Research of Author`s Digression in Structural, Semantic and Semiotic Clues

Abstract.

RESEARCH OF AUTHOR`S DIGRESSION IN STRUCTURAL, SEMANTIC AND SEMIOTIC CLUES

Irina Arkhipova

German Philology Department, Horlivka Institute for Foreign Languages HSEE “Donbass State Pedagogical University”, Bakhmut, Ukraine

Abstract

Background: To ensure the coherence of literary text a significant role belongs to the different types of text insertions focusing the reader's attention on the necessary information and contributing to the expressiveness, emotional and aesthetic effect. Topicality of the given work is determined by its correspondence to the general direction of the modern linguistic studies from the theory of composition of the literary text to establish linguistic and pragmatic properties of the composition-and-plot, composition-and-structural as well as composition-and-semantic units of the text.

Purpose: The purpose of the analysis is to determine the status of author`s digressions as the compositional elements in English literary prose.

Results: The author`s digression is determined as an autosemantic compositional unit of literary text, which ensures semantic relationship of different elements of the text, performs emotional and esthetic, phatic and cognitive functions, and is considered to be explicit means in defining the author’s and reader’s images.

Discussion: The anthropocentrism in the modern linguistics allows us to look at the author`s digression from other positions, or to interpret the author's image problem in the other way, which was previously studied mainly by the literary studies. The studies of the cognitive aspect of author`s digression in the different genres of the literary texts of English and American prose is promising one.

Keywords: author`s digression, lyrical digression, comment, parenthesis, literary text, English literary prose.

Vitae

Irina Arkhipova Candidate of Philology, Associate Professor of German Philology Department, Horlivka Institute for Foreign Languages HSEE “Donbass State Pedagogical University”. The area of research interests includes text linguistics, pragmatics, cognitive linguistics.

Correspondence: nahemaa@ukr.net.

Article.

Ірина Архіпова

УДК 811. 111. 81'42

RESEARCH OF AUTHOR`S DIGRESSION IN STRUCTURAL, SEMANTIC AND SEMIOTIC CLUES

Стаття присвячена вивченню лінгвостилістичних особливостей авторського відступу. Мета статті полягає у визначенні статусу авторських відступів як композиційних одиниць англомовних художніх прозових текстів. Об'єктом виступають авторські відступи в англомовних художніх прозових текстах ХІХ-ХХ ст. На основі комплексного підходу до аналізу текстових внесень з’ясовано критерії визначення авторського відступу та уточнено поняття «авторський відступ».

Ключові слова: авторський відступ, ліричний відступ, коментар, вставні слова, англомовний прозовий текст.

To ensure the coherence of literary text a significant role belongs to the different types of text insertions focusing the reader's attention on the necessary information and contributing to the expressiveness, emotional and aesthetic effect. The following composite text elements include the out of cast units of the compositional structure of the text: titles, episodes, stage directions, notes, inserted constructions and author`s digression actually.

The relevance of the work is determined by its correspondence to the general direction of the modern linguistic studies from the theory of composition of the literary text to establish linguistic and pragmatic properties of the composition-and-plot, composition-and-structural as well as composition-and-semantic units of the text.

The aim of the article is to determine the status of author`s digression as the compositional units in English literary prose texts.

The object is the author`s digression in the English literary prose texts.

The analysis of the linguistic works devoted to the study of the author`s digression suggests that the author`s digression as included in the work text has not been studied enough in the linguistics, and the used in works terms like: "detailed consideration" (Kuharenko 135), "author's of direct language structures" [268], or the term in grammar "inquit" as a juxtaposition of "direct language", as well as the terms "lyrical digression" or "author's comment"; in literary studies the term "remark" to refer this phenomenon in the drama, they do not reveal to the full extent the features of the text included in work. The use of different terms ("author`s digression", "author'scomment", "set piece" and "lyrical digression") to describe the same phenomenon, namely the text included in work; does not provide the differences between these concepts. "The term "lyrical digression" was named not so much due to the peculiarities of its content, but due to the frankness of expression of the author that is revealed in the reasoning" (Kuharenko 135). It is proposed the use of the term "author`s digression", which in our opinion, reflects in the best way the essence of the phenomenon.

From the perspective of semiotic theory, the out of cast units of the text are treated as meta-text elements that act like a means of connectedness (Apresyan), switch attention of the addressee to the more meaningful fable moments, they help to navigate in the literary text space (Lotman).

In the framework of structural and semantic approach, the subject of study are parentheses as a grammatical phenomenon limited to the scope of sentence; while in the spotlight there were the nature of syntax of relationship between the matrix and the parenthesis (Kobrina) and the principles of delimitation of the different functional parentheses types; among them there were inserted and input one, their stylistic features in the text (Aleksandrova, Kostyuk). With the development of text linguistics the tendency was set up to study text inclusions with the textocentric approach that allowed to highlight the textual inclusion in particular (Samoletova) and to examine their functioning in the literary text from the position of linguo-cognitive approach (Bun, Vorobieva). In linguopoethics (Arnold, Vinohradov) the following units and their variants were considered from the perspective of narratology (Kuharenko) as the types of presentation: author language, dialogical language, internal, quasi-direct as the forms: note, remark, and author`s digression). Thus, the included units were studied as both composite units, and as the author's language. As the author's language, it is one of the brightest ways to highlight the image of the author.

Significance of the lyrical digression in the literary texts was highlighted by O. O. Potebnya, identifying it as a special type of "subjectivity" (Potebnya). The literary meaning of the subjective beginning in prose was exposed for the first time by M. M. Bahtin: "Subject for the prose writer – the focus of the contentious votes, among them his voice also should sound; these voices create the necessary background for his voice" (Bahtin 67). This thought of M. M. Bahtin received a general recognition and a significant development in the science. For Example, T. Silman calls the author`s digressions like "lyrical insertions" and considers the author`s digression as an "inclusion of character", where the author acts as an equitable character with his voice (Silman 190-205).

І. Gordon considers the author`s digression into the comments, analyzing the author's position as a commentator on what he portrayed (Gordon 165). І. V. Arnorld defines the intratextual comment, which is issued in the form of a word, expression or sentence within the text itself; it is placed in brackets and is intended to explain the obscure places that appear in the development of the story; the author's intratextual comment that merges with the narration, acquiring the form of author`s digression, or it is included by the author in the language of the characters; and a non-textual comment: here we have by-page notes or endnotes, marginal notes and even epigraphs, prefaces and individual sections (Arnold). T. F. Plehanova believes that the author`s digression is the text composition element, i.e. the author's commenting of the depicted in the work paintings and characters (Plehanova 6-14). The author can interrupt the unravelling of the plot in text and enter into the direct conversation with the addressee (rarely with the character) to evaluate depicted, express own thoughts and feelings. T. F. Plehanova in her work draws an analogy between the author`s digression and the parenthesis. The author considers possible to regard parenthesis "and in the larger than the sentence background. It can also include the author`s digression in the extended interpretation of the parenthesis" (Plehanova 7-8). We adhere to the perspective that the parenthesis is a phenomenon that is introduced to the structure of a sentence, and can be deleted from the sentence without damaging of its structure. The various functions of the parenthesis reduced to the formation of the speech figures, mainly different types of the repeat: anaphora, epiphora, graduation, anticlimax (Skrebnev 252). K. R. Novozhilova calls the author`s digression as one of the form of violation of the predictability, since they are the fallout of literary norms into the world of the real norms, which leads to the violation of the conventions of the literary work (Novozhilova 66-68). Introductory unity (structural and text author`s digression names) reflects the absence of the author's knowledge of the story subject matter, and his knowledge about the world in general. In this relation of the literary and the real world that was explicitly presented with author`s digression, the main direction of the thoughts of the artist is performed, from the particular to the general. The authors of the works can appeal to the imaginary listener and conversationalist (reader). These appeals are reflected in the numerous digressions from the novel. These digressions are necessary for the author to express his attitude to the situation described in the communication, to the communicative intentions of its members and planned by them perlocutionary effects, as well as to the participants themselves and their actions. Despite the fact that the author`s digression helps to disclose deeply the idea and the whole content of the work, they have an impact on the reader, with their help the image of the author-narrator is introduced, which rises above the depicted, H. Flober believes that the author should "create and be silent", i.e. in the minimum way to show his opinion, not destroying the illusion of a fictitious world. This view is also shared by O. M. Levidov, who believes that the author's intervention complicates the objectification of reality, negatively affects the perception of the character by the reader (Levidov 145). Yu. M. Lotman comes to a conclusion about the existence of two types of speech, he named them "someone else's word" and "author's word" (own author's story). He allocates six functional types of "someone else's speech" (monologue by the character's, quote, foreign language text, etc.) and three functional types of actually author's wording: 1. "Common", novel story in a very neutral forms, that does not create a tangible image of the native speaker. 2. Speech, directed to the interlocutor – replacement of the monological story with "one party" of the dialogic speech. 3. Author's stories about the author's story (Lotman 55-56). The second and the third types of actually author's wording are often correlated with the author`s digression.

V. А. Kuharenko calls the author`s digression as an expanded consideration, which includes the author's ideas that express the perception of the author, in her opinion, this is an explanatory form of language, where the author comes into a direct contact with the reader. The Consideration in the literary text is the megaphone of author ideas, not embodied in the form (Kuharenko).

The modern literary studies accepted the following definition of the author`s digression: "Lyrical digression is the form of the author's language, the word of the author-narrator that distracts from the plot description of the events for its commenting, estimation, other reasons not connected directly with the work cast... the author`s digression directly injected introduces into the world of the author's ideal and helps to build the image of the author as a live interlocutor, reader" (Kvyatkovskij 124).

Composition and lyric digressions have a double meaning: on the one hand, they play the role of braking of the fable development of a novel or poem, and on the other hand, they allow the writer to express his opinion in an open form on various issues that have a direct or an indirect relationship to the central theme (Kvyatkovskij).

This definition indicates that the author`s digression gets a conceptual meaning only in the ratio with a category of the author image. The interpretation of the concept of "image of author" is quite diverse; "it is like active participant of the story, or like the creative individuality of the writer" (Hrapchenko 97-108). Probably, such a terminology difference occurs because the author actually appears in the work in his several manifestations. In this regard, V. V. Vinogradov set the problem of typology of the image of the author in the fiction. V. V. Vinogradov using the notions of objectivity and subjectivity solves this problem. In the texts with the "objective" structure of the storytelling, according to V. V. Vinogradov, the author is hidden in the depths of the composition, style, and other major elements of poetics and respectively he is verbally imperceptible. Here in the center we have not the author, not the narrator, but the depicted reality itself. In the texts with the "subjective" storytelling structure the author manifests itself like explicit with this or the other language forms (Vinogradov).

For the linguistic studies of the included text the most typical is primarily the appeal to the texts with the "subjective" structure of the story, where the author is presented as a linguistic entity, i.e. he expresses; manifests itself, first of all by means of the signals of the language of nature in fact.

The anthropocentrism in the modern linguistics allows us to look at the author`s digression from other positions, or to interpret the author's image problem in the other way, which was previously studied mainly by the literary studies.

The image of the author, according to V. V. Vinogradov, with one side is turned to the world of ideas, attitudes, outlooks of the writer, and on the other side to the language structure (Vinogradov). Vinogradov has always stressed that the image of the author is structural, as any verbal form. The analysis of this structure is able to reveal the outlook. Thus, linguistic and literary approaches to the literary work are fundamentally compatible.

In our research we determine the author`s digression as an autosemantic compositional unit of literary text, which ensures semantic relationship of different elements of the text, performs emotional and esthetic, phatic and cognitive functions, and is considered to be explicit means in defining the author’s and reader’s images.

The studies of the cognitive aspect of author`s digression in the different genres of the literary texts of English and American prose is promising one.

References.

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Надійшла до редакції 05 лютого 2017 року.