LINGUISTIC ASPECTS OF LITERARY TEXT INTERPRETATION N P

LINGUISTIC ASPECTS OF LITERARY TEXT INTERPRETATION N. P. Izotova, Ph. D

POINTS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Text Interpretation as a linguistic discipline : theoretical foundations. 2. Text Interpretation and related disciplines. 3. Approaches to literary text interpretation. 4. Typology of texts (structural, functional).

POINTS FOR DISCUSSION 5. Key notions of literary text interpretation: text, foregrounding (strong positions, artistic detail), context: (horizontal, vertical). 6. Literary text: main categories (integration, discreteness, conceptuality, implicitness, fictional time and space, personality / impersonality, addresseeorientation).

Recommended Literature 1. Гальперин И. Р. Текст как объект лингвистического исследования. [2 -е изд-е ]. – М. : Едиториал УРСС, 2004. 2. Болотнова Н. С. Филологический анализ текста: учеб. пос. [4 -е изд-е]. – М. : Флинта : Наука, 2009. 3. Долинин К. А. Интерпретация текста. – М. : Просвещение, 1975. 4. Интерпретация художественного текста / Домашнев А. И. , Шишкина И. П. , Гончарова Е. А. – М. : Просвещение, 1989. 5. Кухаренко В. А. Інтерпретація тексту : навч. пос. - Винниця: Нова Книга, 2004. 6. Одинцов В. В. Стилистика текста. [2 -е изд-е ]. – М. : Едиториал УРСС, 2004. 7. Interpretation and Overinterpretation / Ed. Stefan Collini. – Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Interpretation (Lat. “explication”) is an act, process, or result of interpreting, i. e. explaining the meaning and elucidating the sense, which is often multifaceted.

Hermeneutics folk etymology : Hermes - the Greek god of communication, arts, trade and mediator between the gods, the gods and humanity, who leads souls to the underworld, the inventor of language and speech, an interpreter and a trickster.

Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation theory, and can be either the art of interpretation, or theory and practice of interpretation. q traditional etymology of hermeneutics is derived from the Greek word ἑρμηνεύω (hermeneuō, “translate” or “interpret”). q

TEXT INTERPRETATION n n The object of TI is any speech utterances and texts – literary, scientific, and journalistic. The subject matter of TI is usually defined as textual meaning, textual content, and textual sense.

INTERPRETATION should be viewed as a methodology, a set of techniques serving the needs of various philological disciplines, aimed at deriving textual sense or senses, on the one hand as a process and result of applying these methods and techniques. (O. M. Morokhovsky)

Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900 -2002) Two basic assumptions of interpretation: 1) interpretation is, principally, open and infinite; 2) text comprehension is inseparable from the interpreter's self -understanding.

“Hermeneutic circle” Hans-Georg Gadamer “A person who is trying to understand a text is always projecting. He projects a meaning for the text as a whole as soon as some initial meaning emerges in the text. Again, the initial meaning emerges only because he is reading the text with particular expectations in regard to a certain meaning. Working out this foreprojection, which is constantly revised in terms of what emerges as he penetrates into the meaning, is understanding what is there”

Umberto Eco (1932) n To say that interpretation (as the basic feature of semiosis) is potentially unlimited does not mean that interpretation has no object and that it “riverruns” merely for its own sake. To say that a text has potentially no end does not mean that every act of interpretation can have a happy end.

UMBERTO ECO (1932) Distinguishes between interpretation and overinterpretation. An ‘overinterpretation’ employs Hermetic association and, by doing so, moves interpretation beyond the boundary of reading, that the text itself suggests, and is endorsed by interpretative community. In other words, a bad interpretation exceeds the boundaries of the community consensus. ‘It is impossible to say what is the best interpretation of a text, but it is possible to say which ones are wrong”

TEXT n n The origin of the word text goes back to late 14 century (Lat. textus "style or texture of a work”; structure, connection, pattern of weaving, texture (of cloth), fabric). Text – is any sequence of words ordered according to the rules of a given language system (a semiotic approach) n Text – is any verbal communicative event performed in either written or oral mode. communicative approach) (a

Textual content Textual Meaning Textual Sense The author's sense The receptive sense(s

Text interpretation and related disciplines n n n Text interpretation (begins with characterizing the constituent parts of a text to the generalizations about its underlying sense(s); concerned with implications). Linguostylistics (studies the ways of achieving an accord between the content and expression facets of a text; mainly the explicit level). Linguopragmatics (studies the process of text generation and perception, views the literary text within the system of relations: reality author - literary work - reader ).

Text interpretation and related disciplines n n n Literary stylistics (traces the peculiar features of the author’s individual style through the study of content and form of a fictional text, as well as the social, cultural and historical context of its genesis. Theory and history of literature (study types, genres of literary texts, their genesis, place in the cultural context, impact upon the readers). Text linguistics (studies literary text as a maximal unit of speech activity, as one of the primary means for storage, transfer and transformation of human knowledge about the world).

Paradigms of literary text interpretation The text-oriented approach is primarily concerned with question of the “materiality” of text, analysis of language and style, the formal structure of literary works. §Author-oriented (centered) schools put the main emphasis on the author. § The Reader-oriented approach focuses on the reception of texts by their audiences and the texts’ general impact on the reading public. §The Context-oriented (contextual) tries to place literary texts against the background of historical, social, or political developments while at the same time attempting to classify texts according to genres as well as historical periods. §

APPROACHES TO LITERARY TEXT INTERPRETATION n n n n Hermeneutic Semiotic Literary Philological Psycholinguistic Communicative Cognitive

TYPOLOGY OF TEXTS 1) Structural TEXT Flexible RIGID STANDARDIZED FREE

TYPOLOGY OF TEXTS 2) FUNCTIONAL INFORMATIVE n EMOTIVE n FACTUAL n POETIC n METATEXT n

TEXT FUNCTIONS Cognitive n Informative n Pragmatic n Aesthetic n Communicative. n

Literary Text: main features n n n creates an imaginary picture of the world through poetic images; is a result of a multitude of choices made the author at different stages of text generation; this choice is predetermined by objective and subjective factors, the author’s personal qualities and preferences.

Literary Text: main features aesthetic function; n imagery; n anthropocentrism; n dynamism; n plurality of interpretation; n superfluity…… n

LITERARY COMMUNICATION the outer world writer’s processing and interpreting “funnel principle ” a fictional text reader’s perceiving and interpreting

YURI LOTMAN (1922 -1993) Text is an intellect-like mechanism, the main characteristics of which are that: “it has memory, where it can concentrate its previous meanings, and, at the same time, it has the ability to produce new nontrivial messages when connected to a communicative chain”

Key notions of text interpretation Context Ш VERTICAL Ш HORIZONTAL (the author’s intention, the addressee’s background knowledge, his / her social status, psychological type, social, cultural and historical context, etc. ) (genre, text type, communicative and event situation, etc. )

Foregrounding As ‘a deviation from the norm’ n As ‘more of the same’ n

Key notions of text interpretation Foregrounding § § § convergence, coupling, defeated expectancy; strong positions (the title, the beginning, the end, epigraph); artistic detail

FOREGROUNDING Old Man at the Bridge § n n n I was watching the bridge and the African looking country of the Ebro Delta and wondering how long now it would be before we would see the enemy, and listening all the while for the first noises that would signal that ever mysterious event called contact, and the old man still sat there. An old man with steel rimmed spectacles and very dusty clothes sat by the side of the road. There was a pontoon bridge …. over the bridge. There were not so many carts now and very few people on foot, but the old man was still there. I was watching the bridge …. and the old man still sat there.

Strong Positions The Title: functions nominative §prospective §misleading §intriguing or thought-provoking… §

The Title THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY PROCESS (AGONY) pain excitable state suffering RESULT(ECSTASY) pleasure delight joy

THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY n “Art for me is a torment grievous when it goes bad, ecstatic when it goes well; but always it possesses me. When I have finished with a day of work I am at husk. Everything inside of me is now inside of marble or the fresco. That is why I have nothing to give elsewhere” (AE, 480).

Artistic Detail n n condensed, laconic and very expressive representation in the text of a complicated, multifaceted phenomenon, fact or idea; important element to be taken into account when seeking out the message of a text; reproduces the implicit content and the author's attitude; create foregrounding a specialized usage of language means perceived as unusual, unexpected, or "deautomatized“;

Functional classification of artistic detail depicting details n characterological details n authenticity details n implicit details (implications / implicates) n

Artistic detail A butterfly in her bedroom, fluttering against the glass, that she remembered, and how she caught it, holding it between thumb and forefinger, delicately so as not to brush the dust from its wings. It was a red admiral and she had released it out of the open window, seen it fly up into the sky and watched it until it was just a speck in the blue. Then she had come away from the window and lain on her bed, bored by this solitude, wondering how long it would be before her mother came up and opened the door and said, ’All right, Francine, you can come down now’ [Rendell, 26]. n

Implicates (implications) Types n n n implicit title implication of precedence implicit detail Degrees Superficial Trite Local Deep Dark -allusions -reminiscences -ethnoculteral implications

Reminiscence direct (quotations from literary works) indirect (paraphrased quotations or their semantic and stylistic elements)

Artistic detail n n If you have lived in cities and have walked in the park on a summer afternoon, you have perhaps seen, blinking in the corner of his iron cage a huge grotesque kind of monkey, a creature with ugly, sagging, hairless skin below his eyes and a bright purple under body. This monkey is a true monster. . . Wash Williams, the telegraph operator of Winesburg, was the ugliest thing in town. His girth was immense, his neck thin, his legs feeble. He was dirty. Everything about him was unclean. Even the whites of his eyes looked soiled [Anderson, 89].

Main categories of a literary text n n n integration (unification of all parts for achieving wholeness) conceptuality (organization of a text around a certain idea) implicitness (conceptualized as subtext) discreteness (formation from distinct parts) personality / impersonality (interaction between the author’s and readers images) addressee-orientation

Integration cohesion coherence

The text as a unity is made up of such components n n n n the message (idea / concept); theme (thematic planes); the author's image, (the narrator and narrative, the dominant point of view, forms of presentation); the image of the reader; characters and non-human images; the compositional and genre unity (the settings, conflict, plot lines and turns, text partitioning); the tonal system (usage of language, expressive means and stylistic devices, specific stylistic effects and the atmosphere).

Theme (Gr. thema "something that lies in the foundation") is the general content of a text presented in condensed way. The theme can be understood as the represented aspect of life, which the story illustrates. Message is defined as an inference to be drawn from theme or a problem to be pondered as a result of reading the text. WHAT PROBLEM(S) DOES THE TEXT POSE?

Discreteness Text partitioning (apxiтектоніка) (a spatial arrangement of syntactical, graphical and logical units) Text composition (a logical and aesthetic unity of plot elements)

PLOT STRUCTURE the exposition n the beginning of the plot n plot complications n the climax (culmination) n the denouement (resolution) n the conclusion (ending) n

The narrative (plot) structure n n n simple (straight-line) inverted (with deviations from the usual compositional order) circular (closing event brings back to the beginning) frame (a plot with a subplot) complex (includes digressions (retardations, flashbacks and flashforwards)

the climax conflict (a struggle between opposing forces) the external conflict the internal conflict

The concept of a literary textual (explicit, verbal) layer subtextual (implicit, deep-lying) layer Implicitness of literary text is a structural-semantic category often conceptualized as subtext

SUBTEXT n n Subtext is "a purely linguistic phenomenon inferred from the ability of sentences to engender additional sense" (I. R. Galperin). Subtext is implication of additional sense and emotional meaning (V. A. Kukharenko).

TIME • conceptual • perceptual • fictional (temporal setting) ° immediate ° broad