Linguostylistic means of the category of coherence implementation in Stephen King’s story "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band"

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Linguostylistic means of the category of coherence implementation in Stephen King's story “You Know They Got a Hell of a Band”

Borysova T.S.

Kherson State University

This article continues a series ofpublications of the author dedicated to the analysis of the cohesion implementation in Stephen King 's fiction, which resulted in the definition of a number offeatures specific to the author 's writing techniques. The following article is devoted to the issue of the coherence as a textforming category in modern linguistics and linguostylistic means of its realization on the material of the short story “You Know They Got a Hell of a Band”. The article presents a brief overview of the basic studies and different theoretical views in this sphere in modern domestic and foreign linguistics. Cohesion is defined as the lexical, grammatical and semantic form of communication between separate parts of the text, which determine the transition from one specificc tonality of the text to another. The text itself is considered to be the form of a coherent discourse, which, due to the interaction of speech subjects, is filled with context. Different types of linguistic units that are used to create explicit connectivity in the literary discourse are identified and their uniting functions are analyzed in the course of our work. Specifically, the investigation deals with the functions of such linguostylistic devices as personification, metaphor, epithet, simile and onomastic units that dominate in the text under analysis and take a prominent part in realization of coherency. Particular attention is paid to allusive textual components, which carry factual, conceptual and subtextual information, as well as introduce a significant layer of cultural data into the artistic space. The investigation shows that allusive onyms have wide functional capabilities due to their various modal characteristics, associative links correlated with the implementation of a particular image, with the connotations laid down by the author. The fact that proper names play an important role in the author's modeling of the coherent artistic world in the mind ofthe reader and the significance of the allusion as a unit with rich linguacultural semantics determine the relevance of this research.

Key words: category of coherence, cohesion, implicitness, allusion, onym, ergonym.

Лінгвостилістичні засоби реалізації категорії зв'язності в оповіді Стівена Кінга «Рок-н- рол ніколи не помре»

Борисова Т.С.

Стаття продовжує серію публікацій автора, метою яких є аналіз реалізації категорії зв'язності в художній літературі на матеріалі творів Стівена Кінга. У процесі дослідження визначено ряд особливостей, характерних для техніки письма автора. Запропоновану розвідку присвячено питанню когерентності як текстоутворювальної категорії в сучасній лінгвістиці загалом та лінгвостилістичним засобам її реалізації на матеріалі тексту оповідання «Рок-н-рол ніколи не помре», також відомого під назвою «Рок-н-рольні небеса» («You Know They Got a Hell of a Band»), зокрема.

У статті представлено короткий огляд основних досліджень та різних теоретичних поглядів у цій сфері в сучасній вітчизняній та зарубіжній лінгвістиці. Когезія постає як лексичний, граматичний та смисловий зв'язок між окремими частинами тексту. Текст вважається формою зв'язного дискурсу, який, завдяки взаємодії мовленнєвих елементів, наповнюється контекстом; таким чином, суть тексту полягає в смисловій фіксації поданої письменником інформації. Виявлено різні типи мовних одиниць, використаних для створення експліцитного зв 'язку в літературному дискурсі, та установлено їхній когерентний потенціал. Зокрема, у дослідженні проаналізовано функції таких лінгвостилістичних засобів, як персоніфікація, метафора, епітет, порівняння та ономастичні одиниці, які домінують в аналізованому тексті та займають чільне місце в реалізації категорії зв 'язності. Особливу увагу приділено алюзивним текстовим компонентам, які несуть фактичну, концептуальну та підтекстову інформацію, а також додають у художній простір значний шар культурних даних. Дослідження показує, що алюзійні оніми мають широкі функціональні можливості завдяки їх різноманітним модальним характеристикам, асоціативним зв'язкам, співвіднесеним із реалізацією певного образу, з конотаціями, закладеними письменником.

Актуальність дослідження зумовлено значимістю алюзії як одиниці з багатою лінгвокультурною семантикою та важливою роллю, яку власні імена відіграють в авторському моделюванні цілісного художнього світу у свідомості читача.

Ключові слова: категорія зв'язності, когезія, алюзія, онім, ергонім, імпліцитність.

Defining the problem and argumentation of the topicality of its consideration

The study of the peculiarities of the category of coherence implementation is an important aspect that has been actively developing in the last decades in such field of linguistics as textology.

A specific feature of the theory of the text is the approach to the text as a structural unity (the hierarchy of interrelated elements), while its constituent units, having the binary nature of a word sign, which has the meaning and the formal embodiment, may coincide in amount with the text itself or associate with such units as a paragraph or a phrase.

There is a certain system of implementation of the category of coherence, which reflects the basic characteristics of the text as a multidimensional unit, simultaneously correlated with the structure and with the syntagmatic indicators of the language. The study of ways to implement the category of coherence in the literary text is necessary both in theoretical terms (as one of the stages of complex interpretation of the text), and in the pragmatic (the study of the linguistic nature of the text) [10, 15].

The topicality of this article is determined by the fact that on the material of the literary text we investigate the problems of identifying the linguistic nature of the text in general, the relation of the category of coherence and the category of integrity, the relationship of implicit and explicit means of connectivity, which leads to the general problem of meaning in linguistics.

The goal of our investigation is to study the issue of coherence as the text category in modern linguistics and analyze linguostylistic means of its implementation on the material of the story by Stephen King “You Know They Got a Hell of a Band”.

coherence king linguistic stylistic

Recent research and publications

In the process of investigating coherence as a linguistic category of the text, many authors agree that in contrast to integrity it is a purely informative property of the text (N. S. Valgina, V. O. Lukin, A. I. Novikov and others [3; 5; 6]). Traditionally coherence is considered as property of the text as a whole while cohesion - as a kind of connection between the elements of the text. M. Halliday defines cohesion as such a ratio of elements in the text, when one element of meaning presupposes another element, and the interpretation of the second depends on the interpretation of the first [12, 27]. In other words, the coherence of the text is the result of the interaction of logical-semantic, syntactic and stylistic types of cohesion, and the basis of coherence is the logical-semantic cohesion of sentences [7, 210]. Since the text itself is a multi-dimensional phenomenon, an association consisting of linguistic units of different levels, the category of coherence functions at different levels of the text, combining the elements of the text (and not only the linguistic signs) into a single whole. The basic text-forming function of this category is the semantic correlation of the components of the text. Coherence has two main methods of implementation in fiction: explicit and implicit. The dominant type of cohesion within a literary text is the implicit connectivity based on the unexpressed meanings arising in syntagmatic relations and expressiveness (components of the general knowledge of the author and the reader, that is, information that is known to the participants of the communication). The explicit one is traditionally explored as a brace of utterances in the text [10, 15].

Various types of cohesion are thoroughly explored in textology researches (L. G. Babenko, K. A. Filippov, N. V. Shevchenko and others [1; 8; 9]). As we have mentioned in the previous work [10, 15-16], traditionally they distinguish phonetic means of cohesion (the repetition of specific sounds, assonance and alliteration). Lexical means of implementing the category of cohesion are more significant in the semantic and functional aspects, as it is at the lexical level of the text that the main semantic load lies in the implementation of the idea of the work. This structural duality of the word allows it to act in various relations with other identical, similar, correlated or opposed units. Lexical means of cohesion usually include various types of repetition.

Explicit grammatical means of connectivity include the prevailing of certain parts of speech in the text fragment; aspectual-temporal and modal correlation statements in the fragment of the text; syntactic parallel structures etc. [10, 16]. Another important means providing the coherence of the text is the use of onyms, especially allusive ones. They represent not only denotative coreference, but also the significant cohesion of the units of the nomination. According to T. Larina, “A literary text is a special sphere of functioning of proper names, and the structuring of its onomastic space provides unique opportunities for studying their functions, connections and relationships that form an artistic world in the reader's cognitive space, the integrity of which is represented in the coherence of a literary text” [4, 115].

The outline of the main research material

The story under analysis - “You Know They Got a Hell of a Band” is a short story which was first published in the 1992 anthology “Shock Rock”, and later included in Stephen King's own 1993 collection “Nightmares and Dreamscapes”. The plot depicts a married couple (Mary and Clark Willingham) experiencing a terrible adventure. Having lost their way somewhere in Boulder Creek Wilderness Area, Oregon, they appear in a small town with a name that is magic for any rock music admirer - Rock and Roll Heaven. From the very first line, the story is full of allusive elements that penetrate the narration. The title of the work, and the name of the town both come from the chorus of Rock and Roll Heaven, a song first recorded by Climax in 1973 and was a US Top 10 hit by The Righteous Brothers.

The impression of coziness and neatness in the town description in the text is maintained not only with a combination of metaphor and simile (It was a perfect jewel of a town nestled in a small, shallow valley like a dimple (3)), but also with the name of Norman Rockwell (whose success stemmed to a large degree from his careful appreciation for everyday American scenes, the warmth of small-town life in particular. Often what he depicted was treated with a certain simple charm and sense of humor [13]), and ergonyms Currier & Ives, The Saturday Evening Post, American Mercury, strongly associated with patriarchal America of the 19^th and the 1^st half of the 20^th century:

Its resemblance to the paintings of Norman Rockwell and the small-town illustrations of Currier & Ives was, to Mary, at least, inescapable (3).

The homes all looked impossibly neat and cozy, the sorts of domiciles you saw in the house-beautiful ads of pre-World War II magazines like The Saturday Evening Post and American Mercury (3).

Unfortunately, the place which looked idyllic at first, turned out to be “a Hell on Earth” full of dead rock- and-roll stars' ghosts, “where Janis Joplin serves up the best cherry pie in town, Elvis is still king, and there's a concert every night. But the price of admission is your soul” [14]. Thus, rock music is not just used as the basic element of the setting (e.g., for the key spots of the town the author has chosen very specific ergonyms like: The Rock-a-Boogie Restaurant (5), The Rock Em & Sock Em Billiards Emporium (9), the Rock and Roll Grammar School (9), the Be-Bop Beauty Bar (11), but embodies the danger, horrific threat as well. It unites the plot, permeates each mentioning of musicians' and bands' names, creating the atmosphere of inexplicable horror.

The use of onyms in a literary text is a special unique way of creating connectivity (defined by T. Larina as onymic connectivity [4]), due not only to the recurrence of elements of the onym text paradigm, forming a chain of nominations, which are a special textual bond that forms a connective row, but also their complex semantic structure, which includes a specific connotative component.

We meet the first rock music onyms on the first page, when the author writes about the musical preferences of the main characters: Clark was into people like Wilson Pickett, Al Green and Pop Staples. Mary's taste lay in entirely different directions... her current favorite - Lou Reed's New York (1). It is known that Wilson Pickett, Al Green and Pop Staples are famous American gospel, soul and R&B musicians, while Lou Reed is the representative of underground and alternative rock music.

The atmosphere created in the story has nothing in common with stereotype vivacious recklessness of rock-and-roll. Lou Reed's songs which Mary was listening in the car (New York, The last great American whale) are gloomy and serious, full of social satire and create the effect of a bad omen, serve as a dreary foreboding. For example, song “Busload of Faith” with the lyrics “you can depend on the worst always happening” accompanies Mary's bad dream in which a jukebox transforms into a corrupted body (The coinslot looked like flesh... it was filled up with blood and shadowy floating things that looked suspiciously like human organs (2)). This nightmare prepares the reader for further dreary events, creating suspense.

The premonition that something terrible is to happen is intensified with the help of other stylistic devices (epithets, simile and personification), describing events on the main characters' way and creating the image of the evil absurd world, where they have appeared:

(The car)... threw herself up and out like a clipper ship corkscrewing through a stormwave (2);

... the brooding trees, which seemed to belly right up to the road like starving guests at a banquet (2);

The tape belched out, followed by an ugly brown afterbirth - coils of shiny tape (1);

The small road which Clark tragically chose is also described as promising no good: State Road 42 was only a squiggle of black thread (1).

Nevertheless, the central part in creating the absurd horrible situation in which the characters of the story have appeared is played by onyms and allusion to rock-and-roll music personalities and events (overall, 62 musicians and bands are named). For example, their adventure on the road Mary bitter-ironically named Magical Mystery Tour segment (4) after the name of the Beatles album. The inscription on the bus that blocked the road for the main characters when they attempted to escape is the direct allusion to The Who song (she read, with a fatalistic lack of surprise, the words floating up the painted side like overfilled dirigibles: THE MAGIC BUS (9)). The phrase on the guitar-shaped road exit sign YOU ARE NOW LEA VING ROCK AND ROLL HEA VEN GOODNIGHT SWEETHEART GOODNIGHT (9) is the inkling of a pop song Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight by Calvin Carter and James “Pookie” Hudson which was a hit during the mid-1950s. The menu in the local restaurant contains allusive rock-n-roll puns based on sound imitation: Hound Dog (the name of Elvis Presley's song) instead of “hot dog”, Chubby Checker instead of “cheeseburger”, Big Bopper - “Big Burger” etc. (5).

Stephen King also uses onyms connected with other musical styles: Shenandoah (American old popular song), I've Got a Gal from Kalamazoo (a pop song performed in 1942 by Glenn Miller orchestra) (7), Sousa marches (an American military marches composer) (8). The text is so saturated with references to music that even Mary's thoughts (who, according to the author, knew her rock and roll probably better than Clark (8)) often correspond to lyrics of famous songs: All my exes come from Texas (originally - country music hit All My Ex 's Live In Texas by George Strait), I got to get out of here (a 1974 Badfinger 's song) (7-8).

There are also allusions not related to music but with other art and cultural phenomena and personalities. We've already analyzed the use of the allusive onym Norman Rockwell in the first description of Rock-n-Roll Heaven, but as the main characters have understood that they in a horrible trap, the author uses the name of a Spanish painter Francisco Goya (10) in the function of antonym (he is famous for dark grotesque imagery in works featured a carnival where he explored folly, lust, suffering and death). The ergonym The White Rabbit (9) (the name of a pet shop in the town) is both rock music and literary allusion (it is the direct literary allusion to Lewis Carroll's character from Alice in the Wonderland whose image was frequently used in rock lyrics (e. g. Jefferson Airplane, 1967). Literary allusions are also used when Clark starts to suspect that something terrible is going to happen and remembers the names of famous fantasy writers:

It was, if anything, a little fainter and a little narrower, and had begun to remind Clark of roads in the fantasy epics he liked to read - stories by people like Terry Brooks, Stephen Donaldson, and, of course,

J. R. R. Tolkien, the spiritual father of them all. In these tales, the characters (who usually had hairy feet and pointed ears) took these neglected roads in spite of their own gloomy intuitions, and usually ended up battling trolls or boggarts or mace-wielding skeletons (2).

In the following phrases we see allusions to well-known American horror movies together with literary ones:

You take one look down at a nice little town with a cute little name and say it reminds you of Friday the 13h Part XX (4);

Never mind Ray Bradbury's hellish vision of Mars or the candy-house in `Hansel and Gretel '; what this place resembled more than either was The Peculiar Little Town people kept stumbling into in various episodes of The Twilight Zone (4).

In order to create suspense S. King often uses hints and indirect naming in his story, giving readers the possibility to guess themselves. For example, two first citizens of Rock and Roll heaven whom Mary and Clark saw are described as “wearing a battered top-hat” and another has “tattooed hands” (5). Only in the climax scene “the TopHat” and “his illustrated companion” (8) are named when Mary became sure of her suspicions - they are Ronnie Van Zant from Lynyrd Skynyrd and Duane Allman who “took something from the pocket of his denim jacket and bit into it. Mary saw with no surprise at all that it was a peach” (8). Here the author uses allusion to D. Allman's posthumous album Eat a Peach. In order to describe Janis Joplin without naming her S. King uses some artistic details that help the readers to recognize the rock star: a short woman with a lot of_ frizzy red hair <...> with a brassy look that was both harsh and desperate <...> the laugh had a husky <...> associated with scotch and cigarettes (5); Scotch-and-Marlboros voice (6), whiskey-voiced colleague (7).

In the author's description of passed rock musicians who occupied the town we constantly find the image of Death and objects connected with it which produces a terrible, frightening impression. In the following examples these scary images are intensified with the help of epithet, simile and metaphor:

..his drop-dead blue eyes... (9);

...his pale hands dangling like dead spiders (9);

... apocalyptic bebop combination (11);

They got a hell of a band (4);

... when she took Clark's hand it was like taking the hand of a corpse (11);

Behind him, in the darkness, scores of shadows were trooping onto the stage (11).

The final scream of the emcee is supported with capitalization and an epithet creating the atmosphere of something supernatural and vicious:

This time he was answered - by a demonic shriek of saxophones from the shadows behind him. `Are you ready to BOOOOOGIE?' (11)

The figurative descriptions of two most famous dead rock stars participating in the story - Janis Joplin and Elvis Presley - support the impression of chilling horror:

She screamed indignantly, and as she did, a flood of maggots flew from her mouth. Most struck the floor between her feet, but some clung to her lower lip, squirming obscenely (8);

He had pushed his sunglasses up on his forehead then, for a moment revealing wrinkled, empty eyesockets (9).

The thoughts of Mary in the final of the story casts light and explains the meaning of the antithesis that was already used by the author at the beginning and had the function of foreshadowing (I've been to Rock and Roll Heaven and you know they get a hell of a band (4)): She and Clark had stumbled into Rock and Roll Heaven, but it was actually Rock and Roll Hell (11). The title itself acquires additional meaning as the dead disc jockey “shouted”, “screamed”, “tolled”, “spoke”, “chanted” (11) the long list of names of dead musicians - participants of the night concert. The name of the song used by S. King as a title of the story was actually a tribute to several deceased singers such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Bobby Darin, Jim Morrison, Leroy Brown and Otis Redding, and has been rewritten a number of times since then to include other singers (up to 20 names for now).

Conclusions and perspectives of further research in this field

The analysis of the story “You Know They Got a Hell of a Band” by Stephen King made it possible to come to the conclusion that the structure of the text is held together by allusive onomastic components that permeate the narrative from the title to the last sentence. Among the stylistic means of the coherence implementation the use of allusive onyms dominated throughout the text. Personification, metaphors, repeated epithets and simile being intensified with the help of capitalization created the image of the “deadly” supernatural world.

The prospects for the research of means of coherence implementation are seen in the study of syntactical peculiarities of the text under analysis.

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