“Evil Mastermind” in the framework of a verbally modeled reality

Abstract

This article considers language means verbalizing the EVIL MASTERMIND in the framework of an alternative pop-cultural world. The paper regards an alternative reality as a logical construal, the result of categorizing and modeling activities. The said modeling unfolds according to the patterns of open systems’ development and follows the logic of irrational rationalization that involves mythic space and its content as primary categorization filters. The latter is treated as the premises of myth-oriented semiosis. The article employs the multidisciplinary methodology of M-logic. The article addresses Loki as a prototype EVIL MASTERMIND which is identified as a temporarily tolerated system or a subsystem manifesting extraordinary capacities at different levels of organization and functioning, grudgingly tolerated by other systems due to its etiology essentially contrary to their own, responsible for both their benefits and eventual demise. The paper provides reconstructions of respective semantic features encoded in the verbal construals in Old Norse Eddic texts. Further interpretations of these semantic features result into their arrangement into a systemic cluster thus providing a look at the inner structure of the conceptualized notion of EVIL MASTERMIND in the archaic Germanic tradition. Loki’s speech behavior is analyzed in terms of speech act semantics. Special attention is paid to the variant of EVIL MASTERMIND created in the alternative reality of a TV series “Loki”. The article highlights peculiarities of the alternative EVIL MASTERMIND’S speech activities and focuses on their strategy-tactics arrangements. The paper provides comparative analysis of the two EVIL MASTERMINDS in regard to the patterns of “agonist” VS “antagonist” interactions, employed speech acts, strategies and tactics as well as synthetic interpretations of mythic concepts’ transformations in a modeled alternative pop-cultural world.