Lecture 8. Text and context. Intertextuality and vertical context.

An integral text is the main object of stylistic analysis. All the other stylistic levels – phonetic, morphemic, lexical, syntactical and optional level of word combinations and phraseological units are subordinate to the textual one. Literary and artistic text is a verbal message rendering through the channel of literature or folklore the subject–logical, aesthetic, figurative and estimative information combined in a complex artistic whole. Communicative and functional aspect is the main property of the text: it provides the transfer of information and its impact on the receiver. The text as a pragmatic whole exhibits the related but distinguishable properties of coherence (a matter of content; a network of conceptual relations which underlie the surface text and organize and create the text) and cohesion (the network of surface relations which link words and expressions in a text formally). Cohesion is the surface expression of coherent relations; it makes them explicit. The coherence of the text is a result of the interaction between the information presented in the text and the reader’s own experience. While coherence establishes continuity of the senses (supplemental) and justifies them (explanatory), implicature (or subtext) consists in extending and changing the semantic and/or psychological content of the message without its lengthening. Thus, contextual senses of the text are actualized twice: explicitly, through linear (chain) links (i.e. coherence) and implicitly, through distant relations of the units of the discourse (implicature). There are two types of implicature acc. to V. Kuharenko: implicature of the preceding and implicature proper. The former (or “beginning from the middle”) creates the impression of a previous experience that is common for the author and the reader. It lies in using synsemantic words (initial definite article, personal or demonstrative pronouns, adverbs like “even, now etc”). Implicature proper (or “simultaneous one”) intensifies the emotional and psychological impact of the message; changes or shifts the linear content of the work. Simultaneous implicature consists in a parallel actualization of two levels of content. It is created by means of distant realization of meanings, compositional contrast of semantically incompatible passages, shifts of logical and emotional accents in dialogues.

Acc to I Arnold, the inner integrity of the text is based on three types of relations of units, i.e. paradigmatic, syntagmatic and integrative relations. Paradigmatic relations are associative non-lineal relations connecting units of the same textual level. Syntagmatic relations of units of the same level are based on the linear character of the text, on the succession of these units. Main integrative relations combine units of different textual levels.

Integrity of the text also results from the combination of intratextual (the plane of expression) and extratextual (the plane of content) relations. Intratextual relations are closely connected with the architectonics of the text (its formal structure); extratextual ones – with the composition (the development of the plot). In particular, extratextual relations include the narrator; authorial narrator (in or outside the plot) and the narrator opposed to the author (in or outside the plot); individuality (the method of the author, her/his biography, world outlook etc) and conventionality (his/her place in the trend, tradition, epoch, national literature). V. Grigoriev differentiates additional levels of literary language (stylistics of the text), language of the literature (epoch or literary trend reflected in the work), and poetic language (idiolect of the author).

M. Bahtin introduces the notion of chronotope as a very important parameter for the integral analysis of the text. Chronotopic analysis is based on the opposition of the world described, subjective world and objective world. The chronotopic analysis comprises three levels: topographic chronotope (temporal or spatial parameters of the plot), psychological chronotope (subjective world of the characters) and metaphysical chronotope (the author’s conception and outlook).

The foundations of contextology have been laid out by prof. N. Amosova. The context is defined as the surrounding of a lingual unit with some properties of this unit being actualized. There are 2 types of contexts: extralinguistic or situational context and speech context. Situational context comprises all extralinguistic conditions of the act of communication; the same utterance may have different, even opposite senses in different situational contexts. 3 main types of situational contexts:

1. Single (occasional) situational context implies s that an utterance has its sense only in this very context (e.g. the single situation context of the fairy tale “Winnie Pooh” transforms the prototypical meaning of the phrase “the North Pole” into that of “the pole found under unusual circumstances”;

2. Typical situational context implies that an utterance is comprehensive only in a typical situation (e.g. “moderately fried, please” – the situation “waiter-customer”);

3. Social and historical context is the linking channel between the reader and the text. The change of the social and historical context leads to the misinterpretation of the artistic work.

Speech context is subdivided into linguistic context and stylistic one. Linguistic context is defined as the sum total of fixed conditions determining the context of a lexical unit. The context may be lexical (the hand of the clock, a piece for 4 hands, a farm hand to act with a heavy hand); syntactic (She makes him a good wife. – She make a good husband of him); lexical & syntactic, morphological & syntactic and mixed. Acc. to its size, context is subdivided into microcontext (one utterance), macrocontext (passage or dialogue) and thematic or megacontext (a chapter or the whole work).

Unlike linguistic context, stylistic one does not narrow but rather expands the meaning of a lingual unit. Acc. to M. Riffater, stylistic context is an extract interrupted by an unforeseen element that does not blend smoothly with a context. The stylistic device created is termed as the effect of the broken expectation. Thus, each stylistic context is based on 2 seemingly incompatible features: convergence, i.e. an passage accumulating stylistic devices with an integral stylistic function; and the effect of broken expectation when a linear logical succession of elements is violated by an unusual element with a small probability of prognostication. Stylistic microcontext (a sentence), macrocontext (a passage) and megacontext (the repetition of the key words in different speech situation of the whole text).

The term “intertextuality’ was first introduced into the French literary criticism by J. Kristeva in her elaboration of M. Bahtin’s dialogical principle. Acc. to M. Bahtin, each word is somebody else’s one being saturated with previous context/contexts; every prosaic work is polyphonic. Intertextuality (ambivalence) can be defined as utterances / texts as they are reflected in other utterances / texts. Imitation and parodies depend both on borrowings and transformations of previous forms what is termed as paratextuality. Intertextuality shades into intersubjectivity which is sometimes used as an alternative but essentially concerns the relation a text has with wider spheres of knowledge.

Theory of intertextuality is further developed by O. Ahmanova & I Giubbenet who have introduced the concept of vertical context. Horizontal context is the lingual surrounding of a unit of a text, i.e. coherent passage determining the meaning of its constituents (word & phrases). Vertical context is the aggregate of texts reflected in the passage; it is a historical philological context of a literary work & its parts. Vertical context should be discriminated from the background information, the social 7 cultural information of a certain nation. While encoding a vertical context, the author should take into account the background information of the intended reader (international/national, male/female, average/the best reader (intellectual), contemporary/future). Vertical context may be obliterated because of the temporal distance between the author and the reader; this phenomenon is defined as the noise, “extinguishing” or “devouring’ the information (the term by Yu. Lotman).

Vertical context may be classified acc. to the source: mythological, Biblical, classical etc, and acc. to the way of its semantization: association (a source text is ciphered, the reader perceiving outer verbal manifestation of the image), metaphorization (the transfer of signs from the source image to the new one), expanding or narrowing the meaning of intertextual units (in particular, world images). The type of the vertical context often characterizes not only an author’s idiolect, but a literary trend or the whole literary epoch.

The main categories of the vertical context are quotations & allusions. The quotation is a repetition of a phrase or statement from a book, speech or the like used by way of authority, illustration or basis for further speculation on the matter in hand. It is a direct reproduction of the actual utterance, though used to back up the ideas of a new text. The allusion is an implicit reference, by word or phrase, to a historical, literary, mythological, Biblical fact or a fact of everyday life made in the course of speaking or writing. Acc to their semantic structure, allusions vary substantially: paradoxes (splitting or extending the reference), affirmative allusions (based on the affinity or similarity of certain properties), controversial allusion (allusion as a parody, used with ironical or satirical effect to clash with the direct meaning of the expression alluded). The global vertical context is a coherent integral intertextual & cultural planes of the text.