Lecture 11

Flashback

object of Stylistics:

1/ special language media which due to their ontological features secure the desirable effect of the utterance (EM and SD);

 

2/ certain types of texts which due to the choice and arrangement of language means are distinguished by the pragmatic aspect of communication (FS)

subject of Stylistics:

communicative functions of the language units of different levels

Scheme for stylistic analysis

1. the literary source of the given fragment

2. the form of presentation of the excerpt (a piece of narration, description, direct speech, a piece of dialogue)

3. the manner of presentation of the extract (objective / subjective)

4. the general slant of the passage (lyrical, dramatic, humorous, ironic, unemotional, matter-of-fact, neutral)

5. the message of the text

6. the theme of the text (how it unfolds - logical development)

7. EM and SD , their stylistic functions in reference to the message

TEXT INERPRETATION AND STYLISTIC ANALYSIS

Materials

1. I. Galperin Stylistics. – 1981.

2. А.Н. Мороховский и др. Стилистика английского языка. - 1991.

3. И.В. Арнольд Стилистика современного английского языка. – 1981.

4.V. Kukharenko A Book of Practice in Stylistics. – 2000.

5.

В.А. Кухаренко Інтерпретация тексту. – 2004.

6. Воробйова О.П. та ін. Інтерпретація художнього тексту. - К.: 2004.

TEXT AS A COMMUNICATIVE UNIT AND ITS MAIN CATEGORIES

a business letter

the Constitution

an advertisement

a poem

a novel

a research paper

an essay

a newspaper article

Text (Latin = fabric, connection) =

- any sequence of signs having logical and formal order (Semiotics)

- a sequence of words ordered according to the rules of a given language system

-a verbal communicative event (written/oral) (Pragma-linguistics)

- a product of speech activity;

-a highest communicative unit of speech having a semantic, communicative and structural coherence

Text linguistics studies

1. Ontological aspect

2. gnosiological aspect

3. linguistic aspect proper

4. Pragmatic aspect

Text is characterised by

1. permanence (written variety of language)

2. integrity (I. Galperin - gestalt = inseparability of the whole, oneness, an entity in itself)

3. it is constructed on certain models

4. textual categories

Types of text models:

fixed (rigid) – rule-bound = strict requirements to grammar, vocabulary and composition

applications, law documents, regulations, agreements, constitutions, scientific papers

usual (flexible) – partially standardized = a number of regularities with a certain degree of creative freedom

reviews, newspaper commentaries, advertisements

free (flexible) – highest degree of creative freedom

literary fiction, essays, publicistic texts

S. Maximov:

a. mentafactua

b. artefactual

Expository texts

- the reflection of the objective world

• objects exist in the reality

Literary (fictional)

texts

- an imaginative reality of reality

-an artistic model of the outside world

dual nature of the literary text:

1.verbal - a product of the natural language - (the primary modelling system)

2.aesthetic - a work of art - (the secondary modelling system) - image bearing

•

Art is a veil rather than a mirror

Text in the communicative act:

the addresser - the text - the addressee

V. Kukharenko - the author-reader communication = in the form of a funnel

reality reality

perceived text re-created

by the author by the reader

W.S. Maugham The Summing up

The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run downhill.

In the production of his work, the author has fulfilled himself. The reader of a book is not concerned with the artist’s feelings. The artist has sought release, but the reader seeks for a communication, and he alone can judge whether the communication is valuable to him.

To the artists the communication he offers is a by-product. The work created may be good art or bad art. That is the matter for the reader to decide. He forms his decision from the aesthetic value of the communication that is offered to him. If it enriches his soul and enlarges his personality he will rightly describe it as great.

Basic categories of the text

text is not a sum of its constituting elements

Textual categories:

- are specific constituent qualities characterizing texts of all registers (FS);

- have semantic-structural character (content and form);

- are interconnected in the text;

• vary in different text types (functional-stylistic features)

General textual categories:

modality

discreteness

conceptuality

information

implicitness

integration

personality/impersonality, etc

discreet /discretion # discrete/ discreteness

1. The category of discreteness =

formation of a text from its distinct constituent parts (sentences, paragraphs, chapters, plot elements, etc.)

Types:

a. partitioning

b. compositional structure

a.Text partitioning

= a spatial arrangement of its basic syntactical, graphical and logical parts

?

minimal supra-syntactical units of the text

- the supra-phrasal unity

- the paragraph

supra-phrasal unity (SPU)

terms:

надфразова єдність

складне синтаксичне ціле

прозаїчна строфа

сверхфразовое единство

микротекст

SPU =

- a succession of no less than two sentences united by a micro-theme and cemented by means of inter-phrasal connection

a semantically autonomous constituent of the text

Roland picked out a tiny pearl handled knife with a blade of soft silver folded into it. Sophie took it from him. When she opened the blade to show him, the whole thing was still no more than four inches long. (W. Golding)

SPU can be extracted from the context without losing its relative semantic interdependence

SPU - semantic, communicative and structural completeness

SPU can be embodied in:

-a part of the paragraph

- the whole paragraph

-several paragraphs

George took his chair over to the open window and looked down on the lights and movement of Piccadilly. The noise of the traffic was lulled by the height to a long continuous rumble. The placards of the evening papers along the railings beside the Ritz were sensational and bellicose. The party dropped the subject of a possible great war; after deciding that there wouldn’t be one, there couldn’t. George, who had great faith in Mr. Bobble’s political acumen, glanced through his last article, and took great comfort from the fact that Bobble said there wasn’t going to be a war. It was all a scare, a stock market ramp… At that moment three or four people came in, more or less together, though they were in separate parties. One of them was a youngish man in immaculate evening dress. As he shook hands with his host, George heard him say rather excitedly, - “I’ve just been dining with …”