The article is devoted to the visual and speech genres of Old Tiflis, which are revealed in the visual and verbal texts of famous artists N. Pirosmani, V. Elibekyan and Armenian writer A. Ayvazyan. The carnival spirit of Old Tiflis influenced the visual and verbal signs of the gastronomic infrastructure. The article is written by a semiotic, typological method, as well as an interdiscursive approach (painting, fiction). In addition, Bakhtin’s theory has become a metalanguage for identifying speech genres of urban space.
An empirical analysis of the material showed that Pirosmani's paintings were a vivid example of visual advertising and, in fact, were multichannel creolized texts. Only later, when the symbolic capital of Pirosmani increased, his paint- ings began to be perceived as glowing examples of primitivism. In other words, they were “connected” to global discourse, and their primary function was for- gotten. In the main function of the signage, the paintings were the products of demand of the gastronomic infrastructure of Old Tiflis: they depicted the frames “food”, “feast”, they were also visual menus of Tiflis gastropubs (dukhans).
The utilitarian demand for signs generated the brilliant paintings of Pirosmani, and at the same time, he became the author of urban space. This phenomenon is also affected in the literary discourse (A. Ayvazyan), in which two methods of modeling urban space are manifested. Firstly, the city is mod- eled in consciousness, expressed at the level of the signified (maps, sketches), and then embodied in life. That is how many cities of historical Armenia were built in diachronic point of view. Secondly, the painter (Pirosmani, Grigor – the hero of the story of Ayvazyan) painted and created in the city space (interior, exterior). The motives of his work were his own inner experiences.
The multilingualism of urban space created a demand for advertising signs in different languages. Since the “social bottom” did not possess the linguistic norm of the Russian language, in the eyes of native speakers the urban texts seemed ridiculous, perceived with humor. Similar texts are found in various artists of Old Tiflis (Pirosmani, Gudiashvili, Elibekyan ect.). The same thing appears in the art discourse (Ayvazyan), which gives examples of playing with names, with language (toasts of fun and burial), etc. In addition, an analysis of such a speech genre as toast revealed that it incorporates proverbs, sayings, and in the thematic plan, the following manifestations can be called: spell-wish, wish-curse, wish-criticism, etc. The presence of a similar speech genre and the revealing of the functioning of the toast showed that eating was comprehended by different wishes, and the thematic and syntagmatic analysis of toasts can become a tool for reconstructing the axiological system of Old Tiflis society (homeland, city, parents, children, sisters and brothers, uncles and aunts, etc.).
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