Quoting As A Form Of Dialogism In The Postmodern Text

Abstract

The present paper upholds the problem of quoting as a form of dialogism in postmodern text. Methodologically, the approach, proposed by the authors, integrates two theories. Firstly, it draws on Van Dijk’s Theory, which emphasizes the situational nature of the narrative text in the network of diverse contexts: lingual, cultural, social, ideological, philosophical. Secondly, it relies on the method of syntagmatic oppositions, elaborated by N. A. Shekhtman, which is based on the notion of semantic reduplication. It is assumed that postmodern text is a junction point of many texts written before, which exist in the form of intertextuality and interact via a gigantic dialogue. The participants of the dialogue are the author, the reader, the characters and the wisdom of the previous days as well as modernity. It is argued that quoting serves the basis for dialogism in postmodern text, with allusive proper names as its central elements. Linguistic realizations of quoting and their role in the semantic structure of the novel “Parce que je t’aime” by the French writer G. Musso have been analyzed. In the paper, the authors have demonstrated that postmodern text engages the reader both emotionally and intellectually, making it possible to distinguish between two types of dialogism (emotional and intellectual), which perform different functions, the major being cohesion and backgrounding. The authors have tried to prove that the function of quoting, traditionally a rhetorical device, shifts in postmodern text from an element of embellishment and oratorical credibility to a marker of social and cultural boundaries.

Keywords: Postmodernismquotingdialogismallusion

Introduction

In the course of its evolution human thought moves along the path of complication due to objective reasons, the main of which is the accumulation of experience. In postmodern literature the accumulated spiritual knowledge invested in various types of arts (verbal, visual, architectural, social, etc.) allows modern authors to create an atmosphere of a narrative text saturated with many diverse meanings. Skillfully arranging allusions the author creates a gigantic dialogue in which various epochs, countries, and areas of human knowledge are intertwined. The main participants in this culturally significant dialogue are the author and the reader. The author-originator bears the main responsibility enhancing his work with unique spiritual content, creating conditions for individual multiple interpretations of the text by the readers, building common islands of understanding in the form of inside-the-text comments of various complexity. Postmodern text is a dizzying juggling of elements of quoting that differ in structure, length and function. The purpose of this dialogue is the birth of new spiritual knowledge in the minds of the reader. This is the most noble humane function of literature. The idea of ​​dialogism sustained by and through literature can be traced to the text theory of Bakhtin (2010), particularly his “The Dialogic imagination”, and is also extensively covered in the studies on the problem of intertextuality, first introduced in the works of Kristeva. Intertextuality has a rich history dating back to the times of Chaucer, Shakespeare and even earlier. The 19^th and the 20^th centuries saw the heyday of the art of quoting with masterpieces by Lawrence, Woolf, Eliot, Joyce, Maugham, Fowles, Updike, Stoppard, Pratchett, Vonnegut to name only a few. The present study investigates various types of dialogical interaction between the author and the reader in the postmodern text initiated by elements of quoting.

Problem Statement

Dialogic processes refer to implied meaning in words uttered by the speaker and interpreted by the listener. Dialogic works participate in an endless dialogue that presupposes reaction to the previously advanced information. The term is common both for literary theory and philosophy. In literature dialogic texts are related to other texts in the constant process of mutual multiple semantic interdependence extending, responding, conforming with or confronting each other. This echoes Eliot’s assumption that “the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past” (as cited in Joshi, 2016, p. 192). Some linguists go as far as stating that language itself is dialogic. As it was pointed out by Bakhtin (2010) even human thought is a result of dialogical communication explicit or implicit. It follows that every word ever said or written is a feedback to what has been uttered before and expects some response. All in all, we are willy-nilly involved with each other through our language which turns out to be dynamic, linking and creative in its permanent reinterpretation of the world.

Narrative text is most implicit. It is realized in the integrity of its structure and semantics. Structurally and temporally it is supposed to develop or delineate logically from beginning (exposition) to end (denouement), with broken organization and distorted time that we find in the postmodern text. It is a complex system comprising vocabulary, grammar, syntax, stylistics, these aspects working together to achieve an artistic effect. A text is a cohesive, coherent and integral unit. A narrative text is an elaborate interaction of form and meaning. The text is capable of generating new meanings each time you read it which is termed implicitness or suggestiveness. A text is the result of common effort of the writer producing it and the reader or addressee decoding it. Hence in a text two intellectual codes intersect and interact and the writer’s job is to make this collaboration most effective and exciting. The text’s intricacy is largely due to a system of contexts it exists in. A constellation of both western and Russian linguists contributed to the text theory. There appeared text linguistics with such important names as Halliday (2014), De Beaugrande (as cited in Giuffre, 2017), Hasan (as cited in Wegener et al., 2018), Werlich (1982), and de Beaugrande and Dressler (2016). Russian scholars Galperin (2019), Arnold (2018), Gak (2016), Lotman (2019) laid a considerable foundation for the theory of the text. Modern studies of the text point to its discourse character and focus on the linguistic personality of the author and the characters, different pictures of the world reflected in the narrative discourse. National, cultural, social and ideological characteristics of the text make the core of contemporary theories. Most important works treating text as a discourse belong to van Dijk (as cited in Richardson & Flowerdew, 2016), Harris (as cited in Rodney, 2018), Greimas (as cited in Schleifer, 2016), Habermas (2018), Bloor and Bloor (2013), and their Russian colleagues Karasik (2015), Chudinov (2020), Borbotko (2019).

Postmodern literature is marked by broad experimentation which covers all aspects of the text and turns it into a game both intellectual and entertaining. Postmodern text is a brain-teaser for the readers urging them to piece together fragmented parts of the story presented from different perspectives and scattered about the time line. Its intellectuality is most conspicuous in such features as intertextuality and metafiction or fiction about fiction that call for the reader’s extensive erudition. It is as complex in its interplay of meanings and reminiscences as it is fascinating with irony and black humour that help treat serious subjects playfully. Even the magic and the supernatural become most commonplace with postmodern ‘magic realism’. With its ‘fabulation’ postmodernism blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction. Gloomy and cynical it often tackles such problems as crisis, contradictions, inside and outside chaos, Freudian inner conflict, helplessness and frustration, death and violence treating life as an infinite cycle. For the metaphysics of the postmodern literature we may refer to the works by Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, Maltby, McHale, Hutcheon (as cited in Duignan, 2016).

The key feature of postmodernism is intertextuality which means the presence of other texts in the text concerned. One of the key assumptions is the broadening of the notion “text”. Modern approach tends to regard human history and culture as a text, a multicultural code. Starting with the name of Kristeva (1980) the theory of intertextuality is further elaborated in the works of Clayton and Rothstein (1991), Jacobmeyer (Münster) (2018), Kalenych (2020), and van Zoonen (2017).

Quoting is at the core of intertextuality. Quoting can be intentional or unintentional. Russian linguists use the term precedent phenomena meaning precedent texts and precedent names to refer to the elements of quoting. Some suggest the term textual reminiscences. We deal with a quotation if the source is indicated. Accordingly, complete reproduction of the text without the source is termed text application. These are aphorisms and idioms. Incomplete reproduction of the text without the source is referred to as an allusion and antonomasia. Elements of quoting may be of various length and differ in the degree of their recognition by the addressee. Moskvin (2015) classifies precedent texts into a) texts familiar to a limited number of people (e.g. personal unpublished poetry ); b) texts familiar to large groups of people during limited period of time (e.g. newspaper articles, advertisements) ; c) texts familiar to large groups of people during a long period of time (e.g. The Bible ).

Precedent phenomena are part of the universal tendency towards stereotyping. They form collective discourse that serves the basis for common ideological understanding and becomes a criterion of social identification. Maslova (2018) defines stereotype as a fragment of the conceptual picture of the world, a mental image, a fixed cultural and national notion about a thing or a situation. Stereotypes ensure culture’s stability and unity. Precedent phenomena are a compact way to store culturally important information which can be reconstructed in the addressee’s memory by one detail, the process called ecphony.

Literary allusion is a device for the simultaneous activation of two texts. The activation is achieved through the manipulation of a special signal: a sign (simple or complex) in a given text characterized by an additional larger “referent”. This referent is always an independent text. The simultaneous activation of the two texts thus connected results in the formation of intertextual patterns whose nature cannot be predetermined. The "free" nature of the intertextual patterns is the feature by which it would be possible to distinguish between the literary allusion and other closely related text-linking devices, such as parody and pastiche (Ben-Porat, 1976, p. 107).

We adhere to a broader interpretation of the term that belongs to Russian linguists. According to Galperin an allusion is an indirect reference, by word or phrase, to a historical, literary, mythological, biblical fact or to a fact of everyday life made in the course of speaking or writing. The use of allusion presupposes knowledge of the fact, thing or person alluded to on the part of the reader or listener (Galperin, 2018).

An allusive proper name (APN) is a name that in contrast to the general corpus of proper names possesses a certain unique referential relevance, which objectively narrows the scope of its meaning thus highlighting the qualitative characteristics of the referent in the APN. This is the basis of APN’s implicit meaning. In today's world we witness the growing importance of cultural and social phenomena centered around people or geographical objects. Therefore, proper names acquire a new semantic load in the form of their implicit ​​meaning assigned to them as a marker of these phenomena.

Research Questions

The primary question of the study is to identify which elements of quoting participate in the dialogism of postmodern text. It is essential to find out if different elements of quoting play similar roles in the dialogism. Furthermore, it would be important to distinguish varieties of dialogism enacted by quoting and trace particular elements participating in them. Besides we must identify the place of APNs in the dialogism. Finally, we are keen to know if quoting has any thematic, age and national specificity in postmodern text.

Purpose of the Study

The material of the research is Musso’s novel “Parce que je t’aime” [Lost and found] (Musso, 2017). It is a brilliant example of postmodernism in literature. It intrigues and invites the reader to follow so many insoluble mysteries. The outcome is baffling. It makes you go back and reread the book with new eyes. And you start to notice postmodern metafiction. You keep asking yourself what if it is not a novel at all but the doctor’s diary? What if it is all but the fruit of the patient’s wild imagination?

The atmosphere of the book is exquisite and artistically subtle. The novel spells hope in spite of the brutality of life episodes of the many characters whose destinies are so intricately interwoven. This sets it apart from other dark narratives of postmodernism. The author meticulously follows the details of appearance, the entourage of apartments and cafes, the geographical location of the characters. He excels most in is the creation of a special spiritual atmosphere which facilitates better understanding of their inner world and inner life. The book demonstrates essential features of postmodernism: deceived expectation, missing links in the chain technique, fragmentariness, jerkiness, expressionism with intense psychological states, tedium vitae, metonymic writing.

The book is extremely intertextual, elements of quoting performing distinct functions. Hence the purpose of the study is to find a way in this labyrinth of elements of quoting by systematizing them both structurally and semantically and draw generic conclusions on the role of quoting in textual dialogism.

Research Methods

Dialogism presupposes a peculiar arrangement of a text so that it is targeted at some audience. Information in the text is arranged so as to produce the most effective response which makes context the leading instrument in the semantic organization of the text.

The two major areas of the text’s dialogical motivation are the heart and the mind of the reader. The artistic nature of the narrative text is its undercurrent psychological overtones. The wider the range of these overtones the more absorbing is the narrative. Equally important is the matter of fact, rational content. So, sense and sensibility work in unity. Considering this the most powerful method to investigate the text’s dialogism is the contextual one. The contextual method deals with all sorts of environments of linguistic units. The immediate context allows to make the meaning of lexical units more precise, individual. In postmodern text of paramount importance is the distant context which makes the text cohesive and coherent. Morphological nature of the immediate context helps create various backgrounds: dynamic relying on verbs, descriptive realized through adjectives and nouns, informative built on nouns. Initiated by the English linguist Firth (as cited in Chapman & Routledge, 2005, p. 81) the contextual method was further contributed to by Amosova (2017), Kolshanskij (2020) and others.

Relying on the heuristics of the contextual method Shekhtman (1988) elaborated the method of syntagmatic oppositions. There are always signs in the text whose function is to actualize the meaning of other signs. This facilitates the process of understanding the text. The fact is indicated by Jacobson, who writes that the meaning of any sign is its translation into another, alternative sign (Jacobson, 1987, p. 232). These contexts contain the intersection of semantic structures of words that show a tendency to close use. Shekhtman (1988) proposes the term allonym which is an accompanying word, another name for the semantic feature that is already represented in this context (p. 37). These relations are observed only when similar words follow each other within the same context. Shekhtman (1988) argues the functions of contexts with semantic reduplication (p. 53). Firstly, it is the function of interpretation which presupposes explanation of the lexeme by its semantic equivalent used in the same context, e.g. barren land: tundra . Secondly, is the function of specification which consists in delimitation of the meaning of the preceding element which is semantically more complex than the one that follows it. The preceding element implies its right-hand neighbor, e.g. gaze: look fixedly . Thirdly comes the function of gradation. In these contexts, the right-hand component of the semantic reduplication contains the seme of intensiveness or evaluation which is added to the semantic feature indicated by the left-hand component, e.g. excited: wild . The fourth function discussed by Shekhtman (1988) is that of evaluation (p. 63). Evaluation is commonly contained in the right-hand component of reduplication as it’s natural in communication to introduce the object of discussion and then to characterize it, e.g. influence (neutral): bias (negative) . Finally, the fifth function is that of juxtaposition which is realized in antonymic contexts, e.g. in bad shape: fine .

Findings

We have scrutinized 31 chapters of Musso’s novel “Parce que je t’aime” [Lost and Found] and found 99 cases of quoting including chapter titles and 21 epigraphs which makes the book quite representative from the point of view of quoting (Musso, 2017). The first feature to catch the eye is the dominance of Americanisms among the elements of quoting: 59 examples (e.g. “un sosie presque parfait d'Isaac, le barman de “La croisière s'amuse ” [a hairdo reminding you of Isaac, the barman from the American comedy television series “The Love Boat”] (Musso, Ch.12). Other cultures contributing to the stock of quoting are French (10), British (8), German (4).

Another important peculiarity is the age of the elements: 20-21 century elements prevail (80 examples). New allusions originate from such spheres as music (e.g. Kurt Cobain ), cinema (e.g. Grace Kelly ), brands (e.g. Armani, Hugo Boss ). Old elements (19 examples) come from classical literature mainly (e.g. “Alice au pays des merveilles ” [Alice in Wonderland]), religion (e.g. “Il y a un moment pour tout et un temps pour toute chose sous le ciel” [There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens]), art (e.g. “des dessins de Rembrandt” [pictures by Rembrandt]).

The study shows predominance of APNs among other elements of quoting. They yield 73 examples out of overall 99.

Thorough analysis shows that elements of quoting representing modern reality such as names of hotels, famous brands, city districts are accompanied by contexts whose function is to evaluate, mainly positively: e.g. prestigieux, chic, pharaonique [prestigious, chic, pharaonic]. Though there’s an example of social contrast with negative evaluation: e.g. Greenwood - un paysage dévasté: trottoirs défoncés, bâtiments abandonnés [Greenwood – a devastated landscape: pitted sidewalks, abandoned buildings] (Musso, Ch.19).

Elements of quoting participating in building important meanings are mainly followed by specifying contexts that explain which particular implication of the semantically complex APN is enacted in the context: e.g. La guitare de Clapton avait laissé place à celle de Bob Dylan. “Shelter from the Storm”. L'un de ses titres préférés, écrit par Dylan en 1975, après la rupture avec sa femme Sara. Nouvelle preuve des effets bénéfiques du chagrin sur la créativité artistique. [The guitar of Clapton was followed by that of Bob Dylan. “Shelter from the Storm”. One of his favourite songs composed by Dylan in 1975, after the separation with his wife Sara. Another proof of the beneficial effect of sorrow on the artistic creativity ] (Musso, Ch.3).

In epigraphs we notice the postmodern trend to expose the paradoxical nature of things. Here contexts with contrastive meanings are basically concentrated: e.g. Pour trouver le bonheur , il faut risquer le malheur . Boris Cyrulnik [To find happiness you have to risk it through misfortune ] (Musso, Ch.32).

If we correlate elements of quoting with the effect they produce we come to understand that there are two major types of dialogism: intellectual dialogism and emotional dialogism. Let’s analyze the essence of intellectual dialogism (Table 1 ). Its main vehicles are epigraphs and inside-the-text allusions.

1. The purpose of the epigraph is to make the reader think not only specifically and situationally but in a more generalized way thereby comparing and juxtaposing the reader’s personal experience with the perception of the characters and universal human wisdom. Thus, the semantic perspective of the text is built.

The author’s skill lies in the ability to select the relevant epigraph so that it would emphasize the moral lessons of the chapter. As such the purpose of the epigraph is to induce the reader to analyze and formulate spiritual conclusions as a result of which new humanitarian knowledge is generated. The reader perceives this revelation as personally significant and independently acquired based on empathy and involvement in the events of the story.

Epigraphs represent quoting with attribution and are characterized by accuracy and completeness of reproduction. This gives them credibility, persuasiveness and imperative force encouraging the reader to trust and conceptualize the key ideas of the text. A fragmented and jerky multi-voiced postmodern text acquires logical integrity and coherence through skillfully encrusted quoting.

Of all the 31 chapters in the book 21 are accompanied by an epigraph. The keywords of the epigraphs are abstract concepts that refer the reader to existential problems: e.g. life – 10 epigraphs; fear, suffering - 7 epigraphs; happiness, love – 5 epigraphs; time - 3 epigraphs; the nature of the man – 2 epigraphs. Through epigraphs the author of the postmodern text often emphasizes duality and paradoxical nature of these concepts:

e.g. Nous ne sommes jamais aussi mal protégés contre la souffrance que lorsque nous aimons . Freud [We are never so little protected against suffering as when we love. ] (Musso, Ch.2); Vivez bien . C'est la meilleure des vengeances. [Live well. It’s the best kind of revenge.] Le Talmud (Musso, Ch.26); Living is easy with eyes closed ... John Lennon (Musso, Ch.30). These abstract notions make the reader break away from the mercantile material life raising him to a new level of awareness.

2. As a rule, inside the text allusions are represented by APNs that epitomize the key models of human behavior, meaningful examples of social experience of mankind. They are powerfully implicit as they are compressed versions of texts. Such APNs commonly originate from classic works of literature. In the inside-the-text commentary they correlate with abstract nouns that indicate their existential meanings. Accentuation is achieved by the repetition of the same seme in the immediate or distant context and the extended commentary inside the text.

e.g. - Pourquoi veux-tu tuer un homme?

- Pour me venger.

Dans la tête de Connor, trois mots surgirent alors du passé - une vengeance implacable - qui lui firent froid dans le dos. [“Why do you want to kill a man?” “To take my revenge ”. In Connor’s mind three words from the past popped up – an implacable revenge – and it gave him chills down the spine.] (Musso, Ch. 3)

e.g. Mark vient le voir tous les jours. Il lui lit “ Le Comte de Monte Cristo” d'Alexandre Dumas. La vengeance implacable d'un homme , victime d'une injustice et emprisonné pendant quinze ans. La vengeance implacable ... [Mark came to visit him every day. He was reading “The Count of Monte Cristo” to him by Alexandre Dumas. The implacable revenge of a man, a victim of injustice who spent fifteen years in prison. The implacable revenge …] (Musso, Ch. 20)

e.g. Revenge is a dish best savored cold… (Musso, Ch.22)

e.g. Notre vengeance sera le pardon [Our revenge will be our forgiveness] (Chapter title) (Musso, Ch. 26).

e.g. L'urgence de se défaire du secret qui la minait était trop forte. Bien entendu, les conséquences pouvaient être terribles: la prison, le déshonneur... Mais, à bien y réfléchir, ça faisait des années que sa vie était devenue une prison. [The desire to get free from this secret that burned inside her was great. No doubt the consequences could be disastrous: the prison, the disgrace … But on second thoughts it was years since her life became a prison .] (Musso, Ch.26)

e.g. Connor déteste cet endroit, comme il déteste ce qui, de près ou de loin, se rapporte à la police. Depuis qu'il a vu “ Les Misérables” à Broadway, il se prend pour une sorte de Jean Valjean redoutant sans cesse le retour de Javert. Au plus profond de lui, il est persuade que le meurtre des dealers refera surface un jour ou l'autre et qu'il finira sa vie entre les murs d'une prison. [Connor detests this place as much as he detests those who surrender to the police at once or after a time. Ever since he saw “The Wretched ” at Broadway he has imagined himself to be somebody like Jean Valjean always afraid of Javert coming back. Deep in his heart he is sure that sooner or later the murder of the dealers will out and that he will end his life in prison .] (Musso, Ch.29)

Revenge and the feeling of guilt after it become the “dark secret” that connect the characters of the novel who might even not know each other before they become close. The epigraph of chapter 26 “Vivez bien. C'est la meilleure des vengeances. [Live well. It’s the best kind of revenge.] Le Talmud” places this theme in the global perspective suggesting that the characters will surely make the wise decision and the reader’s mind is similarly affected. So, we observe a semantic net the main knots of which are emphasized by the epigraphs and allusions accompanied by allonyms as abstract nouns (e.g. vengeance, redouter ). Intellectual dialogism renders timelessness and pangeographical nature to postmodern text.

Quoting organizes the semantic canvas of the narrative in which the voices of different writers of distant epochs communicate, inviting the reader to find the connecting link between these intellectual constructions conceived by the author.

The other type of dialogism completing intellectual dialogism is emotional dialogism (Table 2 ). It creates a multisensory multicultural space that maximally reproduces the surrounding world in the impressions it evokes and even goes further to shed light on the character’s inner world and spiritual values especially via allusions from literature, art and music. Its primary target is to conjure up a sense of sharing, the effect of immediacy and presence.

Emotional dialogism is meant to evoke visual images, some particular mood, ideas about the place of narration (entourage). It deals with significant details of the narrative.

e.g..: C'était un diner hors du temps qui sentait bon le New Jersey avec ses banquettes en moleskine usée et ses chromes patines. Sur le mur, derrière la caisse, une collection de photos dédicacées pouvait laisser croire que Jack Nicholson, Bruce Springsteen ou Scarlett Johansson avaient récemment fréquenté l'endroit. Au fond du restaurant, une sono plaintive diffusait un vieux Clapton pour une demi-douzaine de clients solitaires. [It was a diner beyond time that gave you the spirit of New Jersey with its worn out moleskin of the seats and tarnished silverware. On the wall behind the cashier, a collection of autographed pictures could easily make you believe that Jack Nicholson, Bruce Springsteen or Scarlett Johansson had just visited the place. From the heart of the restaurant a plaintive guitar of old Clapton was playing for half a dozen solitary clients] (Musso, Ch. 3).

Thanks to these APNs we may feel the comfort of the café and plunge into the cultural atmosphere marked by the national flavor. The text gets its voice and the reader gets familiar with the local colouring.

Emotional imaginative dialogism engages different spheres of sense-perception ranging from visual, auditory, nasal to artistic through the titles of books and names of great writers and even extends as far as geographical orientation and social identification.

In the postmodern text, we observe the expansion of the boundaries of allusion, which is largely due to APNs that carry social information and indicate the boundary between poverty and wealth. The names of places of busy social activity (shops, hotels, restaurants), names of brands, districts of cities, names of perfumes, makes of cars, brands of bags and liquors become allusive. Allusive names begin to implicitly outline the boundaries of social groups.

e.g. Dans une profusion de néons , les hôtels aux façades rutilantes rivalisent de gigantisme . La silhouette immense de l'Oasis brille de mille feux et avale l'antique Pontiac qui va se garer dans le parking souterrain réservé aux employés. [In the profusion of neon lights, the radiant hotels compete in grandeur. The immense silhouette of The Oasis sparkling with thousands of lights swallows the old-fashioned Pontiac that has just arrived at the underground parking reserved for the employees] (Musso, Ch. 11).

The Oasis, a rich hotel in Las Vegas, comes to symbolize luxury and idle life. The “ancient” Pontiac that belongs to the poor family of the woman working in its services looks ironic and emphasizes the insurmountable material gap between the guests and the personnel.

On the basis of our attentive analysis of the postmodern novel “Parce que je t’aime” [“Lost and Found”] by Musso (2017) we drew two tables representing semantic and functional features of the elements of quoting that participate in dialogism.

Conclusion

To sum up we register intense concentration of elements of quoting in the postmodern text. They serve the main mechanism of dialogism. The age of the elements of quoting is getting younger. In the postmodern text quoting is often used to create a sociocultural background of the narrative enacting multisensory virtual reality, multiculturalism and panchrony of the text.

The conducted analysis allows to clarify the definition of allusion as an element of the text characterized by intense associativity occupying an important place in the sociocultural space of the national discourse. It is always contextually relevant. Allusive meaning is implicit and contextually bound.

Often in the postmodern text allusion performs the function of delimiting the boundaries of the social space pointing to the sociocultural orientations of the poor and rich segments of society.

In this regard the central place among other elements of quoting belongs to APNs as markers of important sociocultural meanings and the main vehicle of dialogism in the text. APNs charged with implicit meaning act as a trigger for the reader’s responses in the form of images, meanings, sounds, spatial and social representations. APNs are therefore compact depository of such information.

The playful nature of the postmodern text is manifested in the telescopic structure of the dialogical construction of meaning through elements of quoting. The key semantic lines represented by APNs and quotations without attribution within the text are reinterpreted under the influence of epigraphs placed in the strong initial position of the text which in their turn are reconsidered interacting with the reader's personal experience. Thus, there is a complex dialogical interaction between the experience of the character in the text, the author himself, the authors of the quoted works and the reader.

Dialogism based on quoting is as alluring emotionally as it is challenging intellectually. It makes the chaotic and disconnected postmodern text unified and cohesive.

Acknowledgments

The article is written within the research work on the topic “World-modelling in media discourse against the backdrop of global challenges: cognitive, pragmatic and ideological aspects” (research contract of 01.06.2020, № 16-298, contract owner Mordovian state pedagogical institute named after M. E. Evseviev).

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