METHODS AND WAYS OF STYLISTIC ANALYSIS.
Interpretation of a belles-lettres work comprises the following three stages: 1.
Preparatory stage. 2. Main stage. 3. Conclusive stage.
The preparatory stage requires the readers’ acquaintance with the author’s
literary career and the cultural context. The knowledge of the historical situation and
the concrete circumstance’ of the creation of the literary text will help the reader to
see the author’s pragmatic task, i.e., the purpose of his book. ’The author’s biography,
an outline of his previous works, the information about his world’ outlook, his social
sympathies, his aesthetic credo etc. will prepare the reader for understanding
ambiguous and obscure places in the text and for comprehending the book’s message.
The main stage deals with the belles-lettres text itself and comprises two
steps; Step A and Step B.
Step A presupposes reading the imaginative production for the sake of its
content-factual information, i.e., the plot of the novel or story and the roles of its main
personages. Simultaneously the reader acquaints himself with the vertical context, i.e.
the commentary to the text, explaining quotations from world classics, allusions and
elucidating different proper and geographic names and historic facts. If the book is not
supplied with a commentary, the reader can consult an encyclopedia or other
reference-books. Since this step deals with the text taken in its wholeness it is also
convenient now to analyze its structure (with two kinds of segmentation: contest —
variative and volume-pragmatic traditional arrangement of text components), its
composition (with all elements of the plot), its completeness and to a certain extent its
integration.
Step B deals with the linguoustylistic analysis of the text, comprising the
following aspects: a) systematization of key-words and thematic words with
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subsequent inferences from their usage; b) decoding all lexical syntactic and phonetic
stylistic devices and other cases of foregrounding; c) selection of poetic details and
commenting on their language capacity.
The conclusive stage is supposed to provide a final formulation of the Content-
Conceptual Information based on the analyses of the modality of the text, its
implicitness, the role of the title and its pragmatics it will be revealed in the process of
discussion among the recipients of the book (the students guided by their teacher).
The scheme of interpretation given below can help to organize the process of
interpretation at the seminars with students. It is recommended that all students should
be thoroughly acquainted with the scheme. For this purpose it is advisable to read
and translate all items of the scheme in the auditorium at the introductory lesson under
the teacher’s guidance.
For discussion at the lesson the teacher can use those items from the scheme
which are more significant for the chosen literary text.
SCHEME OF INTERPRETATION
1. Say a few words about the author and the cultural context.
2. Give the factual information of the text, that is, briefly relate the plot of the
story.
3. Speak on the pragmatic characteristics of the main personages. Extract
additional implicit information from the individual speech habits of the characters
concerning their educational qualifications, social status, age, origin (foreign or
native), emotional state at the moment of speech and kind of general disposition (gay,
sad, kind, cruel, restrained uncontrollable, self-confident, timid etc.), their property
status, geographic locality, etc.
4. Characterize the composition of the story and its architectonics (proportional
relations of the parts of the text). Point out in what way the composition deviates from
the traditional model- exposition, prologue; beginning of the plot (initial collision)
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development of the plot; climax; denouement; end; epilogue and what advantages
result from it.
5. Comment on the category of time and locale of action. It the events in the
story are related not in their chronological order and the locale is changed- in the text,
what retrospective analysis will you make to find the consistency of episodes, that is
to trace the realization of the category of time and space in the text?
6. Comment on volume-pragmatic and context – varieties segmentation of the
text (the shape of prose: narration, description, commentary, dialogue, non-personal
(represented) speech, dialogue, stream of consciousness, monologue.).
7. Comment on the means of cohesion between separate syntactical wholes. Is
it established through traditional lexical and grammatical signals or with the help of
associations and logical conclusions?
8. Comment on the categories of wholeness in the text. What facts and missing
links is it necessary for the reader to conjecture in retrospective analysis in order to
establish the sequence of events and the motives of actions, which will secure the
continuity of the text?
How should the reader accentuate different moments in the text in order to
establish their mutual interrelation and synthesize all separate elements of the literary
work into one -united integrated text?
9. Characterize the category of modality in the text- concentrating on the
addressee’s way of evaluation: Is the story told in the name of the author, or one of
the personages, or an on-looker, eyewitness? Is the narrator’s attitude explicit or
hidden? How does the choice of words reveal the author’s attitude? Is his attitude
passionate or neutral? Docs he avoid straight - Forward evaluations and/characterize
his personages only through the depiction of their actions or does he characterize
them directly?
10. Comment on the category of the implicitness. Find the main implicates of
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the text: 1) an implicit title; 2) implication of precedence; 3) implicit details. Say
which of them play an important role in revealing conceptual information of the text.
11. Reveal the conceptual information of the text (the idea of the story and
substantiate it by picking out from the text:
a) poetic details: depicting details, characterological details authenticity details,
implication details-and extract their sub current information; b) stylistic devices and
comment on their functions in revealing the author’s message and supplementing
superliner information, c) draw conclusions from the linguistic approach to the text.
Comment on the degree of richness of the author’s vocabulary: the usage of
borrowings, foreign words, colloquialisms, vulgarisms, scientific words, neologisms.
Is the author experimenting with the language? What unusual word combinations and
nonce words has he coined?
Find thematic and key words. Reveal the role of stylistically marked, words and
words charged with emotive meaning. Trace cases of repetition of the same word.
Does frequent repetition of a word make it symbolic?
d) comment on the meaning of the title and connect it with the conceptual
information.
The suggested scheme includes nearly all possible characteristics relevant for
text interpretation. It must be noted that each concrete text requires specific approach
and some items may prove optional in its analysis.
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