Cognitive Mechanisms for Creating a Genre form of Limerick As the Nonsense Literature

Abstract

The article proves that a limerick is a genre form of nonsense literature. It also summarizes the cognitive strategies used in the translation of Edward Lear’s limericks into Russian. These strategies are used to convey the original structure and specificity of the semantic meaning of the limerick and include discursive construction — the direct process of constructing a discourse of nonsense from special language resources, the construction of the world itself, the representation of new reality with the help of this discourse; interpretation — adjustment to the current situation, when the original text is corrected based on the language parameters and specifics of native speakers world view; transfer of knowledge based on metaphor — the transition from directly given knowledge to indirectly given knowledge. The primary cognitive mechanism underlying the limerick as a genre form is the discursive construction of a specific nonsense world. According to the analysis, most of the surveyed students prefer the translations of E. Lear’s limericks, which are very close or entirely correspond to the characteristics of the original text from the formal point of view.