Authentic Literary Text As The Subject Of Linguistic And Stylistic Analysis

Authentic literary text

Literary text is a lingual (graphic and sound) design of a piece of belles-letters that is presented by the author as a finished letter. In a literary text the message form is considered the main one; it presents the system of linguistic means for expressing some vivid content. The message form is transformed into a high-principled conception. As the result it appears as aesthetically motivated. Aesthetic motivation provides the individuality of expressing (Shanskiy, 1990). Literary text can be also treated as a communicative oriented verbal work which possesses aesthetic value found out in the process of its acquisition (Pishalnikova, 2017). Some other scientists consider a literary text not only as something aesthetic and ideal but also as a lingual and material category. Therefore, we can confirm that a literary text is an entire logical (semantic) message oriented by the author to the audience. The literary text carries the information, keeps and conveys it.

Regarding the term “authentic literary text” we should suppose that at present neither Russian nor foreign linguists come to the mutual conclusion how to treat this phenomenon. It is known that originally authentic text presents the text which is made not for studying the language, but for real communicative situation. According to the definition given by Haleeva, Kasuk, and Konev (2017) authentic text is the text which native speakers produce for native speakers. It is a text which is produced for performing a certain social function in the linguistic community where it has been produced. In other words, authentic text is an original text created for real situations but not for educational aims. Nunan (1988) also proclaims that authentic text is the information in a written form produced in a process of authentic communication but not for teaching or studying a foreign language. Authentic literary text reflects some facts and peculiarities of the national culture (Gilmore, 2007). A reader gets new information and gets acquainted with values and natives’ mentality i.e. an authentic literary text helps form culturological competence (Mishan, 2005; Takahashi, 2018). From linguistic point of view authentic literary texts are interesting due to polysemy of their lexical units and their connotational meanings. Following the definitions of the authentic text given above we can underline some common peculiarities characterizing an authentic text. They are real linguistic content, real addressee of the information reported in text, reporting of the real information.

Linguistic and stylistic analysis of the literary text

Any analysis is sorting, dissolution, general conclusion from particular deductions. Linguistic and stylistic analysis of the authentic literary text implies the analysis of the text from its inner side. It requires the search for lexical, stylistic and syntactic devises which form a certain particularity of the text.

Various aspects of linguistic and stylistic analysis of literary texts occupy an important place in linguistic investigations. Analysis of the literary text is considered to be the necessary component of the whole study of any text because the content and linguistic form of the text form a dialectical unity. According to Vinogradov (1980) linguistic and stylistic analysis is the analysis which studies how the graphic structure is expressed in imaginative verbal system of the text. Its object is the text as the structure of verbalisms in their aesthetic organization. Linguistic and stylistic analysis of the text is the analysis which includes determination of the extra-linguistic factors preceding the description of linguistic elements either neutral or stylistic and stylistically coloured words. The aim of such analysis is the determination of stylistic text organization conditions, finding out its linguistic, verbal, functional, style and stylistic devices.

This paper shares the definition given by a Russian linguist Shanskiy (1990) who treats linguistic and stylistic analysis of the literary text as a research method aimed at studying linguistic means of different levels in a literary text system from functional and aesthetic points of view, from the point of view of their compatibility with the author’s intention and individual author’s writing manner. This method supposes the studying of a literary text as a skillful organization of linguistic means reflecting a certain ideological, thematic and imaginative content stimulating reader’s aesthetic effect.

At present there are certain approaches to literary texts analysis:

• literary;

• linguistic;

• psycholinguistic;

• communicative.

Literary approach suggests the analysis and interpretation of a literary text as a unit of literature. Such analysis serves as the main method of scientific comprehension of a literary work. It includes the study of the context and genre of the literary work, analysis of its structure, plot and contexture, study of the conflict and problematic, the main idea and also analysis of the author’s image, main and minor characters, analysis of stylistic devices and imaginative details.

Linguistic approach to a literary text analysis pays special attention to the system of the text and its structural characteristics. This approach originates in the middle of the XX^th century. It can be applied to analysis of the text understood either as “a sequence of language units of any order” or “an abstract language unit of highest level” or “the maximum language unit”.

Psycholinguistic approach presupposes the analysis in its activity aspect, i.e. from the point of view of its production and perception where the system of the text and its structural characteristics are also taken into account. Psycholinguistic approach based on the theory of speech activity gives the start to the communicative approach of the literary text analysis. Studying the text as a whole speech product linguists focus on the central element of communicative model: author – text – addressee. Text as a speech product serves a universal form of communication.

Communicative approach to the authentic literary text analysis is based on communicativeness as an integral key feature of the text. It is explained by the fact that everything in the text is referred to the addressee. Thus, conceptual importance and opportunism are treated as system text characteristics.

To sum it all up we should conclude that the complexity of text structural, semantic and communicative organization, its correlation as a component of literary and aesthetic communication with the author and reader, its dependence on the reality and its significant character are the reason for plurality of approaches to its analysis. The approaches and directions can be used together complementing one another.

Our watching the process of learning the course of foreign literature by philology students of the Orenburg State University showed that about 50% of students face the problem of conducting linguistic and stylistic analysis of authentic literary texts. They consider it difficult to find out the main idea and the message conveyed by the author; understand words having no equivalents in a target language; point out lexical, stylistic or syntactic devices providing expressiveness and imaginative value of the text. The results of watching and testing students as well as our personal experience proved reasonability of working out a certain procedure including a logical scheme helping students overcome difficulties.

Using a psycholinguistic approach as a methodological foundation in our research work we worked out the procedure of teaching students linguistic and stylistic analysis of authentic literary text including three consecutive stages: preparatory, analytical and reflexive (Osiyanova & Kuleshova, 2018). At preparatory stage students first of all are given a general scheme providing logical guidelines of the analysis ahead (Osiyanova & Hrusheva, 2016). It includes such items as getting acquainted with the author’s biography and personality, a literary genre the text belongs to, time and locality in which the action proceeds, the main idea and the message conveyed by the author. All these things are discussed at the analytical stage of the analysis. The given scheme also supposes picking up already known lexical, stylistic and syntactic devices. At analytical stage students read and analyze various abstracts from authentic literary works of contemporary British literature (Vraštilová, 2018; Pavlick, Rastogi, Ganitkevitch, Van Durme, & Callison-Burch, 2015). Firstly, the analysis is conducted by the teacher in class as a group oral work and further students carry it out individually in a written form. Reflexive stage is devoted to evaluation and self-evaluation of the work done.