Abstract: The article is devoted to the analysis of binary oppositions in Chinese political discourse in the English language. According to the author of the article, the opposition category reflects Chinese way of thinking and mentality which proves the fact that opposition is a culturally conditioned phenomenon in the Chinese language. In her research Loskutnikova analyzes the semantics of opposition at the lexical level that reflects the nature of Chinese rhetoric in politics. This is demonstrated by Chinese values and culture rooted in the historical and national memory of the nation. The author of the article analyzes linguistic representations of binary oppositions that reflect the Chinese picture of the world. The main research methods used in the article include the method of semantic analysis, discursive method, and linguocultural method. The novelty of this research is caused by the fact that semantics of opposition in Chinese discourse in the English language is an understudied topic. In addition, the novelty of the research is defined by the fact that when Chinese political discourse is translated into the English language, it loses the specifity typical for Chinese mentality, i.e. a text in English is conveyed with a Chinese metamessage. As a result of the research, the author concludes that binary oppositions create a bipolar world that is reflected in the Chinse discourse. Semantics of opposition is verbalized by using linguistic means at the lexical level. 

Keywords: connotation, lexical level, cognitive level, discource, antinomy, oposition, binarity, semantics of opposition, mentality, verbal level

Abstract: This article is devoted to the analysis of Chinese religious reliaties in English detective novels The Chinese Maze Murders, The Chinese Bell Murders, The Chinese Lake Murders and The Chinese Gold Murders by Robert Hans van Gulik and their translations in the Russian and Chinese languages. In her article Startseva analyzes religious realities that reflect the national cultural particularities of the Celestial World and describes the main patterns and translation techniques that are used to adequately transmit the meaning of the text. The methodology of the research implies comparative method, in particular, analysis of English, Chinese and Russian lexemes that trasmit the religious code of Chinese peoples, and analysis of differences and similarities of translation of these realities. The novelty of the research is caused by the fact that for the first time in the academic literature the author makes an attempt to analyze religious realities in Robert Hans van Gulik's novels and define the main patterns used during translating them. As a result of the research, the author discovers the brightest examples of religious realities and analyzes how these realities are transmitted in the Chinese and Russian languages. 

Abstract: The subject of the present research is the writing systems which hypothetically speaking can be used in multidimensional spaces described in non-Euclidean geometries, in particular, geometries with more than three dimensions of space. The author of the present research article analyzes the concept of the multidimensional alphabet and multidimensional systems of information encoding. The importance of this topic is proved by the fact that there is a number of physical theories about the Universe being part of the multidimensional space where other civilizations with essentially different communication systems including writing may exist. In his research Sobolev analyzes the main peculiarities of human writing systems from the point of view of their geometrical and physical representation. He also conducts a comparative analysis of human writing systems and multidimensional writing. At the end of his research the author concludes that being reduced to 2D information encoding, human writing systems can be very difficult or even confusing for civilizations unfamiliar with the non-Euclidean geometry.  

Keywords: information encoding, unary alphabet, writing systems, multidimensional writing, multidimensional alphabet, multidimensional letters, alien writing systems, Arecibo message, color alphabet, cryptanalysis

Abstract: The article is devoted to the problem of the opposition between personality and society in literature based on the example of Mikhail Bulgakov's novel 'Heart of a Dog' and Abe Kobo's short story 'Tinnyusia'. The emphasis is made on the socio-cultural environment when those works were written because they were written at critical epochs of the paradigm shift accompanied with the total chaos of values. Those were the periods of Russia's becoming socialist USSR and Japan's 'turn' to demilitarization and democratization after the Second World War. In both cases psychology and behavior of people during social cataclysms were viewed and interpreted by Abe and Bulgakov through fantastic allegory and grotesque. In their research the authors of the present article have applied the empirical-hermeneutic method, i.e. the method of the correct description and interpretation of particular sources, as well as the dialectic method combined with the complementarity principle. This article is the first one in the history of Russian literary studies and Japanese studies to compare and analyze creative work of Abe Kobo and Mikhail Bulgakov from the cultural, sociological and philosophical points of view. For the first time in the academic literature the authors have also referred to foreign philosophical, socio-psychological and cultural sources including original Japanese texts. 

Keywords: totalitarianism, allegory, crowd, Bulgakov, Abe, personality, society, Japan, Japanese literature, culture