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The article is devoted to the actualization of national identity of a political individual subject with the help of linguistic means (based on the government statements of the former German Chancellor A. Merkel). Given that the construction of national identity takes place in the language, it is proposed to consider culture-bound elements as the main marker of national identity. The purpose of the study is to reveal the relationship between the demonstration of ethnic identity in the speech of an individual political subject and the use of language means that reflect national specifics. General scientific (description, continuous sampling method) and linguistic (linguoculturological and discursive analysis) methods were used in the research. Statistical methods (Chi-square, Cramer’s coefficient) were used to obtain more accurate results and test the hypothesis about the presence or absence of a relationship between language markers and the demonstration of the politician’s national identity. The material of the study was the texts of 34 government statements of the former chancellor of Germany A. Merkel in the period between 2014 and 2021. The chronological framework is determined by extralinguistic factors (the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis and the end of the chancellor’s term), which must be taken into account when analyzing political discourse. This genre of political communication has not been subjected to thorough linguistic analysis, so this study has a certain novelty. The selected lexical units were classified according to the onomastic principle (toponyms, anthroponyms, polytonyms, official names, geortonyms, ethnonyms) and divided into two categories: units denoting German and other realities. A total of 1902 units and 5823 cases of use. The results obtained confirm the hypothesis and indicate the presence of a dependence, but indicate a weak degree of correlation. The proposed approach seems to be innovative, since it allows us to comprehensively consider the phenomenon of identity and can help to correctly interpret and demonstrate the intentions of a political individual subject in public speeches.

The article discusses an interdisciplinary approach to the study of political discourse on the example of linguistic and political science studies devoted to the manifestation of national identity in the speeches of German politicians. The relevance is explained by the fact that the article for the first time considers the use of an interdisciplinary approach in the analysis of professional discourse by specialists from different scientific fields. The purpose of the work is to show how an interdisciplinary approach is implemented in the study of political discourse by linguists and political scientists. Both studies were carried out on the empirical material of 60 texts of public speeches by leading German politicians (H. Maas, Z. Gabriel, F.-W. Steinmeier, A. Merkel, O. Scholz, U. von der Leyen) at international and national events such as the Munich Security Conference, the UN General Assembly, government statements. Both studies used general scientific methods (description, analysis, continuous sampling method), as well as quantitative content analysis (political scientists) and statistical methods of the chi-square test and Cramer’s coefficient (linguists). The use of these methods led both research groups to approximately the same conclusions: German politicians tend to avoid emphasizing ethnic identity in their speeches on the international agenda, which is reflected in the language choices. The analysis by linguists of culture-bound elements with the help of the chi-square test showed that the elements of non-German realities predominate in the speeches. The content analysis carried out by political scientists revealed that the leading German politicians tend not to demonstrate their national identity, giving priority to positioning Germany as a member of the EU and NATO.

The paper focuses on certain aspects of intercultural communication in professional political contexts. With this aim the authors seek to analyze culture-bound elements in German political media discourse, determine their specific role and place in the language system as well as point out the eventual pitfalls on the way to translating them into Russian. Another important point of discussion in the paper is the importance of translation skills for international relations experts: journalists and diplomats. By following the relatively new academic trend of analyzing the use of language in professional contexts, the authors hope to cover a somewhat uncharted territory with this work. The study was aimed at identifying the difficulties that future diplomats and journalists face in solving practical problems, in particular in the process of translating professionally oriented texts. The methods employed include analysis of scientific literature, description, polling and questionnaires, quantitative data assessment and systematization. The primary experiment was conducted under participation of 57 Russian-speaking master students of MGIMO University: future diplomats (65 %) and journalists (35 %). The students were tasked with translating six German texts into Russian in writing, the text in question originating from various German media outlets such as Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Welt, Der Spiegel, Deutsche Welle as well as mitmischen.de, the German parliament’s web site for the younger people. The resulting Russian texts were primarily evaluated based on the translation of the 56 German realia (mostly represented in the original text by proper nouns, such as personal names, toponyms, names of political offices, etc.). In accordance with the classification of Ch. Nord the mistakes were divided into pragmatic, cultural and formal groups. The quantitative analysis discovered that cultural mistakes constituted the majority of them. The reason is the lack of correlated denotations in both cultures and of sufficient lexicographic sources. A possible solution to overcome the emerging difficulties is the creation of a digital guide of culture-bound elements of political discourse.

Films as multimodal products have an increasing entertainment value, so the need to transfer them to other cultures arises. Audiovisual translation (AVT) becomes the only practice to translate and adapt multimodal discourse to various audiences. Together with audio description, that translates the visual into spoken language completing in this way the sounds and dialogues of films, subtitling deals with the changes within the semiotic system. Since subtitles have to interact and work in synchrony with dialogue and image, a great variety of problems arises when this translation mode is employed because a lot of constraints that exist. However, semiotic cohesion between subtitles and other elements such as moving pictures, verbal and non-verbal language and camera editing should be retained. The aim of the paper is to analyse the cases of semiotic cohesion in the English subtitles of the Lithuanian film Garden of Eden (2015). The research is carried out within the framework of multimodal discourse analysis that permits the incorporation of all identifiable communicative modes. The course of practical investigation crystallises out into three underlying directions: assessment of semiotic cohesion, identification of particular form(s) of semiotic cohesion depending on its (dis)appearance on screen and the analysis of the selected instances.