Berezhna M. Steve Jobs as Metasymbolic Strong Linguistic Personality

Abstract

The article defines the type of Steve Jobs’ linguistic personality. The material for the investigation is taken from biographical novel ‘Steve Jobs’ created by W. Isaacson (2011) and its Ukrainian translation (2012). The type of Steve Jobs’ linguistic personality is assessed on the basis of two parameters, namely the manifestation of his psychological type in verbal behavior and the level of communicative competence. The article establishes speech characteristics permitting to include him into particular groups.

According to his psychological type, S. Jobs is considered a metasymbolic linguistic personality. Among speech peculiarities allowing us to include him into the category are the following: domination of intuition and logic; lack of sensory perception, emotions and compassion; concentration on the picture as a whole; importance of the future; figurativeness and associative thinking; rich vocabulary; directness and critique of speech. Respectively, according to the level of communicative competence Steve Jobs is regarded as a strong linguistic personality. Here I distinguish his ability to create texts of any thematic and genre kind, to operate a large number of precedent texts, and to creatively combine diverse language elements. As for his periodical inability to stick to ethical norms in communication, the study shows that Jobs as a strong linguistic personality is capable of bending the existing standards and rules the way he saw fit.

The investigation demonstrates that his speech portrait in translation is different in some aspects comparing to the original. In Ukrainian translation, his speech is simplified and ambiguous in some cases. In addition, the lack of background knowledge prevents the readers from thorough evaluating and appreciating all the potency and power of his speech.