Article

Name: Contemporary children’s literature in the politically correct discourse: axiological linguistic aspect

Authors: V. N. Karpukhina

Altai State University, Barnaul, Russian Federation

In the section Study of literature

Abstract: The paper aims at revealing the basic features of contemporary children’s literature texts as a successful commercial project in mass culture, forming relative axiological principles of the multicultural society in the target audience. The author considers some of the constitutive components of the politically correct discourse, which form a new axiological scale in the texts of contemporary children’s literature. Such components include participants, chronotope, aims, values, strategies, and discursive formulas of the politically correct discourse. The hypothesis is put forward that the politically correct discourse is not acute yet for the Russian linguistic culture. However, it is obvious that in the English culture, the politically correct discourse is being parodied nowadays while it deals with its discursive formulas and manipulative strategies. The contemporary Russian children’s literature is found to be just coming into the frame of the politically correct discourse, whilst English children’s literature is actively functioning in this type of discourse, as in The Tales of Uncle Remus: The Adventures of Brer Rabbit retold by Julius Lester or acquires parody of postmodernist features, as Politically Correct Bedtime Stories: Modern Tales for Our Life and Times by James Finn Garner did. The research results reveal that Boris Akunin and Gloria Mu, the contemporary Russian children’s literature writers, use narrative strategies in their texts of Children’s Book and Children’s Book for Girls, suggesting the implicit ironical assessment for the situations, discursive formulas, and the rules of their usage of the politically correct discourse in the contemporary multipolar society. On the contrary to the directly used irony, often turning into sarcasm of Politically Correct Bedtime Stories: Modern Tales for Our Life and Times by James Finn Garner or to the politically correct discourse manipulative rules usage in the new version of The Tales of Uncle Remus: The Adventures of Brer Rabbit retold by Julius Lester, the texts of children’s books by Boris Akunin and Gloria Mu do not provide directly expressed assessments in the axiogenic situations of the politically correct discourse.

Keywords: politically correct discourse, contemporary children’s literature, axiological linguistics

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