Lecture № 1. Lingustic aspect of text interpretation

LECTURE № 1. LINGUSTIC ASPECT OF TEXT INTERPRETATION

1. Distinctive features of a literary text and other types of texts.

2. The notion of text interpretation.

3. The notion of the meaning, and the content
of the text.

4. The subject-matter and aims of text interpretation as an academic subject.

5. Text interpretation analysis as opposed to stylistic analysis.

6. Approaches to text interpretation (based on the preference of one of the textual senses).

7. Basic schools of literary criticism.

8. A semiotic approach to text interpretation.

Literary text:: other types of texts

Text ─ is any sequence of words ordered according to the rules of a given language

• any sequence of signs having a piece of information (a picture, a dance, a note);

• any verbal communicative event (between the author and the reader) performed in written or oral mode;

In literary poetics text creates an imaginary picture of the objective reality due to a specific figurative language it employs.

Fictional VS non-fictional texts

Literary text

„ Creates the imaginary reality

„ Interprets the objective realty indirectly, by images

„ Free structural patterns (a certain degree of creative freedom)

„ The author’s individuality is evident

Other types of texts

„ Create the objective realty

„ Interpret the objective realty directly

„ Rigid structural patterns (strict requirements to graphical form, grammar, vocabulary)

„ The author’s individuality is ruled out by strict norms

Objective and subjective factors

Literary text ─ is a result of the author’s multitude choices, which are predetermined byobjective:

v different cultural, social and historical conditions

v dominant ideological views

v aesthetic standards

v artistic literary trends

Subjective factors

v age, gender, education

The notion of text interpretation

When we interpret a text we explain it to ourselves and try to make sense of it. We form subjective impressions of it but we have objective considerations in mind when we interpret it. On the other hand, no reading of a story is objective, it is influenced by our particular language, culture and experience. It is one way of understanding the text among many.

Interpretation ─ is an act, process, or result of explaining the meaning of the text and elucidating the sense of the text.

The notion of the meaning, and the content of thetext

The meaning of the text ─ the information rendered directly by language units.

The content of the text ─ is a hierarchy of senses which embraces textual meaning (the universal sense) which is independent, the author’s sense and the reader’s sense.

The author’s sense ─ the implicit content of the text.

The reader’s sense ─ the implicit content of the text.

Textual meaning

„ Explicit

„ Derived from direct meanings of language units

„ Objective (universal), understood directly

„ unambiguous

Textual sense

Ø Implicit

„ Reconstructed through hidden meanings according to the author’s intention

„ Subjective, understood differently by different readers

„ multiple

The subject-matter and aims of text interpretationas an academic subject

As an academic subject Text interpretation is aimed at developing students’ skills of professional competent analytical reading of literary texts based on linguostylistic analysis.

The rules of governing text production and interpretation, which are described as different cultural codes, genres, discourses, and styles are the object of Text Interpretation.

Interpretation relies on our intellectual comprehension rather than on our emotional response of a literary text.

Interpretation involves four related intellectual acts: observing, connecting, inferring and evaluating.

Event vs incident

INCIDENTS:

„ Don’t lead to important consequences

„ Potential, just cloudy possibilities

„ Don’t change the outcome of the story

EVENTS:

„ Have important consequences

„ It is a pivotal point

„ Cause reactions and change the outcome of the story

„ Have later repercussions

Plot is a series of events

„ Event is always logically relate d to the message, the theme, the conflict of the story and is psychologically related to the development of the characters in the story.

„ Event is always suggestive, and to interpret a story means to discover the role the events play in conveying the message of the story.

„ Every plot is a series of meaningful events as the writer selects the events which are meaningful to the message of the story, which reveal certain features of the main characters, their motives and morals.

„ Plot is a planned arrangement of actions and events. They do not occur in a haphazard way, they are causally related. It means that each event is the result of some prior events, and the cause of some subsequent events.

''The king died and then the queen died"

“The king died and then the queen died of grief"

Modem critics distinguish five main elements of plot structure. They are:

Exposition which introduces the characters and describes the setting. It contains all the necessary preliminaries to the events of the plot. Besides it introduces the nature of conflict that sets the plot in motion. It's the beginning of an unstable situation. 

Rising actions (complications) – a series of events which complicate and heighten the conflict, the beginning of the unstable situation.

Climax – the most important event of the story where the major decision is made.

Falling actions (denouement) a typically brief period in which there is less intensity of the conflict, and the untying of complications takes place.

Resolution – the end of the conflict, thebeginning of the stable situation.

The elements of plot structure can be presented with the help of pyramid. It is called a Freytag Pyramid as the diagram first was proposed by German critic Gustav Freytag (19 C).

In exposition the writer introduces the theme, the characters of the story. It contains all the necessary preliminaries to the events of the plot, casts light on the circumstances influencing the development of the characters.

As to its length it may be compressed into one sentence or extended into several paragraphs. Extended exposition provides the reader with information about when and where the events take place, who the characters are and what the story is about. If the characters and backgrounds are not special, not much exposition is required.

Setting is a particular place, time and the social context the events of the plot are set in. A social context of a story is a product of time and place. We have to understand where we are, in which period of time, in which society if we are to interpret correctly the other elements in the story.  We must learn enough about the society— its customs, values, possibilities— to know what the characters are free to do, to choose, and what they may not do.

Setting can be:

dark or light,

melancholy or gay,

real or imaginary,

concrete or symbolic,

"a slice of life'¹ or a cultural panorama,

a moment or an eternity

but it cannot exist without description.

AHIERARCHY OF IMAGES

In a literary text images form a system, which comprises a hierarchy of images beginning with micro-images, formed by a word/word combination, and ending with synthetic images or "extended images", formed by the whole literary work.

According to the specific entity images represent we distinguish:

character-images, i.e.human characters (Sh. Bronte "Jane Eyre", by J. London "Martin Eden ");

landscape-images ("My Heart's in the Highlands " by R. Burns);

animal-images ("The Jungle Book" by R.Kipling, " The North Stories " by J. London)

Character-images are both real and unreal. They are real in the sense that they can be visualized, you can see them act, you can hear them talk. They are unreal in the sense that they are imaginary, even if they are drawn from life, even if they are images of historical people, as they are not identical with them, they are products of the writer's imagination.

FLAT CHARACTERS VS ROUND

FLAT characters

Ø one trait

Ø Characteristics can be sum up in a sentence

Ø Stable/ not developing

Ø Distant from actual human beings

Ø Their actions are determinate, logical, not surprising

ROUND characters

Ø Numerous traits

Ø Characteristics need elaborate description

Ø changeable/ developing

Ø Close to actual human beings

Ø Their actions are difficult to determine, not always logical, surprising

Characters may be described from different aspects: physical, emotional, moral, spiritual, social. A character trait is a relatively stable or abiding personal quality described in a literary text.

Characterization is the creation, presentation and development of character in fiction.

There are two basic types of textual indicators of character: direct definition and indirect presentation.

Using direct definition the author:

names the trait by an adjective {e.g. he was good-hearted)

an abstract noun (e.g. his goodness knew no bounds)

possibly some other kind of noun (e.g. she was a real bitch)

other part of speech (e.g. he loves only himself).

Direct definition leads to generalization. Its dominance in a given text produces a rational and static impression.

Using indirect presentation the author does not mention the trait but displays and exemplifies it in various ways, leaving to the reader the task of inferring the quality he implies.

Although a one-time action does not reflect constant qualities, it is not less characteristic of the character. On the contrary, its dramatic impact often suggests that the traits it reveals are qualitatively more crucial than the numerous habits which represent the character's routine.

Actions include small gestures, a thought, a word, a decision, an impulse or a whole event. A trait may be implied both by one-time actions, and by habitual ones.

One-time actions tend to evoke the dynamic aspect of the character, often playing a part in a turning point in the story.

Habitual actions tend to reveal the character's unchanging or static aspect, often having a comic or ironic effect.

Although a one-time action does not reflect constant qualities, it is not less characteristic of a character as the traits it reveals are qualitatively more crucial than the numerous habits which represent the character's routine.

Both one-time and habitual actions can belong to one of the following categories:

act of commission (i.e. something performed by the character)

act of omission (something which the character should, but does not do)

contemplated act (an unrealized plan or intention of the character)

Analyzing speech characteristic one should be alert for:

a) style markers (markers of official style; markers of informal conversational style; initiating signals; hesitation pauses; false starts)

b)  markers of the emotional state of the character (emphatic inversion; emotionally coloured words, breaks-in-the-narrative; the use of the tailing off into silence which reflect deep emotions or doubt)

c) attitudinal markers (words denoting attitudes, intensifiers)

d) markers of the character's educational level: bookish words, rough words, slang, deviations from the standard

e) markers of regional and dialectal speech, which define the speaker as to his origin, nationality, social standing

f) markers of the character's occupation

g) markers of the speaker's idiolect (his individual speech peculiarities)

Psychological portrayal is the analysis of character's motives by penetration into the mind of the character, description of his mental processes and some psychological changes that motivate his actions.

The name may be deliberately chosen to fit a certain character (Mrs.Murdstone = murder+stone), Shark Dodson, a shark= a person clever at getting money from others in dishonest or merciless ways. Such names are suggestive, as they bring into play the associations which the words they are composed of have.

Description of the world of things that surround the character.

Domestic interiors of the setting are sometimes treated a metonymic/metaphoric expressions of the character.

    A character's physical surrounding (room, house, street, town) and human environment (family, social class) are also often used as trait-connoting metonymies.

All the means of characterization the writer resorts to, enable the reader to visualize and understand the characters, to think, feel and worry with them, to trace the changes and growth in their personalities.

 

LCTURE 4.POINT OF VIEW.

IMPLICATION TECHNIQUES:

SUSPENSE: the quality of a story, that makes the reader uncertain or tense about the outcome of events. 

Suspense is the growing interest and excitement readers experience while awaiting a climax or resolution in a work of literature. It is a feeling of anxious uncertainty about the outcome of events. Writers create suspense by raising questions in the minds of their readers.

Symbol is a person, a place, a thing, or an event that has meaning in itself and stands for something beyond itself as well.

Repetition is when a word, phrase of line is repeated within the text in close proximity.

} Repetition is used to emphasize or add special meaning to what is being said.

} Repetition makes the reader consciously aware of a point being made by the author or the character.

IMAGERY: consists of the words or phrases a writer uses to represent persons, objects, actions, feelings, and ideas descriptively by appealing to the senses. 

Descriptive words or phrases appeal to the 5 senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell- creating a picture in the reader’s mind.

Title is the first element to catch the reader’s eye, but its meaning and function may be determined only retrospectively because it acquires its precise meaning when related to the whole story. Then it may acquire a totally different meaning, or the story itself may clarify the meaning of the title. Title may perform different functions in a literary text such as:

} as a means of conveying the author's message;

} as a means of cohesion, i.e. it unites the components of a story to form an artistic whole;

} as a means of focussing the reader's attention on the most relevant characters or details;

} it may characterize the protagonist;

} it orients or disorients the reader towards the message of the story.

The aim of the analysis is at breaking a literary text down into its varied components to see how each piece works and contributes to the text’s message.

The world is full of texts to interpret, and there are myriad ways to interpret each of them. Being critically text interpretation means engaging with that world and those texts in a thoughtful way to understand how many possible ways of being and thinking there are.

 

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSIONS

1. Distinctive features of a literary text and other types of texts.

2. The subject-matter and aims of text interpretation as an academic subject.

3. Text interpretation analysis as opposed to stylistic analysis.

4. Approaches to text interpretation (based on the preference of one of the textual senses).

5. Basic schools of literary criticism.

6. The main categories of a literary text.

7. The main components of a literary text.

8. The notion of plot of a literary text.

9. Event as opposeto incident: the main distinguishing features of event.

10. The notion of plot elements of a literary text.

11. Stylistic functions of setting in a literary text.

12. The notion of the narrative structure of a literary text.

13. The notion of presentational sequencing and its devices.

14. The notion of image/ character in text interpretation.

15. Different classifications of characters.

16. Flat characters as opposed to round characters.

17. The notion of a character trait and types of characterization: direct definition and indirect presentation.

18. Ways of direct definition.

19. Ways of indirect presentation.

20. The notion of the narrative perspective/ point of view.

21. Types of narrative perspective.

22. The major types of narrators.

23. The advantage of the first person point of view.

24. The advantage of the third-person point of view.

25. Literaryrepresentational forms (narration, description, explanation, argumentation and definition).

26. Ways of creating the mood of the story.

27. The notion of title and its functions in a literary text.

 

LECTURE № 1. LINGUSTIC ASPECT OF TEXT INTERPRETATION

1. Distinctive features of a literary text and other types of texts.

2. The notion of text interpretation.

3. The notion of the meaning, and the content
of the text.

4. The subject-matter and aims of text interpretation as an academic subject.

5. Text interpretation analysis as opposed to stylistic analysis.

6. Approaches to text interpretation (based on the preference of one of the textual senses).

7. Basic schools of literary criticism.

8. A semiotic approach to text interpretation.