Analysis Of 'The Bench'

granted, or at least, to a lesser extent than in Russian. Thus, she prefers to use it for creating sophisticated texts for adults. Her career as an English teacher also contributes to the fact that English is associated with self-control: as a teacher, she has to monitor her speech and make appropriate word choices to ensure that her learners understand her. There is no need to impose such level of control over her use of Russian since this is the language of her nearest and dearest, and she uses it in most emotional and intimate contexts. Thus, it seems to be less appropriate for a kind of writing that requires “a refined form of expression”, but can be used for children’s stories where an exciting plot is probably more important than a sophisticated form. This conclusion might be further supported by the fact that Anastasia struggles to write her dissertation in Russian and needs to translate it from English. The latter is associated with academic context and is more rational while the emotionality of the former makes it challenging to create logical and refined texts in it.
“Autobiographicity”

Another observation made during the data analysis is that most stories written by Anastasia in English are to some extent based on her autobiographical memories. In “The Bench”, my …show more content…
“balalaika”, “perestroika”,” babushka”. Anastasia stated that she included them in her narrative to depict Russian reality in a way that could be understood by foreign readers. Familiar and recognizable concepts should have helped her to do so. However, she came to a conclusion that her attempt was not quite successful. Some parts of Russian life are unfathomable; some words are untranslatable; thus, it takes a lot of time and effort to create a true image of Russia that will not be “touristy”, but at the same time could be appreciated by