Speech dominance in the comedy of A.S. Griboedov "Woe from wit": correlations in russian and chinese
Article analyses a famous play by Griboedov "Woe from Wit" in order to investigate dominance in interpersonal relationships through speech. The text demonstrates the contest for power in a dialogue which is difficult for foreigners to recognize. For this purpose, we analyze rhetorical questions and constructions with personal pronouns, the primary methods employed in the competition for dominance in a well-known dialogue between the characters Chatsky and Molchalin. Based on a comparison of the original text and a Chinese translation, we examine the differences in perceptions of the character's behavior by Russian and Chinese readers. The dialogues of the characters in the play lose their sharpness because of the length of the sentences in the translation and because of the strict word order in the Chinese language. The conclusions are drawn from discussions with graduate students of Russian language from Peking University.