BORROWINGS AS A TEXT-FORMING TOOL IN MAX KIDRUK’S TRAVELOGUES

Abstract

The article examines the functions of foreign-language borrowings in the travelogue genre on the material of M. Kidruk’s works (Mexican Chronicles, Journey to the Navel of the Earth, To Zealand!, Love and Piranhas). The relevance of the study is determined by the intensification of language contacts and the active penetration of foreign elements into contemporary Ukrainian fictional discourse, in particular into texts that represent the experience of travel and intercultural communication. The focus is on borrowings of different origin (English, Spanish, Portuguese etc.) which, in the writer’s texts, designate culturally specific realia, shape images of other countries and peoples, help the author reproduce the “effect of presence” and involve the reader in the space of travel. The material consists of foreign lexical items selected by the method of continuous sampling from the abovementioned works and analysed with regard to their semantics, origin, frequency of use and contextual environment. The methodological basis of the research is formed by descriptive, lexico-stylistic and contextual analysis as well as elements of quantitative analysis, which makes it possible to combine a qualitative interpretative approach with the comparison of types and functions of borrowings in different texts of the same author. It has been established that foreign units in M. Kidruk’s travelogues perform informational, emotional-expressive, stylistic and text-forming functions, taking part in structuring the plot, organising descriptions, creating the image of the traveller-narrator and reproducing the dynamics of intercultural dialogue. The study shows that borrowings not only denote realia that are new to the Ukrainian reader (food, drinks, kinds of activity, geographical objects, elements of everyday life), but also become a means of marking emotional “peaks” of the narrative, highlighting contrasts between “one’s own” and “the other”, and introducing play with linguistic form into the text. The practical significance of the research lies in the possibility of using its results in courses on contemporary Ukrainian language, stylistics, linguoculturology and literary text analysis, as well as in further studies devoted to the functioning of borrowings in the prose of other Ukrainian travelogue writers and to the formation of individual authorial style.