Peculiarities of expressing subtext in a literary text

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Peculiarities of expressing subtext in a literary text

T.V. Kryvoruchko, N.V. Diachuk, I.L. Biliuk, T.V. Svyrydiuk

Abstract

The scientific research is devoted to the study of the peculiarities of expressing subtext in a literary text. Understanding the text is connected with the disclosure of a literary text meaning. The emergence and development of subtext in literary works are connected with the peculiarities of the processes of general development of literature, reflection of contemporary issues, ideological conflicts, literary and artistic polemics, etc. Important characteristics of the text are integrity, coherence, informativeness, structure, divisibility and dialogicity. A literary text contains content- factual, content-conceptual, and content-subtextual information and performs aesthetic, ethical, and cognitive functions. Understanding a literary text is a complex intellectual and emotional process. The surface meaning ensures the perception of the external form of the text and the understanding of the direct meaning. The deep meaning is associated with understanding the indirect meaning, the subtext. The following levels of understanding of literary texts are distinguished: linguistic level, which is the most superficial; interpretation, which is a deeper level of text understanding and is associated with the identification of those text characteristics that correspond to the semantic structures of the reader and make a good impression on him; comprehension of meaning, which is the third level of understanding of a literary text and helps to comprehend the essence of what the work is about and find out what the author of the work wanted, what motives guided him and what tasks he set himself when creating the text; the fourth level of text understanding is the process of realising the content, which involves not only the author and his work, but also the connections between the content of the text and trends in social development, which makes the text seem to be immersed in a historical and cultural context.

Keywords: literary text, subtext, artistic style, integrity, coherence, informativeness, structurally, divisibility, dialogicity

Анотація

Особливості вираження підтексту в художньому творі

Криворучко Т. В., Дячук Н. В., Білюк І. Л., Свиридюк Т. В.

Наукова розвідка присвячена дослідженню особливостей вираження підтексту в художньому творі.

Виділяють такі рівні розуміння художніх текстів: лінгвістичний рівень, який є найбільш поверхневим; інтерпретація, яка є глибшим рівнем розуміння тексту й пов'язана з виділенням тих характеристик тексту, які відповідають смисловим структурам читача та справляють гарне враження на нього; осягнення сенсу, яке є третім рівнем розуміння художнього тексту й допомагає осягнути сутність того, про що йдеться у творі, і з'ясувати, чого прагнув автор твору, якими мотивами керувався та які завдання ставив перед собою під час створення тексту; четвертий рівень розуміння тексту - процес усвідомлення змісту твору, у якому беруть участь не лише автор та його твір, а й зв'язки змісту тексту з тенденціями суспільного розвитку, завдяки чому текст ніби занурюється в історико-культурний контекст.

Ключові слова: художній текст, підтекст, художній стиль, цілісність, зв'язність, інформативність, структурність, подільність, діалогічність, рівні розуміння художнього тексту.

Introduction

Defining the problem. Nowadays the interest to the processes of perception, understanding, and analysis of literary texts has gained great importance. The problem of text comprehension is primarily related to the disclosure of the meaning of an artistic style work. In a literary text, one can discern traces of the characters' non-verbal behaviour, since any literary text has a considerable degree of interpretability and is aimed at revealing the ideological content. The internal reserves of the text are revealed, first of all, by the subtext. The emergence and development of subtext in literary works are associated with the peculiarities of the processes of the general literature development, reflection in the artistic sense of literary works on topical issues of our time, ideological conflicts, literary and artistic polemics and the growing role of the personal principle. However, the tools used to reveal subtext in linguistics do not allow us to fully understand the author's creative nature. Therefore, at the present stage of studying a literary text, it is planned to use psycholinguistic aspects for a deeper interpretation of texts of an artistic style.

Analysis of previous research. Contemporary Ukrainian scholars, in particular S. Yermolenko, I. Kochan, V. Rizun, V. Melnychayko, and others, have studied the text to identify the regularities of language and the specifics of its existence. The study of the concept of text became the main one in the works of such scholars as O.O. Selivanova, R. Harweg, and others.

The aim of the article is to investigate peculiarities of expressing subtext in a literary text.

Research object: subtext in a literary text.

The subject of the study: peculiarities of expressing subtext in a literary text.

Presenting main material

A text is the material, formal and visual expression of the artistic world in a literary work. It consists of letters and punctuation marks that are combined into words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and books. The text contains its depth, which can be reached not only through the ability to read signs, but also through the developed creative imagination, aesthetic experience, and the purposeful work of artistic flair and artistic consciousness. The main feature of a literary text is its communicative and functional feature, i.e., the text is a means of transmitting data and storing information, as well as influencing the recipient's personality. Important characteristics of the text are integrity, coherence, informativeness, structure, divisibility, dialogicity, etc. [1; 7; 8; 10].

Coherence refers to the logic of text presentation, the specific organization of language tools, communicative orientation, and compositional structure. The integrity of the text is characterized by a fully presented topic and the subordination of the presentation to the goal achievement. The structure of a text includes two levels: surface and deep. The deep level helps to understand the meaning of the information presented by the author in the text. The surface level explains the lexical composition and principles of sentence construction. Divisibility is in some way related to structure and allows parts of a text to perform different functions in the process of reading it. This allows you to return to different passages of the text repeatedly and combine them. The informativeness of a text is related to the ability of a text to carry a certain message, and its dialogic nature means that the text is created with the help of joint efforts of the author and the reader. literary reader concept author subtext

The task of a literary text is to express the author's value and aesthetic attitudes. A literary text is guided by the laws of associative and figurative thinking and affects the emotional sphere of a human personality. For a literary text, it is not so much the subject-conceptual world that is important as the representation - a visual image of an object that arises in memory and imagination.

The main distinguishing feature of a literary text from texts of other styles is that the author communicates with the reader using various artistic means, the purpose of which is not only to provide the reader with certain information but also to influence his or her feelings and emotions. The author of a literary text creates an image that has the meaning of a generalized picture of human life created with the help of fiction and a picture that has aesthetic value [9].

Every literary text contains certain types of information that differ in their meaning. There are three types of information that are key to understanding a text:

- factual information contains information about facts, events, and processes that have already taken place, are taking place, or will take place in the real or fictional world. This type of information is transmitted verbally. Units of language are always expressed in a direct sense;

- content and conceptual information provides information about the author's understanding of the relationship between the phenomena described with the help of content and factual information, helps to realize the cause- and-effect relationships between these phenomena, their importance in the social, economic, and political life of a person, including the relationship between different individuals. Also, this type of information refers to the system of views, thoughts, emotions, and feelings of the author, which he tries to reflect in the text, hoping for its exhaustiveness (perception) by the reader;

-subtextual information helps to reveal a certain hidden meaning in a text. It is based on the recipient's ability to perceive reality in parallel - on several planes at once. This type of information includes details, artistic devices, intonation, word order, and sentence combinations. This information is never expressed directly, in words, but with the help of artistic means, which the reader must interpret and understand a particular message of the author [10].

All types of information play an important role in the process of understanding a text, as well as opening up new possibilities for analyzing the text and helping us to realize the process of constructing our own statements. All types are interconnected and cannot exist on their own. In every work of artistic style, there are always certain details that relate to everything the work is about. An important place in works of fiction is taken by the author's conveyance of his or her own emotions and feelings to form the reader's attitude toward certain objects described in the work. But it is worth saying that the reader's attitude to the described object does not necessarily have to be positive, it can also be negative.

A literary text, like texts of other styles, has several functions:

1. The aesthetic function primarily provides intellectual and emotional satisfaction by awakening the reader's imagination and encouraging him or her to empathize with the events described in the work. The reader's empathy is similar to what the author felt when writing the work.

2. The ethical function has common features with the aesthetic function, which is due to the fact that the pleasure experienced by the reader (emotional and intellectual) is the result of the author's ability to satisfy the reader's moral needs and show the main ways to resolve ethical conflicts. The peculiarity of this function is that when we read a work, we consciously or unconsciously transform what we read into our own life experience. The ethical function aims to explain moral truths to the reader by explicitly emphasizing them, but the author may not even realize it, but act as a moralist due to his creative nature.

3. The cognitive function is responsible for increasing knowledge about the world around us, expanding our understanding of the culture, customs, and life of the people described in the work.

The author of a literary text seems to be predicting events, phenomena, and scientific discoveries, encouraging scientists to theorize and study them. Authors of fiction seem to be making a message to readers, especially to future generations who will read their works. A work of fiction helps the reader to better understand themselves, and their own essence, determine their attitude to various phenomena and people, and realize their intentions and desires, thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Thus, the presence of the aforementioned features in a literary text allows you to fill the text with a variety of colours to maximize the reader's attention and immerse him or her in the atmosphere of the work.

Given the fact that there are different types of texts, it is impossible to perceive and understand every text in the same way. Understanding a literary text is a complex intellectual and emotional process. Different scholars have developed certain systems to help readers understand a particular text. The surface meaning ensures the perception of the external form of the text and the understanding of the direct meaning, where the context in the broadest sense of the word plays an important role. Deep meaning is associated with understanding the indirect meaning, the subtext. At this stage of understanding, considerable attention is paid to the common fund of knowledge of the author and the recipient. The essence helps to realize the concept, the general meaning of the text, associated with its emotional perception. Understanding a text comes with experience. The emotional impact of the work's images comes first. The development of reproductive perception, the use of expressive reading, the analysis of real landscapes, the enrichment of reading practice in general, and familiarization with the techniques of image construction are the main recommendations of the scientist regarding the perception of a work of art [7].

There are some levels of understanding of literary texts. The linguistic level is the most superficial level of text comprehension. The purpose of the linguistic level is to clarify and specify the components of the text. At this level, processes such as identifying lexical units of the text, identifying syntactic relations between them, and establishing their semantic characteristics take place.

Interpretation is a deeper level of text understanding, which is associated with highlighting those characteristics of the text that correspond to the reader's semantic structures, make a good impression on him or her, and meet his or her intentions and aspirations. This level is very important in the process of understanding a literary text. It can take the form of actualization, and sometimes of contextualization, because the reader pays more attention to those moments that are important for meeting social needs or achieving personal goals. It is obvious that each reader interprets the content of the text in his or her own way and therefore understands it in his or her way.

A type of interpretation is modernization, which is characterized by the fact that the content of the text being interpreted is given additional features. At the present stage, the past acquires new, uncharacteristic shades. Of course, as a result, we have an incorrect idea of the relations and events recorded in the text. Literary texts, on the other hand, due to their inherent inaccuracy, inconsistency, and even paradox, provoke the reader to take an active part in their elaboration, giving them a new meaning [10].

Comprehension of meaning is the third level of understanding a literary text. To comprehend the essence of what the work is about means to find out what the author of the work wanted, what motives guided him, and what tasks he set himself when creating the text. The text is filled with the content provided by the author, and the reader largely follows his or her path. However, this level cannot be called the deepest level of text understanding, because it is undeniable that future generations understand and perceive the text better than the contemporaries of the author who created a particular work of art. Sometimes an author can write as a message to future generations, telling about things that did not exist in his or her era. It is difficult for the author's contemporaries to perceive strange, incomprehensible things that do not exist. Readers of future generations find it easier to perceive and understand a text that talks about events and things that already exist, and it becomes more interesting to read a work when the author was able to predict what will happen in the future [9].

An important place is taken by the process of realizing the content of the work, which is the fourth level of understanding the text. This process involves not only the author and his or her work but also the connections between the content of the text and trends in social development so that the text is immersed in a historical and cultural context. Just one reading is not enough to penetrate the depth of a text. During the first reading, the reader receives superficial information that does not give a complete understanding of the author's intentions for the text. It is worth reading it several times slowly, thinking about the meaning of the text, immersing yourself in the events taking place in it, so as not to miss a single detail and to discern and unravel the author's position, as well as to give your assessment of the artistic intensity of the work. A literary text should be felt emotionally, and treated as a piece of art.

A literary text can rarely strike a reader's soul the first time they read it. One has to look at it and think about it gradually. According to the scientist, the text should be read several times, because by re-reading the work, the recipient delves deeper into its organization, discovers new, previously unnoticed features, sees new colours, and enjoys them more and more. Interpretation plays an important role in the process of understanding a text because it acts both as a process of realizing the text and as a result of this process, which is expressed by the ability to express the results of one's observations and to formulate one's understanding of what one has read as competently as possible. To understand and comprehend the meaning of a literary text, you should be interested in the work itself and try to penetrate the essence of the work. When reading a literary text, you need to analyze all the details, especially paying attention to the small ones, because sometimes they can encrypt important information necessary to comprehend the meaning of the text.

The subtext is considered to be the hidden inner meaning of a statement that arises from the correlation of direct verbal meanings with the context of situations. The key phrases that help to understand the definition of the concept of subtext are "hidden meaning", "second meaning", "deep meaning", "additional meaning", etc. A subtext is a type of artistic image in which the concrete and sensual givenness of the subject of the image, in addition to its own, has the meaning of a deliberately hidden hint of some other idea or image that is not directly mentioned, but is implied and significantly overestimates the content of what is openly stated in a direct form [7].

There are different types of connotation: situational connotation, which arises in connection with facts and events that have already been described in stories, novels, etc., and associative connotation, which is not related to facts or events that have already been described. It arises in our subconscious mind, which is related to the inherent habit of our consciousness to associate what is expressed verbally with the experience we have accumulated over the course of our lives.

There is a Christian connotation that is generated associatively, with the author appealing to the knowledge of biblical symbolism in his work. By analogy to the Christian subtext, there is a folklore subtext based on a fairy tale or myth [5].

An important role in the study of literary texts is played by the subtext, which contains information about the importance of the text passage in the foreground, its semantic significance. It can arise from additional meanings of lexical units of the text.

This type of subtext is interpreted as connotation. A subtext that contains information about problems and events that are not mentioned in the text is called a presupposition. Presuppositions are understood as those preconditions and pre-conditions that, without being part of the meaning of a statement, create the basis for its use.

The following types of subtext can be distinguished by the nature of the content-subtextual information: subtext with a logical dominant meaning, which occurs when it reports on certain problems or events that are not mentioned in the overt content, or provides additional information about events or phenomena that are mentioned in the content-factual information of the text. In a subtext with a logical dominant meaning, the reader can get acquainted with both the author's opinion and the opinions of the characters in a work of fiction. There are also cases when the author's opinion coincides with the opinions of the characters in the work; subtext with an emotional dominance of meaning contains information about the hidden state of mind of the characters or the author's emotional and evaluative attitude to the events or people described in the text of the work implicitly expressed in the text [1].

Both types of subtext can exist simultaneously in the same work of art. The main functions of subtext are textual, informative, and pragmatic.

The text-forming function contributes to the establishment of associative and semantic, constructive connections between parts of the literary whole, binds the text together, and thus contributes to the creation of semantic unity and stylistic completeness of a work of fiction.

The informative function of subtext is to realize the main idea of a work of art and the author's concept. Three types of information play an important role: content-factual, content-subtextual, and content-conceptual, which interact with each other. The latter two types of information are based on the content- factual information of the text.

The means of expressing semantic- subtextual and semantic-conceptual information are derived only from the combination of language means that form the horizontal context of a work of art. Content-conceptual information characterizes the functional style of the language of fiction in general. Content- subtextual information, unlike content- factual and content-conceptual information, is optional.

This type of information is not always present in a work of fiction. If the work contains subtextual information, it is based on the content-factual information and plays a significant role in the content- conceptual information. The interconnectedness of all three types of information is the essence of the text as a whole [9].

The focus of subtext on reader perception determines its pragmatic function in the text of a work of fiction. The subtext helps to convey the author's subjective and evaluative attitude to the events and people described, which is not always expressed explicitly, and contributes to the formation of a certain position of the reader. The pragmatic function divides the text into its constituent elements. Dividing the text into parts, sections, subsections, and paragraphs orients the reader to a certain mood, directing his or her perception.

The main characteristics of subtext are informativeness (subtext carries information about certain events, phenomena) explicitness/implicitness - subtext cannot be detected as a result of standard analytical procedures that reveal explicit information in the text and intentionality - subtext arises not only subconsciously but also as a result of conscious actions of the speaker.

The search for subtext occurs when the reader needs to find some additional information about certain facts, events, or situations. Any deviation from the general principles and genre-situational norms of the language or violation of language norms can prompt the reader to search for subtext. The main factors that determine the understanding of subtext are the reader's general thesaurus, the content, richness, and depth of the text, mastery of the tools of linguistic analysis, the level of creative activity of the reader's perception, etc.

The collision of the primary and secondary meanings of a situation determines the depth of the subtext. A statement that is repeated, losing its direct meaning, gradually becomes only a sign reminding of a certain upward situation, thus enriching itself with additional meanings that concentrate all the diversity of contextual connections.

To create subtext, the author often uses artistic means: metaphors, metonymy, irony, oxymoron, etc. But artistic means are not a prerequisite for creating subtext. The subtext arises as a result of the correlation of at least 2 distant text segments, i.e. those that are at a certain distance from each other. As a result of this correlation, new knowledge is manifested as a reform of the previous one, and literal and subtextual meanings are correlated as a topic-subject relation [7; 10].

In works of fiction, one can distinguish various means of expressing subtext, such as polysemous words, deictic words, particles, interjections, various repetitions, violations of logical sequence, pauses, paraphrases, etc. All these means, as well as artistic tropes, are additional elements of the text. They ensure the transmission of basic, explicit information.

There is implicit and explicit information in a work of art. Explicit information is openly expressed and consciously perceived by the reader. Implicit information, on the other hand, is implied but not expressed, i.e., it indicates a subtext, and is perceived by the reader unconsciously.

There is a misconception that special means are used to express the main, explicit information and other means to express implicit information. In fact, the same means of expression are used for both types of information, the only difference being that the means of expressing implicit, subtextual information must be additionally labeled [10].

The means of expressing subtext can be different: the actual language itself, which can express both explicit and implicit information. These include polysemous words, particles, phraseology, dialectisms, insertions, inconsistent phrases, repetitions, discontinuous repetitions, incomplete sentences, jargon, etc.; additional marking means that provide a change in the function of expressing the main, explicit information to the function of expressing the subtextual, implicit information [7].

The means of additional labeling, in turn, are manifested in:

- violation of the standard functioning of language tools, including paraphrase, ellipsis, violation of the syntactic or logical order of the components of the statement, which leads to the destruction of certain text structures;

- the use of certain text units in nonstandard positions, which is more typical for lexical and morphological means, including the violation of word combinations, the use of definite articles in sentences with words and in sentences that do not require them, etc;

- the use of language tools without violating the usages and using a certain tool several times. If a tool is used correctly from the point of view of the communicative minimum, it should be used a certain number of times, even excessively. Increasing the number of uses of a particular means creates marking. This group includes various types of repetition, namely sound (assimilation, alliteration, rhyme), phrase (syntactic parallelism), word (polysyndeton or multi-conjunction, tautology, pleonasm), etc. Long pauses can also be seen as a linguistic device that manifests itself as communicative redundancy and is interpreted as the repeated use of a pause [9].

Conclusion

Thus, it can be argued that understanding a literary text is a complex process that requires the reader's activity, and deep reflection, which helps to understand the main characters of the work and comprehend its meaning and main idea. It is a complex intellectual and emotional process. Reading a text involves not only thinking but also imagination because the reader penetrates the inner world of the characters in the work, the circumstances of their lives, their behaviour, and relationships with the world around them. Subtext is the hidden meaning of a work, which gives it ambiguity, the possibility of different readings, helps to understand the author's attitude to certain events described, and helps to formulate the reader's position and orient him or her to a certain mood. The main means of expressing subtext are any linguistic means that express explicit information, as well as additional markers that indicate implicit information, help to find, unravel and understand the subtext.

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