Статья опубликована в Материалах Международной научно-практической конференции «Валихановские чтения – 14». – Том 11. – Кокшетау, 2009. – С. 210-215. TEXT ANALYSIS AS A LINGUODIDACTIC PROBLEM Сысоев В.А., Мощенко Ю.В. Северо-Казахстанский государственный университет им. М. Козыбаева,
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It is impossible to cover all the existing modes of analysing a literary text in such a short and practically oriented article. On the one hand, Text Analysis may be regarded as a separate linguistic discipline possessing its own rather an extensive inventory of methods and techniques as well as theoretical categories and concepts. This rather brief and schematic article deals only with the main modules (stages) of linguo-stylistic, cognitive and general philological text analysis, which are regarded to be most crucial for practical aims that a student of English faces in the process of professional training. In our opinion, these modules (sections) can be presented in the following form and sequence: 1) general information about the text 2) setting and plot structure of the text 3) outline of the characters 4) message of the text 5) concluding remarks It can be by no means stated that such a pattern is the most successful of all those that exist nowadays. But at the same time one cannot question the fact that this analytical sequence has a number of merits such as brevity, clearly marked structure and logical, deducible transitory zones joining its component parts together. The authors of this article have used the internationally acclaimed linguistic tactics of analysing fiction created by I.R. Galperin, I.V. Arnold, V.A. Kuharenko and some other scholars of the Russian and American schools of decoding belles-lettres style texts. The article in question does not touch upon any serious theoretical problems of the contemporary text linguistics. Its ultimate goal is to present the reader some building stones forming the most basic skills of decoding texts belonging to different fiction genres. The following pages of the article are devoted to describing the corner stones of any philological analysis of fiction. 1. Presenting general information about the text Broadly defined, the word fiction refers to any narrative, in prose or in verse, that is wholly or in part the product of imagination. As such, plays and narrative poems (poems that tell a story) can be classified as fiction, as can folktales, parables, fables, legends, allegories, satires and romances – all of which contain certain imaginative elements. Thus, imaginative literature is a way of treating subject matter, establishing the relationship between real life and the virtual life depicted in a work of fiction. From the stylistic point of view, imaginative literature (belles-lettres style) is split into three groups (or substyles): Poetry (verse), Emotive prose and Drama. Questions to answer at this analysis stage include: 1.1. What is the title of the book (novel, short story, poem, fairy tale, fantasy story, folk tale, lore, etc.)?
1.2. Who is the author of …? (Who wrote …? Whom was … written by?) What is the author famous for? 1.3. What substyle and genre does the text belong to? 2. Analysing setting and plot structure of the text When one speaks about the plot of imaginative literature, then, one is referring to the deliberately arranged sequence of interrelated events that constitute the basic narrative structure of a work of fiction. Questions to answer at this analysis stage include: 2.1. What is the book (novel, short story, etc.) devoted to? What is the plot of the book focused on? What does the text describe? What does the plot of the text deal with? What is the plot centered around? What problems does the book touch upon? What does the book tell us about? 2.2. Where does the action of the text take place? Where is the scene laid? Where is the plot of the text set? What is the plot focused on? 2.3. When does the action of the book/text take place? 2.4. How many parts can this text be divided / split into? From the point of view presented in the classical theory of literature, most of fiction pieces (short stories, novels, etc.) fall into 5 stages of plot development. They are as follows: 1) exposition (introduction of characters and setting (time and space of the work)); 2) development of the plot; 3) crisis (climax, culminating point) /the main event in the plot/; 4) falling action; 5) resolution (dénouement) (presenting some general remarks on the observation, sometimes rather abstracted from the general line of the plot). The sequence of these stages in an imaginative text can also be presented graphically as it is shown in Diagram 1. 3. Crisis 2. Development of the plot
1. Exposition Beginning
4. Falling action
Middle
5. Resolution (dēnoument) End
Diagram 1 – Stages of plot development It is often recommended to the students to use this division (giving a context-based name to each part) or invent their own one if the discourse (context) allows. 2.5. Are the parts of the narration strictly organized in one time and space sequence? Is the plot presentation loose (episodic, sporadic, non-linear)? Is the plot presentation similar to a sample of the “stream of consciousness”? 2.6. What does the first / introductory / opening part tell us about? What is the second / following part devoted to? What does the third / fourth part of the text describe? What does the last / final part of the text deal with? 2.7. How are some supra-linear (supra-segmental) relations between different parts realized? 3. Describing the personages
The relationship between the plot and characters is a vital and necessary one. Without a character, there would be no plot and, hence, no fiction. When one speaks of characters in terms of analysis, one is concerned primarily with three interconnected activities. One is concerned, first of all, with being able to establish the personalities of the characters themselves and to identify their intellectual, emotional and moral qualities. Secondly, one is concerned with the techniques an author uses to create, develop and present characters to the reader (both philological and purely linguistic). Thirdly, one is concerned with whether the characters so presented are credible and convincing. Questions to answer in this analytical section include: 3.1. Who is / are the main character(s) of the book (poem, play, etc.)? (Who is the hero / heroine of the book?) If an external conflict (e.g. between a person and the society, or two people) is presented in the text, one usually distinguishes between a protagonist (a main character the readership sympathize with) and an antagonist (opponent). A protagonist is not necessarily a positive hero and an antagonist may be not a villain. 3.2. Is / are he (she) / they dynamic (showing an ability to change) or static (not showing any ability to change throughout the whole book)? (It is important to give the evidence from the text to prove the conclusion made.) 3.3. Are the major personages flat (characterized only by one leading feature) or round (with a polyphony of personal traits displayed)? (Again it is important to give the evidence from the text to prove the conclusions made.) 3.4. Who are the secondary characters / personages of the text? 3.5. What is in your opinion the author’s attitude towards the character(s)/personage(s)? (Is it positive/sympathetic/friendly/negative/critical/ironical/sarcastic/neutral/indifferent?) It is important to be able to prove the point presenting the words/situations/original stylistic devices/expressive means of the language used by the author to describe the characters. Another important point to be made here is describing the type of the implicit author (author’s image) realized in the text (an eye-witness, an impartial observer, a judge, an ardent critic, a confidant, etc.). One typically includes in the section the analysis of the narration type realized in the text, paying special attention to the instances of represented speech (uttered represented speech and inner represented speech) inner dialogue, auto dialogue, inner reaction, stream of consciousness, etc. 3.6. What is your personal attitude to the personage(s)? 3.7. Why do you (dis)like him/her/them? Why do you sympathize (empathize) with him/her/them? Why are you critical about him/her/them? 4. Identifying the message of the text One of the most difficult practical problems in text analysis is identifying the message of the text. When one speaks about the message in connection with the critical linguistic analysis of an imaginative literature, we usually have the following definition in mind. The message of the text is the central idea or statement about life that unifies and controls the total work. It is the comment or statement the author makes about the problem with which the work deals as it necessarily and inevitably emerges from the interplay of the various elements of the fiction work. “What does this belles-lettres style text mean?”, “What is the author trying to say?”, “What is the basic idea of the text?” – these are questions to be answered at this stage of text analysis and interpretation. The message or basic idea of the text is sometimes compared with the theme of a work of fiction. We use these terms without much discrimination, because it is not the aim of this article to draw a borderline between purely linguistic and naturally literary terms, but to unite them in order to carry through text analysis and interpretation in the most efficient way.
To summarise all stated above, when we attempt to identify the message of a work of fiction we are attempting to formulate in our own words the statement about life or human experience that is made by the total work. This task is frequently not easy. It makes us plunge in analysing a number of various elements in their relation to one another and to the work as a whole. There is no rough-and-ready approach to identifying the message of a text, because texts of different kinds and genres yield different messages in different ways. Nonetheless, the following suggestions and comments may prove helpful in identifying the basic idea: It is extremely important in considering message to avoid confusing it with the work’s subject or situation. Basic idea shared in a text with its possible readership is the abstract, generalized statement or comment that the text makes about a concrete subject or situation. On the other hand, the basic idea of any text cannot be established unless we are first successful in establishing the subject or the work’s basic situation. On identifying subject or situation, we are in position to formulate a thematic statement about the text. Take the case of Death of a Hero by Richard Aldington. Its subject, young George Winterbourne killed during World War I or, broader, the so-called “lost generation”, is easily identified. The situation described in the Epilogue (a foregrounded part of the text) is the drab empty life of the war and post-war generation. Bearing this information in mind, one can propose and support the following idea. The message (central idea, theme) of this novel is a passionate protest against war, against the rotten order of things in the author’s country and his call for atonement. One must be as certain as one can that the established statement of message does the work full justice. On the one hand, there is always the serious danger of either understanding the theme by failing to discover its total significance or of overstating and enlarging it beyond what the linguistic elements of the text can be shown to support, and thus making the work of fiction appear more universally applicable than it is. On the other hand, there is a danger of not cognizing the full thematic significance of a text. The correctness of the deduced message in the example taken is proved by numerous denunciative digressions, pages of biting social satire, rich and expressive word-depicting, a song of lamentation for the dead of the generation that went through the horrors of war, the general tragic and appealing mood of this “jazz-band novel”. The test of any message that one may propose is whether it is fully and completely supported by the work’s other elements. The title (and the subtitle) that an author gives the text presents a particular focus or emphasis for the reader’s attention. Take the case of W.M. Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. A Novel Without a Hero. The very title of the book suggests the message focus. It may be formulated as vanity of the society surrounding the author, the absence of real personalities capable of changing anything and the appeal to get terrified by the state of things and change oneself. Such a message is backed, for instance, by the following author’s digression: “The world is a looking – glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you; laugh at it, and it is a jolly kind companion; and so let all young persons take their choice”. Another example of a suggestive title is R.Bradbury’s The One Who Waits. The same function is fulfilled by some other foregrounded text elements. Such as the last paragraph, epigraphs, prologue and epilogue, etc. Authorial digressions of various types often suggest an emphasis for readers’ attention. Inasmuch as authorial lyrical digressions, epigrams, denunciatory digressions, argumentation and commentaries are connected with the plot of the imaginative literature only due to the author’s point of view on the problem and some other subjective elements of fiction, they appear to be mighty and solid explicators of author’s message. Returning to Death of a Hero by Richard Aldington one can find the following denunciative digression:
“That is why I am writing the life of George Winterbourne, a unit, one human body murdered, but to me a symbol. It is an atonement, a desperate effort to wipe off the blood-guiltiness. Perhaps it is the wrong way. Perhaps the poison will still be in me. If so, I shall search for some other way. But I shall search. I know what is poisoning me. I do not know what is poisoning you, but you are poisoned. Perhaps you too must atone”. Biographical and autobiographical research is helpful and illuminating – as are the personal statements the author makes about his or her life and work in prefaces, letters, journals, notebooks and critical writings. They can tell the reader a great deal about the author, the times in which he lived and wrote, and the relationship between the author and the work. Furthermore, they can also tell us something about author’s purport (intentions). Questions to answer at this analysis stage include: 4.1. What is in your opinion the main / basic idea of the text? It is indispensable to find some stylistic devices used by the author and some other elements of style to prove the point. D.H. Lawrence is certainly correct in this respect, when he reminds us in his Studies in Classic American Literature (1923), “Never trust the artist. Trust the tale.” 4.2. What is the connection between the main idea and the usage of words (possibly, belonging to different vocabulary layers: literary, neutral or colloquial) in the text? 4.3. What is the way of presenting the basic idea? Is it explicit (direct presentation) or implicit (hidden in the discourse)? 4.4. How are the content-factual, content-conceptual and content-subtextual types of information connected with each other on the macro-level of the given text? 4.5. How do text categories (prospection, retrospection, intertextuality, cohesion, emotiveness, modality, the title of the text, etc.) and different kinds of cognitive (hermeneutic) markers help us grasp the main idea of the text? Talking about fiction one ought to take into close consideration that in some works (not few in number) the basic idea is not the most important thing and it is very difficult (if possible at all) to decode it objectively. Nonetheless, we are able to define the author’s purport (intention, intent) and some reasons, which made the writer create the given masterpiece (e.g. the desire to disclose the complex nature of an artist or to give the potential readership aesthetic pleasure). 5. Making up an impressive conclusion Last but certainly not least is making up a conclusion. Inasmuch as reporting the results of any interpretational activity is very important both in terms of the content and the form, the conclusion drawn must be connected logically with the opening part of the report (i.e. general information). As a result of this analytical module one should be able to speak about individual features of the author and the text under study. It is also important to dwell on the general impression the text produces. Questions to answer in this analytical section include: 5.1. What is your opinion of the book (novel, short story, etc.) in general? 5.2. What impression did the text make/produce on you? 5.3. What did you appreciate in the text most of all? 5.4. What peculiarities of the author’s individual style of writing did you come across in the book analysed? What can you say about the author’s diction (choice of tropes and lexical expressive means) and syntax? 5.5. Is the author dialogue oriented and democratic in his attitude to the implicit reader (the image of a potential reader in the text) or mentor-like? What is the general tone of the major parts and the whole text?
5.6. Would you advise this book to your friends (fellow students, acquaintances)? /Giving your reasons from the viewpoint of the beautiful linguistic form of narration, interesting idea expressed, true to life situation description./ In a good analysis of the text one ought to combine clear theoretical linguistic knowledge and practical skills of decoding different kinds of texts with the personal creativity in choosing one’s own way and individual technique of text interpretation, as well as in the choice of words used in the report on the work.
