Text Properties

Молчанова Г.Г. Английский как не родной: тест, стиль, культура, коммунакация.Учебное пособие. – М.: ОЛМА Медиа Групп, 2007. – 384 с.

Key Theme:

3.7. The Main Text Properties

3.7.1. Informativity of a Text

Informativity of a text is its ability to convey the information, i. e. certain meaningful contents. The value of the received information is a problem of discussion. It is known that information, being repeated or redundant, loses its value and as a result ceases to be informative. But it is also known that some texts have unchangeable value. Being the permanent source of the new aesthetic or cognitive, scientific emotions, they always remain in a treasury of human culture.
According to I. R. Galperin (Гальперин, 1981), we can distinguish the following types of information in a literary text: a) content — factual (explicit) (reporting about facts, events or processes taking place in the real or imaginary surrounding world); b) content — conceptual, c) content — subtextual (implicit).

3.7.2. Implicitness of a Text

Language has two forms of expressing thoughts: explicit and implicit. The explicit is a superficial, evident line of expressing a thought, while the implicit is a concealed, hidden line which has to be inferred in the process of reading and understanding of the text. The implicit level has its own structural unit — an implicate. The most wide-spread types of implicates one can distinguish the following:
1. An Implicit Title. It expresses in a concentrated form the message or theme of a literary text and requires for its realization the macrocontext of the whole work.
2. An Implicit Detail. It suggests additional deep-lying meaning and create implicit subtext information, which is sometimes the most important factor of revealing the m e s a g e of the author. Implicit details may be further classed into:
a) Depicting details, used for creation the visual image of nature or appearance of a character.
b) Characterological details, which reveal the personage's psychological qualities, individual traits and habits, underlining the most essential features. E.g. Fabian always left very big tips for waiters. Or: It pleased her to be seen in the dress circle even with Andrew.

Problem Question:

What implicit details and stylistic devices are used in the following passage? What additional information about the act of communication and its participants is conveyed by them?

She introduced me to Colonel Aspinwall, an elderly man with an English accent, an English suit, and a young English wife who looked me over and found me socially undesirable. To Dr. Jan Innes, a cigar-chomping thick-jowled man, whose surgical eyes seemed to be examining me for symptoms. To Mrs. Innes, who was pale and tense and fluttering like a patient. To Jeremy Rader, the artist tall and hairy and jovial in the last late flush of his youth. To Molly Rader, statuesque brunnette of about 39, who was the most beautiful thing I'd seen in weeks...
And to Arthur Planter, an art collector so well-known that I had heard of him.

MacDonald, 1979

3.7.3. Composition of a Text

The literary text is a complex whole, the elements of it are arranged according to a definite system and in special succession. This kind of complex organization of a text, its construction is called composition. Text composition is stipulated by its contents, it reflects the complexity of life phenomena depicted in a text.
Composition of a literary text depends on its plot. Plot is a scheme of connected events comprising the main stages in the development of conflicts and revealing principle traits of people through their actions.
The plot as any relatively completed moment of life process has a beginning, development and ending. The point of departure for a plot organization is an exposition (= setting) — an outline of the environment, circumstances and conditions of the described events.
The author may give no exposition at the beginning but hold it up until the initial conflict takes place (retarded exposition); he can place it at the end (reverse exposition); all that depends on the way he sees a life and wants it to be depicted in a story.
The next important component that forms the framework of the plot is initial collision. It represents an event that starts action and causes subsequent development of events.
The initial collision ensures the transition to the next stage — development of actions. The development of events leads finally to the moment of greatest tension, to the decisive clash of interests, to the topmost point — to the culmination of the text.
As a moment of decisive importance it may contain the most intensifying SD — climax. Here we come across all kinds of foregrounding and most of all convergence of stylistic devices, supplying the most important facts for deriving conceptual implicit information.
As a rule the culmination is followed by a denouement, an outcome, i. e. the situation that is taking place as a result of the development of entire preceding action.
A literary work containing all traditional elements of classical composition — exposition, initial collision, development, culmination, denouement and ending, is considered to have a closed plot structure. But in modern prose all basic elements of plot construction counted above can be given in most various forms and, in some cases, they can even be omitted.
Modern short stories often begin immediately with an initial collision and contain no exposition.
A story or novel in which a composition lacks one or more elements of traditional structure, which does not contain all the above mentioned components understood in their conventional sense is said to have an open plot structure.
Thus the composition of a text is not a formal factor. It is undoubtedly meaningful, being closely connected with the character of information in the text.

3.7.4. Title of a Text

The title is of great importance for revealing the conceptual information of a text. Most often it expresses the message, the main idea or concept of the text either in explicit or in implicit form. It represents the quintessence of the contextual conceptual text information. At first it is understood in its direct, denotative meaning: e. g. «For Whom the Bell Tolls», but later on the words chosen by the writer for a title acquire some additional, connotative shades of meaning, extending their semantic structure. The title can be compared to a wound up spiral revealing its potentialities in the process of unwinding. (I. R. Galperin, 1980). I. V. Arnold considers a title to be one of the «strong positions» of a text.
Very often the meaning of a title is veiled by a metaphor or metonymy creating an image and thus helping the reader to penetrate deeper into the content of the story due to the certain emotional predisposition.
Titles can be classified according to the specific type of information conveyed in a text into explicit and implicit ones according to their function:
1. A title-symbol – Қос аққу, Өткір қылыш.
2. A title-narration – Москва слезам не верит. Қазақ ұлтына жасалған қастандық.
3. A title-report – 5 killed, 5 more injured. Жаңаөзенде қанды оқиға орын алды.
4. A title-allusion – Pie in the Sky
5. A title-thesis – Война и мир

3.7.5. Background Knowledge and Vertical Context

To be able to understand the author's knowledge, the reader should possess a considerable amount of background knowledge. It is based on something which is not in the text but which is nevertheless well familiar to the reader. This historical and philological information which the text implies and conveys to the reader through its signs has been given the name of vertical context. In the text a reader comes across various signs or elements of vertical context: literary allusions and quotations, all kinds of realia and a great variety of connotations, which convey certain information of philological, social, historical, economic, geographical or ideological character. This information, if carefully considered, is supposed to introduce the reader to a definite «picture of the world» or a viewpoint, a certain section of reality in all the diversity of its manifestations.

Problem Question: Comment on the main functions and the role of background knowledge in the process of text interpretation. Indicate the signs of vertical context and decode their meaning:

How did she get in the middle like this? And how does she get out?
As it does not offer any solace to dramatize her compromises as a Faustian bargain, so it is not helpful to think of her in-the-middleness as a «Kunderian inner exile».
Roth : 273

3.7.6. Foregrounding

Foregrounding is one of the main notions of stylistics. The Prague School (1926) represented a trend of structural functional linguistics and developed a number of ideas and notions that made a valuable contribution into modern linguistic theory: phonology, theory of oppositions, etc. They introduced into linguistics the functional approach to the language. Their central thesis postulated that language is not a rigorous petrified structure but a dynamic functional system, a system of expressive means that serve a definite purpose in communication. The notion of foregrounding was formulated for the study of poetic language, e. i. the language of literature. When a word atomized by the long use in speech through the context developments obtains some new additional features, the act resembles a background phenomenon moving into the front line — foregrounding. In literary texts such items become stylistically marked features that build up its stylistic function.

For example: concert, концерт, жиналыс, қызыл

Problem Question:
■

From the following poem by Thomas Good you will get a better idea of the foregrounding functions of anaphora. Analyze the poem; explain how anaphora creates the background for the non-repeated unit which, through its novelty, becomes foregrounded. No sun — no moon! No morn — no noon! No dawn — no dusk — no proper time of day —
No sky — no earthly view —
No distance looking blue —
No road — no street — no «t'other side of the way» —
No end to any Row —
No indications where the Crescent go —
No top to any steeple —
No recognition of familiar people —
No warmth — no cheerfulness, no healthful ease, No comfortable feel in any member — No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees, No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds — November!

Th. Good

3.7.7. Defeated Expectancy Principle

Defeated expectancy is a principle considered by some linguists (Jacobson, Riffaterre) as the basic principle of a stylistic function. Its use is not limited to some definite level or type of devices. The essence of the notion is connected with the process of decoding by the reader of the literary text.
The linear organization of the text mentally prepares the reader for the consequential and logical development of ideas and unfolding of the events. The normal arrangement of the text both in form and content is based on its predictability which means that the appearance of any element in the text is prepared by the preceding arrangement and choice of elements, e. g.: the subject of the sentence will normally be followed by the predicate, you can supply parts of certain set phrases or collocation after you see the first element, etc.
Without predictability there would be no coherence and no decoding. At the same time stylistically distinctive features are often based on the deviation from the norm and predictability. An appearance of an unpredictable element may upset the process of decoding. Even though not completely unpredictable a stylistic device is still a low expectancy element and it is sure to catch the reader's eye. The decoding process meets an obstacle which is given the full force of the reader's attention. Such concentration on this specific feature enables the author to effect his purpose.
Defeated expectancy is particularly effective when the preceding narration has a high degree of orderly organized elements that create a maximum degree of predictability and logical arrangement of the contextual linguistic material.

Znamenskaja : 169

Problem Question:

Paradox is a fine example of defeated expectancy. Analyze the following examples and indicate how paradox works in such highly predictable cases as aphorisms, deformation of proverbs and phraseology:
The best way to get rid of the temptation is to yield to it. Wilde
A friend in need is a friend to be avoided.
In business saving penny often means losing the pounds.
Business that always runs smooth is running downhill.
Don't marry for money, it's far cheaper to borrow it.
Thirty is a nice age for a woman, especially if she is forty.
Never put till tomorrow the smile you can give today.

3.7.8. Types of Connotation

There are 2 types of connotation: inherent and adherent. Inherent connotation is a language phenomenon. It is the connotational aspect of lexical meaning, the part of lexical meaning which reflects the attitude of the speaker towards what he speaks about. Emotive charge: the word notorious [nqu'tLrIqs] denotes «a well-known and widely talked of» thing which implies that this general knowledge is ill-fame, which is tantamount to the expression of condemnation. Thus the word «notorious» does not only convey the information, but it also means that it is due to some bad or improper qualities.
Emotive charge is usually combined with evaluation and may be positive or negative. «D o g» — 'despicable person (COD), «idol» — person or thing that is the object of excessive devotion, false god (COD), «to dote on» — to be excessively fond of (COD) — are characterized by the negative emotive charge. Words like famous, economical (not mean!), saving, avoiding waste (COD), auntie are characterized by the positive emotional charge. E. g.: «I am firm, you are stubborn, he is pig-headed».
Expressiveness is a creation of an i m a g e: e. g.: to wade — to walk with an effort through mud, water or anything that makes progress difficult (COD).
Inherent connotation is a systemic language phenomenon rather than a speech characteristic, it is stable and repeatedly reproduced and not restricted to one or two occasional contexts.
The second type of connotation is adherent connotation which is the phenomenon of a speech, not of a language. «Any word, — writes S. Ullmann, — even the most ordinary and prosaic, may, in certain contexts, be surrounded by an emotive aura. A concrete noun like wall will be used in countless situations in a perfectly neutral and matter-of-fact way; yet it is capable of acquiring overtones... Walls may become a symbol of imprisonment and claustrophobia, physical as well as moral (Byron, Shakespeare). Individual emotive associations may be different which does not make a word acquire emotive charge accepted by all the speakers of the given language community. The majority of figuratively used names of animals are characterized either by a positive or by a negative emotive charge: cat — a spiteful woman, snake — a treacherous person, etc.»
It should be pointed out that in the majority of cases the constituents of connotation are closely linked together and can be discussed separately only for the sake of analysis. E. g.: ass — has emotive charge, negative evaluation and bright expressiveness of the underlying image. Thus, the connotation forms are intricately interwoven whole rather than easily coming apart layers in the semantics of the word.
Hence, it is the function of a esthetic impact that is brought into prominence when dealing with fiction.
However expressive scientific texts may be, their basic function remains that of conveying information, stating facts, expressing critical opinions, etc. When, on the contrary, elements of informative writing occur in a literary work they undergo a certain transformation and are turned into a powerful artistic device instead of merely passing on straightforward information. Thus, we may observe the interaction of the 2 functions both in fiction and intellective communication.

Problem Questions:

What is connotation? What types of connotation do you know? What types of additional information about the act of communication and its participants is conveyed by connotation?

Check yourself:
Now, after you have learned the main points of communicative stylistics, its tropes and figures of speech, try and analyze their convergence which strengthens the implicit information and — still more important — creates the additional connotative meaning of a message.

IF...

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowances for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, not talk too wise.
If you can dream — and not make dreams your master,
If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat these two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: «Hold on!»
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings — nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance ran —
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And — which is more — you'll be a Man, my son! Kipling