Literary text is communicative by definition and intentional nature of the discourse to which it belongs, it also composes the process of communication as realization of intellectual and creative interaction of the author and the recipient, communication of the linguoesthetic information to the latter that contains the author’s attitude to personage (character), artistic position, stable value orientations.

The works by classical writers of literature can be treated from different positions.  The task to make the creative works of the writer to be plain for the reader, to approach the understanding of implications of literary works stands before a philological personality.

Specificity of the world view of the author is expressed, as a rule, by means of verbalization of certain concepts.  The modeling of perception includes  description and analysis of using language material as a basis for interpretation and construction of hypothetical generalized model of a language personality of the author. The language personality can be described in terms of individual conceptual sphere and thesaurus of the author.

The case in question here is literary concepts, which are generated by communicative space of the literary text and form a unique image of the author’s individual artistic picture of the world. The literary concept as a notion or  conception has in common with literary word or image. The unity of definition of semantics of the concept and its solution can be grounded with either of the degree of rationality when understanding essential emotional aspects in literary text.

The same criteria underlie the understanding of the term in contemporary linguistics [18, p. 42]. At the same time, when perceiving literary work concept can be considered as an embryo of cognitive operations (momentary act), the development of which into certain system requires  definite time. Besides, the possibility of logical operations with literary concepts is based on the implicit, being an integral part of the literary discourse. The implicit in the literary discourse has relatively clear dynamic  structure being drawn towards potential images.

The literary discourse as linguistic equivalent of thinking can be considered as one of the brightest language «representatives» of national way of world viewing. The language personality of the writer acts here as a modeling projection of the national language and national discourse and communicative behaviour.  

Particularization of verbalization of the author’s concepts is concerned with linguistic analysis of literary text, identification of linguistic rules of discourse interpretation. At the same time, semantic configurations of the author’s text reflect a particular type of the author’s personality. In this regard, the author’s text can be considered as a totality of personality mnemonicresourcesand associative processes, being inseparable from the whole pattern of this language personality of the author. Besides, the literary form of the text inducing the modus of linguistic existential being enables to give autonomous description of peculiarities of the author’s idiolect as one of the hypostasis of language personality. The case in question is particularly in the unity of idiostyle of the author in describing the perceptions.

The behaviour of the lexical units in terms of discourse space of literary works is distinguished by the following specific features. Affected by individual literary context, the language units acquire original meaning being inherent in these texts only and have rather unrestricted semantic boundaries. The meanings of language units are transformed conforming with  general thematic text  attitude  of  narration and  tasks of the literary discourse.

Multiple-aspect character of discourse forms a variety of conceptions, theories and propositions concerning its essence, and avalanche-like flow of scientific comment is indicative of an extremely claimed problematics of the literary discourse.

The term “discourse” is polysemantic, is originated from French discours, English  discourse, from Latin discursus (движение/motion, круговорот/rotation; беседа/conversation, разговор/talk), generally — a process of language activity, studying different research aspects  of the functioning of a language: the study of literature and semiotics, sociology, logics, anthropology and ethnology, historiography and  theology, jurisprudence, the theory and practice of translation, pedagogics, philosophy and linguistics [6, p. 86-95].

A generally accepted definition of the discourse covering all the cases of its usage does not exist, and, apparently,   just that was conductive to such big popularity of this term currently, and different treatment answers successfully any conceptual requirements, modifying more traditional conceptions of speech, text, style and even language.

Narrowing  discourse to a linguistic «life form», many philologists unify this not at all trivial phenomenon, connected at the same time with internal and external world existing in both the human consciousness and objective-subjective reality, in fact, with a particular style of the text as a special form of its presentation and situation of its use, for example, reportage, interview or popular science lecture. In linguistics, the notion of discourse has been used so far as one of the synonyms of stylistic  communities of either linguistic forms  (texts, speech, political essays, etc.) [13, p. 33].

The term «discourse» relates to various national traditions and authors’ contributions. Let us consider the most essential concepts of the literary discourse in home and foreign linguistics.

In the middle of XX century, in 1952, the term    «discourse» was used in terms of linguistics for the first time in the title of the article «Discourse-Analysis» by an American linguist Z. Harris, where he treated this notion exceedingly simple, as the sequence of utterances, a piece of the text longer than a sentence, and only in two decades this term was claimed in linguistics in full. This school arose earlier than the idea of «linguistics of the text», but exactly it was to realize the original intentions of such linguistics [26, p. 355].

Modern works in the field of discourse analysis are certainly less formalistic than the works by Z. Harris, they are addressed more to the human but some generalities have remained.

According to Z. Harris, the method of analysis of coherent speech is the analysis of discourse, the method to be formal, oriented only to frequency of occurrence of morphemes taken as distinctive elements, not depended on the meanings of every meaningful language unit.  This method does not also present any new information about the meanings of the morphemes that compose the text. But it does not mean utterly that as a result of discourse analysis we will not find out about the discourse and what forms grammar takes in it.  After all, «though we use formal procedures similar to descriptive-linguistic ones, we can get new information about a concrete studied text, information being beyond the scope of descriptive linguistics» [26, p. 355].

 Though over a period of many centuries language interaction used to be the subject of such disciplines as rhetoric, oratorical skill, stylistics and study of literature, but only since the recent decades of the XX century discourse analysis has become to exist as a scientific school. It occurred against the background of the opposed tendency being dominant in linguistics  – struggle for  linguistics «cleansing» of studying speech. F. de Saussure  believed that the only object of linguistics – language system.  Transition from the notion of speech to the notion of discourse is connected with an attempt to introduce something paradoxically more significant than the very speech and, at the same time, treatable via contemporary linguistic methods into classical contraposition of language and speech belonging to the scholar [16, p. 57].

In 1960s  there emerged clear differentiation of the notions of discourse and text, that was suggested by the French school of discourse  to which E. Benveniste,  P. Charaudeau, М. Pêcheux, P. Sériot  belong.

So, in accordance with anthropocentric language paradigm advanced by E. Benveniste  it became possible to consider discourse as «language functioning in face-to-face communication». The investigator was one of the first to give terminological meaning to the word “discourse” and to define it as «speech, referred to the speakers» [2, p. 296].

We find reflection of the understanding of text and discourse as representative and resultant aspect of speech activity in P. Charaudeau. According to him, text is an «embodiment, visual representation of different speech»; «unique, individual result of the process  being dependent on the speaker and  conditions of speech production». In addition to that P. Charaudeau notes that  «text intersects with great number of discourses, each of which, in its turn, belongs to a genre and correlates with a situation» [22, p. 69]. In general outline, the scholar treats discourse as consolidation of such notions as «utterance» and «communicative situation» [22, p. 28].

In 1969 М. Pêcheux derived the theory of discourse on the basis of the study about ideology and ideological formations by L. Althusser.  In  М. Pêcheux judgment, discourse is referred to «the compound» of discourse formation and «complex of ideological formations », hidden behind the transparency of the very discourse [15, p. 12-53].

Going out the science and popularity of using the term «discourse» in political journalism ascends to the French structuralists and poststructuralists, and, first of all, to M. Foucault and also А. Greimas, J. Derrida, Yu. Kristyeva; is modified later on by  М. Pêcheux.  The term «discourse» being understandable so  describes the way of speaking and is obligatory to be defined what or whose discourse is,  as the scholars are interested not only in discourse per se, but in its concrete types, designated by a wide spectrum of parameters: purely language features, stylistic specificity, and also a subject area, belief system, lines of arguments, etc.  Besides, it is assumed that a way of speaking largely predetermines and creates the subject area of discourse and social institutes being relevant to it.   

М. Foucault in «Archeology of Knowledge» develops the doctrine about discourse formation as a condition of functioning of specific discursive practices with their rules, concepts and strategies. The classical knowledge is thought by him as archaeological analysis of discursive practices being rooted not in the subject of cognition or activity but in the anonymous will to knowledge that systematically forms the objects discussed in these discourses. The discourse is a total number of utterances which are subordinate to the same system of forming. These utterances depend on the same formation that is the principle of dispersion and placement of the utterances. The discourse is composed of a restricted number of utterances. It is historical. It can be called a fragment of the history, its unity and discontinuity [19].

In the middle of the 1970s, the discursive analysis was linked with the investigation of the laws of   information motion within the framework of communicative situation, realized first of all by exchanging replicas;  thus, one describes an interaction of the structure of dialogues.  In so doing, a dynamic character of discourse is emphasized to differentiate between the notions of discourse and traditional conception about text as a static structure [26].

 Т.А. van Dijk and W. Kintsch write in their work that originally, the theoretical assumptions based on the fact that grammar was to explain system- language structures of the whole text thus turning into text grammar remained declarative  and too close, as usual, to generative paradigm. However, soon after, both the text grammar and the linguistic studies of discourse developed more independent paradigm which was adopted in Europe and the United States» [3, p. 154]. The «textual» approach prevails as before in the work by these two authors, that is, the texts are viewed as  «speech works  of art», which are  of incalculable number, therefore, they require the development of general principles for being understood but not concrete real grammars of different types of discourse.   

According to the mentioned authors, the discourse itself is a complex object with indistinctly defined notion in contemporary linguistics. Т.А. van Dijk discusses  «diffusiveness of the category» of the discourse and explains it by both the conditions of forming and being of this term and indefinite rank of the discourse in the system of language categories [4, p. 46].

When studying discourse, the question of its classification arises: what types and varieties of discourse exist. The most essential differentiation in this field  is a  contrast between written and spoken discourse. This differentiation is connected with the channel of information transfer: in  spoken discourse,  the channel is acoustic, in written one – visual. Sometimes the differentiation between spoken and written forms of language usage is equaled to  difference between discourse and text, but such confusion of two different notions is unreasonable [7, p. 5-20].

V. Z. Demiyankov notes that «discours – discourse, an arbitrary fragment  of the text consisting of more than one sentence or independent part of the sentence. Often but not always, it concentrates on a supporting concept; creates a common context  describing personages, objects, circumstances, times acts, etc., being defined not so much by the succession of sentences as by the  world being common  for its interpreter creating the discourse, which is «built» in the course of the discourse being developed  <…>. The discourse elements: the developed events, their participants, performative information and «non-events»,  that is, а) circumstances, accompanying the events; b) background illustrating  the events; c) evaluation of the participants of the event; d) information bringing the discourse and events into correlation» [5, p. 7].  

А. Greimas and J. Courtés in their joint work «Semiotics. Explanatory Dictionary of the Language Theory» review the eleven usages of the notion of discourse. Text is opposed to discourse and acts as utterance, actualized in discourse as substance, from linguistic point of view, whereas discourse is a process [25, p. 389]. J. Courtés implies the discourse to be multicomponent whole, composed by a large number of language units  specially selected and  united in a certain way, serving as building material  for «speech acts, being acts of communication, <…> of the parts of a particular global integrity» [24, p. 28]. Discourse is interpreted as semiotic process realized in different forms of «discursive practices». When considering the discourse, one means, first and foremost, a specific way or specific rules of speech activity (written or spoken). For example, J.-C. Coquet refers discourse to «cohesion of the meaning structures possessing own rules of combination and transformation» [23, p. 27-28].

Literary discourse comes into a conflict with a supposed monosemanticity, inherent in terminological vocabulary, and is treated differently: «text, immersed in a situation of communication», regarding «great number of intentions» and also  mutually complementary approaches in studying (pragmalinguistic, structural-linguistic, linguocultural, sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic) [8, p. 5–6].

N.D. Arutyunova treats discourse  as «coherent text in complex with extralinguistic, pragmatic, sociocultural psychological and the other factors». «Discourse – is a speech, immersed in life», speech, inserted into a communicative situation, and, therefore, being a category with distinctive social content as compared to speech activity of an individual.  

Discourse is a phenomenon, studied within current time, that is, as it emerges and develops, and when analyzing it, it is necessary to take into account all the social, culturological and pragmatic factors. Therefore, in contrast with the term “text” the term “discourse” is not applied to the ancient and the other texts, the ties of which with directly living life are not reestablished [1, p. 136–137].

Nevertheless, Ye. F. Kirov suggests removing the latter restriction because of the fact of the existence of the past in the presence and its ability to determine many events in the presence and the future. According to Ye. F. Kirov, discourse – is a totality of the written and spoken texts in either language in terms of either culture in the history of its existence [10, p. 16–24].

Literary discourse – is a cognitive process connected with speechmaking, creating speech product, and text  – is an ultimate result of the process of speech activity having a definite complete (and fixed) form   [11, p. 186–197].

Discourse is an ideal type of communication, realized in the most possible detachment from social reality, traditions, authority, communicative routine, etc., and aiming at critical discussion and arguments in support of views and actions of the participants of communication. According to Yu.  Habermas, discourse is a dialogue, in the process of which there is a coordination of disputed claims to the importance to reach agreement: «In the discourses we are trying to re-produce the problematized acceptance, which took place in the communicative action, by means of giving reasons»  [20, p. 69-76].      

N. Chomsky suggests studying language «competence» and abstracting away from using language.  Recently, cognitive sets in the science about language have changed, and none of language phenomena can be understood and described beyond their use, without considering their discursive aspects. Therefore, discursive analysis becomes one of the most important branches of linguistics  [21]. Any of these disciplines approaches to discourse in its own way, but some of them exerted considerable influence on linguistic discursive analysis.

The formation of a new anthropocentric paradigm has led to expanding the sphere of studying the realization of language facts in direction of their more detailed analysis and caused the necessity of developing adequate methods and principles of linguistic investigations which are gradually orienting to discourse and discursive analysis.

 In our opinion, literary discourse  like all language substances (morpheme, words, sentences), is structured according to certain rules characteristic for the given language. The very act of existing  language rules and restrictions is often demonstrated with the help of experimental language formations where the rules or restrictions violate.   

The process of language communication implies the presence of two radically opposed roles of discourse – the speaker and the addressee. The modeling of the processes of making discourse  – is not the same that the modeling of the processes of discourse analyses. Discourse is represented, on the one hand, as speech activity, on the other hand, as a result of this activity, a completed narrative construction of interrelated semiotic levels of making the meaning [14, p. 4].

It follows from the mentioned above that the notion of discourse, the emergence of which relates to approaching linguistic research to the area of superphrasal syntax, means mainly complex unit consisting of succession of sentences, combined by logical, semantic type of cohesion. In other words, discourse  – is a language unit of the upper level possessing structural, functional specificity,  it is  «a new feature in the character of Language, appearing before us at the turn of XX century» [17, p. 71].

In the main, discourse exists not simply in the texts but in the works, where grammar, syntax, word usage, vocabulary are special and in this special world the world’s  laws and rules are in force. Each discourse is one of the  «possible worlds». The very phenomenon of discourse is a proof of the thesis «language – the home of spirit» [9, p. 47].

Thus, the treatment of the literary discourse as a form of language interaction in dynamics of text organization of speech is essential for further considering the author’s conceptual sphere and the writer’s idiostyle that are the important elements for revealing the features of language personality.