Means of objectifying possible worlds in a translingual literary text (based on the story “The Paper Menagerie” by Kenneth Liu)

The purpose of this work is to identify the means that objectify possible worlds with a “domestic/foreign” semantic basis in an English-language translingual literary text. The work explores the interaction of cultures in the mind of an English-speaking Chinese immigrant writer and how it affects the semantic structure of a fictional world. The study is based on the theory of possible worlds, in which a literary text is considered as a fictional world verbalized model. The possible world is understood as a mental construct of an alternative reality, constructed by the author in the text. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that, for the first time, the means that determine the coordinates of possible worlds with the “domestic/foreign” semantic basis constructed by a bilingual immigrant writer have been identified, and the dynamics of these worlds – their interaction and mutual transition – have been described. The researchers found that the “domestic/foreign” opposition is the basis of world modeling in the translingual literary text, and it can be found at different levels of it. Narrative includes a dynamic interaction between two cultures, which is expressed through special linguistic means and narrative strategies: foreign language interspersed, precedent phenomena, subjective narrative and various metatextual elements.