Genesis of the theoretically-critical issues in fairy tales as a fictional text

Размещено на http://www.allbest.ru

Размещено на http://www.allbest.ru

Genesis of the theoretically-critical issues in fairy tales as a fictional text

Pukaliak M.

Pukaliak M. Teacher, Foreign Languages Department, Lviv Polytechnic National University

The article explores genesis of theoretically-critical issues about fairy tales as fictional text. The fairy tale as one of the most popular genres of oral epic tradition has been studied by linguists rather thoroughly. It is significant that the emergence of folkloristics as an academic discipline is largely associated with the research of fairy tales. Fairy text is a peculiar kind of communication because along with communicative-informational function it has communicative-aesthetic function. As a result of the embodiment of the writer's thoughts, the fairy text appears to the reader as a subjectively painted result of the artistic image of the reflection of the objective world.

Key words: fairy tale, literature, text, discourse, approach, analysis, features.

Пукаляк М. викладач кафедри іноземних мов Національного університету «Львівська політехніка»

ПОХОДЖЕННЯ ТЕОРЕТИЧНО-КРИТИЧНИХ ПРОБЛЕМ У КАЗКАХ ЯК У ХУДОЖНЬОМУ ТЕКСТІ

У статті досліджено походження теоретично-критичних проблем у казках як у художньому тексті. Казка як один із найпопулярніших жанрів усної епічної традиції вивчена лінгвістами досить ретельно. Показово, що виникнення фольклористики як навчальної дисципліни багато в чому пов'язане з дослідженням казок. Казковий текст є своєрідним видом спілкування, адже поряд з комунікативно-інформаційною функцією він має комунікативно-естетичну функцію. Внаслідок втілення думок письменника, феєричний текст постає перед читачем як суб'єктивно намальований результат художнього образу відображення об'єктивного світу.

Ключові слова: казка, література, текст, дискурс, підхід, аналіз, особливості.

Пукаляк М. - преподаватель кафедры иностранных языков Национального университета «Львовская политехника»

ПРОИСХОЖДЕНИЕ ТЕОРЕТИКО-КРИТИЧЕСКИХ ПРОБЛЕМ В СКАЗКАХ КАК В ХУДОЖЕСТВЕННОМ ТЕКСТЕ

В статье исследовано происхождение теоретико-критических проблем в сказках как в художественном тексте. Сказка как один из самых популярных жанров устной эпической традиции изучена лингвистами довольно тщательно. Показательно, что возникновение фольклористики как учебной дисциплины во многом связано с исследованием сказок. Сказочный текст является своеобразным видом общения, ведь рядом с коммуникативноинформационной функцией он выполняет коммуникативно-эстетическую функцию. В результате воплощения мыслей писателя феерический текст предстает перед читателем как субъективно нарисованный результат художественного отражения объективного мира.

Ключевые слова: сказка, литература, текст, дискурс, подход, анализ, особенности.

Formulation of the scientific problem

The fairy tale as one of the most popular genres of oral epic tradition has been studied by linguists rather thoroughly. It is significant that the emergence of folkloristics as an academic discipline is largely associated with the research of fairy tales.

Analysis of the latest investigations of the question. In general, the study of fairy tales took shape in the XIX-XX centuries within various scientific fields, represented by Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, Theodor Benfy, Johannes Bolte in Germany, Paul Sebillot, Joseph Bedier, Pierre Saintyves in France, Alexander Afanasyev, Alexander Veselovsky, Vladimir Propp in Russia and others.

The aim is carrying out an investigation of fairy tales both for children and adults to find out their features in terms of semantics, syntactic structures, lexical devices and pragmatics. Therefore, this study will help teachers, students of language and those who are interested in textual features of fairy tales.

Presentation of the basic material and interpretation of the results of investigation

Any fairy tale can be defined as a text analysed and studied within the scope of fictional literature. Fiction is a vague and general term for an imaginative work, usually in prose. At any rate, it does not normally cover poetry and drama though both are a form of fiction in that they are moulded and contrived - or feigned. Fiction is now used in general of the novel, the short story the novella and related genres [1].

Text could be conceived of as a dialogue between author and audience, writer and reader. Fictional texts seem to fit this model of interaction quite well. In such a case there is a writer who has a certain kind of reader in mind and that kind of reader then comes to the text and accepts what the writer offers. But this model of reading and of the interaction that operates in text is very limiting if one looks at a wider range of texts. In the first place it treats writing as a proactive process and reading as a receptive process. The audience of a text is the intended readership, the imaginary person whom the writer addresses and whose questions they try to answer.

By intention, Wimsatt and Beardsley mean “what he intended, that is, the design or plan in the author's mind. The intention is outside the text; the text achieves a kind of independence from the originating intention, a life beyond it. Text can be defined as the visible evidence of a reasonably self-contained purposeful interaction between one or more writers and one or more readers, in which the writer control the interaction and produce most of the language. The whole interaction can be referred to as a discourse. Text can be compared to a site of interaction between a writer and readers which the writer controls.

`Text' and `discourse' are current notions in present-day linguistic discussion. The two terms cover a wide range of meanings and connotations in linguistic and everyday scientific language. `Discourse' is a very broad notion which contains in itself a variety of sub-fields and disciplines. The word `discourse' comes from a Latin word `discursus' which means `conversation/stretch of talk'. The words, we utter or write, may take various forms of discourse, such as speech, lecture, everyday communication, formal discussions, addresses, religious or political orations and a lot more constituted under the term `word'. These discourses are divided into two types, spoken discourse and written discourse [2].

The term discourse can have different meanings, according to Dontcheva-Navratilova “firstly, it is used to refer to unified, meaningful and purposive stretches of spoken and written language. Secondly, it is used to refer to the language in action. Last but not least, it is used to refer to the language of particular language variety” [3].

The major aim of discourse analysis, then, is to produce explicit and systematic, descriptions of units of language use that we have called discourse. Such descriptions have two main dimensions, which we may simply call textual and contextual. Textual dimensions account for the structures of discourse at various levels of description. Contextual dimensions relate these structural descriptions to various properties of the context, such as cognitive processes and representations or sociocultural factors.

Discourse is considered to be a significant object of linguistic research in the framework of approaches worked out by sociolinguistics, pragmalinguistics, linguistics of speech and cognitive linguistics. Nevertheless, existing interpretations of discourse are numerous and heterogeneous. Being oral or written, various in length and treated “in textual or sociocultural and social-interactional terms,” it is referred to “an elusive area, an imprecise and constantly emerging and emergent interface between language and culture” [4]. J.P. Gee differentiates “discourse” with a little “d” to mean language-in-use from “Discourse” with a capital “D” including besides language a nonverbal component (language plus “other stuff”) [8].

Sociocognitive approach to discourse originates from Teun A. van Dijk's ideas and defines discourse as a general idea of text, a concept of text. In this meaning discourse can be compared to a prototype, a cognitive structure similar to mental structures representing objects and events [10]. In this case discourse assumes material form in infinitely many texts united by thematic unity, common structural and stylistic features and the same communicative sphere while any single text is marked as formal embodiment (materialization) of discourse [7].

Fictional discourse is an integrative part of existential discourse. Its transformation from situational-role to personal-oriented existential variety of discourse was due to the transition of oral communication into written. This shift of transmission resulted in the loss of its participants' role relations (those of story teller and listener) and in digressions from traditional formulaic style [11].

All diversity of fictional literature definitions can be reduced to a few most general definitions, congruent to definitions of discourse. In particular, fictional discourse is defined as:

- a kind of personal communication, the purpose of which is to detect and experience the essential meaning of life, to interpret the nature of the relationship between man and the world [12];

- a socio-cultural and communicative product of speech and thought of an ethnic group containing axiological strategies and cultural information in a variety of texts [5];

- a dynamic process of cognitive and linguistic activity, inscribed in a fabulous context and its result - the text - represented in the special social form [6].

The definition analysis reveals emphasis either on processional or resulting aspects or on their interaction. Another significant characteristic of fictional discourse is its semiotic space attending to a specific communicative sphere. N. N. Mironova was the first to describe fictional discourse as “a special sign system serving cultural communication” [10]. In addition, V. V. Krasnykh writes that any discourse by its nature is essentially a single semiotic system possessing its own discursive units - mentefacts and text as units of planes of content and expression [13].

Assertions of semiotic character can be applied in full measure to fictional discourse, being a kinship with fictional discourse and a source of literary tradition. Fictional discourse is based upon desacralized myth as “a way of social memory organization” [14]. Being a non-text type and preceding event, myth in the form of reductive programs, frames, situations and events penetrates into signs of varying complexity. The symbolism of fictional discourse is primarily determined by signs referring to mythological situation. Transformation of original mythological configurations (names, images, attributes, motifs, subjects) in accordance with axiological dominants of fairy tale consciousness leads to the formation of specific fairy tale signs - fairy tale images functioning as fairy tale names, events and expressions.

N. A. Akimenko brings out clearly the correlation between fictional, political and religious discourses. Fictional and political discourses are based on a system of identical mythological beliefs creatively transformed in each to receive diverse manifestations according to their aims. Despite different purposes and nature of fairy tale and religious discourses, their proximity is verified by inner organization (speech formulas, recurrence, repetition) as well as by the structural and semantic characteristics of their onomastic systems [15].

Fairy tale discourse can be regarded as text in the broadest semiotic interpretation. In Bart's understanding of text [16] it demonstrates the holistic multiplicity of meanings interacting with each other and giving rise to new meanings. Being a creolized system like any form of folk culture fairy tale discourse concentrates on the signifiant, releases the signifie from unambiguous interpretation and determines possibilities of its multifold existence.

From the standpoint of semiosis, or sign process, represented as a five-member ratio V, W, X, Y, Z by Ch. W. Morris [17], fairy tale text as a form of fictional discourse manifestation and fabulousness as its genreforming category can be treated as the signifiant of the sign in the broad non-linguistic interpretation (V). The signification of the sign (Y) is the fabulous world constructed in the folk artistic consciousness which reflects creatively transformed experience the ethnic group acquired while interacting with the objective reality. This sign - fairy tale discourse - in a particular communicative situation (context Z) arouses in the addresseeinterpreter (W) predisposition to a certain reaction (interpretant X). In other words, the story-teller's masterly narration of a fairy tale determines the listeners' due communicative behaviour in accordance with the functional characteristics of fairy tale discourse.

Consequently, fairy tale discourse is a complex linguo-semiotic phenomenon, a product of speech and thought of an ethnic group manifested in different genres of fairy works of art (fairy tales, legends, nursery tales, historical and local tales) together with extralinguistic factors. The works of art that make up fairy tale discourse are united by the common category of fabulousness with the miraculous as its central component and accumulate mythological beliefs shared by society in the system of verbal and nonverbal signs.

The turn of the millennium in linguistics is marked by a change of scientific paradigms. XIX century was determined by comparative linguistics, XX century was dominated by the structural method, in XXI century anthropocentric cognitive paradigm is employed in the research of various language phenomena.

It can be stated that linguistics in XXI century is defined by the simultaneous coexistence of different scientific paradigms and approaches to the analysis of all aspects of the language. Among the existing scientific paradigms researchers point out two main paradigms that are fundamental in modern linguistic directions, namely, communicative and cognitive ones.

Cognitive linguistics that originated in the field of cognitive psychology in the second half of XX century gradually established itself as a separate branch of linguistics that studies the relationship of language, thought, spiritual and practical activity of a person. The studies carried out within the framework of cognitive linguistics are actually determined by its objectives and are based on the postulates of the cognitive paradigm:

- anthropocentrism - the study of the mental and spiritual spheres of a person in connection with the language, where the focus is put on the author's identity as a representative of certain spiritual values, the projection of which onto the reader requires from the latter the decoding of the author's intentions;

- cognitive analysis - concentration of the research on real speechthinking processes in the human brain, because the perception of relevant information makes a reader use his/her conceptual apparatus and the corresponding thinking functions;

- explanatory guidance - a guideline to explain language phenomena that reveals itself in the author's attempts to explain the use of specific language means with a view to achieving appropriate pragmatic impact on the audience;

- expansionism - closer integration of any science (linguistic studies in particular) with other branches of knowledge [18].

In terms of the general approach to fiction each individual fictional system (text) of individual fiction writers contains thematic and narrative elements whose characteristic features when they reveal a similitude and certain common aspects with other literary texts determine actually the existence of different literary traditions/pattems/models of fiction as a distinct fictional typological system, and reifies its literary significance.

The peculiarity of fiction as a literary system implies the interpretative consideration of the following elements:

- author (because every text is the expression of its creator's sensibility and experience);

- language (as a means of reification of the text and expression of the authorial point of view);

- text as literary discourse (the narrative arrangements of the text, including the type of narration, chronotope, narrator, etc.);

- text as literary work (the thematic arrangements of the text, including characters, motifs, symbols, etc.);

- reader (because every text is intended to be representative of the human condition), as well as a number of others which may come into view in the process of analysis and which may occur when approaching discourse.

Semantics in cognitive linguistics is investigated by the method of the conceptual analysis. It is considered to be the search of common concepts which form one and the same sign and represent this sign as a marker of a certain cognitive structure. Both the words, sentences and the texts belonging to a certain genre, including the fairy tale genre can be represented by this sign [19].

Language can be viewed from two semantic perspectives:

- generically as semiotic system; representing the full meaning potential available to speakers, the full set of semantic options available to a speaker, what he or she can mean in contrast to what he or she can't mean;

- specifically as text; representing a socially constructed instance of the system. This simply means that text is the result of the meanings that were actually selected, it is the output of the semiotic system.

Multimodality is built on a `functional theory of meaning', an idea of meaning as social action realized through people's situated modal choices and the way they combine and organize these resources into multimodal ensembles” [20]. It distinguishes between three different but interconnected categories of meaning choices (also called meta-functions) that are simultaneously made when people communicate:

- choices related to how people realise content meanings (known as Ideational meaning), that is, the resources people choose to represent the world and their experience of it, for example, what is depicted about processes, relations, events, participants, and circumstances;

- choices related to how people articulate interpersonal meanings, that is, the resources that people choose to represent the social relations between themselves and those they are communicating with - either directly via interaction or via a text or artefact. For example, the visual or spatial depiction of elements as near and far, direct or oblique, are resources used to orient viewers or inter-actors to a text or one another;

- choices concerned with textual or organizational meaning, for example, the choice of resources such as space, layout, pace and rhythm for realizing the cohesion, composition, and structure of a text or interaction.

Halliday proposes that language is 'a system of meaning potential'. Seen to operate on the levels of the content and expression plane, meaning potential is conceived as a network of options where meaning is made through paradigmatic selections from the available system networks. “Language is an abstraction until it is materialized or expressed through either speech or writing, the process in the form of a text. The visual image is similarly a tool for meaning construction” [21]. That is, the pictorial semiotic resource is also seen as a conceptual abstraction with systems of meaning constituting the meaning potential.

Under the influence of anthropocentrism, “non-traditional approaches to the description of individual language systems, language levels and their units were formed”[22]. The inclusion of the so-called human factor into the -scope of the linguistic research put forward the functional approach to language.

Conclusion

fairy tale discourse semiotic

It is the study of language in action, in its functions. Because of this, the object of linguistics is not a language, but speech, recognition of speech and language as an ontologically unified phenomenon. Orientation to the speech, particularly to the statement, discourse, forces us to reconsider the theory of hierarchical organization of language, reordering its units not by place in the general hierarchical system, but using their internal functions. However, the main thing in modern functionalism is the principal setting for the study and description of language from the semantic functions to the means of their realization in language. In this respect, functionalism takes into account the different approaches to language, depending on the role, in which the user of the language distinguishes grammar, speaker and listener in the speech act.

Fairy text is a peculiar kind of communication because along with communicative-informational function it has communicative-aesthetic function. As a result of the embodiment of the writer's thoughts, the fairy text appears to the reader as a subjectively painted result of the artistic image of the reflection of the objective world.

Perspectives for further investigations. Semantic organization of English fairy tales is studied from several points of views. Modern language theory deals with a new approach to the semantic organization of English fairy tales - the conceptual analysis of fairy tale texts done within cognitive linguistics. Cognitive linguistics is one of the main trends of modern functional paradigm which establishes connection between language units and mental essences defined by them.

References

1. Акименко Н. А. Лингвокультурные характеристики англоязычного сказочного дискурса : дис. ... канд. филол. наук. Волгоград, 2005. 193 с.

2. Арутюнова Н. Д. Введение. Логический анализ языка. Ментальные действия. Москва: Наука, 1993. С. 3-7.

3. Балашова Е. Ю. Концепты любовь и ненависть в русском и американском языковых сознаниях : дис. ... канд. филол. наук. Саратов, 2004. 179 с.

4. Барт Р. От произведения к тексту. Эстетика и теория искусства ХХвека / отв. ред. Н. А. Хренов, А. С. Мигунов. Москва: Прогресс-Традиция, 2007. С. 451-458.

5. Бехта І. А., Головащенко Ю. С. Семантичний простір художнього тексту. Наукові записки Національного університету «Острозька академія». Серія: Філологічна. 2016. Вип. 60. С. 100-103. URL: http://nbuv.gov.ua/UJRN/Nznuoaf 2016 60 40.

6. Бехта І. А. Дискурс наратора в англомовній прозі. Київ: Грамота, 2004. С. 16-25.

7. Бехта І. А., Карп М. А. Мультимодальні засоби когезії та когерентності у сучасних літературних казках: теоретико-методологічна інтерпретація. Науковий вісник міжнародного гуманітарного університету. Сер.: Філологія, 2014. Вип. 13. С. 88-108.

8. Бехта І. А. Концептосистема англомовного дискурсу модернізму. Іноземна філологія. Український науковий збірник, 2009. Вип. 121. С. 172-186.

9. Бехта І. А. Мовленнєві моделі в англійськомовній прозі ХХІ століття. Збірник наукових праць [за ред. О. П. Левченко]. 2015. Львів: Вид-во Львівська політехніка. С. 56-59.

10. Бехта І. А. Мовні і концептуальні картини світу. Концептосфера у динаміці: збірник наукових праць. Київ, 2001. Вип. 5. С. 22-26.

11. Бехта І. А. Парадигма англомовного постмодерністського художнього тексту. Науковий вісник Чернівецького університету: зб. наук. праць / наук. ред. Левичцький В. В. Чернівці: Чернівецький нац. ун-т, 2011. Вип. 551-552: Германська філологія. С. 85-92.

12. Бехта І. А. Прономінальні засоби адресації оповідного дискурсу. Мова і культура. Київ, 2005. Вип. 8. Том VI. Філологія. C. 103-109.

13. Бехта І. А. Текст і лінгвістика тексту. Вісник Львів. ун-ту. Серія «Міжнародні відносини». Львів, 2000. С. 570-583.

14. Загнітко А. П., Краснобаєва-Чорна Ж. В. Портретування сучасної лінгвістичної думки. Рецензія на книгу: Селіванова О. О. Сучасна лінгвістика: напрями та проблеми: Підручник. Полтава: Довкілля, 2008. 712 с. Лінгвістичні студії: [зб. наук. пр.] / [укл. Анатолій Загнітко (наук. ред.) та ін.]. Донецьк, 2008. Вип. 17. С. 328-336.

15. Карасик В. И. Языковой круг: личность, концепты, дискурс. Волгоград: Перемена, 2002. 477 с.

16. Коваленко А. М. Заголовок англомовного журнального мікротексту- повідомлення: структура, семантика, прагматика (на матеріалі тижневика Newsweek 2002 року) : автореф. дис. ... канд. філол. наук: 10.02.04 / Київ. нац. лінгв. ун-т. Київ, 2002. 19 с.

17. Красных В. В. Единицы языка vs. единицы дискурса и лингвокультуры (к вопросу о статусе прецедентных феноменов и стереотипов). Русистика: сб. научных трудов. Киев: Киевский университет, 2007. Вып. 7. С. 37-42.

18. Кухаренко В. А. Интерпретация текста. Москва: Просвещение, 1988. 192 с.

19. Лингвистический энциклопедический словарь / Под ред. В. Н. Ярцевой; Ин-т языкознания АН СССР. Москва: Сов. энцикл., 1990. 682 с.

20. Мамонова Ю. В. Когнитивно-дискурсивные особенности лексики английской бытовой сказки : автореф. дис.... канд. филол. наук. Москва,2004. 21 с.

21. Мартинюк А. П. Концепт із позиції інтегративної теорії мови. Філологічні трактати. Суми, 2009. № 2. Том 1. С. 101-107.

22. Миронова Н. Н. Дискурс-анализ оценочной семантики. Москва: НВИ - ТЕЗАУРУС, 1997. 158 с.

Размещено на Allbest.ru