1. Irina V. Ubozhenko National Research University Higher School of Economics Moscow, Russia Политический дискурс как дидактический объект переводоведения Irina V. Ubozhenko National Research University Higher School of Economics Moscow, Russia The Political Discourse As a Didactic Target of Translation Studies Политический дискурс как дидактический объект переводоведения April 24, 2015

2. Key words: comparative political linguistics; the cognitive analysis; the political discourse; teaching translation; the “push-word” methodology; the didactic algorithm; the associative thesaurus.

3. “The great riddle — of archaeology, cognitive science, neuroscience, anthropology, sociology, political science, linguistics, religious studies, and the humanities from literature and music to dance and art — is how we became human, how we acquired modern minds.” Mark Turner.

4. Comparative political linguistics The research implies studying the key cores of the political science notion system in the Russian and English languages. The 1 st step of the research covered the concept of accountability and the related terms connected with the given field of politics.

5. «Choice is the heart of all creating, and where there is no choice there is no room for ingenuity». Vilen N. Komissarov. translation process as a semiotic complex of associations the source languagethe target language

6. The Translatological Background for the Research: pivotal (steady) associative links remote (weak) associative links a translator’s thesaurus

7. The Translatological Background of the Study The idea of the given research is initially derived from our previous investigations of the translator’s intuition and creativity as well as our experimental attempts of the thesaurus modeling of human thinking that finally led to the original methodical algorithm of teaching ingenuity in the field of linguistics (practical translation). We claim that the inner picture of the outer world of each person (scientist, translator) as well as the structure of his/her knowledge and associations is subjective and individual; in case of general universals dominating in the structure of the translator’s knowledge (in his/her brain) the variant of translation finally chosen will be pattern-like (ordinary) while the original structure of knowledge presupposes the emergence of the original intuitive decision; the task of a professional teacher of translating is obviously to stimulate the student’s ability to involve the so-called “weak associative links” provoking in this way the original creative translation decision.

8. The Political Discourse Analysis 1. The research of language creativity is being carried out by the example of the discourse analysis of modern political terminology and other non-equivalent vocabulary within the bounds of political contexts while translating and comprehending foreign academic and scientific texts. 2. The experience of reflexive thinking is necessary while searching for the right associative “prompt”, “push-stimulus” and theoretical “trigger-word” (such as “context”, “style”, “background”) leading to making the translator’s creative choice (often intuitively) that finally results in choosing the most acceptable variant of translation minding certain definite conscious methodological steps (the algorithm). 3. In this connection, the analysis performed has shown that the steady associative links regarding the important but still elusive and even murkey (as R. Behn, for example, puts it) notion of accountability comprise such core fields of meaning as “holding people accountable”, “responsibility”, “the accountability system and its mechanisms”, “liability” and “answerability” and some others.

9. The Empirical Research Part: The Cognitive Discourse Analysis As a Basis for Making-up an Associative Thesaurus. Case 1. The Concept of Accountability and its Cognitive Structure. What Do We Mean by Accountability, Anyway? During 1998, for example, questions about President Bill Clinton’s campaign fundraising and personal behavior generated numerous calls to hold someone accountable. “Perjury,” said U.S. Representative (and speaker designate) Bob Livingston when he announced his retirement from Congress, “is a crime for which the president may be held accountable, no matter the circumstances.” Former senator Bob Dole criticized Attorney General Janet Reno’s failure to appoint an independent counsel to investigate the fundraising practices of the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign committee and hoped that “someone in Congress will hold the attorney general accountable.” Allegations of Chinese espionage at U.S. nuclear laboratories caused Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott to remark that somebody “made some major mistakes, and somebody needs to be held accountable.” Everyone wants people — other people — to be held accountable. Mark Moore of Harvard University and Margaret Gates, a consultant to nonprofit agencies, write of “the public’s demand for accountability,” of “an unquenchable thirst for accountability that cuts across the political spectrum.”

10. Case 2. Discourse Quotation 1. The Sub-notion of Mutual Accountability and its Cognitive Discourse Analysis.. “Mutual accountability requires cooperation. A compact of mutual, collective responsibility is designed to foster that cooperation among the web of people and organizations in the accountability environment. The parties to such a compact would seek to establish the terms under which they — and, they hope, others in the accountability environment — would cooperate to enhance government performance, subject to some agreed-upon constraints to ensure the proper use of finances and the equitable treatment of people. Indeed, without such a responsibility compact for performance, those seeking to improve performance may be unable to move beyond an obsession with the rules for finances and fairness. Who, however, will agree to cooperate? Who will sign on to a “compact” that guarantees nothing more than experimentation? Who will trade individual accountability for mutual accountability? Who (besides a public manager) will trade his or her well-understood (and relatively limited) individual accountability (often defined by professional peers) for some vague sense of mutual, collective responsibility that will be devised, refined, and revised sometime in the future by people with unknown or even incompatible values? Who has an incentive to cooperate? And even if people do sign on to such a responsibility compact, will they remain bound by this informal (and not very enforceable) agreement? Who has an incentive to continue to cooperate?”

11. The Novelty of the Results Gained and Anticipated 4. Simultaneously the accountability concept covers such periphery notions (or sub- notions based on the weak associative links traced in the analyzed discourse) as “the accountability holder” (including regulators and legislatures, politicians, auditors, lawyers and, what is more interesting, scholars and journalists) and “the accountability holdee” represented, in its turn, by the President, government officials, government bureaucracies, an agency’s clients, managers, donors, taxpayers and a number of other players and stakeholders each of whom may be researched as a separate push-notion (theoretically considered as a steady associative link). 5. Of high research interest may be such associative derivatives of “accountability” as “the accountability environment” (in contrast with, at first sight, close, but actually different semantic field and reality notion of “the accountability system”) and a very resourceful and controversial weak associate of “punishment” (never mentioned in any dictionaries as part of the meaning of the word “accountability”) leading not only to the traditional things understood by it such as fines, jail terms and the loss of one’s job, but also to such an associative link as “the public humiliation” (for some “wrongdoing”) which may be extremely useful as a part of the whole thesaurus regarding the concept of accountability.

12. The Prospects for the Research The research of language creativity is supposed to be carried out by the example of the discourse analysis of modern political terminology and other non-equivalent vocabulary within the bounds of political contexts while translating and comprehending foreign academic and scientific texts.

13. The Practical Applied Values of the Investigation Studying the aspects of the contextual actualization of political notions in the English and Russian discourses by means of the comparative analysis is aimed at professional explaining the motivation of the translation equivalent choice. The algorithm of making up an associative thesaurus using the signs of lexical marking is considered to be the tool of political discourse analysis.

14. Conclusions 1. The prospects for the multidisciplinary studies in the field of the Humanities can hardly be overestimated. “The individual human being, in form and movement, in thought and action, is a seamless intersection of powerful histories — phylogenetic history, individual development, and social and cultural history — all profoundly influential. A human being is a unified agency of biology, psychology, and social, environmental, and cultural patterns. And yet, the academic study of human beings is fragmented into scattered disciplines. How can science overcome this academic incoherence to launch a tradition of research in which neuroscientists, cognitive and developmental psychologists, archaeologists, vision scientists, evolutionary theorists, artists, art historians, semioticians, sociologists, and cultural historians join to explain the artful mind and its expression in cultures? How, in short, can inquisitive twenty-six-year-olds inspired to explain the artful mind discover a unified intellectual framework and institutional setting in which to begin thinking about it? Can their path be prepared to any degree by their elders, who lack their enviable plasticity and their exciting prospects, but who presumably command some of the knowledge, methods, and intuitions they might find useful?”[1; 5]

15. References 1. The Artful Mind: Cognitive Science and the Riddle of Human Creativity / edited by Mark Turner. - Oxford University Press, 2006. 2. Robert D. Behn. Rethinking Democratic Accountability. -Brookings Institution Press, 2001. I. V. Ubozhenko. The Cognitive Approach To Developing Language Creativity: Multidisciplinary Aspects within the Bounds of Political Discourse, in: 1st International Conference “Cognitive Futures of the Humanities” (Bangor University, 4–6 April 2013), 2013. I. V. Ubozhenko. The Theoretical Basis of a Linguo-Didactic Model of Developing Creativity in Translation: “Push-Word” Methodology, Prospects for the Neurolinguistic Approach, in: 4th UK Cognitive Linguistics Conference, London: King's College, 2012. - L., 2012.

16. Thank you for your attention! Do not hesitate to ask your questions! Contact information: iubojenko@hse.ru