Sudden Fiction Through the Lens of Decoding Stylistics
Objective: The main purpose of the research is primarily to consider different types of stylistics focusing on decoding stylistics and its basic features, such as coupling, convergence, semantic repetition, salient feature and text strong position together with defeated expectancy. The subsidiary goals are to examine sudden fiction as a very specific genre in the prism of decoding stylistics and to specify types of foregrounding typical of it.
Background: Analysis of literature shows that various types of stylistics are based on different principles: types of general and specific character, diachronic approach, stylistics based on the relations between an author and a reader and some others. Discussing decoding stylistics, we must keep in mind its such important techniques as close reading, the role of intertextuality in proper text decoding, stylistic devices employed by the author as a means of encoding information and importance of reader-response theory.
Method: The article presents the results of the textual, stylistic, lexical, and contextual analyses of literary texts belonging to a very specific genre – sudden fiction. Stylistic analysis covers all the language level: phonetic, morphological, syntactic, and lexical; its results are widely illustrated by numerous examples from the texts under consideration. As far as short fragments from the text are extracted as illustrations of the different types of foregrounding, contextual analysis appears to be very helpful in explaining signals of addressee-orientation hidden by an author.
Originality: Comprehensive multi-aspect approach to the texts of sudden fiction provides a new perspective in text linguistics in general and decoding stylistics in particular. The author not only analyses the role of foregrounding and its types, but connects it with information theory, intertextuality, types of plot development, and text strong positions.
Result: Much attention in the study is paid to foregrounding as the basic notion of decoding stylistics as well as its types: coupling, convergence, semantic repetition, salient feature and text strong position, and defeated expectancy. Numerous examples vividly show which of these types are the most important in the texts of sudden fiction, how they are intertwined in the text, and with what purpose are used.
Conclusion: Though the hypothesis was that due to a specific genre of the considered texts, that is sudden fiction, the main types of foregrounding would be defeated expectancy, the results show that foregrounding in 152 texts of sudden fiction is realized mainly due to text salient feature, namely the title, the beginning and the ending of the text. Other very important types of foregrounding are convergence and defeated expectancy.
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