Precedent Phenomena in the Great Patriotic War Political Cartoon as a Creolized Text

The article deals with precedent phenomena in the Great Patriotic War political cartoons as a creolized text. The author determines source domains and functions of the precedent phenomena in the messages of the cartoons in connection with the period of the Great Patriotic War. Considering political cartoons as a creolized text, the author makes use of methods which linguists apply to verbal texts during the analysis of messages in the form of a political cartoon. First of all, it is L.A. Nozdrina's method for text structure analysis, which is complemented by definitional, semantic, and contextual analyses when lexical meanings of words are studied. As a result of the analysis, it has been revealed that precedent phenomena from the following source domains are used in the cartoons: the history of the Homeland, the Russian song fund, and literature. The latter source domain is represented by subgroups: fairy tales, fables, and the artistic prose. The analysis of the functions of precedent phenomena in the messages has shown that the precedent phenomena are elements of referential, temporal, local, and modal text structures, and they participate in the expression of the textual categories of the message. As an element of the reference structure, the precedent phenomenon contributes to the characterization of text referents and to the disclosure of the main idea of the message. Precedent phenomena, projected on certain points of the time axis in the history of Russia, can be used as temporal indicators, as indirect retrospective links to reconstruct the direction to the past, i.e. they participate in temporal text organization. Precedent phenomena as elements of the local structure make it possible to create a specific space of the political cartoon, a visible picture filled with details. In the modal structure of the message, precedent phenomena are used for introducing the author's position into the message. The multiplicity of associative fields of the precedent phenomena as a property that forms the basis for interpretation (which presupposes certain knowledge on the part of the addressee), and the specific character of these phenomena's insertion into the message (semiotically) give the authors of political cartoons an opportunity to deliver the main idea of the message to the addressee in a capacious and laconic form and to express its emotional and evaluative component.

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