This ubiquitous mimesis: “Augmented” analysis

About the authors:

Natalia N. Belozerova, Dr. Sci. (Philol.), Professor, Professor of the Department of Applied and Theoretical Linguistics, Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Tyumen, Tyumen, Russia; n.n.belozerova@utmn.ru https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0892-7380

Larisa G. Fedyuchenko, Dr. Sci. (Philol.), Associate Professor, Associate Professor of the Department of Applied and Theoretical Linguistics, Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Tyumen, Tyumen, Russia; l.g.fedyuchenko@utmn.ru https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1061-1043

Abstract:

The article compares the reasoning texts (soliloquies) by William Shakespeare, Alexander Pushkin, and James Joyce with the thought chains of reasoning language models. The article is based on the classification of classical mimesis, the key idea of which is to imitate something existing. All texts are analyzed in terms of the semiotic modalities of “to be — to seem”. While analyzing the four texts, along with the method of contextual analysis there were used methods of prompt engineering, involving such tools of artificial intelligence language models as rule-based reasoning, knowledge graphs, and chain-of-thought. The analysis results in a number of conclusions: the modality of “to be” dominates in all the analyzed texts; the modality of “to seem” is realized by means of perfect sentence syntax; reasoning language models are quite capable of identifying cause-and-effect relationships, but the associative links of complex stream-of-consciousness reasoning do not lend themselves to adequate analysis. Thus, the authors come to the final conclusion that the prevalence of functional mimesis is achieved through verbal similarity.

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