Volume 38, Issue 1

Connotations, or the semantic prosodies of words, are associations acquired through exposure to diverse contexts and may be different for the same language item used by different speakers or groups of speakers. In order to compare connotations of the same language item between groups, tools of comparison are of interest. One such tool is analysis of word frequencies in contexts. This article considers a few hypotheses on gender-linked differences in the use of color words in Russian literary texts. Frequencies of total use of color words, and then of color words modifying nouns referring to body parts, color words modifying nouns referring to clothes, color words which have emotional connotations and of color words used to describe elements of landscape are compared for texts authored by women or by men. For the first three subcategories, it was hypothesized that women on average use more color adjectives in this category than men do. For the last category, it was hypothesized that men use more color adjectives in this category than women do. Two studies have been done to verify these hypotheses. Only the last hypothesis, on greater frequency of color words used to describe landscape in men-authored texts, has been confirmed at a statistically significant level. The hypotheses that women use a greater number of total color adjectives on average, and that women use more color adjectives to modify nouns referring to body parts and clothes, were each confirmed at a marginal level of statistical significance. Another avenue for investigating the limits of the concept “connotation” uses syntactic tests. One can say that a number of phrases in Russian are (un)acceptable or highly unusual because there exists a recurring connotation connecting a certain color with a certain state of affairs. However, it is questionable whether connotations limited to a sociolinguistic group can be tested using syntactic tests.

There are many types of unreliable first-person narrators. This article shows that there is a certain kind of unreliable I-narrator who could be termed monologic in the Bakhtinian sense of the term. Bakhtin (1895–1975) saw monologism as closed, static and finalized in the sense that it is limiting in its denial of an Other. In her short story, “Good Climate, Friendly Inhabitants” (Gordimer, Gollancz, 1983 [1965]), Nadine Gordimer has created a first-person narrator whose unreliability is prominently active in the construction of meaning. The analysis focuses on this narrator's mind style, which is shown to be self-contradictory, faulty and limiting in such a way that it can be called monologic. Monologism is seen as a quality of the discourse and, it is argued, a monologic Self can be distinguished from other unreliable Selves by means of how they relate to other people and by their degree of stasis, closure and lack of development.

This study draws on elements from linguistics (pragmatics), literature and translation studies in order to analyze the use of the expressions “connotations” and “associations” and the pragmatic notion of “inference”. Existing definitions have been found to be confusing, and therefore an attempt is made at separating out the elements of connotation from those of association, with the aid of a comparison between translations from English into Swedish and Spanish. The study has its origin in an analysis of inference in literary translation which has broadened into an empirical study on what is generally called “associations” in a variety of genres, such as the translation of “serious” fiction, bestsellers and film titles.

This article considers the controversial nature of truth in George Orwell's N ineteen Eight-Four, both within the novel itself and in critical responses to it. It suggests a new account of the nature of the control exercised by the Party and the resultant schizophrenia induced by “doublethink”; the Party imposes two different and competing attitudes to truth on the people of Oceania. These might be described as “truth-committed” and “non truth-committed” attitudes (Routledge and Chapman, Forum for Modern Language Studies 39: 1–14, 2003). When we are free to choose between these two attitudes, both can form part of our everyday, non-pathological encounters. The non truth-committed approach is typical of encounters with literary texts, and this article argues that such an approach can enable the reader to dispense with too strong a concern for the factual veracity of Orwell's apparent predictions, and to concentrate on the literary qualities of his novel.