Linguocultural Features of British Tales

Abstract

The paper examines linguocultural features of British tales. The relevance of the study is determined by great interest of linguistic science to the issues of national and cultural specificity of folk texts, which is caused by peculiarities of historical development, beliefs, traditions and customs of native people. The objective of the study is to reveal national and cultural characteristics of the British tales by means of their linguocultural analysis. This paper is divided into three sections. The first section analyses linguocultural specificity of the British folk tales. These texts are characterised by the abundance of colloquial words, violation of grammar rules, and prevalence of simple sentences. Among the most frequently used stylistic means are graphons, parallel constructions, repetition, and inversion. We have also revealed male gender preference in folk tales. The second section examines linguocultural features of the British literary tales. They are characterised by the variety of lexical and stylistic means and a diversity of characters and plots. These tales reflect individual worldviews of writers and their aesthetic tastes. The third section gives an overview of adaptation of traditional stories to modern times. Retellings of classic stories appear to meet the needs of people of different ages or population strata, to satisfy the demand for emerging trends or to come alive on screen. Both types of tales express cultural peculiarities of the British people, describe their lifestyle, surrounding and world outlook. The results of the investigation can be effectively used for a further profound comparative analysis of sociolinguistic and linguocultural features of English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish tales.