, Rostov-on-Don, Gagarin Square, 1 vp-zimina@yandex.ru

Dudukalov Egor Vladimirovich ORCID: 0000-0002-6653-0026 PhD in Economics Professor of the Department of Public Administration, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration 82 Vernadsky Avenue, Moscow, 119571, Russia edudukalov@gmail.com Other publications by this author

The relevance of the research is determined by the enduring and growing popularity of fantasy, in which authors can create their own worlds and universes inhabited by various creatures. On the one hand, it gives the creators of the word themselves unique opportunities for creativity, self-expression, including the opportunity through parallels and allusions to convey thoughts and ideas that for one reason or another cannot be expressed directly or within the framework of texts of other genres. On the other hand, by creating new worlds in fantasy, the authors form new vocabulary and phraseology, experiment with the possibilities of natural languages and even construct artificial languages. All this provides a wide field for both research within the framework of linguistics and interdisciplinary research.

Theoretical foundations, materials and methods

The subject of the study is mythological signs in the fantasy genre in comparison with occasional and onyms in the context of linguistic study and description of the language of works of this genre. The novelty of the research lies in the expansion of the theorization of the phenomenon of "mythological signs" as linguistic units in the context of works of the fantasy genre.

In the course of the work, the following methods were used: linguistic observation and description, comparative analysis and classification, continuous sampling. The theoretical basis of the research is based on the works of such researchers as M. F. Tretyakov (Misnik), O. I. Brodovich, S. S. Galiev, S. V. Plotnikov, I. E. Cherkasov and others. The material for the study was N. Gaiman's novel "Neverwhere".

Discussion and results

Fantasy is considered as a kind of fiction, figuratively speaking, as a circle within a circle, where the layer between the inner and outer circles is a mimetic fiction that is tied to a known reality (mimetic or "realistic" fiction) ^{[1, pp. 133-135]}. Within the inner circle of fantasy, which tells about what is currently time is unreal – there is an even smaller circle, a subset within a subset. This is science fiction. Starting from the concept of "Novum" (Novum in Latin "new thing", "new"), by which science fiction researchers understand some new element, something that distinguishes fiction from reality in the form in which it currently exists, it is possible to draw a line between science fiction and fantasy: science fiction insists that novum be explicable in terms corresponding to conditionally formulated natural laws; fantasy does not meet this requirement. Examples of novum include a colonized planet, laser cannons, robots. Novum is the cognitive aspect of science fiction, a technological and scientific extrapolation from the "here and now", the techno–scientific core of the narrative, essential to the entire narrative and separating it from fantasy ^[2].

A more compact definition can be formulated as follows: mimetic fiction is real, fantasy is unreal; science fiction is unreal, but natural, unlike fantasy, where we are talking about the unreal and supernatural. From this we can deduce a simple definition of fantasy, from which we will start in the course of the study, is fiction about the impossible (although this definition is very broad and relatively conditional, we will start from it in this work, since both in domestic and Western literary studies the problem of defining fantasy and its boundaries is debatable ^{[3, p. 14]}).

At the same time, what we consider natural or possible depends on the reality of a given culture at a given level of civilization development (the so-called consensus, that is, generally accepted, universally recognized reality); but the very idea of such reality is an ideal, not an absolute: in practice, there are as many realities as there are individuals with consciousness. Therefore, for example, a reader who believes in astrology can attribute to science fiction a work that a physicist specializing in space research will not consider as such. We can also say that the concrete reality that science fiction starts from and strives for is the reality of the scientific community. And the following paradox follows from this kind of argumentation. Since the natural laws of existence are something that we begin to understand only gradually, over the centuries, what researchers continue to supplement, to the extent that the fiction of one period regularly becomes the fantasy of the next.

Galiev S. S., summarizing the works of a number of researchers, indicates several basic definitions of the concept of "fantasy":

"1. The largest group, represented by encyclopedias and literary dictionaries, refers fantasy to a special kind of fairy tale.

2. The group represents the opinion of researchers who base fantasy on vague concepts of the supernatural, irrational and inexplicable.

3. The Group defines fantasy as complex synthetic genre constructions" ^[4].

S. N. Plotnikova proves that the conceptual standard of the fantasy genre is the "anomalous artistic world" – a world that is organized on the basis of other general structural principles than the usual "our" world. This world is not characterized by direct projectivity and reflectivity, it is secondary to the "normal", ordinary artistic world and can exist only against the background of the latter. It is compliance with this standard that the author calls a necessary condition for attributing a particular text to fantasy ^{[5, p. 265]}.

M. F. Misnik points out that the cognitive model of the fantasy genre was observed for the first time in the XIX century in a number of fairy-fiction works. But to talk about fantasy in the XIX century . It's still early. Sharing the provisions of S. N. Plotnikova on the conceptual standard of fantasy, the researcher notes that in the XIX century this standard had not yet been formed and the earliest works based on a new conceptual setting were at the junction of genres – "in the inter-genre space". Reconstructing the history of fantasy as a separate genre, M. F. Misnik proves that it was in the XX century that fantasy completely separated from other genres, and its invariant cognitive structure is determined by the aforementioned genre-forming concept "anomalous artistic world" ^{[6, p. 4]}.

From the point of view of linguistics, the main features of the anomalous fantasy art world are, firstly, the exclusively linguistic nature of the entities of this world (in reality they have no analogues, and therefore they exist only as denotations of mythological signs – special linguistic means); secondly, the interpretation of the fictional world by the reader (as well as the characters, which enter it from the ordinary artistic world) on the basis of subjective modalities of appearance, strangeness, surprise. The functioning of a fictional language in the pseudo-world is also characteristic (not always, but often anomalous entities communicate through an artificial language) ^{[6, p. 17]}.

Let us take as a basis the definition of the artistic world given by I. V. Fomenko: it is a world created by the writer, unique and self-sufficient, embodied in the author's work (works) ^{[7, p. 20]}. And the "anomalous" artistic world, which we read about in fantasy, is such a special world, for which neither "reflectivity" nor "direct projectivity" are characteristic ^{[8, p. 107]}. That is, it does not reflect the real, ordinary world.

Researchers have long and carefully developed the concepts of "occasionalism" and "onim". In this regard, within the framework of this article, we will not dwell in detail on their content. Note that there are occasional:

1) phonetic (as a morpheme of a neoplasm, the author uses any phoneme that carries a certain semantics);

2) lexical (a combination of morphemes existing in the language; at the same time, the uniqueness of the neoplasm lies precisely in the fact of their connection, and not in the components of the word themselves);

3) grammatical (combinations in which the semantics of a word does not agree with its grammatical form);

4) semantic (words that have acquired a new meaning in an artistic context);

5) occasional (unusual) combinations of words ^[9].

In turn, book proper names can be divided into two groups:

1) formed by the authors according to existing models and even not always distinguishable from real names, surnames and names (such names and names perform a function inherent in proper names in general: they relate to a specific character or object, localizing it in time and space);

2) combining the characteristics of proper and common names (they, on the one hand, indicate the object of thought, and on the other, characterize it from an ironic, satirical, etc. point of view): nicknames, occasional anthroponyms and toponyms. The semantic name is akin to a path (metaphor, comparison), it is invented by the author based on the models and traditions existing in onomastics, in order to characterize the character, the social environment, for stylistic purposes, etc. ^{[10, pp. 160-161]}.

However, not being satisfied with the above-mentioned terms, researchers introduce new terminological units to denote lexical units created by fantasy authors. It should also be clarified that the authors of works of this genre create entire worlds – products of the inner workings of consciousness, restructured versions of our ordinary world, separated from it and filled with numerous anomalies – something that is not observed in the ordinary world. So, at J. Rowling is Hogwarts with a portal at London station, and J. R. Tolkien has Middle–earth, etc. Such worlds have their own chronotope (codependency of space and time), a special system of characters who have specific properties.

The anomaly of such worlds is realized, in particular, with the help of "mythological signs", that is, semiotic structures, which are characterized, firstly, by the absence of a real denotation, and secondly, by conceptual correlation with such concepts as "magical", "miraculous", etc., as indicated by I. E. Cherkasov, O. I. Brodovich ^{[11, p. 180]}. The most detailed concept of "mythoznak" in the context of fantasy is revealed in the dissertation study by M. F. Tretyakova (Misnik) "Linguistic features of the anomalous artistic world of fantasy genre works by English-speaking authors" ^{[6, p. 159]} and her published works ^[12-15]. The concept of M. F. Tretyakov (Misnik) formed the basis of the theoretical basis of this study.

The physical space of the fantasy world, as M. F. Misnik points out, is a conceptual and denotational space. To describe the constructed – anomalous –world, anomalous denotations are needed (not observed in our world). Such denotations, according to M. F. Misnik, organize the physical space of the fantasy world, but they are culturally conditioned (since they belong to the sphere of the collective unconscious) and at the same time represent the product of the author's consciousness. It is the author's consciousness that controls the artificial nomination, the objects of which in fantasy are creatures, objects, phenomena that have no analogues in the real world, extraordinary for our consciousness ^{[16, p. 9-10]}.

Abnormal denotations exist in the form of concepts that have not a material, but a discursive embodiment. To designate words with abnormal denotations, the researcher suggests using the term "mythoznak" (this is a semiotic structure characterized by the absence of a real denotation and correlated with the concepts of "miraculous, magical"). Mythological characters together form a picture, a denotational space of a pseudo–world - a strange, anomalous fantasy world. The mythological signs used in the construction of the anomalous world can also be conventional, stable, and then native speakers correlate these lexemes with certain images, thanks to familiarity with mythology, legends, works of fine art, etc. ^{[16, pp. 9-10]}.

At the same time, the meaning of a mythological sign, updated in a certain text, may not coincide with its dictionary meaning. That is, in the considered anomalous world, the structure and semantic content of conventional mythological signs can be changed (such as, for example, spirit, ghost, elf, troll, faun, goblin, ogre, witch, wizard: their meaning, fixed in dictionaries, has become conventional, but fantasy authors transform these familiar meanings). Writers often fill the meaningful side of the mythos with a new meaning: they expand, refract in their own way. So, for the mythological elf, the dictionary contains the values: "an imaginary creature like a small person with pointed ears", "type of a small fairy, mischievous little creature". And J. K. Rowling, as the creator of the fantasy world, offers the reader his idea of these creatures by constructing a house elf" ^{[16, p. 10]}. Mythological signs in fantasy relate to both the subject, spatial, and event spheres. At the same time, there is a dependence: the more mythological characters there are in the denoted fantasy space, the more anomalous the fantasy world seems, the less similar it is to the world of real reality ^{[16, p. 14]}.

The novel "Nowhere" originated from the script of the TV series of the same name, written by Neil Gaiman in 1996 for the BBC. In the same year, the author released a book, expanding and supplementing the storylines of this story. This adaptation is a full-length fantasy work. The novel takes place in the mysterious Lower London. This world is full of dangers, its inhabitants are saints and monsters, murderers and angels, and the word in it acquires magical power. The main character Richard is an ordinary resident of London, once saved a wounded girl on the street. Because of her, he ended up in Lower London, where his adventures began. He was forced to go through many trials, defeated the Beast, became a warrior and found friends, and in the end had to uncover a conspiracy against God and decide which London he values more. The work is filled with references to the phenomena of British culture, the names of real places in London and the names of historical figures. For this reason, N. Gaiman even released different versions of the novels – British and adapted American. At the moment, publishers are releasing an author-approved version containing parts of both versions ^[17]. The novel was published in Russian in two translations: the first – "Zadverye" – was made by A. A. Komarinets ^[18], the second – "Nikogde" – by M. A. Melnichenko and N. L. Koncha ^[19].

By the method of continuous sampling, 56 units were selected from the novel, which correspond to the definition of mythological signs given above. They are divided into groups according to the classification of M. F. Misnik ^{[16, pp. 12-13]}.

1. Subject mythological signs.

a) Names and names of people with special abilities, as well as humanoid fantastic creatures.

One of the most interesting decisions of the author can be called the choice of speaking names for the family of the main character, whose name is Door. All members of this family had magical abilities to open passages to absolutely any place. The girl's father's name is Lord Portico, his name means "portico" – the entrance to the building, consisting of columns and arches. His wife Portia, has a name that refers readers to the word "portal", emphasizing her ability to open portals. The brother of the Door was called Arch (arch, vault), and the sister Ingress (translated from English – entrance).

One of the heroines of the novel is a woman named Serpentine. Translated from English, "serpent" means a snake, and the Serpentine sign was this reptile. The name itself originated from the name of the Serpentine Lake, its shape resembling a snake. The lake is located in London, in Hyde Park. According to the plot, Serpentine is one of the seven powerful sisters.

In the novel, the defenders of the key are Dominican monks, called "black" because of the color of their robes and endowed with "black" names:

Brother Jet – jet in English means "jet", which is also known as black amber, black jasper;

Brate Fuliginous – covered with soot, sooty.

Brother Sable – sable means "black, mourning, gloomy".

Brother Tenebrae (Latin: darkness, darkness, gloom) – Dark Matins (three morning services performed in the Catholic tradition on the last three days of Holy Week).

A man named Iliaster was the first to bring Richard to Lower London. Iliaster is a term that was introduced by Paracelsus. It denotes the primary matter, which includes the body and soul. It is noteworthy that this is one of the few heroes who can live in two worlds at the same time.

The mythological characters Mister Vandemar and Mister Croup (the names of the villains), Anaesthesia (the name of the rat), the Fop With No Name (the name of the bodyguard) are also close to the occasional proper names.

In the novel, all creatures are afraid to meet shepherds and the Shepherd Queen.

Rat-speakers are residents of Lower London who worship the clan of gray rats.

Sewerfolk – people living in sewers. Even the inhabitants of "unreal" London do not want to interact with them.

For the inhabitants of Upper London, the characters of the novel use the word upworlder, which is formed by adding: up + world + suffix -er.

Many characters have names that match the names of places in London. For example, the character Hammersmith is a blacksmith and a friend of the main character. Hammersmith is a metro station and a neighborhood in the west part of London. During the reign of Queen Victoria, it was an industrial area where the largest power plant in the city was located.

Old Baile (lit. old Bailey) in the real world is the name that the people of London use for the Central Criminal Court of England (by the name of the street on which it is located). This hero of the work is a kind of satire on the judiciary. He is a thief and a conman, but at the same time a loyal friend who always helps and gives valuable advice.

The antagonist of the novel is Angel Islington. His name comes from the name of part of the Islington area in London. Previously, there was a pub "Angel", thanks to which in modern times this area is also called "Angel Islington".

The fighter who fought for the right to become the main character's bodyguard was called Ruislip. In the real world, this is the name of an area in the west part of London.

The Crouch Enders are residents of parallel London, but in our world it is a subway station.

The Olympia character borrowed the name from the Upper London showroom.

b) Names of fantastic animals.

The Great Beast of London is a huge beast that has been living in tunnels under London for hundreds of years. According to the description, he looks like a boar, the size of a car. When creating it, Neil Gaiman relied on the legend of special black pigs living in the sewers of London.

Velvets – vampires living in Lower London;

Miss Whiskers is the name of the rat that delivered the messages of the main characters.

T he Golden is a clan of golden rats.

T he Grey is a clan of grey rats worshipped by residents of Lower London who call themselves Rat-speakers.

Master Longtail is the name of the rat.

The G reat Weasel is a huge weasel that lives in a city near Bangkok.

c) The name of the magic tool-artifact.

The novel features a key that the main character of the Door must bring to the Angel from the black monks. For this, Angel promises to find out who ordered the murder of the Portico family. And to get the key, the heroes take turns passing the tests.

2. Spatial mythological signs.

The very name of the work "Neverwhere" was created by adding the words never – never and where – where. The author created this occasional mythological sign in order to emphasize that the world described by him exists outside of time and space.

According to the plot, there is an ordinary (Upper) London and a parallel world of Lower London, which largely intersects with the real city.

Seven Sisters is a metro station and neighborhood in North London. The area got its name because of the seven elms growing there. In addition, this is the name of the chalk cliffs located along the southern coast of England.

Black friars (lit. "black monks") is a neighborhood, subway station and bridge in London. In 1276, Dominican monks settled on the site of this area, who were called "black" because of the color of their robes (about them - above). So the name of these places arose.

Sometimes residents of Lower London talk about dangerous and mysterious places, for example, "Shepherd's Bush". They say that all creatures are afraid to go there. And in Upper London, this is the name of the area, which got its name because of the shepherds' resting place located there earlier.

Many names and titles are mentioned by the heroes of the novel in passing. So, the Mayfair is a fair held in Lower London, and in the real world it is the West End area and the name of the hotel.

Spatial mythological signs that serve to separate the two worlds are often comparable to occasional proper names. For example:

– Upside, Upworld and London Above are the names that the characters of the novel use for the "real" London;

– Underside and London Below are the world that is under London;

– Undercity beneath Bangkok – the name of the magical world that is located under the city of Bangkok;

– Undersideline is a sub–world metro line that doesn't really exist;

– the House Without Doors or the House of the Arch is the place where the main character of Door lived with her family.

Special attention is drawn to a group of mythological signs, based on the names of real places in London, which acquire a new meaning in the work. So, residents of Lower London use the phrase "Temple and Arch" as an interjection expression that embodies some kind of higher power that can help the heroes and protect them in moments of danger.

The word "Temple" refers to two law corporations in London, whose buildings occupy a large area at the intersection of the City, Westminster and Holborn borders, next to the district and the Temple metro station. In the XII century, a quarter belonging to the Templar Order was located on the site of this area.

"Arch" is a reference to the famous Court of Appeal "Court of Arches", whose meetings took place in the Church of St.?Mary?le?Bow (English: St. Mary-le-Bow). Because of the word "bow" (arch) in the name of the church, the court got the name "Court of Arches".

The combination of "Temple and Arch" suggests justice and power associated with the court, as well as virtue and hope associated with the temple.

According to the plot of the novel, the heroes must cross the Knightsbridge bridge (lit. "Knight's Bridge"). In the real world, this is the name of the area of London where the most luxurious shops of the city are located. And in the world of Lower London, this is a dangerous magical bridge on which the night "dwelt." The author uses a play on words, as the word "night" (night) is similar in sound to the word "knight" (knight).

Also featured in the work is the place "Earl's Court" (lit. "the count's yard") is a subway train in which the count and his subjects live. But in our world, this is a metro station and a London area that got its name thanks to the Counts of Oxford. They were large landowners living in this area for many years. In addition, "Barons Court" and "Ravens court" are also mentioned, which have acquired a new meaning on the same principle.

The Down Street metro station was closed back in 1932, and during the Second World War it was turned into a bomb shelter. But in Lower London it is a spiral staircase that leads down to the labyrinth of the "Great London Beast".

3. Event mythological signs (names of traditions, customs).

For example, floating market – floating market – a market for trade between residents of Lower London, which changed its location every week; hence – markettruce – a truce that was valid only at a certain moment when this market was working.

Conclusions

The physical space of the fantasy world is conceptual and denotational. To describe an anomalous world constructed in fantasy, we need anomalous denotations (not observed in our world, existing only in the form of concepts). Such denotations are a product of the author's consciousness, but culturally conditioned. They organize the physical space of the fantasy world, and the author's consciousness controls an artificial nomination, the objects of which in fantasy are creatures, objects, phenomena that have no analogues in the real world, extraordinary for our consciousness. Relatively recently, the term "mythoznak" was introduced into scientific circulation to denote words with abnormal denotations – such a semiotic structure that is characterized by the absence of a real denotation and is correlated with the concepts of "miraculous, magical" (according to M. F. Misnik).

The differences between mythological signs, occasionalisms and various kinds of onyms noted in the works of the fantasy genre by researchers have been systematized by us based on the results of the analysis of both works on this issue and the research material, and are presented graphically in the form of a generalizing table (see Table 1).

Table 1. Differences and similarities of mythological signs, occasionalisms and onyms in the context of the description of the fantasy world picture

So, most of the mythos are author's nominations. A significant part of the mythological signs from a linguistic point of view is comparable to occasional ones. However, in some cases such an interpretation is impossible. The mythological signs used in the construction of the anomalous world can also be conventional, stable, and then native speakers correlate these tokens with certain images, thanks to familiarity with mythology, legends, works of fine art, etc. If the author of fantasy uses conventional mythological signs (fixed in dictionaries like elf, ghost, spirit, troll, witch, wizard, etc.), then in this case it changes their structure and semantic content, expands, refracts in its own way, so their usual, dictionary meaning is no longer applicable.