Abstract
The article dwells upon the internal monologue as an artistic and linguistic technique in French fiction. Our complex approach represents the correlation of internal monologue with adjacent or interchangeable concepts
Keywords: Linguopragmaticsinternal/inner monologuefactor of subjectivitycompositional structuregraphical means
Introduction
A literary product is a complex structure the elements of which are arranged under a certain angle and the narrative as a whole. In a fictional text, both fable (the constructed textual space) and plot (its presentation and interpretation) are determined by the speaking Subject, or by so-called Subject of Speech (Lotman, 1970). In the compositional structure of an artistic literature work, the internal monologue plays an important role and forms a peculiar speech functioning sphere.
This article considers the linguistic and pragmatic potential of the internal monologue as a language technique carried out by a complex of linguistic and stylistic means used and implemented due to author’s intention. The purpose of internal monologue application is realized on the one hand, with the introduction of the communicative situation of speech addressed to external recipients, on the other hand, not intended to be perceived by others and, thus, to create a model of spontaneously occurring process of inner speech, the whole stream of consciousness, i.e. associative-emotive world of Subject, including perception, sensory and associative thinking (Oyun, 2018).
Problem Statement
The analysis of internal dialogue has conditioned our appeal to the linguopragmatics of several interrelated concepts that should be taken into consideration: inner speech, inner voice, verbal stream of consciousness, intrapersonal communication, inner discourse.
Lev Vygotsky (1999) was the first who pointed out the premises reflected in his concept of inner speech which he defined as a form of self-directed dialogue with oneself in silence, “inner speech is not an internal aspect of external speech, it is a function in itself” (p.17). Further development of the idea in the works of Russian and foreign researchers gave rise to several of the following problems, assumptions and conclusions:
speech began as a social medium and became internalized as inner speech, that is, verbalized thought;
our real identity lies in inner speech, in that ceaseless stream and generation of meaning that constitutes the individual mind;
if inner speech is marked by an intimate sense of one’s active thinking, it is also quite specifically thinking in a language;
inner speech is a shorthand version of real speech, a word in inner speech is the mere “skin” (“covering”, “shell”) of a thought, and it’s very egocentric, not surprisingly, given that it is a monologue with the speaker and the audience being the same person;
inner speech comprises both the inner voice we hear while reading and the muscle movements of the accompanying speech (articulation) organs that are called subvocalizations (Coles, 2009).
Internal monologue, also known as inner voice, inner speech, or verbal stream of consciousness is the thinking in words, a semi-permanent inner monologue that a person has with himself/herself on a conscious or semi-conscious level. Much of what people consciously report “thinking about” can be considered as an internal monologue, a conversation with oneself, speech rehearsal.
In the philosophical field of language, there is a lot of research on inner speech in correlation with the building and usage of phrases in one’s own idiom and, thus, the importance of language in the process of thinking. The term internal monologue is often used interchangeably with stream of consciousness. However, while the inner monologue may mirror all the half thoughts, impressions, and associations that impinge upon the character’s consciousness, it can be restricted to an organized presentation of that character’s rational thoughts. In other words, some kind of psychodynamics revealed by the inner monologue usually exists at a pre- or sublinguistic level, where the images and connotations they cause displace the literal denotative meanings of words.
Another approach in studying internal monologue provokes its comparison with the concept of intrapersonal communication, which is supposed to be communicator’s internal use of language or thought. It is illustrative to imagine intrapersonal communication occurring in an individual’s mind as a model that contains a sender, a receiver, and a feedback loop. Although successful communication is defined as interaction between two or more people, some questions regarding the beneficial nature of intrapersonal communication lead to the argument that the definition is too limited, but it is also communication as messaging within one person. In a literary situation, intrapersonal communication can encompass:
talking to oneself – a time when there should be concern is when talking to oneself occurs outside socially acceptable situations, e.g., the proper signs of schizophrenia;
internal monologue is the semi-continuous internal monologue one has with oneself on a conscious or semi-conscious level;
writing one’s thoughts or observations, i.e. the additional activities on top of thinking, writing and reading back may increase self-understanding and concentration;
sense-making (creation of meanings), for example, interpretation of maps, texts, iconic signs and symbols, nonverbal communication, etc.
Many researchers mention the evolution of internal monologue, putting forward various assumptions about its original nature. Hence, it has been argued that talking to oneself can be used to avoid silence, or vice versa, to maintain constant contact with group members, since in human evolution history the danger signal was transmitted through silence and freezing.
Intrapersonal communication arises from a series of logical and linguistic inconsistencies or contradictions. The descriptor intrapersonal communication is ambiguous by itself. Many definitions seem to be cyclical, as they borrow, apply and, therefore, distort the main conceptual features (for example, sender, recipient, message, dialogue) taken from ordinary interpersonal communication (Kirillova, 2011). Unknown entities or parts of personality allegedly carry out intrapersonal exchange – in many cases, a very private language is relied upon, which in the analysis turns out to be completely inaccessible and ultimately unjustified.
Finally, we single out an internal discourse, which is a constructive act of the human mind and a tool for discovering new knowledge and making decisions. Along with such feelings as joy, anger, fear, and sense awareness, it is one of the few aspects of information processing and other mental activities that a person concerns. Inner discourse is so prominent in the human consciousness of psycho-functioning that it is perceived like synonymous with mind.
In addition, there is a point of view that mind means “what one experiences when one thinks things over and that thinking things over is believed to consist only of words heard in inner discourse.” This common sense idea of the mind should either block the fact that the mind is constantly processing all kinds of information below the level of awareness, or rename this activity to some ostensibly non-mental status, such as reflex response (reaction).
Closely related to the drama monologue, the internal monologue was became a characteristic device of 20th century psychological novels. In both fiction and nonfiction, an internal monologue is the expression of character’s thoughts, feelings, and impressions in a narrative, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. An inner/internal monologue may be either direct or indirect:
direct, in which the author seems not to exist, and the interior character’s Self is given directly, as if the reader were overhearing an articulation of the stream of thoughts and feelings flowing through the hero’s (protagonist’s or any other character’s) mind;
indirect, in which the author serves as a selector, presenter, guide and commentator.
Thus, internal monologues span several forms, including dramatized internal conflicts, introspection, imagined dialogue, and rationalization (Nordquist, 2019). It may be a direct first-person expression, seemingly devoid of author’s choice and control, or a third-person addressing that begins with a phrase like “he thought” or “his thoughts turned to”. Inner monologue is a narrative technique that shows the thoughts passing through the minds of the protagonists. Either these ideas are loosely connected impressions approaching free association, or more rationally structured sequences of thoughts and emotions.
Research Questions
In French fiction, it is possible to highlight the inner world of characters through an internal monologue. As a linguistic means of its implementation, we analyze stylistically marked language units that semantically, grammatically or associatively indicate the presence of an internal monologue in the author’s narrative and can be correlated with the position of internal speech subject (Oyun, 2018). Consequently, scientists have gradually come to the conclusion that thinking as an element of consciousness in the human mind coupled with the unconsciousness (which led to the emergence of the term nonverbal thinking) is a phenomenon of interest not only for such specific areas of human knowledge as philosophy, psychology or psychiatry (linguopathology), but also for linguistics.
Yuri Karaulov (1995) clearly presented this problem:
Inner speech is far from the original, although it is arranged according to the laws of syntax and morphology of a language, equipped and “decorated” with a whole range of intonations and aesthetically significant rhythmic patterns which make it understandable and available for others. (p. 37).
Obviously, in literature the disclosure of pragmatic potential of any formal elements acquires an independent significance, therefore, we should pay attention to the complex of linguistic means of conveying internal monologue with various components and levels of a literary text: lexical, grammatical, stylistic, graphic.
Purpose of the Study
Karaulov’s hypothesis about the existence of an intermediate language as a plot of research, particularly for linguists, is waiting for its confirmation. The reasons of delays in such studies are logical, methodological and methodical difficulties. The first, caused by the individual subjective nature of intermediate language, lead to the impossibility of selecting and structuring necessary language means. The second are caused by stable belief in the symbolic nature of the specific language units that is quite doubtful matter in their classification. Finally, we deal with insufficiency and inefficiency of the experimental methods of the current studies that need more detailed developments (Artyna, 2019).
Various compositional methods of introducing internal monologue into the author’s narrative have determined the purpose of our study. Scientific search in this field is associated with the confirmation of the following several theses:
Internal monologue is preceded by author’s narration, explicitly naming or describing the act of thought, perception, or feeling experienced by the character.
Internal monologue can be introduced into the narrative by a statement implicitly attributing some action, act of thought or perception to the character.
Internal monologue begins with a statement that conveys the character’s thoughts in the form of direct speech.
Internal monologue is transmitted by lexical nomination of a person or object, reflecting the character’s point of view in a special way.
Internal monologue is anticipated by an assumption contained in statement that contradicts to what is true from the narrator’s point of view and, therefore, from the reader’s too.
In fiction, it is possible to combine two forms of showing protagonists’ inner world, which is based on the narrator’s position and attitude to them. On the one hand, this position reveals the characters’ openness/closeness of the consciousness content to the narrator and, on the other hand, the possibility of describing characters from the outside. In this regard, there are two main types of internal monologue: subjectified – in the first person and objectified – in the third.
In French prose, the stylistic forms of internal monologue transmission are independent artistic techniques, since they have a number of relevant linguistic indicators and specific connotations of meaning (Oyun, 2018). As the linguistic indicators testifying differentiation of receptions for the image of heroes’ internal speech, the morphological means, namely, system of personal pronouns (Avedova, Kolesnikova, & Kotelnikova, 2019) and various verbal forms are allocated: fabŭla, present tense of objective reality, and narrative past tense, i.e. imperfect, when the author portrays the character’s inner speech through the prism of the narrator's temporal plan.
Research Methods
In literary communication, the main research methods are quantitative and contextual, as well as the method of component analysis.
The French inner speech of the characters in the fictional discourse uses a large repertoire of linguistic verbal and stylistic means. The application of these tools depends on the type of internal speech and “mode of interpretation”: speech or narrative. According to the speech mode, the character’s inner monologue is in contrast with the narrator’s speech, and reveals similarities with direct speech, while in the narrative mode the character’s inner speech is assimilated or coincides with the narrator’s (Bodnaruk, 2018). The speech portrait of a literary character is important to describe personality, to distinguish him/her from other protagonists, to help the reader in comparing literary heroes, and to demonstrate their inner life and psycho-type (Rodionova, 2018).
We have applied an integrated approach as a tool for stylistic, structural-semantic and functional analysis of linguistic material in French writers’ literary works.
The internal monologues from the first person and the third person often stand side by side in the context, as if it helped the author to show the same phenomenon from different angles. That enriches the expressive and stylistic drawing of the behavior, for example, in extract from the novel by Louis Aragon (1986) “Aurélien”:
Je demeurai longtemps errant dans Césarée. En général, les vers, lui. Mais celui-ci revenait et revenait. Pourquoi? c'est ce qu'il ne s'expliquait pas. Tout à fait indépendemment de l'histoire de Bérénice... l'autre, la vraie. D'ailleurs il ne se rappelait que dans ses grandes lignes cette romance, cette scie. Brune alors, la Bérénice de la tragédie. Césarée, c'est du coté d'Antioche, do Beyrouth. Territoire sous mandat. Assez moricaude même, des bracelets en veux-tu en voilа, et des tas de chichis, de voiles. Césarée… un beau nom pour une ville. Ou pour une remme. Un beau nom en tout cas. Césarée. Je demeurai longtemps… ah ça, je deviens gâteux. Impossible de se souvenir: comment s’appelait-il, le type qui disait ça, une espèce de grand bougre ravagé, mélancolique, flemmard, avec des yeux de charbon, la malaria... qui avait attendu pour se déclarer que Bérénice fût sur le point de se mettre en ménage, à Rome, avec un bellâtre potelé, ayant l'air d'un marchand de tissus qui fait l'article, à la maniére dont il portait la toge. Tite. Sans rire. Tite. [I wandered for a long time in Caesarea. In general, the verses leave… But this one returned and returned. Why? This is what he could not explain. quite independently of the story of Bérénice ... the other, the real one. Besides he remembered only in his main lines this love song. Dark-haired woman, Bérénice of tragedy. Caesarea is on the side of Antioch, of Beirut. Territory under mandate. Pretty dark here, a lot of fuss, veils. Caesarea ... a beautiful name for a city. Or for a woman. A beautiful name in any case. Caesarea ... I have stayed for a long time like this… I become boring. I cannot remember: how he was called, the guy who said this, a kind of devastated, melancholic, bone idle fellow, with coal eyes, malaria… which had waited to declare that Bérénice should be about to put on the household, in Rome, with a chubby guy who looks like a cloth merchant, who makes the items like togas. Tite. Without laughing. Tite] (Aragon, 1986, p. 28)
In the hero’s inner monologue, the poems continuously come to Aurélien’s head, intertwining with thoughts of the girl Bérénice. The words of the verses are Je demeurai longtemps errant dans Césarée..., conveying a sense of thoughts, repeating, reveal musicality throughout the passage. The hero’s internal monologue is first transmitted from the 3rd person – the author’s position, with his comments:
En général, les vers, lui... Mais celui-ci revenait et revenait. Pourquoi? C'est ce qu'il ne s'expliquait pas... [In general, the verses leave… But this one returned and returned. Why? This is what he could not explain.]; and further – from the 1st person, the personage’s point of view: ... ah ça, je deviens gâteux. Impossible de se souvenir: comment s'appelait-il, le type qui disait ça, ... I become boring. I cannot remember: how he was called, the guy who said this...] (Aragon, 1986, p. 35).
From the first person the character goes to the third person (se souvenir), as if being suspended from himself and watching himself from the outside.
The system of verbal tenses is quite heterogeneous in the internal monologue of the third and the first person. In the internal monologue from the 3rd person, the imparfait (non-perfect, imperfect) is used: Mais celui-ci revenait et revenait. Pourquoi? C'est сe qu'il ne s'expliquait pas... [But this one returned and returned. Why? this is what he could not explain.]; while in an internal monologue from the first person, the present tense appears: ah ça, je deviens gâtteux [I become boring].
The analysis of two types of internal monologue showed that the first person is characterized by use of bright, stylistically colored vocabulary, reflecting the linguistic features of oral speech (vernacular, argotisms, various tropes, metaphors, hyperboles, etc.) which can be sharply opposed to the author’s speech manner. At the same time, for an internal monologue of the third person, a narrative with an orientation to more neutral, literary language means is appropriate.
The lexical means of the internal monologue transmission are the language units that express the subjective understanding of events in the novel that is, having a subjective-modal meaning of perceptuality peculiar to the artistic monologue. These linguistic means include lexical units that reflect the character’s socio-characterological features (professional, social, age). This vocabulary also reflects the colloquial nature from everyday oral speech – reduced, rude, and vulgar to familiar, intimate – affectionate. Let us illustrate an excerpt from Martin du Gard’s novel “Les Thibault”:
Et, au fond de lu voiture qui le ramenait chez lui, une cigarette aux lévres, il s'avisa que le petit malade allait vraiment mieux, que sa journée de médecin était terminée, et qu'il se trouvait en excellente disposition. "J'avoue qu'hier soir je n'étais pas fier. En général, quand l'expectoration cesse aussi brusquement... Pulsus bonus, urina bona, sed aeger moritur... Il ne s'agit plus que d'éviter l'endocardite.. la mére est encore jolie femme. Paris aussi est bien joli, ce soir..." [And, in the back of the car that was taking him home, a cigarette on his lips, he realized that the little patient was really getting better, that his day as a doctor was over, and that he was in excellent health. "I admit that last night I was not proud. Usually, when the expectoration stops so abruptly ... Pulsus bonus, urina bona, sed aeger moritur ... It is only a question of avoiding endocarditis.. the mother is still a pretty woman. Paris is also very pretty this evening ... "] (Martin du Gard & Bloch, 1960, p. 16).
Even if we did not know that Antoine is a doctor, we could guess it by the words in which his thoughts are reproduced, namely, due to some of professional terminology: pulsus bonus, urina bona, sed aeger moritur.
Grammar means of internal monologue are divided into morphological and syntactic. The morphological means include the stylistic use of certain parts of speech: pronouns, articles, interjections, various tenses, e.g., in the excerpt from the novel “Aurélien” there may be noted the demonstrative pronouns and interjections involved into the internal monologue: Je demeurai longtemps... ah ça, je deviens gâteux. Impossible de se souvenir: comment s'appelait-il, le type qui disait ça... [I have stayed for a long time like this… I become boring. I cannot remember: how he was called, the guy who said this...] (Aragon, 1986).
The demonstrative pronoun ça refers directly to the reference situation and gives a familiar connotation to the statement, as it occurs in colloquial speech. The interjection ah here also plays its role in conveying the hero’s internal monologue. Interjections express speaker’s immediate reaction, strong emotions and feelings. A character emotionally experiencing the events, in which he is a participant, includes interjections in his/her inner speech.
Expressive syntax, traditionally referred to the sphere of oral colloquial speech, gives the internal monologue a real sense of dynamism. The construction of phrases corresponds to the fact that the reader is immersed in thinking processes, so the writer often uses elliptical (incomplete) sentences, parcellings, rhetorical questions and other means of expressive syntax.
Let us consider the example of parcelling and ellipses, which contribute to help readers feel dynamism of the protagonist’s inner speech:
En général, les vers, lui..., Tout â fait indépendemment de l'histoire de Bérénice... l'autre, la vraie...; Césarée, c'est du coté d'Antioche, de Beyrouth. Territoire sous mandat. Assez moricaude même, des bracelets en veux-tu en voilà, et des tas de chichis, de voiles. Césarée... un beau nom pour une ville. Ou pour une femme. Un beau nom en tout cas Césarée... [In general, the verses, they... quite independently of the story of Bérénice ... the other, the real one...: Caesarea is on the side of Antioch, of Beirut. Territory under mandate. Pretty dark here, a lot of fuss, veils. Caesarea ... a beautiful name for a city. Or for a woman. A beautiful name in any case Caesarea ...] (Aragon, 1986, p. 37).
Among other means that convey the internal monologue in the literary text, there is stylistic use of various graphic techniques, such as italics, capital letters, sparsity, etc. Many linguists note the iconic character of word outline, punctuation marks, dots, as well as the font. Some talented authors have always felt and used the visual possibilities of graphic means, as for example, in an excerpt from the novel by Françoise Mallet-Joris “Les Signes et les Prodiges”:
Un bilan bien négatif. Elle s'est dit qu'il n'est pas très lancé. Un solitaire en somme. Elle avait espéré, à la faveur de ce voyage, de cette intimité inattendue, atteindre un autre milieu, prendre des contacts, que sais-je. Elle est déçue. Il pourrait connaître ces gens-là, lui, puisqu'il a un nom. Cela émerveille Marcelle qu'on ait un nom (toute son ambition) et qu'on ne s'en serve pas pour pénétrer dans le monde dont elle a tant rêvé. Peut-être ne sait-il pas s'y prendre? Mais en l'aidant un peu... [Such a negative assessment. She told herself that he is not very shabby. A loner all in all. She hoped, thanks to this trip, that this unexpected intimacy could help to reach another level, establish a contact, whatever. She was disappointed. He could know these people because he had a name. She was surprised that with Marcelle’s name (and all his ambition) they did not use it to enter the world of which she so much dreamt. Perhaps, he cannot be taken there? But by helping him a bit…] (Mallet-Joris, 1966, p. 45).
Here are the reflections of the personage Marcel and her impressions of meeting the young writer Nicolas Leclusier. Summing up her observations, Marcel expresses her appreciation and attitude towards him – she finds her companion a little sociable, even a lonely person: Un solitaire en somme. Further, in her reflections there appeared a surprise that Nicola, having a name, does not use it to get the proper benefits: Cela émerveille Marcelle qu'on ait un nom (toute son ambition) et qu'on ne s'en serve pas pour pénétrer dans le monde dont elle a tant rêvé [She was surprised that with Marcelle’s name (and all his ambition) they did not use it to enter the world of which she so much dreamt].
The emphasis of the graphic means – italics – allows the author to give additional expressiveness to a particular word. It is clear that for Marcel the word ‘nom’ has a special great significance. The name for a young girl means the opportunity ‘to get into the world’ which she can only dream of – dans le monde dont elle a tant rêvé [to enter the world of which she so much dreamt].
We single out an expansion of the word meaning by author’s using the graphic means. A specific word with an exact nominative meaning, italicized in the internal monologue, acquires a stylistic shade. The hero pronounces this word in her inner speech, amplifying and highlighting it with additional logical accents, emphasized in italics. This phonetic-graphic emphasis provides the reader with better understanding the speaker’s attitude to the subject of the statement.
Findings
In connection with the specified features of internal monologue in literary prose, we should note the following factors promoting development of this art-language technique:
factor of expressing point of view;
factor of economy;
factor of subjectivization of the narrative.
Let us take a detailed and closer look at each of them.
Factor of expressing the point of view
The internal monologue of characters in the novel allows conveying different points of view on the described phenomenon.
There is an opinion that the artistic system is structured as a hierarchy of relations. The very concept of “having value” implies an obvious correlation, the fact of a certain orientation. Since the artistic model in the most general form reproduces the world image for a given consciousness, i.e. it represents the relationship of a person and the world, this orientation will have a subject-object original nature. According to Yuri Lotman (1970), few of the elements in the artistic structure are so directly related to the overall task of illustrating a world picture, as the point of view, for it is directly related to such issues as the position of the text Creator, the problem of Truth and the problem of personality.
The principle of borrowing character’s point of view by narrator has spread widely in French literature and has become an integral part in the stylistic manner of writers like Guy de Maupassant, Émile Zola, Anatole France, Romain Rolland, Marcel Proust, Martin du Gard, François Moriac, Louis Aragon and many others. This determined the subsequent development of the internal monologue technique in French fiction.
Factor of economy
The internal monologue in fiction appears as an economical narration. It simultaneously advances the development of the plot and reveals the author and characters’ images. It is more economical to introduce into prose the internal monologue technique, thus, making readers think of the complex structure of author’s transformations, without overloading the text with unnecessary digressions and details. The reader’s attention is entirely focused on the artistic writer’s images; while the patterns of reported speech (“he said”, “he thought”), on the contrary, complicate the perception, they don’t give any specific information indicating the interrelation of the author’s thought with the characters of the novel.
Internal monologue in the literary text helps to save language resources. “The tendency to shrink” in the French language, according to Charles Bally, is demonstrated due to the influence of the factor of saving human effort (Zavadovskaya, 1971). Using internal monologue shows a tendency to simplify the speech structure of a text, replacing compound verbal forms with the simple ones, eliminating extra auxiliary and introductory words. At the same time, the structure of the internal monologue is one of the most complex systems in semantic relations of all available forms of utterance in French language.
Factor of subjectivization of the narrative
In the inner monologue of a character, the plot events are presented from the position of his/her perception and awareness, i.e. the reflection of these situations in the heroes’ consciousness. Reporting any reality, true or imagined, assumes that this fact has been perceived and realized by someone. ‘The introspection of something portrayed’ marked by language means and passed through the protagonist’s consciousness makes the character plan more tangible or noticeable.
The category of modality associated with the reflection of such introspection in analyzing the surrounding reality through an individual’s consciousness (not obligatory through the text Creator’s) is named perceptuality (perception). The issue on the category of modality, its nature and means of realization is complex and controversial, and attempts to solve it have not yet led to a clear understanding of linguistic boundaries.
The generally accepted definition of subjective modality is the speaker’s attitude to the content of the statement. However, there is no authors’ unanimity observed in choosing subjective modal meanings. Thus, the common point of view, according to which expressing speaker’s relationship to the statement and reality is primarily carried out by means of introductory words with a modal meaning. We adhere and follow Epifantseva’s point of view that modality can be explained as mutual alienation of the subjective and the objective in the statement structure. At the core of this alienation the inherent opposition of the developed human consciousness “I–me” and “non-I–me” lies. In this understanding of modality, its semantic basis is the axiological category (evaluation). The subjective-evaluative base of modality involves taking into account the emotional component in relation of a Subject to the information, without limiting the modal unit semantics by only logical content. The concept speaker’s point of view transfers the multiple facets of evaluation in the intellectual processing of information.
A number of philologists consider the constructive intonation as a means of intra-phrasal modal values. Other researchers believe that modal meanings can be transmitted by additional grammatical, lexical-grammatical and intonational means imposed on a particular form of a sentence (Epifantseva, 1997). Along with intonation, these means include word order, special constructions, repetitions, particles, interjections, and the numerous and diverse groups of introductory (modal) words. In addition, we emphasize that some sentence fragments are classified as direct speech or as part of an adjacent section in free indirect speech. An internal monologue may also contain elements of nonverbal thinking.
Conclusion
Summarizing the linguopragmatic characteristics of the internal monologue in the literary fiction, we state that its relationship with the stream of consciousness, inner speech and voice of a Subject, is obvious. In the literary text, it is revealed through a variety of formal-linguistic elements, including graphic means.
At the same time, intrapersonal communication apparently emerges from a tendency to interpret the internal mental processes that precede and accompany our communicative behavior as if they were some other kind of communicative process. The general sense is that this reconstruction in the language and idioms of everyday public conversation is quite doubtful or weak in best case.
The inner discourse is similar to the discussion with second person. The ideal form of internal discourse seems to be one that begins with facts and continues with logical strictness until a solution is reached. According to this view of thinking, the progress is achieved when a person learns to assess how well-founded the judgements are, and when he/she learns to avoid logical errors.
The evolution of approaches from studying a speaking person as a subject of mental activity to considering him/her as a subject of communication confirms the conceptual cohesion in understanding the category of subjectivity and justifies the epistemological continuity of French linguistics. In French fiction, it is possible to combine two forms of showing the inner world of the characters that was proven with a set of examples outlined. Hence, in author’s narrative two main types of internal monologue (based on the French novels mentioned in this issue) have been designated: subjectified – on behalf the first person and objectified – on the third person.
While the formal internal monologue uses the first-person pronoun and finite verbs in the present tense, the following factors contribute to the development of this art-linguistic technique: 1) the factor of expressing the point of view of the narrative; 2) the factor of economy; 3) the factor of subjectivization of the narrative. An internal monologue is introduced into the narrative either by localizing the reference situation with demonstrative pronouns and adjectives, or by means of adverbs of place and time that obey the character’s position rather than the narrator’s; it clearly traces the emotional and evaluative component.
Thus, the linguopragmatics of the internal monologue in French literature is a vast area of research of linguistic and graphic means united by common artistic task. Therefore, the technique named internal monologue, its introduction into mediated literary communication, as well as creating a model of unintentional (spontaneously flowing) process of inner speech are justified and deserve attention in further promising scientific labors.
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Publication Date
31 October 2020
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eBook ISBN
978-1-80296-091-4
Publisher
European Publisher
Volume
92
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Edition Number
1st Edition
Pages
1-3929
Subjects
Sociolinguistics, linguistics, semantics, discourse analysis, translation, interpretation
Cite this article as:
Davaaevich, O. Y., Dyunerovna, Y. E., & Kan-oolovna, A. M. (2020). Linguopragmatics Of The Internal Monologue (Case Study Of French Fiction Prose). In D. K. Bataev (Ed.), Social and Cultural Transformations in the Context of Modern Globalism» Dedicated to the 80th Anniversary of Turkayev Hassan Vakhitovich, vol 92. European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences (pp. 2664-2675). European Publisher. https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2020.10.05.353