Emotive means of expressiveness in the Ukrainian version of the English-language animated series «Rick and Morty»

Abstract

The article addresses the issue of Ukrainian dubbing for foreign animated series. The study focuses on emotive means and their use in achieving expressiveness in speech. In the context of russia's full-scale war against Ukraine, processes of de-russification and decolonization in Ukraine's cultural space have been invigorated. This has, in turn, opened opportunities for dubbing all foreign films and animated productions released in Ukraine into Ukrainian. The emergence of numerous Ukrainian-language versions of animated series for both children and adults has drawn the attention of linguists. This article analyzes the linguistic means of creating expressiveness in the Ukrainian version of the English-language animated series “Rick and Morty” for adults. The authors deliberately did not aim to compare the English original with its Ukrainian interpretation. Still, they focused instead on analyzing the Ukrainian linguistic tools used to create an appealing animated product for viewers. The primary scientific tools used in this study include methods of continuous sampling, discourse analysis, descriptive method, and inductive method. Based on the compiled empirical material, seven groups of linguistic units were identified: codified words whose denotative meaning inherently contains the explicit emotional attitude or evaluation of the speaker; words with codified connotative evaluative or emotive semantics; codified words that acquire emotive or axiological semantic components only in specific contexts or speech situations; colloquial, particularly slang, vocabulary that is not codified but is widely used in speech practice; occasionalisms; obscene vocabulary; phraseological units, both in their conventional forms and in modified forms created by the dubbing authors. The Ukrainian-language version of the adult animated series Rick and Morty can generally be characterized as highly expressive. A significant number of verbal tools employed by the dubbing authors in the characters' dialogues are emotive and carry a distinct evaluative component in their semantics. Notably, there is a predominance of pejorative vocabulary. The communication between characters is dynamic, with the use of colloquial language and slang fully replicating natural speech. The linguistic portrayals of the characters are vivid and charismatic. The entire linguistic framework contributes to creating a humorous and even sarcastic effect. This is largely achieved through words that evoke associations with real-life scenarios, compel the audience to decode verbally encoded information, and trace intertextual connections to other works of world cinema. At times, underlying subtexts reveal issues of global significance for contemporary societies, including Ukraine. Importantly, the Ukrainian dubbing version prominently displays a national linguistic and cultural flavour, which gives it its unique originality.