Linguocultural representation of ethnic mentality in the context of globalization

The article analyzes the literary representation of the Cajun ethno-linguistic minority in the text of the comic book of the late XX century. The relevance of this study is due to the fact that globalization has established the tendency to represent small ethnic groups in modern popular culture. The desire to create unique and memorable characters made authors appeal to the representation of features of different ethnic groups, including small ones. The national colour, manifested in the character’s appearance, speech, etc., gave the authors an opportunity to speak about cultural similarities and differences, thus introducing diversity into the plot component of popular culture. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the implementation of the characteristics of the small Cajun ethnic group in the speech of the comic book character. As the material of this study Gambit (1993) comic mini-series was chosen, the main protagonist of which identifies himself as Cajun. 300 Gambit’s lines were extracted from the 4 chapters by continuous sampling. The selected replicas were examined using linguocultural analysis to identify the features of the Cajun culture in the character’s speech. Thus, the most prominent feature that allows Gambit to be identified as a characteristic representative of an ethnos is his use of Cajun English. At the phonetic level, the dialect features are manifested in the distortion of interdental consonants, the consonant sounds drop-outs in the middle or end of certain words, and the periodic replacement of the nasal sound [ŋ] with the standard [n]. The influence of the French language on Cajun English explains grammatical deviations peculiar to Francophones and French lexemes in Gambit’s speech. The combination of phonetic, lexical, and grammatical features characteristic of the hero’s lines, but not based on his Cajun dialect, also maintain his image as a native of South Louisiana. In his first solo comic, Gambit appears before readers as a stereotypical Cajun, whose image was originally based on prejudice about the ethnicity.