THE PECULIARITIES OF EMPLOYING LEXICO-SEMANTIC MEANS FOR MODELING AN ALTERNATIVE REALITY (A CASE STUDY OF “THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN’S UNION” BY MICHAEL CHABON)

Abstract

The paper presents a description of the lexico-semantic means for alternative reality modeling employed in Michael Chabon’s novel “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.” The researchers analyze the modeling potential of language units, i. e. the possibility of using them to express null denotations, their designata and expressive effect largely preserved, or to reveal the author’s markedly individual connotations of common widespread notions. An important component of the writer’s artistic design immediately determining the linguistic peculiarities of the novel consists in the deliberate merging together of two linguistic keys – English and Yiddish – which interact in a complex and complicated way, thus allowing to regard the corresponding fragments of the text, tentatively speaking, as examples of a specific American-Jewish ‘macaronic speech’ which may be of interest to a wider set of linguists. Within the array of the vocabulary units considered in the paper, the most widespread are various types of onyms (toponyms, urbanonyms, anthroponyms, ergonyms, ethnonyms etc) coined out of both English and some other languages’ morphemes. Besides, a vast number of American slang lexemes, the majority of them once borrowed from Yiddish, are frequently used by the author alongside with numerous neologisms emerging on the basis of mixed English-Yiddish semantic patterns.