THE PECULIARITIES OF CONVEYING THE SOCIAL STATUS OF FICTION CHARACTERS IN TRANSLATION (BASED ON J. FOWLES’ NOVEL «THE COLLECTOR»)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the sociolinguistic aspects of studying the social status and its reflection in literary texts through the speech of fiction characters. Particular attention is paid to the description of the key concept «social status» as a constituent element of the literary character’s image as well as to the research of the ways the character and his/her linguistic peculiarities are represented in the literary text. It was hypothesized that the character’s social status, education level, and worldview in general must be explicitly seen through the speech the author ascribes to the character. The article deals with the novel «The Collector» by J. Fowles and focuses on analyzing the speech peculiarities of its main character, Miranda. Her language is full of various stylistic devices and expressive means, which also testifies how open-minded this personality is, proves her ability to listen and accept different points of view. Miranda’s speech can be described as extremely poetic and emotional. Concerning key linguistic features of her speech, both lexical and grammatical ones can play a role in defining the character’s social status. The article also studies and analyzes the ways of reproducing the stylistic features in the Ukrainian translation of the novel made by G. Yanovska.