Speech characteristics of a literary text personage at semantic level

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Speech characteristics of a literary text personage at semantic level

Diachuk N.V.,

PhD (Psychology), Associate Professor, Associate Professor at the English Language Department Zhytomyr Ivan Franko State University

Biliuk I.L.,

PhD (Philological Sciences), Assistant Professor at the English Language Department Zhytomyr Ivan Franko State University

Linguists are becoming deeply interested in a unique personality with their inner world, attitude to themselves and to the fate of the world of things likewise. Some scientists view the linguistic personality of the author and the literary personage as two separate aspects. The study of the phenomenon of the linguistic personality helps to understand the actual structure, the picture of the world, to highlight the national features presented in the linguistic behaviour of each personality. Linguistic personality is said to be a set of skills and properties of a person, which determines the way of their creation and understanding of speech events. The remark given by a personage reveals his character virtues, states on his education and upbringing peculiar moments, defines his social and ethnical backgrounds. The paramount factor in a personage picturing becomes a merely speech personage characteristic that gives a possibility to model and stimulate all his speech remarks in various communicative situations.

The article outlines the verbal-semantic level of the linguistic personality of Dorian Gray in the novel “The Picturet of Dorian Gray” written by Oscar Wilde. The level aims to study the usage of verbal categories such as words, grammatical, associative, semantic-syntactic structures, lexical and syntax patterns. When analyzing linguistic personality, it is necessary to determine and record vivid features in the language of literary characters. Proper names the author uses in the fiction have tight connection with certain associations concerning characters of the novel (Lord Henry). The language personality of Dorian Gray is characterized by the frequently used exclamations, the use of imperative forms, superlative adjectives and expressive adverbs, the usage of personal pronoun `I', the usage of modal `must'.

Key words: linguistic personality, literary personage, speech characteristics, semantic level, verbal categories.

МОВЛЕННЄВІ ХАРАКТЕРИСТИКИ ЛІТЕРАТУРНОГО ГЕРОЯ НА СЕМАНТИЧНОМУ РІВНІ

Деякі науковці розглядають автора і особистість персонажа як два окремі аспекти. Вивчення феномену мовної особистості в сукупності його рис допомагає зрозуміти власне структуру, картину світу, виділити національні риси, які представлені в мові кожної особистості. Мовна особистість - це сукупність умінь і властивостей людини, які визначають спосіб їх створення та розуміння мовленнєвих подій. В статті представлено аналіз одного із структурних елементів мовної особистості, а саме вербально-семантичний, що включає в себе дослідження таких вербальних категорій як слова, граматичні, асоціативні, семантико-синтаксичні структури, моделі буквосполучень та речень

Лексичний склад текстових фрагментів, що представляють прямі висловлювання героя, становить індивідуальний лексикон персонажа. Основною вимогою до ключового слова в тексті є обов'язкова розбіжність показника вживаності. При аналізі мовної особистості необхідно визначати та фіксувати яскраві особливості в мові літературних персонажів. Завдяки власним назвам автор створює певні асоціації з персонажами твору. Роман О. Уайльда «Портрет Доріана Грея» має філософсько-естетичний підтекст та підвищену художню умовність. Власні назви допомагають створити певні асоціації з образом героя. Крайність у висловлюваннях Доріана Грея проявляється як наслідок крайності та максималізму його характеру. Герой достатньо жорстоко драматизує ситуації та маніпулює іншими, використовуючи цілий ряд тактик та комунікативних стратегій. Герой вміє раціонально оцінювати реакції людей, а й так певну комунікативно-прагматичну тактику, завдяки якій коригує можливу реакцію співрозмовника. Мовна особистість Доріана Грея також характеризується частотністю вигуків, використанням імперативних форм, прикметників вищого ступеню порівняння та прислівників з надмірною експресивністю.

Ключові слова: мовна особистість, літературний герой, мовленнєві характеристики, семантичний рівень, мовні категорії.

Introduction

The peculiarities of speech and mental personage's activity realization have always been a key point for a hot discussion in translation and literature studies, text linguistics, semiotics and psycholinguistics. Studying personage's speech phenomena aims at reproducing various speech production and interpretation models, defining the speech specificities of socially, professionally and culturally different literary characters. The imaginary word created by a writer is often viewed by a reader as a complicated system of literary images that allows shaping an appropriate attitude towards a literary text character, his psychological validity and speech characteristics [5; 9]. The images of definite literary text characters that are said to be structural components of the system are studied as a body of characteristics: author's appearance description, character traits, his behavior etc.

The significant factor in a personage creating must become a merely speech personage characteristic that will give a possibility to model and stimulate all his speech remarks in various communicative situations. Personage's discourse is often viewed by psycholinguists as a model of a communicative personal behavior.

Personage's speech characteristics realization has no precise scheme affecting personage-reader relations. Though speech characteristics of a fiction personage takes on many forms, scholars agree that speech of a linguistic personality is viewed rather a psycholinguistic process. Thus the remark given by a personage reveals his character virtues, states on his education and upbringing peculiar moments, defines his social and ethnical backgrounds [4; 8].

Analysis of recent research and publications

Speech peculiarities of a fiction personage make him totally different from another character. Speech changes can lead to life changes of a character, show his emotional condition, and define psychological personality type. Hence personage's speech characteristics have become the means in his typing and invidualization processes. vocabulary literary character dorian gray

The theoretical basis of the study are the works of domestic and foreign scientists, L. Ginzburg, I. Sinitsa, L. Zasekina, O. Avramenko, V. von Humboldt, I.A. [6; 3; 1].

The purpose of the article is devoted to the study of the linguistic personality phenomenon at semantic level in fiction of Oscar Wilde (`The Picture of Dorian Gray').

The topicality of the article is caused by the fact that in recent years the subject of linguistic personality phenomenon of both domestic and foreign research is becoming one of the paramount tasks to study. The success of this concept is associated with the late XX century and its system-structural paradigm of speech on anthropocentric issues. Linguists are becoming deeply interested in a unique personality with their inner world, attitude to themselves and to the fate of the world of things as well.

Methods

The study of literary personage speech characteristics makes it reasonable to inquire individual discourse in all its paradigms, covering different communication situations. The use of psycholinguistic mechanisms of research that allows, by means of language, to understand the psychological features of the individual, is of great importance for a deeper and detailed realization of such a discourse. Thus the method of content analysis was applied.

The study

Linguistic personality is known to be a set of human skills and properties that determine the way they are created and the understanding of speech events and texts [2; 7]. They have their own target orientation and different degrees of structural and linguistic complexity, depth and accuracy of the real image.

Many scientists model a linguistic personality as something belonging to various professions, researchers, politicians, etc. based on their speech behavior mostly. But on the basis of literary evidence it is possible to reveal those elements that enable us to view a person in general. The text may contain sufficient facts to describe a literary personage in detail. In the literary text, the author, creating the image of the character of the work and describing how they behave with his environment, provides scholars with the essential linguistic data via which you can represent the social model of the personality according to the literary work.

One of the profound features to represent the linguistic personality of Dorian Gray at the verbal- semantic level is the frequently used personal pronoun "I". The grammatical meaning of the pronoun in this case is directly bound up with the egocentrism of the protagonist, who tends to fix his own reflection on any objects, phenomena and events. English grammar allows the repeated use of "I" within a single sentence. The most representative are the cases of multiple use of these pronouns within a single sentence or set of things where repetition could be avoided.

«I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain. My God, Harry, how I worship her!»;

«I know you are surprised at my talking to you like this. You have not realized how I have developed. I was a schoolboy when you knew me. I am a man now. I have new passions, new thoughts, new ideas. I am different, but you must not like me less. I am changed, but you must always be my friend. Of course, I am very fond of Harry. But I know that you are better than he is»

The constant usage of such words as "life" and "love" in Dorian Gray's speech is not accidental and is explained by the theme of the novel itself that is the theme of life and death, beauty and love - one of the key topics in the work. The same life issues are mostly discussed by the characters. As the plot develops, the context of using the word "life" changes. In the first chapters of the novel, the main personage is full of enthusiasm, love of life, "life" in his speech is accompanied by the meaning of mystery, the perspective of further knowledge what attracts and inspires Dorian: «You filled me with a wild desire to know everything about life».

Disappointment, misery, the tragic realization of what is really going on comes later, and at the same time the context and meaning of the word "life" changes immediately and radically : «How extraordinarily dramatic life is!»; «Life is a great disappointment».

Dorian Gray is a maximalist thus he perceives and treats love in an appropriate way. Love is a feeling that suddenly overwhelmed him. Since after harsh disappointment and tough break with Sybil, the verb "love" is found in the past tense meaning either "I'm interested" or "like something" So the nature of the verb loses its primary meaning: «How mad I was to love you»; «I love beautiful things that one can touch and handle»; «I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself do not interest me». Finally, in the last chapter we can even feel the regret expressed by the verb “love”: «I wish I could love».

The verbal-semantic level of linguistic personality study in the text under analysis is characterized by a good many imperative structures used instead of polite requests. The character uses the imperative mood in communication not only with people of lower rank, but also with representatives of the higher world, and even with close ones. Thus appeals to Basil Hallward often take the form of an order or prohibition: «Ask him to stay»; «Do not leave me, Basil, and do not quarrel with me»; «Do not speak!»; «Come: it is your own handiwork. <...> Come, I tell you »; «Come upstairs, Basil»; «Shut the door behind you».

Dorian's speech behavior towards Lord Henry is a bit softer, since he uses polite imperative forms: «Oh, please do not, Lord Henry»; «Let me think. Or, rather, let me try not to think »; «In that case, let our friendship be a caprice»; «Let me come with you»; «Let us go down to the theatre». Still in the opposition of two forms (polite vs impolite), imperatives and prohibitions prevail: «Stop! Stop!»; «You mock at it for that. Ah! do not mock » «Go away, Harry»; «Do not sneer at it, Harry, any more - at least not before me»; «Do not say it. Do not ever say things of that kind to me again »; «Be quick. Tell me everything at once »; «Do not mind me, Harry»; «Do not laugh like that»; «Don't talk about horrid subjects». The current usage of imperative forms in Dorian Gray's speech is mostly explained by the concept of his image. The boy is very selfish and is constantly trying to manipulate others, yet being a toy in the hands of Lord Henry.

The imperative forms are clearly seen via the usage of modals. "must" is considered to sound more categorical than "should"; if "should" is rather a recommendation to follow or not, "must" leaves no choice for a person to take immediate actions or obey. Dorian Gray opts for the verb "must", regardless of who he is talking to. The main character sometimes uses the word "must" where it is completely inappropriate: «You must admit, Harry, that women give to men the very gold of their lives»; «You must not tell me about things»; «But, as I was saying, you must not think I have not suffered»; «I am different, but you must not like me less»; «You must do me a drawing of Sibyl, Basil»; «No, Basil, you must tell me»; «You must wake me at nine tomorrow»; «You, Alan, you must change him».

Another essential means that enables to focus on the semantic level of language personality in the fiction is vast existence of intensifying words such as superlative adjectives used to express feelings and emotion of the main character.

«She was the loveliest thing I had ever seen in my life»; «Oh, Basil is the best of fellows»; «It is the divinest thing in us»; «She lived her finest tragedy»; «It looked the loveliest of little live things»; «A hideous Jew, in the most amazing waistcoat I ever beheld in my life, was standing at the entrance, smoking a vile cigar»; «He was played by the low-comedian, who had introduced gags of his own and was on most friendly terms with the pit»; «It is rather horrid of me, as he has sent me my portrait in the most wonderful frame, specially designed by himself».

The vivid usage of expressive adverbs «abso- lutely», «entirely», «perfectly», «awfully», «terribly» і «horribly» used to exaggerate the significance of this or that event in the literary text gives a golden opportunity to talk about the verbal-semantic level likewise: «From her little head to her little feet, she is absolutely and entirely divine»; «They are perfectly charming»; «I am awfully sorry that I have made you waste an evening, Harry»; «It was terribly pathetic» «Five minutes past two? How horribly late!».

The verb “want” that emerges in the novel extremely often speaks for Dorian's ambitions. In the English language it is more common to use the phrase "would like" to sound more polite mentioning their wishes and desires. Yet Dorian Gray has chosen to express his ambitions directly not taking into account someone else's interests: "I don't want it put straight, Leaf. I only want the key»; «I simply want to see the place--that is all»; «I only want a picture carried to the top of the house for me» ; «I don't want to have it hung up»; «What I want you to do is merely what you have often done before»; «I don't want any white ones».

Proper nouns are beneficial items to study the phenomenon of a linguistic personality. In the text they serve as ways to create specific associative ties with the main personage. For instance, Lord Harry is often called Harry. Harry is synonymous with trouble, and Old Harry is a name given to the Devil. The relationship between Dorian and Lord Henry is very similar to that between Faustus and Mephistopheles.

Thus, Oscar Wilde implemented his own author's aesthetic project in his novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray". Dorian Gray is a personage who unables to change himself or the circumstances around him. The guy is very selfish and constantly tries to manipulate others that consequently leads to a tragic end.

Results

Analyzing the linguistic personality of the main character of Oscar Wilde's philosophical novel "Portrait of Dorian Gray", one can note that the author uses a great variety of tools that enables the reader to learn about the semantic level representation of linguistic personality. According to the plot, Dorian Gray changes and degrades, which is reflected via his language behavior.

One of the characteristic features of the linguistic personality of the character at the verbal-semantic level is the high frequency of use of the personal pronoun "I", which is directly related to the egocentrism and arrogance of the protagonist, who tends to boast with his own reflection on any objects, phenomena and events. Dorian Gray often uses words such as "life" and "love". As the plot develops, the context of using the word "life" changes. The verbal-semantic level of Dorian Gray's linguistic personality is characterized by frequent use of imperatives instead of polite requests. The proof of arrogance is viewed via the frequent use of the verb "want".

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